od tainted with Y. pestis, the fleas’ stomachs would engorge and cause them to die, yet the bacteria in the dried blood of their desiccated bodies could remain viable for weeks. While some creatures appear unaffected by contact with these fleas or their remnants, others, like human beings, can become infected and die. Such was the nature of the calamity facing Florence.5
Boccaccio did not know the cause of the mysterious pestilenza, but he was shocked by the course of the disease, the care (or lack of care) of the sick and dying, and the surprisingly bizarre behavior of the Florentines. In his introduction to The Decameron, he puts aside any notions of God’s intervention along with suggestions that miasmic air had caused the deaths of two-thirds of the Florentine population. Instead, the author plunges headlong into describing the illness and what he clearly recognizes as a contagious disease—one that will unfortunately be soon followed by grievous social disorder.
He begins with a concise description of the disease’s onset, correctly noting its variability. In the East, he reports that the pestilence manifested itself in “bleeding from the nose.” However, in Florence he sees it progress first “with certain swellings . . . in the groin or under the armpits, growths that soon grew to the size of . . . apples,” or “the size of eggs.” These, the people called gavoccioli (buboes). Soon after the buboes appeared, the body of the infected person became covered with what the author describes as “black spots” (purpura). Death, of course, was imminent.6
Medical care failed, says Boccaccio, either because there was no cure or because doctors were indifferent, just plain “ignorant,” or perhaps not even real doctors. Soon, however, it became clear that approaching those who were ill was dangerous. Even touching their clothing or bodies might be deadly. Between the lack of medical attendance and the virulence of the pestilence, many died who need not have done so, especially among the lower classes.7
The situation of the poor, and even that of the middle class, was dreadful. Once dead, victims’ bodies were simply dragged out the door. Quantities of decomposing bodies could be seen in the streets until the becchini (paid gravediggers) carted them off to any available unoccupied grave. For people who died in their homes alone, days could pass before their bodies were discovered, usually by the stench.
The normally fine funerals reserved for the upper class were also set aside. Few were honored or mourned with the traditional pomp. Without ceremony, and often unaccompanied by family, they were carried to the nearest churchyard where trenches were dug and the bodies unceremoniously and quickly buried. Before long, as Boccaccio dramatically states, the city was “full of corpses.”8
Because of fear, or maybe sometimes out of necessity, groups of the Florentine citizenry dealt with the plague in different ways.9 There were individuals in Florence who “lived entirely apart from everyone else . . . where there were no sick people at all.” Their wise decisions are suggestive of behavior practiced now by many facing the present pandemic.
There were others in Florence, Boccaccio tells us, who followed a “middle course.” They did not “shut themselves up, but went around carrying in their hands flowers, or sweet-smelling herbs, or various kinds of spices; . . . Often they would put these things to their noses, believing that such smells were a wonderful means to purify the brain. . . .” This would have been an attempt to protect themselves from the miasmic pestilence in the air, as had been suggested by Vitruvius, Galen, and others. Would masks have protected these individuals, or at least minimized their infection? In a flea-borne disease, the answer is no.
The final group that Boccaccio bluntly labels bestiale is particularly relevant to our times because they seem familiar. They, like some individuals today, were not careful at all. Boccaccio writes, “they believed that drinking too much, enjoying life, going about singing and celebrating, satis