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The Florentine Chronicle on Medieval Plague Marchione di Coppo Stefani

Marchione di Coppo Stefani was born in Florence in 1336. He wrote his Florentine Chronicle in the late 1370s and early 1380s.  [Stefani, Marchione di Coppo.Cronaca fiorentina. Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, Vol. 30. ed. Niccolo Rodolico. Citta di Castello: 1903-13.]

“Rubric 643: Concerning A Mortality In The City Of Florence In Which Many People Died”

“In the year of the Lord 1348 there was a very great pestilence in the city and district of Florence. It was of such a fury and so tempestuous that in houses in which it took hold previously healthy servants who took care of the ill died of the same illness. Almost non of the ill survived past the fourth day. Neither physicians nor medicines were effective. Whether because these illnesses were previously unknown or because physicians had not previously studied them, there seemed to be no cure. There was such a fear that no one seemed to know what to do. When it took hold in a house it often happened that no one remained who had not died. And it was not just that men and women died, but even sentient animals died. Dogs, cats, chickens, oxen, donkeys sheep showed the same symptoms and died of the same disease. And almost none, or very few, who showed these symptoms, were cured.