The Black Death

Summary

Podcast Summary: Dan Snow’s History Hit – “The Black Death”

Guest: Historian Helen Carr
Release Date: November 13, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Dan Snow is joined by historian and author Helen Carr to dissect the catastrophic impact of the Black Death on 14th-century Europe. They cover the disease’s origins, its spread across Europe, its cultural and societal consequences, and what it was like to try to survive such an unprecedented calamity. Helen brings a nuanced, empathetic perspective that highlights both the horrors and the enduring humanity of the period.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Europe on the Eve of the Black Death

• Widespread Hardship Precedes the Plague

  • The early 14th century was called the "calamitous 14th century" not just due to the plague, but also widespread famine and livestock death from relentless rain and poor harvests.
    • “The rain did not stop. It was this ceaseless deluge.” – Helen Carr (04:21)
  • Food shortages and loss of livestock led to nutritional deficiencies, weakening the population.

• Political Fragmentation and Conflict

  • Europe was comprised of many competing states amid the Hundred Years' War and various local conflicts.
  • Governments had rudimentary responses to crises; price caps were attempted during famine but proved ineffective.

2. The Black Death’s Origin and Spread

• Biological Roots

  • Caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, originating in Central Asia’s Tian Shan mountains and carried by marmots, before being spread by human and animal movements (especially the Mongol expansion).
  • Rats and fleas become critical only as the infection spreads towards Europe.

• Transmission

  • Water trade routes expedited its spread: “The spread through water was probably the fastest spread because water routes were the trade routes across the sea, across rivers, into port towns.” – Helen Carr (11:40)
  • The outbreak’s emergence in Genoa and Florence is reflected in the period’s literature (e.g., Boccaccio’s Decameron).

3. Medieval Understanding and Response

• Medical Knowledge and Theories

  • Largely based on Galenic (humoral) theory; no understanding of germs or vectors.
  • The cause of the Black Death wasn’t discovered until the 20th century.

• Symptoms and Mortality

  • Plague manifested as buboes (blackened, swollen glands), leading to rapid and painful death.
    • “A bubo is effectively an infected gland … they would be black and sort of pussy and really disgusting.” – Helen Carr (12:55)

• Attempts at Survival

  • Quarantine, flight to the countryside (mostly among the wealthy), burning herbs, and “cures” like applying chicken bottoms to buboes or concocting herbal remedies.
  • The word “quarantine” derives from the Italian practice of isolating for forty days.
    • “You were expected to be enclosed within your house … there was a mark put on your door. You weren’t allowed to emerge.” – Helen Carr (15:33)

4. Societal Impact

• Societal Breakdown and Humanity

  • While some chroniclers depicted chaos and anarchy, Helen emphasizes documented acts of humanity and mutual aid.
    • “Bodies were very carefully laid down to rest … People really cared for each other.” – Helen Carr (27:00)

• Religious and Cultural Responses

  • Religious explanations dominated: wrath of God, mass penance, flagellant movements, proliferation of chantries (to ensure prayers for souls).
  • Notable quote from a contemporary urging confession as medicine:
    • “Let him first gather as much as he can of bitter loathing towards the sins committed by him and the same quantity of true contrition of heart … and make a vomit of frank and honest confession.” – (22:48)

• Persecution and Blame

  • Minority groups, especially Jews, were scapegoated; children and other vulnerable groups faced blame for the calamity.

5. Aftermath and Lasting Change

• Demographic and Economic Upheaval

  • Immediate devastation: up to 60% mortality in some areas, cities and villages halved in weeks.
  • Labour shortages empower peasants and artisans to demand higher wages, undermining the feudal system.
    • “The plague is a massive social leveler … the peasant classes start to rise up and demand more money.” – Helen Carr (35:24)

• Cultural Shifts

  • Art and memorials dwell on mortality: memento mori culture, danse macabre, transi tombs depicting decaying corpses.
  • Women’s roles expand: women take on jobs left vacant by men, become brewers, butchers, and even armorers.

• Long-term Political Effects

  • Some government measures echo modern lockdowns, e.g., Edward III banning pilgrimages and closing borders.
  • Ultimately, little lasting progress in public health or governance—the old structures soon reassert themselves.
    • “Things tend to go back pretty much to where they were before. The war starts up again.” – Helen Carr (38:11)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “In the 14th century, a great pestilence, a plague, spread across the continent, killing possibly up to 60% of the continent’s population. It changed everything.” – Dan Snow (01:44)

• “A chicken’s bottom would be plucked … then be held, I guess, on the bubo … perhaps this was a leech sort of effect … suck it up, suck up all the plague.” – Helen Carr (21:30)

• Regarding burial practices:
  “Bodies were very carefully laid down to rest … they were shown respect. People were shown respect.” – Helen Carr (27:00)

• On lasting humanity:
  “Contrary to what we believe, that it was this time of anarchy and inhumanity, there was actually a lot of humanity.” – Helen Carr (38:44)

