HISTORY, ETC: NOTES AT THE END OF A PLAGUE YEAR
This month's newsletter comes to you from my sickbed - featuring near-death experiences, indecent trousers, Anglo-Scottish rivalry and the bishop of Bath & Wells
This month’s newsletter is a little shorter than normal, for reasons that I hope will make sense when you read it. But I hope you enjoy it all the same. See you in 2022, when there will be more History, Etc content than ever before – more news, more Q&As, more recommendations and more giveaways. Thank you, as always, for your support and your subscription. I wish you all a very Happy New Year – dan x
‘Even a woman’
In the first days of 1349, a couple of weeks after Christmas, the bishop of Bath and Wells rolled up his sleeves and tried to sort out an urgent problem. England was in the grip of a pandemic, and things were looking grim. The widespread sickness and death was bad enough. Now, big organisations like the Church, which employed tens of thousands of people across the country, were facing an acute labour crisis.
One critical issue was a priest shortage. Priests were the medieval equivalent of what we today call ‘frontline workers’ and ‘first responders’. In a situation like a pandemic – where lots of people were dying and each urgently needed spiritual care to make sure that his or her soul was not cast into the fiery maw of hell – priests’ services were essential. Christians on the brink of death needed to confess their sins. Generally, only an ordained priest was fit to hear confession.
Yet, the bishop wrote, ‘the contagious pestilence, which is now spreading everywhere... [has ensured that] priests cannot be found for love nor money.’ Some were absent from work because they were sick. Some were absent because they were dead. Others were shielding, ‘because they fear they will catch the disease themselves’. The result was that the Church was understaffed and stretched to breaking point. So senior officials like the bishop of Bath and Wells were forced to take emergency measures.
The solution the bishop chose was to redraw the ordinary rules of life and death. People who fell sick and needed to confess, he announced, could spill their guts to anyone they could find. Cleric, layperson – ‘even a woman if a man is not available’. This was not an ideal situation, but amid the turbulence of a pandemic, authorities across Europe were willing to take unprecedented action.
And that, I suppose, is an attitude we have recently come to understand at first hand. Just as today governments and health leaders have drafted in medical students, paramedics and vets to give vaccinations against Covid, or army personnel to drive ambulances, so in the Middle Ages religious leaders were prepared temporarily to deputise anyone who could help prevent their essential services from collapsing.
Today we often look down on medieval people for their superstition, their preference for the religious over the rational, and their obsession with managing their status in the afterlife at the expense of all other social goals. But sometimes, if we make an effort to set aside our different mindsets, then our actions and their actions can seem strikingly familiar.
‘I’ve caught the f***ing plague!’
There were moments during this pandemic Christmas where I thought – and at times hoped – I was going to die.
In early December I caught Covid. I have had three vaccinations against the virus this year. I am 40 years old, in good health, have no co-morbidities, eat well and exercise a lot. So to begin with, I was annoyed, but not worried.
As the month went on, however, my health began to deteriorate. Within a week I no longer had Covid. But before leaving my body, the virus caused my immune system to perform a sort of CTRL-ALT-DEL reboot. I picked up a secondary infection and very quickly became very unwell.
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