1348

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political events

Louis I of Hungary withdraws from Naples as plague decimates his army (see 1347). He will invade Naples again in 1350 but achieve no lasting result.

medicine

The plague that later will be called the Black Death reaches Marseilles in January and Florence in April, reducing the latter city's population from 90,000 to 45,000 in its worst year (see 1347); it moves on to the German states and Low Countries, reaches Paris in the spring and spreads throughout much of France. French surgeon Guy de Chauliac remains at Auvergne after most physicians have fled and writes, "The visitation came in two forms. The first lasted two months, manifesting itself as an intermittent fever accompanied by spitting of blood from which people died usually in 3 days. The second type lasted the remainder of the time, manifesting itself in high fever, abscesses and carbuncles, chiefly in the axillae and groin. People died from this in 5 days. So contagious was the disease especially that with blood spitting [pneumonia] that no one could approach or even see a patient without taking the disease. The father did not visit the son nor the son the father. Charity was dead and hope abandoned." Guy de Chauliac recommends blood-letting to those unable to flee. Other physicians apply hot onions to sores, and people try all manner of alleged "cures," but nothing avails. Pope Clement VI shuts himself up in his study and has bonfires burning throughout the summer to keep away the pestilence, which kills thousands of other Romans but somehow spares the pontiff. Physicians wear long gowns, long gauntlets, and masks with birdlike beaks in which herbs are burned to purify the air, but many succumb nevertheless. The plague reaches England in September, although London is spared until November (see 1349).

religion

Pope Clement VI issues two bulls declaring Jews to be innocent of spreading the Black Death, but the persecution continues as people accuse Jews of deliberately contaminating wells and "anointing" people and houses with poison. The attacks have begun at Chillon on Lake Geneva and spread to Basel and Freiburg, where all known Jews are herded into wooden buildings and burned alive. At Strasbourg more than 2,000 Jewish scapegoats are hanged on a scaffold erected at the Jewish burying ground. Jews are not permitted to enter the Avignon house of prostitution established last year. Thousands of Jews flee to Poland, Russia, and other, more tolerant, parts of eastern Europe (see 1334).

education

The University of Prague founded by Bohemia's Charles I (the Great) is the first university in central Europe to have the same rights and privileges as the universities of Paris and Bologna (see Vienna, 1365).

Gonville and Caius College at the University of Cambridge has its beginnings in Gonville Hall, founded by Edmund Gonville, rector of Torrington (see Pembroke, 1347). The college will be refounded in 1557 by physician John Caius (see Trinity, 1350).

agriculture

England has her third cold, wet summer in a row, and this one is the worst. Rain falls steadily from midsummer to Christmas, crops are poor, food is short, and the hunger makes the people and animals vulnerable to disease (see 1349).

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