Speaker 1: Hey, folks, if you're hearing my admittedly weak voice, it
Speaker 1: means that we are unlocking a new episode. As you
Speaker 1: can tell, I am in no I'm in no space
Speaker 1: to co host this week. I got a bad stomach
Speaker 1: virus and when I get those, I lose my voice
Speaker 1: because yeah, I just I puke really hard for some reason.
Speaker 1: I don't know why. That's gross, and I'm sorry, but
Speaker 1: you know here it is. Anyway, we're unlocking the first
Speaker 1: episode of our series on the camera. Uh Giovanna Giovanni
Speaker 1: Boccaccio's fourteenth century master work. I'm gonna keep it short
Speaker 1: and sweet because you probably don't want to hear me
Speaker 1: talk like this and I can barely talk anyway. But yeah, uh,
Speaker 1: this is the first episode we did in the series.
Speaker 1: We're going to cover all ten days. If if you
Speaker 1: like this, please check out patreon dot com slash w
Speaker 1: nsty Pod five dollars a month to get you access
Speaker 1: to this, plus all of our other bonus episodes and
Speaker 1: a free and all that stuff that we normally talk about. Uh,
Speaker 1: y'all enjoy the show. I'm sorry, I gotta I can't.
Speaker 1: You know, I can't talk very much today, But anyway,
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and we'll be back next week with
Speaker 1: the delayed episode on Medieval BDSM and another episode in
Speaker 1: our series on the Cameron. Thanks it did it again?
Speaker 2: God did it really? Oh? Fuck me? Here we here,
Speaker 2: we fucking go.
Speaker 1: This time it was Zoom, yes, or the last time
Speaker 1: when we recorded the regular episode, it was the PC
Speaker 1: port having This time, Zoom.
Speaker 3: We're doing We're doing a great job. I can't remember
Speaker 3: to send you the link. Uh, you know, Zoom doesn't
Speaker 3: want to record this. We're being silenced I think sometimes
Speaker 3: just by me.
Speaker 1: By by the church. They don't ready for this. They're
Speaker 1: still uh they're still running the the banded books list,
Speaker 1: and they want to silence us here. I guess I
Speaker 1: don't know.
Speaker 3: I was like literally just sitting here painting my nails,
Speaker 3: and I'm just like, wait a minute, I didn't send
Speaker 3: the link. Gat good job anyway, Like I gotta tell
Speaker 3: you what I'm firing on all cylinders today.
Speaker 2: Baby, it's uh, we're ready to rock.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, Oh so I don't know, do you want
Speaker 3: to talk about these fucking guys because lord no?
Speaker 4: Yeah, nice one, Yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 1: Hello and welcome back to We're Not So Different podcast
Speaker 1: about our ongoing issues with.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's about us really, yeah, if you think about it,
Speaker 3: if you really do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in the end, it's a show about the friends
Speaker 1: we made along the way, namely us. Uh hello, Patron,
Speaker 1: it's your second monest episode of fet Waite. Will let's
Speaker 1: come out of but yeah, well the second February that
Speaker 1: will were Professionals. Yeah, that will come out in February.
Speaker 1: And uh yeah, it's the first episode in our book
Speaker 1: club series on the de Cameron, which, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I knew it was one hundred stories, but I didn't
Speaker 1: think it was going to be that long when I
Speaker 1: got it, and I got the book and I was like, hm,
Speaker 1: maybe a bunch of this is like an intro, and
Speaker 1: there is a very long intro, like the translator's introduction
Speaker 1: is like I don't fucking know all the Roman numerals
Speaker 1: this far, but it gets up to c X L
Speaker 1: I V, so I don't know.
Speaker 2: It take us a while to get through it.
Speaker 1: That's my Yeah, I didn't. Yeah, we're we're not going
Speaker 1: to be covering every story uh in there, but I
Speaker 1: certainly didn't.
Speaker 4: It was that long.
Speaker 3: I want to talk about I want to cover the
Speaker 3: ones that are like, I'm racist towards genuins who are rased.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I hate them. They're dog people, aren't you aren't?
Speaker 1: Isn't your uncle genuine? Shut up? That's why.
Speaker 2: That's how I know.
Speaker 1: That's how I know they're dog people, because I would
Speaker 1: be if not for having been raised in what other
Speaker 1: other random city state? Uh, he's he's right, yeah, the pieces,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah he he he just you know what a guy, Boccaccio.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about him, loved women, maybe one
Speaker 1: of the all time lovers of women.
Speaker 3: He's yeah, he's a ladies man, ladies man's man's man
Speaker 3: man about Florence.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, he's the ladies man man. There's a good
Speaker 1: good father John Misty song called Only Son of the
Speaker 1: Ladies Man, which I'm in my head is just playing,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, God, damn it, I wish my brain
Speaker 1: didn't do this anyway, Folks, Today we embark on the
Speaker 1: maiden voyage of our book club series on the Cameron
Speaker 1: by Giovanni Boccaccio. They very much enjoy the medievalist books
Speaker 1: we've covered, like the Summarillion. In the Name of the Rose,
Speaker 1: I am always particularly moved. We get to hear medieval
Speaker 1: people speak in their own voices to whatever degree we
Speaker 1: can through translators and all that, but you know, uh,
Speaker 1: not the mindless recitations of medieval ledgers, church documents, and
Speaker 1: royal correspondents, which you know, they definitely have their uses,
Speaker 1: but it's also extremely kind of soulless to me. There,
Speaker 1: you know, there's nothing there's nothing wrong with it by
Speaker 1: any stretch. It's certainly useful in historic or archaeological studies,
Speaker 1: but where's the heart?
Speaker 2: Where is it?
Speaker 1: Where are the Yeah? Fictional and allegorical works, on the
Speaker 1: other hand, speak to me like us nothing else. Because
Speaker 1: of the progression of the written word and what has
Speaker 1: survived to us, it's very hard to get in the
Speaker 1: minds of most historical figures, especially before the advent of
Speaker 1: movable type printing. Sure we might see their words and
Speaker 1: deeds recorded, but that's not a window into their mind.
Speaker 1: It's usually just propaganda one way or the other. I
Speaker 1: like to be in their heads as much as I
Speaker 1: do modern day authors, and that's what these medieval works
Speaker 1: of fiction and allegory provide, maybe for the first time
Speaker 1: in human history. The Inferno, the Camera, the Romance of
Speaker 1: the Three Kingdoms, and others except Canterbury Tales. God never
Speaker 1: Counterbary tales. They provide a I gotta make I gotta
Speaker 1: make jokes. You are right, I don't like fucking impes.
Speaker 1: That is all a stone cold fact. Better people than
Speaker 1: you have tried. Now, I'm just kidding. They were. They
Speaker 1: were all far worse than you. Uh yeah. All these
Speaker 1: works and cantuary tell this is fine. I'm just making
Speaker 1: jokes for Eleanor's sake. All these provide a true window
Speaker 1: into how medieval people thought and felt back then, and
Speaker 1: that's why they're so important. When we did The Inferno,
Speaker 1: we jumped into the mind of Dante, a genius writer
Speaker 1: but also one who was annoyingly aware of his own
Speaker 1: genius and unbelievably petty, but one who is simultaneously and
Speaker 1: very very sincerely concerned about the mounting sins of the
Speaker 1: Catholic Church and the final resting place of his immortal soul.
