CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A. AND SONS, AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
Footnotes:
[1]The references to the Justinian plague by contemporary and later historians have been collected, together with partly irrelevant matter about portents and earthquakes, by Val. Seibel,Die grosse Pest zur Zeit Justinian’s I.Dillingen, 1857. The author, a layman, throws no light upon its origin.
[2]Beda,Hist. Eccles.Eng. Hist. Society’s ed. p. 243: “qui ubi Romam pervenit, cujus sedi apostolicae tempore illo Vitalianus praeerat, postquam itineris sui causam praefato papae apostolico patefecit, non multo post et ipse et omnes pene, qui cum eo advenerant, socii, pestilentia superveniente, deleti sunt.”
[3]Flores Histor.by Roger of Wendover. Eng. Hist. Society’s ed.I.180.
[4]Ibid.I.228.
[5]Miscellaneous Works of the late Robert Willan, M.D., F.R.S., F.A.S.Edited by Ashby Smith, M.D. London, 1831. ‘An Enquiry into the Antiquity of the Smallpox etc.’ p. 108.
[6]Annals of the Four Masters, ed. O’Donovan, Dublin, 1851,I.183. “A.D.543. There was an extraordinary universal plague through the world, which swept away the noblest third part of the human race.”
p. 187. “A.D.548. Of the mortality which was called Cron Chonaill—and that was the first Buide Chonaill [flava ictericia],—these saints died,” several names following. The entries of that plague are under different years in the various original Annals.
[7]“Eodem anno dominicae incarnationis sexcentesimo sexagesimo quarto, facta erat eclipsis solis die tertio mensis Maii, hora circiter decima diei; quo etiam anno subita pestilentiae lues, depopulatis prius australibus Brittaniae plagis, Nordanhymbrorum quoque provinciam corripiens, atque acerba clade diutius longe lateque desaeviens, magnam hominum multitudinem stravit. Qua plaga praefatus Domini sacerdos Tuda raptus est de mundo, et in monasterio, quod dicitur Paegnalaech, honorifice sepultus. Haec autem plaga Hiberniam quoque insulam pari clade premebat. Erant ibidem eo tempore multi nobilium simul et mediocrium de gente Anglorum, qui tempore Finani et Colmani episcoporum, relicta insula patria, vel divinae lectionis, vel continentioris vitae gratia, illo secesserant.... Erant inter hos duo juvenes magnae indolis, de nobilibus Anglorum, Aedilhun et Ecgberct,” etc. Beda’sHist. Eccles.ed. Stevenson. Engl. Hist. Soc.I.p. 231.
[8]Ibid.p. 240.
[9]Annals of the Four Masters,I.275.
[10]Thorpe, in his edition of Florence of Worcester, for the Eng. Hist. Society,I.25.
[11]The first of Beda’s incidents of the Barking monastery relates to a miraculous sign in the heavens showing where the cemetery was to be. It begins: “Cum tempestas saepe dictae cladis, late cuncta depopulans, etiam partem monasterii hujus illam qua viri tenebantur, invasisset, et passim quotidie raperentur ad Dominum.”
[12]“Erat in eodem monasterio [Barking] puer trium circiter, non amplius annorum, Æsica nomine, qui propter infantilem adhuc aetatem in virginum Deo dedicatarum solebat cella nutriri, ibique medicari. Hic praefata pestilentia tactus ubi ad extrema pervenit clamavit tertio unam de consecratis Christo virginibus, proprio eam nomine quasi praesentem alloquens ‘Eadgyd, Eadgyd, Eadgyd’; et sic terminans temporalem vitam intravit aeternam. At virgo illa, quam moriens vocabat, ipso quo vocata est die de hac luce subtracta, et ilium qui se vocavit ad regnum coeleste secuta est.” Beda, p. 265. Then follows the story of a nun dying of the pestilence in the same monastery.
[13]Beda, Lib.IV.cap. 14. In addition to the instances in the text, which I have collected from Beda’sEcclesiastical History, I find two mentioned by Willan in his “Inquiry into the Antiquity of the Smallpox,” (Miscell. Works, London, 1821, pp. 109, 110): “About the year 672, St Cedda, Bishop of the East Saxons, being on a visitation to the monastery of Lestingham, was infected with a contagious distemper, and died on the seventh day. Thirty monks, who came to visit the tomb of their bishop, were likewise infected, and most of them died” (Vita S. Ceddae,VII.Jan. p. 375. Cf. Beda,IV.3). Again: “In the course of the year 685, the disease re-appeared at Lindisfarne, (Holy Island), St Cuthbert’s abbacy, and in 686 spread through the adjoining district, where it particularly affected children” (Vita S. Cuthberti, cap. 33). Willan’s erudition has been used in support of a most improbable hypothesis, that the pestilence of those years, in monasteries and elsewhere, was smallpox.
[14]Historia Abbatum Gyrvensium, auctore anonymo, §§ 13 and 14. (App. to vol.II.of Beda’s works. Eng. Hist. Society’s edition, p. 323.)
§ 13. Qui dum transmarinis moraretur in locis [Benedict] ecce subita pestilentiae procella Brittaniam corripiens lata nece vastavit, in qua plurimi de utroque ejus monasterio, et ipse venerabilis ac Deo dilectus abbas Eosterwini raptus est ad Dominum, quarto ex quo abbas esse coeperat anno.
§ 14. Porro in monasterio cui Ceolfridus praeerat omnes qui legere, vel praedicare, vel antiphonas ac responsoria dicere possent ablati sunt excepto ipso abbate et uno puerulo, qui ab ipso nutritus et eruditus.
