After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - The Black Death As It Happened

Episode Date: March 12, 2026

Eyewitness accounts of life during the Black Death are surprising. Sure, there's horror. But there's also d*ck jokes, complicated scientific theories, and buttock-obsessed priests. Taking Anthony through it all is Dr Eleanor Janega, from our sister podcast 'Gone Medieval'.Edited by Hannah Feodorov and Anna Brant. Research by Phoebe Joyce. Produced by Freddy Chick.You can now watch After Dark on Youtube! www.youtube.com/@afterdarkhistoryhitSign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Looking for more shady and sinister stories, sign up to History Hit. You can join us to explore the tragic life of the Bronties or discover the chilling story of Burke and Hair. Plus, with your History Hit subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe to start exploring the past. In the year of our Lord, 1348, there happened in Florence, the finest city in all Italy, a most terrible plague. Tumours appeared in people's groins or under the armpits, some as big as a small apple, others as big as an egg. And afterwards came purple spots that were the messengers of death. The disease spread daily, like fire when it touches oil.

What I am going to tell you is fantastical. And had I not seen it with my own eyes, and were there not many witnesses to attest to it besides myself, I should never dare to tell this tale. It was agony. Septicemia, gangrene, extreme shock, severe gastrointestinal and respiratory distress, internal bleeding,

and those notorious, black, Puss-filled lymph notes, the size of an apple in the groin and under the arms. These are the symptoms of the terrifying and highly transmissible infection that could kill a perfectly healthy person within 24 hours. This was Europe in 1348, the year of the Black Death. Within four years, nearly half the population was gone. Cities emptied, churches overflowed with the dead. Doctors, if they survived, could do nothing but watch.

We think we understand pandemics today, but nothing compares to witnessing a world consumed by plague. Now, to truly grasp it, we are going to turn to the voices of those who lived through it. Poets, preachers and doctors from Italy to England. Their accounts spare no detail. Welcome to After Dark. Get ready to hear about the horror of the Black Death. I am Eleanor and this is After Dark. and I am joined by the effervescent and wonderful.

Anthony, hi, Anthony. Hi, this is so, this is one of the first times I have not done the introduction to After Dark. And I'm enjoying the funness of it because we are here for more medieval mischief with the one and only Eleanor. I'm so excited to be here. I know everybody is sad that Maddie isn't here, but it's because she's going to be a guest judge on Rupal Drag Race and Kay. She is. You know, she's got better places to me. It's the baby episode.

episode of Rupal's Drag Grace that she is like she's going to be in the workroom. It's going to be a baby designing project. Yeah, exactly. Actually, they should do that. It was neither here or there. We're here. Copyright. Copyright.

We're here to talk about medieval history, Eleanor. That's right. And in particular, we are going to be talking about one of my very favorite topics. And I know a perennial favorite here on After Dark, which is the Black Death. We have looked at this in 438 billion different ways, including a day in the life of a rat during the black death or something, it was, it was, but listen, people liked it. Listen, justice for rats. The rats did nothing wrong. No. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. And that's why it was useful to kind of do it. But we are doing something. Okay. So you, you have provided producer Freddie with some quotes.

So tell me what these quotes are going to be and how this episode is going to kind of pan out. So we have got some eyewitness accounts from the, varying people who lived through this mess. I didn't even know that we had that. Well, some people survive, right? You know, and the thing is, obviously, everyone is living through one of the most terrible things that humanity has ever experienced,

and they got a lot to say about it, right? So we don't always have really great accounts of exactly what is happening because everyone is going, oh, my God, everyone's dying, everyone's dying, but we do have them grappling with what it all means, And we do have some descriptors that happen in there as well. So we're going to start off with some stuff from one of my favorite writers of all time, Bacaccio. And he lives through the plague in Florence. We're going to move on.

And we are going to have a look at what the physicians at the University of Paris have to say about it. And what their explanation for the Black Death is. And then we're going to move on to some excellent quotes from the church. Oh, well, look, it's medieval time. We can't not talk about, you know, the church. Listen. So this is what the church. Okay, I'm imagining what those things might be.

