In general, the plague pandemic of 1347-1350 was one of the worst disasters to ever affect the human race. The tragic events of those years events of those years are said to have marked the opening of a period of almost four centuries in which Europe and the Middle East were struck by repeated outbreaks of the same disease. By the end of 1348, the plague had covered all of Italy and most of France, crossing the Alps from Italy into Switzerland as well. England was then affected, as were Germany, Scandinavia, and parts of Russia. Increased trade during the period was largely responsible for transmission of the plague, ôentering port cities and then moving inland as goods and infected humans were disseminatedö (Marks, 1971, 55).
Giovanni Villani (1961) claimed that the Black Death (also known as the Black Plague) had reached Florence in late 1346, killing a total of around 4,000 people, and then diminishing in the winter of 1348 (237). The pre-plague period suffered from famine that erupted in social unrest that was dramatically exacerbated during the period when the pestilence moved through the city. The already weakened inhabitants of Florence were rendered even more vulnerable to the plague. The poor sanitation conditions of Florence were also responsible for creating a prime breeding ground for the plague and its transmission.
The plague, unlike other social phenomena of the era, made no distinction between poor and rich or noble born and peasant. Gottfried (1983) estimated that nearly 75 percent of the Florentine population was lost to the plague or died as a consequence of it (46). In his fictionalized account of the Black Death in The Decameron, Giovanni Boccaccio (1965) wrote that ôIt spread without stop from one place to another...Neither knowledge nor human foresight prevailed against it, although the city was cleansed of much filth by chosen officer in charge and sick persons were forbidden to enter itö (xx...