The Black Death, the Hundred Years War, and Porpoise Haggis: Medieval History Notes, pt 3.

That was awesome!

Thanks to everyone who came out for one or more of the sessions this month. I truly enjoyed getting to know all of you, and I hope to see you at future classes! Teaching was extra fun this time because of your great questions and comments. Thank you!

A little further ado…

Here are the class resources for this week. You’ll notice I’ve not only put down some primary sources, but also a couple of links to articles on the Great Vowel Shift and some other things I briefly touched on but couldn’t cover in-depth. Of course, there are also links to a couple of Medieval cookbooks, so if you ever have a hankering for porpoise haggis or anything suitably… interesting — well! Can’t go wrong with Medieval mac and cheese, anyway.

One thing I do recommend: Rush out to the store and buy you some of this stuff. Imagine pepper that smells of citrus and flowers and cardamom. Then imagine something like 10x better, give Whole Foods $7 of your hard-earned money, and grind this on your eggs for authentic Medieval flavor.

Part Two: 1300-1453 CE

Presentation: (PDF)

Class Resources:

The Hundred Years War, by Jean Froissart. (Froissart is the most famous chronicler of the Hundred Years War. Awesome stuff.)

Letter to the King of England, 1429, by Joan of Arc.

Ordinance for Sanitation in a Time of Mortality, 1348. (The Italian town of Pistoia enacted these rules in order to try to prevent the Plague spreading.)

The Decameron, Introduction, by Giovanni Boccacio. (This is the book I mentioned where the fellow fled with his friends to a mountaintop to escape Plague and wrote a book.)

The Forme of Cury. (The porpoise haggis comes from here. This cookbook dates to 1390.)

Le Menagier de Paris. (Also a good cookbook, from 1390s France.)

The Great Vowel Shift.

If you missed something…

…you can find the notes for part 1 and the notes for part 2 on the site as well. Enjoy!