Clement consecrated the Rhône; each morning that plague spring, hundreds of rotting corpses would flow down the stream like a mysterious new species of sea creature. Passing Aramon, Tarascon, and Arles, Avignon’s dead would flood out into the open Mediterranean, where, under the low gray light of a sea dawn, they would gather in communion with the dead of Pisa and Messina, Catania and Marseille, Cyprus and Damascus.
