This episode, we continue our Medieval True Crime series with a trip to late 13th-century Bedfordshire as represented in its Coroner’s Rolls, as well as hear some inadvertently lyrical legalese from early 14th-century Northampton.
Gross, Charles, editor. Select Cases from the Coroners’ Rolls, A.D. 1265-1413, with a Brief Account of the History of the Office of Coroner. Bernard Quarithc, 1896. Google Books.
References
Hanawalt, Barbara A. “Violent Death in Fourteenth- and Early Fifteenth-Century England.” Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 18, no. 3, July 1976, pp. 297-320. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/178340.
Warrin, Frank L. “Hue and Cry.” The Virginia Quarterly Review, vol. 9, no. 1, 1933, pp. 26–37. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26433779.
For our sixth anniversary episode, we kick off a miniseries on medieval true crime, with the account of a particularly brutal assault on a parish priest, with an additional look at medieval treatments for eye wounds, and also learn how a dead man managed to kill the warrior who slayed him.
Today’s Text
Knox, Ronald, and Shane Leslie, editors and translators. The Miracles of King Henry VI. Cambridge UP, 1923.
Guy de Chauliac, Grand Chirurgie. “Description of the Plague.” Tr. by William A. Guy. Public Health: A Popular Introduction to Sanitary Science, Henry Renshaw, 1870, pp. 48-50. Google Books.
Kelleher, Richard Mark. “Coins, monetisation and re-use in medieval England and Wales: new interpretations made possible by the Portable Antiquities Scheme.” Doctoral thesis, vol. 1, Durham University, 2012. Durham e-Theses, etheses.dur.ac.uk/7314/.
This episode, we check in once again with 14th-century traveler Odoric of Pordenone as he takes in the many lands between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea, including Sri Lanka, Java, Borneo, Vietnam, and some that remain rather mysterious.This episode, we check in once again with 14th-century traveler Odoric of Pordenone as he takes in the many lands between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea, including Sri Lanka, Java, Borneo, Vietnam, and some that remain rather mysterious.
Today’s Texts:
Odoric of Pordenone. “The Eastern Parts of the World, Described.” Cathay and the Way Thither, translated by Henry Yule, vol. 1, Hakluyt Society, 1866, pp. 43-162. Google Books.
Odoricus. “The Voyage of Frier Beatus Ordoricus to Asia Minor, Armenia, Chaldea, Persia, India, China, and Other Remote Parts, &c.” The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation, edited and translated by Richard Hakluyt, vol. 4, Macmillan 1904, pp. 371-444. Google Books.
References:
Bressan, L. “Ordoric of Pordenone (1213-1331): His Vision of China and South-East Asia and His Contribution to Relations Between Asia and Europe.” Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 70, no. 2 (273), 1997, pp. 1-23. JSTOR, www.jstor.com/stable/41493334.
Herodotus. The Histories. Translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt. Revised ed., Penguin Classics, 1972.
Metcalf, Peter. “Wine of the Corpse: Endocannibalism and the Great Feast of the Dead in Borneo.” Representations, no. 17, Winter 1987, pp. 96-109. JSTOR, www.jstor.com/stable/3043794.
Valtrová, Jana. “Beyond the Horizons of Legends: Traditional Imagery and Direct Experience in Medieval Accounts of Asia.” Numen, vol. 57, no. 2, 2010, pp. 154-185. JSTOR, www.jstor.com/stable/27793840.
Audio Credits:
Image: Detail of the Cynocephali of Nicobar, from a 15th-century manuscript of the Itinerarium (or Livre des Merveilles) of Odoric of Pordenone. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, département des Manuscrits, Français 2810, fol. 106.
This episode, we examine the persecution of Jews that occurred during the plague years of 1348-1350, including the record of well-poisoning interrogations, the pope’s attempt to quell the violence, and a Jewish account of the persecutions and resistance.
Today’s Texts
“Appendix 2: Examination of the Jews Accused of Poisoning the Wells.” The Epidemics of the Middle Ages, by J.F.C. Hecker and translated by B.G. Babington, 3rd ed., Trübner & Co., 1859, pp. 70-74. Google Books.
Clement VI. Bull of 1 Oct. 1348 [Latin text]. Acta Salzburgo-Aquilejensia, edited by Alois Lang, vol. 1, VerlagsBuchhandlung Styria, 1903, pp. 301-302. Google Books.
Joseph ha-Kohen. The Chronicles of Rabbi Joseph Ben Joshua Ben Meir, the Sphardi. Translated by C.H.F. Bialloblotzky, vol. 1, Richard Bentley, 1835. Google Books.
References
Cohn, Samuel K., Jr. “The Black Death and the Burning of Jews.” Past & Present, no. 196, Aug. 2007, pp. 3-36. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25096679.
