Q. How many people died?
I have not been
able to ascertain a figure for the total mortality, as the Death
did not strike equally everywhere. Reports from the time lead me
to conclude that Paris lost half its citizens; Venice, two-thirds.
Of England, the monk Thomas of Walsingham wrote,
"In some religious houses, scarce 2 of 20 monks survived.
And it was estimated that scarcely a tenth part of the people
had been left alive."
I was particularly moved by the words of the poet Petrarch:
"Well nigh the whole globe has been left without inhabitants
-- houses left vacant, cities deserted, fields too small for the
dead, and a fearful and universal solitude over the whole earth."
Yet I myself know of towns in which only a scant few succumbed.
And travelers have told me of a few regions that remained completely
untouched, for reasons known only to God.
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