Unlike the plague of 1340 – which killed an estimated 15,000 Florentines – that of 1348 was, according to Boccaccio, far more contagious, spreading with greater vigour and speed.

It was extraordinary, in his view, that the disease did not merely spread from human to human but crossed species too. He saw two pigs dying within moments of biting infected clothing in the street.

Florentine officials removed household waste and contaminants from the city in attempts to eradicate the deadly pestilence, and banned infected people from entering.

They issued public pleas and advised residents on measures that would minimise risk of contagion, such as social distancing and increased personal hygiene.

Boccaccio, in the same introduction, takes aim at those who fled the sick to protect their own health and in doing so degraded the social fabric.

Extreme interpretations of social distancing led to people shunning neighbours and members of their extended and immediate families. In some cases, he writes, parents even deserted their children.

While some took conservative measures – self-isolating indoors in small numbers, eating and drinking moderately and shutting out contact from the outside – others, he writes, roamed freely, gratifying their senses and meeting their desires for food, fun and sex.

Others still consumed only what their bodies needed and excluded contact with the infected. But they wandered wherever they wished, carrying bunches of fragrant flowers, herbs, or spices, or wearing them across their noses in a bid to repel the infection and the offensive odour of death.

Boccaccio’s unfavourable account, lamenting moral degradation and the enormous human suffering, is interrupted by a ray of light in the form of seven young noblewomen and three young gentlemen who appear in the Church of Santa Maria Novella on a Tuesday morning.

They become the storytellers of the Decameron. Collected as a brigade (brigata), they exhibit civility, gentility, strength and a commitment to duty.

Boccaccio presents them as decorous and untarnished, having each cared for their loved ones while within the city walls. He gives each a name that suits their personal qualities, choosing monikers from his own and other literary works. They are: Pampinea, Filomena, Neifile, Filostrato, Fiammetta, Elissa, Dioneo, Lauretta, Emilia and Panfilo.


Refuge through story
At the suggestion of the eldest noblewoman, Pampinea, the brigata leave the terrible pestilence and their devastated, plague-ridden city to take refuge in a rural villa in the nearby hills.

They are not abandoning others, she assures the group, as their relatives have either died or fled. The ten pass time by partaking in banquets, playing games, dancing, singing and telling stories.

Each member of the group narrates one story every day across the following ten days, under the supervision of the elected king or queen for the day. The proceedings close with singing and a dance.

Over those ten days, the brigata tell 100 stories. In them, they name real people – historical, contemporaries and near contemporaries – who would have been recognisable to readers of the Decameron in Boccaccio’s lifetime.

This gives a semblance of reality to the stories told inside an otherwise imaginary scene. The stories reflect Boccaccio’s accounts of moral decay in Florence at the time. Corruption and debauchery abound.

How then do the pastimes of the brigata bring about renewal and recreation?

The Decameron situates vices within fiction and serves as a guide for preserving the mind during physical isolation. Retreating from a stricken city to live a simple life in a communal isolation, the brigata entertain each other and by following disciplined, structured rituals, recover some of the predictability and certainty that, according to Boccaccio, had been lost.


Contemporary resonances
The Decameron was the first prose masterpiece to be written in the Tuscan vernacular, making it more accessible to readers who could not read Latin. It was first distributed in manuscript form in the 1370’s and almost 200 copies were printed over the following two centuries.

The work was censured in 1564 by the Council of Trent and a “corrected” version, expunging all references to clerics, monasteries and churches, was released in 1573.

Boccaccio’s introduction to the Decameron is a frame-story – a narrative that frames another story or a collection of stories.

This form became a popular literary model for enveloping collections of short stories that blend oral storytelling and literature. Variations and borrowings are seen in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well.

The most well-known film adaptation of the Decameron is the first of a trio of masterpieces in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1971 Trilogy of Life. Showcasing ten of the 100 stories in the Decameron, it remains one of Italy’s most popular films.

The Decameron will resonate with modern readers as we grapple with the horror of our own current pandemic. The book is a prescription for psychological survival, a way of mentally distancing from terrible visions, death counts and grim economic forecasts.

Although its framing events took place over 600 years ago, the Decameron’s modern readers, like Boccaccio’s brigata, will find comfort in company and optimism and a sense of certainty in the programmed rituals it describes.

Through its 100 stories, readers can vicariously experience situations that are out of their reach. They can be entertained, find lots to laugh about, and ultimately celebrate the joy and restorative powers of storytelling itself.

Illustration showing the ten storytellers from a circa 1492 edition of Il Decameron.

This post originally appeared in The Conversation on 11 August 2020. It is republished here with permission. The Conversation is a source of insights and analysis from academics and researchers.