In western Europe, news of "pestilence," as it was called, traveled far more quickly than the disease itself. And obviously neither of us means that a handful of returned Genoan sailors were still asymptomatic when they went home to Piancenza telling stories of what had happened on their ship. By the fourteenth century, the papacy had regular courier/embassy service to key locations--a messenger could make the trans-alpine journey to London in about a month. I use that example to illustrate how connected late medieval Europe was.

Some of the clearest evidence for the rapid spread of news of the pestilence comes from religious sources. Early on, and to some extent in the later waves of plague, a popular explanation for the horror was an apocalyptic divine punishment for the sins of humanity, a warning to repent before it was too late.

In Tournai (France), the abbot of St. Giles writes in his chronicle:

Since the beginning of 1349 the whole world has been encompassed by evil and many new happenings have been reported from distant places throughout the world [including] the mortality of men, women and children.

There were great rumours of these things, but the people did not take much notice, and did not realize the connection with their sins, with the result that censures, words and sermons had little or no effect until the blow actually fell.

The bishop of Winchester, in England, pens a letter to his clergy and monks:

We report with anguish the serious news which has come to our ears: that this cruel plague has now begun a similarly savage attack on the coastal areas of England. We are struck by terror lest (may God avert it!) this brutal disease should rage in any part of our city or diocese.

Furthermore, when we talk about news transmission in these cases, it is very clear that what we witness in the sources are entire oral networks and webs of transmission. Our French abbot is very familiar with the "origin story" of the pestilence among the Mongols, gets some of his information from visitors from Paris, and hears a different story about two pilgrims who barely escaped a plague-ridden inn with their lives.

News of the Black Death definitely got around.