In the Article “Baeda,”Dict. Nat. Biog., the Rev. W. Hunt points out that the boy referred to in the above passage would have been Beda himself.
[15]The history of the namepestis flava ictericiais given by O’Donovan in a note to the passage in theAnnals of the Four Masters,I.275: “Icteritia vel aurigo, id est abundantia flavae bilis, per corpus effusae, hominemque pallidum reddentis,” is the explanation of P. O’S. Beare. The earliest mention of “yellow plague” appears to have been in an ancient life of St Gerald of Mayo, in Colgan’sActa Sanctorum, at the calendar date of 13th March.
[16]Polychronicon, Rolls edition,V.250.
[17]The Story of England, Rolls series, ed. Furnivall,II.569.
[18]Rolls series, ed. Thorpe,I.136, 137 (Transl.II.60). Also in Gervase of Canterbury, Rolls series, ed. Stubbs,II.348.
[19]Chronicon Abbatiae Ramesiensis, Rolls ed. 1886, p. 397.
[20]According to an inquisition of 2 Edward III., the abbey of Croyland contained in 1328, forty-one monks, besides fifteen “corrodiarii” and thirty-six servitors.Chronicle of Croylandin Gale,I.482.
[21]Epistolae Cantuarienses, Rolls series, No. 38, ed. Stubbs, Epist.CCLXXII.p. 254, and Introduction, p. lxvii.
[22]William of Newburgh, Rolls ed. p. 481.
[23]Ralph of Coggeshall, Rolls series, No. 66, p. 112.
[24]Roger of Wendover,III.72.
[25]In the Life of St Hugh of Lincoln, who died in 1200, or eight years before the Papal Interdict, there is a clear reference to difficulties thrown by the priests in the way of burial, especially for the poor, and perhaps in a time of epidemic sickness such as the years 1194-6. SeeVita S. Hugonis Lincolnensis, Rolls series, No. 37, pp. 228-233.
[26]Eadmer,l. c.
[27]Polychronicon, Rolls ed.VII.90.
[28]Gesta Pontificum, Rolls ed. p. 171. Another narrator of the story of St Elphege and the Danes is Henry of Huntingdon (Rolls ed. p. 179); he says nothing of the pestilence, but describes the sack of Canterbury. Eadmer also (Historia Novorum in Anglia, Rolls ser. 81, p. 4) omits the pestilence.
[29]Quoted by Higden,Polychronicon, Rolls ed.II.18. This may have been one of Henry of Huntingdon’s poems which were extant in Leland’s time, but are now lost.
[30]Polychronicon,II.166.
[31]Marchand,Étude sur quelques épidémies et endémies du moyen âge(Thèse), Paris, 1873, p. 49, with a reference to Fuchs, “Das heilige Feuer im Mittelalter” in Hecker’sAnnalen, vol. 28, p. 1, which journal I have been unable to consult.
[32]Giraldus Cambrensis,Topographia Hiberniae, in Rolls edition of his works, No. 21, vol.V.
[33]“Itinerarium Walliae” and “Descriptio Kambriae,”Opera, vol.VI.
[34]Polychronicon,I.410.
[35]William of Newburgh,sub anno1157,I.107.
[36]Europe during the Middle Ages, chap.IX.
[37]I have used for this purpose Merewether and Stephens’History of Boroughs, 3 vols. 1835.
[38]Leechdoms, Wort-cunning and Starcraft of Early England.Edited by Cockayne for the Rolls Series, 3 vols. 1864-66.
[39]It is illustrative of the confusion which arises from careless copying by later compilers of history that Roger of Wendover, in hisFlores Historiarum(Eng. Hist. Society’s editionI.159), takes Beda’s Sussex reference to famine and makes it do duty, under the year 665, for the great general plague of 664, having apparently overlooked Beda’s entirely distinct account of the latter.
[40]Hist. Eccles.§ 290:—“Siquidem tribus annis ante adventum ejus in provinciam, nulla illis in locis pluvia ceciderat, unde et fames acerbissima plebem invadens inopia nece prostravit. Denique ferunt quia saepe quadraginta simul aut quinquaginta homines inedia macerati procederent ad praecipitium aliquod sive ripam maris, et junctis misere manibus pariter omnes aut ruina perituri, aut fluctibus absorbendi deciderent. Verum ipso die, quo baptisma fidei gens suscepit illa, descendit pluvia serena sed copiosa, refloruit terra, rediit viridantibus arvis annus laetus et frugifer.”
[41]GreenShort History of the English People, p. 39: “The very fields lay waste, and the land was scourged by famine and plague.” I have missed this reference to plague in the original authorities. A passage in Higden’sPolychronicon(V.258) may relate to that period, although it is referred to the mythical time of Vortigern.
[42]Stow, in enumerating the instances of public charity in hisSurvey of London, ascribes the melting of the church plate to Ethelwald, bishop of Winchester in the reign of King Edgar, about the year 963.
[43]The murrain was a flux,anglicé“scitha” (Roger of Howden) or “schitta” (Bromton).
[44]Simeon of Durham, in Rolls series,II.188. As to fugitives, see Chr. Evesham, p. 91.
[45]Gesta Pontif. Angl.p. 208.
[46]Simeon of Durham, “On the Miracles of St Cuthbert,”Works,II.338-40.
[47]Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Malmesbury adds “a mortality of men.”
[48]William of Malmesbury,Gest. Reg.Eng. Hist. Soc.II.452.
[49]Malmesbury’s construction is repeated by Henry of Huntingdon, Rolls ed. p. 209. Florence of Worcester merely says: “primo febribus, deinde fame.”
[50]Henry of Huntingdon, p. 232.
[51]Annals of Winchester,sub anno1096.
