Black Death Quarantine

Fear. It’s running rampant right now. Palpable, but invisible, like the coronavirus that’s brought us to our knees. Across the ages, however, fear has been a recurring part of the human experience. Can history offer clues on how to cope? What made things worse? What helped?

Looking back—way back—medieval historian and Professor of History Larissa Taylor turns to the Middle Ages, and to the plague of 1347-50 specifically, for answers. Her conclusion isn’t overly comforting. “I’m not sure that we’ve learned so many lessons,” Taylor said. “Or at least I think there are more lessons to be learned.”

COVID-19 gives us another chance to learn those lessons. Lessons about prejudice. Lessons in leadership. Lessons in humility.

Since 2010, Taylor has taught a course titled the History of Fear. She’s also researching and writing a book on the topic from antiquity to 1888. She loves teaching about the plague, she confesses—and admits to having a morbid sense of humor. But right now, it’s no laughing matter. “It’s okay to talk about something that happened six hundred years ago,” she said, “but when it’s happening in the present, and there are a lot of resemblances, it gets a little different.”

Like the coronavirus, the plague, also called the Black Death, probably started in the central steppes of Asia before spreading first to Italy, the most densely populated European country in the 1300s, then following 14th-century trade routes to France, England, and Scandinavia. Death rates in Venice topped 600 a day, Taylor said, while 60 percent of the population of Florence perished. Eerily, on March 20, 2020, Italy reported more than 600 COVID-19 deaths in a 24-hour period.

Medieval people had no idea what had hit them. They looked to the University of Paris and other institutions for answers, Taylor said. They consulted the Pope, who had left a chaotic Rome in 1309 and established a papal palace in Avignon, an enclave in what is now France. They turned to astrology, wondering if the great planetary conjunction of 1345—when Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn aligned in the constellation Aquarius—was to blame. They speculated the invisible enemy came from a miasma floating over the subcontinent of India.

No matter the cause, people were terrified. They shuttered themselves indoors in self-isolation. Those who could afford to fled the cities for the country, Taylor explained. Still others, like today’s spring break revelers, threw caution to the wind, opting to eat, drink, and be merry.

Medieval governing bodies locked the gates to the city. They restricted market days. They quarantined citizens—Venice was the first, forcing citizens to spend 40 days in ships offshore. Today, countries have closed their borders. Grocery stores have special hours for the elderly. Cruise ships search for harbors to dock.

“The parallels are really stunning,” said Taylor, who is most interested in people’s psychological responses then and now. Why do people react differently in these situations? “I think ultimately that it comes down to human psychology. Our own experience shapes how we respond.” Taylor, who minored in psychology as an undergraduate at Harvard and worked for three years in psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, points to differences in education, varying levels of wealth, and knowledge of others as underlying factors. One of the biggest factors? “Prejudice,” Taylor punctuated.

The fear of others, and the need for scapegoats, is a common thread throughout humanity. In the Middle Ages, Taylor said, Jews were frequent targets and were blamed for poisoning wells during the plague. In 1321 the kings of France were convinced that lepers were planning to overthrow Christendom and that the plot was being funded by Muslims. Women accused of witchcraft; homosexuals; ghosts, vampires, and creatures from fairy tales—all have suffered the pointed fingers of blame. Today, President Trump has called COVID-19 the “Chinese virus,” while Iran blames the United States for the virus.

Homophobia. Xenophobia. Misogyny. Religious fear and hatred. Will we ever learn?

“Unless we want to repeat brutal human history, we cannot turn our emotional stress towards a scapegoat, such as an ethnic or minority group,” wrote Kristen Watts ’10, now a corporate counsel for Capcom in San Francisco. Watts recently revisited her senior thesis from Taylor’s class and posted it on LinkedIn. “In many cases, preventing a disease also means controlling certain groups within society and preventative measures. … We must integrate the mandate to live with a consciousness of the effects of our actions on others.”

Taylor argues that such a mandate must come from the top down, from strong leaders “who can urge people to be their best,” she stressed. She fears, however, that a lack of leadership—and a lack of preparedness—may make the COVID-19 pandemic worse.

