CHAPTER XI
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 Borromeowas 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 guildamong 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.
PLATE XXI PROCESSION TO S. MARIA DELLA SALUTE, VENICEFrom a seventeenth century engraving (Face Page 172)
PLATE XXI PROCESSION TO S. MARIA DELLA SALUTE, VENICE
From a seventeenth century engraving (Face Page 172)
PLATE XXII(Face Page 173)CARLO BORROMEO.BY ANNIBALE CARRACCI
PLATE XXII(Face Page 173)
CARLO BORROMEO.BY ANNIBALE CARRACCI
Religion has canonizedS. 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 BorromeoPalace 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 ofBorromeo 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.
PLATE XXIII(Face Page 174)BORROMEOLEADING A PLAGUE PROCESSIONBy Pietro da Cortona
PLATE XXIII(Face Page 174)
BORROMEOLEADING A PLAGUE PROCESSION
By Pietro da Cortona
PLATE XXIV(Face Page 175)BORROMEO INTERCEDING FORTHE PLAGUE-STRICKENA marble bas-relief by P. Puget
PLATE XXIV(Face Page 175)
BORROMEO INTERCEDING FORTHE PLAGUE-STRICKEN
A marble bas-relief by P. Puget
Puget (1622-94) has represented the same subject in amarble 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 hisPromessi 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 Libriv, Desumpti Ex Annalibus Urbis Quos LX Decurionum Autoritate Scribebat.’
In hisStoria della Colonna Infame, published in 1840, Manzoni has told the trial and punishment of the twoUntori, accused of spreading the plague by means of ointments. The home of one of them was destroyedby 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 theProcesso originate degli Untori nella peste del 1630was issued in Milan, giving a full officialaccount of the trial of these Anointers. Fletcher, in 1895, drew up a summary of evidence from all the sources in hisTragedy 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.
PLATE XXV TORTURE AND EXECUTION OF THE ANOINTERS(Face Page 179)
PLATE XXV TORTURE AND EXECUTION OF THE ANOINTERS
(Face Page 179)
At the end of theProcesso originale degl’ Untoriis 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’sColonna Infameis a simple unadorned narrative of the trial and execution of the two Anointers, quite different in literary form from hisPromessi Sposi. It is written with a definite purpose in view. Verri had introduced the story into hisObservations 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’sPromessi Sposiis a happy blend of antiquarian research and imaginative description, and the incidents of the plague aredexterously 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 layputrefying 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 employedmonattito bring out the dead and cart them to the pits, and the priests accomplished their task within the appointed time. Besides themonattithey appointedapparitores, or summoners, who went in advance of themonattiringing a bell to warn the people to bring out their dead.Commissarisupervised bothapparitoresandmonatti. 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 entitledProtomedico. 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 hisNaples 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 hisJohn Inglesant.
Micco Spadara (1612-79), who actually witnessed this plague, has left apicture 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.
PLATE XXVI PLAGUE OF NAPLES, 1656.BY MICCO SPADARAPhotograph by Brogi, Florence(Face Page 184)
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 hisGolden Days of the Renaissance:[180]theother is reproduced here.[181]Both were to be seen in the Medical Exhibition in the Castel S. Angeloin 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.
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.
PLATE XXVII PLAGUE SCENES IN ROME, 1656From an old engraving(Face Page 186)
PLATE XXVII PLAGUE SCENES IN ROME, 1656
From an old engraving(Face Page 186)