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100% found this document useful (6 votes)
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Introduction To Cryptography With Coding Theory. 3rd Edition Lawrence C. Washington & Wade Trappe. 2024 Scribd Download

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Introduction to
Cryptography
with Coding Theory

3rd edition

Wade Trappe

Wireless Information Network Laboratory and


the Electrical and Computer Engineering
Department Rutgers University

Lawrence C. Washington

Department of Mathematics University of


Maryland
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Copyright © 2020, 2006, 2002 by Pearson


Education, Inc. 221 River Street, Hoboken,
NJ 07030. All Rights Reserved. Printed in the
United States of America. This publication is
protected by copyright, and permission should be
obtained from the publisher prior to any
prohibited reproduction, storage in a retrieval
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Text Credit: Page 23 Declaration of


Independence: A Transcription, The U.S.
National Archives and Records Administration.

PEARSON, ALWAYS LEARNING, and MYLAB are


exclusive trademarks owned by Pearson
Education, Inc. or its affiliates in the U.S. and/or
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Unless otherwise indicated herein, any third-


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Pearson’s products by the owners of such marks,
or any relationship between the owner and
Pearson Education, Inc. or its affiliates, authors,
licensees or distributors.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-


Publication Data
Names: Trappe, Wade, author. | Washington,
Lawrence C., author.

Title: Introduction to cryptography : with coding


theory / Wade Trappe, Lawrence Washington.

Description: 3rd edition. | [Hoboken, New Jersey]


: [Pearson Education], [2020] | Includes
bibliographical references and index. | Summary:
“This book is based on a course in cryptography
at the upper-level undergraduate and beginning
graduate level that has been given at the
University of Maryland since 1997, and a course
that has been taught at Rutgers University since
2003"— Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019029691 | ISBN


9780134860992 (paperback)

Subjects: LCSH: Coding theory. | Cryptography.

Classification: LCC QA268.T73 2020 | DDC


005.8/24—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/


2019029691

ScoutAutomatedPrintCode

ISBN-13: 978-0-13-485906-4

ISBN-10: 0-13-485906-5
Contents
1. Preface ix

1. 1 Overview of Cryptography and Its Applications 1

1. 1.1 Secure Communications 2

2. 1.2 Cryptographic Applications 8

2. 2 Classical Cryptosystems 10

1. 2.1 Shift Ciphers 11

2. 2.2 Affine Ciphers 12

3. 2.3 The Vigenère Cipher 14

4. 2.4 Substitution Ciphers 20

5. 2.5 Sherlock Holmes 23

6. 2.6 The Playfair and ADFGX Ciphers 26

7. 2.7 Enigma 29

8. 2.8 Exercises 33

9. 2.9 Computer Problems 37

3. 3 Basic Number Theory 40

1. 3.1 Basic Notions 40

2. 3.2 The Extended Euclidean Algorithm 44

3. 3.3 Congruences 47

4. 3.4 The Chinese Remainder Theorem 52

5. 3.5 Modular Exponentiation 54

6. 3.6 Fermat’s Theorem and Euler’s Theorem 55

7. 3.7 Primitive Roots 59

8. 3.8 Inverting Matrices Mod n 61


9. 3.9 Square Roots Mod n 62

10. 3.10 Legendre and Jacobi Symbols 64

11. 3.11 Finite Fields 69

12. 3.12 Continued Fractions 76

13. 3.13 Exercises 78

14. 3.14 Computer Problems 86

4. 4 The One-Time Pad 88

1. 4.1 Binary Numbers and ASCII 88

2. 4.2 One-Time Pads 89

3. 4.3 Multiple Use of a One-Time Pad 91

4. 4.4 Perfect Secrecy of the One-Time Pad 94

5. 4.5 Indistinguishability and Security 97

6. 4.6 Exercises 100

5. 5 Stream Ciphers 104

1. 5.1 Pseudorandom Bit Generation 105

2. 5.2 LFSR Sequences 107

3. 5.3 RC4 113

4. 5.4 Exercises 114

5. 5.5 Computer Problems 117

6. 6 Block Ciphers 118

1. 6.1 Block Ciphers 118

2. 6.2 Hill Ciphers 119

3. 6.3 Modes of Operation 122

4. 6.4 Multiple Encryption 129

5. 6.5 Meet-in-the-Middle Attacks 130

6. 6.6 Exercises 131

7. 6.7 Computer Problems 135


7. 7 The Data Encryption Standard 136

1. 7.1 Introduction 136

2. 7.2 A Simplified DES-Type Algorithm 137

3. 7.3 Differential Cryptanalysis 140

4. 7.4 DES 145

5. 7.5 Breaking DES 152

6. 7.6 Password Security 155

7. 7.7 Exercises 157

8. 7.8 Computer Problems 159

8. 8 The Advanced Encryption Standard: Rijndael 160

1. 8.1 The Basic Algorithm 160

2. 8.2 The Layers 161

3. 8.3 Decryption 166

4. 8.4 Design Considerations 168

5. 8.5 Exercises 169

9. 9 The RSA Algorithm 171

1. 9.1 The RSA Algorithm 171

2. 9.2 Attacks on RSA 177

3. 9.3 Primality Testing 183

4. 9.4 Factoring 188

5. 9.5 The RSA Challenge 192

6. 9.6 An Application to Treaty Verification 194

7. 9.7 The Public Key Concept 195

8. 9.8 Exercises 197

9. 9.9 Computer Problems 207

10. 10 Discrete Logarithms 211

1. 10.1 Discrete Logarithms 211


2. 10.2 Computing Discrete Logs 212

3. 10.3 Bit Commitment 218

4. 10.4 Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange 219

5. 10.5 The ElGamal Public Key Cryptosystem 221

6. 10.6 Exercises 223

7. 10.7 Computer Problems 225

11. 11 Hash Functions 226

1. 11.1 Hash Functions 226

2. 11.2 Simple Hash Examples 230

3. 11.3 The Merkle-Damgård Construction 231

4. 11.4 SHA-2 233

5. 11.5 SHA-3/Keccak 237

6. 11.6 Exercises 242

12. 12 Hash Functions: Attacks and Applications 246

1. 12.1 Birthday Attacks 246

2. 12.2 Multicollisions 249

3. 12.3 The Random Oracle Model 251

4. 12.4 Using Hash Functions to Encrypt 253

5. 12.5 Message Authentication Codes 255

6. 12.6 Password Protocols 256

7. 12.7 Blockchains 262

8. 12.8 Exercises 264

9. 12.9 Computer Problems 268

13. 13 Digital Signatures 269

1. 13.1 RSA Signatures 270

2. 13.2 The ElGamal Signature Scheme 271

3. 13.3 Hashing and Signing 273


4. 13.4 Birthday Attacks on Signatures 274

5. 13.5 The Digital Signature Algorithm 275

6. 13.6 Exercises 276

7. 13.7 Computer Problems 281

14. 14 What Can Go Wrong 282

1. 14.1 An Enigma “Feature” 282

2. 14.2 Choosing Primes for RSA 283

3. 14.3 WEP 284

4. 14.4 Exercises 288

15. 15 Security Protocols 290

1. 15.1 Intruders-in-the-Middle and Impostors 290

2. 15.2 Key Distribution 293

3. 15.3 Kerberos 299

4. 15.4 Public Key Infrastructures (PKI) 303

5. 15.5 X.509 Certificates 304

6. 15.6 Pretty Good Privacy 309

7. 15.7 SSL and TLS 312

8. 15.8 Secure Electronic Transaction 314

9. 15.9 Exercises 316

16. 16 Digital Cash 318

1. 16.1 Setting the Stage for Digital Economies 319

2. 16.2 A Digital Cash System 320

3. 16.3 Bitcoin Overview 326

4. 16.4 Cryptocurrencies 329

5. 16.5 Exercises 338

17. 17 Secret Sharing Schemes 340


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1. 17.1 Secret Splitting 340

