Hagiographie et pandémie : analyse de la vie de Saint Roch

The Black Death that ravaged Europe in the second half of the 14th century inspired
much Middle Ages to think about explaining the trigger for the disease, but all accounts
coincide on an underlying rationale: the divine anger falling on Men. The field of
art echoes the trauma caused by the pandemic to populations and the fear that leads to
extreme behaviour (flagellants, dance of death, expiatory processions, etc.). Literature does
not fail to stage the plague either, as evidenced by the Decameron, which in its first pages
describes the plague which is reaching the West through Italy. The hagiography, in turn,
and specifically the genre of the Lives of Saints, becomes a significant source of information
on the description and repercussions of the disease in Europe. Thus, in this contribution we
propose to analyse La Vie et légende de monseigneur saint Roch, a French incunable of Jehan
Phelipot published in 1494, which went through three editions, in order to see how in the
hagiographic text Roch’s ascent to holiness revolves around the theme of the plague disease
and how the text becomes a source of information on the pandemic and its consequences.