European prosperity falters during the fourteenth century, with a run of bad harvests, a decline in trade and - from 1347 - the Black Death

The plague which later becomes known as the Black Death makes its first appearance in China

Turkish tribes, besieging Genoese merchants in Caffa, lob the corpses of plague victims over the town walls and thus spread the Black Death

The Black Death, making its way through Europe, is described in vivid detail by Boccaccio who sees its devastating effect in Florence

Massacres of Jews, rumoured to have caused the Black Death by poisoning wells, begin in southern France and spread through much of Europe

Boccaccio begins his Decameron, supposedly the stories told by young Florentine men and women sheltering from the Black Death