4. A Florentine Writer Compared Mass Graves to Making Lasagna
Once the bodies were collected by the ill-fated and flower-wearing body collectors, they would be transported to mass grave sites. There was neither space nor the manpower to dig individual graves for the thousands of plague victims, especially those from the lower social classes. While many of the deceased were buried in churchyards, they still used pits of mass burials.
Florence, one of the worst-hit cities, was the site of many such mass graves. A Florentine writer described the process of mass burials, saying, “At every church, they dug deep pits . . . those who were poor who died during the night were bundled up quickly and thrown into the pit.” He went even further, comparing the layer of the body to a famous pasta dish, “Others were placed on top of them and then another layer of earth, just as one makes lasagne with layers of pasta and cheese.”
“Plague pits” as the mass graves came to be called in Great Britain, have actually been discovered and excavated. One such pit was found at the site of the medieval Thornton Abbey in Immingham in Lincolnshire. The 48 skeletons, 27 of which were children, were carbon-dated to the 14th century and their teeth contained evidence of the presence of Yersinia pestis. Interestingly, the skeletons were found laid out respectfully in straight rows, not dumped in roughly as some medieval art would indicate.