Speaker 1: There's actual subtext here, and enough historical data to show
Speaker 1: us a glimpse of what his life was like. This
Speaker 1: is the good stuff. This is the heart of the
Speaker 1: Middle Ages. This is how we know, unmistakably that we're
Speaker 1: not so different to the music. Now, this is what
Speaker 1: it means to be human. Nowhere in pre modern literature
Speaker 1: is this feeling more cute than any Cameron. Though it
Speaker 1: was published in thirteen forty eight, a scant two decades
Speaker 1: after Dante's divine comedy, and Boccaccio was a devoted Dante fanboy,
Speaker 1: everything had changed in that span of time. The de
Speaker 1: Cameron is dripping with irony. Uh. Not the ironic punishments
Speaker 1: Dante imagined, uh, but what we would probably call something
Speaker 1: like ironic detachment. To Piccaccio's unsparing criticism of the Church
Speaker 1: seemed more akin to those employed over six hundred years
Speaker 1: later by umberto echo in the name of the Rose
Speaker 1: than they do to Dante, who had barely been dead
Speaker 1: for twenty years by that time. Then again, it shouldn't
Speaker 1: be so surprising is that the Cameron was written and
Speaker 1: published during the midst of the Black Death, the single
Speaker 1: greatest catastrophe to ever befall humanity. And how could the
Speaker 1: world ever be the same after you stared not just
Speaker 1: your own death, but the total annihilation of your species
Speaker 1: in the face, folks, it would fuck you up. Imagine
Speaker 1: how crazy COVID made everyone in the world and now
Speaker 1: imagine if two point four billion people had died.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like apparently, like ear, your uncle's ready to go
Speaker 3: fascist because he couldn't go to Appleby for three months.
Speaker 2: But like the quarter of the world population died. What
Speaker 2: happens then, you.
Speaker 1: Know, yeah, you know, who are we going to blame
Speaker 1: when we don't have the church to blame? You know,
Speaker 1: at least after the Black Death, the people of Europe
Speaker 1: could be like, you know what, I know who the
Speaker 1: problem is here? And you know they're eventually going to
Speaker 1: figure out that they can just start their own church
Speaker 1: with communion and white walls, like, I don't know whatever.
Speaker 1: We everybody, folks, we know none, I mean, well still
Speaker 1: some but you know we're not gonna talk about that, folks. Well,
Speaker 1: we'll talk to Protestants later, because you know, at this
Speaker 1: point there are no Protestants. There are only uh, there's
Speaker 1: only a church that's mad at the people and people
Speaker 1: who are mad at the church. And some people are
Speaker 1: kind of you know, iffy on that. But you know,
Speaker 1: it seems to be fairly common that by this point
Speaker 1: there was a lot of I've had enough of this shit.
Speaker 1: I don't know what I'm going to do about it.
Speaker 1: I don't know how I can change it, because this
Speaker 1: is like the ironclad rule of the world. But I'm
Speaker 1: going to figure it out. And you know, hey, what
Speaker 1: do you know they did find it out.
Speaker 4: At some point.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: So today we're going to introduce you to Giovanni Boccaccio,
Speaker 1: the world he inhabited, the meditextual side of his Decameron,
Speaker 1: and the reaction to its publication. But in order to
Speaker 1: do all that, we must first address the Black Deaths,
Speaker 1: seven years of horror and carnage never seen before or since.
Speaker 1: It serves as the backdrop to Boccaccio's life and his
Speaker 1: magnum Opus. The plague's importance to the story is so
Speaker 1: paramount that the description precedes his rundown of how the
Speaker 1: actual story is arranged. Initially, I had something else planned
Speaker 1: for this intro, but as I read Boccaccio's own introduction
Speaker 1: to the First Day, I was struck by his description
Speaker 1: of the plague sweeping through the city state of Florence
Speaker 1: in thirteen forty eight. Upon further reading, I discovered that
Speaker 1: Boccaccio's description is actually based on an eighth century accounting
Speaker 1: of a different plague by a guy named Paul the
Speaker 1: Deacon that was adapted to fit the circumstances of Florence
Speaker 1: during the Black Death. But you know, that probably shouldn't
Speaker 1: be that much of a surprise, because Boccaccio adapted most
Speaker 1: of the one hundred stories in the de Cameron from elsewhere,
Speaker 1: so he probably should have expected as much. And that's
Speaker 1: not a you know, it's not a slide against him,
Speaker 1: you know, that's that's what you did. You know, the
Speaker 1: Inferno is ripped from it's the Bible. It's the Bible
Speaker 1: of Gagan mythology smashed together, you know, And that's fine,
Speaker 1: because it's great. You know. What's more, Bokaciu may not
Speaker 1: have even been in Florence during the height of the pandemic,
Speaker 1: as other evidence indicates he was in Ravenna in late
Speaker 1: thirteen forty seven. Even so, Bocachiu has a way with
Speaker 1: words that is almost unique amongst medieval writers. And regardless
Speaker 1: of whether he was in Florence, the Black Death hit
Speaker 1: the boot harder than almost anywhere else on earth. So
Speaker 1: he would have seen the end of days regardless. And
Speaker 1: so in lieu of another dry description and you know,
Speaker 1: numbers and all that, I will read a few selected
Speaker 1: passages from the introduction to give you a sense of
Speaker 1: the existential dread that destroyed West Asia, the Levant Europe,
Speaker 1: and North Africa through the words of someone who lived it.
Speaker 4: I will bounce.
Speaker 1: Around a little bit because reading all of it take
Speaker 1: thirty forty thirty to forty minutes, and you know, we're
Speaker 1: not doing a you know, audio book. I actually don't
Speaker 1: know if I get in trouble for doing an audiobook
Speaker 1: of a book that's in public domain.
Speaker 2: I think you can't if it's in public domain.
Speaker 3: But you'd have to like find one of the translations
Speaker 3: that was earlier so that it was in public domain,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because Penguin Press would be like, hey, that's ours,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, look, man, you're not what is the
Speaker 1: translator's name, You're not g H. McWilliams, Shut the fuck up,
Speaker 1: die in a fire. Yep, exactly. So yeah, Baccaccio starts out.
Speaker 1: He briefly describes, you know, the Black Death was coming,
Speaker 1: they knew coming from the east, they knew stuff about it.
Speaker 1: And one thing I do find interesting about this is
Speaker 1: the descriptions of how it spread and like you and
Speaker 1: you just want to be like it's fleas dude, it's
Speaker 1: the fleas. It's the fleas, the thing you're describing, like,
Speaker 1: and I mean, they knew about fleas, but like you know,
Speaker 1: it's they didn't know this, I guess, yeah, But they're close,
Speaker 1: they really are. He says, in the face of its
Speaker 1: own rush, all the wisdom and ingenuity of man were unavailing.
Speaker 1: Large quantities of refuse were cleared out of the city
Speaker 1: by officials specially appointed for the purpose. All sick persons
Speaker 1: were forbidden entry, and numerous instructions were issued for safeguarding
Speaker 1: the people's health, but all to no avail. Nor were
Speaker 1: the countless persons humbly directed to God by the pious,
Speaker 1: whether by means of formal procession or in other ways
Speaker 1: any less ineffectual. And then he goes on he says,
Speaker 1: against these maladies, it seemed that all the advice of
Speaker 1: physicians and all the power of medicine were profitless and unavailing.
Speaker 1: Perhaps the nature of the illness was such that it
Speaker 1: allowed no remedy, or perhaps these people who were treating
Speaker 1: the illness, And he goes on to say that he
Speaker 1: thinks there's been a ballooning of medical professionals who don't
Speaker 1: know anything about medicine. Maybe they were ignorant of the
Speaker 1: causes and were not prescribing the appropriate cure. But then
Speaker 1: he kind of gets into the heart of the matter
Speaker 1: and like where things really break down for them, because
Speaker 1: it's not just the death, it's the circumstances of it
Speaker 1: that made them feel acutely alone in a way that
Speaker 1: I think is probably reminiscent of how a lot of
Speaker 1: people feel today. But what made the pestilence even more
Speaker 1: severe was whenever those suffering from it mix with people
Speaker 1: who were still unaffected, it would rush upon these with
Speaker 1: the speed of a fire, racing through dry or early
Speaker 1: substances that happened to come within its reach. Nor was
Speaker 1: this the full extent of its evil. Not only did
Speaker 1: it infect healthy persons who conversed or had any dealings
Speaker 1: with the sick, making them ill or visiting an equally
Speaker 1: horrible death upon them, but it also seemed to transfer
Speaker 1: the sickness to anyone touching the clothes or other objects
Speaker 1: which had been handled or used by its victims. And
Speaker 1: he goes on to talk about there were basically three
Speaker 1: approaches that he saw in Florence to this. There were
Speaker 1: the people who were like Uh, we have to become flagelets.
