October 13, 2021 • 53 mins
A 16th-century bearded Venetian gets turned into a skin suit, and flagellants flagellate in vain!
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
School of Humans. Hello one, Hello all, Welcome to this
week's episode of Cadaver Gals, the podcast where we talk
about all the crazy, silly ways people have died throughout history.
We tell ourselves it's to cope with our own mortality.
But really, I think we're just fear mongers. But it's okay.
(00:28):
I'm your host Taylor, along with Nika Hi and Gabby. Hello,
and today we're going to talk about a hot Venetian
war commander who lost his skin and the Black Death.
So this is actually a pretty gory episode, so I
must warn you. Trigger warnings include, but not limited to,
(00:52):
playing lashing, torture, and plagues kill the music. Okay, welcome
(01:12):
back Cadaver Pals. Gabby, would you like to start us
off and take us on a journey? Oh? I do
want to take everyone on a journey of my multi
level marketing plan that I'm now going to pitch to you. No,
I'm just kidding. I don't. I'm not cool enough to.
I've never been asked to be part of a multi
level marketing scheme out that means you're not a sheep bull.
(01:36):
Oh but I guess though. Okay, thank you, I'll make
up my own and I'll invite you both. Okay, great,
all right, Well we're gonna go back to the sixteenth century.
Wow wow, wow, Okay, this is pike. You know, if
think of previous episodes of cadaver Gals, they're doing the
rat torture in the Netherlands or whatever. So let's like
(01:58):
be in that period. You know, we're like they're doing
gross shit. Anyway, So this is about Marco Antonio bragged
in he was a celebrated Venetian war commander and he
was like, you know, they called him like a sexy
late forty something with as a historians call it, with
a heavy beard. So you know, I'll never forget. I
was traveling with my brother once and I walked by
(02:21):
this guy on a plane and I looked at my
brother and I go, that guy's hot. And my brother
looked at me pain in his eyes, and he goes, damn,
you really do have daddy issues, because the guy was like,
you know, adapt and rumble daddy. Yeah, clearly grizzly beard whatever.
So yeah, i'd probably be into this Venetian commander. Yeah,
you probably would be. I actually know you probably want
(02:44):
it because he was like a heavy patriot and he
like was took things very like seriously, and he was
very grave, as they say back then. So I don't know,
I don't think he'd be that much fun though he
could be kind of the the push to your pool
or the whatever, the opposite sort of not Yeah. I
mean also he was a war commander, he was a senator.
He was also a lawyer. Soup were well rounded. Good
(03:06):
for him, so ambitious, Yeah, look at him go though
maybe jobs were easier back then. I don't know. So
at this time, in like fifteen seventy one when this
story is set, there was a big gass conflict amongst
the European Christian powers and then the Muslim Ottoman Empire,
Like the Ottoman Empire was rapidly expanding their empire, you know,
(03:27):
and there's lots of battles for control at this time
of the Mediterranean Sea. They're like everybody wants some of
that sea water, right, and so the Republic of Venice
controlled Cyprus, and the Ottomans were determined to take it
over so that they could be the ultimate rulers of
the sea. I mean, that's what I'm always saying, you
gotta get Cyprus. So there was like this big Ottoman army.
(03:51):
It was under the mega Christian hater Lala Mustafa Pasha.
And what they did Lala Mustafa Pasha. I mean Pasha's
is the name of Like it's just like the title
of like a commander. I'm sorry, but his first name
La La Yeah, I mean maybe an Ottoman that's pronounced differently,
but I love it. Ottoman's like a dead language, so
(04:12):
I couldn't. I wouldn't know. Actually, I don't know even
know if they're speaking Ottoman at this point, um fact
check us. I don't know. Okay, anyway, so what they did,
They're like, okay, we're gonna go attack the capital of Cyprus.
And they killed this other Venetian war commander and they
sent his head, that guy's head over to Bragg and
then being like we got your boy. And I love
(04:33):
when they send a head. I love it. Yeah to
go yeah, yeah, yeah, I want to hope. I just
really hope they like catapulted it or like I wonder
what kind of like packaging, Like I wonder how many
stamps you need for a head? Right? Also, is it
like a square box? Is it a round box? Is it? Yeah,
there's definitely not a round box, a round box. Wow,
(04:57):
they don't have put pizzas and round boxes. Okay, I've
been like a baggie or like a round bag or
something that's like ventilation. We don't know, like that Flat
Earth Society quote. I don't know if it was real,
but it was like we have flat Earth. There's all
around the globe or something, and it's just like no, no,
silly huge thing. Okay. Yeah. So Braggaden's at this place
(05:21):
in Cyprus that's like on the the eastern side of it,
like on the coast. That's called Famagusta, which is such
a fun name. Okay, this story are amazing Flaala Famagusta,
Marco Antonio, you know, we got all sorts of characters.
But anyway, so he's there and it's like the last
strong cold in Cyprus. So the Ottomans are going to
come get them, right first. The Ottomans come and they're
(05:44):
just like, Braggaden, Haha, you should just fucking surrender, dude,
because they have all these like dead bodies and also
live prisoners that they're just like parading around the gates
of the city being like ha haha, we have all
these things and we're so strong and powerful. But then
Braggaden was like, shut the fuck up. I have rule.
I have like direct orders from the up above people,
not God, but like higher up in the middle military
(06:06):
being like, hey, you may not surrender. You gotta keep cypress.
We gotta be rulers of the Mediterranean, see bro. So
he was very determined. But then a huge battle ensues
for like months. The Ottomans attack by land and sea,
cut off any resources, and they're also like digging tunnels
under the city and putting explosives under their walls. And
(06:26):
then the other Christian powers that are kind of uncontinental
Europe are like, hey, we're gonna come help you, but
they couldn't get their shit together. They're just like the
Christians were in fighting too, between like the Spanish people
and the Hapsburgs and the Romans, and it was just
like they were having they were having a hard time
organizing by the Romans, I mean the pope, yeah right,
it was like, yeah, the Christians were messing at this point, honestly.
(06:48):
And then at one point Mustafa was like, hey, Bro,
like you're doing really badly, so I'm going to offer,
like you can surrender now if you want to, Like
you guys can go like I'll even like y'all leave
the city and like go do your own thing, and like, yeah,
that's very nice with him Wragedon's like, dude, I can't
do that. I have to defend the city to honor Venice.
(07:10):
Like look at my heavy beard. Do you think I'm
just fucking around? Obviously not. Yeah, And like all the
people in Famagusta are like what the fuck braggedon? Like,
we need you to give up because we've already eaten
all the food. There's like not even cats left to eat.
So I hate when they take away the resources while
things are under siege. It's so inhumanitary. Inhumanity, yes, and
(07:36):
made that's what it is. It's not. It's inhumane. Also,
it makes me think my cat, Jembo's right here, and
he's Here's the thing. I don't want to eat Jembo,
mostly because he's not he doesn't have any lean meats.
He's just all fat. So I need to get him
on the treadmill in case there is a siege on
the city of Atlanta, Georgia. So right, of course, I
(07:58):
mean it's not out of the question. Wait, it's do
you know something that I don't know Taylor, Oh no, okay, no,
I'm just fear among Okay, good Um. Anyway, bragged in
maybe he was a cat person. He was like, okay,
you're right, we did eat all the cats. We have
more of food. Everyone's dead, basically, so let's surrender, why not.
So then they go and deliver a letter to the Pasha,
(08:19):
to Musifa Pasha, and they're like, bro, we surrender, and
he's like, Nito Burrito, y'all can get the fuck out
and go to crete. Okay, Like that's fine, you guys
can go, And so a lot of the Venetians and
Christians they start. Also, here's the thing I don't think
we really need to be on bragged inside, because they
were also occupying Cypress, which was like a Greek state
(08:40):
or something at some point, and basically they had enslaved
all the Grecians, so like, you don't have to feel
bad for him, like and yeah, and the Ottomans were
coming in being like hey, I mean the Ottomans were
like a rough crowd sometimes like they would they had
a lot of like interesting violence in their own interesting
form of slavery. But they they were like, hey, Greeks,
you can just like do your own thing now and
(09:00):
like own land and stuff if we take over, So
like maybe that would have been good, but also it
probably would have been weird to like no one, no
empire was really doing the best job in terms of
like human rights and stuff. But anyway, so they're gonna
go surrender, and the Pasha's like, yeah, bro, that's chill.
But then Braggedon goes over, like he actually leaves the
city with his crew of boys. He's like three hundred
(09:21):
soldiers with him, and they're going up to Mustafa Pasha's
tent and to give him to the officially surrender. And
also I thought this was really funny to like literally
give him the keys to the city, you know, just
like here's the gate, you know, even though they had
blown through the walls, so I don't really feel like
they needed as much. They could only put their own
locks on. You know. It's like their thing loved symbolism.
(09:41):
I was going to say, it's a metaphor exactly, and
they loved giving objects in order and like having the
objects have meaning. Yeah, so like the literal keys to
the city. So at first it seems like chill, Like
Braggedon goes in there, and he like kisses Mustafa's ring
and stuff, which is probably like degrading to him or whatever,
but he did it. But then it seems quite civil.
(10:02):
But then the meeting just goes off the fucking rails,
like Mustapha's about to get super down and dirty. It's
gonna be like and no one really knows why he
did it. It might because he was like annoyed at
Braggaden because Braggedden could have like surrendered earlier and then
the Ottomans wouldn't have lost as many people as they did.
And like also they're like maybe Braggaden might have killed
some like Muslim prisoners after they had already signed the surrender,
(10:23):
so I d K. But he's the Pasha is really mad,
and first thing that he does he orders his soldiers
to go and kill all of Braggaden's boys who he
had brought with him, like those three hundred dudes. So
what they do. They go out there, they behead all
these dudes, all of Braggaden's dudes, and Braggaden's like, what
the fuck's happening, and they're like, hey, bro, we fucking
hate your guts. And what they do with bragged In
(10:44):
is instead of killing him. Right, then they're like, hey,
let's have some fun with it. With what they do
is they cut off his ears and his nose. Oh okay,
which is double insulting because apparently that's a punishment for
like a common criminal. Oh heaven forbid. And he's a
fancy boy. He's got a heavy beard and a grave expression.
He wants the fancy punishment, not the commonish. Yeah, and
(11:06):
that's what he got. But they beheaded all of his
boys who had brought with him, and then they stacked
up their heads outside of the Pasha's tent. So a
cool like insider Instagram, you know style idea is just
like a head mural. Yeah, like a head mural. Yeah.
It was really beautiful, you know, a very nice, very
good touch. Um. And then what they do after they
cut off Braggedon's ears and nose, which out like your
(11:29):
nose out as you probably. I just feel like, does
your brain lake out of your face if you cut
your nose off? Probably not, that's not what your brain is,
but it just I feel like it holds things together. Right.
People can be of your face. People can be noseless though,
because like people who had really bad syphilis back in
the day also would lose their noses and they were fine,
(11:51):
and they would actually walk around with gold noses. We've
talked about this. Oh oh yeah, that's right. They take
breaky right exactly. I think that's what it was. I
don't think it's necessarily healthy to be without a nose,
but it is possible, probably not long term, though, Gobby.
