Introduction

The available data on mortality rates in the Black Death in Italy relate to the highly developed northern third of the peninsula. There can be no doubt that Italy went through an unimaginable catastrophe. In Florence, Marchionne di Coppo Stefani described the social situation in this way:

In the chronicler’s mind, the most frightening feature of this enormous demographic disaster, according to the religious beliefs and mentality of the time, was that people died without a priest who heard confession and administered the last rites, and, hence, in the moment of death faced perdition and eternal punishment. Observation of secondary catastrophe effects, that many people died from lack of nursing care, and even from starvation, also had made strong impressions on the author.

Population estimates show that Tuscany must have had over two million inhabitants on the eve of the Black Death, a substantial portion of Italy’s population. Politically, Tuscany was divided into several city states, the ‘comunes’. By far the largest was the Republic of Florence, which had already conquered and subjugated a number of previously independent city states or parts of territories, some shortly before the Black Death. Good records providing mortality data are extant for the city of Florence and some other Tuscan city states which, consequently, will constitute the territorial centrepiece of the discussion of the mortality caused by the Black Death in Italy.