THE EPIDEMIC IN ITALY.
The great sickness reached Italy in the early days of 1348. The
report at Avignon at the time was that three plague-stricken vessels
had put into the port of Genoa in January, whilst from another
source it would appear that at the same time another ship brought
the contagion from the East to Venice. From these two places the
epidemic quickly spread over the entire country. What happened in
the early days of this frightful scourge is best told in the actual
words of Gabriel de' Mussi, who possessed special means of knowledge,
and who has until quite recently been looked upon, but incorrectly,
as a passenger by one of the very vessels which brought the plague
from the Crimea to Genoa. The history of the progress of the plague
may be gathered from the pages of the detailed chronicles, which at
that time recorded the principal events in the various large and
prosperous cities of the Italian peninsula, as well as from the
well-known account of the straits to which Florence was reduced
by the sickness, given in the introduction to the "Decameron" of
Boccaccio.
On reviewing in detail the testimonies from every land relating to
this great calamity, it is impossible to overlook the sameness of
the terms in which writers the most diverse in character, and in
places far distant from one another, describe what passed before
their eyes. It has already been remarked that the imperial historian,
John Cantacuzene, in recounting the horrors of the plague in
Constantinople, has borrowed from Thucydides. But the same ideas, the
very same words, suggest themselves involuntarily to one and all.
The simple monastic annalist of the half-buried [p017] cloister in
Engelberg, the more courtly chronicler of St. Denis, the notary who
writes with the dryness and technicalities of his profession, but
displays withal a weakness for rhetoric and gossip, _littérateurs_
like Boccaccio, whose _forte_ is narrative, or like Petrarch,
delighting in a show of words, the business-like town chronicler of
an Italian city, and the author who aspires to the rank of historian,
the physician whose interest is professional, even the scribbler who
takes this strange theme as the subject for his jingling verse, all
speak with such complete oneness of expression that it would almost
seem that each had copied his neighbour, and that there is here a
fine theme for the scientific amusement known as "investigation
of sources." It is only when we come to examine the whole body of
evidence that there is borne in upon the mind a realisation of the
nature of a calamity which, spreading everywhere, was everywhere the
same in its horrors, becoming thus nothing less than a world-wide
tragedy, and it is seen that even the phrases of the rhetorician can
do no more than rise to the terrible reality of fact.
First in importance, as well as in order of time, comes the testimony
of De' Mussi, the substance of which is here given. It so happened
that when the ships left Caffa—some bound for Genoa, some for Venice,
and some to other parts of the Christian world—a few of the sailors
were already infected by the fatal disease. One sick man was enough
to infect the whole household, and the corpse as it was carried to
the grave brought death to its bearers. "Tell, O Sicily, and ye, the
many islands of the sea, the judgments of God. Confess, O Genoa, what
thou hast done, since we of Genoa and Venice are compelled to make
God's chastisement manifest. Alas! our ships enter the port, but of
a thousand sailors hardly ten are spared. We reach our homes; our
kindred and our neighbours come from all parts to visit us. Woe to
us for we cast at them the darts of death! Whilst we spoke to them,
whilst they embraced us and kissed us, we scattered [p018] the
poison from our lips. Going back to their homes, they in turn soon
infected their whole families, who in three days succumbed, and were
buried in one common grave. Priests and doctors visiting the sick
returned from their duties ill, and soon were numbered with the dead.
O, death! cruel, bitter, impious death! which thus breaks the bonds
of affection and divides father and mother, brother and sister, son
and wife.
"Lamenting our misery, we feared to fly, yet we dared not remain."
The terror increased when it was found that even the effects and
clothes of the dead were capable of communicating the disease.
This was seen in the case of four soldiers at a place near Genoa.
Returning to their camp they carried back with them a woollen
bed-covering they had found in a house at Rivarolo, on the sea-coast,
where the sickness had swept away the entire population. The night
following the four slept under the coverlet, and in the morning all
were found to be dead. At Genoa the plague spared hardly a seventh
part of the population. At Venice it is said that more than seventy
died out of every hundred, and out of four-and-twenty excellent
doctors twenty were soon carried off by the sickness.
