Unveiling Milan's hidden cases of plague occurred in autumn 1629, before the great 1630 epidemic

Abstract

In the summer of 1630, Milan experienced the most devastating plague epidemic in its history. In this study, addressed to investigate the earliest phases of the epidemic in the autumn of 1629, a set of unpublished and only partially known primary sources produced by the city's Officium Sanitatis was consulted and compared for the first time. Including those of two foreigners who died in the Lazzaretto, it was possible to ascertain a total of 39 cases of plague occurred in Milan between 9 October 1629 and the first weeks of 1630, of which 29 (74.4%) ended in death. Seven deaths presumably occurred at home were not recorded in the Liber Mortuorum, in which at least three other deaths caused by plague were deliberately attributed to a different cause. In particular, the case of the Vicario di Provisione in charge, Alfonso Visconti, probably the first death from plague occurred in Milan that year, was deliberately concealed for political reasons. Nevertheless, the spread of the disease remained limited in autumn 1629 and it was probably stopped until the following spring more by climatic factors than by the interventions of public health officials.

Keywords: Milan’s plague epidemic; Yersinia pestis; bubonic plague; hidden cases.

Figure 1

A report of the first case of plague in Milan [14], which says: “On 16 November 1629, a soldier named Pietro Paolo Lovato left Chiavenna and came to Milan, arriving at the house of Collona in the borough of Porta Orientale where his mother, Sabetta Lovatta, lived. The said soldier fell ill and was taken to Ospedale Maggiore, where he was found to have a contagious disease. Within two days, he passed away. At the same time, Collona fell ill with a bubo in the groin and [died ….] three days later. The rest of his family was taken to the Lazzaretto Maggiore, and this is the first case that occurred in Milan.”

Figure 2

Historical map of Milan showing the indicative locations of the four plague outbreaks occurring at the end of 1629. The locations were determined on the basis of Alessandro Tadino’s description of the episodes [1], and the historical map has been superimposed on a modern map using QGIS [–14].