The Bright Side of Life

I've planned to be more positive in these posts, but it seems that I have not begun just yet.


Someone mentioned 'flu season.' That got me to thinking about being lucky about not having been touched by the flu for years even though I had resisted inoculation. Thinking of luck got me to thinking of 'luck' 13. One thing led to another and I got to thinking of the 1300s.


The 1300s were not a particularly luck times for Europeans. Not that it was all bad then; Universities were being founded France, Italy, and Czechoslovakia: in Spain it was the height of Arabic civilization and Yusuf the first was Caliph of Granada; scholarship was flourishing I Catholic monasteries; St. Catherine was born in Siena. Chaucer was born around 1340, In 1321 Dante Finished The Divine Comedy


Still I imagine that the Poles did not feel lucky when the Teutonic Knights blocked their access to the Baltic Sea; nor did the Jews being persecuted in Germany. The French and the English were beginning the Hundred Year War. The citizens of the Crimean city of Koffa, I imagine, did not feel lucky as they watched warriors of a Mongol army catapult the bodies of warriors dead of the bubonic plague over their walls. 


Plague.


The People of Europe and most of the world had see plague before and They would see it again. However, this one in the 1300s has been particularly memorable. It was called the Black Death and was thought to have begun in China or India between 1330 and 1333. By 1347 it had reached Cyprus. By bout 1350 it had killed about 50,000,000 Asians and 24,000,000 Europeans. People in India and China probably feel lucky either. The 25 million individuals who died in Europe between about 1347 and 1351,when the Black Death Swept Russia, may not seem dramatic by our standards, but it was half of them.


Then, early in the 1360s, it came back. It appeared in England in 1361.


The ruled classes acted disturbed by this. In 1358 they revolted in France; in 1381 in England.


Home work: Why did the describe it as the Black Death? Do you really want to know? Did you know that today wild rodents living near people are infected with the bubonic plague? Why do we call it bubonic? Is the Black Death waiting? Are you feeling lucky.


I plan to make an effort to reflect more of the bright side of life in my posts.