Right, so I am going to read those quotes and you are going to guide me through the crack that's going on in and around those. Mighty all together, so it is. Mighty crack. Now, can I just say, if you want to go back and hear a little bit more about the context of some of these things that we're going to be talking about, we have, I think it's about three or four other episodes on the Black Death in our. After Dark Back catalog. Eleanor, you have loads on Gone Medieval as well. So go and listen to all of those and then come back here for this kind of overview and

eyewitness account. Right. First up, let's go. We're going to Picatio, right? This is the first one, right. Eleanor has given us these quotes. I'm going to read the first one. Many dropped dead in the open streets, both by day and by night, whilst a great many others

died alone in their homes, only alerting their neighbors to the same. the fact by the smell of their rotting corpses. Bodies were put down by the front door where anybody passing by, especially in the morning, could have seen them by the thousands. In place of all the usual weeping at death, mostly there was laughing and joking and festive merrymaking, a practice that the women in particular led the way in, okay? There are no tears or candles or mourners to honour the dead. it had reached the point that people who died were treated the same way that goats would be treated

nowadays. Okay, I have never come across this before. I've never read this before. It is my, okay, I'm going to give you my initial impression and then you can kind of tell me the real thing. What's interesting is this idea of, it's very evocative because we're smelling this idea of rotting corpses. We are seeing the doors, the bodies piled up. by their thousands, by the way. And it's also interesting that it's set in the morning time. So this is how you're starting your day with death in Florence, you said, right? Florence, yeah.

You're hearing the weeping. So this is sensory. This is happening all over. But then we have this very odd thing that's saying, and actually, you know who are the most? Well, let me preface it by saying he talks about there being a kind of a disrespect towards the dead because there's so many of them happening, there's so many bodies around the place. But it's a weird thing to then go,

and the women in particular are the worst at this. They are just having the absolute hoot-nanny around all of this death going on. But then it's just saying, oh, you know, this is the losing of all kind of morality. We are unraveling because of the way we are treating our dead. It's no better than the way we're treating our goats, very specific there. Right. who is Bacaccio and talk me through, well, let's start with that.

Who is he? And why should we be paying attention to him in this particular case? Okay. So our good friend Giovanni Baccio is a poet and writer and he's very good. Okay. As you just saw from that, like how a block it is that passage, right? So he's one of like our leading lights of the 14th century, wonderful medieval writer. And he's most famous for his book, The DeCamron.

The DeCamarin is set during the Black. death in Florence. And it follows 10 people. It says seven women and three men who flee Florence. They leave. And they go off to the countryside to wait out the black death. And what they do in the meantime is they decide to tell each other's stories. It's like a story contest. And so they all have to tell a story every day. And then they choose whoever's the king or queen of the next day. And they set the tone for the next one. So that's partially why you're going to see that. Oh, and the women led the way in this because let me tell you what the stories that they're telling in the de camera. It is a series of dick jokes.

Stop it. Yeah. It is like, I mean, it is like graphic sexual content a lot of the time. You know, there are some moral lessons, but a lot of them are also like, oh, like a Muslim princess got captured by pirates and then she sexed her way back to the top, you know, and things like that. So it's just a lot of that. So partially what Bacacho is doing here is he's covering for himself about like why he is

about to tell you a bunch of dick jokes. I see. Because most of his characters are women. Uh-huh. And he's like, you can't even be mad at me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because a woman said it. Can you believe what these are saying?

What? Like, look at them. But also, this is kind of like the typical medieval way as relating to women. It was something bad happening? Probably a woman did it. Yeah, yeah. They are being unreasonable over there. I just can't believe them.

