Show notes
When the first wave of the Black Death finally subsided, what sort of world did it leave behind? How did societies adapt in the decades that followed? And what lessons did this medieval catastrophe hold for future generations? In this final episode of our Sunday Series on the deadly disease, Emily Briffett and historian Thomas Asbridge – author of new book The Black Death: A Global History, published by Allen Lane –consider how the pandemic transformed eco…
Highlighted moments
So some scholars came forward and literally said, I can say categorically that the Black Death could have been many things, but one thing it definitely was not was plague.
“They were able to look at the teeth of those individuals, because in the dental pulp, the remains of signatures both of the ancient DNA of this bacterium Yersinia pestis could be found, and also the antigen, the body's response to it could also be detected.”
“they never used the term, the Black Death, to describe this outbreak, this pandemic. We have a couple of 14th century writers who use it mentioning that there's a Black Death, as in this was a terrible event, but they're not describing it in a definitive sense.”
“We see the emergence in the late 14th century of more frequent issuing of what we call sumptuary laws, which is just a fancy way of saying laws to govern what you wear in terms of clothing.”
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