During the mid 14th century, did news of the Black Death spread ahead of the disease itself?
It was the case with most part of now Germany (then HRE) as well as the Baltic countries. The 'news' was indeed a well-known rumor of well-poisoning of the Jews as a possible cause of the outbreaks.
This rumor was firstly formulated after the alleged 'interrogation' against some Jews from early summer to autumn (October) in 1348, around Lake Geneva, now Switzerland. Many Jews in cities in HRE like Strassburg, Constance, Brandenburg, and Erfurt, was caught and massacred in the first half of the year 1349, mainly in February and in March 1349.
As the well-poisoning rumor spread in Central Europe in late 1348 and in early 1349, the citizens of these cities also witnessed the surge of another possible reaction to the plague, the procession of the flagellants. This lay religious movement was primarily a public spectacle of personal penitence by showing self-flagellation act on the naked skin, but it is worth noting that the surge of their procession also preceded the actual arrival of the plague in most cities. Furthermore, participants of the procession sometimes engaged themselves with the massacre of the Jews, i.e. the pogrom (Kelly 2006: 267). These occurred a few (ca. 2 or 3) months before the plague finally came to the southernmost part of HRE from the Adriatic coast earliest in May, 1349.
On the other hand, Cologne in Rhineland had a first recorded outbreak of the plague in June, 1349, and the pogrom occurred in August. Among the cities I mentioned in this post, only Cologne in fact followed the generally assumed chronological order, namely the plague first and then the pogrom as a possible reaction to the apocalyptic events.
Thus, in contrast to general assumption, the pogrom of alleged culprits of poisoning wells and the religious procession seemed to precede the arrival of the first outbreak of the Black Death in many cases, though it is often difficult to reconstruct the exact 'invasion routes' of the outbreak. In turn it means that they could actually be the precautions against the outbreak. If so, how can we evaluate the effectiveness of such 'precautions', in light of the estimated high mortality rate?
References:
Boccaccio's Decameron, describing Florence-
In the face of its onrush, all the wisdom and ingenuity of man were unavailing. Large quantities of refuse were cleared out of the city by officials appointed for that purpose, all sick persons were refused entry, and numerous instructions were issued for safeguarding the peoples health, but all to no avail. Nor were the countless petitions humbly directed to God by the pious, whether by means of formal processions or in any other guise, any less ineffectual. For in the early spring of that year, the plague began, in a terrifying and extraordinary manner, to make its disastrous effects apparent.
Letter from the papal court at Avignon, copied into a Flemish Chronicle:
On 31st December 1347 three galleys loaded with spices and other goods put into the port of Genoa [...] they were horribly infected and, when the Genoese realised this,, and that other men were dying suddenly without remedy, the ships were driven from the port with burning arrows and other engines of war. For there was no one who had dared touch them or do business with them who did not immediately die.
Gilles li Muisis, Abbot of St Giles at Tournai:
In addition there were persistent reports of a mortality which had begun in the East [...] It was also strongly rumoured that in Hungary, Germany, and the duchy of Brabant, in cities, towns, settlements and villages, men were inciting one another and gathering in crowds of 200, 300, even 500 or more [...] They went through the countryside twice a day for thirty three days, naked except for their drawers, wearing hoods and beating themselves with whips until the blood flowed. At last they arrived in Flanders....
[...] And in all the parishes the priests, the parish clerks and the grave diggers earned their fees by tolling the passing bells by day and night, in the morning and in the evening; and thus everyone in the city, men and women alike, began to be afraid; and no one knew what to do.
(Taken from The Black Death by Rosemary Horrox, MUP 1994)
