HIST 204
SYLLABUS
LECTURE OUTLINES

Tuesday:

Two years ago (2020): https://www.newberry.org/vestige-black-death

Three  years ago (2019): Fire devastates Cathedral of Notre-Dame, Paris (begun 1163, completed 1345):
Notre-Dame in 2010 (from south)
In flames (15 April 2019)
Aerial view after the fire (published 3 April 2021)

Videos:

Michael Wood, “The Story of England: The Great Famine and the Black Death” (58:47 min.; famine: 20:29-30:29; plague: 39:29-47:00):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJSK8_atMJY

Music:

Dies irae (Day of Wrath), 13th cent. (3:31 min.):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yc-QKI_KaAM&feature=fvsr

Deus miserere (God Have Mercy), Old Hispanic prayers and responses sung before the funeral service (4:14 min.):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWO412fuPXg&feature=relmfu

Corvus Corax, “Saltatio mortis” (Totentanz, or Dance of Death, 3:53 min.):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWruBwPNBOs&feature=related

Monks (acting like flagellants): “Pie Jesu domine” (1:37 min.):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgYEuJ5u1K0
“Bring out your dead!” (1:56):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grbSQ6O6kbs

Steeleye Span, “The Shaking of the Sheets” (1989; 4:12 min.):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I16WqxSMCu0

Major health crises of 14th century: Great Famine (1315-22) and Black Death (1347-49)

Distinctions drawn between:

• medicine (physic) and surgery
• licensed (learned or university-trained) physicians and surgeons, and unlicensed healers (including midwives, bone-setters, tooth-pullers, barbers, folk healers, and quacks)

The four humors:

• blood (hot and moist)
• phlegm (cold and moist)
• yellow bile (hot and dry)
• black bile (cold and dry)

Diagnostic aids included:

• pulse
• urine (color, sediment, smell, taste)
• stool
• general appearance (especially of eyes, lips, tongue, hair, skin, etc.)
• other symptoms (swellings, pain, weakness, faintness, blurred vision, hearing problems, dizzyness, sweating, etc.)

Astrological influence on health

Remedies for illness included:

• bloodletting
• purging (with emetics and laxatives)
• medicinal baths (Codex Manesse, early 14C;) and vapor-baths
• adjustment to diet and daily regimen
• medicines
• prayer

Hospitals (for poor only):

• General hospitals (often excluded pregnant women) (examples: St John’s Hospital, Bruges; Eastbridge hospital, Canterbury; and the Hôtel-Dieu, Beaune)
• Leper hospitals (for confinement and care of lepers)
• Lying-in hospitals (for women in childbed)
• Insane asylums
• Almshouses (for the elderly, invalid, or diabled)
• Orphanages

Click to see some 14th-century manuscripts on plague, medicine, and surgery

Some responses to the Black Death:

• Fear that the epidemic was caused by the stars or by divine wrath
• Massacres of Jews (who were initially accused of poisoning wells to cause the pestilence)
• Processions of flagellants
• Mass burials (part of the plague cemetery near the Tower of London, excavated in the 1980s)
• Macabre art (click here to see part of a late 15th-century painting of the “Dance of Death” from Tallinn, Estonia, and another from Lübeck, Germany)
• Struggling to carry on with normal administration (click here to see death entries from the manorial court roll of Norton, co. Hertfordshire, 1348-9)

Thursday:

Some effects of the Black Death in Europe:

• Death of one-third to one-half of the population in 1347-49
• Recurring episodes of pestilence until 18th cent.; population in decline or stagnant until 16th cent. (click for grafitti from Ashwell church, Herts., 1361)
• Rise in real wages and fall in land and food prices (until 16th cent.)
• Changes in farming patterns on large estates, e.g., renting out of demesne, or conversion from arable to pastoral farming
• Gradual eradication of serfdom (except in Eastern Europe)
• Development of rural industries (espcially textile production)
• Rise in peasant and artisanal standard of living (until 16th cent.)
• Expansion of ecclesiastical property ownership
• Peasant and artisanal revolts (e.g., French Jacquerie, 1358; Florentine Ciompi Rebellion, 1378; and English Peasants’ Revolt, 1381)
• Rise of lay participation in civic and religious leadership
• Attempts to use law or statute to prohibit rise of wages and luxurious dress or food to non-elites

Online readings:

John de Trokelowe, Annales: Famine of 1315

Marchione di Coppo Stefani, The Florentine Chronicle (1370s-1380s): the plague in Florence, 1348
http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/osheim/marchione.html

The plague in England, 1348-9:
https://sites.uwm.edu/carlin/the-black-death-in-the-british-isles/

The Ordinance of Labourers (1349) http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/seth/ordinance-labourers.asp
The Statute of Labourers (1351) http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/seth/statute-labourers.asp