Throughout the sixteenth century plague epidemics follow each other in
almost unbroken succession throughout Central Europe. In Rome alone,
during this century, there were no less than twelve severe outbreaks.
The archives of the Capitol and the registers of contemporary
notaries[169] abound in scattered information concerning these
visitations. It had become an established custom that at the first
appearance of an epidemic the Pope and his court should escape from
Rome to a place of safety, leaving the municipality to provide for
the situation as best it could. In May 1449, Nicholas V had fled into
Umbria: in 1462, Pius II had fled successively to Viterbo, Bolsena, and
Corsignano. In 1476, Sixtus IV had flitted in like manner from place to
place. So in April 1522, at the height of the epidemic, it seemed only
in accordance with precedent, when Adrian VI from his secure seclusion
in Spain sent word to Rome of the necessity of imposing a fresh tax
for supporting a crusade against the Turks. The Cardinals seem to have
desired to emulate the example of Adrian, for in June the Town Council
asked the Sacred College not to forsake their posts. Deserted by their
spiritual leaders, the populace lent a ready ear to the imposture of
the Greek necromancer Demetrius of Sparta. He persuaded the terrified
people that the plague was the work of demons, and that, by appeasing
them, it might be brought to an end. So he paraded the streets of the
city, leading by a silken cord a bull that he professed to have tamed
by spells, and sacrificed it in the Colosseum with full pagan ritual to
the hostile demons. As soon as the clergy realized the enormity of the
sacrilege they had condoned they instituted a penitential procession,
which marched through the city, scourging themselves to bleeding and
crying _Misericordia_. If we may credit Paolo Giovio, chief physician
to Clement VII (A.D. 1523-34), it was neither prayer nor sacrifice that
put an end to the plague, but a wonderful oil invented by Gregorio
Caravita, a physician from Bologna. The Oratorio del Crocifisso, near
the church of S. Marcello, is said to have been erected in expiation of
this event. This plague lingered on at least till the following year,
A.D. 1523, for Benvenuto Cellini[170] records his experience of it in
some detail. He says that it dragged on for months, and that several
thousands died daily in Rome. In not unnatural apprehension on his
own account, he determined to adopt such amusements as would promote
cheerfulness of mind, which many believed to be the best remedy against
infection. So he betook himself to shooting pigeons among the ancient
monuments of Rome, and found the pursuit so beneficial to his health
that he succeeded in staving off for a long time the plague, to which
many of his comrades succumbed. But somewhat later, after spending
the night with a young serving girl, he himself fell a victim and has
recorded his initial sensations as follows:
‘I rose upon the hour of breaking fast, and felt
tired, for I had travelled many miles that night, and
was wanting to take food, when a crushing headache
seized me: several boils appeared upon my left arm,
together with a carbuncle which showed itself just
beyond the palm of the left hand, where it joins the
wrist. Everybody in the house was in a panic: my
friend, the cow [Faustina] and the calf [the serving
girl] all fled. Left alone there with my poor little
prentice, who refused to abandon me, I felt stifled at
the heart, and made up my mind for certain I was a dead
man.’
By the constant ministrations of a male friend and the help of a
physician, whom the apprentice summoned, Benvenuto threw off the
sickness, but while the bubo was still open and plugged with lint
under a covering of plaster, went out riding on a little wild pony.
Benvenuto’s account is valuable as the record of the personal
sensations and sufferings of a plague-stricken man, and tells us also
something of the treatment to which he was subjected at the hands of
sixteenth-century medicine.
Benvenuto says that the joyous reunion of the survivors, after
the plague was over, led to the formation by one Michael Agnolo,
a sculptor, of a club of all the leading painters, sculptors, and
goldsmiths in Rome. The meetings of the club, to judge from his
descriptions, seem to have been devoted to merrymaking rather than to
artistic discourse. On his return to Florence he found that his father
and most of his household were dead, and his surviving sister Liparata,
believing him to have died at Rome, swooned at sight of him. But under
the mellowing influence of supper, at which weddings were the main
topic of conversation, sorrow speedily gave place to gaiety.
Marselius Galeati of Padua at the beginning of the fifteenth century
had drawn up the first known code of ‘Regulations against the Plague’,
based on the belief that the disease was imported to Italy by foreign
commerce.
