CHAPTER XII.

[Illustration: Medal of Boccaccio.]

Historians of the plague—Sketch of the four chief pestilences

recorded—Origin of the disease—Plague of Athens—Of Constantinople—Of

Florence—Of Milan—State of medical knowledge—Plague of London.

A history of the plague, in the hands of one qualified to do justice

to the subject by medical knowledge joined to extensive research,

might be rendered attractive in no common degree. It has chanced that

the phenomena, moral and physical, of several remarkable pestilences

have been described by writers of unusual power, whose eloquence

has communicated to them a literary interest, independent of that

which they must otherwise have possessed as striking passages in the

history of man. Of these Thucydides is the earliest; and the plague

which desolated Athens in the second year of the Peloponnesian war,

though not the earliest mentioned in profane records, is the first of

which any particular account has reached us. A sufferer as well as a

spectator, he has related its symptoms, described the wretchedness

which it inflicted on his country, and analyzed its moral effects

with the accuracy and profoundness of reflection by which he is

distinguished above all other historians; and no part of that work

which he has delivered to us as an “everlasting possession”[91] has

excited more admiration than this. Hippocrates, himself a contemporary,

if not an eye–witness, has left a medical account of the same disease,

and from these authorities Lucretius has composed one of the finest

and most celebrated passages in his philosophical poem.[92] Procopius

also has left a description of the plague[93] which during the reign of

Justinian ravaged nearly all the known world, evidently modelled upon

Thucydides, and not an unsuccessful imitation of him. In later times

the great plagues of Florence and London have found worthy chroniclers

in the two great novelists, Boccaccio, who was an eye–witness of that

which he describes, and Defoe, the verisimilitude of whose narration is

such, that it is difficult to believe it anything but what it proposes

to be, the narrative of a person who had witnessed the eventful time

of which he wrote. Defoe, however, was under three years old when the

great plague of London broke out. Boccaccio appears, like Procopius,

to have written in imitation, perhaps in emulation, of the Greek

historian: Defoe has treated the subject in his peculiar style, and

at much greater length than any of those whom we have named; and

intermixing, as we must believe, a quantity of facts and observations,

the result of minute inquiry, with a framework of fiction, has produced

a narrative stamped, like all his works, with a singular appearance

of reality, and remarkable for simple pathos and homely vigour of

description.

We may divide pestilences into two classes: those which, as if

dependent upon some noxious property of the air, have spread

successively from country to country and devastated a large portion of

the world, and those which have raged in a particular spot or within

small limits, and which appear therefore to have been generated by some

local accident, as is said to have occurred in Africa, B.C.

126 (A.U. 628), by the fetid exhalations from dead

locusts,[94] or to have been introduced from other places, and to have

been propagated rather by infection than the transmissive qualities

of the air. To ascertain the specific difference between the two is

probably beyond the reach of medical science; but the distinction is

important, since the latter are susceptible of control by quarantine

laws, which are powerless, perhaps worse than powerless, to arrest

the former. Of these the most celebrated are quaintly described in

a manuscript account of the great plague of London, preserved in

the British Museum.[95]

“Of universall, or œcumenicall[96] plauges, the most spreading and

destructive that I have met with in history are these four: ffirst that

of Athens, which fell out in the Peloponnesian warr, before Christ

428, described most fully by that eminent historian, Thucydides, in

his second booke, who had been sicke of it himselfe, but restored, and

from him by that great promoter and enlightener of the Epicurean, or

Corpuscular Philosophy, the poet Lucretius, in the last part of his

last booke. This plauge, though it bee vulgarly called the Athenian

plauge, because it did great execution there in that city, yet indeed

not on Athens alone, but as Thucydides tells us, beginning at Æthiopia

overran Afrika and transferred itself into Asia, and thence into Europe.

“The second famous, or œcumenicall plauge which hath occurred to my

reading, was in the raigne of Vibius Gallus, and Volusianus his sonne,

according to Calvisius, of Christ 253. This plauge is also related to

have had its originall in Æthiopia, and from thense to have diffused

itself into all the provinces of the Roman empire, and to have lasted

fifteen yeares without intermission. How it raged in Alexandria and

Ægypt wee understand from an epistle of Dionysius, the bishop of that

city at that time, recorded by Eusebius in his viith book, cap. 22.

Hee tells us it fell promiscuously on the heathens and the Christians,

though most heavily upon the former, that noe house was free from the

dire effects of its rage. From other parts of Affrique wee understand

from St. Cyprian, the bishop of Carthage, in his excellent sermon _de

Mortalitate_, made on purpose to animate and strengthen the Christians,

who were joynt and fellow sufferers with the heathens, _unde præsentis

mortalitatis copia_, as he tearms it—‘the large measure of the present

mortality:’ and of its rage at Rome wee find observed out of the Roman

history by Calvisius that there dyed of it daily to the number of 5000,

and therefore Brightman and Mead, both men sufficiently learned, in

their comentaryes upon the Revelations, interpret this plauge to be

one of the fearful judgments foretold to breake forth upon the opening

of the fourth scale, chap. vi. 8. And Justus Lipsius, a critick of noe

ordinary reading, saith of this pestilence in his book _de Constantia_,

_lib._ 2, ‘_non alia unquam major lues, &c._’ that his reading did not

afford him an example or president of a greater plauge, considering the

many countreys it infected in the severall yeares that it lasted.

“The third universall plauge was that which happened in the raigne

of Justinian, and took its beginning in the yeare of Christ 532, and

this also, as the former, is sayd to have descended from Æthiopia. Wee

have a copious description of it by Procopius in his _Persicorum_, lib.

2. And we are informed by him that it raged very much in Byzantium,

or Constantinople, for four months space, and that when it was in its

height, there dyed of it every day 10,000 and upwards; and this is the

pestilence related by Evagrius the ecclesiasticall historian, which

lasted, as he says, fifty–two yeares, not continuall, but by severall

returns and revolutions, and of this pestilence he was sick himselfe.

And Greece shared not only in the contagion of it, but also Italy,

as wee read in Paulus Diaconus, and it swept away Pope Pelagius, the

predecessor of Gregory the Great, about the year 580; ffor I conceive

this plauge to be that in the raigne of Justinian, propagated into

remoter countreys, and lengthened out to this tearme, much according to

the forementioned computation of Evagrius. It also overran Fraunce in

the year 583, and this I conceive to be that which plauged the Britons

here in that vacation betwixt the Romans government and the Saxons, in

Vortigern’s tyme, when the living could scarce bury the dead.

“The fourth œcumenicall plauge which I have taken notice of, was in

the year 1347, ‘_quæ violentissima fuit, et totum mundum pervasit in

annis sex et ita vastavit ut nec tertia pars hominum superesset_:’ they

are the words of Calvisius, ‘it was most violent and ran over the world

in six years, and soe wasted Europe that not the third part of men

were left alive.’ To omit other parts, and see what it did at home in

our owne countreye, Mr. Cambden reports in his Britannia, that in the

yeare 1348 this plauge was soe hot that in Wallingford, in Barkshire,

it dyspeopled the town, reducing their twelve churches to one or two,

which they now retayne. In London it had soe quick an edge, that in the

space of twelve months there was buried in one churchyard, commonly

called the Cistercian, or Charter–house, above 50,000. They write

further that through the kingdom it made such havock that it tooke away

more than half the people; and it is noted there dyed in London alone,

between the 1st of January and the 1st of July, 57,374. Soe Daniel, in

22, Edward III.”

It may be worthy of remark that of these plagues three are traced to

Egypt or Ethiopia, while the fourth, as we shall presently see from

Villani, is said to have originated in the north–east of Asia. Kircher,

in his ‘Scrutinium de Peste,’ has given a catalogue of the most

remarkable pestilences recorded, in which he mentions only one other

universal plague, in the year 1400, but relates neither its origin nor

its history. Another very destructive one broke out in the year 170 in

Babylonia, which spread through the provinces, and carried off a vast

number of persons at Rome. Galen was then living in the capital, and

speaks of this disease as very similar to that described by Thucydides.

The present chapter will be employed in describing some of those

pestilences which are most celebrated, either for the abilities exerted

in describing them, or the ravages which they have committed; and will

include the plagues of Athens, Constantinople, Florence, the plague

of Milan in 1630, and of London in 1665. It is not our plan to give

either a general history of the plague or a detailed account of the

rise and fall, the symptoms and method of treatment of each particular

scourge. The passages which we extract from Thucydides, Procopius, and

Boccaccio, are complete in themselves; from those later pestilences,

of which no master mind has given a comprehensive view, we have

endeavoured to select such particulars and to quote such passages as

show the moral consequences of the visitation, rather than to disgust

by an often repeated story of suffering, or give a hospital chronicle

of the varying intensity of the mischief from day to day.

We begin then with Thucydides’ account of the plague at Athens in the

second year of the war.

