My Rebuttal

1. An exaggeration but ok, Christianity was the dominant religion.
In this argument I was not signaling out Christianity; Muslins and Jews also thought the plague had a supernatural cause. (2, 5) The 99% is the number people that believed in God.

I actually believe that the number of hard a-spiritualist (not willing to accept any spiritual universe as a possibility) tends to holds steady across time just as color-blindness and deafness do. But this is an argument for another time, yes theistic thinking was dominate but it tended to be challenged by pseudo-scientific ideas about the positions of the planets causing natural disaster. Also, just because Christianity was dominate does not mean that there were no unbelievers only that they were less vocal about it.

I am not in a position to defend the beliefs on Muslims or Jews. I think it likely that people of different religions will have different ways of reasoning from their beliefs. Just as you likely do not think and reason like a Communist or Objectivist. Also just as science was not very sophisticated, theological thinking was not as sophisticated as it would become. The teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas (who I will talk about more) was an early medieval improvement on the knee jerk rejection of pagan thought.

My problem is not that some people might of have felt that their suffering was the wrath of God. I am sure many did.
I am not sure how many believed that the plague was caused by God, either as a punishment or the start of the Apocalypse or the work of the devil. The low figures I have seen are at 30% and high ones go as high as 90%. Although I would consider the number was way over 50%, I can agree on 50% of the people thought this way.

I have no idea how we would know this or where these figures are coming from.

However, yes people felt like it was the end of the world. It is not surprising since society really was falling apart. Atheist or not surrounded by that magnitude of death a person would naturally believe that this was the end. The hedonism practiced by many directly following the plague {Issues of Death} would have followed from an atheist point of view. If there is no God, of course, a person should seek to have as much enjoyment as possible in their final days. Certainly, the Catholic Church was critical of the widespread practice of throwing indulgent celebrations during or immediately after the plague.

I do not find it surprising that people had the logic of punishment and like I have discussed before it could have been less of problem if the principles of the Bible had been followed. While many felt it was punishment for disobeying God they would not have assumed that Wrath of God = “lets be passive” like you do. In fact, one of the more common responses was to clean up the city like was done in Pistoia during the spring of 1348.

Also, because the world is not supposed to end in a plague, people were comforted after the other horsemen (that is other signs of the end of world) did not show up (History Channel -The Plague). Faith instills the hope needed to recover and likely limited the moral natural desire to give up hope and indulge in hedonism.

2. ”I don’t think this (God was the ONLY solution) is apparent at all. Just because a person views God as the Ultimate cause does not mean that they are unaware of a Proximate cause. If we were to follow this logic you would have to believe that Christians never try to solve problems because we believe God ultimately in control of the universe. Clearly that is false.”

Yes I would say that a majority of Christians today do not believe God controls everything. But go ask a person that takes the Bible literally; today many main stream evangelicals say that God punishes people through disease, natural and human disasters. I know I shouldn’t judge a Faith based on its “whackos”, since these people have a minority of Christian followers. But during the 14th century the majority of people thought exactly the way that these “whackos” do. (0, 2, 3)

I disagree with your idea that only the “whackos” among Christians still believe God controls everything. Or this idea that some how Medieval Christians did not look for proximal as well as ultimate causes for their problems. Especially with the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas medieval people would have felt obligated to understand the creation and God’s work through the physical universe.

Look, this goes a little off topic but I really want to address this. It is important. All Christians believe that God controls everything. I do, we all do. We believe He is the Ultimate Cause of everything that goes on. That does not mean that there are not proximal causes as well. People who believe in a God who does not control the world are called deists. I like how the Salvation Army likes to say “When natural disasters cause acts of God.” Meaning that natural disasters create situations when Christians (Christ’s earthly body) need to do things.
Very few Christians take the whole Bible literally but we literally believe it is God‘s word.

I mean, Jesus taught in parables (metaphorical stories) and several books of the Bible are poetry. Of course, the whole Bible is not literal! Even people who habitually say “I believe the Bible is literally true” if I went up to them and said “Why is John taking about candlesticks so much in Revelation?” They would answer he is talking about Churches. Candlesticks were a metaphor for Churches.”

We believe God is in charge but we take actions and we discover thing based on that belief. Even in the Bible people pray and do stuff.

Isaac and his family were hit by a famine so the went to Egypt to look for food. The did not stay home and pray and starve. (Genesis 42)

Saul tries to kill David. David uses a ruse to trick Saul so he can run away. Later when his is in the desert he looks to God for spiritual strength. (Samuel 10-20)

David and Jacob are major spiritual figures in the Old Testament. Spirituality and action went hand and hand. Here is a negative example quite like the plague.

In the book of Isaiah, Israel is invaded by Assyria and when people passively reply “let’s eat drink and be merry” the prophet tells how wrong they were for sitting by instead of preparing to deal with the problem at hand. They had made some preparations but when it seemed insufficient they gave up. What they needed to do was repent and prepare for battle.

Frequently this is quote is attributed falsely to Epicurus a Greek philosopher who did not believe in life after death. But is a fair picture of a the only possible true materialist answer to a hopeless situation. While most atheists are not aware of Epicurus his ideas of a life lived for pleasure has been the reoccurring a-spiritualist theme.

Yes, the Bible teaches people to pray but it also insists that they take actions on the proximate causes of their problems. More than that it offers the hope to take actions on ones problems when all hope seem lost. It is an alternative to giving in to the suicidal hopelessness of a crisis in a purely materialistic universe {I know the study is modern and may not hold for medieval people but it is an example of the kind of response I am talking about. }


I do have a few sources that state that how often people thought prayer or repentance was the only solution. (1, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10).

Your first source does not show that people thought prayer and repentance was the only solution. In fact, it talks about some other solutions that were used at the time.

Your source shows that people prayed but this did not stop them from taking other actions as well.

“Besides prayer, city officials reacted to an outbreak of the plague by ordering the city to be kept clean, by setting up a pesthouse outside the city wall, and by requiring detailed reports from physicians. Further, when someone died from the plague, his or her belonging were burned for fear that they might spread the infection. People who died from plague were buried in common graves outside the city wall, rather than at a local church as was the custom.”

I also think it was interesting that the Nun is offering medical cures and apparently experimenting with Apothecary. All this and the article describes her religion as “extreme”. Obviously this article is being quite subjective but seems to feel that a person could be “extreme” and still feel comfortable attempting more ‘secular’ cures.