We are wondering if it's just the tippity whippity or
just like it, you know, because there's like cartilage on
(12:13):
the end, but then there's like bone. So yeah, I
don't I don't know how much of the nose it was. Okay,
all right, that's okay, you know, because let's just say
that the Ottoman and the Venetian sources greatly differ on
what happened, so they might have had different parts of
the nose defined. I don't know. But anyway, after they
(12:34):
do that to him, they're like, hey, let's him humiliate
you more. So what they do is they literally turn
them into an ass. They like, they give him one
of those like bridles that like donkeys and mules have,
and then they put like two buckets on the side
of it filled with dirt and he has to go
around like the Ottoman encampment and everyone and look at this.
They all yell at him, being like ha ha, you
(12:55):
have to convert to Islam, and he's like, I will
not convert to Islam. Torture my body but not my soul.
Oh my god, mortifying for him, all pourable, boy, poor boy.
Also like he can't hear at this point, his nose
is off well, so when they cut off his ear holes,
he can still Yeah, he could still hear, just like
it's probably hearing maybe hurts a little better or something.
(13:18):
They didn't like scoop it out, you know how you
oh what na nice? That's nasty. Also, I will say
when you said turned him into an ass, I honestly,
Gabby thought you chose another magical And I was about
to be like, that's not real. So he's being paraded
around and stuff, and then every time he passes by
Mustafa Pasha's tent he has to like prostrate himself and
(13:40):
kiss the ground and how embarrassing. And then he has
to eat some of the dirt that's in his buckets,
which you know could be nice because it takes less
weight off your shoulders. You just eat the dirt. Um,
But Meanwhile, you know, they've loaded all these like Christians
and the Venetian people onto boats and they're about to
like scedaddle to crete and they don't really know what's
going on. But then at this point the Ottoman soldiers
(14:03):
come over and like start killing all of them on
the boats, and the ones they don't kill, they're like, hey,
we we'll just enslave you. And then they starting and
they hang them up from chains and kind of thing
like the like the prison part of their boats. Jail
jail boat, your boat jail, got it. And then they're like, okay,
bragged in, let's go do something else fun. This is
like he has a cool like torture itinerary. So after
(14:24):
he's going in like the Ottoman encampment, they bring him
over to the boats and what they do is they
chain him up to like the mast head of the boat,
you know, kind of like a sexy mermaid or whatever.
And then after that they get bored of that, I guess,
so they like chain him to a chair with a
string on him and they keep dunking him in the sea,
and then you know, you get bored of that, so
(14:45):
you have to do something else. So then he they
were like, okay, well we're gonna do now. We're gonna
take you to the town's square. And at this point,
you know, he's not doing so well, like the dunk
the sea dunking dragged around the mutilation, he's not feeling
that great. So they take him to the town square
and they had already converted the church into a mosque,
(15:06):
so swift. And they find a butcher and they're like, hey, butcher,
sharpen your knives. We got a task for you. And
he's like, okay, let me sharpen them up. And there
it's like a like a whipping post that, you know,
just like a quaint whipping post in the middle of
the square. I guess you just used to have, you know,
just like a public whipping you know, fun funding game
(15:27):
sort of thing. But they tie him to that, but
they tie him to that with his feet first, so
he's hanging upside down and they get the butcher to
come over and they're like, okay, now, flay the funk
out of this dude. So they just he then he
takes his knife and he starts skinning him. Okay, braggad in.
The butcher does no, no, no, yes, he does. Wait
(15:50):
when you say skinning, do you mean like skinning like
while like while he's being flogged, or do you mean
skinning as in grabbing the knife and actually skinning him
grabbing the knife and actually skinning him. I don't know
if they actually whipped him on the whipping post. That
was just sort of the thing that they used to
hang all inclusive torture post. So yeah, no, they literally
(16:11):
skin him, starting with his feet. But they also are like,
hey man, we want you to do a good job
skinning him so we can have like the full skin
sort of like intact, like not strips, you know, we
want like big sections of the dude. Why what were
they going to do with it? Something fun and flirty?
But reports do say that this point bragged in does
die um And they say before they reached his navel,
(16:33):
which begs the question would you rather be skinned feet
first or head first? That begs the question. It begs
the question begging. Yeah, I mean I think feet first
is probably best. Yeah, same, So anyway isn't easy? Would
you rather? Okay? Is it? It's an easy one? Whatever
(16:55):
was going to kill me first is what I would want? Probably, Okay,
So what do you know what they did with the skin.
Oh yeah. So the next day they have the skin
and what they do is they stuff it full of
straw and they sew it back together, so he's like
a little skin suit straw man. And then they put
the straw man on top of a cow. How embarrassing.
And then they put his little outfit on, his little
(17:16):
Venetian Republic senator outfit on, and the outfit included a
little parasol apparently, and then they like, this actually happened
in his history. Yes, this actually happened. And then they
put them on, and then they take the cow and
they paraded around like the city being like we won. Anyway.
After they do that, eventually the Ottomans set out to
(17:38):
see to go back to the Golden Horn, to go
back to Constantinople or a stumble whatever it's called at
this point, and they hang his skin up on their
like flag posts, so they kind of like hang up
little straw skin suit man on as like a flag
on their boat. That's disgusting. I mean, all of this
(17:59):
is disgusting, but yes, yes, so they do that. Love
to visualize it, I imagine. I I wonder if there's
like those few like Ottoman soldiers who were like, bro,
this is like kind of gross, Like do we have
to have his little skin suits flapping in the wind,
Like imagine the smell the sound of the skin flapping
the well, the smell is probably fine because at this
point in the sun, like his skin is like leathering,
(18:22):
so tan and stuff. So it's like that part like
the body would yeah, and a nice like leather bound
books all a like anchor man. Anyway, he didn't get
a burial, did he. No, I don't know what happened
to the body. But it's kind of funny as they
were leaving. Not funny, it's just kind of like this
(18:44):
them killing Braggaden was supposed to be like Haha, we're
so victorious, but actually that is kind of what united
the Christian powers because you know, they were like in
fighting and shit, but they're literally like some of the
Christian powers were like in boats in which they were
like massacring each other because they hated each other. But
then they got there's his other boat that had left
Cyprus to give the news to the Republic of Venice
(19:04):
of what happened. And they intercepted that boat and they
told them and they're like shit, they killed our boy Braggaden. Okay,
like who needs this end fighting, Let's go like kill
the Ottomans. So that actually then led them to successfully
leading a battle in which they did then defeat the Ottomans.
But then the Ottomans a few years there did take
Cyprus over officially, so you know, it kind of united Europe.
(19:25):
Nothing brings people together like a common enemy. Yeah. Anyway,
and what happened was they brought the skin suit to
Constantinople and but then they think a few years later,
in like maybe fifteen eighty, someone snuck into where the
skin suit was being captain. They stole it and they
brought it back to the Republic of Venice and there
(19:48):
and they said it was as smooth as silk, the
skin suit. And now it currently allegedly they had built
a kind of like a nice monument to Braggaden inside
the church of Saint John and Saint Paul and Venice,
and apparently that they have like a vessel in which
the skin suit still sits. Wow, you can't see it,
(20:10):
so who knows if it's actually there, but I want
to see it. Yeah, we should go. Excuse me, we're
investigative reporters and we need to see the skin suit anyway.
That is the story of Marco Antonio Braggaden, who is
considered a great war hero. And you know he had
a good beard the end. Wow, thank you, Gabby. That
(20:32):
was fantastic. I feel traumatized now. Excellent, great a guarantee
on cadaver galves. We'll be right back. Okay, welcome back everyone.
I know after hearing Gabby's wonderful story, I know what
you're all thinking, what would it be like to be
(20:55):
skinned alive? Yes, not what it came to my brain.
But okay, I bet it's really fun. All right. Yeah,
so it sucks basically like it's bad? Does it what?
So begs the question? Begs the question? Does it hurt? Yes? Okay. So,
(21:16):
first of all, flaying went on the rise in the
Lucky year of nine to eleven BC. Oh, lucky lucky year.
It was a practice that was seen pretty much everywhere
all around the world, but it wasn't the most common
form of torture. But it was mostly used for the
treasonous bastards in medieval Europe, and they would they were
(21:39):
more about like flaying sections to get like information, you know,
from people, whereas in like China, for example, they would
maybe only just like remove the face, but oh no,
hold up, he'll remove the face, skin the face, skin face. Yeah.
So okay, okay, here's the part of body, my body,
(21:59):
I'd want them to flay, maybe like my thighs, oh,
because I get hit. Hide those the pant Oh, but
then it would probably hurt to have a pant on them.
But skirt or address skirts, and I don't wear that
sort of outfit, Taylor, Okay, So are you curious now
(22:21):
about the technique. I'm so curious. Okay, so this is
perhaps even just as bad or not worse. It's definitely
not worse, but um, in order to make the skinning easier,
they would often set you in boiling water or I
thought that's what I thought. Or they would strap you,
(22:43):
like keep you outside in the sun for hours, so
you're basically they're cooking. They're victims first, which makes the
skin a little bit easier to peel, which an aggressive
sunburn is bad, but being boiled alive and then just
like cooked before, it's just like the beginning, you know. Yea. Yeah,
(23:04):
Like one time I had a really bad sunburn and
then I got a massage because I'm an idiot, and
it hurts so bad. Oh my gosh. Well, like I
was making salmon this week and I didn't realize that
you could take the skin off after like you, I
don't know, fry, grill whatever, bake it. The skin just
comes off so easily once it's done, but like when
it's raw, it's really hard to take off. So I
(23:25):
understand why they would do that. Yeah, so, and you know,
people love a good like this might be like the
first you know, how people really enjoy like seeing or
like doing those like satisfying peels from like technology and whatnot.
Even like if you some people like to peel their
own skin from when they're sunburned and stuff. I'm not
(23:46):
saying I do that, but some people eat it, some
people peeling. Okay, okay, we're not going there. That's disgusting,
but you know peeling, Hey, it's not disgusting. If you
have a problem, it's fine. Or I was just thinking
awesome powers and gold member as the skin eating. Okay,
so after they cook you first, they're like next steps.
(24:09):
They start with like longer scores or like slashes, you know, breeze.
So they also they would either start with like the
face or the feet, but of course it was most
important to get the largest sections because the idea once
you've been you finished skinning them is so that you
can display the skin real nice and pretty somewhere. Oh good.
(24:33):
So it's like an esthetic procedure, yes, exactly. So once
they begin the peel, they're essentially ripping and tearing. Your nerves.
As we know, all of your nerves are like the
little messengers that tell our brain that there's pain. So
your brain is like, oh, shooters, that really hurts. Oh
(24:53):
oh shooters, I stole out right? People black out? Well, yeah,
you that's like best case scenario, okay, right, best case
scenario you die like quick, like from shaw or you
pass out because you're feeling literally everything. And also best
best case scenario, better case scenario, they did sharpen their
(25:15):
knives because otherwise it is far more like ripping and
tearing because if you have like you know so, so
you got to hope for a sharp knife and you
got to hope for that pass out. Most of them
would pass out at least by the time they got
to their waist, which is still too that's halfway, you know,
like too much, that's too much. Either way you go. Obviously,
(25:37):
there's also a lot of blood loss going on, and
as Gabby said, sometimes they're hung upside down. So think
about this for a second. Say they're going feet first
and you're being hung upside down, right, all of that
blood is rushing down your body. You can feel it.
