This edited volume, catalysed by a symposium at DePaul University, evolved in the context of Covid-19 out of a desire to understand the long history of Catholic religious orders’ responses to epidemics. Therefore, it contributes to the histories of these orders, the histories of epidemics and the wider effort for sense-making and historical contextualisation that academia and society embarked on over the height of the Covid pandemic and, indeed, thereafter.

The introduction identifies the literature gap that this volume addresses as the lack of focus on ‘religious orders as specific actors, victims or voices during epidemics’ (p. 15). The chapters cover male and female Catholic religious orders’ responses to a range of epidemics in different historical moments, namely plague (from the fourteenth to eighteenth century), cholera (nineteenth century), smallpox (nineteenth century), leprosy (twentieth century) and AIDS (twentieth century). Plague receives the most attention with seven of the thirteen chapters investigating religious orders’ relationships with this disease in Europe. Across the remaining chapters the geographical coverage is quite extensive, incorporating studies from Western Europe, North and South America, South-east Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Regarding the scale of the studies presented, some chapters focus on individual cities, or even institutions, while others examine larger areas.

The volume illuminates the effects of epidemics on the identities and thinking of religious orders, their work, position and impact in their wider communities, from their relationships with patients in their care to municipal authorities and urban inhabitants threatened by contagious illnesses. The thirteen chapters are organised into three thematic sections: ‘Religious Orders between Collective Salvation and Individual Survival’; ‘Religious Orders as Actors of a Spiritual Awakening against Epidemics’; ‘Female and Male Religious Orders facing a New Era of Epidemics’; each of these sections also has two further thematic subsections with two to three chapters. The thematic sections and subsections provide interesting grounds for comparison although the relationships between the chapters are only briefly discussed in the introduction. It is a shame that, somewhere in this volume, there is not a little more exploration of the unifying themes; the nuances in the relationships and comparatives are largely left for the reader to extract. However, this leaves ample grounds for fruitful discussions in seminars and reading groups.

The individual chapters present what we can describe as case studies, focusing on a particular order (or an individual/s therein) and epidemic disease. There are broader studies, such as Thomas Rzeznik’s insightful study of St Vincent’s Hospital (New York City) and how the Sisters of Charity formed and perpetuated the ‘tradition of care’ (p. 247) seen in the hospital’s responses to the crises of cholera in the nineteenth century and AIDS in the twentieth. Other studies have more specific focuses, such as Emma Wall’s thorough work on the institutional, city-wide and international facets of the response of the Venerable English College in Rome to the plague of 1656–7.

Throughout the volume, I was struck by the consistently clear and effective writing. While each author has a unique voice, the consistency is commendable and makes for an engaging volume accessible to both experts and newcomers. Every chapter provides enough context to ensure readers new to the historical moment or history of the order and disease in question are given a clear grounding before the specifics of the evidence are introduced and analysed. Aside from the volume’s insights for those interested in the research gap this work addresses or the specific contributions of individual chapters, this is potentially an excellent key text for university courses for more advanced undergraduates or postgraduates on the histories of epidemics, religious orders or health care.

The case study nature of the chapters is very well suited for seminars and reading groups, with each chapter providing a balance between clarity and depth: great fuel for a good discussion. To give two examples: Nicolas Guyard (in part i) demonstrates very effectively how male mendicant orders were significant for their communities in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, not only for assistance to the sick but through their use and provision of sacred objects which functioned as important resources that brought a connection between earthly and heavenly communities. Jumping to the early twentieth century (in part iii) Marie de Rugy’s study on leprosaria in French Indochina and British Burma provides clear and valuable insights into the work of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary and the Daughters of Charity, the lives of ‘the colonised patient’ (p. 243) in leprosaria, and wider aspects of the colonial healthcare systems that impacted these institutions and patients.

The chapters are also rich potential areas for students in seminars to practise their comparative and critical thinking. There is equally good food for reading groups’ discussions. For example, Guyard’s chapter is located with Francesco Borghero’s effective chapter on ‘Religious orders and plague epidemics in late medieval and Renaissance Florence’, in part i in a subsection labelled ‘Saving the city’. Here there would be fruitful grounds for our students to enhance their understanding of religious orders’ responses and compare their different efforts in proximate locations and times. Equally, Borghero’s chapter could be compared with Nicolas Sarzeaud’s insightful study in part ii, which investigates sacred images, particularly shrouds, and their use against the plague in the sixteenth century.

There is little I would wish to change about this volume. However, while the introduction outlines the research gap, some more detailed engagement with the historiography throughout the introduction and some of the chapters would help readers new to the topics to develop a stronger sense of the contribution of the work as a whole as well as some of the studies therein.

Further, while the book’s title indicates coverage of epidemics from the Black Death to Covid-19, only Matthieu Brejon de Lavergnée’s introduction covers Covid-19 in some depth, offering interesting reflections on the Catholic response. Nevertheless, some chapters on more recent epidemics, such as Ebola and Covid in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, would have added more breadth and interesting grounds for comparison.

To conclude, this volume presents a range of very well-written and insightful case studies. There is something valuable here for experts and newcomers and the exercise of examining these chapters individually and comparatively will hopefully inspire new perspectives and projects in the studies of epidemics and religious orders.