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The middle of the fourteenth century was a period of extraordinary
terror and disaster to Europe. Numerous portents, which sadly frightened
the people, were followed by a pestilence which threatened to turn the
continent into an unpeopled wilderness. For year after year there were
signs in the sky, on the earth, in the air, all indicative, as men
thought, of some terrible coming event. In 1337 a great comet appeared
in the heavens, its far-extending tail sowing deep dread in the minds of
the ignorant masses. During the three succeeding years the land was
visited by enormous flying armies of locusts, which descended in myriads
upon the fields, and left the shadow of famine in their track. In 1348
came an earthquake of such frightful violence that many men deemed the
end of the world to be presaged. Its devastations were widely spread.
Cyprus, Greece, and Italy were terribly visited, and it extended through
the Alpine valleys as far as Basle. Mountains sank into the earth. In
Carinthia thirty villages and the tower of Villach were ruined.
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