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Speaker 1: Lessons from the world's top professors anytime, anyplace, world history

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Speaker 1: examined and science explained. This is one day university.

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Speaker 2: Welcome.

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Speaker 1: You're listening to half hour history Secrets of the Medieval World.

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Speaker 1: I'm your host, Mike Coscarelli. Well, we're finally here, folks.

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Speaker 1: It's the moment you've all been waiting for or dreading.

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Speaker 1: I don't know what you're into, but the plague is

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Speaker 1: finally here, and so is the Late Middle Ages. Now,

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Speaker 1: black Death didn't just hit once. It hit multiple times,

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Speaker 1: and the population didn't recover for centuries. It's a crazy story,

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Speaker 1: lots of fun. Here's Chris to tell you all about it.

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Speaker 2: Now. I want to start from the beginning by saying

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Speaker 2: the Black Death is more than a medical event. It's

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Speaker 2: impossible to say it's just a medical event because it's

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Speaker 2: a huge medical event. It's not the first plague in history.

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Speaker 2: We've had plagues in ancient Athens in the middle of

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Speaker 2: the four hundreds. There was a plague in Byzantium in

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Speaker 2: the five hundreds. But the Black Death becomes a model

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Speaker 2: for all of the plagues and all of the epidemics

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Speaker 2: in history. When aids first started, somebody use the expression

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Speaker 2: the Black Death about it hold totally different scale. But

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Speaker 2: the Black Death is more than a medical event because

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Speaker 2: the Black Death is an event that had profound social

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Speaker 2: economic implications. We've been talking about the Early Middle Ages,

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Speaker 2: little Bumpy Carolin Gene Renaissance in the middle of it,

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Speaker 2: behind Middle Ages, the flowering of knighthood and chivalry and

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Speaker 2: universities and guilds, and the Gothic landscape, and now the fall.

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Speaker 2: So the two hundred year period of what we call

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Speaker 2: the Late Middle Ages from about thirteen hundred to about

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Speaker 2: fifteen hundred has the Black Death right in the middle.

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Speaker 2: It's kind of like the nineteen thirties, the American and

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Speaker 2: worldwide Great Depression lasting two hundred years. So let's talk

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Speaker 2: about the Black Death not just as a medical event,

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Speaker 2: which we will, but also as a social event and

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Speaker 2: what the impact was on demographics. And to look at

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Speaker 2: the Black Death, we have to look at just before

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Speaker 2: it to see its impact. The population before the Black Death, well,

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Speaker 2: from one thousand to thirteen hundred, Western European population rises

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Speaker 2: two hundred and fifty percent. That's not a mistake. How

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Speaker 2: do we know that. We have baptismal records. That's how

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Speaker 2: we know that we have records of people who pay taxes,

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Speaker 2: we have a census. When the Norman invasion occurs in

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Speaker 2: ten sixty six, William, Duke of Normandy says, hey, hey,

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Speaker 2: what do I have now? And you get the Doomsday

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Speaker 2: Book from that, and it's account of all sorts of things.

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Speaker 2: So we really think we know pretty well from the

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Speaker 2: social and economic historians that the European population was doing

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Speaker 2: very nicely. Indeed, now I'm going to be using more

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Speaker 2: statistics that I normally do in these topics, and I

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Speaker 2: subscribe to what Mark Twain said about lies, that there

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Speaker 2: are three types of lies. There are lies, there are

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Speaker 2: damn lies, and then there are statistics. And you can

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Speaker 2: use statistics to prove anything. But nevertheless, I'm going to

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Speaker 2: foray out there England's population from one thousand to thirteen hundred,

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Speaker 2: from two to five million, France from six to fourteen million,

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Speaker 2: Germany and Italy combined from four to eleven million. And

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Speaker 2: here's an important point for the Black Death. Forty percent

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Speaker 2: of Europe's population are under the age of fifteen. It's

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Speaker 2: the exact opposite, by the way of the direction in

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Speaker 2: which we're going now, the direction that the world population

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Speaker 2: is going now is that it is a disproportionately aging

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Speaker 2: population in the twenty first century because we are living

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Speaker 2: longer and better and healthier. But in this period of time,

