Impact of Bubonic Plague on Renaissance Society between the initial outbreak in 1348 and the mid-sixteenth century.

These are symptoms of the plague and why it was called the "black death"

Why did the disease suddenly appear in Europe?

The plagues affected every aspect of European life for more than two hundred years.



It affected the way they viewed responsibility to the sick.

Europeans didn't understand the causes of the plagues, and many blamed "outsiders" for causing them.

They looked for protectors in their saints.

Governments got involved in regulating sanitation and public health.

Marchione di Coppo Stefani was born in Florence, Italy, in 1336. He wrote his Florentine Chronicle in the late 1370s and early 1380s.

A "rubric" in this reading means "section" or "part."

A "bubo" is a lymph node that becomes swollen, black, and painful.

The root word "mort" means "dead." The beccamorti carried the dead to the trenches to be buried.

ostentation: putting on airs, showing off

ordinances: laws

guild--something like a union of skilled laborers today

apothecary--drugstore, pharmacy

The Bubonic Plague, or "Black Death"

The coming of the Black Death in 1348, when in just two years perhaps one-third to one- half of Europe's population was destroyed, marks a watershed, or turning point, in Medieval and Renaissance European History.

In Europe the plague was named the Black Death because of discoloration of the skin and black tumors that occurred on the second day of contracting the plague. These tumors were mainly in the groin area and were the precursor of death within 24 hours in 99 percent of cases. The epidemic was also known as “the poor plague” because of the frequent first occurrence in the poorer parts of town.

The symptoms were described as: convulsions, followed by a rise of temperature, with vomiting, headache, giddiness, intolerance to light, pain in the lower abdomen, back and limbs, sleeplessness, apathy and delirium. The body temperature varied greatly from 101º-107º but fell two or three degrees on the second or third day. The headache was described as splitting and the deliriousness similar to the DTs (delirium tremens), resulting from extreme drunkenness. The eyes became red, the tongue swelled and became covered with a white fur except on the tip. Later the tongue became dry and the fur turned yellow or brown. Constipation was the rule but there might be diarrhea — an even worse sign. A characteristic symptom in severe cases was that the patient appeared dazed and stupid, staggered and had slurred speech. The patient might die within 24 hours, but more commonly death occured on the second or third day. Recovery was very rare.

Bubonic plague (Yersinia pestis) had been absent from Western Europe for nearly a millenium when it appeared in 1348. The reaction was immediate and devastating. Up to two-thirds of the population of many of the major European cities succumbed to the plague in the first two years. Government, trade and commerce virtually came to a halt. Even more devastating to Europeans, there was hardly a generation which did not experience a local, regional or pan-European epidemic for the next two hundred years.

No clear reason for the spread of the epidemic in Europe in the middle ages was known. Strong suspicions were directed at sailors and traders involved in commercial activities resulting from the wide expansion of trade during this period. Those from Asia and the Middle East, where a history of plague dated back a thousand years, came under severe restrictions. Quarantines were implemented in many European ports but they were ineffective at preventing the epidemic.

The physicians of the time were mystified and had little to offer either by way of explanation or cure. It wasn't until the 15th century when particularly severe epidemics raged throughout Europe that it was noticed that cities with good sanitary condition suffered less. Fifteenth century physicians thought that airborne contagion spread the disease. A policy of isolating houses in which the disease was found was introduced and infected houses were marked with a red cross. Such strict confinement was a virtual death sentence for all within the household. However, this seemed to have the peculiar effect of concentrating the disease. It was not being spread by airborne contagion at all but by a far more sinister agent.

There was no aspect of European society that was not affected by the coming of plague and by its duration. At the most basic level, recurrent plague tended to skim off significant portions of the children born between infestations of plague, dampening economic and population growth in most parts of Europe until the late seventeenth century. The responses of Europeans are often treated as irrational or superstitious. Yet medical tracts, moral treatises and papal proclamations make clear that for most Europeans there were, within the medieval world view, rational explanations for what was happening.

Similarly, during the epidemics, physicians and medical writers in various parts of Europe had to deal with questions of the nature of medical knowledge and the extent of the doctor's ethical responsibility to the ill. Over the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, European Christians developed a number of saints who set an example of helpful charity toward victims and who also were understood to preserve the healthy from the ravages of plague. The veneration of St. Roch of Montpelier grew steadily during the fifteenth century, especially in Italy and Germany.

Plague stimulated chroniclers, poets and authors, and physicians to write about what might have caused the plague and how the plague affected the population at large. Nonetheless, in the wake of the first infestations there were attacks on women lepers and Jews who were thought either to have deliberately spread the plague or, because of their innate dishonor, to have polluted society and brought on God's vengeance. The violence against outsiders demonstrated, in a tragically negative manner, the nature and the limits of citizenship in Europe. This was a society which defined itself as Christian and recurrent plagues changed religious practice, if not belief.