"But as an inhabitant I am asked to write more of Piacenza so that
it may be known what happened there in the year 1348. Some Genoese
who fled from the plague raging in their city betook themselves
hither. They rested at Bobbio, and there sold the merchandise they
had brought with them. The purchaser and their host, together with
all his family and many neighbours, were quickly stricken with the
sickness and died. One of these, wishing to make his will, called
a notary, his confessor, and the necessary witnesses. The next day
all these were buried together. So greatly did the calamity increase
that nearly all the inhabitants of Bobbio soon fell a prey to the
sickness, and there remained in the town only the dead.
"In the spring of 1348 another Genoese infected with the plague came
to Piacenza. He sought out his friend Fulchino [p019] della Croce,
who took him into his house. Almost immediately afterwards he died,
and the said Fulchino was also quickly carried off with his entire
family and many of his neighbours. In a brief space the plague was
rife throughout the city. I know not where to begin; everywhere there
was weeping and mourning. So great was the mortality that men hardly
dared to breathe. The dead were without number, and those who still
lived gave themselves up as lost, and prepared for the tomb.
"The cemeteries failing, it was necessary to dig trenches to receive
the bodies of the dead. It frequently happened that a husband
and wife, a father and son, a mother and daughter—nay, whole
families—were cast together in the same pit.
"It was the same in the neighbouring towns and villages. One Oberto
di Sasso, who had come one day from an infected place to the church
of the Friars Minor to make his will, called thither a notary,
witnesses, and neighbours. All these, together with others, to the
number of more than sixty, died within a short space of time. Also
the religious man, friar Sifredo de' Bardi, of the convent and
order of Preachers, a man of prudence and great learning, who had
visited our Lord's sepulchre, died with twenty-three other members
of his order and convent. Also the learned and virtuous friar
Bertolin Coxadocha, of Piacenza, of the order of Minorites, with
four-and-twenty members of his community was carried off. So too of
the convent of Augustinian Hermits—seven; of the Carmelites—seven;
of the Servites of Mary—four, and more than sixty dignitaries and
rectors of churches in the city and district of Piacenza died. Of
nobles, too, many; of young people a vast number."
De' Mussi then proceeds to give examples of the scenes daily passing
before his eyes in the plague-stricken cities of northern Italy. The
sick man lay languishing alone in his house and no one came near
him. Those most dear to him, regardless of the ties of kindred or
affection, [p020] withdrew themselves to a distance; the doctor
did not come to him, and even the priest with fear and trembling
administered the Sacraments of the Church. Men and women, racked with
the consuming fever, pleaded—but in vain—for a draught of water, and
uselessly raved for someone to watch at their bedside. The father or
the wife would not touch the corpse of child or husband to prepare it
for the grave, or follow it thither. No prayer was said, nor solemn
office sung, nor bell tolled for the funeral of even the noblest
citizen; but by day and night the corpses were borne to the common
plague-pit without rite or ceremony. The doors of the houses now
desolate and empty remained closed, and no one cared, nor, indeed,
dared to enter.
Such is the picture of the effect of the malady and the terrible
mortality caused by it drawn by one who seems to have seen its first
introduction into Italy, and who certainly had the best opportunity
of early observing its rapid progress. It might, perhaps, be
thought that his description of the horrors of the infected cities
was over-coloured and the creation of his imagination. But in the
details it bears on the surface the stamp of truth, and in its chief
characteristics it is confirmed by too many independent witnesses in
other parts of Italy, and even in Europe generally, to leave a doubt
that it corresponded to the literal reality.
What happened at Florence is well-known through the graphic
description of Boccaccio. So terrible was the mortality in that
prosperous city that the very outbreak became for a time known in
Europe as the "Pestilence of Florence." In the spring of the previous
year (1347) a severe famine had been experienced, and some 94,000
people had been in receipt of State relief, whilst about 4,000 are
supposed to have perished of starvation in the city[23] and its
neighbourhood. The people, enfeebled by previous hardships, would
naturally fall a prey more easily [p021] to the poison of the
epidemic. In April, 1348, the dreaded infection began to show itself.
