Urban bodies : metamorphosis and contamination

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In the introduction to the first day of the Decameron, two pigs are reported to have been contaminated by the rags of a plague victim. Based on a micro-reading of this scene, the lecture proposes a political anthropology of the metamorphoses and contaminations of the urban body in times of plague. It leads both to a symbolic reflection on Christian identity confronted with Jewish otherness, and to a functional analysis of urban policies to defend the community against all types of pollution and contagion.

The two plague-sick pigs: a prodigy in the Decameron
Maravigliosa cosa è a udire quello che io debbo dire : the plague as an overflow, Boccaccio and his "investigation into the resistible " (Anna Fontes Baratto, ""Miscellaneous" of what? Le fait divers dans le Decameron ", Arzanà, 15, 2012)
Secondo il loro costume: species barriers and bestiality
L'ours, le singe et le cochon: trois manières de ressembler à l'homme (Michel Pastoureau, Le roi tué par un cochon, 2015)
Porcus, corpus : when the impure beast is "another thing" (davar aber)
Identity and prohibition: assimilating the other to what he forbids himself to eat (Pierre Birnbaum, La République et le Cochon, 2013)
The metamorphosis of Jewish children and the imaginary of impure blood (Claudine Fabre-Vassus, La Bête singulière. Jews, Christians and the Pig, 1994)
Back to the Eucharistic society and cannibal power (lectures on January 31 and February 7, 2017)
First story of the first day: false miracles and true devotions (lecture, January 30, 2018)
Second story of the first day: Abraham, or the paradoxical conversion
Third news item of the first day: Melchisedech, or transmission in abeyance
A dissident reading of the parable of the three rings (Carlo Ginzburg, Le Fromage et les vers. L'univers d'un meunier du XVIe^siècle, 1976)
Concealment, conversion, persecution: the Jewish presence on the threshold of the Decameron
Counter-proof to the Western enigma: Jewish communities in the land of Islam and in times of plague (Michaël W. Dols, The Black Death in the Middle East, 1977)
Back to the micro-reading of the scene with the two pigs and the plague victim's rags: ellipse or brachyology ?
The circulation of pigs in the city, an issue of urban order (Cléo Rager, colloquium session , December 13, 2021)
Politiques urbaines de la preservatio sanitatis (Marilyn Nicoud, "Médecine, prévention et santé publique en Italie à la fin du Moyen Âge", in Patrick Boucheron and Jacques Chiffoleau eds, Religion et société au Moyen Âge.Études offertes à Jean-Louis Biget, 2000)
Urban hygiene and community prerogative (Carole Rawcliffe, Urban Bodies: Communal Health in Late Medieval English Towns and Cities, 2019)
From "droppings gatherers" to pizzigamorti (lecture March 30, 2021)
Divagation des porcs et dispersion du sang des barbiers: l'exemple de Tournai (Claire Billen and Marc Boone ed., Bans et édits de la ville de Tournai en temps de peste (1349-1351), 2021)
Le sang empoisonné, du venin aux veines (Franck Collard, "Le poison et le sang dans la culture médiévale", Médiévales, 60, 2011)
Blood formation in the human body and medieval hematoscopy (Laurence Moulinier-Brogli, "Le sang entre savoirs et questionnements, science et imaginaire", Cahiers art et science, 8, 2004)
Bovine plagues and porcine leprosy (Madeleine Ferrières, "Le cochon, la lèpre et l'homme", in Les Animaux malades en Europe occidentale (^VIIe-XIVe^siècle). Actes du colloque de Flaran, 2005)
Une " viande politique " sous surveillance (Madeleine Ferrières, Histoire des peurs alimentaires, 2002)
Butchers in riot and persecution sociology
Flux de sang: l'identité juive et le principe féminin (Daniel Sibony, L'Énigme antisémite, 2004)
Du postribulum de Venise à la " maison des filles " de Toulouse en 1358 (Agathe Roby, La prostitution au Moyen Âge - Le commerce charnel en Midi toulousain du ^XIIIe au XVIe^siècle, 2021)
Déviances sexuelles et pollutions urbaines (Marc Boone, "Le très fort, vilain et detestable criesme et pechié de zodomie" : homosexualité et répression à Bruges pendant la période bourguignonne (fin 14e^- début ^16e siècle)", in Beleid en bestuur in de oude Nederlanden. Liber amicorum prof. Dr. M. Balde, 1993)
"That no contaminated matter (materia infirmitatis) may enter the bodies of the citizens of Pistoia": the Ordinamenta sanitatis tempore mortalitatis of 1348 (Guy Geltner, "The Path to Pistoia: Urban Hygiene Before the Black Death", Past & Present, 246, 2020)
Breaking out of the "tyrannical" Black Death paradigm? Viarii offices , political control of traffic networks and conservatio sanitatis (Guy Geltner, Roads to Health. Infrastructure and Urban Wellbeing in Later Medieval Italy, 2019)
"Poisoning the well": the false evidence of contaminated water
To revive our capacity for wonder, history continues (Tzafrir Barzilay, Poisoned Wells Accusations, Persecution, and Minorities in Medieval Europe, 1321-1422, 2022).