But fundamentally, the DeCamaran also, in addition to all the dick jokes, really groundbreaking because it is written in Florentine dialect. So it's not written in Latin, which a lot of things are. And it's also not, I mean, like French, yeah, like we've got a million things that are written in French around the shop at the time. But dialectic Italian, not so much. For a kind of a local audience, local people, we're reaching the people on the street with this story, this hit. Well, not history necessarily in this case, but we're invoking them, those that can read or that are hearing these stories or whatever it might be, to partake slightly? to identify? Do we think that that's what's happening? Yeah, absolutely. You know, what he's really doing

is reporting on the conditions in Florence. For the Florentine people. Exactly. And this is, you know, some people we do know this. When the Black Death happens, they're like a Yolo, right? Like, it appears that we all might die. So, you know, like, we're just, we're partying. Yes. And that is one of the big reactions that that happens as a result of it. So he's living in Florence. his mother dies, his father dies. Of the plague. Yeah, of the plague in like 1348. And this is not a surprise because let me tell you what is happening in Florence at the time.

It's got one of the highest death counts that we get in Europe at the time. We estimated at about 60% of the population, 6.0. You would notice that on a data. Well, this is what he's describing then. That makes a lot of sense in terms of it is more common. Death is more common than life. Yeah, absolutely. this moment in time.

Completely. And this is basically what we would expect to see within Afro-Eurasia at the time. The more concentrated people are, the faster the black death threats. Sure. You know, so it's like out in the countryside, like it's just not going to happen. You're going to be good. Florence is a really big, very bustling, incredibly wealthy city. International trade.

Absolutely. And so it's got stuff coming back and forth. And so people die. You know, we estimate that worldwide, 25% of the global population dies of the black death. And that is even crazier when you consider that it's only happening in Afro-Eurasia. Like, it's only happening in Saharan Africa, Europe and Asia. And what did you say, 25%? 25%.

So many people die, we undergo global cooling as a result of it. Stop it. Yeah, because, like, there are fewer fires. Wow. Yeah. And so it is like a huge event. And, you know, Florence is one of the real epicenters for it. We have a lot of people die, but people are dying like this in Baghdad.

People are dying like this in Beijing. You know, like all the really big fancy cities, that's where people die. And that's where this 60% that you're talking about then is coming into play in Florence because it is so busy. But like, low Afro-Urasia is 25%. But that's 60% in those concentrated centers is far more prevalent. It's not happening in the Americas. because it's not happening in Australia. That's what I mean.

It's not happening in such as far and out. It's like it doesn't get across the desert in Africa either. Okay, so we have another quote from Baccio. Okay. I'm going to read it. Is this from the same thing? Is this from the decamron? Okay.

This one says, this scourge had implanted so great a terror in the hearts of men and women that brothers abandoned brothers, uncles, their nephews, sisters, their brothers. and in many cases wives deserted their husbands, not the wives deserting their husbands. Come on, okay, now it's illegal for women to have hog this. Okay, okay, all right, I see. But even worse, even worse than that, who could imagine?

But even worse, and almost incredible, was the fact that fathers and mothers refused to nurse and assist their own children as though they did not belong to them. From this desertion of friends and the scarcity of servants, an unheard of custom prevailed. No lady, however young or,

beautiful, would scruple to be attended by a male servant, or to expose herself naked to him. Why would you be doing that before? Which might make those who survive less modest in the times to come. Like absolutely incredible that we are like saying that genetically everyone is getting kind of slutty with it. But also, isn't it funny that they're kind of going, all of this is happening, right? there's death piling up in the door. The more people that you know are probably, in Florence at least,

are probably dying than they are living. And what he is saying is, and then there was naked women. Can you, could you bully? This is what we need to be concentrating on now is the naked women. And so it's very funny because the way that this is written, it's like, listen to, with all due respect to my good friend Giovanni. Yes. Yeah, probably not.

Actually, one of the things that we think really comes out from the Black Death is that there is a great deal of care taken with the dead and with people's families. You don't actually like abandon your loved ones. You can see, for example, if we look at plague pits and things like that, everybody, it's not like you just dump the bodies in the ground. They're all lined up very nicely. They all have their arms crossed. You know, people are attempting to do the right thing.