2. 17.2 Threshold Schemes 341

3. 17.3 Exercises 346

4. 17.4 Computer Problems 348

18. 18 Games 349

1. 18.1 Flipping Coins over the Telephone 349

2. 18.2 Poker over the Telephone 351

3. 18.3 Exercises 355

19. 19 Zero-Knowledge Techniques 357

1. 19.1 The Basic Setup 357

2. 19.2 The Feige-Fiat-Shamir Identification


Scheme 359

3. 19.3 Exercises 361

20. 20 Information Theory 365

1. 20.1 Probability Review 365

2. 20.2 Entropy 367

3. 20.3 Huffman Codes 371

4. 20.4 Perfect Secrecy 373

5. 20.5 The Entropy of English 376

6. 20.6 Exercises 380

21. 21 Elliptic Curves 384

1. 21.1 The Addition Law 384

2. 21.2 Elliptic Curves Mod p 389

3. 21.3 Factoring with Elliptic Curves 393

4. 21.4 Elliptic Curves in Characteristic 2 396

5. 21.5 Elliptic Curve Cryptosystems 399

6. 21.6 Exercises 402


7. 21.7 Computer Problems 407

22. 22 Pairing-Based Cryptography 409

1. 22.1 Bilinear Pairings 409

2. 22.2 The MOV Attack 410

3. 22.3 Tripartite Diffie-Hellman 411

4. 22.4 Identity-Based Encryption 412

5. 22.5 Signatures 414

6. 22.6 Keyword Search 417

7. 22.7 Exercises 419

23. 23 Lattice Methods 421

1. 23.1 Lattices 421

2. 23.2 Lattice Reduction 422

3. 23.3 An Attack on RSA 426

4. 23.4 NTRU 429

5. 23.5 Another Lattice-Based Cryptosystem 433

6. 23.6 Post-Quantum Cryptography? 435

7. 23.7 Exercises 435

24. 24 Error Correcting Codes 437

1. 24.1 Introduction 437

2. 24.2 Error Correcting Codes 442

3. 24.3 Bounds on General Codes 446

4. 24.4 Linear Codes 451

5. 24.5 Hamming Codes 457

6. 24.6 Golay Codes 459

7. 24.7 Cyclic Codes 466

8. 24.8 BCH Codes 472

9. 24.9 Reed-Solomon Codes 479


10. 24.10 The McEliece Cryptosystem 480

11. 24.11 Other Topics 483

12. 24.12 Exercises 483

13. 24.13 Computer Problems 487

25. 25 Quantum Techniques in Cryptography 488

1. 25.1 A Quantum Experiment 488

2. 25.2 Quantum Key Distribution 491

3. 25.3 Shor’s Algorithm 493

4. 25.4 Exercises 502

®
1. A Mathematica Examples 503

1. A.1 Getting Started with Mathematica 503

2. A.2 Some Commands 504

3. A.3 Examples for Chapter 2 505

4. A.4 Examples for Chapter 3 508

5. A.5 Examples for Chapter 5 511

6. A.6 Examples for Chapter 6 513

7. A.7 Examples for Chapter 9 514

8. A.8 Examples for Chapter 10 520

9. A.9 Examples for Chapter 12 521

10. A.10 Examples for Chapter 17 521

11. A.11 Examples for Chapter 18 522

12. A.12 Examples for Chapter 21 523

®
2. B Maple Examples 527

1. B.1 Getting Started with Maple 527

2. B.2 Some Commands 528

3. B.3 Examples for Chapter 2 529

4. B.4 Examples for Chapter 3 533


5. B.5 Examples for Chapter 5 536

6. B.6 Examples for Chapter 6 538

7. B.7 Examples for Chapter 9 539

8. B.8 Examples for Chapter 10 546

9. B.9 Examples for Chapter 12 547

10. B.10 Examples for Chapter 17 548

11. B.11 Examples for Chapter 18 549

12. B.12 Examples for Chapter 21 551

®
3. C MATLAB Examples 555

1. C.1 Getting Started with MATLAB 556

2. C.2 Examples for Chapter 2 560

3. C.3 Examples for Chapter 3 566

4. C.4 Examples for Chapter 5 569

5. C.5 Examples for Chapter 6 571

6. C.6 Examples for Chapter 9 573

7. C.7 Examples for Chapter 10 581

8. C.8 Examples for Chapter 12 581

9. C.9 Examples for Chapter 17 582

10. C.10 Examples for Chapter 18 582

11. C.11 Examples for Chapter 21 585

4. D Sage Examples 591

1. D.1 Computations for Chapter 2 591

2. D.2 Computations for Chapter 3 594

3. D.3 Computations for Chapter 5 595

4. D.4 Computations for Chapter 6 596

5. D.5 Computations for Chapter 9 596

6. D.6 Computations for Chapter 10 597


7. D.7 Computations for Chapter 12 598

8. D.8 Computations for Chapter 17 598

9. D.9 Computations for Chapter 18 598

10. D.10 Computations for Chapter 21 599

5. E Answers and Hints for Selected Odd-Numbered


Exercises 601

6. F Suggestions for Further Reading 607

7. Bibliography 608

8. Index 615
Preface
This book is based on a course in cryptography at
the upper-level undergraduate and beginning
graduate level that has been given at the
University of Maryland since 1997, and a course
that has been taught at Rutgers University since
2003. When designing the courses, we decided
on the following requirements:

The courses should be up-to-date and cover a broad


selection of topics from a mathematical point of view.

The material should be accessible to mathematically


mature students having little background in number
theory and computer programming.

There should be examples involving numbers large


enough to demonstrate how the algorithms really work.

We wanted to avoid concentrating solely on RSA


and discrete logarithms, which would have made
the courses mostly about number theory. We also
did not want to focus on protocols and how to
hack into friends’ computers. That would have
made the courses less mathematical than
desired.

There are numerous topics in cryptology that can


be discussed in an introductory course. We have
tried to include many of them. The chapters
represent, for the most part, topics that were
covered during the different semesters we taught
the course. There is certainly more material here
than could be treated in most one-semester
courses. The first thirteen chapters represent the
core of the material. The choice of which of the
remaining chapters are used depends on the
level of the students and the objectives of the
lecturer.

The chapters are numbered, thus giving them an


ordering. However, except for Chapter 3 on
number theory, which pervades the subject, the
chapters are fairly independent of each other and
can be covered in almost any reasonable order.
Since students have varied backgrounds in
number theory, we have collected the basic
number theory facts together in Chapter 3 for
ease of reference; however, we recommend
introducing these concepts gradually throughout
the course as they are needed.

The chapters on information theory, elliptic


curves, quantum cryptography, lattice methods,
and error correcting codes are somewhat more
mathematical than the others. The chapter on
error correcting codes was included, at the
suggestion of several reviewers, because courses
that include introductions to both cryptology and
coding theory are fairly common.

Computer Examples
Suppose you want to give an example for RSA.
You could choose two one-digit primes and
pretend to be working with fifty-digit primes, or
you could use your favorite software package to
do an actual example with large primes. Or
perhaps you are working with shift ciphers and
are trying to decrypt a message by trying all 26
shifts of the ciphertext. This should also be done
on a computer.
Additionally, at the end of the book are
appendices containing computer examples
® ®
written in each of Mathematica , Maple ,
®
MATLAB , and Sage that show how to do such
calculations. These languages were chosen
because they are user friendly and do not require
prior programming experience. Although the
course has been taught successfully without
computers, these examples are an integral part
of the book and should be studied, if at all
possible. Not only do they contain numerical
examples of how to do certain computations but
also they demonstrate important ideas and issues
that arise. They were placed at the end of the
book because of the logistic and aesthetic
problems of including extensive computer
examples in these languages at the ends of
chapters.

Additionally, programs available in Mathematica,


Maple, and MATLAB can be downloaded from
the Web site (bit.ly/2JbcS6p). Homework
problems (the computer problems in various
chapters) based on the software allow students
to play with examples individually. Of course,
students having more programming background
could write their own programs instead. In a
classroom, all that is needed is a computer (with
one of the languages installed) and a projector in
order to produce meaningful examples as the
lecture is being given.

New to the Third Edition


Two major changes have informed this edition:
Changes to the field of cryptography and a
change in the format of the text. We address
these issues separately, although there is an
interplay between the two:

Content Changes
Cryptography is a quickly changing field. We
have made many changes to the text since the
last edition:

Reorganized content previously in two chapters to four


separate chapters on Stream Ciphers (including RC4),
Block Ciphers, DES and AES (Chapters 5–8,
respectively). The RC4 material, in particular, is new.

Heavily revised the chapters on hash functions. Chapter


11 (Hash functions) now includes sections on SHA-2 and
SHA-3. Chapter 12 (Hash functions: Attacks and
Applications) now includes material on message
authentication codes, password protocols, and
blockchains.

The short section on the one-time pad has been expanded


to become Chapter 4, which includes sections on multiple
use of the one-time pad, perfect secrecy, and ciphertext
indistinguishability.

Added Chapter 14, “What Can Go Wrong,” which shows


what can happen when cryptographic algorithms are
used or designed incorrectly.

Expanded Chapter 16 on digital cash to include Bitcoin


and cryptocurrencies.

