Queen of Sorrows: Plague, Piety, and Power in Late Medieval Italy

Bianca M. Lopez examines plague, devotion and power in late-medieval Italy through an unusually rich archive of 1,904 wills. Focusing on gifts to the shrine of the Virgin of Loreto in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, she traces how epidemic disease, household priorities and migration shaped religious life in and around Recanati.

A will could settle an inheritance and record a gift offered for the dead. Lopez follows those choices across widows, migrants and established families, showing how Loreto’s growing importance was bound up with losses, obligations and ambitions recorded in ordinary legal documents.