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...

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...

<p>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...

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&#8230;. which, predictably, the church absolutely could not stand. We...

<p>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...

The Jews have been expelled, the lepers have been burned, and somebody clearly had a plan&#8230;. we just don&#8217;t know who. We dig into the mechanics of medieval conspiracy theories, how the same story spread across...

<p>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...

<p>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...

<p>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...

<p></p> <p>We’re still talking about the Great Leper Scare of 1321 – where lepers, Jews, Muslims, and the devil himself are allegedly conspiring to poison the wells and topple Christendom. It’s the juicy tale of how a...

<p></p> <p>We are taking a break from Michelangelo to talk about lepers, Jews and… WITCHES! </p> <p>Today we start with the 1321 leper panic in France, where thousands of people were burned alive or locked up for life...

<p></p> <p>On this episode, Michelangelo is done waiting around in Rome — he packs up and heads back to Florence, effectively ghosting the Pope before the Pope can ghost him any harder. Julius II is furious and tries...

<p></p> <p>Michelangelo gets summoned to Rome by Pope Julius II — the baddest, most belligerent pope who ever lived — to build the greatest tomb the world has ever seen. Mickey heads to Carrara for six months to find...

<p></p> <p>In this episode of The Renaissance Times, Cameron and Ray dive deep into Michelangelo’s three extraordinary marble and painted roundels — the tondos — created during his Florence years between 1501 and 1506...

In this episode of The Renaissance Times (Episode 225), Cameron and Ray return to Florence to explore Michelangelo’s earliest surviving sculpture, Madonna of the Stairs (Madonna della Scala)—a marble relief carved when...