[52]“Septimo anno propter tributa quae rex in Normannia positus edixerat, agricultura defecit; qua fatiscente fames e vestigio; ea quoque invalescente mortalitas hominum subsecuta, adeo crebra ut deesset morituris cura, mortuis sepultura.”Gest. Reg.II.506. Copied in the Annals of Margan, Rolls ed.II.506.
[53]Râs Mâlâ, by A. Kinloch Forbes, 2nd ed. p. 543.
[54]Ibid.
[55]Thomas Whyte, “Report on the disease which prevailed in Kattywar in 1819-20.”Trans. Med. Phys. Soc. Bombay,I.(1838), p. 169. See also Gilder,ibid.p. 192; Frederick Forbesibid.II.1, and Thesis on Plague, Edin. 1840.
[56]In 1110 the tax was for the dower of the king’s daughter on her marriage. That also was parallel with a feudal right in Gujerat: “When a chief has to portion a daughter, or to incur other similar necessary expense, he has the right of imposing a levy upon the cultivators to meet it.” A. Kinloch Forbes,Râs Mâlâ, 2nd ed. p. 546. Refusal to plough,temp.Henry I. is stated by Pearson,I.442.
[57]Malmesbury,Gest. Pont.p. 442; H. of Huntingdon; Annals of Margan; Roger of Howden.
[58]Also in the Annals of Osney: “Mortalitas maxima hominum in Anglia.”
[59]“Attenuata est Anglia, ut ex regno florentissimo infelicissimum videretur.” William of Newburgh, Rolls ed. p. 39.
[60]Henry of Huntingdon,sub anno1138.
[61]Gesta Stephani, Rolls series, No. 82, vol.III.p. 99. The author is conjectured to have been a foreigner in the service of the bishop of Winchester, brother of the king.
[62]
“Affluit ergo fames; consumpta carne gementesExhalant animas ossa cutisque vagas.Quis tantos sepelire queat coetus morientium?Ecce Stigis facies, consimilisque lues.”
[63]William of Newburgh,sub anno1149.
[64]Stow’sSurvey of London, Popular ed. (1890) p. 116.
[65]“Recentium esus carnium et haustus aquae, tam insolitus quam incognitus, plures de regis exercitu panis inedia laborantes, fluxu ventris afflixit in Hybernia.” Radulphus de Diceto,Imagines Historiar.I.350.
[66]Benedict of Peterborough,I.104, and, in identical terms, in Roger of Howden.
[67]The speaker is represented as a Jew in France. It is significant that the massacre of the Jews at Lynn in 1190 is stated by William of Newburgh to have been instigated by theforeigntraders.
[68]Ricardus Divisiensis. Eng. Hist. Society’s ed. p. 60.
[69]Description of London, prefixed to Fitzstephen’s Life of Becket. Reproduced in Stow’sSurvey of London.
[70]Petri Blesensis omnia opera, ed. Giles, Epist.CLI.The number of churches may seem large for the population; but it should be kept in mind that these city parish churches were mere chapels or oratories, like the side-chapels of a great church. Indeed, at Yarmouth, they were actually built along the sides of the single great parish church; whereas, at Norwich, there were sixty of them standing each in its own small parish area, the Cathedral, as well as the other conventual churches, being the greater places of worship. Lincoln is said to have had 49 of these small churches, and York 40. An example of them remains in St Peter’s at Cambridge.
[71]William of Newburgh, p. 431.
[72]Ibid.
[73]“His quoque nostris diebus, ingruente famis inedia, et maxima pauperum turba quotidie ad januam jacente, de communi patrum consilio, ad caritatis explendae sufficientiam, propter bladum in Angliam navis Bristollum missa est.”Itiner. Walliae, Rolls ed.VI.68. The itinerary of Bishop Baldwin, which the author follows, was in 1188; but the “his quoque nostris diebus” clearly refers to a later date, which may have been the year after, or may have been the more severe famine of 1195-7 or of 1203.
[74]Histor. Rer. Angl., Rolls series, No. 82, vol.I.pp. 460, 484.
[75]Ralph of Coggeshall,sub anno.
[76]“Variis infirmitatibus homines per Angliam vexantur et quamplures moriuntur,” Annals of Margan, Rolls series, No. 36.
[77]Roger of Wendover,Fl. Hist.Rolls ed.
[78]Matthew Paris,Chronica Majora, Rolls series, No. 57, ed. Luard, vol.V.
[79]Rishanger inChron. Monast. S. Albani, Rolls series, No. 28.
[80]John Trokelowe,ibid.
[81]Wendover,II.162, 171, 190, 205.
[82]Wendover,III.95, 98.
[83]“Qui ex avaritia inopiam semper habent suspectam.”
[84]Alboldslea, or Abbotsley, was the parish of which the famous Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln, was rector (perhaps non-resident) down to 1231, or to within three years of the date of the above anecdote. The existing church is of great age, and may well have been the actual edifice in which the scene was enacted.
[85]Wendover,III.96.
[86]Ibid.III.19, 27.
[87]Wendover,III.381.
[88]William of Newburgh,sub anno1196.
[89]On the other hand John Stow seems to have acquired, from some unstated source, an extraordinary prejudice against him.
[90]Matthew Paris,Chron. Maj.ed. Luard,V.663, 675.
[91]Annals of Tewkesbury inAnnales Monastici, Rolls series, No. 36.
[92]Chronica Majora,IV.647; Stow,Survey of London.
[93]Chron. Maj.IV.654.
[94]Chr. Maj.V.660. Other details occur here and there to the end of the chronicle.
