YouTube Deep Summary

hi everyone welcome back to the history and 20 podcasts we're talking about the Black Death today so slightly different we just finished the Plantagenets miniseries so this is a special request so here we go so we've all heard of it but what was it and when did it happen where did it come from who did it affect what did the content was the time think of it what do people think of it now so just a few of the questions I attempt to answer in the next 20 minutes or so so black death or played so the black death is a strain of plague it's the name given to the strain of bubonic plague which ravaged Europe from sort of 1346 to 53 and the peak years of the Black Death are generally seen as 13 48 to 52 to this day it's still the most devastating natural disaster in recorded human history but the black death isn't actually the first instance of a major plague pandemic in Europe or in European history so in five four one airdate the plague of Justinian which was named after the Roman Emperor at the time hit the Byzantine Empire in the Eastern European Empire which caused mass deaths so a lot of contemporary sources estimated and largely over exaggerated figures that between 25 million and 100 million people were killed which at the time I mean there's a massive over exaggeration but even so it's still a huge amount of people did die from the plague of Justinian so if so why is the Black Death still so significant if that many people died there well the point is the plague of Justinian lusted for just a year it was eradicated by 540 ad but with the black death waves of this bubonic plague during the aftermath of the Black Death continued to hit Europe throughout the 14th century and even bouts returned throughout the 15th and 16th centuries and obviously the cultural social and economic impacts of the Black Death were absolutely enormous so we'll start off with what was it so the simple answer is bubonic plague you get some historians who argue that wasn't bubonic plague as I'm Thrax or wasn't caused by fleas so historians like Graham twig but for the main part it was bubonic plague and that's what I'll be arguing anywhere so what symptoms you get from bubonic plague well the most recognizable symptom of you bores which are huge black boils which affect the lymph nodes in the body so primarily they were found on the net groin and armpits and you got other symptoms which included does similar to a fever so once a person contracted bubonic plague during the Black Death they could expect to live for anywhere between two days to a week and it usually be usually be living in excruciating pain from the blue balls which were renowned for bursting so if you can imagine the pain they go through there with obviously no or very little sanitation or knowledge of medical science that we have today so where did it come from where did it hit Europe from at first so the Black Death is often attributed to the Tatars who more commonly known today as the Mongols so although it actually probably originated in China the Mongols spread it rapidly to India and then into Europe from their conquests and Mongol leaders such as the family of Genghis Khan and stuff so they brought it into Europe and the Black Death was originally thought to been carried by black rats which the scientific name is one the best ones out there it's simply Rattus Rattus but it was actually from fleas on the rats who transmitted it so obviously in the towns and cities in Europe where there's hugely dense densely populated these rats thrive in those cities obviously the fleas live on the rats they jump on to humans bite them and it passes on like that so if we get into you up in the Black Death the first recorded case of the Black Death in Europe was when it reached the generals colony of kafir in the Crimea which was a message by the Mongols in 1346 so it was in an example is in one of the most notorious cases of biological warfare the Mongols catapulted these plague-ridden corpses over the city walls of kafir Nod to break its resistance and it worked the Genoese defends a city roll away for safety the Mongols took over the city but that was a huge mistake because it inadvertently spread the plague to the rest of Europe in huge swears over the next decade really obviously the infected corpses landed in the city it was transmitted when they tried to get rid of these corpses fleas jumping onto the other carriers of the disease and they rolled away from the city into different cities spreading it that way so the plague reached a key Mediterranean part by October 1347 which was Messina in Sicily now this was one of the worst affected places in Europe June the Black Death because it was a key trading route so with more ships continuing to arrive and Messina more people were spreading it to other trading areas along the Mediterranean and North Africa so by January 1348 plague had reached Genoa which is obviously a major trading hub and colony in Europe and it reached Genoa by a gully which had actually come from kafir so the Genoese governors in a move which even today is somewhat reflective of governments in the corona virus pandemic today they banned the galley from stopping at Genoa so in doing so the saved generally citizens very temporarily but the hadn't instructed the gallery the galley sorry where to go so it sailed on to Marseille and Venice which ultimately spread the plague further through the Mediterranean and into mainland Europe from there so 1348 is arguably the most important year in terms of the Black Death and its reach so it's spread through to Pisa and Florence which was another major trading hub in Central Europe Italy and on to Paris and in 1348 across the English Channel and reached England through the Bristol Channel and from 1349 it spread eastward through Germany you might see on the picture of the map that I've got up on the screen now and South East into the Balkans and by 1350 it's spread as far north as Scotland Denmark and Sweden which this argument goes against what people like grimwig argued earlier that it's a climatic thing clearly it's not because you've got it in Scotland Denmark Sweden and there's even evidence of it in Iceland which not very well not there so it doesn't necessarily have to be warm in order for it to spread spreading through