Cronaca fiorentina di Marchionne di Coppo Stefani

[1][4] Bonaiuti stresses the economic disruption in Florence during the fourteenth century which was the result of the bubonic plague.

Niccolò Rodolico, in preparing a new edition, was able to refer to a further seven codices, the earliest of which dated from about twenty-five years after Bonaiuti's death.

I put time and care into finding books and other writings ...[2]The Chronicle gives some of the history of the Bonaiuti family, placing the writer's ancestors at the beginning of the thirteenth century among the noble Guelphs.

Bonaiuti devotes a major part of the work to the destruction caused to Florence and Fiesole by the bubonic plague of the Black Death in the fourteenth century.

[2] His own work focusses principally on Florence, while that of Villani extended over other parts of Europe, with no particular devotion to any geographical area.

[2] Bonaiuti devotes in his Chronicle as much effort to the current "news" of the time, especially concerning the Black Death, as to the ancient history of earlier centuries.

[2] A passage in Bonaiuti's Cronaca fiorentina talks of the mortality rate and the small virtues of people living under such extreme conditions of the plague disease suffered by Florence in 1348.

Many people died simply by being left alone with no help whatsoever: no medical assistance, nursing, or even food, if they had indicated they were ill.

[10] A passage from Bonaiuti's chronicle tells how most churches were overwhelmed with burials, so dug mass deep graves.

[10] The Cronaca fiorentina explains that the spice-dealers and beccamorti sold burial items, such as perfumed spiced goods, benches, caskets, burial palls, biers, and cushions, at outrageously high prices, so that the government finally had to step in and control such prices.

[10] The Cronaca fiorentina also explains that the Florentine guilds were not operating during the plague epidemic of the fourteenth century.

The craft shops were closed, as were the taverns, and only the apothecaries and the churches remained open for business during the disaster.

The overcharging for certain goods and services shows the morality of those providing them, and the rate at which the plague killed people made the apothecaries and doctors rich.

Others enriched by the high death rate were poultry-farmers, gravediggers, grocers selling vegetables, and those who made poultices to draw away the infirmity of the disease.