Epidemics remain in our soul

Plague, disasters from the east and arrows poisoned by germs have always been talked about. Three thousand and more years ago it was Apollo who threw them on the Greeks committed to besieging Troy (we are talking about the Iliad). And Apollo sided with the eastern Trojans; on the other hand, his twin ancestor, a certain Aplu, was the deity of the plague even further east, in Anatolia, and even further back in the years: among the Hittites, about 5000 years ago. People died of plague in Athens, as told by Thucydides, in Rome (166 AD) and Byzantium (541 AD). But who knows what disease it was, certainly contagious infections but which germs it was it is difficult to say. Up over the centuries, following the traces of the infections, of the fear for those who transmit them, of the political consequences they left as an inheritance. But the ideas cleared up in 1348, the year of demarcation between yesterday and today of the epidemics. The black plague. Which leaves indelible traces in our imagination, such as to be the scaffolding of our public, but also internal, discourse on Covid. Because? We asked one of the greatest Italian historians, Adriano Prosperi, professor emeritus at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa and member of the Accademia dei Lincei.

Professor, let’s start with the black plague. Why was it so dramatic that it became an archetype in medical history and imagery?

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Such a long cycle leaves an indelible legacy. Through which channels?

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Epidemics shape the medical imagination, and what traces do they leave on social systems?

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Only social disintegration?

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Is there a parallel between the need to control epidemics and the public hand on health?

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Returning to the infectors, to the evil that is brought from outside. In the global village today: who are the greasers?

< Con la peste come con la guerra la prima cosa che muore è la verità. Sappiamo però, che la liberal-democrazia garantisce ancora il controllo della salute e i diritti dei cittadini. Ma si fanno strada fantasie assurde come quella dello stato di eccezione. E siamo davanti a quello che accade regolarmente: le esclusioni, le chiusure, l’assalto ai forni, la repressione l’esercito nelle città…>

It is difficult to understand how certain mechanisms can remain, always the same through the centuries, but which surprise us every time. How is it possible?

Yet in our imagination, the symbols persist through the centuries.

Palermo and dated 1461. This imagery became fixed then and does not promise to change. We are not fully aware of it, but it is always ready to reappear, as the reaction of defense, of closure, of fear is always ready to reappear. What has changed is the awareness of the causes: we no longer believe that the miasma in the air is guilty or that there is an evil will of a human group linked to the devil. We no longer have a religious image on the subject. Today the pope appears alone alone. To strike the suggestion. He no longer hopes that holy water can drive back the plague. Ideas and feelings are refined, but it remains necessary to resort to that heritage of images, words that are the cultural result, that baggage which, by its nature, is made to last>.

However, the Crucifix of Miracles was brought to St. Peter’s, which is attributed to the defeat of the plague that struck Rome in 1500.

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