Europe in the winter months that's one argument I think it is bubonic plague but that's my take on it anywhere so how did contemporaries react to this so although there were a lot of contemporary chroniclers writing about the Black Death I've sort of cherry picked three or four just to give you a decent idea because they're from diff kind of areas in you rhythm I thought might be an interesting approach but I can definitely recommend having a look at the book the black death by Rosemary Horrocks which is a collection of translated into English contemporary sources at the time and their reactions to the Black Death really worth a look you can get copies on Amazon our world of books and even stuff like that so the first sort of contemporary have decided to look at is a guy called Giovanni or Boccaccio now Baqarah was born in Florence in 1313 so he was in his mid-30s when the black death struck his home city of Florence now he estimated that 100,000 people have died in Florence as a result of the black death but as we discussed earlier with the plague of Justinian contemporaries were likely to over exaggerate these figures and in fact those figures have since been disproved because the total population of Florence at the time wasn't even a hundred thousand so recent estimates suggest that maybe ease as many as fifty thousand died which still is a staggeringly huge amount regardless but Boccaccio's most famously known for his work called the Decameron and that was written as part fiction and part nonfiction and it tells the story of a group of wealthy Florentines who escaped the city and stayed in a country house for the self isolate and maybe and the tell tales of the Black Death to pass the time now Beccaria died in 1375 and he survived the Black Death and this work was one of the most poignant works of the time and gives us a good understanding of how perhaps the wealthy did survive this moving into their country homes and stuff and actually another chronicler I looked at was a lawyer from Pierre kenzan northern Italy called Gabrielle damn you see and he took it upon himself to write a chronicle about the Black Death so at this period chronicles were largely looser for monks and clergymen and the fact that he took it upon himself as a lawyer to write it shows that you recognized the importance it would hold for the future and he called this Chronicle the historia de Mobile which is the book of death I think it translates us and he described the Black Death as we know it today so when he was describing the siege of kafir he used terminology such as the whole army was affected by a disease which overrun the Tartars and killed thousands upon thousands every day so he knew then he could see the destruction this was having upon European society and actually de Mercy's died in 1356 which was shortly after the worst years of the Black Death so he was right there in the prime and the Black Death when he was right in this work and the third character I've taken to look at is Pope Clement the sixth now he reigned from 13 42 to 52 and he ruled throughout the entire period we know as the Black Death and he survived it so initially he stared it's purple seat in avignon before eventually retiring to one whose country retreats on advice of his advisors away from the city where he stayed between two roaring fires day and night in sort of the presumption that warm air would keep playing away now miasma was one of the theories that plagues spread through and miasma is bad air which is why you'll see a lot of those plague doctors with those masks on they were filled with herbs and sweet-smelling spices and stuff to keep where this bad ex they thought was transmitted like that and really looking at it it's not necessarily there not far wrong it was spread through the air but not like through smells so anyway Pope Clement the 6th sits in his nice warm castle during night and yes although he survived the plague his reputation has largely differed between historians so some of them commend him for still navin young for as long as possible which is fair enough while others kind of berate him for running away from his post as Pope and the latter argument is also suggestion why many people during the Black Death lost faith and traditional religious structures at the time so if the Pope had run away into hiding rather than sitting in first and telling all the common people to deal with it why should they take him seriously and that's why you get a lot of these responses to the black death so one of the first response I'm going to talk what the social responses I'm kind of obviously there was a lot to talk about and unfortunately I can't cover it all in 20 minutes but I'll do as best as I can so two main ones I'm looking at the social responses and the Jews were escaped God excuse me so as ever in medieval Europe there was an overarching need to blame someone or something for the transmission of plague obviously as I discussed earlier rats were one theory but too many Europeans at the time and the anti-semitic to renew in medieval Europe Jews or a more obvious scapegoat so the Jews one of most obvious groups to blame and the initial rumor was that the Jews poisoned Wells meaning that the plague was transmitted through water systems and they're meant to pass it on to the Christians who used these wells now people found this is a valid theory because many Jews wouldn't actually collect their water from public Wells they'd source it from rivers and Brooks instead but the reason behind this was not because there were poisoning wells and trying to transmit plague to the Christians but because they were actually aware of higher hygienic standards so in other words the Jews at the time knew there were less likely to contract disease from a river than a public well which whole communities were using so sauce in their water from a sort of spring or a river or a broth boiling it they knew they were less late to contract disease from shared wells now unfortunately people saw them using these rivers thinking right they're not using well as obviously poison in the water sources and this resulted in must pogroms across Central and Western Europe so in September 1348 trial of a group of Jews admitted under torture obviously not the fairest system of judgment but this was medieval