Florence Under Siege: Surviving Plague in an Early Modern City 9780300249286

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FLORENCE UNDER SIEGE

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FLORENCE UNDER SIEGE Surviving Plague in an Early Modern City

John Henderson

YALE UNIVERSIT Y PRESS NEW HAVEN AND LONDON iii

Copyright © 2019 John Henderson All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press) without written permission from the publishers. For information about this and other Yale University Press publications, please contact: U.S. Office: [email protected] yalebooks.com Europe Office: [email protected] yalebooks.co.uk Set in Minion Pro by IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd Printed in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall Library of Congress Control Number: 2019940782 ISBN 978-0-300-19634-4 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 iv

For Christianne, with love

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 CONTENTS

List of Plates, Maps, Figures and Tables Abbreviations, Currency, Weights and Measures Acknowledgements 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

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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

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Medicine, the Environment and the Poor 51 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’

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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

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CONTENTS

The Impact of Plague and Quarantine 118 The Spread and Impact of Plague  Coping with Death  Quarantine and the City  Quarantine and the Countryside Part II Religion, Isolation and Survival

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Religion in the Time of Plague 149 The Plague Approaches: The Church and preventive measures  Plague at its Height and the Practice of Religion  Celebrating with S. 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

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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

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Surviving Plague 229 Plague and the Law  Punishment and Enforcement  Prosecution: General Categories  Prosecuting the Popolo

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Epilogue: The Return and End of Plague, 1632–3

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Notes Bibliography Index

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 PLATES, MAPS, FIGURES AND TABLES

Plates

1 Porta S. Gallo, the northern-most medieval gate of the city of Florence. Photo: Author. 2 A model of the ghetto in early modern Florence. By permission of the Ghetto Mapping Project and the Eugene Grant Research Program on Jewish History and Culture in Early Modern Europe, Medici Archive Project, Florence. 3 Luigi Baccio del Bianco, The Plague in Florence in 1630 (late seventeenth century). Venerabile Arciconfraternita della Misericordia di Firenze. Akg-images / Rabatti and Domingie. 4 Justus Sustermans, Ferdinando II de’ Medici as a Young Man (1628). Palazzo Pitti, Florence. 5 Stefano Bonsignori, Map of the City of Florence (1584). Details: a. Hospital of Messer Bonifazio; b. Convent of S. Onofrio (1584); c. Hospital of S. Maria Nuova. By permission of DECIMA. 6 Tickets sent by the Sanità to the Misericordia. a. Monna Lisabetta vedova; b. Benedetto di Antonio Confortini. AVamfi, Morini C 253, under dates, 16 and 28 June 1633. By permission of the Venerabile Arciconfraternita della Misericordia di Firenze / Photo: Author. 7 Louis Rouhier, Fumigators Disinfecting Household Objects, from The Diligent Orders and Measures Undertaken in the City of Rome during the Plague (Rome, 1657). Wellcome Collection. 8 A Physician Wearing a Seventeenth-century Plague Preventive Costume (c. 1910). Wellcome Collection. 9 A handbill with a recipe for an unguent against plague (1630). ASF, Miscellanea Medicea 389, XVIII, 3.26. By permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali / Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Prot. ix

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N.1233/CL 28.28.01/1184 / Photo: Author. 10 A pamphlet with recipes for preserving against and treating plague (1630). ASF, Misc. Medicea 389, XXX, 3.28. By permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali / Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Prot. N.1233/CL 28.28.01/1184 / Photo: Author. 11 Stefano Bonsignori, Map of the City of Florence (1584). a. Northern sample block of roads in parish of S. Lorenzo; b. Southern sample block of roads in parish of S. Lorenzo. By permission of DECIMA. 12 The chapel and shrine of the Madonna, S. Annunziata. By permission of the Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio per la Città Metropolitana di Firenze e per le Province di Pistoia e Prato / Photo: Author. 13 Relics of S. Antonino under the altar, Cappella Salviati, S. Marco. By permission of the Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio per la Città Metropolitana di Firenze e per le Province di Pistoia e Prato / Photo: Author. 14 The façade of S. Marco seen from Piazza S. Marco. By permission of the Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio per la Città Metropolitana di Firenze e per le Province di Pistoia e Prato / Photo: Author. 15 The Cappella Salviati, 1579–91, S. Marco. By permission of the Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio per la Città Metropolitana di Firenze e per le Province di Pistoia e Prato / Photo: Author. 16 Baccio del Bianco (?), Sant’Antonino Protects Florence (1630–3). Biblioteca Marucelliana, Florence, Dis. Vol. D 113. By permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali / Biblioteca Marucelliana, Prot. N. 689; Class. 28.13.10/3.1 / Photo: Author. 17 S. Antonino Cloister, S. Marco, showing frescoes in the lunettes of scenes from the life of S. Antonino. By permission of the Museo di S. Marco, Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali, Polo museale della Toscana / Photo: Author. 18 Pietro Dandini, S. Antonino Visiting the Sick During the Plague in Florence in 1448–9, Chiostro di S. Antonino, S. Marco (1693). By permission of the Museo di S. Marco, Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali, Polo museale della Toscana / Photo: Margaret Bell. 19 Domenico Cresti (Passignano), Translation of the Body of St. Antoninus, Chapel of S. Antonino, S. Marco. By permission of the Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio per la Città Metropolitana di Firenze e per le Province di Pistoia e Prato / Photo: Margaret Bell.

PLATES, MAPS, FIGURES AND TABLES

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20 A frontispiece depicting Domenica da Paradiso in Ignazio del Nente, Vita e costumi et intelligenze spirituali della gran Serva di Dio, e Veneranda Madre Suor Domenica dal Paradiso fondatrice del monasterio della Croce di Firenze dell’Ordine di San Domenico (Venice, 1664). 21 Antonio del Pollaiuolo and Piero del Pollaiuolo, The Martydom of St. Sebastian (1475). National Gallery, London. 22 Cappella di S. Rocco (Palli), SS. Annunziata, restructured by Jacopo Palli (1631–2). By permission of the Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio per la Città Metropolitana di Firenze e per le Province di Pistoia e Prato / Photo: Author. 23 Cesare Dandini, The Assumption of the Virgin and Saints Jacopo and Rocco with a View of the City of Florence (1631–2), Cappella di S. Rocco (Palli), SS. Annunziata. By permission of the Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio per la Città Metropolitana di Firenze e per le Province di Pistoia e Prato / Photo: Author. 24 Jacques Callot, The Fair at Impruneta (1622). Rijkssmuseum, Amsterdam. a. General view; b. Detail of the Strappado. 25 The church of S. Maria Impruneta. Photo: Author. 26 Giovanni Francesco Bonetti, Plan of the Lazaretto in Milan, from Vero dissegno con le misure giuste del grande lazaretto di S. Gregorio di Milano, come si trovava nel tempo della gran peste l’anno 1630. Wellcome Collection. 27 Louis Rouhier, Isola of San Bartolommeo, from The Diligent Orders and Measures Undertaken in the City of Rome during the Plague (Rome, 1657). Wellcome Collection. 28 Thomaso Porcacchi, L’isole più famose del mondo (Venice, 1572). Wellcome Collection. 29 The façade of the church of S. Miniato al Monte. Photo: Author. 30 The façade of the church of S. Francesco al Monte. Photo: Author. 31 Villa Rusciano, the largest quarantine centre in Florence. Photo: Author. 32 The view from Fiesole towards the city of Florence. Photo: Author. 33 Stefano Bonsignori, Map of the City of Florence (1584). Detail showing the church and convent of S. Miniato al Monte. By permission of DECIMA. 34 The entrance to Fortezza and the monastery at S. Miniato al Monte. By permission of the Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio per la Città Metropolitana di Firenze e per le Province di Pistoia e Prato / Photo: Author. 35 The path connecting the Lazaretti of S. Miniato al Monte and S. Francesco al Monte. Photo: Author.

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36 Interior of the church of S. Miniato al Monte. By permission of the Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio per la Città Metropolitana di Firenze e per le Province di Pistoia e Prato / Photo: Author. 37 Anon (Orazio Colombo), Punishment and Execution of Untori or Plaguespreaders in Milan (1630), after engraving by ‘Bassano’ or ‘Francesco Vallato’. Wellcome Collection. 38 Church of S. Francesco al Monte interior. By permission of the Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio per la Città Metropolitana di Firenze e per le Province di Pistoia e Prato / Photo: Author. 39 Giovanni Stradano, Piazza of the Mercato Vecchio. Palazzo Vecchio, Sala di Guardaroba. © 2019 Photo Scala, Florence. Maps

4.1 Location of Lazaretti and quarantine centres around Florence. 5.1 Parish of S. Lorenzo: total infected with plague, October–December 1630. Source: ASF, Uffiziali di Sanità 463. Drawn by Starroula Koutroumpi. 5.2 Parish of S. Lorenzo: plague burials, October–December 1630. Source: Avamfi 259. Drawn by Starroula Koutroumpi. 5.3 Parish of S. Lorenzo: total infected with plague, October 1630– September 1631. Source: ASF, Uffiziali di Sanità 464. Drawn by Starroula Koutroumpi. Figures

2.1 Plague burials in Florence, 1630–1. Source: Anon., ‘Letter to Francesco Rondinelli’, Library of Carlo Cipolla. 2.2 Burials in the parish of S. Lorenzo, 1630–1. Source: Biblioteca Mediceo Laurenziana, Archivio Capitolare di S. Lorenzo, ‘Libri dei Morti’, 46. 2.3 Burials in the parish of S. Lorenzo, 1620–39 (monthly burials and annual average). Source: Biblioteca Mediceo Laurenziana, Archivio Capitolare di S. Lorenzo, ‘Libri dei Morti’, 41–8. 3.1 Parish of S. Lorenzo: numbers infected (1630–1) and sanitary survey (August 1630). Source: Avamfi, 258; ASF, Compagnie Religiose Soppresse da Pietro Leopoldo, 1418.

PLATES, MAPS, FIGURES AND TABLES

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4.1 Admissions to hospitals and Lazaretti, 29 August–30 September 1630. Source: Avamfi 258. 5.1 Plague burials in Florence: Lazaretti and Campisanti, August 1630–July 1631. Source: Anon., ‘Letter to Francesco Rondinelli’, Library of Carlo Cipolla. 7.1 Admissions, recoveries and deaths at the main Lazaretti of Florence: Bonifazio, S. Miniato al Monte, S. Francesco, Badia Fiesolana, 1630–1. Source: Anon., ‘Letter to Francesco Rondinelli’, Library of Carlo Cipolla. 8.1 Plague prosecutions in Florence, 1630–1. Source: ASF, Uffiziali di Sanità, Negozi, 150-160. 8.2 Prosecutions by gender, 1630–1. Source: ASF, Uffiziali di Sanità, Negozi, 150-160. Tables

8.1 Categories of prosecution by season, 1630–1. Source: ASF, Uffiziali di Sanità, Negozi, 150-160. 8.2 Categories of punishments, 1630–1. ASF, Uffiziali di Sanità, Negozi, 150-160. 8.3 Prosecutions by gender, 1630–1. Source: ASF, Uffiziali di Sanità, Negozi, 150-160. 9.1 Admissions and deaths at the Lazaretto of Monticelli, 20 April– 2 September 1633. Source: Avamfi 259.

 ABBREVIATIONS, CURRENCY, WEIGHTS AND MEASURES

Abbreviations

AAF ASF AVamfi BMLF BNCF DP Sanità

Archivio Arcivescovile di Firenze Archivio di Stato di Firenze Archivio della Venerabile Arciconfraternita della Misericordia di Firenze Biblioteca Mediceo Laurenziana di Firenze Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze Decreti e Partiti Ufficiali di Sanità Currency in Florence

1 gold scudo = 1 fiorino = 7 lire 1 lira = 20 soldi 1 soldo = 12 denari 1 crazia = 1 soldo, 8 denari Weight

1 Libbra = approx. 1/3 of a kilogram 1 Oncia = 1/12 of 1 Libbra Capacity

1 staio = of grain = 18–20 kilograms 1 sacco = 3 staia xiv

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1 Moggio = 24 staia or 585 litres 1 Barile = 20 fiaschi (for oil or wine) Length

1 canna = 2.92 metres 1 Braccio = 0.583 of a metre Source: F. Diaz, Il Granducato di Toscana – I Medici (Turin 1987), p. ix. Wages in 1630–3

Unskilled worker: 25 soldi per day Skilled worker (master mason): 40 soldi per day See : cells L354, K354.

 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My work on plague goes back many years. I was first infected with interest in plague when working under the generous and stimulating supervision of Carlo Cipolla at the European University Institute in Florence while I was completing my PhD dissertation. This particular book had its genesis at the Centre for Metropolitan History, at the Institute of Historical Research, where I co-directed with Derek Keene an ESRC-funded project on plague in early modern England and Italy (No. R000231192). I owe much for the initial conception to Derek and to its development with Justin Champion, who subsequently published a ground-breaking study on the Great Plague of London in 1665 (see Bibliography). My contribution dealt with mapping the relationship between disease and the built environment in the Florentine parish of S. Lorenzo; the results appear here and elsewhere. In this study I benefited from the advice and help of many people, from Derek Keene to Gabriella Orefice, University of Florence, to Colin Rose and Nick Terpstra, to most recently Stavroula Koutroumpi of the University of Cambridge, who has generously devoted much time to drawing the maps appearing in Chapter 5. John Dawson, formerly of the Literary and Linguistic Centre of the University of Cambridge, has been invaluable in helping me over many years to sort, organise and analyse the statistical data concerning plague both for the city of Florence and the parish of S. Lorenzo, and also very generously offered to proofread the manuscript and compile the index. I am also indebted to Flavia Manservigi for her meticulous checking of the translation of many passages. The project has subsequently changed and developed in many ways so that the book now approaches plague from a whole series of perspectives to produce what, I hope, is an histoire totale of the subject. Consequently, I owe a debt of gratitude to many people in different disciplines to whom I have talked xvi

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over the years. I have had many stimulating conversations about plague over the years: with Roger Schofield and Richard Smith at the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Studies, where I also benefited considerably from the advice of Jim Oeppen and Ros Davis; with Giulia Calvi and Alessandro Pastore in Italy; and with Sam Cohn, Christos Lynteris and Lukas Engelmann in the UK, especially within the context of their ERC-funded project ‘Visualising Plague’ at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities in Cambridge, often over enjoyable lunches at Wolfson College. I have also learnt much from talking with my colleagues and friends in the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology at Birkbeck, University of London, who have often provided me with new perspectives on my work. I have benefited too over the years from valuable feedback from academic seminar audiences from Cambridge to London to Oxford, Glasgow and Warwick, to Basel and Bielefeld, to Melbourne and Sydney, to whom I have presented parts of chapters. Earlier versions of parts of chapters have also appeared as articles in journals or books (listed in the Bibliography) and I am grateful to Yale University Press for allowing me to publish this material. I have also benefited from the feedback and comments of friends and colleagues, who have read parts or all of this book, including Jonathan Nelson, Freddie Jacobs, Sheila Barker, Valentina Živković, Sheilagh Ogilvie and Giovanni Pagliuolo, who has provided much valuable advice about illustrations. I am extremely grateful to Yale University Press’s two referees, who went out of their way to provide detailed and invaluable comments on both the structure and contents, which have served to greatly improve the manuscript. I owe much to my friends and colleagues in Florence, who over the years have provided much generous hospitality and intellectual exchange: Marco and Giovanna Geddes da Filicaia; Franco and Maria Carnevale; Esther Diana of the Centro di Documentazione per la Storia dell’Assistenza e della Sanità; Paolo Pirillo and Isabella Chabot for their never-failing hospitality; Giulia Calvi for generously sharing her enthusiasm for both plague and visits to Tuscan thermal baths. There are a number of historians in Florence who have provided much useful advice over the years, including the late Carlo Corsini, as well as Lorenzo del Panta, who have both generously discussed my work and shared their own findings with me, while most recently I have enjoyed many productive conversations with Andrea Zagli on epidemics in early modern Tuscany, and I have more generally learned from Giuseppe Parigino’s expertise on economic history. I owe a great debt to a number of academic institutions in Florence, which have provided me with financial and intellectual support. I was privileged to

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have been Visiting Professor in Autumn 2013 at Villa I Tatti, Harvard University’s Center for Renaissance Studies, under the delightful leadership of Lina and Anna Pertile, where I completed the first three chapters of this book. I have also been hosted as visiting fellow at the Department of History and Civilization, which provided a stimulating environment within which to develop my ideas and project. Recently I have been associated with the Medici Archive Project in Florence, where Alessio Assonitis and his colleagues have provided a welcome base to develop research themes on early modern Tuscan history together. Then over the past three years I have been very fortunate to have been a Visiting Research Professor at Monash University, based both in Melbourne and at the Monash Prato Centre. This post has provided me with the time and space to bring this project to a conclusion, and I have benefited considerably from my conversations with colleagues and friends in Australia and Italy, working closely above all with Peter Howard. I have dedicated this book to Christianne Heal, who has given me unstinting support over the many years this project has taken to mature. I owe a special debt to the staff of a series of archives and libraries in Florence whose cooperation have always proved invaluable, including the Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Villa I Tatti, the Kunsthistorisches Institut, the Marucelliana, the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana and the Archivio Arcivescovile di Firenze. I owe a special gratitude to the archivists of the Venerabile Archiconfraternita della Misericordia di Firenze, who gave me access to their unique holdings: to Don Foresto Nicolai and his warm welcome and most recently to Barbara Affolta and Laura Rossi for their generous help. I have also been very fortunate in the help I have received in rapidly obtaining permission to reproduce pictures in this book, including from Giovanni Pagliuolo of Villa I Tatti; Dottoressa Marilena Tamassia of the Museo di S. Marco; Dottoressa Maria Maugeri of the Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio per la Città Metropolitana di Firenze e le Provincie di Pistoia e Prato; the Venerabile Arciconfraternita della Misericordia di Firenze; and Dr Gabriele Mancuso of the Medici Archive Project in Florence. Finally, I should like to thank the staff of Yale University Press in London for their enthusiasm for this book project, from my initial conversations with Robert Baldock to more recent discussions with Heather McCallum, as well as for the very expert advice of Marika Lysandrou and Percie Edgeler concerning the plates, and the careful editing of the manuscript by Rachael Lonsdale and Clarissa Sutherland.

chapter 1



PLAGUE AND PUBLIC HEALTH IN ITALY AND EUROPE

Considering that fortresses are built for defence against enemies [and] to secure states, it was not unbecoming to use them [Lazaretti] against the major enemy of humankind, and thus almost enclose it there in a strong prison to free the city from the cruel slaughter of death.1

Contemporaries and historians alike have often invoked the analogy between plague and warfare in their discussion of the fight against epidemic disease, as in this passage of the Panegyric written by Mario Guiducci for the young Grand Duke of Tuscany, Ferdinand II. Guiducci praises him for his central role in the campaign against plague in Florence in 1630–1, and in particular for assigning the Fortress of S. Miniato as an isolation hospital or Lazaretto. More broadly, in his discussion of the causes of the epidemic, the chancellor of the Florentine health board, Fulvio Giubetti, declared that it was ‘God’s punishment or God’s war’, a theme which reflects the long tradition that saw plagues as divine retribution for the sins of mankind.2 There was also often a very literal link between warfare and plagues, as armies carried endemic and epidemic disease with them as they crossed countries and continents. This was true of the epidemic which is at the centre of this book, afflicting both northern and southern Europe between the years 1613 and 1666. The spread of disease had been facilitated by the movement of troops during the Thirty Years’ War, and plague arrived in northern Italy in 1629 with the invading German and French armies, during the struggle for the succession of the Duchy of Mantua and Monferrato.3 Dr Alessandro Tadino, the Milanese physician and member of Milan’s health board, placed the full responsibility for the spread of the epidemic on the German mercenaries, who numbered some 25,000, and whom he portrayed 1

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as having little regard for the observance of sanitary legislation, for they moved from place to place without health passes.4 Plague and Italy’s Reputation in Europe

Plagues, and more generally the campaigns mounted by governments to address emergencies caused by outbreaks of epidemic disease, have remained an important area of historical research, and continue to remain relevant to the present day. As each age faces the challenge of new epidemic diseases, from yellow fever and cholera to tuberculosis, AIDS, SARS, bird flu and Ebola, plague remains a paradigm against which reactions to other epidemics have been judged. Plague is often portrayed as having provided a template for public health, with some of the main strategies developed in the Renaissance and early modern periods as models for later policies. Italy has been seen as central to this process, developing the first ‘effective’ plague measures; for, just as the Renaissance was viewed as gradually ‘civilising’ countries north of the Alps, so was the influence of Italian administrative reactions to epidemic disease.5 This book will re-examine these optimistic, and sometimes positivistic, narratives to determine the effect of these public health policies on the life of local inhabitants. In the process we will argue for a more nuanced approach to the experience of epidemic disease than simply an opposition of the rich and the poor. We will examine, on the one hand, the mixed motivations and attitudes of those who ran governments and, on the other, the varied reactions and activities of the lower levels of society, suggesting they were far from passive actors who accepted decrees and legislation from above. Plague in Florence is the main focus of this book, a topic made famous by Giovanni Boccaccio’s detailed description of the impact of the fourteenthcentury Black Death on the city, in his introduction to The Decameron: And in that [pestilence] no learning nor measure was of any use, such as the clearing of the city of much refuse by officials, who were appointed for that purpose, and the prohibition of any sick person from entering [the city] and many counsels [consilia] given for the preservation of health . . . at the beginning of Spring of the said year, it began to demonstrate its doleful effects in a miraculous manner.6

This account has become part of the collective memory of late medieval plague and, despite its literary nature, it reflects some of the secular and

PLAGUE AND PUBLIC HEALTH IN ITALY AND EUROPE

3

spiritual strategies adopted by Florence, which developed into the city’s public health policies over the next 300 years. The introduction to the Decameron has retained an iconic status comparable to the much later and longer accounts of the last epidemics of plague to affect Milan (1630) and London (1665), written respectively by Alessandro Manzoni in 1827 and Daniel Defoe in 1722.7 The present study will concentrate on seventeenth-century Italy, which saw two major outbreaks (1629–33 and 1656– 7), described as the most severe since the time of the Black Death.8 Like Manzoni and Defoe, this book will examine in detail the impact of plague on one city in one year, in this case Florence in 1630–1, with a brief account of its return in 1632–3. Even without the addition of the fictional embellishments of Defoe and Manzoni, the detail provided by contemporaries, including chroniclers, the daily correspondence of officials and court records, enables one to present a lively and at times heart-rending discussion and analysis of what it was like to live though a major epidemic. The aim, therefore, is to provide a truly inter-disciplinary account of the impact of and reactions to this epidemic from the demographic to the medical, social, religious and artistic. In this way a series of approaches will be combined, normally reserved for multi-authored collections of essays, to provide a total history.9 The reputation of Italian public health measures in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was reflected in comments by contemporaries in England. Advisers to the Privy Council often looked to Italy for inspiration when threatened by or during an epidemic, and their discussion provides a useful introduction to the main strategies which had been developed by the health boards in Italy by the mid-sixteenth century. In 1563 William Cecil, Lord Burleigh, consulted Cesare Adelmare, the queen’s Italian physician, who wrote a report entitled ‘How the City of London can make arrangements for the plague and many other types of calamity, which afflict the poor’.10 Adelmare also pointed out the deficiencies of the London system. These were repeated in the London College of Physicians’ ‘Advice’ to the Privy Council in early 1630, which again made recommendations ‘according to the custome of Italy’, suggesting that little had changed in the interim.11 The features which Adelmare and later the college stressed as useful were the standard elements of the strategies which had been adopted by Italian states from the mid- to late fifteenth century. Adelmare began by recommending the establishment of a Supreme Magistracy in order to ‘oppose with every diligence the progress of the plague’. In Italy these health boards coordinated the overall control of plague measures within the city and the

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state, making sure that the complex system of identifying plague victims, their quarantining or burial, and the isolation of those who had come into contact with the sick, was enforced.12 The London college in 1631 also pointed out the importance of health passes for goods coming from infected places. In Italy, and in other parts of Europe, cordons sanitaires had been set up; frontiers were closed with neighbouring states infected with plague and trade stopped with the rest of the peninsula. Adelmare also recommended the construction of a Lazaretto or isolation hospital, because, as he says, ‘good orders have never been implemented successfully without a place to which to send the infected’. This idea was taken up again in 1631 when the king’s physician, Theodore de Mayerne, suggested the establishment of a large Lazaretto known as the ‘Charles Godhouse’.13 Finally, special plague cemeteries were to be created outside the city walls. This was an integrated and sophisticated system predicated on the strength of the Italian city-state, traditionally among the largest and most affluent of powers in Renaissance Europe. However, despite avowed English admiration for the Italian system, neither large-scale Lazaretti nor health boards were ever adopted in England as part of metropolitan or urban strategies against plague.14 These administrative and sanitary structures were not simply confined to Italy; they were developed at a later stage in some northern European countries. Measures of isolation and quarantine became part of the panoply of health measures in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. For example, in 1631 the Parlement of Paris ordered every locality in France to establish a health board,15 while famously Henry IV founded his very own pesthouse, the Hôpital St Louis. It was established in 1607, underwritten by the royal purse, and occupied a site of 27 acres outside the city walls. This example may have led Theodore de Mayerne to recommend to the Privy Council the ‘Charles Godhouse’.16 Furthermore, the use and abuse of quarantine became a significant element of government strategies in early modern Europe, leading to accusations that it was being used as a device to block commerce of rival states.17 Though plague may not have affected either mainland Italy or England again after the mid-seventeenth century, its reappearance in Marseille in 1721 and Messina in Sicily in 1743 kept the subject alive for the government and the public, especially as on each occasion it led to the adoption of quarantine measures. Also influential in this regard was Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year. Its publication in 1721 reflects fear that the epidemic of plague in Marseille might spread to England, supporting the British government’s

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unpopular decision to block trade with suspected countries and to forcibly quarantine ships coming from southern France. Plague remained for even longer an ominous threat to Italy, as seen in the outbreak in Messina, even if it had not spread from Marseille.18 Perhaps even more influential for public consciousness of the potential threat was Manzoni’s extraordinary evocation of the severe epidemic which afflicted Milan in 1630 in The Betrothed. Described as the first historical novel in Italian, its success has served to keep plague alive in the popular imagination, even though cholera and malaria took the place of plague as the major public health threats in Europe. Historians and Plague

Plague remained alive in the nineteenth century as a topic for discussion within the medical world and more broadly through the new international congresses of public health. Plague was part of wider debates about the nature of epidemic diseases, how they were spread and thus the appropriate measures to adopt to counter mortality crises. The link between concepts of disease and public health measures helps to explain the continued interest in the identity of plague. This interest fueled the vigorous debate in the nineteenth century over the role of contagion versus miasma as the cause of disease. It provided the context for some of the earliest studies of epidemics in both Italy and England, including Alfonso Corradi’s multi-volume work, Annali delle epidemie in Italia (1865–95), and Charles Creighton’s A History of Epidemics in Britain (1891).19 The issue as to whether plague was contagious or not had been at the heart of the discussion at the Congresso degli Scienziati in Milan in 1844.20 With this background in mind, it is no coincidence that one of the main preoccupations of Alfonso Corradi (1833–92), one of the leading physicians and medical historians of his day, should have been to emphasise the importance of the role of ‘contagion’ when studying epidemics in the past.21 It was precisely during the 30-year period in which the Annali, his famous collection of sources, was published that debates were strongest between contagionists and miasmists, particularly in relation to the nature and causes of disease.22 Given the number of times Corradi published passages including the word ‘contagion’, one could be forgiven for concluding that a subtext of his Annali was to further the cause of the contagionists, those who argued for the transmission of disease by individuals rather than simply through the atmosphere.23 He wrote in his discussion of early modern plague measures that:

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The introduction of quarantine testifies to the credit now given to the theory of contagion. The results were unsatisfactory, not because the basic principle was mistaken, but because of the enormous difficulty in putting it into practice, ignorance of the various conditions involved in the spread of infection, the ways in which this happens, the things to which it attaches itself.24

The last volume of his Annali was published posthumously in 1894. This was ironical, since in that year, and two years after his death, a major revolution had taken place in plague studies which was to change fundamentally our understanding of bubonic plague and the methods through which it was transmitted. This was the identification of Yersinia Pestis in Hong Kong by the French bacteriologist Alexandre Yersin in 1894.25 A similar irony had befallen the writer of the first thorough study of epidemic disease in Britain. Charles Creighton was also a physician, described on the title-page of his book as ‘Formerly Demonstrator of Anatomy’ at the University of Cambridge.26 In fact, there was a geographical and chronological association between these two scholars, because Corradi had received an honorary doctorate from Cambridge in 1891, the same year he represented Italy at the International Conference of Hygiene in London.27 Creighton’s two-volume study covered the period from AD 664 to ‘the extinction of plague’.28 His detailed examination of the sources of what he called the ‘bubo-plagues’ still remains valuable today, but his understanding of the nature and identity of these plagues was very much of his time. Unlike Corradi, he was a convinced anti-contagionist, whether in the context of yellow fever, smallpox or plague, and remained until the end of his life resistant to bacteriology. The language he employed in his book is polemical in the extreme: he dismissed the hypothesis of one single source of ‘the plague’ as ‘the merest verbalism, wanting in reality or concreteness’.29 Instead he proposed that plague was a ‘soil poison’, which had a ‘special affinity to the products of cadaveric decomposition’. This explains, according to him, why mortality was particularly high among the clergy, given that they lived in close proximity to graveyards, which he characterised as containing the highest concentration of ‘cadaveric decomposition’.30 Even if Creighton’s theory has now been discounted, Alfonso Corradi has continued to prove influential on plague studies in Italy. His Annali have remained a fundamental collection of sources relating to Italian epidemics. References to this impressive eight-volume work (reissued in 1974) pepper the footnotes of all historians writing on the subject. However,

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more recent medical historians, such as Mirko Grmek and Vivian Nutton, studying medieval and Renaissance Europe, have tended to move away from the opposition of concepts of miasma and contagion and to stress instead the close association of notions of contagion and infection or infected air.31 The eruption of the third plague pandemic in the Far East led to a real recrudescence of interest in plague. Beginning in China’s Yunnan province in 1890, four years later it had reached the British colony of Hong Kong, and by 1896 plague had broken out in Bombay, followed by its spread towards the Middle East and Europe.32 The 1890s are particularly significant, with Yersin’s discovery of the identity of the bacillus causing bubonic plague, which he saw as essentially a disease of rats and other rodents and even of water buffalo. His ideas were not, however, accepted immediately, for British India remained hostile to the idea in the late 1890s and preferred traditional explanations of corrupt air and infected soil. The same was true in Europe. The Tenth International Sanitary Conference in Venice in 1897 saw little challenge to the traditional sanitary practices, which were based on the belief in the inter-personal transmission of plague between people and their possessions.33 Many of the measures taken by the British authorities would have seemed familiar to health officers of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italy, including cordons sanitaires, quarantine, disinfection and cleansing of houses and goods, the transport of infected people to isolation hospitals, and the burying of the dead in plague pits outside the city.34 It was not until the second half of the twentieth century that there was a serious revival of interest in plague among historians of pre-industrial Europe.35 One of the most influential historians of this field was the late Carlo Cipolla, whose series of short studies, the best known of which are Cristofano and the Plague and Public Health and the Medical Profession in the Renaissance, served to popularise the subject in Italy and the English-speaking world.36 He brought to bear his breadth of vision as one of the major economic historians of his generation, interweaving social, economic, demographic and medical history. Even so, his work has recently been the object of criticism, which relates once again to the wider debate about the identification of disease in the historical past. Carlo Cipolla and other historians of his generation, such as Jean-Noel Biraben,37 have been criticised for adopting a Whiggish approach to plague and for judging early modern reactions to plague through the lens of the modern bacteriologist.38

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The question of diagnosis, or rather retrospective diagnosis, has continued to dominate this whole field and has led to a vigorous debate, particularly in relation to the Black Death, starting with the zoologist Graham Twigg’s book, The Black Death: A Biological Reappraisal (1984), in which he attributed the Black Death to anthrax, and continuing with Scott and Duncan’s 2001 study Biology of Plagues: Evidence from Historical Populations, which argued against bubonic plague as the main cause of high mortality during the ‘plagues’ of early modern England.39 Central to this debate have been the innovative studies of Samuel Cohn, beginning with his 2002 book on the Black Death, in which he argues that the ‘symptoms and signs’ of the epidemic did not conform to the classic model of bubonic plague, a theme he has continued to explore in a series of subsequent publications.40 The debate in the literature about the identity of pre-industrial plague has remained as vigorous as it was in the nineteenth century in relation to the third pandemic. There are many, such as Ole Benedictow, who have maintained their belief in the role of bubonic plague, and indeed recently the debate has begun to turn full circle.41 Thus scientists, anthropologists and archaeologists have analysed skeletons in Black Death cemeteries across Europe, including Bergen in Norway, the south of France, Hereford and East Smithfield in London, and published their results in a series of articles; one of the best-known was in Nature in October 2011, although much research has continued subsequently in this field. They concluded that the skeletons definitively died from bubonic plague, based on analysis of skeleton tooth pulp. They had sequenced the genome and identified the DNA and protein signatures of Yersinia Pestis, and discovered two strains of it.42 More recently this debate has been taken further by medieval historians, the most prominent of whom are Ann G. Carmichael, Monica Green and Lester K. Little, and the field has continued to provoke stimulating discussions.43 To whichever side of the debate one subscribes, most historians would now avoid devaluation of contemporary understanding of plague (or of any other disease in the past) when seeking to explain past actions and reactions to mortality crises. In Italy the broad outline of the evolution of plague measures is fairly clear, thanks to the work of historians in various parts of the peninsula, from Venice and Milan and Genoa, to Florence and Tuscany, and Rome and Naples.44 Alessandro Pastore has provided invaluable comparative studies, placing Italian responses to plague within a wide European context, while Grazia Benvenuto has written the first general overview of plague in early modern Italy.45 An even wider geographical and

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chronological scope is provided by the invaluable collection of original sources on plague edited by Costanza and Marco Geddes da Filicaia.46 These studies, which have traced the gradual evolution of the main plague measures outlined by Cesare Adelmare, have shown there was not a simultaneous development throughout Italy. The first Lazaretto has been identified in the 1370s in Dubrovnik, until recently part of the Venetian possessions on the Dalmatian coast,47 while republican Venice itself founded the first Lazaretto in the peninsula in 1423. Milan under the Visconti and Sforza regimes developed a Lazaretto and health board later in the fifteenth century, but republican Florence not until the early sixteenth century.48 By the early seventeenth century all the main features of the system had been well established in many of the major Italian cities in the north and centre to Naples in the south.49 This model was copied even in small provincial towns, as Carlo Cipolla demonstrated for Tuscany in his series of short engaging books published in the late 1970s and early 1980s.50 The present book is envisaged as complementary to his work by examining plague in the capital city of Grand-Ducal Tuscany rather than in the small urban centres, reflecting the greater scale of public health measures for a much larger population.51 The history of the evolution of plague measures raises many questions. First, how far does the picture which has emerged from these western European studies conform to or differ from elsewhere in this period? In recent years medieval and early plague studies have moved away from their concentration on western Europe to Russia and the eastern Mediterranean, for example, and to Dubrovnik, the Byzantine Empire, the Middle East and the Ottoman Empire.52 Secondly, few historians have addressed the question of how far cities in Italy and northern Europe, which followed different types of isolation and quarantine measures, suffered more or less. Was it, for example, more effective to cart off large numbers of sick people to isolation hospitals than to leave them shut up in their own houses? This also raises the wider question of the development of the cordon sanitaire and its role in preventing the spread of plague between states. It has often been assumed that they were effective, as in the example of seventeenth-century Italy, where the 1629–33 outbreak was largely restricted to the north and centre, while the outbreak in 1656–7 was more or less concentrated in the south.53 Indeed the whole question of the advantages and disadvantages of quarantine, whether of states, cities or individuals, was hotly contested at the time, a debate which, as mentioned above, continued well into the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Quarantine also

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raises the questions about how different societies defined ‘effectiveness’, not just in demographic terms, but also in terms of the impact on commerce, the benefit to the common good, and the impact on the individual.54 These are themes which over the years have been raised by the wide range of social and demographic historians who have published studies of the impact of plague across Europe. One only has to think of the pioneering study of Jean-Noël Biraben, Les hommes et la peste of 1975, or Paul Slack’s classic study of early modern England, which remains a model for examining the impact of and reactions to plague in pre-industrial society, while the articles of Roger Schofield are still milestones in the demography of plague. More recently the field has been developed further by examining the topography of plague in early modern London, and in particular the close association between mortality, poverty and high-density housing.55 In Italy too there is a rich tradition of demographic studies associated with plague across the peninsula, and more recently interest has been revived in the links between demographic history and public health. Guido Alfani has also begun to analyse the Italian evidence within a much wider European context, stressing, for example, the greater severity of plague mortality in Italy in the seventeenth century compared to north of the Alps.56 For Florence, Burr Litchfield’s online book Florence Ducal Capital, 1530–1630 (2008) provides a detailed analysis of the social and occupation topography of the whole city, with a city-wide analysis of the impact of plague, and forms the point of departure for my own examination of plague at the neighbourhood level in the parish of S. Lorenzo.57 Most recently, the DECIMA project, under the direction of Nicholas Terpstra, has taken the field further, by its exploration of new methodologies and approaches, to explore not just the socio-economic character of the city, but also to recreate the new sensory and aulic experience of early modern Florentines.58 Another characteristic of evolving plague measures identified by historians of early modern Europe was the growing association between plague and poverty, as Brian Pullan lucidly outlined in his classic article of 1992 on early modern Italy.59 This was the subject of Ann Carmichael’s important book Plague and the Poor in Renaissance Florence (1986), in which she demonstrated the growing intolerance towards the poor and the increasingly strong link between higher mortality and the poorer areas of the city, a theme examined recently by Samuel Cohn in relation to later sixteenth-century epidemics.60 Most historians agree that there was a growing hostility towards poorer members of society, as they came increasingly to be associated with disease. In Italy this has often been put down to demographic increase in the centre

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and north, combined with periods of food shortage in, for example, the 1490s and 1520s. This trend was exacerbated by the appearance of the French Disease or the Great Pox, which had a profound effect on contemporaries’ perception of the link between poverty and disease.61 The most evident difference between the effects of plague and the Great Pox was that, while the plague-ridden appestati died rapidly, those sick from the pox died very slowly. This lingering death impacted strongly on official perceptions of the poor, since their sickness led them to inevitable loss of livelihood, reducing them to the level of beggars, who crowded the streets and shocked citizens by their ravaged features and limbs and stinking breath, which itself was seen as causing and spreading disease.62 If these ideas appear to smack of policies of social control, recently a more nuanced analysis of reactions to plague has emerged which tends to blur the edges between some of these oppositions. This new approach is partly at least due to the influence of social and cultural historians who over the past decade or two have begun to discuss not just the actions of governments, but also to recreate the impact of epidemics on the lives of people lower down the social scale. Instead of the poor being characterised, on the one hand, as the cause of plague or, on the other, as simply ‘victims’ of the system, they are now beginning to be viewed as having played a more active role. Other types of source have been examined which help us to move away from concentrating exclusively on the records of the literate elite of governing classes, medical men and the Church. One of these is the diary, edited by James Amerlang, of the tanner Miquel Parets, written during the Barcelona plague of 1651. The diary is unusual because it does not take the standard uncritical line of so many official accounts of plague from early modern Europe. Amerlang emphasises that the tendency for private interest to predominate over public good was not confined to the poorer classes, but also was a feature of the behaviour of the elite.63 Accounts of plague tend by their very nature to be socially selective, but a richer vein of documentation which helps to throw light on the reactions of a wider social milieu are trial records. Careful examination of Italian judicial records during seventeenth-century epidemics by Giulia Calvi on Florence and Alessandro Pastore on Bologna has enabled us to come to a closer understanding of more popular perceptions of disease.64 Pastore took the field forward through adopting a more European approach by comparing cities in Italy, England and Switzerland, and expanded our points of reference by looking, for example, at the relationship between plague and witchcraft and its association with heresy, particularly striking in post-Reformation society,

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as also explored by William Naphy for Geneva.65 A fascinating picture has emerged from these studies of how individuals at the lower levels of society reacted against measures imposed to restrict their movement and how they managed to survive, through a combination of legal and illegal means; these included stealing and the sale of cloth, from those who had died from plague! Giulia Calvi’s deservedly well-known book is geographically closest to the present study. Her approach grew out of the historical concerns of the world of the hugely influential Italian journal Quaderni storici, whose editors include Carlo Ginzburg, one of the main protagonists of the school of ‘micro-storia’, which has proved so influential and popular. She shares some of their interdisciplinary approaches and more broadly those of historical anthropologists and social and cultural historians who have recently combined forces with the historicists of literary studies. She provides a sensitive and detailed discussion of these sources, principally through analysis of the structures and symbolic codes of the health board’s criminal proceedings. Ten years later, Esther Diana returned to these types of source for her study of Sanità nel quotidiano, an account of everyday occurrences associated with health and disease in the lives and practices of physicians, surgeons and patients, which places the records of the plague of 1630–1 within a wider chronological context.66 The present book also examines the trials of those who had broken plague regulations, though my approach and methodology are different and complementary to these other studies. Building on the work of Calvi, I also examine a wide range of court cases, adopting an analytical and statistical approach which links the ‘crimes’ to the system of punishments, placed within the wider context of the developing campaign against plague in Florence and its demographic and socio-economic impact. These more recent studies of plague in early modern Italy provide a much more nuanced view of the lower levels of society. The ‘poor’ are no longer simply seen as the ‘glands of society’ of contemporary medical discourse, and no longer simply the ‘vagabonds’ or ‘swindlers’ as described in legislation. They emerge as people with homes, rather than just the rootless poor. They are shown to have developed survival strategies to enable them to cope during epidemics, not just in trying to provide sufficient sustenance at a time of economic crisis, but also with the very human qualities of boredom and loneliness when enduring forced quarantine in their houses. Another approach which could be taken much further in the study of plague in early modern Italy is the type of detailed comparison between demographic and fiscal data undertaken by, for example Paul Slack and Justin Champion for early modern England and most recently by Guido Alfani and Samuel Cohn for northern Italy.67

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These studies represent the wider shift in historical studies away from the top-down approach to look at the realities of everyday life during crisis and ally themselves more closely to the interests and approaches of historians in other fields. Micro-historical studies have proved particularly influential, as, for example, in Keith Wrightson’s book on plague in Newcastle-upon-Tyne Ralph Tailor’s Summer, a fascinating multi-layered analysis ‘from below’ of the epidemic in 1636. Lloyd and Dorothy Moote’s 2004 book on the Great Plague of London adopted a similar methodology in their lively recreation of life during the epidemic through the eyes of a series of contemporaries.68 Close analysis and recreation of history from below also form part of the field of the social history of medicine, one of whose most original exponents in Italy is Gianna Pomata, whose book Contracting a Cure took the patient’s eye view of medicine and treatment rather than the traditional doctor-centred perspective.69 Newer approaches in the history of medicine have also contributed new tools in the analysis of one of the traditional staples of studies of this field, plague tracts. Once again building on the publications of earlier generations of historians, the work of scholars such as Jon Arrizabalaga, Samuel Cohn and Colin Jones have tended to underline the variety and differences between these tracts and their evolution, rather than emphasising their similarities over the longue durée.70 Jones’s analysis of tracts by medical men, churchmen and magistrates in early modern France stresses that, while each may have had a separate language stemming from their profession, they also shared similar concerns reflected in a shared dystopic vision outside normal experiences of a world created by plague.71 Samuel Cohn examines writings about plague in most detail in his 2010 book Cultures of Plague. His wide-ranging study is based on a variety of printed material – a total of 609 publications listed in the electronic census Edit 16 – in which plague tracts, while being the most significant component, are balanced by discussion of non-medical writings, including plague poetry and plague narratives based on the experience of their authors. Parallel to this new lay intervention in this field, Cohn argues for a growing awareness by physicians of the social causes of plague, leading to a new emphasis in late-sixteenth-century Italy, especially following the 1575–8 plague, of a greater sensitivity to the link between disease and the physical environment. This also coincided with the time of the greatest impact of the Counter-Reformation on society and therefore on the practices of the clergy during plague. Curiously, the role of religion is an aspect which traditionally has been under-studied, although more recently it has been argued that religion was a powerful form of spiritual medicine.72 This topic has now begun

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to be addressed more thoroughly, especially in volumes of collected essays by art historians, in relation to plague saints, most notably SS. Sebastian and Rocco, and to the role of expiatory processions.73 However, apart from Giulia Calvi’s study of the important role played by the canonisation proceedings of the Dominican tertiary Domenica da Paradiso in the fight against plague in 1630–1, it is only very recently that the role of religion during plague has been addressed for early modern Florence.74 This book is an attempt to put together these approaches, quantitative and qualitative, to produce a histoire totale of the impact and experience of plague in Florence. It interweaves a study of medical, religious and administrative themes within the context of the socio-economic factors relating to the impact of epidemic mortality. It is also part of the more recent emphasis in plague studies mentioned above, moving away from the exclusive concentration on a narrative of oppositions of rich and poor, the governing and the governed, towards a more nuanced picture of how society worked through horizonal as well as vertical links. Kristy Wilson Bowers’ study of early modern Seville of 2013, for example, has characterised the response to plague as more humane than that traditionally posited by historians, with greater cooperation between the city officials and the population.75 This is also one of the main themes of Samuel Cohn’s wide-ranging monograph of 2018, Epidemics: Hate and Compassion from the Plague of Athens to AIDS, which dedicates a substantial chapter to a detailed consideration of plague in Milan in 1629–30 and in particular of the trials of the untori or plague-spreaders, made so well known by Manzoni’s account in The Betrothed.76 The present book also seeks to provide a more balanced view of contemporary policies and reactions to plague. It will be argued that, behind the rhetoric of official and medical pronouncements, there lay greater compassion for the poorer members of society, whether reflected in the attitudes of members of fraternities and religious orders or of judicial officials. The latter show a surprisingly humane approach to those breaking plague regulations, with a remarkable number of people simply arrested and released without further punishment. Plague in Florence: Themes and sources

Florence Under Siege: Surviving Plague in an Early Modern City is a vivid recreation of one city’s experience of plague in seventeenth-century Italy through the eyes of both the government and the governed during an

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epidemic which caused the death of about 12% of the city’s population of 75,000. This book provides a richly textured picture based on the extraordinary range and depth of surviving documentation which makes Italy so unique in this period. Official records, such as the history of the epidemic written by the Grand Duke’s librarian, Francesco Rondinelli, and collections of edicts, are balanced by eyewitness accounts, such as the Diary of Giovanni Baldinucci, who provided a different view of government measures, if less critical, than that of Miquel Parets in Barcelona. Other literate sections of society provide different perspectives, from medical advisers and the College of Physicians, to Church leaders and the Capuchin friars who tended to those sick from plague. The archive of the health board provides the richest vein of evidence for the actual experience of the problems generated by plague for those who lived through the epidemic. As Cipolla has shown for smaller Tuscan urban centres, the daily correspondence of the Sanità (health board) enables one to get behind the glossy façade presented by official histories to examine the appalling conditions and often moving stories in the isolation hospitals or Lazaretti. The remarkably detailed records of the judicial proceedings of the health board contain fascinating accounts of the motivation of those, usually at the lower ends of society, who broke the rules and regulations imposed during the epidemic. These cases tell of the desperation felt by individuals, as their families were torn apart through death and forcible isolation, and the difficulties in maintaining their livelihood, when contact was often forbidden and whole sections of the economy were closed down. The records of both the health board and the Fraternity of the Misericordia, responsible for organising the transport and burial of the sick and the dead, provide detailed evidence of patterns of infection and burials at street level, enabling one to examine further the connection between poverty, the environment and disease. The book is divided into two main sections. The present chapter provides a wider historical and historiographical discussion of plague and plague studies. Part I analyses developing public health policies, with emphasis on the environment, medicine and quarantine. Part II is thematic, examining religion, isolation hospitals, and the survival strategies of Florentines in the face of sickness, death and massive regulation. The short Epilogue asks what, if any, new policies were adopted in the face of the brief but shocking return of plague in 1632–3. The wider context for the Florentine epidemic of 1630–3 is provided in Chapter 2, which examines the origins and spread of plague in northern Italy. It also traces the preventive measures adopted by the health

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board as the plague approached Tuscany, including cordons sanitaires along frontiers, and their implementation in August 1630 in Trespiano, a small village five miles north of the city on the road to Bologna. This and other chapters follow the lead of Cipolla and Alfani by emphasising the importance of examining the impact of plague on the city in relation to the surrounding countryside, rather than examining urban epidemics in isolation from their wider context.77 Another important theme addressed here relates to the problems associated with the calculation of mortality during the epidemic through a thorough examination of a wide range of demographic records, from central government to parish. This represents the first reassessment of the full extent of mortality in Florence in this year due to plague and other causes of death. Public health remains the overriding theme in the subsequent three chapters, which concentrate on the numerous challenges faced by officials and the solutions they adopted. Chapter 3, ‘Medicine, the Environment and the Poor’, 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, under the influence of the revival of Neo-Hippocratic ideas, led to closer attention by government and medical staff to the living conditions of the poor.78 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. This 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. Following recent trends in late-medieval environmental history, it will be stressed 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.79 More broadly this chapter will seek 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. It was the combined administrative and medical expertise which led to the emergence of the main characteristics of Italian government policy, for which Italy was admired in early modern Europe. These form the twin themes of Chapter 4, ‘Treating the Body of the City and the Body of the Poor’, which examines the ways in which these two approaches informed the developing strategies of the government during the early stages of the epidemic. While conforming to more general public health policies of

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Italian states, this chapter will also examine how far the Florentine experience of plague was mediated through existing local structures and the political status quo. The influence of the Grand Duke Ferdinand remained very evident, as he sought to intervene in and to influence the developing policy of the magistrates of the health board, which was constituted by patricians who were members of his court. Local institutions were central to the campaign against plague, with the voluntary lay religious group the Archconfraternity of the Misericordia playing a vital role in the transport and burial of the sick and the dead. While their porters and grave-diggers were paid, the members of the fraternity themselves performed their tasks from a sense of Christian charity towards the poorer members of society, a motivation which formed the obverse of the government’s decrees against marginalised groups, such as prostitutes and Jews. A mixed motivation also informed the strategies of the medical staff in the service of the Sanità, and this chapter will examine their role, sometimes distant, sometimes interventionist and sometimes compassionate, in inspecting the sick and recommending a wide range of treatments for the more affluent and the humble. Chapter 5, ‘The Impact of Plague and Quarantine’, examines in more detail the impact on the population of the policies discussed above, first through analysing the factors underlying the spread of plague, both through Florence and at a more local level in the city’s largest parish, S. Lorenzo. Based on records of city and parish, it has been possible to analyse the number of people infected and buried in relation to the topographical and social profiles of individual streets. If this enables one to consider some of the environmental determinants of infection, it is also possible to assess the impact on mortality of the policy of removing the sick from their houses to Lazaretti, through comparing the number of people buried in extra-mural plague pits with those at the isolation hospitals. For contemporaries it was successful, since higher numbers died in Lazaretti, suggesting that they had managed to identify and remove the sick before they got worse. This policy remained in force the next year when a new strategy was introduced, with the imposition from mid-January of a general 40-day quarantine of the inhabitants of both the city and the surrounding countryside. Although this was an extremely expensive operation, since food and drink were being supplied daily to over 34,000 people, the continued drop in mortality led contemporaries to regard this as fulfilling their aims. As will be seen in the Epilogue, the same policies were introduced, except for a general quarantine, when a milder epidemic of plague returned briefly to Florence in 1632–3.

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Having established the main chronology of the epidemics between 1630 and 1633 and the main strategies adopted by the health board, Part II, ‘Religion, Isolation and Survival’, will adopt a thematic approach. It will discuss the impact of plague and the effects of government policy in three different ways – through religion, the day-to-day role of Lazaretti and the administration of justice. In each chapter it will be argued that, in contrast to traditional views of these systems, policy in practice tended to be more compassionate, whether by providing spiritual succour to local inhabitants, the running of isolation hospitals, or in the decisions of judges who dispensed justice against those who broke the decrees of the health board. Religion and the works of art commissioned during and after the epidemic form the central theme of Chapter 6, a topic which, in contrast to other cities, has never been examined in its entirety. 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. It will be shown that 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. It will be argued, in contrast to more traditional views, that there was little conflict, if any, between ‘reason’ and ‘faith’. Instead 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. 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 also happened in 1633 when the church of S. Maria Impruneta became the centre of attention, following the processions through Florence of the miraculous image of the Madonna. 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, even if they did not commission new buildings on the scale of S. Maria della Salute in Venice. Religion also forms an important theme of Chapter 7, which examines the role of Lazaretti in Florence in the campaign against plague. In contrast to other cities, such as Venice and Milan, which constructed purpose-built isolation hospitals, Florence relied on adapting existing convents, churches and patrician villas on the outskirts of the city, the largest of which were the

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Benedictine monastery of S. Miniato al Monte and S. Francesco al Monte alle Croci to the south of the city. This chapter will question how far the epithet ‘more feared than death itself ’ can legitimately be applied to these institutions. A dual approach will be adopted to analyse the experience of those who lived and worked and were patients in these isolation centres, by combining a quantitative analysis of mortality and recovery rates with a re-creation of the physical surroundings and the challenges faced by officials and individuals as the plague got worse. What makes the Florentine case so remarkable is the survival of the daily correspondence between the hospital directors and the health board. These letters provide a unique and moving insight into the way the Lazaretti were run, the medical and spiritual medicines prescribed, and the challenges thrown up by the admission and treatment of well over 10,000 people, more than 10% of the city’s population. It will be argued that, while mortality may have been high, the extraordinary investment of time, personnel and finances underlined the belief in the efficacy of these institutions as a way to solve the war against plague. One of the challenges to have been confronted by the directors of the Lazaretti was the misbehaviour of employees, who stole the clothes of the sick and dead, and food from the kitchens. A detailed analysis of this type of behaviour in the city forms the theme of the final chapter, ‘Surviving Plague’. From a discussion of how the judicial system worked in practice, it will be argued that, compared with cities such as Milan and Rome, the authorities adopted a surprisingly lenient attitude towards infractions of many decrees. It will be shown that, in contrast to the draconian tenor of the legislation, which formed the basis of prosecution, the vast majority of defendants were let off after a very short term of imprisonment or a small fine. Evidently the aim of the health board was to contain and to discourage, rather than to impose severe penalties, while reserving only for the worst offenders the dreaded Strappado, through which individuals were hung from their shoulders and then dropped. These records also 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

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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. Quarantine and isolation centres also form an important theme of the Epilogue, which discusses briefly the return of plague in 1632–3, clearly shocking contemporaries since they had assumed it had disappeared. What makes this outbreak interesting are the similarities and differences in secular and religious responses. As will be argued, while many of the same strategies were employed, this later outbreak did lead to some innovations, namely the quarantining of whole streets and the processing of the Virgin of S. Maria Impruneta through the city over three days. Fortunately, this outbreak proved more localised and much less virulent than the main epidemic which forms the centre of this book, and may help to explain why it was contained more effectively. Florence Under Siege is thus far from being just about those who ran and administered the public health system; it is also about the reactions of those who were at the blunt end of official policy: the lower levels of society. This book adopts a truly inter-disciplinary approach, taking into account and benefiting from the strengths of the work of economic and demographic historians, as well as the historiographical approaches of microhistory.80 New studies have also modified our approaches to the understanding of the history of disease and the relationship between authority and patient. They have reinforced the agenda in the social history of medicine to prioritise contemporary views of the nature of disease, in order to help us understand the actions and reactions of both the individual and the state in their own terms, rather than viewing and judging them from our own perspective.

CHAPTER 2



THE INVASION OF PLAGUE IN EARLY MODERN ITALY

In all that part of the territory crossed by the army, dead bodies had been found in houses, and some on roads. Soon after, in this and that area, individuals and families got sick and died from violent and strange illnesses, with symptoms unknown to the majority of the living. There were only some to whom they were not new; those few were those who could remember the plague of fifty years earlier, that had desolated a good part of Italy, and especially the area of Milan, where it was and is still known by the name of the Plague of S. Carlo.1

This dramatic passage about the plague in Milan in 1630 from the classic historical novel by Alessandro Manzoni The Betrothed (1827) helps to explain the enduring fascination of the public with plague. In England a similar role has been played by Daniel Defoe’s fictional account the Journal of the Plague Year (1722), describing the Great Plague of London in 1665.2 Historians have shown that, while both these books were imaginative works, they were also based to a considerable extent on contemporary sources. Even if they emerged from very different historical contexts and were written from different perspectives, they described the same epidemic, which afflicted both northern and southern Europe during the years 1613 to 1666. Italy was affected by two main waves of plague during the seventeenth century. The first was confined to the northern and central part of the peninsula between 1628 and 1633, while the second hit southern Italy in 1656, from where it was carried by sea to Genoa. As mentioned in Chapter 1, plague arrived in Italy in 1629 with French and German troops. It is no accident that the initial cases of plague identified in October 1629 were first in Piedmont in the Val di Susa, west of Turin and near the border with 23

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France, and secondly in the Valtellina in Lombardy, subsequently travelling to Lake Como to the north of Milan.3 Plague had been identified in Milan on 22 October 1629, even though there was a lively debate among doctors as to whether it was or was not truly plague, a feature which we shall see was part of the reactions of leading members of the medical profession in many other cities during these years.4 By 5 December 1629, the Sanità of Milan had banned communications with Turin and the valleys of Piedmont and Savoy.5 The next two months, the coldest season, saw little progress in the spread of plague.6 However, by February 1630 an outbreak of the epidemic was reported in Cremona, which had spread by the following month to Turin and Verona.7 Other cities in northern Italy soon became infected and on 6 May the authorities as far south as Bologna announced the official outbreak of plague.8 Some idea of the tragic impact of plague on these northern Italian cities can be judged from the levels of mortality. Between 1629 and 1631, major cities and medium-sized centres suffered terribly: while Milan lost 46% of its population of 130,000, 61% of both Parma’s and Verona’s respective populations of 30,000 and 54,000 died.9 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. Plague Approaches Florence: Border controls and cordons sanitaires

Just as medicine has two parts, one that preserves the health of the well so that they do not get sick, the other that cures them, so we distinguish two types of remedies and measures employed: those undertaken before the sickness entered into the city, and those after it had entered.10

The idea of the relationship between medicine for the individual and medicine for the state is a constant theme of writers of this period, as in this passage from Rondinelli’s Relazione del contagio. As will be seen in discussions of Florence, once plague had taken hold, the influence of the health

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and disease of the citizenry on the body of the state was used as a justification to take measures against the poorer members of society. But, as Rondinelli reminds us, a strong theme of medical literature was the preservation of the body in good health by adopting a number of strategies to prevent it from becoming sick in the first place. Well before plague arrived in Tuscany, the health board put into place measures designed to defend the body of the state from the onslaught of disease. In the following discussion I shall begin with the Grand Duchy and gradually move my focus towards the city of Florence, thus following the chronological development of the epidemic, and in this way outline the unfolding reactions of the government and the governed. In order to inform themselves of the progress of the plague across northern Italy, the Florentine health board kept in close touch through regular correspondence with health boards elsewhere. On 7 November 1629, for example, they were informed by the Milanese Sanità that a number of sick people were found in many parts of their state, while at the end of 1629 Florence ‘banned’ a series of provinces, including Villefranche, Languedoc and the Provençal coast, because they had learned that plague had broken out in those areas.11 Following the official declaration of plague in Milan in March 1630, Florence banned the whole of the Milanese Duchy, and then extended the ban to the frontier with the Bolognese state.12 The immediate effect was that commerce and trade were stopped and anybody coming from those areas had to present a health pass to enter the Tuscan state. The gradual movement of plague through northern Italy and towards Tuscany in 1630 can be traced in the correspondence of the Florentine Sanità, who received almost daily reports from their colleagues in other cities and states. The report of 1 June from Venice recounted that: In the Bresciano the plague is raining down and it is making the greatest progress at Disenzano, in particular on the Lake of Garda. In Verona everything is as normal, as it is in the Cremasco, and here [in Venice], although by God’s grace, we are very well, we live with the greatest fear, with every day more measures being taken.13

The following day some reports arrived from Parma of ‘a great mortality of men, under the influence of such a pestiferous disease, and of those who are not treated only one or two survive for three or four days’.14 Receiving reports on a daily basis from northern Italy was clearly a double-edged sword. While it provided detailed information to enable the

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Florentine health board to take preventive measures, it also ‘caused the greatest fear’ as it came closer.15 It must have seemed like an unstoppable tidal wave coming towards the city from the north. After plague had been officially declared in Bologna on 6 May,16 the Florentine health board hastily ruled that a health pass was required by any person who was travelling from place to place within the Tuscan state. A month later the Provveditore of the Florentine Sanità, Tommaso Guiducci, received disturbing but contradictory news from his counterpart in Bologna, Lionardo Buontempi. Evidently a number of people had died in the city and their contacts had been sent to the Lazaretto. He also understood from another source that a general prohibition had been issued that on pain of death nobody was allowed to speak of ‘peste’, ‘so it is not surprising that that it has not been declared more openly’. This was all the more curious because he had heard from another source, Prior Zanchini, who reported the death of many of the members of the Order of S. Filippo Neri, the main confessors in the city at the time, that ‘many poor people die in two or three days and very few recover’. Deputies were appointed to visit all the parishes of the city, following which many were sent to the Lazaretto and ‘at this the people were very alarmed’.17 These mixed messages also alarmed the Florentine health officers, particularly as they realised they could not actually trust their Bolognese colleagues. However, mixed messages were common; they had been part of the Milanese health board’s pronouncements and also characterised the declarations of the Florentine Sanità in summer and early autumn of 1630. It could be argued that this was a natural reaction, given that they wanted to avoid creating panic among the local population and the banning of trade with their state, with all the consequent effects on the economy and standards of living among the poorer members of society. By early June, when it was judged that the Bolognese epidemic was sufficiently grave, the Sanità of Florence put into action the next stage of their anti-plague policy, the establishment of a cordon sanitaire. This was by now a well-established measure taken by early modern states, though they have been better studied as part of maritime defences than in their role on land.18 This system has often been seen as an effective way of potentially containing the spread of plague from one state to another, and in some instances this may have been true, as in the case of the plague epidemic in Marseille in 1720–2.19 But, initially in northern and central Italy in 1629–33, the cordon sanitaire does not appear to have acted as an effective defence, given

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the epidemic’s relatively rapid spread from one major city after another. However, it is striking that the epidemic did not spread further south than Tuscany, and, when plague returned in 1656–7, it was mainly confined to the south, with the exception of Genoa in the north. These different geographical patterns have never been explained entirely convincingly, and may have been to do with the combination of the physical barrier of the Apennines and the effectiveness of the Tuscan cordon sanitaire.20 In summer 1630 the members of the Sanità of Florence were particularly concerned with the Apennines to the north and west of Florence and sent mounted troops to patrol the mountain passes to prevent all commerce or communication with the Bolognese.21 They established guard-posts at halfmile intervals along the frontiers; each post consisted of five or six soldiers, who were housed in a tent. The soldiers took it in turn to act as sentry and if they saw anybody in the area they were instructed to fire their arquebus to warn their nearby companions, who then were to chase the travellers on horseback. If the travellers were without a valid health pass, they were arrested and imprisoned. If, moreover, they refused to return from where they came the soldiers were given permission to shoot them.22 The guards were given detailed guidelines about the information that a correct health pass should contain and how to recognise the individual from the description. In order to assess the validity of the pass they had to ascertain that it contained the person’s name, father’s name and surname, the place of origin and an attestation that they had been resident there for at least 22 days, along with an account of the places they had passed through, and where they had entered the Tuscan state. If this quite precise information would have enabled the guards to ascertain the origins and movements of an individual, they were also required to note his or her recognisable features, such as ‘age, height, whether bearded or not, and other characteristics through which it is made clear that it is the person described in the health pass’.23 In the event it was easier to pass a decree than enforce it to the letter. The records of the Sanità are full of instances of problems with the running of the system or with people trying to get around the laws. Many arose from people travelling around Tuscany who had arrived via the Apennines, and which, as Giulia Calvi has pointed out, could hide a wide variety of people, from beggars to others involved in the black market to army deserters and bandits. These problems were reflected in the Sanità’s correspondence with their representatives in various parts of Tuscany who were responsible for the organisation of the guards on the frontiers with other states.24 Letters

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were sent, for example, on 1 and 2 June from both Pistoia and Barga expressing concern that they did not have the wherewithal to pay the guards, while others wrote a week later from S. Casciano complaining about the lack of printed health passes.25 To ensure that the system was working properly, high-ranking representatives of the Sanità were sent on a tour of frontier posts. On 1 July Senators Giovanni Boni and Luca degli Albizzi reported that ‘notwithstanding the many precautions which are taken at the frontiers, there is always someone who enters the state coming from a banned or suspect place and it is very difficult to remedy this situation for many reasons’.26 This continued to be the case throughout the epidemic. On 3 August, for example, there was a long case of a father and son who had been stopped by the guards in the mountains above Pistoia, who had declared they intended to travel to the Bolognese.27 As the Sanità’s decree laid down, the guards recorded a description of the couple: ‘A man of medium height with a red beard, aged about forty years; he was accompanied by his son, who was ten years old.’28 Detailed questioning revealed that they came from the Piano di Pistoia; he declared his occupation as a labourer when he could find work. Since leaving home he had survived by begging and they had lived by sleeping rough in the countryside, which was possible given that it was the height of summer. The father evidently thought that he was not doing anything wrong because he had a health pass, which he had obtained two months before. When he was asked why they had not continued on their journey, he explained they had been delayed because ‘a dog bit me at the Madonna di Monsommano’. Clearly a diseased leg aroused suspicion, especially as it was bandaged up. When asked for it to be uncovered, it was seen there was a small mark on the thigh.29 He was then asked by whom and where it had been treated, in response to which he revealed that he had gone to Pistoia, where he had been treated at the hospital of the Ceppo. But this also aroused suspicion because the guards wanted to know how they had entered into Pistoia, given that the gates had been closed, and also how they had been able to pass other road blocks. He replied that he had either shown his health pass or he had not been asked for it, since he knew the guards. This was an all too familiar story during times of plague, when the health regulations interrupted the livelihood of the poor, hence the need of the peasant or contadino to beg to support himself and his son. Furthermore, people in smaller communities made allowances for acquaintances, especially if they were poor. Once the guard had been convinced that the wound on the leg was caused by a dog bite rather than a plague boil, the very evident

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poverty of the father and son convinced the authorities to allow them to stay in the hut where they had been found, but under guard.30 Other problems emerged relating to the standard or behaviour of the guards themselves. In early August, on one of the tours of inspection, the representatives of the Sanità visited Prato, where they found the guards on the gates, in the company of many others, ‘playing, paying little attention to their service’, a pattern that was repeated at the other gates of the city.31 They then went on a tour of the mountainous countryside above Prato and Pistoia to check on the guards, and lamented that none could read or write, ordering that in future at least one should be able to read so that they could understand a health pass.32 Lack of diligence was not a problem which was confined to the countryside or contado. Concerns arose when the gates of the city were left open, as in the case of the guards at the Porticciuola delle Farine in Florence. On 5 June two men who were seated near the gate and drinking a glass of wine had reported they had seen a man on a horse pass through the Porta, without even showing a health pass.33 When this was investigated it turned out that he was a certain Capitano Francesco Novellucci from Prato, who had attempted to pass through the Porta al Prato, but had been turned away because he did not have a health pass. He had then gone to the Porticciuola delle Farine, which had not been guarded, and both entered and left Florence from that gate. It was noted that ‘it seemed to our Magistracy that the case was a bad example of little respect for the officials and for the orders of our Magistracy’.34 Capitano Novellucci was condemned to eight days in the secret prison, and security was tightened up. In future, in addition to the Gentiluomo and guard stationed at the gate, it was laid down that there should also be a commissario appointed by the Sanità, who changed every day and was paid 6 scudi a month.35 Another example was the textile worker Tommaso Ciucci, whose speciality was the production of veils in the Bolognese style (‘veli alla Bolognese’), and who at the beginning of June had employed in his workshop a young man from Bologna, who within a couple of days had a ‘a high fever with severe symptoms’. Tommaso immediately sent him to the hospital of S. Maria Nuova, where he died. Within a few days Tommaso himself had fallen ill with a ‘high fever’ and he himself died on 15 June. Despite the suspicion that the cause of his death was a ‘pestiferous sickness’, he was given a normal burial in one of the graves outside the Duomo accompanied by priests who sang the vigil of the dead.36 Thus, even with these suspicious circumstances and an acknowledgement that there were loopholes in the health board’s measures, the medical

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staff who treated these sick men do not appear to have reported to the Sanità that these cases might have been suspicious. In fact, as we shall see below, the majority of commentators believed that the plague only really began later in the summer, when the poultry-dealer or pollaiolo from Bologna died in Trespiano. Evidently people who were determined to enter the city continued to find ways around the system. The Sanità declared that ‘it is necessary to put guards at the two Pescaie of Florence, above and below the city, when the water is low in order to prevent people entering the city under the pretext of bathing in the river’. The commissari were ordered to keep an eye on this to prevent these people of ‘the lowest quality’ from exploiting this loophole.37 Similar fears were expressed in Rome in the same year and large chains were extended at night across the River Tiber to prevent travellers and their cargo from landing by stealth.38 In order to underline the seriousness of these laws, the magistracy prescribed severe penalties for everyone who entered the state from prohibited places without a health pass, including execution, which could be applied immediately without question rather than (as was normally the case) at the end of a process of arrest, questioning and as the culmination of a series of punishments. This applied particularly if somebody was seen trying to cross country away from the main roads, thus arousing suspicion. Equally high penalties were prescribed for those who housed these people, especially inn-keepers, ranging from summary execution to being sent to work in the galleys in the Grand Duke’s fleet.39 Penalties against inn-keepers point to the severe economic problems created by the fear of plague, which, as we shall see in more detail in the next chapter, came on top of an already weakened economy. For example, on 4 June the Sanità in Florence received a petition from the owner of a hostel outside Montepulciano. The premises had been locked up by the Sanità’s representatives, and the owner claimed this created ‘an enormous inconvenience’ to travellers, especially since the city’s gates were locked and his albergo was the only one within five miles. He asked for it to be unlocked and travellers with a health pass to be admitted.40 In broad terms the staple of the Florentine economy, the textile industry, was in decline, especially the production of woollen cloth. This led to high unemployment and declining standards of living, which had been exacerbated by a series of famines and epidemics over the previous decade.41 Then, as the epidemic moved closer, Tuscany cut itself off not just from commerce with other states, but also established strict rules about the circu-

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lation and sale of goods within its boundaries. There was a prohibition on the movement of animals which came from places which had been banned, as can be seen in the case against Francesco, who was imprisoned having brought some young bulls into the territory of Pistoia.42 More generally, markets and fairs were banned. This was not just to prevent livestock from being brought from infected areas, but also to prevent large numbers of people congregating. In Florence, while the main food market, the Mercato Vecchio, remained open, food was now also sold from a series of squares and locations throughout the city.43 Furthermore, outside Florence there are examples of the prohibition of the transport of food, as in the decree of 24 July which banned ‘loose lemons or in boxes’ from being carried to areas which bordered on the Bolognese state, including the mountains of Pistoia, the Mugello, Firenzuola and Scarperia. We learn subsequently that it was not simply that the transport of lemons was seen as likely to spread disease, but that they wanted to prohibit the existing practice of taking them to the Bolognese in exchange for salt.44 Food supply was far from being the only sector of the economy to suffer. Cloth production, which sustained a substantial percentage of Florence’s population and the inhabitants of the dependent contado, was affected badly, especially as contemporaries believed that textiles could harbour the noxious fumes of disease which could cause plague. On 2 June the Sanità discussed the necessity to quarantine silk, cocoons, larvae and any kind of drapes which had originated in the Bolognese.45 Regulations about the silk industry also point to another of the preoccupations of the Sanità which remains a constant theme behind many measures: the potential of fetid smells to create the miasma of disease. This had underlain much of the sanitary legislation of the Middle Ages, but what was new – and we shall discuss this in more detail in the next chapter – is the growing obsession of health officers from the mid-sixteenth century onwards with the relationship between health, disease and the environment. This stemmed from the increasing influence of the revival of neo-Hippocratic ideas, especially how ‘airs, waters and places’ influenced an individual’s health status.46 This had led over the previous 50 years or so to the Sanità commissioning sanitary surveys of the Tuscan countryside to establish the causes of epidemics of fevers and areas of higher mortality.47 Then, as we shall see in Chapter 3, an increased concentration on the urban context, with detailed sanitary surveys being undertaken in Florence in the early 1620s during the typhus epidemic and the epidemic of plague of 1630–1.48

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The growing preoccupation with smells as plague approached Florence can be seen in the increased attention to anything that might cause the miasma of disease. It had long been recognised from well before the time of the Black Death that the butchery of animals was likely to produce fetid air which could corrupt the atmosphere and cause sickness. On 30 June 1630 the Sanità began a systematic inspection of butchers’ shops. This resulted in a case against one Jachopo di Bartolomeo, called the ‘Napoli’, who was a butcher at the Canto alla Paglia. He was reported to have ‘a cesspit full of putrid entrails and of blood and putrid excrement mixed together’. It had led to the ‘creation of a great fetor and stink and other bloodly material in the slaughterhouse, which could lead to serious disease, and we also found much dirt’.49 He was arrested, punished and sent to the secret prison of the Sanità. This reflects the close association in their minds between fetid air, smell and dirt, which could all lead to a ‘grande morbo’. The Sanità were not alone in their belief in the connection between smell and disease. One of the features of the emerging field of the history of the environment in the late medieval and early modern periods has been to show the growing preoccupation of not just official bodies, but also the citizenry, with what we would call issues of public health.50 Thus on 7 June the Sanità received a petition from Suora Margherita, the abbess of the nuns of S. Jacopo in Via Ghibellina, concerning the fetor caused by silk-weaving in a neighbouring house belonging to the Illustrious Signor Cavaliere Sivigatti: ‘and it seems incredible to us that the said Signor Cavaliere should tolerate this fetor’.51 There was in fact a widespread recognition of the dangers of the silkworking process. It was prohibited to work silk-worms, because of the danger that ‘their fetor could cause corruption of the air’.52 As we shall see in the next chapter, this was just the beginning of a whole series of measures designed to clean up the environment, which in August led to a detailed survey of all the poorest parts of the city, and a plan to mend all cesspits (pozzi neri) in order to avoid the potential of smelly matter polluting the atmosphere. All these measures were part of their overall plan of prevention. First, they aimed to prevent plague being imported from outside through the imposition of a cordon sanitaire around the state and banning trade with infected states. Secondly, they aimed to prevent those activities which led to the local creation of plague through the corrupt air and smells generated by occupations such as butchery or the ineffective disposal of human waste. In the end these failed to work: by late July the first cases in Tuscany were recorded in Trespiano, a village five miles to the north of Florence.53

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Plague on the Outskirts of Florence, Summer 1630

Trespiano is a small settlement in the hills above Florence on the main road leading north and along which many people coming from Bologna would have passed. It is perhaps surprising that plague had not been brought from Bologna earlier, given its presence in that city from early May, if not before, especially with the problems of enforcement discussed above. The case of Trespiano is worth discussing in detail. In the first place it provides a guide to the main official measures, which were put in place when an epidemic was identified by the authorities in Florence, a city which had not experienced plague for about a century. Secondly, it enables one to examine how contemporaries traced and understood the chain of events which led to the outbreak of plague, for armed with this information it had been hoped to prevent its further spread. While contemporaries such as Francesco Rondinelli may have manipulated the stories they presented for their own purposes, they are valuable for what they reveal about the intentions of the writers and the extent to which they were based on first-hand knowledge of the sources. It is clear from Rondinelli’s account that he had access to the deliberations and correspondence of the magistracy as well as the records of its court. Rondinelli provided a vivid account of how the epidemic began in Trespiano.54 He began by recounting how a Bolognese pollaiolo, having crossed the border, arrived at the city’s northernmost gate, the Porta S. Gallo (Plate 1). He tried to enter, but did not succeed since the commissario, seeing that he was ill, sent him away, rather than, as he should have, making sure he was taken to the Lazaretto. The pollaiolo ‘was disconsolate and, as he was already sick and very weak, he hardly managed to put one foot in front of the other, and, with his eyes on the ground and his expression devoid of any boldness, said between sighs “who are those who deny me entrance to enter the city, and what will happen to me?” ’55 Even give the fact that Rondinelli evidently had access to official records, it seems clear that he was using literary licence to evoke the actions and speech of the pollaiolo. This is reinforced by his direct quotation from Dante’s Inferno, Canto 8, lines 118–120, recalling Virgil being turned away from the city gates. The story continued, for on his way to Trespiano the pollaiolo met a man called Viviano, who was the steward of the pilgrim’s hospice at Trespiano. He implored him to be allowed to stay rather than leaving him to die in a ditch, a request sweetened by a bribe of half the money he carried on him. Following the pollaiolo’s death, Viviano himself fell sick, but before he died he admitted how he had caught the illness and

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begged that his co-residents should keep well away from the house. In the event his family also died. According to Rondinelli, even this did not convince the authorities of the seriousness of the situation. Viviano was buried normally and his possessions, which he had handled, infected the whole of the village. This [information] was spread through Florence, but through closed teeth and whispered in the ear to a confidant, with the usual recommendation not to say anything to others; it wasn’t believed, it was mocked, and there was nothing that could be done about it, as usually happens; meanwhile people came every day from Trespiano into the city and mixed freely with everybody, and we swallowed the bait, which in time had its effect.56

Rondinelli presents, then, a world populated by selfish and ignorant people out for their own gain rather than acting for the common good. This is a picture which characterises his account of the whole epidemic. He contrasted the scheming actions of the ignorant poor with the noble motivation of patricians, whom he portrayed as selflessly running the health board, and above all of the young Grand Duke Ferdinand, to whom the Relazione is dedicated, and who was praised because he decided to remain in the city to look after his subjects. Before entering Florence, however, we will examine the measures put in place in Trespiano, since they provided a model for those adopted in the capital. This will also help to underline the importance of not isolating a study of disease in an urban context from its rural hinterland, and to show the vital connection between their constant interaction.57 Reports about conditions in Trespiano soon began to arrive at the headquarters of the magistracy of the Sanità in Florence, as, for example, in GiovanFrancesco Guidi’s report on 1 August: It is said that about seven people died, most of whom [lived] near the church, and it is said that all had buboes between the thigh and the body and some boils, one of which was on the head. And when they [the buboes] were lanced or opened, in four or five days they were cured, and immediately they were lanced they felt pain and a swimming head and then after three days it passed.58

As reassuring as this might be, the following morning the Sanità sent the Senators Luca degli Albizzi and Antonio Carnesecchi to investigate,

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accompanied by Dr Zerbinelli and the surgeon Cervieri.59 On arrival they discovered that the news was as bad as they had feared, and then took a series of measures to deal with and contain the problem. Their first concern was to treat the sick, who were taken to the pilgrim’s hospice at Trespiano, which was adapted as a Lazaretto, with separate rooms assigned to men and women. It was provided with its own physician, surgeon and nursing staff, who treated the sick with medicines sent from the city and supplied by the major hospital of S. Maria Nuova. The next stage was to deal with the actual and potential contacts of the sick, and, given that the village was small, this was taken to be the whole population, whom they locked in their houses and provided with free food and drink. The village was then surrounded by 40 soldiers under the command of two corporals; the former were paid 1 lira a day to buy food and the latter 1 giulio. Then, in order to prevent any contact between the locals and the wider world, they closed the road which passed through Trespiano, and made travellers take another road which was created ex novo.60 The following day, 3 August, Dr Francesco Mazzanti rode up to Trespiano to check on the situation. He visited the Lazaretto and said that he was comforted to discover that the fevers were diminishing and that the sick were feeling hungry. However, he stressed that they were already running short of supplies of food, plasters and glasses in which to administer medicines.61 A couple of days later the corporals in charge of the whole operation at Trespiano, Marsilio Fecini and Nofrio Guazzesi, sent a report to the Sanità indicating that supplies were still short, especially oats for the horses, and that they needed more people to help with the burial of the dead and the burning of infected clothes.62 It would appear from Guazzesi’s letter of 7 August that medical personnel were not yet in residence: I received the pregnant woman in Trespiano, but, My Lords, I cannot deal with everything, because I am a soldier by profession, and I don’t know how to behave with her, but to give satisfaction to these illustrious lords I will do what I can of what they want me to do. But I must warn you that we are only two and that we cannot trust anybody; we have to rebury the dead and burn their clothes and take the sick to the hospital, and keep an eye on the four troops of soldiers and distribute food in the neighbourhood to around eighty households and some of them are half a mile away.63

Evidently this report had some effect, because when Guazzesi wrote five days later in his update to the Sanità he recorded that medical personnel had

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arrived. However, the doctor himself now had a very high fever, so he asked that another doctor should be sent to take his place, especially in the hospital where there were now 28 sick with pustules between the thigh and body, 23 of whom had already died.64 He then reported that he himself had not been well, though he was now recovering. He also wrote an account of the state of health of those inhabitants of Trespiano who had been quarantined in their houses, and noted that all those who had come into contact with Viviano, whom Rondinelli had mentioned as having allowed the pollaiolo to stay at the pilgrim’s hospice, had fallen ill and 7 had died. In their correspondence, the Sanità continually emphasised the necessity to trace the spread of the sickness in order to contain it. Four days earlier they had sent Antonio Manni to track down more of the pollaiolo’s contacts and he sent a report of his findings from the house of Sig. Alfonso Broccardi outside Florence.65 Evidently Manni had heard that the pollaiolo’s seventeen-year-old daughter Bartolommea was staying with his brother Matteo Citi. When interviewed she was seen to be in a good state of health and revealed that the pollaiolo’s other children were dispersed around Florence: his son Simone, who was aged between thirteen and fourteen, had gone to work as a servant south of the city in S. Donato in Poggio, while one of his sisters, Maria, who was only six, was still in Trespiano, and the other, Maddalena, aged ten or twelve, was living in Il Cionfo, a hamlet just to the south of Trespiano. Bartolommea, when interviewed about whether any of her family’s possessions had been taken away from her father’s house, confessed that ‘I carried at night four bushels of grain in two sacks, which I buried’. She was ordered to disinter the grain, which was put into a sealed room along with the other goods which had been brought from Trespiano, including: ‘Two coats, a sheet, a cloth mantle, a stool, and a case in which there are various things, such as veils and ribbons and small belts and hats, and other things for girls, and a black petticoat, which the said Maddalena wears, and two shirts.’66 All these objects were quarantined in a room where there had not been any sickness, since it was believed that the grain and the clothes could all carry within them the hidden miasma of disease, derived from the exhalations of the sick who had worn the clothes or from being in a house where plague had broken out. The aim of preventing contact between the sick and their contacts with the healthy remained a constant concern. On 14 August the Sanità implemented another strategy which was considered to be an essential part of their campaign against plague: the establishment of a separate place in

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Trespiano for convalescents, those who had been sick and were now recovering, because, as they declared, ‘there are many who were ill and who get better, because the sickness is improving’. At this point even the personnel were seen as possible spreaders of disease. Two days later, on 16 August, the doctor arrived at Trespiano with a letter from the magistrates of the Sanità addressed to Nofrio Guazzesi in which they ‘ordered me not to pass the barrier, which had just been erected there. Immediately I mounted my horse to obey the order of your Most Illustrious Lords and I returned to the Villa of the Signori Bandinelli, where I will stay until I receive instructions from the most illustrious lords about what to do . . . because, given that I am an ignorant man, my brain cannot find a solution.’67 It may very well be that Guazzesi was also feeling ill. A week later he reported that things were getting worse at Trespiano, to which he had evidently returned: ‘Doctor Francesco Mazzanti, our first doctor, is now about to render his soul to God. The other doctor who came here the day before yesterday is in bed with the fever; of the four servants who came here last, one died tonight and two are sick, so that it is necessary to appoint two other doctors and at least two servants, and after I wrote another man died.’ In this situation Guazzesi, not surprisingly, felt at the end of his tether, reflected in the deterioration of his writing towards the end of his letter: ‘I pray your Most Illustrious Lords to elect another in my place, because I no longer feel able to sustain this work. I can wait three or four days, if God gives me enough life . . .’68 Nofrio Guazzesi evidently got his way, because three days later, on 24 August, a new more vigorous hand has taken over the daily reports, his brother Girolamo Guazzesi, who was in charge of the nearby isolation hospital of the Badia Fiesolana at S. Domenico di Fiesole.69 He seemed to have been full of energy, unlike his brother: on his way to Trespiano he not only recorded those who were sick in the surrounding area, but also made suggestions about creating a place suitable for a new quarantine centre. The area he chose, at the Uccellatoio or the Osteria Nova, was on the Pian di Mugnone, the river valley he would have crossed when travelling from S. Domenico to Trespiano. On arrival at Trespiano, Girolamo Guazzesi found disorder. Soldiers had entered through the picket into the fenced-off area to talk to one of the labourers, and another had entered at night and knocked on the door of the house of two poor widows ‘to negotiate with them’. Guazzesi had both men imprisoned.70 Then three days later Girolamo wrote to say that one of the soldiers whom he had had imprisoned, the corporal Tommaso da Londa, had escaped, having

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broken the lock of the room where he was held and left by a second door, which had been left open by an anonymous accomplice. He had climbed out of a window, let himself down with a rope onto a pergola and fled.71 In time, conditions did improve at Trespiano. A month later Nofrio Guazzesi was back on the scene and reported that ‘thank God we have arrived at a good point with this affair’, and by 10 October there were only five convalescents left ‘of which there are two women, who are sick of fever and catarrh which can be cured’.72 However, tellingly, in September Guazzesi had already asked the Sanità not to send any more sick people to Trespiano. This suggests not only that the pilgrim hostel continued to function as a Lazaretto, but that the plague had spread to different parts of the countryside around Florence. Trespiano remained an important resource in the Sanità’s fight against plague, remaining open after the foundation of the first Lazaretto to the north of the city, the Badia Fiesolana.73 Discussion of its evolution and the problems encountered by the man in charge, Nofrio Guazzesi, serve as a useful introduction to many of the challenges faced by the other larger Lazaretti established over the autumn, as will be examined in detail in Chapter 7. The question of maintaining an adequate supply of food and medicines remained a constant theme in the correspondence, as did the supply of personnel, some of whom succumbed to the disease itself. Guazzesi’s all too human supplication for help to the Sanità, when he himself was completely exhausted, are repeated by the directors of the larger isolation hospitals as mortality climbed in the city over the next few months. Apart from the problems generated for the staff by the arrival of increasing numbers of sick and dying, the Trespiano experience also points to the fact that not all staff behaved well, as some escaped and were blamed by contemporaries for spreading the disease to people and areas not so far touched by the epidemic. As conditions improved at Trespiano, the Sanità turned its attention to other parts of the countryside around Florence. As we have seen, the director of the Lazaretto himself reported the findings about the surrounding area, but the more comprehensive surveys by representatives of the Sanità in their visits to the guard-posts on the frontiers were now adopted for checking on the spread of plague in less remote areas. Fiesole attracted the Sanità’s special attention, as it was closer to Florence than Trespiano. It also lay on a road coming from the north and, moreover, was only about four miles from the city walls, suggesting that the plague was fast approaching. On 13 August the Podestà of Fiesole, Francesco Palmieri, had already reported that a certain Giuliano da Fiesole had been buried immediately

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after he had died of ‘male sospetto’, and his wife was reported by the curate as being ‘sick with the same disease’.74 Three days later Palmieri updated the Sanità on the condition of the children of the pollaiolo, whom we encountered at Trespiano. He was pleased to say that at least Maddalena continued to be in good health, even though he could not report on the other two children because they lived elsewhere. He then visited Lessandra Conti, who was locked up after contact with a sick person, and reported that she was in good health, having talked to her while standing outside and well away from her house.75 By the end of the month things were not looking quite so rosy, as the surgeon of the Sanità, Michel’Agnolo Coveri, had been sent up to Fiesole to see the corpse of the Proposto, who had died on 31 August at 2 o’clock in the afternoon. He provided quite a precise description of the symptoms, from which he concluded that it was ‘a highly suspicious death’: ‘one sees a large tumour in the right groin, which is as large as an egg, livid in colour, as well as [others on] the backbone and buttocks’.76 He also reported that he had heard from the priest of Fiesole that Marchese Salviati had died in a neighbouring valley, the Val di Maria, and suggested alerting Capitano Guazzesi.77 If things had generally improved at Trespiano, on 4 September Girolamo Guazzesi wrote to the Sanità that his brother Nofrio, the poor director of the Lazaretto, had fallen sick of ‘tertian fever’.78 Two weeks later he had almost recovered, because he was back at work, although his handwriting was still somewhat shaky.79 By the end of the month, the physician who visited Trespiano could report that there had been no deaths recently, and that there were only three sick people and nine convalescents. Then, on a negative note, he complained that the poor were suffering because the medicines he had requested had never arrived, including ‘essential oils, sweet almond oil to spread [on wounds], for the surgeon a scarificator and a knife for cutting’.80 During September reports about suspicious deaths in the area continued to be sent to the Sanità in Florence, such as the contadino who had dropped dead near S. Domenico di Fiesole. When Girolamo Guazzesi investigated the case he discovered that the contadino had been sick for ten or twelve days, and his informants told him he had had ‘very dry skin with pain above the right shoulder, and these people say that one of his veins burst, when he was spitting blood, and he fell down dead last night towards dawn’.81 Even closer to Florence was the case of a woman who had fallen sick in Careggi with a ‘swelling’, though what concerned Guazzesi was that she had come from Florence three days earlier, where she had been working as a servant of

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a baker in the centre of the city, in Via de’ Calzaioli. He warned the Sanità that there might already have been sickness in the house she had visited, also in the centre.82 In other words, the system of local individuals or officials, whether secular or ecclesiastical, reporting the sick in the city and countryside, and especially those ill from suspicious ailments, was not working as efficiently as intended, reflecting variations in human motivation. The link between countryside and city remained a constant theme over the course of the epidemic. To state the obvious, an epidemic had to arrive from somewhere, and when travelling across land and along trade and commercial routes it passed through smaller settlements and the countryside, infecting local inhabitants as it went, as we have seen in the case of the chicken-dealer from Trespiano. As Guido Alfani has argued recently, the strikingly higher levels of mortality due to plague in Italy in the seventeenth century, when compared with northern Europe, can be linked in part to what he calls its ‘exceptional territorial pervasiveness’, that is, it impacted as much on rural as urban areas.83 Plague Mortality in the City, 1630–1

Once plague had entered Florence most attention in the sources was concentrated on the city, not surprisingly given that this represented not only the greatest concentration of population in Tuscany, but also their knowledge of the recent frighteningly high mortality rates in urban centres in northern Italy, such as Verona. An essential background to the discussion in the following chapters of the development of reactions to plague is an assessment of the level of mortality in Florence over the period when the epidemic was present in the city. This will serve not only to underline the methodological problems inherent in estimating the exact percentage of the population who died, but will also help to place Florence’s experience of plague within a wider geographical context. In principle it should be fairly straightforward to calculate plague mortality, because one of the main measures taken by health boards in Italy was that everybody who died from plague was buried either in the Campisanti, special plague pits dug outside the city walls, or at the Lazaretti. This was in contrast to the normal system where the dead were buried in their own parish, and indeed also differed from countries north of the Alps, such as England, where many plague victims continued to be buried in their local cemeteries.84 Figure 2.1 therefore combines all officially reported plague burials in the city, whether at the Campisanti or at the four main

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Lazaretti in or near Florence: Bonifazio, S. Miniato, S. Francesco and the Badia Fiesolana. Figure 2.1 clearly reflects the seasonality of epidemic mortality. It shows that plague had already begun to spread to the city during the first two weeks of August, though the highest levels were registered in late autumn, followed by a gradual decline over the following seven months.85 However, as will be discussed below, problems of enforcement, and the incompleteness of surviving documentation, mean that a calculation of the percentage of Florence’s population who died of plague in 1630–1 can never be absolutely precise. Indeed historians have provided a range of estimates between 10% and 17%.86 A quick review of the problems associated with the source material may help to produce a more realistic figure. One of the most favoured ways of calculating mortality in Florence in 1630–1 has been to subtract the total of the city’s resident population recorded in the census of August 1632 (66,156) from an earlier figure of 76,023 recorded in 1622. But such an approach does not take into account the effects of the two typhus epidemics of 1627 and 1629. Moreover, the population estimate of 1622 cannot be accepted at face value. It recorded exactly the same number of males and females over the age of fifteen (22,106), which was precisely twice the number of those under fifteen

2200 2000 1800

Number of burials

1600 1400 1200 1000 800 600 400 200 0 Aug.

Sep.

Oct.

Nov.

Jan.

Feb.

Mar.

Apr.

May

Fig. 2.1 Plague burials in Florence, 1630–1

Jun.

Jul.

Aug.

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(11,053): by contrast the sex ratio in 1632 was 100:121 (29,837 males: 36,219 females).87 A more realistic approach is to begin with a base population derived from a census of the city’s residents in January 1631 at the start of quarantine. This census listed 63,164 males and females (above and below the age of 12); it included the clergy, Jews in the ghetto, and men and women in religious houses, but excluded patients in the Lazaretti and hospitals.88 In midJanuary, when a general quarantine of the resident population was imposed, there were 328 men, women and children in the Lazaretti of S. Miniato and S. Francesco, as well as 146 ‘convalescents’ in the quarantine centres.89 In addition, other hospitals, which treated individuals suffering from ‘ordinary’, non-plague diseases, may have had up to 4,000 patients in non-epidemic years.90 To these 4,474 people must be added the 6,194 plague victims who had been buried at the Lazaretti or in the Campisanti – the city’s plague pits – between the beginning of August 1630 and 20 January 1631, and the number of infants baptised in the same period, which was about 1,218.91 Florence would therefore have had a population of about 75,050 at the beginning of the epidemic in August 1630.92 If these calculations are correct, official plague mortality would have been approximately 12%, confirming Cipolla’s estimate. The crude death rate due to plague alone would have been in the region of 114 per 1,000, just over three times the normal annual crude death rate of 36 per 1,000 in the early seventeenth century.93 However, total figures only tell us part of the story and in what follows we will examine some of the common problems associated with the accuracy of official calculations, which will then lead to a discussion of the wider question about the relationship between plague burials and parochial burials during the epidemic. The accuracy of official figures depended, of course, on both accurate diagnosis and faithful reporting of those who were sick or who died from plague, by medical staff or people who worked for the health magistracy and individual citizens. One can see the care with which many cases were investigated from before the start of the epidemic. On 1 August a physician and surgeon were sent to investigate the case of a sick woman, the widow Donna Antonia, who lived at 18 via Camaldoli. They arrived at 11 o’clock at night and reported that she had been sick for six days ‘with a tumour on her left side near her kidneys’, but that she seemed of ‘a very good colour and with a very low fever with no suspicion of a “cosa cattiva” ’. They recorded that she had a six-year-old daughter, who was also sick with a fever, but they were evidently reassured that this was not plague, underlined by the fact

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that none of the other people who lived in the same house were sick, even though they lived in close proximity.94 Two evenings later there was concern about the condition of a servant of the Illustrious Cavaliere Magalotti in Via della Stufa. A number of medical men were sent, including Drs Zerbinelli and Cerveri, who were worried that the servant had a carbuncle. However, the surgeon Maestro Giovanni Franzese, having identified the diseased area above the right knee above the large tendon, decided that it did not have the signs of a carbuncle. In support of his diagnosis, he went on to describe in some detail the usual appearance of a carbuncle, which did not correspond with the servant’s symptoms; rather it ‘appears like an ulcer . . . but it is not pestiferous’. Moreover, at the beginning she did not suffer from the symptoms of a pestiferous condition, but rather a puncture which suggested to him that she had been bitten by an animal. He had also managed to convince his colleagues with this diagnosis.95 Although the system appears to have basically worked, as elsewhere,96 this was still the very beginning of the epidemic. It was before the plague had really taken off, and when the authorities must have been fearful of its appearance in the city, given that it had already broken out a few miles to the north in villages on the road to Bologna. As we have seen in the case of Trespiano, contemporaries realised that plague could be so easily introduced through carelessness, avariciousness or even deliberate actions on the part of selfish individuals. It was for this reason that in some cities, such as Milan, individuals known as untori were accused of deliberately spreading plague.97 That this phenomenon was known in Florence in 1630 is reflected in an entry in Giovanni Baldinucci’s Quaderno: ‘The plague in Milan was caused by wicked men with poisons . . . who poison the holy water in the holy water stoups in the churches, and the bells at the exits, and whoever touches this poison died quickly and poisons others.’98 There are hints of the same phenomenon occurring in Tuscany, but on an extremely modest scale, with only two examples recorded in the records of the Sanità. The first was the case of the cobbler, Bastiano di Girolamo Giannelli, from Borgo a Buggiano, who was arrested in Volterra on 1 September, accused of ‘poisoning the holy water in the cathedral and in other churches’.99 He had been reported as having stopped for a while in front of the holy water stoup where he is supposed to have gone to ‘poison the holy water’. He replied that he had indeed gone into the Duomo shortly after he had arrived in Volterra, where ‘I stopped as long as it took to say a Pater Noster and an Ave Maria’, and then ‘I stopped near a confessional in order to adjust some needles of which I had a number of different sorts’.100

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Unlike Milan, where the untori were punished severely, no definite proof was found against Bastiano, and he was released eventually.101 The reason he was suspected had partly to do with the fact that he came from northern Tuscany, Borgo a Buggiano in the Val di Nievole to the west of Florence, and that he had rather a mixed trade. Although declaring himself to be a cobbler by profession, he was evidently a self-appointed travelling charlatan who provided cures for common ailments. At the time of his arrest he was in possession of St John’s Wort to treat toothache, lavender oil and terra sigillata (ferruginous clay) for fevers, and ‘burnt white of egg’, from which was made ‘a liquid for the eyes’.102 His role as an unofficial healer clearly made him vulnerable to accusations at a time when anybody who was unknown and was seen loitering or even adjusting their luggage led to them being suspected of bringing plague to Volterra. Just as this incident was early on in the epidemic, so was the second, which involved a physician called Maestro Leandro Ciminelli, who worked in the first Lazaretto in Florence, the hospital of Messer Bonifazio. As will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 7, Leandro was alleged in mid-September to have poisoned patients through giving them a mysterious powder which had led to their deaths. This was, however, one of a number of accusations levelled against him, including attacking his colleagues and necromancy. He was evidently a disruptive character, but even so the more serious accusations were probably linked to suspicion of him since, like Bastiano, he was a ‘foreigner’, described in the records as Neapolitan or Sicilian.103 Despite all the precautions adopted by the authorities, the proper functioning of the Italian system of plague control was dependent on the fulfilment of two preconditions. The first was the enforcement of the law to make sure that everybody reported suspicious ailments or deaths to the authorities, something that, as we have seen in relation to Trespiano, was not always implemented, due to a variety of very human failings. As we shall see in Chapter 8, court records in Florence reveal many instances of individuals who attempted to conceal deaths from plague to avoid the disinfection and quarantining of the victim’s house and family.104 The second prerequisite for the system to work effectively was the accurate diagnosis of plague by the Sanità’s medical staff. This was particularly problematic at the beginning of an epidemic, when the authorities themselves often were reluctant to admit its presence in the city for fear of creating panic and disrupting normal economic and social exchange. Detailed instructions were provided on 13 August to the medical staff of physicians and surgeons in each quarter of the city about how to proceed:

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In the morning, with the tickets that they had been given the previous evening by the Chancellery [of the Sanità], they should go to find all the houses where the sick are listed, and seeing them they should take their pulse and, finding out from them the symptoms of their sickness, they should then make the following divisions: Those sick people, who have signs, either in the groin or under their arms or in some other part of the body, which area obviously malign or pestiferous, must have a ticket written by hand in the following way: ‘In such a street in such a house I have visited a sick person with fever and malign swelling in such a part [of the body], he has been sick for such a number of days; he should be sent to Bonifatio.’ Then take note of those who are in the house, male and female and also their age, and give an account in writing of all this to the Chancellery. The others who are simply sick from a simple fever of little importance, or who are not very sick, should be sent to the hospital of S. Maria Nuova and to the other hospitals, without listing the other people in the same house and not anything else.105

The names and addresses of all sick persons who had been reported the previous day to the Sanità were inscribed on special tickets (polizze), which in the morning were given to the doctors of each quarter of the city. The method of diagnosis, touching the pulse, was one of the main methods that physicians determined the symptoms or ‘accidents’ of a disease, though, as we shall see, as the epidemic worsened doctors became reluctant to get so close to the sick. Distinctions were then made between the symptoms typical of plague and those which were not. The former were located ‘in the groin or under the arms or in some other part of the body, where the signs are evidently malign and pestiferous’. Those with pestiferous symptoms were sent to the Lazaretto of Messer Bonifazio and those with ordinary fevers went to the main general medical hospital of S. Maria Nuova. The recording of details was very punctilious concerning both sick individuals and other members of the household. The care with which the authorities investigated any death in this period can be seen in the case of Giovanni Balsinelli of Via di Mezzo, who was arrested on 29 September because he did not report the death of his wife at home. After he was questioned, it emerged that he had called the doctor, who had diagnosed the cause of death as due to a ‘normal disease’.106 This was in the first month of the epidemic, when the Sanità was particularly vigilant, mortality was lower and when there was less strain on the whole system to cope with the sick, dying and dead throughout the city.

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The proper running of the system also depended on employees who could be relied on faithfully to fulfil their duties. One exception was the surgeon Ceserino, who was employed by the Sanità in the Sesto of S. Giovanni to keep an eye on any sickness among the resident population, to identify any person suspected of having plague and to arrange for his or her transport to the Lazaretto. Ceserino was arrested on 8 November because he was accused of having allowed a series of people who had died in the Albergo di Titolotto in Borgo La Noce to be buried in the local parish church of S. Lorenzo.107 The first death, of the proprietor Titolotto, had taken place over a month earlier and had never been reported by Ceserino. Thus the albergo had not been locked up and the inhabitants continued to go about their daily business, including two people working in the textile trade, a weaver and a glove-maker. The only reason this incident was discovered was that at the end of October the two women who had looked after Titolotto in his illness, his wife Lisabetta and their servant, the widow Francesca, had both fallen ill, but as Ceserino had not diagnosed them with a mal contagiosa he had sent them to the general hospital of S. Maria Nuova. However, on arrival their sickness was regarded as suspicious, so they were then sent off to the Lazaretto of S. Miniato.108 This is a telling incident because it shows how even with the existence of strictly enforced and potentially draconian punishments it was possible for the system to break down. In the description of the incident, Ceserino was accused of negligence rather than corruption, and, as in so much of the reporting of infractions of sanitary legislation, the tone of the officials was characterised by a weary resignation of the failings of individuals who put their fellow citizens at risk. The other important point which emerges from this incident is the relationship between the normal system of burial in the local parish and that adopted during the epidemic, when, as mentioned above, plague victims were interred in the special plague pits outside the city walls or at one of the Lazaretti. Explicit instructions were sent to parish priests, as was noted on 10 October 1630 by Don Felice Logi, the curate of the parish of S. Pier Gattolino, in the parish burial register: because now is the time of plague, there are noted here all those who will die of an ordinary sickness and will be buried in church. The Sanità magistracy keeps a record of those infected [with plague], but it is impossible for the curate to do this work at this time, but the majority go to the Lazaretto and die there.109

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People obviously preferred being buried together with their relatives in the parish cemetery, rather than being bundled into an anonymous mass grave, and tried to find unofficial ways of getting around the system. But there was also an official exception to this rule if you were of the right status and had the right connections. When the wife of Fulvio Giubetti, the chancellor of the Sanità, died of plague, he obtained permission on 6 October to have his wife’s body buried in church, so long as her corpse was placed in a wellsealed coffin, which was placed in a deep hole covered with lime. The only further provision made was that the women who had looked after Fulvio Giubetti’s wife was quarantined.110 It is difficult to gauge how widespread this practice was and how many plague victims might still have been buried in their parishes, since cause of death was rarely recorded by the priests. To take this question one stage further, one can examine in more detail parish burial registers. A complete series survives for S. Lorenzo, which was the largest parish in Florence, containing about 16% of the city’s population.111 Figure 2.2 plots burials in S. Lorenzo over the two years when plague was present in the city, 1630 and 1631. There was a clear rise in the number of burials in the parish in August, accounting for 14% of the annual total of 585. In subsequent months burials remained high from September to November. This was followed by an almost 50% fall in December, after which these high levels of mortality were never regained in 1631. If we now compare the pattern of burials in the city from plague (Figure 2.1) with those in S. Lorenzo, we are presented with a perplexing pattern, for they shared the same mortality rise in the autumn; only the increase in plague deaths in December was not reflected in the burial register of S. Lorenzo. This raises two possibilities: either that plague victims may have continued to have been buried in the parish, or that another epidemic disease was present in the city. Whether the rise in burials in S. Lorenzo may have also included many plague victims cannot be determined with any degree of accuracy from the surviving evidence; in Florence, as elsewhere, it is unlikely that the Sanità itself was responsible for deliberately underreporting plague deaths, even if some citizens found ways to circumvent the rules.112 Unfortunately, the surviving records preclude any final judgement on the possible under-registration of plague victims, since none of the surviving Florentine parish burial registers contain causes of death. This leaves the possibility that Florence was suffering from another epidemic in autumn 1630, for, as we shall see in Chapter 3, there was considerable debate

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90 80 70

Number of burials

60 50 40 30 20

1630

. Sep . Oc t. No v. De c.

Au g

Jan . Feb . Ma r. Ap r. Ma y Jun . Jul .

. Sep . Oc t. No v. De c.

Au g

0

Jan . Feb . Ma r. Ap r. Ma y Jun . Jul .