Speaker 1: We have to get closer to God. We have to
Speaker 1: do that. There were the people who were like, uh,
Speaker 1: we're gonna fucking drink like there's no tomorrow, because hey,
Speaker 1: there might not be, and you know, that seems good
Speaker 1: to us. And then there were the people who kind
Speaker 1: of tried to go about their daily lives in whatever
Speaker 1: way they could and didn't really do go to either
Speaker 1: extreme like that. But you know, he basically says that
Speaker 1: they all died. They all died in the same novels.
Speaker 1: It didn't matter which way you choose. You choose, you know,
Speaker 1: it didn't matter if you prayed more to God or
Speaker 1: if you went closer to the devil. And this is
Speaker 1: you know, kind of feeling out like, hey, what is
Speaker 1: is divine punishment? Is that not a thing? What? You know? Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're probing it, you know, they're probing it. And I
Speaker 1: really find that interesting. He goes on to say it
Speaker 1: was not really a question of one citizen avoiding another,
Speaker 1: and of people almost invariably neglecting their neighbors and rarely
Speaker 1: or never visiting their relatives, addressing them only from a distance. Hey,
Speaker 1: modern life, this scourge had implanted so great a terror
Speaker 1: in the hearts of men and women that brothers abandoned brothers,
Speaker 1: uncles their nephew, not neph and uncle god, sisters their brothers,
Speaker 1: and in many cases wives deserted their husbands. But even
Speaker 1: worse and almost incredible, was the fact that fathers and
Speaker 1: mothers refused to nurse and assist their own children, as
Speaker 1: though they did not belong to them. Now, this is true,
Speaker 1: This is not the myth that medieval people didn't care
Speaker 1: about their kids. However, I would probably argue that a
Speaker 1: lot of that myth kind of comes from this you
Speaker 1: know and misinterpreting, like statistics and stuff. But you know,
Speaker 1: and he says, as a result, as a result of
Speaker 1: this wholesale desertion of the sick by neighbors, relatives, and friends,
Speaker 1: and in view of the scarcity of servants, there grew
Speaker 1: up a practice almost never previously heard of, whereby a
Speaker 1: woman fell ill, no matter how gracious or beautiful or
Speaker 1: gently bred she might be, she raised no objections to
Speaker 1: being attended by a male servant, whether he was young
Speaker 1: or not, nor did she have any scruples about showing
Speaker 1: him every part of her body as freely as she
Speaker 1: would have displayed it to a woman, provided that the
Speaker 1: nature of her infirmity required her to do so, and
Speaker 1: this explained why those women who recovered were probably possibly
Speaker 1: less chase than the period that followed. I don't know
Speaker 1: about his editorializing after at the end there, however, I
Speaker 1: do find it very interesting that he seems to pinpoint
Speaker 1: this is the point where like women and men became
Speaker 1: much more comfortable mixing together and showing their bodies in
Speaker 1: not just a married sexual or you know, sexual circumstance. Yeah,
Speaker 1: only got a couple more here, folks. Later on he
Speaker 1: talks about how there's a breakdown in like funerary practices
Speaker 1: and how it used to be like if somebody died,
Speaker 1: there would be like a procession of hundreds of people
Speaker 1: through the streets, maybe even thousands. You know, it's like
Speaker 1: their cousins and their brothers and seven cousins sixteen times
Speaker 1: removed and all that shit. And it just broke down.
Speaker 1: And now you know, if your body gets thrown anywhere,
Speaker 1: it gets thrown in a ditch on the roadside, because
Speaker 1: they don't have consecrated holy ground anymore, which is when
Speaker 1: this is when that stopped being a thing. For the
Speaker 1: most part. Even in these circumstances, however, there were no
Speaker 1: tears or count candles or mourners to honor the dead.
Speaker 1: In fact, no more respect was according to dead people
Speaker 1: than would nowadays be shown toward dead goats. For it
Speaker 1: was quite apparent that one thing which in normal times
Speaker 1: no wise man had ever learned to accept with patient resignation,
Speaker 1: even though it struck so seldom and unobtrusibly, had now
Speaker 1: been brought home to the feeble minded as well. But
Speaker 1: the scale of the calamity caused them to regard it
Speaker 1: with indifference. People stopped fearing death. That is what this did,
Speaker 1: all right.
Speaker 3: This is gonna help it. It's just gonna happen. Why
Speaker 3: bother being afraid of it?
Speaker 1: Yep, yeah, yeah. He talks about the countryside, how the
Speaker 1: same afflicted them. They just kind of fell in the
Speaker 1: fields and died. But then he returns to the city.
Speaker 1: He says, what more remains to be said, except that
Speaker 1: the cruelty of heaven, and possibly in some measure also
Speaker 1: that of man, was so immense and so devastating that
Speaker 1: between March and July of the year in question, what
Speaker 1: with the fury of the pestilence, and the fact that
Speaker 1: so many of the sick were inadequately cared for or
Speaker 1: abandoned in their hour of need, because the healthy were
Speaker 1: too terrified to approach them. It is reliably thought that
Speaker 1: over one hundred thousand human lives were extinguished within the
Speaker 1: walls of the city of Florence. Yet before this lethal
Speaker 1: catastrophe fell upon the city is doubtful whether anyone would
Speaker 1: have guessed it contained so many inhabitants. Ah, how great
Speaker 1: a number of splendid palaces, fine houses, and noble dwellings,
Speaker 1: once filled with retainers, with lords and ladies, were bereft
Speaker 1: of all who had lived there, down to the tiniest child.
Speaker 1: How numerous were the famous families, the vast estates, the
Speaker 1: notable fortunes that were seen to be left without a
Speaker 1: rightful successor. How many gallant gentlemen, fair ladies, and sprightly youths,
Speaker 1: who would have been adjudged hail and hardy by Galen,
Speaker 1: Hippocrates and a Scallapius, to say nothing of others. Thank you,
Speaker 1: having breakfasted in the morning with their folk, acquaintances and friends,
Speaker 1: sucked in the same evening with their ancestors in the
Speaker 1: next world folks. The Black Death, it fucking sucked. So
Speaker 1: it was bad eleanor talk about dry numbers of the
Speaker 1: Black Death before roughly roughly a third of the years
Speaker 1: estimated four hundred and forty million people or about one
Speaker 1: hundred and forty five million, two hundred thousand died in
Speaker 1: the span of years of seven years. But let's turn
Speaker 1: the focus away from that now and how this affected
Speaker 1: the social order at the time. Yeah. Yeah, so it
Speaker 1: seems like there was when the plague hit a place,
Speaker 1: there was just complete breakdown of all social norms and
Speaker 1: institutions during these outbreaks, like it didn't matt like it
Speaker 1: didn't matter, you know. Pauper was king, King was popper.
Speaker 1: People fucked, they drank, they you know whatever.
Speaker 3: Yeah, certainly we know that to be true. Like there's
Speaker 3: rather a lot of partying going on. Some of this
Speaker 3: is of course hyperbole that he goes on about it,
Speaker 3: I mean, and that's fair because you know, he's just
Speaker 3: being like basically he's he's exaggerating slightly for poetic effect.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: So for example, we know that with plague victims, they're
Speaker 3: not actually just thrown in like a ditch, and there
Speaker 3: is like we know, for example, that they line them
Speaker 3: up real carefully.
Speaker 2: Are you in a ditch?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, but you're not thrown. You are carefully placed
Speaker 1: in a ditch. And also like it like most.
Speaker 3: Of the corpse up they they like they they're they're
Speaker 3: gonna cross your arms. They're gonna like do their best
Speaker 3: to line you up nicely. Yeah, I mean, can they
Speaker 3: get a priest to come say something?
Speaker 2: Maybe not.
Speaker 3: And we definitely know that that is true because like
Speaker 3: one of the things that happens in this period is
Speaker 3: the church is like you're all deputized.
Speaker 1: To like you can, yeah, your own fucking dirt, leave us.
Speaker 1: I'm alone.
Speaker 2: I'm just sorry. Just one second, I have got a
Speaker 2: package one tick y know.
Speaker 3: It's so funny. Cabbage thinks she's a guard cat. Like
Speaker 3: if a package comes.