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Speaker 2: right before the Black Death, four out of ten people

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Speaker 2: alive in Europe are fifteen or younger, and they are

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Speaker 2: clusters of population's largely rural population, but we also had

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Speaker 2: big cities, remember that as well, and the Black Death's

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Speaker 2: going to hit both of those. What was the climate

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Speaker 2: like before, during, and after the Black Death. Well, one

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Speaker 2: of the reasons why you have this great rise in

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Speaker 2: population is that from one thousand to thirteen hundred the

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Speaker 2: climate was really good. Now, how do we know this

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Speaker 2: through a group of people known as the paleoclimatologists. These

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Speaker 2: are people who study tree rings. And you know that

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Speaker 2: if you cut a tree down, you can see how

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Speaker 2: old the tree is, and if you have a very

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Speaker 2: thin ring, that means that the growth period was poor.

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Speaker 2: A thick ring means that the growth period was good.

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Speaker 2: A thick ring means that the air was warm and

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Speaker 2: that there was plenty of moisture. And this was part

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Speaker 2: of that agricultural revolution and the agricultural expansion. Good harvest,

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Speaker 2: good harvest, good harvest from a subsistence to a surplus

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Speaker 2: economy that led from an agricultural revolution to a commercial revolution,

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Speaker 2: and the population begins to move into cities where they

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Speaker 2: are packed closer, where disease can move more quickly. But

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Speaker 2: then again, thanks to our paleoclimatology friends, from thirteen hundred

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Speaker 2: to fifteen hundred, the climate got colder and wetter. We

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Speaker 2: have accounts way up north in Scandinavia that the pack

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Speaker 2: ice was drifting up north and that restricted exploration and

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Speaker 2: trade up in Scandinavia and the British Isles between Britain

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Speaker 2: and Ireland all the way up to Iceland and Greenland.

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Speaker 2: At the same time, you had flooding in northern Europe,

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Speaker 2: so you have more water up north. It's colder, it's

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Speaker 2: going to be pack ice. But a little bit further

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Speaker 2: down now I'm in what we call the Low Countries

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Speaker 2: the Netherlands today, this particular area, the water is not freezing,

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Speaker 2: it's flooding. And so if it's flooding, that impedes the

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Speaker 2: textile trade. Because the textile trade gets impacted, the wool

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Speaker 2: cannot run back and forth as quickly, the finished products

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Speaker 2: can't go back as easily because this flooding has these

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Speaker 2: very difficult currents that are involved in it, and what

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Speaker 2: we would call factories, not quite factories, but places where

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Speaker 2: you store warehouses. These things get flooded. If wool gets wet,

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Speaker 2: forget it, it's absolutely useless. A little example is when

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Speaker 2: you think of England, you don't normally think of wine,

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Speaker 2: but England had from one thousand to thirteen hundred a

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Speaker 2: minor wine industry. The climate change is such that England

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Speaker 2: no longer had that anymore. So it wasn't a huge

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Speaker 2: part of the economy, but it was product that basically collapsed,

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Speaker 2: an economy that basically collapsed. And then again our sources

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Speaker 2: are very good on this. In thirteen thirteen, in thirteen seventeen,

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Speaker 2: and in thirteen twenty two, you had a series of

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Speaker 2: heavy rain alternating with drought. When you have heavy rain

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Speaker 2: alternating with drought, that's top soil gets washed away and

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Speaker 2: you have poor harvests. Poor harvests, lower nutrition, lower nutrition, famine.

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Speaker 2: Famine leads to hunger. Hunger leads to mortality going up.

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Speaker 2: Just think of yourself, if you haven't had enough food

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Speaker 2: to eat and water to drink, if you haven't had

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Speaker 2: your second cup of coffee in the morning, you get

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Speaker 2: a headache, you start to wear down, you start to

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Speaker 2: get tired, and when you get sick, you get sicker,

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Speaker 2: right because you feel like your immune system is depressed.

