Gone Medieval - Battle of the Eras: Medieval vs Early Modern

Episode Date: May 8, 2026

What if the medieval world did not end with a bang, but with a messy argument over who gets to define history itself? Matt Lewis spars with Not Just The Tudors' host Professor Suzannah Lipscomb to spar over Gutenberg, the Reformation, witchcraft, plague, the Renaissance, and the Wars of the Roses to ask where medieval ends and early modern begins. The result is a lively, surprising fight over power, change, and the making of the modern world.MOREWhy The Early Middle Ages MatterListen on AppleListen on SpotifyThe Black DeathListen on AppleListen on SpotifyGone Medieval is presented by Matt Lewis. Audio editor is Amy Haddow, the producer is Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life only on history hit. With your 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. Hello, I'm Matt Lewis. Welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We've got the most intriguing mysteries, the gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the Vikings to the printing press, from kings to popes to the crusades. We cross centuries and continents to delve into rebellions, plots and murders to find the stories big and small that tell us how we got here. Find out who we really were with Gone Medieval. Welcome to Gone Medieval. Today I'm joined by The Brilliant, Professor Susanna Lipscomb,

historian and host of Not Just the Tudors. Last year, I clashed with Tristan Hughes over where the ancient world ended and the medieval world began and it got pretty heated. Now, we're tackling the big question. When did the medieval world give way to the early modern one. Was it a gradual evolution or a dramatic revolution? Every region tells a different story, but our producers want a fight. So Susie and I are going to battle it out one person and one event at a time. So gloves on and let's dive in. Right, Susie, so you and I are going to try and work out maybe where the medieval period ends, if the glories of the medieval world ever actually ended. Where the early modern period begins,

What belongs to you? What belongs to gone medieval? And we're going to fight it out over a few specific things. And so I guess what we need to clear up before we even start is that we are mainly going to be talking about European, Western European history in the main here. So we can acknowledge that things are happening all over the world at various points that may or may not fit into this kind of idea of periodising history as medieval

and early modern because it's kind of an artificial construct, isn't it? It really is. I mean, even the idea that we divide it up. And actually, to be honest, the name early modern is such a weird name. It only really was coined in the 1940s when they needed something else to sort of distinguish the medieval and the modern. But it clearly is kind of teleological. It's leading us towards the modern. It's saying that everything in the early modern is kind of like the green shoots of modernity.

And so it sort of has a kind of propaganda purpose, as it were. but I think this question about when periods end and finish I mean the same problems happen at the end of the early modern does it finish in I don't know 1692 or 1750 or 17809 you know where does it finish I think it's really interesting the whole idea of periodisation is medieval it's petrarchs you know this idea of as you well know dividing it history into time periods but clearly what isn't the case is that sort of of on the 31st of December 1499 and everyone went to sleep and woke up in the early modern period on the 1st of January 1500. I mean, it's more complex than that. And so let's try and think about that. Yeah, I tried, well, we did this similar episode with Tristan on the ancients and, you know, I was trying to say that it's not like everyone goes to bed one day in a toga and wakes up the next morning and thinks, you know, where's my hose and doublet? It's, it's gradual. It's a long process of change. It's evolution rather than revolution in most cases.

which makes it quite interesting for us, I think, to look at some of these topics and think, you know, which side of the divide would we actually put that person or that event or that scientific development on? Absolutely. And I think we'll find that there'll be some sort of roots of some things in the medieval period. But they come to their fruition, their true fullness, they're flourishing in the early modern period. No, we're not here to be nice, Susie. One of us is going to win and one of us is going to lose. Right, so the first person that we're going to look at Is this person medieval or early modern? Where should they fall?

It's Johannes Gutenberg. So he lives 1400 to 1468 Invents the movable type press in Germany Which, I mean, probably not overstating it to describe that As an absolutely revolutionary moment. Having just said that things are evolution, not revolution. This is a genuine revolution, isn't it?

It is. I mean, in fact, actually, of course, we know that print had been around in China much earlier, but this is the beginning of the printing press in Europe. Gutenberg himself, you can have him. He's definitely medieval. Poor Johannes. Dismiss him so, condemn him to the medieval world.

Actually, no, I'm upset you condemn him to the medieval world. I've condemned him. But what I would say is that the transformation that he wrought only comes to fruition later. So really fascinating. after print develops as a technology for the first 50 years or so they're basically making imitations of manuscripts

so they're making books that look like manuscripts they're in Gothic type and the content of them their Bibles, their breveries, their prayer books and it takes quite a while for them to realise actually we can make things much more cheaply and we can disseminate them and the sort of numbers of books

rockets enormously by the thousands the number of different titles available over the 16th century. So I'm going to give you Gutenberg if I can have the importance of print and how it starts to become a kind of political and a religious weapon, because I don't think that happens in the 15th century. No, I think the press is something that really lays the groundwork for the emergence of what we would think of as an early modern world. You think of Kaxston coming to London and setting up his press in the late 1470s.

he's a medieval man existing in a medieval world. But all of a sudden you've got people thinking, what if I wanted to print a different book? What if it's not just a copy of a manuscript? What if it's not even just a religious thing? You've got Mallory writing is Mort D'Arthur and having it printed, and people can get copies and copies and copies of this.

And it's not this exclusive, horrendously expensive thing to own a book anymore. And then later on into the 16th century, that means you can start printing pamphlets. It doesn't have to be a massive book. you can start disseminating information much more widely, much more quickly than you ever could before. Absolutely. And you can also not just have text. You can have pictures. I mean, one of the things that's so crucial for Martin Luther, in the Protestant Reformation as we now think of it, is that there are images. I mean, most people can't read it this time. Maybe by the end of the 16th century, you know, the estimates are perhaps 10% of men can read 5% of women.

So, I mean, that doesn't stop you being able to absorb the information. The parallel I like to draw is it's a bit like, you know, being able to drive today. You don't need to be able to drive. You just need to know someone or be able to pay someone who can. And it's the same with reading at this time. You need to know someone who can read it out loud. But images, and often these are kind of hand-coloured in, they become so powerful in suggesting that the Pope is the Antichrist,

the horror of Babylon, all these things. And those pictures become powerful. And then therefore these pamphlets, this sort of ephemeral print, this cheat print, can become really good at galvanising ideas. And I think that really does happen in the 16th century. So I'm taking that one. So essentially I'm going to cheat and I'm going to keep the Johannes Gutenberg card as a point for me. Because you've said Gutenberg is a medieval person. I think you need to tear it in half and I'll have what he did.

I think you have half. I'll give you a corner off it. If we get to a tiebreaker, the corner of Johannes Gutenberg's card, we'll be the tiebreaker. This is unfair. This is rigged from the beginning. Absolutely, it is. How else am I going to win? The next kind of idea, notion, I guess, that we've got here

is the breaking of the power of Rome. Oh, that's definitely mine. So I would suggest that probably the medieval period in Western Europe is kind of the story of the Catholic Church gaining and maintaining control over everything, over religion, thought, desperately trying to take control of secular states as well and insert itself into all of that.

Is the idea of breaking that power of the Catholic Church in Rome a moment when we can say the medieval world has ended and the early modern has begun? I think so. And I think it's because what we see with Martin Luther, possibly maybe apocryphal, nailing his thesis to the church drawer in Wittenberg, 1517. and what happens after that is essentially like opening Pandora's box, or Natalie Haynes tells us it's actually a jar, opening Pandora's jar, and all of these ideas come out and they can't be confined.

So it means that people start questioning authority and asking, well, if, you know, Luther's basic idea is, if the Pope is wrong about the sale of indulgences, certificates to buy you off time from purgatory, he might be wrong about other things. And so to kind of challenge church authority in that way means that people can question authority in all sorts of ways. I mean, when people say break with Rome,

of course, most people are going to be thinking about Henry the 8th break with Rome, which happens in the early 1530s. There's not one set date, but it happens because he wants to divorce Catherine Verrigan, Marianne, and that is a moment where he's breaking from Rome, and therefore reducing the power of Rome in England. But this is happening across Europe in all sorts of ways. Because in England it's a very peculiarly English thing, isn't it?

Because Henry would still tell you, I think, till the day you died, is a Catholic. Absolutely. It doesn't change that. This is not a Protestant Reformation under Henry VIII. It's a selfish megalomaniacs desire to be separated from his wife, creating an entire new church out of it. But there is this kind of almost parallel movement of Protestant happening on the continent. So something, the wind has changed somewhere because, I mean,

we can definitely stretch all of these ideas of problems with the Roman church back into the medieval period. You've got kind of Wickliff at the end of the 14th century, you know, leading the Lollab movement, which is essentially an effort to say that the church is corrupt. The church isn't meant to be rich, you know, it preaches poverty and yet look at what it has. And, you know, he's persecuted for that and his followers are burned as heretics in England. And at the start of the 15th century, his ideas are influencing Jan Husse in the east of Europe and that you get the Hussite rebellions and everything happening there, which is, again, they're declared heretics. It's an effort to oppose the church.

I don't know you can take it all the way back to the Cathars. In the 12th century, they're viewed as a heretical sect because they don't agree 100% with the teachings of the Catholic Church. So there's always been this idea that maybe the Catholic Church isn't right. But that's always been an idea that's got you into way more trouble than it seems to in the 16th century. It's almost like there's been some kind of shift that makes people more receptive to the idea that the Catholic Church isn't the only way to do things. I mean, there's been a lot of heresies over the years and the Cathars definitely fall into that category. The Lollards, I think,

you can see actually quite a lot of similarity between Lollardie, the ideas of that and what emerges in the Reformation, which is questioning this power. Maybe it contributes to it that we have the most awful Pope in Rodrigo Borgia. You know, if you're thinking about pointing out the excesses of the Catholic Church, a man who has got not just like a quiet air off to the side somewhere, but you know,

loads of children that he parades around that he's having, you know, the famed dance of the chestnuts with possibly, you know, sex workers picking up. Chestnuts from the floor whilst wearing no clothes while surrounded by cardinals in the heart of the Vatican. I mean, you can sort of conclude that things maybe have gone slightly wrong.

But what I think is so fascinating about this period is that we know that it becomes the Protestant Reformation and we know that it becomes this great schism in the church. But that nobody knows that it's going to work out like that. And that we have people like Thomas Moore and Erasmus who are great humanist thinkers. They believe in the power of returning to the original text. They believe in searching in the ancient ideas for a way forwards. And they believe that there can be reform in the church. and yet that doesn't come about and it becomes this enormous schism.