Speaker 2: To the door, she's out there like, hey, hi, motherfucker right,
Speaker 2: it's like you all right?
Speaker 1: She now at it.
Speaker 3: No, but she just like has to go she has
Speaker 3: to like go up, oh yeah, yeah. And she hears
Speaker 3: the doorbell ring or like someone knock on the door.
Speaker 3: She's like running over there, like I don't know what
Speaker 3: the plan is exactly, but she's got a supervise so anyway,
Speaker 3: like yeah she found it, good girl.
Speaker 1: Good job, cabbage, thank you. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, as
Speaker 1: we were saying, there are a couple of embellishments in here.
Speaker 1: There's absolutely no way that one hundred thousand people died
Speaker 1: in Florence because the population of the city was estimated
Speaker 1: to be like one hundred thousand before and it probably
Speaker 1: experienced like sixty percent, right, or.
Speaker 2: So sixty thousand people die.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I mean you know you can, yeah, you can.
Speaker 1: You can forgive him for not for you know, not
Speaker 1: doing that. You see six and ten of everybody you
Speaker 1: know die and you're just like, dead man, I don't
Speaker 1: tell you that's ever.
Speaker 3: And also okay, like let's also like some things that
Speaker 3: we definitely know are true, like you know, saying like
Speaker 3: there aren't enough priests just to say rights for the dead.
Speaker 3: So suddenly everyone is deputies to hear last confessions, Like
Speaker 3: everyone is deputies to kind of like do some of
Speaker 3: the cross stuff. They're just like loc bra we're doing
Speaker 3: our best here, right, you know.
Speaker 1: Yes, this was the first time that lay people were deputized,
Speaker 1: So you know who did who did the preachers first?
Speaker 1: Was it the Protestants or the Catholics. Who was it
Speaker 1: Catholic Church. I'm just kidding, go out.
Speaker 2: Even ladies could if there was no man around.
Speaker 1: That's farther than the fucking Protestants. For the most part,
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Is there still a fucking real hierarchy in place? Yes, yes,
Speaker 2: I want to. They're like literally, any dude, we'll do uh.
Speaker 3: But you know that they do kind of admit that
Speaker 3: women are a sort of people here.
Speaker 1: Well, can I ask like when you say there's I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously there's still a real hierarchy in place, but like
Speaker 1: while this is going on, do we know like if
Speaker 1: people were just like fuck the priest, fuck, you know,
Speaker 1: and they were like, yeah, there is.
Speaker 3: A lot of fuck the priest, I mean like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: because it's because like one of the things that kind
Speaker 3: of happens, right is that you get a lot of
Speaker 3: the church being like, well, this is you motherfucker's fault,
Speaker 3: and then there's a lot of people being like, I
Speaker 3: feel like you were driving, so like if God is
Speaker 3: punishing us, so surely you guys were in charge.
Speaker 2: So like, what the fuck?
Speaker 1: If this is a family sedan, your dad and mom
Speaker 1: driving in the front seat, I'm in the back seat
Speaker 1: in a in a car in a car seat, you know,
Speaker 1: like I'm going Google goga.
Speaker 4: What are you doing?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So there is rather a lot of criticism of
Speaker 3: that particular move on the church's part, and you know,
Speaker 3: we get it, that makes sense, right, but it is
Speaker 3: it is a move that they try.
Speaker 2: They're like your.
Speaker 3: Fault for sin, you know, and a lot of people
Speaker 3: just are are kind of like, look, bra I'm fright
Speaker 3: to go near other people, right. So there's like not
Speaker 3: a lot of church going happening in some people's cases,
Speaker 3: and there is a lot also kind of a sudden
Speaker 3: movement of people. So like old orders where you kind
Speaker 3: of have your local member of the clergy who's looking
Speaker 3: in on you breaks down right, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So when the order was restored, you know, he
Speaker 1: says from March to July, so you know, July and Florence.
Speaker 1: You know, after this has been after this has passed through,
Speaker 1: Like did people have to kind of be prodded to
Speaker 1: go back to the old ways or were they like,
Speaker 1: well that was fun time to go back to the
Speaker 1: fields or it.
Speaker 3: Takes a while for people to kind of lie. So
Speaker 3: one of the things is in terms of like the fields,
Speaker 3: people people go back to the fields.
Speaker 2: Because it's like how the motherfucker going to eat?
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, that's true. They're like, look, I might have
Speaker 1: been a miller or a cobbler before, but we got
Speaker 1: to have that wheat dog.
Speaker 2: Yeah bruh, Like I gotta be bringing in that sorghum crop.
Speaker 1: You know, bringing in the sheaves, bring them.
Speaker 3: So we have a lot of like the peasants kind
Speaker 3: of return pretty quickly because you know, they're like, I
Speaker 3: know how.
Speaker 2: Food gets made. But another thing that happens is, you
Speaker 2: know sometimes shit just doesn't go.
Speaker 3: Back to normal, right, Like we lose whole villages where
Speaker 3: they're just like that doesn't exist anymore. And those people
Speaker 3: oftentimes go to cities, yeah, which replenishes like the city
Speaker 3: population because you kind of can't just go pick up land,
Speaker 3: you know, because you're technically not free now, Like who's
Speaker 3: gonna come check in on you?
Speaker 2: Is the question.
Speaker 3: But it's more the point of like it's more difficult
Speaker 3: to go and then get land somewhere where you're not
Speaker 3: attached because like obviously those serfs over there are gonna
Speaker 3: be like.
Speaker 2: Uh, let's trying to do thought, But with this the
Speaker 2: that's the thought. The thoughts.
Speaker 3: They're gonna they're gonna snap that land up, right, They're
Speaker 3: not gonna be like, oh yeah, hey, like people from
Speaker 3: two villages overcome on it, Like that's not gonna happen.
Speaker 3: So those guys go and replenish the cities, and this
Speaker 3: is like, you know, kind of brave new world.
Speaker 2: Chance to do something completely new.
Speaker 3: So that's like kind of cool, but you've also like
Speaker 3: lost your whole community and you're probably.
Speaker 2: Really fucked up by that, so that's kind of bad.
Speaker 2: You know. Obviously, the church.
Speaker 3: Has a vested interest in like just kind of keeping
Speaker 3: things ticking over and sometimes like nobles and royals will
Speaker 3: very specifically kind of prod people into doing what they want,
Speaker 3: you know, militarily, and then you know, you get.
Speaker 2: Places like Progue who are like, what.
Speaker 3: Was something I don't I don't hear anything, So it's
Speaker 3: like it all it all depends.
Speaker 1: Right, Bohemia, Poland and one other part of North Germany
Speaker 1: magically unaffected I or not unaffected, but didn't have anything
Speaker 1: like the other deaths.
Speaker 2: You know, because God loves us.
Speaker 1: That's true. Yeah. If anything from the rest of history
Speaker 1: tells us, it's that God loves the Poles in.
Speaker 3: The Slova he happen to us?
Speaker 4: Never God, uh jeez.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 1: I actually have read like counter things about like why
Speaker 1: it was that it didn't get there, and like, uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, like I had no idea.
Speaker 2: There's a ganetic thing.
Speaker 3: There's a genetic argument which I like to bring up
Speaker 3: just because I like to use it to explain all
Speaker 3: of my fucking problems with allergies that I've got from
Speaker 3: like my check and Slovak side of the family, where
Speaker 3: there's this idea that people who have allergies because you know,
Speaker 3: you've got a hyperactive immune system that just attacks you
Speaker 3: constantly because it's a little bitch, and there's this idea
Speaker 3: that they were better offending off the Black Death because
Speaker 3: your mean sis was just like what's that over there?
Speaker 2: Hey? But no, you know, and it's like, bro, I'm
Speaker 2: like allergic to air.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you know, it's.
Speaker 2: Probably just you guess I'm just saying it because it's.
Speaker 1: Full scale, yeah, full scale breakdown. It hit Italy, Constantinople,
Speaker 1: parts of England, parts of France, it like decimated them.
