The Plague of Milan
March 30, 2020![]() |
Alessandro Manzoni |
Alessandro Manzoni
(1785–1873). I Promessi Sposi.
Vol. 21, pp. 500-512 of
The Harvard Classics
"I Promessi
Sposi," a seventeenth century novel, vividly describes the
devastating plague of Milan. Then whole families sickened in a few
hours and died in less than a day's time of strange and violent
complaints whose symptoms were unknown to physicians.
(Capuchin monks
given charge of the plague hospital in Milan, March 30, 1630.)
Chapter
XXXI
THE PLAGUE, which the
Board of Health had feared might enter with the German troops into
the Milanese, had entered it indeed, as is well known; and it is
likewise well known, that it paused not here, but invaded and ravaged
a great part of Italy. Following the thread of our story, we now come
to relate the principal incidents of this calamity in the Milanese,
or rather in Milan almost exclusively: for almost exclusively of the
city do the records of the times treat, nearly as it always and
everywhere happens, for good reasons or bad. And, to say the truth,
it is not only our object, in this narrative, to represent the state
of things in which our characters will shortly be placed; but at the
same time to develop, as far as may be in so limited a space, and
from our pen, an event in the history of our country more celebrated
than well known.
Of the many contemporary accounts,
there is not one which is sufficient by itself to convey a distinct
and connected idea of it; as there is not, perhaps, one which may not
give us some assistance in forming that idea. In every one, not
excepting that of Ripamonti, 1which considerably
exceeds all the rest, both in copiousness and in its selection of
facts, and still more in its method of viewing them, essential facts
are omitted which are recorded in others; in every one there are
errors of material importance, which may be detected and rectified
with the help of some other, or of the few printed or manuscript acts
of public authority which still remain; and we may often discover in
one, those causes, the effects of which were found partially
developed in another. In all, too, a strange confusion of times and
things prevailed, and a perpetual wandering backward and forward, as
it were at random, without design, special or general: the character,
by the by, of books of all classes in those days, chiefly among such
as were written in the vulgar tongue, at least in Italy; whether,
also, in the rest of Europe, the learned will know, and we shrewdly
suspect it so to have been. No writer of later date has attempted to
examine and compare these memoirs, with the view of extracting thence
a connected series of events, a history of this plague; so that the
idea generally formed of it must necessarily be very uncertain and
somewhat confused, a vague idea of great evils and great errors, (and
assuredly there were both one and the other beyond what can possibly
be imagined,)—an idea composed more of opinions than of facts,
mingled, indeed, with a few scattered events, but unconnected,
sometimes, with their most characteristic circumstances, and without
distinction of time, that is to say, without perception of cause and
effect, of course and progress. We, having examined and compared,
with at least much diligence, all the printed accounts, more than one
unpublished one, and (in comparison of the few that remain on the
subject) many official documents, have endeavoured to do, not,
perhaps, all that is needed, but something which has not hitherto
been done. We do not purpose relating every public act, nor all the
results worthy, in some degree, of remembrance. Still less do we
pretend to render needless to such as would gain a more complete
acquaintance with the subject, the perusal of the original writings:
we are too well aware what lively, peculiar, and, so to say,
incommunicable force invariably belongs to works of that kind, in
whatever manner designed and executed. We have merely endeavoured to
distinguish and ascertain the most general and important facts, to
arrange them in their real order of succession, so far as the matter
and the nature of them will allow, to observe their reciprocal
effect, and thus to give, for the present, and until some one else
shall do better, a succinct, but plain and continuous, account of
this calamity.
Throughout the whole track, then, of
the territory traversed by the army, corpses might be found either in
the houses, or lying upon the highway. Very shortly, single
individuals, or whole families, began to sicken and die of violent
and strange complaints, with symptoms unknown to the greater part of
those who were then alive. There were only a few who had ever seen
them before: the few, that is, who could remember the plague which,
fifty-three years previously, had desolated a great part of Italy
indeed, but especially the Milanese, where it was then, and is still,
called the plague of San Carlo. So powerful is Charity! Among the
various and awful recollections of a general calamity, she could
cause that of one individual to predominate; because she had inspired
him with feelings and actions more memorable even than the evils
themselves; she could set him up in men’s minds as a symbol of all
these events, because in all she had urged him onward, and held him
up to view as guide, and helper, example, and voluntary victim; and
could frame for him, as it were, an emblematical device out of a
public calamity, and name it after him as though it had been a
conquest or discovery.