Could leaders do better if they studied history?

“You bet. I think any leader in their right mind should know something about the pandemics of the past, whether it’s the 1918 flu or further back in history,” she said. But with the emphasis on technology and STEM fields in the last 20 or so years, the study of history and other humanities fields have been sidelined.

“History allows us to think critically about the past and what it means for us. We always hear the maxim that history repeats itself,” Taylor said. “Most historians will tell you that’s not true. It never repeats itself. But you can learn from history.”

Will we learn? Can lessons from the past lessen our fears? Taylor hopes so. “I think history is needed more than ever in times like this.”

Much to Fear, Then and Now.  Medieval historian Larissa Taylor on how history can inform action in times of crisis. By Laura Meader. Colby Magazine, April,  2020

A plague of serious proportions is ravaging the world. But not for the first time.

From 1347-51, the Black Death killed anywhere from one-tenth to one-half (or more) of Europe’s population.

One English chronicler, Thomas Walsingham, noted how this “great mortality” transformed the known world: “Towns once packed with people were emptied of their inhabitants, and the plague spread so thickly that the living were hardly able to bury the dead.” As death tolls rose at exponential rates, rents dwindled, and swaths of land fell to waste “for want of the tenants who used to cultivate it….”

As a medieval historian, I’ve been teaching the subject of plague for many years. If nothing else, the feelings of panic between the Black Death and the COVID-19 pandemic are reminiscent.

Like today’s crisis, medieval writers struggled to make sense of the disease; theories on its origins and transmission abounded, some more convincing than others. Whatever the result, “… so much misery ensued,” wrote another English author, it was feared that the world would “hardly be able to regain its previous condition.”

Medieval writers produced a variety of answers for the plague’s origins. Gabriele de Mussis’ Historia de Morbo attributed the cause to “the mire of manifold wickedness,” the “numberless vices,” and the “limitless capacity for evil” exhibited by an entire human race no longer fearing the judgement of God.

Describing its eastern origins, he further noted how the Genoese and Venetians had imported the disease to western Europe from Caffa (modern-day Ukraine); “carrying the darts of death,” disembarking sailors at these Italian port-cities unwittingly spread the “poison” to their relations, kinsmen and neighbours.

Containing the disease seemed nearly impossible. As Giovanni Boccaccio wrote about Florence, the outcome was all the more severe as those suffering from the disease “mixed with people who were still unaffected …” Like a “fire racing through dry or oily substances,” healthy persons became ill.

Possessing the power to “kill large numbers by air alone,” through breath or conversation, it was thought, the plague “could not be avoided.”

Scholars worked tirelessly to find a cure. The Paris Medical Faculty devoted its energies to discovering the causes of these amazing events, which even “the most gifted intellects” were struggling to comprehend. They turned to experts on astrology and medicine about the causes of the epidemic.

On the pope’s orders, anatomical examinations were carried out in many Italian cities “to discover the origins of the disease.” When the corpses were opened up, all victims were found to have “infected lungs.”

Not content with lingering uncertainty, Parisian masters turned towards ancient wisdom and compiled a book of existing philosophical and medical knowledge. Yet they also acknowledged the limitations in finding a “sure explanation and perfect understanding,” quoting Pliny to the effect that “some accidental causes of storms are still uncertain, or cannot be explained.”

Prevention was critical. Quarantine and self-isolation were necessary measures.

In 1348, to prevent the illness from spreading through the Tuscan region of Pistoia, strict fines were enforced against the movement of peoples. Guards were placed at the city’s gates to prevent travellers entering or leaving.

These civic ordinances stipulated against importing linen or woollen cloths that might carry the disease. Demonstrating similar sanitation concerns, bodies of the dead were to remain in place until properly enclosed in a wooden box “to avoid the foul stench which comes from dead bodies”; moreover, graves were dug “two and a half arms-lengths deep.”

Butchers and retailers nevertheless remained open. And yet a number of regulations were imposed so that “the living are not made ill by rotten and corrupt food,” with further bans to minimize the “stink and corruption” considered harmful to Pistoia’s citizens.

