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EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS OF THE PLAGUE

1. Gabriele de Mussi: Istoria de Morbo or History of the Pestilence (1348)

Gabriele de Mussi (1280-1356) was an Italian notary from Piacenza, who either travelled himself to Caffa (a Genoese trading post in the Crimea), or, more plausibly, acquired his detailed information on the spread of the Black Death from eye witnesses of the Mongols’ siege against Caffa. According to de Mussi, the plague was transmitted intentionally by the Mongols, who hurled cadavers of people infected with the disease into the besieged city-port. The Genoese fleeing from Caffa brought the disease to Italy. If accurate, this is one of the earliest recorded instances of biological warfare.

In 1346, in the countries of the East, countless numbers of Tartars [Mongols] and Saracens

[Muslim Turks] were struck down by a mysterious illness which brought sudden death. Within

these countries broad regions, far-spreading provinces, magnificent kingdoms, cities, towns and

settlements, ground down by illness and devoured by dreadful death, were soon stripped of their

inhabitants. An eastern settlement under the rule of the Tartars called Tana, which lay to the

north of Constantinople and was much frequented by Italian merchants, was totally abandoned

after an incident there which led to its being besieged and attacked by hordes of Tartars who

gathered in a short space of time. The Christian merchants, who had been driven out by force,

were so terrified of the power of the Tartars that, to save themselves and their belongings, they

fled in an armed ship to Caffa, a settlement in the same part of the world which had been

founded long ago by the Genoese.

 

Oh God! See how the heathen Tartar races, pouring together from all sides, suddenly advanced

upon the city of Caffa and besieged the trapped Christians there for almost three years. There,

hemmed in by an immense army, they [the Christians] could hardly draw breath, although food

could be shipped in, which offered them some hope. But behold, the whole army was affected by

a disease which overran the Tartars and killed thousands upon thousands every day. It was as

though arrows were raining down from heaven to strike and crush the Tartars’ arrogance. All

medical advice and attention was useless; the Tartars died as soon as the signs of disease

appeared on their bodies: swellings in the armpit or groin caused by coagulating humors,

followed by a putrid fever.

 

The dying Tartars, stunned and stupefied by the immensity of the disaster brought about by the

disease, and realizing that they had no hope of escape, lost interest in the siege. But they ordered

corpses to be placed in catapults and lobbed into the city in the hope that the intolerable stench

would kill everyone inside. What seemed like mountains of dead were thrown into the city, and

the Christians could not hide or flee or escape from them, although they dumped as many of the

bodies as they could in the sea. And soon the rotting corpses tainted the air and poisoned the

water supply, and the stench was so overwhelming that hardly one in several thousand was in a

position to flee the remains of the Tartar army. Moreover one infected man could carry the

poison to others, and infect people and places with the disease by look alone. No one knew, or

could discover, a means of defense.

 

 

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Thus almost everyone who had been in the East, or in the regions to the south and north, fell

victim to sudden death after contracting this pestilential disease, as if struck by a lethal arrow

which raised a tumor on their bodies. The scale of the mortality and the form which it took

persuaded those who lived, weeping and lamenting, through the bitter events of 1346 to 1348—

the Chinese, Indians, Persians, Medes, Kurds, Armenians, Cilicians, Georgians, Mesopotamians,

Nubians, Ethiopians, Turks, Egyptians, Arabs, Saracens and Greeks (for almost all the East has

been affected)—that the last judgement had come.

…As it happened, among those who escaped from Caffa by boat were a few sailors who had

been infected with the poisonous disease. Some boats were bound for Genoa, others went to

Venice and to other Christian areas. When the sailors reached these places and mixed with the

people there, it was as if they had brought evil spirits with them: every city, every settlement,

every place was poisoned by the contagious pestilence, and their inhabitants, both men and

women, died suddenly. And when one person had contracted the illness, he poisoned his whole

family even as he fell and died, so that those preparing to bury his body were seized by death in

the same way. Thus death entered through the windows, and as cities and towns were

depopulated their inhabitants mourned their dead neighbors.

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

neighbors, were quickly stricken with disease 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

neighbors. 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.

George Deaux ed., The Black Death 1347 (New York 1969) pp. 75ff

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2. Giovanni Bocaccio, The Decameron (1348)

The Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) lived in Florence while the city was being

devastated by the plague. The experience inspired him to write The Decameron, a story of seven

women and three men who fled the diseased city seeking refuge in a countryside villa. In his

introduction to the book, Boccaccio gives a graphic description of the effects of the plague on his

city. He depicts the outbreak with its high mortality rates, and how that was a catalyst for many

social and cultural changes. He also describes the shattering effects of the fast and painful death

on the bodies but also on the mental, emotional and spiritual states of those affected.