But the schism happens and it does change everything because it means that over time, I mean I think, I guess this is why the period is called early modern because it allows people to start to think about where the source of authority is. And it seems to me the really crucial thing that happens

in terms of reformed or Protestant belief is that you take out that middleman of the priest and you say we can talk directly to God and then you don't need that layer of authority when it comes to decision making and that sets the foundation

for the scientific revolution disputed term but the scientific revolution the Enlightenment later that all begins with not having to go to someone else to get credibility to interpret stuff for you so I feel like I'm going to have to give you

the 16th century reformation is breaking the power of Roman, and that it's a medieval idea. Medieval people have tried it, but it's not until the early modern period that they managed to make it stick. Not well enough. Yes, here we go. Thank you very much. Right, so the next couple, pair that we're going to talk about, are they medieval or are they early modern? Isabella and Ferdinand.

Ooh. So this is a royal couple, Isabella of Castile, Ferdinand of Aragon, largely credited with unifying the country that we know of Spain today, largely credited with possibly problematic term of the reconquista, driving the Muslim presence out of Iberia that had been there for 800 years by that time, but also the people who begin to finance the age of exploration, sending Columbus off west.

Should we think of them, you know, are they doing these things because they're early modern or are they doing these things because they're thoroughly medieval people? And the other two things, I suppose we should say about them, are that they expel the Jews from Spain and then four years later Portugal expels their Jews. And so that expulsion, which arguably is a medieval idea. I mean, the Jews are expelled from England under Edward I, and not allowed back until Cromwell.

So there's a fairly long history of persecuting and expelling Jews in the medieval world. Certainly. And it becomes, it transmutes in the 16 and 16th. century we get kind of ghettoization. But that idea feels like that's kind of a core medieval idea. You can have persecution of the Jews. And the founding of the Inquisition, which is to target people who are thought to be Jewish, who are pretending they think to be Christian. So converts, who they don't think have thoroughly converted. And then the Inquisition gets taken up in the 16th century in various different ways by the Roman Catholic Church.

It's almost impossible to make the no-one expects the Spanish Inquisition joke, talking so seriously about the Spanish Inquisition. Sorry. It's not fun though. The thing is when you read about it, it's so hard, isn't it? That's what's so genius about making a joke of it because actually it's impossible to read about auto defy with a smile on your face because it's so grim.

So I think I do, it's difficult. I don't really want to give you them. But I feel that. How about then? The age of exploration, sending Columbus to the West, that's essentially about opening up trade routes to where they think the East Indies are. One of the things that Columbus does, one of the things that he talks about is, you know, when he gets all of this gold and fabulous

wealth that he's hopefully going to find in the East, he wants it to fund a new crusade to go and take Jerusalem. Yes. Which is a thoroughly medieval idea. Yes, it's true. I mean, yeah, he goes to the West because he wants to take the East. That's exactly right. And their idea about the new world, so called, when he comes back, is that they're hoping to convert everybody. And also, I suppose, if one thinks about what they are doing in terms of the reconquista, the taking of Granada and the rest of the south of Spain from the Muslims,

that's also trying to address this problem, as they see it, that the Muslims invaded in 7-Eleven. So that is all medieval. But, but, One thing I would like to say about Isabel and Fernando is that they are very good at patronising the Renaissance. This might not seem like a major thing, but they are absolutely leading the way when it comes to things like employing court painters, Juan de Flanders, Antonio Inglis, well before many of the Northern Europeans are. So they really are driving ahead with art. At the same time as we only see that happening in Rome, Florence and Rome, perhaps at the same time.

same until time. And they have a sort of vision for unifying Spain as well, which arguably is something that becomes kind of focus in the early modern period. I'm slightly struggling here, though, because I do genuinely think a lot of what they're doing is medieval. Yeah, I think, you know, the reconquista ending in 1492 is really the conclusion of a crusade. You know, it's the successful conclusion to them of a crusade. You seem to make it a really strong effort here to say that everything bad they did is medieval and everything good they did is early modern. Did you notice that, that? So in other words, what I'd like to do is say that from 1492 onwards the territory is mine.

How about that? No. I mean, I do think that idea of creating a much more unified, centralised, single state is a very early modern trait. We go from seeing lots of these fractured kingdoms and even counties within kingdoms that still see themselves in a quite independent way. to seeing these ever bigger blocks of a state and a state that has the machinery of state that we would almost recognise today. You know, some of those institutions

that exist in those places today are beginning to emerge and create those single states. And I think you can see Ferdinand is about driving that for Spain, but are they doing it because they think we're early modern people and we want a nice unified state?

Or are they doing it because they're thinking we're conquering all of this land? Yes. And of course, none of them would have thought of themselves as early modern. It's like we talk about the Tudors, no one thought of themselves as Tudors. But that movement towards centralised power comes to fruition in the 17th century

with Louis XIV and the move towards absolutism. So I do think we see the beginnings of something there, whether they intended it or not. Obviously we've seen states, you know, acquire smaller states before. If we look at back to the Cathars, for example, that's the taking over of Longdok by France. You know, the sort of acquisition has happened before. But this is political and sort of foundational for Spain, I think.