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Speaker 2: And that's what's happening on a massive scale. In fact,

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Speaker 2: that coldness proceeds to such extent that from fifteen hundred

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Speaker 2: to nineteen hundred, yes, nineteen hundred, there's a little mini

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Speaker 2: ice age. Mini it's not hugely different. You know, we

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Speaker 2: don't have mastodons walking around Chicago, but it's a little

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Speaker 2: bit colder, and a few degrees can make a big

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Speaker 2: difference at either end of your growing you're planting and

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Speaker 2: you're harvesting seasons, and that can be the difference literally

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Speaker 2: between life and death. So it's into this context of

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Speaker 2: a weekend population for several decades that the Black Death hits.

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Speaker 2: So the Black Death's impact is higher because people's immune

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Speaker 2: systems are depressed and they're not as physically strong. And

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Speaker 2: so yes, let's go the details. It spreads fast like wildfire.

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Speaker 2: From thirteen forty seven to thirteen fifty one starts out

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Speaker 2: in China. We have records out in China telling us

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Speaker 2: that this plague is moving from the Far East to

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Speaker 2: the Middle East, it hits Italy. Why does it hit

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Speaker 2: Italy Because Italy is trade with various areas, and these

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Speaker 2: fleas on rats are on ships, so it's going to

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Speaker 2: hit Italy first, and then it's going to move up

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Speaker 2: through continental Europe. You've all seen these maps of the

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Speaker 2: path of the Black Death month to month, week to week.

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Speaker 2: We can even track it. And the way that the

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Speaker 2: population dies is very interesting. You know this right that

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Speaker 2: a quarter to a third, so twenty five to thirty

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Speaker 2: five round numbers of the population dies. More men died

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Speaker 2: than women. Why we have no idea. Monks, nuns, and

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Speaker 2: friars die in hugely disproportionate numbers for two reasons. One

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Speaker 2: is monks and nuns we're living in closed communities. Now,

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Speaker 2: usually you would think, well, a closed community, a monastery, convent,

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Speaker 2: is going to protect you. Yeah, but stuff still has

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Speaker 2: to get back and forth. A sack of flower might

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Speaker 2: have fleas in it, and if the fleas come in

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Speaker 2: infect one person and then all bets are off and

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Speaker 2: it's going to rattle around that closed community rapidly, more

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Speaker 2: rapidly than an open community. Because the disease has nowhere

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Speaker 2: else to go. The same time, monks, nuns and friars

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Speaker 2: left the monasteries and convents and went to minister to

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Speaker 2: the dead, to the dying and the dead as well,

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Speaker 2: And so they picked up the disease that way and

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Speaker 2: honorable almost a martyr's death. Now do you remember when

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Speaker 2: I told you that forty percent of Europe's population is

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Speaker 2: under the age of fifteen, Well, now take that number

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Speaker 2: and think of this. Sixty to seventy percent of the

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Speaker 2: people who died, sixty to seventy percent of the people

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Speaker 2: who died in the Black Death were fifteen years old

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Speaker 2: and under. So the population can't recover if the people

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Speaker 2: who are going to make babies aren't there. So after

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Speaker 2: the Black Death you have an old and a young population,

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Speaker 2: and marriage and birth rates plummet. You have fewer young people,

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Speaker 2: so you have old women and younger men. They may

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Speaker 2: fall in love, and the younger men may be looking

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Speaker 2: for inheritances, but they can't have children if the women

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Speaker 2: are post menopausal, so the population cannot replicate itself. In fact,

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Speaker 2: it takes three hundred years for the population of Europe

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Speaker 2: to go back to its numbers before the Black Death

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Speaker 2: three hundred years, and it's primarily because forty percent of

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Speaker 2: the population was under the age of fifteen and sixty

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Speaker 2: to seventy percent of the people who died were fifteen

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Speaker 2: or younger. Now, we tend to think of the Black

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Speaker 2: Death as a one shot deal. It came, it left untrue.

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Speaker 2: The Black Death recurred every fifteen to twenty years for

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Speaker 2: about three cycles, and then it recurred every thirty five

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Speaker 2: to fifty years for about three cycles. What's happening. Look

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Speaker 2: at people getting older, people recovering, the population recovering a

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Speaker 2: little bit that they could have children, and there's an

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Speaker 2: immunity that's building up. That's why the spacing fifteen to

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Speaker 2: twenty years for a few cycles, thirty five to fifty

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Speaker 2: years for a few cycles. So you can see the

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Speaker 2: spacing out of the return of the disease because people

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Speaker 2: are getting stronger against it, but it kept coming back.

