HIST 204
WEEKLY LECTURE OUTLINES
SOME PRIMARY SOURCES FOR RESEARCH PAPERS

Tuesday:

This month: https://www.newberry.org/vestige-black-death

One  year ago (2019): Fire devastates Cathedral of Notre-Dame, Paris (begun 1163, completed 1345):
Previous appearance
In flames (15 April 2019)

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)

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

Thursday:

DIVERSITY AND DYNAMISM IN LATE MEDIEVAL CULTURE

Music:

“Tarantella alia clausula” (2:45 min.):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtsIrhnI4ok&feature=relmfu

“Dolce amoroso foco” (2:13 min.):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnyaTCwnmm0&feature=related

15th-century music (see first two of five videos):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPKhBkLgFLk&list=PL19E954FBC26A7E5F

Videos:

The Print Workshop in the 15th Century (Cambridge University Library; 5:02 min.):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4ARRcED3Ro

Arts and letters:

Some Black Death artistic genres emphasized the inevitability and horrors of death, such as cadaver or “transi” tombs

Expansion of universities and schools, including schools that offered training in business subjects

Rise of vernacular literature, by authors including:

• Dante Alighieri (Divine Comedy: Italian)
• Giovanni Boccaccio (Decameron: Italian)
• William Langland (Piers Plowman: English)
• Geoffrey Chaucer (Canterbury Tales: English)
• Christine de Pizan (Letter to the God of Love; Treasury of the City of Ladies: French)
• François Villon (poems about life among the poor in Paris: French)

Rise of humanist education, based on classical languages, literature, and arts, and led by Italian scholar Francesco Petrarch

Revival of realistic portraiture and of classicizing art and architecture

Philosophy:

Rise of humanism, celebrating human potential (e.g., in Pico della Mirandola‘s essay, On the Dignity of Man)

• Faith unfettered by logic
• Scientific inquiry unfettered by faith

The new technologies: