WEBVTT - God and the Black Death, Part 2 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:05.280 My Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of 0:00:05.360 --> 0:00:14.920 My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. 0:00:15.280 --> 0:00:18.040 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and 0:00:18.079 --> 0:00:20.560 we're back with our second part in this series we've 0:00:20.560 --> 0:00:23.920 been doing about the Black Death, which is another name 0:00:24.000 --> 0:00:27.200 for the big outbreak at the beginning of the second 0:00:27.400 --> 0:00:31.920 plague pandemic. There have been three major pandemics in world 0:00:32.000 --> 0:00:35.320 history of of plague caused by the bacterium your Cineya 0:00:35.400 --> 0:00:38.920 pestis the second one of them is this big one 0:00:39.000 --> 0:00:41.280 at the in the Late Middle Ages that began in 0:00:41.320 --> 0:00:43.680 the middle of the fourteenth century and then had these 0:00:43.720 --> 0:00:47.560 recurrent waves that went on for hundreds of years after that. 0:00:48.040 --> 0:00:50.440 And so in the last episode we we talked about 0:00:50.680 --> 0:00:54.680 I guess mostly there we talked about scientific questions about 0:00:54.840 --> 0:00:58.400 what the causative agent of the plague was, how it spread, 0:00:58.480 --> 0:01:01.680 and some of the outstanding quests about that. There's still 0:01:01.680 --> 0:01:05.840 a lot actually that is surprisingly unknown about how exactly 0:01:05.880 --> 0:01:09.440 these plague pandemics worked, or certainly the older ones before 0:01:09.520 --> 0:01:12.800 the one in the nineteenth and twentieth century. Yeah, So 0:01:12.840 --> 0:01:15.400 in this episode we're going to look more at the 0:01:15.840 --> 0:01:20.360 contemporary response to the Black Death, the fourteenth century response 0:01:20.400 --> 0:01:23.920 to the Black Death, Well, what we know about, uh, 0:01:23.959 --> 0:01:28.199 the views on disease and illness at the time, and 0:01:28.280 --> 0:01:32.440 to what extent those were useful or useless against this 0:01:32.680 --> 0:01:36.240 this onslaught of plague. Now, Rob, I know one of 0:01:36.280 --> 0:01:39.240 the main reasons that you got interested in doing a 0:01:39.240 --> 0:01:42.120 series of episodes on the plague was that you were 0:01:42.160 --> 0:01:45.759 interested in religious responses to the plague, like what were 0:01:45.880 --> 0:01:50.200 the religions in the affected communities saying about the plague? 0:01:50.200 --> 0:01:53.400 And so that's what we've been looking into for this episode, 0:01:53.400 --> 0:01:56.160 and we'll probably end up doing another one after this. Uh. 0:01:56.200 --> 0:01:58.760 And this has been a really interesting subject, not only 0:01:58.840 --> 0:02:04.760 because it is inherently interesting, but actually the historiography of 0:02:04.800 --> 0:02:08.240 the subject is interesting. Like there's been interesting recent scholarship 0:02:08.639 --> 0:02:12.760 on the historical analysis of the different religious responses to 0:02:12.880 --> 0:02:16.440 the Black Plague and and how those analyzes have worked 0:02:16.480 --> 0:02:19.640 and to what extent they're accurate. So, uh So the 0:02:19.639 --> 0:02:22.399 full disclosure, I think when we do start talking about 0:02:22.480 --> 0:02:26.080 comparative religious responses to the Black Plague, this is something 0:02:26.080 --> 0:02:28.840 that I think is probably still a matter of debate. 0:02:28.880 --> 0:02:30.440 This is also, like we were talking about in the 0:02:30.480 --> 0:02:33.560 last episode, not something that's just a settled set of 0:02:33.639 --> 0:02:36.519 facts that are a matter of the history books. Right. 0:02:36.560 --> 0:02:38.600 And then also when we get into stuff like this, 0:02:39.000 --> 0:02:44.400 a lot of times there are some broad theories about how, okay, 0:02:44.800 --> 0:02:46.520 if you didn't have the Black Death, you wouldn't have 0:02:46.560 --> 0:02:49.040 had this, or because of the Black Death, this and 0:02:49.080 --> 0:02:52.560 this occurred, and some of these are very compelling cases. 