Europe so admitted under torture that they'd poisoned the wells and in Basel stuttgart ulm spare and dresden groups of jews are rounded up and burned alive now two of the worst examples in strasbourg where 2,000 Jews are massacred excuse me and in millions where 12,000 were killed now many Jews from Central Europe fled to Poland amidst these pogroms and Poland actually remained a principle Jewish sanctuary right up until the Second World War even today there's a strong Jewish population in Poland and this largely stems from these pogroms in the Black Death so you could sort of argue that the Black Death led to that in one way like there's a big Jewish sanctuary in Poland that's a direct consequence of the Black Death potentially so another social response was the popular uprisings so during the Black Death landholders needed peasants to work more to compensate for those who died of the plague so obviously in return many of the peasants demanded higher wages and is a great horrible history sketch on this actually you like Horrible Histories great sure so in return his present demanded higher wages and they'd refuse to work if they were not paid a higher amount so in England King Edward the thirds response was to introduce the statute of labourers in 1351 now this legislation aimed to reduce peasants wages to pre plague levels so that they could not claim for what long toll has deemed as excessive wages so in France a similar prising called the jakhary occurred in 1358 largely due to similar reasons peasants wanting more wages land holders not paying them and even by 1381 in England the peasants revolt had broken out so some connections can actually be linked to the statute of labourers and thus the Black Death as a reason for these popular uprisings so it shows how much the Black Death affected the economy of these times so another response was a religious response so as we've already discussed the poor perd fled his papal seat in Avignon to the country which left many people frustrated at the Catholic Church now one of the most recognizable religious responses with the rising extremists and religious extremism an inaudible group were called the flagellants so based primarily in the Low Countries which is kind of modern-day Belgium Luxembourg Netherlands the flagellants walk from town to town and the whip themselves as punishment for the sins because they believed that God had sent plague to earth as Way of punishing mankind and they believed that by publicly whipping themselves they could gain penance for their sins now naturally the flagellants were a spectacle that nobody had seen before so people crowded around in large groups to watch them nor social distance in then and as a result of walking from town to town attracting large crowds the flood gent simply helped spread the plague further into Europe there going from one town as a big public spectacle lots of groups people coming together then pushing on the disease's they're going along passed on to one community to another and so on and so it's played out I mean the flood juleps were largely responsible for spreading the plague throughout mainland Europe like the ships were responsible for spreading it through the ports and obviously when like the plague arrived in a town or a city people's response was to flee so that was I'll talk about in a minute about isolation and stuff we'll get onto that soon so another response I looked at was medical responses so obviously not often noted for their medical knowledge medieval doctors had very little idea of how to deal with the black death because most medieval medicine was still based on ancient Greek knowledge of the four humors of the body and bloodletting as a main of helping to balance the humors so if you're human were to wet there's like some blood out you could dry up and things like up so other useless prescriptions often prescribed and to have sort of the funniest found out was one of them was including holding an onion under the armpits where there was a Bubo or holding a chicken's anus against a Bubo you know quite how you've managed that for a few days but quite a weird image to have in your head I suppose couldn't find any images out on Google Images thankfully so I don't really know if I want to see it to be honest but anyway the Black Death also forced medical science to evolve past the ancient Greek knowledge and over the course the next three centuries significant advancements were made up to the period we know as the Enlightenment and the Renaissance so actually the Black Death forced medical science and doctors to actually looked beyond ancient Greece and start dissecting bodies and other kind of ways so another sort of thing I found going back quickly to religious I'll try and squeeze in is the responsive sense so there was a great rise in Saints and stuff and the most famous in plague was st. Sebastian who was a Roman saint and he was shot with loads of arrows and a lot of parents as an artists at the time used this our sort of imagery to describe the plague and it was a chronicler say that rain down like arrows so that was quite an interesting approach sort of religious as well I suppose anyway as I was saying earlier about isolation so quarantine was one of the most significant methods of dealing with the Black Death and the most notable example was the city of Dubrovnik which is in modern-day Croatia which self quarantined itself and saved thousands of countless lives so the quarantine period was between seven and forty days and that's not too dissimilar to what's been recommended today so it was a center where a lot of people were sent from there the black death death to go in there sniff occur if there are eight after forty days symptoms had gone that could come back out and that's really thought what we're seeing now with the coronavirus thought is interesting even seven eight hundred years ago this is still a wide train of thought so the shot conclusions I've come to is that hopefully this is given a very brief overview of the Black Death and I haven't fits everything in and if you've got any more questions please feel free to post in the comments below I'll drop me an email at history and xx at gmail.com I'll find me on Facebook at history in 20 so thanks for listening now catch you next time see you later