Could you Survive the Medieval Apocalypse?

Summary

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After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal

Episode: Could you Survive the Medieval Apocalypse?

Hosts: Anthony Delaney (Matt Lewis), Maddy Pelling
Expert Guest: Dr. Eleanor Janega
Release Date: November 20, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this lively and irreverent episode, historians Anthony Delaney and Maddy Pelling are joined by Dr. Eleanor Janega to dissect the medieval obsession with the apocalypse. They explore how the Book of Revelation fueled an atmosphere of constant end-times anxiety, the bizarre real-world phenomena these beliefs generated—like the infamous flagellant cults—and the colorful pantheon of monsters, from locusts with human faces to the infamous Whore of Babylon. Delving into both the theology and lived experience of medieval Europeans, the trio asks: would any of us stand a chance if that particular brand of apocalypse descended today?

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Key Discussion Points

1. Medieval Mindset: The Ever-Imminent Apocalypse

• Cultural context: Medieval Europeans viewed the apocalypse not as a distant metaphor, but as a real, immediate threat woven into Christian doctrine.

  Dr. Eleanor Janega (05:15): “If you walked up to a medieval peasant and asked when the end of the world was coming, they'd probably say 'soon.' And that's only kind of a joke.”

• Linear worldview: Christianity's timeline has a beginning, middle, and a definite end, creating a perpetual sense of anticipation.
• Judgment at any time: The “Little Apocalypse” in the Gospels stressed the unpredictability of the end—be ready at all times (06:31).

2. Revelation: Sourcebook of Medieval Apocalypse

• The Book of Revelation: Known to the medievals as “the Apocalypse,” this book's bizarre, monster-filled visions provided a script for what the end would look like.

  Dr. Eleanor Janega (08:01): “God was just like, bam, you like that. John has this particular vision...they included it [in the Bible]...probably just because it's awesome, actually. It's a page-turner.”

• Medieval reinterpretations: John of Patmos’ revelations fueled wild speculation and creative reinterpretation.

3. Medieval Attitudes: Welcoming—or Dreading—the End

• Not always bad news: Pious believers anticipated possible rewards after surviving apocalyptic trials, including a “10,000-year reign of peace” (09:28).
• Purgatory versus heaven: The apocalypse could mean a shortcut past purgatory’s “hell with a timer” straight to salvation—if you were sufficiently penitent (10:55).

4. Signs and Stages of the Apocalypse

• Angels and Seals: Trumpet-blasting angels unleash calamities by opening seals (12:27).

  Maddy (12:31): “So far I’m not panicking. That’s camp.”

• Natural disasters multiplied: Apocalyptic prophecy took everyday disasters—earthquakes, famine, war—and amped them up (13:18).

5. Monsters of the End Times

Gog and Magog

• Legendary figures: Agents unleashing chaos, sometimes interpreted as Mongol invasions or other “hordes.”

  Dr. Eleanor Janega (13:55): “If you see a couple of burly sort of undressed dudes ... you are looking at Gog and Magog.”

The Four Horsemen

• War, Famine, Pestilence/Conquest, Death: Each interpreted flexibly to fit current catastrophes, whether Mongol invasions, Black Death, or famine (16:11).
• Artistic depictions: “Sometimes the hell mouth has little legs...They're giving the Nazgul in London.” (15:59)

Locusts the Size of Horses

• Hyperbolic horror: In apocalyptic lore, locusts are depicted as monstrous, horse-sized, often with human faces (24:09).

  Dr. Eleanor Janega (24:09): “A lot of the time the way they're depicted in art is that they look kind of like a horse, and they often have the face of a human.”

• Rooted in rumor: Swedes and northern Europeans more often heard about than saw locusts, making them easy fodder for fantasy (24:41).

Satan as the Multi-Headed Dragon

• Satan’s delayed entrance: The apocalypse begins without him; he arrives as a seven-headed dragon, battling archangel Michael (27:08).

Antichrist (The Beast of the Abyss)

• Satan’s proxy: Born of forbidden union, possessed by Satan, and meant as a twisted mirror of Christ (29:04).

  Dr. Eleanor Janega (29:04): “Antichrist is created by Satan as a way of kind of mocking Christ...He essentially possesses the baby.”

• Worldly evil: The Antichrist symbolizes political/civil danger, bringing rulers to his side, and returns in bestial, leopard-spotted form with many heads (31:19).

The Whore of Babylon

• Sexualized warning: She rides the Beast, drinks from a cup “full of either all the filth of the world or the blood of the martyrs,” and is scapegoated as the source of sexual and political corruption (33:13).

  Dr. Eleanor Janega (33:13): “My girl’s going to show up riding the beast of the abyss, of course. Because what she is doing ... is showing you the way that rulers of the world can be perverted through sex.”

• Enduring misogyny: Doing little more than existing and being attractive is rendered monstrous and world-ending (33:22).

6. Apocalyptic Imagery and Everyday Life

• Accessible doctrine: Apocalyptic themes were broadcast through Advent, sermons, and church art, ensuring even illiterate people recognized the signs (41:01).

  Dr. Eleanor Janega (41:01): “Ordinary people know a lot about this, because yes, it is very central to the Christian [world]. But also there’s a whole season…Advent…about the Apocalypse.”

• Visual literacy: Medieval people could “read” church art—Last Judgments, beasts, and heavenly battles—with sophisticated understanding (42:07).

7. Real-World Effects: Flagellants and Social Chaos

• The Flagellant cults: In times of crisis (notably the Black Death), groups of men (later joined by women and children) would publicly beat themselves to appease God, sometimes degenerating into rumors of orgies in the woods (43:47).

  Dr. Eleanor Janega (44:15): “They’re half naked...sitting around doing basically very public BDSM.”

