Cămașa ciumei

Lore & Background

The central operation of the rite compressed the preparation of fibre, spinning, warping, weaving, cutting and sewing into one uninterrupted period, usually carried out by a specially constituted group of women. Recorded objects included wearable shirts, miniature garments small enough for a baby or doll, and late twentieth-century examples from eastern Serbia made from an opened hemp sack through which a person crawled. Depending on the locality, the finished textile was offered at the village boundary, hung in a tree, buried, burned, cast into the wind, placed on an anthropomorphic effigy, worn by a sick person, or held open while inhabitants passed through it.

Reader's Guide

The earliest known written notice from the Romanian lands appears in Anton-Maria del Chiaro's 1718 history of Wallachia, which records women producing a hemp shirt within twenty-four hours and then burning it. Twentieth- and twenty-first-century research documented both remembered performances and surviving garments, including wartime uses in eastern Serbia in 1991 and 1999. The plague shirt belongs to a wider Balkan and eastern European class of textiles completed within one day, but the names and uses of those objects were not identical. Romanian speech also preserved the comparison a lucra la cămașa ciumei, applied to work done with exceptional speed. The custom demonstrates how communities mobilized collective ritual action to confront epidemic disease and other dangers, with variations in makers, materials, and disposal methods across regions.

Did You Know?

• The shirt had to be made in a single day or night, from raw fibre to finished garment.
• In some localities, the makers had to be seven women all named Maria, or six widows all named Stana.
• The earliest written record of the rite is from 1718, by Anton-Maria del Chiaro, secretary to the Wallachian prince Constantin Brâncoveanu.
• The shirt was used as recently as 1991 and 1999 in eastern Serbia for wartime protection.

The Makers and Their Sacred Duties

The selection of women to produce the plague shirt followed strict local protocols that varied by village. Groups typically numbered three, seven, or nine, though some accounts specify different totals. The criteria for participation were deeply tied to a woman's bodily and social status: in some communities, only elderly women past menstruation—locally called femei iertate, or "forgiven women"—could undertake the work. Other localities demanded widows, virgins, or women sharing a particular given name. At Făgăraș, the requirement was seven women all named Maria; at Mali Jasenovac, six widows named Stana. In Țara Lăpușului, widows led the effort, while in Țara Codrului, young unmarried women worked under the supervision of an experienced elder. The entire process—fibre preparation, spinning, warping, weaving, cutting, and sewing—had to be completed in a single unbroken stretch of time, usually one day or one night. At Didic, the scope expanded further, with representatives from multiple villages converging at a road junction to produce the garment collectively.

A Custom Across Borders

The plague shirt was far from a single-village curiosity. Romanian ethnographic records place the custom in Transylvania, Oltenia, Dobruja, Muntenia, Maramureș, Bukovina, and the Banat, while historical research on plague in Transylvania extends the range into several western Romanian provinces. Beyond Romania's borders, the practice persisted among Romanian-speaking communities in the Timok Valley and other parts of eastern Serbia, with specific evidence from Bukovče, Kobišnica, Jabukovac, Mosna, Boljetin, Donji Milanovac, Gradskovo, Halovo, Mali Jasenovac, and Šipikovo, plus settlements in the Braničevo District. Naming varied by region: the standard Romanian form pairs cămașă with the genitive of ciumă, while Oltenia and Muntenia also used ia ciumei or cămașa de izbândă, meaning "victory shirt." In Serbia, the dialectal form cămașa ciumii appears, and the local speech of Timok Valley communities is known as "Tsaran." The practice sits within a broader Balkan tradition of one-day textiles, with Serbian jednodanka košulja and Bulgarian and Macedonian чумино платно representing related but distinct objects.

From Brâncoveanu's Court to Modern Fieldwork

The earliest written trace of the rite in the Romanian lands comes from Anton-Maria del Chiaro, secretary to Prince Constantin Brâncoveanu, whose 1718 history of Wallachia describes women spinning, weaving, and sewing a hemp shirt within twenty-four hours before burning it. This single account fixed the defining time constraint in the documentary record. Centuries later, the practice attracted sustained scholarly attention. Ion Chelcea documented a complete Tuesday-night performance in Feleac in 1936, and Ion Aurel Candrea's 1944 synthesis of Romanian medical folklore assembled records from multiple regions, including communal passage through the garment and the use of a dressed effigy. Milorad Dragić's 1969 study preserved details of a Bukovče shirt made in the late 1930s. Camelia Burghele published a dedicated monograph in 2003 and returned to the subject in 2020 with field material from Sălaj. Valentin Arapu's 2021 study compared Romanian variants with Greek and South Slavic material, while Natalia Golant's 2022 English-language work combined earlier literature with fieldwork conducted in Ponoarele in 2011 and in eastern Serbia in 2014, 2021, and 2022.

Protection, Disposal, and Living Memory

The finished textile served as a shield against a remarkably broad catalogue of threats: plague, cholera, illness in newborns, infertility, nervous disorders, harm to crops and livestock, and even bullets or death in wartime. How the community deployed the completed shirt depended on local custom. In some villages it was offered at the boundary, hung in a tree, buried, burned, or cast into the wind. In others it was placed on an anthropomorphic effigy, worn by a sick person, or held open while inhabitants passed through it. Recorded objects ranged from full-size wearable shirts to miniature garments sized for a baby or doll, and in late twentieth-century eastern Serbia, an opened hemp sack through which a person crawled served the same apotropaic purpose. By the time Golant conducted her fieldwork, manufacture had ceased in the Oltenian villages she studied, though commemorative feasts persisted, and in Timok Valley villages some families still kept shirts even though no new ones were being made. Wartime uses in eastern Serbia in 1991 and 1999 show the rite could still be activated under acute threat.