The Black Death (38 page)

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The monasteries, on the whole, were still worse affected than the clergy. Including monks, nuns and friars the total population of the religious houses in England shortly before the Black Death had been something near 17,500.
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Not far short of half these appear to have perished in the two years of the epidemic;
probably
more than half the friars and rather less than half the monks and nuns. In the seven monastic houses for which Snape has figures, the population dwindled by 51 per cent between 1300 and the end of the plague
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though some of this must be
attributed
to declining numbers between 1300 and 1348. Numbers were never to rise again to their earlier peak. Some houses, of course, suffered far worse than others; a few were virtually obliterated, a few left almost unscathed. Recovery too was fast in some places while in others it never took place at all. At Durham, Furness and Cleeve, numbers were so reduced that the refectory and
dormitory
had to be cut down in size proportionately. St Albans fell from a hundred to fifty monks and found even this figure difficult to maintain over the two centuries before the
dissolution
. Yet two of the greatest of England’s religious leaders came to the fore at this period and new monastic colleges at Durham and Canterbury were founded shortly after it.

But the blow to the prestige and power of the monasteries did not stem only from their dwindling membership. The enormous number of chantries endowed in parish churches during and
immediately
after the Black Death inevitably detracted from the significance of the monasteries in the eyes of the people.
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The high level of employment and new, exciting opportunities won away many of the more ambitious from spiritual pursuits;
hitherto
in the Middle Ages the Church, in one form or another, had
offered to those who were not of noble birth almost the only prospect of economic or social advancement – now other
possibilities
were beginning to open. Many of the monks had grown accustomed to a way of life which was always comfortable and sometimes luxurious. With tithes unpaid and manorial incomes crippled, the always precarious economics of the worse-run monasteries slipped into deficit.
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Debts quickly accumulated. More than a hundred abbots succumbed to the plague. Not only did this mean a great loss in financial acumen and expertise but also in revenue, since the Crown took over the monastic income while its leadership was vacant and exacted a heavy fine before the new appointment could be made official.
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The economic
difficulties
of the monasteries do not stem entirely from the Black Death; some houses were in trouble already while others managed to survive with their affluence unaffected. But the plague was certainly the most dramatic and probably the most
important
element in their decline.

To lose wealth and worldly power does not, of course,
automatically
imply a corresponding loss of spiritual grace. It is,
indeed
, more commonly argued that riches of the spirit accrue in inverse ratio to riches of the world. But there is little reason to believe that the new poverty of the monks brought with it any significant access of religious fervour – on the contrary, such evidence as there is indicates that the reverse was true.
Wadding’s
denunciation of his own order, the Franciscans, is well known:

Though the mendicant orders were included in Wadding’s strictures it seems, nevertheless, that they emerged from the
plague years with heightened credit. Whether they were really more selfless and courageous than the parish clergy could hardly have been assessed by a contemporary, let alone today. The very fact that they had no territorial responsibility increased their chances of making an impression on the laity. When the parish priest performed his duty he was no more than a familiar figure doing what he had always done. The mendicant friar, descending as from heaven on a beleaguered village, was greeted with an enthusiasm which his better-established colleague rarely knew. But however this may have been, it does seem certain that their way of life precluded the display of materialism and even cupidity which was so marked among the priesthood. It was not only in England but on the mainland of Europe as well that the
mendicants
gained in authority and wakened the angry jealousy of their rivals.

In 1351 a counter-attack was launched. A petition, signed by a multitude of senior churchmen, was presented to Pope Clement VI, appealing for the abolition of the mendicant orders or, at least, that their members should be forbidden to preach or to hear confession. The Pope’s reply at once defended the mendicants and provided a staggering indictment of the clergy. ‘And if their preaching be stopped,’ he asked, ‘about what can you preach to the people? If on humility, you yourselves are the proudest of the world, arrogant and given to pomp. If on poverty, you are the most grasping and most covetous…. If on chastity – but we will be silent on this, for God knoweth what each man does and how many of you satisfy your lusts.’ He accused them of
wasting
their wealth ‘on pimps and swindlers’ and neglecting the ways of God.
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If there were any doubt that the Church in Europe was not generally admired or, indeed, deserving of admiration, in the years that followed the Black Death it would surely be settled by this astonishing attack delivered by a Pope on his own priests. Clement VI was himself by no means dedicated to austerity and was generally disinclined to rebuke too harshly the peccadilloes of the flesh. To have been provoked into such invective, he must have felt himself tried very far. That he was doing no more than voice the opinion of the people at large cannot be doubted; that he
himself, with his superior sources of information and personal responsibility for the doings of the Church, should have endorsed that opinion is a clear verdict of guilty against the priesthood.

