"In the year of Our Lord 1348, there came to the great city of Florence, which is the fairest of all Italian cities, a plague of such virulence that no human wisdom or foresight could take any measures against it... The violence of this disease was such that the sick communicated it to the healthy who came near them, just as a fire catches anything dry or oily near it. And it even went further: to speak to or go near the sick brought infection and a common death to those who did so."

Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron, written c.1351–1353. The preface describes the plague in Florence from which the storytellers flee to the countryside. Boccaccio was in Florence during the outbreak of 1348.