Authorities responded in different ways to the outbreak. Recognizing the plague’s arrival by ship, the people of Messina “expelled the Genoese from the city and harbour with all speed.” In central Europe, foreigners and merchants were banished from the inns and “compelled to leave the area immediately.”

These were severe measures, but seemingly necessary given the varied social reaction to plague. As Boccaccio famously recounted in his Decameron, the whole spectrum of human behaviour ensued: from extreme religious devotion, sober living, self-isolation and a restricted diet to warding off evil through heavy drinking, singing and merrymaking.

The fear of contagion eroded social customs. The number of dead grew so high in many regions that proper burials and religious services became impossible to perform: new religious customs emerged pertaining to preparing for and presiding over death.

Families were changed. An account from Padua mentions how “wife fled the embrace of a dear husband, the father that of a son and the brother that of a brother.”

Ultimately, there is a human element to plague too often lost in the historical record. Its influence should not be underestimated or forgotten. The modern response to pandemic evokes a similar community response. Different in scope and scale, and indeed in medical practice, administrative and public health actions remain critical.

But in 2020, we are not, as Boccaccio lamented, seeing the law and social order break down. Essential duties and responsibilities are still being carried out. Against our own 21st-century plague, wisdom and ingenuity are prevailing; citizens hang on “the advice of physicians and all the power of medicine,” which unlike the 14th century, is anything but “profitless and unavailing.”

How medieval writers struggled to make sense of the Black Death. By Kriston R. Rennie. The Conversation , March 31 , 2020.

In the autumn of 1348 a ship glided into the port of Southampton in England, carrying a disease from the east that had already ravaged the western world. It had killed men, women and children in their thousands quickly and mercilessly. This was the bubonic plague, identified by the blackening ‘buboes’ that formed within the joint area of an infected person – the groin or armpit were the most common places. These were accompanied by bodily aches, cold, lethargy and a high fever. When the infection got into the blood stream it effectively poisoned the blood, leading to probable death. Some survived the infection but most people died within days, sometimes hours. This wave of bubonic plague became known then as the Pestilence – or later, the Black Death.

By November 1348 the disease had reached London, and by New Year’s Day 1349 around 200 bodies a day were being piled into mass graves outside the city. Henry Knighton, an Augustinian monk, witnessed the devastation of the Black Death in England: “there was a general mortality throughout the world… sheep and oxen strayed through the fields and among the crops and there was none to drive them off or collect them, but they perished in uncounted numbers… for lack of shepherds… After the Pestilence many buildings fell into total ruin for lack of inhabitants; similarly many small villages and hamlets became desolate and no homes were left in them, for all those who had dwelt anthem (sic) were dead.”

The countryside went to ruin, with crops, livestock and produce dying for lack of people to tend to them. Towns were abandoned, left only with the dead to occupy them, and war with France – the first part of the later-named Hundred Years’ War – was put on hold. England and the rest of Europe was forced to come to terms with an epidemic of an apocalyptic nature that drastically changed the landscape of society.

In a bid to take control of the epidemic, Edward III, king of England as the time, was forced to turn his attention to domestic matters. Before the outbreak in England, his daughter Princess Joan had contracted plague after her ship docked in Bordeaux. She was on her way to marry Peter of Castile as part of a diplomatic marriage alliance between the two kingdoms. She never reached Castile and, upon discovery that the plague had taken hold of Bordeaux, she took refuge in a small village called Loremo, where she died alongside a large part of her entourage.

The king was devastated by the news and acted quickly and decisively to try to curb the outbreak in England. The 1349 January parliament was postponed until Easter (however, when spring came parliament was still empty.) Officials fled to their homes in the country and sheriffs refused to conduct their business for fear of their lives. The country was in lockdown and the people looked to the king to support them in the crisis.

Edward’s response was rational: he suspected that poor public hygiene was responsible for the epidemic. In a bid to tackle the spread of infection, he opposed the idea of digging a burial pit for the plague victims in East Smithfield – it being in close proximity to the Tower of London and surrounding residential areas. Pits were dug further away, the largest one in Smithfield. In 1349 Edward III wrote to the Mayor of London directing him to have the streets thoroughly cleaned, for they were “foul with human faeces, and the air of the city poisioned (sic) to the great danger of men passing, especially in this time of infectious disease”.