Colet, et al. “The Black Death and Its Consequences for the Jewish Community in Tàrrega: Lessons from History and Archeology.” The Medieval Globe, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014, pp. 63-96. Western Michigan University, scholarworks.wmich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1021&context=tmg.
Hecker, J.F.C. The Epidemics of the Middle Ages. Translated by B.G. Babington, 3rd ed., Trübner & Co., 1859. Google Books.
Jedwab, Remi, et al. “Negative Shocks and Mass Persecutions: Evidence from the Black Death.” Institute for International Economic Policy, Elliott School of International Affairs, The George Washington University, www2.gwu.edu/~iiep/assets/docs/papers/2017WP/JedwabIIEPWP2017-4.pdf. Working paper.
Nirenberg, David. “Epilogue: The Black Death and Beyond.” Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages, updated edition, Princeton UP, 1996, pp. 231-250. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvc77j55.14.
Winkler, Albert. “The Medieval Holocaust: The Approach of the Plague and the Destruction of Jews in Germany, 1348-1349.” Federation of East European Family History Societies, vol. 13, 2005, pp. 6-24. BYU ScholarsArchive, scholarsarchive.byu.edu/facpub/1816.
Consulted for translation comparisons
Horrox, Rosemary, translator and editor. The Black Death. Manchester Medieval Sources, Manchester UP, 1994.
“Quamvis perfidiam Iudeorum.” Translated into French by Claire Chauvin, RELMIN, Université de Nantes, 2013, www.cn-telma.fr/relmin/extrait87469/.
Music credit: Hershman, Mordechai, performer. “Rochel Mevake Al Bonaiho.” 1921. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/item/jukebox-39537/.
As life under quarantine begins to enter a new phase, we continue our survey of plague texts, with a grab-bag of selections ranging from Petrarch baring his soul to a surgeon listing failed remedies to some Paris professors issuing pandemic guidelines to keep the country safe, which include by no means consuming olive oil.
Today’s Texts
Capgrave, John. The Chronicle of England. Edited by Francis Charles Hingeston, Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, and Roberts, 1858. Google Books.
Dobson, Susanna, translator. The Life of Petrarch. Collected from Memoires pour la vie de Petrarch by Jacques-Francois-Paul-Aldonce De Sade, vol. 2, 7th ed., W. Wilson, 1807. Google Books.
Guy de Chauliac, Grand Chirurgie. “Description of the Plague.” Tr. by Anna M. Campbell. Reprinted from Campbell, The Black Death and Men ofLearning, pp. 2-3, 1931.
Guy de Chauliac, Grand Chirurgie. “Description of the Plague.” Tr. by William A. Guy. Public Health: A Popular Introduction to Sanitary Science, Henry Renshaw, 1870, pp. 48-50. Google Books.
Petrarch, “Letter to Gherard, May 1349.” Translated by Francis Aidan Gasquet in The Black Death of 1348 and 1349, 2nd ed., George Bell and Sons, 1908, pp. 33-34. Google Books.
“Statement of the Faculty of the College of Physicians of Paris.” In The Epidemics of the Middle Ages, by J.F.C. Hecker, translated by B.G. Babington, 3rd ed., Trübner & Co., 1859, pp. 47-49. Google Books.
References
Hecker, J.F.C. The Epidemics of the Middle Ages. Translated by B.G. Babington, 3rd ed., Trübner & Co., 1859. Google Books.
Image: Figure of a bubo being treated from the Bristol City Library MS of Guy de Chauliac’s Chirugia Magna. In Singer, Charles. “The Figures of the Bristol Guy de Chauliac MS. (circa 1430).” Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, 10, pp. 71–90, doi.org/10.1177/003591571701001504.
We return at last for our first episode of 2020 in the midst of the covid-19 global pandemic. As such, our text for today is the famous description of the bubonic plague as it appeared in Florence in 1348 with which Boccaccio frames his tale collection, the Decameron.
Today’s Text
Boccaccio, Giovanni. Stories of Boccaccio (The Decameron). Translated by Léopold Flameng, G. Barrie, 1881. Google Books.
Kowalski, Todd J., and William A. Agger. “Art Supports New Plague Science.” Clinical Infectious Diseases, vol. 48, no. 1, Jan. 2009, pp. 137-138. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40309557.
Marafiotio, Martin. “Post-Decameron Plague Treatises and the Boccaccian Innovation of Narrative Prophylaxis.” Annali d’Italianistica, vol. 23, 2005, pp. 69-87. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24009628.
Martin, Paul M.V., and Estelle Martin-Granel. “2,500-Year Evolution of the Term Epidemic.” Emerging Infectious Diseases, vol. 12, no. 6, pp. 976-980, doi:10.3201/eid1206.051263.
Image Credit: Detail from a 15th-century French manuscript of the Decameron (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des manuscrits, Français 239, fol. 1r.)
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