The Venetians: A New History: from Marco Polo to Casanova Read Online Free PDF Page B

Rattus rattus ). And as the Venetian merchants fled Constantinople in the ensuing panic, their galleys carried with them some of these black rats. On their voyage home during the latter months of 1347 these galleys called at various Venetian trading ports on the way, spreading the plague to Negropont (Euboea), Crete, Corfu and up the Adriatic islands, to Trieste.
    The first recorded death from plague in Venice occurred on 25 January 1348. The putrid waterways provided an ideal breeding ground for the black rats, which quickly spread. By the coming of the heat and stink of spring, officially designated barges had begun plying the canals crying out for ‘Corpi morti’ (dead bodies). Corpses were transported to be buried on remote islands of the lagoon. Soon there were so many that they were simply tossed ashore to rot. By the height of summer it has been estimated that there were 600 people dying each day. The streets were littered with suppurating bodies, the canals bobbed with bloated corpses; the stench was almost unendurable. Commercial activity, and even the city’s renowned bureaucracy, had come to a virtual standstill. The prisons were thrown open in an attempt to replace municipal manpower, but as many as could simply fled to the mainland. This belatedly included most of the city’s physicians, who had suffered disproportionate losses whilst vainly attempting to treat the disease.
    Within months the disease had swept across the Alps and by the summer of 1348 it had even reached England. An anonymous monk in Austria recorded, ‘And in this year a pestilence struck that was so great and universal that it stretched from sea to sea, causing many cities, towns and other places to become almost totally desolated of human beings.’ At the same time bands of frenzied survivors, maddened with grief and terror, sought out scapegoats. Jews throughout Europe soon became targets, and the Jews of Venice were no exception. They lived on the island of Spinalunga (now known, after its former inhabitants, as Giudecca), which made them easytargets. When news reached Italy from Switzerland that two Jews had been tortured into confessing that they had poisoned the local wells with a plague powder concocted from ‘Christians’ hearts, spiders, frogs, lizards, human flesh and sacred hosts’, the situation became further inflamed. During the course of 1348 Pope Clement VI was forced to issue two papal bulls instructing the clergy to protect the Jews, and condemning those who blamed the Jews for the Black Death as having been ‘seduced by that liar, the Devil’.
    In Venice all citizens lived cheek-by-jowl, its population being the most concentrated and urbanised in Europe. As a result, no class of citizens was to be spared the scourge of this pandemic. By October 1348 as many as fifty noble families had been completely wiped out, their centuries-old names vanishing into history. Such losses were reflected several times over amongst the poor. To make up for this depletion, many exiles were encouraged to return, and even debtors who had fled or been imprisoned were absolved on payment of a token amount of their debt. Formerly Venice had guarded its citizenship with jealous pride; rarely were any other than those born in the city permitted to become Venetians. Yet within nine months of the plague arriving, the government was even advertising for citizens, promising that anyone who settled in Venice within the year would be guaranteed citizenship. A crucial aspect of the Republic’s character was now showing itself – the belief in pragmatism rather than ideals, no matter how long these ideals may have been held.
    It is impossible to tell how many died. Most experts concur that the toll across Europe probably amounted to around one-third of the population, with other estimates varying between 20 per cent and 80 per cent mortality. The involvement of Venice and Genoa in the lucrative Black Sea and Levantine trade had made them amongst