“In the very beginning of summer, the Peloponnesians and their

confederates, as before, two–thirds of the military power of each

state, invaded Attica, under the command of Archidamus, son of

Zeuxidamus, king of Lacedæmon, and after they had encamped themselves

wasted the country about them. And before they had been many days in

Attica the plague first began among the Athenians, said also to have

seized formerly on divers other parts, as about Lemnos and elsewhere,

but so great a plague and mortality of men was never remembered to

have happened in any place before. For at first, neither were the

physicians able to cure it through ignorance of what it was, but died

fastest themselves, as being the men that most approached the sick,

nor any other art of man availed whatsoever. All supplications of the

gods, and inquiries of oracles, and whatsoever other means they used

of that kind, proved all unprofitable, and at the last, subdued by the

greatness of the evil, they gave them all over.”

“It began (by report) first, in that part of Æthiopia that lieth

above Ægypt, and thence fell down into Ægypt, and Afric, and into the

greatest part of the territories of the king.[97] It invaded Athens on

a sudden, and touched first upon those that dwelt in Piræus; insomuch

as they reported the Peloponnesians had cast poison into their tanks,

for springs there were not any in that place. But afterwards it reached

the upper city, and then they died a great deal faster. Now let every

man, physician or other, concerning the ground of this sickness,

whence it sprung, and what causes he thinks able to produce so great

an alteration, speak according to his own knowledge; for my own part,

I will deliver but the manner of it, and lay open only such things as

one may take his mark by, to discover the same if it come again, having

been both sick of it myself, and seen others sick of the same.

“This year, by confession of all men, was of all other for other

diseases most free and healthful. But if any man were sick before, his

disease turned to this; if not, yet suddenly, without any apparent

cause preceding, and being in perfect health, they were taken first

with an extreme ache in their heads, redness and inflammation of the

eyes; and then inwardly their throats and tongues grew presently

bloody, and sent out a preternatural and fetid breath. Upon this

followed sneezing and hoarseness, and not long after the pain together

with a mighty cough came down into the breast; and when once it was

settled in the stomach it caused vomit, and with great torment came

on all manner of evacuations of bile that physicians ever named. And

most persons were taken with a hollow hiccough, bringing on violent

convulsions, which in some ceased quickly, but in others were long

before they gave over. Their bodies outwardly to the touch were

neither very hot nor pale, but reddish, livid, and beflowered with

little pimples and whelks; but so burned inwardly, as not to endure

the lightest cloths or linen garment to be upon them, nor anything

but mere nakedness; but rather most willingly to have cast themselves

into cold water. And many of them that were not looked to, possessed

with insatiate thirst, did this into the tanks. And whether they

drank more or less, it was all one; and restlessness and wakefulness

prevailed throughout. And while the disease was at the height, their

bodies wasted not, but resisted the torment beyond all expectation,

so that most of them died on the ninth or seventh day, of the inward

fever, whilst they had yet strength, or if they had escaped that,

then the disease falling down into their bellies, and causing there

great exulcerations and immoderate looseness, they died many of them

afterwards through weakness. For the disease (which took first the

head) began above and came down, and passed through the whole body; and

if a man survived through the worst part of it, still it caught hold of

his extremities, and left its mark. For it fell upon the fingers and

toes; and many survived with the loss of these members; some also with

the loss of their eyes. And others presently upon their recovery were

taken with such an oblivion of all things whatsoever, as they neither

knew themselves nor their acquaintance.

“For this was a kind of sickness which far surmounted all expression

of words, and both exceeded human nature in the cruelty wherewith it

handled each one, and appeared also otherwise to be none of those

diseases that are bred amongst us, and that especially by this. For

all, both birds and beasts, that use to feed on human flesh, though

many men lay abroad unburied, either came not at them, or tasting

perished. And the proof is this: there ensued a total failure of all

such fowl, which were not then seen, neither about the carcasses, or

any where else: but by the dogs, because they are familiar with men,

this effect was seen much clearer.

“So that this disease (to pass over many strange particulars of the

accidents that some had differently from others) was in general such

as I have shown; and for other usual sicknesses, at that time no man

was troubled with any, or if there were any they turned to this. Now

they died, some for want of attendance, and some again with all the

care and physic that could be used. Nor was there any to say certain

medicine, that applied must have helped them; for if it did good to

one, it did harm to another; and as far as strength and weakness of

constitution were concerned, it carried off all alike, even those that

were most carefully nursed. But the greatest misery of all was, the

dejection of mind, in such as found themselves beginning to be sick

(for they grew presently desperate, and gave themselves over without

making any resistance), as also their dying thus like sheep, infected

by mutual visitation; for the greatest mortality proceeded that way.

For if men forbore through fear to visit them, then they died forlorn;

whereby many houses were emptied, for want of some one that would

tend the inhabitants. If they forbore not, then they died themselves,

and principally the honestest men. For out of shame they would not

spare themselves, but went in unto their friends, especially after

it was come to this pass, that even their domestics, wearied with

the lamentations of them that died, and overcome with the greatness

of the calamity, were no longer moved therewith. Still those who had

recovered felt the most compassion both on them that died and on them

that lay sick, as having both known the misery themselves, and now no

more subject to the danger. For this disease never took any man the

second time, so as to be mortal. And these men were both by others

counted happy, and they also themselves, through excess of present

joy, conceived a kind of light hope never to die of any other sickness

hereafter.

“Besides the present affliction, the reception of the country people

and of their substance into the city, oppressed both them and much

more the people themselves that so came in. For having no houses, but

dwelling at that time of the year in stifling booths, the mortality

was now without all form; and dying men lay tumbling one upon another

in the streets, and men half dead about every conduit through desire

of water. The temples, also, where they took up their temporary abode,

were all full of the dead that died within them; for, oppressed with

violence of the calamity, and not knowing what to do, men grew careless

both of holy and profane things alike. And the laws which they formerly

used touching funerals were all now broken, every one burying where he

could find room. And many for want of things necessary, after so many

deaths before, had recourse to shameless burials of their dead. For

when one had made a funeral pile,[98] another getting before him, would

throw on his dead and set fire to it. And when one was burning, another

would come, and, having cast thereon him whom he carried, go his way

again.

“And the great licentiousness, which also in other kinds, was used

in the city, began at first from this disease. For men more readily

ventured on things which they formerly concealed, or durst not do

freely and at their pleasure, seeing before their eyes such quick

revolution of the rich dying, and men worth nothing inheriting their

estates; insomuch as they judged it best to enjoy their fortunes

briskly and merrily, considering them and their lives alike held but

from day to day. As for pains, no man was forward in any action of

honour to take any, because they thought it uncertain whether they

should die or not before they achieved it. But that which produced

present enjoyment, or which immediately led to it, was now received to

be both honourable and advantageous. Neither the fear of the gods, nor

laws of men, awed any man. Not the former, because they concluded it

was alike to worship or not worship, from seeing that alike they all

perished: nor the latter, because no man expected his life would last

till he received punishment of his crimes by judgment. But they thought

there was now over their heads some far greater judgment decreed

against them; before which fell they thought to enjoy some little part

of their lives.

“Such was the misery into which the Athenians being fallen, were much

oppressed; having not only their men killed by the disease within, but

the enemy also laying waste their fields and villages without. In this

sickness also (as it was not unlikely they would) they called to mind

this verse, said also of the elder sort to have been uttered of old:—

A Doric war shall fall,

And a great plague withal.

“Now were men at variance about the word, some saying it was not

_Λοιμὸς_ (i. e. the Plague), that was by the ancients mentioned in that

verse, but _Λιμὸς_ (i.e. Famine). But upon the present occasion the

word _Λοιμὸς_ deservedly obtained. For as men suffered, so they made

the verse to say. And I think, if after this there shall ever come

another Doric war, and with it a famine, they are like to recite the

verse accordingly. There was also reported by such as knew, a certain

answer given by the oracle to the Lacedæmonians, when they inquired

whether they should make this war or not, ‘that if they warred with all

their power, they should have the victory, and that the god[99] himself

would take their parts;’ and thereupon they thought the present misery

to be a fulfilling of that prophecy. The Peloponnesians were no sooner

entered Attica, but the sickness presently began, ‘and never came into

Peloponnesus, to speak of, but reigned principally in Athens, and in

such other places afterwards as were most populous. And thus much of

this disease.[100]

The disease remitted during the winter, but in the following summer

broke out again, and carried off Pericles among its victims. In that

one death Athens received more irretrievable injury than from the

loss of all the multitude who perished, for he was the last of that

succession of statesmen who founded and matured her greatness. Hitherto

the directors, the virtual sovereigns of the state,[101] had been

truly demagogues: they led, those who succeeded to their influence

were led by, the people, and preserved their power by yielding to and

encouraging passions which they ought to have controlled.[102] Two

years later the plague broke out again. Altogether it carried off 4400

heavy armed soldiers, and 300 horsemen; that is, 4700 male citizens

in the prime of life, between the ages fixed by law as the limits of

active service, of the highest and middle ranks alone, besides an

innumerable multitude of other persons.[103]

