Short History Of... - The Black Death

Episode Date: September 19, 2021

In October 1347, a ghostly fleet of trading ships docks at a port in Sicily. The crew members – dead already, or well on their way – bear bubonic plague. The ‘Great Pestilence’ will ravage the populations of three continents over the next decade. What changes to society will result from this, the most devastating pandemic in history? How will people make sense of the terrible scenes before them? Are their methods of dealing with disease really as misguided as they seem? This is a Short History of the Black Death. Written by Dan Smith. With thanks to Dr. Eleanor Janega, teacher of medieval history at the London School of Economics. For ad-free listening, exclusive content and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Now available for Apple and Android users. Click the Noiser+ banner on Apple or go to noiser.com/subscriptions to get started with a 7-day free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's a warm summer morning in 1348 in the Tuscan city of Siena. A plump man called Agnolo de Tura stands by a pit, staring into its abyss. By profession he is a shoemaker, a tax collector and a chronicler. But today his work is much more arduous in nature. He's burying his child. There's no service of remembrance. He's not been able to find a priest to do the job. No death bell sounds. Anulo barely sheds a tear.

This is the fifth of his children he's buried with his own hands. He has no more tears to give. Around the city, pits overflow with corpses, lined up like bales in the hold of a ship. The stench of disease and decay hangs heavy in the air. Hundreds are dying each day and night. There is neither the time nor the resources for proper send-offs. Siena is a city where those who live are too fearful of their own imminent demise to properly mourn their loved ones.

Some of the pits are so overfilled that dogs drag out the bodies from beneath the sparse covering of earth and take them back into the city streets to devour them. Streets which until recently were filled with chatter and activity in this city made wealthy by trading and banking are now deathly still. Those who have the money and somewhere else to go have already fled. Those who remain dare not leave their homes without the strongest reason. This nightmarish vision, though, is not unique. It's being played out in cities and villages across Europe,

throughout the Middle East, in North Africa and in Asia. For the world is in the dismal grip of bubonic plague. My name is Paul McGann, and welcome to Short History Of, the show that transports you back in time to witness history's most incredible moments and remarkable people. In this episode, we find ourselves in the 1340s and 50s, amid the most devastating pandemic humankind has ever known. Watching on as the bubonic plague ravages the populations of three continents. From its origins in Central Asia, the plague sweeps westwards, engulfing the Middle East, North Africa and the whole of Europe. The bewildered populations of the known world can do nothing but await their fates. Is this, as some are convinced, the coming of the end of days?

Of course, we know that the world will make it through this unprecedented crisis. But the plague reshapes our planet, reconfiguring not only its demographics, but also how people see themselves and their place in the cosmos. This is a short history of the Black Death. In the time that the plague rages across Africa, Asia and Europe, from the early to mid-1340s until around 1353, when the deathly wave subsides, the term Black Death is not in common usage. That will be the label given to this horrifying disease several centuries later. For now it's

more likely to be called the Great Pestilence, and it's a terrible way to die. The main form of the disease is the bubonic plague, although there are also septicemic, blood-borne, and pneumonic, airborne versions too. Dr. Eleanor Janega, teacher of medieval history at the London School of Economics, explains. So, I mean, the primary thing with bubonic plague and why we call it bubonic plague is that you get what are called buboes. So it's really quite terrible. And what happens is your lymph nodes, because they are attempting to basically strain out all of the terrible infection, they become overloaded. And the lymph nodes then

swell up into what we call a bubo. And at times, you know, especially in bad cases like this, what we're talking about is they will swell up to maybe the size of eggs is what contemporary witnesses say. And that can be in any of your obvious lymph node places. They say that it often happens in armpits or the groin. It can also happen in the throat. It's exceedingly painful. There's a really terrible fever associated with it. And then at times they tend to report as well that they have trouble breathing. There's been arguments about whether there are actually two plagues going on, which will be referred to as the mnemonic and bubonic plague. But we do think that they're just secondary side

effects at this point, which is that it's just very, very difficult to breathe when your body is undergoing this infection. So we think that it affects your lung capacity. And so especially in cases where people's lungs are infected, we do see cases where people die within 24 hours. For people who their major symptoms are the buboes and the fever, it's about three days. Bubonic plague is not new. It's been around for several thousand years,

caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. There were outbreaks perhaps as long ago as 3000 BC. Hestis. There were outbreaks perhaps as long ago as 3000 BC. From 541 until 549 AD, what became known as the Justinian Plague, named after the Byzantine emperor at the time, wreaked havoc across swathes of the known world. This was the first plague pandemic, and there were further outbreaks over the next two centuries, killing millions. But it didn't travel with the same speed and virulence as the Black Death does. So why is the Black Death different? It's likely that the plague itself has mutated. The germ driving the pestilence is more robust and communicable.