"To cure the malady," writes Boccaccio, "neither medical knowledge
nor the power of drugs was of any avail, whether because the disease
was in its own nature mortal, or that the physicians (the number
of whom—taking quacks and women pretenders into account—was grown
very great) could form no just idea of the cause, nor consequently
ground a true method of cure; of those attacked few or none escaped,
but they generally died the third day from the first appearance of
the symptoms, without a fever or other form of illness manifesting
itself. The disease was communicated by the sick to those in health
and seemed daily to gain head and increase in violence, just as fire
will do by casting fresh fuel on it. The contagion was communicated
not only by conversation with those sick, but also by approaching
them too closely, or even by merely handling their clothes or
anything they had previously touched.
"What I am going to relate is certainly marvellous, and, had I not
seen it with my own eyes, and were there not many witnesses to
attest its truth besides myself, I should not venture to recount it,
whatever the credit of persons who had informed me of it. Such, I
say, was the deadly character of the pestilential matter, that it
passed the infection not only from man to man; but, what is more
wonderful, and has been often proved, anything belonging to those
sick with the disease, if touched by any other creature, would
certainly affect and even kill it in a short space of time. One
instance of this kind I took special note of, namely, the rags of a
poor man just dead having been thrown into the street, two hogs came
by at the time and began to root amongst them, shaking them in their
jaws. In less than an hour they fell down and died on the spot.
"Strange were the devices resorted to by the survivors to secure
their safety. Divers as were the means, there was one feature common
to all, selfish and uncharitable as it [p022] was—the avoidance of
the sick, and of everything that had been near them; men thought only
of themselves.
"Some held it was best to lead a temperate life and to avoid every
excess. These making up parties together, and shutting themselves up
from the rest of the world, ate and drank moderately of the best,
diverting themselves with music and such other entertainments as they
might have at home, and never listening to news from without which
might make them uneasy. Others maintained that free living was a
better preservative, and would gratify every passion and appetite.
They would drink and revel incessantly in tavern after tavern, or in
those private houses which, frequently found deserted by the owners,
were therefore open to anyone; but they yet studiously avoided, with
all their irregularity, coming near the infected. And such at that
time was the public distress that the laws, human and divine, were
not regarded, for the officers to put them in force being either
dead, sick, or without assistants, everyone did just as he pleased."
Another class of people chose a middle course. They neither
restricted themselves to the diet of the former nor gave way to
the intemperance of the latter; but eating and drinking what their
appetites required, they went about everywhere with scents and
nosegays to smell at, since they looked upon the whole atmosphere as
tainted with the effluvia arising from the dead bodies.
"Others, again, of a more callous disposition declared, as perhaps
the safest course in the extremity, that the only remedy was
in flight. Persuaded, therefore, of this, and thinking only of
themselves, great numbers of men and women left the city, their
goods, their house, and kindred, and fled into the country parts; as
if the wrath of God had been restricted to a visitation of those only
within the city walls, and hence none should remain in the doomed
place.
"But different as were the courses pursued, the sickness fell upon
all these classes without distinction; neither did [p023] all of any
class die, nor did all escape; and they who first set the example of
forsaking others now languished themselves where there was no one
to take pity on them. I pass by the little regard that citizens and
distant relations showed one to the other, for the terror was such
that brother even fled from brother, wife from husband, nay, the
parent from her own child. The sick could obtain help only from the
few who still obeyed the law of charity, or from hired servants who
demanded extravagant wages and were fit for little else than to hand
what was asked for, and to note when the patient died. Even such
paid helpers were scarce, and their desire of gain frequently cost
them their lives. The rich passed out of this world without a single
person to aid them; few had the tears of friends at their departure.
The corpse was attended to the grave only by fellows hired for the
purpose, who would put the bier on their shoulders and hurry with it
to the nearest church, where it was consigned to the tomb without any
ceremony whatever, and wherever there was room.
"With regard to the lower classes, and, indeed, in the case of many
of the middle rank of life, the scenes enacted were sadder still.
They fell sick by thousands, and, having no one whatever to attend
them, most of them died. Some breathed their last in the streets,
others shut up in their own houses, when the effluvia which came
from their corpses was the first intimation of their deaths. An
arrangement was now made for the neighbours, assisted by such bearers
as they could get, to clear the houses, and every morning to lay the
bodies of the dead at their doors. Thence the corpses were carried
to the grave on a bier, two or three at a time. There was no one
to follow, none to shed tears, for things had come to such a pass
that men's lives were no more thought of than those of beasts. Even
friends would laugh and make themselves merry, and women had learned
to consider their own lives before everything else.
