3. Bodies Piled Up in the Cities
At the height of the Black Death pandemic, hundreds were dying every day throughout Europe. Giovanni Boccaccio, who lived through the worst of the 14th Century outbreak in Florence, said the city itself turned into a graveyard due to the countless dead bodies laying throughout the city. He wrote, “Many died daily or nightly in the public streets.” For thousands who died in their homes, “the departure was hardly observed by their neighbors until the stench of their putrefying bodies carried the tidings.”
In addition to the staggering rate of death, many who were employed as gravediggers died themselves leaving few to carry out the necessary work. The bodies of plague victims are infectious, so gravediggers were especially hard hit by the pandemic alongside doctors and priests who had contact with live victims. Gravedigging was exhausting manual labor at the time, so anyone weakened by a near-death bout of the plague would also have been unable to assist in the work.
The popular imagery of carts full of bodies and chants of “bring out your dead” arises from this era. Bodies did, in fact, have to be carted out of cities for mass burials in outlying areas. The stench of numerous dead bodies would have led to panic, as the contemporary belief was that foul smells, or “miasmas,” caused diseases themselves.