Category Archives: Lectures and Talks

Themed Issue and Webinar on “Disease, Death, and Therapy” – Speculum

Speculum published a whole issue on the topic of “Disease, Death and Therapy” with several articles related directly to plague. Moreover, on 14 Jan 2021, Speculum hosted a webinar with the authors; the recording will soon be publicly available.

Gayk, S. Apocalyptic Ecologies: Eschatology, the Ethics of Care, and the Fifteen Signs of the Doom in Early England. Speculum 96, 1–37 (2021) doi:10.1086/711658

Abstract: Exploring how late medieval texts imagined the promised destruction of the physical world, this essay offers an ecocritical reading of a single apocalyptic motif: the Fifteen Signs of the Doom. This once popular catalogue of ecological and cosmological portents of the Apocalypse encouraged environmental watchfulness, moved human experience from the center to the margins, and explored the humbling inscrutability of natural disaster. Surveying some of the Middle English sermons and lyrics that include this motif, this article considers how the practice of imagining the coming apocalypse by cataloguing wonders, natural disasters, and strange phenomena in the material world not only reminded human beings of their participation in a larger ecology but also invited them to reflect upon their responsibilities to and sympathies with the larger world.

McCormick, M. Gregory of Tours on Sixth-Century Plague and Other Epidemics. Speculum 96, 38–96 (2021) doi:10.1086/711721

Abstract: Analyzes philologically and historically all testimony in the works of Gregory of Tours about various epidemics that struck Gaul, Iberia, and Italy in the sixth century; in particular, those of the most serious disease, “inguinal epidemic,” that is, bubonic plague (Yersinia pestis), as well as an illness that may have been smallpox (Variola major). Establishes that Gregory’s testimony, inspired by his personal and pastoral-theological concerns, is reliable and informative; delineates the motivations and sources for reporting the recurring epidemics of plague as they emerge from his writings; shows that Gregory’s information is robust but geographically constrained: of the twenty-two places and regions where he knows unambiguously about plague, only four are further than 400 km from his familial Clermont (Fig. 1). Gregory’s twenty-two mentions of plague also refer to six epidemics between c. 543–47 and c. 591–94, of which he treats four in greater detail; his silences are confirmed to be significant only rarely. Two epidemics are newly dated to springtime, and the initial outbreak is shown as likely to have reached Gaul from a western port. Contagion mirrors communications infrastructures and affected the countryside as well as towns, which populations tended to flee. Symptoms, epidemiology, and heavy mortality align with the ancient DNA proof that the pathogen was Yersinia pestis; pneumonic plague is suggested in two cases. Gregory’s historical testimony is confirmed by and integrated into the new biomolecular archaeological discoveries of early medieval plague victims in western Europe.

Barker, H. Laying the Corpses to Rest: Grain, Embargoes, and Yersinia pestis in the Black Sea, 1346–48. Speculum 96, 97–126 (2021) doi:10.1086/711596

Abstract: When, how, and why did the Black Death reach Europe? Historians have relied on Gabriele de’ Mussi’s account of Tatars catapulting plague-infested bodies into the besieged city of Caffa on the Crimean Peninsula. Yet Mussi spent the 1340s in Piacenza; he had no direct knowledge of events in Caffa. Sources by people present in the Black Sea during the Second Pandemic, including Genoese colonial administrators, Venetian diplomats, Byzantine chroniclers, and Mamluk merchants, offer a different perspective. They show that the Venetian community at Tana played an important role in plague transmission; that it took over a year (from spring 1346 to autumn 1347) for plague to cross the Black Sea to Constantinople; that people crossed the Black Sea in 1346 but commodities did not because of a series of trade embargoes; that grain was one of the most important Black Sea commodities in both volume and strategic value; and therefore that the embargoes of 1346 delayed plague transmission by temporarily halting the movement of grain with its accompanying rats, fleas, and bacteria. When Venice, Genoa, and the Golden Horde made peace and lifted their embargoes in 1347, both the grain trade and the spread of plague resumed.

Curtis, D. R. From One Mortality Regime to Another? Mortality Crises in Late Medieval Haarlem, Holland, in Perspective. Speculum 96, 127–155 (2021) doi:10.1086/711641

Abstract: This article employs a large database of 10,360 deaths taken from registrations of graves dug and church bells tolled at Haarlem between the years 1412 and 1547—one of the largest samples and longest series of mortality evidence ever produced for medieval Holland—and systematically compares findings with a seventeenth-century burial register for the same city. It concludes that we should put aside any lingering notion that late medieval Holland was very lightly affected by epidemic diseases: in fact, in Haarlem, these mortality crises were more severe than those seen in the seventeenth century. The data also reveal not one overarching “medieval mortality regime” but distinct changes between fewer but more severe spikes in the first half of the fifteenth century, and higher frequency of smaller spikes later on—especially in the period 1480–1530—with the number of mortality crises damping down after 1530. These mortality crises tended to produce more adult female victims than male, supporting recent findings from elsewhere in the late medieval Low Countries.

