Biography Of Giovanni Boccaccio s Magnum Opus The...

â€Å"There made its appearance that deadly pestilence, which, whether disseminated by the influences of the celestial bodies, or sent upon us mortals by God in His just wrath by way of retribution for our iniquities, had its origin some years before in the East, whence, after destroying an innumerable multitude of living beings, it had propagated itself without respite from place to place, and so, calamitously, had spread abroad into the Westâ€Å". These are the lines from Giovanni Boccaccio s magnum opus The Decameron , which consists of various tales narrated by seven young women and three young men seeking refuge in a secluded villa outside Florence to escape from one of the greatest catastrophies in human history. The Black Death . Miniature of the Decameron by Taddeo Crivelli from Ferrara (1467) INTRODUCTION: The most memorable example of what has been advanced, is afforded by agreat peatilence of fourteenth century, which desolated Asia, Europe and Africa and of which the people yet preserve the remembrance in gloomy traditions. It was an oriental plague marked by inflamatory boils and tumors of glands such as break out in no other febrile disease. On account of these inflammatory boils and from black spots, indicator of a putrid decomposition, which appeared upon the skin, it was called in Germany and northern kingdoms of Europe, the Black Death and in Italy, la Mortelaga Grande , the Great Mortality. The Black Death was one of the most devastating