So where are we going then? Are they medieval or are the early modern? Do you hate them so much that you're going to call the medieval? I mean, I find Isabel completely fascinating. One interesting thing that actually I think of as a result of this is thinking about the kind of changing of the god. I mean, Fernando dies in 1516, and we have a huge number of people who die at around that point in time. This is dangerous territory. I'm just persuading it.

Just push it further and further. Push it further and further. But there's quite a lot of, you know, Henry 7th, obviously, 1509. There's, you know, Max Millian, we take up to a 1519. We've got, there's a real changing of the guard that happens in those, at the beginning of the 16th century, when things really clearly are of a different period. I think it's those 30 years or so that are in dispute, perhaps, between us.

So they're mostly medieval. Yeah, I think they're mostly medieval. They're a little bit in the blurry bit, so I'm going to claim them. Yeah. Thank you very much. I'm slightly disgusted that you hate the medieval world so much though, Susie. It's great. Right.

Well, hopefully this is one that you'll be interested in. We might be able to agree on something here. Witchcraft? Oh, witchcraft. In particular, I guess. Yes, it's so interesting, isn't it? I remember when I was at university, I was set a question about the rise in beliefs in witchcraft. And why the rise and belief in witchcraft happened in the 1450 to 1750?

which of course is not the case. It's a trick question because people have believed in witchcraft for thousands of years. But what we absolutely see happen in the early modern period is a increase in persecution, prosecution, execution of people thought to be witches. And I think that whilst that definitely our cases stretching back into actually ancient Rome, ancient Greece, we've got the Alice Keitler case in your period in the sort of 1320s, it's only really after Heinrich Kramer, that absolutely mad man writes his hammer of the witches, Malius Maleficorum 1486, mostly him, which is sort of viriantly misogynistic and seems to be under the authority of the church.

Only after that, and really later in the 16th century do we start to see the witch craze, the rise in the end it's like 90,000 people we estimate. who are arrested, around half of them executed as witches. And it mostly happens if we're drilling in between about 1560 and 1650. Yeah. And I think the medieval period has a really benign attitude to witchcraft. You know, yes, they believe it exists, but they generally believe it's a fairly harmless, sometimes a positive thing.

Are the women who are healing people using herbs and things in communities? Is it a form of witchcraft? Maybe. But it's good. So we don't really know. There are definitely women around who are referred to as witches. We get the first kind of witch trial in France in the 14th century. And then we've got the Marjorie Geordomain, who's known as the Witch of I,

who is burnt at the stake in the 1440s for supposedly helping Duke Humphrey of Gloucester's wife, Eleanor Cobham, to forecast the death of King Henry the 6th. So there is this idea beginning to emerge by kind of the middle of the 15th century that witchcraft could be a bad thing, but it's so often in the medieval period, particularly in the 15th century, I think. It emerges as a political weapon that witchcraft is something you can use against women

where you don't necessarily have the judicial tools to deal with them as you might deal with a man. Eleanor Cobham's case particularly throws up the idea that there is no legal mechanism to try a noble woman for treason. A noble man can be tried by a group panel of his peers, but there's no mechanism to do that. to a woman. So they changed the law to invent a way to do it, but it's too late with Eleanor.

So they charge her with witchcraft. So that's the kind of morphing of this idea that this benign thing that you might call witchcraft might be something bad. Henry V in prisons his stepmom for donkey's years for accusing her of being a witch just because he wants to take all of her lands and money off her because he wants to use it to fund his war in France. So it evolves from this kind of benign, friendly, helpful thing into a political weapon. But then, at some point the attitude changes to think it's it's a real thing that we should be scared of and that we need to chase out of the world yes i mean that's the crucial change is that witchcraft starts to be seen as a diabolical pact and the idea that the people might be making

packs with the devil is so threatening in an age which thinks it's living in the end times it thinks that the apocalypse the day of judgment is coming and so there's a real kind of deep-seated fear. And the fear is amongst the elites as much as among ordinary people. And that's what really changes in the 16th century. And in fact, the diabolical pact becomes put into law in places across Europe. So the other thing I would say is that the fact it's put into law changes it as well. That we have a witch burnt at the stake earlier is very different from England, say,

in the 60-04, James VI and First's law that's passed, because at that point, witchcraft is a crime, it's a capital offence, and therefore it's treated as a crime and which is a hanged in England because it's not heresy, it is a crime, it's murder, but by witchcraft. The other thing I want to say is that I think this is part of a general move across the 16th century into the 17th century in terms of a kind of tightening of patriarchy. So actually we also see an increase in women accused of being scolds. So I always think that scolds and witches, the women who are accused of both of those,

are basically they're women without HRT. So they are women who are irritable and a bit cantankerous and who are just going through the awfulness of perimenopause and menopause. And that is problematic. And people object to women having an opinion, having a voice, being a bit angry about things. And there is this kind of clampdown. So women who are scolds are punished by being put in a brank so that, you know, they can't speak.

It's scolds who are dipped in water, not witches. And then the other thing that happens also in 1594, 1624 in England and France are new laws about infanticide. So women who are thought to have conceived outside of marriage and then their baby dies, are accused of infanticide and executed for it. And of course, infant death is really common at this time, and so is pregnancy outside of marriage. But it's just another way of clamping down on women's power. So I think that what we see is this kind of extension of patriarchy.