• On the thin line between life and death:
  “There is a wonderful humanity in something like that … the dead and the living were walking together.” – Helen Carr (40:29)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [03:53] Medieval Europe’s crisis before the Black Death
• [08:31] The real origins and biological mechanics of the plague
• [12:55] Symptoms and how the Black Death presented itself
• [14:15] Quarantine, attempts at isolation, who could escape
• [21:28] Medieval “cures” for the plague—emerald, chickens, herbal remedies
• [22:48] Religious prescriptions and quotable 14th-century “medicine”
• [26:18] Spread through England; spike in deaths; parish records
• [28:47] National and regional responses—lockdowns, attempts at public health
• [33:19] Lasting cultural effects—memento mori, transi tombs, changing art
• [35:24] How the Black Death re-levelled society; economic change and Peasants' Revolt
• [38:44] Overall takeaways: enduring humanity and resilience

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Tone & Final Thoughts

Rich in anecdotes and sensitive analysis, this episode blends stark depictions of one of Europe’s greatest disasters with compelling stories of resistance, innovation, and human dignity. Helen Carr emphasizes the falsehood of purely grim narratives, instead highlighting acts of care, the resilience of community, and the complex legacy of the Black Death.

This is an episode for anyone interested in the lessons history has for us in times of crisis, and how even in the darkest hours, humanity shines through.

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Transcript

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[Dan Snow]

This episode of Dan Snows History is sponsored by American Historytellers. In the fall of 1620, a battered merchant ship called Mayflower set sail across the Atlantic. It carried 102 men, women and children, risking it all to start again in the new world. Every week on American History, Tellers host Lindsay Graham takes you through the moments that shaped America. In our latest season, we explore the untold story of the Pilgrims, one that goes far beyond the familiar tale of the first Thanksgiving. After landing at Cape Cod, the Pilgrims forged an unlikely alliance with the Wampanoag people. They helped survive the most brutal winter they had ever known, laying the foundation for a powerful national myth. But behind that story lies another one of conflict, betrayal and brutal violence against the very people who helped them survive. Follow American Historytellers on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcast. You can binge all episodes of American History Tellers the Mayflower early and ad free right now on Wondery. Hi everybody, welcome down to Knows. History hit today. We are talking about a catastrophe, a cataclysm, possibly the grisliest incident in European history. And friends, that is up against some pretty stiff competition. In the 14th century, a great pestilence, a plague, spread across the continent, killing possibly up to 60% of the continent's population. It changed Everything changed. The economics, the politics, the social relationships, the religion of Europe. Bodies piled up in the streets, cities emptied out and became ghost towns. England was thrown into revolt and tumultuous. I'm talking, of course, about the Black Death, and I've got one of the best telling me all about it. I've got the history hit, collaborator, friend of the podcast, TV presenter, brilliant author Helen Carr on the podcast right now to tell me all about it. Helen's just written a book, in fact, about the 14th century called Sceptered Isle. Helen is going to tell me and you how to survive the Black Death and do that. You got to know where it's coming from, what it is, Are there any treatments that work? What do they think works at the time? Can you escape? And also, if you do survive, what is the Europe that you're going to rebuild your life in?

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[Dan Snow]

God save the King.

[Helen Carr]

No black white unity till there is first some black unity.

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Never to go to war with one another again.

[Helen Carr]

And lift off and the shuttle has cleared the tower.

[Dan Snow]

Helen, good to have you on the podcast.

[Helen Carr]

Thank you for having me.

[Dan Snow]

What does Europe look like, the Europe on the eve of the Black Death?

[Helen Carr]

Well, I'd love to say it's all looking really positive for Everybody, but the 14th century has been nicknamed before the calamitous 14th century, and that is not only because of the Black Death. In the early 14th century, around 1314, 13, 15, 16, to even up to 1317, 18, Northern Europe is hit by something called the Great Famine. The great famine followed by a great moraine, which is a death of cattle and livestock. So the Famine started around 1314, when there was a period of intense weather. So it just rained constantly. All of the accounts say that the rain did not stop. It was this ceaseless deluge. And it wiped away all of the harvests, all the crops. People weren't able to grow wheat, they weren't able to make bread, your daily bread, they weren't able to do it. So grain price were driven up, the cost of basic foodstuffs was driven up and people began to starve. There's cases of people talking about eating rats and other unclean things. And after that, there was this great moraine. So all of the cattle died. So about 60% of cattle in England and Northern Europe were killed by this plague on livestock. And without cattle, you don't have basic vitamins like dairy that you get from your cheese and your milk, and you don't get the. The protein from meat, from the cattle and the livestock. So people, these basic vitamins, and that goes up to even 13, 20. So about 20 years or so before the plague hits, you've got this whole generation who are lacking some of these key components in their diet to be able to strengthen their bodies and their bones and their constitutions.