The oldest
physician of his time, Lodovico Settala, who had not only seen that
plague, but had been one of its most active intrepid, and, though
then very young, most celebrated successful opponents; and who now,
in strong suspicion of this, was on the alert, and busily collecting
information, reported, on the 20th of October, in the Council of the
Board of Health, that the contagion had undoubtedly broken out in the
village of Chiuso, the last in the territory of Lecco, and on the
confines of the Bergamascan district. No resolution, however, was
taken on this intelligence, as appears from the ‘Narrative’ of
Tadino. 2
Similar tidings arrived from Lecco and
Bellano. The Board then decided upon, and contended themselves with,
despatching a commissioner, who should take a physician from Como by
the way, and accompany him on a visit to the places which had been
signified. ‘Both of them, either from ignorance or some other
reason, suffered themselves to be persuaded by an old ignorant barber
of Bellano that this sort of disease was not the pestilence;’ but
in some places the ordinary effect of the autumnal exhalations from
the marshes, and elsewhere, of the privations and sufferings
undergone during the passage of the German troops. This affirmation
was reported to the Board, who seem to have been perfectly satisfied
with it.
But
additional reports of the mortality in every quarter pouring in
without intermission, two deputies were despatched to see and provide
against it—the above-named Tadino, and an auditor of the committee.
When these arrived, the evil had spread so widely, that proofs
offered themselves to their view without being sought for. They
passed through the territory of Lecco, the Valsassina, the shores of
the Lake of Como, and the districts denominated Il Monte di Brianza
and La Gera d’Adda; and everywhere found the towns barricaded,
others almost deserted, and the inhabitants escaped and encamped in
the fields, or scattered throughout the country; ‘who seemed,’
says Tadino, ‘like so many wild savages, carrying in their hands,
one a sprig of mint, another of rue, another of rosemary, another, a
bottle of vinegar.’ 3 They made inquiries as
to the number of deaths, which was really fearful; they visited the
sick and dead, and everywhere recognized the dark and terrible marks
of the pestilence. They then speedily conveyed the disastrous
intelligence by letter to the Board of Health, who, on receiving it,
on the 30th of October, ‘prepared,’ says Tadino, ‘to issue
warrants to shut out of the city any persons coming from the
countries where the plague had shown itself; and while preparing the
decree,’ 4 they gave some summary orders
beforehand to the custom-house officers.
In the mean while, the commissioners,
in great haste and precipitation, made what provisions they knew, or
could think of, for the best, and returned with the melancholy
consciousness of their insufficiency to remedy or arrest an evil
already so far advanced, and so widely disseminated.
On the 14th of
November, having made their report, both by word of mouth and afresh
in writing, to the Board, they received from this committee a
commission to present themselves to the governor, and to lay before
him the state of things. They went accordingly, and brought back
word, that he was exceedingly sorry to hear such news, and had shown
a great deal of feeling about it; but the thoughts of war were more
pressing:‘Sed belli graviores esse curas.’ So says
Ripamonti, 5 after having ransacked the records
of the Board of Health, and compared them with Tadino, who had been
specially charged with this mission: it was the second, if the reader
remembers, for this purpose, and with this result. Two or three days
afterwards, the 18th of November, the governor issued a proclamation,
in which he prescribed public rejoicings for the birth of the Prince
Charles, the first-born son of the king, Philip IV., without thinking
of, or without caring for, the danger of suffering a large concourse
of people under such circumstances: everything as in common times,
just as if he had never been spoken to about anything.
