The Great Pox. The French Disease in Renaissance Europe

Abstract

The great pox-a loathsome disease, often transmitted venereally, characterized by sores and great pain-appeared suddenly and virulently in Europe in the last decade of the fifteenth century.Its arrival in Italy coincided with the French invasion of the peninsula, giving rise to its most common name (at least outside of France), "the French Disease."Modern scholars associate it with syphilis, but the authors of this new study on the impact of the disease on Europe choose to restrict themselves to the terms commonly used in the sixteenth century.Their choice of terminology is the signal of a new approach.The authors do not study syphilis itself as a biological entity (the traditional approach), but rather the phenomenon of "the French Disease," that is, the reception of the disease by Renaissance Europe-the social, cultural, and especially intellectual reaction to it.

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