Malaria and Rome: A History of Malaria in Ancient Italy, Robert Sallares [reading a book TXT] 📗

rejected the lectio difficilior. The inscription CIL 12.3129 is a dedication to quartan fever in the third century  from Nemausus in Gallia Narbonensis ( quartanae votum reddet libens merito Byrria Sev-erilla).

¹²⁸ Dobson (1997: 304–6); Pryor (1991: 130); Cameron (1993: 10, 54–5) described malaria as common in Anglo-Saxon England; the lencten-ádl of Old English texts probably signified spring relapses of P. vivax malaria, according to Bonser (1963: 403–5); Darby (1983: 52, 95, 107, 112, 146, 150–2, 176) on malaria in the East Anglian fens and its disappearance in the nineteenth century; Nicholls (2000).

¹²⁹ Pliny, NH 31.8.12.

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since he emphasizes that he had quotidian fevers. The timing of one episode of fever, after Easter 801, sounds like a typical spring relapse of vivax malaria, but it is possible that he contracted falciparum malaria as well in Rome.¹³⁰ There were undoubtedly other such individuals, since Bede and Paulus Diaconus both commented on the popularity among the Anglo-Saxons of pilgrimages to Rome in the early medieval period.¹³¹ More than one Anglo-Saxon king died in Rome. Bede related the story of the miracle of a young boy who was cured of a long-running intermittent fever by standing on the tomb of St. Oswald, king of Northumbria (633–642), at Bardney Abbey in Lincolnshire. This text constitutes some direct evidence for malaria in England c. 700 (at that time in the same monastery a little boy was severely affected by a prolonged fever. One day he was awaiting the hour of the attack,when one of the brothers entered and said to him: ‘my son, shall I teach you how to cure yourself from the trouble of this debilitating disease? Get up, enter the church, and go to Oswald’s tomb, remain there, stay quiet and remain by the tomb. Make sure that you don’t leave the church, or move from the spot, until the hour when your fever is scheduled to leave you. Then I will enter the church, and lead you away.’ The boy followed the brother’s instructions. While he sat by the tomb of the saint the disease never dared to touch him; indeed it was so terrified that it flew away, and did not dare to touch him on the second day, or the third day, or ever again.’)¹³²

¹³⁰ e.g. febrium flagellatione . . . remanet cotidianus labor eiusdem castigationis; tamen febrium castigatio cotidianis diebus nos non reliquit (By the lashing of fevers . . . the daily labour of the very same chastisement continues; the daily chastisement of fevers does not leave me.) Alcuin, Epistolae 218, 221, ed. Duemmler (1895), Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Epistolae, iv. 362, 365, cf. Epistolae 146, febris et infirmitas me fatigatum habet (fever and weakness keep me tired), and 149 ( febric-itantem); Gaskoin (1904: 99, 110, and 124). Peter of Blois is another example of a person who returned to northern Europe after contracting malaria in Italy. He developed semitertian fever in Sicily in  1169, was treated at Salerno, and then returned home with a detailed knowledge of malaria to the Loire valley region of France, where in a letter to his friend Peter medicus written c. 1170–5 he described another case of semitertian fever in the knight Geldewin, which may also have been imported—Peter of Blois, Letter 43, discussed by Holmes and Weedon (1962).

¹³¹ Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, 5.7, ed. Plummer (1896); Paulus Diaconus 6.37.

¹³² Bede, HE iii.12: tempore fuit in eodem monasterio puerulus quidam longo febrium incommodo graviter vexatus: qui cum die quodam sollicitus horam accessionis exspectaret, ingressus ad eum quidam de fratribus: ‘Vis,’ inquit, ‘mi nate, doceam te quomodo cureris ab huius molestia languoris? Surge, ingredere ecclesiam, et accedens ad sepulcrum Osualdi, ibi reside, et quietus manens adhaere tumbae. Vide ne exeas inde, nec de loco movearis, donec hora recessionis febrium transierit. Tunc ipse intrabo, et educam te inde.’ Fecit ut ille suaserat, sedentemque ad tumbam sancti, infirmitas tangere nequaquam praesumpsit; quin in tantum timens aufugit, ut nec secunda die, nec tertia, neque umquam exinde eum auderet contingere.

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In the late medieval period there continued to be regular contact between England and Rome. The resident English community in Rome suffered from malaria there as well as the numerous pilgrims, the so-called Romipetae. Gervase, a monk in Canterbury, described a severe epidemic of ‘bad air’ in Rome in  1188. It badly affected both visitors from England and the Roman cardinals who were patrons of the Canterbury church. It started its ravages in July, but continued to claim victims as late as October in that particular year. (‘For a terrible epidemic, arising from the excessive heat of summer and atmospheric conditions which appeared after the festival of St John the Baptist, devastated the Roman people to such an extent, and especially foreign visitors, that several thousand of the clerics and people died. Indeed the cardinals who were the patrons of the Canterbury church were killed by this abomin-able pestilence, as well as five monks who were companions of the prior and many of the servants. All the others were so ill that no one was able to pass on a drink of cold water to anyone else. However the prior Honorius, who was already on the point of death, was taken, through the good offices of the bishop of Ostia, to a mountainous location in the province of Velletri so that he could be cured by breathing purer air. Nevertheless that execrable poison of bad air, now occupying his vital organs, finally killed him on 21

October . . . Other monks, who had died in July, were buried in various churches.’)¹³³ A noted English doctor, Hugh of Evesham, was elevated to the status of cardinal of San Lorenzo in Lucina by Pope Martin IV (1281–5) to protect him from malaria, but Hugh himself died from Roman fever.¹³⁴ In view of these contacts it is ¹³³ The historical