1349 - The Rat Crusade“And he that owneth the house shall come and tell the priest, saying, it seemeth to me there is as it were a plague in the house. Then the priest shall command that they empty the house...that all that is in the house be not made unclean....And he shall cause the house to be scraped within round about, and they shall pour out the dust...into an unclean place.”—Leviticus 14:35-41They obliged the carpenters to watch.Gathering his robe against the January cold, Wilhelm of Glarus was likewise an unwilling witness, the prisoner of his own eyes. They refused to tear themselves from the fine new house—a remarkable, windowless structure of two stories’ height—standing, daubed with pitch instead of plaster and unpainted, upon a rocky islet where the Rhine bent itself toward the faraway ocean. Neither were the scraps and shavery of its making cleared away, instead being swept beneath its open foundation, augmented with many a wicker basket of forest-gathered kindling.Snowflakes, impelled by savage, pine-laden gusts, stung exposed flesh.
