Although modern historians refer to the plague of the fourteenth century as the Black Death, this is a neologism: prior to the 18th century, the plague was typically referred to the as the ‘great pestilence’ or ‘great death’ in English. However, the term had appeared during the 14th century: The Belgian astronomer, Simon de Covino, used the phrase mors nigra (‘Black Death’) in his poem De judicio Solis in convivio Saturni (‘On the Judgement of the Sun at a Feast of Saturn’) in the 1350s, where he blamed the plague on the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. Astrological explanations such as these were not uncommon…
In reality, Black Death is a disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. The bacterium was first discovered in 1894 by Alexandre Yersin. The Swiss physician had been working at the same time as the plague was devastating Hong Kong.
Although the plague can take different forms, there are 3 that are particularly common: bubonic, pneumonic, and septicaemic. The Black Death was a form of bubonic plague.