• Clerical anxieties: The church tried to limit popular, uncontrolled expressions of apocalyptic fervor that might disrupt social order—or their own authority (44:43).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “If you have a real sort of understanding of yourself as holy… the apocalypse isn't going to be such a bad thing for you.”
  – Dr. Eleanor Janega (09:01)

• “If you have a big earthquake happen, then you just go, ah, apocalypse is happening.”
  – Dr. Eleanor Janega (18:15)

• “The dragon comes up and Satan is…depicted oftentimes as a red dragon...He’s gonna come up...he is gonna run into his old op, St. Michael the Archangel.”
  – Dr. Eleanor Janega (27:08)

• On the Whore of Babylon:
  “My girl's going to show up riding the beast of the abyss, of course. Because...she is showing you the way that the rulers of the world can be perverted through sex.”
  – Dr. Eleanor Janega (33:13)

• On surviving the medieval apocalypse:
  “I'm not even interested in milk delivery work. Like, if I can't get down pub...I'm not built for this. No thanks.”
  – Dr. Eleanor Janega (47:47)

• On the blending of drama and dread:
  “But what if I were to help lead it? So I would just, like, get involved in the drama.”
  – Maddy Pelling (48:10)

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Important Timestamps

• 01:38 – Introduction: Medieval anxieties about the apocalypse
• 05:15 – “When is the end of the world coming?”
• 07:07 – The Book of Revelation and the meaning of “apocalypse”
• 09:01 – Why many medieval Christians wanted the End to happen
• 12:27 – The first apocalyptic signs: trumpet-blowing angels and natural disasters
• 13:55 – Gog and Magog explained
• 15:41 – The Four Horsemen (war, famine, pestilence, death)
• 18:15 – Disasters as apocalyptic signs; earthquakes, Black Death
• 24:09 – Locusts the size of horses; mixed horror and rumor
• 27:08 – Satan as dragon, archangel Michael’s rematch
• 29:01 – The Antichrist’s origin and legend
• 33:13 – The Whore of Babylon as the apocalypse’s femme fatale
• 41:01 – How everyday people engaged with apocalypse stories (Advent, art, sermons)
• 43:47 – Flagellants: cults, self-punishment, and chaos during pandemics
• 47:14 – Exit Q: Could any of us survive the medieval apocalypse?

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Tone, Style, and Takeaway

• Tone: Playful, witty, sardonic, with humor riffing on modern pop culture and memes (“Pick me,” “hashtag 14th century best century,” “Nazgul in London”).
• Depth: Insightful blend of theology, history, and social psychology, often lampooning both medieval and modern angst.
• Memorable passages: The panel’s animated sequence discussing the Whore of Babylon, their rejection of survivalist fantasy (“I would just lie down and die”), and Dr. Janega’s sarcastic takes on what God might have thought (“I’m sick of you people”).

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Summary for the Uninitiated

This episode delivers a thorough, whip-smart journey through the medieval obsession with apocalyptic prophecy—its roots, its monsters, and its effects on the lived experience. What emerges is a society primed to see the end around every corner, translating trauma and disaster into mythic struggle, and acting out those anxieties in wild, sometimes transgressive ways. Most telling: not even the podcast hosts would bother to try surviving the medieval apocalypse—they’d rather become part of the show, or simply spectate as the monsters rolled in.

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Transcript

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[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

For Medieval Europe. The Apocalypse wasn't just a metaphor, it was very real and very imminent. We're talking about the four horsemen, locusts the size of horses, the Beast of the Abyss, the Whore of Babylon, and obviously the Antichrist. We're going to go through the medieval apocalypse blow by blow to see how this obsession with the end led to the bizarre real world cults like the flagellants who abandoned all norms for group sex in the woods. Welcome to After Dark.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

The woman straightens, hand shading her eyes against the noon glare. The world has gone strange, the light too bright too still. She sees the sun dim to blood red and the sky above crack with a sound like a mountain splitting. From it spills fire and winged things, vast and shimmering, their cries agonizingly loud. The earth trembles, birds fall dead mid flight. She hears the church bell clanging wildly and sees the river running backward. Shit. She thinks the end is clearly nigh. Hear ye, hear ye. The end is nigh. Well, it was for medieval people anyway, because it was their Christian duty actually to talk about and be prepared for the coming apocalypse. It was laid out in the book of Revelation, where the final battle between good and evil takes place. So you had to be prepared for what was coming down the line. Today we are going through it blow by blow, one monster after another, and discussing how these ideas about the end of the world ended up with people flagellating themselves and having group sex in the woods. Maddie just said how very medieval this was, not the Dark Ages. The only conceivable guest for today, of course, is Dr. Eleanor Jaenega. She's here. Eleanor, of course, is the host of our sister podcast from history hit Gone Medieval, alongside the brilliant Matt Lewis, and she specializes in studying medieval apocalyptic thought. I didn't think I was gonna be able to do that in one go. Now I've highlighted it, but it's fine. We did it. And she was also the star of a wonderful documentary on historyhit tv. Go and subscribe to that now if you're not. That came out last year called Medieval Apocalypse. Eleanor, welcome back to After Dark.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Hello. I live here now.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

You live here now. You do.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

I feel like people really hate when you come on the show, Eleanor. You're just the least popular guest.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

You're definitely not one of our most popular guests ever on After Dark.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Every single time.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

It's her again. It's gonna be the worst. Yeah, absolutely.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

I am genuinely so excited to get into this topic because when we do medieval history, I think we're always a little bit lost potentially sometimes.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

Yeah. Depending on what it is.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Yeah. Just exposing us there live on this podcast.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

However, I will say this. I was raised Catholic, and so the concept of apocalypse, nearer to me than I'm comfortable with, but yes.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, then that's fair. Eleanor, tell me this. Were I to walk into a medieval village and walk up to a random person, a medieval peasant, and say, when is the end of the world coming? What are they going to say to me?

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Soon? And I mean, that's only kind of like. Yeah, like it's only kind of a half a joke, because every single thing that we see in the gospel, there's a part of the gospel that we often refer to as the little apocalypse where Jesus talks about the end of the world. Right.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Just a tiny apocalypse.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Just a little bit. Just a little bit. It's just a little Sousa of an apocalypse.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

An appetizer. Yeah.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

You know, like, for them, this is a really important part of Christianity. And what you have to understand about Christianity is it is a linear religion, right? There's a beginning. That's when God makes the world. You're in the Garden of Eden. There's a middle, which is kind of when Jesus shows up, you know, does his thing, and then there's an end, right? The world is going to end. The universe is going to end at a point in time, and after that happens, you're going to have the last judgment, and everyone's going to go to their ultimate place, either heaven or hell. That's it. Right? So it's going to happen. Now, what Jesus says in the Little Apocalypse is that you don't know the hour that the apocalypse is coming. That you're just supposed to kind of like, keep yourself ready because it could happen at any moment.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

This is stressful. As someone who overthinks everything anyway, I don't need to be told that, like, this is not supposed to be Judgment is coming. It's coming. But, like, we're not gonna tell you when. Tell me when.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Yeah, yeah. Well, you don't get to know. And it's. Then you're just supposed to stay on your toes. And so as a result, obviously, if you're, like, steeped in this particularized milieu, anytime something gets a little bit weird or goes slightly wrong, you're like, ah, it's coming. Yeah, exactly.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

Now, you mentioned a beginning, a middle, and an end. That sounds very storified to me, as if it's very story led. And we can actually trace this to a book, a specific book, can't we? See what I did there?

