BBC Documentary THE BLACK DEATH

Summary

Highlights

• The Black Death decimated 20 million lives across Europe, wiping out entire families and communities 🏴.
• Cities were overwhelmed with corpses; mass graves became the norm 😨.
• With no cure in sight, faith and religious practices were among the few sources of comfort, albeit limited 🛐.
• Strange and deadly reactions from society included flagellant movements and antisemitic attacks fueled by fear and ignorance ⚔️.
• Remarkably, the aftermath saw peasants gain more rights and leverage, shaking the feudal system to its core 💪.

Key Takeaways

• The Black Death struck Europe from 1348 to 1350, wiping out nearly half of its population 😱.
• Medieval societies were thrown into chaos, with traditional structures collapsing amidst the panic 💥.
• Survivors, despite their tremendous losses, sparked a gradual revival, paving the way for societal shifts 🌱.
• The documentary highlights eyewitness accounts that provide chilling insights into the era's devastation and chaos 👀.
• As devastating as it was, the Black Death inadvertently led to transformations in societal and economic structures ⚙️.

Overview

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction: The Black Death The chapter titled 'Introduction: The Black Death' sets a somber and foreboding tone, with the speaker (or music) evoking emotions of fear and sorrow. The narrative speaks of a time when no one will find peace, as an inevitable plague, represented through imagery of poisoned arrows and incurable diseases, will lay waste to humankind. The wrath of this disaster is likened to God's command to obliterate man, indicating a period of deep crisis and widespread devastation likely referring to the historic bubonic plague that ravaged populations.
• 01:00 - 03:00: The Black Death Strikes Europe The chapter titled 'The Black Death Strikes Europe' discusses the impact of the Black Death on Europe between 1348 and 1350, describing it as a near-apocalyptic event. The plague caused widespread fear and devastation, with graveyards becoming overwhelmed with the deceased. Those who survived lived in constant dread, believing they were on the verge of the last judgment.
• 03:00 - 05:00: Impact on Society and Faith The chapter titled 'Impact on Society and Faith' delves into the profound effects a historical crisis had on European society and religion. It describes a world that seemed forsaken, with widespread despair across the continent from Italy to Ireland. Europe faced a catastrophic loss of nearly half its population, with 20 million people perishing during the crisis. This immense tragedy stressed every facet of medieval society to its limits, as traditional medicine proved futile against the epidemic. In such times of despair, extreme religious cults that were both violent and macabre emerged, reflecting society's struggle to comprehend and cope with the devastation.
• 05:00 - 07:00: Spread of the Plague and Human Responses The chapter titled 'Spread of the Plague and Human Responses' describes a catastrophic period where society's moral fabric disintegrated amidst the chaos caused by a devastating plague. Panic and fear led to people turning on each other with acts of cruelty, and a pervasive sense of doom akin to the end of the world was prevalent. Despite the chaos, some individuals survived to document and reflect on the widespread despair. These eyewitnesses, including writers, doctors, lawyers, and priests, provide a unique historical account of the period.
• 07:00 - 09:00: The Pope's Role and Flagellant Movement The chapter delves into the catastrophic impact of the Black Death in Europe, highlighting the dire situation on the front lines. Despite the immense trauma, the continent avoided falling into a new Dark Age. Instead, the experience of horror and tragedy spurred a gradual Reawakening in Europe, sowing the seeds for future change.
• 09:00 - 11:00: Scapegoating and Persecution The chapter "Scapegoating and Persecution" explores how Europe, during the mid-14th century, though often mischaracterized as backward, was actually well-populated, sophisticated, and mobile. The narrative likely delves into the complexities of societal behaviors, including the tendency towards scapegoating and persecution, a common theme during crises such as the Black Death. These dynamics are examined to understand the underlying causes and impacts on European society during this tumultuous period.
• 11:00 - 13:00: Arrival in England and Social Shifts The chapter 'Arrival in England and Social Shifts' describes the vibrant movement of people engaged in various professions arriving in England, including devout individuals, traders, merchants, pilgrims, soldiers, and bureaucrats. The society is depicted as bustling, with particular emphasis on the bustling activity in ports and cities, especially in Northern Italy. Additionally, Florence is highlighted as a major commercial hub, boasting a significant population and being exceptionally rich and busy with trade and commerce.