Added Chapter 22, which gives an introduction to


Pairing-Based Cryptography.

Updated the exposition throughout the book to reflect


recent developments.

Added references to the Maple, Mathematica, MATLAB,


and Sage appendices in relevant locations in the text.

Added many new exercises.

Added a section at the back of the book that contains


answers or hints to a majority of the odd-numbered
problems.
Format Changes
A focus of this revision was transforming the text
from a print-based learning tool to a digital
learning tool. The eText is therefore filled with
content and tools that will help bring the content
of the course to life for students in new ways and
help improve instruction. Specifically, the
following are features that are available only in
the eText:

Interactive Examples. We have added a number of


opportunities for students to interact with content in a
dynamic manner in order to build or enhance
understanding. Interactive examples allow students to
explore concepts in ways that are not possible without
technology.

Quick Questions. These questions, built into the


narrative, provide opportunities for students to check
and clarify understanding. Some help address potential
misconceptions.

Notes, Labels, and Highlights. Notes can be added to the


eText by instructors. These notes are visible to all
students in the course, allowing instructors to add their
personal observations or directions to important topics,
call out need-to-know information, or clarify difficult
concepts. Students can add their own notes, labels, and
highlights to the eText, helping them focus on what they
need to study. The customizable Notebook allows
students to filter, arrange, and group their notes in a way
that makes sense to them.

Dashboard. Instructors can create reading assignments


and see the time spent in the eText so that they can plan
more effective instruction.

Portability. Portable access lets students read their eText


whenever they have a moment in their day, on Android
and iOS mobile phones and tablets. Even without an
Internet connection, offline reading ensures students
never miss a chance to learn.

Ease-of-Use. Straightforward setup makes it easy for


instructors to get their class up and reading quickly on
the first day of class. In addition, Learning Management
System (LMS) integration provides institutions,
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instructors, and students with single sign-on access to
the eText via many popular LMSs.

Supplements. An Instructors’ Solutions Manual can be


downloaded by qualified instructors from the textbook’s
webpage at www.pearson.com.

Acknowledgments
Many people helped and provided
encouragement during the preparation of this
book. First, we would like to thank our students,
whose enthusiasm, insights, and suggestions
contributed greatly. We are especially grateful to
many people who have provided corrections and
other input, especially Bill Gasarch, Jeff Adams,
Jonathan Rosenberg, and Tim Strobell. We would
like to thank Wenyuan Xu, Qing Li, and
Pandurang Kamat, who drew several of the
diagrams and provided feedback on the new
material for the second edition. We have enjoyed
working with the staff at Pearson, especially Jeff
Weidenaar and Tara Corpuz.

The reviewers deserve special thanks: their


suggestions on the exposition and the
organization of the topics greatly enhanced the
final result. The reviewers marked with an
asterisk (*) provided input for this edition.

* Anurag Agarwal, Rochester Institute of Technology

* Pradeep Atrey, University at Albany

Eric Bach, University of Wisconsin

James W. Brewer, Florida Atlantic University

Thomas P. Cahill, NYU

Agnes Chan, Northeastern University

* Nathan Chenette, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology


* Claude Crépeau, McGill University

* Reza Curtmola, New Jersey Institute of Technology

* Ahmed Desoky, University of Louisville

Anthony Ephremides, University of Maryland, College


Park

* David J. Fawcett, Lawrence Tech University

* Jason Gibson, Eastern Kentucky University

* K. Gopalakrishnan, East Carolina University

David Grant, University of Colorado, Boulder

Jugal K. Kalita, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs

* Saroja Kanchi, Kettering University

* Andrew Klapper, University of Kentucky

* Amanda Knecht, Villanova University

Edmund Lamagna, University of Rhode Island

* Aihua Li, Montclair State University

* Spyros S. Magliveras, Florida Atlantic University

* Nathan McNew, Towson University

* Nick Novotny, IUPUI

David M. Pozar, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

* Emma Previato, Boston University

* Hamzeh Roumani, York University

* Bonnie Saunders, University of Illinois, Chicago

* Ravi Shankar, University of Oklahoma

* Ernie Stitzinger, North Carolina State

* Armin Straub, University of South Alabama

J. Felipe Voloch, University of Texas, Austin

Daniel F. Warren, Naval Postgraduate School

* Simon Whitehouse, Alfred State College


Siman Wong, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

* Huapeng Wu, University of Windsor

Wade thanks Nisha Gilra, who provided


encouragement and advice; Sheilagh O’Hare for
introducing him to the field of cryptography; and
K. J. Ray Liu for his support. Larry thanks Susan
Zengerle and Patrick Washington for their
patience, help, and encouragement during the
writing of this book.

Of course, we welcome suggestions and


corrections. An errata page can be found at
(bit.ly/2J8nN0w) or at the link on the book’s
general Web site (bit.ly/2T544yu).

Wade Trappe

trappe@winlab.rutgers.edu

Lawrence C. Washington

lcw@math.umd.edu
Chapter 1 Overview of
Cryptography and Its
Applications
People have always had a fascination with
keeping information away from others. As
children, many of us had magic decoder rings for
exchanging coded messages with our friends and
possibly keeping secrets from parents, siblings,
or teachers. History is filled with examples where
people tried to keep information secret from
adversaries. Kings and generals communicated
with their troops using basic cryptographic
methods to prevent the enemy from learning
sensitive military information. In fact, Julius
Caesar reportedly used a simple cipher, which
has been named after him.

As society has evolved, the need for more


sophisticated methods of protecting data has
increased. Now, with the information era at
hand, the need is more pronounced than ever. As
the world becomes more connected, the demand
for information and electronic services is
growing, and with the increased demand comes
increased dependency on electronic systems.
Already the exchange of sensitive information,
such as credit card numbers, over the Internet is
common practice. Protecting data and electronic
systems is crucial to our way of living.

The techniques needed to protect data belong to


the field of cryptography. Actually, the subject
has three names, cryptography, cryptology,
and cryptanalysis, which are often used
interchangeably. Technically, however,
cryptology is the all-inclusive term for the study
of communication over nonsecure channels, and
related problems. The process of designing
systems to do this is called cryptography.
Cryptanalysis deals with breaking such systems.
Of course, it is essentially impossible to do either
cryptography or cryptanalysis without having a
good understanding of the methods of both
areas.

Often the term coding theory is used to


describe cryptography; however, this can lead to
confusion. Coding theory deals with representing
input information symbols by output symbols
called code symbols. There are three basic
applications that coding theory covers:
compression, secrecy, and error correction. Over
the past few decades, the term coding theory has
become associated predominantly with error
correcting codes. Coding theory thus studies
communication over noisy channels and how to
ensure that the message received is the correct
message, as opposed to cryptography, which
protects communication over nonsecure
channels.

Although error correcting codes are only a


secondary focus of this book, we should
emphasize that, in any real-world system, error
correcting codes are used in conjunction with
encryption, since the change of a single bit is
enough to destroy the message completely in a
well-designed cryptosystem.