Overseas, further precautions were taken. In Italy in 1347, almost a year before the plague reached England, ports began to turn away ships, fearful that they carried the deadly disease. By March 1348, these protective measures were formalised and Venice became the first city to close its ports to incoming vessels. Those they did admit were subjected to 30 days of isolation, later raised to 40, which eventually lead to the birth of the term ‘quarantine’, for ships were forced to wait in the middle of the Venetian lagoon before they were permitted to disembark. Remote cemeteries were dug and in a later outbreak, the Venetians even went as far as establishing a quarantine island on Lazzaretto Vecchio, a small island in the Venetian Lagoon. An excavation in 2007 revealed more than 1,500 skeletons, all supposedly victims of bubonic plague. Thousands more are believed to remain below ground on the island.

However, these measures were too little too late. Plague still took hold in Venice – as it did globally – killing an estimated 100,000 people, a catastrophic proportion of the Venetian population.

England shared the same fate. In 1300 the population had reached around five million, and by 1377 this was reduced to 2.5 million. Plague had claimed half of the population, wiping out entire families, villages and even towns such as Bristol. The measures that were taken to hinder the spread of the first Black Death epidemic were powerless, but there were contingency plans for future outbreaks later in history.

In 1563, when plague struck again (as the disease did most years, although some outbreaks were more severe than others), the lord mayor ordered that blue crosses should be attached to doors of houses that held anyone infected with plague over the past week. Inhabitants were to stay indoors for one month after the death or infection of anyone in the building. Only one uninfected person was allowed out of the house, in order to buy provisions for the sick or healing. To mark their health they were meant to carry a white rod, which if they forgot would incur a fine or even imprisonment. In 1539 plague struck London again and houses were to be incarcerated for 40 days – the typical quarantine period stipulated in 14th-century Venice. By 1580 shipping was heavily monitored, and crews and passengers were quarantined either on board their vessels or in the port where they had disembarked. Merchants were kept at the port of Rye and were prohibited from entering the city, and all goods were to be aired in order not to transport infection. Movement was also monitored within the country – travellers into London from outside counties were prohibited if there was known to be plague in their area.

Outbreaks of plague continued into the 17th century, the most savage and famous being the 1665–56 epidemic. In 1630, quarantine measures were taken in London, with the Privy Council ordering that again houses were shut up when those inside were infected. However, to enforce the order, guards were to be stationed outside the infected house. This was soon replaced with the order that the people inside were to be sent to the Pest House (an enclosed hospital for those suffering from the plague) while the house was closed up. More famously, the village of Eyam in Derbyshire bravely imposed a self-quarantine in order to prevent the spread of infection into other villages, losing 260 villagers in the process.

Over four centuries, plague devastated the lives of millions, and despite the best efforts of the authorities, there was little to be done in order to control the spread of such virulent infection. People blamed themselves, usually in the belief that they were being punished by God for their sins – some even believed that the epidemic was an apocalypse.

Although today plague has generally ceased to exist, there was an outbreak in the US in 1924, and in India as late as 1994, killing 52 people and causing mass panic as people fled out of fear of infection. However, we do not tend to experience the rate of mortality seen in the 14th, 15th, 16th and 17th centuries. With the advancement of modern medicine and practical contingency, we hope that bio-medical disaster remains as history.

Black Death quarantine: how did we try to contain the most deadly disease in history? By Helen Carr.

History Extra, March 30, 2020.

The pandemic of COVID-19 is often called “unprecedented” – and for many people cooped up in their homes in different countries, the experience is both unparalleled and challenging. But in late-medieval Europe, individuals self-isolated professionally. Some people – women particularly – permanently withdrew from society to live walled in, alone in a room attached to a church.

Guides for, and texts written by, these female “anchorites” – as the women were known – from Britain and continental Europe give us descriptions of their way of living and recount their reflections. So what can these medieval women teach us about how to cope with self-isolation?

