From The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio, Translated by Guido Waldman, Oxford University Press, 2008

Here begins the first day of The Decameron, wherein the Author sets forth the occasion that brought together for conversation the persons shortly to be described. Under the reign of Pampinea, the topic of story-telling is at the choice of each person.

Every time I stop to consider your natural inclination to pity, most gracious ladies, I recognize that you will find the opening of this present work abhorrent and distressing; for so is the painful recapitulation of the recent deadly plague, which occasioned hardship and grief to everyone who witnessed it or had some experience of it, and which marks the introduction of my work. I should be sorry, however, if you let this discourage you from reading on, as if to do so were to condemn you to unremitting sighs and tears. You are to look upon this grim opening as travellers on foot confront a steep, rugged mountain: beyond it lies a most enchanting plain which they appreciate all the more for having toiled up and down the mountain first. And just as sorrow will come to displace the most abundant happiness, so will the arrival of joy put paid to sorrow. This brief affliction (I call it brief for it is contained in not all that many letters) will quickly give place to the sweet relief already promised you: were I not to mention it, you might perhaps never have expected it after an opening such as this. The fact is, had I been able to find some suitable alternative path by which to bring you to where I want, other than along this steep one, I should willingly have done so; but as I could not have explained the reasons underlying what you are about to read unless I broached this matter of the plague, I find myself virtually obliged to write about it.

The era of the fruitful Incarnation of the Son of God had arrived at theyear 1348 when the deadly plague reached the noble city of Florence, of all Italian cities the most excellent. Whether it was owing to the action of the heavenly bodies or whether, because of our iniquities, it was visited upon us mortals for our correcttion by the righteous anger of God, this pestilence, which had started some years earlier in the Orient, where it had robbed countless people of their lives, moved without pause from one region to the next until it spread tragically into the West. It was proof against all human providence and remedies, such as the appointment of officials to the task of ridding the city of much refuse, the banning of sick visitors from outside, and a good number of sanitary ordinances; equally unavailing were the humble petitions offered to the Lord by pious souls not once but countless times, whether in the course of processions or otherwise. As the said year turned to Spring, the plague began quite prodigiously to display its harrowing effects. Here it did not develop as it had done in the East, where death was inevitable in anyone whose symptoms were a loss of blood through the nose. Its first sign here in both men and women was a swelling in the groin or beneath the armpit, growing sometimes in the shape of a simple apple, sometimes in that of an egg, more or less: a bubo was the name commonly given to such a swelling. Before long this deadly bubo would begin to spread indifferently from these points to crop up all over; the symptoms would develop then into dark or livid patches that many people found appearing on their arms or thighs or elsewhere; these were large and well separated in some cases, while in others, they were a crowd of tiny spots. And just as the bubo had been, and continued to be, a sure indication of fatal disease, so were these blotches for those on whom they appeared. No physician's prescriptions, no medicine seemed of the slightest benefit as a cure for this disease. In addition to those trained in medicine, the number of men and women who claimed to be physicians without having studied the subject at all grew immensely; however, whether it was that the nature of the malady would not permit it, or because doctors were unable to discover its origins and therefore could not apply the proper remedy, not only did few people recover but indeed nearly all the sick would succumb within three days of the above-mentioned symptoms' first appearance; some died sooner, some later, and the majority with no fever, nothing.

And the plague gathered strength as it was transmitted from the sick to the healthy through normal intercourse, just as fire catches on to any dry or greasy object placed too close to it. Nor did the trouble stop there: not only did the healthy incur the disease and with it the prevailing mortality by talking to or keeping company with the sick--they had only to touch the clothing or anything else that had come into contact with or been used by the sick and the plague evidently was passed to the one who handled those things. You will be quite amazed by what I am about to tell you: were it not that many people witnessed it and I saw it with my own eyes, I would never have dared believe it, still less set it down in writing, even if I had had it on the most reliable authority. So potent was the contagion as it was passed on that it was transmitted not only between one person and the next: many a time it quite clearly went further than that, and if some animal other than a human touched an object belonging to a person who was sick or had died of the plague, the animal was not merely infected with it but fell dead in no time at all. As I have just mentioned, I saw this for myself one day in particular: the rags of a pauper who had died of the plague had been tossed out into the street and two pigs happened upon them; they nosed about them with their snouts, as pigs do, then took them in their jaws and shook them this way and that; it was not long before they fell into convulsions, as if they had swallowed poison, and then dropped dead on top of the rags they had so haplessly snatched up.

