60. Jacques le Gris Rapes Marguerite de Carrouges, Normandy, January 1386
Anne Brannen 0:24
Hello and welcome to True Crime Medieval, 1000 years of people behaving badly. I’m Anne Brannen, and I am your host in Albuquerque.
Michelle Butler 0:35
And I’m Michelle Butler, in Maryland, the most medieval state in America.
Anne Brannen 0:40
Today we are going to France, toward the end of the Middle Ages, 1386. On the 18th of January 1386, Jacques Le Gris raped Marguerite de Carrouges in Capomesnil, Normandy, and that is our crime. I’m gonna give you the background of this crime, and then we’ll get to what happened in terms of trials. Marguerite de Thibouville had married Jean de Carrouges in 1380. She was his second wife. His first wife, Jeanne de Tilly, had died, along with his son, in 1378. The son, at that point, was about six. The child’s godfather had been Jacques Le Gris, who was one of Carrouges’ close friends. The two men had both become vessels of Pierre d’Alençon in 1377. By the time de Carrouges’ first wife and son died, his friendship with Le Gris had sort of deteriorated. This is because Le Gris had become a favorite at the court of d’Alencon and de Carrouges was jealous. Okay, fair enough. He went to one of the campaigns in the war against the English because, you know, that was ongoing, and it was going on for quite some time. He came back and he married Marguerite in 1380 after distinguishing himself on the battlefield. Now, Marguerite was beautiful, because chronicles tell us so and so let’s just assume that’s true. She was beautiful. She was wealthy. She was young. Her family, which had gotten into some trouble for fighting against the French king was going to get reinstated in society if she married de Carrouges. That was nice. He was going, he hoped, to have an heir. So yeah, it was a really good deal. But then de Carrouges sued Le Gris for an estate that had belonged to Marguerite’s father. There’s complex real estate law going on here. Not only is it complex real estate law, but it’s complex medieval real estate law, and I’m just going to let it lay on the table. So he sues, and Carrouges lost that suit. Then he sued Pierre d’Alencon and he lost that suit, too. The upshot of all this was that he was even less of a favorite at d’Alencon’s court, since, of course, he had been suing him. Okay. Then Carrouges lost another land deal, and he blamed Le Gris for having influenced d’Alencon against him, although I would like to point out that probably Le Gris had already influenced d’Alencon against him–as I have mentioned, the suits previously. Le Gris and Carrouges actually made up for a while, but then when Carrouges came back from another campaign against England, which had left him bankrupt, Carrouges was again socially inferior to Le Gris, who was not bankrupt on account of not having gone on the campaign. Carrouges had to go to Paris to try to get the money that was owed him. On the 18th of January 1386, Marguerite was alone at home and Le Gris demanded to see her, forced his way in when she refused to let him in. He propositioned her, offering her money, and she refused. He raped her violently and told her that he would kill her if she told anybody but she did. Carrouges got back a few days later, and she told him, and he began legal proceedings against Le Gris. But d’Alencon was the judge. This is the local court so d’Alencon is the judge and Marguerite’s the only witness. This is so loaded against her that Marguerite and de Carrouges, they just don’t even show up at the trial. So Carrouges went to the king, because he needs to go up to a higher court. So he does. Now, this was not actually going to be any better since it was just Marguerite’s word against Le Gris’. So Carrouges wanted a judicial duel. Trial by combat–that’s what this is–had originated in the Germanic tribes. It was all through the Frankish area and then later the Holy Roman Empire, and every region had different sorts of rules about how it went. You didn’t have to be a noble, you can be a commoner, for a judicial trial. There’s a legal code from around 1300 which prohibits it. Nevertheless it continued for quite some time. Carrouges had to get the permission of the king. The French court became highly invested in this whole thing. I don’t know. But they were. It was very, very interesting. Apparently it was partly because of how well he had argued this whole thing. His rhetoric was great. Judicial trial was not unknown, but it had become a little unusual. So Carrouges and Le Gris, on the ninth of July 1396…Le Gris was accusing Carrouges of defamation. So they had these counter suits. First, there was a criminal trial, because the parliament wanted to hear testimony before they decided whether a judicial trial was warranted. Marguerite was very pregnant at this time. By the way, Marguerite’s pregnancy was totally irrelevant to the entire thing, because everybody knew, it was medically known, that you could not get pregnant from having been raped. So this was all irrelevant. I’m just telling you that this was going on. There were a couple of servants who were tortured to make sure their evidence was true, but there wasn’t really any evidence against Le Gris anyway. Le Gris’ defense was that Carrouges had made everything up on account of rage and jealousy, and also he had an alibi, which was that he was too far away at the time that Marguerite was raped to have gotten there and back. It was 25 miles. Carrouges pointed out that the entire affair was completely humiliating, so why would he have made this up? And also that Le Gris could damn well ride that far and back. So what the hell? Le Gris’ alibi was compromised anyway, because the guy that said that he had been where he was saying he was, was arrested for rape. The Parliament could not determine the truth, and therefore, they decree: trial by combat. So this was very, very exciting. They had to have a suitable place and there hadn’t been many judicial trials. So they didn’t have one. So they used the jousting arena over at Saint-Martin-des-Champs. So that the king could attend, it got scheduled later. It was for the 29th of December 1386. In the meantime, Marguerite gave birth to a healthy boy. All of Paris and a whole bunch of French nobles attended the duel. It was a really big damn deal. Oh and the king knighted Le Gris at the beginning of things so that they, the two combatants, would be of equal status. Thank you, Mr. King. Okay. I will tell you what they were carrying. Because I find this…I’m like, Really? They, each one of them, they’re wearing plate armor. Fair enough. They were carrying a long sword, a battleaxe, a dagger, and a lance. I think this is a lot to be dragging around, quite frankly, but they did have all this. So it was very, very fair. Whole thing, very fair. Now. I will tell you what happened. Have you read all this, Michelle? Do you know what happens?
Michelle Butler 8:15
Yeah.
Anne Brannen 8:16
Michelle knows all this stuff, but I’m going to tell y’all. On the first charge, both lances struck, but they didn’t pierce the armor. Second charge. Both of them hit the other’s helm. Third charge. Both of them shattered lances on their shields. I really like how how kind of symmetrical this all is. I’m choosing to believe the Chronicles here because I like this. Fourth charge. They whacked each other with axes until Le Gris slashed the neck of Carrouges’ horse, and then Carrouges disemboweled Le Gris’ horse and so horses dead, they’re on foot. Fifth charge. They drew their swords and they fought on foot. Le Gris was winning for a while, but then Carrouges knocked him down and then stabbed him for a while, but it was plate armor. He made some dents but he didn’t get through but he managed to get Le Gris’ helmet off. Le Gris would not confess and so Carrouges killed him. Tada. This is how we know that Le Gris was actually guilty, because the whole thing about trial by combat is that God is in charge. You make everything all fair, all fair, all fair, and then God is in charge of who wins. Tada. Tada. So Le Gris indeed had raped Marguerite. Carrouges won a whole lot of money and Marguerite got to not be burned to the state. I didn’t tell you that part, which is that if Le Gris had won, Marguerite was going to be burned to the stake for having brought a false accusation. Okay. So she and Carrouges are alive. Yay. They lived in Paris and Marguerite had some more children. Carrouges died about 10 years later on crusade. Marguerite died some years later, I think about 15, nothing else of note about her That duel was chronicled about by Jean Froissart. The whole story was chronicled many times. We have the records of the parliament. We have the notes that Le Gris’ lawyer kept. He suspected that his client was actually guilty. Despite the unusual clarity of surviving records, stories about Le Gris’ innocence were nevertheless invented, none with any evidence at all. Such as somebody else admitted to the rape. We’ve got no evidence for this at all. His descendents tried to really get, you know, because they wanted him to be all innocent. So they were big on these stories. By the way, it was not actually the last French judicial duel, which was in 1547. But it was the most famous. Everybody was so interested in it. There you go. That’s it for me. It’s your turn.
Michelle Butler 11:04
I actually had not heard of this before the film came out. It’s very interesting, because everything I read about it says, ‘this is an amazingly famous duel that everybody knows about,’ and then they go on to say, ‘but I hadn’t heard about it.’
Anne Brannen 11:20
I hadn’t heard about it either. Everybody knows about it, except us. But now we know. So we’re telling you.
Michelle Butler 11:25
I had not heard of this. What we have, of course, is this film that just came out last fall, that brings this brings this back to the public consciousness. It is itself based on a 2004 book, called “The Last Duel: A True Story of Trial by Combat in Medieval France.” The theme of truth is really interesting, running through both the book and the film. The book has a very fascinating epilogue about the afterlife of the story, the attempts to exonerate Le Gris, which happened very quickly. The chronicles…you mentioned Froissart, and there’s another one, the chronicle of Saint Denis. They’re written within two decades of the duel, and there’s this attempt to exonerate him without blaming Marguerite. Oh, it’s mistaken identity. She’d only met him once before. It was somebody else, and that person ended up confessing to it later. So it’s this terrible miscarriage of justice. The Enlightenment philosophers actually pick up on that and use it as a stick to beat the Middle Ages with: ‘Oh, it’s this superstitious, barbaric time in which you can have this terrible miscarriage of justice, and so we don’t do it that way anymore.’
Anne Brannen 12:58
What we would have now is a mistrial. Parliament could not decide that Le Gris was innocent, they could not decide that he was guilty. So it would end up nowadays in a mistrial.
Michelle Butler 13:11
Yes. I kind of want to come back to that question of the legal status of rape then and now. But I don’t want to lose my place in my notes.
Anne Brannen 13:24
You go.
Michelle Butler 13:28
Eric…his last name is spelled JAGER, and he’s at UCLA. I think that’s pronounced ‘Jager.’ I’m not actually sure how his last name is pronounced. But he’s a medievalist. It’s not an academic press, it’s a popular press, it’s published by Penguin. So it’s aiming at a general audience, which means that the footnoting is not always as extensive as what a person might like. He argues that the other exonerating thing that happens afterwards, is that people start saying that her husband forced her to lie. That somebody did rape her and he uses this opportunity to get back at this guy he hated, which the author does not find to be a particularly compelling argument. First of all, he doesn’t think Carrouges is that subtle of a thinker.
Anne Brannen 14:22
No, I don’t think so either.
Michelle Butler 14:24
He also doesn’t think that this is how you would go about it. Because again, this isn’t something that goes well for him. It doesn’t add to his reputation for him to have to publicly be telling everybody that ‘okay, you know, my wife was raped while I was out of town, I couldn’t protect her.’ It goes to so much of his identity as a knight that he does not find that compelling.
Anne Brannen 14:49
You know, in both of these stories, Marguerite disappears.
Michelle Butler 14:54
I know. That is an enormous issue with how this keeps getting talked about.
Anne Brannen 15:06
It’s very brave that she reported this rape at all.
Michelle Butler 15:13
The point that the author makes in the book is that the position of rape legally in the 14th century is that it’s a capital crime. If you’re a man and you’re convicted of rape, it carries the death sentence.
Anne Brannen 15:27
In France or across Europe?
Michelle Butler 15:32
In France. He was talking about France in particular. Which is interesting because rape is not a capital crime now. I looked this up. Let me pull this back up. In 1977, the US Supreme Court in a case called Coker versus Georgia–and here I’m quoting from a website that I’ll put in our show notes, “held that the death penalty for the rape of an adult was grossly disproportionate and an excessive punishment,” and hence was unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment.
Anne Brannen 16:24
When would it stop incurring the death penalty in France? Do you know?
Michelle Butler 16:28
I have no idea. I’m sorry, I didn’t look that up. I was quite fascinated, though, at the idea that, at least in legal terms, the 14th century says rape is punishable by death and the 1977 United States–in our supposedly more civilized enlightened era–says that’s ‘grossly disproportionate.’ That’s an actual quote from the ruling that they handed down. Some states have later gone and added the death penalty for the rape of a child. But according to the Supreme Court, you can’t have the death penalty in the United States for rape.
Anne Brannen 17:19
15 years imprisonment in France now.
Michelle Butler 17:24
But the point that our author makes is that that’s what we have in law, but in practice, it’s hardly ever actually reported, let alone prosecuted.
Anne Brannen 17:38
Right, right. That’s what I would have thought. So there’s an idea of the dreadfulness of it but there’s not actually a real societal carrying out of that. So that’s interesting, though, because she knew when she accused him, the death penalty came with it if she was found to be telling the truth.
Michelle Butler 18:06
It’s also considered more to be a property crime against the man. Whoever her guardian is. It’s not really a crime against the woman. It’s a crime in which you have damaged the property of some man. This is one of the reasons that Marguerite keeps falling out of the story. Because this story is actually…it’s these two men.
Anne Brannen 18:31
Right, right. She’s simply the object of contention.
Michelle Butler 18:35
They’re having this ongoing conflict with each other. And at some point, in January of 1386, the fight comes to her, but it’s never really about her. It’s so aggravating.
Anne Brannen 18:53
Yeah, it really is.
Michelle Butler 18:54
There’s an interesting thing that happens in 1306. Philip the fourth, who we’ve met before. He’s the guy who did the terrible things to the Templars and then in his turn fortune got him with the scandal with the adulterous princesses. So we’ve met this guy before.
Anne Brannen 19:15
We refer you to our podcast on when Philip slaughters the Templars. We also refer you to our podcast about the Tour de Nesle affair, which is just so fascinating, but we move on.
Michelle Butler 19:29
So this guy, as part of his move to centralize the authority of the government, in him basically. In the kingship. He has a code written in 1306 that clarifies when you can have judicial duels. Before this, you could ask for it for basically anything but Philip the fourth’s 1306 code says it has to be murder, rape, or treason.
Anne Brannen 19:59
So the death penalty things. Okay, got it.
Michelle Butler 20:02
Exactly.
Anne Brannen 20:04
Since judicial trial goes to the death that makes sense. Why would you have a judicial trial for something that really you’re only going to get in prison for a little while? Yes. It makes sense.
Michelle Butler 20:21
You can have a judicial trial without it going to the death. The king can step in. We see when Richard the second steps in when Bolingbroke…who the hell is Bolingbroke fighting? Do you remember who he’s having the duel with? Richard the second interrupts. It’s very close to being contemporary with this. Slightly after this.
Anne Brannen 20:55
Bolingbroke. I’m laughing because Bolingbroke. Really, always busy.
Michelle Butler 20:59
I don’t remember who he’s having the duel with. But Richard the second steps in and they’re both mad because they thought they were going to win. Then he banishes Bolingbroke, which leads ultimately to him being deposed.
Anne Brannen 21:13
Yep.
Michelle Butler 21:14
But whatever. Not relevant to this particular thing. Except that it is an example of what was supposedly going to be a duel to the death and then the king steps ends and says no, not really. So the book is the the source for this film. I was not looking forward to watching this film.
Anne Brannen 21:35
Really?
Michelle Butler 21:39
I was not looking forward to watching the film because I had heard that it’s structured where you get each main character’s version of events, and I really wasn’t looking forward to watching the rape three times.
Anne Brannen 21:53
Oh, Jesus. Yeah, no. Okay, right. No, no.
Michelle Butler 21:55
So here’s my view. Here’s what I think about the film. I actually think it’s a good film, but it was badly timed. I don’t think it’s the sort of film that we say to ourselves, ‘You know what, after two years of a pandemic, and all the other terrible things going on in the world, what I really want to do is sit down and watch two dudes being terrible to each other, and one of them’s wife becoming collateral damage.’
Anne Brannen 22:27
This would explain why Laura and I are on a Gordon Ramsay kick. We’re watching nothing but Gordon Ramsay these days.
Michelle Butler 22:35
The British baking show.
Anne Brannen 22:37
The British baking show, which is nice. And the Gordon Ramsay show, where there’s a lot of yelling, but at least the cooking is very good, if he gets that done.
Michelle Butler 22:44
It’s a pretty good film. Try not to pay any attention to anything Marguerite wears.
Anne Brannen 22:51
Oh, damn.
Michelle Butler 22:54
There is no rhyme or reason for when her hair is covered. I had such hopes because in the scenes before she’s married, her hair’s all down. I’m like, awesome, this is great. Then the same thing is true after she’s married. What the actual hell? Come on. Except every once in a while she has something on her head. What?
Anne Brannen 23:18
It sort of fell on there while she was going out the door. Okay, yeah, no, that doesn’t make any sense. Her hair should be covered. But yeah, this is totally our sensibility. We can’t as a society understand women, especially sexually active women, with their hair up. We don’t get this.
Michelle Butler 23:43
It’s weird because they do that with with her mother in law. Carrouges’ widowed mother, she’s properly coiffed. But Marguerite…I guess because we’re supposed to understand that she’s young and sexy that she has to have the hair down. But it’s weird because some of her married women friends do have the proper coiff. So that particular piece…I’m like, this is driving me nuts.
Anne Brannen 24:13
Yeah. Okay, so I’ll have to ignore that. Although it is Jodie Comer and she looks nice with her hair down. So there’s that. What about the shoes? I have to ask about the shoes because that’s always a sore point too.
Michelle Butler 24:27
Their shoes are not bad. There’s actually a funny scene where Pierre is trying on shoes and is asking Le Gris’ opinion about his different shoes.
Anne Brannen 24:38
And the shoes are correct?
Michelle Butler 24:39
Yeah. They’re nice. The men’s clothes are not actually that bad. It’s just her clothes are a little weird. And the hair thing is weird. The men’s clothes are not bad. Other than that, it’s a pretty good movie. It’s got this ongoing theme of truth. Right at the beginning, it calls itself, right on the screen, ‘based on true events.’ Then it spends the rest of the movie asking you, ‘but whose truth?’
Anne Brannen 25:19
Well, This is fair because that’s pretty much what the French Parliament was doing.
Michelle Butler 25:24
The first third of the movie is titled ‘The Truth according to Jean de Carrouges.’ Then the middle piece is titled ‘The Truth according to Jacques Le Gris’. But then we get the movie wanting to have it both ways, because chapter three, ‘The Truth according to Marguerite,’ that piece fades out just for half a second, and what’s left on the screen is ‘the truth.’ So you end up with the movie wanting to both argue that this was a lot about perspective, and wanting to say but Marguerite’s perspective is the true one. Which, you know, yes. But also no. You either believe her or you don’t. So it’s got this theme going on. The mother in law is very interesting. The mother in law is allowed to drop some some bombs that I thought were very fascinating. At one point, she tells Jean…Jean’s really upset, ‘I’ve lost the captaincy of Belleme, it’s not right, it’s not right.’ His mother just looks at him and says, ‘There is no right. There is only the power of men.’ She’s so disgusted with him, that he does stupid things that he can’t possibly win, and then is mad that it didn’t work out. Later on, she says the same thing to Marguerite. She says to her, ‘why are you pursuing this case? You’re just gonna get my son killed.’ Marguerite says, ‘because this is what happened to me. It’s true.’ The mother in law says to her, ‘the truth does not matter.’ It’s actually a really interesting moment. Up until that moment, you don’t actually think that Jean and Marguerite have all that much in common. But at that particular moment, you realize that the two of them do have that in common. This stubborn belief that right matters.
Anne Brannen 27:35
Mm hmm.
Michelle Butler 27:37
Whereas the mother in law and Le Gris both kind of understand, ‘Well, yeah, kind of, but what also matters is politics. What also matters is charm. What also matters is being able to persuade people.’ So what we get here is a film that wants to have this complex interplay of viewpoints. But what you end up with is reinforcing that the story is the men’s. It accidentally ends up reinforcing that because two thirds of the movie is from the men’s point of view.
Anne Brannen 28:10
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Michelle Butler 28:12
Jean’s point of view felt fairly close to his historical self. He’s a good fighter. He’s not so great at politics. He’s kind of stubborn. The movie underscores the idea that he could not read. Read or write, actually. I do not know if that was true. But that’s what the film does. For Jacques’ part of the film, the movie makes the most changes from the historical record, because it wants to create the idea that he can be a sympathetic character.
Anne Brannen 28:54
Yeah, that’s kind of hard.
Michelle Butler 28:56
This is the place where like all historical films, the movie is about now as much as then.
Anne Brannen 29:03
Right. Right. Right.
Michelle Butler 29:06
What the movie wants to do with Jacques is say, ‘but what if the context is toxic? How much blame do you carry as an individual man if your entire context is telling you that this is okay?’ So there’s two times in the film where they’re referencing books. He can read. And they have him reading out loud. But the two books that they have him referring to are The Romance of the Rose–
Anne Brannen 29:33
Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. Not a good moral code.
Michelle Butler 29:39
And The Art of Courtly Love.
Anne Brannen 29:41
Oh, even worse.
Michelle Butler 29:43
Both of which are contemporary books that pretty much endorse rape.
Anne Brannen 29:52
Yeah, they endorse rape. Unlike the law. It doesn’t have him reading any legal text, which would say ‘Don’t do this.’ No, no. Thank you for that. I’m glad that I was warned. Because I’m gonna go watch this movie now. And I’d be watching and I’d have a little heart attack. But now that I know, I’ll be okay. Thank you.
Michelle Butler 30:14
It also has Pierre and Jacques….Jacques did have the reputation of being a womanizer. But the idea that Pierre is a womanizer, and that they have parties together?
Anne Brannen 30:36
Oh, no, no, no.
Michelle Butler 30:37
With lots of women. One of the things they do that is very fascinating is they set up… earlier, they have a party where Pierre, Le Gris, and some other dudes, have these scantily clad women, and they’re having a party…
Anne Brannen 30:54
With their hair down, I’m guessing.
Michelle Butler 30:56
With their hair down, and hardly any clothes on. Jacques is chasing one of these women around a table, and she’s squealing and doing kind of pretend resistance. He says to her, ‘if you run, I will only chase you.’ What they set up is that that is an exact mirror of what happens in the rape. So the film is going out of its way to tinker with the historical record to make Jacques and that he can persuade himself that Marguerite was in on the game. How they film that scene, the actual rape scene, from her point of view, and from his point of view, are very different. For example, one little tiny thing that’s different. When we’re in his point of view, and she starts up the stairs, she takes off her shoes, and he thinks, aha, this is unspoken consent. In her point of view, when she’s running up the stairs, her shoes come off because she’s trying so hard to get away from him. The other thing it changes is that Marguerite’s testimony, historically, is that Adam Lavelle has to help tie her down and Jacques gags her with his hat. This does not happen in the film.
Anne Brannen 32:16
Adam Lavelle is one of the servants that gets tortured for evidence.
Michelle Butler 32:21
Well, I’m actually okay with that.
Anne Brannen 32:23
He had been the one who knocked on the door first and told Marguerite that Jacque Le Gris wanted to talk to her.
Michelle Butler 32:37
He’s the one who talks his way into her home. So I’m at least as unhappy with him as I am with Jacques.
Anne Brannen 32:44
Well, he got tortured. Now he’s dead anyway. They’re all dead, by the way.
Michelle Butler 32:47
So then we get Marguerite’s perspective. Ben Affleck and Matt Damon wrote the screenplay together, and they bring in a friend who’s a woman to help them on this part. So good job for them not thinking that they can write Marguerite’s part of the script. Good on them. But there’s just a lot less information about Marguerite.
Anne Brannen 33:13
Because there’s a lot less information about Marguerite in the record, of course.
Michelle Butler 33:17
So they’re having to make a lot of this up. What they do is create things that from her point of view make sense, but allow Jacques to think that they’re having a flirtation. For example, from Marguerite’s point of view when she’s interacting with him at that party, where Jacques and Jean are supposedly mending fences, and she’s being nice to him, Jacques sees that as ‘Her husband’s boring, stupid, and illiterate and I like books, so of course, she’s flirting with me.’ But from Marguerite’s point of view she’s trying to show Jean, ‘Look, you don’t have to fight with everybody. Just make nice with people.’ She says, ‘you can smile at people and and seem nice, even if you do not mean it.’ There’s there’s an awful lot of moments of her trying to school him to behave like a grown up.
Anne Brannen 34:12
Frankly, looking at historical record, I think that this was not out of place.
Michelle Butler 34:17
The film also does some interesting stuff with, from Marguerite’s point of view, that the difference between what she has to consent to with Jean, her husband, and what happens to her with Jacques is a matter of degree rather than of absolute difference. As the film is showing it, what’s happening to her with Jean, she’s not wild about.
Anne Brannen 34:42
Which may or may not be true. We don’t really know.
Michelle Butler 34:46
That’s something they’ve made up. We have no idea. There’s also her being a product of her environment. This rang very strongly to me, as someone who has also existed in the world as a woman. Conditioning as a woman is why she opens the door to Adam. She has been taught to be nice to men and do what they want. Even though she tells him, ‘I’m home alone, and I’ve been told not to open the door.’ He says to her, ‘but it’s really cold out here and my horse lost a shoe. Can I just warm myself by the fire while it’s been reshod?’
‘Read some books.’
Yeah. The film really underscores the ways in which Marguerite gets lost in her own story. At the end, it’s very striking. Jean wins, and he’s put up on his horse. He’s being congratulated. People are asking him to bless their babies. He’s going through the streets. Marguerite is behind him on her own horse. And it’s utterly silent. Nobody’s talking to her at all. She’s absolutely being ignored.
Anne Brannen 35:55
We don’t actually have a record of that. But what we do have a record of is that indeed, Carrouges got all these accolades and money and whatnot, and Marguerite falls out of the story. Yeah, we do have that.
Michelle Butler 36:08
But I absolutely understand why last fall, nobody was in the mood for a film that alternates between horrific scenes of violence–because they show a lot of the battles that Carroughes and Le Griss were in.
Anne Brannen 36:25
Do they do a good job on the battles? I do like a good war film.
Michelle Butler 36:29
They’re not bad. I think that this would have been a very hard movie to follow without having read the book, particularly in Carrouges’ part where the scenes are very short. We’re just getting this scene, this scene, this scene, this scene, but that sets up…for example, the first scene in Carrouges’ part of things is in 1377, when he and Le Griss and Carrouges’ father are in a battle at Limoges. On the other side of the river, are whoever is attacking them, and they’re holding hostages, and they start slitting the throats of the hostages, demanding that the fighters come over and fight with them. In Carrouges’ point of view, he sees this and says, ‘we can’t do this, this is terrible. We have to go save the hostages.’ He starts across and everybody follows him. He thinks he’s being really heroic. In Le Gris’ point of view, what happens is at that moment, he turns to Carrouges and says, ‘we were told by the king to hold the bridge.’ Carrouges says, ‘but we have to go, the hostages.’ So you have the same thing. But more information has been added. You can understand why each man thinks they were in the right at that point, which is absolutely setting up the rest of the film.
Anne Brannen 37:55
I like that. Although I’m kind of intrigued because I don’t remember Le Gris having been…Le Gris doesn’t go on any of the campaigns that Carrouges’ is on. Does he? Did they totally make this up?
Michelle Butler 38:08
They tinker with…Carrouges absolutely sees more actual combat than Le Gris does. Le Gris is much more politically savvy.
Anne Brannen 38:18
He stays home. Yeah.
Michelle Butler 38:19
But like every other film about the past, it’s actually about today. Do we believe rape victims? How do we decide? How do we punish? This visceral impulse to try to exonerate the rapist if they’re good looking, and we like them. Or if they’re men of a certain status. I was very hesitant about the fact that Adam Driver, who I think is amazing, was in this, but I understand why they did it, because they need Le Gris to be charming and good looking.
Anne Brannen 38:57
He was charming, we know that. I don’t know about the good looking. We know that Marguerite was beautiful, because we are told.
Michelle Butler 39:03
They really underscore the physical differences. Matt Damon is shorter, and they’ve given him some facial scars. But it’s about today even in some little things. At least twice we get a view of Notre Dame with scaffolding around it.
Anne Brannen 39:24
Which is of course…I mean, they were building it. They were always building.
Michelle Butler 39:29
They were doing something with the buttresses. It was built about 100 years earlier, but they were making repairs.
Anne Brannen 39:38
As one does. The amount of money that any church or cathedral has to spend just on fixing the roof is astonishing. There’s always something going on.
Michelle Butler 39:49
The king’s only 17 years old. So one of the things that they do in the film is they have the king basically going ‘this looks interesting.’ He signs off on the duel because he’s 17 years old and it sounds like fun.
Anne Brannen 40:03
One of the things that is an issue that still that reverberates for me is the problem of mistrial. Of having a trial where the jury cannot decide who is right. Now what happens is you have a mistrial, and then everybody goes their merry way, and stories get told and whatnot. If you have a possibility of having a judicial trial, you can at least solve everything. Ah ha, you are guilty, we know because you’re dead. But it still doesn’t really satisfy the judicial issue. You know, because there wasn’t strong…it was Marguerite’s word and Le Gris was not able to produce evidence that he wasn’t there. His alibi sucked. It was stupid. But it’s a problem. If the Parliament had said, ‘obviously, yes, he is guilty,’ the descendants would still have been making stories up about how really somebody else did it and they confessed on their deathbed.
Michelle Butler 41:11
No, that’s absolutely the thing about this. The legal theory is that you’ll have this debate, and that will settle the question. It absolutely doesn’t. It doesn’t for now, and it doesn’t at the time.
Anne Brannen 41:27
What’s interesting to me is that there doesn’t seem ever to be a question that Marguerite was raped. All of the stories are about her being raped. The question is, who did it? No one says she is just lying. And of course, there’s the issue of the child. But that would actually be more of an issue now. If she had been pregnant, and it was from an affair and not her husband’s child, then maybe she would say she was raped. But that wouldn’t have made any difference, because you couldn’t get pregnant from rape in the Middle Ages, because the doctors knew this to be true. So it wouldn’t have fixed anything.
Michelle Butler 42:14
They use this as a plot point in the film. She’s being questioned as part of the trial in front of the king and is asked about her pregnancy. Oh, you were married for five years with your husband, you didn’t have any children during that time, and all of a sudden, right after this thing you’re calling a rape, you’re pregnant, and everybody knows…so maybe what you’re really doing here is covering up that you slept with him and you liked it, but now you have to pretend it was rape. So they do make use of that in the film, and that I thought was interesting, too, because we still see that particular argument trotted out in contemporary 21st century politics. We see the argument being made that rape victims cannot get pregnant, because–what was that saying? ‘women’s bodies have ways of shutting that whole thing down.’
Anne Brannen 43:20
What was that from? Arkansas? Alabama? I forget.
Michelle Butler 43:25
I thought he was Ohio. But it’s this 500 year old science that is kind of lurking around as a folktale and getting told, and every once in a while comes back up and stated as an actual fact. When of course it’s not. But we don’t teach health well, I guess.
Anne Brannen 43:49
But at the time, she’s never accused of having an affair. That’s just not one of the stories.
Michelle Butler 43:56
No, it’s something they’re tinkering with in the film. Because then they get to think of clever ways to ask her whether she orgasms with her husband and she’s not actually sure what they’re asking her but she knows she knows she’s supposed to say yes.
Anne Brannen 44:12
Yeah, except it’s the Middle Ages and this is not a thing, so whatever. Okay. I’m glad I got all this before. I do want to see the movie. It has Jodie Comer in it, for one thing, and so there you are. But yeah, I’m glad that you told me. Although we’re gonna have to put a thing in the blurb about how this is entirely a spoiler.
Michelle Butler 44:33
Many, many spoilers. Ben Affleck is worth the price of admission. The actress playing his wife–he’s Pierre, the lord–the actress playing his wife, I think has one line. But there are lots of scenes of her and she is acting so tremendously with her face. You know that she hates her husband. She never says it. She never says anything like that. She is the dutiful wife. But every time he’s not looking at her and we get a shot of her face, she hates him.
Anne Brannen 45:12
Totally acting in the beat. All right.
Michelle Butler 45:17
The stuff they do with Pierre…I have no idea whether any of that is historically accurate, but I doubt it. But it’s there to provide Jacques with some ideological cover that they’re essentially a couple of frat boys. They do dreadful things together.
Anne Brannen 45:35
He was a favorite, but whether or not they were hanging out together and having parties, I don’t think we know.
Michelle Butler 45:44
Ridley Scott, the director…the film kind of bombed. It only made $30 million at the at the box office. But who was going to the movie theater last fall? Because not me. Who the hell was going to movie theaters? He’s very mad, and he’s blaming the millennials and their cell phones, which is just sour grapes. He’s absolutely not reading the room.
Anne Brannen 46:08
I don’t want to hear any more about the millennials. The millennials are just fine. Everybody leave them alone. Good lord.
Michelle Butler 46:15
They’re also 40 years old.
Anne Brannen 46:17
Yeah, what the hell?
Michelle Butler 46:19
They have two children and a mortgage.
Anne Brannen 46:21
An enormous amount of student debt. So just stop.
Michelle Butler 46:24
They’re not Gen Z. Leave them alone.
Anne Brannen 46:29
Well, this was fun. Actually. This was actually really fun. I’m sorry about Marguerite getting raped. That’s not good. But other than that, it was so interesting. I think you’re right, the timing was not good for the movie.
Michelle Butler 46:46
I think that the work that Jager is doing here is worth doing. I think that we need more books that explain the Middle Ages to a general audience.
Anne Brannen 46:57
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. This is a nice focus. It really is.
Michelle Butler 47:01
He has another one actually, that we might want to look at, about a murder in France. I mean, obviously, France is his area of specialty, but he has another book about a medieval crime that we might want to look at.
Anne Brannen 47:14
Cool. Let’s put that on. We have a couple of comments on the website.
Michelle Butler 47:22
Oh, yeah, I saw those. I wanted to add those to the list.
Anne Brannen 47:24
Yeah we have to add those in. I believe they’re both Eastern European, which is good. Because yeah, we want to do that. I was wondering, do we have a Ukrainian? And we do. Because we had St. Olga of Kiev.
Michelle Butler 47:39
Oh, that’s right.
Anne Brannen 47:40
Yes, we did. Yes, we did. Glory to Ukraine. That’s where we’re at. I do believe. Is that not true, Michelle?
Michelle Butler 47:45
I’m there. I also read that there’s a number of blacksmiths that make armor for contemporary reenactors, who work in Ukraine, who have shifted to making human size caltrops to put in the streets to deter tanks.
Anne Brannen 48:04
Resourceful people. So we obviously recommend our old podcast. Any more on our lovely duel?
Michelle Butler 48:13
That is what I have. I think it’s a good film. I think it’s important to watch it knowing ahead of time what is going to happen. That Le Gris is essentially self-deluding about what went down. The film puts its little thumb on the scale to do that because that’s the story it wants to tell. That you have these three people whose perspectives…but ultimately, it’s really just two. Its Carrouges and Le Gris. Marguerite is one of the many casualties of their conflict. It’s a really interesting moment in history, because in many ways, the two of them are emblematic of 14th century knighthood, where Carrouges is old knighthood, that is actually about fighting and Le Gris is this new style of Knighthood that’s coming in, that is about politics.
Anne Brannen 49:08
Yes. And misunderstanding the convention of courtly love. Yeah. As we know from his reading material in the film, yes.
Michelle Butler 49:17
And Ben Affleck is a blonde who is interested in his shoes.
Anne Brannen 49:22
There you go. There you go. I’d like to point out what we have not mentioned, which is we’re in Normandy. These are Normans. They’re Normans.
Michelle Butler 49:32
Yes. Belleme calls back to our Mable episode, because that’s the captaincy that Carroughes was so mad about. His father had held it and then he assumed it would come down to him, but Pierre actually gave it to somebody else. In the film, he gives it to Le Gris but that’s just cleaning up the plot. In real life, it’s somebody else. That’s Belleme, as in Mabel de.
Anne Brannen 49:55
The badass Norman woman who got murdered on account of her really bad Norman behaviors.
Michelle Butler 50:05
Marguerite is a tough cookie. She doesn’t let this go by.
Anne Brannen 50:09
She doesn’t. She doesn’t. So yeah, so we’re glad. True crime Medieval is in favor of Marguerite and we don’t like the crime. Yeah. But the story as it comes down to us is not about the crime. This often happens with our podcasts. It’s not really about the crime, but about the aftermath. So there you go.
Michelle Butler 50:33
One thing I found really fascinating about this–the duel takes place on the feast day of Thomas Becket. December 29. The king’s son had died the day before.
