From the historian's notes

Dubrovnik, 1377

Croatia · Europe · July 1377 · summer

What it was high

small and dense — a few thousand inside the walls plus districts and islands; outsized in shipping, diplomacy and paperworkwalled Adriatic city-commune from the early middle ages; a maritime merchant republic in all but name

That year

• QUARANTINE IS INVENTED HERE, NOW: in July 1377 the Major Council enacts that arrivals from plague-infected places must first sit out a month in designated spots (Mrkan islet and Cavtat) before entering — the trentina, thirty days of enforced waiting; the word 'quarantine' comes later when the term stretches to forty 27 July 1377 (the council decision; cite the date as the standard one given from the archives) highone paragraph of law; the founding act of public-health border control, copied by the world for six centuries
• the machinery around it: Ragusa's obsessive record-keeping — notaries, chancery registers, insurance-minded merchants — is WHY this law exists and survives; the archive is the city's real fortification continuous highcivic culture

Who held it high

the commune of Ragusa under the crown of Hungary-Croatia (since shedding Venice in 1358) — self-governing through its Rector and councilsa Rector who serves ONE MONTH at a time — power deliberately diced small; the Major and Minor Councils and the Senate steertwo decades free of Venice and prospering on salt, silver (Balkan mines) and carrying trade; the plague generation is in charge — every adult remembers 1348, which is precisely why this year's law happens

Its name high

two live names in-period: Latin/Romance 'Ragusa' (official documents, Communitas Ragusina) and Slavic 'Dubrovnik' in the vernacular of its own streetsWritten in Latin script for chancery Latin and Italian; Slavic vernacular in speech (Cyrillic appears in some regional correspondence)

The date, there high

AD 1377Anno Domini (Julian); notarial dating by saints' days; the commune's own month-long rectorships give civic time a heartbeatChurch bells and the commune's civic bell divide the day; gates open and close on the bell; notaries date by saint's day and indiction. And now the city has invented a brand-new unit of time — thirty counted days of waiting — which is the exact length of her ring: the trentina and the deck of cards share a number, and the pack flags it as the stop's quiet engine.

Money medium

Ragusan grosso (silver) with smaller follari; perpera as money of accountfollari beneath the grosso; Venetian ducats respected for big sumsbread and figs: follari; a notary's routine instrument: grossi — order of magnitude only

Weather medium

July: 28-31 C, hard light on white stone, the sea flat mornings and wind-brushed afternoons; cisterns and shade run the daythe era's 'weather' is epidemic recurrence — plague waves return generationally; the new law IS the forecast response

Things

Objectsnotarial registers and lead-sealed instruments — the city's true treasure; Ragusan grossi and follari in the tills, Venetian and Hungarian coin alongside; salt by the shipload; Balkan silver ingots transiting; rosaries and reliquaries of St Blaise (Sveti Vlaho), the city's patron, everywhere; water cisterns and their bronze dippers — summer's infrastructureFoodsalted fish and fresh catch; olive oil and hard bread aboard, better ashore; figs ripening, early grapes; almonds; kid and lamb from the hinterland on feast days; wine cut with water in the heat; citrus from the southern gardensClothlinen against the glare; wool for sea nights; merchant sobriety in dress — the councils legislate against excess and mean it (sumptuary rules are a Ragusan hobby); veils and modest wraps for patrician women in publicGetting aboutships: galleys, cogs, barques — the city IS its tonnage; mules on the karst roads; caravans inland toward the mining towns; small boats stitching Cavtat, the islands and the salt pansIn the airsalt and hot stone; pine resin off the islands; tar and hemp in the arsenal; incense at St Blaise against the fish-quay air

What she'd hear

A genuinely bilingual city: Slavic (the ancestor of today's Croatian) in the streets, Romance — Latin, Venetian-Italian, and the fading local Dalmatian tongue — in chancery and counting-house. Her Italian works everywhere that matters; her face is explained by the eastern trade the city lives on.

Where she could stand

• the Placa (Stradun) — the main street on the filled channel between the city's two original halves
• the chancery and notarial benches — clerks registering contracts, wills, protests and — this month — a new health law
• the harbor and its arsenal arches — galleys and cogs careened, salt barques from Ston
• Mrkan islet seen from the walls — the barren offshore islet just designated as a waiting place for suspect arrivals
• the Ston road and salt pans — the commune's salt works and the fortification line securing them

Researched for this card · confidence high