No Monkey Business in This House!

PART I—The Roots

Descendants of Doménico Antonio Pelliccia

Doménico Antonio Pelliccia, born, Carrara, Italy, married to María Vitoria Inconnu, born about 1740, Italy died 19 July 1822, Bastia, Corsica, France

Battista Pelliccia, born about 1776, Italy, died 19 November 1856, Oletta, Corsica, France, buried, Oletta, Corsica, France, married to Anna Morelli, born in 1771, died 13 March 1811, Oletta, Corsica, France

Francesco Maria Pelliccia, born 15 August 1801, Oletta, Corsica, France, died in 1857, Oletta, Corsica, France, married 22 February 1829, Oletta, Corsica, France, to Maria Magdalena Murati, born 16 June 1810, Oletta, Corsica, France, died 28 August 1877, Oletta, Corsica, France

Anna Pelliccia, born in 1830, Oletta, Corsica, France, died in 1839, Oletta, Corsica, France

Nonce Antoine Pelliccia, born in 1832, died in 1835

Jean Baptiste Dominique Pelliccia, born 23 September 1835, Oletta, Corsica, France, died, Puerto Rico, married to Marie Angeline Vecchionacce, died 20 October 1884, Marseille, France

Marie Francoise Pelliccia married 30 October 1893 to Francois Marie Pelloni

Marie Paula Pelliccia, born 16 December 1838, Oletta, Corsica, France, died USA, married to Paul Holophene Marfisi

Marie Annina Pelliccia, born in 1841, Oletta, Corsica

Marie Philomena Pelliccia, born 10 October 1844, Oletta, Corsica, France, married 18 September 1865 to Nicholas Sebastian Pelloni

Petro Angel Maria Pelliccia, born in 1847, Oletta, Corsica, France, died in 1944, Adjuntas, Puerto Rico, married to Reye Montalvo, born in 1866, Puerto Rico, died in 1956, Puerto Rico

Francisco Pelliccia, born 27 May 1882, Adjuntas, PR, died 8 December 1968, Elizabeth, NJ, married to Maria Torres, born 4 March 1884, Adjuntas, PR, died 17 July 1972, Elizabeth, NJ

(Note: Children and descendants of Franciso & Maria Pelliccia are covered in the family tree in Part II of this book)

Antonio Pelliccia, born 22 April 1898, Adjuntas, Puerto Rico, died January 1987, married Cruz Torres, born 1906

Carmen Ida Pelliccia

Maria Christina Pelliccia

Daisy Pelliccia born 3 January 1926, Villalba, Puerto Rico (Also see entry under Magdalena Pelliccia)

Magdalena Pelliccia, born 1883, Adjuntas, PR, died 1983, Elizabeth, NJ, married to Baptisten Minet, born 1893, Marseilles, France, died 1975, Elizabeth, NJ

Daisy Pelliccia, born 3 January 1926 to Antonio Pelliccia and Cruz Torres in Villalba, Puerto Rico, and adopted by the Minet at the age of six in Elizabeth, NJ, died August,1987, married to Leonardo Alirangues, born 19 May 1929

Leon Alirangues, born 3 July 1960, married Pamala Adubato, born 26 April 1968

Gabriel Alirangues, born 3 August 1991

Michael Alirangues, born 16 January 1994

Paul Alirangues, born 26 November 1963, married Loretta Accardo, born 3 April 1962

Victoria Pelliccia, born in 1882, Adjuntas, PR, died in 1980, Santa Cruz, CA, married to her cousin, Francisco Pelliccia, born 1877 died in 1935.

