The Decameron: The Black Death

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During the Middle Ages, a horrific pestilence known as the Black Death spread across Europe, igniting an inferno of depression, suffering, and, most irrevocably, death that has come to define an era. Although historians disagree on the precise origin of the plague, the general consensus suggests that Genoese merchant ships brought the Black Death to Messina in 1347, and it proceeded to advance throughout Europe off and on for centuries, the bubonic form by flea-infested rats on trading ships and the pneumonic form from one human to another. Due to the lack of medical knowledge and, hence, the absence of a cure at the time, the Black Death killed more than one and a half million people - approximately one-third of Europe’s total pre-plague population …show more content…

As Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio, who lived in Florence during the height of the plague, described in the introduction to his novella, The DeCameron, the contagious nature of the Black Death prompted people to “avoid the sick and everything belonging to them” in order to evade contracting the devastating disease themselves. This heartless attitude toward the suffering was relevant on the scale of an entire city, with citizens shunning their neighbors, as well as within the family, with brother abandoning brother and wife deserting husband. As a result, victims of the bubonic plague were often left to die alone without receiving the last sacraments typical of the Christian religion or even having a funeral. In fact, Marchionne di Coppo di Stefano Buonaiuti, a small land owner in Europe in the 1370s, noted in The Florentine Chronicle that people abandoned their sick relatives through deception, telling the frail person that they were going to fetch a doctor- many of whom were dropping dead from the plague themselves- but never returning. Evidently, fear of the Black Death trumped whatever obligation one had to caring for their family or neighbors during this dark time, namely because the plague was so infectious. The gruesome symptoms of the disease- boils on the neck or thigh, black spots of internal bleeding, and coughing up blood- served as warning signs to stay away from the person, for coming in contact with a person suffering from the plague- whether they were alive or dead- almost guaranteed catching it. To save themselves from a similar fate, people, regardless of who of or what they had to leave behind, fled to the countryside, where there were less people, in hopes of dodging this density dependent disease. The Grim Reaper was merciless when

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