0:00

Ryan Reynolds here for I guess my hundredth Mint

0:02

commercial. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

0:04

no, no. Honestly,

0:06

when I started this, I thought I'd only have to

0:09

do like four of these. I mean, it's unlimited premium

0:11

wireless for $15 a month. How are

0:13

there still people paying two or three times that

0:15

much? I'm sorry, I shouldn't

0:17

be victim blaming here. Give it

0:19

a try at mintmobile.com/switch whenever

0:21

you're ready. $45 up from

0:23

payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers

0:26

on first three-month plan only. Taxes and fees

0:28

extra. Speed slower above 40 gigabytes. See details.

0:30

Ryan Reynolds here for I guess my hundredth Mint

0:32

commercial. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

0:34

no, no. Honestly,

0:37

when I started this, I thought I'd only have to

0:39

do like four of these. I mean, it's unlimited premium

0:41

wireless for $15 a month. How are

0:43

there still people paying two or three times that

0:45

much? I'm sorry, I shouldn't

0:47

be victim blaming here. Give it

0:49

a try at mintmobile.com/switch whenever

0:51

you're ready. $45 up from

0:53

payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers

0:56

on first three-month plan only. Taxes and fees extra.

0:58

Speed slower above 40 gigabytes. See details. Acast

1:02

powers the world's best podcast.

1:06

Here's a show that we recommend. Food

1:10

Network Obsessed is your podcast for

1:12

all things Food Network. I'm

1:15

Jamie Sire and I talk with

1:17

your favorite chefs, food influencers, and

1:19

Food Network personalities. They tell

1:21

me all about how they started their careers,

1:23

who and what they've been influenced by, and

1:25

what it's like to cook in a Food

1:27

Network studio. You'll hear

1:29

from stars like Alex Guarnaschelli, Guy

1:31

Fieri, and Bobby Flay. Listen

1:34

to Food Network Obsessed wherever you get your

1:36

podcasts. Acast

1:41

helps creators launch, grow,

1:43

and monetize their podcasts

1:45

everywhere. acast.com. In

2:00

the year 1346, rumors

2:02

were moving around Europe of strange

2:05

and dark news coming out of

2:07

the Eastern kingdoms of Cathay and

2:10

India. There were

2:12

stories of serpents and toads

2:14

falling from the sky like

2:16

thick rain slithering into homes

2:19

and devouring numberless people,

2:22

injecting them with poison and

2:24

gnawing at their limbs. There

2:27

was talk of earthquakes that cast

2:29

down whole cities and of unquenchable

2:31

fires from the sky that burned

2:33

all night and ate up any

2:36

who fell prey to the flames.

2:39

But for those in

2:41

Europe hearing such strange tales, life,

2:45

for now, continued as much

2:47

as it had always done. In

2:50

the same year that rumors from the

2:52

East first began to circulate, in England,

2:55

Edward III was preparing for

2:58

the marriage of his young daughter Joan

3:00

to the eldest son of Maria of

3:02

Portugal and King Alfonso XI of Castile.

3:06

The negotiations had been lengthy,

3:09

so it wasn't until two years later, in the

3:11

fateful year of 1348, that the 14-year-old Princess Joan

3:16

set out for her wedding and

3:19

new life on the continent. By

3:21

then, stories from the East were

3:24

beginning to stick. Joan's

3:26

parents watched their young daughter board

3:28

a ship from Plymouth bound for

3:30

Bordeaux and filled with treasures, among

3:32

them a beautiful wedding cloak of

3:35

gold and silk. With

3:37

her went a bodyguard of 50 armed

3:39

men, many of them knights or famous

3:42

archers, though none were

3:44

able to save her or themselves

3:46

from the dangers that awaited them.

3:49

For there would be no wedding. The

3:52

years of preparation had all been in

3:54

vain. The plagues that

3:56

had, it was told, already

3:58

ruined Cathay and India. were

4:00

no longer a thing from the

4:03

periphery of a Eurocentric world. They

4:06

had arrived on the streets

4:08

of European cities spreading out

4:10

with terrible rapidity to its

4:13

farthest-flung villages. Nothing,

4:15

now, could save Joan,

4:17

daughter of Edward III, from

4:20

the Black Death. A

4:38

A Well,

4:46

a great choice to start with. Welcome

4:48

to After Dark. My name is Antony.

4:51

And I'm Maddie. And we're speaking Irish today

4:53

for some reason. I don't know why. I've taken it back

4:55

by the Irish. Hello. I just,

4:58

it came to me and I went with it. And

5:00

the Black Death, that's what we're talking about

5:02

today. Not because I spoke Irish. I

5:04

don't know why that happened. I just did. For

5:07

a long time, as you probably know, it has

5:09

been, the Black Death has been associated with some

5:12

of the most nightmarish ideas of what it was

5:14

like to live in the Middle Ages. And we'll

5:16

get into some of those details. But there's something

5:19

new in it for us now, I think,

5:21

for people who have lived through the COVID-19

5:23

pandemic. Not that it's entirely relatable, but we

5:25

have a bit of an insight that maybe

5:27

we didn't have before. But

5:30

here to guide us through the history,

5:32

this difficult history, is Helen Carr, who

5:34

is a historian and a best-selling author

5:36

of The Red Prince, John of Gaunt,

5:38

Duke of Lancaster. And Helen has also

5:40

just finished writing a brand new book,

5:42

which is coming out next year, all

5:45

about the 14th century. And for

5:47

fans of Helen and history hit together, you

5:49

will know that there is some news that you might be very

5:51

excited about. And that is that

5:53

Helen has a brand new documentary coming out about the Battle

5:56

for Scotland. And that will be on history. Hit TV soon.

5:58

Can't wait for that. First of

6:00

all, Helen, welcome. Thank you so much for coming

6:02

to After Dark Towers. Thank you so

6:04

much for having me. I'm so looking forward to it and I'm

6:06

a big fan of the podcast. So it's a

6:08

joy to be here. A joy

6:10

to be here chatting about the Black Death. But

6:14

Helen, most people have an idea,

6:17

right, about what the Black Death was. And some

6:19

of those ideas might be mistaken

6:21

slightly. So tell us in

6:23

the simplest terms from those who don't know what

6:25

exactly was the Black Death. The

6:28

Black Death's a pretty modern term

6:30

in itself. It was actually a

6:32

19th century moniker. It was made

6:34

up really to identify the symptoms

6:36

of the Black Death. In its

6:39

time contemporaneously, it was called the

6:41

pestilence or the pest. And

6:43

it was a pandemic that devastated Latin

6:46

Christendom, killing up to 60% of

6:49

the population. So that's across the

6:51

West and also North Africa. And

6:54

it was really a bacteria

6:57

called Yacenia pestis. That was

6:59

the cause of this pandemic.

7:02

And once it was absorbed into the

7:04

bloodstream, and that was usually by a

7:06

flea bite or contact with infected tissue.

7:09

And you can imagine in the 14th

7:11

century how many fleas were roaming

7:13

around. This bacteria spread through the

7:15

body. So it was going through the

7:17

blood vessels and sinew until it eventually

7:20

killed its host. What people probably don't

7:22

know that there were three different variations

7:24

of the plague. And that was actually

7:26

discovered quite soon into the pandemic. So

7:29

it was the bubonic, pneumonic and septicemic.