[95]This is the number given by Matthew Paris. It suggests a larger population in the capital than we might have been disposed to credit. The same writer says that London was so full of people when the parliament was sitting the year before (1257) that the city could hardly hold them all in her ample bosom. The Annals of Tewkesbury put the whole mortality from famine and fever in London in 1258 at 20,000. But the whole population did not probably exceed 40,000.
[96]The year 1274 was the beginning of so exceptional a murrain of sheep that it deserves mention here, although murrains do not come within the scope of the work. It is recorded by more than one contemporary. Rishanger (p. 84) says: “In that year a disastrous plague of sheep seized upon England, so that the sheep-folds were everywhere emptied through the spreading of it. It lasted for twenty-eight years following, so that no farm of the whole kingdom was without the infliction of that misery. Many attributed the cause of this disease, which the inhabitants had not been acquainted with before, to a certain rich man of the Frankish nation, who settled in Northumberland, having brought with him a certain sheep of Spanish breed, the size of a small two year old ox, which was ailing and contaminated all the flocks of England by handing on its disease to them.” Under the year following, 1275, he enters it again, using the term “scabies.” Thorold Rogers (Hist. of Agric. and Prices,I.31) has found “scab” of sheep often mentioned in the bailiffs’ accounts from about 1288; it is assumed to have become permanent from the item of tar occurring regularly in the accounts; but tar was used ordinarily for marking. It may have been sheep-pox, which Fitzherbert, in hisBook of Husbandry(edition of 1598), describes under the name of “the Poxe,” giving a clear account of the way to deal with it by isolation. For murrains in general, the reader may consult Fleming’sAnimal Plagues, 2 vols. 1871—1884, a work which is mostly compiled (with meagre acknowledgment for “bibliography” only) from the truly learned work of Heusinger,Recherches de Pathologie Comparée, Cassel, 1844. Fleming has used only the “pièces justificatives,” and has not carried the history beyond the point where Heusinger left it.
[97]Continuation of Wm. of Newburgh, Rolls series No. 82, vol.II.p. 560: “Facta est magna fames per universam Angliam et maxime partibus occidentalibus. In Hibernia vero tres pestes invaluerunt, sc. mortalitas, fames, et gladius: per guerram mortalem praevalentibus Hybernicis et Anglicis succumbentibus. Qui vero gladium et famem evadere potuerunt, peste mortalitatis praeventi sunt, ita ut vivi mortuis sepeliendis vix sufficere valerent.”
[98]See also the continuation of the chronicle of Florence of Worcester, Bohn’s series, p. 405.
[99]Rishanger’s annals, 1259-1305, and Trokelowe’s, 1307-1323, are printed in the volumes ofChronica Monast. S. Albani, No. 28 of the Rolls series.
[100]Furnivall’s ed. Rolls series, No. 87, vol.II.569, 573.
[101]Chronicle of William Gregory, Camden Society, ed. Gairdner, 1876.
[102]Annales Londonienses, Rolls series, No. 76, ed. Stubbs. Introduction, p. lxxvi.
[103]Ibid.(Annales Paulini), p. 238.
[104]Ibid.p. 304.
[105]Epistolae Cantuarienses, Rolls series, No. 38,II.Introduction by Stubbs, p. xxxii.
[106]Epistolae Cantuarienses, Rolls series, No. 38,II.Introduction by Stubbs, p. cxix.
[107]Ralph of Coggeshall, Rolls series, No. 66, p. 156.
[108]He might have been, and probably was, the prototype of the physician Nathan Ben Israel, in the 35th Chapter ofIvanhoe.
[109]Adam de Marisco to Grosseteste,Mon. Francisc.ed. Brewer,I.113.
[110]I have not succeeded in finding this in the author’s writings, and quote it at second hand.
[111]Quoted, without date, by Marchand,Étude historique et nosographique sur quelques épidémies et endémies du moyen âge. Paris, 1873.
[112]I give this account of the obvious characters of spurred rye from a recent observation of a growing crop of it.
[113]One of the greatest epidemics was in Westphalia and the Cologne district in 1596 and 1597. It fell to be described by two learned writers, Sennert and Horst, of whose accounts a summary is given by Short,Air, weather, seasons, etc.I.275-285.
[114]Translated into thePhilosophical Transactions, No. 130, vol.XII.p. 758 (14 Dec. 1676) from theJournal des Sçavans.
[115]Studien über den Ergotismus, Marburg, 1856.
[116]Simeon of Durham and Roger of Howden have the following, under the year 1048: “Mortalitas hominum et animalium multas occupavit Angliae provincias, et ignis aereus, vulgo dictus sylvaticus, in Deorbensi provincia et quibusdam aliis provinciis, villas et segetes multas ustulavit.”
[117]“Je crois qu’ils ont voulu indiquer l’ignis sacer ou de St Antoine, qui dans ces années et surtout 1044 sévit en France.”Recherches de Pathologie Comparée, vol.II.p. cxlviii.
[118]On the other hand, Short, in hisGeneral Chronological History of the Air, Weather, Seasons, Meteors etc.(2 vols. London, 1749) says that the epidemic of 1110 consisted of “especially an epidemic erysipelas, whereof many died, the parts being black and shrivelled up;” and that in 1128, “St Anthony’s fire was fatal to many in England.” He gives no authority in either case. But the one error is run to earth in a French entry of 1109, “membris instar carbonum nigrescentibus” (Sig. Gembl. auctar. p. 274, Migne); the other, most likely, in theignisaround Chartres, 1128 (Stephen of Caen, Bouquet, xii. 780).