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

I like that.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

I think all the time. And that book being the book of Revelation. Talk to me about this one, please. How does apocalypse present itself in this particular context?

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Okay, so there is a man, and his name is John of Patmos, or St. John the Divine. Right? He is often confused with the St. John who writes the Gospel of John. And in the Middle Ages, they do think it's the same guy. It is not the same guy. And John's deal is he goes off to the island of Patmos, which is now in Greece, and homeboy feels some things, he thinks some things, you know, like uncharitably, you could say that. It sounds like somebody's trippin', right? And so he says that it is revealed to him. And that's what apocalypse means in Greek. It means, you know, revelation. Okay, so medieval people are going to call the book of Revelation the Apocalypse. But now we tend to say Revelation. There's no s. It's the book of Revelation.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

I saw that in my notes and I wanted to say Revelations. I wanted to. But it's not that.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Yeah, it's not. Because it's just like.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

It's just the one revelation.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

Basically like the ultimate revelation.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

God was just like, bam, you like that. And John like has this, this particular vision about how everything is going to go down. He writes this out and everyone is like, yeah, real talk, I guess. And they included it. Yeah, it's fine. Quite why this makes it into the Bible itself and it isn't just Apocrypha, I cannot tell you. But it's probably just because it's awesome actually. And it's like full of monsters. So it's really difficult to not like it. It's a page turner. It's actually genuinely worth reading because you're like, what is going on the whole time?

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

It's bedazzled.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Yeah, exactly.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Tell me this though. People in the medieval world who were Christian kind of wanted this to happen. Right. Because we think of the Apocalypse as being this, I want to say apocalyptic thing in our culture. It's the way that we read it now. It's a catastrophe, it's a bad thing, it's horrific. And there are going to be lots of monsters that we're going to discuss and it is pretty horrific. But people actually wanted this to happen to begin. Yeah.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

I mean, if you have a real sort of understanding of yourself as holy as actually in alignment with God, the Apocalypse isn't going to be such a bad thing for you. You may die. Yeah. Like you might be rent apart by a particular beast or you know, die in one of several natural disasters. But if the. I know, right? But like if the Apocalypse is actually happening, it means that like, oh well, we're kind of getting to the end. Right.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

And it's proof.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Yeah, exactly. And when you get to the end, if you are right with God. So there's a couple of things that are going to happen. There's one version of the Apocalypse that some people subscribe to where there's this idea that after the persecutions of the Apocalypse, there's going to be what we call a 10,000 year reign of peace. The last world emperor is going to come down and everyone's going to have a really nice time just like and chill for 10,000 years. So if you survive, you've got something really nice.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

Wait, some people are going to Survive.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

The apocalypse, maybe in this particular version. Okay. But then after 10,000 years, God's going to be like, okay, well, everyone had a nice time. We're calling it a day. Let's go.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

So, you know, maybe you believe in the 10,000 year reign of peace, maybe you don't. If you don't, you're going straight to the Last Judgment. And again, if you think that you are good, then that means that you get to go to heaven. And you've got to understand that the way medieval Christians are looking at the world isn't necessarily like, you go to heaven right away when you die. Unless you're a particularly good person. Like, you know, if a baby dies, yeah, the baby's good. Like, don't worry about that. Like, they're in heaven. But a lot of people, you know, if they messed up, if they were sinful and, you know, it's pretty easy to be sinful, you know, ask any, ask anyone raised Catholic. They'll let you know.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

And this is now a therapy problem.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

We're gonna get it out. You're like, oh, go catharsis. But you know, you are going to end up in purgatory. And you have to understand that purgatory isn't, you know, people think it's like limbo. It's just kind of like, oh, a third space. It's not. It's hell with a timer.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Okay.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

So like, you're in hell, you're experiencing all the bad things, you're paying your.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Debt, but you're gonna get out of it.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

But you're gonna kind of like burn off the sins. They're going to be kind of expiated and then you can go to heaven, right? So if you're kind of like one of those people who was like, ooh, like, you know, your general garden variety sinful, then the Apocalypse is kind of good for you because you're not even gonna have to like, experience hell for very. Right. Because like, we're gonna get straight to the Last Judgment, so you kind of.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Want it to happen in your own lifetime, right?

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that wouldn't be bad. Now, granted, there are also people who are like, actually the Apocalypse is bad and we don't want it to happen. Right. So, like, when bad things happen, some people are like, seems awful, right? You know, some people loving it. Yeah, we don't. You know, like, when the Black Death happens and people are like, gosh, this really might be it. There are people who like, kind of attempt to stop it sometimes when People think that Antichrist has come. What they're attempting to do is again, stop that. There are people who are like, can we just right, knock this on the head? But on the whole, if you're a real fanatic, you think it's going to be a good deal for you.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

I'm very into this idea of non disbelief. I've said this a million times that, that there, you know, we have this idea that everybody believes in the same thing. But there's this idea of disbelief is also really tempting to pursue in terms of this. But what I want to come to is that idea of if you are a medieval person and this starts to unfold and you're clocking those things going, here we go, what are some of the things. What are some of the first things that we would be seeing unfold in the world about us that we're going, shit, there's the Apocalypse.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

So angels are gonna show up and blow some trumpets. Okay, okay.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

So far I'm not panicking. I'm just like, okay, that's camp.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

And so what happens? It's super camp. They show up and they're like, toot, toot, toot.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

And if you do it like that, it's super camp.

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[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

And so what they're going to do is they are going to start unsealing. There are several seals. And the seals do bad things. And I mean, seal like something that's holding a door closed, not like the cutie little animal, unfortunately.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

Oh, I didn't even if there were.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Several seals, that would be great. I'd be like, come on, bring these on. And so what they first start doing is kind of unleashing natural disasters. That's like one of the big things that's going to happen. And so certain things are going to happen. Like the stars are going to fall out of the sky, the mountains will be ground to dust. The seas are going to come up and they're going to boil off. Sometimes they're going to be made of blood.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

She's dramatic.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

I mean, like. I mean, girl, like, she's a stunt queen. Yeah, okay, right. Like, there's a lot of it. So there are just going to be tons and tons of natural disasters. So basically any natural disaster that medieval people are aware of, you take that up to the nth degree and that's going to happen to you. So, you know, plenty of people die in earthquakes during the medieval period generally, you know, as they still do now. And so they're like, yeah, what if that happened even worse than obviously a Bunch of people are going to die. So like a lot of cities are going to be decimated as a result of this.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

So a lot of this is based on things that people have already experienced, right? In terms of natural disasters. But we also have the unleashing of beasts and monsters, don't we?

