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Vendor
C.H.BECK
Susanne Simor
Original language
German
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The Power of the Epidemic

Volker Reinhardt

How the Great Plague changed the World 1347-1353

The Great Plague of 1348 was one of the most drastic events in European history. Volker Reinhardt reconstructs the course of the epidemic from its beginnings in Asia to its temporary extinction in Europe and sheds light on the different conditions in selected cities.

When the plague approached in spring 1348, the Milanese ruler Luchino Visconti had the city completely isolated. Sick people were walled in as a precaution. Milan was thus the only city in Italy to be spared. Volker Reinhardt has reviewed all the sources on the Great Plague. He shows how the supposed European conflagration was a sum of local dramas which people coped with in very different ways: through political upheavals, persecution of minorities, restoration of old conditions or even praise of the tyrannis à la Milan.