Lawlessness, debauchery, scapegoating, murder ... the Black Death didn’t bring out the best in people
by from on (#53JP9)
Today's coronavirus has echoes not just of more recent pandemics but of the medieval plague, a disease of unkown origin that unleashed terrible fear and hatred. In the following excerpt from her 2015 book, From Tolerance to Tyranny: A Cautionary Tale from Fifteenth-Century Spain", Erna Paris narrates the European experience of the plague, known as the Black Death, in the fourteenth century.