• 13:00 - 15:00: Economic and Social Transformation The chapter titled 'Economic and Social Transformation' discusses the bustling and densely populated environments likened to a 'ripe pomegranate' or a 'dense antill of human contact,' reflecting a mix of merchants and peasants, rich and poor, and the coexistence of business and pleasure. These cities, described as large and crowded yet incredibly wealthy, attracted many people, symbolizing ideal conditions for diseases to thrive.
• 15:00 - 17:00: Legacy and Resilience of Europe In the autumn of 1347, a mysterious and horrifying disease known as the Black Death arrived in Europe, brought by sailors returning from the Black Sea. This disease, carried in their blood and breath, initially caught the citizens by surprise, unaware of the scale of devastation it would bring.

BBC Documentary THE BLACK DEATH Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 [Music] listen everybody and I will set tears pouring from your eyes no one will rest poisoned arrows will strike everyone fevers will throw down the proud and incurable disease will strike like [Music] lightning for the almighty has said I shall wipe man man whom I created off
• 00:30 - 01:00 the face of the Earth for three horrifying years between 1348 and 1350 the Black Death pushed medieval man to the brink of an apocalypse the living expected only death everywhere graveyards were choked with corpses the scale of death persuaded those who lived weeping and lamenting through the bitter events that the last judgment had
• 01:00 - 01:30 [Music] come it was a world without hope seemingly abandoned by God from Italy to Ireland Europe lost nearly half its population 20 million died in the crisis every part of medieval Society was strained to Breaking Point medicine failed the sick violent and macabra religious cults
• 01:30 - 02:00 appeared and morality collapsed as men turned on each other in brutal acts of Cruelty no one knew who or what would follow the Antichrist the end of the world but some survived to Chronicle the despair writers doctors lawyers priests unique eyewitnesses is from death's
• 02:00 - 02:30 front line and their extraordinary words offer us intimate shocking and surprising windows on the worst catastrophe in the whole history of Europe for despite the trauma the continent was not plunged into a new Dark Age the gradual Reawakening of Europe was in fact seated in the horror and tragedy of the Black Death
• 02:30 - 03:00 [Applause] [Music] in the mid 14th century Europe was not the Dark Continent so often lampooned by history it was well populated sophisticated mobile and
• 03:00 - 03:30 devout people are moving there are Traders there are Merchants there are pilgrims there are soldiers there are bureaucrats there are people on every imaginable kind of business on the road moving about this Society nowhere was richer or busier with trade and commerce than the ports and cities of Northern [Music] Italy Florence with a population of over
• 03:30 - 04:00 100,000 was said to resemble a ripe pomegranate a dense antill of human contact merchants and peasants rich and poor business and pleasure the population was tremendous and the cities were big crowded but they were also very wealthy places to live and so attracting lots of people so in a sense it's the sort of place that a disease is going to love
• 04:00 - 04:30 into this medieval Melting Pot in the Autumn of 1347 stole a horrifying and mysterious disease it was born by Sailors returning from the Black Sea in the East the pestilence already in their blood and on their breath at first the citizens had no idea of the scale of the horror that would hit them the disease that later became known as the Black Death would threaten every
• 04:30 - 05:00 part of medieval Life Society religion feudalism family in the town of Penza a lawyer Gabriel deuses recorded the arrival of the disease I have been urged to write what happened here every city every settlement every place was poisoned by the contagious pestilence when one person had contracted the illness he poisoned his whole family and those
• 05:00 - 05:30 preparing to bury the dead were seized by death in the same way thus death entered Through the Windows and as cities and towns were devastated the survivors mourned their dead kin Italy was the front line of a bewildering epidemic no one was prepared for the speed and horror of the disease people became sick with a flu like fever and began
• 05:30 - 06:00 vomiting in their necks armpits and groin pus filled swellings or bubos appeared and on the skin internal hemorrhaging produced purple and black blotches death followed within a week from a pneumonia likee flooding of the [Music] lungs in a matter of 2 3 months 20% of
• 06:00 - 06:30 your population is just a pile of corpses so being stunned I think is probably the most obvious reaction they must have had as well as being petrified and having no sense of what to do to make it stop though there were no known cures many doctors tried their best genti deino was among them Chief physician at the University of Perugia he began to realized just how Unstoppable the
