A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

by Barbara W. Tuchman

An early victim was the Queen of France, Jean’s second wife, who died in September 1360 ahead of the main epidemic. The Pestis Secunda, sometimes called the “mortality of children,” took a particularly high toll of the young, who had no immunity from the earlier outbreak, and, according to John of Reading, “especially struck the masculine sex.” The deaths of the young in the Second Pest halted repopulation, haunting the age with a sense of decline. In the urge to procreate, women in England, according to Polychronicon, “took any kind of husbands, strangers, the feeble and imbeciles alike, and without shame mated with inferiors.”

An early victim was the Queen of France, Jean’s second wife, who died in September 1360 ahead of the main epidemic. The Pestis Secunda, sometimes called the “mortality of children,” took a particularly high toll of the young, who had no immunity from the earlier outbreak, and, according to John of Reading, “especially struck the masculine sex.” The deaths of the young in the Second Pest halted repopulation, haunting the age with a sense of decline. In the urge to procreate, women in England, according to Polychronicon, “took any kind of husbands, strangers, the feeble and imbeciles alike, and without shame mated with inferiors.”