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Speaker 2: So can you imagine this thing which changed the way

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Speaker 2: everybody sees the world. It's a tornado. It's a hurricane

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Speaker 2: that comes and then it comes back again, and you

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Speaker 2: may experience it three times in your lifetime. It's not

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Speaker 2: a once in a lifetime event. And if you've gone

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Speaker 2: through it once and then it comes back again. It's

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Speaker 2: all the more frightening because the first time you don't

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Speaker 2: know what the heck is going on, but the second time, well,

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Speaker 2: you certainly do know what's going on, and it's scary.

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Speaker 2: In fact, some of you may have read Samuel Peep's

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Speaker 2: Journal of a Plague Year, where he talks about plague

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Speaker 2: in the city of London in the year sixteen sixty five,

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Speaker 2: the year before the Great Fire, which is also described

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Speaker 2: in his diary. That plague was the plague the Black

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Speaker 2: Death coming back about three hundred years later. And then

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Speaker 2: it's even in Marseille, the port of Marseille in France

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Speaker 2: in seventeen twenty. Now, what was the disease. Well, we've

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Speaker 2: been able to dig up bodies and we've been able

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Speaker 2: to look at not bone marrow, which isn't there anymore,

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Speaker 2: but the that's in teeth of plague victims, and using

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Speaker 2: kind of CSI kind of investigating, we can figure out

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Speaker 2: what types of strains of the plague. This where there

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Speaker 2: were three types of strains, and we also have this

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Speaker 2: from accounts of what happened to the bodies. There was

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Speaker 2: bubonic plague, which was not contagious. Everybody thought it was contagious.

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Speaker 2: It wasn't what's contagious as the flea jumping from your

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Speaker 2: body to mind. Sixty to eighty percent mortality. So if

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Speaker 2: you got the bubonic plague, chances were good that you

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Speaker 2: would not survive. And it took about five or six days,

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Speaker 2: so you had about a week to live. And it

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Speaker 2: was called the black death because the bubonic plague produced

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Speaker 2: these black or bloody swellings in your lymph nodes, and

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Speaker 2: that's why you have the description of these swellings in

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Speaker 2: your neck, under your arms, or in the groin area,

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Speaker 2: and that's the black death. It's communicated via fleas, as

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Speaker 2: I said, not person to person, and the flea would

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Speaker 2: suck the infected blood from rats, and the rats or

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Speaker 2: the fleas would bite humans and that's how that was spread.

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Speaker 2: And that was most of what this black death was.

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Speaker 2: There were two other strains of it, the pneumonic strain

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Speaker 2: of it, which was highly contagious person to person. Are

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Speaker 2: you ready for this? One hundred percent mortality two to

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Speaker 2: three days. And this was characterized not by the swelling

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Speaker 2: in the lymph node system, the neck, the groin, or

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Speaker 2: the armpit. But by the coughing up of blood. Well

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Speaker 2: that's how mneumonic plague was spread through this blood that

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Speaker 2: you would cough up. So if somebody is coughing in

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Speaker 2: a market, you know that's it. Somebody coughs on near

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Speaker 2: a bunch of produce, Well that person can't sell the

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Speaker 2: produce and that poor person basically dies in the street.

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Speaker 2: Another is called septocemic plague, which was insect born again

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Speaker 2: one mortality and this is just incredible. Six hours, six

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Speaker 2: hours to live. Wow, let's take a break.

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Speaker 1: When we come back, we'll find out what astrologers, yes,

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Speaker 1: astrologers thought was cause of the plague.

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Speaker 2: Now, remember I said that this is a medical event,

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Speaker 2: but not just a medical event. What was the social, economic,

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Speaker 2: religious impact of this event. Well, we have all sorts

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Speaker 2: of accounts that make us wonder what would I do

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Speaker 2: in that situation. One set of accounts damns the church

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Speaker 2: by saying, well, lots of priests did not give what

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Speaker 2: they used to call extreme unction, last anointing, last rites

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Speaker 2: because the priests were afraid of being contaminated themselves. And

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Speaker 2: that's a damnation of those priests, and maybe some did.

