Plague Spreaders: Political Conspirators and Agents of the Devil. A Study of Popular Belief in 17th-Century Milan

This dissertation focuses on the broader questions regarding the response to natural calamities in the early modern period and on the popular reception of plague literature. The point of entry for my research is the plague outbreak of 1630 and in particular a curious phenomenon that took place in Milan, Italy. A belief begun spreading that people assisted by demons were using a poisonous concoction to spread the plague. The episode became a cause célèbre thanks to Alessandro Manzoni who told the story of the plague-spreaders to criticize the faulty judicial system which tried and executed the plague spreaders based on superstitious beliefs rather than reason. The little scholarship available on the topic has often conflated the events of 1630 with witchcraft. In my dissertation, I contend that the phenomenon of plague spreading exemplifies the synthesis of complex popular beliefs that characterized the Milanese “Seicento”, and contemporaries did not perceive it simply as a form of witchcraft. I join the revisionist effort of the last forty years that has tried to bring light to the history of Milan during a century that, until the 1980’s, was labeled as a culturally “dark” period of Spanish domination, and for this reason neglected