Matteo Villani[150] wrote a plain unvarnished account of the state of Florence during the Black Death, but it has found little favour beside the lighter sketch that stands as a prelude to the _Decameron_. His brother Giovanni, the Florentine historian, was one of the early victims, and Matteo takes up his history at the point at which he left it, and begins with a description of the epidemic. Famine had preceded the plague, and like it was regarded as sent by Heaven for the punishment of sin. But the energy of the government, in importing corn and distributing it to the destitute, had done much to relieve the distress, when this worse enemy presented itself at the gates.
Both Villani and Boccaccio enlarge on the futility of all measures, preventive and remedial alike, and the intense infectiveness of the disease. They believed that it could be communicated by a look, as well as by contact with the person or belongings of an infected subject. Boccaccio mentions the speedy death of two pigs from rooting among some infected clothing. Some pinned their faith on strict seclusion: some on temperate living, some on intemperance: others sought safety in the carrying of aromatic substances. Both Villani and Boccaccio lay stress on the utter depravity and demoralization engendered by the plague. Great uncertainty of life has never failed to generate corresponding recklessness. It has always been the same tale in every desperate city; it was so when Jerusalem, panic-stricken at the threatened attack of Sennacherib, gave itself over to wild revelry: ‘And in that day did the Lord God of Hosts call to weeping and to mourning, and to baldness, and to girding with sackcloth: but behold joy and gladness, slaying oxen, and killing sheep, eating flesh and drinking wine: let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.’ Matteo Villani traces to the Black Death the social and moral degeneracy and the political anarchy, that were rampant in Florentine life, in the centuries that followed close upon it. Family affection is apt to reach its lowest ebb in the houses of a plague-stricken city. Villani and Boccaccio echo the language of Thucydides when they tell of parents deserting children, and husbands wives, in their hour of need, and the neglect of the sacred rites of sepulture. The plague raged in Florence from April to September, and Antoninus, Archbishop of Florence, computes the mortality within the city at 60,000 persons, two-thirds of the total population. Boccaccio actually raises the figure to 100,000 between March and July only, but this figure, if correct, must comprise also the surrounding district, which suffered only less severely than the city itself. One bright record stands out against this dark background of social demoralization in the devotion of the Compagnia della Misericordia to their self-appointed task. Instituted in A.D. 1244 for the service of the sick, they now also lent themselves to the transport of the dead. A picture by Cigoli (A.D. 1559-1613), now in the church of the Misericordia, shows the brotherhood in red robes—now changed to black—gathering up the dead and dying at the foot of Giotto’s Tower. The bearers may be seen to this day in the streets of Florence in the same robes and hoods masking the whole face but the eyes, but the hand-litters and sedans of Cigoli’s picture have now been slung on wheels and sanctified to modern use with the addition of a motor ambulance. Great wealth flowed into the coffers of the guild from men who desired to crown a vicious life with a comfortable death and a decent burial.