Many saw the Black Death as a result of the wrath of God incurred for the assorted sins of people in that time period-ùa disaster of biblical proportions that led to both the formation of the Flagellants, who were first united by a pervading desire for masochistic penitence, and the persecution and massacre of the Jews. The plague, understandably, struck fear in Europe, and because it was associated with GodÆs punishment, often in the first stages of the Black Death the well-endowed gave large sums of money and assets to the church in the hopes of protection from the pestilence. Many believed that the Apocalypse had arrived.
As the death toll of the plague soared higher, a set of inter-related repercussions began. One was the psychological effect of constantly living in fear of contracting the plague. Some took to revelry and sexual promiscuity, and the more wealthy often fled the unsanitary conditions of the city, where the disease found many hosts in the within the city walls. Another major set of repercussions involved perceptual errors by the fear-stricken of the causes of the plague. Groups blamed other groups or institutions for the pestilence.
The medieval mind was a suspicious and superstitious one. Before the plague struck England, King Edward III, seeing the plague rage in France, pronounced that county's fate the result of a morally corrupt king. As the plague was seen primarily by those of the Christian faith as a herald of the arrival of the anti-Christ, and one of the prevalent attitudes of the Christian populace was the image of the Jew as the anti-Christ (originated and perpetuated by the Catholic Church), Jews started to become the victims of widespread persecution.
The first cases seemingly took place in southern France in 1348; later in May, Jews were murdered in Provence for their perceived complicity in the spread of the plague, and in September at the trial at Chillon, a confession by seve...