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- [00:02]
Matt Lewis
From long lost Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Elena Jarninger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life. Only on History Hit with your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com subscribe. Acast Powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend
- [00:52]
Nikayla Matthews Akome
if you've ever dreamed of quitting your job to take your side hustle full time. Listen up. This is Nikayla Matthews Akome, host of side Hustle Pro, a podcast that helps you build and grow from passion project to profitable business. Every week you'll hear from guests just like you who wanted to start a business on the side. If you can't run a side hustle,
- [01:11]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
you can't run a business.
- [01:12]
Nikayla Matthews Akome
They share real tips and so I started connecting with all these people on LinkedIn and I saw target supplier diversity was having office hours. Real advice. Procrastination is the easiest form of resistance and the actual strategies they use to turn their side hustle into their main hustle. Getting back in touch with your tangible cash and sitting there down and learning to give your money a job like it changes something. Check out side Hustle Pro every week on your favorite podcast app and YouTube.
- [01:42]
Matt Lewis
Acast helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere.
- [01:48]
Carvana Customer
Acast.com I sold my car in Carvana last night.
- [01:52]
Nikayla Matthews Akome
Well, that's cool.
- [01:53]
Carvana Customer
No, you don't understand. It went perfectly. Real offer down to the penny. They're picking it up tomorrow. Nothing went wrong.
- [01:59]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
So what's the problem?
- [02:00]
Carvana Customer
That is the problem. Nothing in my life goes to smoothly. I'm waiting for the catch.
- [02:04]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
Maybe there's no catch.
- [02:05]
Carvana Customer
That's exactly what a catch would want me to think.
- [02:08]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
Wow. You need to relax.
- [02:09]
Carvana Customer
I need a knock on wood. Do we have wood? Is this table wood?
- [02:12]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
I think it's laminate.
- [02:13]
Carvana Customer
Okay. Yeah, that's good. That's close enough.
- [02:14]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
Car selling without a catch. Sell your car today on carvana. Pick up. These may apply.
- [02:22]
Matt Lewis
Hello, I'm Matt Lewis. Welcome to Gone Medieval From History Hit. The podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We've got the most intriguing mysteries, the gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the Vikings to the printing press, from kings to popes to the Crusades, we Cross centuries and continents to delve into rebellions, plots and murders, to find the stories, big and small that tell us how we got here, find out who we really were with. Gone Medieval. Welcome to Con Medieval Today. I'm joined by the brilliant professor Susannah Lipscomb, historian and host of Not Just the Tudors. Last year, I clashed with Tristan Hughes over where the ancient world ended and the medieval world began. And it got pretty heated. Now we're tackling the big question. When did the medieval world give way to the early modern one? Was it a gradual evolution or. Or a dramatic revolution? Every region tells a different story, but our producers want a fight. So Susie and I are going to battle it out one person and one event at a time. So gloves on and let's dive in. Right, Susie, So you and I are going to try and work out maybe where the medieval period ends, if the glories of the medieval world ever actually ends. Ended where the early modern period begins. What belongs to you? What belongs to Gone medieval. And we're going to fight it out over a few specific things. And so I guess what we need to clear up before we even start is that we are mainly going to be talking about European. Western European history in the main here, so we can acknowledge that things are happening all over the world at various points that may or may not fit into this kind of idea of periodizing history as medieval and early modern. Because it's kind of an artificial construct, isn't it?
- [04:18]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
It really is. I mean, even the idea that we divide it up and actually, to be honest, the name early modern is such a weird name. It only really was coined in the 1940s when they needed something else to sort of distinguish the medieval and the modern. But it clearly is kind of teleological.
- [04:36]
Nikayla Matthews Akome
It's.
- [04:37]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
It's leading us towards the modern. It's saying that everything in the early modern is kind of like the green shoots of modernity. And so it sort of has a kind of propaganda purpose, as it were. But I think this question about when periods end and finish, I mean, the same problems happen at the end of the early morning. Does it finish in, I don't know, 1692 or 1750 or 1789, you know, where does it finish? I think it's really interesting. The whole idea of periodization is medieval. It's Petrarch's, you know, this idea of, as you well know, dividing it history into time periods. But clearly what isn't the case is that sort of on the 31st of December, 1499, everyone went to Sleep and woke up in the early modern period on the 1st of January, 1500. I mean, it's more complex than that. And so let's try and think about that.
- [05:29]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, I tried. Well, we did this similar episode with Tristan on the Ancients. And, you know, I was trying to say that it's not like everyone goes to bed one day in a toga and wakes up the next morning and thinks, you know, where's my hose and doublet? It's, it's, it's gradual. It's a long process of change. It's evolution rather than revolution in most cases. Which makes it quite interesting for us, I think, to look at some of these topics and think, you know, which side of the divide would we actually put that person or that event or that scientific development on?
- [05:59]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
Absolutely. And I think we'll find that there'll be some sort of roots of some things in the medieval period, but they come to their fruition, their true fullness. They're flourishing in the early modern period.
- [06:11]
Matt Lewis
No, we're not here to be nice, Susie. One of us is going to win and one of us is going to lose. Right. So the first person that we're going to look at is this person. Medieval or early modern, where should they fall is Johannes Gutenberg. So he lives 1400-1468, invents the movable type press in Germany, which, I mean, it probably not overstating it to describe that as an absolutely revolutionary moment. Having just said that things are evolution, not revolution. This, this is a genuine revolution, isn't it?
- [06:43]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
It is. I mean, in fact, actually, of course, we know that print had been around in China much earlier, but this is the beginning of the printing press in Europe. Gutenberg himself, you can have him, he's definitely medieval.
- [06:56]
Matt Lewis
Poor Johannes. Dismiss him. So condemn him to the medieval world. Actually, no, I'm upset. You condemn him.