You just feel the blood like you feel your skin
being peeled off. You feel the skin or the blood
(25:58):
like running down your skin and like dripping down off
of your face. So you're like more or less choking
in your own blood. Awful, Ah, I told you this
is really gory. And so that's gory about your skin
getting peeled off. Okay, So so yeah, that's also disgusting.
And then we can also just assume at this time
(26:19):
they didn't really understand like what bacteria was and that
it was a bad thing. So let's just assume that
they're not in a very sterile environment. So like you're
getting infected, Like you're like, all of this is happening
left and right at this getting infect Yeah, yes, absolutely,
so some have even survived the full flame. Oh no,
(26:40):
but that sucks. You will die from infection afterwards, like
after a day or so, you're gonna look like that
fucking body's exhibit for real walking around. Yeah. So so
really like there, I wouldn't even wish this on like
my greatest enemy, you know, I would not. I'm just kidding. I. Well,
(27:02):
then you need to be sure that your therapy in therapy, Yes, exactly.
This is really making me rethink the things that I
say in bed, because many times I'll say something like
I want to wear your skin, and now that I
know what the processes, I don't know if that's sexy. No,
I don't know if casually casually wearing somebody's skin is
(27:26):
sa I mean, Nica, it's fine. You can say it's
a fantasy, like in your fantasy you can flay people
and then put their skin back on and that's fine
and it's not painful. It's like fine, it's not that
I want to cause pain, that's not it. I just
want to wear. Just make sure make sure you give
them antibiotics as you're wearing their skin. Make sure that's
(27:47):
just sterile environment. Yeah, yeah, just say that sexily, just
like thanks guys, antibiotics. Also, this is going on, like
your skin, you're losing your skin, right, so you get
really cold because so you get cold too. So that's
so gross, like your nerves like Nita jot good. Yeah, exactly,
(28:07):
a little nerve jacket. So anyway, Nica, would you like
to lighten the d with another death? I don't know
how light actually, I'm sorry. I don't know if there's
any deaths in this one. It's okay, it's me. I'm
sure there are. But we're going to a really interesting
(28:28):
practice in the medieval times, not necessarily a death, though
there was much death going on, so I think that's why.
Oh it's on the backdrop of like mega death, so
I think it's okay. Also, I feel like a weird
ghost under my blanket. So yeah, Gabby has a blanket
on and looks like you look like you're in a
haunted house or something. I was thinking, cave Oh, okay,
(28:49):
cave ga, Gabby, the cave woman. I'm in a uterus.
It's a haunted uterus. It's a pregnancy scare. Ah boo,
so silly. Okay, So we're doing this. I thank you
Gabby for that funny joke. We're doing that. We're doing
this so we all know what the flagellum is, right, yeah, okay, wait,
(29:11):
like of a cell tale. Yeah, so I grabbed coffee
actually this morning with my partner and I was like,
everyone knows what phlagellum is, and they were like, um,
you don't know that. Okay, the public school system and
this country kind of sucks. And I was like, everyone
has to know what the flagellum is. It's the little
appendage from certain cells that look like a like a lash,
and they enable the cells to swim. You know. They're
(29:34):
found on like sperm, in bacteria and other cells and
and so no, I want to know. I want to
I want to post something on Instagram asking if everyone
knows what the flagellum is, because for me, it's like, oh,
I mean everyone, if you if I look at a
sperm cell, I'm not going to remember what the what
the what the round part looks like and like what
the name of it is, but I'm gonna remember the flagellum.
(29:55):
It's the squiggly do That's what I call it on
the sperm. See, yeah, the squiggly thing. In sex said,
we learn all about like the man stuff, but like
nobody tells us about like what happens to a woman.
But it's fine, that's true. That's true. And storks. No,
we don't have flagell well, we might have. I don't.
(30:16):
I actually don't know, Okay, anyway, so that is not
the flagellum that we're going to talk about today. There
was also a group of people, yes, in the Middle Ages,
called flagellents, different word, and they have nothing to do
with body cells and bacteria, and that's what we're gonna
get into today. But I just wanted to talk about sperm.
So flagellents were groups of people who would whip themselves
(30:39):
and the name of religion, and they were pretty popular
back in the day. I think the first recorded self
flagellations come from Martin Luther and other Christian leaders who
would teach that spirituality should manifest in the physical form. So, like,
there was one guy called Peter Damien and he was
a Christian monk from the eleventh century, so I'm not
a very fun guy, and he said that only those
(31:02):
who shared the sufferings of Christ could be saved and
they're or they had to hurt themselves so they could
like hurt in the same way that Christ hurt. Hurted.
Was hurt hurt? Yeah, was done hurted. It makes so
much sense. You guys. Yeah. Also, a flagellation for flagellum
are like very different words. But do they have Is
there a reason they're connect because they have flag but
(31:24):
the whip would look like the flagellum. Yeah, connection A
whip is like a real life sperm. I mean sperms
are real too, don't get me wrong. It's like basically
embodied sperm of the sperm um that I don't know
how we got here, but I'm going to try to
read us back in. So that's you started it. You
(31:48):
talked about the cells. I know, well it's well, it's
because I can't really say flagellent without thinking of the flagellum,
so I had to bring it up because there also
I know I would have brought it up at some
point in the story. Just get it out of the
way immediately, you know, adhd out of the way at
the start. Schedule it okay. So they believe that's the
(32:09):
only way that they could be saved, and so they
would hurt in the same way and do that and
have other people hurt themselves as well. There are, however,
other stories from ancient Rome where these eunuch priests would
self flagellate until they bled in this annual ritual to
the goddess Seybelle. I feel like I pronounced that wrong,
but she was a goddess, and they would usually do this.
(32:30):
While this is bad, well, priests who were being initiated
would castrate themselves, so you had like the priests who
would castrate themselves on this day, and then the other
priests that had already castrated themselves and they were eunuchs
would just self self flash self flash throughout the day,
and it would usually land on March twenty fourth. So
if anyone feels like celebrating March twenty fourth next year,
(32:51):
by all means, go ahead and do that. Yes, let's
encourage self harm. No, but don't, don't it's God. Yeah
that is not true, but anyway, so many like those
are just some of the stories. But obviously, self flagellation
and self harmful religion has existed since I'm sure before
(33:15):
ancient Roman times, and we might just not have it recorded.
But those are just sometimes and it's still kind of
popular today, like well, I don't know about popular, but
it's still practiced today, Okay, like some partitioners of Shia
Islam still self flagellate and many communities. They actually do
it once a year on the day of Ashura, which
is an Islamic holiday, and yes, Roman Catholics also sometimes
(33:36):
do it. It's there's like this not super secret but
kind of secret brotherhood called Dmanos Penitentes which means the
Penitent Brothers. They are curiously in New Mexico more than anything,
and they practice self flagillation in the name of Catholicism.
And then Pope John Paul the Second actually used to
self flagellate with a belt and also sleep on like straw.
(33:59):
I think that's just okay. Yeah, but anyways, we're gonna
go way way back to when it was the most popular.
Everyone was doing it. If you weren't doing it, what's up.
It was during the Black Death. Yes, that's a lot
of death because he people are dying in your story.
Thank you, great job. That's true. That's true. They are
(34:19):
so the Black Death. It's raging, it's crazy. Well, it's
the mid fourteenth century. People were dying and religious zelots
were like, oh, we have to do something about this.
So they take the Black Death personally as one does,
and they say, oh, it's because of our sins and
of our filth. Of course, people don't have to like
(34:40):
always relate things to themselves, you know, and yes they do.
Sometimes it's not about you, it's always about you. No,
that's actually a big lesson that I think a lot
of people learned in their twenties. It's like, it's not
always about you. Like I remember when my ex blocked
me after we broke up. I took it so personally
and then I was like, wait, maybe I'm too beautiful
and he literally cannot handle it and that's why he
(35:00):
blocked me. So it's not about me. It's not my problem.
It's not a me problem because anyways, like I'm still
learning that. Yeah, like you said, it was about me,
but it's like the opposite because you're just like too
amazing and that's okay. So these groups called flagellants came
together and they began practicing this ritual like all the
(35:22):
time everywhere because they were like, we need to end
the Black Death and this is what's going to happen.
The groups ranged from two hundred to three hundred people
to sometimes in the thousands, and what their game plan
was is they would basically roam from town to town
to self flagellate in public as penance and to bring
an end to the black death. Okay, they were like
(35:42):
the Avengers, you know, how how dramatic is that? Just
like a bunch of I just imagine of all being men,
but I'm surely there were women too. But they're just
like hitting themselves, you know, they're like, oh, stop hitting yourself,
Stop hitting yourself. Oh my gosh. Okay, they're like doing
it and they're looking at like dead staring people, being like,
we're doing this for you. Yeah. Literally, that's how they
(36:05):
would do it, and that's actually how they would recruit
a lot of their people, is like they would do
that and then ask people that are watching them from
the towns to repent. And that's how they like suddenly
gained so many numbers basically, which is crazy. But really
they're just like having a super spreading event. Yeah, I literally,
yeah exactly. So they would arrive in a town, they
would go straight to the church, and the bells in
(36:27):
the church would ring to alert the public that the
flagellans were here, you know, the sperm is here. So
they'd wear hoods and no shirts and chant litanies, which
actually there were women in this group of people as well.
So I found it really interesting that they got to
be shirtless as well. But I think, oh, good for them,
But this is also Europe. No no. Also I was
(36:51):
reading about it, and it's like people said that was
okay because they were wearing hoods, so they were like
their identities were covered. But still yeah, kind of kind
of progressive flagellents being progressive. Wow, titties out. Yeah, but
all those paintings from them those times their titties were
out all the time out. Yeah, maybe you're maybe painters
(37:12):
are just freaks. Yeah. Well, I love reading about like
um Royalty, especially like the princesses and queens who like
would have dresses like fixed so their titties could be
out just like and they would just like walk around
like that. It's like okay, girl, girl bos. So they
would chant their litanies and then they would go outside
(37:34):
three times a day, two times in the morning and
one in the evening, and they would practice self flagellation. Um.
The total time per day that they were whipping themselves
was eight hours daily. Good. I did this for thirty
three days straight to represent Jesus's age at crucifixion. That's
a lot eight hours a day, it's like nine to
(37:55):
five on the back. Dolly Parton said it first. So um,
Apparently flagellans could be as young as seven years old,
which is when, according to this sect, children's sins could
be accounted for. Oh damn, I got so many sins then, right,
(38:16):
been accumulating since seven? Wow? Yeah. And they couldn't speak
to each other, and they couldn't have contact with the
opposite sex, and they had to avoid shaving, bathing, changing clothes,
all of that. So that seems like that would be
a really great way to get the black play. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
for sure. They also had to sleep on straw. And
(38:37):
I also I really want to paint the picture of
the whip because it wasn't just like a sexy leather thing,
you know. I think sometimes we me think of whips
now as like the black leather bds and whips whatever,
And that's not what they were using. They were not
doing it for that particular reason. They It was a
stick with three thongs, which are the long leather parts
(39:01):
of a whip, and the thongs would have nails or
iron spite. Yeah, yeah, I find it and also find
it very interesting, like when they were recruiting people. Did
they just have these whips like on hand, like to
give like, okay, here you go, here's your craft sashion before. Yeah,
(39:22):
like a crafting, crafting with my buds. Maybe they're like
Jedis where they have to like the Jedies have to
make their own lightsabers. Maybe you have to make your
own whip, like a richual whip making. Yeah, that makes sense.