This person was, as we have elsewhere
said, the celebrated Ambrogio Spinola, sent for the very purpose of
adjusting this war, to repair the errors of Don Gonzalo, and,
incidentally, to govern; and we may here incidentally mention, that
he died a few months later in that very war which he had so much at
heart; not wounded in the field of battle, but on his bed, of grief
and anxiety occasioned by reproaches, affronts, and ill-treatment of
every kind, received from those whom he had served. History has
bewailed his fate, and remarked upon the ingratitude of others; it
has described with much diligence his military and political
enterprises, and extolled his foresight, activity, and perseverance;
it might also have inquired what he did with all these, when
pestilence threatened and actually invaded a population committed to
his care, or rather entirely given up to his authority.
But that which, leaving censure,
diminishes our wonder at his behaviour, which even creates another
and greater feeling of wonder, is the behaviour of the people
themselves; of those, I mean, who, unreached as yet by the contagion,
had so much reason to fear it. On the arrival of the intelligence
from the territories which were so grievously infected with it,
territories which formed almost a semi-circular line round the city,
in some places not more than twenty, or even eighteen, miles distant
from it, who would not have thought that a general stir would have
been created, that they would have been diligent in taking
precautions, whether well or ill selected, or at least have felt a
barren disquietude? Nevertheless, if in anything the records of the
times agree, it is in attesting that there were none of these. The
scarcity of the antecedent year, the violence of the soldiery, and
their sufferings of mind, seemed to them more than enough to account
for the mortality: and if any one had attempted, in the streets,
shops, and houses, to throw out a hint of danger, and mention the
plague, it would have been received with incredulous scoffs, or angry
contempt. The same incredulity, or, to speak more correctly, the same
blindness and perversity, prevailed in the senate, in the Council of
the Decurioni, and in all the magistrates.
I find that
Cardinal Federigo, immediately on learning the first cases of a
contagious sickness, enjoined his priests, in a pastoral letter,
among other things, to impress upon the people the importance and
obligation of making known every similar case, and delivering up any
infected or suspected goods: 6 and this, too,
may be reckoned among his praiseworthy peculiarities.
The Board of Health solicited
precautions and co-operation: it was all but in vain. And in the
Board itself their solicitude was far from equaling the urgency of
the case; it was the two physicians, as Tadino frequently affirms,
and as appears still better from the whole context of his narrative,
who, persuaded and deeply sensible of the gravity and imminence of
the danger, urged forward that body, which was then to urge forward
others.
We have already seen how, on the first
tidings of the plague, there had been indifference and remissness in
acting, and even in obtaining information: we now give another
instance of dilatoriness not less portentous, if indeed it were not
compelled by obstacles interposed by the superior magistrates. That
proclamation in the form of warrants, resolved upon on the 30th of
October, was not completed till the 23rd of the following month, nor
published till the 29th. The plague had already entered Milan.
Tadino and Ripamonti would record the
name of the individual who first brought it thither, together with
other circumstances of the person and the fact: and, in truth, in
observing the beginnings of a wide-spread destruction, in which the
victims not only cannot be distinguished by name, but their numbers
can scarcely be expressed with any degree of exactness, even by the
thousand, one feels a certain kind of interest in ascertaining those
first and few names which could be noted and preserved: it seems as
if this sort of distinction, a precedence in extermination, invests
them, and all the other minutiæ, which would otherwise be most
indifferent, with something fatal and memorable.
But one and the other historian say
that it was an Italian soldier in the Spanish service; but in nothing
else do they agree, not even in the name. According to Tadino, it was
a person of the name of Pietro Antonio Lovato, quartered in the
territory of Lecco: according to Ripamonti, a certain Pier Paolo
Locati, quartered at Chiavenna. They differ also as to the day of his
entrance into Milan; the first placing it on the 22nd of October, the
second, on the same day in the following month; yet it cannot be on
either one or the other. Both the dates contradict others which are
far better authenticated, Yet Ripamonti, writing by order of the
General Council of the Decurioni, ought to have had
many means at his command of gaining the necessary information; and
Tadino, in consideration of his office, might have been better
informed than any one else on a subject of this nature. In short,
comparing other dates, which, as we have said, appear to us more
authentic, it would seem that it was prior to the publication of the
warrants; and if it were worth while, it might even be proved, or
nearly so, that it must have been very early in that month: but the
reader will, doubtless, excuse us the task.