This sort of thing, as well as many another that was similar to it if not worse, produced in the survivors all manner of terrors and suspicions all tending to the same solution, and a very heartless one it was: they would keep their distance from the plague-victims, and from their chattels too, thus hoping to preserve their own skins. There were some who inclined to the view that if they followed a temperate life-style and eschewed all extravagance they should be well able to keep such an epidemic at bay. So they would form into a group and withdraw on their own to closet themselves in a house free of all plague-victims;here they would enjoy the good life, partaking of the daintiest fare and the choicest of wines-all in the strictest moderation-and shunning all debauchery; they would refrain from speaking to anyone or from gleaning any news from outside that related to deaths or plague-victims--rather did they bask in music and such other pleasures as were at their disposal. Others found the contrary view more enticing, that the surest remedy to a disease of this order was to drink their fill, have a good time, sing to their hearts' content, live it up, give free rein to their appetites--and make light of all that was going on. This was their message, this their practice so far as they were able; day and night would find them in one tavern or another, soaking up the booze like sponges, and carousing all the more in other people's houses the moment word got out that that's where the fun was to be had. This was easy enough to do because everyone had let his property go, just as he had let himself go as if there was to be no tomorrow. Most houses therefore lay open to all comers, and people would walk in off the streets and make themselves at home just as if they owned the place. And while they pursued this brutish behaviour they still took every care to avoid all contact with the sick.

Now with our city in such a sorry state, the laws of God and men had lost their authority and fallen into disrespect in the absence of magistrates to see them enforced, for they, like everyone else, had either succumbed to the plague or lay sick, or else had been deprived of their minions to the point where they were powerless. This left everyone free to do precisely as he pleased. There were many others who adhered to a middle way between these two, neither following the frugal regimen of the first group nor letting themselves go in the drunken, dissolute life-style of the second. They partook of their fill but no more and, instead of shutting themselves away, they would go about holding flowers to their noses or fragrant herbs, or spices of various kinds, in the belief that such aromas worked wonders for the brain (the seat of health), for the atmosphere was charged with the stench of corpses, it reeked of sickness and medication. Others there were who were totally ruthless and no doubt chose the safest option: there was in their view no remedy to equal that of giving the plague a very wide berth. On this premise any number of men and women deserted their city and with it their homes and neighbourhoods, their families and possessions, heedless of anything but their own skins, and made for other people's houses or for their country estates at any rate, as though the wrath of God, visiting the plague on men to punish their iniquity, was never going to reach out to where they were; as though it was meant to harry only those remaining within their city walls, as though not a soul was destined to remain alive in the city, as though its last hour had come.

And even if not all of them died who clung to these various persuasions, not all of them lived either; in each of these groups many fell sick, here, there, and everywhere, and mindful of the example these people had given when they were still in good health, those whose health remained sound left them to languish unattended. One citizen avoided the next, there was scarcely a man who would take care of his neighbour, kinsmen would seldom if ever call on each otther, and even then would keep their distance--but this was not all: men and women alike were possessed by such a visceral terrorr of his scourge that a man would desert his own brother, uncle would forsake his nephew, sister her brother, and often a wife her husband. What is more, believe it or not, mothers and fathers would avoid visiting and tending their children, they would virtually disown them. Therefore those who fell sick--and they were a number beyond counting, of either sex--had no recourse beyond the charity of their friends (the few they had) or the cupidity of their servants: these were few and far between, even though they were recruited with absurdly inflated wages, and comprised men and women of the commonest sort, for the most part totally untrained, whose ministrations amounted to little more than handing the patient such objects as he requested or watching him die. Qμite often in the course of his duties the servant lost his life along with his wages. Now this desertion of the sick by their neighbours, their families and friends, and the scarcity of servants, led to a practice hitherto unheard of: when a woman fell ill, she could be the neatest prettiest, most refined of ladies, but she made no bones about being attended by a male, any male, never mind his age, and displaying to him any part of her anatomy quite without embarrassment, just as she would do with another of her sex, if her invalid condition required it. Conceivably this might have occasioned a certain lapse from the path of virtue among those women who subsequently recovered their health. At all events many people succumbed who might have pulled through had they obtained help. In the absence of the sort of ministrations the sick required but could not obtain, and as the pestilence continued unabating, the number of people who died in the city night and day was impossible to credit on hearsay, let alone on witnessing it. Thus the survivors were virtually forced to engage in practices totally at variance with the traditional Florentine way of life.