Anne Brannen 50:45
That’s right. I didn’t mention that. But he decided on a big party instead of going into mourning. Big party with a duel as kind of like the culmination.
Michelle Butler 50:57
And the duel is in a monastery. I kind of found that shocking.
Anne Brannen 51:02
It’s the abbey of Saint Denis. It’s in the jousting arena at the abbey, which I also am like, really, abbeys have jousting yards?
Michelle Butler 51:10
I was like, hold on, I need a sidebar. Explain to me the circumstances under which the monastery had a dueling yard, which had then been converted to ‘oh, well, we’re really going to do tournaments here. But in a pinch, we can really have a duel again.’ Hold up. I need some background.
Anne Brannen 51:33
If I figure this out, we’ll put it in. Do you remember what we’re doing next? I always ask you this. And you never do.
Michelle Butler 51:39
I never do. I’m so sorry.
Anne Brannen 51:42
You don’t have to remember. It’s kind of like my…it’s my standard question. Do you remember? And then I get to tell you.
Michelle Butler 51:48
I always fail the quiz.
Anne Brannen 51:50
I know you’re going to though. But I’m going to tell you and what I get to tell you is that we’re going about 150 years back in time and over the English Channel and we get to talk about…the thing is, King John was really awful. He just really was. He was not a good man. He had his little ways and sometimes no one spoke to him for days and days and days. But one of the things he did was he starved the wife and son of William DeBraose to death in his dungeon because he was pissed off at William DeBraose and so we’re going to talk about that. We’re going to Dorset, 1210.
Michelle Butler 52:23
Okay. This one’s been on the list for a little while.
Anne Brannen 52:27
I know. I put it on the list when we first started. I was like we have to talk about…what, two and a half years ago, but now we’re finally getting to getting to talk about King John starving William DeBraose’ wife and child to death.
Michelle Butler 52:41
The DeBraoses have shown up before. At least the family’s terrible.
Anne Brannen 52:45
Oh yeah. At one point one of the DeBraoses was murdering one of the Welsh…I forget. But yeah, the DeBraoses show up. They’re a border family, a Marcher Lord family, and they’re really quite busy and not enormously well behaved. But in this case, it’s King John not behaving well at all. So that’s what we’re going to do. And then the time after that, by the way, we’re going to his brother, only it’s a crime against Richard the Lionheart, when he gets kidnapped. But first we’re doing King John. All right. This has been True Crime Medieval, where the crimes are just like they are today–God help us– only with less technology. You can find us on Spotify and Stitcher and Apple podcast and all the places where the podcasts hang out. We have a website at Truecrimemedieval.com, Truecrimemedieval is all one word. There we have the lovely little blurbs that I write and you can link to the podcast. We’ve got the show notes that Michelle does. We have transcripts, which Michelle has been doing, the early ones having been done by Laurie Dietrich. You can leave comments. We love that. We like to hear from you. We love it when you give us medieval crimes because really, it’s 1000 years and an entire continent. So hey, there’s a lot of stuff going on. Two and a half years, we’re still not done. We’re scheduled all through this year. but we can add more. So yeah, that’s what we’ve been doing. We’ll see you next time, when we will be in England. Bye.
59. Bran Ardchenn, King of Leinster, and his wife Eithne are Assassinated, Cell Cúile Duma, Ireland May 6, 795
Anne Brannen 0:23
Hello and welcome to True Crime Medieval, 1000 years of people behaving badly. I’m Anne Brannen, and I’m your host in Albuquerque.
Michelle Butler 0:32
And I’m Michelle Butler in Maryland, the most medieval state in America.
Anne Brannen 0:38
Today we are talking about the time that Bran Ardchenn and his lovely wife Eithne were burnt to death at a church in Leinster in 795. So that’s the crime.
Michelle Butler 0:56
This is our second church murder in a row.
Anne Brannen 1:00
We’ve had two or three at this point.
Michelle Butler 1:03
The last one was the Medicis.
Anne Brannen 1:05
The one before that was Robert the Bruce whacking John Comyn at the high altar. Not to mention Thomas Becket. Honey, people get killed in churches all the time. They’re not supposed to in the Middle Ages. It’s supposed to be a lovely place of sanctuary where you are safe, blah, blah, blah. That’s not happening.
Michelle Butler 1:26
It’s distressing, actually, how many times we’ve run into…we’ve only been doing this for two years.
Anne Brannen 1:33
But it’s like—
Michelle Butler 1:33
This is the fourth one.
Anne Brannen 1:35
Death in churches and death at dinner. Those are the biggies. No, they weren’t eating. They were in the church, and they got killed. We know this because it got written down in the Irish annals. So this is all true. Basically, basically…this is what we found out. Sometimes we go, ‘Oh, here’s a crime, somebody died. Let’s go find out about it’ and when we do it’s like, ‘okay, that’s basically it.’ Then we have to explain the background and the history. That’s what’s going on.
Michelle Butler 2:09
I have an absolutely awesome quote about this.
Anne Brannen 2:12
Oh, do you? Where’d you find it?
Michelle Butler 2:13
From Early Christian Ireland, which is this awesome book I’ve been reading by T.M. Charles Edwards. It’s this really awesome new history from the year 2000. Here’s what he has to say about this, that made me feel really good about the fact that we looked at this and said, ‘We know nothing but these people’s names.’ “A difficulty here is that the uneven but considerable wealth of the evidence is liable to be overwhelming. The annals and the genealogies in combination enables something to be said about thousands of named individuals. Early Irish history is thus liable to become a morass of names. What is worse, often little can be said about the persons who bear the names, other than what were their pedigrees and when and sometimes how they died.” So it’s not just us that looks at this and says, ‘Oh, we know nothing about these people, but their names.’ That apparently is a known problem with early Irish history, that you have all of these awesome genealogies and the annals and stuff where people have jotted stuff down and nothing else.
Anne Brannen 3:22
Same thing in Welsh. Okay, well, there were these people and they died. I have some stuff to say about the death but I’m not there yet. As usual, it’s my job, I’m going to explain all the background of this. Who were these people whose names we know died and that’s what we know. So we’re in Leinster and around 800 Common Era, Úgaine Mór founded the kingdom and Fionn mac Cumhaill built a stronghold there. When the Romans left Britain, settlers from Leinster went and settled in Wales and so you had some big connections there. Connacht, which was led by the O’Neills, became an enemy of theirs in the fifth century. The northern Leinster dynasty was founded by Murchad mac Brain, and our Bran was part of that dynasty. There’s a couple of different dynasties. He’s part of that one. Bran had married Eithne ingen Domnaill, who was the sister of Donnchad Midi, the high king, or maybe his daughter, we don’t know but it’s one of those things. That made relations with Connacht peaceable so that was a good political marriage. We don’t know if they got along. They were together when they died, so they at least talked to each other. Bran’s main rival as King of Leinster was Ruaidrí mac Fáeláin, who had been defeated in battle by Eithne’s dad or brother, whichever one it was. Ruaidrí defeated Bran in 782 at the Battle of Curragh, but Ruaidrí died in 785 and that’s when Bran became King of Leinster. So it was going back and forth between the lines. Okay, so everything’s great, doo doo doo doo. But Fínsnechta Cethardec mac Cellaig, who was the son of Cellach mac Dúnchad, who had been King of Leinster before Ruaidri, he had Bran and Eithne assassinated by burning, and then he became King of Leinster. Okay. I’m going to go into what happened after but I want to take a little segway because we know that Bran and Enya were killed by burning in the church. What the hell does that mean? There are different ways to kill people by burning…you can burn the church down around them, but that’s not what happened or we’d be told that. You can tie them to things with wood and set that on fire. But I think they didn’t burn them at stakes. You can pour pitch on their head and set it on fire. You can tie them up and pour gold down their throats. But what…we don’t know. You can’t just throw matches at them. What the hell happened? Did you find anything, Michelle, on what this possibly…? Was there some custom about how you burnt people in the church?
Michelle Butler 6:16
Nope. Not even everything I read talked about them being killed in the church. I did find some things about where the church probably was. So I have some stuff about that. But in terms of how they were actually killed, no.
Anne Brannen 6:34
This pisses me off because I would really like to know. I would like more clues as to what happened, but we don’t have them. They died and fire was involved. That’s all we know. And they could have been in or out of the church, but they were over by the church. The church was involved. All right. So what happens afterward? Well, Eithne’s brother or dad, whichever it is, is going to die in 797 and Áed, who was the son of the guy who had been the high king before Donnchad Midi–they’re both O’Neills but they’re different lines in the O’Neills–he killed off Donnchad’s successors, and he became the next High King himself. Then he invaded Leinster and installed the sons of Ruaidri and Bran as co-leaders. I find this hilarious. So they were joint rulers of Leinster, and that’s what happens. Here’s the point. The point of this particular discussion, the crime of the assassination, is that it’s an episode in a history of constant warfare–battles and raids and skirmishes–because that’s what the Celtic tribes did. They fought with each other. They made political and military alliances with each other. They fought with other peoples and made alliances with Romans, Greeks and whatever was around. That’s what they did. Across Europe, they were known as warriors, and that emphasis on warfare continued on down into the Irish Celts. The Welsh–by the way, I got to do this little segue here–the Welsh have a different sort of history. They’re the other main branch of the surviving Celts, but they’re in Britain and so they get pushed off to the edges. They were warriors, they divide into tribes, but they didn’t have high kings. That kind of organization wasn’t going to show up for quite some time. In fact, the first and only real king of Wales is at the end of the 11th century. So they weren’t doing the same kind of thing. The Romans had invaded and they were the main enemy for everybody. After that, the Anglos, Saxons, and Jutes invaded, and they were the main enemy for everybody and they took over basically the whole east. Wales, at that time, then was divided into several small kingdoms, which fought each other and they fought the Germanic invaders in the east and they fought the Irish and they fought Vikings. After a while, they’re going to fight the Anglo Normans because they’re going to come in, but back to the Irish. The Vikings are going to take pieces of the island. Ireland becomes divided into little kingdoms and over-kingdoms, and one of those kings, Diarmait Mac Murchada of Leinster, is going to get exiled by the High King, who was one of those Connacht guys. So Diarmait made a deal with the Normans, after which all hell is gonna break loose, but we think that that’s a crime in and of itself and so we’re going to talk about that later in some other episode. That is my explanation of what the hell was going on. When Bran and Eithne got burnt in church they’re just part of a long history of killing each other. Weren’t you were telling me that basically nobody dies in their beds?
Michelle Butler 9:41
When I found this and added it to our crime list, I thought, ‘Oh, this is going to be really interesting because you have this king get assassinated.’ Oh, it’s not even worth talking about in the annals. It’s just, ‘oh, well, this is a thing that happened.’ Because it happens so commonly.
Anne Brannen 9:59
Let’s not do a whole series of dead kings in Ireland, because this is just going to be the same thing over and over again.
Michelle Butler 10:06
I was looking at the annals, and this is really, really common for basically as far back as the annals go. If you’re one of these kings in Ireland, your likelihood of a peaceful death in your own bed is really, really low.
Anne Brannen 10:27
You get assassinated.
Michelle Butler 10:29
You get killed in battle, or you get killed by a relative who thinks they can do a better job than you’re doing.
Anne Brannen 10:36
I don’t even know if the relatives think that they could do a better job. I just think that the relatives want the job. It’s basically ‘Whack, whack, Whack, whack whack’ with various kinds of implements. Or matches.
Michelle Butler 10:48
I’m looking right now at one of the annals. This one king, twenty-two years. The next one, nine years. Nine years. Twelve years. Five years. They have–
Anne Brannen 11:03
A month and a half!
Michelle Butler 11:04
Four years. Nine years. Three years. Three years. Eleven years. One year. Four years. Three years. Twenty-four years. Twenty-four years is the longest one. One of my favorite ones is the one who…he was king for one year in 941. I’ll just read you the entry. “Lorcan, son of Fealan, King of Leinster…” — so he’s not even king, he’s the prince but he becomes king for a little while– “was slain by the Norsemen as he was plundering Dublin having first defeated the foreigners where many of them were slain by him.” I love this. He’s gone to Dublin. He’s kicked out some of the Vikings, but apparently not all of them, and some of the leftover Vikings catch him and kill him while he’s busy plundering the city.
Anne Brannen 12:06
I was telling some of this to Laura as she was leaving this morning. She said, ‘Well, you know, they have no TV.’ I said, ‘hon, we have TV, and we’re whacking each other all the time.’ She said, ‘a lot of us die in our beds. I said, ‘Well, okay.’
Michelle Butler 12:21
If you’re Irish king in the seventh, eighth or ninth century, you die horribly.
Anne Brannen 12:29
Also, it’s not like they’re alone. It isn’t just the kings are killing off each other. No, often it’s battle. So lots of other people have to get involved, too. So basically, if you’re Irish, in this particular time period, your likelihood of dying horribly is…
Michelle Butler 12:52
It’s a violent place. My God, early Ireland. I had kind of always come into early Ireland through the venue of the monasteries and the books.
Anne Brannen 13:09
What is it that the Vikings hit? Let’s get the monasteries. Because, you know, there’s not a lot of fighting going on at the monastery. It’s very different piece of the culture.
Michelle Butler 13:18
So coming at it from this side, the politics…it’s like, ‘my God, these people.’ Also, Ireland’s political structure is so different, because you have like 150 tiny little kingdoms. Ireland is the size of Indiana, just for context.
Anne Brannen 13:41
So it’s not like you’re gonna have this vast territory.
Michelle Butler 13:45
You have kingdoms that are literally three acres. This was one of the really cool things I learned, because we had a little bit more time because we had to take a week off.
Anne Brannen 13:57
Yeah, we had some time off. Because once again, COVID interferes with our plans. Michelle and I are just fine. But you know, sometimes relatives get sick, blah, blah, blah. Nobody died.
Michelle Butler 14:09
I was reading Early Christian Ireland, which was a book that had been on my shelf for a long time but I hadn’t really had time to sit down and pick through it. When I’m reading Irish history, I have to read really, really slowly because the names are very hard. My tendency is to kind of blip over them, and you can’t understand what’s going on if you just blip over them.
Anne Brannen 14:32
No, no, no, no. A lot of times, if you’re not familiar with the language, they kind of look alike.
Michelle Butler 14:39
They do.
Anne Brannen 14:40
It’s easy to mess them up.
Michelle Butler 14:44
So he talks about how the kingdoms are defined by their fields, the agricultural land, and generally speaking, you have one or two fields, and that’s the kingdom. So you’re king of those five acres, you’re king of those three acres. Just think about it. There’s 140 of them. Ireland is the size of Indiana. That’s probably more counties than there are in contemporary Indiana.
Anne Brannen 15:21
And then there’s the structure where the little kingdoms will be gathered into larger kingdoms. Then there’s this over-King. There’s this kind of hierarchy, which is continually shifting.
Michelle Butler 15:33
Yes, yes. Later in the book, Charles-Edwards–his name is hyphenated, it’s T.M. Charles-Edwards, his name is not Charles Edwards, that’s his whole last name–he talks about how trying to assess the impact of the Viking phase on Irish history is really quite difficult, because the historians want to talk about it as this hair-burning time of violence, and he’s like, but if you compare it, really, to what they were doing to each other beforehand, it’s maybe not as bad as it seemed. But he does say this that I thought was fascinating. Let me do the quote. “After the Viking phase in Irish history came that period and its political life, which has properly been entitled, ‘The Wars of the Great Provincial Kings.’ Those–
Wait, wait, wait, wait. I like that. Because the title has a little oxymoron. The Great Provincial Kings.
Isn’t that great? Big Little kings. “–those wars stretching from the 10th to the 12th century, ultimately stemmed from the Donnchad mac Domnaill’s activities” –this is the king who was Bran’s brother in law. Doing the transcript for this one is going to be horrible.
Anne Brannen 17:06
Let’s all have a little thought while we think about Michelle doing the transcript.
Michelle Butler 17:11
“They were far less conducive to civilization than the more peaceable order of the seventh and early eighth centuries.” So let’s have a little moment and think about that. Things get worse.
Anne Brannen 17:28
So when Bran and Eithne get burnt in the church, it’s during a sort of calm time of constant warfare, which later will become a worse time.
Michelle Butler 17:39
A worse time caused by the political policies of the king who was Bran’s brother in law. I think what he’s talking about here is that Bran’s brother in law, the king of Tara, makes the decision to align himself with Leinster rather than Munster and messes up some existing political structures and sets off this constant warfare, which I thought was fascinating. He ends that sentence with “and they left Ireland” –all that fighting– “in the opinion of Western European contemporaries, a country of picturesque but deplorable barbarity.” I thought that was just fascinating. That this assassination that we dealt with today, it seemed like we didn’t know anything about it. But according to this historian, it’s connected to this political reshuffling that the king of Tara is trying to do, which then has this inadvertent consequence of setting off a whole bunch of provincial infighting which then changes the image of Ireland in European eyes from this place where you send your sons to get educated to this place that looks barbaric, which in turn then makes it okay to invade.
Anne Brannen 19:12
So the culmination is Diarmuit inviting in the Normans.
Michelle Butler 19:19
I thought we had found this completely minor thing that I had absolutely no idea what we were going to talk about and it turns out to be connected to everything.
Anne Brannen 19:30
Well, you found out stuff about the church, I think. You were looking at the church?
Michelle Butler 19:33
I did.
Anne Brannen 19:34
It was archaeology and if there’s archaeology, you cannot keep from looking at it.
Michelle Butler 19:40
I looked up some stuff about the Book of Leinster too. This manuscript, which was really fascinating. I started looking at all kinds of stuff because when I went looking and found well, okay, what we have here are lines about Bran in four different annals, but they don’t say anything else except they got dead.
Anne Brannen 20:04
And one of them says burnt.
Michelle Butler 20:08
That’s helpful. Thanks so much. The place where the kings of Leinster had their seat–this is really pretty fascinating–was an important Neolithic site, which seems to be pretty common in Ireland. That where the Irish royal sites were, were themselves important Neolithic sites. Not just because…we see in England that if there’s a castle there, it’s probably because somebody else had looked at it earlier and said, that’s a really defensible site. That’s not necessarily what’s going on in these places. It’s more that they’re an important site spiritually, because not every one of these royal sites is being used as a royal site because it’s defensible. Tara is not necessarily defensible or Mullaghmast–this one. It has a really nice standing stone that is now in the National Museum in Dublin. There’s some really cool archaeology that was done there later. There’s an entire village that used to be below where a later castle was built that has totally disappeared but so they’ve done this really cool archaeology on that.
Anne Brannen 21:12
So the later castle…they didn’t have to dig under the later aastle? The later castle was destroyed or fell down and then they dug under?
Michelle Butler 21:22
I didn’t mean it was below it. I mean, it was in the valley.
Anne Brannen 21:26
Oh, you don’t mean below in the earth? You mean below in…?
Michelle Butler 21:30
Sorry. Yeah, there was a medieval village there that totally disappeared.
Anne Brannen 21:36
That really is a very different picture in my head.
Michelle Butler 21:39
Sorry. No, it–
Anne Brannen 21:40
The ambiguity of the English preposition ‘below’ demonstrated for you here by us.
Michelle Butler 21:46
There was also a horrific battle here later in the 16th century.
Anne Brannen 21:51
Which one?
Michelle Butler 21:52
It was the Massacre at Mullaghmast, which was the summary execution of Irish gentry by the English army and Tudor officials. It was in 1577. This was part of the Elizabethan attempt to reconquer Ireland. One of the things I really enjoy about the podcast is that we get to look at one place and kind of look at what was happening with it over time. I quite enjoy getting to see the ways in which things persist through time. So you have this Neolithic site that would have had this this stone that was there–the standing stone with its carved triskel, it’s that really common Celtic symbol, the actual, the prehistoric one. That would have been there when this massacre was happening in 1577. Persisting through time and staying there. It’s not there now, now it’s in the National Museum, but it would have been there in 1577. Watching Elizabeth’s officials murder a bunch of Irish nobles, as they tried to reconquer Ireland. Probably the church where the killing happened was near where there was a monastery that is now referred to as Oakvale. But that’s an Anglication of the the word. It Oughaval. There was a monastery there that was found in the sixth century. It was destroyed in the ninth century, probably by the Danes. It was not refounded. But there’s some really cool ruins there because a later church was built. A later medieval church.
Anne Brannen 23:41
The ruins are of the later church?
Michelle Butler 23:44
Yup. There’s a mid medieval church there that is now ruined. The Book of Leinster is really fascinating. I enjoyed reading about this a lot.
Anne Brannen 23:55
Do tell.
Michelle Butler 23:56
Oh, it’s so exciting. The Book of Leinster is one of the places that contains references to Bran’s death, to this murder. There’s at least two genealogies. There’s one called the Kings of Leinster and there’s another one called the Christian Kings of Leinster that are just lists of the kings, that mention him. Like this one: “Bran Ardchenn” –this is the Kings of Leinster– “Bran Ardchenn King of Leinster and his wife Ethne, daughter of” ‘that guy’ “were killed by the first cousin once removed–“
Anne Brannen 24:38
Yes, I forgot to say that. He was his first cousin once removed.
Michelle Butler 24:44
“–at this church on the sixth night of summer precisely.” Then it quotes a poem that we don’t have. “Of this it was said, the death of Bran, evil the deed at Cell Cúile Duma”–that’s the name of the church– “of Eithne daughter of that King was woeful to him.” So it quotes a poem that we don’t have anywhere else. It does this all over the place. This is in the Book of Leinster. This is a miscellany. Which doesn’t even do justice to what it is. It is 187 leaves. There are 45 leaves lost. There are 374 separate items, pieces of writing, in the Book of Leinster.
Anne Brannen 25:40
374 pieces…different pieces of writing?
Michelle Butler 25:45
Yes. There’s little snippets of poems. There’s pieces of the annals. It contains the most complete version that survives of the ‘Cattle Raid of Cooley.’ Ooh, it has this amazing Irish origin story that talks about the place of Ireland, the Irish people, and their language in the biblical world setting.
Anne Brannen 26:15
It is the bane of genealogy, let me tell you. People believe this, people believe this so much.
Michelle Butler 26:18
Here, this is awesome. “The Irish language,” according to this book, so here I’m quoting, “was created after the confusion at the Tower of Babel.” It claims that Irish avoided all the shortcomings and confusion found in other languages and was thus deserving of special recognition.
Anne Brannen 26:22
Oh Jesus. [laughter] It is deserving of special recognition, for it is a lovely lovely language and has a great deal of emphasis on prepositions, which is just lots of fun in and of itself, but it is not special of all the other languages in the way that is going on. Also there’s all these people in Irish genealogy way way back who get kind of confused with biblical figures, so that they become the same person.
Michelle Butler 27:12
We actually know a ton about this book particularly given old it is. It was mostly collected in the 1160s. It was worked on from 1151 to 1224. But most of the work was done in the 1160s and we even know the name of the principal scribe.
Anne Brannen 27:32
Really.
Michelle Butler 27:32
He was the abbot of Tír-Dá-Glas and may well have been working on this at the suggestion, shall we say, of the King of Leinster at that time. Just fascinating. We know this because at one point in the book, we have a place where he says his name, Aed, and then gives ‘ua’ and then probably his father’s name, ‘wrote the book and collected it from many books.’ That is indeed what he did. It’s basically a commonplace book. It’s just him collecting whatever he thought was interesting. Gerald of Wales saw this book during his trip to Ireland when he came over with Strongbow. He saw the Book of Leinster and–
Anne Brannen 28:18
He saw the book of Kells, too, didn’t he?
Michelle Butler 28:20
Yeah he was doing a book tour, clearly.
Anne Brannen 28:24
[laughter]. A book tour of ancient Ireland.
Michelle Butler 28:26
So it–
Anne Brannen 28:27
Are there any illuminations?
Michelle Butler 28:29
There are illuminations. He said it had beautiful illuminations, which probably was before he saw the Book of Kells because its illuminations are not as beautiful as the Book of Kells.
Anne Brannen 28:39
Nothing is, so there you go. All things pale before the Book of Kells.
Michelle Butler 28:44
But the thing that cracks me up about this, that is so awesome, is this book spent time at the church that was built after the one in which they died. That later church that still exist in ruins. This book was kept there.
Because this is close to the seat of the kings of Leinster, right?
Reasonably. It’s to the north of it. It actually was known as the Book of Oakvale. It got named The Book of Leinster in the 19th century because at that point, it wasn’t there anymore. But another scholar–whose name is R.I. Best, which you’d think sounds hysterical, but it’s his real name–matched passages in the Book of Leinster to ones that had been copied in the 17th century from the Book of Oakvale and establish that they were the same book. I was nerding out over this something fierce. I’m so sorry. We don’t even have to include this. I was so excited about this.
Anne Brannen 29:44
I’m totally including it. We always include your rabbit holes, honey.
Michelle Butler 29:49
Oh my gosh, this book is huge. A diplomatic transcription runs to six volumes, and it’s in Irish, not Latin.
Anne Brannen 29:59
Not Latin?
Michelle Butler 30:00
No.
Anne Brannen 30:00
Whoa.
Michelle Butler 30:00
It’s in Irish. It’s mostly in Irish. It was purchased in 1700 by Edward Lloyd, who was a Welsh nationalist and linguist doing a tour through Ireland and collecting books in Irish because one of the things he was doing was helping study and preserve Celtic languages, which is how it ended up in England for a while.
Anne Brannen 30:27
Yay, Edward Lloyd.
Michelle Butler 30:28
Yes. Everything about this was just amazing. I loved it.
Anne Brannen 30:33
I’m glad. So we have the Book of Leinster, which is awesome. And has illustrations. I’ll see if I can find one. We have the church of Oakdale, which is in ruins. Are there tours of it? Can we go visit this thing?
Michelle Butler 30:50
There are great pictures. I was looking online. There are people who have gone there and taken really awesome pictures. I was very anxious that we wouldn’t have enough to talk about with this, but I enjoyed tremendously digging around and looking up all this stuff about the Book of Leinster. It’s in Trinity College now.
Anne Brannen 31:15
That’s where the Book of Kells is held and it’s on display. Is the Book of Leinster on display? Do you know?
Michelle Butler 31:21
Let’s look. It is now kept in Trinity College, Dublin under this shelf mark. But not all of it, there’s a piece of it that is in University College, Dublin. I do not know how it made its way back to Dublin. I was not able to trace…I got nerdily interested in the history of manuscripts after that awesome work that was done by Barbara Palmer, showing what was happening with the Towneley manuscript and the history of the Towneley manuscript, so I’m nerdily interested in this, but I can’t figure out how it got back.
We’d have to know what happened to David Lloyd’s collection.
I know that he bought it in 1700 and somehow it made its way back. I even was looking on their website and I could not figure that out.
Anne Brannen 32:13
So it’s held there and it can be viewed in some way. If it’s not on display, you would be able to view it if you were a scholar and had a legitimate reason for looking at it.
Michelle Butler 32:33
I found a website that has translations of most of the pieces of the Book of Leinster and I had the most amazing time looking through all the collected crap that is in the Book of Leinster. There’s things like an Irish poem about the coming of spring, that is a lot like ‘Sumer is acumen in.’ There was one, it’s a tiny little poem, where a bishop…a woman has come to him with a question. It’s essentially in an Agony Aunt column. The woman has come to him with a question, and he has an answer for her. It was a 12th century box of newspaper clippings.
Anne Brannen 33:18
So just a collection of different things that the abbot found that he thought were worth writing down.
Michelle Butler 33:23
That he thought were worth looking at. The famous pieces, I knew about. The Cattle Raid of Cooley and some of these other things, but I really enjoyed looking through all the little tiny bits. ‘Here’s a miracle story associated with this saint. Here’s another miracle story associated with those other things.’ They’re not very long. Maybe a paragraph or a page or something. Because, obviously, if you have 374 different little works, and you only have 187 leaves, things aren’t very long. Some of these things are just little snippets. But it’s just so different than a lot of other medieval things I’ve read. It’s basically just stuff that this guy thought was interesting, and so he kept it together.
Anne Brannen 34:07
Including some of the annals.
Michelle Butler 34:08
Yep.
Anne Brannen 34:09
Cool.
Michelle Butler 34:09
He, by the way, was the last abbot of Tír-Dá-Glas because it burned down in 1164. It was not reestablished in part due to some church reforms that happened. That’s just before the Norman invasion.
Anne Brannen 34:26
Right.
Michelle Butler 34:27
Because of some reforms that happened as part of the Norman invasion. Part of the pretense for the invasion was that…well, we can talk about that when we get there. But the only Englishman to ever be pope signed off on that. I’m sure that was just a coincidence. ‘You can totally invade and fix the Irish church.’
Anne Brannen 34:48
No problem.
Michelle Butler 34:49
It’ll be fine. They’re totally screwed up.
Anne Brannen 34:51
Yeah, do that.
Michelle Butler 34:53
So anyway, he was the last abbot of Tír-Dá-Glas.
Anne Brannen 34:56
I’m trying to find David Lloyd and I can’t find him.
Michelle Butler 35:00
His name is Edward Lloyd and his last name is spelled–I’m just guessing as to how his name is pronounced–because it is Lhuyd.
Anne Brannen 35:07
Lhuyd. That’s comes down to us as Lloyd. So Edward.
Michelle Butler 35:14
Edward.
Anne Brannen 35:18
I was spelling it in English. No wonder I couldn’t find him. Okay. Edward Lhuyd was a Welsh naturalist–
Michelle Butler 35:27
Naturalist and linguist.
Anne Brannen 35:29
Got him.
Michelle Butler 35:29
He ended up being head of, I think, a museum in Oxford. He was first a naturalist and then he gets hauled in…some people come to him and are like, Cornish is dying out, we got to do something. And he’s like, you’re right, we got to do something, and so he ends up being involved in studying and preserving Celtic languages.
Anne Brannen 35:47
He’s the one who notices the similarity between the Welsh branch and the Irish branch of the Celtic languages. He’s the one who notices. Cool. He died from asthma, I’m sorry to tell you.
Michelle Butler 35:58
Oh, yeah, he was only 40–
Anne Brannen 36:00
49.
Michelle Butler 36:03
Ashmolean. That’s it. He ends up head of the Ashmolean Museum. Yeah, he definitely looked like somebody I would be interested in reading more about.
Anne Brannen 36:13
I totally am. I hadn’t heard of him before. What I was trying to figure out was what happened to his library. What happened to the books? Do-to-do. He was working at the Ashmolean. Then he traveled all around. Yeah, cuz he was finding all these books…the first written record of a trilobite was by him.
Michelle Butler 36:35
Yes! He’s one of these awesome, early Enlightenment scientists who’re just doing a little bit of everything.
Anne Brannen 36:41
What happened to his stuff? I’m not finding…Yeah, I don’t know.
Michelle Butler 36:47
I was not able to hunt it up. But I ran across him very late last night.
Anne Brannen 36:51
Alright. So Edward Lhuyd. We are interested in him. All righty. So. So we had a little death, and we don’t know what the death was like, because we weren’t given any…if people say somebody got stabbed, it’s really clear what happened. People say somebody got burnt. Not so clear. Not so clear.
Michelle Butler 37:18
What I learned on this go is that Irish politics were bad news. And there’s a really cool website that is called celt.ucc.ie. That is the Corpus of Electronic Texts, that has a whole bunch of Irish texts.
Anne Brannen 37:41
Oh, yes. I saw that.
Michelle Butler 37:43
Free Digital Humanities Resource. They have a bunch of stuff in translation. So that was really good.
Anne Brannen 37:49
Will you put that in our show notes?
Michelle Butler 37:52
Oh, yeah. They have pieces from the Book of Leinster there, but it’s somebody else’s project–the whole big translation–and that person’s project is creating links. They’re not translating everything themselves, but they’re creating links to every place that they found because it actually is quite difficult to find a full English translation of the Book of Leinster.
Anne Brannen 38:15
You can imagine. Because it’s really big and it’s a lot of little tiny things.
Michelle Butler 38:19
Mostly people are referring to bits of it. Which makes sense. Oh, and by the way, there is no fiction about this at all.
Anne Brannen 38:30
Yeah, no, there’s no fiction.
Michelle Butler 38:32
The closest you get is Peter Tremayne’s Sister Fidelma series, which is set in the seventh century in Munster. But I can understand why, because the…
Anne Brannen 38:45
There’s no there there.
Michelle Butler 38:48
What I mean, though, is that early Ireland in general is not rich in historical fiction, because the research is godawful. Really, it’s just Peter Tremayne. There’s an awful lot of Irish historical fiction, but not pre conquest.
Anne Brannen 39:08
Sometimes when we’re doing this stuff, I think, no one’s done really much fiction about this, this would be great. And like, here we go. Really great scene, very dramatic. Bran and Eithne get burned to the church. But we don’t even know. We don’t know.
Michelle Butler 39:22
I do think that the politics of this time period would lend itself to some great fiction but it’s Game of Thrones-y. Don’t get attached to anybody because they’re only going to be King for three years, King for four years, King for one year. Don’t get attached.
Anne Brannen 39:38
They’re all going down. Well, of course, the Normans are going to come and fix everything, she said sarcastically.
Michelle Butler 39:47
Like the Vikings came in.
Anne Brannen 39:50
The French Vikings. Okay, so that’s our collection. We explained why this particular murder that we don’t know much about, kind of connects to everything. Yay.
Michelle Butler 40:02
And it is utterly, utterly typical of Irish kingship at this time. I foolishly was like, Oh, this is really awesome. There’s this assassination, this is going to be great. It’s going to be totally unusual. No. It is utterly how kings died in Ireland.
Anne Brannen 40:19
So we have that it and we explained it. It’s all connected to everything. And it’s very typical. We had a lovely discussion. There’s church ruins, which we could go see. There’s a lovely manuscript, which maybe we can go see, maybe not, not clear on this, but at least it’s there.
Michelle Butler 40:36
There’s a standing stone that this dead king absolutely would have seen because it was there.
Anne Brannen 40:44
That’s one last thing I always forget to do…hold on. Do-doot-do.
Michelle Butler 40:51
There’s no historical fiction because the research is terrible. Also I learned that before 911, there was one annal in Ireland. It’s like the Anglo Saxon chronicle, where there’s one and then copies get dispersed and people start adding to it. So all these annals that are being cited in the Book of Leinster are all, in the past, the same one that has been tinkered with and recopied and added on to. So all those three different versions that are in the Book of Leinster are all the same one at their source. I did not know that.
Anne Brannen 41:30
The next time you hear from us, we will be discussing that time that Jacques de Gris raped the wife of Jean de Carrouges and then we have the Last Duel. Paris 1386 March 9. So this is one where we sort of started with a historical fiction and went backwards.
Michelle Butler 41:48
That’s because that movie came out, the movie with Matt Damon and Jodie Comer. And Adam Driver. That will be really different than this one. There’s that really popular book, there was a movie that didn’t do so awesome. But it turns out, if you include the same rape three times, maybe that’s not what audiences really find the feel good movie of the year?
Anne Brannen 42:19
No. Anyway, well, so we’re gonna go to France. We’re gonna go to France, late 14th century. We like to move around. That’s where we’re going.
Michelle Butler 42:29
That will be very different.
Anne Brannen 42:31
That will be very different, indeed. This has been True Crime Medieval, where the crimes are just like they are today only with less technology. I don’t know. ‘And then we burned them with matches.’ You can find us on Spotify and Apple podcast and Stitcher and all the places where the podcasts are hanging out. And at Truecrimemedieval.com, Truecrimemedieval is all one word. There’s links to the podcast, but there’s also show notes and transcriptions. You can reach us through there–that’s our website–and leave comments, you can leave comments there. Also we’d love to have reviews. We aren’t charging money, there’s nothing you can buy. You cannot send us any bucks, because we’re just doing this for fun. But we do like to have reviews anyway, because I have this thing where I want to get True Crime Medieval up in the field of true crime podcasts. It’s kind of like when I had my blog, which was Creating Text(iles) where the ‘iles’ was in parentheses, and it was supposedly a knitting blog. It wasn’t really, it was basically me just kind of blabbing. But you know, like that. I want true crime. So if you give some reviews, they might go on up. That’d be great, just be amusing to me. So that’s it. Leave us comments. You can also let us know if there’s any medieval crimes that you think that we should do. Like somebody suggested Abelard, and it was on our list anyway, but we did it.