"Consecrated ground no longer sufficed, and it became [p024]
necessary to dig trenches, into which the bodies were put by
hundreds, laid in rows as goods packed in a ship; a little earth was
cast upon each successive layer until the pits were filled to the
top. The adjacent country presented the same picture as the city; the
poor distressed labourers and their families, without physicians,
and without help, languished on the highways, in the fields, in
their own cottages, dying like cattle rather than human beings. The
country people, like the citizens, grew dissolute in their manners
and careless of everything. They supposed that each day might be
their last; and they took no care nor thought how to improve their
substance, or even to utilise it for present support. The flocks and
herds, when driven from their homes, would wander unwatched through
the forsaken harvest fields, and were left to return of their own
accord, if they would, at the approach of night."
Between March and the July following it was estimated that upwards of
a hundred thousand souls had perished in the city alone.
"What magnificent dwellings," the writer continues, "what stately
palaces, were then rendered desolate, even to the last inhabitant!
How many noble families became extinct! What riches, what vast
possessions were left with no known heir to inherit them! What
numbers of both sexes, in the prime and vigour of youth, whom in
the morning Galen, Hippocrates, or Æsculapius himself, would have
declared in perfect health, after dining heartily with their friends
here, have supped with their departed friends in another world."[24]
It might perhaps be suspected that this description of Boccaccio
as to the terrible nature of the plague in Florence was either a
fancy picture of his imagination or intended merely as a rhetorical
introduction to the tales told in the "Decameron," with only a
slender foundation of fact. Unfortunately other authorities are
forthcoming to confirm [p025] the graphic relation of the Florentine
poet in all its details. Amongst others who were carried off by the
pestilence in Florence was the renowned historian, Giovanni Villani.
His work was taken up by his brother Matteo, who commences his annals
with an account of the epidemic. So terrible did the destruction of
human life appear to him that he tells his readers that no greater
catastrophe had fallen on the world since the universal Deluge.
According to his testimony, it involved the whole of the Italian
peninsula, with the exception of Milan and some Alpine districts of
northern Lombardy. In each place visited by the scourge it lasted
five months, and everywhere Christian parents abandoned their
children and kinsfolk, in as callous a way as "might perhaps be
expected from infidels and savages." As regards Florence, whilst
some few devoted themselves to the care of the sick, many fled from
the plague-stricken city. The epidemic raged there from April till
September, 1348, and it is the opinion of Villani that three out of
every five persons in the city and neighbourhood fell victims to
it. As to the effect of the scourge on the survivors, the historian
records that whilst it would naturally have been expected that men,
impressed by so terrible a chastisement, would have become better,
the very contrary was the fact. Work, too, was given over, and "men
gave themselves up to the enjoyment of the worldly riches to which
they had succeeded." Idleness, dissolute morals, sins of gluttony,
banquets, revels in taverns, unbridled luxury, fickleness in dress
and constant changes according to whim, such were the characteristic
marks of the well-to-do Italian citizens when the plague had passed.
And the poor, also, Villani states, became idle and unwilling to
work, considering that when so many had been carried off by the
pestilence there could not but be an abundance for those whom
Providence had spared.[25] [p026]
The same story is told in all the contemporary chronicles of Italian
cities. At Pisa the terrible mortality lasted till September, 1348,
and there were few families that did not reckon two or three of their
members among the dead. Many names are said to have been completely
wiped off from the roll of the living. At least a hundred each
week were carried to the grave in the city, whilst those who had
been bold enough to watch at the death-bed of a relation or friend
appealed in vain to passers-by to aid them to bury the corpse. "Help
us to bear this body to the pit," they cried, "so that we in our
turn may deserve to find some to carry us." The awful suddenness
of the death often inflicted by the scourge is noted by the author
of the "Chronicle of Pisa," in common with nearly every writer of
this period. Men who in the morning were apparently well had before
evening been carried to the grave.[26]
A Paduan chronicler, writing at the time, notes that one sick man as
a rule infected the house in which he lay, so that once the sickness
entered into a dwelling all were seized by it, "even the animals."