Modern cryptography is a field that draws


heavily upon mathematics, computer science,
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persons in Milan in the year 1630.’ Fletcher appends this further
description: ‘This is followed by the names of the Magnificos, who
sat in judgement, and the particulars of the punishment decreed.
Each scene in the picture has its letter, which is referred to in an
explanatory legend below. The entire disregard of the unities of time
and place, which characterized such productions, is well displayed in
this curious engraving. On the right is the shop of the barber Mora,
and in front of it the “Column of Infamy” is already erected. A large
platform car, drawn by two oxen, exhibits the victims, executioners,
and priests. A brazier of live charcoal contains the pincers with which
the flesh was to be torn. The barber’s right hand is on the block, and
a chopper held over the wrist is about to be struck down by a mallet
held aloft by the executioner. Further on is seen a large platform, on
which the two victims are having their limbs broken by an iron bar,
preparatory to their exposure on the wheel for six hours. The wheels
are also displayed, one of them already on a pole, with the men
bound upon them. Still further on are the fires consuming the
bodies, and, last scene of all, on the extreme left is a fussy little
stream, foaming under bridges, which is supposed to be a river, and
into it a man is throwing the ashes of the two malefactors.’
One dark night in 1788 Nature for very shame let loose a storm
that wrecked the Column: her minion Man then tardily demolished
the monument of his own infamy. The balcony of Catarina Rosa’s
house was also taken down, so that no structure stands to call to
mind the hideous tragedy. The corner-house of the Vedra de’
Cittadini, on the left hand as one comes from the Corso di Porta
Ticinese, occupies the site of poor Mora’s house. A dwelling has
rested on the accursed site since 1803.
It is surprising to find that not only does not Ripamonti deny the
guilt of the victims, but now and again he seems to hint at its reality.
It has to be borne in mind that in his position as official
historiographer of Milan it was hardly permissible for him to express
sentiments opposed to popular conviction and the decisions of the
courts of justice. As late as 1832, during an epidemic of cholera in
St. Petersburg, the most circumstantial statements of miscreants
putting poison in the food and drink of the people were in every
mouth.
Manzoni’s Colonna Infame is a simple unadorned narrative of the
trial and execution of the two Anointers, quite different in literary
form from his Promessi Sposi. It is written with a definite purpose in
view. Verri had introduced the story into his Observations on Torture,
merely as an illustration of the way in which the confession of a
crime, both physically and morally impossible, may be extracted by
torture. Manzoni retells the tale, in the interest of humanity at large,
to show that no matter how deep may have been the belief in the
efficacy of ointments, and despite the existence of a legislature that
countenanced and approved torture, it was competent to the judges
to convict them, only by recourse to artifices and expedients, of the
injustice of which they were perfectly well aware.
Manzoni’s Promessi Sposi is a happy blend of antiquarian
research and imaginative description, and the incidents of the plague
are dexterously woven into the fabric of his story. Manzoni wrote at
a time when literature, freed from the trammels of convention, was
being slowly brought into harmony with the outlook of modern
thought. Though an aristocrat by birth, his upbringing had taught
him to regard life with the eyes of the peasant, and not with those
of his overlord. In his genius for romance and in his reverence for
the past Manzoni has much in common with Scott, but with this
difference, that Scott sees the social fabric from above, Manzoni
from below. To Scott life was a pageant in which knights of chivalry
and courtly dames shared all the leading parts: Manzoni’s stage is
filled with men struggling to be rid of the yoke of feudal oppression.
The plague of Milan, falling alike on rich and poor, afforded him the
text from which to preach the essential equality of all men. His
whole narrative is so moulded as to throw into striking contrast the
vices of the rich with the virtues of the poor. The plague scenes, too,
give him scope for his remarkable insight into the psychology of
crowds, and for his skill in marshalling men in masses, a gift in
which he rivals Tintoretto. It is the genius of Manzoni that he
persuades without preaching.
The total mortality of this pestilence in Milan has been estimated
roughly at 150,000 persons. The Sanità, or Board of Health, profiting
by the lessons of the previous plague, seem to have acted with
sense and energy, though hampered by the ignorant obstinacy of
the Senate, the Council of Decurions, and the Magistrates, who were
afraid of driving away trade, if the presence of plague were
admitted. One strange remedial measure was the organization of an
immense procession through the streets in honour of San Carlo.
During the procession all the sequestered houses were fastened up
with nails to prevent the infected inmates from joining in it. Deaths
were so numerous at the height of the plague that the burial-pits
were filled, and bodies lay putrefying in the houses and streets. The
Sanità sought the help of two priests, who undertook to dispose of
all the corpses in four days. With the assistance of peasants, whom
they summoned from the country in the name of religion, three
immense pits were dug. The Sanità employed monatti to bring out
the dead and cart them to the pits, and the priests accomplished
their task within the appointed time. Besides the monatti they
appointed apparitores, or summoners, who went in advance of the
monatti ringing a bell to warn the people to bring out their dead.
Commissari supervised both apparitores and monatti. Piazza was
one of these overseers.

The plagues of the seventeenth century have left behind them


very many memorials both in literature and in art: among them the
great plague of Milan is only one of many.
Southern France was attacked again and again, and in 1643
plague raged fiercely at Lyons. Over the portico of the church of
Notre-Dame de Fourvière, which stands high up on the precipitous
hill that overhangs the town, is a frieze commemorating this plague.
In Italy, city after city succumbed. Guido’s picture, ‘Il Pallione del
Voto,’ reminds us that Bologna suffered along with Milan. Venice
suffered too, and out of her ruin rose the church of S. Maria della
Salute.
Florence retains in the Bargello a hideous reminiscence of her
visitation in a wax representation of ‘Pestilenza’ by Zumbo Gaetano
Giulio (1656-1701). Corpses are lying about in various stages of
decomposition: among them lies a dead mother beside her infant
child. A man, whose nostrils are covered with a bandage, attempts
to carry away a corpse. In the background great bonfires are
burning. The modelling of the carcases is anatomically exact, but the
production as a whole is utterly repulsive.
In 1656 Naples assumes the leading rôle in this hideous Dance of
Death. Soldiers brought the plague on a transport from Sardinia. At
first the viceroy attempted to disguise the true character of the
disease. The first doctor who dared to pronounce the sickness
plague was promptly put in prison. Malcontents spread the report
that the Spaniards had designedly introduced the plague, and were
employing people to go through the city in disguise, sowing
broadcast poisoned dust. The infuriated populace turned on the
Spanish soldiery, who sought safety by transferring the accusation to
the French. Nothing but blood would satisfy the mob, and Angelucci
di Tivoli, reputed author of the plague powder, was broken on the
wheel as a peace-offering to their bloodt-hirsty fury. The Spaniards
were accused also of poisoning the holy water in the churches by
means of the deadly powder. Superstition was rampant in every
form. One said that he had been miraculously cured by drinking holy
water before an image of the Virgin. Another saw a marble statue of
the Madonna and Child in the church of S. Severo covered with
sweat, and the faces of both livid and marked by the plague. A
doctor, Francesco Mosca, who printed a formula for curing the
plague, was honourably entitled Protomedico. A nun prophesied that
the building of a convent on the hill of St. Martin for her sisterhood
would bring to an end the pestilence. The building was taken in
hand in eager haste, rich and poor vying in bodily labour, but in spite
of all their efforts the mortality grew apace. By a strange perversity
of reasoning penitential processions paraded both day and night the
very streets in which priests, in terror of the contagion, were
administering the Sacrament on the end of a stick. The death-roll of
six months was 400,000 lives. Various writers have described this
plague, among them Muratori, Giannone, and de Renzi in his Naples
in the year 1656, published in 1667. The Papal Nuncio in Naples at
the time thought fit to write a pamphlet on it, and of modern writers
Shorthouse has made poor use of it in his John Inglesant.
Micco Spadara (1612-79), who actually witnessed this plague,
has left a picture of it, which is now in the National Museum at
Naples. It represents the Piazza Mercatello, a veritable
pandemonium of dead and dying. Monatti, drawn from the galley-
slaves, are dragging the corpses with hooks to carts in which to
carry them to the burial-pits. Here and there sedan chairs are seen.
These were used to carry the sick to the lazarettos. At first chair-
bearers were selected from the citizens who volunteered for the
task, but when all these were dead, galley-slaves and convicts took
their place. In the plague of Marseilles in 1720 sedans were put at
the disposal of the doctors, ‘for their more easy conveyance
everywhere’, by order of the Town Council.
There was plague in Rome as well as Naples in 1656. Nicolas
Poussin (1594-1665) was resident in Rome, and has left the
testimony of an eye-witness in his picture, ‘The Plague of Rome,’
now in the Czernin Collection at Vienna. It is a landscape with
architectural features, of which Denio[179] gives this brief notice:
‘Two men are seen dragging a corpse to the mouth of a vault, whose
opening is already barred by dead bodies. A man, enveloped in a
white mantle, directs the bearers where to go: by his side is a
jackal-like dog. On the high platform of the receptacle we notice a
group of six men. Broken columns take the place of the half-seen
trees in other works, while sarcophagi and tombs indicate a
cemetery. Beyond the arch stretches the Campagna.’ Poussin has
introduced into the picture the Castle of S. Angelo, mindful, no
doubt, of the legend of Gregory’s vision.
PLATE XXVI PLAGUE OF NAPLES, 1656.
BY MICCO SPADARA
Photograph by Brogi, Florence (Face Page 184)

