The great mortality, commonly called the Black Death, was a catastrophe sudden and overwhelming, the like of which it will be difficult to parallel. Many a noble aspiration which, could it have been realised, and many a wise conception which, could it have attained its true development, would have been most fruitful of good to humanity, was stricken beyond recovery. Still no time was wasted in vain laments. What had perished was perished. Time, however, and the power of effort and work belonged to those that survived.
Two of the noblest churches in Italy typify the twofold aspect of this great visitation – the Cathedral of Siena and the Cathedral of Milan. The former, the vast building that crowns the Tuscan Hill, is but a fragment of what was originally conceived. It was actually in course of erection, and would have been hardly less in size than the present St. Peter's had it been completed. The transepts were already raised, and the foundations of the enormous nave and choir had been laid when the plague fell upon the city. The works were necessarily suspended, and from that day to this have never been resumed.
Little more than a generation had passed from the fatal year when the most glorious Gothic edifice on Italian soil was already rising from the plain of Lombardy – a symbol of new life, new hopes, new greatness, which would surpass the greatness of the buried past. And this, be it observed, was no creation of Prince or Potentate; it was essentially the idea, the work, the achievement of the people of Milan themselves.397
What gives, perhaps, the predominant interest to the century and a half which succeeded the overwhelming catastrophe of the Black Death is the fact of the wonderful social and religious recovery from a state almost of dissolution. It is not the place here even to enter upon so interesting and important a subject. It must suffice to have indicated the point of view from which the history of the immediately succeeding generations must be regarded. In spite of wars and civil commotions it was an age of distinct progress, although the very complexity and variety of current and undercurrent is apt at times to daze the too impatient inquirer, who wishes to reduce everything to the simple result of the definitely good, or the definitely bad.