To Padua a stranger brought the sickness, and in a brief space the
whole city was suffering from it. Hardly a third of the population
was left after the scourge had passed.[27] At Siena, according to
Di Tura, a contemporary chronicler, the plague commenced in April
and lasted till October, 1348. All who could fled from the stricken
city. In May, July, and August so many died that neither position
nor money availed to procure porters to carry the dead to the public
pits. "And I, Agniolo di Tura," writes this author, "carried with my
own hands my five little sons to the pit; and what I did many others
did likewise." All expected death, and people generally said, and
believed, that the end of the world had certainly come. In Siena and
its [p027] neighbourhood, according to Di Tura, about 80,000 people
were thought to have died in these seven months.[28]
At Orvieto the plague began in May. Some 500 died in a very short
space of time, many of them suddenly; the shops remained closed,
and business and work was at a standstill. Here it ran its usual
five months' course, and finished in September, when many families
were found to have become extinct.[29] At Rimini it was noticed that
the poor were the first to be attacked and the chief sufferers. The
sickness first showed itself on May 15th, 1348, and only died out
in the following December, when, according to the computation of
the chronicler, two out of three of the inhabitants had been swept
away.[30]
An anonymous contemporary Italian writer describes the sickness as a
"swift and sharp fever, with blood-spitting, carbuncle or fistula."
Only the few, he says, recovered when once stricken with the disease.
The sick visibly infected with their corruption the healthy, even by
talking with them; for from this mere conversing with the sick an
infinite number of men and women died and are buried. "And here,"
says the writer, "I can give my testimony. A certain man bled me, and
the blood flowing touched his face. On that same day he was taken
ill, and the next he died; and by the mercy of God I have escaped.
I note this because, as by mere communication with the sick the
plague infected mortally the healthy, the father afterwards avoided
his stricken son, the brother his brother, the wife her husband,
and so in each case the man in health studiously avoided the sick.
Priests and doctors even fled in fear from those ill, and all
avoided the dead. In many places and houses [p028] when an inmate
died the rest quickly, one after another, expired. And so great was
the overwhelming number of the dead that it was necessary to open
new cemeteries in every place. In Venice there were almost 100,000
dead, and so great was the multitude of corpses everywhere that few
attended any funeral or dirge. . . . This pestilence did not cease in
the land from February till the feast of All Saints (November 1st,
1348), and the offices of the dead were chanted only by the voices
of boys; which boys, without learning, and by rote only, sang the
office walking through the streets." The writer then notices the
general dissoluteness which ensued after the disease, and its effect
in lowering the standard of probity and morals.[31]
To the terrible accounts given by De' Mussi of the state of
plague-stricken Genoa and Piacenza, and that of Boccaccio, of the
ravages of the pestilence in the city of Florence, may be well added
the eloquent letters of the poet Petrarch, in which he laments the
overwhelming catastrophe, as he experienced it in the town of Parma.
Here, as in so many other places, the inhabitants vainly endeavoured
to prevent the entry of the disease by forbidding all intercourse
with the suffering cities of Florence, Venice, Genoa and Pisa. The
measures taken to isolate Parma appear to have been, at least, for
a time, successful, as the dreaded plague apparently did not make
its appearance till the beginning of June, 1348.[32] But in the six
months during which it lasted it desolated the entire neighbourhood.
In Parma and Reggio many thousands, estimated roundly at 40,000,
were carried off by it.[33] Petrarch was at this period a canon of
the cathedral of Parma, and had made the acquaintance at Avignon of
Laura, who quickly became the object of his admiration as a typical
Christian mother of a family, and as a fitting subject to inspire
his poetic muse. Laura died at Avignon, one of the [p029] many who
fell victims to the great pestilence which was then raging in that
city. The letter written by a friend named Louis to inform Petrarch
of this death found him at Parma on May 19th, 1348.[34] A month later
the poet wrote to Avignon in the most heart-broken language to his
brother, a religious at Monrieux, and the only survivor of a convent
of five-and-thirty.[35] "My brother! my brother! my brother," he
wrote. "A new beginning to a letter, though used by Marcus Tullius
fourteen hundred years ago. Alas! my beloved brother, what shall I
say? How shall I begin? Whither shall I turn? On all sides is sorrow;
everywhere is fear. I would, my brother, that I had never been born,
or, at least, had died before these times. How will posterity believe
that there has been a time when without the lightnings of heaven or
the fires of earth, without wars or other visible slaughter, not
this or that part of the earth, but well-nigh the whole globe, has
remained without inhabitants.