10

1631

Fig. 2.2 Burials in the parish of S. Lorenzo, 1630–1

among the medical advisers to the Sanità at the beginning of the epidemic in August about whether the rising mortality was caused by plague or the ‘ordinary sicknesses which afflict the city every autumn’.113 In fact, the ‘ordinary sicknesses’ were not so ordinary, for Florence had suffered over the previous decade from a series of episodes of what contemporaries described as ‘petechial fever’ and historians have identified as enzymatic typhus.114 This disease is associated in particular with periods of severe grain shortage, from which Florence had suffered twice over the previous decade, and most recently in 1629. These patterns of mortality in S. Lorenzo over this decade before the outbreak of plague are reflected clearly in Figure 2.3, where there were significant rises in 1621–2, 1626–7 and 1629; the first and third were associated with ‘petechial fever’. Each had a rather different seasonality. In the case of 1621–2, mortality attributed to petechial fever began increasing in October, continued through the spring, and finally ended in early summer, while the majority of deaths in S. Lorenzo in 1629 occurred in the summer and early autumn.115 By contrast, the epidemic of 1626 had a very different profile: it occurred during the hottest summer months and tailed off when it became cold, and may have been an enteric disease, since it attacked chil-

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dren much more seriously than adults. The closest seasonal patterns of epidemic mortality in the parish between 1621 and 1631 were those of 1629 and 1630. In each case over 50% of burials took place over the five months from August to December. Even if there was not the same enormous rise of burials in S. Lorenzo in 1630–1 as those registered in the Campisanti or the Lazaretti, there was a notable increase, specifically during the period when plague was at its height. Thus, even if contemporary estimates did not deliberately underregister plague mortality, the increase in parish burials in S. Lorenzo in the late summer and autumn of 1630 suggests the presence of another epidemic coterminous with plague, reflecting the claims of the health authorities and doctors that this, rather than plague, was the cause of the growing mortality. These results may lead us to reassess the mortality rates due to epidemic disease in Florence in 1630–1, but still plague mortality rates were lower in comparison with many areas in northern Italy.116 Venice lost 33% of a population of 140,000, Milan 46% of 130,000 and Verona 61% of 54,000. Even closer to home, in Tuscany, Pescia lost 50% of its pre-plague population of 2,800.117 The reason for such variations in mortality between urban centres has never been explained satisfactorily. It may be linked to when the epidemic started in a specific locality; if it began earlier it might have had

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Fig. 2.3 Burials in the parish of S. Lorenzo, 1620–39 (monthly burials and annual average)

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more chance to develop greater virulence before the weather changed. It is possible it was related to the effectiveness of preventive measures, such as cordons sanitaires, the removal of the sick to quarantine centres or the rapid burial of the dead. These are questions to which we shall return in the course of this book, as we examine in detail how Florentine government and society reacted to this plague epidemic, both at the level of government legislation and enforcement through systems of quarantine, and at the level of the street, as individuals and families closed ranks against the authorities to protect their relatives and their possessions. It is this tension between governors and governed which provides one of the major themes of this book.

CHAPTER 3



MEDICINE, THE ENVIRONMENT AND THE POOR

Doctors and Diagnosis: ‘A certain sickness with suspicion of contagion’

As we have seen in Chapter 2, when plague arrived in Tuscany, in the village of Trespiano, the first reaction of the Florentine health board was one of caution. On 1 August they recorded that ‘a certain sickness with suspicion of contagion’ had broken out in the village.1 What they feared, of course, was the arrival from Bologna of what a contemporary chronicler of the epidemic referred to as ‘mal contagioso’.2 Clearly in the early days nobody wanted to breath the fatal word ‘plague’ for fear of creating alarm in the city, despite the fact that plague, peste or contagio had been present in northern Italy since autumn 1629, and in Bologna from May 1630.3 Uncertainty about the nature of this disease remained evident throughout August, when discussions continued to be held at the highest medical and social levels.4 This led to a debate in Florence, as it had at the beginning of the epidemic in Bologna three months before, and during earlier outbreaks, such as in Venice in 1555–7.5 The importance of these debates lies in the reluctance of authorities to admit the presence of an epidemic. This would have created public alarm and the implementation of a series of plague measures, which had important economic implications, leading to the commercial and political isolation of whole states. In Florence, Francesco Rondinelli recorded that in August 1630: ‘all the city was divided between [different] opinions: one that said it was plague and these were called the Frightened Ones . . . The others who said that they were ordinary sicknesses, which happened every year, caused by suffering and hardship.’6 Another point of view was presented in the treatise by Antonio Righi, a distinguished physician who advised the health board: 51

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Several highly respected men have thought that in Italy there is no plague, at least as there was in earlier times; anyway [if it is plague], it is not as much as before or at least this is very likely, because from the time when the French Pox was first in Italy, pest has scarcely been heard of at all or very little . . . The reason for these things is that when the French Disease is present, in turn the other pest diminishes, since two pests cannot exist simultaneously; if this opinion were true Florence would certainly be very safe from the plague, since the French Disease is abundant there.7

This rather contorted argument may have been presented to reassure contemporaries they were not about to be subjected to the effects of high mortality from plague. Unfortunately, experience had shown that in Florence, as elsewhere, from as early as the mid-1490s the presence of one of these epidemics did not preclude the presence and impact of the other.8 In order to resolve this problem, the Grand Duke requested a report from the College of Physicians to determine ‘the true essence and quality of this sickness’. The college responded that, although it was ‘a contagious pestilential disease, it was not plague’.9 It was argued that, although the epidemic may have shared two of the main characteristics of plague, being contagious and pestilential, it could still be ruled out at this stage as not fulfilling all the conditions. Further, in addition to Righi’s contention that it was impossible for two epidemics to co-exist, they also noted that: although there had not been infection of the air, there had been a little corruption and that the seeds of this were carried here from Lombardy by the Tramontana, the wind which blew in the Spring. The result was that the bodies of the poor, who because of their sufferings and hardships had less resistance, were therefore afflicted by this malign influence.10

The college distinguished between general localised infection of the air, which would have derived from some local source, such as the disturbances caused by earth tremors, and a distant cause. The corrupt ‘seeds’, which derived from Lombardy, were a clear reference to Girolamo Fracastoro’s tract De Contagione. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries one of the most frequently used terms to express transmission was ‘contagion’, though it is important to stress that this was not a recognition of some twenty-first-century pathogen, which could be passed from person to

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person. It was instead based on the notion of corrupt air, and, even if we take into account the Galenic idea – developed by Fracastoro – of ‘diseased seeds’ in the atmosphere, this does not represent the origins of Koch’s germ theory.11 Rather contemporaries meant a much more elastic interpretation of contagion, as meaning transmission through the air, and, even if touch was implied, this meant little more than the passing of corrupt air. It is important to stress this point, because it helps us to understand the role of air and its relationship to ideas about putrefaction and smell in the theory of disease and disease transmission in early modern Italy. In a very literal way, the plague was seen as being spread through breath or, if touch was involved, then through the rubbing off of infected seeds in the air which had been impregnated into the clothes worn by the sick, hence the burning of cloth or its lengthy exposure to the air. The centrality of ‘contagion’ to ideas of disease and its transmission within the context of the Florentine plague is reflected in a passage from a treatise which was written following the epidemic of 1631 by the Portuguese physician Dr Stefano Roderico de Castro, who was reader in Theoretical Medicine at the University of Pisa and one of the advisers to the Florentine health board: Dionisio: ‘I should like to find somebody who for once can tell me what this contagion consists of, because I see that everyone mentions it, but no-one explains it.’ Marcello: ‘God save me from it, that I enter into this labyrinth, in which the Ancients did not acquire praise and among the Moderns Girolamo Fracastoro was fortunate that he was not blamed more for what he said.’12

The Dialogo was in part a rhetorical device to display the author’s learning, although it also reflects the range of contemporary interpretations of terms relating to disease and transmission. The question posed by Dionisio about the nature of ‘contagion’ may seem ingenuous at first sight, but when the expert Marcello replied he also admitted that others had found difficulty in attempting a convincing definition. The very complexity of this subject, which underlines the necessity to be careful in the interpretation of contemporary terminology, is found in Fracastoro himself. In his 1546 treatise De contagione, he divided ‘contagion’ into three types: by direct contact; at a distance; and, his best-known idea, by indirect contact through fomites, a technical term for the intermediary in the transmission of an infected substance from a patient to a healthy host.13 Thus the ‘seminaria contagionis’

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could be absorbed by an individual through inhalation. The way it was understood to have worked is laid out in the treatise of another medical adviser to the Florentine health board, Dr Antonio Pellicini, in the autumn of 1630. He explained that it was not just through breathing that one could inhale soot and vapours, but also through pores all over one’s body: Thus it is easy to understand that contagion can occur without contact between people, through the fomites, which pass from the air through the infected body to another thing, which then receives it.14

Furthermore, Fracastoro believed that, in the case of diseases such as plague and the Great Pox, the fomites often enter another medium, within which they can be stored for a long time until they are passed on to another person. Fracastoro defined those substances which he regarded as being most suitable as ‘somewhat porous, and are warm and tepid’. He cites the examples of ‘wool, rags, and many kinds of wood’.15 In common with his contemporaries, this provided one explanation for the rapid spread of plague. Fracastoro’s idea of ‘contagion’ is far away from the twenty-firstcentury concept, even though in the past medical historians claimed his concept as the origin of their own: ‘It is only in his work on infection that Fracastoro rises to the height that places him among first-class investigators.’16 The idea of seeds of disease was not just important for discussions of transmission; it was also used in discussions of the cause of disease. Fracastoro believed that although these ‘seeds’ are external and corrupt the air, they can be reactivated within an individual by an unhealthy regime. This reflects the Galenic belief in the relationship between external corruption of the air and the humoral balance of the individual’s body. Dr Righi developed this notion further, listing internal causes of plague such as ‘a great cacochimia [bad mixture of humours], or from putrefaction and other corruption of the humours’.17 Even though Rondinelli was evidently well aware of this debate, it is not clear whether he followed it in detail. In support of the doctors, he says that it is difficult in a large field to recognise a herb when it has just emerged from the earth, just as in a city with many sicknesses it is difficult to determine when this particularly poisonous herb is born, added to the fact that man tended to believe what he wants!18 Rondinelli, then, seems rather frustrated about the indecisive nature of the pronouncements of the medical profession, although we should bear in

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mind that he wrote his account with hindsight. However, he did record that most medical experts agreed about the most immediate and readily observable effect of this epidemic: higher mortality among the poor, which was caused by the fact that recently the poor had suffered considerably from a series of severe dearths, when they had been forced to consume food and drink of poor quality. This had led, according to some doctors, to the generation in the bodies of the poor of ‘a great mass of bad humours’, which had led to the creation in them of an ‘extraordinary putrefaction, which even from a long distance and even for any occasion has become the plague’. Furthermore, poor diet was seen as having provided them with less resistance to disease than the well-nourished stomachs of the more affluent.19 In this discussion of the reasons for the link between disease and poverty, Rondinelli reported quite faithfully the ideas enunciated by both Righi and de Castro, even if he did not mention them by name. Righi took the standard Galenic line and linked bad diet with disease; he emphasised that not eating well increased the level of bad humours within the bodies of the poor and weakened their resistance to disease.20 Stefano de Castro also argued that their wilful ignorance made them susceptible to disease. The poor are portrayed as only believing in the evidence of their own eyes and refusing to believe it was necessary to keep clear of an infected person who, although he might not have an evident ‘segno del male’, could still be carrying the ‘secret seed of contagion’. Furthermore, he suggested that the shortage of money of the poor meant they could not take the proper preventive measures against plague, such as buying aromatic herbs and spices to burn and perfume the air and having enough space to avoid mixing with infected people.21 If de Castro portrayed the poor as victims of their own prejudices and ignorance, Righi instead had a more fatalistic approach. According to him it was in the very nature of the poor to attract disease, as he demonstrated by taking the Platonic analogy between the human body and the city. He likened the noble and robust organs, such as the heart, to the upper levels of society and the poor to the less noble and robust organs (veins, arteries, skin and glands). The rich were seen as having the ability to expel unnecessary dangerous substances towards the outside and the lower organs. The poor did not possess the same ability, so they became the deposit of poisons: ‘therefore . . . if the disease is in the city, they [the poor] receive it and retain it, as if they were the glands of society’.22 This vision of society as a body was not just confined to the medical world. In Rome during the 1656 epidemic the Jesuit Sforza Pallavicino recorded that, when plague had begun to spread through Trastevere, a decision was made to

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place the poor sick into a Lazaretto in order to ‘cut off, according to the rules of surgery, all that part that was weak and ignoble from the best parts of the body’.23 In Rome, as elsewhere, medical men provided a justification for government policy in their treatment of the poor, which, as will be seen in the case of Florence, involved expelling foreign beggars from the city, the housing of local beggars in special hostels known as the Spedali dei Mendicanti and rigorous measures to keep the poor in their place – literally through quarantine when they had come into contact with the sick – and the enforced removal of substantial numbers of suspected plague victims to Lazaretti. There had been a growing body of medical literature in Italy from the later sixteenth century which had come to associate the poor, ignorance, bad diet and disease, and which was invoked at times of epidemics to support the belief of the governing classes that the poor were the cause of the problem.24 In this way Colleges of Physicians and doctors provided advice to governments and thus a theoretical justification for their actions. Preventive Measures and the Environment

A major theme of the contemporary Florentine treatises written about the ‘pestilential contagious diseases’ (Pellicini’s title) of 1630–1 was that the insanitary conditions associated with poverty and poor housing were one of the fundamental causes of plague. It was in particular the poisonous vapours, which were generated, in de Castro’s words, by ‘earthquakes, unburied bodies, stagnant and fetid water’,25 which caused plague. Insanitary conditions were seen as particularly bad in cities, through the effluence generated by humans living in close proximity, as underlined by De Castro: the crowds of sick people and of those who care for them can besmirch the air, and the proof is clear; [in the same way that] one always flees the air inside hospitals, because the breath of the sick fills them with bad vapours. I imagine that similarly at a time when there are many sick people in a city, that city is a hospital.26

This belief in the association between bad air and disease had also underlain sanitary legislation from well before the Black Death, when medieval states and cities had enacted measures to clean up the environment, from the disposal of human waste to the banning of the butchery of animals in city centres. Indeed, contrary to traditional views of the history of public health, recently historians of the late-medieval period have argued that

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contemporaries were not only aware of the problems associated with polluted environments, but also made strenuous efforts to clean up urban spaces.27 In other words, when contemporaries complained stridently about high levels of stench in cities and the countryside, this represented not just the objective reality of sanitary conditions at particular times, but also led to determined responses of the authorities to tackle the causes of pollution. From the second half of the sixteenth century, these ideas became even better developed through the influence of the growing literature concerning the close connection between the environment and disease following the revival of neo-Hippocratic ideas. Samuel Cohn has argued that the plague of 1575 in northern Italy had already promoted a more general public awareness of this nexus, as reflected in the explosion of broadsheets in Venice, Milan and Bologna which gave instructions to citizens to keep the streets clean of refuse and excrement in order to prevent the spread of disease.28 This led to a greater concentration in public health on the causative link between disease and the Hippocratic categories of airs, waters and places. The writers of plague tracts, such as Giovanni Filippo Ingrassia of Palermo, provided detailed discussions of the problems of contaminated water, while Niccolò Massa of Venice and Girolamo Donzellini of Verona stressed the link between plague in 1576 and the crowded insanitary housing of the poor.29 These concerns continued to be fundamental to anti-plague measures in the seventeenth century. The treatises, legislation and official policies relating to the urban environment enacted in Florence during the 1630–1 epidemic echo the medical Consiglia of the late sixteenth century. The measures which stemmed from these recommendations were intended to be preventive and attacked corrupt air, seen as one of the fundamental causes of plague. Fulvio Giubetti, the chancellor of the Sanità, in his treatise Conservazione della sanità contro al contagio della peste (1630), underlines the necessity to keep the streets clean and prohibit any activity which was likely to lead to the increase in smell and fetid vapours.30 One of the main areas of concern was the method used for the disposal of human waste. As we shall discuss in more detail in the next section, Florence did not have a widespread system of sewage pipes, relying instead on the pozzo nero or cesspit. These needed regular emptying and, as Giubetti noted, if this was not done their smell made the sky pestilential. While he admits that the summer was the worst time of year to empty the pozzi neri, because the air could be corrupted more easily by the heat, when necessary, as during plague, this should be undertaken at night to avoid giving offence to and infecting the neighbourhood.31 Concern was expressed also about

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silk production in the city of Florence: ‘some people had been offended by the fetor produced by the boilers used in silk production; we will willingly listen to their solutions to remedy this situation’.32 Existing orders to keep the streets clean were also reinforced. As during the Middle Ages, tanners and butchers were regarded as being particularly dangerous occupations, as their production processes were likely to corrupt the air. The tanners were prohibited from throwing their rubbish or polluted water into the streets, while Rondinelli records that at the height of the epidemic, in November, butchers were forbidden to slaughter animals in the city, since it generated humidity, which was ‘one of the main causes of contagion’.33 The two types of meat regarded as particularly noxious were pork and beef, not just because they generated humidity, but also because when eaten they led to the generation of ‘thick blood and melancholy’, both of which were regarded by doctors as dangerous for health. Slaughtering animals was also seen as releasing noxious vapours, which were exacerbated when butchers followed the practice of inflating animals’ corpses, presumably to make them appear larger when they were sold.34 Not only tradesmen, but also the daily activities of individuals and families were regulated. They were prohibited from allowing any type of manure, human as well as animal, to be kept even in their own houses, since the corrupt fumes could poison the inhabitants in the house and neighbourhood.35 They were also not allowed to throw into the street the water which had been used to clean out barrels containing wine which had gone off (vino guasto) or to wash receptacles for food preparation and consumption. Extra controls were introduced to regulate the standard of food and drink, with a strict prohibition against the sale of any types of food which was ‘ruined or stinking’, including green unripe fruit, fish, meat and grain, because they ‘corrupt the blood, relax the stomach and create various sicknesses and pestilential diseases’.36 Finally, regulations were put into place to control drink. Consumption of what were regarded as older wines, such as acquavite, were prohibited and new wine had to be diluted in wine vats before it was sold, thus avoiding the corruption of blood which could poison the body.37 All these measures adopted in summer 1630 at the beginning of the epidemic in Florence were familiar from the legislation and practices of cities and towns in medieval and early modern central and northern Italy. They had all been based on the advice of medical experts, from Dino del Garbo at the time of the Black Death to Marsilio Ficino in the later fifteenth century to Antonio Pellicini and Stefano de Castro in 1630–1. What appears

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to have been new from the later sixteenth century was that Italian health boards began to institute sanitary surveys of urban and rural areas. Medical experts were sent to places infected by an epidemic to gather information about the health conditions of the area, to describe the diseases of the sick and dead and to determine the cause of the outbreak.38 Even more urgent was when an epidemic broke out in Florence, the capital city of the Grand Duchy. During the epidemic of ‘petechial fever’ of 1620–1, the members of the charitable confraternity, the Buonomini di S. Martino, with doctors elected by the Sanità, instituted an inspection of the houses of the sick poor and found there ‘a stink and fetor so great and unbearable’. Consequently, they commissioned a government official, Filippo Lasagnini, responsible for the condition of Florence’s streets, to undertake a thorough survey of the city and especially of the poorer areas. His description of the insanitary conditions led the Sanità to conclude that ‘proceeding in this way it is a miracle that it does not lead to a plague’.39 These were to prove portentous words. When plague broke out in summer 1630, there was a recognition of the close connection between smell and sickness. Rondinelli recounts that ‘the first seeds [of the epidemic] began in Via de’ Calderai at number 3 in this way: Antonio the builder, the son of Francesco Giannelli, emptied a well of the Monache dette le Poverine; through the hard work and the terrible smell [he] was immediately overtaken by a serious illness, and shortly afterwards there was discovered a swelling the size of a nut between his thigh and his body. When Dr Lorenzi came to visit him, and diligently interrogated him, he immediately had the windows opened, saying that there were all the indications of “mal contagioso”. ’40 The recognition of the close relationship between environment and plague in 1630 was reflected in Dr Pellicini’s recommendations to the health board in his treatise written in November 1630, describing the initial stages of the epidemic: ‘And remove those people shut up in houses, and especially the narrow evil shacks where there is a number of people living, not so much because of the many disorders which can take place, but because the enclosed air cannot be cleansed and is insalubrious.’41 This followed a measure which had been taken in Bologna in May, where it was ordered that streets should be cleansed of all rubbish which might have created bad odours and corrupt air, and that tanners should be removed outside the city walls since their occupation caused particularly strong smells.42 In Florence a survey was implemented of all the city, concentrating on the poorest streets.

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‘Filth is the mother of corruption’: The sanitary survey, August 1630

These [miserable beds] were carried away, those poor houses were cleansed from this dirt, and proper mattresses should be substituted in place of the vile piles of straw and the wretched rags.43

As in 1620–1, the survey was delegated by the Sanità to the members of a religious confraternity, in this case the Company of S. Michele Arcangelo, which had fulfilled this task on behalf of the city from the early sixteenth century.44 Significantly there were other charitable confraternities elsewhere dedicated to Michele Arcangelo, the saint traditionally associated with plague and the cure of disease. He was the patron saint of, for example, a major confraternity in Rome, which helped the poor and sick, and Pope Urban VIII had dedicated his papacy to him following his recovery from malaria.45 The initial brief of the company in Florence in August 1630 was to concentrate on identifying all leaking cesspits and inadequate or defective bedding, and assessing the distribution of drinking water.46 The link between poverty, disease and bedding remained a constant theme throughout the epidemic, as recorded by Mario Guiducci in his ‘Panegyric’ to the Grand Duke, written during the plague: ‘They provide for the extreme misery of the poor, who languish in their houses, which are falling down and badly supplied, not so much for their lack of food, as they have to sleep in beds which are so wretched, that it would be less troublesome to sleep in the places where unclean animals live.’47 These problems were explained in more detail by an anonymous discussion of these environmental problems compiled during the total quarantine of the city. The author, who was probably of the party which opposed the quarantine, emphasised two features of housing which made the poor particularly susceptible to plague, especially for those who lived in groundfloor apartments: a humid atmosphere, where the ‘walls run with water’, and the lack of proper ventilation.48 Furthermore, because of their poverty they often had no ‘benches or bed and hardly a straw mattress and a mattress of tow’ (hemp fibre); when beds were remade they were ‘found to be mildewed’ and their clothes were often damp in the morning when they woke up. It was reported that conditions also were often crowded, with families of four or five children living in cramped apartments. All this was made worse because often ‘they do not have ventilation or air in the house and have only

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a little window’. This was made worse during the total quarantine of Florence from mid-January 1631, when all residents were required to remain in their houses day and night, ‘so living like this they will definitely die’. They were seen as a danger not just to themselves, ‘because if they get sick they infect the others who live above them’. Finally, it was rumoured that another health risk was in the offing; the Sanità intended to distribute coal for fires in these houses, which would lead to a ‘great fear of some sickness’, because ‘coal would create the greatest damage [to health] because it is too hot’. While this document was written in February 1631 during the quarantine of the city, it was precisely these concerns which were reflected in the sanitary surveys of the poorest zones of the city in August 1630. The surviving copy of the survey, initiated on 10 August, records the genuine concern of the confratelli over the living conditions of the poor, hardly surprising given that many were nobles from the Grand-Ducal court. This was a very detailed investigation, with the brothers going from house to house, and indeed from apartment to apartment, mounting stairs, going through smelly courtyards and into equally smelly basements, to investigate the cause of odours emanating from leaking or over-full cesspits and drains. Such is the detail provided by the survey that it has formed the basis of Nicholas Eckstein’s recent article, ‘Florence on Foot’, as a way of investigating ‘eye-level mapping’ of the city.49 The Parish of S. Lorenzo, as Florence’s largest parish, has been taken as a sample area. It stretched from the centre, just north of the Baptistery, to the northern city walls at Porta S. Gallo and included a range of building types, from the patrician palaces in the centre to the complex of conventual and hospital buildings on Via S. Gallo, all linked together by the numerous streets of terraced houses inhabited by artisans and poorer folk. Thus, reflecting the large area it covered, it was fairly representative of Florentine society and included a wide social and professional mix. The members of the Company of S. Michele Arcangelo conducted two surveys of S. Lorenzo in 1630, the first which reported on 10 August and the second on the 16th. Together they identified 770 instances of leaking cesspits and rotten mattresses, though far more mattresses needed to be replaced (656) than cesspits required repair (114). This is not unexpected given that every person living in these crowded houses would have needed a mattress or palliasse on which they slept, while there was usually no more than one cesspit per house and, in theory, that would have been repaired at the landlord’s expense. Some idea of the number and distribution of these problems can be seen in Figure 3.1; the grey line records the total number of leaking cesspits and

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mattresses per street in the parish, based on the two surveys in mid-August. What is perhaps most surprising, given the laments of the Gentiluomini, is that over half the streets (24 of 44) were identified as not having a problem in August. Evidently the Company of S. Michele concentrated on the worst cases, given that replacing mattresses and repairing cesspits implied considerable expense for the government. This exercise was part of an on-going process in checking the living conditions and levels of poverty over the next few months, and future surveys continued to highlight problems which needed addressing. As the month went on, the scope of the job of the gentlemen of the company was expanded to include, not just remaking mattresses and taking away rubbish, but also ‘to take a note of the sick that are found in the houses’.50 On 27 August they were instructed that on their visits to the parishes of the city, they were to make a note of the ‘accidenti de’ malattie’ and send this information to the chancellor of the Sanità, and at the same time to make sure to inform all heads of household it was their duty, under threat of punishment, to report to the gentlemen any sick person in their house.51 To examine how far, as contemporaries believed, there might have been a close relationship between insanitary conditions and sickness, Figure 3.1 compares the results of the sanitary survey with the number of people reported as infected with plague in each street over the course of the epidemic, using the lists of sospetti or suspected victims as a proxy for infection. What immediately becomes apparent from this graph is that, just as the survey did not identify problems in each street, so some streets did not record any people who were suspected of having plague. As we shall discuss further in Chapter 5, this pattern was also reflected in the distribution of plague deaths in the parish of S. Lorenzo, suggesting that there may not always have been such an obvious direct association between living conditions and plague as contemporaries suggested. However, when one examines the correlation between the overall number of cases identified in the sanitary survey and the infection rate per street, even if the result may not be significant in a true statistical sense (0.60), it does still indicate some level of matching, as can be seen in Figure 3.1. Inevitably, given differences between the character of the gentlemen who undertook the survey, some fulfilled their tasks more rigorously than others, which led to variations in the amount of information recorded for each section of the city. The survey of the Sesto of S. Croce, for example, provided

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160 140 120 Number

100 80 60 40 20 Borgo la Noce Borgo S. Lorenzo Canto a Monteloro Canto alla Paglia Canto alle Macine Canto del Giglio Canto di Bernadetto Canto di Puccino Da S .Maria del Fiore Fortezza da Basso Gomitolo dell’Oro Piazza Madonna Piazza S. Lorenzo Via Chiara Via da Foligno Via de Ginori Via de Martelli Via de Melaranci Via de Taddei Via del Campaccio Via della Cella di Ciardo Via della Forca Via della Stufa Via dell’Acqua Via dell’Amore Via dell’Amorino Via dell’Ariento Via delle Gatte Via delle Ruote Via di S. Barnaba Via Larga Via Malborghetto Via Nuova Via Panicale Via Porciaia Via Romita Via S. Appollonia Via S. Francesco Via S. Gallo Via S. Giovanni Via S. lacopo Via S. Zanobi Via Tedesca Monache di S. Teresa Via S. Caterina Via S. Giuliano Via S. Orsola

0

People infected

Sanitary survey

Fig. 3.1 Parish of S. Lorenzo: numbers infected (1630–1) and sanitary survey (August 1630)

much more detail about the health of the inhabitants than did the survey of the Sesto of S. Giovanni, noting, for example, cases of ‘fever, catarrh, malate di spine’. An example of a well filled-out report is that of a household in Via del Palagio: Monna Francesca di Pagolo contadina and two mature daughters: one of them was sick with catarrh and fever for more than a month, suffering a lot from this catarrh, treated at home. The slipper-maker near to that man who makes carriages had need of alms, because he cannot remain at the hospital for [they] had need for the bed, and he suffers a lot from the said catarrh and lives in the room, which is without a window, and it is a place which is unhappy, cramped and nasty.52

The head of the first apartment’s household is Monna Francesca, who is described as being from the countryside (contadina), though it is not clear how recently she had come to live in Florence. One of her two older daughters is reported as being sick from two of the conditions listed in the gentlemen’s guidelines, catarrh and a fever, and had been treated at home, although whether by Monna Francesca or the surgeon of the Sesto is not clear. Her

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neighbour, the slipper-maker, had evidently the same illness, catarrh, which was sufficiently serious because he had received treatment at the hospital of S. Maria Nuova, but had been removed because of the pressure on beds, probably because of the increasing number of sick people in the city. The gentlemen who visited him also saw his living conditions as exacerbating his illness: a ‘place which is unhappy, cramped and nasty’. The close association between poverty and disease in the minds of the Gentiluomini is clearly reflected in the extraordinarily detailed survey of the Sesto di S. Giovanni undertaken by Niccolò dell’Antella and Lionardo Ginori on 16 August. One of the 230 entries concerned Agnolo di Francesco, who lived between Canto alle Macine and S. Lorenzo, and was described as ‘sick from suffering and fever’.53 Indeed descriptions of living conditions predominated in the gentlemen’s surveys since, although sickness was noted so that individuals could receive alms for treatment and support, the main purpose was to record insanitary housing. The amount and types of information provided were very revealing of the miserable state in which many of the poorer sorts spent their lives. The houses of the poor were not confined to the back-streets, as can be seen from the following account of the inhabitants of the medieval tower at the Canto alla Paglia, which was opposite the Baptistery of S. Giovanni, on the corner of Borgo S. Lorenzo and Via dei Carnesechi, now Via Cerretani. Particular attention would have been paid to this building, because the apartments were above a shop belonging to a butcher, an occupation which in itself would have been seen as creating pollution through the release of the corrupt vapours contained in bodies of animals when they were slaughtered and cut up.54 The tower was divided into four separate apartments, each with problems of its own: 210. On the first floor of the said tower: to the widow Monna Lisa a new straw mattress; climbing another staircase: to Monna Lisabetta, wife of Bartolommeo, bring another mattress; to Monna Francesca on the said floor: mend a cesspit. 211. On the top floor: a mattress to Antonio the tailor; and instruct the landlord of the said [apartments], who is the above-mentioned Moscellaro, to have carried away all the rubbish in the said house because it causes a great stink. 212. The house which is built next door: to the son of the widow of the stretcher-bearer: a new straw mattress and empty the fresh-water well; the landlord is called ‘Il Grazzini’.55

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This description follows the journey of the inspector from the ground to the top floor of what were probably quite cramped apartments, or even rooms, in a medieval tower. Like others built in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, they were tall narrow buildings with sometimes no more than one or two rooms per floor, as suggested by the inspector having to climb the staircase from Monna Lisa’s room to those of Monna Lisabetta and Monna Francesca. Even though this extract from the company’s visit is brief, it has enabled us to determine some of the characteristics which contemporaries saw as constituting ‘the poor’ and in turn how their living conditions were seen as determining that poverty. First, this group of half a dozen people were all living in rented accommodation in squalid conditions with a landlord who was normally too mean to have the rubbish cleared away. In this and the house next door there were also problems with either the supply of clean water or the system to deal with human waste. We know that two of these women were widows, presumably living in straitened circumstances. They are represented as being too poor to buy decent mattresses, though it must be remembered that mattresses were also mentioned here because they were seen as harbouring the poison of disease. Finally, two of the men mentioned would also have been regarded as potentially suspect within the context of plague, Antonio the tailor and the deceased stretcher-bearer, the first because he dealt with cloth and the second because he came into contact with the sick. The emphasis in this passage, as in the rest of the survey, was on poverty and insanitary conditions, which often met in the same house. Over and again the Gentiluomini encountered widows or women living by themselves in poverty. In this case the level of indigence was measured by the lack of bedding. Some such as Monna Fiore, the widow of Camillo the cobbler, living in Via S. Gallo ‘opposite [the Convento di] Chiarito’, was found to be sleeping on the floor, as did the five women tenants further down the street, and the weaver Lisabetta di Tommaso with her five children in Via Campaccio.56 In other cases, the precarious economic climate had led to the splitting up of families, as had happened to Maddalena di Giovanni, who was described as a ‘girl’ of twenty-four years’ old, who lived in Via dell’Amore (today Via S. Antonino) next to the baker at S. Pierino, in poverty, since she also slept on the floor. She was described as having been abandoned by her father and was to be sent to the beggars’ hostel of the Mendicanti and was to be given a palliasse.57 In Borgo S. Jacopo in Campo Corbolini there lived a woman called Nannina with seven children; the family was evidently in

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abject poverty since they were described as ‘dying of hunger’. The main bread-winner of the family, her husband Matteo Pallini, had been in Pisa for several months, possibly in search of work, and may very well have found it difficult to return with the restrictions placed on travellers during plague. Obviously, with such a large family, she would have found it difficult to work, hence her parlous financial state.58 Another problem was that whole houses had evidently been divided up into letting rooms which were desolate in their poverty: In the courtyard inside the Portaccia [in Via dell’Ariento]: in the courtyard there are many wretched rooms with ten tenants, all miserable: provide [new] palliasses and have everything burnt; they do not have any kind of sheet or cover; and have carried away many mounds of rubbish that corrupt the air.59

When the Sanità received this report on the ‘houses of the poor people of the city’, they declared themselves very satisfied with the ‘diligence employed and the charity of those who had undertaken’ the survey. They then requested the Grand Duke to provide subsidies to the sick, and that those houses which had the greatest need were to be cleaned. However, charity was not provided for all: the Sanità requested a note to be made of those poor people who were able to work in the woollen or silk trades, and they were not given alms.60 One of the main aims of the survey had thus been achieved, to establish the extent of the needs of the poor. The other important aspect was the extent of insanitary conditions, which might generate disease and help to create an epidemic. The relationship between disease and smelly environments was reflected in the report of an employee of the magistracy of the Otto di Guardia e Balia at the beginning of the epidemic, on 8 August 1630: Ottavio, detto il Chappellaio, corporal of the officers of the Otto, recounts that on the evening of the 7th, I was in the company of the officers, when at one o’clock at night, passing near the house of Signor Lucha Salviati, and smelling a great stink, we went into Piazza de’ Donati, which is close, where, as we said, at one o’clock at night we found 19 barrels of shit; they had begun to empty a cesspit and evidently they had left it uncovered at 24 hours at night, because one of the said barrels was full and had been taken outside the house against the laws of the Sanità.61

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As the epidemic developed a whole series of measures were taken to cope with these environmental problems. These were summarised by the chancellor of the Sanità, Fulvio Giubetti, in his 1630 leaflet Notizie concernenti la conservazione della sanità contro al contagio di peste, which we shall look at in more detail in Chapter 4 in relation to the broader sanitary legislation adopted in the autumn. The concern for filth, smells and corrupt air can be seen even more graphically in a scene which was probably not uncommon in early modern cities, but in more normal times might not have been the cause of such alarm. The circumstances were ultimately the responsibility of the Grand Dukes, because they were caused by workmen in Palazzo Medici. The Palazzo had remained their property, even though the family had taken up residence in Palazzo Pitti: In the courtyard of the Palazzo de’Medici, where the labourers are working on the chapel, there are the common places [toilets], which give off the most terrible stink in all the street, and the same is true under the portico . . . therefore it is necessary to remake them in other places which can be properly aerated.62

Problems arose, then as now, when provision had to be made for builders working on a property, either because they were lazy or because the proprietor did not allow access to their own toilets. The Grand Dukes were also ultimately responsible for a similar problem for their employees in their stables: ‘20: to the stables of SAS: repair the common place [toilet] in Adam’s room, and also the sink, because they cause a great stink, and take away the rubbish and filth from a hole where they all throw it.’63 The Medici were not the only landowners whose property created insanitary conditions. For example, in the road behind the convent of the nuns of S. Orsola ‘there is a drain leading from the troughs where the nuns work; twice a week all the stinking water runs out, which poisons the street’. The gentlemen ordered that the drain should be covered, or else a well should be created, which would drain off the water from the trough.64 Problems may have occurred over lack of clarity about who was responsible for drains once waste water had left the premises, the landlord, institution or the city. In Via Panicale, for example, the Gentiluomini ordered that a drain should be repaired because it ‘receives [the water from] the washrooms of twelve houses around the corner’.65 In the case of a house near Canto alle Macine, which was inhabited by the patrician Tommaso Pandolfini, ‘there is a drain

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that discharges into the street and causes a very great stink’. The landlord Piero the olive-oil dealer is ordered to construct a well to collect the fetid water.66 Tenants could also be the cause of the problem, as in another house near Canto alle Macine where orders were issued to all the tenants; when they washed their clothes, they were to make sure that the stinking water did not flood the street.67 The system for dealing with the human waste of tenants could also be defective, as was reflected in the case of the medieval tower at the Canto alla Paglia and numerous other entries in these surveys, including the house in the Sesto of S. Ambrogio between Via Nuova and Borgo Pinti inhabited, among others, by two widows, Monna Cammilla and Monna Caterina. Apart from the palliasses which need replacing because ‘they cause a great stink’, they were living in very cramped conditions: ‘There are seven people in a room and they do everything in the same courtyard to the left of Monna Dianora’s room, where there is a fetid bed which could create plague.’68 While legislation and medical reports may have put the blame for filthy living conditions firmly on the shoulders of the poor, many entries in the sanitary survey underline that it was the responsibility of the landlord to provide the sanitary facilities, involving not just latrines, but also the provision of fresh water and the disposal of all sorts of waste generated within the domestic context. Clearly one of the most problematic areas within houses were the cellars, partly because this is where the pozzi neri may have been situated, and partly because this was where pipes entered the property, whether for the clean water supply, where this existed, or for drainage pipes linked to the channels for waste water in the street. And, as can be seen from the following entry relating to the S. Ambrogio area, it had also been where rubbish was dumped: 21: At the Leoni at the Canto [corner] there is a cellar, which in addition to being filled with filth [porcheria] there is a dead female dog, which creates plague; immediately empty [of filth] the entranceway and the stables and also take away the bones, which the coroners keep, which is necessary with the smells everywhere around, and many complain.69

Here again one can see the association between filth and the fear of plague, made worse by the fact that a dead dog had been dumped there along with bones which had been stored by coroners. This was seen as a health concern, not just by the Gentiluomini, who surveyed the area, but also more generally by locals, many of whom complained.

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As mentioned, pozzi neri were often situated in cellars and smelled if they leaked. One reason there had been problems with the cesspits was the recent change in the system. Until the early sixteenth century it had been the job of the votapozzieri (literally sewer-emptiers), who were paid by the state to empty the pozzi neri on a regular basis. They had emptied the liquid matter into the River Arno and sold the solid matter to the contadini to fertilise their fields.70 Then in the early seventeenth century the proprietors and the contadini decided to bypass the votapozzieri, with property-owners selling the matter directly to the contadini. Deregulation meant that there was now no proper control of waste disposal and resulted in complaints about the stench of the Arno and the surrounding areas. A new law was passed to remedy this abuse so that in future only the officially appointed votapozzieri could deal with waste. However, when it was decreed that landlords had to pay the votapozzieri, some decided to get the tenants to pay instead. This meant, because the poorest could not afford to pay, that the cesspits were left to overflow.71 Landlords may also have employed unscrupulous and ill-trained men to fulfil this task, leading to accidents. Thus on 17 October the guards at the Porta al Prato reported that a cart belonging to votapozzieri had overturned with its contents of two barrels of shit as it was passing through the city gate. As the Sanità officials complained, this would lead to the spread of putrefying smells and corrupt air and would mean that people would ‘die of stink’.72 The brothers of the Compagnia di S. Michele Arcangelo understood well the association between stink and plague and must have been keenly aware of their own exposure to disease while they conducted their survey. Risks to their own health and to that of the city are clearly evident from this note on 30 August by one of the Gentiluomini, Lionardo Ginori, when he made his survey of Via Chiara: In distributing the palliasses today, we discovered that the household goods were being moved of someone that they say had died while he was being taken to hospital. Having heard that it was a suspicious disease, I ordered that those goods should not be touched. I thought it was fair to give account of this to Your Most Illustrious [Lords], because I have found a sick woman in the Stufa Vecchia of Via dell’Ariento and that the person who had died lived in front of the baker of S. Bernaba.73

The report reflects the care taken to trace the physical proximity of cases of sickness and to report any incidence of suspicious deaths and also how

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information was gathered as they made their way along the streets inspecting houses. Evidently, on discovering somebody taking goods out of a house, Ginori had interviewed neighbours, who had told him about the man’s suspicious death on the way to hospital. All these streets were in close proximity and it is possible that the sick woman had visited the baker behind S. Bernaba where the man had died. Ginori would have known this area intimately since Palazzo Ginori, where his family lived, was around the corner; one can almost hear his patrician voice asking the questions and eliciting answers – ‘they say’, ‘having heard’ – from the more humble people of his neighbourhood. The brothers of the Company of S. Michele, who had been designated to carry out the survey, were genuinely shocked by the poverty, filth and stinking air caused by the living conditions of the poor. As they noted in their report on the Sesto di S. Maria Novella, ‘one sees in the poverty from one day to the next, an increase in the miseries and infinite needs, and if you had wanted us to note every case we would have had to create a very large volume indeed’.74 By early September the Sanità recorded that a total of 2,347 straw mattresses had been handed out to the poor by the confraternity, equivalent to giving a mattress to 3% of the resident population, though more would have benefited, given the custom and necessity among the poor for members of the same family to sleep together.75 Concern was expressed above all that these insanitary conditions would create and increase the corrupt vapours, which were seen as creating plague, for, as Rondinelli put it, ‘filth is the mother of corruption’.76 The exercise continued throughout the month and after nearly two weeks, on 22 August, the brother who had conducted a series of surveys in the Sesto of S. Maria Novella noted that, from one day to the next, there was an alarming growth of ‘misery, necessity and sickness’ among the poor.77 Even if the results of the sanitary survey of late summer 1630 appear to have shocked those who conducted it, they cannot have been that surprised, given that their normal daily experience must have included encounters with areas of the city which gave off smells generated by both domestic and industrial waste. 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’

The previous sections have shown how the medical advisers to the health board diagnosed the cause of the plague as being closely related to the poor

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and the conditions in which they lived. The sanitary survey in August provided justification, if it was needed, for their contention that the poor actually caused plague through creating squalor and dirt, which itself caused putrefaction and corrupt air and thus led to the outbreak of the epidemic.78 This was seen as combined with the thoughtlessness of the poorer sort, as in the case of the pollaiolo from Trespiano, who, despite being mortally ill from ‘the contagious sickness’, spread it among the local inhabitants, which in turn led to Florence itself becoming infected. If the environment survey was one immediate result of the advice given to the Sanità, another was to address the problems which the authorities saw as generated by the poorest members of society, beggars, who were seen as spreading plague, as the chancellor of the Sanità, Fulvio Giubetti, records: In suspicious times [e.g. when an epidemic threatens] the [following] must be thrown out [of the city]: the beggars, vagabonds and rascals, as really nourishing the plague. And these can be thrown out also at times of famine, as it is better to feed and help our own than foreigners and aliens.79

Rondinelli explained further why beggars were such a problem: they most easily ‘catch the fire of contagion and sow it’ in their journeys through the city as they ask for alms. The Sanità had a dual policy in dealing with beggars.80 The first part was to banish all non-Florentine beggars from the city; this was part of a wider policy against certain categories of people, as Francesco Rondinelli records: all Jews, beggars, rogues and gypsies, although they had very clean passes they were not allowed to enter, because it was not the time to make the body of the city worse with such malign humours, the most inclined towards putrefaction.81

Once again, then, the image of the body of the city was invoked, for it was seen as under threat from the malign humours of these groups of people. Local beggars were housed in the Beggars’ Hospital, the Spedale dei Mendicanti, which had been founded in 1621 in the semi-abandoned convent of S. Salvadore di Camaldoli near the city walls in the Oltrarno. The foundation had been a response to a crisis in the standard of living of the poor following a series of very poor harvests from 1616, exacerbated by an outbreak of petechial fever in 1621.82 The measures taken to deal with plague

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nine years later were based on the experience of the earlier epidemic, which may have fed the uncertainty and debate about the identity of the disease in summer 1630. Hence the reintroduction of the sanitary survey and the utilisation of the Mendicanti for local beggars. Furthermore, given suspicion of the rootless poor, on 23 August Giovan Filippo Rucellai, the Provveditore of the Mendicanti, was asked to find a separate place in the city to house any beggars ‘with swellings [rogne] or other similar sicknesses’, in order to ‘cleanse the city as much as possible of any infection’. In the event they took over a hospital at the Porta S. Niccolò, which was used for giving lodging to the poor, after negotiating with the Arte de’ Mercatanti who administered the hostel.83 In addition to beggars, the Sanità alighted on another marginalised group of society in the search for somebody to blame: prostitutes. They were also seen as potentially corrupting the humours of the body of the city, in this case through the corruption of sin and through bringing down moral scandal. Fulvio Giubetti, echoing the advice of doctors, said that prostitutes should be thrown out of the city, along with beggars, since plague could actually be caused by coitus, as ‘immoderate’ exercise was regarded as generating too much heat, which made the body vulnerable, especially at times of plague.84 A decree on 23 August banned ‘dishonest women with a bad life’ (mala vita) and their clients from circulating through the city, between 1 o’clock in the morning and sunrise. The reasons in general were to avoid scandalous behaviour ‘by people with little fear of God, and especially in these times when the city and the Church had organised the act of public penitence to placate and not provoke even more the wrath of God against us’.85 However, as we shall see in Chapter 8, despite a series of court cases against prostitutes for plying their trade during the epidemic, and for causing social disruption, there is no evidence they were expelled from Florence. Even if prostitutes were not expelled, greater emphasis was placed on ensuring they remained in certain predetermined streets. For example, on 23 August the Officiali di Onestà, who were responsible for regulating prostitutes, were asked to remove them from Via del Giardino.86 This may have been because one of the houses in the street had been assigned to taking care of orphans of plague victims and they wished to avoid the risk of them being morally polluted.87 This restriction on their movement was part of a well-established tradition, and the link between sin and prostitution is well illustrated by a decree of the Sanità on 27 October 1630, when a group of prostitutes was given eight days to move from where they were living behind

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the Company of S. Michele near the church of S. Ambrogio. They were accused of providing a bad example in the neighbourhood and offending the religious sensibilities of the two Padri of S. Giuseppe, who lived there, made even worse because they would have polluted the body of the holy sacrament in the chapel.88 As we shall see in Chapter 8, prostitutes remained the butt of judicial enquiry, being blamed for leading astray Florentine men, collaborating with them to break into and out of locked houses where somebody had died of plague. There are stories, however, in Florence as elsewhere, of repentance. One such was the prostitute ‘La Maria Lunga a Cazzettina’, who amazed everybody in autumn 1630 by her conversion to a life of piety. She decided to give away all her goods to the poor and went to serve the women plague victims in the city’s main Lazaretto at S. Miniato al Monte.89 This conversion story also serves to underline a black-and-white approach to sexual morality. But there was also another reason that prostitutes attracted the attention of the authorities, through their involvement in the buying and selling of second-hand goods, and especially of clothes, believed, as we have seen, to hold within themselves the poisonous vapours of plague.90 This was also one of the causes for the city’s interest in and reaction to another marginalised group, the Jews, who were granted little latitude for their activities during the epidemic. Rondinelli records that: It was prohibited for all Christians on pain of punishment to enter the Ghetto, and for the Jews to receive them, because it is easy to become infected through the narrowness of the area, the multitude of Jews living there and because of the appalling smell which arises from all their bodies.91

While there was a pre-existing tradition in plague tracts to link the crowded housing of ghettos with smell and disease, Rondinelli reflects a more blatant prejudice against Jews, linking them with filth and impurity.92 This had, of course, a moral as well as a physical dimension, emphasised still further during epidemics, when people believed that God was punishing mankind for sin and immoral acts.93 This policy of treating the Jews as scapegoats at times of plague had a lengthy tradition from the time of the Black Death when, among other things, they were accused of poisoning wells. However, in contrast to the mid-fourteenth century, in 1630 this did not lead to pogroms against the Jews.94 Suspicion of Jews was already apparent in early August 1630, when Jews returning from market in Pisa were not allowed

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back into the city, even though they had a health pass.95 Then on 15 August another edict was passed prohibiting Jews from wearing black hats. The reason for this move is not clear. The material may have been seen as likely to have attracted the corrupt vapours of plague, but the ban may also have been to prevent confusion with the black hats worn by the Misericordia employees.96 It was not long before the movement of Jews was further restricted, for they were not allowed outside the ghetto during the epidemic. As a result, as in Rome during the 1656 plague, the inhabitants of the ghetto had to provide treatment to any members of the community who fell sick, by Jewish doctors, physicians and surgeons who lived there.97 The system of quarantining plague victims adopted by the Florentine state was also established in the ghetto, locking up contacts in their houses or taking those with plague to their own Lazaretto.98 In a petition by the ‘Università degli Ebrei di Firenze’ to the Grand Duke in March 1631, the inhabitants recounted the measures they had put into place during the plague, claiming that as a result the death rate was lower in the ghetto than in the rest of the city. While the ghetto was made of very crowded narrow streets, the provisions taken by the inhabitants may well have mitigated the effect of plague. As a corollary to this, members of the Christian community were prohibited from having any contact with Jews in Florence and were punished if they broke the decree, as happened in the case of three washerwomen, all called Lucrezia, who were arrested on 11 October 1630 and placed in the secret prison of the Sanità where they were interrogated. All of them had apparently separately picked up dirty clothes to be washed from three different Jews, who had delivered them to the women at the Portone del Ghetto. These women certainly knew what they were doing, but were in need of the extra cash, as in the case of Lucrezia di Domenico d’Agostino from Olmo, who was arrested near the church of S. Michele and said in her defence: ‘I am a poor women who goes begging, and I do not have a house nor a roof, and sometimes I have performed some services for the said Jewess in the said Ghetto, when it was possible to go into the Ghetto.’99 The rules of the Sanità obviously continued to be broken. On 27 December another decree was issued emphasising the necessity for the Jews to keep the gate and fences outside the ghetto well locked in order to prevent people from entering to sell things. There was also a move to even stop the sale of vegetables by Christians near the gate of the ghetto, and there were instructions that if found there they should be sent away.100 Notwithstanding the ban on contact between Jews and the outside world, the Sanità communicated

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with them through the intermediary of their own health board. On the same day the Sanità gave permission to them ‘in the interests of health’ to create their own prison for Jews who broke their decrees, though with the proviso that they had first to report their actions.101 Then in March 1631 the Jews petitioned the Sanità underlining that their quarantining in the ghetto had had severe economic consequences for their community. The government had been cognizant of this and had granted them 1000 scudi from the Monte di Pietà, without which they said that they would have died of hunger after six months of being locked behind the ghetto’s doors. By March they had been left so impoverished that they had had to sell the silverware from their synagogue, and asked permission to leave the ghetto and resume their normal activities and ‘sustain their poor impoverished families’.102 These policies do reflect prejudice against the Jews, but also that there was still communication between these two communities, while the granting of subsidies shows that the Florentine authorities were aware of and were prepared to help mitigate the impact of their new laws on the community within the ghetto. More broadly, the policy of the Sanità towards the Jewish community also reflected the theme of many plague decrees and measures concerning the association between disease and the physical fabric of the city. Apart from the common contemporary prejudice that Jews lived in filthy conditions – challenged by recent work on early modern Jewish communities – the Florentine ghetto, as in other Italian cities, was notorious as a zone within the city with especially narrow streets (see Plate 2). It consisted of an area of 100 by 200 metres and was based in the medieval city centre, where the houses were crowded together and population density was very high.103 As we have seen, medical writers and contemporary commentators believed that this type of housing would have trapped more easily the fetid fumes of disease. This was also a topic which had been mentioned by the notary Alessandro Canobbio in relation to the ghetto in Milan during the 1576 epidemic, and by contemporaries such as the Jesuit Sforza Pallavicino, commenting on the plague in Rome in 1656–7.104 Eugenio Sonnino’s study of the ghetto in Rome during the plague showed that mortality was higher among the Jewish population, and he has hypothesised that this was linked to the high density of housing and Jewish involvement in the trade of second-hand clothes.105 Belief in the role of putrefaction in generating and spreading disease thus underlay not just the advice given by physicians, but also the measures taken by the Sanità. This informed the survey of the poorer parts of the city and the action against the beggars, both of which were seen as preventive policies to ensure that disease was not generated by the putrefaction of rotting material

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and effluence. Furthermore, returning to the link between the idea of the body of the city and the body of the poor, it was thought that inhaling corrupt air would lead to the putrefaction of humours, exacerbated in the case of those at the bottom of society by their poor diet, which made them more susceptible to disease. Poverty and Charity: The growth of ‘misery, necessity and sickness’

Despite the type of language employed by the authorities in summer 1630, it is misleading to represent the reactions of the Florentine state to the poor as simply a policy of social control, expressing fear and disgust of the lower levels of society. This was, after all, a period characterised by a raft of charitable initiatives which dated from both before and after the Council of Trent (1545–63), including new institutions to deal with the problems of abandoned children as well as the conversion of Jews and the rescue of prostitutes.106 Most relevant to this context was the movement mentioned above, the Ospedali dei Mendicanti, which had been set up in many major Italian cities to deal with the problem of vagrancy and beggars, whose numbers had been increasing in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.107 These initiatives were partly a response to the gradual decline of sections of the Italian economy in this period, as the woollen textile industry in particular suffered from the growth of competition from lower-quality textiles produced in England, Holland and Spain. The presence of their merchants in the Mediterranean also led to them taking over Italian textile trade with the Levant. If this led to unemployment, or at least underemployment, in cities such as Florence, where up to 20% of the city’s workforce was engaged in this sector, the lower levels of society were also affected by the impact of short-term crises caused by epidemics and famines. Some of these events were Europe-wide, such as the famine of the 1590s, and following the religious wars and the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War it became generally more difficult to obtain supplies of food from abroad.108 Florence itself had shared some of these wider trends, even though recent research has underlined that not all sectors of the economy were equally badly affected, for there was a continued demand for luxury silk goods and a boom in construction and the rebuilding of palaces.109 Even so, a measure of the impact of national and local factors on the wool industry in Florence was the extraordinary fall in the number of workshops from 100 in 1596 to 49 in 1626. The growing unemployment associated with the decline in the

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local woollen textile industry was the context within which the Ospedale dei Mendicanti was founded. But there were other factors which led to growing misery for the poor. There had been a series of very poor harvests between 1616 and 1621; although the government had bought large amounts of grain from abroad, this made it very expensive and had led to its sale at high prices. This combination of rising prices and high unemployment from the 1590s led to a very high cost of living. As Burr Litchfield has shown, grain prices had doubled between the 1520s and the 1620s and real wages of those at the lower levels of the textile industry (spinners and weavers) had fallen some 15% to 20%.110 Some reflection of the seriousness of the situation was that, during the months before the harvest of 1620, about 18,000 poor contadini came to Florence in search of food.111 Then, to make matters worse, by the end of October an epidemic of petechial fever had begun.112 This was just the beginning of a decade of severe problems for the lower levels of society, with further grain shortages in 1625 and a virtual famine in 1629, leading to exceptionally high prices of basic foodstuffs. Giovanni Baldinucci summarised in his Quaderno the problems at the end of the decade: This year of 1629, after three years of terrible harvests, they were waiting for an unusually good year for oats and wheat, but in mid-June there arrived fog which destroyed almost all the oats, and half the crop of wheat, and then in September a tempest arrived such that there were pieces of hail [gragniola] which weighed up to 17 lb.113

The following summer, on 17 July 1630, Baldinucci is writing with compassion about the terrible conditions of the poor he had seen over the previous winter: The poor have been without anything for a long time since they have been without or with very little work, and the cost of living has been very high for a number of years, with half the normal harvest, and now, with the passes closed, the shops are empty . . . And at the churches one often sees more beggars than people attending divine offices, truly pitiable cases, with fear that here in November, December and January will see people dying of hunger. May God please not permit such a great punishment, particularly to the many poor children who eat the stalks of cabbages that they find on the street, as though, through their hunger, they seem like fruit; and I have seen this with my own eyes.114

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Baldinucci alludes here to a number of central themes, which remained constant throughout the following year. Unemployment had already been, as we have seen, a severe problem, a situation exacerbated for the poor by the high price of basic commodities, owing to the poor harvest and the impact on the supply of grain from abroad, with the closing of frontiers with those neighbouring states where plague had already been identified. Then, once the Tuscan Grand Duchy became infected, markets were limited or closed, which made survival difficult for both those living in the city and the countryside. Those worst affected, as we have seen, were the very poor who now began to beg in large numbers, and swelled the size of the normal groups of habitual beggars, especially around churches, where they hoped to excite the compassion of those attending Mass. This description is given an especially clear sense of actuality as Baldinucci himself reported on how he saw the effect of this dramatic shortage on the poor with their frantic search for food, eating the stalks of cabbages as if they were delicacies like fruit. The governing classes were not deaf to the cries of the poor. As seen above, the brothers of the Company of S. Michele, who had been designated to carry out the survey of the city, had been genuinely shocked by the poverty and filthy conditions in which so many of their co-citizens were living. The Medici Grand Dukes since the time of Cosimo I had established a reputation for being protectors of the poor and promoters of charitable initiatives. Within a decade of coming to power in 1534, Cosimo had begun to reform almost every aspect of the Tuscan state. The welfare system played a central role in his overall ambition to centralise the state, which was achieved through the creation of new governing bodies, the Buonomini del Bigallo in the case of charitable institutions. Even if this magistracy did not achieve as much as had been intended, this was part of a more general move to take greater control of the city’s main hospitals and fraternities. Substantial new charitable institutions were also established at this time to cope with those groups of society whom the Tridentine decrees on charity had determined as particularly at risk – young boys and girls from poor families who were rescued from the temptations of a slow decline into immorality under the influence of unscrupulous predators.115 The Buonomini del Bigallo may have provided the framework for the supervision for the various charitable institutions of hospital and fraternity throughout the Grand Duchy, but there was another magistracy which was provided with a fillip by the Grand Dukes, namely the public health office of the Sanità. Allegedly made permanent in 1527 during the most severe outbreak of plague for over 100 years, it came under Cosimo’s control in 1549

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when the five members of the magistracy came to be elected from among Florentine ‘Gentlemen’, rather than the citizens as under the republican regime, with the confirmation of the Duke. Then from 1604 the membership was further restricted to patrician families and in particular members of the Senate.116 The Sanità thus gradually increased in powers during this period and, like other permanent Italian health boards, such as that in Venice, came to extend its remit. Despite the fact that plague did not actually return to the region until 1630, the Sanità played an increasingly important role in corresponding with health boards in other parts of Italy and Europe, in order to keep abreast of the potential threats of epidemics, most notably those of the mid-1570s in northern Italy. We learn also about its more general supervisory role of public health in Florence and its surroundings, as well as more generally in Tuscany, through the constant correspondence of the Sanità with its local representatives in subject towns and cities. This correspondence reflected the increased obsession with the environmental determinants of health, as they sent out representatives into the provinces to conduct surveys of miasmatic low-lying areas, where bogs and putrefying matter could potentially corrupt the air and create an epidemic, of fevers or plague.117 The 1620s, and particularly the crises of the typhus epidemic and food shortage at the beginning of the decade, and then the famine in 1629 followed by plague, was an opportunity for the members of the Medici regime to demonstrate their charitable character. The plague of 1630–1 proved the perfect testing-ground for the new young Grand Duke, Ferdinand II, who was 20 at the time and keen to prove his dedication to his subjects. The portrait of Ferdinand by Justus Sustermans shows him two years previously at 18 when he gained his majority as a confident, but still diffident youth (see Plate 4). Recognising, even before the plague had begun, the dire plight of the poor, with high levels of unemployment and high prices, the government began from spring 1630 to introduce a series of strategies to help them survive. On 10 February a loan of 2,400 bushels of wheat (staia di grano) was provided to unemployed wool-weavers, while the silk workers were employed in various public works.118 Recognising too the great penury of contadini, the government provided help to those in the countryside who had been reduced to misery because of the series of poor harvests. A sum of 6,000 scudi was raised, half from the Florentine pawn bank of the Monte di Pietà and half from the hospital of the Ceppo in Prato, presumably reflecting the geographical area covered by these payments to poor peasant families of bread, rice and small sums of money.119

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According to the short account of the plague written by Giubetti, the chancellor of the Sanità, the contadini were also provided with work, ‘digging ditches and laying pipes to provide water for the use and beautification of the city’. He expresses his admiration for the prudence of Ferdinand and his governing Council for present and future developments: electing gentlemen to survey the countryside, ordering that the land should be worked and sown, and that the land-owners should do more to make sure that they cultivated and maintained the land properly.120 The surveys of the poor in the countryside served to underline their plight. The crisis impacted even more on contadini, for at least the poor of the city were unlikely to have died from starvation. All this was made worse by the measures taken by the health board as the plague grew closer. Frontiers were closed, as were markets in the contado, and the movement of people into the city was very limited, cutting them off from the sources of food and alms from which they would normally have benefited during years of particular grain shortage.121 Conditions for the poorer levels of society did not improve over the spring, and Ferdinand II and his Council decided to intervene. On 27 May 1630 he wrote a letter to the Senato dei Quarantotto, which was read aloud to the assembled senators, in which he lamented the ‘great number of poor people in this city, contado and state, who are in well-known and extreme need’.122 He ordered the Senate to elect a commission of experts to make suggestions for employment in both urban and rural areas in the Grand Duchy. Recognising the central role of the woollen, linen and silk industries to the Florentine economy, he believed that the best way to improve the lot of these men and women was to put them to work at their usual occupations, so that they could earn their living. He ordered a large quantity of linen and gave it to the women to weave,123 and provided a loan of 150,000 scudi to the silk and wool industries, so that they could work and maintain the skilled workers of the main crafts of the city.124 Although this may have provided some employment, ultimately this process may have been rather counter-productive: increasing the amount of cloth simply added to the piles of which had remained unsold after commerce had been disrupted after the closing of frontiers with infected states.125 Ferdinand went further in trying to help the poor by personally offering employment in building a church at Palazzo Pitti, which, however, remained incomplete at the time.126 According to the contemporary Luca di Giovanni di Luca Targioni, men and women were employed in the Boboli gardens.127 They also worked on the façade of the cathedral

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and at the Fortezza di S. Giovanni.128 However, none of these projects really solved the problem of unemployment, and furthermore the work at the Fortezza appears to have backfired, as was made clear in the records of the Sanità on 3 August, based on a report of the Spedalingo of S. Maria Nuova: feeling the necessity to help the poor of the city, through his great piety, the Grand Duke commanded that certain works should be done at the Fortezza di S. Giovanni, where many people went, led there by necessity. Therefore, many people arrived who were so weak that it was difficult for them to sustain the work, so many became sick and ended up at the hospital of S. Maria Nuova, dying there without being able to be helped by medicines or care.129

While those in power had been aware of the ‘extreme misery’ of the poor, they had not realised the extent of their weakness after long periods of living at the very margins of existence, with under-employment or unemployment and very high prices of basic foodstuffs. Furthermore, even if this was before plague had really begun in the city, the number of deaths recorded in the city’s parish burial registers had begun to soar from June onwards.130 This suggests, as the College of Physicians had decided when they met in August, that an epidemic of so-called ‘normal diseases’ had already begun to afflict the poor, possibly enteric illnesses related to eating food of poor quality. As seen above, this led to the authorities suspecting a close connection between poverty, insanitary conditions and disease, and to the sanitary surveys of the city. At the end of August, when the committee of Senators submitted a report on ‘how to help the poor within and outside the city’, they asked the gentlemen of the Company of S. Michele to distribute alms, given their intimate knowledge of the city, and to list ‘street by street, and house by house, in addition to their poverty those who would be able to be employed in various activities, in order to avoid as much as possible maintaining them just from alms’.131 In this case, the alms derived from private sources instead of from state institutions, such as the Monte di Pietà. The Grand Duke began by setting an example, promising to contribute 3,000 scudi a month, the Archduchess and other members of the family 2,000 scudi a month, while all other gentlemen citizens were asked to provide a voluntary subsidy to the level they could afford.132 Within eight days all those who were going to offer a contribution to the fund were asked to hand in to the chancellor’s office a

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piece of paper on which was written the sum they promised to provide.133 Individual sums varied considerably and sometimes they even gave reasons for not providing as much as they felt obligated, as in the following: I, Cosimo Bargellini, have promised myself that I will offer to pay for the charitable subsidy each year in the future 3 scudi a month in advance, not being able to manage [to provide] a larger sum. Having had a storm [tempesta] in my property, which meant that I was unable to harvest all the wheat, wine, oil and wood, but also there was further damage, so that this year I have only harvested a third of the normal amount, as one can see in effect.134

The total collected in September was over 46,000 scudi, with the largest contributions from the Grand-Ducal family, with Ferdinand himself supplying 36,000; in October the monthly total rose to 55,418 scudi.135 These were very considerable sums and speak of the commitment of Ferdinand and his family to the cause of the poor, as well as of the inspiration and influence this provided to the rest of the better-off population. This initiative was part of the series of measures mentioned above over the course of the month, from providing work in the wool and silk industries to improving the sanitary conditions of the poor to distributing alms and bread.136 These charitable activities provide a very different image to that which emerged from both contemporary medical treatises and the rhetoric of the health board. This apparent contradiction in approach and attitude towards the poor should not surprise us; it was typical of not just early modern, but also latemedieval attitudes towards the poor. However, what had already changed from the early sixteenth century is a growing intolerance and fear of the poor, as they came increasingly to be seen as the source of infection. Initially this attitude was more fuelled by the impact of the new epidemic of the Great Pox, though, as argued by Samuel Cohn, the devastating plague epidemic of 1575–6 in northern Italy led to an ever-increasing association between plague and poverty, with the poor coming to be blamed for the plague.137 Even so, the same ambivalent attitude was evident. In Verona, for example, while the city expelled beggars, they also expressed pity for their plight. The Archbishop of Milan, Carlo Borromeo, later sanctified, gave his name to this epidemic because of his active involvement and the help he gave to the poor, underlining the complementarity of providing charity for both the body and the soul.138

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What has emerged, then, from this chapter is the ambivalent nature of attitudes towards the poor in a period of economic crisis, but before the plague truly affected the city. In the next chapter we shall examine whether the balance between charitable sentiments and intolerant policies changed when the crisis became an emergency, as mortality soared under the real impact of the epidemic.

CHAPTER 4



PLAGUE AND PUBLIC HEALTH: TREATING THE BODY OF THE CITY AND THE BODY OF THE POOR 17 July 1630: Up until today the plague is in Milan, Verona, Bologna and Parma, all major cities, without taking into account the other minor cities, lands and castles. And they write that in Parma that of the 20,000 souls in the city, more than 16,000 have died, so some from there write that the inhabitants are reduced to such a state that they are jealous of those who are dead; they do not have the comfort of sacraments, given that the priests are dead, as are the doctors and the apothecaries, and those who administer justice, leaving everything undone.1

Giovanni Baldinucci provides a vivid personal view in his Quaderno of what it was like to live through an epidemic. He also described the atmosphere in the city before it broke out, reflecting the fear generated by the expectation of its arrival. Even when the plague was at a considerable distance from Florence, news arrived of its devastating effects on areas in northern Italy. Information came by personal communications through the exchange of letters with individuals, but above all through the daily correspondence of the members of the health board. This news travelled rapidly through the city by word of mouth, and the most up-to-date information was likely to have reached somebody, such as Baldinucci, who moved in those circles from which members of the government and the Sanità were drawn.2 While to the historian of plague these descriptions may be familiar, for those living through these events they were deeply personal, as Baldinucci records: And here in Florence we are in great fear of this plague, which is close to us and spreading, even if, thanks to the grace of God, up until now the city is very healthy, except for the suffering of the poor, who are all defeated because they have not worked for a long time.3 84

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In less than a month Baldinucci notes in his diary: ‘We are on 12 August 1630 and it is greatly feared that the contagious sickness in the area may enter the city’, while two days later he writes: ‘It is feared that the contagious sickness is entering the city.’4 His and other people’s fears were well-founded, for within ten days he records that a Lazaretto had been established at one of the older hospitals of the city, that of S. Giovanni or Bonifazio. Here 115 people were being buried each day and the large numbers of corpses created such a smell that the authorities had been forced to create special plague pits outside the city walls.5 He may very well have learned this through personal experience, given that Bonifazio was less than five minutes from his house. If he had walked up Via S. Gallo, he would have smelt the ‘fetor’ of the rotting bodies, made worse by the hot Florentine summer.6 Deaths appear to have occurred in the city before Baldinucci was aware of them, suggesting that the Sanità may have kept their cards close to their chest to avoid the panic and disruption of everyday life implied by an official announcement. As seen above, the Collegio dei Medici were themselves reluctant to identify plague as present, given the belief that the higher death rates were caused by ‘ordinary sicknesses’, a recurrence of petechial fever and the sufferings of the people. Other perspectives on the initial stages of the epidemic can be gained from official records, whether in the shape of Francesco Rondinelli’s history, the Relazione, or the records of the health board, or those of the Fraternity of the Misericordia, which performed much of the work of transporting the sick and dead. There are also printed and manuscript instructions deriving from the Sanità and even the Grand Duke. Those written in Florence at the time included an anonymous manuscript of twenty chapters, probably penned by a member of the health board, which laid out the main elements of the role of the Sanità during the epidemic. It was written during August 1630, since the plague had started, and the main Lazaretto was identified as Bonifazio; no mention was made of S. Miniato, which was not established until early September.7 A booklet by the chancellor of the Sanità, Fulvio Giubetti, which was written and published in the autumn of 1630, provided a general guide to the nature of plague and some of the main measures to adopt during an epidemic. It was largely based on the works of well-known writers on plague. These included medical treatises, such as that of Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Heurnio, who had trained in Padua and taught in Leyden, or nonmedical accounts of plague, such as the very substantial Tractatus de peste (Lyon, 1535) by the jurist Gianfrancesco Riva di S. Nazarro.8 Also of great

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interest was the manuscript copy of the Avvertimenti per la peste, which the Grand Duke had apparently obtained from Venice and had sent to the Collegio dei Medici on 19 October for their comment: ‘these Avvertimenti were sent by the Serenissimo Granduca with his written commentary, through which he orders that they reply point by point. The most illustrious Magistrate was pleased to give me this attention. But I have had them copied in such a way that they can reply endorsing them in the margin.’9 The Grand Duke may very well have become impatient with the measures in place in mid-October and wanted to use the Avvertimenti to encourage the Collegio to put pressure on the Sanità to think of new ways to tackle the plague once it was established. By mid-October the presence and identity of plague could hardly have been denied. Figure 2.1, summarising all plague deaths in the city, showed that, after the gradual increase in mortality in September, it had begun to climb in the following month. The epidemic was at its most virulent in November and December 1630, followed by a steady decline over the following seven months, until it was declared extinct in late July 1631. Broadly, mortality appears to have followed the pattern of temperature, for after a mild autumn mortality began to grow as the weather got colder, although Rondinelli instead linked it to the waxing and waning of the moon.10 He noted that the areas worst affected were the poorest areas on the margins of the city, which was a slightly different pattern from the initial episodes of plague in August when the deaths had occurred in more central areas.11 Plague and Official Reactions in August

In August the ‘contagion’ spread from Trespiano to the centre of the city into those zones with an especially high density of population, where houses were crowded together. It was also these areas which were regarded as most at risk, as has been seen from the sanitary survey in August; the conditions in many of these houses had preoccupied the brothers of the Compagnia di S. Michele on their visits and had led them to be surprised that disease had not already broken out there. Contemporary accounts of the first outbreaks of plague reveal the mechanisms which were put into play once the epidemic had broken out in the city. A comparison of the account by Rondinelli in his Relazione with the records of the Fraternity of the Misericordia provides two different perspectives on these events, one representing the more coloured official history and the other the more prosaic administrative register.

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Lazaretti and quarantine centres 2 km

Trespiano

2 miles

Fiesole Il Cionfo Badia Fiesolana S. Domenico Villa Palmieri S. Marco Vecchio

Riv er A rno

FLORENCE

Bellosguardo S. Francesco al Monte S. Miniato al Monte

Villa Rusciano Badia a Ripoli

Pian dei Giullari

Map 4.1 Location of Lazaretti and quarantine centres around Florence

The three first episodes were recorded between 9 and 16 August in Via del Garbo (now Via della Condotta), Canto alla Briga and S. Pancrazio. Plague was initially confined to the north of the Arno. This might suggest there was a connection with Trespiano, although all fell within the mid-thirteenth-century city walls rather than directly inside the Porta S. Gallo, the northern-most gate leading to the road to Bologna. The geographical spread of these cases, moreover, does not suggest a necessary connection between them, given that one

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was on the western edge of the area, the second on the eastern and the third in the centre. They did, however, share a similar type of housing structure and density, with relatively narrow streets made up of four- or five-storey terraced houses. Rondinelli’s account of the first cases identified the names of the main actors and their actions, a familiar feature of other contemporary plague narratives. The first episode was in Via del Garbo: In the street called Via del Garbo there is a very large old house inhabited by many tenants, among whom lived a poor widow with four children . . . [that day] she bought a bushel of flour to make bread, and after they had eaten they visited their neighbours in the house. And then the following day the oldest daughter died and two sons were taken to the hospital of S. Maria Nuova, whose officials, when they saw that they were infected with plague, sent them back home, where they died with their mother the following night. Nothing was done for a few days until a neighbour Maestro Domenico Castelli noticed through the window of the same house the dead body of the servant girl of Signora Maddalena del Garbo. Immediately he went to the Sanità, whose officials came to the house, and, after knocking for a short while, they broke down the door and discovered that not just the servant girl was dead, but also her mistress. The magistrates then told all the inhabitants of the house to stay inside, but because the plague epidemic was only beginning, the following morning everybody left home and went to work in their workshops. Then seeing the disobedience and danger, all the tenants were taken forcibly to be quarantined in the hospital of S. Onofrio. But because they were already infected – some actually dying – they were taken to the Lazaretto of Messer Bonifazio, where only five remained healthy throughout; of the thirtyseven who entered, thirty-one died and only six returned home.12

The Sanità officers then returned to find out how the widow and her family had become infected: ‘When they went to investigate from where this sickness derived, they discovered that Sisto Amici, who had a wool-cloth shop around the corner, had brought to his storehouse a load of cloth from Trespiano and that one of the windows of this storeroom overlooked the courtyard belonging to this poor widow.’ The widow was the victim of the episode, because both she and three of her children became infected, as well as a neighbour, Signora Maddalena del

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Garbo, with her servant. Then, because the other inhabitants ignored the health board’s instructions to stay inside, they were taken to the new Lazaretto of Messer Bonifazio. Eventually only 6 of the 37 inhabitants returned home alive, underlining the severity of the epidemic at this stage, with an 84% mortality rate. Rondinelli’s detailed description of this episode reflects the aims of the Sanità – to discover the cause of the sickness which affected the poor and then take appropriate measures to prevent its spread. As the official historian, Rondinelli was also concerned to contrast the wisdom of the Sanità with the wilful ignorance of the poor, who by disobeying the commands of the magistrates not only caused their own death, but also endangered the rest of the population. The transportation of the sick to Bonifazio was thus portrayed as a punishment of the poor who continued to carry out their normal business, in spite of being confined by law to their houses. Overall this account served to underline the important role of the Sanità, who were represented as protecting the health of the population at large. Similar themes emerge from Rondinelli’s account of the other two initial cases. The next episode was at the Canto alla Briga in the popular area of S. Ambrogio.13 In this case the wife of a builder called ‘Il Rovinato’, literally a physical wreck, went to look after her sick sister in Via dell’Acqua, who herself had nursed a young stranger. Though not identified, clearly the stranger was seen as the villain in the piece, since he had introduced plague from which the sister also died. However, the wife of ‘Il Rovinato’ was also to blame because she took the shirt which her sister had been wearing at her death and gave it to her daughter who had coveted it. The result was that the daughter and the wife died and Rondinelli could not help but add the moral lesson, namely that this ‘loving action had cost her dearly’, as it did for other inhabitants in their house who also died, with the exception of a neighbour called Lisabetta the flower-seller. The third episode also involves the carelessness of individuals who thoughtlessly put their own interests above those of the city.14 This case concerned the wife of a baker in S. Pancrazio who had gone to Trespiano to nurse her daughter who was sick, and had then returned home evidently sick, having caught plague. She died in mid-August, followed by the death of seven others in her house. However, worse was to follow, for one of her neighbours had gone to nurse somebody in Via Nuova, carrying with her the contagion, following which the curate of the church of S. Pancrazio, Don Paolo Ermini, had died, and – because before his death he had been carrying out his duties and giving the sacraments – two of his fellow priests had died.

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Each of these accounts has a particular character, for they are personalised by providing the names of the main actors. They included Signora Maddalena del Garbo of Via del Garbo, her neighbour Maestro Domenico Castelli, the graphically named builder ‘Il Rovinato’, the flower-seller Lisabetta and Don Paolo Ermini, the curate of S. Pancrazio. The two more socially elevated Florentines, the patrician Signora del Garbo and the clergyman Don Ermini, were presented as victims and incidentally affected by the actions of others who were blamed for having caused the spread of plague. We know the names of the actors in these narratives because they were based on close investigation by the Sanità of the various links in the chain of cause and effect.15 In the case of Via del Garbo, it was first suspected that it was the poor widow who had contracted plague when she bought a bushel of flour and then spread it to her neighbours when she visited them. After further investigation the real villain of the plot was discovered to be the neighbour in another house, the wool-dealer Sisto Amici, who had brought cloth from Trespiano. The origin of the outbreak in S. Pancrazio was also linked back to Trespiano, for the wife of the baker had gone there to nurse her daughter and brought the plague back home with her. As the wife of the baker she would no doubt have helped to spread the plague to those she served in the neighbourhood, while her co-resident, the nurse, carried it still further to Via Nuova. In these examples we have local inhabitants simply carrying out their normal occupation or familial duties, whether it is nursing the sick or giving a daughter her aunt’s shirt, which she had obviously prized. These episodes also talk of loopholes in the system, as when the wife of the baker was allowed to leave the city to go to Trespiano and then to return home. Cloth also plays an important part in all these accounts and all subsequent episodes in the transmission of disease. Rondinelli emphasises that ‘the ease with which cloth was sold was the reason for this great sickness . . . it happened that many times, for a little fruit or a sum of money, jackets, shirts or other infected things were sold and in this way the poison was spread in the contado’.16 Restrictions on the sale of cloth was a measure which had had a long tradition in plague legislation in Italy, as far back as the provisions taken during the Black Death. Fear stemmed from the belief that cloth could attract and hold within itself the corrupt vapours of plague, because of its porous nature. Removing the corrupt air was also at the basis of the sanitary survey of the city; the authorities cleaned the streets and the living quarters of the sick to remove the putrefaction and stink of rotting waste which produced the same miasma of plague.

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These accounts of the first outbreaks of plague in Florence reflect how the public health system worked at the very beginning of the epidemic in early August, before the presence of plague had been officially declared. There then follows the gradual emergence of the official strategies to deal with the epidemic. Public Health and Prevention

Francesco Rondinelli provides detailed information on the administrative measures taken during the early stages of the epidemic. The Sanità was in overall control on a day-to-day basis. There were eleven magistrates employed during the 1630–1 epidemic, and when it returned in 1632–3. Significantly, underlining the close links between the Sanità and the higher echelons of Grand-Ducal government, nine of these men were senators, and included representatives of patrician houses, including the Vettori, Degli Albizzi, Magalotti and the Medici themselves in the person of Il Signor Cavaliere Lorenzo de’ Medici. The two other non-senators were Gianfrancesco Guidi, the Grand Duke’s secretary, and Lorenzo Altoviti, the Provveditore of the Dogana (customs).17 The Sanità also appointed its own police service and tribunals; as the chancellor Fulvio Giubetti writes in his guide, the chancellor had the role to ‘act and to make sure that the plague through contagion or bad management does not attack people nor breed in places; and furthermore he needs to be an accurate and diligent person, and intelligent, to know how to deal with affairs and to prevent unexpected events’.18 The surviving regulations governing the Sanità, probably written in the first half of August, prescribed that the magistrates should meet twice a day in their headquarters in the city centre.19 It was stressed that it was important to attend these meetings, especially in the morning when major decisions were taken.20 These decisions were implemented by six magistrates, each of whom was assigned to one of the Sesti of the city and given full authority.21 Information on urgent matters was supplied to the magistrates by the Gentiluomini, who had been deputed by the Sanità to supervise each Sesto of the city.22 The Sanità also had full powers to enforce regulations and laws through prosecution, imprisonment and punishment, as will be discussed in detail in Chapter 8.23 The close involvement of Gentiluomini or patricians in the administration and enactment of many of the main plague measures is a striking feature of Florence’s campaign against plague in this period. They are identified by

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name in both the Sanità’s records and by contemporary commentators, such as Rondinelli. We have seen that they were employed in August to conduct the sanitary survey of the city, supply the mattresses and order the repair of the cesspits, as members of the Compagnia di S. Michele. They would have coordinated their efforts with the six Gentiluomini who supervised plague provisions in each of the city’s Sesti. Then, as we shall see later in this chapter, more Gentiluomini were called upon at the beginning of the total quarantine of the city; each of the six at the head of each Sesti had five more under their command. They undertook a census of the resident population and organised delivery of food, drink and wood to each house where people had been shut up for 40 days. These tasks suggest they were regarded as responsible, literate and, since they lived in the area which they were surveying, knowledgeable about local inhabitants and their living conditions. The hospital was the second type of structure mentioned by Rondinelli, and in its various guises was central to the campaign of the Sanità. Following the measures adopted during the 1620–1 epidemic of petechial fever, the first intervention of the health magistrates was to confine the sick in the biggest general hospital of the city, S. Maria Nuova, for which Florence was so well known.24 Then, as awareness grew that plague had entered the city, the Hospital of Messer Bonifazio on Via S. Gallo was designated from 10 August as a Lazaretto for those who had been diagnosed with plague (see Plate 5, details a and c). The convent of S. Onofrio was also designated as a quarantine centre for those who had come into contact with plague victims or had recovered and were subjected to an additional period of quarantine, before being able to return to their homes, and later it was taken over by the Sanità as a prison (see Plate 4b).25 However, as an anonymous chronicle emphasised in his account of events, initially they thought Bonifazio and S. Onofrio ‘would be sufficient and that the sickness would not develop further’. In fact, it had the opposite effect, for a good number of the nursing sisters of Bonifazio died, and ‘it spread through the city, with no street not having experienced it, whether a little or much’.26 In time these facilities proved insufficient. Rondinelli recorded that by mid-September many people in the city had become worried about what was regarded as the rather eccentric decision of the Sanità to use Bonifazio as a Lazaretto. It was seen as ‘a completely new and strange thing to create a Lazaretto in the city, and in a road [Via S. Gallo] so much frequented and full of monasteries and of shop-doors’, as can be well appreciated from Stefano Bonsignori’s view of the hospital.27 This led, as we shall see in Chapter 7, to the creation of a series of Lazaretti and quarantine centres around the city, the most prominent of

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which was the conversion of the Benedictine abbey and church of S. Miniato al Monte (Map 4.1).28 Figure 4.1 examines how all the different institutions involved in dealing with plague intermeshed and how their roles changed in September. The graph is based on a summary of all the sick people who were transported by the Misericordia over the course of September. The first instinct of the Sanità was to send the sick to the general hospital of S. Maria Nuova. However, even though plague victims now went to the Lazaretti, the trend in admissions to S. Maria Nuova shadowed quite closely those to S. Miniato, possibly reflecting admission of those suffering from a concurrent epidemic, as reflected in the burial records of the parish of S. Lorenzo (see Chapter 3). More broadly, Carlo Corsini’s study of S. Maria Nuova has shown that mortality climbed to its highest level in the seventeenth century in 1630, apart from during the typhus epidemic of 1648. It had already begun to rise considerably the previous year, reflecting the combined famine and epidemic of ‘tertian fevers’, but virtually halved in 1631, when presumably more of the sick were taken directly to the Lazaretti of the city. Another important finding of Corsini’s study is that the number of patients who died at S. Maria Nuova who were Florentine had almost doubled, from 28.7% to 46%, reflecting the restrictions on the entry of people from outside the city during the epidemic.29

65 60 55 50

Admissions

45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 29 30 31 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 Aug. Sep. S. Maria Nuova

S. Matteo

Messer Bonifazio

S. Minato al Monte

Fig. 4.1 Admissions to hospitals and Lazaretti, 29 August–30 September 1630

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The records of the Misericordia reveal that one of the other general hospitals in the city, S. Matteo, had also been pressed into service in this period. Despite the spike in admissions on 3 September, possibly responding to an emergency at one of the other institutions, admissions for the rest of the month were regular but low, suggesting they continued to receive patients suffering from acute diseases.30 Esther Diana’s study of the patient registers of another more recently founded general hospital, S. Giovanni di Dio, reveals a considerable drop in admissions in 1630–1: admissions of 99 in 1630 and 34 in 1631, compared with 172 in 1628 and 195 in 1629, suggesting that, while they continued to accept patients, many of the poorer sort, who might normally be admitted for more common diseases, had now contracted plague and were therefore taken to the Lazaretti. During the following two years, 1632–3, admissions rose (111) and then fell (84), reflecting initially a reversion to a more normal pattern after plague had ceased, but a fall on its return in 1633.31 Figure 4.1 shows the complementary function of Lazaretti. Bonifazio was the major recipient of those diagnosed with plague until 7 September. But even a medium-sized hospital such as that of Messer Bonifazio would have been swamped by large numbers of admissions. When S. Miniato al Monte opened its doors on 8 September it appears to have taken over the role of admitting all new plague cases; in theory Bonifazio would have continued to treat only existing patients, but in reality it continued to admit new ones during the autumn. Admissions to S. Miniato gradually increased over the month, and then, as the epidemic worsened, it received regularly about 30 patients a day, although spiralling in the last week of September to numbers never previously experienced. As the epidemic increased, so did pressure on the institutions designed to cope with the sick. The most crucial and the most vulnerable was Bonifazio. Many people in the city had become worried about its use as a Lazaretto. As in nearby Prato, a Lazaretto located in the city created a pool of infection for the surrounding community.32 While there may have been restrictions on the movement of people in and out of the hospital, contacts could not be avoided with the frequent admission and discharging of patients and the need for regular provisioning. As mentioned above, this led to the creation from early September of a series of new Lazaretti outside the city walls. In the end, as Targioni records, a total of 14 Lazaretti and quarantine centres were created in and around Florence.33 This flurry of new foundations should not allow one to forget that Bonifazio did continue to be used as a Lazaretto, even though its presence was overshadowed. In mid-November Dr Leandro gave his opinion of the state of the hospital of

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Bonifazio. He emphasised that the number of people with plague in the hospital continued to rise daily, despite the fact that originally this Lazaretto was supposed to have been abandoned after the creation of the Lazaretto at S. Miniato. He recounted, moreover, that this led to the increase of the fear of his colleagues and to their fleeing, thus ‘increasing the sickness and fear’ of being ‘wounded by the cruel vapours of plague’.34 While the Sanità had overall control of the direction of policy against the onslaught of plague and the tracking down and prosecution of malefactors, what is striking about Florence’s overall campaign was the involvement of voluntary organisations. We have already seen the role of the brothers of the Compagnia di S. Michele, who undertook the sanitary survey in August 1630. Perhaps even more remarkable was the central role of the Fraternity of the Misericordia, which undertook a number of important tasks on behalf of the public health authority.35 The Misericordia had a long and venerable tradition in Florence of looking after the poor, and from the mid-1490s had taken on the role of transporting the sick and the dead during plague outbreaks, developed even further in 1630–3.36 The way the health board’s day-to-day running of the campaign against plague intersected with the services provided by hospital and confraternity can be appreciated from the measures taken when a suspected case was identified.37 The law obliged the heads of households to report immediately to the health magistrates the presence of a sick or dead person in their families. The health magistrates sent a doctor to see if the victims had a ‘common disease’ or a ‘contagious disease’. The Misericordia then carried the sick person to S. Maria Nuova, if he or she had a ‘normal’ sickness, or to the Lazaretto, if they were diagnosed with plague, and also arranged for the dead to be buried in plague pits outside the city walls.38 As mortality rose the Sanità created a series of plague pits (Campisanti) outside the following city gates: Porta a S. Gallo near Porta a Pinti (in or near what is now Piazza Donatello), Porta S. Frediano towards S. Francesco di Paolo, and Porta a S. Miniato at the bottom of the hill leading up to the Fortezza di S. Miniato.39 The co-residents of those identified with plague, the sospetti, were then either taken to a quarantine centre outside the city or locked in their homes for 22 days; the houses were marked with a red cross and the word ‘Sanità’. These regulations applied to all social classes, as in the case of the senator Cavaliere Magalotti, who lived in Via della Stufa, and whose servant Margherita had been reported at the beginning of the epidemic to have had a ‘pustule [carboncello] on a knee’, though the senator continued to insist that she had been bitten by a scorpion.40

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After these stages had been completed, Sanità employees then entered these houses to remove and burn the mattress on which the patient had slept and burn or wash his clothes, while all the rooms were disinfected with a solution of vinegar and water and the air purified with sulphurous vapours. A subsidy of 1 giulio (equivalent to 13 soldi and 4 denari) was given to the poor, which a neighbour used to buy them food; this sum was equivalent to about half a day’s wage for a labourer and would have bought about two and a half kilos of bread.41 Much of the management of the plague outbreak was about the control of people, making sure that the sick and their contacts were taken to the appropriate places and that dead bodies were buried rapidly. As discussed in earlier chapters, preventive measures ensured the control of the flow and movement of people within the city, since it was recognised that this led to the spread of plague. These included the appointment of guards at city gates to prevent sick people entering; the careful control of beggars, with locals herded into the Spedale dei Mendicanti and those from outside Florence sent away; the increasing regulation of the activities of prostitutes; and the locking up of the Jewish community in the ghetto. In addition to these marginalised groups of society, the Sanità aimed to control the movement of the general population and in particular any locales where people would collect together in scandalous activities, as Rondinelli recounts, summarising a decree: ‘All gambling dens were prohibited as well as all meetings at barbers’ shops and elsewhere, especially where they played ball games [pallottole] . . . in order not just to avoid crowds of people, but also the moral causes of contagion that are sins, that are frequently found in these places, and often they are not minor sins either.’42 Even if a large number of people were not prosecuted for breaking the law in this way (18 over the course of the epidemic), these were only the people who had been seen and reported. Others may have got away with enjoying themselves and playing games, having been warned in advance of the arrival of the Sanità officials, just as happens with street vendors in Italy today.43 Penalties were high, from 100 scudi to the threat of being sent to work in the Grand-Ducal galleys at Livorno, although, in practice, many sentences were either commuted or not enforced. More generally the Sanità chancellor, Fulvio Giubetti, records that it was not believed to be good in times of plague to take exercise or play games because it led to the alteration of the blood, although at the same time he recommended that the Sanità should counter fear by keeping the people happy, since melancholy was seen to increase sickness.44

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Bans were not just placed on locales of immoral activities. Attendance at confraternity meetings was prohibited, as Giovanni Baldinucci wrote in his Diary on 28 October, so that ‘people infected with plague are not introduced among such a large number of people’.45 Later in November he noted that a prohibition had also been placed on people attending public sermons,46 and at the same time all types of school were closed, since disease was seen as having been spread by a large number of children in a room.47 Even so this led to some prosecutions, as in the case against the scribe Raffaello di Taddeo Statini, who was said to have continued to teach at his writing school on Piazza del Duomo, although he denied this, saying in his defence that he was simply living in the house.48 Potentially even more concerning were public religious processions, which, as we shall see in Chapter 6, were allowed to take place at the beginning of the epidemic in August to persuade God to mitigate its impact, and in mid-December to give thanks to God and the saintly intercessors, the Virgin Mary and S. Antonino, for the slowing down in mortality. However, on these occasions the Sanità remained concerned about the spread of plague and only allowed leading members of Church and state to participate in the procession, while the general public could watch at a distance from street corners. Other types of normal activity were affected. We have seen in Chapter 3 that at the beginning of the epidemic there was concern about the butchery of meat in the city, since opening carcasses led to the release of corrupt vapours, made worse by the custom of inflating the bodies of dead animals. Unlike Bologna, which in early June had banned all food markets and fairs, Florence kept open the main food market of the city, the Mercato Vecchio, as well as some shops selling food. However, this licence was not universal, for the market of S. Lorenzo, which was normally held every Wednesday morning, was closed from 7 September to ‘obviate frequent gatherings of people’, with greater restrictions being imposed during the total quarantine of the city the following spring (see below).49 Despite these strict laws, there was continued concern with pollution. In mid-January four butchers were arrested because they had in their shops ‘a number of large barrels of corrupted blood and rotten guts, which produces much fetor and a bad smell’.50 Other commercial enterprises also continued to worry the authorities. Indeed 10% of all prosecutions against those breaking the decrees of the Sanità were associated with the production or sale of cloth (see Table 8.1), although there was some latitude in practice, given that the textile industry remained the main employer in the city. Silk production was an important

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industry and already in June, before the epidemic had broken out, concern had been expressed about the fetor created by the boiling of silk-worm chrysalises. A decree was passed that, if silk was found in a house, it was to be carried to Via Palazzuolo where it was purged. Instructions too were issued about using the water in the Arno. Evidently it was common practice to wash oneself in the river and normally the stufaioli (attendants) would have provided the towels to dry oneself. However, to avoid reusing a towel touched by a plague victim, the public had to bring their own rather than accept them from stufaioli. More specifically, nobody was allowed to wash in the Arno those clothes which had been brought from the Lazaretto of S. Miniato, to avoid the spread of disease through water.51 Most feared were dealers of second-hand clothes, since they often bought and sold clothes belonging to the sick and dead and hence spread the disease, since it was feared that corrupt vapours were contained in and spread through cloth. They were prohibited from buying used woollen or silk garments, unless they first provided a list to the Sanità, who would organise their purification through boiling, presumably subsequently offering them a certificate of health. Then, to avoid the risk posed by old rags lying around in the streets, gravediggers were sent to search them out and destroy them.52 There are a series of examples of rigattieri or dealers who were investigated following accusations of selling old clothes. For example, Francesco di Giovanni Urbani, whose shop was in Palazzo Strozzi, had been arrested on 12 November 1630 and brought to trial on the 17th.53 He was accused of displaying in his shop old clothes which he had bought in Prato four months previously, including ‘some small coats and overcoats’. On questioning, he also admitted to having in his back-pack a ‘mixture of various things, including collars, shirts, pieces of cloth and similar things and dirty white linen’, also bought in the market in Prato.54 Then, getting to the nub of the questioning, he was asked whether ‘he knew that Prato has the same, or even worse, infection as in this city’. His answer was elliptical, for he replied: ‘I have lived in the same house for all my life and none other.’ He clearly was aware of the laws against buying old clothes, for he mentioned that the ‘overcoats’ had health passes attached to them, but it was not recorded whether he responded specifically to the question about plague in Prato.55 In the event he must have convinced the judge after he very carefully explained that he had bought the clothes four months earlier in the weekly Monday market in Prato, when it was still possible to travel and before the ban on markets was imposed. Control of the sale and disposal of clothes and cloth, cleaning of streets and control of people entering the territory and city were the main preventative measures in place throughout the epidemic. Fear of infected air and its

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spread between people and materials remained the basis of the main measures to cope with plague once it had entered the city, including reporting, inspection, quarantining and fumigation of infected houses, the establishment of Lazaretti and the burial of the dead. Medical theory justified these measures and doctors continue to play a central role in the identification and treatment of the sick. The Control of Plague

The way in which official and voluntary organisations intermeshed can be examined as the epidemic unfolded. One of the most important was the Misericordia, whose role was depicted in a contemporary picture, attributed to Luigi Baccio del Bianco (Plate 3). There are many interesting features of this picture, which provide complementary visual evidence to the written evidence. It presents a view of the cathedral from the west, to provide the maximum canvas to depict the members at work picking up and carrying the sick and dying on the Piazza both to the west and in front of the unfinished façade. Evidently painted to underline the importance of the charitable role of the members of the fraternity, they are shown dressed in a black habit with a black felt hat. The anonymous chronicler records that they were ‘recognised since they wore a black habit with sign of a red cross’.56 They stand out in contrast to the red clothes of the patricians and doctors. This picture also provides a good view of the headquarters of the Misericordia, which can be seen then, as now, in a substantial building on Piazza del Duomo, facing the southern flank of the cathedral. The building stands out, because it is covered in frescoes by Bernardo Poccetti; they depict the seven works of mercy, which included some of the main roles of the Misericordia, such as visiting the sick, and the succour and the burial of the poor.57 In the foreground on the right is a well-dressed patrician, who is wearing a red cloak and large black hat, leading the viewer’s eye with his right hand with which he gestures towards the charitable acts of the Misericordia. At street level, immediately in front of the Misericordia palace, there is a temporary wooden fence through which a child is looking at the brothers waiting to be called on their next mission. It may very well be that it is his mother dressed in red who is seen in the mid-distance running towards the palace. The fence was constructed at the beginning of the epidemic to keep out potentially infected members of the public. It also served to protect the public from association with Misericordia employees, who came into contact on a daily basis with plague victims. They lived separately in a number of rooms next to the

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Compagnia, possibly in the house shown in the picture which was ‘at right-angles to the Misericordia headquarters with a red awning over the entrance’.58 Rondinelli recorded that the grave-diggers also lived together next to the Misericordia in a road appropriately called Via della Morte, since it was used as an area for the burial of the dead.59 Traditionally, the Misericordia had run as a voluntary charity. Following a reform of 1490, the so-called Compagnia Maggiore was made up of 72 members, to which were added the Numero Minore of salaried personnel, such as porters and grave-diggers, whose numbers varied according to need.60 This innovation was reflected in their statutes of 1501, and was put into practice during the plague epidemic of 1522–3.61 During the first week of November 1630, when the plague was at its height, the company employed 35 porters, each of whom was paid 3 lire and 10 soldi per day.62 The work must have been strenuous; in late October one employee alone was paid for carrying 99 sick people to the hospitals of S. Maria Nuova and S. Matteo.63 Despite the hardness of the work and the potential for catching plague, a list compiled of all the porters employed by the Misericordia between 26 August and 30 November 1630 records that many worked for seven weeks and a few were still working at the end of November.64 After their service they were described as having ‘gone to the spedale’, presumably because they were placed in quarantine for 22 days in the hospital run by the Misericordia at Monticelli before returning home. Perhaps surprisingly, only one was recorded as having been taken to S. Miniato, where he died of plague.65 The Misericordia porters can be seen in action in Baccio del Bianco’s painting. In the foreground a well-dressed man has collapsed in the street. He is being tended by a man dressed in red, presumably a doctor, who looks as though he is feeling his pulse and at the same time unbuttoning his jacket, before being placed in the bier by the Misericordia porters in black. Behind stands another man in black holding a pomander to his nose to purify the air. Elsewhere we see the dead being carried in a covered bier, such as the procession in front of the cathedral, preceded by two priests dressed in white surplices, and three Misericordia porters in black carrying a crucifix. Both the sick man and the corpse were probably affluent, the first because it was unusual for anybody to touch somebody suspected of having plague, and the second because of the size of the procession. Others less well-off had a smaller retinue, such as those between us and Giotto’s Campanile or the other near the fence in front of the Misericordia palace. Elsewhere in the picture we see bystanders caught up in the scene, such as the mother and son with their arms around each other in the left foreground, and, between

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them and the cathedral steps, a man and a woman gesticulating towards the funeral procession. The central role of the Misericordia and the way in which its members and employees intermeshed with the voluntary and paid officials of the Sanità become clear in examining the various stages following the identification and reporting of a plague case and the subsequent transporting of the sick and dead. At the beginning of the epidemic a proclamation was passed declaring that it was compulsory for all citizens to report anybody who was sick or who had died in their house to the Sanità and to the doctors of their quarter, or risk a fine of 100 scudi.66 These stages can be seen in operation in the case of Signor Antonio di Giovanbattista del Tovaglia, who had been arrested in December: Last night Sandra my servant came down with a fever, and yesterday morning I went to the Sanità to bring the ticket of her sickness, as we are obliged to do by law. After I had given in the certificate I went to Mass and after Mass and I had taken a walk, I returned home and found that the house had been locked up by the Sanità after lunchtime.67

Although Antonio di Giovanbattista had a licit excuse for his absence from the locked-up house, nevertheless it was observed that because he had come into contact with a sick person he ‘could have caused some mal di contagio’ by taking an unnecessary walk through the city. Even if citizens such as Signor del Tovaglia were acting responsibly and reporting cases of plague, the doctor appointed by the College of Physicians to respond to the Avvertimenti sent by the Grand Duke did not think this was sufficient to catch every instance. He suggested that each gentleman who was responsible for the overall supervision of the enactment of plague measures in the Sesti should pay ‘lads from hostels, shops, bakers and at least two or three “donnicciuole” to make a secret report each morning and evening to the Gentiluomini of the occurrences of sickness in one or two streets to which they were assigned in their area’.68 By mid-August the health board had assigned two physicians and two surgeons to each quarter of the city; they were required by the chancellor to spend at least part of each day at the Sanità headquarters, so that when he needed them he could find them.69 They were then given detailed instructions: ‘For those sick people who have the signs in the groin or under their arms or in any other part of the body that are evidently malign and pestiferous they have to compile a ticket [polizza] in their own hand.’70 Those who were

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sick with a ‘simple fever’ were to be sent to S. Maria Nuova or one of the other medical hospitals in the city.71 The separation of disease categories was at the basis of government measures once plague had broken out in the city, for, as Targioni recorded, ‘the Lords of the Sanità knew how damaging this disease was when people mixed together’.72 Then, as we have seen, if anything suspicious was discovered the patient was sent to the Lazaretto. In addition to the separation of those with ordinary diseases from those with plague, there was a further category, the sospetti, co-residents of the seriously sick and those with whom they had come into contact. Initially these were simply shut up in their houses.73 Once the house was locked with a wooden bar across the entrance, a red notice with ‘Sanità’ written in large letters was posted on the door and the inhabitants had to remain inside, with the threat of loss of life and confiscation of their possessions, and anybody absent had to return immediately. Even after the end of the period of quarantine they were not allowed to rent the house or change tenants for six months, because of the fear of plague lingering in enclosed spaces.74 Although Baldinucci’s house was not locked up during the epidemic, an entry in his Quaderno for 20 October does reflect the extent of the psychological impact on those who lived in the same street where plague had broken out: ‘20 October: and everything is developing quickly; and the contagion is in Via de’ Ginori where I live, and four houses have already been shut up so that the infected do not infect others, and my house is close to these houses, and God give me what is for the best.’75 The Misericordia had a vital role in carrying the sick to the Lazaretti or quarantine centres and arranging for the dead to be buried. When individuals needed to be collected, the Sanità sent tickets to the Misericordia listing their name and address, as in an example from 1633 (see Plate 6a): On the day of the 16 June 1633 You of the Company of the Misericordia should carry to the usual place of those infected with contagion Monna Lisabetta, widow, at Via del Moro at number 6 at the Piazza del Grano, Niccolò Magnani, Chancellor.76

In this case, Monna Lisabetta had already died, and so the ticket is marked with a cross, whereas in another example, dated 28 June 1633, Benedetto di Antonio Confortini was described as ‘sick with contagion’ and living in Via S. Jacopo in Campo Corbolini at number 24 (Plate 6b).77

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At the end of each day the Misericordia made a daily report to the Sanità of the number of people they had taken to the Lazaretto or hospital, or had been buried.78 These various systems provided a complete record of the number and identity of the infected and dead, as well as the names of those who had come into contact with the patient and had been shut up in their houses or taken to a quarantine centre. Children who had been abandoned or left behind by their parents who had been taken to Lazaretti were accompanied instead to a house in Via del Giardino, where they were looked after by a ‘good woman’, who was paid 1 giulio a day, while the youngest were sent to wet-nurses.79 Contemporary commentators mention the Misericordia carrying the sick in litters to the Lazaretti and hospitals. They were all struck by the mournful sound of the bell that the bearers rang to announce their presence and to warn the populace to keep their distance to avoid infection. Traditionally the members of the Misericordia had carried the sick on their shoulders in a type of basket known as a zana, which usually had a wooden base and was made of willow or other materials. It contained a seat for the sick person and had a cloth lining, to which during plague was added yellow wax.80 Then according, to Targioni, the Grand Duke ordered that the porters should carry the sick in a bier, which was covered with waxed cloth.81 These can be seen in the foreground of Luigi Baccio del Bianco’s picture, which shows a simple wooden structure with handles at the front and back, covered by a red cloth, and carried by two Misericordia porters, while a third walks in front with the bell and a long stick (see Plate 3). The biers were made of wood surmounted by a framework to leave room around the patient’s body. Rondinelli mentioned that the cloth covering the bier was black and that inside there was a small vase in which incense was burned to correct the air so that the sick person’s breath should not infect the city. In order to prevent suffocation, a small window was made in the side of the cover. Inside, the patient was protected from too uncomfortable a journey, because he or she was provided with a straw mattress, which was changed regularly.82 The accuracy of Rondinelli’s description is confirmed by the expenses recorded in the Misericordia’s account books.83 There are payments to carpenters for making the biers, as well as to mattress-makers for the palls. In some instances, the pall was decorated, the cloth being painted, presumably with the sign of the Misericordia, or it had a blue fringe. Other expenses included the straw and the thin mattresses, as well as herbs and spices to be burned in the burners in the biers to rectify the infected air breathed out by the patient or given off by a corpse.84 Other expenses

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included shoes for those carrying the sick and dead as well as quite substantial sums for candles, as on 30 November 1630: ‘For the cost of torches and yellow and white candles and small yellow candles and oil against poison for the porters [neri] and the Company, and for the offices said for those buried in the burial pits.’85 It was recorded that 364 scudi and 18 soldi was paid, and evidently costs continued to escalate as the epidemic got worse.86 The Misericordia carried those being taken to the Lazaretto as far as the city gate, where they were met by a contingent from S. Miniato. The patient was placed into a travelling bed which was carried by a mule, or inside a sledge which was pulled up the steep hill by oxen; on arrival they were ‘treated with charity’ by the servants and examined by the doctors.87 At the beginning of the epidemic in August and early September provision for the sick and their contacts was relatively restricted, with the former, as mentioned above, taken to Bonifazio, and the latter shut up in their houses or taken to the hospital of S. Onofrio and those with simple fevers to S. Maria Nuova. In September new Lazaretti and quarantine centres were established outside the city walls. It was recognised, however, that the forcible removal of the sick and their contacts may not always have been straightforward, so on 27 August 1630 the chancellor of the Sanità wrote to the Company of the Misericordia that ‘in cases of resistance they can ask for two constables to be sent to them from the Bargello’.88 The next stage was the disinfecting of houses and belongings. Fulvio Giubetti, in common with his contemporaries, describes the system of cleansing the houses as purging, as a doctor would purge the body of its bad humours: The second remedy, after the plague victims have been taken away, is to cleanse the houses and their furniture with fire and with water, and those things which cannot be cleansed with water, like leather, beds and other things, must be burned.89

This recalls the theme of the sanitary survey in August, as the body of the city being purged of filth to prevent the creation and spread of disease. There are various descriptions of the processes involved in the purgation and cleansing of houses from the more lively account by Rondinelli, to the prescriptive decree of the Sanità on 26 August, which was sent to the rectors governing the Tuscan Grand Duchy, in turn expanded on the orders of the Sanità for the city, ‘The method of purifying infected houses’.90 A ‘trustworthy man’ was recommended by the local priest in each parish, who was

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in charge of two fachini. They entered the infected house first and fumigated the rooms: ‘a torch of kindling wood and fumigating with sulphur, and the dust scraped from the walls and the floor washed with water and vinegar’.91 Then the man in charge entered the house and went into the bedroom holding a burning torch or bunch of twigs to purify the air. The contemporary instructions to the Sanità specified the purchase of ‘juniper, rosemary, mastic, myrtle to perfume and wash the houses’.92 The windows were locked and the house fumigated with sulphur, after which it was swept thoroughly and the walls white-washed along with any wooden utensils and furniture. The mattresses and palliasses were then taken away to be burned, and any bed-linen and covers were placed in a cauldron of boiling water and taken outside to be purified by the air, while the room where the plague victim had been sick was washed down with vinegar three days running and quicklime spread on the floor.93 Fulvio Giubetti, in his instructions on measures to take during the epidemic, provides a guide to the amount of time that people and different types of objects each held the poison of plague and for how long they needed to be purged: Purging of objects with the plague: it is necessary to warn people that the plague and the poison lasts for two months; walls, iron and wooden objects [are purged] for a year; and cloth, in particular woollen cloth, for three years. People are purged for fourteen days; houses, iron and wooden goods for twenty days . . . air is purged for three months.94

Rondinelli’s account provides a more nuanced view, given that it was written after the epidemic had passed, and therefore could take into account how far the normative prescriptions were interpreted and put into practice.95 The first difference he records is that rather than simply washing clothes from the infected house, some, and especially bedclothes, were taken away and burned. The Avvertimenti in October suggested that ‘slaves and other delinquents deserving death should be brought from Livorno and should be given this dangerous task, although great care should be taken that they do not steal anything and that they should be well locked up when they are not working’.96 There is little evidence this suggestion was adopted, perhaps because of the danger of transporting people from Livorno, and instead it was assigned to paid officials. However, this system apparently led to great unrest. Thus from the beginning of January, six Gentiluomini were appointed, one for each Sesto of the city. Each was assigned a cart with two men called

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zolfatori or fumigators, who appear in a scene in the left-hand corner of Baccio del Bianco’s picture of the Misericordia in action (Plate 3). They entered the houses with a notary, who made a list of all the houses visited where goods were to be burned, which they submitted to the Sanità each evening. The following morning all the listed goods were taken away on the carts to five designated places outside the city walls to be burned. Some idea of the scene at the houses was reflected in one of the series of prints of scenes during the plague in Rome in 1656, even if this image may be exaggerated. Plate 7 shows the cart, two profumatori and another man very vigorously throwing out of the window absolutely everything, from guitars to books to trunks. It is not entirely clear whether the objects are being disinfected or burned outside the house, although it was probably the former, reflecting the officials’ title of zolfatori or profumatori.97 This very vigour may reflect the character of the types of people employed, as suggested by Rondinelli’s discussion of the ‘grandissimi disordini’ created by these first fumigators in Florence. The most notorious was a man called Bartolomeo di Niccolò Fagni. He was first mentioned in the court records on the 13 December, when he, with accomplices, was accused of having stolen from a series of locked-up houses. The case rumbled on for a number of weeks, but no final confession was extracted from them, despite torture.98 Nevertheless, it may have been this case which led to a change in the system; the Gentiluomini now took over the supervision of this operation, rather than leaving the job entirety to profumatori. As elsewhere in his narrative, Rondinelli is keen to contrast the noble motives of the patrician class, who ran the campaign against plague, and the misguided actions of the populace. On taking office in January, the Gentiluomini went beyond their initial remit and gave themselves an extra substantial task, revisiting and disinfecting all the houses already surveyed and burning offending goods. The total number of houses and apartments revisited was over 1,200. Rondinelli claims that it was this action which most helped to clean the city from plague, for ‘experience shows that certain death was in those clothes’.99 Contrasted to these noble actions were those of the populace, who were accused of hiding through their greed all sorts of infected cloth in cellars and under roofs, hardly surprising given the value of clothes to the poor as material assets. Compassion also lurked under the surface; those inhabitants who were very poor were sent to the quarantine centres at Monteoliveto and Villa Strozzini, where, he said, all their expenses were to be paid and they were to receive good treatment.100 Treatment of the poor is the theme of the next section, which deals with both the sick and the dead body.

