Much Later Example

It has been a bit of a struggle finding information to keep this blog going over the course of this semester; this week I tried a different route and sourced mined some of my previously used sources to see where some of their information came from. I hope that this strategy will be useful in keeping my information for my blog/research project from getting stale.

Last week I discussed the manuscript: Dance Macabre, in graveyard of the church of St. Magnus at Magdeburg. This manuscript gave the impression of death having a “personality.” For this week, I want to look at another work of art that depicts the Black Death. 

"During the Black Death of 1348, the Blessed Bernard Tolomei left the safety of his Benedictine monastery in Monte Oliveto and returned to his native Siena to attend to the sick and dying. He succumbed to the plague that same year and soon became the object of religious devotion. An abbot from Bernard's monastic order commissioned this painting in 1736, when Bernard was being considered for sainthood. Giuseppe Maria Crespi interpreted the story's pathos with great depth, expression, and immediacy." [1]

Although much of what I have been researching has been from manuscripts specifically from the same century as the Black Death, I think it’s important to understand how much of an impact the Black Death had on society even three hundred to four hundred years later.

"Wearing a white robe and holding a crucifix, Bernard and a fellow monk attend to plague victims in an open-air encampment outside the walls of Siena. On the left, a priest walks under an umbrella, accompanied by an acolyte. Several plague-stricken figures languish on the ground in various stages of death. Below Bernard, a woman slumps over while her small child desperately tries to pull her upright. At her feet, the foreshortened body of a dead infant falls in the area between the acolyte and bowing monk. A woman has perished in the right corner, her gray-skinned body lifeless, thus a man above her holds a cloth over his mouth to avoid smelling the stench. Contorted, highlighted figures emerge from the shadowy darkness to confront the viewer, accordingly heightening the emotion of the drama. " [1]

 Like Dance Macabre, Bernard Tolomei and the Plague in Siena gives death a “personality”, yet one that is three hundred – four hundred years later. The “personality” in this painting is different from that of the Dance Macabre; mentioned in some of my previous blog entries, Benard Tolomei and the Plague in Siena exhibits traits that represent the overall feelings of society during the Black Death. Death and dying is depicted as a very real feeling; in Bernard Tolomei and the Plague in Siena, images of the dead and dying strewn out into the street, and death is stalking its victims. 

What I find most important about this work is the fact that even as late as 1736; society still feared the death and particularly the plague. There is absolutely no comparison with this work of art with manuscripts from before the plague. The dark themes and the presence of death can be felt, this leads me to believe that the Black Plague’s reign of fear did not end with eradication rather it plagued humanity for many years after. 

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[1] The J. Paul Getty Trust . "Bernard Tolomei and the Plague in Siena (Getty Museum)." Bernard Tolomei and the Plague in Siena (Getty Museum). http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artObjectDetails?artobj=904 (accessed October 28, 2013).

Back to the Manuscripts

Last week I took a step away from the researching the manuscripts directly and focused on more scholarly articles with a central focus on the statistics of death in relation to age and or prior condition. This week I would like to return to the main focus on my blog which is the manuscripts and what they tell us about how Medieval society felt about death during and after the Black Death.

This week I want to take a look at just one example of an illustrated manuscript and explain the depiction and what it means in relation to societies feelings about death and dying.

Dance Macabre, in graveyard of the church of St. Magnus at Magdeburg.

The Dance Macabre, in the graveyard of the church of St. Magnus at Magdeburg demonstrates the feeling that death is real and traumatic. 

"The trauma of the Black Death gave rise to the most popular artistic channel for the representation of death, the Dance of Death. There are indications that first the dance macabre was performed, then poetized, and finally painted. Before the15th century, the Dance Macabre was traced on walls of churches and charnel houses across Europe, gathering in its train rich and poor and young and old, exemplified by the fresco of Eure-et-Loir. In Europe every victim was danced off to hell no matter what: sudden death was escalated to sudden damnation (Binion, 2004). The dance macabre, based on folk superstition represented by the skeletons themselves, or accompanied with the living had a second social and spiritual lesson, that death is always coupled with the living. In the dance of the death, the corpses often tug or draw the living to death (Cohen, 1982)"  

[http://entomology.montana.edu/historybug/YersiniaEssays/Medrano.htm]

What does this say about how people felt after the Black Death? I believe that it gave death a "personality." No longer was death being looked at in a religious overtone but rather as more natural, traumatic, and gruesome event. The Black Death had a profound impact on this feeling; in a sense it was almost as if people were literally taken and guided down the path away from life as the image depicts. This is just scratching the surface and their are more images that demonstrate the reactions from society. In my future blogs I will began to look at more of these types of images and try to break them down and understand the theme the artist is trying to come across.

