Betrayal in the 14th Century (and the Present)

Sometimes it’s important to be reminded that our petty personal dramas are utterly insignificant in the face of history. The plight of the Tzombi exerts a pull on me which helps me forget mundane day-to-day squabbles and reminds me that I serve a larger goal. In that spirit, I present more history:

When the Black Death spread through Europe, certain populations were unaffected. The Tzombi were the most visible of this plague-immune group. Since Tzombi kept their houses dark, the windows of the Pre-Deceased population were covered with shutters and heavy draperies. The Tzombi were loath to take baths, because this hastened the deterioration of their skin. The Pre-Deceased also adopted these measures. Though we don’t have any Tzombi-written memoirs (no blood circulation leads to poor eyesight, which makes them averse to writing for long periods) we do have an account from Agnolo di Tura, called the Fat, from Siena.

The ashen ones, called the Luccini, were selected by the Magistrates and were bestowed with a thousand gold florin each that they were to spend on the poor sick and to bury the poor dead. And it is found that at this time there died in Siena 36,000 persons 20 years of age or less, and the aged and other people died, to a total of 52,000 in all in Siena. And in the suburbs of Siena 28,000 persons died, so that in all it is found that in the city and suburbs of Siena 80,000 persons died. But of the Luccini there were but few victims.


As soon as the plague was over, however, some began to turn against the Tzombi, believing that their immunity to the disease suggested that they were responsible for causing it. In Strasbourg, many were tried and tortured, and despite the Tzombi race’s relative indifference to pain, a few confessed:

Balavignus the grey, a wight and inhabitant of Thonon, was only placed on the rack a short time, and his bones did crack such that when he was taken off his gait was uneven and his wrist did hang limply from the tender sinews; and he confessed that he had been sold poison in a sewn leather bag, and he was ordered on pain of ban and in obedience of law to put the same poison into the larger and smaller wells of his town; he stated that the color of the poison was red and black and did resemble muscerdae.

In 1380, there followed lynchings in several towns by an anti-Tzombi vigilante society who called themselves the Boniti. Di Tura includes a description of one:

These four the Boniti dragged out of their houses and cut off their heads. And the mayor caused their heads to be set upon poles and carried before the king. And when the king saw the heads he did greet them and the heads were known to have greeted back for a day and a night. And the king thanked the mayor warmly for what he had done. But when the second morning dawned the heads were without life.

I confess that I’ve been thinking a great deal over the past several days about betrayal, how people can turn against you for no reason other than ignorance and an unwillingness to bend their minds and wills into something good and kind. No one is impervious to pain, not even the Tzombi.