Abstract
The management of the contemporary Covid-19 pandemic hardly seems to have benefited from the "lessons of history"; on the other hand, it has rekindled the questions that mankind asks itself about epidemics like the plague. Why did the plague stop, and how much was biological (individual and collective immunity, bacterial mutations, human genetics, vectors and reservoirs, etc.) and how much socio-cultural (conceptions of transmission, control measures, etc.)? Anne-Marie Moulin reviews the debate on contagion and the strategies and means of preserving medieval plague, between East and West.