"When has any such thing been ever heard or seen; in what annals has
it ever been read that houses were left vacant, cities deserted, the
country neglected, the fields too small for the dead, and a fearful
and universal solitude over the whole earth? Consult your historians,
they are silent; question your doctors, they are dumb; seek an answer
from your philosophers, they shrug their shoulders and frown, and
with their fingers to their lips bid you be silent.
"Will posterity ever believe these things when we, who see, can
scarcely credit them? We should think we were dreaming if we did not
with our eyes, when we walk abroad, see the city in mourning with
funerals, and returning to our home, find it empty, and thus know
that what we lament is real.
"Oh, happy people of the future, who have not known these miseries
and perchance will class our testimony with [p030] the fables. We
have, indeed, deserved these (punishments) and even greater; but our
forefathers also have deserved them, and may our posterity not also
merit the same."
Then, after saying that the universal misery is enough to make one
think that God has ceased to have a care for His creatures, and
putting this thought aside as blasphemy, the writer continues: "But
whatever the causes and however hidden, the effects are manifest. To
turn from public to private sorrows; the first part of the second
year is passed since I returned to Italy. I do not ask you to look
back any further; count these few days, and think what we were and
what we are. Where are now our pleasant friends? Where the loved
faces? Where their cheering words? Where their sweet and gentle
conversation? We were surrounded by a crowd of intimates, now we are
almost alone."
Speaking of one special friend, Paganinus of Milan, Petrarch writes:
"He was suddenly seized in the evening by the pestilential sickness.
After supping with friends he spent some time in conversation with
me, in the enjoyment of our common friendship and in talking over our
affairs. He passed the night bravely in the last agony, and in the
morning was carried off by a swift death. And, that no horror should
be wanting, in three days his sons and all his family had followed
him to the tomb."[36]
In other towns of Italy the same tragedy, as told in the words of
Boccaccio and Petrarch, was being enacted during the early spring and
the summer months of 1348. At Venice, where the pestilence obtained
an early foothold, and the position of which rendered it particularly
susceptible to infection, the mortality was so great that it was
represented by the round numbers of 100,000 souls.[37]
Signor Cecchetti's researches into the history of the medical faculty
at Venice at this period furnish many [p031] interesting details
as to the spread of the sickness.[38] Although surgeons were not
allowed by law to practise medicine, so great was the need during
the prevalence of the dread mortality that one surgeon, Andrea di
Padova, was allowed to have saved the lives of more than a hundred
people by his timely assistance.[39] In the 14th century Venice was
troubled by the plague some fifteen times, but that of 1348 was
"the great epidemic"—"the horrible mortality"—to the chroniclers of
the time. For a long period after, public and other documents make
it the excuse for all kinds of irregularities.[40] The diplomas of
merit bestowed upon doctors who remained faithful to their posts by
the authorities of Venice speak of death following upon the first
infection within a very short space of time. So depopulated was the
city that it might be said no one was left in it. Many doctors fled,
others shut themselves in their houses. Artisans and even youths
undertook the duties of physicians, and helped numbers to recover.[41]
On Sunday, March 30th, 1348, the Great Council of Venice chose a
commission of three to watch over the public safety. These a few days
later ordered deep pits to be made in one of the islands to receive
the bodies of those who died in the hospitals and of the poor, and to
convey them thither, ships were appointed to be always in waiting.
