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A vivid recreation of how the governors and governed of early seventeenth-century Florence confronted, suffered, and survived a major epidemic of plague SURVIVING PLAGUE IN AN EARLY MODERN CITY – FLORENCE UNDER SIEGE BY JOHN HENDERSON... more

A vivid recreation of how the governors and governed of early seventeenth-century Florence confronted, suffered, and survived a major epidemic of plague

SURVIVING PLAGUE IN AN EARLY MODERN CITY – FLORENCE UNDER SIEGE BY JOHN HENDERSON

In Florence Under Siege: Surviving Plague in an Early Modern City, John Henderson examines how a major city fought, suffered and survived the impact of plague. Going beyond traditional oppositions between rich and poor, this book provides a nuanced and more compassionate interpretation of government policies in practice, by recreating the very human reactions and survival strategies of families and individuals at all levels of society.

Wider Implications
Each age faces the challenge of new diseases from cholera to AIDS and Ebola, but plague remains the paradigm against which reactions to epidemics are often judged. Early modern Italy, famous as the birthplace of the Renaissance, has long been portrayed as having developed public health policies which formed the basis of models developed in later centuries. This book, while focussing on seventeenth-century Florence, examines the Tuscan capital within a wider Italian and European context to assess the effect and real impact of these policies on the city, the neighbourhood, street and family. Writing in a vivid and approachable way, this book unearths the forgotten stories of doctors and administrators struggling to cope with the sick and dying, and the impact of plague on individuals and families through the personal diaries of the literate to the verbatim testimony in court cases of the poorer levels of society.

Official Reactions
Many histories of public health concentrate on chronicling government policies, whereas here equal emphasis is placed on the lived experience. Underpinning this narrative is a vivid recreation of the stories and experiences of individuals who endured and survived the epidemic. Contemporary political and medical rhetoric often blamed disproportionately the lower levels of society as the spreaders and even cause of plague, but official measures are examined to establish their real impact on the whole population. These included the cordon sanitaire along the frontiers of the Tuscan state; sanitary surveys of the living conditions of the poor; inspection and locking up of infected houses. A range of treatments are examined from the plague doctor’s prescribing of the ‘miraculous’ drug of Theriac to the surgeons’ lancing of buboes to the complex recipes devised by empirics.

Lazaretti or Isolation Hospitals
Lazaretti or vast, crowded isolation hospitals above all served to distinguish many Italian cities from their northern European counterparts. Some cities built new structures, but many took over existing buildings, as in the case of Florence, where the beautiful Romanesque convent and church of San Miniato al Monte on the hill overlooking Florence to the south of the river Arno became the city’s major Lazaretto. Together with the other Lazaretti around the city, San Miniato housed and treated over 10,000 people during the epidemic of 1630 to 1631, but did, as was claimed at the time, they lead to a reduction in mortality? or simply provide a convenient way for the poor to be enclosed?

Religion
Religious strategies also form an important theme of this book, reflecting contemporary belief in the necessity to placate divine ire at the sins of Mankind, through prayers and public masses. But elaborate processions with holy relics were an integral part of the ceremonial response. How far did this lead to conflict with the health board officers given the perceived threat of the spread of disease when large numbers collected together? The plague in Florence also led to the commissioning of major works of art and architecture from the Medici Grand-ducal family to the more and less affluent, as they paid for chapels, altarpieces, and silver and wax votive offerings. This truly inter-disciplinary study examines these commissions and asks how far the iconography of votive saints in Tuscany, such as St. Sebastian and San Rocco, have in common or differ from other parts of Italy.

Individual Experience and Survival Strategies
Florence Under Siege seeks above all to look behind the optimistic gloss of official printed accounts to examine individual experiences. It recreates the often moving and tragic narratives of the individuals who ran isolation hospitals, the doctors who treated plague victims, and above all of the ordinary men and women left bereft and confused by the sickness and death of family members.

Plague on Trial
Analysis of the large corpus of contemporary court records provides fascinating evidence of the numerous survival strategies through which individuals coped with the very real fear generated by a city under siege from an invisible enemy and how they attempted to side-step regulations in order to preserve their possessions and their normal way of life. Examination of detailed trials reveals not just the extraordinary variety of ‘crimes’, but also reveals greater compassion than suggested by the draconian punishments prescribed in law and thus helps to break down the traditional picture of the opposition of rich and poor, the governors and governed.

Chapter outline:
1. Plague and Public Health in Italy and Europe Plague and Italy’s Reputation in Europe Historians and Plague in Italy Plague in Florence: Themes and Sources

PART I, FLORENCE UNDER SIEGE: COPING WITH PLAGUE
2. The Invasion of Plague in Early Modern Italy Plague approaches Florence:
Border Controls and cordons sanitaires
Plague on the Outskirts of Florence, Summer 1630
Plague Mortality in the City, 1630–1

3. Medicine, the Environment and the Poor Doctors and Diagnosis: ‘A certain sickness with suspicion of contagion’
Preventive Measures and the Environment
‘Filth is the mother of corruption’: The Sanitary Survey, August 1630
Marginalisation of the Poor: ‘It was not the time to make the body of the city worse with such malign humours, the most inclined towards putrefaction’
Poverty and Charity: The Growth of ‘misery, necessity and sickness’

4. Plague and Public Health: Treating the Body of the City and the Body of the Poor
Official Reactions in August Public Health and Prevention
The Control of Plague Doctors and Medicine: Treating the Body of the Poor

5. Fighting the Plague
The Spread and Impact of Plague
Coping with Death
Quarantine and the City
Quarantine and the Countryside

PART II, RELIGION, ISOLATION AND SURVIVAL

6. Religion in the Time of Plague
The Plague Approaches: The Church and Preventive Measures Plague at its Height and the Practice of Religion
Celebrating with Sant’Antonino: The Plague Relents
Plague, Religion and the Grand-Ducal Court: The Cult of Domenica da Paradiso
Religion and Quarantine: ‘Providing for the health of the soul is more important than [providing for the health] of the body’
SS. Annunziata and Plague
The Madonna dell’ Impruneta and the Return of Plague, 1633

7. Lazaretti and Isolation: ‘More feared than death itself’?
First Experiments and the Hospital of Messer Bonifazio
The New Isolation and Quarantine Centres Lazaretti: Form and Function
‘The medicines in this period play an important role’
Spiritual Medicine
Assessing Patient Mortality: ‘More feared than death itself’?
Life, Death and Serving the Poor Sick: ‘I desire that you pray God for me, because I am suffering under the heaviest of crosses’
Life in the Lazaretti: The Perspective of the Staff

8. Surviving Plague
Plague and the Law
Punishment and Enforcement
Prosecution: General Categories
Prosecuting the Popolo

EPILOGUE: THE RETURN AND END OF PLAGUE, 1632–3

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