In other countries, it generally lasted only half a year, but
returned frequently in individual places; on which account, some,
without sufficient proof, assigned to it a period of seven years.

Spain was uninterruptedly ravaged by the Black Plague till after
the year 1350, to which the frequent internal feuds and the wars
with the Moors not a little contributed. Alphonso XI., whose
passion for war carried him too far, died of it at the siege of
Gibraltar, on the 26th of March, 1350. He was the only king in
Europe who fell a sacrifice to it; but even before this period,
innumerable families had been thrown into affliction. The
mortality seems otherwise to have been smaller in Spain than in
Italy, and about as considerable as in France.

The whole period during which the Black Plague raged with
destructive violence in Europe was, with the exception of Russia,
from the year 1347 to 1350. The plagues which in the sequel often
returned until the year 1383, we do not consider as belonging to
"the Great Mortality." They were rather common pestilences,
without inflammation of the lungs, such as in former times, and in
the following centuries, were excited by the matter of contagion
everywhere existing, and which, on every favourable occasion,
gained ground anew, as is usually the case with this frightful
disease.

The concourse of large bodies of people was especially dangerous;
and thus the premature celebration of the Jubilee to which Clement
VI. cited the faithful to Rome (1350) during the great epidemic,
caused a new eruption of the plague, from which it is said that