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)
- 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