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Doctors and Medicine: Treating the body of the poor

Chapter 3 discussed how the College of Physicians played an important part in the deliberations of the health board at the beginning of the epidemic, providing advice about the nature of the disease and treatment. The college continued to give advice throughout the epidemic. In mid-October it was recorded by the college that the Grand Duke ‘had heard that in other states the Collegio had proposed to their Princes remedies and orders to help the poor sick to universal satisfaction’. He, therefore, required the Collegio to ‘ascertain better the nature of the disease by opening corpses, listening to the reports of physicians and surgeons who worked at the Lazaretti’. In this way the medical profession was urged not just to write theoretical plague treatises, but also to investigate more closely through empirical observation and the experience of medical staff the nature of the disease and offer further advice about policy and treatment.101 The College of Physicians was also required to collaborate practically with the Sanità by ensuring that sufficient medical staff were available. To this end, it drew up a list of 80 physicians and 86 surgeons potentially available in 29 towns in Grand-Ducal Tuscany.102 In Florence itself a series of doctors were identified who could serve in the various Lazaretti and quarantine centres. The chancellor of the Sanità, Fulvio Giubetti, was clear what their qualifications should be: ‘these must be trained, expert, and mature and know the cause from where the sickness came from, the state of the said sickness, and of how it must finish and terminate.’103 A series of distinguished physicians were thus appointed, five of whom were in the service of the Grand Duke, and another five described as specifically to treat ‘those sick people in the city without the suspicion of plague’. Two of those nominated, Antonio Pellicini and Stefano Roderico de Castro, were indeed ‘experts’, as the authors of two of the main plague treatises written during the epidemic; the latter also held an important chair in Medical Theory at the University of Pisa.104 At the beginning of the epidemic each Sesto of the city was assigned its own medical staff, a physician and surgeon, together with an apothecary to supply the necessary medicines. Their role was ‘to treat the sick, who were to be forced to receive the treatment’, even if they refused, although no payment was required from the poor.105 Some caution was taken to ensure that there was strict control of surgeons, since they were regarded as more likely to attempt to profit from patients. Surgeons were supervised both by the nobleman who oversaw the enforcement of sanitary decrees in each quarter, and also by physicians and apothecaries who were to accompany

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them when visiting an infected house.106 As we shall see in the analysis of the trials against those who broke these rules in Chapter 8, the government had reason to be careful, since accusations were made against surgeons for receiving bribes to provide misdiagnoses of sickness and causes of death, so that patients would not be sent to the Lazaretto and the dead would not be buried in the plague pits outside the city walls. During the plague doctors were supposed to live alone to avoid spreading the poisonous vapours of disease to co-residents, and a sign was placed over their front doors in the shape of a triumphal arch, containing the words ‘Medico della Sanità’ for ready identification. When doctors went about their business they had to wear the full plague costume, as reflected in the wellknown image of an early modern plague doctor (see Plate 8). The costume reflects contemporary views for protection against plague: the leather waxed coat, the lenses covering the eyes, the leather gloves and the covering to his face, which all inhibited the absorption of the infected and corrupt air, both the substance and cause of transmission of the disease. His famous beak contained herbs to modify and disinfect the air he breathed in through his nostrils. Each of the medical staff received a salary: 30 scudi a month to physicians, 15 to surgeons and 10 to apothecaries.107 As the plague epidemic got worse in the autumn it proved more difficult to recruit doctors for the Lazaretti, since some died and others fled, and greatly inflated fees were offered to secure their services, 80 scudi a month to physicians and 40 scudi to surgeons.108 Even the work of a medico del quartiere proved very onerous; in mid-October the Collegio asked the Sanità to relieve two doctors of their duties. Maestro Paolo Filiromola was exempted by special order of the Grand Duke, but Maestro Francesco Franzesi was less fortunate, for, although he had already worked for the Sanità for a number of months, it declared it was not prepared to relieve him for the moment, reflecting a dearth of doctors willing and able to take his place.109 The same day the Grand Duke wrote to put pressure on the Collegio de’ Medici. He underlined how ardent he was in his concern for the ‘health of his subjects during the current sicknesses’. Furthermore acknowledging that ‘the main treatment [cura] belongs to doctors’, he asked them to organise immediately a meeting of all their members ‘and discuss all the remedies that can be administered to the sick, not only to treat [curare] them, but also to maintain in health those who had recovered and were well’.110 His stress on the urgency of the situation suggests that Ferdinand was impatient with the College, given that the plague was getting worse, and he hoped that

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sending them the Venetian Avvertimenti would inspire the Florentine Collegio to think of new ways to tackle the problem: ‘We are sending these Avvertimenti from Venice to put them into practice when needed.’111 The chapters governing the running of the Sanità from August 1630 repeated the basic principle to be observed by all medical practitioners, that only physicians could prescribe medicines ‘by mouth’, while surgeons could treat only external conditions with plasters and unguents.112 At this stage in the epidemic all medicines were supplied by the hospital of S. Maria Nuova, although the authors of the Capitoli issued a warning to the Sanità that their doctors should keep track of medicines in hospitals to avoid ‘infinite expenses’.113 In a petition in September to the Sanità by the city’s apothecaries, they underlined that there were good stocks of ‘medicines made with the bezoar stone and also more drugs which form the ingredients for these medicines, and there are about 200 lb of “olio contro veleni” and about 2,000 lb of Theriac and a large enough quantity of Mithradatum’.114 Theriac and mithradatum were regarded as sovereign remedies in the treatment of plague, and bezoar stone was recommended by Dioscorides as ‘an infallible antidote for its special virtues against all poisons’, seen as the cause of plague.115 By October there was increased pressure on the supply of medicines in Florence, because the speziali or apothecaries were ordered not to sell them outside the city in order to maintain a sufficient supply.116 In a letter from the Sanità to the Collegio on 19 October 1630, they were urged to do everything possible to provide ‘medicines considered appropriate to treat the current sicknesses’, and in particular ‘oil against poison’ and theriac. For this end they ordered an inventory to be drawn up to show how much stock of these two medicines was held by the apothecaries of Florence.117 All these medicinal treatments were designed to combat what was seen as the cause of plague, the corruption and putrefaction of the humours through the ingestion of pestiferous vapours. As Dr Stefano Roderico de Castro explained in autumn 1630, there are innumerable degrees of putrefaction; the worst occurs in the case of plague and affects our system, for ‘the great putrefaction acquires a nature which is the enemy of our nature, which one calls poison’.118 The main aim of medical intervention was to combat this poison, through the intervention of both physicians and surgeons. In a treatise written at the same time, Dr Antonio Pellicini summarised the treatment as follows: ‘First, rapidly remove the poison present in the body. Secondly, put out the excessive putrid heat. And third correct and deal with the accidents, among which are to be numbered the ulcers and carbuncles and the buboes also called gavoccioli.’119

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The most favoured methods of achieving this were to take pills and beverages, but there was some debate about the advisability of bloodletting, scarification and sweating.120 The author of the Avvertimenti sent to the College of Physicians had recommended that patients should be wrapped in covers in front of a fire, thus ‘the pores open so that they sweat out the poison’.121 In fact, already from the early sixteenth century, doctors were advising caution in letting the blood of plague patients, advice which was redoubled later in the century from a series of doctors from the Venetian Niccolò Massa, to Girolamo Fracastoro in his treatise De contagione, the Brescian Girolamo Donzellini and the Sicilian Giovanni Filippo Ingrassia.122 In Florence in 1630, the doctor appointed by the college went on to say it was also a bad idea ‘to provoke sweating with the heat of a fire, for someone with a burning fever, such as a pestilential fever’, because, citing Hippocrates’ Epidemics, it was likely to kill the patient. He dismisses this advice of the Avvertimenti, saying that it was a ‘dangerous thing to act as a doctor without knowing medicine’!123 Many of the treatises and recipe collections which survive from this period share much in common in terms of the ingredients and recipes. Some of these derived from the Grand-Ducal Fonderia or laboratory.124 In midAugust 1630 the Grand Duke had sent four flasks of acqua da febbre to treat the patients at the city’s first Lazaretto of Messer Bonifazio. Acqua da febbre was recommended for ‘the treatment of those sick with fevers, and especially those which are malign and pestiferous’.125 Another deriving from the Fonderia was Olio contro a Veleni and a recipe with a similar title derived from Mattioli’s edition of Dioscorides’ Materia Medica.126 Contemporaries also looked to the past for recipes, whether it was citing Galen or Ficino, or the association with leading statesmen, such as the recipe for Theriaca Rosa prepared by one of Cosimo I’s physicians, or the ‘Lattovaro preservativo contro la peste’ said to have been sent by Filippo Maria Visconti to Cosimo il Vecchio.127 The association with leading figures gave these recipes a prestige and a guarantee of their efficacy, just as the constant citation of authorities such as Galen and Hippocrates gave medical treatises their authority. As mentioned above, among the best-known treatments for plague designed to ‘take away the putrescent fire of plague’ were theriac and mithradatum; these were also used in smaller quantities as a way of fortifying the body against plague. These two miracle drugs were also often prescribed in conjunction with cooling medicines, such as barley water, and those specifically designed to fight the ‘malignity’ of plague.128 Pellicini records a fairly typical recipe, which included some of the main ingredients common to treat plague:

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Root of water germander (Radice di Scordeo) dr. 3 Angelica root (Barbe d’Angelica) dr. 1.5 Root of birthwort (Radice d’Aristolochia tonda) dr. 5 Acorn root (Radice d’Acoro) dr. 5 Cardomom root (Radice di Cardo santo) dr. 5 Goat’s rue root (Radice di Capraggine) dr. 11.3.11 Ferruginous clay from Elba (Terra sigillata dell’Elba) dr. 11.3.11 The property which virtually all these ingredients have in common is that they resisted poison, especially appropriate in the case of plague, which, as noted above, was seen as a poison which penetrated the body. Some, like terra sigillata and water germander, also had drying properties, which would have been used to dry the putrefaction of the humours. Some could be used in many different ways, both internally and externally, as in the case of water germander, which could be made up as an ‘electuary, syrup, powder, decoction and water’.129 Pellicini and de Castro were not the only people who went into print to give advice about how to preserve oneself and to treat plague. In common with other parts of early modern Italy and Europe, plague epidemics led to the multiplication of a wide variety of publications from lengthy treatises directed at the ruling elite to pamphlets and broadsheets.130 A small selection of these publications, which was collected together in one of the files of the Miscellanea Medicea, reflects this variety.131 The most comprehensive was the Brief instructions to preserve oneself from the contagious pestilence, written in 1630 on the orders of the Collegio de’ Medici of Lucca. The author began by explaining that in order to avoid the tedium of a lengthy exposition, he had made a summary of the recommendations of a series of distinguished writers ‘principally by those who have known by experience some precepts appertaining to the preservation [of health]’.132 The first of the recommendations was to ‘keep at a distance the fomites, in which are hidden the poisonous seeds of plague’, reflecting clearly the influence of Fracastoro’s theories in his De contagione, while the second was to ‘preserve the body in perfect health to provide the greatest resistance to plague’. Advice was fairly standard and consisted of staying at home and being careful about the goods brought into the house. In this way it was seen as possible to regulate the atmosphere and the body to keep them as healthy as possible through following the precepts of the six non-naturals, by adjusting the air, eating and drinking moderately, and balancing the humours through

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purging and, in the case of infection, of taking well-known treatments such as the Olio contro veleno of the Grand Duke or Mattioli.133 A second pamphlet was written by Gasparo Marcucci of Lucca on The Virtues of Water Germander, and finished on 10 August 1630 at the beginning of the epidemic.134 The collection also includes handbills, such as the following recipe printed for the magistrate of the Florentine Medici e Speziali on 11 September 1630 for an unguent, which was to be applied to the nostrils, palms of the hands and soles of the feet to help preserve people from plague (see Plate 9).135 Another leaflet (Plate 10) appears to have been written by a lay rather than a medical man. He signed himself anonymously as Cavaliere C.C.S., which might lead one to believe that his title was invented to sell the leaflet, though this may not have been the case. The pamphlet was printed by Zanobi Pignoni, the same printer of Fulvio Giubetti’s official guide to the measures to be adopted by the government during plague, and it was given an official imprimatur, ‘with the licence of the superiors’, presumably the Magistrato di Sanità.136 Furthermore, the printer himself wanted to promote the leaflet, since he provided an introduction to his ‘courteous readers’, saying that he had printed the antidote for the ‘universal benefit, and especially for the poor’, who were looking for a remedy for ‘mal contagioso’.137 The Cavaliere C.C.S., following the custom of recipe collections more widely, also advertised the antidote as tried and tested, ‘provato e esperimentato’, and had led to cures of the disease.138 The recipe was made up of a powder, which, it was claimed, was efficacious both to preserve people against sickness and to treat them if they fell ill. It was recommended the remedy should be taken in the morning and the evening, ‘because with this sickness somebody goes to sleep feeling well, in the morning is discovered sick with a carbuncle’, something which would not happen if the remedy had been taken. If sick, the powder should be administered immediately, followed by a purgative, and then the Antidoto contro Veleni, which could either be obtained from the Grand-Ducal Fonderia or the Spezeria del Borbottini.139 After recommending other treatments to treat carbuncles, the author went on to warn against adopting other remedies, which had proved fatal in two recent cases.140 The first was to eat lots of garlic and onions as a preservation against plague, a remedy adopted by a ‘tick finder’ (cercator de zecca) who each morning had eaten three garlic bulbs and drunk a tankard of wine and yet was found dead with pustules. The second was the case of the young organist at the Baptistery who sought to fill himself up with lots of theriac and greco, but had died with carbuncles. The moral of that story

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was that, even if ‘the quality of the materials was good, the quantity was poisonous’!141 The leaflet by Cavaliere C.C.S. reflects the fact that, despite the formal division in competencies between physician and surgeon and apothecary, Colleges of Physicians made exceptions by granting special licences; these allowed the prescribing of secret recipes to treat incurable diseases by practitioners other than those with formal qualifications.142 Inevitably, given that medical authorities were under great pressure to find rapid solutions during epidemics, the college made exceptions to its rules.143 On 30 August 1631 a petition had been received from the surgeon Maestro Francesco d’Ascanio Fancelli from Monterchi for a special licence to allow him to administer his ‘Lattovaro espulsivo contra la peste’. He began by establishing his credibility by underlining that he had worked as a surgeon for fourteen years in Lastra a Signa. The college evidently had investigated the case, for it wrote on 26 September to the Grand Duke recommending the granting of the licence, recognising that sometimes the sick go in desperation to empirics after being treated unsuccessfully by physicians. It recorded that this medicament had been examined by a series of doctors who had concluded that it contained no harmful ingredients and had been used with benefit in ‘hospitals and other places with good results’ (‘buona operazione e giovamento’). Maestro Francesco had recorded in a printed leaflet both the method of using the Lattovaro and the names of 37 people from Lastra and S. Martino a Gangalandi who had attested that they had been cured from ‘swellings, buboes, carbuncles, and pestilential fevers’ (‘gonfi, buboni, carbonchi, e febbri pestilenziali’).144 Another petition from Pietro Settini da Bibbiena was submitted in summer 1633 when plague had returned to Florence. He also wanted to cross professional boundaries, since he was an apothecary and sought permission to work as a surgeon. He based his claim first on the urgency of the situation, because he said that all the surgeons were dead in his area. Secondly, he emphasised his experience, for not only had he worked as an apothecary for 14 years, but also as a surgeon for a year during the plague in the Spedale di S. Maria Nuova, and had served in the Lazaretto di Prato Vecchio, where he had had much experience in his art ‘to the benefit of the sick’. The Collegio agreed to make an exception in an urgent case such as this.145 The shortage of trained practitioners in isolation hospitals led the Sanità to allow the doctors to use those without medical training in the treatment of the sick. On 5 December 1630 the director of S. Miniato al Monte sent a list of eight men and eight women ‘who are qualified to help

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the surgeons . . . the men are divided into three classes and are differentiated according to their knowledge and achievement’. The first of the women was called Margherita di Giovanni Lombardi, ‘who takes blood and cuts the buboes like a surgeon and merits a higher salary’.146 The plague led the Sanità to be more flexible when there was such a shortage of medical practitioners. They also realised that, when people lived in the middle of the countryside, they might not even have access to the services of an empiric. In their decree of 26 August 1630, the Sanità recounted that they had asked their medical advisers to provide a guide to some of the medicines which could be made up simply with ingredients at hand.147 First, as a preservative to protect themselves against plague, they were advised to take theriac in the morning and ‘grease themselves with oil against poison’. It was recognised that these medicines might not be available, given that they were expensive and unlikely to be found in the house of a contadino. Instead they were advised to take ‘walnuts, dried figs and rue’. The sick should be given ‘a glass of five ounces, of cicerbita sauce, or of goats’ rue, and very hot, and they’ll do well to cover themselves to sweat’, ‘for sweating is the best remedy’. If these were the measures recommended by physicians, self-help recommended by surgeons involved the treatment of the swellings and boils and carbuncles. Heated cups or roasted white chopped-up onion should be used to bring out the poisonous matter in the swellings. The boils and pustules were to be treated with ground scabious, and to remove the scab one should first cover it with chicken sauce and then shave it using a razor, finally covering the scab with theriac. For the carbuncles, it was best to cover them with pomegranate juice mixed with the seeds and peel. The recommendations of the Collegio de’Medici for self-help by contadini demonstrate that many of the ingredients in recipes against the plague were fairly common. It is also true that some plague remedies, in common with medical recipes more generally, were more complex and contained more expensive and exotic ingredients designed for the more affluent, hence the use of theriac and mithradatum.148 What seems to have divided some practitioners was the extent to which patients should or should not be purged, scarified and even have their blood let. All this suggests that generally the population and authorities retained considerable faith in the medical profession. It is striking that the evidence from Florence does not seem to reflect the complaints against unlicensed empirics, which proliferated in other early modern cities, including Rome, Venice and London.149 The testimony of witnesses in these trials also reflects the shared knowledge of the terminology and basic principles of Galenic

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medicine between the medical world and the public. This is a topic which has emerged as a strong theme in studies of Colleges of Medicine and Protomedici in early modern Italy by, for example, Gianna Pomata and David Gentilcore. They have shown that the language of petitioners concerning alleged malpractice or the failure to fulfil the terms of the doctor– patient contract reveals a good basic understanding of how the body worked in humoural terms and the intended effect of certain types of treatment.150 The Sanità were dependent on the services of medical practitioners, but they kept a close eye on their activities. Anybody who wished to treat the sick during the epidemic, in addition to those officially appointed by the Sanità, had to have a special licence. This was even the case with doctors who were ill and wished be to treated at home, as in the example of Maestro Giovanni Confortinari, who lived in a house behind the church of S. Jacopo fra Fossi, and was given permission on 7 November to ‘be treated at home, because he lives alone and has a large house where he can be looked after by enough servants, and Dr Faberi who can visit and treat him.’151 In this instance, even though it is possible that Maestro Confortinari had the symptoms of plague – though this is not mentioned – the fact that he had a spacious house and lived alone suggests that this was regarded as sufficient reason to allow him to avoid the perils of being taken either to the hospital of S. Maria Nuova if he had an ‘ordinary disease’ or to the Lazaretto if suspected of having plague. This is another example of the special exemptions granted to the more affluent during the epidemic. Dr Faberi makes his appearance in a case eleven days later, for, although he has permission to practise, he had obviously not followed the rules laid down by the Sanità: ‘Furthermore, it has been heard that Maestro Francesco Franzesi and Maestro Salustri Faberi, doctors expert in treating those suspected of having plague, practise their profession in apothecary shops and in other places, mixing with everybody without any regard [for the implications of their actions], and that they treat many people without giving notice to or obtaining permission from the Magistrate.’ They were instructed to cease this practice forthwith, and to follow the normal routine laid down by the Sanità, according to which every sick person they visited should be reported to them.152 Drs Franzesi and Faberi may very well have been so busy responding to the demands of the sick that they had forgotten to inform the Sanità. This is perhaps what occurred in a tragic case during the quarantine reported to the Sanità at 6 o’clock in the evening of 23 February 1631 by Niccolò Doni, the distributor of the subsidy to those people shut up in their houses:

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In Via Nuova da S. Paolo at number 176 the following case occurred: A woman in labour had been in the process of giving birth for fourteen hours with the creature dead and half outside the mother. The midwives judged that it should be cut, but they could not find a surgeon who would come, and what was worse was that the parish priest of Ognisanti refused to give her the sacrament without the ‘fede’ of Sebastiano Manieri, the surgeon of the said Sestiere, that it was not ‘mal contagioso’. And the poor woman continued to be in serious danger of both her body and soul, without finding until now either a surgeon or a priest to remedy the situation.153

This case is instructive on a number of levels. First, it shows that even the total quarantine of the city did not prevent midwives from working; presumably they too would have had to obtain a special licence from the Sanità to leave their houses. Secondly, it shows that while the surgeon of the Sesto may have been fully occupied, it also indicates that he may have been less willing to attend a birth where the likelihood of a patient dying was greater and therefore of his being subsequently blamed for her death. The lack of involvement of the priest may indicate that he was concerned to follow to the letter the regulations of the Sanità, but his reluctance to attend to his parochial duty and to provide the sacraments to the woman also shows cowardice on his part. He was breaking the Archbishop’s instructions to parish priests that, even when they feared for their own lives, they must not deny the sacrament or hearing the confession of those sick and suspected of plague.154 Court cases against surgeons suggest that they were not always reluctant to treat patients, especially if provided with financial incentives. Others took advantage of the crisis to make illicit profits, as in the case of the accusations in the autumn against Cesarino Coveri and Vittorio Geri, that, for the payment of a fee, they gave a deliberate misdiagnosis, so that somebody with plague would not be taken to the Lazaretto or buried in a plague pit, as reflected in the anonymous denunciation received by the Sanità on 14 November ‘I give notice of some dirty tricks [porcherie] that were done by the surgeons and doctors employed by the Sanità.’155 An example of this, combined with the accusations of sexual misconduct of practitioners, is reflected in the trial on 19 November of Vettorio, the surgeon who had been appointed to the Sesto of S. Ambrogio to visit those suspected of having the contagion:

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he often went without his companion to make the visits, from which derived unrest, as we shall discuss below. That the said Vettorio on 17th had visited a certain Domenica di Casentino, who lived on the second floor of the house where the dyer Paolantonio lived in Via S. Maria. He [Vettorio] had got her [Domenica] to stand at the top of the stairs and lift her clothes and in this way had inspected her, following which he made his report and she was sent to the Lazaretto of S. Miniato. And then he went to visit the wife of the said Paoloantonio, and put his hands on the breasts of the lady, embraced her and kissed her and said to her that he would like to screw a little. However, she resisted and said ‘I will tell my husband’, and with a great effort she managed to escape from his grasp.156

The misdemeanours of surgeons is a topic which will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 8 within the context of prosecutions of all types of infractions of public health regulations, when it will be seen that, despite the deserved attention paid by the Sanità to the misbehaviour of medical practitioners, they were not that numerous, and overall the systems put in place seem to have worked reasonably well.157 This chapter, as reflected in its title, has discussed how Florentines treated the body of the city and the body of the poor through the public health structures put in place to deal with the first stages of the epidemic. It has also examined the role of the doctors in treating the sick. In the next chapter we will turn to the spread and impact of plague and how the government coped with the challenge of sickness and death as the plague waxed and then waned, to die out in the summer of 1631, though returning briefly in 1632–3.

CHAPTER 5



THE IMPACT OF PLAGUE AND QUARANTINE

The first half of this chapter steps back from discussion of the development of plague measures to consider their impact, effectiveness and some of the problems which were encountered along the way. As has been seen, the overall policy of the Sanità had been to adopt strategies which would lead to limiting the spread of the epidemic by separating the sick from the healthy and the dead. The first section will examine the geographical distribution of the infected within a specific part of the city, the large parish of S. Lorenzo, in order to see how far infection was limited. The second section will then look at how the Sanità dealt with the increasing number of plague burials and some of the associated problems. Discussion in these two sections will concentrate mostly on the first four months of the epidemic, September to December 1630, and will act as a preface to the second half of the chapter, which follows the adoption of a new policy of general quarantine of the city. The Spread and Impact of Plague

Most contemporaries who discussed the impact of the epidemic on Florence made the automatic link between poverty and plague, which we have seen was a theme of the decrees of the Sanità and the writings of both medical and non-medical men. Francesco Rondinelli recorded with hindsight the zones of the city worst affected: The places where the plague was at its worst were those at the extremities of the city, those inhabited by poor people. Among the streets that had suffered worst was the street which goes from S. Ambrogio to the Porta alla Croce [Borgo La Croce], which is the only one to have been barred, 118

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and about 600 people died there, and about 130 houses were locked up there. Then Via Gora, the new houses on Via sul Prato, Borgo S. Pier Gattolini, Via S. Zanobi, and Via Tedesca behind the church of S. Lorenzo.1

Many of these areas were close to the city gates, which is where plague would have entered. The spread and location of plague morbidity and mortality across the whole city in autumn 1630 has been examined by Burr Litchfield.2 He has shown that, while some areas, as around S. Ambrogio and S. Lorenzo, were severely affected, other parts suffered less, as for example the Sesto of S. Spirito to the south of the river, where mortality was lower, except for the Camaldoli area. This suggests that the direct connection between poverty and plague is too simplistic an explanatory model, especially as this southern quarter of the city was one of the worst affected during earlier epidemics in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.3 By linking the plague data to the census of 1632, Litchfield has been able to characterise the socio-economic characteristics of the areas worst affected. He has shown that there was a close connection between higher mortality and streets inhabited by the poorer levels of society, many of whom lived in housing with multiple occupancy and were employed in the textile trade. The quarter of S. Giovanni was one of the main areas identified by Litchfield as particularly hard hit by the epidemic. He identified two main parts of S. Giovanni, one to the west, north of Piazza S. Lorenzo, and the second to the east, including S. Croce and S. Ambrogio. During the 1630–1 plague, the city had been divided into sixths or Sesti rather than quarters, so that the boundaries of the Sesto of S. Giovanni were closer to those of the parish of S. Lorenzo, and thus excluded S. Croce and S. Ambrogio. We will concentrate in what follows on the spread of plague in S. Lorenzo, and the link between sickness, death and the socio-economic and environmental character of the parish. Higher mortality in S. Lorenzo may very well have been linked to the arrival of plague from the north along the road to Bologna, from where it first entered the city through the northern Porta S. Gallo, and then spread through the Sesto of S. Giovanni. Maps 5.1 and 5.2 show plague morbidity and mortality suffered in the parish by street during the three months from October to December 1630, when plague was at its height. This data is based on two registers kept by the Magistrato di Sanità of all the houses which had been locked up when one or more of the inhabitants had been diagnosed with plague and either taken by the Misericordia to the Lazaretto or buried in plague pits.4

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People identified as infected with plague, Oct.–Dec. 1630 0

Porta S. Gallo

1–20 VIA S. GALLO

21–40 41–60 61–80 81–100 above 100 VIA S. CATERINA VIA

DE LL ’A M OR E

VI A

250 m 250 yds

E’ A D CI VI AN R A L ME

S. Lorenzo VIA DELL’ AMORINO

’ VIA DEELLI MART

2 CELLA DI CIARDO

VIA MALBORGHETTO

2

GO BORE NZO S. LOR

1 GOMITOLO DELL’ ORO

V. D. STUFA

V. PO RC IA IA

VIA S. BARNABA B. LA NOCE

VIA S. JACOPO IN CAMPO CORBOLINI

1

ACQUA

NORI VIA DE’ GI

O GN LI FO

V. D’ AR IE NT O

DELL’

VIA LARGA

DA

TA V. D DD E EI

V OR IA S. SOL A

VI A

A OV NU VIA

VIA CHIARA

VIA TED ESC A PA V NI . CA LE V. RO M IT A

VIA S. GIULIANO

VIA S. G ALLO

VIA DEL CAMPAC CIO

VIA S. ZANO BI

Fortezza da Basso

VIA LARGA

VIA DELLE RUOTE

Duomo

Map 5.1 Parish of S. Lorenzo: total infected with plague, October–December 1630

Map 5.1 shows considerable variation between streets becoming infected across the parish, with some central ones more badly affected, while other more peripheral streets had few or no registered cases. This suggests that the spread of disease was contained, following the strict imposition of public health regulations. The pattern of those who died of plague in each street during these three months (see Map 5.2), is quite closely correlated with the geographical spread of infection, suggesting that the identification of plague cases and their removal was effective. It is interesting that three of the streets which experienced a lower number of people infected (Via delle Ruote, Borgo La Noce and Cella di Ciardo) had no deaths registered in

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Plague burials, Oct.–Dec. 1630 0

121

Porta S. Gallo

1–20 VIA S. GALLO

21–40 41–60 61–80 81–100 above 100 VIA S. CATERINA

DE LL ’A M OR E

VI A

250 m 250 yds

E’ A D CI VI AN R A L ME

S. Lorenzo VIA DELL’ AMORINO

’ VIA DEELLI MART

2 CELLA DI CIARDO

VIA MALBORGHETTO

GO BORE NZO S. LOR

1 GOMITOLO DELL’ ORO

NORI VIA DE’ GI

1

ACQUA

VIA S. BARNABA B. LA NOCE

V. D’ AR IE NT O 2

DELL’

V. D. STUFA

O GN LI FO

V. PO RC IA IA

TA V. D DD E EI

VIA LARGA

DA VIA S. JACOPO IN CAMPO CORBOLINI

VIA

V OR IA S. SOL A

VI A

A OV NU VIA

VIA CHIARA

VIA TED ESC A PA V NI . CA LE V. RO M IT A

VIA S. GIULIANO

VIA S. G ALLO

VIA DEL CAMPAC CIO

VIA S. ZANO BI

Fortezza da Basso

VIA LARGA

VIA DELLE RUOTE

Duomo

Map 5.2 Parish of S. Lorenzo: plague burials, October–December 1630

the autumn; they may have only become sick towards the end of December. Analysis of the spread of plague can further be explored through another register kept by the Sanità (Map 5.3), which, though not as detailed as the first, has the advantage that it extends to the end of September 1631, when the epidemic finally died out.5 Broadly, the distribution of infection in the autumn of 1630 was mirrored in the pattern over the whole year. Evidently, once the epidemic had begun in a street, it remained there over the whole year, moving within and between those houses rather than spreading outwards. While Via S. Zanobi was infected over the whole epidemic, other

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People identified as infected with plague, Oct.–Sep. 1631 0

Porta S. Gallo

1–20 VIA S. GALLO

21–40 41–60 61–80 81–100 above 100 VIA S. CATERINA

DE LL ’A M OR E

VI A

250 m 250 yds

E’ A D CI VI AN R A L ME

S. Lorenzo VIA DELL’ AMORINO

’ VIA DEELLI MART

2 CELLA DI CIARDO

VIA MALBORGHETTO

2

GO BORE NZO S. LOR

1 GOMITOLO DELL’ ORO

NORI VIA DE’ GI

1

ACQUA

VIA S. BARNABA B. LA NOCE

V. D’ AR IE NT O

DELL’

V. D. STUFA

O GN LI FO

V. PO RC IA IA

TA V. D DD E EI

VIA LARGA

DA VIA S. JACOPO IN CAMPO CORBOLINI

VIA

V OR IA S. SOL A

VI A

A OV NU VIA

VIA CHIARA

VIA TED ESC A PA V NI . CA LE V. RO M IT A

VIA S. GIULIANO

VIA S. G ALLO

VIA DEL CAMPAC CIO

VIA S. ZANO BI

Fortezza da Basso

VIA LARGA

VIA DELLE RUOTE

Duomo

Map 5.3 Parish of S. Lorenzo: total infected with plague, October 1630–September 1631

streets parallel, such as Via Campaccio and Via S. Gallo, gradually become infected with plague, as did some to the south, such as Via Pancale and Via Romita. To examine the differences between streets more closely, we will return to Figure 3.1, which was examined in Chapter 3 in relation to the sanitary survey and graphs infection per street. The number of sick people in one road, Via S. Zanobi, was far higher than in any of the surrounding streets, with 161 reported cases of suspected plague. The next group of eight streets had between 60 and 69, then two between 50 and 59, one with 45 (Via di Foligno), five more between 10 and 29, 21 of less than 10, and six with no

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cases. The reasons for these variations are difficult, if not impossible, to resolve finally, although we can begin to unpick some of the possible contributory factors.6 Chapter 3 has shown that, although there was a general association between environmental conditions and the numbers of reported sick, it is not statistically significant to say that insanitary conditions alone were a major factor, as had been suggested by the gentlemen who conducted the survey of mattresses and cesspits in August 1630. However, contemporaries also alluded to the link between the incidence of plague, the type of housing and the occupations of the inhabitants. In order to take this further, an attempt was made to reconstruct the topographical and socio-economic character of each street. The physical character was best reconstructed through a comparison of Stefano Bonsignori’s 1584 map of Florence with the first really detailed and accurate map of the city in 1832 associated with the cadastral survey of that year. Putting together these two maps, it was possible to obtain approximate measurements of the streets and buildings, and then with data from the 1632 census of the city to link the number of physical houses listed in the fiscal document with those represented in both the 1584 and 1832 maps.7 Although the 1632 census provides a wealth of information, this data has to be interpreted with considerable caution when discussing the socio-economic character of individual streets or areas before the epidemic. The survey was conducted following the plague to list those who had survived but, while it may help to characterise broadly types of households and occupations of residents in the parish, there are no reliable pre-plague estimates of the population of each street. The streets with the most infected people, over 50, fall into two main areas: a northern and a southern block (see Plate 11, a and b). The first consisted of three roads parallel to each other: Via S. Zanobi (161), Via del Campaccio (today Via S. Reparata, 68) and Via S. Gallo (68), all linked to the south by Via dell’Acqua (69). To the south and north of S. Lorenzo there was a block of six streets, with four parallel to each other: Via Tedesca (60), Via Panicale (66), Via Romita (66) and Via Porciaia (57), linked at the top by Via Chiara (63) and at the bottom by Via dell’Ariento (62), parallel to which was Via S. Jacopo Corbolini (59). As Map 5.1 shows, these two blocks were close together, but there is a notable difference between the two. The streets nearer S. Lorenzo, in the older city centre, were narrower and more tightly packed than those in the northern block (cf. Plate 11, a and b). Thus in some areas the numbers of sick and dead attributed to plague coincide with streets of high density housing, such as in Via S. Zanobi and Via del Campaccio, but in other cases there is not

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such an obvious relationship. This will be explored further through examining the characteristics of three streets: Via S. Zanobi in the northern block and Via Romita in the southern, and Via de’ Ginori, which was a southern continuation of Via S. Gallo and relatively unaffected by the plague. As mentioned in Chapter 4, Giovanni Baldinucci, who lived in Via de’ Ginori, recorded in his diary on 20 October his fear of the plague spreading in his street, since he lived close to the location of four houses which had already been locked up.8 It was one of the grandest streets in the parish and contained a series of large patrician palaces.9 According to the 1632 census, the street possessed a high proportion of heads of household with surnames and larger than average number of servants.10 In the event the street suffered very little; only seven cases of plague were reported. In general, contemporaries noted few patricians died and most who died in their houses tended to be servants.11 Lower patrician mortality may be linked to some of them having either fled to their villas in the countryside or having remained shut up in their city palaces, thus with less contact with the outside world than the poorer sort, who had to travel round the city for work or to buy food. In contrast to Via de’ Ginori with its palatial, stone-built constructions, Via S. Zanobi had many more plague cases (161). Despire being longer, it had a much high housing density: 180 houses compared with Via Ginori’s 52. Although it was longer, it contained 180 houses.12 Occupational profiles also differed considerably. Via S. Zanobi was far from being patrician and had long been closely associated with textile production. In the 1562 and 1632 censuses the majority of the heads of household were registered as employed in the more menial tasks of the wool and silk industries.13 The link between numbers of people infected once plague had arrived in a street and housing density is strengthened when examining Via Romita (today the top section of Via S. Antonino, to the west of Via de’ Ginori), which, like Via S. Zanobi, had long been associated with the textile trade. It is the shortest of the three examples; there were two cases of suspected plague in each of its 33 houses, higher than Via S. Zanobi, with an average of 1.12 cases per house.14 The density of the housing stock in Via Romita, where houses occupied narrow plots, appears to have been an important factor in the spread of plague. These correlations between the incidence of plague and the physical character of the streets show that not all in the same area were equally affected; even contiguous streets could have very different levels of infection. Thus Via S. Zanobi and Via del Campaccio (today Via Reparata) were parallel to each other, but the number of cases of infection was nearly two and a half times greater in Via S. Zanobi (161 compared to 68). Given their proximity, what other physical

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factors might explain the different impact of the epidemic? In the first place, Via del Campaccio was shorter than Via S. Zanobi, with 17% less house frontage. Secondly, there were considerably more houses listed in the 1632 census in Via S. Zanobi (180) than in Via del Campaccio (106); thus the mean width of houses was 4.5 metres in S. Zanobi and 5.5 metres in Via del Campaccio. The comparison between these streets suggests that housing density may have been an important factor to influence the spread of plague once it had entered a street, when it found it easier to spread from household to household. Anecdotal evidence taken from prosecutions and witness statements in the trial during the epidemic backs up this assumption, as in the trial on 17 November of the silk-weaver, GiovanBattista di Zanobi Carosi: I live in Via della Scala, myself and my wife, in an apartment, that is the last, and under me lived the widow Monna Lisabetta, who died on the Thursday of the week before I was carried away; in the first apartment lives the widow Monna Maddalena, and in the two middle apartments, live the widows Monna Gostanza and Monna Nannina, and the said Monna Gostanza has a girl who is called Maddalena. Monna Gostanza fell ill about 4 days ago and I sent her report to the Sanità and she was visited by a Gallino, who has no hair on his face and whom I heard is called Ceseri, and he sent her to the Lazaretto of S. Miniato, and her daughter was taken to S. Honoferi.15

GiovanBattista’s testimony suggests that he lived in a terraced house divided into a series of small apartments, inhabited by a number of poor widows, through which plague had spread rapidly. The death of Monna Lisabetta, who lived underneath GiovanBattista, was followed by the sickness spreading to the middle floor. Monna Gostanza fell ill and was taken to the Lazaretto, while Monna Nannina, who lived on the same floor, was found dead ‘lying out on the floor’ of her apartment. She, like Monna Lisabetta, was then taken for burial at the Camposanto, the plague pit outside the city walls. At the time of the trial, of the seven people who lived in the house, two had died and one was sick. GiovanBattista had been arrested because he had been found outside his house, when, according to the health board regulations, he should have been shut up inside. However, he protested his innocence, saying that the surgeon had told him he could leave freely, since he lived in a separate apartment.16 The concentration of plague within particular households and streets finds confirmation in studies of other early modern plague epidemics, whether that of Paul Slack on Bristol, the classic study by Roger Schofield of

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Colyton in Devon, Justin Champion on London or the more recent article by Guido Alfani and Samuel Cohn on plague in Nonontola, an important rural community outside Modena.17 What emerges from these studies is not just the association between individual families and plague, but also a very clear clustering of cases in particular houses and households, helping to explain why mortality was not evenly distributed through a community. More broadly, in Nonontola the areas of higher mortality were related to the proximity of where the epidemic entered the city, as we have observed in Florence in relation to not just S. Lorenzo, but also S. Ambrogio, which was close to the eastern gate of Porta alla Croce. A range of studies, moreover, of early modern plague have shown that there were more deaths among the poorer parishes, whether this was in Milan in 1523, London between 1560 and 1665 or Nonontola in 1665.18 While this is broadly true in the case of Florence in 1630–1, as Rondinelli noted, not all poor parishes were affected. The parish of S. Lorenzo reflects this pattern in microcosm. Whereas a more affluent street, such as Via de’ Ginori, was almost spared, more crowded streets with higher density housing had higher numbers infected and dying. In Florence, surviving sources make it difficult to draw a comprehensive link between the spread of infection or deaths and specific households in the city, since most data is at the level of the street rather than the individual.19 However, other factors that most probably contributed to the spread of plague within an area are worth further investigation, especially the networks and patterns of sociability between households, houses and streets. This was recognised at the time, as reflected in the Sanità’s obsession with people or matter ‘out of place’, as reflected in the trial records that will be examined in Chapter 8.20 As will be seen, the vast majority of people arrested were in places where they were not supposed to be, either in the street after curfew or during the general quarantine of the city, or because they were engaged in trades which involved the production or sale of cloth, and especially secondhand clothes. In other cases, however, people had been arrested because their trades were the centres of nodes of sociability. Eleven innkeepers were punished for keeping open their premises during the epidemic when they were supposed to have been closed. This was exacerbated still further when the guests left the inn and simply continued their usual way of life, even after a co-resident had died there, as was the case with the Albergo di Titolotto in mid-November 1630 (see Chapter 8). Other people who attracted the attention of the authorities included tavernkeepers, and especially when they continued to provide a convivial setting for drinking and playing games. Another category included food suppliers such as bakers, who perhaps

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unintentionally acted as a central locus for people in a neighbourhood as they came to buy bread on a regular basis. The connection between the spread of mortality and the presence of taverns, eating-houses and food suppliers has been suggested by Justin Champion in his study of plague in London in 1665, and is an area which deserves much closer analysis.21 Following this discussion of the impact of plague at street level, we will now widen out focus to consider a second way in which Florence coped with one of the city’s gravest challenges generated by the epidemic: the systems it devised for the burial of large numbers of dead and the problems it encountered. Coping with Death

On 9 August 1630. Margherita di Francesco Altoviti da Vernio of the Popolo di S. Pulnari in a house in the Corte del Garbo [today Via Condotta] was buried in the said church [S. Apollinare] by the Compagnia della Misericordia as not suspicious, although, as was seen the next day, two of her children were taken from the said house, and were carried to the graveyard of S. Maria Nuova on the order of the Magistrato di Sanità. And the same day, the 10th, Antonio and Bartolomeo, sons of the cobbler Vincentio at Canto alla Briga, died. And these above-mentioned bodies were carried to S. Maria Nuova and buried there in the usual cemetery, in a grave of 3 braccia deep, and they were covered with quicklime and earth, as also having been suspected of having died of this sickness. On 16 August 1630 Signora Maddalena del Signor Antonio del Garbo and her servant were taken from the Corte del Garbo and carried and buried at night in the cemetery of S. Maria Nuova, covered with quicklime and earth, as having had the mal contagioso; and [the Sanità] had not yet given the order for other graveyards, so it was ordered that people who died from suspicious deaths were to be carried to the graveyard at Bonifatio.22

These three entries, taken from the records of the Misericordia, return us to the first cases in August at the beginning of the epidemic. and the uncertainty both about the nature of the disease and the best strategy to adopt for the burial of plague victims. This was the reason that their corpses were taken to S. Maria Nuova, where they were buried 3 braccia deep and covered with quicklime, and then, as plague burials increased, the dead were taken to the city’s first Lazaretto, Bonifazio. Here plague pits were dug at the back

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of the garden towards the city walls, as far as possible from the hospital. The numbers increased rapidly; Baldinucci records that, by 24 August, 115 people were being buried daily.23 Then, as mentioned above, this burial ground proved insufficient as mortality rose, so a series of plague pits (Campisanti) were created outside the city gates. Priests accompanied corpses to burial at the Campisanti to provide the semblance of a proper funeral and received 2 scudi for each journey.24 One of the problems of burial in less frequented places was that dogs began to dig up the bodies buried in the Campisanti. Apart from the indignity of having the corpse of a relative exposed and treated in this way, there was the fear that dogs would spread the plague, which was part of an on-going discussion about the difficulties of allowing all animals to be admitted to the city given the problems of the diffusion of plague.25 The Sanità thus had fences built around the pits.26 Then on 26 August a decree was published to the effect that ‘the dogs of the city of Florence and its contado should be tied and shut up, otherwise if they are found outside it is possible to kill them without penalty’, and indeed people were encouraged to do so by being awarded 1 giulio.27 Baldinucci records that, by 23 November, over 300 dogs had been killed in the previous three days.28 The records of the Misericordia reveal that it employed men to shoot dogs, probably during the daily visits of the Fraternity’s porters to infected houses and grave-diggers to the Campisanti.29 In the account book, which begins on 1 April 1631, there are various entries relating to arquebuses and to shooting dogs, as recorded on 22 April: ‘For having killed eight dogs, 5 scudi to our men. For having given a tip to Romolo, who has killed dogs outside Porta della Croce, 4 scudi’.30 The Campisanti were one of the key elements of the strategy of the Sanità. Although no specific regulations have survived indicating the actual procedures at the Campisanti, they played a vital role for the burial of those who had died of plague in the city, as opposed to those who had died at the Lazaretti. In the early stages of the epidemic the Sanità were firm about enforcing burials in the Campisanti of any plague victim in the city. Baldinucci records under 24 August, for example, that Signor Averone del Salvatico, who had died with ‘suspicion of plague’ with ‘certain swellings’, was carried for burial to the Camposanto outside Porta S. Gallo even though he was a rich noble.31 It was not straightforward for somebody to be buried in their parish at this time, even if they had not been diagnosed with plague. The Avvertimenti record that first it was necessary to obtain a ticket from the gentleman of the quarter confirming they had died from a noncontagious disease.32 As the plague progressed, the Sanità must have received

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repeated protests, for exceptions were made for nobles and ‘more civilised people’ (gente più civile) to be given permission to bury their relatives in their family tomb in their parish church, as long as the prescribed steps were taken.33 In a letter of 13 May 1633 from Giovanni Bonsi to Stefano Roderico de Castro, one of the medical advisers to the Sanità, about the sudden death of his son Antonio, he reassures the doctor about the precautions he had taken: the body had been placed in a double coffin with quicklime and in a grave of 3 braccia deep, according to the rules of the Sanità.34 These were exceptions and the vast majority of people dying from plague were either buried in the Campisanti, if they had died at home, or in the plague pits dug at the Lazaretti. The changing relationship between the total numbers buried in these two different locations reflects the success of the campaign of the Sanità in removing those sick from plague as rapidly as possible. With the increase in the number of people taken to the Lazaretti, there was a drop of those buried in the Campisanti (cf. Figure 5.1). These figures for burials derive from a letter which was sent to Francesco Rondinelli and kept in a collection belonging to the Tuscan Grand-Ducal ambassador to the English court since, as mentioned in Chapter 1, the English

1400

1200

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1000

800

600

400

200

0 Aug.

Sep.

Oct.

Nov.

Dec.

1630

Jan.

Feb.

Mar.

Apr.

May

Jun.

1631 Burials in Lazaretti

Burials in Campisanti

Fig. 5.1 Plague burials in Florence: Lazaretti and Campisanti, August 1630–July 1631

Jul.

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were particularly interested in plague provisions taken in Italy.35 In fact, by 1665 the English, and in London in particular, had begun to realise the advantage of creating separate burial grounds during the plague, rather than simply burying the victims in parish cemeteries, even if the principle of establishing separate pesthouses or Lazaretti was never adopted widely.36 Unusually, Worcester did use a pesthouse more extensively, with 25% of deaths occurring there, but it has been estimated by Paul Slack that during the Great Plague of 1665, London probably housed no more than 600 patients in the five pesthouses, even though it was by far the largest city in England.37 Figure 5.1 shows clearly how the system of plague burials worked in Florence. At the beginning of the epidemic, in August, most of those identified as having died from plague were buried in the Campisanti. This reflected the initial doubt and debate about whether it was really plague that was afflicting the city and thus it took a while for all the Lazaretti to be established properly. The largest was that at S. Miniato, but these figures also included those who had died at the contiguous S. Francesco al Monte, the Badia Fiesolana to the north of the city and Bonifazio. Figure 5.1 suggests that, once the system was properly established, and especially after the opening of S. Miniato, the number of plague deaths registered at the Lazaretti increased and those at the Campisanti began to fall: while in September 43% of all plague deaths were buried at the Lazaretti and 57% at the Campisanti, this proportion had reversed in October, with 71% buried at the Lazaretti and 29% at the Campisanti, a trend which continued over subsequent months. The overall proportion of people in Florence dying at the Lazaretti as opposed to in the city (67.5%) was higher than in many cities in north and central Italy. Similar figures were found in Pistoia during the same epidemic (66%), though not in nearby Prato (27%), and in Rome in 1656–7 (61.8%).38 During the very severe plague of 1575–7, deaths in Venetian Lazaretti represented 41% of the city’s total plague burials, and in Padua between 24% and 30%. Then when plague returned to Venice in 1630–1, the figure had dropped to 15%, which Jane Stevens Crawshaw has put down to the fact that the system was over-strained with large numbers dying within a single year.39 Although contemporaries stressed that at times conditions could be chaotic and that patients suffered from over-crowded wards, nevertheless there was a general belief in the efficacy of the Lazaretti for the inmates and the city more generally. Indeed, as we shall see, this belief underlies the emphasis in Florence and in other parts of early modern Italy on the centrality of the role of these institutions in combatting plague. These figures for Florence suggest that the system of identification and transportation of

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the sick and the burial of the dead appears to have functioned relatively efficiently. The way Lazaretti worked, and the fate of the plague victims and the personnel will be discussed in detail in Chapter 7, but it is worth recording what an anonymous contemporary commentator said about their capacity and mortality rates. He calculated that 12,500 beds were provided between the Lazaretti and quarantine centres, many of which were paid for by the patriciate, but most by the ‘liberality of Ferdinand, the Serenissimo Principe’.40 Targioni said that there was some disagreement about the numbers who died at S. Miniato, some saying many and others few. However, he records that the largest number of deaths was in October and November, with the worst day on 11 November when 106 died at S. Miniato alone.41 Baldinucci records on 23 November that from August until that day 5,000 people had died and that at the time of writing 70 were dying per day in the city and Lazaretti combined. Chapter 7 will return to assess the accuracy of these figures, but what is important is the significance to contemporaries in recording these statistics. In this way they could keep an eye on how the epidemic progressed. In fact, by early December most commentators noted things had begun to improve. The severity of mortality in October and November is confirmed by the figures of the Sanità, as was the slight decline from early December as summarised in Figure 2.1. Another important reason to collect these statistics was that it was a way the state provided proof of the success of their campaign against plague. Quarantine and the City

In order to ensure that infection and death rates continued to decline, the Sanità considered a new strategy, the adoption of a total quarantine of the resident population. A partial quarantine had already been adopted in December, when women and children below the age of 13 had been shut up in their houses. In this way, at least a section of the population was prevented from spreading plague, the declared motivation for the same policy to have been adopted and reinforced repeatedly in Bologna from mid-July, where it was believed that women and children were more likely to leave their houses.42 It may be that they were also seen as less economically productive.43 They were certainly regarded as more financially vulnerable, as reflected in the surviving portion of a census in December 1630 of those people who were deemed as potentially needing financial support during the partial and then total quarantine of the city. The only part of the census

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to survive is for the Sesto of S. Spirito.44 This area was traditionally among the poorest parts of the city, as reflected in the fact that almost half (44%) of the 1,912 families received subsidies. The social composition of the Sesto is clearly reflected in the detailed survey, showing, for example, that more affluent streets, such as Via Maggio, did not require subsidies, while in one of the poorest areas, Camaldoli, over 50% of households were in receipt of financial help. These poorer streets coincided with the prevalence of femaleheaded households, where the husbands were either sick or absent, while many others were headed by impoverished widows (17%).45 Here also they experienced higher numbers of plague cases, as Deanna Sardi Bucci has shown in her analysis of the provenance of the women who were taken to S. Miniato in autumn 1630.46 This reflects a long-standing pattern of the link between poverty and high mortality, as Ann Carmichael has shown for the distribution of deaths from plague in S. Spirito in the fifteenth century, and especially their geographical spread during the epidemic in 1430.47 The census reveals the levels of poverty in the city in December 1630. A population already impoverished by the economic downturn had been further hit by the impact of plague over the past few months, as emphasised by the report of those who took the census, reflecting the shock of the Gentiluomini, who had undertaken the sanitary survey of the city in August 1630: ‘in Via Camaldoli all the [inhabitants of the] houses are without work, because the workshop owners no longer provide work from the suspicion that they would thus infect the cloth; if all were to work as they wish the subsidy would be much less’.48 Work and poverty remained major themes in the discussions in December about whether or not to establish a total quarantine of the city. On the one hand, the cost of the operation was potentially enormous, balanced, on the other, by the desire to eradicate plague. Just as at the beginning of the epidemic different views were expressed about the nature and identity of the disease, so, as in other cities, there was a debate in December 1630 about whether or not to implement a general quarantine of the city. This related to a wider assessment by contemporaries of the efficacy of government measures in general.49 The most detailed discussion of the quarantine was provided by Rondinelli, including the main arguments on both sides of the debate. The views against a quarantine included: some condemned it as noxious, because locking up a large number of people in small houses full of foul air for such a long period, they could easily become infected . . . and if there was only one who through bad luck fell ill of plague, it would be almost impossible not to communicate

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the sickness to the others . . . It was also thought it would give [the poor] the opportunity to be lazy and lose the desire to work, having for forty days been provided abundantly for all their needs . . . others were astonished that it would be possible to feed an entire city daily for such a long time . . . Other disapproved of it as fruitless, saying that it was a new invention, and that many other pestilences had been extinguished without similar measures.50

While it may have been a ‘new invention’ for Florence, similar arguments had been advanced against the imposition of a quarantine in Bologna in September 1630, appealing to the experience of urban authorities in northern Europe: The cities of Germany and of France, which are so frequently afflicted by plague, fight off the scourge with abundant meals and with strict isolation of the infected from the suspect cases and of both from the healthy. They do not even consider the adoption of a general quarantine . . . above all knowing how much damage to have been done in Italy to those cities which had wanted to adopt a similar remedy.51

The anti-quarantine lobby marshalled a whole series of medical and economic considerations in their favour. These included the increase of the fetor of ‘foul air’. This was the argument which had been advanced at the very beginning of the epidemic, when everybody believed that the disease was not plague, underlining that, whatever disease was involved, corrupt air was seen as the medium through which it was spread. The economic arguments included increasing the laziness of the poor and the enormous expense of feeding them on a daily basis. The misfortunes which other Italian cities are alleged to have suffered as a result of imposing these regulations did not deter the pro-quarantine camp. They argued that this was the best remedy ‘because experience has shown that the contagion is spread by people mixing together, so that by removing the immediate cause one cuts out the root of the sickness’. However, recognising that remaining locked up in a small space could lead to ‘the great poisoning’ of the air, the inhabitants should ‘breathe fresh air at the windows, on terraces and, those who have no other place, then on the roofs’.52 Judging by the space which Rondinelli devoted to the anti-quarantine argument, it may have been that he was not in favour of the quarantine. However, as the official historian of the epidemic he had to support the final

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pro-quarantine decision: ‘the best opinion won, both because of the good arguments on which it was based, and the wishes of the Grand Duke, who had an extreme desire to cleanse his state from this sickness’.53 Given that Rondinelli’s account was the official one, it was also written to glorify the actions of the young Ferdinand. He had decided to remain in or near Florence and established an enviable reputation for himself during the quarantine, by walking through the streets and giving encouragement and support to his poor subjects locked up in their houses for 40 days. The quarantine was implemented on 20 January, the feast-day of the plague saint, St Sebastian, both in the city and in all the communities around Florence.54 Rondinelli gives the impression that the free movement of the majority of the population was immediately restricted. They were required to remain inside their homes for 40 days, under threat of public flogging, and food, drink and firewood were delivered daily to their houses, sufficient to survive. However, what emerges less clearly from his account is that this was not a universal quarantine, for it was graded according to social and economic status. In the preceding weeks anybody with a villa in the countryside had been allowed to leave Florence, as long as they informed the Sanità in advance and remained there without moving from place to place.55 But more generally Baldinucci records that those males over 14 who were not in receipt of the daily charitable subsidy of food could obtain a pass to walk through the streets of the city, so long as they did not enter any houses.56 Baldinucci was one of those who could wander around the city and he records that he was struck on the first day of the quarantine in particular that it ‘makes one very melancholy to see the streets and churches without anybody in them’. As a pious Christian he would have been particularly affected by the lack of people in church, though Mass was celebrated daily in the streets in front of portative altars and tabernacles.57 Further exceptions to quarantine regulations were made to the better-off, allowing them to move to other houses in the city or the country. On the first day of the quarantine, 20 January, Francesco di GiovanBattista Cinetti, one of the Grand Duke’s financial officials, was given permission to move to the palace belonging to Ferdinand in Via del Centauro.58 Others were given permission to leave Florence, such as the celebrated court painter Pandolfo Sacchi. He was allowed to travel on 23 January to Villa di Mezzomonte, recently acquired by Cardinal GiovanCarlo de’Medici, where he was commissioned to decorate the gallery with the frescoes which still survive there.59 The following day further permission was granted to Cavaliere Rimbotto Bimbotti to allow his wife, Caterina, to go to the house of her mother, Signora

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Maria Baldovinetti, who had been suffering for some time from an unspecified illness. However, it was stipulated that Caterina should travel in a sedan chair accompanied by a representative of the Sanità. Clearly this was regarded as an exceptional case, for, as noted by the magistrate, it was against the decrees governing the quarantine, according to which women were prohibited from leaving their houses.60 The Baldovinetti family must have had influence with the Sanità, because towards the end of February a special licence was granted to Lionello Baldovinetti to allow the wedding to take place in early March between his sister Signora Verginia Baldovinetti and Lorenzo Frescobaldi, and that the couple in the company of two ladies (gentildonne) could attend the wedding mass in S. Lorenzo.61 While exceptions were made for the better off to leave their houses and even celebrate a marriage, the quarantine was really organised to make sure that the poorer sort quite literally remained at home. The Grand Duke assigned the overall supervision of the imposition and regulation of the quarantine to Alfonso Broccardi, who had been responsible for setting up the Ospedale dei Mendicanti, or beggars’ hostel, just over ten years earlier. Broccardi had the reputation at the time as a severe and efficient administrator and was unpopular with his contemporaries, but despite his modest origins he had been protected and promoted by the Regents, especially by Archduchess Maria Maddalena, when Ferdinand was still a minor.62 Broccardi had long been a proponent of the enclosure of the poor from well before the foundation of the Mendicanti. It therefore comes as no surprise that he was strongly in favour of the quarantine and, given his influence at court, may have had a decisive influence on its adoption.63 The quarantine can be seen as the Spedale dei Mendicanti on a vast scale, and it is no coincidence that Dr Stefano Roderico de Castro likened the city to a hospital.64 Passes to leave their houses to buy food were restricted to one male per household, and all women and children of 14 or under had to remain at home.65 This was an enormous operation and required a high degree of organisation, leading to the employment of 1,100 people.66 There were two major warehouses established, one north of the river in the convent of S. Croce, and the second south of the river at the convent of S. Maria del Carmine. These warehouses supplied smaller ones in each of the city’s Sesti.67 Overall control of the Sesti was given to an official called a Caporione, who represented the Grand Duke and had full authority to order the punishment of anybody who broke the quarantine laws.68 The Caporioni had 30 Gentiluomini under their command, who carried out a detailed census in the first half of January 1631, in order to determine

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the numbers who had to be fed and where they lived. This must have been a huge task, for an official record gives a total of 30,452 people who fell into this category, out of a total resident population of 61,408.69 These 30 officials also had responsibility for arranging for the delivery of food to their local warehouses, from where those with a ticket came to collect their rations on a daily basis. The officials, however, would arrange for food to be delivered to those households headed by women, who were not allowed to leave their home. Targioni recounts that they had 300 carts at their disposal, supplied by the Grand Duke and others, in order to deliver the food and firewood to keep the poor warm during the winter, especially necessary as they would have been unable to get much exercise.70 In his diary entry for 20 January, Giovanni Baldinucci provides more exact information about the rations distributed, which included bread, wine, oil, meat and salt, supplemented to include sausage, fennel, rosemary, rice, herb salad and sweets.71 Baldinucci was not one of the gentlemen assigned to be in charge of the census of inhabitants and the distribution of food in the streets, so he may have gleaned this information from Giovanbattista and Giovanni Ginori, two of his neighbours in Via de’ Ginori.72 More detail can be added to Baldinucci’s general account from a contemporary official record: ‘The way it is believed possible to satisfy through feeding those who have need of the subsidy during the quarantine.’73 A ration of food and drink was worked out on a rota system according to the day of the week. Every day each person was given two loaves of bread and a mezzetta (about a half-litre) of wine. Meat was delivered three times a week on Sunday, Monday and Thursday, while on Tuesdays there was given instead a sausage, which was to be made up from pork without fat, pepper, fennel and rosemary. In addition on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, rice and cheese (caccio) was provided when they could be found, while on Friday salad was delivered, combining bitter and sweet herbs. Following the advice of one of the medical advisers of the Sanità, Dr Antonio Pellicini, this was evidently regarded as a well-balanced diet, and would have been much more substantial than the normal daily fare of the poor.74 One of the motivations for supplying this substantial menu, apart from preventing the poor from starving, was to counter the problem outlined at the beginning of the epidemic, when one of the contributing factors leading to the outbreak of plague had been seen as the bad diet of the poor, whose corrupt humours contributed to the corruption of the air. Florence was not unique in providing a generous diet to the poor during plague; contemporaries of the 1576–7 epidemic in northern Italy provide similar accounts of

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the generosity of the city authorities in Milan, Padua and Venice, and no doubt similarly mixed motivations would have been behind the policy.75 During the quarantine, about half the population had to remain in their houses, but those employed in certain professions were given permission to go to work, especially those involved in textiles and selling food, with the proviso that none could return home, but had to live in their workshops. Furthermore, in common with the patricians, some exceptions were made to quarantine regulations. Members of some other trades were allowed to practise their professions, as in the case of blacksmiths, who could work in their workshops, as long as this did not lead to large groups meeting there, while others, such as wine dealers, were allowed to sell grog as long as they did not also supply food.76 Individuals were also given licences, as in the case of three builders, who were allowed to continue to work at SS. Annunziata, while others, such as Maestro Stefano di Bastiano Torricelli, was only given permission to work for one day at a specific house.77 Many more licences were granted for those involved in medicine and for those whose services would have been much in demand, such as barber-surgeons; 23 were listed by name on 1 February as receiving permission to practise where there was demand.78 All these exceptions, both more general and individual, would have gone some way to meeting the objections of the anti-quarantine lobby, who had argued that unemployment would have led to laziness. In fact, as has been seen, even before the quarantine, the Grand Duke had himself organised work with men employed in manual work at the Fortezza da Basso and the Boboli gardens, while women were paid to spin silk and linen. During the quarantine the Grand Duke continued to employ the men and, given the cold weather, he provided each with a thick coloured overcoat, which they wore when they worked outside in the Boboli. The only drawback for the workers was that, as in the case of the textile and food workers, they had to live at the Boboli and not return home.79 It is tempting to see the picture of the heroic role of the Grand Duke during the quarantine as exaggerated. For example, when his brother, the cardinal Prince Giovanni Carlo, wrote to their brother Prince Matthias on 17 March 1631 he described Ferdinand as showing his subjects ‘an excess of love and of kindness and the greatest nobility of soul’.80 It is true that Ferdinand had remained at Bellosguardo near Florence throughout the epidemic, which he certainly need not have done, and, as we have seen, provided not just work for the poor, but made substantial contributions to the cost of the fight against the plague, and the quarantine in particular. Giovanni Baldinucci, in common with many of his contemporaries who

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have left accounts, emphasised how the young Grand Duke walked through the city streets during the quarantine, accompanied by a small group of courtiers to show his support of the poor. Baldinucci records that he actually talked to the people shut up in their houses and listened to their needs, which was ‘truly the greatest consolation to the poor and [provided] an edifying example to the whole world’.81 In very publicly showing his personal concern for the plight of the poor, the young Ferdinand was following a long tradition of Medici Grand Dukes from Cosimo I onwards, and it certainly served to establish his reputation in Tuscany. It is also true, as an anonymous chronicler pointed out, that ‘one did not see cadavers in the street, nor the other usual frightful and horrendous things occurring in periods of similar misery’.82 It is only too easy to swallow the heroic rhetoric of the official point of view, without taking into account the negative impact of the quarantine on the population. Their disenchantment with the new raft of restrictions on their physical movement and economic activities, especially when Carnival was suspended, is well brought out by this anonymous contemporary sonnet: Every crafty plebeian seems to stand out, wearing silk stockings, and flowers, and gloves and a thousand scoundrel doctors, with another thousand barons, are made rich. Who will not maintain such an abundance? and will not boast of the opulent gain? But I wish to give you, instead of cash, you lazybones, the death you deserve! I saw a man who wore not just the cloak which he didn’t possess, but diamonds just out of the mine. The poor die of suffering, these ones enjoy: I drool from how angry I am. Shit, a good man can’t keep quiet!83

If the topos of some benefiting and becoming affluent through the misery of others is familiar from the introduction to Boccaccio’s Decameron, the suffering of the poor during the plague is a constant theme through all accounts of epidemics in the preindustrial age. Undoubtedly, even though

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sustenance was provided to those who were locked up their houses, discontent remained high, as reflected in the number and types of trials of people breaking the Sanità legislation, as will be examined in detail in Chapter 8. Quarantine and the Countryside

So far we have discussed the impact of the quarantine on Florence, but, as Rondinelli reminds us, the city and its contado were interdependent. Furthermore, the Sanità had much to fear from the countryside, for, as Guido Alfani has stressed, mortality in rural parts of Italy could be as high as in cities.84 The Sanità decided to impose the same terms of the quarantine on the area within five miles of the city walls. Two Commissari were appointed, Luca Mini, the parish priest of S. Stefano in Pane, for the popoli to the north of the city, and Niccolò Cini, a canon from the cathedral, to the south. They supervised the whole operation and coordinated the reports about the sick and the condition of the contadini provided by parish priests and the local rectors, who also gave information about who was to be treated, sent to Lazaretti or buried. Another enormous task to be undertaken was a census of all the poor contadini who had been shut in their houses and could not work; each was given a daily ration of bread.85 The seriousness with which they undertook this task can be seen in Cini’s report on 28 January: Yesterday morning I began to distribute the bread in four areas to better serve the poor, as can be seen from the enclosed note. The love with which I serve the Illustrious Lords convinces me I should distribute everything with my own hand . . . and I filled in and gave the tickets to everybody, and examined carefully each family to remove anybody from the list who could earn their living.86

Despite what he recounted, this operation could not simply be undertaken by Mini and Cini alone, so they broke up the large zones they supervised into smaller areas, and delegated the surveying and distribution to a series of other officials, as is made clear by the report of Guglielmo Altoviti di Rimaggio on 24 January 1631: concerning the distribution of the bread to tenants and other needy persons of the contado . . . the part which concerns me is this part with the parishes beginning outside Porta a S. Niccolò and ending with the

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Arno on one side, and the other all of the Strada Maestra Aretina, not passing the boundary given to us of the five miles which is under my care. As you will see from the attached description of the ten parishes, which we have compiled with the help of the curates and rectors and other relevant people . . . I find it is necessary to distribute each day at least 291 loaves of bread at a cost of 38 scudi and 16 shillings.87

Guglielmo Altoviti goes on to elaborate in more detail the types of people who required feeding during the quarantine: ‘I have not described others than the tenants and the people who are unable to earn their living, including girls and boys and those women who live normally by washing clothes for people in Florence or carrying goods into the city to sell.’88 The same criteria were adopted in each part of the contado, as can be seen in a list of 65 widows compiled and submitted by the rector of the Parish of the Canonica di Fiesole.89 We have also seen that widows were often the most vulnerable section of the population, particularly at times of crisis, and clearly the work of these particular women was disrupted, as all contact with Florence, on which they depended for their living, was cut off by the quarantine regulations. The cost of this charitable enterprise was immense, for 1,800 loaves were distributed each day, and after the end of the quarantine it continued until mid-June on a more limited scale, when each day a loaf was given to all beggars living within a ten-mile radius of the city.90 Some idea of how they were distributed can be gained from these summaries on 2 February 1631: Outside Florence, the part of S. Giovanni: [Sesto: 531; Fiesole: 602; S. Stefano: 2189; Careggi: 750 Outside Florence, the part of S. Spirito: Bellosguardo: 600; alle Rose: 1214; Gioghi: 431; Antella: 297; Ripoli: 291.91

The whole system of the quarantine in the contado was presented in as glowing terms by Rondinelli as that in the city, and particularly due to the influence of the charitable inspiration of Ferdinand. Once again, while not denying the generosity of the Grand Duke’s involvement in food supply, the reality of the situation was somewhat different. The negative impact of the plague and the restrictions put on the movement and employment of contadini cannot be underestimated, as reflected in the reports of parish priests and rectors as well of those of Cini, Mini and other local officials.

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These contain heart-breaking accounts comparable to those of the brothers of the Compagnia di S. Michele, who had undertaken the sanitary survey of the city in August 1630. Some of the worst problems occurred within the first ten days after the beginning of the quarantine, before the system was properly set up and running. Many of the reports underline that the poor contadini lived in wretched conditions and that many were virtually starving.92 While those with land were allowed to continue to cultivate their crops, those without were completely dependent on either the generosity of landowners or the distributions of the Commissari. The reports of the Commissari and the parish priests all contain descriptions of the dire straits in which many of the contadini found themselves. For example, Sebastiano, the curate of the parish of S. Piero a Solicciano, to the west of the city, between Lasta a Signa and Florence, wrote to the Sanità on 24 January: On behalf of the office that I hold as priest, it has seemed to me to be my obligation to represent to you, with all my love, the miseries and the greatest calamities in which many tenants find themselves during this quarantine, as well as other beggars of my parish. Certainly if they are not helped by a subsidy at this time, by observing the orders of the Illustrious and Clarissimi Lords, one finds people dead in their houses through suffering from cold and hunger, and other infinite needs, since at the moment they cannot either go begging or help themselves in other ways.93

In this passage Sebastiano reminds us that the quarantine was just one of a series of factors which threatened the lives of the contadini in January 1631. After all, it was the culmination of a series of measures taken over the past six months to control plague and the movement of people, and to deal with the effect of sickness and death on family members and local communities. Added to this, as Sebastiano and other commentators reported, conditions were made worse by the cold weather, exacerbated within a few weeks by severe rainfall and flooding.94 Unemployment was one of the worst problems caused by the quarantine and many of the Commissari and parish priests report on its severe impact on the lives of local inhabitants, especially as a result of the restrictions imposed on the movement of people. One of the solutions proposed by the Commissari was to persuade landowners to help their tenants and continue to provide work for them. When Francesco Maria Malegonnelle reported on

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21 January on the parish of S. Martino at Montughi, just to the north of the city walls, he had evidently encountered the impoverished labourer Giovanni Pentolini, who had five small children, and suggested that the landowner, Cavaliere Rimbotti, should employ Giovanni to cultivate his land.95 Not all landlords or landowners were prepared to help their tenants. Canonico Cini on 29 January, in his survey of the area between the Strada Romana and the Strada Chianti, underlined ‘that the farm labourers are in great misery, and even though they have rich owners, they do not want to look after them; it seems to me there is no remedy for their misery because nobody gives them alms’.96 Two days later Filippo Capponi, in his report on the area between Porta S. Niccolò and the Strada Aretina, recorded that other contadini were in an even worse situation, since they were without an employer or landowner to give them work.97 The other problems stemmed directly from the imposition of the quarantine, with the regulation of the movement of people and goods. Commissario Roberto Pepi, who was based in the Mugello, a traditionally poor mountainous area to the north of Florence, reported that it was particularly hard hit by the quarantine, perhaps because it was more remote than some of the areas closer to Florence. Pepi wrote to the Sanità on 26 January about the precarious state of the local inhabitants of Vaglia and S. Piero a Sieve.98 In Vaglia ‘the poverty is extraordinary’, because there is nobody to take care of the poor and where, moreover, there are no men in some households. Women had had to take over one of the main occupations of the area, the carrying of wood to Florence, but even this form of employment had been stopped by the quarantine, as their movement was forbidden. He implored the Sanità to find another way for them to support themselves and warned that otherwise ‘disorders’ would follow. He reminded them he had already written two days previously about the situation, but that he had been impelled to write again by the experience of meeting a poor widow with small children who had come up to him crying about her situation and asked him to listen to her ‘miseries’.99 In Dicomano, also in the Mugello, he emphasised the lack of food and asked permission from the Sanità to provide a licence for two of the local bakers to go to the Romagna and to buy 50 bushels of wheat (grano) once a week, in order to make sure that the locals did not starve, especially as their usual occupation of wool-working had ceased.100 In some cases, the local inhabitants, desperate for sustenance, wrote to Grand Duke Ferdinand himself, in the traditional form of a petition, as in the example of the villagers of Montereggi, north of Fiesole. They wrote on 3 February, emphasising that ‘not only in this area, but also within the circuit

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of many miles, there is no employment, whether for a shop-keeper or an inn-keeper, who can give bread, and everybody dies of hunger with their poor families’.101 Thus ‘with my head bowed, I supplicate you by the wounds of Christ, to have pity’. This stemmed from an uneven distribution of subsidies, because they wanted to share ‘the same paternal charity, which had been provided at Fiesole, Settignano, and many other parishes’.102 It may have been in response to receiving petitions from impoverished contadini that the Grand Duke decided to appoint two of his relatives, Cardinal Giovan Carlo and Don Lorenzo, to travel around the contado within the five-mile radius ‘asking those poor people how they were treated, seeing whether the bread which was distributed was good, and that the orders had been properly observed and that there were no disordini’.103 There were areas to the south of the city which were also very poor. Closer to Florence some occupations were dependent on the city and were thus disrupted by the quarantine. For example, in the Piano di Ripoli towards Bagno a Ripoli and Rimaggio, many local women who made their living washing clothes for Florentine families were now unable to travel into the city and were thus deprived of their livelihood.104 Of particular concern to Commissario Cini was Impruneta to the south of Florence, because it was just outside the five-mile radius, which had been designated as the limit for the distribution of the subsidy. On 28 January he wrote to the Sanità saying: ‘there are many poor wretched people that it torments and crucifies me, as it seems that I am partial in this distribution . . . their misery is so great, a sign of which is that they find it impossible to live; I believe that their number is at least 400’.105 On 4 February he returned to the same topic in his report, underlining the suffering in the parish of Impruneta, which extended seven miles beyond Florence ‘and there are more borghi full of people, who feed themselves with myrtle berries, acorns, and grasses, and whom one sees along the roads seeming like corpses who walk’.106 It is easier to stress the negative side of the quarantine than the positive, since so much of the correspondence to the Sanità complained about the dire nature of the situation in the parts of the countryside administered by the Commissari Cini and Mini. However, there is evidence that the Sanità did listen. On 29 January there was news from Campomigliaio in the Mugello that the local inhabitants had a great celebration, because of the arrival of flax, which had been sent to them for the women to weave.107 And there was another positive report from Sesto, where the Commissioner had reported on 25 January that the local population was surviving between weaving wool, receiving the daily subsidy and working their farms.108

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Complaints from the contado about lack of food seemed to diminish in February, once the system was properly in operation. Problems remained, partly generated by the contadini themselves; for example, in early February people in the parish of S. Giovanni in Careggi, who, despite the law to the contrary, continued to visit each other in their houses.109 More problematic in February was the continued outbreak of plague in the contado, first in the Mugello, including Borgo S. Lorenzo and Scarperia.110 Closer to Florence there were new cases in the village of Pinzidimonte, between Florence and Prato, from where the rector of the parish of S. Lorenzo, Filippo Gabbiani, wrote on 9 February: It pleased Divine Providence to touch my people with the whips of the contagion: immediately they relocked four houses indiscriminately, two of which did not have any bread to sustain them; the rest of the parish was discouraged by the others [from going out], prohibiting them from frequenting the churches, the streets, work, and everywhere they were threatened. I throw myself into the pious arms of the Lord, dedicating myself to help the poor, and I subject myself to manifest danger, carrying food to the sick themselves, making sure that they should be helped with that which belongs to the body, as to the soul. Finally, seeing that the living like the dead were abominated, I have resolved to myself to make a little cemetery, in order to provide just for the dead of this parish.111

Here were the problems in miniature of the whole policy of the general quarantine: sickness, feeding those shut up in their houses and burial. What differs in the village of Pinzidimonte, when compared with the city, apart from the scale, is that the priest did not have the judicial arm to enforce the law and proceed against rabble-rousers. The quarantine had another month to run, and during that period the Sanità and the Grand Duke continued to underwrite the huge cost of subsidising the poor shut up in their houses in the city and contado. At the very beginning of the quarantine, the Abbondanza and warehouse officials had already calculated that the city alone would consume 2,000 bushels of grain each day, and that was not including the cost of all other consumables which were provided on a regular basis to everybody who was shut up in their houses.112 In terms of cost, the anonymous history of the epidemic, possibly written by the chancellor of the Sanità, Fulvio Giubetti, calculated that the total cost of the quarantine alone would have been in the region of 240,000 scudi, to which he added the amount of 260,000 scudi for the cost of the

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whole campaign against plague from its beginnings in August 1630 until the day he was writing on 8 February 1631.113 This was seen as a price worth paying, for deaths from plague continued to fall over the spring until they died out in the summer of 1631. On 27 February the Sanità already had recorded the plague was getting better in the city and by 4 March it said that deaths were also falling in the contado,114 and later in the month all the Lazaretti and quarantine centres around Florence were closed, except for the largest, S. Miniato and S. Francesco.115 It was the reports and figures sent by the director of S. Miniato which gave hope to the Sanità officials and also proof to back up their optimistic statements. The reports of the director of S. Miniato were vital in providing evidence for the claims of the health board, as in his letter of 8 February: ‘yesterday we organised a good mandata to the convalescent centre, with 115 women and children and 92 men’, who were all regarded as having recovered.116 On the 18th he reported that ‘the sick are getting better’, while on the 26th he recorded that conditions had continued to improve – only ‘some with scabs, catarrh, blind and incurables remained and they have been here for entire months’117 – and finally two days later he recorded with great excitement that nobody had died there for the first time since the Lazaretto had been opened.118 Everybody concerned kept an eagle eye on the level of mortality as it fell steadily over the spring (see Figure 2.1). Given the central role of the brothers of the Misericordia during the epidemic and their close involvement in recording the sick and dead, they also celebrated any good news, as on 5 May: ‘This day there were no deaths at all and in the morning the Mass of the Holy Spirit was sung in the Company.’119 As Targioni records, all the measures taken by the Sanità, including the quarantine, were based on the belief that plague was spread from person to person: ‘the Lords of the Sanità knew how much damage it caused when people mixed together.’ However, it should be remembered that this reflected contemporary belief that disease was transmitted through passing on corrupt air to one another.120 This was also the reason that Carnival had not been celebrated that year, and Rondinelli records almost regretfully that ‘football was never played, nobody went around in masks, and no comedies of any kind were performed, or performances, or joyful events . . . thus during the summer there was no palio which of necessity implied a great crowd’.121 The pious Baldinucci seemed instead to have been more concerned about the lack of religious activities during the quarantine, including the bans on attending Mass in church or confraternity and on processions through the streets, even though Mass had been celebrated regularly for those shut up in their houses

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from portative altars (see Chapter 6). It was not until the procession of Corpus Christi on 19 June 1631 that finally the populace was able to take to the streets to thank God for the cessation of plague.122 Restrictions began to be lifted once the quarantine was over, although this was staggered over four days according to the part of the city, with S. Spirito first, followed by S. Croce, and then S. Maria Novella and S. Giovanni. From Ash Wednesday onwards it was licit for all men and boys over the age of ten to leave their houses freely to go to their workshops, although they could not visit each other in their homes, except for artisans in pursuit of their work. Then, on the last day of Carnival, the hostels and taverns were opened, although the number of people eating together in a room at any one time was limited to four.123 Other precautions which remained in place in this period included the restriction on women and children, who had been receiving a subsidy to remain at home.124 More affluent women who had not needed the subsidy were allowed to travel through the city in their carriages.125 The very poor did not fare so well; the ban on begging continued, with those who refused to stop being either sent outside the city or placed in S. Onofrio, where they were held ‘like prisoners’ and put to work, the men as manual labourers and the women as weavers.126 In this chapter, then, we have examined the main elements of the strategies employed by the Sanità and the Grand Duke, supported by a series of charitable institutions, the most important of which were the fraternities, and especially the Misericordia, the hospitals and the Lazaretti. The young Ferdinand II was portrayed by many contemporaries in glowing terms as providing leadership and acting by example, which was followed by members of his court, who fulfilled many of the necessary duties in surveying and feeding the poor. This was a task not undertaken lightly, given the financial implications for an already depressed economy, for the government and for the Grand Duke himself. Although it would be easy to portray the motivation of all these individuals involved in the campaign against plague as stemming from the desire to impose social control on the population to avoid them from revolting, we must not undervalue their charitable and Christian motivation. It is indeed the theme of religion to which we shall turn in the next chapter, examining contemporaries’ appeals to God and a series of saintly intercessors, initially to prevent the spread of plague and then to mitigate its effects once it had arrived. It should not be forgotten that in Baroque Florence the power of spiritual medicine was regarded as stronger than any secular measures adopted by governments.

CHAPTER 6



RELIGION IN THE TIME OF PLAGUE

The plague was, citing one medical writer, ‘an infection of the heart generated by poisoned air’; others have said that it is a contagious sickness caused by the infection of the air, or of the corruption of those things which breed it. Others [say] that it is God’s punishment or God’s war, which human power cannot resist, and others that the plague is a poisonous vapour created in the air and inimical to [Man’s] vital spirit.1

In this extract from the treatise written in the autumn of 1630 by the chancellor of the health board, Fulvio Giubetti, he recorded the variety of opinions believed to be the causes of the epidemic and the measures taken ‘for the preservation of health against the contagion of the plague’. A prominent cause was the traditional ecclesiastical one, which stemmed back to the time of the Black Death and before, that God was angry with mankind and sought to punish its sins. This chapter will examine policies adopted by the Church to avert the plague and to mitigate its effects. It will be argued that what characterised Florence’s religious reactions was the strong cooperation between Church and state, modifying the more generalised view of secular– ecclesiastical conflict, which has been seen as more typical of early modern Tuscany.2 An underlying theme will also be a consideration of the impact of plague on artistic production and visual imagery. The Plague Approaches: The Church and preventive measures

As plague threatened in August, the Archbishop of Florence, Alessandro Marzi Medici, passed a series of decrees to ensure the spiritual health of the city and to ward off the threat and impact of God’s anger.3 He decreed that sermons should be given every Sunday in the Duomo by representatives of 149

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all the main religious orders; their common theme should be that these punishments – the ‘flagelli di Dio’ – came as a result of our sins. The first sermon was given by a Jesuit father, Maestro Albizzi, who, according to Luca di Giovanni di Targioni: demonstrated truly what was sin, and with doctrine eloquently demonstrated to men their sins, showing how the wars which tormented Italy were the punishment of pride that dominated men, that the famine was the tenacity and usury of the rich, that the plague was for the little continence and modesty that one sees in our times, which had seen the loss of shame and fear of God.4

Moreover, using the image of the Jews in the Old Testament, who took refuge from calamity in the ark, the Florentines were encouraged to seek comfort in the Holy Sacrament, which was to be exposed for a whole year on the high altar of the Cathedral. This was to form the focal point for the devotion of the Quarantore, a continuous period of prayer for 40 hours, a practice which was then adopted by all the churches, monasteries, congregations and confraternities throughout the city. This evidently had a great impact on the citizenry, who prayed to God that the city should be kept healthy and that, moreover, the terrible harvest shortages should cease, especially hard for the poor given the high unemployment at the time.5 The Archbishop then ordained that the bells of the Duomo and all the churches of the city should be rung together 15 to 20 times for the Ave Maria de’ Morti, a relatively new devotion, when the public recited the De Profundis for all the souls in Purgatory. According to Luca Targioni: when this sound was heard, everybody, the poor and the rich, must kneel together at the same time, wherever they found themselves, and with an act of contrition and sorrow for their sins, they should turn to the Lord, praying Him for their liberation from the said tribulations; indeed we truly saw a great devotion among many in the streets and shops [of the city], and at the sound of the bell they prostrated themselves on the ground to pray for [relief from] the said calamities.6

Hearing that the plague had begun to approach the city and that even these spiritual remedies had not assuaged God’s ire, the Archbishop prescribed further devotions, this time to the Virgin Mary to ask her to intervene with God on behalf of the Florentines. Seeing that the citizenry

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held particular veneration for the miraculous image at SS. Annunziata (see Plate 12), he made a vow to the Virgin on behalf of the whole city to fast one day a week for a year to be undertaken by one person in each household, beginning on 15 August, the festival of the Assumption of the Virgin. These instructions were spelt out in a public sermon in the Duomo by a ‘Father of great worth’.7 Following the sermon, there was a public procession to SS. Annunziata by all leading members of Church and state. They began at the Duomo with ‘all the clergy, with our most pious patron Ferdinand [the Grand Duke of Tuscany], all his relatives, with the Clarissimi Signori Quarantotto – the leading members of the government – and all the magistrates’. Unfortunately this did not help the Archbishop himself, for, following an illness which had lasted for a number of days, he died on 13 August. The day following the procession, 16 August, an elaborate public funeral was organised, which was attended by a large crowd. His body was carried through the streets of the city to the Duomo, where ‘he was placed on a tall catafalque, with a great quantity of candles, according to a most beautiful design by [Matteo] Nigetti, and he was buried next to the Chapel of S. Antonio in the cathedral’. Nigetti was a leading architect and sculptor associated with the Grand-Ducal family and, appropriately enough, is best known as the designer of the tabernacle for SS. Annunziata and the funeral chapel of the Medici, the Cappella dei Principi, in S. Lorenzo.8 Even if the Archbishop did not himself die of plague – Baldinucci says that he had had a fever for about twelve days9 – the day of his funeral fell on the Feastday of S. Rocco, one of the main plague saints. Two days later the theme of the public sermon, which was delivered in the Duomo by a member of the bare-footed Carmelites, was that the Archbishop’s death was a punishment for the sins of the Florentines. In fact, as Targioni comments, this appeared to have been verified, because within a few days the ‘mal contagioso’ had broken out in Trespiano.10 Plague at its Height and the Practice of Religion

These events represented the spiritual medicine administered by the Church, based on very public displays of penitence, with large numbers of people mixing together, participating in communal actions and prayers to God to prevent the arrival of plague. Just as the state’s policy towards plague can be divided between preventive or pre-emptive measures and those taken once the epidemic had broken out in the city, so the same was true of the

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policy of the Church. Once plague had been identified as having begun in the city from the middle of August, public assemblies were frowned upon by the public health board, since they were seen as increasing the spread of disease. The Sanità intervened in what might be thought of as more properly ecclesiastical matters, banning, for example, lay religious confraternities from meeting. Giovanni Baldinucci recounts in his Diary on 28 October that ‘the Sanità have forbidden and prohibited from meeting the Congregazione of S. Ignatio in S. Giovannino and the Congregazione of Beato Ipollito’, so that ‘people infected with plague are not introduced among such a large number of people’.11 Baldinucci would have taken particular note of this, as a keen follower of Beato Ippolito Galantini, who had died in his own lifetime (in 1621), and had been responsible for establishing the confraternity known as the Congregazione della Dottrina Cristiana, whose role was to provide religious instruction to artisans, and in particular silk weavers.12 Clearly Baldinucci was upset by this ban; as a pious layman, he would have been prevented, along with his confratelli, from gaining the spiritual sustenance afforded by regular attendance at confraternity services and Mass. The only exceptions to this rule were the Company of S. Michele Arcangelo and the Fraternity of the Misercordia; both, as has been seen, performed important services to the state. As has been discussed above, S. Michele Arcangelo surveyed sanitary conditions in the city and provided help and charity to the poor, building on a long tradition of Florentine confraternal piety and charity. The importance of the specific association between St Michael and a temporal triumph over disease was underlined by Pope Urban VIII’s dedication of his papacy (1623–44), to the Archangel after the pontiff had recovered from malaria.13 Members of both this confraternity and the Misericordia, in its role in transporting the sick or dead, must themselves have increased their own vulnerability to infection and to spreading disease as they travelled through the city. However, somebody had to perform these tasks, and the Christian charitable imperative and their own salvation in the service of the sick provided them with sufficient motivation to continue. The new Archbishop, Cosimo Bardi de’Conti di Vernio, continued to underline the importance of reinforcing the policy of the Sanità.14 He had evidently learned from experience for, as Targioni recorded, the Archbishop had been in many places where there had been plague. He had, therefore, seen at first hand the remedies taken for safeguarding the healthy, which would give him further reason to cooperate closely with the health board.

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Reflecting the decrees of the Sanità, he decreed that anybody caught stealing from houses where plague was suspected was to be excommunicated, and ordered that all the doors of the Duomo should be locked, except for two side entrances, to prevent people collecting in crowds. Special rules were also imposed for confession. Priests were told to keep the popolo at a distance, wooden rails were built around the confessionals and inside them a curtain of parchment was hung up to create a barrier between the priest and the public, as they were to be in Rome during the plague epidemic of 1656–7.15 In this way it was hoped that the breath of any sick person would not ‘offend’ the confessor. Just as air was seen as transmitting disease, so was wine, and indeed the Archbishop passed a decree prohibiting communion wine being given to communicants, especially as so many people drank from the same chalice.16 Concern about the potential noxious qualities of wine or its ability to transmit poisons was also reflected in the health board’s decree in September, that all new wines had to be diluted with water to ‘counter the malignity which could have poisoned bodies’, as new wine could cause swelling of the stomach through creating corrupt air.17 As the main administrator of spiritual medicine, parish priests were at the hard end of the fight against the invisible enemy. It was their job not just to hear confession, but also to administer sacraments to the sick in their parishes and, with the regular clergy, serve in hospitals and Lazaretti. In autumn 1630, the Archbishop issued a series of instructions to parish priests to underline their obligations and the necessity to take precautions for their own safety.18 First, he emphasised their obligation to continue living in their parishes in ‘this present [time] of suspicion of contagion’, and to administer the sacraments of penitence, the Eucharist, extreme unction and baptism. It was stressed that, even when they feared for their own lives in approaching the sick, they must not deny the sacrament of penitence or hearing the confession of those sick and suspected of plague.19 The Archbishop also provided detailed provisions to minimise the danger to which his clergy were subjected when following their spiritual obligations, reflecting the advice given by Carlo Borromeo during the plague in Milan and Marco Gonzaga, Bishop of Mantua in 1575–7.20 The Archbishop’s concern for the safety of his priests was reflected in the types of clothing they had to wear, as recorded by another contemporary: ‘in order that they were recognised, they carried in their hand a white stick surmounted by a little cross, and, like the physicians, surgeons and apothecaries, they wore a habit of waxed cloth in red; this kind of habit is useful for defence against the contagion’.21 The red

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habits, as reflected in the picture of the plague doctor in Plate 8, may also have had a symbolic spiritual role as a reference to the Passion of Christ and their love of God as expressed through charitable acts. It is worth questioning how far they actually did wear red, given that those priests depicted by Baccio del Bianco in his picture of the Misericordia during the plague all wore black and those in red appear to have been laymen (see Plate 3). The Archbishop based his decrees on both the necessity to provide spiritual medicine and to protect his clergy, given his understanding of medical theory of the cause and methods of transmission of plague. In common with seventeenth-century outbreaks of plague in Rome, fear was expressed that liturgical objects could spread disease.22 When giving communion in church the priest was told to hold a cloth in front of himself and always to stand between two lit yellow wax tapers, so that the air was purified, and after communion he was to disinfect his fingers with vinegar. When it came to extreme unction, the priest was to anoint an eye, an ear, the nose, the mouth and a hand of the sick person ‘with brevity and rapidity and at hand’s length using an instrument’, and he had then to burn immediately the cotton-wool with which he had given extreme unction in order to avoid the risk of spreading the sickness.23 Fear of infected air was at the basis of another of the Archbishop’s decrees later in the autumn, in late November, which banned the preaching of sermons at any church in the city, a recognition that plague was spread by people collecting together, as the sick might breath out infected air.24 Furthermore, priests had to wear waxed cloth, for it was believed to have the ability to repel corrupt air, which was seen as containing the poison of plague, as did the parchment hung up in the confessional box, which provided a shield against the potentially dangerous breath of parishioners. In both cases this was because it was believed that infected air contained within itself the Fracastorian ‘seeds of disease’, which had a sticky nature and attached themselves readily to cloth and human skin and thus infected the human host.25 Despite these precautions, priests and friars did die during the epidemic, as they were inevitably exposed to the sick. Mortality appears to have been highest among the friars who worked in and ran the Lazaretti, and, as we will discuss in Chapter 7, it was the Capuchins who bore the brunt: 12 died of the 38 employed in Florence. In order to increase the personnel available at parish level, regular as well as secular priests worked to undertake their vital spiritual mission. The Chapter of S. Lorenzo, for example, employed two priests and two clerics to tend to the sick, two of whom died. The

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Vallombrosans worked in the parishes of S. Pancrazio and S. Spirito, while the Padri Minimi confessed the sick of the parish of S. Ambrogio. These were among the areas where plague struck most severely, and indeed at least 20 clergy died in the city during the epidemic.26 The Archbishop’s edicts were backed up by the decrees of the health board and reflected the cooperation between Church and state, as in many other cities, whether during the Milanese plague outbreak of 1575–7 or the Roman epidemic of 1656–7.27 However, as will be examined in more detail in Chapter 8, theory and practice did not always coincide and laws were not always obeyed. Carlo Cipolla, in his studies of the 1630–1 plague in Tuscany, underlines one area of conflict as being the difficulty encountered in prosecuting the clergy, given the many clerical exemptions.28 This is borne out in the analysis in Chapter 8 of those breaking health board regulations. In one case there was a priest who was discovered participating in revelry during the quarantine of the city. He was with his two sisters singing and playing the guitar in the middle of the night, when they should all have been shut up in their individual houses. Unlike his sisters, the priest, who was not named in the records, was not punished.29 Cipolla also alludes to other areas of potential conflict between Church and state, such as when the Sanità requisitioned conventual buildings as pesthouses, or when they staged placatory processions through the city.30 Even when the authorities imposed strict regulations on cults, this did not always prevent some of the clergy from attempting to flout the rules, as happened in Rome in summer 1656 after churches had been closed in order to prevent access to a number of votive images, which had become the focus of popular devotion during the plague.31 When the Clerics Regular of the Mother of God continued to keep open the church door of their convent of S. Maria in Portico, the secular and religious authorities combined to take drastic action. The Pope, Alexander VII, suppressed the convent, removing the image and the clerics to another church, and had the church rebuilt, in response to the vow made by the Roman Senate. The relic was placed in a new location and was enclosed in a large sculptural frame designed by Giovanni Antonio De Rossi to prevent the public’s physical contact with the object of their adoration.32 There were also examples of local conflict in Tuscany, as in the case of the small town of Montelupo. The parish priest, Don Antonio Bontadi, had organised a procession carrying a large crucifix from the church. According to the representatives of the Sanità, this was serious enough, but he had gone on to invite neighbouring communities to take part, thus defying the Florentine authorities’ quarantining of the town.33

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Despite these potential areas of conflict, in Florence, as we have seen above, the Archbishop shared the concerns of the Sanità in preventing people collecting together, and both agreed to organise together a major procession through the city on 5 December, the Feastday of S. Antonino. Celebrating with S. Antonino: The plague relents

The procession was justified on the grounds that the health board believed the plague was relenting and that conditions were improving in the city, reflected in the fall in mortality at the Lazaretti. The uncorrupted body of the fifteenth-century Archbishop of Florence, the Dominican S. Antonino, was carried in solemn procession along Via Larga from S. Marco to the Duomo.34 The saint’s body was housed in the Dominican church of S. Marco, in what Giubetti described as the ‘sumptuous chapel built by the Lords Averardo and Antonio Salviati’, where it is still found today (see Plates 13, 14 and 15).35 The chapel was designed and constructed by Giambologna and his associates between 1579 and 1591. It was the final concrete embodiment of the process of his canonisation, promoted by Pope Adrian VI in 1523 and then published by the Medici Pope Clement VII.36 S. Antonino was seen as the city’s defender whose role it was to intercede on behalf of his subjects to mitigate the effects of God’s anger against Florence. His help had only come to be invoked in such a public way in the seventeenth century, beginning with the famine of 1622.37 This new role is reflected clearly in Baccio del Bianco’s drawing of S. Antonino Protects Florence, which was probably produced in relation to the epidemic of 1630–1 (see Plate 16).38 Seated on a cloud and floating above the city, Antonino spreads his arms and his cloak, extending his patronage and protection of the city. The clear association with the Grand Duke is reflected on the front left in the putto carrying the ducal crown, while balancing these emblems on the right there are those of Florence itself – the Marzocco lion and the personification of the River Arno. The joint secular and ecclesiastical campaign is reflected in the references to cannons of war and angelic trumpets, underlined by the clear representation of both the Duomo and the Palazzo della Signoria. Antonino’s relevance as a protector against plague is emphasised by his active role looking after and providing physical and spiritual succour to the sick and dying during the epidemic of 1448–9.39 This role is depicted in one of the frescoes in the lunettes in the Chiostro di S. Antonino in the convent of S. Marco, a cycle which had been begun early in the seventeenth century,

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and was finally completed in the 1690s (see Plate 17).40 Although Pietro Dandini’s fresco of S. Antonino and the Plague of 1448–9 in Florence was not painted until 1693, this subject may very well have been envisaged as part of the original iconographic scheme, given that his help to plague victims was part of his hagiographic tradition (Plate 18). The continued relevance of the subject in the 1690s reflects the current preoccupations with epidemic disease, as Florence was suffering from a severe epidemic of ‘fevers’ associated with famine.41 Even though it has suffered from damage through damp and having a doorway cut through it, the main subject remains clear: namely S. Antonino providing the viaticum to a dying plague victim. The inscription underneath the fresco stresses both his spiritual and charitable role: ‘he administered the Holy Sacrament and helped the needy with generous alms’.42 This reflects Antonino’s interest in the respectable poor, or poveri vergognosi, for whom he had established the confraternity of the Buonomini di S. Martino in the 1440s.43 The theme of saintly figures administering the last sacrament to the dying became one of the most popular subjects in post-Tridentine plague imagery. The new emphasis on the sacraments reflected the Roman Catholic Church’s broader propaganda campaign against the Protestant challenge and Protestant rejection of many of the traditional sacraments.44 The influence of the Council of Trent on practices in Florence can be seen in Archbishop Cosimo de’ Bardi’s decree in autumn 1630, underlying the sacramental obligations of parish priests. The other feature of Dandini’s fresco, which is shared by this new way of showing the role of saintly care of the sick, was the setting in the open air, reflecting the function of clergy carrying the last sacrament or viaticum to dying plague victims, whether they were found in the street, at home or in Lazaretti.45 In Dandini’s fresco the sick man is shown as having collapsed on a pile of straw, probably representing the man’s palliasse or mattress, typical of the houses of the poorer levels of society, which we have seen were the subject of concern during the sanitary survey in August 1630. The best-known rendition of this subject is in the numerous paintings of S. Carlo Borromeo, the late-sixteenth-century Milanese bishop famous for his provision of charity and spiritual succour to the poor and sick during the epidemic of 1576–7. Subsequent portrayals of Borromeo’s role during plague was highly influenced by the series of twenty large paintings, or Quadroni, commissioned by the Milanese cathedral chapter in 1602 as part of his canonisation process. Designed, if not all executed, by one of Milan’s leading

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artists, Camillo Landriani, detto il Duchino, there are four canvases which show Borromeo’s activities during the plague.46 Most relevant here is Carlo Borromeo Administers the Sacraments to the Plague-Stricken, and its iconography became influential in the portrayal of the same theme of not just Borromeo, but also other saints. Dandini’s composition is broadly based on that of Duchino, for the saints are shown on the left-hand side of each painting administering the Host to the dying man, surrounded by his clerical assistants. There is also some ambivalence in the way the sick man is portrayed, for he is shown in the stance of one with a vision, with his right hand touching his heart, and the upward direction of his gaze. The notion of salvation is also reflected on the right of the fresco, with the image of the dying woman, who is shown gazing up at S. Antonino seeking his attention and spiritual salvation through the sacrament. One of the most striking features of Dandini’s fresco is the depiction of the large brown bubo under the left armpit of the plague victim. This way of representing the effects of plague is part of a long iconographic tradition, even though it has been observed that more generally by the seventeenth century fewer buboes were shown on the bodies of plague victims.47 The aim of showing the sick man’s symptoms and the proximity of the clergy was probably didactic, to emphasise their role in tending to the sick, despite the threat to their health, and to demonstrate the divine protection afforded them by Jesus, the Divine Physician. Neither Antonino nor his clerical companions show any fear of proximity to the sick man, despite knowledge that plague was spread by the corrupt air breathed out by the sick. It had been argued that, by conquering fear, religion protected a person medically from plague.48 The procession was a major event in the life of the city and the following discussion is based on a number of eyewitness accounts encountered in other chapters: Luca di Giovanni di Targioni; Fulvio Giubetti, the chancellor of the Sanità; and by Francesco Rondinelli. As with spectators in any period, some accounts were more detailed, and some underlined certain aspects more than others. The procession was carefully organised in advance by both the ecclesiastical and the secular authorities, conscious of the necessity to achieve a balance between spiritual and sanitary health. Concern was raised that, because ‘the devotion of the Florentines was great towards that saint’, it was likely there would be large crowds of people in the streets, which was regarded as ‘a dangerous thing in time of contagion’.49 Care was taken to restrict the number of participants in the procession, which was limited to leading members of Church and state.