Michelle Butler 44:06
Maybe not go to the Irish annals and see if you can find another dead king or two, because there’s tons but there’s just nothing else about them.
Anne Brannen 44:14
I think we might be kind of eschewing any more dead Irish kings. How about that? Unless there’s something really different.
Michelle Butler 44:26
We could do dead Irish kings for six months, but there’s really nothing else about them except they’re dead.
Anne Brannen 44:34
‘This time, we’re in Munster.’
Michelle Butler 44:36
I really enjoyed this piece of the Irish psyche that they bothered to write down–there’s really meticulous record keeping– ‘so and so’ got killed, ‘so and so’ got killed, ‘so and so’ got killed, ‘so and so’ died in battle, don’t bother write anything else down, but there’s the meticulous record keeping of their name and how they died.
Anne Brannen 44:58
Well, along with things like, the Book of Kells got found under a sod. That was in there.
Michelle Butler 45:08
I guess one way to look at this is that in some ways it’s indicative that we have a lot of information, because we do have all these names, but we just don’t know anything else about them.
Anne Brannen 46:42
All right. Anyways, that’s us. Bye!
58. The Pazzi Conspiracy, Florence, Italy, Easter 1478
Anne Brannen 0:23
Hello, and welcome to True Crime Medieval, 1000 years of people behaving badly. I’m Anne Brannen, and I’m your host in Albuquerque.
Michelle Butler 0:32
I’m Michelle Butler in Maryland, the most medieval state in America.
Anne Brannen 0:36
It is indeed. It is indeed. It has a medieval flag and things like jousting. Today we’re discussing the Pazzi conspiracy, which is really all about the Medicis, the Pazzis, it’s just very sad. In Florence, Italy, on the 25th of April 1478, Lorenzo de Medici and his brother Giuliano were attacked, whilst not only in the cathedral–sanctuary, sanctuary–but actually attending Mass, by some members of the Pazzi families, hence the name for this particular crime. Lorenzo was wounded, but Giuliano was killed. And then things did not go well for the Pazzis after that. They had meant to bring the Medicis down. But instead, they…well, lots of bad things happened to them. So. Why the hell would you get to the point where you thought it was a really good idea to attempt to take down the Medicis in the high cathedral at Mass. It’s not like people were not going to notice. So, our background. The Medicis had been rulers of Florence since the first half of that century. They had the largest bank in Europe and so though they weren’t like official rulers, they were really running things. They were running Florence. They had originally made their money mostly in textiles, and they grew and they grew and they grew, and they established a bank. I love this part. They used accounting systems, such as we still use today, the double entry bookkeeping system, which is a way of finding errors and accounting, because the sums of debts have to match up with the sums of credits. And I mean, you can you can misuse it–
Michelle Butler 2:22
That’s a humongously important step forward–
Anne Brannen 2:25
It is really big.
Michelle Butler 2:26
–for accounting and economics and banking.
Anne Brannen 2:29
Yes, you can misuse it. But hence forensic accounting, where you find out what people are doing. But it means that you can be really clear about what’s going on. You can catch mistakes much more easily if you’re actually looking for them, rather than trying to make them and, you know, get by the FBI and whatnot. It gives a high measure of accuracy. The oldest account books that have…so I got interested in this. A little tiny little rabbit hole.
Michelle Butler 2:57
Alright, so the plot trust this week is that you have the rabbit hole.
Anne Brannen 3:00
I have a little rabbit hole. The oldest account books that use the double bookkeeping system come from Florence, though, it was probably invented elsewhere. There’s a lot of contenders for that. And I’m sorry, it was a rabbit hole, but I’m not going into it.
Michelle Butler 3:14
[laughter]
Anne Brannen 3:14
So the DeMedici, they were really serious about money. And they spent it on art. For instance, Boccelli, Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael. And they spent it on buildings. The St. Peter’s Basilica, they built that. Also–nicely, ironically–they spent a lot of it on the cathedral where the Pazzis were going to attempt to take them down. That cathedral had been started in 1296. But the structure was finished in 1436, when Cosimo DeMedici had supported the goldsmith, Brunelleschi, who created the design for the dome, which was begun in 1420 and finished in 1436. So this was a place where…I mean, this was really kind of not just symbolic, but actually a real place that exemplified DeMedici money and power and how they spent it. Cosimo, at that point, had control of the government of Florence, not officially but through money. But the thing, is powerful families have to deal with enemies. The DeMedicis had pissed off Pope Sixtus the fourth, so this is going to be a big deal. He had become Pope in 1471. He had given positions– cardinalships, bishoprics, prefetships–to his relations, his friends and relations. He also wanted to buy this little town in northern Italy and turn it into a new papal state. Okay, why not? But the deal fell through, at first because Lorenzo DeMedici wanted to buy it too. I don’t think he was going to turn it into a papal state. I don’t know what he was going to do with it, but he wanted to buy it. When the deal went to Pope Sixtus instead, Lorenzo’s bank refused to finance it. Uh huh. Duh. So Sixtus had a snit fit and he fired the Medicis as the bankers to the papacy and hired the Pazzis instead. Okay. The Pazzis, by the way, they were another Florentine banking family. They had built a church in Florence, though not the cathedral. It was small. They had married into the Medicis. One of them, who was actually one of Lorenzo’s childhood friends, had married Bianca, who was the sister to Giuliano and Lorenzo and how this all got discussed at family dinners after the Pazzis tried to murder both her brothers I only wish I knew. I don’t. Do you know anything about this, Michelle, how Bianca took this?
Michelle Butler 5:43
I would assume it was a sore subject.
Anne Brannen 5:47
I know. I know, why doesn’t anybody talk about this? I want to know but anyway, we don’t know. Some of his relations tried to murder some of her relations and I can’t imagine that was good for the marriage. There you go. So besides the undermining of the buying and selling of that town that the Pope wanted, thereby getting more power, the Pope was pissed off also because one of his numerous appointments to positions of power of his friends and relations was sidelined by Lorenzo who got his own brother in law appointed Archbishop of Florence. Okay. So. The Pazzis were not as powerful is the Medicis, but they too liked having power, and so they decided to kill both Lorenzo and his brother Giuliano at the same time, and Pope Sixtus, in a very naughty and unpope-like manner–about which I believe Michelle is going to have a lot more to say because this was something that shocked her, shocked her I tell you, shocked her to the bone–did not actually sanction the killing. But he said that anybody who got the Medicis out of power would not be in trouble with him and he would support them and also, the Duke of Urbino had 600 troops stationed outside Florence to be ready to move in. Okay. What could go wrong? So during mass, Francesco de Pazzi, who was the head of the Pazzi bank in Rome and Sixtus’s nephew Girolamo Riario and the Archbishop of Pisa, Francesco Salviati, attacked Giuliani and stabbed him 19 times after whacking him in the head with a sword. They wounded Lorenzo in the neck but a poet, a good friend of his who was also a poet and the tutor of his children, Poliziano–the Medicis were his patrons–he saved Lorenzo’s life by pulling him into the sacristy. Yay. And Lorenzo liked him even better after that. Yay. Any rate, so after that a bunch of these idiots went over to the Palazzo della Signoria–that is, they went to the town hall–and they attempted to take it but that didn’t work. Florence did not rise up against the Medicis since they themselves, all the people of Florence, did not have a lot of reasons to do so, because they hadn’t been trying to buy little Italian towns and put all their friends and relations in positions of power or create bigger banks than the Medicis had. So instead of taking control of the town hall, a bunch of these guys got hung from the windows by the Florentines. Da Vinci made a beautifully gruesome drawing of what one of them looked like hanging there and decomposing, and we’re going to use that as our little illustration on the website. The rest of the crew didn’t fare well either. Several dozen got killed immediately. The head of the family tried to get away but he was found and captured. He was captured and tortured and hung from one of the town hall windows alongside the rotting corpses of everybody else who was still hanging there. And then his body got buried and then dug up and got desecrated several different ways. It went in and out of the river and at one point was propped up, rotting, over at the door of what had been the corpse’s palace when the corpse was still alive. Lorenzo–getting back to the Medicis–Lorenzo, bless his heart, had begged for restraint and calm, but, as you can see, the Florentines ignored him. However, he did manage to save some of the relatives. So yay. Including, you know, his brother in law. But the the co-conspirators were hunted down. Nicholas Baker tells us that 80 people were executed by the 20th of October and remember, this all went down about, you know, the 23rd of April. So, so just that many months. There were still more later. One of the conspirators actually made it to Constantinople, but the Sultan sent him back. He got hung out a window as well, but it was a window of a prison, not the town hall, because by that time, I think all the rotting corpses had been taken down, so why bother putting them there? And was that all? It was not. The remaining de Pazzis were banished. Everything they owned–goods and land–all got confiscated. They were stricken from the public registers. Their Coat of Arms was taken away. Anything with their name on it got renamed. Anybody who was named Pazzi wasn’t allowed public office or anybody married to one of the Pazzis wasn’t allowed public office. Lorenzo’s brother in law was under house arrest for a while, but that was okay, really, given the alternatives. And his daughters were allowed to get married, unlike all the rest of the Pazzi daughters, so yay, there’s that. Okay. But the pope fought back. Of course he did. He excommunicated Lorenzo and anybody holding public office in Florence. He put Florence under interdict, so nobody could take communion or hear mass and then Naples and Urbino attacked Florentine territory. All of this ended when Lorenzo went to Naples and allowed himself to be a prisoner of the king, who was convinced to broker peace. It wasn’t a very good peace, but it was a peace at least. And then the Medicis were stronger because they figured out that they needed to concentrate power and Lorenzo himself was even more popular because he was so cool. He worked on maintaining peace and making money. The Pazzis were finally able to return to Florence in 1494, when the eldest son of Lorenzo, who was named Piero, and had taken over Florence after Lorenzo died in 1492, completely undid all of Lorenzo’s constructions of peace and goodwill, or at least not slaughtering each other, and he got thrown out of Florence. After what he was called Piero the unfortunate, and that was 1494. The de Medicis returned to power again in 1512. And that is what happened in the Pazzi conspiracy, which is when the Pazzi family tried to oust the Medicis and really did not do a good job of it. Although Giuliano did die, and that was very wrong, because he was gorgeous. You can see him a lot. He was one of the models in Michelangelo’s paintings. Lorenzo himself, not gorgeous, but a really, really good administrator. Any rate, Giuliano didn’t get pulled into the sacristy until he got stabbed 19 times. Now my question here. Because if any of you have listened to the podcast that we did on Mary, Queen of Scots, and that very sad dinner she had when her husband and his cohorts in doing a stupid plot, much like the plot we’ve got today, stabbed her musician and secretary 56 times, we are told. Michelle, at that point, you raised an objection, and I think it was a good objection, that we really can’t be sure that it was 56 times because Mary wouldn’t have really been able to count while they were stabbing him. There was too much frenzy. And then really, was forensics that good that they were able to tell 56 times when they were counting the wounds on the body. I believe that was your objection. Michelle?
Michelle Butler 13:07
Yep.
Anne Brannen 13:07
How do you weigh in on the 19 times? Do you think this is a thing that will pass our understanding of medieval forensics? Could they figure out that somebody has been stabbed 19 times? Or do you believe this to be a little useful fiction?
Michelle Butler 13:23
I don’t know. I think that it’s highly likely that there would be the opportunity for some useful fiction. On the other hand, you could probably count some number of wounds. I mean, it’s not going to be exact, right? Because if you’re stabbed, stabbed, stabbing, you’re going to have some overlap.
Anne Brannen 13:50
Theoretically, you would, yes.
Michelle Butler 13:52
It’s not like you’re saying to yourself, ‘Okay, so what I need here is a really good distribution all over the place so I’ll be able to keep count.’ You’re aiming for the central body mass.
Anne Brannen 14:01
Yeah, or whatever you can reach. Yes. And he may actually have been dead already and not moving around on account of the, um, getting whacked on the head with a sword. It might have been fairly easy to stab him. So you could…maybe you could count. ‘One, two.’ Although why you would, I don’t know.
Michelle Butler 14:18
I don’t know that you’d count as it was going on. But it would certainly be in Lorenzo’s best interest to have somebody look that body over and come up with a truly egregious number. He doesn’t need to garner public sympathy because he definitely has public sympathy at that point, but every little bit helps when you’re holding on by your fingernails.
Anne Brannen 14:45
19 is a nice number. A rounded number does sound made up but 19? That’s a good number. It’s a lot. It is not as extravagant as 56. You know, the 56 stab wounds that Rizzio theoretically had. I mean, that’s way over the top. So, Michelle, my understanding is that you were a little upset by this story.
Michelle Butler 15:10
Good gracious sakes. Oh my gosh. Golly gee. Okay, so here’s the thing. Here’s the thing, I read a book called _The House of Medici: Its Rise and Fall_ by Christopher Hibbert, which was originally written in 1974. But the reason I read it is that it kept showing up as ‘this is a good book to read about this.’ And also the other one that I wanted to read, which is called _April Blood: Florence and the Plot against the Medici_, which I really would have liked to read. It was published by Oxford University Press in 2003. It is, alas, out of print, and is not available as a digital book. So there was just no way to get a hold of it in time. But I really would have liked to have read that one. Anyway. So I read this other one that was coming well-recommended in lists of books about the Medici, of which of course, there are a gazillion. I will say it’s an old fashioned book. You can definitely tell it was written originally in 1974. It’s not out of print, though, which tells you something about how it’s been received over the decades that it’s been around. So I will say, everything I know about this comes from that.
Anne Brannen 16:33
Okay.
Michelle Butler 16:34
So what I’m going to tell you is Christopher Hibbard’s version of events. This is horrible. I’m, I’m scandalized. I’m, I’m horrified. Because..I mean, it’s one thing, right, we’ve been doing crimes for a couple years now. I’d like to think of myself as a basically worldly person, or at least not as naive as I was growing up in the Midwest, but oh, my God. I was raised Catholic, okay. The idea that they kill these guys, they killed them, not only in church, but in the middle of the mass. And–this is the part that really is sacrilegious– they used the elevation of the host–that moment, and then the ringing of the Sanctus bell of course at the same time, which symbolizes that at that particular moment, that’s when the host goes from being…that is the holiest moment in the mass.
Anne Brannen 17:39
Yep. Yes, it is.
Michelle Butler 17:41
It is when the host goes from being the bread to being the body and blood, the body of Christ. It is the central moment of holiness. But it’s also really visual, because the priest is lifting the host up, and so everybody can see it. And everybody is supposed to be dipping their heads at that point, reverentially. So they used that as their go sign and I’m horrified. It’s so blasphemous, it is so blasphemous. It is one of these things that has to have happened in real life because if you tried to write it in a book of historical fiction, your editor would say, ‘oh, no, sweetie, nobody would do that in the Middle Ages. They have too much reverence for religion to do that.’
Anne Brannen 18:35
No, no, we we’ve had–
Michelle Butler 18:40
I’m mentioning…sorry, I’m mentioning this the very next time somebody tries to tell me about how the Middle Ages was this horrible time in which people only did what the Pope said and they were really, really religious and they never ever did anything against their religion, which I hear a lot.
Anne Brannen 18:57
Yeah, it’s total silliness.
Michelle Butler 19:00
I’m whipping out that time that somebody used the elevation of the host as their go sign for an assassination.
Anne Brannen 19:10
Because we’ve had…I want to remind us all that we’ve covered some murders in churches. There was Robert the Bruce killing John Comyn in front of the high altar because he had a little fit of anger.
Michelle Butler 19:23
That was pretty bad.
Anne Brannen 19:24
And there was a bunch of doofuses killing Thomas a Becket in Canterbury Cathedral.
Michelle Butler 19:31
That was pretty bad. But I as far as I can tell, this was stone cold sober.
Anne Brannen 19:38
This was stone cold sober.Not a fit of anger. Pre-planned, and they use the host… they used the elevation of the host as a signal. Very, very tacky.
Michelle Butler 19:50
And two of the assassins were priests.
Anne Brannen 19:54
Yes, one of them was an archbishop. It’s so bad.
Michelle Butler 20:02
It’s horrific. The brother Giuliano had gotten hurt three weeks earlier. So here’s the only redeeming feature of this whole thing. He had gotten hurt three weeks earlier. So the Pazzis had all these, like, plan A, plan B, plan C, where they were going to try to accost the two of them together in public, but Giuliano wasn’t going out in publicecause he’d been hurt.
Anne Brannen 20:29
How had he gotten hurt?
Michelle Butler 20:30
I think he fell off his horse and hurt his leg.
Anne Brannen 20:33
Oh, okay.
Michelle Butler 20:34
Hibbert says but I don’t remember right at this moment. So he gotten hurt and wasn’t going out in public. And so this was like their plan D. Their original assassin, who had agreed to be part of the plot in public, backed out when they’re like, ‘Okay, we have to go, we’re gonna have to do this in church, too many people have heard of the plot, we have to move.’ And the original guy’s like, ‘this is where I get off. I’m not killing anybody in church.’
Anne Brannen 21:04
Do you know what happened to him? Because the Pazzis, they were all in trouble. The people that Lorenzo was able to save were not conspirators or co-conspirators. They were people who just happened to be related, you know. So do you know what happened to him?
Michelle Butler 21:20
I don’t remember whether Hibbard talks about that.
Anne Brannen 21:22
I’d love to know.
Michelle Butler 21:23
Yeah, that would be really interesting. I mean, my guess would be he got swept up. But if he had any sense at all, if he had any sense at all, he left town.
Anne Brannen 21:33
It didn’t matter. They tracked everybody down. They tracked people down from Constantinople. It did not matter. You did not get away. I didn’t read about ‘and then so and so went to London and was never heard from again.’ There was nothing. No, they were gone. They found him. Well, I’m sorry, Michelle, that this was so upsetting. And scandalizing.
Michelle Butler 22:00
It’s pretty scandalous. I’m really pretty shocked, and I’m pretty shocked that they somehow thought that there wasn’t…the Pazzi I mean…that they somehow thought that pulling off…I guess it’s one of these places where you have the sunk cost fallacy kicking in because they’ve planned everything and they feel like they have to move and so they just keep going down this worse and worse path. And yet they somehow think that this method of execution is not, even if they managed to pull it off, is not going to have ramifications for their ability to take control of the city.
Anne Brannen 22:43
Right. When we were talking about Darley murdering Rizzio, I was calling it the stupid plot. I think this is like the stupid and tacky plot, but it’s really very, very stupid. What were…if this was Plan D, what was A and B and C? What were they going to do that might have worked better if it had come off?
Michelle Butler 23:04
They had earlier plans for encountering them in public spaces. ‘So a dinner is happening over here, we’ll figure out how to get into there.’ Or there is an event happening over here, you know, a public festival. ‘Oh, they’ll be there. So we’ll do it there.’ But because Giuliano had been hurt, he wasn’t going out in public. And they…it got to where the only place they were going to be able to encounter the two of them together was at mass.
Anne Brannen 23:35
Okay. And although Giuliano and Lorenzo were running Florence together, they were co-running Florence’s together, Lorenzo really was the stronger of the two. So they wanted him both. They didn’t want to let Giuliana go. Because they’d still have a leader. They still have a de Medici leader.
Michelle Butler 23:53
Exactly. That’s exactly it. Unsurprisingly, this is really a topic for historical fiction.
Anne Brannen 24:02
I knew that you would have stuff for us there.
Michelle Butler 24:04
Unsurprisingly. But the one that I looked at was the one on Netflix because that’s really recent.
Anne Brannen 24:13
There’s one on Netflix? Netflix!
Michelle Butler 24:15
It is! I think it might have been a victim of the of the pandemic because it ran from 2016 to 2019. But did not come back after the pandemic.
Anne Brannen 24:29
Yeah, I watched it. I enjoyed the hell out of it.
Michelle Butler 24:32
Did you actually watch it? I have not watched all of it. I did watch the episode with the actual murder.
Anne Brannen 24:41
Yeah, I’m gonna go back and watch that now that I’m clear on what was going on. Yeah. Oh, it’s fun. It really is. And, you know, the thing is, historical fiction that I know something about but not an enormous amount, that’s always very easy for me. Whereas historical fiction where I actually really know a lot…problems. So I just got to enjoy the Medici. It wasn’t like watching the Tudors, for instance, where I have to like explain all the time where things have gone wrong.
Michelle Butler 25:09
I thought it was something Netflix clearly did based on the success of Game of Thrones. I think there are unmistakable…not parallels with but debts to Game of Thrones in how it’s handled. I mean, right down to some of the actors. Richard Madden, who was Robb Stark, Richard Madden is Cosimo. And the Pazzi patriarch Jacopo is played by Sean Bean.
Anne Brannen 25:43
Yes, and it’s always nice to see Sean Bean. You know that I had a thing where I was watching all Sean Bean that I possibly could because I wanted to know, does he really die in everything? He doesn’t, you know, I just want to tell you that.
Michelle Butler 25:59
He dies in kind of have a lot of them though.
Anne Brannen 26:02
He does. There’s a high percentage of Sean Bean actor deaths. Yeah, yeah. Any rate. Yeah. Sean Bean’s in it.
Michelle Butler 26:09
I was fairly impressed with it. Of course, it’s fiction. They’ve tightened things up, they’ve sexed things up. Everybody’s more attractive than they would have been.
Anne Brannen 26:21
Oh, Lorenzo. Lorenzo was not handsome, we are told and because he’s surrounded by artists, we do have some depictions. He’s not as handsome as his brother. This is true.
Michelle Butler 26:33
But I thought they did a nice job with the actual assassination scene. I thought the filming choices were really interesting. There’s a lot of shots from above. There’s really interesting music. I thought that the handling of the crowd was done really well. The kind of chaos that immediately breaks out once the assassination attempt has happened.
Anne Brannen 26:59
Yeah.
Michelle Butler 27:01
And it doesn’t really shy away… Even though the sympathy of the show is with the Medicis. It’s called Medici the Magnificent. It’s not called, you know, the Pazzi underdogs. The sympathy of the show is clearly with the Medicis. It does not actually shy away from how the riots break out and people are just murdering…
Anne Brannen 27:24
Right. Lorenzo didn’t like that. He really did not. So he was begging people to be restrained. I don’t know where this is happening but I like to imagine him standing like the sheriffs do in American movies where people are coming to lynch somebody and the sheriff’s standing there like you, ‘you Eleanor you brought bread, you were saved by…’ He says to all of the people there something that ties them into some kind of humanity, and let’s not kill each other. I like to imagine him doing that. But I don’t know if he did. At any rate, he did try to make people behave. They didn’t.
Michelle Butler 28:02
No. They did not. And that really is, you know, one of the reasons this didn’t work, because the city ultimately was not with the rebels. The Medicis had a history…Hibbert thinks it’s not especially earned–but the Medicis had a history of being liked by the populace.
Anne Brannen 28:27
Yeah, and so this is one of those instances where, you know, you might hear about this, ‘oh, the Pazzi family goes up against the very, very important incredibly, incredibly strong Medici,’ you might think that the sympathy is going to be with the underdog, but it is not. It isn’t. My sympathy is not with the underdog and yours isn’t. It was in the church at the high mass with the host and everything is just…so the murder itself is dreadful. Florence was not wanting the Pazzis to take over, you know, so in this case, oddly enough, in this case, I’m not with the underdog. I’m okay with the Medicis at this point. Am I all the time, at every minute? No. But right now? Yeah, sure.
Michelle Butler 29:10
It’s tricky because Lorenzo is the subject of a fair amount of mythologizing that comes afterwards.
Anne Brannen 29:20
Of course.
Michelle Butler 29:21
I mean, you’re doing well, if your nickname for posterity is Lorenzo the Magnificent.
Anne Brannen 29:28
Yes. It wasn’t one of those ironic things. You know, it wasn’t like, you know, Pedro the good, you know, it wasn’t like that.
Michelle Butler 29:36
No, no. It was meant. Part of that is that the Medicis were always really clever about paying for public works.
Anne Brannen 29:46
Right, right.
Michelle Butler 29:47
Paying for buildings, paying for art, patronizing artists. There’s some very funny stories that Hibbert tells about them finding the artists. Brunelleschi. Botticelli and the rest of them. Michelangelo, of course. It’s a good idea to have the artists well inclined to you. And it’s a good idea to spend money in public ways. It’s a lesson Andrew Carnegie learned.
Anne Brannen 30:21
I was about to mention Andrew Carnegie. Yeah, absolutely. ‘Here is a library and a museum.’ ‘Ooh, you’re so cool.’ Yep. Yeah, public works really matter, and things that are visual and used and useful and loved, that matters a lot. And as I say, the de Pazzis did build a church, but it wasn’t like that cathedral. The Medicis got the cathedral done.
Michelle Butler 30:46
They did spend an awful lot of money, they really did, on things that were for the public. I mean, they’re not…I don’t want to sound like they’re perfect or anything. Because they’re clearly…they’re bankers. But they at least have enough sense to know that if you want the public to be on your side, you’d better spend some money on public works.
Anne Brannen 31:16
When we were talking about this earlier, before we came to the recording you, you were upset. I remember you’re saying something at the very first about the pope. That the Pope was behind all this was also distressing to you.
Michelle Butler 31:29
It was. Yes. The Pazzi go to him, and they meet with him, and he kind of does this wink at them and says, ‘do whatever you want as long as nobody gets killed.’ What they take that to understand is, ‘I actually don’t care whether you kill somebody. I’m required to say that.’ So what he says is, ‘do whatever you want as long as there’s no killing.’ What they hear is ‘actually I would be okay if Lorenzo and Giuliano end up dead.’
Anne Brannen 32:04
So it isn’t this kind of thing like where Henry the second, for instance, has a little fit where he says, ‘will no one rid me of this priest’–or something like that, we don’t really know–and is misunderstood because the minor knights that hear him that go and kill the archbishop don’t actually understand that Henry has temper fits all the time, and then he gets over it. They don’t get this, and so they go and kill him. It isn’t like that at all. This is deliberate. On the part of the Pope. This is deliberate.
Michelle Butler 32:35
Hibbert thinks so. Hibbert thinks that, and the Pazzi seem to think so. This is the only explanation I have for why they thought it was going to be okay for them to behave in such a sacrilegious manner. They must believe that they have the pope firmly enough on their side that the immediate thing after this kind of blasphemy isn’t going to be their excommunication.
Anne Brannen 32:59
Well, they’re right. The Pope excommunicates Lorenzo, and puts Florence under interdict. The pope doesn’t go ‘oh my god, the Pazzis, you have been so bad, not only will you lose all your money, because Florence takes it away from you, I will also excommunicate you naughty naughty people.’ That is not what he does. They were right.
Michelle Butler 33:17
That’s really dreadful.
Anne Brannen 33:18
I’m sorry, honey. Yes. We have 1000 years of people behaving badly. Sometimes, what we have are people…are Catholics behaving very badly as Catholics. Not good. Not good. Being very naughty here. Very naughty indeed. The Pope was naughty. The Pazzis were naughty, very naughty. Very, very naughty indeed. I can just imagine, because I also know Catholicism, and I can just imagine being there at the moment of the mass, and all of a sudden having violence breakout. That would be very shocking, indeed.
Michelle Butler 33:56
What Hibbert says is–and again, I don’t know his sources for saying this–but what he says is that that’s one of the reasons that Guiliano, that the brother, ends up dead because he…Lorenzo was the skeptical one, so even when he is doing the head bow thing, he’s kind of got one eye open. But the brother was more devout, and so he’s full on in the moment. So he doesn’t have that half second to react that Lorenzo has. Lorenzo actually manages to get his cloak off and wrap it around his hand and start wailing on people. Once his assassin has realized it’s no longer as easy as he thought it was, he flees
Anne Brannen 34:47
That’s the point at which our poet is able to drag Lorenzo into the sacristy?
Michelle Butler 34:52
Into the sacristy, yeah. And barricade themselves in.
Anne Brannen 34:57
Lorenzo got wounded in the neck, but it was a mild wound.
Michelle Butler 35:01
The brother did not have just that extra half a moment to react. They weren’t messing around. Lorenzo’s assassin is trying to slit his throat. That’s why he’s injured in the throat. I think they did the same thing to the brother. Because he went down pretty fast.
Anne Brannen 35:26
Yeah, he went down very fast.
Michelle Butler 35:29
This just feels so substantively different to me than what happened with John Comyn or what happened with Becket. Because so much of that is about reacting in the moment in a hot blooded sort of way. This is this is so cold and planned.
Anne Brannen 35:48
There were 600 troops outside Florence waiting to come in. It’s very cold blooded.
Michelle Butler 35:53
It feels more like Joan of Arc, the murder of Joan of Arc.
Anne Brannen 35:59
How so?
Michelle Butler 36:00
Because it is this misuse of religion to do terrible political things.
Anne Brannen 36:08
Got it. Got it. Got it.
Michelle Butler 36:10
I would have lost…if this had shown up on a trivia thing, even after having been a medievalist now for decades, if this had shown up on a trivia question, did I think that somebody had committed murder in the 15th century in the middle of mass using the elevation of the host as the signal to start stabbing? I would have said, no.
Anne Brannen 36:39
No, of course.
Michelle Butler 36:40
I would not have thought that that was possible.
Anne Brannen 36:42
You might do it in front of the high altar, you know, where you’re supposed to be having a peaceful talk with your cousins since everybody’s related but oh, no, nah, not at Mass. Yeah. I don’t know if we’ve got the de Medicis showing up on our list at any other point, which is actually kind of nice. It would be nice if the de Medicis get out of our 1000 years of people behaving very badly list. But the de Pazzis were ruined. Very sad. I mean, that’s it. If you happen to be just related to the conspirators, you were ruined. I mean, the entire family was just done. So that’s always really sad too like, if your brother goes and does stupid, bad things, and then you like, lose all your money, because you happen to be related. That’s not good. But this is a place and a time where family and family connections is paramount. So whether or not you were in on the conspiracy, you’re under house arrest, but we’re going to let your daughters get married. Okay, fair enough.
Michelle Butler 37:47
I really don’t have a ton more. There really are lots of you know, lots of fiction about it. But I really kind of stuck with the Netflix one because I thought that most recent handling was really pretty well done. And the the unmistakable echoes of the Red Wedding in how the assassination was filmed. I mean, I was just struck by their screaming mother.
Anne Brannen 38:20
Hmm, yeah. Oh, yeah. I had really… I’m thinking about the actual piece of history. I forgotten that they were not the only Medicis who were there. They all went to Mass. Oh, very sad.
Michelle Butler 38:33
The show’s handling of their mother is just, just, it’s just heartbreaking. She’s screaming.
Anne Brannen 38:46
Yeah. That’s interesting. I was thinking about the Medicis. I’m thinking about the entire family because everybody is so clearly affected. I forgotten that. Of course, all the De medicis are. Although I was thinking about Bianca, I will say that.
Michelle Butler 39:01
They have them barricaded in the sacristy and the people are trying to get in and finish Lorenzo off, and Lorenzo’s mom is trying to get out and get to the brother. Get to her son.
Anne Brannen 39:17
That’s a nice way to film it.
Michelle Butler 39:18
Yeah, terrible. God. It was awful.
Anne Brannen 39:22
Well, this particular podcast has not gone on as long as we might generally but we understand that that is because one of us was really scandalized. Very scandalized, and could just even hardly think about anything else except the scandalous nature of the entire thing. And so there we are. That’s been our discussion of the time that one of the families of Florence tried to take down the biggest family in Florence and really failed so very badly, very badly. Indeed.
Michelle Butler 40:00
One thing that I do like about the Netflix handling is that a lot of the actors are actually Italian. It’s done in English, but a lot of the actors are actually Italian. They’re not all, but an awful lot of them are.
Anne Brannen 40:13
Sean Bean, no.
Michelle Butler 40:14
Not Sean Bean and not Richard Madden. But mostly, they’re a bunch of Italians, which is kind of nice.
Anne Brannen 40:23
We’re leaving Italy the next time. Do you remember what we’re doing?
Michelle Butler 40:27
No, what are we doing next?
Anne Brannen 40:28
We’re going to Ireland at the end of the eighth century. So you’ll be happy about that. You’ll be much more comfortable. We’re going to talk about the time that one of the kings got assassinated, when Brian Archen gets assassinated in Ireland 795. So that’s what we’ll be doing next. We were making a little collection of, you know, blood feasts. You know, when people get murdered at dinner. We definitely need to make a collection of church murders, you know, the violation of sanctuary when people get murdered in church.
Michelle Butler 41:07
Honestly. You read about these rules, and you think really, did it have to be a rule? Did you have to say out loud, that you don’t murder people in church, or when you’ve invited them to dinner? Clearly you did need to say that out loud.
Anne Brannen 41:18
Clearly, you did. We’ve mentioned a couple of the other church murders. You remember also during the massacre of the Danes that the Danish citizens of Oxford got burned down in the church, remember?
Michelle Butler 41:36
That’s right.
Anne Brannen 41:37
Because they went there for sanctuary and that didn’t work. Sanctuary only works if the people who are coming after you believe that it matters more than what they’re doing.
Michelle Butler 41:47
Yeah, honestly, I’m gonna have to hopefully run across some instances in which it did work. Where you went running for the church, and they shut the doors and the people outside went, ‘Oh, okay.’
Anne Brannen 42:01
Elizabeth the queen. Absolutely. She took sanctuary. She was there for a long time.
Michelle Butler 42:07
That’s good.
Anne Brannen 42:09
She and her kids. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Michelle Butler 42:11
Nice to know, at least once–
Anne Brannen 42:12
The boys got murdered only when they were taken out and taken to the Tower. They were not in sanctuary when they got murdered. So there’s that for the end of the Plantagenets. You know, there’s a little bit of behaving. There you go. So sometimes yes, sanctuary actually worked as sanctuary. Not always though, and we tend to hear about the times it didn’t. So that’s our discussion about the Pazzis and the Medicis at high mass in April. This has been True Crime Medieval, where the crimes are just like they are today only with less technology. You can find us on Spotify and Apple podcast and Stitcher and all the places where the podcasts hang out. You can find us at truecrimemedieval.com Truecrimemedieval is all one word. And there you can find the show notes. Michelle does the show notes and transcripts. We’re working on getting them back all together. Laurie Dietrich did them for quite some time. And now we’re doing them. Michelle is doing them. And I do the blurbs and find enormously interesting pictures to stick on things. You can reach us through the webpage too and you can leave comments. And we’d love it if you left reviews in the places where you are finding us. So we’ll be in Ireland next time. We like to go. We’re all around. 1000 years. An entire continent. So that’s us. Bye!
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
57. Stephen of Blois Breaks His Oath, London, England, December 1135
Anne Brannen 0:23
Hello, and welcome to True Crime Medieval, 1000 years of people behaving badly. Sometimes really, really badly. But today, just kind of mildly badly. I’m Anne Brannen, and I’m your host in Albuquerque.
Michelle Butler 0:37
And I’m Michelle Butler, in Maryland, the most medieval state in America.
Anne Brannen 0:42
We’re so glad to actually be recording because we had this thing where the computer no, didn’t work, and we’re all blah blah blah, flickery, flickery, down, down down Microphones, no, no, no. Here we are. And we’re recording. And today we’re talking about the time that Stephen of Blois broke his oath, which…This happens all the time, like throughout the Middle Ages, everybody’s breaking their oaths, but we decided we want to focus on this anyway, because it had some big consequences. He broke his oath in London, England 1135. And that was the oath that he would support Empress Matilda for the throne of England. And we’ll remind you that we have discussed Stephen of Blois before because he’s the guy that was supposed to get on the White Ship. And he didn’t. That was in the winter of 1120. He didn’t get on the White Ship. Why? Because he was no fool. And he saw that everybody was really, really drunk, and they were really, really drunk, and they went off without him. And then they hit a rock in the harbor, which everybody knew was there, only they were too drunk, and they all died. That was sad. But what happened when the White Ship went down was that Henry the first of England had no legitimate heir because William Aetheling had died on the White Ship being drunk with all his cousins. So that’s what happened. So Henry the first didn’t have a legitimate heir, the successor to the throne. Very bad. You have to set up a successor because otherwise you’re going to have a war. More on that. And so he decided that the throne should go to his last legitimate heir who was Matilda. Matilda was the Holy Roman Empress. And then she was married to Geoffrey of Anjou.
