Editing Black Death (section)

==<span id="Etymology"></span><span id="Name"></span><span id="Naming"></span>Names==
European writers contemporary with the plague described the disease in [[Latin]] as {{Langx|la|pestis|label=none|link=no}} or {{Langx|la|pestilentia|link=no|lit=pestilence|label=none}}; {{Langx|la|epidemia|links=no|lit=epidemic|label=none}}; {{Langx|la|mortalitas|link=no|lit=mortality|label=none}}.<ref name=":1">{{Citation|title=Black Death, n.|url=https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/280254|work=Oxford English Dictionary Online|year=2011|edition=3rd|publisher=Oxford University Press|language=en-GB|access-date=2020-04-11|archive-date=22 May 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210522013812/https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/280254|url-status=live}}</ref> In English prior to the 18th century, the event was called the "pestilence" or "great pestilence", "the plague" or the "great death".<ref name=":1" />{{sfn|Bennett|Hollister|2006|p=326}}<ref>John of Fordun's ''Scotichronicon'' ("there was a great pestilence and mortality of men") {{harvnb|Horrox|1994|p=84}}</ref> Subsequent to the pandemic "the ''furste moreyn''" (first [[murrain]]) or "first pestilence" was applied, to distinguish the mid-14th century phenomenon from other infectious diseases and epidemics of plague.<ref name=":1" />

The 1347 pandemic plague was not referred to specifically as "black," at the time, in any European language. The expression "black death" had occasionally been applied to other fatal or dangerous diseases.<ref name=":1" /> In English, "Black death" was not used to describe this plague pandemic, however, until the 1750s; the term is first attested in 1755, where it translated {{Langx|da|den sorte død|lit=the black death}}.<ref name=":1" /><ref>{{cite book | vauthors = Pontoppidan E |title=The Natural History of Norway: … |date=1755 |publisher=A. Linde |location=London |page=24 |url=https://archive.org/details/naturalhistoryNc2Pont/page/n57}} From p. 24: "Norway, indeed, cannot be said to be entirely exempt from pestilential distempers, for the Black-death, known all over Europe by its terrible ravages, from the years 1348 to 50, was felt here as in other parts, and to the great diminution of the number of the inhabitants."</ref> 

This expression - as a proper name for the pandemic - had been popularized by Swedish and Danish chroniclers in the 15th and early 16th centuries, and in the 16th and 17th centuries, it was transferred to other languages as a [[calque]]: {{Langx|is|svarti dauði}}, {{Langx|de|der schwarze Tod}}, and {{Langx|fr|la mort noire}}.<ref name=":2">{{Cite journal| vauthors = d'Irsay S |date=1926|title=Notes to the Origin of the Expression: ≪ Atra Mors ≫|journal=Isis|volume=8|issue=2|pages=328–32 |doi=10.1086/358397|jstor=223649|s2cid=147317779|issn=0021-1753}}</ref><ref>The German physician [[Justus Hecker|Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker]] (1795–1850) cited the phrase in Icelandic (''{{lang|is|Svarti Dauði}}''), Danish (''{{lang|da|den sorte Dod}}''), etc. See:  {{cite book |last1=Hecker |first1=J. F. C. |title=Der schwarze Tod im vierzehnten Jahrhundert |trans-title=The Black Death in the Fourteenth Century |date=1832 |publisher=Friedr. Aug. Herbig |location=Berlin, (Germany) |page=3, footnote 1 |url=https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_LhoqAAAAYAAJ/page/n11 |language=German |access-date=19 July 2024 |archive-date=29 April 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160429081540/https://books.google.com/books?id=LhoqAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA3 |url-status=dead }}</ref> Previously, most European languages had named the pandemic a variant or calque of the {{Langx|la|magna mortalitas|lit=Great Death}}.<ref name=":1" />