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Oh, God.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

And talk to me about Gog and Magog.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Okay, so Gog and Magog, love them. Homeboys. You know what, these are guys that you will see a lot, right? So for example, if you are here in London, you will see like multiple Gogs and Magogs around the shop. So Gog and Magog are a really important architectural motif. And especially not just in the medieval period, but in the early modern period. People love to slap a Gog and Magog on things. So if you see a couple of like burly sort of like undressed dudes, which I often encounter that like a lot of times around clocks in places like that, then you are looking at Gog and Magog and what they do is they open the gates and allow nothing, something through, right? And so it's like often hordes of some description or another. And people will interpret this in all sorts of ways. So for example, when people are facing the influx of Mongols, people go, oh word. Like Gog and Magog opened the gates and these Mongols are through here. And like these are. These are the hordes of Satan and they're attacking us all, right? So oftentimes they are seen as unleashing non Christian fighters. That's a big one. So, you know, like armies that can kind of roll through. But this can also kind of just be used however you want it to, depending. So just like there's a couple of homies, they're not wearing shirts and they're gonna open a gate and suddenly.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

So whatever you need them to do, that's what they do. But this is also part of the genius of this lore, right? And we'll see this as we go through this. I was really noting this recently. This can be whatever you need it to be, actually. And that's why it endures. Okay, so we've had Gog and Magog. This is the one I'm most familiar with. And I think possibly people will be familiar with the concept of the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Talk me through this dramatic.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

This excitement on Eleanor's face.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Picture my favorite four people. Yeah, the four Hors of the Apocalypse are also kind of. They're getting unleashed at this point in time. There are some really great art motif examples of this where they're like jumping out of little hellmouths.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Yeah.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

And I love this. Like, sometimes you get a little.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

Very graphic novel.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Yeah.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

It's so good. Like, sometimes the hell mouth has little legs.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Oh. Oh, yes. I can exactly picture what you're talking about. They're giving the Nazgul in London.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Similar. Like the Black riders heading out.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

100%.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

And so there are, of course, four of them. Right. And so you have war, famine, pestilence and death. Right, yeah, yeah. Which is like, you just get to death at the end. I'm always kind of like, I feel like it could have just gone straight to the death, but, like, it's not. It's not good enough.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

Those are the three things will lead to that.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

But sometimes pestilence is also called conquest. So it's sort of. And so again, you have, like this mutability there. So obviously, when the Black Death is happening in the 14th century, everyone is like, oh, word, this is pestilence.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

Sure.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

But when it is something like the Mongols attacking in the 13th century, you can be like, mmm, conquest.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Yeah, that's so interesting.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

So, like, again, you can just kind of do it however you want it to. And obviously these are, again, things that everyone can agree are really bad. So it's like famine again. Like, I think about the 14th century all the time in these contexts. My Favorite century. Hashtag 14th century, best century. So they are experiencing at one point in time the great famine. Right. So this goes from about like a 1315-1317. And we have a series. A series of terrible summers in Europe. So all the crops fail to the point that people can't even keep their animals alive. There are rumors that cannibalism is happening in certain places. Like everyone is starving. And when it's happening on such a big scale, you just go, yeah, well, there it is. Right. And then the fact that 30 years later, kind of like hot on the heels, 40 years later, you then get the Black Death just ticking. It's not that weird, right? At the same time, the Hundred Years War is happening. So it's like you live in France, you're like, yeah, soul bad. Yeah. Seemingly the signs are there. Yeah, yeah.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

You kind of alluded to this already. But one of the other aspects of this is an influx of natural disasters. And actually, when you were talking about it before, and we can kind of touch on it here, I guess it's this idea of trying to explain your world. Right, right. And in the medieval world, part of that is going. There is Another force punishing us, controlling us, directing us, and in this case, directing us potentially towards the end.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Oh, yeah, absolutely. And so, you know, when you have a big natural disaster, it then feeds into this narrative that you are just absolutely steeped in. Right. It's difficult for us to sort of get in the same headspace because we have these kind of ideas of plurality. You know, we have a lot of different religions at our disposal to think about. We haven't necessarily been told this is the only way to think. Right. But they are in this particular culture that is just saying, here's the major story. And, you know, we're humans. We like patterns, right? We like to recognize things. And so when something bad happens, it's really easy to say, oh, like, this is just like, I've seen it, you know, it's like that joke, you know, guy who's only seen one movie, I'm getting a lot of, like, vibes of the same thing. It's like, so every single thing that is happening is just going to be like that again. So if you have a big earthquake happen, then you just go, ah, you know, apocalypse is happening. And there are a lot of earthquakes, especially in the Mediterranean world around in the Middle Ages. There are some really, really serious earthquakes that happen. Say you live in Iceland, you know, you're just like around volcanoes all the time. It's really easy to just be like, ah, you know.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

Yeah, like, what is it? You know what I mean, what they must be thinking, what is happening? This is world altering, you know, this is cataclysmic. And so you're gonna want to explain it as best you can.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Oh, yeah. And absolutely. And the way that they are explaining it a lot of the time. So again, you know, not to keep talking about the Black Death, but can't stop one's time. Like when they're trying to explain why the Black Death is happening, one of the reasons that, that they've come up with is earthquakes. So there are some big earthquakes that had happened in Italy around the time, and they say, oh, the earthquake has opened up a seam in the earth and the miasma has come out of the earth.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

This is such a medieval obsession, right, of, like, things coming out of stuff, that there's something bad down there. Literally. I mean, is this a belief that hell is literally underestimated?

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Yeah, because like, hell's down there, right? So if you have the actual Earth's crust riven, then stuff can come up from out of there. Right. And that to them is like science, right?

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

Yeah.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

You know, that this makes sense. It fits in with their worldview. And this is something that you hear really educated people say. You know, like educated people will also be like, oh, there was a conjunction between Mars and Saturn. And you know, and it was in like this. And so like the pestilence has come down out of the sky. So, you know, like our best educated minds are really like working on it. And because they are incredibly smart people and they've grown up with this explanation of, of this is how the world works, this is how the universe works. Again, they're just gonna be like part of that. Right? Yeah.