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Speaker 2: Yet we do have evidence that monks, nuns, and friars

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Speaker 2: died at a hugely not just disproportionate, but hugely disproportionate rate.

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Speaker 2: We have accounts that we have to allow God to

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Speaker 2: take care of the souls because so many die, they

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Speaker 2: can't have a proper burial, so they're just kind of

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Speaker 2: thrown into these mass graves. Lime is thrown on top

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Speaker 2: of them, and we just hope that the decomposition of

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Speaker 2: the bodies doesn't somehow reach us. We have accounts of

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Speaker 2: mothers and fathers abandoning their families. I don't know about that.

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Speaker 2: I don't know whether a mother or a father would

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Speaker 2: abandon a child. We do have stories of people abandoning

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Speaker 2: their elderly parents. That turns our stomach as well. It's

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Speaker 2: hard to separate fact here from apocrypha because when things

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Speaker 2: start going wrong, you know, the rumor mill starts churning.

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Speaker 2: We can all remember moments in our own lives where

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Speaker 2: we've turned on the radio and we've heard that strange phrase.

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Speaker 2: We have unconfirmed reports. That makes us wonder why those

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Speaker 2: unconfirmed reports are being reported. This is all you have

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Speaker 2: at that time, unconfirmed reports. Panic. So what does some

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Speaker 2: people do? Some people close up shop, and if the

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Speaker 2: disease doesn't get into your house, your monastery, your convent,

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Speaker 2: you're okay. But if it does, I mean it's an

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Speaker 2: all or nothing operation. Some people leave, they flee to

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Speaker 2: the countryside, and the people who flee to the countryside

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Speaker 2: tend to be people who have the money to have

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Speaker 2: a villa far from the city. In fact, Boccaccio's Decameron

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Speaker 2: is a collection of stories told while these rich people

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Speaker 2: wait the Black Death out. There are ten people. They

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Speaker 2: have ten days, so they're each going to tell one

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Speaker 2: story a day. And that's how you get the Decameron right,

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Speaker 2: ten stories a day, one hundred stories. It's a bunch

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Speaker 2: of rich people twiddling their thumbs in a rich villa

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Speaker 2: far from a city, hoping that the Black Death doesn't

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Speaker 2: make it in, doesn't infect their refuge, if you will.

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Speaker 2: So we have all sorts of accounts, of religious explanations,

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Speaker 2: explanations and reactions. Quite frankly, nobody knows what the heck

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Speaker 2: is going on, and people start to try to figure

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Speaker 2: it out. Well, that makes sense, right, so what do

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Speaker 2: they do? There were discussions about what was going on

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Speaker 2: in the East, So you have to remember that in Europe,

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Speaker 2: right in particularly universities settings, and among the merchants classes.

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Speaker 2: Because the merchants would have had contact with news from

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Speaker 2: abroad before anyone else because of their ships. They heard

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Speaker 2: about this plague, this disease going off in the far East,

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Speaker 2: and so what is going on on in the East

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Speaker 2: becomes part of the discussion. And so what do you do.

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Speaker 2: You go to the University of Paris. The University of

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Speaker 2: Paris is the Harvard and Yale and Princeton and Stanford

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Speaker 2: and University of Chicago and Sorbonne and Oxford and Cambridge

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Speaker 2: all wrapped up into one. This is where the heavy

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Speaker 2: hitters are. And they say to the people there, particularly

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Speaker 2: the medical faculty, what's going on. Now. These people go

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Speaker 2: to their astrological charts. Now we rehear that, and we go, whoa,

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Speaker 2: this is crazy. They're reading horoscopes. Astrology is really astrono

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Speaker 2: me in this age, and if you go all the

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Speaker 2: way back to Egypt and ancient Sumeria and Assyria, people

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Speaker 2: who are called astralla jerors are really astronomers. They're scientists.