The church of Santa Maria in Campitelli at Rome was rebuilt, in


its present form, in 1659, by Carlo Rainaldi, to accommodate a
miraculous image of the Virgin, to which the cessation of the plague
of 1656 was ascribed. The church is sometimes called S. Maria in
Portico, because of the neighbouring Portico of Octavia. The
miraculous Madonna is placed now beneath the canopy over the
high altar. It is still believed to protect Rome from the contagion of
pestilence. Here, too, came constantly the Elder Pretender and his
son Henry, who took his Cardinal’s title from this church, to offer
prayers to this self-same image of the Madonna, for the liberation of
England from the plague of Protestant apostasy. To this end James
instituted in perpetuity an office of prayer, and ordained that every
Saturday Mass should be said at 11 of the morning before the
picture, with the Sacrament exposed, and that after recital of the
prayers a blessing should be given along with the Sacrament. This
ceremony has ever since been regularly performed.
In the sacristy is a framed engraving of the miraculous Madonna,
dated 1747. It is surrounded by a series of small pictures, one of
which shows the appearance of the image to S. Galla in the
pontificate of John I (523-6), as she ministered to the wants of
twelve poor men in her house. Another shows Pope John dedicating
the miraculous picture in the oratory of S. Galla, which was
transformed later into the church of S. Maria in Campitelli. The
remaining pictures represent scenes in successive pontificates, in
which this miraculous Madonna brought about a cessation of plague.
A brief explanation in Latin is attached to each.
The plague of 1656 occurred in the pontificate of Alexander VII.
This Pope did much to atone for the craven spirit of his papal
predecessors by his courage and devotion to his people throughout
the epidemic. It is surprising that no memorial has been erected to
commemorate his services.
Two rare contemporary prints represent scenes in the course of
this visitation. One is figured by Lanciani in his Golden Days of the
Renaissance:[180] the other is reproduced here.[181] Both were to be
seen in the Medical Exhibition in the Castel S. Angelo in the spring of
1912. Lanciani’s print shows the following scenes:
1. Inspection of the city gates by Prince Chigi.
2. Barge-loads of corpses from the lazaretto on the
island of S. Bartolommeo.
3-5. Various methods of fighting the plague in
infected districts.
6. The ‘Field of Death’ near St. Paul-outside-the-
Walls.
The second print is of even greater interest than this: the first
two rows of plates give some idea of the character of the lazarettos,
and show how they were guarded by palisades and sentries: they
also show the carts for transport of the sick attended by armed
soldiers. The disinfection of the books and personal ornaments of
the sick, a dead dog being dragged away to be thrown into the river,
and a sick-cart marked with a cross, are other details of interest. The
third row indicates the removal of infected goods to places outside
the city, where they were either washed or cleansed; places where
other things were deposited; a country residence of the Popes
converted into a convalescent home; and the ruined palace of the
Antonines, where woollen goods were taken for disinfection. The
fourth row represents chiefly wash-houses and washing-places, to
which clothes and bedding were removed for cleansing. The fifth
row, the execution of those who transgressed the sanitary
regulations, the shooting of sick criminals, and the various measures
taken to restrict the river traffic. A cable is thrown across the river,
and palisades are erected on the shores, so as to break all contact
between the city and boats bringing in provisions. The huts are
shown, in which soldiers and officials were lodged, whose duty it
was to compel obedience to the prescribed regulations.
PLATE XXVII PLAGUE SCENES IN ROME, 1656
From an old engraving (Face Page 186)
CHAPTER XII
The Great Plague of London, which reached its height in 1665,
has left an abundant aftermath both in literature and art. The main
story of its ravages is too well known to call for repetition.
There were still some ready to see in the plague, as they were in
the case of the fire, evidence of the handiwork of malevolent Jews.
Since their expulsion from England by Edward I, the Jews had never
yet obtained the legal right of re-entry, their open petition to
Cromwell having failed. With the restoration of Charles II to the
throne, they seem to have taken the matter into their own hands
and found their way quietly back, so that at the time of the plague
there were many resident in London, to the great advantage of trade
and to the relief of an ever-needy Government. But three centuries
of plague, punctuated by fierce outbreaks at regularly recurring
intervals, had served to unravel much of the mystery of pestilence,
and the people had learnt that it was not to be exorcised by a
holocaust of Jews, or by the brutal murder of imaginary poisoners.
Celestial portents were not lacking to presage the plague. A
blazing comet appeared for several months before the plague. Men
affected to see, in its dull colour and slow solemn movement, a
prediction of the heavy punishment of pestilence; whereas that
which preceded the fire was swift and flaming and foretold a rapid
retribution.
Superstition raked up images afresh from the scrap-heap of
discarded fancies. Women saw flaming swords in the heavens, some
even saw angels brandishing them over their heads. Astrologers had
strange tales of malignant conjunctions of the planets. Medical
opinion was still divided along the same lines of cleavage, as it had
been for 2,000 years before. There were those who referred the
disease to some occult poison, and those who referred it to an
excess of some manifest quality, such as heat, or cold, or moisture,
in each case corrupting the body humours. Speculation was rife as
to the nature of the causal poison. Some, as Lucretius had done,
conceived it to be pestiferous corpuscles of atomic character, outside
the range of human vision, generated either in the heavens by a
malignant conjunction of planets, or in the soil, and so often
liberated by the agency of earthquakes. These poisons, however
generated, found their way into the human body through the
medium of the distempered atmosphere.
Some had noticed an unusual absence of birds before the
epidemic, as Thucydides and Livy had done in their times. Boyle
observed a great diminution of flies in 1665, Boghurst a
superabundance of flies and ants in 1664. Sir George Ent and others
attributed the disease to minute invisible insects, but Blackmore
conceived these to be rather a consequence than a cause.
Insects, so-called, had been vaguely associated with pestilence
from remote antiquity, more especially flies, lice, and locusts; but in
the medical literature of the sixteenth century and after they are
assigned a much more definite role. Mercurialis[182] states that huge
numbers of caterpillars paraded the streets of Venice during the
plague of 1576. Goclenus[183] mentions swarms of spiders during
the plague of Hesse in 1612, and Hildanus swarms of flies and
caterpillars this same year in plague-stricken Lausanne. Bacon
speaks of flies and locusts, as characteristic of pestilential years, and
Diemerbroeck[184] of flies, gnats, butterflies, beetles, grasshoppers,
and hornets in the same connexion. Gottwald[185] reported the
presence of multitudes of spiders during the plague of Dantzig in
1709. Arabian physicians considered the putrefaction of swarms of
dead locusts an important cause of pestilence. Hancock,[186] as late
as 1821, argued that locusts caused famine by destroying the crops,
and so prepared the way for human pestilence.
Talismans, amulets, reliquaries, and all the stock-in-trade of
magic were in brisk demand among the populace. Quack vendors of
antipestilential remedies innumerable effectively replaced physicians,
most of whom took refuge in flight. All honour to those who stood
fast at their posts and reclaimed for medicine what Galen had
renounced, the captaincy of its own soul. These are the men who
had no fear for ‘the pestilence that walketh in darkness or the arrow
that flieth by day’:
1. Dr. Francis Glisson Presidents of the Royal College
2. Sir Thomas Witherley of Physicians.
3. Dr. Nicholas Davys
4. Dr. Edward Deantry
5. Dr. Thomas Allen
6. Sir John Baber
7. Dr. Peter Barwick
8. Dr. Humphrey Brooks Fellows of the Royal College
9. Dr. Alexander Burnett of Physicians.
10. Dr. Elisha Coysh
11. Dr. John Glover
12. Dr. Nathaniel Hodges
13. Dr. Nathan Paget
14. Dr. Thomas Wharton
15. Dr. William Conyers Member of the Royal College
of Physicians.
16. Dr. O’Dowd
17. Dr. Samuel Peck
18. John Fife
19. Thomas Gray Members of Barber-Surgeons’
20. Edward Hannan Company.
21. Edward Higgs
And yet a few beside these, whose names are inscribed on no
human document, but whose deeds are imprinted in imperishable
type on the deathless record of righteous human endeavour.
Nathaniel Hodges[187] shows us something of the daily life of a
physician in the course of this plague. He himself rose early, took his
antipestilential dose, attended to the affairs of his household, and
then repaired to his consulting room, where crowds awaited him.
Some, who were sick, he treated, others he reassured and sent
away. Breakfast followed, then visits to patients at their homes. On
entering a house he would vaporize some aromatic disinfectant on a
charcoal brazier: if he arrived out of breath, he would rest a while,
and then place a lozenge in his mouth, before proceeding to the