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[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

To me about huge locusts, because this.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

Is a scary one.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Okay.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Yeah, this is a scary one. I mean, we're move on to the bigger monsters, the bigger beasts in the apocalypse. But the locusts, Eleanor.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Okay, so. And they're even like worse than you think because a lot of that's pretty bad.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Fantastic.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

I know. Because it's like gross, you know, when you think about it and you go, wow, locust the size of horses.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

Wait, they're that big?

[Instacart Announcer]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Hold on. That's like one of those. Would you rather fight one horse sized locust or like 20 locust sized horses?

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

Locust sized horses.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Yeah. Every time.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

100%.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

I'm picking the mammals every time. At least I know how their brains work. Yeah, yeah, this is how it goes.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

They're horse sized. I did not know that.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Yeah.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

And a lot of the time the way that they are depicted in art is that they look kind of like a horse and they oftentimes have like the face of a human. So they, they are like a monster.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Weird things.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Yeah. So it's like, you know, we think, you know, you hear locusts, you're like, oh, yeah, the bug. And those are bad. And we don't like them and they eat your crops. But. But it's worse than that.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Tell me this though. In reality, are people in medieval Europe, particularly northern Europe, coming into contact with locusts? Or is this a creature that's kind of spread from warmer climes into the cold north?

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

I mean, like, in theory it could happen, but really, this is like a rumor.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

This is a monstrous version.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Yeah, exactly. So like Italians there, they're gonna know all about locusts. That's absolutely fine.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Swedish people, maybe.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Not like less so, you know, and so in a way, can you imagine.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Showing them a picture of a horse sized locust being like, this is coming for you.

[Instacart Announcer]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

And this exists in the world.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

And you're like. And you're being told that it does, right? And like, again, there's like this pattern thing. Because of course, like, locusts are one of the plagues that Moses brings up in order to punish the Egyptians because they won't let everybody go. So everyone is like, oh, well, that's real. This is definitely like a thing that exists. And I'm aware of frogs, which are one of the plagues, so locusts as well. But then if you've never seen a locust, and then you're like horse sized locust, and they're like, yeah. And it's kind of like a dude's head on a horse and there's wings. You're like, like, I don't.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

But also, why not? Because I'm told they exist. I know they exist. They are devastating to crops. So that's all very real. Again, it's just enough reality to base the narrative in so that we can then extrapolate fantasy out of it almost. It's interesting. It's kind of genius.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Yeah, it's kind of like, you know, a game of telephone or something. Right? So, okay, like, you know when like someone whispers something in someone's ear?

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

So you're like, locust, like big thing eats crops. And you're like, yeah. And then like, by the time you get to northern Europe, they're like, like, face of a dude. So it can kind of.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

That's what Eleanor said.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

I don't know.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

Pick it up right to me. But she's the expert. Okay, let's get. Oh, I was gonna say, let's get bigger. Well, it is a bit bigger. We're going into beasts now, right? Beasts. We have once more, please. I got Alyssa Edwards in to do it. We have dragons. Slash Satan. Satan being a dragon. Dragons being Satan.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

I was gonna say he's been missing from this so far.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Yeah. And it's interesting because things get going without him.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Right?

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

So, like, these things are. Because you have to understand that the apocalypse is something that God is letting happen. Cause God is all like, I'm sick of you people. That'd be.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

If I was God, I'd be like, guys, I am tired. I'm just gonna go and destroy all this.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

So, you know, at this point in time, it's just been kind of like things are unleashed that were being held back. Right. By, you know, God.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

So this isn't like a great evil plan done by Satan, but he does crop up.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Yeah. So Satan is now gonna show up, right? He's like, everybody, things have got pretty.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Like, he's had his feet up for the first bit of the apocalypse as, oh, this is happening.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

He's coming in for, like, act two.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

And he is a dragon and he's got many heads.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

You know, that's always the case in medieval depiction. The devil is always a dragon.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

In this context.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

Yes, in the apocalyptical context.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Yes, in the apocalyptical context. And there's gonna be, like, more than one guy who's got seven heads. Like, look, I don't know what to tell you. It's just like, this is what's going to happen. And so the dragon comes up and Satan is, you know, like, depicted oftentimes as a red dragon. And he's going to come up and what he depicts is kind of like the spiritual foe of God.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Okay.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

So he's gonna come out and he's like, hell, yeah. Can't wait to, like, eat all of the innocent and torture them. This is gonna be absolutely brilliant. Right. So out he comes. But he is going to run into his old op, St. Michael the Archangel.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Oh, for like a final throwdown.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Yeah. You know, it's like the ultimate twunk. Yeah, we love. I'll tell you what, there are a lot of St. Michael's out there, and I'm very serious, where he's, like, shown fighting the devil and the devil's, like, very thirsty for it. He's like, stop. Oh, wow. Oh, he's got his foot on my throat, you know, of a deal. So, you know, basically Satan ended up down there during the war between the angels and the demons. And so he has fought St. Michael once before and lost. And now it's like, rematch. He's going to lose again. But so there's going to be, like a big battle in the sky between the dragon and St. Michael. And of course St. Michael's going to win because obviously it does. But this doesn't stop the dragon from existing. Basically what Satan then does is he's like, tag me out, bro. Tag me out. And he goes to the beast in the abyss.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Oh, okay. So he could kind of occupy these different creatures and they still exist whether he's in them or not.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Yeah. So the beast of the abyss, now we usually identify as Antichrist.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Okay, okay, okay.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

So the Antichrist is not Satan.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

That is correct.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

Oh, but kind of is.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Yeah. So, okay, so Antichrist is like. He's this whole other guy. Right. And so the thing that we need to understand about Antichrist is Antichrist is. Is created by Satan as a way of kind of mocking Christ.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

So in the same way that God creates Christ. Right, it's kind of a mirror of that.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Exactly. But obviously, because Satan can't create anything because you know he's not God, only God can create. There are a couple of different ways that the Antichrist may have been made. One of the stories is that he is born from an evil monk and nun. Sometimes it's like it's a sex worker.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

So medieval.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

It's like so good. Right. So like sometimes it's like a sex worker, things like that. And so then what Satan does is like, oh yeah, this looks like an evil baby. And what he does is he essentially possesses the baby. And then that possessed baby is Antichrist because he can't make it. And then Antichrist will go on to do all sorts of different things. There's like an Antichrist legend that usually happens before the apocalypse. So he basically shows up and he's like, hey, what's up everybody? It's your boy JC and everyone is like, oh, real talk. Better worship this guy. Now he's gonna rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. He's gon have everyone worship him. Enoch and Elias are going to show back up. They're going to have a fight. He's going to kill them. He's going to try to ascend bodily into heaven, but he can't do it. And then the spirit of Christ's mouth is going to strike him down. And then the apocalypse can begin or the 10,000 year reign of peace. It depends on who you're asking. Right. It's very complex, like a lot of things.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

And where's the ring in all of this?