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The popolo were not allowed to enter Via Larga or the piazze in front of S. Marco and the Duomo where the procession passed. Instead they had to watch from a distance from the corners which intersected with these streets and squares. Mounted guards were stationed in such a way as to prevent the enthusiasm of the popolo leading to a ‘tumulto’, a system which obviously worked well because our commentators remarked that everybody was well behaved. Something of the excitement of the occasion was reflected in Luca Targioni’s account: There were few who missed making the effort to see the saint . . . one saw a large number of people on all the street corners, though they were not allowed to pass the guards, who were stationed there; notwithstanding this, it was possible to have a good view of the [procession] as it passed; and with God’s help, even though I was not worthy, I saw it twice very well.50

What they saw was a splendid and well-orchestrated event. Francesco Rondinelli added other details of the scene, which make it even more vivid.51 As during other religious festivals, carpets had been hung from the windows of palaces along the way, and sweet-smelling herbs had been scattered along Via Larga and Via Martelli, to which was added the smell of perfumes being burnt from the doors of the houses to disinfect the air. The owners of the palaces which lined these streets had a privileged position, and were allowed to watch the procession from their doors with their servants, all of whom held lit torches. Rondinelli was clearly much impressed by the sights and smells, which he characterised as ‘most beautiful to see’.52 The procession began with four men carrying a lit candle accompanying a large crucifix, followed by seven descendants of S. Antonino and the Dominican friars and the clergy, who walked along singing litanies in honour of the saint. Next came S. Antonino himself, probably not unlike the scene depicted by Domenico Cresti, il Passignano, in his fresco of the Translation of the Body of S. Antonino, of 1589–91, which was painted in the Cappella di S. Antonino in S. Marco, where the procession is shown having left the church and passing a conventual cloister (see Plate 19).53 Antonino’s body was carried in relay by a succession of the privileged. While in the fresco his body was shown lying on top of the catafalque, in December 1630 he was carried in the glass sarcophagus in which he was normally encased. He was taken from the church by six bishops, including the Archbishop, into the Piazza. From there he was carried by the canons of

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the Cathedral, who may have been younger and more able to support the weight of the sarcophagus than the elderly bishops. Giubetti was particularly struck by the saint’s appearance: And afterwards there came the beautiful gilded ‘arca’, covered with the clearest glass and decorated with silver brocade with gold braid, where the body of the most glorious saint lay, surrounded by roses and lilies, in the act of sleeping, in pontifical clothes, as though he were alive.54

While in Passignano’s fresco the baldachin is carried by young men in livery, in 1630 the saint was surrounded by the twelve members of the Buonomini di S. Martino. He had established the confraternity in the 1440s to provide charity to the poor of the city, and especially the so-called poveri vergognosi, or those too shame-faced to beg. Like the Misericordia, it had survived numerous changes of regimes and had retained a special place of affection in the hearts of the Florentines. Next came the Grand Duke Ferdinand, who took the place of honour after the saint, accompanied by his relatives and leading members of the government, all carrying lit candles. Then, as the bells from the Duomo rang out and the procession passed, everybody knelt in prayer to their patron in thanks for the lessening of the plague and hope for its eventual disappearance. After arrival at the Duomo, S. Antonino’s body was carried into the Cathedral. He was placed on a raised platform in the choir surrounded by a series of lit candles in splendid large silver candlesticks, adding to the lights of the numerous lit candles all around the choir ‘and on all the terraces there was a large number of lights, that were so many that they were impossible to count’.55 The Grand Duke and three male relatives then placed the baldachin of white cloth over the saint’s body, and they were presented with candles by knights and gentlemen, pages, the twelve members of the Buonomini di S. Martino, followed by members of the Senate dressed in scarlet robes.56 This splendid and elaborate occasion involved the highest representatives of state and Church, and once all the offerings had been made the Archbishop began to celebrate Mass. The secular and ecclesiastical collaboration was again underlined by the next stage, which also brought the ceremony to the popolo. At a sign from the Archbishop, the bells of the Cathedral began to peal, followed by those of all the churches in the city, rounded off by the firing of the cannons from the fortresses around the city. This was a sign to the popolo, for, following the edict of the Archbishop, every man and woman threw themselves down onto the ground where they stood, and

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knelt and prayed to God, saying three times the Pater Noster and the Ave Maria. It was at this point that the saint left the Duomo and was carried back to his resting-place in S. Marco.57 In the judgement of one observer ‘this procession was one of the most beautiful festivals that I have seen in my life, and it proceeded with such devotion and sentiment that one can only describe it with difficulty. I saw someone cry bitterly, whose eyelashes had perhaps been dry at the loss of those dearest to him.’58 It should also be underlined that this whole event was staged to restore the confidence of the public in the efforts being made by the state to combat the plague. The fact that the Grand Duke took such an active role in the whole ceremony, and indeed had not left the city during the epidemic, also boosted his reputation. But it is in its role as a religious event that its importance lies in convincing the Florentines of the significance of divine intervention, mediated through S. Antonino, to stop the epidemic. Furthermore, while only a small privileged proportion of the population was allowed to take part in the procession itself, all Florentines did feel involved in the whole event and it underlines the power of faith as spiritual medicine. The procession could be seen from a distance and everybody could respond to the promptings of the bells of the Cathedral and those of the churches in the city to pray for the intervention of S. Antonino. Contemporaries were convinced that their prayers had been heard and God had responded to their appeal, for Giubetti recorded that this devotion led to the sky clearing, the rain stopping and the contagion diminishing.59 Stories circulated that S. Antonino’s intervention had had miraculous effects; one nun claimed that 400 people had been cured of plague and that only one person had died in the parish of S. Marco itself. While it is documented that the friars themselves, following the example of Antonino, had taken up the role of tending to the sick,60 it is difficult to know how to interpret these broader claims, especially when based on rounded-up figures. We have seen that at this time the director of S. Miniato did record a drop in the number of deaths in the Lazaretto. However, overall mortality of those buried in the Campisanti did not fall until January (see Figure 5.1), well after the procession of S. Antonino, and may have been related to increased cold weather. Plague, Religion and the Grand-Ducal Court: The cult of Domenica da Paradiso

S. Antonino played a very public role in the Florentine public’s spiritual battle against plague, but the aid of another local holy individual, Beata

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Domenica da Paradiso, was also invoked, within the context of a more private cult, associated in particular with the Grand-Ducal family.61 Domenica da Paradiso (1473–1553) had been a Dominican tertiary, who was believed to have had an important role during the plague in Florence 100 years earlier (see Plate 20). In 1527, at the height of the epidemic, Domenica, according to the contemporary chronicler Lorenzo Segni, asked God ‘to gather all of the Florentine plague into her body and then to accept all of her blood, to be poured from her veins, offering all that she had in exchange’.62 This was underlined by the statement of the prioress of Domenica’s convent, la Crocetta: ‘She prayed to God and asked Him to punish her and take her blood, not that of her citizens, following which she fell ill immediately.’63 Thus Domenica took upon herself the sins of her fellow citizens and asked God to punish her rather than them, echoing the rationale for Christ’s crucifixion. Just as S. Antonino remained corporeally present in his tomb in S. Marco, so did Domenica at the convent of La Crocetta. In this context, leading members of Church and state joined together again to resurrect another divine patron to provide them with protection and to mitigate the effects of the plague. Domenica had been chosen even though her previous intervention had been 100 years previously, but it should not be forgotten that, unlike northern Italy, plague had not affected Florence for a century. Domenica’s role, enshrined in the memory of the convent, was revived when Florence was threatened by plague in summer 1630. The canonisation proceedings, which had been begun in 1624, took on a new urgency.64 As Giulia Calvi recounts in her book Histories of a Plague Year, a significant event took place on 7 June 1630, when leading members of Church and state met at the church of the Crocetta. The party which visited Domenica’s tomb included leading physicians appointed by the Collegio de’ Medici, a series of Tuscan bishops, the Florentine Inquisitor and the Grand Duke Ferdinand himself. The physicians’ testimony formed a central part of the proceedings to verify her miraculous state of conservation, as can be seen in that of Antonio de’ Medici: I have seen and examined the body . . . as well as the torn burial clothes, carefully. Neither emits any odour, and I have seen no indication, save for the ears, that the body has been touched by anyone . . . After examining the sepulchre, I have concluded that no artificial device has been inserted to prevent bad odours from accumulating . . . There is no sign of infection or corruption [in the body], except for the perforations, and I do not recognise the red spot on the left side of the body as a natural phenomenon.65

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The presence of a physician with a Medici surname as one of the medical examiners was no accident. As Calvi has argued eloquently, the GrandDucal family was an essential element in the push behind Domenica’s canonisation proceedings. She had from the first been associated with the Medici party, and the Grand Duchess, Cristina of Lorraine, who initiated the canonisation proceedings in Rome, saw a close association between her own rule of Tuscany as regent and Domenica’s careful administration of the convent of the Crocetta: ‘We frequently admired the prudence of this good mother. We believed that it was something which exceeded the ordinary, insofar as she was neither a noblewoman nor a woman of letters . . . It will certainly stand out for all those who, as we have often done, consider the rules and administration that she initiated.’66 The association between the Grand-Ducal family – in particular the Grand Duchess Cristina of Lorraine – and Domenica da Paradiso and the Crocetta convent was further strengthened by commissioning the well-known painter Jacopo Vignali to produce a portrait of Domenica. The payment for the painting, which was completed in 1631, came out of the expenses of the canonisation and on completion was delivered to Cristina.67 Domenica is presented as the protector of Florence. Her right hand is extended to indicate the city in the background, while her eyes are turned upwards towards the sky, where she sees a vision of the Madonna staying the hand of an irate Christ, who wishes to punish the citizens of Florence, a clear reference to the plague assailing the city as he painted the picture.68 As Giovanni Pagiarulo has pointed out, Domenica was depicted as healthy and attractive, very different from the image presented by her biographer Ignazio del Nente, who wrote in 1625 that she had deliberately prayed to God to take away the distraction of her bellezza, as a result of which, ‘where before she was plump, fresh and compact, she then became so defeated and exhausted, that she seemed rather a woman made of air than of flesh’.69 Del Nente’s description was in line with the traditional picture of saints, whom she took as exempla for her life, such as St Catherine of Siena, and corresponded more closely with her corpse, which was examined during the canonisation proceedings. Intriguingly, however, when Domenica was depicted on the frontispiece of del Nente’s biography, her face represented a halfway position between the painted image of Vignali and the literary description (see Plate 20). The frontispiece, described as being the ‘true likeness’ of Domenica, shows her with high cheekbones, but hardly defeated and exhausted. Otherwise, it reflects her role as described in the biography, dressed as a nun, holding in her left hand a crucifix around which lilies are entwined, representing her humility and devotion.

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The various stages of the canonisation proceedings moved ahead at a stately pace, but it was Domenica herself who accelerated the process and it is here that her association with plague is re-evoked. In November, during the height of the epidemic, Domenica’s body began to produce miraculous cures, especially of those sick from plague, as in the following testimony of 26 November by Albiera de’ Guiducci, whose daughter Costanza had fallen sick: I sent my servant Maria to the convent of Crocetta. There, the good nuns asked her to recite the Salve Regina seven times. They then sent me a piece of bread and a little red cross, that they said had touched Domenica’s body. When the servant came home, she gave the cross to my little girl, who, saying that she felt better, quickly got up for the first time in a long while. I prepared a broth from the bread, and she began to feel better and better. She is now completely well. I believe this to be a sign of grace, especially considering that these are strange times, dangerous and contagious . . . and considering that even the doctor thought she would die.70

As in most miracle stories, a staple of the narrative was that, after the doctor’s intervention had failed, the patient’s relatives had recourse to the saint, who cured the sick person from a serious illness. Here the power of spiritual medicine worked for the individual, as it had worked for the city when recourse was made to S. Antonino. Even though it is possible to trace close associations between families who benefited most from Domenica’s miraculous cures and the Grand-Ducal family, it remained a more personalised and domestic ambience compared with the public procession for S. Antonino.71 Although there was a gradual fall in mortality from the New Year, the appeal to S. Antonino had not been entirely efficacious, for deaths from plague continued. The quarantine of the whole city had thus been instigated to continue the fight of the Sanità against the epidemic. Just as the Grand Duke supported this campaign, so did the Archbishop of Florence, believing in the importance of the continued appeal to God for His clemency. Religion and Quarantine: ‘Providing for the health of the soul is more important than [providing for the health of] the body’

Luca di Giovanni di Targioni’s comment about the importance of spiritual remedies in the fight against plague72 remained a constant theme in accounts of the religious measures taken during the general quarantine of the city. It was hardly accidental that it was fixed to begin on 20 January, the Feastday

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of St Sebastian, the plague saint par excellence. The Archbishop recognised the importance of providing for the health of the souls of his flock in this unusual situation, when nobody was supposed to leave their houses and was unable to go to church as in normal times. He therefore sought and obtained rapidly from Pope Urban VIII indulgences and ‘grazie spirituali’ for the Florentines and, furthermore, the concession that saying ‘una Corona del Signore’ was equivalent to attending Mass for those who were unable to leave their houses during the quarantine.73 The population was instructed to prepare itself spiritually by confessing and taking communion before the quarantine started and fasting the previous Saturday ‘in order that the Lord, seeing us prepared and clean of the filth of sins, should want to liberate us from the above mentioned contagious sickness’.74 Following the decrees of the Sanità to the general population, Rondinelli recounts that the Archbishop issued strict instructions to all the regular clergy and nuns not to leave their institutions.75 An exception was made for the parochial clergy, who were given permission to travel around their parishes with a cleric to perform their duties to their parishioners. Standing in the street in front of the houses or at their doors, the priests heard confessions on Saturdays and the vigils of the feasts which fell within the period of quarantine. The Archbishop had also obtained permission from the Pope to allow Mass to be celebrated in the streets of the city, although Giovanni Baldinucci remarked that ‘those who are able to go outside can go to Mass in church’, a reference to the fact that the Sanità did provide health passes to allow some to go to work and others to collect daily rations for their households.76 Two canons were assigned for each Sesto, and they chose the places where altars were to be set up, normally located at street corners, so that the maximum number of people could hear Mass. Given that this was a cold and rainy season, the altars were provided with a small protective baldachin above, and local inhabitants competed to decorate them to produce the most beautiful altar in the neighbourhood. Rondinelli also described them in similar terms: ‘protected by a little hut . . . some were made from plaster or another material, with golden cornices’.77 Baldinucci in his diary added a personal note of what he could see from the windows of his house in Via de’ Ginori: ‘It is 2 February 1630 [1631], and the quarantine continues. Mass is said in all the streets of the city; as has been said, in some streets there are three altars, and here in Via di Ginori where I live, there are two, one at Canto della Macine and one at the door of the Signori Giraldi.’78

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Every Sunday morning the Holy Sacrament was brought to the temporary altars erected at the street corners. To alert the population that Mass was about to begin a small bell was rung, at which point everybody flocked to their windows and front doors. After Mass was finished the priest sang the hymn ‘Stella Coeli estirpavit’ and the litanies of the Madonna, to which the population responded. In addition to Sunday Mass, the altars on the street corners were the centre for the daily celebration of the Rosary. Local inhabitants participated by kneeling at their windows and doors and singing in response to the priest ‘con voce alta a cori’, concluding with three Pater Nosters and three Ave Marias.79 This must have been an extraordinary sight and it moved eyewitnesses, as is evident in Francesco Rondinelli’s comment on the scene: And who had heard an entire city praying at the same time all together, it would have seemed that there was a choir of devout religious, and through the tenderness it was not possible to contain the tears . . . and a most beautiful thing in some roads with poor people to see lights at every window; and all the praises of the Mother of God resounded everywhere; in this way verifying the common proverb that the poor sustain two things better than the rich, that is justice and devotion.80

The end of the 40-day period of quarantine came on 5 March, which had significance both in terms of public health and religion. Normally the 40 days were taken as reflecting Christ’s period in the wilderness, but here contemporaries interpreted it as representing the period Noah spent in the ark, thus drawing the parallel between the flood and the plague. Moreover, just as the beginning of the quarantine was marked by an important day in the liturgical year, the festival of St Sebastian, so was its end, which coincided with the first day of Lent. As Baldinucci recorded in his diary on 5 March, some of the main rules of the quarantine remained in force until the 15th, principally those forbidding people to go out and mix together. Restrictions remained in force for religious practices. Mass continued to be celebrated at the street corners and when priests distributed ashes on the first day of Lent, they went no further than the entrance to each house. Preaching was still prohibited and the pious Giovanni Baldinucci was obviously concerned as to whether or not there would even be sermons during Lent. Carnival had also been cancelled, though on Fat Thursday, the last Thursday before Lent, there had been a procession around the city of an altarpiece of the Madonna from S. Maria Novella, which Baldinucci said

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usually hung beneath the organ. Another procession took place on the following Tuesday, this time led by the crucifix of the Bianchi, probably from S. Michele Visdomini, recalling the processions of the Bianchi in Tuscany in 1399–1400, when men and women had taken to the streets to pray God to preserve them from the potential crisis of the end of the century and the plague which spread throughout Italy.81 These two processions thus made appeal to both Mary and Christ.82 Gradually, as the plague diminished, restrictions on devotional practices were lifted. Baldinucci recorded that on 14 June, holy water stoups in all churches were renewed with holy water and confraternities were again allowed to meet, having been banned since the autumn, a specific concern to Baldinucci as a fervent member of a number of religious companies.83 A couple of months later, on 18 August, he recorded there was ‘a procession from the Duomo to SS. Annunziata, with all the magistrates and the Grand Duke and . . . the Bishop of Fiesole . . . where the Mass of Spirito Santo was said, and again there was a new vow to fast for a day a week up until the Festival of the Madonna [25 March 1632] . . . in order to thank our Lord God for the mercy He has shown to our city to free it from contagion’. He emphasised that there was even more reason to be thankful to God, because the scale of the plague was much lighter in Florence than it had been in northern Italy: ‘if in our city 100 people died of plague, in many others in Lombardy there died, for example, a thousand’.84 SS. Annunziata and Plague

SS. Annunziata had played an important role in the spiritual battle against plague in the city during this whole episode, from August 1630 to August 1631. It had been at the centre of the public ceremony for the city’s vow to the Virgin on the feast of the Assumption, when a public procession began and ended there with leading members of Church and state. SS. Annunziata had also been the destination for those who had recovered from plague. Cohorts of male and female ex-appestati were formed into a procession, which wound its way down the hill from S. Miniato al Monte to the city, where they first thanked the Virgin for their recovery before returning home. Each was dressed in white, symbolising that they had left behind the sin associated with disease and now re-entered the city purified and healthy in body and soul. This was intended as a very public spectacle to demonstrate how medical skill and the power of the Virgin’s healing could combine successfully in the war against plague. It also reflected practices in some

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other parts of Italy, as in Padua during the 1575–7 epidemic, and more generally following the release of prisoners in medieval Europe.85 The association between SS. Annunziata and the plague was part of a long-standing tradition. The altar of the Cappella di S. Sebastiano housed, according to Ferdinando Del Migliore writing in 1684, an arm of the saint.86 At the centre of the chapel was Antonio and Piero del Pollaiuolo’s famous painting of the first martyrdom of Sebastian (see Plate 21). He is shown, as described in The Golden Legend, pierced with arrows, for he had been sentenced to death on the orders of the Emperor Diocletian. However, what led to his fame was that he survived the arrows, and was subsequently martyred again by being stoned to death and his body thrown into a sewer. It was his ability to survive that led to his association with plague. The arrows became the symbol of plague as a way of representing the darts of corrupt air and God’s wrath. The earlier decades of the seventeenth century saw instead a greater concentration on Sebastian’s second martyrdom throughout Italy. When the Pucci family, the patrons of the chapel of St Sebastian, embarked in about 1608 on a programme of redecoration, they commissioned Giovan Battista Paggi to paint the subject on the left-hand wall. According to Baldinucci, the scene showed the moment ‘when the holy martyr, on the order of the tyrant, was beaten with iron rods’.87 The subject may also have been chosen because the Pucci may not have wanted a competing image of the first martyrdom. It was in front of this altar that, according to Rondinelli, the Servite friars regularly celebrated Mass against plague during the epidemic of 1630–3.88 As well as performing a very public role in the spiritual campaign against plague, as one of the main miracle shrines of the city, the cult of SS. Annunziata continued in its traditional role for the cure of individuals (see Plate 12), from the humble to the more affluent, including members of the Medici family and important foreign dignitaries or rulers. This role provided the opportunity for worshippers to make votive offerings from the powerful, who commissioned whole chapels, to the poorer, who bought ready-made small panels or ex-voti.89 The more private votive role of SS. Annunziata continued throughout the plague epidemic, as can be seen from a record of the miracles performed at the shrine between 1621 and 1690. Although this register is evidently very incomplete and tends to record those people who had left significant silver votive offerings, there are examples of those who had been cured of plague by the Virgin in this period.90 Unlike Domenica da Paradiso, whose miracles occurred in the autumn, most of the few cases cited here were recorded from the late winter onwards, probably reflecting earlier restrictions on the

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public visiting the shrine to prevent the spread of disease. It was no accident that the first entry in the register to refer to plague was dated 6 March 1631, which was the day after the quarantine had been lifted, therefore enabling people to start travelling around the city. Most of the other nine plague miracles in the plague year dated from the following two months.91 The people who had sought help from the miraculous Virgin had nearly all been in contact with those who had caught plague, many of them their own family members. Some had actually contracted plague, although the Virgin’s intervention had cured them from the ‘buboes’ and ‘carbuncles’ associated with the disease,92 as in the case of Signora Lessandra Cardi Civoli. Despite seven people having died in her house from the contagion, and both she and her little son having buboni, recourse to the Virgin had led to their cure.93 There are also examples of people who, notwithstanding their contact with the sick, did not contract plague. Maestro Corso Corsi from Pisa had slept for three nights with his little son who was sick, presumably to look after him. He and his family members were frightened of catching the sickness and, having prayed to the Virgin, they all remained healthy, except for the little boy. In gratitude for their deliverance, Maestro Corso took his whole family of ten, including a baby in swaddling-clothes, to visit SS. Annunziata, where he left a collection of ten silver votive offerings within a frame. Others left at this time included five voti of infants in swaddling-clothes and another five offered to SS. Rocco and Sebastian. All these were made of silver and reflect not just the affluence of the family, but also their belief in the strength of spiritual medicine.94 Another example is of a doctor, Maestro Vincentio Selva, who had worked at the quarantine centre of Villa Rusciano for 16 months and remained well throughout, even though ‘with his own hands [he] had looked after and treated the contagiati’. In gratitude for his safe delivery he had commissioned the well-known court artist Ottavio Vannini to paint his votive offering, ‘an oil painting on cloth, with a black frame, with a naturalistic portrait (ritratto al natural)’.95 There were a number of doctors who gave thanks to the Virgin at SS. Annunziata for their survival. Their survival would have been especially worth recording, because their continued health was an even greater testimony to the strength of the power of the Virgin’s protection, and because they left valuable silver votive objects and even commissioned pictures from well-known artists. According to the contemporary chronicle by the Servite friar Padre Ferdinando Mancini, the friars periodically decided to get rid of many ex-voti, and a purge took place in spring 1631. Mancini’s description

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in 1650 reflects the extent to which they weighed down the walls and the ceiling: But speaking of the painted panels: these were of such a large number that all the walls of the chapel [of the church] were hung [with these objects] and covered; they cluttered up all the pillars from the capitals down; they equally lined all the doors of the church, inside and out, and in the Chiostrino dei Voti (except where there are the stories [i.e. the frescoes] by the excellent painters) all the rest was occupied by them, even above the iron bars, above the chains of the arches of the columns. I counted up to 3,600.96

Although the clearing out of ex-voti may have been normal practice by the friars, it is interesting that this took place during the plague epidemic.97 On a very pragmatic note, the quarantine may have been seen as a convenient time to reduce the number of ex-voti, which were seen as threatening the structure of the church, when members of the public who normally thronged the church were shut up in their houses.98 As in Rome in 1656, the authorities would have wanted to stop large numbers of people gathering at miraculous shrines, to prevent the spread of disease. Although Mancini provides no direct evidence that this spring-cleaning was also linked directly to fear of plague, it would not be surprising given the variety of materials used, as recorded in Mancini’s later inventory. He lists four main types of ex-voti: large statues made of wax and other materials, which were ‘full-size, or even larger’; small paintings; yellow voti, made from and formed with papier-mâché (fatti e formati); and silver voti.99 Fear of ex-voti would have reflected contemporary belief in the ability of the corrupt vapours to attach themselves to objects, especially if they were seen as porous like wood, wax and papier-mâché. Furthermore, melting down silver ex-voti was a good source of cash for the church, especially if the friars had to make repairs to the walls and roofs of the chapels that had been damaged by the weight of those objects which had been hung or suspended. Given the important role of SS. Annunziata during the plague of 1630–1, the church appears to have benefited more than many Florentine churches from patronage during or in the aftermath of the epidemic. The association of the Medici family and SS. Annunziata had had a long history, and had grown ever closer under the Grand Dukes, as they paid for the restructuring of parts of the church’s interior and exterior.100 Furthermore, given the importance of the shrine, it is not surprising that the Medici should have sought to gain greater control over this part of the church.

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The influence of the Medici had for some time been reflected in a very concrete way in the commissioning of elaborate silver ex-voti and candlesticks, among which was the large silver plaque (paliotto) by the goldsmith Egidio Leggi from 1600, showing the then ten-year-old Cosimo II de’ Medici – later the father of Grand Duke Ferdinand – kneeling in front of the altar in thanks for saving him from the ‘fevers’ and ‘umori catarrari’ which had carried off his father.101 The Grand Dukes and their wives continued to make generous donations to the chapel, including not just objects in silver, but also expensive jewels, culminating with Don Lorenzo de’ Medici’s commission, based on the design of the architect Matteo Nigetti, of the impressive and sumptuous tabernacle in silver, ‘in the form of a step’, in the centre of which was placed the Volto Santo, which Andrea del Sarto had painted a century earlier.102 The plague of 1630–1 provided a new incentive for enriching the chapel. On 25 March 1632 the Grand Duchess Cristina of Lorraine, for the feast of the Virgin, commissioned four candlesticks, and a crucifix which was designed by Nigetti and produced by Pietro Tacca.103 The description by Cinelli in 1677 – ‘among these there are four candlesticks and a rock crystal crucifix (cristallo di monte), bound in gold and of a considerable size’ – corresponds with the three elaborate liturgical objects which survive to this day in SS. Annunziata.104 Other less grand objects, but nevertheless of value, were left at the Virgin’s chapel and include a series of votive lamps in silver. In 1632 (month not given) Signor Andrea del Signor Filippo Manucci donated a lamp which weighed 13oz and 18d, while between July and September 1633 another entry in the convent’s book of ricordi reads: ‘Record of the happy memory of Signor Asdrubale Guerrini, secretary of the most Christian Maestà Maria Medici, Queen of France, who made a bequest, that after his death his heirs should have made six silver lamps weighing 50 lb for each, to put in the chapel of SS. Annunziata.’ And then in 1635 when Ferdinand II returned from the Bagni di S. Filippo, he was convinced that he had been cured by the intervention of the Virgin and he left silver weighing 69 lb, 4oz, 12d, worth the enormous sum of 1,370 ducats, which was to be turned into a votive lamp based on a design by Matteo Nigetti.105 The gifts by the Grand-Ducal family quite literally vastly outweighed those of other donors, but the presence of the large number of ex-voti of varying size and value, from silver to wax, is significant of the continued importance of and widespread belief in the cult of the Virgin to cure a wide range of diseases, including plague. Other families were also keen to make a significant mark on SS. Annunziata at the time or shortly after the plague. One of the most important projects

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was the restructuring of the old chapel of S. Rocco, on the left side of the nave (Plate 22). The chapel had recently been reduced in size because of the rebuilding of the organ immediately above it. On 20 December 1630, during the plague, the Servites gave the patronage of the chapel to the Venetian merchant Jacopo Palli, who was an existing patron of SS. Annunziata, and who, according to Filippo Baldinucci, had made a fortune in Venice.106 Palli commissioned the sculptor Bartolomeo Rossi to design and produce the elaborate neo-classical frame for the altar. He then went on to commission one of the best-known painters at the time, Cesare Dandini, to paint a major altarpiece, the Assumption of the Virgin and Saints Jacopo and Rocco with a View of the City of Florence.107 In March 1631 the final contract was drawn up between Palli and the friars of SS. Annunziata for the rebuilding of the chapel, which was consecrated on 18 December 1632.108 The date was recorded in an inscription under the altar: ‘Dei Gratiam. Terra Marique Expertus. Iacopus Pallius. Ann. MDCXXXII.’ Dandini’s Assumption of the Virgin, which he had painted between 1631 and 1632, was now put in place on the altar itself, where it remains to this day (Plate 23). It is a substantial picture, measuring some 285 by 1,856 centimetres, in an important location in the church, underneath the newly refurbished organ and to the left of the main altar. This area already had close association with plague, since the chapel was dedicated to S. Rocco. In the altarpiece, S. Rocco is prominently shown to the right of the Virgin, with his usual attributes, holding his staff and accompanied by his dog. A plague sore is shown on his left leg, revealed as he kneels and his cloak falls back. He is balanced by S. Jacopo on the left, a choice reflecting the patron’s Christian name. Both saints, as the contract lays down, ‘are [shown] in the act of commending to the Virgin the city of Florence, that is painted underneath’.109 Mary is represented in her role as intercessor, in the act of praying to God for His mercy to mitigate the impact of plague and His wrath at the failings of mankind. Florence is shown framed by the three saintly figures, with the Cathedral and Baptistery and the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio. Another important commission in SS. Annunziata, which dates from 1632, is that of Alessandro de’ Medici to build a new sacristy.110 The project was assigned to the Grand-Ducal architect Matteo Nigetti, already active in these years at SS. Annunziata, and it is he who was responsible for the splendid entrance door to the sacristy made of marble surmounted by the arms of the Medici family, on either side of which were the tombs by Francesco Mochi di Alessandro and his father Vitale.111 The sacristy was

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designed to have an altar. The popular painter Jacopo Vignali was commissioned to paint the altarpiece, especially appropriate as over the past decade his work had become particularly associated with natural disasters, whether those caused by extreme food shortages or epidemic disease.112 The picture he painted was the Assumption with SS. Stefano, Alessandro, Gregorio Taumaturgo, Valentino and Agnese, which was completed in 1635.113 The association between the Virgin and the third-century saint Gregory Thaumaturgus cannot have been lost on either the patron or the viewer, given their shared power in both warding off and combatting disease.114 It may not have been coincidental that the festival of S. Agnese fell only a day after that of St Sebastian and that she too was associated with miraculous healing.115 The earlier 1630s, then, saw the enrichment of SS. Annunziata through a series of commissions associated principally with the chapel of the Virgin, but also areas of the church which were linked specifically with plague, most significant of which was the Cappella di S. Rocco with Palli’s commission of Cesare Dandini to paint the altarpiece of the Assunzione della Vergine e i Santi Jacopo e Rocco. Even if commissions associated with plague may have been delayed when workshops were closed during epidemics, they were often produced after the epidemic had died down in gratitude for the cessation of disease, as in the case of the Medici patronage of the Cappella della Vergine in SS. Annunziata in the 1630s. The same was true in other cities, one of the best known of which was S. Maria della Salute in Venice, which was built as a voto after the disappearance of the same epidemic of plague of 1630.116 It is hardly surprising that people from all levels of society, from wealthy families to less affluent donors of wax ex-voti, should have continued to patronise SS. Annunziata and other churches in Florence and its contado in the early to mid-1630s with commissions relating closely to plague. The enthusiasm for works of art of all types relating to the plague throughout the 1630s also reflects the fact that it continued to afflict the city and its environs in the early years of the decade. The Florentines celebrated its disappearance in September 1631. However, it returned from the following June until the end of October, with a final fling in January 1633, though mortality was much lower than three years previously.117 While S. Antonino and the miraculous image of the Virgin Mary at SS. Annunziata played a central role during the 1630–1 plague, in 1633 the Florentines turned to a whole series of miraculous images within the city, but above all to another traditional image, the Madonna dell’Impruneta.

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The Madonna dell’Impruneta and the Return of Plague, 1633

When plague returned in spring 1633, the church began to organise ‘spiritual remedies’ to accompany the secular initiatives, the most detailed account being provided by Francesco Rondinelli.118 The Archbishop first organised four processions through the city, but, in contrast to the earlier events involving S. Marco and SS. Annunziata, the first three were more limited in geographical scope. The aim was to involve other patron saints in addition to those to whom they had appealed in the past. There was, however, no effort to suppress activities surrounding local shrines in the city, as happened during the 1656–7 plague outbreak in Rome, but evidently caution was advised.119 Thus, on 22 April, the head of S. Zanobi was carried from the Duomo to S. Marco and then to SS. Annunziata, but to make sure that as few people as possible were involved directly, only the canons and priests of the Duomo were included in the procession. They left early in the morning and no bells were rung to alert the popolo. The following week the relic of S. Reparata was carried from the Duomo to S. Maria Novella; the third week the relic of St Sebastian went from the Duomo to S. Croce; and the final procession was of the relic of S. Giovanni Battista from the Duomo to S. Spirito. This time it was a more deliberately public affair; the reliquary was carried under a baldachino by the Archbishop himself, ‘who blessed it as it stopped at the end of each street’.120 The processions radiated out from the centre to the four main quarters, bringing the miraculous and salvational powers of the relics kept in the Duomo to all parts of the city. The processions all ended at the main mendicant churches, involving all the main orders of the friars in the fight against plague. It is also significant that the first time the head of S. Zanobi was processed through the northern part of the city, it was taken to both the Servite church of SS. Annunziata and the Observant Dominican church of S. Marco, central to the processions and celebrations of 1630–1. The appeal to the strength of spiritual medicine did not end there, for there was a surprising amount of religious activity in the city during spring 1633, despite fears of increasing mortality.121 What is striking is that, as far as one can determine, devotions appear to have been organised by individual corporations, rather than being stage-managed from the centre by the Archbishop. Thus on the evening of the Annunciation, 25 March, groups of clergy with confraternities processed to SS. Annunziata, and then on 1 May the Company of the Vanchetoni, of which Giovanni Baldinucci was a member, walked barefoot in procession, with their faces covered and with crowns of thorns on their heads and ropes around their necks, carrying a

1 Porta S. Gallo, the northern-most medieval gate of the city of Florence, through which plague is said to have arrived in August 1630.

2 A model of the ghetto in early modern Florence showing the density of housing in the city centre, which contemporaries regarded as linked to the spread of plague.

3 Though this painting, attributed to Luigi Baccio del Bianco, is believed to have been painted after the event (he died in 1657), it is the only surviving representation of the plague in the city in 1630–1. With the background of the cathedral, the main aim was to show the vital role of the Misericordia in carrying those sick with plague to the Lazaretto and the dead to be buried.

4 Justus Sustermans’ Ferdinando II de’ Medici as a Young Man (1628) was painted two years before the outbreak of plague. At only eighteen, Grand Duke Ferdinand looks uncertainly at the viewer, dressed in armour with a large ruff around his neck. As a military leader, his first campaign was that against plague.

5a This detail from Stefano Bonsignori’s Map of the City of Florence (1584) shows the hospital of Messer Bonifazio on Via S. Gallo, the first Lazaretto in Florence.

5b The Convent of S. Onofrio, used by the Sanità first as a quarantine centre and then as a prison during the plague.

5c The Hospital of S. Maria Nuova, the largest medical hospital in the city centre, which treated non-plague cases in 1630–1. This was a large site and Bonsignori shows the massive cruciform ward for men to the north of the piazza and the women’s navelike ward to the south.

6 These two tickets generated by the Sanità magistrates reflect the process through which the sick were identified to the Misericordia. They show the names and exact addresses of two people to be taken to the Lazaretto: a sick woman, who may have already died, and a sick man. Above, we have Monna Lisabetta vedova, Via del Moro, 16 June 1633; note the cross, suggesting she had already died. Below, we have Benedetto di Antonio Confortini, Via di S. Jacopo in Campo Corbolini, 28 June 1633, described as ‘malato di contagio’, sick from contagion.

7 In the centre of Louis Rouhier’s print of Rome during the plague of 1657, the fumigators are shown vigorously throwing out the contents of an infected house to be taken away in carts, though it is unclear how much was to be disinfected or burned.

8 Every part of the body of this plague doctor is covered to provide protection from the harmful airs which carried plague: a leather coat and hat, a leather covering for his face, a beak containing herbs to purify the air, lenses to protect his eyes and long boots.

9 A handbill with a recipe for an unguent against plague (1630).

10 A pamphlet with recipes for preserving against and treating plague (1630).

11 These two sections of the parish of S. Lorenzo (a northern block, above, and a southern block, below) reflect the density of housing in this part of the city and also include streets where plague was at its most severe.

12 The chapel and shrine of the Madonna, SS. Annunziata: the centre of the cult of the miraculous Madonna, where crowds of people, from the ruling Medici family to the more humble, left votive offerings to thank the Virgin for preserving them against plague in 1630–3.

13 Relics of S. Antonino in the Cappella Salviati in S. Marco. The body of S. Antonino, a venerated fifteenth-century bishop, formed the centrepiece of the procession in December 1630 when Florentines implored his help in overcoming the plague epidemic.

14 This is the façade of S. Marco, the church of the Observant Dominicans, which housed the relics of S. Antonino and thus formed the centre of his cult.

15 The chapel in S. Marco built to house the relics of S. Antonino was designed by Giambologna and decorated by multiple artists, including Alessandro Allori.

16 This drawing, attributed to Luigi Baccio del Bianco, shows S. Antonino seated on a cloud floating above Florence, spreading his arms and cloak to protect the city.

17 The S. Antonino Cloister at S. Marco, showing frescoes in the lunettes of scenes from the life of S. Antonino, painted over the course of the seventeenth century.

18 Pietro Dandini’s depiction of S. Antonino Visiting the Sick During the Plague in Florence in 1448–9 (1693) in the cloister of S. Antonino. Note the large bubo under the sick man’s left armpit.

19 Passignano’s Translation of the Body of St. Antonino (1589) in the Chapel of S. Antonino, S. Marco. This painting shows the procession of leading members of Church and state carrying the incorrupt body of the saint lying under a catafalque as they pass the walls of a convent.

20 This seventeenth-century frontispiece features Domenica da Paradiso holding a cross entwined with lilies, symbolising humility and devotion.

21 Originally from the Oratory of S. Sebastiano in SS. Annunziata, this painting shows the first martyrdom of S. Sebastiano when he was pierced by arrows, symbolising the spread of contagion through the air.

22 Jacopo Palli, an affluent Venetian citizen, rebuilt this chapel under the organ, a prominent location in the church of SS. Annunziata. It was rebuilt during the epidemic of 1630–1 and was specifically dedicated to the plague saint, S. Rocco.

23 This large altarpiece by Cesare Dandini formed the centre of the chapel and shows the Assumption of the Virgin with two saints, S. Rocco, revealing his plague sore on his lefthand leg as he kneels and his cloak falls back, and Jacopo, the patrons’ own patron saint.

24 Jacques Callot’s The Fair at Impruneta (1622), shows the size of the piazza, spacious enough for the crowds accompanying the procession of the Madonna of Impruneta. The detail on the opposing page, from the left of the picture, reveals the Strappado in use, with a criminal suspended in mid-air.

25 This photograph of the church of S. Maria Impruneta shows the loggia which was built in gratitude to the Madonna for having stopped the second plague in Florence in 1633.

26 This depiction of the Lazaretto in Milan reveals a vast square surrounded by a series of small rooms to house plague victims, though as the epidemic of 1630 grew worse a veritable shanty town of huts was built to house the growing numbers of sick people. Note also the small church of S. Carlo at the centre, designed so that everybody could see the celebration of Mass.

27 This print by Louis Rohier shows the entrance to the main Lazaretto in Rome, on the island of S. Bartolommeo in the middle of the River Tiber, with a series of tall fences and gates to restrict the movement of people.

28 Thomaso Porcacchi’s 1572 map of Venice shows the location of the two main Lazaretti, the Vecchio to the south-east and the Nuovo to the north-east. Their establishment on islands in the lagoon had the great advantage that plague victims (in the Vecchio) and their contacts (in the Nuovo), were even better isolated than in inland cities.

29 The façade of the church of S. Miniato al Monte, the Benedictine abbey, which became the main Lazaretto in Florence. It was sited on top of the hill to the south of the city, thus providing isolation and fresher air.

30 One side of the church of S. Francesco al Monte, which was initially designated as a quarantine centre but soon became another Lazaretto as the epidemic grew more virulent.

31 Villa Rusciano, the largest quarantine centre in Florence, sited to the east of S. Miniato al Monte.

32 The view from Fiesole towards the city of Florence. The Badia Fiesolana, the largest Lazaretto to the north of the city, is in the middle distance on the right and S. Domenico di Fiesole, the main quarantine centre to the north, is in the middle distance to the left.

33 Stefano Bonsignori’s, Map of the City of Florence (1584) here shows the church and convent of S. Miniato al Monte, revealing the layout of the site with the piazza in front overlooking the city.

34 The entrance to the Fortezza and the monastery of S. Miniato al Monte, through which the sick would have been carried.

35 The path connecting the Lazaretti of S. Miniato al Monte and S. Francesco al Monte, emphasising their proximity.

36 The interior of the church of S. Miniato al Monte, reflecting the size of the nave which during the plague epidemic would have been filled to capacity with beds containing the sick.

37 This engraving shows the punishment and execution of untori, or plague-spreaders, in Milan in 1630.

38 The interior of the church of S. Francesco al Monte, though smaller than S. Miniato, nevertheless provided substantial space for beds.

39 Giovanni Stradano’s depiction of the Piazza of the Mercato Vecchio prominently features the column in the city’s main market square where executions and the Strappado took place, emphasised the aim of the punishment: to shame transgressors and to set an example. Unlike in other cities, such as Milan and Rome, during the plague epidemics in the seventeenth century only one person was executed in Florence for contravening plague legislation.

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crucifix. This penitential procession would have excited the devotion of onlookers and helped to convince them of the importance of this spiritual remedy to mitigate the effects of plague. Other participants in devotional activities included the friars of S. Marco, who each Friday recited the Rosary and then went to the oratory of Or S. Michele; there they recited the verses of the Passion in front of the crucifix where S. Antonino had prayed; the Padri della Sporta also processed barefoot to SS. Annunziata with their miraculous crucifix; while the parishioners of S. Marco renewed their vow to S. Antonino and processed around the parish with his mitre.122 The Sanità continued to restrict the movement of certain sections of the population. Thus women and children younger than 12 were confined to their houses for about a month from late April 1633.123 However, because this period included Pentecost, Mass was celebrated on three evenings at temporary altars erected in the entrances of churches, so that women and children could participate from their windows or doorways, and in this way ‘not be deprived of spiritual consolation’.124 Then from May to mid-October there was a public recitation of the Rosary each evening. Despite the potential risk, the role of spiritual medicine was evidently regarded as sufficiently important to the fight against plague, and large numbers of men collected together in the streets and around tabernacles, which were illuminated, and in some streets this service was accompanied by music and spiritual discorsi. By mid-August restrictions were lifted even further when the Pope granted a plenary indulgence for everybody who went to their parish on 15 August, the festival of the Assumption of the Virgin, to confess and to take communion.125 By late April 1633, the Archbishop decided that the measures taken had proved insufficient to calm the plague, which had begun to worsen. On 25 April he consulted a number of theologians, who concluded that it was necessary to ‘remove the abuses’ and to adopt a more universal devotion than had been in place up until that time.126 One of the theologians consulted, the Jesuit Padre Cosimo de’ Pazzi, suggested bringing the Madonna of Impruneta into the city, an idea which received universal support, including that of the Grand Duke.127 While the Church and state appear to have been more flexible in their attitude to individual devotion than two years earlier, they were more cautious when it came to drawing up the regulations for participation in processions. They were worried about the possible implications for the physical health of the city with large crowds collecting to see the Virgin. It was agreed with the Sanità that the public had to remain at a distance

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of 100 metres from the procession, that no more than ten people could assemble together on street corners to watch, and that nobody was allowed to enter the church where the Madonna spent the day.128 With these precautions in place, the procession was scheduled to begin on 21 May and to last for three days from Saturday to Monday. All contemporaries who left descriptions of the event emphasised the glorious nature of the processions and the important role of the Madonna of Impruneta in helping to halt the plague epidemic. Jacques Callot’s view of the fair at Impruneta in 1622 provides a good idea of the size of the Piazza from where the procession set off for Florence (see Plate 24). Apart from the official chronicle of Francesco Rondinelli, there was also a very detailed account by Giuliano di Ceseri Cecchini, one of the surgeons elected by the Sanità to treat those sick with plague, as well as a shorter Cronica compiled by the Compagnia di S. Ilario a Colombaia, which had a close connection with the Madonna. These two accounts were printed in 1714 by Giovambatista Casotti in his Memorie istoriche della miracolosa immagine di Maria Vergine dell’Impruneta, although it is not clear whether the original manuscripts of either have survived.129 In preparation for the procession, everybody who lived on the route was instructed to clean the streets in front of their houses, and to remove any rubbish, reminding one of the sanitary survey of the city in August 1630 at the very beginning of the epidemic. This had both a sanitary and a spiritual function, so that participants would not become infected with the corrupt air associated with rotting rubbish and also to avoid offending the sensibility of the Madonna. Furthermore, in common with the earlier processions to SS. Annunziata and S. Marco in 1630–1, the population had to stay inside their houses and watch the procession from windows and doorways, and were instructed to fast and pray to the Virgin to cease the plague.130 The Madonna set off from Impruneta with the ‘guard of cavaliers with their lieutenant’ in order to protect her from the adoring crowds, who lined the roads and streets along which she passed. The procession was quite large even at this point, for it included priests from the church and over 200 members of the confraternity from Impruneta, who administered the cult, all dressed in ‘Turkish cloth’ and carrying lit torches.131 Their route took them towards Florence through the Certosa of Galluzzo, where they were met by another confraternity, the Compagnia di S. Ilario, as described by their diarist: ‘At 22.30 hours the Compagnia di S. Ilario set off to meet her [the Madonna], with a rich baldachin belonging to the Monache di S. Gaggio; there were 224 of them, all carrying torches, and a choir of twenty

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musicians, and on arriving at the Orto dei Padri di Certosa, the fathers came down from their monastery, where they had been waiting, each holding a light in their hands.’132 From there the Madonna was carried towards Florence, stopping the night at the convent of S. Gaggio on Via Senese, at the top of a small hill just outside Porta S. Pier Gattolini. Here the Virgin could rest before she encountered the mass of her admirers the following day. However, it was not just the Virgin who needed to recover from her journey, but also those who carried her. Cecchini recorded that for ‘those who carried the tabernacle [the members of the flagellant confraternity] said that it was a great weight, and I believe it because the tabernacle is tall and wide, and that it could hardly pass through the doors of the churches, and the baldachin was of deep violet velvet and was carried by eight lords, among the first of the city’.133 The colour violet was not chosen at random, since it was a sign of penitence, reflecting not just the character of the confraternity, but of the whole procession.134 The following day, the Madonna was carried down Via Senese to Porta S. Piero Gattolini, now Porta Romana, where she was placed on a large specially constructed platform decorated with lights and flowers. As a sign that she had arrived they fired guns, which was a sign for the fortresses around the city to fire their cannons ‘for joy’, and then the bells of all the churches of the city began to ring. This was clearly a very well-orchestrated event, coordinated by both secular and ecclesiastical powers; to Cecchini ‘it appeared that Paradise was opened through joy’.135 This cooperation was further emphasised because the procession was met by the metropolitan clergy with friars and confraternities; the Archbishop was joined by the Grand Duke on the Madonna’s slow procession through the city to end at S. Maria Novella, where she stayed overnight.136 On the second day the Madonna was taken in procession around the northern part of Florence, following a route from the Dominican church of S. Maria Novella through the quarter of S. Giovanni to the Servite church of SS. Annunziata, and from there to the Duomo, where she remained the rest of the day and night. A large platform had been erected surrounded by lights, which must have been a remarkable sight, because the whole interior of the church, including the choir, the balcony of the cupola and the nave were all illuminated by wax candles. A very large torch composed of four torches together was placed on the exterior of the Duomo on the cross at the very top of the cupola,137 so that Florentines could see the lights from afar. Following the precautions taken during earlier processions, the movement of the population was restricted; they were only allowed to look out from

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their windows and doorways, though, as Cecchini recorded, about twenty people were arrested by the birri or police for disobeying the order.138 On the third day the Madonna made her way out of the city, via the Franciscan church of S. Croce, thus ensuring that she had visited not just the very centre of Florence’s ecclesiastical power, the Duomo, but also the main mendicant churches in all four quarters of the city.139 There was as noisy a celebration of her exit as of her arrival, as Cecchini recorded: When they were outside the city gate, many and many types of guns were fired . . . and there was a great number of people at their windows, on top of roofs, and at the [entrances to] shops, and wherever it was possible to be and see . . . the Popolo all asked for mercy and pardon for their sins and the liberation from the scourge of contagion.140

Contemporaries believed there were clear signs the Madonna of Impruneta had listened to them. There was a dramatic change in the weather when she arrived at Porta S. Pier Gattolini: it began to rain hard accompanied by cold winds. The rain continued throughout the day and did not cease until she arrived at S. Maria Novella. Although this must have made for a very soggy procession, with the clothes and finery of the clergy and the Grand Duke’s party becoming soaked, it was regarded as a sign that the Madonna had listened to them, since she was traditionally brought into the city to encourage a change of weather following droughts or floods. More positively, in terms of public health, the epidemic had begun to diminish within ten days, with few entering and dying at the Lazaretto. Restrictions were now lifted on the movement of the population, and large numbers of people walked to Impruneta, individually and as members of confraternities. Then on 12 June the members of the Sanità themselves went to Impruneta, and left 10,000 scudi to the Madonna to provide dowries for the marriage of poor girls. Twelve days later 184 convalescenti returned home completely cured!141 The shrine itself benefited enormously from the success of the Madonna’s intervention, for, as Cecchini recorded: ‘This most holy image was left many alms and covers for its tabernacle; silver goods of various kinds, including lamps, vases, basins and other vestments for saying Mass and wax . . . we are dealing with thousands of pounds.’142 Francesco Rondinelli in his Relazione lists some two pages of ‘the more precious gifts’ left at the shrine, including those from the Grand Duke, members of the Medici family, Florentine nobility, nunneries and a long list of confraternities. These objects ranged from Ferdinand’s gifts of ‘an altarcloth of gold [thread], and two drops

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[gocciole] of pure silver, and a most beautiful cloth’, to silver chalices and ‘a mantel for the Madonna of cloth woven with gold flowers’. Most splendid of all was the donation on 12 October 1633, when Ferdinand with Cristina and other princes of the blood visited the Madonna and gave her ‘a crucifix with four candlesticks of rock crystal, with ebony feet, two silver vases with similar flower decoration, and a most beautiful reliquary [sepolcro] of silver within which was the head of S. Sisto, first pope and then martyr’.143 Many of these objects still survive today in the museum attached to the church of S. Maria all’Impruneta, including fifteen votive vases given by the city clergy, various confraternities and noble families.144 One example was that given by the Compagnia del Crocifisso dei Bianchi di Firenze, which met under the hospital of S. Maria Nuova, which was inscribed with the year 1633.145 A pair of candlesticks which appears in Rondinelli’s list contains an inscription on its base which reads: ‘GINEVRA CARNESECCHI MOZZI 1633’.146 A very elegant chalice was also given in 1633 by the Compagnia del Beato Ippolito dei Vanchetoni, associated closely with the Grand Duchess Maria Maddalena of Austria.147 As significant as these objects are, by far the most expensive commission was the new portico on the façade of the church, which was constructed in 1634 and designed by one of the best-known architects of the day, Gherardo Silvani (Plate 25). It too had important Medici links, as the whole project was paid for by the Florentine Compagnia delle Stimmate di S. Francesco, which met in the Medici church of S. Lorenzo, specifically in gratitude for the cessation of plague.148 Churches with miraculous images in and near the city of Florence benefited considerably from the plague, as they were left money and valuable votive objects to enrich their shrines. New chapels were built, as has been seen at SS. Annunziata, and façades were added to existing churches. However, none of these architectural programmes was on the scale of developments in some other Italian cities in the seventeenth century. For example, in addition to S. Maria della Salute in Venice, the Chiesa del Voto was built in Modena between 1631 and 1634, while in Rome S. Maria in Campitelli was rebuilt to house the recently transferred miraculous image of S. Maria in Portico.149 In addition to churches constructed as ex-voti in thanks for the cessation of the epidemic, others, such as the much smaller church of S. Maria del Pianto in Naples, were built to help the passage of the souls through Purgatory of those who had died in the plague of 1656.150 If there were a variety of architectural responses to plague in cities across Italy, they all shared broadly similar religious reactions, which in turn were reflected in broadly similar themes in the art of the period. Most cities

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appealed to their patron saints and miraculous images, and organised processions, public prayers and fasting. There was a general recognition of the importance of participation of the citizenry in these activities, although there were variations between cities about the extent of their involvement and, with some exceptions, there was a general tendency to restrict public expressions of piety when mortality was at its height.151 During the ‘Plague of S. Carlo’ in Milan in 1576, the Archbishop himself persuaded the Sanità to allow three processions to take place, as the epidemic worsened in October, an event which was celebrated in Gian Battista della Rovere’s Carlo Borromeo’s Procession of the Holy Nail of 1602.152 During the dreadful epidemic which hit Naples 80 years later, in 1656, the authorities made a public vow to Mary asking for her defence against plague, and encouraged the full participation of the public at the height of the epidemic.153 Some cities in central Italy were more cautious in their response. In Bologna in August 1630, the governing authorities took a public vow to the Madonna of the Rosary, Ignatius Loyola and Francis Xavier, to ask for their intercession. The vow was not fulfilled until towards the end of the epidemic, 27 December, on the festival of Saint John the Evangelist, when a public procession was organised through the city, and for which the leading artist Guido Reni was commissioned to paint his Pallione del Voto.154 In Florence, as has been seen, the city also declared a vow to the Virgin Mary in August and to S. Antonino in December. Each vow had a different role, the first was at the beginning of the epidemic, when it was hoped the Virgin’s intervention would prevent the plague getting worse, and the second was to thank S. Antonino for effecting the decline of the epidemic. But in Florence, as in Bologna, and in contrast to Naples, the Archbishop and the health board were more cautious. They agreed that the procession should take place only when mortality fell. Both cities also agreed in advance to limit severely the number of those allowed to participate in processions, with only leading members of Church and state taking part, while the rest of the population had to watch from windows, doorways and street corners.155 Many of these public and private celebrations in Florence reflected the underlying influence of the Medici Grand Ducal family. The young Ferdinand himself had throughout the epidemic made himself very visible, providing an exemplary role by remaining in or near the city and thus increasing his reputation for Christian charity. Giovanni Baldinucci was extremely laudatory in his comments about the Grand Duke: ‘He did not spare any expense in succouring and helping his people in these present common calamities and miseries, himself going through the city on foot

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and the streets where the poorest people lived to attend to their needs, to help them and to check that the bread and the other things that they were given was good.’156 This did indeed represent Christian charity, given, as we have seen, the belief that the corrupt air produced by the insanitary living conditions of the poor could lead to sickness. The Grand Duke also provided work for the unemployed members of the textile industry, which was already in decline and suffered from the restrictions imposed on commerce and work during the epidemic. Ferdinand’s female relatives, such as the Grand Duchess Cristina, also had powerful influence during the plague, as reflected in her involvement in the beatification process for Domenica da Paradiso, whose cult developed as a centre for miraculous healing. All this influence also led to a very clear concrete legacy, whether in the patronage of the shrine at SS. Annunziata, the growth of Domenica’s monastery of La Crocetta, or the subsidy through a Medici-dominated confraternity to pay for the construction of the loggia in front of the church of S. Maria in Impruneta. The plague also inspired private patrons to commission images, chapels and smaller votive offerings, and, as in the case of previous plague epidemics, led to the development of imagery associated with plague, of both the first martyrdom of St Sebastian, characterised by his body being pierced with arrows, and the second martyrdom, which, in common with representations of saints, such as the Good Samaritan or Tobias, came to place less emphasis on disease and more on the healing presence of holy figures.157 Just as changes in Florence in the representation of the way saints associated with plague and disease echoed wider shifts in plague iconography in Italy, so the same was broadly true of cities’ religious reactions. This chapter has argued for a close association in policy between Church and state in early modern Tuscany. However, as mentioned above, this did not always prevent friction and episodes of conflict, as when the priest in Montelupo organised processions at a time when the city was under quarantine, or the actions of the Clerics Regular, who insisted on keeping open to the Roman public the shrine in their convent of S. Maria in Portico. The theme of secular–ecclesiastical cooperation during plague has also emerged from more recent studies of early modern plague in Italy, as argued persuasively by Samuel Cohn for the 1575–6 epidemic, as in Milan and Padua, and in Palermo as recorded in the treatise of Giovanni Filippo Ingrassia.158 The same collaboration was reflected in Church and state practices in Venice during the same years, and in Rome in 1656–7, when Cardinal Gastaldi was in charge of the campaign against plague.159 As discussed

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above, Archbishops were concerned not just to organise processions, but also to make sure that their clergy administered to the spiritual needs of their flock. Furthermore, as we shall see in the next chapter, religious corporations such as the Capuchin friars ran and worked tirelessly in Lazaretti, administering and providing spiritual succour to the sick.

CHAPTER 7



LAZARETTI AND ISOLATION: ‘MORE FEARED THAN DEATH ITSELF’?

Good [plague] orders have never been implemented successfully without a place to which to send the infected.1

This statement by Cesare Adelmare, physician to Queen Elizabeth I of England, formed an important part of his ‘Advice’ to the Privy Council in 1563. Together with his contemporaries, he saw the establishment of an isolation hospital or Lazaretto as central to a state’s campaign against plague. These institutions were particularly typical of southern Europe and had evolved first in the city-states of Renaissance Italy. However, the first system of quarantine was developed in 1377 in Ragusa (Dubrovnik), a city which had achieved independence from Venice twenty years earlier. The government distinguished between those coming by sea and those by land, establishing a Lazaretto for the former on the island of Mrkan, and for the latter at the nearby town of Cavtat.2 More broadly, historians have long believed that quarantine and isolation were important elements of public health campaigns in tackling epidemic disease in the past, and that they were central to the disappearance of plague from western Europe in the early modern period.3 What distinguished isolation hospitals in Renaissance Italy was their scale and that they were mostly built of brick or stone. There was, however, considerable variation in the types of building used. Many cities simply took over existing structures, including monastic buildings, beggars’ hostels or private villas belonging to patricians, all of which were requisitioned for the duration of the epidemic. One of the largest permanent Lazaretti in Italy was in Milan and the near-contemporary design shows a vast square courtyard measuring some 368 by 370 metres (Plate 26). It consisted of a continuous single-storey 183

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structure of 280 small rooms, each one of which measured some 8 square metres and contained a bed, fireplace and toilet. The window overlooked the courtyard, at the centre of which was a chapel open at all sides so that the sick could see the celebration of the Host, designed to cure the plague through the strength of God’s spiritual medicine. It was surrounded by a moat to keep out the public. During the 1630 epidemic it came to accommodate over 16,000 sick people, many of whom were housed in temporary huts, a scene so memorably recreated by Manzoni in The Betrothed.4 The Milanese Lazaretto, established from 1488, was the most substantial single purpose-built structure, but it was pre-dated by the system of isolation hospitals in Venice. Largely because of its position as an entrepôt and the centre of trade between western Europe and the east, Venice’s first Lazaretto was established as early as 1423; to this was added a second some 60 years later. Even if Venice’s position could have potentially made it more susceptible to infection, it also had the advantage of being on the sea and could thus designate islands in the lagoon as the sites of the Lazaretti. In Venice, as elsewhere, their design was usually based on a similar model, with courtyards and separate wards for men and women, a chapel and a cemetery, as well as areas to house the staff. They were also often surrounded by tall perimeter walls in order to prevent the sick escaping and the public entering.5 The Vecchio was designed for the isolation and treatment of those sick from plague, while the Nuovo was used as a quarantine station for those who had recovered. They can be seen in the 1572 print of the map of Venice by Thomaso Porcacchi in his L’isole più famose del mondo, with the Lazaretto Vecchio to the south and the Lazaretto Nuovo to the north-east (see Plate 28). At the time of one of their worst epidemics in 1575, these proved insufficient and they requisitioned a veritable armada of 3,000 boats moored off the island, which catered for about 10,000 people.6 Another north Italian coastal city, Genoa, constructed a purpose-built Lazaretto in the early sixteenth century called Della Foce, which was situated well outside the city centre and was described by the contemporary annalist Agostino Giustiniani in 1537: ‘a very large building was built shaped as a quadrangle and divided into two parts, with cloisters and many workshops [officine] dedicated to the treatment of those sick from the morbo pestifero, who were very well provided for when the need arises’.7 However, when the city was hit by a particularly severe epidemic, these premises, despite their size, proved inadequate and other buildings were taken over as Lazaretti.8 In the tremendous plague which hit Genoa in 1656–7, the Monastery of the Consolazione was requisitioned. The conditions there are

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well-known through the detailed description by its director, Father Antero Maria di S. Bonaventura, who described it as ‘above on a high hill, distant from the city, exposed to northern winds (aquilonari), which destroy pestiferous exhalations’.9 Despite its position, Father Antero Maria’s book contains horrendous descriptions of the appalling conditions there, explaining why the Consolazione came to be popularly known as the ‘Sconsolazione’. These examples of states that had built permanent Lazaretti reflect their position as centres of commercial exchange, so that, even after the threat of plague had disappeared, they continued to use these structures as quarantine centres for goods originating from areas which were under suspicion of being infected.10 Another example closer to Florence is Livorno, where the appropriately named Lazaretto di S. Rocco was established in the port area in 1590 under the influence of Ferdinand I; this was not a period of plague in Tuscany, but rather fulfilled the role of quarantining goods coming from potentially infected areas.11 Clearly models of Lazaretti were very influential and the Protomedico Giovanni Filippo Ingrassia, when recommending the establishment of new institutions during the plague epidemic of 1575 in Palermo, declared that he was following the models of Milan and Venice.12 Indeed Ingrassia’s treatise, Informatione del pestifero, et contagioso morbo (1587), discussed the range of institutions dedicated to the sick in Palermo in 1575, including seven hospitals and the building ex novo of a Lazaretto and three hospitals for convalescents.13 The new Lazaretto was called the Cubba and in his remarkably detailed description of its function he shows how the space was divided up according to gender and between the sick and convalescents. He also provides recommendations about the dimensions of the spaces, location of windows for ventilation and the building of chapels for religious services.14 Indeed Ingrassia’s discussion is the first theoretical description of Lazaretti design before John Howard’s extensive discussion in the eighteenth century.15 Lazaretti in port cities, such as Venice, Genoa and Livorno, should not be taken as representative of the whole of Italy. There were many inland cities which adapted existing institutions when a major epidemic threatened. Many of these were either monastic or military sites since, as Jane Stevens Crawshaw points out, they were by their very nature large and spacious and many were sited on the outskirts of cities.16 Rome is an interesting example, as it also used water as a method of quarantine, for the city took over the Isola of S. Bartolommeo in the middle of the River Tiber. The island at the time of the plague is represented in the prints of Louis Rouhier (Plate 27). It was one of a series of remarkable depictions of scenes representing The

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Diligent Orders and Measures Undertaken in the City of Rome during the Plague (1657), which within ten years were reflected in a similar series of prints showing the Great Plague of London in 1665. The upper panel of the second sheet shows the island linked to the land on either side by two bridges, with the church and convent in the centre, providing an excellent way of controlling the passage of people and goods in and out of the island.17 Although Florence had constructed a purpose-built isolation hospital in the mid-1490s, it was on such a small scale, with only 26 beds, that it was of little use when plague returned to the city in the 1520s.18 Instead the government constructed a series of shanty towns outside the walls, a temporary expedient to the emergency posed by the epidemics of 1522–3 and 1526–7. By the time that plague returned 100 years later, the original Lazaretto seems to have been forgotten and the solution adopted was the requisitioning of a series of existing secular and ecclesiastical institutions. Like other cities, Florence did have an established quarantine centre for suspected goods at the church and convent of S. Marco Vecchio outside the city walls, well before plague arrived in Florence in the summer of 1630. In their petition to the Grand Duke in late May, the Sanità mentioned that, while the space was sufficient for ‘suspect merchandise’, it was not large enough ‘to receive people who needed to be purged’, and this evidently was an increasing problem as more ‘plague suspects’ arrived.19 A group of officials visited S. Marco Vecchio with the Grand Duke’s main architect, Giulio Parigi, to report on what was needed to make the premises also suitable to receive people. On return, they showed the Sanità the plan of the site and recommended that it was necessary to divide up the rooms and to build a loggia where infected goods could be aired. Parigi was assigned the work, although the Sanità decided to reduce the original estimate from over 1000 scudi to 500 scudi, the project gaining Grand-Ducal approval on 30 May.20 First Experiments and the Hospital of Messer Bonifazio

Most contemporaries writing about the role of Lazaretti in Florence in this period did not question their usefulness, even if they acknowledged that conditions were feared by the poor. Contemporary writers, such as Francesco Rondinelli, appear to have regarded them as an essential part of the fight against plague. However, neither they nor their fellow patricians went to S. Miniato if they fell ill, in contrast to Venice where nobles were taken to Lazaretti, though they were housed and treated separately from the poor.21 Mario Guiducci, in his ‘Panegirico’ to the young Grand Duke Ferdinand II,

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developed further the image of warfare when praising him for assigning the Fortress of S. Miniato to the city as a Lazaretto: Considering that fortresses are built for defence against enemies [and] to secure states, it was not unbecoming to use them against the major enemy of humankind, and thus almost enclose it there in a strong prison to free the city from the cruel slaughter of death.22

Here is the real justification for the role of the Lazaretto. It was believed that mortality would be contained by taking there those who were sick and dying from plague, helping to liberate the city from the epidemic. This chapter will examine the role of the city’s Lazaretti within the wider context of the Sanità’s campaign to contain and combat the epidemic. Here we are presented with the age-old conundrum of how far the ends justified the means, in this case the incarceration of over 10,000 people in isolation hospitals over the course of a year. In order to address this issue, we shall examine as wide a variety of points of view as possible, not just of those who directed this campaign from on high, but also those who were involved in the day-to-day running of these institutions and, where possible, of the inmates themselves. There is no detailed examination of the role of Lazaretti in Florence for any period, but the extraordinarily detailed nature of the surviving records enables one to provide a nuanced discussion of life within these institutions, in particular through analysis of the correspondence between their directors and the members of the health board. They provided an almost day-by-day, often heart-breaking, account of the conditions, reminiscent of Dr Bernard Rieux’s description in Camus’ La peste of a fictional outbreak of plague in 1947. We will begin with an account of conditions at the first Lazaretto in the city, the hospital of Messer Bonifazio, helping to explain why it was so rapidly superseded by a series of new isolation and quarantine centres. The most important were S. Miniato al Monte and S. Francesco al Monte, and the quarantine centre of Villa Rusciano, all to the south of the river; and S. Marco Vecchio, the Badia Fiesolana and S. Domenico di Fiesole to the north. The main part of this chapter will address how these very substantial spaces were used for both medical and spiritual treatment of the sick. It will explore the reality of the trials and tribulations of daily life within Lazaretti, which were separated from the main population of the city, and whether their inmates really did fear incarceration there ‘more than death itself ’.23

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The way the city’s Lazaretti intermeshed with overall plague strategies has been outlined in Chapter 4. At the beginning of the epidemic, the first cases were taken to and buried at the general hospital of S. Maria Nuova, but soon any person suspected of plague was taken to the newly designated Lazaretto of Messer Bonifazio in Via S. Gallo. However, when the potential seriousness of the epidemic was recognised, pressure increased on Bonifazio, which only had a limited capacity of 74 beds.24 By late summer their resources were stretched almost to breaking-point: between 29 August and 7 September about 17 patients were admitted each day.25 Even with more than one patient per bed, the 174 new admissions during this ten-day period alone would have created havoc in the limited space available.26 We know in some detail about the conditions at Bonifazio through the regular correspondence between the hospital’s director and main physician and the health board. On 23 August Dr Paolo Pesciolini reported to the Sanità the symptoms of 15 women patients. Most of them are described as having fever, but many had specific symptoms associated with the ‘contagious sickness’: The first fell sick today at 12.00 with fever and a headache, not with violence nor any kind of evident exhaustion, and this evening the fever was somewhat diminishing. The second was sick from Wednesday night onwards and has two dark pustules on a knee, with fever, without diminishing, but the patient resists well. The third has been sick from Saturday onwards, and immediately a carbuncle was seen on the left shoulder with severe symptoms up until today; this evening the patient is getting better, and the carbuncle is under control. The eighth became ill today and has a bubo under the right arm, a very high fever and a carbuncle on the right leg. The eleventh got sick on Sunday, a very high fever, with a carbuncle, a bubo in the groin; she is sick in the whole of her body.27

Pesciolini made a careful diagnosis, distinguishing between those with fevers and other symptoms. He clearly noted the progress of the sickness of each of his patients, as can be seen in the case of the first one whom he visited at midday and again in the evening, having seen a decline in the fever. But the majority had other symptoms, which were more serious and coincided more closely with those of plague, as described in the treatises on

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plague with which he would have been familiar. He distinguishes between a series of eruptions on the body from ‘pustoli’ to a ‘carbunculo’ to a ‘bubone’. He is also careful to locate the part of the body where these boils appeared, such as ‘under the right arm’, ‘in the right leg’ or ‘in the groin’; all again indicated by treatise writers as typical locations for plague sores. If on 23 August Dr Pesciolini could take his time to describe the symptoms of his patients, by the end of the month this may have become more difficult as the numbers grew; there were 70 new admissions between 29 August and 1 September.28 The hospital had a limited capacity, and the growing pressure on the staff by mid-September of the increasing numbers of patients is reflected in a series of letters written by the main physician, Dr Niccolò Giovagnoli, to the health board over the week of 12–18 September. In each letter he talks of the continuous increase in the arrival of sick people, the mounting number of the dead and also the problems created for the nursing staff having to work in such an unhealthy environment. On 16 September he reported: I came to Bonifazio on 12 September . . . I have found many between yesterday and today to be sick from these pestilential fevers, accompanied either by tumours in the ducts [emuntori] or by little pustules, or by one or the other, and every day I find more in bed sick from the same illness. I have at present four serving women who are healthy . . . I have seven serving men who are healthy up to now . . . I have said many times to the ministers of the Sanità, who come here to see if we are alive or dead, that we need two by day and four by night to look after the sick, and two to keep the hospital clean. We need grave-diggers, since all are either dead or sick themselves . . . I have also two priests sick in bed and the other feels ill . . . In fact, I don’t feel well myself; for two evenings I have had a fever with yawning and shivering . . . and [I hope] it is pleasing to God that these fevers are not the beginning of the ‘contagious sickness’.29

As he points out, ‘the place is so infected that everybody, even the healthy get sick’.30 He goes on to underline the cause for the infection, namely that, because it is an enclosed space, the air becomes ‘fetid, notwithstanding that we burn herbs to purify the air’.31 Belief in the causal relationship between the polluted environment and sickness remained a constant theme over the following month. The hospital director Fra Giovanbattista Buonaiuti wrote to the health board officials on

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30 September that: ‘I was advised not only by friends, but all the doctors . . . not to return at present, since all judged that one could not stay without fear of life . . . especially as my bedroom, which is very small, is where a doctor has died of the current sickness and he had mixed with many who have died of the same sickness. But also because where I live is situated between the two wards.’32 His room was considered so dangerous that it needed the removal of the plaster and lengthy fumigation. In these circumstances he requested permission from the health board officials to live in a house which was outside the Lazaretto.33 A general idea of the layout of the hospital can be gained from Stefano Bonsignori’s view of the site in 1584 (Plate 5a). The two main wards for the female and male patients respectively were parallel to each other, and could be accessed through the loggia which gave onto Via S. Gallo. Giovanbattista Buonaiuti’s bedroom would have been between the two wards and he would have met patients when leaving his room as they entered or exited the ward, as well as the staff who had come into contact with the sick. The staff living quarters were clustered around the wards, and therefore it would have been difficult to escape the influence of corrupt air, and one can readily understand Dr Giovagnoli’s fear of the infected nature of the hospital. Other areas designated as living quarters for the medical staff, such as the physician and the surgeon, would have been on the first floor. Bonsignori’s view also shows that behind the main hospital buildings was the vegetable garden, where normally the staff grew food for those who lived and stayed in the institution. At the back there was a small area designated for a cemetery for those who had died in Bonifazio, presumably normally sufficiently large for the relatively low death rate among staff or the sick, and later the mentally disturbed and vagrants. The situation would have been very different during the plague in the late summer and autumn of 1630. As seen above, the medical director lamented about the high number of sick people who arrived and the large number who died rapidly. On 20 August, the Sanità ordered the Prior of Bonifazio to have graves dug for the plague victims towards the walls, so that it was far away from the buildings ‘at the boundary of the vines’. Graves were to be dug at no less than 3 braccia deep, with corpses buried in quicklime to facilitate more rapid decomposition, especially important for the bodies of plague victims, whose smell was believed to have spread plague, especially in warm summer weather.34 What is less clear is the location of those areas which were used for the medical services, since by this time Bonifazio had abandoned its role as

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a hospital for general medical conditions and had become instead a centre for treating those with mental diseases.35 In common with the other medical hospitals in early modern Florence, Bonifazio had a pharmacy where they made up the recipes prescribed by the physicians, traditionally located at the front of the site off one end of the loggia.36 During the plague Bonifazio employed an apothecary called Domenico Vaselli, but specific medicines against plague were also supplied by the Grand Duke’s Fonderia or laboratory, including flasks of acqua da febbre.37 The doctors in the hospital were sent four flasks of fever water, together with the recipe, and were advised that this water alone should be prescribed, since it had been observed that the best results were obtained without also giving other remedies.38 This careful approach to treatment reflects the debates which were taking place at the time, about whether or not the disease was the same as the recent outbreaks of petechial fever, which had afflicted the city in 1620–1 and as recently as 1629. However, they were hedging their bets, as the fever water was intended to treat ‘especially malign and pestiferous’ fevers. Dr Antonio Righi in his contemporary treatise on plague warned that poor diet had led to the generation in the bodies of the poor of ‘a great mass of bad humours’, which had led to the creation in them of an ‘extraordinary putrefaction, which even from a long distance and even for any occasion has become the pest’.39 It was therefore important to get the right diagnosis and the right treatment and, as we have seen, Dr Pesciolini had by 23 August already identified the tell-tale signs of buboes and carbuncles among his patients at Bonifazio. To the problems of the over-crowding, fetid air and lack of personnel, as described by Dr Giovagnoli on 16 September, were added those linked to the behaviour of the staff. On the day following Dr Giovagnoli’s report, there is a record of the rather curious on-going case against Maestro Leandro Ciminelli, described as a Neapolitan or Sicilian physician, who worked at Bonifazio. I shall merely summarise the wide variety of crimes of which he was accused, since they are discussed in detail by Giulia Calvi.40 At their most serious, offences included giving patients doses of a certain powder in water, which allegedly led to the death of many; it can be no accident that the powder was not identified and its anonymity added to its mysterious venomous qualities. His character was further impugned when it was discovered that among his belongings, which had presumably been searched on his arrest, he had books of necromancy. He is also said to have physically attacked colleagues; he was accused of twice punching the apothecary

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Domenico Vaselli and hitting with a club the servant of Jacopo the saddlemaker. On top of this he was alleged to have stolen money from dying patients, and to have given a chicken to two surgeons and the apothecary, following which the latter died.41 Leandro had been accused of a wide range of offences, most serious of which was poisoning patients and colleagues with mysterious concoctions or rotten chickens. How far he had really committed all these multifarious crimes must remain open to question, even if he was clearly a quarrelsome character. The theme of poisoning is a familiar topos at the time among the plague-spreaders or untori in Milan, so famously described by Alessandro Manzoni in The Betrothed, and discussed most recently by Samuel Cohn.42 It is no surprise that the preamble to the trial recorded that ‘perhaps he had sown the plague through the city’ before he came to be employed by the hospital.43 He may have been also caught up in the dishonest behaviour of another colleague who was brought to trial at the same time. Benedetto Bettoni, who in fact testified against Leandro at his trial, had been accused of purchasing at cheap rates meat of poor quality to feed to the patients, recording a higher price and pocketing the difference.44 Even if Bettoni found it convenient to try to implicate Dr Leandro, the latter had committed a number of rather different misdemeanours. It would have been useful to Bettoni that Leandro had come originally from outside Florence, as he would have been unlikely to have had a local patron to defend him, a reminder that foreigners were often blamed for importing or spreading plague. Ultimately it may be difficult to determine the extent of Leandro’s culpability, but this episode speaks of the pressures on people during crisis. Leandro was clearly an unforgiving character, who appears very much to have had the condition of the patients at heart, hence his bullying of his colleagues to do what he thought should have been their job. It is not surprising that colleagues exploded and threw accusations against each other, in a situation where they were all under extreme pressure. This was exacerbated by the constant fear that they too might succumb to the ‘contagious sickness’, which, as they all knew, was easily caught by breathing in the corrupt fumes exhaled by the sick and their contacts. Fear of contagion was also at the root of a change in policy by the government. As mentioned above, Rondinelli records there was growing concern about the use of Bonifazio as a Lazaretto.45 Dr Leandro Ciminelli, who by mid-November had evidently returned to favour, wrote a report to the Sanità enumerating the problems, ‘Il parere dell’Eccellentissimo Dottore Leandro medico in Bonifazio’,46 in which he mentioned that plague had

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broken out in the monastery among the nuns, with whom Bonifazio shared the site. He reports that there are few nuns who were not sick, and that within the past four days nine had died. He attributed the outbreak in general to the fact that there was so much human traffic between the hospital and the outside world. More specifically, he suggested that the nuns’ premises were vulnerable because they had openings at the front onto Via S. Gallo, their grate through which they spoke to visitors, and a gate through which one entered the garden. In giving his opinion of the state of the hospital, he emphasised that the number of people with plague increased daily, leading to fear among his colleagues and to their fleeing, and ‘increasing the sickness and fear’ of being ‘wounded by the cruel vapours of plague’.47 Bonifazio was, in fact, not closed in September, as the Sanità had decided, even though it became increasingly evident this was not simply an outbreak of ‘ordinary sicknesses’ which could be coped with by using the existing range of medical hospitals in Florence.48 Instead there was urgent need for new isolation facilities outside the city walls. The fact this system was not instituted more immediately may reflect that the city was not used to plague; Florence had not experienced it directly for over 100 years. The New Isolation and Quarantine Centres

During autumn 1630, when the epidemic was at its worst, some 14 centres were created around Florence, including Lazaretti for those diagnosed with plague, as well as quarantine centres, where those who had recovered from plague were housed for 40 days with those who had been in contact with the sick.49 Unlike other cities, such as Venice and Milan, none of these were purpose-built institutions, but were based in a series of monastic buildings or private villas. All these structures were positioned on the hills overlooking Florence, as we have seen in Map 4.1, meaning that they were near enough the city to be readily accessible to receive the sick and their contacts, but far enough away not to infect the citizens with their diseased breath. One contemporary calculated that the whole system provided over 2,500 beds for the sick and their contacts.50 Francesco Rondinelli in his official account of the epidemic suggests that the initiative was taken by Grand Duke Ferdinand, who ordered the disarming of the Fortress of S. Miniato, and then provided the whole area for the city’s main Lazaretto, an appropriate location, since it was on a hill to the south overlooking Florence.51 It was opened on 8 September and housed

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and treated sick women and children who had been identified with plague. The contiguous convent and church of S. Francesco al Monte was opened on 26 September for male plague victims;52 it normally housed Franciscan friars, many of whom remained behind to tend to the sick (Plates 29 and 30). Curiously, given his access to official records, Rondinelli’s account contains some inaccuracies. Another contemporary, Giovanni Baldinucci, recorded in his Quaderno that the fortress had been disarmed, but that the church and convent of S. Miniato al Monte itself provided the premises for the first Lazaretto: ‘And the church served as the hospital for the men, and the refectory or arsenal of the fortress for women, and the dormitories were also used, which was where in the past the monks of Monte Oliveto had lived.’53 This was facilitated because the church and convent had been virtually abandoned and were in a state of disrepair, following the departure of the monks after the creation of the fortress in the mid-sixteenth century.54 Intriguingly the question of whether a religious building could be or should be requisitioned without the permission of the Church does not seem to have been raised at this time, and it was only the following spring that the Pope protested, presumably after he had, rather belatedly, learned about the practice.55 The contiguous S. Francesco al Monte provided space for ‘the men in the church and the ground floor rooms, and women in the convent’.56 The convent and church of S. Marco Vecchio, which was outside the city walls to the north of Florence, was designated as the centre for those people in the city who had come into contact with plague victims, especially those living in severely reduced and insanitary conditions.57 From fairly early on in the epidemic, it was observed that some recovered from plague, so special centres were established where they could convalesce along with those who had come into contact with plague victims. Many were requisitioned villas and, like S. Miniato al Monte, were sited on high ground outside the city walls, in order to dispel the corrupt fumes generated by the sick, who themselves would thereby benefit from being able to breath in ‘the best of air’.58 Precautions were taken so that no trace of the plague miasma attached to their bodies could be spread outside the Lazaretto, so before leaving they were well washed with vinegar.59 Women and children were sent for 40 days to Villa Rusciano, south of the Arno, followed by another 8–10 days to the Pieve a Ripoli, while the men went from the Serristori villa to the Guicciardini villa in Pian dei Giullari (Plate 31). The Badia Fiesolana to the north of Florence was requisitioned as

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a Lazaretto, and the nearby church and convent of S. Domenico acted as a quarantine centre for women and children, while men were placed in Villa Palmieri, also known as ‘I Trevisi’.60 The photograph taken from Fiesole, looking down towards Florence, shows the Badia on the right-hand side and S. Domenico on the left (Plate 32). This was a well-coordinated system and implied a high level of investment of financial and human resources, and above all the dedication of a substantial religious, lay and medical staff. Contemporaries, such as Rondinelli, and physicians’ medical treatises, stressed the necessity for Lazaretti and how they contributed to the city’s fight against plague. It was less in their interests to provide a detailed account of the actual conditions within these institutions. Inevitably the perspective of this chapter will primarily be that of the medical and administrative staff, since it is they who have left behind accounts of their experience in their regular correspondence with the Sanità. If the patients’ perspective only emerges indirectly from these letters, nevertheless their conditions were recorded, and court cases involving patients and personnel who sought to leave the Lazaretto also provide evidence of their attitudes and reactions to being forcibly shut up in these malodorous environments. Lazaretti: Form and function

The physical structures and how they were used is a useful starting point in recreating the lived experience of staff and patients. The wider physical environment of the Lazaretto of S. Miniato was provided by the fortress, which afforded a convenient means of shutting off the whole hill so that entry and exit were controlled. In this way, not only were the church of S. Miniato and its cloister enclosed, but also the contiguous thirteenthcentury Palazzo dei Vescovi. This building had become the barracks of the Spanish guard, and Cosimo I had moved there one of his main financial departments of government, the Depositeria Generale. As Giovan Battista Belluzzi, ‘Il San Marino’, remodelled Michelangelo’s original design, so he extended the walls, which thus enclosed the church of S. Francesco al Monte, now S. Salvatore al Monte alle Croci.61 The position of S. Miniato would have met Fulvio Giubetti’s desiderata for Lazaretti: ‘they must be surrounded by walls or by ditches, so that those who are inside cannot leave when they want, and if they [the walls] do not exist they should be especially constructed; it is possible to adapt buildings which are already extant or construct huts in open spaces in the countryside’.62

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One can see why the Sanità opted for this site, rather than investing in the construction of totally new premises. It was some distance from the city and yet near enough to be reached on foot and to carry the sick from Florence, following the example of the location of similar institutions in other parts of Italy, such as Milan, Genoa and Palermo.63 The extent to which the earlier restructuring of the fortress and its perimeter walls increased its separateness and defensibility can be appreciated in Stefano Bonsignori’s topographical view of Florence in 1584 (Plate 33). The façade looks over the city and is at right-angles to the large courtyard, fronted by the Palazzo dei Vescovi, which then led to a series of other buildings to the west. In front of the church was a piazza in which cannons were mounted overlooking the buttresses, a position which also controlled the access, as necessary during a period of plague as during war. Underneath was the so-called Porta del Soccorso, one of the entrances to the site through which some of the sick would have been carried. To the west of the Campanile was the main entrance, which survives today and would have been the other door through which the appestati were carried to the Lazaretto (Plate 34). From here it was just a short walk along a path to S. Francesco (Plate 35). The extent to which this whole area was walled off from the rest of the city, after Il Marino’s interventions, is clearly reflected in Bonsignori’s view, before Giuseppe Poggi remodelled the area in the nineteenth century. I shall now turn to examine the interior to see how a building which was designed as a church came to be used as an isolation hospital. S. Miniato has a basilican plan with a central nave flanked by long colonnades and two side aisles (Plate 36). The church was, furthermore, a two-level design with the choir high above the nave and the crypt underneath. It was the nave which would have been the main centre for the housing and treatment of patients. Although it may seem curious to us to use a church as the physical context within which to treat the sick, the actual space was little different from the plan of the majority of medieval and renaissance hospitals, as can be seen from Bonsignori’s view of the hospital of S. Maria Nuova (Plate 5c). The women’s ward of the hospital, the long building to the south of the piazza, was built in the early fourteenth century, and has the same nave-like form. At S. Miniato, the space was used in the same way, with beds being positioned along the length of the nave, at the end of which, as in the case of a regular medical hospital ward, was the altar, for the administration of spiritual medicine through the celebration of Mass. Also, as with contemporary hospitals, there was gendered segregation of patients. The men were housed in the churches themselves, while other parts of the conventual

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complex were assigned to women: the refectory and dormitory at S. Miniato, and different parts of the convent at S. Francesco.64 The other feature which both the church nave and the hospital ward had in common was the height of the building. S. Miniato had a simple roof with an exposed open timber truss. The same was true of S. Francesco al Monte, where patients were taken to be quarantined after being released from S. Miniato (see Plate 38). In both contexts, the virtue of height from a medical point of view was that it facilitated the circulation of air and enabled the infected breath of plague victims to be dispersed.65 This was a feature which reflected not just the design of purpose-built medical hospitals, but also the recommendations of those who wrote about and designed Lazaretti in renaissance and early modern Italy, whether it was Ingrassia in Palermo, Father Antero in Genoa or the architect who built the new isolation facilities in Verona.66 Despite their height, doctors warned that one of the major problems of Lazaretti was the concentration of diseased and corrupt air, for, as Stefano de Castro stated in his contemporary plague tract, they contain a ‘great multitude of sick people, together with those who look after them’. He goes on that ‘the proof is clear that the air of hospitals should always be avoided, if for no other reason than that the breath of the sick fills them with bad vapours.’67 Concern for the use of these spaces for the sick is reflected in a letter on 20 November 1630 to the Magistrato di Sanità from the director of S. Miniato, Padre Bisogni: Yesterday I took possession of the place and of the goods of S. Francesco and investigated its capacity, and I confirm what I also said yesterday to the Most Illustrious Lords that . . . it is already a marvel that in that great vase of a church there is not a minimal breath of air, since all the glass windows have been completely nailed up.68

He asks the Sanità to send builders to create new windows (a tromba) in the roof to improve ventilation, which he estimates is no more than two days’ work. Creating or modifying windows seems to have been a common concern of those who ran Lazaretti, as reflected in the inventory of goods listed when the quarantine centre of S. Domenico di Fiesole was closed: ‘Fifty-three windows, with four without covering [a geloscia] and four with waxed cloth, and thirty-four small windows covered with paper, and nine large window-shutters, and two large windows covered with waxed cloth, good and bad quality.’69

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There remained some debate about the most appropriate atmosphere suitable for the treatment of appestati and the heating and circulation of air within the wards, as recorded in the Avvertimenti per la peste: 8. About Lazaretti The Lazzaretto, especially the one for the sick, should be kept very hot with boilers . . . and the beds frequently purified, the sheets whitened and the bedclothes dried out with a fire underneath, in such a way that each bed is purged at least every week.70

This advice was rebutted by the doctor from the Collegio de’ Medici, who replied: It is pernicious advice to say that the place for feverish patients with an acute burning fever should be kept as hot as the places where the wood boilers are situated; poor people need to breath fresh air, and it would be better to drown or throw them in the Arno.71

Apart from debates about the correct atmosphere and temperature appropriate for the care and treatment of appestati, a major problem when adapting a church as a Lazaretto was that it lacked all the necessary furniture and facilities, which Bonifazio as the first Lazaretto would already have owned. On 26 August the Sanità recorded that they had ordered 100 pairs of bed planks (panchette) with palliasses, mattresses, sheets, pillows and covers, as well as ‘twenty-five beds of similar quality for S. Francesco’.72 When the quarantine centre of S. Domenico di Fiesole was closed it listed in its inventory ‘438 sheets, between good and poor’ quality and ‘124½ pairs of bed planks’, reflecting the number of people housed in quarantine centres.73 ‘The Medicines in this Period Play an Important Role’

We now have an idea of the physical spaces and the furnishings of S. Miniato and S. Francesco. These areas included the churches, and, as Baldinucci mentioned, the attached convents as living accommodation for the staff and an overflow space for extra patients.74 The next sections will examine how these spaces were used, the treatment and the challenges faced by the staff, as large numbers of people arrived on a daily basis throughout the autumn.75 We first meet the patients as they arrive carried in litters or on carts. No doubt sick patients would have felt worse after a bumpy ride on a cart up the

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steep incline to the main entrances. Apart from feeling ill, they would probably have been filled with dread about their uncertain future. The two entrances to the Lazaretto were the Porta del Soccorso and the Fortezza’s main entrance: the first can be seen today in its bricked-up state, while the second remains the main entrance to the site (see above). On arrival at the door of the church, they went through an admission process, which was similar to that adopted by any renaissance hospital.76 This was recorded in late November by a contemporary who worked at S. Miniato: When the sick arrive, they are taken to a room where they are given the sacraments; while they are being confessed, the physicians often enter the room full of fear, then the priest cedes his place to the doctor, who sees the patient. However, there are many who arrive who have already been confessed and communicated and do not enter that room, and consequently do not see the doctor and die without doctor and without medicines.77

Rondinelli mentions that when the patients were taken to the wards, their clothes were burned and they were placed in different types of accommodation according to social class; there was a separate area for the more affluent, on their rare admission, whilst the poor were placed in more crowded conditions with up to four people per bed.78 At the beginning of the second episode of plague in 1633, the Capuchin friars discovered on arrival at the Lazaretto of Monticelli that patients were crammed together with four or five a bed in an atmosphere of fetid air and ‘abominable filth’. Their first action was to reorganise the space and to order new beds with a maximum of two patients in each.79 Although Monticelli must have seemed crowded at the time, the demand for space at S. Miniato was much greater during the more severe epidemic of 1630–1. Even though this is a negative assessment of conditions, there was considerable belief in the efficacy of treatment and the role of spiritual medicine as a complement to physical medicine. The administration of medicines, and more generally the treatment and care of the sick and dying, required the employment of a very large staff, as in Lazaretti in other parts of Italy at the time.80 On 10 November when the Prior of S. Miniato sent the Sanità an account of the number of patients and staff at the Lazaretto, he recorded that there was a total of 145 staff, consisting of 52 women and 93 men. These included a substantial nursing staff (40 men and 34 women), as well as cooks,

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people to look after and wash the clothes and bed-linen, and grave-diggers.81 The medical staff consisted of two physicians and nine surgeons. By December, when the pressure on medical staff, and particularly surgeons, had grown considerably, the Lazaretto employed 16 grave-diggers.82 In the early days of the Lazaretto, medicines had been ordered from the hospital of S. Maria Nuova, but as the epidemic worsened a large pharmacy was established, which employed six men, including apothecaries and their servants.83 Such was the pressure on the surgical staff that on 5 December Fra Bisogni, the director of S. Miniato, reported that they now also employed eight additional men and eight women who were trained to help the surgeons. The men were divided into three classes, according to their knowledge and ability. Bisogni records, moreover, that one of the women, Margherita di Giovanni Lombardi, ‘takes blood and cuts the buboes like a surgeon and merits a somewhat higher salary than the other women’.84 Another Margherita – or possibly the same one – who played a medical role is mentioned by Rondinelli in his discussion of treatment at the convalescent centre in Villa Tolomei on Via S. Margherita a Montici during the 1633 plague: there was a surgeon to treat the men, and for the women there was a woman called Margherita, wife of a coachman, who served as a housekeeper in that convalescent centre, a woman who was truly very diligent, treated [patients] with such accuracy that cannot be properly described, and because the surgeon was sick, it fell to her to treat the men as well, which she performed with such honesty, that is worth recording.85

The mention of Margherita in two different sources reflects the important medical role of women in Lazaretti, as also discussed by Jane Stevens Crawshaw for Venetian Lazaretti, and more broadly their central part in the wider medical marketplace, as has emerged from studies over the past ten to fifteen years.86 Even though it was not easy to recruit medical and nursing staff, acceptance to work there was still controlled carefully. For example, the director of the Lazaretto of the Badia of Fiesole, the Capuchin Fra Bernardino da Lucca, had written to the Sanità on 7 February 1631 about ‘a certain man called Dalla Rocca’, who had been sent to serve the sick in his role as a surgeon. They were concerned because he had announced that he ‘intended to provide treatment in his own strange way, giving patients medicines by mouth, and not using any irons to cut buboes and swellings, something of which our physicians do not approve’.87 Of course, the reason that physicians were opposed was because

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this broke one of the cardinal distinctions between physician and surgeon, with the former practising internal medicine and the surgeon external medicine. So far Fra Bernardino had not allowed the surgeon to adopt this method of treatment, and he said that he would wait for the Sanità magistrates to ‘illuminate him of their intention’. Their response to the surgeon’s proposed ‘new method of treatment’ was not slow in coming; they laid down that ‘he [Dalla Rocca] should be requested to write down the preparation and the medicines to be used, so that we can hear the judgement of the physicians, and so that the medicines are to be prepared canonically’ – that is, according to the proper methods.88 Intriguingly, and perhaps this reflects the demand for doctors at the Lazaretti, Dalla Rocca must have been allowed to provide his medicines ‘by mouth’, although the initial approval by the physicians ensured their control over their surgeon colleague. However, three days later Fra Bernardino reported back to the Sanità with some alarm, ‘that GioSimone Rocca who was sent here as a surgeon, and whose description of the materials he needed I have sent you in the past few days, had demonstrated his virtue, or in truth his knowledge, and until now those who have been treated by him have died, so I judge that it would be a good thing to dismiss him, but I have been unable to do so. This is a bad thing and we must quickly remove the poison, and not use oils or plasters from outside [the Lazaretto], so that we can mitigate the effects [of his treatment], and these doctors are of the same opinion.’89 The careful control of medical staff reflects the desire to maintain standards, even at a time of great shortage of doctors willing to serve at Lazaretti. This, in turn, underlines contemporary belief in the efficacy of medical treatment for plague, as shown in the statement by the director of the Lazaretto of S. Miniato, Padre Bisogni: ‘the medicines in this period play an important role’.90 As in all hospitals, a daily routine was established at S. Miniato to provide that treatment. In the morning one of the serving personnel took blood, then the patient was given a refreshing bitter lemon cordial or syrup, and an ointment of theriac was applied to the regions around the heart, in order to combat the hot poisons of disease. Half an hour before both lunch and dinner, patients were given barley water, theriac and ‘the oil against poison’, and an external preparation was applied, consisting of Armenian clay and the ferruginous clay, terra sigillata. Those who worked in the wards were also provided with remedies, as a way of fortifying their systems and increasing their resistance to the potential corruption of their humours caused by disease and bad air. One of the best known preventatives was a liqueur known as Centerbe, ‘100 herbs’, and

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another was a sovereign remedy made from ground-up pearls, which was specifically recommended to combat the poison of disease.91 These were all well-known treatments which we find described in plague tracts from the fifteenth century onwards, and recommended in Dr Antonio Pellicini’s treatise, Discorso sopra de’ mali contagiosi pestilenziali of 1630.92 Given that these ingredients and medicines were prescribed by learned doctors in treatises, it is worth investigating how far their recommendations were put into practice. This can be done both by examining the medicines bought by the Lazaretti and the few surviving records of treatment prescribed to specific patients. As seen above, the earliest Lazaretto of Messer Bonifazio was partly supplied by the Grand Duke’s laboratory or Fonderia. In midAugust 1630 there is a reference to four flasks of Acqua da febbre being prepared to be sent to Bonifazio to treat ‘those sick with fevers, especially malign and pestiferous’, although in common with other large hospitals in the city, it would have had its own well-equipped pharmacy for the preparation of medicines.93 When S. Miniato was established in early September a long list of equipment was supplied for the preparation and storage of medicines including: 50 flasks; 300 ampules; 300 albarelli or medicinal jars; various bronze and copper containers; a pestle and mortar; and 100 glasses in which to distribute medicines.94 On 9 October, demand was clearly exceeding supply, as can be seen from a letter from S. Maria Nuova, which had initially supplied the Lazaretto with medicines: Knowing that at S. Miniato the number of sick are multiplying so much that it is impossible to provide enough medicines, I need now about 200 lb of syrups, in addition to many other medicines . . . I am ordering a search for herbs in order to begin to make new syrups . . . the apothecaries are getting sick as happens frequently with the others working [here].95

Further details are contained in a register which survives and lists the medicines given to male patients at S. Francesco for a two-month period, from mid-December 1630 to mid-February 1631; by this time its role had changed from being a quarantine centre to a Lazaretto.96 The way medicines were prescribed follows the same pattern for each entry: date, patient number, name, ingredients prescribed and quantity, and in some cases ‘ordered by the doctor’, although there is no indication of the illness. In the initial pages, theriac is one of the most important medicines, ‘triacha con contraserva’, which was combined with various types of root, and in particular diorsenia,

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which was reputed to be particularly good at combatting poisons as well as inducing sweating.97 The important role of sweating at S. Francesco is reflected in the frequent inclusion of a generic drink, ‘drink for sweating’, despite the critical comments about this treatment by the doctor from the College of Physicians, as recorded in the Avvertimenti. Other popular medicines included a gargle and an oil against poisons, which may have been the same as the well-known ‘Olio del Gran Duca di Toscana contraveleno’, which contained oil of crushed scorpions in Greek wine, in which were infused a series of other strong ingredients, including theriac, mithradatum, aloe and myrrh.98 Significantly less and less theriac was administered from late December, which may reflect lack of stocks, as Florence was closed off from commerce with the outside world. In early February the place of these strong medicines came to be taken by fruit-based ingredients, such as plums, lemon syrup, sweet almond oil, nutmeg and mel rosato, a mixture of rose water and honey. Diet was also considered a vital part of treatment in the Lazaretto, as it was more generally in the recommendations of doctors both to preserve health and to treat disease. Historians writing about the food and drink given to patients in early modern Italian Lazaretti, whether in Milan, Prato, or Venice, have discovered a similar daily diet for plague patients, to include bread, meat and wine, while the really sick were given eggs and chicken broth.99 This reflects the advice contained in the treatise written by Dr Antonio Pellicini written for the Florentine Magistrato della Sanità, and corresponds to the rations handed out to the poor during the general quarantine of the city.100 It is also confirmed from evidence which has survived from Florentine Lazaretti, where from the beginning bread, meat and wine were regarded as staples in the earliest isolation hospital in the city, the hospital of Messer Bonifazio.101 By late December it was recorded that the two largest Lazaretti of the city, S. Miniato al Monte and S. Francesco al Monte, consumed respectively 150 lb and 120 lb of meat a day.102 The director of the Lazaretto, Bisogni, in mid-January was able to confirm the beneficial effects of medical treatment: 12 January 1631: Furthermore I should like to record that over many days I have observed the great benefit to suspected people when the swelling is scarified, [for] they are freed from those fevers, and they are given the purging medicine and they leave more safely for the convalescent centre, with better colour [to their faces] and stronger . . . because the medicines in these times play an important role.103

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It was thus the combined treatment of surgeons, with scarification of the sites of the plague sores, and that of physicians, the prescribing of purgative medicines, that convinced Father Bisogni of the important role of medicine in the cure of plague patients. The popularity of traditional plague remedies did not wane. Over the summer of 1631, at the very end of the epidemic, the Lazaretto was being supplied with theriac and ‘olio contra veleni’ by the company of apothecaries of Pietro Paolo, known as ‘il Moro’. By September, when individual recipients were listed by name, the main beneficiaries were Capuchin friars. They were presumably seen as needing fortification against possible lurking infection from the corrupt air left behind by the appestati, and the ingredients reflected those recommended for the prevention of plague by Dr Pellicini.104 Spiritual Medicine

In addition, and in common with the treatment of patients in all hospitals in Italy in this period, contemporaries viewed spiritual medicine as complementary to physical treatment. As seen in Chapter 6, it was believed that, because God had created the plague to punish mankind for its sins, the only way both society and individuals could be cured was though appealing for His forgiveness, which could be achieved by intervention of the saints and spiritual experts in the shape of the clergy. Counter-Reformation Italy had seen an increased emphasis on the active social role of religious orders, all of whom became closely involved in caring for the poor in hospitals.105 This new role can already be seen from earlier in the sixteenth century, with the involvement of a series of orders in the care of those suffering from the new epidemic of the Great Pox. These included the Jesuits, the Theatines, the Capuchins and the Camilliani or Ministri degli Infermi, which were founded specifically to tend to those suffering from incurable diseases at the Hospital of S. Giacomo degli Incurabili in Rome.106 It was therefore natural that, when the Sanità came to appoint a member of a religious Order as director of the Lazaretto of S. Miniato to oversee these considerable operations, they should have thought of choosing a member of the Ministri degli Infermi. Care was taken in the choice of candidates and plans had already begun as early as 2 August 1630 to find the most suitable person to act as director, weeks before many sources even mention their intention to create this Lazaretto.107 The then chancellor of the Sanità, Niccolò Magnani, had written to the Florentine ambassador in Rome,

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Nicolini, to ask the Padre Generale of the Ministri degli Infermi to find out whether the Prefect of the order, Padre Donato Bisogni, could be persuaded to take the job. He had been chosen in particular because of his valuable experience in coping with a recent epidemic or contagione in Palermo in 1624, and it was no accident that by this time the order was known popularly as the Frati di Ben Morire. Bisogni accepted and overall supervision of S. Miniato al Monte was given to him, helped by four fellow friars.108 He worked there for eight months, dying at the very end of the first epidemic in August 1631. Another candidate whom the Sanità had considered approaching was the Padre Provinciale of the Minori Osservanti, but they had concluded that ‘even if these Padri Francescani have great worth, we do not know what they will contribute in practice’.109 In the event the Franciscan order of friars, the Padri Zoccolanti, who were already resident at S. Francesco al Monte, agreed to take over the running of their church and premises as a quarantine centre, which in November became a Lazaretto when S. Miniato became too full.110 It was above all the Capuchins who bore the brunt of the spiritual war against plague. In Tuscany 92 of these friars worked at Lazaretti in the service of the sick, with 38 in Florence, of whom 12 died.111 These friars would have been busy providing spiritual and physical succour to the sick. In the regulations governing the life of the staff at S. Miniato and at S. Francesco, emphasis was placed on a good Christian life, with the injunction to confess and to communicate every Sunday and on the main feasts, and every evening at the sound of the Ave Maria each had to make an act of contrition.112 Apart from their spiritual role, they may also have acted as nurses, reflecting that this was a significant part of the activities of the new sixteenth-century religious orders.113 Clearly, though, their main role was to confess patients as they entered and to give them the last unction when they were on the point of death.114 A natural corollary of this function was that they acted as witnesses to testaments drawn up in the Lazaretto by dying patients. Unfortunately no significant collections of wills enacted in Lazaretti have been so far traced for Florence, as was the case for Venice in the same period.115 However, in each of the five wills listed in a small register dating from late October to early November 1630,116 a number of Franciscan friars are listed as witnesses, each of whom was described as an ‘assistant and at present caring for the sick in this place’. They appear along with doctors and in some cases with nurses, all of whom would already have been in the wards. On one occasion, 28 October, when the epidemic was at its height, it had become more difficult to find

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more than three witnesses: ‘because of the dangerous sickness of contagion, they had not wanted to come to the beds in the ward’.117 The regulations governing the life of the staff at S. Miniato are not simply a prosaic account of administrative duties: there is an underlying moralistic tone, emphasised by the order that nobody was allowed to engage in activities likely to give offence to God, such as playing games which involved gambling, or swearing and deception.118 There were also strict injunctions prohibiting male and female members of staff from entering each other’s wards or habitations. All this is reminiscent of the regulations of S. Giacomo degli Incurabili in Rome, which is hardly surprising given the long and central role of Padre Bisogni’s order in running that hospital. At S. Giacomo a poster was displayed listing the strict rules which governed the behaviour of staff and patients, at the bottom of which was a small strip cartoon showing what happened when somebody disobeyed orders. Errant patients were whipped and ejected unceremoniously from the premises.119 Strict rules were seen as necessary because rumours of immoral goings-on had apparently been circulating in Florence. On 24 November Padre Bisogni had written to the Sanità that he had heard that a preacher in a sermon had been defaming ‘his holy place, saying that here the girls turn into women, and other prejudicial things’.120 As we shall see later in this chapter, these were not entirely unfounded rumours, but other types of story also circulated which served to counter any putative bad reputation. There is a story told of a prostitute in Florence in 1630, whose actions served to provide an inspiration to others to serve in Lazaretti: a famous prostitute, la Maria Lunga a Cazzettina, dispensed all her goods to the poor, presented herself to the Lazaretto of S. Miniato, and has served there, serving the women [patients] with such charity and patience that she truly had made a true conversion.121

This account mirrors conversion stories from elsewhere in Italy, as in Bologna, where Susanna Ricci, an ex-prostitute, presented herself in summer 1630 at the city’s main Lazaretto with a particular skill, to work as a female barber.122 There were incidents during the 1656 plague in Genoa, as recorded by the Augustinian friar Antero Maria di S. Bonaventura, who not only worked in the Lazaretto, but also wrote a detailed account of its life and his experiences there.123 For example, he mentioned a very Christian servant, who opted to sleep on straw because he had divided up his bed for the sick.

