Milan had suffered from the Black Death far less than other cities
of Italy: maybe she had acquired a transient immunity. For the three
succeeding centuries her history is one long catalogue of plagues, of
which two claim special notice.
In 1576 plague broke out in late July. Carlo Borromeo was archbishop
at the time. The son of Ghiberto Borromeo, Count of Arona, and Mary
de Medici, Carlo was of noble parentage. His influence gained for him
in early life the archbishopric of Milan. Amid all his wealth his
own personal life was ordered with temperance and humility. Stern,
or as some say cruel, to track out and repress all the abuses that
had invaded the Church in his diocese, he earned the jealous dislike
of his clergy and of the religious orders. The Brothers of Humility
made open attempt on his life, but by a miracle he escaped them.
Carlo was away at Lodi when news reached him that plague had broken
out in Milan. Hastening back to the city he found that the governor,
many officials, and all the rich had fled. All was in chaos. The
people turned in despair to their spiritual father, and entrusted
the care of the town to him. He set them to work at once to adapt
the great hospital of St. Gregory for the reception of the sick, and
later to build six lazarettos of wood outside the walls. All these he
equipped and furnished with linen from his own palace. For its better
administration he divided the city into four quarters, and put over
each an overseer with a staff of helpers. His example of courage and
personal devotion served to attract many of the secular clergy, monks,
and nuns to the service of the sick. Even lay men and women organized
a nursing guild among themselves. Carlo himself went everywhere,
giving directions for housing the sick and burying the dead. He visited
even those parishes beyond the walls, where the disease was raging,
providing for the sick, feeding the needy, and rousing the clergy to
the loyal discharge of their duty. Famine soon came to add another
horror to pestilence. Borromeo collected all the destitute into an
encampment and arranged the supply of food. First he had all his own
silver plate melted down to provide the necessary money. When this ran
out, he begged it from door to door, and finally incurred huge debts on
his own personal security. Beyond such material aids as these, Carlo
Borromeo brought to the stricken Milanese the spiritual comforts of
religion. From the pulpit of his cathedral he expounded to them the
Lamentations of Jeremiah, showing them how they applied to Milan. From
the altar steps he chanted with quivering voice the penitential psalms,
and kneeling before the altar offered himself to God as a sacrifice
for his people. Through the streets of the city he marched at the head
of penitential processions with bare feet and the rope of the criminal
around his neck. But through it all he passed unscathed, himself and
his eight-and-twenty attendant priests. Only 17,000 died in Milan,
and 8,000 in the districts round about: that so few died out of so
vast a multitude of sick was attributed to the ministrations of their
archbishop.
As the traveller comes down from the Alps, skirting the shores of
Lago Maggiore, where gardens are radiant in spring with camellias,
magnolias, mimosa, and myrtle, one feature only blurs the faultless
landscape. On a ridge, high over the lake at Arona, towers on its
pedestal the statue of Carlo Borromeo, a senseless, soulless colossus,
in copper and bronze, mocking the skies. Your guide-book tells you you
may go up inside its body. If you do so on a hot day you may learn
something of the sufferings of Phalaris, roasted in the belly of his
own brazen bull. But perhaps you will do as well to stay beneath and
pray that something rather of the spirit oi Borromeo may enter into
your soul.
[Illustration: PLATE XXI PROCESSION TO S. MARIA DELLA SALUTE, VENICE
From a seventeenth century engraving (Face Page 172)]
[Illustration: PLATE XXII (Face Page 173)
CARLO BORROMEO. BY ANNIBALE CARRACCI]
Religion has canonized S. Carlo Borromeo; Art has ensured him
immortality. In the churches and galleries of Milan he figures as
patron saint against plague, sometimes alone, sometimes conjointly
with St. Roch. In Venice he gives place to St. Roch, in Florence to
St. Sebastian. In parts of Central Italy S. Carlo reappears, attended
often by local saints, interceding with the Madonna. In the church of
S. Dominico in Perugia a picture shows him along with S. Catharine of
Siena, supplicating the Virgin. At S. Carlo in Corso at Rome, along
with S. Ambrose, he intercedes with Christ, and another picture in the
same church represents his apotheosis.
