Black Death in the Holy Roman Empire

Several witness accounts do exist from the Black Death in the Holy Roman Empire, although they were often either written after the events took place, or are very short.

[4] The Black Death reached Switzerland south from Ticino in Italy, and West to Rhone and Geneva from Avignon in France.

[7] During the summer and autumn of 1349, the plague spread West from Strasbourg toward Mainz, Kassel, Limburg, Kreuznach, Sponheim and finally (in December) to Cologne; and East toward Augsburg, Ulm, Essingen and Stuttgart.

[1] The Black Death reached Northern Germany in the early summer of 1350 when it arrived in Magdeburg, Halberstadt, Lübeck and Hamburg.

[9] In the often brief descriptions that feature in sources that have survived, three common elements can be identified: The Lower Rhine city of Cologne appears to have experienced an outbreak of Black Death as early as 1347, for which the local Cronica vander hiliger stat Coellen (1499) records: "In the said year [1347] and the two years after, there was a great dying throughout the world, both amongst the pagans and the Christians.

"[9] Two pages later, brief reports are given on the "Flagellant Brothers" (Geysellbroederen) or "Cross Bearers" (Cruysdreger), and the burning of the Jews,[c] without linking these three events (the same juxtaposition without connection happens in the Nuremberg Chronicle of Hartmann Schedel).

"[9])In June 1349, abbot Gilles Li Muisis from Saint-Martin Abbey, Tournai reported large numbers of deaths, and mass graves being dug to bury the deceased.

"[10] Duke John is then said to have all Jews arrested (va[ng]en, "caught"), whom were "burnt, beaten or drowned", ending that this all happened in the years 1349 and 1350.

[9] The author had a double explanation for the plague, believing it to be both a divine punishment, as well as a plot by the Jews to poison the drinking waters; therefore, he condoned the anti-Jewish pogroms.

[9] The Rhymed Chronicle of Flanders (probably written around 1410 in Ghent), as preserved early-15th century Comburg Manuscript, noted that between 1348 and 1350, there was die groete steerfte ("the great dying"):[11] "In the year 1349, God from the heavenly realm chastised the whole world with a great, heavy pestilence, so that barely half of all people remained alive, and that many cities and villages and castles stood empty and uninhabited.

In the famous chronicle Cronica Boemorum regum by Francis of Prague (Franciscus Pragensis), the king and the Kingdom of Bohemia were portrayed as free from the sins God's had sent the plague to punish the rest of Europe for, and the air as pure and clear.