- [07:02]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
I've condemned him. Yes, I've condemned him. But what I would say is that the transformation that he wrought only comes to fruition later. So really fascinating. After print develops as a technology, for the first 50 years or so, they're basically making imitations of manuscripts. So they're making books that look like manuscripts, they're in Gothic type. And the content of them, you know, their Bibles, their breviaries, their prayer books, and it takes quite a while for them to realize, actually we can make things much more cheaply and we can disseminate them. And the sort of numbers of books rockets enormously by the thousands. The number of different titles available over the 16th century. So you, you, I, I'm going to give you Gutenberg if I can have like the, the importance of print and how it starts to become a kind of political and a religious weapon. Because I don't think that happens in the 15th century.
- [08:00]
Matt Lewis
No, I think the press is something that really lays the groundwork for the emergence of what we would think of as an early modern world. You think of Caxton coming to London and setting up his press in the late 1470s. He's a medieval man existing in a medieval world. But all of a sudden you've got people thinking, what if I wanted to print a different book? What if it's not just a copy of a manuscript? What if it's not even just a religious thing? You know, you've got Malory writing his Morte d' Arthur and having it printed and people can get copies and copies and copies of this. And it's not this exclusive, horrendously expensive thing to own a book anymore. And then later on into the 16th century, that means you can start printing pamphlets. It doesn't have to be a massive book. You can start disseminating information much more widely, much more quickly than you ever could before.
- [08:45]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
Absolutely. And you can also not just have text, you can have pictures. I mean, one of the things that's so crucial for Martin Luther within the Protestant Reformation as we now think of it, is that there are images. I mean, most people can't read at this time. Maybe by the end of the 16th century, the estimates are perhaps 10% of men can read, 5% of women. So I mean, that doesn't stop you being able to absorb the information. The parallel I like to draw is it's a bit like being able to drive today. You don't need to be able to drive, you just need to know someone or be able to pay someone who can. And it's the same with reading at this time. You need to know someone who can read it out loud. But images, and often these are kind of hand colored in. They become so powerful in suggesting that the Pope is the Antichrist, Christ, the horror of Babylon, all these things. And those pictures become powerful. And then therefore these pamphlets, this sort of ephemeral print, this cheap print, can become really good at galvanizing ideas. And I think that really does happen in the 16th century. So yeah, I'm taking that one.
- [09:50]
Matt Lewis
So essentially I'm going to cheat and I'm going to keep the Johannes Gutenberg card as a point for me, because you've said Gutenberg is a medieval Person,
- [09:56]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
I think you need to tear it in half. And I'll have what he did.
- [09:58]
Matt Lewis
You can have half. I'll give you a corner off it. If we get to a tiebreaker, the corner of Johannes Gutenberg's card.
- [10:03]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
Oh, my goodness. This is unfair. This is rigged from the beginning.
- [10:07]
Matt Lewis
Absolutely it is. How else am I going to win? The next kind of idea, notion, I guess, that we've got here is the breaking of the power of Rome.
- [10:17]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
Oh, that's definitely mine.
- [10:19]
Matt Lewis
So I would suggest that probably the medieval period in Western Europe is kind of the story of the Catholic Church gaining and maintaining control over everything, over religion thought, desperately trying to take control of secular states as well, and insert itself into all of that. Is the idea of breaking that power of the Catholic Church in Rome a moment when we can say the medieval world has ended and the early modern has begun?
- [10:49]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
I think so. And I think it's because what we see with Martin Luther, possibly maybe apocryphal, nailing his thesis to the church door in Brittenberg 1517, and what happens after that is essentially like opening Pandora's box, or Natalie Haynes tells us it's actually a jar, opening Pandora's jar. And all of these ideas come out and they can't be confined. So it means that people start questioning authority and asking, well, if, you know, Luther's basic idea is if the Pope is wrong about the sale of indulgences certificates to buy you off time for from purgatory, well, might. He might be wrong about other things. And so to kind of challenge Church authority in that way means that people can question authority in all sorts of ways. I mean, when people say break with Rome, of course most people are going to be thinking about Henry VII's break with Rome, which happens in the early 1530s. There's not one set date, but it happens because he wants to divorce Catherine Vargan, Mary Amberlynn, and that is a moment where he's breaking from Rome and therefore reducing the power of Rome in England. But this is happening across Europe in
- [12:06]
Matt Lewis
all sorts of ways, because in England, it's a very peculiarly English thing, isn't it? Because Henry would still tell you, I think, till the day he died, he's a Catholic.
- [12:14]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
Absolutely.
- [12:14]
Matt Lewis
It doesn't change that this is not a Protestant Reformation under Henry viii. It's a selfish megalomaniac's desire to be separated from his wife, creating an entire new church out of it. But there is this kind of almost parallel movement of Protestantism happening on the continent. So something the wind has changed somewhere because, I mean, we can definitely stretch all of these ideas of problems with the Roman Church back into the medieval period. You've got kind of Wycliffe at the end of the 14th century, you know, leading the Lollard movement, which is essentially an effort to say that the Church is corrupt, the Church isn't meant to be rich. You know, it preaches poverty and yet look at what it has. And, you know, he's persecuted for that and his followers are burned as heretics in England. And at the start of the 15th century, his ideas are influencing Jan Hus in the the east of Europe and that you get the Hussite rebellions and everything happening there, which is again, they're declared heretics. It's an effort to oppose the Church. I mean, you can take it all the way back to the Cathars, you know, in the the 12th century, they're viewed as a heretical sect because they don't agree 100 with the teachings of the Catholic Church. So there's always been that maybe the Catholic Church isn't right, but that's always been an idea that's got you into way more trouble than it seems to in the 16th century. It's almost like there's been some kind of shift that makes people more receptive to the idea that the Catholic Church isn't the only way to do things.
