Petrarch 1304-74. The encyclopedia does not mention his writing about the plague, but the Laura he immortalized, died in the plague year 1348. Sounds as though there might be a story there.

Here is a URL about the many other times plague epidemics hit Europe:
http://www.beyond.fr/history/plague.html In one of the worst, cause was greedy merchants who wanted silk cargo on ship with known cases of plague inducing authorities to lift the quarantine.