Aristophanes and Plato furnish abundant evidence, if farther evidence

were necessary, that about this time a great change did take place in

the manners and morals of the Athenians. The reader will find this

subject, which is one of great interest, and would require a separate

chapter for its investigation, noticed in our introductory chapter,

and treated at considerable length in the preliminary discourse to

Mitchell’s Aristophanes there quoted. We here allude to it only to

guard against the supposition that this total demoralization was

brought about in the short space of a few months by the influence of

terror and recklessness: a thing not in itself probable, not confirmed

by the experience of similar visitations, and not the necessary

meaning of the assertion, that “the licentiousness of the city flowed

at first from this disease.” This was the crisis of the change; the

pestilence determined the victory of an evil influence which had long

been spreading, and marked the period from which that change was to

be dated. Hitherto the open practice of the new doctrines had been

repressed by laws, and by the received opinion of good and evil; but

now that the insecurity of life and property banished thought of the

future, by alike extinguishing both hope and fear, “for no man expected

that his life would last till he received punishment of his crimes by

judgment,” and that the general disorder and distress removed all check

of public opinion, the doctrines of the sophists sprung at once to

maturity, and bore abundant fruit after their kind.[104]

Another circumstance, apparently more trivial, is not unlikely to have

had considerable effect—the collection of the whole Athenian people

within the walls. A proverb tells us that idleness is the mother of all

vice; and few things are more unfavourable to moral habits than the

crowding of a large population within inconveniently narrow bounds.

Both these sources of evil were united in Athens. The inconvenience

experienced by the people for want of accommodation has been already

described. For their employments, agriculture was the only business

to which a free Athenian would _personally_ apply himself, although

the wealthy carried on manufactures by means of slaves; and from the

practice of agriculture the Athenians were now entirely cut off. In

consequence, a great number of families had no support whatever, except

what they derived from the public revenue, in the form of sacrifices,

a large part of which was distributed among the people, public

entertainments, and the pay for attending the public meetings and the

courts of justice. Needy men readily embrace doctrines which place the

property of others at their disposal; and thus the nation was already

half demoralized when the plague broke out, and removed the fear of

present punishment without enforcing that of future retribution.

Temptation and bad example soon completed the work.

Procopius, a Greek historian of the sixth century, was a witness, and

has left a minute description of the great plague which in the reign of

Justinian ravaged nearly the whole of the known world. It is evidently

modelled upon the celebrated passage in Thucydides which we have just

extracted. The most remarkable circumstance in this pestilence is its

extraordinary length. When Evagrius of Antioch wrote his Ecclesiastical

History it had lasted fifty–two years, with alternate fits of

relaxation and vigour; but during this long period the earth was never

wholly free from its ravages.

“About this time a pestilence occurred, which almost put an end to

the human race. Now it is always probable that daring men will propose

some reason to explain those things which come down on us direct from

heaven, as persons skilled in such matters love to deal in wonderful

causes beyond man’s discovery, and to shape strange schemes of natural

philosophy; knowing that what they utter is not sound, but satisfied if

they can cheat the vulgar into believing it. But for this particular

calamity we can in no way account, either in word or thought, except

by referring it to God. For it fell on no particular portion of the

earth, nor race of men, nor was it confined to any season of the year,

which things might have given some pretence for thinking it of natural

origin, but spread over all the earth, and ravaged all nations, the

most unlike and opposite to each other, sparing neither constitution

nor age. For whether men differed in place of abode, or in diet, or

temperament, or in anything else in which they do differ from each

other, in this disease the variance availed nothing; and it fell

on some in summer, on others in winter, and on others at the other

seasons. Let would–be philosophers and speculators upon lofty things

speak, then, each according to his own opinion. I proceed to show

whence this disease came, and how it operated to destroy men.

“It began in Egypt, among the inhabitants of Pelusium, and, dividing,

spread on one side to Alexandria and the rest of Egypt, and on the

other into Palestine, and from thence over the whole earth, advancing

by its proper way and at its proper season; for it seemed to advance

according to a prescribed plan, and to abide in every country for an

appointed time, sparing none as it passed, and extending on either

side to the bounds of the habitable world, as if apprehensive lest any

recess should escape. For it missed no island, no cave, no mountain

summit inhabited by man; or if it did, and spared, or laid its hand

but lightly on the dwellers there, then it returned at a later time,

and never touching their neighbours, whom before it had attacked

most bitterly, quitted not that spot until the measure of the dead

was fully and justly made up,[105] proportionate to the mortality

of the neighbourhood in the former season. The disease always began

at the sea–side, and spread thence into the interior. It reached

Constantinople, where I then happened to be, at midsummer in the second

year of its progress. The manner of its attack was this: visions of

spirits,[106] in all sorts of human shapes, were seen. The sufferers

thought they met a man, who struck them, and were taken ill the same

moment that they saw the spectre. At first men strove to turn aside

these spirits, by uttering the holiest names, and hallowing themselves

as best they could; but they gained nothing by this, for very many

who fled even to the churches, perished there; and at last, even when

their friends called them, they would not attend, but shut themselves

up at home, and pretended not to hear, though their very doors were

yielding to the knocking; so terrified were they, lest it should be

some spirit.[107] Others again were taken ill in a different way, and

saw some one in a dream, who stood over them and struck them; or heard

a warning voice, that they were numbered with the dead. But most fell

sick in the following manner, unwarned of their fate either by sleeping

or waking visions. They felt feverish on first rising, or while walking

or otherwise employed. There was no change in colour, no heat, as when

fever supervenes, no inflammation; but until evening the fever was so

slight that it suggested no idea of danger, either to the patient or

the physician; and indeed none that were ill of it expected to die.

But on that day, or the next, or sometimes a few days after, the buboe

appeared, mostly in the groin, but in the arm–pit also, or behind the

ears, or sometimes on the thighs.

“Thus far the course of the disease was alike in all; for the rest, I

cannot tell whether the difference of symptoms arose from difference

of constitutions, or is referable to the will alone of Him who sent

it. For some fell into a deep stupor, others into raving madness, and

each suffered agreeably to the kind of his disorder. For those who

were attacked by stupor, forgetting everything to which they were

accustomed, seemed always asleep. And if any person were in attendance

on them, from time to time they took food; but some who were neglected

perished for want of food. The maniacs, on the contrary, were afflicted

by sleepiness, and continual apparitions, which attacked them, as

they thought, meaning to kill them; so that they raised a great

disturbance, and made horrid cries, endeavouring to escape. And their

attendants, worn by constant labour, suffered most severely, insomuch

that men pitied them no less than those who were ill, not from any

danger of contagion[108] (for no physician nor other person fell sick

from contact with the sick or dead; since many employed constantly in

nursing or burying, against all expectations, survived this service,

and many, for whose illness no cause could be discovered, died at

once), but on account of their hard labour did they pity them. For

it was necessary to replace the patients who would throw themselves

out of bed, and roll on the floor, and to drive and hale them back as

often as they tried to rush out of the house; and such as could find

water wanted to plunge in, not from desire to drink, for they went

mostly to the sea, but at the suggestion of a disordered mind.[109] And

there was also much trouble in administering food, to which they were

very adverse. Many died of starvation, or by throwing themselves down

heights. Mortification of the buboes carried off such as experienced

neither stupor nor frenzy, and they died at last exhausted by agony. It

would be supposed that the others underwent equal torture; but this was

not so, the mental disease, however slight, precluding all sensation of

pain.

“The physicians, embarrassed by their unacquaintance with the forms

of the disease, and thinking that the element of it was secreted in

the buboes, determined to examine the dead bodies; and opening these

tumours, found in them something in the likeness of a coal. Some died

immediately, some after many days; some threw out black pustules, the

size of a lentil, all over their bodies, and these lived not one day

longer, but died on the instant. Many were carried off at once by

vomiting blood. One thing I have to observe, that the most eminent

physicians predicted the death of many, who soon after, against all

expectations, had nothing ailing, and persisted that many would

live, who at that moment were on the point of dissolution. Thus,

throughout the disease, there was nothing for which human reason could

account,[110] but in almost every instance some unlooked–for event

occurred. The bath did good to some, and no less harm to others.

Many who were neglected, died; others unexpectedly survived. Medical

treatment had contradictory effects on those who tried it; and, in

brief, the wit of man found no means of safety, either to ward off or

to overcome the evil, but its attack was without apparent cause, and

the recovery spontaneous.