Michelle Butler 2:32
I enjoyed reading about their marriage. They did not really get on.
Anne Brannen 2:36
No. But they had children. Hence, Henry the second, but they did they did not like each other. I don’t know. I don’t know how she liked the Holy Roman Emperor. So the White Ship had gone down in 1120. And Henry wanted Matilda to be the heir. And there were some problems here. Because one was she was a girl and everybody’s like, Oh, girls, no, no, they can’t run the country and blah, blah, blah. And also she was by that time married to Geoffrey of Anjou. And not only did Matilda not like him much, the Anglo Normans who were running England at the time, also hated him because he was from Anjou, which is right next to Normandy, and they were traditional enemies, blah, blah, blah. Okay, so that was going to be a problem. So he three times got his nobles to, you know, swear religious…religiously swear oaths. They were going to support Matilda. Really, no kidding, I mean it, sir. And in 1127, Stephen had taken that oath, because he was going to uphold Matilda’s reign. Alrighty, fair enough. So she was married to Geoffrey of Anjou, and everybody hated him. And by the way, this is…Geoffrey of Anjou is Geoffrey Plantagenet. And that’s how the Plantagenet name comes into English history. That’s how it is. Because Geoffrey–I really like to envision this–Geoffrey liked to wear a sprig of yellow blossom broom shrub in his hat. Ya gotta be distinctive somehow.
Michelle Butler 4:12
That’s another one of those, it has to have happened in real life, because you wouldn’t be allowed to write that in a book.
Anne Brannen 4:17
No, no.
Michelle Butler 4:18
It’s just ridiculous.
Anne Brannen 4:19
It’s just ridiculous. And the Latin name for this little blossom is Plata genista, which in French was platagenae. And so there you go. That’s how…the Plantagenets, by the way, never call themselves that. They never use that name. That got stuck on them later. And now we all think it’s their last name, and people insist on it, but really, you know, it isn’t. But I digress. And where was I? Right, right. Matilda had made a marriage which the Anglo Normans didn’t like so along with being female, the succession was shaky. Therefore, everybody had made this oath that they’re going to support her as Queen of England when Henry died So. That was in 1127 that Steven signed the oath. But in 1135 in December, Henry died very suddenly. He got ill. Nobody murdered him. How does this happen? I don’t know. But he got ill and he died. And so the throne was therefore empty. And it was sort of this Norman custom, really, to go and grab empty thrones, you know, whenever they showed up.
Michelle Butler 5:24
That’s how Henry got it.
Anne Brannen 5:26
That’s how Henry himself had gotten it. Because he grabbed it.
Michelle Butler 5:31
We talked about this with the William Rufus episode.
Anne Brannen 5:35
Yes, we did. His brother, Billy Rufus, had been shot accidentally, probably, in the New Forest while he was hunting and so the minute the throne was empty, Henry went and got it. So you know, this…it happened. Actually. That’s how William had gotten in the first place. It’s a Norman custom. So at the time of Henry’s death, Matilda was in Anjou with Geoffrey of Anjou. Ironically, what they were doing was supporting a rebellion against Henry in Normandy. Things hadn’t been going well between Henry and his daughter for a while. So that was going on. But Stephen was in Bologna, much closer to London. And when he heard the news of Henry’s death, he hightailed it to London, and he got there not only before Matilda, but before several other Norman barons who thought they should be in line for the throne, but they were all down doing the rebellion, and they were busy. And also his brother Tybalt, who was his big brother, and so therefore, would probably be first in succession before him if indeed we were following succession, which we aren’t. And Tybalt was actually in Blois, and that was further away. And so, Stephen hightailed it and he got there first. And a little side, to explain some of this concerning Stephen. Stephen had been born in Blois–Stephen of Blois–but he had been very close to Henry, who was his uncle. Stephen’s mother, Adela, was the daughter of William the Conqueror. And Henry, this guy who has no successor, was his son. So Stephen’s his nephew. And Stephen was knighted by Henry in 1112 and became part of Henry’s court and so he knew England well, and he knew the Anglo Norman nobility and barons well, and he was close to people there. Where as Matilda…she might have been Henry’s daughter and Stephen’s cousin, but she had lived in Germany since she was eight years old, until she married the Holy Roman Emperor. Um, after a while, she got older before that, and then had been in Anjou with Geoffrey. She wasn’t well known in England. She didn’t really have connections to the Anglo Norman nobility. And she was a girl, we don’t want to forget that part. Okay. So Henry had died on the first of December. Stephen was in London by the eighth. And the Londoners proclaimed him king. They hadn’t taken any oaths so they didn’t care and they thought that Stephen would give them more rights and privileges.
So they proclaimed him king. Henry of Blois, who was the Bishop of Winchester, gave Stephen the support of the church. By the way, he was Stephens brother, and the Lord Chancellor handed over the royal treasury to Stephen. ‘Here you go, here’s all the goods.’ And as for Stephen’s oath, his brother, Henry the bishop, argued that the king shouldn’t have required the oath anyway. And also Henry got Hugh Bigod, who had been Henry, the king’s, royal steward to swear that Henry the king had changed his mind about the succession on his deathbed. I’m so sorry for all the Henrys. Henry is a really, really, really popular name at the time. It’s the same with Matilda. Matilda is really, really popular. It’s just…okay. So at the moment, we’re having Henry the bishop, Henry the king. We did have Henry, the Holy Roman Emperor, but he’s over in Germany doesn’t show up in England, so we don’t care, blah, blah, blah, but there’s Henry’s all over the place. Okay. Stephen was crowned king of England at Westminster Abbey on December 22. And then the realm was happy and peaceful for they had a new king. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, not what happened. What happened was that Stephen had lots of problems there at the beginning of his reign. Norman nobles who were down actually in Normandy at the time had supported Tybalt–his big brother–but once Stephen was crowned, they supported him to keep the country out of war. Oh, it sounds so sweet and ironic and even Tybalt did. ‘Okay, we’ll support you.’ But they were in Normany, what did they care? But David the first, King of Scotland, invaded England as soon as he heard that Henry was dead. Yay, so the Scots are busy. And so Stephen had to fight in the north. And Wales won a battle early on in January and in April. Iorwerth ab Owain ambushed and killed Richard Fitz Gilbert de Clare, which led to Owain Gwynedd of Gwynedd invading Anglo-Norman territory, burning the town of Cardigan and capturing Cardigan castle. And Stephen didn’t actually retake control of the territories that have been lost to Wales at that time. I just want to point out, the territories that had been lost to Wales have been Welsh territories in the first place, but I move on. Okay. Geoffrey of Anjou invaded Normandy. Stephen negotiated a peace. In 1136 Robert, the Earl of Gloucester, who had supported Matilda, led a rebellion against Stephen.By the way, he’s one of Matilda’s half brothers. He was one of…because he was one of Henry’s many illegitimate children. Anyway, that rebellion spread across the South West of England. And Geoffrey of Anjou re-invaded Normandy. Okay. By 1139 it was clear, though Stephen had managed more or less to keep a lid on things…managing more or less to keep a lid on things means that the lid keeps falling off onto the floor a bunch and you have to pick it back up. I mean, he had not been having like calm and rest, but it became clear by 1139 that Matilda and Robert were going to invade. By September of 1139, Matilda was in Arundel–that’s down on the coast–and Robert was with Miles of Gloucester marching towards London. Stephen trapped Matilda in Arundel Castle. But he released her apparently because he thought she was not a threat, you know, because that being female thing. Hmm, Mm hmm.
Michelle Butler 11:59
One of the books that I read, which has the delightful title, this very clever: “Stephen and Matilda: Cousins of Anarchy…”
Anne Brannen 12:11
That is very good. That’s because Victorians named this civil war period that’s coming up the Anarchy. So that’s what…that’s the pun.
Michelle Butler 12:19
This particular historian, Matthew Lewis, argues that Stephen was really in a hard place there because if he besieges her then he is behaving unchivalrously to a woman who hasn’t actually attacked him yet.
Anne Brannen 12:34
But yeah, just wandered to England with an army. Okay, yeah.
Michelle Butler 12:38
He strongly suspects she’s going to, but the argument can be made that he is behaving unchivalrously towards her. So no matter what he does, he’s in trouble. If he lets her go over and join up with her brother. And that,of course, is a bad idea. If he besieges her and captures her, that’s not going to look good either. So, so you know, her being a girl ends up cutting both ways as far as how Stephen can behave towards her.
Anne Brannen 13:05
Uh huh. Okay, I like that. Fair enough. It wasn’t really a good move in terms of, you know, military strategy.
Michelle Butler 13:14
No, and there’s some evidence that he, poor 12th century soul, takes this idea of chivalry seriously in a way that some of the guys around him don’t.
Anne Brannen 13:28
But not so chivalrously that he doesn’t like, you know, hightail it to London and take the throne.
Michelle Butler 13:35
Oh sure, absolutely
Anne Brannen 13:35
What a knightly knight. Well, thank you. Okay, let’s go with that. Poor Stephen. Poor Stephen. He felt like he had to let Matilda go, so he did. And then he was fighting Matilda and Robert’s forces around England, you know, here and there. And then 1141, he was captured by Robert because he…because Steven was besieging Lincoln castle and this sort of didn’t work, so they got him. They took him to Bristol castle. And Geoffrey invaded Normandy again. Why not? And Henry of Blois–the bishop, you remember–gave Matilda what was left of the royal treasury. Meanwhile, Stephen’s wife Matilda…because you know, this is Matilda the Queen.There’s Matilda the Empress and Matilda the queen. The queen is married to Stephen, Matilda the Empress is his cousin and at war with him. Okay, that’s where we’re at. Matilda the Queen tried to rally support. I believe Michelle, you told me that one of your rabbit holes is Matilda the queen? You’re going to talk about her?
Michelle Butler 14:41
I did. Yes. I looked into Queen Matilda. I think both of these women, both Matildas, are nieces of David of Scotland because oh my God these people need some genetic diversity.
Anne Brannen 14:58
David of Scotland. Everybody… Just everybody’s related. They’re all related. They’re all related. So, in July of 1141, Matilda and Robert besieged Winchester, but Queen Matilda and her forces defeated them. Robert of Gloucester was captured and then exchanged for Stephen.
Michelle Butler 15:26
Everything back to where it was.
Anne Brannen 15:28
All right. That’s all gonna be okay. Stephen had himself crowned again along with his wife, Queen Matilda. So we’ve had another coronation. He’s been crowned twice. I guess he gets the royal treasury back. I don’t know. Is there anything in there? Whatever. And in September of 1142–so this is a little more than a year later–Stephen attempted to capture the Empress Matilda in Oxford because the fighting had been going on and so she’s in Oxford he tries to capture her but Oxford was really well…it had really good fortifications. It was very well protected. And so he was besieging her, but the Empress escaped out of the castle in late December. And really, honestly, I’m not making this up. I am not making this up. She crossed across the river, which was iced over. She walked…she got out of the castle and she walked over the icy river. And she went to Wallingford. Yes.
Michelle Butler 16:30
That is absolutely one of the amazing pieces of this.
Anne Brannen 16:36
I love this.
Michelle Butler 16:37
She escapes across the frozen river in white cloaks. They walk six miles.
Anne Brannen 16:44
Six miles was it? Yeah, she escapes on foot. It’s not like they brought carriages across the icy river. No, no, no, no, she’s a stalwart woman. She really is. Six miles to Wallingford, huh?
Michelle Butler 16:56
Yeah.
Anne Brannen 16:57
So they wore white cloaks so that you couldn’t see them in the snow. That’s very smart. Was it night or day? It must have been night.
Michelle Butler 17:04
It was night, yeah, yeah, yeah, they managed to do this at night. But they have to cross Stephen’s lines. It is absolutely–
Anne Brannen 17:13
Because he’s besieging so he’s got them and so–
Michelle Butler 17:16
Yeah. They have to…they escape in a blizzard, you know, in a snowstorm.
Anne Brannen 17:23
Oh my god I love this.
Michelle Butler 17:25
Across the ice. It is the stuff of legend.
Anne Brannen 17:28
So surely there are many movies about this right and little films and some books, little historical novels we can go read?
Michelle Butler 17:37
I’m sure there are. I’m sure there are. That isn’t what I happened to look up. I have Cadfael, but I’m sure there are because it’s absolutely cinematic.
Anne Brannen 17:48
Surely, surely so. That would be nice. I would like that. I would really like it. Yeah, she really did. She watched across the ice, much like a scene out of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Although she had a lot more company with her. And she went to Wallingford. This is one of the Angevin strongholds and things were quiet for a while. Ah, peace and quiet for a while. But late the next year, 1143, more rebellion in East Anglia, led by Geoffrey de Mandeville. Hugh Bigod rebelled in Norfolk, Ranulf of Chester rebelled the next summer in 1144. Things continued. They weren’t a very great state of affairs and this went on for years. Coinage was all helter-skelter because various rulers and nobles would mint their own coins because you know, who’s the ruler? I don’t know. We don’t know. It kind of doesn’t matter. Well, Stephen had been crowned twice. So theoretically he is but not. It’s not…nobody’s believing this is real. Small local lords built castles without sanction. The Forest law wasn’t enforced. There was sporadic fighting throughout almost all the country. But the end of the Civil War began early in 1153. Because Henry Fitz Empress– that’s the son of Matilda, the Empress–invaded. Stephen’s forces and Henry’s faced each other in July at Wallingford. But by that time, everybody was sick of all this nonsense and the church brokered a truce. Now Henry had invaded a couple times, you know, things hadn’t things hadn’t gone anywhere. But this, this actually…this was it. Now, Stephen’s son, Eustace–we haven’t mentioned him because he doesn’t matter to history. He’s going to be disappearing soon. Stephen’s son, Eustace was supposed to be Stephen’s successor. So he didn’t like the truce, which he wasn’t even mentioned in and so he went to gather troops, but he died. Okay, that’s it for him. All right. So Stephen has no clear successor.
Michelle Butler 19:50
Well, he has a son named William but William…William is the smartest one of the bunch. And William says ‘I’m swearing right now to anybody who will listen that I don’t want this. What I want is just my little holding over there in Blois, the thing that I would, you know, inherit on my own. I want nothing to do with this. Here, let me sign.’ He is absolutely the brains of the operation.
Anne Brannen 20:24
Yes, and there’s nobody like him else in history that we know of. There’s lots of people who don’t want to be king. There’s very few people who could be king and turn it down.
Michelle Butler 20:35
It’s an amazing amount of sense out of a 16 year old boy. ‘For fuck’s sake, no, I’m not doing this.’
Anne Brannen 20:40
Yeah, he’s….Yeah. So there’s no successor because, you know, Eustace is dead. And William has taken himself off the line. At 16. He was 16 when he did this.
Michelle Butler 20:53
Yeah, he was 16.
Anne Brannen 20:55
I am impressed.
Michelle Butler 20:56
I’m so impressed with him. Because he has…you know, what’s going on, in part, is that he’s watched his dad…literally his entire life, his father has been at war.
Anne Brannen 21:06
Right, with the Normans. And with the Welsh, and the Scots. I mean, it’s just there’s been no respite.
Michelle Butler 21:13
And it really is such an important moment because the death of Eustace and then William going, ‘I don’t want anything to do with this’ is what allows this to not go into a second generation of fighting.
Anne Brannen 21:24
Yeah, because there’s no place to take it. Yay. Yay. And when in history, in England and France, do we see this happened? Never, except right now. So let’s all take a little moment, where we really admire William of Blois. So he went…he just stayed…just like, he stayed in Blois. And, you know…?
Michelle Butler 21:40
Yeah, he went back. They said, ‘well, let’s get that in writing. Because we don’t want you coming back later and changing your mind.’
Anne Brannen 21:50
To hell with oaths. That clearly doesn’t mean anything.
Michelle Butler 21:54
And then Stephen made Henry his successor, and he didn’t live…
Anne Brannen 22:00
No, he died the next year.
Michelle Butler 22:02
Yeah.
Anne Brannen 22:03
Well, I really admire him a lot. But there’s gonna be no films and fiction about this. Because, boring. Alright. So, good. So Stephen had, it seems, Stephen had no real successor. And there’s a little bit more dulsatory fighting after that truce. But finally, there was a treaty of Winchester or the Treaty of Wallingford, depending on how you look at it. That was in the summer of 1153, by which Stephen kept the throne, but Henry was his successor. He’s going to be Henry the second, the next year, 1154. So the Civil War had lasted from 1135 to 1154. That’s way too long for this sort of nonsense to be going on. And Henry had to reconstruct the country. He demolished a bunch of the unsanctioned castles. He reestablished taxation lines. He reestablished law courts and the Royal Mint and he worked on rebuilding the royal treasury. And he took back the lands in the north that had been lost to Scotland and he subdued the Welsh and took back the lands that had been under English rule. And, you know, he brought things into sort of, you know… it’s a very different period and now we have the Plantagenet reign because…Geoffrey Plantagenet is not ever actually one of the English rulers. We go to the Plantagenets. And by the way, the last of the Plantagenets is going to die at the Battle of Bosworth and we found him later in a parking lot. That was the last of the Plantagenets.
Michelle Butler 23:52
It’s a long dynasty.
Anne Brannen 23:54
It’s a long dynasty, and there’s a lot of war and there’ll be yet another civil war within the Plantagenets as two lines, the Lancastrians and the Yorks attempt to…like, which one of the Plantagenet lines is the Plantagenet line that rules England? Neither one! It’s the Tudors. Oh, well. But that’s, that’s…that’s down in the future. Right now, having a little rest. Eleanor of Aquitaine is going to come in but hey, hey having a little risk right now. Having a rest.
Michelle Butler 24:24
This war goes on for so long that literally two of the three main chroniclers die before it finishes up.
Anne Brannen 24:34
‘I’m sorry, I could no longer be your historian because I’m going to go be with God. I have no–‘
Michelle Butler 24:40
For real. Orderic Vitalis, who shows up in everything, dies before the end of this whole thing.
Anne Brannen 24:49
Yeah, we talk about Orderic all the time.
Michelle Butler 24:52
And William of Malmesbury doesn’t make it to the end. He’s been dutifully recording but he doesn’t make get to the end.
Anne Brannen 25:01
Well, you know, Stephen just barely did.
Michelle Butler 25:05
The book I read, Cousins of Anarchy, thinks that probably the whole entire country is not in as much chaos as what the Chronicles say. That this is one of those places where, you know, there’s chaos among the upper classes–
Anne Brannen 25:25
And then some places, which are really in a bunch of conflict. But yeah, not the entire country. Although, you know, the whole country’s, like, affected by who is it that’s king and what’s going on. Not necessarily getting run over by forces that need to eat all your cows. And so, yeah.
Michelle Butler 25:45
He points out–Matthew Lewis, the author of that book–points out that right in the thick of the conflict, Geoffrey allows his nine year old son, the future Henry the second, to come to England, apparently to help bolster Empress Maud’s cause by, ‘hey, look what I have–the grandson of Henry the first, waiting in the wings. So you should support my cause, because what you’re really doing is supporting this grandson coming to the throne.’ And what the historian was pointing out was that if it was really an absolutely lawless place, Geoffrey would not have sent his heir.
Anne Brannen 26:32
Right, right. Right. Right
Michelle Butler 26:33
He clearly was confident that the child would be able to be safe.
Anne Brannen 26:38
Well, you know, there’s all this chivalry running around. Women being let out of prison, and then escaping around on ice. Yeah. So you can’t be killing children.
Michelle Butler 26:51
And this is definitely one of the points that that historian makes, is that this is a very interesting conflict, because it has all these rules. So you have all of this stuff going on with siege warfare, and there were very clear rules about how that worked. People get captured and ransomed, but, you know, nobody’s getting stabbed to death, the nobles aren’t stabbing each other to death on the battlefield. That you have this very early conflict that is happening in the time of chivalry and people are still following the rules.
Anne Brannen 27:29
So you slaughter the common people, but you save the nobles and get money for them.
Michelle Butler 27:35
Exactly. So, you know, Stephen’s captured, he’s not murdered. That would have ended it right there. Robert ofGloucester is captured rather than killed on the battlefield.
Anne Brannen 27:46
Right. Yeah. Because that…you know, Matilda needed Robert of Gloucester. That would have been very problematic for her at that time.
Michelle Butler 27:58
You know, one of the things that ends up bringing this to an end is that people just start dying. Robert of Gloucester…the generation that started this is starting to die out. Robert of Gloucester dies. All of these people that have been prosecuting the war are in their 60s and start dying.
Anne Brannen 28:18
You know, it’s interesting, though, because then the civil war that comes later, the Cousins’ War between the Lancastrians and the Yorkists, it goes on for generations. But there’s a…it’s bigger, it’s not just about the king, it’s about, you know, noble families.
Michelle Butler 28:35
Right.
Anne Brannen 28:35
So it’s the kind of thing where you can inherit the conflict and take it on, but not so much here.
Michelle Butler 28:43
And we saw that in the Albigensian crusade as well. That it went into a second generation. This was one of those things that, where in reading about the one crime, the things that follow from his original crime of abandoning his oath, there were a number of things that happened that I wanted to put on our list.
Anne Brannen 29:04
Oh goody good.
Michelle Butler 29:05
So I will add them. We have more crimes. Do you want to hear about Queen Matilda?
Anne Brannen 29:12
I want to hear about Queen Matilda because I know a lot about the Empress but Matilda I just I don’t know about so much.
Michelle Butler 29:18
So the two Matildas…remember we talked with Mary Queen of Scots about how she and Elizabeth make for a very interesting comparison? The same is true with these two Matildas. Empress Maud gets–
Anne Brannen 29:33
Oh, oh wait. For those of you who aren’t clear on this. Matilda and Maud are the same name and totally interchangeable at this time in the Middle Ages. So yeah, we should just say that, yes.
Michelle Butler 29:45
So they tend to get called Queen Matilda and Empress Maud just to try to keep things straight.
Anne Brannen 29:52
Fair enough. Let’s do that for a little rest.
Michelle Butler 29:55
The book that I read talked a lot about how she gets bad-mouthed in the Chronicles, but the things she does, if she were a man, would be sources of admiration. So her invasion, you know, the things that she’s willing to do. The daring escape across the ice. Even some of the high handed things she does when she gets into London and doesn’t end up managed to be crowned because she annoys them to the point where they chase her out of London. Her personality is so much like her father. And her approach to this appears to be, ‘I don’t understand why he could behave like this. If I’m going to be the monarch, if I’m going to actually rule, this is how I have to behave.’ And, you know, she’s probably right. That she’s intrinsically in a position that cannot work because they want her to behave like a queen, like they expect women to behave. But you cannot do that and rule because that’s not what Queens did.
Anne Brannen 31:04
Right
Michelle Butler 31:04
Their job was to support their husband
Anne Brannen 31:07
And have babies, lots of babies, mostly male.
Michelle Butler 31:11
Absolutely. So she’s sometimes portrayed as being really kind of aggressive and abrasive, but that probably is a factor of that lens of ‘but we were expecting you to behave like a girl.’
Anne Brannen 31:25
Right
Michelle Butler 31:26
Whereas Queen Matilda is very good at behaving like a girl and exercising the powers of queenship. And the tour de force for this was when she tag-teamed with Bishop Henry to goad the crowds of London into chasing Empress Maud out before she could get crowned. This was brilliant. This historian thinks that Queen Matilda was working with Henry. Not everybody. There’s some argument about whether Henry actually…because when Matilda…when Empress Maud takes over, Henry–Bishop Henry–says, ‘Okay, fine, you win.’
Anne Brannen 32:12
Yeah, he gives her he gives her the Treasury.
Michelle Butler 32:14
Right. And so there’s argument about whether he actually betrayed his brother or whether he was just biding his time. Because he and his brother had worked…they were pretty tight.
Anne Brannen 32:25
Right
Michelle Butler 32:25
So my historian thinks that Henry was biding his time and and cooking up this thing with the queen.
Anne Brannen 32:33
Well, and the Treasury had been decimated so you know already, so what. ‘Here’s your $5.’
Michelle Butler 32:41
So what Queen Matilda does is, she sends a letter to Empress Maud while Empress Maud is in London, arranging her coronation and annoying the crap out of people because she’s bringing in rich guys and saying, ‘you know what? I need you to pay a tax.’
Anne Brannen 32:58
Oh, like the minute she gets there. That’s what she’s doing. That’s so foolish in a place that had been really really happy with Stephen.
Michelle Butler 33:07
Yeah, yeah. So there are some bad decisions that get made…it’s not just…their objections are not just because she’s a girl. She definitely has Henry the first’s patterns of behavior without having the established rule that would allow that to be okay, or at least to be tolerated. So Queen Matilda sends a message. And it’s a passive aggressive mastery. Because what she says is ‘Okay, you win. I really would like to ask for Steven to be released. I know that would be a big ask. He’s not trying to get the kingdom back.’ And she implies that if Maud releases him, they’ll just go off together to Blois.
Anne Brannen 34:02
Yeah, Blois. We like Blois.
Michelle Butler 34:04
She doesn’t say it, but she implies ‘we’ll just go–
Anne Brannen 34:07
‘I’ve never been there, but Blois, that sounds good.’
Michelle Butler 34:10
‘–and I understand that’s a big deal. But, you know, I’m doing the girl thing here and I’m asking for mercy. And if you can’t see your way to that, could you at least promise Eustace his inheritance? Not the inheritance from Stephen. No, no, I understand that you’re gonna hold on to that. But the inheritance that would be coming to him through me, could you at least give him that?’
Anne Brannen 34:33
Right.
Michelle Butler 34:34
And the plan was to garner sympathy for her disinherited son. She’s doing the girl things–
Anne Brannen 34:41
Right
Michelle Butler 34:42
She’s interceding on behalf…’it’s not for me. It’s for my son.’
Anne Brannen 34:46
Yeah. ‘You have children, you must know what it’s like to be worried about their future welfare.’
Michelle Butler 34:54
And they’re banking on what happens, which is that, you know, Empress Maud tells him to shove off.
Anne Brannen 35:01
Uh huh.
Michelle Butler 35:01
And they of course–Queen Matilda and probably Bishop Henry–make sure that the people who need to know in London know about this. And they’re so enraged at the high handed treatment of Eustace’s inheritance, they come to the castle where Empress Maud is, and they chased her out. She has to flee London on horseback so quickly that the people chasing her sit down and eat the dinner that was on the table.
Anne Brannen 35:40
So not nearly as kind of impressive as going across the icy river.
Michelle Butler 35:48
But this is how she ends up over there. Because…she ends up out of London and then has to go over to to Oxford.
Anne Brannen 35:56
So she redeems the ignoble escape with a noble one. Okay, yeah.
Michelle Butler 36:06
It’s such a dramatic time in history, right? It’s nice to read about. Nobody wants to live in interesting times. But it is nice to read about.
Anne Brannen 36:18
Yeah, we’re in interesting times right now. And they’re awful. So yeah.
Michelle Butler 36:22
I don’t want to.
Anne Brannen 36:23
No we don’t.
Michelle Butler 36:23
Yeah.
Anne Brannen 36:25
No, no, no. So…Queen Matilda, besides being able to play girly girl, she was also part of the the military campaign once.
Michelle Butler 36:36
Oh, yeah. Oh yeah yeah. And she was really good at knowing what things she could do and get away with. She was really, really good at offering the nobles an implicit contrast. This is what Empress Maud is like. Now, this is what I am like. This is what you would get if you went back with Stephen. Because she did participate in military campaigns, but it was only ever on her husband’s behalf.
Anne Brannen 37:09
‘Not for me. No, I don’t even need to be queen. Although I do think my crown is very becoming. I don’t even need to be queen. I’m just working for my husband. And my son.’
Michelle Butler 37:23
‘I am here on behalf of my men.’
Anne Brannen 37:30
Delightful.
Michelle Butler 37:31
She’s so great. I, um…my kids almost missed the bus this morning. Because I was in my kitchen. And thought of something that I’m going to share with you that we may or may not want to include, but I felt very clever. So I’m going to share this with you. Do you know the song “Sobbin’ Women” from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers?
Anne Brannen 37:54
I probably have heard it but I’m not…that’s not one of the musicals that’s way up at the top of my head.
Michelle Butler 38:00
So the thing about it is it’s rapey, okay. It’s this song. And in the context of the musical, the boys figure out that they’re not supposed to kidnap the girls and that was a bad choice. But the song makes the case for kidnapping these women.
Anne Brannen 38:15
Uh huh.
Michelle Butler 38:16
And it talks about how, you know, in the past when men wanted women, they would just go kidnap them and eventually the women came around to being okay with it. So it’s a really really problematic song. But this morning, I got to thinking…I got to thinking about how you could rewrite this song about Norman women and it would be much better. So I have a verse for you if you want.
Anne Brannen 38:42
Okay.
Michelle Butler 38:45
Here we go. “Talk about those Norman women/Who lived in the olden days /Adela ran the dukedom/while Steve was on crusade/He fled from battle in the Holy Land/She said, ‘Go back and die a man/My father conquered England/Show me prowess in the war./Or don’t come home no more.’ Oh yes. Norman women were plottin’, fightin’, killing as much as the knights/Descended from Vikings, they were scary in their own right/Mabel murdered ’bout a dozen/Matilda saved her captive husband/The guys got all the headlines/but the Norman girls kicked ass/Oh, those Norman women.”
Anne Brannen 39:29
This is definitely staying in. I love that. We had several of these Norman women.
Michelle Butler 39:36
And that’s why my kids almost missed the bus this morning. That’s one of the reasons though, that Steven doesn’t run at Lincoln.
Anne Brannen 39:46
Right.
Michelle Butler 39:47
Because his mother had excoriated his father about fleeing during a battle in the Crusades. And she did. She told him to go back and either either die or win.
Anne Brannen 40:02
Yes, he came back from the Crusades and he wasn’t supposed to. She sent him back. This is true. So it is true. It’s in Stephen’s mind that he really needs to not be his dad.
Michelle Butler 40:14
‘Mom said not to run.’
Anne Brannen 40:17
“Mom said. Mom said.’
Michelle Butler 40:18
And all the chronicles talk about what an impressive fighter he was at the Battle of Lincoln. Even the ones that are pro Maud give him that.
Anne Brannen 40:30
Yeah. Stephen was a good fighter. Yeah. So besides Queen Matilda, you, I believe, were interested in Cadfael?
Michelle Butler 40:40
I did. I looked up Cadfael. It’s a set of books that is set during the Anarchy. The author of course is Ellis Peters, and that is the pen name for Edith Pargeter. This series is really the first modern historical mysteries. There were ones before this, but it really established a sub genre of mysteries.
Anne Brannen 41:12
I didn’t realize that.
Michelle Butler 41:13
Yeah, it was humongously influential. The idea of a historical…of mysteries set in the past, and in particular, figuring out how you could do historically based forensics.
Anne Brannen 41:28
Uh huh. Uh, huh. Using common sense and your brain
Michelle Butler 41:34
Yeah.
Anne Brannen 41:36
And–I’m guessing–relying on the medieval forensic technique, which we discussed at one point–
Michelle Butler 41:45
Yeah, no, not cruentation, no.
Anne Brannen 41:49
–of walking people by a corpse and waiting and when it bled that was the murderer. Yeah.
Michelle Butler 41:50
No, not really. The British Crime Writers Association had a historical award that was named for her from 1999 to 2012. The books were published from 1977 to 1994. The author died in 1995 after a long illness. There’s 20 books in the series plus three short stories. Probably the best known adaptation–probably a lot of people actually know this from the adaptations–the television adaptation of 13 of the novels that starred Derek Jacobi.
Anne Brannen 42:23
Yay, Derek Jacobi, yay.
Michelle Butler 42:32
And the television series chose to use the second book in the series, One Corpse Too Many, as actually its pilot. It’s set in 1137. So early in the anarchy. And it’s when the war touches Shrewsbury. Because that’s where…he’s in Shrewsbury Abbey, Cadfael is.
Anne Brannen 42:55
Where is Shrewsbury? Tell our listeners.
Michelle Butler 42:58
To the west, it’s…Shrewsbury Abbey was actually one of the guilt abbeys that was created after the Conquest. Remember, several of the Normans established abbeys and churches as a, you know expiation of their sins of being involved in the Conquest.
Anne Brannen 43:17
‘We’re sorry we conquered your country. Here’s some churches. We’re not giving the country back. But here’s some churches.’
Michelle Butler 43:24
Shrewsbury Abbey was established by Roger… Roger Montgomery, who we ran into because he’s Mabel de Belleme’s husband.
Anne Brannen 43:31
Yes. Yet another one of the Norman women of the sort that you were talking about?
Michelle Butler 43:36
Yes. The rather strong willed ones. So Stephen besieges Shrewsbury castle, and got quite a lot of backtalk from the lord who was holding it out against him. So he has the defenders executed when he finally takes the castle, which is lawful but not normally done.
Anne Brannen 44:01
And a little tacky.
Michelle Butler 44:03
Yeah. And it’s not usually what Stephen does, either. But he was catching some flack for maybe being a little too soft on–
Anne Brannen 44:12
Too chivalric, as we mentioned earlier.
Michelle Butler 44:14
So he decided to have a lesson at this point. And within the novel, what happens is that a murdered man is slipped among the…into the set of the lawfully executed. And really, nobody cares about this except Cadfael, because all the rest of them are like, ‘what’s the difference between 95 bodies and 94? Really?’
Anne Brannen 44:35
‘Yeah, I mean, somebody just miscounted probably.’
Michelle Butler 44:38
Yeah. So the book and the television adaptation raises questions about the difference between murder and lawful execution, about sanctioned violence and unsanctioned violence, particularly in wartime.
Anne Brannen 44:51
Yeah, yeah. We’ve talked about the notion of war crimes in the Middle Ages, and the notion did exist.
Michelle Butler 44:58
I was just re-watching One Corpse Too Many, actually, before we were recording. And it really, you know, it really holds up. They were filmed between 1994 and 1998. And they’re…they’re just pretty good.
Anne Brannen 45:15
I still like them.
Michelle Butler 45:16
Derek Jacobi is carrying everything, right? Because he’s so good. But they’re nice…they’re nicely done sometimes historical things really are more about the time period in which they are filmed, rather than the time period in which they are set. But with the exception of a couple of hairstyles, the 12th century looks pretty good.
Anne Brannen 45:41
They worked hard on it , they really did.
Michelle Butler 45:43
Yeah. Generally people have…the women have..you know, things on their heads like they should. Nobody’s running around with their bare hair sticking out.
Anne Brannen 45:52
No. Which you only do if you’ve been horribly in trouble. Or, you know, if someone catches you out and you’re actually, you know, having private moments. You do not run around in public with your head bare. No.
Michelle Butler 46:07
The influence of this series is really extensive. You can go now to any bookstore and find an entire sub genre of not just historical mysteries, but ones set in the Middle Ages.
Anne Brannen 46:21
Yes, yes. Yes. Yeah. You were…one of the ones that you introduced me to…we were talking about the seizure of Constantinople and you were talking about the–
Oh, Alan Gordon.
And I read it. I love this. It was great. Alan Gordon.
Michelle Butler 46:37
Alan Gordon. Yeah. Peter Tremayne’s Sister Frevisse ones are very good. The ones that are set in Ireland, early Ireland. Margaret Frazier’s sister…sorry, it’s Peter Tremayne’s Sister Fidelma series that is set in Ireland. But it’s Margaret Frazier’s Sister Frevisse. Which you can see where I would get those confused every once in a while. Those are set in the 15th century, and they’re absolutely brilliant. She is so meticulous with the research. When ever people speak–and you can do this because it’s the 15th century–they only speak in words that are current in the 15th century English
Anne Brannen 47:24
Right. Right.
Michelle Butler 47:24
You can’t do that in the descriptions, but in dialogue, they only speak in words that you could have said out loud in the 15th century.
Anne Brannen 47:33
I like Cadfael I really do. But I also really like her Brothers of Gwynedd quartet. She’s really good about Welsh English. Oh, the Welsh-English conflict. She’s really good. And we were just talking about Owain Gwynned. That’s what this is about. That particular line.
