History of the Black Death - Full Documentary

History of the Black Death - Full Documentary

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:38):
Humanity has suffered pandemics of various sizes and degrees of
severity throughout history. They were recounted in the Bible, occurred
during the reigns of Roman emperors like Justinian, and even
followed the First World War. But the time of the
Black Death was something else Entirely. The story of the
Black Death is the story of a perfect storm. It

(01:02):
was the focal point where the conditions of cities, expansion
of the human population, the explosion of trade, and just
the right political situations met a powerfully lethal bacterium with
an equally powerful vector of transmission. It went by many names,
the Black Death, the Plague, the Great Mortality, and many others,

(01:25):
but we know it so well because of its infamy.
It was, after all, estimated that thirty to forty percent
of Europe died, but Europe was not alone. Africa, the
Middle East, India, and East Asia were all in its
path of destruction. In the end, it was suspected that worldwide,
two hundred million people died, a number so high that

(01:48):
every outbreak before or since has not even come close.
And this is especially impressive when you figure in that
the world population at the time was approximately five hundred million.
Our story begins not in Europe, but far to the east.
No one is exactly certain where the plague hides its lair,

(02:09):
but many agree it lies somewhere where the Great Eurasian
Step meets the Gobi Desert. Some claim it came from
the Mongolian Plateau, from a region of the Great Desert itself,
a place that Marco Polo, on his journey, would say
that when a traveler became isolated, he would hear the
voices of devils leading him astray, and the arid wind

(02:30):
could make a thousand fantasies thronged to the mind, whereas
others felt it was on the banks of Lake Issekull,
one of the deepest lakes in the world, where the
contagion lay in wait. Now left to its own devices,
the plague would infect small rodents and animals, and due
to its lethal nature, it would not have easily been

(02:51):
able to escape its isolated domain. But by the mid
fourteenth century, the Step was unified by the Pax Mongolica
and trade had rebounded on a massive scale. What was
once a desolate and isolated land was now crisscrossed by
the silk roads. It was traversed by throngs of merchants

(03:12):
hoping to make their fortune. A multitude of trade stations
and oasis stopping points were also established. What's more, to
expedite messages that kept the bureaucracy of the Great Mongol
Empire in its later fractured states working, the writers of
the Yam, essentially a Mongolian pony express, were created. Suddenly

(03:33):
the plague had a mechanism to expand its domain, and
it eagerly awaited its chance to do so. In the
Crimean Peninsula, quite a distance to the west was the
city of Kafa in the mid thirteenth century. She was
a backwater, rural, rustic, some would say primitive fishing village.

(03:57):
But the world was changing and trade would which had
languished since the faul of the Roman Empire, had emerged
as a powerful force. And a really good example where
the Italian city states, which vied fiercely with one another
for monetary hegemony, nothing would stop them from expanding their
bottom line. The quote unquote crusaders the Fourth Crusade jumping

(04:19):
over the walls of Constantinople in twelve oh four gave
testament to that. Now to quote a Feengi rule of
acquisition number ninety five in case anybody's interested, expand or die. Thus,
in twelve sixty six, the Genoese arrived at Cafa and
set to work, making it a city to be reckoned with.

(04:40):
By thirteen forty, she boosted a population of eighty thousand people.
Buildings dotted the horizon, Her market was a flurry of activity,
and the docks of Cafa were renowned to house over
two hundred ships. The location was perfect for the business savvy.
The Silk Roads ran just to the north, divided into

(05:00):
several paths before going into Europe.

Speaker 2 (05:03):
The Volga and the.

Speaker 1 (05:04):
Don Rivers were relatively nearby, adding to a commercial sphere
of influence, and from her warm water port ships would
come and go from Constantinople, the Levant, Italy, and as
far away as Iberia. In a short period of time,
Kafa had blossomed into a major focal point for bringing
in luxury goods from both east and west. But as

(05:28):
is the case so many times in history, one civilization's
success usually comes at the expense of her neighbors. The
Mongol Empire was one of the largest land empires in
history by the time of Kublai Khan's death in twelve
ninety four, it had fractured into four separate khanates. Each

(05:48):
had their own agenda and modus operandi. But don't let
the division fool you. Each khanate was still very powerful,
of which the Golden Horde exercised authority over the Crimea.
To them, it was a small portion of their vast realm. Now,
the armies of the Golden Horde were comprised to a
certain extent with the Tartars. This was a nomadic tribe

(06:09):
from eastern Mongolia that were conquered in the days of
Jenghis Khan. They had been integrated into the Mongolian armies
and helped with the western expansion of the Empire. By
the mid fourteenth century, the Golden Horde relied on the
Tartars to help govern their land. Now, to put this
all into context, Kafa, and for that matter, the Genoese presence,

(06:31):
existed only because the Golden Horde allowed it. The land
on which the trading city flourished was essentially a grant
for the purposes of enriching the khanate's bank account. But
for the two decades leading up to the early thirteen forties,
political economic, and religious friction between the Mongols and the
Genoese were mounting. Thus, by the year thirteen forty three,

(06:54):
very little was needed to ignite a precarious situation into
open hostility. Not too far from Kafa was the trading
city of Tana. It was nestled at the mouth of
the Don River and renowned as being the jump point
one takes to get to China. It was in this
city that a small angry exchange on a market street

(07:16):
blossomed into a full blown riot, resulting in spilled blood,
and to be specific, a Muslim died at the hands
of an Italian, or at least, as the tale goes well.
Either way, the story got out and the local Mongol khan,
a man by the name of Yani Beg, decided to
arrive at the city gates and brought with him an
impressive tartar army. Under the auspices of being a defender

(07:41):
of Islam, he demanded that the city capitulate. Now, in
standard Mongol fashion, a besieged city had the option of
either adhering to the terms of surrender completely or taking
their chances with fighting back, which usually resulted in the
city and its people being wiped from the surface of
the earth. The Genoese opted for the latter option and

(08:03):
responded to Yanni Begg's terms with a particularly insolent response.
In retrospect, perhaps this wasn't the best idea. The attackers,
not expecting this kind of response, laid into Tana with
a vengeance, and the city was quickly overrun. However, some
of the defenders managed to escape and then ran for