These anchorites chose to be confined in these cramped cells for many reasons. According to medieval religious culture, a life of prayer on behalf of others vitally supported society. Isolation empowered women to express their love for Christ, and minister to their fellow believers through their prayers and counsel. Anchorites were even presented as possessing “super powers” of interceding for the deceased in purgatory.

Furthermore, in the late Middle Ages, devotion among laypeople – people who are not clergy – flourished. Life as an anchorite offered laywomen an option to express this piety, but offered more freedom for individual contemplation (and solitude) than a nun’s life.

Warnings in guides for anchorites also hint at less spiritual motives. Life as a recluse, paradoxically, situated anchorites at the heart of their communities and could transform them into religious celebrities. Their cells often faced busy roads in bustling cities and doubled as a bank, teacher’s cubicle, and storehouse of local gossip.

The 13th-century, medieval English guide for female anchorites, Ancrene Wisse, warns recluses not to look for comfort. Instead, the anchorite should remind herself that she was enclosed not just for her own benefit, but for the sake of others too.

She is told to “gather into your heart all those who are ill or wretched” and “feel compassion”. By self-isolating, the anchorite “holds [all fellow believers] up” with her prayers. Now, nurses and doctors are urgently calling for a similar commitment from the public, when begging “Stay home for us.”

The Wisse’s advice has a flavour that feels equally relevant today. Self-isolation may be easier to bear if instead of seeing it as a stretch of boring but comfy nights in, you recognise it as an unpleasant, stressful experience – but also visualise all the people whose health you are protecting by staying home.

The earliest-known English woman writer, Julian of Norwich (c.1343–c.1416) – an anchorite – likewise encouraged readers to acknowledge their own vulnerability, but suggested perceiving it as a strength. She assured readers in her late 14th-century or early 15th-century text, A Revelation of Love, that suffering and difficulties will not defeat them:

        ‘ Christ did not say, ‘You shall not be perturbed, you shall not be troubled, you shall not be distressed,’ but he said, ‘You shall not be overcome.’

Julian promises that readers will experience emotional turmoil during any crisis but will ultimately conquer it. This promise parallels modern survival psychology. When adapting to life during a crisis, acknowledging the challenging circumstances as forming one’s real life now is essential. Yet one should simultaneously remember that one is doing one’s utmost to return to a better, pre-crisis style of living. Only by acknowledging our vulnerability – both physical and mental – and consequently taking action to protect and care for others and ourselves, will we make it through.

According to manuals for anchorites, they should guard their metaphorical windows (their five senses) and actual cell windows, to prevent falling into temptation and being distracted from their prayers and meditation. The Wisse declares: “disturbance only enters the heart through something … either seen or heard, tasted or smelt, or felt externally.”

The external world can upset one’s interior world. Dutch anchorite Sister Bertken (1427-1514) recounts this confusion in a poem:

‘The world held me in its power

with its manifold snares

it deprived me of my strength.’

Yet this nervousness about the effect of sensory input can also be understood as a medieval analogue to a warning against fake news or anxious over-consumption of news. Several guides recommend having a female friend scrupulously guarding the anchorite’s window, refusing to allow access to visitors who spread gossip and lies. Social media today can be a little like such visitors.

Anchorites and writers of manuals for anchorites also reflected upon how to keep sane. Keeping occupied prevents one from climbing the walls. British Cistercian monk, Abbot Aelred of Rievaulx (1110-1167), tells his sister, an anchorite, in A Rule of Life for a Recluse that: “Idleness … breeds distaste for quiet and disgust for the cell.”

Routines are key. Anchorites recited sequences of prayers, psalms and other Bible readings at fixed points of the day. According to modern survival psychology, dividing a problem or stretch of time into manageable steps is crucial when faced with a crisis. Equally important is performing each step one by one, never looking further ahead than the next step.

Mentally absorbing hobbies, such as crafts, gardening or reading, are another time-honoured strategy for dealing with self-isolation. After recommending sewing clothes for the poor and church vestments, the Wisse assures anchorites that keeping occupied will shield their minds against temptation:

        ‘For while [the devil] sees her busy, he thinks like this: ‘It would be useless to approach her now; she can’t concentrate on listening to my advice.’

