The Black Death

Quickly the plague spread over Sicily, ravaging with especial violence the towns and villages at the western end. It was not for long confined to such narrow limits. Sicily, as Professor Renouard dryly remarks,^{70} ‘fulfilled its natural mission as a centre of the Mediterranean world’. From thence it spread probably to North Africa by way of Tunis; certainly to Corsica and Sardinia; the Balearics, Almeria, Valencia and Barcelona on the Iberian peninsula; and to Southern Italy. It is remarkable, in this as in every other epidemic of bubonic plague, how closely the disease followed the main trade-routes.^{71} Largely, of course, this is a token of the role which the rat played in the propagation of plague. But whether the Black Death travelled by rat, by unescorted flea or by infected sailor, ship was the surest and most rapid means. The Black Death, indeed, is peculiar among plagues in that the particularly high incidence of its pneumonic variant meant that it struck inland with unusual vigour. But even though it could thus attain the hinterland, its first target was still the coastal towns. It travelled from the Crimea to Moscow not overland but by way of Italy, France, England and the Hanseatic ports.^{72}

The three great centres for the propagation of the plague in Southern Europe were Sicily, Genoa and Venice. It seems to have arrived more or less simultaneously at the latter ports some time in January, 1348. But it was Pisa, attacked a few weeks later,^{73} which provided the main point of entry to Central and Northern Italy. From there it moved rapidly inland to Rome and Tuscany. It had begun the march which was not to end until the whole continent of Europe had been blanketed by death.

In Italy the previous years had provided a chapter of disasters less dramatic but little less damaging than those which had overtaken the unfortunate Chinese. A crescendo of calamity was reached shortly before the plague arrived.^{74} Earthquakes had done severe damage in Naples, Rome, Pisa, Bologna, Padua and Venice. The wine in the casks had become turbid: ‘a statement which,’ as the nineteenth-century German historian Hecker hopefully remarked, ‘may be considered as furnishing a proof that changes causing a decomposition of the atmosphere had taken place.’ From July 1345 six months of almost continuous rain had made sowing impossible in many areas. The following spring things were little better. The corn crop was less than a quarter of the usual and almost all the domestic fowls had to be slaughtered for want of feeding stuffs. Even for the richest states and cities it was difficult to replace the loss by imports. ‘In 1346 and 1347 there was a severe shortage of basic foodstuffs… to the point where many people died of hunger and people ate grass and weeds as if they had been wheat.’^{75} Near Orvieto the bridges were washed away by the floods and the damage done to communications all over Italy made the work of feeding the hungry still more difficult.^{76}

Inevitably prices soared. The price of wheat doubled in the six months prior to May 1347, and even bran became too costly for the poor. In April 1347 a daily ration of bread was being issued to 94,000 people in Florence; prosecutions for all minor debts were suspended by the authorities and the gates of the prisons thrown open to all except serious criminals. It is said that four thousand Florentines died either of malnutrition or from diseases which, if malnutrition had not first existed, would never have proved fatal.^{77} And yet of all the cities of Italy, Florence, with its great wealth, its powerful and sophisticated administration and its relatively high standards of education and of hygiene, was best equipped to cope with the problems of famine and disease.

Financial difficulties in Florence and Siena, which the agricultural problem complicated but did not create, made things even worse. The great finance house of the Peruzzi was declared bankrupt in 1343, the Acciaiuoli and the Bardi followed in 1345. By 1346 the Florentine houses alone had lost 1.7 million florins and virtually every bank and merchant company was in difficulties. It was an economic disaster without precedent.^{78} Even if the grain had been available it would have been hard for the cities of Tuscany to find the money to purchase it.