examination of his patients. After a round of several hours’ duration,
he would return home, drink a glass of sack, and then dine on roast
meat and pickles or some similar condiments, all of which were
reputed antidotal. More wine followed the preliminary curtain-raiser.
Afternoon and evening, till eight or nine o’clock, were devoted to a
second round of visits. His late hours he spent at home, a stranger
to noxious fumes of tobacco, quaffing sack, to ensure cheerfulness
and certainty of sleep. Twice the fatal infection seemed to have
slipped past his outposts, but Hodges had still his remedy: he merely
doubled the dose.
Of all the literature of pestilence none has been more widely read
than Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year: all later records take their
colour from Defoe. Nevertheless, a careful study and comparison of
other contemporary accounts leaves little room for doubt that
Defoe’s picture does not accurately represent the general state of
London during the plague. His picture is far more true of Marseilles
in 1720 than of London in 1665, and in this connexion one should
remember that he had sedulously collected materials for a diary of
the plague of Marseilles, which have been printed in some editions
of his works. These can hardly have failed to colour his Journal,
which was not submitted to the public till 1722, two years after the
plague of Marseilles.
Defoe himself was but six years old at the time of the plague, so
that his own childish memories can have aided him but little in his
task. He will have had, at most, a dim recollection of some hideous
catastrophe, round which ranged tales of parents and friends in his
boyhood. To these he will have added facts and incidents borrowed
from the chief records available in print. Intrinsic evidence goes to
show that these were three: London’s Dreadful Visitation, Hodges’s
Loimologia, and Vincent’s God’s Terrible Voice in the City. The first of
these will have given him the Bills of Mortality and other general
information: the second, the aspect of the plague from a physician’s
point of view: the third, a vision of the plague as it appealed to
popular imagination.
That Defoe intended to write history and not fiction, there is no
reason to doubt. Judged only by the accuracy of his facts it is
history, but it is in the facts that he omits, just because he had never
heard of them, that he unconsciously lapses into fiction. Comparison
of details and incidents with the unimpeachable record of Pepys
confirms his accuracy, but it shows also that, by separating incidents
from their surroundings and by compressing his description to the
exclusion of all but selected incidents, the picture, as a whole, does
not accurately represent the aspect of the city, as it was. Pepys, who
was an actual eye-witness, has noted not only the most striking
events but those of everyday commonplace interest, so that his
narrative is far more true to life. Defoe, on the other hand, has
removed his picture from its setting. Pepys shows us that, though
the spectre of plague was everywhere, everyday life went on,
though in subdued fashion. Defoe would have us believe that all
activity was paralysed.
For all this, however, as one reads the Journal the narrative has
such an air of verisimilitude, that one instinctively pictures the writer
as describing what he has seen with his own eyes, so perfect is the
illusion. Mead, indeed, himself an authority on the plague and so
soon after the event, believed that the Journal was the authentic
record of an eye-witness. Defoe’s faculty of visualizing what he has
not seen is inferior only to the vividness with which he describes
what he has visualized.
What is the secret of this vividness? More than all else, extreme
simplicity of language. The simple style was Defoe’s natural style,
and for that reason his use of it is fluent and easy, and knowing this
he fitly puts his story into the mouth of a simple saddler. Defoe
wrote for a growing class of readers of a lowly social order. He is the
apostle of the common people: that is why he imitates their way of
speaking. Not only is his narrative colloquial, but it deliberately
affects the language a saddler would use in reciting to his intimates
the memories of what he had lived through. There is no striving for
dramatic effect, no drawing of lurid pictures, no literary artifice, but
always the same sustained simplicity of diction, even in describing
the most appalling occurrences. There must be no chance of missing
the smallest point, so he even does such thinking as is necessary by
running comments on his own story.
The educated reader, particularly in these days, when even
literature is administered in tabloid form, must needs be wearied by
the prolixity, and irritated by the redundancy of the narrative. But
again it must be pleaded in extenuation that these very defects are
deliberate. Constant repetition, as every teacher knows, sooner or
later penetrates the densest brain.
But the Journal is something more than a mere chronicle, vivid
enough at that, of what happened, and how men behaved, during
the plague. Defoe regards the plague as the judgement of God, and
this attitude imparts a strong moral purpose to the work. This is why
he dwells so much on the mental and moral effects of the
catastrophe, inculcating his lesson without the appearance of undue
insistence. Pepys, as we know, could find heart to make merry
during the plague, just as Boccaccio depicted his company of
Florentines: to Defoe the mere idea of merriment is revolting. Pepys,
on New Year’s Eve, as he looked back over the abomination of
desolation, could make this entry in his Diary:
‘December 31, 1665. I have never lived so merrily
(besides that I never got so much) as I have done this
plague time ... and great store of dancings we have
had at my cost (which I am willing to indulge myself
and wife) at my lodgings. The great evil of this year,
and the only one indeed, is the fall of my Lord of
Sandwich, whose mistake about the prizes hath
undone him.’
Pepys was a stranger to imagination: his pleasures and his griefs
were things of the surface and matters of the moment. His creed is
egoistic hedonism in all its naked brutishness. He is far more
concerned over the fire, where there is a chance of losing his
property, than over the plague where the chance is of losing his life.
His New Year’s Eve retrospect is not the only glimpse he gives us of
callous indifference to the horrors of the plague. Look at September
30, 1665, when the fiercest spell was only just past:
‘So to sleep with a good deal of content, and saving
only this night and a day or two about the same
business a month or six weeks ago, I do end this
month with the greatest content, and may say that
these three months, for joy, health, and profit, have
been much the greatest that ever I received in all my
life, having nothing upon me but the consideration of
the sicklinesse of the season during this great plague
to mortify mee. For all which the Lord God be praised!’
It was not that Pepys was unconscious of the terrible scenes of
suffering around him, only that he was unmoved by them. Into one
short letter to Lady Cartaret, at the height of the plague, he
compresses all the grim details that fill a volume for Defoe.
Historians frequently lay it down that the fire of London swept
away the plague. As a fact it probably had little to do with its
departure. Several English towns were as hard hit as London, and
yet in the absence of any conflagration subsidence and
disappearance of plague followed the same course as in London. At
Salonica,[188] about a.d. 1500, a fire which destroyed 8,000 houses
was actually followed by an outbreak of plague. It was a common
contemporary belief that the departure of plague from London was
hastened by the coming of pit-coal into general use, so that the
atmosphere was constantly permeated by sulphurous fumes.
Records in art of the Great Plague of London, though numerous,
are mostly unimportant. Generally artists have been content to
illustrate its copious literature. In 1863 Frederic Shields commenced
an intended series of illustrations of the Journal of Defoe. Ruskin
lavished great praise on the woodcuts, for their imaginative power
and for the superlative excellence of the design. Proofs of six of
these woodcuts were to be seen at the Memorial Exhibition of the
works of Shields (Alpine Club, September-October 1911). The set of
six comprised the following scenes:
1. The Decision of Faith
A man is seated at a table, on which lies a Bill of
Mortality, with his Bible open before him. He says to
himself, ‘Well I know not what to do, Lord direct me.’
His finger points to the answer in the open Bible:
‘Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge,
even the most High, thy habitation: there shall no evil
befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy
dwelling.’
2. The Death of the First-born
A youth lies in convulsions on a bed, while a
woman kneels beside it. In the background are bearers
carrying away a corpse: both are smoking pipes. On
the ground lies an hour-glass.
3. Solomon Eagle warning the Impenitent
Solomon Eagle stands with a brazier of live coals on
his head in a fierce preaching attitude before a group
of lewd young women at an open window.
4. The End of a Refugee
A man with a long hooked pole is dragging a
corpse along. Beside him stands a grave-digger with
spade, dog, and dinner-basket.
5. The Plague-Pit
Bodies are being shot from a cart into a pit by the
light of a torch, which a man is holding.
6. Escape of an Imprisoned Family
The door of a house has been hacked down, and is
lying on a dead body.
George Cruickshank contributed four plates to Brayley’s edition of