Angela Pelliccia, born 1904, died 1992 in Santa Cruz, CA

Francisco Pancho Pelliccia, born 1905, died in Elizabeth, NJ, married to Dorothy (maiden name unknown)

Lorain Eikenbush, born 16 April, 1939, died 30 March 2005

Joyce Pelliccia

Nancy Pelliccia

Janet Pelliccia

Antonieta Pelliccia, born 18 January, 1905, died 25 June 2000, married to Alex Demeter, born 18 March, 1912, died 15 March, 1995

Sandra Demeter, born 27 July 1935, married 21 September, 1957 to John P. Araneo, born 14 February 1929, died 27 January 2009

Janiene Lusco, born26 November 1961

Johnna Alvarez, born 20 November, 1963

Norman Demeter, born 17 April 1937, died 25 January 1987, married to Mary Hartman, born 12 December 1931

Lynn Ann Sysock, born 27 October 1961

Michelle Arlotto, born 25 November, 1962

Gregory Demeter, born 8 March, 1971

Ivette Demeter, born 28 August 1947, married to Peter Anzelone, born 5 September, 1947

Marielle Anzelone, born 11 March, 1970

Janee Anzelone, born 8 January, 1973

Peter Anzelone Jr., born 19 February, 1981

Alexis Anzelone, born 17 September, 1983

Rolando Pelliccia, born 1908, died Baltimore, MD

Jorge Pelliccia, born 1910, died in 1985

Rene Pelliccia, born 1913, died 11 December 2001, Santa Cruz, CA

Elena Pelliccia, born 1914, married to Frank Albanese

Raul Pelliccia, born 1915

Elsa Pelliccia, born 14 May, 1917

Ilda Pelliccia, born 1919

Fernando Enrique Pelliccia, born 1923, died 1986

Yolanda Pelliccia, died young

Juana Pelliccia, born 9 November,1896, Adjuntas, Puerto Rico, married to a Mr. Garastegi

Angel Pelliccia, born 25 June 1893, Adjuntas, Puerto Rico, died in July 1974, Adjuntas, Puerto Rico, married to Rosario Moll, born 30 December 1894, died in August 1979, Ponce, PR

Miguel Angel Pelliccia, born 11 November, 1921

Ramon Pelliccia, born 30 August, 1928

Carmen Ida Pelliccia, born 5 May, 1932, married Domingo Pelliccia, born 26 July, 1928

Carlos Pelliccia, born April, 1937

Blanca, born 6 January, 1905, died 24 March 2012, married to José Rodriguez

Diana Pelliccia, born 1895, Adjuntas, Puerto Rico

Ana M. Pelliccia, born 29 March 1904, Adjuntas, Puerto Rico, died 14 January 1990 in Florida, married to Pedro Rodriguez, born 1900, died 10 October 1956

Peter Rodriguez, born 19 December 1936, Elizabeth, NJ

Evelyn Rodriguez, born 8 October 1945, Perth Amboy, NJ, married to Bruce (surname unknown), born 5 July, 1943, died 20 January, 2008

Heidi, born 22 January, 1969

Bruce, born 10 January, 1970

1. Awakening in Passage—The Man in the Room

There is a man in a dimly lit room. A diminutive maple table supports a small, twenty-watt, shaded lamp. He lies very still on a cot cushioned only by a three-inch mattress. He is in the front room of a first-floor apartment that he occupies with his wife, Maria. His daughter Amy owns the building, and she lives in the second floor unit with her family.

His wrists are bound to the peripheral metal frame of the cot. A thin pillow supports his head just a few inches above the mattress level. An intravenous station contains a bottle. A tube leads from the bottle into his left arm. The liquid from the bottle drips into an intermediate container and slowly flows into his vein.

A solitary hardwood chair beside the cot provides a not-too-comfortable place for the watchful person tending the man. The upright chair is an attempt to keep the one whose turn it is to watch awake. Notwithstanding the discomfort, eyelids drop and so does the head, but the chair prevents deep sleep.

The man on the cot occasionally shudders and tries to break free from his restraints and reach for the intrusive needle. The watcher prevents the man from loosening the binding and calms him. In fact, the man has recognized his attempts as futile and subsides.

The kitchen at the rear of the home is lit, and the aroma of continually brewing coffee wafts throughout; it encourages wakefulness. In the hours before midnight, a small group gathers to discuss the present situation, and the voices mingle with the wafting coffee scent to assist in its purpose. At midnight, the relief watcher pours a cup of coffee and proceeds to take his turn.

He receives a report on how the man is doing.

It’s paradoxical that throughout the home any conversation is carried out in subdued tones as if the speakers don’t want to disturb the man. In fact, the hope is that he will be disturbed and will respond. Perhaps, in our subconscious, we sense that this is part of his passing and that he is already in another world. This is part of the wake … a pre-wake.

