The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio
thinking and in every place sickened of the plague and languished on
all sides, well nigh abandoned, having themselves, what while they
were whole, set the example to those who abode in health.
Indeed, leaving be that townsman avoided townsman and that well nigh
no neighbour took thought unto other and that kinsfolk seldom or never
visited one another and held no converse together save from afar, this
tribulation had stricken such terror to the hearts of all, men and
women alike, that brother forsook brother, uncle nephew and sister
brother and oftentimes wife husband; nay (what is yet more
extraordinary and well nigh incredible) fathers and mothers refused to
visit or tend their very children, as they had not been theirs. By
reason whereof there remained unto those (and the number of them, both
males and females, was incalculable) who fell sick, none other succour
than that which they owed either to the charity of friends (and of
these there were few) or the greed of servants, who tended them,
allured by high and extravagant wage; albeit, for all this, these
latter were not grown many, and those men and women of mean
understanding and for the most part unused to such offices, who served
for well nigh nought but to reach things called for by the sick or to
note when they died; and in the doing of these services many of them
perished with their gain.
Of this abandonment of the sick by neighbours, kinsfolk and friends
and of the scarcity of servants arose an usage before well nigh
unheard, to wit, that no woman, how fair or lovesome or well-born
soever she might be, once fallen sick, recked aught of having a man to
tend her, whatever he might be, or young or old, and without any shame
discovered to him every part of her body, no otherwise than she would
have done to a woman, so but the necessity of her sickness required
it; the which belike, in those who recovered, was the occasion of
lesser modesty in time to come. Moreover, there ensued of this
abandonment the death of many who peradventure, had they been
succoured, would have escaped alive; wherefore, as well for the lack
of the opportune services which the sick availed not to have as for
the virulence of the plague, such was the multitude of those who died
in the city by day and by night that it was an astonishment to hear
tell thereof, much more to see it; and thence, as it were of
necessity, there sprang up among those who abode alive things contrary
to the pristine manners of the townsfolk.
It was then (even as we yet see it used) a custom that the kinswomen
and she-neighbours of the dead should assemble in his house and there
condole with those who more nearly pertained unto him, whilst his
neighbours and many other citizens foregathered with his next of kin
before his house, whither, according to the dead man's quality, came
the clergy, and he with funeral pomp of chants and candles was borne
on the shoulders of his peers to the church chosen by himself before
his death; which usages, after the virulence of the plague began to
increase, were either altogether or for the most part laid aside, and
other and strange customs sprang up in their stead. For that, not only
did folk die without having a multitude of women about them, but many
there were who departed this life without witness and few indeed were
they to whom the pious plaints and bitter tears of their kinsfolk were
vouchsafed; nay, in lieu of these things there obtained, for the most
part, laughter and jests and gibes and feasting and merrymaking in
company; which usance women, laying aside womanly pitifulness, had
right well learned for their own safety.
Few, again, were they whose bodies were accompanied to the church by
more than half a score or a dozen of their neighbours, and of these no
worshipful and illustrious citizens, but a sort of blood-suckers,
sprung from the dregs of the people, who styled themselves
_pickmen_[8] and did such offices for hire, shouldered the bier and
bore it with hurried steps, not to that church which the dead man had
chosen before his death, but most times to the nearest, behind five or
six[9] priests, with little light[10] and whiles none at all, which
latter, with the aid of the said pickmen, thrust him into what grave
soever they first found unoccupied, without troubling themselves with
too long or too formal a service.
[Footnote 8: _i.e._ gravediggers (_becchini_).]
[Footnote 9: Lit. _four_ or six. This is the equivalent Italian
idiom.]
[Footnote 10: _i.e._ but few tapers.]
The condition of the common people (and belike, in great part, of the
middle class also) was yet more pitiable to behold, for that these,
for the most part retained by hope[11] or poverty in their houses and
abiding in their own quarters, sickened by the thousand daily and
being altogether untended and unsuccoured, died well nigh all without
recourse. Many breathed their last in the open street, whilst other
many, for all they died in their houses, made it known to the
neighbours that they were dead rather by the stench of their rotting
bodies than otherwise; and of these and others who died all about the
whole city was full. For the most part one same usance was observed by
the neighbours, moved more by fear lest the corruption of the dead
bodies should imperil themselves than by any charity they had for the
departed; to wit, that either with their own hands or with the aid of
certain bearers, whenas they might have any, they brought the bodies
of those who had died forth of their houses and laid them before their
doors, where, especially in the morning, those who went about might
see corpses without number; then they fetched biers and some, in
default thereof, they laid upon some board or other. Nor was it only
one bier that carried two or three corpses, nor did this happen but
once; nay, many might have been counted which contained husband and
wife, two or three brothers, father and son or the like. And an
infinite number of times it befell that, two priests going with one
cross for some one, three or four biers, borne by bearers, ranged
themselves behind the latter,[12] and whereas the priests thought to
have but one dead man to bury, they had six or eight, and whiles more.
