KUŽNA EPIDEMIJA V ČRNOMLJU V LETIH 1691-92 - TIPIČEN PRIMER POJAVNIH OBLIK IN POSLEDIC V MESTNIH OKOLJIH
1691/1692 EPIDEMIC OF BUBONIC PLAGUE IN ČRNOMELJ - A TYPICAL EXAMPLE OF CAUSE AND CONSENQUENCE IN URBAN ENVIRONMENTS?

Summary/Abstract: Next to peninsula Istria, Slovenia and its Dolenjska region in particular (today’s southeastern part of Slovenia), were most exposed to plague disease. The town of Črnomelj is situated in Dolenjska part of Bela krajina, almost on the region’s outer rim.The last epidemic in the region in 1691/1692 hit only this town and its neighboring area and is one of the best documented epidemics in Slovenia, since the kept records even list all the people, who fell ill or died. The paper follows the chain of events, from the outbreak of disease until it was contained, trying to establish all their demographic consequences. By no means Črnomelj Plague was a selective murderer, that would kill certain families with mathematic precision and leave others unharmed. However, the plague was spread among many more households, than it cleaned off their inhabitants. The plague killed 139, or one fifth of the entire town population in the town, which with neighboring area had a population of 650. On the other hand, 216 infected shows that every third towner fell ill and two out of three Črnomelj people died. The plague hit at least 77 percent of all households, or two-thirds of them all, in some cases hitting peerhaps 97 households (80% of them all). Deaths in 57 households evidence that the Black Death visited every second household. In the end, only 3 households on the outskirts were entirely swept clean of life and additional 3 in the neighboring villages. The final statistics show numbers, entirely different from gloomy narrative reports that unjustifiably attribute describe plague as an apocalypse in urban settlements.

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