7:31

And the most famous one is

7:34

the bubonic plague. And this

7:36

was most famously described by

7:38

the author, Boccaccio, who witnessed

7:40

the onset of plague in

7:42

his hometown in Florence. And

7:44

it was written down in

7:46

his Decameron. And he

7:48

describes the symptoms as certain

7:51

swellings that appeared on both men

7:53

and women, either on the

7:56

groin or under the armpits. And some

7:58

of these swellings grew in as big

8:00

as an ordinary apple, others like

8:02

an egg. And these were

8:04

what people called plague boils. And

8:07

then the boils turned black

8:10

and they started, he called it

8:12

livid contagion. And they spread over

8:14

the arms and thighs. And it

8:16

was considered as he calls it

8:19

an unmistakable token of coming death.

8:21

So it was these huge swellings

8:23

that turned black that kind of

8:25

appeared over the body. And so

8:27

it was this unmistakable visible symptom

8:30

of the impending end. It

8:32

must've been so terrifying to look down

8:34

and realize that you or someone you

8:37

loved had these blackened boils growing on

8:39

them. How many people did

8:41

this actually kill? Because I think when it

8:43

comes, it's a little bit like the witch

8:45

trials. When it comes to the plagues of

8:47

the medieval era, there are

8:49

so many different statistics flying around and people

8:51

do like to exaggerate. Do we know how

8:53

many people actually died? Not exactly.

8:56

There was no way of telling because you

8:58

didn't have birth records and death records by

9:00

this point. That didn't come to law for the Reformation.

9:03

And so I think the only way

9:05

that we have some kind of idea

9:07

is through clerical records as to how

9:09

many priests died in the

9:11

process that in that sort of the

9:13

global West analysis. But they

9:15

think between 50 to 60% of the population. Certainly

9:21

you have certain demographics that

9:23

perished more than others. So

9:26

people who were living in close quarters, people

9:28

who were poorer, the elderly, for example,

9:30

died more frequently than people

9:32

who were wealthier. But the plague didn't

9:35

discriminate. It wasn't a case

9:37

of hygiene. It was a case of

9:39

luck and proximity. And if you had somebody

9:41

within your locale who was infected.

9:43

And so that was, as

9:46

we've just heard from your wonderful intro

9:48

to the podcast, that that could even

9:50

affect kings and princesses,

9:53

not just your lowly

9:55

peasant. So where did this

9:57

come from then, Helen? Do we know? Can we

9:59

even? and make an educated guess? Yeah,

10:02

so they think that it came from

10:04

Asia. It's difficult to

10:07

know exactly where, but it sort

10:09

of started to appear around 1347.

10:14

We think it was mostly carried by

10:16

marmots in the Central Asia

10:18

area. So the Black Death

10:20

is always associated with rats, but actually it

10:22

was some larger rodents that were the source

10:24

of the original first waves

10:26

of plague. So these

10:28

rodents, these large marmot rodents, which if

10:30

you Google them, they're actually quite cute.

10:32

So it's quite, it's like doing that as we

10:35

speak. Yeah, I'm going to Google right now.

10:37

Yeah, they're really sweet. They look a little

10:39

bit like my toddler. And, but you know,

10:41

they existed well away

10:43

from human habitation, but

10:46

in the late Middle Ages, so this

10:48

is a few years, about a decade

10:50

before the plague emerged, the largest land

10:52

empire in history started to spread, and

10:54

that was the Mongol Empire. And

10:57

for the Mongols, marmots became food

10:59

and fur and leather,

11:01

but they were super itinerant. These

11:03

Mongol hordes, you know, they would

11:05

ride across the Tian Shan

11:07

mountain range. And that was sort of the late,

11:10

that was beginning around in the late 13th

11:12

century. And so through food and fur,

11:15

these Mongols repeatedly exposed themselves

11:17

to this Yersinia pestis, which

11:19

is what these marmots carried.

11:22

And they carried it for

11:24

thousands of miles. But

11:27

marmot meat was not the only

11:29

thing that the Mongols consumed. They

11:31

also had sacks of grain with

11:33

them, particularly millet. And grain also

11:35

traditionally attracts rodents. And so

11:37

they were starting to carry rats with

11:39

them. And the rats were starting to

11:41

become infected with the Yersinia pestis. And

11:44

it was, according to

11:46

an Italian source, this

11:49

all came to the West through the siege

11:51

of Caffa, which they

11:53

thought brought the plague to Western

11:55

Europe, by effectively biological warfare. So

11:59

the story goes, I don't think this is

12:01

true, but it's a great story. The Mongol

12:03

army besieged the Genoese port of Kaffir, and this

12:05

is in 1346, and

12:07

they allegedly launched these plague-ridden

12:09

bodies over the city walls,

12:12

infested and putrid by

12:14

the plague with all these boils all

12:16

over them. And the belief

12:19

was that the plague was spread by

12:21

miasmus, or the

12:23

stench of this putrefying

12:25

corpse. And even though

12:27

that was quite a convincing hypothesis, it's

12:29

not really the truth. I mean, more

12:32

realistically, it was these sacks of

12:34

grain that were traveling from these various

12:36

ports across into Western

12:38

Europe with rodents inside

12:41

them or around them

12:43

that were already infected with Eusinium pestis,

12:45

and that's really how it started to

12:47

creep across into Europe and into

12:49

England eventually as well. So there's these two

12:51

really competing narratives here. You've got on the

12:54

one hand, this active,

12:56

very purposeful spreading of the

12:58

disease through, as you say, biological warfare, and

13:01

then you've got actually something, in

13:03

some ways far more insidious, that there are

13:05

just rats creeping into every town and city,

13:07

every port, every ship in Europe, and bringing

13:09

that into the households of the highest and

13:12

lowest as well. Let's talk

13:14

about, I suppose, the whole gamut of

13:16

medieval society that was affected

13:18

by this. And we heard at the beginning

13:20

about Princess Joan, who's just 14, when she

13:23

heads across the channel to get married. Well,

13:26

first of all, can you tell us a little bit

13:28

about who she is, and how do we know what

13:31

happens to her specifically in this period? Yeah,

13:34

so there is actually remarkably little

13:36

on Joan, and I wanted

13:38

to tell her story in my forthcoming book,

13:41

because she's always been a bit of a

13:43

footnote in history in regard to not only

13:45

the plague, but in regard to any royal

13:47

history that has been written about in this

13:49

period. And part of the reason

13:51

for that is it's so difficult to track down

13:54

what actually happened to her. So

13:56

she was set to go off to marry her.

14:00

Pedro, Prince Pedro, later

14:02

called Pedro the Cruel, so I'm not entirely sure what

14:05

fate would have served her best. Lucky escape

14:07

there. Yeah, he's like, is it? Blutte

14:09

Derrat. Yeah, he wasn't great. He actually

14:11

ended up probably murdering his wife, so

14:13

lucky Joan either way. So

14:20

she went, she was only 14, but what's so

14:22

affecting about this story is she, one of the

14:24

surviving sources that we do have is her truso.

