Avignon Papacy

The air choked with the stench of disease. The landscape, shriveled and fallow. A syrupy silence hangs over the land. It is 1348; the Black Death is here. Scampering up a mooring rope and into a trade vessel, a harbor rat carries a deadly passenger, the Yersinia pestis. And in October of 1347, the ship, docked in Messina, carries the Black Death into Europe (“Black Death”). Swollen lymph nodes, mottled black skin, and infection are merciless; victims eat lunch with their friends, and dinner…