(08:23):
their lives back to Kafa. The Tartar army pursued very closely.
They were fully engaged to punish the Italians for their
insult of resistance to them and their Mongol Khan. These arrogant,
decadent Genoese no longer had a right to exist in
the khanate any longer. But as I've mentioned before, Kafa

(08:45):
was an impressive city. In her city walls were equally impressive,
and thus the Tartar army and her Khan had to
settle in for a siege. This was going to be
a really long siege, and as it dragged out, something
else was comeing in on the heels of the Tartar horsemen.
By thirteen forty six, tales of a strange disease had

(09:07):
begun to filter their way west. Most of the stories
were ignored, but they told of entire areas being destroyed
in population centers being wiped out, Vast tracts of China
and India la dying of a mysterious pestilence, and the disease,
like the stories about it, were making their way west.

(09:28):
By early thirteen forty six, Russian chroniclers had recounted that
the shores of the Caspian Sea were affected. In less
than a year, it had spread across the dawn and
the Volga rivers descended into the Crimean Peninsula and onto
an unsuspecting Tartar army.

Speaker 2 (09:47):
It didn't take long before the encampment was infected, and.

Speaker 1 (09:51):
Even less time before the besiegers began to die en mass.
For the Genoese, protected by their city walls, this affliction
was he sent to them. It was nothing less than
their God's retribution against the Heathen race, And if they
had any faith in this belief, they were soon to
find out just how wrong they were. The situation in

(10:15):
the Tartar camp was degrading by the day to the
point where more people were dying. They could be easily
attended to the scene, if one could imagine, was that
of putrid swollen corpses, stacked like cordwood as far as
the eye could see. But perhaps what motivated the survivors
to action was not so much the sight, but rather
the disgusting, gut wrenching stench. The con at this point,

(10:39):
disgusted and revolted by the smell, gave the command to
load the corpses on the catapults and then had them
launched into the city. His hope was that the smell
would accomplish what his army couldn't, that is, to drive
the inhabitants to surrender. Now keep in mind that the
bodies were well into the faces of decomposition by the

(10:59):
time they were weaponized. What's more, as the body rots,
gases formed within the various layers fascia and internal organs,
it essentially putrefies. Thus, when it's launched with sufficient velocity
and upon hitting a stone structure at the end of
their trajectory, they wouldn't just impact and fall down. Rather,
some would explode into chunks and aerosolized fragments, spraying an

(11:22):
entire area and showering those unfortunate enough to be below.
This went on for weeks. The city was essentially inundated
with remains. The rats that were infesting the camp would
follow the scent in short order, and with them the
plague entered the city. The Genoese, who were once confident

(11:43):
behind their defenses and were scoffing at the enemy, now
saw the dying commence once again, but this time it
was in their own streets, their own buildings, and in
their own homes. What made the plague especially ethel was
that it had an almost perfect vector for transmission. That is,

(12:04):
the rats and fleas that carried it were well suited
to allow it to spread. The black rat or Rattus ratus,
thought to be one of the major species involved in transmission,
evolved in Asia approximately ten to fifteen thousand years ago. Now,
while it's half the size of its cousin, the brown rat,
it compensates with its ability to reproduce. And what do

(12:27):
I mean by this? Two rats mating continuously for three
years can lead to a population of over three million.
It is also an extremely resilient creature. It can climb
nearly vertical surfaces, enter through openings a quarter inch thick,
and survive a fall of five stories. And by the way,

(12:47):
rodent comes from the Latin rodere, meaning to gnaw, and
as such, its powerful jaw can cut its way through lead,
adobe and unhardened concrete. Medieval city walls simply didn't stand
a chance.

Speaker 2 (13:04):
Now.

Speaker 1 (13:04):
Once inside a city or on board a ship, it
can exhibit problem solving intelligence. After establishing a nest or
a den, it purposely creates an escape route before cautiously
forging for food. Indeed, it essentially conducts reconnaissance, changing the
areas that it explores and adapting quickly to any change
in its environment. But perhaps its most unsettling aspect is

(13:27):
that it serves as an almost perfect reservoir for fleas.
The oriental flea, known as Xenopsilla kiopsis, is also called
for obvious reasons, the rat flea. It has a preference
to get its blood meal from a rat or other rodent,
but if that source is limited or exterminated, it's happy

(13:51):
to try something else, And while it's waiting for something
else to come on the menu, it has a certain
degree of patience. This flea can endure from more than
a month without a host, and during this time it
can live on clothing baggage, fur hare, or for that matter,
corpses that are catapulted through the air. Once a target

(14:12):
is sensed, its powerful hind legs allowed to jump over
half a meter, and once it lands, its exceptional bite
can penetrate directly into the blood scream of its host,
where it can suck up a meal. Now, in a
normal flea, this blood would flow without interruption into the
flea's stomach. Plague infested fleas, on the other hand, where
a completely different story. Once infected, the plague bacterium would

(14:35):
multiply within the flea itself, blocking its foregut and more importantly,
its ability to ingest a meal. This would make the
flea even more voracious, resulting in multiple bites, and with
each bite, the plague bacteria would be regurgitated into the host.
Now this brings us to our main culprit. The bubonic

(14:58):
plague is caused by the bacterium Yocernia pestis, and to
emphasize this is not a virus. Viruses are smaller, work
on a different mechanism, and their infectivity is distinctive. Once
Yasernia pestis is inside the human host, it reproduces aggressively
using its own unique enzymes, it can invade organs and

(15:19):
a lymphatic system. This system, by the way, is crucial
to the body. It is one of the key members
of our immune defense and is responsible for eliminating foreign contagion.
But for the purposes of the plague, it becomes its
new home, which can seem a little counterintuitive. The reason
for this is that the plague is extremely adaptive, which

(15:41):
allows it to evade the otherwise very competent human immune system.
And while the immune system is busy chasing its own tail,
Yasernia pestis spreads from lymph node to lymph node to
lymph node and multiplies at a ferocious rate. But of course,
for the defenders of Kafa, with no known knowledge of
germ theory, epidemiology, and no insight on how this was spreading,

