Main description (English)

This study reconstructs the history of smallpox vaccination in the Papal States from 1801, when the first inoculations were delivered, to 1841, when a Notificazione definitively established severe consequences for those who refused to be vaccinated, although vaccination remained officially optional. This contribution demonstrates that only a multi-scalar approach, focusing both on state institutions and on local actors (municipalities, doctors, members of the ruling classes), permits an understanding of the geographical variety and political contradictions that characterized the health policies of the Papal States in the first half of the nineteenth century. Vaccination campaigns did not depend only on state law or on the attitude of the pontiffs towards inoculation on the basis of the work of Edward Jenner; on the contrary, they often represented a more circumscribed response to local epidemiological threats. There- fore, we seek to highlight the role of those autonomous and “peripheral” agencies that did not hesitate to interpret the decisions of the papal government in various ways, including anticipating or even opposing them.