Michelle Butler 47:52
If I end up with more time in my life at some point, I think Chester would be an amazing place for a mystery.
Anne Brannen 47:58
I really love Chester.
Michelle Butler 48:00
There’s so much going on in Chester.
Anne Brannen 48:03
And nowadays, if you go back there, there’s still so much that’s left.
Michelle Butler 48:07
There’s so much…there’s so much cultural contact going on in Chester since it’s a trading city.
Anne Brannen 48:17
Yes. It’s an important border city in between Wales and England. Yeah.
Michelle Butler 48:23
I can think of lots of reasons why people would want to kill each other in such an environment.
Anne Brannen 48:31
Yes, yes. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, that would be fun. Because you could really work a lot with the Welsh. So by the way, in case anybody wants to know, if you want to learn Welsh, and you go on over to Duolingo to do it, one of the very first things you learn is how to say ‘I am a dragon.’ [Welsh]. Because you never know when you need to say ‘I am a dragon’ in Welsh. And so that’s over on Duolingo. Just saying.
Michelle Butler 48:57
Gosh, you know, when I was being taught Spanish, one of the first things they taught us was how to ask where the bathroom is. I think that maybe the people who were teaching high school Spanish were a little bit clearer on what you might need as a tourist. You randomly have to walk around Wales and tell the Welsh ‘I’m a dragon.’
Anne Brannen 49:16
Well, true, you probably need to know where the bathroom is, where the airport is, more than you need to announce that you’re a dragon. But in terms of culture, the dragons are really important. So there’s that. Besides I like being able to say [Welsh]. It’s good to know. But the Anarchy…the civil war doesn’t show up a whole lot in those Cadfael novels, does it? It does that first one. It’s really crucial.
Michelle Butler 49:45
It’s mostly in One Corpse Too Many. Because after that, the struggle wanders off. And you know, it’s not touching Shrewsbury directly. The chaos is still out there and it’s providing some places where violence is happening, but after this book, it’s happening out there.
Anne Brannen 50:07
And that’s actually…historically, it makes a whole lot of sense too because it wasn’t…there were very few places where it was, you know, constant fighting all the time. Wallingford was always in trouble. Okay. But really, it was sporadic through it. But it just went on and on and on and on and on and on. Not as much of a wicked death toll as there would be in the Cousins’ War, which people call the War of the Roses, but is really the Cousins’ War. In the Middle Ages, that’s what they called it. Yeah, I mean, that was…that was devastating. This was messy and problematic, and disruptive, but not as sheerly devastating is the War of the Roses/ Cousins’ War thing. But it’s still a Cousins’ War. They’re cousins.
Michelle Butler 51:05
Matthew Lewis argues that Stephen gets a bad rep by the Victorian historians because they see the purpose of the Middle Ages as consolidating power in the central government, which will then enable and lead to the British Empire which of course, from the point of view of the 19th century, is the whole entire purpose of all things.
Anne Brannen 51:36
[trumpet sound] Well, the sun set on that, didn’t it?
Michelle Butler 51:41
They bad-mouth Stephen because they see Stephen’s reign as not contributing to that ultimate goal. Because he, in order to try to hold on to power and in order to try to maintain peace as much as possible, devolved some powers back to the local earls.
Anne Brannen 52:00
Right
Michelle Butler 52:00
And deputizes them. You know, ‘it’s your job to now try to hold the border of Scotland and it’s your job to hold the border with Wales and it’s your job to hold the border here.’ And so he allows authority to leave the central government and go back in some measure to the earls and that apparently was absolutely not okay according to 19th century historians who wanted everything centralized which then allows you to conquer the world, hello, which is what everbody wants.
Anne Brannen 52:29
Well, they didn’t…the striving to create an empire doesn’t actually start at this point. Not just not with Stephen but not with Henry the second. I mean, it isn’t a medieval…it just is not a medieval prospect and project in England. I mean, it had been a project before. Alexander had a project of conquering the world. The Romans in general. I mean, you could have a ‘conquer the world’ project but that was not a medieval English project. The medieval English project was ‘go away French people that we used to be.’ That’s pretty much the English–
Michelle Butler 53:06
So, yes. Civil wars make for good fiction but not so much good living.
Anne Brannen 53:12
No. Civil wars are not good because they’re actually happening in your backyard and you know the people involved. It’s not any fun and there tend to be cousins. Cousins get involved. Brothers and sisters. It’s very sad.
Michelle Butler 53:26
He does have a really good point, though, about the way that this war is conducted versus what happens 100 years from now with Henry the third. You remember the… Edward the first is then his son and they have the Barons war and Edward the first is a is a take no…literally a take no prisoners kind of guy. He has Simon De Montfort just murdered on the battlefield. ‘No, we’re not taking him prisoner because we’re ending this now.’
Anne Brannen 53:57
And although he was not after conquering the world, he was definitely after taking the entire island that had England on it. Absolutely.
Michelle Butler 54:05
Yeah.
Anne Brannen 54:06
Yeah. He did his his very best with that. He really did. Actually got it all done. He took Wales.
Michelle Butler 54:13
He had Wales.
Anne Brannen 54:14
He got Scotland.
Michelle Butler 54:15
He gets Scotland for a little while and then age catches up with him and he has a stroke and dies on his way to take it back. But it is a very important 100 years because at this point there’s still ‘oh we’ll take the prisoners.’
Anne Brannen 54:29
Yeah, that whole prisoner for ransom thing. That just eventually you know goes to the wall and there’s…sometimes you keep the prisoners and exchange them and sometimes you kill the prisoners but yeah, that the keeping the nobles for ransom is not going to last forever. We don’t do it anymore, for instance. Even if we had nobles, we wouldn’t be doing it.
Michelle Butler 54:48
Well, certainly Edward the first didn’t because he was more of a ‘I want to solve this problem forever’ kind of guy.
Anne Brannen 54:55
Yeah. And the problem doesn’t get solved by keeping people alive. Robert of Gloucester went right back to war. Stephen went right back to war.
Michelle Butler 55:04
But Henry the first did this. He kept his brother, Robert, in prison for the rest of his life. You know, Robert–Robert, Duke of Normandy–was trying to argue with him about ‘Well, really, if somebody is…if only one of us is gonna be Duke and King, it should be me because I’m older.’ And Henry said, ‘I don’t think so.’ And he kept him in prison for the rest of his life.
Anne Brannen 55:29
But he didn’t kill him.
Michelle Butler 55:32
He did not kill him.
Anne Brannen 55:33
Yeah, King John is not going to be so good at this stuff, either. I believe we have King John on our list for when he starves the wife and son of one of the Debraoses.
Michelle Butler 55:42
Yes.Um. There’s a probably apocryphal story about Stephen that he was besieging the castle, a castle that was being held by the father of William Marshal. And little William Marshal was being held as a hostage by Stephen, and Stephen, you know, holds him out in front of the castle and says, ‘you need to, you need to surrender or I’m gonna catapult your kid over the walls.’ And John, the dad yells back, ‘go ahead. I still have the hammer and anvil to make more.’ And Stephen decides not, in fact, to kill the seven year old and have him thrown over the walls, which is good for the future of England.
Anne Brannen 56:31
Because it’s William Marshal.
Michelle Butler 56:32
Because it’s William Marshal. And he was quite important as he grew up, including being of course–as a 73 year old man–being the regent for the nine year old Henry the third.
Anne Brannen 56:46
Yeah, so William Marshal. So Stephen doesn’t kill William Marshal. No, Stephen would not have starved people to death in his dungeons. He just didn’t do that sort of thing.
Michelle Butler 56:56
It wasn’t that it wasn’t his speed.
Anne Brannen 56:59
It was not. So is there more? Do we have more today on Stephen, the civil war that happened because of the crime of Stephen of Blois not taking his oath seriously, which happens continually all through the Middle Ages. You make oaths and then you break them blah, blah, blah. That’s…it wasn’t really a crime. It was just a thing he did. And then there was a war. Do we have more on this?
Michelle Butler 57:21
I don’t really. I mean, I think ultimately the responsibility for this comes back to Henry the first. It’s not his fault that his only legitimate son drowned. That’s not his fault. But it is his fault for not being real about what Empress Maud’s chances were going to be. He should–
Anne Brannen 57:42
Fair enough.
Michelle Butler 57:43
He should have just designated Stephen.
Anne Brannen 57:45
Yeah, he should have done. He should have done. But there were rumors that he had done on his deathbed. It wasn’t just Bigod that was saying that this is true.
Michelle Butler 57:56
I think his plan probably was to not die and live long enough that it could just go right from him to Maud’s son.
Anne Brannen 58:04
Yeah, I think that was his plan. His plan didn’t work so well, though, actually. Do you know what he died of? He died suddenly of an illness.
Michelle Butler 58:11
I think it was actually not an unreasonable plan. It just…alas, he was 67 when he died, which, you know…
Anne Brannen 58:20
How sudden is that really in the Middle Ages?
Michelle Butler 58:22
Yeah.
Anne Brannen 58:25
It’s my age and it would be sudden now for me.
Michelle Butler 58:28
But he also…his choices are very interesting here because he’d have been better off designating Stephen. He’d had been better off designating Robert of Gloucester I think Robert of Gloucester could have made this work. It would have been difficult but I think he could have done it.
Anne Brannen 58:44
Yeah, he was illegitimate. So that was an issue and the Normans didn’t think highly about that. The Welsh didn’t much care, but the Normans thought it was a big deal to not be…so that would have been a problem. But Gloucester had a lot of friends. Certainly more than Matilda did.
Michelle Butler 59:03
He’s an interesting guy, Robert of Gloucester. He is very interesting. This choice to support his sister, rather than seize the throne for himself. He’s very interesting. And his son goes over to Stephen, which I thought was interesting.
Anne Brannen 59:19
Oh, I didn’t know that.
Michelle Butler 59:21
His son, whose name is Philip, I believe, asks for permission to go set up a little front in the war on his own and he gets in trouble. He sends for aid and his father’s like, ‘you know what, you got to deal with it. I’m busy. You started it, you clean up your mess.’ And he ends up having to surrender to Stephen and Stephen treats him so well that he goes over to Stephen. Stephen appears to be good at the charm offensive because he does the same thing to Henry the second. When Henry is young, he’s…I don’t know, 14 maybe. And he has that first invasion that he tries to run.
Anne Brannen 1:00:09
Right. He’s young. He’s young when he first invades, yeah.
Michelle Butler 1:00:11
Yes. And his mom and dad both are like ‘you deal with it. You showed up. We told you not to.’ And they hang him out to dry. He can’t pay his mercenaries so he, in a fit of desperation or courage writes to Stephen for help.
Anne Brannen 1:00:27
‘I’m sorry.’ Um, Stephen. Stephen is his first cousin once removed?
Michelle Butler 1:00:34
Yeah
Anne Brannen 1:00:34
‘I’m sorry, Cousin Stephen that I invaded.’
Michelle Butler 1:00:39
‘But I can’t pay my mercenaries. Could you float me a loan?’
Anne Brannen 1:00:40
Can you pay my mercenaries that I hired?
Michelle Butler 1:00:42
And Stephen does it!
Anne Brannen 1:00:49
I love I love this. I really do.
Michelle Butler 1:00:51
He does it. Because He figures…he always… I think Steven is really interesting, because he does really want to try to bring people over to him rather than always having to create a punishment.
Anne Brannen 1:01:11
Yeah, yeah. Yes. I think that’s true.
Michelle Butler 1:01:15
And it is possible that treatment of Henry is part of what allows them to ultimately come to that arrangement in 1154.
Anne Brannen 1:01:28
That would make sense. That would make sense. Because at that point, Henry’s like, ‘okay, all right, you know, keep the throne. Keep it. Just give it to me later.’ Okay. Like, okay, that’s makes it…
Michelle Butler 1:01:41
Yeah, I found it very interesting to read about Stephen, because he’s nearly always discussed as being a weak king. And that’s not really what was going on there. He was a complicated kind of guy.
Anne Brannen 1:01:53
And he did manage to keep the throne until he died. There’s that also. Matilda didn’t get to. She was never Queen of England. She had been the Holy Roman Empress. But then she wasn’t anymore. She wasn’t Queen of England, despite the fact that she crowned herself once. Didn’t work. Too bad.
Michelle Butler 1:02:12
So this was interesting. What are we doing next time? I don’t remember.
Anne Brannen 1:02:16
I will tell you. The next time y’all hear from us, we will be discussing the Pazzi conspiracy. We’re going to Italy. We’re going to Italy at the end of the 15th century. And we get to talk about the Medici family and why you might want to get them out of being the rulers of Florence.
Michelle Butler 1:02:37
I know nothing about this. Okay.
Anne Brannen 1:02:41
This will be fun.
Michelle Butler 1:02:42
This will be really interesting.
Anne Brannen 1:02:44
Yeah, this what we like. Learning things. We like things that we know and things we don’t know, because we learn a lot. And we’re, as we’ve said, having fun. So. This has been True Crime Medieval, where the crimes are just like they are today only with less technology. You can find us on Stitcher and Spotify and Apple podcast, and all the places where the podcasts are hanging out. And you can reach us at truecrimemedieval.com. True Crime Medieval is all one word. And you can find there the show notes that Michelle does and a little blurb that I do and the transcripts, which used to be done by Laurie Dietrich, and now Michelle is working on them. And I might also but I haven’t gotten there. And I have ADHD. So who knows? And um, yeah, so that’s..we’d love to hear from you. Please leave reviews and comments and tell your friends and whatnot. And if you have medieval crimes that you think we should pay attention to, please let us know. And we’ll look at them and maybe put them on our list. We’ve got all of 2022 scheduled and then a lot more things after that. So we’re not done with the Middle Ages anytime soon. It’s a thousand years and an entire continent.
Michelle Butler 1:04:06
Yeah, there’s quite a lot of crimes. There really are.
Anne Brannen 1:04:09
And plus we add on things that, you know, are actually from the early modern era.
Michelle Butler 1:04:14
This one really is just like today. Maybe the stakes are not always as high but one cousin taking what another cousin was promised as an inheritance is absolutely standard. I mean, usually it’s grandma’s churn or something, but this happens. Yeah.
Anne Brannen 1:04:31
This is why going into family law takes a strong stomach. Anyway, that’s us. Bye.
Michelle Butler 1:04:40
Bye
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
56. Special Episode: Darnley Murders Rizzio, Edinburgh, Scotland 1566
Anne Brannen 0:25
Hello, and welcome to True Crime Medieval, 1000 years of people behaving badly. I’m Anne Brannen, and I’m your host in Albuquerque.
Michelle Butler 0:34
And I’m Michelle Butler in Maryland, the most medieval state in America.
Anne Brannen 0:39
And we’re very excited today to bring you a special episode, special because it’s not actually medieval. It’s early modern. And so I have a little story. Michelle, would you like a story?
Michelle Butler 0:52
Ooo!
Anne Brannen 0:53
Yes. Once upon a time, there was a beautiful lady. And she was queen of all the land. And so she went to have supper. She was really pregnant, very pregnant, and so she was a little tired. She was having supper with her bestest friends and her buddies, and then her husband and a whole bunch of hooligans came in and stabbed her best friend 56 times and threw him down the stairs. The end.
Michelle Butler 1:20
Whoa. That’s not a bedtime story.
Anne Brannen 1:24
No, no, I wouldn’t give that to kids. Today we are discussing the time that Lord Darnley murdered David Rizzio on the ninth of March 1566, while he was at supper with his boss, Mary Queen of Scots. David Rizzio had been born in Italy, sometime around 1533, near Turin, and he became Mary Queen of Scots’ private secretary after he joined her musicians because she needed a bass singer. He had ended up in Scotland looking for court work, which he got with Mary, Queen of Scots and he became a favorite of hers. He got lots of money from her, he got fabrics and gold and all kinds of stuff. And he became her secretary of affairs with France. He was angling for Secretary of State. He was ambitious.
Michelle Butler 2:13
Wow.
Anne Brannen 2:14
He was actually quite ambitious. So we don’t want to think about… I think that some of the stories that come down to us are, like, of the meek and mild David Rizzio, who’s just sitting there playing music and got stabbed. He was a political player. So. Just saying. That’s part of the picture. And so he wasn’t a shrinking nobody. He was Catholic, which was a problem for the Scottish courtiers, who were Protestant, most of them, but there was a really lot of problems. Scotland was really having trouble with the whole Protestant-Catholic issue, which England was too, you know, but a lot of Europe. At any rate. So there was problems there, Scotland, and Mary was pregnant at this point, Mary was six months pregnant, and there were rumors that the child was his. And so, back to what was…this foundation of Rizzio being there, Mary, who was the… she was the only legitimate child of King James the fifth of Scotland. He had a whole bunch of illegitimate children. All her half brothers and sisters that are her couriers at court, you know, that’s his illegitimate children. And he had two legitimate sons, but they died. So she’s the one that survives, and she became queen of Scotland on the 14th of December in 1542, when her father died of an illness, maybe because he was all upset after the loss of a battle, and maybe…any rate he was ill and he died. And she herself had been born on the eighth of December. So she was six days old when she became queen.
Michelle Butler 3:48
Wow.
Anne Brannen 3:51
So she wasn’t very good at being queen. And so she wasn’t queen. She didn’t perform queenliness for quite some time. Regents were ruling the country and there’s a lot of infighting blah, blah, blah, which I’m just going to slide on over because…The complexity of Scottish infighting, like–way, way–was way bigger than the English and even the Welsh. I’m just saying. Oh, Scottish infighting. And so at five, she was taken to France, because there was this deal. She was going to marry the Dauphin of France when she got a bit older. And so she did that in 1558. So she had married the Dauphin in 1558. And then 1559 she became Queen of France because her father-in-law died. And then in 1560, her husband died of an ear infection.
Michelle Butler 4:39
Oh my gosh.
Anne Brannen 4:40
I know. An ear infection that got bad enough that it formed some kind of abscess in his brain and I just want us all to think about how wonderful it is that we actually have antibiotics because I myself personally have had many ear infections in my little life when I was young, and I didn’t die of any of them, did I? You know why? It was antibiotics. So there you go. An ear infection. That must have been so painful.
Michelle Butler 5:05
I had a cousin die of a sinus infection because she was dumb and stopped taking the antibiotic when she felt better.
Anne Brannen 5:11
Oh, no, no. So then she got the bounce back.
Michelle Butler 5:15
Um-hm.
Anne Brannen 5:15
Oh, no, no, no, no. Okay, so she could have managed to not die.
Michelle Butler 5:20
Yes. So finish your course of antibiotics when you are assigned them.
Anne Brannen 5:26
Finish them. Alright. So the king of France…he’d been king of France for a year, and then he died. So she wasn’t queen of France anymore. And she went back to Scotland because she was still queen of Scotland. So she went to Scotland, but she hadn’t been in since she was five years old. Now. She hadn’t been raised in Scotland. She’d been raised in France, and she was Catholic, in this, you know, strife ridden country. Most of her couriers were Protestants. She was sympathetic to both sides. And that kind of didn’t make her popular with either of them, you know? ‘No, we’re a faction, pick your side.’ Most of her council was Protestant. And she had already at this point–this becomes important in her life later–she had already on the death of Mary, King Henry the eighth’s daughter, who, you know, been queen for a little while in England–she had already claimed the English throne at that point, on the basis that Elizabeth was illegitimate. So there you go. So she was trying to balance ruling an unruly Scotland with aiming toward the English throne. It was a difficult thing to do, and lots of work, lots of work. And so anyway, she needed to get married again, because you know, her husband’s dead, as we mentioned, so that was one of her projects. She worked on an engagement to the heir of Philip of Spain, but that fell through. Probably just as well because he was nuts. And Elizabeth tried to get Robert Dudley to marry her because she thought maybe she could control Mary through Robert Dudley but Dudley didn’t want to do that. So that fell through. And then there was Henry Stewart, her cousin, Lord Darnley, and she fell in love with him. I mean, I think the second time she saw him, she felt completely…he was tall, and he was handsome, and he was like, totally sexy. And she was totally fell in love with him. They got married in 1565. It was a Catholic wedding and they got married even though they did not have papal dispensation from the Pope, and they were first cousins.
Michelle Butler 7:32
Oh, whoa
Anne Brannen 7:34
Everybody’s related.
Michelle Butler 7:36
I knew they’re all related. I had I just hadn’t picked up on that…they were quite that related.
Anne Brannen 7:43
Yeah, half first cousins, but still first cousins nonetheless.
Good gracious sakes. I tell you what, trying to read about this. It felt like it was halfway between a frat house and an overwrought romance novel. It was…oh my gosh…
It’s so bad.
Michelle Butler 8:08
The Scottish royal court feels like a frat house.
Anne Brannen 8:13
Yeah. And then Mary brings in both…She’s quite bright. She’s really brilliant. And she brings in this political plotting and political acumen along with a kind of a romantic sort of feel, you know, but Darnley? Oh my god, Darnley was such a mistake. But he was the kind of mistake…Okay, so anybody here, anybody here who tends to fall in love or in their youth tended to fall in love with, you know, the bad girls, the bad boys, you know, this, you know this. That’s what he was. She totally fell in love. And he was such a mistake. He was raised to be very conscious of being in line for both the English and Scottish thrones. I mean, kind of far down, but nevertheless, it was this thing that he was aware of. He was well educated. He liked noble pursuits like hawking and he seems to have been one of the dimmer stars in the noble firmament of Europe.
Michelle Butler 9:13
[laughing] Okay.
Anne Brannen 9:18
Although to be fair, it may just be that he seems stupid because he drank so much. I mean, maybe that’s what it was.
Michelle Butler 9:23
The competition is fierce. Elizabeth and Mary are both very bright and educated people.
Anne Brannen 9:29
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. The competition’s fierce. He was very vain. He was arrogant. He tended to be violent and he alienated everybody. Nobody liked him. Because he was awful. Mary refused to grant him the crown matrimonial, which means that he would be king, he would be King of Scotland rather than just her consort, and would rule if she died. She refused to grant that to him and he wanted it so badly because he thought of himself as the King of Scotland and so therefore he should be the King of Scotland. Also Mary’s marriage to another Catholic…although I have to put a little thing in here. Theoretically, Dudley is a Catholic. In reality, he sort of doesn’t care. When they got married, Mary went to the nuptial mass after the wedding and he didn’t go. I just…he doesn’t really care. She cares, but he doesn’t. But her marriage to another Catholic, you know, at least in name had sparked a rebellion which was led by her half brother, the Earl of Maury. This is yet another one of James the fifth’s…. And that had ended with a bunch of them that have been back…nothing really happened, except that a bunch of the earls ended up in exile in England. That comes up later. Okay. Any rate, Mary got pregnant soon after the marriage. Right after that she started hating him. But for a while she liked him and she got pregnant. And before she found out what a ghastly mistake she’d made, you know. Rizzio became Darnley’s focus. Because of his closeness to the Queen and the rumors that the child was his and Darnley’s notion that murdering him could be leveraged to get Mary to declare him king. This is really unclear how this works. But it’s in Darnley’s brain. And so that’s one of the things. Robert Stedall, who’s written a lovely book on all this, explains the plot thus: Darnley, his father, who’s the Earl of Lennox, and William Maitland decided that they would “contact the Earl of Moray, and the exile lords in England. And if they would agree to grant Darnley the crown matrimonial in the next parliament, and so make him lawfully the king of Scots, then Darnley would switch sides and recall the exiles home, pardon them, and forbid the confiscation of their estates. And then he would perform the ultimate U turn and reestablish the religious status as it had been, at the time of Mary’s return from France. And so Darnley would become king with full parliamentary sanction. Moray, and his allies would be reinstated as if they had never rebelled, and the Protestant Reformation settlement would be restored.” Alrighty, then. That’s like one of those plots that couldn’t possibly work because it’s way too complicated. And makes no sense whatsoever. I’m just saying, but that’s his plot. And that’s what’s in Darnley’s head and he’s drunk and he wants to murder Rizzio. And so there you go. At 8pm on the ninth of March 1566–it was a Saturday–the Queen and Lady Argyle–now that’s Jane Stewart, who’s one of Mary’s half sisters, yet another from James the fifth–they were sitting in her little supper room, along with Rizzio. They were eating supper and there were some ladies in attendance. Darnley had gathered a very large group of men, these being you know, this part of the rebellion described above as what I think of as the stupid plot. So Rizzio was just available as a kind of like start to the rebellion and focus on Catholics. And besides Darnley was pissed off at him. So Darnley went into the chamber to tell Mary–who you remember was six months pregnant at the time–that everything was going to be okay. I really love this. ‘Be calm, Mary, for all is well. Stab, stab, stab.’ Mary, I guess didn’t believe him. Lord Ruthven came in, he was wearing his armor and demanded Rizzio, Mary tried to, you know, hide him. They grabbed Rizzio. Ruthven stabbed him. There was a gun being pointed at Mary’s belly at this point, trying to keep her back. The ladies tried to stop Ruthven, but I didn’t go anywhere. And it’s a pretty small room. And I mean, if you’re on the tour going through Holy Rood, it’s kind of hard to all fit in there to see, so I think this was a pretty…there was a lot of tension and it was very scary little time. Quite a terrifying melee, I think. Any rate, Ruthven dragged Rizzio out, and the rebels stabbed him 56 times. 56. Using Darnley’s dagger as one of the weapons. Darnley didn’t actually stab him but Darnley murdered him. It’s that kind of thing. If you pay somebody to be a hitman to kill the cheerleader who’s going up against your daughter in the cheerleading contest, you have murdered the cheerleader. That’s how this works.
Michelle Butler 14:45
Okay, okay, hold on. I have questions about the specificity of that number.
Anne Brannen 14:51
It’s from Mary. Mary said 56.
Michelle Butler 14:53
Okay, but are you really sitting there watching? Watching and…’1, 2, 3, 4…’ Are you really?
Anne Brannen 15:04
No. No, they’re stabbing him. Ruthven stabbed him and then dragged him out. And then they stabbed him…the rest of however many times they stabbed him was outside of the room. And Mary was being held in the room. So no, she did not actually see this. So where she got this number, I don’t know.
Michelle Butler 15:20
So somebody did some 16th century CSI and counted? I mean, at some point, you’re not going to be able to count anymore, because you’re going to have overlapping wounds. I’m just…that’s just such a fascinating number.
Anne Brannen 15:36
I think you’re right, and that we don’t really know that it was 56. But I like the specificity of the number because for one thing, what this becomes immediately–and I believe you’ll go into this more on your rabbit hole journey–is a story. And the 56 is a great number for the story. 56 times! It was a lot, at any rate, but whatever. I agree, I don’t think we know it was 56. But Mary said it was 56.
Michelle Butler 16:03
I’m not fully convinced that with every piece of modern technology you have available, once you get up to, you know, dozens of wounds that you could possibly ascertain 56. You know, with MRI scanners and X rays and every other piece of reconstructive technology that you have. I don’t know. Feel free, dear listeners, if you know more about this than me, feel free to correct me. But I have watched a lot of crime television and I don’t know. Seems unlikely.
Anne Brannen 16:39
I totally agree. I don’t think we really know that it was 56. But I’m gonna say 56 because it’s part of the story.
Michelle Butler 16:46
Yeah, I think you’re right, Mary is immediately working to characterize what’s going on, as you know, excessive. Because that’s what 56 is. Excessive.
Anne Brannen 16:57
Yeah, because it’s a whole different story if Darnley comes in, stabs Rizzio and drags him out, and then throws him down the stairs. That’s a very different story from ‘and then Ruthven came in and Mary was held at gunpoint–and she’s the one who says–with a gun pointed at her belly. Where the future king of England and Scotland is growing his little self, that’s what’s going on in there. Yeah, it’s a very dramatic story. But I will say it’s a small room, and Rizzio did get stabbed. So I mean, there was stuff going on. Have we moved on from the 56 stabs?
Michelle Butler 17:33
Yeah. I’m sorry.
Anne Brannen 17:34
No, no, no, don’t be sorry. I think it’s a good point. Any rate, they stabbed him a bunch of times–Mary says 56–and then they threw his body down the stairs and stripped it and later he’s gonna be buried outside Holyrood Abbey, and then later the queen had him buried in her father’s tomb. So that’s what happens to Rizzio’s body. And the Queen was held in her rooms with a guard. So that’s how far the rebellion got. They killed Rizzio and they held the Queen in her rooms. But here’s the deal. Mary, the Queen of Scots, had way more brains than Darnley did, way more, and so she used them at this point. And she sweet talked him into escaping with her. ‘Yes, yeah.’ And so then she got troops together and took the castle back. Bye, bye, Darnley. And the rebels fled back to England again and she had the baby, who as I say, is gonna be James the First of England and the sixth of Scotland. And so that’s what happened there. But what happened to the dangerous numbskull, Lord Darnley? Well, the marriage didn’t get any better, because, you know, he was still drunk, and he was still arrogant. And he still, you know, is insisting on being king. He didn’t attend his son’s baptism.
Michelle Butler 18:49
The most awesome marriage counselor would be challenged by ‘how do we get past the fact that you murdered my secretary?’
Anne Brannen 19:01
‘In front of me’
Michelle Butler 19:03
Yeah.
Anne Brannen 19:04
His behavior gets no better, you know, so there’s no fixing this. There really is not. Then he got ill with the smallpox when James was about…when the baby was about eight months old. Some people say syphilis but whatever, he got sick, and he was recuperating in a little cottage near Holyrood Palace. And then in the early morning of the 10th of February 1567–Mary was not there, she was away at a wedding–two barrels of gunpowder which had been put in the room underneath the room where Darnley was sleeping exploded, probably not by accident. You know, everybody hated him. Everybody hated him. Mary’d been trying to get divorced. Darnley and his valet… the bodies were found outside, and it looked like Darnley had been fleeing because he only had his night shirt on so somehow or other he was getting out of there and he was quite dead. And exactly what he’s dead from is unclear. One of the investigators said he had internal injuries as if there had been an explosion, but I guess he didn’t really look like there had been an explosion on the outside of him. Maybe he was smothered, but there weren’t any signs of strangling, but at any rate, he was dead, and obviously murdered by somebody somehow. And they found the shoes of one of the Earl of Bothwell’s supporters at the scene. And since Mary had been close to the Earl of Bothwell, and she had also been trying to figure out whether or not she could…how she could divorce Darnley and keep James legitimate…you know, that was going to be difficult. Suspicion fell on Bothwell and on Mary as having been part of the plot, because, you know, she had an alibi. But things had been put together before then. So Mary and Bothwell left Edinburgh and got married. We don’t know…there’s two stories. One is that Bothwell abducted her and raped her. And one is that she went willingly and married him. That that was a story that was meant to preserve her honor on account of having married Bothwell so quickly. It’s the same kind of issue that we saw when we were talking about Peter Abelard and Heloise, you know, whether or not he…you know, he said that he had raped her but she said no, she said that was untrue, and it really looks like what he was doing was trying to save her reputation. They did go off. They did get married. She miscarried some twins, but you know, what exactly happened was unclear. Bothwell was tried and found not guilty. But Mary lost her supporters. She was in prison. She was forced to abdicate. Her son became king and Moray became regent. Later, by the way, Bothwell is going to die in Denmark, insane. So just saying. But Mary fled to England, and her cousin Elizabeth, the Queen of England, kept her in custody. And Mary continued to plot against Elizabeth. It looks to me like she kind of gave up on Scotland and started focusing on England. Finally, in the fall of 1586, she was put on trial for treason, and then she was executed in February of 1587. And really, it’s all because of Darnley and Rizzio. Darnley, it’s Darnley. Darnley was her biggest mistake, according to me.
Oh my goodness. Everything he touches is such a farce. The death of Vizzio is a farce. His own death is a farce. It’s just ridiculous. It’s hard to take him seriously because he fouls everything up so spectacularly.
I like this idea that the death of Rizzio is a farce. I don’t think Mary and Rizzio thought that. But what you’re meaning something, what is it?
Michelle Butler 22:53
Well, what I mean is that he doesn’t just do things. Everything he does is so over the top.
Anne Brannen 23:00
Very over the top. I think it’s the alcohol. I think he was a mean drunk. And I think he was a dramatic drunk. That’s where I’m at.
Michelle Butler 23:08
I don’t know, because so much of what we see in the 16th century is early modern people taking medieval stories very, very seriously. And so I think maybe Darnley thinks of himself as being this hero of a grand epic.
Anne Brannen 23:27
Ah
Michelle Butler 23:28
And so everything has to be over the top.
Anne Brannen 23:32
Well, that would make sense. And he had been raised to think of himself as the heroes of grand epic. ‘You’re descended from the royalty of England and Scotland and actually in line, although really sort of very far down, very far down the line.’ But still.
Michelle Butler 23:48
Well, alcohol would do absolutely nothing to dispel those, you know, delusions of grandeur.
Anne Brannen 23:54
No, it would not, it would not help at all. It would only make it worse. Yeah. True. True. So what did you find out?
Michelle Butler 24:03
So what I was looking at was…totally unsurprisingly, this becomes fodder for an awful lot of fictional material. Radio dramas, plays, operas, novels, but I looked specifically at film and television. There’s so much. I picked three things to focus on, because there’s so much and there’s even more if you look not just at the ones that are from Mary’s…there’s some from Mary’s point of view, where she’s the good guy, which then makes Elizabeth into the bad guy. And there’s other times where Elizabeth…it’s her story, and Mary shows up as the bad guy. There’s so much of this. I will have in the shownotes links to lists that deal with this because I’ve picked three from the list that I thought were particularly interesting. So one is a film from 1895.
Anne Brannen 25:07
Wow
Michelle Butler 25:08
I know right? It is 18 seconds long.
Anne Brannen 25:14
[laughing]
Michelle Butler 25:15
Okay, okay. I know but it’s 1895.
Anne Brannen 25:20
Well, it’s a film.
Michelle Butler 25:21
It’s a film.
Anne Brannen 25:22
It’s a full length feature film for 1895.
Michelle Butler 25:26
It was made by Edison labs. And it’s directed by a man named Alfred Clarke who was really important in early film, and in particular, the earliest special effects. It’s called ‘The Death of Mary, Queen of Scots.’ And it is the first known use of special effects in film. And in particular, there’s a stop motion trick to substitute a mannequin for the actor playing Mary and actually show the beheading. It actually looks pretty good. You can see this on YouTube.
Anne Brannen 26:01
So it’s the it’s the beheading, but Rizzio isn’t in here.
Michelle Butler 26:04
No, no, this is just the beheading. It’s 18 seconds long.
Anne Brannen 26:09
So you can’t get that and you know–
Michelle Butler 26:11
This is all it’s doing is it’s showing the beheading. It may be the first film to use trained actors, rather than just kind of whoever you have on hand. It uses–and I found this fascinating–the actor playing Mary is a man because that’s how it was done at the time.
Anne Brannen 26:33
Oh
Michelle Butler 26:33
In Shakespeare’s time.
Anne Brannen 26:34
Oh, of course.
Michelle Butler 26:36
Isn’t that wild? They decide in 1895, that we want to do this really historically accurate thing and so we’re going to have Mary played by a man because that’s how it was done in Shakespeare’s theatre. It’s this really interesting idea about historical accuracy.
Anne Brannen 26:53
Uh huh.
Michelle Butler 26:53
It is absolutely one of the earliest films to do a recreation of a historical scene. And indeed, one blog post I read about it said that “This film, ‘The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots’ can safely be called the first historical film in the sense that we have come to think of it.”
Anne Brannen 27:11
Goodness me. And you were able to watch this on YouTube?
Michelle Butler 27:15
It’s on YouTube.
Anne Brannen 27:16
Hot damn.
Michelle Butler 27:17
I will give you a link to it.
Anne Brannen 27:19
It’s not gonna take a big chunk out of my day to watch it either. Really.
Michelle Butler 27:23
No, no, for sure it’s very fast. But that development of special effects is why this is really interesting. I mean, I can’t imagine what people thought watching in 1895 what looks like an actual beheading, and then the axe man picks up the head by the hair…it’s wild.
Anne Brannen 27:49
Would it have been shown? Do you know?
Michelle Butler 27:52
Oh, that’s an interesting question. I don’t know who saw it. I know it was being made…I mean, I guess Edison was probably showing it. He was such a showman. He probably was carrying it around with him and showing things. So my second one that I have for you is from 1940.
