Historians and plagues in pre-industrial Italy over the longue durée

This essay deals with plague and plagues in renaissance and early modern Europe over the longue durée, principally from a methodological perspective. I shall combine an historiographical approach with an historical account of developing reactions to plague and in passing compare measures to cope in the early sixteenth century with reactions to the impact of the Great Pox or the Mal de Naples. I shall concentrate on southern Europe and in particular on Italy and my aim is to re-assess the historiography of plague through the lens of some of the more recent Anglo-Saxon literature in this field. In the process I shall outline some of the debates within the field and end with some general methodological observations drawn from early modern Italy.