Constructing the pandemic: the Italian plague in early modern Iberian news discourse (1629–1631)

Abstract

From 1629 to 1631, during the Thirty Years’ War, a severe plague began in Northern Italy and rapidly spread across the Continent. The pandemic’s repercussions soon reached the Iberian Peninsula, where the news was documented and circulated via various media, including reports and avvisi. News concerning this so-called Italian plague was published in the main news centres of the Spanish kingdoms, such as Seville, Lisbon, and Madrid. Drawing upon microhistory—specifically Filippo de Vivo’s model (Past and Present, 2019)—and techniques related to news discourse and content analysis (see Soto, Díaz Noci and Espejo-Cala, 2020), this study aims to explain how news about pandemics was created and disseminated at the precise moment when journalism was taking shape as a craft in Early Modern Europe.