M. Luther’s “Whether One May Flee From A Deadly Plague”:

Cultural practices in a pest pamphlet in the early modern era

Abstract

This article addresses representations and cultural practices of individual and collective coping with epidemics in the late Middle Ages and the beginning of the modern era. For this, it analyzes ethical-religious discourses present in so-called pest pamphlets, with emphasis on "Whether One May Flee From A Deadly Plague", written by Martin Luther in 1527. These discourses teach cultural practices that instruct, shape and govern bodies, proposing to the subjects ways of being and acting within a complex network of produced and negotiated meanings. Practices of the self are instituted in the sense of knowing and directing self contemplation, recognizing one's own limits and freeing oneself and others from one's own domain, seeking this way to ground freedom for the ethical and political exercise.