But there are other reasons too. Improved agriculture has seen an explosion in the European population in recent decades, although a spate of poor harvests more recently has led to widespread malnutrition. There are more people, often not at peak health, living closer together in unsanitary urban environments, ideal circumstances for the plague to rip through. In a street off London's cheap side, about a thousand miles and a year on from Angelo de Tura's farewell to the last of his children, a man sits hunched in the corner of his humble home.

He's watching his wife, anguish on his face. She lies on their bed, her head crooked to one side by a vast tumour on her neck. The sweat is dripping off her. Pus flows from the sores on her body. She coughs up blood, her suffering punctuated by episodes of delirious shouting. The odour of her body decaying from the inside out makes him want to retch, although he fights the urge. The couple have already lost two children to the pestilence, but just a week ago she attended to the suffering of others, boiling up medicines from recipes passed down the generations to her.

She hoped to lessen the pain of neighbours themselves showing symptoms. Now, just a few days later, she's not so much a shadow of herself as a horrifying spectral version of who she once was. spectral version of who she once was. The man has spoken to a doctor who advises that he pops the buboes on his wife's body with a chicken feather to let them drain. The doctor does not realize that such treatment achieves little other than to speed up the infection rate. He himself will not come to the plague house. For a while, doctors enjoyed an extended payday as they attended to the sick, charging premium fees regardless of their skills and expertise. But so many doctors have now succumbed to the plague themselves

that those who remain are reluctant to treat new sufferers regardless of the money on offer. Anyway, the husband knows, in his heart of hearts, he has done since he first spotted the tell-tale red rings, or God's tokens, on his wife's skin, that there's nothing left to be done, just to wait for her inevitable end. In the meantime, he's faced with the cruelest of conundrums.

Should he stay, knowing that her fate is sealed? Or should he take their one remaining infant and head for the countryside, away from this hell, in the hope of outrunning the disease? The longer he remains, the less their chance of escape. But where will he go? And what will he do for money? He's not like those lucky few in the metropolis, rich enough to up sticks and move out to their country pads. So for now he stays, desperately turning over the options in his mind,

and sometimes peering at the skin on his own arms, wondering if that's a ring he sees developing. Another vital factor in the rapid spread of the plague is the way the trading ships now connect the world like never before. Although no one can be sure, it seems likely that the outbreak began somewhere in Central Asia, perhaps in modern-day Kyrgyzstan, toward the beginning of the decade. Before long, it's present in the Golden Horde, an area which has its origins in the Mongol Empire. According to one version of events, Italian traders fell out with some local Muslims at Tana on the Black Sea sometime around 1345 and fled to the safety of Kaffa, a Genoese outpost in the Crimea.

But they're pursued by Jani Beg, a Khan of the Golden Horde and his huge army. Unbeknown to them, Jani Beg's troops are carrying the plague, and soon start to lose men in large numbers. When they set siege to Caffa, they catapult the infected bodies of their dead comrades over the city walls. The Italian defenders, little realizing that they're facing a form of biological warfare, do their best to deal with the dismal bombardment. But they're growing weaker as the siege runs into months and their reserves of food and other resources deplete. Wearily, they haul the bodies from where they lie

and struggle to dispose of them. Their close contact with the corpses effectively signs their own death warrants. Regardless, the Black Death comes anyway. Infected fleas arrive in the fur of rats coming into the city in great tides, noses twitching and paws scrabbling along the stony ground. With both sides in disarray, those Italians who were fit enough set to sea and make for Constantinople, the great crossover point of the eastern and western trading routes. It's around May 1347. Although no one realises it, there is now no practical way to hold back the pandemic.

to hold back the pandemic. By the autumn, the disease is in North Africa and spreading through the Middle East, brought first to Alexandria by a ship sailing out of Constantinople, laden with slaves. Europe is assailed at about the same time. At the Sicilian port of Messina, dock workers welcome a small fleet of trading ships that limp into the harbour.

