1348

Corpus cujus fuit sepultum in majori Cataniensi Ecclesia, in eo videlicet tumulo, ubi corpus quondam Friderici Regis patris sui fuerat conditum & humatum. Et hoc anno domini MCCCXLVIII. de mense Aprilis prime Indictionis.

His body was buried in the cathedral of Catania, in the same tomb where the body of his father, the late King Frederick, had been laid to rest. This was in April, in the year of the Lord 1348, in the first indiction.

E in questo tempo si cominciò in Siena la grande Mortalità, la maggiore, e la più oscura, e la più horribile, che mai si potesse dire, o immaginare; e così bastò infino all'Ottobre 1348. Ella fo di tanta oscurità, che morivano gli huomini, e le donne quasi di subito. Enfiava l'anguinaja, e 'l ditello, e di subito favellando si morivano.

At this time the great mortality began in Siena. It was the greatest, darkest, and most horrible that anyone could ever tell or imagine, and it lasted until October 1348. It was so dark that men and women died almost at once. Their groins and armpits swelled, and they died suddenly, while they were talking.

Laurea, propriis uirtutibus illustris et meis longum celebrata carminibus, primum oculis meis apparuit sub primum adolescentie mee tempus, anno Domini m° iijc xxviij die vj° mensis Aprilis in ecclesia sancte Clare Auin. hora matutina; et in eadem ciuitate eodem mense Aprili eodem die sexto eadem hora prima, anno autem m° iijc xlviij° ab hac luce lux illa subtracta est, cum ego forte tunc Verone essem, heu! fati mei nescius.

Laura, famous for her own virtues and long celebrated in my poems, first appeared to my eyes in the early days of my youth, on April 6 in the year of our Lord 1327, in the church of Saint Clare at Avignon, in the morning. And in the same city, in the same month of April, on the same sixth day, at the same first hour, but in the year 1348, that light was taken from this light of day. I happened to be at Verona then, alas, unaware of what had befallen me.

E l’Affrica nelle marine, e nelle sue provincie di verso levante, e le rive del nostro Mare tirreno. E venendo di tempo in tempo verso il ponente, comprese la Sardigna, e la Corsica, e l’altre isole di questo mare; e dall’altra parte, ch’è detta Europa, per simigliante modo aggiunse alle parti vicine verso il ponente, volgendosi verso il mezzogiorno con più aspro assalimento che sotto le parti settentrionali. E negli anni di Cristo 1348 ebbe infetta tutta Italia, salvo che la città di Milano, e certi circustanti all’Alpi, che dividono l’Italia dall’Alamagna, ove gravò poco. E in questo medesimo anno cominciò a passare le montagne, e stendersi in Proenza, e in Savoia, e nel Dalfinato, e in Borgogna, e per la marina di Marsilia e d’Acquamorta, e per la Catalogna, e nell’isola di Maiolica, e in Ispagna e in Granata. E nel 1349 ebbe compreso fino nel ponente, le rive del Mare oceano, d’Europa e d’Affrica e d’Irlanda, e l’isola d’Inghilterra e di Scozia, e l’altre isole di ponente, e tutto infra terra con quasi eguale mortalità salvo in Brabante ove poco offese. E nel 1350 premette gli Alamanni, e gli Ungheri, Frigia, Danesmarche, Gotti, e Vandali, e gli altri popoli e nazioni settentrionali.

It took in the coasts of Africa and its eastern lands, and the shores of our Tyrrhenian Sea. Moving westward over time, it took in Sardinia, Corsica, and the other islands of this sea. On the other side, called Europe, it reached the nearby lands to the west in the same way, striking the south more fiercely than the north. In the year of Christ 1348 it had infected all Italy except the city of Milan and some places near the Alps, which divide Italy from Germany; there it weighed lightly. That same year it began to cross the mountains and spread into Provence, Savoy, the Dauphiné, and Burgundy, along the coast at Marseille and Aigues-Mortes, and into Catalonia, the island of Majorca, Spain, and Granada. By 1349 it had reached the shores of the Ocean in the far west, in Europe, Africa, and Ireland, the islands of England and Scotland, and the other western islands. Inland, too, the mortality was almost equal everywhere, except in Brabant, where it did little harm. In 1350 it bore down on the Germans, the Hungarians, Frisia, Denmark, the Goths and Vandals, and the other peoples and nations of the north.