I don't think it's necessarily directed at women who are benignly using herbs to heal. I think a lot of these people are completely innocent of any involvement. with anything vaguely magical. They're not necessarily the cunning woman of the village. They are just often people who have less than those who are accusing them and the sort of the hatred goes downwards. And I think that is an indication that it is a kind of about the dawning of modernity because one of the reasons why these women,

and it's mostly women, but not all, are in such straits that they're coming to beg for stuff from a more wealthy landowner is because the whole system of charity that had been part of the medieval world view has broken down because population is growing, because the prices are increasing, because there's less around and people are looking after number one and people are hungry and fearful and envious

and women who are asking for things are often those who are bearing the brunt of that. I think it's quite striking that we've spoken a little bit about kind of the reformation and the breaks with Rome and all of that kind of thing. We've talked about how that was a kind of relaxing of attitudes, a challenging of the structures that had been there for hundreds of years, almost as if we think that that was a slightly enlightened move. But here we have something that I think we wouldn't consider to be enlightened.

It's almost the opposite of that. It's getting back to a way more superstitious time than the medieval world had ever really been. And it's kind of, whilst that might be perceived to be moving forward, This feels like it's moving backwards. Well, progress is not linear, and progress itself is probably a problematic idea. But I absolutely think it's fascinating to consider that the witch trials are a product of growing capitalism. They're the product of changing forms of landholding, for goodness sake. I mean, that people are, by this point in time, more and more having to move on to what we consider a standard,

like contractual arrangements for their rent, where the rent can go up year after year, which has just not been the case throughout the sort of 15th century. And everybody's feeling the pinch. And there's somebody has to be to blame. And then, of course, we get sort of apocalyptic weather conditions and terrible bouts of epidemics and war, lots and lots of war. And so the circumstances are such that there's so much need

and there's so much sense of desire for things that people don't have so much lack. I think that the witchcraft trials come out of so much lack because they're not just about superstition. They're actually also about fear of what you don't have and what you

want to have and what is being taken from you. And so these become kind of scapegoats for the problems of society. Yeah, that's so interesting. So I guess we're sort of allowing that witchcraft has existed in the medieval world that the 15th century sees a kind of political weaponisation

of the idea of witchcraft in elite cases. But are we thinking of early modern as the time in which people get genuinely terrified of witchcraft and it becomes much more of a problem for society? I mean, Matt, we don't have 90,000 people being arrested in the medieval period as witches. It clearly is an early modern problem. You can have that stinky hot mess

for your early modern world. Talking as stinky hot messes. Oh, where are we going now? card says the plague. Ah, yes. And it also has a note that we might want to think about sweating sickness. And it says we might want to think about syphilis. I'm not sure how much we ever want to think about syphilis.

But let's go there. I mean, the plague in the middle of the 14th century is what we tend to think of as the plague, the black death, huge pandemic, wipes out, depending on which estimates you look at around half, maybe up to two thirds of the population of Europe, is utterly devastating, brings about huge societal changes. Changes the way people think about their relationship with their feudal lords, with their landlords, with their masters.

People who are still tied to the bit of land that they live on the serfs are starting to think, can you really make this stick for very much longer? Leads to a whole series of popular revolts, the peasants revolt in England, but similar things are happening in France and around places as well. Is disease and the responses to disease changing the world?

is the play, I mean, I think we have to say the Black Death is probably a medieval thing, but when we think about recurrences of it and the arrival of something like the sweating sickness and then of syphilis and things like that are the impacts of those diseases and responses to them, does that mark a changing point? I mean, clearly the Black Death, the 1340s, is a moment

and it produces vast change. But what I think so fascinating is that the plague just doesn't go away. I mean, by the time we get to the 16th century, It's recurring roughly every nine years across Europe as a whole, every 16 years in England, we think. And there's still massive outbreaks where huge proportions of the population are dying on a kind of every decade. It's still around Great Fry of London, 1666, also there's a plague that year. Yes, yes, exactly.

The year before you've had very huge numbers of people dying from the plague. So I think that to just think of it as medieval is wrong. And certainly I can claim delightfully the pox, syphilis and sweating sickness as early modern, I think, because sweating sickness is seen for the first time amongst Henry Tudor's armies on the way at Bosworth. So in the 1480s and thereafter it's around to about 1551. We don't know exactly what it was. It looks like a sort of really virulent form of influenza, and it recurs often,

and people die within 24 hours quite often if they're going to die of it. So it's a horrible, horrible disease. And then the newcomer on the block is what later gets called by the sort of Latinate name of syphilis, the great pox, which occurs amongst the French armies in Italy in the campaigns of the 1490s. And everyone refers to it as someone.

else's problem. So, you know, the sweating sexiness gets called the English sweat. The great pox get called the French pox or the Italian pox or whoever you're blaming. And it's sexually transmitted and it's really horribly virulent at first and it starts on men on the genitals and it produces all these postures and boils and it horribly painful. And then, of course, it develops over time and becomes something you can live with. But still, you know, you've got these cases of people who have the, you know, this is drilling through the skull of their head. You know, they're living with these open wounds. It's just horrific. Yeah. And I guess the question is if, you know, if the plague is a thoroughly medieval thing,

and it's still around in 1666, 1666 is clearly medieval then. Can we say there's a point, you know, we've just said the sweating sickness and syphilis and things like that arrive and are virulent. And there isn't yet the medical technology to effectively tackle all of those things. So is this a point at which we need to think that there are still very medieval attitudes and responses to these things rather than anything early modern that maybe medicine is lacking behind some other aspects of the changing world? Yes, I mean really interesting.

