Medieval: December 2017

A Day In the Life Living With the Plague > .

Pre-Modern Death in Childbirth

Pre-modern childbirth was more dangerous than it is in the most dangerous-to-birth-in countries today. Some evidence from New England suggests an average maternal mortality rate of 2.5%. That is, for every 1000 births, there would be 25 women who died. In countries with the maternal mortality closest to that, (calculated over multiple births) 1 in 6 childbearing woman will die from complications of childbearing; we can expect that the rate was similar in pre-modern times.

http://birthnerd.blogspot.ca/2011/07/pre-modern-death-in-childbirth.html .

https://www.tudorsociety.com/childbirth-in-medieval-and-tudor-times-by-sarah-bryson/ .

Childbirth in Medieval and Tudor Times by Sarah Bryson - The Tudor Society

Medieval Lives - Birth, Marriage, Death (Series) - HuDa >> .

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCpYM0jg1d5M0XcIp4yj2kZF4Cws07HgL .

Medieval Life - Birth, Children, Marriage, Death - Tony - playlist
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtakTnKQQMCzgnwhkhJrO5NE2mTuE8eN4

Women, Medieval to 19th C: She Wolves, Harlots, Whores, Heroines, Queens, Scandalous - archanth >> .

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrYzzr8yja6FbLdIk0yyO6G8MUiJSJzS7 .

Society: Children, Women, Birth, Marriage, Death, Dance ; Medieval to Modern - archanth >> .

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrYzzr8yja6EXGbIsrT_V07Mvj-PZGtRt .

Pandemics & the Economy | The Lasting Effects of the Black Death > .
How did Medieval People respond to the Black Death? - same > .
Black Death Explained in 8 Minutes - CaHi > .

History of the Black Death - 1 - fph > .
History of the Black Death - 2 - fph > .
History of the Black Death - 3 - fph > .

Burial

A-Z of Archaeology: 'B - Burials' > .

Longevity

https://www.sapiens.org/body/human-lifespan-history/

Did Ancient People Die Young?

Mos Teutonicus

Mos Teutonicus (Latin: the Germanic custom) was a postmortem funerary custom used in Europe in the Middle Ages as a means of transporting, and solemnly disposing of, the bodies of high status individuals. The process involved the removal of the flesh from the body, so that the bones of the deceased could be transported hygienically from distant lands back home.

German aristocrats were particularly concerned that burial should not take place in the Holy Land, but rather on home soil. The Florentine chronicler Boncompagno was the first to connect the procedure specifically with German aristocrats, and coins the phrase mos Teutonicus, meaning ‘the Germanic custom.'

English and French aristocrats generally preferred embalming to mos Teutonicus, involving the burial of the entrails and heart in a separate location from the corpse. One of the advantages of mos Teutonicus was that it was relatively economical in comparison with embalming, and was more hygienic.

Corpse preservation was very popular in mediaeval society. The decaying body was seen as a representative of something sinful and evil. Embalming and mos Teutonicus, along with tomb effigies, were a way of giving the corpse an illusion of stasis and removed the uneasy image of putrification and decay.

The process of mos Teutonicus began with the cadaver being dismembered to facilitate the next stage in the process, in which the body parts were boiled in water or wine for several hours. The boiling had the effect of separating the flesh from the bone. Any residual was scraped from the bones, leaving a completely clean skeleton. Both the flesh and internal organs could be buried immediately, or preserved with salt in the same manner as animal meat. The bones, and any preserved flesh, would then be transported back to the deceased's home for ceremonial interment.

Mediaeval society generally regarded entrails as ignoble and there was no great solemnity attached to their disposal, especially among German aristocrats.

Although the Church had a high regard for the practice, Pope Boniface VIII was known to have an especial repugnance of mos Teutonicus because of his ideal of bodily integrity. In his bull of 1300, De Sepulturis, Boniface forbade the practice. The papal bull issued which banned this practice was often misinterpreted as prohibition against human dissection. This probably hindered the research of some anatomists as they feared repercussions and punishment as a result of medical autopsies but De Sepulturis only prohibited the act of mos Teutonicus, not dissection in general.

Medieval Life - Birth, Children, Marriage, Death, Education, Sex

Medieval Life - Birth, Children, Marriage, Death, Education, Sex -- Tony Blake
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtakTnKQQMCzgnwhkhJrO5NE2mTuE8eN4&disable_polymer=true

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-DUn4N5LCE

Mortality childbirth -- developing nations
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/sep/24/why-do-women-still-die-giving-birth

Renaissance Education:
https://www.thegreatcoursesdaily.com/education-in-the-renaissance/

Medieval Superstition - Sex Education > .