From the records of the city of Rome it is possible to gather some
idea of the measures adopted by the Popes and Town Council for the
suppression of epidemics of plague. There isolation of infected
individuals or districts was attempted. All wearing apparel and other
materials and articles capable of spreading the infection, were
liable to be destroyed. The city gates were closed, and every incomer
was subjected to strict inspection, and was frequently rejected.
Those gates that were left open could only be used from daybreak to
nightfall, when they were locked against all comers. Navigation of the
Tiber was sometimes suppressed; Lanciani says that an order was issued
on July 30, 1575, that all the boats on the Tiber should be scuttled
in three days, because it was found that the boatmen were ferrying
passengers across stream for bribes. Two transgressors were actually
put to the rack for their offence, which was placarded over them for
all to read. On one occasion a wholesale destruction of dried fish was
taken in hand. Contract medical practice seems to have existed even
in these days. Lanciani has noted among the city records agreements
between physicians or quacks and Roman families for the provision of
medical advice and drugs for a stipulated payment of money. Wills were
often dictated from windows, while lawyer and witnesses stood in the
street beneath.
Confraternities for ministering to the sick and removing them to the
hospitals existed in Rome, though perhaps numerically less than in
other great cities of Italy. The confraternity of the _Pietà_ had
been instituted during a plague epidemic, in the time of Eugene IV
(1431-47), and still has a nominal existence in Rome.
Plague broke out fiercely again in Rome in 1527, at the time of the
sack of the city. Florence was also involved in this same epidemic. It
is this visitation that gave birth to Machiavelli’s _Descrizione della
Peste di Firenze dell’ anno 1527_, cast in the form of a letter to a
friend. In it we find no vivid picture of the awful catastrophe that
was overwhelming Florence, but in place of that a cold-blooded cynical
record of the trivial doings of a loafer sauntering idly through the
streets of the plague-stricken city. It is a record that challenges
comparison rather with the casual entries of _Pepys’s Diary_, than with
the formal descriptions of Bocaccio and Manzoni, his own compatriots.
Opening with a vapid soulless lamentation, in the vein of Petrarch,
over the general demoralization and devastation produced by the plague,
he passes on to describe his own daily mode of living, from which his
correspondent is invited to infer that of the general body of citizens.
The _liaisons_ of licentious monks, the vile ribaldry of infamous
buriers, the vain recourse to preservatives against the plague, these
are the things that are uppermost in his mind, as he depicts his own
amorous intrigues against the dark background of the plague, with the
fidelity of a Pepys and the light-hearted insouciance of a Guy de
Maupassant.
Villari, Macaulay, and others have declined to accept the _Descrizione_
as an authentic product of Machiavelli’s pen. They cannot reconcile its
garrulous obscenity with the stern cold-blooded restraint of the author
of the _Principe_—the frivolity of the one with the sinewy manhood
of the other. They seem to forget that, so far back as 1502, amid
the stirring life of the camp of Caesar Borgia, he had found leisure
to write similar puerilities to his friends in Florence. Political
rectitude, or if we may not ascribe this to Machiavelli, political
sagacity is no guarantee of moral righteousness, and sensuality is
not the exclusive property of the young. Moral levity, as the history
of pestilence shows, is a usual product of the constant imminence of
danger and death; and with Machiavelli political degradation had left
moral levity in sole possession of the field.
A copy of the discredited production still actually exists in the
handwriting of Machiavelli, with revisions inserted in the manuscript
in that of his friend Lorenzo di Filippo Strozzi. Villari advances the
strange suggestion, that Machiavelli had merely copied out what Strozzi
had composed. Is it not equally reasonable to suppose that Machiavelli
had used an actual letter of Strozzi, as the basis of a casual
composition? This would explain the fact that it is cast in epistolary
form, as well as the apparent discrepancy of style. Francesco Berni
(_c._ 1490-1536), a contemporary of Machiavelli, has apostrophized
plague in one of his satirical poems or _capitoli_. A cleric, to whom
indolent pleasure was the be-all and end-all of existence, he must
surely stand alone among writers as one who would hug the pestilence to
him as a friend.
‘The pestilence time is good—a fig for other
times.... Firstly, it carries off the rabble, it
destroys them, makes holes among them and thins them
out—like a housewife among the geese at Allhallowtide!