Pieragostini, R. The Healing Power of Music? Documentary Evidence from Late-Fourteenth-Century Bologna. Speculum 96, 156–176 (2021) doi:10.1086/711571

Abstract: The idea of the healing power of music—rooted in Platonic and Aristotelian psychologies and Galenic humoral theory—has a long-standing tradition in European intellectual thought and occurs in several texts of the medieval and early modern periods. In contrast to the abundance of references in theoretical discussions, however, historians today face the scarcity of evidence documenting specific, actual uses of music as therapy. Among such rare evidence are two documents emanating from the chancery of late-fourteenth-century Bologna, which form the focus of this article. The documents, which concern a musician and an itinerant healer, provide new insights into musical practices directed in particular to the cure of psychic sufferings. The documents make clear that the secular authorities of Bologna considered the agency of these two practitioners and their medical and musical skills to be crucial for maintaining or restoring individual and collective health. The evidence discussed here suggests that the use of music toward curative ends must have been more widespread than hitherto acknowledged. It also highlights the powerful association between notions of musical healing and ideas of individual and civic well-being that underlay the Bologna officials’ idea of the state.

Marcel Keller

Co-Editor of the Black Death Network Postdoc in Palaeogenetics at U. of Tartu

More Posts

Follow Me:
Twitter

EAA Vilnius 2016: Plague in diachronic and interdisciplinary perspective – CfP

Call for Paper for the Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologist in Vilnius 31.8.-4.9.2016

http://eaavilnius2016.lt/

logo

Plague, an infectious disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, occurred in at least three major historical pandemics: the Justinianic Plague (6th to 8th century), the Black Death (from 14th century onwards), and the modern or Hong Kong Plague (19th to 20th century).Yet DNA from bronze age human skeleton has recently shown that the plague first emerged at least as early as 3000 BC. Plague is, as any disease, both a biological as well as a social entity. Different disciplines can therefore elucidate different aspects of the plague, which can lead to a better understanding of this disease and its medical and social implications.

The session shall address questions like

  • Which disciplines can contribute to the research on the plague? What are their methodological possibilities and limitations?
  • How can they work together in order to come to a more realistic and detailed picture of the
    plague in different times and regions?
  • Which ways had societies to react to the plague? How can they be studied or proved?
  • Which commons and differences can be seen between the Justinianic Plague and later plague epidemics? Are there epidemiological characteristics that are essential and/or unique to plague?
  • What are possible implications of the pandemic spread and endemic occurrence of plague
    through the ages for the interpretation of historical and cultural phenomena?

We would like to invite researchers from the disciplines of archaeology, anthropology, biology, history, medicine and related subjects to present papers in our session.

Abstract nr. TH5-05
Presentation Preference – Regular session (half day)

Author – Gutsmiedl-Schümann, Doris, Universität Bonn, Vor- und Frühgeschichtliche  Archäologie, Bonn, Germany (Presenting author)
Co-author(s) – Kacki, Sacha, Anthropologie des Populations Passées et Présentes, Université de Bordeaux, Pessac, France
Co-author(s) – Keller, Marcel, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena,
Germany
Co-author(s) – Lee, Christina, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom

Topic – Science and Interdisciplinarity in Archaeology

Keywords: diachronic perspective, Plague

Rainer Schreg

archaeologist

professor in medieval and postmedieval archaeology at Bamberg university

More Posts - Website

Follow Me:
Facebook

Current debates about sustainability – and the 14th century crisis

The German Leibniz-Gemeinschaft and theFederal Ministry of Education and Research initiated a program of public discussion on sustainability at various research museums (humans culture sustainability). The 4th and last of the Museumsgespräche 2012 “Mensch Kultur Nachhaltigkeit” at the RGZM in Mainz is dedicated to the handling of soil and water in past and present.

Discutants are Prof. Dr. Hans-Rudolf Bork (Kiel unisversity), Prof. Dr. Hans-Georg Frede (Gießen university) and myself; moderation by Axel Weiß (SWR). On November, 27.th 2012 at 19PM there will be a livestream at http://www.zukunftsprojekt-erde.de/mitmachen/museum-digital/museumsgespraeche-2012-mensch-kultur-nachhaltigkeit/museumsgespraeche-2012-livestream.html. Discussion however will be in German.

The 14th century will probably one topic among others as it seems to be a very interestig case study for sustainability assessment.

Links

Rainer Schreg

archaeologist

professor in medieval and postmedieval archaeology at Bamberg university

More Posts - Website

Follow Me:
Facebook