Italian Arms, Fourteenth Century
This dreadful visitation, which began in the far East and rolled dismally over the western world, pressed with unwonted weight upon Florence, where the people were predisposed for disease by a succession of events that both morally and physically had affected the whole community. As far back as the year 1345 unusual and constant rains accompanied and followed by earthquakes continued from the end of July to the beginning of November; the harvests were nearly ruined; but few grapes appeared; tillage was interrupted, and the little wine that could be made had proved unwholesome.
The Arno again swamped half Florence; streams, swelled into torrents, rolled over banks and bridges and ravaged every district; Rifredi and Borghetto were ruined by the Terzolla; the Mugnone and Rimaggio did equal mischief, and an overwhelming flood was hourly expected in the capital.
The next year’s harvest failed, and the rain still poured down through April, May, and June, 1346, with storms and tempests, and a partial destruction of the smaller seeds; misfortune seemed busily brooding, but not for Florence alone; France and the rest of Italy were struck with equal apprehensions; corn and wine again failed; the poultry perished for lack of food; cattle of every kind were fearfully diminished; the price of oil became enormous, and fruit was almost entirely extinct. Land produced at the utmost a quarter, and in some places only a sixth, of the customary crops, and even that was unwholesome; want came like an armed man; the peasants abandoned their farms and robbed each other through sheer necessity; or else begged their bread in Florence, where the concourse of starving wretches was overwhelming.
No land could be tilled unless the owner provided sustenance in kind for his labourers besides the necessary seed, and this was almost impossible even at an enormous cost; in former scarcities corn was extravagantly dear but still to be had; now there was scarcely any even for the highest offers until the government, with infinite exertion and by mere dint of money, imported it from the Maremma, Romagna, Sicily, Sardinia, Calabria, Barbary, Tunis, and the archipelago. But even the receipt of this was difficult; for Pisa, equally distressed, detained all that entered Porto Pisano until her own market was supplied. Thirty thousand florins were nominally thus spent, one-third of which was supposed to have found its way into the coffers of dishonest and heartless peculators. Ten great ovens were erected by the government and strongly barricaded, where by day and night men and women were constantly employed in making bread; this was distributed every morning at the sound of the great bell, to churches, convents, country parishes, and hungry creatures; but with exceeding difficulty, from the fierce pressure of starving multitudes. In April, 1347, it was found by the bread-tickets received that no less than ninety-four thousand people were daily furnished with two loaves each from these ovens. In this were not counted the citizens and their households who were already supplied and did not share in the public distribution, but bought better bread at more than double price from the numerous private ovens. It was exclusive also of religious mendicants and other systematic beggars who in infinite numbers crowded into Florence from the adjacent towns and districts, and were in continual altercation with the citizens. Yet none were refused, whether stranger or subject, and all classes joined hand and heart in relieving the general misery. The increase of grain from the wheat harvest of 1347 reduced the price, towards the end of June, which however soon mounted up again from the eagerness of bakers to purchase, in order to uphold the market by refusing to make more than a certain quantity. This plunged the city into confusion; tumults began, which the priors calmed by hanging the baker who commenced this system, and corn fell to its natural value which the harvest gradually diminished.
[1346-1350 A.D.]
Death and sickness of course attended this suffering, and to alleviate the general distress the priors as early as March had decreed that nobody should be arrested for any debt under one hundred golden florins until the following August; and also, with a premium for importation, put a maximum price on the bushel of wheat; this was useless; because hunger backed by money overcame law, and corn sold for double the government value. For further alleviation all the prisoners in the public jails were released on a compromise with their creditors and enemies, as mortality had already begun in these places to the number of two or three in a day; public debtors for less than one hundred florins were also set at liberty on paying fifteen per cent. of their fines; but very few could take advantage of this, for all were suffering from poverty, hunger, and distress.
The effects now began to appear; women and children of the poorest classes sank under the woeful pressure; this lasted until November and carried off about four thousand souls; but it was worse in Prato, Pistoia, and Bologna, in Romagna, and throughout all France. In Turkey, Syria, Tatary, and India, sickness raged with unheard-of violence, giving rise and currency to a thousand marvellous tales, such as fire issuing from the earth and air, and consuming men, cattle, houses, trees, and even reducing the very earth and stones to cinders: those who escaped this, died of pestilence; and on the banks of the Tanaïs, at Trebizond, and in all the neighbouring countries, only one person in five was left among the living; in other places it is said to have rained great black maggots with eight legs, some alive, some dead, whose sting was death and whose corruption poisoned the atmosphere; but these are the least incredible of the numerous fables that this universal scourge generated in morbid imaginations, and in which all men, being terror-struck, believed implicitly. Turkey, Greece, Egypt, Syria, Crete, Rhodes, and the other eastern isles bowed before the pestilence; thence it travelled with the course of trade to Sicily, Sardinia, Elba, Corsica, and throughout the coasts of Italy; four Genoese galleys carried it to that city out of eight that had fled from the Euxine; Milan scarcely felt it, but as there were then no lazarettos it swept over the Alps, searched every vale in Savoy, ravaged Provence and Dauphiné, infected Burgundy and Catalonia; missed Brabant, but holding on its course carried death and misery through the rest of Europe until 1350, when it had penetrated even the Boreal regions and nearly depopulated Iceland, which has never yet recovered from its touch.
“This disease,” says Giovanni Villani,[d] “was of such a nature that none survived its attack for three days; certain tumours appeared in the groins and under the arms; the patient then spit blood; and the priest that confessed him, and the neighbour who looked on him often took the malady, so that every sick creature was abandoned: no confession, no sacrament, no medicine, no attendance; yet the pope granted a pardon to every priest who administered the holy communion, or confessed, or visited and watched the dying man.”