Mexico's churches to close during epidemics

[chaplainM]

I'm pleased to see that the Church has learned something since the time of the black plague.

[frebrd]

1. Every cloud has a silver lining. eom

[struggle4progress]

2. Maybe some of those medieval people were not as stupid as you think: our advantage,

after all, is that we know what happened to them and the following twenty five or thirty generations. But all our knowledge is rooted in the observations of earlier folk, and even in the middle ages people paid attention to their world and tried to lean from it

"ORDINANCES FOR SANITATION IN A TIME OF MORTALITY"
Pistoia 1348

In the name of Christ Amen. Herein are written certain ordinances and provisions made .. by certain wise men of the People of the city of Pistoia .. concerning the preserving, strengthening and protecting the health of humans from various and diverse pestilences which otherwise can befall the human body ...

... no citizen of Pistoia or dweller in the district or the county of Pistoia . . . shall in any way dare or presume to go to Pisa or Lucca or to the county or district of either. And that no one can or ought to come from either of them or their districts ... to the said city of Pistoia or its district or county ... And that gatekeeper of the city of Pistoia guarding the gates of the said city shall not permit those coming or returning to the said city of Pistoia from the said cities of Pisa or Lucca, their districts or counties to enter the said gates ...

... no person whether citizen, inhabitant of the district or county of the city of Pistoia or foreigner shall dare or presume in any way to bring ... to the city of Pistoia, its district or county, any used cloth, either linen or woolen, for use as clothing for men or women or for bedclothes ...

... the bodies of the dead, after they had died, can not be nor ought to be removed from the place in which they are found unless first such a body has been placed in a wooden casket covered by a lid secured with nails, so that no stench can issue forth from it; nor can it be covered except by a canopy, blanket or drape ...

... no person of whatever condition or status or authority shall dare or presume to return or to carry to the city of Pistoia any dead body in or out of a casket or in any manner ...

... any person who will have come for the burial or to bury any dead person can not and may not be in the presence of the body itself nor with the relatives of such a dead person except for the procession to the church where it will be buried. Nor shall such persons return to the house where the defunct person lived or enter into that house or any other house ...

http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/osheim/pistoia.html