Summary
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how the Black Death influenced the structure and ideas of Medieval Europe. In October 1347, a Genoese trading ship arrived at the busy port of Messina in Sicily and docked among many similar ships doing similar things. But this ship was special because this ship had rats and the rats had fleas and the fleas had plague. This was the Black Death and its terrible progress was captured by the Florentine writer Giovanni Boccaccio who declared “in those years a dead man was then of no more account than a dead goat”. In the long and unsanitary history of Europe there have been many plagues but only one Black Death. It killed over a third of Europe’s population in 4 years – young and old, rich and poor, in the town and in the country. When it stopped in 1351 it left a continent ravaged but transformed – the poor found their labour to be valuable, religion was both reinforced and undercut, medicine progressed, art changed and the continent awash with guilt and memorialisation. With Miri Rubin, Professor of Medieval and Early Modern History at Queen Mary, University of London; Samuel Cohn, Professor of Medieval History at the University of Glasgow; Paul Binski, Professor of the History of Medieval Art at Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge
Transcript
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| 0:48.3 | Hello in October 1347 a Genuese trading ship arrived at the Visiport of Messina in Sicily. |
| 0:55.0 | Redying to dock it would have nosed in among many similar ships doing similar things. |
| 0:59.0 | But this ship was special. |
| 1:01.0 | It carried the plague, the black death, cause unknown for about 600 years, but in the next |
| 1:05.9 | four years it killed up to half of Europe's population. Its terrible progress was captured |
| 1:11.0 | by the Florentine writer Giovanni Boquaccio who declared, in those years progress was not only massively reduced the population of Europe, it changes economics and |
| 1:24.0 | rearranged its society, but did the disease also bring sotter transformations in its |
| 1:28.6 | art, its religion and its intellectual outlook? With me to discuss the Black Death, I'm Meer Rubin, |
| 1:33.4 | Professor of Medieval and Early Modern History at Queen Mary University of London, |
| 1:37.3 | Paul Binsky, Professor of the History of Medieval Art at the University of Cambridge |
| 1:41.6 | and Samuel Cohen, Professor of Medieval History at the University of Cambridge and Samuel Cohen, Professor of Medieval History at the |
| 1:44.3 | University of Glasgow, Mir Rubin. Can you talk us through the symptoms that people |
| 1:49.0 | would have started to play to display in Messina? what happened to a plague victim? |
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