The Black Plague in Geneva, Theodore Beza's Treatise, and COVID-19

Articles

Mar 21

Introduction

Life out there looks like an apocalyptic movie. Store shelves are empty; entire countries are quarantined; every public space stands deserted; even the freeways of LA are desolate. The blaring of the political news cycle has been drowned out by updates on COVID-19. Public health announcements, alarming statistics, painful testimonies, dire economic impacts litter our news feeds. Speculations, superstitions, and fake news lie strewn across the Internet. Schools, bars, restaurants, and even churches have shuttered their doors. In one sense, we’ve been reduced to a pre-modern society (but with Internet, thank the Lord), confined to a provincial life within the walls of our own homes.

What a crazy world.

Now, you’ve already read all the articles about social distancing, the importance of washing your hands, flattening the curve, and the best television shows to binge on. You’ve probably also received at least a dozen emails from companies describing their response to the virus. And if you’re reading this blog, you’ve probably also read some Christian articles on how to make sense of all this through the lens of Scripture. That’s all good and well.

But for several days, I have been hoping to read not about the present, but the past, about how Christians of yesteryear dealt with crisis and plague in their own day. I want to read about how faithful saints responded to death and disease, to glean from their experience. I haven’t found much out there.¹ So in this post, I want to do just that. No, I’m not going to look at Exodus and learn what the Egyptians did when God smote them with the plagues—because, well, we all know how that went. Instead, I want to look at how the saints in Geneva, Switzerland responded to the black plague epidemics of the 1500s.

The Black Plague in Geneva²

In 1542, the world was decidedly pre-modern. It would be at least 100 more years until the invention of the first microscope and over 250 years until the first vaccine. The cause of the black plague, a bacterium called Yersina pestis, wouldn’t be discovered for another 350 years.³ In those days, ‘medicine’ meant blood-letting, drinking ground unicorn horn,⁴ and consuming concoctions of lead and mercury.

But pre-modern or not, in the fall of 1542, the black plague came to Geneva. At the time, the renowned John Calvin, reformer of Geneva and de facto leader of the Company of Pastors (the group of pastors for the entire city of Geneva), was just 33 years old. The Reformation was just reaching maturity, having been accidentally kicked off by Martin Luther 25 years earlier. Mary I of England, who came to be known as Bloody Mary for burning Protestants at the stake, was still 11 years from the throne.⁵

In Geneva, the ministers (pastors) were required to visit the sick and console the dying, in order to

…console them according to the Word of God, showing them that everything they are suffering and enduring comes from the head of God and his good providence, and that he sends nothing to his faithful people except for their good and salvation.⁶

Normally this duty fell to appointed ministers of the Company of Pastors; they would be responsible for visiting the sick and consoling the dying in the city of Geneva. But when the plague arrived, one of the ministers, Pierre Blanchet, “volunteered to relocate outside the city and visit the plague hospital”⁷ to shepherd those infected with the plague. Months later, by the Lord’s mercy, the plague abated.

But in the spring of 1543, the plague returned. On May 11, 1543, Blanchet again volunteered to minister to the plague hospital. By the end of the month, he himself had contracted the disease and died.

This created a crisis for the Company of Pastors. They struggled for a week to find a replacement. Not finding any eager volunteers, the Company finally resorting to a lottery—Calvin’s name excluded (which has its own dramatic backstory, but I digress). Yet, shockingly, the selected pastors, while acknowledging that it was their duty, refused to serve, stating that “God has still not given them the strength and constancy needed to go to the said hospital.”⁸ In such dire circumstances, a young minister, Mathieu de Geneston, stepped forward to take Blanchet’s place. Tragically, the plague soon killed him, too.