0:02:53.040 --> 0:02:56.280 But we also have to remind ourselves that, like, you know, 0:02:56.320 --> 0:02:59.359 this is a complex game of trying to figure out 0:02:59.400 --> 0:03:03.040 how history comes together, and you know, what causes what? 0:03:03.320 --> 0:03:06.760 So you know, but butterfly wings are flapping all over 0:03:06.800 --> 0:03:09.200 the place. Uh So you know, we have to have 0:03:09.240 --> 0:03:12.640 to remind ourselves that nothing is one certain. But some 0:03:12.680 --> 0:03:15.640 of these arguments are rather interesting. Well, let's go ahead 0:03:15.680 --> 0:03:18.800 and start here in uh In, in the world of 0:03:18.880 --> 0:03:21.960 Christian Europe at the time, and uh I thought we 0:03:22.040 --> 0:03:24.320 might begin by just looking at the broader view of 0:03:24.400 --> 0:03:30.360 illness and ultimately the divine um. Basically, how did people 0:03:30.560 --> 0:03:33.280 at this time in this region view the cause of disease, 0:03:34.000 --> 0:03:35.840 What did they think about disease, where do they think 0:03:35.840 --> 0:03:37.600 it came from? And how did they think you should 0:03:38.040 --> 0:03:40.880 attempt to treat it? And so I thought we might 0:03:40.960 --> 0:03:42.920 run through some of the key ideas here, and some 0:03:43.000 --> 0:03:45.640 of these we've discussed on the show before, sometimes at length. 0:03:46.160 --> 0:03:49.320 So for starters, there was the idea of the four humors, 0:03:49.320 --> 0:03:52.120 and this was rooted in the work of Hippocrates, that 0:03:52.200 --> 0:03:55.800 an imbalance of the four humors of blood, flim, black bile, 0:03:55.880 --> 0:03:59.480 and yellow bile could result in disease. And this idea 0:03:59.520 --> 0:04:03.120 had been built on by Galen and others. So it 0:04:03.160 --> 0:04:06.120 basically said, you know, to treat illness, one would need 0:04:06.200 --> 0:04:09.120 to rebalance the humors, and there were various ways of 0:04:09.240 --> 0:04:13.240 doing this. But we know now that this was not correct, 0:04:13.680 --> 0:04:16.960 and this is in fact one of the um the 0:04:17.000 --> 0:04:20.200 main lines of thinking leading to a major treatment of 0:04:20.240 --> 0:04:23.920 the Middle Ages and and beyond, which is the treatment 0:04:24.040 --> 0:04:27.080 of blood letting, or actually not just blood letting, blood letting, 0:04:27.160 --> 0:04:32.039 various purging procedures that would try to purge people of 0:04:32.080 --> 0:04:34.880 excess fluids within the body when some when it was 0:04:34.920 --> 0:04:37.040 thought that their humors were out of balance. So if 0:04:37.080 --> 0:04:38.760 you you know, you had too much blood in the 0:04:38.800 --> 0:04:42.040 body and maybe that's leading to uh, I don't recall exactly, 0:04:42.160 --> 0:04:44.080 maybe a fever or something like that. I could have 0:04:44.160 --> 0:04:46.800 that wrong. What they thought led to what but you 0:04:46.800 --> 0:04:49.680 could you could alleviate that by putting, you know, punching 0:04:49.680 --> 0:04:52.400 a hole in the body and allowing excess blood to 0:04:52.480 --> 0:04:55.600 run out, right now, Next, there was the there was 0:04:55.680 --> 0:04:59.400 the idea that illness spread via bad air, and this 0:04:59.520 --> 0:05:02.120 was me asthma theory, which we've definitely discussed on the 0:05:02.160 --> 0:05:06.479 show before. Uh. This also had been advanced by Hippocrates. 0:05:06.520 --> 0:05:09.960 So again an idea rooted in in in classical thought 0:05:10.040 --> 0:05:12.440 and some of the you know what, we're considered the 0:05:12.440 --> 0:05:16.479 best ideas concerning the natural world of the time. Um. So, 0:05:17.320 --> 0:05:19.200 as we've discussed on the show before, the notion of 0:05:19.240 --> 0:05:22.960 bad and foul air being the thing that allows disease 0:05:23.000 --> 0:05:27.080 to travel and infect. That would mean therefore the removal 0:05:27.160 --> 0:05:30.920 of bad air, or the positioning of yourself further from 0:05:31.040 --> 0:05:35.360 bad air, would be a way to prevent or combat illness. Now, 0:05:35.400 --> 0:05:39.560 interestingly enough, this approach can work accidentally in some cases. 