I think of the quote from Macbeth: The night is long that never finds the day.

The man thinks … I awake after a seemingly long sleep. I feel I have just been born. But that can’t be true because I know I am Francisco Pelliccia, so I must already exist. My thoughts are jumbled like those of the old man I must be. These thoughts of recent birth and lifetime existence confuse me, but what difference does it make? I’m in some sort of change from one state to another. I am passing from cosmos to birth or from life to afterlife. The difference may be so slight that it is meaningless. I am coming from infinity or passing to eternity. Corta diferencia! (Little difference!) Even though it’s dark, I know I’m at home, but this bed is not my familiar one. It’s narrower, and the mattress is thinner than my usual thick Simmons. I try to reach out to feel the bed boundaries and am filled with fear as I realize that my arms are bound at the wrist to the metallic frame of the bed.

Am I a prisoner? Why am I bound? I begin to see a dim light on a distant table and begin to realize some other disturbing sights. There is a needle in my left arm connected to a tube that feeds from a raised bottle.

There is a dim outline of a person alongside my bed. I think it’s a man. He seems to be saying something, but I can’t hear the words very clearly. They are muddled sounds that seem to run into each other … overlapping sounds that have lost their individual space.

I’ve lost my peripheral vision to glaucoma, and it’s impossible for me to find more than a few degrees of sight. Have I lost my other senses? How many senses are there? Taste, hearing, sight, touch, speech, smell … no! Taste and smell are the same. My thinking is running amok—thoughts chasing other thoughts.

What might have happened to me? I know that as I grew older I slowly lost my awareness of one or more senses and my memory from time to time, but I would return to normal in a few minutes. This time it feels as if something more permanent has happened and I might not return to normalcy.

Suddenly I’m aware that my grandson. Johnny Urrutia Jr. is in the room with me, and I hear him as a voice from another world.

"Papa, please come back and talk to me. Just one more time. Tell me what you feel. Come back and tell Mama to bring us some Ceballos Sherry (a family favorite dry Spanish sherry). There’s always fino or cream sherry available. The sweetness of the cream is for happier times. Let’s linger on the dryness of the fino. We have serious things to talk about. Either one is all right as long as we share it as we speak. Please, Papa, speak to me." My voice quivers as I plead. I’m afraid that I may never hear his voice again.

We always conversed in Spanish; that is, he would talk in Spanish, and I would try to answer in Spanish, but mine was a contrived language interspersed with English and filled with grammatical errors and invented words and phrases. I understood everything he told me, and that was the essence of our discussions because he was the teacher and I the student. If we don’t speak again, a major part of my existence will be lost. My life will be diminished! How can I go on without him?

Not to hear his voice again or share his thoughts … my thoughts are wandering as his must be. In my desperation, as I talk to him, I have the sense that he hears some of what I am saying. I imagine a hint of a smile and a slight, acknowledging nod.

I hear you, Johnny. I do not actually hear his voice, but feel its presence as if we are telepathically connected.

Yes, I would like to have some Ceballos. Where is your grandmother? I want to see her. Tell her to come in here. What has happened to me? Why am I tied up? What am I being given through this needle? I can’t speak the words, Johnny. Can’t you sense what I’m trying to ask? What would you ask if you were in my place?

I sense that Papa has trouble understanding what is going on. I speak very slowly, giving separation to my words. Papa, you had a stroke. We are giving you nourishment through this tube. The doctor said that maybe you would come back to us if we did this.

I hear the word stroke, Papa thinks. I guess the minor strokes I’ve had finally erupted into something more damaging.

Have I already died, and am I in another dimension? Perhaps no one ever really dies. I have sometimes thought death would be an illusion and those around me would see my condition as death. I would then be free from having to react or interact. I’d sense their presence, but they’d see me as dead. I wouldn’t have to answer or talk. Most talking is an obligation of living. It has to include the hypocrisy of masking real, or at least honest, thoughts. I could dwell with my true thoughts. But, no, I’m not dead. Otherwise why are they restraining me?