[Dan Snow]

Europe's politically fragmented. There's lots and lots of. Well, bigger and little statelets.

[Helen Carr]

Yeah, it is politically fragmented at the time. It's in the middle of the eponymous Hundred Years War. So England have just fought the Battle of Crecy and been successful. Edward III is riding high his success. So there's this war with France going on. There's conflict going on in Iberia, across the Iberian Peninsula as well. And there's tensions, familial tensions, with the Castilian kings. So everybody is sort of politically occupied, but they're not really thinking about what's going on in the epidemiology.

[Dan Snow]

And are states able to respond to things like famine, to things like pestilence? I mean, is there any. Obviously, there's no welfare system, but is there any way in which. Did kings ever give any thought to this kind of stuff?

[Helen Carr]

Not really. It's sort of in the same vein as today. Do people really precipitate crises such as this in a very pragmatic and useful way, as we experienced over the course of 2020? Not really. And it was the case then as well. It was a very basic level of response. So you had. With the Great Famine, price caps were put in place. So it was. You can't elevate prices beyond a certain point, but people didn't necessarily adhere to that. It's very difficult to main maintain law and order when things feel very out of control for the general populace.

[Dan Snow]

Population. Is the population generally rising or. It sounds like it's taken a big dent in these terrible events earlier in the century.

[Helen Carr]

So the end of the 13th century, there is a population boom. The population is at a peak. There's a real kind of boom in creativity and cultural output. So things are going pretty well by the end of the 13th century. And they do take a bit of the dip around the time of the Great Famine, but nothing that large. Generally, the population is at quite high points. Yeah.

[Dan Snow]

And big cities.

[Helen Carr]

Yep. So before the Black Death, there are still quite a lot of hamlets and villages. Cities are growing, but they're not growing as fast as they will do afterwards. There's still a lot of rural activity going on, a lot of activity around market towns. So you still see today some market Crosses in towns across England and the same in France as well. Market towns were important. They were very popular and people tended to exist around these local market towns. There were cities, but they weren't as large as they would go on to be.

[Dan Snow]

Medical knowledge, I'd not be condescending, but very basic compared to that.

[Helen Carr]

Yeah, it's that sort of Galenic theory, the humoral theory, the idea that your body is based in different humours, so you're kind of wet or dry or hot or cold, phlegmy, that sort of thing. It's very nice. I love humoral theory.

[Dan Snow]

So this extraordinary pandemic's about to crash straight into a. We would now say some medically quite illiterate society with no safeguards in place.

[Helen Carr]

No, there's no safeguards in place. People have some idea what the body is doing. This idea that we're living in this dark age of science isn't correct, but they certainly didn't have the knowledge that we do today. And it was only really the actual cause of the Black Death that was discovered in the 20th century. I mean, people for centuries had no idea what actually caused it.

[Dan Snow]

Well, can you enlighten us, please? What did cause it and where did it come from?

[Helen Carr]

So the Black Death was caused by a bacterium called Yersinia pestis, and Yersinia pestis emerged around the Kazakhstan Tianchan mountain range with marmots. So people always think of Black Death and they think of rats, but actually it was marmots, another rodent native to this region in the Tianshan mountain range, that carried the Yesinia pestis. And it was only when the Mongol hordes started moving through these regions, as the Mongol Empire started to expand, that they started disrupting the biology of these regions. And they started hunting marmots and using them for fur and meat and therefore transporting them as they were itinerant, as they moved across various regions. And so the Black Death started to emerge, particularly around the Kazakhstan region.

[Dan Snow]

Wow. So the Black Death, obviously it's a biological phenomenon, but it's the interaction with politics, military affairs and human beings that turn it into this kind of extraordinary catastrophe.

[Helen Carr]

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It was never meant to be. It was a bacterium that could exist within these rodent communities and populations, but it was never meant to exist with humans. And that's where it all went wrong. It was the.

[Dan Snow]

It jumps a species.

[Helen Carr]

It jumps a species. Exactly. But what also these itinerant Mongol hordes are carrying with them is grain. And inside the grain you have rodents, such as mice and rats. And so it's when this Yersinia pestis starts to interact with other rodent species that the bacteria grows and becomes lethal to human beings. So the Mongol hordes are moving towards the Mediterranean, they're moving towards Europe as they're expanding their empire, they're conducting siege warfare and they're also carrying plague with them at the same time. There's another theory as well that the plague, the Black Death, was carried by camel caravans, also moving in a similar direction and ending in the trading hub, the Russian city of Kazan, which. But that's a more recent theory and I think it does have some interesting background to it, but we're not entirely sure exactly how.

[Dan Snow]

What's the first mention we get of this, this plague in European literature?