These suggestions are easily translatable to today. After all, according to survival psychology, performing manageable, directed actions with a purpose is crucial in crises. Incidentally, the Wisse also recommends keeping a cat.

On the one hand, self-isolation can feel limiting – Julian of Norwich also felt that: “This place is prison,” she said, referring either to earthly life or her cell. But the cell’s cramped space also granted medieval women a paradoxical, spiritual freedom. In his letter to the anchorite Eve of Wilton, the 11th-century monk Goscelin of St Bertin exclaims: “'My cell is so narrow,’ you may say, but oh, how wide is the sky!”

Coronavirus: advice from the Middle Ages for how to cope with self-isolation. By  Godelinde Gertrude Perk. The Conversation , March 27, 2020.

In the fields between the Derbyshire villages of Eyam and Stoney Middleton sits a gritstone boulder known as the “boundary stone”.

During the bubonic plague outbreak of 1665-6, the inhabitants of Eyam quarantined themselves, in a famous act of self-sacrifice, to prevent the spread of the plague. Villagers would come to place money in six holes drilled into the top of the boundary stone to pay for food and medicine left by their anxious neighbours.

By the end of the outbreak, more than a quarter of the village’s population of almost 1,000 were dead. The plague, however, was contained.

For residents of Eyam today, in the midst of the escalating coronavirus pandemic, which has already touched a nearby village, the lessons of that self-imposed isolation have powerful echoes.

Standing by the boundary stone, Ian Smith, who volunteers at the local museum, describes how the village had adopted a process that has become familiar around the world in the last few weeks – “social distancing”.

“In some respects,” says Smith, “the villagers were well ahead of their time. They didn’t know what the affliction was, but they reasoned that close contact with other people was how the illness was passing from one to another.” (In fact, infected fleas had been brought into the village in a bundle of cloth.) “They recognised the necessary business of keeping apart from other people.”

He applies the lesson to the current crisis. “We should be very aware that mass movement of people from one community to another is not a good thing. Like football matches, where you take fans from one area to mix with others quite closely. It’s mad.”

Even as Smith is ruminating on this fact, English football, perhaps belatedly, is in the process of being suspended.

On Friday, the day after prime minister Boris Johnson’s press conference, the stories of two pandemics, one historical and one current, were colliding in Eyam. The green tourist information placards outside homes with names like “Plague Cottage” have been joined in recent weeks by a prominent new poster in the village centre giving information on coronavirus and its symptoms.

At one point a middle-aged couple walk past, discussing an acquaintance facing self-isolation. And villagers wonder what will happen when their popular museum reopens next weekend after the winter closure; whether the thousands of schoolchildren who annually visit will appear this year.

What is clear to many, however, is that Eyam’s story remains a powerful example not only of how diseases are transmitted – then as now via trade routes and centres – but also of how successful social immobilisation can contain outbreaks.

For the Derbyshire villagers in the mid-1660s, the trade that brought the plague was cloth, and the source of it was London, where thousands were already dying.

Confronted by mounting deaths, the village’s newly arrived priest, William Mompesson, was able – in an uneasy alliance with his ejected Puritan predecessor Thomas Stanley – to convince villagers that the right thing to do was quarantine the village, and face a high probability of death, rather than spread the plague.

And in 17th-century Eyam, “social distancing” in the midst of a plague outbreak meant not only isolation – as Francine Clifford, the local historian, points out – but also open-air funeral services that reduced physical proximity, and families burying their own dead in fields and gardens rather than the village graveyard.

As Clifford explains, Eyam’s quarantine was finally imposed after a month-long lull in plague deaths that had first begun in the autumn of 1665.

“It was June [1666] and the deaths started to go up again,” she explains. “It was then William Mompesson realised that it was going to get a heck of a lot worse before it got better. He knew if he didn’t stop people leaving the village in panic, it would spread to the villages and the towns. If it got to Sheffield or Manchester, it would be back to the London proportions.”