In the churches there are none to press upon you.
Besides, none keep any record of buying or borrowing.
Yea, buy and make debts, for there will be no creditors
to trouble you. And if a creditor should come, tell him
that your head aches, that your arm pricks, he straight
will go away, and will not turn him round! If you go
out, no one will cross your path: rather is place
yielded to you, and honour done you, especially if you
are clothed in rags. You are lord of yourself and lord
of others. You can watch the folk’s strange antics and
laugh at others’ fear. Life has then new laws: every
pleasure is allowed.... Above all, there need be no
work done. It is a choice life, serene and large: time
passes very gaily from dinner time to supper.’[171]
In A.D. 1530 there was plague in Geneva,[172] which is memorable as
the occasion of an accusation against certain persons of disseminating
the disease by means of concocted poisons. In the spring of the year
a dissolute young man, one Michael Caddod, was seen to throw down a
handkerchief near a shop. Some one picked it up, and its foul smell
aroused suspicion. Caddod was forthwith put to torture, and in his
agony implicated Jean Placet, an unqualified surgeon in charge of
the pest-house, together with his wife, son, and servant, and one
Dom Jehan Dufour, priest and confessor to the pest-house. Under the
influence of torture, they were driven to admit, that they had sworn
solemnly on a Book of Hours to join in spreading the plague, so as to
enable them to pillage the sick. Placet and his wife, they said, had
prepared the poison from poultices that had been used on discharging
buboes, by drying them to powder and then adding veratrum. Caddod and
his wife undertook to spread it about the streets, while Placet and
his wife administered it to patients in the pest-house with promptly
fatal results. Suspicion fell on Placet, and a barber-surgeon, Bastian
Granger, with his assistant, was instructed to keep an eye on his
doings. Madame Placet was equal to the occasion and gave the pair
short shrift with a dose of poison in their food. In the end Placet
and Caddod were convicted. Their hands were first cut off in front of
the houses of their supposed victims. Next their flesh was cruelly
lacerated with red-hot pincers, and finally the headsman’s axe put a
merciful end to their sufferings. Young Placet’s age obtained for him
the lenient treatment of hanging, while Dufour was first unfrocked and
then hanged. A rapid decline of the plague ensued on so acceptable a
sacrifice.
A few years later, in January 1545, a recurrence of plague in Geneva
raised anew the phantom of another plague plot. This time the bailiff
ordered the arrest of the two men, Bernard Dallinge and Jehan Lentille.
They were alleged to have cut off the foot of a corpse that had fallen
from the gallows, and used it as an ingredient of a plague ointment
that they smeared on the handles of doors. By March, confessions
extracted from them by torture had served to implicate no less than
forty persons. All were accused of having sworn to spread the disease
broadcast, and of having actually smeared door-handles and locks. When
searched, boxes of ointment were found in their possession. The craze
for carrying antipestilential remedies made this an easy matter, but
for all that their guilt was manifest. Calvin, in a letter of March 27,
1545, addressed to Myconius, seems to credit their guilt, but the State
records of Geneva show that he mercifully advocated strangling instead
of mutilation and the stake. As in the case of Servetus, he was less
concerned about their deaths than the manner of their dying. Nineteen
men and seven women—Catholics perhaps—profited by his clemency, and
were executed without preliminary torture. The _Nuremberg Chronicle_
says that in 1494 all the beggars were driven out of Nuremberg, because
they were believed to spread the plague.
The leaders of medicine were no more exempt than the people from the
promptings of fanatical fear. Ambroise Paré[173] echoes the crude
suspicions that Guy de Chauliac had expressed at the time of the Black
Death. This is his advice to the magistrates in time of pestilence:
‘What shall I add? They must keep an eye on certain thieves, murderers,
poisoners, worse than inhuman, who grease and smear the walls and
doors of rich houses with matter from buboes and carbuncles and other
excretions of the plague-stricken, so as to infect the houses and
thus be enabled to break into them, pillage and strip them, and even
strangle the poor sick in their beds: which was done at Lyons in the
year 1565. God! what punishment such fellows deserve: but this I leave
to the discretion of the magistrates, who have charge of such duties.’