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Father Antero also lists a series of men and women who had arrived at the doors of the Lazaretto saying that they wanted to serve there from a spirit of Christian charity, even knowing the appalling conditions that prevailed inside the ‘Sconsolazione’. He provides not just examples of extraordinary Christian charity, but also of conversion, a constant theme of the CounterReformation church. Thus four Dutchmen were converted to Catholicism and then served in the Lazaretto, and a Turk was converted on his deathbed. Lazaretti also advertised the success of spiritual medicine through the very public procession to SS. Annunziata by those who had recovered and were on their way to return to the community. As seen in Chapter 6, SS. Annunziata had played a central role in the religious prophylactic measures adopted by Church and state. Once a sufficiently large number had been assembled of those who had recovered from plague, they were dressed in white clothes, symbolising their return to physical and spiritual health, and carried olive twigs. As they entered the city gate they were each given a coin (testone),124 and then continued in procession to SS. Annunziata, where they gave thanks for their recovery at the miraculous shrine of the Virgin Mary. In 1633, when the plague returned, a similar, but slightly extended, procession was organised for those who had recovered. They also walked to SS. Annunziata, though without entering the church, and then to S. Marco and the Cathedral, where they were blessed before returning home.125 S. Miniato also became part of the wider religious life of the city during public festivities, as in the celebrations for S. Antonino on 5 December, when the public procession of the saint’s body through the streets of the city was accompanied by a noisy celebration of fireworks and cannons, fired from the piazza in front of the church of S. Miniato. The involvement of the Lazaretto in these celebrations was described by Padre Bisogni in his daily report to the Sanità magistrates. On the evening of 5 December they joined the city in honouring the festival of ‘our most glorious votive intercessor, S. Antonino, with extraordinary fireworks and lights, and after the procession with litanies and lights in both hospitals, which we hope is not just to the glory of God and the saint, but also for our happiness and that of our souls and those of the city, but also that it is taken as testimony of our improvement here’, reflected in the fact that about 200 people had been sent as ‘cured’ to the convalescent centre.126 To assess how realistic were Padre Bisogni’s optimistic reports, it is necessary to examine in more detail the actual figures for those who had entered, died and left alive, within the much wider of context of mortality and morbidity rates in 1630–1.

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Assessing Patient Mortality: ‘More feared than death itself ’?

The scale of the problem faced by the city’s four main Lazaretti is reflected in the statistics compiled by the directors and sent on a weekly basis to the Sanità over the course of the epidemic of 1630–1. Overall there was a total of 10,325 entrants to the Lazaretti during this year, of which 57% entered in just three months, October to December 1630, when the epidemic was at its height. The graph of the combined monthly admissions, recoveries and deaths at the four main Lazaretti of Florence (Figure 7.1) shows that November saw a peak in admissions (2,389), followed by a slight decrease in December (2,081), both of which were much higher than October (1,429), which itself was almost double the September figure (749). Even though fewer people arrived at the Lazaretti in December, mortality was slightly greater (60% compared to 57%); some of the percentage increase in mortality can probably be attributed to those who had arrived during the period of highest admissions in November, and especially later in the month. Stefano Roderico de Castro, one of the Sanità’s doctors, observed of the Lazaretti that ‘the

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Fig. 7.1 Admissions, recoveries and deaths at the main Lazaretti of Florence: Bonifazio, S. Miniato al Monte, S. Francesco al monte, Badia Fiesolana, 1630–1

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majority of those who die, do so quickly [after they are admitted], those who are going to live have a lengthy sickness’.127 This was confirmed in Padre Bisogni’s report to the Sanità on 24 November, that doctors at S. Miniato noted that ‘almost all the women who come, arrive at the end [of their lives] and are almost dead’.128 Though another report in the following month recorded that ‘as far as the dead are concerned, the majority are always children and little children’.129 Baldinucci suggests that, in addition to plague, there were other reasons for high mortality, including the fear of infection, reflecting medical belief at the time of the association between negative emotions and sickness: ‘and many poor people died from terror seeing themselves placed in a bed which was full of the sick, two at the head of the bed and two at the foot, and the place from which a dead person had been taken away was immediately filled with a new patient’.130 Contemporaries in Florence emphasised that the Lazaretti of their city experienced high mortality; overall the numbers who died represented 54.5% of total admissions to these four institutions. But placing this figure within a wider context suggests that it was more or less in line with the mortality experience suffered in Lazaretti in Prato and Pistoia (49% and 51%) during the same epidemic. However, different cities even during the same epidemic could have different experiences, as is the case during the much more severe plague outbreak in 1575–7 in the Veneto when Venice suffered a 77% mortality rate in their Lazaretti, and Padua 50%, while in Rome in 1656–7, 63.7% died of the 8,529 people entering the Lazaretto.131 The mortality figures suffered by Florentine Lazaretti suggest that Bisogni’s estimate of greatly improved conditions in December was overoptimistic, although he was justified when one examines the survival rates, which continued to improve dramatically, from 29% in November to 40.1% in December, a trend which continued in the new year, with the highest rate in February (96%). At the same time there was a very decided tailing-off of admissions from January onwards. The increase in recovery rates may have related to a lessening in the disease’s virulence, as reflected during the more minor epidemic in Milan in 1485, when two-thirds of the people sent to the Lazaretto survived.132 The high overall mortality rate of the four main Florentine Lazaretti over the course of the epidemic inevitably created considerable pressure on their burial space. As in the case of the Campisanti outside the city walls, large plague pits were dug when S. Miniato was opened, but already by 15 November Padre Bisogni was reporting that a new cemetery was being created.133 Rondinelli records that the dead were buried without clothing in

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ditches of 3 braccia deep, and covered with quicklime and earth.134 Evidently, as demand grew, standards slipped. Padre Bisogni wrote on 2 December that he had ordered new graves should be dug at least a braccio and a half deep, stressing the extreme urgency, given that some of the existing graves had been destroyed by the rains and begun to open up, which he feared might lead to ‘a great sickness’.135 In fact, he had already warned the Sanità some days before he was worried that the putrefaction of rotting bodies would create and exacerbate the plague, made worse by scavenging dogs running off with diseased bones.136 The same problem resurfaced at the end of December. Bisogni stressed again on 29 December the necessity of re-covering the ditches in the old cemeteries, where there was not a braccio of soil covering the bodies. He saw this was a manifest danger, especially as he believed that the plague would resurface once the first warmer air of spring appeared, and again repeated that the graves should be redone to a depth of a braccio and a half.137 The increase in admissions also led to considerable problems, even during the weeks following the opening of S. Miniato in September, and despite the fact that its capacity was many times greater than the original Lazaretto of Messer Bonifazio. The director Tommaso Guiducci reported to the health board on the 19 September: ‘this morning 19 sick people have already arrived, and we don’t know where to find the space to put them’.138 He also complained that there was a lack of bedding and in particular mattresses and covers, and asked for more to be sent quickly. Two days later he wrote again to renew his request, because ‘this morning I have seen the sick, both men and women, who are without covers on their beds’.139 Two days later he wrote that 129 sick people had been admitted since the time he had taken up his appointment; of these about 43 had died and deaths were increasing daily.140 Life, Death and Serving the Poor Sick: ‘I desire that you pray God for me, because I am suffering under the heaviest of crosses’

The remorseless increase in the number of people arriving at S. Miniato led to greater pressure on staff. Despite the many employees, working conditions were hardly ideal, and Bisogni reiterates in his reports the constant problems with lack of personnel through exhaustion and death. Even shortly after opening in September, he had complained repeatedly that the male and female servants could not cope with such hard work, and asked for more people to ‘serve the sick’.141

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The doctors who provided the treatment were among those most exposed to infection, as reflected in a report from S. Miniato, on 9 October, asking urgently for another physician: Because Dr. Ridolfo is in bed sick and Dr Ticciati is not able to visit such a large quantity of sick people, [between those] who are here [already] and those who arrive continuously; and it is necessary that he should come today in order to do the visits this evening with the assistants; and [I report] with details of the grave-diggers, two are not enough to undertake such a weight [of work], because we have 13 bodies of young people [to bury] . . . the need is great and each day the weight is greater.142

Dr Ridolfo was not the only one to fall ill, for three days later the work for Dr Ticciati proved too much: 12 October 1630: this night Doctor Ticciati has rested little; he has a bubo on his left thigh and a fever, though at the moment it is not great. Dr. Chresto Chlafes this morning seems to be in quite a grave condition, which leads us more to fear than hope. The surgeon Francesco Cortigiani, who fell ill yesterday evening, has a high fever, so that only the surgeon Galletti, who comes to us from Bonifazio, is able to do the ward rounds; Dr. Giovagnoli is also sick, because of his very hard work yesterday, and it’s said that he never rested last night and has a bit of a fever. Soon the other doctors and surgeons, who were elected yesterday, will arrive [which is essential], because this morning the poor sick are without the doctors’ visit and the need is very great.143

The correspondence between the director of S. Miniato and the Sanità continued to paint a gloomy picture for the rest of October,144 but it is in November that conditions really went from bad to worse. Reading the almost daily correspondence from Padre Bisogni, one is struck by the tenacity of the staff in the face of almost insuperable problems. In order to provide some flavour of the atmosphere, I shall trace developments at S. Miniato and S. Francesco over the course of November, to include a discussion of Villa Rusciano. An overall picture of the pressure on resources and space can be gained from the report of the director of S. Miniato to the health board on 10 November. He listed the number of staff and patients in S. Miniato, S. Francesco and Villa Rusciano. Each one was seen as an integral part of the overall system for dealing with the sick, dying and recovering.145 At

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S. Miniato, there was a total of 724 patients (312 men, 412 women), with mortality growing; 25 to 30 new sick people arrived every day. This resulted in very cramped conditions with 5–6 women sleeping per bed, increasing later in the month to 7 or 8.146 At S. Francesco there were 660 patients and here too they were crowded together, which he regarded as more manageable, since there were many babies and children. Villa Rusciano was also crowded, even with its capacity of between 600 and 800. In these conditions these three institutions alone had a total maximum capacity of over 2,000 people at any one time, equivalent to 3% of the city’s resident population. On 11 November Padre Donato Bisogni wrote to the Sanità as follows: I make reverence to your Lordships and I come to supplicate you, that given that the number of sick has increased greatly, I need more surgeons. There are 800 sick people so that we need at least another three surgeons and, moreover, two or three ask to be exchanged, and we must follow their judgement to give them more energy. There are three physicians here and one is sick and they cannot visit the sick every day, because one is provided for the women patients and the other for the men, and it is not the duty of the physician that he has to perform a ward round twice a day. We ask for ten surgeons and . . . physicians in order to visit the sick every day, that is two doctors for the men and three for the women, because we cannot do with fewer. I should at least like to remind the Illustrious Lords [of the need for] the perfumes or wood to create odiferous fires for health . . . because they cannot survive in such a great fetor.147

Eight days later, on 19 November, he is writing again to implore the Sanità for help, stressing the ‘extreme necessity of changing these physicians and surgeons, because every day one of them falls ill, as happened yesterday to Giuliano del Toso, whom we discovered has the contagion and we have only four surgeons and the same number in bed’.148 Padre Bisogni proposed that ‘to give breath to those who are fighting’, doctors should only work for fifteen days, and their places should be taken by colleagues who work in the city, thus establishing a rota to avoid complete exhaustion and lengthy exposure to infection.149 Despite these heartfelt pleas, his proposed system does not seem to have been adopted by the Sanità. He returns to this theme on 24 November, the day before the men were transferred to S. Francesco, lamenting that there was a lack of surgeons to treat the women and that many will die if they are

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not sent more.150 There was still a shortage the following day: ‘the surgeons have not arrived . . . there only remain four surgeons, and all have served continuously for the past two months and do not have the energy to continue’.151 Padre Bisogni was not exaggerating, for he was now desperate, as he recounts on 26 November: I am sorry to bring this distressing topic to the Illustrious Lords; everything I have foretold has happened with great displeasure and travail of my soul, as yesterday the surgeon Bonelli, who was the support of the poor, fell ill again; this morning Baccio Fagiolini has fallen sick of contagion; the surgeon from Romagna has died, and the surgeon Dondino Bargiglio is dying; and others are also in bed, that is a man from S. Maria Nuova, who is a priest, the man from Toso and the Bolognese, and two are shocked and half-dead, but remain standing, and this morning more than 400 or 500 poor people were without medicine; and thus it will be a massacre of those who are sick.152

When Padre Bisogni wrote to the health board to ask for a replacement for medical staff, he argued that with too few doctors it was impossible to treat the large number of patients who thronged these institutions, and as a result even those who had improved got worse again and the majority then died.153 These grim conditions were still in place by the end of November, when Padre Bisogni wrote to the Illustrious Lords ‘it is not possible to send good news from the war’,154 and in this situation it is hardly surprising that some doctors were reluctant to serve for, as he reported: ‘the said physicians only want to enter the ward twice a week, indeed a very bad and awful decision for the poor sick’.155 It was not just medical staff who suffered, but also the physicians of the soul. On 25 November Padre Bisogni wrote to the Sanità to ask for more priests to administer sacraments to the sick when they were moved to S. Francesco, since presumably those priests who had served the convalescents went with them, while those who were at S. Miniato would have had their hands full coping with sick women patients.156 Indeed of the 38 Capuchin friars who tended to the spiritual needs of plague victims 12 died, a 32% mortality rate. Though mainly engaged at S. Miniato, they also worked at other Lazaretti in and around Florence, such as the Badia Fiesolana, as well as at the hospital of S. Maria Nuova.157 Francesco Rondinelli also recounts a number of stories about the life and death of the religious working in the Lazaretti. These passages are clearly

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provided as exempla of the selflessness and dedication of the Capuchins, as in the case of Fra Innocenzio da Pisa, who was aged about 30 at the time of writing: Hearing that the Frati were to be sent to the Badia Fiesolana in the service of the sick, even though he himself was feverish, he was impelled by an extraordinary fervour to offer himself, and entering into the Lazaretto, he immediately became healthy. This father was very charitable and had no respect for himself, handled and carried the sick from one place to another, cherishing them day and night in a special way, but in the end he caught the contagion, called for all the sacraments, and received them. He was asked whether he wanted to make the usual declaration, and replied he had already done so with the Most Blessed Virgin, and with S. Francesco, indicating that both had appeared to him. Thus seeing this, those fathers prayed him whether he would like to disclose how and when, but he reminded them that ‘Sacramentum Regis abscondere bonum est’, responding that it was not necessary, and then remained silent after he had taken hold of a crucifix, commending himself with large numbers of tears, and expired as he spoke.158

While the Sanità was not able to provide an adequate response to the frequent requests of Padre Bisogni to provide more staff, the Grand-Ducal court clearly retained an interest in the running of S. Miniato. They sought to address one of the other major problems, the level of polluted air in these buildings produced by the sick, which was seen as causing plague. On 20 November Signor Giovanni Nobili, the Provveditore of the Sanità, informed Padre Bisogni that the Marchese Medici, in the name of the Grand Duke, had ordered S. Miniato should be emptied and that all the sick should be transferred to S. Francesco. In responding to this plan, Padre Bisogni wrote on 20 November to the Grand Duke, acknowledging that, while it was an ‘excellent decision’, he wanted to suggest ‘humbly and sincerely’ to the Grand Duke that this was very difficult, given that there were about 900 patients in S. Miniato.159 He stressed that it was actually impossible, since it was already so crowded and there was a considerable difference in the space available in the two buildings – S. Francesco only had capacity for 400 sick people. He suggested that instead the men should be transferred to S. Francesco, given they were fewer, and that the women should remain in S. Miniato. He reassured the Grand Duke that he would make sure that S. Miniato was properly disinfected: ‘Vostro Altissimo Signor, if you trust me, within fifteen

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days the cleansing and purification will be finished and no other hospital in the city will be so clean and purified and will be envied by any other hospital of the city, because our people purify a part of it every day.’ When he wrote again to the Sanità on 24 November, it was to announce that the men would indeed to be transferred to S. Francesco on the following day, noting that all the women who arrived were ‘almost moribund’.160 The sospetti who were housed in S. Francesco had first to be removed to make way for the male plague patients from S. Miniato and the obvious place to send them was to the quarantine centre of Villa Rusciano. Even though it had a capacity of between 600 and 800, this mass transfer had significant implications for an already crowded space. On 23 November, Vincenzo Selva, the villa’s director, wrote a worried letter to the Sanità, talking of ‘the great multitude’ of people and that ‘this place, because it is very narrow, is not capable of receiving that quantity of convalescents treated at S. Francesco al Monte’.161 The result was imminent danger to everybody, for ‘I say to them [the Sanità] in truth that this place will shortly be infected, and in this way will cause considerable damage’.162 He also emphasised that the weather had worsened an already difficult situation: ‘My Lords . . . added to which are [the problems caused by] the continuous rain and such humid air, and so people cannot walk on the little field, and have to remain in their rooms, where the damp enters with the many draughts, that the time is not far off when the contagion will be introduced.’163 By 20 December, when the numbers of the sick and dying had begun to reduce, the director of S. Miniato complained that the quarantine centres were still so full that those at the Lazaretto who had got better were forced to remain longer than necessary: ‘God knows that this is the cause of much damage to the poor people who develop again the carboncelli through staying in the bed of the gravely sick.’164 Villa Rusciano suffered from another problem, of being sent people who were still sick: ‘convalescents exhausted by the long journey with sores, which were purified, and others sent with swellings and others whom that day had had their buboes cut, and others who had received poor treatment’. Thus ‘it seems to me that the situation must be treated with considerable prudence, because otherwise one throws away all the money which has been spent and [there is a] certain danger of losing people’.165 In order to cope, ‘every day I have to send for stretchers to carry [to S. Miniato] the people, who have either a swelling or inflamed boils and came sick from there, and others with boils, which are not mature and have been only slightly cut’.166 This was confirmed by the surgeons, who had many times lamented about

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this state of affairs, with the lack of medicines and especially of three anti-plague remedies, which were regarded as staples in cure and treatment: Olio contro veleno, terra sigillata and theriac.167 These problems were hardly unique to Villa Rusciano; misdiagnosis seems to have plagued the whole system. At S. Miniato in the same period, Padre Bisogni complained that people were sent to him who did not have plague, both from the city and from Villa Rusciano, sometimes simply with the excuse that they had a fever. Rondinelli confirmed that this was a more general problem: ‘putting a poor man, who does not have plague, in those beds and with that infected company is to send him to a sure death’.168 This situation may have reflected possible laziness of doctors, but more probably it stems from pressure exerted by the health board to make sure that anybody who had a whiff of plague was dealt with quickly! Those who ran Villa Rusciano also complained that they had been sent those with plague who had been released too quickly. At another convalescent centre, Villa Serristori, it was reported that there were patients who still had ‘open buboes’,169 though the return of patients may also have been a response to the extraordinary pressure on their resources, after they had had to receive the convalescents from S. Francesco. The combined pressure on S. Miniato from the quarantine centre and the city meant that in one week they were sent somebody with a wound to his head, one with the Great Pox, and another with an incurable sore, who should all have been treated in other hospitals.170 An example of one individual who had been misdiagnosed, and about whom we have more information, was a girl called Anna, the daughter of a wet-nurse. Evidently the mother had contacted her employer, Serenissimo P.D. Lorenzo, who had written to find out what had happened and had received a personal reply. This was extremely unusual and reflects his status in society and the special treatment Anna received: She arrived yesterday evening, and she was put in a room in a bed by herself . . . today I visited this woman twice and, with the doctors, investigated her sickness, and discovered that she had been badly treated by those who had made a mistake to send her up [here] . . . Because she does not have another sickness other than a little fever and little catarrh on the tongue, but she does not have the contagion on any account.171

The case of Anna, as with those with a wound to the head or the Great Pox, reflects Bisogni’s continued complaints in late December that those sick with other diseases, which should have been identified by their obvious

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symptoms, were still arriving at the Lazaretto. In some cases, those responsible for diagnosing patients with plague, either in the city or in these institutions, appear to have been driven more by anxiety to shift the burden for treatment to another place than to provide a careful diagnosis. It would be possible to continue adumbrating the problems over the following months caused by misdiagnosis, lack of medical and nursing staff, and the generally crowded, damp conditions. Moreover, the weather had turned colder after Christmas, and Bisogni emphasised that the women convalescents did not have heavy enough clothes and hence got worse again.172 However, we should also remember that the plague did diminish. By early December a different note had begun to creep into the correspondence between Padre Bisogni, the director of S. Miniato, and the health board, with a new emphasis on things improving and fewer people dying. On 2 December he reported that ‘there is good news . . . the physicians this morning made a general visit [of S. Francesco] . . . and I have found most people without fever among the men’.173 Then on the 13th he wrote again: ‘This night and all of yesterday, of the 362, only six men have died, and they were those who had come from the city and were already dying.’174 While his comments should not be taken to imply that resources were not overstretched, the figures which the director produced in his daily report definitely reflected a reduction in the number of deaths. This was obviously worth celebrating for, as seen above, on the evening of 5 December the Lazaretti joined the city in honouring the festival of S. Antonino, ‘so that it is taken as a sign and witness to the improvement here’.175 If those who ran the Lazaretti put this improvement partly down to the benign influence of S. Antonino, they were also convinced of the efficacy of treatment, which, as has been seen, combined the administration by physicians of specific plague medicines, and purging those with fevers and scarification by surgeons of buboes and the swollen parts of the body.176 By mid-January Bisogni recorded that ‘the medicines in this period play an important role’ in the treatment and recovery of patients.177 However, the picture was not altogether positive, and advances seem also to have been accompanied by retreats, as at this time even he was complaining about the burden of having to report depressing news when he remarked ‘I am tired of always [having] to write the same thing’.178 It was not just a problem of disease, for those who had recovered and were convalescing were now suffering from the cold. They did not have sufficient warm covers for their beds, and as a result they were falling ill again.179 Towards the end of the following month, February, he was again in

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a more positive frame of mind, writing that conditions had continued to improve, and the only people who remained at S. Miniato were ‘some with swellings, catarrh, the blind and incurable, who have been here for entire months’.180 When assessing the conditions on the hill of S. Miniato, it should not be forgotten that this Lazaretto was part of a wider system around Florence of isolation and quarantine centres. There was a close and interdependent connection between S. Miniato, S. Francesco and the nearby Villa Rusciano. When people were sent from a Lazaretto to a quarantine centre, they had in theory got better, but, as we have seen, this was not always the case. We should also remember that, even if conditions were seen to improve at S. Miniato, on which most of the city’s attention was concentrated, other isolation facilities may have continued to be in a dire situation, as suggested by the correspondence in March 1631 between those in charge at S. Marco Vecchio and the Sanità.181 On 11 March the Prior Lione reported that ‘the poor sick in this place are not visited by our physician; I do not know the reason, but he has begun to disagree with our nurse, and the patients [as a result] are not purged, let alone given syrups’.182 When he wrote again on 15 March the situation had deteriorated: ‘Yesterday six sick men and women arrived in this place, among whom one died in the basket [carried by the Misericordia]. And here we are all very astonished, because for the past two days the sickness has grown worse.’ He was particularly concerned that there were not enough friars to administer the sacraments, so that ‘a poor woman had died without confession or communion’. He put this down to the shortage of priests, for, when he wrote to the Capuchins, they replied that they could not come, because their first obligation was to the Lazaretto of the Badia Fiesolana.183 Five days later he returned to the attack: ‘all the ministers who are in this place desire their liberty and to be allowed to leave, because in a few days, four of the main ministers have died and an assistant’. He therefore requested first a new physician and more provisions, which were lacking, especially chickens for the infirm and meat for the ministers. He concluded by declaring that S. Marco Vecchio was hard done by compared to the other Lazaretti, because they did not have enough shoes and other necessities.184 Life in the Lazaretti: The perspective of the staff

The picture painted so far of life and death in the Lazaretti and quarantine centres has been heavily weighted towards those who directed these

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institutions. In particular, the perspective which has dominated has been that of the director of S. Miniato, Padre Bisogni. His constant reporting from the front line of what he saw as a veritable war against plague reflected his stamina and persistence in the face of almost insuperable odds. Inevitably, his view also reflected his mission as a member of the Order of the Frati di Ben Morire, so his language is coloured by his religious vocation, as when on 12 November he wrote to the Sanità: ‘I wish that you pray to God for me because I am [suffering] under the heaviest cross.’185 Life in these institutions during the autumn and winter of 1630–1 can also be examined from a different point of view, that of the staff. Clearly it cannot have been easy working in the crowded, malodorous and often dangerous conditions in the Lazaretti and quarantine centres among very sick and frightened patients. Bisogni and other directors of Lazaretti and quarantine centres tended to emphasise the problems which struck them from an administrative and organisational perspective; even though they also showed great compassion when talking about the problems of, in particular, the medical staff, this nevertheless remains by definition the view of the men in charge. It is also possible to provide a different perspective of those lower down the pecking order, through different types of sources, namely petitions from individuals who worked at the Lazaretti, and their voices as reflected in records of trials of those who broke the rules or deliberately attempted to improve their lot financially through theft. Up until now we have heard more about the problems which doctors encountered in their work at the Lazaretti. Similar problems were experienced by priests, who provided sacraments to the sick. For example, in a petition to the Sanità on 14 October, the Franciscan Fra Niccolò da Bolognano said that he had already been working at S. Miniato for 36 days and was now totally worn out: ‘finding myself completely weak and exhausted from the work, that I do not feel I can serve any more, but I am weakening from one day to the next’. The result was that ‘with a certainty, almost obvious, that if I do not sicken with the contagious sickness, I shall die consumed by it, little by little’. Fra Niccolò therefore requested that he be given licence to leave S. Miniato for 40 days and go to a quarantine centre, giving the undertaking that he would return to work at the Lazaretto afterwards.186 A similar request was made to the Sanità on 25 November by a priest who had been at S. Miniato for 50 days ‘administering the most holy sacraments to the poor contagious patients’. He recounts that ‘in those days I fell sick from the contagious disease, fever and swelling, that reversed itself, so the physician and surgeon said to me, that I can obtain a permit to go to the

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quarantine centre, because, remaining here, I am in great danger of getting sick again’.187 This priest and the friar had clearly dedicated themselves to tending to the sick at S. Miniato in the autumn during the months of highest mortality. In their petition neither of them spoke of wanting to leave the Lazaretto for good, but rather to be given a period of respite, so that they could recover and collect their energy before returning to administer to the souls of the ‘poor contagious patients’. The life of the friars was, of course, dedicated to the care of the souls of their spiritual charges, so that by serving at the Lazaretto they were fulfilling their professed vow on entering their order. The same moral and professional imperative would not necessarily have been applied to the nursing staff, who would have had more complicated family lives, as can be seen in the case of the Oratio Borsi, a nurse at S. Miniato, who petitioned the Sanità on 18 November. Oratio recounted that when he entered the Lazaretto to work he had left behind him in the city his wife, Angliola, and her mother, Caterina. However, the latter had been taken to S. Miniato, because she had entered an infected house, leaving behind his wife, who evidently felt burdened by being all alone, especially as she was only a ‘tender age’ of 20. Oratio’s request to the Sanità was that Caterina should be allowed to leave their house to live with her sister Margerita, who lived in the women’s hostel of the Orbatello, until he returned home.188 This petition speaks to the effect on a family of a relative working at a Lazaretto, and underlines that quarantine centres were not completely cut off, for they permitted communication with people in the city. Oratio had evidently kept in touch with his family during the period he had worked at S. Miniato, and was understandably concerned about the fate of his young wife, underlined by the declaration with which he ended his petition, that he would send his salary to Angliola when she entered the Orbatello, and if he died ‘I leave her in the care of God’; presumably, given that she would already have been living there, she would have been able to continue as a resident. While these petitions present the motivation of the supplicant in the best light, trial records by their very nature provide a negative perspective of the behaviour of employees which led to prosecutions and appearance in court. They were part of a much wider phenomenon of local inhabitants breaking the law in the city. As we shall see in much more detail in Chapter 8, these included stealing goods, mixing together in the streets, when they were supposed to have stayed in locked-up houses, and selling infected cloth.

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Over the course of the autumn and early spring of 1630–1, there were 15 cases at S. Miniato, S. Francesco and Villa Rusciano which had led to prosecution. It should be emphasised that these were only the instances which had led to trial. It is probable that there were many more cases of misbehaviour of one kind or another which were punished on the spot, as is suggested by the report of the director of Villa Rusciano on 22 January 1631, the ‘Memorandum of the excesses committed by the officials and servants in the quarantine centre of Rusciano at various times’, to which we shall return below.189 Most of the cases which went to trial involved the movement of persons and goods from the Lazaretti or quarantine centres to the city, and the majority were committed by employees. The Sanità were most concerned with tracing the potential threat of the spread of disease into the city carried by them and the goods they were carrying. The main goods stolen were food and cloth, including clothes and bed-linen, both of which, as seen in other contexts, were regarded as having the potential to absorb the seeds of disease and spread the plague from person to person. Some trials resulted from employees of Lazaretti fleeing to go home, as on 15 October when Maria di Matteo Porta had been arrested leaving S. Miniato. When interviewed, Maria said that she was three months’ pregnant and had two children (aged 11 and 6), ‘who roamed the streets’ alone. According to her, having worked at the Lazzaretto for eight days, she asked the nurse in charge for permission to leave, but she was refused. However, she recounts that she was resolved to leave ‘and one day after supper when the door and the gate were open and there wasn’t anybody around, I left and walked along the street where the stretcher comes through Porta a S. Miniato and nobody said anything to me’. When questioned further, she replied: ‘I didn’t speak with anybody up there, except the nurse, and Jesus helped me for love of the two little children, and I could not stay because of the great stink.’ The judge must have been swayed by her argument and she was allowed to stay at home.190 This case talks to the humanity of the trial judge, who was convinced by Maria’s own concern about her two little children being left to roam through the streets. However, the questioning, which had elicited Maria’s replies, does reflect a preoccupation with the potential threat she posed in spreading disease through the city, though at the same time, if what she says was true, this incident reveals a curious lack of vigilance in ensuring that doors and gates were properly guarded. Another person, arrested after being accused of leaving S. Francesco, seems to have been more generally discontented. Questioned on 30

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December 1630, Jacopo di Bastiano detto Tamburlano, sounded put out by the conditions in which he had been forced to serve: ‘I worked as a cook at S. Francesco, I was then sent to Rusciano as a convalescent and that Padre Vincenzo, the superintendent of Luccano [Rusciano], made me work.’ He continued by complaining about the lack of food and that when he had dropped a saucepan he was put into prison, from where he escaped, but was rearrested!191 Others who were arrested had combined breaking the decrees of the Sanità with breaking criminal law. A number were caught stealing goods from the Lazaretto, with the implication that they would have been infected by their sick owners. One of the grave-diggers at S. Miniato, Oratio di Simone Ristorini, was particularly active: ‘while he worked at this office of grave-digger he dressed himself in the clothes of the sick and dead in the said Lazaretto’, going on to amass a series of stolen goods of some value, presumably from the dead. The trial transcript recorded the objects which they found when they searched him, and which he had on his person: Two rings which appear to be of gold, one with a red stone, and the other turquoise. One silver cavalierino, and a seal with the name of Jesus which appears to be of gold. A small [image of] Christ made of brass, and a copper medal in which is depicted the Passion. A medal and a uffitiolo of the Madonna. Two folding knives, with three rings to be sown. A star-shaped stone bound in silver . . . A crown of red bone with a Christ, four medals and a piece of cloth. A breviary and a Venetian quattrino and a medal. Two handkerchiefs for the nose, with two buttons, one black and the other of gold. Lire 28, 1 soldo and 8 denari in various types of money.192

Oratio di Simone had presumably been working at S. Miniato for some time and had searched the clothes of people as they died. These objects had evidently been brought by the sick to the Lazaretto, and included some of their more valuable possessions, because the owners had not wanted to leave them at home in case they were stolen there. They may also have had a talismanic value, because many were religious objects made of precious metals, including images of Christ and the Virgin Mary. Quite apart from the action

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of stealing these objects, concern was expressed by the Sanità about the potential health risk, for ‘while he [Oratio] handled these goods he could have caused much sickness of contagion’, and hence he was imprisoned. Even if this is an unusual case, because it speaks of ongoing theft over a long period, stealing on a much smaller scale was not uncommon, as also described by Jane Stevens Crawshaw in her study of Venetian Lazaretti.193 Many examples of theft of food and drink give the impression of being more opportunistic and were not confined to S. Miniato. There are examples of people stealing goods from the quarantine centre at S. Domenico di Fiesole, another of two men who together had stolen a bed from the prison of S. Onofrio to give to a prostitute, and of Donna Nannina, who had been caught in mid-January taking away bread from the quarantine centre of the Villa ‘Strozzini’.194 These accusations were not always upheld, as can be seen in the case of Caterina di Bartolomeo da Reggello, who had visited somebody in the Lazaretto of Legnaia, and been caught coming back through the Porta S. Frediano carrying eggs, bread and oil. Accused of having stolen them from the Lazaretto, she provided what was obviously a convincing explanation, since she was let off: she claimed that she had gone to the market on the way to Legnaia and, not having wanted to return home first, she took them with her on her visit.195 The most comprehensive record of misdemeanours at one of these institutions was the ‘Memorandum of the excesses’ mentioned above, compiled by the director at Villa Rusciano on 22 January 1631.196 Many of these ‘excesses’ mirrored those elsewhere and involved theft of clothes and food, but what is particularly revealing is that the memo reflects the existence of a number of individuals who made up an organised network for the theft, processing and sale of these stolen goods. On the one hand, there were nurses and female assistants who did much of the theft of bed-linen, sheets and shirts. For example, Domenica di Alessandro Fabbrini, the ‘carter’, had carried away a number of shirts sewn together underneath her cloak.197 It turned out that she had had a relationship with Paolo di Lando Landi, who had been a soldier at S. Miniato and was now the under-cellarer of Villa Rusciano. Apparently, he had been so upset at Domenica leaving that he had wept, although it is not clear whether this stemmed from his affection for her or that she had left with stolen goods without his knowledge. Paolo crops up again further on in the record when we discover that he did not have just a history of theft, but also had been involved with other women. Both Lucretia, who was the servant of the doctor Tedeschini, and

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Aurelia di Michele del Brino had had sex with Paolo, and he had even promised marriage to Lucretia. It would appear that his relationships were designed to assist him in his veritable business of theft. But, realising that smuggling out the stolen goods was likely to lead to discovery, he persuaded his accomplices to hide the material about their persons, as seen in the case of Domenica.198 It was at this point that another character appears on the scene and was brought into the business: Giovanni Lupinai, who was in charge of the cellar and had previously been a tailor.199 He had been provided by Paolo with a number of new sheets, which he had then cut up and made into various articles, including aprons, coats, socks, and trousers. When interviewed, Giovanni, who had recently lost his wife, confessed that he had been persuaded by Aurelia to do this work, apparently with the promise of marriage. Furthermore, using his position as cellarer, he took Aurelia down to the cellar, where they indulged in ‘secret meals’, and were discovered on a number of occasions. Paolo, who appears to have masterminded this whole enterprise, had clearly thought through the next stage of the operation, for it was discovered that Aurelia’s room was being used to smuggle out the goods. They had lowered a bundle through her window to another man waiting underneath called Jacopo Elmi. Jacopo carried them into town to Via Gora in Ognissanti, where Paolo’s wife lived, thus closing the loop of the whole project. On other occasions Paolo had arranged for two flasks of olive oil, 15 lb of candles, wine and eggs to be taken from Rusciano to his wife in town. This, then, was a well devised plan by Paolo di Lando Landi, who had allegedly taken advantage of a series of women to persuade them to work on his behalf. But Aurelia also employed a similar technique to Paolo’s in her dealings with Giovanni Lupinai, who as a tailor was a vital part of the plan to make the clothes easier to smuggle out of the villa, and at the same time had benefited from free food. Aurelia was evidently a key player in her own right, using her wiles to influence a lonely widower to perform a series of illegal acts. Paolo di Lando was not the only person who master-minded such activities. Even one of the apothecaries, Jacopo Bonetti, was tempted to have smuggled out by Iacopo the porter a series of goods, including precious medicines, such as the ‘oil against poison’, which was used for patients.200 Perhaps the largest-scale operation was that conducted by five named soldiers, all corporals of the guard at Villa Rusciano. One of them, Antonio ‘the Spaniard’, had received from the cook Bartolomeo ‘Il Riccio’ a quantity of empty flasks and two small barrels of herrings. This was but one in a list of many frauds he

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had committed, including stealing a large number of clothes which had been carried into the city to the house of a dyer, who was described as of small stature, with a brown beard, who lived in Piazza d’Arno, as well as a sack containing more goods left with the slipper-maker Ricorboli.201 Once again, these soldiers had built up a network of confederates, from the employees of Villa Rusciano to Iacopo the porter and the dyer, who received the stolen goods, which he either stored or for which he acted as a fence. Moreover, the fact that so many of the members of the guard of Rusciano were involved made life easier, since we are told that Antonio was able to store the stolen goods in the guardhouse until the coast was clear and they could be collected. The reason that so much detail emerged about each of these separate operations was because of the confession of Iacopo the porter. The description of each episode includes mention of his presence, but always following the instructions of others rather than initiating the theft. It was from his testimony that we learn of the appearance of the dyer and the reputation of Antonio ‘the Spaniard’, who was known to have been involved in a long history of fraud at S. Miniato and S. Francesco, and in this way helped to identify the culprits and to track down the stolen goods. The authorities were perhaps fortunate in having discovered a man such as Iacopo the porter, who was prepared to provide evidence against his colleagues in crime, presumably having entered into a form of pleabargaining. As historians we are also fortunate because it points us to another reality behind the official correspondence of the Lazaretti directors, towards the reactions of the personnel, who were employed to provide for patients and to guard these facilities. These lively episodes point to individuals seeking to circumvent rules and to benefit from the confusion caused by emergency measures to tackle the epidemic. They also raise the wider question presented by the evidence: how isolated were isolation hospitals? More broadly it leads us back to the central question raised at the beginning of this chapter, the efficacy of the Lazaretto in the wider context of public health policies. Lazaretti had to be open to the outside world, since they received those diagnosed with plague, and quarantine centres those who had been in contact with the sick. There was also movement between institutions when those who had recovered were sent elsewhere to convalesce. Eventually they returned home in procession via the miracle shrine of SS. Annunziata, for it was believed that the Madonna was at least partly responsible for their recovery. There was also movement of the personnel

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who staffed the Lazaretti and quarantine centres. The stress on staff not entering each other’s wards suggests that the spaces within these institutions may have been more permeable than was desired. Then when members of staff died they were replaced by others who came from the city. Clearly these institutions were also important consumers of food and medicines, which also had to be supplied from outside. Although geographically more separate than hospitals based in the city centre, Lazaretti could not be completely isolated. Another feature of the permeability of these institutions, which may seem surprising, given the constant emphasis on separation of the sick and healthy, was that relatives were allowed to visit the sick. In Venice, for example, visitors had first to obtain a permit from the Sanità, although they were prohibited from landing on the islands where these institutions were built.202 In Florence visitors also needed permits to visit, and indeed on 19 November the director of S. Miniato wrote to the Sanità saying that, because of a new order, the guards who were stationed at the gates to S. Miniato would not allow anybody to pass, which had led to people becoming so desperate that they had climbed over the walls. He therefore decided to provide permits himself, which apparently satisfied the guards, but only to close relatives, such as wives, children and fathers or mothers.203 Even given the somewhat porous nature of these spaces, it would be churlish to deny that according to their own lights the Lazaretti were successful in mopping up an increasing number of sick and dying in the city, as can be seen when comparing the diminishing number of burials in the Campisanti outside the city walls, compared with those at the Lazaretti. Those contemporaries who recorded their reactions, and in particular official historians, such as Rondinelli, or the correspondents of the Sanità to other states, regarded the role of the Lazaretto as a great success. As mentioned in Chapter 5, compared with other cities, in Florence a higher percentage of plague victims were removed to Lazaretti. It is possible that the success of this system was causally linked to the lower levels of overall mortality in Florence (12%) compared with Bologna and Prato (both c. 25%), but this must remain open to question and is a topic which needs much further comparative analysis across time and space. The Lazaretti’s combined force of physical and spiritual medicine was seen by contemporaries as a vital plank in the war of the city against plague in early modern Italy, a belief shared with early modern writers of treatises, whether medical men or administrators.204 They saw a close link between these institutions and the city: the Lazaretto enabled the city to

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purge itself of the diseased elements by separating the sick poor. Ultimately, though, it was the social and political status of commentators which determined whether they thought the Lazaretto was ‘more feared than death itself ’ or was ‘a great success’ in the fight against plague. Official historians such as Francesco Rondinelli saw the whole campaign as being a testament to the clear-sightedness and charitable pluck of the young Grand Duke, Ferdinand II. Those with closer professional personal experience painted another picture. It is questionable whether the physicians who served at these hospitals would have agreed wholeheartedly with the benefits which accrued, either to themselves or to any patients sent there who were not sick from plague. It was one of the doctors employed by the health board, Dr Righi, who remarked that ‘everybody feared the Lazaretto and burial there more than death itself ’.205 But the ‘everybody’ to whom Righi referred was constituted not by patricians, but by the more than 10,000 people who were taken to the Lazaretti, and, given the conditions at the height of the epidemic, it is hardly surprising these institutions should have engendered fear and a wish to escape. In order to understand this dichotomy in attitudes towards the Lazaretti we should remember that this was just one feature – if a central one – of the state’s unfolding policy towards the poor in the early modern period, characterised across Europe as one of increasing marginalisation and control of activities. This was underlined by growing intolerance during periods of crisis, when medical writers came to blame the poor for the spread of epidemics. But it is also possible to present too black-and-white a picture of social control. Indeed recent scholarship has emphasised the more positive role of these institutions, with a very deliberate policy to provide wideranging medical services and a good diet to treat and, if possible, cure those suffering from plague, reflecting a more general reassessment of the function and role of the hospital in the Renaissance.206 As Jane Stevens Crawshaw has argued persuasively in her book on Venetian Lazaretti, ‘the sheer cost of administration is indicative of genuine attempts to cure the plague’.207 In the Lazaretto, as in the Tuscan state, the policies adopted during periods of plague were also a public expression of Christian charity and the influence of the Counter-Reformation, whether in lending a strong moral dimension in the control of behaviour or motivating the religious who staffed the isolation and quarantine centres. In itself this whole campaign was also a remarkable feat for the state, especially since it implied high expenses for the government and personally for the young Grand Duke, to

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pay personnel and to feed thousands of people from the public purse. It is for this reason that Ferdinand was portrayed as demonstrating his ‘heroic virtue’ and, with the help of the Sanità, leading to his courageously shooting the ‘monster of plague’. One also must not forget the dedication and extraordinary bravery of those who directed or worked in the Lazaretti: men such as Doctor Giovagnoli working at Bonifazio at the beginning of the epidemic; Padre Bisogni of the Frati Ben Morire, who struggled valiantly to keep on top of the extraordinary pressures of running S. Miniato; or women, such as the prostitute Maria Lunga, ‘La Cazzettina’, who, as mentioned above, volunteered to work at S. Miniato. If this reflected glow of Counter-Reformation sanctity helps us to break down the overly rigid picture of intolerance of the poor, the more than 550 court cases against people breaking the sanitary legislation during the plague epidemic in Florence, and the relative leniency of their punishments, points to a world in which the bark of social control was much more flexible than its bite, as we shall see in the following chapter. Policies in the wider communities of the city and state were predicated on a strong policy of social control, just as strong discipline was justified within smaller institutional communities. But the history of the Florentine Lazaretti is a complex story which contains many contradictory elements. In assessing their role and the extent to which they contributed to the campaign against plague, one has to remember that isolation hospitals were never completely cut off from the wider community they served, whether through the passage of personnel and patients or the illegal trafficking of stolen goods. Conditions within these institutions were at times horrendous and even the doctors feared contact with their patients. However, this is not just a story of marginalisation of the poor, but also of dedication and extraordinary bravery. The records reflect a remarkable level of commitment by the men and women who staffed these communities.

CHAPTER 8



SURVIVING PLAGUE

The poorer members of society have often emerged from previous chapters as the objects of official or medical rhetoric, rather than actors in their own right. Many contemporary sources tended to portray them in negative terms, and even to view them as one of the causes of plague, whether it was through their deliberate actions which spread disease or simply their insanitary living conditions. We have also seen that this negative view was at times mitigated by policy in action, as reflected in the views of the gentlemen who visited the houses of the poor, members of charitable confraternities and the Church. Even in this view individuals remained submerged beneath this broad top-down picture. This chapter will seek to redress the balance, by concentrating more on the everyday life of the inhabitants who remained in the city, not having been taken off to a Lazaretto or to a quarantine centre. The aim will be to provide a more nuanced picture of the identity and reactions of the poorer levels of society than that of contemporary accounts by patricians or of government officials. Even though the Florentine poor have themselves left no written records, their reactions are mirrored in court records. While normally the criminal justice system in Florence was run by the magistracy, Otto di Guardia e Balìa, during the plague the health board set up its own special court.1 The present chapter, building on Giulia Calvi’s Histories of a Plague Year, is based on an analysis of some 566 cases of prosecutions undertaken by this court from between September 1630 and July 1631.2 Even though probably not all the Florentine records of plague trials survive, they are sufficiently detailed to enable one to link specific cases to the punishments imposed by the court, thus providing a way of seeing how far the decrees were actually put into effect. Existing studies of early modern Italian plague, such as those of Bologna, Milan and Naples, provide a general discussion of the broad categories of 229

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prosecutions, but so far no other studies provide the type of detailed quantitative analysis of plague trials as presented in this chapter.3 One of the problems, as historians of plague in Bologna and Milan have underlined, is the incompleteness and disorganisation of archives and the intractability of the sources.4 In Bologna, for example, the archive of the criminal tribunal of the Torrone, which dealt with a wide range of prosecutions including plague regulations, contains 103 registers of between 300 and 1,200 folios for just the year 1630.5 Although trial records are far from being unproblematic as sources, they do help one to distinguish different strata and occupational categories of those prosecuted. The lively and often raucous responses of those arrested and of witnesses demonstrate that local inhabitants who lived in the city during the plague were not a passive mass who accepted all regulations. Living in a city in which the Sanità had absolute power led to the infringement of numerous privileges and freedoms normally taken for granted. While the Sanità presented those tried as breaking the law, these people were often simply seeking to adopt strategies to survive, both financially and psychologically,6 as in the ostensibly innocent case of Lucrezia di Francescho Bianchi, who had been arrested two days after the imposition of the total quarantine of the city, 22 January 1631: Lucrezia di Francescho Bianchi: ‘I lived in Campaccio from Ognissanti [1 November] until today, and about a month ago I returned to the house of Lorenzo the miller in Via della Salvia, in order not have to remain alone at home during this quarantine. ‘I am not registered in any other house than that of the miller, and this morning the Corporal Grasso from the Bargello, who was passing, said that I should not be in the house where I am, but in a house which I left on the day of Ognissanti, and he took me there, and then I returned to Campaccio, as I said, but because I did not know anybody there and did not want to remain alone at home, I went to stay in this house of the miller’s wife, who is my friend, thinking I had not done anything wrong, and I found myself in a house of good people . . .’ Judge: ‘Why do you think you were arrested?’ Lucrezia di Francescho Bianchi: ‘If I had wanted to say, I don’t know, but that Corporal wished me ill, because one day a young man from Cinganelli wanted to marry me, and this corporal arrested him and I think for this he wishes me ill.’ And she was returned to prison.

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Monna Maria di Lorenzo the miller, who lives in Via della Salvia: Judge: ‘From when did Lucrezia the prostitute return to your house?’ Monna Maria di Lorenzo the miller: She replied that she [Lucrezia] had returned six days ago, taking the opportunity of the return of Angiola the prostitute, who lives next to the house where she is registered to stay during the quarantine, and speaking from the windows she asked her a number of times saying she wanted to return to stay with her during the quarantine, and this woman liked her.7

This case talks to both the problems of solitude and boredom, not normally recorded in official documents, of the interruption of normal economic activity, of the fear of moral pollution, and of informal networks of sociability and affection between these women, which proved stronger than fear of the law. There is also clearly more than meets the eye in the relationship between Lucrezia and the corporal who had arrested her in the first place. He was clearly jealous of the proposal of marriage, which Lucrezia alleged to have received. Ultimately this remains a very human story since, to cover herself, the miller’s wife explained that she had allowed Lucrezia to live with her after Lucrezia had asked her repeatedly and that she was, moreover, clearly a good friend. The trial reveals the strength of existing social networks and friendship. This, together with many of the other cases to be considered in this chapter, more broadly point to the importance of the support of parenti, amici e vicini, the family, friends and neighbours at the basis of Mediterranean society. Many broke the health board regulations, either as a result of financial hardship or through sheer frustration at being shut up in cramped apartments with their families or alone, while others attempted to rescue objects belonging to relatives who had been taken to a Lazaretto. In order to examine these themes further, this chapter will first outline the judicial system established by the Sanità during the epidemic, before analysing the general chronological and geographical patterns of prosecution. This will lead to asking how far the stiff punishments outlined in the legislation were actually put into effect. These introductory sections will provide the framework for the analysis of the main types of ‘crimes’, the people who committed them, and their motivation over this plague year. Plague and the Law

As we have seen in previous chapters, a series of decrees was issued at the beginning of the epidemic to regulate movement of the population, to

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prevent the spread of plague, and it will be useful to reiterate them here to provide a context for the discussion which follows.8 First, it was laid down that the head of household had to report any suspicious sickness or death to the magistracy of the Sanità, who then sent their surgeon to identify if it was or was not plague. The sick or dead person was then removed from the house and his or her co-residents were either taken to a quarantine centre or were locked up together, and none were allowed to leave for 40 days. A locksmith was employed to nail a bar across the door and the Sanità officials made daily inspections of the locked houses, to make sure nobody had tried to enter or to leave. Finally, any materials which had been in contact with the sick person (clothes, bed-clothes) were taken away to be disinfected or burned. It was against these regulations that the majority of infractions were committed. There are a variety of texts which provide information about punishments to be imposed on those breaking the Sanità’s decrees. Grand-Ducal legislation laid down some examples of penalties for specific types of infractions, such as when health passes were fraudulently obtained or falsified. The punishments were, of course, based on practices which had evolved over the centuries and had become progressively formalised under the Grand Dukes.9 They ranged from fines, which were the most common and popular, since they produced revenue for the state, to corporal punishment, from whipping to the Strappado (also known as fune or corda, meaning tied to a rope). Though execution was very rare in Florence during the plague compared with cities such as Milan and Rome in the seventeenth century, the Strappado would have been serious enough, for the prisoner’s arms were tied behind his or her back, and rope wound under the armpits so that they could be hauled up into the air and dropped, and when their downward motion was abruptly stopped it would have caused dislocation.10 People younger than 18 were given a less severe punishment, two lashes in public, whereas men leaving a locked-up house were sent off for hard manual labour on the Grand Duke’s galleys in Livorno, and the women to the communal prison of the Stinche, sentences which could be commuted to a 200 scudi fine through petitioning to the Grand Duke.11 This was an enormous sum, equivalent to about six months’ wages for a labourer, and only the more affluent with savings would have found it possible to pay.12 However, pleading poverty in a petition to the Grand Duke could also lead to remission of the fine, especially in the case of the elderly, the sick or those with large families. Once the plague really took hold, the Sanità established its own prison in the ex-convent of S. Onofrio where the health board’s court would have been

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located (see Plate 5b).13 The statutes governing the operation of the Sanità, dating from August, establish that imprisonment was prescribed for not reporting the dead or the sick. While these texts draw attention to the heaviest punishments applied for the more severe crimes, there were many not listed in the legislation, especially for the wide variety of minor infractions. They were dealt with by the Sanità, who seem to have had some flexibility in the application and interpretation of the law, especially in the application of physical punishments and fines.14 The key figure in this judicial process was the chancellor of the Sanità, as outlined in his overall role, which was: to know how to construct and to frame proceedings against those who commit frauds and are disobedient concerning matters of health, to know also how to put forward his opinion and plans, when necessary, to the magistrates [of health], based on good foundations and reasons, because nobody apart from the health board magistrates take part in the Sanità trials, except for the Prince who ratifies the decision.15

It was the job of the Sanità policemen (birri) to enforce the health board’s regulations, gathering information and arresting people whom they saw as breaking the law. From late September 1630, as the plague began to worsen, the Sanità was permitted to establish seven more armed guards at the Bargello under its own aegis.16 But, at the beginning of November, the Sanità discovered they had insufficient personnel and recorded that: Our magistrate seeing that the work of the Sanità is increasing in many ways, it is particularly necessary to be diligent, so that those who break their orders and the laws made by this tribunal are discovered and punished, to avoid giving rise to further transgressions, through which many other problems could be caused for the public.17

Approval was given by the chancellor of the Sanità, on 1 November, for the appointment of the following staff: Ottavio Diligenti detto il cappellaio (the hatter), who had previously been employed by the Otto, with the title of Capitano, with a salary of 15 scudi a month; 13 employees at 3 scudi a month; a lieutenant, named as Francesco detto il Luna, at 5 scudi a month; 2 corporals at 4 scudi a month; and another corporal at 24 lire a month. These men were employed, on the one hand, to man the prison and, on the other, to patrol the streets and to arrest those whom they had discovered

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to have broken the Sanità’s decrees. The birri or police also relied on a parallel system of detection and reporting, through the secret denunciations by so-called amici segreti or secret friends. Furthermore, citizens more generally were encouraged to make anonymous denunciations of anybody transgressing any of these laws and regulations, and were paid 10 scudi for anybody successfully prosecuted as a result. This was a very substantial incentive to make denunciations, for 10 scudi would have been equivalent to about nine weeks’ earnings for a fully employed labourer and six weeks’ earnings for a fully employed master mason.18 This system was based on a well-established feature of anonymous denunciations or tamburazioni or denuncie in medieval and early modern Italy.19 It had come to form an important part of law enforcement and led to neighbours reporting each other.20 Normally, anybody involved in a crime, who denounced his or her co-criminals, and where the prosecution was brought to a successful conclusion, would be granted immunity.21 Just as the number of people employed by the Sanità varied over the course of the epidemic, reflecting the extent of the crisis, so did the number of and typology of prosecutions. Figure 8.1 shows a considerable change in prosecutions across the year, with an increase in the autumn, from the

120 110 100

Total prosecutions per month

90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 Sep.

Oct.

Nov. 1630

Dec.

Jan.

Feb.

Mar.

Apr.

May

1631

Fig. 8.1 Plague prosecutions in Florence, 1630–1

Jun.

Jul.

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lowest level in September (16), doubling in October, and reaching their highest level in November (117) and December (105). Until this point, the pattern of prosecutions followed the level of mortality in the city (see Figure 2.1), reflecting the increased regulation and its enforcement by the Sanità, as larger numbers of people were taken off to Lazaretti and quarantine centres, leaving more empty houses ripe for robbery. Over the following seven months, there was an overall decline in both prosecutions and levels of mortality, particularly during the last phase of the epidemic, May (21), June (7) and July (19). However, in the first part of the year prosecutions and mortality did not necessarily follow the same monthly pattern. In January, while deaths in the city were 60% lower than the previous month, there was only a slight decrease in the level of prosecutions (97), and even the further fall in deaths in February was not mirrored in a really substantial drop (62). March and April saw contrasting patterns, with numbers of arrests first halved (31) and then rising again (57). Part of the explanation for the increase in prosecutions in February and April is provided by the shifts in the overall types of felony, as reflected in Table 8.1. In the months which saw the largest numbers of ‘crimes’ recorded – November, December and January – the major category was associated with residence, where people were breaking out of or into houses

Punishment Category

Male

Female

Total

Male %

Female %

Total %

Female % of Male

1

Arrested/ Released no fine

251

89

340

44.35

15.72

60.07

35.46

2

Released with fine

51

13

64

9.01

2.30

11.31

25.49

3

Prison sentence

43

5

48

7.60

0.88

8.48

11.63

4

Whipping in public

3

0

3

0.53

0.00

0.53

0.00

5

Riding donkey

5

5

10

0.88

0.88

1.77

100.00

6

Isolation hospital

4

2

6

0.71

0.35

1.06

50.00

7

Fune/Strappado

64

7

71

11.31

1.24

12.54

10.94

8

Galleys/ Banishment

12

1

13

2.12

0.18

2.30

8.33

9

Gallows

1

0

1

0.18

0.00

0.18

0.00

10

Unknown

6

4

10

1.06

0.71

1.77

66.67

440

126

566

77.74

22.26

100.00

28.64

Table 8.1 Categories of prosecution by season, 1630–1

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linked to death and disease. In contrast, in February and April, there were many more prosecutions against people engaged in work. February is also differentiated from any other month, because nearly 40% of cases were against men leaving their homes to return to work, partly reflecting a frustration at being shut up for 40 days at very close quarters with their families, but also their desire to get back to their shops and to earn money, especially as many, even before the plague, were probably living near the breadline. Some prosecutions led nowhere, because even textile workers were allowed to continue to work in their workshops during the city-wide quarantine, as long as they did not return home, while other occupations, such as buying and selling second-hand clothes, were considered dangerous. The second feature which emerges from this analysis is the relationship between male and female prosecutions, with 78% of cases attributed to men (see Figure 8.2). This conforms to general patterns of criminal prosecution at the time,22 and also, as we shall see, reflects the characteristics of Florentine male sociability and work patterns. In January, however, there was a slight rise in the proportion of female prosecutions to a third, but it is

120 110 100

Prosecutions per month

90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

Sep.

Oct.

Nov.

Dec.

Jan.

Feb.

1630

Mar.

Apr. 1631

Total

Male

Female

Fig. 8.2 Prosecutions by gender, 1630–1

May

Jun.

Jul.

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March that is anomalous when female prosecutions were actually higher than males. This probably reflects the frustration felt by women, for, although the total quarantine of the city had been lifted in early March, on Ash Wednesday, it remained in force for women and children younger than ten until 22 April.23 Punishment and Enforcement

As mentioned above, at the beginning of the epidemic, decrees established a whole series of severe punishments, including imprisonment, whipping in public and banishment, and even capital punishment.24 These decrees particularly concentrated on those who left locked-up houses or admitted anybody by removing the bars on front doors. Table 8.2 analyses the punishments administered in these 566 cases to assess how they were implemented in practice. Compared with the draconian character of the laws enacted at the beginning of the epidemic, in practice a substantial proportion of punishments were relatively mild. This can be seen clearly from Table 8.2. The first category

CITY: Leaving & entering

Autumn

Winter

Spring

Summer*

Total

%

14

13

13

10

50

8.83

1

STREET

2

8

81

3

0

92

16.25

HOUSE: Entry/exit

3a

58

78

35

2

173

30.57

Hiding sick/dead

3b

5

3

1

3

12

2.12

Forced entry/theft

3c

16

22

0

1

39

6.89

4

5

1

5

0

11

1.94

SANITÀ: officers’ offences In houses

4a

8

7

0

1

16

2.83

In pesthouses

4b

4

9

11

1

25

4.42

Medical staff

4c

9

2

3

0

14

2.47

5

5

18

2

0

25

4.42

Textiles

5a

23

16

16

4

59

10.42

Food/drink

5b

3

9

8

0

20

3.53

6

9

5

12

4

30

5.30

167

264

109

26

566

100.00

29.51

46.64

19.26

4.59

100

WORK

Unknown Total Per cent

* Summer 1631 is June and July only

Table 8.2 Categories of punishments, 1630–1

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RELIGION, ISOLATION AND SURVIVAL

(those arrested, imprisoned and released without a fine) accounted for 60% of the total. If one then adds the second category, those released from prison after paying a fine, the total rises to 71%, reflecting more general patterns of punishment in medieval and renaissance Europe where lengthy incarceration in prison was rare, usually a maximum of six days.25 In the records of the judgements, the judge often declared that individuals had suffered enough through imprisonment. This represented a recognition that being shut up in the crowded conditions of the Sanità’s prison, the ex-convent of S. Onofrio, would probably have been unpleasant, given the wide range of people incarcerated there, from the relatively innocent, who had found themselves on the wrong side of the law through being in the wrong place at the wrong time, to opportunistic thieves, to hardened criminals. Here are three examples of people who were let off, the judge having declared that they had already suffered enough in prison. The first was a couple, Margherita di Vettorio and the builder GiovanBattista di Giulio, who appeared in court on 9 November. They had been arrested because they had shown compassion, having looked after two girls who lived in the same house and who had been abandoned, having lost their parents. The suspicion was that the girls could have potentially had plague and spread it themselves, but evidently the girls were not sick because their protectors were released.26 The two other cases were related to work. One was the case of the oil-seller Stefano di Lorenzo Buoncollazi, who had been arrested when he left his house near the Albergo del Caccio to go to work in his workshop to make candles, but was released on 6 November when it had not been proven that he had broken the law.27 The third case was a bit more complicated and was a moving story of the printer Simone di Piero Ciotti, who had been arrested on 4 November for going to work in his printshop after four of his children had either died or been taken to the Lazaretto. In the event he was held for eight days, but he was released after the trial, because the doctor who had come to see the children had declared their deaths were not caused by plague; instead they ‘smelled of worms’ and had died with ‘an abundance of worms’. The priest from the parish of S. Margherita confirmed that three were all buried in his church, since they had not died from plague; even so, after release from prison, Simone was required to remain at home for ten days.28 The third category, imprisonment as a form of punishment, contained a smaller percentage of people (9%), reflecting the fact that the main role of prison at the time was as a holding centre rather than as punishment per se,

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hence the frequent notation of an individual having suffered enough.29 Thus if one adds this category to the first two, a very substantial 80% of arrested individuals were imprisoned and then released. This leniency in dealing with minor infractions of plague regulations can also be seen during the seventeenth-century epidemics in Bologna and in Genoa, although it would appear from the secondary literature there was greater severity in Milan, Naples and Rome.30 Imprisonment was regarded as insufficient for some criminal activities. The other categories consisted of some form of humiliation, capital punishment or a combination of both. Until 5 November, the Sanità had had the Strappado administered at the Bargello. However, in their petition to the Grand Duke, the magistrates complained that the Bargello officials had objected to the Sanità using their facilities, and asked to be allowed to administer the Strappado themselves in the Bargello. The problem was resolved when it was decided to administer the Strappado at the column in the Mercato Vecchio, the traditional location for both the Strappado and flogging, as seen in Giovanni Stradano’s Piazza del Mercato Vecchio (Plate 39).31 The public performance of punishments was regarded as a powerful tool to warn potential miscreants of the fates which lay in store for them if they broke Grand-Ducal decrees. Inducing shame in the criminal was at the basis of much medieval and early modern punishment.32 A small number of people, ten (2% of total), were subjected to the humiliating experience of being condemned to ride a donkey backwards, with a card around their necks on which their crime was described. They were led around the streets, probably being subjected to abuse and even having rotten fruit and vegetables thrown at them by their fellow citizens. Sanità employees who were arrested would have been seen as having brought shame on their office or the city, especially when they were accused of receiving multiple bribes to leave contagious houses open.33 As in the case of other cities in early modern Italy, such as Milan and Venice, grave-diggers were accused of taking advantage of their position, by stealing and reselling clothes and valuables belonging to the dead, recalling the legislation following the Black Death in Florence limiting the amount they could charge for burial.34 Thus on 30 November 1630 a becchino or gravedigger employed by the Fraternity of the Misericordia, Andrea di Stefano Boccini da Legnaia, had been accused of taking the shirt off the dead body of somebody who was suspected of having died of plague and bringing the shirt to Florence, presumably to sell.35 Another, Oratio di Simone Ristorini, who worked as a grave-digger at S. Miniato, was found to have stolen a heavy jacket

240

RELIGION, ISOLATION AND SURVIVAL

and other valuables from a man who had died at the Lazaretto and brought them into Florence. He was placed on a donkey with a breve around his neck, which listed the clothes he had stolen from the dead.36 This took place just after the beginning of the total quarantine of the city, so he had broken a series of decrees from stealing potentially infected clothes, to entering Florence when the gates would have been closed, and then moving around the streets. Significantly, though the number of those paraded through the streets on a donkey was small, half of them were women, whereas normally, as we have seen, only 22% of prosecutions were female. In fact, most of these women were prostitutes, whose activities were seen as damaging to the moral fabric of the city, again reflecting wider concerns in medieval and early modern society.37 A case in point is Giulia di Filippo, who on two evenings had left her locked house in her street, Gomitolo dell’Oro, to go to another one around the corner in Via dell’Acqua.38 She was aided and abetted by a male friend, who had undone the bar across her door, and by another prostitute, Francesca di Piero Borselli, who had received Giulia with her man-friend in her own house, which had also been locked up following the sickness or death of a co-resident.39 As we have seen in earlier chapters, the authorities showed particular sensitivity to the activities of prostitutes during plague, as they saw them as contributing to the sin for which God was punishing the city. Furthermore, in August their activities had been limited, since they and their clients were prohibited from leaving their houses at night, hence the extra attention paid to Giulia di Filippo.40 Another case involved a group of six people who had left a house where they were supposed to have remained during the total quarantine of the city. The Sanità officials had been alerted because they were making a lot of noise – ‘un mezzo bordello’ – in the area around their houses, probably having been reported by a nosey neighbour or a ‘secret friend’. They were brought to trial on 26 January and all whipped in public.41 More potentially life-threatening were the few people who were sent to serve at one of the city’s Lazaretti, a not uncommon punishment in Italian cities at the time, mostly because they had broken out or taken goods from locked-up houses.42 However, despite the popular perception of the Lazaretto as ‘more feared than death itself ’, being sent to work in an isolation or quarantine centre does not seem to have been regarded as an exceptionally severe punishment, perhaps because, as we have seen above, the spaces were more permeable than suggested by the regulations, and also provided opportunities for the activities of networks for the organisation of theft from patients and the institution itself.

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Thus a man called ‘Il Fosso’ (the Ditch), a fumigator of houses (inzolfatore) was sent together with his wife and father-in-law to work at the quarantine centre of Villa Rusciano, because they had been unable to pay the fines imposed on them for their misdemeanours, ‘because they are poor, and do not have the wherewithal to pay the expenses’ of imprisonment.43 Another case, on 4 November, involved two men who were sent as punishment to the Lazaretto. Both Vincentio di Giovanbattista Romano and Giovanbattista di Vettorio di Baldo had been arrested on the grounds of artful begging. They had dressed up as hermits, and persuaded people to kiss a crucifix to convince them to give money to these allegedly holy men.44 The Strappado was one of the most rigorous punishments, as seen in a detail from the left Jacques Callot’s near-contemporary view of the fair in the piazza in front of the church of S. Maria Impruneta (see Plate 24, detail). As mentioned above, the Strappado involved being hoisted up with a rope wrapped around the armpits and then dropped, leading to dislocation of arms and shoulders; the number of times this was administered depended on the gravity of the crime. This terrible punishment was meted out to 12% of those prosecuted (71). Some were arrested in groups, such as the seven people on 10 November. The two women and five men were picked up in the street in the area south of the Arno called Monticelli, having been discovered after they had left a house which had been locked up, because there were people sick with a suspicious disease inside.45 Evidently, this multiple punishment was intended to provide a very public example to frighten people into obeying the law during the period of highest mortality. Others who were given the Strappado were individuals, such as the baker Lorenzo di Raffaello, who had been arrested and then put on trial early on during the total quarantine of the city. In his case he was prosecuted because the loaves of bread that he made and distributed to the poor on behalf of the Sanità weighed 3 ounces less than the standard weight. He was twice subjected to the Strappado in public, with a loaf of bread at his feet; the latter, designed to shame the criminal, was an established practice in medieval and early modern Europe.46 Others were punished for hiding or not reporting sickness in their household, or selling or stealing cloth and other objects, usually from locked-up houses. These people represented a range of occupations, including four inn-keepers, two bakers and two dealers of second-hand clothes. The first four were seen as more likely than others to spread disease, since they would have been in constant contact with the public. Second-hand clothes dealers

242

RELIGION, ISOLATION AND SURVIVAL

had from the very beginning been forbidden to practise their trade during the epidemic, for fear they would be buying and selling clothes which had belonged to plague victims. Perhaps most shocking to the health board were cases when their own employees were accused of robbing empty houses or extorting bribes for not reporting sickness, as in the case of Santi di Giovanbattista, who inspected houses where sickness had been reported. He was accused of having accepted a 2 scudi bribe from a woman, so that she was not taken to the Lazaretto at the Badia Fiesolana; this was equivalent to about a week’s wages for a labourer. His punishment included having to return the money to the woman and stand in public tied to the wooden structure where the Strappado was administered for half an hour, with a breve hung around his neck, with the words ‘for having taken bribes’. He was then flogged twice.47 The Strappado was also used more generally in criminal trials as a form of torture to extract confessions. The best example of its use during this plague epidemic was part of an on-going investigation into the nefarious dealings of Bartolomeo di Niccolò Fagni, who was a ‘fumigator of suspect houses’. We first hear his name on 13 December, when he was arrested for stealing an ampule of ‘olio controveneno’ while inspecting and fumigating houses.48 He was brought before the magistrate three days later and, although a lengthy trial ensued, he was eventually let off. However, suspicions remained and over the following months a series of his co-workers were arrested and interrogated with torture. They were accused, along with Fagni, who was obviously the ring-leader, of stealing from the houses they had been sent to disinfect. On 21 December, Baccio d’Agnolo Bassini was interrogated about taking a ring, among other things, when he visited a house with Fagni, and on 23 December two more of his accomplices, Bernardo di Domenico Bacci and Giovanbattista di Vangelista Rondinelli, were questioned about other cases of stealing. However, nothing was proven definitively; even when Fagni was rearrested and tortured, he maintained his innocence and was eventually let off.49 Finally, despite the dire threats contained in the Sanità’s decrees about a number of crimes that would result in being sent to serve on the galleys at Livorno, this was the fate of only 13 people or 2% of the total, which was furthermore later commuted to banishment. The first two who fell into this category held important offices as employees of the Sanità, and this severe punishment would have been designed to provide an important example and deterrent to others. The first was Alessandro Vestri, the Vice-Governor of the main Lazaretto to the north of the city, the Badia Fiesolana. He had

SURVIVING PLAGUE

243

been convicted of fraud, having claimed higher wages for labourers than he had actually paid them.50 The second man was the Lieutenant of the Bargello, Francesco detto ‘Il Luna’ (the Moon), whom we saw appointed on 1 November. He was accused during the general quarantine of having allowed some women on 23 February to travel through the city in a carriage to attend a wedding at the house belonging to Grassino of the Arte della Seta. Two other men were arrested at the same time, including one of Il Luna’s colleagues at the Bargello, the Corporal Giovanbattista detto Scottino. On investigation it turned out that they were married to these women, so the men were punished in front of their wives, while the latter were just imprisoned for a few days.51 Lower down the food chain than the Vice Governatore and the Luogotenente was the butcher, Giovanbattista di Christofano Calderina, who, despite living in an infected house, had not just visited his wife, but carried a potentially infected mattress through the streets, and to cap it all had gone to the market outside the city gates. It was by now early July 1631, when the plague was on the wane, but restrictions about leaving the city were still in force, so he would have had to bribe his way through the gate, and furthermore he may have been taking the mattress to the market for sale. Giovanbattista was condemned to 20 years in the galleys, although, after a series of petitions to the Grand Duke, this was reduced to 2 years and finally to one month, followed by 2 years of banishment in Livorno, because he was ‘old, more than sixty years, and sick’.52 The overall impression, then, was of a moderately lenient enforcement of the law, except in the case of those who were subjected to the Strappado, when it was felt necessary to give an example for crimes regarded as particularly dangerous to the public good. As seen above, in common both with medieval and early modern systems of justice in general, there was a substantial difference in the total number of women being accused and punished: they represented 22% of the total (excluding the 1% of men and 3% of women where we do not know the outcome).53 Table 8.2 shows that women also tended to have been treated more leniently, with a higher percentage falling within the first three lighter categories – imprisonment with or without a fine – 85% of women and 78% of men. They received a smaller proportion of the more overtly serious punishments; none were hung and only one banished; and a significantly higher number of men were subjected to the Strappado. The only category of punishment where the number of women equalled that of men was being forced to ride a donkey backwards; this was meted out mainly to prostitutes, and was intended to

244

RELIGION, ISOLATION AND SURVIVAL

shame the individual who was seen as having brought dishonour on the city, at a time when God was viewed as punishing the city for its sins. The most severe punishment, execution, was, however, only enforced once in the case of one person in Florence, despite the declarations of the Sanità at the beginning of the epidemic that anybody who tried illegally to enter the city and territory could be subjected to capital punishment.54 The person hanged was Andrea di Domenico Casignani, a young gardener of 21, who had rather stupidly twice broken into the same locked house, from which he had stolen goods and then gone on to sell them in the ghetto. The severity of the punishment was probably designed to set an example at a time, in early November, when mortality had begun to increase. After all, Andrea had risked spreading disease, through contact with goods belonging to somebody who was sick or had died of plague, compounded by entering the ghetto, which was locked during the plague epidemic and to which entry was prohibited.55 Accusations of the deliberate spreading of plague lay at the basis of the renowned trials and punishments of the untori in Milan in 1630, described in contemporary writers such as Giuseppe Ripamonti’s account of the Milanese plague, and later made famous by Manzoni’s The Betrothed.56 Although the records are incomplete, recently Samuel Cohn has examined a wide range of sources to determine how many alleged untori were actually brought to trial and executed. In contrast to the wild accounts of contemporaries of 1,500 untori arrested, he has calculated that there were probably fewer than 100 executions.57 The range of grisly punishments meted out to ‘plague-spreaders’ in Milan is reflected in detail in Plate 37. The Florentine Magistrato di Sanità instead only accused two people of being untori, both of whom have been mentioned in previous chapters. The first was Bastiano di Girolamo Giannelli from Borgo a Buggiano, who was arrested on 1 September in Volterra.58 He was accused of poisoning the holy water in the Cathedral. This underlines popular fear at the beginning of an epidemic, and indeed suspicion of anybody from outside the city, as he came from northern Tuscany, compounded by his trade as a travelling charlatan. The second accusation of poisoning was also against a man involved in medicine, Maestro Leandro Ciminelli, who worked at the first Lazaretto of Messer Bonifazio. Described as a Neapolitan or Sicilian physician, it was also rumoured that, before coming to work at Bonifazio, he had spread poison around the city. In the event neither he nor Bastiano were executed, and, after periods in prison, were released, Leandro even returning to work at the Lazaretto as a trusted employee.59 As we shall see below, there were

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245

many cases of people potentially spreading plague, through the buying, selling or moving of goods which had belonged to those sick or dead from plague, but none were described as untori and only Andrea di Domenico Casignani was punished through execution. Being a ‘foreigner’ was one of the traits which led to popular rumours of plague-spreading, as in Milan where the French were said to have been supplying poisons in order to weaken the regime to make it easier to invade.60 In Naples, on the other hand, the nuncio Giulio Spinola recorded rumours among the popular classes in 1656 that it was the Spanish regime, together with the Sanità itself, which had spread plague. This was countered by the government, who blamed the deliberate spreading of plague on the French and an exiled group which had fomented rebellion nine years earlier. Giulia Calvi notes that it was the coincidence between the three-quarters of the city where plague was most severe and the areas of rebellion that had fed these suspicions, leading to the combination of pestiferous and revolutionary contagion.61 Although in Milan there were no foreigners listed among the surviving trial records against untori, in Naples there were examples of northern Europeans arrested and tried for deliberately spreading plague.62 The wilder rumours about the deliberate spreading of plague by untori smearing poisonous substances throughout some Italian cities reflects a more general fear of particular elements threatening the stability of society. In Milan and Verona in 1575–6 there had been rumours of potential revolt and sedition, which it has been argued was assuaged by providing food to the unemployed.63 In the following century, we have seen in Naples in 1656 the association between the areas of highest mortality and the origins of the revolt of Masaniello in the previous decade, while in 1631 the artisans of Bassano in northern Italy rose up against the lack of work, declaring that ‘rather than let themselves die of hunger, they would go and pick up whatever they could find’.64 If the fear of foreign powers helps in part to explain the greater prevalence of accusations against untori in Milan and Naples, differences in the treatment of those accused of breaking the decrees of health boards can also be explained by the political contexts and regimes. In Rome a rigorous punitive system was enforced during the 1656–7 epidemic and led to frequent torture and brutal public executions.65 But Rome was unusual, anyway, in the greater strength of its combined secular and ecclesiastical governments. This was in addition to the fact that the Congregazione della Sanità had papal authority, and the man in charge of the Sanità in the papal state, cardinal Girolamo Gastaldi, imposed his own rigid conception of justice

246

RELIGION, ISOLATION AND SURVIVAL

and its enforcement, so that even people who fled from the Lazaretto could be executed.66 The rigorous punishment of those breaking plague legislation in Milan and Rome may represent the exception rather than the rule. In Naples, despite rigorous proclamations against those contravening the decrees of the Sanità, especially against the untori or those who broke out of locked houses, in practice the enforcement of punishments was sporadic.67 Then, as Alessandro Pastore has shown, there was relative leniency in overall sentencing and its enforcement in both Bologna and Genoa during the seventeenth-century plague outbreaks.68 He has attributed the difference in policies between Genoa and Rome to the fact that the former had a much weaker and more divided regime than the latter.69 Less severity in the levels of punishment in Florence, as in Bologna and Genoa, may also be linked to the political context, reflecting the young Grand Duke’s attitudes and policies. As has been seen, Ferdinand remained in or near the city during the epidemic, and he promoted his image of charity towards the poor, which could be seen as being exercised very publicly, since capital punishments had first to gain his approval. It was, moreover, seen as important to establish a balance between the maintenance of control over the population and a flexibility in enforcement, combined with financial support for the poor. We return, then, to the age-old theme of early modern poor relief and welfare, ‘fear and pity’, which, as discussed in earlier chapters, led to fear of the poor as potential fomenters of plague, which in itself led to proactive measures by governments to improve urban sanitary conditions and to sustain the lower levels of society.70 This tension in the reactions and motivations of the governing classes can be seen at both an individual and a more general level, through the cumulative evidence contained in the records of trials of those who broke the decrees of the health board. The evidence presented here serves to blur the rhetoric of the writers of medical treatises and official accounts, of the opposition of the rich and poor, through examining the identity and motivation of those brought to trial. While it can be argued that the types of action which led to prosecution could threaten the health of society, the relatively flexible and compassionate rulings of judges in the vast majority of cases suggests that these actions were not seen in the same light as potential revolts. Many individuals were brought to trial as a result of selfish actions rather than deliberate actions to foment rebellion threatening the regime. Having established the types and relative leniency of the punishment system established by the court of the Sanità, the overall pattern of prosecu-

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tions will be examined next, before concentrating in detail on the types of infraction of the law, listening carefully to the voices of those tried, to understand closer their reactions to living through plague. Prosecution: General Categories

An overall theme which links many of these trials is the concern of the Sanità officials with space, and the interaction of individuals and groups with public areas, such as city gates, piazze and streets, or with transitional spaces, including thresholds of houses and doorsteps, and with more private and intimate spaces within homes and workshops. The way in which space was formed by social interaction and individuals’ sensory experience is a topic which has attracted much attention, as in the recent collection of essays entitled The Experience of the Street in Early Modern Italy, edited by Georgia Clarke and Fabrizio Nevola.71 The following analysis will be organised thematically around the spatial context within which these 566 ‘crimes’ were committed (see Table 8.2). They were reflected in the following five categories: 1) City: leaving or entering; 2) Street: being in the wrong place at the wrong time; 3) House: entering or leaving locked premises; 4) Sanità: the physical context of offences by their officers; 5) Work: the places where people engaged in their normal occupations against the law. It should be emphasised that categorisation is not an exact science. There were inevitably some overlaps between categories, although each person has only been counted once, as in the case of the series of people staying at the Albergo del Titolotto, who, following a death in the hostel, all continued to go out to work (categories 3a and 5). In a very few cases, witnesses have been placed in the category of those about whom they were giving evidence, since they were all held in prison. It is striking that the single largest category of prosecutions (category 3) was associated with the house: 40% concerned people entering or leaving houses which had been locked up, because a resident had died or been sick. Many of these sounded ostensibly quite innocent cases, with residents entering or leaving to visit or stay with relatives or friends. Included in this figure was a relatively small number of those engaged in deliberate criminal activity, mostly by non-family members (7% of total), involving forced entry or theft of possessions from locked-up houses. These results are broadly reflected in those of studies elsewhere, as in the case of Bologna in 1630 or early modern England.72 Other more common offences took place in the street (16%), which includes socialisation and drinking at taverns or meeting to play cards, all of

248

RELIGION, ISOLATION AND SURVIVAL

which had been prohibited by law, while others were simply people outside their houses after curfew. Others were engaged in activities prohibited in the street, including begging, as we have seen in the case of the two men, who dressed themselves up as hermits and persuaded people to give them money upon kissing a crucifix. As discussed above, on another day, 17 October, some contadini, who had been emptying pozzi neri at night, were apparently very impatiently trying to rush through one of the city gates, the Porta al Prato, when their cart banged against the gate and two of the barrels of excrement were damaged so badly that the contents spilled out, so that the guards declared that they had nearly died from the stink, reflecting the close contemporary association between smell and sickness.73 A significant proportion of offences was also associated with work spaces (104 or 19%). The majority of offenders were men who had been discovered having left their locked-up house and gone to their workshop. This phenomenon was associated especially with the textile trade, which employed up to a third of the Florentine workforce, and many were involved in selling second-hand clothes, reflecting the belief that cloth was a particularly dangerous medium through which plague was spread. Table 8.2 also enables one to examine how types of offence changed over time. In the autumn (September to November), the largest numbers were associated with the house, but there was a fall in the percentage attributed to this category between autumn and spring from 47% to 39%, dropping subsequently to 33%. The system of surveillance and reporting of people entering and leaving locked houses evidently became more efficient as more policemen were employed. This was offset during the winter months (December to February) by a significant rise in the number moving around streets (5% to 31%). This may reflect a reaction against the restrictions imposed by the total quarantine of the city, which also included a number of cases (see below) where people were caught climbing over roofs to visit friends, neighbours and prostitutes! Many clearly broke the health board regulations through sheer frustration, either as a result of financial hardship or being shut up in cramped apartments with their families, or even from being alone. However, many trials reflect the close proximity in which relatives lived and the bonds which bound family members together to provide support to the sick and dying, even in the face of state regulation and fear of their own fate. The other significant category was associated with work, accounting for 18.4% of prosecutions overall. Here, too, there was variation over time.

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249

While there was a slight drop between autumn and winter (18.6 to 16.3%), there was a considerable increase in the spring (23.9%). This may reflect the fact that, even during the quarantine, the Florentine authorities gave permission for some textile workers to continue working, as long as they went to live in their workshops. This was a measure designed to ensure that the economy did not totally grind to a standstill. However, as Giulia Calvi points out, on some occasions, once plague had been discovered in a household, the family would divide, with the adult male members going off ‘covertly’ to stay and work in their workshops, while the women remained at home. It was often the men’s subsequent return home to check on the health of family members which led to their discovery by the Sanità officials.74 More broadly, most of these offences relating to work were selling goods, whether in the Mercato Vecchio or from shops or even in streets, or working at home, as in the case of prostitutes who received clients. The greatest suspicion, as we have seen, was against selling cloth products, since the fear, probably well founded, was that they came from infected households and would have helped to spread plague. What complicates this issue further is that many shops for provisions remained open, except during the quarantine when food was purchased from central warehouses. All this activity reflects the desire of individuals and families to attempt both to continue to follow a normal way of life, even during plague, and to protect or acquire possessions. It seems to have had little to do with, on the one hand, a sense of civic responsibility or even, and this is perhaps more curious, a fear of being infected through handling those goods which had come into contact with people diagnosed with plague, although this knowledge would have been widespread through society. Further details about the motivation and reactions of those arrested will be found in the rest of the chapter, which examines more closely specific examples of individuals in each category of prosecution, prefaced by an analysis of gender differences in prosecution (see Table 8.3). As mentioned above, overall, women represented only 22% of prosecutions, which reflects more general patterns discovered by studies in medieval and early modern Europe. In some categories, there were very few women involved in misdemeanours. For example, none were accused of hiding the sick or dead. Perhaps the most surprising is the low number of women who were prosecuted, because of engaging illegally in an occupation associated with the textile trade, given the high percentage of female employees engaged in the various stages of production. According to the 1632 census, even after the plague

250

RELIGION, ISOLATION AND SURVIVAL Female

Male

Total

%

F%M

1

11

39

50

8.83

28.21

STREET

2

22

70

92

16.25

31.43

HOUSE: Entry/exit

3a

49

124

173

30.57

39.52

Hiding sick/dead

3b

0

12

12

2.12

0.00

Forced entry/theft

3c

15

24

39

6.89

62.50

4

0

11

11

1.94

0.00

In houses

4a

1

15

16

2.83

6.67

In pesthouses

4b

7

18

25

4.42

38.89

Medical staff

4c

4

10

14

2.47

40.00

5

2

23

25

4.42

8.70

Textiles

5a

9

50

59

10.42

18.00

Food/drink

5b

1

19

20

3.53

5.26

6

5

25

30

5.30

20.00

126

440

566

100.00

28.64

22.26

77.74

100

CITY: Leaving & entering

SANITÀ: officers’ offences

WORK

Unknown Total Per cent

Table 8.3 Prosecutions by gender, 1630–1

had ceased, 77% of female household heads were involved in textiles, compared with 34% of male household heads.75 The low number may be partly explained by the greater restrictions placed on the movement of women, for, as seen in earlier chapters, from mid-December until well after the general quarantine of the city had been lifted women and children were not allowed to leave their houses. Instead, as noted in Chapter 7, women working in pesthouses as administrators, cooks or as nurses were accused of stealing food or bedclothes. This was in line with more general criminal activity of women in medieval and renaissance Europe; they tended to be associated with petty theft, stealing small objects for immediate consumption or sale.76 This also reflected the fact that most female misdemeanours during plague were associated with residence, such as leaving or entering locked-up houses (51% of female compared to 36% male). As has also been noted for Bologna during the 1630 plague, such cases were often related to possessions, reflecting fear of losing what women rightly thought were theirs, since items had belonged to relatives who had died or had been taken off to the Lazaretto; the aim was to remove them from the house before somebody else broke in and stole them.77 A relevant example is the case discussed above of the wife of the

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builder called ‘Il Rovinato’, who had carried home the blouse worn by her dead sister, whom she been nursing, leading to the death of the daughter to whom she donated it. Rondinelli recorded the incident in detail to emphasise how careless actions can take lives.78 From the general patterns of punishment and prosecution, the rest of the chapter will discuss in more detail trials from each category of prosecution to provide a clearer idea of the motivation of individuals and their interaction with health board employees and magistrates.79 Prosecuting the Popolo

Returning to the typology of prosecution, the various fields in Tables 8.2 and 8.3 have been organised according to broad spatial categories: the city, the street, the house and the working environments of the health officers and local inhabitants. In the following sections each space will be examined separately and illustrated by individual trials. The City: Leaving or entering The first category was constituted mainly by people either trying to leave or enter the city, when such movement was highly regulated, due to the fear of people importing or exporting plague. In fact, there were relatively few cases over the year – 50, or 8.8% of the total – suggesting that the system to control the movement of people through the city gates worked fairly efficiently. Even if the seasonal distribution of prosecutions was spread fairly evenly over the year (Table 8.1), an analysis by month paints a rather different picture, with the highest numbers in September (9) and July (9) (Figures 8.1 and 8.2). Towards the start of the epidemic people may not have been conversant with the decrees of the Sanità, or at least used this an excuse, as in the case of Lisabetta di Cammillo di Jacopo Sandini, who had been arrested on 3 September, after lending a health pass (bulletta di sanità) to her neighbour, Caterina di Piero Bencini. Both women lived in the parish of S. Stefano in Pane, just to the north of the city. In her trial, Caterina declared that she had needed to go into Florence to fetch some wool to weave, ‘and did not know this was a bad thing to do and she did not want to do harm to anyone’, evidently not realising or not admitting the suspicion with which any cloth was regarded by the Sanità. However, she persisted; although she was turned back when she tried to enter the city the first time, later in the day she managed to slip through the gate and was eventually arrested in Florence.80

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Two days later, the gold-beater Jacopo di Giovanni di Teracini Palermitano was arrested as he tried to enter the city through the Porta S. Miniato. An unusually vivid idea of his appearance emerges from the detailed court record: ‘A tall thin man, brown skin, with a Nazarene hat, dressed in white socks, a large jacket, with a black cloak.’81 On being questioned, he declared that he had decided to walk up to the Fortezza di S. Miniato from across the city, probably Via S. Zanobi where he lived, after which he rested in the church. He stayed on the hill for two and a half hours, because he said that the air was fresher up there. Under questioning, it emerged that Jacopo di Giovanni had left Palermo to escape the plague, then gone to Rome and afterwards to Loreto, presumably to thank the Madonna for his lucky escape, and arrived in Florence in March in order, as he said, to visit the city. Although he had come from an infected area, he arrived before the real restrictions had been put into place. Initially the arresting officials and the magistrate had clearly been suspicious of him as a ‘foreigner’. But he was released rapidly, as nothing further was proven against him, even at a time before mortality had begun to increase.82 Six months later, March also saw a slight rise in numbers. However, the majority of those arrested can be linked to one case alone, the eight people discussed above who had either facilitated or were involved in travelling through the city in a carriage to attend a wedding. They had been arrested on 23 February during the total quarantine of the city, when everybody, and particularly women, were restricted to their homes. Finally, July also saw a rise in prosecutions under this category (9). People appear to have been more prepared to take risks towards the end of the epidemic, as in the case of the butcher Giovanbattista di Christofano Calderina. He was brought to trial on 4 July; he had left an infected house where he lived and gone to a market outside the city walls, and finally had transferred a mattress from his home to another house.83 Then two men identified as Jews, Salamone di Moisè Calvani and Benedetto di Abramo da Siena, were tried on 14 July. They had been arrested at Sesto for buying and selling against the orders of the Sanità, which required all Jews to remain in the ghetto until the epidemic had officially been declared over.84 The same day two soldiers, one from Spain and the other from Salerno, were condemned for entering Florence against the orders of the Sanità; they had come via Bologna from the Imperial German camp in Lombardy, where plague had been rife.85 The Sanità took these misdemeanours seriously: they were either banished or given the Strappado.

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The Street If the relatively low number of people prosecuted for attempting to leave or enter the city without a valid health pass suggests that the guards were doing their job, it was clearly more difficult to control the movement of people within the city. There were double the number of prosecutions for being in the streets (16.25%), either when they should have been at home – after curfew or during the total quarantine – or were engaged in prohibited activities, such as meeting at taverns or playing games in groups. Concern was expressed that plague would spread more easily through crowds, and through individuals communicating with the sick or their contacts in locked-up houses. As we have seen in previous chapters, while the secular and ecclesiastical authorities shared a common concern over the dangers of people collecting together in public, there were contradictions in policy. On 13 November, when mortality was at its height, the Sanità gave permission to stall-holders to continue to sell vegetables, meat and fish in the Mercato Vecchio, though nowhere else, whereas two days later all schools were closed, and all parents were banned from accompanying their children.86 Then during celebrations for the festival of S. Antonino, although participation in processions was limited to the upper echelons of society, members of the public were allowed to assemble together at street corners. Finally, during the quarantine, any direct participation in religious activities was prohibited, and the public had to watch the celebration of Mass from their windows. Certain groups within society were also regarded as more dangerous and more likely to spread plague, as at the beginning of the epidemic when beggars had been shut up in the Ospedale dei Mendicanti and the Jews enclosed in the ghetto. Then, on 28 November, the Sanità petitioned the Grand Duke with the proposal that all women and children below the age of 12 should not be allowed out of their houses for an indeterminate amount of time; this was approved the following day.87 Part of the explanation may have been on medical grounds, for the humours of both women and children were thought more likely to become corrupted, and therefore they were more likely to breathe out infected air. But the main reason appears to have been social control, to keep at least part of the population at home. The Company of S. Michele, who had undertaken the sanitary survey in August, reported on 2 December there were some 30,000 poor people in the city, of whom some 21,000 were women and children. While some of their menfolk went out to work, many of these dependants required sustenance and were easier to identify and help on a regular basis if they remained at home.88

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One of the main concerns of the Sanità was to prevent people collecting together in groups in the street, for it was believed that anyone who was infected would pass on the plague to others. This was the reason for the prohibition of any form of games, as mentioned in Chapter 4. In midNovember, a decree was passed in which the Sanità declared that ‘despite the prohibition of groups playing games at the Orto di Canto di Nello and other places, one hears that throughout the city in many barbers’ workshops and other places many people meet together to play at a variety of games’. In future all such activities were banned, whether in houses or in shops.89 Rondinelli recorded that, if caught, the penalty was a fine of 100 scudi, and, if anybody persisted, they were sent to work on the Grand-Ducal galleys.90 This was a very high sum, for it would have been equivalent to 480 days’ earnings for a fully employed labourer. However, most of the people caught playing games in the street were of humble origin and would have found it impossible to pay the fine, suggesting that here, as elsewhere, the decrees were worse in their bark than their bite, and were issued more to scare and to set an example than to be put into practice. The renewal of the decree suggests that people were prepared to flout the law and continue to play games even during times of plague. In fact, about a fifth of those people arrested in the category of street crime had collected together to play bowls and this had led to a ‘very big crowd of people’. There were three main groups arrested and brought to trial in December (17 and 22) and January (9). The six men brought to trial on the 17th included two barbers, Francesco di Michelagnolo, known as ‘Diavolini’, Francesco di Ceseri Fantasti, and Ugolino Bastiano il Rosso, a dealer in games who hired out balls (pallottole) and cards. They were joined by a soldier, a shop-keeper and a silk-weaver.91 These men came from different parts of Florence and would have travelled across the city to join in the games, while the five men put on trial on 22 December all came from the parish of S. Ambrogio. They were probably neighbours or friends, and included a boatman, a wool-beater and a gardener and his assistant, and ‘were all found acting in a criminal fashion, playing bowls in a house at Porta alla Croce, against the decree published about this matter’. In fact, when Santi the gardener and Piero his lad were about to be arrested they fled, but were declared as ‘still being complicit in the crime’.92 Porta alla Croce was also the scene for another type of incident, which was surprisingly common: those who were caught in the street talking to people in locked-up houses, as when Antonio di Francesco Traballesi was

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seen on 7 December having a friendly chat with Monna Maria. In fact, since Antonio was arrested, his testimony has survived: Last Wednesday I was walking towards Porta alla Croce, and when I was close to the gate the widow Monna Maria, who was locked in her house by the Sanità, called out of the window and asked me how I was. I said to her that I was fine, and while I was talking to her the police officers came and took me to prison. When questioned he [Antonio] declared that the window through which Monna Maria talked was on the ground floor, but he was standing on the other side of the street.93

Monna Maria was seen, then, as potentially infecting an acquaintance, since if she was sick she could have breathed out infected air. However, evidently, since Antonio was some distance away, it was not regarded as a risk, and he was released after questioning. Another man arrested on 6 December, the tailor Lorenzo Oberto Cavetti, had been caught having stuck his head in a hole in an entrance of a locked house in Via del Campaccio. He was talking to his boss, who had been locked up in his house. But worse was to come when he was accused of receiving from his boss some pieces of cloth, which, as the trial record says, was all done against the law, and he was put back into prison. However, when questioned subsequently, he replied that his boss had not given him any cloth; he was carrying the cloths from his shop and intended to work on them at home. Here we see not just fear that somebody who was potentially infected could breathe out infected air, but that the cloth would become infected and it would spread the plague as it was carried through the city.94 In these two cases the officers of the Sanità were fulfilling their job, but perhaps were being over-enthusiastic, for after further investigation the judge decided that neither Monna Maria nor Antonio Traballesi had done anything wrong, even if in principle the officers’ actions were correct, since even talking to somebody outside a locked-up house was seen as having the potential to spread disease if the inhabitants were sick with plague. It was regarded as an even worse offence if people were caught chatting outside late at night, when everybody should have been at home. Thus the cook Antonio di Matteo  was tried on 4 December, because ‘at three at night, he was found speaking to a number of people, who had been locked in their houses, through a window without bars, which was about 2 metres above the ground. The house was in Via de’ Pilastri, opposite the Osteria del Fiasco d’oro.’95 In this case, as well as that of Antonio Traballesi, we can see that the

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Sanità officers followed the letter of the law, in reporting distances between people and of windows in relation to street level. Antonio di Matteo should not have been talking to people in locked-up houses at that time of the night, especially since they may have been sick, in which case their breath would have infected the air. The location may also be significant, for not only was it opposite a hostel, but also because Via de’ Pilastri was one of the streets designated where prostitutes could live and work, thereby encouraging the possibility of illicit actions.96 Francesco Rondinelli, in his discussion of the reasons for the prohibition of people collecting together in the street, suggested that this was prohibited, not just because it spread contagion, but also because it led to immoral acts, ‘which are frequent in these places’.97 There was a heightened awareness of the dangers of the contagion of sin during the total quarantine of the city, when religion had become even more important to the populace, as they were prevented from going to church and had instead to participate in Mass from a distance. During the whole period plague was in the city, there were 25 cases which involved prostitution, 11 of which were accusations against men for talking to or for frequenting prostitutes; the others were against the women themselves. However, 38% of these cases fell within the 40-day period of the quarantine, reflecting concern about punishment for the wages of sin. There may also have been an increase in the number of individuals reporting prohibited activities, such as leaving houses, given that the majority of the population were at home and had more time to observe their neighbours! This was part of a wider phenomenon during the quarantine, with an increase in the number of people accused of mixing together in the street, which this measure had specifically been imposed to prevent. Nearly half (46 of 92) of those prosecuted for being outside their house over the whole year took place during these 40 days. Many of the accusations against prostitutes were located in particular areas, either in or near the streets which had been established by law as the zones where prostitutes could practise their trade legitimately.98 One of these streets was Via Pentolini in the parish of S. Ambrogio, where four cases had been reported, reflecting the concerns back in October, when, as seen above, a decree had been passed on the 27th to remove those prostitutes who lived behind the Compagnia di S. Michele at S. Ambrogio. Another five were reported in the parish of S. Lorenzo, also not far from those streets designated as legitimate work places for prostitutes.99 Some cases involved men visiting prostitutes during the quarantine, and even breaking down the bars, which had been put into place across the

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doors of suspected houses (see below); others were simply examples of people talking in the street. Thus on 7 January, Lorenzo detto Baldrone, one of the corporals of the Bargello employed by the Sanità, reported that he had been walking along Via dell’Acqua at 2 o’clock in the morning, when he had noticed that a ground-floor door was open, which clearly at that hour should have been closed since it was after curfew. Investigating further he entered the house and discovered Giuseppe Gugli and Domenico Andreucci talking with the prostitute Donna Maddalena della Biancha, following which they were taken off to prison and punished.100 Later in the month, on 27 January, two prostitutes, called Caterina Buco detta La Guida and Maddalena, had been reported by their neighbour Lucrezia in the street where they lived, Via Pentolini. Apparently not only had Maddalena asked her for money, which she had refused, but they had said ‘most infamous words with no regard for girls and respectable women’, among whom she obviously included herself.101 This may have been part of a long-standing battle of Lucrezia with her prostitute neighbours; the anonymous system of reporting during the plague provided her with a useful tool with which to express her resentment. This reflects the extent to which ordinary life continued during the epidemic, which served to throw into relief existing tensions and rivalries, underlining the necessity to examine reactions to plague within the wider social and cultural context. Once the quarantine had begun on 22 January, the population was told that people were not allowed to leave through the front door, except for one male member of a household, who collected food. However, they were allowed to take the air by opening windows or standing on balconies or roofs, since it was admitted that staying locked up together might also increase disease. Some seem to have taken this as a licence to roam further afield. There are examples in court records of people being reported climbing over roofs to visit friends and carousing together on balconies and rooftops to while away the time. In January 1631, three men, Matteo d’Andrea Zachagnini, Giovanni di Niccolò Fogliari and Giovanni sarto, had been arrested, because they ‘each day had climbed over two roofs and the terrace belonging to the innkeeper Petto Sudicio, and with the said Salvestro and his sons had played cards’. However, on 22 January they were alleged to have broken down the entrance of the flat belonging to two prostitutes, Maria di Menico and Benedetta di Francesco, where they were discovered and taken to jail.102 When interviewed, the protagonists closed ranks. For example, Benedetta replied to questioning:

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I don’t know how to play the guitar and I didn’t hold a guitar on the roof, even though I was on the roof, and Matteo and the man called Giovanni were on their own roofs. On the roof of Petto Sudicio the innkeeper I did not see anybody.103

Maria provided a bit more information and backed up Benedetta’s statement: I was yesterday on my roof and I saw many people sitting on all the other roofs, and on the roof belonging to the said Petto, I didn’t see anybody, except those from his house and I didn’t see anybody else playing or anything else . . .104

These people were following the Sanità regulations; as instructed, they were taking the air on their roofs. However, if, as the birri suggested, they climbed along roofs, then they were also mixing together, which the quarantine had been imposed to prevent, exacerbated still further if they broke down the entrance to Benedetta and Maria’s flat! But, since even the men when interviewed supported each other’s statements, the judge was unable to prove the case, and the protagonists were released after paying a fine. Clearly the occupations of the women had attracted the attentions of the Sanità; moral pollution would have added to the corruption caused by plague. Many of those who were prosecuted for being in the street were accused of having left their homes at a time prohibited by the Sanità, while others were engaged in activities not allowed during the plague, such as gaming or visiting prostitutes. There is inevitably some overlap with the next category of prosecution, the house, which, as has been discussed above, represented the single largest number of cases (40%), with the main distinction being that, in the case of the street, the main activities took place outside, whereas the latter was by definition focused on entering or exiting from the internal spaces of the house. The House The category of ‘house’ has been divided into three sections (see Table 8.2) the largest is made up of those people caught entering or exiting a locked house (30.6% of 566), to which can be added the cases which involved forced entry and theft (6.9%). The high number of people in the first sub-category reflects an almost obsessive concern on the part of the employees of the Sanità with entrances

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and exits of houses, including windows, doors, thresholds and even roofs, particularly during the total quarantine of the city. Most people left houses which were associated with sickness or death, or were caught in the streets after curfew, and most were in the period of highest mortality (November through to January), with a fall in February, suggesting that the regulations were better enforced during the quarantine. Some cases appear to have been very innocent, such as the widow Sandra di Matteo, who was arrested on 23 January, because she ‘left the house to catch a hen which was outside, and I immediately returned inside, and I was arrested and taken off to prison’. Extra vigilance would have been enforced as this was right at the beginning of the general quarantine of the city, but even so she was released rapidly.105 Through the Sanità’s concern with spaces, we also learn much about neighbourhood and family ties and everyday relations and practices, which normally went unrecorded, as in the case of Monna Betta d’Antonio, a woolweaver by profession, who had been arrested on 8 November, because, as she said at her trial: This morning I had let down a basket out of my upstairs window, because my son had asked me to mend a pair of trousers, so I let down the basket so that he could put them inside for me, since he was locked up and quarantined in the rooms beneath mine. Then a gentleman of the Sanità arrived and saw the basket and made me go to prison.106

Evidently her explanation was regarded as innocent enough; she was allowed to return home, and her somewhat repetitive testimony seems to reflect direct speech. In fact, according to Rondinelli, permission was given during the quarantine for people to let down a basket with a chain from a terrace.107 This was to allow food to be provided to those shut up in their houses, whereas Monna Betta was passing back a mended pair of trousers to her son, and there was constant suspicion of any clothes which could have contained the seeds of disease. There were times, and especially during the total quarantine of the city, when family members, who lived close to each other, became frustrated because they were not allowed to leave their houses and to meet, as they would have done normally. This was reflected in the case involving three sisters and their priest brother. They had been arrested because they were engaged in what the health board regarded as inappropriate behaviour. In

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other words, they were enjoying themselves in the middle of the night. However, it is significant that here, as in other instances, once investigated there was more to the story than there appeared initially. The case begins with the report of Piero dal Ponte a Sieve: Captain Piero dal Ponte a Sieve, from the guard of the Bargello, in reference to the evening of 24th of the current month, was with his armed guards (famigli) and the corporal in Via di S. Gallo at three hours of the night, where they found in the house, Donna Maria di Giovanbattista from Empoli, Donna Francesca di Lorenzo and Donna Laura di Stefano. They were in the company of a priest wearing a mask with a guitar in his hand. They said that they had wanted to go to the house of a neighbour, and the corporal gave orders to take their names and gave orders  to free them, and so it was done. Then, because of the events of that morning, these women were arrested and taken to the secret prison, so that they could be punished for having broken the orders of the Sanità.

Following the testimony of the corporal, one of the sisters gave evidence. Maria Giovanbattista: ‘I live in Via dell’Acqua opposite Sandrina. They arrested me in the house belonging to my brother in Via S. Gallo, opposite the stables of the Signor Cardinale about ten days ago.’ Judge: ‘How were you found in the house of your brother?’ Maria Giovanbattista: ‘I felt ill and he [my brother] spoke to Signor Romoli and . . . two lads [of the health board], who were passing by with their cart full of clothes to be burned, accompanied me . . . Yesterday evening the door was open and in the house there was nobody else except for us, three sisters and Domenico Fantini, our brother the priest, and in order to pass the time we dressed up our brother in a mask, and we were dancing among ourselves, and while he was mounted on the stairs dressed up like that, the corporal passed by and hearing us laughing he came closer to the door and saw what was going on inside the house.’108

In this incident this group were unfortunate to have left open their front door, so that as the corporal of the guard passed along Via S. Gallo he was attracted by the jollity and spied the priest in a mask outlined on the stairs.

