The cult of the dead in Medieval Europe: revisiting a historiographical theme in times of crisis

Abstract

Between November 2019 and the end of 2021, our planet lived a strange and singular daily life dictated by unexpected circumstances. During the epidemic caused by the spread of COVID-19, the daily news began with death tolls. For the first time in most of our lives, this wasn’t counting the number of victims of war, massacres or natural disasters. The deaths tallied during that period were, instead, the result of the spread of a respiratory virus, infection with which could be – and was in many thousands of cases – lethal. In fact, large-scale death had never been so significant for an inhabitant of post-World War II Europe, nor had the agent promoting the infection spread so quickly and easily in the various spaces and circles of society and socialisation.