AFTER every great disaster – Vesuvius, the Boris Johnson administration, Chelsea signing Winston Bogarde – come questions. But does history get the answers right?
The official enquiry into the Black Death, the plague that killed close to half of Europe in 1346 to 1353, suggests otherwise. For it concluded that it was caused not by the Yersina pestis bacterium but by Saturn, Jupiter and Mars being in Aquarius.
A contemporary source reads: “There are those, misguided and far from God’s grace as they are, who claim this is the fault of fleas on rats. Ravings to be dismissed.
“For our most advanced monks have studied the heavens, seen the 1345 conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter with Mars in the same house preceded by lunar eclipse and proven beyond doubt this called a pestilence down upon us.
“This is a humiliation for those anti-scientific heathens who claim killing rodents is an answer, or escaping to the far-flung countryside of rural Croydon would prolong survival. Sheer nonsense! It was the planets revolving around the Earth the whole time!
“So let there be less of this ‘keeping yourself clean’ nonsense, and no more shutting yourself indoors. And as for the masks worn to obstruct the airways, well, sir, do you believe the spheres of heaven take heed?
“No, this was a conjunction event pure and simple. And as it won’t repeat until 1373 and we’ll no doubt have come up with some pretty effective anti-maleficent prayers by then we have no further lessons to learn from it. Good.”
And so Britain continued happily onwards and soon felt so recovered that it renewed the Hundred Years War, to the delight of the peasantry.
Next week: to 1946, when Alan Turing invents the computer as something to be gay on.