- [13:39]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
I mean, there have been a lot of heresies over the years and the Cathars definitely fall into that category, the Lollards. I think you can see actually quite a lot of similarity between Lolardi, the ideas of that and what emerges in the Reformation, which is questioning this power, I, I, maybe it contributes to it that we have the most awful Pope in Rodrigo Borgia. You know, if you're thinking about pointing out the excesses of the Catholic Church, a man who has got not just like a quiet air off to the side somewhere, but, you know, loads of children that he parades around that he's having, you know, the famed dance of the chestnuts with possibly, you know, sex workers picking up chestnuts from the floor whilst wearing no clothes while surrounded by cardinals in the heart of the Vatican. I mean, you can sort of conclude that things maybe have gone slightly wrong. But what I think so fascinating about this period is that we know that it becomes the Protestant Reformation and we know that it becomes this great schism in the Church, but then nobody knows that it's going to work out like that and that we have people like Thomas Moore and Erasmus who are great humanist thinkers. They, they believe in the power of returning to the orig original text. They believe in searching in the ancient ideas for a way forwards. And they believe that there can be reform in the church. And yet that doesn't come about and it becomes this enormous schism. But the schism happens and it does change everything because it means that over time, I mean, I think, I guess this is why the period is called early Modern, because it allows people to start to think about where the source of authority is. And it seems to me the really crucial thing that happens in terms of reformed or Protestant belief is that you take out that middleman of the priest and you say we can talk directly to God, and then you don't need that layer of authority when it comes to decision making. And that sets the foundation for the scientific revolution. You know, disputed term, but the scientific revolution, the Enlightenment later. That all begins with not having to go to someone else to.
- [15:52]
Matt Lewis
To get credibility to interpret stuff for you. So I feel like I'm going to have to give you the 16th century reformations, breaking the power of Roman and that. It's a medieval idea. Medieval people have tried it, but it's not until the early modern period that they managed to make it well enough.
- [16:08]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
Yes, here we go. Thank you very much.
- [16:10]
Matt Lewis
Right, so the, the next couple pair that we're going to talk about, are they medieval or are they early modern? Isabella and Ferdinand.
- [16:17]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
Ooh.
- [16:18]
Matt Lewis
So this is a. A royal couple, Isabella of Castile, Ferdinand of Aragon, largely credited with unifying the country that we know of as Spain today, largely credited with possibly problematic term of the Reconquista, driving the Muslim presence out of Iberia that had been there for 800 years by that time, but also the people who begin to finance the age of exploration, sending Columbus off west, should we think of them? You know, are they doing these things because they're early modern, or are they doing these things because they're thoroughly medieval people?
- [16:55]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
And the other two things I suppose we should say about them are that they expel the Jews from Spain and then four years later, Portugal expels their Jews. And so that expulsion was. Which arguably is a medieval idea.
- [17:10]
Matt Lewis
I mean, the Jews are expelled from England under Edward I and not allowed back until Cromwell. So there's a fairly long history of persecuting and expelling Jews in the medieval world, certainly.
- [17:20]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
And it becomes, it transmutes in the 16th century. We get kind of ghettoization. But that idea feels like that's kind of a core medieval idea. You can have persecution of the Jews and the founding of The Inquisition, which is to target people who are thought to be Jewish, who are pretending they think to be Christian. So converts who they don't think have thoroughly converted. And then the Inquisition gets taken up in the 16th century in various different ways.
- [17:49]
Matt Lewis
It's almost impossible to, to make the. No one expects the Spanish Inquisition joke though. Talking so seriously about the Spanish Inquisition.
- [17:55]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
Sorry, it's not fun though. The thing is when you read about it, it's so hard, isn't it? That's what's so genius about making a joke of it. Because actually it's impossible to read about Auto du Fay with a smile on your face because it's so grim. So I think I do. It's difficult. I don't really want to give you them, but I feel that.
- [18:17]
Matt Lewis
How about then the age of exploration, sending Columbus to the west, that's essentially about opening up trade routes to where they think the East Indies are. One of the things that Columbus does, one of the things that he talks about is, you know, when he gets all of this gold and fabulous wealth that he's hopefully going to find in the east, he wants it to fund a new crusade to go and take Jerusalem.
- [18:39]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
Yes.
- [18:39]
Matt Lewis
Which is a thoroughly medieval idea.
- [18:41]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
Yes, it's true. I mean, yeah, he goes to the west because he wants to take the East. That's exactly right. And their idea about the New World, so called when he comes back, is that they're hoping to convert everybody. And also I suppose if one thinks about what they are doing in terms of the Reconquista, the taking of Granada and the rest of the, the south of Spain from the Muslims, that's also trying to address this problem that they, as they see it, that the, that the Muslims invaded in 7 11. So it's all that is all medieval. But, but one thing I would like to say about Isabel and Fernando is that they are, are very good at patronizing the Renaissance. This might not seem like a major thing, but they are absolutely leading the way when it comes to things like employing court painters, Juan de Flanders, Antonio Ingles, well before many of the northern Europeans are. So they're, they really are driving ahead with art at the same time as we only kind of see that happening in Rome, Florence and Rome perhaps at the same sort of time. And they have a sort of vision for unifying Spain as well, which arguably is something that becomes kind of focus in the early modern period. I'm slightly struggling here though, because I do genuinely think that a lot of what they're doing is medieval.
- [20:04]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, I Think, you know, the reconquista ending in 1492 is really the conclusion of a crusade. You know, it's the successful conclusion to them of a crusade. You seem to make a really strong effort here to say that everything bad they did is medieval and everything good they did is early modern. That's.
- [20:18]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
Did you notice that? So in other words, what I'd like to do is say that from 1492 onwards, the territory is mine. How about that?
- [20:28]
Matt Lewis
No, I mean, I do think. I do think that idea of creating a much more unified, centralized, single state is a very early modern trait. We go from seeing lots of these fractured kingdoms and even counties within kingdoms that still see themselves in a quite independent way to seeing these ever bigger blocks of a state and a state that has the machinery of state that we would almost recognize today. You know, some of those institutions that exist in those places today are beginning to emerge and create those single states. And I think you can see Ferdinand Isabella driving that for Spain. But are they doing it because they think we're early modern people and we want a nice unified state, or are they doing it because they're thinking we're conquering all of this land?
- [21:12]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
Yes. And of course, none of them would have thought of themselves as early moderns. Like we talk about the Tudors, no one thought of themselves as Tudors. But that movement to. Towards centralized power comes to fruition in the 17th century with Louis XIV and the move towards absolutism. So I do think we see the beginnings of something there, whether they intended it or not. Obviously, we've seen states, you know, acquire smaller states before. If we look at, back to the Cathars, for example, that's the. The taking over of Long Dock by France. You know, this sort of acquisition has happened before, but this is political and sort of foundational for Spain, I think.
