New Directions in the Study of Religious Responses to the Black Death¹

Abstract

The past decade has seen the publications of numerous excellent studies on the Black Death. For the most part, however, scholars have been preoccupied with debating whether the Black Death was caused by plague or not, parallels between the first, second, and third plague pandemics, and broader historiographical questions of continuity and change. Less attention has been devoted to revisiting the religious responses of Christians, Muslims, and Jews to the natural disaster. Recent scholarship has begun to question previous paradigms in which the responses of these three communities were viewed as qualitatively different in essential characteristics such as their conception of contagion. By emphasizing the internal diversity of views within these monotheistic communities, and drawing on recently published primary sources, scholars attempting to write a nuanced comparative history of the religious responses to the Black Death will be able to avoid the misleading generalizations promoted by their predecessors.

Religious construction of disease: An exploratory appraisal of religious responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in Uganda

“…Christian ideology on the cause of pandemics has been consistent over the centuries pegging it to sinful acts, though these differ depending on the lifestyle and environment of the time. For example, whereas Stearns (2009) identified pride, lust, impiety, simony, indecent clothing and filial disobedience as responsible for the Black Death in the 14 th century, homosexuality, corruption and refusal to worship God are identified as the sins in the circumstances of COVID-19.…”

“…The indiscriminative nature of COVID-19 raises the question of theodicy, as it was with the Black Death. Some Christian scholars attribute the death of children and other innocent victims to pandemics for their failure to honour their parents, or conversely, by their death being a punishment for the sins of their parents (Stearns, 2009).…”

New Science and Old Sources: Why the Ottoman Experience of Plague Matters

“…By now, it has become commonplace to study three discrete pandemics: the First Pandemic, known as the Justinianic Plague and its recurrent waves (541-c.750); the Second Pandemic, known as the Black Death (1346-53) and its recurrent waves that continued for several centuries; and the Third Pandemic that spread globally in a few years after its appearance in Hong Kong in 1894. 8 Although the idea that the Plague of Justinian and the Black Death were two separate waves of epidemic Hrabak 1957;Krekic 1963;Langer 1975;Dols 1977;Norris 1977;Alexander 1980;Schamiloglu 1993;Ansari 1994;Kōstēs 1995;Manolova-Nikolova 2004;Anandavalli 2007;Stearns 2009 andFrandsen 2010;Buell 2012. Also see works cited in notes 5 and 6 above.…”

“…Recent studies have shown that religion cannot be accepted as the sole determinant in responses to epidemic diseases(Stearns 2009 and.…”

New Science and Old Sources: Why the Ottoman Experience of Plague Matters

“…By now, it has become commonplace to study three discrete pandemics: the First Pandemic, known as the Justinianic Plague and its recurrent waves (541-c.750); the Second Pandemic, known as the Black Death (1346-53) and its recurrent waves that continued for several centuries; and the Third Pandemic that spread globally in a few years after its appearance in Hong Kong in 1894. 8 Although the idea that the Plague of Justinian and the Black Death were two separate waves of epidemic Hrabak 1957;Krekic 1963;Langer 1975;Dols 1977;Norris 1977;Alexander 1980;Schamiloglu 1993;Ansari 1994;Kōstēs 1995;Manolova-Nikolova 2004;Anandavalli 2007;Stearns 2009 andFrandsen 2010;Buell 2012. Also see works cited in notes 5 and 6 above.…”