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

And where is the lair to see this.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

Yes.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

And so he has been defeated by the time the apocalypse starts.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

And what who has the Antichrist.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

The Antichrist has. And so he gets thrown into the abyss. So now he's going to come back out not in the form of a human, which he is before, but as the many headed beast.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

All right, this is.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

I know, right? It's like epic.

[Sleep Number Customer 2 / Bombas Announcer]

Yeah.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

And so he has like seven heads again. A lot of the times he's kind of like depicted as a leopard. He's like, I'm spotty girl. Like it's spotty. And so he comes out. And so if Satan is the depiction of spiritual evil, he is the depiction of sort of political or worldly evil.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

Okay.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

So what he's gonna do is he's gonna go around and he's like, what's up? Your boy is back. He's spotty. This time. And he's going to get all of the leaders of the world to worship him, and everyone's gonna be like, we love the Beast. This is great. And then again, basically the same thing again with the terrorizing of the innocent since. And, you know, the hey, hey. Right. So he then sticks around for longer.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

The Antichrist is quite petrifying.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Yeah. There's something more petrifying about that frightening thing so far.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Yeah. And he really is able to just sort of convince people to follow him. And this, I think, still quite resonates with us now because, like, you know, when you see political leaders and you see people being like, oh, yeah, this is great. And you're like, oh, oh, going down.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

The wrong path there.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Yeah, Right. Like, I mean, so it's not particularly difficult.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

And again, that kind of roots it in reality a little bit more. Like you were saying, that kind of the blurring of real life and real experience mixed in with all this kind of spirituality and this kind of superstition. We've had a lot of men so far, Eleanor.

[Instacart Announcer]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Let's talk about possibly the most exciting person in this ensemble, the Whore of Babylon, please.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

No, this is my girl. I love.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Like.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Okay, so now it's illegal for women to have hobbies, apparently.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

So after all of this, we've had Gog and Magog, we've had dragons, we've had the Antichrist. But women can't have hobbies.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Women with hobbies are the scariest thing.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

So my girl's going to show up riding the beast of the abyss, of course. Because what she is doing, the Whore of Babylon, is basically, she is showing you the way that the rulers of the world can be perverted through sex. So there has to be a way of bringing sex into this. Like, you know, everyone is bored. They're like, I'm seeing lots of monsters. I'm seeing nary a titty. Like, we gotta. We gotta make it happen, guys.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

We need something slightly, and we have.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

To blame women for something.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Yeah, exactly.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

So we should go to the sex realm for that. Sex realm.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Yes, whatever.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

I don't know what that.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

So girlie gets in trouble for knowing she's hot. Standard. So it's like, oftentimes the first way she's depicted is she's, like, looking in the mirror, being, like, la, la la, and admiring her hair. Can you imagine nothing worse? Right? And anyway, then girly's gonna get all dolled up, really nice little dress on her. She's gonna go ride the Beast around. She is going to Drink from a cup full of either all the filth of the world or the blood of the martyrs. Okay, it depends.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

I'll go for option B.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

And she's gonna go around and be like, yoo hoo. Like every single leader in the world.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

Right.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Refer to as either the mother of abominations or the mother of harlots, which I prefer the mother of harlots.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Oh, my God, yes, please.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

And people are going to be like, inspo, you know, when she goes live, where they're like, wow, this looks really good. And it's kind of like also warning so about the way that powerful men can be brought down through lust. But also a way that women can be like, yo, I would like to have some sex now. Right? It's the end of the world. May as well shag about it. Right. And so it's kind of like a warning about being continent even during difficult times. So she's my favorite girl because I just think that the girls get a bad rap. Like, okay, like, now I can't break the will of powerful men, I guess.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

And I love that, like all the other creatures in this lineup are to do with like, natural disasters, big emergencies, things that are genuinely terrifying and beyond people's control. And then we have a woman who's like, she represents sex.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Yeah. And they're like, sexy power.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Yeah, sexy power. It's not good.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

You have to just kind of understand that sex for them is. It's a problem. Right. And you spend a lot of time in the Christian context attempting to just get people to have sex in exactly the right way for the right reasons, which is like married, procreative.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Yeah.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

And then that's it. And so this is about the dangers of getting people to spill over into lust. Lust is a lot of times seen as sort of like the gateway. So it's the one that you go to that is gonna knock on everything else because it's so universal. Like, everyone really, really understands lust. And indeed, it's particularly tied up with women because it's Eve who ate the apple and figured out everyone was naked and that stuff was sexy. Right. So it's gonna be women who are bringing this in. And people are deeply uncomfortable with women's sexuality. And so it's seen as a monster in and of itself.

[Sleep Number Announcer]

Right.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

In time honored after dark tradition, we have an image and we are going to look at. This is the very whore of Babylon. So I will very briefly describe this and then you can tell me where I've gone wrong and what I've missed. So we have on the right hand side of this very colorful. I was just asking Eleanor before we looked at this, is this actually medieval? Because it looks incredibly colourful, incredibly well rendered and it's really compelling. But anyway, we've got the Antichrist. I think you can tell me if I'm wrong. Who is this multi headed horned dragon type type beast? On his back then is the Whore of Babylon and she is holding. She's dressed in red and she is holding that cup that you talked about. I actually thought it was a garden feature until you pointed out that it's sitting.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

It is the fountain, isn't it?

