The Messinese now appealed to the Patriarch Archbishop of Catania to allow the relics of St Agatha to be taken from Catania to Messina. The Patriarch agreed but the Catanians, not unnaturally feeling that charity began at home and that St Agatha should remain at her post in her own cathedral, rose in protest. ‘They tore the keys from the sacristan and stoutly rebuked the Patriarch, saying that they would rather die than allow the relics to be taken to Messina.’ The Patriarch, who must have been a man of singular courage, accepted the mob’s decision but insisted at least on dipping some of the relics in water and personally taking the water with him to Messina.
‘The aforesaid Patriarch,’ reads Michael of Piazza’s account,
landed at Messina carrying with him the holy water… and in that city there appeared demons transfigured into the shape of dogs, who wrought grievous harm upon the bodies of the citizens; so that men were aghast and dared not go forth from their houses. Yet by common consent, and at the wish of the Archbishop, they determined to march devoutly around the city reciting litanies. While the whole population was thus processing around the streets, a black dog, bearing a drawn sword in his paws, appeared among them, gnashing with his teeth and rushing upon them and breaking all the silver vessels and lamps and candlesticks on the altars, and casting them hither and thither…. So the people of Messina, terrified by this prodigious vision, were all strangely overcome by fear.
This description exemplifies the curious blend of sober eye-witness reporting and superstitious fantasy which is characteristic of so many similar chronicles. How much of it should one believe? How much of it, for that matter, did Michael of Piazza believe himself? Rabies was endemic in Sicily and, since nobody can have had the time or energy to keep mad dogs in check, it is not surprising that there should have been an unusally large number running in the streets. In the circumstances the panic-stricken Sicilian can hardly be blamed for detecting some supernatural influence in their activities. But did the chronicler really believe that he, or some other reliable witness, had actually seen a black dog with a drawn sword in its paws? Or was the statement no more than an expression in symbolic terms of the chronicler’s belief in the dog’s daemonic possession? Probably Michael of Piazza himself would hardly have known the answer. Medieval man skated on the thinnest possible ice of verified knowledge with beneath him unplumbed and altogether terrifying depths of ignorance and superstition. Let the ice break and with it was lost all grasp on reality and all capacity for objective, logical analysis.
The people of Messina, disappointed of St Agatha’s relics, then set off barefoot in procession to a shrine some six miles away where was to be found an image of the Virgin said to possess exceptional powers. Once again they were discomfited and, in their discomfiture, Michael of Piazza saw another proof that the plague was God’s retribution on his erring people.
This aforesaid Mother of God, when she saw and drew near unto the city, judged it to be so hateful and so profundly stained with blood and sin that she turned her back upon it, being not only unwilling to enter therein, but even abhorring the very sight thereof. For which cause the earth yawned open and the horse which bore the image of the Mother of God stood fixed and motionless as a rock.
Eventually the animal was bullied or cajoled into the city and the Virgin lodged in Santa Maria la Nuova, the largest church of the city. But little good did it do the unfortunate Messinese. ‘…this coming of the image availed naught; nay, the pestilence raged so much the more violently that one man could not succour another but the greater part of the citizens deserted Messina and were scattered abroad.’
After his return from Messina the gallant Patriarch succumbed to the disease which he had combated so stoutly. He was buried in the Cathedral at Catania. By his behaviour and by his death he set a standard which was to be matched by few indeed of his peers.
Quickly the plague spread over Sicily, ravaging with especial violence the towns and villages at the western end. It was not for long confined to such narrow limits. Sicily, as Professor Renouard dryly remarks,{70} ‘fulfilled its natural mission as a centre of the Mediterranean world’. From thence it spread probably to North Africa by way of Tunis; certainly to Corsica and Sardinia; the Balearics, Almeria, Valencia and Barcelona on the Iberian peninsula; and to Southern Italy. It is remarkable, in this as in every other epidemic of bubonic plague, how closely the disease followed the main trade-routes.{71} Largely, of course, this is a token of the role which the rat played in the propagation of plague. But whether the Black Death travelled by rat, by unescorted flea or by infected sailor, ship was the surest and most rapid means. The Black Death, indeed, is peculiar among plagues in that the particularly high incidence of its pneumonic variant meant that it struck inland with unusual vigour. But even though it could thus attain the hinterland, its first target was still the coastal towns. It travelled from the Crimea to Moscow not overland but by way of Italy, France, England and the Hanseatic ports.{72}
The three great centres for the propagation of the plague in Southern Europe were Sicily, Genoa and Venice. It seems to have arrived more or less simultaneously at the latter ports some time in January, 1348. But it was Pisa, attacked a few weeks later,{73} which provided the main point of entry to Central and Northern Italy. From there it moved rapidly inland to Rome and Tuscany. It had begun the march which was not to end until the whole continent of Europe had been blanketed by death.
In Italy the previous years had provided a chapter of disasters less dramatic but little less damaging than those which had overtaken the unfortunate Chinese. A crescendo of calamity was reached shortly before the plague arrived.{74} Earthquakes had done severe damage in Naples, Rome, Pisa, Bologna, Padua and Venice. The wine in the casks had become turbid: ‘a statement which,’ as the nineteenth-century German historian Hecker hopefully remarked, ‘may be considered as furnishing a proof that changes causing a decomposition of the atmosphere had taken place.’ From July 1345 six months of almost continuous rain had made sowing impossible in many areas. The following spring things were little better. The corn crop was less than a quarter of the usual and almost all the domestic fowls had to be slaughtered for want of feeding stuffs. Even for the richest states and cities it was difficult to replace the loss by imports. ‘In 1346 and 1347 there was a severe shortage of basic foodstuffs… to the point where many people died of hunger and people ate grass and weeds as if they had been wheat.’{75} Near Orvieto the bridges were washed away by the floods and the damage done to communications all over Italy made the work of feeding the hungry still more difficult.{76}