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The women had obviously broken the law, having left their own homes, something prohibited to them during the total quarantine of the city. In questioning it emerged that Maria had doubly sinned, because she was ill and should possibly have been taken to the Lazaretto rather than enjoying herself with her family in the middle of the night. It is significant that the priest himself was not apparently arrested, even though behaving indecorously and having left his front door open, probably because of clerical immunity.109 These cases have allowed us to view the close ties between family members and friends, providing emotional support at a time when people felt isolated and threatened by plague regulations which prohibited their normal everyday activities. There were also times when family members were left behind, because their relatives had been taken off to a Lazaretto. A couple of girls, Maria d’Andrea and Cammilla d’Antonio, living in a ground-floor flat in Via Gora, had been reported to the Sanità, and were put on trial on 6 November. Their mother had been taken sick 10 or 11 days previously and had been carried off to the Lazaretto of S. Miniato. They had been reported by a neighbour and the ‘secret friend’ recorded that the two girls had continually left their apartment, where they had been locked up, and gone upstairs to visit the widow Margherita and the builder Giovanbattista di Giulio. It was reported that the girls had begun to dance with Margherita and Giovanbattista and Margherita’s daughters. and it was at this point that the Sanità officials arrived. It was recorded that Margherita and Giovanbattista were taken off to prison, so they would not infect the others in the house. In the trial inevitably Margherita blamed the girls, saying to them, according to her, when they appeared in her apartment: ‘Oh traitors, what have you done?’ Maria d’Andrea admitted their wrongdoing and apologised, putting it down to the fact that she had a ‘small brain’!110 Here one can appreciate the impact of plague at a very personal level, with the head of household being taken off to the Lazaretto, leaving behind two teenage girls. Evidently they had been used to playing with their friends upstairs and had thought nothing about going to visit them, since they were probably lonely and frustrated at being shut up alone. Even so, this would also have involved breaking down the barrier which would have been erected across their door by the Sanità officials after their mother had been removed. We can see clearly how houses were divided up between different tenants who had different reactions, including those like the ‘secret friend’ who reported this incident, either through concern about the threat to

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public health of these girls’ activities or because they saw this as a way to make money through collecting the reward. Others, such as Margherita and Giovanbattista, evidently welcomed the girls as friends, even though they did not admit this in their trial. There were other examples of people working at Lazaretti who were concerned about the fate of their family they had left behind in the city, as in the case mentioned in Chapter 7 of the nurse Oratio Borsi. He had written from S. Miniato petitioning the Sanità magistrates on 18 November at the height of the epidemic since he was concerned about his wife Angliola, who had been left alone, which worried him because ‘my poor wife suffers without her mother and moreover she is a tender age of only 20’.111 These records, then, reflect the close proximity in which families and friends lived, and the bonds which bound them together to provide emotional and financial support to the sick and abandoned, even in the face of state regulation and fear of their own fate. The extent to which families were prepared to go are reflected in those few cases (12) where they attempted to hide or not report the sick or dead, making up 2% of total prosecutions (category 3b). Once again there was a variety of reasons somebody might be arrested, including for deliberate evasion of the law. Thus, on 4 November, Giovanni di Bruno Brunelli, a fishmonger in the Mercato Vecchio, had been arrested for deliberately hiding disease through not declaring somebody had died of ‘mal contagiosa’ in his house. He had been arrested because he had been seen carrying ‘furtively’ at night, with the help of other people, the body of his grandson from Via delle Ruote, where he had died of plague, back to his own house in Via S. Zanobi (see Map 5.4c). He explained his actions as out of consideration for those people who lived in the house where the child had died, so they would not be locked up. It is difficult to avoid the impression that he was floundering around to find excuses for his behaviour, especially given his subsequent actions. He compounded his crime for ‘the said Giovanni had gone on to mix with a number of people, and particularly in selling fish in the Mercato, where he was arrested in the act, which could infect and spread plague through the whole of Florence’.112 Although no more details are provided, presumably his motivation had been to support his own children so that his son could continue to work, although his testimony reflects little concern with the potential of spreading infection through the city. The same was true of a better educated man who in November was accused of a series of misdemeanours. Piero di Raffaello Billi lived in Via Gualfonda and worked as a scribe at the Dogana. He first entered the records

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on 5 November after he had been reported by a ‘secret friend’, and had been brought to trial for an event which had taken place the previous August. Piero had been accused of having carried, with the help of another man, the body of his servant Domenica, who had died of ‘mal contagioso’, and dumping her in Piazza Vecchia di S. Maria Novella, around the corner from where he lived in Via Gualfonda. Undismayed, he had then gone on to mix with others, potentially leading to ‘severe damage and danger in infecting other people’, following which he was imprisoned in the Sanità prison of S. Onofrio.113 After release, on 14 November, he was accused of visiting relatives who were sick, although he was subsequently let off because his denial was accepted.114 He next appeared before the Sanità judge on 4 December, as Piero di Michele Billi, although it was in fact the same person. This time he had been accused of having received in his house Girolomo, the son of Francesco Manzuoli, who later returned and then died of ‘mal contagioso’. In his defence, Piero talked about how the surgeon had treated the boy: ‘He put on top of the swelling an unguent of white lilies and a filthy woollen cloth, and then on Wednesday he took blood from the feet, and the day afterwards he died at 17.00.’115 It seems he was trying to excuse himself by suggesting that the surgeon did no good. But Piero was part of a wider conspiracy involving Girolomo’s father, Francesco Manzuoli, who had been arrested on 29 November; he had been accused of bribing another surgeon, Vettorio Geri, not to report his sick son to the authorities.116 These three incidents suggest that Piero was good at talking himself out of difficult situations and covering his tracks, given that no direct evidence could apparently be found against him. He was not, however, working in isolation, as seen in the case of Girolamo Manzuoli, who had been sick when he visited Piero at his home in Via Gualfonda. He had also involved somebody else to help to carry his servant’s body before she was dumped in the street. Members of Piero’s immediate circle also fell foul of the law. On 24 November, his wife, Barbera di Piero, was accused of visiting a sick nephew. She was imprisoned and then released after eight days; in her defence she said that she had never left the house. Then on 1 December, Piero’s brother-in-law, Raffaello di Taddeo Statini, also described as a scribe, had been accused of having continued to work at a writing school on Piazza del Duomo, even after schools had been closed and his relatives were sick. He responded that he was not working, but was in the house on Piazza del Duomo where he lived. The first part of his defence must have been accepted,

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because he was released having been placed in quarantine at S. Onofrio for 20 days.117 The trials of Piero di Raffaello Billi and his associates are revealing on a number of counts. In the first place, it shows him at the centre of a series of networks, whether it was the Manzuoli family or his own family. Through the Manzuoli he was also linked to further law-breaking, because Francesco, Girolomo’s father, had deliberately bribed the surgeon not to report his sick son. Secondly, it demonstrates that, despite a series of quite severe accusations against him, including dumping a dead body in the street, he had managed to elude punishment through lack of real proof. Whether this was a result of his ingenuity in hiding the evidence, or because he was the recipient of malicious neighbourhood reporting, is difficult to say. The neighbourhood watch was an important part of the next category: forced entry and theft from locked houses (category 3c), which represented 7% of the total or 39 cases. It emerged from the trial of two lads on 3 November. They had been denounced by a ‘secret friend’, who on 31 October had reported that he or she had seen two people climbing a wall surrounding an orchard belonging to the Guadagni family in Via delle Ruote. At the time they had not been recognised. However, they had been spied by a woman, who was a neighbour, and by the Guadagni’s gardener. They were reported as having tried to break into a house, which had been locked up after the death of an old man. After this was reported to the health officers an officer went to investigate; he took a ladder with him and inspected the wall and discovered ‘a hole in the said wall where a foothold had been made’, to allow the lads to scale the wall.118 If these records reveal the strength of links between family and friends, they also reflect the strength of neighbourhood solidarity. A number of people were reported by ‘secret friends’, reflecting that, as mentioned above, neighbours were encouraged to make secret denunciations of anybody transgressing any of these laws. The trials talk of the ties of the local community, which was also linked to suspicion of outsiders. This type of informal reporting is part of a wider phenomenon familiar from studies of early modern European witchcraft trials, from which it has been found that often cases of denunciation stemmed from local rivalries or dislikes or petty jealousies. It is also important not to forget in this context the financial incentives for reporting petty theft, with the reward of 10 scudi paid for anybody successfully prosecuted as a result. This, it will be remembered, was a substantial reward, and was equivalent to 45 days’ earnings for an unskilled worker and 30 for a master mason.

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An example of more successful criminal activity was that of Salvadore di Vincenzo Tortorelli, a baker at the Porte Vecchie, who, according to the charge-sheet in January 1631, had ‘entered the house of Giovanni di Jacopo Dolci, who had died of the contagion, together with all his children and their mother’.119 Salvadore was accused of taking objects, including rings and a necklace, from this locked house; to make matters worse he gave them to his prostitute. During the trial it was discovered that Giovanni di Jacopo Dolci was, in fact, his father-in-law, so he claimed initially that they were his family’s possessions, suggesting that he had consent from the family to remove the objects, and to prove the point he said ‘I can swear on the sacred stone’ (pietra sacra). However, once he was tortured he recanted and admitted that he had indeed just been stealing without permission! In addition to the crime of theft for which he would have been prosecuted in normal times, he risked becoming sick though absorbing the corrupt air of plague in the house where people had died recently and into which he had broken. It was feared that he could then have spread the disease in the city through his potentially infected breath, and also by spreading the seeds of disease attached to both the goods he had stolen and to his clothes. Understandably, in these circumstances, he received a harsh punishment of a fine of 25 scudi and twice being subjected to the Strappado; the consequent dislocation of arms and shoulders would most likely have affected his future ability to work as a baker. This wide variety of infractions of the sanitary decrees, from quite innocent cases to the more deliberately criminal, all talk of the wide variety of strategies of survival adopted by a population not used to such a variety of restrictions on their movement. They speak also of the preciousness of possessions and the ties of friendship and of the family, both to relatives of the sick and deceased. They also reflect that criminals had a field day, not used to the large number of empty houses and apartments potentially ripe for burglary. The role of the neighbourhood is also highlighted here, as neighbours remained alert to unusual activities which could potentially spread disease or cause disruption. While some cases stemmed from direct denunciations of private citizens, many were the result of the reports of Sanità employees who observed activities potentially against the law as they walked along the streets of the city. They were themselves also clearly in a good position to take advantage of the regulations put into place during the plague epidemic, if they were minded to profit by the confusion and fear created by the plague. The following section will look at a range of cases involving prosecutions against

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Sanità employees. The authorities came down heavily on any such activities, applying severe punishments as a deterrent, but we should not exaggerate the phenomenon. In comparison with those transgressions examined in this section, of private citizens leaving or entering houses, the number of cases against state employees was relatively low: 66 or 12% of total prosecutions. Prosecuting the Sanità Many of these Sanità employees had been taken on during the emergency. However, given the nature of both full-time and part-time employees, it is not possible to estimate the percentage of those paid by the Sanità who were prosecuted. Their jobs were dangerous, as they met opposition or absorbed the corrupt fumes of plague. Whilst higher wages were paid to some of the personnel to induce them to serve in Lazaretti and to visit infected houses, others saw this as an opportunity for profit.120 The offences of Sanità officers have been divided into four main categories, two associated with the location where the ‘crimes’ were discovered, in houses and in Lazaretti. The other two consist of a generic category (category 4), where no location was specified, and the last (4c) concentrates on the misdemeanours of medical staff, most of which took place in the houses of the sick. Despite the differences between location and personnel, there were two major offences: bribery and theft. Medical staff, rather than stealing, tended, with Sanità officers, to be implicated in taking bribes for treating the sick or for not declaring sickness or death. Indeed, this was underlined as a grave problem by the anonymous brief chronicle of the epidemic: ‘the disorder was caused in great part by the greediness of those employees, who undressed plague corpses and sent their clothes to their own houses to sell’.121 Theft took place mostly from locked houses or from the Lazaretti. Thefts from houses in the city are dominated by a series of cases against one man, the fumigator Bartolommeo di Niccolò Fagni, whom we have met above. The case against him was conducted over a month, and includes denunciations, testimonies of witnesses and testimonies of Fagni and his accomplices. What emerges from these records is a lively scene full of contradictory voices, which have been well captured by Giulia Calvi.122 Fagni had been a trusted employee of the Sanità, as he recounted in his defence at his trial on 12 December. At the beginning of the epidemic he

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had begun by supplying beds to a series of isolation facilities in the city, including Bonifazio, S. Onofrio, the Ospedale de’ Talani and the houses in Via del Giardino which had been assigned to those children who had been left behind when their parents were taken off to a Lazaretto. Subseqently, Fagni worked with another official, Dr Durazzini, in opening locked houses to fumigate them. However, when Durazzini was appointed as the director of the small Lazaretti at Legnaia and Settignano, Fagni remained in charge of this operation with four men working under him, clearly providing him with the opportunity for theft.123 On 19 December fresh accusations for stealing emerged against Fagni and his associates. The weaver Piero di Lorenzo Maiani was questioned about the stolen goods from the house of the builder Jacopo, who lived in Piazza del Grano. Jacopo agreed that various pieces of linen and woollen cloth had been stolen by them, instead of being taken for fumigation and quarantine at S. Marco Vecchio, and said that at the same time various other valuables had disappeared. Even though torture was applied to Fagni and his associates, they continued to maintain their innocence, and the judge could not make any evidence stick, leading to their release.124 We have already discussed, in Chapter 7, the extent of the criminal activity of those employed in the Lazaretto of S. Miniato, and the way in which they benefited from their networks of associates, which spread out from the Lazaretto to the city, enabling them to pass on and sell stolen objects. Many of these objects belonged to the Lazaretto, including sheets, bed-covers and food, while others had belonged to the dead, such as the jacket and other valuables stolen by Andrea, who was employed as a gravedigger at S. Miniato.125 S. Miniato was not the only Lazaretto to suffer from theft. Tommaso di Francesco Peroni at the much smaller Lazaretto at Legnaia, where he performed the role of steward, had been accused with Maddalena d’Aghostino Chiari of having stolen bread and other goods. When arraigned before the Sanità judge on 13 December it was discovered that, in addition to theft, they had had ‘carnal relations’ and gone to her house in the city, thus also potentially spreading plague after his contact with the sick at the Lazaretto.126 He was punished with three doses of the Strappado and she was tied to the Strappado structure, but without being hoisted up in the air. It was not just theft which plagued the life of Lazaretti, but also fraud, as in the case of Alessandro Vestri, the Vice-Governor of the Badia Fiesolana, where he had employed a number of people from the surrounding area to dig graves. However, when his ex-employees were interviewed, it was discovered

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that Vestri had paid out very little to the labourers. He had evidently not expected his accounts to be audited. The investigating magistrate took his job very seriously, and had taken the lists of named payments and checked them with the individuals concerned, who confirmed that they had not been paid or had received less than was their due.127 Taking bribes was the other more common accusation against Sanità employees. In early November two men, Santi di GiovanBattista and Bastiano di Giovanni detto ‘Il Rosso’, servants of the Sanità and of the customs respectively, were sent to a house in Borgo S. Piero Gattolini, to accompany a woman and her family to the Lazaretto. However, they said that, because she had so feared going to the Lazaretto, she offered a bribe so that she should not be taken there: 7 giuli to Bastiano and 10 lire to Santi, equivalent respectively to about four and eight days’ work for a labourer.128 The older man received the most severe punishment, being whipped twice in public, preceded by half an hour tied to the Strappado structure, with a notice around his neck saying that he committed fraud. Bastiano di Giovanni seems instead to have got off lightly and been sent home. The judge took into account that he was not an employee of the Sanità and that there was actually no evidence that he had taken a bribe. His age may also have played a part for, as he pleaded, he was only 19 years of age, in which case he may have been led astray by the older man.129 There were also accusations against medical staff who had benefited financially from providing misdiagnoses so a sick person could avoid being taken to the Lazaretto, as we have seen in the case of the son of Francesco Manzuoli. A deliberate misdiagnosis of cause of death would have meant that somebody was buried in the local parish church, rather than in the anonymous public plague pit or Campisanti. Cesarino, for example, was a surgeon appointed by the Sanità to visit suspect cases in the Sesto of S. Giovanni, and was arraigned twice in the first half of November.130 In the first instance, Cesarino had apparently attended the Albergo di Titolotto in Borgo La Noce, which had a pre-existing history of a recent suspicious death. About a month earlier, in mid-October, when the owner of the Titolotto had died, the local surgeons had ordered his burial in his local church of S. Lorenzo. However, on investigation, the Sanità declared that the danger was that it ‘could perhaps have been mal contagioso and could have caused great errors and the death of more people’.131 Then on 27 or 28 October two women in the albergo fell sick: Lisabetta, wife of Titolotto, and the widow Francesca, who worked for them as a servant, and had looked after Titolotto in his sickness. Cesarino declared that they were not sick of

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mal contagioso and had ordered that they should be taken to the hospital of S. Maria Nuova, where those who suffering from ‘ordinary sicknesses’ were treated.132 On arrival, the two women were diagnosed by the hospital doctors as having mal contagioso and they were sent to S. Miniato. The consequence of Cesarino’s actions was that the albergo was not locked up, and the eight or ten people who lived there continued to go about their normal way of life, including a wool-weaver and a glove-maker, both of whom worked with cloth, regarded as potentially dangerous since it could carry plague. Then one of the inhabitants of the albergo had died on 5 November. She was called Margherita di Piero di Guido and her husband was a labourer from Carmignano to the north-west of Florence.133 Despite being buried as a plague victim in the Campisanti outside the city walls, the albergo still remained open and the inhabitants were left free to roam the city. In this instance it was the owner of the albergo, Antonio, who was regarded as the most guilty and he was condemned to two doses of the Strappado, while the other inhabitants were released.134 Cesarino next appears in a trial on 11 November, in his capacity as surgeon of the Sesto of S. Giovanni.135 This time he had been called to Via S. Zanobi, which is close to Borgo La Noce, where a series of people had died of mal contagioso, all of whom he had allowed to be buried in S. Lorenzo. They included another hostel proprietor, Antonio di Goro, his wife and three children, while a daughter was sent to S. Miniato. Again Cesarino had maintained the cause of death was not plague. and he had permitted Antonio’s brother, Guido, who also lived in Via S. Zanobi, to go to his workshop, despite the fact there were three people sick in his house, his own daughter and two of Antonio’s daughters, Caterina and Benedetta. Here again we see the strength of family ties, which were stronger than fear of the state, as Guido took care of his brother’s daughters, despite the very evident danger that this posed to his own family. Cesarino’s ‘crimes’ did not end there. He continued to fail to report, or misdiagnose, plague victims.136 The Sanità was obviously furious and declared that ‘it all stems from the little respect the said Cesarino has for the orders of the Most Illustrious Lords’.137 Cesarino had evidently been arrested and imprisoned in S. Onofrio, because we find a reference to him there on 25 November, when he was transferred under guard to S. Francesco al Monte.138 As we know from the correspondence of the director of S. Miniato, this was a period of very high mortality and a shortage of surgeons, so, while Cesarino’s new life gave him greater liberty, it also involved greater risk. This appointment suggests that the Sanità must have retained some

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faith in his ability, because they refer to him as ‘our surgeon Cesarino Garbini’.139 This series of examples of the misbehaviour of employees of the Sanità, from fumigators to employees of the Lazaretti, to medical staff, paints a picture of disorder. Clearly the health board magistrates and judge took these ‘crimes’ very seriously, and some individuals were punished severely to provide an example, in contrast to many members of the public, who got off lightly with a short imprisonment. However, we should not present too exaggerated a picture of a world turned upside down, where authority could no longer be enforced. A useful corrective is provided by the figures of prosecutions in Table 8.1. Over the course of the whole year that plague was present in the city, there were only 66 cases against Sanità employees, or 12% of the total of 566, in contrast to 40% of private individuals accused of infractions of the law when leaving or entering houses. Of course, the total number of ‘crimes’ of individuals only represented those who had been spotted by a health board official or reported by a ‘secret friend’, though how long it was possible to hide such misdemeanours is questionable in a face-to-face society such as Florence’s at a time of crisis when people were encouraged to spy on each other. It can be seen in the case of the surgeon Cesarino that, once a Sanità employee had been discovered, his case was investigated thoroughly, leading to previous infractions coming to light. One should also not forget the other side of the coin. The public too were implicated when they bribed officials to allow them to stay in their houses or to be buried in parish cemeteries. In many cases this was to maintain the cohesiveness of their families and to provide support for their sick members. The desire to maintain normalcy even during the plague is also reflected in the final section, concerning offences linked to work. It is hardly surprising that individuals and families should attempt to continue to work at a time of high unemployment, as a range of occupations were affected by plague regulations. Work and Survival Strategies Just under a fifth (18%) of total prosecutions were identified with work. Table 8.2 distinguishes the two largest single types of occupation (to do with textiles and with food and drink), and subsumes the remainder in the overall ‘Work’ category. The largest number of prosecutions were associated with cloth (59 or 10% of cases), hardly surprising given the textile industry remained the main employer in the city, despite being in decline.140

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The second largest group was a generic category and included a wide variety of occupations (25 or 4.4%). These included the two teachers we encountered above working at a school in Piazza del Duomo, a lute-maker called Domenico Saracini, a book-seller and two printers, as well as men involved in producing metal and glass objects, such as locksmiths, a lancemaker and a scrap merchant, Lorenzo di Bartolommeo Soldelli, who had been accused of carrying a sack and old flasks through the city.141 The professions of many of these people involved dealing with or selling to the public. But during the quarantine the Sanità was extra-vigilant, particularly when people were leaving their doors open, as in the case of ‘Domenico Saracini, the lute-maker, who had kept open his shop and worked there, and in the said shop, also with Giovanni di Giulio Giolli, who was holding a guitar, which he played inside the shop’.142 It is not clear from the record whether the objection was that the door was left open or that Giovanni was playing his guitar, which could potentially attract an audience. In fact, as we have seen in Chapter 5, not all occupations were banned, even during the quarantine. Since the main concern of the Sanità officers was to prevent the spread of infection, many occupations remained permissible, as long as they did not involve travelling through the city, especially during the quarantine. On 1 February 19 men were released, even though they had been found working. In fact, all their workshops were in the house where they lived, so they would have been allowed to continue so long as they did not leave their front door. Four of these men all lived at the Canto del Giglio in the parish of S. Lorenzo, and had a diverse range of occupations such as lute-maker, tinker and dealer in tin, and a cobbler.143 The third and smallest sub-section consisted of 19 people involved in the supply of food and drink. These included sellers of wine or acquavita (7) who had decided to continue to work, despite the ban on taverns, which, as seen above, was frowned on by the authorities because it might encourage large, rowdy gatherings. Others were grocers (5) who had been arrested during the quarantine of the city, when all shops selling food and drink were closed. Food was instead supplied from central state-run warehouses through a ticket system of vouchers (bullette). Thus on 24 February the water-carrier Andrea di Bartolommeo Aliso had just finished working in his workshop, as he was able to do under the terms of the city quarantine, but he ran into trouble because when he went out to buy bread he was challenged by the guard and accused of fraudulently presenting a voucher which was not in his name, following which he was

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imprisoned and fined.144 Another man, a barber called Bastiano di Santi, had a more fortunate outcome. He was also arraigned during the quarantine, having been accused of obtaining bread, wine and meat without the appropriate ticket. This accusation was levelled against him by Guido Cocchi, who in the end had to pay a fine himself, because Bastiano could prove to the Sanità that he had the appropriate documentation.145 The system of licences and official exemptions can also be seen at work in relation to cases concerning textiles. Thus silk-workers were allowed to continue to work, which may seem curious given contemporary concerns about cloth, but another major worry for the authorities was unemployment caused by plague, and how the poorer members of society could support themselves. Weavers of woollen cloth were apparently allowed to continue to work, as is reflected in the trial of the widow Donna Lessandra di Francesco, who lived in Via Campuccio in the poor Camaldoli section of the city. When the fumigator Piero Rozzuoli visited the house to fumigate the infected rooms, he found her ‘weaving with a loom outside her rooms and she had [thus] not observed the law’, which would have required everybody to remain in their separate apartments to avoid the spread of infection.146 Above all, the Sanità concentrated on the prohibition of the sale of secondhand clothes, because of the likelihood that they may have belonged to somebody who had died recently from plague. In fact, 41 of the 59 people falling into the category of ‘textiles’ were involved in storing or trying to sell old clothes. These included mattress-makers, grave-diggers who had attempted to sell the clothes taken from the dead at the Lazaretto, such as Andrea di Stefano Boccini, and people who had tried to sell the clothes of their dead relatives. In the early phase of the epidemic, in mid-September, the second-hand clothes’ dealer Giovanni Franzese, who had a shop on Via de’ Calzaioli, had been approached by a priest called Domenico Rovai from S. Stefano in Pane, who had wanted to exchange a zimarra or sleeveless cloak which had belonged to his dead mother, for a priest’s cape, which Giovanni would make for him.147 During the trial Giovanni protested his innocence, saying that he never sold second-hand clothes, since he was a collar-maker and haberdasher. It turned out that the priest knew this, as he was a distant relative of Giovanni’s wife and asked him the favour ‘as my friend’. Rovai, moreover, reassured Giovanni that his mother had not died of male cattiva, but rather of pneumonia (male di punta), because she had gone for a walk in the mountains ‘and had got very cold’. After a thorough interrogation, the judges believed Giovanni’s story and he was allowed to return home. In this case one sees yet again the centrality of informal networks in buying and selling goods, on which contemporaries

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thought they could rely in times of plague, and also the diligence of the questioning by the Sanità, based on investigation of the priest’s activities in the city. More often it was the second-hand clothes’ dealers who were caught selling after they had acquired second-hand clothes from third parties. The trial of Monna Antonia di Giovanni, arrested on 16 November 1630, points to how the prohibition of this trade impacted on people, who were often from the poorer levels of society. The judge began by asking: Q: What is your occupation? R: I weave, I sew, in fact I do whatever I can to survive. Q: What were you doing yesterday evening? R: I was arrested yesterday evening on Piazza Strozzi, because I was carrying two shirts to sell because I did not have anything to eat. Q: Who is [in] your family? R: I have two children, one male and one female, who are very small, and my husband, who was a second-hand clothes’ dealer, but now does nothing.148

Here were the problems caused for families when specific economic activities were banned. The household head was deprived of his livelihood and his family from the benefit of the major wage-earner, and hence the desperate efforts of his wife to sell some shirts. Another desperate attempt to survive was the case of the carpenter Piero di Bartolommeo detto Mazzantonino, who on 28 October had apparently taken apart a coverlet to sell in pieces; he was sentenced to one dose of the Strappado.149 It was not just selling, but any contact with old clothes that was prohibited, as in the example discussed in Chapter 3 of the three washerwomen, all called Lucrezia, from the Mugello, who had been arrested on 11 December for washing clothes in the Arno belonging to Jews in the ghetto, at a time that it was prohibited to have any contact with Jews. In the event they had been released because of their very evident poverty, which would have been exacerbated by the cold weather of mid-December. They were not charged for their food and drink consumed in prison, which the Sanità itself paid as a form of charity.150 In this case, as with others, the judge seems to have felt genuine compassion for the poor, when their misdemeanours seem to have been based on ignorance rather than deliberate criminal activity, so that they were often let off lightly, even when they were handling cloth. After the end of the quarantine and as mortality declined there appears to have been a relaxing of some

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of the regulations about selling used clothes. From April a number of cases appear in which people were accused of keeping clothes without having a licence, indicating that these objects could be sold if free of possible contamination. Piero d’Andrea Tozzi, a retailer with a shop at Canto a Tornaquinci, was arraigned on 29 April for storing a pair of silk socks for sale, while on the same day Agnolo di Giovanni displayed for sale a jacket, silk cassock and black twill jacket. However, neither of them had obtained a licence for these objects and, following imprisonment and trial, they were released after their goods had been confiscated.151 Towards the end of the epidemic, in July, there was much greater freedom of movement of people and goods. On 10 July, Mariano di Domenico Masini and his apprentice GiovanBattista di Simone Mormorai had gone to Campi, having some days earlier taken some wool to be woven by Francesca detta la Pugia. This was notwithstanding the fact that Francesca had the ‘contagious sickness’ and had died an hour after they left. When Mariano heard that she had died, he went back to the house and took away the wool, distributing it to a further nine or ten people in Campi to be woven, leading to the ‘greatest danger’ of carrying the sickness to their houses.152 In the interrogation he defended himself, saying that he had not known that Francesca had ‘mal di contagio’, or that she was living in a locked house. Evidently people were now allowed out of the city to trade and could take wool from Florence to be woven in the countryside. Despite their defence, the accusation stood against the two men, that this was a threat to public health. Even if the house had not been properly locked up, they could not have ignored the fact that Francesca was very sick. In the event Mariano was fined 100 ducats, since he was ‘quite an old man and unable to sustain any physical punishment’, while his apprentice was subjected to three doses of the Strappado.153 The case of Mariano is a convenient place to conclude this chapter, as the plague lessened in Florence and its contado in July 1631. It demonstrates that even right at the end of the epidemic the Sanità remained vigilant concerning the possible spread of disease and its reintroduction back into the city. The obsession with the dangers of cloth as a medium through which plague was passed from person to person and place to place always remained one of the main points of focus for the authorities. Added to this was the suspicion that the insanitary environments in which many of the poorer members of society lived could cause plague, through the generation of corrupt air produced by leaking cesspits or processes associated with butchery or wool and silk production. All these factors, then, led to the Sanità’s close control of the movement of people through the city, the restric-

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tion of groups gathering together, and the close attention to the entrances and exits of houses, especially when they had been locked up after a plague case had been identified. It was the deliberate breaking, then, of the decrees regulating the movement of people and goods which led to the wide variety of prosecutions that have formed the basis of this chapter. What has emerged is a system which was full of contradictions in enforcement, which indeed was true of the overall secular and religious response to this epidemic in Florence. We have seen that on occasions very severe punishments were imposed, especially against those who were employed by the health board itself; the dreaded Strappado was employed in 12% of the 566 cases. While this did serve to provide an example at one extreme, what also emerges from our discussion was the flexibility with which the legal system was applied. This can be seen in the case of Mariano di Domenico Masini, who, though clearly flouting the law, was punished with consideration for his age. What characterised the system in Florence was the relative leniency of most sentences – especially compared with cities such as Milan and Rome. The vast majority of people who were imprisoned following arrest were released after short periods, with or without a small fine to cover the expense of the costs of their stay. While fines were regarded as an essential form of income to help support the expense involved in running the plague programme, the system of sentencing also reflects a very genuine concern for the fate of many of those at the poorer levels of society, who were often deprived of not just their livelihood, but also the emotional support of their relatives, as families were broken up through sickness and death. As we have seen, the Florentine epidemic of 1630–1 was atypical when compared, for example, with the seventeenth-century plagues in Milan and Naples. There was a lack of conspiracy theories and less opposition between social classes; instead of vertical denunciations, accusations tended to be horizontal between people of the same social class.154 These judicial processes provide a fascinating insight into the thoughts and feelings of local Florentine inhabitants. They record the strategies, as individuals and families sought to maintain their networks on which they normally relied to survive. But it was when these strategies collided with the policies of the Sanità that arrests were made, especially when families attempted to retain connections with their members and their possessions. We should not undervalue the impact when the sick were carried off to the Lazaretto, both on the victims and on their parenti, amici e vicini, let alone the fear of the dying and burial in common plague pits.155

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It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the daily intervention of the authorities in their lives should have created resentment and led to their devising many ways of evading the law. It was not just the evasive strategies they adopted in their lives, but also in their interviews. While some individuals provided such straightforward answers in questioning that their simplicity and honesty shone though, at other times answers appear to have been so deliberately muddled that they confused the judge and made it difficult to determine the real events. This was exacerbated still further when groups of people backed up each other, denying that any ‘crime’ had taken place and eventually leading to them being let off. However, there is evidence that sometimes false accusations had been made, either by Sanità officials patrolling the streets or by neighbours as amici segreti, who were anxious to obtain the remuneration gained when somebody was successfully prosecuted. Court records thus reveal a complex world of truths and half-truths, of infractions and punishments, and the contradictory motivations of the authorities. They also reflect a surprising degree of flexibility in the enforcement of the law. This was based on the desire to make sure that real infractions were punished, but also reflected compassion towards offenders, whose responses to the judge often reflected the confusion of being caught up in the web of the judicial process.

EPILOGUE



THE RETURN AND END OF PLAGUE, 1632–3

The preceding chapters have discussed in detail the provisions put into place during the major epidemic in Florence and its contado in the years 1630–1, while this brief concluding chapter will compare the impact and reactions to the return of plague in 1632–3 and will act as a useful epilogue to this book. It will serve as a way to examine how far the city learned from its recent experience, since they now had tried and tested policies they could put into place to deal with an epidemic, whereas in 1630 they had not suffered from plague for over a century. The return of plague provoked alarm,1 reflected in a series of entries in Giovanni Baldinucci’s diary: We are on the 1 January [1632], and the city is completely free from plague, thanks be to God’s mercy, and also the contado and state of Florence. 10 October 1632 . . . more than six or eight months have passed since the city has experienced the contagious sickness, nevertheless plague has been present in Livorno from May onwards and has appeared today at Monticelli outside Porta S. Friano, where many people have died in that village. We are on the 20 April 1633. When we thought that we could restart commerce with the other cities, imagining that the city was completely cured of plague, the sickness has returned again, so that they will have to re-institute the Lazaretti . . . it has created great alarm.2

The most complete guide to the brief return of plague in 1632–3 is Rondinelli, with a shorter and more personal account provided by Giovanni Baldinucci.3 Rondinelli follows the progress of the epidemic through a series of narrative chains, as in 1630–1. Also in common with two years before, he adopts a 277

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moral tone, identifying the names of individuals and where they lived, showing how their unthinking behaviour had led to the spread of disease. The main actor is Alessandra, the wife of Domenico Vivuoli, from Monticelli, a suburb to the south-west of Florence. On 30 June 1632 she left her home to fulfil a vow to the miraculous image of the Madonna of Montenero on the hills outside Livorno. She was accompanied to the shrine by a friend who lived in Livorno, with whom she stayed for three days, while her 18-year-old son Taddeo walked around town. Thanks to the laxity of various border guards, she managed to return home to Monticelli, where her son died after suffering severe bleeding through his nose, followed by the death of her husband and two others. This was a story about carelessness, not just by Alessandra, but also by the guards, who had clearly become lax after the main epidemic had died down, and is reminiscent of the accounts at the beginning of the first epidemic in August 1630. These deaths were reported to the Sanità, who on investigation were told that the deaths were not due to plague, but to an ‘ordinary sickness’, diagnosed as ‘mal di pondi’ and ‘fluxes’.4 Mortality did not end there: more deaths were reported in Monticelli, and the Sanità ordered that everybody should remain at home, an order which Rondinelli tells us was disobeyed, because people continued to go to and from Florence. By 8 September 1632 plague had broken out in Florence itself. The first cases were in Borgo S. Frediano, the street leading to the gate, which was the nearest point of entry into the city from Monticelli, which took the place in Rondinelli’s narrative of Trespiano two years earlier. Rondinelli recounts that cloth from Monticelli had been carried to a house of tertiaries belonging to the lay religious confraternity of the Laudesi di S. Agnese, where three had died, followed shortly afterwards by the wife and children of a barber who lived nearby. Not believing it was plague, the barber had sold some of his possessions, including overcoats, to a Jewish dealer and a bed to another dealer in the parish of S. Leo who then died with his apprentice.5 By this time news had travelled fast and, as Rondinelli says, ‘the city was scared’, especially as the plague then spread north of the river to the area near S. Maria Novella. This led the Sanità to establish a new Lazaretto and, seeing that the centre of the epidemic had now been well established in Via Palazzuolo, on 23 October they decided to quarantine the whole street with all 218 inhabitants forced to stay inside their houses. Gradually the epidemic began to cease, disappearing by early January.6 The perceived success of the measures taken during this first episode led to ‘great happiness’ in the city, and reflected those adopted in 1630–1: the

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establishment of a Lazaretto and a quarantine centre, gentlemen appointed at the head of each Sesto to organise the inspection of the city, with the Misericordia responsible for removing the sick and burying the dead. One major difference was the early quarantining of a whole street. Even so, as Rondinelli commented, ‘the fire, that was not entirely extinguished, continued working slowly so that . . . in the end it made great strides’.7 When Baldinucci recorded in his diary on 20 April 1633 that the sickness had begun again ‘and created great alarm’, he was obviously well informed, for he noted that 16 people were dying per day from plague.8 Despite general support for these measures, as the plague began again to develop in spring 1633 there was a challenge mounted to a central plank of the policy of the Sanità, the Lazaretto. Just as there had been a debate over the nature of the disease at the beginning of the epidemic three years earlier, so there was another in April 1633. The Sanità was convinced that the outbreak was plague, but were opposed by the Gentiluomini of the Sestieri, who were of the opinion that it was not plague, and advocated treating the sick in their houses, rather than taking them to an isolation hospital. The Sanità had evidently been persuaded by the force of public opinion, particularly among the poorer members of society, who had said that ‘no way did they want to suffer from the same miseries in the Lazaretto’. The Grand Duke on his return to Florence asked both sides to present their cases, to be backed up by expert medical opinion. This evidently represented a battle of power between the magistrates of the Sanità and the patrician Gentiluomini of the Sestieri, who had had personal experience in coping with the plague at the sharp end, and may well have been persuaded by the pressure of popular opinion to oppose the Lazaretto and in the process avoid potential resistance at street level.9 The Gentiluomini won the argument and there was ‘great joy among the people’. This lasted for only 11 days, for the epidemic got worse and there was general agreement that it was plague and that it was necessary to establish a Lazaretto at Monticelli. In the end, the expertise of the Sanità won and, as Rondinelli remarked, they were thus able to re-establish their authority over the Capisestieri! Once that was achieved, all the recent measures were reintroduced to prevent the spread of the disease further through the city, including the immediate reporting of anybody who fell ill and their inspection by surgeons – but at a distance – the notification of the sick by physicians to the health board, and the prohibition of selling infected clothes. There was also a renewed accent placed on the association between dirt and disease: all Florentines had to make sure that their houses were cleaned thoroughly and the dirt was to be carried out of the city.

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Renewed emphasis was also placed on the dangers of space. Unlike two years before, when the Mercato Vecchio had remained open, this time it was closed and the markets were held in the piazze throughout the city, because it was observed that large numbers of people collecting together in one place ‘could spread plague through many houses’. Some restrictions were placed on other types of activity which might encourage crowds, and particularly of charlatans, ‘because curiosity attracts the simple and childen to listen to the charlatans, where they stand with open mouths, without blinking, to see these bagatelles, and nonsense, and to hear this foolishness’.10 Restrictions were also placed on movement. Greater emphasis was placed on shutting off whole streets when a case of plague was identified, as this was seen as having been a ‘most potent remedy’ in halting its spread in the previous autumn.11 This system was adopted 30 years later on a much larger scale in Rome, when the whole of Trastevere was quarantined during the plague of 1656, and it is to this measure that contemporaries and historians have attributed the fall in mortality in the city.12 In Florence in spring 1633, as during the winter and spring of 1630–1, a renewed restriction was placed on the movement of women and children, since they were regarded as more likely to catch the contagion. This was based partly on the belief that they were more likely to spread disease by wandering around the city and partly on the common medical belief in the greater humidity of their constitutions, while men were seen as drier and more robust and resistant to disease. Women and children were prohibited from leaving their houses for ten days from 22 April, a ban which was renewed for two more months, until 23 June, although exceptions were made for more affluent women, who were allowed to travel through the city accompanied by a servant. As was recognised at the time, this exacerbated the existing problems of poverty since it created unemployment. The Buonomini di S. Martino delivered subsidies of 2 crazie a day to poor women, although it was noted that this was very expensive; in just two to three days the Buonomini distributed about 5,000 scudi.13 However, such was the belief in the power of spiritual medicine and of the intercessionary roles of relics and local saints that ecclesiastical and secular authorities chose to be flexible in their own restrictions on space and organise a series of processions through the city in spring 1633. On the day chosen to quarantine women and children, 22 April, the head of S. Zanobi was carried from the Duomo to S. Marco and then to SS. Annunziata. This was the first of four weeks in which precious relics were carried in procession through the city, until by the fourth week all the four main quarters of

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the city would have been visited.14 But, as in 1630–1, there was also concern about the potential that crowds might spread disease, so participants were restricted to the canons and priests of the Duomo. Then, as outlined in more detail in Chapter 6, between 21 and 23 May the Madonna of Impruneta was brought into and carried around the city. The procession was preceded by the enforced cleaning of the streets along the route by local inhabitants to remove any rubbish which might create plague-inducing fumes. As with earlier processions to SS. Annunziata and S. Marco in 1630–1, the resident population had to stay inside their houses and watch the procession from windows and doorways, while more generally members of the public could watch from street corners, but had to remain a distance of 100 metres from the procession.15 Contemporaries considered the Madonna’s intervention to have been successful, noting that within ten days the numbers of people dying at the Lazaretto had begun to diminish. Giuliano di Ceseri Cecchini recounted that restrictions on movement were now lifted and large numbers of people went to Impruneta to thank the Madonna, including the Sanità magistrates. Twelve days later he recorded that 184 convalescenti had returned home cured.16 This was obviously a triumphalist account, meant to boost the power of spiritual medicine and the reputation of the Madonna of Impruneta, and we shall return below to examine the records of the Lazaretto in 1633 to see how far they reflected these claims of the dramatic improvements in levels of mortality. The main Lazaretto was established in Monticelli in the Villa della Querciola. It was run, as at S. Miniato al Monte in 1630–1, by the Capuchin friars. On arrival on 29 April they discovered about 400 sick people living in appalling conditions, made worse by the humidity of the rooms, with 4 or 5 per bed, most of which appear to have been mattresses on the floor. The friars set about improving matters, asking the Sanità for materials to make proper beds, and placing only two people in each one. In 1633, as three years earlier, the Lazaretto was part of a wider system through which the sospetti, contacts of those sick from plague, and those who had recovered were sent to special quarantine centres. They were all to the south of the Arno, where the epidemic was worst: the Villa de’ SS. Tolomei on Via S. Maria a Marignolle, Villa dello Strozzino, also used two years earlier, and Villa Borgherini, probably Villa Belvedere al Saracino, both on the hill of Bellosguardo overlooking Florence.17 The records of the Sanità provide an idea of the number of people interned at the Lazaretto and quarantine centres during the middle of the epidemic. Between 20 and 25 May, there were 207 people at the Lazaretto of Monticelli, with 68 men, 118 women and 21 babies, while at the convalescent

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centre at Villa Borgherini there were 456 people, and 240 at Villa dello Strozzino. The total number in the Lazaretto and quarantine centres between 20 and 25 May alone was 903.18 As we saw above, religion played an important role in the city’s battle against plague; those who had been cured successfully through having had their their buboes cut were processed up the hill to Marignolle, singing ‘Litanies of the Madonna’.19 Once the convalescents’ wounds were healed, they were sent to another centre on the banks of the river Arno away from their city, where they ‘could recover their energy’. The centre consisted of two large houses, one for men and the other for women. Constructed of planks, each was made up of 7 or 8 rooms containing 14 or 16 beds, so total capacity, assuming 2 patients per bed, would have been about 256. Given concern about the close relationship between disease and corrupt air, these buildings were constructed with an emphasis on the circulation of fresh air, with large windows in the roof and another on the rear side, and roofs made of tiles, all to facilitate the escape of mali odori. Emphasis too was placed on the healing nature of religion: an altar was set up between the two houses so that male and female patients could participate in the Mass celebrated by the Capuchin friars. After ten days the patients’ health was checked by the surgeon: if he attested that they were well enough to leave, they were first washed and disinfected in a bath of warm water, vinegar and herbs. Then they formed a procession singing ‘Litanies of the Lord’ and returned home via the three major centres of cult during the plague, SS. Annunziata, S. Marco and the Duomo.20 The 1632–3 plague outbreak shocked the Florentines, since they had assumed the epidemic was over. Contemporaries recorded that neither in autumn 1632 nor in spring and summer 1633 were deaths as high as in 1630–1, but they failed to give more than a general idea of the real impact of the plague. The records of the Misericordia provide a more concrete idea of the number of people taken to the Lazaretto of Monticelli.21 As in 1630–1, it was their role to transport those suspected of plague and then to bury those who died. In the period when plague was identified in the city, 20 April to 2 September 1633, 1,735 people were sent to Monticelli (see Table 9.1: ‘Sick’ and ‘Dead’). This was about 2.6% of the population recorded as resident in the city in the 1632 census (66,056). The second epidemic affected many fewer people than two years earlier when over 10,000 had been taken to the Lazaretti of the city.22 During the months covered by these records, the largest number of people admitted to Monticelli was in May (383), and it may have been no coincidence that this followed the period

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Sick 1633

Male

% of Sick

Female

% of Sick

Total

%

April

186

15.62

158

13.27

344

28.88

May

194

16.29

189

15.87

383

32.16

June

152

12.76

159

13.35

311

26.11

July

59

4.95

58

4.87

117

9.82

August

16

1.34

19

1.60

35

2.94

September

1

0.08

0

0.00

1

0.08

608

51.05

583

48.95

1191

Totals

100.00

Dead 1633

Male

% of Dead

Female

% of Dead

Total %

April

95

17.46

93

17.10

188

34.56

May

92

16.91

82

15.07

174

31.99

June

55

10.11

64

11.76

119

21.88

July

20

3.68

34

6.25

54

9.93

August

6

1.10

3

0.55

9

1.65

268

49.26

276

50.74

544

September Totals

100.00

Figures for April are only for 20–30 April Figures for September are only for 1–2 September, and only for sick

Table 9.1 Admissions and deaths at the Lazaretto of Monticelli, 20 April–2 September 1633

processions were mounted in the city. Although there was a drop in admissions in June (311), it was not until July that there were substantially fewer (117). That this epidemic disease was much less virulent than two years earlier is reflected in the overall mortality rate at Monticelli (31.35%) compared with 55% at S. Miniato in 1630–1. There was a drop in mortality over these months with a maximum in April at the beginning of the epidemic, followed by a gradual fall, from 32% in May to 21.9% in June, with a continued decline in July and even further in August, from 9.93% to 1.65%. During the 1632–3 epidemic, as two years earlier, the state, whether in the guise of Grand Duke Ferdinand or the health officials, dedicated very significant resources to the campaign against plague, in funding poor relief, providing subsidies or food to those quarantined in their houses, paying salaries to the personnel involved in the administration of their policies, and setting up and running the series of isolation and quarantine centres. These

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costs had a considerable impact on public finance and an already declining economy, with resultant effects on the poor with the rise in unemployment and high prices.23 In February 1631 a contemporary had calculated that the cost of running the Lazaretti amounted to 260,000 scudi, added to which was the 240,000 scudi spent on feeding the poor people shut up in their houses during the quarantine.24 Much of this sum came from the Monte di Pietà, the Florentine pawn bank established to provide loans to artisans, which later became a deposit bank. It has been estimated that the Monte paid out 800,000 scudi in 1630–1 to underwrite the costs of the plague.25 Plague had profound implications for trade and therefore employment with the banning of commerce with infected states leading to the market for certain goods drying up.26 One of the areas most severely affected was textiles, which had traditionally provided employment for up to a third of the population. Merchants also suffered from their goods being destroyed when found in the houses of workers who had fallen sick. As we have seen, this led the Grand Duke to provide employment by instituting a series of public works, for example in the Boboli gardens and the Fortezza da Basso. In addition, interest-free loans of 150,000 scudi were provided for 18 months to help the wool and silk merchants and 40,000 scudi to linen merchants to continue production and to support workers.27 Judging by the comments of contemporaries, these very considerable costs and resources expended on the fight against plague were regarded as worthwhile, because plague was seen as having been stopped in its tracks in the summers of 1631 and 1633. The success of their policies was monitored carefully by the health board through the regular perusal of statistics generated by the administrators of the isolation and quarantine centres. Some indication of the impact of these measures on the population of the city has been discussed through trial records, which revealed strategies, some legitimate and some illegitimate, which helped the poorer sort to survive both economically and psychologically. Another related theme of this study has been a reassessment of the motivation of those involved in running the campaigns between 1630 and 1633. It has shown that, as during any crisis, the actions and reactions of the elite were very mixed. Emphasis has been placed on the importance of getting behind the rhetoric of legislators and administrators to examine their laws and decrees in action. This has shown that medical and governmental discourse dwelt on the traditional oppositions of poor and rich, with the latter often being blamed for causing plague through their lifestyle and actions; they were seen as spreading disease in travelling through the city and through

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their association with textile production and second-hand clothes. Policies of legislators also led to the confinement of beggars, prostitutes and Jews, and their language was infused with the rhetoric often taken to typify early modern attitudes to the poor and marginalised groups. On the other hand, we have seen that the reactions of individuals involved in the administration of censuses and sanitary surveys, the transport and treatment of those suspected of having contracted plague, or the provision of spiritual medicine to the sick and dying were infused with compassion and horror at the living conditions of the poorer members of society and their plight in isolation and quarantine centres. The religious, medical and administrative personnel of the Lazaretti mostly worked as hard as they could to provide what was regarded at the time as the best treatment possible under extremely difficult circumstances. This moderation in the actual treatment of the poorer levels of society was most vividly reflected in Chapter 8 in our analysis of the punishments meted out to those who broke plague legislation. In contrast to some other Italian cities that experienced plague in the seventeenth century, such as Milan, Rome and Naples, hardly anybody was executed, and the vast majority were released from prison only a few days after being arrested, often even without paying a fine. In stressing the compassion of individuals involved in the administration of plague regulations, we should not undervalue the terror and fear generated by plague, whether of chroniclers of these events, such as Baldinucci and Rondinelli, or of the thousands of people who were separated from their family and neighbours and taken to a Lazaretto. Life in these crowded institutions, surrounded by suffering and death – or indeed, being shut up in a house where a relative or neighbour had died or been sick with plague – must have generated fear, even if the contemporary epithet ‘more feared than death itself ’ may have been a rhetorical exaggeration.

 NOTES

1 PLAGUE AND PUBLIC HEALTH IN ITALY AND EUROPE

1. M. Guiducci, ‘Panegirico al Serenissimo Ferdinando II Duca di Toscana per la liberazione di Firenze della peste’ in F. Rondinelli, Relazione del contagio stato in Firenze l’anno 1630 e 1633 (Florence, 1634), p. 123. 2. F. Giubetti, Il cancelliero di sanità, cioè notizie di provisioni e cose concernenti la conservazione della sanità contro al contagio della peste cavate da suoi authori (Florence, 1630), p. 3. 3. C.M. Cipolla, Cristofano and the Plague: A Study of the History of Public Health in the Age of Galileo (Cambridge, 1973), pp. 15–21; L. Del Panta, Le epidemie nella storia demografica italiana, secoli XIV–XIX (Turin, 1980), pp. 158–9; and most recently G. Alfani, ‘Plague in Seventeenth-century Europe and the Decline of Italy: An Epidemiological Hypothesis’, European Review of Economic History, 17 (2013), pp. 408–30. 4. A. Tadino, Raguaglio dell’origine et giornali successi della Gran Peste . . . (Milan, 1648), pp. 26, 77, as in Cipolla, Cristofano, pp. 15–16; Fondazione Treccani degli Alfieri, Storia di Milano (Milan, 1957), vol. 10, pp. 503–5. 5. For a discussion of foreign influences on English plague provisions see P. Slack, The Impact of Plague in Tudor and Stuart England (London, 1985), pp. 207–19. 6. Translated from Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron in Giovanni Boccaccio, Tutte le opere, ed. V. Branca (Florence, 1969), pp. 69–70. 7. See the introductory essays to Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year, ed. P. Backscheider (New York, 1992); and Alessandro Manzoni, The Betrothed and the History of the Column of Infamy, ed. D. Forgacs and M. Reynolds (London, 1997). 8. G. Alfani, ‘Plague in Seventeenth-century Europe’, pp. 408–30. 9. For example, I. Fosi, ed., La Peste a Roma (1656–1657) (Rome, 2006). 10. National Archives, London, SP 12/75/52. 11. Slack, The Impact of Plague, pp. 207–19. 12. For a discussion of the evolution of plague measures in Italy see A.G. Carmichael, ‘Plague Legislation in the Italian Renaissance’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 57 (1983), pp. 208–25, and G. Benvenuto, La peste nell’Italia della prima età moderna. Contagio, rimedi, profilassi (Bologna, 1995). 13. National Archives, London, SP 16/533/17, ff. 100r–104r, 110v–111r, 114r; discussed in H. Trevor-Roper, Europe’s Physician. The Various Life of Sir Thomas de Mayerne (New Haven and London, 2006), pp. 306–11. 14. See Slack, The Impact of Plague. 15. L. Brockliss and C. Jones, The Medical World of Early Modern France (Oxford, 1997), p. 351. 286

NOTES to pp. 4–8

287

16. Cf. W. Naphy and A. Spicer, The Black Death and the History of Plagues, 1345–1730 (Stroud, 2000). 17. M. Harrison, Contagion: How Commerce Has Spread Disease (New Haven and London, 2012), ch. 2. 18. G. Restifero, Peste al confine. L’epidemia di Messina del 1743 (Palermo, 1984). 19. A. Corradi, Annali delle epidemie in Italia dalle prime memorie al 1850 (Bologna, 1865–94, 1974 repr.); C. Creighton, A History of Epidemics in Britain: From AD 664 to the Extinction of Plague (Cambridge, 1891). 20. ‘Rapporto della Commissione sulle memorie presentate intorno alla peste orientale’, Atti della Sesta Riunione degli Scienzati Italiani tenuta a Milano nel settembre MDCCCXLIV (Milan, 1845), pp. 728–37, esp. p. 730. 21. B. Zanobio and G. Armocida, ‘Alfonso Corradi’ in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, vol. 29 (Rome, 1983), pp. 313–15. 22. Cf. G. Cosmacini, Storia della medicina e della sanità in Italia. Dalla peste europea alla guerra mondiale, 1348–1918 (Rome-Bari, 1987), pp. 349, 358–64. 23. C. Pogliano, ‘L’utopia igienista (1870–1920)’, in Malattia e Medicina. Storia d’Italia. Annali 7, ed., F. Della Peruta (Turin, 1984), pp. 589–631, esp. pp. 592–9, 602–4, 613. See in general M. Pelling, Cholera, Fever and English Medicine, 1825–1865 (Oxford, 1978), pp. 295–310, and ‘Contagion/Germ Theory/Specificity’, in W.F. Bynum and R. Porter, eds, Companion Encyclopedia of the History of Medicine (London and New York, 1993), ch. 16. 24. Corradi, Annali, vol. 3, p. 71. 25. S. Cohn, ‘The Black Death: End of a Paradigm’, The American Historical Review, 107.3 (2002), pp. 703–38, and The Black Death Transformed: Disease and Culture in Early Renaissance Europe (London, 2002). 26. Creighton, A History of Epidemics. 27. Zanobio and Armocida, ‘Alfonso Corradi’. 28. Creighton, A History of Epidemics, vol. 1, 174–6. 29. Ibid. 30. Ibid. 31. M.D. Grmek, ‘Les vicissitudes des notions d’infection, de contagion et de germe dans la médecine antique’, Mémoires de Centre Jean Palerme, V (Textes Medicaux Latins Antiques) (Sainte-Étienne, 1984), pp. 53–70; V. Nutton, ‘The Seeds of Disease: An explanation of contagion and infection from the Greeks to the Renaissance’ in V. Nutton, From Democedes to Harvey: Studies in the History of Medicine (London, 1988), pp. 15–34. 32. M. Echenberg, Plague Ports (New York, 2007), Parts 1–2 on the origins and spread of the third pandemic in the Far East and the Indian sub-Continent. See also C. Lynteris, Ethnographic Plague: Configuring Disease on the Chinese-Russian Frontier (London, 2016). 33. Echenberg, Plague Ports, p. 11. 34. Ibid., Part 2. 35. See also A.G. Carmichael, ‘The Last Past Plague: The Uses of Memory in Renaissance Epidemics’, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 53.2 (1998), pp. 132–60. 36. Cipolla, Cristofano; C.M. Cipolla, Public Health and the Medical Profession in the Renaissance (Cambridge, 1976). 37. J.-N. Biraben, Les hommes et la peste en France et dans les pays européens et méditerranéens (Paris, 1976), 2 vols. 38. A. Cunningham, ‘Transforming Plague: The Laboratory and the Identity of Infectious Disease’, in A. Cunningham and P. Williams, eds, The Laboratory Revolution in Medicine (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 240–1. 39. G. Twigg, The Black Death: A Biological Reappraisal (London, 1984); S. Scott and C.J. Duncan, Biology of Plagues: Evidence from Historical Populations (Cambridge, 2001). 40. S.K. Cohn in ‘The Black Death: End of a Paradigm’; The Black Death Transformed; Cultures of Plague: Medical Thinking at the end of the Renaissance (Oxford, 2010); and ‘The Historian and the Laboratory: The Black Death Disease’, in The Fifteenth Century,

288

41. 42.

43.

44.

45. 46. 47.

48. 49. 50. 51.

NOTES to pp. 8–9

XII: Society in an Age of Plague, eds, L. Clark and C. Rawcliffe (Woodbridge, 2013), pp. 210–11) argues that in historical times Yersinia pseudo-tuberculosis has never possessed deadly toxins that led to such high mortality rates as characterised by the Black Death. See also: F. Cavalli, ‘I ratti invisibili. Considerazioni sulla storia della peste in Europa nel medioevo e nella prima età moderna’, Quaderni Guarneniani, 6 NS (2015), pp. 113–40. O.J. Benedictow, The Black Death, 1346–1353: The Complete History (Woodbridge, 2004). K.I. Bos, V.J. Schuenemann, B. Golding, H.A. Burbano, N. Waglechner, B.K. Coombes, J.B. McPhee, S.N. DeWitte, M. Meyer, S. Schmedes, J. Wood, D.J.D. Earn, D.A. Herring, P. Bauer, H.N. Poinar, J. Krause, ‘A draft genome of Yersinia pestis from victims of the Black Death’, Nature, 478 (2011), pp. 506–10. L.K. Little, ed., Plague and the End of Antiquity: The Pandemic of 541–750 (Cambridge, 2008); cf. the review by V. Nutton, ‘Pestilential Complexities’, Social History of Medicine, 22 (2009), pp. 177–9. See also L.K. Little, ‘Plague Historians in Lab Coats’, Past and Present, 213 (2011), pp. 267–90; M. Green, ed., Pandemic Disease in the Medieval World: Rethinking the Black Death (Leeds, 2014); A.G. Carmichael, ‘Plague Persistence in Western Europe: A Hypothesis’, The Medieval Globe, 1.1: Article 8. R.J. Palmer, ‘The Control of Plague in Venice and Northern Italy, 1348–1600’ (PhD thesis, University of Kent at Canterbury, 1978); P. Preto, Peste e società a Venezia, 1576 (Venice, 1978); J. Stevens Crawshaw, Plague Hospitals: Public Health for the City in Early Modern Venice (Farnham, 2012); M.L. Leonard, ‘Plague epidemics and public health in Mantua, 1463–1577’ (PhD thesis, University of Glasgow, 2014); G. Albini, Guerra, fame, peste. Crisi di mortalità e sistema sanitario nella Lombardia tardomedioevale (Milan, 1982); S.K. Cohn, Epidemics: Hate and Compassion from the Plague of Athens to AIDS (Oxford, 2018), ch. 6; G. Asseretto, Per la comune salvezza dal morbo contagioso. I controlli di sanità nella Repubblica di Genova (Novi Ligure, 2011); A.G. Carmichael, Plague and the Poor in Renaissance Florence (Cambridge, 1986); Cipolla, Cristofano; E. Sonnino and R. Traina, ‘La peste del 1656–57 a Roma: organizzazione sanitaria e mortalità’, La demografia storica delle città italiane (Bologna, 1982); I. Fosi, ed., La Peste a Roma (1656–1657), pp. 433–52; G. Calvi, ‘L’oro, il fuoco, le forche: la peste napoletana del 1656’, Archivio Storico Italiano, 139.3 (509), (1981), pp. 405–58; P. Lopez, Napoli e la peste (1464–1530). Politica, istituzioni, problemi sanitari (Milan, 1989); I. Fusco, Peste, demografia e fiscalità nel regno di Napoli del XVII secolo (Milan, 2007). A. Pastore, Crimine e giustizia in tempo di peste nell’Europa moderna (Rome, 1991); G. Benvenuto, La peste nell’Italia della prima età moderna. C. Geddes da Filicaia and M. Geddes da Filicaia, Peste. Il flagello di Dio fra letteratura e scienza (Florence, 2015). Stevens Crawshaw, Plague Hospitals; M. Grmek, ‘Le concept d’infection dans l’antiquité et au moyen âge, les anciennes mesures sociales contre les maladies contagieuses et la fondation de la première quarantaine à Dubrovnik (1377)’, RAD. Jugoslavenske Akademije Znanosti I Umjetnosti, 384 (1980), pp. 9–54; and Z.B. Tomić and V. Blažina, Expelling the Plague: The Health Office and the Implementation of Quarantine in Dubrovnik, 1377–1533 (Montreal, 2015). Albini, Guerra; Carmichael, Plague and the Poor, p. 120. Fosi, ed., La Peste a Roma; Calvi, ‘L’oro, il fuoco, le forche’; Lopez, Napoli e la peste. Cipolla, Cristofano; C.M. Cipolla, Faith, Reason and the Plague: A Tuscan Story of the Seventeenth Century (Brighton, 1979); Cipolla, Fighting the Plague in Seventeenth-Century Italy (Madison, Wisconsin, 1991). On plague in Florence in 1630–1, see D. Lombardi, ‘1629–31: crisi e peste a Firenze’, Archivio storico italiano, 137 (1979), pp. 3–50; D. Sardi Bucci, ‘La peste del 1630 a Firenze’, Ricerche storiche, 10 (1980), pp. 49–92; M.B. Ciofi, ‘La peste del 1630 a Firenze con particolare riferimento ai provvedimenti igienico-sanitari e sociali’, Archivio storico italiano, 142 (1984), pp. 47–75; G. Calvi, ‘A Metaphor for Social Exchange: the Florence Plague of 1630’, Representations, 13 (1986), pp. 139–63; and G. Calvi, Histories of a Plague Year: The Social and the Imaginary in Baroque Florence (Berkeley, Los Angeles and Oxford, 1989).

NOTES to pp. 9–13

52.

53. 54. 55.

56.

57.

58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67.

68.

289

On seventeenth-century Tuscany, see the many studies by Carlo Cipolla cited during the course of this book. J.T. Alexander, Bubonic Plague in Early Modern Russia: Public Health and Urban Disaster (Oxford, 2003); N. Varlik, Plague and Empire in the Early Modern Mediterranean World: The Ottoman Experience, 1347–1600 (Cambridge, 2015). See also Z.B. Tomić and V. Blažina, Expelling the Plague and the articles in L.K. Little, ed., Plague and the End of Antiquity. Del Panta, Le epidemie, pp. 161, 169. See, however, S. Cavallo’s discussion of plague measures in early modern Turin: Charity and Power in Early Modern Italy: Benefactors and their Motives in Turin, 1541–1789 (Cambridge, 1995). See Harrison, Contagion; Echenberg, Plague Ports. Biraben, Les hommes et la peste; Slack, The Impact of Plague; R.S. Schofield, ‘An Anatomy of an Epidemic: Colyton, November 1645 to November 1646’, in The Plague Reconsidered: A new look at its origins and effects in 16th and 17th Century England, ed. P. Slack (Matlock, 1977), pp. 95–126; J.A.I. Champion, London’s Dreaded Visitation: The Social Geography of the Great Plague in 1665, Historical Geography Research Series, no. 31 (London, 1995); G. Twigg, The Black Death; N. Cummins, M. Kelley and C. ÓGráda, ‘Living Standards and Plague in London, 1560–1665’, The Economic History Review, 69 (2016), pp. 3–34. For example, L. Del Panta, ‘Cronologia e diffusione della crisi di mortalità in Toscana dalla fine del XIV agli inizi del XIX secolo’, Ricerche storiche, 7.2 (1977), pp. 293–343; Cipolla, Fighting the Plague; Sonnino and Traina, ‘La peste del 1656–57 a Roma’; Fusco, Peste, demografia e fiscalità nel regno di Napoli; Alfani, ‘Plague in seventeenth-century Europe’. B. Litchfield, Florence Ducal Capital, 1530–1630 (ACLS Humanities E-Book, New York, 2008). See J. Henderson and C. Rose, ‘Plague and the City: Methodological Considerations in Mapping Disease in Early Modern Florence’, in Mapping Space, Sense, and Movement in Florence: Historical GIS and the early modern city, ed. N. Terpstra and C. Rose (London, 2016), pp. 125–46; J. Henderson, ‘“La schifezza, madre della corruzione”, Peste e società della Firenze della prima età moderna’, 1630–1631 Medicina e storia. Rivista di storia della medicina e della sanità, 2 (2001), pp. 23–56. Some of the findings of these articles have been incorporated into the present book; others will be developed further in future projects. See, for example, N. Terpstra and C. Rose (eds), Mapping Space, Sense, and Movement in Florence: Historical GIS and the early modern city (London, 2016). B. Pullan, ‘Plague and Perceptions of the Poor in Early Modern Italy’, in T. Ranger and P. Slack, eds, Epidemics and Ideas (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 101–23. A. Carmichael, Plague and the Poor; S.K. Cohn, Cultures of Plague, ch. 7. J. Henderson, Piety and Charity in Late Medieval Florence (Oxford, 1994 Chicago, 1997), ch. 2, 7, 8. J. Henderson, ‘Coping with Plagues in Renaissance Italy’, in The Fifteenth Century, XII: Society in an Age of Plague, ed. L. Clark and C. Rawcliffe (Woodbridge, 2013), pp. 175–94. J. Amerlang, A Journal of the Plague Year: The Diary of the Barcelona Tanner Miquel Parets 1651 (Oxford, 1991). Calvi, Histories; Pastore, Crimine e giustizia. W.G. Naphy, Plagues, Poisons and Potions. Plague-Spreading Conspiracies in the Western Alps, c. 1530–1640 (Manchester, 2003). E. Diana, Sanità nel Quotidiano. Storie minute di medici, cerusici e pazienti (Florence, 1995). Slack, The Impact of Plague, ch. 5 and 6; Champion, London’s Dreaded Visitation. Cf. G. Alfani and S. Cohn Jr, ‘Nonontola 1630. Anatomia di una pestilenza e meccanismi del contagio. Con riflessioni a partire dalle epidemie milanesi della prima età modern’, Popolazione e Storia, 2 (2007), pp. 99–138. K. Wrightson, Ralph Tailor’s Summer: A Scrivener, His City and the Plague (New Haven and London, 2011); A.L. and D.G. Moote, The Great Plague: The Story of London’s Most Deadly Year (Baltimore and London, 2004).

290

NOTES to pp. 13–24

69. G. Pomata, Contracting a Cure: Patients, Healers and the Law in Early Modern Bologna (Baltimore and London, 1998); D. Gentilcore, Healers and Healing in Early Modern Italy (Manchester, 1998). 70. J. Arrizabalaga, ‘Facing the Black Death: perceptions and reactions of university medical practitioners’, in L. Garcia-Ballester, R. French, J. Arrizabalaga, and A. Cunningham, eds, Practical Medicine from Salerno to the Black Death (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 237–88; Cohn, Cultures of Plague. 71. C. Jones, ‘Plague and its Metaphors in Early Modern France’, Representations, 53 (1996), pp. 112, 109. 72. C. Rawcliffe, Medicine for the Soul: The Life, Death and Resurrection of an English Medieval Hospital (Stroud, 1999); J. Henderson, The Renaissance Hospital: Healing the Body and Healing the Soul (New Haven and London, 2006). 73. C.M. Boeckl, Images of Plague and Pestilence: Iconology and Iconology (Kirksville, Missouri, 2000); G.A. Bailey et al. (eds), Hope and Healing: Painting in Italy in a Time of Plague, 1500–1800 (Chicago, 2005); S. Barker, ‘Art, Architecture and the Roman Plague of 1656– 1657’, in I. Fosi (ed.) La peste a Roma, pp. 243–62; S. Barker, ‘Plague Art in Early Modern Rome: Divine Directives and Temporal Remedies’, in Bailey et al. (eds), Hope and Healing, pp. 45–64; L. Marshall, ‘Manipulating the Sacred: Image and Plague in Renaissance Italy’, Renaissance Quarterly, 47 (1994), pp. 485–53 and L. Marshall, ‘Reading the Body of a Plague Saint: Narrative Altarpieces and Devotional Images of St. Sebastian in Renaissance Art’, in B.J. Muir, ed., Reading Texts and Images: Essays on Medieval Renaissance Art and Patronage (Exeter, 2002), pp. 237–71. 74. Calvi, Histories, ch. 5; S. Barker, ‘Miraculous Images and the Plagues of Italy, ca. 1590– 1656’, in Saints, Miracles and the Image: Healing Saints and Miraculous Images in the Renaissance, ed. S. Cardarelli and L. Fenelli (Turnhout, 2018), pp. 29–52. I am grateful to Sheila Barker for permitting me to read this article before publication. 75. K. Wilson Bowers, Plague and Public Health in Early Modern Seville (Rochester, 2013). 76. Cohn, Epidemics. 77. Alfani, ‘Plague in Seventeenth-century Europe’. 78. J. Henderson, ‘Public Health, Pollution and the Problem of Waste Disposal in Early Modern Tuscany’, in Economic and Biological Interactions in Pre-industrial Europe from the 13th to the 18th Centuries, ed. S. Cavaciocchi (Florence, 2010), pp. 373–82. 79. C. Rawcliffe, Urban Bodies: Communal Health in Late Medieval English Towns and Cities (Woodbridge, 2013); G. Geltner, ‘Healthscaping a Medieval City: Lucca’s Curia viarum and the Future of Public Health History’, Urban History, 40 (2013), pp. 395–415. 80. There is a vast literature on microhistory. For a very useful recent discussion, which summarises many of the approaches, see John Brewer, ‘Microhistory and the Histories of Everyday Life’, Cultural and Social History, 5 (2010), pp. 1–16, and F. de Vivo, ‘Prospect or Refuge? Microhistory, History on the Large Scale: A Response’, Cultural and Social History, 7.3 (2010), pp. 387–97. For a thoughtful consideration of the adoption of a micro-historical approach to the study of an early modern plague epidemic, see Wrightson, Ralph Tailor’s Summer, pp. xi–xiii. 2 THE INVASION OF PLAGUE IN EARLY MODERN ITALY

1. Translated from A. Manzoni, I promessi sposi, ed. A. Asor Rosa (Milan, 1965), pp. 517–18. 2. Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year. 3. Cipolla, Cristofano, pp. 15–21; Del Panta, Le epidemie nella storia demografica italiana (secoli XIV–XIX), pp. 158–9; and most recently Alfani, ‘Plague in Seventeenth-century Europe’, pp. 408–30. 4. On the plague in Milan see Treccani degli Alfieri, Storia di Milano, vol. 10, pp. 498–557; Cohn, Epidemics, ch. 6, and, for the earlier period, G. Albini, Guerra, fame, peste. 5. M. Abrate, Popolazione e peste del 1630 a Carmagnola (Turin, 1972), pp. 60–71; A. Brighetti, Bologna e la peste del 1630 (Bologna, 1968), p. 35. 6. Cipolla, Cristofano, pp. 38–40.

NOTES to pp. 24–29

291

7. On plague in Turin see Cavallo, Charity and Power in Early Modern Italy, pp. 44–57; for a study of nearby Carmagnola see Abrate, Popolazione e peste; for Verona, see Cohn, Cultures of Plague, pp. 131–6, and L. Camerlengo, ‘Il Lazzaretto a San Pancrazio e l’Ospedale della Misericordia in Bra. Le forme dell’architettura’, in L’Ospedale e la città. Cinquecento anni d’arte a Verona, eds, A. Pastore, G.M. Varanini, P. Marini and G. Marini (Verona, 1996), pp. 179–91. 8. Del Panta, Le epidemie, p. 160, table 24. 9. Cipolla, Fighting the Plague, p. 100, table A.1; Del Panta, Le epidemie, p. 168; Alfani, ‘Plague in Seventeenth-century Europe’. 10. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 42. 11. ASF Sanità, Negozi 144, 7.xi.1629; 145, f. 14r, 1.i.1630 (cited as Sanità, Negozi). 12. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 21. 13. Sanità, Negozi 147, f. 6r, 1.vi.30: ‘Nel Bresciano la peste fiocca et a Disenzano in particolare sul Lago di Garda fa’ grandissimo progresso. In Verona stanno le cose al solito, et così nel Cremasco, et qua’, sebene per la Dio grazia, si sta’ ottimamente, con tutto ciò si vive con grandissimo timore, continuandosi ogni giorno più le dilidenze, si tratta di ristituire il commerzio a Ferrara’. 14. Sanità, Negozi 147, f. 12r, 2.vi.30: ‘Per più lettere di particolari habbino sia avviso . . . in Parma una grand mortalità di huomini, con influenza di male tanto pestifero, che quelli che non si medicano camparano tre or quattro giorni, e gli altri che si medicino uno solamente o due’. 15. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 21. 16. P. Malpezzi, (ed.), I bandi di Bernardino Spada durante la peste del 1630 in Bologna (Faenza, 2008), p. 228. 17. Sanità, Rescritti 37, ff. 49r–v, 13.vi.30. The legislation on this is in L. Cantini, Legislazione toscana raccolta e illustrata, vol. 15 (Florence, 1805), pp. 236–7. 18. See D. Panzac, Quarantaines et lazarets. L’Europe et la peste d’Orient (XVII–XX siècles), (Aix-en-Provence, 1986); Biraben, Les hommes et la peste, vol. 2, pp. 84ff.; A.D. Cliff, M.R. Smallman-Raynon and P.M. Stevens, ‘Controlling the geographical spread of infectious disease: Plague in Italy, 1347–1851’, Acta med-hist Adriat, 7–1 (2009), pp. 197–236. 19. See Biraben, Les hommes et la peste, vol. 1, pp. 230–40. 20. Cf. Alfani, ‘Plague in seventeenth-century Europe’. 21. These measures are recorded in Sanità, Copialettere 55, ff. 1r, 3r–v, 16v, and are discussed by Cipolla, Cristofano, pp. 38–40. 22. Rondinelli, Relazione, pp. 21–2. See also F. Giubetti, Il cancelliero di sanità. Notizie concernenti la conservazione della sanità contro al contagio di peste (Florence, 1630), pp. 9–11, on the election and pay of guards. 23. Sanità, Negozi 147, f. 533r, 22.vi.1630: ‘età, statura, barba, et altri segnali per li quali sia chiaro essere quella tal persona che è descritta nella detta fede’. 24. See Calvi, Histories, ch. 1, ‘The External Dangers’, for a discussion of some ten cases involving travellers in Tuscany prosecuted by the Florentine health board. 25. Sanità, Negozi 147, ff. 8r, 45r. 26. Sanità, DP 6, f. 6r, 1.vii.1630: ‘Sentendo che nonostante le molte diligenze che si fanno a’ confini, in ogni modo trapeli sempre qualche persona che venga di luogo o bandito o sospetto, e che sia difficilissimo il rimediarvi a’ detti confini per molti ragioni’. 27. Sanità, Negozi 149, ff. 222r–225r, 3.viii.30. See also discussion of this episode in Calvi, Histories, pp. 22–4. 28. Sanità, Negozi, ff. 222r–v: ‘un huomo di giusta statura, barba rossa, di anni circa 40’. 29. Ibid., f. 223r: ‘“mi morse qui un cane alla Madonna di Monsummano, e non potevo andare”; mostrando fasciata la gamba sinistra dalla legatura e “un poco di male sotto la menatura”’. 30. Ibid., f. 224r. 31. Ibid., f. 91r: ‘Partimo di Firenze, e arrivamo a Prato, e ala Porta vedemo che le guardie con molti altri stavano giocando con pocha diligenzia al suo servizio, e andammo alle altre porte e trovamo il medesimo’.

292

NOTES to pp. 29–34

32. Ibid., f. 91r. 33. Ibid., 147, ff. 51r–52v, 5.vi.30. 34. Sanità, Rescritti 37, f. 41r: ‘E parendo al Magistrato nostro che il caso sia di mal’esempio, e di poco rispetto degli Officiali, e degli ordini del nostro Magistrato’. 35. Sanità, DP 6, f. 6v, 1.vii.30. 36. Rondinelli, Relazione, pp. 40–41. 37. Sanità, DP 6, f. 6v, 1.vii.30, marginal addition: ‘Inoltre parebbe al magistrato che si dovesse metter le guardie alle due Pescaie di Firenze di sotto e dello sopra . . . levare la commodità di entrare nella nostra città sotto pretesto di bagnarsi’. 38. Cf. Barker, ‘Plague Art in Early Modern Rome’, pp. 45–64, esp. p. 47. 39. Sanità, Rescritti 37, f. 6r; f. 83v, 1.vi.1630; DP 6, f. 6v, 1.vii.1630. 40. Sanità, Negozi 147, f. 20r. 41. Cf. C.M. Cipolla, I pidocchi e il Granduca. Crisi economica e problemi sanitari nella Firenze del ‘600 (Bologna, 1979); B. Litchfield, Florence ducal capital, 1530–1630; more generally, G. Alfani, ‘Italy’, in Famines in European History, ed. G. Alfani and C. Ó Gráda (Cambridge, 2017), ch. 2. 42. Sanità, Negozi 147, ff. 7r–v. 43. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 24. 44. Sanità, Rescritti 37, f. 111r, 24.vii.30: ‘limoni a some o in casse’. 45. Sanità, Negozi 147, ff. 10r–v. 46. On this theme see Cohn, Cultures of Plague, ch. 8; Henderson, ‘Public Health, Pollution and the Problem of Waste Disposal in Early Modern Tuscany’, pp. 373–82; S. Cavallo and T. Storey, Healthy Living in Late Renaissance Italy (Oxford, 2013). 47. See C.M. Cipolla, Miasmas and Disease: Public Health and the Environment in the PreIndustrial Age (New Haven and London, 1992). 48. See Cipolla, I pidocchi, pp. 63–5. 49. Sanità, Negozi, 147, f. 791r, 30.vi.30: ‘Jachopo di Bartolomeo detto il Napoli macelaro al Canto ala Paglia, che aveva il botino pieno di budella fradice e di sangue e sterco fradice mescholatto, che gietava grande fettore e puzzo e altro sagun’co per la masatoio, che è uno grande morbo e noi perevene trovo tale sporcizie’. 50. See Carole Rawcliffe, Urban Bodies; Geltner, ‘Healthscaping a Medieval City, pp. 395–415. 51. Sanità, Negozi 147, f. 58r, 7.vi.1630: ‘Ad dì 7 di giugno 1630: Fede per me Badessa e Monache del Monastero di Sto. Jacopo in Via Ghibellina di Firenze, come la verità et che il nostro monasterio nelle stanze più alte della banda dell’Orto resta molto offeso dal vicino che star a Canto all’Illustrissimo Sig. Cavaliere Sivigatti del sito e fetore del trarre la seta, e ci maravigliasssero che detto Sig. Cavaliere tolleri tal fetore e di tanto fo fede io Suor Margherita della Pena electa al presente Badessa di detto convento’. 52. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 23. 53. The account of the origins in Trespiano is shared by all contemporary accounts of the plague, for example Rondinelli, Relazione; Luca di Giovanni di Luca Targioni, ‘Relazione della Peste di Firenze negli Anni 1630 e 1631, scritta da Luca di Giovanni di Luca Targioni’ in Giovanni Targioni Tozzetti, Notizie degli aggrandimenti delle scienze fisiche: accaduti in Toscana nel corso di anni LX del secolo XVII (Florence, 1780), 111, pp. 302–3. 54. For what follows see Rondinelli, Relazione, pp. 42–3. 55. Ibid. 56. Ibid. 57. As also argued by Alfani, ‘Plague in seventeenth-century Europe’; see also, on the kingdom of Naples, I. Fusco, Peste, demografia e fiscalità nel regno di Napoli and I. Fusco, ‘La peste del 1656–58 nel Regno di Napoli: diffusione e mortalità’, Popolazione e Storia 10.1 (2009), pp. 115–38. 58. Sanità, Rescritti 37, f. 139r, 1.viii.30: ‘Perchè a Trespiano sono morti circa sette persone secondo si dice, et la maggior parte vicino alla Chiesa, e dicono che tutti habbino havuti bubboni fra coscia et il corpo, et alcune delle bolle, et uno nel capo, et quando sono scoppiati o aperti in quattro o cinque giorni sono guariti, et subito scoppiati sentivono travaglio, e giramento di capo, et in capo di tre giorni passava.’

NOTES to pp. 35–40

293

59. The orders adopted for the Sanità are listed in Sanità, DP 6, ff. 40r–41r, 2.viii.30, and summarised by Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 43. 60. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 43. 61. Sanità, Negozi 149, f. 114r. 62. Ibid., ff. 241r–v. 63. Ibid., f. 356r: ‘È venuta la dona in cinta a Trespiano, ma, Signori, io non posso aserde (asservire)? a tutte le cosse perchè il mistiero mio è di soldatti, e non so fare a lei?, ma per dare sodifazione a cotesti Signori Illustrissimi, me sia quello che pareva a loro, che vogleno che io faccia, ma bisogna che avertesio che noi siamo dua soli e qua noi si posiamo fidare di nesuno; noi haviamo a fare solevare i morti, abruciare le robbe, pensare a fare condure li amalati allo spedale, e rivedere a quatro corpi di guardia de’ soldati, e a dispensare i viveri a vecina o ottanta fuchi, e ci è di tale fuochi lontano un mezo miglio alla strada.’ 64. Sanità, Negozi 149, f. 629r. 65. For what follows see Sanità, DP 6, f. 44r, 7.viii.30. 66. Ibid., f. 44v, 7.viii.30: ‘Due gabbani, un lenzuolo, un ferraiolo di panno, uno scannello, et una cassetta entrovi più sorte, veli e nastri e cinturini e cappelli, et altre bagaglie da fanciulla, et un gammurrino nero, che lo porta in dosso la detta Maddalena, et due camicie.’ 67. Sanità, Negozi 149, ff. 804r–v, 16.viii.30: ‘Stamatina ero alla Loggia, che avevo lasciato il pane per distribuire, arivò il medicho con una lettera delli Signori loro Illustrissimi, che mi ordinavano che io non passassi il rastrello di nuovo fatto lì; subbito montai a cavallo per obedire l’ordine delle Signori loro Illustrissimi e me ne tornai alla Villa delli Signori Bandinelli, dove mi tratero sino che dalle Signori loro Illustrissimi mi sia ordinato quello devo fare, con supplicarle ancora mandarmi una istruzione di quello devo fare, perché il mio cevello, essendo io homo ignorante, non ci trovo a guista mento.’ 68. Ibid., f. 1118r: ‘Il dotore Franceso Mazzanti nostro primo medico hora sta per rendere l’anima a Dio, l’altro medico che vene ieri l’altro è nelle letto con la febra, delli quatro servi venuti ultimi, ne morto stanote uno, e due ne stano male, a tale che è necesario che faccono provesione di ii altri medico et almeno di dua servi, et ci dopo avrei scrito morse i altro homo. Prego le Signori loro Illustrissimi che faccino elezione di un altro in luogo mio, perchè io non mi sento più abile a durare questa fatiga, staro aspetarlo tre o quatro dì, se Dio m’ dura tanta vita, che le Signorie loro Illustrissimi mandano uno altro . . .’ 69. Ibid., ff. 1251r–v, 1263r. 70. Ibid., ff. 1261r–1263r. 71. Ibid., ff. 1427r–v. 72. Ibid., 150, f. 1091r, 22.ix.30: ‘per grazia di Dio noi abiamo condotto a buono punto questo negotio’; Ibid., 151, ff. 470r–v. 73. Ibid., 150, f. 211r: on 4 September 1630 the director of the Badia Fiesolana, Girolamo Guazzesi, reported that ‘Ho voluto mandarli destintamente la nota di tutti i morti dal 25 giugno 1630 sino al dì d’oggi’, suggesting that the Badia had opened on 25 June. 74. Ibid., 149, f. 654r, 13.viii.30. 75. Ibid., f. 794r, 16.viii.30. 76. Ibid., f. 1619r, 31.viii.30: ‘Se li vede nell’inguinaglia destra un tumore grande quanto un’uovo di colore livido et tutta la schiena et natiche livide.’ 77. Ibid., f. 1619r, 31.viii.30. 78. Ibid., 150, f. 211r, 4.ix.30. 79. Ibid., f. 861r, 17.ix.30. 80. Ibid., f. 1422r, 30.ix.30: ‘li serinzali comuni, olio di amandole dolce per ugnere, per il ceruzico uno scarificatoio et una fiametta per taliare’. 81. Ibid., f. 481r, 10.ix.30: ‘una gran ransicaia con un dolore sopra la spalla dritta, e dicono queste gente che gli sia scoppiato una vena sputando sangue, e cascato morto stanotte passata su il far del giorno’. 82. Ibid., f. 269r, 5.ix.30.

294

NOTES to pp. 40 –43

83. Alfani, ‘Plague in seventeenth-century Europe’; Alfani and Cohn, ‘Nonontola 1630’, pp. 99–138; and Cipolla, Fighting the Plague, on rural plague in Tuscany. 84. Slack, The Impact of Plague, pp. 54–5. 85. The phases of the epidemic were recorded by Rondinelli, Relazione. The first cases in the city and the initial measures taken by the Sanità in August 1630 are in Sanità, DP 6. 86. Del Panta, Le epidemie, p. 60, table 24; Cipolla, Fighting the Plague, p. 100, table A.1; Sardi Bucci, ‘La peste del 1630’, pp. 67–77. 87. The 1632 census is in Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze (henceforth BNCF), Palatino EB XV.2, and the 1622 summary in BNCF, Magl. 11.1.240, f. 4r. See Ciofi, ‘La peste del 1630 a Firenze’, pp. 52–3, and Sardi Bucci, ‘La peste del 1630’, pp. 70–72. For the dating of the census, see ASF, Pratica Segreta 178, ff. 258r–259r and 363r–364v. See the discussion of this problem by K.J. Beloch, Storia della popolazione d’Italia (trans. Bevölkerungsgeschichte Italiens, Berlin and Leipzig, 1937–61) (Florence, 1994), pp. 276–8. 88. ASF, Carte Strozziane, ser. 1, XXIX.16, ff. 112v–113r. 89. Sanità, Negozi 154, f. 471r, 10.i.1631. 90. BNCF, Magl. 11.1.240, f. 4r in 1422. Included in this figure were foundlings who both lived in institutions in the city and were wetnursed outside Florence. 91. This figure is derived from a letter sent to Francesco Rondinelli and is contained in an unpublished collection of reports from the Grand-Ducal Ambassador to the English court. The manuscript came from the library of the late Carlo Cipolla, to whom I remain extremely grateful for having sent me a copy and for having given me permission to cite these findings. I have included in the totals both plague deaths and baptisms (M. Lastri, Ricerche sull’antica e moderna popolazione della città di Firenze per mezzo dei registri del Battistero di S. Giovanni (Florence, 1775), pp. 61–2), an approximate calculation of the first twenty days. 92. The fact that many of Florence’s more affluent families may have been absent in July 1630, having followed their normal pattern of leaving the city in the summer, reinforces the supposition that this total underestimates the city’s real size. It was a well-established custom for wealthy families to leave Florence in the summer to avoid the tremendous heat and humidity, and this tendency was reinforced by the advice of doctors, who suggested that at time of plague ‘the principal most secure remedy is to flee the pestiferous air . . . leave early and return late’: J. Soldi, Antidotario per il tempo della peste (Florence, 1630), p. 28. The estimate of the population at risk on the eve of the 1630–1 epidemic remains problematic and will repay further investigation. While Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 34, records that very few of the nobility died, it remains unclear whether he is including only the males (many of whom apparently did remain in the city) or also their families who may have fled Florence. 93. C.M. Cipolla, ‘The “Bills” of Mortality of Florence’, Population Studies, 23 (1978), pp. 54–8. 94. Sanità, Negozi 149, f. 5r, 1.viii.1630. 95. Ibid., ff. 121r–v, 404r. He identifies the following symptoms of a carbuncle: ‘Nel principio il plurito con una bolla o più come grani di miglio quali fradice fanno un ulcere con crosta ed alle volte aviene che senza queste bolle si scortica la pelle, ma però sempre appare l’ulcere con crosta come avviene ne canceri e questa crosta horo ha colore cineritio, e livido, hora nero e nel fondo è talmente attaccata come se fosse un chiodo; e quest’ è il termine proprio degli Autori. E di più va rodendo, come semeggiando la carne attorno, quale infiamma straordinamente e diventa nera e splendida come bitume o pece.’ 96. Del Panta, ‘Cronologia e diffusione delle crisi di mortalità’, pp. 315–16; Cipolla, Faith, Reason and the Plague, pp. 79–84; Sonnino and Traina, ‘La peste’, p. 40. 97. See Cohn, Epidemics, pp. 136–60. 98. G. Baldinucci, Quaderno. Peste, guerra e carestia nell’Italia del Seicento, ed. B. Dooley (Florence, 2001), pp. 68–9.

NOTES to pp. 43–51

295

99. Sanità, Negozi 150, ff. 214r–215v: ‘haver havuto notitia che esso ammaliassi l’acqua benedetta della chiesa cattedrale, et altre chiese’. 100. Ibid., ff. 215r–v: ‘Arrivato che fui in Volterra, mi fermai un poco in Piazza, e poi me ne andai nel Duomo, che mi vi fermai tanto, che dissi un pater noster et un Ave Maria, e vi andai con le robbe, che havevo adosso’; ‘Io mi fermai alquanto intorno a un confessonario, e quivi accomodai certe agora che havevo in più sorte’. 101. For a detailed discussion of the untori in Milan, see Cohn, Epidemics, ch. 6. 102. Sanità, Negozi 150, f. 215r; see also the discussion of this incident in Calvi, Histories, pp. 25–7. 103. Sanità, Negozi 150, ff. 852r–858r, 17.ix.1630. See Calvi’s detailed discussion of this incident in Histories, pp. 182–92. 104. See below, Chapter 8, also Calvi, ‘A Metaphor for Social Exchange’, pp. 139–63, and Calvi, Histories. 105. Sanità, Negozi 149, ff. 682r–v: 13.viii.1630: ‘Che la mattina con le polizze che li saranno date la sera dalla Cancelleria vadino a ritrovare le case tutte dove saranno nominati li ammalati e quelli visti toccatoli il polso inteso da loro gl’accidenti del male habbino a fare questi divisioni: Quelli ammalati che havranno segni, o nell’anguinaglia o sotto le braccia o in qual’altra parte del corpo si sia apparentemente maligna e pestifera, habbino a fare una poliza sottoscritta di lor mano in questa maniera: “In via tale nella tal casa ho visitato un ammalato con febbre con enfiato maligno nella tal parte, son tali giorni che s’e’ malato; questo si deve mandare a Bonifatio.” Appreso notare quale genti sono in quella casa, maschi e femmini et anco l’età, e di tutto dar conto alla cancelleria in scritto. Quelli altri che sono semplicemente ammalati di febbre semplice e di poca consideratione si potranno mandare a Santa Maria Nuova e altri spedali senza fare menzione ne di persona che sia in quella casa medesima ne di altro.’ 106. 107. 108. 109.

110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117.

These instructions were repeated in early September: Sanità, Negozi 150, ff. 52r–v. Sanità, Negozi 150, ff. 1148r–1149r, 29.ix.1630. Ibid., 152, ff. 377r–v. Cf. discussion of this incident in Chapter 8, and also in Calvi, Histories, pp. 76–8. Archivio Arcivescovile di Firenze, S. Piero Gattolini, Libri dei Morti, 1576–1727, vol. 2, f. 1v, 10. Oct. 1630: ‘e perchè hora è tempo di peste, qui si noteranno tutti quelli che saranno morti a male ordinario, e ch’havanno hauta sepoltura in chiesa, perchè del’infetti il magistrato della Sanità ne terra conto, essendo impossibile al curato fare per hora questa diligenza, poiché la maggior parte vanno al lazzaretto e ivi morano’. Sanità, DP 6, ff. 152r–v, 6.x.1630. P. Pieraccini, ‘Note di demografia fiorentina. La parrocchia di S. Lorenzo dal 1652 al 1751’, Archivio storico italiano, ser. 7, 83 (1925), pp. 44–5. Del Panta, ‘Cronologia’, pp. 298–9; Cipolla, Fighting the Plague, pp. 81–3. Rondinelli, Relazione, pp. 26–7. Del Panta, Le epidemie, pp. 54–63; Cipolla, I pidocchi. Cf. also Schofield, ‘An Anatomy of an Epidemic’, pp. 98–101. Cipolla, I pidocchi, p. 33; Cipolla, Faith, Reason and the Plague, pp. 83–5. Cipolla, Fighting the Plague, pp. 80–83; Sonnino and Traina, ‘La peste’, pp. 450–1 n. 37. Cipolla, Fighting the Plague, pp. 100–1, tables A.1 and A.2. 3 MEDICINE, THE ENVIRONMENT AND THE POOR

1. Sanità, Rescritti, 37, f. 139r, 1.viii.1630. 2. D. Catellacci, ed., ‘Curiosi ricordi del contagio di Firenze nel 1630’, Archivio storico italiano, ser. 5, 20 (1897), p. 381; Litchfield, Florence Ducal Capital, ch. 7 n. 10, suggests that the text may have been as written by Fulvio Giubetti, the chancellor of the Florentine health board.

296

NOTES to pp. 51–58

3. Cipolla, Fighting the Plague, p. 100, table A.1; Brighetti, Bologna, p. 39, cf. the documents he published in Appendix 2. 4. See also the discussion of medical theory and plague in Calvi, Histories, pp. 59–70. 5. Brighetti, Bologna, pp. 40–8. On Venice, see P. Preto, Peste e società a Venezia, 1576 (Venice, 1978), pp. 48–51; Palmer, ‘The Control of Plague in Venice and Northern Italy, 1348–1600’, pp. 112–22; Cohn, Cultures of Plague, ch. 6. 6. Rondinelli, Relazione, pp. 26–7. 7. A. Righi, Historia contagiosi morbi qui Florentiniam popolatus fuit anno 1630 (Florence, 1633), p. 7. 8. Henderson, Piety and Charity, pp. 401–5. 9. Catellacci, ‘Curiosi ricordi’, p. 383; Righi, Historia, ch. 36, presents some of the more detailed medical arguments of whether or not it was plague. Cf. also the discussion in Calvi, Histories, pp. 60–9. 10. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 40. Cf. Sanità, Negozi 149, ff. 1470r–1471r, report of college. For the history of the college in the sixteenth century, see L. Sandri, ‘Il Collegio Medico Fiorentino e la riforma di Cosimo I: origini e funzioni (secc. XIV–XVI)’, in Umanesimo e università in Toscana (1300–1600), ed. S.U. Baldassari, F. Ricciardelli and E. Spagnesi (Florence, 2012), pp. 183–211. 11. A. Castiglioni, A History of Medicine (New York, 1957 [1941]), p. 457. 12. Stefano Roderico de Castro, Il curioso nel quale dialogo si discorre del male di peste (Pisa, 1631), p. 19. On the de Castro family see J. Arrizabalaga, ‘Medical Ideals in the Sephardic Diaspora: Rodrigo De Castro’s Portrait of the Perfect Physician in early SeventeenthCentury Hamburg’, Medical History, Suppl. (2009), 29, pp. 107–24. 13. G. Fracastoro, De contagione et contagiosis morbis et eorum curatione, ed. and trans. W.C. Wright (New York, 1930), pp. 9–21. 14. Antonio Pellicini, Discorso sopra de’ mali contagiosi pestilenziali. Raccolto dall’Eccellentissimo Sig. Antonio Pellicini d’ordine del Collegio dei Medici Fiorentini. Per comandamento del Serenissimo Gran Duca di Toscana (Florence, 1630), p. 9. 15. Fracastoro, De contagione, pp. 14–17. 16. C. and G. Singer, ‘The scientific position of Girolamo Fracastoro [1478?–1553] with especial reference to the source, character and influence of his theory of infection’, Annals of Medical History, 1 (1917), p. 5. 17. Righi, Historia, p. 60; cf. also for early modern England: A. Wear, Knowledge and Practice in English Medicine, 1550–1680 (Cambridge, 2000), p. 284. 18. Rondinelli, Relazione, pp. 28–30. 19. Ibid., pp. 30, 40; cf. Righi, Historia, pp. 23–6, for the role of diet. 20. Righi, Historia, p. 17; De Castro, Il curioso, p. 9. The link between putrefaction of the humours and contagion is a central theme of Giambattista da Monte’s work, which Fracastoro sought to refute: V. Nutton, ‘The reception of Fracastoro’s Theory of contagion: the seed that fell among thorns?’, Osiris, 6 (1990), pp. 201, 205–6. 21. De Castro, Il curioso, p. 9. 22. Righi, Historia, pp. 11–12; Calvi, Histories, pp. 65, 262 n. 21. 23. Pastore, Crimine e giustizia in tempo di peste nell’Europa moderna, p. 188. 24. The theme of Cohn, Cultures of Plague, ch. 7, where he argues that it was the plague of 1575–6 which led to this especial awareness of the link between poverty and epidemic disease, in particular factors such as famine, poor housing and poor sanitation. 25. De Castro, Il curioso, p. 15. 26. Ibid., p. 19. 27. For more recent approaches see Carole Rawcliffe, Urban Bodies, and Geltner, ‘Healthscaping a Medieval City’, pp. 395–415. 28. Cohn, Cultures of Plague, pp. 202–7. 29. Ibid., pp. 216–19. 30. Giubetti, Notizie concernenti la conservazione della sanità. 31. Ibid., p. 20. 32. Sanità, DP 6, f. 3v, 26.vi.1630: ‘Rispetto alle caldaie di trar la seta nella città di Firenze, sentendosi alcuno che ressi offeso dal fetore di dette caldaie, sentirli volentieri per proporre il rimedio.’

NOTES to pp. 58–64

297

33. Giubetti, Notizie concernenti la conservazione della sanità, p. 21; Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 56. 34. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 56. 35. Giubetti, Notizie concernenti la conservazione della sanità, p. 21; Rondinelli, Relazione, pp. 24–5. 36. ASF, Torrigiani, Appendix 17.1, Cap. XVI, f. 152r: Giubetti, Notizie concernenti la conservazione della sanità, pp. 22–3. 37. Targioni, ‘Relazione della Peste’; ASF, Torrigiani, Appendice 17.1, p. 307; Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 58. 38. See Cipolla, Miasmas and Disease. 39. Sanità, Negozi 138, f. 1058r, 3.i.1621: ‘caminando inanzi in questo modo sia miracolo se non si precipiti in una peste’; cf. Cipolla, Miasmas and Disease, pp. 13–14. 40. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 150; also cited by Calvi, Histories, p. 4. 41. Pellicini, Discorso, p. 13. 42. Brighetti, Bologna, p. 39. 43. Mario Guiducci, ‘Panegirico’ p. 124. 44. ASF, Compagnie Religiose Soppresse da Pietro Leopoldo (CRS), 1418, no. 12 (Sesto di S. Giorgio). Cf. N.A. Eckstein, ‘Florence on foot: an eye-level mapping of the early modern city in time of plague’, Renaissance Studies, 30 (2015), pp. 1–25, on the history and membership of this confraternity. 45. S. Barker, ‘Plague Art in Early Modern Rome’, p. 51, and more generally Boeckl, Images of Plague and Pestilence, p. 184 n. 102. 46. Sanità, Copialettere 15, f. 102r. 47. Guiducci, ‘Panegirico’, p. 124. 48. Sanità, Negozi 155, ff. 259r–v: undated, but about 8 February 1631: ‘Terzo, che è poveri che stanno per terreni, e più non hanno ne panchette ne letto, e appena hanno un saccone e una materassa di capecchio, e quando vanno a rifarlo lo trovano muffato, perchè le mura colono d’acqua . . . Quinto, che le maggior’ parte che habitano per terreni non hanno sfogativa ne aria in casa, et hanno solo un finestrino, considerate come posson’ fare a non infettare.’ 49. Eckstein, ‘Florence on foot’. 50. ASF, CRS, 1418.6 A.II, no. 12: ‘Visita fatta nel Sesto di S. Giorgio per noi Piero Gerini et Ipolito Niccolini nelle case di povere persone per vedere dove fussi di bisogno rifare pagliericci, levare immonditie, le dar nota de’ malati che si trovassero in dette case’. The pages of the manuscript are not numbered, so references are to the surveys of the Sesti with their dates. 51. Sanità, DP 6, f. 80r, 27.viii.1630. 52. ASF, CRS, 1418, Sesto di S. Croce, visita no. 7 (20.viii.1630): ‘Monna Francesca di Pagolo contadina ed dua figliuole grande, una malata di catarro con febbre e più di un mese, dolendosi assai di detto catarro, medicha in casa. Il ciabattino vicino a quello che fa le carrozze, avrebbe bisognio di aiuto di limosina perchè allo spedale non potrà stare, avendo bisognio essere mossa per il letto e si duole assai di detto catarro e sta in stanza che non ha finestra e luogo infelicie e stretto e cattivo.’ 53. ASF, CRS, 1418.6 A.11, Sesto di S. Giovanni, 16.viii.1630, no. 206: ‘un malato di stento e febbre’. 54. Cipolla, Miasmas and Disease, pp. 23, 64. Cf. Andrea Zagli et al., Maladetti beccari: storia dei macellari fiorentini dal Cinquecento al Duemila (Florence, 2000). Legislation against butchers was not a recent innovation; it was a recurrent theme of medieval sanitary legislation and had been part of the measures taken in Florence during the Black Death. See J. Henderson, ‘The Black Death in Florence: Medical and Communal Responses’, in Death in Towns: Urban Responses to the Dying and the Dead, 100–1600, ed. S. Bassett (Leicester, 1992), p. 143. 55. ASF, CRS, 1418.6 A.II: Sesto di S. Giovanni, Relazione 15, 13 August: ‘Nella Torre del Canto alla Paglia sopra il mascellaro per andare in Borgo S. Lorenzo.

298

56.

57. 58.

59.

60. 61.

62.

63. 64.

65. 66.

67. 68.

NOTES to pp. 64–68

210: Al primo piano di detta torre a Monna Lisabetta vedova un pagliericcio nuovo; salito una altra scala a Monna Lisabetta, moglie di Bartolommeo, porta un altro pagliericcio; alla Francesca in detto piano: farli rassettare un pozzo nero. 211: All’ultimo piano a Antonio sarto, un pagliericcio; e comandare al padrone di detta, quale è il Moscellaro sudetto, che facci portare via tutte le spazzature che sono in detta casa, perché rendono gran puzzo. 212: Nella casa che sale allato, al figliuolo della vedova lettighiere, un pagliericcio nuovo, e fa vuotare il pozzo biancho; il padrone di essa è Il Grazzini.’ Ibid.: Sesto di S. Giovanni, Relazione 9: ‘In detta via dirinpetto a Chiarito’: allato sta Monna Fiore, vedova di Camillo calzolaio, che dorme in terra e ha bisognio di un pagliericcio’; ‘Appresso a numero 14 sta in una casa medesimo cinque pigionali, tutti senza appunto di letto, hanno bisognio di sacconi’; ‘Nel Campaccio: no. 8, de’ tessitore Lisabetta di Tommaso con 5 figli dormono in terra.’ Ibid.: Sesto di S. Maria Novella, Relazione 15, 13.viii.1630: ‘Maddalena di Giovanni, una fanciulla sta acanto al S. Pierino fornaio, deta d’anni 24, abandonata dal padre, dorme in terra, entrerebbe nei Mendicanti senonli bisogna un saccone.’ Ibid.: Sesto di S. Maria Novella, Relazione 15, 13 August; this entry at the end of the survey was dated 22 August: ‘Nannina di Matteo Pallini sta accanto al rivenditore, dirimpetto al beccaio di Piazza a Madonna, a sette figliolo, il marito a Pisa che più mesi, si muorono della fame.’ Ibid.: Sesto di S. Giovanni, Relazione 11, 16 August: ‘64. Nel cortile drento alla Portaccia nel cortile vi sono molte stanzaccie con 10 pigionali tuttti infelici, fare pagliaricci, effare abbrucciare ogni cosa, e non hanno sorte nessuna di lenzuola o coperte e far portar via parecchi monti di robaccia che ammorba.’ Ibid., dated 19.viii.1630: ‘Il Magistrato della Sanità ha ricevuto la relazione della visita fatta a tutte le case di povera gente della città et resta molto sottisfatto della diligenza usata et carità di quelli che hanno operato.’ Sanità, Negozi 149, f 405r, 8.viii.1630: ‘Chonparisce Ottavio, detto il Chappellaio, chaporale de’ famigli d’Otto e do chonto chome la sera de’ 7 stante ero in ato di guardia cho piu’ famigli e a l’uno di notte, pasamo dala chasa del Signor Lucha Salviati, e sentendo una puza grande, si andò inella Piazza de’Donati, luogo chovicino a dove detta un ora di notte si trovano numero 19 barili di stercho de lile, avevano chomiciato avuotare un pozo nero e mostrano averlo ischoperto a ore 24, perchè di già alumoia uno pieno li sudetti barilli e chavatoli fuora chasa chontro alle legie di Sanità.’ ASF, CRS, 1418.6A, Sesto di S. Giovanni, Relazione 11, 16 August: ‘220: Nel cortile del Palazzo Medici dove stanno i lavoranti della cappella vi sono i luogi comuni, che a tutta la strada rendono grandissimo puzzo, come fanno ancora sotto il porticho a dove stanno detti lavoranti, però saria necessario farli in altri luoghi e che avessero lo sfogo all’aria.’ Ibid.: Sesto di S. Ambrogio, Relazione 3, 11.viii.1630: ‘20: Alle stalle di SAS rassettare il luogo comune nella stanza di Adamo, et ancora l’acquaio perchè danno gran sito, e fare levare la spazzatura e porcheria di una buca dove tutti la gettano.’ Ibid.: Sesto di S. Giovanni, Relazione 11, 16.viii.1630: ‘Via dreto a S. Orsola, cominciando da S. Barnaba cominciando a man dritta. In detta strada vi è una fogna dove lavor[ano] le monache che per a volte la settimana esce fuora tutta l’acqua puzzolente che ammorba la strada.’ Ibid.: Sesto di S. Giovanni, Relazione 11, 16.viii.1630: ‘15: Nella casa allato a detta, rassettare una fognia, che riceve i lavatoi di dodici case di detro.’ Ibid.: Sesto di S. Giovanni, Relazione 11, 16.viii.1630: ‘207. Nella casa dove sta Tommaso Pandolfini vi è una fognia che spurga nella strada e cause grandissimo puzzo, però è necessario comandare al padrone di detta, quale è Piero oliandolo, che faccia un pozzo da smaltire.’ Ibid.: Sesto di S. Giovanni, Relazione 11, 16.viii.1630: house number 205. Ibid.: Sesto di S. Ambrogio, Relazione 3, 11.viii.1630: ‘sendovi 7 persone in una stanza e li fanno ogni cosa nella medesima corte e man manca nella stanza di Monna Dianora vi è un letto fetente che meterebbe la peste dove la non fossi, però si abbruccia e se li rifacci’.