However it may be, this soldier,
unfortunate himself, and the bearer of misfortune to others, entered
the city with a large bundle of clothes purchased or stolen from the
German troops: he went to stay at the house of one of his relatives
in the suburbs of the Porta Orientale, near to the Capuchin Convent.
Scarcely had he arrived there, when he was taken ill; he was conveyed
to the hospital; here, a spot, discovered under one of the armpits,
excited some suspicion in the mind of the person who tended him, of
what was in truth the fact; and on the fourth day he died.
The Board of Health immediately
ordered his family to be kept separate, and confined within their own
house; and his clothes, and the bed on which he had lain at the
hospital, were burned. Two attendants, who had there nursed him, and
a good friar, who had rendered him his assistance, were all three,
within a few days, seized with the plague. The suspicions which had
here been felt, from the beginning, of the nature of the disease, and
the precautions taken in consequence, prevented the further spread of
the contagion from this source.
But the soldier had left seed outside,
which delayed not to spring up, and shoot forth. The first person in
whom it broke out was the master of the house where he had lodged,
one Carlo Colonna, a lute-player. All the inmates of the dwelling
were then, by order of the Board, conveyed to the Lazzaretto; where
the greater number took to their beds, and many shortly died of
evident infection.
In the city, that which had been
already disseminated there by intercourse with the above-mentioned
family, and by clothes and furniture belonging to them preserved by
relations, lodgers, or servants, from the searches and flames
prescribed by the Board, as well as that which was afresh introduced
by defectiveness in the regulations, by negligence in executing them,
and by dexterity in eluding them, continued lurking about, and slowly
insinuating itself among the inhabitants, all the rest of the year,
and in the earlier months of 1630, the year which followed. From time
to time, now in this, now in that quarter, some one was seized with
the contagion, some one was carried off with it: and the very
infrequency of the cases contributed to lull all suspicions of
pestilence, and confirmed the generality more and more in the
senseless and murderous assurance that plague it was not, and never
had been, for a moment. Many physicians, too, echoing the voice of
the people, (was it, in this instance also, the voice of Heaven?)
derided the ominous predictions and threatening warnings of the few;
and always had at hand the names of common diseases to qualify every
case of pestilence which they were summoned to cure, with what
symptom or token soever it evinced itself.
The reports of these instances, when
they reached the Board of Health at all, reached it, for the most
part, tardily and uncertainly. Dread of sequestration and the
Lazzaretto sharpened every one’s wits; they concealed the sick,
they corrupted the grave-diggers and elders, and obtained false
certificates, by means of bribes, from subalterns of the Board
itself, deputed by it to visit and inspect the dead bodies.
As,
however, on every discovery they succeeded in making, the Board
ordered the wearing apparel to be committed to the flames, put the
houses under sequestration, and sent the inmates to the Lazzaretto,
it is easy to imagine what must have been the anger and
dissatisfaction of the generality ‘of the nobility, merchants, and
lower orders,’ 7 persuaded, as they all were,
that they were mere causeless vexations without any advantage. The
principal odium fell upon the two doctors, our frequently mentioned
Tadino and Senatore Settala, son of the senior physician, and reached
such a height, that thenceforward they could not publicly appear
without being assailed with opprobrious language, if not with stones.
And, certainly, the situation in which these individuals were placed
for several months, is remarkable, and worthy of being recorded,
seeing a horrible scourge advancing towards them, labouring, by every
method, to repulse it, yet meeting with obstacles, not only in the
arduousness of the task, but from every quarter, in the unwillingness
of the people, and being made the general object of execration, and
regarded as the enemies of their country: ‘Pro patriæ
hostibus,’ says Ripamonti. 8
Sharers, also, in the hatred were the
other physicians, who, convinced like them of the reality of the
contagion, suggested precautions, and sought to communicate to others
their melancholy convictions. The most knowing taxed them with
credulity and obstinacy; while, with the many, it was evidently an
imposture, a planned combination, to make a profit by the public
fears.
