The Moral Economy of Epidemics: Emergency, Charitable Institutions and Poor Relief in Early Modern Italian Plague Regulations

Lorenzo Coccoli ()
Additional contact information
Lorenzo Coccoli: Università degli Studi dell’Insubria

Chapter Chapter 7 in Reassessing the Moral Economy, 2023, pp 137-154 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract While scholars of medieval and early modern epidemics have mostly focused on the repressive measures deployed by authorities in order to hold marginal sectors of society in check, these were not the only way in which the powerful interacted with the lower sorts. In fact, something like a welfare system of extraordinary relief provisions was often implemented, going from simple almsgivings to the granting of special rights to the poor. The logic behind it was inspired by what I propose to style “the moral economy of epidemics”, i.e., a set of mainly religious but also legal, economic and medical values, somehow shared between the rulers and the ruled, and which, to some extent at least, compelled the former to help the latter in time of epidemic distress. Using the experiences of early modern Italian cities as a case study, I start with a methodological discussion of E. P. Thompson’s notion and its range of applicability; I then list some of the most relevant forms of aid authorities granted to the hardest-hit sections of the population; finally, I proceed to disentangle the different and sometimes conflicting values that explicitly or implicitly underlay these policies, while also allowing their recipients some room for agency.

Keywords: Epidemics; Social history; Charitable Institutions; Poor relief (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palscp:978-3-031-29834-9_6

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9783031298349

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-29834-9_6

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Studies in Economic History from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().