[Helen Carr]

It mostly comes out of Florence and out of Italy, so we know that it emerged in Genoa first and then it moved to Florence. And you start to get accounts with literary accounts, like in Boccaccio Decameron. And we also get accounts coming out of the East. There's a Syrian scholar who talks about the plague arriving in Syria, and accounts start to emerge all around a similar time. There's a very famous one in relation to these Mongol hordes that talk about the siege of Kaffa and how the Mongols used dead bodies, corpses, as biological warfare by tossing them, these plague riddled corpses over the walls of the city in front of people and releasing what people thought was the way that they caught it, this miasma. So the smell, the stench of the dead corpses, how people thought they might contract plague. So there are these myths. It's probably not true that that's what happened, but that is all around the same time you start to get. These accounts begin to pop up around 1347.

[Dan Snow]

Northern Italian port cities getting it first because they're really dominating the trade with the East. The merchants are going up into the Black Sea, into what is now Russia, Ukraine.

[Helen Carr]

Exactly. The spread through water was probably the fastest spread because water routes were the trade routes across the sea, across rivers, into port towns. That's how things were carried. That's how things were spread as quickly as they. And what's interesting about plague is it doesn't have this particular route. There is no linear pattern in which it emerges. It sort of pops up in various pockets and there's no rhyme or reason. It could be in a city and then suddenly be in this tiny little town, miles away, 300 miles away. So you never really know exactly what route it's going. And I think that is mostly probably because of these water routes. And these trade routes across sea and rivers.

[Dan Snow]

Did the chroniclers that you've mentioned realize instantly that this was like something that they hadn't seen before? Is the mortality just astonishing?

[Helen Carr]

Yeah, the mortality was astonishing. It was terrifying for people. I mean, it was apocalyptic for people. Scholars did start to try and work out what was happening, why there was such a Great Mortality. Avignon was the main hub of science and medicine coming out of the papacy in Avignon, they were investigating corpses and they did realize that it was these buboes that stood, started to emerge on the planet.

[Dan Snow]

Talk me through the disgusting. What is a bubo?

[Helen Carr]

A bubo is effectively an infected gland. So the Black Death, if you get bitten by a flea that's containing Yersinia pestis, it goes into your bloodstream, it goes through into your lymph nodes. And so all of the lymph nodes around your body is where you would get these buboes. And that's where the infection would become visible. And it was this growth usually under your armpit or maybe in your neck or maybe in your groin. And it would grow to as big as people describe it as like eggs or. Or even as big as apples. And it would be dark, so they would be black. It's the poison. It's effectively blood poisoning. So they would go dark and black and sort of pussy and really disgusting. And some people did survive. Some people would go into this sort of sense state of almost a fever and paralysis and they sort of sweat it out and eventually the buboes would burst and then they would be able to survive. But most people didn't.

[Dan Snow]

And so communities just chopped in half.

[Helen Carr]

Yeah, yeah. Completely severed in half. It's unimaginable when we think about it in terms of how this would impact our society. I think it is incomparable. I mean, Black Death has been compared to the COVID pandemic. It's been compared to Spanish influenza. But I don't think that there has been anything that is quite on the level of what people experienced in 1348.

[Dan Snow]

Okay, so how are we going to survive? You can survive by going into complete isolation.

[Helen Carr]

Yeah. Quarantine.

[Dan Snow]

Did they know that? Did they somehow they realized that there was some person to person contamination.

[Helen Carr]

Yeah, they did eventually work that out. It was a period of great confusion. Most people thought that it was the wrath of God. They thought that this was divine intervention that was making this happen. So you had examples of people clustering together in relation to religious observance. Yeah.

[Dan Snow]

Or fell into the church for some prayer.

[Helen Carr]

Well, right Exactly. But then there were also people who did try and escape it, mostly the nobility. They could. I mean, people talk about it not being classist, the Black Death, but it was to a certain extent only because of the privileges that the wealthy had, they were able to leave the vicinity they were in and go and stay in other houses. They did escape to the countryside.

[Dan Snow]

So when plague arrived, they would sort of dash off. Just that simple, trying to outrun the plague. That would work? Well, it could work, yeah.

[Helen Carr]

Yeah. I mean, it was more effective than if you were just your layman who lived in a small house in your tiny little street in the City of London and Cheapside, and you're sharing a room with 12 other people in your family, sleeping all together, along with the rats and their fleas. You're going to have more of chance of survival than you would if you were those people.

[Dan Snow]

You mentioned the word quarantine. Is that quarantine? Am I right in thinking that derives from this period of the plague?

[Helen Carr]

I believe it does, yeah. I think it's from the Italian.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah. That people would have to spend 40 days apart or something.

[Helen Carr]

Yeah. So you were expected to be enclosed within your house and if somebody in your household was sick, you were enclosed in the house with the sick and you weren't allowed to come out. There was mark put on your door. You weren't allowed to emerge. Yeah, it was pretty grisly.

[Dan Snow]

So rich people can move around and sort of keep on the move, keep ahead of it. Is there anywhere where the population's less dense or you look in Europe, you think actually there's less mortality there.

