62 BLACK DEATH, The (Bubonic Plague), Sylvester Hassell The most general and fatal epidemic that ever desolated the world was the Black Death of the fourteenth century. Originating in China, preceded by dreadful droughts, famine, floods, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and swarms of locusts, characterized by black carbuncles and buboes all over the body, terminating fatally in two or three days, sometimes announced by dense and awful clouds coming from the east, poisoning the water and the air, maddening some and demoralizing others, the horrible pestilence ravaged the entire Eastern Hemisphere, scattering death everywhere on land and sea. It is believed to be a moderate estimate that fifty millions of human beings perished. The plague prevailed in Europe from 1348 to 1351. Flagellation was revived by armies of tens of thousands of people marching from city to city, chanting mournful ditties, and, at stated times, lacerating their bodies with triple scourges armed with points of iron—thus blindly seeking to extirpate their sins and avert the pestilence.
The Jews, so often treated by professed Christians as scape-goats, were tortured and murdered by thousands on the charge of poisoning the wells. The Jews were also repeatedly persecuted, during this century, in France and Spain, for their wealth and their religion; hundreds of thousands are said to have submitted to compulsory baptism; those who refused thus to submit were either banished or massacred, and their property confiscated.” (Hassell’s History pg 454)