You gotta bring them out and be like, okay, we
gotta make your whips first, here's your supplies. Here's what
you do. Step one, get your stick to join your
(39:45):
cult um. Ok So it was kind of intense, and
the flagellants would whip themselves so hard that they would
draw blood, spraying crowds, and some people would think the
blood was holy because of their sacrifice, and they would
put the blood on their eyes or in their bodies,
leaving that it had miraculous properties. So you can just
(40:08):
imagine the picture that we're painting here. You know, they're
on the town square encircle, chanting and whipping themselves. Other
times the iron spikes or nails would get stuck inside
the flesh and it would take two or three tries
to dislodge the body, sometimes taking chunks of flesh with it.
I don't like. I hate when flesh is described in
(40:29):
chunk chunks. I hate it. Two I wrote it hate
the word chunk. M It doesn't sound cute. It's just
it is cute if it's a big, fat cat chunk.
But that's yeah, chunk, I guess, but not if it's
flesh chunks, Oh, a little chunk. Also, I like with
them being sprayed with blood. It sounds like a cool
concert or something, you know, like when people are like
(40:51):
spraying champagne bottles, but it's blood instead. Yeah. I when
I used to go to Catholic Mass when I was younger,
and the priest would spray us with holy water, I'd
be like, hey, all excited, open my mouth for thee
oh my gosh. Anyway, I thought it was so fun. Okay,
(41:11):
so okay, so I know what y'all were thinking. Did
it work? Yeah, it didn't work. Well no, So we'll
never really know because maybe maybe somehow their prayers did
work and their sacrifices did work. But what we do
know is that the Black death raged on even after
the pope proclaimed that flagellents were heretics and excommunicating them,
(41:34):
and they didn't stop at first. They were like, we're
going to keep going. But then other people in Europe
started realizing that flagelens were supposed to be excommunicated, and
they started treating them differently. And then flagellents kind of
dissolved a little bit. They came back again in the
sixteenth century a little bit, but for the most part
Medieval Black Death flagellents kind of just like fell apart.
(41:56):
The group fell apart like any good boy band. It
has to fall apart at some point, that's true, yeah,
And so they kind of dissolved. And then also another
reason why we don't think it worked is because some
people notice the flagellents brought the play to towns where
the plague had in surface to first gotta be set
(42:17):
it first, exactly, and so flageleents were actually denied entry
into the towns because they were like, you're carrying this disease,
you're not actually helping. And so what they would do
is they would wait outside of the town and basically
do the self flagelling flag flogging outside of the town
more because they were like, we're so bad, we have
(42:39):
the plane no, that's not funny, not funny, but it's
just like, no, I found it very funny. I found
that very very funny. Actually, like, bro, you're not helping,
Yes we are. No, you're literally not I know. And
then they like feel more guilty so they do it more. Yeah,
so a fun time that like not done it and
(43:00):
that would have been the best solution. Absolutely, yeah, staying
home and so full distancing would have been the best solution.
But you know, if they didn't know it then and
people barely do it now, then I don't I think
I've lost hope for a humanity. Well, thank you, Nika.
I'm going to talk just about that when we come back. Okay,
(43:24):
welcome back. As we all know now, unfortunately we're too
familiar with plagues and people are still doing weird shit
to try and fix it. But disclaimer of guys, please
just do as scientists tell you and don't do weird shit.
There's a plague. What's happening? We're in a gabby? Did
you know that what we are in a plague? Isn't
(43:46):
that crazy? We're so random. It's such a vibe, honestly,
such a vibe. It's something it's not I hate COVID.
It's killed people. I love. It's terrible. Yeah, so we're
going to talk about the Black Death further. So this
was a plague that was originated from bacteria that fleas
would carry on rats. Barf, barf, barf. That's discussed. Please
(44:10):
please are canceled. But love rats, they're just doing the
Lord's world. Don't talk about don't talk about those things.
I know our listeners get real triggered by time about rats.
I don't like them. And actually I know someone who
has one as a pet and their lat or like
(44:31):
a mouse or a bacteria or a the R word okay,
and she's like, they're very intelligent and actually great pets,
but I just cannot. Also, apparently they're like ridiculously clean,
but then how do they get the plague? Huh? Well,
that explained to me that rat because this was medieval
times and shit was really dirty. Then they didn't know
(44:53):
about bacteria and stuff like that. They didn't know that
being clean was good. Okay, I didn't even like wash
their hands yet. They didn't know to wash your hands.
So fleas are on the rats, but they didn't know
that they religious. Like all of a sudden, people were
getting these like welts all over their body, like predominently
in their like armpits and groin grells. The welts would
(45:15):
leak m pus and blood, say it pus and blood,
and you would also have flu like symptoms, fever, chills, eggs, vomit,
and Nika, I will spare you the D word, so diarrhea.
I decided to do that. I decided I'm a bad girl.
(45:36):
I'm gonna I actively decided not to bully you, Nica,
and I decided violence. Yeah, well I got me choosing violence.
Nothing surprising, thanks for ruining my day. It's almost my season. Well,
I mean it's currently your season, though I know Libra
Libra season is so nice and airy and pretty, and
(45:59):
then Scorpio season is like kremlin time. They'll Scorpio season
is the season where you would wear somebody else's skin, Nika.
So yeah, well my scorpios actually, my mars and my
venus are in Scorpio, so I actually I love I
love Scorpio energy. But Libre season is just very graceful, okay,
(46:21):
and like pretty. And I said, I wasn't going to
bully you, but you're you're taking just trying to defend myself. Okay,
go ahead, Okay. So, as you can imagine, people have
always been doing weird, weird stuff to try and cure
(46:41):
diseases and um like peeing on yourself. Yeah, people do exactly. Yeah.
So there are a few other tactics besides lashing themselves
that people would do, many of which were rubbing various
herbs and roots and stuff on the boils. But they
(47:03):
were like essentially like making their own potions. They would
also drink vinegar, mercury, and even arsenic, which I'm sure
you can guess how that went. They all die. Mercury
drives people crazy well, but also arsenic, like people were
just killing themselves. Oh yeah, I know, no, I know that.
But actually one of the more popular potions is actually
(47:25):
used today and non traditional like medical type practices. It's
called four thieves vinegar. There's one ingredient per thief, that's
why it's four thieves. It most commonly had like vinegar obviously,
sage cloves, rosemary, and today it's like it's like a
bad antibacterial tonic to keep germs at bay, which is
(47:46):
very interesting to me. Does it like work? I mean,
I don't know, no, I mean, it's not like it's
not bad for you, but it didn't like cure the
Black Day definitely not so um. Others other people would
like overheat themselves to essentially try and smoke out the disease.
People did that with COVID two. Yeah, well people, but
(48:07):
they refused to do the one thing that actually worked.
So yeah, so they sit by fires. Others would try
blood letting, which was actually relative was a very popular thing,
so they put leeches on their skin to like draw
the bad blood. And you guys, being a leech collector
during this time was quite the hot career people were making.
I thought, Taylor, I literally thought you were to say,
(48:30):
being a leech collector myself, I was like, what, no,
you collect more than porcelain horses? What? Okay, I did earlier?
I know I needed I needed to get back to
you lovingly. Okay, back at you? Did they use back then? No? Okay?
But so what about ketamine? So no, would you quit
(48:53):
guessing and just listen? Yeah? Okay, So they would use leeches, okay,
other people? So so there was also like there was
a big group of people obviously they decided to use
religious cures. So in addition to what Nico was talking about.
They would also use serpents, which were obviously synonymous with
(49:15):
the devil, so they like chop up snakes and rub
them on their skin to draw quote, draw out the devil.
And then others would pluck a chicken butt and rub
the bare bum of a chicken on you until the
chicken got sick, and then they were like, oh, well
the chicken has absorbed my sickness, which is really rude
(49:37):
to chickens and also the snakes. Yeah, but you guys,
the most effective stop the spread is drum roll. Are
you ready? Yeah. Social distancing death is literally when social
distancing was invented. So, as Nika kind of mentioned, like,
(49:58):
it got to the point where like these were these
super spreader events, people going out and like you know,
trying to bring people into do the lash, and so
it got to a point where they're like they started
monitoring and they were like, yeah, you can't come in.
You were you were sick and you were going to
get us sick. They didn't understand like the spread of germs.
They that concept wasn't there, but they understood that it
(50:18):
had to do with like proximity of other people. So
they figured that out, and so that's when they decided, hey,
stop coming near us, and you guys need to stay home.
So they started saying like you gotta stay like they
started selling people that they had to say home. Some
instances they would have like special areas that were just
for people who were sick that they would just stay quarantine.
(50:39):
So they were literally quarantining. And that's ultimately like what
was reduced the spread, and it came up because of
black death, so it eventually it slowed down after like
four USh years, so guys were two down, two years down,
two to go. But yeah, you know, but get vaccinated.
(50:59):
So there you have it. You're sick, stay home. But
what I find hilarious is like social distancing was to
crazy concept like proximity, but then putting rubbing a chicken
on the welt and then the chicken getting sick, it
like that made perfect to them. I didn't. I mean,
that's how it's still like today, right, I mean, people
are like social discing and dumb and they want to
(51:21):
have viber mactin instead. It seems like that, Oh I
mean yeah, no, I listen, yeah, so people are historians
are gonna be talking about this in fifty years and
be like that was so dumb. A new plague will
come up and then it'll just the next generation of kidavergals.
They're gonna be talking anyway. I cut you off, Taylor,
you had a big point. I did have another point.
So this was actually the Black Plague was essentially kind
(51:44):
of the end of the what is called the Medieval times,
because people were starting to realize that these quote religious
cures didn't work. They were like, wait, this isn't so
they kind of started to change their thinking. They started
to figure out that it's like proximity and that germs
(52:06):
would like spread and they So this was kind of
the beginning of or like the in the end of
medieval times, in the beginning of more modern times, kind
of like how right now people are realizing that the
system we're under is total bullshit. I mean, that's a
whole other podcast. But yeah, oh yeah, I'm not I'm
(52:27):
I mean, yeah, I'm just like, well, what's wrong with
the world, Nika, what are you talking about? I just
want to thank the flagellum of the bacteria from the
Black Death for bringing the medieval people into the enlightened ages,
which is an ironic way to state that, But okay,
(52:49):
thank you, get Nika, You're welcome. Okay, Well, do we
have any closing thoughts? People, get vaccinated, quarantine if you're sick,
if you're not feeling well, stay home, get tested, don't spread,
don't splatter your blood on people. Yeah, yeah, that too,
unless it's consensual, Unless you can do whatever you want
(53:10):
as long as contentual exactly. All right, Well, thank you
everyone for listening to this week's glory episode of cadaver Gals.
Until next week. Bye. Cadaver Gals is a production of
(53:36):
School of Humans in iHeartRadio. It is hosted, written, and
all that good stuff by Nika Jarte, Gabby Watts, and
me Taylor Church. You can follow us on Twitter and
Instagram if it's still there at calaver Gals.