Memorials of Borromeo are innumerable. The sacristy of Milan Cathedral
contains a life-size effigy in mitre and robes, all in wrought silver:
also a gilded wooden cross, on which the various emblems of the Passion
are carved in relief, which he carried in plague processions: also a
silk embroidered portrait of him in his mitre. S. Carlo Catinari at
Rome has one of his mitres, and part of the rope that he wore as a
halter.
Beneath the floor of Milan Cathedral, below the dome and in front of
the choir, is the Cappella of Carlo Borromeo. His remains lie in a
silver coffin, supported on a silver altar, each elaborately engraved
and embossed. The hexagonal chamber has the whole surface of its
walls coated with plates of silver, on which are reliefs representing
a series of scenes from his life. In one he is giving alms to the
plague-stricken: in a second he is baptizing children in a plague
hospital: in a third he is walking with feet and head bare, and with
a halter round his neck, in a plague procession, preceding the sacred
relics that are carried beneath a canopy.
Portraits of S. Carlo in Milan, those in the Cathedral, in the
Borromeo Palace and elsewhere, all in profile, show the prominent nose
and receding forehead and a degree of ugliness that would almost seem
to forbid enrolment in the catalogue of the saints. A rugged full-faced
portrait by Annibale Carracci (1560-1609), now in the Hermitage at St.
Petersburg, seems less discordant with the halo.
Pietro da Cortona (1596-1669) painted a picture of Borromeo heading
a plague procession, which is one of the best of its kind. It is now
over the altar of S. Carlo Catinari at Rome, but hidden from view by a
brazen symbol of rays of glory.
The familiar theme of innumerable pictures both in Italy and France
is Carlo Borromeo carrying the Sacrament to the plague-stricken. Some
of the best known are those by Jakob van Oost (le Vieux) (1600-71) in
the Louvre: by Lemonnier in the Musée at Rouen: by Cigoli (1559-1613)
in the church of Santa Maria Nuova at Cortona: by Francesco Gossi in
the church of Poveri at Bologna: and by Baldassare Franceschini in the
church of the Barnabites at Pescia.
The Flemish painter Gaspard de Crayer (1585-1669) has varied somewhat
the hackneyed features of the subject. In his picture, Carlo Borromeo,
in red episcopal robes, followed by two acolytes carrying the taper and
cross, bends down and offers the Sacrament to a dying man, who kneels
before him with head bandaged and shirt thrown open over his bare
chest. Behind the man are two women, one of whom supports his body,
while the other in the shadow of a doorway carries a glass of water
in her hand. Kneeling beside the man, with hands joined in prayer, a
little boy awaits the Sacrament: in the foreground lies a dead child.
Before this little corpse a man is seated on the ground, supporting his
head, his legs bare and covered with ulcers. Behind him are two women,
one of whom covers her mouth with a handkerchief, while the other
stretches out her hands to an attendant deacon, who is distributing
alms. The background is a street of Milan with a vista of open country
beyond.
[Illustration: PLATE XXIII (Face Page 174)
BORROMEO LEADING A PLAGUE PROCESSION
By Pietro da Cortona]
[Illustration: PLATE XXIV (Face Page 175)
BORROMEO INTERCEDING FOR THE PLAGUE-STRICKEN
A marble bas-relief by P. Puget]
Puget (1622-94) has represented the same subject in a marble
bas-relief, now in the Santé at Marseilles. Borromeo kneels in earnest
supplication amid a group of dead and dying. His eyes are fixed on a
cross borne aloft by cherubs. He is attended by acolytes, who carry a
cross and chalice, and a child clings to his robes. In the foreground a
convict drags off a corpse for burial. In the background a woman bends
in wild despair over a bed, on which a dead man is stretched.
* * * * *
In 1630 occurred the Great Plague of Milan, well known to many by
the description of Manzoni (1785-1873) in his _Promessi Sposi_. For
his information he has drawn on many sources, and not least on the
contemporary record of Canon Ripamonti, written by request of the
Magistracy as a supplement to his History of Milan.
