Plague and foreign threats to public health in early modern Venice

Abstract

By the sixteenth century, it was widely accepted that plague, whatever its true nature, was a contagious disease. The Venetian state ordered Venetian travellers and its representatives abroad to report any news about the mal contagioso to the government. Fragmentary survivals in the records of the Sanità and other sources allow an understanding of what it was that they thought was causing the disease and what Venetians thought could be done. It is a commonplace that traditional ideas about medicine and religion were increasingly discarded as more and more accurate records of the periodicity of disease became available. Venice's attempts allow us to measure the change.

Keywords:

• Venice
• Provveditori alla Sanità
• plague
• Holy Roman Empire
• Ottoman Empire

Acknowledgement

This research was supported by a grant from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation.

Notes

 1. Vanzan Marchini, Leggi, 1: 100; the entire report is 100–28.

 2. Cohn, Black Death Transformed; Scott and Duncan, Biology of Plagues; idem, Return of the Black Death.

 3. See the still controversial arguments in Raoult and Drancourt, ‘Molecular Insights into the History of Plague’. On the debate see also Carmichael, ‘Universal and Particular’.

 4. Slack, ‘The Disappearance of Plague’; idem, The Impact of Plague ; idem, ‘Responses to Plague’; idem, ‘The Black Death’; and Flinn, ‘Plague in Europe’, esp. 143–5; Biraben, Les Hommes et la peste.

 5. See Cohn, Black Death Transformed; Carmichael, Plague and the Poor. They both recently restated their positions at a colloquium in London: Carmichael, ‘Universal and Particular’ and Cohn, ‘Epidemiology of the Black Death’.

 6. These examples are all found in the letters bound together in Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Provedditori alla Sanità notatori, 593 (henceforth ASV, Sanità not.) They are all from the second decade of the eighteenth century, and report the situation in central Europe.

 7. Vanzan Marchini, Leggi, 1: 32–6. The plague of Marseilles also was the catalyst for Daniel Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year, which was intended as a reminder to English readers of the problems of epidemic disease.

 8. On the general responses to plague in Venice see Palmer, ‘Control of Plague in Venice’ and Venezia e la peste .

 9. Pullan, ‘Plague and Perceptions’, and Slack ‘The Black Death’ both emphasize the close connection between public health regulation and the extension of the powers of the early modern state.

10. Vanzan Marchini, Leggi, 1: 102.

11. Ibid., 1: 104.

12. Ibid., 1: 121.

13. ASV, Sanità not. 562, 73^r–74^v. Pagination in the notatori reflects the varying modes of composition or collection. Some have modern pagination, others are numbered folios with recto and verso noted, and finally some multi-paged individual documents have only a document number. Citations to these volumes respect their varied organization.

14. Preto, I servizi segreti is a general study of Venice's use of spies in the early modern period; agents investigating plague are discussed 447–9.

15. ASV, Sanità not. 409. This includes a register of bound dispatches from 1479–80 concerning reports of various parts of the Holy Roman Empire (Graz, Bratislava, Sopron (Ödenburg), and Ljubljana).

16. Vanzan Marchini, Leggi, 1: 105.

17. In practice, quarantine for royalty or important government officials was difficult to enforce. See eg., ASV, Sanità, not. 409, no. 10 (1679). Nicolo Corner reports that on imperial orders Duke Radziwill [apparently Mikal Kazimierz Radziwill] passed through Villach without entering quarantine and that he expected to do the same at Venzone in Friuli.

18. Sanuto, I diarii, 35: 257–58 (1523), 327 (1524); 44: 263 (1527).

19. In private communication Eric Dursteler observed that this has been true in the sixteenth century as well.

20. ASV, Sanità not. 663, no. 207 (5 September 1720), ‘oltre ne qualche caso occurso nelle galere che è quasi il solito.’

21. Venezia e la peste, 106.

22. Sanuto, I diarii, 27: 375, 33: 253–7, 36: 465–6.

23. In the archive of the Provveditori alla Sanità registers 592–621 concern eighteenth-century reports of plague in Germany, but organized according to the locality from which the letter arrived, for example, 593 (Vienna), 596 (Milan).

24. ASV, Sanità not. 155 for example, is a collection of printed broadsheets from 1630–1730. Cohn, Cultures of Plague argues that in the wake of the plagues of the 1570s, physicians exhibited a new appreciation for complex issues of public health.

25. ASV, Sanità not. 594, nos. 53–7 (14–8 September 1714).

26. ASV, Sanità not. 593 an anonymous undated report found among the letters gathered in this volume.

27. ASV, Sanità not. 592–621 are volumes of original letters and published manifests as well as registers of communications received by the Sanità.

28. ASV, Sanità not. 409, a collection of unbound original letters, nos. 38, 107, 127.

29. For example, ASV, Sanità, Disegni 2 (1713) ‘Disegno che delinea la vera situatione de’ posti strade e trati insolite che possono condure dalle Germania nella giurisdizione di Moggoio.’

30. ASV, Sanità not. 594, Napoli section, no. 47. The volume is a collection of dispatches from Constantinople, Naples and Rome. Each section is individually numbered.