0:05:39.560 --> 0:05:42.880 But again, this one too is not correct. Yeah, so 0:05:43.160 --> 0:05:46.839 we've actually done at least one whole episode on miasma 0:05:46.880 --> 0:05:50.120 theory before, maybe multiple episodes, So if you go into 0:05:50.160 --> 0:05:53.240 the back catalog you can probably find that somewhere. Um. 0:05:53.279 --> 0:05:57.559 But but Yeah, miasma theory is very interesting, especially because 0:05:57.680 --> 0:06:00.960 it's it's mechanisms are not always easy to nail down. 0:06:01.000 --> 0:06:03.640 But yeah, it's generally the idea that there's something in 0:06:03.680 --> 0:06:06.960 the air, often a foul smelling air or some kind 0:06:06.960 --> 0:06:11.120 of bad air or bad vapor, that that could have 0:06:11.279 --> 0:06:13.960 a number of proximate causes of its own. It may 0:06:14.000 --> 0:06:17.600 be air that is caused by a conjunction of the 0:06:17.640 --> 0:06:20.440 planets or something, or it might be released from deep 0:06:20.440 --> 0:06:22.800 in the earth during an earthquake, and all of these 0:06:22.800 --> 0:06:25.359 things might ultimately be something you could trace back to 0:06:25.440 --> 0:06:28.920 a supernatural cause. As many people in Christian Europe would 0:06:28.920 --> 0:06:31.320 they would say, you know, well, here are the proximate causes. 0:06:31.360 --> 0:06:34.479 It's bad air, that would say, released by the planets, 0:06:34.480 --> 0:06:37.000 are released by an earthquake. But ultimately it's God. It's 0:06:37.040 --> 0:06:39.720 God is punishing us, and we'll come back to the 0:06:39.720 --> 0:06:43.880 theological interpretations. In a moment, I was reading a work 0:06:44.040 --> 0:06:48.520 by a historian named Michael W. Doles who lived nineteen 0:06:48.560 --> 0:06:52.320 forty two to nineteen eighty nine, who was a historian 0:06:52.400 --> 0:06:55.479 of medicine and historian to the Middle East. He published 0:06:55.520 --> 0:06:57.560 a book called The Black Death in the Middle East 0:06:57.560 --> 0:06:59.360 in nineteen seventy seven, I think it was actually his 0:06:59.440 --> 0:07:03.440 doctoral assertation, but he's a widely cited scholar on this 0:07:03.560 --> 0:07:06.840 subject who and also I want to come back either 0:07:06.880 --> 0:07:08.760 in this episode or in the next episode with more 0:07:08.800 --> 0:07:12.720 recent scholarship that has offered some some critiques of of 0:07:12.800 --> 0:07:17.120 doles as generalizations about about religious responses to the plague. 0:07:17.160 --> 0:07:19.120 So this it's not just like what he says goes 0:07:19.160 --> 0:07:21.160 for all time. But in an essay I was reading 0:07:21.160 --> 0:07:24.080 called the Comparative Communal Responses to the Black Death and 0:07:24.160 --> 0:07:28.200 Muslim and Christian Society is published in the seventies. Uh, 0:07:28.280 --> 0:07:31.960 he's writing before he gets into the religious responses, he's 0:07:32.000 --> 0:07:36.960 writing about the dominant mechanistic theories of plague transmission within 0:07:37.200 --> 0:07:41.280 both Christian and Muslim societies. And he writes that both 0:07:41.280 --> 0:07:44.600 of these societies tended to have this same dominant mechanical 0:07:44.680 --> 0:07:46.800 theory of the spread of plague, so both of them 0:07:46.840 --> 0:07:50.640 were largely working from miasma theory, like you're talking about 0:07:50.680 --> 0:07:53.200 the idea that plague is caused by bad air. And 0:07:53.240 --> 0:07:56.880 this is because communities of of both religions were largely 0:07:56.960 --> 0:07:59.960 drawing on the same medical traditions like you mentioned hippocerty 0:08:00.040 --> 0:08:03.840 ease the elaboration on Hippocrates by Galen, but then also 0:08:04.000 --> 0:08:07.560 even sina Or also known as Avicenna, and as a 0:08:07.600 --> 0:08:12.200 result of the belief in miasma theory, a common preventative 0:08:12.240 --> 0:08:15.560 to infection under this theory is what might be called 0:08:15.840 --> 0:08:20.280 changing the air. And so this could have this could 0:08:20.360 --> 0:08:23.640 have interpretations that would actually be useful even though the 0:08:23.640 --> 0:08:26.600 theory is wrong, and could have interpretations that would be 0:08:26.600 --> 0:08:30.560 completely useless. So it might mean, say, getting out of 0:08:30.600 --> 