School of Humans. Hello one, Hello all, Welcome to this
week's episode of Cadaver Gals, the podcast where we talk
about all the crazy, silly ways people have died throughout history.
We tell ourselves it's to cope with our own mortality.
But really, I think we're just fear mongers. But it's okay.
(00:28):
I'm your host Taylor, along with Nika Hi and Gabby. Hello,
and today we're going to talk about a hot Venetian
war commander who lost his skin and the Black Death.
So this is actually a pretty gory episode, so I
must warn you. Trigger warnings include, but not limited to,
(00:52):
playing lashing, torture, and plagues kill the music. Okay, welcome
(01:12):
back Cadaver Pals. Gabby, would you like to start us
off and take us on a journey? Oh? I do
want to take everyone on a journey of my multi
level marketing plan that I'm now going to pitch to you. No,
I'm just kidding. I don't. I'm not cool enough to.
I've never been asked to be part of a multi
level marketing scheme out that means you're not a sheep bull.
(01:36):
Oh but I guess though. Okay, thank you, I'll make
up my own and I'll invite you both. Okay, great,
all right, Well we're gonna go back to the sixteenth century.
Wow wow, wow, Okay, this is pike. You know, if
think of previous episodes of cadaver Gals, they're doing the
rat torture in the Netherlands or whatever. So let's like
(01:58):
be in that period. You know, we're like they're doing
gross shit. Anyway, So this is about Marco Antonio bragged
in he was a celebrated Venetian war commander and he
was like, you know, they called him like a sexy
late forty something with as a historians call it, with
a heavy beard. So you know, I'll never forget. I
was traveling with my brother once and I walked by
(02:21):
this guy on a plane and I looked at my
brother and I go, that guy's hot. And my brother
looked at me pain in his eyes, and he goes, damn,
you really do have daddy issues, because the guy was like,
you know, adapt and rumble daddy. Yeah, clearly grizzly beard whatever.
So yeah, i'd probably be into this Venetian commander. Yeah,
you probably would be. I actually know you probably want
(02:44):
it because he was like a heavy patriot and he
like was took things very like seriously, and he was
very grave, as they say back then. So I don't know,
I don't think he'd be that much fun though he
could be kind of the the push to your pool
or the whatever, the opposite sort of not Yeah. I
mean also he was a war commander, he was a senator.
He was also a lawyer. Soup were well rounded. Good
(03:06):
for him, so ambitious, Yeah, look at him go though
maybe jobs were easier back then. I don't know. So
at this time, in like fifteen seventy one when this
story is set, there was a big gass conflict amongst
the European Christian powers and then the Muslim Ottoman Empire,
Like the Ottoman Empire was rapidly expanding their empire, you know,
(03:27):
and there's lots of battles for control at this time
of the Mediterranean Sea. They're like everybody wants some of
that sea water, right, and so the Republic of Venice
controlled Cyprus, and the Ottomans were determined to take it
over so that they could be the ultimate rulers of
the sea. I mean, that's what I'm always saying, you
gotta get Cyprus. So there was like this big Ottoman army.
(03:51):
It was under the mega Christian hater Lala Mustafa Pasha.
And what they did Lala Mustafa Pasha. I mean Pasha's
is the name of Like it's just like the title
of like a commander. I'm sorry, but his first name
La La Yeah, I mean maybe an Ottoman that's pronounced differently,
but I love it. Ottoman's like a dead language, so
(04:12):
I couldn't. I wouldn't know. Actually, I don't know even
know if they're speaking Ottoman at this point, um fact
check us. I don't know. Okay, anyway, so what they did,
They're like, okay, we're gonna go attack the capital of Cyprus.
And they killed this other Venetian war commander and they
sent his head, that guy's head over to Bragg and
then being like we got your boy. And I love
(04:33):
when they send a head. I love it. Yeah to
go yeah, yeah, yeah, I want to hope. I just
really hope they like catapulted it or like I wonder
what kind of like packaging, Like I wonder how many
stamps you need for a head? Right? Also, is it
like a square box? Is it a round box? Is it? Yeah,
there's definitely not a round box, a round box. Wow,
(04:57):
they don't have put pizzas and round boxes. Okay, I've
been like a baggie or like a round bag or
something that's like ventilation. We don't know, like that Flat
Earth Society quote. I don't know if it was real,
but it was like we have flat Earth. There's all
around the globe or something, and it's just like no, no,
silly huge thing. Okay. Yeah. So Braggaden's at this place
(05:21):
in Cyprus that's like on the the eastern side of it,
like on the coast. That's called Famagusta, which is such
a fun name. Okay, this story are amazing Flaala Famagusta,
Marco Antonio, you know, we got all sorts of characters.
But anyway, so he's there and it's like the last
strong cold in Cyprus. So the Ottomans are going to
come get them, right first. The Ottomans come and they're
(05:44):
just like, Braggaden, Haha, you should just fucking surrender, dude,
because they have all these like dead bodies and also
live prisoners that they're just like parading around the gates
of the city being like ha haha, we have all
these things and we're so strong and powerful. But then
Braggaden was like, shut the fuck up. I have rule.
I have like direct orders from the up above people,
not God, but like higher up in the middle military
(06:06):
being like, hey, you may not surrender. You gotta keep cypress.
We gotta be rulers of the Mediterranean, see bro. So
he was very determined. But then a huge battle ensues
for like months. The Ottomans attack by land and sea,
cut off any resources, and they're also like digging tunnels
under the city and putting explosives under their walls. And
(06:26):
then the other Christian powers that are kind of uncontinental
Europe are like, hey, we're gonna come help you, but
they couldn't get their shit together. They're just like the
Christians were in fighting too, between like the Spanish people
and the Hapsburgs and the Romans, and it was just
like they were having they were having a hard time
organizing by the Romans, I mean the pope, yeah right,
it was like, yeah, the Christians were messing at this point, honestly.
(06:48):
And then at one point Mustafa was like, hey, Bro,
like you're doing really badly, so I'm going to offer,
like you can surrender now if you want to, Like
you guys can go like I'll even like y'all leave
the city and like go do your own thing, and like, yeah,
that's very nice with him Wragedon's like, dude, I can't
do that. I have to defend the city to honor Venice.
(07:10):
Like look at my heavy beard. Do you think I'm
just fucking around? Obviously not. Yeah, And like all the
people in Famagusta are like what the fuck braggedon? Like,
we need you to give up because we've already eaten
all the food. There's like not even cats left to eat.
So I hate when they take away the resources while
things are under siege. It's so inhumanitary. Inhumanity, yes, and
(07:36):
made that's what it is. It's not. It's inhumane. Also,
it makes me think my cat, Jembo's right here, and
he's Here's the thing. I don't want to eat Jembo,
mostly because he's not he doesn't have any lean meats.
He's just all fat. So I need to get him
on the treadmill in case there is a siege on
the city of Atlanta, Georgia. So right, of course, I
(07:58):
mean it's not out of the question. Wait, it's do
you know something that I don't know Taylor, Oh no, okay, no,
I'm just fear among Okay, good Um. Anyway, bragged in
maybe he was a cat person. He was like, okay,
you're right, we did eat all the cats. We have
more of food. Everyone's dead, basically, so let's surrender, why not.
So then they go and deliver a letter to the Pasha,
(08:19):
to Musifa Pasha, and they're like, bro, we surrender, and
he's like, Nito Burrito, y'all can get the fuck out
and go to crete. Okay, Like that's fine, you guys
can go, And so a lot of the Venetians and
Christians they start. Also, here's the thing I don't think
we really need to be on bragged inside, because they
were also occupying Cypress, which was like a Greek state
(08:40):
or something at some point, and basically they had enslaved
all the Grecians, so like, you don't have to feel
bad for him, like and yeah, and the Ottomans were
coming in being like hey, I mean the Ottomans were
like a rough crowd sometimes like they would they had
a lot of like interesting violence in their own interesting
form of slavery. But they they were like, hey, Greeks,
you can just like do your own thing now and
(09:00):
like own land and stuff if we take over, So
like maybe that would have been good, but also it
probably would have been weird to like no one, no
empire was really doing the best job in terms of
like human rights and stuff. But anyway, so they're gonna
go surrender, and the Pasha's like, yeah, bro, that's chill.
But then Braggedon goes over, like he actually leaves the
city with his crew of boys. He's like three hundred
(09:21):
soldiers with him, and they're going up to Mustafa Pasha's
tent and to give him to the officially surrender. And
also I thought this was really funny to like literally
give him the keys to the city, you know, just
like here's the gate, you know, even though they had
blown through the walls, so I don't really feel like
they needed as much. They could only put their own
locks on. You know. It's like their thing loved symbolism.
(09:41):
I was going to say, it's a metaphor exactly, and
they loved giving objects in order and like having the
objects have meaning. Yeah, so like the literal keys to
the city. So at first it seems like chill, Like
Braggedon goes in there, and he like kisses Mustafa's ring
and stuff, which is probably like degrading to him or whatever,
but he did it. But then it seems quite civil.
(10:02):
But then the meeting just goes off the fucking rails,
like Mustapha's about to get super down and dirty. It's
gonna be like and no one really knows why he
did it. It might because he was like annoyed at
Braggaden because Braggedden could have like surrendered earlier and then
the Ottomans wouldn't have lost as many people as they did.
And like also they're like maybe Braggaden might have killed
some like Muslim prisoners after they had already signed the surrender,
(10:23):
so I d K. But he's the Pasha is really mad,
and first thing that he does he orders his soldiers
to go and kill all of Braggaden's boys who he
had brought with him, like those three hundred dudes. So
what they do. They go out there, they behead all
these dudes, all of Braggaden's dudes, and Braggaden's like, what
the fuck's happening, and they're like, hey, bro, we fucking
hate your guts. And what they do with bragged In
(10:44):
is instead of killing him. Right, then they're like, hey,
let's have some fun with it. With what they do
is they cut off his ears and his nose. Oh okay,
which is double insulting because apparently that's a punishment for
like a common criminal. Oh heaven forbid. And he's a
fancy boy. He's got a heavy beard and a grave expression.
He wants the fancy punishment, not the commonish. Yeah, and
(11:06):
that's what he got. But they beheaded all of his
boys who had brought with him, and then they stacked
up their heads outside of the Pasha's tent. So a
cool like insider Instagram, you know style idea is just
like a head mural. Yeah, like a head mural. Yeah.
It was really beautiful, you know, a very nice, very
good touch. Um. And then what they do after they
cut off Braggedon's ears and nose, which out like your
(11:29):
nose out as you probably. I just feel like, does
your brain lake out of your face if you cut
your nose off? Probably not, that's not what your brain is,
but it just I feel like it holds things together. Right.
People can be of your face. People can be noseless though,
because like people who had really bad syphilis back in
the day also would lose their noses and they were fine,
(11:51):
and they would actually walk around with gold noses. We've
talked about this. Oh oh yeah, that's right. They take
breaky right exactly. I think that's what it was. I
don't think it's necessarily healthy to be without a nose,
but it is possible, probably not long term, though, Gobby.
