Demographic Crises
The Flagellants
Many people, learned or not, were convinced that whatever the proximate cause of the disease, the ultimate cause was divine anger. It was a punishment from an angry God, a scourging of the world. Probably the most famous and exotic response to this was the flagellant movement. These were bands of people who wandered through towns and countryside doing penance in public. They inflicted all sort of punishments upon themselves, trying to atone for the evil of the world, sacrificing themselves for the world's sins in imitation of Jesus.
Society wondered at them and had extremely mixed feelings about them. Many common folk admired their piety and sacrifice, but most of the Church hierarchy condemned them. Here are a couple of descriptions of the flagellants from contemporary chroniclers. The first is from Jean de Venette.
While the plague was still active and spreading from town to town, men in Germany, Flanders, Hainault and Lorraine uprose and began a new sect on their own authority. Stripped to the waist, they gathered in large groups and bands and marched in procession throught the crossroads and squares of cities and good towns. They formed circles and beat upon their backs with weighted scourges, rejoicing as they did so in loud voices and singing hymns suitable to their rite and newly composed for it. Thus, for 33 days they marched through many towns doing penance and affording a great spectacle to the wondering people. They flogged their shoulders and arms, scourged with iron points so zealously as to draw blood.
The second account is from the medieval historian Jean Froissart, from his history of the Hundred Years' War.
... the penitents went about, coming first out of Germany. They were men who did public penance and scourged themselves with whips of hard knotted leather with little iron spikes. Some made themselves bleed very badly between the shoulder blades and some foolish women had cloths ready to catch the blood and smear it on their eyes, saying it was miraculous blood. While they were doing penance, they sang very mournful songs about nativity and the passion of Our Lord. The object of this penance was to put a stop to the mortality, for in that time . . . at least a third of all the people in the world died.
The flagellants showed a tendency toward anticlericalism, condemning the clergy for its corruption. They also showed a tendency to kill Jews they encountered, and even killed clergymen who spoke against them. In October 1349 the pope condemned them and ordered all authorities to suppress them. But flagellants reappeared in times of plague well into the fifteenth century.