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Speaker 2: They're not reading tarot cards. And they say, well, maybe

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Speaker 2: something went on in the Eastern sky. So they get

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Speaker 2: their charts out and they come up with this explanation

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Speaker 2: of bad air. That's the explanation. Does not strike us

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Speaker 2: as very scientific, but in their terms it made sense

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Speaker 2: thinking historically that in the east, remember the diseases coming

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Speaker 2: from the east, there was a war between the Sun

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Speaker 2: and the sea in the Indian Ocean. This is the

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Speaker 2: white paper or memorandum that was written by the University

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Speaker 2: of Paris medical faculty to publicize their findings that in

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Speaker 2: the east there had been a war between the Sun

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Speaker 2: and the sea in the Indian Ocean. And why do

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Speaker 2: they say this because they noted that on March twentieth,

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Speaker 2: thirteen forty five, there had been a conjunction of planets

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Speaker 2: within the constellation of Aquarius. What were the plantlanets Saturn, Jupiter,

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Speaker 2: and Mars. So this conjunction of planets Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars,

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Speaker 2: Saturn representing death, Jupiter representing air, and Mars representing pestilence.

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Speaker 2: And that this confluence produced, according to one explanation, hot

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Speaker 2: and dry air, according to another explanation, warm and humid air,

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Speaker 2: and that air mass moved from east to west along

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Speaker 2: trade routes, when what was really moving were fleas on

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Speaker 2: infected rats along trade routes. But their notion was that

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Speaker 2: the disease was somehow out there as opposed to on

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Speaker 2: the ground, and this was the bad air explanation. The

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Speaker 2: Italians started to quip about this, and the best advice

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Speaker 2: that I ever read as to how to avoid the plague,

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Speaker 2: the Italian said, take three pills Chito, longeay and tar

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Speaker 2: day Chiito, run away fast, laune ay, stay away, go far,

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Speaker 2: and tar day return after a long time. Run away fast,

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Speaker 2: go really really far, and don't come back for a

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Speaker 2: long long time. And in some ways that advice was

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Speaker 2: as good as any. The reaction went both ways. And

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Speaker 2: it's interesting because if you look at the plague that

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Speaker 2: hits Athens around four point thirty BCE, you have the

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Speaker 2: same reaction. You have people who become religious fanatics, who

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Speaker 2: become very austere, and then you have people who say, eat,

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Speaker 2: drink and be merry, for tomorrow we shall die rich

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Speaker 2: or poor, good or bad, old or young, pious or evil.

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Speaker 2: Everybody's dying, so why not have a good time. So

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Speaker 2: we have accounts of this tremendous licentiousness where people are

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Speaker 2: drinking and having sex in the streets and they're gonna

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Speaker 2: die anyway, So who really cares. Let's just gorge ourselves

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Speaker 2: with food and drink and sex. And then you also

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Speaker 2: have religious fanatics, the flagilante, the flagelets, who said, this

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Speaker 2: must be a plague sent on us by God because

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Speaker 2: of our sins, and so we must purge our bodies.

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Speaker 2: And particularly in Germany and Italy and France, they march

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Speaker 2: through the streets stripped down and they whip themselves with cords.

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Speaker 2: Sometimes the chords have a metal spikes or triangles on

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Speaker 2: the end of them, and they bleed themselves that if

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Speaker 2: they expunge their sins, God will allow the plague to end.

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Speaker 2: And then, of course the Jews get blamed for this.

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Speaker 2: We have programs against Jews, saying that Jews poisons the wells,

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Speaker 2: or somehow Jews burn something that infected the air. So

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Speaker 2: again the programs against Jews are byproducts of this religious

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Speaker 2: fanaticism as well. You can't say that the black death

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Speaker 2: isn't depressing, because that great flowering comes crashing down. The

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Speaker 2: Black Death, more than just being a medical event, is

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Speaker 2: a complete reorientation of medieval society.

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Speaker 1: Thank you for tuning in to another episode of half

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Speaker 1: hour History, Secrets of the Medieval World. Mex is our

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Speaker 1: final episode. Are you upset? I am. It's the end

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Speaker 1: of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Age

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Speaker 1: of Exploration. Trust me, you don't want to miss it.

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Speaker 1: Our history Secrets of the Medieval World from One Day

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Speaker 1: University is a production of iHeart Podcasts and School of Humans.

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