THE SHADOW OF DEATH DESCENDS

Originating in eastern or central Asia, plague ravaged Europe - and people were helpless to stop it spreading

- NIGE TASSELL

"There seemed to be no cure. There was such a fear that no one seemed to know what to do. When it took hold in a house, it often happened that no one remained who had not died." This observation by the Florentine chronicler and statesman, the Marchionne di Coppo Stefani, encapsulates the sense of complete helplessness that pervaded all the regions under siege from the Black Death in the mid-14th century, the most catastrophic pandemic in human history. The world had never seen anything like it before, and medieval society was utterly unequipped to deal with the spread.

Now proven to have been caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, passed from the fleas on rats to humans, the killer plague had its origins in either eastern or central Asia in 1346. The following year, it was transported aboard ships carrying the army of Jani Beg, the khan of the Golden Horde, as he attacked the Genoese-held port of Kaffa (now Feodosiya) in the Crimea. There were even reports of the corpses of Jani Beg's men who had succumbed to the disease being catapulted over the city walls in an attempt to infect the locals. This might sound fanciful and far-fetched, but the Golden Horde's landing in the Crimea provided a route for the plague to decimate the populations of western Eurasia and north Africa.

From Kaffa, the rapid spread tends to be attributed to Genoese ships making a hasty retreat - more specifically, the unofficial passengers on board: fleas living on rats. With these ships sailing in all directions and arriving at multiple destinations, the plague-ridden fleas and their rodent carriers were soon at ports all around the Mediterranean Basin. When the ships docked on the Italian peninsula, at Constantinople or along the north African coast, the disease docked with them.

The 19th-century French physician Paul-Louis Simond (seen injecting a patient) proved plague could be transmitted from rat fleas