Anne Brannen 28:10
Uh huh.
Michelle Butler 28:11
There actually is a 1936 film that stars Katharine Hepburn as Mary, Queen of Scots. Reviews are mixed. I thought the costumes were pretty good. I actually think that golden age Hollywood tends to do pretty well with medieval and early modern costumes. So, for example, I watched the trailer and she always has something on her head, which usually is a place where more contemporary films about these time periods get themselves in trouble. They have royal women with their hair just streaming down their back, which would not have happened. But anyway, we’ll just leave that one aside. It’s not, you know, it’s not that big of a deal. The one from 1940, however, is a big deal because this is a German film called The Heart of a Queen and it is Nazi propaganda. I’m going to tell you right now, I was not expecting to have my part of today be Nazi propaganda.
Anne Brannen 29:06
No, no, no. I mean, no, I…no. I’m shocked. Any rate. Yes. So explain to me how Mary Queen of Scots becomes Nazi propaganda because I’m not making the jump here. I gotta…I gotta have it laid out.
Michelle Butler 29:20
It is a pro-Scottish, anti-English film. And Elizabeth is a horrible human being in it. It is altogether pro-Mary. And it is about showing that the English are terrible, and hence in 1940, the Germans are totally justified in wanting to steamroll them.
Anne Brannen 29:44
I see. And so Scotland is the hero is not really because it’s Scotland, but because it’s not England.
Michelle Butler 29:52
Exactly. It’s being used to make England look bad. As if, as if Scotland… anyway, I thought this is just fascinating. So there’s a quote here from the German scholar Theodore Riegler, who says, “The depiction of the cold ruler Elizabeth the first was aimed at presenting the early history of British striving for world domination, which would have consequences for all parts of the earth during centuries up to the present, thus implicitly justifying Germany’s war with Britain at the time.” So Elizabeth was terrible and wanted to take over the world, so sit down Shut up, it’s our turn, you did this before us.
Anne Brannen 30:42
Really they should have focused on Victoria I would think.
Michelle Butler 30:48
I was expecting a lot of different things when I was…I wasn’t disappointed. There’s a whole bunch of really lurid handlings of this Rizzo/Darnley/Mary thing, you know, there’s a lot of those. I was not expecting Nazi propaganda.
Anne Brannen 31:06
I forgot to mention, considering this triangle you’re talking about, I didn’t actually include in my background, the rumor that Darnley had been having an affair with Rizzio before all this happened. I didn’t include that rumor. But that was a rumor. So there you go. So I like this. Rizzio was the father of Mary’s child and screwing Darnley. He was busy. Busy, busy man, apparently. According to rumor.
Michelle Butler 31:29
Yeah.
Anne Brannen 31:31
Anyway. So, Nazi propaganda.
Michelle Butler 31:33
Nazi propaganda.
Anne Brannen 31:34
I have never heard of this film. How well known was it in Nazi Germany?
Michelle Butler 31:40
It’s not considered to be the best effort of that director.
Anne Brannen 31:45
Who is the director?
Michelle Butler 31:46
Hold on, I do know this. The director is Carl Froelich and the star is Zarah Leander. And there’s songs in it, although it’s not called a musical. So I don’t know what to make of that.
Anne Brannen 32:04
Were you able to see it or…?
Michelle Butler 32:07
I can find stills from it. I have not tried to watch this.
Anne Brannen 32:19
So the English were very, very bad and then being naughty. Okay.
Michelle Butler 32:24
And the Vizzio thing is in this one.
Anne Brannen 32:27
Uh huh?
Michelle Butler 32:28
Just by the way, it is.
Anne Brannen 32:30
Well what do the Nazis make of Rizzio? I mean, it’s kind of problematic having Mary be your heroine when she’s plotting to take the English throne. She honestly is. And what Rizzio has to do with all this, I can’t see. I still want to see this movie now.
Michelle Butler 32:47
There are so many. There’s so many. The most recent one is from 2018. So lest we think that this was a thing that happened in the golden age of Hollywood, and Nazi propaganda, and then it drops off the radar. No, no. This is still a thing. In fact, there’s quite a lot of material from the 21st century, particularly television. There’s a CW show called Reign. There’s stuff from…when was that? The 80s? There’s a ton. But the most recent one was from 2018 called Mary Queen of Scots and it stars Saoirse Ronan, and Margot Robbie. And the trailer calls it an epic clash of queens.
Anne Brannen 33:42
Yes, I saw this.
Did you?
Saoirse.
Michelle Butler 33:46
I beg your pardon. Saoirse. So what did you think of it because I didn’t actually watch the whole thing. I watched the trailer.
Anne Brannen 33:52
I’m trying to remember this because I think this was one of those ones where I was like, ‘Okay, I will watch this. And I will try not to spend the entire time explaining to you Laura, where everything is wrong.’ You know, I was trying to keep my mouth shut. That’s where I was.
Michelle Butler 34:10
I gathered from my reading about it that it makes the affair between Rizzio and Darnley explicit.
Anne Brannen 34:16
Right.
Michelle Butler 34:17
Yeah. I just don’t know what to think of this. I mean, they’re both… the actresses both look very good. David Tennant is in it. He plays John Knox which probably was interesting.
Anne Brannen 34:28
That was fun. I did like that part. Yes. But you know, I love Tennant in anything. He’s one of my faves. So there you go. No, Tennant’s good. But see you can…there’s these actors that you can hand anything and they can make it good. But yeah, he does Knox, No, the actresses are very, very good, but you know, whatever. So why…what were you reading about it that caused you to pause?
It is pretending to be even handed but the reviews of it say that the sympathy of the film is with Mary.
Oh, absolutely.
Michelle Butler 35:05
Elizabeth, for example, is presented as really having some disfiguring because of the smallpox.
Anne Brannen 35:12
Uh huh. Yeah.
Michelle Butler 35:13
She’s presented as being, you know, aggressive in a way that is not treated with the kind of sympathy that…so it’s playing a little bit because that trailer says it’s an epic clash of queens, which kind of implies that it’s going to attempt to take an even handed approach, but it is very much more in Mary’s camp. Which tends to be what we see with this. You either have ones that take Elizabeth, and she’s the good guy, or take Mary and she’s the good guy, which makes makes the other one automatically the bad guy. I think it’s inevitable that you’re going to have a lot of things that want to compare the two of them, because they’re cousins trying to do a very similar project that is very difficult, hold on to their queenship. And they take two opposite routes. Elizabeth never marries, and takes that as her approach to holding on to power. Mary was not an adult, so she didn’t have the option of choosing not to marry, and at that point is then pretty well stuck with that as it would be difficult for her to refuse to remarry.
Anne Brannen 36:28
Right. Right. But she’s no longer a virgin queen.
Michelle Butler 36:31
Exactly.
Anne Brannen 36:32
You know, it’s really sad also about her husband dying of the ear infection, because that marriage actually seems to have been pretty good, you know. Too bad, you know. Then she had two bad marriages after that. Yeah. And it then really kind of points out the danger of marriage for a ruling queen.
Michelle Butler 36:51
I think that, having been taught this usually from the English point of view it…from that perspective, it is usually portrayed as Elizabeth made the correct choice. And Mary is the illustrative example of how badly it would have gone for her if she had tried to marry.
Anne Brannen 37:12
Mm hmm.
Michelle Butler 37:13
I’m not certain that’s a fair comparison. Because as I say, Elizabeth was an adult when she came to the throne, so she had a lot more opportunity to make her own decisions. Whereas Mary because of having been a baby, and having a bunch of men making decisions for her–as they would have to, she’s a baby, she can’t make decisions–but they make various typical decisions for her. ‘Okay, we’re going to we’re going to arrange a marriage, we’re going to arrange a marriage.’ She has options removed from her before she is able to make her own decisions. However, was it a great idea to keep trying to get involved in plots, when you’re imprisoned in England for 19 years? That probably is a poor choice.
Anne Brannen 37:58
It’s also true that, you know, they’re both working on holding on to power in a realm that’s just has all this religious strife. And they take very different roads toward dealing with that. Mary’s playing both sides, really. And that doesn’t work well. And what Elizabeth does is establish the police state where basically, you’re in real trouble if you don’t adhere to the Church of England.
Michelle Butler 38:27
Mary doesn’t have a Cecil. A Lord Cecil. You need somebody who is looking out for your interests, who isn’t going to then become a rival.
Anne Brannen 38:37
That’s the other thing going on in Scotland. They’re all cousins or half brothers and sisters. They’re all related. And so the vying for power is very real and very dangerous. And Elizabeth isn’t actually…she’s like distant cousins with people, but she’s not actually related to a lot of people. Her siblings are all dead. Her family came in, you know, through the Welsh lines, and her mother’s family was out of favor, and lost their power. And so Elizabeth doesn’t have that kind of close, close relative infighting that’s going on in Scotland, which is so dangerous. I mean…it goes on for so long. But Mary’s at the heart of it. It is really true, though. She escapes from Scotland. She gets to England. Elizabeth has to deal with her some way or another and allowing her into court, as a fellow Queen makes the relationship with Scotland highly problematic, you know, so there’s this political thing going on there. So she keeps her in custody. And Mary continues to plot against her. So from that point of view, she’s really not got a lot of options. She lets it go on for quite some time before she finally cuts Mary’s head off.
Michelle Butler 40:04
Yeah Mary’s an old woman by the time she is executed and Elizabeth is very reluctant to do it because she knows very well that once you establish the precedent that you can execute a monarch, that can bounce back on her. So she’s very reluctant to do it. But Mary just keeps getting involved in plots.
Anne Brannen 40:27
She had enough to do, quite frankly. She had hobbies. She read a lot of stuff. She had reading. And she had…she was an excellent needle woman. She did all kinds of embroidery. You can still see this if you go to Holyrood Palace. It’s there. I mean, she had hobbies, she could keep herself occupied with stuff other than making plots. But I think people get addicted to it or something. ‘I can’t be queen of Scotland anymore, I’m going to be Queen of England.’ No, no, no, no, you’re just not.
Michelle Butler 40:58
I guess this is what she had in common with Darnley.
Anne Brannen 41:01
Touche. She certainly did. That is an interesting point.
Michelle Butler 41:04
They both were convinced that…well, Mary had been queen since she was, you know, a baby.
Anne Brannen 41:11
Tiny. Only six days old. She wasn’t even a week old yet when she became queen.
Michelle Butler 41:16
It’s kind of amazing that baby survived to adulthood, you know?
Anne Brannen 41:20
Well, yeah, they got her out. They got her to France. She survived because she was in France.
Michelle Butler 41:24
It’s not so difficult to find a plausible demise for a baby.
Anne Brannen 41:30
‘The baby? The baby had an ear infection, and then put a pillow on its head.’ Yeah, it’s really fairly easy. But you know, one of the things that’s interesting to me about our discussion here is that Rizzio has disappeared.
Michelle Butler 41:43
Yeah
Anne Brannen 41:44
One of the things that happens is that Rizzio disappears continually out of the stories. Like, he’s this little ‘and then Rizzio was murdered.’ And then we move on, you know.
Michelle Butler 41:53
Yeah.
Anne Brannen 41:53
Darnley got exploded, don’t even hear about that. It’s just there. But Rizzio…Rizzio is the beginning of things falling apart.
Michelle Butler 42:02
He’s a useful cautionary tale about ambition. You know, he has left his home. He’s Italian. He’s left his home. He’s come to this other court to make his fortune. And it worked up till the moment that it didn’t.
Anne Brannen 42:18
Yeah, yeah. So he’s the lesson in ‘moderation would have been better.’ But really, everybody in the entire tale is a lesson in ‘moderation would be better.’ And quite frankly, all of the humans are lessons in ‘moderation would be better’ and yet we seem to not be able to do it all the time.
Michelle Butler 42:38
No, we’re so bad at it. Yeah, he’d have been much better off if he’d have just ‘Oh, look how far I’ve gotten. I’m really happy now. This looks stable.’
Anne Brannen 42:49
‘I don’t need any more than this. I got stuff.’ Yeah, so that was a very bad night for Mary Queen of Scots. It wasn’t the worst night of her life since later, her cousin would put her in prison and then cut her head off. But you know, it was pretty bad night, that little supper. And what I want to know is what they were eating. I’ve never been able to find this out. Was like was she eating French food? Was it haggis? She was eating Scottish neeps and tatties? Was she eating Scottish food?
Michelle Butler 43:15
There’s a giant argument for the films about whether she should have a French accent or a Scottish accent.
Anne Brannen 43:23
I don’t see why this is an argument actually. Because she had been living in France since she was five years old. And so I think it’s…what, do we think that she was going around France with this Scottish accent?
Michelle Butler 43:39
Nonetheless, it is a giant argument.
Anne Brannen 43:42
So of the films that you ran into, how many actually gave her a French accent? Because the problem is, that it feels wrong. Because she’s Mary Queen of Scots.
Michelle Butler 43:51
Yeah. Well with the Katharine Hepburn one, they just have her speak like Katharine Hepburn.
Anne Brannen 43:59
Well, that’s a way out, isn’t it?
Michelle Butler 44:01
They have other Scots have Scottish accents. But Katharine Hepburn just sounds like Katharine Hepburn, which I think is in fact, a choice to nod towards that French accent without having Katharine Hepburn try that.
Anne Brannen 44:17
So she doesn’t sound like the rest of the Scotsman. But she…
Yeah.
She’s not…because the French feels jarring to modern ears. Darnley had been raised in England by the way.
Michelle Butler 44:32
[laughter] The Scottish court. Nobody sounds like a Scot. Except the people who are raising the cattle.
Anne Brannen 44:46
Yeah, her father sounded like a Scots and we know this because–I mean, he spoke English with a Scots accent–because it’s reported that when he was dying, he said “It came with a lass, it will gaen with a lass.” Meaning that ‘It began with a girl and it’ll end with a girl.’ And so we think that he was talking about the Stuart dynasty coming in, through daughter of Robert the Bruce, Marjorie Bruce. And that he might be saying that it’ll end with his daughter, but it didn’t actually. It ended with Anne. The last Stuart monarch was Anne. She was born in the 17th century, the daughter of James the second and seventh, who was the son of James the First and sixth, who was in the belly with a gun getting pointed at it at dinner that day, that we were talking of. So some of them actually were raised in Scotland, but there was a kind of going to France and going to England to get away from things that happened a lot.
Michelle Butler 45:47
There’s just so many. There’s just so much violence in the Scottish court at this time. Holy cow.
Anne Brannen 45:53
Yeah, there really is. But you kind of don’t expect it at dinner. I mean, I was thinking about this as we have a little theme of you know, blood feast. But usually when we’re talking about blood feast, we may really you invite people over ‘Oh, come to dinner, come to dinner,’ and then you close to the door of the halls and slaughter them all and that’s your blood feast. But this is very different. ‘Come to dinner, come to dinner,’ and then somebody breaks in and kills you. That’s really different, but it’s still technically, you know, death, bloody death at dinner. So could be called a blood feast, but nah, not really the same thing.
Michelle Butler 46:22
I don’t know. I don’t know that I am carrying a lot of sympathy for Rizzio because you have to use good sense when you pursue these kinds of ambitions. I just…it’s kind of like playing in the Marine Band, which is itself an honorable thing to do. And what Vizzio was doing was honorable, but you don’t go from playing in the Marine Band to being Secretary of State, which is what he’s trying to do.
Anne Brannen 46:49
He’d become her friend and close to her and he was helping with relations with France, but…certainly if you’re going to do it, you don’t wanna do it at the Scottish court. That was a mistake, for sure.
Michelle Butler 46:59
And if there’s anything to rally the High Lords together, it’s some upstart getting more power than what they deserve.
Anne Brannen 47:08
Not even from Scotland. Because at least from Scotland, you know, it was fighting your cousins fighting your brothers, slaughtering people, killing people at the high altar, as we saw with Robert the Bruce and John Comyn.
Michelle Butler 47:20
Oh, yeah, they’ll totally go back to killing each other. But first, we got to deal with the interloper.
Anne Brannen 47:25
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, he had made people very angry, and Darnley had made people very angry too, but they were willing to go along with killing Rizzio, who was an outsider, because of the stupid plot, whereby everybody was going to get power back, I guess, I don’t know. And Darnley would be king, because he was going to flip two or three times. Why would you…why would you trust anybody who believed this? It just doesn’t make any sense. But anyway, stupid plot, stupid guy. Lots of alcohol. Lots of screwing around. Very narcissistic. Worst King consort evar.
Michelle Butler 48:06
And attempted assassination by gunpowder, which might not have actually worked. They probably had to stick around and kill him. Kill him, you know, directly.
Anne Brannen 48:18
Yeah. This is just…that whole thing’s bizarre. So they’re gonna blow him up. He didn’t get blown up. Why he knew to run away, we don’t know. But then you have to smother him. So apparently they’d smothered him in the garden is what probably happened.
Michelle Butler 48:35
I hope somebody has written a really interesting book about the history of domestic terrorism with gunpowder, because I bet there’s some really interesting work to be done there.
Anne Brannen 48:45
So besides the Gunpowder Plot, and blowing up Lord Darnley.
Michelle Butler 48:49
Yeah, I bet there’s more. Because once once somebody tries this other people go, ‘Oh, that’s a good idea.’
Anne Brannen 48:56
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Michelle Butler 48:57
I bet there’s more out there. I bet somebody has written an interesting book and I just haven’t run across it yet, about the emergence of, in particular, domestic terrorism, and attempts to influence domestic politics. Because it had been used in warfare, you know, to undermine castle walls for a long time. But that shift to using it as a political tool for political violence and domestic terrorism, I think is a product of the 16th century but I hope somebody has written a book so I can go find it.
Anne Brannen 49:28
We’ll be doing another special episode concerning the Gunpowder Plot. I forget when that’s coming up.
Michelle Butler 49:35
It probably in November because of November 5.
Anne Brannen 49:38
Oh, that’s right. That’s right. That’s right.
Michelle Butler 49:40
And so at that time, I will have a chance to go see… find somebody’s history of gunpowder as a tool for domestic terrorism.
Anne Brannen 49:51
Yeah, we’ll do the Gunpowder Plot next November. Do we have anything else on the horrible supper?
Michelle Butler 49:57
I do not. I covered my films. And Thomas Edison showed up so that was cool.
Anne Brannen 50:04
So did the Nazis, so there you go.
Michelle Butler 50:06
I did not expect…wasn’t expecting that. I was expecting a lot of sex and violence and I’m not disappointed. There’s an awful lot of nudity in the treatments from the 21st century.
Anne Brannen 50:18
Yeah cuz people ran around nude all the time in the Middle Ages in Scottish castles. Uh huh. [laughter] Because that was comfortable. Well, that is our discussion of the horrible supper that was ruined by the stupid plot. Darnley murdered Rizzio. And that was just really, really, really sad. It was not good. The whole thing just was stupid. The whole thing is just so dumb and involves death and destruction just dumb, dumb, dumb.
Michelle Butler 50:50
Yeah, I don’t know if I feel encouraged or discouraged by the fact that so often the crimes that we cover are not superhero awesome schemes, bruhahaha. They’re so dumb that somebody must have come up with them when they were half sloshed, or all the way sloshed. And they’re executed poorly. And then it goes exactly as badly as you think it’s gonna go.
Anne Brannen 51:17
Yes, but see, that’s the thing about the humans, is that the humans are not only badly behaved, the humans tend to be sort of stupid is when they’re drunk. There’s a lot of drink going on through these histories.
Michelle Butler 51:32
Goodness gracious. Some of these plots are just like, did anybody stop and think about this for half a second?
Anne Brannen 51:39
Yeah. Is this gonna work? Because the answer’s no.
Michelle Butler 51:42
Could we maybe just step back and…’Listen, I got a great idea. Let’s murder the Archbishop of Canterbury, in his own church at Christmas. This is gonna be great.’
Anne Brannen 51:54
The King is gonna love that. No, that was dumb. ‘I know, let’s throw the king out the window.’ No, no, no. Oh, well, this has been…so any rate, so this has been our discussion of the stupid plot. And the next time you hear from us, we will be discussing that time that Steven of Blois broke his oath in London of 1135 when he said he would not be king, and then he grabbed the throne really quickly. So we’re going to talk about that, which then gets us into talking about that English Civil War, and then that gets us to talking about Cadfael.
Michelle Butler 52:36
Oh! Yay!
Anne Brannen 52:37
Yeah, you get to talk about Cadfael. ‘Cadfael’ because that’s how everybody says it.
‘Cad-file.’ Yeah.
Yeah, I’m gonna say ‘Cad-fell.’ So this has been True Crime Medieval, where the crimes are just like they are today only with less technology. Crime is stupid.
Michelle Butler 52:54
Definitely equal amounts of stupidity.
Anne Brannen 52:57
The equal amounts of stupidity. Humans have not changed in that. And maybe someday we will, but we haven’t had time yet. We can be found on Spotify and Apple and Stitcher and all kinds of places where the podcast hang out. And you can also reach us through Truecrimemedieval.com. Truecrimemedieval is all one word. And you can there leave comments for us. We’d love to hear comments of any kind, you know what’s going on and corrections, sometimes we get corrections. And also, we’d love to hear if you have crimes you think we ought to do. And we’ll take that under advisement. And you can also reach us through the website. And you can find the show notes and transcriptions and little blurbs and whatever hilarious picture I’ve been able to find and write hilarious things under it because we’re having a good time. That’s basically what we’re doing, me and Michelle, we get together, get together and have a good time.
Michelle Butler 53:56
Because we’re retired. We do what we want.
Anne Brannen 54:01
We’re having a very good time just discussing all of the Middle Ages. You know, occasionally, you know, and occasionally our specialties but basically all in the Middle Ages. Yeah, so that’s all for us. Bye!
Michelle Butler 54:14
Bye!
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
55. Winter Shenanigans (Lords of Misrule), Europe 500-1600
Anne Brannen 0:22
Hello and welcome to True Crime Medieval, 1000 years of people behaving badly. I’m Anne Brannen and I’m your host in Albuquerque.
Michelle Butler 0:31
And I’m Michelle Butler, in Maryland, the most medieval state in America.
Anne Brannen 0:37
And today, we are having our lovely dark of the year in the northern hemisphere winter solstice-y, Christmassy, Yule-y kind of thing. We’re going to discuss winter shenanigans in the Middle Ages and…precise crimes?…we don’t have a crime we’re focusing on, we just want to discuss winter shenanigans. So that’s what we’re doing. Michelle, what have you got? What’s going on in Maryland that’s all medieval for Christmas?
Michelle Butler 1:09
Actually, the weather is weird here in Maryland. It’s not especially Christmassy yet. It is in the 50s and it’s also been up in the 60s. It’s not very Christmassy feeling here yet. I went to pick up my CSA yesterday, and the guy who arrived as I was leaving was barefoot, in shorts.
Anne Brannen 1:39
Were you getting summer squash?
Michelle Butler 1:42
It was nuts. The weather has been bonkers here.
Anne Brannen 1:46
Here. it’s been cold here in Albuquerque and will continue to be cold in Albuquerque with occasional bits of little bits of warmness. But yeah, we have Christmas customs here which have a nice long history. On Christmas Eve I will make posole and biscochitos. Biscochitos are the state cookie of New Mexico. Do you have a state cookie? I don’t know. Do other places have state cookies? We’ve got one. It’s biscochitos. And the posole, which is a hominy and pork and red chili stew. And we will… we won’t put out luminarias because I just don’t have the energy for it. But a lot of people will. And those are…we use paper sacks with sand in the bottom and then a little candle and that works really well on the flat roofs and the flat walls. Up north they call them farolitos. But here we call them…down here in Albuquerque, we call them luminarias. So yeah, that’s what we do. Anyway, we’re discussing the Middle Ages. And we put this week into our schedule as the winter solstice/Yule/Christmas episode, and we were calling it the Lords of Misrule pretty much because we like that name. But really, we have a lot to cover, way more than just have some Lord of Misrule. But we can start there. And by the way, though, we’ll be be discussing a lot of mayhem, as I said, there’s no particular crime that we’ll be covering, although I think there’s one that Michelle has brought in that is going to be…what is it? Early Modern, that that will be early modern. And I’m going to get to my absolute favorite Christmas debacle later on. So now then. The Lord of Misrule. That’s a title given to an official whose job it was to watch over the Feast of Fools. The Lord of Misrule, by the way, is the English name. The Scots called it the Abbot of Unreason. And the French called it (my favorite) the Prince of Sots. You know, the ruler of the drunken people. And so it was, at least at some times, and in some places sanctioned by the government, though and other times in places it was simply a way of being the leader of the sots. And so what were the sots doing? There was what they call the Feast of Fools, which had started in southern France, in which a lay person would be chosen to be a pretend Bishop of the area. And there would be general reversals, upheavals, of liturgy and church structure. So rituals were parodied and clergy might switch position and this happened on various days. But all of those days were in the dead of winter. The Feast of Circumcision, which was January the first or St. Stephen’s Day, which was the 26th of December, or St. John’s Day, which was the 27th of December, or the Feast of the Holy Innocents, which was the 28th of December, and this was an official church custom, though there was also official pushback from the Church. There were some valid spiritual and religious foundations to the whole thing. Humility, for instance, and the reminder that we have different roles and statuses in our life than we do in death. Where, you know, things tend to be a little bit more equal. Except that we’re judged according to how good we are. So, you know, at the table where Jesus is at the head of it, you can be, you know, below the salt. That’s not, you know…if you haven’t been as good as, let’s say, Margery Kempe, who gets to sit up at the top at the top of the table, as we are told. Am I believing this? No, I’m not. Margery Kempe. You know, we ought to cover Margery Kempe just as a crime of her own, you know what I mean? But any rate. Like we did Hugh Despenser. The terrible dreadfulness of Hugh Despenser. We can do the complete obnoxiousness of Margery Kempe. But at any rate. We move on. But nevertheless, as you can imagine things got out of hand sometimes, having met the humans, and even when they didn’t, it was all sort of unseemly. So from the 12th century on, the church started putting…they were putting restraints in place, limiting the overturning of authority, but it existed as part of liturgies. We have one from France around–it was written around 1220–which includes the entire text for the liturgical Feast of Fools. So this was not just something happening out in the street. And it wasn’t a thing that was happening because the people were taking over the church. This was a church Office, and the Lord of Misrule was the leader of the ritual. Okay, very well. But that’s not all. The official celebration in church of disorder wasn’t all that was going on. Because the lay people also had some things to do in the depth of winter. There was a fairly mild custom, which was held on the 19th of January, which commemorated the Flight into Egypt of Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus. And in that, a young woman or a girl, holding a child or a baby, they would be on a donkey, and they’d be led all around the town, ended up at the church and the donkey got to be in the church. And, you know, that’s actually fairly mild. That’s really pretty tame. In England, there was a very popular custom, which was the boy Bishop. I’ve actually seen this in the records myself, like at Ramsey Abbey, you know, the payments for the boy Bishop. In that case, the festivities got started on December 6, because that’s St. Nicholas’s day, when, as you know, St. Nicholas puts nice things in your shoes unless you’ve been awful. And so it went on until the 28th of December, as you remember, the Holy Innocents Day, when a lot of babies get slaughtered, while Herod is trying to get rid of Jesus. And that’s why Mary and Joseph have taken him to Egypt. That’s what’s going on there. And in this case, a little boy was given…a boy was given bishop’s gear, and he and other boys went around blessing the town. And they also performed all of the church services, all of the church offices, except the Mass. They couldn’t do the Mass. Although they might have parodied it, but they couldn’t…so there’s a boundary there at the Mass.
Michelle Butler 8:13
E.K. Chambers says that if the boy Bishop dies, during his time, as the boy Bishop, he’s actually buried as a bishop, which I thought was fascinating.
Anne Brannen 8:22
Really?
Michelle Butler 8:23
Yeah
Anne Brannen 8:24
That is very interesting indeed. The ceremony at which the boy Bishop was installed took place during the Magnificat. The real Bishop steps down at the point where they’re saying ‘he has put down the mighty from their seat’ and the boy took his place at ‘and exalted the humble and meek.’ This makes sense to me. So there’s this…this total sense in terms of thinking about reversing places of power, as a way of remembering that the power as it is given out on Earth is not the power as it is given out in Heaven. Totally makes sense to me. Okay. This finally…Elizabeth the First finally abolished it entirely. And frankly, that’s kind of pretty tame, too, isn’t it? But. So the notion that we have of this kind of drunken riotous behavior at the Feast of Fools doesn’t come from the versions that the church authorized. It comes from the fact that humans tend to take things to the extreme. Instead of just inverting religious orders and commemorating the fleeting nature of the human hierarchies, people got involved in lots of misrule. So men and women dressed as women and men, which was, you know…wearing clothes that was not your gender-specific, as thought of in the Middle Ages, was not illegal by either secular or in the church but it was frowned upon. In our Joan of Arc podcast we discussed the fact that she was burnt to death at the stake for wearing men’s clothing, but not specifically because she was wearing men’s clothing but because in doing so, she was going back on an agreement that she had made with the Church and so therefore, she was a heretic. So any rate, cross dressing, and people would wear masks and cavort around. There were singing and dancing and gambling in the church and playing around and, of course, there was drinking. And not just in the churches, the regular churches. zIn abbeys and convents, monks and nuns were often, you know, totally misbehaving on the Feast of Fools day. Whenever that was, whenever that community was celebrating the Feast of Fools. It was any time, as you have heard, through December and on into January. And the mask wearing tended to allow people license to misbehave, and to behave much worse than they would have. So periodically the church banned the masks, but that didn’t work. People wear them anyway. The church banned the Feast entirely in the 15th century. Although people kept the celebration They kept…for many years later. And even the comparatively tame boy Bishop custom got out of hand occasionally. Sometimes the boys wore masks and misbehaved themselves. Because you couldn’t tell who they were when they were masked. Now this is one of the things that I have never understood. Michelle, when people are wearing just, kind of masks, are you able to tell who they are?
Michelle Butler 11:32
Depends entirely on…What are they, you know…what kind of clothing are they…? Are they wearing their normal…? If it’s just masks and they’re wearing their normal clothing, you can probably tell and if they–
Anne Brannen 11:45
Yes
Michelle Butler 11:46
The whole disguise, then–Clark Kent notwithstanding–normally a little thing across the eyes isn’t going to do it.
Anne Brannen 11:55
Indeed, not. And as a matter of fact, we actually as a society have been learning a lot about this in the last two years, haven’t we? Because we all go about in masks, and pretty much we know who we are. I’m just saying. So, you know, so if it’s just…and that’s all I hear about, the masks, and I’m like, oh, big deal. Any rate. They wore masks so you had no idea that it was little Tommy from next door. Anyway, they would go and demand gifts from the community. I think this is basically a boy Bishop shakedown, is what this was. Okay. All of these December, January, messing around, all this stuff was followed in just a few weeks, according to the calendar, by carnevale, which means farewell to meat, which precedes Lent. And those customs have been revived in places where they had fallen away. But the Feast of Fools itself has not been revived, though Christmas itself really involves a lot of the traditions, you know, that were in the Feast of Fools. Some of those elements. I’m thinking here, for instance of the ugly sweater contest, which seems to me to be very much in line with the Feast of Fools. Yeah?
Michelle Butler 13:07
Yeah.
Anne Brannen 13:07
Or the white elephant game. Do you know the white elephant gift game?
Michelle Butler 13:11
Oh, yeah.
Anne Brannen 13:12
Ah, well, that’s going to be going on at the party I’m going to tonight and it will be hilarious. There will be a lot of hilarity and some people will actually end up with stuff they like and other people will have to take complete trash home, depending on how it went out. But the Boy Bishop has been revived in the late 20th century and I hadn’t known this. This was a great interest to me. In Hereford, the boy Bishop preaches a sermon and leads prayers, and other churches throughout England have followed suit. So there’s a boy Bishop a lot of places in England. And in some places, the boy Bishop remains in place all year presiding over like youth things, I don’t know. Like, what is that? Bake sales? ‘I’m here, the boy Bishop, to make the bake sale sacred.’ I have no idea what the boy Bishop is doing in youth events in England for the whole year. But at any rate in some places that’s going on, or at least it was before we had the dreadful pandemic. Who knows what’s going on now? I don’t know. I don’t know. Boy bishops this year? I don’t know. I can’t speak to it. But there’s also places that instituted the custom that hadn’t had it before. It’s throughout Spain, and the United States. Oddly enough, we have a bunch of boy bishops.
Michelle Butler 14:23
Oh wow. Interesting.
Anne Brannen 14:24
I know. I don’t think we have any here, we’re too busy with Las Posadas. We have Las Posadas, which is Mary and Joseph go all around to various houses and you give them the posole and biscochitos. And also they’re able to know where to go because you have put out the luminarias so they know they can come to your house. So the baby Jesus has a place to stay and doesn’t have to stay in the manger. That’s what the luminarias are doing. They’re not just being pretty. But all right, carnival. Carnival never disappeared. It began at epiphany and epiphany is January 6, and it went on until the day before Ash Wednesday which might start some time in February or be as late as the 10th of March. And it was a period of feasting and playing and reversing social roles. And in general eating up all the meat and butter before Ash Wednesday, when the 40 days of Lenten fasting is going to start when you can’t have any meat and you can’t have eggs, and you can’t have butter or any dairy products. And basically…there’s a lot of beans, is what you’ve got, right at the time when, you know, that’s kind of what’s left. But you have to eat everything up so it doesn’t go bad. And that period also involve parades, and masked balls. And I am very sorry to tell you, but this–I hadn’t known about this and so now I get to be pissed off about this–systematic mistreatment and degradation of the local Jews. That’s most notably in Rome itself. And that aspect continued in Rome well into the 19th century.
Michelle Butler 14:24
Yeah, I don’t think I knew that.
Anne Brannen 15:31
Yeah, I don’t like that. But the carnivals became traditional throughout Europe, and they were taken by the Europeans to North America. And now, today, well, or at least non pandemic today, if you can imagine it. They’re celebrated throughout the Spanish speaking New World, throughout the French speaking New World, throughout England, America, Canada, Europe. Rio de Janeiro holds the largest and the most famous. In the United States is, of course, Mardi Gras down on the Gulf Coast. And you know, in New Orleans, and all the places around there. When we’re talking about Mardi Gras, on the Gulf Coast, we think about New Orleans, but actually it’s all through the Gulf Coast that things are going on. The Venice carnival, the carnival in Venice, is of course, one of the oldest and one of the most famous, but all throughout, all over the world. And all of the festivities, all through the winter, as they did centuries ago involve a lot of drinking, a lot of behavior that sometimes skirts the edge of bad behavior, and it’s just naughty. And sometimes it goes over the edge of the cliff into violence and destruction. There’s been times when there’s been kind of curb on that. Normally, the Puritans. The Puritans didn’t even allow you to celebrate Christmas. It was just another damn day, you just forget that. Yay, America. But there’s something really kind of crucial about it. And so I want to put all this into a larger context cause there are celebrations that mark the winter throughout the world–I’m talking about the northern hemisphere of it–at the winter solstice, which falls on the 21st of December. And theoretically, that’s not what’s being celebrated by all the… Medieval European feasts are commemorating something to do with the birth of the baby Jesus. But the Bible doesn’t actually say when Jesus was born, what time of the year, and it was highly unlikely that was any time in the winter because, first of all, that’s not when the registry was. And second of all, the sheep…the shepherds and their sheep aren’t laying out on the hills at night in the dead of winter. So the observation of his birthday on the 25th of December made it possible to blend his worship into the celebrations that were already happening in the northern hemisphere at the winter solstice, when the sun begins to grow stronger, in one way of thinking. At least the days get longer. And so, you know, it seems…it’s going to get hotter and so ergo, the sun is stronger. So this is going on throughout the Northern Hemisphere. The Romans had observed their Saturnalia on the 17th of December through the 23rd. There was feasting, there was partying, there was gift giving, gambling and masters serving serving the slaves at table. And it commemorated the lost golden age, which was when Saturn ruled and the earth was abundant and there was no private property and all the people were equal. So there you go, nice little winter solstice thing. Outside of Europe, the Chinese, for instance, celebrated the winter solstice as the New Year. The ancient Chinese did, though by the turn into common era, the date for the new year had shifted to a lunar calendar. And so the solstice was a different festival. But at the solstice festival, officials took time off, people went home, ancestors, gods were worshipped and elders were respected. I myself personally like that very much. And I would like for us to think of how to do it and I’ll just say I like marzipan. Marzipan is very good. So it’s now a feasting day with dumplings or rice balls, depending on which piece of China you’re living in. So it’s still a feasting day. The Aztecs celebrated the birth of the boy sun at the winter solstice and they played games and they had processions and flags were really important. And they had dancing and singing and they made this sculpture out of amaranth, a grain, and honey, representing the god and then they ate it all up. And the Incas celebrated the Sun God at the winter solstice. And the ancient ceremony…the ceremony has been revived. It’s very popular with tourists. In a theatrical production, which is a representation of the earlier ceremonies. Throughout the Andes, at the winter solstice, music, mask wearing, feasting. So, you know, the winter party time, the winter’s party time, serious party time, this is really, really important. We have to go to the winter parties and put on all our little lights and you know, eat a bunch of stuff. It’s important. And then we have, all of us, our different ways of noticing either Christmas or the winter solstice or Hanukkah, whatever festival we have. Happy Holidays. But it’s crucial. Crucial. Anyway. So I want to end my section by sharing with you–and I haven’t told Michelle anything about this and I don’t know if she knows about it–I want to end my section with what is my absolute favorite medieval Christmas celebration gone horribly awry.
