True Crime Medieval

There were not, in the Middle Ages, any chastity belts. They did not exist. Really, they didn't. They show up later, when enlighted ages say that they were used in the Middle Ages. Then, enlightened ages invented them, and now you can buy them on Amazon. Michelle explains how we know they didn't exist, and how they got invented, and why the later ages that invented them said the Middle Ages did it. Anne, on the other hand, had a lot of fun researching the state of chastity belts now. Oh, and that hacking episode. Pro tip: don't attach your private parts to the internet.

Sometimes when our medieval rulers get assassinated we can see why, and that's the case for Galeazzo Maria Sforza, who was a very bad sort of person. So, not surprisingly, he got stabbed to death by conspirators. Two of them were out for personal gain, but one was a poet who was, he believed, serving the greater communal good, which charms Anne. We tell you all about Sforza and the assassination, which is, really, the point of this episode, but the gem of information for Michelle was that one of the churches of Florence got burnt down on account of spectacular stage effects that were really too spectacular.

During the Fragmentation of Poland, which lasted from 1138 to 1320, Leszek Bialy -- Leszek the White -- managed to reign as the High Duke of Poland four times, the last reign going on for 16 years before it ended, on account of his having been assassinated. That's a long reign, during the age of fragmentation, when the realm was, well, fragmented, and the position of High Duke got passed around pretty often. Leszek was attending a conference of several dukes when he was attacked in his bath, escaping naked on his horse for a short distance before the attackers caught up with him. So, he's well known for that, because it's dramatic, and a great subject for painting, but he's also famous for refusing to go on crusade because there was no beer in the Holy Land. Which is a really true thing; there's documentation.

Henry d'Almain didn't really want to fight in the Second Barons' War, because the leaders of the two sides were both his uncles, and when his uncle Simon de Montfort was killed and mutilated in the last battle, he wasn't part of that, so it was really unseemly for his cousins, the sons of Simon de Montfort, to find him in a church in Italy and slaughter him while he was clinging to the altar. As vengeance goes, it was a really stupid vengeance that didn't settle anything, and only got the de Montfort boys into more trouble. (Their father wouldn't have done such a thing; the de Montforts were going downhill, that generation.) Anne wrassles with her grudging respect for Simon de Montfort, and Michelle finds a really badly behaved Victorian scholar. Because bad behavior transcends the Middle Ages.

We thought it would be interesting to talk about the Crimean Slave Trade, but we had not known that would, essentially, cover all of written history and all of the Old World. But it was on the schedule, and we found it interesting. So! We'll start with the mother of Carlo de Medici, Maddelena, who was captured in or sold from Circassia (it's over on the northeast shore of the Black Sea), and then sold in Crimea to a Venetian who took her to Venice and sold her to Cosimo de Medici, who took her to Florence. The Crimean slave trade was the major location of international slave trading from the 15th century until the 18th century, though it had existed much earlier. Maddelena was one of millions of people who were forcibly passed through the ports of Crimea. We distill a giant topic! But we mention Cervantes. He was one of the millions. Oh, and Captain John Smith. Pocahontas gets a mention. She wasn't one of the slaves. She just got stuck with one of the stories.

Michael Servetus was one of those brilliant people who can be a bit annoying. He read and/or spoke Spanish and French and Hebrew and Latin and Arabic and Greek and who knows what all. He studied and/or wrote books on theology, medicine, mathematics, law, and some other stuff. He wrote poetry. He had a bunch of degrees. But he had to leave the Studium of Zaragoza because of a fight with the High Master; he nearly got the death penalty in Paris for translating Cicero's De Divinatione (but they decided to just make him withdraw the book instead); he was in prison for a few days for injuring a physician who attacked him out of jealousy; he was arrested in France for heresy, and the Catholics were going to burn him at the stake; but he escaped --- and then, instead of going to Italy, he went to Geneva, where John Calvin, who disagreed with Servetus in lots of ways, was instrumental in getting him burned at the stake there. So it was the Protestants who finally killed him, rather than the Catholics. It wasn't John Calvin's finest moment. But on the other hand, Calvin had argued for cutting Servetus's head off rather than burning him with his books. Well, almost all of his theolgy. Three copies of the theology text survived, and Michelle will tell you all about them.

On the second Christmas that the Pilgrims spent in Plymouth (the first had been spent cutting down trees and building houses), the governor of the colony, William Bradford, gathered the men together so that they could all go do the Lord's work (which was probably cutting down trees and building houses). Some of the colonists were newly arrived, and hadn't come for religious reasons, but more for finding wealth and opportunity in the New World. This portion of the men did not think that Christmas didn't exist and should not be recognized. They thought it did exist and they should get to have celebratory fun. So they talked Bradford into letting them go, and they went back and played games in the street. Bradford was surprised when he found them, since he thought they were praying and meditating in their homes about whether or not Christmas actually existed, and when they had prayed and meditated enough, they would figure out that it didn't, and then they would come help out with the Lord's work. Which was not, at all, in any way, playing games in the street. Anne gets to talk about Christmas and Colonial America, and Michelle found a rabbit hole that was so seductive she didn't read anything about William Bradford and the Naughty Boys, because she had to learn all about John Taylor, Water Poet, who had a lot to say about the dreadfulness of banning Christmas and, we've decided, is the protagonist of Michelle's next historical novel. Happy Holidays!

