SHADOW AND L1GHTNING: BY CYNTHIA ABEGAIL

SHADOW AND LIGHTNING
(Excerpt) from Warren Carroll's
"History of Christendom"

"In the prosperous Italian city of Sienna, more
than half the population died in the spring and summer
of 1348. The plague is caused by the killer
bacteria Yestis pestis.

The total mortality in Avignon was 62,000; seven
thousand houses were shut up because all their former
inhabitants were dead or gone.
In the fall of 1348, the plague was raging in Paris, with
800 people dying everyday and a third of inhabitants
wiped out. It had now reached northern Germany and
Greece. In London, it switched from bubonic to even
deadlier pneumonic form, killing 30,000 during the
winter of 1349.

Perhaps none of the many stories so memorably captures
the quality of their horror as that of the London ship
with a cargo of wool which arrived in Bergen, Norway.
The boarders of the drifting ship found every man aboard
the ship dead and brought the bacteria ashore in their own
bodies. By the end of 1350, King Magnus Of Sweden would
say, "God for the sins of man has struck the world with this
great punishment of sudden death; by it most of our countrymen
are dead. On the other hand, death percentage was higher in
Scandinavian countries.
Yet Christendom survived. Eventually, the plague declines and
the spiritual darkness gave way to the cruelty of fire in the decade
of the 1370's when one of the most vivid and glorious saints in the
Church history, Catherine of Siena appeared on the scene scattering
lightning.

She had written to Pope Gregory XI at the time of the Western Schism,
'Come swiftly like gentle lamb. Respond to the HolySpirit who calls you.
I tell you, Come; come; come; do not wait for time since time does not wait for you.' Catherine of Sienna, a saint like a lighning --- a great saint!"
(The article sheds light into the history which is not known to many of us. Thanks for giving us the information, Cynthia)New World

Source: Warren H. Carroll. The Glory of Christendom: A History of Christendom.