Paré recommended, as a prophylactic, the wearing of an amulet of
arsenic. It was to be worn over the heart in order that ‘the heart
might become accustomed to poison, and so be the less injured when
other poisons sought it’.
The pandemic of A.D. 1565 was the occasion of a great impetus to the
production of the so-called Mystery and Miracle plays, particularly in
the south-east parts of France. Mystery plays aimed for the most part
at setting forth the central mysteries of the New Testament, such as
the Incarnation, the Nativity, the Passion, and the Redemption. Miracle
plays dealt with the legends of the great saints of the Church, but
in practice the distinction of Miracle and Mystery came to be ignored
in the play. The purpose of each, in time of plague, was to appease
an angered God by glorifying His majesty, either directly or through
the medium of His saints. The origin and prime purpose of these plays
had almost certainly been educational, for the instruction of a
populace unable to read for themselves: and they originated out of the
worship of the Christian Church. Christianity, when adopted as the
State religion, had dealt the death-blow to the vicious spectacles of
the amphitheatre that were all that survived of the ancient classical
drama. Christianity was also destined to become the parent of the
modern drama, by the introduction into public worship, not later than
the fifth century A.D., of living pictures to illustrate and expound
its teaching. Mystery and Miracle plays alike were evolved from this
simple liturgical origin. The transformation had been effected at any
rate as early as the twelfth century, and by A.D. 1380 a complete
Miracle play was produced in the presence of Charles IV.
Successive epidemics of plague had led to the adoption of these plays
as instruments of intercession, and the pandemic of 1565 gave a great
impetus to this development. When the district of Maurienne was in
the grip of the plague in 1564, the people vowed to present in the
following year the Miracle play of their patron saint St. Martin,
if only their town were spared. No less than seventy-four actors,
all drawn from the working class, devoted themselves to learning and
rehearsing the various parts of the play. Money as well as time was
freely afforded, for the people themselves undertook the expenses of
staging, scenery, and music. The marginal notes of the play, which has
been recently published, show that the stage was erected beside the
wall of a church. Later, as the control of the performances passed out
of the hands of the Church into those of lay associations, the plays
came to be performed away from the churches, a separation that paved
the way for the secularization of the drama by the introduction of a
non-religious atmosphere. This play is in dialect and arranged for
presentation on two days. At the first performance the central theme
was the life of St. Martin as a soldier, at the second his life as a
bishop, and with it were shown certain of his miraculous cures.
This play is but one of many that have recently been published: other
towns followed the example of St. Martin de la Porte. Villard-le-Lans
vowed and played the ‘Mystery of the Passion’ and the ‘Miracle of Saint
Sebastian’: Modane the ‘Mystery of the Last Judgement’: Termignan and
Sollières the ‘Miracle of Saint Laurence’, and so on. Local authors,
commonly the priest or the notary, compiled the various plays.
At Villard-le-Lans is a chapel of St. Sebastian. It has no windows, and
a doorway hewn in the rock. It was prepared as a theatre for presenting
a Mystery play in A.D. 1446. But following the plague of 1565 it was
converted, in fulfilment of a rich man’s vow, into a chapel adorned
with frescoes illustrating the story of St. Sebastian. The frescoes
survive to this day, and have been fully described by M. l’Archiviste
de Jussin.
If we may credit local legend, the Oberammergau Passion Play had
a similar origin in A.D. 1633. One Gaspard Schueler, a native of
Oberammergau, but living at Eschenlohe, where plague was rife,
determined to pay a hasty and surreptitious visit to his wife and
children. He did so, and carried the plague to Oberammergau, where he
died of it himself. Between the day of his death and the festival of
SS. Simon and Jude, thirty-three days later, eighty-four persons died
of plague at Oberammergau. A meeting of the inhabitants was summoned,
and six women and twelve men took a solemn vow to produce every ten
years a play representing the sufferings of Christ. They were rewarded
by the immediate cessation of the plague.
FOOTNOTES:
[169] Lanciani, _Golden Days of the Renaissance_.
[170] Bk. I, § 27 seq.
[171] Translated by Miss Egerton Castle, _Italian Literature_.
[172] Léon Gautier, _La Médecine à Genève jusqu’à la fin du
dix-huitième siècle_.
[173] _Livre de la Peste._