Author: Anne Brannen

31. Christmas Episode: The Murder of Thomas Becket, Canterbury, England 1170

Henry II and Thomas Becket having an argument
Here, in a 13th century manuscript, we see Henry II and Thomas Becket having an argument. Which of them, exactly, is winning the argument at the moment we do not know; the long battle will be ending, however, when some knights at Henry’s court, mistaking a temper tantrum for a royal dictum, go and slice the top of Thomas’s head off. From Peter of Langtoft’s Chronicle, British Library Royal 20 A II.

After years of annoying each other, and fighting about the boundaries between church power and royal power, Henry II of England lost his temper with Thomas Becket, at Christmas, and said something (we don’t actually know what, exactly) which caused four knights who didn’t know him very well (and hence didn’t realize that he lost his temper all the time and would be getting over it in a while) to go down to Canterbury and murder the Archbishop. Bad career move, really. And Thomas Becket, who was then after all a martyr, started healing people and performing miracles pretty much immediately.  Henry was very sorry. Or, at least, he said so. In this episode, we explain it all for you, and Michelle has a lot to say about drama.  Not surprisingly.

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30. Albigensian Crusade, Languedoc 1209-1229

Beziers cathedral
The cathedral in Béziers was rebuilt after the Crusaders destroyed the one there before, but it was, as this one is, fortified. So was the city. A military mistake allowed the Crusaders to take the city and kill everyone they could, Catholics and Cathars alike. But to be fair, the fortifications wouldn’t have helped for long — the Crusaders were well heeled, well trained, and ruthless. (Photo is from Wikipedia.)

Once the Latin Church figured out how to justify slaughtering people who weren’t believing the things they were supposed to believe, according to the Latin Church, it was a short leap from slaughtering them in the Holy Land to slaughtering them in Europe.  The Cathars were being very wrong, very wrong indeed, on account of being dualists and not believing in things like baptism and the resurrection. So the Pope called a crusade against them.  And the French monarchy was glad to help, since the Languedoc — where most of the Cathars were hanging out — was rich and enticing territory to annex.  To France. Which is why, in the Languedoc today, they mostly speak French rather than Occitan. Even though “languedoc” is from “langue d’oc“– “language of òc.”  That’s one way languages get endangered.

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29. People’s Crusade, France and Germany, 1096

Dore's engraving of massacred People's Crusade
Above, the soldiers of the Second Crusade come upon what’s left of the People’s Crusade, lying where it got ambushed at Civetot. Joseph François Michaud’s Histoire des croisades finally got published in 6 volumes in 1840 — in 1875, Gustave Doré illustrated, copiously, a special edition; this engraving is found there.

At the end of 1095, Pope Urban II called for  the first of what would be several crusades, wherein the Latin Christian Europeans were supposed to go take the Holy Land away from the Islamic rulers who held it at that time.  So the nobility of Europe, mostly from France, started putting together forces and money, so as to travel and fight.  That was the Prince’s Crusade, the First Crusade, and it would leave Europe in the summer of 1096.  It takes a while to gather the wherewithal needed for such a venture.  Unless you just plan on being a mob!  In that case, you can be the People’s Crusade, and leave for the Holy Land in April! It takes no time at all to gather money if you just steal it from other people.  The People’s Crusade slaughtered the Jewish communities that they came across, creating the first of the giant massacres of the Jews of Europe which would continue on through the Middle Ages. They never  got to the Holy Land; those of them that survived the journey (and the Hungarians, who managed to kill a lot of them)  managed to get as far as Civetot, where the Seljuk Turks slaughtered them.  Your hosts aren’t sorry about this.

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28. The Sicilian Vespers, Sicily, Kingdom of Sicily, Easter 1282

Sicilian Vespers, Hayez 1846
Painted in 1846 by Francesco Hayez, this presentation of the Sicilian Vespers (and oh, there are so many — go google Sicilian Vespers and click on images — they go on and on and on) shows us the outraged Sicilian woman; the Frenchman who assaulted her dying on the ground, in unimpressive clothes; a much better dressed Sicilian standing over him; lots of other Frenchmen getting massacred; and, oddly, a host of Sicilians storming out of the church, to join the fray. Since everybody was hanging out outside the church, waiting for the vespers service, it’s unclear to us what they were all doing in there, other than getting ready to swarm dramatically out the doors when all hell broke loose. Hayez painted three versions of the Sicilian Vespers — this one is held in the Galleria nazionale d’arte moderna e contemporanea,  in Rome.

On Easter Monday, 1282, the Sicilians revolted against the French government that had been in place since 1266; in the course of a few weeks 4,000 to 8,000 French people were slaughtered, depending on what source you are reading. We explain how things got to such a pass, and Michelle has a lovely trip down a rabbit hole wherein she discovers the awesomeness of Stephen Runciman.  George Orwell makes a cameo appearance.

