The Great Pestilence (A.D. 1348-9)

CHAPTER II.

THE EPIDEMIC IN ITALY

The great sickness reached Italy in the early days of 1348. The report at Avignon at the time was that three plague-stricken vessels had put into the port of Genoa in January, whilst from another source it would appear that at the same time another ship brought the contagion from the East to Venice. From these two places the epidemic quickly spread over the entire country. What happened in the early days of this frightful scourge is best told in the actual words of Gabriel de' Mussi, who possessed special means of knowledge, and who has until quite recently been looked upon, but incorrectly, as a passenger by one of the very vessels which brought the plague from the Crimea to Genoa. The history of the progress of the plague may be gathered from the pages of the detailed chronicles, which at that time recorded the principal events in the various large and prosperous cities of the Italian peninsula, as well as from the well-known account of the straits to which Florence was reduced by the sickness, given in the introduction to the "Decameron" of Boccaccio.

On reviewing in detail the testimonies from every land relating to this great calamity, it is impossible to overlook the sameness of the terms in which writers the most diverse in character, and in places far distant from one another, describe what passed before their eyes. It has already been remarked that the imperial historian, John Cantacuzene, in recounting the horrors of the plague in Constantinople, has borrowed from Thucydides. But the same ideas, the very same words, suggest themselves involuntarily to one and all. The simple monastic annalist of the half-buried cloister in Engelberg, the more courtly chronicler of St. Denis, the notary who writes with the dryness and technicalities of his profession, but displays withal a weakness for rhetoric and gossip, littérateurs like Boccaccio, whose forte is narrative, or like Petrarch, delighting in a show of words, the business-like town chronicler of an Italian city, and the author who aspires to the rank of historian, the physician whose interest is professional, even the scribbler who takes this strange theme as the subject for his jingling verse, all speak with such complete oneness of expression that it would almost seem that each had copied his neighbour, and that there is here a fine theme for the scientific amusement known as "investigation of sources." It is only when we come to examine the whole body of evidence that there is borne in upon the mind a realisation of the nature of a calamity which, spreading everywhere, was everywhere the same in its horrors, becoming thus nothing less than a world-wide tragedy, and it is seen that even the phrases of the rhetorician can do no more than rise to the terrible reality of fact.

First in importance, as well as in order of time, comes the testimony of De' Mussi, the substance of which is here given. It so happened that when the ships left Caffa – some bound for Genoa, some for Venice, and some to other parts of the Christian world – a few of the sailors were already infected by the fatal disease. One sick man was enough to infect the whole household, and the corpse as it was carried to the grave brought death to its bearers. "Tell, O Sicily, and ye, the many islands of the sea, the judgments of God. Confess, O Genoa, what thou hast done, since we of Genoa and Venice are compelled to make God's chastisement manifest. Alas! our ships enter the port, but of a thousand sailors hardly ten are spared. We reach our homes; our kindred and our neighbours come from all parts to visit us. Woe to us for we cast at them the darts of death! Whilst we spoke to them, whilst they embraced us and kissed us, we scattered the poison from our lips. Going back to their homes, they in turn soon infected their whole families, who in three days succumbed, and were buried in one common grave. Priests and doctors visiting the sick returned from their duties ill, and soon were numbered with the dead. O, death! cruel, bitter, impious death! which thus breaks the bonds of affection and divides father and mother, brother and sister, son and wife.

"Lamenting our misery, we feared to fly, yet we dared not remain." The terror increased when it was found that even the effects and clothes of the dead were capable of communicating the disease. This was seen in the case of four soldiers at a place near Genoa. Returning to their camp they carried back with them a woollen bed-covering they had found in a house at Rivarolo, on the sea-coast, where the sickness had swept away the entire population. The night following the four slept under the coverlet, and in the morning all were found to be dead. At Genoa the plague spared hardly a seventh part of the population. At Venice it is said that more than seventy died out of every hundred, and out of four-and-twenty excellent doctors twenty were soon carried off by the sickness.

"But as an inhabitant I am asked to write more of Piacenza so that it may be known what happened there in the year 1348. Some Genoese who fled from the plague raging in their city betook themselves hither. They rested at Bobbio, and there sold the merchandise they had brought with them. The purchaser and their host, together with all his family and many neighbours, were quickly stricken with the sickness and died. One of these, wishing to make his will, called a notary, his confessor, and the necessary witnesses. The next day all these were buried together. So greatly did the calamity increase that nearly all the inhabitants of Bobbio soon fell a prey to the sickness, and there remained in the town only the dead.

"In the spring of 1348 another Genoese infected with the plague came to Piacenza. He sought out his friend Fulchino della Croce, who took him into his house. Almost immediately afterwards he died, and the said Fulchino was also quickly carried off with his entire family and many of his neighbours. In a brief space the plague was rife throughout the city. I know not where to begin; everywhere there was weeping and mourning. So great was the mortality that men hardly dared to breathe. The dead were without number, and those who still lived gave themselves up as lost, and prepared for the tomb.

"The cemeteries failing, it was necessary to dig trenches to receive the bodies of the dead. It frequently happened that a husband and wife, a father and son, a mother and daughter – nay, whole families – were cast together in the same pit.

"It was the same in the neighbouring towns and villages. One Oberto di Sasso, who had come one day from an infected place to the church of the Friars Minor to make his will, called thither a notary, witnesses, and neighbours. All these, together with others, to the number of more than sixty, died within a short space of time. Also the religious man, friar Sifredo de' Bardi, of the convent and order of Preachers, a man of prudence and great learning, who had visited our Lord's sepulchre, died with twenty-three other members of his order and convent. Also the learned and virtuous friar Bertolin Coxadocha, of Piacenza, of the order of Minorites, with four-and-twenty members of his community was carried off. So too of the convent of Augustinian Hermits – seven; of the Carmelites – seven; of the Servites of Mary – four, and more than sixty dignitaries and rectors of churches in the city and district of Piacenza died. Of nobles, too, many; of young people a vast number."