• 06:30 - 07:00 disease was this pestilence as the peasons call it or epidemic or whatever else you wish to call it is more awful than anything ever seen before no disease of comparative malignancy has ever been witnessed nevertheless terrified wealthy citizens grasped at any hope seeking to buy their way to Medical
• 07:00 - 07:30 salvation the immediate and particular cause is a certain poisonous material which is generated from the heart and the lungs my job as physician is not to worry about the heavens but to concentrate on the symptoms of the sick and to do what I can for them genti advised people to eat lettuce and to alternate their sleep on the left and right side so as to keep the heat of the liver steady lying on one's back
• 07:30 - 08:00 can be disastrous astonishingly to those with Advanced symptoms he applied a paste of gum resin the roots of white lies and dried human excrement it was a form of using the human body to help itself blood or excrement or other waste products which if for instance they were treated by distillation or something something like that might yield some magic in inverted
• 08:00 - 08:30 commas remedy that might be effective but such treatments were rooted in the medieval past and without exception they failed just as the physician gentio dealino failed on the 18th of June 1348 the pestilence added his name to the roll call of death
• 08:30 - 09:00 as people realized the disease could not be cured they were left with only their faith in God and the efforts of the church when one person lay sick in a house no one would come near even dear friends would hide themselves away weeping The Physician would not visit the priest panic-stricken administered the sacraments with fear and trembling no one knew what to
• 09:00 - 09:30 do religion was no Shield against the disease the clergymen who braved the dying to administer their last rights often fell victim themselves in Penza the Black Death ripped through the religious orders more than 60 priests died fear was compounded by ignorance some believed the disease was transmitted by sight others that merely
• 09:30 - 10:00 thinking about it would bring death Italian Society faced real Jeopardy the crisis was captured by the pen of Giovani bachio this Florentine writer now stepped forward as the black death's most lucid and startling witness such Terror was struck into the hearts of men and women by This calamity that brother abandoned brother and the
• 10:00 - 10:30 uncle his nephew and the sister her brother and very often the wife her husband but what was even worse and quite incredible was that fathers and mothers refused to see and 10 their sick children as if they had not been theirs bewildered and terrified with neither defense nor understanding families and friends shunned each other almost all adopted the same cruel
• 10:30 - 11:00 policy which was to avoid entirely the sick and everything belonging to them by so doing each thought he would secure his own safety people in 1348 really thought the apocalypse was nigh disaster was upon them and there seemed to be nothing you could do about it there'd been nothing like this before on this scale and how to react how to behave they just didn't [Music] know as the bonds of society fractured
• 11:00 - 11:30 The rhythms of medieval life began to unravel harvests went ungathered Livestock untended in the city of Sienna civil courts were closed and building work on the cathedral halted work never resumed and the great Nave remains unfinished today as local leaders died City life stopped the scale of the disaster was
• 11:30 - 12:00 becoming clear in addition to lots of people being ill and dying you now had nothing working properly the bodies weren't being removed sanitation to the extent that it existed completely collapsed food wasn't being made bread wasn't being baked so you had in addition to disease famine and and the general problems of keeping some sort of order in this suffering and misery of our city
• 12:00 - 12:30 the authority of human and divine laws almost disappeared for like other men the ministers and the executives of the laws were all dead or sick or shut up with their families so that no duties were carried out every man was therefore able to do as he [Music] pleased in a world seemingly abandoned by God no one expected to live many behaved as if each day would be
• 12:30 - 13:00 their last Italian Society was in moral [Laughter] [Music] meltdown they thought the sure cure for the pestilence was to go about amusing themselves satisfying every bestial appetite that they could they spent day and night going from Tavern to Tavern drinking immoderately or went freely into other people's houses doing as they pleased
• 13:00 - 13:30 this they were able to do because many had abandoned their homes so that many houses became common property and any stranger who went inside made use of them as his own throughout the spring and summer of 1348 the toll of death went unabated in Venice some 90,000 [Music] died in Florence it was half the City's