(16:05):
not to mention that antibiotics would not come around for
oh six hundred years, this was nothing less than a
glimpse into the apocalypse. By April thirteen forty seven, there
was very little left of the Tartar army around Kafa.
By the time of the Spring rains, the straggling survivors

(16:25):
had retreated. Many who left were infected and took the
plague with them to other destinations. However, by then the
contagion had made its way well into the city, and
there the scenario had become equally appalling. John Kelly, in
his book The Great Mortality, does a great job of
describing what the situation in the city was like before

(16:46):
the Tartars left. Quote as the death toll mounted, the
streets would have been filled with feral animals feeding on
human remains, drunken soldiers looting and raping old women, dragging
corpses through rubber and burning buildings, spewing jets of flame
and smoke into the crimean sky. There would have been

(17:06):
swarms of rodents and piles of bodies stacked like cordwood
in every public square, and in every eye a look
of wild panic or dull resignation. The scenes in the harbor,
the only means of escape and besieged Kafa, would have
been equally horrific. Surging crowds and sword wielding guards, children

(17:27):
wailing for lost or dead, parents shouting and cursing everybody,
pushing towards teeming ships and beyond the melae on the
departing galleys, prayerful passengers hugging one another under great white
sheets of unfurling sail, ignorant that below deck, in dark,
sultry holds hundreds, if not thousands, of plague bearing rats

(17:47):
were scratching themselves and sniffing at the cool sea air
end quote. As I've said before, Kafa was an impressive city.
Equally impressive was her port, which could shelter nearly two
hundred ships. At this point in history, panic had engulfed
the populace and getting out was the only thing the

(18:08):
inhabitants could think of. Thus it wasn't just one Genoese
galley that managed to depart, but several. Their journey would
take them south through the Black Sea, then through the
narrow Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara. Their destinations were
the great ports of the entire Mediterranean world. The world

(18:53):
that the plague was sailing into seemed almost perfectly set
up for a pandemic. From the thirteenth century onward, trade
had expanded like never before, and not just on land,
but also on the water. The sea lanes in the
trade routes of the Mediterranean had prominently emerged, not just
as a simple means to expand a country's income, but

(19:13):
vital to the success of any emerging power. Thus, ports
and harbours would grow to facilitate this need and became
strategically crucial as the world made its first steps into
becoming a global community. In time, it became a relatively
common sight to see luxury goods from China being sold
in Italy, France, or even England. Now the time leading

(19:37):
up to the fourteenth century was also a period of
dramatic gain in the human population. This was a phase
of prolonged favorable weather, which meant impressive crop yields and
the extra food would mean more mouths could be fed.
Europe was estimated to have peaked someplace in the seventy
five to.

Speaker 2 (19:56):
Eighty million range.

Speaker 1 (19:58):
But all good things come to an end, and by
the thirteen thirties the weather had changed for the worse,
and this was accompanied by various ecological disasters like drought,
earthquake and flooding. And just as a side note, these
ecological disasters would have a dramatic effect on instigating rat migrations.
This was the time when crops began to fail, malnutrition

(20:21):
became more rampant, and the rural populations began to flock
to the cities. Urban planning was not able to keep
up with this massive influx, and so cities became disorganized, overcrowded,
and even more filthy. City dwellers could not effectively keep
up with all the garbage that they produced. Refuse would
fill every corner, and sewage was literally thrown out the

(20:43):
window on the streets below, which now functioned as open sewers.
What's more, the early fourteenth century was also one of
the most gruesome periods when it comes to military history.
John Kelly, in his book The Great Mortality Brings Us
to Life quote from Kafa to Vietnam and Afghanistan. No

(21:04):
human activity has been more closely associated with plague than war,
and few centuries have been as violent as the fourteenth
In the decades before the plague, the Scots were killing
the English, the English, the French, the French, the Flemings,
and the Italians in the Spanish each other. More to
the point, in those savage decades, the nature of battle

(21:25):
changed in fundamental ways. Armies grew larger, battles, bloodier civilians
were attacked with more frequency, and property was destroyed more routinely,
and each helped to make the medieval battlefield and the
medieval soldier more effective agents of disease end quote. The
ships that sailed from Caffa had multiple destinations in the summer.

(21:49):
At thirteen forty seven, some of these ships arrived at Constantinople.
Here the plague disembarked and killed an estimated fifty to
seventy percent of the population. The court scholar Demetrios Kaidones,
who was an eyewitness, remarked, quote, every day we bring
out our own friends for burial, and every day the

(22:10):
city becomes emptier and the number of graves increases. Men
inhumanely shun each other's company for fear of contagion. Fathers
do not bury their own sons, and sons do not
perform last duties for their fathers end quote.

Speaker 2 (22:28):
From the great city.

Speaker 1 (22:29):
On the Bosphorus, it began to spread over land in
two directions. To the west, it spread through Bulgaria, Greece, Romania,
and then upwards towards Poland. And to the east, it
dispersed across Asia Minor before heading into Persia. But the
Genoese plague ships of Kafa weren't done yet. They continued

(22:49):
to sail south through the Dardnelles, and onwards to ports
in Cyprus, the Levant Egypt, and then all the way
across to Sicily. In October thirteen forty seven, twelve Genoese
galleys arrived in Messina. It was here that the Great
Mortality first seemed to appear in the historical narrative. The

(23:11):
local authorities, who were forced to witness these incoming ships,
saw scores of men and women encrusted with lesions, many
in the various stages of dying. Stacks of dead bodies
were later discovered below deck. After a period of deliberation,
the decision was made to turn these ships out, but
by then it was much too late. The Black Death

(23:33):
invaded the city with unfettered enthusiasm and then spread through
the entire island, killing an average third of the population.
As before with Constantinople, it began to spread over land
in very short order. It had jumped the Strait of
Messina and then began to make its way up the
Italian boot, arriving in Rome a few months later. In retrospect,

