This text, written in 1576 and 1577, offers an eyewitness account of the plague in Venice, and a unique first-hand view of how it was living through a major epidemic before the advent of modern medicine.
In 1575, Venice was hit by one of the worst plague epidemics ever. Over the following two years, between 50,000 and 60,000 people died, in a city of about three times that. One third of the population perished in this two-year period.
To understand the severity of such a crisis, imaging what would happen today, if one in three citizens died in just a couple of years, of an incurable, contagious disease which killed at random, for which the authorities had no reliable remedies.
It was as bad then, as it would have been today.
Rocco Benedetti
The author, Rocco Benedetti, was a notary in Venice. We don’t know much about his personal situation, but he is known to have worked in the period between 1556 and 1582. Documents, which he as attested as notary, are in the Venetian archives.
During the epidemic, his primary task was to write down last wills and testaments of those who expected to die soon.
In quieter times, he offered his services to the merchants and financiers of the Rialto market. His ‘office’ was a desk under a portico, which was absolutely normal for the time.
His role as notary at the Rialto markets meant that he had a wide range of contacts, both in the Venetian nobility, and in the citizen class, to which he himself belonged.
He was therefore a well-bred, well-educated, and well-connected individual, a cultured and studied person, one of the pillars of civil society.
This account of the plague in 1576 wasn’t his first public writings. In 1574, he had published a short account of the feasts and celebrations held in Venice for the visit that year of Henry III, King of France and Poland.
Manuscripts and booklets
Benedetti’s account of the plague in Venice exists in at least four versions: two manuscripts from his own hand, and two printed versions.
What seems to be the first manuscript, today in the Biblioteca Civica di Verona, is titled The most notable events which happened in Venice due to the plague in the year 1576 described by me, Rocco Benedetti, Venetian notary.
It also carries a dedication, to The most Illustrious and most Excellent Lord, Sir Giacomo Foscarini, Knight, Superintendent-General of Candia, and my most honoured Lord and Patron.
The manuscript is dated February 15th, 1577.
Another copy, held in the Museo Correr in Venice, has the simple title Events of the plague in the year 1576, and no attribution, dedication or date. It is, however, in the same hand, and the content is practically identical.
The two printed versions are both from 1577, and dated in the text to June 28th, 1577. One is printed in Urbino, the other in Bologna.
While the contents of the two printed copies are identical, they both differ from the manuscripts. Language and vocabulary is less Venetian, and more Florentine — probably to reach a wider audience — some parts have been modified, and fairly large segments left out entirely.
Notes on the translation
This translation from the Venetian to English is based on a transcription of the manuscript in Venice, made by Donatella Calabi, Luca Molà, Simone Rauch and Elena Svalduz in 2020.
They published their work on the website of the Associazione Progetto Rialto and in a booklet with Cierre Edizioni, 2021.
Without their work — a published, machine-readable transcription of the manuscript — this translation wouldn’t exist.
Benedetti wrote some biblical citations in Latin, which I have kept in the main text. Their translations, taken from the King James Bible, with the exact references are in the footnotes.
The original, both in the manuscripts and in the printed versions, was one single block of text, spanning over a dozen pages. Reading such an unbroken text is not easy, so I have added paragraph breaks and subtitles rather liberally.
The subtitles are not in the original.
Finally, one Venetian word remains in the translation because there is no proper translation which communicates the same.
The word pizzigamorti literally means somebody who removes the dead. In normal times, they were undertakers, who collected the body, prepared it for funeral, and took care of the actual burying after the religious rites.
During the plague epidemics, due to the high mortality among the pizzigamorti, people of the absolutely lowest social standing were enticed or pressed into such service: stragglers, vagabonds, beggars, convicted criminals, etc. In the extreme circumstances of the epidemic, this led to numerous cases of abuse, theft, fraud and whatnot, as Benedetti narrates.
About the cultural context
The original manuscripts are 450 years old. Much has changed, and we do not live in the same world as Rocco Benedetti.
Many things, concepts and ideas, which were evident and obvious to him, not worthy of any explanation, might be odd, weird or even entirely incomprehensible to us.
Some of the main differences are covered in five appendices, included after Benedetti’s account.
The plague still exists, even if it is mostly absent in Europe today. Appendix A gives an overview of what the plague is and how it spreads, in modern terms.
Bacteria were discovered in the later 1800s, and antibiotics in the 1900s, so at the time of Benedetti, doctors and others had no such knowledge. Their interpretation of the disease was based on ideas from Antiquity, such as humours, miasma, buboes, tumours, malignant air, and more, which is discussed in appendix B.
Benedetti lived in the Republic of Venice, an ancient nation, which ceased to exist over two centuries ago. The Venetian Republic, like any other state, had institutions, legal and administrative systems, and traditions and customs, which all shaped how it responded to an emergency like the plague epidemic. The Venetian institutions mentioned by Benedetti are described in appendix C, but one is essential for the understanding of the text.
Matters of the plague were governed by the Magistrato alla Sanità, which was a kind of ministry for public health. Rather than one person in charge, there were five: two Over-superintendents of Health, and three Superintendents of Health, which were all appointed for terms of one year.
The epidemic in 1575–1577 was not the first encounter Venice had with the plague. Based on earlier experiences, the Magistrato alla Sanità had in the 1400s established two lazzaretti on islands in the Venetian lagoon.
The Lazzaretto Vecchio was primarily a hospital for the plague stricken, but hospital more in the sense of hospitality, than as a place offering cures and treatments. In the 1500s, there was no cure for the plague.
The Lazzaretto Nuovo, on the other hand, was not for the sick, but for the suspect. Persons, and goods, which had been in contact with victims of the plague, were suspect of carrying the contagion. They were consequently placed in quarantine, which in normal times happened on the Lazzaretto Nuovo.
Venetian society was divided in classes, which governed practically all social interactions, and, while rarely said explicitly by Benedetti, the class differences were everywhere. The nobles ran the state, citizens were merchants, shop-keepers and administrators, while commoners and foreigners did most of the manual work needed. All this, and some notes on the Venetian economy, are in appendix D.
Venice had historically very little farmland, and therefore developed an economy based on international trade and manufacturing. It was a very wealthy and a very metropolitan place, with people from all over Europe and the Mediterranean basin coming and going all the time. Consequently, the lockdowns imposed during the epidemic, and the reluctance of foreign merchants to come to Venice, hit very hard, stifling trade and travel, which were the backbone of the Venetian economy. The detrimental effects on trade and business really left a mark on Rocco Benedetti, who, as a notary, lived in that world of trade and business.
Finally, Benedetti name-drops some people, who were famous or well-known in his time. Fame is fickle, however, and these once celebrities are now mostly forgotten. Appendix E contains very short biographies of some of the persons mentioned in the text.
Other minor notes, explanations and comments are in footnotes throughout the translation.
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