De' Mussi then proceeds to give examples of the scenes daily passing before his eyes in the plague-stricken cities of northern Italy. The sick man lay languishing alone in his house and no one came near him. Those most dear to him, regardless of the ties of kindred or affection, withdrew themselves to a distance; the doctor did not come to him, and even the priest with fear and trembling administered the Sacraments of the Church. Men and women, racked with the consuming fever, pleaded – but in vain – for a draught of water, and uselessly raved for someone to watch at their bedside. The father or the wife would not touch the corpse of child or husband to prepare it for the grave, or follow it thither. No prayer was said, nor solemn office sung, nor bell tolled for the funeral of even the noblest citizen; but by day and night the corpses were borne to the common plague-pit without rite or ceremony. The doors of the houses now desolate and empty remained closed, and no one cared, nor, indeed, dared to enter.

Such is the picture of the effect of the malady and the terrible mortality caused by it drawn by one who seems to have seen its first introduction into Italy, and who certainly had the best opportunity of early observing its rapid progress. It might, perhaps, be thought that his description of the horrors of the infected cities was over-coloured and the creation of his imagination. But in the details it bears on the surface the stamp of truth, and in its chief characteristics it is confirmed by too many independent witnesses in other parts of Italy, and even in Europe generally, to leave a doubt that it corresponded to the literal reality.

What happened at Florence is well-known through the graphic description of Boccaccio. So terrible was the mortality in that prosperous city that the very outbreak became for a time known in Europe as the "Pestilence of Florence." In the spring of the previous year (1347) a severe famine had been experienced, and some 94,000 people had been in receipt of State relief, whilst about 4,000 are supposed to have perished of starvation in the city23 and its neighbourhood. The people, enfeebled by previous hardships, would naturally fall a prey more easily to the poison of the epidemic. In April, 1348, the dreaded infection began to show itself. "To cure the malady," writes Boccaccio, "neither medical knowledge nor the power of drugs was of any avail, whether because the disease was in its own nature mortal, or that the physicians (the number of whom – taking quacks and women pretenders into account – was grown very great) could form no just idea of the cause, nor consequently ground a true method of cure; of those attacked few or none escaped, but they generally died the third day from the first appearance of the symptoms, without a fever or other form of illness manifesting itself. The disease was communicated by the sick to those in health and seemed daily to gain head and increase in violence, just as fire will do by casting fresh fuel on it. The contagion was communicated not only by conversation with those sick, but also by approaching them too closely, or even by merely handling their clothes or anything they had previously touched.

"What I am going to relate is certainly marvellous, and, had I not seen it with my own eyes, and were there not many witnesses to attest its truth besides myself, I should not venture to recount it, whatever the credit of persons who had informed me of it. Such, I say, was the deadly character of the pestilential matter, that it passed the infection not only from man to man; but, what is more wonderful, and has been often proved, anything belonging to those sick with the disease, if touched by any other creature, would certainly affect and even kill it in a short space of time. One instance of this kind I took special note of, namely, the rags of a poor man just dead having been thrown into the street, two hogs came by at the time and began to root amongst them, shaking them in their jaws. In less than an hour they fell down and died on the spot.

"Strange were the devices resorted to by the survivors to secure their safety. Divers as were the means, there was one feature common to all, selfish and uncharitable as it was – the avoidance of the sick, and of everything that had been near them; men thought only of themselves.

"Some held it was best to lead a temperate life and to avoid every excess. These making up parties together, and shutting themselves up from the rest of the world, ate and drank moderately of the best, diverting themselves with music and such other entertainments as they might have at home, and never listening to news from without which might make them uneasy. Others maintained that free living was a better preservative, and would gratify every passion and appetite. They would drink and revel incessantly in tavern after tavern, or in those private houses which, frequently found deserted by the owners, were therefore open to anyone; but they yet studiously avoided, with all their irregularity, coming near the infected. And such at that time was the public distress that the laws, human and divine, were not regarded, for the officers to put them in force being either dead, sick, or without assistants, everyone did just as he pleased."

Another class of people chose a middle course. They neither restricted themselves to the diet of the former nor gave way to the intemperance of the latter; but eating and drinking what their appetites required, they went about everywhere with scents and nosegays to smell at, since they looked upon the whole atmosphere as tainted with the effluvia arising from the dead bodies.

"Others, again, of a more callous disposition declared, as perhaps the safest course in the extremity, that the only remedy was in flight. Persuaded, therefore, of this, and thinking only of themselves, great numbers of men and women left the city, their goods, their house, and kindred, and fled into the country parts; as if the wrath of God had been restricted to a visitation of those only within the city walls, and hence none should remain in the doomed place.

"But different as were the courses pursued, the sickness fell upon all these classes without distinction; neither did all of any class die, nor did all escape; and they who first set the example of forsaking others now languished themselves where there was no one to take pity on them. I pass by the little regard that citizens and distant relations showed one to the other, for the terror was such that brother even fled from brother, wife from husband, nay, the parent from her own child. The sick could obtain help only from the few who still obeyed the law of charity, or from hired servants who demanded extravagant wages and were fit for little else than to hand what was asked for, and to note when the patient died. Even such paid helpers were scarce, and their desire of gain frequently cost them their lives. The rich passed out of this world without a single person to aid them; few had the tears of friends at their departure. The corpse was attended to the grave only by fellows hired for the purpose, who would put the bier on their shoulders and hurry with it to the nearest church, where it was consigned to the tomb without any ceremony whatever, and wherever there was room.