§ 10. THE LATER AVIGJXON POPES. 101
qr_2,500»000Lpeople, fell victims to tlue^ .dcead-d.lsaa.se. |: Ac-, cording to Knighton, it was introduced into the land through Southampton. As for Scotland, this chronicler tells the grewsome story that some of the Scotch, on hearing of the weakness of the English in consequence of the malady, met in the forest of Selfchyrche — Selkirk — and decided to fall upon their unfortunate neighbors, but were suddenly themselves attacked by the disease, nearly 5000 dying. The English king prorogued parliament. The disaster that came to the industries of the country is dwelt upon at length by the English chroniclers. The soil became " dead," for there were no laborers left to till it. The price per acre was reduced onehalf, or even much more. The cattle wandered through the meadows and fields of grain, with no one to drive them in. " The dread fear of death made the prices of live stock cheap." Horses were sold for one-half their usual price, 40 solidi, and a fat steer for 4 solidi. The price of labor went up, and the cost of the necessaries of life became "very high."^ The effect upon the Church was such as to interrupt its ministries and perhaps check its growth. The English bishops provided for the exigencies of the moment by issuing letters giving to all clerics the right of absolution. The priest could now make his price, and instead of 4 or 5 marks, as Knighton reports, he could get 10 or 20 after the pestilence had spent its course. To make up for the scarcity^f ministers, ordination was granted before the canonical age, as when Bateman, bishop of Norwich, set apart by the sacred rite 60 clerks, "though only shavelings" under 21. In another direction the evil effects of the plague were seen. Work was stopped,
1 These are the figures of Jessopp, Coming of the Friars, Gasquet, p. 226, and Cunningham, Growth of English Industries and Commerce, p. 276. Thorold Rogers, however, in Six Centuries of Work, etc., and England before and after the Black Death, Fortnightly Review, VIII. 190 sqq. reduces the number. Jessopp bases his calculations upon local documents and death lists of the diocese of Norwich and finds that in some cases nine-tenths of the population died. The Augustinians at Heveringland, prior and canons, died to a man. At Hickling only one survived. Whether this fell mortality among the clergy, especially the orders, points to luxuriant living and carelessness in habits of cleanliness, we will not attempt to say.
2 Knighton, II. 02, 05.
102 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
on the Cathedral of Siena, which waa-lai^ ^^^t on a srale ^ almost unsurpassed size^^and ha,^ T)ftt h^pn rpsumptl totUL^
The Black Deathjwas said to have invaded Europe from the East, and to have been carried first by Genoese vessels. ^ Its victims were far in excess of the loss of life by any battles or earthquakes known to European history, not excepting the Sicilian earthquake of 1908.
.In spite of the^lag;uej_anil perhaps in gratitude for its cessation, the Jubilee Year of 1350, like the Jubilee under Boni- Jface at the opening of the century, brought thousands of pil^ ^rims to Rome. If they left scenes of desolation in the cities and villages from which they came, they found a spectacle of desolation and ruin in the Eternal City which Petrarch, visiting the same year, said was enougli to move a heart of stone. Matthew Villani ^ cannot say too much in praise of the devotion of the visiting throngs. Clement's bull extended the benefits of his promised indulgence to those who started on a pilgrimage without the permission of their superiors, the cleric without the permission of his bishop, the monk without the permission of his abbot, and the wife without the permission of her husband.
Qfjhe three popes who followed j^ement, only good can be said- Im]LPcentVI.jJL352.--lSfi2^ native of the see of Limoges, had been appointed cardinal by Clement VI. Following in the
1 Gasquet, p. 253. This author, pp. viii, 8, compares the ravages of the bubonic plague in India, 1897-1905, to the desolations of the IJlack Death. He gives the mortality in India in this period as 3,250,000 persons. He emphasizes the bad effects of the plague in undoing the previous work of the Church and checking its progress.
2 Ralph, bishop of Bath and Wells, in a pastoral letter warned against the "pestilence which had come into a neighboring kingdom from the East." Knighton refers its origin to India, Thomas Walsingham, //i'sf. Angl., KoUs Series I. 273, thus speaks of it: "Beginning in the regions of the North and East it advanced over the world and ended with so great a destruction that scarcely half of the people remained. Towns once full of men became destitute of inhabitants, and so violently did the pestilence increase that the living were scarcely able to bury the dead. In certain houses of men of religion, scarcely two out of twenty men survived. It was estimated by many that scarcely one-tenth of mankind had been left alive."
8 Muratori, XV. 66.