• 13:30 - 14:00 population such was the multitude of corpses brought to the churches every day and every hour that there was not enough consecrated ground to give them burial with the cemeteries full they were forced to dig huge trenches where they buried the bodies by their [Music] thousands in Sienna near the famous Gothic Cath Cathedral victims were
• 14:00 - 14:30 thrown into pits in the foundations of the old city wall remarkably they are still there [Music] today as one chronicler of the time noted more bodies were put on top of the corpses with a little more dirt over those thus they put layer upon layer just like one puts layers of cheese in a lasagna in Milan the fear of contagion fueled a
• 14:30 - 15:00 brutal response the city authorities ordered the houses of the sick to be locked and shuttered leaving the victims inside to die everyone now believed that God was punishing the world on the edge of the Abyss the rest of Europe braced itself seeking answers could anything stop God's r
• 15:00 - 15:30 age but now as the Black Death swept across Europe the horror of the disease would be rivaled by the horror of man's own [Music] response in 6 months the Black Death had taken millions of lives and devastated Italy now in the spring of 1348 it arrived in southern France it's clear that the the disease
• 15:30 - 16:00 followed the roots of trade across Western Europe which had become by the 14th century a pretty elaborate Network run largely by Italians and ironically of course it was from Italy that they exported very successfully the disease to other parts of Europe in the coming months fear of the black death would strike at the heart of the church provoking bizarre rituals of penitence but work were still it would
• 16:00 - 16:30 trigger ethnic hatred on a horrifying [Music] scale the pestilence quickly spread Inland to the papal seat of aeno it was here rather than in Rome that Pope Clement v 6 held Court avenon was at this time a city drip fared on religious power patronage and diplomacy it had of course at its heart the papal Court um which was an enormous
• 16:30 - 17:00 operation of some 6 or 700 people but it was also in effect Europe's Crossroads a point where culture politics theology art science converged the pope was God's voice on Earth his court seeed with gossip and rumor surely religion would save them in the court musician and philosopher Lou haligan began a unique
• 17:00 - 17:30 account of the arrival and impact of the disease the entire province is infected by these calamities seafish are now not generally eaten men believing that they have been poisoned by the infected air and it is thought that the whole coast and all the neighboring countries caught the infection from the stinking breath of wind which blew from the region contaminated by the pestilence day by day more and more people people die
• 17:30 - 18:00 now by God's will it has reached us like many devout and educated men haligan believed the pestilence was a miasmic wind blown across the continent by a furious deity moral Decay it was reasoned had brought such divine retribution really big diseases are God's business he punishes Egypt with plagues he punishes the Israelites with
• 18:00 - 18:30 plagues and so they will look for forms of pollution that aren't what we think of as pollution sinfulness evil moral pollution it was surely a time to hold true to one's Faith the pope declared that prayer piety and religious possessions were the route to Salvation and survival but they didn't
• 18:30 - 19:00 work so many were dying that the pope ordered huge new graveyards to be consecrated to bury the piles of rotting corpses he even consecrated the rone so that bodies could be dumped in the river in aenor they buried 11,000 people in 6 weeks and they lost onethird of the Cardinals and half the population so clearly aenor as the center or heart of Christianity hadn't been spared was the Catholic Church failing
• 19:00 - 19:30 The Devout some clearly thought so an extraordinary movement of lay extremists now appeared they were known as the flagellants and they directly challenged the authority of the church we witnessed a performance of devout processions with the chanting of litanies men and women alike many barefoot others wearing hair shirts or
• 19:30 - 20:00 smeared with ashes processed with Lamentations and tears some beat themselves with cruel whips until the blood ran the flagellant marched from town to town whipping themselves and others into a frenzy of brutal penitence watching One procession was Robert of Asbury each wore a hood painted with a red cross front and back and carried a
• 20:00 - 20:30 whip with three thongs each thong had a knot in it with something sharp like a needle stuck through the middle as they walked they sang a Christian litany and one after the other they struck themselves with these whips on their naked and bloody bodies contemporary Observers talk about flatulence beating themselves and the
