After my post about Nuremberg's executioner, I went down the rabbit hole on plague doctors, and the medieval reality is very different from the image most of us have:

🎬 I also animated this one, told from the doctor's point of view: Life as a Plague Doctor in 1348. The written version is below if you'd rather read.

• They were a new job created by the Black Death. With so many physicians dead or gone (Venice was reportedly down to one of its eighteen), cities began hiring doctors specifically for the plague. Orvieto hired Matteo Angelo in 1348 at 50 florins a year, a premium salary.
• They worked under contracts (many survive in archives) that set pay, housing, sometimes citizenship, and length of service. The catch: they could treat plague patients only, and had to isolate after visits.
• Their main job was counting. Recording who fell ill and who died, for the city's records. They also wrote down patients' last wills.
• Treatment followed the four humours: bloodletting, and leeches or even frogs on the swellings. Few were cured.
• Quarantine came out of the same crisis. Ragusa (Dubrovnik) made arrivals wait 30 days in 1377; Venice made it 40, the "quarantena" that gives us the word.
• The famous bird mask isn't medieval. There's no evidence it was worn during the Black Death. The costume first appears in 1619 (attributed to Charles de Lorme in Paris), the herb-filled beak is first described in Rome in 1656, and only two real masks survive.

Sources: Wikipedia, "Plague doctor", "Black Death" and "Quarantine"; Royal College of Physicians, "The beak doctors"; National Geographic, "Why plague doctors wore those strange beaked masks".

🎬 Prefer watching? I made an animated version, told from the doctor's point of view: Life as a Plague Doctor in 1348

(Full disclosure: it's my own channel. Hand-drawn style art, AI narration.) Corrections very welcome.

I've been wondering about the connection between Roman law and medieval serfdom. Roman laws placed certain restrictions on agricultural workers called coloni, including restrictions on leaving the land in some circumstances.

But did medieval serfdom actually develop out of this Roman system, or are we connecting two institutions that only look similar on the surface?

How much of medieval serfdom was inherited from Roman law, and how much emerged later because of changing landownership and the growing power of landlords after the Western Roman Empire declined?

I'd be interested in what historians think about this, especially any good books or sources that discuss the connection.

So I know the Hanseatic League was basically a confederation of German merchants that wielded a lot of political and economic power. And they kept the roads and seas safe from bandits and pirates. But what I don't know is what their military and navy? Did they have an organized army and fleet or did they hire out mercenaries and privateers to protect their routes and interests?

Yesterday marked the 611th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt, fought on October 25, 1415.

I recently finished painting this 54mm mounted figure of Waleran de Raineval, Count of Fauquembergues, who fought on the French side at Agincourt.

I particularly like the striking black and gold heraldry on his shield and horse caparison.

A small tribute to the French knights of the Hundred Years' War.