by John Kelly
57 weather was changing: “Climatology,” in The Dictionary of the Middle Ages, pp. 454–55. See also Philip Ziegler, The Black Death (Harper & Row, 1969), p. 32.
58 “The ice now comes: “Climatology,” in The Dictionary of Middle Ages, p. 455.
58 Little Ice Age: Fagan, The Little Ice Age, pp. 48–49.
58 poor and mediocre harvests: Ian Kershaw, “The Great Famine and Agrarian Crisis in England, 1315–1322,” Past and Present 59 (May 1975), p. 7.
58 “inundation of waters”: William Chester Jordan, The Great Famine: Northern Europe in the Fourteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 24.
58 Flanders experienced some of the worst downpours: Henry Lucas, “The Great European Famine of 1315, 1316, and 1317,” Speculum 5 (1930): 348.
59 near the English village of Milton: Ibid., p. 346.
59 poor huddled under trees: Jordan, The Great Famine, p. 143.
59 “cries that were heard”: Ibid., p. 141.
59 “dearness of wheat”: Ibid., p. 135.
60 cost of wheat: Lucas, “The Great European Famine,” p. 352.
60 year’s worth of barley: Dyer, Making a Living in the Middle Ages, p. 230.
60 “extracted the bodies”: John de Trokelowe in John Aberth, From the Brink of the Apocalypse: Confronting Famine, War, Plague, and Death in the Later Middle Ages (New York: Routledge, 2000), p. 13.
60 “Incarcerated thieves”: Ibid., p. 14.
60 “parents, after slaying their children”: Jordan, The Great Famine, p. 148.
60 accounts of cannibalism: Ibid., pp. 149–50.
60 exiled for stealing food: Ibid., p. 271.
60 Adam Bray: Dyer, Making a Living in the Middle Ages, p. 231.
61 “certain malefactors”: Lucas, “The Great European Famine,” p. 360.
61 “serenity of the air”: Aberth, From the Brink of the Apocalypse, p. 35.
61 Bolton Abbey: Dyer, Making a Living in the Middle Ages, p. 229.
61 “most savage, atrocious death”: Jordan, The Great Famine, p. 143.
61 In Antwerp: Lucas, “The Great European Famine,” p. 367.
61 In Erfurt: Jordan, The Great Famine, p. 144.
61 In Louvain: Ibid., p. 144.
61 In Tournai: Aberth, From the Brink of the Apocalypse, p. 54.
61 animals began to die: Kershaw, The Great Famine and Agrarian Crisis, pp. 20–21. See also: Jordan, The Great Famine, p. 36.
62 “It is a dysentery type illness: Ibid., p. 14.
62 vitamin deficiencies: Aberth, From the Brink of the Apocalypse, pp. 14–15.
62 half-million people died: Dyer, Making a Living in the Middle Ages, p. 235.
62 Flanders and Germany: Jordan, The Great Famine, p. 148.
63 “Think how their bodies”: Giovanni Morelli in Herlihy, in The Black Death and the Transformation of the West, p. 33.
63 “poorly nourished”: Simon Couvin in Herlihy, in The Black Death and the Transformation of the West, p. 33.
63 question the link: Biraben, Les hommes et la peste en France et dans les pays européens et méditerranéens, vol. 1 (Paris: Mouton, 1975), pp. 131–32.
63 periods of dearth: Cohn, The Black Death Transformed: Disease and Culture in Early Renaissance Europe (London: Arnold, 2002), p. 32.
63 “A famine”: Jordan, The Great Famine, p. 186.
64 fetal malnutrition is also a factor: S. E. Moore, A. C. Cole, et al., “Prenatal or Early Postnatal Events Predict Infectious Deaths in Young Adulthood in Rural Africa,” International Journal of Epidemiology 28, no. 6 (December 1999): 1088–1095.
64 mortality pattern: Jordan, The Great Famine, pp. 186–87.