We are wondering if it's just the tippity whippity or
just like it, you know, because there's like cartilage on
(12:13):
the end, but then there's like bone. So yeah, I
don't I don't know how much of the nose it was. Okay,
all right, that's okay, you know, because let's just say
that the Ottoman and the Venetian sources greatly differ on
what happened, so they might have had different parts of
the nose defined. I don't know. But anyway, after they
(12:34):
do that to him, they're like, hey, let's him humiliate
you more. So what they do is they literally turn
them into an ass. They like, they give him one
of those like bridles that like donkeys and mules have,
and then they put like two buckets on the side
of it filled with dirt and he has to go
around like the Ottoman encampment and everyone and look at this.
They all yell at him, being like ha ha, you
(12:55):
have to convert to Islam, and he's like, I will
not convert to Islam. Torture my body but not my soul.
Oh my god, mortifying for him, all pourable, boy, poor boy.
Also like he can't hear at this point, his nose
is off well, so when they cut off his ear holes,
he can still Yeah, he could still hear, just like
it's probably hearing maybe hurts a little better or something.
(13:18):
They didn't like scoop it out, you know how you
oh what na nice? That's nasty. Also, I will say
when you said turned him into an ass, I honestly,
Gabby thought you chose another magical And I was about
to be like, that's not real. So he's being paraded
around and stuff, and then every time he passes by
Mustafa Pasha's tent he has to like prostrate himself and
(13:40):
kiss the ground and how embarrassing. And then he has
to eat some of the dirt that's in his buckets,
which you know could be nice because it takes less
weight off your shoulders. You just eat the dirt. Um,
But Meanwhile, you know, they've loaded all these like Christians
and the Venetian people onto boats and they're about to
like scedaddle to crete and they don't really know what's
going on. But then at this point the Ottoman soldiers
(14:03):
come over and like start killing all of them on
the boats, and the ones they don't kill, they're like, hey,
we we'll just enslave you. And then they starting and
they hang them up from chains and kind of thing
like the like the prison part of their boats. Jail
jail boat, your boat jail, got it. And then they're like, okay,
bragged in, let's go do something else fun. This is
like he has a cool like torture itinerary. So after
(14:24):
he's going in like the Ottoman encampment, they bring him
over to the boats and what they do is they
chain him up to like the mast head of the boat,
you know, kind of like a sexy mermaid or whatever.
And then after that they get bored of that, I guess,
so they like chain him to a chair with a
string on him and they keep dunking him in the sea,
and then you know, you get bored of that, so
(14:45):
you have to do something else. So then he they
were like, okay, well we're gonna do now. We're gonna
take you to the town's square. And at this point,
you know, he's not doing so well, like the dunk
the sea dunking dragged around the mutilation, he's not feeling
that great. So they take him to the town square
and they had already converted the church into a mosque,
(15:06):
so swift. And they find a butcher and they're like, hey, butcher,
sharpen your knives. We got a task for you. And
he's like, okay, let me sharpen them up. And there
it's like a like a whipping post that, you know,
just like a quaint whipping post in the middle of
the square. I guess you just used to have, you know,
just like a public whipping you know, fun funding game
(15:27):
sort of thing. But they tie him to that, but
they tie him to that with his feet first, so
he's hanging upside down and they get the butcher to
come over and they're like, okay, now, flay the funk
out of this dude. So they just he then he
takes his knife and he starts skinning him. Okay, braggad in.
The butcher does no, no, no, yes, he does. Wait
(15:50):
when you say skinning, do you mean like skinning like
while like while he's being flogged, or do you mean
skinning as in grabbing the knife and actually skinning him
grabbing the knife and actually skinning him. I don't know
if they actually whipped him on the whipping post. That
was just sort of the thing that they used to
hang all inclusive torture post. So yeah, no, they literally
(16:11):
skin him, starting with his feet. But they also are like,
hey man, we want you to do a good job
skinning him so we can have like the full skin
sort of like intact, like not strips, you know, we
want like big sections of the dude. Why what were
they going to do with it? Something fun and flirty?
But reports do say that this point bragged in does
die um And they say before they reached his navel,
(16:33):
which begs the question would you rather be skinned feet
first or head first? That begs the question. It begs
the question begging. Yeah, I mean I think feet first
is probably best. Yeah, same, So anyway isn't easy? Would
you rather? Okay? Is it? It's an easy one? Whatever
(16:55):
was going to kill me first is what I would want? Probably, Okay,
So what do you know what they did with the skin.
Oh yeah. So the next day they have the skin
and what they do is they stuff it full of
straw and they sew it back together, so he's like
a little skin suit straw man. And then they put
the straw man on top of a cow. How embarrassing.
And then they put his little outfit on, his little
(17:16):
Venetian Republic senator outfit on, and the outfit included a
little parasol apparently, and then they like, this actually happened
in his history. Yes, this actually happened. And then they
put them on, and then they take the cow and
they paraded around like the city being like we won. Anyway.
After they do that, eventually the Ottomans set out to
(17:38):
see to go back to the Golden Horn, to go
back to Constantinople or a stumble whatever it's called at
this point, and they hang his skin up on their
like flag posts, so they kind of like hang up
little straw skin suit man on as like a flag
on their boat. That's disgusting. I mean, all of this
(17:59):
is disgusting, but yes, yes, so they do that. Love
to visualize it, I imagine. I I wonder if there's
like those few like Ottoman soldiers who were like, bro,
this is like kind of gross, Like do we have
to have his little skin suits flapping in the wind,
Like imagine the smell the sound of the skin flapping
the well, the smell is probably fine because at this
point in the sun, like his skin is like leathering,
(18:22):
so tan and stuff. So it's like that part like
the body would yeah, and a nice like leather bound
books all a like anchor man. Anyway, he didn't get
a burial, did he. No, I don't know what happened
to the body. But it's kind of funny as they
were leaving. Not funny, it's just kind of like this
(18:44):
them killing Braggaden was supposed to be like Haha, we're
so victorious, but actually that is kind of what united
the Christian powers because you know, they were like in
fighting and shit, but they're literally like some of the
Christian powers were like in boats in which they were
like massacring each other because they hated each other. But
then they got there's his other boat that had left
Cyprus to give the news to the Republic of Venice
(19:04):
of what happened. And they intercepted that boat and they
told them and they're like shit, they killed our boy Braggaden. Okay,
like who needs this end fighting, Let's go like kill
the Ottomans. So that actually then led them to successfully
leading a battle in which they did then defeat the Ottomans.
But then the Ottomans a few years there did take
Cyprus over officially, so you know, it kind of united Europe.
(19:25):
Nothing brings people together like a common enemy. Yeah. Anyway,
and what happened was they brought the skin suit to
Constantinople and but then they think a few years later,
in like maybe fifteen eighty, someone snuck into where the
skin suit was being captain. They stole it and they
brought it back to the Republic of Venice and there
(19:48):
and they said it was as smooth as silk, the
skin suit. And now it currently allegedly they had built
a kind of like a nice monument to Braggaden inside
the church of Saint John and Saint Paul and Venice,
and apparently that they have like a vessel in which
the skin suit still sits. Wow, you can't see it,
(20:10):
so who knows if it's actually there, but I want
to see it. Yeah, we should go. Excuse me, we're
investigative reporters and we need to see the skin suit anyway.
That is the story of Marco Antonio Braggaden, who is
considered a great war hero. And you know he had
a good beard the end. Wow, thank you, Gabby. That
(20:32):
was fantastic. I feel traumatized now. Excellent, great a guarantee
on cadaver galves. We'll be right back. Okay, welcome back everyone.
I know after hearing Gabby's wonderful story, I know what
you're all thinking, what would it be like to be
(20:55):
skinned alive? Yes, not what it came to my brain.
But okay, I bet it's really fun. All right. Yeah,
so it sucks basically like it's bad? Does it what?
So begs the question? Begs the question? Does it hurt? Yes? Okay. So,
(21:16):
first of all, flaying went on the rise in the
Lucky year of nine to eleven BC. Oh, lucky lucky year.
It was a practice that was seen pretty much everywhere
all around the world, but it wasn't the most common
form of torture. But it was mostly used for the
treasonous bastards in medieval Europe, and they would they were
(21:39):
more about like flaying sections to get like information, you know,
from people, whereas in like China, for example, they would
maybe only just like remove the face, but oh no,
hold up, he'll remove the face, skin the face, skin face. Yeah.
So okay, okay, here's the part of body, my body,
(21:59):
I'd want them to flay, maybe like my thighs, oh,
because I get hit. Hide those the pant Oh, but
then it would probably hurt to have a pant on them.
But skirt or address skirts, and I don't wear that
sort of outfit, Taylor, Okay, So are you curious now
(22:21):
about the technique. I'm so curious. Okay, so this is
perhaps even just as bad or not worse. It's definitely
not worse, but um, in order to make the skinning easier,
they would often set you in boiling water or I
thought that's what I thought. Or they would strap you,
(22:43):
like keep you outside in the sun for hours, so
you're basically they're cooking. They're victims first, which makes the
skin a little bit easier to peel, which an aggressive
sunburn is bad, but being boiled alive and then just
like cooked before, it's just like the beginning, you know. Yea. Yeah,
(23:04):
Like one time I had a really bad sunburn and
then I got a massage because I'm an idiot, and
it hurts so bad. Oh my gosh. Well, like I
was making salmon this week and I didn't realize that
you could take the skin off after like you, I
don't know, fry, grill whatever, bake it. The skin just
comes off so easily once it's done, but like when
it's raw, it's really hard to take off. So I
(23:25):
understand why they would do that. Yeah, so, and you know,
people love a good like this might be like the
first you know, how people really enjoy like seeing or
like doing those like satisfying peels from like technology and whatnot.
Even like if you some people like to peel their
own skin from when they're sunburned and stuff. I'm not
(23:46):
saying I do that, but some people eat it, some
people peeling. Okay, okay, we're not going there. That's disgusting,
but you know peeling, Hey, it's not disgusting. If you
have a problem, it's fine. Or I was just thinking
awesome powers and gold member as the skin eating. Okay,
so after they cook you first, they're like next steps.
(24:09):
They start with like longer scores or like slashes, you know, breeze.
So they also they would either start with like the
face or the feet, but of course it was most
important to get the largest sections because the idea once
you've been you finished skinning them is so that you
can display the skin real nice and pretty somewhere. Oh good.
(24:33):
So it's like an esthetic procedure, yes, exactly. So once
they begin the peel, they're essentially ripping and tearing. Your nerves.
As we know, all of your nerves are like the
little messengers that tell our brain that there's pain. So
your brain is like, oh, shooters, that really hurts. Oh
(24:53):
oh shooters, I stole out right? People black out? Well, yeah,
you that's like best case scenario, okay, right, best case
scenario you die like quick, like from shaw or you
pass out because you're feeling literally everything. And also best
best case scenario, better case scenario, they did sharpen their
(25:15):
knives because otherwise it is far more like ripping and
tearing because if you have like you know so, so
you got to hope for a sharp knife and you
got to hope for that pass out. Most of them
would pass out at least by the time they got
to their waist, which is still too that's halfway, you know,
like too much, that's too much. Either way you go. Obviously,
(25:37):
there's also a lot of blood loss going on, and
as Gabby said, sometimes they're hung upside down. So think
about this for a second. Say they're going feet first
and you're being hung upside down, right, all of that
blood is rushing down your body. You can feel it.