- [21:52]
Matt Lewis
So where are we going then? Are they medieval or are they early modern? Do you hate them so much that you're going to call them medieval?
- [21:57]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
I mean, I find Isabel completely fascinating. One interesting thing that actually I think of as a result of this is thinking about the kind of changing of the God. I mean, Fernando dies in 1516, and we have a huge number of people who die at around that point in time. This is dangerous territory. I'm just persuading my.
- [22:16]
Matt Lewis
But push it further and further, push
- [22:18]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
it further and further. But there's quite a lot of, you know, Henry seventh, obviously 1509. There's, you know, Maximilian would take up to 1519. We've got. There's A. There's a real changing of the guard that happens in those at the beginning of the 16th century, when things really clearly are of a different period. I think we've. It's those 30 years or so that are in dispute perhaps between us.
- [22:39]
Matt Lewis
So they're mostly medieval?
- [22:41]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
Yeah, I think they're mostly in the
- [22:42]
Matt Lewis
blurry bit, so I'm going to claim them. Thank you very much. I'm slightly disgusted that you hate the medieval world so much, though, Susie. It's great. Right, well, hopefully this is one that you'll be interested in. We might be able to agree on something here. Witchcraft in particular, I guess.
- [23:00]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
Yes. It's so interesting, isn't it? I remember when I was at university, I was set a question about the rise in beliefs in witchcraft and why the rise in belief in witchcraft happened in the 1450-1750, which of course is not the case. It's a trick question because people have believed in witchcraft for thousands of years. But what we absolutely see happen in the early modern period is a increase in persecution, prosecution, execution of people thought to be witches. And I think that whilst there definitely are cases stretching back into actually ancient Rome, ancient Greece, we've got the. The Alice Kytler case in your period, in the sort of 1320s. It's only really after Heinrich Kramer, that absolutely mad man, writes his Hammer of the witches, Malleus Maleficarum, 1486, mostly from him, which is sort of virulently misogynistic and seems to be under the authority of the Church. Only after that and really later in the 16th century, do we start to see the witchcraft, the. The rise in. In the end, it's like 90, 000 people, we estimate, who are arrested, around half of them executed as witches. And it mostly happens if we're drilling in between about 1560 and 1650.
- [24:23]
Matt Lewis
Yeah. And I think the medieval period has a really benign attitude to witchcraft, you know. Yes, they believe it exists, but they generally believe it's a fairly harmless. Sometimes a positive thing are the women who are healing people using herbs and things in communities, is it a form of witchcraft? Maybe, but it's good. So we don't really know. There are definitely women around who are referred to as witches. We get the first kind of witch trial in France in the 14th century and then we've got the Marjorie Jordemain, who's known as The Witch of AI, who is burnt at the stake in the 1440s for supposedly helping Duke Humphrey of Gloucester's wife, Eleanor Cobham, to. To forecast the death of King Henry vi. So there is this idea beginning to emerge by kind of the middle of the 15th century that witchcraft could be a bad thing. But it's so often in the medieval period, particularly in the 15th century, I think it emerges as a political weapon that witchcraft is something you can use against women where you don't necessarily have the judicial tools to deal with them as you might deal with a man. Eleanor Cobham's case particularly throws up the idea that there is no legal mechanism to try a noble woman for treason. A noble man can be tried by a group panel of his peers, but there's no mechanism to do that to a woman. So they changed the law to invent a way to do it, but it's too late with Eleanor, so they charge her with witchcraft. So that's the kind of morphing of this idea that this benign thing that you might call witchcraft might be something bad. Henry V imprisons his stepmom for donkey's years for accusing her of being a witch, just because he wants to take all of her lands and money off her, because he wants to use it to fund his war in France. So it evolves from this kind of benign, friendly, helpful thing into a political weapon. But then at some point the attitude changes to think it's a real thing that we should be scared of and that we need to chase out of the world.
- [26:15]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
Yes, I mean, that's the crucial change is that witchcraft starts to be seen as a diabolical pact. And the idea that the people might be making pacts with the devil is so threatening in an age which thinks it's living in the end times, it thinks that the, the apocalypse, the Day of Judgment is coming. And so there's a real kind of deep seated fear. And the fear is amongst the elites as, as much as among ordinary people. And that's what really changes in the 16th and in fact the diabolical pact becomes put into law in places across Europe. So the other thing I would say is that the fact it's put into law changes it as well. That we have a witch burned at the stake earlier is very different from England, say in the 1604 with James VI and First's law that's passed because at that point witchcraft is a crime, it's a capital offense and therefore it's treated as a crime. And witches are hanged in England because it's not heresy, it is a crime, it's murder, but by witchcraft. The other thing I want to say is that I think this is part of a general move across the 16th century into the 17th century in terms of a kind of tightening of patriarchy. So actually, we also see an increase in women accused of being scolds. So I always think that scolds and witches, the women who are accused of both of those are basically, they're women without hrt. So they are women who are irritable and a bit cantankerous and who are just going through the. The awfulness of perimenopause and menopause, and that is problematic. And people object to women having an opinion, having a voice, being a bit angry about things. And there is this kind of clampdown. So women who are scolds are punished by being put in a brank so that, you know, they can't speak. It's scolds who are dipped in water, not witches. And then the other thing that happens also in 1594, 1624 in England and France, are new laws about infanticide. So women who are thought to have conceived outside of marriage and then their baby dies are accused of infanticide and executed for it. And of course, infant death is really common at this time, and so is pregnancy outside of marriage. But it's just another way of clamping down on women's power. So I think that what we see is this kind of extension of patriarchy. I don't think it's necessarily directed at women who are benignly using herbs to heal. I think a lot of these people are completely innocent of any involvement with anything vaguely magical. They're not necessarily the cunning woman of the village. They are just often people who have less than those who are accusing them and the sort of. The hatred goes downwards. And I think that is an indication that it is a kind of about the dawning of modernity, because one of the reasons why these women, it's mostly women, but not all, are in such straits that they're coming to beg for stuff from a more wealthy landowner is because the whole system of charity that had been part of the medieval worldview has broken down. Because population is growing, because the prices are increasing, because there's less around and people are looking after number one. And people are hungry and fearful and envious. And women who are asking for things are often those who are bearing the brunt of that.