[Helen Carr]

It's difficult to know. I mean, we don't have the evidence to tell that. That's really hard because you don't have the records to sell. Where it was worse, where it was better, it was kind of bad everywhere.

[Dan Snow]

Kind of bad everywhere, yeah. But cities, people are in close proximity.

[Helen Carr]

So there's going to be more people dying in cities. Just because of the number of people in cities, there's a greater proportion of people existing in these areas together. And obviously sanitation is a thing. You're going to have more rats where there are more people. We know that now. The case is still the same today. There are more rats where there are more people.

[Dan Snow]

And rats are dangerous because the fleas carrying the bacteria, they've bitten somebody with the bacteria.

[Helen Carr]

Yeah.

[Dan Snow]

They're catching a ride on a rat to bite someone else.

[Helen Carr]

Yeah, exactly. So the fleas take the ride on the rat. The rat goes into somebody's home, the Fleas jump off the rat and they find another host. That host happens to be Dan Snow in his house with his family and kids and then takes a nice little bite out of Dan Snow and then leaps onto the rest of your family.

[Dan Snow]

People are crowded at this point. I mean, people are sharing rooms.

[Helen Carr]

Yeah, you've got multiple people sharing small spaces. But this idea that people are living in these sort of hovels and they have no sanitation, it's not really correct. People use soap, they did bath, they did care for their bodies. They brushed their teeth, they brushed their hair, they had combs. They would wash, they would use rose water, they would clean out their houses and to get rid of the fleas with buckets of water, they would beat their linen, they would clean their linen, they would air their wool and they would beat it to get rid of any of the dust and the fleas inside the wool. It's not like people lived in squalor. People did take care of their surroundings and their environment. It was just the fact that rats did coexist with human beings at this time in a way that we don't have to suffer that at the moment.

[Dan Snow]

You listen to Dan Snow's history. There's more coming up.

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[Dan Snow]

Can't I just let it go?

[Helen Carr]

Take a breath.

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[Dan Snow]

Foreign Once you have the plague, is there anything you can do to give yourself a better chance? Survival? Or is it all just in the genes? Is it all luck?

[Helen Carr]

It's luck. I think it's luck. And there is some sense that as it's important to say there wasn't one plague that came back again and again and again into the 16th century. And then of course in the 17th century there was the second great plague. It was luck. There is a sense that maybe people did develop a level of immunity by exposure. It certainly may be less severe consequences. But in that first really brutal wave, 1348, I think it was pure luck and possibly genetics, it would be interesting to know what that was. Some people did think there were ways of preventing it. There was a belief that you could crush up emeralds, where you'd get emeralds from at this point and use them on your skin, on your buboes. There was another one that was if you found a snake, you cut up the snake and pulverize the snake, you'd use it to smear all over your body and that would protect you from the plague. There was the famous one about the chicken's bottom.

[Dan Snow]

Not famous for me. What's that about?

[Helen Carr]

Well, there's this idea that A chicken's bottom would be plucked. You're looking at me. Slightly sickened. It would then be held, I guess, on the bubo. And I suppose if you're thinking about this, rather than comically and more practically, perhaps this was a leech sort of effect. The leeches later were used in medicine, so perhaps this was a similar. And they thought perhaps this chicken's bottom would withdraw all of the. Yeah, suck it up. Suck up all the plague. That obviously didn't work. People used to burn herbs, they used to create concoctions of various herbs like sage, rosemary, things they could get their hands on from their gardens. You know, people used what was around them. That was, I think, the takeaway. It might seem weird to us, but people used what they had in their gardens, they used what they had in their vicinity to try and find some sort of cure. There was also, of course, a religious cure, verbal cure. And there's a wonderful quote which I have here, and it says, whenever anyone is struck down by the plague, they should immediately provide themselves with a medicine like this. Let him first gather as much as he can of bitter loathing towards the sins committed by him and the same quantity of true contrition of heart, and mix the two into an ointment with the water of tears. Then let him make a vomit of frank and honest confession, by which he shall be purged of the pestilential poison of sin and the boil of his vices shall be totally liquefied and melt away.

[Dan Snow]

Wow.

[Helen Carr]

Yeah.

[Dan Snow]

That's a curious illusion of medicine, psychotherapy and preaching. We should say, though, plague doctors with their big funny noses.

[Helen Carr]

That's not the 14th century.

[Dan Snow]

Not the 14th century. That was later.

[Helen Carr]

That's later. That 17th century plague. Yeah.

[Dan Snow]

So what else do people do?

