Plague: Venice

Document in Italian containing an account of a miraculous cure of the plague at the monastery of Santa Croce in Venice, on 8 July 1464.

Incipit: NEL nome del Signor nostro Iesu Christo e de vergene Maria, e del Glorioso / martire sancto Sebastiano. Del mille quao sessanta quatro. Adi otto Lug[l]io si ha / uendo piaciuto al signor Dio di visitar il Monasterio nostro di santa Croce in la çudeca / di pestilencia ...; Explicit: … e lo dette fuori per la ruoda e questo si parti.

The text describes the apparition on 8 July 1464 of a knight ('Cavalier' on line 8), wearing a black velvet suit and carrying a sword, at the door of the monastery stricken by the plague, and how he cured the afflicted by advising them to pray and fast, and granted them immunity from future outbreaks of the plague.

The text, badly worn in many places and partly illegible, is similar but not identical to that transcribed from a similarly framed parchment document, if not the same document, found at the convent by an anonymous eighteenth-century writer who published it in Memorie della vita della B. Eufemia Giustiniani monaca benedettina ed abbadessa in Santa Croce della Giudecca dedicate alle Venete dame (Venice, 1788), pp. 100-102.

During another outbreak of the plague in 1576, the legend was revived and amplified by the claim that water from the monastery's well would confer immunity from plague. A version of the present text was printed and circulated as a broadsheet and a great many people from the mainland went to the monastery to drink the miraculous water.

The monastery was suppressed in 1806 and its possessions dispersed.

Single leaf. 410 x 305 mm. On parchment. Damaged, with five large lacunas in the parchment causing loss of text; parts of the text badly rubbed, occasionally retraced by a later hand. Writing area 353 x c. 300 mm, ruled with a lead point for single vertical bounding lines and 36 horizontal lines for 35 written lines. Large uneven round semi-Gothic script in dark brown ink. The parchment sheet was formerly nailed to and probably displayed in a frame for display, as suggested by the paler edges with traces of nail-holes all around.

Date of acquisition and provenance unknown (retrieved from storage in April 1936).

Catalogue description modified in 2016. For original description, see S.A.J. Moorat, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts on Medicine and Science in the Wellcome Historical Medical Library, vol. II, MSS. written after 1650 A.D. N-Z, with Indexes, Appendix, and Supplement to Volume I (London: Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 1973), Supplement, p. 1477, no. 808A.

Early ownership unknown. Eighteenth- or nineteenth-century marks "4/86" and "V=896" on verso are now concealed under a newly supplied paper lining.