“The disease lasted in Constantinople four months, and was at its

height for three. At first the number of dead was little greater than

ordinary; then the evil increased till it amounted to 5000 daily, and

at last to 10,000, and even more. At first every man took care himself

to bury those in his household, casting them secretly, or by open

force, into other persons’ tombs; but at last all was confusion. For

slaves remained without masters; and men, formerly rich and happy,

were left without common attendance by the sickness and death of their

slaves; and many houses were quite emptied of inhabitants: so that some

remained many days without burial, because there were no persons that

knew them. When the Emperor heard of this, he sent money and soldiers

from the palace, and ordered Theodorus, an officer called by the Latins

the Referendary, who received all petitions addressed to the Emperor,

and signified his pleasure with respect to them, to take charge of

this matter; so that they whose houses were not yet entirely desolated

performed the funeral rites of their own connexions; and Theodorus, at

the imperial expense, and partly also at his own, buried those bodies

that had none to care for them. But when the tombs that were already

constructed were filled with corpses, trenches were dug all about the

city, into which every one cast the dead as he could, and went away;

until the grave–diggers, wearied out, took off the roofs of the towers

on the wall of the district called Sukai,[111] into which they cast

the bodies promiscuously, and when they were full replaced the roofs.

The fetid smell from hence reached the city, and much annoyed the

inhabitants, especially when the wind lay in that quarter.

“All rites usual at burials were then neglected: there were no

processions, no hymns, nor dirges; but it was sufficient if a man bore

off a corpse upon his shoulders, and cast it down in the maritime

quarter of the city. From thence the bodies, piled in heaps on

barges, were carried oft wherever chance directed. At that time the

factions[112] into which the people were before divided, relaxing from

their mutual hate, applied themselves conjointly to pay due reverence

to the dead, and buried all persons without distinction, whether they

had any claim on them or not. And those whose delight had been in

base and evil pursuits, shook off their lawless course of life, and

accurately performed the duties of religion, not from having repented

and learnt to govern their passions, nor from being suddenly turned

into lovers of virtue; for it is impossible to change thus easily the

natural temper, or the result of long continued habit, except by means

of a divine interposition. But all were terror–struck at the scenes

which surrounded them, and, in the expectation of immediate death,

could scarce help assuming a temporary decency of conduct. But these

same men, when they were quit of the plague, and supposed themselves in

safety, through its departure to some other quarter, returned even to a

worse frame of mind than before, and displayed still greater profligacy

in their lives, surpassing their former selves in wickedness and

lawlessness. So that one might truly affirm that this disease, either

by chance or pre–appointment, accurately distinguished and passed by

the worst men. But this was shown afterwards.

“At this time you could hardly see any one buying or selling in

Constantinople; but those who kept in health sat at home, and took

care of the sick, or bewailed the departed. Or if you did meet anyone

abroad, he was carrying a corpse. All trade was idle; the craftsmen

desisted from their crafts, and all persons abandoned whatsoever works

they had in hand; so that a perfect famine revelled in a city abounding

usually in all good things. To have enough of bread, or of any thing

else, was difficult, and was considered a great privilege, so that

it was thought that some sick persons met with an untimely end for

want of necessaries. To sum up, no robes of state were to be seen in

Constantinople, especially while the Emperor himself was ill; but in a

city where the court of the whole Roman empire was held, all persons

dressed like private men, and remained at home. Such was the course of

the pestilence in Constantinople and throughout the empire: it also

fell upon the Persians and all other barbarians.”[113]

On comparing this pestilence with that of Athens, we cannot fail to

observe their different effects upon the conduct and tempers of those

who were exposed to their influence. In the one, party spirit (and the

factions of Constantinople were pursued with a violence as desperate

as their origin was trivial) was hushed, and the most profligate were

awed into temporary decency; in the other, every chain of society was

loosed, every duty toward God and man forgotten in the intoxication

of danger, and the craving to drown thought in sensual pleasure. “Let

us eat and drink, for to–morrow we die,” was truly the maxim of the

Athenians. Surely this difference can only be ascribed to the powerful

effects produced by the received belief of a future existence upon the

minds even of those who, under common circumstances, seemed regardless

of such considerations. Among the Athenians practically no such belief

existed; it was the creed of their poets, it was inculcated at their

mysteries, but it was devoid of all authority to serve as a rule of

conduct. In no age or place in which the Christian religion has been

professed, however corrupted in principle or depraved in practice, has

that general depravity, which is described by Thucydides, ensued in

consequence of a similar calamity. The nearest approach to it is to

be found in the great plague of Florence, as related by Boccacio. His

account indeed, as being the introduction to a work of fiction, might

be suspected of exaggeration for purposes of effect. It is, however,

completely confirmed by Matteo Villani, in his continuation of the

history of Giovanni Villani, his brother, who himself died in this

plague. His narration gives some striking particulars of the duration

and extent of the calamity, and of the evil consequences which it left

behind it; which will serve well to introduce and corroborate the more

picturesque and highly–coloured narrative of Boccacio.

The plague appears to have originated in 1346, in Upper India and

China (Cathay), “and coming on day after day, and spreading from nation

to nation, within the space of one year it comprehended the third part

of the world, which is called Asia. And at the end of this time it

fixed on the nations of the Mare Maggiore[114] and on the coasts of the

Mare Tirreno, in Syria and Turkey towards Egypt, and the shores of the

Red Sea, and northwards on Russia and Greece, and Armenia, and other

adjoining provinces.” From the Mare Maggiore the plague was brought to

Sicily, Pisa, and Genoa by some Genoese and Catalonian vessels, which

fled thence to escape from it but too late. “Then in the process of

the time appointed by God to the nations all Sicily was involved in

this deadly pestilence, and Africa, in her coasts and in her provinces

towards the east, and on the shores of our Mare Tirreno. And the plague

coming gradually westward, comprehended Sardinia and Corsica, and all

the islands of that sea; and in like manner on the continent of Europe,

it seized on the neighbouring parts towards the west, and extended

itself southwards, with more violence of assault than in the northern

parts. In 1348 all Italy had the disorder, except the city of Milan,

and some parts about the Alps, where it pressed little. And in this

same year it began to pass the mountains, and to extend itself into

Provence and Savoy and Dauphiné, and Burgundy, and along the seacoast

of Marseilles, and of Aigue Morte,[115] and through Catalonia, so to

the island of Majorca, and in Spain and Granada. And in 1349 it had

taken in, on the extreme west, the coasts of the ocean in Europe and

Africa, and Ireland, and the island of England and of Scotland, and

other islands of the west, and all the land within, with nearly equal

mortality, except in Brabant, where it did little mischief. And in

1350 it seized the Germans and Hungarians, Friesland, Denmark, the

Goths and Vandals, and the other people and nations of the north.”

The time during which the pestilence raged, in each country which it

successively seized upon, is stated by Villani to have been about five

lunar months,[116] lasting at Florence from the early part of April,

1348, to the beginning of September in the same year: and he estimates

the mortality in that city and district, and in other regions, as

far as report enabled him to form a judgment, at three out of five,

of all sexes and ages, reckoning the poor with the rich; the poor,

however, being somewhat the most diminished, because the pestilence

began among them first, and they had less aid against it, and more

discomforts and wants. The neglect, however, both of rich and poor,

according to Villani, as well as Boccacio, appears to have been very

general; but he adds a notice of the failure of the policy of those

who withdrew themselves from the danger, and “shut themselves up in

solitary places where the air was healthy, provided with every comfort

for living, where there was no suspicion of infection, yet in different

countries the judgment of God, against which there is no shutting of

the door, struck them down, just as the others who had taken no care

for themselves. And many others who had made themselves ready for

death to save their relations and friends in their sickness escaped,

although they had the disorder, and many had it not at all, though they

continued this service.”[117]

This is an unintentional, and therefore an unsuspicious testimony to

the absence of really contagious properties in this pestilence, as

well as in the one described by Procopius. Boccacio, on the contrary,

describes the virulence of the contagion in the strongest terms.