I wouldn't say that even medieval actually, I think the attitudes towards medicine are essentially ancient. I mean, they're still thinking about Galen. You know, ideas about the body take a long time to change. They do start to change in the 16th century, do start to get more disdainting. sections and more kind of thinking about what be going on by the early 17th century William Harvey has discovered the circulation of the blood, though he still thinks that hysteria in women

is caused by the womb wandering around the body. So, you know, he's not. It's not. So if he, and you know what, he thinks that the only way to stop it is if a woman is regularly having sexual intercourse, otherwise she might go mad. Is that what I told his wife, do you think? Yeah, that's his excuse. But the attitudes take so long to change. And, I mean, still, in 1665, people are thinking that you can deal with a plague

or you can tell that it's coming because, you know, there's going to be an influx of woodlice or spiders. You know, there's a boy at Eton who's thrash for not smoking his pipe because they think that smoking keeps the plague at bay. I mean, so ideas take a really long time to change. And so I think we're both actually caught up in ancient. world views there. Do I get to keep the plague then? What do we think? I mean, I feel like you can keep the plague if you can give me

such a weird negotiation. Can I have sweating sickness and the pox, please? You can have sweating sickness and you can have syphilis. Thank you. I think it's just interesting that the ways of tackling and approaching those things are so slow to change that they're still facing the same problems, still trying to use the same explanations for everything that had been around for thousands of years by that point and that that's kind of lacking lagging behind everything else

really right the next person that we have is someone who we have actually mentioned before his name has cropped up already is this person medieval or is the early modern Thomas Moore sir saint Thomas Moore goodness me this is a tricky one so I mean his outlook is very much one of somebody embracing the ideas of the Renaissance, which we haven't really talked about yet, but he is a humanist in that his, he looks to ancient ideas, skipping over the medieval period,

if I can put it like that, looks back to the ancient Greeks and the ancient Romans inspiration. This is where they start calling it kind of medieval middle bit, don't they? Because they wanted to talk about how wonderful ancient Greek and ancient Roman wisdom is, how great the modern world in which they're living is, and just leave that bit in the middle.

Absolutely. Just ignore what's happened in between. And so he's a human, is not because he's an atheist. That's not what it means at the time, but he's a believer, but who believes that things can be reformed. And that, to me, seems fundamentally early modern.

At the same time, I will give you the fact that he is much more like someone like Thomas Beckett in terms of his outlet when it comes to the church, he doesn't in the end become at all Protestant. He dies probably arguably a Catholic martyr or possibly a martyr for conscience

or possibly he just won't put you know, tie his colours to the mast either way but he says nothing. But he defends the Pope's position as supreme head by not swearing. Which is a very medieval thing, isn't it? In a world that is beginning to allow for the acceptance of alternatives he has a very medieval attitude

to the Catholic Church still. Although one could make a case that standing in, you know, saying, I can do no other here I must stand is a very early modern idea. It's what Luther has done and more does it, his point is different. But the sort of bending with the wind and not allowing these religious matters to define you too much, perhaps could be regarded as a more medieval practice. Yeah. Well, and I think I'm going to score an own goal here, as much as I hate.

to maybe allow you to win this one. I think one of the most interesting things about Thomas Moore is if you look at the things that he's writing. And there are two main things that he's particularly famous for writing. Obviously, I'm going to bring it Richard the Third. But, you know, he gives us this kind of first real narrative history of Richard the Third. And his other book, Utopia, is almost like a historical fiction novel. You know, he's writing about this ideal world, this island that exists somewhere,

which is packed with ideas, although he positions it as ideal, it's packed with no private property and married priests, all the things that we know Thomas Moore disagrees with. And I think in those two pieces of work, we've got someone who, for me and his Richard III, is writing old-fashioned medieval style allegory about history. This is history as lesson. This is moral warnings from history.

And the interesting thing about that is that he stops writing it and gives it up and puts it on a shelf. The book that he continues to write is Utopia, which is a much more new idea of a kind of fictional, narrated approach to examining things that don't exist. It doesn't really have a moral message behind it, or at least not one that Thomas Moore would agree with. It's positioning perfection as all of the things that we know he disagrees with. So it's kind of using literature as a way to explore different thoughts and different ideas, not just to present it as a moral lesson from history. So I think his Richard the third is a very medieval piece of work. I think Utopia is a thoroughly early modern

piece of work. And I think it's striking that he puts the medieval down. And the one that he publishes is the early modern piece of work. Absolutely. And that book Utopia is still so foundational in terms of thinking about political satire and about, you know, we literally use the word utopian to talk about visions of an ideal world, which in this case, as you say, wasn't his ideal world at all. One of the most shocking ideas he has in it is that people should see each other naked before they get married, which he thinks is completely, I mean, one assumes he thinks is completely outrageous.