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27. Halloween Episode: Arche the Miller and his Drunken Buddies Pretend to be Ghosts, Cambridgeshire, England 1592

Talking skeleton from the middle ages
Medieval ghosts usually looked like the humans they had been, only much paler, but they more and more began to look like skeletons. Either way, the main thing they did was waylay living humans in order to give them orders — either concerning how the living could manage to stay out of Purgatory, or how the living could help the dead get out of Purgatory (by finding the stuff they stole in life and giving it back, for instance). Here, a living person is waylaid by a skeletonized dead person, clearly giving unwanted instructions. From a 14th C French Book of Hours, held at the Esztergom Metropolitan Library, Hungary.

When Arche the Miller and a bunch of his cohorts got very very drunk and pretended to be ghosts, they were living in Early Modern England, but they were pretending to be Medieval Ghosts, new ghosts having not been invented yet. In this episode, we explain medieval ghosts and how to pretend to be one, tell medieval ghosts stories, and try to wrap our minds around the well-known medieval forensic tool wherein murdered bodies bleed when the murderer comes by. Happy Halloween!

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26. Robert the Bruce Kills John Comyn, Dumfries, Scotland 1306

The Death of John Comyn
In this rendition of the death of John Comyn, which indeed Robert the Bruce caused, by stabbing him, we see the angry and fierce Bruce and a sort of angelic and serene dead Comyn. The clothes are wrong, but that’s the Victorians for you; also, we don’t actually know if the killing was outright murder or self defense; we do know that since Comyn had thrown Bruce under the Edward I of England bus, Bruce was not in a good mood. Henri Félix Emmanuel Philippoteaux, “Death of Comyn,” from Cassell’s Illustrated History of England, vol. 1, p. 330.

Robert the Bruce was not yet King of the Scots when he stabbed John Comyn in front of the high altar in Greyfriars’ Church in Dumfries. But he would be, pretty soon, in spite of being excommunicated for violence in the church. We explain the fight for the crown of Scotland and the interfering bossiness of Edward I of England, but we don’t explain whether the Bruce murdered Comyn or it was self-defense, because we don’t really know.  Because chroniclers. 

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The Great Cause genealogical chart
As promised, or threatened, depending on how you look at it, a lovely graph of the family connections of the contenders for the Scottish Crown, in the Great Cause. It is a doozy. Created by Czar Brodie; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitors_for_the_Crown_of_Scotland

25. The Viking Raid on Lindisfarne, Northumbria 793

Viking Raid
A nicely terrifying illustration of the pagan Viking hordes showing up in England. From the early 12th century Miscellany on the Life of St. Edmund, from Bury St. Edmunds, now held at the Pierpont Morgan Library (M.736, f7r).

It was quite a shock to the rest of Europe when the Vikings, who had been raiding in Scandinavia and making little raids occasionally in Europe, pillaged The Holy Isle of Lindisfarne.  The Vikings were pumped, though; it was a very profitable day. That was the beginning of the Viking Age.  We discuss the Viking Age, why it was clear to the Vikings that raiding (as opposed to thievery) was not a crime, and why Hnefatafl, which everybody calls Viking chess, isn’t really like chess at all.

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24. Philip IV Slaughters the French Knights Templar, Paris, 1310

Execution of the Templars
Philip IV and some of the members of his court, having previously executed several dozen French Templars, observe the execution of the surviving leaders of the Order, as imagined by the Bedford Master. c. 1415, Paris, in a copy of Boccaccio’s “Des cas des nobles hommes et femmes.” (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Fr.226, f.265)

After having lost Cyprus, their last holding in the Middle East, the Knights Templar no longer had a bunch of Christian pilgrims to protect, so they tried to figure out what to do next.  Find new mandate? Join the Hospitalers? Well, no, neither one, darn it. Philip IV of France, who owed a whole hell of a lot of money to the order, strong armed the Pope, with the result that the order got disbanded and the French Templars got exterminated. We’re both annoyed at Philip, Pope Clement V, Sir Walter Scott, and anybody continuing to tell lies about the Templars.  It’s not that we approve of them, really.  We just hate the lies. Oh, and we think King Denis I of Portugal is awesome.

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23. The Sheer Dreadfulness of Hugh Despenser the Younger, Hereford, England, 1326

Excecution of Hugh Despenser
After his horrible execution, Hugh Despenser was quartered, and the various pieces of him sent around — the head went to be displayed over London Bridge, as usual. Here, we see all his pieces, before they get dispersed; in the foreground, Isabella of France and Roger Mortimer discuss how well the day has gone and where to go get lunch. (15th Century, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits, Division occidentale, Cote: Français 2675)

It’s true that Edward II was a very bad ruler; one of his problems was that he would adhere loyally to his favorites.  And though his loyalty to Piers Gaveston gave him difficulties, his loyalty to Hugh Despenser got him dead. Why, oh, why, did Edward think so highly of Hugh Despenser, the greedy dangerous, annoying chancellor who was so very dreadful that the queen invaded the country to get rid of him? And is the only Englishman to have a war named after him? Why? We don’t know that.  But we do know that really Hugh should have been sent away long before things fell apart.  In this episode, we discuss the dreadfulness of Hugh, and the exciting news that we have perhaps found some of his bones.  Oh, and that execution.  It was bad.

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