If individuals and families found themselves required to respond to the Black Death, so too did communities and cities. Various urban authorities issued regulations that they hoped might slow or prevent the spread of the disease. A particularly detailed set of ordinances was issued in the northern Italian city of Pistoia in May of 1348. Interestingly, these ordinances were revised several times over the coming month as the authorities adapted their regulations in an effort to address the growing crisis.
Questions to consider as you examine the source:
Ordinances against the Spread of Plague, Pistoia, 1348
No citizen or resident of Pistoia shall dare or presume to go to Pisa or Lucca; and no one shall come to Pistoia from those places; penalty 500 pence.
No one shall dare or presume to bring to Pistoia any old linen or woolen cloths, penalty 200 pence, and the cloth to be burnt in the public piazza of Pistoia by the official who discovered it.
The bodies of the dead shall not be removed from the place of death until they have been enclosed in a wooden box, and the lid of planks nailed down so that no stench can escape: penalty 50 pence to be paid by the heirs of the deceased.
To avoid the foul stench which comes from dead bodies, each grave shall be dug two and a half arms-
Any person attending a funeral shall not accompany the corpse or its kinsmen further than the door of the church where the burial is to take place, or go back to the house where the deceased lived.
When someone dies, no one shall dare or presume to give or send any gift to the house of the deceased.
To avoid waste and unnecessary expense, no one shall dare or presume to wear new clothes during the mourning period or for the next eight days; penalty 25 pence. This shall not apply to the wife of the deceased, who may if she wishes wear a new garment of any fabric without penalty.
No one shall dare or presume to raise a lament or crying for anyone who has died outside Pistoia, or summon a gathering of people other than the kinsfolk and spouse of the deceased, or have bells rung, or use criers or any other means to invite people throughout the city to such a gathering; penalty 25 pence from each person involved. However it is to be understood that none of this applies to the burial of knights, doctors of law, judges, and doctors of physic, whose bodies can be honoured by their heirs at their burial in any way they please.
So that the living are not made ill by rotten and corrupt food, no butcher or retailer of meat shall dare or presume to hang up meat, or keep and sell meat hung up in their storehouse or over their counter.
To avoid harm to men by stink and corruption, there shall in future be no tanning of skins within the city walls of Pistoia.
At the burial of anyone, no bell is to be rung at all, but people are to be summoned and their prayers invited only by word of mouth.
Source: Rosemary Horrox, ed. and trans., The Black Death (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994), 195–