Abstract

In her authoritative collection of contemporary sources on the Black Death, Rosemary Horrox subdivided the part dedicated to 'explanations and responses' in three sections: 'The religious response', 'Scientific explanation', and 'Human agency'.2 Even if there are overlaps between these categories, they offer explicit or implicit explanations of pestilence and suggest adequate responses to it in different terms. Documents in the first are centered on God's anger and punishment for human sins, those in the second on natural mechanisms not immediately dependent on God's will, while those in the third on alleged conspiracies and secret machinations of the Jews. If we look at the...