Main description (English)

This contribution addresses the dynamics that characterized a regular religious order in the wake of of the great plague epidemic of the years 1347-1348 and its reappearances across the second half of the fourteenth century. Established mainly in the urban context of central and northern Italy during the later thirteenth and and earlier fourteenth centuries, the order of the Servants of Mary (Servites) had integrated itself within nu- merous sectors of the societas christiana, despite the fierce territorial competition offered by other religious orders, especially the mendicant ones. The advent of the Black Death – following the obvious initial blow that produced a net depopulation of convents and general identity and social crisis – paradoxically helped to consolidate and accelerate numerous processes that had marked the Servites since its beginnings. This article analyzes these phenomena in their local contexts, emphasizing the friars’ presence in the territories of the Patrimony of St. Peter.