- [30:17]
Matt Lewis
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- [31:20]
Nikayla Matthews Akome
day or night. VRBoCare is here 24? 7 to help make every part of your stay seamless. If anything comes up or you simply need a little guidance, support is ready whenever you reach out. From the moment you book to the moment you head home. We're here to help things run smoothly because a great trip starts with the right support. And hey, a good playlist doesn't hurt either.
- [31:51]
Matt Lewis
Are you looking for the perfect podcasts to hunker down with during the longer, colder, darker nights?
- [31:58]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
Well, look no further than the award winning After Dark Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal with me, Maddy Pelling and me, Anthony Delaney.
- [32:06]
Matt Lewis
We are historians and love all things
- [32:08]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
gloomy and macabre, from Tudor executioners and ancient Egyptian death rituals to witch trials and folklore. Feel transported back in time on After Dark, out every Monday and Thursday wherever you get your podcasts.
- [32:21]
Matt Lewis
And guess what? We're Also now on YouTube After Dark, a podcast from history. I think it's quite striking that we've we've spoken a little bit about kind of the Reformation and the breaks with Rome and, and all of that kind of thing. We've talked about that, how that was a kind of relaxing of attitudes, a challenging of the the structures that had been there for hundreds of years. Almost as if we think that that was a slightly enlightened move. But here we have something that I think we wouldn't consider to be enlightened. It's almost the opposite of that. It's getting back to a way more superstitious time than the medieval world had ever really been. And it's kind of whilst that might be perceived to be moving forward, this feels like it's moving backwards.
- [33:16]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
Well, progress is not linear and progress itself is probably a problematic idea. But I absolutely think it's fascinating to consider that the witch trials are a product of growing capitalism. They're the product of changing forms of land holding, for goodness sake. I mean, that people are, by this point in time, more and more having to move on to what we consider standard, like contractual arrangements for their rent. With the rent can go up year after year, which has just not been the case throughout the sort of 15th century. And everybody's feeling the pinch and there's somebody has to be to blame. And then of course, we get sort of apocalyptic weather conditions and terrible bouts of, you know, epidemics and war, lots and lots of war. And so the circumstances are such that there's so much need and there's so much sense of desire for things that people don't have. So much lack. I think that the witchcraft trials come out of so much lack because they're not just about superstition. They're actually also about fear of what you don't have and what you want to have and what is being taken from you. And so these become kind of scapegoats for the problems of society.
- [34:33]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, that's so interesting. So I guess we're sort of allowing that witchcraft has existed in the medieval world, that the 15th century sees a kind of political weaponization of the idea of witchcraft in elite cases. But are we thinking of early modern as the time in which people get genuinely terrified of witchcraft and it becomes much more of a problem for society?
- [34:55]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
I mean, Matt, we don't have 90,000 people being arrested in the medieval period as witches. It clearly is an early modern problem.
- [35:03]
Matt Lewis
You can have that stinky hot mess for your early match, your early modern world. Talking of stinky hot messes.
- [35:11]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
Oh, where are we going now?
- [35:13]
Matt Lewis
The next card says the plague.
- [35:15]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
Ah, yes.
- [35:16]
Matt Lewis
And it also has a note that we might want to think about sweating sickness, and it says we might want to think about syphilis. I'm not sure how much we ever want to think about syphilis, but let's go there. I mean, the plague in the middle of the 14th century is what we tend to think of as the plague. The Black Death. Huge pandemic, wipes out. Depending on which estimates you look at around half, maybe up to two thirds of the population of Europe is utterly devastating. Brings about huge societal changes, changes the way people think about their relationship with their feudal lords, with their landlords, with their masters. People who are still tied to the. The bit of land that they live on. The surfs are starting to think, can you really make this stick for very much longer? Leads to a whole series of popular revolts. The peasants revolt in England, but similar Things are happening in France and around places as well, is disease and the responses to disease changing the world is the play. I mean, I think we have to say the Black Death is probably a medieval thing, but when we think about recurrences of it and the arrival of something like the sweating sickness and then of syphilis and things like that, are the impacts of those diseases and responses to them, does that mark a changing point?
- [36:26]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
I mean, clearly the Black Death, the 1340s, is a moment and it produces vast change. But what I think so fascinating is that the plague just doesn't go away. I mean, by the time we get to the 16th century, it's recurring roughly every nine years across Europe as a whole, every 16 years in England, we think. And these. There's still massive outbreaks where huge proportions of the population are dying on a kind of every decade.
- [36:53]
Matt Lewis
It's still around, you know, Great Friday of London, 1666 also. There's a plague that year.
- [36:58]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
Yes, yes, exactly the year before. You've had very huge numbers of people dying from the plague. So I think that to just think of it as medieval is wrong. And certainly I can claim delightfully the pox, syphilis and sweating sickness as early modern. I think, because sweating sickness is seen for the first time amongst Henry Tudor's armies on the way out to Bosworth, so in the 1480s and thereafter, it's around to about 1551. We don't know exactly what it was. It looks like a sort of. Of really virulent form of influenza and it recurs often and people die within 24 hours quite often if they're going to die of it. So it's. It, it's a horrible, horrible disease. And then the new, the newcomer on the block is what later gets called by the sort of Latin name of syphilis, the, the great pox, which occurs amongst the French armies in Italy in the campaigns of the 1490s. And everyone refers to it as someone else's problem. So, you know, the, in the sweating sectionist gets called the English sweat, the great pox, the French pox or the Italian pox or whoever you're blaming. And it's sexually transmitted and it's really horribly virulent at first and it, it starts on men on the genitals and it produces all these pustules and boils and it horribly painful. And then of course it develops over time and becomes something you can live with. But still, as you know, you've got these cases of people who have the, you know, this is drilling through the skull of their head. You know, they're living with these open wounds. It's just horrific.