This volume on the plague bears an emblematic engraving on the
title-page. A skeleton holds in his hands weapons, armour, bones, and
books all strung together. The toes of his feet protrude from beneath
a carpet on which lies a plague-stricken man. In front of the skeleton
is an altar, on which stand taper and crucifix. Beside the altar sits
a woman, a drawn sword in her right hand, her left arm embracing a
stork: a naked child is by her side. On the frontal of the altar is the
title of the book: ‘Josephi Ripamontii, Canonici Scalensis Chronistae
Urbis Mediolani, De Peste Quae Fuit Anno cIɔIɔcxxx Libri V, Desumpti Ex
Annalibus Urbis Quos LX Decurionum Autoritate Scribebat.’
In his _Storia della Colonna Infame_, published in 1840, Manzoni
has told the trial and punishment of the two _Untori_, accused of
spreading the plague by means of ointments. The home of one of them
was destroyed by order of the State, and the ground on which it stood
declared accursed. On it a stone column was erected in 1630, bearing
the following inscription:[176]
‘Here, where this plot of ground extends, formerly
stood the shop of the barber, Giangiacomo Mora, who
had conspired with Guglielmo Piazza, Commissary of
the Public Health, and with others, while a frightful
plague exercised its ravages, by means of deadly
ointments spread on all sides, to hurl many citizens to
a cruel death. For this, the Senate, having declared
them both to be enemies of their country, decreed that,
placed on an elevated car, their flesh should be torn
with red-hot pincers, their right hands be cut off, and
their bones be broken: that they should be extended on
the wheel, and at the end of six hours be put to death
and burnt. Then, and that there might remain no trace
of these guilty men, their possessions should be sold
at public sale, and their ashes be thrown into the
river; and to perpetuate the memory of their deed the
Senate wills, that the house in which the crime was
projected shall be razed to the ground, shall never
be rebuilt, and that in its place a column shall be
erected, which shall be called Infamous. Keep afar
off, then, afar off, good citizens, lest this accursed
ground should pollute you with its infamy. August 1630.’
This cursing of the site recalls the curse of Joshua[177] on the site
of Jericho after its capture: ‘Cursed be the man before the Lord, that
riseth up and buildeth this city Jericho: he shall lay the foundation
thereof in his first-born, and in his youngest son shall he set up the
gates of it.’ And the Constitutions of Moses[178] pronounced a similar
curse on cities that turned aside from the true religion.
In 1777 Count Pietro Verri, Counsellor of State in the service of Maria
Theresa, published a treatise on Torture, in which special reference
was made to this case at Milan in 1630. His work, however, did not see
the light till 1804. Then in 1839 the _Processo originate degli Untori
nella peste del 1630_ was issued in Milan, giving a full official
account of the trial of these Anointers. Fletcher, in 1895, drew up a
summary of evidence from all the sources in his _Tragedy of the Great
Plague of Milan_.
Early in the morning of June 21, 1630, one Catarina Rosa, a woman
of the lower classes, saw from the balcony of her house a man going
down the street writing on a sheet of paper. He stopped to wipe his
fingers on the wall of a house, probably to get rid of ink-stains,
but the woman’s fear at once conjured up the superstitious image of
a deadly ointment smeared on the walls to spread the plague. A crowd
of excited women flocked to the Council Chamber to inform the Senate,
who at once ordered the man’s arrest. Henceforth no one dared touch
a wall. Ripamonti tells how three young French travellers fared, who
in admiring the marble of a temple unsuspectingly ventured to touch
it. Someone saw them do it, and raised the alarm. Forthwith they were
savagely set upon and hurled into gaol, and only released when it was
found that there was no vestige of evidence to suggest anything but
innocent curiosity.
Again, an old man of eighty was seen to dust a bench in the church of
St. Anthony with his cloak before sitting down. Immediately the women
cried out that he was anointing the benches, and the worshippers set
on him there and then in the church, and after beating him brutally
dragged him before the magistrates. Ripamonti believes that he died of
his injuries.
