One of the most extensive pandemics in Italy’s past, the Great Plague of 1630 harvested its maximum number of victims in northern Italy. Milan lost over a quarter of its inhabitants to ‘la peste’. Verona was the worst affected with over half of its citizens dying in horrible agony. The pandemic started with French and Austrian soldiers marching into Italy as mercenary garrisons for the main towns of the Po valley. Another factor was the extreme poverty of the population reduced by years of austerity under governments who failed to provide basic services in food production and medical facilities. Over a million perished in the great plague: around a quarter of the population.

The pandemic spread to other parts of Europe and may have been instrumental in causing the Great Plague of London in 1665.

The ‘Peste’ was graphically written about by Italy’s great writer Alessandro Manzoni in his novel ‘I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed).

Like many other plagues its origin was eastern and may have been related to the Mongol invasion which almost conquered the Hapsburg empire. Special wear was developed to enable improved survival rates. Here are some examples.

The beak-like mask enabled lavender pomanders to be inserted to protect the wearer from infection and combat stench from decomposing corpses.

With the medical knowledge of the age it was impossible to halt its progress although isolation centres known as Lazzaretti (the church of the Milan lazzaretto was recently restored) were set up. A certain Doctor Giuseppe Daciano did write an interesting treatise, however, on the pandemic and the methods of not catching it or curing it:

What is most disturbing is the fate allocated to Lucca described in the prophecies of Nostradamus. In one of his quatrains he  mentions a “great plague” and the Italian city of Lucca.

(Century III, Quatrain 19) “In Lucca it will come to rain blood and milk”.

It would be a simple matter to quarantine many of the inhabitants of Lucca since they live in a city surrounded by massive walls should the prophecy ever come to be realised.

On the bright side the great plague of northern Italy of the seventeenth century claimed many fewer victims than the 15th century pestilence known as the Black Death. That was one of the most devastating pandemics in history and  killed off an  estimated 75 to 200 million people in Europe and Asia.

(Any similarity between 1630 and 2020 are now not purely coincidental. Indeed, all inhabitants of Lucca, as all inhabitants of Italy, are under quarantine with all non-essential journeys banned.

PS Many of you may know that the nursery rhyme quote which titles this post alludes to the Great Plague of London in 1665.)