The Plague; Written for the 1900's Time Period

The Plague
Today’s society is filled to the brim with terror and uncertainty of what tomorrow may bring knocking on their front door. Sickness or even death, perhaps? England is hidden in the cloak of sickness known as the Black Death and no matter how hard people try to escape from its folds, no one is safe from this plague. In a panic, healthy people have done all they can to avoid this sickness. The doctors refuse to see patients; the priests refuse to administer last rites. Shopkeepers have closed their stores, and many people have fled the cities for the countryside, but even there people are finding that the plague has spread (“Black Death”). The farmers and retailers of farm produce are also in danger of catching the Bubonic plague due to the fact that there are fleas on their animals (“Spread of the Elizabethan Bubonic Plague in Elizabethan England”). The plague causes many problems for the victim, such as very high fever, delirium, vomiting, muscular pains, and the swelling of lymph nodes.
Many believe that the plague is a punishment from God. They believe the only way to overcome the plague is to win back God’s forgiveness. Some people are having a hard time coping with the terror they have for the plague and are lashing out at their neighbors (“Black Death”). The reason for this is because many of these people don’t know how to deal with this new terror and suspense of not knowing what is going to happen to them, so they turn their fear into anger and use that anger to lash out at others. This is almost a way of blaming others for the problems that have taken over everyday life because of the plague. While this may seem outlandish to do, it’s not as crazy as the way some of the upper-class men are coping with this time of terror. Many of them have joined processions of flagellants and travel from town to town to engage in public displays of penance and punishment. A flagellant is someone who whips themselves as a part of a religious penance. They do this by beating themselves and each other with heavy leather straps studded with sharp pieces of metal while townspeople look on (“Black Death History; Society”). You are more prone to germs and disease with cuts and wounds all over your body. These people who believe in bringing punishment on themselves do this act of beating themselves for 33 ½ days, three times a day. Then they would move on to the next town and begin the process again.
Strangely enough, this act of whipping themselves into a “religious frenzy” is a way of relief. What motivated people to this extreme act was the prolonged plague, hunger, drought, and other natural maladies (“The Flagellants Attempt to Repeal the Black Death, 1349”). Here is a description of the Flagellants from Sir Robert of Avesbury, who has witnessed their ritual:
“In that same year of 1349, about Michaelmas (September, 29) over six hundred men came to London from Flanders, mostly Zeeland and Holland origin. Sometimes at St. Paul’s and sometimes at other points in the city, they made two daily public appearances wearing clothes from the thighs to the ankles, but otherwise stripped bare. Each wore a cap marked with a red cross in front and behind.
Each had in his right hand a scourge with three tails. Each tail had a knot and through the middle of it there were sometimes sharp nails fixed. They marched naked in a file one behind the other and whipped themselves with these scourges on their naked and bleeding bodies.
Four of them would chant in their native tongue, and another four would chant in response like a litany. Thrice they would all cast themselves on the ground in this sort of procession, stretching out their hands like the arms of a cross. The singing would go on and, the one who was in the rear of those thus prostrate acting first, each of them in turn would step over the others and give one stroke with his scourge to the man lying under him.
This went on from the first to the last until each of them had observed the ritual to the full take of those on the ground. Then each put on his customary garments and always wearing their caps and carrying their whips in their hands they retired to their lodgings. It is said that every night they performed the same penance (“The Flagellants Attempt to Repel the Black Death, 1349”).”
Not only men, but women also, take place in these beatings through the towns. They do this all in the name of God. Other than beating themselves, they also preach, confess, and forgive sins, and they declare that the blood shed in their flagellations has a share with the blood of Christ in atoning for sin. This group also believes that their penance is a substitute for the sacraments of the church, and that the absolution that is granted by the clergy is of no avail (“The Black Death And The Flagellants”).