Black Death 

Your lectures are fantastic .. please dont stop making these videos.

Bacteria not a virus. @ 7:35 the narration and the caption listed the Black Death as: Yersinia pestis (italicized) virus; however, this might just be a miss understanding between virus vs bacteria or a simple miss print. It's really not a virus but a Gram-negative, rod-shaped coccobacillus, a facultative anaerobic bacterium. Not a huge distinction or difference, but a genuine difference none the less. Great videos, you have an awesome understanding of history. Thanks.

I can't thank you enough for your videos. I have been looking for quality, trustworthy videos from a Christian perspective and I am so happy to find yours. You provide clear, rich information which make me feel as if I'm sitting in your lecture hall.

I love your lectures, not completely dry but still retaining a sense of gravitas.

Biological Warfare is by far my biggest fear.

I really don't think it's possible to overstate the ripple effect this particular plague outbreak had on world history. A large book would just scratch the surface, not just the immediate changes but the chain reaction these changes brought to future events. At times I think it sowed the seeds of doubt about the RC church and its clergy in the minds of the people. The weakness and inability of the pope and clergy to have any effect had to make people wonder about its theology and practices. A large population puts pressure on the agricultural system. The good land gets overused and quickly becomes poor in nutrients. This causes poorer land or even unsuitable land to be tilled to increase acreage. Poor nutrients not just effect crop yield but crops become more susceptible to diseases. It really starts a vicious endless spiral downward. From a land use/quality perspective the plague was beneficial. At some point the whole system had to break because farm technology was so primitive. Still hard to wrap my mind around the sheer numbers of dead. With the emergence of a super bug or virus along with fast global transport, we are just as suceptible today as the 1300's. We should not be sitting smugly thinking modern medicine makes this impossible.

Yersinia pestis is a bacteria, still a few cases in the US yearly, and not a virus. Other than that, excellent lecture.

I am somewhat familiar with the history of the plague/black death, and this lecture is right on the mark about the impact of the plague on European civilization, economics, and the church. A really fine, well-done lecture, as are all of them I've heard so far.

Great lectures Ryan! Keep up the good work. I love history, absolutely fascinating!

I enjoyed this. I recommend Connie Willis' "The Doomsday Book", a science fiction/historical fiction account of a modern history student (well, a history student in a few decades when historians use time travel for research) going back to the Middle Ages for research, but accidentally landing in the Black Death. Extremely moving and powerful story.

Thanks for the great history lectures,Dr. Reeves! I feel I am getting a University education in Church History...btw,Dr. Dorsey Armstrong (Purdue) has a fantastic series on The Great Courses Plus which is quite exhaustive regarding The Great Mortality.She is an authority on the Middle Ages and a very enjoyable prof.

I really love your work I to have a deep love of History .Keep up your great work Ryan.

These lectures are quite simply a little bit of heaven! Fantastic!

At around 21:30 in the video, you make a comment about the Flagellant movement and make it sound as if it was associated with the Catholic Church. Actually, the Catholic Church ruled that this movement was heretical. (This isn't a complaint about your videos. I love this series, and I think you do a great job. Thank you so much for doing these!)

7:15 everywhere but Poland

That oriental rat flea is quite heinous looking. So small and -oh so much devastation.

Officially a fan

Your slide at 12:05 is misleading. 1420 is 70 years after the plague. Many people tried to flee cities, or left after the plague was over. A number of 30,000 doesn't reveal how many died versus how many left. We know that after the plague, people started to migrate around Europe to look for work. Peasants were now much freer to trade their labour for a higher wage than ever before, and landowners were desperate to find labour, so I would not expect peasants to stay on a small island of which the landholders had already died. Instead they would have migrated to the mainland to look for work. In short, you need a figure that is tied closer to the end of the plague, around 1350.

Was there anywhere in Europe that the plague didn't have much affect?

How did the economic effect the Black Death?

Poland looks safe from it

I'm confused about the "Little Ice Age" and how it fits into the plague. The dates of this event begin usually after the reformation.

This is the part where we are accused of "poisoning the wells"and countless of us killed in pogroms.שלום

Is it true that Jews sustained little to no casulties during the black death outbreaks ?

Do you know on rosh hashana our siddur prayer books today tell us to go out side of town or village to throw bread crumbs or say prayers near wells or water... We were blamed for poisoning Christian wells and were killed in mass by locals in pogroms...Its still in Orthodox Siddur today. Amazing since the Sephardic Siddur does not do this since they lived in non Christian lands...שלום

Population crunch. Why dont leaders adress this issue more.