Upon this plague, and upon the practice alluded to by Villani, of

withdrawing into sequestered retreats, Boccacio has formed the

groundwork of his celebrated collection of tales. In an introduction

he describes the phenomena of the disease, and the appearance of the

city; and relates how a mixed party of both sexes, casually assembled,

resolved to quit a scene of such danger and misery, and seek security

in the loneliness of the country, and recreation in each other’s

society. The tales are supposed to be related by each in turn for the

amusement of the rest. Boccacio’s description of the plague runs as

follows:—

“It was in the year 1348 that the deadly pestilence reached

the noble city of Florence, the fairest of all in Italy; a plague

which, whether proceeding from the influence of the heavenly bodies,

or sent for our iniquities upon men by the just anger of God for

our correction, began some years before in the eastern regions,

deprived these of an innumerable quantity of living beings, and then

communicating from one place to another, spread itself miserably,

without stopping, towards the west. Prudence and human foresight

availed nought against it, though the city was carefully cleansed

from much filth by officers appointed for that purpose, and all the

sick were forbidden to enter it, and much attention given to the

preservation of health: nor was there more profit from the humble

supplications made to God by devout persons, not once, but often, both

in formal processions and in other manners: but the plague began to

show forth its sad effects in horrible and wonderful fashion almost

in the beginning of the above–named year. The symptoms were not such

as they had been in the east, when bleeding at the nose was the

sure sign of inevitable death; but at the beginning of the disease

certain swellings appeared, alike in men and women, either in the

groin or under the arm; some of which grew to the size of a common

apple, some to that of an egg, and some more and some less, and the

common people called them boils. And in a short time this deadly

boil spread from the two parts of the body already mentioned, and

began to rise indifferently in every part of the body, and soon after

this the characteristic of the disease began to change into black or

livid spots, which appeared on the arms and thighs, and every other

part of the body of many patients, in some cases large and few, and

in others small and thick. And as the boil had originally been, and

still was, a most unfailing indication of approaching death, so were

these spots whenever they appeared. Nor did it seem that the skill of

any physician, or the power of any medicine, availed to cure these

diseases, or was of any service; on the contrary, whether it were

that the nature of the evil would not allow it, or that the medical

attendants (the number of whom, besides the really skilful, had become

exceedingly great, and comprised both men and women, who never had

had any medical instruction), in their ignorance did not know whence

it proceeded, and consequently could not take proper measures against

it, the result was that not only few recovered, but almost all died

within the third day from the appearance of the above–named symptoms,

some a little sooner and some a little later, and most of them without

any fever, or other incidental symptom. And the violence of the plague

was the greater, because it spread from the sick to the sound by their

mutual communication, just as fire catches dry or greasy substances

when they are brought close to it. And the evil went yet farther; for

not only by conversation and intercourse with the sick did the sound

get the disease, and the occasion of the like death, but even the

touch of clothes, or anything else which had been touched or used by

the sick, seemed to carry with it the same disease, and communicated

it to the toucher. It is a marvel to hear the tale which I have to

tell; indeed had not many, and I myself with my own eyes, seen it, I

should hardly have dared to believe, much less to write it, however

trustworthy had been my informant. I say then that such was the

virulence of the plague in spreading from one subject to another, that

not only man gave it to man, but this much more remarkable circumstance

often visibly occurred, namely, that something which had belonged to a

man sick or dead of the disease, being touched by another animal not of

the human race, not only infected it with the disease, but killed it in

a very short time; of which my own eyes, as I just now mentioned, among

other instances, received proof one day in the following manner:—The

rags of a poor man who died of the plague were thrown into the public

street, and a couple of pigs came up, and routed among them a great

deal with their snouts, as their manner is, and took them in their

teeth, and shook them against their faces; and both, in a very little

while after, reeling about some time as if they had taken poison, fell

dead to the ground upon the rags which they had so roughly handled.

Hence, and from many other similar or more alarming circumstances,

there arose various fears and fancies in those who still remained

alive, and almost all of them tended towards one very cruel conclusion,

to avoid and fly from the sick, and everything belonging to them, for

every one believed that by so doing he would secure himself. Some were

of opinion that moderate living, and avoiding all excess, had much

effect towards resisting this calamity: and these made their parties,

and lived away from all others, and collecting together and shutting

themselves up in houses where there were no sick, and for their

better living using the most delicate food and the best wines with

the utmost temperance, and avoiding all luxury, there they tarried,

without allowing themselves to speak to any one, or to hear any news

from abroad of the dead or the ill, passing their time in music and

such pleasures as they could obtain. Others held a contrary opinion,

and asserted that the surest remedy for the disease was to drink

freely, and to enjoy themselves, and to go about singing and amusing

themselves, and to indulge their appetites in every way they could,

and to laugh, and make sport of everything that occurred. And just as

they said they acted, as far as they could; going night and day now

to one tavern and now to another, drinking without stint or measure,

and doing this for the most part in other men’s houses, provided only

that they found anything there that was to their taste or fancy. And

this they could easily do, because every one, as if he had no longer

to live, had, as it were, abandoned his property, so that most houses

had become common; and a stranger used them, if he happened to come to

them, just as their own masters would have done. With all this brutal

conduct, they always avoided the sick as much as they could. And in

this affliction and wretchedness of the city, the respected authority

of laws, both divine and human, was almost entirely fallen to decay

and dissolved, from the condition of their ministers and officers; for

these, like other men, were all dead or sick, or else left so destitute

of assistants that they could perform no duty: so that every one might

do whatever pleased him best.

“Many others held a middle course, not confining themselves so

closely in their diet as the first, nor indulging themselves so freely

as the second in drinking and other excesses. These used things

in moderation, according to their appetites, and without shutting

themselves up, went about, some of them carrying flowers in their

hands, some scented herbs, and some divers kinds of spices, which

they often applied to their noses, thinking it best to cherish the

brain with scents of this kind, since all the air seemed thick and

noisome with the stench of the dead bodies, and the diseased parts,

and the medicines. Others were of a more inhuman opinion (though

perhaps a safer one), and said that there was no better remedy

against pestilences, nor so good, as to run away from them. And many

men and women, influenced by this reasoning, and caring for nothing

but themselves, abandoned their own cities, their own houses, their

habitations, and their relations, and their property, and went to

other men’s country establishments, or at least to their own: as if

the anger of God, when stirred up to punish the iniquity of men with

this pestilence, would not follow them wherever they were, but had only

determined to destroy those who were to be found within the walls of

their city; or as if they thought that no one ought to remain in it,

and that its last hour was come. And although these, with their various

modes of thinking, did not all die, so also did they not all escape: on

the contrary, many of every opinion growing sick everywhere, those who

while themselves well had given the example to those who still remained

so, were left to languish almost entirely deserted. And, not to mention

that one fellow–citizen avoided another, and hardly any neighbour took

any care of another, and relations seldom or never visited each other,

with such alarm had this calamity seized on the hearts of men and

women, that brother abandoned brother, and uncle nephew, and sister

brother, and often the wife her husband; and, which is yet stranger and

hardly credible, fathers and mothers were shy of visiting and attending

upon their children, as if they were not their own. The result was,

that the countless multitude of men and women who were ill, had nothing

to depend upon, except either the kindness of friends, and these were

few, or else the avarice of servants, who were induced by large and

disproportionate wages to give their attendance. And even of them the

number was small, and men and women they were of rude understanding,

and generally unaccustomed to such services, and hardly of any use

except to hand to the patients such things as they asked for, or to

observe when they died: and often while rendering such services as

these, they lost their lives for their pains. From this desertion of

the sick by their neighbours, and relations, and friends, and this

scarcity of servants, there spread a practice such as had hardly ever

been heard of, that no lady, however elegant, or fair, or young, if

taken ill, would object to have a man in attendance on her, be he what

he might, young or old, or was ashamed to discover to him any part of

her person, just as she would have done to a woman, if the need of her

disorder did but require it: and this perhaps in after times, rendered

those who recovered less scrupulous in their conduct. The same want of

attendance also occasioned the death of many, who might perhaps have

escaped if they had had assistance; and thus partly for want of fitting

services, which the sick could not have, and partly from the violence

of the plague, the number of those who died day and night in the city

was so great, that it was astounding even to hear, much more to see:

and thus, almost of necessity, there arose among those who were left

alive practices contrary to the former custom of the citizens.

“It was the custom, as we still it see to this day, that female

relations and friends assembled in the house of the deceased, and there

bewailed him, with his yet nearer female connexions. And his male

neighbours and many of his townsmen, with his own nearest friends, met

separately from the women before his house; and thither, according

to his rank, came also the clergy, and the deceased was borne on the

shoulders of men of his own rank, with funeral ceremony of wax tapers

and chanting, to the church which he had chosen for a burial–place

before his death. But these observances, after the fury of the plague

began to rise, almost entirely ceased, and other new practices came

in their room. For not only did people die without having many women

about them, but there were a good many who passed away from this life

without having any one to witness it: and few indeed were those, to

whom were granted the piteous lamentations and bitter tears of their

connexions. On the contrary, instead of these, were heard in most cases

laughter, and jests, and good fellowship: and ladies for the most part

laying aside the tenderness of their sex, had very completely made

themselves masters of this practice, as thinking it for their own

safety. And few were there whose bodies were followed to the church

by more than ten or a dozen of their neighbours; and the bier was not

borne by honourable citizens, friends of the deceased, but a sort of

grave–diggers who came from the lowest order of the people, and did

these services for hire, took it up and carried it with hurried steps,

not to the church which he had himself appointed before his death, but

generally to the nearest, following four or six clergy with few tapers,

and generally without any; and then the priests with the assistance of

these grave–diggers, without troubling themselves about any over long

or solemn offices, laid the corpse as quick as possible in the first

burial–place which they found unoccupied. The condition of the lowest

class, and probably of a great part of the middle class, was full of

far greater wretchedness than this; for these were generally kept to

their houses either by hope or by poverty, and thus remaining in their

neighbourhoods, they sickened by thousands in the day, and receiving

no service or assistance, they almost all died without any thing to

save them. Many were there who came to their end both by day and night

in the public streets, and many others who died in their own houses,

and their neighbours had no knowledge that they were dead, till they

discovered it by the stench of the putrefying corpses: and the whole

place was full of these and others who died on every side. In most

neighbourhoods one practice was observed; namely, that the people of

the vicinity, moved as much by the fear that the putrefying of the

dead bodies might injure themselves, as by the affection which they

had borne to the departed, with their own hands, and by the assistance

of porters, when they could get them, brought down from their houses

the corpses of those who were already gone, and set them before their

doors; and there, especially in the morning, any one who had gone about

might have seen them without number. Then biers were brought thither,

and there were some who for want of regular biers laid the corpses on

tables. Nor was it only once that one bier bore two or three corpses at

the same time; but a long list might be made, where the same bier held

the wife and the husband, or two or three brothers, or father and son,

or some such load. And infinitely often did it happen, that when two

priests were going with a crucifix for some corpse, three or four biers

were carried after it; and the priests, when they thought they had

one body to bury, had six, or eight, or sometimes more. Nevertheless,

the dead were not honoured with any tears, or lights, or attendance;