But if we say, and ooh, the wives are leaving their husbands and ooh, the rich girls have male servants and they let him see him naked. That's a great thing to put at the beginning of your book all about dick jokes. Sure. Sure, sure, sure. So, again, he's like, and that's why this is a little slice of life. So is he having a laugh? Yeah.

You think, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So basically, it's partially justifying why it is that he's written the dick joke book. Uh-huh. And it's covering that in a morality tale. Exactly. And so it's like, this is the wink to camera that you have to do in order to just why you've written a sex book during like the largest pandemic the world's ever seen.

We've all written a sex book during the last month. And he's like, I'm just reporting what's happening. This is, you know how women are. Yes, yes. And also, like, from a medieval standpoint, you got to understand that women are the horny ones. Yeah. So, you know, like, of course that's like what they're going to do. Of course they're going to get real, real slutty with it the minute everybody starts dying, right?

So, yeah. And you talked there about, you know, he's having a bit of crack. but you also talked about the kind of disparity between what he's describing and the, oh, we're just dumping bodies everywhere and very carefully being laid to rest, which is what I would have expected and what was somewhere in the back of my mind. But what he also says, it seems to be saying, is that, and there were no real kind of survival strategies for this. People are just drinking, getting in the nip.

They were just like having a lovely old time. But I, again, my instinct tells me, that that is probably not going to be totally the case, right? People are going to be trying to contain this disease. He eventually walks us back. One of the two of us has read the decamaran and it is not me. I really recommend it. It is filthy.

Is it long? It is, but like, again, it's filthy. It's like, you know, most medieval things you read a minute and you think you're being very worthy because you're reading a medieval book and then it's like this is just saucy. Okay. So, like, do read, pick it up sometime. But what's interesting is that he does walk it back. And then he goes, okay, well, I said most people were doing this.

But he actually says that there's kind of like three ways of looking at this. One, YOLO party time. Yeah. We're having an orgy. Everyone's invited, right? Two, people pretending that everything is normal and just trying to go normcore. Okay. That happened.

I always hate this. I actually hate myself for doing this, but I'm going to do it. We saw that ourselves, right? where it was like actually just just to try and maintain that normality became a kind of an act of radical resistance almost during the COVID pandemic that we've all just come out, well, a few years ago come out of. So that's interesting to hear that that's there as well. Yeah. So they're just like, listen, I don't want to deviate from my actual patterns. I'm going to mass. I'm running my shop. I'm doing these things whilst people increasingly are dying. And you know, it's a coping mechanism.

It's a lot to deal with. And then there's the third group of people who essentially like lock themselves inside and they are being really abstemious. They are going vegan. They are trying not to drink too much. Yeah. Yeah. Like that's a big thing. Like medieval people, if you like leave them alone for two seconds, they will go vegan. Like they in the, well, poor people are like basically having to do it. Yeah. So it's like it's not particularly interesting. But especially more well to do people, if they're ever worried that God is mad at them, they go vegan. So it's like lent you're vegan. Like if you're, If you're an important muck-de-muck in the church and you want to make a point about things, you go vegan. So, you know, then there's that's like the third way.

And they're kind of like, oh, I am just going to try to get on God's good side. Apparently, he's really angry with us. So no lamb from. So no lamb. And then, you know, they kind of do this lockdown thing. So he kind of presents the three versions, but like which is the one that he's going to write about? Obviously, he's going to write about party town. The crack.

Like, no one's going to be like, oh, yeah, and what did the vegans do? Cry? Okay. That's like, that's not going to sell coffee. are going to come for you now. They are horrors. Some of my best friends are Regans. Like some of my best friends are Stevens.

That's kind of same. That's a throwback to another episode. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so that's for catcher. That's really interesting because it is, it's interesting to see it being made fun of. That's not something we associate with the Black Death, really, in terms of particularly from a medieval perspective itself.

Usually it's like, oh, God, it's this thing. But actually, it's something very human in that. And we know that ourselves, because we know that ourselves, because we have done that. We try to find humor. And again, it's what you're talking about, this kind of survival mechanism that, I don't know, it's just how we try to rationalize

terrible things sometimes. And it's interesting to see that here. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And I suppose one of the reasons we don't get to see that very often is that there's a limited number of people we get to hear from in the medieval period. And you've got to be literate, which most people are not.