I see him try to wrest his arms from his restraints. He pulls and jerks against them. He tries to reach over with his less-encumbered arm and stretch his fingers toward the invasive needle.

Papa, I know you don’t like it, but we are trying to bring you back to us by feeding you this food. Maybe you could work with us. Remember, you used to tell me that you believed death was avoidable. You used to say, ‘A strong will to live in a man can put off the grim reaper.’ For how long, Papa, can a man do this?

For as long as he has a purpose. Or until he gives up on his purpose.

Well, make us your purpose! Come back and talk to us once more. Drink wine with me and tell me all the things you haven’t yet! I know you can’t talk to me now, but maybe I can answer my questions as you would have. I will try!

I look at him as I try, you would probably say…

‘I am getting tired. I’ve told you many things. I hope I’ve completed my purpose. I’ve raised a family. I’ve provided for family as best as I could. I’ve told you many stories about our family. I’ve told you some things that I mostly imagined, because they occurred before my time. I’ve told you…’

I interrupt him, I know that, Papa. Your history about the fourteenth century and the plague were told to me as ‘stories’ you made up. I also know that the telling of events of the early sixteenth through the nineteenth century was handed down from your ancestors—from your grandfather and your father directly to your ears. And then you passed them to me. I will save and preserve our history as best I can. I will help my grandmother as she travels to join you.

Querido nieto, [dear grandson], fulfill your purpose, and when it comes your turn, come in peace.

Okay, Papa, I’ll leave you to your own time of decision. Pass when you are ready, and eventually we will join you.

He falls asleep leaving me to wonder how much we had been able to communicate. I watch him for a while and wonder what thoughts occupy him now.

I continue to jump from one thought to another. I believe in God, although I don’t understand his nature. I also believe in immortality but I’m not sure what form it will take. Will I become a spirit and float among the living? Maybe time will cease to be a dimension; perhaps I’ll be frozen in this moment and will stay in it for eternity. That would be hell! No, I don’t believe that. I’m ready to pass on. Why can’t they leave me alone? I continue to fight to tear the needle from my arm, but my loving family physically restrain me. I want to be left alone.

I see my life—a tapestry woven of memory threads with no time component. There is no sequence in happenings. My significant experiences are all present at once. This can’t be my life flashing right before my death. No! The right before my death would imply a time concept and of this there is none. There is no sense of flashing. It is all laid out before me in one gigantic thought. I see the beauty as well as the ugliness of my life. My experiences are a part of my essence, my character, my soul. They are the components of my memory. Not historical memory as the world sees it, but memory as seen and interpreted by me and uncluttered by the many insignificant tasks which had seemed so important to my daily routine.

My memories include all the important and significant things that happened since my birth in 1882. My memory has served as a journal, and its pages are indelible in my mind. This tapestry provides remembrance of all my deeds, good or evil. It is delivered by my memory as having served a purpose in the total scheme of my life.

I very often lied to gain some advantage. I would lie for sexual favors from the women in my fields, one of which was Maria, my wife to be. I lied to avoid my father’s anger. I lied about being married. Maria and I had several children before we were officially man and wife. I committed adultery several times during my self-proclaimed marriage as well as during my legal union. I had an affair with Dorethea, Maria’s cousin. This affair produced a child, Nora. Nora was accepted by my wife Maria as part of the family. Nora lived her life as a good and giving person. She gave complete care and comfort to my father, Angel, in his later years. She was loved by all. Now I realize that Nora’s birth by my seed served a greater good, as did the births of all my children. Why? This is one of God’s secrets.

I have killed men in self-defense. Men who worked for me would become violent and threaten me with the machete, their professional tool for cutting brush and trees. I never went anywhere without my pistol and I never hesitated to use it when attacked. Could I have wounded men instead of killing them? I don’t know.

I know there is a purpose to all human activity, but I am unable to explain it.

I had been taught morality, ethics and law during my schooling in Corsica. I provided and cared for my family and worked for them in Puerto Rico and the United States. In America, in completely different circumstances, I behaved properly and lawfully. I realize that people shouldn’t criticize others—myself included—unless they themselves have lived during similar times and circumstances. The reason for my improper behavior was beyond my capability to understand. I could not understand the forces that motivated me. I was not God, neither would I pretend to understand His overall plans as did the people who voiced their hypocritical musica celestiales [celestial music] as if God had shared his plans with them. I did what I thought was right, or was driven to do by situation.