Speaker 1: It killed like fifty percent of the people in the
Speaker 1: levant like Morocco, you know, all Egypt Egypt got fucking annihilated.
Speaker 1: The population of Cairo didn't recover until like sixteen hundred
Speaker 1: or something. It was real bad. But yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: we we've talked before about the you know, long term
Speaker 1: ramifications of the Black Death afterwards, you know, like peasants
Speaker 1: were able to to to scrape a bit more for themselves,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, standards of living rows in some
Speaker 1: cases because there was you know, more land and all
Speaker 1: that over time. But was there any were there any
Speaker 1: immediate things that happened that just never went back at all.
Speaker 3: I mean, one of the kind of immediate things that
Speaker 3: happens that doesn't go back is just the kind of
Speaker 3: level of suspicion that's incredibly.
Speaker 2: High, Like you get a lot of blame place at
Speaker 2: the door of the church.
Speaker 3: Let's just say that that it doesn't you don't really
Speaker 3: put that cat back in the bag.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think that that really hurts people.
Speaker 3: I would say that one of the things that begins
Speaker 3: to happen is people start being more interested in like
Speaker 3: nice things you have, more interesting kind of like consumer
Speaker 3: culture and stuff like that, because they're.
Speaker 2: Like, bitch, I might die at any moment.
Speaker 1: I want some cloth, give me those pointy toad shoes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a lot more. There's a lot more of that.
Speaker 3: So like we see a fashion get really outlandish very quickly,
Speaker 3: and things of this nature. So yeah, a little bit
Speaker 3: more emphasis on nice things and luxuries as it were.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the last thing, you know, just from my
Speaker 1: own curiosity, Boccaccio implies the widespread breakdown of sexual mores
Speaker 1: at the time. Is this attested to in the historical record?
Speaker 3: I mean, it's really difficult to say, because people talk
Speaker 3: about it all the time, and so I'm assuming it
Speaker 3: must be true. But it's also difficult to say if
Speaker 3: they're just like doing it to talk about people fucking
Speaker 3: because they love to do that. I'm assuming yes, because
Speaker 3: you know, you get like a lot of sermons written
Speaker 3: about it, you get a lot of chronicles saying this,
Speaker 3: you get rather a lot of people handwringing.
Speaker 2: So I'm gonna go ahead and say, yeah, like they
Speaker 2: were fucking.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there there was an uptick uptick in hand jobs
Speaker 1: and everybody just like the world ended. Yeah, we started
Speaker 1: with the Black Death because that's what the camera in
Speaker 1: itself starts with. But now we're going to turn, as
Speaker 1: we always do with these introductions to the author and
Speaker 1: mettextual aspects of the book. So first the author Eleanor,
Speaker 1: who is Giovanni Boccaccio, and uh, why he so horny?
Speaker 1: Why he loved so he's so horny?
Speaker 3: Okay, so noted Florentine, but very interestingly, he actually moves
Speaker 3: to Naples at kind of a young age because his
Speaker 3: dad is in banking and basically down in Naples they're
Speaker 3: having the reign of Frederick the Wise, who's an Anchovin,
Speaker 3: which is quite funny, and there's kind of like rather
Speaker 3: a lot of wheeling and dealing going on down there.
Speaker 3: So Stead it's like, yo, there's money to be made.
Speaker 3: Come on, everybody, We're moving to Naples. And he's meant
Speaker 3: to be a banker like his dad, but he fucking
Speaker 3: hates it, like shout out an anti capitalist king. And
Speaker 3: so then he's like, look, I'm gonna study canon law instead,
Speaker 3: and like he gets sent off to school, but he
Speaker 3: also hates that.
Speaker 1: He's like, man, I just want to I just want
Speaker 1: to hang out for a living. Can I get a
Speaker 1: job just hanging out? Yeah? Writing poetry?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So he gets the closest thing to that, which
Speaker 3: is like he begins to write poetry. So he gets this,
Speaker 3: you know, nice little education where you know everyone at
Speaker 3: the time is super hard for doing more Greek texts
Speaker 3: and things. There's more Greek texts floating around the Italian
Speaker 3: peninsula at this point in time. I wonder why Venice
Speaker 3: looking in your direction.
Speaker 1: Man. They were ripping. They were ripping the copper out,
Speaker 1: they were ripping, they were they were taking the crown jewels,
Speaker 1: they were taking the horses of Saint Mark. They were
Speaker 1: stealing every fucking thing they could. They were taking the
Speaker 1: papers out of like they were taking manuscript just hauling them.
Speaker 1: They're like the ship out.
Speaker 3: Of here, Like I can't even read this ship yet,
Speaker 3: but I'll get to it.
Speaker 2: I'll learn.
Speaker 1: And they and they didn't even and they didn't And
Speaker 1: even though they did that, there was still like when
Speaker 1: when when Constantinople fell, they were like, Wow, all of
Speaker 1: this new knowledge we just found out. The Greeks were like,
Speaker 1: we've known this for six hundred years. What's wrong with you?
Speaker 2: Jesus Christ?
Speaker 1: I wonder, I thought, you guys, Wait, you guys just
Speaker 1: dominated US military, militarily, financially, religiously, and economically. And you
Speaker 1: mother and like they probably were like you mud farming peasants.
Speaker 1: Fuck yeah, you'd be so mad if you took an
Speaker 1: l like that.
Speaker 2: God embarrassing, embarrassing.
Speaker 3: So like, yeah, I mean that is one hundred percent
Speaker 3: what's going down at the moment. And so he's like
Speaker 3: getting all trained up. But then he moves back to
Speaker 3: Florence and he kind of gets caught up in politics,
Speaker 3: like events overtake him. He becomes really involved in Florentine government,
Speaker 3: and as a result of that, he's sent on lots
Speaker 3: of diplomatic missions for the Florentines. So, for example, when
Speaker 3: Pope Urban the fifth comes down to Rome because he's like,
Speaker 3: you know, thinking about like he visits Rome anyway from Avenue,
Speaker 3: and Charles the fourth is like, you're gonna state you
Speaker 3: get to stay in Rope.
Speaker 2: You gotta stay in Rome, and he's.
Speaker 3: Like no, it fucking absolute looks, but like you know,
Speaker 3: it's it's Bocaccio who goes and meets him. Bocaccio gets
Speaker 3: sent around, like to varying different cities.
Speaker 2: He like gets sent up to the German Lands.
Speaker 3: He gets sent like to do things for Florence, and
Speaker 3: as a part of this he also meets Petrarch, who
Speaker 3: is kind of like doing his like big tour of
Speaker 3: the Italian lands, being like, shit fucking sucks.
Speaker 2: Does anyone want to do anything about it?
Speaker 3: Ah?
Speaker 2: Oh, okay, okay, cool, cool, cool, cool cool cool.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm gonna write some things talking about this particular
Speaker 3: time that are gonna be wildly misconstrued by people in
Speaker 3: the nineteenth century.
Speaker 2: So uh yeah.
Speaker 3: Like so he's doing like all of these diplomatic things
Speaker 3: and and he gets like set back to the pope repeatedly.
Speaker 3: And this is kind of confusing because like there are
Speaker 3: rumors that he kind of like takes the cloth at
Speaker 3: a point in time, but we don't have any evidence
Speaker 3: of it, but he is super involved with the papacy,
Speaker 3: so it's kind of like what's going on over there right,
Speaker 3: like really really difficult to say. But anyway, he decides
Speaker 3: he's gonna be an author. The first thing he writes
Speaker 3: is the day mliary bus Clary, so like the famous women,
Speaker 3: and then he writes yes, yeah, because he's like, ladies, ladies,
Speaker 3: I'm a feminist.
Speaker 1: The earliest sum is nough. I'm just kidding, as you
Speaker 1: please do not. But yeah.
Speaker 3: Then then he gets around eventually to ride into the
Speaker 3: camera and he kind of starts in like thirteen forty nine,
Speaker 3: I want to say, but it takes him a really
Speaker 3: really long time, and this kind.
Speaker 2: Of becomes his magnum opus, right, like this is this
Speaker 2: is his thing, so.