Medieval Upheavals

1215 – Magna Carta
A charter agreed to by King John of England and his rebellious barons, the document would come to be seen as the beginning of legal limits on the power of monarchs.

1315-17 – Great Famine
A series of crop failures and bad weather that struck large parts of Europe.

1337 – Beginning of the Hundred Years’ War
The Kings of England and France begin a war – fought off and on – that would last until 1453.

1347-51 – Black Death
One of the largest pandemics in human history, it crossed through Eurasia and killed as many as 200 million people.

1378 – Western Schism begins
A split within the Catholic churches that would see two or three men claiming to be Pope at the same time.

http://www.medievalists.net/2018/04/most-important-events-middle-ages/

The 50 Most Important Events of the Middle Ages

Plagues & Pandemics

Surviving a Pandemic in Ancient Rome - Antonine Plague > .

Antonine Plague: Roman Empire's First Pandemic - Shadows > .

History of Pandemics mapped > .

Pandemic, Epidemic, Endemic - Tar >> .

Pestilence, Pandemics, Pox - TThu >> .

Plague in the Ancient and Medieval World - same > .
History of Pandemics mapped > .
Pandemics Economically Worse than War - First Pandemic - Pandemic Hx 1 - tgh > .

Life After the Black Death Ended - Weird > .
The Most Destructive Pandemics and Epidemics In Human History > .
Pandemics & the Economy | The Lasting Effects of the Black Death > .
How did Medieval People respond to the Black Death? - same > .
Black Death Explained in 8 Minutes - CaHi > .

History of the Black Death - 1 - fph > .
History of the Black Death - 2 - fph > .
History of the Black Death - 3 - fph > .

The Great Pestilence - ToTh >> .

Did The Black Death Affect Medieval Religion? Islam / Christianity ~ same > .

The Antonine Plague of 165 to 180 CE, also known as the Plague of Galen (from the name of the Greek physician living in the Roman Empire who described it), was an ancient pandemic brought to the Roman Empire by troops returning from campaigns in the Near East. Scholars have suspected it to have been either smallpox or measles, but the true cause remains undetermined.

Antonine Plague - 165 to 180 CE .

Justinian Plague: First Pandemic? // Procopius (541-542) - VoP > .
Pandemics Economically Worse than War - 1st Pandemic - Pandemic Hx 1 - tgh > .

The Plague of Justinian (541–542 CE, with recurrences until 750) was a pandemic that afflicted the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire and especially its capital, Constantinople, as well as the Sasanian Empire and port cities around the entire Mediterranean Sea.

In 2013, researchers confirmed earlier speculation that the cause of the Plague of Justinian was Yersinia pestis, the same bacterium responsible for the Black Death (1347–1351). ... Ancient and modern Yersinia pestis strains closely related to the ancestor of the Justinian plague strain have been found in Tian Shan, a system of mountain ranges on the borders of Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and China, suggesting that the Justinian plague may have originated in or near that region.

The plague returned periodically until the eighth century. The waves of disease had a major effect on the subsequent course of European history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_of_Justinian .

Justinian Plague - 541 CE - - 750 CE .

Pandemics and the Shape of Human History: Outbreaks have sparked riots and propelled public-health innovations, prefigured revolutions and redrawn maps.

"In early 542, the plague struck Constantinople. The plague hit the powerless and the powerful alike. Justinian himself contracted it. Among the lucky, he survived. His rule, however, never really recovered. In the years leading up to 542, Justinian’s generals had reconquered much of the western part of the Roman Empire from the Goths, the Vandals, and other assorted barbarians. After 542, the Emperor struggled to recruit soldiers and to pay them. The territories that his generals had subdued began to revolt. The plague reached the city of Rome in 543, and seems to have made it all the way to Britain by 544. It broke out again in Constantinople in 558, a third time in 573, and yet again in 586.