14:28

We know all of these beautiful things

14:30

that had been so carefully chosen by

14:32

her parents to demonstrate that they were

14:34

a European superpower. Edward III had just

14:36

won the battle of Cressy. He had

14:39

taken Calais by storm. He

14:41

was spreading his influence across

14:44

Europe. He was at war with France and he

14:46

wanted to show Spain that he was powerful and

14:49

he wanted them to be his ally and he

14:51

had to show that through his daughter. So there

14:53

was a lot of pressure on her to

14:55

do a good job really in this marriage.

14:58

She went over this gorgeous truso and she

15:00

had headboards and she had looking glasses

15:02

and she had these golden robes to

15:04

wear on her wedding day. She

15:07

had beautifully ornate saddles that were

15:09

interlaced with pearls and jewels. It

15:11

was extraordinary wealth that

15:13

was heading over the channel

15:16

and she landed at Bordeaux

15:19

and that's all we know is that

15:21

she landed at Bordeaux. Oh, wow. She

15:24

disembarked. We know the ship that

15:26

she disembarked from and she would have been dropped

15:28

off and then the ship left again. She

15:31

would have had, I think at least four

15:34

very close ladies in waiting because she had saddles

15:36

made for them. She traveled

15:39

into Bordeaux and then at

15:41

some point her entourage left

15:44

Bordeaux. But

15:46

we don't know if they left with Joan. All

15:49

we know is that they left and went

15:51

into one of the smaller villages, Sandlerimo. And

15:53

some people, some historians have

15:55

suggested that Joan died at Sandlerimo

15:58

but I know that later. In

16:00

the 1380s, John of Gaunton endowed an

16:03

obit for Joan at her burial place

16:05

in Bordeaux Cathedral. So I

16:08

think she died in Bordeaux and then

16:10

her household moved on. And

16:13

it was only around September time

16:15

that one messenger came back and

16:17

told the king and queen that their daughter had

16:20

died of plague. And what we do have is

16:22

their response to that and

16:25

their note- them notifying the king

16:27

of Castile. And you have this

16:30

really affecting and

16:33

sad expression of

16:35

their parental grief in

16:37

that letter. That's all we really know, is

16:40

when her household account ends and

16:43

the fact she was buried in Bordeaux in the

16:45

Cathedral beneath the choir. But we

16:47

don't know what happened in that time. So

16:50

my hypothesis is that

16:52

she probably landed in Bordeaux, they didn't

16:54

realise what they were sailing into. They

16:57

would have found out pretty quickly. This

17:00

was the height of plague during- in

17:02

France, in southern France during this period.

17:05

And judging from the sources that came

17:07

out of France around the same time,

17:10

you can get an idea of the

17:12

sorts of things they were experiencing, burial

17:14

pits, fires, terror, people

17:17

locking themselves inside their homes.

17:20

And I think she probably

17:22

went and took refuge in Bordeaux in

17:24

the castle in Bordeaux, where she thought

17:26

she would find safety with her, with

17:29

her household. And some of

17:32

her household would have certainly died. We don't

17:34

know who, but we do know that one

17:36

of them managed to return back

17:39

on a ship and notify

17:41

the king and queen around

17:43

September. And I think Joan

17:45

probably died around July. We

17:48

think she died around July, it's necessarily August,

17:50

but I think that's too late. I think

17:52

it was probably early July that she

17:54

actually died. So reasonably quickly within a

17:56

couple of months of arriving. archival

18:00

research before, and you're listening to this

18:02

podcast, do not underestimate the amount

18:05

of work that Helen has

18:07

put in to come up with that

18:09

chain of events. That is some serious

18:12

historical research right there. I cannot wait

18:14

to read a little bit more about

18:16

this in the book. But just to

18:18

leave Joan in Bordeaux then, and start

18:21

thinking about this move into the plague into

18:23

England, and you've said that we're looking at

18:25

the end of the 1340s

18:28

for this. What

18:30

do people think is happening initially? We have

18:32

no news like we experienced at

18:35

the outbreak of Covid where we knew this was

18:37

coming, although I'm imagining that word is travelling from

18:40

Europe for quite some time potentially. So what do

18:42

they actually think is happening as soon as plague

18:44

hits England? I think that

18:46

when the plague is in France and it starts to

18:48

spread through France, I think that there's going to be

18:51

some kind of idea as to

18:53

what is coming. That there's something happening,

18:55

there's something deadly, there's something

18:57

moving. But what

19:00

I don't think people were aware of was the

19:02

fact that a pandemic would spread sort of

19:04

globally. I think that there were

19:07

always isolated cases of things spreading

19:09

and people becoming sick and possibly

19:11

dying. But I don't think it became

19:13

a fear until it was on those moments where it

19:15

was on your doorstep. People were certainly

19:17

aware and they were worried in the same way,

19:19

I think, because we can identify with that daily

19:22

news report of how Covid was popping up

19:24

in Italy and then it was popping up.

19:26

And we were just waiting for

19:29

that moment. But what I think is

19:31

also very similar to our experience

19:33

of Covid is that it

19:36

wasn't this case of plague is like a sort

19:38

of a death ship that

19:40

just sails and as it reaches

19:42

places, people start to die. It

19:44

is something that it was incredibly

19:46

difficult to trace. If

19:48

somebody came from France and

19:51

then travelled up to Hull

19:54

and they were infected with plague, there might be

19:56

a little outbreak in Hull. But then there also

19:58

might be an outbreak in... and there

20:00

might be an outbreak, it wasn't like

20:02

it had any rhyme or reason, it would just pop up. There

20:05

was no real pattern apart

20:08

from the more macro perspective of it in

20:12

that it sort of spread through Italy and then

20:14

it started to come into France and the low

20:16

countries and then it would hit England.

20:19

So it wasn't like it arrived in

20:21

the southwest and then it moved all the

20:23

way up the country. But I think the

20:26

people's reaction, it's very difficult to know. We

20:28

know how people started to react

20:31

later when the plague was very

20:33

much part of people's

20:35

lives in England and

20:38

the way people did start to

20:40

react was fear,

20:42

panic. They thought that

20:44

it was the wrath of God.