When they look on board, they find most of the crews are dead, their bodies slumped unceremoniously on the decks where they fell. Of those alive, many display what will become the all-too-familiar signs of plague. Bodies oozing contagion stink worse than ever in the cramped and unhygienic conditions on board. The authorities demand that the death ships return to the waves immediately. But the shattered sailors have expended all their energy getting here. The survivors, most little more than walking corpses, have neither the strength nor the impetus to go anywhere else. It's all too late anyway.

The Black Death has made it to mainland Europe. Merchants have also spread the disease to the Greek islands en route from Constantinople. Venice, Genoa, Pisa, and other Italian port cities soon follow. The fast-sailing ships that have underpinned Europe's trade boom now mark a path to the grave. And things are much more likely to spread by ship, of course, in the medieval period, because that's the fastest way there is to move everything. So in a world where there is no motorized transport, over land pretty much the fastest that you can move is about 30 miles a day

or so. That's about what a horse can give you if you're not pushing it too much. Ships don't have that problem though. And especially if you've got a good prevailing wind, you can really cut around and actually move very, very quickly, which is one of the problems when everybody gets plagued suddenly because the Mediterranean is a very, very busy shipping route. And the North Sea is a very, very shipping route. And one of the things that goes along with all the nice stuff that people are moving around can come in with your salt from the Crimean Peninsula, or it can come in with your nice silk that's come from Paris, things like that. So it can really just move around more quickly as a result of ships. And that's why we get this myth.

move around more quickly as a result of ships. And that's why we get this myth. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. From the Italian ports, the pestilence moves inland

and up into Austria and Switzerland. By sea it spreads to the French trade hub of Marseille. From there it gathers pace through France, south into Spain and Portugal, and north up towards the Low Countries. England is struck when a ship sailing from Bordeaux arrives in the town of Malcolm Regis on the south coast in May 1348. Within a month, it is spread to other coastal cities, including Bristol, and even over to Ireland. By August, it is in London. Soon, it's in control of the whole country. It finds its way into Scandinavia

through the ports of Bergen and Oslo and into German lands via the trading cities of the Hanseatic League. In the coming months and years it takes over the entire continent and stretches into Russia. Only a few small pockets of territory remote and self-contained escape.

No one, yet, in the late 1340s, has worked out the source of the spread, those parasites living upon the rats that populate trading ships in such huge numbers. When their rat hosts die, these bacteria-carrying fleas excel at finding new hosts. Non-infected rats on land, where the ships dock, but also humans too, moving into their clothes and dwelling places, widening the contagion with every host transfer. And critically, the disease then moves from person to person. This is, so I am always saying the rats did nothing wrong. There's, you know, it's not their fault. It's the fleas.

The fleas are on the rats. You know, like, come on, it's not the rat's fault. It's got fleas. Why are we blaming the mammal here? So we know that European black rats would have these fleas and then the fleas would just kind of get off and get on to everybody. But having said that, there's plenty of places in Europe that were hit by black dust. So for example, you know, far north in Sweden or Norway or like way up in Scandinavia, where it's too cold for rats. They don't have rats, and everybody gets plague anyway.

So there comes a time when it doesn't actually have to do with fleas or rats or anything like that. And fundamentally, it's highly communicable between humans. So, yeah, it can come, it comes off of a flea initially and gets into somebody's bloodstream. And this is a way that it can spread. But if you like, you don't want to be in close contact with another person who has plague. There is some debate about whether or not it can be spread by droplets. The jury is extremely out on that, but it's communicable in some way, shape, or form.

