Roy Porter Student Prize Essay How (Not) to Survive a Plague: The Theology of Fleeing Disease in Sixteenth-century England

Early modern medicine favoured flight as the best prophylactic against epidemic disease. Theologically, however, flight savoured of an attempt to defy divine providence, or a dereliction of Christian charity, while staying could seem an act of presumption or recklessness. This essay studies six theologians whose writings on the issue circulated in sixteenth-century England. Long dismissed as inconclusive and derivative, these ‘flight theologies’ can be better understood as products of theological principle and communal experience, whose combined influence precluded definitive prescriptions. Instead, authors marshalled the rhetoric of ‘conscience’ to displace the decision back onto their readers, while retaining interpretive authority over the key factors of Scripture and personal obligations. Flight theology thus seeks less to solve a practical problem, than to produce a particular kind of political subjectivity, bound to the community and predicated on persuasion. In so doing, the discourse fuelled the emergence of an early modern English public sphere.