We’re in 1066. Duke William the Bastard, who had in October conquered England, became William the Conqueror. He had himself crowned king in London on Christmas Day. He needed a coronation in London because that was the seat of all the officialdom. You know, as like he’s Norman, you’ve got to make things really clear that we are now officially the leaders of England, you know, because really it wouldn’t seem like that, since you aren’t English and don’t speak English. This will become important in a minute. And he needed to do it at Christmas, because that had become a sort of traditional kind of thing. There had been some other kings crowned at Christmas. And so you know, he…it just seemed more legitimate. So everything was going really well. And the crown got put on his head, and he was declared king. And so then the crowd, which was mixed English and Norman shouted out their approval, ‘yay, great, this is wonderful.’ However. The Norman guards, who were outside of the church, heard all this stuff, couldn’t understand a word of the English, and they thought there was a riot. So therefore, they set fire to the nearby houses belonging to English people.
Michelle Butler 22:46
Oh my God, I didn’t know this.
Anne Brannen 22:48
I just learned this while I was doing my research for our winter shenanigans. And I don’t think it’ll ever get any better. There will be no story told to me better of bad things that happened in the Middle Ages. So everybody ran out of the church, duh, because it was all filling up with smoke. William stayed there, the Archbishop stayed there, and whatever clergy that had to be there for the ceremony. They finished the ceremony– must have been sort of humiliating, but they finished the ceremony. Orderic Vitalis tells us that William was pale and trembling. And maybe he was, but, you know, since he was a pretty fierce warrior, he was kind of used to thinking and acting quickly in dire circumstances. I kind of don’t believe that. I don’t believe that William was all pale and trembling. But at any rate, he was crowned. And then afterward, the English who had little reason to be all happy about the Normans coming and taking over everything, and spreading some language nobody could understand, disliked them even more and trusted them even less. Cuz at any minute, it had been proven that for no reason, they might burn your house down. Merry Christmas!
Michelle Butler 24:02
We keep finding blood feasts at Christmas. We can’t go a generation without somebody inviting somebody else over. Oh, yeah, we’re gonna have a great party. And then there’s murder. I mean, that’s practically part of the celebration.
Anne Brannen 24:20
Yeah, yeah. Over the cliff into violence and destruction. Yep.
Michelle Butler 24:25
I was way literal in my research. When I was told we were doing the Lords of Misrule, that’s what I did. I looked very specifically at the Lords of Misrule. I found some wacky modern stuff that is kind of worth sharing. There’s a brand new scholarly book about Mardi Gras called the Lords of Misrule.
Anne Brannen 24:54
Oh cool.
Michelle Butler 24:55
Isn’t that neat?
Anne Brannen 24:56
I like that. But is it about the Gulf Coast Mardi Gras?
Michelle Butler 25:01
I looked at this for two seconds, okay, because I was going past it on my way to something else to make sure it wasn’t about medieval–
Anne Brannen 25:09
Right. Right.
Michelle Butler 25:11
But no, it’s…from my very quick perusal it’s New Orleans.
Anne Brannen 25:17
Yeah, okay. So yeah, the Gulf Coast. Because Because Mardi Gras…the term Mardi Gras gets used for a lot of the carnivals. But when we say Mardi Gras, we tend–you know, we the Americans–we mean New Orleans, because hello, that’s our big one.
Michelle Butler 25:32
Yeah, in general, modern uses of the phrase, Lord or Lords of Misrule is pretty interesting. Lush has a perfume line named Lord of Misrule.
Anne Brannen 25:42
I have some of it, it’s quite nice.
Michelle Butler 25:45
There is a 2010 National Book Award winner, where the book is called Lord of Misrule. That has nothing to do with anything. It’s about the race track. It’s about horse racing.
Anne Brannen 25:58
Was there a horse called…’And then Lord of Misrule is coming in second…’
Michelle Butler 26:03
I don’t know. I think in some cases, it’s just a really interesting…it’s just a really cool phrase that gets picked up.
Anne Brannen 26:09
It is, It is. That’s why it came to our mind. So we’re like, oh, Lords of Misrule.
Michelle Butler 26:14
Alfred Noyes has a poem called The Lord of Misrule. But it set in May, so I don’t know what he thought he was doing with that. He’s got it conflated with the stuff happening in May Day. I don’t…So those are kind of the by the way things that happened on my way to actually finding some stuff. Because what I was finding was that the specific phrase, The Lords of Misrule seems to be more about…it’s very late. So the earliest, earliest use of it is from the 1480s. So, in my head, what I’m seeing is the beginnings of medievalism.
Anne Brannen 27:03
Hahahaha! The thing that our forefathers did. That was the Lords of Misrule, that’s what that was.
Michelle Butler 27:11
It appears to be what’s happening is upper class people adopting what they think used to be the practices of the lower class.
Anne Brannen 27:24
Ah! Like Morris dancing.
Michelle Butler 27:26
Right. And so it’s bound up…you see it being bound up with upper class people finding out about Robin Hood, for example. So sometimes…we have records where the same people play Friar Tuck in Robin Hood games and then turn around and they’re the lord of Misrule.
Anne Brannen 27:42
Huh
Michelle Butler 27:43
We have records from between 1508 and 1515, William Wynnsbury plays Friar Tuck in the Mayday games, and then he’s also the Lord of Misrule at Christmas. So once I got my head around that what I was seeing was medievalism, things were better because I was really…I discovered that I really have trouble with topics that are part of this, um, belief in the idea of Merrye Olde England, with lots of extra e’s. And I so I need sources. So fortunately, I was able to find some sources. By far the most interesting thing I found was from 1551.
Anne Brannen 28:32
Oh, really?
Michelle Butler 28:33
Yes. In 1551, Edward, Henry the Eighth’s son was on the throne, but he was a child. So what you really have are a bunch of grownups squabbling. And from 1547 to 1549, Somerset, Lord Somerset, is the Lord Protector. And he manages to annoy somebody else, and is arrested in October of 1549. And then he’s in prison for the next year and so, while they’re figuring out what they’re going to charge him with. In 1551 they eventually figure out something that they can charge him with and he’s sentenced to be executed in January of 1552.
Anne Brannen 29:23
Okay
Michelle Butler 29:24
So that is the context for this elaborate Christmas production that happens in 1551, at the end of 1551
Anne Brannen 29:37
Merry Christmas, we’re gonna cut your head off.
Michelle Butler 29:42
You know what, I’m just gonna quote…I’m here in W.R. Streitberger’s book Court Revels, 1485 to 1559. This was one of those times where I was at Kalamazoo and saw the book and thought ‘Eh, might be useful’ and had the sense to buy it.
Anne Brannen 30:02
Yay!
Michelle Butler 30:03
As opposed to some earlier times where I had not in fact had the sense to buy it.
Anne Brannen 30:07
Well, you didn’t know you were going to be doing a podcast that covered all of Europe in the entire Middle Ages. I mean, I didn’t either.
Michelle Butler 30:14
I didn’t either. But thank goodness, this time I had the book I needed. So here he is, here’s the quote, “Preparations for the revels in both of these Christmas seasons [ie 1551 and then again in 1552] were the most elaborate of the entire reign. The revels accounts in earlier years ran as high as 150 pounds and as low as 11 pounds. But the bills associated with Christmas in 1551 were over 500 pounds.” And then the next year, it was 400 pounds.
Anne Brannen 30:48
God almighty
Michelle Butler 30:49
They spent a ton of money. Richard Grafton, who is a contemporary writer, so from the 1560s, “thought that the Christmas revels were designed to distract the king and the court’s attention from the fate of Somerset, who had been arrested in October of 1551. tried for treason and felony in December and was now scheduled to be executed.”
Anne Brannen 31:11
So that’s it. That’s someone at the time saying this.
Michelle Butler 31:14
Yep. And he’s writes, in 1565: “The Duke beyng condempned as is aforesayd, the people spake diversely and murmured against the Duke of Northumberlande,” who was Somerset’s rival “and against some other of the Lordes for the kind of condempnation of the sayd Duke, and also as the common fame went, the kinges maiestie tooke it not in good part; wherfore aswell to remoove fond talke out of mennes mouthes, and also to recreate and refresh the troubled spirites of the yong kinge, it was deuised that the feast of Christes Natiuitie, commonly called Christmas then at hand, should be solemnly kept at Greenewiche with open houshold and franke resorte to the Court.”
Anne Brannen 32:04
They distracted the child king by having a bunch of Christmas party stuff going on.
Michelle Butler 32:11
They did.
Anne Brannen 32:13
And he had been very close to Somerset because Somerset had been his, his main guy. Did you remember that Edward Seymour was his uncle? That’s his mother’s brother.
Michelle Butler 32:23
Oh, that’s right. That’s right. I had read that and then I’d forgotten it. That this is yeah, Somerset is his uncle.
Anne Brannen 32:31
So no matter how young he is, or you know, how much of a teenager he is, or what having your uncle beheaded, who’s been by your side since you…Yeah, that would be a hard thing to stomach.
Michelle Butler 32:47
But, part of my French, what they do is creepy as fuck. Because what they do is they have the lord of Misrule come across the river to Tower Hill, where Somerset is going to be executed in four weeks time.
Anne Brannen 33:05
Oh Jesus.
Michelle Butler 33:07
They have…it’s not exactly a mock execution, but it kind of is because they have the Lord of Misrule lop the end off of a barrel of wine, and then start serving it out to the crowd.
Anne Brannen 33:23
This is wicked.
Michelle Butler 33:24
Yes. Here is what Streitberger says about this. This “entry into London is one of the most cynical uses of the revels from the entire period.”
Anne Brannen 33:37
I would say the entire…not just this period, not just the early Middle Ages, but the Middle Ages.
Michelle Butler 33:45
We do kind of have a crime this go because we have Somerset getting set up so that Northumberland can take him down and you know, be in charge of the child King directly. And then we have this really cynical use of the Lord of Misrule and and the entertainments that the Lord of Misrule would generally be doing. Oh, here’s another piece, you’re gonna love. The guy who was the Lord of Misrule at this time? His last name is Ferrers, and he’s…he’s a little strange.
Anne Brannen 34:23
How so?
Michelle Butler 34:24
Okay. So when he writes about playing the Lord of Misrule, he speaks about this in the first person as if there is no difference between himself and the Lord of Misrule. “This yeare, I imagin to cum oute of a place caulled vastuum vacuum,” which is really fascinating, by the way, that phrasing, ie “the great waste/asmoche to saie as a place voyde or emptie withoute the worlde” so outside the world, “where is neither fier ayre water nor earth/ and that I haue bene remayning there sins the Last yeare. And bicause of Certaine devisis which I haue towching this matter, I wolde yf it were possyble haue all myne apparell blewe the first daie that I present my self to the kinges Majestie.” And, and, and! His device… he has a crest with Hydras on it as the Lord of Misrule. And his motto is Semper Ferians, which means always celebrating, but it’s also this amazing play on his name Ferrers. Oh, I was so happy to find this.
Anne Brannen 35:43
This is amazing. And there’s…it’s such a subversion, you know, executing as part of the Christmas revels, which are all about light coming back. This is not that. I have a question. That tower, Tower Hill, that we’re speaking about it…Do we know where Somerset was held in the tower? Could he see this?
Michelle Butler 36:10
Oh, interesting question. I’m afraid I don’t know because Streitberger doesn’t talk about that.
Anne Brannen 36:16
Because I know that often people could see the gallows, for instance, where they were going to be executed. It just depends on where you’re held in the Tower. The Tower has lots of different rooms, got so many rooms.
Michelle Butler 36:29
This…I cannot stress how grotesque this thing was. It was an entry into London…Here, let me just quote my guy here. “The Lord of Misrule’s entry is partly a parody of the entries the city of London had accorded to royalty for centuries and partly a burlesque of the power vested in royalty to dispense justice.” The Lord of Misrule shows up on Tower Hill, with prisoners bound in chains and hauled in carts behind the procession.
Anne Brannen 37:03
Yeah, that’s not part of the Christmas revels. That is a new thing.
Michelle Butler 37:09
This is all about trying to make it seem like what happens to Somerset…because he’s executed on January 22, right after this. Just trying to defang that spectacle. They’re trying to set up the fake spectacle against the real spectacle that’s going to be happening later.
Anne Brannen 37:34
Yeah, so it’s just kind of like a part of things. Yeah. We had prisoners and chains. We had a wine barrel being decapitated, and then Somerset died. Yeah. As if it was all at the same level. This is appalling.
Michelle Butler 37:48
Mm hmm. Yeah, it’s dreadful. Part of what he has with him…properties included rounded clubs hollowed out for squibs, joints, locks, hasps, staples for the stocks, a pillory, prisons, manacles, keys for jailers, and a block and beheading axe.
Anne Brannen 38:11
And that’s all…that’s in payments for the Christmas revels.
Michelle Butler 38:14
Yes. That is properties that they were using for the Christmas revels that year. It is absolutely outside what would normally be happening, but it’s being done as part of…it’s so political, and…everything is political with the Tudors.
Anne Brannen 38:33
Oh, yeah.
Michelle Butler 38:34
I was just reading about a fascinating book that was talking about how they really have to be looked at as the last medieval English kings rather than the first of something else, because they were very much about arguing for their authority by arguing that they were part of this very long line of kings and doing that by the use of spectacle in this way, like they’re doing with the Lord of Misrule. Hey, we’re taking on this thing, and this is how it’s always been done.
Anne Brannen 39:09
No, yeah, yeah, yeah. They were the Welshmen that killed the last of the Plantagenets. It is kind of…
Michelle Butler 39:18
Yeah, this one’s pretty bad. This one’s pretty bad.
Anne Brannen 39:22
So we do have a crime. I take it back. It’s a… now, it’s early modern crime. It’s not medieval. There were medieval crimes. And that was how they were treating the Jews in the Christmas revels in Rome. They weren’t killing them, by the way, but they were humiliating them and so that’s what I’m not calling it as as like an actual…like, you know, murder or theft, no. But, you know, making people go through the streets naked and throwing things at them. That’s what was going on. One of the things I wonder is if it would have been possible to stage this kind of political use of the Lords of Misrule before the early modern era, you know. In other words, the Lords, the Feast of Fools, all those festivities, were more not…sacrosanct. That’s not the word I want, but less easily manipulated, I would think.
Michelle Butler 40:20
I think that what we see going on in the late 15th, and then into the 16th centuries, is, you know, the adoption and kind of play acting of customs that didn’t actually belong, you know, originally to the upper class. I’m reminded of the ways in which you go now into any corporate building or, or bank or, you know…I was at the orthodontist with my kid on Monday, and there’s a Christmas tree at the orthodontist. Just a beautifully decorated Christmas tree with fake presents under it. This has nothing to do with anything. It’s performative.
Anne Brannen 40:59
Yes.
Michelle Butler 41:00
So I think that a lot of these things, this early medievalism that we’re seeing where the Tudors were like, we’re going out-medieval the medieval kings, that it’s performative rather than an emergent custom and I know that the line there can be a little can be a little tricky.
Anne Brannen 41:19
Yeah, cuz sometimes you can make performative into a custom. That makes sense to me. I will buy that. I will buy that. Yeah, and we’re moving out of the Middle Ages. And, and the Middle Ages then become a period which is vilified because of its, you know, backwardness, but also a period which is exalted because of its authority. Yeah. Yeah. The people, the people performing the Lord of Misrule’s wicked preamble to beheading Somerset are not the people who would have originally been performing it. Which means I wonder what it seemed like to the people of London and what did it seem like to the child King? I mean, what…what they think of this? Were they like, party down, party down, we don’t care about Somerset anymore. Is that what they were doing?
Michelle Butler 42:12
We do know a little bit about this, because there is an English clothier named Henry Machyn, who mostly sold cloth to be used in funerals, and funeral trappings. And he kept a diary from 1550 to 1563. And it’s his description that we have of what was happening at this Lord of Misrule for 1551. He’s the one who’s writing this down. And he very carefully documents what he saw. And it’s followed immediately by his documentation of Somerset’s execution. He sees them as being connected.
I just looked up because I wanted to know…the townspeople of London had been ordered at his execution to stay indoors. So at the actual execution, they weren’t supposed to be there. But, you know, they went there anyway, because, duh, humans.
And were doing the dipping their hankies in the blood thing
Anne Brannen 43:18
Were they?
Michelle Butler 43:20
Which they weren’t…they weren’t supposed to be doing that either, because you didn’t want to be making relics.
Anne Brannen 43:27
Well, I’m just…I just…I can’t even. I have nothing. I just don’t even know what to say about subverting the Christmas festivities into, you know, the prelude to an execution. Tacky, tacky, tacky, it’s tacky, Michelle, it’s tacky.
Michelle Butler 43:46
I agree. This is unrelated. But I woke up yesterday morning, and my brain was like, I have something to tell you. And what it had to tell me was, Mischief is the Lord of Misrule.
Anne Brannen 43:59
Oh my god. Mankind!
Michelle Butler 44:00
Yes.
Anne Brannen 44:01
Oh! Okay. So now you have to explain to our listeners what it is you just said.
Michelle Butler 44:10
Mankind–the best play ever written in English, fight me, it is–has this character named Mischief, who acts like a Lord of Misrule, but he’s not called that because it’s too early because Mankind was written in 1470. He’s not called that because the title doesn’t exist yet. But he clearly is behaving…so it’s very interesting, right? Because we have it showing up in this play. But it’s not called that yet. But the play is clearly drawing on some folk traditions that did exist.
Anne Brannen 44:45
Mm hmm.
Michelle Butler 44:46
So it’s kind of this in between moment that’s attesting to the tradition before it gets picked up by, you know, the Tudors in order… because there are records…E.K. Chambers says that there are records of there being a Lord of Misrule every year in Henry the Seventh’s court. That means he’s using it to make a point.
Anne Brannen 45:10
Indeed, but there aren’t records in the…we’re not seeing records in the…in the court household records before that?
Michelle Butler 45:21
No, no, I had to go read E.K. Chambers again. I wasn’t expecting to have do that again ever in my life, but I had to go back and reread the section of E.K. Chambers. Anywho. So what this did for me with Mankind, that clearly my subconscious wanted me to think about, was that when you have somebody who’s behaving like a Lord of Misrule, come out and say, you know, ‘we’ve been away for a long time, we will come give you a Christmas song,’…You have Mischief and the little devils–it’s actually Nowadays who comes back and says that, but you know, they’re behaving like that. And they come out and say, we’re going to give you a Christmas song. This changes for me, potentially, what the audience is expecting at that moment. We’ve always read it as they expect something good. But if they recognize these characters, as Lords of Misrule, they might be a little bit more [skeptical noise] about this than what we think they might be.
Anne Brannen 46:20
Yes, because they might be demanding money.
Michelle Butler 46:24
Yes. And they may well know that you can’t trust these guys, because they’re Lords of Misrule. So, you know, when when they come out and say we’re gonna send you a Christmas song and then, you know, everything starts out okay with “It is written with a coal,” and then it moves off into the profane line that they don’t allow us to print in the 19th century. Do you want me to say it or not?
Anne Brannen 46:49
I actually don’t mind if you do because I’m not in the 19th century. And this is my favorite play of all time. So hey.
Michelle Butler 46:55
It is the best play written in English. I’m standing by it.
Anne Brannen 46:59
I do too.
Michelle Butler 46:59
They come out and it starts okay with “It is written with a coal”–and this sings perfectly to Deck the Halls. And then it goes sideways off into “He that shitteth with his hole/ unless he wipe his ass clean/ on his breech–his breeches, his pants–it shall be seen.” And, you know, we’ve always…when we did this, when we performed this, the audience kind of went [gasps] and stopped singing along, because they’d been encouraged to sing along. And I just wonder whether for a medieval audience, they might not have been as shocked by it, because they were kind of expecting…
Anne Brannen 47:37
–at some point it was going to devolve?
Michelle Butler 47:39
Yeah, they might well have been expecting that there was going to be a certain amount of Lord of Misrule naughtiness with this. And then of course, later in the play, when Mischief does the Court of Mischief, that’s very similar to some stuff that happens later on in the records with the Lord of Misrule with recruiting people into his party and having a court where they give judgment on this versus that. ‘Was this a better pie? Or was that a better pie? Was this person a better dancer, or was that person a better dancer?’ So anytime I get to swing back to Mankind is a good day.
Anne Brannen 48:15
Well, that court business, that’s part of the Lords of Misrule, fits in very nicely into ‘Let’s behead Edward Seymour.’ Yeah.
Michelle Butler 48:22
Isn’t that awful? They take this thing that was a joke and make it real with that execution.
Anne Brannen 48:29
Oh, God. Yes. Yes. Well, this is, you know…if we were still writing papers, this is one we’d have to do, isn’t it? But I have moved on.
Michelle Butler 48:39
Yeah, I don’t write papers anymore.
Anne Brannen 48:41
Yeah. Anybody listening who’s still writing about medieval drama for the Academy, you might look into Mankind and the Lords of Misrule. We’re just saying.
Michelle Butler 48:51
I did write a paper–and it was published even–about how the little devils in Mankind are like Robin Hood, and these things can all be true because, you know, the Lord of Misrule is like…you know, we see that overlap in the records.
Anne Brannen 49:07
Everything resonates. And there’s evidence for it.
Michelle Butler 49:12
So much of Robin Hood is about rule breaking.
Anne Brannen 49:14
Indeed. And the overturning of status.
Michelle Butler 49:19
Yeah. The most commonly used adjective to talk about Robin Hood in the earliest texts is bold. Bold Sir Robin, going off and doing the things that everybody wants to do but they don’t dare to do.
Anne Brannen 49:30
Unless it’s sometime in December and they have their masks on.
Michelle Butler 49:34
And then then they can do it.
Anne Brannen 49:36
They can do it. Well, I’m appalled. I knew about Somerset getting executed but I did not know about the false party that had gone on for days beforehand. Yeah, cuz the little king was gonna be so upset.
Michelle Butler 49:52
Court politics,.The longer I the longer I look at this, the worse it gets. With what they did with the drama and the performances and the spectacle, that Christmas season, it’s just terrible. And they spent so much money doing it. 500 pounds is a lot of money.
Anne Brannen 50:13
It is a lot of money.
Michelle Butler 50:14
It’s still a lot of money.
Anne Brannen 50:16
No, I don’t throw 500 pounds around. No. Well.
Michelle Butler 50:21
That is all I know. That is all I know. We got George Ferrers being weird and apparently perceiving…he’s a big thinker, you know, but he plans. He’s kind of a cynical political mover, too, because he had been Somerset’s retainer. And then once Somerset starts going down, he shifts to Northumberland. He’s really good at knowing when it’s time to jump ship.
Anne Brannen 50:46
I find the Tudor period. Fascinating. But I’m just like, appalled by it all the time. Just simply appalled. And I think the Middle Ages are pretty bad. I think people are badly behaved in the Middle Ages. As you know. I’m just like when you get to the Tudors, oh, my god. Well, so, happy holidays, whatever holidays you are celebrating. You will have started perhaps much earlier at the beginning of December, perhaps you’ll keep going on into the beginning of Lent. Let this be a time of joy. Let it be joy and comfort and stay safe. And that’s what we have to say about medieval winter shenanigans. And the next time that you hear from us, we’ll be having a special episode because we’re going to go…we’re going to be in the early modern period again. Because we need to discuss something that I love so much that I kept sticking it on the schedule. I ended up, what, three times it was on the schedule. Anyway, we’re gonna do it next time. And that’s when Darnley, who was married to Mary Queen of Scots at the time, murders Rizzio, the musician, in Edinburgh in 1566. And really a lot of other stuff is associated with that as it always is. And Darnley himself is not going to die a natural death. That’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna go to Scotland in the 16th century. Why not?
Michelle Butler 52:11
Yeah, this is one of those I’ve heard of, but haven’t really looked at.
Anne Brannen 52:14
Oh, hon. We went to…when my child was…god, he would have been about one and a half. We were in Edinburgh and we went to Holyrood Palace and so we got to see the room where Mary Queen of Scots was eating dinner when Rizzio got murdered in front of her. So I’m holding my, you know, and my child pipes up, he says ‘Where did she pway? This completely…you know, the docent was like, ‘what?’ I said ‘he wants to know where Mary Queen of Scots did her prayers.’ And he said ‘well, I suppose anywhere she wanted.’ He didn’t really have a good answer for this. That was my child’s reaction to Darley killing Rizzio. Where did she pway?
Okay, whatever. This has been True Crime Medieval. We had lots of fun. It was festivities. True Crime Medieval, where the crimes are just like they are today only with less technology. We’re on Apple podcasts and we’re on Spotify and Stitcher and all the places where the podcasts hang out, we’re there. And you can reach us…we’ve got a website truecrimemedieval.com. True crime medieval is all one word. And that’s where you can get access to the show notes that Michelle does and the transcripts which had been being done by Laurie Dietrich, and are getting taken over by Michelle, and the blurb and whatever picture I found to illustrate. I like finding pictures. I’ve been having a lot of fun with that entirely the entire time. And you can get a hold of us. You can reach us through the website. And you can also leave comments. We’d love to hear from you. If you’ve got any medieval crimes that you think we should look at, please let us know. We’ll take it under advisement. We’ve been doing this now for two years. And we’ve got another year planned. We’re not running out of medieval crimes any time soon. But surely, you’ve got some that you’d like for us to know. And we try to move around because…we try to move out of England and even out of England and France and go on to other places like, you know, Scotland and Wales and Scandinavia and Italy and Spain. We tried to move around. Bye!
Michelle Butler 54:33
Bye!
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
54. Fulbert’s Henchmen Attack Peter Abelard, Paris, France 1117
Anne Brannen 0:23
Hello, and welcome to True Crime Medieval, 1000 years of people behaving badly. I’m Anne Brannen. I’m your host in Albuquerque.
Michelle Butler 0:33
And I’m Michelle Butler, in Maryland, the most medieval state in America, where it is sunny and cold and perfect today.
Anne Brannen 0:42
It’s sunny and cold here too in Albuquerque. So, I don’t know, it’s odd when the weather in Maryland and Albuquerque coincide. This doesn’t really seem like it ought to be a thing. But there you go. Today, we are very happy. We’ve really been looking forward to this because we get to talk about one of our favorite pieces of medieval history. Today, the crime that we are talking about is that time in Paris, in probably around 1117, when the renowned theologian and philosopher Abelard got castrated by a band of thugs that broke into his room. One night in Paris, a band of thugs, who had been sent by his wife’s uncle, broke into his room and castrated him and they got punished. I’m told this, I’d have no idea what really happened to them, but they got punished. And the uncle, Fulbert, he lost his position as the canon of Notre Dame for a little while. And Abelard left his position as canon of Notre Dame and he went off to a monastery for a while. Okay, so. Well, that’s the crime. And that’s what happened right after. What the hell? What the hell? Here’s the background. Abelard was born sometime probably around 1079. He was the son of a Breton Knight.
Michelle Butler 2:04
I did not know that he was a nobleman’s son. That was a new piece of information for me on this reread. Now, it is possible, I did know that at one point, and my brain just emptied its cache because that happens every once in a while.
Anne Brannen 2:17
Yeah, and there’s so much of it that could get filled up with that…the information on Abelard and all its different pieces is so large that you really, some of it you could lose very easily. Yeah, he was from the lower nobility. But instead of becoming a knight himself and enjoying his status as lower nobility, however enjoyable that was, I don’t really, know he got enticed into academia. His father had encouraged his education, and Abelard had a flair for philosophy. And he also had a flair for argumentation, and being arrogant. And that went really well. Oddly enough, in academia, you still sometimes find that.
Michelle Butler 2:55
Haha! Weird.
Anne Brannen 2:57
So he studied in various places around France, and he ended up in Paris around 1100, where he was studying at the Cathedral School of Notre Dame. When we discussed the history of the university in our podcast about the University of Paris strike, that was much later in 1229. At the time that Abelard was studying and teaching in Paris, the university does not exist. He’s at the Cathedral School, which will later evolve into the university. But he left for a while to teach at Melun, which is now in the Paris suburbs. But at that point, it was a town in the boonies. And then he moved closer to Paris. And after a few years back in Brittany, he went to Paris again, and he attempted to become master of the Cathedral School. But his intellectual rival, William of Champeaux…that’s his intellectual rival at the moment. He has different ones at different times. And they have different…Bernard of Clairvaux is really going to take him down pretty hard. But anyway, this is William of Champeaux. He managed to maneuver him on out. They were rivals, by the way, basically, because Abelard was arrogant and able to argue better than William, you know, so…he made a lot of enemies on account of his arrogance. And so this is one of them. That’s a theme throughout his life. So he went back to Melun, and then he went back to Paris, and then he went to Laon. And then he went back to Paris. And at that point there around 1115, he did become master of the Notre Dame Cathedral School. And he was an immensely popular teacher. Students came to Notre Dame from across Europe to study with him. He was quite renowned, but he needed a place to live. Because you know, you do, there’s that human thing. And he got rooms at the house of Fulbert, who was a canon in Notre Dame. He was drawn there, not as far as we know by the excellence of the rooms–we never hear about them–but by the fact that Heloise lived there, who was the niece of Fulbert. She was 15 to 17 at the time. She’s 20 years younger than he was. And she was also renowned, in Paris at least, as an unusually well-educated and extremely intelligent woman. She’d been educated by the nuns at Argenteuil, which is now in the suburbs of Paris like everything else, but was at the time some nearby little town. She read Latin, Greek and Hebrew, and Abelard’s rooms at Fulbert’s were paid for by his tutoring of Heloise, who could not attend the Cathedral School because she was a girl. So they were both brilliant. They were both of them absolutely brilliant. And they began an affair, sometime probably around 1116. Fulbert found out about this and separated them and we all know that that wasn’t gonna work because we know from history, literature, and probably our own experience, that that does not work, the separation of you know, very passionate lovers. So Abelard sent Heloise to live with his family in Brittany when she got pregnant. And she had a son named Astrolabe, which would be the equivalent now of naming a child Global Positioning System.
Michelle Butler 6:18
Yeah…it’s just…I mean, really, Astrolabe is the victim here.
Anne Brannen 6:23
It is such an uncommon name that that’s how we know where he is in different times because nobody else is named Astrolabe. Nobody, nobody. So for those of you who are wondering, it was at that time an ancient navigational…a little device that had been first invented, like in Persia. It was pretty damn old. At that point, it was a very important navigational tool. I have one myself that one of my students gave me. I don’t know how to use it. And so if I’m ever on a ship with anAstrolabe I’m just as lost as I would be if I didn’t have it. However, I do in my car have global positioning systems, so I know where I am, unless I’m in Pittsburgh, where it tells you to drive down streets which are actually stairs, but at any rate, that’s what his name was. Astrolabe.
Michelle Butler 7:08
Honestly, it’s one of those pieces that if you wrote it in a novel, your editor would say, ‘No, you can’t do that. Not even the biggest, dorkiest people are going to name their kid Compass. So back off.’
Anne Brannen 7:22
Well, one of the biggest, dorkiest people on the planet was Heloise, and she did name her child Astrolabe. So, Abelard wanted to marry her. But she did not want that because marriage, according to her, was a form of legal prostitution. And also marriage and children really get in the way of leading an intellectual academic life. She’s not wrong, really.
Michelle Butler 7:48
She’s not wrong.
Anne Brannen 7:51
But she finally agreed, as long as the marriage was going to be kept secret. And that was because she was concerned about Abelard’s career. It wasn’t yet the law…the ruling that the clerics were not going to be able to marry was not yet enacted, although it was coming pretty soon. But it was more and more the custom that clerics were not married. So she didn’t want to mess with his career. His career is getting messed with anyway, let me tell you, but at any rate, that was her thinking on this. And so she stayed with her uncle so that nobody would know they were married. Astrolabe, by the way, in case you’re wondering, he was back in Brittany being raised by Abelard’s sister Denise. Lucky for him.
Michelle Butler 8:37
Lucky Denise. Sheesh.
Anne Brannen 8:40
I wonder, does she call him Astrolabe?
Michelle Butler 8:44
Hopefully she gives him a nice nickname.
Anne Brannen 8:46
Yeah, like Bill. Anyway, so this didn’t work out. Fulbert made the marriage public. And then Heloise denied it because, you know. So Fulbert beat her up. So Abelard got her away and sent her to a nunnery to be safe. And then Fulbert had a fit and got his thugs to castrate Abelard. And that’s where we started the story. So. Things don’t stop there, of course. I’m going to tell you the rest of it. Abelard, who was humiliated and pretty upset, as one would be, went to the Monastery at Saint Denis so as to kind of stay out of the public eye–gossip, outrage, scandal going on. You bet. He did not really make a very good cloistered monk, however, so he started teaching again. He started writing, he got in more trouble. He got charged with heresy, he got out of that. He went at one point to go be a hermit.
Michelle Butler 9:46
Hahaha!
Anne Brannen 9:46
I just find this so endearing…it’s just…because he kept wanting…he kept trying to be people he was not. You know? So he went off to be a hermit. He had a little hut. Only what happened was that students came from across Europe and built little tents and huts all around, you know. It didn’t work. And so he built an actual building. And that became the Oratory of the Paraclete. Paraclete means Holy Spirit. That’s so that’s what that means. So he was there for a few years. And then he went to Brittany. And that lasted a little bit. But that didn’t work out and he got in trouble again. So he then went back to Paris, why not? He was teaching and writing…he and Heloise were back in contact at this point, or at least more contact than we know of before, and he became Abbot of her convent, called the Paraclete. And he and she, they wrote letters back and forth. Some of which we have, and they put them into a collection. This includes Abelard’s autobiography, which is called to my great joy, “The History of my Calamities.” It’s kind of like the last time we were talking, there was a biography, who was it, Emma of Normandy? Yes. “The excellence of me.”
Michelle Butler 11:04
“In praise of Queen Emma.”
