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During the Middle Ages, Italy was in a unique situation. To begin with, both before and during the Renaissance, there was no country or nation named Italy. Instead, there was a geographic area that stretched from the vicinity of Venice and Milan in the north along “the boot” to Naples and the island of Sicily in the south. Italians were Italians based roughly on a common geography and language. Cities known as city-states dominated the political, cultural, and economic scene in Italy, and that alone went a long way toward keeping Italy fragmented.

Occasionally a city-state or an alliance would rise up and appear to hold too much power. Eventually the city-states realized the potential dangers and established per­ manent ambassadors to each city-state. They established a policy known as balance of power politics. If one city-state grew so powerful that it threatened the balance of power in Italy, the rest of the city-states would ally against the insurgent to keep it in check. This proved effective until the late fifteenth century, when forces from Europe turned their eyes toward Italy and began to ravage the region.

The timing hardly could have been worse. In October 1347, traders from Genoa arrived in Italy with an unexpected stowaway: the bubonic plague. Fleas and Rats The plague originated with rodents, specifically black rats. In fourteenth-century Europe, sanitation was, in a word, nonexistent. City streets flowed with sewage. Garbage and waste were not disposed of properly. Where there was garbage there were rats. Where there were rats there were fleas. Rats couldn’t transmit the disease to humans, but fleas could.