• 20:30 - 21:00 blood spattering the walls of the surrounding buildings what do people see when they look at a spectacle like that well what they see is Jesus suffering and bleeding for their sins what more powerful act can people have performed on their behalf to avert this terrible Scourge that's coming to them the theatrical ritual Drew large crowds
• 21:00 - 21:30 hoping for Redemption this sent shock waves through the church the church didn't like them at all because it was a lay movement and it was very much do-it-yourself Catholicism and the last thing it wanted in the middle of a plague outbreak was a large group of nuts marching from town to town and they thought they were insane religion was something the church dispensed through the priesthood through the sacraments and so they considered
• 21:30 - 22:00 them extremely dangerous as well but the promise of the fagence proved empty and lethal these bizarre marching mobs would simply have helped to spread the disease more [Music] quickly after several months of horror the city of aino the religious heart of Europe had become a ghost town to be brief at least half the
• 22:00 - 22:30 people in Avenue died there are now within the walls of the city more than 7,000 houses where no one lives because everyone in them has perished and in the suburbs one might imagine that there is not one Survivor in a bid to stay alive the pope put his own faith in a talented young doctor his name was G shulak and he became the papal surgeon at Avenue the plague was shameful for the
• 22:30 - 23:00 Physicians who could give no help at all especially as out of fear of infection they shrank from visiting the sick and even if they did they achieved nothing and earned no fee for all the sick died save a very few for previous plagues there were some remedies for this one
• 23:00 - 23:30 nothing dak's story was remarkable he contracted the disease whilst tending others and for an agonizing 6 weeks treated himself inzing the [Music] bubos his friends had left him for
• 23:30 - 24:00 dead but amazingly he was one of the lucky ones to [Music] recover Doak then worked tirelessly to try and unravel the nature of the disease carrying out autopsies he was able to observe the infected lungs of victims evidence he maintained of gods polluting my Asma
• 24:00 - 24:30 breathing is impaired men suffer in their lungs and whoever has these corrupted cannot by any means Escape nor live beyond 2 days the sh aants give a fascinating glimpse of the medieval symptoms of the disease but even today modern medicine can't explain what the Black Death actually was theories suggest a lethal hybrid of bubonic and hemorrhagic
• 24:30 - 25:00 plague but in truth the disease remains a mystery nevertheless as the most acute medical Observer of the age Dak knew it was spread by human contact accordingly he advised the pope for prevention the best cure was to flee the area before becoming infected to thin the blood with blood letting to strengthen the heart with fruits and good smelling things and to
• 25:00 - 25:30 purify the air with fire the pope did as he was told isolating himself from court and servants between two great log fires gak did give the pope advice we assume uh on a personal level about keeping himself out of Harm's Way as far as possible keeping people who had contact with the disease away from the
• 25:30 - 26:00 pope and he was lucky enough that none of his papal patients actually caued theak had triumphed the pope rode out the black death and survived but the same was not true for others in a world seeking to appease God's Fury Christian tolerance crumbled as the community began a murderous Purge neighbor turned on neighbor seeking out scapegoats Heretics
• 26:00 - 26:30 Outsiders and the Jews if you're convinced that God is angry at you you look around and say what has made God mad well there can be few sense worse than denying what you understand to be the true God as the true God and in their mind that's what Jews were doing the Jews were accused of plots to destroy all Christen
• 26:30 - 27:00 in the spring of 1348 Jews from narbon and carcasson were dragged from their homes and burned at the stake some wretched men were found in possession of certain powers and whether justly or unjustly God knows were accused of poisoning the wells with the result that anxious men now refused to drink the waters some of these men were Bur burnt for this act and are being burnt
• 27:00 - 27:30 daily it being ordered that they should be punished thus the brutal atrocities were recorded by the court BFFs here follows the confession of one of the Jews made on the 8th of October 1348 in the castle of shilon Belita the wife of aquatus the Jew was put to question and when it was over she confessed that