64 confronted a peddler: Ernest L. Sabine, “City Cleaning in Medieval London,” Speculum 12, no. 1 (1937): 29.
65 “I make bold”: Stefan’s Florilegium, ed. by Mark Harris, May 19, 1997, [email protected]. See also: www.florilegium.org.
65 antirodent remedies: Ibid.
65 Princess Asaf-Khan: Hirst, The Conquest of Plague, p. 124.
65 “Dead rats in the east”: Shi Tao-nan in Wu Lien-Teh et al., Plague, p. 12.
66 incredible powers of reproduction: J. Laurens Nicholes, Vandals of the Night (Los Angeles, 1948), pp. 18–19.
66 remarkable qualities: Robert Pollitzer, Plague (Geneva: World Health Organization, 1954), p. 286.
66 reconnaissance lesson: Nicholes, Vandals of the Night, p. 22.
67 rats have been observed laughing: Jaak Panksepp and Jeffrey Burgdorf, “‘Laughing’ Rats and the Evolutionary Antecedents of Human Joy?” Physiology and Behavior 79 (2003): 533–47.
67 rat migrations: Pollitzer, Plague, p. 294.
67 rat first appeared in the West: F. Audoin-Rouzeau, “Le rat noir (Rattus rattus) et la peste dans l’occident antique et médiéval,” Bulletin de la Société de Pathologie Exotique 92, no. 5 (1999): 125–35.
68 “horse dung”: Sabine, “City Cleaning in Medieval London,” p. 26.
69 “Every seat”: Lucinda Lambton, Temples of Convenience and Chambers of Delight (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), p. 9.
69 public sanitation systems: Sabine, “City Cleaning in Medieval London,” p. 21.
70 “dung, lay-stalls”: Memorials of London and London Life in the XIIIth, XIVth, and XVth Centuries, ed. by H. T. Riley (London: London, Longmans, Green and Co., 1868), p. 295.
70 municipal sanitation workers: Sabine, “City Cleaning in Medieval London,” p. 23.
70 attacked by an assailant: Ibid., p. 30.
71 two women in Billingsgate: Ibid.
71 “Filth [is] being”: Philip Ziegler, The Black Death (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), p. 156.
71 unfortunate English peasant: Graham Twigg, The Black Death: A Biological Reappraisal (London: Batsford Academic and Educational, 1984), p. 102.
71 rat count: Ibid., p. 105.
71 “meanest Roman”: Edward Gibbon in McLaughlin, Coprophilia, p. 7.
72 “To those who are well”: Ibid., p. 11.
72 St. Agnes: Ibid.
72 St. Francis: Ibid., p. 7.
72 “civil and mannerly”: Ibid., p. 86.
72 “Hi, the fleas”: Stefan’s Florilegium, ed. by Mark Harris, May 19, 1997, [email protected].
72 battle changed: Aberth, From the Brink of the Apocalypse, p. 63.
73 village of Coutrai: Clifford J. Rogers, “The Age of the Hundred Years War,” in Medieval Warfare: A History, ed. by Maurice Keen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 137.
74 larger armies produced larger concentrations: Aberth, From the Brink of the Apocalypse, p. 63.
74 “A castle can hardly be taken”: Rogers, “The Age of the Hundred Years War,” p. 136.
74 “humble and innocent”: Aberth, From the Brink of the Apocalypse, p. 84.
75 “dismal devastation”: Ibid., p. 86.
75 “Many people [have been] slaughtered”: Rogers, “The Age of the Hundred Years War,” p. 152.
75 old Soviet army, which fought in Afghanistan: Lieutenant Colonel Lester W. Grant and Major William A. Jorgensen, “Medical Support in a Counter-Guerrilla War: Epidemiologic Lessons Learned in the Soviet-Afghan War,” U.S. Army Medical Department Journal, May–June 1995, pp. 1–11.
