the father afterwards avoided his stricken son, the brother his brother, the wife her husband, and so in each case the man in health studiously avoided the sick. Priests and doctors even fled in fear from those ill, and all avoided the dead. In many places and houses [p028] when an inmate died the rest quickly, one after another, expired. And so great was the overwhelming number of the dead that it was necessary to open new cemeteries in every place. In Venice there were almost 100,000 dead, and so great was the multitude of corpses everywhere that few attended any funeral or dirge. … This pestilence did not cease in the land from February till the feast of All Saints (November 1st, 1348), and the offices of the dead were chanted only by the voices of boys; which boys, without learning, and by rote only, sang the office walking through the streets." The writer then notices the general dissoluteness which ensued after the disease, and its effect in lowering the standard of probity and morals.[31]
To the terrible accounts given by De' Mussi of the state of plague-stricken Genoa and Piacenza, and that of Boccaccio, of the ravages of the pestilence in the city of Florence, may be well added the eloquent letters of the poet Petrarch, in which he laments the overwhelming catastrophe, as he experienced it in the town of Parma. Here, as in so many other places, the inhabitants vainly endeavoured to prevent the entry of the disease by forbidding all intercourse with the suffering cities of Florence, Venice, Genoa and Pisa. The measures taken to isolate Parma appear to have been, at least, for a time, successful, as the dreaded plague apparently did not make its appearance till the beginning of June, 1348.[32] But in the six months during which it lasted it desolated the entire neighbourhood. In Parma and Reggio many thousands, estimated roundly at 40,000, were carried off by it.[33] Petrarch was at this period a canon of the cathedral of Parma, and had made the acquaintance at Avignon of Laura, who quickly became the object of his admiration as a typical Christian mother of a family, and as a fitting subject to inspire his poetic muse. Laura died at Avignon, one of the [p029] many who fell victims to the great pestilence which was then raging in that city. The letter written by a friend named Louis to inform Petrarch of this death found him at Parma on May 19th, 1348.[34] A month later the poet wrote to Avignon in the most heart-broken language to his brother, a religious at Monrieux, and the only survivor of a convent of five-and-thirty.[35] "My brother! my brother! my brother," he wrote. "A new beginning to a letter, though used by Marcus Tullius fourteen hundred years ago. Alas! my beloved brother, what shall I say? How shall I begin? Whither shall I turn? On all sides is sorrow; everywhere is fear. I would, my brother, that I had never been born, or, at least, had died before these times. How will posterity believe that there has been a time when without the lightnings of heaven or the fires of earth, without wars or other visible slaughter, not this or that part of the earth, but well-nigh the whole globe, has remained without inhabitants.
"When has any such thing been ever heard or seen; in what annals has it ever been read that houses were left vacant, cities deserted, the country neglected, the fields too small for the dead, and a fearful and universal solitude over the whole earth? Consult your historians, they are silent; question your doctors, they are dumb; seek an answer from your philosophers, they shrug their shoulders and frown, and with their fingers to their lips bid you be silent.
"Will posterity ever believe these things when we, who see, can scarcely credit them? We should think we were dreaming if we did not with our eyes, when we walk abroad, see the city in mourning with funerals, and returning to our home, find it empty, and thus know that what we lament is real.
"Oh, happy people of the future, who have not known these miseries and perchance will class our testimony with [p030] the fables. We have, indeed, deserved these (punishments) and even greater; but our forefathers also have deserved them, and may our posterity not also merit the same."
Then, after saying that the universal misery is enough to make one think that God has ceased to have a care for His creatures, and putting this thought aside as blasphemy, the writer continues: "But whatever the causes and however hidden, the effects are manifest. To turn from public to private sorrows; the first part of the second year is passed since I returned to Italy. I do not ask you to look back any further; count these few days, and think what we were and what we are. Where are now our pleasant friends? Where the loved faces? Where their cheering words? Where their sweet and gentle conversation? We were surrounded by a crowd of intimates, now we are almost alone."
Speaking of one special friend, Paganinus of Milan, Petrarch writes: "He was suddenly seized in the evening by the pestilential sickness. After supping with friends he spent some time in conversation with me, in the enjoyment of our common friendship and in talking over our affairs. He passed the night bravely in the last agony, and in the morning was carried off by a swift death. And, that no horror should be wanting, in three days his sons and all his family had followed him to the tomb."[36]
In other towns of Italy the same tragedy, as told in the words of Boccaccio and Petrarch, was being enacted during the early spring and the summer months of 1348. At Venice, where the pestilence obtained an early foothold, and the position of which rendered it particularly susceptible to infection, the mortality was so great that it was represented by the round numbers of 100,000 souls.[37]
Signor Cecchetti's researches into the history of the medical faculty at Venice at this period furnish many [p031] interesting details as to the spread of the sickness.[38] Although surgeons were not allowed by law to practise medicine, so great was the need during the prevalence of the dread mortality that one surgeon, Andrea di Padova, was allowed to have saved the lives of more than a hundred people by his timely assistance.[39] In the 14th century Venice was troubled by the plague some fifteen times, but that of 1348 was "the great epidemic"—"the horrible mortality"—to the chroniclers of the time. For a long period after, public and other documents make it the excuse for all kinds of irregularities.[40] The diplomas of merit bestowed upon doctors who remained faithful to their posts by the authorities of Venice speak of death following upon the first infection within a very short space of time. So depopulated was the city that it might be said no one was left in it. Many doctors fled, others shut themselves in their houses. Artisans and even youths undertook the duties of physicians, and helped numbers to recover.[41]
On Sunday, March 30th, 1348, the Great Council of Venice chose a commission of three to watch over the public safety. These a few days later ordered deep pits to be made in one of the islands to receive the bodies of those who died in the hospitals and of the poor, and to convey them thither, ships were appointed to be always in waiting.
The rich fled from the place; officials could not be found, and the Great Council was so reduced that the legal number for transacting business could not be got together. Notaries died in great numbers, and the prisons were thrown open.[42] When the epidemic had ceased the Senate had great difficulty in finding three doctors for the city. On January 12th, 1349, Marco Leon, a capable physician, and a native of Venice, who was in practice at Perugia, offered to return to his own city "since," as he says, "it has pleased God by the terrible mortality to leave our native [p032] place so destitute of upright and capable doctors that it may be said not one has been left."[43]
Details of a similar nature might be multiplied from the contemporary Italian records. What has been here given, however, will enable the reader to form some estimate of the nature of the terrible disease and of the extent of the universal devastation of the Italian peninsula. The annals relate that in every