20:46

They started to blame weird things

20:48

like, you know, you have sources

20:50

of clerics blaming the length of

20:53

people's shoes and the bad attitudes

20:55

of the royal household and the

20:57

royal court with their partying and

20:59

their sumptuous feasting

21:01

and wearing menus

21:03

to wear these little... The only way I can describe it

21:06

is it's sort of like a short dress and

21:08

it goes over some very tight

21:11

tights and it was called a pole talk and

21:13

they said it was. Because of these sorts of

21:15

behaviours, God is punishing us with

21:17

the plague. So there was a lot of

21:19

guilt. Well,

21:39

after dark listeners, we have an introduction to

21:41

make on today's podcast. And the person we'd

21:43

like to introduce is probably somebody you already

21:45

know. And if you don't, you should get

21:47

to know his podcast. And that, of course,

21:49

is Dan Snow, host of Dan Snow's History

21:51

Hit. Dan, welcome to After Dark. Hey, guys,

21:53

well, it's a great honour to be on

21:55

the podcast, tickly, because it's now such a

21:58

behemoth. It's such a juggernaut. I'm

22:00

very excited. Are you enjoying being part

22:02

of the history hit family? Oh,

22:05

we absolutely are. It's been such a joy

22:07

and early on it was so nice to

22:09

borrow presenters from different history hit podcasts and

22:11

you get to know everyone

22:13

a little bit, get to know everyone's different

22:15

approaches and perspectives to history. And I think

22:18

Dan, we're going to talk not about our

22:20

own podcast here, but about your podcast and

22:22

the thing that I love

22:24

and have to admit to you, I have

22:27

been a real genuine listener of your pod

22:29

for many years, not

22:31

to out you on the age front here, Dan,

22:33

but I really have been genuinely a fan. And

22:36

one thing that I love in terms of that perspective,

22:38

the angle that you bring is that

22:40

it's so you make history so relevant in

22:43

terms of what's happening in the headlines right

22:45

now. Is that just your perspective on history,

22:47

Dan? Is that just how you see the

22:49

past and present and how they interlink? Thanks,

22:51

Maddie. Yeah, I bet you've been listening to it ever since you were

22:53

in primary school. Of course. My passion, I

22:55

came from a family of journalists, but

22:58

I always loved history. As you say, history is urgent. History

23:01

is the reason that we've got too much carbon

23:03

in our atmosphere. It's the reason that America

23:05

and China are eyeing each other up in the South

23:07

China Sea. It's the reason that

23:10

Vladimir Putin thinks Eastern or all

23:12

of Ukraine is part of Russia. All

23:14

of these things which are affecting our lives, those

23:16

of our families, loved ones, children and their children

23:18

and their children, all of those things are

23:21

deeply rooted in our past. My

23:23

passion is those episodes where I

23:26

take up something that we're seeing today, Ukraine, the

23:29

fervor of the American election, Brexit,

23:32

Taiwan and Middle East, Israel,

23:34

Palestine, and I try and

23:36

look into the deep history of it. That is

23:38

my passion. Having said that, I also just love

23:40

banging out an episode in Francis Drake or Florence

23:42

Nightingale, the great narrative stories in history. I like

23:44

doing both. I've always wanted my pod. I've never

23:46

wanted to pin it down. I think like you

23:48

guys with your podcast, you actually wanted to find

23:51

yourself as widely as possible because it just makes it

23:53

more interesting for us when we go to work. But

23:55

one of the things that works really well, I think,

23:57

on your podcast and if they're after dark listeners who

23:59

don't listen. Listen to Dan's podcast do because one

24:01

of the things we share in common is

24:04

this broad view, but really

24:06

bringing in, as you're saying, Dan, individual

24:08

narratives to help locate those

24:11

histories within people's lives and within the

24:13

lives of people who are listening today.

24:17

And what kind of narrative drive do you

24:19

think mostly appeals to you when it comes

24:21

to history? Because we can all do facts

24:23

and figures, we can all Google, but what

24:25

is it about those big sweeps of narrative

24:27

history that really gets your interest peaked? Well,

24:29

you said it better than I could do,

24:31

I think, really, but it's the fact that

24:33

it's the greatest, that the greatest stories ever

24:35

told, like the best stories are true stories.

24:38

And then as well as these incredible kind

24:40

of dramatic arcs that touch the lives of everybody,

24:43

it's the human beings within them. It's the fact

24:45

that we know enough about what it

24:47

was like to be Archduke Franz Ferdinand as he

24:49

drove through the streets of Sarajevo that day. We

24:51

kind of have a pretty good idea of what

24:53

was going through Kaiser Wilhelm's head as he mulled

24:56

over the big decisions and Tsar Nicholas as they

24:59

mulled over the decisions that basically plunged

25:01

the world into catastrophic war and condemned

25:03

their own families and their own regimes

25:05

to oblivion or worse. So it's just

25:07

those, as you say, the individuals being

25:09

caught up in it is so fascinating.

25:11

So it's telling the big story and

25:13

then cutting back and reminding everyone that

25:15

there are families and

25:17

humans driving these events

25:19

and becoming caught up in these events. Thinking

25:22

about some of those stories that we have

25:25

in common, Dan, and some of those human

25:27

elements that drive us all, I think,

25:30

to tell history, the thing that I

25:32

think we share is a love of

25:34

stories and history set on ships. Now,

25:37

we have covered so

25:39

many ships on After Dark and they're always the most

25:41

popular. We've done The Bounty, we've done HMS Terror, recently

25:44

listened down to your episode on HMS

25:46

Wager. I say, listen, I ran to

25:48

that. I have never downloaded anything quicker

25:51

in my entire life. But

25:53

for After Dark listeners who do love

25:55

a ship story, can you recommend any

25:57

episodes on your pod or indeed episodes

25:59

that are not set on ships, but the

26:01

people absolutely need to hear. So

26:03

yeah, HMS Wager, you mentioned, that's just a

26:06

story that you couldn't make up. Shipwreck

26:08

and Mutiny, murder, an astonishing

26:10

escape story. And

26:13

that's true of episodes, for example, on the Mutiny on

26:15

the Bounty, Captain Bligh on the Bounty. Oh, I

26:17

quite liked a recent one. Was Scott's expedition

26:19

to the South Pole, was it actually sabotaged?

26:22

It was definitely let down by, well,

26:25

perhaps incompetence on the part of many

26:27

people involved, but was it actually maliciously

26:30

sabotaged? That's the big question. That's a

26:32

huge one. But if people want

26:34

to get away from the ice and the water,

26:36

the desert and the mountains are available. So I've

26:38

done a series on Ancient Egypt recently, and a

26:40

series on the Inca in the Andes, which was

26:42

an amazing experience. I got to walk the Inca

26:44

Trail through the Andes and just

26:46

explored a civilization I knew nothing about.

26:49

Well, you heard it here, folks. You can get

26:51

your news and your alts from

26:53

Dan Snow's History here, wherever you get

26:56

your podcasts. And honestly, you will not

26:58

regret it. Download every episode right now.

27:09

When you use SAP Concur solutions to automate your business

27:11

finances, you'll be ready for anything.

27:18

Except the new office dog running off with your lunch.

27:20

With SAP Concur, you With

27:24

SAP Concur, you can be ready for

27:25

can be ready for almost anything.

27:27

Take control of your business finances

27:31

today at concur.com. Ryan

27:38

Reynolds here for, I guess, my 100th

27:40

Mint commercial. No, no, no, no, no,

27:42

no, no, no, no. Honestly,

27:44

when I started this, I thought I'd only have

27:46

to do four of these. I mean, it's unlimited

27:49

premium wireless for $15 a month. How are there

27:51

still people paying two or three times that much?

27:53

I'm sorry, I shouldn't be

27:55

victim blaming here. Give it a

27:57

try at mintmobile.com/switch whenever you're ready.

28:01

$45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New

28:03

customers on first three month plan only. Taxes

28:05

and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes

28:07

in details. Ryan Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile.

28:09

With the price of just about everything going

28:11

up during inflation we thought we'd bring our

28:13

prices down. So to help

28:15

us we brought in a reverse auctioneer, which is apparently

28:17

a thing... ...Mint Mobile unlimited. Premium Wireless. Get 30, 30,

28:19

bitty, bitty. Get 30, bitty. Get 20, 20, bitty. Get

28:22

20, 20, inh leave slash,

28:31

switch. $45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month.