76 plague between 1966 and 1974: Dr. Evgeni Tikhomirov, in Plague Manual: Epidemiology, Distribution, Surveillance and Control, ed. by David. T. Dennis and Kenneth L. Gage (Geneva: World Health Organization, 1999), pp. 23, 24.
76 lived in dirt bunkers: L. J. Legters, A. J. Cottingham, and D. H. Hunter, “Clinical and Epidemiologic Notes on a Defined Outbreak of Plague in Vietnam,” American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene 19, no. 4 (1970): 639–52.
76 village of Dong Ha: Lieutenant Commander Frederick M. Burkle, Jr., “Plague as Seen in South Vietnamese Children,” Clinical Pediatrics 12, no. 5 (May 1973): 291–98.
Chapter Four: Sicilian Autumn
80 “sickness clinging to”: Philip S. Ziegler, The Black Death (New York: Harper & R
ow, 1969), p. 40.
80 “Speak, Genoa:” de’ Mussis, “Historia de Morbo,” in The Black Death: Manchester Medieval Sources, trans. and ed. by Rosemary Horrox (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994), p. 19.
80 “three galleys”: Louis Heyligen, “Breve Chronicon Clerici Anonymi,” in Horrox, The Black Death, p. 42.
80 “full of infected sailors”: Giovanni Villani, quoted in Robert S. Gottfried, The Black Death: Natural and Human Disaster in Medieval Europe (New York: Free Press, 1983), p. 53.
80 Genoese fleet: Albano Sorbelli, ed., Corpus Chronicorum Bononiensium, RIS, XVIII/I, 2 vol. (Città di Castello: 1910–38), Chronica B., p. 584.
81 scribe who estimated: Gottfried, The Black Death, p. 38.
81 “Men inhumanely”: C. S. Bartsocas, “Two Fourteenth-Century Greek Descriptions of the Black Death,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 21, no. 4 (Oct. 1966): 394–95.
81 “Upon arrival”: Ibid., p. 395.
81 Y. pestis followed the trade routes: Michael W. Dols, The Black Death in the Middle East (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), pp. 36–39.
82 island immediately rose up: Hecker, Epidemics of the Middle Ages, p. 13.
82 “Ships were dashed”: Ibid.
82 “pestiferous wind”: Ibid.
83 “future tense of verbs”: Leonardo Sciascia, La Sicile comme métaphore (Paris: Editions Stock, 1979), p. 53.
83 “In October 1347”: Michele da Piazza, “Bibliotheca Scriptorum qui res in Sicilica getas sub aragonum imperio retulere,” excerpted in Horrox, The Black Death, p. 36.
84 “disease in their bodies”: Jean-Noël Biraben, Les hommes et la peste en France et dans les pays européens et méditerranéens, vol. 1 (Paris: Mouton, 1975), pp. 49–55.
84 “a sort of boil”: Ibid.
84 voyage to Italy: Mark Wheelis, “Biological Warfare at the 1346 Siege of Caffa,” Emerging Infectious Diseases 8, no. 9 (2002): 974–75.
85 “The disease bred”: da Piazza, “Bibliotheca Scriptorum,” in Horrox, The Black Death, p. 36.
85 “Cats and . . . livestock”: Ibid.
85 “a black dog”: Ibid., p. 38.
85 “earth gaped wide”: Ibid., pp. 38–39.
86 “With his friends”: Ziegler, The Black Death, p. 133.
86 “a man, wanting to make his will”: de’ Mussis, “Historia de Morbo,” in Horrox, The Black Death, p. 21.
86 “Don’t talk to me”: da Piazza, “Bibliotheca Scriptorum,” in Horrox, The Black Death, p. 39.
86 “stupid idea”: Ibid., pp. 38–39.
87 “see him dead”: Ibid., p. 37.
87 Duke Giovanni: Ibid., p. 41.
88 third of Sicily: Ziegler, The Black Death, p. 62.
