World civilization
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The Mongol Empire was founded in 1206 after Temijin is popularly known as Genghis Khan in the west to mean a universal ruler. The warrior united the Mongolia tribes and supported China’s economy through stabilized taxation and rural cooperatives’ establishment. The kingdom conquered the neighboring kingdoms through the Tartars army, creating enemies and championing peaceful coexistence with some of the neighbors. The empire contributes to a great part of the world’s civilization process, especially to the Protestant Reformation. The empire was closed in 1368, after existing for 162 years. This paper will review the connection between the establishment of the kingdom, the pandemic’s outbreaks, and the Protestant Reformation. They are all connected with then pandemics indicating the continued disintegration in the Christian society.
In the year 1346, a mysterious disease that was bringing a sudden death struck several East countries. Within a very short period, the disease had ripped off many kingdoms and cities of their residents, with only a few people being spared by the killer pandemic. During the pandemic, Tana was abandoned after an incident where people from Tartars attacked Christian merchants from Italy. The merchants fled to Caffa, a historical place that was founded earlier by the Genoese. The Tartars followed the Christians to Caffa, where they sieged the city, keeping them besieged for three years. The Tartars army was infected with the deadly disease, with thousands dying in a day. As the army population kept on decreasing due to the pandemic, the generals lost the interest in continuing to put the city under siege. They ordered that the corpses of the people dying from the disease be catapulted into the city with hopes of having the Christians dead. The Tartars believed that the Christians could not escape the area free from the pandemic and could die through poisoned water and air.
Despite the tight measures in Caffa, few sailors managed to escape, some going to Genoa while others were destined to Venice and other Christian areas. The infected sailors mixed with the other people and everywhere in the city where the foreign Christians moved. Whenever a person contracted the disease, the disease was directly transmitted to the rest of the family members. The Christian cities were highly depopulated through numerous death counts, with the Christians left to believe that it was the end of the world as proclaimed in the Gospels. The attack by the Mongols using the infected bodies led to the death of many Christians by 1348.
About 200 years later, almost a similar attack happened against the Italian Christians in Venice and other cities like Venice and Mantua. In 1630, the army from Venice went to war with Hapsburgs over the territorial ownership of Mantua. Even though the Hapsburgs triumphed over the Venetians, they were heavily killed by Yersinia pestis, an epidemic that broke during the war claiming more than 40,000 lives of the soldiers. This disease killed about 25% of the 150,000 populated Venice through contact transmission after lasting for a year.
One common factor from the two attacks by the plagues is that the non-Christians are targeting the Christians, and plagues were seemingly used as a biological weapon against the Christians. Most of the Mongols were not Christians but were tolerant of other religious faiths as per the tradition set by the founder, Genghis Khan. At some time, religious intolerance was taking the pace, pushing the other people out of a society based on religion. The Christians being forced out of Tana and then sieged at Caffa indicate a struggling religious relationship between different religions, with Christianity being a key target. At Caffa, the Christian merchants were infected with the dangerous infectious disease by the Tartars. The Mongols realized that the siege over the city wasn’t important because they were dying numerously.
The rivalry’s continuity is seen in 1646 when the war in Mantua broke between the Venetians and the Hapsburgs. Different from the previous cases, the war involved two Christian groups: The Venetians and the Hapsburgs. During this time, another major outbreak occurred that almost cleared the entire population of the European continent. Even though the plagues coincided with civil and religious violence, the plagues indicated a mark of events in the Christianity revolution that was slowly growing into a divided society of faith. In the first plague, the conflict indicates a religious war against united Christians from Italy. After being attacked with infected corpses, the Italian merchants and other nationalities fled to other Christian cities like Venice, Genoa, and Milan. The Christians were used to spread the disease amongst themselves. In the second case that happened 200 years later, the disease that struck the two Christian groups indicated the continued disintegration in the Christian community. The spread of the disease in the European countries increased the spirit of disintegration and Christian reformation.
Reference
Ell, Stephen R. “Three days in October of 1630: detailed examination of mortality during an early modern plague epidemic in Venice.” Reviews of Infectious Diseases 11, no. 1 (1989): 128-139.
Wheelis, Mark. “Biological warfare at the 134 siege of “Caffa.” (, 2002).