28:36

shards out! above 40

28:38

gigabytes in details. I

28:47

don't always like to draw too many

28:49

direct links between the past and more

28:51

present experiences because we'll often fall down

28:53

of kind of a pithole of mistakes

28:55

when we do that. But nonetheless, some

28:57

of the things that you're saying really

28:59

are setting off little alerts

29:01

in my mind of going, we know what

29:03

that's like, we know what that's like. And

29:05

we couldn't possibly have known, you know, before

29:07

five or six years ago. We're really starting

29:09

to build this idea of what

29:12

it was like as this

29:14

plague starts to spread. But

29:16

in our next narrative, Maddie is going to tell us

29:18

a little bit more about some of the details of

29:21

everyday experience during this time. As

29:30

the Black Death engulfed England in 1348

29:33

and then Scotland the following year,

29:35

church bells rang out incessantly for

29:38

the dead. So

29:40

loud and so relentless

29:42

were they that in places they

29:44

were muted. Their ropes stayed

29:46

and their drums deadened out of pity

29:48

for the sick who lay dying listening

29:51

all the time to their dreadful toll.

29:54

An eerie silence followed, falling

29:57

heavy across the land, mistreading.

30:00

rolled across fields, emptied by

30:02

pestilence. Homes stood

30:04

empty and abandoned, livestock

30:06

wandered unattended. The

30:09

root of this evil was, to

30:12

the people of the medieval world,

30:14

obvious. This was

30:16

a divine punishment from God,

30:18

and rising to meet this

30:20

terrible judgment came, in

30:22

the autumn of 1349, a new horror, the Flagellants. All

30:29

over Europe, Flagellants processed in the streets

30:31

naked, but for the plain cloth sacks

30:33

hung at their waists, and all the

30:35

time striking their backs with whips. Each

30:40

crack and tear meant to atone

30:42

for the sins of mankind. In

30:44

London, they performed their apocalyptic street

30:46

show, night after night, in front

30:48

of the old St. Paul's Cathedral,

30:50

with its great spire towering over

30:52

them. What

30:56

must it have felt like? What did it feel like to

30:58

stand in the crowd and watch? What

31:00

did it feel like to live through this

31:03

apocalypse? Through a time when

31:05

the living struggled to bury the dead,

31:07

and the moor of the grave seemed

31:09

ready to swallow the world. Can

31:15

I just say, I would have

31:17

eye rolled so hard at Flagellants,

31:19

I would have just been like,

31:21

babe, I'm going home, I'm getting

31:23

my meat, this is not

31:26

happening for me, this is too much,

31:28

they're making it about them. Helen, what

31:30

exactly were these, I

31:32

was going to pass too harsh a judgment,

31:34

what exactly were Flagellants? Yeah,

31:37

the Flagellants were, so they

31:39

arrived in England from Flanders,

31:42

and they came in about September 1349, Mickelmers,

31:46

so late September, and

31:48

Maddie was right in her narrative,

31:50

they wore this small loin cloth,

31:52

I think the idea was that

31:54

they were experiencing the pain and

31:56

the agony of Christ, but

31:59

they also wore a hood. and that

32:01

was painted front and back with a red

32:03

cross, so kind of like a weird, like,

32:05

crusader look at the same time. And

32:07

they carried a whip in their

32:09

right hand, which had three thongs on

32:12

it. And each thong had a knot

32:14

with something, these were like DIY thongs.

32:17

I mean, when you say thongs as well,

32:19

let's imagine knots, not like the things, but

32:21

not the things that people wear. DIY

32:23

thongs is gonna be the title of this

32:25

episode, you do realize that? It's a DIY

32:27

thong, everyone's gonna go away and go, I

32:30

can do a DIY thong. People will be like, why don't

32:33

they've lost their minds? DIY thongs is not the thing. I

32:36

mean, at this point, what

32:38

everything goes. We all did weird stuff in

32:40

the pandemic. Yes, we did.

32:44

Oh, we did. It had like

32:46

something sharp attached to it, so things that

32:48

people could find, be that nails or needles,

32:51

and they'd stick it through the middle of

32:53

the knot and say it stuck out on

32:55

the other side. And as they walked one

32:57

after the other, they would whip themselves, they'd

32:59

strike themselves these whips on their

33:02

naked bodies. And then three

33:05

times during this procession, the men would

33:07

prostrate themselves on the ground and make

33:09

the shape of the cross with

33:11

their bodies as someone else walked over

33:13

them, lashing their backs with

33:15

his own whip. Anthony

33:19

is so unimpressed. No, I'm just

33:21

like, go home guys, get a

33:23

hobby. I know there's a plague

33:25

and you probably can, you have to socially distance whatever,

33:27

but Christ on a bike, not this. It's

33:31

pretty intense. I mean, imagine watching that, as you

33:33

said, it would have

33:35

been terrifying. And it was

33:37

this extreme act of

33:39

penance and penitence. And it

33:41

was claimed they did this every single night, so

33:43

it was like a nightly ritual. And

33:46

they weren't a new phenomenon.

33:48

This is something that had

33:50

been practiced before. Across Europe,

33:52

ritualized self-logging was quite

33:55

fervently practiced in response to plague. And

33:57

it wasn't only just men, so in

33:59

Northern. and central Italy, it was

34:02

all local people. So over nine

34:04

days, these people in Italy would process traveling

34:07

through regions wearing head-to-toe white robes,

34:09

and they would shout peace

34:12

and mercy, and they were communities

34:14

who were moving and spreading plague

34:16

as they went. And so it

34:18

was, but it was this idea that they

34:21

had in some way, the pervading our theme,

34:23

was this was God's wrath. Because this is

34:25

a time when people, you

34:28

know, people really did believe that everything

34:31

had that happened to them.

34:33

They were fatalistic. Everything that happened was

34:36

God's intention. It was divine

34:38

mercy, or it was divine

34:40

wrath. And you lived in

34:42

this environment of extreme piety

34:44

and penance. And that was

34:46

just the norm. So when something comes out

34:48

of the blue that feels biblical, you're

34:51

going to attribute that to this

34:54

greater power that really is such a

34:57

huge part and dictates

35:00

your everyday life and existence. I

35:03

hesitate to make this direct comparison, but I

35:05

do think there's a little something in this.

35:07

If we think back to the pandemic that we lived through, before

35:11

everyone cancels me, just bear with me, think

35:14

back to the practice that a lot of

35:16

people partook in of going out and bashing

35:18

the pots and pans and shouting for the

35:20

NHS. And whilst I don't

35:22

think that's on the same level of self-righteousness

35:24

as the flagellants, I think there's something there

35:26

about a feeling of

35:28

needing to come out into a communal space

35:31

and express something of

35:34

what is happening on

35:36

a community level, whether that's a religious

35:38

level in terms of the medieval world

35:40

or whether it's just a more social

35:43

thing in the COVID pandemic and

35:45

enacting something, something that's choreographed, something

35:47

that brings people together that causes

35:50

a spectacle at a

35:52

time when everyone is isolating, everyone's removing into

35:54

their own domestic space. I mean, you talked

35:56

about Joan heading to the castle for safety

35:58

and we know that... people in

36:01

medieval England either removed themselves into

36:03

their home or abandoned their homes

36:05

entirely and entire villages were lost

36:07

to this and just stood empty.