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

I was like, why is there a random fountain in the background? But no, she's also, interestingly, like you alluded to Eve earlier, she's under a tree as well. It's there to be read if you want to read it. The setting is very verdant, by the way. It's very fertile looking ground. We then on the left hand side we have in supplication, we have three kings crowned and in their jewels we also have other nobles finely dressed. We're seeing a lot of blue, we're seeing a lot of red, we're seeing a lot of green. So we're talking status here. And then you see kind of center of the image, an angel with blue wings in a red robe directing somebody who you can explain to us a little bit more just by like now this is the Whore of Babylon and it kind of looks like. Oh, and there's a little river running through the whole thing and a town in the background.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

It doesn't.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Very apocalyptic. There's no disasters going on in the background. It's just.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Well, the disaster is a sexy lady.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Yeah. Okay. That is.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

That's a terrible thing.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

So I love Eleanor, you know, talking about the fact that this is the original coloring from the 15th century, that she's in a red dress. I mean, like every temptress in Hollywood since the dawn of time. Yeah, yeah. That she is, you know, sexy ladies be wearing red and don't look at them too closely.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

You know, we haven't moved on that much is the thing. Yeah. And so you have this. All of the people are just kind of like drawn to her. They're like, yes, fallen on my knees immediately. And like, as you would. Right. I like that she's got this sort of a tiara that looks like a papal tiara.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

Yes.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Where she's got like three crowns and everyone is like, real talk. Look at the sumptuous fur trim on her dress. So you know, this is like as sexy as it gets. It's as good as it gets. And now the angel and the guy here, that is St. John being shown by the angel because the angel is basically taking him around during the revelation and being like, you like that? Like that. How about this? So he's like horror of Babylon right there. Like, don't like.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

This is the revelation.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

This is the revelation. And so this is really kind of showing what that can mean. Now this is also sort of like the cusp with Protestantism when we have this coming out. And so one of the reasons she's wearing this tiara that looks kind of papal is that also this is like being like. Sometimes people be like, the church is the whore of Babylon.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

Yes.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

You know, wow.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Okay.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

And there's like so again it's this really malleable concept. Concept where it's like, well, what is it that the rulers of the world adhere to? Then you can just go, that's the whore of Babylon. It could just be a sexy lady. It could be the church. Sometimes people will say that it's the Holy Roman Emperor. It's all sorts of things. It's always movable, right?

[Sleep Number Announcer]

Why choose a sleep number? Smart bed.

[Sleep Number Customer 1]

Can I make my sight softer?

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Can I make my sight firmer?

[Sleep Number Customer 2 / Bombas Announcer]

Can we sleep cooler?

[Sleep Number Announcer]

Sleep number does that cools up to eight times faster and lets you choose your ideal comfort on either side your sleep number setting. Enjoy personalized comfort for better sleep night after night. It's our Black Friday sale, recharged this season with a bundle of cozy soothing comfort. Now only 17.99 for our C2 mattress and base plus free premium delivery price is higher in Alaska and Hawaii. Check it out at a sleep number store or sleepnumber.com today.

[Ryan Reynolds (Mint Mobile)]

Hey, Ryan Reynolds here wishing you a very happy half off holiday because right now Mint Mobile is offering you the gift of 50% off unlimited. To be clear, that's half price, not half the service. Mint is still premium unlimited wireless for a great price. So that means some half.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Half day.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

Yeah.

[Ryan Reynolds (Mint Mobile)]

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[Sleep Number Customer 1]

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[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Talk to me then about how this crazy, complicated malleable story was in reality in the medieval period and the fact that people can tie it to things like the church or women as the problem or whatever it is you Know, there are these kind of shape shifting elements. First of all, are people well versed in the story of the Apocalypse? Does the ordinary person understand all of these elements? And second, how effective is this belief, this fear of the apocalypse coming or this excitement for the apocalypse in terms of everyday life for ordinary people?

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

So ordinary people know a lot about this because, yes, it is very central to the Christian. But also there's a whole season that you sit around thinking about the Apocalypse, which is Advent. You know, we've turned Advent into Christmas. Advent is not Christmas. Right. Like, the lead up to Christmas is about the Apocalypse. Is about the Apocalypse. You know, it's getting darker, it's getting darker, it's getting darker. And so every year for that four weeks, you sit around and you think about this and they will just read the Apocalypse to you at church. And you know, despite what everyone will have you tell. Yeah, they're doing that in Latin, but then they're gonna give you a big old sermon about what that means.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

And there'd be paintings on the side of the walls.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

There's paintings on the side of the walls. It's to have paintings in a church that are showing the Apocalypse super common over church doors. To have like a Last judgment or an apocalypse scene so that everyone goes, okay, yeah, so this is what's going to happen.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

And I suppose a door, because everyone's gonna have to pass through that. So that's something people really need to see.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Yeah, exactly. And medieval people might not be literate in the sense that they can read and write, but what they are incredibly good at doing is reading images. And so this is all extremely legible to them. So if you show them they are.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Highly literate, they are highly literate in a different way to how we.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

And in a way that like a lot of people now just simply cannot do. Right. Like you show them the horror of Babylon and they'll be like, oh, yeah. And they'll be able to tell you the entire story. Now people are like, she's pretty lady on a dress. Yeah, you know, like, so. Which is, which is cool, right? And so they are incredibly aware of this. And it's just a really big part of their history. And now it is incredibly malleable as a result of that. And so people can kind of like go around pinning things on it. The church is not particularly happy with that all the time. Now you can, you can't stop people doing it. You, you don't want to stop people from preaching about the Apocalypse at the correct and designated time, right? But what the church really doesn't want you to do is predict the apocalypse.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Because that's their job.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

That is their job. They're like, because the thing is, you don't know when it's going to happen. Right. Jesus says over and over and over, you cannot know. It's just not up to you. There's no way for you to actually know. Yeah, exactly.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

You can exert greater control if you don't know.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

And then the trouble is too, if somebody says, oh, hey, yeah, like the apocalypse is happening and then it doesn't, then it calls the entire thing into nothing's true. Yeah. So they really don't want people going around saying, oh, this is proof that the world is ending. They're like, please don't say that. Do not tell anyone that this is what it's.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Because some people are going to fall into routines of chaos as well if they believe that the end is nigh. They're not going to be like, thank God, I'm going to go to heaven. They'll be like, oh, I can go and check my next door neighbor now. But because I've always wanted to and now it doesn't matter 100%.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

And definitely we see this in particularized popular movements. For example, like the flagellants. What happens when people think that stuff is getting out of control?

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

Right.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Ooh, okay, tell us about those.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Okay, so the flagellants are a group of people who crop up during the Black Death. They kind of start out in the German lands, but then they move around a lot. And the idea that they have is God is like, punishing the world for being sinful. He's probably bringing about the end of it. So what we are going to do about this is we're gonna go to var, we're gonna strip to the waist and we're gonna beat ourselves. And then this way, God is going to be like, oh, they've punished themselves enough. Never mind, I'm gonna call off.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

Aren't they great?

