“As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live.” —Ezekiel 33:11

Pandemics are certainly nothing new. The World Health Organization has identified two major outbreaks of Bubonic Plague in Europe: the Justinian Plague in 541 BC and the “Black Death” of 1348. (There was also a major Plague outbreak in China in 1894.) The Antonine Plague (AD 165–180), also known as the Plague of Galen (after Galen, a physician who described it), was a pandemic brought to Europe by troops returning home from campaigns in the Near East. While we can’t be sure what caused it, some scholars have suggested it might have been smallpox or measles. Of course, it could have been something else, not to exclude a disease unknown to us today.

The 14th-century Black Death was the most devastating epidemiological disaster ever to strike Europe. Over five years It is thought to have killed almost one-third of the continent’s population. In a thesis on the Plague’s influence on art, historian Jessica Marie Ortega writes:

“The Black Death was not the only plague epidemic that […] swept Europe nor was it the last; waves of plague reoccurred between two to twenty years after the Black Death until the early eighteenth century, often appearing for months at a time. These subsequent outbreaks were not as devastating as the initial wave in 1348, but the fact that this epidemic returned so frequently kept people constantly aware of eminent death and in fear of not dying well [Plague symptoms could be excruciatingly painful]. The Ars Moriendi (The Art of Dying Well) was a Latin text from the fifteenth century that provided directions to the procedure of what was seen as a “good death.”

The prominent theory about the advent of the Black Death is that the bubonic plague arrived in Europe from Asia on boats sailing through the Mediterranean Sea. The plague affected port-cities more heavily than inland cities with little connection to Mediterranean trading; thus the Italian Peninsula, especially Venice, was especially hit. […] After the Council of Trent in the late sixteenth century, many plague-saint images dwindled and the focus eventually centered upon science and medicine. Medical and historic research indicates that three different strains of plague caused the disease that overwhelmed Europe: bubonic, pneumonic, and septicemic. The three types had slightly different symptoms and mortality rates, but they were all caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. Bubonic plague was the most prevalent, and its symptoms were commonly pictured in art. A fleabite caused the bubonic strain; after being bitten, there is an incubation period of about one week and then a black pustule surrounded by a red ring appears at the sight. Yersinia pestis is a bacterium in the intestines of rodents that causes a blockage and is transmitted through a bite by an infected organism. Flu-like symptoms then develop as the lymph node nearest the bite begins to swell. This stage is very painful and many doctors would try to reduce the tenderness by draining the pus from the lymph node; ultimately, the cause of death was cardiac arrest. Pneumonic and septicemic were more rare than the bubonic strain, but they both have mortality rates closer to 100%. Pneumonic plague was transmitted from person to person and the infection is caused when the plague moves into the lungs. The incubation period is half that of bubonic because the body is starved of oxygen. On the other hand, septicemic plague was transmitted through lice fleas, but it has no incubation period and the victim died within a day. The quick incubation period and high mortality rates caused an initial panic in Medieval society. The Sienese chronicler Agnolo di Tura recorded that “so many died that all believed it was the end of the world.”

Because people knew nothing about microscopic pathogens at the time, many believed that the Black Death was some sort of divine punishment for grave sins: greed, blasphemy, heresy, fornication, adultery, and other serious transgressions. Accordingly, the faithful were urged to repent and beg God’s forgiveness.

Christians also sought help from several “Plague saints,” pleading for their intercessions or direct intervention. Since the beginning, “catholic” (with a small /c/; including Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Anglican) Christians have believed in the power of the Church’s saints to work miracles, small and large, and answer prayers. In the Middle Ages, faith and worship were not personal; faith was seen as a common treasure and worship as the daily work of the entire community, living and dead (without denying a personal spiritual dimension). And so different saints were petitioned to assist with various crises, problems, and wishes. In times of Plague, the three saints most often invoked were St. Sebastian, St. Roch, and St. Anastasia of Sirmium [in modern-day Serbia]), who is venerated in the Orthodox church as Pharmakolytria, “she who delivers from potions/poisons.” In fact, many medieval saints, like Christ himself, were healers. And their healing “powers” were believed to be proof of their holiness and were used as evidence in support of their canonizations. Healing—both spiritual and physical— has been an animating theme in Christian belief and literature down through the centuries.

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“Remember, Lord, thy covenant, and tell the striking angel: “Now stop thy hand, and let not the land be desolated, and do not destroy every living soul.”
—From the introit to a Plague mass attributed to Clement VI in the mid 14th century

St. Sebastian

St. Sebastian was a third-century confessor and martyr who drew the ire of the Roman emperor Diocletian by working to convert pagan Romans to Christianity. As retribution, the emperor condemned him to be tied to a stake and executed by archers. Sebastian somehow survived his wounds only to be later clubbed to death and thrown in a sewer. He became the go-to saint in A.D. 680 when a virulent epidemic swept through Rome, perhaps because he had survived being skewered with arrows; in pagan belief, pestilence was delivered by arrows shot from above by the gods. (Digression: the old depiction of little Cupid with his bow and arrows tells you what the ancients thought about romantic crushes—more of a debilitating affliction than a stroke of good fortune.) In any event, Sebastian has been invoked as a protector against plagues since antiquity.