Mercifully, the plague did not visit Geneva again until August of 1564, 22 years later. John Calvin had died just a few months earlier, and had passed the mantle on to his protégé, Theodore Beza. But even after decades to prepare, the Company again struggled to respond to the plague rightly. Should caring for plague victims fall on a few men, or on all the ministers, despite the risks? Since they believed in God’s sovereignty over the plague, would it still be appropriate to take earthly measures to prevent infection? Where is the line between courage and rashness, caution and neglect?⁹

The plagued returned again, 4 years later. From 1568 to 1571, thousands of Genevans died. The Company of Pastors continued to select men by lot, the esteemed (i.e. Beza) excluded, to minister to the sick. But Theodore Beza found this arrangement unacceptable, cowardly, shameful. He argued extensively that the lottery system ought to be abandoned, that each minister was to be responsible for visiting the plague victims within his own parish, and that all of the ministers, including himself, were to take turns visiting the plague hospital each week.¹⁰ By the mercy of God, before the end of the epidemic, he prevailed.

Thus the pastors, finally, served—courageously, sacrificially, even in the face of death.

Theodore Beza’s Treatise on the Plague

As a follow-up to the episodes of the plague, in 1579, Beza wrote a treatise called Questions Regarding the Plague¹¹ to Christians thinking of leaving the city. The treatise is 20 pages long, and Beza spends 18 of those pages arguing against those who claimed that leaving the city to avoid the plague was both faithless and futile because (1) God was sovereign over death and disease, and because (2) the plague was not infectious.

But Beza argued that this view is fallacious, and appealed to Scripture to show that God always uses means, and that those means follow the natural order of the world. He also argued, from Scripture, that contagions are, well, contagious, and that it is good for a Christian to consider this reality.

In Beza’s mind, it is not necessarily more faithless to leave or more faithful to stay; rather, it depends on the circumstances and duties of that Christian. Beza charges that Christians ought to consider the following:

The principal cause of the plague is God’s wrath against our sins, for God rightly punishes sinful man with just punishments.
A man cannot fully avoid the plague, which is the wrath of God against sin, by change of place but by change of life—repentance and faith in Christ.
If a Christian dies, this is God’s decree for good, for they are blessed who die in the Lord.
No man ought to either leave or stay with a doubtful conscience. Rather, he should learn from the Word of God what his duty is, and then, commending himself to God, he ought to do whatever his duty is.
A wise man will not leave when he should stay, and will not stay when he should leave.
The Christian who stays ought to know that God commands, “Thou shalt not kill”, and therefore ought not to rashly put his life, nor the lives of those who depend on him, in danger of infection.
The Christian who leaves ought to know that his regard for himself and for his own family ought not to cause him to forget his duty to his country and his fellow man; for love seeks not her own.
The bonds of humanity prevail. The husband is bound to the wife, and the wife to the husband. Parents are bound to their children, and children to their parents. Masters are bound to their servants, and servants to their masters. Yet the closer the bond, the greater the duty; the farther the bond, the lesser.
Those in public office (i.e. city officials and ministers) have greater responsibility for the common good during times of extreme danger and plague. He wrote, “It would be something very shameful, indeed wicked, to even imagine a faithful pastor who abandons one of his poor sheep in the hour when he especially needs heavenly consolation.”¹² The sheep might flee danger; the shepherd must not.
A sick Christian ought to consider the life of his friends dearer than his own, and not permit them to visit, lest they be infected and die. This is a bold claim, but one that Beza backed up with his own life; when he caught the plague in 1551, he did not permit any of his friends to be with him, even though he craved their presence.

Beza ends his treatise with a call not to physical remedies, but to spiritual remedies:

“as our Sinnes are the chief and true cause of the Plague, so that this is the onely proper remedie against the same; if the Ministers dispute not of the Infection (which belongeth to Physicians) but by their Life and Doctrine stir up the People to earnest Repentance, and Love, and Charitie one towards another.”¹³

A Reflection

It is a sobering thing to recognize that in 16th century Geneva, “Some of the ministers undertook this dangerous assignment [of ministering to plague victims] with compassion and courage; for others, the fear of contracting the contagion reduced them to cowards.”¹⁴ I think especially of the men who willfully refused to fulfill their oaths, treasuring their own lives over the souls of God’s sheep, and shudder.

Yet, that was the 16th century, over 400 years ago, right? True, humanity has come a long way over those years. We have almost half a millennium more of medicine, technology, and knowledge. We know disease is caused by bacteria and viruses, not witchcraft and sorcery. We know that washing our hands and self-quarantining will slow the progress of the virus. We have global, almost-instantaneous communication and a measure of coordination. We ought to thank God for that.

