A planetary alignment allegedly creates the Black Death - March 20th, 1345

On this day in 1345, the alignment of three planets supposedly caused the Black Death pandemic.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
Hello and welcome to This Day in History Class, a
show that demystifies history one day at a time. I'm Gabelusier,
and today we're looking at one of the worst bad

(00:21):
takes in medical history, the idea that the position of
the planets can unleash deadly diseases on Earth. The day
was March twentieth, thirteen forty five, the alignment of three

(00:44):
planets supposedly caused the Black Death pandemic. That mistaken belief
was first espoused in the fourteenth century by the medical
faculty at the University of Paris, though many other medieval
scholars echoed the same idea. At the time time, astrology
was still a respected science right up there with astronomy,

(01:05):
and celestial activity was widely believed to have a direct
impact on everything from the weather, to human fortunes to
the spread of disease. Special significance was placed on planetary
conjunctions and alignments, the times when two or more planets
appear to be close together in the sky, when in
reality there's still a great distance apart. In other words,

(01:28):
a planetary alignment is just an optical illusion. The planets
aren't really lining up in a row. It just looks
that way from our perspective here on Earth. The alignment
that occurred in thirteen forty five involved Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars.
It remained visible for several days and left a powerful
impression on everyone who saw it. For years afterward, people

(01:52):
tried to determine what kind of impact it would have
on human life, and when the Black Death reached European
shores a few years later, are the greatest minds of
the era finally settled on an answer. The triple conjunction
of thirteen forty five was the ultimate cause and source
of the Bubonic plague, or so they thought. Planetary conjunctions

(02:14):
and alignments occur at regular intervals as the planets complete
their respective journeys around the Sun. That means the events
aren't common, but they aren't especially rare either. However, some
are certainly more impressive than others. For example, the conjunction
between Jupiter and Saturn is especially striking. As the largest planets,

(02:36):
they reflect a lot of light from the Sun, making
them particularly bright when paired together. That was the case
on March twentieth, thirteen forty five, when Jupiter, Saturn, and
Mars all appeared to share the same quadrant of the sky.
Even before it happened, though, astrologers and philosophers across Europe

(02:56):
had speculated about what the upcoming great conjunction might mean.
The most famous of those publications was written by a
French Jewish philosopher named Jersonied. According to him, quote, it
is known by experience that a conjunction of Saturn with
Jupiter signifies great and general events. He then noted that

(03:18):
in thirteen forty five, Mars would also join those two
planets in the same constellation Aquarius. Jersoned had several theories
for what that portended, and none of them were good.
Most ominously, he predicted that the conjunction would bring about
quote diseases and deaths which will last for a long time.

(03:41):
In the Middle Ages, many scholars would have considered that
a pretty obvious conclusion. That's because Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn
were commonly linked to bodily humors that were thought to
cause health problems when unbalanced. That said, few would have
imagined a conjunction leading to a disease is as devastating
and widespread as the Bubonic plague except, of course, in hindsight.

(04:07):
The Black Death, also known as the Great Mortality, or
simply as the Plague, was the deadliest infectious outbreak in
human history to date, its wre through Asia, the Middle East,
and Europe during the fourteenth century, claiming the lives of
between seventy five and two hundred million people. As you

(04:27):
probably know, the plague was not the result of planetary alignment. Instead,
it was caused by a bacterium called Ursinia pestis. That
deadly microbe was carried by fleas that often traveled on
rats and other small mammals. The plague's origin point is
still widely debated, but many believe at first appeared in

(04:48):
humans in Mongolia around the year thirteen twenty, after wreaking
havoc on the region's nomadic tribes. The plague then moved
south and east to China and India. It hitched a
ride on tradeships from Asia and the Middle East to Europe,
spreading infection from one port city to the next. By
the time the plague had run its course in the

(05:10):
early thirteen fifties, roughly half of the continent's population was dead.
In the midst of that first Western outbreak, there was
a desperate rush to figure out what was causing the
disease and how to stop it from spreading. Scholars across
Europe began scrutinizing plague cases from every angle, producing a

(05:31):
long list of possible origins and remedies. Dozens of plague
treatises were written and circulated during that time, but since
no one knew about germ transmission yet, few of the
explanations shed any real light on what was happening. That said,
one of the most highly regarded plague commentaries came out
of the University of Paris in thirteen forty eight. The

(05:55):
medical faculty there had been tasked by the French King
Philip the sixth with pro fiding a definitive account of
the ongoing crisis. Their resulting work was divided into two parts.
The first dealt with the causes of the plague, and
the second provided suggestions for how to prevent or treat it.
The authors wasted no time and got to the scapegoating

(06:17):
right away, declaring quote, we say that the distant and
first cause of this pestilence was and is the configuration
of the heavens. In thirteen forty five, at one hour
afternoon on March twentieth, there was a major conjunction of
three planets in Aquarius. This conjunction, along with other earlier

(06:37):
conjunctions and eclipses, caused a deadly corruption of the air
around us, signifying mortality and famine. You may be wondering
how a planetary alignment could lead to a deadly corruption
of the air. Well, fear not, the authors provided an explanation.
According to them, quote, Jupiter, being wet and hot, draws

(07:01):
up evil vapors from the Earth and Mars. Because it
is immoderately hot and dry, then ignites the vapors, and
as a result, there were lightnings, sparks, noxious vapors, and
fires throughout the air. Given the conditions in Europe in
thirteen forty eight, you can kind of understand why they
would make that connection. For instance, we know from other

(07:24):
contemporary accounts that it was an unusually hot year, and
with dry winds pushing around the smoke and smell of
millions of burning corpses, it's easy to imagine why the
air itself would seem hostile. To the medieval scholars, Though
the polluted air was the result of bodily humors, that
had been thrown off balance by the planetary alignment a

(07:45):
few years earlier, and they wrongly assumed that rotten air
was the immediate cause of their affliction. Unfortunately, their advice
for how to deal with the plague was equally misguided.
The medical faculty at the University of Paris suggested people
purge all of their waste matter as frequently as possible
in order to keep their bodies dry and therefore less

(08:08):
susceptible to infection. Adding to the confusion, other medieval scholars
went the opposite direction, advising people to soak themselves in
urine or menstrual blood as a way to ward off
the disease. Similar signs of panic and desperation cropped up
periodically over the next few centuries, as outbreaks of the

(08:28):
plague continued to reappear from time to time. Thankfully, the
plague's mortality rate piqued in the fourteenth century and things
never again got as dire as they once were. Sadly,
the same can't be said for junk science theories about disease.
Those continue to cause problems even today. Planetary alignments don't

(08:50):
get as much blame as they used to, but as
someone's uncle will tell you the year twenty twenty did
end with the closest conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn three
hundred and ninety seven years. Coincidence, yes, but good luck
telling him that. I'm Gabelusier and hopefully you now know

(09:11):
a little more about history today than you did yesterday.
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iHeartMedia dot com. Thanks to Chandler May's for producing the show,

(09:34):
and thank you for listening. I'll see you back here
again tomorrow for another day in History class.