The aged physician, Lodovico Settala,
who had almost attained his eightieth year, who had been Professor of
Medicine in the University of Pavia, and afterwards of Moral
Philosophy at Milan, the author of many works at that time in very
high repute, eminent for the invitations he had received to occupy
the chairs of other universities, Ingolstadt, Pisa, Bologna, and
Padua, and for his refusal of all these honours, was certainly one of
the most influential men of his time. To his reputation for learning
was added that of his life; and to admiration of his character, a
feeling of good-will for his great kindness in curing and benefiting
the poor. Yet there is one circumstance, which, in our minds,
disturbs and overclouds the sentiment of esteem inspired by these
merits, but which at that time must have rendered it stronger and
more general: the poor man participated in the commonest and most
fatal prejudices of his contemporaries: he was in advance of them,
but not distinguished from the multitude; a station which only
invites trouble, and often causes the loss of an authority acquired
by other means. Nevertheless, that which he enjoyed in so great a
degree, was not only insufficient to overcome the general opinion on
this subject of the pestilence, but it could not even protect him
from the animosity and the insults of that part of the populace,
which most readily steps from opinions to their exhibition by actual
deeds.
One day, as he was
going in a litter to visit his patients, crowds began to assemble
round him, crying out that he was the head of those who were
determined, in spite of everything, to make out that there was a
plague; that it was he who put the city in alarm, with his gloomy
brow, and shaggy beard; and all to give employment to the doctors!
The multitude and their fury went on increasing; so that the bearers,
seeing their danger, took refuge with their master in the house of a
friend, which fortunately happened to be at hand. All this occurred
to him for having foreseen clearly, stated what was really the fact,
and wished to save thousands of his fellow-creatures from the
pestilence: when having, by his deplorable advice, co-operated in
causing a poor unhappy wretch to be put to the torture, racked, and
burnt as a witch, because one of her masters had suffered
extraordinary pains in his stomach, and another, some time before,
had been desperately enamoured of her, 9 he had
received from the popular voice additional reputation for wisdom,
and, what is intolerable to think of, the additional title of the
well-deserving.
Towards the latter end of March,
however, sickness and deaths began rapidly to multiply, first in the
suburbs of the Porta Orientale, and then in all the other quarters of
the city, with the unusual accompaniments of spasms, palpitation,
lethargy, delirium, and those fatal symptoms, livid spots and sores;
and these deaths were, for the most part, rapid, violent, and not
unfrequently sudden, without any previous tokens of illness. Those
physicians who were opposed to the belief of contagion, unwilling now
to admit what they had hitherto derided, yet obliged to give a
generical name to the new malady, which had become too common and too
evident to go with-out one, adopted that of malignant or pestilential
fevers;—a miserable expedient, a mere play upon words, which was
productive of much harm; because, while it appeared to acknowledge
the truth, it only contributed to the disbelief of what it was most
important to believe and discern, viz., that the infection was
conveyed by means of the touch. The magistrates, like one awakening
from a deep sleep, began to lend a little more ear to the appeals and
proposals of the Board of Health, to support its proclamations, and
second the sequestrations prescribed, and the quarantines enjoined by
this tribunal. The Board was also constantly demanding money to
provide for the daily expenses of the Lazzaretto, now augmented by so
many additional services; and for this they applied to
the Decurioni, while it was being decided (which was
never done, I believe, except by practice) whether such expenses
should be charged to the city, or to the royal exchequer. The high
chancellor also applied importunately to the Decurioni, by
order, too, of the governor, who had again returned to lay siege to
the unfortunate Casale; the senate likewise applied to them,
imploring them to see to the best method of victualing the city,
before they should be forbidden, in case of the unhappy dissemination
of the contagion, to have any intercourse with other countries; and
to find means of maintaining a large proportion of the population
which was now deprived of employment. TheDecurioni endeavoured
to raise money by loans and taxes; and of what they thus accumulated
they gave a little to the Board of Health, a little to the poor,
purchased a little corn, and thus, in some degree, supplied the
existing necessity. The severest sufferings had not yet arrived.