Sebastian to the rescue

In June of 1463, the Plague returned to the small Italian town of San Gimignano. The local government responded with a decree that every church should offer prayers invoking St. Sebastian. In a book about Renaissance artist Benozzo Gozzoli, art historian Diane Ahl describes how he was ordered to suspend work in the local church of Santa Maria Assunta and turn immediately to painting a fresco honoring Sebastian. The inscription at the bottom reads: “SANCTE SEBASTIANAE INTERCEDE PRO DEVOTO POPULO TUO,” (Saint Sebastian intercede for your devoted people.) According to town records, the fresco turned out to be miraculously therapeutic: “on the very day of its dedication in July 1464, pestilence is recorded to have ceased through Sebastian’s intercession, and 38 inhabitants were freed from the plague.”

Here is a 14-century prayer invoking both Sebastian and Anastasia:

“Lord God, Jesus Christ,
mighty redeemer, merciful,
hear us, sinners,
who fear this tribulation.
Lord, you who say, ‘I do not want the death of the sinner
but that he convert and live
and confess all his sins
and make amends,’
I beg you, Lord, that for the love
that you have for the holy Virgin Mary, your mother, and for the merits of the blessed martyr Saint Sebastian and [for those] of my Lord Saint Antoninus, our patron, and for my lady Saint Anastasia,
that from this tempest that is tumors,
ulcers, and corruption of blood, you save us,
so that when we leave this world, you lead us with pleasure
and with joy into your holy company, and that we be worthy to enter your angelic choir before your divine majesty. Amen.”

And another:

“Almighty eternal God, who [commanded] a certain general epidemic of plague [the one in A.D. 680] to be recalled from all men because of the merits of your most glorious blessed martyr Sebastian, grant your suppliants that those who carry this prayer on their persons, or have it written in their homes or houses, or otherwise are mindful of themselves in your name, or read it on a day, by these prayers and merits be set free from this mortal epidemic of plague and from all poisonous nuisances and from all danger to body and soul by sudden death…”
“May the offering of our devotion be accepted in your sight, O Lord, and may its entreaty benefit us, by whose [observance] it is offered. Through our Lord, Jesus Christ. As supplicants nourished by the Holy Service we beg you Lord, that because we celebrate with the office of appropriate service, by the intercession of your blessed martyr Sebastian we may feel sustenance. Through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen”

And two more:

“O St. Sebastian, guard and defend me, morning and evening, every minute of every hour, while I am still of sound mind; and, Martyr, diminish the strength of that vile illness called an epidemic which is threatening me. Protect and keep me and all my friends from this plague […] O martyr Sebastian! Be with us always, and by your merits keep us safe and sound and protect from plague. Commend us to the Trinity and to the Virgin Mary, so that when we die we may have our reward: to behold God in the company of martyrs. Amen”

“Lord God, Jesus Christ, merciful redeemer, have mercy on me, a sinner. Lord, you hold me in this tribulation, but you have said, ‘I do not want the death of the sinner, but that he convert and live and confess and make amends for all his sins.’ I beg you for mercy, Lord; by the love you have for the Virgin Mary, your blessed mother, and by the merits of the blessed martyrs, Saint Sebastian and all the other martyrs and the virgin Saint Anastasia, save me from this epidemic. Amen”

St. Roch

St. Roch was born in the French town of Montpellier to wealthy parents; his father was the local governor. Roch is reported to have had a birthmark in the sign of a cross. After his father died, Roch decided to sell his possessions and set out on a pilgrimage to Rome. On his way, he stopped in several towns and healed people afflicted with the Plague. The Acta Breviora, an anonymous, undated account of the saint’s life, relates the following story:

“After he came to the sick and blessed them all in the name of Jesus Christ, he fearlessly touched each patient that they declared immediately that a saintly man had come among them, because he had already extinguished so much pain of the fever throughout the entire hospital…And he delivered from the most savage plague through the sign of the cross and the memory of the Passion of Jesus Christ whomever he touched.”

Francesco Diedo, the Venetian governor of Brescia, wrote a biography of Roch in 1478 titled Vita Sancti Roch. He recounts that in 1414, when the Church Council of Constance (in Germany) was threatened by the Plague, public processions and prayers for the intercession of Roch were ordered, and the outbreak ended. Roch’s cult gained additional traction when prayers to the saint were reportedly answered during the Plague that broke out in northern Italy between 1477 and 1479.

