The Black Death QUOTES

1 " Fourteenth-century men seemed to have regarded their doctor in rather the same way as the twentieth-century men are apt to regard their priest, with tolerance for someone who was doing his best and the respect due to a man of learning but also with a nagging and uncomfortable conviction that he was largely irrelevant to the real and urgent problems of their lives. "

― Philip Ziegler , The Black Death

3 " France was the next country to be overrun. The plague arrived at Marseilles a month or two after it reached the mainland of Italy. Through 1348, it moved across the country, advancing on two main lines, toward Bordeaux in the west and Paris in the north. The fate of Perpignan, just north of the Spanish border, illustrates vividly what happened in many of the smaller cities. The disruption of everyday commercial life is shown by statistics of loans made by the Jews of Perpignan to their Christian co-citizens. In January 1348, there were sixteen such loans, in February, twenty-five, in March, thirty-two. There were eight in the first eleven days of April, three in the rest of the month, and then no more until August 12. "

― Philip Ziegler , The Black Death