The Next Turns Rebuttal

Hello,

I can’t respond to your last post point by point ...its way too long. So I think it would be better if I restate my argument while trying to address your specific concerns.

Since you said the statements below, I think we can agree on the modified points 1,2, 4 and 5.
"My problem is not that some people might of have felt that their suffering was the wrath of God. I am sure many did."
"Nor do I have problem believing that rats played a major role in transmitting the disease, they certainly did."

1. Most people of medieval Europe believed in a God.
2. A large portion of those people thought that the plague was caused by a divine being.
3. Many people also thought the cure could be obtained by appeasement to God. Thus the main types of investigation into the causes/cures to the plague were divine in nature. This prevented large scale secular investigations into the causes/cures of the plague.
4. Because the underlining causes were not discovered the plague was allow to spread all across Europe and to reach epidemic proportions.
5. During the 17 and 18th centuries large scale secular investigations outnumber divine investigations.
So the only point question (I hope) is point 3.

It sounds like that you think that I don’t believe secular causes/cures for the plague were ever investigated. I agree that they were investigated, but the real question here is on what scale were secular causes/cures investigated compared to divine causes/cures.

My sources shows that there was a wide spread belief that a Divine being caused the plague.(4, 8, 9)

But I also have sources which explain that many people not only believed that a Divine Being was the source of the plague but appeasement to God could provide the cure.
1. “Since religion dominated life in seventeenth-century Italy, prayer was naturally an important weapon against the plague."
http://galileo.rice.edu/fam/bubonic_plague.html
6. “..... and priests might urge their sick parishioners to pray for healing or to visit the shrines of saints.”
http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/documents/Black_Plague.pdf
9."but also that the faithful should be saved by their belief in Christ.”
http://www.loyno.edu/~history/journal/1996-7/Smith.html

So far I was given 1 source that explains how people used secular investigations. (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/med/pistoia.html)
Unlike my sources above this source only shows one specific incident where people investigated secular cures more than divine ones.
My sources (1, 6, 9) do not talk about specific situations, they show that investigation of a divine cure was common to the people of that time.

I also have specific sources (including a couple news ones) that shows how many people used appeasement to God as a cure instead of investigating secular cures.
1. "When the plague worsened in Florence during the summer of 1633, an order came from the Commissioner of Health requiring nuns to pray continuously for the next 40 days for divine.”
http://galileo.rice.edu/fam/bubonic_plague.html
13. “Flagellants, religious fanatics of 13th-century Europe who proclaimed the imminence of the wrath of God against corruption and, as a religious rite, practiced public, self-inflicted scourgings. The sect arose in Perugia, in central Italy, in 1259-60 and is said to have numbered 10,000.”
http://www.encarta.ca/encyclopedia_761552477/Flagellants.html#p2
14. “While all countries were filled with lamentations and woe, there first arose in Hungary, and afterward in Germany, the Brotherhood of the Flagellants, called also the Brethren of the Cross, or Cross-bearers, who took upon themselves the repentance of the people for the sins they had committed, and offered prayers and supplications for the averting of this plague. “
http://history-world.org/black_death.htm
(Note: I know that the RCC denouced these sects, but the RCC denounced all Christian sects outside of the RCC)
15. In 1348, Pope Clement VI led a pilgrimage to Rome for mass prayers to appease God. However, over 90% of the pilgrims fell prey to the very plague that they had tried to prevent.
The Black Death. The History of Bubonic Plague. December 2, 2003:
http://cosmos.ucdavis.edu/2005/Cluster%207/Ramya%20Kandasamy.pdf


I believe we can agree that both logical paths happened.

Your logical path:
1. People saw this as natural plague or Divine plague.
2. People saw that no matter if God caused the plague or not a secular cure was needed.
3. People investigated secular cures especially the ones about cleanliness since it is promoted in the bible.
I do believe that this did happen, one quote I like is
"God will not do for mankind that which mankind can already do themselves."

My logical path:
1. People saw this as a punishment of a divine being.
2. People thought since God was doing this, appeasement of God would stop it.
3. People try to appease god by prayer or went on pilgrimages in order to stop or prevent the plague’s spread.
It seems quite logical to me that if a person believes that God was the cause of a plague that appeasement to that God would stop it.

"Wrath of God = lets be passive”, in path2 people were not being passive, they were doing things that they thought would cure them and stop the plague. Passive to me is doing nothing; obviously Christians think that prayer is effective. Also given the time it took for people to die (3 weeks or less), people’s first choice to combat the plague was their only choice since death happened quickly. In other words there was little time for alternative investigations if the first plan failed.

The heart of this debate is not whether these 2 situations happened. Is it at what scale did these 2 situation happen. If you could provide sources which state that the most common way to combat the plague was secular investigation, I would be more apt to believe that appeasement to god did not help to spread of the disease.

Your alternative comparison:
In order to show that appeasement God was not the best thing for the people during this time I must compare it to a more effective alternative. You provided a couple alternatives that people used during these times that were beyond biblical thought. Galen's theory of humors and the Astrological alignment of the planets were 2 such examples. I completely agree that these methods were discussed and did nothing to combat the plague.

My alternative comparison:
The best alternative to deal with this situation is the way we deal with unknown situations today.
If the authority figures of that time, laid out a decree asking all people to be aware of the differences between towns ravaged by plague and the towns that were not. I do not think it would take much time for the people to realize that towns which were hit by the plague also had large rat populations and that rats had something to do with the wide spread migration of the disease.
I have never come across any sources that say the church or the state investigated in this way. This method of investigation would have been way more effective in finding ways to stop the plague than appeasement to God or the use of biblical verses that promoted cleanliness.

On that topic I do feel that adherence to bible scripture which promoted cleanliness did help in these situations. But why did god stop at cleanliness. After all, many other religions promote clean living in their scriptures such as Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism. This is clear evidence that unclean living was obvious to people since people could see the effects of an unclean situations (bad smell, seeing things rot etc.)
Therefor I have a few questions about the Bible and why only obvious actions to combat disease were included.
So why didn’t God warn people of the danger of transporting of animals or rodents?
Why didn’t God clearly encourage methods of finding out the causes or cures of unknown situations, like the plague?
Why didn’t God clearly explain germ theory, or explain the dangers of letting the rodent population get out of hand?
Why did God only provide help which was already obvious to people, such as cleanliness?

Best Regards,

TheNextTurn