The Black Death killed about half of Europe's population and inflicted great losses also in Africa and Asia. Records of chroniclers of that period clearly show that people did not die only because of the plague. At that time there were also powerful earthquakes, tsunamis, meteorite impacts, floods and other cataclysms. This is how the German historian Justus Hecker summarizes these events in his 1832 book "The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania":
"On the island of Cyprus, the plague from the East had already broken out; when an earthquake shook the foundations of the island, and was accompanied by so frightful a hurricane, that the inhabitants who had slain their Mahometan slaves, in order that they might not themselves be subjugated by them, fled in dismay, in all directions. The sea overflowed – the ships were dashed to pieces on the rocks and few outlived the terrific event, whereby this fertile and blooming island was converted into a desert. Before the earthquake, a pestiferous wind spread so poisonous an odour that many, being overpowered by it, fell down suddenly and expired in dreadful agonies. … German accounts say expressly, that a thick, stinking mist advanced from the East, and spread itself over Italy, … for just at this time earthqukes were more general than they had been within the range of history. In thousands of places chasms were formed, from whence arose noxious vapours; and as at that time natural occurrences were transformed into miracles, it was reported, that a fiery meteor, which descended on the earth far in the East, had destroyed every thing within a radius of more than a hundred leagues [483 km], infecting the air far and wide. The consequences of innumerable floods contributed to the same effect; vast river districts had been converted into swamps; foul vapours arose every where, increased by the odour of putrified locusts, which had never perhaps darkened the sun in thicker swarms, and of countless corpses, which even in the well-regulated countries of Europe, they knew not how to remove quickly enough out of the sight of the living. It is probable, therefore, that the atmosphere contained foreign, and sensuously perceptible, admixtures to a great extent, which, at least in the lower regions, could not be decomposed, or rendered ineffective by separation."
Source: gutenberg.org/files/1739/1739-h/1739-h.htm
You can read my entire study on the Black Death here:
reset676.com/en/3-black-death.html
"On the island of Cyprus, the plague from the East had already broken out; when an earthquake shook the foundations of the island, and was accompanied by so frightful a hurricane, that the inhabitants who had slain their Mahometan slaves, in order that they might not themselves be subjugated by them, fled in dismay, in all directions. The sea overflowed – the ships were dashed to pieces on the rocks and few outlived the terrific event, whereby this fertile and blooming island was converted into a desert. Before the earthquake, a pestiferous wind spread so poisonous an odour that many, being overpowered by it, fell down suddenly and expired in dreadful agonies. … German accounts say expressly, that a thick, stinking mist advanced from the East, and spread itself over Italy, … for just at this time earthqukes were more general than they had been within the range of history. In thousands of places chasms were formed, from whence arose noxious vapours; and as at that time natural occurrences were transformed into miracles, it was reported, that a fiery meteor, which descended on the earth far in the East, had destroyed every thing within a radius of more than a hundred leagues [483 km], infecting the air far and wide. The consequences of innumerable floods contributed to the same effect; vast river districts had been converted into swamps; foul vapours arose every where, increased by the odour of putrified locusts, which had never perhaps darkened the sun in thicker swarms, and of countless corpses, which even in the well-regulated countries of Europe, they knew not how to remove quickly enough out of the sight of the living. It is probable, therefore, that the atmosphere contained foreign, and sensuously perceptible, admixtures to a great extent, which, at least in the lower regions, could not be decomposed, or rendered ineffective by separation."
Source: gutenberg.org/files/1739/1739-h/1739-h.htm
You can read my entire study on the Black Death here:
reset676.com/en/3-black-death.html
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