A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

by Barbara W. Tuchman

“In the time of that great mortality in the year of our Lord 1348,” wrote a professor of law named Bartolus of Sassoferrato, “the hostility of God was stronger than the hostility of man.” But he was wrong. The hostility of man proved itself against the Jews. On charges that they were poisoning the wells, with intent “to kill and destroy the whole of Christendom and have lordship over all the world,” the lynchings began in the spring of 1348 on the heels of the first plague deaths. The first attacks occurred in Narbonne and Carcassonne, where Jews were dragged from their houses and thrown into bonfires. While Divine punishment was accepted as the plague’s source, people in their misery still looked for a human agent upon whom to vent the hostility that could not be vented on God. The Jew, as the eternal stranger, was the most obvious target.