So, there were those two boys in the Tower of London, Edward V, King of England, who was 12, and Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York, who was 9, and they disappeared one summer after their uncle Richard declared them illegitimate and became King Richard III. And it was a total mystery as to what happened to them, and still is, and Richard III was not king for very long before Henry Tudor, who was on one side descended from Tudur ap Gronwy Fychan, which made the English no never mind, but on the other side descended from King Edward III, and so was a claimant to the throne of England by blood if you squinted your eyes and looked sideways, was a very good claimant to the throne on account of winning the Battle of Bosworth, after which King Richard was buried under a future car park. Henry was king, then, and there weren't any more men left from the family of Richard III and Edward IV, because the princes in the tower had disappeared and everybody, including us, thought they were dead. But maybe they weren't ! Maybe they got away! They maybe escaped the Tower and went to Flanders! And that kind of imagining allowed for Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck, both of whom, four years apart, claimed to be either Edward V, or Richard Duke of York, or even their cousin George. Both of them became the center of rebellions. Both of them lost the fight for the crown. One was allowed to be a castle worker and the other was kept at court until he misbehaved once too often and got executed. So we explain all that. And Anne explains all of the pretenders to the English throne. And what is Michelle's rabbit hole, this episode? The ACTUAL BED that was made for the wedding of Henry and Elizabeth. No, really. She got a book about it and it's her favorite part of this whole hoopla.

In the summer of 1358, French peasants took up arms -- this means mostly sticks -- and attacked the nobility. They did indeed murder some of them, but mostly, almost entirely, the burnt down property. They didn't even loot. They just destroyed stuff. The nobility had gotten problematic, certainly, what with running away from important battles and then trying to squeeze more out of the peasantry so they could pay for further military adventures, though apparently not any training. So the peasants were fed up, and they put great fear into the nobility, who then imagined that the peasants were committing lots and lots of atrocities, so the nobility had to go commit atrocities on the peasants, so as to make them harmless. It was a really really really bad summer.

Vasvilkas, the Grand Duke of Lithuania, got assassinated for a reason that Michelle considers the stupidest assassination reason the podcast has seen so far, that being that when Vasvilkas, the Monk Prince, decided to give up the throne so he could go back to being a monk, he gave it to a brother in law, and another brother in law thought that Vasvilkas should have made him a co-ruler, so he murdered Vasvilkas. As MIchelle points out, he still didn't get to be co-ruler. So she went off to read about the changing legend of Vasvilkas, and Anne got to find out about the sacred grass snakes of Lithuania, and they were worth it, let me tell you.

Sometimes students riot, maybe because of tuition hikes, or because a coach got fired for a sex abuse scandal, or because their team won a game, or because their team lost a game, or because the university became integrated, or because the government is moving into authoritarianism, or because the government already was authoritarian but is getting worse, and sometimes because the pub gave them bad wine. In the last case, around 100 people might just end up dead. Welcome to Oxford, 14th Century! The St. Scholastica Day Riot lasted for days, some of the students were scalped, university buildings were looted, there was a whole bunch of bell ringing, and the king got involved. Worst student riot ever. Hands down.

Philip, the King of France, married Ingeborg of Denmark, and it would have been a really great political alliance, except that after the wedding night Philip wanted out. So he asked the pope to annul the marriage, saying that it hadn't been consummated, on account of witchcraft, and he sent Ingeborg to a convent. But Ingeborg said the marriage HAD been consummated, and the pope wouldn't annul the marriage, so Philip had a genealogy made up showing that his marriage to Ingeborg violated canon law because they were too closely related, since Philip's first wife had been Ingeborg's first cousin once removed, but it was a fake genealogy, Philip's first wife being Ingeborg's fourth cousin once removed, and nobody believed it. They eventually got reconciled, after the wife that Philip had married bigamously in the interim died. So there's that. Michelle got so interested in the idea of using witchcraft to make husbands impotent (in the middle ages of course, not now) that she ordered a book on it, so we can look forward to that.

Sandwiched between two legendary Holy Roman Emperors -- his father, Frederick Barbarossa, and his son, Frederick II -- Henry VI, who was not legendary, and who died at the age of 31 (his dad died at 67 and his son at 55; lots more time to rack up legendary activities), nevertheless managed to acquire a nickname -- "The Cruel" -- in large part because of his belief in the efficacy of torturing political opponents in public. Besides discussing Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor, Anne explains how many Crusades there were and why Henry was all set to go off on Crusade #3 1/2 when he died, and Michelle is delighted to tell you ALL about that time when Henry didn't die, with the rest of the nobles at a meeting, when the floor broke and they all fell into the cesspit. Well, Henry didn't. He was either hanging onto a window or having a side meeting in another room. She's got a poem, too, written in Latin. But she reads it to you in English.