(23:55):
it was estimated that the plague, on average moved approximately
two and a half half miles a day, crossing rivers traversing
over mountain passes and entering nearly every city it came across,
but that was on land. The aforementioned plague ships that
were forced to depart Messina went on to new destinations
as well. The sailors on board, who had somehow managed

(24:17):
to survive, carried on business as best they could, trading
their goods as they went. They still had a bottom line,
after all. Thus, these very same ships would move on
to Marseille, Genoa, Malta, Tunis, and ports in Spain, Sardinia
and Corsica, to name a few. Their home city of Genoa,

(24:38):
with an estimated population in ninety thousand, was infected in
late November, where thirty to forty percent would die. Marseille
would fare no better and would serve as the major
entry point for all of France. It's from here that
the plague would move north towards Avignon, where it would
arrive in January of the next year. It was also

(24:58):
in January thirteen forty eight that Venice, with their estimated
population of one hundred and twenty thousand people, also got hit.
The Venetian response was vigorous and highly structured, Some would
even consider it almost brutal. The Great Council and the
Doge Andrea Dandalo declared that all entering ships were to

(25:19):
be seized and searched. The ships that were found to
have even the slightest indication of plague were immediately set
to the torch on a nearby island, isolated from the
rest of the population. A strict quarantine was established. In fact,
the very word quarantine comes from the Italian quaranta giorni,
meaning forty days, which was the amount of time that

(25:41):
ships and their crew were held in isolation. A municipal
fleet of gondolas were created which traversed the canals chanting
corpe morti. Corpe morti essentially bring out your dead. This
rather macab chant some in the population to throw their
dead bodies into the waiting ships below. The corpses were

(26:03):
then systematically interred in specialized burial locations. Not despite these measures,
the death rate soared to over sixty percent. It was
later estimated that over seventy two thousand people died. This
death rate was so high and so rapid that in
many instances the complex network of society would either fail

(26:25):
or vanish entirely. But once again, the Venetian government stepped
up to the challenge. As society began to disintegrate all
around her, Near draconian measures and martial law were invoked.
Civilization would endure, but it held on by a very
tiny thread. However, as Venice desperately grappled to maintain order

(26:46):
and to save the rest of her population, the bubonic
plague had already moved on. The decade that led up
to thirteen forty eight was a very difficult time for Florence. Flood, disease, drought,
and famine had all visited the city. Warfare engulfed the

(27:06):
land as Genoa was up in arms against Venice and
the papacy, likewise with the Holy Roman Empire. What's more,
Edward the Third of England, who had used Florentine banks
to fund his portion of the Hundred Years War, had
defaulted on his loans. The magnitude of these loans was
so immense that it caused financial ruin in the Italian city,

(27:28):
and thus it was in the spring at thirteen forty
eight that the plague also arrived. The one hundred thousand
citizens of the city had no idea what was about
to hit them, arising from what seemed like thin air,
the stigmata of purple black swellings in the armpit and
the groin known as bubos began to suddenly appear, and

(27:49):
this seemingly on everyone. This was followed by bloody vomit,
high fevers, delirium, and in most situations, in agonizing death,
society began to break down. His entire families and neighborhoods
would be wiped out. And keep in mind, some of
this would only happen in a few days. Panic on

(28:09):
an almost unimaginable level would grip the city. Riots and
looting would spread like wildfire. Those that could attempted to
barricade themselves away, while afflicted and dying people were simply
abandoned to their fate, and many would try desperately just
to escape the carnage. Altogether, by most estimates, fifty percent,

(28:32):
that's five zero the population perished. Giovanni Boccaccio, a writer
who some say lived in Plague, Florence, gave a testament
of what he saw. A great many people died who
would have perhaps survived had they received some assistance. Indeed,
the number of deaths reported in the city, whether by

(28:52):
day or night, was so enormous that it astonished all
who heard tell of it, to say nothing of the
people who actually witnessed the carnage. Thus a great number
departed this life without anyone at all to witness their going.
I few, indeed, were those to whom the lamentations and
bitter tears of their relatives were accorded. Boccaccio continues, quote,

(29:15):
such was the magnitude of corpses that huge trenches were
excavated in the churchyards into which new arrivals were placed
in their hundreds, stored tier upon tier like ship's cargo,
each layer of corpses being covered with a thin layer
of soil till the trench was filled to the top

(29:35):
end quote. The term plague pit would later be coined.
But even more gruesome would follow. As the heavy spring
rains would come. They would unearth the remains and then
wash them about the city. Later their accounts, where these
very same remains would then serve as the food source

(29:56):
for rats, pigs, and even dogs, of which could have
been nothing less than apocalyptic. The plague had an absolutely
astounding death rate, with an incubation time that is, the
time of exposure to the onset of symptoms anywhere between

(30:16):
one day to one week. An infected individual who didn't
have any symptoms was able to pass on the disease
without even knowing it. There were three major known variants.
The bubotic form was the least lethal. Once infected, a
person would exhibit flu like symptoms, most notably high fevers,

(30:36):
followed by fatigue and cough, of which the latter could
become very bloody. This would occur as Urcinia pestis against
the bacteria made its way through the body's organs, causing
some of them to shut down. There are even reports
that those who were infected and in the latter stages
of the disease would have an odour that was consistent
with internal gangreen. Eventually, the contagion would make its way

(31:01):
into the lymphatic system, accumulating.

Speaker 2 (31:03):
In the lymph nodes.

Speaker 1 (31:05):
These nodes would swell, resulting in the characteristic plague boils,
usually in the groin, the armpit, or the neck. Now,
some of these nodes would grow immense and could cause
major disfigurement.

Speaker 2 (31:17):
There are those who survived the.