It can certainly come off of fleas, but it's just sort of once it gets in, it's in. And you can debate about whether or not a rat did it or a flea all day long. A chronicler, Marco di Capost Stefani, tells of the turmoil in Florence as the Black Death takes hold in 1348. The city-state eventually loses some 60% of its population, a devastating death rate, but not an atypical one. Many cities, London, Paris and Hamburg among them, pay a similar toll. But most of the population of Europe, around 90%, lives in the countryside,

where whole villages at a time fall to the blight. It's not even just that maybe the entire population died, that is something that can happen. But sometimes there's simply not enough people to then sustain a village after the plague has spread through. So they've got to go find somewhere else to live because there's just no one else to work with. And rural communities are very, very close-knit. They depend on each other for work and food and all sorts of things. So it's very likely that they will spread it to each other. sorts of things. So it's very likely that they will spread it to each other. De Coppola Stefani recounts how the Florentines carry the bodies of the dead to burial on a daily basis. In the grounds of every church, pits are dug down to the water table. Those who are poor

and die in the night are quickly bundled up and thrown in. In the morning, after the pit is filled with fresh bodies, a layer of earth is shoveled in on top of them. Then the process begins again. More bodies, another layer of earth. More bodies, more earth. It is, says the chronicler, just as one makes lasagna with layers of pasta and cheese. Body collectors, people paid to haul away the bodies of the dead, become an increasingly familiar sight.

Healthy, able-bodied men, mostly from the lower social ranks, realize there is money to be made in this grim and dangerous work, much more than in the fields where they usually toil. Gangs of newly anointed gravediggers known as Bacchini in Florence stalk the streets, shovels over their shoulders and pushing carts redeployed from the fields. That now familiar aroma of decay attaches to them. That now familiar aroma of decay attaches to them. They are rarely welcomed, grim reapers that they are. Nor are they particularly sympathetic to the grieving. Bodies are piled on one another with little thought for respect or decorum. Lifeless limbs flail as the carts are pushed over rough cobbles.

This is business, necessary business, and they charge whatever they can get. They know the risk they run. The evidence of their eyes suggests that simply touching the property of the afflicted can make you sick, let alone handling the bodies of the lost. There are tales of animals rifling through the ragged clothes of the deceased, only to fall down dead almost instantaneously. The collectors are regarded by some as nothing but profiteers, but this is grim work and someone has to do it. Some, though, overstep the mark. They demand extortion at prices from those still stunned by their personal tragedies. distortion at prices from those still stunned by their personal tragedies. A few may demand a bribe to remove a body,

or break into people's houses and threaten to slay them and pass them off as just more victims of the pestilence if they don't pay up. In one of the more refined corners of Florence, the famed poet Petrarch receives a letter one morning. His brow creases as he reads it. It brings the worst of news. His beloved news, Laura, has fallen victim to the Black Death in Avignon. He sits down at his desk, quill in hand, and writes urgently to a friend. Oh, happy posterity, he muses, who will not experience such abysmal woe and will look

upon our testimony as a fable. At the monastery of Montreux in the Swiss Alps, Petrarch's brother, a monk named Gerardo, faces his own ordeal. He wanders the monastic grounds, anxiously praying to God for guidance. He has only his dog for company, scuttling along beside him. Until recently, this had been home to a vibrant population of 35 religious brothers. Now, Gerardo is alone, the sole survivor of a plague outbreak. Religious communities have been among the most hard-hit by the Black Death.

Religious communities have been among the most hard hit by the Black Death. Living in such close proximity to others, monasteries and nunneries are perfect breeding grounds for the disease. Moreover, monks, nuns and priests, like doctors, have been in close contact with the afflicted. Their calling and desire to dispense comfort and negotiate salvation pushing them into the arms of peril. As Gerardo paces, his mind turns to practical questions. Now that he's buried each of his brethren, who is left to bury him? He ruffles his dog's fur, grateful for its companionship.

The Black Death is no respecter of wealth or rank. Alfonso XI of Castile might be the only reigning monarch to die in the outbreak, but the great families of Europe are hard hit. The bacteria do not discriminate on social grounds. Yet it is true to say that the poorest in society face a particularly hard time. The rich do, at least, have options.