And yet, we are still very much human, just as human as our spiritual forefathers. We still falter in the face of death. We still cherish our lives over others. We still bend inward in self-preservation instead of overflowing with self-denying love. We still are not sovereign over disease, pestilence, and plague. We still ask the same questions: “Why, Lord? How long, O Lord?” I expect that as the COVID-19 story unfolds, there will be similar stories of courage and cowardice, of mercy and cruelty, of hope and despair, just like the black plague of bygone centuries.

As I’ve reflected on this history of the plague in Geneva, I’ve been tempted to lament like Elijah, “We am not better than our spiritual forefathers” (1 Ki 19:4). If these godly men, sons of the Reformation, personally discipled and trained by none other than the John Calvin, faltered and cowered in the face of death, what hope do we have today? Can we be any better?

But is it exactly at such a point that the Scripture says, “Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him" (Ps 42:11). In our weakness His power is perfected; His grace is sufficient (2 Cor 12:9). Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril—or pestilence, or plague, or a global quarantine—or sword separate us from the love of Christ? No. We overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For we are convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, neither things present nor things to come—not power, not height, not depth, not any created thing—will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Ro 8:25–39).

Yes, in such a time as this, there will be stories of courage and cowardice, of mercy and cruelty, of hope and despair. But in such a time as this, may we be unwaveringly resolute, by the love of God, to be the writers of the stories of courage, mercy, and hope. May God give us supernatural, Spirit-empowered, resurrection confidence in Him! May His extravagant love for us compel us to love others at great cost to ourselves! Whether that means staying cooped up to protect our ailing grandparents, or giving blood for the sick, or working as a doctor or nurse, or giving away your favorite creature comforts, or buying groceries for a shut-in, or bearing with an annoying family member, or sharing the gospel with a despairing friend over a video call, or ministering the Scriptures to the dying, may God give us grace to do these things lovingly for Him.

The Church’s hope has been, still is, and will always be the Lord Jesus Christ. With such a hope, with such a glorious, resurrected, kingly Savior, whether we are healthy or whether we are sick, we live by faith in the Son of God, who loved us and gave Himself up for us. If we live, we live for the Lord. If we die, we die for the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s. To live is Christ; to die is gain. We must not consider our lives of any account as dear to ourselves, but only that we may finish the course and mission that we have received from our Lord Jesus Christ, to testify of the gospel of the grace of God. We love, because He first loved us. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life—his preferences, his desires, his safety, his needs—for his friends. We must remember that we know love by this, that Christ laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. (Gal 2:20, Ro 14:8, Php 1:21, Ac 20:24, 1 Jn 4:19, Jn 15:13, 1 Jn 3:16)

Footnotes

9Marks recently posted how the Baptist churches of Washington D.C. responded to influenza (the Spanish flu) of 1918. It was a fascinating read, and I recommend it highly.
Unless otherwise noted, all historical details and their inferences are taken from Scott Manestch’s Calvin’s Company of Pastors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yersinia_pestis, accessed 2020.03.21.
Probably narwhal horn. I mean, I get it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_I_of_England#Accession, access 2020.03.18.
Quoted in Manetsch, Scott M. Calvin’s Company of Pastors: Pastoral Care and the Emerging Reformed Church, 1536-1609. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015, 284.
Ibid, 285.
Ibid, 286.
Ibid, 286.
Ibid, 286–287.
Its full title is “A learned treatise of the plague wherein the two questions, whether the plague be infectious or no, and , whether and how farr it may be shunned of Christians by going aside, are resolved”. A translation of the Latin into English is available here: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A27641.0001.001?rgn=main;view=fulltext.
Manetsch, Scott M. Calvin’s Company of Pastors: Pastoral Care and the Emerging Reformed Church, 1536-1609. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015, 289.
Beza, Theodore. A learned treatise of the plague wherein the two questions, whether the plague be infectious or no, and , whether and how farr it may be shunned of Christians by going aside, are resolved. Published 1579. Accessed at https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A27641.0001.001?rgn=main;view=fulltext.
Manetsch, Scott M. Calvin’s Company of Pastors: Pastoral Care and the Emerging Reformed Church, 1536-1609. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015, 285.