Emperor Leopold I fled the City, because he could, just after promising to erect a monument if the Plague would come to an end.
Several sculpturers over the years got busy and the Monument was completed and inaugurated in 1693.
This monument fundamentally bears witness to the fact that the Black Plague and the Second Attack of the Turks upon Vienna were God's punishment for the sinful life of his creation and that, however, the pious intervention by the Emperor defeated both: The Plague and the Turks.
Let's look at this happening in the light of a modicum of sober contemplation:
God creates man 'in his image' but endows him/her with certain needs and drives.
Then, when man acts in accordance with his design, this so-called all-forgiving and all-merciful God sends as punishment a devastating disease which kills in a most painful and cruel manner, young and old, babies in diapers and doddering old men and women, the guilty and the innocent.
It is truly bad enough that the people of the 17th Century believed such utter nonsense.
What is worse still, is the fact that even today people believe that everything which happens is planned by God.
Yes I know all the arguments in favour of this proposition:
Man must experience pain, to appreciate the state of painlessness.
Man must starve to appreciate the feeling of being satiated.
Man must experience God's punishment, so he may appreciate God's grace.
When we consider the claim of God's all powerful, all knowing, all good, all just all-benevolent nature, all of the above becomes meaningless drivel.
So, after all this, here is a picture of the Pestilence Column in Vienna's Graben, by day and by night.
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