Black Death

The Black Death is the plague that strikes Florence in 1348 and transforms the conditions of life described at the opening and closing of the Decameron’s storytelling frame. The account moves from the visible signs of illness and the failure of treatment to fear, abandonment, and flight; the company’s departure from the city, and its eventual decision to return, make the epidemic both a historical catastrophe within the narrative and the circumstance that occasions its stories.

Arrival and Course

The narrative dates the plague’s arrival in Florence to 1348, after it had appeared in the East, killed an immense number of inhabitants there, and continued westward from place to place. Its coming is situated in a world where people sought explanations in both the movements of the heavens and human wrongdoing, imagining the disease as a possible punishment sent by divine wrath. These are the period’s explanatory beliefs as presented by the narrative, not a medical account of the disease’s cause.

The city had not simply ignored the danger. Officials arranged measures to purge it of impurities, sick people were forbidden to enter, and advice intended to preserve health was offered. Devout people also made repeated prayers and processions. None of these efforts prevented the plague’s effects from becoming evident around the beginning of spring. The contrast between organized precautions and the epidemic’s advance establishes the limits of civic foresight and communal supplication in the face of the disaster.

Symptoms and Failed Treatment

The narrative distinguishes the Florentine symptoms from the sign associated with the plague in the East, where bleeding from the nose was taken as a certain indication of death. In Florence, the illness first appeared as swellings in the groin or beneath the armpits. Some grew to the size of an ordinary apple, others to that of an egg, and people called them plague-boils. They could spread to other parts of the body; later, black or livid blotches appeared, often first on the arms and thighs and then elsewhere. Both the swellings and the blotches are described as reliable signs of approaching death.

Neither physicians’ counsel nor medicines seemed to help. The account attributes the failure either to the nature of the infection or to the inadequate knowledge of many practitioners, including people with no medical training who had entered the work. Few recovered: nearly all who developed the signs died within three days, some sooner and some later, often without fever or another complication. The narrative thus presents the disease as swift and difficult to interpret as well as resistant to the remedies available to its sufferers.

Contagion and Fear

The plague’s spread magnifies the terror. Conversation and close association with the sick could infect the healthy, in the narrative’s comparison, as readily as fire catches dry or greasy material brought near it. Even contact with a sick person’s clothing or belongings seemed dangerous. The account presses this fear beyond human contact: objects used by the sick or dead appear capable of carrying the disease to animals as well.

To substantiate this extraordinary claim, the narrator recounts a personal observation. Rags belonging to a poor man who had died of the plague were thrown into a public way. Two hogs rooted among them, took them in their mouths, and tossed them about; shortly afterward, both animals turned and fell dead on the rags. The episode gives the plague’s contagious force a concrete, witnessed image, while also marking how the narrator distinguishes what he reports from mere hearsay.

Flight and the Breakdown of Care

People responded to danger in opposing ways. Some withdrew into houses where no one had been sick, formed secluded groups, ate and drank moderately, avoided incontinence, and occupied themselves with music and diversions while refusing news of illness and death. Others treated feasting and pleasure as their best defense, drinking without measure and moving from tavern to tavern or entering other people’s houses whenever they found something tempting. With many people acting as though they had little time left, property was neglected and houses could be used by strangers almost as if they were public places. Even those who embraced revelry still avoided the sick as far as they could.

A third response was to flee before the plague. Many people, men and women alike, abandoned Florence, their homes, relatives, and possessions for country houses, reasoning that distance from the city might protect them. The narrative rejects any certainty in this strategy: people who fled, as well as people who stayed, fell ill in different places, often without care. The epidemic therefore unsettles both the expectation that a particular way of living can secure immunity and the distinction between the safety of the city and that of the countryside.

Fear also breaks the bonds that would ordinarily sustain the sick. Neighbors avoided neighbors, relatives rarely visited, and communication was often kept at a distance. Brothers, uncles, sisters, husbands, and wives deserted one another; in the account’s starkest reversal, parents sometimes refused to visit or tend their own children. Sick people were left to the charity of the few friends who remained or to servants attracted by unusually high wages. Those servants were scarce, often inexperienced, and in some cases died while caring for the ill. Some sick women consequently had to accept care from men and expose their bodies when necessity required it, a circumstance the narrative associates with diminished modesty among those who survived. The deaths in Florence resulted not only from the plague’s virulence but also, the account stresses, from the lack of timely assistance.

The Plague and the Storytelling Frame

The Black Death gives the company’s departure its purpose: they leave Florence to seek diversion while preserving their health and lives amid the suffering in the city. At the end of the frame, the king reflects that it will be fifteen days the next day since they left. He regards their conduct as honorable: although they have eaten, drunk, danced, sung, made music, and heard stories that might encourage desire, he says he has seen no blameworthy word or action among them, but instead continuing decency, concord, and familiarity. Their retreat offers a sharp contrast to the social abandonment described in the plague-stricken city, though it is presented as temporary refuge rather than a remedy for the epidemic.

With the sun low and vespers approaching, the king proposes that the group return the following morning. He argues that their stay should not be prolonged until it becomes tedious, and that their growing familiarity with people nearby may threaten their privacy and comfort. The company accepts his advice, and preparations for the return bring the frame toward its close. The epidemic thus remains more than an opening backdrop: it is the force that first separates the storytellers from Florence, shapes the interval in which their company forms, and finally sets the time for their return.