The Black Death As It Happened
After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal
History Hit
4.7 • 2.1K Ratings
🗓️ 12 March 2026
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Eyewitness accounts of life during the Black Death are surprising. Sure, there's horror. But there's also d*ck jokes, complicated scientific theories, and buttock-obsessed priests. Taking Anthony through it all is Dr Eleanor Janega, from our sister podcast 'Gone Medieval'.
Edited by Hannah Feodorov and Anna Brant. Research by Phoebe Joyce. Produced by Freddy Chick.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Looking for more shady and sinister stories, sign up to History Hit. |
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| 0:25.2 | to start exploring the past. |
| 0:31.6 | In the year of our Lord, 1348, there happened in Florence, |
| 0:36.1 | the finest city in all Italy, a most terrible plague. |
| 0:41.1 | Tumors appeared in people's groins or under the armpits, some as big as a small apple, |
| 0:47.5 | others as big as an egg. And afterwards came purple spots that were the messengers of death. |
| 0:54.7 | The disease spread daily, like fire when it touches oil. |
| 1:00.5 | What I am going to tell you is fantastical. |
| 1:04.4 | And had I not seen it with my own eyes, |
| 1:07.1 | and were there not many witnesses to attest to it besides myself, I should never dare to tell |
| 1:13.5 | this tale. It was agony. Septicemia, gangrene, extreme shock, severe gastrointestinal and respiratory |
| 1:24.4 | distress, internal bleeding, and those notorious, black, puss-filled |
| 1:30.3 | lymph notes, the size of an apple in the groin and under the arms. |
| 1:34.3 | These are the symptoms of the terrifying and highly transmissible infection that could kill a perfectly healthy person within 24 hours. |
| 1:42.3 | This was Europe in 1348, the year of the Black |
| 1:46.8 | Death. Within four years, nearly half the population was gone. Cities emptied, churches overflowed |
| 1:54.0 | with the dead. Doctors, if they survived, could do nothing but watch. We think we understand pandemics today, but nothing compares to witnessing a world consumed by plague. |
| 2:06.5 | Now, to truly grasp it, we are going to turn to the voices of those who lived through it. |
| 2:10.8 | Poets, preachers and doctors from Italy to England. |
... |
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