And then whatever you wrote down has to survive to us. And it's a really long time ago. You know, 700 years ago is a really long time. It is. So, you know, we don't. always get these stories, but because Baccio wrote so many sexy bangers. Yeah. You know, it survived us because everyone is like, oh, yeah, have you read the dick joke book? Yeah, yeah. And then, and that's in there. So, right, we're going to move away from Baccio to, oh, I'm really interested in this

now because this is a Paris medical faculty. So I'm, okay, my expectations here are going to be different. I am expecting, I don't know if I'm going to get it, I'm expecting something a bit more serious, a bit more methodical. We talked about those survival strategies in the previous quotes. I'm imagining I'm going to hear some of that there. And maybe even treatment. Okay. Let's see. You're like, you're going to love it. You can expect what you want. You're going to get one thing. I'm so excited for you. Okay. It says, we, the masters of the faculty of medicine at Paris, inspired by the command of the most, okay, the tone's very different. By the command of the most illustrious prince, our most serene Lord Philip, a king of France, Godolf Phil,

and by our desire to achieve something of public benefit, have decided to compile with God's help, a brief compendium of the distant and immediate causes of the present universal epidemic. Okay, so we're being scientific now. Yes. So here we are at the Paris medical facilities, right? University of Paris second university in Europe.

We now call it the Sorbonne. Yeah. You may know her as the Sorbonne. I've lectured there. Oh, okay. I know. She's fancy. All right.

Okay. So the Bologna came first, then came the University of Paris. And as this says, basically, the king was like, so fancy boys, what's all this then? Right. Like, explain yourselves, right? And we have had the University of Paris since about the 12th century at this point in time. Universities look a little bit a little bit different at that point than they do now. It's kind of more of a vibe.

Great. It's less like, oh, here's the halls of the university. And it's more like a collection of guys who are really clever and who have gone to school there who put on lectures in different places. Rich, I'm assuming? Oh, yes. Oh, my God, yes. So members of the university are all technically members of the clergy. Oh.

So in order to be a student, you have got to be a clergy member just for while you're there. Oh, okay. It's where the term town gown relations comes from because they're all wearing clerical gowns. And is that why we have gowns? Yeah. Yeah, because we are pretending to be members of the clergy. And they are studying a couple of different things. So to be a physician, like the title physician, they're not called doctors yet.

We only let physicians be called doctors from the 19th century. Right, yes. Real doctors are people with PhDs. We just felt sorry for them. Okay. So to be a doctor, you have to first study what is called the trivium. That's grammar, logic, rhetoric. And so that's basically like reading and writing in Greek and Latin and arguing with each other.

Yes. And then if you master that, that's your bachelor's. You will go on to study the quadrivium. The quadrivium are music, astronomy, mathematics, which is basically like just the regular stuff and as well as geometry. They keep making them do maths. I don't know if I would have gotten through. Listen, these guys are doing it with Roman numerals too for quite a long time. By now, I think we've brought the Arabic numerals.

but it's like I don't even want to think about it. Everything else would have been fine, but not numbers. It's horrifying. And then if you are doing physician work as these guys are, then you're also going to study the master. So you're going to be working with things like the Trachula, written by Trotov-Silerno. You will be working with Avicenna's things.

So a lot of things that come over, especially from the Arabic world, you'll be studying Plato and Aristotle, which you shouldn't. Studying Hippocrates about. this is not going to help. But, you know, they are going to be really working with these things. I mention hypocrisy and things like that because you've got to understand the medieval world,

like everybody, up until we discover germs in the 19th century, is working off of the humor. Yeah. Theory, right? So you and I know it and love it. You've got four humors in the body. You've got black bile, yellow bile, blood, and phlegm. They correspond with earth, air, fire, and water, you know, hot, dry, cold and wet.