- [38:39]
Matt Lewis
Yeah. And I guess the question is, if, you know, if the plague is a thoroughly medieval thing and it's still around in 1666. 1666 is clearly medieval, then can we say there's a point. We've just said the sweating sickness and syphilis and things like that arrive and are virulent and there isn't yet the medical technology to effectively tackle all of those things. So is this a point at which we need to think that there are still very medieval attitudes and responses to these things, rather than anything early modern, that maybe medicine is lacking behind some other aspects of the. The changing world?
- [39:13]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
Yes. I mean, really interesting. I wouldn't say that even medieval, actually. I think the attitudes towards medicine are essentially ancient. I mean, they're still thinking about Galen. You know, ideas about the body take a long time to change. They do start to change in the 16th century, do start to get more dissections and more kind of thinking about what be going on. By the early 17th century, William Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood, Though he still thinks that hysteria in women is caused by the womb wandering around the body. So, you know, he. He's not.
- [39:41]
Matt Lewis
Wait, it's not.
- [39:44]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
So if he. And you know what, he thinks that if the only way to. To stop it is if a woman is regularly having sexual intercourse, otherwise she might go mad.
- [39:54]
Matt Lewis
But is that what he told his wife?
- [39:55]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
Do you think that's his excuse? But the attitudes take so long to change. And I mean, still in 1665, people are thinking that you can deal with a plague or you can tell that it's coming because you know there's going to be an influx of woodlice or spiders. You know, there's a boy at Eton who's thrashed for not smoking his pipe because they think that smoking keeps the plague at bay. I mean, so ideas take a really long time to change. And so I think we're both actually caught up in ancient worldviews there.
- [40:30]
Matt Lewis
Do I get to keep the plague, then? What do we think?
- [40:32]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
I mean, I. I feel like you can keep the plague if you can give me such a weird negotiation. Can I have sweating sickness in the pox, please?
- [40:42]
Matt Lewis
You can, you can have sweating sickness and you can have syphilis. But I think. I think it's just interesting that the ways of tackling and approaching those things are so slow to change, that they're still facing the same problems, still trying to use the same explanations for everything that had been around for thousands of years by that point. And, and that's kind of lacking, lagging behind everything else really. Right. The next person that we have is someone who we have actually mentioned before. His name has cropped up already. Is this person medieval or is he early modern? Thomas More, sir, St. Thomas More.
- [41:16]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
Goodness me, this is a tricky one. So I mean his outlook is very much one of somebody embracing the ideas of the Renaissance which we haven't really talked about yet. But he is a humanist in that his. He looks to ancient ideas. Skipping over the medieval period, if I can put it like that, looks back to the ancient Greeks and the ancient Romans.
- [41:47]
Matt Lewis
This is where they start calling it kind of medieval middle bit, don't they? Because they want to talk about how wonderful ancient Greek and ancient Roman wisdom is, how great the modern world in which they're living is and just leave that bit in the middle.
- [41:57]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
Absolutely. Just ignore what's happened in between. And so he's a human is not because he's an atheist. That's not what it means at the time. But he's a, he's a believer but who believes that things can be reformed. And that to me seems fundamentally early modern. At the same time, I will give you the fact that he is much more like someone like Thomas Beckett in terms of his outlet when it comes to the church. He doesn't in the end become at all Protestant. He dies probably arguably a Catholic martyr or possibly a martyr for conscience or, or possibly he just won't put, you know, his tie his colors to the mast either way. But he says nothing. But he defends the Pope's position as Supreme Head by not.
- [42:47]
Matt Lewis
Which is a very medieval thing, isn't it? In a world that is beginning to, to allow for the acceptance of alternatives. He has a very medieval attitude to the Catholic Church still.
- [42:57]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
Although one could make a case that standing in, you know, saying I can do no other here I must stand is a very early modern idea. It's what Luther has done and more does it. His point is different. But the sort of bending with the wind and not allowing these religious matters to define you too much perhaps could be regarded as a more medieval practice.
- [43:38]
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Carvana Customer
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- [43:56]
Nikayla Matthews Akome
Well, that's cool.
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Carvana Customer
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- [44:03]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
So what's the problem?
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Carvana Customer
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Dr. Elena Jarninger
Maybe there's no catch.
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Carvana Customer
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Dr. Elena Jarninger
Wow. You need to relax.
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Carvana Customer
I need a knock on wood. Do we have. What is this table?
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Dr. Elena Jarninger
I think it's laminate.
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Carvana Customer
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Dr. Elena Jarninger
That's close enough car selling without a catch. Sell your car today on carvana. Pick up these man fly.
- [44:37]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, well. And I think I'm going to score an own goal here. As much as I hate to maybe allow you to win this one. I think one of the most interesting things about Thomas More is if you look at the things that he's writing and there are two main things that he's particularly famous for writing. Obviously I'm going to bring up Richard iii, but you know, he gives us this kind of first real narrative history of Richard iii. And his other book, Utopia is almost like a historical fiction novel. You know, he's writing about this ideal world, this island that exists somewhere which is packed with ideas. Although he positions it as ideal. It's packed with no private property and married priests. All the things that we know Thomas More disagrees with. And I think in those two pieces of work we've got someone who for me and his Richard iii is writing old fashioned medieval style allegory about history. This is history as lesson. This is moral warnings from history. And the interesting thing about that is that he stops writing it and gives it up and puts it on a shelf. The book that he continues to write is Utopia, which is a much more new idea of a kind of fictional narrated approach to examining things that don't exist. It doesn't really have a moral message behind it, or at least not one that Thomas More would agree with. It's positioning perfection as all of the things that we know he disagrees with. So it's kind of using literature as a way to explore different thoughts and different ideas, not just to present it as a moral lesson from history. So I think his Richard III is a very medieval piece of work. I think Utopia is a thoroughly early modern piece of work. And I think it's striking that he puts the medieval down and the one that he publishes is the early modern piece of work.