0:08:33.000 the area where the bad air is. You know, you're 0:08:33.080 --> 0:08:35.920 changing the air by changing your location. So if everybody 0:08:35.920 --> 0:08:38.800 around you is getting infected, that probably means there's some 0:08:38.920 --> 0:08:41.120 bad air around and you need to get away from it, 0:08:41.200 --> 0:08:44.600 so you could flee. But then also it could mean 0:08:44.679 --> 0:08:47.920 something like sweetening the air. This was a common practice 0:08:48.000 --> 0:08:51.960 of infusing the air you breathe with pleasant sense, like 0:08:52.080 --> 0:08:55.800 herbs or flowers or fresh fruits. And so when you 0:08:55.840 --> 0:08:58.280 see those plague doctor masks like we talked about in 0:08:58.320 --> 0:09:01.200 the in the previous episode, that they might have a 0:09:01.240 --> 0:09:05.040 beak or some kind of protuberance coming from where the 0:09:05.080 --> 0:09:07.559 mouth and the nose would be. That presumably the person 0:09:07.600 --> 0:09:10.680 wearing the mask is breathing through not having a journey 0:09:10.800 --> 0:09:12.920 theory of disease. They were not thinking about trying to 0:09:13.160 --> 0:09:16.520 filter out droplets bearing viral particles. Instead, they were thinking 0:09:16.520 --> 0:09:19.640 about filtering the air coming into your mouth and nose 0:09:19.720 --> 0:09:23.560 with sweet smells. So those protuberances in the mask would 0:09:23.600 --> 0:09:26.680 often be stuffed with herbs or or something like that. 0:09:27.080 --> 0:09:29.079 Right and then and then, I think in at least 0:09:29.080 --> 0:09:31.520 in some cases, the idea too was that there was 0:09:31.559 --> 0:09:35.520 still an opening right next to either nostril so um, 0:09:35.920 --> 0:09:38.760 so that there were a number of problems with that design, 0:09:38.840 --> 0:09:41.560 which again, to be clear, was not would not have 0:09:41.640 --> 0:09:44.880 been in in in use during this time period. It 0:09:44.880 --> 0:09:47.720 would have come centuries later, and there's still some dispute 0:09:47.840 --> 0:09:50.880 as to house widespread they actually were. But despite the 0:09:50.920 --> 0:09:54.200 fact that they come later and they they might not 0:09:54.280 --> 0:09:57.360 have been as widespread as you might get an impression, uh, 0:09:57.520 --> 0:10:00.280 they still do reflect the dominant thinking of out the 0:10:00.320 --> 0:10:04.320 mechanistic causes of disease transmission at the time. UH. And 0:10:04.360 --> 0:10:09.560 it's understandable because you basically have a learned system here 0:10:09.880 --> 0:10:14.760 that matches up closely with some of our natural responses 0:10:14.800 --> 0:10:18.480 to say, revolting or alarming smells. You know we like 0:10:18.559 --> 0:10:22.080 basically aligns up with some of our body's natural defenses 0:10:22.120 --> 0:10:26.960 against potentially poisonous or infectious agents, right, I mean, so 0:10:27.000 --> 0:10:32.720 we have natural disgust reactions that are almost certainly evolved 0:10:32.840 --> 0:10:36.240 to protect us from infectious disease. Like why is it 0:10:36.320 --> 0:10:39.400 that we tend to find the body fluids of of 0:10:39.440 --> 0:10:42.280 other people and animals revolting and like we want to 0:10:42.280 --> 0:10:44.920 get away from them as probably because that is an 0:10:44.920 --> 0:10:48.559 evolved response. An animal that happens to be disgusted by 0:10:48.600 --> 0:10:51.520 body fluids and stays away from them is less likely 0:10:51.600 --> 0:10:56.000 to contract an infectious disease. So that's also an area 0:10:56.040 --> 0:10:59.160 in which even though the person who has this disgusted 0:10:59.200 --> 0:11:02.839 reaction might not understand the mechanisms that, oh, tiny organisms 0:11:02.880 --> 0:11:05.440 might get into my body and then start colonizing and 0:11:05.480 --> 0:11:09.840 infecting me. Uh, the the intuition provided by the disgusted 0:11:09.920 --> 0:11:12.640 reaction is itself protective, even though you you might you 0:11:12.679 --> 0:11:16.040 wouldn't understand the reason why. But anyway, coming back to 0:11:16.080 --> 0:11:18.160 the other half of it, So another way of changing 0:11:18.160 --> 0:11:20.760 the air is