36:10

And I think there's something powerful

36:14

and interesting about what the Flagellants

36:17

are doing, albeit in a

36:20

somewhat from our modern perspective slightly ridiculous

36:22

way. I think there is something there

36:24

about that sort of public choreography.

36:27

Yeah, I

36:30

completely agree. And I think, so

36:32

I've done a bit of work on

36:34

emotions and emotions around this period and

36:36

how we can try and get an

36:38

idea of how people were feeling. And

36:40

I think even though we shouldn't make

36:43

contemporary, you know, modern comparisons, because our

36:45

experience was very different to people who

36:48

were living through this. However,

36:50

human emotion, I believe, is

36:53

a universal thing. Emotions

36:56

like fear and

36:59

grief and piety

37:02

or sense of this sense of guilt.

37:05

I think that those are feelings that

37:07

people had in the past, in the

37:09

14th century. And that

37:11

feeling that we talked about a bit

37:13

earlier about hearing on the radio

37:16

that the Covid pandemic

37:18

is appearing, it's left China,

37:20

it's spreading. There was a

37:22

sense, a growing sense of

37:24

fear. And I think how

37:27

does one react in fear? We

37:29

often seek comfort in togetherness. We

37:31

seek some kind of sense of

37:33

unity and

37:35

collective safety,

37:37

as you said, with the bashing of

37:40

the pots and pans. And I think in

37:42

regard to godliness and piety and looking to

37:44

the church, because you always look to a

37:47

priest to sing Masses for your soul, to

37:49

be there for you, to give you the

37:51

last rites. I mean, something

37:53

we can talk about, that people didn't have access

37:55

to that in the same way. And I think

37:57

that this unimaginable

38:00

fear, watching your loved

38:02

ones die around you, that you

38:04

might be next. I

38:07

think piety was one of

38:09

the only ways that people living through

38:11

plague could make sense of

38:13

its devastation. And I don't think that

38:15

is something we can laugh

38:18

at or sneer at or go, okay,

38:20

because actually I think it makes a

38:22

lot of sense that people would respond

38:25

in that way. Taking

38:27

all of that into consideration, does

38:31

that mean that there is a change

38:33

in relationship to death

38:36

and how people are understanding death at

38:38

this point? Because it's around them, it's

38:40

everywhere. Yeah,

38:42

I mean, plague changed

38:44

the world after thought 1348. And

38:46

it should also be clear that

38:48

wasn't the only wave. People had

38:50

to endure waves of plague

38:52

that came every few

38:54

years up until really into

38:57

the 16th centuries. Well,

38:59

there's obviously the famous plague 1665

39:02

in the 17th century.

39:06

People endured it for centuries and it

39:08

became something that people lived with.

39:11

And so with that, particularly into

39:13

the late 14th century and to

39:16

the early 15th century, the whole

39:18

concept of memento mori became such

39:20

a thing. So memento mori means

39:23

literally, remember you will

39:25

die, as is this visual

39:28

reminder all around

39:30

you that death is nigh.

39:33

I mean, it must have been

39:35

quite a bleak existence, but people

39:37

started to take death and dying

39:40

very seriously. And

39:42

it became this way of expressing

39:45

oneself as well through creative

39:48

output, through literature and prose and

39:50

art. And

39:53

it really produced quite remarkable

39:56

things. One of the things

39:58

that I find deeply affecting because I live

40:00

in Cambridge and in 1352, the

40:04

Corpus Christi College, which is next

40:06

to St. Bennet's Church was formed.

40:08

And a guild had already been

40:10

formed there in the height of the plague. And

40:13

because they were so overwhelmed by the death and the

40:15

number of souls that they had to pray for, an

40:18

extra guild was formed in order to be able

40:20

to support the dying into the

40:22

afterlife. So

40:24

it was like a perpetual chantry that

40:27

was formed. And later

40:29

on, a few years later, an

40:32

entrance between Corpus Christi College and St.

40:34

Bennet's, next to St. Bennet's Church was

40:36

created. And it still is where the

40:38

scholars walk through today. And

40:41

you have this beautiful old church, 11th

40:43

century church next to it. That

40:46

walkway was created over a

40:48

plague pit where people were

40:50

buried in couples or

40:52

people were buried, three people on top of

40:54

each other. And what it

40:56

was is it held the recent dead in

40:59

heart and in mind. It was

41:01

not a coincidence that they chose

41:04

to make that their path, their

41:06

pathway, their entry and exit. It

41:09

was not void of meaning. It

41:12

was designed very purposefully to create this

41:14

constant reminder of those who had been

41:16

lost to plague and the inescapable fate

41:19

of the living. So it was binding

41:22

the spiritual world to

41:24

the physical by prayer, by

41:27

earth and by stone. And

41:29

that in a very

41:31

basic level was Memento

41:33

Mori. And I find that incredibly

41:35

moving, this idea that it

41:38

was this united realm in some way. You

41:40

know, that was the thin space became even

41:42

thinner just after the Black

41:44

Death. And that that

41:46

space as it's expressed in architecture

41:48

is still at the heart of a city

41:51

today. And it's still part of the urban,

41:53

the fabric of the urban environment. The

41:55

other thing to say, I think, here, Helen, is that bodies

41:59

and death. were so

42:01

proximate to people, not just the threat

42:04

of dying, but the actual physical

42:06

reality that people were confronted with of

42:08

illness and the dead body and what

42:11

you needed to do to dispose of

42:13

those bodies, whether it was a mass

42:15

grave and sort of sending the spirit

42:18

on its way, but also sending the

42:20

physical body on its way. And

42:23

something that's always fascinated me about,

42:26

you're just sort of talking about

42:28

the legacies of the Black Death,

42:30

are the cadaver tombs that exist,

42:32

these incredible marble or at least

42:34

stone carved tombs that you get

42:37

in cathedrals and churches across

42:39

Britain that are not

42:41

representations of the dead peacefully

42:44

as they would have been in life, but

42:46

in a state of decomposition that is quite

42:48

shocking if you're not prepared for it, right?

42:51

What are they about? They're so bizarre.

42:54

So they

42:56

are a brilliant example of

42:58

this concept of memento mori. And

43:02

they are otherwise known, the cadaver tombs, they're

43:04

also known as transy tombs as well. And

43:07

I think there's one, there's a particular one that's

43:10

very famous, I think it's in Lincoln Cathedral

43:12

and that is a beautiful example.

43:14

And it's the, you have the, you know,

43:16

the body of the dead person sculpted above,

43:19

usually sculpted

43:22

out of marble or stone. And

43:24

then beneath, it's like an open, an

43:27

open casket, imagine, beneath

43:30

this body in this box-like

43:32

tomb, you see this

43:34

skeleton or a body that is in

43:37

the process of decomposition. And sometimes you

43:39

even see the worms crawling

43:41

over the body. And

43:45

it is this very physical

43:48

idea and impression of death. You

43:52

know, it's this idea that death

43:55

and the body and the putrefying

43:58

nature of... composition

44:01

is part of our earthly and

44:03

human existence. If that

44:05

makes sense, it's like in some way, it's

44:09

a very powerful religious

44:11

symbol because it

44:13

represents the physicality of the human

44:15

body rather than the

44:18

very spiritual sense, this idea of the

44:20

soul. It represents this idea that we

44:22

will die. That human

44:25

body will die and it will

44:27

go into a state of decomposition. Yeah,

44:31

absolutely. It's really

44:33

intense. You will die,

44:35

you will die one day and you will die

44:37

one day. The joyfulness of the Black Death, yeah.

