Los Grans Mals: Disasters and Civic Life in the Late Medieval Midi

Forman, Brian

doi:https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-c2c8-e373

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Los Grans Mals: Disasters and Civic Life in the Late Medieval Midi

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“Los Grans Mals: Disasters and Civic Life in the Late Medieval Midi” examines the many catastrophes that struck the cities of Marseille and Montpellier during the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. During this era, southern Europe witnessed increasingly frequent episodes of natural disasters due in part to the Little Ice Age, a period of climate change. Using letters, town council deliberations, and chronicles, this project compares municipal responses to floods, drought, famine, and plague. This approach reveals the links between disaster responses and the common good, or what was termed as res publica in period sources. The common good was invoked for policies which sought to manage the well-being of the entire community, including public health, infrastructure, commercial activity, and local religious affairs. This dissertation argues that city governments took control over the management of the common good in direct response to the increased frequency of disasters during this era. After each disaster, sources either directly cite the res publica of the commune or highlight the increasing municipal control over its administration. This terminology allowed both cities to imagine themselves as the embodiment of the common good when they organized disaster responses. “Los Grans Mals” also argues that Marseille and Montpellier favored actions that ritualized civic life and built local identity through collective practices. These responses explicitly sought to protect the community and create the bonds necessary for resilience, or the capacity to absorb external shocks and crises. Using these rituals outside of their ordinary liturgical context also generated community resilience by symbolically unifying the city through familiar actions and practices. Consequently, this dissertation illustrates how late medieval cities coped with the era’s challenges, offering a story of resilience rather than decline.

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