NOTES to pp. 68–73

299

69. Ibid.: Sesto di S. Ambrogio, Relazione 3, 11.viii.1630: ‘21: Ai Leoni sul Canto vi è una cantina che oltre all’essere piena di porcheria vi è morto una cagna che mette la peste, però subito si facci votare el’entrata e dale stalle, et ancora farli levare l’ossa che serbano ai coronai, che ciò è necessario sentendosi il puzzo da per tutto intorno e molti si lamentano.’ 70. G. Cascio Pratilli and L. Zangheri, La legislazione medicea sull’ambiente (Florence, 1993–8), vol. 2: I bandi (1621–1737), pp. 511–12, 9.iii.1643/4; see also for further edicts L. Cantini, Legislazione toscana raccolta e illustrata (Florence, 1800–8). This is also outlined in Cipolla, I pidocchi, pp. 60–7. 71. See Cipolla, I pidocchi, pp. 60–7. 72. Sanità, Negozi 151, f. 802r, 17.x.1630: ‘I Commissari della Porta al Prato, serventi di loro SS. Ill’mi, reverentemente espongono un disordine che nasce a detta porta per l’indiscrettione di quelli contadini che la notte votono i pozzi neri in Firenze, e che la mattina a buon ora vogliono cavar la materia di Firenze. Perchè impatientissimi et indiscreti di lasciar entrar prima le carra e some di vino, e passeggieri e carrozze che molte volte s’incontano alla porta, vogliono (mentre si guardano le bullette a passagieri) uscire con la materia quasi nascostamente . . . questa mattina de 17 d’ottobre, che percorendo in un carro se ne roppe su la porta due barili, con grandissimo danno delli esponenti, i qual’oltre la fatica di assistere con quella vigilanza che si deve ne presenti bisogni, hanno hauto a morir del puzzo. Però vengono suplicarLe che si degnino comandar che detti contadini se ne devino uscire per la Porticciola del Prato, si come hanno ordine anco della dogana, di donde comodamente posson uscir e entrare senza pericolo e fastidio di alcuna persona.’ 73. Ibid., 149, f. 1572r, 30.viii.1630: ‘Nel distribuire i sacconi questo giorno si è trovato che si sgomberacca le masserizie di uno che dicono sia morto mentre era condotto allo spedale, che per aver sentito che era male sospetto, o ordinato non toccino dette robbe, che le volevan portare in altra casa il che mi è parso bene darne conto alle lor SS. Ill.mi, si come o trovato una donna malata nella Stufa Vecchia della Via dell’Ariento et il sopradetto che è morto sta dirempetto al fornaio di S. Bernaba.’ 74. ASF, CRS, 1418.6A, Sesto di S. Ambrogio, Relazione 3, of 11.viii.1630, passage dated 22.viii.1630. 75. Sanità, Negozi 150, f. 53r, ?2.ix.1630. 76. F. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 24. 77. ASF, CRS, 1418.6A, Sesto of Santa Maria Novella, Relazione 15, 22.viii.1630: ‘e si vede che da un giorno all’altro nella povertà cresce, le miserie e le necessità infinito, e se si avessi voluto notare tutti si sarebbe fatto un gran volume’. 78. Rondinelli Relazione, pp. 24–5. 79. Giubetti, Notizie concernenti la conservazione della sanità, p. 28. 80. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 25. 81. Ibid., p. 24. 82. D. Lombardi, Povertà maschile, Povertà femminile. L’Ospedale dei Mendicanti nella Firenze dei Medici (Bologna, 1988), ch. 1; Cipolla, I pidocchi. 83. Sanità, Rescritti 37, f. 186r, 23.viii.1630: ‘Si era dato ordine al Rucellai, Proveditore de’Mendicanti, che facesse diligenza di trovare luogo opportuno nella città, dove si potessero fare ritirare, e stare i Mendicanti male affetti di rogne, o altri simili mali, poichè nel luogo solito non vi è comodità di tenerli, et questo per spurgare la città più che sia possibile da ogni infetione.’ 84. Giubetti, Notizie concernenti la conservazione della sanità, p. 28. 85. Cantini, La legislazione, vol. 16, p. 86, 23.viii.1630. 86. Sanità, DP 6, f. 70v. 87. See the records of the ‘Figliuoli derelitti che si tenghono in Via del Giardino’, Sanità 466. 88. Sanità, DP 6, f. 188v, 27.x.1630: ‘Farsi precetto a tutte le donne meretrici, che stanno dietro alla Compagnia di San Michele da Sto Ambrogio, che fra otto giorni devino havere sgomberato di dove habitano, atteso che in detta compagnia si trova il santissimo sacramento e vi habitano due padri di Sto Giuseppe, e dette donne apportano scandolo

300

89. 90.

91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97.

98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106.

107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118.

NOTES to pp. 73–79 e fastidio a detti padri, et sono di male esempio alla vicinanza del luogo dove si trova il santissimo sacramento.’ Catellacci, ‘Curiosi ricordi’, p. 383. See T. Storey, Carnal Commerce in Counter-Reformation Rome (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 172–5; and T. Storey, ‘Prostitution and the Circulation of Second-hand Goods in Seventeenth-century Rome’, in L. Fontaine, ed., Alternative Exchanges: Second-Hand Circulations from the Sixteenth Century to the Present (Oxford, 2007). Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 57. Cohn, Cultures of Plague, pp. 213, 218–19. K. Stow, ‘Was the Ghetto Cleaner . . .?’, in M. Bradley and K. Stow, eds, Rome, Pollution and Propriety: Dirt, Disease and Hygiene in the Eternal City from Antiquity to Modernity (Cambridge, 2012), pp. 169–70. S.K. Cohn, ‘The Black Death and the Burning of Jews’, Past & Present, 196 (August 2007), pp. 3–36. Sanità, Negozi 149, f. 84r, early August 1630. Sanità, DP 6, f. 54v: ‘Si faccia intendere a tutti gl’Hebrei che non possono portare il cappello nero.’ E. Sonnino, ‘Cronache delle peste a Roma. Notizie dal Ghetto e lettere di Girolamo Gastaldi (1656–1657)’, in Fosi, ed., La Peste a Roma (1656–1657); and D. Gentilcore, ‘Purging Filth: Plague and Responses to it in Rome, 1656–7’, in Bradley and Stow, eds, Rome, Pollution and Propriety, p. 158. Sanità, Negozi 155, f. 1095: a petition of 6.iii.1631 by the Università degli Ebrei to the Sanità towards the end of the epidemic. Ibid., 153, f. 641r, 11.xii.1630: ‘Io son poverino che vo accattando e non ho casa ne tetto et ho fatto qualche volta de’ servizi a detta ebrea quando si poteva andar nel ghetto.’ Sanità, DP 7, f. 126v: 27.xii.1630. Ibid. Sanità, 155, f. 1095r. R.G. Salvadori, The Jews of Florence (Florence, 2001), pp. 36–7. Cohn, Cultures of Plague, p. 218; Sonnino, ‘Cronache delle peste a Roma’, pp. 40–1. Sonnino, ‘Cronache delle peste a Roma’, pp. 35–74. See: J. Henderson, ‘Charity and Welfare in Sixteenth-century Tuscany’, in A. Cunningham and O. Grell, eds, Charity and Medicine in Southern Europe (London, 1999), pp. 56–86; N. Terpstra, Cultures of Charity: Women, Politics, and the Reform of Poor Relief in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2013). Most recently see J. Henderson, ‘I Mendicanti e la politica assistenziale Italiana’, La chiesa e l’ospedale di San Lazzaro dei Mendicanti. Arte, beneficenza, cura, devozione, educazione, ed. A. Bamji, L. Borean and L. Moretti (Venice, 2015), pp. 33–46. See discussion in Lombardi, ‘1629–1631: crisi e peste a Firenze’ and Litchfield, Florence Ducal Capital. Litchfield, Florence Ducal Capital, pp. 212–15. Ibid., pp. 273–4. D. Lombardi, ‘Poveri a Firenze. Programmi e realizzazioni della politica. Assistenziale dei Medici tra Cinque e Seicento’, in Timore e carità. I poveri nell’Italia moderna, ed. G. Politi, M. Rosa and F. Della Peruta (Cremona, 1982), pp. 172–4. See Lombardi, Povertà maschile, povertà femminile, pp. 26–9; Lombardi, ‘1629–1631: crisi e peste a Firenze’, pp. 172–4. Baldinucci, Quaderno, p. 63. Ibid., p. 65. See N. Terpstra, Abandoned Children of the Italian Renaissance (Baltimore, 2005). Cosimo Dei cancelliere, ‘Dell’origine dell’Uficio della Sanità’: Sanità 43, ff. 64v–65r. See the discussion in Cipolla, Miasmas and Disease. See Lombardi, ‘1629–1631: crisi e peste a Firenze’, p. 6, based on ASF, Arte della Lana 449, n. 135; ASF, Scrittoio delle Fabbriche, 1928, n. 30.

NOTES to pp. 79–86

301

119. ASF, Pratica Segreta 178, f. 2r, 19.iv.1630. 120. Catellacci, ‘Curiosi ricordi’, p. 385. 121. Lombardi, ‘1629–1631: crisi e peste a Firenze’, pp. 16, 21, and pp. 23–31 on the even worse impact on contadini of the total quarantine in spring 1631. 122. ASF, Pratica Segreta 178, ff. 4r–5r: ‘tanto numero di povere persone di questa città, contado, e stato, che ne hanno una notoria et estrema necessità’. 123. Ibid. 124. Ibid.; Catellacci, ‘Curiosi ricordi’, p. 385. 125. Lombardi, ‘1629–1631: crisi e peste a Firenze’, pp. 7–8. 126. ASF, Pratica Segreta 178, f. 186r; R. Galluzzi, Istoria del Granducato di Toscana sotto il governo della Casa Medici (Florence, 1781), vol. 6, p. 28; and Catellacci, ‘Curiosi ricordi’, p. 385. 127. Targioni, ‘Relazione della Peste’, p. 312. 128. Ibid.; ASF, Pratica Segreta 178, f. 186r; Catellacci, ‘Curiosi ricordi’, p. 385. 129. Sanità, Rescritti 37, f. 142r, 3.viii.1630: ‘Sentendosi che per sollevare i poveri della città, dalla somma pietà di VA, è stato comandato, che si faccia certo lavoro in Fortezza di S. Giovanni, dove concorrono molti, spinti dalla necessità, e perciò vi compaiono tanto stenuati, che difficilmente possono sostenere la fatica, ammalondosene molti, et capitando poi allo Spedale di S. Maria Nuova, vi muoiono tutti senza esser capaci di medicamenti ed aiuto, come referisce Monsignore Spedalingo.’ 130. Cf. Henderson, ‘“La schifezza, madre di corruzione”’, pp. 40–4. 131. ASF, Pratica Segreta 178, f. 187r: ‘strada per strada, e casa per casa, oltre alla povertà di quelli che fussero habili a poter’ essere in varii esercizii impiegati, per sfuggire quanto si possa di havere solo a mantenere con le limosine, come è detto’. 132. Catellacci, ‘Curiosi ricordi’, p. 385. 133. Cantini, Legislazione, vol. 16, pp. 92–5: Decreto, 30.viii.1630. 134. ASF, Monte di Pietà nel Bigallo 674, c. 338: n. 370: ‘Io Cosimo Bargellini mi obbligo, et offerisco, pagare per il caritativo sussidio per l’anno futuro scudi tre ogni mese anticipati, non potendo sforzarmi a maggior somma per haver hauto l’anno passato ne miei beni la tempesta, la quale non solo mi levò tutta la biada, vino, olio et ogni frutto del legname, ma anco mi lasciò tal danno, che quest’anno non ho ricolto il terzo del solito, come di si può vedere in effetto.’ 135. ASF, Monte di Pietà nel Bigallo, 677, cc. xx and ccxxiv: totals for September and October 1630. 136. ASF, Pratica Segreta 178, f. 187v, 3.ix.1630: six senators were appointed to distribute bread to the poor. 137. Cohn, Cultures of Plague, ch. 7: ‘Plague and Poverty’. 138. Ibid., pp. 227–9. 4 PLAGUE AND PUBLIC HEALTH

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Baldinucci, Quaderno, pp. 64–5. Ibid., pp. 64–5. Ibid., p. 65. Ibid., p. 66. Ibid., pp. 66–7. Ibid., p. 67. ASF, Torrigiani, Appendice 17.1. Celeberrimi atque acutissimi jureconsulti Do. Jo. Francisci de Sancto Nazario doctoris Papiensis, De peste, 3 vols (Lyon, 1535). 9. ASF, Torrigiani, Appendice 17.1, ff. 159r–166r: ‘essendo mandato dal Serenissimo Granduca questi avvertimenti con un suo rescritto, per il quale commanda che si gli risponda capo per capo. L’Illustrissimo Magistrato si compiacque di darmi questa cura. Però l’ho fatto coppiar in tal maniera, che si gli possa responder apostillando nella margine.’ See

302

10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

20.

21. 22. 23. 24.

25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

36.

NOTES to pp. 86–95

ASF, Ospedale di Santa Maria Nuova (cited as SMN) 200, f. 159r, 19.10.1630 on the Venetian origins of the Avvertimenti. Rondinelli, Relazione, pp. 33–4. Ibid., pp. 36–7. Ibid., pp. 44–5. Ibid., p. 46. Ibid., p. 46. See Calvi’s discussion in Histories, pp. 4–5. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 47. Listed ibid., pp. 217–18. Giubetti, Notizie concernenti la conservazione della sanità, p. 1, on the role of the chancellor. The eighteenth-century history of the Sanità emphasises that the magistracy did not have a specific residence before 1632, when they were assigned a room in the palace of the Arte dei Mercatanti. In 1630–1 it is likely they met in the ‘Nunziatura’: Sanità 43, c. 72. Cf. Diana, Sanità nel Quotidiano, pp. 25–6. ASF, Torrigiani, Appendice 17.1, ff. 150r–152v: short regulations governing the Sanità; I have assumed an early August date since only the Lazaretto of Messer Bonifazio was mentioned. Ibid., f. 150r, Cap. I: meet twice a day; Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 24 says that the Sanità had met daily from early June. ASF, Torrigiani, Appendice 17.1, Cap. II. Curiously this source mentions four magistrates for the four quarters, whereas the city had been divided up into Sestieri. Ibid., Cap. III. Ibid., f. 150v, Cap. IV: imprisonment of anybody not reporting dead or sick; Cap. V: the Sanità’s separate prison. Cipolla, I pidocchi, pp. 38–9; ‘Statutes of the Hospital of S. Maria Nuova, Florence (c. 1510)’, in K.P. Park and J. Henderson, ‘“The First Hospital Among Christians”: the Ospedale di Santa Maria Nuova in Early Sixteenth-Century Florence’, Medical History, 35 (1991), pp. 164–88; J. Henderson, The Renaissance Hospital. See Rondinelli, Relazione, pp. 44–6; Catellacci, ‘Curiosi ricordi’, p. 382; and Sanità, DP 6, f. 54v. Catellacci, ‘Curiosi ricordi’, p. 382. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 47. Ibid., pp. 52–3. C. Corsini, ‘Morire a casa, morire in ospedale. Ricoverati e mortalità a Firenze in età moderna’, in La bellezza come terapia. Arte e assistenza nell’ospedale di Santa Maria Nuova a Firenze, ed. E. Ghidetti and E. Diana (Florence, 2005), p. 244, table 3. Cf. Henderson, The Renaissance Hospital. For S. Matteo see E. Diana, San Matteo e San Giovanni di Dio, due ospedali nella storia fiorentina. Struttura nosocomiale, patrimonio fondiario e assistenza nella Firenze dei secoli XV–XVIII (Florence, 1999). Diana, San Matteo e San Giovanni di Dio, p. 213, table 2. Cipolla, Cristofano, pp. 52–3. Targioni, ‘Relazione della Peste’, p. 311. Sanità, Negozi 152, f. 858r: ‘Ferito dalli vapori crudeli di peste’. Archivio della Venerabile Arciconfraternita della Misericordia di Firenze (cited as AVamfi), Morini C 250: ‘G[i]ornale della Compagnia della Misericordia’, 26.8.1630– 30.11.1630, f. 2r: ‘Si terrà conto di danari che si pagano à nostri porti che si tiene per sotterare e morti sospetti di male contagioso e di portarte malati sospetti ai lazaretto di Bonifazio, chavare morti di quello luogo per sotterrare al Campo e di poi si levò detto lazeretto di Bonifazio e si fece alla Fortezza di Sto Miniato al Monte, e si porta li amalati a detto luogo e altre ispese per detto bisognio e danari che si ànno dalla Sanità per detto bisognio come in questo, e tenuto per me, Orlando di GiovanGualberto Zuti, quoiaio e cittadino fiorentino e proveditore della compagnia della Misericordia.’ J. Henderson, Piety and Charity; J. Henderson, ‘Plague in Renaissance Florence: medical theory and government response’, Maladies et société (xii–xviiie siècles), ed. N. Bulst and

NOTES to pp. 95–101

37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47.

48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62.

63. 64. 65. 66. 67.

303

R. Delort (Paris, 1989), pp. 165–86; and discussion in Diana, Sanità nel Quotidiano, pp. 14–21. Rondinelli, Relazione, pp. 49–50. Ibid.; Catellacci, ‘Curiosi ricordi’, p. 384. AVamfi, Morini C 250: Giornale della Compagnia della Misericordia, 26.8.1630– 30.11.1630. Also mentioned by contemporary commentators e.g. Targioni, ‘Relazione della Peste’, p. 305. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 26. Sanità, Negozi 152, c. 769, 12.II.1630. Cipolla, Cristofano, pp. 134–5. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 56. See ch. 8. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 28. Baldinucci, Quaderno, p. 70. Ibid., p. 71, 23.11.1630. Ibid., p. 70; Rondinelli, Relazione, pp. 57–8: ‘tutte le scuole di ciasceduna sorte, perchè i fanciulli stando in una stanza sola molti in numero, e ristretti insieme, facilmente poteranno infettarsi, e la ragione vuole che il buono agricoltore tenga particolar conto delle piante novelle, le quali venga su, e i giovanetti in simili tempi abastanza imparano mentre stanno sani’. Sanità, DP 7, f. 74r; cf. discussion in ch. 8. Sanità, Negozi 150, f. 365r; Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 58, is not specific about when markets were closed; other sources confirm this measure was just implemented during the quarantine. Sanità, Negozi 154, f. 615r, 14.1.1631: ‘alcuni bariglioni di sanguaccino fradicio, e budellaccia putrefatte, che rendono molto fetore, e cattivo odore’. See also ff. 613r–v. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 58. Ibid., pp. 58–9. Sanità, Negozi 152, ff. 785r–v. Ibid., f. 785r: ‘Signori, si, che in una zana vi havevo mescolati diverse cose, come collari, camice, pezzuole, e simili cose e bianche e sudice.’ On plague in Prato, see Cipolla, Cristofano. Ibid.: ‘Domandato se egli sappia che in Prato sia la medesima or forse più infezione che in questa città. Risponde: ‘Io ho casa la mia vita quanto nessuno altro, e gli ho compri come mi ho detto.’ Catellacci, ‘Curiosi ricordi’, p. 383. C. Torricelli et al. (eds), La Misericordia di Firenze attraverso i secoli. Note storiche (Florence, 1975), pp. 92–3. Catellacci, ‘Curiosi ricordi’, p. 383. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 55. Sanità, Negozi, 160, f. 454r, 18.8.1631, lists the number of officials working for the Misericordia. I am grateful to Barbara Maria Affolta for clarification on this point. Documenti inediti o poco noti per la storia della Misericordia di Firenze (1240–1525), ed. U. Morini (Florence, 1940), ch. 16, pp. 112–15. AVamfi, Morini C 249, cc. 106–7, 5–6.11; c. 130. In 1633 they were paid ‘lire due per ogni servizio fatto’. AVamfi Morini C 252/4: ‘Ordine degli ufficiali di Sanità della città di Firenze, firmato da Niccolò Magnani cancelliere, che ai fratelli della Misericordia che portano malati al lazzeretto o morti di contagio al campo santo, siano pagati lire due per ogni servizio fatto (14.v.1633).’ Ibid., cc. 90–1, payments, 25.x–27.x.1630. Ibid., ff. 2v–24r, 26.viii–30.ix.1630. Ibid., ff. 2v–24r: 26.viii–30.ix.1630. ASF, SMN 200, ff. 160r–v, 161r. Sanità, Negozi 153, f. 1207r, 28.xii.1630: ‘Signor Antonio di GiovanBattista del Tovaglia, quale nonostotante che li fusse stato serrata la casa conforme al solito, passeggiava per la città, del che ne può aver cagionato qualche male di contagio. La causa per la quale gli sia

304

68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74.

75. 76.

77.

78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90.

NOTES to pp. 101–104

stata serrata la casa è per esse morta una sua serva in detta casa.’ Del Tovaglia’s defence was that: ‘Hier notte alla Sandra mia serva si prese una febbre e hier mattina io vennì alla Sanità a portare la poliza del suo male, conforme a che ero obligato, dopo che habbi dato la polizza, andai alla messa e dopo messa e fatto esercizio, tornai a casa e trovai che la casa era serrata dalla Sanità dopo l’ora di desinare.’ Avvertimenti, ASF, Torrigiani, Appendice 17.1, ff. 159r–v. Ibid., Cap. VIII. Sanità, Negozi 149, ff. 682r–v, 13.8.1630, repeated in early September: Sanità, Negozi 150, ff. 52r–v. Ibid. 149, f. 682v. Targioni, ‘Relazione della Peste’, p. 305: ‘i Sigg cercavano ogni modo di non ci tenere detti malati per le case perché non avessero a infettare gl’altri’. Ibid., Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 52; Catellacci, ‘Curiosi ricordi’, p. 383. Rondinelli, Relazione, pp. 52, 56. See also: Giubetti, Notizie concernenti la conservazione della sanità, pp. 28–9, measures to take to separate the ‘appestati’ and ‘sospetti’ from the ‘sani’: ‘con il condurgli in luoghi appartati fuori della città, dove possino essere curati e custoditi, potendo essere forzati a dovere uscire della case proprie, quando sia pericolo d’infettare gl’altri dell’istessa casa o li vicini, altrimenti non ci essendo luogo destinato per gl’appestati, né s’endoci li pericoli di appestare gl’altri, non è lecito privare alcuno della casa sua, come anco non deve essere prohibito a particulari appestati ritirarsi per le ville e case loro particulari quando a loro spese si contentono d’essere guardati.’ Baldinucci, Quaderno, pp. 69–70. AVamfi, Morini C 253, 16 June 1633: ‘Adì 16 di giugno 1633. Voi della Compagnia della Misericordia potrete portare al solito luogo delli infetti del contagioni Monna Lisabeta, vedova, sta in Via del Moro al numero 6 alla Piazza del Grano, Niccolò Magnani, Cancelliere.’ Ibid., under date, 28 June 1633: ‘Adì 16 di giugno 1633. Voi della Compagnia della Misericordia potrete portare al solito luogo delli infetti del contagioni Benedeto di Antonio Confortini, malato di contagio, sta in Via San Jacopo in Campo Corbolini al numero 24. Niccolò Magnani, Cancelliere. A.B.C.S.’ ASF, Torrigiani, Appendice 17.1, Cap. IX. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 51. See B.M Affolta, ‘Dalla zana al carro lettiga’ in S. Nanni, ed., La carità a motore. Come nacque la prima ambulanza (Florence, 2017), pp. 19-31. I am grateful to the author for allowing me to consult the article before publication. Targioni, ‘Relazione della Peste’, p. 305; Guiducci, ‘Panegirico’, p. 122: ‘certe barelle a usuanza di cataletti’. Rondinelli, Relazione, pp. 49–50. AVamfi, Morini C 254: ‘Entrata e Uscita di denari . . . per il contagio’, 6.10.1630– 19.11.1631; Morini C 249: ‘Debitori e creditori’, 26.8.1630–ix.1630; 1648 (256): ‘Spese minute alla giornata per servizio della Sanità’, 1.4.1631–30.11.1631. The Misericordia’s account books list numerous expenses relating to plague: see, for example, AVamfi, Morini C 250, 253, 255. AVamfi, Morini C 254, f. 68r: ‘A spese di torce e falchole gialle e falchole bianche e moccoli gialli e d’olio contraveleno servitio per i neri e per la compagnia per la fare e ufizi fatti pe i mortti a canppi.’ AVamfi, Morini C 249, cc. 90–1, 25–27.x.1630. Catellacci, ‘Curiosi ricordi’, p. 383; Targioni, ‘Relazione della Peste’, p. 305. AVamfi, Morini B 18: ‘Ordini degli ufficiali di Sanità per il trasporto degli ammalati sospetti all’ospedale di Bonifazio’. The chancellor is listed here as Niccolò Magnani, rather than Fulvio Giubetti. Giubetti, Notizie concernenti la conservazione della sanità, pp. 29–30. Cantini, La legislazione, vol. 16, pp. 89–90; Rondinelli, Relazione, pp. 52–3; cf. Sanità, Negozi 152, ff. 769r–v: ‘Modo di purificar le case infette’ (undated, but between folios dated 17.xi.1630).

NOTES to pp. 105–110

305

91. Sanità, Negozi 152, ff. 769r: ‘fiamma de stippa et infumando con solfo e le muraglie scossi dalla polvere et il pavimento bagnato con acqua et aceto’. 92. Avvertimenti, ASF, Torrigiani, Appendice 17.1, Cap. XVII, f. 152v. 93. Cantini, La legislazione, vol. 16, p. 89. 94. Giubetti, Notizie concernenti la conservazione della sanità, p. 31. 95. Rondinelli, Relazione, pp. 52–3. 96. Avvertimenti, Torrigiani, Appendice 17.1, f. 162v. 97. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 53; cf. also the trial records discussed in Chapter 8 where they are normally referred to as profumatori. 98. Sanità DP 7, 148r–v, and Chapter 8; see also Calvi, Histories, pp. 169–75, for a detailed discussion of Fagni. 99. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 53. 100. Ibid., pp. 52–3. 101. ASF, SMN 200, f. 159r, 19.x.1630. 102. Cipolla, Public Health, p. 85, table 3. 103. Giubetti, Notizie concernenti la conservazione della sanità, p. 30. 104. ASF, SMN 200, ff. 155r–v: in the deliberations of the Collegio de’Medici the following were listed on 17 October 1630 as in the service of the Sanità: Medici per servitio della Serenissima casa: Maestro Antonio Pellicini; Maestro GiovBattista Aggiunti, Maestro Vettorio Rossi, Maestro Giovanni Ronconi, Maestro Francesco Angiulla (?) Medici per servitio delli Ammalati non sospetti della città: Maestro Mario Mavanti; Maestro Stefano de Castro Portoghese; Maestro Antonio Medici; Maestro Niccolò Zerbinelli per il Magistrato della Sanità; Maesto Giovanni Nardi. 105. Giubetti, Notizie concernenti la conservazione della sanità, p. 30. 106. Calvi, Histories, pp. 78–9. 107. Rondinelli, Relazione, pp. 54–5. 108. Ibid., p. 56. 109. ASF, SMN 200, f. 160r–v, 20.10.1630: letter from the Sanità to the Collegio de’ Medici. 110. Ibid., f. 159r, 19.10.1630. 111. Ibid. 112. ASF, Torrigiani, Appendice 17.1, Cap. XI. 113. Ibid., f. 151v, Cap. XIII. 114. Sanità, Negozi 150, f. 558r, undated, but about 10.9.1630: ‘medicamenti berzuartici e di più molta copia di droghe che vanno in detti medicamenti et d’olio contro veleni c’è ne circa lb. 200 e triache circa lb. 2000, et del mitridatio assai quantità’. 115. P.A. Mattioli, I discorsi ne i sei libri della materia medicinale di Pedacio Dioscoride Anarbeo (Venice, 1557; Bologna, 1984 repr.), p. 640. 116. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 25. 117. ASF, SMN 200, f. 158r, 19.10.1630: letter from GiovanFrancesco Guidi on behalf of the Grand Duke (SAS) to the Collegio dei Medici. 118. De Castro, Il curioso, p. 36. 119. Pellicini, Discorso sopra de’ mali, pp. 21–2. 120. Cf. Calvi, Histories, p. 68, discusses bloodletting and in particular the recommendations for making cuts on the leg below the bubo so that the poisonous liquid could flow out. 121. Avvertimenti, ASF, Torrigiani, Appendice 17.1, f. 163v. 122. Cohn, Cultures of Plague, pp. 15–18. 123. Avvertimenti, ASF, Torrigiani, Appendice 17.1, f. 163v. 124. See also ASF, Misc. Med. 389, ff. 200–1r: ‘Modo di medicare questo male contagioso, sperimentato con havere guariti molti, sì come si può sapere su la Costa S. Giorgio et in Borgo Ognisanti da quelli padri.’ This MS contains other recipes for preserving oneself from the male contagioso, including ‘rimedi et sperimentati per li carboncelli’. 125. Sanità, Negozi 149, f. 847r, 17.8.1630: ‘Il Illustrissimo Signor Marchese Niccolò Guinigi ha hordinato in fonderia di S.A.S. per parte di quella che si mandi a V.A.S. quattro fiaschi d’Acqua da febbre, acciò V.S. li faccia havere a quelli che sono deputati

306

126. 127. 128. 129. 130.

131. 132. 133.

134. 135. 136. 137. 138. 139. 140. 141. 142. 143. 144. 145. 146.

147. 148. 149. 150.

151.

NOTES to pp. 110 –115 nell’Ospedale di Bonifatio alla cura delli amalati di febbre, massime malignie, et pestifere, perché la diano confirme alla ricetta a detti malati quanto prima advertendo di non darlo altri rimedii per bocca se non questa, observando l’effetto che seguendo buono come per lo più suol succedere si seguiti il darlo l’acqua sola, se non li potranno dare quel che lo pareva bene . . . però li manda con questa li detti quattro fiaschi d’acqua di febbre legatovi ad uno di loro la ricietta.’ Pellicini, Discorso sopra de’ mali, p. 27. Ibid., pp. 59, 61. Ibid., pp. 28–9. Ibid., p. 56. Cf. P. Slack, ‘Mirrors of Health and Treasures of Poor Men: The Uses of the Vernacular Medical Literature of Tudor England’, in C. Webster, ed., Health, medicine and mortality in the sixteenth century (1979), ch. 7; C. Jones, ‘Plague and its Metaphors in Early Modern France’, pp. 97–127; Cohn, Cultures of Plague. ASF, Misc. Med. 389. Ibid. 389, 5, c. IIIr. Ibid. 389, 5, cc. IV–XIIIv. For a detailed discussion of the way in which the six non-naturals were used as a way of preserving health see Cavallo and Storey, Healthy Living in Late Renaissance Italy, and S. Cavallo and T. Storey, eds, Conserving Health in Early Modern Culture: Bodies and Environments in Italy and England (Manchester, 2017). Ibid. 389, 4, c. XVIIv. Ibid. 389, 26. Ibid. 389, 5. Ibid. 389, 3. Ibid. 389, 4. Ibid. 389, 5. Ibid. 389, 7–8. Ibid. 389, 8. See the studies of Pomata, Contracting a Cure; D. Gentilcore, Medical Charlatanism in Early Modern Italy (Oxford, 2006). Cf. De Castro, De curioso, pp. 8, 59; and discussion in Calvi, Histories, pp. 98–104. ASF, SMN 200, f. 207r, 30.8.1631; ASF, SMN 200, f. 206r–v, 26.9.1631. Ibid., f. 295r, 21.8.1633. Sanità, Negozi 153, ff. 279r–v, S. Miniato, 5.12.1630: ‘Mando la nota alle Signori Illustrissime di tucte quelle persone che con maturo giuditio, consiglio e esperienza sono abilitate per l’aiuto de’ cierusichi, et essendo tanto huomini come donne. Vediamo che gli uomini sono otto, e devisi in tre classe o differenze secondo il lor sapere e progresso. Margherita di Giovanni Lombardi, questa prima cava sanguee taglia buboni come un cerusicho, e merita qualche cosa piu della provisione.’ For what follows see Cantini, La legislazione, vol. 16, pp. 89–90. Cf. the detailed discussion of the account books of the Speziale del Giglio in late fifteenth-century Florence in J. Shaw and E. Welch, Making and Marketing Medicine in Renaissance Florence (Amsterdam, 2011). D. Gentilcore, ‘Negoziare rimedi in tempo di peste, alchimisti, ciarlatani, protomedici’, in La Peste a Roma, I. Fosi, ed., pp. 75–91; P. Wallis, ‘Plagues, Morality and the Place of Medicine in Early Modern England’, English Historical Review, 121.490 (2006), pp. 1–24. Cf. Calvi, Histories, pp. 87–8; G. Pomata, Contracting a Cure, ch. 5; D. Gentilcore, ‘“All that pertains to medicine”: Protomedici and Protomedicati in Early Modern Italy’, Medical History, 38 (1994), pp. 121–142; Gentilcore, Medical Charlatanism in Early Modern Italy, ch. 6. See also M. Pelling, ‘Active Patients’, in M. Pelling with F. White, Medical Conflicts in Early Modern London: Patronage, Physicians and Irregular Practitioners, 1550–1640 (Oxford, 2003), ch. 7. Sanità, DP 7, f. 16r, 7.11.30: A licence granted to Maestro Giovannni Confortinari malato ‘chi sta a casa dietro a S. Jacopo fra Fossi, che possa curarsi in casa per esser solo,

NOTES to pp. 115–124

152.

153.

154. 155. 156.

157.

307

et havere la casa grande, e commodità da farsi curare con servitù bastante, et il medico Faberi lo posso curare e visitare.’ Ibid., f. 43v, 18.11.1630: ‘Item sentito che Maestro Francesco Franzesi e Maestro Salustri Faberi, medici esperti a medicar li infermi di sospetto, vanno praticando per le botteghe di spezzierie et altri luoghi, mescolandosi con tutti senza alcun riguardi, e che medicono molte persone senza notizia o licenza del Magistrato.’ Sanità, Negozi, 155, f. 741r, 23.2.1631: ‘In Via Nuova da S. Paolo al numero 176, nasce il presente caso: Una donna parturiente stata nell’atto del partorire quattordici ore, con la creatura morta e meza fuora, giudicandosi dalle levatrici venire al taglio, non si trova cerusico che vi vada, e quel che e’ peggio, il parrochiano d’Ogni Santi, recusa voler sacramentarla senza la fede di Sebastiano Manieri cerusico di detto Sestiere, che non sia mal contagioso, e la povera donna continua in così grave pericolo del corpo e dell’anima, senza trovarsi sin’ora ne cerusico ne sacerdote per tal effetto. Io come quello che distribuisce il sussidio a detta strada, ne do conto alle Signori Vostri Illustrissimi, fo reverenzia, dal Sestiere di Santa Maria Novella in S. Paolo, li 23 di Febbraio 1630 ab incarnazione a 18 ore.’ Filiberto Marchini, Belli divini sive, Pestilentis temporis accurata et luculenta: speculatio theologica canonica . . . philosophica (Florence, 1633), p. 246. Sanità, Negozi, 151, ff. 608r–v: ‘Gli do nota d’alcune porcherie, che vengon fatte da cerusici e medici stipendiati dalla Sanità.’ Ibid., 152, f. 863r, 19.11.1630: ‘Vittorio di . . . cerusico del Sestiere di S. Ambogio, et deputato sopra le visite del contagio, vadi spesse volto senza il compagno, a fai visite, del che ne nasce de’ disordini, come appresso si dice. Che detto Vettorio il dì 17 stante habbi fatto una visita a una certa Domenica di Casentino, che habitava il secondo piano della casa dove habita Paolantonio tintore in Via S. Maria, et fattola fare in capo di scala et alzare i panni in questa guisa la visitasse, fa che il suo referto, che perciò fu mandata al Lazzeretto di S. Miniato, et ciò fatto andasse alla volta della moglie del detto Paoloantonio, a quella mettesse le mani in seno, abbracciasse et bacciasse, dicendoli ci vogliamo un po’ chiavare, da quella fusse fatta resistanza con dire lo diciò al mio marito e con gran fatica lei scappasse dalle mani.’ See ch. 8, and Calvi, Histories. See, for example, Sanità, Negozi 153, ff. 481r–v, 9.12.1630: ‘Salvestro [di Michele Lucherino], detto Petto sudiccio, oste nel Panicho temeraramente e contro le legge di quelle habbi facto medicare uno suo figliolo malato di male contagioso da medico ancora non deputato da loro Signori, quale sta nella Via dello Studio, et tutto acciò detto suo figliolo non fusse condotto a uno de’ lazzaretti sopra dicio deputati. . . . Detto Salvestro haver praticato sempre nella sua osteria in grave danno del pubblico e con causa di infettare molta gente’. 5 THE IMPACT OF PLAGUE AND QUARANTINE

1. Rondinelli, Relazione, pp. 36–7. 2. Litchfield, Florence Ducal Capital, para. 344–50. 3. J. Henderson, ‘The Parish and the Poor in Florence at the time of the Black Death: the case of San Frediano’, Continuity and Change, 3 (1988), pp. 247–72; Carmichael, Plague and the Poor in Renaissance Florence, pp. 71–8. 4. Sanità 467. 5. Sanità 463. 6. See J. Henderson and C. Rose, ‘Plague and the City’, pp. 125–46, for a discussion of some of the methodological issues raised in, for example, assessing how far the socio-economic and topographical character of each street might have related to levels of infection and mortality. 7. See G. Orefice, ‘Dalle decime settecentesche al catasto particellare granducale’, in Firenze nel period della restaurazione (1814–1864). Una mappa delle trasformazioni edilizie, Storia dell’urbanistica Toscana, II, January–June 1989, pp. 41–50. 8. Baldinucci, Quaderno, pp. 70–1. 9. Via de’ Ginori had a combined house frontage on both sides of the street of some 434 metres.

308 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

16. 17.

18.

19. 20. 21.

22.

23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

NOTES to pp. 124–128

Litchfield, Florence Ducal Capital. Ibid., para. 346. Via S. Zanobi’s street frontage was 810 metres, and Via de’ Ginori’s 434 metres. Litchfield, Florence Ducal Capital, para. 346. Via Romita’s street frontage was 183 metres. Ibid., ff. 573r–574r: 17.xi.1630: ‘Io habito nella Via della Scala e sono io e la mia moglie in uno appartamento, cioè l’ultimo, nel di sotto di me habitativa Monna Lisabetta vedova, quale è morta giovedì la settimana inanzi, che fussi preso; primo appartamento habita Monna Maddalena vedova, e nelli appartamenti di mezzo, che sono due, habita Monna Gostanza vedova, Monna Nannina vedova, che detta Monna Gostanza ha una fanciulla che si chiama Maddalena. Monna Gostanza ammalò circa 4 giorni e feci il referto alla Sanità ella fu visitato di un Gallino senza pelo in viso, che ho sentito dire che si chiama Ceseri e la mando al Lazzaretto di S. Miniato, e la sua figlia fu menata a S. Honoferi.’ Ibid., ff. 573r–574r, 17.xi.1630. P. Slack, ‘The Local Incidence of Epidemic Disease: The Case of Bristol, 1540–1650’, in Slack (ed.), The Plague Reconsidered, pp. 49–62; Schofield, ‘An Anatomy of an Epidemic’ Champion, London’s Dreaded Visitation; Alfani and Cohn Jr, ‘Nonontola 1630’, pp. 99–138. Cohn and Alfani, ‘Nonontola 1630’; G. Alfani and M. Bonetti, ‘A survival analysis of the last great European plagues: The case of Nonantola (Northern Italy) in 1630’, Population Studies, 72 (2018), pp. 14–15; Cummins et al., ‘Living Standards and Plague in London, 1560–1665’, pp. 3–34. Cf. Schofield, ‘An Anatomy of an Epidemic’; Alfani and Cohn Jr, ‘Nonontola 1630’, p. 124. M. Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London, 1996), p. 36. J. Champion, ‘Epidemics and the Built Environment in 1665’, in J. Champion, ed., Epidemic Disease in London (London, 1993), pp. 35–52; cf. also Alfani and Bonetti, ‘A Survival Analysis’, p. 14; P. Galanaud, A. Galanaud and P. Giraudoux, ‘Historical Epidemics Cartography Generated by Spatial Analysis: Mapping the Heterogeneity of Three Medieval “Plagues” in Dijon’, PLoS ONE, 10(12) (2015): e0143866. AVamfi, Morini C 259/1, c. 1r: ‘a dì 9 di agosto 1630. Margerita di Francesco Altoviti da Vernio del popolo di S. Pulnari a casa nella corte del Garbo fu sotterata in detta chiesa dalla Compagnia della Misericordia come non sospetta, benché fusse come si vede il giorno veniente che si cavorno della detta casa dua de’ sua figlioli; e quali furno portati nel carnaio di Santa Maria Nuova per hordine del Magistrato di Santità per sospetto di mal di contagio dove ebbe principio il primo male in Firenze. E sotto il medesimo giorno del dì 10 detto morirno Antonio e Bartolomeo fratelli figlioli di Vincentio cabattino a casa al Canto alla Briga. E sopradetti morti si portonno in Santa Maria Nuova e li seppelirno nel solito carnaio facendo una fossa di 3 braccia affonda e li copersano di calcina e terra per sospetto anche questi di tal male. A dì 16 d’agosto 1630: la signora Maddalena del signor Antonio del Garbo e la sua serva, cavati della corte del Garbo, e portati a sepoltura di notte nel carnaio di Santa Maria Nuova con una coperta di calcina e terra sopra come male contagioso; e per non essere ancora dato hordine di altri campi come poi fu hordinato che si portassino a Bonifatio nel carnaio loro.’ Sanità, DP 6, f. 66r; Baldinucci, Quaderno, p. 67. AVamfi, Morini Aa 2014. Sanità, Rescritti 37, ff. 337ff, 9.x.1630. Targioni, ‘Relazione della Peste’, p. 307; Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 56. Sanità, Rescritti 37, f. 190r, 26.viii.1630. Baldinucci, Quaderno, p. 71. AVamfi, Morini C 254, f. 70r: ‘Entrata e Uscita di denari . . . per il contagio’. Ibid., C 256, ff. 1v (1.iv.1631), 3r (22.iv.1631): ‘Per havere fatto à mazare no. 8 cani da nostri huomini, 5 scudi. Per havere dato la mancia a Romolo che à mazato de’ cani fuori della Porta alla Croce, 4 scudi.’

NOTES to pp. 128–136 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72.

309

Baldinucci, Quaderno, p. 67. Avvertimenti, Torrigiani, Cap. XIV, f. 152r. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 54. AVamfi, Morini C 252/3, Lettera di Giovanni Bonsi a Stefano di Rodrigo de’ Castro, 13 May 1633. The manuscript is from the library of the late Carlo Cipolla, to whom I remain very grateful for permission to cite these data. See Slack, The Impact of Plague, pp. 276–7. Ibid., p. 277. Cipolla, Fighting the Plague, p. 79; Cipolla, Cristofano, p. 147; Sonnino and Traina, ‘La peste del 1656–57 a Roma’, p. 443: table 3. Stevens Crawshaw, Plague Hospitals, pp. 86–8, 189. See Cohn, Cultures of Plague, p. 21 on the more minor epidemic in Milan of 1483–5, when 4,829 people died and 6% died in the plague hospital. Catellacci, ‘Curiosi ricordi’, p. 383. Targioni, ‘Relazione della Peste’, p. 308. Pastore, Crimine e giustizia, pp. 88–9. Rondinelli, Relazione, pp. 60ff.; Lombardi, ‘1629–1631: crisi e peste a Firenze’, pp. 43–4. Sanità 465, and discussed by Lombardi, ‘1629–1631: crisi e peste a Firenze’, pp. 43–9. See Lombardi, ‘1629–1631: crisi e peste a Firenze’, pp. 43–9. Sardi Bucci, ‘La peste del 1630’, pp. 83–8. Carmichael, Plague and the Poor, pp. 74–5. Lombardi, ‘1629–1631: crisi e peste a Firenze’, p. 48: ‘tutte le case sono senza lavoro, atteso che i bottegai non danno più da lavorare per sospetto di non infettar le tele, che se tutte avesser da lavorare quanto vogliono, il sussidio sarebbe minor somma’. On the quarantine see also Ciofi, ‘La peste del 1630 a Firenze’, pp. 59–64. In addition to Bologna, there were debates about general quarantines in, for example, Milan and Bustio Arsizio: Cipolla, Cristofano, pp. 98–9. Rondinelli, Relazione, pp. 59–60. Brighetti, Bologna, pp. 238–9. Rondinelli, Relazione, pp. 60–1. Ibid., p. 68. Cipolla, Cristofano, p. 98. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 62. Baldinucci, Quaderno, p. 72. Ibid., pp. 72–3. Sanità, DP 7, f. 165r. Ibid., f. 170r. Ibid., ff. 170v–171r. Ibid., DP 8, 13v. Lombardi, Povertà maschile, poverta’ femminile, pp. 30–5. Ibid. De Castro, Il curioso, p. 19. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 63; Targioni, ‘Relazione della Peste’, p. 313. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 72. Ibid., p. 63. The following is based on Targioni, ‘Relazione della Peste’, p. 313, and Baldinucci, Quaderno, p. 72. ASF, Misc. Med. 370.32, f. 2r. Targioni, ‘Relazione della Peste’, p. 313. Baldinucci, Quaderno, p. 72; cf. Rondinelli, Relazione, pp. 64–5. There is a brief discussion of the quarantine in Florence in Cipolla, Fighting the Plague, pp. 17–18. For a list of the names of the ‘Gentiluomini deputati sopra le strade’ see Rondinelli, Relazione, pp. 71–80.

310

NOTES to pp. 136–140

73. ASF, Misc. Med. 370.32: ‘Modo di come si crede che possa satisfazione in alimentare quelli che hanno bisogno del sussidio della quarantena’. 74. Pellicini, Discorso sopra de’ male, pp. 11, 14. 75. Cohn, The Cultures of Plague, pp. 278–9. 76. Sanità, DP 7, f. 165v. 77. Ibid., ff. 168v, 176v. 78. Ibid., ff. 184v–185r. 79. Targioni, ‘Relazione della Peste’, p. 312. 80. The letters from Prince Giovanni Carlo to Prince Mattias in ASF, Mediceo Avanti il Principato 6146, c. 43: 17.iii.1631: ‘Andava ‘personalmente per la città a piedi et a cavallo per riveder tutto quello che si faceva . . . per bene accertare i bisogni dei suoi sudditi. L’atto del granduca è stato un eccesso di amore, di benignità et di grandezza straordinaria dell’animo suo.’ Mediceo Avanti il Principato 5392, c. 51: on 1.ii.1631: ‘Il granduca ogni giorno si lascia rivedere per la città a piedi con poca gente per provvedere ai bisogni di questa clausura [e.g. quarantine]. Io ancora vado in ciò servendo S.A., et speriamo con l’aiuto di Dio, e con queste diligenze di liberarci affatto dal male perchè va scemando sempre il numero de’morti e de’ cadenti di questo morbo.’ 81. Baldinucci, Quaderno, p. 73. 82. Catellacci, ‘Curiosi ricordi’, p. 385. 83. Cited by Ciofi, ‘La peste del 1630 a Firenze’, p. 61, without providing the source: Ogni furbo plebeo par che ne spiccchi, porta calze di seta, e fiori, e guanti e mille mediconzoli furfanti, con mille altri baron, son fatti ricchi. Chi è che a tanta macca non si ficchi? che del guadagno ingorgo non si vanti? Ma vorrei darvi invece di contanti, brutti poltron, la fine che v’appicchi! Io ho visto a talun che non portava Non che altro il ferraiuol per non l’avere, il diamante col collar di cava. I poveri stentar, costor godere, per la rabbia che’i’ho mi vien la bava. Cazzo, un uomo da ben non può tacere! 84. G. Alfani, ‘Plague in Seventeenth-century Europe’, pp. 408–30. 85. Rondinelli, Relazione, ch. 7, pp. 81–8: ‘Cura del contado’. Cf. also the discussion in Lombardi, ‘1629–1631: crisi e peste a Firenze’, pp. 23–31. 86. Sanità, Negozi, 154, ff. 1216r–v: 28.i.31. ‘hiermattina cominciai a distribuire il pane in quattro luoghi per più comodita’ de’ poveri, come vedranno dall’inclusa nota. L’affetto col quale io servo alle Illustrissimi Signori dettava che io distribuissi tutto di mia mano, come fo di quella parte che elle veggano, e come di mia mano ancora ho fatto e dato le polizze a ciascuno, esaminando bene le famiglie per detrarne le bocche che si guardagnano il vitto’. 87. Ibid., f. 1021r, 24.i.1631: ‘sopra la distributione e del pane ai pigionali et altre persone bisognose del contado . . . tocco a me questa parte di popoli comincando da fuori la Porta a San Niccolò, con il termine d’Arno per una parte, e per l’altra tutta la Strada Maestra Aretina, non passando il termine prescrittoci della cinque miglia, tengo alla mia cura. Come le vedranno dalla allegata mia descritione dieci popoli, sopra i quali havendo fatto con l’aiuto de’ curati e rettori, et altre persone particulari, l’esame che per la brevità del tempo mi è stato permesso, trovo havere necessità di distribuire ogni giorno numero 291 pani almeno che sono il valore di z. 38 s. 16.’

NOTES to pp. 140 –144

311

88. Ibid., ff. 1021r–v, 24.i.1631: ‘Io non ho descritto altro che i pigionali e per persone inabili a guardagnare, ho inteso fanciulle e ragazzi e quelle donne, le quali vivendo per l’ordinario col far bucati a persone di Firenze o col portare qualche caretta alla città.’ 89. Ibid., ff. 1028r–v, 23.i.1631. 90. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 88. 91. Sanità, Negozi 156, f. 49r: Fuori di Firenze parte di San Giovanni: Sesto: 531; Fiesole: 602; S. Stefano: 2189; Careggi: 750 Fuori di Firenze parte di S. Spirito: Bellosguardo: 600; alle Rose: 1214; Gioghi: 431; Antella: 297; Ripoli: 291. 92. The reports of Cini and Mini are scattered throughout Sanità, Negozi 155–6. 93. Ibid. 154, f. 1016r, 24.i.31: ‘Per l’uffitio che tengo di curato d’anime, mi è parso in conscienza obligo mio, rappresentargli con tutto l’afetto le miserie e calamità grandissime nelle quali in tempo di questa quarentena si ritrovano molti e molti prigionali, et altri mendichi del mio popolo, che al sicuro, se non sono socorsi di qualche sussidio in questo tempo, non solo sono per osservare gli ordini dalle Signori loro Illustrissimi e clarissime, ma anco, se ne troverà morti, per le case per il patimento e di freddo e di fame, et altre infinite bisogni. Non potendo loro al presente, ne andar mendicando ne aiutarsi in altre maniere.’ 94. Mentioned, for example, by Baldinucci in his Quaderno. 95. Sanità, Negozi 155, f. 1019r, 24.i.31. 96. Sanità, Negozi 156, f. 51r. See also Sanità, Negozi 154, f. 1216v, 28.1.1631: ‘Inoltre voglio che le SS Ill. restino avvisate che si ritrovino nelle medesime miserie una gran numero di contadini, nonostante che sian lavoratori di Gentilhuomini ricchi e l mal loro mi par senza rimedio perchè non hanno che gli faccia limosina’. 97. Sanità, Negozi 156, f. 53r, 29.i.31: ‘Nota de’ poveri poderai che non hanno padrone che li possino sovenire, quali abitano nella arte che tocca a me.’ 98. Sanità, Negozi 155, f. 1128r, Commissario Pepi, 26.1.1631, S. Piero a Sieve. 99. Ibid., f. 1128r. 100. Ibid., f. 1156r. 101. Sanità, Negozi 156, f. 78r: Petition to the VAS of the poveri contadini of Montereggi, 3.2.1631: ‘non solo in paese, ma in circuito di parechi miglia chi dia da guardagne una crazia, ne un botteggaio, o oste, che dia pur a credenza un pane, si muoiono tutti con le lor povere famiglie di fame’. 102. Ibid., f. 78r. 103. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 87. 104. Sanità, Negozi 155, f. 1021r, 24.i.31. 105. Sanità, Negozi 154, ff. 1216r–v: ‘son molti poveri miserabili, mi tormenta e mette in croce, parendoli ch’io sia parziale in questa distribuzione . . . la miseria loro è grande a segno che io ho per impossibile che vivino el numero di essi credo sia almeno di 400’. 106. Sanità, Negozi 155, f. 158r, 4.ii.31, Senatore Niccolò Cini to the Illustrissimi Signori: ‘e vi sono più borghi pieni di gente che si ciba di coccole di mortella, ghiande, e erbe, e di veggano per le strade che paiono cadaveri che camminino’. 107. Sanità, Negozi 154, f. 1250r, 29.i.31. 108. Ibid., ff. 1160r–1161r. 109. Sanità, Negozi 156, f. 50v, report of Francesco Maria Malegonelli. 110. Sanità, Negozi 155, ff. 1156v, 48r, 2.ii.1631; f. 242r, Scarperia, 7.ii.31. 111. Ibid., f. 308r, 9.ii.1631: ‘Piacque alla Divina Provvidenza di toccare questo mio popolo con i flagelli del contagio: subito furono indistintamente riserrate quattro case, due delle quali ne aveano un pane di vivere: il resto del popolo era dagl’altri discacciato, proibitogli le chiese, le strade, i lavori, da per tutto è minaciato: mi gettai nelle pietose bracia del Signore, impegniai me medesimo per sovvenire i poveri, e mi ridussi con pericolo manifesto a portare io stesso il mangiare a proprii infermi, procurai che fussero soccorsi così di quello che apparteneva al corpo, come all’anima. In ultimo vedendo ch’erano abominati i vivi non che i morti, mi risolvetti a fare in sul mio proprio un piccolo cimitero, acciò io solo servissi per i defunti di questo popolo.’

312

NOTES to pp. 144–153

112. See ASF, Ufficiali del Biado, Abbondanza 18, under 29.xii.1630. 113. Catellacci, ‘Curiosi ricordi’, p. 391. Litchfield, Florence Ducal Capital, para. 356 and note 70, calculated the cost of the quarantine as about 185,440 scudi, based on 40 days of the daily ration of 1 Lira. 114. Sanità, DP 8, ff. 14r, 17v. 115. Ibid., DP 8. 116. Sanità, Negozi 155, f. 264r. 117. Ibid., f. 842r: ‘et certe rognosi, catarri, ciechi e incurabili, chi sono stati qui per i mesi interi’. 118. Ibid., f. 895r. 119. AVamfi, Morini C 259/2, ‘Morti’: entry under date 5.v.1631: ‘Questo giorno non ci fu morti di sorte alcuna, e la mattina veramente in nella Compagnia si canta la messa dello Spirito Santo.’ 120. Targioni, ‘Relazione della Peste’, p. 305. 121. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 65. 122. Baldinucci, Quaderno, p. 77. 123. Sanità, Rescritti 37, ff. 825r–v. 124. Ibid. 125. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 65. 126. Cantini, La legislazione, vol. 16, pp. 104–5, ‘Bando contro i mendicanti’, 7.3.1631; Sanità, Rescritti 37, ff. 857v, 889r. 6 RELIGION IN THE TIME OF PLAGUE

1. Giubetti, Notizie concernenti la conservazione della sanità, p. 3. 2. Cipolla, Public Health, pp. 36–7; Cipolla, Faith, Reason and the Plague, pp. 41–74. 3. G. Aranci, Formazione religiosa e santità laicale a Firenze tra Cinque e Seicento. Ippolito Galantini fondatore della Congregazione di San Francesco della Dottrina Cristiana (1565–1620) (Florence, 1997), pp. 75–85. 4. Targioni, ‘Relazione della Peste’, p. 300. 5. See Lombardi, ‘1629–1631: crisi e peste a Firenze’; and Litchfield, Florence Ducal Capital, pp. 327–32. 6. Targioni, ‘Relazione della Peste’, p. 300. 7. Ibid., p. 301. 8. See L. Berti, ‘Matteo Nigetti’, Rivista d’Arte, 27, 3rd ser., 2, 1951–2, pp. 93–106; C. Cresti, ‘Architettura della Controriforma a Firenze’, in Architetture di altari e spazio ecclesiale. Episodi a Firenze, Prato e Ferrara nell’età della Controriforma, ed. C. Cresti (Florence, 1995), pp. 7–73. 9. Baldinucci, Quaderno, p. 66. 10. Targioni, ‘Relazione della Peste’, pp. 301–2. 11. Baldinucci, Quaderno, p. 70. 12. Ibid., p. 70, n. 283. See A. D’Addario, Aspetti della Controriforma a Firenze (Rome, 1972), and Aranci, Formazione religiosa e santità laicale a Firenze. 13. On the company of S. Michele Arcangelo see N. Eckstein, ‘Florence on foot’; and on Urban VIII see Barker, ‘Plague Art in Early Modern Rome’, p. 51. 14. For the following see Targioni, ‘Relazione della Peste’, p. 306. 15. D. Rocciolo, ‘Cum Suspicione Morbi Contagiosi Obierunt. Società, religione e peste a Roma nel 1656–1657’, in Fosi, ed., La peste a Roma, p. 119. 16. Targioni, ‘Relazione della Peste’, p. 306. 17. See Mattioli, I discorsi ne i sei libri della materia medicinale di Pedacio Dioscoride Anarbeo, p. 601. 18. See Marchini, Belli divini, pp. 246–9: ‘Instruzione a Parrocchi e Curati della Città’, and pp. 251–3: ‘Instruzione a tutti li RR. Preposti, Piovani, Curati della Diocesi Fiorentina’. 19. Ibid., p. 246. 20. Cohn, Cultures of Plague, pp. 231–7.

NOTES to pp. 153–161 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48.

49. 50. 51. 52. 53.

54. 55. 56. 57. 58.

313

Catellacci, ‘Curiosi ricordi’, p. 383. Barker, ‘Art, Architecture and the Roman Plague of 1656–1657’, p. 245. Marchini, Belli divini, p. 248. Targioni, ‘Relazione della Peste’, p. 307. See Fracastoro, De contagione. See Rondinelli, Relazione, pp. 204–20, for a detailed discussion of the secular and religious priests who died ‘in the service of plague victims’. Cohn, Cultures of Plague, pp. 288–293; Cohn, Epidemics, pp. 72, 85. Cipolla, Faith, Reason and the Plague, pp. 1–9, esp. p. 3. Sanità, Negozi 155, ff. 805r–806r, 25.2.1631. Cipolla, Faith, Reason and the Plague, pp. 1–9; Cipolla, Fighting the Plague, pp. 56–7. Barker, ‘Miraculous Images and the Plagues of Italy, ca. 590–1656’. I am grateful to Sheila Barker for permitting me to read this article before publication. Barker, ‘Miraculous Images’. Cipolla, Faith, Reason and the Plague, pp. 41–74. See Calvi, Histories, pp. 249–51. Catellacci, ‘Curiosi ricordi’, p. 385. S.J. Cornelison, Art and the Relic Cult of St Antoninus in Renaissance Florence (Farnham, 2012), pp. 98–101. Ibid., p. 300. See: M. Chiarini, Disegni del Seicento e del Settecento della Biblioteca Marucelliana (Florence, 2016), p. 317. See also Forlani Tempesti, who suggests that the drawing may be the first surviving work from the young Stefano della Bella (1610–64): entry by A. Forlani Tempesti in Il seicento fiorentino. Disegno, incisione, scultura, arti minori (Florence, 1986–7), p. 260. The drawing is in the Biblioteca Marucelliana, Florence, vol. D n.113: 2.220. Cornelison, Art and the Relic Cult, p. 300. R.C. Proto Pisani, ‘Il ciclo affrescato del primo chiostro di San Marco: una galleria della pittura fiorentina del seicento’ in La Chiesa e convento di San Marco di Firenze (Florence, 1990), vol. 2, pp. 321–46, esp. p. 342. Del Panta, Le epidemie, p. 206. ‘somministrava il SS. Sacramento e sovvenire con larghe limosine li bisogniosi’. Henderson, Piety and Charity, pp. 44, 388–97. Boeckl, Images of Plague and Pestilence, ch. 6, pp. 108–36, and esp. pp. 108–11. Ibid., p. 111. On Landriani’s Quadroni see P. Jones, ‘San Carlo Borromeo and Plague Imagery in Milan and Rome’, in Bailey et al., eds, Hope and Healing, pp. 65–74. Boeckl, Images of Plague and Pestilence, p. 109. T.W. Worcester, ‘Plague as Spiritual Medicine and Medicine as Spiritual Metaphor: Three Treatises by Etienne Binet SJ (1569–1639)’, in Piety and Plague: From Byzantium to the Baroque, ed. F. Mormando and T.W. Worcester (Kirksville, Missouri, 2007), pp. 224–36, examines Binet’s ideas. Targioni, ‘Relazione della Peste’, p. 308; Catellacci, ‘Curiosi ricordi’, p. 387. Targioni, ‘Relazione della Peste’, p. 310. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 85. Ibid. M. Bietti Favi, ‘La pittura nella Chiesa di San Marco’, in La Chiesa e convento di San Marco di Firenze (Florence, 1990), vol. 2, pp. 231–46. On the translation ceremony of S. Antonino’s relics on 9 May 1589, which Passignano’s fresco commemorated, see Cornelison, Art and the Relic Cult, ch. 7, and M. Schraven, Festive Funerals in Early Modern Italy: The Art and Culture of Conspicuous Commemoration (London, 2014), pp. 136–40. Catellacci, ‘Curiosi ricordi’, p. 386. Targioni, ‘Relazione della Peste’, p. 310. Catellacci, ‘Curiosi ricordi’, p. 386. Ibid. Ibid., p. 387; see also Cornelison, Art and the Relic Cult, p. 302.

314

NOTES to pp. 161–168

59. Catellacci, ‘Curiosi ricordi’, p. 387. 60. Giovanni Pagliarulo, ‘Jacopo Vignali e gli anni della peste’, Artista. Critica dell’Arte in Toscana, 6 (Florence, 1994), p. 146. 61. On the cult of Domenica da Paradiso in Florence during the plague epidemic of 1630–1, see Calvi, Histories, ch. 5. On Domenica da Paradiso see, among other works: I. Gagliardi, Sola con Dio. La missione di Domenica da Paradiso nella Firenze del primo Cinquecento (Florence, 2007); A. Scattigno, ‘La costruzione di un profilo di santità femminile nella Firenze del XVII secolo’, Annali di Storia di Firenze, 8 (2013), pp. 145–70; M. Callahan, ‘“In her name and with her money”, Suor Domenica da Paradiso’s Convent of la Crocetta in Florence’, in Italian Art, Society and Politics: A Festschrift for Rab Hatfield, ed. B. Deimling, J.K. Nelson and G. Radke (New York, 2007), pp. 117–27; and M. Callahan, ‘Suor Domenica da Paradiso as alter Christus: Portraits of a Renaissance Mystic’, The Sixteenth Century Journal, 43.2 (2012), pp. 323–50. 62. B. Segni, Storie fiorentine (Milan, 1805), vol. 1, p. 191, cited in Calvi, Histories, p. 209. 63. Passage translated in Calvi, Histories, p. 209. Cf. Callahan, ‘“In her name and with her money”’, pp. 117–27. 64. Pagliarulo, ‘Jacopo Vignali’, p. 160. 65. Cited in Calvi, Histories, pp. 221–2. 66. Cited in ibid., p. 205. 67. Pagliarulo, ‘Jacopo Vignali’, pp. 159–60. 68. Ibid., p. 160. 69. I. del Nente, Vita e costumi et intelligenze spirituali della gran Serva di Dio, e Veneranda Madre Suor Domenica dal Paradiso fondatrice del monasterio dalla Croce di Firenze dell’Ordine di San Domenico (Venice, 1664), p. 2; cf. Pagliarulo, ‘Jacopo Vignali’, pp. 161–2. 70. Cited in Calvi, Histories, p. 228. 71. Cited ibid. 72. Targioni, ‘Relazione della Peste’, p. 313. 73. Ibid. 74. Ibid., p. 314; Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 69. 75. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 69. 76. Baldinucci, Quaderno, p. 72. 77. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 70. 78. Baldinucci, Quaderno, p. 73. 79. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 70. 80. Ibid., pp. 70–1; cf. also the less detailed accounts of both Targioni, ‘Relazione della Peste’, p. 315, and Catellacci, ‘Curiosi ricordi’, p. 390. 81. See D. Bornstein, The Bianchi of 1399: Popular Devotion in Late Medieval Italy (Ithaca, 1993). 82. Baldinucci, Quaderno, pp. 75–6, and n. 309 and 314. 83. B. Dooley, ‘Introduzione’ to Baldinucci, Quaderno, pp. xv–xvi.] 84. Baldinucci, Quaderno, pp. 77–8. 85. Stevens Crawshaw, Plague Hospitals, p. 206; G. Geltner, The Medieval Prison: A Social History (Princeton, 2008), p. 77. 86. F. Del Migliore, Firenze città nobilissima Illustrata (Florence, 1684), p. 302. 87. Pagliarulo, ‘Jacopo Vignali’, pp. 156–8 and 192 n. 112. 88. Ibid., pp. 157–8; Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 90. 89. On which see M. Holmes, The Miraculous Image in Renaissance Florence (New Haven and London, 2013); also pp. 80–3. 90. These have been transcribed in E. Casalini and I. Dina, Ex voto all’Annunziata. Inedito sul contagio del 1630. Tavolette dipinte del secolo XIX (Florence, 2005). It is not clear what the time-lag was between the dates when people visited and were cured at SS. Annunziata and when their names were entered into the register. Those entries which concern miracle cures of plague have been dated by the editors as having taken place in 1632, whereas it is more probable that they refer to 1631.

NOTES to pp. 169–176 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104.

105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121. 122. 123. 124. 125. 126. 127. 128. 129. 130.

315

Ibid., p. 29. Ibid., p. 33. Ibid., p. 29. Ibid., p. 30. Ibid., p. 31. Ibid., p. 13. See F.J. Jacobs, Votive Panels and Popular Piety in Early Modern Italy (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 37–41. Casalini and Dina, Ex voto all’Annunziata, pp. 13–14. Ibid., p. 11. La Basilica della Santissima Annunziata, ed. C. Sisi (Florence, 2014), 2 vols. See too, for the earlier period, Holmes, The Miraculous Image. D. Liscia Bemporad, ‘Argenti per un santuario’, in La Basilica della Santissima Annunziata, vol. 2, pp. 240–41. On Cosimo II’s death see G. Pieraccini, Le Stirpe de’ Medici di Cafaggiolo (Florence, 1986), vol. 2, pp. 299–302. Liscia Bemporad, ‘Argenti per un santuario’, pp. 244–6. Cf. E. Nardinocchi, ‘Pietro Tacca fra natura e decoro’ in Pietro Tacca: Carrara, la Toscana, le grandi corti europee, ed., F. Falletti (Florence, 2007), p. 113. Liscia Bemporad, ‘Argenti per un santuario’, pp. 246–7 and p. 249, Plate 9, and discussed in more detail in D. Liscia Bemporad, ‘I Doni di Cristina di Lorena alla basilica della SS. Annuziata’, in Studi sulla Santissima Annunziata in memoria di Eugenio Casalini osm, ed. L. Crociani and D. Liscia Bemporad (Florence, 2014), pp. 131–54. E.M. Casalini and P. Ircani Menichini, Le lampade votive d’argento delle cappelle della SS. Annunziata di Firenze (Florence, 2011), pp. 19–22. Sisi (ed.), La Basilica della Santissima Annunziata, vol. 2, p. 78. The Servites conceded the chapel already dedicated to S. Rocco to Signor Jacopo Palli; cited in Filippo Baldinucci, Notizie de’ professori del disegno da Cimabue in quà, ed. F. Ranalli (Florence, 1846), vol. 4, pp. 558–9. The following discussion is based on S. Bellesi, Cesare Dandini (Turin, 1996), pp. 66–7. Ibid., pp. 66–7. Pagliarulo, ‘Jacopo Vignali’, p. 184. A. Rinaldi, ‘Matteo Nigetti’, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 78 (2013). Pagliarulo, ‘Jacopo Vignali’. Sisi (ed.), La Basilica della Santissima Annunziata, vol. 2, p. 78. On the link between plague and the later sixth-century Gregory the Great see Barker, ‘Miraculous Images’. I am grateful to Valentina Živković for these points. A. Hopkins, Santa Maria della Salute: Architecture and Ceremony in Baroque Venice (Cambridge, 2000). Rondinelli, Relazione, pp. 141–200. Ibid., pp. 247–87: ‘Breve relazione della Madonna dell’Impruneta’. Cf. also Litchfield, Florence Ducal Capital and Barker, ‘Miraculous Images’. Barker, ‘Art, Architecture and the Roman Plague of 1656–1657’, p. 251. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 202. The following discussion is based on Rondinelli, Relazione, pp. 200–04. Ibid., pp. 202–03. Baldinucci, Quaderno, p. 83; Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 203. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 203. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 275–6. On the role of S. Maria dell’Impruneta in 1633, see also Barker, ‘Miraculous Images’. Rondinelli, Relazione, pp. 275–8. Giambatista Casotti, Memorie storiche della miracolosa immagine di Maria Vergine dell’Impruneta (Florence, 1714); Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 21 (1978). Casotti, Memorie storiche, p. 189.

316 131. 132. 133. 134. 135. 136. 137. 138. 139. 140. 141. 142. 143. 144. 145. 146. 147.

148. 149. 150. 151. 152. 153. 154. 155. 156. 157. 158. 159.

NOTES to pp. 176–184 Ibid., pp. 190–1. Ibid., pp. 183–207. Cecchini, in ibid., pp. 190–1; see also pp. 216–17. Cf. Jones, ‘San Carlo Borromeo and Plague Imagery in Milan and Rome’, p. 78. Cecchini in Casotti, Memorie storiche, p. 191. Casotti, Memorie storiche, pp. 190–2. Ibid., pp. 192–3. Ibid., p. 192. Ibid., p. 196. Ibid., p. 198. Ibid., p. 200. Ibid., p. 199. Rondinelli, Relazione, pp. 285–6. A. Paolucci, B. Pacciani and R.C. Proto Pisani, Il Tesoro di Santa Maria all’Impruneta (Florence, 1987). Ibid., p. 46, no. 19. Ibid., p. 41, no. 10. Ibid., p. 41, no. 11: ‘COMPAGNIA DEI VANCHETONI A QUALE LA GRANDUCHESSA MARIA MADDALENA D’AUSTRIA DIEDE AMPIE SOVVENZIONI PER LA SOSCRIZIONE DELLA FACCIATA SULLA STRADA E DEL VESTIBOLO DELL’ORATORIO.’ Basilica di Santa Maria all’Impruneta guida storico-artistica: Museo del Tesoro di Santa Maria in Impruneta, ed. C. Caneva (Florence, 2005), p. 29. Hopkins, Santa Maria della Salute; Barker, ‘Art, Architecture and the Roman Plague of 1656–1657’, pp. 251–4. J. Clifton, ‘Art and Plague at Naples’, in Hope and Healing, ed. Bailey et al., p. 109. A useful overview of religious reactions to plague in early modern Italy is Benvenuto, La peste nell’Italia della prima età moderna, ch. 3. Jones, ‘San Carlo Borromeo and Plague Imagery’, p. 68. Clifton, ‘Art and Plague at Naples’, p. 99. C.R. Puglisi, ‘Guido Reni’s Pallione del Voto and the Plague of 1630’, Burlington Magazine, 130.8 (1995), p. 405. Brighetti, Bologna; Pugliesi, ‘Guido Reni’s Pallione del Voto’, p. 411. Baldinucci, Quaderno, pp. 74–5. Cf. Barker, ‘Plague Art in Early Modern Rome’, p. 48, where she argues that the representation of the cure of St Sebastian largely replaced his intercessory function. See Cohn, Cultures of Plague, pp. 283–93. A. Hopkins, ‘Combating the Plague: Devotional Paintings, Architectural Programs, and Votive Processions in Early Modern Venice, Hope and Healing, ed. Bailey et al., pp. 137–52; Pastore, Crimine e giustizia, pp. 187–97. 7 LAZARETTI AND ISOLATION

1. National Archives (NA), London, SP 12/75/52; for a discussion of foreign influences on English plague provisions, see Slack, The Impact of Plague, pp. 207–19. 2. Tomić and Blažina, Expelling the Plague, pp. 106–7. 3. See Biraben, Les hommes et la peste, vol. 2, p. 174; and for a more considered discussion of this topic see Slack, The Impact of Plague, ch. 12: ‘The End of Plague, 1665–1722’. 4. Palmer, ‘The Control of Plague in Venice and Northern Italy’, pp. 190–3. 5. Stevens Crawshaw, Plague Hospitals, ch. 1, esp. pp. 61–74. 6. Ibid., provides the most detailed and recent examination of Lazaretti in Venice; see pp. 52–3 on the 1575–7 epidemic. 7. Cited in G. Asseretto, Per la comune salvezza dal morbo contagioso, p. 69. 8. Benvenuto, La peste nell’Italia della prima età moderna, pp. 172–5.

NOTES to pp. 185–189

317

9. Antero Maria di S. Bonaventura, Li Lazaretti della città e riviere di Genova del MDCLVII, ne quali oltre a successi particolari del contagio si narrano l’opere virtuose di quelli che sacrificorno se stessi alla salute del prossimo. E si danno le regole di ben governare un popolo flagellato dalla peste (Genoa, 1658), pp. 5–6. 10. Stevens Crawshaw, Plague Hospitals, pp. 210–18. 11. See Panzac, Quarantaines et lazarets. 12. Cohn, Cultures of Plague, p. 35. 13. Giovanni Filippo Ingrassia, Informatione del pestifero, et contagioso morbo (Palermo, 1587). 14. See Cohn, Cultures of Plague, pp. 82–3, and Stevens Crawshaw, Plague Hospitals, pp. 72–3. 15. John Howard, An Account of the Principal Lazarettos in Europe (London, 1791). 16. Stevens Crawshaw, Plague Hospitals, pp. 70–3. 17. Discussed by R.-M. San Juan, Rome: A City out of Print (Minneapolis and London, 2001), ch. 7, and L. Nussdorfer, Civic Politics in the Rome of Urban VIII (Princeton, 1992), pp. 145–61. 18. On the 1520s see Henderson, ‘Plague in Renaissance Florence’ and cf. also Henderson, The Renaissance Hospital. 19. Sanità, Rescritti 37, ff. 33r–v, 27.5.30: ‘Il Lazzeretto di S. Marco vecchio ha servito per ricevere le mercanzie sospetto e fa quivi la debita purga, ma non ha comodità alcuna di ricevere persone che havessero bisogno d’esser purgata in detto Lazzaretto, e stante questo mancamento perchè giornalmente ne vuol venire occasione mediante le presenti sospetti di peste.’ 20. Ibid. 21. Stevens Crawshaw, Plague Hospitals, pp. 94–5. 22. Guiducci, ‘Panegirico’, p. 123. 23. Righi, Historia, pp. 147–8. 24. L. Passerini, Storia degli stabilmenti di beneficenza e d’istruzione elementare gratuita della citta di Firenze (Florence, 1853), p. 228. 25. AVamfi Morini C 258. 26. Ibid. 27. Sanità, Negozi 149, ff. 1194r–v, 1211r: ‘La prima si è infermata oggi a ore dodici con febbre e doglia di testa, non con fierezza ne prostratione manifesta di forze, e questa sera la febbre è in qualche declinatione. La seconda è ammalata da mercoledì notte in qua, et ha due pustoli in un ginocchio di colore atro, con febbre, senza vedersi mai declinatione, ma la facultà vi sale resiste assai. La terza è ammalata da sabato in qua, e subito si vedde un carbunculo nella spalla sinistra e con accidenti fieri insino al giorno di oggi, questa sera sta assai ripresa perché detto carbuncolo ha assai gestito. L’octava si è ammalata oggi et ha un bubone sotto il braccio destro, grandissima febbre et un carbunculo nella gamba destra. L’undicesima s’ammalò domenica, febbre grandissima, ha un carbuncolo, un bubone nel inguine, sta male in ogni estremo.’ 28. AVamfi Morini C 258. 29. Sanità, Negozi 150, ff. 819r–v: ‘Io vennì a Bonifazio dì 12 stante [Settembre] per curare gl’amalati, che quivi si trovavero. Molti di casa fra il giorno avanti e l’istesso giorno trovai essere amalati di queste febbre pestilentiali, accompagnate o da tumori nell’ emuntorii o da carboncelli, o dall’uno o delli altri, et ogni giorno trovo a letto nuovi amalati del medesimo male. Ho quattro donne al presente sane, d’una di queste servano al lavare i panni, e l’altre due a servire l’amalate giorno e notte. Ho setti servi fin in hora sani, dua di questi ho messo ad aiutare le donne, e cinque ne restano per fare tutto il servitio delle amalati, e de’morti. Ho detto più volte alli ministri della Sanità che vengono qua per sapere si siamo vivi o morti, che per fare guardia agli amalati ci vuole dua il giorno, e quattro la notte; ci vuole dua che attendino a tenere spazzato lo spedale, ci bisognono becchini,

318

30. 31. 32.

33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55.

NOTES to pp. 189–194 essendo tutti o morti o amalati. Non ho infermieri, ne sotto infermieri, ne a donne, ne a huomini, che sieno atti a questa carica. Ho due cerusici, che non possono supplire a Bonifazio, e S. Rocco, di modo tale che uno di questi luoghi patirà enon sarà servito bene. Ho due preti in letto, e l’altro non si sente bene, questo deve servire agli huomini, donne, monache, e S. Rocco. Io non sto bene, havendo hauto dua sere continue principio di febbre con spadigli, e brividi, e caldo non grande la notte, e una sera prima svenimenti . . . che piaccia al Sig. Iddio che queste febbricciauole non sieno un principio di male contagioso.’ Cf. also discussion in Calvi, Histories, p. 186. Sanità, Negozi 150, f. 819v: ‘il luogo è talmente infetto, che ogni persona ben che sana, si amalerà’. Ibid., ff. 849r–v: ‘questo luogo infettitissimo, havendo l’aria racchiusa molto alterata e fetente, nonstante che si faccia buoni odori con infumigii’. Ibid., f. 1433r: ‘Che sono consigliato non solo dagli amici, ma tutti li medici a chi ho conferito, e non tornarmi di presente, giudicando tutti non potervisi stare adesso senza pericolo della vita. Non solo, perchè nella mia camera, quale è piccolissima, è morto un medico del male corrente, et è stata conversate da molti che sono pure morti dell’istesso male. Ma perchè tutta l’habitazione mia situata nel mezzo di due spedali, che non si può entrare o uscire di detta senza imboccarsi in quelli che là sarano mandate, o per curarsi, o per fare la guardia, essendo ancora di presente in detta mia camera et stanze donne inferme.’ Ibid., ff. 1433r–v. Sanità, DP 6, f. 66r. See Mariana Labarca, ‘Itineraries and Languages of Madness: Family Experience, Legal Practice and Medical Knowledge in Eighteenth-century Tuscany’ (PhD thesis, European University Institute, 2015). Henderson, The Renaissance Hospital, ch. 9. Sanità, Negozi 149, f. 847r, 17.viii.1630. Ibid., f. 847r: ‘non darlo altri rimedii per bocca se non questa, observando l’effetto, che seguendo buono, come per lo più suol succedere, si seguiti di darlo l’acqua sola, se non li potranno dare quel dì lo pareva bene. . . li mandi con questa li detti quattro fiaschi d’acqua di febbre legatovi ad uno di loro la ricietta’. Righi, Historia, pp. 11–12. Calvi, Histoiries, pp. 183–92. Sanità, Negozi 150, ff. 852r–858r, 17.ix.1630; the charges are summarised on f. 854r. Cohn, Epidemics, ch. 6, ‘Plague Spreaders’, pp. 127–60, esp. pp. 136–41. Sanità, Negozi 150, f. 852r, 17.ix.30. Ibid., ff. 852r–858r, 17.ix.30; 151, ff. 323r–332v. Cf. also the discussion in Calvi, Histoiries, pp. 182–3. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 47. Sanità, Negozi 152, ff. 858r–v, 870r–v. The report is undated, but most likely it is from 19 November, since it is filed between two documents of that date. Ibid., f. 858v: ‘Qui fioccano li appestati, et è impossibile trattenere una corrente pestilenziale fra gente inesperta, e non avveza a vedere colpi mortali, e tanto più haverà a crescere quanto crescie il timore de’ medici.’ Cipolla, I pidocchi. Targioni, ‘Relazione della Peste’, p. 311. Catellacci, ‘Curiosi ricordi’, p. 384. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 47. Ibid., pp. 47–8; some patients from the Hospital of Messer Bonifazio were transferred there: AVamfi, 258 (i). Baldinucci, Quaderno, pp. 67–8. F. Gurrieri et al., La Basilica di San Miniato al Monte a Firenze (Florence, 1988), p. 92. ASF, Misc. Med. 364.14: ‘Lettera dell’Arcivescovo di Firenze (Cosimo de’Bardi) alla congregazione dell’immunità toccante delle censure in che pretesero a Roma esser

NOTES to pp. 194–198

56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62.

63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68.

69.

70.

71.

72. 73. 74.

319

incorsi i ministri della sanità et i superiori de’ conventi che senza la permissione del Papa li havavano fatti servire per la peste in uso di lazzeretto: 9.iii.1630/1.’ Baldinucci, Quaderno, pp. 67–8; confirmed also by the records of the Sanità: DP 6, f. 77v. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 48. Sanità, Copialettere 15, f. 108r. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 50. Ibid., pp. 47–8. See D. Lamberini, Il San Marino (Florence, 2007), vol. 2, pp. 84–7. Giubetti, Notizie concernenti la conservazione della sanità, pp. 28–9: ‘devono essere circondati di muraglie o di fosse in modo che quelli che vi sono dentro non ne possino uscire a volontà loro e non essendone de’fatti a posta, si possono fare con pigliare de luoghi fatti, overo fare delle capanne in luoghi aperti e alla campagna’. Stevens Crawshaw, Plague Hospitals, ch. 1; Cohn, Cultures of Plague, pp. 80–90. Baldinucci, Quaderno, p. 68. See Henderson, The Renaissance Hospital, for a discussion of hospital design and how this facilitated both physical and spiritual medicine. Stevens Crawshaw, Plague Hospitals, pp. 66, 71–7; Camerlengo, ‘Il lazzaretto a San Pancrazio e l’ospedale della Misericordia in Bra’, pp. 179–91. De Castro, Il curioso, p. 19. Sanità, Negozi 152, ff. 904r–v, 20.xi.1630: ‘Hieri pigliai il possesso e consegna del luogo e di robbe di S. Francesco, e veduta la capacità de quello e mi confermo in quello ch’avisai hieri anco alle SS’ie loro Ill’mi, che in detto luogo non vi possino stare meglio che gl’huomini, che sono in minor numero, et è già meraviglia che in tutto quel’ vaso di chiesa non vi sia un minimo speraglio, essendo tutte le finestre invetrate inchiodate; e per non farli danno, acciò possiamo mettarvi quanto prima gl’ammalati e bisogno, che sia il tetto faciano alcune finestre a tromba, e cui va l’opera di due giorni, tanto supplico le SS Ill’mi a mandare li maestri che ogni uno può venire mentre, io sospendo e non vi fo accostare infetto o sospetto alcuno. Hoggi invierò un grosso numero di convalescenti a Lusciano e farò un purgo generale e fusi feriale d’un buon numero di persone descole essendone sono venute una buon numero di Firenze.’ Sanità, Negozi 160, ff. 24r–v, 44r, 1.viii.1631: ‘Inventario di robe consegniati dal Maesto Reverendissimo Padre Fra Bernardino da Lucca, Governatore del Lazzeretto della Badia di Fiesole, e per lui dal Maesto Reverendo Padre Fra Angiolo Tarugi Cappuccini degnissimi, a Priore Lioni Guardaroba et Proveditore del Lazzeretto di S. Marcho Vecchio. Quali robe dissano essere della Convalascienzia di S. Domenico. Cinquanta-tre finestre che n. 4 a geloscia, e n. 4 di tela incerata, e n. 34 di carta piccole, e n. 9 imposte di finestroni, e n. 2 finestroni di incerato, tra buone e cattive.’ The whole inventory is on ff. 24r–44r. ASF, Torrigiani Appendice 17.1, ff. 168r–v: ‘8. De Lazzaretti. Il lazzaretto massime quello di malati si tenga molto caldo con caldari di fuoco e serrati, come dove si piglia il legno, et i letti si purghino spesso, imbiancandosi le lenzuola e panni da letto, si disecchono col fuoco sotto, di modo che ogni letto venga purgato almeno ogni settimana, e però vi sieno huomini e ciò deputati in strumenti di legno e stanze con fuochi sotto e da far i soffomigi a proposito, acciò quelli che vi si portano non trovino nuova posto nel letto dove si mettono.’ ASF, Ibid., ff. 168r–v, *marginal note 1: ‘Perniciosa consiglio dir che i luoghi ove stano febbricanti de’ febbre acuta, ardente, adurente si tengha caldo come luoghi ove si piglia il legno con caldani di fuocho, havendo i miseri bisogno di respirar aria fresca sarebbe meglio affogarli o butarli in Arno.’ Sanità, DP 6, f. 77v. Sanità, Negozi 160, ff. 24r–v, 44r. On the design of Italian Lazaretti see Stevens Crawshaw, Plague Hospitals, ch. 1; on the design of the interior of Roman Lazaretti, see San Juan, Rome: A City out of Print; on plans of Lazaretti in Bologna see Brighetti, Bologna, pp. 75–96.

320

NOTES to pp. 198–202

75. See also the discussion of the medical staff at S. Miniato al Monte in Diana, Sanità nel quotidiano, pp. 153–69. 76. Henderson, The Renaissance Hospital. 77. Sanità, Negozi 152, f. 1385r: ‘Con grandissimo cordoglio, et intenso dolori, vengono con questa avvisare l’Illustrissimi Signori loro, come probabilmente e realmente sono defraudate circa la cura de’ signori fisici intorno alli infermi, quali arrivano qui con grandissima speranza di esser subito o in breve visitati dal medico, e vene spesso avviene, che non lo vedono se non quando sono spediti e del tutto mortali. La ragione è questa, che detti signori fisici non vogliono entrare nello spedale se non due volte la settimana, mala, anzi malissima e pessima resolutione per li poveri infermi. Quando arrivano l’infermi si pongono in una stanza dove s’hanno da sacramentare, nella quale i signori fisici molte volte sono entrati termerariamente mentre si confessavano actualmente et è bisognato che il confessore ceda il luogo al medico, che visiti l’ammalato, e molti essendo confessati, e comunicati et vol entrano in detta stanza, e consequentemente non vedono il medico, ma se ne muorano senza medico, e senza medicina. Rimedino le Signorie loro a questa sconveniente e tutto sarà ad honor di Dio e sanità de’ poveri infermi.’ Unfortunately the writer’s signature is illegible: Gio. Tor..gh..m. 78. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 40. 79. Ibid., p. 161. 80. See Stevens Crawshaw, Plague Hospitals, ch. 3. 81. Sanità, Negozi 152, ff. 460r–461v. 82. Ibid., ff. 460r–461v, 478r. 83. Sanità, DP 6, f. 86r; Sanità, Negozi 152, ff. 460r–461v, 478r. 84. Sanità, Negozi 153, ff. 279r–v, S. Miniato, 5.xii.1630: ‘Margherita di Gio Lombardi: questa prima cava sangue e taglia li buboni come un cerusico e merita qualche cosa di più della provisione che si da all’altre.’ 85. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 165. 86. Stevens Crawshaw, Plague Hospitals, pp. 161–2; J. Stevens Crawshaw, ‘The Beasts of Burial: Pizzigamorti and Public Health for the Plague in Early Modern Venice’, Social History of Medicine, 24.3 (2011), pp. 570–87. See also Special Issue: Women and Healthcare in Early Modern Europe, ed. S. Strocchia, Renaissance Studies, 28.4 (2014). 87. Sanità, Negozi 155, f. 253r: ‘come qui è stato mandato per cerusico un certo homo Dalla Rocca, il quale fa instanzia di medicare con modo suo singulare, dando per bocca, et anco non usuando per tagliare buboni et carboni ferro alcuno, cosa che questi nostri signori medici non l’approvano’. 88. Ibid., f. 254r: ‘bisogna che mette in carta il modo, e medicamenti che intende usuare, acciò potiamo sentire il parere di SS. Medici e che li medicamenti si faccino canonicamente’. 89. Ibid., f. 339r, 10.ii.1631: ‘quel GioSimone Rocca che fu mandato qui per cerusico, et che io alli giorni passata li mandai in scritto di sua mano le robbe di che si serviva, se fatto exprimentare la sua virtù, o vero il suo sapere, et sino ad hora quelli che a hauto cura sono morti, si che giudico benfatto di licentiarlo, poi che non riesce. Questo è un male che bisogna con presteza levare il veleno, et non con olii, et impiastrii di fuora, volere mittigarli, del istesso parere sono anco questi medici.’ 90. Sanità, Negozi 154, f. 514v, S. Miniato: 12.i.31: ‘le medicine in questi tempi le fu’ grand servitio’. 91. Sanità, Negozi 153, ff. 97r–v, 2 xii.1630. 92. Pellicini, Discorso sopra de’ mali, pp. 50–60; on the surgeons’ treatment, see pp. 66–86. 93. Sanità, Negozi 149, f. 847r; for a discussion of the pharmacies of Florence’s general hospitals see Henderson, The Renaissance Hospital, ch. 9. 94. Sanità, Negozi 150, ff. 118r–v. 95. Sanità, Negozi 151, f. 391r, 9.x.30: ‘conoscendo che a S. Miniato multiplica tanto li malati ch’è impossibile supplire a tanti medicamenti, volendo adesso di sciroppi soli circa lb. 200 . . . mando a cercare dove sia del’erbe per cominciare a far nuovi sciroppi, sendo assai avanti con li fatti . . . resta che li speziali si ammalino sicome fa spesso l’altra servitù’.

NOTES to pp. 202–206

321

96. Sanità 469, entitled ‘Registro dei medicinali per i convalescenti del Lazzaretto di S. Francesco al Monte: 10 dicembre 1630–16 febbraio 1631’. The inventory gives the year as 1631 and the cover says it recorded ‘Donne convalascente’, whereas in fact it is a register of male patients. 97. C. Masino, Voci di spezieria dei secoli XIV–XVIII, ed. D. Talmelli and G. Maggioni (Padua, 1988), p. 48. 98. Ibid., p. 99. 99. Stevens Crawshaw, Plague Hospitals, pp. 136–43; Cipolla, Cristofano, pp. 148–51; Cohn, Cultures of Plague, pp. 278–9. 100. Pellicini, Discorso sopra de’male, pp. 11, 14. 101. Sanità Negozi 150, ff. 1434r–v. 102. Calculated from Sanità, Negozi, ff. 153, 1017r. 103. Sanità, Negozi 154, ff. 514r–v, S Miniato, 12.i.1631: ‘Di più voglio proporre che nel arco de’ molti giorni ho osservato il grand beneficio che fa alli sospetti, apunto ch’è l’enfiato è scarificato che è eliabrire a quelle febre che ci sono stati, il darli il medicamento purgante, e si partono con più sicurezza per li convalascenze, con meglior colore e forte, perchè le medicine in questi tempi le fa gran servitio.’ 104. Pellicini, Discorso sopra de’ mali, pp. 14–19. 105. See Barker, ‘Plague Art in Early Modern Rome’, in Hope and Healing, pp. 49–58. 106. See J. Arrizabalaga, J. Henderson and R. French, The Great Pox: The French Disease in Renaissance Europe (London and New Haven, 1997), pp. 172–3. 107. Sanità, Rescritti 37, f. 143r, 2.viii.1630: ‘In proposito di doversi eleggere uno spedalingo e sopraintendente del Lazaretto di S. Miniato et se deva eleggere il Padre Donato Antonio [Bisogni], Prefetto de’ padrie del Belmorire, o il Padre Provinciale de’ Minori Osservanti, overo il guardiano di S. Francesco. Carica di sopraintendere al governo d’ammalati, è cosa che per farla bene ricevea pratica particolare intorno a tale esercitio. Et perchè in questi Padri Francescani, se bene di valore, non si sa che concorrà questa pratica, et il predetto Padre Prefetto, si sa che l’ha esercitata in Palermo nell’occasione del passato contagione in quella città, et concorrendo in lui le qualità predette che si riceviano per saper comandare in un negotio tale.’ 108. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 48; Baldinucci, Quaderno, p. 68. Although Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 132, says Bisogni was already in post in Florence as Superiore of the Collegio dei Frati di Ben Morire; cf. P. Sannazzaro, Storia dell’Ordine Camilliano (1550–1699) (Turin, 1986), pp. 132–3. 109. Sanità, Rescritti 37, f. 143r, 2.viii.1630: ‘perchè in questi Padri Francescani, se bene di valore, non si sa che concorrà questa pratica’. 110. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 48; I Frati Cappuccini. Documenti e testimonianze del primo secolo, ed. C. Cargnoni, vol. 3.2 (Perugia, 1991). 111. See Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 205; and pp. 204–20 for a detailed discussion of the role of the Capuchins in Florence. 112. Sanità, Negozi 153, f. 705r. 113. Cf. Barker, ‘Plague Art in Early Modern Rome’, on Rome. 114. Sanità, Negozi 152, f. 1385r. 115. Cf. the detailed discussion of testaments drawn up in Venetian Lazaretti in Stevens Crawshaw, Plague Hospitals, pp. 198–204. 116. Sanità, 480. 117. Ibid., ff. 5r–6v, 28.x.1630: ‘per esser mal pericoloso di contagio, che non sono voluti venire nello spedale alle letta’. 118. Sanità, Negozi 153, f. 705r. 119. See Arrizabalaga et al., The Great Pox, p. 175. 120. Sanità, Negozi 152, ff. 1074r–v, S. Miniato, 24.xi.1630: ‘e piaccia a Dio che questo non faccino per lo spavento, che se gl’è a aurescivano da una predica che con poco prudenza fu fatta diffamando questo santo luogo, dicendo il predicatore che qui le fanciulle che venissono tornavano donne e altre cose pregiuditiali’. 121. Catellacci, ‘Curiosi ricordi’, p. 383.

322

NOTES to pp. 206–212

122. Pastore, Crimine e giustizia, pp. 123–5. 123. Bonaventura, Li Lazaretti della città e riviere di Genova, pp. 17–24; see also discussion in Stevens Crawshaw, Plague Hospitals, pp. 41–2. 124. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 50. 125. Ibid., p. 166. 126. Sanità, Negozi 153, f. 332r, 6.xii.1630: ‘Hier sera per fare honore al gloriosissimo Santo Antonino, nostro votivo intercessore, feci far fuochi e lumi straordinarii, e dopo la processione con letanie e lumi da tutti nell’uno e l’altro spedale, il che non solo spero che sia stato a gloria di Dio sia del santo, ma anco per nostra allegrezza e anime oltre che dalla città, ancora sara stato preso per segno testimonio espresso del nostro miglioramento.’ Cf. also the account in Baldinucci, Quaderno, pp. 71–2, and the discussion in Litchfield, Florence Ducal Capital, ch. 7. 127. De Castro, Il curioso, p. 10. 128. Sanità, Negozi 152, f. 1074r: ‘Do ancora relatione che in questi octo dì hanno osservato i signori fisici e cerusichi che quale tutte le donne che vengono, arrivavano al fine e quasi moribonde, trattenendo e ascendendo il male.’ 129. Sanità, Negozi 153, f. 1017r. 130. Baldinucci, Quaderno, p. 79: ‘e molte povere persone per il terrore morivano nel vedersi mettere in un letto a’ dove era pieno di malati, che dua da capo e dua da piede, et di dove cavavano uno morto vi mettevano subito il nuovo malato’. On fear and plague see: Stevens Crawshaw, Plague Hospitals, pp. 143–4; Cohn, Cultures of Plague, pp. 271–7; N. Eckstein, ‘Mapping fear: Plague and perception in Florence and Tuscany’, in Terpstra and Rose, eds, Mapping Space, Sense, and Movement in Florence (London, 2016), pp. 169–86. 131. Stevens Crawshaw, Plague Hospitals, pp. 190–1; Sonnino and Traina, ‘La peste del 1656–57 a Roma’, pp. 440–1. 132. Stevens Crawshaw, Plague Hospitals, p. 190. 133. Sanità, Negozi 152, f. 680r: 15.xi.1630. 134. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 50. 135. Sanità, Negozi 153, f. 64r, 2.xii.1630. 136. Sanità, Negozi 152, f. 1329r. 137. Sanità, Negozi 153, ff. 1295r–v, 29.xii.1631: ‘cosa necessarissima di ricoprire meglio le fosse demuti nelle cimiteri vecchi mal fatte e che sopra li cadaveri non c’è un braccio di terra, con manifesto pericolo che se al primo sole tepido di primavera siano per rimandare la peste’. 138. Sanità, Negozi 150, f. 975r: ‘come disse questa mattina a Vostri Signori, gli ammalati moltiplicano e sono adesso oggi ne sono venuti 19 e non ci è dove metterli tutti’; cf. Rondinelli, Relazione, pp. 47–8. 139. Ibid., f. 1043r: ‘questa mattina o visto de’malati, così donne come huomini, che sono scoperti’. 140. Ibid., f. 1131r. 141. Ibid., ff. 975r, 1043r. 142. Ibid., f. 395r: ‘si provega speditamente di’un medico fisico poichè il dottore Ridolfo si è messo nell letto ammalato, et il dott. Ticciati non può solo sopportare a visitare tanta quantità di ammalati che ci sono et continuamente ci vengono, e sarebbe necessario che venisse oggi per potere questa sera far le visite e con dalle stanti et con particolari de’ bechini e perchè abbiamo 13 corpi da piccole e 2 solo non bastano a tanto peso . . . il bisogno è grande e ogni giorno si fa maggiore peso’. 143. Ibid., ff. 527r–v. 144. See, for example, the letter from the Sanità to the Collegio de’ Medici on 20 October 1630, in which they stressed the need to elect two more physicians for S. Miniato and a surgeon: ASF, SMN 200, ff. 160r–v. 145. Sanità, Negozi 152, ff. 460r–461v, 478r. 146. Ibid., ff. 1329r–v. 147. Ibid., f. 492r: S. Miniato, ‘11 novembre: Fo riverenza alle Signorie loro Illustrissimi e vengo a supplicarle che essendo cresciuto molto el numero dell’infermi, ho bisogni più

NOTES to pp. 212–213

148.

149.

150. 151.

152.

153. 154.

155. 156.

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che sorte cierusichi e sono ottocento amalati; mi bisognano almeno altri tre cierusichi, oltre che nesuno due o tre che chieggono d’esser mutati e bisogna far a loro giuditio questi mute per darli animo. Qui sono tre fisici, e uno sta mal disposto, non possono visitare l’infermi ogni dì, perchè appena si supplisce un dì alle donne e l’altro agli’ huomini, non essendo il dovere che due volte el giorno entri . . . a visitare per poter reggere, si gratia aggiunto el numero di dieci cierusichi e . . . fisici per poter far visita ogni dì tutti infermi, cioè due dottore agl’uomini e tre alle donne et perchè non si può fare dimeno, e ricordo alle Signori loro Ilustrissimi li profumi o legno da far fuochi odoriferi per la salute . . . poichè non si può stare al gran fetore.’ Ibid., ff. 861r–v, S. Miniato, 19.xi.1630: ‘la necessità estrema che vi’è di mutare questi medici e cierusichi, poichè ogni dì ne cade alcuno di’ essi ammalato, come è occorso hieri a Giuliano del Toso, sul mezzo de’ scoprendo egli il contagio, e siamo rimasti con quattro soli cirusichi, standone altitanti in letto; sichè sia otto dì andiamo in pericolo di restar di senza affato, poichè sono tutti maturi e non possono più il fiato. Signori miei, bisogna dar fiato a chi combatte, acciò si possa riparare, ese non fanno che la ruota giù a incenna e mutar questi con quelli che sono assignati per la città ogni quindeci dì al più, non occerrerà manda amalati più in S. Miniato, perchè basterà avviarli al cimiterio senza tante spese. Oltre diciò vengono tanto essacerbati dal nuovo ordine che tengono alla puta di S. Miniato, li comessarii che non permettono alle loro genti che passino avvisitarli, che si mettino in ultima desperatione e tra l’una e l‘altra angustia se risolverranno molte con ogni pericolo di vita a saltare le mura, e mi pareva SS’i Ill’i che si consentassero che le simile licenze di questi loro parenti in primo grado, come moglie, figlioli o padri e madri, permettessero che io la facessi loro, a questi commisseri si quiestassero con le mie licenze che so e conosco molto bene a chi darle e come.’ Ibid., ff. 861r–v, 19.xi.1630. See also on 22 November, Sanità, Negozi 152, f. 1011r: ‘sono ammalati cinque cerusichi e non si può rimediare alla cura de’ poveri con tre soli che sono rimasti in piedi e tutti stanno per cadere. SS’ri, li poveri ne vanno per mezzo, oltre che li predetti cerusichi sono aggravati sopra ogni forza per tanto è necessario manda cirusichi, ese mettaci in d[is]agio’. Ibid., ff. 1074r–v, 24.xi.1630. Ibid., f. 1103v: 25.xi.1630: ‘li cerusichi che le Signori Illustissimi scrissero di mandare ancora non sono comparsi e qui la gente moltiplica e certo senza essere medicata . . . più che quattro cerusichi rimasti e tutti hanno servito due mesi di passo e non hanno più forze da resistere’. Ibid., f. 1166r, 26.xi.1630: ‘mi dispiace apportar argomento di afflittione alle SS’ri Ill’mi quanto l’ho predetto tutto è avvenuto con molto dispiacere e travaglio dell’animo mio, poichè hieri s’amal di nuovo il cerusico Bonelli ch’era il sostegno de’poveri; questa mattina è caduto Baccio Fagiolini nel contagio; è morto il cerusico romagnolo, e sta morendo Dondino Bargiglio cerusico, sie altri ne stanno anco a letto, cioè uno di Santa Maria Nuova, che è un prete, quello dal Toso e il Bolognese siche due . . . spaventati e mezzo morti stanno in piedi; e questa mattina lascieranno senza medicare più di quattrocento o cinquecento poveri; e così si farà macello di questi infetti’. Sanità, Negozi 153, ff. 316r–v, 6.xii.1630. Sanità, Negozi 152, f. 1374r, 30.xi: ‘non si può mandare buone nuove dalla guerra, perciò le Signori l’Illustrissimi sapranno che questa notte è morto el cerusico Bonelli, et Carlo Lottini sta per morire. E perchè Iddio è tutto bonta e provvidenza ha mosso sia da Empoli un eccellente cirusico è di notte è arrivato qui in villa e chiamato che volevi servire a questo Lazzaretto’. See also Ibid., f. 1332r: ‘è morto Dandino Bargigli cierusico . . . è morto Baccio Fagioli cerusico, il povero Carlo Lottini l’altra sera arriva e questa notte se gliè scoperto l’enfiato con grandissima febre e siamo alle stesse angustie e travagli per conto di questi cirusichi’. Ibid., f. 1385r: ‘I detti signori fisici non vogliono entrare nello spedale se non due volte la settimana, mala, anzi malissima e pessima resolutione per li poveri infermi’. Ibid., ff. 1103r–v, S. Miniato, 25.xi.1630.