Eorpwald, the ruler of East Anglia c 624, after his father died, converted to Christianity because Edwin, the Deorian king, converted to Christianity, and managed to connect pretty much the entire eastern coastal kingdoms of England. So that lasted a few years, but then he got assassinated, on account of having converted to Christianity, and East Anglia became pagan again for a while. Eorpwald, the first ruler in England to be killed for being Christian, was therefore a martyr, and a saint. His murder is our crime, so we talk about that, but really, Anne gets to talk about Old English runes and the Norfolk Lavender Farm, and Michelle, to her great delight, gets to discuss Sutton Hoo, and really, that's why she put Eorpwald on our list.

In 1134, Melisende, the Queen of Jerusalem, who had, as a child, been raised to be the Queen of Jerusalem all by herself, was sharing the throne with Fulk, her husband, who did not like sharing. So he tried to get rid of her, by accusing her of adultery with her cousin Hugh of Jaffa, which was not a thing that was actually happening. And when Hugh fled (on account of not wanting to be in a duel with a guy bigger than The Mountain in Game of Thrones), Fulk sent somebody to assassinate him, The assassination failed, but Hugh was badly hurt, and the Council of Jerusalem, which had been very happy with Melisende as queen, and thought Fulk was some snooty newcomer from France, supported a palace coup, and Fulk really did not have much power after that. We discuss the badnesses of Fulk, and explain why, although Melisende ruled for 30 years, she hasn't been discussed much until recently. (Spoiler alert: Victorians. As usual.)

Hugh de Lacy, one of the Anglo-Normans who was sent to bring order to Ireland (where the Anglo-Normans were having a lot of trouble), was inspecting the military installation he was having built at Durrow (where St. Columba had previously built a monastery), when he was murdered by one of the Irish who wanted him dead, by being hit on the head with an ax. So there you are. There is your crime. We discuss this, yes we do, but really we are discussing Hugh de Lacy because he built Trim Castle, and Michelle really really really wanted to talk about Trim Castle. So she does. We learn a lot about Anglo-Norman castles, really. But Anne still wonders about where the best place to hide your murder ax might be, because under your tunic just does not sound right.

In 1199, when Richard the Lionheart died, there were two possible claimants to the throne of England -- his younger brother John, and his nephew Arthur. John was a bit over 30 years old; Arthur was about 12. John, the youngest surviving son of Henry II, was by Norman law the rightful heir. Arthur, the eldest son of Geoffrey, John's older brother, was by the laws of Brittany, the rightful heir. Also, John was in England and Arthur was in Brittany. Also, John was the person who was, well, John. Ruthless, is what he was. You can guess who it is who won, especially since you've already heard of King John and Arthur of Brittany sort of fell through the cracks of history. Except that the French really like him, and wrote a bunch of plays, and the Victorians loved him bunches because he was so pathetic. Michelle explains all that.

By the 15th century, Nuremberg was making a reputation and a lot of money out of being the main saffron import location in Europe. So the town burgesses took it very seriously when spice merchants sold saffron that wasn't fully saffron, but had various other things added to it. Very seriously indeed. So seriously that it was possible to be, as Johnanes Ryneken was, in 1444, executed for being a very bad spice merchant indeed. Anne especially enjoyed this episode, because she got to talk ALL about saffron, but Michelle was Quite Annoyed at the lack of scholarly citations. Also there was all that German. But there were some historical novels! With saffron!

The de Mariscos were a family that continually got into trouble, on account of continually misbehaving. When William de Marisco was executed at the Tower of London in 1242, it was ostensibly for attempting to have the king murdered, but since he'd also been pirating from the Isle of Lundy, and murdering messengers, he was going to end up being executed at some point anyway. Besides explaining the de Mariscos, we have two rabbit holes! Anne is fascinated by the Isle of Lundy, and Michelle is fascinated by Matthew Paris, and really, there's a lot going on in this episode.

Snorri Sturluson, the great Icelandic poet and historian and lawspeaker of the Althing, got involved in Norwegian/Icelandic politics, and it ended very badly. For him, for one thing, as the king of Norway arranged for 70 men to stab Snorri in his basement, and for Iceland, which devolved into chieftain battles and eventually unified with Norway and the Norwegian king became the boss of everything. The Althing still exists, though, and Iceland is independent now, and Snorri is one of the most influential poets of the early middle ages. We explain all this. Anne still wonders why you need 70 people to stab somebody in his basement, and Michelle is shocked, shocked, I tell you, that there isn't any historical fiction about all this, though she is slightly mollified by the fact that there is now a Snorri ap, for Android and IOS. Well, then.