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 ann
We’ve been doing this for thirteen years. Two hundred and thirty-nine episodes. Three hundred and twelve hours of audio. One pretty good explanation of how a goldsmith with no architectural training ended up building the largest masonry dome in the world.
We don’t do hot takes. We don’t do ten-minute summaries. We don’t do “and that’s why he was complicated.” We take a story — the Medici, Brunelleschi’s Duomo, the Avignon Popes — and we sit with it until we understand it.
That usually takes four to whatever hours. Sometimes more. We’re aware this is unhinged. You’ll come for the Renaissance and stay for two friends arguing about whether Cosimo de’ Medici was a saint or a banker. (Mostly banker.)
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 -…
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,…
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…
We are taking a break from Michelangelo to talk about lepers, Jews and… WITCHES! Today we start with the 1321 leper panic in France, where thousands of people…
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…
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…
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…
In this episode, Cameron and Ray return to the early 1500s, a time when Michelangelo was transitioning from a famous Florentine artist to a "superhuman" international celebrity. The…
Started podcasting in 2004 when nobody knew what one was. Twenty-two years and seven shows later he's still arguing about whether Cosimo de' Medici was a saint or a banker. Mostly banker. Reads Burckhardt for fun.
“If a Renaissance pope didn't poison at least one cardinal he wasn't really pope.”
History degree from James Madison. Used to teach. Now reads primary sources in his garage and emails Cam to argue. Specialises in the bit where everyone's lying and we still have to figure out what happened.
“Show me a Renaissance saint and I'll show you a ledger he was trying to fix.”
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