The Milano Sforza Registers of the Dead: Health Policies in Italian Renaissance

The institution of theLiber Mortuorumin Milan greatly anticipates death registrations in Europe. Introduced in 1450 by Duke Francesco Sforza for the early containment of plague it was daily compiled until 1801, reporting demographical data and causes of death, leaving a corpus of 366 volumes, an outstanding source for interdisciplinary research. Addressed to ascertain individual causes of death, it represents an unprecedented early example of disease monitoring and prevention. The paper discusses Sforza’s health policy in Milan, describes the Mortuorum registres features at the end of the 15thcentury, and analyzes the distribution of the city deaths in 1480, a year without epidemic events. These data constituted the first entry of a database of theLiber Mortuorum.