Very sexy stuff. It's wonderful stuff. And the idea is that when those humors get out of alignment, that's what makes you sick. Everybody believed this. Again, and I cannot stress this enough, do not go around and say to me that, like, Romans had better medicine than medieval people did. They didn't. It was worse.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was much worse. They believed this as much as medieval people. People in the 17th century believe this. Yes. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But medieval people get guff for it.

It's not until the 18th century, really, that we start to see this change in this supposed enlightenment kind of thing. So we have a long, long time of this. But so am I right then in thinking that the kind of the motivation for writing this would be knowledge as power? Yeah. I mean, kind of, you know, everyone's just freaking out. Everyone's freaking out. Everyone's freaking out.

And they're like, well, what is happening? Yeah. And the idea is if we can just explain what's happening, then at least that gives us something to work with. Okay. Right. And if you're King Philip. And I am. Obviously.

Yes. And you are going to be like, well, I don't understand what all of this is. Can you just explain to me what is going on? And what is the university for, bra? Other than that. Like what, like, you're so fancy. I'm given to understand they have all these special dispensations within the city of Paris. Like if the students are behaving badly, they go to ecclesiastical court.

They don't go to like regular legal courts because they're members of the clergy. So why have we carved out this special niche for you all? if you're not working for it. If you're not actually doing it. So when Philip shows up and he's like, hey, guys. Hey, back time. Yeah, exactly. So they are asked to basically explain what is going on really quickly,

but they're going to be explaining it within this specific academic framework that we see in the university system. And what's striking me about what you're saying is that these are, you know, because now it has this idea of like a lot of people go to university. and, you know, you can go and have a great example and still not know that much. Come on. No self-put-downs. The, these men are the smartest men around.

So if anybody is going to be able to do, like, this is their moment. This is what they are, this is what they have trained for in a great sense. Oh, absolutely. I mean, and when we say university now, you think about university and you're like, yeah, that's what, that'll be like 10,000 people. Yeah, like 50. Right. You know, and you've got to be the best of the best.

It's a very expensive undertaking. And it's where people get sent if they are extremely clever and they are being groomed to take on incredibly important positions within the church or even like at the king's court. Right. So it's like that's where you go to learn things. So this is extremely highfalutin. Okay. That's the official. That's right.

That's your next book, right? Highfaluton. universities. Okay. So I'm going to go back to some of these quotes. And this is apparently what caused, what they thought caused the Black Death. Okay. So this is their, this is their finding. Yeah, this is their finding. This is their report. They got together, they wrote a report. Okay. The first cause of this pestilence was the configuration of the heavens, obviously. In 1345, three years before the Black Death, at one hour afternoon on the 20th of March, bloody hell, they are, they are going into specifics here. There was a major.

conjunction of three planets in Aquarius, namely Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. They're coming together in the heavens caused a deadly corruption of the air on Earth, meaning mortality and famine would follow. They drew up evil vapors from the earth and then ignited them with lightning flashes, drama, noxious vapors, and the fires in the air. These many corrupted vapors were then spread around the world by frequent gusts of wind and gales. This corruption, when breaches, when breaches, that in necessarily penetrates to the heart and corrupts while they're going all they've gone from the cosmos and now they've got inside the human body necessarily penetrates to the heart and corrupts the substance of the spirit now we're going even deeper again and rots the

surrounding tissues this is the immediate cause of the present epidemic right i said that these are the most learned men and they are they are they are i'm not trying to take away from them but at the same time it just goes to show you can spend as much time as you want to university and there's still be some things that you can't understand. Listen. I'm not the only one. When you've got a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Yeah.

Right? Like when you've got a medieval university education, you're going to explain things within that. And so we've got the astronomy, right? That's like one of the, that's one of the quadrivium that you've got to learn. And this is reflecting this medieval idea of what is called the microcosm versus macrocosm.

Sure. Okay. The macrocosm is God's creation writ large, the universe. And the human body is meant to be a part of that. And to an extent, it's like a reflection of it, right? So humors exist in the world more generally, but they also exist within us. That's why astrology makes sense to them.