31. ASV, Sanità not. 699, fasc. 2: 21^r–v; 2:38^v–39^r;2:43^r; 2:43^v–44^r; 2: 51^v–52 ^v; 63^v.

32. ASV, Sanità not. 699, fasc. 2: 138^r–v.

33. ASV, Sanità not. 699, fasc. 2: 80^v–81^r (17 January 1711); 2:86r (20 January 1711) 2:109r (14 February 1711).

34. ASV, Sanità not. 592, nos. 44–67 are letters to and from the Venetian ambassadors to the Imperial court, 1709–11. The ambassador typically revealed the pressure he was under to relax travel, especially for troops. The responses from the Provveditori alla Sanità on the other hand revealed the continuing worry among Venetian officials about the quality of information they were receiving, the possibilities of fraud in these reports and the importance of maintaining restrictions until they were sure that the danger had passed.

35. I have chosen to use the generally accepted modern names for towns and cities. I put the name the Venetian agents used in parentheses. The only exception is Budapest since the bridge uniting the two sides of the Danube had yet to be built.

36. ASV, Sanità not. 599, fasc. 2: 11^r–v; 13^v–14^v; 24^r–25^v; 28^r–38^v; 59^r–61^v; 75^r–v; 83^v–85^v; 88^r–92^v; 113^v.

37. ASV, Sanità not. 593, 453^r–470^r is a series of reports by Venturi written in October 1711 reporting on his travels during the previous two months.

38. ASV, Sanità not. 699, 2: 59^v–61^v; for Fojnica 37^r–38^r.

39. ASV, Sanità not. 593, no. 56.

40. ASV, Sanità not. 593, no. 95.

41. ASV, Sanità not. 699, fasc. 2: 30^r–v, 36^v–38^r, 59^v–61^v.

42. ASV, Sanità not. 593, 95.

43. ASV, Sanità not. 699, fasc. 2: 24^r–25^v.

44. ASV, Sanità not. 699, fasc. 2: 30^r–v, ‘e sono di qualli che hebbero altre volte il contaggio, e particolarmente uno de nostri Padri di Foinizza, e scrive [sic] che questo contaggio è del più pessimo che sia mai stato….’

45. ASV, Sanità not. 699, fasc. 2: 29^v–30^r.

46. ASV, Sanità not. 699, fasc. 2: 33^r, ‘come è naturale per tutto il mondo ma per il contagio giuro per Dio grande che non s' è sentito.’

47. ASV, Sanità not. 699, fasc. 2: 35^r–v; a later deposition (74^v) described the disease as caused by scaranzia.

48. ASV, Sanità not. 699, fasc. 2:84^r–85^v. Father Lodovico Juarich noted ‘con certe machie à chi rossa à chi negre’ and later he added ‘sono stato più volte in Turchia et à Sebenico in tempo del contagio, e mi sono noto benissimo i suoi flagelli.’

49. ASV, Sanità not. 410, 32, 36; similarly, ibid., 409, 38; ibid., 594, 165; ibid., 699, fasc. 2: 59^r–v.

50. ASV, Sanità not. 699, fasc. 2: 44^r.

51. ASV, Sanità not. 593, 453^r, ‘più pel cattivo provvedere nella vigilanza e cautela che non per la forza del morbo.’

52. This is a theme in a number of his books, but see especially Cipolla, Faith, Reason and the Plague, and Calvi, Histories of a Plague Year.

53. ASV, Sanità not. 593, 454^r, ‘coloro per la magior parte luterani e calvini che fidarsi nella predstinazione e deridono pasciutarsi da se, volevano assistere con gl amalati e con li defonti persin alla seppoltura nel modo stesso ch’ usar si suole per ordinario nelle altre infermità non epidemiche.’ Ibid., 180^r, again he reports that the death toll was increased ‘per mancanza di precauzione e di buona cura giacchè la gente operava come prima nel praticare assistere alla malattia e sepoltura, a mangare a bere parte per la natural rozessa degli abitanti, parte perche essendo stato li più Calvini fidandosi alla loro dottrina di predestinazione, col supposto che Iddio può sanarli o farli morire per quante cautele che faccinsi.’

54. ASV, Sanità not. 593, no 49, ‘quando uno muore tutta la gente che resta in quella casa, sia sana o ammalata, vien mandata al lazzaretto dove vi si ammalano i sani….’

55. Albèri, Relazioni degli Ambasciatori Veneti, 3: 1 452–3.

56. There is a debate about how universally this injunction was followed. See the comments of Dols, Black Death and ‘Comparative Communal Reactions to the Black Death’; Conrad, ‘Tu'Un and Waba’, and ‘Epidemic Diseases’; Panzac, La Peste; and Mossensohn, Ottoman Medicine. Conrad and Mossensohn both emphasize the wide range of opinion among Muslims about the nature of miasma, contagion and plague. Thus, they are less sure that the general observation of Muslim passivity in the face of epidemic disease is a useful one.

57. Panzac, La Peste, 285.

58. ASV, Sanità not. 699, fasc. 2: 29^v.

59. ASV, Sanità not. 664, no. 64 (23 June 1724).

60. ASV, Sanità not. 699, fasc. 2: 37^r–38^r.

61. ASV, Sanità not. 699, fasc. 2: 37^r–38^v.

62. ASV, Sanità not. 699, fasc. 2: 30R.

63. ASV, Sanità not. 699, fasc. 2: 35V.