The last two years have seen the COVID 19 pandemic engulf the world, destroying old traditions and creating new ones in its inexorable wake. But our experience is not unique. Similar pandemics have challenged our ancestors throughout the arc of human history. The Renaissance suffered especially from incidents of pandemic plague, including the Black Death (yersinia pestis), leprosy, and syphilis. Like Covid 19, these diseases were relentless in their spread and often fatal, often leaving survivors disfigured for life. Medical authorities were confounded. How did the plague begin? Who is most vulnerable? How can we stop its spread? What did we do to deserve such bad fortune? One of the most thoroughly documented Renaissance pandemics was Holy Fire, associated with St. Anthony, to which people of every age and occupation were equally vulnerable. Multiple works of art record the cause, symptoms, and cures of this pervasive and horrific disease, as perceived in 15th-century contemporary wisdom. This is the story of how an earlier era experienced both fear and hope when faced with the inevitable progress of a horrific disease - how ultimately human ingenuity and Christian faith became united in a single purpose.

Laurinda Dixon is a specialist in northern European Renaissance art. Currently retired, she served as the William F. Tolley Distinguished Professor of Teaching in the Humanities at Syracuse University for many years. Her scholarship considers the intersection of art and science - particularly alchemy, medicine, astrology, and music - from the fifteenth though the nineteenth centuries. She has lectured widely in both the USA and Europe, and is the author of many articles, reviews, and eleven books, including Perilous Chastity: Women and Illness in Pre-Enlightenment Art and Medicine (1995), Bosch (2003), and The Dark Side of Genius: The Melancholic Persona in Art, ca. 1500-1700 (2013). Laurinda holds a Ph.D. in art history from Boston University, as well as a degree in piano performance from the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. She currently resides in Cincinnati, Ohio.