Gabriel de Mussis (''ca.'' 1280 – ''ca.'' 1356) — in Italian, Gabriele de' Mussi — was a

notary A notary is a person authorised to perform acts in legal affairs, in particular witnessing signatures on documents. The form that the notarial profession takes varies with local legal systems. A notary, while a legal professional, is disti ...

from

Piacenza Piacenza (; egl, label= Piacentino, Piaṡëinsa ; ) is a city and in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy, and the capital of the eponymous province. As of 2022, Piacenza is the ninth largest city in the region by population, with over ...

, Italy, who gave a vivid account of the start of the

Black Death The Black Death (also known as the Pestilence, the Great Mortality or the Plague) was a bubonic plague pandemic occurring in Western Eurasia and North Africa from 1346 to 1353. It is the most fatal pandemic recorded in human history, causi ...

in the

Black Sea The Black Sea is a marginal mediterranean sea of the Atlantic Ocean lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bounded by Bulgaria, Georgia, Roma ...

city of Kaffa and its spread to

Sicily (man) it, Siciliana (woman) , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = Ethnicity , demographics1_footnotes = , demographi ...

and Piacenza. His account in

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

, entitled ''Istoria de Morbo sive Mortalitate quae fuit Anno Dni MCCCXLVIII'' ("History of the Disease, or the Great Dying that took place in the Year of our Lord 1348"), is preserved in a manuscript in the library of the

University of Wroclaw A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, the ...

(now

shelfmark A shelfmark is a mark in a book or manuscript that denotes the cupboard or bookcase where it is kept as well as the shelf and possibly even its location on the shelf. The closely related term pressmark (from press, meaning cupboard) denotes only th ...

R 262).

Mark Wheelis Mark L. Wheelis is an American microbiologist. Wheelis is currently a professor in the College of Biological Sciences, University of California, Davis. Carl Woese and Otto Kandler with Wheelis wrote the important paper '' Towards a natural system of ...

(2002)
“Biological Warfare at the 1346 Siege of Caffa”
''

Emerging Infectious Diseases ''Emerging Infectious Diseases'' (EID) is an open-access, peer-reviewed journal published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). EID is a public domain journal and covers global instances of new and reemerging infectious diseas ...

'', Vol. 8, No. 9 (September issue). Although it was formerly believed that de Mussis had been present in Kaffa and travelled in a disease-laden ship to Piacenza, it has been determined that he probably never left home. De Mussis apparently recorded an early example of

biological warfare Biological warfare, also known as germ warfare, is the use of biological toxins or infectious agents such as bacteria, viruses, insects, and fungi with the intent to kill, harm or incapacitate humans, animals or plants as an act of war. Bio ...

in describing how the army of the

Golden Horde The Golden Horde, self-designated as Ulug Ulus, 'Great State' in Turkic, was originally a Mongols, Mongol and later Turkicized khanate established in the 13th century and originating as the northwestern sector of the Mongol Empire. With the fr ...

hurled plague-infected cadavers over the city walls during the in 1346. Modern authorities believe that his description of events is plausible and may indicate that plague was successfully introduced into Kaffa by the Tartars, but that the long-standing belief that the events at Kaffa contributed to the spread of plague beyond the city is not correct.

References

Citations

Other sources

*Deaux, George (1969), ''The Black Death 1347''. New York: Weybright and Talley; Chapter IV, pp. 75ff. *Derbes, Vincent J. (April 4, 1966), “De Mussis and the Great Plague of 1348”, ''

JAMA ''The Journal of the American Medical Association'' (''JAMA'') is a peer-reviewed medical journal published 48 times a year by the American Medical Association. It publishes original research, reviews, and editorials covering all aspects of biom ...

''. 1966; 196(1):59-62. doi:10.1001/jama.1966.03100140113030. {{authority control 14th-century Italian historians 14th-century Latin writers People from Piacenza Year of birth uncertain