The search for the suspected Anointer resulted in the arrest of one
Guglielmo Piazza, a scrivener who carried an ink-horn at his belt. He
was also a commissioner of health, that is to say, a petty official
employed to report cases of plague. Throughout two applications
of torture he stoutly denied the offence, but in his cell, broken
with suffering and fearing a renewal of torture, he yielded to the
suggestions of those around him. He confessed his guilt, and declared
that he obtained the deadly ointment from the barber Giangiacomo Mora.
This man was straightway arrested and carried to the court, but there
vehemently asserted his innocence and vowed that he had never seen
Piazza. Under torture, however, he gave way, and vied with the unhappy
Mora in concocting falsehoods. Among others, they implicated Count
Padilla, son of the Commandant of the Castle, but in the end he was
acquitted, and it is from the notes of his trial that Verri obtained
the material for the narrative of Piazza and Mora.
Mora, like most barbers of his day, dabbled in medicine, so that
medicinal jars and vessels were found in his shop. These, he asserted,
contained preservatives against the plague, and probably with truth,
for during epidemics of plague they were in great demand. Ambroise Paré
gives an elaborate formula for a preservative water, with which to wash
the body frequently and rinse the mouth, and a few drops of it were to
be placed as well in the nostrils and ears. Similar nostrums were in
great demand during the Great Plague of London and that of Marseilles
in 1720.
Piazza had occasionally visited Mora’s shop as a customer of the
barber, and both stated that Mora had undertaken to prepare a pot of
his preservative for Piazza. On this innocent transaction was to be
built up a charge of wholesale murder. Mora was induced by torture to
admit that Piazza had supplied him with foam from the mouths of plague
victims to mix with his ointment.
In the intervals of torture Mora and Piazza more than once recanted and
declared that their confessions were false, but a renewal of torture
soon induced them to retract. The ignorant ferocity of the populace
called aloud for satisfaction. At the conclusion of their examination
the unhappy victims were carried off for the execution of a terrible
sentence, in spite of the pledge of impunity. With the merciful
prospect of death before them, they openly asserted that all their
admissions incriminating others were false and had been extracted from
them by their terror of further torture.
[Illustration: PLATE XXV TORTURE AND EXECUTION OF THE ANOINTERS (Face
Page 179)]
At the end of the _Processo originale degl’ Untori_ is a folded plate
representing in all its details the execution of Piazza and Mora.
It is a rough reproduction of an older undated engraving, which
Fletcher has reproduced from a copy in the collection of medical
prints and engravings in the library of the Surgeon-General’s Office
at Washington. The engraver of this was Orazio Colombo, and it was
published in Rome by the authority of the Nuncio of the Roman College.
On the top of the engraving is its title, which may be translated, ‘The
sentence pronounced on those, who had poisoned many persons in Milan
in the year 1630.’ Fletcher appends this further description: ‘This is
followed by the names of the Magnificos, who sat in judgement, and the
particulars of the punishment decreed. Each scene in the picture has
its letter, which is referred to in an explanatory legend below. The
entire disregard of the unities of time and place, which characterized
such productions, is well displayed in this curious engraving. On the
right is the shop of the barber Mora, and in front of it the “Column of
Infamy” is already erected. A large platform car, drawn by two oxen,
exhibits the victims, executioners, and priests. A brazier of live
charcoal contains the pincers with which the flesh was to be torn. The
barber’s right hand is on the block, and a chopper held over the wrist
is about to be struck down by a mallet held aloft by the executioner.
Further on is seen a large platform, on which the two victims are
having their limbs broken by an iron bar, preparatory to their exposure
on the wheel for six hours. The wheels are also displayed, one of them
already on a pole, with the men bound upon them. Still further on are
the fires consuming the bodies, and, last scene of all, on the extreme
left is a fussy little stream, foaming under bridges, which is supposed
to be a river, and into it a man is throwing the ashes of the two
malefactors.’
One dark night in 1788 Nature for very shame let loose a storm that
wrecked the Column: her minion Man then tardily demolished the monument
of his own infamy. The balcony of Catarina Rosa’s house was also taken
down, so that no structure stands to call to mind the hideous tragedy.
The corner-house of the Vedra de’ Cittadini, on the left hand as one
comes from the Corso di Porta Ticinese, occupies the site of poor
Mora’s house. A dwelling has rested on the accursed site since 1803.
It is surprising to find that not only does not Ripamonti deny the
guilt of the victims, but now and again he seems to hint at its
reality. It has to be borne in mind that in his position as official
historiographer of Milan it was hardly permissible for him to express
sentiments opposed to popular conviction and the decisions of the
courts of justice. As late as 1832, during an epidemic of cholera
in St. Petersburg, the most circumstantial statements of miscreants
putting poison in the food and drink of the people were in every mouth.
Manzoni’s _Colonna Infame_ is a simple unadorned narrative of the
trial and execution of the two Anointers, quite different in literary
form from his _Promessi Sposi_. It is written with a definite purpose
in view. Verri had introduced the story into his _Observations on
Torture_, merely as an illustration of the way in which the confession
of a crime, both physically and morally impossible, may be extracted
by torture. Manzoni retells the tale, in the interest of humanity at
large, to show that no matter how deep may have been the belief in
the efficacy of ointments, and despite the existence of a legislature
that countenanced and approved torture, it was competent to the judges
to convict them, only by recourse to artifices and expedients, of the
injustice of which they were perfectly well aware.
Manzoni’s _Promessi Sposi_ is a happy blend of antiquarian research
and imaginative description, and the incidents of the plague are
dexterously woven into the fabric of his story. Manzoni wrote at a
time when literature, freed from the trammels of convention, was being
slowly brought into harmony with the outlook of modern thought. Though
an aristocrat by birth, his upbringing had taught him to regard life
with the eyes of the peasant, and not with those of his overlord. In
his genius for romance and in his reverence for the past Manzoni has
much in common with Scott, but with this difference, that Scott sees
the social fabric from above, Manzoni from below. To Scott life was a
pageant in which knights of chivalry and courtly dames shared all the
leading parts: Manzoni’s stage is filled with men struggling to be rid
of the yoke of feudal oppression. The plague of Milan, falling alike on
rich and poor, afforded him the text from which to preach the essential
equality of all men. His whole narrative is so moulded as to throw
into striking contrast the vices of the rich with the virtues of the
poor. The plague scenes, too, give him scope for his remarkable insight
into the psychology of crowds, and for his skill in marshalling men
in masses, a gift in which he rivals Tintoretto. It is the genius of
Manzoni that he persuades without preaching.
The total mortality of this pestilence in Milan has been estimated
roughly at 150,000 persons. The Sanità, or Board of Health, profiting
by the lessons of the previous plague, seem to have acted with sense
and energy, though hampered by the ignorant obstinacy of the Senate,
the Council of Decurions, and the Magistrates, who were afraid of
driving away trade, if the presence of plague were admitted. One
strange remedial measure was the organization of an immense procession
through the streets in honour of San Carlo. During the procession all
the sequestered houses were fastened up with nails to prevent the
infected inmates from joining in it. Deaths were so numerous at the
height of the plague that the burial-pits were filled, and bodies lay
putrefying in the houses and streets. The Sanità sought the help of
two priests, who undertook to dispose of all the corpses in four days.
With the assistance of peasants, whom they summoned from the country in
the name of religion, three immense pits were dug. The Sanità employed
_monatti_ to bring out the dead and cart them to the pits, and the
priests accomplished their task within the appointed time. Besides
the _monatti_ they appointed _apparitores_, or summoners, who went in
advance of the _monatti_ ringing a bell to warn the people to bring out
their dead. _Commissari_ supervised both _apparitores_ and _monatti_.
Piazza was one of these overseers.
* * * * *
The plagues of the seventeenth century have left behind them very many
memorials both in literature and in art: among them the great plague of
Milan is only one of many.
Southern France was attacked again and again, and in 1643 plague raged
fiercely at Lyons. Over the portico of the church of Notre-Dame de
Fourvière, which stands high up on the precipitous hill that overhangs
the town, is a frieze commemorating this plague.