Perhaps this is the best place to express a general opinion on the work by Short, which is the only book of the kind in English previous to my own. It is everywhere uncritical and credulous, and often grossly inaccurate in dates, sometimes repeating the same epidemic under different years. It appears to have been compiled, for the earlier part, at least, from foreign sources, such as a Chronicle of Magdeburg, and to a large extent from a work by Colle de Belluno (fl. 1631). Many of the facts about English epidemics are given almost as in the original chronicles, but without reference to them. English experience of sickness is lost in the general chronology of epidemics for all Europe, and is dealt with in a purely verbalist manner. So far as this volume extends (1667) I have found Short’s book of no use, except now and then in calling my attention to something that I had overlooked. His other work,New Observations on City, Town and County Bills of Mortality(London, 1750) shows the author to much greater advantage, and I have used his statistical tables for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
[119]The facts were communicated to the Royal Society by Charlton Wollaston, M.D., F.R.S., then resident in Suffolk, and by the Rev. James Bones. They were referred by Dr G. Baker to Tissot of Lausanne, who replied that they corresponded to typical gangrenous ergotism. SeePhil. Trans.vol.LII.pt. 2 (1762) p. 523, p. 526, p. 529; and vol.LX.(1768) p. 106.
[120]An erroneous statement as to an epidemic of gangrenous ergotism, or of Kriebelkrankheit, in England in 1676, has somehow come to be current in German books. It has a place in the latest chronological table of ergotism epidemics, that of Hirsch in hisHandbuch der historisch-geographischen Pathologie, vol.II.1883 (Engl. Transl.II.p. 206), the reference being to Birch,Philos. Transact.This reference to ergotism in England in 1676 is given also in Th. O. Heusinger’s table (1856), where it appears in the form of “Schnurrer, nach Birch.” On turning to Schnurrer’sChronik der Seuchen(II.210), the reference is found to be, “Birch,Phil. Trans.vols.XI.andXII.”; and coming at length to thePhilosophical Transactions, it appears that vols.X.,XI.andXII.are bound up together, that vol.XII.(1676) p. 758, contains an extract from theJournal des Sçavansabout ergot of rye in certain parts of France, and that there is nothing about ergotism in England in either vol.XI.or vol.XII.So far as concerns Dr Birch, he was secretary to the Royal Society in the next century.
[121]Knighton,De Eventibus Angliaein Twysden, col. 2580: “In aestate scilicet anno Gratiae 1340 accidit quaedam execrabilis et enormis infirmitas in Anglia quasi communis, et praecipue in comitatu Leicestriae adeo quod durante passione homines emiserunt vocem latrabilem ac si esset latratus canum; et fuit quasi intolerabilis poena durante passione: ex inde fuit magna pestilentia hominum.”
[122]Phil. Trans.XXIII.p. 1174 (June 26, 1702).
[123]Op. cit.I.pt. 2, p. 366.
[124]Phil. Trans.XXII.(1700-1701), p. 799, a Letter in Latin from Joh. Freind dated Christ Church, Oxford, 31 March.
[125]The earliest religious hysterias of Sweden fall in the years 1668 to 1673, which do not correspond to years of ergotism in that country, although there was ergotism in France in 1670 and in Westphalia in 1672. The later Swedish psychopathies have been in 1841-2, 1854, 1858, and 1866-68, some of which years do correspond closely to periods of ergotism in Sweden.
[126]“Moriebantur etiam plures morbo litargiae, multis infortunia prophetantes; mulieres insuper decessere multae per fluxum, et erat communis pestis bestiarum.” Walsingham,Hist. Angl.,sub anno; and in identical terms in theChronicon Angliaea Monacho Sancti Albani.
[127]“Magna et formidabilis pestilentia extemplo subsecuta est Cantabrigiae, qua homines subito, prout dicebatur, sospites, invasi mentis phrenesi moriebantur, sine viatico sive sensu.” Walsingham,Hist. Angl.II.186. Under the same year, 1389, the continuator of Higden’sPolychronicon(IX.216) says that the king being in the south and “seeing some of his prostrated by sudden death, hastened to Windsor.”
[128]For example in the Sloane MS. 2420 (the treatise by Constantinus Africanus of Salerno), there are chapters “De Litargia,” “De Stupore Mentis,” and “De Phrenesi.”
[129]Th. O. Heusinger,Studien über den Ergotismus, Marburg, 1856, p. 35: “Es werden freilich in den Beschreibungen einiger früheren Epidemieen öfter typhöse Erscheinungen erwähnt; die Beschreiber behaupten aber auch dann meist die Contagiosität der Krankheit, und es liegt die Vermuthung nahe, dass die Krankheit dann eigentlich ein Typhus war, bei dem die Erscheinungen des Ergotismus ebenso constant vorkommen, wie sie sonst in vereinzelteren Fällen dem Typhus sich beigesellen” (cf. ‘Dorf Gossfelden,’ in Appendix).
[130]History of Agriculture and Prices,I.27.
[131]“Sed in fructibus arborum suspicio multa fuit, eo quod per nebulas foetentes, exhalationes, aerisque varias corruptiones, ipsi fructus, puta poma, pyra, et hujusmodi sunt infecta; quorum esu multi mortales hoc anno [1383] vel pestem letalem vel graves morbos et infirmitates incurrerunt.” Walsingham,Hist. Angl.II.109. The continuator of Higden records under the same year, in one place a “great pestilence in Kent which destroyed many, and spared no age or sex” (IX.27), and on another page (IX.21) a great epidemic in Norfolk, which attacked only the youth of either sex between the ages of seven and twenty-two!
[132]Walsingham,II.203; Stow’sSurvey of London, p. 133.
[133]The spelling, and a few whole words, have been altered from Skeat’s text, so as to make the meaning clear.
[134]Simpson,Edin. Med. and Surg. Journ.1842, vol.LVII.p. 136.