The Justinianic plague, as it became known, didn’t burn itself out until 750. By that point, there was a new world order. A powerful new religion, Islam, had arisen, and its followers ruled territory that included a great deal of what had been Justinian’s empire, along with the Arabian Peninsula. Much of Western Europe, meanwhile, had come under the control of the Franks. Rome had been reduced to about thirty thousand people, roughly the population of present-day Mamaroneck. Was the pestilence partly responsible? If so, history is written not only by men but also by microbes."
...
The word “quarantine” comes from the Italian quaranta, meaning “forty.” The earliest formal quarantines were a response to the Black Death, which, between 1347 and 1351, killed something like a third of Europe and ushered in what’s become known as the “second plague pandemic.” As with the first, the second pandemic worked its havoc fitfully. Plague would spread, then abate, only to flare up again.

During one such flareup, in the fifteenth century, the Venetians erected lazarettos—or isolation wards—on outlying islands, where they forced arriving ships to dock. The Venetians believed that by airing out the ships they were dissipating plague-causing vapors. If the theory was off base, the results were still salubrious; forty days gave the plague time enough to kill infected rats and sailors. Snowden, a professor emeritus at Yale, calls such measures one of the first forms of “institutionalized public health” and argues that they helped legitimatize the “accretion of power” by the modern state.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/04/06/pandemics-and-the-shape-of-human-history .

Plague writers who "predicted" coronavirus pandemic .

Pandemic and 1918: How History and Illness Intertwine - tHG > .
History of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic - tHG > .

Ж Black Death to Peasants' Revolt ..

Ж Black Death - Impacts ..
ЖЉ Black Death - Jewish Persecution, Europe ..
Cooling - Medieval famine, plague, social change ..
Crises ..
Economic & Societal Consequences of Black Death ..
Great Pestilence ..
History of Pandemics ..
Plague ..
Quarantine ..

Quarantine

Archae-Facts: 'Quarantine' > .

Sweating Sickness

sudor anglicus - Sweating Plague - Deadly - WeHi > .

1485 - 1551 (England) - Europe 1528 > .

Sweating sickness, also known as English sweating sickness or English sweat or (Latin) sudor anglicus, was a mysterious and contagious disease that struck England and later continental Europe in a series of epidemics beginning in 1485. The last outbreak occurred in 1551, after which the disease apparently vanished. The onset of symptoms was sudden, with death often occurring within hours. Its cause remains unknown, although it has been suggested that an unknown species of hantavirus was responsible.

John Caius was a practising physician in Shrewsbury in 1551, when an outbreak occurred, and he described the symptoms and signs of the disease in A Boke or Counseill Against the Disease Commonly Called the Sweate, or Sweatyng Sicknesse (1552), which is the main historical source of knowledge of the disease. It began very suddenly with a sense of apprehension, followed by cold shivers (sometimes very violent), giddiness, headache, and severe pains in the neck, shoulders, and limbs, with great exhaustion. The cold stage might last from half an hour to three hours, after which the hot and sweating stage began. The characteristic sweat broke out suddenly without any obvious cause. A sense of heat, headache, delirium, rapid pulse, and intense thirst accompanied the sweat. Palpitation and pain in the heart were frequent symptoms, as well. No skin eruptions were noted by observers, including Caius. In the final stages, there was either general exhaustion and collapse, or an irresistible urge to sleep, which Caius thought was fatal if the patient were permitted to give way to it. One attack did not produce immunity, and some people suffered several bouts before dying. The disease tended to occur in summer and early autumn.

Wharram Percy & Superstition

Abandoned Medieval Village > .
A 500-Year-Old Cold Case in the Village of Wharram Percy > .

Wharram Percy bodies mutilated to 'stop dead rising':

Knife marks were found on 137 bones dating between the 11th and 14th Centuries, discovered at Wharram Percy in Yorkshire. The remains of about 10 people had been decapitated and dismembered. Knife marks were mostly in the head and neck area but there was also evidence for the burning of body parts and deliberate breaking of some bones after death.

Experts said it was the first evidence of ancient [superstitious] practices to stop "corpses rising from their graves, spreading disease and assaulting the living".

Wharram Percy lies between Malton and Driffield, in East Yorkshire. It was once a thriving community built on sheep farming, but it fell into steep decline after the Black Death and was eventually completely abandoned. The long-abandoned village was excavated in the 20th Century.

Water - risks of drinking

People in the Middle Ages were also well aware that not all water was safe to drink – in addition to polluted water, which would be largely confined to urban areas, it was common knowledge to avoid obtaining water from marshy areas or places of standing water. However, if they knew the water was coming from a good source, they would not be afraid to drink from it. Like us, they just did not boast about it.

Did people drink water in the Middle Ages? - Medievalists.net

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