The experience of those villagers has become pertinent again as families, communities, towns and even countries engage with the concept of quarantine. The word is derived from the Italian quaranta giorni, in reference to the practice during the 14th century of requiring plague-infected ships from Venice to sit at anchor for 40 days before landing.

Ironically, perhaps, it was a quarantine in China – once again for plague, in Harbin in 1910 – that would inform most modern approaches, not least in China, where, like Eyam, it became embedded in myth.

The 1910 Harbin outbreak, in a centre of the fur trade, saw 95% of infected patients die. The quarantine was managed by a celebrated doctor named Wu Lien-teh, dispatched to Harbin from what is now Malaysia.

In Harbin he implemented not just a strict lockdown, including the suspension of transport links with Russia and Japan, but introduced measures still used today, including dedicated quarantine centres and hygienic burials, with his approach recorded meticulously in his notes.

Eugenia Tognotti, a historian of quarantine who wrote an essay on the subject for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, believes we still have much to learn from quarantines of the past.

Currently under lockdown herself in Italy, the European country worst hit by coronavirus, she emphasises that successful quarantines like Eyam’s require “social acceptance” and other conditions that vary according to geography and political context, pointing out that they are rarely uncontroversial. “Let’s not forget that quarantine measures raise many ethical issues,” she says, referring to the Sars outbreak in 2002, an even more deadly if less widespread coronavirus than the one causing the current pandemic.

She adds: “In China, compared to other affected countries, there was stronger control of the social strata at risk”; village-level governments were empowered to isolate travellers from Sars-infected areas, and enforce quarantines on people suspected of having contact with Sars patients.

“That raised many questions regarding the impact of isolation and quarantine measures, and possible discrimination against certain social categories and minorities. The present emergency and the rigid measures adopted pending the Covid-19 epidemic will give us more lessons.”

And Tognotti poses the question that has been troubling many political leaders and commentators. “Can the kind of quarantines applied in China – with the rigid measures – work in the western democratic countries?”

She answers her own question with a big “if” – one that is becoming increasingly apparent. “Only if countries were not caught unprepared and if they recognised the enormous importance of planning.”

She adds: “We can learn from the past. In time of plague and cholera, well-trained and experienced public health officials were quick to recognise the crisis and launch an emergency public health response to contain outbreaks. A well-organised educational campaign to inform and calm a panicking and frightened public, and combat misinformation and fake news, is extremely important. It’s the effort that Italy is making right now with some success.”

And it was exactly that which Mompesson – who lost his wife in the outbreak – and Stanley achieved: communicating the difficult necessity of social immobilisation to a village of poor miners.

On a hill above the village, overlooking the boundary stone, are the so-called “Riley graves”, named after the local farm where Elizabeth Hancock buried her husband and six children in a field. It’s a poignant reminder of Mompesson’s success as a public health leader.

Tourists Karen and Paul Senior are visiting the village from Newcastle. “Everyone is going into a panic because of the coronavirus and we’re actually in a plague village where everyone voluntarily self-isolated,” says Karen.

“The timing’s been a bit bizarre,” says Paul. “We planned this visit before the coronavirus. Maybe we’re being taught an existential lesson.”

Asked what thoughts the visit has inspired, he replies: “It’s a question of humanity.

“There’s the juxtaposition of looking after your own family,” he adds, referring to the fact that Mompesson sent his children away. “Wanting to save your own skin and the bigger picture. If they left Eyam, they could have spread the disease. You want to do the best for the community, but there’s a strong desire to survive.”

Eyam recalls lessons from 1665 battle with plague. By Peter Beaumont. The Guardian. March 15, 2020. 

Aachen Cathedral, in Western Germany may be able to claim a special spiritual connection with the global COVID-19/coronavirus crisis: The cathedral, one of Europe’s oldest, is said to house the relics of Saint Corona herself. What’s more, Saint Corona is believed to be the patron saint of protection against plague—depending who you ask, that is.

The cathedral, in fact, had begun renewing its focus on Saint Corona more than a year ago, well before the novel virus had emerged as a public health threat. Originally, Aachen Cathedral had planned to put the saint’s golden shrine on public view in the summer of 2020, as part of an exhibit on goldsmithery. Ironically, at a time when believers might be more drawn to Saint Corona than ever, the cathedral may have to postpone the exhibit if the crisis has not abated by summer.