[135]Ralph of Coggeshall (Rolls ed. p. 156) describes the death of Hubert on 13 July, 1205, but does not mention the name of his physician.
[136]Gilberti AngliciCompendium Medicinae, ed. Michael de Capella. Lugduni, 1512, Lib.VII.cap. “De Lepra,” pp. 337-345.
[137]Bernardi GordoniiLilium Medicinae. Lugd. 1551, p. 88.
[138]Compend. Med.Ed. cit.p. 344.
[139]Lilium Medicinae.Lugd. 1551, p. 89.
[140]Ibid.p. 89.
[141]For fuller reference, see p. 103.
[142]Philos. Trans. of Royal Society,XXXI.58: “Now in a true leprosy we never meet with the mention of any disorder in those parts, which, if there be not, must absolutely secure the person from having that disease communicated to him by coition with leprous women; but it proves there was a disease among them which was not the leprosy, although it went by that name; and that this could be no other than venereal because it was infectious.”
He then quotes from Trevisa’s translation of Bartholomew Glanvile,De proprietatibus rerum, passages which he thinks relate to syphilis, although they are obviously the distinctive signs of lepra taken almost verbatim from Gilbertus Anglicus. He implies that the later so-called leper-houses of London were really founded for syphilis when it became epidemic. In the will of Ralph Holland, merchant taylor, mention is made of three leper-houses, the Loke, Hackenay and St Giles beyond Holborn Bars, as if these were all that existed in the year 1452. But in the reign of Henry VIII. there were six of them besides St Giles’s,—Knightsbridge, Hammersmith, Highgate, Kingsland, the Lock, and Mile End; and these, says Beckett, were used for the treatment of the French pox, which became exceedingly common after 1494-6.
[143]Martin,Histoire de France,VII.283.
[144]One of Gascoigne’s references was copied by Beckett (Phil. Trans.XXXI.47), beginning: “Novi enim ego, Magister Thomas Gascoigne, licet indignus, sacrae theologiae doctor, qui haec scripsi et collegi, diversos viros, qui mortui fuerunt ex putrefactione membrorum suorum et corporis sui, quae corruptio et putrefactio causata fuit, ut ipsi dixerunt, per exercitium copulae carnalis cum mulieribus. Magnus enim dux in Anglia, scil. J. de Gaunt, mortuus est ex tali putrefactione membrorum genitalium et corporis sui, causata per frequentationem mulierum. Magnus enim fornicator fuit, ut in toto regno Angliae divulgabatur,” etc. In theLoci e Libro Veritatum, printed by Thorold Rogers (Oxford, 1881), the following consequences are mentioned: “Plures viri per actum libidinosum luxuriae habuerunt membra sua corrupta et penitus destructa, non solum virgam sed genitalia: et alii habuerunt membra sua per luxuriam corrupta ita quod cogebantur, propter poenam, caput virgae abscindere. Item homo Oxoniae scholaris, Morland nomine, mortuus fuit Oxoniae ex corruptione causata per actum luxuriae.” p. 136.
[145]A most excellent and compendious method of curing woundes in the head and in other partes of the body; translated into English by John Read, Chirurgeon; with the exact cure of the Caruncle, treatise of the Fistulae in the fundament, out of Joh. Ardern, etc.London, 1588.
[146]MS. Harl. 2378:—No. 86 is: “Take lynsed or lynyn clothe and brēne it & do ye pouder in a clout, and bynd it to ye sore pintel.” Also, “Take linsed and stamp it and a lytel oyle of olyf and a lytl milk of a cow of a color, and fry them togeder in a panne, and ley it about ye pyntel in a clout.” No. 87 is “for bolnyng of pyntel.” No. 88 is “For ye kank’ on a mānys pyntel.” On p. 103 is another “For ye bolnyng of a mānys yerde.... Bind it alle abouten ye yerde, and it salle suage.” On folio 19: “For ye nebbe yt semeth leprous ... iii dayes it shall be hole.” “For ye kanker” might have meant cancer or chancre. The prescriptions in Moulton’sThis is the Myrour or Glasse of Helth(? 1540) correspond closely with these in the above Harleian MS. The printed book gives one (cap. 63), “For a man that is Lepre, and it lake in his legges and go upwarde.” There is also a prescription for “morphewe.”
[147]Nicolas Massa, in Luisini.
[148]Freeman,The Reign of William Rufus. App. vol.II.p. 499.
[149]L. c.V.679, “Episcopus Herefordensis polipo percutitur.—Episcopus Herefordensis turpissimo morbo videlicet morphea, Deo percutiente, merito deformatur, qui totum regnum Angliae proditiose dampnificavit;” and againV.622.
[150]Compend. Med.Ed. cit.p. 170.
[151]Lilium Med.Ed. cit.p. 108.
[152]Brassac, Art. “Elephantiasis” (p. 465) inDict. Encycl. des Sciences Médicales.
[153]Rosa Anglica.Papiae, 1492.
[154]That Baldwin IV.’s disease excited interest in him is clear from the reference of William of Newburgh, who calls him (p. 242) “princeps Christianus lepram corporis animi virtute exornans.”
[155]Chronicon de Lanercost (Bannatyne Club, p. 259): “Dominus autem Robertus de Brus, quia factus fuerat leprosus, illa vice [anno 1327] cum eis Angliam non intravit.” The rubric on folio 228 of the MS. has “leprosus moritur.”
[156]The original account is by Gascoigne,Loci etc.ed. Rogers, Oxon. p. 228.