It had been the custom--as we see it is today--for the female relatives and neighbours to assemble in the house of the deceased and join with his nearest and dearest in mourning over him; outside the house the menfolk would foregather--the dead man's kinsmen and neighbours and a great number of townsmen--while such clergy as suited the man's social standing would arrive; he would be carried on the shoulders of his peers to the church he had chosen before his death, with all the funeral rites of candles and dirges. Most if not all of these practices were suspended as the plague's ravages became more ruthless, only to be superseded byw hat was hitherto unheard of: not merely did many people die bereft of their atttendant feminine company, all too many passed away without so much as a single witness. Barely a handful were accorded the benefit of seeing their dear ones in floods of compassionate tears: far from it, the new order called for quips and jollity more suited to a festive gathering. The womenfolk had largely suppressed their natural pity and become well practised in this new frivolity to assure their own survival. Seldom were there more than ten or a dozen neighbours to escort the body of the deceased to church. Nor would the corpse be borne on the shoulders of prominent and distinguished citizens: the bier would be taken in charge by a tribe of pallbearers, people of the commonest sort who liked to call themselves undertakers and who fulfilled the function against payment in cash. They would bend their hastening steps, not to the church appointed by the deceased before his death, but to the nearest one, more often than not, preceded by maybe a half-dozen clerics holding the odd candle-sometimes with none at all. With the help of the pallbearers they would drop the corpse into the nearest available tomb that had space, without too much effort being wasted on a lengthy or solemn requieum. If you examined the situation of the common people, and even that of much of the middle class, it looked a great deal bleaker still: they stayed at home for the most part, whether it was hope or sheer poverty that kept them there, and caught the plague by the thousand right there in their neighborhood, day after day; in the absence of any help at all, paid or otherwise, they were virtually all beyond saving. Many there were who passed away in the street, by day as by night, while scores of those who die indoors only made their neighbours aware of their decease by the stench of their decaying corpses; the whole city was full of these and others dying all over the place.

Neighbours tended all to follow the same procedure, motivated as they were by fear of being tainted by the corpses no less than by kindness towards the dead. With the aid of bearers if they could find any, otherwise on their own, they would carry the corpses into the street and lay them down outside the front door; anyone who took a turn in the street, in the morning especially, would have noticed any number of them. Then they would send for coffins (unless these proved unobtainable, in which case planks would have to serve); and on more than one occasion a single bier would be loaded with two or three corpses--it happened frequently, and you could have counted a good number that bore away wife and husband, or two or three brothers, or father and son, and so on. There were countless occasions, too, when a couple of priests would go with a crucifix to fetch somebody only to find that three or four groups of pallbearers had fallen in behind them with their biers, so that whereas the priests were expecting to have one deceased person to bury, they might find themselves with half a dozen or more. Which is not to suggest that these obsequies were attended by any tears, any display or candles, any company: things had reached the point where the dying received no more consideration than the odd goat would today. What was inescapably apparent was that if the occasional minor disaster that occurs in the normal course had failed to teach patience to the wise, the sheer scale of the prevailing evil had taught even the simplest soul a degree of placid resignation. As there was not sufficient consecrated ground in which to bury the vast number of corpses that arrived at every church day aftter day and practically hour by hour, least of all while any effort had been made to give each person his own burial plot in accordance with age-old custom, enormous pits were dug in the graveyards, once saturation point had been reached, and the new arrivals were dropped into these by the hundred; here they were packed in layers, the way goods are stowed in a ship's holds, and each layer would get a thin covering of earth until the pit was filled up.

Before I go into yet more detail about the afflictions our city underwent in those days, I should only add that if the townsfolk were having such a ghastly time of it, the neighbouring countryfolk were spared none of the rigours. To say nothing of the market-towns, which were like the city if on a smaller scale, in the remote villages and out in the fields the labourers, poor penniless wretches, and their households died like brute beasts rather than human beings; night and day, with never a doctor to attend them, no sort of domestic help, they would pass away, some indoors, others out on the roads or among their crops. As a result they, like the townsfolk, became feckless in their habits, neglecting their affairs and their possessions; indeed, far from encouraging their animals, their fields, their earlier labours to bear fruit, they all bent their best efforts to dissipating whatever came to hand as though they were simply awaiting the day on which they could see they were going to die. Which is why the oxen, the donkeys, the sheep and goats, the pigs and hens, even the faithful hounds were driven off and went wandering at leisure through the fields where the harvest stood abandoned, not gleaned, not gathered in. Many of them behaved like perfectly rational beings, browsing to their hearts' content all day and at nightfall returning replete to their quarters without any herdsmen in attendance.

Leaving the countryside and returning to the city, what more is there to say but that, what with the inordinate wrath of Heaven and doubtless also to some extent the cruelty of men, between March and July more than a hundred thousand human beings are in all certainty believed to have lost their lives within the walls of Florence: this as a result partly of the sheer inexorability of the plague, partly of the terror possessing the survivors, which prevented them from attending and ministering to the sick in their need? Before the plague struck, who would have believed the city even numbered that many inhabitants? Oh think of all the great palaces, the find houses and gorgeos mansions that once boasted full households, now bereft of their masters and mistresses, abandoned by all, down to the hunblest menial! Imagine all those memorable family names, those vast estates and egregious fortunes left without a legitimate heir! How many gallant men, how many fair women and bright young people whom anybody would have pronounced among the fittest--even physicians as eminent as Galen, Hippocrates, and Aesculapius would have--satt down to breakfast with their families and friends only to find themselves dining that nightt with their forbears in the next world!