• 27:30 - 28:00 around Midsummer last the Jew provinal gave her some poison she was to put this in the wells to poison the people using them and she took the poison and did as she was [Music] told thousands of Jewish families were forced into false confessions they were then condemned to death calamitous as it was terrible as it was the plague was not just a disaster for some people it was an opportunity an opportunity to do
• 28:00 - 28:30 things that they'd been hoping for some time to be able to do now was their chance certain Commissioners have been appointed to punish the Jews by due legal process and you should know that all Jews living in V nerve have now been burnt to put it at its most brutally simple it was an opportunity for the many Christians who were in debt to
• 28:30 - 29:00 Jewish money lenders to liquidate their debts by liquidating their creditors this was a planned process it was led by the elite and in very many towns the wiping out of the Jewish Community happens before the plague ever arrives in the 3 years of the Black Death massacres of Jews took place in over 100 towns and cities in France Italy Switzerland and Germany Europe lay
• 29:00 - 29:30 morally derailed in the late spring of 1348 the Pope's musician Lou haligan penned a warning to colleagues in northern France I am writing to you most dearly beloved so that you should know in what perils we are now living and if you wish to preserve yourselves the best advice is that a man should eat and drink moderately but above all make little with people it is best to stay at home until
• 29:30 - 30:00 the epidemic has passed but for Louie halan it was too late in July 1348 the Black Death claimed his life with Europe Riven by pilgrims and by a universal crisis of Faith the pestilence now leapt the channel and invaded the Pastoral lands of England how would the feudal certainties of
• 30:00 - 30:30 centuries Now Fair was the whole of Europe poised on the edge of [Music] Anarchy across the continent nearly half the population was dead England waited proud religious pastoral feudal
• 30:30 - 31:00 once again the Black Death entered from the sea in the summer of 1348 it arrived in the ports of Southampton Plymouth and Bristol it marched across a country where 90% of the people lived on the land in England cile peasants had worked their Lord's Estates for centuries paying rent for their own small Holdings in the coming months the
• 31:00 - 31:30 Carnage of the black death would transform this Society in surprising ways the 13th century had seen a steady rise in population more and more marginal land was plowed for grain now the land and the people were balanced precariously on a knife edge before the Black Death life for peasants was pretty hard they were living large numbers of them
• 31:30 - 32:00 at a bare subsistence level many are living on very small Holdings scratching existence out of the land rural England they exposed un [Music] [Laughter] vulnerable in the suffk village of Walsham Willows lived a family called Denny's hear us oh God Nicholas Denny was married to Catherine they had a young [Music]
• 32:00 - 32:30 family from statements and court records of the time we can give them an authentic voice moving insights into how such peasant families were torn apart by the disease us be secure and no B by May 1349 the Black Death had arrived at their door death moved slowly at first but once the kindling was lit the blaze spread with such intensity it looked like no one would remain my elder brother William was one of the
• 32:30 - 33:00 first in our manner to succumb to the [Music] pestilence he died within 3 days followed by his wife and three of the children he left to me his dwelling 7 and a half acres in the care of his remaining son as death stalked The Village the tenancies of the deceased passed to the grief stricken
• 33:00 - 33:30 survivors no one knew who would be next like those before them The Peasants believed the disease was born in corrupted air with sweet smelling herbs like thyme tan and wormwood they tried in vain to purify their homes but all they did was disguise the smell of death my mother followed my brother to the Grave very quickly with my elder brother dead my
• 33:30 - 34:00 mother's five acres have gone to me Catherine and I are now more than three times as rich as we were before this pestilence struck but who knows how long that last the other Villages avoid us I think no family is infected I wake early every morning with a dread that the swellings will have appeared on my children overnight in a catastrophic few months walam lost
• 34:00 - 34:30 several hundred [Music] Souls among them the Lord of The Manor leaving his widow lady Rose to saxum to cope with the Crisis Death took my good husband and killed more than a third of the men women and children in the village there is now such a shortage of servants Craftsmen and of agricultural labor ERS that a great many of us Lords and those
• 34:30 - 35:00 well endowed with goods and possessions without all service and attendance across the board it looks like half the population dying in England you can look at the clergy because there's evidence for replacing those that died and that looks like 40 to 50% you can then look at individual Villages you can find some places with