[Helen Carr]

Well, as I said before, people believe this was divine. And there was a lot of penitential acts. You see a lot of penitence happening. I mean, even the King, Edward iii, was commanding that prayers were to be said for the people of Eng. There had to be constant prayers being said to try and appease God's wrath. You also had chantries being established left, right and centre. And chantries, I mean, if there was the priest left to do the chanting, chantries, where very rich people would pay a priest money to sing masses for the soul of their loved ones of the dead. And that was. It was giving yourself effectively currency in the afterlife. If you're doing all of this good now, then you were kind of secure for your afterlife. But then there were also more extreme acts. Acts and this was mostly seen in Europe, in Italy and particularly northern Europe. And that was the flagellants. And despite being told they couldn't come into the country, they certainly did manage to get into England. But the flagellants were a particularly extreme case of penitence. And this was a group of men who would march across the country whipping themselves. And they had these sticks with leather string thongs at the end of the stick and they would tie on at the end of each of these leather thongs. They had glass, anything sharp up thorns, and they would whip themselves, ritually whip themselves. And they would pause, they'd lie down, make the shape of the cross and then carry on. And the idea is that they were atoning for their sins, but they were also mimicking the Passion. So they were mimicking Christ on the route to the crucifixion. It was a pretty terrifying sight. But people did come and watch it. It was the thing to go and watch. Let's go watch the flagellants. They're coming. And everyone would kind of run and watch the flagellants. And you saw this particularly in northern Europe. You did see it in England as well. But then there was another type in Italy called the bianchi, and they were. And they wore these sort of canonical headdresses. They were all dressed in white and women and children could be part of this. And they would process from village to village doing the same thing in their white robes, whereas the flagents wore these loincloths that went from the waist down to the feet.

[Dan Snow]

So extreme behaviour. Yeah, extreme times. Let's come to England. It arrives by sea in Dorset, so.

[Helen Carr]

It probably arrives in various ports across the south southwest, roughly around the same time. But Dorset is the most famous one. The idea is that a ship that's come over from Gascony and the sailors on the ship are infected with plague. And it's this town, Melcombe in Dorset, that the first accounts come out of people dying from this unknown illness. And then it starts to move through England pretty quickly. And as I said before, it pops up in various locations. It's not like it moves from the south and kind of slightly creeps north and eventually ends up in Scotland. It's all happening all at the same time. Cases are popping up left, right and centre. You could be in Newcastle and there's an account of plague in Newcastle at the same time as there's an account of plague in Bristol. Bristol is a city that was said to have been almost completely wiped out by plague. So it was incredibly virulent in England. And you weren't safe if you were living in villages and hamlets, and you weren't safe if you were living in cities.

[Dan Snow]

I've seen some parish records and the spike was brutal. I mean, over the space of two months, your entire community could be well chopped in half.

[Helen Carr]

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And how does one make sense of that? And if you are living in through this, how can you make sense of the world that you were used to is suddenly now ceasing to exist? I mean, the people that you knew were dropping down like flies. The only way that people did make sense of this was that this was God's wrath.

[Dan Snow]

Did society break down? I mean, did people take the opportunity of robbing from their neighbors or rising up against their hated landlords? Is there complete fracturing of the peace of the country?

[Helen Carr]

Yeah, there's society broke down. But then there are also amazing examples of humanity. I mean, there's a real trend when people talk about plague and the Black Death. There's this sort of people just acting like mad people and like throwing bodies around the street. And it was all crazy. And Boccaccio's Decameron gives this sense of absolute anarchy, but actually the evidence shows the contrary. There was a lot of humanity and love and empathy and respect shown to people and people who were dying. We think about plague pits as bodies just launched into the earth, these pits, or being burned, it's not the case. Bodies were very carefully laid down to rest. They were laid carefully on top of each other. They weren't sort of thrown in like heaped corpses. They were shown respect. People were shown respect. There's this wonderful example that I found in the record of a man in a parish in London, in central London, who, in his will. There's a lot of people rushing to make wills at this time. He wanted his worldly goods, his wealth to be installed in his local parish church, his gold for people to come and use in his community to enhance their life. When things became difficult for them. So they couldn't pay to feed their children that month, or they couldn't pay to have their roof fixed or something. He would say they could come and use that money and then repay it in the trust that they would repay it. And it was this communal pot of gold. It's examples of that community. Your parish was incredibly important. These were your. Not just your neighbors, they were your extended family. People really cared for each other. So I think that the idea of it being rough and horrible and ugly and dark isn't necessarily the truth. I think there was a lot more kindness and empathy and humanity shown to people.

[Dan Snow]

So at the parish level, lots of humanity, empathy. What about the regional, national level? Is there anything anyone's doing? Cleaning streets, trying to organize, passing laws. Is there any response by any government that's had any effect? How are we gonna survive this?

[Helen Carr]

Yeah, I mean, there's incredibly practical responses. So Edward iii, he says, no pilgrimage. Nobody is allowed to the country for pilgrimage or war. It's a lockdown. We're very familiar with that term. It's a lockdown. So nobody is allowed to leave the country. People are allowed to move within the country, but nobody's allowed to come in, Nobody's allowed to go out. Again, there's also practical measures shown. He is a king. He opposes a plague pit being dug near the Tower of London. I mean, you think, oh, that's really good of him. He's sort of preventing it being dug in the city, like close to people. I kind of also wonder. He's going, not near the Tower. No, no, no, no, no. That's my place. You're not putting a plague pit there. But he does oppose that. Whether sort of basic sanitation is a real problem. People did consider sanitation as potentially being a root cause of plague, but nobody really knew the exact answers as to where it came from. They did think that it was godly.