on the contrary, matters had come to that pass, that no more care

was had of men who died, than now would be of goats: so that it very

plainly appeared that the greatness of the calamity had taught even the

simplest and most unthinking, the lesson which the natural course of

events had not been able, by few and slight sufferings, to impress upon

the wise, namely, the necessity of patience under suffering. So great

was the number of the bodies which were every day, and almost every

hour borne in concourse to every church, that the consecrated ground

was not sufficient for the burials, especially if it were desired

to give to every body a place of its own, according to the ancient

practice. Great trenches therefore were dug in the burying–grounds of

the churches, after every part was filled; into which the bodies which

were brought afterwards were thrown by hundreds. There they were were

stowed layer upon layer, like the merchandise in a ship, each layer

covered with a little earth, till they reached the top of the trench.

And not to go on any longer hunting out every particular of our past

misery, which befel us in this city, I say that while the time was

passing so cruelly in it, the surrounding country was not in any wise

spared. For there, not to speak of the castles, which in proportion to

their size were like the city, in the scattered villages and in the

fields the poor and wretched labourers and their families, without any

care of physician or aid of servant, by the way side, on the land they

tilled, and in their houses, died alike by day and night, not like

men, but almost like beasts. So they became wanton in their habits,

just like the townspeople, and paid no attention to their affairs or

business; but all, as if they expected to die on the day which they

found they had reached, would do nothing to secure the future produce

of their cattle, and of the land, and of their own past labours, but

exerted themselves as much as possible to consume those which they

found at hand. Thus it happened that the kine, the asses, the sheep,

the pigs, the goats, the poultry, and even the dogs, creatures most

attached to mankind, driven out of their own houses, went about as

it pleased them over the fields, where the corn was left, not merely

unharvested, but uncut. And many of them, almost like reasoning beings,

after they had fed well in the day, at night returned home without any

guidance of their shepherd. What more can be said, leaving the country

and returning to the city, but that such and so great was the cruelty

of heaven, and perhaps in some degree that of men, that between March

and the following July, between the virulence of the pestilential

disease, and the bad attendance on the sick, or their abandonment in

their need on account of the fear entertained by the sound, more than

a hundred thousand human beings are confidently believed to have died

within the walls of the city of Florence; though before this deadly

occurrence, perhaps the whole number would not have been estimated so

high. Oh, how many great palaces, how many fair houses, how many noble

mansions, formerly fully inhabited, now remained empty, from their

lords and mistresses to the lowest menial! Oh, how many memorable

races, how many vast inheritances, how many splendid fortunes found

themselves left without any right successor! How many gallant men,

how many fair women, how many comely youths, whom not only any common

observer, but Galen, Hippocrates, or Æsculapius would have judged in

the soundest health, breakfasted in the morning with their relations,

companions and friends, and then, the evening after, supped in the

other world with their ancestors.”

The relaxation of morals consequent upon this pestilence is more fully

described by Villani.

“In this season of the deadly pestilence, Pope Clement VI. made great

general indulgences of the punishment of all sins to those who on

repentance and confession requested it of their confessors, and died;

and in this mortality every Christian, thinking that he was dying, set

himself well in order, and with much contrition and repentance they

gave up their souls to God. And the few wise men who remained alive

expected many things, which through the corruption of sin, turned out

otherwise, the very contrary most marvellously coming to pass. For

they thought that such as God by his favour had kept alive, having

seen the extermination of their nearest connexions, and having heard

the like tidings of all the nations of the world, would have become of

better condition, humble, virtuous, of the true faith, and would have

kept themselves from iniquities and sins, and would have been full of

love and charity one towards another. But now that the mortality was

at an end, the contrary appeared; for men finding themselves few and

rich by their heirships and successions to earthly goods, forgetting

things past as if they had never been, gave into a more unhandsome

and disorderly life than they had used before. For wandering about at

leisure they dissolutely indulged in the sin of gluttony, banquets,

taverns, delicate food, gaming, running without bridle into luxury,

which they sought in strange clothing, and unusual fashions, and

unseemly manners, changing the forms of all household goods. And the

people, men and women, because of the exceeding abundance which they

found of all things, would not labour at their accustomed trades, and

would have the dearest and most delicate viands for their subsistence,

and married at will; the maid–servants and all the lowest women

dressing themselves in all the beautiful and valuable attire of the

honourable ladies who were dead. And almost all our city, without any

check, ran into a discreditable course of life, and so, and worse, did

the other cities and provinces of the world. And according to all the

accounts we have received, there was no place where the living kept

themselves in continence, when they had escaped from the divine wrath,

supposing that the hand of God was weary. But, according to the prophet

Isaiah, the wrath of God is not shortened, neither is his hand weary:

but he has much pleasure in his mercy, and labours in long–suffering,

that he may bring back sinners to conversion and repentance; and he

punishes temperately.

“It was supposed that, through the failure of the people, there would

for a long time be abundance of every thing which the earth produces;

and, on the contrary, through the ingratitude of men, every thing came

to unusual scarcity, and so continued a long time. In some countries

there were several unusual famines. So also it was expected that

there would be abundance of clothing, and of all other things which

are of service to the human body beyond subsistence: and, in fact,

the contrary came to pass for a long time; for most things were worth

twice as much as they used to be before the aforesaid mortality, and

more. And labour, and manufactures of all sorts, rose regularly to

more than twice the ordinary rate. Lawsuits, disputes, controversies

and riots arose on every side among the citizens of every country, on

account of their inheritances and successions. And our city of Florence

long filled her courts with them, with great expenditure and unusual

charges. Wars were stirred up, and various scandals throughout all the

universe, contrary to the common expectation of men.”

These Italian accounts might be suspected of exaggeration, but

they are fully supported by ultramontane authority; and though the

pestilence of 1348 is usually known as the plague of Florence (a

distinction which it owes probably to Boccaccio), it raged even

more destructively beyond the Florentine territory, and beyond the

Italian peninsula. The French and English historians in particular

bear testimony to the extent of misery produced by it. “Never in old

times was it heard or seen that such a multitude of people lay dead:

the evil seemed to grow by imagination and contagion, for if a whole

man visited a sick man, it was very seldom that he escaped. Thus in

many towns and villages the priests fled to avoid attending upon the

dying: in many places, out of twenty persons, not two remained alive.

At Paris, in the hospital of the Hôtel Dieu, the mortality was such,

that for a long time five hundred corpses were carried in carts daily

to the burial–ground of the Innocents.”[118] “In Provence and Languedoc

two–thirds of the people were estimated to have perished; in the rest

of France one–third. Allowing for the inclination which all men have to

magnify those calamities, the naked facts of which are terrible enough,

there is here evidence of a mortality hardly to be equalled.”[119]

In England the same pestilence raged with destructive energy among

the poor, but spared the higher orders. Hardly any of the nobility

or bishops died, with this remarkable exception, that the see of

Canterbury was thrice vacated by death in one year. It is also recorded

that there was a great murrain among the cattle, and that neither beast

nor bird of prey would touch their carcasses. Meat in consequence

became exceedingly scarce, and the harvest having failed, not so

much for deficiency of crops, as for want of hands to get it in, the

distress was very great. About harvest–time a reaper was not to be had

for less than eight–pence, nor a mower for less than twelve–pence a

day, besides victuals, “which in those days was excessive wages, money

having then a tenfold value to what it hath now.”