to change your location. Right, So if 0:11:20.800 --> 0:11:23.480 you get away from where you perceive there to be 0:11:23.520 --> 0:11:26.520 a cloud of mi asthma, you might also be getting 0:11:26.520 --> 0:11:30.320 yourself away from real vectors of disease, which could be 0:11:30.320 --> 0:11:32.280 a number of things when we talked about different theories 0:11:32.280 --> 0:11:34.960 of this in the last episode, but you could be 0:11:35.000 --> 0:11:39.000 getting yourself away from host populations of infected animals like 0:11:39.040 --> 0:11:42.160 commence al rodents which are carrying fleas which would deliver 0:11:42.280 --> 0:11:46.320 the infectious bite, or away from infected people who could 0:11:46.400 --> 0:11:50.160 possibly be spreading the disease directly, either through droplets that 0:11:50.200 --> 0:11:52.679 they're coughing out leaving the nose and mouth if they 0:11:52.679 --> 0:11:56.160 have pneumonic plague and infection of the lungs, or getting 0:11:56.200 --> 0:11:59.400 away from infected people who are transmitting plague to other 0:11:59.400 --> 0:12:03.760 people through they're human ectoparasites, which is a finding of 0:12:03.800 --> 0:12:05.600 a recent study we we talked about, I think it 0:12:05.640 --> 0:12:09.480 was from eighteen or so that that said the the 0:12:09.840 --> 0:12:12.440 for a number of plague outbreaks, it looks like the 0:12:12.480 --> 0:12:15.880 best explanatory model for how the plague spreads is if 0:12:15.920 --> 0:12:19.200 it's being spread person to person through things like human 0:12:19.400 --> 0:12:23.960 lice and human fleas. But in any case, getting away 0:12:24.000 --> 0:12:26.560 from where plague is is an effective method of protecting 0:12:26.600 --> 0:12:29.280 yourself no matter which of these vectors is the dominant 0:12:29.320 --> 0:12:37.560 one than Now from this point we get into some 0:12:37.600 --> 0:12:40.960 of the more supernatural causes, and we can certainly lump 0:12:41.040 --> 0:12:44.960 these all together and just say all right, supernatural causes 0:12:45.000 --> 0:12:47.439 of the of the disease, of the plague, or we 0:12:47.480 --> 0:12:50.520 can divide them up into a few different categories. On 0:12:50.520 --> 0:12:53.480 one hand, I think we can easily state that the 0:12:53.520 --> 0:12:56.360 supernatural is never the cause of an illness and therefore 0:12:56.400 --> 0:12:59.720 buying large supernatural solutions are not going to work. Um. 0:12:59.760 --> 0:13:02.640 But it roughly speaking, I think we can look at 0:13:02.640 --> 0:13:05.600 three different categories and we can discuss them from there. So, 0:13:05.640 --> 0:13:10.560 first of all, there's the supernatural individual level, so disease 0:13:10.600 --> 0:13:14.360 as a result of sin, like individual sin, a punishment 0:13:14.440 --> 0:13:19.720 for sin, or a test administrated by supernatural forces. Uh, 0:13:19.760 --> 0:13:22.520 generally we're talking about God or an agent of God. 0:13:23.000 --> 0:13:26.760 Medieval thinking tended to limit the extent to which demons 0:13:26.760 --> 0:13:30.200 could actually mess with flesh. This is something that was 0:13:30.280 --> 0:13:33.160 discussed in the had been discussed in the works of Aristotle, 0:13:33.320 --> 0:13:36.679 and Thomas Aquinas had laid in on this. So there 0:13:36.679 --> 0:13:39.920 are certain limits, like the idea that that the devil 0:13:40.000 --> 0:13:43.160 could not turn you into an animal, because that would 0:13:43.160 --> 0:13:45.840 that would be in defiance of natural law. But other 0:13:45.920 --> 0:13:49.480 things were permitted, so you can kind of it gets 0:13:49.520 --> 0:13:54.319 into kind of a messy theological area. Um. But so 0:13:54.600 --> 0:13:56.400 for the most part, when people were looking for a 0:13:56.440 --> 0:13:58.760 cause of the plague, they were not looking to Hell. 0:13:58.880 --> 0:14:02.000 They were looking to Heaven. Yeah. From everything I've been reading, 0:14:02.040 --> 0:14:08.080 this was especially the the overwhelming, uh, supernatural explanation used 0:14:08.080 --> 0:14:11.560 throughout Christian Europe at the time was that that disease, 0:14:11.679 --> 0:14:15.480 especially plague, is