Black Death in Italy

The well-organized and Urban city republics of Central and Northern Italy had the most well-developed administration in Europe prior to the Black Death; their documentation has provided among the most useful descriptions of the pandemic, and the preventive measures and regulations initiated by the Italian city-states during and following the Black Death pandemic has been referred to as the foundation of modern quarantine law regulation.

[1] When the Black Death reached modern-day Italy, it was roughly divided into the Kingdom of Sicily and the Kingdom of Naples in the south, the Papal States in the middle, and the heavily urbanized Northern Italy, which formally belonged to the Holy Roman Empire but in reality, divided into several autonomous city republics or principalities.

The sick wished to be cured, to make wills, and to take the confession, but physicians, notaries, and priests were infected and soon refused to go near them; people abandoned their homes, which criminals pillaged without being stopped by the guards and officials, who also died.

One of the royal family members, Duke Giovanni, fled from Catania to the forest of Mascalia, where he was referred to as the last victim of the plague in Sicily in April 1348.

It spread from Pisa to the rest of Central Italy: to Piombino, Lucca in February, to Florence in March, and Siena, Perugia, and Orvieto in April and May 1348.

[1] Agnolo di Tura described how people abandoned their loved ones whose bodies were thrown down holes all over the city of Siena, but how no one cried because everyone thought that they would soon die as well.

[1] In the countryside outside Florence, the peasantry fell dead in their fields which were abandoned by the living, who let loose their animals and ate their supplies because they lost any hope of surviving.

[1] Matteo Villani described how people in Florence, expecting their death, lived to enjoy life without consequences: the poor ignored the class system.

Due to the Pope residing in Avignon, Rome had lost its place as the center of Christianity and the pilgrims and clerical visitors that used to favour the city, and had almost been reduced to a local town.

[1] The cemeteries were filled so rapidly that mass burials were arranged, and eventually, the sick started to dig their graves in the middle of the town squares.

The Black Death of the Republic of Venice has been described in the chronicles of the Doge Andrea Dandolo, the monk Francesco della Grazia, and Lorenzo de Monacis.

Venice was one of the biggest cities in Europe, and at this point, it was overcrowded with refugees from the famine in the countryside the year prior and the earthquake in January.

[1] The Black Death in Italy was crucial in developing modern European quarantine laws, health authorities, and hospitals.