When sick rats crawled off a ship in Sicily in 1347, the infection they carried triggered the most fatal pandemic in recorded history, eventually killing an estimated 200 million people. Spread not only by vermin but also person-
to-person, the Black Death struck cities with varying force. A 40% loss in population was not uncommon. Someone from Siena, Italy, wrote: “No one wept for the dead because everyone expected death himself.” For several centuries, the disease in its varied forms ravaged Europe.
Pastors faced the question of whether to risk their lives by visiting their sick and dying members. Joining many from the population at large, some ministers left their homes and posts for safer locales. In 1527, when the plague swept through Wittenberg, Martin Luther instructed ministers: “Those who are engaged in a spiritual ministry such as preachers and pastors must likewise remain steadfast before the peril of death. We have a plain command from Christ, A good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep, but the hireling sees the wolf coming and flees (John 10:11). For when people are dying, they most need a spiritual ministry.”
Luther meant what he said, turning his own home into a hospital, even while his wife Katie was pregnant. In one letter he wrote, “There are battles without and terrors within.”
Geneva faced its own struggles as the plague periodically devastated the city. John Calvin, the famed theologian there, strongly emphasized God’s sovereignty. Commenting on Jonah’s gourd, he wrote: “It is yet ever true that the gnawings even of worms are directed by the counsel of God, so that neither a herb nor a tree withers independently of his purpose.”
But how did such beliefs shape behavior when confronted with disease? Since sovereignty doesn’t preclude the use of reasonable means, officials strategically located their hospital several hundred yards outside the city walls.
That didn’t solve the issue of pastoral visitation of the sick. In fall 1542, in a ministerial meeting of perhaps 25, Pierre Blanchet, one of Geneva’s pastors, volunteered to make all hospital calls. No one objected. Blanchet survived the winter, but by the end of May, the plague had killed him. Finding a replacement proved nearly impossible. All felt accepting the task of visitation was accepting a death sentence.
The Geneva ministers resorted to drawing lots. Deemed irreplaceable, Calvin was ordered not to participate in the selection process. For some reason, they drew more than one name, but each of those chosen refused the task. Though such visitation “belongs to their office” as ministers, the record states, “God has still not given them the grace of strength and constancy needed to go to the said hospital.”
I believe in sovereignty, too, but sometimes my belief doesn’t carry the day either.
The impasse was broken when young Mathieu de Geneston, who had pastored only three years, volunteered to shoulder the responsibility. Sadly, the Black Death quickly took his life. Eventually, the Geneva pastors abandoned drawing lots, and each minister was asked to visit those directly under his pastoral care. Who knows how faithful they were in this?
About the Columnist: Paul V. Harrison has pastored Madison FWB Church in Madison, Alabama since 2015. Previously, he pastored Cross Timbers FWB church in Nashville, Tennessee, for 22 years. He was an adjunct professor at Welch College for 17 years, teaching church history and Greek. Paul is the creator of Classic Sermon Index, a subscription-based online index of over 66,000 sermons, with clients including Harvard, Baylor, and Vanderbilt, among others: classicsermonindex.com.
