This chapter emphasises the importance of taking seriously seventeenth-century medical theory, and its understanding of the environmental factors associated with plague. The increasing belief in the link between environment and disease led to closer attention by government and medical staff to the living conditions of the poor. In Florence, as in some other Italian cities at the time, the public health authorities instituted a detailed house-by-house survey of the living conditions of the poor. The chapter provides a detailed analysis of the survey, and in the process reveals the crowded and insanitary living conditions of the poorer members of society. It stresses that measures taken to address these problems are not just evidence of insanitary conditions, but are also part of a long tradition of proactive sanitary legislation which sought to cleanse houses and streets of the filth seen as causing disease. More broadly, the chapter seeks to understand these measures in relation to attitudes towards the poorer members of society, as reflected in contemporary medical and government rhetoric, which even sought to blame the poor for the worsening epidemic through their poor diet, lifestyle, and behaviour.
{"title":"Medicine, the Environment and the Poor","authors":"J. Henderson","doi":"10.2307/j.ctvk8w059.8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvk8w059.8","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter emphasises the importance of taking seriously seventeenth-century medical theory, and its understanding of the environmental factors associated with plague. The increasing belief in the link between environment and disease led to closer attention by government and medical staff to the living conditions of the poor. In Florence, as in some other Italian cities at the time, the public health authorities instituted a detailed house-by-house survey of the living conditions of the poor. The chapter provides a detailed analysis of the survey, and in the process reveals the crowded and insanitary living conditions of the poorer members of society. It stresses that measures taken to address these problems are not just evidence of insanitary conditions, but are also part of a long tradition of proactive sanitary legislation which sought to cleanse houses and streets of the filth seen as causing disease. More broadly, the chapter seeks to understand these measures in relation to attitudes towards the poorer members of society, as reflected in contemporary medical and government rhetoric, which even sought to blame the poor for the worsening epidemic through their poor diet, lifestyle, and behaviour.","PeriodicalId":131079,"journal":{"name":"Florence Under Siege","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-08-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132379318","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This chapter assesses the everyday life of the inhabitants who remained in the city, not having been taken off to a Lazaretto or to a quarantine centre. It provides a more nuanced picture of the identity and reactions of the poorer levels of society through a discussion of how the criminal justice system in Florence worked in practice. These records reveal that many prosecutions were of individuals and families who had adopted strategies to survive. Trials, interviews, and witness statements reflect the personal experience of how the city's population dealt with being shut up at home, leading to isolation and deprival of their normal means of support as families were split up and economic activities were banned. Court records reflect not just an extraordinary amount of social activity, despite the imposition of measures of social and sanitary control, as people escaped from locked-up houses, climbed over roofs to visit family, friends, or prostitutes, and tried to carry on their normal trades to help starving families. If economic hardship formed a major motive for people breaking out of and into houses, there were also organised gangs who exploited the crisis and conducted criminal activities, which led to the theft of valuables from locked houses and isolation and quarantine centres.
{"title":"SURVIVING PLAGUE","authors":"J. Henderson","doi":"10.2307/j.ctvk8w059.14","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvk8w059.14","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter assesses the everyday life of the inhabitants who remained in the city, not having been taken off to a Lazaretto or to a quarantine centre. It provides a more nuanced picture of the identity and reactions of the poorer levels of society through a discussion of how the criminal justice system in Florence worked in practice. These records reveal that many prosecutions were of individuals and families who had adopted strategies to survive. Trials, interviews, and witness statements reflect the personal experience of how the city's population dealt with being shut up at home, leading to isolation and deprival of their normal means of support as families were split up and economic activities were banned. Court records reflect not just an extraordinary amount of social activity, despite the imposition of measures of social and sanitary control, as people escaped from locked-up houses, climbed over roofs to visit family, friends, or prostitutes, and tried to carry on their normal trades to help starving families. If economic hardship formed a major motive for people breaking out of and into houses, there were also organised gangs who exploited the crisis and conducted criminal activities, which led to the theft of valuables from locked houses and isolation and quarantine centres.","PeriodicalId":131079,"journal":{"name":"Florence Under Siege","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-08-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130261437","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This chapter discusses the origins and spread of plague in northern Italy. Plague arrived in Italy in 1629 with French and German troops. It is no accident that the initial cases of plague identified in October of 1629 were first in Piedmont in the Val di Susa, west of Turin and near the border with France, and secondly in the Valtellina in Lombardy, subsequently travelling to Lake Como to the north of Milan. Other cities in northern Italy soon became infected and on May 6, 1630, the authorities as far south as Bologna announced the official outbreak of plague. Judging by the rapidity with which plague spread between these northern urban centres, one would have expected the epidemic to have arrived in Tuscany by early May, given that Bologna is only 65 miles north of Florence, but it was delayed by both natural and man-made factors. Tuscany is separated from Reggio-Emilia by the Apennine mountain range, which provided a physical barrier and facilitated the control of traffic coming from the north. The chapter then traces the preventive measures adopted by the health board as the plague approached Tuscany, including cordons sanitaires along frontiers, the removal of the sick to quarantine centres, and the rapid burial of the dead.