St. Anastasia

St. Anastasia, like Sebastian, lived during the persecutions of Diocletian, in the third century. There is little reliable historical documentation about her; the details of her life have been passed down as legend. During the Diocletian persecutions, Anastasia is said to have visited prisons and cared for confessors of Christianity. She fed, provided medical care, and sometimes even ransomed suffering captives. She is said to have been staked to the ground and burned alive for refusing to renounce her faith. Anastasia is one of the seven women mentioned by name in the canon of the Roman Catholic mass; her feast day in the Western church is Christmas day.

According to a 14th-century missal [an often elaborately decorated book containing the prayers, important chants, and necessary instructions for the celebration of a mass/eucharist] written in Occitan, the old language of southern France, part of the Anastasia Plague remedy consisted of celebrating the second Christmas Mass three times [at the same time on consecutive days]. The Feast of the Nativity of our Lord was the occasion for three masses, according to ancient sources: at midnight, dawn, and during the day: “The second Mass was celebrated by the pope in the ‘chapel royal’ of the Byzantine Court officials on the Palatine, i.e., St. Anastasia’s church, originally called, like the basilica at Constantinople, Anastasis [‘resurrection’], and like it built at first to reproduce the Jerusalem Anastasis basilica—and like it, finally, in abandoning the name ‘Anastasis’ for that of the martyr St. Anastasia. Thus the association of this Mass with Anastasia, who died around A.D. 304, is based by this account on a pious pun and dates from the eighth century or earlier. The invocation of Anastasia originally was tantamount to a prayer for resurrection. The dawn Mass begins, “Lux fulgebit” (Light will shine [at dawn]), as indicated in the cartulary [medieval transcriptions of original Church documents] from the town of Saint-Antonin. The Missale Romanum provides the text, introduced as “Statio ad Sanctam Anastasiam” (Assembly at [the Church of] Saint Anastasia) in Rome. It includes a prayer for Saint Anastasia and a gospel reading from Luke (2.15–20), telling how the shepherds came to Jerusalem to see the Christ child. The second Christmas mass, with its imagery of innocence (newborn, shepherds, dawn), implies the innocence of the faithful despite the acknowledgment of their sinfulness. It strengthens their claim for mercy from the gentle babe, very different from the avenging God of Plague. —William Paden, An Occitan Prayer against the Plague and Its Tradition in Italy, France, and Catalonia [eastern Spain]

A plague miracle attributed in part to St. Anastasia:

In Italy there was a convent of Saint Elizabeth where there were many nuns. And in a short time they all died except one of holy life. This lady, when she saw the land greatly ravaged by the great plague that was there, made a prayer to the Virgin Mary, that the Virgin reveal to her why our Lord sent this cruel pestilence onto Christians. And at that time, because of the great devotion of the said holy lady, the blessed sacred Virgin, mother of God, appeared to her and said to her, “Know that my son has given this cruel sentence to all people, and so many will die that there will remain only the twelfth part of the race of the people.” And then the lady nun asked the blessed Virgin Mary if there was any way to make the said pestilence cease. And the blessed Virgin Mary answered, “You will tell the Christian people to have sung in three days three masses, beginning ‘Lux fulgebit’ [A light will shine], which is the second mass of Nativity, in commemoration of Saint Sebastian and Saint Anastasia. And all the men and women and children must hold a candle lighted in their hands when the three masses are said; and for those three days, let all those who are of age to confess fast, and let them be in the place where the three masses are said, and the death and pestilence will cease at once. (And if the plague is not there, the cruel sentence and pestilence will not come there at all.” And the nun, having heard the answer of the Virgin Mary, was very glad, and right then what is said above was accomplished throughout that land. And the said nun made it known in various other regions where there was the said pestilence, and at once what is said above was accomplished: the evil ceased. It is a proved thing. (from the Occitan missal)

“Lord God, Jesus Christ, merciful redeemer, have mercy on me, a sinner. Lord, you hold me in this tribulation, but you have said, ‘I do not want the death of the sinner, but that he convert and live and confess and make amends for all his sins.’ I beg you for mercy, Lord; by the love you have for the Virgin Mary, your blessed mother, and by the merits of the blessed martyrs, Saint Sebastian and all the other martyrs and the virgin Saint Anastasia, save me from this epidemic. Amen.”

And finally a 14th-century Plague prayer to Christ himself:

Jesus of Nazareth, look upon the tribulations that have surrounded us on every side, and I beg you with all my heart, contrite and humble and in the spirit of humility, to hear me about this tribulation for which I invoke you and call out to you, Alpha and Omega, Jesus Christ, blessed father of all believers and all creatures, that just as you took on true flesh from blessed Mary, so truly we might receive what we seek from you. Amen.

The last outbreak of the Bubonic Plague to sweep western and central Europe was in 1720.