You just feel the blood like you feel your skin
being peeled off. You feel the skin or the blood
(25:58):
like running down your skin and like dripping down off
of your face. So you're like more or less choking
in your own blood. Awful, Ah, I told you this
is really gory. And so that's gory about your skin
getting peeled off. Okay, So so yeah, that's also disgusting.
And then we can also just assume at this time
(26:19):
they didn't really understand like what bacteria was and that
it was a bad thing. So let's just assume that
they're not in a very sterile environment. So like you're
getting infected, Like you're like, all of this is happening
left and right at this getting infect Yeah, yes, absolutely,
so some have even survived the full flame. Oh no,
(26:40):
but that sucks. You will die from infection afterwards, like
after a day or so, you're gonna look like that
fucking body's exhibit for real walking around. Yeah. So so
really like there, I wouldn't even wish this on like
my greatest enemy, you know, I would not. I'm just kidding. I. Well,
(27:02):
then you need to be sure that your therapy in therapy, Yes, exactly.
This is really making me rethink the things that I
say in bed, because many times I'll say something like
I want to wear your skin, and now that I
know what the processes, I don't know if that's sexy. No,
I don't know if casually casually wearing somebody's skin is
(27:26):
sa I mean, Nica, it's fine. You can say it's
a fantasy, like in your fantasy you can flay people
and then put their skin back on and that's fine
and it's not painful. It's like fine, it's not that
I want to cause pain, that's not it. I just
want to wear. Just make sure make sure you give
them antibiotics as you're wearing their skin. Make sure that's
(27:47):
just sterile environment. Yeah, yeah, just say that sexily, just
like thanks guys, antibiotics. Also, this is going on, like
your skin, you're losing your skin, right, so you get
really cold because so you get cold too. So that's
so gross, like your nerves like Nita jot good. Yeah, exactly,
(28:07):
a little nerve jacket. So anyway, Nica, would you like
to lighten the d with another death? I don't know
how light actually, I'm sorry. I don't know if there's
any deaths in this one. It's okay, it's me. I'm
sure there are. But we're going to a really interesting
(28:28):
practice in the medieval times, not necessarily a death, though
there was much death going on, so I think that's why.
Oh it's on the backdrop of like mega death, so
I think it's okay. Also, I feel like a weird
ghost under my blanket. So yeah, Gabby has a blanket
on and looks like you look like you're in a
haunted house or something. I was thinking, cave Oh, okay,
(28:49):
cave ga, Gabby, the cave woman. I'm in a uterus.
It's a haunted uterus. It's a pregnancy scare. Ah boo,
so silly. Okay, So we're doing this. I thank you
Gabby for that funny joke. We're doing that. We're doing
this so we all know what the flagellum is, right, yeah, okay, wait,
(29:11):
like of a cell tale. Yeah, so I grabbed coffee
actually this morning with my partner and I was like,
everyone knows what phlagellum is, and they were like, um,
you don't know that. Okay, the public school system and
this country kind of sucks. And I was like, everyone
has to know what the flagellum is. It's the little
appendage from certain cells that look like a like a lash,
and they enable the cells to swim. You know. They're
(29:34):
found on like sperm, in bacteria and other cells and
and so no, I want to know. I want to
I want to post something on Instagram asking if everyone
knows what the flagellum is, because for me, it's like, oh,
I mean everyone, if you if I look at a
sperm cell, I'm not going to remember what the what
the what the round part looks like and like what
the name of it is, but I'm gonna remember the flagellum.
(29:55):
It's the squiggly do That's what I call it on
the sperm. See, yeah, the squiggly thing. In sex said,
we learn all about like the man stuff, but like
nobody tells us about like what happens to a woman.
But it's fine, that's true. That's true. And storks. No,
we don't have flagell well, we might have. I don't.
(30:16):
I actually don't know, Okay, anyway, so that is not
the flagellum that we're going to talk about today. There
was also a group of people, yes, in the Middle Ages,
called flagellents, different word, and they have nothing to do
with body cells and bacteria, and that's what we're gonna
get into today. But I just wanted to talk about sperm.
So flagellents were groups of people who would whip themselves
(30:39):
and the name of religion, and they were pretty popular
back in the day. I think the first recorded self
flagellations come from Martin Luther and other Christian leaders who
would teach that spirituality should manifest in the physical form. So, like,
there was one guy called Peter Damien and he was
a Christian monk from the eleventh century, so I'm not
a very fun guy, and he said that only those
(31:02):
who shared the sufferings of Christ could be saved and
they're or they had to hurt themselves so they could
like hurt in the same way that Christ hurt. Hurted.
Was hurt hurt? Yeah, was done hurted. It makes so
much sense. You guys. Yeah. Also, a flagellation for flagellum
are like very different words. But do they have Is
there a reason they're connect because they have flag but
(31:24):
the whip would look like the flagellum. Yeah, connection A
whip is like a real life sperm. I mean sperms
are real too, don't get me wrong. It's like basically
embodied sperm of the sperm um that I don't know
how we got here, but I'm going to try to
read us back in. So that's you started it. You
(31:48):
talked about the cells. I know, well it's well, it's
because I can't really say flagellent without thinking of the flagellum,
so I had to bring it up because there also
I know I would have brought it up at some
point in the story. Just get it out of the
way immediately, you know, adhd out of the way at
the start. Schedule it okay. So they believe that's the
(32:09):
only way that they could be saved, and so they
would hurt in the same way and do that and
have other people hurt themselves as well. There are, however,
other stories from ancient Rome where these eunuch priests would
self flagellate until they bled in this annual ritual to
the goddess Seybelle. I feel like I pronounced that wrong,
but she was a goddess, and they would usually do this.
(32:30):
While this is bad, well, priests who were being initiated
would castrate themselves, so you had like the priests who
would castrate themselves on this day, and then the other
priests that had already castrated themselves and they were eunuchs
would just self self flash self flash throughout the day,
and it would usually land on March twenty fourth. So
if anyone feels like celebrating March twenty fourth next year,
(32:51):
by all means, go ahead and do that. Yes, let's
encourage self harm. No, but don't, don't it's God. Yeah
that is not true, but anyway, so many like those
are just some of the stories. But obviously, self flagellation
and self harmful religion has existed since I'm sure before
(33:15):
ancient Roman times, and we might just not have it recorded.
But those are just sometimes and it's still kind of
popular today, like well, I don't know about popular, but
it's still practiced today, Okay, like some partitioners of Shia
Islam still self flagellate and many communities. They actually do
it once a year on the day of Ashura, which
is an Islamic holiday, and yes, Roman Catholics also sometimes
(33:36):
do it. It's there's like this not super secret but
kind of secret brotherhood called Dmanos Penitentes which means the
Penitent Brothers. They are curiously in New Mexico more than anything,
and they practice self flagillation in the name of Catholicism.
And then Pope John Paul the Second actually used to
self flagellate with a belt and also sleep on like straw.
(33:59):
I think that's just okay. Yeah, but anyways, we're gonna
go way way back to when it was the most popular.
Everyone was doing it. If you weren't doing it, what's up.
It was during the Black Death. Yes, that's a lot
of death because he people are dying in your story.
Thank you, great job. That's true. That's true. They are
(34:19):
so the Black Death. It's raging, it's crazy. Well, it's
the mid fourteenth century. People were dying and religious zelots
were like, oh, we have to do something about this.
So they take the Black Death personally as one does,
and they say, oh, it's because of our sins and
of our filth. Of course, people don't have to like
(34:40):
always relate things to themselves, you know, and yes they do.
Sometimes it's not about you, it's always about you. No,
that's actually a big lesson that I think a lot
of people learned in their twenties. It's like, it's not
always about you. Like I remember when my ex blocked
me after we broke up. I took it so personally
and then I was like, wait, maybe I'm too beautiful
and he literally cannot handle it and that's why he
(35:00):
blocked me. So it's not about me. It's not my problem.
It's not a me problem because anyways, like I'm still
learning that. Yeah, like you said, it was about me,
but it's like the opposite because you're just like too
amazing and that's okay. So these groups called flagellants came
together and they began practicing this ritual like all the
(35:22):
time everywhere because they were like, we need to end
the Black Death and this is what's going to happen.
The groups ranged from two hundred to three hundred people
to sometimes in the thousands, and what their game plan
was is they would basically roam from town to town
to self flagellate in public as penance and to bring
an end to the black death. Okay, they were like
(35:42):
the Avengers, you know, how how dramatic is that? Just
like a bunch of I just imagine of all being men,
but I'm surely there were women too. But they're just
like hitting themselves, you know, they're like, oh, stop hitting yourself,
Stop hitting yourself. Oh my gosh. Okay, they're like doing
it and they're looking at like dead staring people, being like,
we're doing this for you. Yeah. Literally, that's how they
(36:05):
would do it, and that's actually how they would recruit
a lot of their people, is like they would do
that and then ask people that are watching them from
the towns to repent. And that's how they like suddenly
gained so many numbers basically, which is crazy. But really
they're just like having a super spreading event. Yeah, I literally,
yeah exactly. So they would arrive in a town, they
would go straight to the church, and the bells in
(36:27):
the church would ring to alert the public that the
flagellans were here, you know, the sperm is here. So
they'd wear hoods and no shirts and chant litanies, which
actually there were women in this group of people as well.
So I found it really interesting that they got to
be shirtless as well. But I think, oh, good for them,
But this is also Europe. No no. Also I was
(36:51):
reading about it, and it's like people said that was
okay because they were wearing hoods, so they were like
their identities were covered. But still yeah, kind of kind
of progressive flagellents being progressive. Wow, titties out. Yeah, but
all those paintings from them those times their titties were
out all the time out. Yeah, maybe you're maybe painters
(37:12):
are just freaks. Yeah. Well, I love reading about like
um Royalty, especially like the princesses and queens who like
would have dresses like fixed so their titties could be
out just like and they would just like walk around
like that. It's like okay, girl, girl bos. So they
would chant their litanies and then they would go outside
(37:34):
three times a day, two times in the morning and
one in the evening, and they would practice self flagellation. Um.
The total time per day that they were whipping themselves
was eight hours daily. Good. I did this for thirty
three days straight to represent Jesus's age at crucifixion. That's
a lot eight hours a day, it's like nine to
(37:55):
five on the back. Dolly Parton said it first. So um,
Apparently flagellans could be as young as seven years old,
which is when, according to this sect, children's sins could
be accounted for. Oh damn, I got so many sins then, right,
(38:16):
been accumulating since seven? Wow? Yeah. And they couldn't speak
to each other, and they couldn't have contact with the
opposite sex, and they had to avoid shaving, bathing, changing clothes,
all of that. So that seems like that would be
a really great way to get the black play. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
for sure. They also had to sleep on straw. And
(38:37):
I also I really want to paint the picture of
the whip because it wasn't just like a sexy leather thing,
you know. I think sometimes we me think of whips
now as like the black leather bds and whips whatever,
And that's not what they were using. They were not
doing it for that particular reason. They It was a
stick with three thongs, which are the long leather parts
(39:01):
of a whip, and the thongs would have nails or
iron spite. Yeah, yeah, I find it and also find
it very interesting, like when they were recruiting people. Did
they just have these whips like on hand, like to
give like, okay, here you go, here's your craft sashion before. Yeah,
(39:22):
like a crafting, crafting with my buds. Maybe they're like
Jedis where they have to like the Jedies have to
make their own lightsabers. Maybe you have to make your
own whip, like a richual whip making. Yeah, that makes sense.