[157]“Item matrimonium inter dominum regem et quandam nobilem mulierem nequiter impedivit, dum clanculo significavit eidem mulieri et suo generi, quod rex strabo et fatuus nequamque fuerat, et speciem leprae habere, fallaxque fuerat et perjurus, imbellis plusquam mulier, in suos tantum sacvientem, et prorsus inutilem complexibus alicujus ingenuae mulieris asserendo.” Matthew Paris,Chron. Maj., Rolls ed.,III.618-19.
[158]Chronicon Angliaein Twysden, col. 2600.
[159]Chronicle of Geoffrey le Baker, edited by E. Maunde Thompson. Oxford, 1889, p. 100.
[160]Professor Robertson Smith has kindly written for me the following note: “The later Jews were given to shorten proper names; and in the Talmud we find the shorteningLa‘zar(with a guttural, which the Greeks could not pronounce, between theaand thez), for Eliezer or Eleazar. Λάζαρος is simplyLa‘zarwith a Greek ending, and occurs, as a man’s name, not only in the New Testament but in Josephus (B. Jud.V.13, 7). This was quite understood by early readers of the Gospels; the Syriac New Testament, translated from the Greek, restores the lost guttural, and uses the Syriac form, as employed in1 Macc.viii. 17 to render the Greek ’Ελάζαρος. Moreover the Latin and Greekonomasticaexplain Lazarus as meaning ‘adjutus,’ which shows that they took it from (Hebrew) ‘to help’—the second element in the compound Eliezer. The etymology ‘adjutus’ (or the like) ‘helped by God,’ would no doubt powerfully assist in the choice of the designation lazars (for lepers). Suicer, in hisThesaurus, quotes a sermon of Theophanes, where it is suggested that every poor man who needs help from those who have means might be called a Lazarus.”
Hirsch (Geog. and Hist. Path.II.3) says that the Arabic word for the falling sickness comes from the same root (meaning “thrown to the ground”) as the Hebrew word “sâraat,” which is the term translated “leprosy” in Leviticus xiii. and xiv. In Isaiah liii. 4, the Vulgate has “et nos putavimus eum quasi leprosum,” where the English Bible has “yet we did esteem him stricken.”
[161]Roger of Howden. Edited by Stubbs. Rolls series, No. 51, vol.I.p. 110. Aelred, the chief collector of the miraculous cures by Edward the Confessor, appears to have omitted this one.
[162]Ailredi Abbatis RievallensisGenealogia Regum Anglorum. In Twysden’sDecem Scriptores, col. 368. “Cum, inquit [David], adolescens in curia regia [Anglica] servirem, nocte quadam in hospicio meo cum sociis meis nescio quid agens, ad thalamum reginae ab ipsa vocatus accessi. Et ecce domus plena leprosis, et regina in medio stans, deposito pallio, lintheo se precinxit, et posita in pelvi aqua, coepit lavare pedes eorum, et extergere, extersosque utrisque constringere manibus et devotissime osculari. Cui ego: ‘Quid agis,’ inquam, ‘O domina mea? Certe si rex sciret ista, nunquam dignaretur os tuum, leprosorum pedum tabe pollutum, suis labiis osculari.’ Et illa surridens ait: ‘Pedes,’ inquit, ‘Regis aeterni quis nescit labiis regis morituri esse praeferendos? Ecce, ego idcirco vocavi te, frater carissime, ut exemplo mei talia discas operari. Sumpta proinde pelvi, fac quod me facere intueris.’ Ad hanc vocem vehementer expavi, et nullo modo id me pati posse respondi. Necdum enim sciebam Dominum, nec revelatus fuerat mihi Spiritus ejus. Illa igitur coeptis insistente, ego—mea culpa—ridens ad socios remeavi.”
[163]Vita S. Hugonis Lincolnensis.Rolls series, 39, p. 163-4.
[164]The bishop left by his will 100 marks to be distributed “per domos leprosorum” in his diocese and a like sum “per domos hospitales,” and three marks each to the leper-houses at Selwood and outside Bath and Ilchester.Hist. MSS. Commiss.X.pt. 3, p. 186.
[165]Monumenta Franciscana.Rolls series, No. 4. Introd. by Brewer, p. xxiv.
[166]William of Malmesbury,Gesta pontificum, Rolls ed., p. 72.
[167]In 1574 it was found providing indoor relief for fifteen brethren and fifteen sisters, and outdoor relief for as many more.
[168]Roger of Wendover. Rolls ed.II.265.
[169]In the MS. of Matthew Paris’sChronica Majorain the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, No. 26 in the Parker Collection, p. 220. The late Rev. S. S. Lewis, fellow and librarian of the College, who most liberally had a fac-simile of the drawing made for me, would date it a little before 1250. (Rolls edition, by Luard,II.144.)
[170]Rotuli Chartarum, 1199-1216. Charter of confirmation, 1204 (5 Joh.) p. 117 b.
[171]In theValor Ecclesiasticusof Henry VIII. its revenue is put at £100.
[172]The commanderies of the Knights of St Lazarus were numerous in every province of France. For an enumeration of them seeLes Lepreux et les Chevaliers de Saint Lazare de Jerusalem et de Notre Dame et de Mont Carmel. Par Eugene Vignat, Orleans, 1884, pp. 315-364.
[173]Joannis Sarisburiensis Opera omnia, ed. Giles 1, 141 (letter to Josselin, bishop of Salisbury).
[174]“Vix seu raro inveniuntur tot leprosi volentes vitam ducere observantiis obligatam ad dictum hospitale concurrentes.” Walsingham,Gesta Abbatum, Rolls ed.II.484.
[175]Matthew Paris,Chron. Maj.V.452.
[176]Walsingham,Gesta Abbatum,II.401.
