Black Death in Italy

Italy in the mid-14th century

When the Black Death reached modern-day Italy, it was roughly divided in the Kingdom of Sicily and Kingdom of Naples in the south, the Papal States in the middle, and the heavily urbanised Northern Italy, which formally belonged to the Holy Roman Empire but in reality divided in to several autonomous city republics or principalities.

The Black Death

The traditional story of how the plague first came to Europe was that it was introduced to Europe via Genoese traders from their port city of Kaffa in the Crimea. During a protracted siege of the city, the Mongol Golden Horde army of Jani Beg, whose mainly Tatar troops were suffering from the disease, catapulted infected corpses over the city walls of Kaffa to infect the inhabitants. When the plague spread inside the city, the Genoese ships in the harbour fled from Kaffa toward Italy, bringing the plague with them.^[1] This story is now largely discredited as a xenophobic blame narrative.^[2]

Southern Italy

The arrival of the Black Death to Sicily (and thus Western Europe), has been described by the chronicler Michele da Piazza. In October 1347, twelve Genoese ships from the East arrived to Messina on Sicily. After the Genoese came ashore, the inhabitants of Messina started to develop abscesses, cough and die. The Genoese were immediately banished from the city, but the illness spread with such speed that the city experienced a collapse of social order. The sick wished to be cured, to make wills and to take the confession, but both physicians, notaries and priests were infected and soon refused to go near them; people abandoned their homes, which were pillaged by criminals without being stopped by the guards and officials, who also died.^[1]

On Sicily, Messina was pointed out as a city being condemned by God for its sins. Refugees from Messina fled toward Catania to ask the statue of Saint Agatha to be brought to Messina to appeal to God, but the citizens of Catania locked the gates to them.^[1] They were instead allowed to take the statue of the Virgin Mary from Santa Maria della Scala to Messina.^[1]

During November, refugees desperately fled from Messina in all directions, dying on the roads and spreading the plague all over the island of Sicily, including Catania, which became the second plague center of the island. One of the members of the royal family, Duke Giovanni, fled from Catania to the forest of Mascalia where he was referred to as the last victim of the plague in Sicily in April 1348.^[1]

Central Italy

According to Agnolo di Tura, the Black Death migrated from Genova to Pisa in January 1348 and spread from Pisa to the rest of Central Italy: to Piombino, Lucca in February, to Florence in March and Siena, Perugia and Orvieto in April and May 1348.^[1] Agnolo di Tura described how people abandoned their loved ones whose bodies were thrown down holes all over the city of Siena, but how no one cried because everyone thought they would soon die as well.^[1] The survivors pleasured themselves with food, wine, pleasure hunting and games.^[1] When the plague finally left Siena the cities rulers had died as well as the artists Ambrogio and Pietro Lorenzetti: Agnolo di Tura claimed only eight people remained alive in Siena when the plague left. ^[1]

The Black Death in Florence has been famously described by Giovanni Boccaccio. In the autumn of 1347, rumours had reached the city about a great epidemic. To prevent it from reaching Florence, the city streets was cleaned, ill travellers were refused entry, the authorities instructed all inhabitants to keep their houses, streets and squares empty and not allow animals entry into the city, butchers were mandated to strict hygienic regulations, prostitutes and homosexuals were banned from the city in order to lessen the wrath of God, and processions of prayers were held in public to prevent the plague from reaching the city. ^[1]

In March 1348 the plague reached Florence, where it lasted until July.^[1] Neither formally educated medical doctors nor the traditional male and female folk healers and medical practitioners could do anything about it.^[1] The infected died within three days, people were infected by the smallest contact even with the clothes or other objects handled by the ill.^[1] Boccaccio witnessed dead bodies being thrown out upon the streets, after which the animals who started to touch it fell down dead.^[1] Priests and other authorities died so swiftly that the administration and law and order collapsed.^[1] People refused to bury their dead, who were instead buried by a special group of grave diggers recruited from the poorest beggars, the becchini, who charged enormous sums to throw the bodies in mass graves.^[1] Those who could not pay left the bodies on the street, which were soon full of rotting corpses.^[1] In the countryside outside Florence, the peasantry fell down dead in their fields which were abandoned by the living, who let loose their animals and ate their supplies because they lost the hope of surviving.^[1] Matteo Villani described how people in Florence, expecting their death, lived to enjoy life without consequences: the poor ignored the class system and started to eat luxury food and dress in fashion of dead aristocrats, and how people started to marry anyone they wished without considering class, status or suitability.^[1]

Giovanni Boccaccio claimed that 100.000 people died in Florence. This is not possible because the whole city population did not reach that number, but the death toll was nonetheless very high. One of the most known victims was the painter Bernardo Daddi.^[1]

Northern Italy

One of the most known contemporary descriptions of the Black Death in Northern Italy is the Historia de Morbo by Gabriele de' Mussi.^[1] He describes it with focus on his own home town of Piacenza. According to the chronicle, the plague did not migrate from the South across the Italian Peninsula, but was taken directly to Genova and Venice by Genoese plague ships.^[1]

The plague came to Piacenza with the Genoese Fulco della Croce, who died shortly after his arrival, followed by his host family and their neighbors.^[1] When the plague entered a house through one victim, three days remained before all the inhabitants of that house were dead.^[1] The ill called upon physicians to care for them, notaries to make their will and priests or monks to take their confessions and witness their wills, and all of the visitors took the plague with them when they left; convents, especially, were badly infected through the priests taking the confessions from the sick. Soon, the sick and dying were abandoned by physicians, priests and their own families who fled from the illness and the lonely screams of the dying could be heard from the abandoned houses.^[1] The corpses of the dead were left in the abandoned houses, which were closed off in fear of the deceased, and only the richest paid the poorest to bury the remains of the dead.^[1] The cemeteries were filled so rapidly that mass burials were arranged, and eventually, the sick started to dig their own graves in the middle of the town squares.^[1]

Between March and September 1348, in Bologna, several famous academics of the University of Bologna died, among them Giovanni di Andrea.^[1] The Black Death of Trento (June 1348) has been described in the chronicle of Giovanni of Parma. In July 1348, two of the rules of Padua died in succession.

The Black Death of the Republic of Venice has been described in the chronicles of the Doge Andrea Dandolo, the monk Francesco della Grazia and Lorenzo de Monacis. Venice was one of the biggest cities in Europe, and at this point overcrowded with refugees from the famine in the countryside the year prior and the earthquake in January. In April 1348, the plague reached the crowded city and the streets became littered with the bodies of the sick, dying and the dead, and with smells emanating from houses where the dead had been abandoned.^[1] Between 25 and 30 people were buried daily in the cemetery near Rialto, and corpses were transported to be buried on islands in the lagoon by people who gradually caught the plague and died themselves.^[1] So many Venetians fled the city, including the officials of the state, that the remaining members of the city councils banned the Venetians from leaving the city in July by threatening loss of their position and status if they did, to prevent a collapse of social order.^[1]