You gotta bring them out and be like, okay, we
gotta make your whips first, here's your supplies. Here's what
you do. Step one, get your stick to join your
(39:45):
cult um. Ok So it was kind of intense, and
the flagellants would whip themselves so hard that they would
draw blood, spraying crowds, and some people would think the
blood was holy because of their sacrifice, and they would
put the blood on their eyes or in their bodies,
leaving that it had miraculous properties. So you can just
(40:08):
imagine the picture that we're painting here. You know, they're
on the town square encircle, chanting and whipping themselves. Other
times the iron spikes or nails would get stuck inside
the flesh and it would take two or three tries
to dislodge the body, sometimes taking chunks of flesh with it.
I don't like. I hate when flesh is described in
(40:29):
chunk chunks. I hate it. Two I wrote it hate
the word chunk. M It doesn't sound cute. It's just
it is cute if it's a big, fat cat chunk.
But that's yeah, chunk, I guess, but not if it's
flesh chunks, Oh, a little chunk. Also, I like with
them being sprayed with blood. It sounds like a cool
concert or something, you know, like when people are like
(40:51):
spraying champagne bottles, but it's blood instead. Yeah. I when
I used to go to Catholic Mass when I was younger,
and the priest would spray us with holy water, I'd
be like, hey, all excited, open my mouth for thee
oh my gosh. Anyway, I thought it was so fun. Okay,
(41:11):
so okay, so I know what y'all were thinking. Did
it work? Yeah, it didn't work. Well no, So we'll
never really know because maybe maybe somehow their prayers did
work and their sacrifices did work. But what we do
know is that the Black death raged on even after
the pope proclaimed that flagellents were heretics and excommunicating them,
(41:34):
and they didn't stop at first. They were like, we're
going to keep going. But then other people in Europe
started realizing that flagelens were supposed to be excommunicated, and
they started treating them differently. And then flagellents kind of
dissolved a little bit. They came back again in the
sixteenth century a little bit, but for the most part
Medieval Black Death flagellents kind of just like fell apart.
(41:56):
The group fell apart like any good boy band. It
has to fall apart at some point, that's true, yeah,
And so they kind of dissolved. And then also another
reason why we don't think it worked is because some
people notice the flagellents brought the play to towns where
the plague had in surface to first gotta be set
(42:17):
it first, exactly, and so flageleents were actually denied entry
into the towns because they were like, you're carrying this disease,
you're not actually helping. And so what they would do
is they would wait outside of the town and basically
do the self flagelling flag flogging outside of the town
more because they were like, we're so bad, we have
(42:39):
the plane no, that's not funny, not funny, but it's
just like, no, I found it very funny. I found
that very very funny. Actually, like, bro, you're not helping,
Yes we are. No, you're literally not I know. And
then they like feel more guilty so they do it more. Yeah,
so a fun time that like not done it and
(43:00):
that would have been the best solution. Absolutely, yeah, staying
home and so full distancing would have been the best solution.
But you know, if they didn't know it then and
people barely do it now, then I don't I think
I've lost hope for a humanity. Well, thank you, Nika.
I'm going to talk just about that when we come back. Okay,
(43:24):
welcome back. As we all know now, unfortunately we're too
familiar with plagues and people are still doing weird shit
to try and fix it. But disclaimer of guys, please
just do as scientists tell you and don't do weird shit.
There's a plague. What's happening? We're in a gabby? Did
you know that what we are in a plague? Isn't
(43:46):
that crazy? We're so random. It's such a vibe, honestly,
such a vibe. It's something it's not I hate COVID.
It's killed people. I love. It's terrible. Yeah, so we're
going to talk about the Black Death further. So this
was a plague that was originated from bacteria that fleas
would carry on rats. Barf, barf, barf. That's discussed. Please
(44:10):
please are canceled. But love rats, they're just doing the
Lord's world. Don't talk about don't talk about those things.
I know our listeners get real triggered by time about rats.
I don't like them. And actually I know someone who
has one as a pet and their lat or like
(44:31):
a mouse or a bacteria or a the R word okay,
and she's like, they're very intelligent and actually great pets,
but I just cannot. Also, apparently they're like ridiculously clean,
but then how do they get the plague? Huh? Well,
that explained to me that rat because this was medieval
times and shit was really dirty. Then they didn't know
(44:53):
about bacteria and stuff like that. They didn't know that
being clean was good. Okay, I didn't even like wash
their hands yet. They didn't know to wash your hands.
So fleas are on the rats, but they didn't know
that they religious. Like all of a sudden, people were
getting these like welts all over their body, like predominently
in their like armpits and groin grells. The welts would
(45:15):
leak m pus and blood, say it pus and blood,
and you would also have flu like symptoms, fever, chills, eggs, vomit,
and Nika, I will spare you the D word, so diarrhea.
I decided to do that. I decided I'm a bad girl.
(45:36):
I'm gonna I actively decided not to bully you, Nica,
and I decided violence. Yeah, well I got me choosing violence.
Nothing surprising, thanks for ruining my day. It's almost my season. Well,
I mean it's currently your season, though I know Libra
Libra season is so nice and airy and pretty, and
(45:59):
then Scorpio season is like kremlin time. They'll Scorpio season
is the season where you would wear somebody else's skin, Nika.
So yeah, well my scorpios actually, my mars and my
venus are in Scorpio, so I actually I love I
love Scorpio energy. But Libre season is just very graceful, okay,
(46:21):
and like pretty. And I said, I wasn't going to
bully you, but you're you're taking just trying to defend myself. Okay,
go ahead, Okay. So, as you can imagine, people have
always been doing weird, weird stuff to try and cure
(46:41):
diseases and um like peeing on yourself. Yeah, people do exactly. Yeah.
So there are a few other tactics besides lashing themselves
that people would do, many of which were rubbing various
herbs and roots and stuff on the boils. But they
(47:03):
were like essentially like making their own potions. They would
also drink vinegar, mercury, and even arsenic, which I'm sure
you can guess how that went. They all die. Mercury
drives people crazy well, but also arsenic, like people were
just killing themselves. Oh yeah, I know, no, I know that.
But actually one of the more popular potions is actually
(47:25):
used today and non traditional like medical type practices. It's
called four thieves vinegar. There's one ingredient per thief, that's
why it's four thieves. It most commonly had like vinegar obviously,
sage cloves, rosemary, and today it's like it's like a
bad antibacterial tonic to keep germs at bay, which is
(47:46):
very interesting to me. Does it like work? I mean,
I don't know, no, I mean, it's not like it's
not bad for you, but it didn't like cure the
Black Day definitely not so um. Others other people would
like overheat themselves to essentially try and smoke out the disease.
People did that with COVID two. Yeah, well people, but
(48:07):
they refused to do the one thing that actually worked.
So yeah, so they sit by fires. Others would try
blood letting, which was actually relative was a very popular thing,
so they put leeches on their skin to like draw
the bad blood. And you guys, being a leech collector
during this time was quite the hot career people were making.
I thought, Taylor, I literally thought you were to say,
(48:30):
being a leech collector myself, I was like, what, no,
you collect more than porcelain horses? What? Okay, I did earlier?
I know I needed I needed to get back to
you lovingly. Okay, back at you? Did they use back then? No? Okay?
But so what about ketamine? So no, would you quit
(48:53):
guessing and just listen? Yeah? Okay, So they would use leeches, okay,
other people? So so there was also like there was
a big group of people obviously they decided to use
religious cures. So in addition to what Nico was talking about.
They would also use serpents, which were obviously synonymous with
(49:15):
the devil, so they like chop up snakes and rub
them on their skin to draw quote, draw out the devil.
And then others would pluck a chicken butt and rub
the bare bum of a chicken on you until the
chicken got sick, and then they were like, oh, well
the chicken has absorbed my sickness, which is really rude
(49:37):
to chickens and also the snakes. Yeah, but you guys,
the most effective stop the spread is drum roll. Are
you ready? Yeah. Social distancing death is literally when social
distancing was invented. So, as Nika kind of mentioned, like,
(49:58):
it got to the point where like these were these
super spreader events, people going out and like you know,
trying to bring people into do the lash, and so
it got to a point where they're like they started
monitoring and they were like, yeah, you can't come in.
You were you were sick and you were going to
get us sick. They didn't understand like the spread of germs.
They that concept wasn't there, but they understood that it
(50:18):
had to do with like proximity of other people. So
they figured that out, and so that's when they decided, hey,
stop coming near us, and you guys need to stay home.
So they started saying like you gotta stay like they
started selling people that they had to say home. Some
instances they would have like special areas that were just
for people who were sick that they would just stay quarantine.
(50:39):
So they were literally quarantining. And that's ultimately like what
was reduced the spread, and it came up because of
black death, so it eventually it slowed down after like
four USh years, so guys were two down, two years down,
two to go. But yeah, you know, but get vaccinated.
(50:59):
So there you have it. You're sick, stay home. But
what I find hilarious is like social distancing was to
crazy concept like proximity, but then putting rubbing a chicken
on the welt and then the chicken getting sick, it
like that made perfect to them. I didn't. I mean,
that's how it's still like today, right, I mean, people
are like social discing and dumb and they want to
(51:21):
have viber mactin instead. It seems like that, Oh I
mean yeah, no, I listen, yeah, so people are historians
are gonna be talking about this in fifty years and
be like that was so dumb. A new plague will
come up and then it'll just the next generation of kidavergals.
They're gonna be talking anyway. I cut you off, Taylor,
you had a big point. I did have another point.
So this was actually the Black Plague was essentially kind
(51:44):
of the end of the what is called the Medieval times,
because people were starting to realize that these quote religious
cures didn't work. They were like, wait, this isn't so
they kind of started to change their thinking. They started
to figure out that it's like proximity and that germs
(52:06):
would like spread and they So this was kind of
the beginning of or like the in the end of
medieval times, in the beginning of more modern times, kind
of like how right now people are realizing that the
system we're under is total bullshit. I mean, that's a
whole other podcast. But yeah, oh yeah, I'm not I'm
(52:27):
I mean, yeah, I'm just like, well, what's wrong with
the world, Nika, what are you talking about? I just
want to thank the flagellum of the bacteria from the
Black Death for bringing the medieval people into the enlightened ages,
which is an ironic way to state that, But okay,
(52:49):
thank you, get Nika, You're welcome. Okay, Well, do we
have any closing thoughts? People, get vaccinated, quarantine if you're sick,
if you're not feeling well, stay home, get tested, don't spread,
don't splatter your blood on people. Yeah, yeah, that too,
unless it's consensual, Unless you can do whatever you want
(53:10):
as long as contentual exactly. All right, Well, thank you
everyone for listening to this week's glory episode of cadaver Gals.
Until next week. Bye. Cadaver Gals is a production of
(53:36):
School of Humans in iHeartRadio. It is hosted, written, and
all that good stuff by Nika Jarte, Gabby Watts, and
me Taylor Church. You can follow us on Twitter and
Instagram if it's still there at calaver Gals.
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