Demographic Crises
Official Reactions
Contrary to what you might think, the reaction from public officials, and from many churchmen, was not that this calamity was the vengeance of God upon a sinful world, but that it was a disease. Authorities took what steps they could to deal with it.
Cities were hardest hit and tried to take measures to control an epidemic no one understood. In Milan, to take one of the most successful examples, city officials immediately walled up houses found to have the plague, isolating the healthy in them along with the sick. As the account of Boccaccio shows, Florence tried to shut its gates against the sick, but of course it could not shut the gates against the rats.
Venice took sophisticated and stringent quarantine and health measures, including isolating all incoming ships on a separate island. The period of isolation was normally forty days, which is where we get our word quarantine (quarante, though our English word comes from the French rather than the Venetian). The people died anyway, though fewer in Milan and Venice than in cities which took no such measures.
While the plague was infesting an area, it was difficult for official authorities to do much of anything, especially in the countryside. Too many people were dying too quickly, including the officials themselves. One account records that a man died of the plague. The priest who was to bury him died. The notary who was to execute his will died. And the people who came to witness the will also died. In another account, so many people from one town died while walking along the roadside, so many bodies were piled so high, that bandits were able to hide behind them to rob the living. In another case, people fled a city only to die on the road. Their horses returned and others in the city rode them back out to loot the bodies. In circumstances like these, official reactions were almost pointless. Such circumstances never lasted long—a few weeks or months while the disease was at its worst—and then public order was restored.