Nella nostra città cominciò generale all’entrare del mese d’aprile gli anni Domini 1348, e durò fino al cominciamento del mese di settembre del detto anno. E morì tra nella città, contado e distretto di Firenze, d’ogni sesso e di catuna età de’ cinque i tre, e più, compensando il minuto popolo e i mezzani e’ maggiori, perchè alquanto fu più menomato, perchè cominciò prima, ed ebbe meno aiuto, e più disagi e difetti. E nel generale per tutto il mondo mancò la generazione umana per simigliante numero e modo, secondo le novelle che avemmo di molti paesi strani, e di molte provincie del mondo. Ben furono provincie nel Levante dove vie più ne morire.

In our city it became general at the start of April in the year of the Lord 1348, and lasted until the beginning of September of that year. In the city, the countryside, and the district of Florence, three out of every five people died, and more, of every sex and age. That is counting the common people, the middle sort, and the great together. The common people lost somewhat more, because it began among them earlier, and they had less help and more hardships and wants. Generally throughout the world, people died in similar numbers and ways, according to the news we had from many foreign countries and many lands. There were indeed lands in the East where far more died.

Id pudori meo gravius insultat, quod iam annus integer, iamque alterius bona pars abiit, ex quo nihil viro dignum, non dicam facere, sed ne loqui quidem contigit, tonante undique ac fulminante ferociter fortuna. Qua in re benigno sub iudice forsan excuser, si ad examen venerit, illud quoque non leve aliquid, sed millesimum trecentesimum quadragesimum octavum sextae aetatis annum esse, quem lugeo, qui non solum nos amicis sed mundum omnem gentibus spoliavit. Cui si quid defuit, sequens ecce annus illius reliquias demetit, et quidquid illi procellae superfuerat, mortifera falce prosequitur.

What wounds my pride most is this. A whole year has gone, and a good part of another, in which I have not managed to do anything worthy of a man, or even to say anything, while fortune thundered and struck like lightning on every side. A kind judge might perhaps excuse me, if it came to a hearing. For this is no small thing either: it is the year 1348 of the sixth age that I mourn. It robbed not only us of our friends but the whole world of its peoples. And if it left anything undone, look, the following year is reaping what was left. Whatever survived that storm, it hunts down with its deadly sickle.

Dico adunque che già erano gli anni della fruttifera Incarnazione del Figliuolo di Dio al numero pervenuti di mille trecento quarant'otto, quando nella egregia città di Fiorenza, oltre ad ogni altra italica bellissima, pervenne la mortifera pestilenza, la quale, per operazion de' corpi superiori o per le nostre inique opere, da giusta ira di Dio a nostra correzione mandata sopra i mortali, alquanti anni davanti nelle parti orientali incominciata, quelle d'innumerabile quantità di viventi avendo private, senza ristare, d'un luogo in un altro continuandosi, verso l'Occidente miserabilmente s'era ampliata.

I say, then, that it was the year 1348 since the fruitful Incarnation of the Son of God when the deadly pestilence came to the noble city of Florence, more beautiful than any other city in Italy. Whether it came through the workings of the heavenly bodies, or was sent upon us mortals by the just anger of God to correct our wicked ways, it had begun some years before in the lands of the East. There it had taken the lives of countless people. Then, without stopping, it had moved on from place to place and spread, wretchedly, toward the West.

Anno Domini mcccxlviii percussa est gens Franciae et quasi totius mundi, et hoc alio modo quam per bellum. Nam sicut fames, ut dictum est in principio, et bella, ut dictum est in processu hujus narrationis, affuerant, ita pestilentiae et tribulationes in diversis mundi partibus iterum acciderunt.

In the year of our Lord 1348 the people of France, and of almost the whole world, were struck down, and not by war. Famine had come, as I said at the beginning, and wars, as I told as this account went on. Now pestilences and troubles came again in many parts of the world.