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Paradoxically, the decades that followed the plague saw not only a decline in the prestige and spiritual authority of the Church but also a growth of religious fervour. One example of this, to which we have already referred, was the large number of chantry chapels which were opened all over England. There was a spate of church building throughout Europe; the Cathedral of Milan is probably the most conspicuous example but the
countrysides
of England, France and Italy are rich in village churches begun between 1350 and 1375. In Italy, nearly fifty new religious holidays were created; a move presumably inspired by relief at the end of the plague and fear lest, unless propitiated, the Almighty might once more unleash the whirlwind.
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The number of pilgrims to Rome and other centres did not fall off even though a third of those who might have made the journey were now dead. In some cases, indeed, the number rose substantially after 1349 and 1350.
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In Florence, the Company of Or San Michele, a society with various religious and philanthropic functions, received donations worth 350,000 florins during or immediately after the Black Death. Most of this came in the form of legacies.
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Though such generosity on the part of the rich could clearly not continue at a panic level once the plague was over, repeated threats that new disasters were imminent ensured that the flow continued at a healthy level.
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It is easy to portray such charity as no more than the insurance policy of a rich man, well-informed about the
dangers
of moth and rust and prudently piling up treasure in heaven. So, indeed, it was. But, as Dr Meiss has demonstrated in his brilliant analysis of the impact of the Black Death on the Italian bourgeoisie, the confidence of the wealthy Florentine in the
validity
of his most fundamental assumptions had been badly shaken. The fortunes which they had amassed seemed more a source of guilt than of security. Their gifts to charity or to the Church were inspired partly by the urge to propitiate the angry god and partly by a shrewd calculation that some minor redistribution
of wealth might avert discontent and civil disorders in the future. But they also reflected a strong distaste, a revulsion almost from the prosperity and luxury which they had long been accustomed to cherish as the most indispensable feature of their lives.

Yet, perhaps even more than this, the frenzied charity in which the rich of Europe indulged during and after the Black Death, demonstrated their faith in the one institution where it seemed a proper sense of social discipline survived. Discredited the Church might be in the eyes of many but, to the nobles and the monied élite, it was still the dyke which held back the flood of anarchic insurrection. Unless it were shored up then
everything
, it seemed, might be swept away. The rich gave eagerly so that the clergy might beautify their buildings and enhance their standing in the world. ‘Their own position seriously threatened, they felt sustained by the assertion in art of the authority of the Church and the representation of a stable, enduring hierarchy.’
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The religious revival had therefore a strong element of the conservative. But this was only one strand in a complex which contained at least as much of the violently radical. The second half of the fourteenth century was marked in many countries by resentment at the wealth and complacency of the Church and fundamental questioning of its philosophy and its
organization.
In England it was the age of Wyclif and of Lollardy, a new and aggressive anti-clericalism to some extent made use of by ambitious men who envied the riches and influence of the Church, but drawing its strength from the discontent and
disillusionment
of the people at large. In Italy it was the great period of the Fraticelli, dissident Franciscans who believed that poverty was of the essence of Christ and that a rich church must be a bad one. These rebels, having been denounced as heretics by Pope John XXII thirty years before, now declared the Pope himself a heretic and rejected all sacraments except their own. All over Europe the co-fraternities, the
confrèries
,
grew up, as it were, in the shadow of the great religious orders. In essence they were more movements of withdrawal than of protest; lay groups of simple idealists who sought refuge in their own society from a harsh and vicious world. But their very existence was an implied criticism of the system which they rejected and inevitably they
began to evolve habits and strike attitudes inimical to the
orthodox
organizations from which they had evolved.

Once again, as so often in the history of the Black Death, one must remember that
post
hoc
is not necessarily
propter
hoc.
The second half of the fourteenth century was a time of spiritual unrest, of pertinent questioning of the values and of the conduct of the Church, of disrespect for established idols and a seeking for strange gods. Though the tempo of events would have been different, changes would have taken longer to bring about, resistance would have been more intense and reaction more immediate; in the long run things would have followed the same course, even though there had never been a plague. Dr Levett’s judgement has already been quoted:

‘The Black Death did not, in any strictly economic sense, cause the Peasants’ Revolt or the breakdown of villeinage, but it gave birth, in many cases, to a smouldering feeling of discontent, an inarticulate desire for change…’

Coulton has suggested that the passage would read as well if ‘theological’ were substituted for ‘economic’ and ‘Reformation’ for ‘Peasants’ Revolt’.
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The comment is a fair one. The Black Death did not cause the Reformation, it did not stimulate doubts about the doctrine of the Transubstantiation; but did it not cause a state of mind in which doctrines were more easily doubted and in which the Reformation was more immediately possible? Did it not break down certain barriers, psychological as well as
physical,
which otherwise might have impeded its advent? Wyclif was a child of the Black Death in the sense that he belonged to a
generation
which had suffered terribly and learned through its sufferings to doubt the premises on which its society was based. The Church which he attacked was a victim of the Black Death because of the legion of its most competent and dedicated officers who had perished and, still more, because of the honour and
respect
which it had forfeited in the minds of men. The Church continued as an immensely potent force in the second half of the fourteenth century but the unquestioned authority which it had been used to exercise over its members was never to be recovered. To this decay the Black Death made a signal
contribution.

Matteo Villani, the Florentine historian, devoted a passage to the effects of the Black Death on those who were fortunate enough to survive it:
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‘Those few discreet folk who remained alive,’ he wrote