Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down

A detailed Summary of Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down

" I buried with my own hands five of my children in a single grave. No bells. No tears.

This is the end of the world." (Deaux, 1969) These are the words of Italian author Agniol di

Tura, but they reflect the emotions of an entire nation in the 1300's. It was at that time that

Europe was struck by the hardest blow that a plague would ever swing. The Bubonic Plague hit

Europe with a ferocity that could never have been predicted.

The spread of the Bubonic Plague in the fourteenth century happened quickly as a result

of poor living conditions, trade routes and ignorance of the disease. The first reported case of the

plague was in 543 when it hit Constantinople. (Hecker, 1992) This was a minor outbreak and

there were others similar to it, but since no one knew where it came from and so few were dying

from it, no one took the time to find out. But then in 1334, an epidemic struck the northeastern

Chinese province of Hopei that people couldn't ignore. It killed up to 90% of the population-

around 5,000,000 people. (Armstrong, 1981) This caught people's attention, but by then it was

Sadly, some of the events that aided the rapid spread of the Pla

giving the disease it's most popular nickname, Black Death. In most severe cases, death would

With all the advances that the world has made in the past seven centuries, it is

at the end. The flagellants would meet in the center of a town and urge others to join them in

and it didn't happen a few hundred years ago. It happened in 1994. The problem with

In the time of the plague, not only was religion tosses aside, but also morality as a whole.

Boccaccia talk about this in the introduction to his book, The Decameron:

Approximate Word count = 2529
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: History

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