1348 – 1402
Milan and the places spared
In a few places the plague of 1348 seems to pass by. Historians still argue over why, and over how far the records can be trusted.
Milan is the largest city of northern Italy, ruled by Luchino Visconti and his brother Giovanni, the archbishop. Its chroniclers record few deaths in 1348. By a story told of Luchino, when the plague appears in three houses, he has their doors and windows walled up with the sick and the healthy inside, and leaves them to die. Samuel Cohn counts Milan among the cities that came through 1348 almost unharmed, and finds the reasons hard to explain. The evidence for this is mostly the silence of the chroniclers. In 1361 the plague returns and strikes Milan hard.
Poland is often said to have escaped because King Casimir III closed its borders. The story has no firm source, and such a ban would have been hard to enforce. Polish records of these years are too few to show how hard the plague struck Kraków, the king’s capital, or the rest of the kingdom. Bohemia, where Charles IV rules from Prague, also left few records of the plague, and how hard it was struck is still debated.
Iceland is spared for half a century. The plague reaches Norway in 1349, but no ship brings it across the Atlantic. In 1402 a ship lands at Hvalfjörður in the west of Iceland, and the plague it carries kills perhaps half of the people of the island in the next two years.
Charles IV, king of Bohemia, on the votive picture of Jan Očko of Vlašim, painted in Prague before 1371Wikimedia Commons, circle of Master Theodoric, National Gallery Prague, public domain
The tomb of Casimir III in Wawel Cathedral, Kraków, made after his death in 1370Wikimedia Commons, Pko, CC BY 2.5
Sources
- Samuel K. Cohn, The Black Death Transformed: Disease and Culture in Early Renaissance Europe (2002).
- Ole J. Benedictow, The Complete History of the Black Death (2021).
- Gunnar Karlsson, Iceland’s 1100 Years: The History of a Marginal Society (2000).
Prev: The doctors of 1348Next: The burnings, January – March 1349