Black Death in Italy

The Black Death was present in the Italian states of present-day Italy between 1347 and 1348.[1] Sicily and the Italian Peninsula was the first area in then Catholic Western Europe to be reached by the bubonic plague pandemic known as the Black Death, which reached the region by an Italian ship from the Crimea which landed in Messina in Sicily in October 1347.

1346-1353 spread of the Black Death in Europe map

Boccaccio;The plague of Florence in 1348.

Decameron; The plague of Florence

Coming to a completely unprepared region, the Black Death was a chock to Italy and to Europe. The Black Death in Italy belongs to the most documented among its outbreaks in Europe, with many literate eye wittnesses, among them being Giovanni Boccaccio, Marchionne di Coppo Stefani and Agnolo di Tura, whose descriptions of it in their own cities and areas has become famous. The well organized and Urban city republics of Central and Northern Italy had the most well developed administration in Europe prior to the Black Death; their documentation has provided among the most useful descriptions of the pandemic, and the preventive mesures and regulations initiated by the Italian city states during and following the Black Death pandemic has been referred to as foundation of modern quarantine law regulation.[1]