Marchione di Coppo Stefani

In his Florentine Chronicle (Cronaca fiorentina), written in the late 1370s and early 1380s, the Italian chronicler Marchione di Coppo Stefani describes the plague as it struck the city of Florence. Although he was still a teenager at the time the Black Death arrived, Stefani retained vivid memories of the plague's symptoms and how fear of the disease prompted families to abandon their sick loved ones. He also writes of the burial of the plague's victims, who died in such numbers that the survivors forgot ordinary funeral ceremonies and had to dig mass graves for the bodies.

In addition to recording the human toll, Stefani reflects on the economic impact of the plague, which gave rise to an entire class of "vultures," who greatly profited from services they rendered to the dead and dying...