A.D. 1448. “Owing to the heavy rains of the previous year, 1447,” says Martinez de Leiva, “a severe pestilence prevailed, which was attributed to the excess of moisture, conjoined with the unprecedented heat:” it was rife in various parts of Spain. On the 11th of October, public prayers were offered up at Barcelona on account of this pestilence and of other calamities, such as earthquakes, &c. During this year great mortality occurred in the army of King Alonso V., encamped in the neighbourhood of Pomblein. A.D. 1450, in the month of June, a pestilence broke out in the city of Saragossa. Zurita, who in his Annals of Aragon gives an account of this pestilence, specifies but little, although it is known to have raged for some time, and to have extended to Barcelona, where it continued for two years after (1452). On the Sabbath, the 22nd of April, the authorities of this city, Barcelona, despatched a state-messenger to the monasteries of Saint Gerónimo de la Murta, of the district of Ebro, de Monte Alegre, de Poblet, de Santa Cruce, and de Escala Dei, to solicit the brethren to implore the Almighty to relieve them from the sore pestilence with which the city was visited. On the 13th of June of this year, the Queen Donna Maria retired, with her Court, from the city, for fear of the pestilence. A.D. 1456. There were two comets observed this year: three years after, 1459, the Baltic was so frozen over, that people travelled on the ice from Denmark to Lubeck, Wismar, Rostock, and Stralsund. A.D. 1465, pestilence again visited Italy. On the 6th of December of this year, the brothers Miguel Capelier and Leonardo Crestia, of the order of St. Francis of the Convent of Jesus, were deputed by the corporation of the city of Barcelona to implore the interposition of the Almighty to free the city from pestilence. The year following, Cadiz was nearly depopulated by a plague. Other parts of Spain suffered also from epidemic pestilence; so much so, that on the 7th of January, 1466, the Council of Ciento voted that the Feast of St. Sebastian should not be observed, on account of the epidemic which was raging at Barcelona. Further, on Thursday, the 13th, the Council of Thirty-two determined that an image of the guardian angel should be erected; and on the 17th of November following there was a solemn procession ordered. A.D. 1468, epidemic pestilence raged at Parma. A.D. 1471, Pope Sextus erected a brothel at Rome, and the Roman prostitutes paid him a weekly tax, which amounted to 20,000 ducats a year.