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Yeah, just like, oh, it's like, girl, that's so much like, never mind. Okay, seems good.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

So being a bit of a pick me. Calm down.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Exactly, exactly. And it's a really interesting thing because at first when it starts happening, everyone is like, oh, that's great. Yeah, like, really good idea. Really nice. And then eventually everyone, everyone is like, it's too much. Yeah. And the church doesn't love it because obviously these are just like some guys. And what the church never likes is when some guys take it upon themselves to start a religious movement.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Because they're acting on behalf of everyone else. Right. So they're gonna get loyalty and followers, potentially. Although I think most people would be kind of repulsed by it.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Yeah. Well, at first they're like, this is great. And then they're like, it's kind of weird.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

And then, thank you for your service, but stop now.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Exactly. And like, so basically, as they're moving around, they do amass followers. And so it kind of starts out as a bunch of men are doing. Eventually you've got women following them as well. You've got children following them. And they're going from place to place. They're often kind of like sleeping rough on the side of the road. And then eventually the rumor becomes they shagging in the woods.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

Well, where else would that go?

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Because, like, they're half naked. This is like the thing that they do. You know, they're sitting around like doing basically very public bdsm. And so they're kind of like, oh.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

That kind of like the flagellation of the body and it's that intimacy and that performance with their flesh. And yes, it's non sexual to begin with, but you can see how people would make that connection in this period.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Exactly. And so, you know, obviously the church takes an incredibly dim view of this because they don't like the idea that there can be lay intercessors with God. Right. Like, obviously that's their job to be doing it.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

That's a bit too Protestant now.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. They're like, absolutely not with all of this and definitely not with the overt kind of sexual connotations that people start interpreting from. So it's an interesting one because here they are being pickies. It is like what you said, because either they're saying, well, we can put a stop to this. Like, we can intercede directly with God and we can make sure that the apocalypse doesn't happen. Or they're saying, oh, aren't I good? Oh, like I'm gonna definitely be fine. And then if the world is ending.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Well, I tried and I'm gonna be sorted.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Yeah. And I'm gonna be one of the elect.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

It's giving Society for the Reformation of manners in the 18th century context.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Oh my God, it too very much.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

Like, oh my God, we are so holier than thou. We're gon everyone else.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

We've saved you.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

You're welcome.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

Yeah. Also probably in that context and in the medieval context, going around spreading a crapload of disease, you would imagine, like, they're carrying shit with them. Wherever they're going.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

It's like, during the Black Death, the thing that you do not want to happen, it's like a bunch of people who are, like, moving around. It's like, not great, not good. And people know that. Yeah, people know that, and they're real. They are really aware that these idiots. Again, that Black Death comes from varying places, and it can be. It can be moved around. So, yeah, they don't love it.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

So, ironically, they are kind of spreading the apocalypse.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

I know. Great job, everyone.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Really good job.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

Exit question for everybody. I'll start with you, Eleanor. Could you survive the medieval. Oh, she's already making noise. Could you survive the medieval apocalypse?

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Would you want to?

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Yeah. I mean, that's the thing. It's like. So for me, it's like, you know when people are like, oh, well, how would you survive the zombie apocalypse? I'm always like, no, thanks. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm good.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

My sister always says that. She's like, I would just lie down and die. Like, I don't have the energy for this.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Yeah, I'm not. I agree. Your girl isn't really running like that. No. So, I mean, probably not. I think that, like, even if it's not gonna be that you get, like, eaten by Antichrist or, you know, you die in an earthquake or whatever, I'm telling you, I just feel like the supply chains are really disruptive. Like, how are you getting dinner?

[Instacart Announcer]

Right?

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Like, that's the thing. So I don't. I'm not even interested in milk delivery work. Like, if I can't get down pub. I'm sorry. Like, I will again, like, down and die. Like, no, thank you. Like, I'm. I'm not beating any of the allegations. I'm not built for this. No, thanks.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

I. I think. I think practically I agree with you. I probably wouldn't, but the drama side of me goes, but what if I were to help lead it? So I would just, like, get involved in the drama.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Pick me.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

Yeah. I just feel like, what if I was the whore of Babylon or whatever it is. Red doesn't look good on me, though. I have two things to do.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

You could be a drunken. You could be a trumpeting angel.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

You're just going out there being like, like, yes, queen.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

So maybe if I got involved on that level. Right, Maddie, you're not surviving it.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

No.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Wow. No, she's not there.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

I love this going. No, no, no. How dare you? No, not a chance.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Yeah, literally, not a chance. No, I would be. I just find it tedious. I Can't be bothered. One monster after another. What's happening now? No.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

Unless you become one of the monsters. Yeah, that's the only way I know. It's too much effort.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

It is.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

I agree. I do.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

I agree.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

I agree. I would run off to the the woods and just live there with the dogs, but there'd be all the flagellants having sex in the woods all the time. So that'd be just annoying.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

And then you're like, come on guys.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Can we have a peace and quiet?

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

I'd be really anxious if the dogs get eaten by some monster as well.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Yeah, yeah.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

I was on a walk over the weekend.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Basically we're all dead.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

Yeah, I was on a walk over the weekend and I was afraid that a bird of prey was going to take my smallest dog so I couldn't survive.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

I mean, she didn't literally. Tiny.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

She's tiny, but she's not that small. The bird of prey is definitely smaller than her. But I was like convinced. It was like Shane grab the dog from leaving. But it didn't happen.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

Just like leaning over her to protect. Right.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

Get out of here. We've had enough for you.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Goodbye.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Maddie]

Thank you Eleanor for coming in and telling us all about the medieval apocalypse. If you've enjoyed this conversation and I know you have, then check out Gone Medieval with Eleanor and Matt of course. And you can find Eleanor's documentary on history. Hit tv. Until next time, leave us a five star review wherever you get your podcast so other people can find us too. And we'll see you next time.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

By. Foreign. And I've got a Boost Mobile gift just for you. Aww.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

For me, Anna?

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Yes, Anna, you deserve a gift. The Boost mobile unlimited plan is just $10 a month for the first two months. Then 25amonth forever with unlimited data, talk and text.

[Podcast Host - Possibly Matt Lewis]

It's a gift.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Thanks, Anna. Anytime, Anna.

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[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

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[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

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