44:41

Oh no, I'm never dying. I've decided not

44:43

to, sorry. Oh no, I take great comfort

44:45

in the fact that I'll die someday. Oh

44:47

my god. Because like, at some point it'll

44:49

happen. That's very morbid. I don't mean that.

44:51

I will say, Anthony, you do talk about

44:54

dying a lot. It's

44:56

a topic of conversation between us. A significant

44:58

amount more than it should be, yeah. I

45:01

think I might just be Irish. We

45:04

live cheek by jowl with us. Just bringing the mood

45:06

down. I think that's

45:08

actually quite a healthy attitude. It's something that

45:10

the people living in this period

45:13

and you see it with these transitums

45:16

or the art that

45:18

came out of the period after. It

45:21

does demonstrate this idea of, I

45:25

wouldn't say comfort, but acceptance

45:27

and creating something with that

45:29

knowledge. But there's all sorts of

45:31

things that came out of this idea of the

45:34

body and the plague body. It

45:37

wasn't just the transitums. Like

45:39

horror stories came out of the post-plague

45:42

bodies. We've spoken about some

45:45

of that emotional impact, Helen,

45:47

that you're talking about the fear, the

45:49

sadness, the grief that people are experiencing because

45:51

of the proliferation of death at this time.

45:55

I was not aware of this poem, despite the fact that in

45:57

my notes it's described as one of the most famous poems in

45:59

the English language. this is new to

46:01

me, but Maddie is going to give us a

46:03

little insight into what I believe is a very

46:05

touching poem. The

46:10

poem Pearl is one of

46:13

the great English poems, though the identity

46:15

of its author is unknown to us

46:17

now. It takes place

46:19

within a dream and deals with the

46:21

loss of a young child. Hollow

46:24

with loss and harrowed by

46:26

pain, the poet stumbles into

46:28

a green garden of ginger,

46:30

gromwell, and ghillie flower. This

46:33

place is at the center of

46:36

all their sorrow, for it is

46:38

here that their precious daughter died,

46:40

slipping through their fingers to the

46:42

black soil beneath their feet. Now

46:46

they mourn with a broken

46:48

heart for that priceless pearl

46:50

without a spot. So

46:53

much about the way this poem is written

46:55

sounds foreign to us now,

46:57

alien, yet its

46:59

very strangeness magnifies its power.

47:02

In its lines we sense the unsayable

47:04

grief of a parent who has lost

47:07

a child, and yet there

47:09

is a more sinister undercurrent.

47:13

Again and again the poem

47:15

returns to one word, spot.

47:19

The spot that ruined the

47:21

pearl, the spot that blotted what

47:24

was flawless and is now lost.

47:27

In that dark lesion on

47:29

a perfect surface, are

47:31

we seeing the black death and its

47:33

pestilent boils? Can we use

47:36

this poem to get closer to the

47:38

pain and loss felt by

47:40

so many? I'll

47:44

tell you what, I'm going to throw

47:46

to you Helen on this because obviously you'll know

47:49

more than me, but whether or not it is

47:51

about the black death, it's a

47:53

real example of what you

47:55

were talking about in that emotional thing.

47:57

You know you can connect to those

47:59

words. so easily, that gets right into

48:01

the heart of it. But let's

48:03

talk historically for a second and try and take some of the emotion

48:05

out of it. Do you think this

48:07

is about the Black Death? Is that what this

48:09

is describing? Or do you think it's something else?

48:11

I think it is. There are different hypotheses when

48:13

it comes to Pearl. And I think a lot

48:15

of, I'm not an English

48:18

scholar, but reading it myself and reading some

48:20

of the literature around it, I do

48:22

think that it is about the Black Death

48:25

and whether you can attribute that to the

48:27

narrator's own experience. Or

48:30

the general mood of the era

48:32

about loss and grief and

48:35

pervading death. In

48:37

1361, there was a particularly virulent

48:40

strain of plague that was dubbed

48:42

the Children's Plague, which I find

48:45

really moving. And

48:47

it killed a lot of young

48:49

children. And I did

48:51

wonder whether perhaps the

48:54

reference to Spot and

48:58

the child being very young had something to do with

49:01

that particular wave of plague.

49:03

It's just also the repetition

49:05

of the word spot. And

49:09

that is how people identified these buboes and these

49:11

plague spots. And

49:14

so for me, in a 50-year span

49:16

where plague is so prevalent and

49:22

it keeps returning, it seems very likely

49:25

that this is written about a child

49:27

who has been lost to plague. That's

49:30

my reading of it. But like all

49:32

arts, it's all subjective. And

49:35

so people will take different readings of it. For

49:37

my book, I have used

49:39

this poem as a

49:41

way of trying to access emotion

49:43

and grief around plague because

49:46

one thing that historians don't really

49:48

do when it comes

49:50

to plague is it's very analytical.

49:53

And there's a little really on

49:55

emotional connection to that loss and

49:57

feeling and how people grieved. And

50:00

I think Pearl is a wonderful example of

50:03

grief. And for

50:05

anybody who's experienced grief, it

50:07

goes straight to the core, and

50:09

you feel connected immediately with

50:11

this 14th century writer. And

50:14

it just shows that some of these human

50:16

emotions just transcend time. And

50:18

that's why I wanted to use it, because I

50:20

just thought that it was such

50:23

a unique poem about

50:25

death and feeling around death,

50:28

and this idea of speaking to that

50:30

loved one in that very

50:32

visual space. And it also fills the tropes

50:34

of the dream visions that you see in

50:36

this period. You know, Chaucer, the book of

50:38

the Duchess, is also about grief, and that

50:41

begins with this dream vision. So there is an

50:43

element of those literary tropes that you see with

50:45

Pearl, but I think in

50:47

relation to loss and grief, it

50:50

feels like Pearl is a good example to touch

50:52

on that. This

50:56

is the last one. You're

51:12

giving a really clear idea there of this switch

51:14

potentially in the way people are

51:17

thinking about death, describing death, experiencing

51:19

death from the living side of

51:21

things. You know, five million

51:23

people, this is a lot of people. Do we know

51:25

if this changed how people express

51:28

their feelings or how they talked about

51:30

their feelings and their emotions? You mentioned

51:32

kind of the emotional side of this

51:34

before and studying the history

51:36

of emotions. Do

51:39

we see a switch post-Black Death? Yes,

51:42

there's more this sense of memento

51:44

mori and I think it's most

51:47

clear in the art that

51:49

appears and the literature that appears.

51:51

It's poetry like Pearl, but one

51:54

of my favorite altarpieces is in

51:56

the V&A and is

51:58

a scene of the... apocalypse.

