La deuxième pandémie de peste

The second plague pandemic: origins and narrative memory

Research seminar 

ON-LINE
22nd May 2024
Universitat de Lleida

In volumes over the year 2022, the journal Past & Present hosted a lively debate on the origin of the Black Death as a result of the discoveries made in recent years in the field of Palaeogenetics. It is in this field, centred, to a large extent, on the discussion of the findings of genetic material of Yersinia pestis in late medieval burials, where the greatest renewal has taken place on a crucial issue: the starting point and the successive outbreaks of the so-called Second Plague Pandemic. This has made it necessary to adjust the chronological sequence that marks the history of the bacteria with that of the demographic, social and economic effects caused by the epidemic outbreaks, which had been documented through archival and archaeological sources.
Apart from all the questions raised by the origins of the plague, other avenues of exploration remain open around what is considered to be the main epidemic crisis of the past. Was the outbreak of the years 1347-1351 the beginning of the construction of a narrative memory of the epidemics and the mortality crises they caused? How has this narrative memory conditioned modern historiography on the plague? What were the later episodes most often described in sources produced by various institutions and in what terms were they collected?
In a broad scenario with the whole of the Eurasian continent and more specific approaches to privileged observatories of the Mediterranean, the city of Montpellier and the western territories of the Crown of Aragon, the aim will be to provide answers to these questions. Given the complexity of the phenomenon, this will be done from a combination of disciplines and perspectives ranging from Palaeogenetics and Archaeology to textual criticism.

16:00 Introduction

16:15 Monica H. Green (Independent Scholar)
Why we are still debating the “Origin” of the Black Death?
 

17:00 Geneviève Dumas (Université de Sherbrooke, Québec)
Climate and the Plague in Early Modern Montpellier
 

17:45 Albert Reixach Sala (Universitat de Lleida)
The register of epidemics in the narrative sources of the Crown of Aragon (mid-13th century to end of 16th century)

Scientific coordinators:
Pere Benito i Monclús (UdL)
Albert Reixach Sala (UdL)
Antoni Riera i Melis (IEC)
María José Vilalta i Escobar (UdL)
Information and link to the session:
albert.reixach@udl.cat