In Florence in 1348, shortly after two of its biggest banks collapsed because the English king had defaulted on a loan, roughly two-thirds of the population died of the Black Death. Egg-shaped buboes swelled up in the victims' armpits or groins, and then black bruising spread across their bodies. According to Giovanni Boccaccio, whose father and stepmother died during the outbreak, the disease was so infectious that pigs who nuzzled the discarded clothing of the dead began instantly to writhe in agony, and then dropped down dead. The healthy fled the sick, and some, in the words of the first complete English translation of the Decameron from 1620, 'lived as separatists from all other company' - or in the flatter style of the most recent version, 'kept clear of everyone else'.

LRB 12 March 2009 | PDF Download