Coming out of the East, the Black Death reached the shores of
Italy in the spring of 1348 unleashing a rampage of death across
Europe unprecedented in recorded history. By the time the epidemic
played itself out three years later, anywhere between 25% and 50%
of Europe's population had fallen victim to the pestilence.
The plague presented itself in three interrelated forms. The
bubonic variant (the most common) derives its name from the
swellings or buboes that appeared on a victim's neck, armpits or
groin. These tumors could range in size from that of an egg to that
of an apple. Although some survived
The Plague's Progress
the painful ordeal, the manifestation of these lesions usually
signaled the victim had a life expectancy of up to a week. Infected
fleas that attached themselves to rats and then to humans spread
this bubonic type of the plague. A second variation - pneumonic
plague - attacked the respiratory system and was spread by merely
breathing the exhaled air of a victim. It was much more virulent
than its bubonic cousin - life expectancy was measured in one or
two days. Finally, the septicemic version of the disease attacked
the blood system.
Having no defense and no understanding of the cause of the
pestilence, the men, women and children caught in its onslaught
were bewildered, panicked, and finally devastated.
The Signs of Impending Death
"The symptoms were not the same as in the East, where a gush of
blood from the nose was the plain sign of inevitable death; but it
began both in men and women with certain swellings in the groin or
under the armpit. They grew to the size of a small apple or an egg,
more or less, and were vulgarly called tumours. In a short space of
time these tumours spread from the two parts named all over the
body. Soon after this the symptoms changed and black or purple
spots appeared on the arms or thighs or any other part of the body,
sometimes a few large ones, sometimes many little ones. These spots
were a certain sign of death, just as the original tumour had been
and still remained.
Varying Reactions to Disaster
"...Such fear and fanciful notions took possession of the living
that almost all of them adopted the same cruel policy, which was
entirely to avoid the sick and everything belonging to them. By so
doing, each one thought he would secure his own safety.
Some thought that moderate living and the avoidance of all
superfluity would preserve them from the epidemic. They formed
small communities, living entirely separate from everybody else.
They shut themselves up in houses where there were no sick, eating
the finest food and drinking the best wine very temperately,
avoiding all excess, allowing no news or discussion of death and
sickness, and passing the time in music and suchlike pleasures.
Others thought just the opposite. They thought the sure cure for
the plague was to drink and be merry, to go about singing and
amusing themselves, satisfying every appetite they could, laughing
and jesting at what happened. They put their words into practice,
spent day and night going from tavern to tavern, drinking
immoderately, or went into other people's houses, doing only those
things which pleased them.
In this suffering and misery of our city, the authority of human
and divine laws almost disappeared, for, like other men, the
ministers and the executors of the laws were all dead or sick or
shut up with their families, so that no duties were carried out.
Every man was therefore able to do as he pleased.
Many others adopted a course of life midway between the two just
described. They did not restrict their victuals so much as the
former, nor allow themselves to be drunken and dissolute like the
latter, but satisfied their appetites moderately. They did not shut
themselves up, but went about, carrying flowers or scented herbs or
perfumes in their hands, in the belief that it was an excellent
thing to comfort the brain with such odours; for the whole air was
infected with the smell of dead bodies, of sick persons and
medicines.
Others again held a still more cruel opinion, which they thought
would keep them safe. They said that the only medicine against the
plague-stricken was to go right away from them. Men and women,
convinced of this and caring about nothing but themselves,
abandoned their own city, their own houses, their dwellings, their
relatives, their property, and went abroad or at least to the
country round Florence, as if God's wrath in punishing men's
wickedness with this plague would not follow them but strike only
those who remained within the walls of the city, or as if they
thought nobody in the city would remain alive and that its last
hour had come."
The Breakdown of Social Order
"One citizen avoided another, hardly any neighbour troubled about
others, relatives never or hardly ever visited each other.
Moreover, such terror was struck into the hearts of men and women
by this calamity, that brother abandoned brother, and the uncle his
nephew, and the sister her brother, and very often the wife her
husband. What is even worse and nearly incredible is that fathers
and mothers refused to see and tend their children, as if they had
not been theirs.
Thus, a multitude of sick men and women were left without any care,
except from the charity of friends (but these were few), or the
greed, of servants, though not many of these could be had even for
high wages, Moreover, most of them were coarse-minded men and
women, who did little more than bring the sick what they asked for
or watch over them when they were dying. And very often these
servants lost their lives and their earnings. Since the sick were
thus abandoned by neighbours, relatives and friends, while servants
were scarce, a habit sprang up which had never been heard of
before. Beautiful and noble women, when they fell sick, did not
scruple to take a young or old man-servant, whoever he might be,
and with no sort of shame, expose every part of their bodies to
these men as if they had been women, for they were compelled by the
necessity of their sickness to do so. This, perhaps, was a cause of
looser morals in those women who survived."
Mass Burials
"The plight of the lower and most of the middle classes was even
more pitiful to behold. Most of them remained in their houses,
either through poverty or in hopes of safety, and fell sick by
thousands. Since they received no care and attention, almost all of
them died. Many ended their lives in the streets both at night and
during the day; and many others who died in their houses were only
known to be dead because the neighbours smelled their decaying
bodies. Dead bodies filled every corner. Most of them were treated
in the same manner by the survivors, wbo were more
Citizens of Tournai bury plague victims. These are
fortunate to have coffins. Most victims
were interred in mass graves
concerned to get rid of their rotting bodies than moved by charity
towards the dead. With the aid of porters, if they could get them,
they carried the bodies out of the houses and laid them at the
door; where every morning quantities of the dead might be seen.
They then were laid on biers or, as these were often lacking, on
tables.
Such was the multitude of corpses brought to the churches every day
and almost every hour that there was not enough consecrated ground
to give them burial, especially since they wanted to bury each
person in the family grave, according to the old custom. Although
the cemeteries were full they were forced to dig huge trenches,
where they buried the bodies by hundreds. Here they stowed them
away like bales in the hold of a ship and covered them with a
little earth, until the whole trench was full."