 

The onset and spread of the plague

In the year of our Lord 1348, there happened at Florence, the finest city in all Italy, a most

terrible plague – whether owing to the influence of the planets, or perhaps it was sent by God as a

just punishment for our sins. It had broken out some years before in the Levant, and after passing

from place to place, and making incredible havoc all the way, reached the west; where, in spite

of all the means that knowledge and human foresight could suggest as to keeping the city clear

from filth, including the exclusion of all suspected persons; notwithstanding frequent

consultations what else needs to be done; nor omitting prayers to God and frequent processions;

in the spring of that year, it began to show itself in a sad and terrible manner. And, different from

what it had been in the east, where bleeding from the nose was the fatal prognostic, here there

appeared certain tumors in the groin, or under the armpits, some as big as a small apple, others as

an egg; and afterwards purple spots in most parts of the body: in some cases large but few in

number, in others cases smaller but more numerous, however both sorts the usual messengers of

death.

 

To cure the malady, neither medical knowledge nor the power of drugs was of any effect;

whether because the disease was in its own nature mortal, or that the physicians (the number of

whom, taking quacks and women pretenders into the account, had grown very much) could form

no just idea of the cause, nor consequently ground a true method of cure; whichever was the

reason, few or none escaped; but they generally died the third day from the first appearance of

the symptoms, without a fever or other bad circumstance attending.

 

And the disease, by being communicated from the sick to the well, seemed daily to get ahead,

and to rage the more, as fire will do by laying on fresh combustibles. It spread not only by

conversing with, or coming near the sick, but even by touching their clothes, or anything that

they had before touched. Such, I say, was the quality of the pestilential matter, as to pass not only

from man to man, but, what is more strange and has been often known, that anything belonging

to the infected, if touched by any other creature, would certainly infect, and even kill that

creature in a short space of time.

 

Common reactions

This occasioned various fears and devices amongst those people who survived, all tending to the

same uncharitable and cruel end; which was to avoid the sick, and everything that had been near

them; expecting by that means to save themselves.

 

 

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Other held it best to live temperately, and to avoid excesses of all kinds, shut themselves up from

the rest of the world; eating and drinking moderately of the best, and diverting themselves with

music, and such other entertainments as they might have within doors.

 

Still others maintained free living to be a better preservative, and would draw back from no

passion or appetite they wished to gratify, drinking and reveling incessantly from tavern to

tavern, or in private houses; which were frequently found deserted by the owners, and therefore

common to everyone; yet avoiding, with all this irregularity, to come 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 enforce them were either dead or sick or in want of persons to assist them;

everyone did just as he pleased.

 

Another sort of people chose a method between these two; not confining themselves to rules of

diet like the former, and yet avoiding the intemperance of the latter; but eating and drinking what

their appetites required, they walked everywhere with perfumes and sprays to smell; as holding it

best to corroborate the brain: for they supposed the whole atmosphere to be tainted with the stink

of dead bodies, arising partly from the distemper itself, and partly from the fermenting of the

medicines within them.

 

Others of a crueler disposition deemed it safer to avoid the plague altogether: men and women in

great numbers left the city, their houses, relations, and effects, and fled into the country (as if the

wrath of God had been restrained to visit those only within the walls of the city).

 

Traditional customs overlooked

I pass over the little regard that citizens and relations showed to each other- for their terror was

such that a brother even fled from his brother, a wife from her husband, and, what is more

uncommon, a parent from his own child. On which account the numbers that fell sick could have

no help but what the charity of friends, who were very few. From this desertion of friends, and

the scarcity of servants, an unheard-of custom prevailed: no lady, however young or handsome,

would disdain being attended by a man-servant, whether young or old it mattered not; and to

expose herself naked to him, the necessity of the distemper requiring it, as though it was to a

woman; which might make those who recovered less modest for the time to come. And many

lost their lives who might have escaped had they been looked after at all.

 

From mere necessity, many customs were introduced, different from what had been before

known in the city. It had been usual, as it now is, for the women who were friends and neighbors

to the deceased, to meet together at his house, and to lament with his relations; at the same time

the men would get together at the door, with a number of clergy, according to the person’s

circumstances; and the corpse was carried by people of his own rank, with the solemnity of

candles and singing, to that church where the person had desired to be buried. This custom was

now laid aside; far from having a crowd of women to lament over them, great numbers passed

out of the world without a single person by their bed; few had the tears of their friends at their

departure; for even the women had learned to postpone every other concern to that of their own

lives. Nor was a corpse attended by more than ten or a dozen, nor were those citizens of credit,

but fellows hired for the purpose; who would put themselves under the bier, and carry it with all

 

 

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possible haste to the nearest church; and the corpse was interred, without any great ceremony,

wherever they could find room.