the Journal of the Plague Year. Three of them, the ‘Dead Cart’, the
‘Great Pit in Aldgate’, and ‘Solomon Eagle’ are vivid and powerful;
the fourth, ‘The Water-man’s Wife’, feeble and commonplace.
The preaching of Solomon Eagle is the subject of a picture by P.
F. Poole, R.A., in the Mappin Gallery at Sheffield. The scene depicted
is taken from Harrison Ainsworth’s novel Old Saint Paul’s. It shows
Solomon Eagle, with the brazier of live coals on his head, nude but
for a loin-cloth; and discoursing to the terrified citizens outside old St
Paul’s Cathedral, during the plague. All around are strewn bodies of
dead and dying: a house displays the damning red cross and the
words ‘Lord have mercy upon us’. In the background bearers are
carrying away a corpse to burial.
An incident, that Pepys describes in his Diary under September 3,
1665, as follows, is represented in a modern picture by Miss
Florence Reason.
‘Among other stories, one was very passionate,
methought, of a complaint brought against a man in
the towne for taking a child from London from an
infected house. Alderman Hooker told us it was the
child of a very able citizen in Gracious Street, a saddler,
who had buried all the rest of his children of the
plague, and himself and his wife now being shut up
and in despair of escaping, did desire only to save the
life of this little child: and so prevailed to have it
received stark-naked into the arms of a friend, who
brought it (having put it into new fresh clothes) to
Greenwich; where, upon hearing the story, we did
agree it should be permitted to be received and kept in
the towne.’
In 1679 a terrible epidemic of plague broke out in Vienna, then
an opulent city, with a population of some 210,000, and the seat of
Leopold, the Holy Roman Emperor. Our chief knowledge of the
visitation is derived from Sorbait (Consilium medicum oder
freundliches Gespräch), Abraham a St. Clara (Merk’s Wien), and
Fuhrmann (Alt- und Neu-Wien). The disease was preceded by an
epidemic of the ‘Hot Sickness’, (Hitzige Krankheit), which was very
fatal. Bubonic plague followed in its wake and Vienna presented the
spectacle of one huge lazaretto for the sick, one gigantic plague-pit
for the dead. Convicts, as at Naples, were employed both to nurse
the sick and bury the dead. Clothing, furniture, and bedding lay
littered in the streets mixed with the dead and dying. When carts
failed, the bodies were thrown into the Danube. A Plague Committee
strove in vain to shut up all infected houses and segregate the
inmates in lazarettos and stations of quarantine. Death by public
hanging was the penalty of disobedience. Some of the royal princes,
and foremost among them Prince Ferdinand of Schwartzenburg,
together with many of the nobility, devoted themselves courageously
to fighting the plague, undertaking even the most menial duties. But
many of the citizens and the Emperor himself fled. Leopold
conceived his obligations to his people discharged by a pilgrimage to
Maria-Zell to pray for cessation of the plague. Then he moved his
court to Prague, whence plague drove him to Linz.
During the plague the Viennese set up a wooden column, to
which frequent processions were made, observing the ancient ritual
of the Flagellants. At the end of the plague Leopold made a vow at
St. Stephan’s to replace it by a marble column, which was duly
erected in the Graben between 1687-93.
An incident of this plague, the story of the street-singer Augustin,
who was thrown alive, but drunk, into the plague-pit, but escaped
none the worse for his experience, recalls the like occurrence in
Defoe. The man is said to have composed the familiar ‘O du lieber
Augustin’ in a beer-house on the very night he was thrown into the
plague-pit.
Amulets of various kinds were extensively employed in the
seventeenth century. In South Germany a common form was the so-
called Pest Penny. These had on one face, as a rule, the figure of St.
Benedict or St. Zacharias, and on the reverse some formula of
exorcism.
Vienna[189] fell a victim to outbreak after outbreak of plague, but
the experience gained in the visitation of 1679 enabled the
authorities to stamp out the infection in 1691 and 1709, before it
had grown out of hand. But in 1713 all preventive measures failed to
check its spread. Then, in the month of May, processions and litanies
were organized to the plague column. The Emperor Charles VI
remained in Vienna, and pronounced a solemn vow in St. Stephan’s,
that if the plague ceased he would erect a church as a thank-
offering. Such was the origin of the Karlskirche. This church is a rich
square edifice with a huge dome. It is the chef-d’œuvre of J. B.
Fischer von Erlach, commenced in 1715. The ravages of the plague
are portrayed in relief, by Stanetti, in the tympanum. Flanking the
portico are two domed belfries, resembling Trajan’s column, 108 feet
high, with reliefs from the life of S. Carlo Borromeo by Mader and
Schletter. In March 1714, when the plague died out after a total
mortality of 120,000, a thanksgiving Te Deum was sung in St.
Stephan’s, at which the emperor was present. Two series of
memorial coins were struck, the one showing the votive column, the
other the church dedicated to S. Carlo Borromeo.
The Plague Regulations, published in separate form at Vienna at
the time of this epidemic, give a good idea of current popular
opinion as to the nature of plague. There was no lack of adherents
for each belief of every preceding period. There were those who
regarded it as a signal evidence of God’s displeasure. There were
those who attributed it to poison in the air or food, generated in the
stars and spread by the malice of grave-diggers for their own
purposes. Even the Jews were incriminated. There were those who
read its origin in the conjunction of certain stars. Others ascribed it
to famines, to poisonous fumes set free by earthquakes, to comets,
and even to dry seasons through the multiplication of insects. Come
how it might, clouds taking the form of biers and funeral
processions, noises in churchyards, and dreary sounds in the air
foretold its coming. On infected bodies the virus was often visible as
blue sulphurous fumes. There were clearly also some who conceived
a natural origin. A doctor, named Gregorovius, dissected three dead
bodies in search of the cause, but failed to find it. His intrepid zeal
was duly rewarded by the Emperor and by the Faculty of Medicine in
Vienna.
Conformably with the varying conceptions of cause, remedies
were varied and multifarious. Some pinned their faith to a devout
life, aided by processions and penitential sermons. Some lit fires to
cleanse the air, at times adding sulphur. A host of herbs, chief
among them Angelica, enjoyed repute as antipestilential remedies.
The simple life appealed to some, purgatives and blood-letting to
others.
But side by side with this ill-assorted medley of measures, a code
of sanitary precautions had slowly grown up. Early notification by the
doctors, quarantine of suspects and segregation of the sick,
cleanliness and disinfection were all recommended and sedulously
executed, and supplied in embryo the essential principles of modern
sanitary science. Doctors were enjoined to keep sober, to fumigate
themselves, and to wear silk or taffetas, to which the virus would
not cling. We have arrived indeed at the parting of the ways, and
henceforth the stream of medical science, polluted less and less by
the surface waters of superstition, flows on clear and full in its
appointed channel. The sun of science emerges at length from its
protracted winter solstice.
CHAPTER XIII
In the year 1720 plague found its way to Marseilles. It was
believed to have been brought by a ship, the Grand-Saint-Antoine,
which arrived on May 25 from the Levant. As usual, the attempt was
made to hush it up for the sake of trade. At the beginning of August
something had to be done, so on the advice of two physicians,
Sicard, father and son, it was decided to light bonfires throughout
the city. For lack of firewood this was not done, but also for lack of
faith, for it was found that despite their vaunted specific, the Sicards
had fled the city. So sulphur was served out to the poor instead,
wherewith to ‘perfume’ their houses.
As early as August 2 the Town Council found it necessary to
adopt special measures to keep physicians and surgeons to their
task. Accordingly, they decided that the city should pay them a fixed
salary in place of fees from the sick, and allow them smocks of oiled
cloth, and sedan chairs to carry them on their rounds. There are
several illustrations extant of the dress adopted by doctors in the
plague of Marseilles. The same dress, with trifling variations, was
worn elsewhere in France, in Switzerland, and in Germany, and had
originated in Italy. It is shown in an old Venetian woodcut of a.d.
1493, from the works of Joannes de Ketham (Fasciculus Medicinae,
1493). This woodcut shows a physician in a long overall, but wearing
only a skull-cap on his head, visiting a plague patient in bed. He is
accompanied by attendants who carry lighted torches, while he
himself holds a medicated sponge before his mouth and nose, as he
feels the pulse. Grillot figured the dress as the frontispiece of his
Lyon affligé de la peste 1629, and Manget[190] has borrowed it from
him. From his description it would seem that the mantle, breeches,
shirt, boots, gloves, and hat were all of morocco leather. The beak
attached to the mask was filled with aromatics, over which the air
passed in respiration, and had an aperture for each eye, fitted with a
disk of crystal.
PLATE XXVIII,
1. DRESS OF A MARSEILLES DOCTOR,
1720
PLATE XXVIII,
2. GERMAN CARICATURE
OF THE SAME