Giovanni Boccaccio, who famously chronicles the plague in his work The Decameron, notes the exodus of the rich from the crowded streets of Florence. Having withdrawn to a comfortable abode where there were no sick persons, Boccaccio writes, they locked themselves in and settled down to a peaceable existence, consuming modest quantities of delicate foods and precious wines and avoiding all excesses. They refrained from speaking to outsiders, refused to receive news of the dead or the sick, and entertained themselves with music and whatever other amusements they were able to devise. We do tend to see that people try to leave cities

in the medieval period for this. You know, when the plague comes through, if people have the means and money, they run a lot of the time. Locaccio writes about this in the Decameron. You know, all the people who, they leave Florence, they say, okay, well, that's it. We're going out and we're staying by this nunnery instead. And they tell each other body tales in order to keep their spirits up. So we do know that there is a lot of moving around, but then there's plenty of people who can't afford to go anywhere. So Boccaccio also mentions this. He says, oh, well, here are some things that people do as a result of the plague. Some of them board themselves up in their houses and they just try to live a very healthy, as they think of it, a very austere life where

they only kind of eat a very little bit. They pray a lot and they just stay inside. Other people party. They go out onto the street and they throw, you know, huge parades and they just say, okay, well, if I'm going to die, I'm going out dancing. But then he mentions, oh yeah, and then all the poor people died. And it's sort of implicit in this is that there's still this whole huge class of people who are serving these rich people who are like maybe, you know, boarded up in their house or maybe out partying. And there's a lot of people who don't get to make these decisions, you know, they just need to survive. And so they still have to keep bringing in the hay harvest and keep serving rich people who have decided that they want to go out to a banquet. In poorer areas, people are just a bit more cheap by jowl. And of course, they have harder living conditions than as now.

Poorer people tend to do worse in pandemics because they have worse diets. They have worse living conditions. They're already at a disadvantage in terms of underlying health. Same thing is true for medieval poor people. They're at a disadvantage. After the death of his daughter, Princess Joan, England's king, Edward III, squarely blames the pestilence on the detritus and human excrement piling up in the streets of London and in the River Thames. But there is no joined-up approach to public health. Authorities occasionally make proclamations, prohibiting town dwellers from fleeing into the countryside for fear of spreading the contagion.

But there's no way to enforce it, no police to ensure that such orders are observed, nor the money or desire to pay a private militia. In most cases, whatever public response there is depends on the will of the monarch or of the church. Help usually comes in the form of handouts, rather than strategies to counter the disease itself. Such mechanisms simply do not exist, nor does the population expect them.

Rulers rule, and there's no sense of reciprocity. You pay your taxes to the king because the king commands it, not because of the promise of something in return. There is no something in return. That said, in June 1348, Philip VI of France turns to the great minds at the University of Paris in the hope of getting some explanation for what's going on. So the King of France commissions the Paris medical faculty, who are one of the best medical faculties in medieval Europe, bar maybe Salerno. And he says, OK, that's it. We've got this terrible plague. What's happened here?

And they write up a very complex thesis that is based on, you know, pre-modern ideas of how health works. And they say, well, what's happened is that the planets are in a particular conjunction. So Saturn, Mars, and Jupiter have got themselves in a muddle. They are all interacting with each other, which has released poisonous air. And then this poisonous vapor has been brought down to Earth. And now we're breathing in the poisonous vapor and it is causing what is called miasma. So miasma here, the idea is that maybe it's bad air, a bad smell, something kind of vaguely poisonous. And then when you breathe that in, then that is what gives you the plague. But that's an incredibly high level

and sophisticated response. Exactly how many people said, oh, yes, that's definitely the case. We're not entirely sure. Other people will have similar approaches to miasma theory. So for example, there is a big earthquake that happens on the Italian peninsula around this time.

And people say, oh, a miasma came out of the ground when that earthquake hit, you know, and Italy is one of the first places that's hit. So the miasma came out of the ground in that earthquake hit, you know, and Italy is one of the first places that's hit. So the miasma came out of the ground in Italy and then it's been spreading since then. What I always say about this is actually miasma theory, when you look at it, it's not like it makes some sense in terms of this. So, you know, yeah, bad air. They know that if you're around other people who are sick, then this can make you sick as well. There will be things like quarantines where you will not be allowed in or out of cities. There will be things like, well, if a bunch of people are extraordinarily ill,

then only a few people will go look in on them and then they will have to stay away from other people. So they're aware that something can be contagious. They get that. It's just that they don't know. obviously they don't understand that we're covered in a bunch of microscopic bugs that you can't see all the time. That is, you know, several steps, much, much too far for them. But it's not as though they don't understand

