In "Faith, Reason and the Plague in Seventeenth-Century Tuscany", Carlo M. Cipolla traces the relentless progress of the plague in Tuscany, then a highly developed region of Western Europe. As fear eventually lapsed into hysteria when confronted with death and widespread illness, the plague no doubt brought abrupt changes to religion and one's faith in the Almighty. The paper shows that, consequently, the idealized selfless image of the faithful and religious suffered during and after the plague. With economic and social tensions collapsing before one's very eyes with the advent of the disease, it was not uncommon for one to ponder how could God allow such an affliction to persist. Was the plague an evil made necessary by inescapable evolution, or perhaps a tragic accident at variance with the normal advance of events? The paper explores answers to this question, and others.
From the Paper:
"Like the "Black Death" plague of the 14th century, the plague in the 17th century invoked a number of people to question their own faith and trust in a higher being. It must be stressed, however, that while confidence in the institutional churches may have waned due to the a self-centered, greedy image painted of the clergy, faith in Christ/God did not evaporate as one might expect. Rather, the imminence of death, brought closer than every by plague, made the need for salvation more pressing. One consequence was the spread of mysticism and lay piety. Mystics believed that God lived in every individual and that His presence was felt in proportion to one's ability to suppress intrinsic material and sensual inclinations and subject one's will to that of God."
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