Speaker 3: It becomes kind of like the thing about him. And
Speaker 3: he's working on it for like twenty five years. Like
Speaker 3: I mean, because the motherfucker is a brick, let's be real.
Speaker 3: So that's not too surprising when you see the book.
Speaker 3: But yeah, he's just like a really interesting guy in
Speaker 3: that he has his fingers in a lot of different pies.
Speaker 3: He's got sort of like one toe in every single world, right,
Speaker 3: Like he's in politics, he's in the church, he understands banking,
Speaker 3: he is a poet.
Speaker 2: He's meeting up.
Speaker 3: With all of these people who are influential thinkers at
Speaker 3: the time, and that's just really particular and interesting. So yeah,
Speaker 3: like a real, a real interesting late medieval guy.
Speaker 2: He's a weird little one. I like him.
Speaker 1: Yeah. He also famously maybe the reason that we all
Speaker 1: know about and envision Hell as Dante's Inferno, because he
Speaker 1: was Dante's bravest soldier. He loved Dante. He was the
Speaker 1: person who first called it the It's called the divine
Speaker 1: comedy now because Boccaccio called it that as opposed to
Speaker 1: his own human comedy. You know it.
Speaker 4: He he just he.
Speaker 1: Fucking loved Dante. He and Petrarch both loved Dante. And
Speaker 1: you know it's wild because you know, Dante is extremely,
Speaker 1: extremely sincere and all this stuff. And I mean, maybe
Speaker 1: Boccaccio cared about, like cared as deeply about his mortal soul.
Speaker 1: I don't think we can know that, but he certainly
Speaker 1: didn't like he Even Dante's ironic denunciations and punishment of
Speaker 1: the church and his punishments of the pope are in
Speaker 1: a different tenor than the way.
Speaker 4: Boccaccio talks about it.
Speaker 1: Boccaccio's like snide when he talks about it. Dante's more
Speaker 1: like sad, like, well, I missed, I missed, I missed
Speaker 1: the real the real deal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's interesting. It shows us how we've kind
Speaker 3: of moved on. And I think also this is the difference.
Speaker 3: Like he he fanboys Dante, but he considers himself a
Speaker 3: devotee of Petrarc, so he kind of sees himself as
Speaker 3: en meshed with Petrarch's kind of vision of a new
Speaker 3: future for the Italian peninsula, and Petrarch is not a
Speaker 3: fan of the church at the time for French reasons, right, right,
Speaker 3: So you know, like things have kind of like wrapped up.
Speaker 3: And this is also one of the big things that
Speaker 3: we've got to keep in mind when we are comparing things,
Speaker 3: like even in this like couple of years, by the
Speaker 3: time we've got to by the time it got to Bocaccio,
Speaker 3: he is in the middle of the Babylonian captivity, right,
Speaker 3: like the papacy, like is here baby, and so like
Speaker 3: Dante meanwhile, he was just like I don't know, like
Speaker 3: a pope's live in room?
Speaker 1: Am I? Right? Am I? Right?
Speaker 3: So you know, like things things kind of like have
Speaker 3: changed massively. So you get a bit more unhappy, don't you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like yeah you do, yeah, And uh yeah, he
Speaker 1: you know, he's obsessed with Dante. He copies out, uh
Speaker 1: the the text of the Divine, the whole Divine comedy.
Speaker 1: He's the first one that does it. And uh, you know,
Speaker 1: he just he loved Dante. And so like, you know,
Speaker 1: if you like that vision you have of hell in
Speaker 1: your head, you can thank Bacaccio for at least one thing,
Speaker 1: a couple more things on Bocaccio. Should we think less
Speaker 1: of this work because it's mostly a retelling of existing
Speaker 1: stories and tall tales?
Speaker 2: No, I mean, like, motherfucker, Oh now we're mad.
Speaker 3: At medieval people for writing like medieval people, I think, not,
Speaker 3: all right, Like, this is what they do, this is
Speaker 3: what this is what the Canterbury Tales is, this is
Speaker 3: what we see with that blow, this is how they
Speaker 3: tell stories. So I just don't think that we can
Speaker 3: get down on them for like having a preferred format.
Speaker 2: So I just don't think that that really works as
Speaker 2: a criticism, you know.
Speaker 3: And yeah, it's not the way that we write now,
Speaker 3: but okay, so what and also sometimes we do, you know,
Speaker 3: also sometimes we do have short story collections, and that's
Speaker 3: kind of the way to think about this is as
Speaker 3: a collection of short stories.
Speaker 2: And there's nothing wrong with that as a literary genre.
Speaker 3: It's just that this is how medieval people do it,
Speaker 3: because if you think about it, you're not always going
Speaker 3: to have like someone who's literate around the shop.
Speaker 2: And so what you're going to be doing is you're
Speaker 2: gonna have someone.
Speaker 3: Telling thesees to groups of people, you know, at mar
Speaker 3: ease and for fun, and you know you're not gonna
Speaker 3: be all.
Speaker 2: Like, well, I'll come back tomorrow night.
Speaker 3: And pick up where we left off chapter twenty three, right,
Speaker 3: But you can skip around and you can do different
Speaker 3: stories at different times.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Lastly, what is it about Bacaccio's writing that makes him
Speaker 1: feel kind of unique and different to basically everything that
Speaker 1: came before? And is this the first novel in your opinion?
Speaker 2: That's a great question. I suppose that. I think so
Speaker 2: the first place.
Speaker 3: One of the things that is different about it is
Speaker 3: it has like the intellectual rigor. It's got the it's
Speaker 3: got the chops, baby, it's got references to classical literature.
Speaker 3: This is a motherfucker who knows his mythology. This is
Speaker 3: someone who's really on top of things, and he can
Speaker 3: do it all Like right, he's got rains, he can
Speaker 3: do funny, he can do sad, he can do tragic,
Speaker 3: he can do scary, like he can do all these
Speaker 3: different things.
Speaker 2: And so it really shows.
Speaker 3: Him as someone who has talent on a huge scale
Speaker 3: and is able to bring about lots of different lots
Speaker 3: of different emotions in his audience. And I think that
Speaker 3: that is what really kind of sticks with us. In
Speaker 3: terms of being the first novel, I think I'd probably
Speaker 3: actually go for the Divine Comedy first, just because I
Speaker 3: do think that it kind of hangs together almost novelistically,
Speaker 3: because of like the point of view that we get
Speaker 3: from the main character. But I understand why people say this,
Speaker 3: because I think that this is kind of more intended
Speaker 3: for a broader audience, so it's kind of like more
Speaker 3: aware of itself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think it's either this or you know,
Speaker 1: maybe Don Quixote, which is you.
Speaker 2: Know, we love Savantes, don't we?
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is you know almost is that fifteen hundreds? Yea, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah it was, you know, it was a couple of
Speaker 1: hundred years later, you know. But yeah, it's it's it's all,
Speaker 1: it's all a rich tabestry because it's all coming together,
Speaker 1: you know, you can't you can't have one without the other.
Speaker 1: Moving on to the meditextual stuff. So in his prologue,
Speaker 1: Boccaccio refers to the book by the subtitle Prince Galahut
Speaker 1: aka Galahad. What does a figure of our theory and
Speaker 1: legend have to do with this book?
Speaker 2: So I think that this is kind of like.
Speaker 3: A reference to making beautiful things out of like sinful ones, right,
Speaker 3: because Galahad quite famously he is Lancelot's bastard son. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, so there you go, and he also becomes
Speaker 3: like the successful Grail night all right.
Speaker 2: So we talked about this in.
Speaker 3: Our theory on a series. You know, they're constantly going
Speaker 3: through who is the new superhero Night, and first it's
Speaker 3: like Key, and then it's Lancelot, and then and then
Speaker 3: he gets Galahad, right, And Galahad is the one who's
Speaker 3: able to focus up on religion and you know, askew
Speaker 3: himself to such a point.
Speaker 2: That he's able to like get the Grail. So congratulations.
Speaker 3: And I think it's kind of like a reference to
Speaker 3: like coming through temptation or like coming through these like
Speaker 3: sinful things in order to create something beautiful and pure.
