About the three plagues that occurred in Brabant and how people married without joy and died without mourning.

In the year 1315, in the time of Duke John III, about whom we are now speaking - in the year after the gatekeepers thus perished [this is a reference to the previous chapter] - three plagues began, sent by God, about which people will speak forever.

The first plague was the rain. It began in the month of May and lasted for a year. As a result, most of the grain and fruit harvest was lost.

The second plague followed a short time later in the same year. That was the heavy expensive time. I want you to realise that such a costly time had never occurred since God banished Adam from the earthly paradise. Not just bread, but all food was as expensive as had never been seen on earth before. A four-count of rye cost 60 Tournai groats in Antwerp. The people were so miserable that no one could articulate it. The moaning and crying of the poor would make even a stone turn to pity. If they lay wailing and sick by the roadside, swollen with hunger, they were dying of poverty, so people would just throw them into a pit. How and also more [other manuscripts here have the more logical reading ‘Tsestich ende oec mere’, more than sixty]. In this way our lord God punished [other manuscripts here have the logical form ‘wrac’, from avenge] the earthly sins of mankind, caused by excessive living.

The third great and severe plague followed a year later. This was the great mortality that affected rich and poor alike. No one was so healthy as not to fear dying. Few did not get sick, some healed, some died. It was said that a third of the people died. People stopped dancing, playing, singing and all revelry, for fear that people would see. You now saw happening what had been predicted long before: that the time would come on earth when brides would marry without joy, and people would go to funerals without grief. And shortly before this happened, one saw the comet pass through the sky, with its tail pointing straight to the northwest. By nature, these always announce the death of monarchs or the plagues to mankind.