in some way a punishment for sin, 0:14:16.040 --> 0:14:20.320 and it often an individual punishment for sin. Uh. And 0:14:20.360 --> 0:14:22.520 of course this could give rise to all kinds of 0:14:22.560 --> 0:14:25.880 the Odyssey type questions right where the Odyssey, of course, 0:14:25.880 --> 0:14:29.280 being the the subject of believers trying to justify the 0:14:29.320 --> 0:14:32.240 ways of God to man. Uh. This could give rise 0:14:32.280 --> 0:14:36.640 to questions like, well, why would innocent children uh be 0:14:36.880 --> 0:14:40.760 catch this disease? You know, they're too young, um to 0:14:40.760 --> 0:14:43.360 to be culpable for sin in the same way adults are. 0:14:43.400 --> 0:14:46.080 And and this was addressed in numerous ways. Some people 0:14:46.160 --> 0:14:48.840 might say, well, it's actually their parents are being punished 0:14:48.880 --> 0:14:51.360 for their sin or uh, you know, and the saying 0:14:51.360 --> 0:14:53.000 that the children will get to go to heaven their 0:14:53.040 --> 0:14:55.200 parents are being punished, or it might be said that 0:14:55.240 --> 0:14:59.120 the children h have disobeyed the commandments to honor thy 0:14:59.160 --> 0:15:02.160 father and mother. So there by being disobedient to their parents, 0:15:02.160 --> 0:15:05.960 they are actually being punished. But yeah, supernatural punishment seems 0:15:05.960 --> 0:15:09.960 to have been an overwhelmingly common interpretation, especially within Christian Europe. 0:15:10.520 --> 0:15:12.560 I do want to add a caveat though about like 0:15:12.600 --> 0:15:15.960 the limited powers of of demonic forces, is that you're 0:15:15.960 --> 0:15:18.800 going to also encounter exceptions to that rule, certainly when 0:15:18.800 --> 0:15:24.720 you're dealing with individual surviving folkloric and mythological ideas. Um. 0:15:25.080 --> 0:15:26.800 But but this is just sort of by and large 0:15:26.840 --> 0:15:29.160 like what the what the how the learned members of 0:15:29.200 --> 0:15:32.600 society would have interpreted the problem. Now, an extension of 0:15:32.600 --> 0:15:36.720 the supernatural individual category is the supernatural group category, which 0:15:36.720 --> 0:15:39.240 were already discussing a little bit here. This is the 0:15:39.240 --> 0:15:43.680 same as previously uh explained, but roughly applied to an 0:15:43.800 --> 0:15:47.560 entire city and entire people or culture, and generally limited 0:15:48.120 --> 0:15:51.520 to you know, the judgment of divine forces. Again, so 0:15:51.600 --> 0:15:54.960 there's something something is wrong in our culture, or in 0:15:55.000 --> 0:15:57.960 our church, or in our kingdom and or in our 0:15:58.000 --> 0:16:02.080 world entirely, we've fallen at ray, and therefore the Almighty 0:16:02.280 --> 0:16:05.520 is punishing us. And then another category and this kind 0:16:05.520 --> 0:16:07.200 of gets down to a lot of the like I say, 0:16:07.280 --> 0:16:11.080 this sort of ground level folkloric um ideas, the idea 0:16:11.160 --> 0:16:14.320 that witchcraft and magic were involved. This is something encountered 0:16:14.360 --> 0:16:16.920 in cultures around the world generally, the idea of that 0:16:17.040 --> 0:16:22.440 disease may be caused by others practicing magic against you. Um. 0:16:22.480 --> 0:16:27.320 This generates ideas concerning whiches and sorcerers, but also leads 0:16:27.360 --> 0:16:32.160 to all manner of mothering and the persecution in response 0:16:32.200 --> 0:16:35.760 to illness. Something bad is happening to us. Illness is here, 0:16:36.320 --> 0:16:39.680 someone is responsible, and we have to do something about it. Yeah. 0:16:39.680 --> 0:16:42.600 And as as you allude to, and as anyone might 0:16:42.640 --> 0:16:48.160 guess that this particular interpretation kind of really disastrous consequences. Yeah. 0:16:48.400 --> 0:16:51.720 So again, none of these understandings of disease are are 0:16:51.760 --> 0:16:55.200 actually valid, and none of them are really going to work. 0:16:55.240 --> 0:16:57.520 Certainly some of them they seem to work, and then 0:16:57.560 --> 0:17:00.000 they seem to work in certain cases with other illnes 0:17:00.040 --> 0:17:02.240 us is. But then here comes the Black Death with 0:17:02.400 --> 0:17:05.480 just staggering mortality rates. Uh. We got into this a 0:17:05.480 --> 0:17:08.080 bit in the last episode, but I mean, in the 0:17:08.119 --> 0:17:10.320 numbers are going to vary, but I've seen like a 0:17:10.520 --> 0:17:14.000 rough thirty to seventy five percent mortality rate for plague. 