See previous thesis blog post: Pestilence & Prayer: Appendix B – Prayers (26)
History of the Lombards: Chapter V by Paul the Deacon
In these times during the eighth indiction (A.D. 680) the moon suffered an eclipse; also an eclipse of the sun occurred at almost the same time on the fifth day before the Nones of May about the tenth hour of the day. And presently there followed a very severe pestilence for three months, that is, in July, August and September, and so great was the multitude of those dying that even parents with their children and brothers with their sisters were placed on biers two by two and conducted to their tombs at the city of Rome. And in like manner too this pestilence also depopulated Ticinum so that all citizens fled to the mountain ranges and to other places and grass and bushes grew in the market place and throughout the streets of the city. And then it visibly appeared to many that a good and a bad angel proceeded by night through the city and as many times as, upon command of the good angel, the bad angel, who appeared to carry a hunting spear in his hand, knocked at the door of each house with the spear, so many men perished from that house on the following day. Then it was said to a certain man by revelation that the pestilence itself would not cease before an altar of St. Sebastian the martyr was placed in the church of the blessed Peter which is called “Ad Vincula.” And it was done, and after the remains of St. Sebastian the martyr had been carried from the city of Rome, presently the altar was set up in the aforesaid church and the pestilence itself ceased.
The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio, pgs. 3-8.
Let me say, then, that thirteen hundred and forty-eight years had already passed after the fruitful Incarnation of the Son of God when into the distinguished city of Florence, more noble than any other Italian city, there came the deadly pestilence. It started in the East, either because of the influence of heavenly bodies or because of God’s just wrath as a punishment to mortals for our wicked deeds, and it killed an infinite number of people. Without pause it spread from one place and it stretched its miserable length over the West. And against this pestilence no human wisdom or foresight was of any avail; quantities of filth were removed from the city by officials charged wit this task; he entry of any sick person into the city was prohibited; and many directives were issues concerning the maintenance of good health…it began in both men and women with certain swellings either in the groin or under the armpits, some of which grew to the size of a normal apple and others to the size of an egg (more or less), and… almost all died after the third day of the appearance of the previously described symptoms…
And in this great affliction and misery of our city the revered authority of the laws, both divine and human, had fallen and almost completely disappeared…the sick were abandoned by their neighbors, their parents, and their friends…Very few were the dead whose bodies were accompanied to the church by more than ten or twelve of their neighbors, and these dead bodies were not even carried on the shoulders of honored and reputable citizens but rather by gravediggers from the lower classes…[the neighbors] would drag the corpse out of the home and place it in front of the doorstep where, usually in the morning, quantities of dead bodies cold be seen by any passerby… Nor did a bier carry only one corpse; sometimes it was used for two or three at a time.
