The Renaissance Times

16:39

The Smell of Evil – The Renaissance #247

The Renaissance Times ·

2026/10/07

We’re deep in the witchy end of the Renaissance now…. women falling into trances, communing with the dead, healing the sick, and charging for it, which honestly sounds like a pretty solid business model. Meanwhile men called the Căluşari are dressing as women, leaping around with swords, and apparently killing people with no legal consequences whatsoever. The church is not thrilled about any of this, but it’s been going on for thousands of years and a strongly worded sermon

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17:40

Werewolves Lost Again – The Renaissance #246

The Renaissance Times ·

2026/09/18

We’ve finally made it to witch trials…. sort of. First: an 80-year-old man in 1692 Livonia confessing to being a werewolf, werewolves who apparently lose battles against sorcerers armed with broomsticks, and a fertility cult called the Benandanti who leave their bodies in the shape of butterflies to fight for good crops using fennel stalks. Then the Waldensians, who just wanted to preach poverty and got 700 years of massacre for it. And then the witch trials of 1430s Switzerland, where

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16:13

Head on a Platter – The Renaissance #245

The Renaissance Times ·

2026/08/27

We’ve been building up to witches for a while now, and this episode we take a detour back to the second century CE…. because of course we do. Before Christians started accusing Jews of ritual murder, cannibalism, and orgies, Romans were accusing Christians of exactly the same thing. The stories just get recycled. Then we get into women flying at night with the goddess Diana, Herodias engineering the head of John the Baptist on a platter, and how 1,500 years later she somehow ends up

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13:20

The Devil’s Recipe Book – The Renaissance #244

The Renaissance Times ·

2026/08/07

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 wrote the first book on witchcraft in 1435, and a judge who apparently knew an extraordinary amount of detail about secret devil-worshipping covens…. under torture, of course, which is famously reliable. By 1438 the template is basically set: broomsticks, covens, babies in pots, and

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13:26

Blame the Jews (The Plague Made Them Do It) – The...

The Renaissance Times ·

2026/07/17

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 planets. Pope Clement VI tries to point out that Jews are dying of the plague too, which you’d think would settle the matter.The post Blame the Jews (The Plague Made Them Do It) – The Renaissance #243 appeared first on The Renaissance Times.

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18:36

The Silence of Marguerite – The Renaissance #242

The Renaissance Times ·

2026/07/03

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 through three of the great Beguine mystics, including Marguerite Porete, who spent 18 months on trial giving the Inquisition the silent finger before being burned alive in Paris in 1310. Her book survived, was read seriously by theologians for centuries, and wasn’t

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20:26

Rats, Jews, and the Man with the Flute – The...

The Renaissance Times ·

2026/06/26

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 at a speed that makes you go “hmm,” and why the whole thing is basically a template that’s still being photocopied 700 years later. Also: the Pied Piper of Hamelin was apparently a real event, and the rats didn’t show up until 275 years after the

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18:29

A Goodly Sum – The Renaissance #240

The Renaissance Times ·

2026/06/03

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 coincidence. We also get a forged letter from the future, a secret room full of incriminating ram-skin, and a dragon that God apparently sent to signal it was time to murder somebody.The post A Goodly Sum – The Renaissance #240 appeared first on The Renaissance Times.

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26:41

The Tall Dark Man with a Scimitar – The Renaissance #239

The Renaissance Times ·

2026/05/28

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 nothing more than the smell of burning human flesh. Under torture, we’ve got Jews implicating the the Muslim King of Granada, the Sultan of Babylon, and a tall dark man with a scimitar who was apparently just standing around at the conspiracy meeting ready to cut

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25:45

POISON IN THE WELL – The Renaissance #238 (The...

The Renaissance Times ·

2026/05/11

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 rumour spiralled into a pyramid scheme of scapegoating that ended with 160 Jews burned alive in a ditch. Today we talk about how it was connected to the Great Famine of the early 14th century and a bunch of Christian teen beggars who decided to force Jews to convert.There's

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23:09

Burn the Lepers – The Renaissance #237

The Renaissance Times ·

2026/04/30

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 were burned alive or locked up for life based on tortured confessions of a supposed plot to poison the water supply and take over the world. Along the way we get hot and heavy with the French royal family — adultery, assassinations, a king who

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23:14

Ghosting the Pope – The Renaissance #236

The Renaissance Times ·

2026/04/21

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 every trick in the book to drag him back, including leaning on Florence’s own leader Soderini, who knows you can’t bully a prima donna and writes the most flattering letter of recommendation in

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29:25

The Warrior Pope and the Marble Dreamer – The...

The Renaissance Times ·

2026/04/06

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 the perfect marble, starts dreaming of flooding Rome with giant statues, and then one of the most famous sculptures from antiquity gets dug out of the ground right in front of him. We also get into why Julius

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28:20

The Price Just Doubled: Michelangelo, the Doni Tondo,...

The Renaissance Times ·

2026/03/21

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. Beginning with the origins of the tondo format itself (those circular domestic artworks that started life as elaborately painted birth trays brought to mothers who’d survived childbirth), the

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18:47

Renaissance #225 – Teenage Michelangelo: The Buff...

The Renaissance Times ·

2025/10/15

The post Renaissance #225 – Teenage Michelangelo: The Buff Baby Jesus and the Marble Prodigy (Michelangelo, part 3) appeared first on The Renaissance Times.

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18:47

Renaissance #225 – Teenage Michelangelo: The Buff...

The Renaissance Times ·

2025/10/15

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 he was just fifteen. They marvel at his prodigious skill, discussing how this modest, unfinished piece already reveals his genius for depth, motion, and emotional complexity. Along the way, they

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15:41

Renaissance #224 – Privilege, Paint, and Patronage...

The Renaissance Times ·

2025/09/16

In this episode of Renaissance, Cameron and Ray continue their exploration of Michelangelo’s life and career, digging into the family connections, social structures, and cultural forces that shaped his rise. They trace Michelangelo’s privileged entry into the Medici circle, compare his fortunes to Leonardo da Vinci’s tougher climb, and dive into Florence’s vibrant humanist culture of the late 15th century. The conversation ranges from patronage networks and family loyalty, to the artistic

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15:41

Renaissance #224 – Privilege, Paint, and Patronage...

The Renaissance Times ·

2025/09/16

In this episode of Renaissance, Cameron and Ray continue their exploration of Michelangelo’s life and career, digging into the family connections, social structures, and cultural forces that shaped his rise. They trace Michelangelo’s privileged entry into the Medici circle, compare his fortunes to Leonardo da Vinci’s tougher climb, and dive into Florence’s vibrant humanist culture of the late 15th century. The

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18:26

Renaissance #223 – Mickey The Angel (Michelangelo...

The Renaissance Times ·

2025/09/03

The post Renaissance #223 – Mickey The Angel (Michelangelo part 1) appeared first on The Renaissance Times.

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18:26

Renaissance #223 – Mickey The Angel (Michelangelo...

The Renaissance Times ·

2025/09/03

Cameron and Ray dive into the life and legend of Michelangelo, kicking off what promises to be a long-running series on one of history’s most celebrated artists. Drawing on Vasari’s Lives of the Artists and contemporary sources, they explore Michelangelo’s early years, the mythology surrounding his divine protection, his family’s noble (and possibly invented) lineage, and the role of Florence in shaping his

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