Speaker 1 (31:19):
Plague whose necks were bent to the side permanently. Now,
if these massively swollen lymph nodes were able to rupture
through the skin, they would open up, spilling the fluid
contents within, which of course would be teeming with bacteria
and ready to infect another. In fact, for that matter,
most fluid that was carrying the bacteria that was excreted

(31:41):
from the body, that is by coughing, bleeding, vomiting, etc.
Was infectious if it was touched, or even worse if
it was ingested. The mortality rate of the bubonic variant
was approximately sixty percent, which gave you the best chance
for survival if you had the plague. And yes, this

(32:02):
does mean that there were those who had the plague
who did manage to live through it, but again that
implies that you had this variant of the plague. Now,
the pneumonic form occurred. When the bacteria got into the lungs,
people would start vomiting and coughing of blood almost immediately.
This variant was extremely infectious and could be passed through

(32:25):
the air. Transmission, as one can imagine, was more common
in the winter time when people were simply cloistered together.
On average, one would have approximately three days to live
once the onset.

Speaker 2 (32:37):
Of symptoms occurred.

Speaker 1 (32:39):
The mortality rate of this variant would run in the
ninety five to one hundred percent range, depending on the
region that you were in. Now, if you think that
having a less than five percent chance at survival was bad,
the last variant was the worst. If the bacterial count
in the body reached maximum density and then spilled into

(32:59):
the blockloodstream, you would end up with the septocemic variant
of the plague. The body would simply go into massive
shock and shut down, and no one recovered from this.
And to put this all into perspective, the time frame
between beginning to feel ill and dying was approximately fourteen
and a half hours. Family members would literally kiss their

(33:22):
seemingly healthy loved ones good night, only to find them
dead in the morning. Think for a second how this
could possibly change one's worldview, and then take it a
step further. Think what your mindset would be if you
had absolutely no scientific knowledge of what was actually going on.

Speaker 2 (33:41):
The death that.

Speaker 1 (33:42):
Surrounded the individual would have been near impossible to grasp.

Speaker 2 (33:46):
The magnitude was just too much. But why was it so?

Speaker 1 (33:51):
The Black Death, as I've mentioned before, was a perfect storm.
The plague was nothing new on the world stage. It
had affected humanity before and would do so afterwards. The
plague Agisinian, for example in five forty one to five
forty two, which caused massive destruction, was also thought to
be caused by Eucinia pestis, and yet the death rate,

(34:13):
the duration, and the extent of carnage in this and
other epidemics was never as high as it was during
the Black Death. The plague the mid fourteenth century also
had some unusual characteristics. It appeared to advance, albeit a
bit slower, even during the winter months, which if it
was carried on fleas, doesn't make logistical sense, as most

(34:35):
fleas would have died of the cold. What's more, this
particular plague infected people at a rate that modern Yusinia
pestis just doesn't seem to possess. Some forensic scientists today
feel that this bacteria had some help aside from the
warfare of the time, the condition to cities, the extended
trade routes, and an ideal vector of transmission, The Black

(34:57):
Death may not have been alone in indeed, it might
have been the perfect storm of multiple pandemics at once.
In retrospect, it has been hypothesized that the bacteria associated
with anthrax and the virus tied to Ebola were also involved,
both of which are lethal in their own right.

Speaker 2 (35:18):
Now.

Speaker 1 (35:19):
Part of the reason why the death rate was so
high was also associated with the immense physical geography that
would be affected, that is, the entire continent of Europe,
amongst other continents. Plague would wash over one area, only
to return in another wave coming from another direction. In
this way, some areas of Europe would be hit several times,

(35:41):
and in many cases the second or even third wave
could be even more devastating than the first. By mid
thirteen forty eight, the Black Death had been going strong
in Europe for nearly a year. Avignon in southern France
had run out of space to bury her dead. A
wave of plague that originated in Constantinople had blazed a

(36:02):
path into the Balkans, and Italy had been overrun, prompting
the historian Giovanni Boccaccio to comment, quote one citizen avoided another,
hardly any neighbor troubled about others. Such terror was struck
into the hearts of men and women by this calamity.
That brother abandoned brother, and very often the wife her

(36:23):
own husband. What is even worse and nearly incredible, is
that fathers and mothers refused to see and tend their
own children as if they had not been theirs.

Speaker 2 (36:34):
End quote.

Speaker 1 (36:38):
Through the rest at thirteen forty eight, at an average
rate of two and a half miles a day, the
Black Death made its way north. Rural communities that were
along the way were sometimes wiped out entirely. In some places,
the destruction was so complete that nature would retake the land,
and traces of civilization would only be rediscovered by aerial

(36:58):
photography prior to the First World War. By June thirteen
forty eight, the Great Mortality arrived in one of its
most prominent hunting grounds, the great city of Paris. Her
population was approximately two hundred and ten thousand people, easily
one of the larger cities of Europe. Once the plague

(37:20):
had made its way in, it began to fester there,
gaining in virulence. By the time it left a year later,
over half the city was left silent and lifeless. But
the plague was only getting warmed up as it continued
its path north. It seemed that in the hot summer
days it acquired even more momentum, and make no mistake,

(37:42):
its most destructive time was still ahead.

Speaker 2 (37:46):
By the late summer.

Speaker 1 (37:47):
At thirteen forty eight, a fisherman in the English Channel
could see the plague flag flying from nearly every French
town and village along the coast. It would not be
long before the Black Death would engage in its most citisen.
A cross channel invasion was imminent as the Battle for
Britain would soon begin. The plague, after all, had killed

(38:09):
in France and on the seas and the oceans. In England,
it would do its work with a brutal efficiency never
seen before.

Speaker 2 (38:16):
There.

Speaker 1 (38:17):
It would kill on the beaches and on the landing grounds.
It would kill in the fields and the streets and
the hills, and it would seem as if it would
never surrender. As the Avignon, Paris, Florence and many other

(38:52):
cities were running out of space to bury their dead.
England was enjoying a relatively good summer in.

Speaker 2 (38:57):
The year thirteen forty eight.

Speaker 1 (39:00):
Popular King Edward the Third had replaced the rather unpopular
Edward the Second, who, let's just say, came to a
rather unpleasant end.

Speaker 2 (39:09):
Literally.