The rich fled from the place; officials could not be found, and the
Great Council was so reduced that the legal number for transacting
business could not be got together. Notaries died in great numbers,
and the prisons were thrown open.[42] When the epidemic had ceased
the Senate had great difficulty in finding three doctors for the
city. On January 12th, 1349, Marco Leon, a capable physician, and a
native of Venice, who was in practice at Perugia, offered to return
to his own city "since," as he says, "it has pleased God by the
terrible mortality to leave our native [p032] place so destitute
of upright and capable doctors that it may be said not one has been
left."[43]
Details of a similar nature might be multiplied from the contemporary
Italian records. What has been here given, however, will enable the
reader to form some estimate of the nature of the terrible disease
and of the extent of the universal devastation of the Italian
peninsula. The annals relate that in every city, castle, and town
death and desolation reigned supreme. In most places, as in Pisa, for
example, law and order became things of the past; the administration
of justice was impossible; criminals of every kind did what they
best pleased,[44] and for a considerable time after the plague
had passed the Courts of Law were occupied in disputes over the
possessions of the dead. When the wave of pestilence had rolled on
to other lands there came in its wake famine and general distress
in Italy, but strangely accompanied with the lavish expenditure of
those who considered that, where so many had died, there should be
enough and to spare of worldly goods for such as were left. The
land lay uncultivated and the harvest was unreaped. Provisions and
other necessaries of life became dear. Markets ceased to be held,
and cities and towns devoid of inhabitants were spectacles of decay
and desolation. It is said, and there does not appear to be reason
to doubt the statement, in view of the many contemporary accounts of
the disaster, that at least one half of the general population of
Italy were swept away by the scourge. This relation of the horrors
of the year 1348 in Italy may be closed by the account left us of
some students from Bohemia, who at this time journeyed back to their
country from Bologna.
"At this time," says a chronicle of Prague, "some students, coming
from Bologna into Bohemia, saw that in most of the cities and castles
they passed through few remained alive, and in some all were dead.
In many houses [p033] also those who had escaped with their lives
were so weakened by the sickness that one could not give another a
draught of water, nor help him in any way, and so passed their time
in great affliction and distress. Priests, too, ministering the
sacraments, and doctors medicines, to the sick were infected by them
and died, and so many passed out of this life without confession or
the sacraments of the Church, as the priests were dead. There were
generally made great, broad and deep pits in which the bodies of the
dead were buried. In many places, too, the air was more infected and
more deadly than poisoned food, from the corruption of the corpses,
since there was no one left to bury them. Of the foresaid students,
moreover, only one returned to Bohemia, and his companions all died
on the journey."[45]
FOOTNOTES:
[23] Sismondi, _Histoire des Républiques Italiennes du Moyen Age_,
vi, p. 11.
[24] "The Decameron," Introduction.
[25] Muratori, _Scriptores_, xiv, coll. 11-15.
[26] Muratori, _Scriptores_, xv. 1021.
[27] _Ibid._, xii, 926.
[28] _Ibid._ xv, 123. At this period the population at Siena was more
than 100,000, and it had been determined to proceed with the building
of the vast Cathedral according to the designs of Lando Orefice. The
work was hardly undertaken when the plague of 1348 broke out in the
city. The operations were suspended, and the money which had been
collected for the purpose was devoted to necessary public works (G.
Gigli, _Diario Sanese_, ii, 428).
[29] Muratori, _Scriptores_ xv, 653.
[30] _Ibid._, 902.
[31] _Ibid._, xvi, 286.
[32] A. Pezzana, _Storia della città di Parma_, vol. i, p. 12.
[33] _Historiæ Parmensis Fragmenta_, in Muratori, _Scriptores_, xii,
746.
[34] T. Michelet, _Histoire de France_, iv, p. 238.
[35] A. Phillippe, _Histoire de la Peste Noire_ (Paris, 1853), p. 103.
[36] _Epistolæ Familiares_ (Ed. 1601), lib. viii, pp. 290-303.
[37] Muratori, _Scriptores_, xii, 926.
[38] See his article _La Medicina in Venezia nel 1300_ in _Archivio
Veneto_, tom. xxv, p. 361, _seqq._
[39] p. 369.
[40] _Ibid._, 377.
[41] _Ibid._
[42] _Ibid._, p. 378.
[43] _Ibid._, p. 379.
[44] Roncioni, _Istorie Pisane_ in _Archivio Storico Italiano_, iv,
808.
[45] _Chronicon Pragense_, ed. Loserth in _Fontes rerum
Austriacarum_, _Scriptores_, vol. i, p. 395.
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