A pillar of fire, which on the 20th of December, 1348, remained for an hour at sunrise over the pope's palace in Avignon; a fireball, which in August of the same year was seen at sunset over Paris, and was distinguished from similar phenomena by its longer duration, not to mention other instances mixed up with wonderful prophecies and omens, are recorded in the chronicles of that age.
The order of the seasons seemed to be inverted; rains, flood, and failures in crops were so general that few places were exempt from them; and though an historian of this century assure us that there was an abundance in the granaries and storehouses, all his contemporaries, with one voice, contradict him.

The consequences of failure in the crops were soon felt, especially in Italy and the surrounding countries, where, in this year, a rain, which continued for four months, had destroyed the seed.

In the larger cities they were compelled, in the spring of 1347, to have recourse to a distribution of bread among the poor, particularly at Florence, where they erected large bakehouses, from which, in April, ninety-four thousand loaves of bread, each of twelve ounces in weight, were daily dispensed.

It is plain, however, that humanity could only partially mitigate the general distress, not altogether obviate it.
Diseases, the invariable consequence of famine, broke out in the country as well as in cities; children died of hunger in their mother's arms--want, misery, and despair were general throughout Christendom.
Such are the events which took place before the eruption of the Black Plague in Europe.

Contemporaries have explained them after their own manner, and have thus, like their posterity, under similar circumstances, given a proof that mortals possess neither senses nor intellectual powers sufficiently acute to comprehend the phenomena produced by the earth's organism, much less scientifically to understand their effects.
Superstition, selfishness in a thousand forms, the presumption of the schools, laid hold of unconnected facts.