0:17:13.720 --> 0:17:18.320 I've seen bubonic with an eight percent mortality rate during 0:17:18.359 --> 0:17:21.879 this time, and I've seen uh, the other varieties of 0:17:21.880 --> 0:17:24.320 plague with you know, upwards of ninety to a hundred 0:17:24.400 --> 0:17:28.639 percent of mortality. So it's uh, you know, staggering numbers 0:17:28.640 --> 0:17:32.560 to consider. Yeah, with pneumonic or septo semic plagues, the 0:17:32.560 --> 0:17:34.840 other two versions, and again they're they're all caused by 0:17:34.840 --> 0:17:37.280 the same bacterium. It's all your cine epestis. It's just 0:17:37.359 --> 0:17:40.879 about how the body gets infected Soneumonic is infection of 0:17:40.960 --> 0:17:45.560 the lung tissue, like if either bubonic plague progresses to 0:17:46.320 --> 0:17:49.200 a lung infection or if you inhale the bacterium directly 0:17:49.200 --> 0:17:52.200 and it gives you a primary lung infection, that'sneumonic plague. 0:17:52.359 --> 0:17:55.239 Septo semic plague is infection of the blood stream with 0:17:55.320 --> 0:17:58.600 the your cine epestis. And either way, uh yeah, these 0:17:58.600 --> 0:18:02.920 are just absolutely devas dating like without without very quick 0:18:03.000 --> 0:18:06.480 antibiotic treatments. And and I do think it's important to 0:18:06.520 --> 0:18:09.880 stress that even in the modern world, with these versions 0:18:09.920 --> 0:18:12.000 of plague, you've got to catch it early with the 0:18:12.000 --> 0:18:15.679 antibiotics to be effective because these uh, these forms of 0:18:15.680 --> 0:18:18.919 the disease can progress shockingly rapidly. There there are stories 0:18:18.960 --> 0:18:21.840 from the Middle Ages of uh, you know, people people 0:18:21.960 --> 0:18:25.720 going to bed seemingly okay and then just being dead 0:18:25.760 --> 0:18:30.480 by the next morning. It's a shockingly rapid progression. And uh. 0:18:30.520 --> 0:18:34.760 And yeah, the the mortality rates without early antibiotic intervention 0:18:34.880 --> 0:18:38.639 or somewhere near a hundred percent. Now, some of the 0:18:38.680 --> 0:18:41.720 prevention and treatment practices of the day were certainly in 0:18:41.760 --> 0:18:44.840 line with the four humors and the miasma theory um 0:18:45.200 --> 0:18:47.680 on the later front, and one of the most consequence 0:18:47.720 --> 0:18:49.880 real views was that again one could just simply move 0:18:49.920 --> 0:18:52.720 from an area with bad air to one with better air. 0:18:53.000 --> 0:18:55.240 But all of this was more prevalent in the early 0:18:55.359 --> 0:18:58.959 days of the Black Death um. As it progressed, you 0:18:59.000 --> 0:19:04.399 saw more of a turning to potential religious cures and 0:19:04.440 --> 0:19:08.800 religious treatments religious responses to the plague. Yeah, because if 0:19:08.840 --> 0:19:12.280 you are following this view in in Christian that's very 0:19:12.320 --> 0:19:15.280 common in Christian Europe, that the plague is being caused 0:19:15.359 --> 0:19:18.400 by sin and it is a punishment for sin, then 0:19:18.400 --> 0:19:22.000 you would think that the primary way of alleviating it 0:19:22.080 --> 0:19:25.919 would be doing something about the underlying cause, doing something 0:19:25.920 --> 0:19:29.040 about the state of sin that you're in, and trying 0:19:29.080 --> 0:19:31.320 to fix that in order to get God to relent 0:19:31.440 --> 0:19:33.720 with the disaster. Yeah, and so I like the most 0:19:33.760 --> 0:19:37.640 obvious treatment here is Okay, if if God has allowed 0:19:37.640 --> 0:19:39.919 this to happen or cause this to happen, I need 0:19:39.960 --> 0:19:41.639 to get on the phone with God. And I do 0:19:41.720 --> 0:19:43.879 have a way, I have a direct line. I can pray, 0:19:44.000 --> 0:19:47.600 we can all pray. And so that was one method 0:19:47.720 --> 0:19:51.120 turned to