- [46:22]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
Absolutely. And that book, Utopia, is still so foundational in terms of thinking about political satire and about, you know, we. We literally use the word utopian to talk about visions of an ideal world, which in this case, as you say, wasn't his ideal world at all. In one of the most shocking ideas he has in it is that people should see each other naked before they get married, which he thinks is complete. I mean, one assumes he thinks is completely outrageous. Turns out that's what people mostly do these days. But, you know, this. This sense that he is creating a sort of vision for how a world could be and playing with ideas is very much of the Renaissance age.
- [47:03]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, I feel like he's a man who, more than anybody else that I can think of, is aware that he is standing with one foot in two different worlds and is really struggling to step one way or the other with both feet. His literature, I think, points to him being very early modern. His religious views point to him being quite medieval. But his. His humanist approach is also thoroughly early modern. So I think on the swingometer, I mean, give them over sort of reluctantly, but okay. I mean, I guess this is a big one. Now we've got the Renaissance. The Renaissance.
- [47:42]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
Well, let's do this in five minutes.
- [47:43]
Matt Lewis
Speed through the Renaissance.
- [47:45]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
Okay, so the foundations of the Renaissance are 14th century, but in terms of its flourishing, I think we can argue that that comes with the high Renaissance, comes with the patronage of the Medicis, like Lorenzo de Medici. And then with the move to Rome, it's people like Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael who are producing the most extraordinary work, which of course is happening. You know, the statue of David, Michelangelo, Statue of David is 1504. This sort of the things that we are most familiar with, the Mona Lisa, all of these things are. Are early 16th century, actually. And we then see that spreading across northern Europe. We get people like Albert Jur, we get Hans Holbein. And if we think beyond visual art, if we think about literature, I mean, English literature, scholars, when they say the Renaissance, they mean the 16th century. Because people like Sir Thomas Wyatt, one of my great favorites, he is introducing the Petrarchan sonnet, medieval into English. And people like Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, is using blank verse, unrhymed verse, in translating Virgil's Enid. And he's doing that for the first time. And then Shakespeare picks that up. So, and we've got Sidney and then we've, you know, Spencer, and then eventually we've got Shakespeare, of course, and Milton much later. And that is all a early modern flourishing, looking back to the glory days of Greek and rogue.
- [49:25]
Matt Lewis
But the idea of a Renaissance isn't necessarily an early modern thing. I mean, we get the 12th century Renaissance in Western Europe, particularly when there is, following the first Crusade, increased contact with the Muslim scholars in the Near East. And, you know, all of this knowledge that, that Western Europeans will try and tell you was lost. It was never lost. It was just being cared for by, by Muslims. And suddenly they have access to all of that again. And we get this kind of flourishing of, of art and learning and translation and understanding and a hearkening back to the ancient world of the Greeks and the romans in the 12th century. But we definitely wouldn't think of that as an early modern thing. So what do you think has changed in the 16th century? Is it because it's striking that in the 16th century you've got the Reformation going on at a similar sort of time to the, the Renaissance flourishing. There seems to be a real mind shift. I mean, can we pick a point in the 16th century where we say the Renaissance has become an early modern thing?
- [50:22]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
So, well, let's first of all say that there are multiple Renaissances then, because the 12th century one is clearly distinct from what's happening by the end of the 15th, beginning of the 16th century. I mean, what would we say? I mean, utopia itself, 15, 16 could be the watershed moment. Perhaps it's after that that we see. But that's in England. I mean, it's very easy to be quite specific to a particular place. I mean, where would we say for elsewhere? We'd say Rabelais, you know, I guess Pantagru and Gargantua. We'd say for France, for Spain, we might have to, to look ahead to Don Quixote and that we're not, you know, that's not till the 17th century. So we're in terms of where we position our, the beginning of our Renaissance in different countries, it's going to vary. And of course it starts in Italy, so it's the earliest in Italy. So I mean, I think I, I'm not sure I can give you a point because I think it's really from the beginning of the 16th century, very beginning of the 16th century, and it gathers pace over time and affects everything.
- [51:30]
Matt Lewis
Modernist thing to say, it's all ours. I mean, I, I kind of think if we're talking about the Renaissance, I think we have to say that's an early modern thing, don't we?
- [51:41]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
I mean, I'm very happy to accept that point of view, Matt.
- [51:43]
Matt Lewis
Yes, I need to stop being, trying
- [51:45]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
to be fair now that I've got this. You could have made a greater case for Petrarch, you know, But I'm just going to leave that there anyway.
- [51:52]
Matt Lewis
I'll have it back later. Our last card. This is quite an interesting one, I think. The wars of the Roses. So in, in England in particular, and we Normally date it 1455-1485, maybe 1487, if you actually want to take notice of the Battle of Stoke, which nobody ever seems to want to. And this is a moment, so a fight for the crown of England quite often framed as a civil war. I don't know that we can call it a civil war. It's very much the elite fighting the elite, rather than it being a. Any kind of a civil war. But even if we frame it as that, I do think this is a moment that shifts something in England in that it breaks or creates the realization that you have to break the power of the old nobility, that kings are being overrun, are being swamped by their own nobility, and that the system is crumbling and can't carry on as it was. And, and that that causes an outbreak of war, it causes the deposition of kings, and, you know, the throne becomes a bit of a merry go round for a little while. And that, that has to end, that has to be fixed, and that breaking the power of the old nobility is kind of the way to do that. And for me, as much as I hate to say, because this is earlier than I'd like to ever allow you to have anything, but it feels like the wars of the Roses is a moment that is. Is shifting things towards something that we would recognize more as. As early modern.
- [53:14]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
That's so interesting. So, yes, I mean, I would say the same in that I think that Henry VII and his new men, you know, the way that he's building people up because of their merit and not because of their noble status is categorically an early modern development. But thank you for pushing back the origins of that well into the wars of the Roses and allowing me to stretch my tent over more and more of the 15th century.
- [53:41]
Nikayla Matthews Akome
Oh, no.
- [53:41]
Matt Lewis
Hoist by my own petard. And this is also a period in which we're talking about the. The increased use of gunpowder. You know, gunpowder is a thing much like the printing press that is going to change the world forever.