So astronomy and astrology pretty much exactly the same thing. So they've witnessed this conjunction. They know about it. And they're like, girl. Oh, and that's why. Told you that was something. Exactly. And so, you know, they really believe in all of that.

Like to the point that if you're going to, for example, do surgery on people, in the medieval period, you will consult astrological things because, like, you ought not to be bleeding certain parts of the body at certain times at certain times in conjunction with astrological problems. Okay? So there's a reflection of that in there. And this is actually pretty complex. And to be fair, okay, it's weird about the vapors.

And obviously, it's not due to a conjunction of the planets. But what you do see here that I do think is important is, okay, they don't know about germs. Yeah. But they understand that being around in the area, there's something around us. Yeah. And it makes us sick. Yeah. Right.

And so things like this, this idea of noxious vapors, this idea that you can have my asthma, you know, that's not a hundred miles off of germ theory. And it's like, yeah. And I don't know. It moves around on the wind. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, why is that weirder than like, oh, it's invisible. And if someone breathes on you?

Yeah, yeah. Right. No, I think it's in there. I think it's got the kernel of where this goes to it. And they're contextualizing it within the knowledge that's available to them in their day. But I also actually really love this idea of the connection of the cosmos and the individuals and this idea that, which we do know scientifically, is the case that we are all made up of certain particles that are universal that go across anything. And they seem to have some kind of innate knowledge of that. of how we are all connected somehow

and we are connected to things beyond even human experience is something that's far wider. So I do give them some kind of credit for that as well. And it's very easy, I think, for us, isn't it? To be like, God, they didn't know what they were talking about. But actually, there's wisdom in this. It might not necessarily be what we now understand as factual knowledge, but there's wisdom in it nonetheless.

Absolutely. They're doing the best that they can with the tools at their disposal, right? Yeah. Like this is actually a very sophisticated way of looking at this. It's not their fault that they're wrong. Nobody knows what a germ is. Yes.

That's just it. Like, they know, I wouldn't know the germs existed if I hadn't been told they exist. Yeah. Right. Can you imagine you told a medieval person about a germ? You know, it's a one I kind of like a fantasize if I would go back, the thing that I would try to like bring back is like penicillin.

Sure. And then I have to think about like how I would explain that to them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's difficult. It's very difficult. Right. I know we're coming to the end of this episode, but I want to get one more account in, and this is from an eyewitness. And now we're moving. So we've been into a fun old artistic type with Paccio. We have gone to the medical facilities. And now we're going to the clergy. We can't leave this topic without going to the clergy. So let's see what this says. The men have abandoned the old, decent style of long, full garments. Oh, right. Okay. in favour of clothes which are short, tight, impractical. Every part laced, strapped or buttoned up, with sleeves and hoods hanging down to absurd lengths

so that they look more like torturers or even demons than men. Women flowed with the tides of, oh God, women flowed at the tides of fashion, you know, even more eagerly wearing clothes that were so tight that they wore a fox tail hanging down inside their skirts at the back to hide their arses. First mention of an arse. The sin of pride manifested in this way

must surely bring down misfortune in the future. So again, the people were too sexy. Oh, it's just, it is your fault for being slutty. Well, it's not the first time somebody said that. I know, I'm like, listen, like, would you tell a butterfly not to flap its wings? You know, so this comes to us from an anonymous monk. And so it is imperative for the church to make this all you people's faults.

Of course. Right. Because they're like, I need to explain why this happens. And again, you got a hammer. Everything's a nail. Right. And so this has got to be a moral problem. And what's interesting about this is it kind of backs Paco up?

