ASIATIC ORIGIN
In 1333-4 an epidemic killed two-thirds of China's inhabitants. It first appeared in the northeastern Chinese province of Hopei, killing 90% of the population - some 5,000,000 people. Carried along trade routes the Black Death, as it will be called later, began to go west, striking India, Syria, and Mesopotamia. In 1346, the Plague came to Kaffa, a Genoese cathedral city and a port central to the successful Genoese trade industry located on the Crimean Peninsula of the Black Sea. The Tartar forces of Kipchak khan Janibeg, backed by Venetian forces - competitors of the Genoese - had sieged Kaffa. But then, in 1347, to the Italians' luck, their opponents began to die at an alarming rate - Janibeg's army was overcome by the Plague.

BIOLOGICAL WEAPON
Janibeg forces abandoned the siege, but before they performed one last act of warfare against Genoa. Using the catapults Janibeg launched the Plague infested corpses of his dead men into the city. The Italians quickly threw these bodies into the sea, but the damage was done. Hoping to escape the quickly spreading disease, four Genoese ships, thought to be uncontaminated, retired from Kaffa. They sailed home to Italy.
It is difficult to arrive at a definitive conclusion on the number of people who died of the Plague. Contemporary survivors saw dead bodies filling the cemeteries and the streets. Writers of the time claimed a third of the continent, an estimated 25 million souls, died in four years.

PLAGUE IN EUROPE
· When the plague arrived, Pisa and Vienna lost 500 people a day.
· Florence, Venice, Hamburg and Bremen lost a minimum of 60% of their populations.
· At the peak of the epidemic, Paris lost 800 people a day, and by the end of the disease (in 1349), half its population of 100,000 people had died.
As centres of trade, in cities and villages the Plague results were devastating. Losses of 40% were common. There were cases where the number of death was so high that the survivors were forced to abandon the village. In communities like monasteries and convents, when one individual contracted the Plague it wasn't long before everyone died. And in almost every case, none survived.

FLAGELLANTS AND JEWS
Death was much more than numbers.
In a spirit of pleasing God appeared the flagellants. These fanatics took public displays of penitence to the extreme. Groups of flagellants went from one town to another whipping themselves. The flagellants soon changed their focus of wrath to the most popular target of the medieval Christian: the Jew. Already rumours had begun that the Jews had brought the Plague by poisoning wells. Although the Pope pointed out that Jews were dying as quickly as Christians, and that the Plague spread where there were no Jews, logic had little effect. The mysterious disease had to have a cause, and those who suffered had to be avenged. The numbers alone speak to the extent of the persecution: thousands of Jews were burned to death.