Ori Ben-Shalom, Public Health, Medicine, and Religious Reform in Carlo Borromeo’s Milan, The Sixteenth Century Journal, vol. 55, nos. 3–4, (2024): 545-574
The year’s SIHS committee awards the prize for an outstanding article on medieval or early modern Italian history to Ori Ben-Shalom, for his article “Public Health, Medicine, and Religious Reform in Carlo Borromeo’s Milan,” The Sixteenth Century Journal, vol. 55, nos. 3–4, (2024): 545-574. In this beautifully written work, Ori Ben-Shalom uses groundbreaking archival research to challenge stereotypes about the binary divisions of medical and ecclesiastical care in the 16th century. This article illuminates Carlo Borromeo’s interventions in the medical sphere in nuanced and complex ways, revealing the tensions and the points of contact between religion and medicine. It shows how epidemics could represent opportunities to reaffirm the authority of the Church and purify an entire society both from plague and sin. Ben-Shalom work enriches our understanding not just of Borromeo’s strategies, but of the intersections of networks ecclesiastical power and medical expertise in Milan and beyond.