Another celebrated pestilence is that which desolated Milan in the

year 1630. The duchy was then subject to Spain, and, like all the

foreign dependencies and conquests of that once powerful kingdom, had

reason to rue the day that gave it such a master. Domestic misrule,

the licensed insolence of the nobles, the supine indifference of the

government to all but political crimes, combined with the miseries of

almost constant war to destroy the husbandman’s hopes and paralyse his

industry. At length natural causes seemed to unite with political ones

to work evil to this unhappy country. In the year 1627 an unfavourable

season and defective harvest produced an alarming scarcity, which

was aggravated into famine by a second failure in the succeeding

year. The consequences of this scarcity were soon evident in the vast

number of persons without employment or means of subsistence, who were

congregated in the streets of Milan. It was the pernicious fashion of

that time for the gentry to maintain a number of idle and dissolute

followers—men regardless of obligations human or divine, who owned no

law except their master’s will, chosen and valued for their readiness

to undertake and dexterity to execute his orders, alike unmindful of

their guilt or danger. The rich walked the streets followed by a train

of these bravoes (the Italian name is naturalized in our language),

swords were drawn upon the slightest pretence, and their brawls openly

insulted and defied the law. These men were the first to be turned

adrift when vice and luxury began to feel the pressure of want.—”It

would have been laughable,” says a contemporary, “had such a feeling

been consistent with the consciousness of our own danger, to see the

change in those persons who used to be bugbears to all. The nobles now

walked unattended, civilly, _hanging their ears_ (demissis auribus), as

if to bespeak peace by their demeanour. No less striking was it to see

their domestic bullies, who used to perfume the very air, reduced to

beg half naked through the city.”[120] The sufferings of these ruffians

would excite little sympathy, but the famine pressed equally upon the

honest and industrious. The rich being compelled by increasing scarcity

to contract their expenses, artificers and tradesmen, one after

another, were thrown out of employ; and thus the streets were filled

with a starving crowd, daily increased by those who flocked from the

country and from neighbouring towns, reduced to depend upon charity,

and allured to the capital by its superior wealth.

So great was the evil, such the scenes of misery presented to the eye

in every street, that the municipal authorities resolved on opening

two vast establishments—the lazaretto, or hospital for persons with

infectious disorders, and a building usually appropriated to the

reception of foundlings. To these places all mendicants and persons

without means of subsistence were taken by the police, and maintained

at the public expense. At one of these establishments 3000 persons

were admitted within a few days, and fresh inmates were continually

presenting themselves. Private munificence materially lightened the

heavy charge thus laid upon the public treasury. But, then as now,

numbers were so devoted to a vagabond life, that rather than accept

food, clothing, and shelter, under the moderate restraints necessary

to preserve order in such a multitude, they would have remained in

rags, exposed to the inclemency of the weather, and dependent even for

the bread of life upon casual relief. To quicken the diligence of the

police, a small reward was given for each person whom they brought in.

At length the discontent among those who were shut up, generated by

the restrictions on their liberty, and heightened by a mortality far

less probably than that which took place among them while scattered

abroad, but more alarming because brought all at once into view, became

so great, that the magistrates broke up these establishments, and the

misery of unbounded beggary again prevailed throughout Milan.

During this period the pestilence lurked in the Grison mountains:

it had even appeared in the capital; but the deaths were few, the

disease spread not, and both magistrates and people, with a common

infatuation, were eager to deny the existence of danger until it was

too late to guard against it. In the autumn of 1629 a further evil

visited this unhappy country. The Spanish governor had granted a free

passage to a German army, intended to oppose the French interest in

the duchy of Mantua. These men, with the brutal licentiousness which

preeminently disgraced the mercenary soldiers of that age, inflicted

all the miseries of war upon a friendly population. Blood, rapine, and

fire marked their path; the inhabitants concealed their property, and

abandoned their houses, but it was often in vain; their persecutors

spread over the country, and if discovered they were compelled by

torture to reveal their stores. And as the first of these locusts left

nothing for those who followed, the latter often vented their wrath and

disappointment upon those poor people, whose only crime was having lost

their all. Thus all who could fly, took shelter in the most retired

fortresses, and there endured extreme hardship, until the last of these

ill–omened allies had disappeared. And such was the devastation, that

the miseries of their temporary shelter were little worse than those

endured after their return home.[121]

Still further to increase the terrors of these troops, it was reported

that they bore the plague along with them, from which indeed the German

armies were said seldom to be entirely free. Superstition added to

the general alarm. A comet appeared in 1628; another in 1630. Belief

in the malign influence of these bodies was then general. Prophecies

were current, said to be of ancient date, denouncing plague and famine

in these years. It will be evident to the reader that no place could

be better fitted to receive and nourish a pestilential disorder than

Milan was at this time. Scarcity of food and want of cleanliness,

inseparable from a poor and crowded population, and a summer of unusual

heat, combined to favour the reception of the enemy. In November, 1629,

a soldier quartered at Chiavenna returned to his home at Milan. He

was taken ill, removed to the hospital, and died; and on examination

the signs of plague were found on his body, and the subsequent death

of all persons who had been under the same roof made it evident that

the plague had gained entrance. But at first the progress of the

disease was slow, so slow that doubts were entertained whether it were

really the plague; and while the magistrates were dilatory and remiss

in taking the usual precautions, the common people were especially

unwilling to admit so unpalatable and alarming a report. Fear of the

sufferings, and disgust at the restrictions and discipline of an

infected city, made them furious against all who warned them of their

danger. The first physician in Milan, a man eminent for charity in

the exercise of his profession as well as skill, and therefore highly

venerated even by the populace, was assaulted by a mob, and obliged

to fly for his life, upon no other provocation than his belief in the

reality of the disease.

[Illustration: From a Medal of Cardinal Borromeo.]

But unfortunately incredulity was of no avail to check its progress;

and at last the magistrates were compelled to place guards and barriers

at the gates, and to exclude all persons and all articles coming from

suspected places. Not only the sick, but all persons living in the same

house with them, were removed to the lazaretto, or, if suffered to

remain, were placed under the charge of an officer appointed to ensure

their perfect seclusion. Those whose health was suspected were allowed

to remain under similar but somewhat lighter restraint. And having done

what was possible in the way of precaution with little benefit, for the

mortality increased fearfully, the authorities turned for help to St.

Charles Borromeo, the late Archbishop of Milan, whose body, enclosed in

a crystal shrine, formed the most precious treasure of the cathedral.

There was at least a propriety in applying to him in preference to any

other saint in the calendar; for his liberality, and intrepidity, and

zeal in his pastoral duties were eminently displayed in 1576, when

Milan laboured under the same calamity.

It was determined therefore, with the permission of the church, to

carry these relics in solemn procession round the city, and to implore

the continued patronage and intercession of the saint, who in life had

zealously watched over the temporal as well as the spiritual welfare

of his people. It was ordered that no expense be spared to increase

the splendour of the rite, and testify due reverence to the hallowed

remains; and accordingly the streets through which the pomp was to

pass were cleared, and cleansed, and decked with tapestry and other

ornaments, as if for a festival. The houses of the poor, and those

which the pestilence had left untenanted, were furnished at the expense

of the city, or by the piety of some wealthy neighbour. The latter

should rather have been left in their desolation, bare and mournful,

to testify to the extent of the distress, and implore, more touchingly

than words could do it, the divine protection. The shrine was borne

through the chief streets surrounded by the priesthood, the nobles, and

the magistrates, barefoot, and in penitential dresses, and followed by

a multitude: and for a moment all minds were abstracted from their own

and the common danger, to gaze upon the mitred skull, visible through

its transparent covering, whose eyeless sockets and grinning jaws might

have seemed to mock the hopes so fondly and vainly entertained.

The procession took place on June 3rd: at its close the saint returned

to his resting–place; and from that time forward the disease raged with

redoubled fury, and the Milanese were reduced to despair. For eight

days and nights, however, the shrine was deposited upon the high altar,

surrounded by a concourse of votaries, beseeching help with tears and

cries. The answer, our author says, was comprised in the number of the

dying; and lest the interpretation should be doubtful, that number

increased until 1800 perished daily. Strange infatuation! where every

man should have avoided his dearest friend as charged with death, to

congregate thousands in supplication against an enemy, to whom in that

very act they gave a more extensive and deadly power!

The speedy burial of the dead is commonly one of the great

difficulties in time of pestilence. Here it was little felt. There was

a class of men called Monatti, professed attendants on the plague, and

ever ready for, and rejoicing in the most dangerous and disgusting

services. Ripamonte speaks of them as a class well known to everybody,

and passes in silence over the origin of the name, and the nature of

the reward which tempted, or the tie, whether hereditary or other,

which bound them to so desperate a service: curious points on which

we have failed to procure information elsewhere. It was the duty of

these men to convey the sick to the hospitals, and attend them there;

to watch over those who remained at home, and to carry away the dead

for interment. Strange and revolting were these funeral processions.

