Vasilief, A History of the Byzantine Empire

The fall of Byzantium

The policies of Byzantium in the fourteenth century

Page 6

An immediate clash between the two republics was temporarily averted by the plague of 1348 and the following years, which paralyzed their forces. This terrible plague, the so-called Black Death, which had been carried from the interior of Asia to the coast of the Maeotis (the Sea of Azov) and to the Crimea, spread from the pestiferous Genoese trade-galleys sailing from Tana and Kaffa all over Constantinople, where it carried off, according to the probably exaggerated statements of the western chronicles, two-thirds or eight-ninths of the population. Thence the plague passed to the islands of the Aegean Sea and the coast of the Mediterranean. Byzantine historians have left a detailed description of the disease showing the complete impotence of the physicians in their struggle against it. In his description of this epidemic John Cantacuzene imitated the famous description of the Athenian plague in the second book of Thucydides. From Byzantium, as western chroniclers narrated, the Genoese galleys spread the disease through the coast cities of Italy, France, and Spain. There is something incredible, remarked M. Kovalevsky, in this uninterrupted wandering of the pestiferous galleys through the Mediterranean ports. From these the plague spread to the north and west, and affected Italy, Spain, France, England, Germany, and Norway. At this time, in Italy, Boccaccio was writing his famous Decameron which begins with a description of the Black Death classical in its picturesqueness and measured solemnity, when many brave men, fair ladies, and gallant youths in the soundest of health, broke fast with their kinsfolk, comrades, and friends in the morning, and when evening came, supped with their forefathers in the other world. Scholars compare the description of Boccaccio with that of Thucydides, and some of them hold the humanist in higher estimation even than the classic writer.

From Germany through the Baltic Sea and Poland the plague penetrated into Pskov, Novgorod, and Moscow, in Russia, where the great prince, Simeon the Proud, fell its victim in 1353, and then it spread all over Russia. In some cities, according to the statement of a Russian chronicle, no single man was left alive.

Venice was actively preparing for war. After the horrors of the plague were somewhat forgotten, the Republic of St. Mark made an alliance with the King of Aragon. The latter was discontented with Genoa and consented, by his attacks upon the shores and islands of Italy, to distract the Genoese and thereby to facilitate the advance of Venice in the east. After some hesitation John Cantacuzene joined the Aragon-Venetian alliance against Genoa; he accused the ungrateful nation of the Genoese of forgetting the fear of the Lord, devastating the seas as if they were seized with a mania for pillaging, and of endeavoring permanently to disturb the seas and navigators by their piratical attacks.

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Reference address : https://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/vasilief/policies-byzantium-fourteenth-century.asp?pg=6