I’ve given up trying to cope with my present situation. My grunts do not seem to convey my anger at being bound; I feel restrained like an animal on the shortest leash. My thoughts continue to wander. I derive an enjoyment—no, rather a comfort—in the fresco-like summary that depicts my entire life from infancy to recent adulthood.

Drifting off to sleep from time to time in a dreamlike state, I imagine previous generations. Although they must have had their own identities, I imagine their appearance to be vaguely similar, or identical, to people I’ve known during my lifetime. I find that I’m able to drift into memory that allows me to recall ancestors well before my time. Is this made-up memory? Is it the result of listening to anecdotes in the past? Is it memory that existed at the moment of conception? I guess that it is probably a combination of several things. The generations immediately preceding often told stories of ancestors. I imagine an intuitive memory derived from what must have been their experiences. These might have been passed on to me much as other inherited things: hair color, skin tint, and other physical similarities. My interest in history helps identify different periods and construct mental scenarios. Sprinklings of random imaginings allow me to fill in the hazy, faded thoughts and complete reminiscences. The earlier generational memories are sparser and seemed to leave blank sections of several centuries. The sections that are revealed to me are in detail and become a part of the panoramic tapestry experience.

Time seems to have disappeared from my senses. During my life prior to this stroke, all my thoughts were memory. There was no present time; everything was remembered. Whether it happened well in the past or merely a split-second ago, it was experienced as memory. Now I see all my memory in the present—a gigantic scene that just exists. I can dwell on one phase of it or refocus my mind’s eye and see it all at once. What an elevating experience this is, not having to wait for time at all! I spent most of my life waiting for time to pass and something to happen. I can look at this experience as an out-of-body exercise for as long as I care. My relatives will tend to my time-related events. They can decide for themselves when I die. I will review my family experience in whatever portion of eternity my brain continues to function. If this is dying, it’s not at all distressing.

I manage to hear an occasional word from Johnny, and his facial expressions supplement them into complete thoughts.

I wish you would come back to us just once more. Talk to me again, Papa.

If I could only smile at Johnny to let him know that I understand, but my stubborn lips refuse.

I sleep and when I awake I remember that I am bound and manage to free one hand. Someone restrains it and rebinds it. I manage a grunt to let whoever it is know that I’m displeased. Regaining my composure, I relax and go back to my time-frozen memory and think about history.

I was born on May 27, 1882, in Adjuntas, Puerto Rico. My father, Petro Angel Pelliccia, was born in Oletta, Corsica, in 1847, and my mother, Reye Montalvo, was born in Puerto Rico in 1866. The previous Pelliccia generation was also born in Corsica but earlier generations of the Pelliccia lived in the Tuscany region of Italy.

Tuscany came from the ancient Etruscan civilization. It had been conquered and ruled by the Romans in the mid fourth century. After the fall of Rome, it was a Lombard duchy in the sixth to eighth centuries with Lucca as its capital, and later a boundary area under the Franks in the eighth to twelfth centuries. The last Frankish ruler, Matilda, bequeathed her lands to the papacy which caused strife between pro-papal and pro-imperial factions in and between the cities. Florence eventually gained control over most Tuscan cities in the fourteenth to fifteenth centuries.

Had the Pelliccia been there throughout that history? I can’t be sure. I often wondered why the Pelliccia migrated from Italy to Corsica to Puerto Rico. I finally migrated to the United States and shortly thereafter my immediate family joined me and we have lived in the United States ever since. Now, in my current state, I see the reasons for these significant migrations. In my dream twilight, maybe some of these reasons are imagined, but I’m confident that they are accurate. I see some of my ancestors as current relatives; I think of them as having the same names based on their character, personalities, and other attributes. Certain characteristics reappear in descending generations randomly and usually not in sequential offspring. Trait mutations also appear at intervals.

