The Renaissance Times

We wrap up the witches series by pulling together everything we’ve covered – the folklore, the hallucinogens, the conspiracy theories, the Inquisition, and yes, the broomstick thing. Turns out the witch trials weren’t really about witches. They were about famines, heresy, herbal healers, ergot fungus, ancient blood-drinking myths that got recycled from Jews to vampires to women with cats…. and a church that was absolutely terrified of losing control. Plus: the first documented vampire in history, a polymath who married a 13-year-old and died from too much sex, and a toad someone was keeping under her bed and feeding bread and cheese. The post The Good Society – The Renaissance #248 appeared first on The Renaissance Times.

We’re deep in the witchy end of the Renaissance now…. women falling into trances, communing with the dead, healing the sick, and charging for it, which honestly sounds like a pretty solid business model. Meanwhile men called the Căluşari are dressing as women, leaping around with swords, and apparently killing people with no legal consequences whatsoever. The church is not thrilled about any of this, but it’s been going on for thousands of years and a strongly worded sermon isn’t going to cut it. The post The Smell of Evil – The Renaissance #247 appeared first on The Renaissance Times.

We’ve finally made it to witch trials…. sort of. First: an 80-year-old man in 1692 Livonia confessing to being a werewolf, werewolves who apparently lose battles against sorcerers armed with broomsticks, and a fertility cult called the Benandanti who leave their bodies in the shape of butterflies to fight for good crops using fennel stalks. Then the Waldensians, who just wanted to preach poverty and got 700 years of massacre for it. And then the witch trials of 1430s Switzerland, where the accused were confessing to flying on chair legs with the help of a hallucinogenic salve applied in a manner Cameron declines to leave ambiguous. The post Werewolves Lost Again – The Renaissance #246 appeared first on The Renaissance Times.

We’ve been building up to witches for a while now, and this episode we take a detour back to the second century CE…. because of course we do. Before Christians started accusing Jews of ritual murder, cannibalism, and orgies, Romans were accusing Christians of exactly the same thing. The stories just get recycled. Then we get into women flying at night with the goddess Diana, Herodias engineering the head of John the Baptist on a platter, and how 1,500 years later she somehow ends up co-leading the witches. Next episode: werewolves. The post Head on a Platter – The Renaissance #245 appeared first on The Renaissance Times.

We finally get to the witches. Only took us a couple of hundred episodes. The trail leads through the Black Death, tortured confessions about poisoned powders and boiled infants, a German theologian named Nider who wrote the first book on witchcraft in 1435, and a judge who apparently knew an extraordinary amount of detail about secret devil-worshipping covens…. under torture, of course, which is famously reliable. By 1438 the template is basically set: broomsticks, covens, babies in pots, and 700 followers on the verge of becoming lords of the country. Between 1400 and 1775 roughly 100,000 people would be prosecuted. About 80% of them women. The post The Devil’s Recipe Book – The Renaissance #244 appeared first on The Renaissance Times.

Twelve Genoese galleys dock at Messina in 1347 carrying rats, fleas, and Yersinia pestis…. and within weeks Europe is looking for someone to blame. Spoiler: it’s the Jews. Also the beggars. Also, possibly, the planets. Pope Clement VI tries to point out that Jews are dying of the plague too, which you’d think would settle the matter. The post Blame the Jews (The Plague Made Them Do It) – The Renaissance #243 appeared first on The Renaissance Times.

The Beguines were a movement of independent women who lived like nuns, owned property, preached in the vernacular, and answered to no man or church…. which, predictably, the church absolutely could not stand. We work through three of the great Beguine mystics, including Marguerite Porete, who spent 18 months on trial giving the Inquisition the silent finger before being burned alive in Paris in 1310. Her book survived, was read seriously by theologians for centuries, and wasn’t definitively credited to her until 1946 because obviously a woman couldn’t have written anything that sophisticated. The post The Silence of Marguerite – The Renaissance #242 appeared first on The Renaissance Times.

The Jews have been expelled, the lepers have been burned, and somebody clearly had a plan…. we just don’t know who. We dig into the mechanics of medieval conspiracy theories, how the same story spread across France at a speed that makes you go “hmm,” and why the whole thing is basically a template that’s still being photocopied 700 years later. Also: the Pied Piper of Hamelin was apparently a real event, and the rats didn’t show up until 275 years after the fact. The post Rats, Jews, and the Man with the Flute – The Renaissance #241 appeared first on The Renaissance Times.

The King of France issues a royal edict blaming the lepers for poisoning the wells…. conveniently leaving out the Jews, who had just paid him 150,000 livres – roughly a third of the entire royal annual revenue. Pure coincidence. We also get a forged letter from the future, a secret room full of incriminating ram-skin, and a dragon that God apparently sent to signal it was time to murder somebody. The post A Goodly Sum – The Renaissance #240 appeared first on The Renaissance Times.

We’re still talking about the Great Leper Scare of 1321 and now we’re deep into the trials. We’ve got lepers across France being rounded up, tortured into confessions, and burned at the stake, because Jesus loves nothing more than the smell of burning human flesh. Under torture, we’ve got Jews implicating the the Muslim King of Granada, the Sultan of Babylon, and a tall dark man with a scimitar who was apparently just standing around at the conspiracy meeting ready to cut heads off. We also drill down into immurement. That’s where you brick someone up inside a wall. Medieval Christian love and compassion at its best. The post The Tall Dark Man with a Scimitar – The Renaissance #239 appeared first on The Renaissance Times.