They were preceded by two men with bells, who warned all persons to

avoid the way, that the Monatti were at hand, death and pestilence in

their train. Then came carts with the dead piled in disorder, many

stripped even of their last covering, when it was such as to excite

the cupidity of the ruffians in charge of them; while the long hair of

women trailing on the ground, and limbs and heads dangling over the

sides, and answering to the rough movements of the vehicle, and fallen

bodies strewed along the ground,[122] presented a spectacle the more

revolting for the grotesqueness that mingled with its horror. Meanwhile

the Monatti sat carousing in the midst of death with indecent laughter

and jests, and exultation in the general calamity; indulging the

avowed hope that the mortality might never cease till the population

of Milan was exterminated, and the wealth of her palaces left unowned

and undefended, to be appropriated by the plunderer at will. Necessary

as these ministers were, their presence added fresh miseries to those

under which the city groaned. Reckless and desperate, hating others in

proportion as they were loathed and despised, they were prepared for

any crime that passion and interest might prompt. Their duty called

them into all suspected houses, and at such a season every house lay

open to suspicion. Every abode, every room therefore was exposed to

their intrusion; and robbery was the most frequent, but not the worst

end to which these ill–omened visits were perverted. Other profligates

too assumed their dress and ensigns, and sometimes when the true and

false Monatti met, strife and bloodshed added new horrors to the sick

chamber or the dying bed.

The general distress, as misery is ever prone to credulity, was in

no small degree increased by the most absurd and wicked reports. It

was supposed that foreign princes had generated, or, at all events,

were maintaining the plague, with the view of weakening the power

of the state, and taking undisturbed possession of it, when reduced

to a solitude. A belief was propagated, that persons were employed

to besmear everything likely to be touched with the most foul and

pestilential compounds. The walls of houses, the fastenings of doors,

household implements, clothes, men’s persons, everything fit to spread

the infection, nay, the very standing corn in the fields, now ripe

for the sickle, were thought to be poisoned by some unseen enemy. The

belief originated in an unexplained appearance, the result most likely

of some wanton joke or malicious deception. On the morning of April

23rd, the fronts of houses throughout the whole length of the city were

observed by the earliest passengers to be marked with spots, appearing

as if a sponge filled with the matter of the plague–sores had been

pressed against them. The whole population ere long was in a commotion,

and poured out to see this strange phenomenon; but this was before the

fury of the pestilence, and the alarm created was forgotten, until

revived by the increasing mortality. Then reports were circulated, and

greedily received, that emissaries of hostile princes were diligently

engaged in spreading infectious poison through the city; nay, that

the powers of hell, as well as human principalities, were leagued

against it, and that the devil had taken a house in Milan, where his

head–quarters were established, and the pestiferous unguents prepared

and distributed. One man related how, as he stood in front of the

cathedral, he saw a chariot drawn by six white horses, and followed by

a numerous attendance, in which a person sat, of princely demeanour,

though his dark and deep–burnt complexion, his floating hair, the fire

of his eye, and the threatening expression of his lip, gave such an air

to the countenance as he had never beheld on mortal face. The stranger

stopped before him, and bade him mount. He complied, and was carried

to a house which appeared like many others; but on entering, he saw

strange and wonderful things, in which majesty was mixed with horrors,

delight with fear. In one part thick–flashing lightning dispelled the

seeming night which reigned elsewhere: here a spectral senate held its

meetings; there vast empty chambers and gardens extended, and from the

brow of a dimly–seen rock waters poured abundantly into a basin placed

to receive them; and he narrated a variety of other prodigies. The

tempter concluded by showing him vast treasures, and promising that

they should be his own, and every wish be gratified, if he would bow

the knee to him and do his bidding. But the temptation was insufficient

to overcome his virtue, and he was suddenly transported back to the

spot whence he had been taken. The motive for concocting such tales

is as evident as their extravagance: yet they roused the populace to

such fury and such jealous suspicion, that many fell victims not to any

imprudence, but to the commonest and most natural actions, which the

prevailing frenzy interpreted into the dreadful crime of anointing.

In sight of Ripamonte, from whom we derive this account, an old man

past eighty, well known as a daily frequenter of the church of St.

Antony, was seen, on rising from his knees, to wipe the bench on which

he meant to sit with the skirt of his cloak. Some women raised a cry,

that the old man was anointing the seats. The church was more thronged

than usual, for it was a festival–day. The people ran together in an

instant: the old man was dragged by the hair, beaten, and kicked; the

only thing that saved his life for an instant was the wish to carry him

before the judges, and extort some knowledge of his accomplices. “I saw

him,” says Ripamonte, “dragged away thus, and never heard more of him.

I think that he must have died on the instant. Those who were induced

by pity to inquire of his character, reported that he was a good and

honest man.”

With the people in this temper, accusations and convictions for a

crime probably fictitious were not wanting. The first victim was a

person employed by the tribunal of health to make the daily round of

a district, and report the names of all who were ill. He was accused

by some women, who described his person, and swore that they saw him

from their windows daub the walls with some preparation. Being put to

the torture, he endured it with wonderful constancy until the fourth

day, and then when the judges, wearied by his firmness, were about to

release him, he made a sort of voluntary confession, and named one

Mora, a barber, as the person who had given him the ointments. Other

circumstances he added, grossly false, as that the barber had given

him at the same time a potion which took away all power of confession,

until he had undergone a certain process of torture. The house of Mora

was found full of medical or chemical vessels and preparations (it

was then usual for barbers to practise surgery), which he declared

were meant as preservatives to be distributed among his friends. The

physicians who inspected them were of a different opinion, and declared

them to be prepared for poisons; and on their report the barber was

put to the torture, where, after several times alternately confessing

and recanting, he at length made full acknowledgment of his guilt,

and of all the methods which he had employed. Others, meanwhile, were

apprehended upon the same charge, and made similar confessions under

the cogent arguments of the rack; and all were put to death with

circumstances of no common cruelty. Mora’s house was demolished, and

a column built on the spot where it stood, with an inscription to

commemorate his guilt. A sort of madness seems to have been epidemic,

and it is not improbable that some persons may have been led to attempt

the crime by the mere force of imagination, as sometimes a murder of

unusual horror seems to work upon minds morbidly susceptible of such

impressions, till they believe themselves irresistibly driven to commit

the same offence. Some persons who were taken within the lazaretto,

with boxes and bottles, as if prepared to collect the putrid humour

of the plague–boils, which was believed to be the chief ingredient of

these diabolical preparations, confessed their guilt, persisted in

their confession under the severest tortures, and yet under the gallows

asserted, that though they died willingly in expiation of other guilt,

they were innocent in this point, even of the knowledge of unguents,

or of the magical or diabolical practices which were said to be joined

with them. One man who lay sick in the lazaretto, confessed that he had

entered into a compact with the devil, and pointed out the spot where

his poisons would be found. He died in raving madness (no uncommon

symptom in the disease), calling for the means of self–destruction,

and attempted to cut his throat with a sharp piece of money. A woman

also confessed, and named her daughter as an accomplice: and the

instruments of infection were found in the possession of the latter.

It added no small credit to these stories that four men were said to

have been detected in the palace at Madrid, with medicaments prepared

for communicating the plague, yet they escaped, and left no trace of

their flight. This news came in a letter signed by the king’s own hand,

addressed to the governor of the province, and warning him to be upon

his guard. There is some justice in an observation made by our author,

that it seemed fated through the whole of this business that things

doubtful and things certain should be intermixed, and mutually involve

each other in obscurity. The total disappearance of four men, detected

in a crime of such moment, even in a royal palace, where of all places

their apprehension would appear to be certain, bears such an air of

mystification as throws discredit on the whole story: yet we cannot

suppose the Spanish monarch a party to the practising of so mischievous

a deceit upon his own suffering subjects; and scarcely any other person

would dare, or could be interested, to get up a trick so dangerous,

and apparently so unprofitable to the contrivers and actors in it.

But the people, blinded by their fears, saw neither improbability

nor inconsistency in these stories. Ripamonte, evidently himself a

sceptic, professes that an author was not free to canvass this subject

unreservedly, so obstinately was the belief fixed both in the higher

and lower classes, who maintained this breath of rumour as devotedly

as they clung to their homes and altars, and all that they held most

sacred.

The Italians, owing perhaps to the common use of poisons among them,

seem readily to have admitted such reports. When the plague broke

out at Naples in 1656, it was said to have been introduced by the

Spaniards, who suborned people to scatter poisoned dust in the streets.

This was one of the methods which the Milanese anointers were reported

to use. Tadini, one of the most eminent physicians then and there

practising, who wrote an account of the plague,[123] says that he knew

two young women, who on crossing themselves with holy water on coming

out of church observed that a clammy powder remained on their clothes

and persons, wherever the sacred sign had been made. Returning home

they were seized with giddiness, and died within two days. This seems a

strong case, yet it may be doubted whether they died of the plague or

of imagination, for no marks of the disease appeared on their bodies.

Their mother, and those who had waited on them, perished in the same

unaccountable way.