The Black Death had such an impact on the fourteenth century, and therefore upon the Order of St Augustine, that it warrants some attention here.
The Black Death was one of the deadliest natural disasters in all of human history. Historical records attribute the Black Death to an outbreak of Bubonic Plague, an epidemic of the bacterium Yersinia pestis spread by fleas with the help of animals like the black rat (Rattus rattus), although today's experts debate both the microbiological culprit and the mode of transmission. The original 14th-century European event was called the "Great Mortality" by contemporary writers and, with later outbreaks, became known as the "Black Death" because of a striking symptom of the disease, called acral necrosis, in which sufferers' skin would blacken due to subdermal haemorrhages.
The Black Death (more recently known as the Black Plague) was a devastating pandemic that first struck Europe in the mid-14th century (1347–1350). Starting in Asia, the Black Death reached Mediterranean and Western Europe in 1348, probably from Italian merchants fleeing from it in the Crimea. It killed twenty million Europeans in six years, a quarter (or one-third?) of the total population and up to a half of the population in the worst-affected urban areas. A series of plague epidemics also occurred in large portions of Asia and the Middle East during the same period, which indicates this outbreak was actually a worldwide pandemic.
The millions of victims constituted the largest death toll from any known epidemic of any disease in world history. A strong presence of the more contagious pneumonic and septicaemic varieties increased the pace of infection, spreading the disease deep into inland areas of the continents. Plague continued to strike parts of Europe throughout the 1400s, 1500s, and 1600s with varying degrees of intensity and fatality. Researchers still do not agree on why large outbreaks of the infection have never returned to Europe. However, improvements in hygiene habits and strong efforts toward public health and sanitation probably had a positive impact on the decline of the disease.
The result of the Black Death was not just a massive decline in population. It irrevocably changed Europe's social structure, was a disastrous blow to the Catholic Church and to the morale of Christians, caused widespread persecutions of minorities like Jews and lepers, and created a general mood of morbidity that influenced people to live for the moment, unsure of their daily survival. The Augustinian Prior General at the beginning of the Black Death was Thomas of Strasburg O.S.A.. He was elected Prior General at the General Chapter at Paris in 1345. He is listed as the fourteenth Prior General since the Grand Union of the Order in 1256, and the first one who was not Italian.
He must have possessed unusual administrative talents in view of the position that he had held in the Diocese of Strasburg previously, as well as the fact that he was re-elected at three successive general chapters. He was carrying out his third term of office at the time of his death in 1357. The last ten years of his generalate was a calamitous time for the Order of Saint Augustine and for the population of Europe generally because of the Black Death (1347 to 1351). One result of the Black Death was a relaxation of some rules within the Order (and in many other religious orders) which weakened religious observance. For example, the standards for entry to the Augustinian Order were lowered; persons unable to speak Latin could be ordained as priests (although the Mass was celebrated exclusively in Latin), and priests who could not speak Latin could become superiors in small communities.
As well, the minimum age for receiving faculties to hear the Sacrament of Reconciliation ("confession") was lowered to the age of twenty-five years; that the Prior retained his vote in a Provincial Chapter even if the community no longer contained two men in Holy Orders (priests); and sanctions against the omission of chanting the Divine Office were suspended. A scarcity of vocations after the Black Death brought about a considerable lowering of admission standards. The Augustinian General Chapter at Basel in 1351 allowed - contrary to the rules of the Order - to receive into the priesthood even those who knew no Latin but were otherwise well disposed. This dispensation was first intended to be valid for three years only, but was then repeated by chapters until 1362.
After 1388 the Order tried to regain the former standard by binding provincials under pain of deposition from office to restrain from saying Mass those priests who could not read Latin well. As late as 1519 – when the Protestant Reformation erupted - nothing else seems to have been required for ordination but the legal age and the ability to read distinctly and sing correctly. Despite the efforts of Prior General Thomas of Strasburg O.S.A. and his successors, religious observance was weakened and discipline declined. A reform which brought about the modern standard of priestly education came only with the Council of Trent (1545 - 1563).
The Black Death caused a major decline in the number of entrants to religious life, possibly not only because of the reduction in population but also because of the questioning of the value of religion that arose because prayer and the possession of religious faith apparently had offered neither protection from catching the plague nor any healing of those infected. Over a century later, Ambrose Massari da Cori O.S.A., Prior General in 1476 - 1485, wrote in his Chronica that the Black Death had taken 5,084 Augustinian lives, which improbable statistic would have left only about 1,000 surviving Augustinians.
When compared to other statistics, Massari’s proposed Augustinian death toll is literally incredible; in other matters as well, his historical accuracy is likewise appropriately questioned. The number of 5,084 Augustinian deaths is now universally doubted; modern scholars no longer accept it as credible, and are inclined to think the Augustinian deaths during the Black Death were nearer to 1,000. However, Jordan of Saxony O.S.A. (also called Jordan of Quedlinburg), who was Provincial of one of the German Provinces during the Black Death, himself recorded that 144 of his friars died. Could an Order-wide tally of only 1,000 deaths, therefore, possibly be a little low? The above figures would mean that there were fewer members in the Order in 1350 than there had been in 1256. Whatever the number was, the Black Death had an impact on the numbers and the discipline of the Augustinian Order that had not been completely overcome when the next major blow struck it – the Protestant Reformation early in the sixteenth century.
Boccacio describes the Black Death. The onset of the Black Death was described by Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375).Translated into English.http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/boccacio2.html