At first glance, it may seem that Guillaume de Manu's text is vulnerable to modern skepticism towards historical texts. However, after a little reflection, even today's readers will highlight real events through all the implausibility of the narrative. They will not believe in heavenly signs, nor in accusations against the Jews, nor will they treat all improbable topics in the same way; they will not put them on the same level. Guillaume did not invent anything. Of course, he is a gullible man and reflects hysterical public opinion. But this does not make the countless deaths described by Guillaume, caused, apparently, by the famous Black Plague, which devastated the north of France in 1349 and 1350, any less real. Equally real is the beating of Jews, justified in the eyes of the murderous crowds by rumors of water poisoning, which circulated almost everywhere. The general horror of the disease gave these rumors enough weight to unleash a massacre.

Here is a passage from the "Court of the King of Navarre" that speaks of the Jews:

Then the lying one appeared, Insidious, renounced, Abominable Judea, Evil, unfaithful, Who hates good and loves all evil. She has a lot of gold and silver, And she promised so much money to the Christians, That wells, rivers and springs, Who were clean and healthy, They were poisoned in many places. Many have lost their lives because of this, For many have made use of these springs; And that's why they died suddenly. There were a million of them, Who died because of this in the village and in the city. That's how it happened This is a fatal misfortune. But He who reigns high and sees far away, Who governs everything and foresees everything, He did not want to hide this treason and exposed it. And proclaimed it so widely, That they lost both life and property, For all the Jews were destroyed: Some are hanged, others are boiled, Others drowned, others chopped off A head with an axe or a sword, And many Christians are with them They died shamefully. [1]

Medieval communities were so afraid of the plague that they were frightened even by its very name; They tried not to pronounce it for as long as possible and not even to take the necessary measures, which aggravated the perniciousness of the epidemic. They were so helpless that to admit the truth meant for them not so much to confront misfortune as to submit to its corrupting action, to renounce even the appearance of a normal life. The entire population willingly succumbed to this blindness. A desperate desire to deny the evidence favored the hunt for scapegoats.

In Animals Afflicted with the Plague, La Fontaine remarkably conveys this almost religious reluctance to utter a terrible word, that is, to unleash the pernicious power of the disease within the community:

Plague (since we have to call it by name)...

The fabulist shows us how collective dishonesty works, recognizing the epidemic as divine punishment. It turns out that the guilt that caused the divine wrath is unevenly distributed. To get rid of the misfortune, you need to find the culprit and deal with him accordingly or, as La Fontaine writes, "surrender" him to the deity.

The first in the fable are the predators, who innocently describe their ferocious behavior, which behavior they are immediately forgiven. The donkey is the last, and it is he, the least bloodthirsty and, therefore, the weakest and most defenseless, who is ultimately chosen as the victim.

In some cities, according to historians, Jews were exterminated even before the arrival of the plague, with a single rumor about its appearance in the neighborhood. Guillaume's story could reflect events of this type, since in the poem the massacre takes place long before the climax of the epidemic. But the numerous deaths attributed by the author to Jewish poison suggest a different explanation. If these dead are real (and there is no reason to think of them as imaginary), then they could have been the first victims of the same plague. But it does not occur to Guillaume, even in hindsight. In his eyes, the traditional scapegoats retain explanatory power for the first stages of the epidemic. Only for subsequent stages does the author recognize the presence of a pathological phenomenon proper. At a certain point, the magnitude of the disaster no longer allows us to see the only explanation in the poisoners' conspiracy, but Guillaume, nevertheless, does not reinterpret the entire series of events from the point of view of their real cause.

It may be asked, however, to what extent the poet admits the presence of the plague at all, since he avoids writing the fatal word in black and white to the very end. At the decisive moment, he solemnly introduces the Greek and, it seems, still rare term "epidemic" at that time. This word obviously functions differently in his text than it would in ours; It is not the real equivalent of the dreaded term, it is rather a kind of surrogate, a new ploy not to call the plague by its name, in short, a new scapegoat, but this time purely linguistic. It was impossible, says Guillaume, to determine the nature and cause of the disease from which so many people died in so short a time:

There was no doctor, no healer, Who would be able to tell the reason, Where did it come from and what is it, Nor give her a cure, Only that it was a disease Nicknamed "epidemic".

Here, too, Guillaume obediently follows public opinion instead of thinking for himself. From the scholarly word "epidemic" in the fourteenth century still emanates the aroma of "science" that helps to ward off fear, like the incense that was burned at crossroads to weaken the plague fumes. A correctly named illness seems to be half-healed, and in order to give ourselves the false impression of control, we often rename uncontrollable phenomena. These linguistic exorcisms are still willingly pursued in areas where our science remains illusory or ineffective. By refusing to name the plague, it is the plague that is ultimately "consigned" to the deity, that is, a linguistic sacrifice is arranged—innocent enough, of course, compared to the human sacrifices that accompany or precede it, but nevertheless similar in its fundamental structure.

Even in retrospect, all the collective scapegoats – real and imagined, Jews and flagellants, rockfalls and the word "epidemic" – continue to play their part in Guillaume's story so successfully that he never notices the unity of the scourge we call the Black Plague. He continues to see many different calamities, more or less independent or connected with each other only by their religious significance, partly like the ten plagues of Egypt.