On one of our walks we do in the summer we usually stop off at this little shrine, just away from the track down a field, the walks are upbeat, hopefully everyone is happy, seeing the lake and stunning scenery, walking through the woods, looking forward to a good lunch. Then we stop at the Gesòò dei mort, stepping down the field we arrive at a small chapel, quite pretty, then we sit down on the wall. The birds sing, the crickets make that strange noise and bees buzz around, it is so peaceful, however it once wasn’t. The chapel is dedicated to the bones of the people who died in the plague of 1630, in the chapel are their bones, dug up from the field, people who were buried in a hurry by an already tiny population terrified of more deaths. Usually my guests are shocked to see skulls and bones laid out on display, the more northern guests are not used to this for them it is a bit macabre, however in Italy we often see bones laid out, a poignant reminder where we are going eventually. I cannot remember how many people died, i think about 14, It’s incredible to think that this small frazione above Vercana lost so many people to the plague, up in the middle of nowhere? How did the plague arrive at such a small place, surely it wasn’t visited by foreigners or many travellers?
It’s easy to underestimate trade and travel centuries ago, we tend to think of modern day globalism and forget that trade routes are centuries old. From the ancient Silk Routes into Venice, Genova and other ports the trade expanded out and around italy and into other parts of Europe, these ports became rich and many different routes were created to ship goods. The plague is thought to have first entered Europe via merchant ships from Genova who were in the port of Kaffa in the crimea in 1347, the city was surrounded by Tartar armies who were already infected by the plague, they were said to have thrown their dead over the walls of the city hoping the smell would kill the inhabitants (People believed in the Miasma, infection by bad air, its where the origins of the word malaria comes from, literally Bad air). The genovese fled the city taking with them an uninvited party, the plague rats which were hosting the fleas, they headed to Sicily and then the mainland where the plague could spread around and down trade routes into other parts of Europe. Like the Coronavirus it started mainly in Italy and then worked its way around europe, the plague had periods where it would go and then come back until about the 1660’s.
Around here we have plenty of these trade routes. Up the Valtellina valley above lake Como, there is Morbegno, (well worth visiting) the town where the Via Priula arrives, this was the ‘main road’ over the mountains, built in the late 1500’s it went to Bergamo and eventually led to Venice and was an important part of the trading routes around northern Italy. Going over a pass of nearly 2000 meters the cobbled road opened up the route into the Vùaltellina valley and then onto the Engiadina valley and the Grigione. Obviously trade was important to necessitate the effort of building this road, its now a lovely walk which can take you all the way to Bergamo!
The lake itself was an important route for not only trade but also for pilgrims up the side of the lake and then through into Switzerland, from the Po to the Rhine valleys, our Via Regina dates back to Roman times…, many more people travelled than we realise. With this influx of people it was inevitable that more than just goods and money arrived. The main roads were mule tracks, not along the lake front but higher up, passing through the villages, maybe exchanging, selling or buying goods on the way, maybe selling something with a flea hiding somewhere, ready to bite and infect some unknowing person.
Ok I know Coronavirus is not the Plague or the Black Death, that was caused by bacterium Yersinia pestis, and was unimaginably horrible, the Corona virus doesn’t kill 100% of the people like the pneumonic or septisemic plague (bubonic killed 50 %), it is supposed to be 3% (although I’m sure it feels like much more to the people in Bergamo watching the army lorries taking the bodies of their loved ones away). However there are similarities: both come from the east, both come from an animal host at the start (infected fleas fed on rats which were always around where humans lived, when the rats died the flea then moved to the nearest hosts i.e humans) afterwards the plague was spread both by fleas and also via droplets in the air when an infected person sneezed. After the supposed jump from bats to humans the coronavirus now spreads just from human to human. Both were spread by Globalism, Genovese and Venetian merchants and the mongol empire with the silk trade bringing the plague into Europe, it travelling around bound up in the cloth, on people, on the animals, whereas the coronavirus has spread via people moving around both for work and for pleasure. One awful thing that they have in common is that both have so far created some horrible incidents of racism & xenophobia, pogroms in medieval Europe, modern incidents of anti chinese feeling and of course it is even being used by some so called politicians to create ever more divisions in our societies, saying its a foreign or Chinese virus,
Another problem which is very similar to the times of the plague is that workers would run away from the big towns to escape the plague taking with them the infection, as sadly has happened in Italy now, the exodus of people from the north down to their homes, understandably wanting to be with families, took with them also the coronavirus.
With the plague many of the richer people escaped to their country estates and were the cause of many deaths around their estates, nowadays the problem of people moving around in the Lombardy area has become so bad that the government have put a ban on people going to their second homes, many people have a house in the mountains or in the countryside and in avoiding spending the lockdown in the city have taken the infection with them to the other areas. They are now forbidden to stay there and must go back to their main residence.
During the plague many villages closed the paths into their lands, pulling down bridges, destroying walkways and putting guards on the entrances and exits into the land, refusing people from infected areas, now this is on a larger scale, with many countries closing their borders, doing checks, not allowing people from certain areas to enter. It is understandable this urge to protect your people. Even yesterday coming down to the lake from Livigno (we didn’t want to but we now we had to transfer down) we had to have our forms saying why and where we were going, we were stopped at the customs point, questioned about what our reasons were for travelling and so on, then on the way down we could have been questioned by the many people who were stationed on the roads, protecting the roads up to the touristic areas where people have second homes.
On the way down from Livigno we passed people on the roads (not many) but everyone had face masks, gloves, this reminded me of the nosegays and hankies people had during the plague periods, well to do people would have a bunch of aromatic flowers and herbs to hold under their nose to avoid the Miasma reaching them, even the word Quarantine has Venezian origins, quarantena, it meant the 40 days that the sailors and goods would wait on a boat before being allow to disembark during the 14-15c plague period.
I wonder if we are all going to become a little more suspicious of other people, like during the plague with outsiders coming into a village maybe we will start looking at other with different eyes, i hope not, i hope that like the plague out of this awful experience there will be some kind of benefit. Sounds a bit weird i know but although the plague was appalling, the Black Death in 1340s killed over 20 million people, just under 1/3 of the population and the other plagues which followed were not far behind but strangely enough there were benefits afterwards, it was a catalyst which made the world change much quicker.
Firstly the lack of people to work the land meant that people were free to look for work and did not have to stay in serfdom, tied to the lords land, leaving your area work was much easier to find with good wages.
In the world of medicine due to the failure to find a cure for the plagues medicine became less theoretical and more practical, hospitals stopped being somewhere just to keep ill people and started being centres to cure illnesses, some even starting to specialise in specific illnesses.
Another strange benefit was the use of the vernacular, the local language; basically because so many priests and monks died there was not so many people to write in Latin, this had been the main language used for books, so people started to write in their own language, Boccaccio in Italian and in England the death of many of the french speaking elite meant french stopped being the main language and English started to take over.
The rise of humanism was also a result of the Black Death, with the rise of a urban educated middle class people started to think more about their existence, they started questioning religious doctrine, before the church controlled all aspects of a persons life,. After the plague many people lost faith in the church and started looking inwardly for answers, this lead to questions about their existence thinking more about this life and not an afterlife. This lead to the flowering of thought, art, literature of the renaissance and also after later plagues to the reformation.
I don’t know if there will be any good things that come out of this virus,. I hope that something will be positive, not just all negative. Time will tell.
Sorry if this was a bit long, I think I got carried away! I enjoyed doing it though and I hope that you enjoy reading it.
Villa Tres jolie 