Gabriele de Mussis

In the fall of 1347, a small fleet of Genoese ships reached the port of Messina, Sicily. They had sailed from the port of Kaffa, in the Crimean Peninsula on the northern shores of the Black Sea, in flight from a siege by the Tartars, nomadic warriors from eastern Asia who had invaded the lands north of Kaffa (modern-day Russia and Ukraine) in the thirteenth century. At Kaffa, the Tatar armies had deliberately infected their enemies with the plague by catapulting dead bodies over the town walls. Rats and dying sailors aboard the ships then brought the infection to Messina, where hundreds of people began suffering the plague's telltale symptoms. Too late to quarantine the death-dealing vessels, the city authorities banished the ships from the port, an action that soon spread the plague to other towns...