According to a story told by Italian notary Gabriele De’ Mussi, plague arrived in 1346, when “Tartars” attacking the city of Caffa in the Crimea came down with a mysterious illness.

In Gabriele de Mussi’s narrative, the Genoese inside the fort soon fell ill. They clambered aboard their ships and fled toward Italy—to Genoa, Venice, and other ports, carrying with them the very ...

Gabriele Mussi’s mother, Candida, played the national lotteries all her life, but cautious Gabriele never did. A slight, earnest man of 35, Gabriele is a farm foreman at Sant ‘Ilario ...