1347
The year the Black Death reached Sicily by sea, at Messina, in October.
1347 CE
The Plague Comes to Messina and Catania
Anonymous of Catania, Sicilian History, printed in Rosario Gregorio’s Bibliotheca scriptorum (1791) · after April 1348 (events of October 1347 to April 1348)
Accidit ergo, quod de mense Octobris anno dominice Incarnationis MCCCXLVII. circa principium mensis Octobris prime Indictionis, duodecim galee Januensium, divinam fugientes ulcionem, quam Dominus noster pro eorum iniquitatibus desuper eis transmiserat, applicuerunt in portum civitatis Messane, talem secum morbum ossibus infixum deferentes, quod si quis cum aliquo ipsorum locutus fuisset, erat infirmitate effectus letali, quam mortem nullatenus evadere poterat inmediate.
In the year of the Lord’s Incarnation 1347, at the beginning of October, in the first indiction, twelve Genoese galleys put in at the port of the city of Messina. They were fleeing the vengeance of God, which our Lord had sent down on them for their sins. They brought with them a disease so fixed in their bones that anyone who had spoken with one of them caught a deadly sickness at once. He could in no way escape death.
Dictus vero Patriarcha, eorum precibus devote commotus, annuit, cum reliquiis predictis Messanam personaliter accessurus. Et hoc anno domini MCCCXLVII. circa finem mensis Novembris prime Indictionis.
The Patriarch was moved by their prayers and agreed to take the relics to Messina himself. This was in the year of the Lord 1347, toward the end of November, in the first indiction.