(Face Page 200)


M. Reber[191] describes an engraving by John Melchior Fuesslin,
representing a doctor in the plague of Marseilles. The legend
beneath it, in German, is (translated) ‘Sketch of a Cordovan-leather-
clad doctor of Marseilles, having also a nose-case filled with smoking
material to keep off the plague. With the wand he is to feel the
pulse.’ Reber’s and Manget’s plates are both reproduced in the Bristol
Medico-Chirurgical Journal, March 1898, from the Janus blocks.
Gaffarel[192] gives the costumes both of a doctor and of a hospital
attendant: they closely resemble the dress of the Italian charitable
guilds of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
By August 9 some of the physicians and almost all the master-
surgeons had fled, and an ordinance was issued demanding their
return, or in default their expulsion from their respective
corporations, and other special penalties as well. Two physicians
named Gayon volunteered their services for the Hôpital des
Convalescents, but forthwith paid the penalty with their lives. In the
absence of sufficient physicians in Marseilles, others were
summoned from Montpellier, Paris, and elsewhere. These exhausted
their energies in a dispute over the contagious character of plague.
Chicoyneau and Chirac maintained that it was not contagious.
Deidier proved, by successfully inoculating dogs with bile taken from
plague subjects, that at any rate it was communicable. Each
subsequently expounded his views in a formal discourse before the
School of Montpellier.
Existing hospital accommodation was quite unequal to the needs.
Emergency tents were erected outside the town, with mattresses for
the sick. Chevalier Rose equipped and maintained a hospital in the
district entrusted to him, at his own expense. A large temporary
hospital of timber covered with sail-cloth was hurriedly erected, but
when almost finished towards the end of September it was blown
down by a gale, and was not rebuilt till October 4. This hospital,
together with the Hôpital Général de la Charité of 800 beds,
provided ultimately sufficient accommodation, so that none need
remain in the streets.
From the first the mortality was such that it was wellnigh
impossible to bury the dead. On August 8 the Assembly resolved
that carts should be used to carry the dead to burial, and that pits
should be dug in which the bodies could be buried in lime. So two
huge pits were dug outside the walls, between the gate of Aix and
that of Joliette, M. Moustier overseeing the diggers and compelling
them to work. Chevalier Rose also had pits dug and organized a
corps of buriers in his own district. The duties of burial were at first
entrusted to sturdy beggars, but in a brief space of time the supply
of these failed, so that bodies began to accumulate in the houses
and streets. Then convicts were requisitioned in relays from time to
time.
These convicts were promised their liberty, to excite them to
work—a promise that was never fulfilled in the case of the few who
survived the task. Their ignorance of the management of carts and
horses, their idleness and lust of robbery rendered them so unfit for
the task, that Moustier and the other sheriffs and Chevalier Rose
were compelled to be always present on horseback, to superintend
the work. By August 21 corpses had already begun to accumulate in
old parts of the city, where the streets were too narrow and steep
for the carts to go. Accordingly, an order was issued that the vaults
of the churches in the upper town should be used for burials in
quicklime, and that, when full, they should be sealed up with
cement. By the end of August the streets were literally strewn with
dead bodies, some in an advanced stage of putrefaction, mingled
with cats and dogs that had been killed, and bedding thrown out
from the houses. The square in front of the building called the Loge,
as also the Palissadoes of the port, were filled with bodies brought
ashore from ships in the roadstead, to which whole families had fled
in the belief that plague would not reach them on the water.
By September 6 more than 2,000 dead bodies were lying in the
streets, exclusive of those in the houses. On the esplanade called La
Tourette, lying towards the sea between the houses and the
rampart, 1,000 corpses had lain rotting for weeks in the sun and
emitting a frightful stench. They were too rotten even to be lifted
into carts, and too foul to be carried to distant pits. Chevalier Rose,
mindful maybe of Procopius, conceived the idea of throwing them
into two huge vaults in the old bastions close to the esplanade, after
breaking in their roofs. The task was carried out in fierce haste by
100 galley-slaves, who tied handkerchiefs dipped in vinegar over
their mouths and noses. At the same time fishermen netted 10,000
dead dogs floating in the port and towed them out to sea.
In the parish of St. Ferriol, the finest quarter of the city, Michel
Serre the painter undertook to see to the burial of the dead, with
carts and galley-slaves placed at his disposal, himself providing food
and lodging for the workers. A grateful city has repaid him by
hanging his two large pictures of Marseilles during the plague close
beneath the ceiling of an underground cellar, where it is impossible
to decipher their details.
When all the bodies were disposed of, the sheriffs employed the
galley-slaves to clear the filth from the streets and throw it into
barges, which carried it out to sea.
In the early days of the epidemic, the sheriffs had forbidden the
annual procession on August 16, in honour of St. Roch, at which the
saint’s bust and relics were carried through the streets; but the
people raised such an outcry that the procession was celebrated, the
sheriffs attending with their halberdiers to prevent a crowd following.
By September 7 even the civil authorities had come to regard the
plague as an instrument of God’s wrath, and the magistrates, to
appease it, vowed that every year the city should give 2,000 livres to
a House of Charity, to be established under the protection of our
Lady of Good Help, for orphans of the province.
At the height of the plague many parish priests and some of the
monks fled: the services of the Church were mostly suspended. But
many secular clergy and monks remained and devoted themselves
unflinchingly to the sick. The bishop, Belsunce, nobly played his part.
Wherever the poorest lay, there he went confessing, consoling, and
exhorting them to patience. To the dying he carried the Sacrament,
to the destitute the whole of his money in alms. Though plague
invaded his palace and carried off those about him, it spared him. It
is of him that Pope[193] asks,

Why drew Marseilles’ good Bishop purer breath


When nature sickened, and each gale was death?
On All Saints’ Day, Belsunce headed a procession through the
streets from his palace, walking barefoot, as Borromeo of old, with a
halter about his neck, and carrying the cross in his arms. He wished
to appear among his people as a scapegoat laden with their sins,
and as a victim destined to expiate them. Accompanied by the
priests and canons of the Church he led the way to a place where an
altar had been erected. There, after exhorting the people to
repentance, he celebrated Mass before them all. Then he solemnly
consecrated the city to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, in honour of which
he had instituted a yearly festival. The tears coursing down his face
as he spoke moved all to cry aloud to the Lord for mercy. On
November 16 Belsunce was emboldened to exorcise the waning
plague. Calling together all that remained of the clergy to the church
of Acoulles, he read all the prayers that the Pope had prescribed for
deliverance from plague. Then after an eloquent and moving
exhortation he carried up the Holy Sacrament to the cathedral’s roof,
and there, under the open sky, with all the city lying before him,
uttered a solemn benediction, and performed the full ritual of
exorcism according to the forms of the Roman Catholic Church.
Belsunce was not the first human scapegoat to tread the streets
of Marseilles in voluntary expiation for its people. In times of
pestilence, in the old Greek colony of Massilia, one of the lower
orders offered himself on behalf of his fellow citizens. Dressed in
sacred garments and decked with sacred boughs he was led through
the streets, amid the prayers of the people that their ills might fall
on him, and then cast out of the city.
There stands this day on a lofty crest of land in the open square,
right in front of the episcopal palace of Marseilles, a statue of
Belsunce in bronze, by Ramus. The stone pedestal bears a
commemorative inscription and two reliefs in bronze. In one,
Marseilles in woman’s form is lying among her stricken children,
while Belsunce and his attendant priests implore the Sacred Heart to
stay the plague. In the other, Belsunce bears the Sacrament to sick
and dying.
The statue of Belsunce, clad in full episcopal robes, stands with
face raised and arms outstretched to heaven, in attitude of earnest
supplication. Before him Nature has set a landscape of surpassing
beauty: sea, earth, and sky give freely of their best. Far down below
a polyglot people move hither and thither around the harbour quays,
like ants, at their appointed tasks. Beyond it spreads a matchless
expanse of Mediterranean sea, now smooth and silvery as a mirror,
now fretful with the rising tide. Away over the sea and over the low
land that bounds the bay, the evening sun lights up the face of
Belsunce with a last lingering radiance, as it goes down to its setting
in a glory of golden hues. If man’s graven image may enjoy the
perfect happiness denied to man, then surely Belsunce has his
reward.
Marseilles is rich in reminiscence of her bishop. In the Bureau
d’Intendance Sanitaire hangs a pleasing portrait of Belsunce by
Gobert; while in the Musée may be seen a poor picture, by Mansian,
of him giving the Sacrament to the victims of the plague. François
Gérard (1770-1837) presented his ‘Peste de Marseille’ to the Bureau
d’Intendance Sanitaire, where now it hangs. The wan dismal
colouring of the picture accords ill with the striking vigour of the
composition. In the foreground is set forth the whole tragedy of a
family stricken with plague. On the ground lies the father writhing
with agony: his hands are clenched, his eyes are starting from their
sockets: the dressing in the right armpit indicates one site of the
disease. The mother, seated on a chest, clasps to her body her elder
boy, wrapped in a blanket, too weak to stand: the younger child
leans against his mother, his eyes fixed in terror on his dying father.
Anguish is depicted in the death-like pallor of the mother’s face. In
the background Belsunce in full robes distributes to the sick and
starving poor the bread which an attendant is carrying. To the left of
the foreground bodies of the dead are lying huddled up beneath an
awning, while to the right convicts are dragging corpses away for
burial. The sublime serenity of the good bishop seems to bring to his
stricken people in their anguish some promise of that peace which
passeth all understanding.

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