ABSTRACT
This paper intends to give an overall picture of the relation between climatic variability and the occurrence of food shortages and epidemic diseases during the 15th and 16th centuries in Northern Italy. This area has been selected as a case study mainly according to the completeness and reliability of the historical sources available. A general coherence between climate, famines and epidemics has been documented, even if their specific relation is strongly linked to the location considered because of the peculiar geography of the Italian peninsula. The most important and widespread famines were almost always related to climatic events, mainly to rain, followed by cold and flood. The period 1440–1540 is characterized by a greater density of occurrences of both food shortages and epidemic diseases, whose causal relation was documented in both directions. They can also be related to climatic events occurring in the same years.