88 “nature of a donkey”: Quoted in Benjamin Z. Kedar, Merchants in Crisis: Genoese and Venetian Men of Affairs and the Fourteenth-Century Depression (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976), p. 9.
88 “heading toward the Atlantic”: Heyligen, “Breve Chronicon Clerici Anonymi,” in Horrox, p. 42.
89 ecological upheaval in Italy: J. C. L. Sismondi, Histoire des Républiques Italiennes du Moyen Age, vol. 4 (Paris: 1826), p. 11.
89 “severe shortage”: in Ziegler, The Black Death, p. 44.
89 poisonous gas: Hecker, Epidemics of the Middle Ages, p. 14.
89 “true of Italy”: Ziegler, The Black Death, p. 45.
90 “fine circuit of walls”: Anonimo Genovese, in Poete del Duecento, vol. 1, ed. by G. Contini (Milan and Naples: 1961), p. 751.
90 reconstruction of the timeline: Biraben, Les hommes et la peste en France, pp. 53–55.
90 during this second visit: Ibid.
91 monetary bequest: Steven A. Epstein, Genoa and the Genoese, 958–1528 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), p. 211.
91 De Benitio and his colleagues: Ibid., pp. 211–12.
92 “Venetians are like pigs”: Quoted in Kedar, Merchants in Crisis: Genoese and Venetian Men of Affairs and the Fourteenth-Century Depression, p. 9.
92 all-day parade: Martino da Canale, in Eileen Power, Medieval People (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), pp. 43–45.
93 instruction from municipal authorities: Mario Brunetti, “Venezia durante la Peste del 1348,” Ateneo Veneto 32 (1909): 295–96.
94 “Corpi morti!”: D’Irsay, “Defense Reactions During the Black Death,” Annals of Medical History 9 (1927) p. 171.
94 five feet deep: Ibid., p. 297.
94 banned gramaglia: Ibid.
94 often mentioned as the source: Robert S. Gottfried, The Black Death: Natural and Human Disaster in Medieval Europe (New York: Free Press, 1983), p. 48.
95 Ragusa: Francis Aidan Gasquet, The Black Death of 1348 and 1349 (London: George Bell and Sons, 1908), p. 65.
95 killed about 60 percent: Frederick C. Lane, Venice, a Maritime Republic (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), p. 169.
95 “rather die here”: D’Irsay, “Defense Reactions During the Black Death,” p. 174.
95 “At the beginning”: Cronica di Pisa di Ranieri Sardo, ed. by Ottavio Banti, Fonti per la Storia d’Italia 99 (1963).
96 preparations for the coming onslaught: Ann G. Carmichael, Plague and the Poor in Renaissance Florence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 99.
96 “bodies . . . shall not be removed”: “Gli Ordinamenti Sanitari del Commune di Pistoia contro la Pestilenza del 1348,” in Archivio Storico Italiano, ed. by A. Chiappelli, series 4, 20 (1887), pp. 8–12.
96 “it shall be understood”: Ibid., pp. 11–12.
96 Gentile da Foligno: Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, vol. 3 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1931), pp. 237–39.
97 plague tract: Ibid., p. 243.
97 “unprecedented.” Ibid.
97 studium generale: William M. Bowsky, “The Impact of the Black Death upon Sienese Government and Society,” Speculum 39, no. 1 (Jan. 1964): p. 13.
98 In Orvieto: Elizabeth Carpentier, Une ville devant la peste: Orvieto et la peste noire de 1348 (Paris: 1962), pp. 79–81.
98 thinks 50 percent: Ibid., p. 135.
99 only 29 percent: David Herlihy, “Plague, Population and Social Change in Rural Pistoia, 1201–1430,” Economic History Review 18, no. 2 (1965): p. 231.
99 In neighboring Bologna: Shona Kelly Wray, “Last Wills in Bologna During the Black Plague,” unpublished Ph.D. thesis (Boulder: University of Colorado, 1998), p. 165.