Speaker 1 (39:11):
Edward the Third had gone on to achieve glory against
the French at the Battle of Cressey in thirteen forty six,
His victorious troops would steadily bring back the spoils of
war to the ports of Calais, where they'd be shipped
across the English Channel to an absolutely triumphant Britain. But
this train of goods increasingly made its way through a

(39:33):
French countryside where a number of cities displaying the plague
flag would be increasing by the day. Plus keep in
mind that English wool at this point in history was
an extremely high demand and plague or not, trade continued
relatively unabated despite the looming threat.

Speaker 2 (39:51):
English sheep, after all.

Speaker 1 (39:52):
In mid thirteen forty eight, estimated at approximately eight million,
outnumbered English people by a decent man margin. That commodity
simply had to get out as other goods needed to
get in, and social distancing was just not a high priority.
The Black Death came with a vengeance never seen before.

(40:15):
Historians in retrospect feel that the plague came from Calais
and landed on several fronts along the Channel coast. The
Great Mortality arrived at Southampton, Portsmouth and the small port
of Melcombe which is now part of Weymouth. Another front
began at Bristol, where it was suspected a ship from
Gascony docked with a cargo of French wine. The effect

(40:37):
of its landing was striking and immediate. The local monk,
Henry Knighton described it as quote a cruel death took
just two days to break out all over town. For many,
it was nothing less than sudden death end quote. Now
from these two separate beachheads, one along the Channel coast
and the other from Bristol, the plague began to move inland,

(41:01):
along the roads and the river systems. Now, whereas the
average death rate in the city in continental Europe was
approximately thirty three percent, in England, it would soar to
an incredible fifty five percent. And again this is on average.
Some cities would see as high as eighty to ninety
percent of their population perish. Many towns and cities who

(41:26):
could simply not bury their dead fast enough would resort
to incinerating the remains. A traveler along an English road
would see a nightmarish landscape of giant black smoke plumes
emanating from every direction, with the ash of the dead
raining down upon them. So many people died that industries
were left abandoned, fields were untended, Livestock would be dying

(41:49):
by the thousands in the pastures and the streets of
small villages and towns would be overgrown and retaken by
nature by the late autumn. At thirteen forty eight, the
two fronts combined together and then cut a swayth to London, which,
as John Kelly, the author of The Great Mortality, would say, quote,

(42:11):
the sanitary conditions of the city were appalling even by
medieval standards end quote. London at this time was estimated
to have had eighty two one hundred thousand people, of
which over half of them would be taken by a
particularly sinister one two punch, first by the pneumonic variant
as the cooler weather the fall and winter would drive

(42:33):
people indoors and thus closer together, and then second by
the bubotic form in the spring, as the warming months
brought fleas and rats back into action. But despite this
alarming death rate, things were just getting started for the rest.
At thirteen forty nine, the plague advanced to the north,
and just like in France, it overran one city after

(42:54):
the next, but again in England, it seemed to inflict
death at an unusually high rate as it continued its
relentless drive, and by the latter part of that year,
it had arrived at the borders of Scotland. John Kelly,
using primary source material, gives us the Scottish assessment of
what happened next quote.

Speaker 2 (43:14):
The Scots, who.

Speaker 1 (43:15):
Were still laboring under the impression that the plague was
an English phenomenon, were enjoying themselves immensely in the summer
at thirteen forty nine. They were laughing at their enemies
and swearing by the foul death of England. In March
of thirteen fifty, the very next year, they amassed the
large army in the forest of Selkirk, near the English border,

(43:35):
And of course they did this with the intention of
invading the whole realm. But before the attack could be launched,
the quote revenging hand of God reached across the border
and shattered the gathering Scots with sudden and savage death
end quote. Now this would not be the only time

(43:56):
an army would be annihilated. Far to the south plague
in the Iberian Peninsula as far back as thirteen forty eight.
It had come to the Emirates of Granada in thirteen
forty nine, and by thirteen fifty, the same year that.

Speaker 2 (44:10):
The Scots were dying at Selkirk.

Speaker 1 (44:13):
The warrior king Alfonso the eleventh of Castile was on
the verge of taking Gibraltar and then had the plan
to bring down the Emirate once.

Speaker 2 (44:21):
And for all.

Speaker 1 (44:22):
But instead, at the Siege of Gibraltar, his army would
be destroyed by Ursinia Pestis, and Alfonso the eleventh would
go down in history as the only reigning European monarch
to die at the Black Death. Now keep this in mind,
as the Castilian army got wiped out here by the plague,
the Emirates of Granada would ironically be saved, and thus

(44:45):
it would take another one hundred and fifty years before
the rac Conquista would be finally completed. With such massive
mortality descending on seemingly everyone, a shattered and desperate Europe
began to look for answers. Many felt that this was
divine retribution for the sins of humanity and turn to religion.

(45:09):
Others looked to astrology, and in Paris, considered to be
the pinnacle of medical knowledge, the learned forty six masters
the Paris medical faculty congregated and determined that the Black
Death was caused by an unusual conjunction of Saturn, Mars,
and Jupiter, which they determined happened at one in the
afternoon on March twentieth, thirteen forty five, and I'm assuming

(45:32):
that's local time now. The learned masters got together and
assembled a compendium to explain this. Further quote. The first
cause of this pestilence was and is the configuration of
the heavens, which occurred in thirteen forty five at one
hour after noon on the twentieth of March, when there
was a major conjunction of the three planets in Aquarius.

(45:55):
What happened, according to the masters in chapter two, was
that many of the vapors corrupted at the time of conjunction,
mixed with the air and were spread abroad by frequent
gusts of wind. This corrupted air, when breathed in, corrupted
this substance of spirit, and thus the heat generated destroyed
the life force.

Speaker 3 (46:15):
End quote.