Statistical Evidence

This week I am going to take a break from studying illustrated manuscripts and look more at mortality statistics and patterns of death of the Black Death. There is a lot more to cover in regards to illustrated manuscripts and how they reflect the impact of the plague on society; however, this week I felt that it was necessary to reflect on more of a statistical basis of the impact of the Black Death and try to relate it to the illustrated manuscripts in regards to why the images reflect what they do.

The first set of statistical evidence that I wanted to examine was at what age group was affected most by the Black Death. Finding completely accurate information is going to be nearly impossible as accurate records have either been lost, destroyed, or not created at all. What I did find was a study on age of patterns of mortality during the Black Death in London from 1349-1350. The results from this study were what I had expected to find.

Analyses were done using a sample of 337 individuals excavated from the East Smithfield cemetery in London, which contains only individuals who died during the Black Death in London in 1349–1350. The age patterns from East Smithfield were compared to a sample of 207 individuals who died from non-epidemic causes of mortality. Ages were estimated using the method of transition analysis, and age-specific mortality was evaluated using a hazards model. The results indicate that the risk of mortality during the Black Death increased with adult age, and therefore that age had an effect on risk of death during the epidemic. The age patterns in the Black Death cemetery were similar to those from the non-epidemic mortality sample. The results from this study are consistent with previous findings suggesting that despite the devastating nature of the Black Death, the 14th-century disease had general patterns of selectivity that were similar to those associated with normal medieval mortality. [1] 

As of right now I am not fully convinced that this makes a difference in the images that are depicted in the illustrated manuscripts both during and after the Black Death. The reason for this conclusion is because as DeWitte mentioned in her abstract of the Age patterns of mortality during the Black Death in London, the patterns of death hadn't changed; the old were still the ones who were dying as they were more susceptible to the plague.

After looking into the importance of age in relation to how the plague affect medieval Europe, I felt that it was necessary to follow up this study with a study that associated the mortality rates with preexisting conditions and whether or not it was a factor in the spread of the plague. Just as before, even though it doesn't show a clear impact on the illustrated manuscripts, I am questioning whether it made a difference at all. 

Many researchers have assumed that the Black Death was so virulent, and the European population so immunologically naïve, that the epidemic killed indiscriminately, irrespective of age, sex, or frailty. If this were true,Black Death cemeteries would provide unbiased cross-sections of demographic and epidemiological conditions in 14th-century Europe. Using skeletal remains from medieval England and Denmark, new methods of paleodemographic age estimation, and a recent multistate model of selective mortality, we test the assumption that the mid-14th-century Black Death killed indiscriminately. Skeletons from the East Smithfield Black Death cemetery in London are compared with normal, nonepidemic cemetery samples from two medieval Danish towns (Viborg and Odense). The results suggest that the Black Death did not kill indiscriminately-that it was, in fact, selective with respect to frailty, although probably not as strongly selective as normal mortality. [2]

 Surprisingly, the fact that it was selective in respect to frailty should have a impact on the images that are displayed in the illustrated manuscripts. Although noted in my previous blogs, the manuscripts didn't exempt individuals based on social standing since the death killed regardless if you were powerful or a peasant; however, perhaps the images of the individuals within the paintings show more feeble characters? This is something that I haven't noticed as of yet, but then again I haven't really been looking into that. The next few blogs are going to start trying to tie some loose ends and make further observations about how the illustrated manuscripts reflect societies outlook on death and dying during the Black Plague.

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[1] DeWitte, Sharon N. "Age patterns of mortality during the Black Death in London, A.D. 1349–1350." Journal Of Archaeological Science 37, no. 12 (December 2010): 3394-3400. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed October 6, 2013).

[2] deWitte, Sharon N., and James W. Wood. 2008. "Selectivity of Black Death mortality with respect to preexisting health."Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences Of The United States Of America 105, no. 5: 1436-1441. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed October 6, 2013).