that illness is something that people give to each other. It's about a million miles off of germ theory, but it's not, it makes sense it makes sense. It's not stupid. I'm always very defensive of medieval people because they're really doing their best all the time, and we come along with our germ theory and then look down on them, and it's not fair. What medical responses exist are mostly homespun and not very effective, and in some cases positively harmful. People carry posies of fragrant flowers or herbs and spices to ward off the bad air. If bad smells make you ill,

surely good smells keep you healthy. Some doctors warn against bathing, arguing that hot water opens the pores of the skin, creating new access points for foul air and water to enter the body. A group of physicians from Oxford write to the Lord Mayor of London in 1350, urging, If an ulcer appears near the ear or the throat, take blood from the arm on that side, that is, from the vein between the thumb and the first finger. But if you have an ulcer in the groin, then open a vein in the foot between the big toe and its neighbour. At all events, bloodletting should be carried out when the plague first strikes. When there is no room left to dig more plague pits in Avignon,

Pope Clement VI makes the calamitous decision to consecrate the River Rhone so that Christians might be buried in it. No thought seemingly given to those who rely on the river as the source of their drinking and bathing water. By 1480, well over a century after the Black Death, there's been little progress in understanding the plague. Edward IV's Plague Medicines suggests as a remedy that one should take an egg that is newly laid and make a hole in either end and blow out all that's within, and lay it to the fire and let it roast till it may be ground to powder, but do not burn it.

Then take a quantity of good treacle and mix it with chives and good ale, and then make the sick drink it for three evenings and three mornings. Some public health measures are more advised, though. There are villages that prohibit the arrival or departure of anyone, either to keep the illness within, or more usually, to prevent its arrival from the towns. But bigger cities reliant on trade do not have such a choice. So sometimes it'll just be areas of towns get quarantined. You'll avoid particular houses. We do know that that happens.

Interestingly, the term quarantine in and of itself is linked to bubonic plague, though not the Black Death outbreak. It's a response to the 17th century plague. And it comes from the Italian and it's a foreshortening of quarantigiorno, which means that when ships that were going to come into Venice or the other ports had to wait 14 days before they could come in. So bubonic plague is still kicking around in a really virulent way 300 years later. And that's how we get the term. Confronted by a seemingly inescapable flood of death and sadness, people struggle to make sense of what's happening to them. For many, it's simply the fulfillment of Christian prophecy, an inevitable suffering before what God decrees comes next. One of the big things that we say from people is that this must be the apocalypse.

So instead of saying, I don't think that there is a God, they double down on that there's a God and this is the end of the world. And that makes perfect sense because, you know, another one of the things that we tend to forget about when we talk about Christianity now is that it's a linear religion. It's got a beginning, a middle, and an end. You know, the beginning is Adam and Eve. The middle is when Jesus came back and died for everybody's sins. And then the end, Jesus makes it very clear that he is going to come back

repeatedly in the Bible and that you're supposed to have your house in order because he's going to come back. And that's the apocalypse. And there is a lot of work put into trying to identify what the apocalypse will be and what will happen. But it's generally considered that one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse is pestilence. And it makes a lot of sense as well if we think that right before the plague kicked off, we have the Great Famine that goes from 1317 to 1318. And it's absolutely terrible. And it kills about, we think, about 10% of the European population. So they've already had this terrible famine. Here comes through this terrible disease.

And, you know, if 60% of the population died, if six out of every 10 people you knew died, you could be forgiven for thinking, well, yeah, this is it. This is the end of the world. Especially if you grow up in a society that is constantly talking about this expectation going to happen. Alternatively, others claim the plague is God's expression of his wrath. One of the big ideas is that God's mad for any number of reasons, and it really depends on who you're asking. for any number of reasons, and it really depends on who you're asking. So, for example, if you've got reform individuals like Thomas Wycliffe here in England, who says that, you know, the church needs to reform and that it is a terrible, shambling mess, well, the trouble is that God