Speaker 1 (46:17):
Now, keeping all this in perspective, it's good to point
out that the scientific method, germ theory, and even the
medical need for hand washing was still a ways in
the future, not to mention things like ivy fluid vaccination
and antibiotics. The medicine of the time was based on
ideas that ranged back to the time of Aristotle and Galen,

(46:37):
who was a doctor who lived during the rain of
Marcus Aurelius. As such, it was based on the four
humors of the body blood, phlem, yellow bile, and black bile,
which could cause illness if they were unbalanced, and the
preferred treatment was usually bloodletting. However, this method would usually
result in the introduction of more infection and or the

(46:59):
loss of too much blood, which would usually hasten death.
But when this didn't seem to work, new methods were developed.
Doctors would lance the swollen boils, draining the extremely infectious
contents out. Now, in some situations this would actually work,
but in others more infection would simply set in through

(47:19):
the new openings. In some cases they would take this
a step further. The boobos were lanced open and then
a concoction of herbs and human excrement was rubbed in,
and as can be imagined, this didn't really work out
very well either. Now, one theory that came about was
the idea that the plague was an airborne vapor and miasma,

(47:42):
and the thought process was that this was something that
could be countered by inhaling extremely pure air, hence the
reason some people sought solace in the countryside, or it
could be opposed by inhaling extremely foul air to offset
some of the noxious odors. This led entire community rushing
to stick their heads into the local latrine. Now along

(48:05):
those same lines, drinking urine became very popular and specifically
non plague victim urine developed into a treatment, and of
course the procurement of this became its own cottage industry.
For those rich enough and who decided not to drink urine,
a crushed up sapphire that was ingested was also thought
to work well against the plague. There were those who

(48:28):
also employed fire. Initially, it was applied directly to the body.
In some scenarios, hot pokers were even jabbed into the
boils of those with the disease. I guess one way
to look at it is that one person's treatment is
another person's torture. But in other scenarios, fire was actually
used as a means to ward off what was considered

(48:49):
evil vapors, and of course fire was also very effective
at warding off fleas. Thus the pope at the time,
Clement the sixth would sit between two log fires when
he was giving mass, and for the record, he was
noted to have survived the plague. Throughout Europe, quarantine would
also more effectively be used. The extreme examples would include

(49:11):
the city of Milan and a good majority of Poland.
In those areas, anyone who showed the first signs that
the Great Mortality would be literally walled up. In many cases,
they'd be walled up alongside their own families within their
own homes, which now became their own tombs. Now as
vicious and brutal as this may sound, Milan's death rate

(49:32):
was only fifteen percent, and Poland's rate was much lower
than the rest of Europe. During the years of the
Great Mortality, there were a lot of different treatment modalities
that were developed, but perhaps the greatest legacy of medical
intervention were the plague doctors. To look upon a plague

(49:53):
doctor was a foreboding experience. There was a good chance
that you were dying when you saw them. But durrance
alone was startling, as they wore the equivalent of a
medieval hazmat suit, donning a thick leather covering with solid
boots and thick gloves. Their bodies were nearly sealed off
from direct contact. The bird like masks were designed to

(50:15):
shield their breathing, the beaks being full of herbs and
flowers to neutralize some of the putrid odors. The eyepieces
were of glass, but would later be filled with crystal
and then dyed red in color, giving one an almost
sinister gaze, and some of these would also be offset
so that the doctor could not look directly at his patient,
As the idea that eye contact could lead to contracting

(50:38):
the disease became a thing. In many cases, these nightmarish
bird human hybrids would be the last thing a person
would see, and unfortunately, most plague doctors are remembered by
history as being nothing more than icons of death. But
that said, the people who took up this job put
their lives on the line and began to study what

(50:59):
they saw. The old ideas that treating patience and medicine
in general came under increasing scrutiny, and new methods that
treating wounds, pain and fever, along with investigating the disease itself,
were developed. Now even if they couldn't cure the black
death in many cases, these plague doctors still managed to

(51:20):
ease the suffering of those that they treated. Now, not
all would put their faith in medicine or science. Many
also turned to religion for solace, but some would take
this to an extreme. A movement known as the Flagelence
emerged in late thirteen forty eight and early thirteen forty

(51:42):
nine as the Black Death ravaged Europe. These men and women,
in groups as high as five hundred would engage in
pilgrimages across the continent as penance for what they perceived
as these sins of humanity and a displeased God. They
would whip themselves as they went by. The way were
composed of three or four ropes, each with a piece

(52:03):
of metal or hooks embedded at the ends. Many would
march naked, others were dressed in white robes and hoods,
sometimes with a red cross printed on them. A contemporary witness,
the Dominican friar Henry sie de Hervodia, would comment that
the movement was like a race without a head, and
would describe one of the members as he stripped himself

(52:27):
naked and beat his body in arms and legs till
blood poured off of them. Then, in an ecstasy of
pain and joy, he fell to his knees and in
his cold monks cell, naked and covered in blood, and
shivering in the frosty air, he prayed to God to
wipe out his sins end quote.

Speaker 2 (52:45):
Officially from a.

Speaker 1 (52:46):
Religious perspective, they were rejected by Pope Clement sixth as
being heretical for the purposes of the plague. However, they
served as a vector moving the disease along their pilgrimage route.
People along the way would know that the flagelence had come.
The road that they took after all, would be splattered
with blood and entrails, not to mention the bodies of

(53:08):
those who had died in the attempt to find remission
for their sins. Now, increasingly, as the Great Mortality took
more lives at an unprecedented rate, the various peoples of
Europe began to look for someone to blame. The Jewish

(53:29):
community of Europe would be one of the major scapegoats.
The plague was put into the light of being an
elaborate scheme where a vast underground Jewish network had poisoned
all the wells. Many Jews were thus rounded up and
faced torture to extract forced confessions after which the pogroms
began in Earnest, of which the first major one occurred

(53:50):
in Touloon on April thirteenth, thirteen forty eight. Many would
follow almost throughout the entire breath of Europe. Trucius the
Canon of Constance would say, quote within the revolution of
one year, that is, from all Saints Day November one,
thirteen forty eight until Michael Moss September twenty ninth, thirteen

(54:13):
forty nine, all of the Jews between Cologne and Austria
were burnt and killed end quote.

Speaker 2 (54:21):
In Strasburg it was.

