Flagellant Response To The Black Death

I was most surprised about the flagellant response to the Black Death during this period of history. I understand the strong connection that people of that era had to their faith and religion, but I don’t understand the idea of harming oneself in order to atone for the anger of God. The Black Death was seen by many to be a direct punishment for the evils of man that was ordained by God and the response of the flagellants was to inflict self-harm in order to alleviate the anger that God must have had against humanity for inflicting it with such a disastrous illness. Even more shocking than the behavior of the flagellants towards themselves is the way that the group displaced their pent-up emotion and frustration onto the Jews. The flagellants embraced the theory that fewer Jews died of the plague than Christians because Jews were poisoning wells with a fervor that lead them to attack and kill entire Jewish quarters of towns and villages. The flagellant self-inflicted harming because of God’s anger (the Plague) eventually caused the group to inflict their anger on the Jews, which makes me question their theology. If they saw God as being the cause of so much death what right did the group have to inflict death upon others? Were they taking up the mantle as being a hand of God or acting as self-appointed Gods? …show more content…
It’s hard to ignore the compelling numbers of deaths that were caused by the Plague and how the population was dramatically reduced due to the spread of the Plague. The population decrease had an impact on all factors of life, since the disease did not discriminate between social classes or castes. This had a resounding effect on all factors of daily life of the time