Speaker 3: And that's kind of both a reference to what is
Speaker 3: going on at the time and also a reference to
Speaker 3: kind of what he's intending to do with this literature,
Speaker 3: is like, yeah, you know, we're doing these kind of
Speaker 3: like body things, but this is this is giving us
Speaker 3: a window into humanity, which is beautiful indeed.
Speaker 1: Indeed. Yeah, So to put it mildly, the de Cameron
Speaker 1: caused quite a stir upon release it.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 1: Well, and we've had a we have a question from Gassey,
Speaker 1: who has asked what was the initial reaction to the
Speaker 1: de Cameron on its publication? What is it considered especially scandalous? Uh?
Speaker 1: What with most of the stories involving sex and usually adultery,
Speaker 1: as well as a solid helping of last me against
Speaker 1: the Church, usually as a part of the first two
Speaker 1: Uh so, yeah, Eleanor was were they mad about the
Speaker 1: anti clericalism or the sex thing or maybe both?
Speaker 3: I mean so interestingly at first they're like, oh my,
Speaker 3: that's so much sex.
Speaker 2: Can I gety?
Speaker 3: You know, it's very like initially in the fourteenth century,
Speaker 3: it's very much like there's like some fifty shade stuff
Speaker 3: where it's.
Speaker 2: Like, oh, have it for Ben, Can you believe there's
Speaker 2: this sexy book?
Speaker 3: I can't believe it because for the fourteenth century, this
Speaker 3: is the standard level of antialism, Like this is not
Speaker 3: this is not anything that I don't expect to see
Speaker 3: off like my boy Meleach. It's just like much more
Speaker 3: amusing when BaCaCO is doing it right, Like it's very
Speaker 3: very funny. So there is some like, oh, well, this
Speaker 3: is just a sign of the times isn't everything is
Speaker 3: falling apart. Oh we're so immoral now, ubbity bubby bob.
Speaker 3: But you know that doesn't stop it selling like hotcakes.
Speaker 3: In fact, it just helps it to increase in fame.
Speaker 3: Now what weapons though, is like a hundred years later
Speaker 3: the church is like, wait a minute, but that makes
Speaker 3: perfect sense, right, because like, first of all, when this
Speaker 3: comes out, the church is.
Speaker 2: Like, I don't know, man, everyone's fucking dying. I don't
Speaker 2: know what to tell you. And we are.
Speaker 1: Like they weren't prohibiting anything at that point. They were
Speaker 1: like they were fending off angry mobs.
Speaker 3: They could not prohibit people from like going up outside
Speaker 3: the papal.
Speaker 2: Palace and Avenue on and yelling you fucking suck and.
Speaker 3: That like basically, like you know, he revises it kind
Speaker 3: of one more time in the thirteen seventies and then
Speaker 3: by thirteen seventy eight year in the middle of the
Speaker 3: of the Western Schism, right, so like when the Western
Speaker 3: Schism happens, I'm sorry, they do not fucking care what
Speaker 3: is going on in terms of literature.
Speaker 2: They do not have time for this.
Speaker 3: Then when they finally get the band got back together,
Speaker 3: they're like, hold on a fucking second. And it's at
Speaker 3: this point in time that they've also got all these
Speaker 3: problems with hoosites, they've got problems with lollards, they've got
Speaker 3: problems with you know, people who have just completely been like, yeah,
Speaker 3: we're not even fucking Catholic anymore, and you can go
Speaker 3: fuck yourself.
Speaker 2: And so suddenly they're like, whoa, whoa, what's all this
Speaker 2: anti clericalism?
Speaker 1: Hey, yo, wow, oh you guys are still mad at
Speaker 1: us for that whole it's your fault about the Black
Speaker 1: Death they come on. That was like a century yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: and so we're just a little guy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so it you know, there's there's the Bonfire
Speaker 3: of the Vanities.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was turned in the first one. The Bonfire
Speaker 1: of the Vanities was a real thing. I always think
Speaker 1: that's neat.
Speaker 3: So I think it's nice. I think that's really great.
Speaker 3: And so they're like, well, let's get let's fucking go.
Speaker 3: But it's very important to point out that this is
Speaker 3: like in fourteen ninety seven, so it's like one hundred
Speaker 3: and ten years after the fucking fact, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: And we tend to do this thing of.
Speaker 3: Collapsing time when We're like, oh, and then the church
Speaker 3: immediately condemned it, and I'm like that's a pretty slow immediate, right, yeah,
Speaker 3: And this is where everything fucking starts going downhill, because
Speaker 3: we're we're about to hit the Early Modern period. You know,
Speaker 3: by many accounts, were in the Early Modern period.
Speaker 1: By the time we at this point, you are twenty
Speaker 1: years from uh Lutherans, you know, Lutherans, Yeah, twenty years
Speaker 1: from lu got.
Speaker 3: The Columbian Exchange going already, you know, we've got hoos sites.
Speaker 3: So it's like, really, you know, fucking Columbus has fallen.
Speaker 1: Columbus sailed yie old ocean blue by that point. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So basically the only person who hasn't got the memo
Speaker 3: that we are in a new era is the Germans
Speaker 3: at this point. So you know, it's like, yeah, so
Speaker 3: it's very much a kind of early modern backlash, whereas
Speaker 3: in the Middle Ages they're like, so true, how rivaled?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: O oh you.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Officially, it was challenged by clerics for some time after
Speaker 1: The Bonfire of the Vanities was officially placed on the
Speaker 1: band books list, which is known as the Index Liberum
Speaker 1: Prohibitorum when it was created in fifteen fifty nine, but
Speaker 1: again that was created in fifteen fifty nine, so you know,
Speaker 1: they might have looked down upon certain books before that,
Speaker 1: but the official thing didn't come out. Despite this, the
Speaker 1: book was extremely popular, and a new version was commissioned
Speaker 1: by Pope Gregory the eighth and fifteen seventy three, wherein
Speaker 1: all the clerics were replaced by secular individuals. But that
Speaker 1: wasn't good enough, so an even more heavily revised edition
Speaker 1: was done less than a decade later, under Pope's sexist
Speaker 1: the fifth.
Speaker 3: I love this, it's so it's so fucking name. This
Speaker 3: is like Renaissance Pope to a t. It's like, this
Speaker 3: is what they're spending your money on. They're like, I
Speaker 3: like the Sexy Book, but you can't criticize me anyway.
Speaker 2: I'm off to the orgy.
Speaker 4: Boo boo yah boooo, right, Like.
Speaker 3: You know, like these these motherfuckers, all right, you're selling indulgences,
Speaker 3: making the biggest and ugliest like Vatican you've ever fucking seen,
Speaker 3: and just like fucking their page boy, And they're like, well,
Speaker 3: I want to read the Sexy book.
Speaker 2: You can't be bad.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna jerk off to this, but you can't yell
Speaker 1: at me in it exactly. Yeah, I'm reading this with
Speaker 1: one hand, but you can't.
Speaker 2: You can't. But just so you know, I am not
Speaker 2: all clerics, so is.
Speaker 1: This very uh yeah, not all clerics, you know. And
Speaker 1: he's wearing like a miter well like a well like
Speaker 1: a yeah, a page is like sucking him off in
Speaker 1: like a in a in like a hot tub of champagne.
Speaker 1: How do you invent a hot tub? Back? Then shut off? Look,
Speaker 1: what didn't Champagne really fuck up the hot shut up?
Speaker 1: Shut the fuck anyway?
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh. The book itself is classic. It's been adapted dozens
Speaker 1: of times since its released. Most notably is that it
Speaker 1: is one of the direct uh so called Italian humanist
Speaker 1: inspirations for Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and thus is a direct
Speaker 1: inspiration for Dan Simmons's excellent sci fi novel Hyperion. Uh.
Speaker 1: You can read the first one. It's amazing, The second
Speaker 1: one's pretty good, a third and fourth one that's real
Speaker 1: late century sci fi writer, problematic stuff. But you do
Speaker 1: you you're an adult. You guys are adults. But yeah,
Speaker 1: the first one is really excellent, though you get the shrike.
Speaker 1: We love the shrike. He puts us on the tree.
