The Renaissance Times

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...

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...

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 murde...

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 dar...

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 ea...

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...

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 recomm...

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 i...

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 child...

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...

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...

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 s...

In this final instalment of the First Crusade series, Cameron and Ray bring the long march to its bloody climax with the siege and fall of Jerusalem in 1099. They blend dark humour with historical detail as they recount the Crusaders’ desperate conditions, the political and religious fervour driving them, and the brutal reality of the conquest. Along the way, they explore the parallels between med...

In this penultimate episode of _The Renaissance_’s epic First Crusade arc, Cameron and Ray finally march the crusaders to the gates of Jerusalem — nearly three years and 2,000 miles after they first set off. Along the way, they tackle imperial betrayal, failed negotiations with the Fatimids, the crusaders’ worsening food and supply situation, and the final collapse of faith in the Holy Lance. As a...

In this wild, irreverent, and historically sharp episode of _Renaissance_, Cam and Ray tear into the chaotic early months of 1099. As Raymond of Toulouse and the other Crusader leaders fumble their way down the Levantine coast, we get siege fails, castle bluffs, and political drama worthy of a reality TV series. Cam debuts his AI-generated theme song, shares the origin of Valentine’s Day (hint: it...

In Episode 219 of The Renaissance Times, Cameron and Ray are diving deep into the next leg of the First Crusade. They follow Raymond of Toulouse as he reluctantly resumes the crusade toward Jerusalem, dealing with infighting, cannibalism fatigue, and logistical nightmares. The episode paints a vivid picture of political fragmentation within the Muslim world at the time — from the Fatimids in Egypt...

In this darkly hilarious and horrifying episode, Cam and Ray dive deep into the Crusades—specifically the winter of 1098–1099—where starvation and power games took centre stage. The guys discuss Bohemond’s Machiavellian brilliance in manipulating both Muslims and fellow Crusaders, the siege of Ma’arrat al-Numan, and the desperate, documented acts of cannibalism that shocked even medieval chronicle...

In this episode of _The Renaissance Times_, Cam and Ray dive into the chaos and absurdity that followed the siege of Antioch in 1098. With the Pope’s legate dead, the Crusader princes lose their spiritual leash and immediately devolve into power games, cowardice, and opportunistic violence. We’ve got pandemic panic (complete with medieval nobles doing the ol’ “every man for himself” routine), Chri...

By Christmas of 1097, the Crusaders continued to lay siege to Antioch but it has gone on so long they are running out of supplies. One out of every seven men was dying of hunger. Even a greater percentage of horses were also dying. Because Jesus loved them. Both sides continued to hope for the arrival of reinforcements to turn the tables.   There's something secret here that only members can...

Kerbogha, the governor of Mosul, with a massive coalition army he’d built, on his way to relieve Antioch, paused to eliminate Baldwin in Edessa. One of his new allies was Ridwan of Aleppo, who relied heavily on the Shi’a ‘Order of Assassins’, led by Hassan-i Sabbah, to stay in power. And Sabbah was friends with the Persian polymath Omar Khayyam. So let’s go down some...

This episode finds the Crusaders marching through the Anatolian desert, doing deals with French pirates, selling their armour and watching pack animals sliding down wet mountain paths, until finally reaching the city/fortress of Tarsus – where they immediately turn on and kill each other, before eventually moving on towards Antioch. This was less a unified Christian army and more a coalition...

On his way to Constantinople, Bohemond attacked a village of Christian heretics, because having different opinions should not be tolerated. When he arrived at the Byzantine capital, he met with Alexios but didn’t trust his cooking. After he left, he was quickly followed by Count Raymond of Toulouse, who thought he should be in charge of the allied invasion and had a knack for building barric...

The failure of the People’s Crusade didn’t stop the overall appetite in Europe for pillaging the Holy Land. They still had the Prince’s Crusade. A bunch of rich young men, their vassals and hired mercenaries set out to pillage Jerusalem and anything else appetising along the way. Even, perhaps Constantinople. There's something secret here that only members can see. Probably an au...

At the end of April in 1096, a priest by the name of Volkmar, a monk called Gottschalk, and an army from the Rhineland led by a Count Emich set off on the First Crusade with tens of thousands of soldiers and enthusiastic pilgrims… following a goose that had been inspired by God… and a holy goat. Their first order of business was to kill as many Jews as possible. Why? Because something...

Our guest today, Toby Lester , has worked as a refugee affairs officer for the United Nations, helped with programmes in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, undertaken Peace Corps work in Yemen. He has written also extensively for national publications, including the Smithsonian, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, The American Scholar, The Wilson Quarterly, BBC Magazine, and the Lo...