Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Introduction: The Black Death in History

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
The Black Death

Part of the book series: The Bedford Series in History and Culture ((BSHC))

Abstract

It so happened that in the month of October in the year of our Lord 1347, around the first of that month, twelve Genoese galleys, fleeing our Lord’s wrath which came down upon them for their misdeeds, put in at the port of the city of Messina. They brought with them a plague that they carried down to the very marrow of their bones, so that if anyone so much as spoke to them, he was infected with a mortal sickness which brought on an immediate death that he could in no way avoid.1

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 74.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Notes

  1. Michele da Piazza, Cronaca, ed. Antonino Giuffrida (Palermo: ILA Palma, 1980), 82.

    Google Scholar 

  2. This evidence is more fully described in John Aberth, From the Brink of the Apocalypse: Confronting Famine, War, Plague, and Death in the Later Middle Ages (New York: Routledge, 2000), 122–31.

    Google Scholar 

  3. Thomas Robert Malthus, First Essay on Population, 1798 (London: Macmillan and Co., 1926), 12.

    Google Scholar 

  4. See David Herlihy, The Black Death and the Transformation of the West, ed. Samuel K. Cohn Jr. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), 39–81; Samuel K. Cohn Jr., The Black Death Transformed: Disease and Culture in Early Renaissance Europe (London and New York: Arnold and Oxford University Press, 2002), 223–52.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  5. John Clynn, Annalium Hiberniae Chronicon (The Annals of Ireland), ed. Richard Butler (Dublin: Irish Archaeological Society, 1849), 37.

    Google Scholar 

  6. Timothy Kircher, “Anxiety and Freedom in Boccaccio’s History of the Plague of 1348,” Letteratura Italiana antica, 3 (2002): 319–57.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors
  1. John Aberth
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Copyright information

© 2005 Bedford/St. Martin’s

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Aberth, J. (2005). Introduction: The Black Death in History. In: The Black Death. The Bedford Series in History and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-10349-9_1

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-10349-9_1

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-10349-9

  • eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation