This is a fascinating, readable and beautifully illustrated account of Plague in early seventeenth-century Florence. It provides a panoramic survey of the city: how it was administered, the medical response and how the population fared as the epidemic swept through it. Drawing on a wide range of quantitative and qualitative source materials, one of its great strengths is the way it moves deftly between the two. Clearly analysed tables, graphs and impressive street mapping chart the ‘big’ data from sources like death registers, whilst discussions of sources like eye-witness accounts, correspondence or court room testimonies are woven around these. This makes it a book rich in the broader context as well as in such details as the dilemmas faced by those managing the epidemic and the concerns of individuals caught up in the tragedy.
The study of plague in the early modern Italian peninsula, particularly Tuscany, is very well-established. Henderson’s familiarity with the terrain enables him to navigate the extensive historiography, engaging with and building on the findings and debates from previous studies whilst simultaneously adding to the field. The book opens with valuable contextual information, mapping the history of epidemic disease in the peninsula, noting the precedents for the Florentine approach to prevention and containment and summarizing historical debates over the identity of successive ‘plagues’. Rather than adding to the latter, Henderson provides a valuable explanation of contemporary medical understandings of how ‘contagion’ was generated and spread. Dirt, dampness and unpleasant smells which were particularly linked to the living conditions of the poor were seen as harbouring the dangerously corrupted air associated with pestilence. Likewise, their unsatisfactory diets were thought to predispose them to succumbing to contagious air and the author shows how these beliefs underpinned the administration’s responses to the arrival of plague.
Indeed, Henderson makes poverty, the experiences of the poor and attitudes towards them one of the central themes of the book. The environmental explanation for contagion, placed beside an analysis of the 1630 sanitary survey, which reveals their appalling living conditions helps explain why attitudes towards the poor and marginal veered between revulsion, fear and compassion. His account of the efforts made by the administration to alleviate squalor and the economic distress consequent on the lengthy quarantine supports his argument that this was not purely about ‘social control’: rather it suggests an impressive charitable response to the tragedy. Often it is the details he offers which help make the book so vivid: such as the 2,347 fetid mattresses replaced by September 1630 (p. 70) and the 1,100 people involved in delivering emergency food and fuel supplies to the poor (p. 135).
The author revisits the long observed relationship between poverty and high mortality rates during plague with his mapping of the progress of sickness and death in the poor parish of St. Lorenzo, adding some nuance to the work of scholars such as Carmichael and Litchfield. However, his conclusion that considerable variations in mortality rates in poorer streets are best explained through patterns of social networks owes more to his research on the criminal records than parish statistics. Building on Calvi’s research in the criminal archives Henderson not only submits the records to a careful statistical analysis, but also draws attention to what court narratives tell us about the individual needs and attitudes, which drove people to flout quarantine regulations.Footnote 1 We see how the financial hardship, boredom, frustration and loneliness endured by those incarcerated in their homes for over 2 months led them to continue meeting and exchanging physical goods – and therefore potentially spreading the plague – through their financial, familial and social networks.
Henderson’s discussion of the records of the isolation hospitals (lazzaretti), adds greatly not just to the bigger picture of the administrative and medical response to plague but to our understanding of the experience of hospitalisation. Crucially he also makes extensive use of sources, which provide insight into the weaknesses of the system and the desperation of those trying to manage these hospitals as their staff died or fled the city. Indeed, this is a powerful feature of the author’s approach throughout the book as he seeks when possible to balance regulations and administrative intentions against practicalities, outcomes and lived experiences.
Henderson also pays attention to the important contribution played by the Church, whether in terms of the Capuchins who nursed the sick or the members of confraternities who transported patients and dead bodies about the city. Descriptions of the powerful city-wide religious observances which took place are suggestive of the broader psychological and emotional support provided by religious practices. Complementing this, there is a discussion of the cults around saints, which emerged or were revived during the epidemic and of the works of art associated with or commissioned during the plague. This all confirms and adds to Cohn’s argument that the nature of the relationship between church and state was one of attempted collaboration and cooperation against a ‘common enemy’.Footnote 2
Throughout the book, careful attention is paid to any evidence regarding women and gender. We learn of the gendering of the quarantine restrictions; of the consistently higher death rates for women, the gender differentiation in crimes and the roles played by female medical staff. Henderson also highlights the many references to material culture running through his sources. Textiles are a huge problem in the city: both its main source of employment yet considered a key player in plague transmission and he finds them constantly being illegally removed from locked houses, re-sold, being burnt or confiscated by officials or being procured for or stolen from hospitals.
Henderson’s intention was to provide an ‘histoire totale’ (p. 14) and he has certainly succeeded. Moreover, Covid-19 has swept through the world since this book was published and it is suddenly painfully relevant: offering us a rare opportunity to reduce the gap between us and the past as we reflect on the ways in which our experiences now resonate a little more closely with experiences of those whose lives he describes.
