The End of the World

Day 2 of the Black Death!

Daily Objectives:
 

• Journal (click here!)
• MME: End of the World
• video clip: Flagellants
• NO LEFT SIDE ASSIGNED, but you could do a student choice one for extra credit.
• Time at the end of class was given to make sure notebooks were in order before being turned in.

Right side notes: 

MAIN IDEA: People thought the world was ending as the plague spread and nothing could prevent it.

Words Worth Knowing:

• Death obsession: surrounded by the dying, people humanized death in literature, art, and superstition. Death was now seen as skeleton who rode his horse through towns, danced people to their deaths and often held a scythe. (Skeletal figure with a scythe sound familiar?)
• Pestilence: another name for the plague and what it was called during the outbreak. Also called The Great Mortality. The phrase "Black Death" wasn't used until the 18th century.
• Flagellant: a person who whipped themselves as penance for the sins that brought the plague. Brotherhood of the Flagellants would walk through Europe beating themselves with iron studded whips for 33.5 days (a day for every year of Christ's life) and people would pay money, gather in groups to pray and some would even catch flagellant blood to wipe it on themselves or their children as protection from the plague.
• Doctors: beak-masked men who treated plague victims. Wore bird-like masks to prevent the miasma (death fog) and smell of the bodies as they worked. 

IF YOU WERE GONE:

Watch this BBC documentary on the plague and death culture in Europe during that time. The Black Death (48 mins) - warning: can get kind of gross. :)

Check out the MME  here.