PEOPLE died daily. In the mornings, in front of the houses one could see corpses the tireless gravediggers or becchini had not yet collected. Graveyards were full. A local chronicler described how dozens of corpses were “stacked in layers like cheese in lasagne.”

The plague was a swift killer. Around 8,000 schoolchildren, 30,000 spinners, 600 notaries and lawyers, 60 doctors and 140 priests were listed among the dead. In the end, 50,