The Black Death: An Intimate History by: John Hatcher
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Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Release date: 5th June, 2008
Media: Hardcover
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Average rating -
Rating: - Ultimately disappointing.
I was intrigued by this book due to the village the author used for the setting of the book, Walsham in Suffolk, which is close to where I live. I had read other books concerning the Black Death and been bored senseless with clinical faceless facts about incubation dates and estimation of the exact spread of the Plague, so I was hopeful that this book would be more insightful into the lives of the ordinary villager.
Yes, the book does deliver on giving the reader characters, both real and invented, that you can follow through the book and observe how various events affected every stratum of society and how things changed through the "before, during and after" times of the Black Death. From attitudes to religion and work conditions, to changes in social classes. But this book leaves the reader feeling it is missing something.
To begin with the book settles into the surroundings and sets the scene for the reader, both of human and geographic content. However a few chapters into the book and you're wondering if the Plague is ever going to turn up?!!? The chapters for the time the pestilence has actually arrived in Walsham seem to be over in no time. This is then followed by chapters on the after effects of the Black Death. The main problem I have with the "before" and "after" is that it repeats a lot of the same themes and theories, even the same sentences put into the minds of the characters. At times the book seems to just be going round and round in circles and you're left thinking on some paragraphs that "I already knew that"...or "Didn't I just read that in the last chapter?".
By the end of the book you feel you have read a book just on social and economic history of the 1350s rather than a book dedicated to Black Death. The themes of the book seem to wander around a lot and almost feel as if some chapters were taken over by the author rambling just to fill the book out a little. In the current form, the book would have been much better if it had been more concise. Having said all that, it's still one of the better books I have read in this genre and does at least bring the reader closer to "seeing" how an ordinary village coped with the Black Death.
Rating: - Interesting but not gripping ....
The Black Death "remains the greatest natural disaster to befall humanity." Well, perhaps but we are spoilt for choice. Professor Hatcher's book is a hybrid, mostly a social and economic history, partly fictional based on a real Suffolk village in 1340s. What he has done is to apply intellect and industry (using the records that have survived) adding his imagination to make a story. As a Cambridge historian, he is qualified to add narrative flesh to the factual skeleton. The book chronicles the fourteenth century rural world with much detail - plus some reasonable extrapolation - providing a picture of religious belief, agricultural practice and social structure.
The suffering caused by the plague is dealt with comparatively briefly; it arrives on page 127 and is over in eight weeks. It was random, the godly fell as easily as the sinners. Its gruesome symptoms are described; individual lives sketched in their final hours. There is not much more to say about boils and the stench, "bring out your dead" and paint the crosses on the doors. Hatcher invents characters to propel the story. The book has the subtitle "A Intimate History" and I suppose this was it.
Essentially this is a book about terror. What I did not fully appreciate was that they knew what was coming a long time before it arrived. Reports of the epidemic travelled well ahead of the actual infection; by 1346, it was known to be on the Caspian then its progress charted city by city. Death, horrible and agonising, was coming ever nearer; it was only a matter of time. It arrived in Weymouth, Dorset, in 1348. In the Suffolk village it came in the Spring 1349. How would our society react knowing that half of us would be dead in two or three years?
What they did was turn to religion. In a world of intense superstition and pervasive Christian dogma, the clergy controlled lives. Unimaginable suffering awaited those who did not die in the hands of a priest. Death without confession, and the correct rituals, ensured entry to hell and a putrid eternity of suffering. Terror of the spiritual was as great as the fear of physical suffering. Half the population of the village died, peaking at 50 people per day most without confession or a proper funeral to pave their way toward heaven. Some had prepared as best they could, elaborate rituals, visits to shrines, holy water and candles. The church made a lot of money, priests made more as did the charlatans and quacks.
Hatcher then goes to some length to show how society changed after the infection had passed. There were considerable spoils for the survivors; land was available, food was cheap, higher wages for less work, and a new social freedom for the poor with less deference and obedience to their masters. And yes the priests (those that survived, God was not sparing of his own) made more money.
I was a little weary by the end of the book; it is an interesting story but not a gripping one. The characters are not developed but illustrative. This is certainly not "an intimate history" rather a skilled case study of a place and time. As Professor Hatcher suggested, it is an invitation to go and learn more. This is a tidy book, a good social and economic commentary of the rural - as opposed to the better documented urban - experience.
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