Late Middle Ages

Late medieval plague saints and folk beliefs

The Black Death arrived in Europe at a moment when the saints were, for most people, the principal defenders against sudden death. There was no effective medicine. There was no germ theory. There was no public health apparatus. The sick were tended in their homes by family members and by the occasional barber-surgeon; the dead were buried in the parish cemetery, often without benefit of clergy; and the saints were the only recourse against a pestilence that seemed, to contemporaries, to be the immediate work of God. The cult of the saints of the plague expanded explosively in the wake of the catastrophe of 1347–1351, and the folk beliefs and practices that surrounded the cult became a permanent feature of late medieval popular religion.

The wider context of the recurring waves of plague is set out in Recurring plagues and their decline and in Why did the plague return in waves?. The eventual disappearance of plague is treated in How Europe finally escaped the cycle of plague. The persecution of the Jews, which was a direct consequence of the folk beliefs about the origin of the plague, is examined in Jewish persecution and the spread of plague.

Saint Roch of Montpellier

The most popular of the new plague saints was Saint Roch (c. 1295–1327), a French pilgrim from Montpellier, who was believed to have devoted his life to the care of plague victims in Italy and to have himself been healed of the disease by an angel. According to his legend, Roch was born to a wealthy family in Montpellier, made a pilgrimage to Rome, and stopped at various plague-stricken towns on the way, where he healed the sick by the sign of the cross and by prayer. He himself contracted the plague at Piacenza, and was healed, according to the legend, by an angel who appeared to him in a vision. He is conventionally shown in pilgrim’s garb — cloak, staff, hat, and a small dog that licks the plague-sore on his thigh.

The cult of Saint Roch expanded rapidly after 1348, particularly in northern Italy. The church of San Rocco in Venice was built in the late fifteenth century to house the relics of the saint, and the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, decorated by Tintoretto in the 1560s, became one of the great shrines of plague-devotion in Europe. The cult was officially recognized by the church in 1466, when Pope Paul II added the feast of Saint Roch to the Roman calendar. The cult of Saint Roch was, in the late medieval period, a continental cult: there were churches dedicated to Saint Roch in nearly every major European city, and the saint was invoked in the plague processions of France, Germany, the Low Countries, and Italy. As the historian Richard Trexler argued in Syncretism and Christian Worship in Central Italy (1972), the cult of Saint Roch filled a gap that the older saints had not filled: the older saints had been invoked against particular symptoms of the disease, but Saint Roch was invoked as a healer of the disease as a whole.

Saint Sebastian, the Arrows of Plague

Saint Sebastian (c. 256–288) was, by 1348, an older saint, but his cult expanded rapidly in the wake of the Black Death. Sebastian was a Roman soldier martyred by arrows during the persecution of Christians under the emperor Diocletian. He was not, in his original cult, a plague saint: he was invoked primarily as a protector of soldiers and of plague victims only in the wake of the plague of 680 in Rome. The association of his arrows with the sudden death of plague was already established by the late seventh century, and the iconography of the saint — bound to a column or a tree, pierced with arrows, his body strained upward in an attitude of suffering — was well developed by 1300.

The plague of 1348 gave a new urgency to the cult. The principal late medieval depictions of Saint Sebastian — the paintings of Mantegna, Botticelli, and Bellini, all dating to c. 1474–1480 — were commissioned in the wake of the major plague outbreaks of the late fifteenth century, and they are among the most popular devotional images of the period. The cult of Saint Sebastian was particularly strong in the cities of northern Italy and in the towns of southern Germany, and the saint was invoked in the plague processions of the German cities as well as the Italian ones. The historian of medicine Jon Arrizabalaga, in his study of the Spanish Habsburg response to plague, has shown that Saint Sebastian was invoked in Spain as well, and that the cult was an important part of the public response to the major Spanish outbreaks of the late sixteenth century.

The Virgin Mary, Saint Christopher, and Saint Adrian

The Virgin Mary was, in the late medieval period, the most powerful of all the intercessors against plague. The cult of the Virgin, especially under the titles of Our Lady of Sorrows (Mater Dolorosa), Our Lady of Mercy (Mater Misericordiae), and Our Lady of the Rosary, expanded rapidly in the wake of the Black Death. The image of the Virgin as a refuge from divine judgment, in which she is shown sheltering the faithful under her cloak, became one of the most popular devotional images of the period. The dedication of churches to the Virgin under these titles — particularly the churches of the Misericordia in Italy, and the churches of the Schutzmantelmadonna in Germany — was one of the characteristic features of late medieval church building.

Saint Christopher (third century) was, in the late Middle Ages, a saint of great popularity. The legend held that Christopher had carried the Christ child across a river, and that anyone who looked at an image of him that day would not die a sudden or violent death. The cult of Saint Christopher was therefore a cult of protection against sudden death, and the sudden death of plague was, by 1348, the most feared form of sudden death. Images of Saint Christopher were placed on the walls of churches, on the sides of buildings, and on small devotional objects worn by travellers. The cult was particularly strong in the German-speaking lands and in England, where wall paintings of Saint Christopher survive in many parish churches.

Saint Adrian of Nicomedia (c. 200) was, by 1348, a saint of primarily northern European cult. Adrian was a Roman officer martyred under Diocletian, and he was invoked against plague and other sudden deaths. He was particularly popular in the Low Countries and in northern Germany, and he was usually depicted in armour, holding a sword and an anvil. The cult of Saint Adrian is one of the more obscure of the late medieval plague cults, but it was a real and continuing presence in the religious life of the period.

