'Pareva Milano fosse diventata un cielo'. Politics and urban narration during the Plague of Saint Charles

Abstract

The 1576 Plague of Milan was an experience of crucial importance in the life of Carlo Borromeo, whose tireless efforts to implement the policies of the Council of Trent found a golden opportunity for the redevelopment of his city in the catastrophic circumstances it was enduring. Bearing witness to it all were the voices of the chroniclers of the time, in their plain and direct writing style: allowing, on the one hand, to reconstruct the Saint’s work in its progress; and, on the other hand, to observe the new narrative strategies of the urban universe at the height of the plague. By taking a look at one such chronicle, i.e. Paolo Bisciola’s Relazione verissima della Peste di Milano, the present study aims at giving a taste of the ways in which contemporaries wrote of the renovation Milan’s urban landscape in the wake of catastrophe.