Anglican adaptation to pandemic disease: a historical perspective

As churches navigate the “new normal” of hybrid/online worship and public health measures, history offers some resources that can help guide our thinking. Anglicanism has, from its birth in the sixteenth century, adapted to such epidemic challenges as sweating sickness, plague, smallpox, cholera, and influenza. Anglican theology favors corporate prayer (including dispersed, synchronous prayer) and encourages the idea of the sacramentality of the word. At the same time, it resists the idea of virtual sacraments apart from a physical gathering and rejects a eucharist at which only the celebrant receives the consecrated bread and wine. History rarely offers straightforward lessons, but it suggests that Anglicanism has sufficient resources within itself to sustain itself through even a prolonged pandemic.

The English Sweating Sickness of 1485-1551 and the Ecclesiastical Response

During the 15th and 16th centuries, five epidemics of a disease characterized by high fever and profuse sweating ravaged England. The disease became known as English sweating sickness because it started in England, though it also struck Ireland and mainland Europe. The infectious disease was reportedly marked with pulmonary components, and the mortality rate was estimated to be between 30% and 50%. The evidence of the “sweating sickness” story is medically fascinating and historically noteworthy as to its sudden appearance in 1485 and major disappearance in 1551. This was a period when the Church of England broke away from the Roman Catholic Church; and the then Prince of Wales, Arthur Tudor, died possibly of sweating sickness. The Church played a vital role during those periods: responses were made in the form of treatment (in Germany), ecclesiastical prayers, tailored worship, and devotions during those trying times, and the preservation of fragile records relating to the epidemics.

The English Sweating Sickness: Out of Sight, Out of Mind?

<p>In this paper we aim to add additional knowledge regarding the occurrence, origin and epidemiological features of the English sweating sickness. The English sweating sickness raged in five devastating epidemics with mortality rates between 30 and 50% between 1485 and 1551 throughout England, and on one occasion also affected mainland Europe, in 1529. The Picardy sweat, generally considered as the English sweating sickness’ lesser deadly successor, flared up in France in 1718 and caused 196 localized outbreaks with varying severity all over France and neighboring countries up to 1861. The English sweating sickness has been the subject of numerous attempts to define its origin, but so far all efforts have failed due to lack of material, DNA or RNA, that - using modern techniques and knowledge - could shed light on its cause. Although the time frame in which the English sweating sickness occurred and the geographical spread of the outbreaks is generally known, we will demonstrate here that there was more to it than meets the eye. We found reports of cases of sweating sickness in years before, after and between the 1485, 1508, 1517, 1529 and 1551 epidemics, as well as reports of sweating sickness in Italy and Spain.</p><p><strong>Conclusion. </strong>In spite of the fact that the English sweating sickness apparently has not caused casualties for a more than a century now, we suggest that -given the right circumstances- the possibility of re-emergence might still exist. The fact that up until today we have no indication concerning the causal pathogen of the English sweating sickness is certainly not re-assuring.</p>