{"title":"The Invasion of Plague in Early Modern Italy","authors":"J. Henderson","doi":"10.2307/j.ctvk8w059.7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvk8w059.7","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter discusses the origins and spread of plague in northern Italy. Plague arrived in Italy in 1629 with French and German troops. It is no accident that the initial cases of plague identified in October of 1629 were first in Piedmont in the Val di Susa, west of Turin and near the border with France, and secondly in the Valtellina in Lombardy, subsequently travelling to Lake Como to the north of Milan. Other cities in northern Italy soon became infected and on May 6, 1630, the authorities as far south as Bologna announced the official outbreak of plague. Judging by the rapidity with which plague spread between these northern urban centres, one would have expected the epidemic to have arrived in Tuscany by early May, given that Bologna is only 65 miles north of Florence, but it was delayed by both natural and man-made factors. Tuscany is separated from Reggio-Emilia by the Apennine mountain range, which provided a physical barrier and facilitated the control of traffic coming from the north. The chapter then traces the preventive measures adopted by the health board as the plague approached Tuscany, including cordons sanitaires along frontiers, the removal of the sick to quarantine centres, and the rapid burial of the dead.","PeriodicalId":131079,"journal":{"name":"Florence Under Siege","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-08-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114934563","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"PLAGUE AND PUBLIC HEALTH:","authors":"","doi":"10.2307/j.ctvk8w059.9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvk8w059.9","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":131079,"journal":{"name":"Florence Under Siege","volume":"31 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-08-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128153890","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-08-20DOI: 10.12987/9780300249286-010
{"title":"7. Lazaretti and Isolation: ‘More feared than death itself’?","authors":"","doi":"10.12987/9780300249286-010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.12987/9780300249286-010","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":131079,"journal":{"name":"Florence Under Siege","volume":"169 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-08-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127508866","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This chapter focuses on religion and the works of art commissioned during and after the epidemic. The strategies adopted by Church and state in Florence were seen as vital to placate the wrath of God, one of the main causes of plague. Indeed, there was close collaboration between Church and state, as each shared the common aim of employing the power of local saints and images to intervene with the wrathful deity. Secular and ecclesiastical authorities also shared similar concerns for public health, by limiting direct participation of the majority of the population in major processions. Official devotion and major processions centred on three major ecclesiastical sites: the Cathedral; SS. Annunziata, which housed the city's main miraculous shrine; and S. Marco, where the body of St Antonino was kept in an elaborate crystal casket. Belief in the power of religion during plague is reflected by the importance placed on artistic patronage in each of these three churches during and following the epidemic. As during previous epidemics, the 1630s plague led to a lasting legacy of commissions of new chapels, altarpieces, frescoes, costly silver candlesticks, and humble ex-voti, reflecting that plague in Florence, as elsewhere, led to the enrichment of churches.
{"title":"RELIGION IN THE TIME OF PLAGUE","authors":"J. Henderson","doi":"10.2307/j.ctvk8w059.11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvk8w059.11","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter focuses on religion and the works of art commissioned during and after the epidemic. The strategies adopted by Church and state in Florence were seen as vital to placate the wrath of God, one of the main causes of plague. Indeed, there was close collaboration between Church and state, as each shared the common aim of employing the power of local saints and images to intervene with the wrathful deity. Secular and ecclesiastical authorities also shared similar concerns for public health, by limiting direct participation of the majority of the population in major processions. Official devotion and major processions centred on three major ecclesiastical sites: the Cathedral; SS. Annunziata, which housed the city's main miraculous shrine; and S. Marco, where the body of St Antonino was kept in an elaborate crystal casket. Belief in the power of religion during plague is reflected by the importance placed on artistic patronage in each of these three churches during and following the epidemic. As during previous epidemics, the 1630s plague led to a lasting legacy of commissions of new chapels, altarpieces, frescoes, costly silver candlesticks, and humble ex-voti, reflecting that plague in Florence, as elsewhere, led to the enrichment of churches.","PeriodicalId":131079,"journal":{"name":"Florence Under Siege","volume":" 3","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-08-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132075709","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"List of Plates, Maps, Figures and Tables","authors":"","doi":"10.2307/j.ctvk8w059.3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvk8w059.3","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":131079,"journal":{"name":"Florence Under Siege","volume":"222 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-08-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124406547","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"[Illustrations]","authors":"","doi":"10.2307/j.ctvk8w059.12","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvk8w059.12","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":131079,"journal":{"name":"Florence Under Siege","volume":"35 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-08-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130484522","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-08-20DOI: 10.12987/9780300249286-012
{"title":"9. Epilogue: The Return and End of Plague, 1632–3","authors":"","doi":"10.12987/9780300249286-012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.12987/9780300249286-012","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":131079,"journal":{"name":"Florence Under Siege","volume":"37 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-08-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117116358","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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