The Elders of Pistoia

Tuscany, a region of northern Italy, was one of the wealthiest and most industrialized areas of fourteenth-century Europe. Tuscan towns were governed by elected councils, and presided over by a podesta, usually an outsider with no business or family connections to the city he governed and who served a short term. The members of the city governments openly debated all issues confronting them and were free to pass ordinances in a time of emergency. Thus free of the whims and tyranny of a monarch or dictator, the cities of Tuscany were as well-equipped to deal with the Black Death as any in Europe.

In the spring of 1348, while the Black Death approached, the anziani, or elders, of the city of Pistoia promulgated the following ordinances to deal with the disease. The ordinances...