No particular genomic features underpin the dramatic economic consequences of 17th century plague epidemics in Italy

genomes phylogenetically closest to those from the 1636 outbreak of San Procolo a Naturno, Italy. They both belonged to a cluster extending from the Alps to Northern Germany that probably propagated during the Thirty Years war. Sequence variation did not support faster evolutionary rates in the Italian genomes and revealed only rare private non-synonymous mutations not affecting virulence genes. This, and the more heterogeneous spatial diffusion of the epidemic outside Italy, suggests environmental or social rather than biological causes for the severe Italian epidemic trajectory.