The phrase 'black death' – describing [[Thanatos|Death]] as black – is very old. [[Homer]] used it in the [[Odyssey]] to describe the monstrous [[Scylla]], with her mouths "full of black Death" ({{Langx|grc|πλεῖοι μέλανος Θανάτοιο|translit=pleîoi mélanos Thanátoio}}).<ref>Homer, ''Odyssey'', XII, 92.</ref><ref name=":2" /> [[Seneca the Younger]] may have been the first to describe an epidemic as 'black death', ({{Langx|la|mors atra}}) but only in reference to the acute lethality and dark [[prognosis]] of disease.<ref>Seneca, ''Oedipus'', 164–70.</ref><ref name=":2" /><ref name=":1" /> The 12th–13th century French physician [[Gilles de Corbeil]] had already used ''{{lang|la|atra mors}}'' to refer to a "pestilential fever" ({{Langx|la|febris pestilentialis|label=none}}) in his work ''On the Signs and Symptoms of Diseases'' ({{Langx|la|De signis et symptomatibus aegritudium|label=none}}).<ref name=":2" /><ref>{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/egidiicorbolien02rosegoog|title=Egidii Corboliensis Viaticus: De signis et symptomatibus aegritudium|publisher=In aedibus B.G. Teubneri| vauthors = de Corbeil G |date=1907| veditors = Valentin R |location=Harvard University|language=la|orig-year=1200}}</ref> The phrase {{Langx|la|mors nigra|lit=black death|label=none}}, was used in 1350 by Simon de Covino (or Couvin), a Belgian astronomer, in his poem "On the Judgement of the Sun at a Feast of Saturn" ({{Langx|la|De judicio Solis in convivio Saturni|label=none}}), which attributes the plague to an astrological [[conjunction (astrology)|conjunction]] of Jupiter and Saturn.<ref>On page 22 of the manuscript in [http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b9078277z/f25.image Gallica] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161006064435/http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b9078277z/f25.image |date=6 October 2016 }}, Simon mentions the phrase "''mors nigra''" (Black Death): "''Cum rex finisset oracula judiciorum / Mors nigra surrexit, et gentes reddidit illi'';" (When the king ended the oracles of judgment / Black Death arose, and the nations surrendered to him;).
* A more legible copy of the poem appears in: Emile Littré (1841) [http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/bec_0373-6237_1841_num_2_1_451584?_Prescripts_Search_tabs1=standard& "Opuscule relatif à la peste de 1348, composé par un contemporain"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140722010105/http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/bec_0373-6237_1841_num_2_1_451584?_Prescripts_Search_tabs1=standard& |date=22 July 2014 }} (Work concerning the plague of 1348, composed by a contemporary), ''Bibliothèque de l'école des chartes'', '''2''' (2) : 201–43; see especially p. 228.
* See also: Joseph Patrick Byrne, ''The Black Death'' (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2004), [https://books.google.com/books?id=yw3HmjRvVQMC&pg=PA1 p. 1.] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160426053818/https://books.google.com/books?id=yw3HmjRvVQMC&pg=PA1 |date=26 April 2016 }}</ref> His use of the phrase is not connected unambiguously with the plague pandemic of 1347 and appears to refer to the fatal outcome of disease.<ref name=":1" />

The historian [[Mrs Markham|Elizabeth Penrose]], writing under the pen-name "Mrs Markham", described the 14th-century outbreak as the "black death" in 1823.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Penrose |first=Elizabeth |url=https://archive.org/details/ahistofengland00markham/page/152/mode/2up?q=%22black+death%22 |title=A History of England |date= |publisher=John Murray |others= |year=1853 |edition=New and Revised |location=London |pages=152 |language=English}}</ref> The historian Cardinal [[Francis Aidan Gasquet]] wrote about the Great Pestilence in 1893{{sfn|Gasquet|1893}} and suggested that it had been "some form of the ordinary Eastern or bubonic plague".{{sfn|Christakos|Olea|Serre|Wang|2005|pp=110–14}}{{efn|He was able to adopt the epidemiology of the bubonic plague for the Black Death for the second edition in 1908, implicating rats and fleas in the process, and his interpretation was widely accepted for other ancient and medieval epidemics, such as the [[Plague of Justinian]] that was prevalent in the [[Byzantine Empire|Eastern Roman Empire]] from 541 to 700&nbsp;CE.{{sfn|Christakos|Olea|Serre|Wang|2005|pp=110–14}}}} In 1908, Gasquet said use of the name ''{{lang|la|atra mors}}'' for the 14th-century epidemic first appeared in a 1631 book on Danish history by [[Johannes Isacius Pontanus|J.&nbsp;I. Pontanus]]: "Commonly and from its effects, they called it the black death" (''{{lang|la|Vulgo & ab effectu atram mortem vocitabant}}'').{{sfn|Gasquet|1908|p=7}}<ref>Johan Isaksson Pontanus, ''Rerum Danicarum Historia'' ... (Amsterdam (Netherlands): Johann Jansson, 1631), [https://books.google.com/books?id=HaExAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA476 p. 476.] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160504221100/https://books.google.com/books?id=HaExAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA476|date=4 May 2016}}</ref>