Page 50 - Studia Universitatis Hereditati, vol 13(1) (2025)

bodies were later exhumed and transferred to faced severe shortages and were unable to
regular cemeteries, which had to be done secret- meet their tax obligations. In response to
ly as the authorities did not allow this (Travner these circumstances, the parish priest of St
1934, 46, 47). Vid, Tomaž Zahely, asked the provincial
According to the Chronicle of the parish of government for tax relief for his parishion-
4
St Vid, written by Matej Slekovec (as cited in ers – a request that was readily granted by
Hojnik 2025, 300), the plague began to attack the authorities.
again with devastating force in 1645:
In addition to the descriptions of living
Due to the townspeople’s lack of caution, conditions, hygiene and the tragedy of rotting
the disease spread throughout St Vid and corpses and their odour, some Slovenian-lan-
the Haloze region. The victims suffered guage literary works are based on the belief in
from successive and consistent symptoms: the cleansing power of fire and smoke. Fire is
50 violent stomach cramps attacked them one often associated with rituals and ceremonies
after the other, some had acute chest pains, aimed at purifying or cleansing people, objects
studia universitatis hereditati, letnik 13 (2025), številka 1 / volume 13 (2025), number 1
while others developed buboes character- or spaces.
ised by bloody red spots on their bodies. The Fumigation was the most important meth-
disease progressed with frightening speed – od of preventing the plague. This practise was
most of those affected succumbed within based on the belief that fire had purifying prop-
24 hours after feeling a paralysing weakness. erties and could clear the air. Various fragrant
Only a few survived for several days and re- or smoky woods were used for this purpose, in-
coveries were extremely rare. The corpses of cluding cypress, pine, juniper, oak and beech. In
the deceased were a gruesome sight, as they addition to pleasant scents, unpleasant-smell-
quickly turned black after death and gave ing substances were also used, including castore-
off an overwhelming stench. ‘This is death,’ um, galbanum, sulphur, burnt leather, horns and
people whispered to each other as despair gunpowder. Gunpowder was particularly prized
spread through the community. Some res- and was used from the sixteenth to the late eight-
idents thought of fleeing, but quickly real- eenth century (Byfleet 2023).
ised they had nowhere to go – conditions The function and occurrences of the puri-
in the neighbouring region of Haloze were fying fire were described in detail in James Fraz-
just as bad. By July 1645, the epidemic had er’s Golden Bough (1922) in the chapter on the
already affected half of the houses in St Vid. ‘Need-fire’ and in several places in earlier ver-
The homes of those infected were quar- sions of the book. Frazer claims that the fire fes-
antined, marked with conspicuous white tivals are all celebrated periodically at certain
crosses, and supplies were delivered through times of the year and date back to a very distant
the windows to minimise contact. When a time. But apart from these regularly recurring
death occurred, families resorted to secret celebrations, farmers in many parts of Europe
burials, usually held at night behind their resorted to a fire ritual at irregular intervals in
homes. The toll taken by the plague went times of hardship and distress, especially when
beyond the human victims and devastat- their livestock was afflicted by a plague. Some-
ed the local economy. With so many people times the need-fire was referred to as a ‘wild
dead, agricultural labour in the vineyards fire’, no doubt to distinguish it from the tame
and fields was neglected. The survivors fire produced by ordinary methods. Among the

4 The first part of the chronicle was written by Matej Slekovec (1846–1903), who worked as a priest in the neighbouring parish of
St Mark from 1887. In 1883, he published the section on the outbreak of the plague in the St Vid Chronicle and also published it
in Slovenski gospodar (see: Slekovec 1883, 142).