Faith and catastrophe

Lesson plan

3 class periods of about 45 minutes.

1. Day 1 · 45 min

   A bishop's sermon

   1. 5 minutes: Pose the unit question: How did religious believers respond, and did responses differ? Students note one way people of faith respond to a disaster today.
   2. 10 minutes: Read the History tab of The Plague as a Test: A Bishop's Sermon at Carthage. Its intensity is Medium: a vivid list of symptoms in 14.1, and martyrdom and the deaths of children mentioned without graphic detail. Point out that this is a sermon, written to steady frightened listeners.
   3. 15 minutes: Pairs read 8.1–8.6, 15.1–15.4 and 16.1–16.3. They find what troubled Cyprian's listeners about who was dying, and three of his answers.
   4. 5 minutes: Note that 15.2 names the Jews among those the plague punishes. The History tab explains the view of the Jews that Cyprian argued elsewhere.
   5. 10 minutes: Start the source's activity: students write a short letter from a pagan neighbor answering the sermon. Collect them; as an extension, partners trade letters and write Cyprian's reply, using only arguments he makes in the excerpt.

2. Day 2 · 45 min

   A court and a city pray

   1. 15 minutes: Read entries 1, 9, 10, 23, 25 and 26 of The Great Epidemic of 735–737 (Medium intensity: a steady list of deaths, nothing graphic). Students list the court's religious responses: offerings to the kami, sutra readings, ordinations, and the emperor blaming his own lack of virtue.
   2. 5 minutes: The Plague Comes to Messina and Catania is High intensity. Before reading, tell students that today's passages are about relics, processions and an image of Mary, and that other parts of the page describe the sick and the dead in detail.
   3. 15 minutes: Groups read 28.1–28.8 and 29.1–29.6. They list what the people and clergy of Messina and Catania did, and what the chronicler says came of each act.
   4. 5 minutes: Make a two-column chart on the board, Japan and Sicily. Ask where the responses look alike and where they differ: who acted, and what each act was meant to do.
   5. 5 minutes: Extension: groups may take one of the More sources for this unit. Aelius Aristides (Medium intensity) and William Dene (Low) need no special preparation. Procopius is High intensity, with detailed symptoms and bodies piled in towers; assign only 2.22.1–2.22.5 and 2.23.13–2.23.16, on God and the changed behavior of the city.

3. Day 3 · 45 min

   A sermon against inoculation

   1. 10 minutes: Read the History tab of A Sermon against Inoculation. Its intensity is Low: it mentions sores and death, nothing graphic. Explain that inoculation here means giving smallpox matter on purpose, long before vaccination. The English is hard, so read short passages aloud.
   2. 15 minutes: Read passages 2 to 5 aloud. Students find Massey's three reasons inoculation is wrong and put each in their own words.
   3. 5 minutes: Ask what Massey's claim in 5, that the fear of smallpox keeps people from vice, shows about what he thought disease was for.
   4. 15 minutes: Students answer the unit question in a paragraph, using at least two of the four sources: How did religious believers respond, and did responses differ? They give passage numbers and say where responses agreed and where they differed.

Read these sources

The sources the lesson plan uses, in its order. Each opens in Hearth Library with the original beside plain English, and a History tab on who made it and how far to trust it.

1. 1

   The Plague as a Test: A Bishop's Sermon at Carthage

   Cyprian, 252–253. Moderate.

   Plain words; the Scripture, the persecution, and Cyprian's purpose need context.

   Questions, key terms and an activity

   bishop

   the leader of the Christian church in a city and its region

   pagan

   a follower of the traditional Roman gods, as Christians called them

   persecution

   cruel treatment of a group, such as Christians, by the authorities because of their beliefs

   martyr

   a person killed for refusing to give up their faith

   confession

   in Cyprian's church, declaring oneself a Christian before Roman officials, at the risk of death

   Antichrist

   a last great enemy of God whom many Christians expected before the end of the world

   flux

   dysentery or severe diarrhea

   rhetoric

   the art of persuasive speech, taught in Roman schools

   1. Comprehension What troubled some of Cyprian's listeners about who was dying? Give three of his answers.
   2. Analysis In section 16 Cyprian says the plague tests people. List what it tests. What does the list suggest about how people in Carthage were actually behaving?
   3. Analysis (reliability) Cyprian was an eyewitness writing during the epidemic, but he wrote a sermon to steady his congregation. How might that purpose shape his list of symptoms in section 14 and his story of the dying bishop's vision in section 19? What other kind of source would you want to check him against?
   4. Connection Aelius Aristides (The Plague at My Country House, and a Life for a Life) also explains a plague through his faith. Compare whom each writer thinks the plague is about, and what each thinks a believer should feel when others die.

   Activity Write a short letter from a pagan neighbor in Carthage who has just heard Cyprian's sermon and wants to answer it. Then trade letters with a classmate and write Cyprian's reply, using only arguments he makes in the sermon.

   For teachers · Worksheet for this source

2. 2

   The Great Epidemic of 735–737

   Shoku Nihongi, 735–797. Moderate.

   Plain sentences, but many names and offices; the notes on kami and the ruler's virtue carry the context.