is mad at the church, and so that's why we're having Black Death. If you are high up in the church, so Bishop Thomas Brinton, who is the Bishop of Rochester, and a very great preacher, writes all of these very elaborate sermons blaming his parishioners for God's wrath. And he says, well, God is mad at you, so he's here to clear things out. Or, you know, if you are a one kind of clergy member and you don't like another, then you blame that clergy member. Or, you know, if you are a one kind of clergy member and you don't like another, then you blame that clergy member. So you'll see a lot of what we call secular clergy, so people who are parish priests, blaming, for example, Franciscans, who they don't like. And they'll say, oh, well, Franciscans, they've become greedy and they've got too much money. God is punishing us. The Catholic Church, that has dominated European life for the best part of a millennium, is certainly an upheaval even before the Black Death descends. Rival factions have torn the Church apart in recent times. Within a few years,

there will be rival popes in Rome and Avignon, and for a while three popes, all ruling at the same time. For the faithful, the Black Death highlights the weaknesses of the Church, its disunity and inability to make things better between God and his people. It leads some to suspect that in fact the plague is the consequence of the Church's shortfalls. In this faith-shattering period, the seeds of the Protestant Reformation are sown. So the church is in this really weird limbo position at the end of the medieval period, and when you've got a lot of terrible plague kicking around, you know, there is an expectation which we don't tend to really understand anymore, because even when we are religious,

we're not religious in kind of the same way. So there is this expectation that the church should have been able to mediate this in some way, shape, or form. There should have been some way for the church to intervene with the divine to at least kind of mollify this. And when they're unable to do that, it's just genuinely confusing to kind of the worldview and world order. And so it's very easy to blame them as well. So, you know, there's a lot has been written about, you know, this as one of the key things that kind of begins to cut the church out from underneath itself. One response to these perceived church inadequacies is the rise of the flagellants, a group of mostly upper class men who process from town to town

and give public displays at penance. This band of zealots emerges in Germany and gains a foothold across the continent. In 1349, about 600 arrive in England from Flanders and make their way to London. They are a motley crew, clothed from thigh to ankle, but naked from the waist up. On their heads they wear caps, a red cross marked on the front and back. Twice a day for several weeks they arrive at some point in the city, most often at St Paul's.

In their right hands they carry a scourge with three tails. Each tail has a knot, and through the middle of it sharp nails are fixed. They march in file one behind the other and whip themselves until their naked flesh bleeds. All the while they chant in a call and response, occasionally throwing themselves to the filthy floor, their arms stretched out to form the shape of the cross. They are a spectacle in the downtrodden city, crowds coming out into the fetid air to look upon them under the glare of God's own sun. They wonder if their self-inflicted pain might somehow relieve them of some of their own.

Pope Clement VI, though, is among those unnerved by them, and he soon condemns the flagellants in a papal bull that leads to their suppression. The religious fanaticism of others is less inward-looking. Many believe that the pestilence has descended upon them because of the sins of others. Antisemitism rages. In early 1349, Jews in Strasbourg are rounded up and tortured.

Under the most extreme duress, some falsely confess to spreading the disease by poisoning wells. 2,000 Jews are murdered here. The city square fouled with the stench of burning flesh. Later in the year, there are further massacres in Cologne and Mainz. By 1351, some 60 large and 150 smaller Jewish communities will have been destroyed across Europe. Others blindly attack foreign visitors, Romani travellers, pilgrims, beggars, even itinerant monks. There are cases too of lepers and others with visible skin conditions being blamed for the

outbreak and murdered. Otherness becomes a legitimate target for those living in fear and anger at the pestilence. Then, from about 1351, the Black death starts to peter out effectively coming to an end in 1353 the plague though does not disappear for good it's interesting because it really is a kind of petering out because if you think about, it's around for multiple decades. So it's kind of cyclical. The major, major outbreak is sort of seven years long, but it never entirely goes away. It becomes endemic in Europe. Sure, you've got the seven years that is really, really terrible. It eventually peters out and then it's back. So it's not that it ever really stops. It's just that it doesn't kill anyone en masse in the same way until the 17th century. But it will come back over and over and over again, just in smaller pockets.