In many parts of Europe, flagellants aimed at propitiating God's wrath by beating each other bloody and attacking Jews, who were commonly accused of spreading the pestilence.

Christians had long venerated saints as models of the godly life and as mediators before God, in this case an angry and vengeful one. A whole new series of "plague saints" (like St. Roch) came into existence along with new religious brotherhoods and shrines dedicated to protecting the population from plague.

The recurrence of plague also affected the general understanding of public health. Beginning in Italy in the 1350s there were new initiatives aimed at raising the level of public sanitation and governmental regulation of public life. And, finally, by the sixteenth century a debate over the causes of plague spread in the medical community as old Greek and Roman corruption theories (the theories that it was the evil in people that caused disease) were replaced by ideas of contagion (disease spreads from one living thing to another).

From the very earliest plagues there were simple embargoes preventing movements of goods and people from one area to another. By the sixteenth century, however, there were well articulated systems of quarantine in place in many parts of Europe, as Europeans learned about the importance of isolating or quarantining the sick.

Continue reading to learn more about a specific instance of the plague and how it affected the city of Florence.

The Florentine Chronicle
by Marchione di Coppo Stefani

Rubric 643
Concerning A Mortality In The City Of Florence In Which Many People Died.

In the year of the Lord 1348 there was a very great pestilence in the city and district of Florence. It was of such a fury and so tempestuous that in houses in which it took hold, previously healthy servants who took care of the ill died of the same illness. Almost none of the ill survived past the fourth day. Neither physicians nor medicines were effective. Whether because these illnesses were previously unknown or because physicians had not previously studied them, there seemed to be no cure.

There was such a fear that no one seemed to know what to do. When it took hold in a house it often happened that no one remained who had not died. And it was not just that men and women died, but even sentient animals died. Dogs, cats, chickens, oxen, donkeys sheep showed the same symptoms and died of the same disease. And almost none, or very few, who showed these symptoms, were cured.

The symptoms were the following: a bubo in the groin, where the thigh meets the trunk; or a small swelling under the armpit; sudden fever; spitting blood and saliva (and no one who spit blood survived it). It was such a frightful thing that when it got into a house, as was said, no one remained. Frightened people abandoned the house and fled to another. Those in town fled to villages. Physicians could not be found because they had died like the others. And those who could be found wanted vast sums in hand before they entered the house. And when they did enter, they checked the pulse with face turned away. They inspected the urine from a distance and with something odoriferous under their nose. Child abandoned the father, husband the wife, wife the husband, one brother the other, one sister the other. In all the city there was nothing to do but to carry the dead to a burial. And those who died had neither confessor nor other sacraments.

And many died with no one looking after them. And many died of hunger because when someone took to bed sick, another in the house, terrified, said to him: "I'm going for the doctor." Calmly walking out the door, the other left and did not return again. Abandoned by people, without food, but accompanied by fever, they weakened. There were many who pleaded with their relatives not to abandon them when night fell. But [the relatives] said to the sick person, "So that during the night you did not have to awaken those who serve you and who work hard day and night, take some sweetmeats, wine or water. They are here on the bedstead by your head; here are some blankets." And when the sick person had fallen asleep, they left and did not return.

If it happened that he was strengthened by the food during the night he might be alive and strong enough to get to the window. If the street was not a major one, he might stand there a half hour before anyone came by. And if someone did pass by, and if he was strong enough that he could be heard when he called out to them, sometimes there might be a response and sometimes not, but there was no help. No one, or few, wished to enter a house where anyone was sick, nor did they even want to deal with those healthy people who came out of a sick person's house. And they said to them: "He is stupefied, do not speak to him!" saying further: "He has it because there is a bubo in his house." They call the swelling a bubo. Many died unseen. So they remained in their beds until they stank. And the neighbors, if there were any, having smelled the stench, placed them in a shroud and sent them for burial. The house remained open and yet there was no one daring enough to touch anything because it seemed that things remained poisoned and that whoever used them picked up the illness.

At every church, or at most of them, they dug deep trenches, down to the waterline, wide and deep, depending on how large the parish was. And those who were responsible for the dead carried them on their backs in the night in which they died and threw them into the ditch, or else they paid a high price to those who would do it for them. The next morning, if there were many [bodies] in the trench, they covered them over with dirt. And then more bodies were put on top of them, with a little more dirt over those; they put layer on layer just like one puts layers of cheese in a lasagna.

The beccamorti [literally, vultures] who provided their service, were paid such a high price that many were enriched by it. Many died from [carrying away the dead] , some rich, some after earning just a little, but high prices continued. Servants, or those who took care of the ill, charged from one to three florins per day and the cost of things grew.

The things that the sick ate, sweetmeats and sugar, seemed priceless. Sugar cost from three to eight florins per pound. And other confections cost similarly. Capons and other poultry were very expensive and eggs cost between twelve and twenty-four pence each; and he was blessed who could find three per day even if he searched the entire city.

