Page 49 - Studia Universitatis Hereditati, vol 13(1) (2025)

during the day, steamed up and spread the er that infected corpses were buried in this place
stench in the city air that people breathed at that time (p. 96).
in. Furthermore, half-naked children ran Ptuj also experienced the horrors of the lo-
through the streets, peeing and pooing wher- cust invasion in 1672, exactly 800 years after the
ever they could. And the adults didn’t hes- invasion of locusts in 872, with swarms again ar-
itate for too long either. Hordes of hungry riving in such massive numbers that they dark-
cats and dogs and whole swarms of rats were ened the sun. Strong winds drove them into
scattered across the city. Even in the houses, the Drava River, causing mass drowning. The
they probably didn’t pay too much attention waves then deposited countless carcasses along
to hygiene and bred lice and fleas. The inhab- the shoreline, where decomposition produced
itants of Metlika died like flies and could not an overwhelming stench. An epidemic followed,
be buried on the spot in the parish cemetery which only stopped the following year (Travner
of the Three Parishes, but exactly where St 1934, 112). 49
Roch’s Church stands today, or on the site of During the plague, infected human corps-
the plague sign at St Martin’s Church. The es often lay unburied for a long time on roads,
inhabitants of Metlika were frequently af- fields and in thickets, so that they were torn
flicted by plague, cholera, smallpox, typhus, apart by dogs and wild animals, as for example
dysentery and occasionally famine. The most near Ptuj in 1682. Other bodies rotted for weeks
severe outbreaks of plague occurred in 1431, and months in abandoned houses. Such cases oc-
1510, 1646, 1647 and 1691 and then again curred mainly in the countryside, where entire Sensory Representations of Plague
from 1720 to 1730, i.e. for ten years. 3 houses and settlements often died out, so that
there was a lack of undertakers to bury the dead.
Travner explains (1934) that in the years In the cities, too, piles of corpses often lay in the
872 and 873, Slovenia, especially Lower Styr- streets. Everyone ran away from the infected
ia, was hit by extreme heat and drought. At the corpses. They spread such a terrible stench that
same time, huge swarms of locusts flew in, devas- nobody could stay near them. There was also a
tating the Ptujsko polje in particular. The wind high risk of infection. That is why everyone – ex-
drove them into the Drava, but the waves threw cept the gravediggers – was strictly forbidden to
them back onto land. Here, the carcasses of the touch the corpses. The locals had to hire a brave
locusts rotted and spread an unbearable stench. man as quickly as possible to pull the corpse out
As a result, a major epidemic broke out in Ptuj of the house with an iron hook on a long pole.
and the surrounding area, killing many people. It was only in later times (especially after the
In the following years, similar conditions pre- provisions of the Infection Ordinance of 1710)
vailed throughout Europe (Travner 1934, 91). In that corpses were covered with sheets or placed
1542 and 1543, large swarms of locusts also flew in coffins made of thin wood and incensed. In-
into Carniola and Styria, devouring everything fected corpses were destined for their own cem-
that was green in a very short time. A great fam- eteries outside the towns and villages, which the
ine followed. The rotting carcasses of thousands communities had to take care of. They dug large
of animals polluted the air. In 1542, in the area and deep plague pits in which the corpses were
around Celje, especially on the border with Car- disposed of, sprinkled with quicklime and then
niola, almost all landowners fled for fear of the raked. They often even buried the apparently
plague epidemic. Between Maribor and Kam- dead. When the epidemic ended, common mon-
nica at the end of the nineteenth century, there uments (plague signs) were erected on the com-
was a plague sign with the year 1543 as a remind- mon graves of the victims. Here and there the
3 Unless otherwise noted, all translations are by the author.