NAPIER’S REFLECTIONS ON THE PLAGUE
In this wide and wasting pestilence all Europe was more or less immersed; she was bereft of three-fifths of her population, and excepting Milan, together with a few places at the foot of the Alps, the whole of Italy was shaken to its centre. Genoa lost 40,000, Naples 60,000; and Sicily and Apulia the incredible number of 530,000 souls! The city of Trapani was completely depopulated; all died; and her silent walls and empty dwellings were alone left to tell the tale. Throughout Tuscany the harvest of death was proportionably great: Pisa lost four-fifths or, as some say, seven-tenths; Florence three-fifths; but Siena mourned for 80,000 of her buried citizens and never recovered from the blow.
Amongst the illustrious victims of this universal sacrifice were the celebrated Laura of Avignon and the historian Giovanni Villani of Florence. The latter, says Sismondi (and his words will suit all subsequent, as they are the echo of all antecedent writers), “was the most expert, faithful, elegant, and animated historian that Italy had yet produced: we have made habitual use of his history during more than half a century with that confidence which is due to a judicious contemporary author who had himself taken part in public affairs.” Villani was in fact much more than a mere historian, and like almost all Florentines became both merchant and politician; he travelled into France and the Netherlands, was several times in the seigniory, superintended the building of the present walls, directed the mint, and filled other high offices in the commonwealth. He served also against Castruccio, was one of the hostages delivered to Mastino della Scala, and spent a long life in public and private activity; but finally, ruined by the failure of the Bonaccorsi with whom he was in partnership, his latter days were apparently unhappy and he died amidst the misfortunes of his country.
Sickness gave way before the August sun, and all that remained of the Florentine people were free from disease at the new seigniory’s inauguration on the 1st of September, but what the remnant was we are not told; so small however that poverty disappeared, and riches abounded in consequence of accumulated inheritances. Yet instead, as some expected, of men’s hearts being softened and subdued and penitent, and turned to religion and virtue and moderation by so awful a catastrophe, Florence immediately became a theatre of luxury, riot, and debauchery. As if the hand of God were tired, and death was swallowed up in victory, feasting, taverns, and every kind of licentious revel occupied the people; both sexes, high and low, with new and fanciful attire, but more especially the latter, flaunted through the streets bedizened like players in the rich garments of illustrious families, all now extirpated. And as if these saturnalia were to be everlasting, few labourers would return to agriculture, fewer still to trade, and those few insisted on exorbitant remuneration. Unbounded pride and heartless prodigality were everywhere triumphant; the hand of death had removed the burden of poverty; the departure of death had removed the weight of terror, and the rebound was startling. With feelings numbed, and passions free, no wish was too vicious to indulge, no idea too strange for belief.
Superabundance of agricultural produce was looked for because of the scarcity of mouths, and the contrary happened; for everything fell short and long continued so, in some countries even to the most biting famine; manufactures of almost all kinds, clothes, everything necessary for the human body, were in like manner expected to appear spontaneously and in profusion; but the reverse took place; most sorts of manufactured goods soon doubled their former cost, and all labour brought twice the money that it fetched before the pestilence; disputes, lawsuits, contests, disturbances of every class sprouted like nettles throughout the land, and Florence long and severely felt their evil consequences. Immense treasures too had been willed away by dying men to public charities, or in trust to corporate bodies for the poor; some directly, others after several successions, all now swept off by exterminating plague; amongst others there was left to the corporation of Orto-san-Michele alone the vast inheritance of 350,000 florins, a sum equal to one year’s revenue of the commonwealth. This was in trust for the poor; but there were no poor, no paupers, no destitution; death had murdered poverty. Money, houses, and other valuables abounded; the directors felt their hands at liberty, their conscience easy; and unbounded peculation was the result; the elections were kept close amongst themselves; they re-elected each other; power and profit moved round in a circle undisturbed by any external influence for three long years, until at last the angry voice of Florence destroyed this nefarious and disgraceful system. In a similar manner, but with better management, 25,000 florins were left to the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova, and an equal sum to the new and useful company of “Misericordia”; so that the city most abounded in charitable resources at the very time when poverty was for the moment annihilated.
Many corrective laws for the various existing evils were promulgated by those magistrates who still retained their discretion and now resumed their power; one of these was to exonerate minors and married women from any legal responsibility in affairs of pecuniary and other property, unless with the consent of their relatives or guardians declared before a judge in the court of the above corporation of Orto-san-Michele, which had ex-officio their guardianship. At the same period, and no less to encourage population by the residence of students than for the dignity of Florence, a public college was founded for the first time, and able professors were appointed to the whole range of science, besides civil and canon law and dogmatic theology.
It might have been supposed that all accounts between debtor and creditor had been cancelled by the plague; but so many fraudulent bankruptcies had previously occurred and so unwholesome a system of mercantile credits had been allowed that it became an article of swindling speculation, and large orders were frequently given on long credit with a sole view to future insolvency. As a remedy there was now published a decree forbidding any citizen to buy or sell on credit, not only in the state itself but within a hundred miles of Florence, on pain of losing his reputation and a fine equal to the amount of the purchase money. Nor were sumptuary laws forgotten; for riches and luxury required control, and a check was therefore placed on the expense of marriage ceremonies which now were frequent in consequence of augmented wealth and thin population; but as these could not at once raise citizens to the state new scrutiny-lists became requisite for three years, which from necessity admitted the nobles to many public offices both in town and country.[f]