Yes, 100%. A little bit. Yeah, we're back to that. Yeah. It's like, oh, yeah. Everyone's like, hmm, seems everyone is dying. I'm going to get slutty with it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like, I'm going to like, if like, if not now, when? Like when am I going to wear my dress that's so tight I have to have a fox tail to hide my bum crack? Right? Yeah. Like that's that's what. Wait, what is the fox tail for? So yeah, that's basically what it is when he says hide their arces. Yeah. It's like it's hanging down inside, like on your bum so that your bum crack doesn't show. It's going to like give you a more padded. It literally is for that. Yeah. It's like to give you a more padded love. Because I've seen them. I've, I didn't know that that's what they were for. Yeah. And it's like, look, they're like, I don't want to like, I mean, listen, the two cheeks would be too much. So I'm like, listen, it could be

worse. They could not wear the fox tail and you'd be seeing that bum cleavage, right? So like, listen, take the win where you're... Yeah. I need to get myself a fox tail. Yeah. And it's like, this is where we start to see the kind of fashion for medieval men of just basically wearing tights. Yeah. It's like, so it's just like tights and like a really short tunic. But the tunic then has like floppy, flappy sleeves. Yes. Because like you still, you need to have that because the more cloth you're wearing in the medieval period, like the more your money you're showing you have. So they're like, I want to show my junk. Yeah. But I want to. everybody to know I have money.

I could afford trousers. But this is a fashion choice. So, yeah. And I think that's beautiful. Yes, no, listen, go for it. They're also the kind of image of medieval people that we grow up with in storybooks, right? Like if you're thinking about the penguin sleeping beauty or whatever. Oh, yeah.

That's how they're dressed. Yeah, exactly. And, oh, it was too sexy. Yeah, well, as ever. Listen. Okay. Anthony, my darling love. How do you feel about these sources?

Does this make you feel any different? I know you like I am a huge fan of this particular pestilence, but does this open your eyes up? Yeah. Do you know what it actually really does? Because what it's given me, and this is obvious because these are first-hand accounts, right? So this is the whole great thing about first-hand accounts in any part of history. It gives you a personal insight. And it gives you multiple personal insights. And the different ways people were looking at this, the different way people were using this event to, exert control, as we see so many times in different ways, to moralize and therefore to control again. But also, and I'm so glad that this is in there, to have fun sometimes, it's going like, I don't know, it's just what else can you do? And it's a very human reaction. And we see the kind of institutions reacting in the medical practitioners and the clergy. But then we have Bacchia going, and also there are,

as you have been saying, a plethora of dick jokes to go here. And I just, that's why we love history, right? It's all the formal stuff. And we have to know how to navigate all of that and how to read between those lines. And then we get to have fun with Paco. Do you know, I think that it just goes to show that it is important to keep looking at the Black Death. Because this is really what humanizes it. And these sorts of eyewitness accounts tell us more about what actual people are thinking and doing.

I think there's a tendency of people to think that history is just about kings and queens having a battle. But this is also real. Like this is what was happening. This tells us more about the average person on the street. And that's why I will make you all hear about Foxtail arces. Forever. That's right. You're going to have no pushback from me.

I'm on board. If you've enjoyed listening to history of Foxtail arses, then you're going to, you're going to, you're going to. You can find more medieval mayhem over on Gone Medieval with Eleanor, of course, and the Incredible Mount Lewis. We also have some medieval history in our After Dark back catalog, a lot of which is with you, actually. Can you believe it? Funny that, isn't it? So thank you so much for listening. And if you're listening and if you've been listening to After Dark for the last couple of years, we are also on YouTube.

So go over and you can watch us and you can see what. I've had a lot of people say that they thought that I was a much older man. Wow. Thanks for that to your face. Well, in the comments on YouTube. Never to my face. They were just like, we didn't think that you looked like that. I was like, I'll take it as a compliment.

Listen, I didn't know you were so handsome. No, they don't say that. They don't say that. They just go, oh, we thought you sound like an old lady, essentially. Which, by the way, I fully embrace my old ladyness. Oh, it's actually. Yeah, no, I'm here for it. Anyway, sorry, we're rambling.

Thank you for listening to After Dark. Thank you for watching After Dark on YouTube. You can leave us a five-star view and Gone Medieval, a five-star view, wherever you get your podcast because it helps other people to discover us and have a nice time with history, which is what we're all about, right?

That's right. Learning through fun. We will be back with more medieval mayhem with Eleanor in next week's episode.