Question

Use the following excerpt from Boccaccio's The Decameron to answer the following question:

Answer 1

In the year of our Lord 1348, there happened at Florence, the finest city in all Italy a most terrible plague; which, whether owing to the influence of the planets, or that it was sent from God as a just punishment for our sins, had broken out some years before in the Levant (Middle East) and, after passing from place to place, and making incredible havoc all the way, had now reached the west…

Answer 2

[The plague] occasioned various fears and devices amongst those who survived, all tending to the same uncharitable and cruel end; which was, to avoid the sick and everything that had been near them, expecting by that means to save themselves. Some [held] it best to live temperately and to avoid excesses of all kinds…and…they shut themselves up from the rest of the world…Others maintained free living to be a better preservative and would balk no passion or appetite they wished to gratify, drinking and reveling incessantly from tavern to tavern…yet strenuously avoiding, with all this brutal indulgence, to come near the infected.— Public Domain

Answer 3

According to Boccaccio, what did some people believe to be the cause of the plague?

corrupt bishops

the sins of some

climate change

drunkenness