Nor therefore were the dead honoured with aught of tears or candles or
funeral train; nay, the thing was come to such a pass that folk recked
no more of men that died than nowadays they would of goats; whereby it
very manifestly appeared that that which the natural course of things
had not availed, by dint of small and infrequent harms, to teach the
wise to endure with patience, the very greatness of their ills had
brought even the simple to expect and make no account of. The
consecrated ground sufficing not to the burial of the vast multitude
of corpses aforesaid, which daily and well nigh hourly came carried in
crowds to every church,--especially if it were sought to give each his
own place, according to ancient usance,--there were made throughout
the churchyards, after every other part was full, vast trenches,
wherein those who came after were laid by the hundred and being heaped
up therein by layers, as goods are stowed aboard ship, were covered
with a little earth, till such time as they reached the top of the
trench.
[Footnote 11: _i.e._ expectation of gain from acting as tenders of the
sick, gravediggers, etc. The word _speranza_ is, however, constantly
used by Dante and his follower Boccaccio in the contrary sense of
"fear," and may be so meant in the present instance.]
[Footnote 12: _i.e._ the cross.]
Moreover,--not to go longer searching out and recalling every
particular of our past miseries, as they befell throughout the
city,--I say that, whilst so sinister a time prevailed in the latter,
on no wise therefor was the surrounding country spared, wherein,
(letting be the castles,[13] which in their littleness[14] were like
unto the city,) throughout the scattered villages and in the fields,
the poor and miserable husbandmen and their families, without succour
of physician or aid of servitor, died, not like men, but well nigh
like beasts, by the ways or in their tillages or about the houses,
indifferently by day and night. By reason whereof, growing lax like
the townsfolk in their manners and customs, they recked not of any
thing or business of theirs; nay, all, as if they looked for death
that very day, studied with all their wit, not to help to maturity the
future produce of their cattle and their fields and the fruits of
their own past toils, but to consume those which were ready to hand.
Thus it came to pass that the oxen, the asses, the sheep, the goats,
the swine, the fowls, nay, the very dogs, so faithful to mankind,
being driven forth of their own houses, went straying at their
pleasure about the fields, where the very corn was abandoned, without
being cut, much less gathered in; and many, well nigh like reasonable
creatures, after grazing all day, returned at night, glutted, to their
houses, without the constraint of any herdsman.
[Footnote 13: _i.e._ walled burghs.]
[Footnote 14: _i.e._ in miniature.]
To leave the country and return to the city, what more can be said
save that such and so great was the cruelty of heaven (and in part,
peradventure, that of men) that, between March and the following July,
what with the virulence of that pestiferous sickness and the number of
sick folk ill tended or forsaken in their need, through the
fearfulness of those who were whole, it is believed for certain that
upward of an hundred thousand human beings perished within the walls
of the city of Florence, which, peradventure, before the advent of
that death-dealing calamity, had not been accounted to hold so many?
Alas, how many great palaces, how many goodly houses, how many noble
mansions, once full of families, of lords and of ladies, abode empty
even to the meanest servant! How many memorable families, how many
ample heritages, how many famous fortunes were seen to remain without
lawful heir! How many valiant men, how many fair ladies, how many
sprightly youths, whom, not others only, but Galen, Hippocrates or
Æsculapius themselves would have judged most hale, breakfasted in the
morning with their kinsfolk, comrades and friends and that same night
supped with their ancestors in the other world!
I am myself weary of going wandering so long among such miseries;
wherefore, purposing henceforth to leave such part thereof as I can
fitly, I say that,--our city being at this pass, well nigh void of
inhabitants,--it chanced (as I afterward heard from a person worthy of
credit) that there foregathered in the venerable church of Santa Maria
Novella, one Tuesday morning when there was well nigh none else there,
seven young ladies, all knit one to another by friendship or
neighbourhood or kinship, who had heard divine service in mourning
attire, as sorted with such a season. Not one of them had passed her
eight-and-twentieth year nor was less than eighteen years old, and
each was discreet and of noble blood, fair of favour and well-mannered
and full of honest sprightliness. The names of these ladies I would in
proper terms set out, did not just cause forbid me, to wit, that I
would not have it possible that, in time to come, any of them should
take shame by reason of the things hereinafter related as being told
or hearkened by them, the laws of disport being nowadays somewhat
straitened, which at that time, for the reasons above shown, were of
the largest, not only for persons of their years, but for those of a
much riper age; nor yet would I give occasion to the envious, who are
still ready to carp at every praiseworthy life, on anywise to
disparage the fair fame of these honourable ladies with unseemly talk.