Speaker 1: He puts us on the tree of time so we
Speaker 1: can think about our sins for you know, for eternity.
Speaker 1: It's great. We love him, folks. Yeah, anyway. The individual
Speaker 1: stories have also inspired many adaptations and retellings of their own,
Speaker 1: such as Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well, works by Molier, Lord,
Speaker 1: Alfred Tennyson, Percy B. Shelley, Jonathan Swift, and even one
Speaker 1: by Martin Luther, which of course is about a Jew
Speaker 1: converting to Christianity and try to trying to convince the
Speaker 1: Jew not to Yeah, it's fine, he and Philip melichthon
Speaker 1: it's real like self insert poor Man's Dante hours. It
Speaker 1: also served as the inspiration for a number of films,
Speaker 1: but specifically two famous ones, both known as The Camera Nights,
Speaker 1: one from nineteen twenty four and the other from nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty three, and a recent Netflix adaptation released in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four, amongst many others.
Speaker 3: I haven't watched that yet, and I haven't either. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: it looks good.
Speaker 1: I just you know, yeah, I've heard I've heard mixed things, uh,
Speaker 1: but also heard it sexy.
Speaker 2: So you know, well, that well you know that's that's
Speaker 2: the the Cameron base.
Speaker 1: It is the de camera. Yeah, as long as people
Speaker 1: are fucking it could be like, oh yeah, I hate
Speaker 1: like you're fucking You're like, God, I hate clerics. God
Speaker 1: they suck so much.
Speaker 2: Like the camera don't come yet.
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm thinking about how I hate fucking hate clerks.
Speaker 2: Oh god, fuck hewn. It's supposed to work the opposite way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're supposed to talk about that first. Oh no,
Speaker 1: now this is a horrifying fetish we oh god. Lastly,
Speaker 1: the book itself, uh setting in characters, so yeah, set
Speaker 1: thirteen forty eight, just outside Florence at the deserted villa Schifanoia.
Speaker 1: I have no idea. This is a villa. It's a
Speaker 1: lovely villa that you can still I think it's private now,
Speaker 1: but still there to this day in what is now
Speaker 1: Faya Sol the dramatics persone. We got seven women named
Speaker 1: who he names is like, He's like, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to tell you their names. Okay, fine, we'll call this
Speaker 1: one Pampania, Fiametta, Philimina, Amelia, Loretta, Nephili and Alyssa. And
Speaker 1: three men named Panfilo, Dioneo, and Filo strato eleanor is
Speaker 1: there anything we need to know about any of them specifically?
Speaker 3: Not really, they're like interchangeable ggs. I mean to a
Speaker 3: certain extent, he's kind of like written himself into it
Speaker 3: a little bit, like you know, he's got his own
Speaker 3: personal Mary Sue in that way that everybody likes to
Speaker 3: do it right, you know.
Speaker 2: It's it's basically gonna.
Speaker 3: Be though your standard sort of like sexy kind of stories.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I mean one of them is Bocaccio.
Speaker 1: Yeah, congratulations, it's long. It's long been. It may may
Speaker 1: have been happening in the Middle Ages too, but in
Speaker 1: the early modern period people were like, oh, Penphilos Bocaccio,
Speaker 1: I got it, Like like oh, oh, I see, like
Speaker 1: you didn't cover that very well, now, did you.
Speaker 3: It's yeah, basically, I mean it says a lot about
Speaker 3: society that there's like seven women and three men, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean yeah, they don't really have like
Speaker 1: they you'll hear about like oh this character is like
Speaker 1: one note or something like that. These are no note characters.
Speaker 1: They are here to voice the story and for you
Speaker 1: to imagine in your head like somebody been like once
Speaker 1: upon a time and he goes do do do do,
Speaker 1: and you see the like you know, you don't. It
Speaker 1: doesn't matter if phil Amina or you know, Dioneo said it,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 3: You know, yeah, it's like, you know, there are there
Speaker 3: is some speculation that there's like seven women because it's like,
Speaker 3: you know, maybe maybe this is the liberal arts. Maybe
Speaker 3: it is you know, the cardinal and theological virtues, which
Speaker 3: are like you know, you know, the ones like temperance
Speaker 3: and fortitude and justice and prudent and faith and hope
Speaker 3: and charity blah blah blah blah, you know the ones.
Speaker 3: But you know, seven is just kind of like the thing.
Speaker 3: And it's like, you know, there's how many muses are there,
Speaker 3: you know, it's it's stuff like this.
Speaker 2: So and and then like yeah, and then you get
Speaker 2: like three dudes.
Speaker 3: Like there's been some kind of like, oh, maybe this
Speaker 3: is about the division of the soul and their appetite
Speaker 3: and spirit and reason. And I'm like, okay, well which
Speaker 3: one is fucking boccaccio?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, so I think it's it's maybe like
Speaker 3: a little far fetched. It all so fundamentally you don't
Speaker 3: really need to know that because they are interchangeable.
Speaker 1: Really, yeah, yeah, yeah, it. It doesn't matter who you
Speaker 1: imagine as how you imagine these characters. They are as
Speaker 1: interchangeable as possible. I think really the only info we
Speaker 1: get on them is that Pampania is the oldest one,
Speaker 1: Like he says that in the intro, and that's pretty
Speaker 1: much it. And you know, other than that, they all
Speaker 1: just sound like uh, Lacroix beverage names. God, there's Pamponia
Speaker 1: and Philomena, and you're like, man, that's great, just give
Speaker 1: me some fucking you know, folks, that is the de Cameron.
Speaker 1: It is uh, it's gonna be a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: I'm going to go ahead and preface this right now.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of sex in this There's a lot
Speaker 1: of fucking. If that embarrasses you, that's fine, I understand.
Speaker 1: I can't listen in a place where you can't hear that.
Speaker 1: These episodes are probably going to be very not safe
Speaker 1: for work and very not safe for your kids or
Speaker 1: like someone you don't want to have an awkward conversation
Speaker 1: with listening. I'm just saying that right now. So you
Speaker 1: so you know, I'm you know, I'm sure you do,
Speaker 1: but you know, in case you've forgotten, this is like
Speaker 1: you know, it's not gonna you know, it's not gonna
Speaker 1: be like Dante describing you know, what two lovers did.
Speaker 1: It's like so anyway, I was really getting in her guts.
Speaker 2: And yeah, yeah, exactly, Okay, cool.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I just want everyone to know that. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't think any of you have a problem, but you.
Speaker 2: Know, it's gonna be very medieval looks. I don't know
Speaker 2: what to tell you.
Speaker 3: These people love to talk about sex and they're a
Speaker 3: lot more chill with it than we are. And it's
Speaker 3: not our fault, so don't so stop yelling at us.
Speaker 2: I'm not the papacy.
Speaker 1: So that's right, that's right, Well, folks, that is uh,
Speaker 1: that's gonna do it. Uh, you know, for this intro
Speaker 1: to the camera. We'll be back next month. I don't
Speaker 1: know how many stories or how many days we'll cover.
Speaker 1: We're not covering all the stories. You know, if there
Speaker 1: is if there are a couple that you are really uh,
Speaker 1: if you really like them, please respond in this or
Speaker 1: posting the discord or d M or whatever. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: just let us know. Well, you know, we're going to
Speaker 1: try to get We're going to try to get to
Speaker 1: the big ones and you know which whichever one's eleanor
Speaker 1: says she likes, because I certainly don't know where you know,
Speaker 1: what most of them are about anyway. But yeah, we'll
Speaker 1: be back. We'll be back with that next time. And
Speaker 1: uh yeah that you know, that's the show. Hope you
Speaker 1: you guys enjoyed it. You guys who voted for the
Speaker 1: de Cameron vindicated, vindicated After we we went through the
Speaker 1: Name of the Rose, which was awesome, but you know,
Speaker 1: now we get the de Cameron, which is also awesome,
Speaker 1: So yeah it is. Yes, so we'll be back next
Speaker 1: time with that. But yeah, thank you all for listening,
Speaker 1: thank you for subscribing. We'll see you next time.
Speaker 2: Bye ye