Though public interest in Saint Corona has perked up due to the coronavirus, little is ultimately known about her life—or, for that matter, her remains. According to Catholic Online, it’s believed that she lived during the second century, in Roman-occupied Syria, where Christianity was outlawed. When a Roman soldier named Victor was tortured after the discovery of his secret Christian faith, Corona decided to publicly profess her Christianity in an act of solidarity. In this telling, the Roman judge Sebastian ultimately had both of them executed. Catholic Online suggests that their remains may lie in Anzù, in northern Italy, at the 11th-century Basilica Sanctuary of Saints Victor and Corona (not far from one of the areas hit hardest by the pandemic).

Candida Moss, a theologian at the University of Birmingham, in England, recently tweeted that Saint Corona’s remains are, indeed, in Anzù, rather than Aachen—assuming that Saint Corona had ever lived in the first place. In an email, Moss elaborates on the evidence suggesting Corona is an invented figure: The earliest records mentioning her emerged hundreds of years after her purported death, and the Roman legal system described in her story seems rather anachronistic.

Furthermore, according to Moss, Saint Corona is not one of the historic patron saints of infectious disease, contrary to word that has been spreading in the midst of the COVID-19 outbreak. Indeed, according to Catholic Online, “Corona is invoked in connection with superstitions involving money, such as gambling or treasure hunting.” Other traditions hold that Saint Corona is the protector of lumberjacks, since she was martyred while tied to two trees.

Even if these views of Saint Corona have dominated historically, Moss says it’s possible that different groups have viewed the saint in different ways. “The veneration of saints is a very regional affair,” Moss told Artnet. For example, she cites Saint Edmund—another patron saint against plague—who didn’t become associated with disease until 700 years after his death. The reason, Moss says, was an outbreak of plague in the French city of Toulouse, where Edmund’s relics were held, that caused the city’s residents to pray to him for protection.

Meanwhile, a similarly local understanding of Saint Corona seems to have emerged in the town of Kirchberg am Wechsel, in eastern Austria—home to its own Parish Church of St. Corona (Pfarrkirche St. Corona). A version of the church’s website, captured by the Wayback Machine in 2017 (long before COVID-19), states that “Holy Corona serves as an advocate for requests for steadfastness in faith, for requests against storms and crop failures, for averting epidemics and for requests for help in the small needs of everyday life.” Daniela Lövenich, a spokeswoman for the Aachen Cathedral, also told Artnet that Saint Corona’s association with plague “probably” comes from Kirchberg am Wechsel, not from Aachen or Anzù.

The Pfarrkirche also attempts to clarify some of the confusion surrounding Saint Corona’s remains and their whereabouts. They are, according to the church, divided between Italy and Aachen, where Holy Roman Emperor Otto III delivered some of the relics in 997. Charlemagne is also buried at Aachen Cathedral, a historic coronation site for German kings and queens. (The Pfarrkirche was built much later, in the 17th century, on the site of a statue of Saint Corona that was found in a tree—possibly placed there by the area’s lumberjacks.)

So all along, Saint Corona may have only been associated with disease in one small Austrian town, due to a statue in a tree and a specific confluence of local historical events. With the help of a new disease that takes her name—not to mention the internet—Saint Corona may now well become an international symbol of protection from disease. This is how it’s happened, after all, all the way back to Saint Edmund and beyond.

“Saintly traditions have always grown and developed over time as people call upon local saints for assistance in situations of crisis,” Moss wrote in an email, even if that means the saints already associated with an issue are neglected. (In the case of epidemic, that could be Edmund, Barbara, Aloysius Gonzaga, and Roch). Still, she wrote, it’s “surely a good thing” if people can now find comfort in Saint Corona—“[a]s long as they also self-isolate and don’t think Saint Corona can protect them.”

Is Saint Corona a Guardian Against Epidemics? By Matthew Taub.  Atlas Obscura, March 31, 2020