[Dan Snow]

This is Dan Snow's history here. More after this.

[Helen Carr]

Did I talk too much?

[Dan Snow]

Can I just let it go?

[Helen Carr]

Take a breath.

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[Helen Carr]

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[Dan Snow]

And they were also aware that there was something to do with cleanliness. Something to do with. Do they associate rats at this point with plague?

[Helen Carr]

No.

[Dan Snow]

No, they didn't. Okay, fine. But they attempted to sort of clean up the city A little bit. Wouldn't have much effect.

[Helen Carr]

It wouldn't have much effect. And as far as they could. I mean, there are people dying, like, constantly. It's like. Like you're losing an entire workforce. So efforts to be clean and cleaning things up weren't exactly something that could be enacted with any sort of sense of continuity or stability.

[Dan Snow]

And also the things that are causing it, which is the fleas on the back of these rodents. You can't see them.

[Helen Carr]

No, you can't see them. They didn't know they existed. They had no idea. They thought that it was divine wrath. They thought they had done something incredibly bad. And what you get from the accounts of this period, and there are numerous accounts from this period, is this sense of. Of anger, guilt, shame. Really powerful human emotions that are coming through in the record that people are blaming themselves. They're blaming themselves and they're blaming each other. They're blaming entire communities. They're blaming the Jews, as often happens in other countries, they blame the Catalonians. In certain areas, there was always people to be blamed if not blaming oneself. Children were blamed. Children were blamed for not doing as they were told. They caused the Black Death. I love that I'm going to level that at my own children. When they won't get their shoes on in time for school, I think, how.

[Dan Snow]

Does it burn out? Just kill everyone who's susceptible to it and then just run out of victims?

[Helen Carr]

Well, it doesn't really burn out. It comes back. I mean, so it goes through waves. It was particularly powerful in the summer. So you would get waves of plague usually in the summer, at which point people would go off, if they could. They'd go off to their sort of summer residences. Edward III used to go off to Woodstock in the countryside in Oxfordshire, and he would sort of hide away there. So there were waves of plague, some more verunt than others. 1348 was the worst. There was another one in 1361 that was particularly bad for children. It was known as the children's plague. So that killed a lot of little children, which is very sad. But beforehand it was mostly very young people, very old people. A lot of men as well. Men were more susceptible to it than healthy women.

[Dan Snow]

So people just. Societies have learned to live with this. Just terrible things. We've been through them.

[Helen Carr]

Yeah. People did learn to live with it. People lived in fear of it, though. And things changed. People's attitudes to death. Death started to change. We see that in the cultural output of the period.

[Dan Snow]

Yeah. So how does the world change with the Plague.

[Helen Carr]

So after the Black Death, if we're thinking about the culture and the output and the art and the visual side of things, you saw a lot around this cult of memento mori, this idea that you will die, remember, you will die. It literally means remember you will die. And there's a lot of reminders in tomb monuments, in literature and arts from the period. Remember you will die. The dance macabre is a very poignant image that did exist before the Black Death, but it just became more popular in how often it was repeated in manuscript culture. In art in Italy, there was obviously a much more of an artistic movement that included images of death and memento mori art, lots of skeletons. There was also transy tombs, which you saw into the late 14th century, early 15th century, partly because so many people had been killed who were actually able to create these sorts of monuments. And transitombs are so interesting because it's the first time you see see this vision of death. It's sort of the visible reminder of what happens to your corporeal body when you die. You have a fresh corpse on the top in this sculpture, but then beneath it, it's like an open coffin almost. You get a vision of what's happening beneath the ground. And it's this cadaver that is flesh eaten, it's got worms sort of crawling over it and it's half decomposed that you can see bits of the skull, a bit of the flesh might still be clinging to the cheek. And it's this beautiful masonry. It beautiful sculptural artistic movement, but it is also incredibly affecting. And what's that trying to tell the viewer, somebody who is standing there for the centuries looking at this, it is a reminder that we are all in it together. Whether you're the king, you're the pope or you're the peasant, you are going to die. And this is what is going to happen to your bodily remains. And so, you know, make sure that you are penitential and you say your prayers, because that's really what's going to keep you. Your salvation after death is what's important.

[Dan Snow]

Speaking of the peasants, we got the famous Peasants Revolt in the late 14th century in England. Do you see things like that around Europe? Are they exacerbated these things caused by the plague?

