The plague in Bruges

Alb er t Cl ar ysse

The Bruges region had to endure regular plague epidemics, interspersed with sporadic deaths from the same disease, between the panEuropean Black Death of 1347 and 1669. The civic authorities responded in the late fifteenth century with an increasing number of measures. All waterways and wells were cleaned, stray dogs killed and infected houses marked. Infected people and those who cared for them were quarantined. An official was appointed in 1563 with the task of registering infected houses, and pesthuysen were set up on Magdalenaveld in 1602, to which plague victims could be brought.

A ‘Health Chamber’ (Camere van Ghesontheyt) was founded in Bruges in 1603, following the example of several other European cities. This took a number of measures to combat the spread of the disease and to ensure the proper care of plague victims. It is evident from these measures that the powers-that-be realized that

18 Proclamation on the plague issued by the civic authorities in Bruges on 25 August 1625 and reissued on 20 May 1666 Stadsarchief Brugge

19 Earliest necrology (period 1632–63), panel, monastery of the Discalced Carmelites, Bruges The Discalced or ‘Barefoot’ Carmelites tended to plague victims, at the cost in some cases of their own lives.

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the disease was contagious. The steps taken by the civic authorities may have contributed more to the control of the disease than the treatment offered by physicians (Fig. 18). The latter were unaware, after all, of the existence of bacteria, believing instead that plague was caused by a toxin supposedly created in decomposing food, plants, excrement or corpses. They proposed various measures to prevent the formation of plague toxin, to neutralize it or to prevent contact with it. If contact occurred nevertheless, a variety of means were proposed to raise the patient’s resistance or to remove the toxin by inducing sweating, vomiting and/or diarrhoea. Two Bruges physicians – Jan Pelsers (1569) and Thomas Montanus (1669) – published books describing their experiences during plague outbreaks. At the end of the day, doctors did not play a leading role in this respect: their role was more of an advisory one.

Treating plague victims was entrusted to rode meesters (‘red masters’), so-called because of their red upper garments. These surgeons were well paid and received free accommodation and clothing, a horse plus feed, and a male or female assistant. Their task was to visit the marked houses and to confirm the infection. The rode meesters also had to get plague victims to transfer to the plague houses and, once the outbreak was over, to declare their homes ‘pure’. They treated patients’ buboes and distributed medicines. Buboes were cut or burst with a redhot iron or with hot wax dripped from a candle. According to Montanus, placing the anus of a live chicken on the bubo was an effective treatment. Highly complex mixtures of herbs, minerals and other materials were prescribed, as if in the hope that the myriad of ingredients would include something that might prove beneficial. Plague was seen as a punishment from God: people were exhorted to seek salvation in penance, acts of charity, attending plague masses, penitents’ processions, prayer and veneration of plague saints. Religious counsellors provided spiritual texts. Numerous saints were invoked against the plague: we find images of them in paintings, sculpture and reliquaries in churches, monasteries and in the streetscape. During the epidemic of 1666, the civic authorities recognized St Francis Xavier as Bruges’s special plague saint. The plague was at its most intense in 1631 and 1632. The Discalced or ‘Barefoot’ Carmelites, who had only been present in Bruges for six months, spontaneously offered their assistance to plague victims, costing nine of these mendicants their lives (Fig. 19).

Estimates vary as to the number of deaths during the various plague epidemics in Europe, although we do have reliable figures for the final outbreak in Bruges in 1665–66. Brother Pieter Van den Driessche – the clerk of the Camere van Ghesontheyt – meticulously recorded each death, together with the date and the victim’s address. Dr R. Pannier concluded from a study of this material that 35% of those infected (1,338 out of 3,795) died, and that total mortality amounted to roughly 4% of the population as a whole (1,338 out of approximately 32,300 residents). Two parishes – Sint-Anna and SintGillis – were the worst affected. As usual, the largest number of cases occurred in the poorer districts, especially during the summer. Mortality was greatest among children (51% compared to 27% for woman and 22% for men). Mortality in Bruges was clearly less severe than that in other countries and regions: Europe’s last plague epidemic in Marseille in 1720–21, for instance, is believed to have cost the lives of half the population.