MDT Ep. 91: Concerning Wage Warfare after the Plague

MDT Ep. 91: Concerning Wage Warfare after the Plague

Author: Medieval Death Trip June 8, 2022 Duration: 40:39
This episode, we follow up on a question from Ep. 90 about why the wandering worker Thomas Fuller might have fallen in with a criminal shepherd by looking at a pair of vagrancy and labor laws from the economically disrupted decades following the Black Death: the Statute of Laborers of 1351 and the Commons' Petition against Vagrants of 1376. We also learn a bit about late medieval prisons. Today's Texts: Henderson, Ernest F., editor and translator. Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages. George Bell and Sons, 1892, pp. 165-168. Google Books. "Commons' Petition Against Vagrants" of 1376," reprinted in R.B. Dobson, The Peasants' Revolt of 1381. MacMillan, 1970, pp. 72-74. Google Books. References: Clark, Elaine. "Institutional and Legal Responses to Begging in Medieval England." Social Science History, vol. 26, no. 3, Fall 2002, pp. 447-473. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40267786. Geltner, Guy. "Medieval Prisons: Between Myth and Reality, Hell and Purgatory." History Compass, vol. 4, 2006, pp. 1-14, doi: 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2006.00319.x. Available at guygeltner.net.

Step into the strange and vivid world of the Middle Ages with Medieval Death Trip. Each episode is built around a single primary source-a chronicle, a poem, a letter, or a legal record-that reveals something peculiar, grim, or wonderfully unexpected from the period. The chosen texts are the real draw, offering unmediated glimpses into a mindset that can feel both alien and strangely familiar. You’ll hear about bizarre miracles, brutal justice, mystical visions, and the quiet, odd details of daily life that history books often overlook. After presenting the document in full, the host provides context and personal reflections, piecing together what the story might tell us about the people who wrote it and the world they inhabited. This isn’t a dry academic lecture; it’s more like a guided tour through the archives, pointing out the bloodstains and the marginal doodles with equal fascination. The podcast lives in the intersection of several genres, pulling from history, literature, and cultural study to examine how medieval people made sense of their reality. Listening feels like uncovering a series of forgotten artifacts, each one a conversation starter about belief, violence, humor, and humanity. For anyone curious about history’s shadowy corners and the raw, unfiltered voices of the past, this series provides a consistently engaging and thought-provoking journey. The approach is both serious and accessible, treating these centuries-old accounts with respect while never shying away from their inherent strangeness. Tune in for a deep dive into the archives, one unsettling and fascinating story at a time.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 50

Medieval Death Trip
Podcast Episodes
MDT Ep. 86: Concerning the Meaning of Stones [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 33:52
As we kick off the New Year, we take a brief diversion from our Medieval True Crime miniseries to explore the world of precious stones and the extraordinary properties attributed to them through a look at the Lapidary of…
MDT Ep. 82: Concerning Plague Persecutions [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:19:55
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 o…
MDT Ep. 81: Concerning More Descriptions of the Plague [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 42:56
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 profess…
MDT Ep. 80: Concerning Boccaccio's Description of the Plague [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 50:21
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 Bocc…