[177]“The sisters of St James’s were bound by no vows, and at this period [1344] were not all, or even any of them, lepers; and in consequence a place in the hospital was much sought after by needy dependents of the Court.” Report on MSS. of the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury, inHist. MSS. Commission Reports,IX.p. 87.
[178]Dugdale’sHistory of Warwickshire, p. 197.
[179]On Nov. 24, 1200, king John signed at Lincoln letters of simple protection to theleprosiof St Bartholomew’s, Oxford (Rot. Chart. 1199-1216, p. 99).
[180]Rotuli Hundredorum,II.359-60. The famous Stourbridge Fair originally grew out of a right of market-toll granted in aid of the leper-hospital.
[181]The decrees of the Third Lateran Council are given by several historians of the time, among others by William of Newburgh, pp. 206-223.
[182]Roger of Howden, Rolls edition,II.265.
[183]William of Newburgh, Rolls edition, p. 437.
[184]See the various charters and memorials in Surtees’History of Durham.
[185]Two of the larger houses for lepers not mentioned in the text were St Nicholas’s at Carlisle and the hospital at Bolton in Northumberland, each with thirteen beds.
[186]By collecting every reference to lepers or lazar-houses in Tanner’sNotitia Monasticaor in Dugdale’sMonasticonSir J. Y. Simpson has made out a table of some hundred leper-houses in Britain (Edin. Med. and Surg. Journ.1841 and 1842). Simpson’s table has been added to by Miss Lambert in theNineteenth Century, Aug.-Sept. 1884, by the Rev. H. P. Wright (Leprosyetc. 1885), who says at the end of his long list: “There were hundreds more,” and by Mr R. C. Hope (The Leper in England, Scarborough, 1891), whose list runs to 172.
Perhaps the most remarkable development of that verbalist handling of the matter has been reserved for a recent medical writer, who has constructed, from the conventional list of leper-hospitals, a map of thegeographical distribution of leprosyin medieval Britain. (British Medical Journal, March 1, 1890, p. 466.)
[187]The Lock was doubtless the house of the “Leprosi apud Bermondsey” who are designated in the Royal Charter of 1 Hen. IV. (1399) as recipients, along with theleprosiof Westminster (St James’s), of “five or six thousand pounds.” (Rotuli Chartarum, 1 Hen. IV.)
[188]Beckett,Phil. Trans., vol. 31, p. 60.
[189]Stow,Survey of London, ed. of 1890, p. 437.
[190]Beckett,l. c.The Knightsbridge house was earlier. See next note.
[191]Survey of London, pop. ed. p. 436. Bequests to lepers occur in various wills of London citizens, in Dr Sharpe’sCalendar of Wills, vol.II.Lond. 1890. In a will dated 21 April, 1349, the bequest is to “the poor lazars without Southwerkebarre and at Hakeney” (p. 3). On 1 July, 1371, another bequeaths money to “the three colleges of lepers near London, viz. atle loke, at St Giles de Holbourne, and at Hakeney” (p. 147). On 7 April, 1396, bequests are made to “the lepers at le loke near Seynt Georges barre, of St Giles without Holbournebarre, and le meselcotes de Haconey” (p. 341). The “lazar house at Knyghtbrigge” appears, for the first time, in a will dated 21 Feb. 1485, along with “the sick people in the lazercotes next about London” (p. 589).
[192]Accounts of the Lord High-Treasurer of Scotland.Rolls seriesI.1473-1498, pp. 337, 356, 361, 378, 386.
[193]These are all the so-called “medieval leper-hospitals” collected by Belcher (Dubl. Quart. Journ. of Med. Sc.1868, August, p. 36) chiefly from Archdall’sMonasticon Hibernicum. He points out that the very early references to leprosy in theAnnals of the Four Mastersincluded various kinds of cutaneous maladies.
[194]Chronicon Abbatiae Rameseiensis.Rolls series, 1886, p. 157. The chronicler has nothing farther to say as to the cause of the leprosy, than the opinion of “a certain philosopher,” that whatever turns us from health to the vices of disease acts by the weight of too much blood, by superfluous heat, by humours exuding in excess, or by the spirits flowing with unwonted laxity through silent passages.
[195]Eadmer,Vita S. Anselmi, Rolls edit., p. 355.
[196]Walsingham,Gesta Abbatum, Rolls edit.II.Appendix C. p. 503.
[197]Brassac, Art. “Éléphantiasis,” inDict. Encycl. des Sc. Méd.p. 475, says: “Il y avait aussi des vagabonds et des paresseux qui, sans nulle crainte de la contagion, et désireux de vivre sans rien faire, simulaient la lèpre pour être admis aux léproseries. On y trouvait encore des personnes qui s’imposaient une réclusion perpétuelle pour vivre avec les lépreux et faire leur salut par une vie de soumission aux règles de l’Église.”
[198]The ordinance is translated in full from the City archives by H. T. Riley,London in the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, pp. 230-231. The following is the preamble of it:—
“Edward, by the grace of God, etc. Forasmuch as we have been given to understand that many persons, as well of the city aforesaid as others coming to the said city, being smitten with the blemish of leprosy, do publicly dwell among the other citizens and sound persons, and there continually abide and do not hesitate to communicate with them, as well in public places as in private; and that some of them, endeavouring to contaminate others with that abominable blemish (that so, to their own wretched solace, they may have the more fellows in suffering,) as well in the way of mutual communications, and by the contagion of their polluted breath, as by carnal intercourse with women in stews and other secret places, detestably frequenting the same, do so taint persons who are sound, both male and female, to the great injury of the people dwelling in the city aforesaid, and the manifest peril of other persons to the same city resorting:—We” etc.
[199]Riley, p. 384.
[200]Dialogue of the Fever Pestilence.Early Eng. Text Soc.