Anonymous Clergyman

The great fear of the plague was worsened by the realization that nobody, no matter their wealth or their station in life, was safe. The sickness reached rich and poor alike. Kings and their courts were affected, as were doctors and philosophers as well as the highest religious authorities.

In 1348, the plague arrived in the city of Avignon (in what is now southern France), where the court of the pope, the head of the Christian church, had moved from Rome in 1309. An anonymous cleric of the Low Countries, who was visiting Avignon during the plague outbreak, told of what he saw in the following letter dated April 27, 1348. The writer describes the plague's horrible symptoms, the possible causes of the disease (including the deliberate poisoning of the water wells), the flight of people who believed...