Turns out that's what people mostly do these days. But, you know, this sense that he is creating a sort of vision for how a world could be and playing with ideas is very much of the Renaissance age. Yeah. I feel like he's a man who, more than anybody else that I can think of, is aware that he is standing with one foot in two different worlds and it's really struggling to step one way or the other with both feet. His literature, I think, points to him being very early modern. His religious views points in being quite medieval, but his humanist approach is also thoroughly early modern.

So I think on the swingometer, are we... I mean, give them over. Sort of reluctantly. But, okay, I mean, I guess this is a big one now. We've got the Renaissance. The Renaissance. Well, let's do this in five minutes. Yeah, speed through the Renaissance. Okay. So the foundations of the Renaissance are 14th century.

But in terms of it's flourishing, I think we can argue that that comes with the High Renaissance, comes with the patronage of the Medici, like Laurentian Medici. And then with the move to Rome, it's people like Micahecoe, like Micaheachia. Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael, who are producing the most extraordinary work, which of course is happening. You know, the Statue of David, Michelangelo's Situid of David is 50 and04.

The sort of the things that we are most familiar with, the Mona Lisa. All of these things are early 16th century, actually. And we then see that spreading across northern Europe. We get people like Albert Jure. We get Hans Holbein. And if we think beyond visual art, if we think about literature, I mean, English literature scholars, when they say the Renaissance, they mean the 16th century.

Because people like Sir Thomas Wyatt, one of my great favourites, he is introducing the Petrarchan sonnet, medieval, into English. And people like Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, is using blank verse, unrhymed verse in translating Virgil's in it. And he's doing that for the first time and then Shakespeare picks that up. And we've got Sydney and then we've, you know, Spencer, and then eventually we've got Shakespeare, of course, and Milton much later. And that is all a early modern flourishing, looking back to the glory days of Greek and Rome. But the idea of a renaissance isn't necessarily an early modern thing. I mean, we get the 12th century renaissance in Western Europe,

particularly when there is following the First Crusade increased contact with the Muslim scholars in the Near East. and all of this knowledge that Western Europeans will try and tell you was lost. It was never lost. It was just being cared for by Muslims. And suddenly they have access to all of that again. And we get this kind of flourishing of art and learning and translation and understanding and a hearkening back to the ancient world of the Greeks and the Romans in the 12th century. But we definitely wouldn't think of that as an early modern thing.

So what do you think has changed in the 16th century? Is it, because it's striking that in the 16th century you've got the reformation going on at a similar sort of time to the Renaissance flourishing. There seems to be a real mind shift. I mean, can we pick a point in the 16th century where we say the Renaissance has become an early modern thing? So, well, let's first of all say that there are multiple renaissonses then because the 12th century one is clearly distinct from what's happening by the end of the 15th, beginning of the 16th century. I mean, what would we say?

I mean, Utopia itself, 1516 could be the watershed moment, perhaps. It's after that that we see. But that's in England. I mean, it's very easy to be quite specific to a particular place. I mean, where would we say for elsewhere? We'd say Rabelais, you know, I guess, Pantuckaroo and Gargantua. We'd say for France. for Spain we might have to look ahead to Don Quixote

and that we're not, you know, that's not till the 17th century. So we're, in terms of where we position now, the beginning of our renaissance in different countries, it's going to vary. And of course it starts in Italy. So it's the earliest in Italy. So, I mean, I think, I'm not sure I can give you a point because I think it's really from the beginning of the 16th century,

very beginning of the 16th century, and it gathers pace over time and affects everything. early modernist thing to say. It's all ours. I mean, I kind of think if we're talking about the Renaissance, I think we have to say that's an early modern thing, don't we? I mean, I'm very happy to accept that point of view, Matt. Yes. I need to stop trying to be fair. Now that I've got this, you could have made a greater case for Petrarch, you know, but I'm just going to leave that there. Anyway, I'll have it back later. Our last card, it's quite an interesting one I think. The Wars of the Roses. So in England, in particular, and we normally date it 1455 to 1485,

maybe 1487, if you actually want to take notice of the Battle of Stoke, which nobody ever seems to want to. And this is a moment, so a fight for the Crown of England, quite often framed as a civil war. I don't know that we can call it a civil war. It's very much the elite fighting the elite, rather than it being any kind of a civil war. But even if we frame it as that, I do think this is a moment that shifts something in England in that it breaks or creates the realization that you have to break the power of the old nobility, that kings are being overrun, are being swamped by their own nobility, and that the system is crumbling and can't carry on as it was. And that that causes an outbreak of war. It causes the deposition of kings and, you know, the throne becomes a bit of a

merry-go round for a little while. And that that has to end, that has to be fixed. And that breaking the power of the old nobility is kind of the way to do that. And for me, as much I hate to say, because this is earlier than I'd like to ever allow you to have anything. But it feels like the Wars of the Roses is a moment that is shifting things towards something that we would recognise more as early modern. That's so interesting. So yes, I mean, I would say the same in that I think that Henry the 7th and his new men, you know, the way that he's building people up because of their merit and not because of their noble status, is categorically an early modern development. But thank you for pushing back the origins of that well into the walls of the roses and allowing me to stretch my

tent over more and more of the 15th century. Oh no, hoist by my own partard. And this is also a period in which we're talking about the increased use of gunpowder. You know, gunpowder is a thing, much like the printing press that is going to change the world forever. Yes. Francis Bacon said the three things that most changed the world were gunpowder, the printing press and the compass. And we have two of them really coming of age in this period. And gunpowder absolutely, I mean, the use of cannon on a large scale is from the 15th century onwards. We get those amazing wall breakers that the sort of cannon can really demolish and then the archibus and then later the musket. And that is absolutely transforming the nature of warfare in this period.