- [53:53]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
Yes. I mean, Francis Bacon said that the three things that most changed the world were gunpowder, the printing press and the compass. And we have two of them becoming really coming of age in this period. And gunpowder. Absolutely. I mean, the use of cannon in, on a large scale, what is from the 15th century onwards we get those amazing wall breakers that the sort of can really demolish and then the arquebuse and then later the musket and. And that is absolutely transforming the nature of warfare in this period. Fun fact. First gun crime in London, 1536, poor Robert Packington. But then of course, you've got the development of armies over this period of time. Like a large army in the late 15th century is probably what, 20,000 strong and by the middle of the 17th century it's 150,000. I mean, it's, you know, and I'm rushing ahead with all sorts of things here, but I do think that warfare often is what a period in which you see great technological developments and perhaps that's also happening in the wars of the Roses.
- [54:49]
Matt Lewis
It kind of forces innovation, doesn't it, in a way that might not have happened otherwise. I mean, if I'm going to make. Obviously I've got to make a play for the wars of the Roses being medieval here because.
- [54:58]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
Yeah, I mean, I'm surprised that you're giving us over quite so easily.
- [55:02]
Matt Lewis
I'm trying to be fair. I'm not giving it over at all. But I think it's a very medieval response to the problem in that we are seeing the mobilization of levies of, of nobleman's private armies in a way that I think I begin to associate the medieval world much more with the professional mercenary army and much more with the development of state armies, state run kind of standing armies. And we don't have those in the wars of the Roses and we don't have those in the medieval world. So this feels like almost a, a death throw of the medieval world, that there is a change brewing and this is a response to things that need to change. But it's a very medieval response to that need.
- [55:42]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
Yes. I mean, we don't get standing armies really for quite a long time in the, in the early modern period either. We. That is a bit of a later development. I, I do genuinely think it's probably a death row of the medieval world. A death row or a birth pang, it's hard to say.
- [55:59]
Matt Lewis
I'm going to keep it as a death throat, otherwise I'll never be able to talk about the wars of the Roses. I'm gone medieval again. I can't do that.
- [56:04]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
You can't bear that? Okay.
- [56:05]
Matt Lewis
You have to have me on not just the Tudors at least once a month to come and talk about the wars of the Roses. So you're not creating punishment for yourself if you do this. So And I mean the idea of warfare and gunpowder and stuff, you know, you talk about the war destroyers there. And part of what happens around that time too is the, I'm going to say the fall of Constantinople and we shouldn't say the fall of Constantinople, it, but it's taken by the Ottoman forces. Because saying it's the fall of Constantinople puts you very much on one side.
- [56:30]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
Yes.
- [56:30]
Matt Lewis
Of the fight. So the Ottomans take Constantinople, which is a place that was understood to be untakeable. It couldn't be breached, the walls had never been breached, it had never been taken. And it's tempting. Again, as much as I hate to do this, I don't know why I do this to myself.
- [56:48]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
He's just being fair minded, Matt.
- [56:50]
Matt Lewis
I know I need to stop it though, don't I? Constantinople is taken in 1453 by the Ottoman Empire. And if we, we think about the end of the, the ancient world, if we ever want to put an actual date on it as being the fall of Rome, 1453 is kind of the fall of the rest of the Roman Empire, the Eastern Roman Empire, the, the Byzantine Empire that has, has endured ever since that considered itself the successor to the Roman Empire. 1453. You can make an argument for the fact that warfare has changed, politics is changing, everything is changing. And that that Constantinople switching hands from the Eastern Christian and the Roman Empire to the Muslim Ottoman Empire is an era defining moment too.
- [57:30]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
Yes, it is interesting and it kind of sparks a lot of the changes that happen thereafter. And we've talked about Isabel and Fernando, like their reaction is because of what has happened at Constantinople, that the desire to take back Granada for the Christians is because they see that the, the Turk is on, you know, at their door. And that is what people are reacting to a lot in the 16th century. We, we forget too much, I think about how France, Francis I of France, of Francois the First, Henry viii are reacting and above all Charles V reacting to this, this Ottoman threat. So it is determining the nature of warfare and of political, international concerns across the 16th century. And that does begin in the mid 15th century. So. Yeah, let's that as well.
- [58:20]
Matt Lewis
No, no, I think we'd already said that the wars of the Roses is very firmly medieval. I'm definitely tucking that into my, my stack. But I think it's, it's symptomatic of the fact that these things are almost impossible to pin down to a date even in one place. You can have so much going on that might feel medieval. But there's also some early modern stuff we talked about. Thomas Moore, I think, is a great example of that kind of striding the divide and trying to work out which world you fit in. Because something is changing and I don't know whether I want that or that.
- [58:48]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
Yes, I know. And I. And on a personal level, I would say that I find this period of overlap utterly fascinating. It is the period of sort of 1490 to 1520, where it's all up for grabs and where new worlds are being created in the mind. And perhaps it is that just that transition which makes that period so engaging and so interesting, because it's not clear which way things are going to go.
- [59:17]
Matt Lewis
So you're happy for Gone Medieval to do stuff up to 1520? You've got that.
- [59:20]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
No, I'm happy for you to end in 1490 and leave the rest to me.
- [59:25]
Matt Lewis
I can't remember how many cards I gave you before I asked for the scores, but I've got four.
- [59:29]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
I've got four as well.
- [59:30]
Matt Lewis
Oh, well, we can call that an honorable draw then, can't we?
- [59:32]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
Absolutely. Let's do that.
- [59:33]
Matt Lewis
Although I did say if it was a tiebreaker, then you get a corner of Gutenberg.
- [59:37]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
So I've got four and a quarter or four and a corner.
- [59:40]
Matt Lewis
I'm going to give you four and a corner. And I've got three minus a corner. There's your winning scrap of paper. Congratulations. Thank you so much.
- [59:47]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
I'll frame it well.
- [59:50]
Matt Lewis
Thank you so much. This has been an absolute joy.
- [59:52]
Dr. Elena Jarninger
It has been. Thank you.
- [59:55]
Matt Lewis
I hope you enjoyed this episode. There are new installments of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday, so please come back to join Elena and I for more from the greatest millennium in human history. Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast casts and tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval. You can also sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week@historyhit.com subscribe. Anyway, I better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with history.
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