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Abstract

This article sets out to explore the perception of pain during outbreaks of the plague in the early modern period. On the basis of the recent doubts about the mind/body dualism, it holds that both kinds of pain should be investigated and be seen as a whole. In the majority of the autobiographical sources the article relies on, there is no description of pain itself. Instead visual signs and its quantitative dimensions are given: the number of buboes and the length of the illness. This can partly be explained by the perspective of the sources but also points to a more general attitude prevailing at that time. However, that there is no description of pain is a statement which has to be qualified, particularly for those sources which describe the treatment of the buboes by the surgeons. Christian religion was the force that strongly influenced the perception of pain. It gave a meaning to suffering and it made quite a number of the sick concentrate on their duty as Christians and on the death and afterlife, thus partly disregarding pain, in particular when they had done penance and taken Holy Communion before. However, it sometimes also caused doubts about sinful behaviour before the plague. Pain however was aggravated by the way society and the authorities acted or were perceived to act. The pain of separation, and a feeling of loneliness and discrimination were connected with being infected. The article closes with some remarks on plague and gender. The fear of the plague and the plague itself cannot have meant the same to men and women, it argues.