In Italy, city after city succumbed. Guido’s picture, ‘Il Pallione
del Voto,’ reminds us that Bologna suffered along with Milan. Venice
suffered too, and out of her ruin rose the church of S. Maria della
Salute.
Florence retains in the Bargello a hideous reminiscence of her
visitation in a wax representation of ‘Pestilenza’ by Zumbo Gaetano
Giulio (1656-1701). Corpses are lying about in various stages of
decomposition: among them lies a dead mother beside her infant child. A
man, whose nostrils are covered with a bandage, attempts to carry away
a corpse. In the background great bonfires are burning. The modelling
of the carcases is anatomically exact, but the production as a whole is
utterly repulsive.
In 1656 Naples assumes the leading rôle in this hideous Dance of
Death. Soldiers brought the plague on a transport from Sardinia. At
first the viceroy attempted to disguise the true character of the
disease. The first doctor who dared to pronounce the sickness plague
was promptly put in prison. Malcontents spread the report that the
Spaniards had designedly introduced the plague, and were employing
people to go through the city in disguise, sowing broadcast poisoned
dust. The infuriated populace turned on the Spanish soldiery, who
sought safety by transferring the accusation to the French. Nothing but
blood would satisfy the mob, and Angelucci di Tivoli, reputed author of
the plague powder, was broken on the wheel as a peace-offering to their
bloodt-hirsty fury. The Spaniards were accused also of poisoning the
holy water in the churches by means of the deadly powder. Superstition
was rampant in every form. One said that he had been miraculously cured
by drinking holy water before an image of the Virgin. Another saw a
marble statue of the Madonna and Child in the church of S. Severo
covered with sweat, and the faces of both livid and marked by the
plague. A doctor, Francesco Mosca, who printed a formula for curing
the plague, was honourably entitled _Protomedico_. A nun prophesied
that the building of a convent on the hill of St. Martin for her
sisterhood would bring to an end the pestilence. The building was taken
in hand in eager haste, rich and poor vying in bodily labour, but in
spite of all their efforts the mortality grew apace. By a strange
perversity of reasoning penitential processions paraded both day and
night the very streets in which priests, in terror of the contagion,
were administering the Sacrament on the end of a stick. The death-roll
of six months was 400,000 lives. Various writers have described this
plague, among them Muratori, Giannone, and de Renzi in his _Naples
in the year 1656_, published in 1667. The Papal Nuncio in Naples at
the time thought fit to write a pamphlet on it, and of modern writers
Shorthouse has made poor use of it in his _John Inglesant_.
Micco Spadara (1612-79), who actually witnessed this plague, has left
a picture of it, which is now in the National Museum at Naples. It
represents the Piazza Mercatello, a veritable pandemonium of dead
and dying. _Monatti_, drawn from the galley-slaves, are dragging the
corpses with hooks to carts in which to carry them to the burial-pits.
Here and there sedan chairs are seen. These were used to carry the
sick to the lazarettos. At first chair-bearers were selected from
the citizens who volunteered for the task, but when all these were
dead, galley-slaves and convicts took their place. In the plague of
Marseilles in 1720 sedans were put at the disposal of the doctors, ‘for
their more easy conveyance everywhere’, by order of the Town Council.
There was plague in Rome as well as Naples in 1656. Nicolas Poussin
(1594-1665) was resident in Rome, and has left the testimony of an
eye-witness in his picture, ‘The Plague of Rome,’ now in the Czernin
Collection at Vienna. It is a landscape with architectural features, of
which Denio[179] gives this brief notice: ‘Two men are seen dragging
a corpse to the mouth of a vault, whose opening is already barred by
dead bodies. A man, enveloped in a white mantle, directs the bearers
where to go: by his side is a jackal-like dog. On the high platform of
the receptacle we notice a group of six men. Broken columns take the
place of the half-seen trees in other works, while sarcophagi and tombs
indicate a cemetery. Beyond the arch stretches the Campagna.’ Poussin
has introduced into the picture the Castle of S. Angelo, mindful, no
doubt, of the legend of Gregory’s vision.
[Illustration: PLATE XXVI PLAGUE OF NAPLES, 1656. BY MICCO SPADARA
Photograph by Brogi, Florence (Face Page 184)]
The church of Santa Maria in Campitelli at Rome was rebuilt, in its
present form, in 1659, by Carlo Rainaldi, to accommodate a miraculous
image of the Virgin, to which the cessation of the plague of 1656
was ascribed. The church is sometimes called S. Maria in Portico,
because of the neighbouring Portico of Octavia. The miraculous Madonna
is placed now beneath the canopy over the high altar. It is still
believed to protect Rome from the contagion of pestilence. Here, too,
came constantly the Elder Pretender and his son Henry, who took his
Cardinal’s title from this church, to offer prayers to this self-same
image of the Madonna, for the liberation of England from the plague
of Protestant apostasy. To this end James instituted in perpetuity an
office of prayer, and ordained that every Saturday Mass should be said
at 11 of the morning before the picture, with the Sacrament exposed,
and that after recital of the prayers a blessing should be given
along with the Sacrament. This ceremony has ever since been regularly
performed.
In the sacristy is a framed engraving of the miraculous Madonna, dated
1747. It is surrounded by a series of small pictures, one of which
shows the appearance of the image to S. Galla in the pontificate of
John I (523-6), as she ministered to the wants of twelve poor men in
her house. Another shows Pope John dedicating the miraculous picture in
the oratory of S. Galla, which was transformed later into the church
of S. Maria in Campitelli. The remaining pictures represent scenes in
successive pontificates, in which this miraculous Madonna brought about
a cessation of plague. A brief explanation in Latin is attached to each.
The plague of 1656 occurred in the pontificate of Alexander VII. This
Pope did much to atone for the craven spirit of his papal predecessors
by his courage and devotion to his people throughout the epidemic. It
is surprising that no memorial has been erected to commemorate his
services.
Two rare contemporary prints represent scenes in the course of this
visitation. One is figured by Lanciani in his _Golden Days of the
Renaissance_:[180] the other is reproduced here.[181] Both were to be
seen in the Medical Exhibition in the Castel S. Angelo in the spring
of 1912. Lanciani’s print shows the following scenes:
1. Inspection of the city gates by Prince Chigi.
2. Barge-loads of corpses from the lazaretto on the island of S.
Bartolommeo.
3-5. Various methods of fighting the plague in infected districts.
6. The ‘Field of Death’ near St. Paul-outside-the-Walls.
The second print is of even greater interest than this: the first two
rows of plates give some idea of the character of the lazarettos, and
show how they were guarded by palisades and sentries: they also show
the carts for transport of the sick attended by armed soldiers. The
disinfection of the books and personal ornaments of the sick, a dead
dog being dragged away to be thrown into the river, and a sick-cart
marked with a cross, are other details of interest. The third row
indicates the removal of infected goods to places outside the city,
where they were either washed or cleansed; places where other things
were deposited; a country residence of the Popes converted into a
convalescent home; and the ruined palace of the Antonines, where
woollen goods were taken for disinfection. The fourth row represents
chiefly wash-houses and washing-places, to which clothes and bedding
were removed for cleansing. The fifth row, the execution of those who
transgressed the sanitary regulations, the shooting of sick criminals,
and the various measures taken to restrict the river traffic. A cable
is thrown across the river, and palisades are erected on the shores,
so as to break all contact between the city and boats bringing in
provisions. The huts are shown, in which soldiers and officials were
lodged, whose duty it was to compel obedience to the prescribed
regulations.
[Illustration: PLATE XXVII PLAGUE SCENES IN ROME, 1656
From an old engraving (Face Page 186)]
FOOTNOTES:
[176] Translated in _A Tragedy of the Great Plague of Milan_, R.
Fletcher, M.D. 1895.
[177] Joshua vi. 26.
[178] Deuteronomy xiii. 15-18.
[179] Nicolas Poussin, p. 134.
[180] p. 84.
[181] From an engraving in the author’s possession.