Fun fact, first gun crime in London, 1536, poor Robert Packington. But then, of course, you've got the development of armies over this period of time, like a large army in the late 15th century is probably, what, 20,000 strong. And by the middle of the 17th century, it's 150,000. I mean, it's, you know, and I'm rushing ahead with all sorts of things here. But I do think that warfare often is a period in which you see great technological developments. And perhaps that's also happening in the Wars of the Rose. It kind of forces innovation, doesn't it, in a way that might not have happened otherwise.

I mean, if I'm going to make, obviously I've got to make a play for the Wars of the Roses being medieval here because it's going to ruin me. I'm surprised that you're giving us over quite so easily. I'm trying to be fair. I'm not giving it over at all. But I think it's a very medieval response to the problem. In that we are seeing the mobilisation of levies, of nobleman's private armies in a way that I think I begin to associate the medieval world much more with the professional mercenary army and much more with the development of state armies,

state-run kind of standing armies. And we don't have those in the Wars of the Roses and we don't have those in the medieval world. So this feels like almost a death row of the medieval world that there is a change brewing and this is a response to things that need to change, but it's a very medieval response to that need. Yes. I mean, we don't get standing armies really

for quite a long time in the early modern period either. that is a bit of a later development. I do genuinely think it's probably a death throw of the medieval world. A death row or a birth pang, it's hard to say. I'm going to keep it as a death row because otherwise I'll never be able to talk about the Wars of the Roses on God Medieval again. I can't do that. You can't bear that.

You'd have to have me on not just the Tudors at least once a month to come and talk about the Wars of the Roses. So you'd be creating a punishment for yourself if you do this. So, and I mean the idea of warfare and gunpowder and stuff, you know, you talk about the war destroyers. there. And part of what happens around that time too is the, I'm going to say the fall of Constantinople and we shouldn't say the fall of Constantinople, but it's taken by the Ottoman forces because saying it's the fall of Constantinople puts you very much on one side of the fight.

So the Ottomans take Constantinople, which is a place that was understood to be untakeable. It couldn't be breached. The walls had never been breached. It had never been taken. And it's tempting, again, as much as I hate to do this, I don't know why I'd do this to myself. She's just being fair-minded, Matt. I know, I need to stop it, though, don't I? Constantinople is taken in 1453 by the Ottoman Empire. And if we think about the end of the ancient world, if we ever want to put an actual date on it as being the fall of Rome.

1453 is kind of the fall of the rest of the Roman Empire, the Eastern Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire that has endured ever since, that considered itself the successor to the Roman Empire. 1453, you can make an argument for the fact that warfare has changed, politics is changing, everything is changing, and that Constantinople switching hands from the Eastern Christian and the Roman Empire to the Muslim Ottoman Empire

is an iridefining moment too. Yes, it is interesting and it kind of sparks a lot of the changes that happen thereafter, and we've talked about Isabel and Fernando, their reaction is because of what has happened at Constantinople. The desire to take back Granada for the Christians is because they see that the Turk is on, you know, at their door. And that is what people are reacting to a lot in the 16th century.

We forget too much, I think, about how France is a first of France, of Franco the 1st, Henry V, are reacting, and above all, Charles V, reacting to this Ottoman threat. So it is determining the nature of warfare and of political international concerns across the 16th century, and that does begin in the mid-15th century. So, yeah, I'll take that as well. No, no, I think we'd already said that the Wars of the Roses is very firmly medieval. I'm definitely tucking that into my stack.

But I think it's symptomatic of the fact that these things are almost impossible to pin down to a date, even in one place, you can have so much going on that might feel medieval, but there's also some early modern stuff. We talked about Thomas Moore, I think is a great example of that kind of striding the divide and trying to work out which world you're fitting because something is changing and I don't know whether I want that or that. Yes, I know.

And on a personal level, I would say that I find this period of overlap utterly fascinating. It is the period of sort of 1490 to 1520 where it's all up for grabs and where new worlds are being created in the mind. And perhaps it is that just that transition which makes that period so engaging

and so interesting because it's not clear which way things are going to go. So you're happy for gone medieval to do stuff up to 15-20. We've got that recording. No, I'm happy for you to end in 1490 and leave the rest of me. I can't remember how many cards I gave you before I asked for the scores, but I've got four. I've got four as well.

Oh, well, we can call that an honourable draw then, can't we? Absolutely, let's do that. Although I did say if it was a tiebreaker, then you get a corner of Gutenberg. So I've got four and a quarter, or four in a corner. I'm going to give you four and a corner, and I've got three minus a corner. There's your winning scrap of paper. Thank you so much.

I'll frame it. Well, thank you so much. This has been an absolute joy. It has been. Thank you. I hope you enjoyed this episode. There are new instalments have gone medieval every Tuesday and Friday, so please come back to join Eleanor and I for more from the greatest millennium in human history.

Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all of your friends and family that you've got. medieval. You can also sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week at HistoryHit.com forward slash subscribe. Anyway, I'd better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with history hit.