What is the main idea Boccaccio is trying to communicate in this excerpt from The Decameron?

Primary Source Document Analysis Worksheet

Primary source: Giovanni Boccaccio – The Decameron

_________________________________________________1. What is the main idea Boccaccio is trying to communicate in this excerpt from

The Decameron? How does he describe the reactions of the citizens of Florence?

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2. What is the author’s bias? What might have motivated Boccaccio to describe the Black

Death’s impact in Florence?

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3.  What was the context in which Boccaccio was writing? Where and when was this

document written, and what was going on at that time (beside the plague epidemic)?

_________________________________________________4. Who was the intended audience for The Decameron?

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5. Can you connect The Decameron to other things you’ve learned about, either in class

or elsewhere? How might this source add to our understanding of history?

14th-century Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375) probably started writing his collection of stories, The Decameron after the plague epidemic of 1348. The book contains 100 tales told by a fictional group of seven young women and three young men sheltering in a secluded villa just outside Florence, Italy, to escape the Black Death. Written in vernacular Florentine Italian, Boccaccio had probably completed The Decameron by 1353.

Excerpt from The Decameron:

The symptoms were not the same as in the East, where a gush of blood from the nose was the plain sign of inevitable death; but it began both in men and women with certain swellings in the groin or under the armpit. They grew to the size of a small apple or an egg, more or less, and were vulgarly called tumors. In a short space of time these tumors spread from the two parts named all over the body. Soon after this the symptoms changed and black or purple spots appeared on the arms or thighs or any other part of the body, sometimes a few large ones, sometimes many little ones. These spots were a certain sign of death, just as the original tumor had been and still remained.

One citizen avoided another, hardly any neighbor troubled about others, relatives never or hardly ever visited each other. Moreover, such terror was struck into the hearts of men and women by this calamity, that brother abandoned brother, and the uncle his nephew, and the sister her brother, and very often the wife her husband. What is even worse and nearly incredible is that fathers and mothers refused to see and tend their children, as if they had not been theirs.

The plight of the lower and most of the middle classes was even more pitiful to behold. Most of them remained in their houses, either through poverty or in hopes of safety, and fell sick by thousands. Since they received no care and attention, almost all of them died. Many ended their lives in the streets both at night and during the day; and many others who died in their houses were only known to be dead because the neighbors smelled their decaying bodies. Dead bodies filled every corner. Most of them were treated in the same manner by the survivors, who were more concerned to get rid of their rotting bodies than moved by charity towards the dead. With the aid of porters, if they could get them, they carried the bodies out of the houses and laid them at the door; where every morning quantities of the dead might be seen. They then were laid on biers or, as these were often lacking, on tables.