The Italian family name Pelliccia means fur merchant or furrier. Yet, my father and uncle often spoke of the family as being marble workers in and around Carrara, Italy. I’ve often wondered about a reason for their having changed from being fur merchants to being stone workers. I see them as fur merchants in the Florence area of Tuscany as part of one of the seven most-influential guild groups in the early fourteenth century. Life has been good for the preceding four hundred or so years. Cities have grown, trade has prospered, and population has increased. It’s a good time in Tuscany as well as in most of Europe. Strong kings have maintained reasonable order. Primary guidance is dictated by the Catholic Church; although self-serving, it provides a guiding light for hope and a means of enduring the harsh, though tolerable, life. But the general tranquility is about to be disrupted by apocalyptic events; the four horsemen are on their way: famine, pestilence, war, and death.

Climate patterns shift, temperatures plummet, and crops fail. The people of this century will be traumatized by extremes of deprivation, disease, devastation, and death.

Mother Church has begun to lose the confidence of her followers. The papacy has been hijacked to Avignon, France. The church leaders up to and including Pope Clement VI are wallowing in the trappings of too worldly a lifestyle. It is commonly known that many priests have concubines or are sleeping with women in the villages and are corrupt. This religious corruption has shown itself to me during my lifetime and during my study of history. I have become completely cynical about the Church. Here is another example of man’s inevitable corruption!

2. Necrosis

Ring around a rosy, a pocket full of posies

Ashes, ashes we all fall down.

We all, as children, happily joined hands and recited this familiar nursery rhyme. We never thought about its meaning.

Later some of us came to think that it referred to the not-so-delightful black death. The ring around a rosy refers to the round, red rash that was the first symptom of the disease. The pocket full of posies refers to the practice of carrying flowers and placing them around the infected person for protection. Ashes is a reference to the coughing, sneezing, and wheezing sounds made by the infected person. Finally, we all fall down describes the many deaths resulting from this awful disease.

It turns out we were more accurate as children, because it is generally explained by scholars that the reference to the black death is nonsense. The nursery rhyme is simply one of indefinite origin and has no specific meaning, and someone long after the fact invented an explanation for its creation.

Why do I think of this now? I find that often the legend is more interesting that the fact and it graces the fact.

My thoughts continue. One reason my ancestors changing from being furriers to being stone workers was the black death that struck Europe in 1348 and several times afterwards.

During the thirteenth century, the Mongol empire reached from China to modern-day Turkey with trade routes that ended at the Black Sea from where spices and silk went to Italy and the rest of Europe on merchant ships that also carried illness by fleas on rats and killed half the population of Italy between 1348 and 1365.

We Pelliccia were divided into two distinct and almost equal groups, the living and the dead.

Furs were part of the incoming trade. Entering into Genoa a buffer zone existed between the early signs of the blight and the Pelliccia business in the Florence area. We did have some warning of the onslaught.

A chronicler from nearby Siena described the ugly family shattering scene in about 1354:

Neither relatives nor friends nor priests nor friars accompanied the corpses to the grave, nor was the office of the dead recited … In many places of the city trenches were dug, very broad and deep, and into these the bodies were thrown, and covered with a little earth; and thus layer after layer until the trench was full; and then another trench was begun. And I, Agniolo di Tura … with my own hands buried five of my children in a single trench; and many others did the like. And many dead were so ill covered that the dogs dug them up and ate them, dispersing their limbs throughout the city. And no bells rang, and nobody wept no matter what his loss, because almost everyone expected death. And people said and believed, ‘This is the end of the world.’ (Durant, 1953, 30)

Boccaccio opens his The Decameron with a frightful description of the plague:

