The Fifteenth Century XII: Society in an Age of Plague

Description

Described as "a golden age of pathogens", the long fifteenth century was notable for a series of international, national and regional epidemics that had a profound effect upon the fabric of society. The impact of pestilence upon the literary, religious, social and political life of men, women and children throughout Europe and beyond continues to excite lively debate among historians, as the ten papers presented in this volume confirm. They deal with the response of urban communities in England, France and Italy to matters of public health, governance and welfare, as well as addressing the reactions of the medical profession to successive outbreaks of disease, and of individuals to the omnipresence of Death, while two, very different, essays examine the important, if sometimes controversial, contribution now being made by microbiologists to our understanding of the Black Death. Contents List of Illustrations Contributors Preface Abbreviations Introduction • Carole Rawcliffe Looking for Yersinia Pestis: Scientists, Historians and the Black Death • J.L. Bolton Pestilence and Poetry: John Lydgate’s Danse Macabre • Karen Smyth Pilgrimage in ‘an Age of Plague’: Seeking Canterbury’s ‘hooly blisful martir’ in 1420 and 1470 • Sheila Sweetinburgh An Urban Environment: Norwich in the Fifteenth Century • Elizabeth Rutledge Mid-Level Officials in Fifteenth-Century Norwich • Samantha Sagui Leprosy and Public Health in Late Medieval Rouen • Elma Brenner Plague Ordinances and the Management of Infectious Diseases in Northern French Towns, c.1450–c.1560 • Neil Murphy The Renaissance Invention of Quarantine • Jane Stevens Crawshaw Coping with Epidemics in Renaissance Italy: Plague and the Great Pox • John Henderson The Historian and the Laboratory: The Black Death Disease • Samuel K. Cohn, Jr. Index