324

NOTES to pp. 213–217

157. Calculated from the discussion of the Capuchin friars who died, in Rondinelli, Relazione, pp. 204–20. 158. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 186. 159. Sanità, Negozi 152, ff. 915r–916r, 20.ix.1630: P. Donato Antonio Bisogni to the Serenissima Gran Duca: ‘come è stata ottima risolutione quella che per ordine di VAS ha fatta il Magistrato di Sanità in darci hieri per servitio degl’infetti voto il luogo di S. Francesco, e perchè è venuto questa mattina il Sig. Giovanni Nobili proveditore a significarmi che il S. Marchese Medici, a nome di VAS, ordinò che si votasse S. Miniato e che tutti gl‘infetti, che sono vicino a novecento, si mettano in S. Francesco, stimo necessario in Domino rappresentare humilmente e sinceremente a VAS come è cosa difficilissima e ha’ dell’impossibile per l’angustia e differenza del luogo, non essendo capace più che di quattrocento al più amalati, e sebene vi sono stato ristretti l’uno su l’altro cinquecento e più convalascenti più? con grandissima angustia che spesso però ritornavano qui molti di essi amalati, con di meno altro è ristrengere infetti e altro sani che possino stare a disagio . . . Basta che in S. Francesco mettiamo gl’humoni, che sono in minor numero, e restando le donne in S. Miniato, se riduranno in tanta largura che non si può dire più e quanto al purificar S. Miniato, VAS se fidi di me che non passeranno quindeci dì che sarà in termine di politezza e purificatione, che non havrà invidia in questo a qualsiavoglia spedale della città perchè faremo delegenze che ogni dì purificherano una parte di esso.’ 160. Ibid., ff. 1074r–v, S. Miniato, 24.xi.1630. 161. Ibid., ff. 1030v: ‘questo loco per essere male angusto non è capace di ricevere quella quantità di convalascenti che qua si ritrovano come si praticava a S. Francesco al Monte’. 162. Ibid., ff. 1030r, 23.xi.1630: ‘ma non la possa durare [the good state here] per la moltitudine, se non con eminente pericolo e mentre lor Signori Illustrissimi non venga dato qualche buona limitatione a quello reverendo di S. Miniato che ocultamente facci ben visitare la gente che manda, se li dice in verità che questo loco in breve si verrà ad infettare e per tal modo che sarà con danno considerabile’. 163. Ibid., f. 1030r: ‘Signorie Ilustrissime si scrive è la verità et tutto con la participazione di questi signori cerusichi, li quali come più volte si sono lamentati, aggiungendo ancora che le continuo pioggie e l’aria così umida et il non possere la gente passeggiare per il piccolo prato e stare nelle camere che vi entra l’umido con tanti fiati, altro non si procura che di lontano introdurre il contagio.’ 164. Sanità, Negozi 153, ff. 975r–v: ‘Iddio sa che è cagione del danno di molti poveri alli quali si riattaccano le carboncelli per stare nel lecto de’ gravi.’ 165. Sanità, Negozi 152, ff. 1030r–v: ‘li convalescienti esausti del male il lungo viaggio con le piaghe non purificate altri mandati con il gonfio altri del istesso giorno tagliati et altri mal curati che lo conducano con le seggiaette et a mi pare che in questo si dovessi con somma prudenza considerare perchè si viene a butta via tutta la spesa fatta loro e con sicuro pericolo di perdersi la gente’. 166. Ibid., ff. 1030r–v: ‘ogni giorno mi conviene mandare per barelle e far portare gente che hanno o l’enfiato o bolle cattive uscite di là con il male et altri poi che non maturi sono così poco tagliati’. 167. Ibid. 168. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 49. 169. Sanità, Negozi 153, ff. 122r–v, 3.xii.1630. 170. Ibid., f. 1017r, 21.xii.1630. 171. Ibid., f. 177r, 3.xii.1630: ‘arrivò iersera, e le feci mettere in una stanza e letto da per se, la seco la bambina e sto bene, questa donna oggi lo vista due volte, e con li medici fatta diligenza del suo male, e trovo che è stata mal trattato da quelli che l’anno a torto mandata quasù, poichè non a altro male che un poco di febbre e tantino di catarro sula lingua, non ha contagio di sorte alcuna. Per tanto giovedì se non sarà febbre la manderò alle convalascenze per levarla dall’occasione del male.’ 172. Sanità, Negozi 154, f. 514r, 12.i.1631.

NOTES to pp. 217–220

325

173. Sanità, Negozi 153, ff. 97r–v, 2.xii.1630: ‘buone nuove: . . . li signori fisici questa mattina hanno fatto a visita generale che si suol fare la Domenica e mercoledì a tutti gli ammalati et hanno trovato tra gl’huomini più di da gente senza febre, e che li buboni sono tornati addietro’. 174. Ibid., f. 704r: ‘Questa notte e tutto hieri fra 362 homini non sono morti altri che sei e questi di quelli che sono venuti moribondi dalla città.’ 175. Ibid., f. 332r. Cf. the account in Baldinucci, Quaderno, pp. 71–2, and discussion in Litchfield, Florence Ducal Capital, ch. 7. 176. Sanità, Negozi 154, f. 514v. 177. Ibid., f. 514v. 178. Ibid., f. 406v, 9.i.1631: ‘sono stanco a’ scrivere sempre l’istesso’. 179. Ibid., f. 514r, 12.i.1631. 180. Sanità, Negozi 155, f. 842r, 26.ii.1631: ‘certe rognosi, catarri, ciechi e incurabili che sono stati qui le mesi interi’. 181. Ibid., f. 1469r: 21.iii.1631. On 20 March 1631 Lione, the Prior of the Lazaretto of S. Marco Vecchio, wrote to the Sanità deploring the terrible conditions and listing a whole series of problems. Thus all who worked there (the ministri) wanted to have permission to leave. Within a few days, four had died, along with a female assistant. Also, their doctor had not turned up, though it was not clear it was because he had not wanted to come or was sick. There was also a lack of provisions, particularly of chicken for patients and meat for the staff. He reported that everybody was complaining that the standards at S. Marco Vecchio fell short of other Lazaretti, with a shortage of shoes and coats. He urged the Sanità to allow him to leave because he said he was serving ‘with his blood’. 182. Ibid., f. 1134r, 8.iii.1631: ‘li poveri malati in questo luogo non sono visitati dal nostro signor fisicho, il perchè non lo so, che hanno pare a me cominciato a orzare con il nostro infermiere e non sono purgati ne meno sciloppati’. 183. Ibid., f. 1324r: ‘Ieri in questo luogo arrivò no. 6 malati tra huomini e donne, tra i quali ne morì uno nella cesta, e qui tutti siamo grandissimi isbigottiti, perchè da 2 giorni in qua il male è più maligno che mai in tutti e modi, do conto a VS e scaricho la coscienzia mia in tutto e per tutto che qui è necessario metter drento chi sagramenti, perchè la notte nascie delle morte subitane et una povera donna è morta senza comfessione e comunione, ieri 3 volte si mandò per i Cappucini e così mi dicano non potere tal carica più atteso l’essere obbligati alla Badia.’ 184. Ibid., f. 1469r, 20.iii.1631. 185. Sanità, Negozi 152, f. 538r, 12.xi.1630: ‘le cose di quà passano del governo de’ ministri meglio . . . Desidero che facci pregare Iddio per me perchè sto sotto gravissima croce’. 186. Sanità, Negozi 151, f. 599r: ‘trovandosi dalle fatiche talmente fievole, et indebolito, che non solo sente non poter più servire, ma va in giorno in giorno mancando, con certezza quasi manifesta se non d’infermarsi di mal contagioso, almeno di morirsene così consumandosi a poco a poco’. 187. Sanità, Negozi 152, f. 1107r, 25.xi.1630: ‘per aministrare le santissimi sacramenti alli poveri malati contagiosi. In quelli giorni io mi ammalai di mal contagioso, che fu febbre e gonfio, qual tornò indietro, che perciò mi dice il medico et il cerusico, ch’io procuri licenzia d’andare a far la quarantana, perchè sto in pericolo, stando quasu, d’ammalarmi di nuovo’. 188. Ibid., ff. 776r–v, 18.xi.1630: ‘Oratio Borsi infermiere all solito Lazzaretto S. Miniato supplica L’Ill Sig’i loro et gli espone che avanti che entrassi in questo lazzaretto lasciò la sua famiglia, quale fu Angliola sua moglie et Caterina sua madre di detta Angliola. Ora Sig’ri Ill’mi mi è comparso detta madre quale viene dal Ponte alla Badia per cagione di essere andata in casa Rinaldo della Vecca in Via de’Servi, ubbidetta et di presente si trova in questo lazzaretto et perchè la mia povera moglie si grava senza la madre inoltre che è di tenera età di anni 20 et in Orbatello si trova per abitatione Margerita sua sorella carnale quale con gratia di Madama ella vi entro. Ora Sig’ri Ill’mi genuflesso havanti alle Sig’ri loro le supplico che per amor di Dio le diano espeditione che detta mia moglie entri in quel

326

189. 190.

191. 192.

NOTES to pp. 220 –230 luogo in compagnia alla sorella per abitatione vi stia fino a tanto ch’io non escho di questo lazzaretto per suo vivere gli assegnio il mio salario et morendo io lascio la cura a Dio.’ Sanità, Negozi 154, ff. 1341r–v: ‘Memoria delle eccessi stati commessi dalli ofitiali e stante in la Convalescentia di Rusciano sotto diversi tempi’. Sanità, Negozi 151, f. 660r, 15.ix.1630: ‘e un giorno dopo desinare, che era aperta la porta, et il rastrello, e non vi era nessuno, mi partì, e se ne venne a dirittura per la strada di dove vien la lettiga e entrai per la Porta a S. Miniato, e nessuno mi disse niente. Io non parlai lassù con nessuno, ne con altri che con infermiera, e Giesù mi ha l’aiutato per l’amor di quelle due bamboline, e non poteva star per il grand puzzo.’ Sanità, Negozi 153, f. 1314r, 30.xii 1630, Jacopo di Bastiano detto Tamburlano: ‘Io servivò per quoco a S. Francesco, fui mandato a Ruciano per la Convalascenza, e quel Sig. Vincenzo Proveditore di Luccano mi messe a lavorare per portar aqua, riporre letta, e altro.’ Ibid., f. 1351r, 30.xii.1630: Due anella mostrano d’ora, uno con pietra rossa, e l’altro turchina. Un cavalierino d’argento et un sigillo mostra d’oro con un nome di Giesù. Un Cristo piccolo d’ottone, et una medaglia di rame dentroci la Passione. Una medaglia, et un uffitiolo della Madonna. Due coltelli da chiudersi, con tre anella da cucire. Una pietra stellaria legata in argento, et una . . . Una corona d’osso rossa con un Cristo, quattro medaglie, et un Diaquero. Un breve con un quattrino Venetiano, et una medaglia. Due fazzoletti da naso, con due bottoni, uno nero, e l’altro d’oro. E lire venti otto, soldi uno, danari otti, in più sorte moneta.

193. Stevens Crawshaw, Plague Hospitals, pp. 222–8. 194. Stole goods from Fiesole (28.iv); S. Onofrio: stole bed to give to prostitute (28.iv); Sanità, Negozi 154, ff. 605r–v, 14.i.31. 195. Sanità, Negozi 152, f. 1163r, 26.xi.1630. 196. Sanità, Negozi 154, ff. 1341r–v, 1352r. Cf. the short discussion in Calvi, Histoiries, pp. 179–81. 197. Sanità, Negozi 154, ff. 1341r–v. 198. Ibid. 199. Ibid. 200. Ibid., f. 1352r. 201. Ibid. 202. Stevens Crawshaw, Plague Hospitals, pp. 147–8. 203. Sanità, Negozi 152, f. 492r, 11.xi.1630. 204. Cohn, Cultures of Plague, pp. 90, 278–9. 205. Righi, Historia, pp. 147–8. 206. Stevens Crawshaw, Plague Hospitals, ch. 4; Cohn, Cultures of Plague, pp. 35, 278–9; more generally see Henderson, The Renaissance Hospital. 207. Stevens Crawshaw, Plague Hospitals, p. 77. 8 SURVIVING PLAGUE

1. Brackett, Criminal Justice. 2. Calvi, ‘A Metaphor for Social Exchange’, p. 142, based on her discussion of 332 trial proceedings; cf. Calvi, Histories, p. 5. 3. For Bologna see Pastore, Crimine e giustizia, ch. 4; for Milan, see Cohn, Epidemics, ch. 6; for Naples see Calvi, ‘L’oro, il fuoco, le force’, pp. 405–58. 4. Pastore, Crimine e giustizia, pp. 73–5; Milan; Cohn, Epidemics, p. 150. 5. Pastore, Crimine e giustizia, pp. 73–5. 6. Cf. too the discussion in Amerlang, A Journal of the Plague Year: The Diary of the Barcelona Tanner Miquel Parets, 1651, ‘Introduction’, pp. 3–12; Wilson Bowers, Plague and Public Health in Early Modern Seville.

NOTES to pp. 231–236

327

7. Sanità, Negozi, 154, ff. 926r–927v, 22.1.1631: ‘Io habito nel Campaccio da Ognisanti in quà e circa un mese fa io son tornata in casa di Lorenzo mugnaio nella via della Salvia per non star sola in casa in questa quarentena. Io non mi sono fatta scrivere in altre case che in quella del detto mugnaio, e stamattina passando di quivi il caporale Grasso del Bargello disse che io non stavo in quella casa dove ero, ma in una casa addirimpetto nella quale io stavo avanti a Ognisanti passato, elo mene partì, per Ognisanti e tornai nel Campaccio, come ho detto, e perchè nel Campaccio non mi conoscevo gente, e non volevo star sola in casa venni a stare in casa questa mugnaia, ch’era mia amica, con pensiero di non far più male perchè sono sei mesi o cinque in casa, che mi sono habilitata dalle Officiali della Sanità per non far più male, e mi sono ritrovata in cotesta casa di persone da’ bene. La casa rincontro dove io stavo levata, e non vi sta’ nessuno ne manconon vi sono mie masserizie . . .’. Domandata: ‘Perchè la dunque pensa di essere presa?’ Risposta: ‘Se io lo volessi dire, non lo so, ma quel Caporale mi voleva male, perchè un giorno un giovane da Cinganelli mi voleva sposare, e questo Caporale lo prese e per questo penso che mi vogli male’. E fu rimessa in carcere.’ f. 927r: ‘Monna Maria di Lorenzo mugniao che sta in Via della Salvia: Domandata da quando in qua la Lucretia meretrice sa tornato in casa sua? Risponde: da sei giorni en qua con occasione che tornò in casa la Angiola meretrice, che sta allato alla sopradetta dove è stata scritta lì per fare la quarantena, et con occasione di parlassi dalla finestra ha pregato più volte di voler tornare a star seco a fa la quarentena, et detta donna mi ha compiaciuta.’ 8. These measures are summarised in Cantini, Legislazione, vol. 16, pp. 116–19. 9. For which see J.K. Brackett, Criminal Justice and Crime in Late Renaissance Florence, 1537–1609 (Cambridge, 1992). 10. Ibid., p. 62. 11. Cantini, Legislazione, vol. 16, pp. 115–17, 24.x.1630. 12. ASF, Torrigiani Appendice 17.1, f. 150v: Cap. V. 13. Ibid. 14. Cantini, Legislazione, vol. 16, p. 118. 15. Giubetti, Notizie concernenti la conservazione della sanità, p. 2. 16. Calvi, Histories, pp. 118–19. 17. Sanità, Rescritti 37, f. 465r, 1.xi.1630: ‘Vedendo il magistrato nostro, che li affari della sanità vanno in qualche parte augumentando, e che in particolare è necessario di fare diligenze, che i transgressori delli ordini e leggi fatte da questo tribunale si ritriovino e punischino per non dar’adito alle transgressioni, mediante le quali ne potrebbono succedere molti inconvenienti per l’universale.’ From Niccolò Magnani, cancelliere; approved 1.xi.1630. 18. See for 1630–1: a reasonable wage-rate for an unskilled worker in Florence would be 25 soldi per day given for Milan (cell L354) and for a master mason 40 soldi per day (cell K354). 1 scudo = 6 lire, and 1 lira = 20 soldi, so 1 scudo = 120 soldi. I am very grateful to Sheilagh Ogilvie for her advice on this topic. 19. Brackett, Criminal Justice, p. 59; A. Zorzi, ‘The judicial system in Florence in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries’, Crime, Society and the Law in Renaissance Italy, eds T. Dean and K.J.P. Lowe (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 44ff.; T. Dean, Crime and Justice in Late Medieval Italy (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 17–20; on Venice, F. de Vivo, Information and Communication in Venice: Rethinking Early Modern Politics (Oxford, 2007), pp. 86–114. Cf also F. Nevola, ‘Surveillance and Control of the Street in Renaissance Italy’, in The Experience of the Street in Early Modern Italy, ed. G. Clarke and F. Nevola, I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance, 16 (2013), pp. 101–5. 20. Cantini, Legislazione, vol. 16, p. 118–19; A. Zorzi, ‘The judicial system in Florence’, pp. 44ff.; Brackett, Criminal Justice, pp. 36–7. 21. Cantini, Legislazione, vol. 16, p. 118. 22. T. Dean, Crime in Medieval Europe, 1200–1550 (Abingdon, 2001), p. 77, and more generally ch. 4, ‘Women and Crime’.

328 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

32.

33. 34.

35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47.

NOTES to pp. 237–242

Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 65; Sanità, Rescritti 37, ff. 825r–v. Cantini, Legislazione, vol. 16, p. 115–17, 24.x.1630. Dean, Crime in Medieval Europe, pp. 119–23. Sanità, DP 7, f. 22r, 9.xi.1630. Sanità, Negozi 152, ff. 282r–283r, 6.xi.1630. Ibid., ff. 186r–v, 4.xi.1630; DP 7, f. 29r. See also the discussion in Calvi, Histories, pp. 122–3. Zorzi, ‘The Judicial System in Florence’, p. 53. Pastore, Crimine e giustizia, pp. 98–9, 183–5, 187–97 (on Bologna, Genoa, Rome); Cohn, Epidemics, ch. 6 (on Milan); Calvi, ‘L’oro, il fuoco, le force’, pp. 447–8 (on Naples); and more generally, Pullan, ‘Plague and Perceptions of the Poor’, pp. 116–17. Sanità, Rescritti 37, ff. 490r–v, 5.xi.1630, Petition from Niccolò Magnani, cancelliere della Sanità to the Granduke: ‘Accade alcune volte che il Magistrato nostro condenna de’ Transgressori a doverseli dare la fune in pubblico, e già che di presente haviamo esecutorie da potere effettuare la detta, et altre esecuzioni, et anco si provederanno carcere sufficienti a ritinersei carcerati, manca solo la commodità di luogo oportuno da’ potere eseguire la fune sudetta contro i condennati, perchè nel sito del nostro offizio non è luogo oportuno dove metterla; e quando è accaduto il dovere far dare tal fune è bisognato valersi di quella del Bargello, i famigli del quale non voglion permettere che altri che loro faccia detta esecuzione, e pretendono di poi da i poveri condennati mercede assai rigorosa, il che è di danno poi che per lo più quelli si condennano alla fune sono poverelli, e non hanno il modo a’ poter pagare le lire sette e altre mercedi che pretendono. Onde al Mgistrato parrebbe che si potesse ordinare al detto Bargello che ogni volta sarà necessario valersi dala sua fune, e sito per i prigioni di questo magistrato egli sia tenuto di lassare liberamente valersene alli nostri esecutori e famigli nell’istesso modo che hanno la sua senza poter pretendere emolumento alcuno.’ ‘Il Magistrato ordini di fare alzasi uno stile per detto effetto come in Mercato Vecchio.’ Cf. Brackett, Criminal Justice, pp. 67–8. Dean, Crime in Medieval Europe, pp. 130–3; G. Rebecchini, ‘Rituals of Justice and the Construction of Space in Sixteenth-century Rome’, in The Experience of the Street in Early Modern Italy, ed. G. Clarke and F. Nevola, I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance 16 (2013), pp. 153–79. Sanità, Negozi 152, ff. 464r–476r: Ulisse di Bartolomeo Dolci, donzello di Magistrato di Sanità. See Cohn, Cultures of Plague, p. 273; Cohn, Epidemics, pp. 145–7; Stevens Crawshaw, Plague Hospitals, pp. 128–32, 196–8, and Stevens Crawshaw, ‘The Beasts of Burial: Pizzicamorti and Public Health’, pp. 570–87. Cf. Henderson, ‘The Black Death’, on accusations against grave-diggers in fourteenth-century Florence. Sanità, DP 7, ff. 68v–9r, 30.xi.1630. On grave-diggers and plague see Calvi, Histories, pp. 147–54. Sanità, DP 7, ff. 174v–175r. Dean, Crime in Medieval Europe, pp. 86–8; cf. Storey, Carnal Commerce in CounterReformation Rome. Sanità, Negozi 152, ff. 759r–v, 776r–777v; DP 7, ff. 105v–106r. Sanità, Negozi 153, ff. 759r–v, 776r–777v; DP 7, f. 105v. Cantini, Legislazione, vol. 16, pp. 86–7, 23.viii.1630. Sanità, DP 7, f. 176r. For example, in Bologna in 1630: Pastore, Crimine e giustizia, p. 98. Sanità, DP 8, f. 147r: ‘perché sono poverelli e non hanno modo a pagare le spese’. Sanità, DP 7, f. 11r, 4.xi.1630. Ibid., f. 23r, 10.xi.30. Ibid., 174v: ‘due tratti di fune da’ darseli in pubblico con un filo di pane ai piedi’. Ibid., f. 10v; Negozi 152, f. 378r. Others were also convicted with him and given similar punishments: ff. 378r–v.

NOTES to pp. 242–253 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81.

82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88.

329

Sanità, Negozi 153, ff. 445r–452r; 680r. Sanità, DP 7, ff. 148r–v. Sanità, DP 8, ff. 11r–v, 23.ii.1631. Ibid., ff. 21r–22r. Ibid., ff. 157r–158r, 3.vii.1631: ‘vecchio, più di 60 anni, e malsano’. See Dean, Crime in Medieval Europe, ch. 4, ‘Women and Crime’, esp. pp. 77–8; Pastore, Crimine e giustizia, p. 98. Sanità, DP 6, f. 6v, 1.vii.1630. Sanità, Negozi 152, ff. 241r–246v, 253r–257v; DP 7, ff. 97r–98r. G. Ripamonti, La Peste di Milano del 1630, ed. C. Reposi (Milan, 2009). See also Naphy, Plagues, Poisons and Potions. Cohn, Epidemics, ch. 6: ‘Plague Spreaders’, pp. 127–60, esp. pp. 136–41; two sources provide evidence of at least 54 executions, to which another 23 can be added from the reports of the Avvisi. Sanità, Negozi 150, ff. 214r–215v: ‘’haver havuto notitia che esso ammaliassi l’acqua benedetta della chiesa cattedrale, et altre chiese’, f. 250r. Ibid., ff. 852r–858r, 17.ix.1630; f. 151, ff. 323r–332v. Cf. also the discussion in Calvi, Histories, pp. 182–3. Cohn, Epidemics, pp. 150–2. Calvi, ‘L’oro, il fuoco, le force’, pp. 421–2. Cohn, Epidemics, p. 150; Calvi, ‘L’oro, il fuoco, le force’, pp. 426–7. Cohn, Cultures of Plague, pp. 264–6. Cited in Pullan, ‘Plague and Perceptions of the Poor’, pp. 116–17. A. Pastore, ‘Tra giustizia e politica: il governo a Genova e Roma nel 1656/7’, Rivista storica italiana, 100 (1988), pp. 140–8; Pastore, Crimine e giustizia, pp. 187–97. Pastore, Crimine e giustizia, pp. 187–97. Calvi, ‘L’oro, il fuoco, le force’, pp. 447–8. Pastore, ‘Tra giustizia e politica’, pp. 133–7. Ibid., pp. 152–4. Pullan, ‘Plague and perceptions of the poor’, pp. 106–7; Amerlang, A Journal of the Plague Year, pp. 15–16. The Experience of the Street in Early Modern Italy, ed. G. Clarke and F. Nevola, I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance, 16 (2013), pp. 47–229. Pastore, Crimine e giustizia, pp. 77–88. Sanità, Negozi 151, f. 802r, 17.x.1630. Calvi, Histories, pp. 12, 94–6. Litchfield, Florence Ducal Capital, para. 288–9, esp. table 6.2; see also J.C. Brown and J. Goodman, ‘Women and Industry in Florence’, Journal of Economic History, 40 (1980), pp. 73–80. See Dean, Crime in Medieval Europe, pp. 77–8. Pastore, Crimine e giustizia, pp. 88–99. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 46. These categories follow broadly those of Calvi, Histories, ch. 1–4. Sanità, Negozi 150, ff. 153r–v, 3.ix.1630. Ibid., f. 271r, 5.ix.1630: ‘Un huomo di statua alta, magro di corpo, pelo nociato, con capelliera alla Nazarena, vestito con calze bianche, giubbone grande, et il restante con ferraiolo di nero.’ Cf. also discussion above, ch. 2, and Calvi, Histories, pp. 24–5. Sanità, Negozi 150, ff. 271r–272r, 5.ix.1630. Sanità, DP 8, ff. 157r–158r. Ibid., ff. 170r–v. Ibid., f. 170r. Sanità, Rescritti 37, f. 559r, 13.xi.1630; f. 593r, 15.xi.1630. Ibid., f. 639r, 28.xi.1630. Ibid., ff. 665r, and 665v–667v, 2.xii.1630.

330

NOTES to pp. 254–258

89. Ibid., f. 590r, 16.xi.1630: ‘Nonostante si sia fatto prohibizione che all’Orto di Canto di Nello, et in altri luoghi per via di precetti, che non si faccino radunate di giuochi, si sente che per la città in molte botteghe di barbieri, et in altri luoghi, concorrono molte persone a giuochare a diverse sorte di giuochi.’ The prohibition applied equally to houses and shops. 90. Rondinelli, Relazione, pp. 56–7. 91. Sanità, Negozi 153, ff. 755r–v plus 780r–v, 15.xii.1630; DP 7, f. 106r. 92. Ibid., f. 1034r: ‘quali tutti sono stati trovati infragianti crimine a giocare alle pallottole in una casa alla Porta alla Croce, contro il bando pubblicato in materia’. ‘Santi ortolano et Piero suo garzone, quali nell’atto della cattura si sieno fuggiti, che ancora loro erono complici al delitto et transgressione soprascritta.’ 93. Ibid., f. 291r, 7.xii.1630: ‘Antonio di Francesco Traballesi: Mercoledì passato andavo verso la Porta alla Croce, quando fui vicino alla Porta, una donna chiamata Monna Maria vedova, che era serrata in casa dalla Sanità, da una finestra mi domandò come stavo. Io lo disse che stavo bene e mentre ragionavo così vennero i birri, e mi menava a prigione.’ ‘La finestra era a terreno ma io li stavo . . . dall’altro parte della strada.’ ‘Non credo vi fusse nessuno che mi vedesse perchè vi sono più di 30 case serrate. All’ora fu rimesso al suo luogo.’ 94. Ibid., ff. 323r–v, 6.12.1630: ‘Lorenzo Oberto Cavetti sarto sia stato trovato in via detta il Campaccio, con il capo dentro su uno sportellino fatto in uno uscio della casa del suo maestro, quale è serrata, et parlava con il detto maestro, et de’ quello ricevette certi panni tagliati, con un paia di cesoie, et che il tutto habbi fatto contro le legge . . . et messo in carcere segrete’. In the record of his trial, he responded: ‘Io havevo de’ panni di un mio bottegaio, che gl’havevo cavato di bottega mia per portare a casa a lavorare . . . Non è vero che il maestro meli dessi di casa, perchè gl’haveva portati come sopra e sono di un fondaco o linaiolo non so il suo nome. All’hora accettato, fu rimesso al suo luogo.’ 95. Ibid., f. 211r, 4.xii.1630: ‘Antonio di Matteo, già cocchiere, quale nelle tre hore di notte sia stato trovato a parlare a più persone serrate, da una finestra senza ferrace alta da terra 2 braccia in circa, quel casa è posta nella Via de’ Pilastri rimpetto all’Osteria del Fiasco d’Oro.’ 96. On the location of prostitutes see N. Terpstra, ‘Locating the Sex Trade in the Early Modern City: Space, Sense, and Regulations in Sixteenth-century Florence’, Mapping Space, Sense, and Movement in Florence. Historical GIS and the early modern city, ed. N. Terpstra and C. Rose (London, 2016), pp. 107–24. 97. Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 56. 98. Terpstra, ‘Locating the Sex Trade’, p. 116. 99. Via dell’Acqua, Via Campaccio, Gomitolo dell’Oro and near Sant’Orsola. 100. Sanità, Negozi 154, f. 322r, 7.i.1631. 101. Ibid., ff. 1159r–v: ‘parolle infamissime senza riguardo di fanciulle e di done da bene’. 102. Ibid., f. 975r: ‘andavano ogni giorno sopra il tetto di Salvestro detto Betto Sudico oste, e scalavano per un terrazzo, e passavano due tetti, e con detto Salvestro e suoi figli stavano insieme a giocare all’aca, e essendomi transferito il 22 del corrente a dette case, et havendo picchiato l’uscio della Maria di Menico e della Benedetta di Francesco, ambe meretici a Pavoni, per far cattura delli suddetti, quali erano sopra il tetto che giocavano, quando sentirno pichiare, essendo noi stati scoperti, si messero in fuga e ritornorno nelle loro case’. 103. Ibid., f. 976r: ‘Io non so sonar chitarra, e non ho tenuto chitarre sul tetto, ero bene stata sul tetto. Sul tetto di Petto Sudicio oste, non mi veddi nessuno, veddi bene Matteo e uno che si chiamano Giovanni, che erano sul loro tetto, stanno tutto in una medesima casa, e la Maria era quivi sul tetto a sedere da me. Io non veddi alcuno che giocassi a giochi di nessuna sorte, e fu rimessa in carcere.’ 104. Ibid., f. 976r: ‘Io fui hieri sul mio tetto, e veddi sugli altri tetti di molta gente, che stavano a sedere sul tetto, e sul tetto di Petto Sudicio non veddi altri che quelli da casa sua, e due,

NOTES to pp. 258–261

105. 106.

107. 108.

109. 110.

331

Giovanni e Matteo, erano sul loro tetto, che stanno tutti in una medesima casa, e non veddi altri che giocassero o altra cosa.’ Ibid., f. 968r, 23.i.1630, Sandra di Matteo vedova: ‘fui presa lunedì perchè ero uscita a cacciac fu era una gallina, e me ne tornato subito in casa, e mi presero e fu rimesso in carcere’. Sanità, Negozi 152, f. 376r, 8.xi.1630: ‘Monna Betta d’Antonio e Lisabetta d’Antonio vedova tessitora di lana quale: “sta mattina io havevo calato un paniera giù basso perchè un mio figlio mi haveva detto che io gli racconciasse un paio di calzoni et io haveva mandato giù un panierino per haverli perchè egli si trova nelle stanze di sotto a far la quarantena. Venne un gentilhuomo e vedde quel panierino mi fece metter qua prigione” . . . fu rimessa.’ Rondinelli, Relazione, p. 71. Sanità, Negozi 155, ff. 805r–806r, 25.2.1631: ‘Il Capitano Piero dal Ponte a Sieve, loro Bargello e referisce come essendo la sua famiglia la sera delli 24 del corrente con la pattuglia [era in] Via di San Gallo su’ le tre hore di notte, in casa trova Donna Maria di Giovanbattista da Empoli, Donna Francesca di Lorenzo e Donna Laura di Stefano, quali erano in compagia di un prete vestito in maschera, con una chitarra in mano, e dissono che volere andare in casa d’una sua vicina, e la pattuglia dette ordine si pigliassero i loro nomi e si lasciassino andare, e così fu fatto. E questa mattina si è fatto cattura delle sudette donne, e condotte in carcere segrete, acciò sieno castigate conforme agli ordini. Maria Giovanbattista: Io sto in Via dell’Acqua, rimpetto alla Sandrina. Mi l’anno preso in casa del mio fratello in Via di San Gallo rimpetto alla Stalle del Signor Cardinale, che vi sono da dieci giorni in quà. Domanda: In che modo essa si ritrovai in casa del fratello? Maria Giovanbattista: Io mi sentivo male e lui parlava al Signor Romoli e lui mi disse che facesti molto a due giovani che vanno con la carretta, che fu abbrucciare la roba, e loro mi l’accompagnavano, che così gli haveva detto il Ser Giovanni Romoli. Hier sera l’uscio era aperto, e in casa non era altri che noi tre sorelle e Domenico Fratini, nostro fratello prete, e per passare il tempo noi vestimmo il detto nostro fratello da maschera e ballavano fra di noi, e mentre che egli era su per la scala così vestito passò la pattuglia, e sentito che noi ridevamo si affaccio all’uscio.’ Cipolla, Faith, Reason and the Plague, p. 203. Sanità, Negozi 152, f. 280r, 6.xi.1630: ‘Maria d’Andrea e Cammilla d’Antonio in Via Gora, alle quali gl’era ammalato la madre d’una di che et andata al lazzeretto di San Miniato dieci o undici giorni sono, et perchè l’amico referisce che continuamente le due fanciulle eschino del loro appartamento già confitti, et i due escino su di sopra in un appartamento dove habita una tal vedova chiamata Margherita vedova e GiovBattista di Giulio muratore. Però essendosi messo alla diligenza la sera del dì 5 stante si andò in detta casa, et andato in nell’habitatione di sopra dove di già havevamo saputo che ballavano le dette dua fanciulle, le trovammo essere in conversatione, che ballavano, ed la detta Margherita et GioBattista, et altre figlie della detta Margherita, et perchè non infettino altra gente dove potrebbero praticare, detta Margerita et GioBattista si sono condotti nelle carcere di Santo Noferi.’ f. 281r: ‘Masa d’Andrea vetturale, quale disse mia madre è andata al Monte et io havevo havuto precetto di non mi partire del mio appartamento, et hiersera dua ragazzi che un si chiama Pierino e l’altro Giovanni, figli di una che si chiama la Capa, che mi appresero che cavorno il legno che era confitto, e mi dissero che io mi allargasse e però hieri sera mi trovorono di sopra nelle stanze dell’altra pigionale che si chiama Margherita e questo è stato per il mio poco cervello. Cammilla d’Andrea vetturale d’anni 14 come disse.’ f. 281v: ‘sono dodici giorni che ero serrata con la Tommasa mia sorella et i ragazzi di Capo ci appresero et hiersera furono trovate nelle stanze di sopra della Margherita nella medesima casa.

332

111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121. 122. 123. 124. 125. 126. 127. 128. 129.

130. 131.

132.

133. 134. 135. 136. 137. 138. 139. 140. 141.

NOTES to pp. 261–271 Margherita: Hiersera mentre che io ero in sala a lavorare mi veddi apparir quivi la Masa e Cammilla fanciulle che erono state serrate dalla Sanità nello loro stanze della medesima casa, li dissi “O traditore che fate voi?” e loro mi dissero che in quella stanza dove erono ammorbavono.’ Ibid., ff. 776r–v. Ibid., f. 187r, 4.xi.1630: ‘ma nonostante questo delitto, il detto Giovanni habbi di poi praticato con diverse persone et particolarmente in mercato a vendere il pesce, dove sia stato in tal atto catturato, da infettare, et a appestare tutto Firenze’. Ibid., ff. 240r–v, 5.xi.1630: ‘habbi praticato continuamente con diverse persone, in grave danno et pericolo d’infettare altra gente’. Ibid., ff. 620r–v. Sanità, Negozi 153, ff. 137r–138v, 4.xii.1630: ‘li messe su l’enfiato dell’unguento di gigli bianchi e della lana sudicia a poi il mercoledì gli cavò sangue per i piedi et il giorno di poi alle 17 hore si morì’. Sanità, Negozi 152, f. 1341r. See also the discussion in Calvi, Histories, pp. 79–82. Sanità, DP 7, f. 74r. Sanità, Negozi 152, ff. 109r–116r, 3.xi.1630. Cf. the detailed discussion of this case in Calvi, Histories, pp. 122–3. Sanità, Negozi 154, ff. 481r–482v, 495r–496r, 15.1.1631: ‘Salvadore di Vincenzo Tortorelli, fornaio dalle Porte Vecchie, sia entrato in casa di Giovanni di Jacopo Dolci, quale era morto con tutti li sua figliolo di contagio, insieme con la madre.’ Cf. Calvi, Histories, pp. 139–42. See Calvi, Histories, ch. 4, for a more detailed discussion of this topic. Catellacci, ‘Curiosi ricordi’, p. 382. Calvi, Histories, pp. 169–75. Sanità, Negozi 153, ff. 445r–452v. Ibid., f. 447v; DP 7, ff. 148r–v. Sanità, Negozi 154, f. 974r; DP 7, f. 176r, 23.i.1631. Sanità, DP 7, f. 119r, Tommaso di Francesco Peroni, 13.xii.1630. Sanità, DP 8, ff. 11r–12v, 23.ii.31: his scrivano, Antonio, was not found guilty. 1 giulio was equivalent to 13s 4d: C.M. Cipolla, Money in Sixteenth-Century Florence (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1987), p. 49, n. 12. Sanita 152, ff. 108r–v and DP 7, ff. 10v–11r, 3.xi.1630. See also the long case against Ulisse di Bartolommeo Dolci, a donzello of the Sanità, who had received bribes to leave contagious houses open, not shutting up houses when somebody had died there. 10. xi.1630, Negozi 152, ff. 464r–476r; discussed in Calvi, Histories, pp. 156–63. See also the discussion in Calvi, Histories, pp. 13–14, 74–89. Sanità, Negozi 152, f. 377r: ‘nel quale un mesi fa si morì il detto Titolotto padrone dell’albergo e et dai cerusici fu ordinato che si sotterassi a S. Lorenzo, quale ebbe male . . . che poteva forse essere male contagioso perchè ne ha causato di grand errori e lla morte di più gente’. Ibid., ff. 377r–v: ‘in prima dica che alle 27 o 28 del mese passato si ammalà due donne cioè: Lisabetta moglie di Titolotto e Francesca vedova come serva, quali governono il detto Titolotto et ammalati che furno da me: Ceseri cerusico di quel quartiere furno anche le dette due donne visitate, et propose il detto cerusico non essere male contagioso et ordichò che andassera a Santa Maria Nuova.’ Ibid., f. 377v. Sanità, DP 7, f. 29v, 12.ix.1630. Sanità, Negozi 152, ff. 505r–v, 516r, 11.xi.1630. Ibid., f. 507r. Ibid., ff. 505r–v. Sanità, DP 7, f. 58r, 25.xi.1630. Ibid., f. 58r, 25.xi.1630. See above ch. 4, and Litchfield, Florence Ducal Capital. Sanità, DP 8, f. 80r.

NOTES to pp. 271–280

333

142. Sanità, Negozi 154, f. 1069r, 24.i.1631: ‘Domenico Saracini liutaio, quale teneva aperta la bottega, e lavorava, et in detta bottega vi si è trovo Giovanni di Giulio Giolli, quale haveva una chitarra in mano, e sonava et era dentro in bottega’. 143. Sanità, DP 7, f. 186r. 144. Sanità, Negozi 155, f. 770r. 145. Sanità, DP 7, ff. 173r–v. 146. Sanità, Negozi 153, f. 1035r: 22.xii.1630: ‘Donna Lessandra di Francesco vedova habita in Camaldoli nel Campuccio, alla quale sia stata serrata la casa stante il contagio seguito in detta casa, et che di poi da Piero Rozzuoli inzolfatore di case sia stata vista e trovata a tessere in telaio fuori delle sue stanze, e non ha osservato il comandamento fattoli conforme a bandi.’ 147. Sanità, Negozi, 150, ff. 829v–830v, 16.ix.1630. 148. Sanità, Negozi 152, ff. 783r–85v, 17.xi.1630, trial of ‘Monna Antonia di Giovanni, rivenditore, alla quale fu dato il giuramento: Domanda: Che arte facia? Risponde: io filo, io cuccio, chi so, in mano in mano fa quello che posso io fui presa iersera su la Piazza delli Strozzi, perchè ho avevo portato a vendere due camicie, che non avevo da mangiare. Domanda: Che famiglia ebbe? Risponde: Ho due figli, uno maschio e una femmina, chi sono piccolo, et in mio marito chi fa il rivenditore, ma ora non si fa più nulla.’ 149. Sanità, DP 6, f. 191r. 150. Sanità, Negozi 153, ff. 641r–v, 11.xii.1630: Lucrezia di Domenico d’Agostini dall’Olmo: ‘Io son poverino, che vo accattando e non ho casa ne tetto et ho fatto qualche volta de’ servizii a detta ebrea quando si poteva andar nel ghetto.’ DP 7, ff. 98r–v, 13.xii.30. 151. Sanità, DP 8, ff. 77v–78r, 28.iv.1631. 152. Ibid., ff. 172r–v: 15.vii.1630: ‘Visto la carceratione di Mariano di Domenico Masini larcino, et di Giovanbattista di Simone Mormorai, imputati che sotto il 10 luglio 1631 andassero a Campi, et havendo alcuni giorni prima lascato in casa d’una tale Francesca detta la Pugia dieci pesi di lana in serbo, che portavano per dare a filare, nonostante che detta Francesca fusse ammalata di male di contagio, in modo che circa un hora doppo si morì. Il detto Mariano ancor che havesse notitia di detto male facesse cavare di detta casa la detta lana, e quella facesse dispensare in nove o dieci case di Campi, perchè il fusse filata con grandissimo pericolo di mettere il male nelle dette case.’ 153. Ibid., f. 172v: ‘essendo huomo assai vecchio et inhabile ad ogni pena’. 154. Calvi, Histories, pp. 8–9. 155. See the discussion in Calvi, Histories, pp. 3–14, 74–89. 9 EPILOGUE: THE RETURN AND END OF PLAGUE, 1632–3

1. It was not unknown for plague to come back, as it did in the Kingdom of Naples following its initial disappearance at the end of 1656. See Fusco, ‘La peste del 1656–58 nel Regno di Napoli: diffusione e mortalità’, pp. 115–38. 2. Baldinucci, Quaderno, pp. 80–2. 3. Rondinelli, Relazione, pp. 141–63; Baldinucci, Quaderno, pp. 82–93. 4. Rondinelli, Relazione, pp. 141–3. 5. Ibid. 6. Rondinelli, Relazione, pp. 145–8, records that the number of deaths in the city equalled those who had recovered (62). 7. Ibid., p. 148. 8. Baldinucci, Quaderno, p. 83. 9. Rondinelli, Relazione, pp. 142–63. 10. Ibid., p. 192. 11. Ibid., p. 146.

334 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

NOTES to pp. 280 –284

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 INDEX

Abbondanza 144 Abramo, Benedetto di: Jew from Siena 252 Adelmare, Cesare: Italian physician to Queen Elizabeth I of England 3–4, 9, 183 Adrian VI, Pope 156 Agnolo di Francesco 64 Agnolo di Giovanni 274 AIDS 2, 14 air: corrupt 7, 32, 53, 57–9, 64, 67, 69–71, 74, 76, 90, 97–8, 108, 133, 136, 145, 153–4, 158, 168, 170, 176, 181, 190, 194, 197, 201, 204, 265–6, 274, 282 fetid 31–2, 59–60, 70, 85, 133, 189, 199 infected 7, 52, 98, 103, 109, 154, 253, 255–6, 265 noxious 58 poisonous 56 polluted 214 Albergo di Titolotto 46 Albizzi, Luca degli: Senator, and Sanità magistrate 28, 34, 91 Albizzi, Maestro: Jesuit father 150 Alexander VII, Pope 155 Alfani, Guido 10, 12, 16, 40, 126, 139 Aliso, Andrea di Bartolommeo 271 Alps 10, 40 Altoviti, Guglielmo 140 Altoviti, Guglielmo di Rimaggio 139 Altoviti, Lorenzo: provveditore of customs, and Sanità magistrate 91 Altoviti, Margherita di Francesco da Vernio 127 Amerlang, James 11 Amici, Sisto: wool-dealer 88, 90 Andrea: grave-digger 267 346

Andrea di Stefano Boccini da Legnaia 239 Andreucci, Domenico 257 Angiola: prostitute 231 Anna: daughter of a wet-nurse 216 Antella 140 Antella, Niccolò dell: Senator and Sanità magistrate 64 anthrax 8 Antonia di Giovanni, Monna 273 Antonia, Donna: widow 42 Antonio: builder 59 Antonio: owner of Albergo di Titolotto 269 Antonio: tailor 64–5 Antonio di Matteo 255–6 Antonio di Vincentio 127 Antonio, ‘the Spaniard’ 224–5 Apennines 24, 27 apothecary 84, 107–9, 113, 115, 153, 191–2, 200, 202, 224 Archbishop of Florence 150–1, 153–6, 159–60, 164–5, 174–5, 177, 180 army: deserter 27 French 1, 23 German 1, 23 mercenaries 1 arrest 14, 27, 30, 32, 43–6, 74, 97–8, 101, 125–6, 178, 191, 221–2, 230–1, 233, 235, 238–9, 241–4, 249, 251–2, 254–5, 257, 259–63, 269, 271, 273, 275, 284 Arrizabalaga, Jon 13 Ash Wednesday 237 Assumption of Santo Stefano: Feast 173 Assumption of the Virgin: Feast 151, 173 Athens: plague 14 Ave Maria 43, 161, 166, 205 Ave Maria de’ Morti 150

INDEX Bacci, Bernardo di Domenico 242 bacillus 7 bacteriology 6, 7 Bagni di S. Filippo 171 Bagno a Ripoli 143 Baldinucci, Filippo 172 Baldinucci, Giovanni 15, 43, 77–8, 84–5, 97, 102, 124, 128, 131, 134, 136–8, 145, 151–2, 165–8, 174, 180, 194, 198, 209, 277, 279, 284 Baldo, Giovanbattista di Vettorio di 241 Baldovinetti: family 135 Baldovinetti, Lionello 135 Baldovinetti, Maria 135 Baldovinetti, Verginia 135 ball games 96 Balsinelli, Giovanni 45 Bandinelli, Signor 37 bandit 27 barber 96, 254, 278 Barcelona 15 plague 1651 11 Bardi, Cosimo de’: Archbishop of Florence 157 Barga 28 Bargellini, Cosimo 82 Bargello, prison 104, 230, 233, 239, 243, 257, 260 Bargiglio, Dondino 213 Bartolomeo, ‘Il Riccio’: cook 224 Bartolomeo, Jachopo di: ‘Napoli’, butcher 32 Bartolomeo di Vincentio 127 Bassano 245 Bassini, Baccio d’Agnolo 242 Bastiano di Giovanni: ‘Il Rosso’ 268 Bastiano di Santi: barber 272 Bastiano, Ugolino: ‘Il Rosso’, dealer in games 254 beggar 11, 27, 56, 65, 71–2, 75–8, 82, 96, 135, 140–1, 146, 248, 253, 284 Bellosguardo 137, 281 Belluzzi, Giovan Battista: ‘Il San Marino’, architect 195–6 Bencini, Caterina di Piero 251 Benedetta di Francesco: prostitute 257 Benedictow, Ole 8 Benvenuto, Grazia 8 Bernardino, Fra, da Lucca: director of the lazaretto of the Badia Fiesolana 200–1 Betta d’Antonio, Monna: wool-weaver 259 Bettoni, Benedetto 192 Bianchi, Lucrezia di Francescho 230–1 Bianco, Luigi Baccio del 99–100, 103, 106, 154, 156

347

Bibbiena, Pietro Settini da 113 Billi, Barbera di Piero 263 Billi, Piero di Michele 263 Billi, Piero di Raffaello: scribe at Dogana 262–4 Biraben, Jean-Noël 7, 10 bird flu 2 Bisogni, Padre Donato 197, 206–7, 209, 210–14, 216–17, 219, 228 Director of S. Miniato al Monte 200–1, 203–5 Black Death 2, 3, 8, 32, 56, 58, 73, 90, 149, 239 Boccaccio, Giovanni: The Decameron 2, 3, 138 Boccini, Andrea di Stefano, da Legnaia: grave-digger 272 Bologna 16, 29–31, 33, 43, 57, 87, 97, 119, 206, 252 health measure 59 Lazaretto 26 plague 229–30 mortality 226 plague 1630–1 11, 24, 26, 51, 131, 133, 180, 247, 250 plague 1656–7 246 punishment: leniency 239, 246 Torrone: criminal tribunal 230 Bolognese 25, 27–8, 213 Bonaventura, Father Antero Maria di San: director of lazaretto of Genoa 185, 197, 206–7 Bonelli: surgeon at lazaretto di S. Miniato 213 Bonetti, Jacopo: apothecary, at lazaretto di S. Miniato 224 Boni, Giovanni: Senator, Sanità magistrate 28 Bonsi, Giovanni 129 Bonsignori, Stefano 92, 123, 190, 196 Bontadi, Don Antonio: parish priest 155 border controls 24 Borgo a Buggiano 43–4, 244 Borgo San Lorenzo 144 Borromeo, S. Carlo 82, 153, 157–8 Borselli, Francesca di Piero: prostitute 240 Borsi, Angliola di Oratio 220, 262 Borsi, Oratio: nurse at lazaretto di S. Miniato 220, 262 Bresciano: plague 1630–1 25 bribe 33, 108, 239, 242–3, 264, 266, 268, 270 Brino, Aurelia di Michele del 224 Broccardi, Signor Alfonso: supervisor of general quarantine of city 36, 135

348

INDEX

Brunelli, Giovanni di Bruno: fishmonger 262 bubo 28, 34, 36, 39, 43, 45, 59, 72, 95, 101, 109, 112–14, 128, 158, 169, 188–9, 191, 200, 203, 211, 215–19, 263, 282 Bucci, Deanna Sardi 132 builder 59, 67, 89, 90, 137, 197 Buonaiuti, Fra Giovanbattista: director of lazaretto of Messer Bonifazio 189–90 Buoncollazi, Stefano di Lorenzo: oil-seller 238 Buontempi, Lionardo: Provveditore of the Sanità in Bologna 26 burial 4, 7, 15, 17, 29, 34–5, 38, 40–2, 46–50, 56, 81, 85, 93, 95–6, 99–100, 102–4, 108, 116, 118–19, 121, 125–31, 139, 144, 151, 161–2, 188, 190, 209–11, 226–7, 238–9, 268–70, 275 female 41–2 male 41–2 cadaveric decomposition 6 Calderina, Giovanbattista di Christofano: butcher 243, 252 Callot, Jacques: print-maker and draughtsman 176, 241 Calvani, Salamone di Moisè: Jew 252 Calvi, Giulia 11–12, 14, 27, 162–3, 191, 229, 245, 249, 266 Camilliani, Padri 204 Cammilla, Monna 68 Cammilla d’Antonio 261 Campi 274 Campomigliaio 143 camposanto see plague pit Camus, Albert: La Peste 187 Canobbio, Alessandro: notary in Milan 75 Capponi, Filippo: surveyor of contado during quarantine, 1631 142 Capuchin Friars 15, 154, 183, 199, 204–5, 213–14, 218, 281–2 Careggi 39, 140 Parish of S. Giovanni 144 Carmelites 151 Carmichael, Ann G. 8, 10, 132 Carmignano 269 Carnesecchi, Antonio: Senator, Sanità magistrate 34 Carnival 146 cancelled 138, 145, 166 Carosi, Giovanbattista di Zanobi: silkweaver 125

Casignani, Andrea di Domenico: gardener 244–5 Casotti, Giovambattista: author of account of the procession of the Madonna of Impruneta (1714) 176 Castelli, Maestro Domenico 88, 90 Castro, Antonio di Stefano Roderico de, Dr 129 Castro, Dr Stefano Roderico de: Portuguese physician 53, 55–6, 58, 107, 109, 111, 129, 135, 197, 208 adviser to Florence health board 53 catarrh 38, 63–4, 145, 171, 216, 218 Caterina: mother of Angliola di Oratio Borsi 220 Caterina Buco: ‘La Guida’, prostitute 257 Caterina di Bartolomeo da Reggello 223 Caterina, Monna 68 Cavetti, Lorenzo Oberto: tailor 255 Cavtat 183 Cazzettina, Maria Lunga a 206 ex-prostitute 73 Cecchini, Giuliano di Ceseri: surgeon 176–8, 281 Cecil, William: Lord Burleigh 3 cemetery 8 Certosa di Galluzzo, Orto dei Padri di 177 Cerveri, Dr 35, 43 cesspit 32, 57, 60–1, 64, 66, 68–9, 92, 123, 248, 274 empty at night 57 repair 62 Champion, Justin 12, 126–7 charity 17, 66, 76, 78, 82–3, 100, 104, 140, 143, 152, 154, 157, 160, 180–1, 206–7, 214, 227, 246, 273 charlatan 44 Chiari, Maddalena d’Aghostino 267 China: Yunnan province 7 Chlafes, Dr Chresto 211 cholera 2, 5 Church, the: challenge of Protestantism 157 collaboration with State 18, 149, 155, 162, 181 conflict with State 155 Counter-Reformation 13, 207, 227–8 Ciminelli, Maestro Leandro: physician 44, 94, 191–2, 244 Cinelli, Giovanni 171 Cinetti, Francesco di Giovanbattista 134 Cinganelli 230 Cini, Niccolò 140, 142–3 cathedral canon 139 Ciotti, Simone di Piero: printer 238

INDEX Cipolla, Carlo 9, 15–16, 42, 155 Cristofano and the Plague 7 Public Health and the Medical Profession in the Renaissance 7 Citi, Bartolommea 36 Citi, Maddalena 36, 39 Citi, Maria 36 Citi, Matteo 36 Citi, Simone 36 Ciucci, Tommaso: textile worker 29 Civoli, Signora Lessandra Cardi 169 Clarke, Georgia 247 Clement VII, Pope 156 Clerics Regular of the Mother of God 155 Cocchi, Guido 272 Cohn, Samuel, Jnr 8, 10, 12–14, 57, 126, 181, 192, 244 College of Physicians 15, 52, 81, 101, 107, 110, 113, 115, 203 Collegio de’ Medici 85–6, 108–9, 111, 113–14, 162, 198 Commissari 139, 141, 143 Compagnia di S. Ilario a Colombaia 176 Company of S. Michele Arcangelo 60–2, 69, 70, 73, 78, 81, 86, 92, 95, 141, 152, 253, 256 Confortinari, Maestro Giovannni 115 Confortini, Benedetto di Antonio 102 contagion 5–7, 29, 51–6, 58, 71, 85–6, 89, 91, 96, 102, 111, 116, 133, 144, 149, 153, 158, 161, 164–5, 167, 169, 178, 188, 192, 205–6, 212–16, 219–20, 223, 245, 256, 262–3, 265, 268, 272, 274, 277, 280 Conti, Lessandra 39 cordon sanitaire 4, 7, 9, 15, 24, 26–7, 32, 50 Corona del Signore 165 Corradi, Alfonso: Annali delle epidemie in Italia 5–6 honorary doctorate: University of Cambridge 6 Corsi, Maestro Corso, from Pisa 169 Corsini, Carlo 93 Cortigiani, Francesco: surgeon 211 Council of Trent 76, 157 court record 3, 11, 19, 44, 106, 229, 252, 257 Coveri, Cesarino: surgeon of health board 116 Coveri, Michel’Agnolo: surgeon of health board 39 Creighton, Charles: A History of Epidemics in Britain 5 formerly Demonstrator of Anatomy, University of Cambridge 6 Cremasco 25 Cremona: plague 1630–1 24

349

Cresti il Passignano, Domenico 159–60 curfew 126, 248, 253, 257, 259 Dandini, Cesare: painter 172–3 Dandini, Pietro: painter 157–8 Dante: Inferno 33 dead: transport 15, 17, 85, 95, 152 DECIMA project 10 decree 17, 19, 27–8, 31, 69, 72, 74–5, 78, 96–8, 104, 107, 114, 118, 128, 135, 149, 153–5, 157, 222, 229, 231–2, 234, 237, 239–40, 245–6, 251, 275, 284 Defoe, Daniel 3 Journal of the Plague Year 4, 23 Del Sarto, Andrea 171 Della Rovere, Gian Battista: Carlo Borromeo’s Procession of the Holy Nail 180 denunciation 116, 234, 240, 257, 261, 263–6, 270, 275–6 Depositeria Generale 195 Devon, Colyton: plague 126 Diana, Esther 12, 94 Dianora, Monna 68 Dicomano 142 diet 203 poor 55, 191 linked with disease 55 Diligenti, Ottavio: ‘Il Cappellaio’, hatter 233 Diocletian, Emperor 168 Dioscorides, Pedanius 109–10 disease: 1629 41 connection with environment 57, 189 malaria 5, 60, 152 pneumonia 272 smallpox 6 tuberculosis 2 yellow fever 2, 6 Disenzano: plague 1630–1 25 disinfection 7, 44, 96, 104, 106, 108, 154, 159, 194, 214–15, 232, 242, 282 doctor 13, 24, 36–7, 45, 49, 51, 54–6, 58–9, 72, 74, 84, 95, 99–101, 104, 107–10, 113, 115–17, 129, 154, 164, 169, 190–1, 197–9, 201–3, 205, 209, 211–13, 216, 219, 223, 227–8, 238, 269 Jewish 74 Dolci, Giovanni di Jacopo 265 Domenica: servant 263 Domenica da Paradiso, Beata 14, 161–4, 168, 181 Domenica di Casentino 117 Domenico d’Agostino, Lucrezia di 74

350

INDEX

Doni, Niccolò: distributor of subsidies during general quarantine 115 Donzellini, Girolamo: Brescian doctor 57, 110 drains 61, 67 Dubrovnik (Ragusa) 9, 183 Lazaretto 183 quarantine 1377 183 Durazzini, Dr 267 ebola 2 Eckstein, Nicholas 61 Edit 16 13 Elmi, Jacopo 224 empire: Byzantine 9 Ottoman 9 Empoli 260 England: Bristol, plague 125 burial 40 early modern 8, 10, 12, 247 Lazaretto 183 Newcastle-upon-Tyne, plague 1636 13 Privy Council 3–4, 183 quarantine 5 textile industry 76 Ermini, Don Paolo 89 curate of S. Pancrazio 90 Europe: early modern 4, 11, 16, 111, 183, 227 witchcraft trials 264 medieval and early modern 168, 241, 249 medieval and renaissance 4, 7, 238, 250 northern 4, 9, 40, 133 plague 1613–66 1 southern 183 western 183–4 evidence 55, 72, 99, 105, 114, 125, 143, 145, 170, 195, 203, 225, 246–7, 260, 263–4, 267–8, 276 Fabbrini, Alessandro: carter 223 Fabbrini, Domenica di Alessandro 223–4 Faberi, Maestro Salustri: doctor 115 Fagiolini, Baccio 213 Fagni, Bartolommeo di Niccolò: fumigator of houses 106, 266–7, 242 famine 30, 71, 76–7, 79, 93, 150, 156–7 Fancelli, Francesco d’Ascanio: surgeon 113 Fantasti, Francesco di Ceseri: barber 254 Fantini, Domenico: priest 260 Far East: plague 1890 7, 8 feast: Fat Thursday 166 Fecini, Marsilio: corporal 35 Ferdinando I, Grand Duke 131, 175, 185

Ferdinando II, Grand Duke 1, 17, 30, 34, 79–80, 82, 107, 113, 134–5, 140, 142, 151, 160–2, 164, 167, 171, 177–81, 186, 193, 214, 227–8, 246, 253, 279, 283–4 festivals: Assumption of the Virgin 167, 171–2, 175 S. Antonino 217 S. Rocco 151 S. Sebastian 164–6, 173 S. Agnese 173 St John the Evangelist 180 fever 31, 35, 38, 44–5, 59, 63–4, 79, 101, 151, 171, 188, 191, 203, 211, 214, 216–17, 219 associated with famine 157 burning 110, 198 high 29, 36, 211 low 42 malign 110 ordinary 45 pestiferous 110, 191, 202 pestilential 110, 113, 189 petechial 48, 59, 71, 77, 85, 92, 191 simple 102, 104 tertian 39, 93 Ficino, Marsilio 58, 85, 110 Fiesole 37–9, 140, 142–3, 187, 195, 197–8, 223 bishop of 167 Canonica di 140 Filicaia, Costanza Geddes da 9 Filicaia, Marco Geddes da 9 Filippo, Giulia di: prostitute 240 Filiromola, Maestro Paolo: medico del quartiere 108 filth: association with plague 68 mother of corruption 60 Fiore di Camillo the cobbler: Monna, widow 65 Firenzuola 31 Florence: Albergo del Caccio 238 Albergo di Titolotto 247, 268 Baptistery 61, 64, 112, 172 beggars: expelled 56 housed in ‘Ospedali dei Mendicanti’ 56 Bellosguardo 140 Boboli Gardens 80, 137, 284 census: 1562 124 1630 131 1631 42, 135 1632 123–5, 249, 282 churches: Duomo 18, 29, 43, 80, 99–101, 149–51, 153, 156, 159–61, 167, 172, 174, 177–8, 207, 244, 281–2

INDEX Giotto’s Campanile 100 Monte Oliveto 106, 194 Ognissanti 116 S. Bernaba 69–70 S. Casciano 28 S. Domenico di Fiesole 39 S. Francesco al Monte 195–6 S. Francesco di Paolo 95 S. Giovanni 64 S. Giuseppe 73 S. Jacopo 172 S. Jacopo fra Fossi 115 S. Lorenzo 46, 119, 123, 135, 151, 179, 268–9 Cappella dei Principi 151 S. Marco 18, 156, 159, 161–2, 174, 175–6, 207, 281–2 Cappella di S. Antonino 151, 156, 159 S. Marco Vecchio 187, 194 S. Michele 74 S. Michele Arcangelo 60 S. Michele Visdomini 167 S. Miniato al Monte 194–6, 207, 252 Campanile 196 Palazzo dei Vescovi 195–6 S. Pancrazio 87, 89–90, 155 S. Pierino 65 S. Rocco 172 S. Salvadore di Camaldoli 71 S. Salvatore al Monte alle Croci 195 S. Zanobi 125 S. Ambrogio 119 S. Apollinare 127 S. Croce 174, 178 S. Maria all’Impruneta 18, 181 S. Maria Novella 174, 177–8, 263, 278 SS. Annunziata 18, 137, 151, 167–75, 173, 176–7, 179, 181, 207, 225, 281–2 Chapel of S. Rocco 172–3 Chapel of S. Sebastiano 168 Chapel of the Virgin 171, 173 Chiostrino dei Voti 170 Medici funerary chapel 151 S. Spirito 155, 174 S. Stefano in Pane 272 confraternity 78 Buonomini di S. Martino 59, 157, 160, 280 Compagnia del Beato Ippolito dei Vanchetoni 179 Compagnia del Crocifisso dei Bianchi di Firenze 179

351 Compagnia delle Stimmate di S. Francesco 179 Compagnia Maggiore 100 Congregazione della Dottrina Cristiana 152 Congregazione di Beato Ipollito Galantini 152 Congregazione di S. Ignatio in S. Giovannino 152 Flagellant Confraternity 177 Laudesi di S. Agnese 278 see also Company of S. Michele Arcangelo; Misericordia, Archconfraternity, Florence convent: Convento di Chiarito 65 La Crocetta 162–4, 181 Monache dette le Poverine 59 Monache di S. Gaggio 176 S. Domenico di Fiesole 195 S. Jacopo 32 S. Marco 156 S. Marco Vecchio 186, 194 S. Croce 135 S. Maria del Carmine 135 S. Orsola 67 famine 1622 156 Fortress: Fortezza di S. Giovanni da Basso 81, 137, 284 S. Miniato al Monte 1, 95, 137, 187, 193–5, 199, 252 Porta del Soccorso 199 Ghetto 42, 73–5, 96, 244, 252–3, 273 Portone del 74 guild: Arte della seta 243 Arte de’ Mercatanti 72 hospital 78 Ospedale de’ Talani 267 Ospedale dei Mendicanti 65, 71–2, 76–7, 96, 135, 183, 253 S. Giovanni di Dio 85, 94 S. Matteo 94, 100 S. Maria Nuova 29, 35, 45–6, 64, 81, 88, 92–3, 95, 100, 102, 104, 109, 115, 127, 179, 188, 196, 200, 202, 213, 269 speziaria 113 Inquisitor 162 Magistrate: Buonomini del Bigallo 78 Onestà, Officiali di 72 Otto di Guardia e Balìa 66, 229, 233 market: Mercato Vecchio 97, 239, 253, 280 S. Lorenzo 97 oratory: Or S. Michele 175 Osteria del Fiasco d’Oro 255

352

INDEX

Florence (contd) Palazzo della Signoria 156 Palazzo Ginori 70 Palazzo Medici 67 Palazzo Pitti 67, 80 Palazzo Strozzi 98 Palazzo Vecchio 172 Parish: Ognissanti 224, 230 S. Giovanni 146 S. Leo 278 S. Lorenzo 10, 17, 47–9, 61–4, 93, 118–22, 126, 144, 154, 256, 271 S. Marco 161 S. Pier Gattolino 46 S. Pullinare 127 S. Ambrogio 68, 73, 89, 118, 126, 155, 254, 256 S. Croce 146 S. Margherita 238 S. Maria Novella 146 S. Spirito 146 S. Stefano in Pane 140, 251 Pescaie 30 Piazza d’Arno 225 Piazza de’ Donati 66 Piazza del Duomo 97, 99, 103, 159, 263, 271 Piazza del Grano 102, 267 Piazza del Mercato Vecchio 239 Piazza Donatello 95 Piazza S. Lorenzo 119 Piazza S. Marco 159 Piazza Strozzi 273 Piazza Vecchia di S. Maria Novella 263 plague: 1430 132 1448–9 156, 157 1522–3 100, 186 1526–7 162, 186 1630–1 1, 3, 11–12, 15, 18, 31, 33, 40–1, 57–8, 72, 79, 85–6, 91, 117–18, 126, 156, 162, 167–8, 170–1, 174, 186, 190, 199, 208 1632–3 3, 15, 17–18, 113, 117, 168, 173–4, 176, 277–84 mortality 226 spread by breath 53 spread by cloth 53 Porta a Pinti 95 Porta a S. Miniato 95, 221, 252 Porta al Prato 29, 69, 248 Porta alla Croce 118, 126, 128, 254–5 Porta del Soccorso 196 Porta Romana 177–8 Porta S. Frediano 95, 223

Porta S. Friano 277 Porta S. Gallo 33, 61, 87, 95, 119, 128 Porta S. Niccolò 72, 139, 142 Porta S. Pier Gattolini 177 Porte Vecchie 265 Porticciuola delle Farine 29 quarters: S. Ambrogio 119 S. Croce 119 S. Giovanni 119, 177 River Arno 69, 87, 98, 140, 156, 194, 198, 241, 273, 281–2 Senate 79–80, 160 Sesto 165 S. Ambrogio 68, 116 S. Croce 62 S. Giovanni 46, 63–4, 119, 140, 268–9 S. Maria Novella 70 S. Spirito 119, 132, 140 Speziaria del Borbottini 112 streets: Borgo La Croce 118 Borgo La Noce 46, 120, 268–9 Borgo Pinti 68 Borgo S. Frediano 278 Borgo S. Jacopo in Campo Corbolini 65 Borgo S. Lorenzo 64 Borgo S. Pier Gattolini 119, 268 Canto a Tornaquinci 274 Canto alla Briga 87, 89, 127 Canto alla Paglia 32, 64, 68 Canto alla Macine 64, 67–8, 165 Canto dei Leoni 68 Canto del Giglio 271 Canto di Nello 254 Cella di Ciardo 120 Corte del Garbo 127 Gomitolo dell’Oro 240 Via Camaldoli 42, 119, 132, 272 Via Campuccio 272 Via Cerretani 64 Via Chiara 69, 123 Via de’ Calderai 59 Via de’ Calzaioli 40, 272 Via de’ Ginori 102, 124, 126, 136, 165 Via de’ Pilastri 255–6 Via dei Carnesechi 64 Via del Campaccio 65, 122–5, 230, 255 Via del Centauro 134 Via del Garbo 87–8, 90 Via del Giardino 72, 103, 267 Via del Moro 102 Via del Palagio 63 Via dell’Acqua 89, 123, 240, 257, 260 Via dell’Amore 65

INDEX Via dell’Ariento 66, 69, 123 Portaccia 66 Via della Condotta 87, 127 Via della Morte 100 Via della Salvia 230–1 Via della Scala 125 Via della Stufa 43, 95 Via delle Ruote 120, 262, 264 Via di Foligno 122 Via di Mezzo 45 Via Ghibellina 32 Via Gora 119, 224, 261 Via Gualfonda 262–3 Via Larga 156, 159 Via Maggio 132 Via Martelli 159 Via Nuova 68, 89–90 Via Nuova da S. Paolo 116 Via Palazzuolo 98, 278 Via Panicale 67, 122–3 Via Pentolini 256–7 Via Porciaia 123 Via Romita 122–4 Via S. Gallo 61, 65, 85, 92, 122–4, 188, 190, 193, 260 Via S. Jacopo in Campo Corbolini 102, 123 Via S. Zanobi 119, 121–5, 252, 262, 269 Via S. Antonino 65, 124 Via S. Margherita a Montici 200 Via S. Maria 117 Via S. Reparata 123–4 Via Senese 177 Via sul Prato 119 Via Tedesca 119, 123 typhus: 1620–1 59 1627 41 Fogliari, Giovanni di Niccolò 257 food: price 81 receptacles, washing of 58 Fracastoro, Girolamo: De contagione 52–3 doctor 53–4, 110–11 fomites 54 ‘seeds of disease’ 154 France 133 church 13 doctor 13 French accused of supplying poisons 245 health board 4 Magistrate 13 Paris: Parlement 4 Queen of 171 southern 5, 8 Francesca: widow and 46, 268

353

Francesca: ‘La Pugia’, wool-weaver 274 Francesca di Lorenzo, Donna 260 Francesca di Pagolo, Monna 63–5 Francesco, livestock 31 Francesco: ‘Il Luna’, Lieutenant of the Bargello 233, 243 Franzese, Maestro Giovanni: surgeon 43 Franzesi, Maestro Francesco: doctor, medico del quartiere 108, 115 Frati di Ben Morire 205, 219, 228 fresco 18, 99, 134, 156–60, 170 Frescobaldi, Lorenzo 135 frontier: closed 25, 27, 30, 32, 78, 80 funeral procession 100–1 Gabbiani, Filippo: rector 144 Galantini, Beato Ippolito 152 Galen 53–5, 110, 114 Galletti: surgeon at lazaretto of Bonifazio and S. Miniato al Monte 211 Galluzzo, Certosa di 176 Gangalandi, S. Martino a 113 Garbini, Cesarino: surgeon at lazaretto of Bonifazio 46, 125, 268–70 Garbo, Dino del 58 Garbo, Maddalena del 88, 90 Garbo, Maddalena del Signor Antonio del 127 Gastaldi, Cardinal Girolamo 181, 245 Geneva 12 Genoa 8, 197 Lazaretto 184–5, 196 Monastery of the Consolazione 184–5 plague 1656–7 23, 27, 184, 206, 246 punishment: leniency 239, 246 Gentilcore, David 115 Gentiluomini 29, 62, 64–5, 67–69, 79, 91–2, 101, 105–6, 132, 135, 279 Geri, Vittorio: surgeon of the Sanità 116, 263 Germany 133 Giambologna: Flemish sculptor working in Florence 156 Giannelli, Bastiano di Girolamo: cobbler 43–4 travelling charlatan 244 Giannelli, Francesco 59 Ginori, Giovanbattista 136 Ginori, Giovanni: deputato sopra le strade 136 Ginori, Lionardo: deputato sopra le strade 64, 69–70 Ginzburg, Carlo 12 Gioghi 140 Giolli, Giovanni di Giulio 271

354

INDEX

Giovagnoli, Dr Niccolò: physician 189–91, 211, 228 Giovanbattista: ‘Scottino’, Corporal at the Bargello 243 Giovanbattista di Giulio: builder 238, 261–2 Giovanni: sarto 257–8 Giovanni Franzese: second-hand clothes dealer 272 Giraldi, Signori, Via de’ Ginori 165 Giubetti, Fulvio: Chancellor of health board 1, 47, 57, 67, 71–2, 80, 85, 91, 96, 104–5, 107, 112, 144, 149, 156, 158, 161, 195 Giuliano da Fiesole 38 Giustiniani, Agostino: annalist of Genoa 184 God’s anger 18, 149, 156, 168 God’s punishment and war 1, 149–50 Golden Legend 168 Gonzaga, Marco: bishop of Mantua 153 Good Samaritan: iconographic theme 181 Goro, Antonio di: inn-keeper 269 Goro, Benedetta di Antonio 269 Goro, Caterina di Antonio 269 Goro, Guido di 269 Gostanza, Monna: widow 125 grain: high price 77 shortage 77 Grand Duke 67, 78–9, 81, 110, 233 Grand Duke’s laboratory or Fonderia 110, 191, 202 Grand-ducal Ambassador, Tuscan 129 Grand-ducal Court 61, 161, 214 Grand-ducal family 82, 151, 162–4, 180 Grand-ducal government 91 Grand-Duchy of Tuscany 9, 25, 59, 78, 80, 107 Grassino, of the Arte della Seta 243 Grasso, Corporal 231 grave-digger 17, 98, 100, 128, 189, 200, 211, 222, 239, 267, 272 Grazzini, Il: landlord 64 Great Pox 11, 52, 54, 82, 204, 216 Green, Monica 8 Grmek, Mirko 7 Guadagni family 264 Guazzesi, Girolamo 39 in charge of Lazaretto 37 Guazzesi, Nofrio 35, 37–9 Guerrini, Signor Asdrubale: secretary of Maestà Maria Medici 171 Gugli, Giuseppe 257 Guidi, Gianfrancesco: Grand Duke’s secretary and Sanità magistrate 34, 91

Guido, Margherita di Piero di 269 Guiducci, Albiera de’ 164 Guiducci, Costanza di Albiera de’ 164 Guiducci, Mario 60, 186 Panegyric 1 Guiducci, Tommaso 210 Provveditore of health board 26 health board (Magistrato di Sanità) 1, 3–4, 9, 12, 15, 17–19, 25–32, 34–6, 38–40, 43, 44–7, 51, 53–4, 59–62, 66–7, 69–72, 74–5, 78–80, 82, 84–6, 88–93, 95–6, 98, 101–2, 104–9, 112–18, 121, 125–9, 131, 134–6, 139, 142–6, 149, 152–3, 155–6, 158, 164–5, 175–6, 178, 180, 186–90, 192–3, 195–8, 200–1, 203–8, 210–23, 226–8, 230–5, 238–42, 244, 247, 249, 251–3, 255–61, 263, 265–6, 268–76, 278–9, 281, 284 Chancellery 45 court 229, 246 decree 18, 232, 234, 242, 245–6, 248, 251, 254, 256, 265 employee 266, 268, 270, 275 judicial system 231 magistracy 17, 37, 46, 86, 88–9, 91–2, 95, 112, 115, 119, 127, 135, 151, 167, 197, 207, 229, 232–3, 239, 242, 244, 251–2, 262–3, 267–8, 270, 279, 281 officer 266 physician 101 records 281 servant 268 surgeon 101 health measures 51, 56 health pass 2, 4, 25–30, 74, 98, 165, 226, 232, 251, 253 Henri IV, King of France 4 herbs and spices: burning to prevent plague 55 Hereford 8 Heurnio, Giovanni: Dutch physician 85 Hippocrates 110 neo-Hippocratic ideas 16, 31, 57 Holland: textile industry 76 Hong Kong 6 plague 1894 7 hospital: Hôpital St Louis, Paris 4 Pistoia: Ceppo 28 houses: inspection of 59 locked 9, 19–20, 30, 35, 39, 46, 59, 73–5, 92, 95, 101–6, 115, 119, 124–5,

INDEX 131, 133–4, 138–9, 144–5, 153, 155, 166, 170, 195, 220, 231–2, 236–8, 240–1, 244, 246–8, 250, 253–59, 261–2, 264–7, 269, 274–5, 280, 284 high-density 10 insanitary 64 Howard, John 185 human waste 65–6, 68–9 as fertilizer 69 disposal of 32, 56–7 humours 54–5, 70–2, 76, 104, 109, 111, 115, 136, 171, 191, 201, 253 bad 54–5 Iacopo: porter 224–5 Il Cionfo 36 ‘Il Fosso’: fumigator of houses 241 ‘Il Grasso’: corporal 230 ‘Il Rovinato’: builder 251 illness: enteric 81 Impruneta 143, 176, 178, 281 Madonna dell’ 173–4, 281 India: Bombay, plague 1896 7 Ingrassia, Giovanni Filippo: Protomedico of Palermo 57, 110, 181, 185, 197 Innocenzio, Fra, da Pisa 214 isolation hospital see Lazaretto Italy 15, 90 early modern 8, 10, 12, 53, 111, 115, 226, 239 northern 12, 49, 51, 57, 84, 136, 162, 184, 245 northern and central 26, 130, 180 plague: 1575–7 82 1629–30 1 1629–33 3, 9, 23 1656–7 3 Jacopo: builder 267 Jacopo: saddle-maker 192 Jacopo di Bastiano: ‘Tamburlano’ 222 Jesuit 150, 204 Jews 17, 42, 71, 73–6, 96, 150, 252–3, 273, 278, 284 pogrom 73 synagogue 75 Università degli Ebrei di Firenze 74 Jones, Colin 13 Koch: germ theory 53 Lake Como: plague 1629–30 24 Lake Garda: plague 1630–1 25 Landi, Paolo di Lando 223–4

355

Landriani, Camillo: ‘Il Duchino’, painter in Milan 158 Languedoc 25 Lasagnini, Filippo: government official 59 Lastra a Signa 113, 141 Laura di Stefano, Donna 260 Lazaretto 1, 7, 9, 15, 17–19, 26, 33, 35, 38–40, 44–6, 49, 56, 73–4, 93–5, 98–9, 102–4, 107–8, 110, 113, 115–17, 119, 128–9, 131, 145–6, 153–7, 178, 183, 185–6, 188, 190, 194, 207, 229, 231, 235, 238, 240–2, 244, 250, 261–2, 266–8, 270, 272, 275, 277–9 Badia Fiesolana 37–8, 41, 130, 187, 194–5, 200, 213–14, 218, 242, 267 Bonifazio 41, 44–5, 85, 88–9, 92, 94–5, 104, 110, 127, 130, 186–93, 198, 202–3, 210–11, 228, 244, 267 graveyard 127 ‘Charles Godhouse’ 4 Legnaia 223 Monticelli 100, 199, 279, 282–3, 281 patient mortality 208 S. Francesco al Monte 19, 41–2, 130, 145, 187, 194, 197–8, 202–3, 205, 211–12, 214–18, 221–2, 225, 227, 233, 269 S. Marco Vecchio 218, 267 Lione, Prior 218 S. Miniato al Monte 19, 41–2, 46, 73, 85, 93–5, 98, 100, 104, 117, 125, 130–2, 145, 161, 167, 186–7, 193, 194–206, 209–23, 225–6, 228, 239, 261–2, 267, 269, 281, 283 speziaria 113 S. Onofrio 88, 92, 104, 125, 146, 264, 267 Settignano 267 Le Rose 140 Leggi, Egidio: goldsmith 171 Lent 166 Lessandra di Francesco, Donna: widow 272 Levant: textile trade 76 Leyden 85 Lisa, Monna 64–5 Lisabetta: flower-seller 89, 90 Lisabetta di Bartolommeo, Monna 64–5 Lisabetta di Tommaso 65 Lisabetta, Monna: widow 102, 125 Litanies of the Lord 282 Litanies of the Madonna 166, 282 Litchfield, Burr 10, 77, 119 Little, Lester K. 8 Livorno 96, 105, 278 Grand Duke’s galleys 96, 232

356

INDEX

Lazaretto di S. Rocco: 1590 185 plague 1632–3 277 Logi, Don Felice: curate of S. Pier Gattolino 46 Lombardi, Margherita di Giovanni 114, 200 Lombardy 52, 167 Imperial German camp 252 Valtellina: plague 1629–30 24 Londa, Tommaso da: corporal 37 London: City of 3 College of Physicians 3–4 East Smithfield 8 International Conference of Hygiene 6 plague 126 plague 1560 126 plague 1665 3, 10, 13, 23, 126–7, 130, 186 Savoy hospital 24 Lorenzi, Dr: medico del quartiere 59 Lorenzo: miller 230–1 Lorenzo detto Baldrone 257 Lorenzo di Raffaello: baker 241 Loreto 252 Loyola, Ignatius 180 Lucca 111–12 Lucretia: servant of Dr Tedeschini 223–4 Lucrezia: neighbour 257 Lucrezia: washerwomen 74, 273 Lunga, Maria: ‘La Cazzettina’, prostitute 228 Lupinai, Giovanni: tailor 224 Lyon 85 Maddalena, Monna: widow 125 Maddalena della Biancha: prostitute 257 Maddalena di Gostanza: daughter 125 Maddalena di Giovanni 65 Madonna di Monsommano 28 Madonna of Montenero 278 Madonna of the Rosary 180 Magalotti: Cavaliere, Senator, Sanità magistrate 43, 91, 95 Magnani, Niccolò 102 chancellor of the Florentine Sanità 204 Maiani, Piero di Lorenzo: weaver 267 Malegonnelle, Francesco Maria: commissioner overseeing contado during quarantine 141 Mancini, Ferdinando: Servite friar and chronicler 169–70 Manieri, Sebastiano 116 Manni, Antonio: worked for the Sanità 36 Mantua and Monferrato, Duchy of 1 Manucci, Signor Andrea di Signor Filippo 171 Manzoni, Alessandro 3 The Betrothed 5, 14, 23, 184, 192, 244

Manzuoli family 264 Manzuoli, Francesco 263–4, 268 Manzuoli, Girolomo di Francesco 263–4 Marcucci, Gasparo: author of treatise on water germander, 1630 112 Margerita: sister of Caterina 220 Margherita: servant 95 Margherita: widow 261–2 Margherita, Suora: abbess of S. Jacopo 32 Maria: servant 164 Maria, Monna 255 Maria d’Andrea 261 Maria di Giovanbattista, Donna 260–1 Maria di Lorenzo 231 Maria di Menico: prostitute 257 Marignolle 282 markets: closed 31, 78 Mercato Vecchio 31, 249, 262 Prato 98 Marseille: plague 1720–2 4–5, 26 Martyrdom of S. Sebastian: iconographic theme 181 Mary, Virgin 97, 150–1 Marzocco lion 156 Masini, Mariano di Domenico 274–5 Massa, Niccolò: Venetian doctor 57, 110 Matthias, Prince 137 Mattioli, Pietro Andrea 110, 112 mattresses 60–2, 64–6, 69–70, 92, 96, 103, 105, 123, 157, 198, 210, 243, 252, 281 fetid 68 replacement of 61 rotten 61 straw 60, 64 Mayerne, Theodore de: king’s physician 4 Mazzanti, Dr Francesco 35, 37 Medici 67 Alessandro de’ 172–3 Alessandro Marzi: Archbishop of Florence 149 Antonio de’ 162–3 Carlo, Cardinal Prince Giovanni 137, 143 Cosimo de’, il Vecchio 110 Cosimo I de’ 78, 110, 138, 171 Cristina of Lorraine, Grand Duchess 163, 171, 179, 181 Giovancarlo de’: Cardinal 134 family 168, 170–3, 178–9 Lorenzo, Don 91, 143, 171, 216 Marchese 214 Maria Maddalena, Archduchess 81, 135, 179 Vitale de’ 172 medicines 107 acorn root 111

INDEX acqua da febbre 110, 191, 202 aloe 203 angelica root 111 Armenian clay 201 barley water 110, 201 bezoar 109 birthwort root 111 burnt white of egg 44 cardamom root 111 centerbe 201 cicerbita sauce 114 diorsenia root 202 dried figs 114 ferruginous clay (terra sigillata) 44, 111, 201, 216 garlic 112 goat’s rue 111, 114 greco 112 ground-up pearls 202 Lattovaro 110, 113 lavender oil 44 lemon syrup 203 mel rosato 203 mithradatum 109–10, 114, 203 myrrh 203 nutmeg 203 oil against poison 110, 112, 203–4, 216, 224, 242 oil of crushed scorpions in Greek wine 203 onion 112 plums 203 purgative 204 rue 114 scorpion 95 spiritual 13, 19, 146, 151, 153–4, 161, 164, 169, 174–5, 184, 196, 199, 204, 207, 226, 280–1, 284 St John’s Wort 44 sweet almond oil 203 theriac 109–10, 112, 114, 201–4, 216 walnuts 114 water germander 111–12 see also treatment Mediterranean 76 eastern 9 miasma 5, 7, 31–2, 36, 79, 90, 194 Michelagnolo, Francesco di: ‘Diavolini’, barber 254 Michelangelo Buonarotti 195 Middle East 7, 9 midwife 116 Migliore, Ferdinando Del: historian 168 Milan 8, 19, 43–4, 57 Archbishop 180 cathedral 157

357

Congresso degli Scienziati 5 health board 1, 24, 26, 180 Lazaretto 18, 183–4, 193, 196, 203 mortality 24 plague: 153, 230 plague 1485 209 plague 1523 126 plague 1575–7 (of S. Carlo) 23, 75, 137, 155, 157, 180–1, 185 plague 1629–30 14, 24 plague 1630–1 3, 5, 25, 84, 244, 275 plague 1656–7 284 early modern 229 plague-spreaders 14, 43–4, 192, 244–6 punishment 239, 244, 246, 275 execution 232, 244 rumour of revolt 1575–6 245 trial 244 Mini, Luca 140, 143 parish priest of S. Stefano in Pane 139 Ministri degli Infermi 204–5 Misericordia, Archconfraternity, Florence 15, 17, 74, 85–6, 93–5, 99, 100–104, 106, 119, 127–8, 145–6, 152, 154, 160, 218, 239, 279, 282 Mass of Spirito Santo 167 Mochi, Francesco: sculptor 172 Modena: church, Chiesa del Voto 179 Monte di Pietà: bank 75, 79, 81, 284 Montelupo 155, 181 Montepulciano 30 Monterchi 113 Montereggi 142 Monticelli 241, 278 plague 1632–3 277 Montughi 142 Moote, Dorothy 13 Moote, Lloyd 13 Mormorai, Giovanbattista di Simone: apprentice 274 mortality 5, 6, 8, 10, 14, 16–17, 19, 24–5, 31, 38, 40–2, 45, 47–9, 52, 55, 75, 81, 83, 86, 89, 93, 95, 97, 119, 124, 126–8, 131–2, 139, 145, 154, 156, 161, 164, 173–4, 180, 187, 190, 193, 207, 209, 212–13, 220, 226, 235, 241, 244, 252–3, 259, 269, 273, 277, 280–3 Moscellaro: landlord 64 Mrkan, island 183 Mugello 31, 142–4, 273 Nannina, Donna 223 Nannina, Monna: widow 125 Naphy, William 12

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Naples 8, 9, 245 church: S. Maria del Pianto 179 health board 245 decree 246 Masaniello, revolt of 245 plague 1630–1 275 1656–7 180, 284 mortality 245 plague: early modern 229 plague-spreaders 245 punishment 246 severe 239 regime: Spanish 245 trial 245 Nazarro, Gianfrancesco Riva di San: jurist 85 Nente, Ignazio del: Dominican author of biography of Domenica da Paradiso 163 Nevola, Fabrizio 247 Niccolò, da Bolognano: priest at lazaretto di S. Miniato 219 Nigetti, Matteo: Grand-Ducal architect 151, 171–2 Nobili, Signor Giovanni: Provveditore of the Sanità 214 Nonontola, Modena: plague 126 Norway: Bergen 8 Novellucci, Capitano Francesco, of Prato 29 Nutton, Vivian 7 Observant Dominicans 174 occupations: baker 40, 65, 69–70, 89–90, 101, 126, 142, 241, 265 book-seller 271 butchery 32, 56, 58, 64, 97, 274 cobbler 271 fumigator 270 grocer 271 inn-keeper 30, 126, 241 lance-maker 271 locksmith 271 lute-maker 271 poultry-dealer 30 printer 271 textile industry 30–1, 46, 97, 119, 124, 126, 181, 248–50, 270, 284 flax 143 glove-maker 46, 269 linen 80, 284 mattress-maker 272 sale of cloth 97 second-hand clothes 73, 75, 241, 273 silk 31–2, 58, 66, 79–80, 82, 97–8, 272, 274, 284

spinner 77 weaver 46, 77 wool 66, 77, 79–80, 82, 142, 269, 272, 274, 284 tinker 271 washer-woman 143 wine-dealer 137 wine-seller 271 offences: places committed 247 Old Testament 150 Olmo 74 Oltrarno 71 Orbatello: women’s hostel 220 Order of S. Filippo Neri 26 Osservanti, Minori 205 Osteria Nova 37 Ottavio: ‘Il Chappellaio’ 66 Padri Minimi 155 Padua 85 plague 1575–7 130, 137, 168, 181, 209 Paggi, Giovan Battista 168 Pagiarulo, Giovanni 163 Palermo 57, 197, 252 Lazaretto 1575: Cubbo 185, 196 plague 1575–7 181, 185 plague 1624 205 Palio: cancelled 145 Pallavicino, Sforza 55 Jesuit 75 Palli, Jacopo: Venetian merchant 172–3 Pallini, Matteo 66 Nannina, widow of 65 Palmieri, Francesco: Podestà of Fiesole 38–9 Pandolfini, Tommaso 67 Paolantonio: dyer 117 Parets, Miquel: tanner 11, 15 Parigi, Giulio, architect 186 Parma 84 mortality 24 plague: 1630–1 25, 84 mortality 84 Passion of Christ 175 Pastore, Alessandro 8, 11, 246 Pater Noster 43, 161, 166 Pazzi, Cosimo de’: Jesuit Father 175 Pellicini, Dr Antonio: physician 54, 56, 58–9, 107, 109–11, 136, 202–4 penitence 72, 151, 153, 175, 177 Pentecost 175 Pentolini, Giovanni: impoverished labourer 142 Pepi, Roberto: commissioner surveying contado during quarantine 142

INDEX Peroni, Tommaso di Francesco: steward at lazaretto of Legnaia 267 Pescia: mortality 49 Pesciolini, Dr Paolo: physician at Lazaretto of Messer Bonifazio 188–9, 191 petition 30, 32, 74–6, 109, 113, 115, 142–3, 186, 219–20, 232, 239, 243, 253 Petto Sudicio: inn-keeper 257–8 physician 1, 3–6, 12, 35, 39, 44–5, 51–3, 56, 75, 107–10, 113–14, 153, 162–3, 190–1, 195, 199–201, 211–13, 217–19, 227, 244, 279 Divine 158 Pian dei Giullari 194 Pian di Mugnone 37 Piedmont 24 Val di Susa: plague 1629–30 23 Piero: gardener’s lad 254 Piero: olive-oil dealer 68 Piero dal Ponte a Sieve: Captain of the Bargello 260 Piero di Bartolommeo: ‘Mazzantonino’, carpenter 273 Pietro Paolo: Company of Apothecaries, ‘Il Moro’ 204 piety 73, 81, 152, 180 Pieve a Ripoli 194 Pignoni, Zanobi: printer 112 Pinzidimonte 144 Pisa 66, 73, 169 University of 53, 107 Pistoia 28–9, 31 Lazaretto 209 Piano di 28 plague 1630–1 130 plague analogy with warfare 1 association with poverty 10, 82, 118 ‘bubo-plague’ 6 bubonic 6–8 caused by fetid water 56 caused by unburied bodies 56 cemetery 4 imagery: post-Tridentine 157 interpersonal transmission 7 mortality: distribution 62 pre-industrial 8, 10 spread by breath 54 spread by cloth 54, 73, 90, 98 travellers’ restrictions 66 Whiggish approach 7 plague pit 7, 17, 40, 42, 46, 49, 85, 95, 108, 116, 119, 125, 127–30, 161, 209, 226, 268, 269, 275 plague-spreaders 14, 43–4, 192, 244–6

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Platonic analogy: human body and the city 55 Poccetti, Bernardo: painter of frescoes on façade of the Misericordia 99 Poggi, Giuseppe: nineteenth-century architect 196 police 91, 178, 233–4, 248, 255, 258 Pollaiuolo, Antonio and Piero del: Martyrdom of St Sebastian, SS. Annunziata 168 Pomata, Gianna 13, 115 poor 77 attitude towards 82–3 burial 99 cause of epidemics 56 condition of 60, 77 higher mortality 55 houses of 66 ignorance 89 living conditions 64, 68, 71, 181, 284 marginalisation of 70 plight of 79 resistance to disease 52 respectable 157, 160 sick sent to Lazaretto 56 source of infection 82 suffering of 84 Porcacchi, Thomaso: author of L’isole più belle del mondo 184 Porta, Maria di Matteo 221 porter 17, 100, 103–4, 128 poverty 10, 55–6, 60, 62, 64–6, 70, 76, 78, 80–1, 119, 132, 142, 232, 273, 280 association with disease 11, 15 pozzo nero see cesspit Prato 29, 79, 94, 98, 144 hospital: Ceppo 79 Lazaretto 203, 209 plague: mortality 226 plague 1630–1 130 Prato Vecchio 113 prison 27, 31, 74–5, 91–2, 168, 187, 222, 230, 232–3, 235, 237–9, 241, 243–4, 247, 255, 257, 259, 261, 263, 270, 273–4 S. Onofrio 223, 232, 238, 263, 269 secret prison 29, 32, 74, 260 Stinche 232 procession 174, 181, 225 altarpiece of the Madonna from S. Maria Novella 166 Company of the Vanchetoni 174–5 Corpus Christi 146 crucifix of Padri della Sporta 175 crucifix of the Bianchi 167

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festival of S. Antonino 156, 158–61, 207, 253 head of S. Zanobi 174, 280–1 Impruneta, Madonna dell’ 18, 20, 175–8, 281 mitre of S. Antonino 175 placatory 155 public 151 relic of S. Giovanni Battista 174 relic of S. Sebastiano 174 relic of S. Reparata 174 prosecution 19, 91, 95, 97, 117, 125, 220–1, 229–31, 234–6, 246–9, 251–3, 258, 262, 265–6, 270, 275 female 236–7, 240, 249 male 236–7, 240, 249 prostitute 17, 19, 72–3, 76, 96, 206, 223, 231, 240, 243, 248–9, 256–8, 265, 284 Provence 25 Pucci family: patrons of the chapel of S. Sebastiano, SS. Annunziata 168 Pullan, Brian 10 punishment 1, 12, 14, 62, 73, 77, 89, 91, 135, 149–51, 228–9, 231–3, 237, 241, 244, 246, 251, 256, 264, 276, 284 banishment 71, 237, 242–3, 252 draconian 46 execution 30, 157, 232, 235, 237, 239, 244–6, 284 female 243 fines 232–3, 238, 241, 254, 258, 265, 272, 274–5, 284 galleys 30, 235, 242–3, 254 isolation 235 leniency 246 male 243 medieval and early modern 239 physical 233 prison 19, 32, 37, 238–9, 271, 275, 284 with fine 243 without fine 243 public 239 released, no fine 235, 238 riding donkey 235, 239–40, 243 severe 266, 275 Strappado 19, 232, 235, 239, 241–3, 252, 265, 267–9, 273–5 whipping 134, 144, 206, 232, 235, 237, 239–40, 242, 268 work in Lazaretto 240 Purgatory 150, 179 putrefaction 55 quarantine 4, 6–7, 9, 12, 17, 20, 31, 36–7, 47, 50, 56, 60–1, 74, 88, 92, 94–5,

97, 100, 102–4, 106–7, 115–16, 118, 126, 131–146, 155, 164–6, 169–70, 181, 183, 185–7, 193, 195, 197–8, 202–3, 205, 215–16, 218–21, 225–7, 229–32, 235, 236–7, 240–1, 243, 248–50, 252–3, 256–9, 261, 264, 271–3, 278–82, 284 quarantine centres 42 S. Domenico di Fiesole 195, 197–8, 223 Villa Belvedere al Saracino 281 Villa Borgherini 281–2 Villa de’ SS. Tolomei 281 Villa della Querciola 281 Villa di Mezzomonte 134 Villa Guicciardini 194 Villa Palmieri: ‘I Trevisi’ 195 Villa Rusciano 187, 194, 211–12, 215–16, 218, 221–4 Villa Serristori 194, 216 Villa Strozzini 223, 281–2 Villa Tolomei: Via S. Margherita a Montici 200 Quarantore 150 rat: plague carrier 7 Reggio-Emilia 24 regimes: Medici 79 Sforza 9 Visconti 9 Reni, Guido: Pallione del Voto in Bologna 180 revolt 146, 245–6 reward for reporting ‘crimes’ 262, 264, 276 Ricci, Susanna: ex-prostitute, Bologna 206 Ridolfo, Dr: at Lazaretto di S. Miniato al Monte 211 Rieux, Dr Bernard 187 Righi, Dr Antonio: physician of the Sanità 51–2, 54–5, 191, 227 Rimaggio 143 Rimbotti, Caterina di Rimbotto 134–5 Rimbotti, Cavaliere Rimbotto 134, 142 Ripamonti, Giuseppe: account of plague in Milan in 1630 244 Ripoli, Pian di 140, 143 Ristorini, Oratio di Simone 222–3, 239 Rocca, Giosimone: ‘Dalla Rocca’, surgeon 200–1 rogne see bubo Romagna 142, 213 Rome 8–9, 19, 30, 56, 252 church: S. Maria in Campitelli 179, 181 S. Maria in Portico: image 155, 179, 181

INDEX confraternity 60 health board 245 hospital: S. Giacomo degli Incurabili 204, 206 Lazaretto 246 Isola di S. Bartolommeo 185 Niccolini: Florentine Ambassador 204 plague 1656–7 55, 74, 106, 130, 153, 155, 170, 174, 181, 186, 209, 245, 284 houses locked up 280 quarantine 280 punishment 246 execution 232, 245–6 leniency 275 severe 239 quarantine 185 relic: head of S. Sisto 179 River Tiber 185 Senate 155 torture 245 Trastevere 55 Romoli, Girolamo: Soprintendente della Scrittura 260 Romolo: employee of the Misericordia, dog-killer 128 Rondinelli, Francesco 15, 25, 33–4, 36, 51, 54, 58, 70–1, 73, 85–6, 88–92, 96, 100, 103–6, 118, 126, 129, 132–4, 139–40, 145, 158–9, 165–6, 168, 174, 176, 178–9, 186, 192–5, 199–200, 209, 213, 216, 226–7, 251, 254, 256, 259, 277–9, 284 Relazione del contagio 24 Rondinelli, Giovanbattista di Vangelista 242 Rosary 166, 175 Rossi, Bartolomeo: sculptor 172 Rossi, Giovanni Antonio de’: sculptor 155 Rouhier, Louis: author of 1657 prints of the Diligent orders and measures 185–6 Rovai, Domenico, from S. Stefano in Pane: priest 272 Rovinato, Il 89, 90 Rozzuoli, Piero: fumigator 272 rubbish: removal of 64–7 Rucellai, Giovan Filippo: provveditore of the Ospedale dei Mendicanti 72 Russia 9 Sacchi, Pandolfo: court painter 134 sacrament 73, 84, 89, 116, 153, 157–8, 199, 213, 219 baptism 153 Eucharist 153

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extreme unction 153–4, 157–8, 205, 214, 218 Holy 150, 157, 166 penitence 153 Salerno 252 Salvatico, Signor Averone del 128 Salve Regina 164 Salvestro di Michele Lucherino 257 Salviati, Lord Antonio 156 Salviati, Lord Averardo 156 Salviati, Marchese, Val di Maria 39 Salviati, Signor Lucha 66 S. Antonino 18, 97, 156–62, 164, 173, 175, 180, 207 S. Catherine of Siena 163 S. Domenico di Fiesole: convent 187 S. Gaggio: convent 177 S. Maria all’Impruneta: church 179, 241 S. Martino a Montughi 142 S. Michael Archangel 152 S. Piero a Sieve 142 S. Piero a Solicciano 141 S. Rocco, plague saint 14, 169 S. Sebastian, plague saint 14, 134, 169 Sandini, Lisabetta di Cammillo di Jacopo 251 Sandra: servant 101 Sandra di Matteo 259 Sandrina 260 Sanità see health board sanitary survey 31, 59–63, 68, 70–2, 81, 86, 90, 92, 95, 104, 122, 132, 141, 152, 157, 176, 253, 284 Santi: gardener 254 Santi di Giovanbattista: Sanità employee 242, 268 Saracini, Domenico: lute-maker 271 SARS 2 Scarperia 31, 144 Schofield, Roger 10, 125 Scott and Duncan: Biology of Plagues, Evidence from Historical Populations 8 Sebastiano: curate of S. Piero a Solicciano 141 Segni, Lorenzo: chronicler 162 Selva, Maestro Vincenzo: Director of Villa Rusciano 169, 215 Servite Friars 168, 177 Sesto Fiorentino 91–2, 101, 105, 107, 119, 135, 143, 252 Settignano 143 sewer-emptiers 69 Sicily: Messina: plague 1743 4–5 sick: subsidies to 66

362

INDEX

transport 7, 15, 17, 50, 85, 89, 93, 95, 103, 131, 152, 198, 218 sickness: enteric . . . 48, 81 increased by melancholy 96 Silvani, Gherardo: architect 179 Sivigatti, Signor Cavaliere 32 Slack, Paul 10, 12, 125, 130 soil: infected 7 poison 6 Soldelli, Lorenzo di Bartolommeo: scrap merchant 271 Sonnino, Eugenio 75 Spain 252 Seville: early modern 14 textile industry 76 Spanish Guard 195 Spinola, Giulio: Cardinal, papal nuncio to Naples 245 Statini, Raffaello di Taddeo 263 scribe 97 Stevens Crawshaw, Jane 130, 185, 200, 223, 227 Strada Aretina 140, 142 Strada Chianti 142 Strada Romana 142 Stradano, Giovanni, or Jan Van der Street: painter 239 streets: cleaning 57–9 stretcher-bearer 65 widow of 64 surgeon 12, 35, 39, 42–4, 46, 63, 74, 101, 107–9, 113–17, 125, 153, 190, 192, 200, 211–13, 215, 217, 219, 232, 263–4, 268–9, 279, 282 barber-surgeon 137 Sustermans, Justus: painter 79 Switzerland 11 Tacca, Pietro: sculptor 171 Tadino, Dr Alessandro: Milanese physician 1 Tailor, Ralph: scrivener, Newcastle-upon-Tyne 13 Targioni, Luca di Giovanni di Luca 80, 94, 102–3, 131, 136, 145, 150–2, 158–9, 164 tavern 126–7, 146, 247, 253, 271 Tedeschini, Dr 223 Teracini, Jacopo di Giovanni di: gold-beater from Palermo 252 Terpstra, Nicholas 10 Theatines, Order 204 theft 12, 19, 105–6, 153, 192, 220–5, 228, 239–42, 244, 247, 250, 265–7 Thirty Years’ War 1, 76

Ticciati, Dr: at the Lazaretto of S. Miniato 211 Titolotto: proprietor of the Albergo 46 Titolotto, Albergo del 126 Titolotto, Lisabetta di 46, 268 Tobias: iconographic theme 181 Torricelli, Maestro Stefano di Bastiano: builder 137 Tortorelli, Salvadore di Vincenzo: baker at the Porte Vecchie 265 torture 106, 242, 265, 267 Toso, Giuliano del: surgeon 212–13 Tovaglia, Antonio di Giovanbattista del 101 Tozzi, Piero d’Andrea: retailer 274 Traballesi, Antonio di Francesco 254–5 treatment: bloodletting 110, 114 chicken sauce 114 ground scabious 114 heated cups 114 pomegranate juice 114 purging 114 scarifying 39, 110, 114, 203–4, 217 sweating 110, 114, 203 white onion 114 Trespiano 16, 30, 33–40, 43–4, 71, 86–90, 151, 278 pilgrim’s hospice 35 plague 1630–1 32, 51 Uccellatoio 37 trial 11–12, 14, 70, 98, 108, 114, 116, 125–6, 139, 192, 219–22, 229–31, 233, 238, 240–2, 244–8, 251–2, 254–5, 259, 261–6, 269, 272–4, 284 Turin 24 plague 1630–1 24 Turk 207 Tuscany 8, 79, 149, 181 northern 44, 244 plague: 1399–1400 167 1630–1 155 Twigg, Graham: The Black Death: A Biological Reappraisal 8 typhus 31, 79, 93 enzymatic 48 unemployment 30, 76–79, 81, 137, 141–3, 150, 270, 272, 280, 284 University of Cambridge 6 untori see plague-spreaders Urban VIII, Pope 60, 152, 165, 175, 194 Urbani, Francesco di Giovanni 98 Vaglia 142 vagrancy 76 Val di Maria 39

INDEX Val di Nievole 44 Vannini, Ottavio: court artist 169 Vaselli, Domenico 191 Venice 8, 57, 86, 109, 114, 172, 183, 226, 239 church: S. Maria della Salute 18, 173, 179 health board 79 lagoon 184 Lazaretto 9, 18, 184–6, 193, 200, 203, 223, 227 wills 205 mortality 49 plague: 1575–7 51, 57, 130, 137, 181, 185, 209 1630–1 25, 130, 173 quarantine 184 Tenth International Sanitary Conference 7 Vernio, Cosimo Bardi de’ Conti di: Archbishop of Florence 152 Verona 25, 82 Lazaretto 197 mortality 24, 49 plague: 1576 57 1630–1 24, 40, 84 rumour of revolt 1575–6 245 Vestri, Alessandro: vice-governor of Badia Fiesolana 242, 267–8 Vettori, Luigi: Sanità magistrate 91 Vettorio 117 builder 238 surgeon 116 Vettorio, Margherita di 238 Via S. Maria a Marignolle 281 Vignali, Jacopo: painter 163, 173 Assumption with SS. Stefano, Alessandro, Gregorio Taumaturgo, Valentino, and Agnese, 1635 173

363

Assunzione della Vergine e i Santi Jacopo e Rocco, 1631 173 Villefranche 25 Vincentio: cobbler 127 Vincentio di Giovanbattista Romano 241 Vincenzo, Padre: superintendent of Villa Rusciano 222 Virgil 33 Visconti, Filippo Maria: ruler of Milan 110 Viviano: steward of pilgrims’ hospice, Trespiano 33–4, 36 Vivuoli, Alessandra di Domenico 278 Vivuoli, Taddeo di Domenico 278 Volterra 43–4, 244 Volto Santo, Lucca 171 votapozzieri see sewer-emptiers waste: removal of 90 water: fetid 56 polluted 68 water buffalo: plague carrier 7 Wilson Bowers, Kristy 14 Worcester: plague 1665 130 Wrightson, Keith 13 Yersin, Alexandre: French bacteriologist 6–7 Yersinia Pestis 6, 8 Zachagnini, Matteo d’Andrea 257–8 Zanchini: prior of the order of S. Filippo Neri in Bologna 26 Zerbinelli, Dr Niccolò: health board physician 35, 43 Zoccolanti, Padri 205

364