A Rod For Run Awayes Summary

When the plague hit Europe in the 14th century, thousands of people were seemingly dropping dead. Christians determined that the cause of these fatalities was an act of God’s wrath and punishment for the sinners. Unfortunately, dense populations of peasants in cities allowed the disease to spread quickly, yet elite such as priests and physicians often fled for their own wellbeing. Thomas Dekker addresses his thought that these elite should be obligated to remain in the cities to aid the sick peasants rather than leaving them for dead in the piece A Rod for Run-awayes. Dekker argues that the rich peoples who fled could have helped those that were left behind both by providing for them directly in addition to demonstrating to God the sense of community with the virtue of dealing with this issue together. During this time, priests and physicians should have felt

In fleeing, priests abandoned many people who wished for proper prayer, and potentially burial, when the time came. This gave peasants a lack of hope, because already in the wake of feeling as though they had disappointed God, these peasants no longer had the correct ability to resolve their sins, and potentially be spared from this disease. Additionally, when the physicians left, people further lost hope as they did not know how the physically solve the issues they were facing. Dekker describes how churchyards “have letten their ground to so many poore Tenants, that there is scarce roome left for any more to dwell there, they are so pestred” (Dekker 13). He describes almost a state of anarchy as people cannot even relish in the idea of a proper burial from priests, but instead are buried in pits with masses of other people washed in “foule water”. Without priests and physicians, the people are lost and have neither religion nor medicine to turn