Plague in the Early Modern World A Documentary History

Plague in the Early Modern World presents a broad range of primary source materials from Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, China, India, and North America that explore the nature and impact of plague and disease in the early modern world. During the early modern period frequent and recurring outbreaks of plague and other epidemics around the world helped to define local identities and they simultaneously forged and subverted social structures, recalibrated demographic patterns, dictated political agendas, and drew upon and tested religious and scientific worldviews. By gathering texts from diverse and often obscure publications and from areas of the globe not commonly studied, Plague in the Early Modern World provides new information and a unique platform for exploring early modern world history from local and global perspectives and examining how early modern people understood and responded to plague at times of distress and normalcy. Including source materials such as memoirs and autobiographies, letters, histories, and literature, as well as demographic statistics, legislation, medical treatises and popular remedies, religious writings, material culture, and the visual arts, the volume will be of great use to students and general readers interested in early modern history and the history of disease.

Introduction Modern medicine and conditions Vulnerability and resilience: conceptual categories and interpretive framework 1: The bubonic plague: historical overview and scope Terminology Defining early modern plague Recurrence of plague Global dimensions Plague and other disease epidemics Sources 1.1 Plague in the Ottoman capital:a diplomatic perspective Author: Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq (1522–92) Title: The Turkish Letters of Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, Imperial Ambassador at Constantinople 1554–1562 1.2 A visitor’s perspective on plague Author: Baron Wenceslas Wratislaw of Mitrowitz Title: Adventures of Baron Wenceslas Wratislaw of Mitrowitz… 1.3 Plague in early modern Hindustan Author: Jahangir, Emperor of Hindustan (1569–1627) Title: The Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri; or, Memoirs of Jahangir 1.4 Plague statistics in Frankfurt am Main (1622–40) 1.5 Episodes from the plague in Rome of 1656. Etching 1.6 Plague death tolls in the early seventeenth century Author: Richard Bradley, F. R. S. (1688–1732) Title: The Plague at Marseilles Considered… 1.7 Plague and other diseases in eighteenth-century Aleppo Author: Alexander Russell (c 1715–68) Title: Natural History of Aleppo 1.8 Plague in Russia Author: Charles Mertens (1737–88) Title: An Account of the Plague which Raged at Moscow in 1771 1.9 A major plague episode in China in 1770/71 1.10 Observing plague in early modern Africa Author: Johannes Leo Africanus (c 1494–c 1554) Title: The History and Description of Africa of Leo Africanus 1.11 Epidemic disease in early modern North America Author: Noah Webster (1758–1843) Title: A Brief History of Epidemic and Pestilential Diseases 2: Religious understanding of and response to plague Textual foundations Late medieval religious orientations Saints, relics, and processions Flight from plague Sources 2.1 Prayer as a weapon against the plague Author: Ismail ibn Kathir (b c 1300–73) Title: The Beginning and End: On History (c 1350–51) 2.2 Competition in the religious economy Author: Michele da Piazza Title: Chronicle (1347–61) 2.3 Islamic religious responses to plague: fasting and sacrifice Author: Ibn Taghri Birdi Title: History of Egypt 1382–1469 CE 2.4 Seeking saintly intercession: the case of Saint Roche 2.4A: Devotion to Saint Roche Author: Jehan Phelipot Title: The Life, Legend, Miracles of Saint Roch (1494) 2.4B: Saintly intercession 2.4C: Saint Roch in church 2.5 God punishes Egypt with the sixth plague, the plague of boils 2.6 Fleeing from the plague Author: Martin Luther (1483–1546) Title: "Whether One May Flee from a Deadly Plague" (1527) 2.7 Clergy and the plague: intercession and activity Author: Nicolau Gracida Title: "Letter to Manuel Lopez" (1538) 2.8 Supplications to God to end the plague Author: Selaniki Mustafa Efendi (d 1600) Title: Chronicle of Salonika [Tarih-i-Selaniki] 2.9 Prayer to avert the plague Title: "Prayer for a Time in Which There Is No Plague Arriving" 2.10 Procession as a response to plague Artist: Jean Solvain (1600–64) Title: "The Vow of the Plague, Procession, April 22, 1630" 2.11 Religious approaches to illness Author: Heinrich Grasmüller (b c 1630) Title: Sickness-Book, or Prayers and Adages of Consolation for the Sick and Dying (Hamburg, 1681) 2.12 Monument to the plague Erasmus Siegmund Alkofer, Regensburg Plague- and Penance-Monument on Account of the Plague and Pestilence Raging Widely in the Year of Christ 1713 (1714) 2.13 A memorial of plague in the eighteenth century: religious understandings Author: Erasmus Siegmund Alkofer (1673–1727) Title: Regensburg Pestilence- and Penance Memorial on the Occasion of the Plague and Pestilence Raging Widely in the Year of Christ 1713 2.14 Religious responses to other disease epidemics Author: Jonathan Belcher Title: "A Proclamation for a Public Fast" 2.15 Early modern saints Artist: Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre (1714–89) Title: "St. Charles Borromeo Distributing Communion to the Victims of the Plague in Milan" (c 1760) 3: Medical understanding of and responses to plague Early modern conceptions of plague The spread of plague: contagion and miasma Early modern experiences Scientific traditions and underpinnings Plague: between science and religion Sources 3.1 Applying wound dressings, scarification with cupping glasses Title: Treatise on the Plague (Tractatabus de Pestilentia) (fifteenth century) 3.2 Tradition and innovation in early modern medicine Author: Girolamo Fracastoro (c. 1478–1553) Title: On Contagion and Contagious Diseases and Their Cures (1546) 3.3 Plague precautions Author: Francois Valleriole (1504–80) Title: Tractate on the Plague (1566) 3.4 Confronting the ancients Author: Wu Youxing (c 1580–1660) Title: Treatise on Acute Epidemic Warmth [Wenyilun] (1642) 3.5 The plague (1649): Hospital del Pozo Santo, Spain Anonymous, Seville, Spain (seventeenth century) 3.6 Classifications of plague Author: M. Chicoyneau, Verney, and Soullier Title: "A Succinct Account of the Plague at Marseilles: Its Symptoms, and the Methods and Medicines Used for Curing It" (1721) 3.7 Dietary considerations in preventing plague Title: Medicina Flagellata (1721) 3.8 Protective clothing Author: Jean-Jacques Manget (1652–1742) Title: Treatise on the Plague(Geneva, 1721) 3.9 Cattle plague Author: Richard Bradley, F. R. S. (1688–1732) Title: The Plague at Marseilles Considered (1721) 3.10 Comparing diseases and treatment Author: Richard Mead (1673–1754) Title: A Discourse on the Plague (1744) 4: Political and policy responses to plague Governmental actions: quarantines, lazarettos, hospitals The question of sanitation in civic ordinances Religious dimensions of political responses to plague Sources 4.1 Civic examinations Title: "The Plague Orders of 1541," Venice 4.2 Running a plague house Author: Paul Hector Mair (1517–79) Title: Chronicle from 1547–1565 4.3 The ideal plague hospital Author: Francois Valleriole (1504–80) Title: Trafficking ofthe Plague (1566) 4.4 Tales of the lazaretto Author: Rocco Benedetti (active 1556–82) Title: "Account of the Plague of 1575–1577" (1630, Bologna; originally published in 1577 in Urbino) 4.5 A Window onto early modern Jewish life Title: "Prague Plague Ordinance" (1607) 4.6 Practical policies and approaches to the plague Author: Abraham Catalano (d. 1642) Title: "A World Turned Upside-Down" 4.7 London plague ordinances (1665) Author: Daniel Defoe (1660–1731) Title: Journal of the Plague Year (1722) 4.8 The lazaretto and medical services to the community Author: Jacob ben Isaac Zahalon (1630–93) Title: "The Treasure of Life" (1683) 4.9 An eighteenth-century epidemic in Western Europe Artist: Etching by J. Rigaud after M. Serre Title: "The Port of Marseille during the Plague of 1720" (1720) 5: Social responses to plague: memory, society, and culture Impact on daily life Marginalization: plague as polemical tool and boundary marker Marginal and liminal segments of society: the poor, foreigners, and Jews Cultural responses to plague Sources 5.1 Judicial protection of Jews—theory Author: Pope Clement VI (1291–1352, r. 1342–52) Title: "Sicut Judeis" (Mandate to Protect the Jews) (October 1, 1348) 5.2 Communal responses and social implications of the plague Author: Ahmad ibn ‘Ali al-Maqrizi (1364–1442) Title: A History of the Ayyubids and Mamluks (fifteenth century) 5.3 Finance magistrate’s book cover Anonymous, Siena, Italy, 1437 "Allegory of the Plague" 5.4 Exegesis and plague Author: Martin Luther (1483–1546) Title: "First Lectures on the Psalms" (1513–15) 5.5 Jewish suffering in the exile Author: Samuel Usque (c. 1500–after 1555) Title: Consolation for the Tribulations of Israel (Ferrara, 1553) 5.6 Heresy, more pernicious than plague Author: Jan David (c. 1545–1613) Title: Christian Soothsayer … (1603) 5.7 Engraving of the torture and execution of alleged plague carriers Title: Description of the Implementation of Justice Made in Milan against Some of Them Who Have Made Up and Spread the Anointed Pestiferous … (Milan, 1630) 5.8 Imagined power? Author: Joseph Juspa Hahn of N

Dean Phillip Bell is President/CEO and Professor of Jewish History at the Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership in Chicago. His publications include Sacred Communities: Jewish and Christian Identities in Fifteenth-Century Germany, Jews in the Early Modern World, and Jewish Identity in Early Modern Germany: Memory, Power and Identity. He is also editor of The Routledge Companion to Jewish History and Historiography.