Healthscaping a medieval city: Lucca’s Curia viarum and the future of public health history
G. Geltner, Department of History, University of Amsterdam, 134 Spuistraat, 1012 VB, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
In: Urban History / Volume 40 / Issue 03 / August 2013, pp 395-415
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0963926813000321

ABSTRACT:

In early fourteenth-century Lucca, one government organ began expanding its activities beyond the maintenance of public works to promote public hygiene and safety, and in ways that suggest both a concern for and an appreciation of population-level preventative healthcare. Evidence for this shift (which is traceable in and beyond the Italian peninsula) is mostly found in documents of practice such as court and financial records. These augment and complicate the traditional view afforded by urban statutes and medical treatises. The revised if still nebulous picture emerging from this preliminary study challenges a lingering tendency among urban and public health historians to see pre-modern European cities as ignorant and apathetic demographic black holes.

Basis for this conclusion is a careful analysis of the records of the “Curia Viarum”, – the Court of Roads. This body was mainly concerned with “maintaing urban, suburban and regional infrastructure” but it was also held responsible for “enforcing sanitary , labour and building regulations” (p. 398). 13 volumes of early court-proceedings have been preserved from the period 1336 -1377 and presents a series of diverse complaints and rulings pertaining to environmental violations and concerns, like the neglect of maintenance of ovens, contaminations of drinking water supplies, waste thrown into streets, blockage of sewers and drains, keeping animals inside the walls of the city, washing cloth in the fountains etc. The article is according to Guy Geltner a first presentation of the material, which is currently undergoing a more detailed study.