• 35:00 - 35:30 real horror jarro about 80% of the population died the huge death toll among laborers paralyzed Rural Life some Villages were abandoned farmsteads fell into ruin and Fields were left fallow we've always got to remember the profoundly grief stricken condition they must have been in after the Black Death the awful darkness of those months when
• 35:30 - 36:00 the you know the Black Death was carrying people off in in their Village in their in their Town wherever it might be um but nevertheless families like the Den's these peasant families do get that act together pretty quickly land lying waste is committed to the Village until another tenant could be found it's happening all over the Mana those of us Left Alive there is
• 36:00 - 36:30 Bounty the world is changing gradually the surviving peasants began to reap unforeseen advantages from death's Vigor they were in demand and could ask for higher wages and cheaper rents before the Black Death uh labor was plentiful labor was cheap after the Black Death it was very very difficult you simply couldn't get people to come to do the
• 36:30 - 37:00 jobs you couldn't get people to uh cut your corn to thresh it you couldn't find people to repair your roof unless you paid them two or three or even four times the wages you'd paid them before across the land agricultural laborers threw off the shackles of the past the old order of the English landscape was changing I've heard from the next Parish that 12 laborers women and men have abandoned
• 37:00 - 37:30 their lord for higher wages elsewhere the juri's found them in contempt to the king but they're long gone the law will not catch up with them the feudal certainties were crumbling the bonds of service were being strained to Breaking Point The Establishment itself was under threat I have suffered unbearably that hands of my laborers this want is strongly felt
• 37:30 - 38:00 both in my Manner and throughout the whole of England among Lords and clergy alike because of it the leading men of the Kingdom appeared before the king and asked for some remedy for these problems to be ordained runaway wages were bad news and King Edward III's response was astonishingly Swift in 1349 as the pestilence raged he commanded Ed that workers accept wages at their 1346 levels it was a sign of
• 38:00 - 38:30 just how rattled The Establishment felt commissions were set up around the country finding people who were charging over the odds for their labor but the laws of supply and demand proved too [Music] strong the Black Death was forcing social and economic change on an unwilling ruling class but those at the bottom of the Heap sniffed opportunity and a new
• 38:30 - 39:00 [Music] age this is a political threat to the whole sort of ordering of society this is more than just I'm not going to get enough money this year this is you know potentially very destabilizing to the political system really in medieval England despite the best efforts of king and country to stop it the Black Death had caused the world to move on
• 39:00 - 39:30 Autumn of 1350 after 3 years of Terror and 20 million lives the Black Death had reached the edges of 14th century [Music] Europe death's Vigor would soon fade but not before visiting one last haunting and prophetic witness brother John Clint a Franciscan frier in Ireland believed the day of judgment had come struggling against the sickness
• 39:30 - 40:00 that gripped him he made one final amazing gesture I brother John Clint of the friers miner of keni have written in this book of the notable events which befell in my time so that such Deeds should not perish with time or be lost from the memory of future Generations I leave parchment for for continuing the work in case anyone should be alive in
• 40:00 - 40:30 the future and any son of Adam can escape this pestilence and continue the work thus [Music] begun but the pages deliberately left blank by the dying John Clint came to represent much more than a space on which to record the final days of humanity for this was not the story that followed for the surviving sons of Adam
• 40:30 - 41:00 the disease was finally waning the war was over brother Clint's new page was in fact a clean slate on which a new history would be [Music] written in the decades after the Black Death recurring boats of pestilence struck again and again but the resilience of Medieval Europe would now reveal itself in fascinating
• 41:00 - 41:30 ways the remarkable thing about the black death is after the first shock of 1348 people got used to the Black Death we looked into the abyss and we have survived and plagues come back every 10 years but we survive them too and so there's I think a tremendous energy in the late 14th century which is the kind of V which is expressed in painting and in poetry learning to live with the disease was a