Speaker 1 (54:23):
Reported that half the Jewish population was stripped naked, marched
into a local cemetery and incinerated in a stone house.
And in Brandenburg they were placed on a giant grill
and burnt alive. But even in these dark, tumultuous times,
there were those who provided sanctuary. The city of Marseille

(54:44):
in southern France, for example, offered a great deal of protection.
The King of Poland, Casmir the Great, would take in
Jewish refugees and even forbade persecution. Even the Pope Clement
the sixth in a papal bull on July six, six
thirteen forty eight would say, quote, it cannot be true
that the Jews are the cause of the plague, for

(55:06):
it affects the Jews themselves end quote. But even with
the Pope's blessings, not all would listen.

Speaker 2 (55:14):
In some communities where the Jewish.

Speaker 1 (55:16):
Population was slightly less affected, they would be blamed for
the plague and killed, and in other communities, where it
was mostly the Jews dying from the Black Death, the
locals would justify killing them as completing God's work, and
this would go on for years. By late thirteen forty nine,

(55:41):
upwards of fifty to sixty percent of the British Isles
had succumbed to the plague. But this was not the
only front.

Speaker 3 (55:50):
At two and a.

Speaker 1 (55:50):
Half miles a day, it had crossed the Rhine, entering
into what would one day be southern Germany, and then
from there had advanced to the Gates of Vienna. Was
able to cross on more than just land. On the
North Sea, the Black Death took to the water and
invaded Scandinavia. Ships would later be found adrift with nothing

(56:11):
on board except ravaged corpses Bergen would be one of
the first cities to be hit, but it would not
stop there. It moved east, penetrating even into remote areas
to Cedidol, a secluded village that was located high in
the mountains, was so badly devastated that nearly everyone in
it died.

Speaker 2 (56:32):
In fact, when a rescue.

Speaker 1 (56:33):
Party arrived in thirteen fifty nearly a year later, the
only survivor they found was a young girl named Ripe
the Poor Child, who, due to her lack of human
interaction and guidance, had reverted back into an animalistic existence.
She had begun to hunt wild game like a wolf
and had lost the ability to communicate with words. Now,

(56:57):
despite these harrowing stories, the plague would By thirteen fifty one,
the Black Death arrived in Poland, but there it was
not able to inflict as much damage. Cities were more
spread out, and the king Kasmir the Third again also
known as Casmir the Great, had shut down the borders
of his kingdom and had enforced a very strict quarantine.

(57:20):
As I mentioned before, anybody in Poland who showed the
slightest signs of plague were literally bricked into their homes.
And just as a side note, there is one theory
that says that Poland had an abundance of cats, which
would help to curb the rat population and thus saved
a good chunk of humanity. By thirteen fifty two, the

(57:42):
plague had made it to the gates of Moscow, but
unlike the Grand Armae or the Wehrmacht, it continued to
move east and back into the Eurasian step from where
it came. Now, make no mistake, Europe was left devastated
in its wake, but by thirteen fifty three the Black
Death was finally over. There is a famous statement which

(58:09):
I believe is from William Yeats, though many authors in
history have said similar things. It goes, the veneer we
call civilization is only skin deep. Though we like to
think that humanity is secure, are more barbaric tendencies lie
just below the surface. And thus this statement implies that
it only takes a nudge from some other stressor to

(58:30):
knock us down several notches, you know, to blow us
back into the Stone Age kind of thing. There may
be a certain degree of truth to this, but as
far as stressors go, the Black Death was perhaps one
of humanity's greatest catastrophes. After all, it's estimated that a
third of Europe did not survive the pestilence, and now

(58:51):
historians feel that that number is woefully low. Worldwide, it's
also thought that over two hundred million people died. Network
of society and some places broke down or was destroyed entirely,
and yet civilization persisted. A new equilibrium was established, and
some say Europe emerged in a better spot.

Speaker 2 (59:14):
With so many dead.

Speaker 1 (59:15):
The cost of labor skyrocketed and the cost of food plummeted.
The landed gentry who ended up on the losing end
of this one were now forced to pay higher wages,
and peasants and serfs saw their standard of living increased. Indeed,
some could even build up wealth to pass on to
their children. Furthermore, somebody who was previously indentured to the

(59:36):
land now had a better chance of leaving an unfavorable
position and moving to a new location with the knowledge
that they could be employed. With the need of labor
in such high demand, even the position of women was
elevated as some took on traditionally male roles. Some historians
even go so far as to say that this was
the beginning of the end of serfdom. There's going to

(01:00:00):
be a time when old ideas and institutions that had
previously wallowed in complacency were now put to the test.
People began to take a very insightful re examination of
their own mortality. As such, art, literature, and music were
all drastically affected by the plague, as can be seen
with the emergence of the dance macabre genre. To this,

(01:00:26):
many historians would also add that a new breed of
doctors would begin to question their methods, treatment and out
of date ideas, a now growing middle class would hunger
for new concepts and books, and an ever growing disappointment
with religious institutions would hasten Europe into the Reformation. Make
no mistake, humanity took a major hit, but it stood

(01:00:49):
the test of time. John Kelly, in his book The
Great Mortality summarizes this really well.

Speaker 3 (01:00:56):
Quote After two.

Speaker 1 (01:00:58):
And a half centuries the rapid demographic growth, the balance
between people and resources had become very tight. Nearly everywhere,
living standards were either falling or stagnating. Poverty, hunger, and
malnutrition were widespread. Social mobility was rare, Technological innovation was stifled,
and new ideas and modes of thinking were.

Speaker 2 (01:01:20):
Denounced as dangerous heresies.

Speaker 1 (01:01:23):
The Black death and the era of recurrent disease helped
to end the paralysis and allowed the continent to recapture
its momentum. A smaller population meant a larger share of
resources for the survivors, and as often a wiser use
of resources. Human ingenuity also flowered as people sought ways

(01:01:44):
to substitute machine power for man power. As a result,
you had a more diversified economy, a more intensive use
of capital, a more powerful technology and standard of living.
Plague in some broke the Malthusian deadlock, which otherwise would
threaten to hold Europe in its traditional ways for an
indefinite future. Horrific as a century of unremitting death had been,

(01:02:09):
Europe was able to emerge from the Charnel House of pestilence,
renewed like the sun after the rain.

Speaker 3 (01:02:17):
End quote to