And we think that part of this has to do with everyone who's going to die if it died of it. It was too late. You know, there was just no one left to kill. And so it kind of goes away a little bit. You know, perhaps people who are more likely to survive had then survived, you know, maybe there is some form of immunity or resistance and that gets passed on genetically. And so the percentage of the population that dies drops. The Black Death just refers to this specific seven years of mortality, but it does also basically kick off a series of plagues that will continue until we invent antibiotics. By its end, the Black Death has claimed the lives of at least 20 million people, and more likely nearer to 60 million. In Europe, it's accounted for perhaps 60% of the population

and upwards of 25% of the global population. But its impact extends further still. It's challenged the traditional domination of the Catholic Church, changed the social structure, affected global economics and ushered in a new era of art and culture. This new period is characterized by a fresh individualism and is informed by the danse macabre, a common allegory,

in which a skeletal personification of death shepherds those of all social stations in a dance to the grave. A lot of amazing art is made as a result of the Black Death. We have wonderful paintings. We have, you know, amazing literature. We've got all sorts of artistic flowering that happens at this time because, again, people are like, well, that's it. You know, I'm writing my epic poem.

You know, I'm writing my play. This is what's going to happen now because if I'm going to die, then at least I'm going to have taken the moment to do this. A chronicle composed at the Cathedral Priory of Rochester in England elaborates on some of the social changes, as well as revealing some deep-seated prejudices against the poor. It reads as follows. A great mortality destroyed more than a third of the men, women and children. As a result, there was such a shortage of servants, craftsmen and workmen, and of agricultural workers and labourers,

that a great many lords and people, although well endowed with goods and possessions, were yet without service and attendance. with goods and possessions, were yet without service and attendance. Such a shortage of workers ensued that the humble turned up their noses at employment, and could scarcely be persuaded to serve the eminent unless for triple wages. Instead, because of the doles handed out at funerals, those who once had to work now began to have time for idleness, thieving and other outrages, and thus the poor and servile have been enriched and the rich impoverished. As a result, churchmen, knights and other worthies have been forced to thresh their corn, plough the land and perform every other unskilled task if they are to make their own bread.

In the short term, economies approach near collapse as the workforce depletes and much labor is simply abandoned. For example, in Siena, they were building a huge new cathedral. And they had to completely stop what their initial plan was because it was going to be much bigger. And they simply didn't have enough workers to build the cathedral to that size anymore. So if you go there to this day you can kind of see what the original plan was going to be and then they were like never mind and they just kind of put it in the other direction instead and made a smaller version. It's still absolutely enormous to be fair but it was just going to be even more enormous. So you know you see real shortages of workers immediately there.

In the 30 or so years after the pandemic, the reduced labour force is able to command higher wages. But it's not all a tale of upward mobility. The majority of the population are serfs, who've traditionally been tied to the land, forced to eke out a subsistence living and pay their dues to the landowners. The advances they now make are offset by a rampant inflation and, ultimately, by pay

freezes that see wages stagnate for another century and a half. Nonetheless this serf class also becomes increasingly consumerist and questions the lot which they have until now had to accept. The response is often a crackdown from above to keep them in their place. In England, for instance, it's made illegal for commoners to wear ermine or dress in purple, a traditionally royal colour. Peasant revolts will soon erupt across the continent. Perhaps, even today, there is much we can learn

from those who endured the Black Death. And I suppose that one of the other things that is certainly true about us now and about people during the Black Death is I do think that there has been more of a valuing of community and an understanding of the way that we are all connected. And medieval people certainly knew that. They really understood themselves as living in a community and being connected to the world around them and their neighbors. When people ask me, why do you study the Black Death? And they do. I say it's because you can find out most about a society when it's

in a really terrible time. When everything is going well, people behave in the ideal manner, right? And it is in times of real terrible strife, like the Black Death, that you find out what really makes a society tick. They will get down to their baseline begin to behave as they really kind of feel when they are in hot water. Next time on Short History Of, we'll bring you a short history of the early space race. On the morning of October 5th, 1957, the newspapers were filled with this story about Sputnik. It really was a harsh realization. You could actually see the booster, the upper stage. You couldn't see Sputnik, it was too small, but you could actually see the upper stage flying over the United States. And that actually terrified the average American citizen because they suddenly realized that the enemy, the Soviet Union, had proven that they could actually put a weapon anywhere on Earth.

That's next time on Short History Of.