Not only did converse and consorting with the sick give the infection to the sound, but the mere touching of the clothes, or off whatsoever had been touched or used by the sick, appeared of itself to communicate the malady … A thing which had belonged to a man sick or dead of the sickness, being touched by an animal … in a brief time killed it … of this mine own eyes had experience. This tribulation struck such terror to the hearts of all … that brother forsook brother, uncle nephew … oftentimes wife husband; nay (what is yet more extraordinary and well-nigh incredible), some fathers and mothers refused to visit or tend their very children, as though they had not been theirs … The common people, being altogether untended and succored, sickened by the thousand daily, and died well-nigh without recourse. Many breathed their last in the open street, whilst other many, for all they died in their houses, made it known to the neighbors that they were dead rather by the stench of their rotting bodies than otherwise; and of these and others who died the city was full. The neighbors moved more by fear lest the corruption of the dead bodies should imperil themselves than by any charity for the departed … brought the bodies forth from the houses and laid them before the doors, where, especially in the morning, those who went about might see corpses without number. Then they fetched biers, and some, in default thereof, they laid upon a board; nor was it only one bier that carried two or three corpses, nor did this happen but once; nay, many might have been counted which contained husband and wife, two or three brother, father and son, and the like … The thing was come to such a pass that folk reckoned no more of men that died than nowadays they would of goats. (Durant 1953, 31)

I know there are historical facts describing the curse that descended onto man. I have told my grandchildren stories on the same subject. Were they true? Did I receive these stories in some mysterious way? Were they received genetically? Were they delivered by God as lessons for good? Can I be a latter-day apostle? Surely, someone as cynical as I, a shameless sinner, wouldn’t be chosen to deliver goodness and truth. Maybe it’s another example of the Lord moving in mysterious ways. In any case, here are the stories.

The helplessness the Pelliccia are enduring drives many to seek relief from the horror. The most important aspect of this dark period is the realization that caring for loved ones (fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, and children) is a privilege given to us and taken from us by God—a God whose purpose we cannot understand. This privilege of caring, which we had taken for granted, is taken from us perhaps as a lesson from nature or God. Had we become too secular? Had we replaced sincere caring with the self-centeredness of doing good deeds only for personal gratification? There is a fine line between caring for others and caring for ourselves; it is a vague distinction. How awful it is to be immunized from feeling love and consequently not caring for those you previously cared for. Tanto que te quiero [I care so much for you] is forgotten.

To make matters worse, in January 1348, the month the plague first appeared on the continent, a serious earthquake hit the area between Naples and Venice. There was a general cynicism that influenced people to live for the moment. Unsure of their daily survival, they blamed and persecuted minorities like Jews and lepers. Just as the disease came to be known as the black death because of the effect which caused the victim’s skin to blacken due to internal hemorrhages, so too were their souls blackened in a hatred for all including themselves.

How we Pelliccia dread the appearance of swellings, called buboes, in the armpits or groin, the blood poisoning, or the attack on the lungs causing the spewing of vomited, bloodied spittle. We know that most victims die within four to seven days after infection.

I see the suffering very clearly, and things that I imagined before are real. Before fleeing we reflect on human characteristics. Some of us are in fearful confusion. Many are more susceptible to the attack and perish within a day. Angelita, a young mother of four children, contracted pneumonic plague, and when she died in a very few days, it was a welcomed comfort to be relieved of the constant coughing, gasping for air, throwing up phlegm, blood and spittle. She was torn between wanting relief via death and the guilt of leaving her children. She was torn between her responsibilities to her family and the anguish over her diseased, tortured body. She found sudden peace as she gasped a final breath and her immortal soul departed.

And earlier, Francisco, a young boy of twelve years was fortunate. He had been born in a weakened condition and succumbed in a day before suffering the agonizing sores, lesions, and bleeding. The healthier members of the family responded as do most people. The good gained an extraordinary strength, became very good, and showed a compassion for the sick that overcame their fear. Maria, Nora, and Aimee tended the sick—cooled their feverish bodies, cleaned their sores, washed their bodies, fed them as best they could, stroked their foreheads, chanted encouraging words, and prayed for them constantly. Miraculously, the caretakers suffered only minor affliction and were rewarded with a fairly long life. Others were diminished by their fears and ran from the sick to seek shelter or self-inflicted death. The indifferent cringed and fearfully waited deliverance in one form or another.

These stories were a prologue; an analogy to things destined to happen some six hundred years later.

An article in the Florentine Chronicle from the late 1370s reported:

Now it was ordered by the bishop and the Lords (of the city government) that they should formally inquire as to how many died in Florence. When it was seen at the beginning of October that no more persons were dying of the pestilence, they found that among males, females, children and adults, 96,000 had died between March and October