Methods for counting war deaths developed alongside structural changes in the ways that states enumerated mortality (for both fighters and citizens) between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. This paper argues that an alternative way to interpret observers' comments on the magnitude and novelty of war damages during the Italian Wars (1494-1559) is to trace the history of enumerating mortality from the fourteenth century, using the Hundred Years' War and the Black Death as departure points. Military heralds counted dead soldiers in Northern Europe and civic record keepers registered public mortality in Italy. Numbers carried cultural value. In war, disputants and observers used numbers rhetorically to argue political cases and to emphasize the scale of victories and defeats. By 1500, the proliferation of specific mortality numbers in public discourse--amplified by printed war reporting--forced observers to reckon with their meaning. The article concludes by illustrating how numbers entered memorial culture: monuments from the Italian Wars featured numbers as an index of the perceived magnitude of war in the sixteenth century.
...More
Book
Lorenzo del Panta;
(2021)
Le epidemie nella storia demografica italiana
(/isis/citation/CBB220759092/)
Article
Christophe Poncet;
(2017)
Le triomphe de la vie
(/isis/citation/CBB202886405/)
Article
Carmichael, Ann G.;
(1998)
The last past plague: The uses of memory in Renaissance epidemics
(/isis/citation/CBB000076334/)
Book
Besozzi, Leonida;
(1988)
Le magistrature cittadine milanesi e la peste del 1576-1577
(/isis/citation/CBB000031934/)
Article
Zanette, Laura;
(1990)
Tre predicatori per la peste: 1575-1577
(/isis/citation/CBB000063867/)
Article
Bianchi, Rossella;
(1986)
Franceso Pagni e un'epidemia di peste a Pescia: Il Ms. Ottob. Lat. 2126
(/isis/citation/CBB000032350/)
Article
Carmichael, Ann G.;
(1983)
Plague legislation in the Italian Renaissance
(/isis/citation/CBB000006754/)
Article
Schupbach, William M.;
(1976)
A Venetian “plague miracle” in 1464 and 1576
(/isis/citation/CBB000010670/)
Article
Folco Vaglienti;
(2020)
Pratica anatomica ospedaliera a Milano al tempo di Leonardo
(/isis/citation/CBB042369026/)
Article
Teodoro Katinis;
(2003)
Sulle fonti aristoteliche e platoniche del "Consilio contro la pestilentia" di Ficino
(/isis/citation/CBB667745269/)
Book
Brozzi, Mario;
(1982)
Peste, fede, e sanità in una cronaca cividalese del 1598. Prefazione di Amelio Tagliaferri
(/isis/citation/CBB000050076/)
Article
Patrizia Cincinnati;
(2024)
Ludovico Settala, il protomedico de I promessi sposi. Una nota di storia della medicina
(/isis/citation/CBB147335106/)
Book
Preto, Paolo;
(1978)
Peste e società a Venezia nel 1576
(/isis/citation/CBB000013281/)
Book
Edoardo Pittalis;
(2021)
La Serenissima e le epidemie. Scienza, fede e superstizione: come Venezia affrontò il nemico invisibile
(/isis/citation/CBB615185893/)
Article
Teodoro Katinis;
(2020)
Per la fortuna di Ficino nel Cinquecento: il caso dei Dialoghi sopra le cause della peste universale di Alessandro Puccinelli
(/isis/citation/CBB103154617/)
Article
Marshall, Louise;
(1994)
Manipulating the sacred: Image and plague in Renaissance Italy
(/isis/citation/CBB000038582/)
Thesis
Palmer, R.;
()
The control of plague in Venice and Northern Italy, 1348-1600
(/isis/citation/CBB000007210/)
Book
Cohn, Samuel K., Jr.;
(1992)
The cult of remembrance and the Black Death: Six Renaissance cities in central Italy
(/isis/citation/CBB000034220/)
Book
Carmichael, Ann G.;
(1986)
Plague and the poor in Renaissance Florence
(/isis/citation/CBB000063623/)
Book
Lopez, Pasquale;
(1989)
Napoli e la peste, 1464-1530: Politica, istituzioni, problemi sanitari
(/isis/citation/CBB000059603/)
Be the first to comment!