prayer, prayer to God, and various other other 0:19:51.400 --> 0:19:54.199 religious approaches come into play. To hear the use of 0:19:54.240 --> 0:19:58.760 ambulence and charms as a means of of aiding prayer 0:19:58.960 --> 0:20:02.240 or as as a means of hecting against plague, even 0:20:02.280 --> 0:20:06.760 as the idea that some form of contagion was taking place, 0:20:06.840 --> 0:20:10.639 like the idea that it was that that they became 0:20:10.680 --> 0:20:13.240 apparent that something was happening, it was somehow spreading from 0:20:13.359 --> 0:20:15.640 person to person. Even if you got into this view, 0:20:16.359 --> 0:20:20.040 there was still the idea, well, an amulet can stand 0:20:20.080 --> 0:20:22.199 between me and that it can be the thing that 0:20:22.240 --> 0:20:25.680 protects me. Um And when this didn't appear to work, 0:20:25.920 --> 0:20:28.920 we can certainly understand why more extreme methods were then 0:20:28.960 --> 0:20:32.840 explored like, if prayer doesn't work and amulets are not working, 0:20:32.920 --> 0:20:36.800 then maybe I'm not trying hard enough, and therefore God 0:20:36.920 --> 0:20:40.080 is still not removing this plague from my shoulders. And 0:20:40.119 --> 0:20:44.119 here you get into some of the most interesting theological 0:20:44.240 --> 0:20:47.399 reasoning that that appeared in Christian Europe in response to 0:20:47.440 --> 0:20:50.120 the plague, which is picking up on on pre existing 0:20:50.200 --> 0:20:55.200 ideas about the powers of the mortification of the flesh. Yes, 0:20:56.560 --> 0:21:01.800 the various flagulent groups for example, Um, you've probably seen 0:21:02.640 --> 0:21:05.560 art and uh you know, and you've seen paintings depicting 0:21:05.640 --> 0:21:10.320 these individuals before, often people in white clothing UM, going 0:21:10.720 --> 0:21:16.280 making like minor parades through the streets, whipping or flailing oneself, 0:21:16.560 --> 0:21:20.680 drawing blood from one's back, thus staining the white garments 0:21:20.720 --> 0:21:25.119 that you're wearing. UM as an act of penance. UM. 0:21:25.160 --> 0:21:28.120 And the interesting thing about these is that these groups 0:21:28.160 --> 0:21:31.479 practicing the mortification of the flesh in public rituals as 0:21:31.480 --> 0:21:33.840 a means of of seeking penance during times of great 0:21:33.880 --> 0:21:38.840 suffering and fear. These existed prior to the Black Death. UM. 0:21:39.359 --> 0:21:42.119 You find these during the thirteenth century, and during the 0:21:42.160 --> 0:21:45.240 thirteenth century they had already reached the point of heresy 0:21:45.600 --> 0:21:48.199 or the charge of heresy by the church, as it 0:21:48.240 --> 0:21:53.200 became a sort of grassroots means of removing one's sin effectively, 0:21:53.600 --> 0:21:56.119 or or at least to the powers that be, seeming 0:21:56.119 --> 0:21:58.560 to come dangerously close to cutting the power of the 0:21:58.640 --> 0:22:01.160 Church out of the equation, because what do you need 0:22:01.240 --> 0:22:04.760 church for when the power to remove sins resides in 0:22:04.800 --> 0:22:08.359 your own hands and your own flails um Even more 0:22:08.440 --> 0:22:13.120 so when this idea generates that merely witnessing a progression 0:22:13.200 --> 0:22:17.560 of flagelens through the streets can remove your sins. If 0:22:17.600 --> 0:22:21.600 you're trying to picture a procession, a flagulent procession, people 0:22:21.760 --> 0:22:25.159 moving in formation through the streets punishing their own bodies 0:22:25.200 --> 0:22:28.439 in order to enact the mortification of the flesh. And 0:22:28.440 --> 0:22:30.240 and by the way, the mortification of the flesh, I 0:22:30.240 --> 0:22:33.840 mean these people did point to sort of passages in 0:22:33.880 --> 0:22:37.080 the Bible that could be interpreted as giving them license 0:22:37.160 --> 0:22:39.840 to to enact this kind of spiritual dealing where the 0:22:40.000 --> 0:22:43.480 you know, punishing the body or denying the body pleasure 0:22:43.520 --> 0:22:46.160 and inflicting pain on the body could in some way 0:22:46.600 --> 0:22:49.400 purify you in the eyes of God. Like there, uh, 0:22:49.440 --> 0:22:51.760