In the Lazzaretto, where the
population, although decimated daily, continued daily on the
increase, there was another arduous undertaking, to insure attendance
and subordination, to preserve the enjoined separations, to maintain,
in short, or rather to establish, the government prescribed by the
Board of Health: for, from the very first, everything had been in
confusion, from the ungovernableness of many of the inmates, and the
negligence or connivance of the officials. The Board and
the Decurioni, not knowing which way to turn,
bethought themselves of applying to the Capuchins, and besought the
Father Commissary, as he was called, of the province, who occupied
the place of the Father Provincial, lately deceased, to give them a
competent person to govern this desolate kingdom. The commissary
proposed to them as their governor, one Father Felice Casati, a man
of advanced age, who enjoyed great reputation for charity, activity,
and gentleness of disposition, combined with a strong mind—a
character which, as the sequel will show, was well deserved; and as
his coadjutor and assistant, one Father Michele Pozzobonelli, still a
young man, but grave and stern in mind as in countenance. Gladly
enough were they accepted; and on the 30th of March they entered the
Lazzaretto. The President of the Board of Health conducted them
round, as it were, to put them in possession; and having assembled
the servants and officials of every rank, proclaimed Father Felice,
in their presence, governor of the place, with primary and unlimited
authority. In proportion as the wretched multitude there assembled
increased, other Capuchins resorted thither; and here were
superintendents, confessors, administrators, nurses, cooks,
overlookers of the wardrobes, washerwomen, in short, everything that
was required. Father Felice, ever diligent, ever watchful, went about
day and night, through the porticoes, chambers, and open spaces,
sometimes carrying a spear, sometimes armed only with hair-cloth; he
animated and regulated every duty, pacified tumults, settled
disputes, threatened, punished, reproved, comforted, dried and shed
tears. At the very outset he took the plague; recovered, and with
fresh alacrity resumed his first duties. Most of his brethren here
sacrificed their lives, and all joyfully.
Such a
dictatorship was certainly a strange expedient; strange as was the
calamity, strange as were the times; and even did we know no more
about it, this alone would suffice as an argument, as a specimen,
indeed, of a rude and ill-regulated state of society. But the spirit,
the deeds, the self-sacrifice, of these friars, deserve no less than
they should be mentioned with respect and tenderness, and with that
species of gratitude which one feels, en masseas it were,
for great services rendered by men to their fellows. To die in a good
cause is a wise and beautiful action, at any time, under any state of
things whatsoever. ‘For had not ye Fathers repayred
hither,’ says Tadino, ‘assuredly ye whole Citie
would have been annihilated; for it was a miraculous thing that
ye Fathers effected so much for ye publick
Benefit in so short a space of Time, and, receiving no Assistance, or
at least, very little, from ye Citie, contrived, by
their Industrie and Prudence, to maintain so many thousands of Poore,
in ye Lazzaretto.’ 10
Among the public, also, this obstinacy
in denying the pestilence gave way naturally, and gradually
disappeared, in proportion as the contagion extended itself, and
extended itself, too, before their own eyes, by means of contact and
intercourse; and still more when, after having been for some time
confined to the lower orders, it began to take effect upon the
higher. And among these, as he was then the most eminent, so by us
now, the senior physician Settala, deserves express mention. People
must at least have said: The poor old man was right! But who knows?
He, with his wife, two sons, and seven persons in his service, all
took the plague. One of these sons and himself recovered; the rest
died. ‘These Cases,’ says Tadino, ‘occurring in the Citie in
the first families, disposed the Nobilitie and common People to
think; and the incredulous Physicians, and the ignorant and rash
lower Orders, began to bite their Lips, grind their Teeth, and arch
their Eyebrows in Amazement.’ 11
Note 1.
Josephi Ripamontii, canonici scalensis, chronist&æ urbis
Mediolani, de Peste qu&æ fuit anno 1630, Lib. V. Mediolani,
1640. Apud Malatestas.
Note 2.
Tadino, p. 24.
Note 3.
Tadino, p. 26.
Note 4. 5
Ibid., p. 27.
Note 5.
Ripamonti, p. 245.
Note 6. Life
of Federigo Borromeo, compiled by Francesco Rivola. Milan: 1666. P.
584.
Note 7.
Tadino, p. 73.
Note 8.
Ripamonti, p. 261.
Note 9.
History of Milan, by Count Pietro Verri. Milan: 1825. Vol. iv. p.
155.
Note 10.
Tadino, p. 98.
Note 11. Ib.,
p. 96.
0 comments