Imagine this: a pandemic strikes. Waves of deadly contagion decimate the community. After months of hopes and false alarms, the outbreak finally subsides.
Sound familiar? Actually, I’m talking about Venice, ravaged by over seventy plague epidemics from the 1300s to 1600s.
After the contagion and deaths end, survivors must decide how to cope. Some lament their losses, others celebrate the return to a new normal life, yet others may find ways to prosper from adversity.
What can we learnfrom Venice’s story?
During or after five distinct episodes of the Plague, Venice’s leaders or private citizens commissioned a new church, either pleading with God to stop an epidemic or thanking God for ending it.
While I don’t advocate bargaining with God, I’m intrigued with the concept of creating something physical to remember significant events. Centuries after these churches were built, they bring to mind the suffering endured by so many, as well as the joy when tragic events ceased, and offer inspiration and beauty to generations of visitors.
Currently, we can’t visit those churches, but we’ll share a view and brief mention of each (from oldest to newest). Enjoy your tour!
San Sebastiano (Venice) Facade; By Didier Descouens – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26195762
In 1468, an older building was converted into a church dedicated to Saint Sebastian, who survived martyrdom by the wounds of arrows, but was later clubbed to death. He was one of the chief patrons against plague and pestilence in Europe.
San Giobbe Church, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
The Church of San Giobbe was named for the Old Testament Saint Job, due to his many sufferings and hoped-for efficacy against the plague. Construction began in 1450 under architect Antonio Gambello and, after a pause of twenty years, was completed by Pietro Lombardo, with funding from Doge (Leader) Cristoforo Moro. It was finally consecrated in 1493.
Church of San Rocco, Venice
Saint Rocco was renowned for being cured miraculously of a plague bubo that he acquired while attending plague patients. In 1485, Venetians stole his body from Montpelier, France, and brought it to the Church of the Brotherhood in Venice. The guild that built the church was overjoyed because they attended to the sick and plague-stricken.
Chiesa del Redentore (Church of the Redeemer), Venice
In 1577, at the end of two years of deadly plague, Venice’s Senate and the Doge ordered the construction of a grand new church, Chiesa del Redentore (Redeemer), designed by the Veneto’s premier architect, Andrea Palladio, to thank God for sparing the fortunate two-thirds of its population.
Santa Maria della Salute Church, Venice
In 1630, Plague struck Venice again. The Doge and the Patriarch vowed to build a church, Santa Maria della Salute, in honor of the Virgin Mary, and asked for her help to end the plague. Within a week, the epidemic was over. Architect Baldassarre Longhena won a competition and designed the church.
To learn more about Venice’s “votive/plague” churches, see:
Compassion, cruelty, or escape? Why do people act in such different ways when confronted with threats of contagious disease? Ignorance of a disease’s cause sometimes led to extreme reactions. Spiritual beliefs also played a role. Both Catholic and Protestant traditions reveal merciful as well as cruel responses. We’ll look back over the centuries and suggest novels and nonfiction that dive deeper.
LEPROSY
Before and after the plague, leprosy was a much-feared contagious and often fatal bacterial nerve disease for thousands of years.
Disfiguring symptoms (rash-like skin patches and loss of extremities due to inability to feel pain) meant people afflicted with leprosy were shunned and often forced to live in leper colonies.
Most people avoided lepers, but not these heroes:
Francis of Assisi and followers caring for lepers, artist unknown
Francis of Assisi—(1181-1226) was a rich young man who abandoned his life of luxury for a life of poverty devoted to living like Jesus, preaching and serving people. Although he had felt a long-standing revulsion, he not only gave lepers coins for food, but also embraced them. Evidence suggests he may have contracted leprosy from these contacts.
Father Damien in Molokai
Father Damian—(1840-1889) was a Catholic priest who ministered to lepers’ physical, spiritual. and emotional needs on the Hawaiian island of Moloka’i, where the state ordered them to live in isolation. He lived there for eleven years and contracted the disease himself. He continued his work on Moloka’i and died six years later.
Read about them:
Saint Francis of Assisi, biography by G.K. Chesterton
Moloka’i, historical novel by Alan Brennert
Or watch: Brother Sun, Sister Moon (popular 1972 movie about life of Francis)
PLAGUES (beginning in the mid-1300s):
Loading plague victims onto a cart
“The mystery of the contagion was ‘the most terrible of all the terrors,'” author Barbara Tuchman wrote about the Black Death (Bubonic Plague) of the 14th century, in her novel, A Distant Mirror:The Calamitous 14th Century.
Because people didn’t understand the causes of the plague, Christian men and women known as flagellants wandered through town and countryside flogging themselves, trying to atone for the world’s evil. They believed this might persuade God to end the plague.
Others scapegoated Jews, believing they had caused the plague by poisoning water. As was common through the centuries, people turned to violence, expulsions and massacres against their Jewish neighbors (including burning to death nearly two hundred Jews in Strasbourg in 1349).
Yet others sacrificed their lives to care for the sick, such as in Wittenberg, Saxony, in 1527:
The plague arrived in the town of Wittenberg, where Martin Luther taught and lived, in August, 1527. Then:
The university shut down.
Many students and professors fled.
Luther’s patron, the Elector of Saxony, ordered Luther to leave.
Luther refused, insisting he needed to stay to minister to the townspeople.
Luther and his wife, Katharina, opened their home to shelter and treat plague victims.
Luther’s own son became ill, but survived.
Read about it:
Decameron—written during Italian Renaissance, characters escape the Plague by retreating to a villa in the Italian countryside to wait out the end of the plague
A Distant Mirror,by Barbara Tuchman (novel, mentioned above)
Katharina Fortitude, by Margaret Skea—novel about Katharina von Bora’s marriage and life with Martin Luther, including the time of Plague
The Reformation of Suffering: Pastoral Theology and Lay Piety in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany, by Ronald K. Rittgers—(nonfiction) scholarly examination of responses to the plague and other suffering
Plague in 17th-Century England:
Plague arrived in London in Spring, 1665.
Theaters, Oxford and Cambridge Universities were closed.
In 1666, King Charles II commanded an end to all public gatherings.
Many wealthy Londoners fled to the countryside to escape infection.
In London, the sick and those in their households were quarantined, with the government supplying their food.
Read about it:
Samuel Pepys’ diary: (nonfiction) his entries from Spring,1665-1666 chronicled London’s bubonic plague epidemic
A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe—Over 50 years after the epidemic, Defoe drew upon historical documents to write this realistic novel about the plague’s effects on London.
The Weight of Ink, by Rachel Kadish—a fascinating time-split novel set partly in 17th-century London at the time of the Plague
Year of Wonder, by Geraldine Brooks. Fictionalized account of how a town in the English countryside isolated itself to prevent the spread of the Plague
EPIDEMICS IN THE HABSBURG EMPIRE:
In 1710, Emperor Joseph I attempted to isolate his territories from the spread of disease
He created a “sanitary cordon” several miles deep along the thousand-mile-long southern border with the Ottoman Empire.
He died of smallpox the following year, in spite of his efforts.