Chapter Five: Villani’s Last Sentence
102 “grown to vigor”: Giovanni Villani, in Ferdinand Schevill, History of Florence, from the Founding of the City Through the Renaissance (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1961), p. 239.
102 “full of infected”: Ibid.
102 Villani biography: Louis Green, Chronicle into History: An Essay on the Interpretation of History in Florentine Fourteenth-Century Chronicles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 1–20.
103 “appetite of women”: Ibid., p. 13.
103 appetite for disastrous and apocalyptic events: Ibid.
103 “presence of the father”: Giovanni Villani, in Schevill, History of Florence, p. 222.
103 defaulted on his loans: Giovanni Villani, in Gene A. Brucker, Florence: The Golden Age, 1138–1737 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), p. 251.
103 “plague was . . . foretold”: Giovanni Villani, in Green, Chronicle into History, p. 37.
104 “sign of future and great events”: Ibid., p. 38.
104 “dry or oily substance”: Boccaccio, Decameron, trans. G. H. McWilliam (London: Penguin, 1972), p. 6.
104 Clerical deaths: Aliberto B. Falsini, “Firenze dopo il 1349; le Consequenze della Pestra Nera,” Archivo Storico Italiano 130 (1971): p. 437.
104 “plague lasted”: Giovanni Villani in Schevill, History of Florence, p. 240.
105 “Dear ladies”: Boccaccio, Decameron, pp. 14–16.
105 “two pigs”: Ibid., p. 6.
106 “dr
opped dead”: Ibid., p. 11.
106 “one citizen avoiding another”: Ibid., pp. 8–9.
106 “Countless numbers”: Ibid., p. 9.
106 “a practice”: Ibid., p. 9.
106 “A great many people”: Ibid.
107 “once been the custom”: Ibid., pp. 9–10.
107 “rare for bodies”: Ibid., p. 10.
108 “Such was the multitude of corpses”: Ibid., p. 12.
108 “nothing was more senseless”: Giulia Calvi, Storie di anno di peste . . . (Milan: Bompiani, 1984), pp. 108–9.
108 “public and heroic event”: Caroline Walker Bynum, “Disease and Death in the Middle Ages,” Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 9 (1985): 97–102.
109 “Some people”: Boccaccio, Decameron, p. 7.
109 “a middle course”: Ibid., p. 8.
109 “Some again”: Ibid.
109 chronicle of another Florentine: Marchione di Coppo Stefani, Cronica fiorentino, ed. Niccolo Rodolico, RIS, xxx/1 (Città di Castello, 1903), pp. 229–32.
110 dinner parties: Ibid., p. 230.
110 “They could not”: Stefani, pp. 229–32.
111 “cost of things grew”: Ibid., p. 231.
111 death rate: Anne G. Carmichael, Plague and the Poor in Renaissance Florence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 60.
111 “public order held”: Falsini, “Firenze dopo il 1349,” p. 439.
111 two buboes: Giovanni Villani, in Schevill, History of Florence, p. 240.
111 even chickens being stricken: Stefani, Cronica florentino, p. 230.
111 “must not deceive”: Quote in Cohn, The Black Death Transformed, p. 14.
112 Travel rates: Graham Twigg, The Black Death: A Biological Reappraisal (London: Batsford Academic and Educational, 1984), p. 139.
112 plague ward: Cohn, The Black Death Transformed, pp. 27–28.
112 “aerial spirit”: J. Michon, Documents inédits sur la grande peste de 1348 (Paris: J.-B. Baillère et Fils, 1860), p. 46.
112 produced symptoms uncommon: Francis Aidan Gasquet, The Black Death of 1348 and 1349 (London: George Bell and Sons, 1908), pp. 8–9.
112 dead within three days: Giovanni Villani, in Schevill, History of Florence, p. 240.
113 never exceeded 3 percent: Cohn, The Black Death Transformed, p. 2.