Finding wax was miraculous. A pound of wax would have gone up more than a florin if there had not been a stop put [by the communal government] to the vain ostentation that the Florentines always make [over funerals]. Thus it was ordered that no more than two large candles could be carried [in any funeral]. Churches had no more than a single bier which usually was not sufficient. Spice dealers and beccamorti sold biers, burial palls, and cushions at very high prices. Dressing in expensive woolen cloth as is customary in [mourning] the dead, that is in a long cloak, with mantle and veil that used to cost women three florins climbed in price to thirty florins and would have climbed to 100 florins had the custom of dressing in expensive cloth not been changed. The rich dressed in modest woolens, those not rich sewed [clothes] in linen. Benches on which the dead were placed cost like the heavens and still the benches were only a hundredth of those needed.

Priests were not able to ring bells as they would have liked. Concerning that [the government] issued ordinances discouraging the sounding of bells, sale of burial benches, and limiting expenses. They could not sound bells, sell benches, nor cry out announcements because the sick hated to hear of this and it discouraged the healthy as well. Priests and friars went [to serve] the rich in great multitudes and they were paid such high prices that they all got rich. And therefore [the authorities] ordered that one could not have more than a prescribed number [of clerics] of the local parish church. And the prescribed number of friars was six.

All fruits with a nut at the center, like unripe plums and unhusked almonds, fresh broadbeans, figs and every useless and unhealthy fruit, were forbidden entrance into the city. Many processions, including those with relics and the painted tablet of Santa Maria Inpruneta, went through the city crying our "Mercy" and praying and then they came to a stop in the piazza of the Priors. There they made peace concerning important controversies, injuries and deaths.

This [pestilence] was a matter of such great discouragement and fear that men gathered together in order to take some comfort in dining together. And each evening one of them provided dinner to ten companions and the next evening they planned to eat with one of the others. And sometimes if they planned to eat with a certain one he had no meal prepared because he was sick. Or if the host had made dinner for the ten, two or three were missing. Some fled to villas, others to villages in order to get a change of air. Where there had been no [pestilence], there they carried it; if it was already there, they caused it to increase.

None of the guilds in Florence was working. All the shops were shut, taverns closed; only the apothecaries and the churches remained open. If you went outside, you found almost no one. And many good and rich men were carried from home to church on a pall by four beccamorti and one tonsured clerk who carried the cross. Each of them wanted a florin. This mortality enriched apothecaries, doctors, poultry vendors, beccamorti, and greengrocers who sold poultices of mallow, nettles, mercury and other herbs necessary to draw off the infirmity. And it was those who made these poultices who made alot of money. Woolworkers and vendors of remnants of cloth who found themselves in possession of cloths [after the death of the entrepreneur for whom they were working] sold it to whoever asked for it. When the mortality ended, those who found themselves with cloth of any kind or with raw materials for making cloth was enriched. But many found [who actually owned cloths being processed by workers] found it to be moth-eaten, ruined or lost by the weavers. Large quantities of raw and processed wool were lost throughout the city and countryside.

This pestilence began in March, as was said, and ended in September 1348. And people began to return to look after their houses and possessions. And there were so many houses full of goods without a master that it was stupefying. Then those who would inherit these goods began to appear. And such it was that those who had nothing found themselves rich with what did not seem to be theirs and they were unseemly because of it. Women and men began to dress ostentatiously.

Rubric 635
How Many Of The Dead Died Because Of The Mortality Of The Year Of Christ 1348

Now it was ordered by the bishop and the Lords [of the city government] that they should formally inquire as to how many died in Florence. When it was seen at the beginning of October that no more persons were dying of the pestilence, they found that among males, females, children and adults, 96,000 died between March and October.

Rubric 636
How They Passed Ordinances Concerning Many Things In Florence

In the said year, when the mortality stopped, women and men in Florence were unmindful of [traditional modesty concerning] their dress. And ordinances were passed concerning this giving authority to the Judge of the Grascia to enforce these ordinances. The tailors made such boundless demands for payment that they could not be satisfied. Authority was granted [to the judge] that he should handle all matters himself. Servants were so unhappy about the very high prices [they paid] that it was necessary to make great efforts to restrain [the price rises]. The workers on the land in the countryside wanted rent contracts such that you could say that all they harvested would be theirs. And they learned to demand oxen from the landlord but at the landlord's risk [and liability for any harm done to the animal]. And then they helped others for pay by the job or by the day. And they also learned to deny [liability for] loans and [rental] payments. Concerning this serious ordinances were instituted; and [hiring] laborers became much more expensive. You could say that the farms were theirs; and they wanted the oxen, seed, loans quickly and on good terms. It was necessary to put a brake on weddings as well because when they gathered for the betrothal each party brought too many people in order to increase the pomp. And thus the wedding was made up of so many trappings. How many days were necessary and how many women took part in a woman's wedding. And they passed many other ordinances concerning [these issues].

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