[Helen Carr]

Yeah, the plague is a massive social leveler. So there are going to be examples of this, because what you get after the plague is the nobility sort of going like, how could they possibly be wearing the same clothes as me? Just because they're able to demand More money now because they've supposed survive the plague and I need them to work my land, but that makes them rich. And then they start to panic because the feudal system starts to kind of. The lines begin to blur. The peasant classes start to rise up and demand more money. And there's that famous William Langland poem, Piers Plowman. It talks about not being satisfied with their penny ale and they want fresh flesh or fried fish rather than the pottage that they might have been used to before the Black Death. It's this idea that they're no longer existing in this fatalistic society. They weren't born into a feudal class and therefore they have to stay there. They can better themselves, they can better their lives. You see a lot more of the movement with artisans. So you have people might be born into more lowly families, but going to work in apprenticeships, men and young women going to work in apprenticeships. Whereas before the plague this would usually be familial. So if you were a smith, it would be your son would then become a smith. But when the son dies of plague, who's going to become your apprentice? It's going to be the lad in the village over there who did survive the plague. So people are able to better their lives. And there is this theory that after the plague there was a so called golden age. And this was particularly applicable to women. You saw women taking on jobs that men would normally have. You know, armorers, they're butchers, vitners, Women were always alewives. The ale was drunk a lot more. A lot more ale was brewed in much more mass production. You'd be glad to hear that. Cause I know that you like love and ale.

[Dan Snow]

I'm not surprised that people respond to the play by drinking more.

[Helen Carr]

Exactly. So there was a lot more innovation and technological development. The advent of the watermill. The watermill was used because you didn't have people there who were able to sort of manually grind corn and grind wheat. So they had to find a way of doing it. It drove automation. People were much more itinerant, they had portfolio careers. People would work with the seasons, they'd work on a harvest and then they might go and work as drovers or they might travel across the silk roads as part of the merchant caravans. So people were moving more. After the plague, there was much more interconnectivity for the survivors. There was development, things like clocks. So you weren't just relying on the church bells. Clocks were installed opposite the parish church so people would begin to be able to understand what time of day it was.

[Dan Snow]

Is the capability of government increasing? Are they trying to take a more active role in that? Not just in fighting wars and maintaining the luxury lifestyles of the elite. Are they trying to do things to improve sanitation, for example?

[Helen Carr]

Not really, no. Things tend to go back pretty much to where they were before. The war starts up again. Everything starts to sort of judder back into normality. Edward III continues with his feasting. He continues to have parties, dressing up as a pheasant and having a great time.

[Dan Snow]

And fighting the French.

[Helen Carr]

And fighting the French, yeah.

[Dan Snow]

Imagine that you pause for the plague and then go back to fighting the French.

[Helen Carr]

You go back to fighting the French, but then you have the battle of Poitiers and you managed to capture to John the Good. That's true.

[Dan Snow]

So it is tempting.

[Helen Carr]

Win, win.

[Dan Snow]

If the Black Death is probably the greatest catastrophe to ever befall Europe, what do we learn about humans?

[Helen Carr]

So I think that in writing the course of my book and my research, what surprised me is that actually, contrary to what we believe, that it was this time of anarchy and inhumanity, there was actually a lot of humanity. A good example of this is in Cambridge. So Corpus Christi, the college, Corpus Christi College in Cambridge, which still exists today. Students are there today. This was a college founded during peak plague years, and it was founded by the people of Cambridge. It was the one college not to be founded by the nobility or a royal member of royal family. It was founded by the people, the burghers of Cambridge. And they came together to form this college. It was a confluence of two guilds coming together to create a space, space for the people, to pray for the souls of the people. When the church and the parish was overwhelmed with chantries and praying and arms for the dead. That is why that this was formed. And what's interesting is it's right next to, if you've been to Cambridge, right next to this little 12th century church, St. Bennet's Church. And this has been the parish of St. Bennet's the college was eventually, just after this first wave of plague, built there. Now, what's interesting is students today walk across this pathway next to St Bennet's Church, into one of the gates that leads into to Corpus Christi College. And underneath that pathway, there was an archaeological excavation a few years ago that uncovered a plague pit. Okay, so plague bodies, people who'd died in this parish had been laid to rest there carefully. Not bundled in, not thrown in like they were just sort of meat sacks, but they were carefully laid to rest kindly, gently, as if given the respect as dead bodies, and it was covered over. And the idea was that the people in this parish who were part of Corpus Christi College would have to walk across this pathway every day. So they were walking with the dead. The dead and the living were walking together. And it was a period of time when that space, that thin space between life and death became ever thinner. And I think that there is a wonderful humanity in something like that.

[Dan Snow]

Thank you very much, Helen Carr. And that last answer really does lead on beautifully to your book Septidar, where you explore those themes of power and humanity in the face of all the trials that the 14th century could throw at people. We're gonna get you back on the podcast soon. Thank you very much for coming on.

[Helen Carr]

Thank you for having me.

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[Helen Carr]

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