Relics, Processions, and Votive Masses

The cult of the saints of the plague was sustained by a dense network of relics, processions, and votive masses. The relics of Saint Roch, Saint Sebastian, and Saint Christopher were widely distributed: by the late fifteenth century, there were relics of Saint Roch in nearly every major European city, often presented as gifts from the French or Italian churches that had first acquired them. The relics were carried in procession in time of plague, often with great ceremony, and they were the focus of the votive masses that the towns and cities of the late Middle Ages endowed in the wake of plague outbreaks.

The plague procession was a distinctive form of late medieval public ritual. The population of a town, led by the clergy and the civic authorities, would march through the streets carrying the relics of the local saints, singing hymns, and praying for divine mercy. The most elaborate of these processions were the Rogation processions, which were held in time of plague and other calamities. The compagnie delle Laudi of the Italian cities, the confréries de pénitents of the French cities, and the Bruderschaften of the German cities all organised processions of this kind, and the processions were among the most important public events of the late medieval city.

Votive masses were another common response to plague. A town or a guild might commission a special mass to be said in honour of a particular saint, or in thanksgiving for having been spared, or in the hope of being spared in the future. The masses were often endowed with land or other property, and the endowment of a votive mass was one of the characteristic features of late medieval testamentary practice. The swearing of oaths was also common. In time of plague, towns and cities would often swear oaths to perform certain acts of penance, to undertake certain pilgrimages, or to make certain charitable gifts. The oaths were binding on the community, and they were often recorded in the town records. The most famous of these oaths is the oath sworn by the city of Pistoia in 1348 to maintain a permanent sanità, but similar oaths were sworn by dozens of Italian, French, and German cities in the wake of the Black Death.

Amulets, Charms, and the Three Kings of Cologne

Alongside the official cult of the saints, a rich body of folk beliefs and practices developed in the late Middle Ages. Amulets and charms were widely carried, often in the form of small objects inscribed with sacred names or symbols. The most popular of these was the pestilence cross, or Pestkreuz, a small devotional object marked with the instruments of the Passion. The pestilence cross was worn around the neck, hung on the wall, or carried in the pocket, and it was believed to protect the wearer against the plague. Other common charms included pieces of paper inscribed with the names of the Three Kings of Cologne — Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar — who were believed, according to a legend that circulated widely in the late Middle Ages, to have been preserved from sudden death by the star they followed. The legend was so popular that the relics of the Three Kings were translated from Milan to Cologne in 1164, and the cathedral of Cologne became one of the great pilgrimage sites of medieval Europe.

Folk beliefs about the cause of the plague were also widespread. The planets, the comets, the weather, the behaviour of animals, the state of the crops — all of these were believed to be omens or causes of the disease. The conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars in the sign of Aquarius in 1345 was, as we have seen, the most widely cited astrological explanation. The Jews were widely accused of poisoning the wells, and the persecution of the Jews in the wake of the Black Death is treated in Jewish persecution and the spread of plague. Witches were also believed to be responsible for outbreaks of plague, and many women were tried and executed for witchcraft in the wake of outbreaks, although the great European witch-craze of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was not, in the main, a response to plague.

The folk beliefs about the cause of the plague are important for what they reveal about the worldview of the people who held them. The late medieval explanation of plague combined the celestial (the conjunction of the planets), the terrestrial (the corrupted air, the bad water, the unburied dead), the social (the sins of the community, the malice of the Jews, the witchcraft of the poor), and the individual (the sins of the sufferer). The explanation was, in this sense, a total explanation, in which the disease was not a thing in itself, but a sign of a deeper disorder in the world. The cult of the saints of the plague was, in this context, not a piece of magical thinking, but a piece of social action: it was a way of bringing the disorder of the world under the protection of the heavenly host, and of re-establishing, by prayer and ritual, the proper order of things.

The Long-Term Legacy

The cult of the saints of the plague and the folk beliefs that surrounded it remained a feature of European religion and popular culture for centuries after the Black Death. The saints of the plague continued to be invoked in time of crisis, and the processions, votive masses, and pilgrimages continued to be held. The relics of Saint Roch, Saint Sebastian, and the other saints were still being venerated in the nineteenth century, long after the major European outbreaks of plague had ended. The legacy of the late medieval cult of the saints of the plague can be traced in the religious and folk practices of Catholic Europe well into the modern period: the Sagra of the Italian villages, the Fronleichnam processions of the German cities, the romería of the Spanish villages, all preserve, in different forms, the late medieval practice of the public procession in time of crisis.

The legacy is also visible in the visual arts. The figures of Saint Sebastian, Saint Roch, and the Virgin of Mercy remained standard subjects of Catholic devotional painting into the nineteenth century, and the iconography of the saints of the plague remained essentially unchanged. The cult of Saint Roch was particularly persistent: the saint was invoked in the cholera outbreaks of the nineteenth century, and his feast day, 16 August, is still observed in many Catholic parishes in Italy, France, and Spain. The cult of the saints of the plague is, in this sense, a living piece of the late medieval past.

References

  • Trexler, Richard C. Syncretism and Christian Worship in Central Italy: 1460–1520. University of Chicago Press, 1972.
  • Christian, William A. Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain. Princeton University Press, 1981.
  • Wilson, Stephen. The Magical Universe: Everyday Ritual and Magic in Pre-Modern Europe. Hambledon, 2000.
  • Finucane, Ronald C. Miracles and Pilgrims: Popular Beliefs in Medieval England. Macmillan, 1977.
  • Goodich, Michael. Miracles and Wonders: The Development of the Devotional Narrative in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries. Ashgate/Variorum, 2007.