52:02

And it was painted by

52:04

Master Bertram. It's this scene of the

52:06

apocalypse and it's a series of panels.

52:08

It depicts the moment of the seventh

52:10

seal being broken and this

52:13

chaos being unleashed on earth.

52:15

You know, the horsemen of

52:17

the apocalypse, fire and hell

52:20

and damnation and fury. And I

52:22

think it really gives this sense

52:25

of what people were afraid

52:27

of and what people thought was

52:30

genuinely possible. And it was painted

52:32

by Master Bertram von Minden and

52:34

it came out of Hamburg in Germany and it's this

52:37

beautiful altarpiece, beautiful but

52:39

strikingly terrifying. And it's

52:41

45 wooden panel scenes

52:44

and it's the revelation of Saint John

52:46

the Divine and that's otherwise known as

52:48

the apocalypse. So the first

52:50

panel marks the beginning of anarchy

52:52

and that's when the seventh seal

52:54

is opened and the angels stand

52:57

prepared to inflict unbearable suffering upon

52:59

the living. They've got their trumpets

53:01

and then what follows is this fire and

53:03

this death and destruction. He

53:06

wasn't the only craftsman to be painting

53:08

these sorts of scenes after 1348 into

53:11

the 15th century. Another example

53:13

which I use a lot because it's one

53:16

of my favorite places in the country is

53:18

this little church in Pickering in North Yorkshire

53:20

and it's the church of Saint Peter and

53:22

Saint Paul. And I've been

53:24

there a few times and it's one

53:26

of the rare examples of some of

53:29

the original paintings that used to be

53:31

all over church walls before the Reformation.

53:33

And it was vibrant and

53:36

bright and I think it was

53:38

discovered in the 19th century when the plaster was

53:40

coming off and then they started to chip away

53:42

and they found these beautiful frescoes all over the

53:44

wall. And these show scenes

53:46

like the biblical scenes that decorate the walls

53:49

and that was mostly means of educating a

53:51

letter at people who obviously you know they

53:53

couldn't read the Bible because it was in

53:55

Latin it was only preached to them but

53:58

it was showing some normative scenes like

54:01

the St George slaying the dragon

54:03

and the martyrdom of St Edmund

54:06

and the seven corporeal acts

54:08

of mercy, but the most dramatic and

54:11

the scene that takes up the most space

54:14

in the church is this depiction of descent

54:16

into hell. You can google

54:18

it, it's incredible. There's this flaming mouth

54:20

of a dragon that reveals the

54:22

many dead descending into

54:25

this mouth desperate for

54:27

redemption from this eternal damnation.

54:30

I think that the mood of

54:32

the era in regard to

54:34

how people considered death

54:37

was largely anxiety,

54:39

insecurity, and I think the

54:42

good dollop of pessimism. And

54:45

yay. Not a great note

54:48

to end on, Helen. Give us something about that.

54:50

Not a great note. But I was just about

54:52

to add, what you did get after

54:55

all of this loss was

54:57

this great societal leveling. And

54:59

how much that happened is

55:02

up for debate still. It's this

55:04

continual debate and it's quote unquote

55:06

the debate over the golden age,

55:08

which is this time that came

55:12

after these waves of plague,

55:14

mostly into the late 1350s,

55:17

1360s, 1780s. But it

55:19

was a period where you really saw

55:21

the end of serfdom. People were able

55:23

to better themselves. The government tried their

55:25

damnedest to stop them doing that. You

55:27

must only wear shoes this length. You're

55:29

not allowed to wear shoes this length

55:31

because you only really come from peasant

55:33

stock or they were not allowed

55:36

to wear, see, sump tree laws. They weren't

55:38

allowed to wear certain colors and furs. But

55:40

you saw the rise of the merchant

55:42

class having more power. Hierarchies

55:45

were imbalanced. And as a

55:47

result, much later you have things

55:49

like the peasants revolt, et cetera. But

55:51

it was a great leveling and it did

55:53

give people opportunities. There were periods where

55:56

women had to step into more

55:58

roles. You saw women as a whole. armourers

56:01

because so many men died, and in particularly

56:03

in the second wave of plague, lots of

56:05

men die because they're working out in the

56:07

fields. And so women

56:09

had to work more.

56:12

They had to do traditionally men's

56:14

roles. And so, yeah, it

56:16

has been considered as a golden age

56:18

in many respects. It was a time

56:21

where some of the greater societal unfairness

56:23

that existed in the 14th century

56:26

ceased to exist in the same way. I

56:29

see behind you, Helen, there's a dog wandering around, so we

56:31

won't keep you too much longer, but my own are probably

56:34

scraping at the door right now to try and get out

56:36

in a dog walk. But just before we let you go,

56:39

tell us about this new book. When is it out?

56:41

And what can we expect from it? Tell us everything

56:43

you can. It is going to be out

56:45

next May, and it's called Septed Isle, and it's

56:47

a new history of the 14th century. So it

56:49

starts in 1307 with the death of

56:52

Edward I, who is this warrior

56:54

king, super famous people who've watched Brave Heart,

56:56

will know exactly who I'm talking about. And

56:59

then it ends with the deposition and death

57:01

of Richard II. And the idea of the

57:03

book is that I am telling the story

57:05

of the 14th century through

57:07

the age of the last Plantagenetes,

57:09

which makes them great characters to

57:12

be able to tell this story

57:14

through. Well, if you want to check out our

57:16

back catalogue, then you can do wherever you get

57:18

your podcasts. Leave it to five star reviews so

57:20

other people can discover us and watch out for

57:22

Helen's new book when it comes out in spring.

57:24

I know Maddie and I will definitely be grabbing

57:26

a coffee of that when it comes out. Thank

57:28

you for listening as effort. Until next time, we'll see

57:30

you soon. To

57:39

get people excited about Boost Mobile's new nationwide

57:41

5G network, we're offering unlimited talk, text and

57:43

data for $25 a month forever. Even if

57:45

you have a baby, even if your baby

57:47

has a baby, even if you grow old

57:50

and wrinkly and you start repeating yourself, even

57:52

if you start repeating yourself, even if you're on

57:54

your deathbed and you need to make one last call

57:56

or text, right, or text the long lost son you

57:58

abandoned at birth. You'll still get unlimited. Talk text

58:00

and data for just $25 a month with

58:02

Boost Mobile. Forever. After 30 gigabytes, customers may experience

58:04

slower speeds. Customers will pay $25 a month as long

58:07

as they remain active on the Boost Unlimited plan. Forever. Acast

58:12

powers the world's best podcasts.

58:15

Here's a show that we recommend. Food

58:19

Network Obsessed is your podcast for

58:22

all things Food Network. I'm

58:24

Jamie Sire, and I talk with

58:26

your favorite chefs, food influencers, and

58:28

Food Network personalities. They tell

58:30

me all about how they started their careers,

58:32

who and what they've been influenced by, and

58:35

what it's like to cook in a Food Network studio.

58:38

You'll hear from stars like Alex Guarnaschelli,

58:40

Guy Fieri, and Bobby Flay. Listen

58:43

to Food Network Obsessed wherever you get your

58:45

podcasts. Acast

58:50

helps creators launch, grow,

58:52

and monetize their podcasts

58:54

everywhere. acast.com.