   Questions, key terms and an activity

   epidemic

   an outbreak of disease that spreads quickly through many people at once

   kami

   the gods and spirits of Japanese tradition, worshiped at shrines

   sutra

   a Buddhist scripture, often read aloud for protection or blessing

   edict

   a formal order or announcement from a ruler

   amnesty

   a pardon granted to many prisoners at once

   relief

   food, goods, or money given by a government to people in need

   court rank

   an official's place in the order of the court, which decided pay and privileges

   virtue

   moral goodness; here, the goodness a ruler was expected to show, believed to keep the realm in order

   1. Comprehension List the things the court did in response to the epidemic between 735 and 737. Which were religious, which were practical, and which fit neither group?
   2. Analysis In his edicts of the fifth and eighth months of 737, the emperor says that his own lack of virtue brought the disaster. Why might a ruler say this, and what did he do in response?
   3. Analysis (reliability) These records were kept by government officials and edited into a history sixty years later. Whose experiences do they record in detail, and whose do they leave out? What can and can't they tell us about how ordinary people suffered?
   4. Connection Read The Government Explains the Flu, 1918, a U.S. Public Health Service pamphlet. Compare what each government believed it could do against an epidemic and whom each expected to act.

   Activity Students build a timeline of the entries from 735 to 737 on a long strip of paper, marking each entry as a religious response, practical relief, an amnesty, a death, or a report. In small groups they then write a short memo as officials in the eighth month of 737, advising the emperor what to do next and pointing to the record so far as their evidence.

   For teachers · Worksheet for this source

3. 3

   The Plague Comes to Messina and Catania

   Anonymous of Catania, 1348–1361. Moderate.

   Plain storytelling, but long and full of places and church terms; the notes explain the ones that matter.

   Questions, key terms and an activity

   chronicle

   a record of events set down year by year

   galley

   a long ship rowed by oars, often with sails, used for war and trade in the Mediterranean

   relic

   the body, or part of the body, of a saint, or an object linked to a saint, kept and honored in a church

   notary

   an official who drew up and witnessed legal documents such as wills

   excommunication

   cutting a person off from the church and its sacraments

   bubo

   a painful swelling of a gland in the groin, armpit, or neck; the mark of bubonic plague

   1. Comprehension Trace the plague’s path in these chapters. Where did it start, where did it spread, and how did people try to escape it?
   2. Analysis The chronicler gives two kinds of explanation, natural (breath, touch, infected air) and religious (God’s vengeance, demons, saints). Find examples of each. Does he see them as competing?
   3. Analysis (reliability) The chronicler lived in Catania and disliked Messina. Which passages might that have shaped? Which details is he most likely to have seen for himself?
   4. Connection Compare how Messina treated the Genoese with how Catania treated the people of Messina. What does each city’s choice tell you about fear and blame?

   Activity In small groups, students choose one group in the chronicle (the Genoese sailors, the families of Messina, the notaries and priests, the townspeople of Catania, the patriarch). Each group writes a short statement explaining its choices in its own words, then the class discusses which choices were reasonable and which were cruel, and why.

   For teachers · Worksheet for this source

4. 4

   A Sermon against Inoculation

   Edmund Massey, 1722. Challenging.

   Hard eighteenth-century English with long sentences and many Bible references; the notes explain them, and short passages read aloud work best.

   Questions, key terms and an activity

   inoculation

   in 1722, putting matter from a smallpox sore into a small cut to cause a milder case; now called variolation

   Providence

   God’s care for the world and plan for what happens in it

   distemper

   an illness

   sermon

   a talk on a religious subject given by a member of the clergy, usually in church

   physic

   medicine; the work of physicians

   presumption

   taking on more than one has a right to

   1. Comprehension Massey gives three reasons inoculation is wrong. Find each one and put it in your own words.
   2. Analysis Massey says the fear of smallpox keeps many people from vice. What does this tell you about what he thought disease was for?
   3. Analysis (reliability) Massey says inoculation caused more deaths than smallpox caught in the ordinary way. Where might he have got that idea in 1722, and what would you need to know to test it?
   4. Connection Read What the Africans of Boston Knew about Inoculation, by Cotton Mather and Zabdiel Boylston. Cotton Mather, a minister like Massey, supported inoculation. Compare how each uses religion to argue about the same practice.

   Activity Students hold a public meeting set in London in the summer of 1722. One group speaks for Massey, one for the surgeon Charles Maitland, and one plays parents deciding whether to have their children inoculated. Each speaker may use only evidence available in 1722. The parents then explain in writing what they decided and which argument weighed most.

   For teachers · Worksheet for this source

More sources for this unit

• The Plague at My Country House, and a Life for a Life Aelius Aristides, 170–175. Moderate. For teachers
• The Plague at Constantinople Procopius, 550–551. Moderate. For teachers
• The Plague in the Bishop of Rochester’s Household William Dene, 1349–1350. Moderate. For teachers

To finish

Come back to the question: How did religious believers respond, and did responses differ? Ask students to answer it with evidence from at least two of the sources, and to say which source they trust most and why.

Standards

Students compare how Aristides, Cyprian, Procopius and others explain a plague through their faith, and how a sermon's purpose shapes it.

Go further

Other units

Who gets blamed? · The healer's burden · Governments, quarantine, and consent · Explaining disease before germs · After the plague · Case study: smallpox · Reading sources critically

Encyclopedia

Corrupted air (miasma) · Smallpox, from inoculation to eradication · The Black Death

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