Confraternities can be seen as a barometer of social and cultural trends. This article explores the use of confraternity sources as records for the impact of plague. Using Orvieto (Umbria) between 1340 and 1410 as a setting, this article assesses the response to plague by the town’s population through their joining the confraternity of San Francesco. My analysis demonstrates the serious impact of the Black Death on Orvieto. It also reinforces the importance of studying subsequent outbreaks of the plague to better understand the role of epidemic disease in expressions of popular piety as well as the importance of situating the study of disease and confraternities in their local context.

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

• Lee, A. R., (2025), "Confraternities and the Plague in Orvieto: 1340–1410", HSSCommons: (DOI: )

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1. Confraternitas

Original publication: Lee, Alexandra R. A. “Confraternities and the Plague in Orvieto: 1340–1410.” Confraternitas 28 (2): 2018. 3-16. DOI: . This material has been re-published in an unmodified form on the Canadian HSS Commons with the permission of Iter Canada / Confraternitas. Copyright © the author(s). Their work is distributed by Confraternitas under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. For details, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/.