• 41:30 - 42:00 challenge that medieval men and women now took upon themselves in painting and storytelling there was an extraordinary flourishing of macabra art pictures in which people were encouraged to engage with the horrors of death and Decay art does seem to change as a result of the Black Death the portrayal of Effigies as skeletal or with worms coming out of them a healthy woman and a
• 42:00 - 42:30 skeleton right behind her these become more common the Black Death reminded them that it did hit everyone that death was everyone's companion throughout their life and that's why you get these etchings of the skeleton behind you because that in a sense is the way you're thinking now death is your constant companion it was a message portrayed in many English Parish churches in the late 14th
• 42:30 - 43:00 and 15th centuries at lutterworth church in leerer the dead rise to the call of trumpets from [Music] Heaven the images show that death is inevitable but also the Ecstasy of Eternal Resurrection Ironically in the Medieval World it was pictures of the Dead that helped teach the survivors how to
• 43:00 - 43:30 live in villages like walum Willows surviving peasants like the Denny's family were coming to terms with a new world lady Rose has now waved 12 Pennies from each acre which used to cost us two Shilling till a world improves or another tenant can be found who is prepared to pay the full rent so we have more land and yet pay us the mistress needs us more than we need
• 43:30 - 44:00 our there are groups of peasants that say look we're not accepting things as they were before because the Situation's changed I'm sorry we've got greater bargaining power so therefore we demand more we don't want to perform these forc labor Services we want to work for higher wages we want to be able to go to other villages to take on other Holdings whatever it might be many survivors from the countryside were also drawn to to the towns and cities filling the vacuum left by the urban
• 44:00 - 44:30 dead it's not only our wealth has improved chaos the pestilence has brought has opened up opportunities my sister Agnes strong weld has abandoned the land of our Lady and fled to whips switch where she has married a cobbler without the lady's license they do not know his name so it seems she will escape for those peasants who'd made it
• 44:30 - 45:00 through life was better the same could not be said for the landowners my buildings and walls are crumbling and the manner barely yielded 10 last year no laborer is prepared to take orders from anyone whether equal inferior or Superior and all those who serve do so with ill will and a malicious spirit in 1353 in walam Manor 55
• 45:00 - 45:30 laborers men and women even went on strike there were landlords that were trying to keep things as they had been in the past this was much resented and one can see uh the origins of the peasants Revolt of 1381 in the dissatisfaction of a populace that felt itself deprived of the opportunities that they could see available to them English peasants were flexing their muscles in a society relieved of the
• 45:30 - 46:00 shackles and certainties of the high Middle Ages in some ways the birth of the modern world can be traced to the Black Death I think because it marked definitively the end of the idea that you are forever fixed in one social identity The Next Century became a golden age for the English laborer surom gradually withered away on the continent too the survivors of the Black Death were also writing new
• 46:00 - 46:30 chapters in human history Giovani bacho gulak and Gabriel deusas among them as Europe rebounded Millions Beed by the dead were spent on rebuilding The Peasants restarted work on their famous icon completing the bell tower in 1350 it was a time to look forward not
• 46:30 - 47:00 back in 1350 the pope calls the Jubilee which encourages all pilgrims to come to Rome so again thousands of medieval pilgrims are on the roads you think that would be the last thing you want to do after a plague what they do it's very regenerative in the narrow streets of the Italian cities where the Black Death had first stalked there was a gradual Reawakening for the next 100 years Renaissance men found new pride in the classical roots
• 47:00 - 47:30 of European culture there was a huge outpouring of creativity in the fields of architecture literature artart and science ideas that celebrated the spirit of man in his world it had been the worst Century to be alive and no other age before or since had felt so close to
• 47:30 - 48:00 Annihilation but the people of medieval Europe had not lost their nerve one of the healthiest conclusions is to remind ourselves that Europe survived the Black Death it survived recurring outbreaks for 300 years of plague and I think that's a very good conclusion to get out of it is the resilience of of the human spirit in the face of this sort of appalling
• 48:00 - 48:30 adversity slowly an inspiring story of human survival was emerging from the brink of the Apocalypse a new vision of Hope and Humanity had been rested from [Music] [Applause] [Music] despair [Music]