The Black Plague swept through Europe in the 14th century marking it as the most horrific period in our history. It arrived in Florence, one of Europe’s largest cities, in January 1348 and by October, over half of Florence’s population had perished. While these dry facts highlight the severity of the ordeal, they give no sense of the struggles faced by the survivors. Our recent COVID-19 pandemic—with lockdowns, masks, and social distancing—showed us pandemics are about more than just numbers. They are about people and how we cope with tragedy. My novel, The Blackest Time highlights the resilient human spirit and the compassion shown by those who survived that immense adversity.

Flood and Famine

Three years before the plague reached Florence, scholars observed a dazzling display of celestial lights in the night sky. On each successive night, the lights drew closer together, eventually forming what astronomers call a triple conjunction of planets. Prophets saw the joining of Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars as an omen. They believed arrangements of planets and stars were divine messages foretelling earthly events. The prophets claimed Jupiter and Saturn were water worlds and their proximity had heralded great floods in the past. The addition of Mars, the god of war, to the prophecy filled them with dread; it signaled a coming catastrophe beyond the scale of a mere flood.

The first part of the prophecy unfolded early the following year, with incessant rain overspreading central Europe. By summer, farmers in the countryside struggled to salvage even a fraction of their usual harvest. Merchants who brought produce to Florence’s central market had to travel farther to find goods to fill their wagons. By the following spring, flooded farm fields made it impossible to sow crops. In the city, the once vibrant food market, where wagons had overflowed with produce, was now nearly deserted; only a few vendors with meager offerings remained. Housewives, accustomed to selecting only flawless fruit, felt fortunate to find even bruised apples.

Farmers abandoned their farms and sought refuge in the city. Their arrival increased the already substantial indigent population, adding to the strain on resources and services. Compassionate church members who operated shelters for the needy faced challenges in accommodating the rush of people seeking refuge. To feed the poor, city officials established grain stores and arranged for ships to bring grain from southern Italy and Sicily. The first grain barges arriving in Florence were met with celebration, as people believed the famine was over. No one suspected within a few short months the Black Death would engulf the city.

The Plague Arrives

In January 1348 the first cases of plague were recorded in Florence. No one knew what caused the plague. A common belief was that the plague was spread through “bad air.” Apothecary shops where perfumes were sold did a thriving business with customers who wanted the most pungent fragrances available. They hoped the powerful scents would neutralize the disease-laden air. Each apothecary shop made perfumes from local and imported flowers and spices. Traditionally, perfume made from iris flowers was popular because the iris symbolized Florence, but iris perfume didn’t have the strongest scent. One of the strongest scents available at that time was made from gardenia flowers, so gardenia perfume became the most requested. The perfumes kept people from smelling bad, which was beneficial because they didn’t bathe very often, but it did nothing to combat the plague.

Doctors quickly found their customary treatments were ineffective. They were baffled when the plague infected all members of a family except one, and concluded it had to be the balance in bodily fluids that protected the survivors. For two millennia, since the time of Hippocrates, physicians had practiced balancing blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile to prevent their patients from contracting illnesses. (It wasn’t until the 19th century that studies showed the ineffectiveness of these treatments.) Despite their failures, selfless doctors worked tirelessly, exposing themselves to the disease as they continued to treat the afflicted and members of their families.

Florentines were devout Christians. Families went to mass every Sunday, and when the plague struck, many went to mass several times a week. Some gathered at churches in the afternoons to say the rosary. While in church, families distanced themselves from others—during Covid, we called it social distancing. There were no pews in churches in medieval times. People stood during mass and other services. During the plague, they stood in clumps. Each family group stood together, but separated their group from their neighbors. Across the space gaps, they offered each other sympathy and support.

People tried as best they could to care for others. To avoid contaminating themselves, they left parcels of food on their sick neighbors’ doorsteps. Though terrified of the plague, families showed incredible compassion, opening their homes to children orphaned by the plague.

Changes were necessary

Church and city officials collaborated to manage the crisis caused by the plague, their efforts hampered by the sheer scale of the problem. So many deaths happened in such a short time that eventually, cemeteries were filled. Church law said bodies had to be buried in consecrated ground. Other than cemeteries, the only consecrated grounds were the sites where churches had been built. To prevent a calamity, the Florentine bishop made the difficult decision to allow burials on consecrated church land. There weren’t enough workers to dig individual graves, so bodies were interred in mass graves outside the churches.

Having places to bury bodies wasn’t the only problem. Funeral services ran out of wood to build coffins. Before the plague, burial practice had the deceased placed in a coffin and carried to the church for a funeral mass, followed by a procession to the cemetery. City health regulations had mandated the use of coffins as a sanitary measure to contain decomposing bodies. With hundreds perishing every day at the plague’s peak, there were no processions or individual funeral masses. Bodies were taken directly to graves and interred. Since bodies weren’t present at masses and processions, city officials suspended the requirement for coffins and allowed bodies to be simply wrapped in silk shrouds. Names of the deceased were collected and read at a funeral mass the following morning.

Accepting the possibility that the plague was spread by bad air, city officials implemented improved sanitation measures. They employed workers to wash the streets every night; they required butchers to dispose of spoiled meat promptly, and they banned highly perishable fruit from the city. Historians credit those measures as instrumental in ending the plague, not because they purified the air, but because they reduced the rat population by cutting off their food supply.

The plague and the famine that came before it form the backdrop in The Blackest Time. The novel’s focus is on the resilience of the people and how they coped with the tragedy shown through the experiences of Gino, the book's central character.