 

Mass burials

With regard to the lower sort, and many of a middling rank, the scene was still more affecting;

for they staying at home either through poverty, or hopes of succor in distress, fell sick daily by

thousands, and, having nobody to attend them, generally died. Some breathed their last in the

streets, and others shut up in their own houses, and only the stench that came from them made

their deaths known to the neighborhood. And, indeed, every place was filled with the dead. A

method now was adopted by the neighbors, as pity for the dead, to clear all the houses, and lay

the dead bodies at the doors; and every morning great numbers might be seen brought out in this

manner; from whence they were carried away on biers, or tables, two or three at a time; and

sometimes it has happened that a wife and her husband, two or three brothers, and a father and

son, have been laid on together. There was no one to follow and shed a few tears over them; for

things were come to that pass, that men’s lives were no more regarded than the lives of so many

beasts. The consecrated ground no longer containing the numbers which were continually

brought thither, especially as they were desirous of laying everyone in the parts allotted to their

families; they were forced to dig trenches and to put them in by hundreds, piling them up in

rows, as goods are stowed in a ship, and throwing in little earth till they were filled to the top.

 

What more can I say? That between March and July, it is pretty certain that upwards of a

hundred thousand souls perished in the city only. What magnificent dwellings, what noble

palaces were then depopulated to the last person! What families extinct! What riches and vast

possessions left, and no known heir to inherit! What members of both sexes in the prime and

vigor of youth, who in the morning were in perfect health, after dining heartily with their friends

here, have supped with their departed friends in the other world!

“The Black Death, 1348,” Eye Witnesses to History, www.eyewitnesstohistory.com (2001)

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3. Robert of Avesbury, (1349)

One reaction to the pestilence ravaging Europe in the late 1340s came from the Brotherhood of Flagellants (a group which also included women). These men and women thought that public self- whipping performed as a penitential rite might lessen God’s wrath against the sinful world and thus put an end to the untold suffering of the multitudes. Flagellation had been practiced in monasteries as a method of spiritual discipline, but had never before been turned into a public spectacle. The movement was active especially in the German-speaking areas. The Flagellants were not popular in England, but a large contingent of these public penitents did cross the English Channel in 1349 and came to London. Sir Robert of Avesbury witnessed their ritual and left a vivid description of it.

 

The pestilence which had first broken out in the land occupied by the Saracens became so much

stronger that, sparing no dominion, it visited with the scourge of sudden death the various parts

of all the kingdoms. […] It began in England in Dorsetshire, and immediately advanced from

 

 

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place to place, attacking people without warning. Very many of those who were attacked in the

morning were carried out of human affairs before noon. And no one whom it [the pestilence]

willed to die did it permit to live longer than three or four days. […] And reaching London, it

deprived many of their life daily, and increased to so great an extent that from the feast of the

Purification [February 2 nd

, 1349] till after Easter [April 12 th

, 1349] there were more than two

hundred bodies of those who had died buried daily in the cemetery which had been then recently

made near Smithfield, besides the bodies which were in other graveyards.

 

In that same year of 1349, about Michaelmas [September 29], over six hundred men came to

London from Flanders, mostly of Flemish origin. Sometimes at St Paul’s and sometimes at other

points in the city, they made two daily public appearances wearing clothes from the thighs to the

ankles, but otherwise stripped bare. Each wore a cap marked with a red cross in front and behind.

 

Each had in his right hand a scourge with three tails. Each tail had a knot and through the middle

of it there were sometimes sharp nails fixed. They marched naked in a file one behind the other

and whipped themselves with these scourges on their naked and bleeding bodies.

 

Four of them would chant in their native tongue and, another four would chant in response like a

litany. Thrice they would all cast themselves on the ground in this sort of procession, stretching

out their hands like the arms of a cross. The singing would go on and, the one who was in the

rear of those thus prostrate acting first, each of them in turn would step over the others and give

one stroke with his scourge to the man lying under him.

 

This went on from the first to the last until each of them had observed the ritual to the full tale of

those on the ground. Then each put on his customary garments and always wearing their caps

and carrying their whips in their hands they retired to their lodgings. It is said that every night

they performed the same penance.

Norman Cohn ed., The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages (1970)