Anne Brannen 11:07
That’s kind of like this. “The History of my Calamities.” It’s a good title. It was in Latin. So he…he actually got excommunicated for heresy in 1141. But Peter the Venerable, who just just loved him, Peter the Venerable managed to step in and keep his books from being burned and got the excommunication lifted. And Abelard died the next year in 1142. Heloise ended up with his body. It got sent to her and she buried him at the Paraclete. Alright. His contributions to philosophy and theology are immense. I’m not going to pretend to get into that. That’s a whole nother deal. Not going to go there. But I will say that, for me, the most important things that he contributed are: 1. the idea that God can be reached through reason and not just faith. This is why he got into…why he was having a big fight with Bernard of Clairvaux, who’s the guy that got him excommunicated. Because Bernard of Clairvaux knows it’s faith. You have to accept God on faith, you can’t, like, think your way to him. It’s kind of dangerous to let humans think, I don’t know if you knew this. That’s what’s going on. Any rate, Abelard thought that you could get to God through reason, I don’t know, because God gave us reason? So there you are. Anyway. And, 2. the idea that intention is what needs to be looked at when considering a human action, not just the action itself. And that will become one of the key stones of the legal study that the University of Paris will become known for. So hey. And of course, by the way, he thought that women should be educated. Yay. Now, Heloise, let’s go back to her. Heloise, who had been the abbess at Argenteuil, became the abbess of the Paraclete. And she established several daughter houses across France. She ran a lot of stuff. She was good at organization. And, you know, taking care of business and stuff. Abelard wrote–and now we’re going back to this whole thing about their affair–Abelard wrote in ‘the history of his calamities,’ that he had seduced her and that he had used force, which is a real problem, of course, for all of us. But Heloise denied this vehemently. She said that she had desired him and chose him. And one of the problems is, how do you reconcile this disjunction? What makes most sense to me is to actually believe Heloise. Abelard may well have been intending to try to keep her reputation safe, because he wanted for her to not be in danger of having the convent shut down. And that was the thing that happened There was this whole thing ‘nuns are immoral and screw around. And so let’s shut down the convent’ and that was going on. So it was an issue. So that makes sense to me, though, of course Heloise–who had said that she would rather be his whore than his wife–was quite annoyed at this attempt to, you know, to snatch her agency out of the story. That also makes sense to me. Her correspondence with Abelard contains intense philosophical, theological questions and debates because you know, brilliant. And one of the important things she does, to my mind, is demand that he help in creating a new Rule for the Paraclete because it was Benedictine. The Benedictines had, like, the sanest and most moderate of the monastic rules, because they took your humanity into account and didn’t try to just sort of erase it and make you be on your knees all the time, on stone, stone, stone floors. But the Benedictine rule, although it was very sane, was written for men, and not women and women needed changes made to the rule. And so she was instrumental in that. When she died, she was buried with Abelard at the Paraclete. They might have been moved to the tomb over in Paris that you can go to now and leave love letters there so that they can help you with your love life. They might be there but they might still be at the Paraclete because the oratory of the Paraclete says they’re still there and I think they might be. So the ending of my background: what the hell happened to Astrolabe or as I like to think of him, Global Positioning System?
Michelle Butler 15:27
[laughing] Who knows?
Anne Brannen 15:27
Yeah, I know. Abelard, who was also…I forgot to tell you this part. He was also a poet and a musician, but whatever. He did those things too. And a composer. He wrote a poem, dedicated to Astrolabe, called the Carmen Astralabium. And Peter the Venerable–we have his writings led in a letter to Heloise–he tells her that he’s working on getting a position in a big church for Astrolabe. Astrolabe shows up in the records of the Cathedral of Nantes and in an abbey in Switzerland, and we know it’s him because nobody else in Europe is named Astrolabe. So it’s got to be him. And the records for the Paraclete record his death 1 October, although they don’t say what year it is. So okay, records of Paraclete, but they call him ‘Astrolabe, the son of our master Peter.’ And so that’s what happened to them all. Oh, it was a bad thing to do to the renowned philosopher and theologian. It was really very bad. But quite frankly, I want to tell you, even if he hadn’t actually had this horrible castration humiliation thing where he had to, like, leave and go to Saint Denis, I do not think that Abelard would have stayed at the Cathedral School of Notre Dame, just writing his stuff. Because even before all of that he was traveling around, traveling around, traveling around. He just was moving, moving, moving. There’s this restlessness to his intellectual life and his physical life that I find really compelling. I think he was still going to be getting in trouble and moving all around. But all of it includes this business.
Michelle Butler 17:06
He also annoys people too much to stay in one place.
Anne Brannen 17:10
Yeah. He’s all the time getting in trouble.
Michelle Butler 17:12
He’s really the Alexander Hamilton of his time. Brilliant and annoying the crap out of…you know, Bernard of Clairvaux is his Burr.
Anne Brannen 17:23
Yeah, yeah. Oh, Bernard of Clairvaux. That’s a formidable enemy. I’ve seen Bernard of Clairvaux’s skull, by the way, did I tell you that?
Michelle Butler 17:35
Oh, wow.
Anne Brannen 17:36
Yeah, it’s in a reliquary at some church I went to in France. And you can see it, it looks really polished. So I think it probably wasn’t behind glass all the time. And you used to be able to rub it but–
Michelle Butler 17:48
Oh my
Anne Brannen 17:48
It’s a very nice skull.
Michelle Butler 17:49
You can understand why he would drive Bernard of Clairvaux right up a wall. Because, you know…for one thing, neither one of them want to share the spotlight.
Anne Brannen 17:58
No, they’re both pretty large, arrogant beings. Yes.
Michelle Butler 18:02
Yeah. You can’t be the center of attention when somebody else is there, also wanting to be the center of attention. You know, Bernard of Clairvaux, was all about, you know, follow the rules and excel within following the rules.’ And Abelard wants to say, no, we’re going to reconsider all of it.
Anne Brannen 18:19
Right. Because intention is what matters.
Michelle Butler 18:21
Right down to his name. I had apparently forgotten that he gave himself that name.
Anne Brannen 18:26
Oh, yeah, that’s not his name. Sorry about that. I didn’t tell y’all that. But yeah, he made that up.
Michelle Butler 18:31
He just gives himself a new name. He rolls into Paris and is like, ‘call me Abelard.’ Is that your name? No. But call me Abelard. My God. He’s such a character.
Anne Brannen 18:44
Well, you know, this business about following the rules is not necessarily the thing which matters also shows up then later in Heloise’s thinking because she refuses to think of her affair with Abelard as sinful. Something happened after being married because of her intention, you know, because love was the intention. Ergo, it can’t be wrong.
This is a topic that I had not studied since…probably graduate school, but possibly even undergraduate.
You were in my Medieval Women Writers class, right?
Michelle Butler 19:27
So we would have…yeah, I was, so we would have read about Heloise at that time. But I had not had reason to come back to this at all. I never taught the kind of comprehensive medieval survey class where you would teach Abelard and Heloise. The only medieval survey classes I taught were specifically English.
Anne Brannen 19:52
Right. They’re specifically not English. They are so French.
Michelle Butler 19:56
Yes. Oh my gosh. So there was a lot about this I had either forgotten or not known. So I found this really, really fascinating to come back to. I just did not know a bunch of this. Like I hadn’t known, I hadn’t remembered, that he was from this noble family and “no, I have three brothers, the title can go to them, I’m going to go argue professionally.”
Anne Brannen 20:27
“I’m making this up. There’s no university yet, but by God, there will be one someday and they’re going to talk about me.”
Michelle Butler 20:37
I find his Sic et Non, you know, that way of considering the pros and–I mean, it’s literally considering the pros and cons of something–to be such a useful way of structuring the consideration of a problem.
Anne Brannen 20:54
Hmm. Um-hum.
Michelle Butler 20:56
For me, that’s where I find his contribution to my intellectual life to be pretty intense. Because that is really how we do things still, right? We list the pros on one hand and the, you know, the cons on the other and then try to figure out on balance, which one carries more weight.
Anne Brannen 21:16
And for me, his insistence that the infinite, the ineffable, can be approached through reason.
Michelle Butler 21:24
Oh, yeah, that’s, that is enormously helpful.
Anne Brannen 21:27
You don’t have to park your brain at the door when you’re thinking about God. Awesome. Yeah, you can see he wasn’t heretical. He wasn’t a heretic. But he pushed, he pushed, he pushed, he pushed. He took things as far as he could, I think.
Michelle Butler 21:42
So you want to hear about some of what I found.
Anne Brannen 21:44
Tell me about your rabbit holes, bonita.
Michelle Butler 21:46
Here’s one I got. There is a new biography. That is a good place to start for somebody new to the story of Abelard and Heloise. It’s published by HarperCollins. So it’s one of these scholarly informed but written to be generally accessible, which is always a really nice kind of jumping point. It’s also worth reading because the author appears to…Abelard is rubbing off on him because he’s full of sass. So for example, “Eloise begins her reply to Abelard–as one must always do with writers, especially if one is married to them–by congratulating him on the quality of the work she has just read.”
Anne Brannen 22:35
This is so true. True. ‘This book was great, honey.’
Michelle Butler 22:40
Yeah. ‘Everything’s fine.’ Elsewhere, he says, “Peter Abelard could exhibit that disastrous inattention to the feelings of others that is often read as hostility, even cruelty, and reacted to with mistrust and aggression. He had a gift for making enemies.” Here’s another one that I quite liked: “He was himself–Abelard–demonstrably useless at any kind of political infighting-
Anne Brannen 23:09
Ha!
Michelle Butler 23:10
–and he ended as the loser in any interaction he ever had with authority because he believed in the power of logical argument.”
Anne Brannen 23:19
Yes, this is also true.
Michelle Butler 23:21
So that’s a book that I recommend. It’s not a scholar’s book. It’s a book written by somebody who has read scholars.
Anne Brannen 23:29
Okay.
Michelle Butler 23:31
There is so much fiction inspired by this story. I’m telling you right now, I didn’t go very far into it–
Anne Brannen 23:37
No, you can’t.
Michelle Butler 23:39
Because there’s is a whole ton.
Anne Brannen 23:43
I think we were saying a couple podcasts ago, you were saying that the most cultural responses you’d seen to anybody we’d been working with you’d seen with Elizabeth Bathory? I think maybe Heloise and Abelard…
Michelle Butler 23:57
Yeah, it’s true.
Anne Brannen 23:59
They I think they put her in the shade.
Michelle Butler 24:01
That’s likely to be true.
Anne Brannen 24:04
Oh, all of it. Oh, it’s all about the love affair. It’s not about the philosophy. It’s not about the theology. I don’t even know how much of it is about Global Positioning System, their little child.
Michelle Butler 24:20
I will include in the show notes a list. There’s a website that has a list of the historical fictions. There’s a film from 1988 with one of the worst covers ever created. And I did not watch this film. Okay, I’m just going to own up right now. But it is based…It’s called Stealing Heaven. It’s based on a 1976 novel of the same name. I did read a review of it and the review ends like this: “Despite all its flaws, I still like this film. Heloise emerges as a fairly strong willed woman. She has considerable agency, although she agrees to do what Abelard wants, she always does so as her choice and rather than being simply seduced, she pursues her desire forAbelard as much as he pursues his for her. And her desire for him is not simply physical but intellectual. There is little doubt that she is his equal intellectually. So the film seems to have captured important elements of the real Heloise’s personality and perhaps even exaggerated them slightly–Mead is a feminist author, author after all–Thompson’s performance is the heart of the film.” I think that remembering that this is a film from 1988 really made this evaluation of it stick with me. And now I’m more likely to go watch it because it sounds like a much better film than you would be expecting from 1988.
It takes Eloise seriously, it sounds like, on the terms that I understand her and so I would be willing to see it.
Yes.
Anne Brannen 25:53
They were both brilliant. There’s a piece in his ‘autobiography’–that was in quotes–where he talks about her. He says ‘she looked fine. She was okay.’ What he was attracted to was that brain.
Michelle Butler 26:10
Yeah, yeah. So let me finish this. This paragraph here. “Thompson’s performance is the heart of the film, and she brings real strength of personality to the role. And somewhat interestingly, the sex scenes offer De Lint, who’s playing Abelard’s body for erotic consideration almost as much as Heloise’s.” That’s amazing in 1988.
Anne Brannen 26:30
That is amazing.
Michelle Butler 26:31
“Is it a GREAT movie? No. But it is a far better medieval romance than many other films. And it’s fun to see a film that at least tries to make intelligence and education seem sexy. As a university professor, I appreciate that.” So yeah. I found that to be a very useful review, and I’m more likely to go watch it.
Anne Brannen 26:51
You’ll give us a link to that?
Michelle Butler 26:53
I will, yeah. One of the things that I found really fascinating about the fiction is how quickly it starts.
Anne Brannen 27:03
Oh, really?
Michelle Butler 27:04
Yeah. About 100 years after their deaths.
Anne Brannen 27:10
That’s not long.
Michelle Butler 27:11
John de Meun. The continuer–
Anne Brannen 27:14
Oh, of course! The Roman de la Rose.
Michelle Butler 27:17
Yes! They’re in the Romance of the Rose.
Anne Brannen 27:20
Oh, of course they are. Yeah.
Michelle Butler 27:22
He finds the eight letters. So he is why we have those letters, because he finds them and he translates them and he distributes them. And then he includes their story in the Romance of the Rose, thus inducting them into the pantheon of courtly love, and just turning them…it both preserves their story and complicates it, because now, they’re figures of fiction.
Anne Brannen 27:47
Right. Immediately. Yeah. And immediately, that’s what they are. They’re the lovers. You know?
Michelle Butler 27:53
Yes.
Anne Brannen 27:54
With this tragic piece of the story. Yeah.
Michelle Butler 27:58
It is an irresistibly compelling story so you can understand why it gets pulled in. It’s just one of those moments of reality that, you know, like Shakespeare says, if you see this played upon a stage, you would condemn it as an improbable fiction. It has to have happened in real life, because you wouldn’t be allowed to tell it as a fiction. So the piece, the big piece, that I did not know, probably because this book came out in 1999 and I was already done with my coursework by then and working on my dissertation, is this book by Constant Mews called the Lost Love Letters of Heloise and Abelard. So in 1976, Constance Mews read at Ewald Konsgen’s edition of a 15 century anthology of letter extractions, and…you would have an anthology of extracts from letters. There were there were lots of these in the Middle Ages, and they were used to teach the art of how to write letters.
Anne Brannen 29:13
Yeah, models. They were models.
Michelle Butler 29:16
Exactly. It is pulling together extracts of a really witty turn of phrase or a particularly nice introduction to the letter or a particularly nice sign off. Something appealed to the compiler of that anthology that he pulled pieces out of these letters. The original editor, Konsgen, had edited this actually as his dissertation, created a scholarly edition for it. It had just…it had been in the library at Clairvaux for hundreds of years and nobody had bothered to look at it. And his director said to him, ‘you know, why don’t you…there’s these Latin letters, why don’t you create an edition for your dissertation?’ Cool. And he suggested that…there’s extracts from 113 letters that he suggested, “you know, I think this might be Abelard and Heloise’s letters.”
Anne Brannen 30:13
His dissertation director said this?
Michelle Butler 30:15
No, no, is the dissertation director had suggested the project, but that was Konsgen, the editor. He had suggested in his edition, ‘I think this might be Abelard and Heloise.’ But that was not what he was doing in that project.
Anne Brannen 30:29
Right.
Michelle Butler 30:29
So he didn’t he didn’t mess with it. He just threw the suggestion out there.
Anne Brannen 30:34
Okay.
Michelle Butler 30:36
In 1976, Mews wasn’t about that either. He thought, ‘Oh, that’s interesting.’ And then he went off and did his dissertation on Abelard’s Theologica, and then did a couple of critical editions of the work of Abelard, and eventually he made his way back to the letters in 1993. And reconsidered the question of whether he thinks they are written by Abelard and Heloise. And this book, this 1999 book makes the case for that authorship.
Anne Brannen 31:05
Mkay.
Michelle Butler 31:07
Scholarship being what it is, of course, not everybody agrees with him. One of the points he makes is that not everybody agrees that the original eight letters were written by Abelard and Heloise either.
Anne Brannen 31:20
Well…but mostly, mostly people do.
Michelle Butler 31:22
He talks about people who want to argue that–particularly a couple generations of scholarship ago–wanted to argue that there’s no way a girl wrote the ones that are prescribed to her, it must be that Abelard wrote all of them, and he’s just in a fictitious conversation with himself. No woman could possibly be this educated at this time, or talk like this, you know. In some of those letters, she talks about how she sits in church and really was thinking back to some of the dirty stuff they got up to and was distracted. And apparently this scandalized, you know, DW Robertson and Peter Dronka and Georges Duby so much.
Anne Brannen 32:04
Hahaha! Thank you. Yes, of course, it did. Yeah.
Michelle Butler 32:07
That they just could not cope. And were like, no, it must be fiction. Abelard must just be talking to himself.
Anne Brannen 32:13
Yeah, cuz girls can’t be educated and they can’t think about sex. Okay.
Michelle Butler 32:17
And they certainly cannot be raunchy.
Anne Brannen 32:20
Okay, well, that’s stupid.
Michelle Butler 32:26
I’m not an Abelard scholar. But I find his argument, in which he lays out a whole bunch of parallels between these 113 letter extracts and the eight that we’re pretty sure belong to Abelard and Heloise…so he lays out parallels in content and in references and in style. And ultimately, his argument is that it is less brain twisty to accept that they’re by Abelard and Heloise than to go through the mental gymnastics you have to go to to reject them.
Anne Brannen 33:06
Yes. And to figure out that some other two people wrote them, because–
Michelle Butler 33:11
Yes
Anne Brannen 33:11
–there were so many people wandering through Europe with these kinds of brains and this kind of education and these particular characters. So what are these letters doing? What do they add to our story?
Michelle Butler 33:23
So what they add to the story is, they are more immediate to the love affair. The 8 letters that we have are written after the fact. They’re at least 15 years after the fact. So they are retrospective, whereas these letters are when it’s happening, contemporary to the affair, and they’re…so that’s what they’re bringing to it is the immediacy, and if you like, I picked a couple to share pieces of if you want.
Anne Brannen 34:05
I think that you should give these as models of letters so that we know how to write them. Since that’s really what they’re supposed to be doing. Anyway, I think that’s cool.
Michelle Butler 34:15
So which one would you like first, the one I picked from Heloise or the one from Abelard?
Anne Brannen 34:20
Let’s do Abelard and then Heloise because I find her always to be a kind of…
Michelle Butler 34:25
That’s nice because I like hers better.
Anne Brannen 34:27
Yeah. I think it always works well to read Heloise after you read Abelard because they’re…she’s…they’re both equally brilliant, but she’s a little saner. Let’s just put it that way.
Michelle Butler 34:39
You know, he always strikes me as being both in the moment and standing back and thinking about how to present the moment so he looks the way he wants to look.
Anne Brannen 34:50
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Michelle Butler 34:52
He’s very aware.
Anne Brannen 34:56
Some people have thought of him as as narcissistic. As a narcissist. I don’t know how they got to that. How could they think that? Because of course, you know, he also had some mental breakdowns occasionally, which I didn’t mention. And so it was like, was he bipolar? You know, what was going on? We don’t know. We don’t know. But anyway.
Michelle Butler 35:16
So this is actually a poem, which is nice too, because we do know that Abelard wrote songs. It was one of the ways that he, you know, courted, Heloise, writing songs and as far as we knew, none of them survived. But we we could think about this as a song. It’s certainly poetry. “Love urges me to enlist in its service, to respect its laws,/ And what I had not learnt, love forces me to learn./ No man but stone is he whom your beauty does not move./ I believe that I am moved, nor can I be stone./ Poets have tried hard to portray the body of Venus./ But did they ever produce anyone equal to you? Certainly, I think not./ For your beauty surpasses even the goddesses themselves./ Should I go on or be silent? By your grace, I will speak/ I will speak, for a traitor is devoid of words./ What are they like, what you conceal with clothing? My mind can scarcely rest./ I want to stroke them when they come to mind/ But fortune and shame and, that which I fear, sweetest,/ The murmuring of people, obstruct my desires. If I could see you, my dear, as often as I wished/ Three times a day, I would want it to be.”
Anne Brannen 36:41
Thank you. That is very nice.
Michelle Butler 36:43
Isn’t that lovely? I find that to be compellingly Abelard-like.
Anne Brannen 36:51
Yes. And there’s something in there, that business about, the thinking about, you know, other people. I’m really struck by how…you know how it is, you know, you fall in love, and you’re the only two people in the world and this is never actually true. Never has been actually true. But that’s what it feels like. And both of them are able to think their way into understanding the love affair is not sinful, because of intent. But they live within a context and what other people think is not what they think. And I’m really struck by that. Yeah, the murmuring. And was there murmuring? There sure as hell was.
Michelle Butler 37:43
And he’s much more–he’s much more concerned about it.
Anne Brannen 37:47
Yes, she did not effing care. She never did.
Michelle Butler 37:52
So now let me read to you the one that I picked from Heloise. “Ever since we first met and spoke to each other, only you have pleased me above all God’s creatures, and only you have I loved. Through loving you, I searched for you; searching for you, I found you; finding you, I desired you; desiring you, I chose you; choosing you, I placed you before everyone else in my heart, and picked you alone out of thousands in order to make a pledge with you. With that pledge fulfilled and having tasted the honey of your sweetness, I hoped to put an end to future cares…Birds love the shady parts of the woods, fish hide in streams of water, stags climb mountains, I love you with a steadfast and whole mind. Thus far you have remained with me, you have manfully fought the good fight with me, but you have not yet received the prize. If the faith falters of the one in whom I had placed–and still keep–all my hope and trust, and if the chain of his love should not firmly hold fast, I have no idea at all in whom else I can subsequently believe.” I picked that one because if that is…if this is theirs, you know, and she’s writing this in the middle of the love affair…it just…to me…is just heartbreaking that, you know, she has this trust and and she trusts him to stay true, right? And then we see her react to the “History of my Calamities” when she gets a hold of that letter. And we don’t know how she got a hold of his 20,000 word screed where he’s talking about this whole thing and he portrays her as ‘Oh, she’s safely off in the nunnery and so it’s a happy ending.’ And she writes back to him, and she’s like, that’s not how I remember it exactly.’ o
Anne Brannen 40:05
Yeah. No. And yeah, and ‘I wasn’t forced. And we are still married.’
Michelle Butler 40:12
‘And I’m here because I agreed. You asked me to. And I agreed.’ This is–
Anne Brannen 40:16
Yeah.
Michelle Butler 40:17
I am here because you asked me to come here. And so it’s just, it’s just a little heartbreaking to have this be up against that.
Anne Brannen 40:28
Well, but it’s so it’s so like both of them because Abelard rewrites things and she doesn’t. She stays there, like she continues to think this is…that is what she portrays. This is a love. It is a true love. Eventually she comes, “Okay. Yeah, we love each other like brother and sister blah, blah, blah, okay, fine.” But that’s, she’s not. That’s not what it is. And that’s not what it was. And she remains, she remains that constant. Abelard has so much more trouble. In some ways, we say oh, yeah, okay, fine, she’s in the convent. And he’s, you know, wandering around France, you know, getting into trouble. But she wasn’t just in the convent. She had…she was writing to other people. You know, Peter the Venerable. She had other daughter houses that she’d founded that she was…she was busy. She had stuff to do. She wasn’t, like, sitting around all quiet thinking in her little cell about God all day. She was–
Michelle Butler 41:32
No, man. No, not at all. And she’s so much better with people than Abelard is.
Anne Brannen 41:37
Yeah, she actually is.
Michelle Butler 41:39
When she…when she takes over as abbess of the Paraclete, that nunnery is so poor, the nuns are having to forage for their own food. By the time she dies, they’re well off. And it’s in large measure because of how good she is with people. She’s good at donor relations. She goes around to the neighboring noblemen and persuades them to donate land or donate, you know, a percentage of the harvest, or can we have the proceeds from this field for a year?, and she manages to persuade people to help support the convent. They’re good; they’re comfortable by the time she dies. She’s so much better at people than Abelard.
Anne Brannen 42:24
That story–andI believe it to be a story–that Abelard tells about how he seduced her and it was all him and even forced her, and he was terrible. And she, you know, it’s not her because she’s pure and pure. It’s not just that it takes her agency away when she is like, ‘No, I was in on this, this was…I chose this’. It also…there’s a way in which he portrays her as being much less powerful than she actually is. And that’s…I would be annoyed by that too. But it’s funny because her letters…she loves him, she still loves him. That’s her story. She’s sticking to it. But you can tell she gets annoyed. ‘Like, what the hell, guy? Stop your mouthin’ off.’
Michelle Butler 43:11
I don’t want to lean too hard on the connection with Hamilton, but he spills the tea, you know, in the “History of my Calamities” and it’s like the Reynolds Pamphlets–
Anne Brannen 43:23
Explain this to everybody.
Michelle Butler 43:24
–and Heloise reacts exactly the same way. So, so in Hamilton, as I’m sure everybody knows by this point, he has that affair with Mariah Reynolds. And then when her husband is attempting to blackmail him, and then his political enemies find out about it, he decides that the best way to deal with this is to just publish a book about it and tell the world what happened. And his wife is like, what is wrong with you? I cannot believe you aired our dirty laundry in front of everybody. And that’s kind of the tone Heloise takes when she writes back to him like, ‘Oh, I was interested to hear that you were writing to total strangers about what happened in our bed. Thanks for cc’ing me on that email.’ She’s so frustrated.
Anne Brannen 44:26
It’s so him. Because it’s the history of HIS calamities, isn’t it? It’s all about, ‘this happened to me, me the thing that happened to me when I lost my penis.’ Well, it IS a big deal. It totally is. But you know, she’s sort of, she’s involved in the story. It’s her too. So.
Michelle Butler 44:42
The 20,000 word, you know, letter. It’s also kind of morbidly hilarious in that it’s part of a genre. I didn’t know this until this go round of reading. It’s part of genre called the consolation genre where you write a letter to somebody else and you basically one up their trauma in an attempt to make them feel better.
Anne Brannen 45:02
Hahaha! I did not know about the genre. That’s a stupid genre. Let’s just say as Okay, now this is True Crime Medieval, speaking with one voice. I’m pretty sure Michelle agrees with me on this. That when you are talking to someone who is in grief and trauma, the proper subject of the conversation is not your own grief and trauma. Shut up. Okay, we’re done.
Michelle Butler 45:31
Yes, yes. He is writing, he’s writing to this friend. And of course, you know, we also sometimes argue, ‘oh, maybe this friend isn’t really real. Maybe this is just a, you know, his framing narrative in order to be able to write you know, about himself, right? The thing he wants to talk about.’
Anne Brannen 45:47
I don’t think he needs a framing narrative to talk right about himself. I really don’t. I think he just sort of can do it.
Michelle Butler 45:54
But basically, the genre is ‘Oh, you think you have it bad? Let me help you feel better by telling you how much my life sucks.’
Anne Brannen 46:02
‘I had my penis cut off. It was really awful.’ Like, I mean, really. It’s hard to trump that, quite frankly.
Michelle Butler 46:10
‘My wife’s uncle totally overreacted.’
Anne Brannen 46:16
Fulbert just was not good at this whole thing. The part where he like beats Heloise up because she won’t go along with him outing the marriage that he was supposed to keep, that he agreed to keep secret. You know, it’s like, Fulbert! And then…you know. ‘So Heloise is safe, so I’m gonna attack Abelard.’ He just really he had no…he had no moderation in perspective, Fulbert. He didn’t, no.
Michelle Butler 46:43
Well, it’s one of those moments of remembrance that you can put a little layer of civilization on the Normans but if you scratch just a little bit what you find under there are the Vikings.
Anne Brannen 46:59
Well, and I will just remind us that Abelard is not a Norman, he’s a Breton.
Michelle Butler 47:05
He is a Breton.
Anne Brannen 47:06
but he is a CELT. Yeah. Bretons stuck around. And at the time, you know, when people were trying to like explain his bad behavior, one of the ideas about why it is that Abelard just cannot get along with anybody, he does these stupid things, was that he was a Breton. I mean, France. ‘Well, you know, people from Brittany. That’s just like how they are. I mean, they’re even worse in Wales, gonna tell you. Don’t even mention Ireland and Scotland…’
Michelle Butler 47:39
But the uncle’s actions here really are a reminder that we’re not that far away from you know, blood feuds. And you deal with things by taking them into your own hands.
Anne Brannen 47:53
Yeah, Yeah. That’s an honor assault. That’s what it is, it’s all about honor. Fulbert’s honor. Because this is not about…let’s just be real clear about this…this is not about Heloise, who needs to be taken care of and should not be seduced by her teacher. No, this is about beating up…he beats up Heloise. This is all about, once again, about perception. What do people think of Fulbert? You know, that his niece and ward has been having this affair and gotten married and at this point already had a child named Global Positioning System and that’s what this is about. He’s upset about his…about his reputation and his household. The stain, the stain on it. That’s what he’s upset about. He’s not really upset about Heloise.
Michelle Butler 48:45
Yeah. Yeah. That’s why he’s so mad. He’s been made to look bad. And people are whispering behind his back. He’s upset about the exact same things that Abelard is upset about. People are whispering.
Anne Brannen 48:57
People are whispering. And he’s completely…it’s not even… there’s not even a hint of ‘Well, maybe he could have arguments with Abelard.’ He has. He’s not Abelard’s…not only is he not Abelard’s intellectual equal–who is? except Heloise–he’s just not in that realm at all. He’s in the physical realm. And it’s a physical attack that he can do. All the rest of Abelard’s fights are intellectual. This one was very, very physical and he lost it.
Michelle Butler 49:29
DW Robertson, who is not in favor, you know, of this whole thing, quotes a 19th century visitor to where supposedly Abelard and Heloise are buried–
Anne Brannen 49:42
Where we leave our little letters
Michelle Butler 49:46
–in…where the heck is this?
Anne Brannen 49:47
Yeah, it’s in that famous cemetery and it’s in Paris. Now. It was on the outskirts of Paris, but it’s kind of like in the middle now.
Michelle Butler 49:53
Yes. “Go when you will. You will find somebody snuffling over that tomb.” It’s not DW Robertson himself saying it. It’s some 19th century tourist talking about, you know, how people are always coming to sniffle at Abelard and Heloise’s tomb, but you can just hear the grumpy old man behind it like, ‘Yeah, I know. Right? Yeah.
Anne Brannen 50:19
I’m interested in…here’s what I’m interested in this quotation. I’m interested in the idea of, of weeping over Abelard and Heloise, as if it was a tragical love story. And you know, I think that one of the things is, is that when you’re thinking about like Abelard, Abelard and Eloise. The love story. It kind of stops after Heloise is in the convent, and Abelard has been castrated. They have all this…the rest of their lives isn’t really a part of it. But…for me, the love affair is part of this decades long story. And if it doesn’t cause me to want to weep. I mean, I’m very sorry that the crime happened. I do not think that…I do not think that Abelard should have been physically assaulted. And I don’t think that Heloise should have been beat up either. I think that everybody really should have just behaved, but I don’t find it tragic, do you?
Michelle Butler 51:12
Um…I find it tragic in that they were not able to figure out how to have both the intellectual life and their married life. It’s better for people to be able to live in both your body and your soul and your mind.
Anne Brannen 51:32
Fair enough.
Michelle Butler 51:33
So I feel like having…not being able to live a full, full, complete life with all of those things is sad. But this is an entirely…I mean, it’s certainly a story…or an instance of an entirely predictable problem. I mean, so much of this is halfway farcical. Right? There were so many places where different choices could have been made, and not have the bad things happen. But that’s not how people work. And it is utterly fascinating that the proponent of rationalism…
Anne Brannen 52:14
Is so irrational.
Michelle Butler 52:15
Oh, yeah. But that’s not how people work. And even he can’t kind of grapple with it, because he doesn’t really understand why he’s so irrational in this particular place.
Anne Brannen 52:26
Right. Right. Right. But yeah, but love does make fools of us all. See, here’s the thing, if indeed, if indeed Fulbert had not been like so such a wacko Norman kind of guy and had not, you know, caused them…had not caused all kinds of problems and whatnot, as a marriage, that was never going to actually be what I think of as marriage, or you think as a marriage. That was because Heloise was right. You cannot be who they are, and live the lives that…live the lives that they were really born to, those intellectual lives. And can you have an intellectual life and also have a married life? Yes, yes, you can. But I don’t think they could. I don’t think they could have. I don’t think they possibly could have. That was just doomed to failure. They could have a very, very…they have a very, very hot, passionate affair. And they could have a long, long time of writing letters to each other and having philosophical discussions. But they were not going to live together. And you know, figure out who was making the breakfast. They would not ever going to be doing. They could not possibly have lived that life.
Michelle Butler 53:37
Yes, I agree.
Anne Brannen 53:39
Heloise is especially right about what happens to women in a marriage. And–
Michelle Butler 53:44
Yes
Anne Brannen 53:44
–the intellectual life. Heloise was able to keep the intellectual life because she might have been…she continued to be married to Abba, Lord, but she wasn’t living with him. She was running several convents. That worked. And so I don’t think of this as a tragedy. I think that some tragical things happened in it, but that basically they both ended up being who they were. One of them was a kind of wandering around guy who thought of a bunch of stuff and wrote a bunch of stuff and got into trouble and tried to be a hermit, but didn’t manage that. And one of them was a woman who wrote, who thought, who ran a bunch of businesses, and that’s what they were.
Michelle Butler 54:24
But it is certainly telling that neither one of them ends up raising GPS.
Anne Brannen 54:29
No, Astrolabe is raised…They’re clearly both concerned with him, especially Heloise. Because Peter the Venerable is writing to her about what’s going on. So they’re taking care of his welfare, but they are not raising him. Denise raised him. No, marriage wasn’t going to work, not marriage as we know it.
Michelle Butler 54:48
They’re not householdy people
Anne Brannen 54:50
No, they’re sitting around having arguments people, that’s who they are. And they were not gonna be able to have arguments about where to go for dinner. They had to have arguments about the nature of God and you know, how to run a Benedictine household for women. They had to have that kind of argument.
Michelle Butler 55:05
So do you think that the letters, the letters that were found in 1471, the ones I just read from… do you buy his argument that…?
Anne Brannen 55:15
It seems like a pretty good argument to me. I don’t discredit…I don’t say that they’re not.
Michelle Butler 55:21
I think that he understands…from reading his book, I think he understands exactly how high of a bar it is.
Anne Brannen 55:30
It’s a really damn high bar.
Michelle Butler 55:32
And that you do not publish a book like this, if you wish to keep your academic reputation, if you cannot make a solid case, because this, this is how you fail yourself out of academia really fast.
Anne Brannen 55:44
Yeah. It does sound like their voices. To me, it does.
Michelle Butler 55:48
So that was delightful. I had not known that there were these pieces of 113 other letters. What Mews describes that is really fascinating is that early on, the monk who’s doing the compilation and is looking just for pieces of good rhetoric is mostly just pulling out the beginnings and the ends of letters. And then he seems to get involved in the story.
Anne Brannen 56:10
Yes!
Michelle Butler 56:11
Because larger and larger chunks–
Anne Brannen 56:14
That makes sense to me. So Abelard. Abelard and Heloise. So there…can we put a link in to the list of…there’s historical fiction, there’s movies, there’s plays, there’s music, there’s poetry, and this has been going on the Middle Ages.
Michelle Butler 56:34
There’s so much stuff.
Anne Brannen 56:36
This…this has been…this has been a story told over and over and over and over and over and you know, mostly the first part of it, not the part that goes on for decades where you write letters and have arguments. Which to me…yeah, that’s actually for me the part that matters the most. But I think that says a lot about me more than it does about society in general.
Michelle Butler 56:57
I am at least as interested in the history of scandalized male scholars who cannot wrap their heads around her, the way she talks.
Anne Brannen 57:05
Oh my god.
Michelle Butler 57:06
They’re having the vapors over her frank sexuality.
Anne Brannen 57:11
Because apparently, even though they’re a medievalist, they haven’t apparently read any medieval literature. What the hell is wrong with him? Breathing exercises, breathing and going to our happy place. Hmm. So we’ll put the links in for Abelard and Heloise and do put the links in for the scholars that had the vapors, would you, because that sounds like somebody’s gonna want to read those. I will, at least. Give me the links. So do you have more? Do you have more, my dear, on our beloved Abelard and our even more beloved Heloise?
Michelle Butler 57:44
I was glad to come to this. I continually find that things I thought I knew I do not. Let me phrase it differently. I do not know to the extent that I can learn them now on account of having learned a lot in graduate school about how to learn things. So things that I learned as an undergraduate or even early in a master’s program, I learn much more now. So it was very fascinating to come back to this. And it’s so infamous, you know, we had to talk about Abelard at some point.
Anne Brannen 58:16
Oh, yeah. Abelard. Yes. Okay. So, the crime was Abelard got assaulted. But really, you know, what we wanted to talk about was all the stuff all around it.
Michelle Butler 58:27
Oh yeah.
Anne Brannen 58:29
The crime was serious. It really happened. It was not good. We’re sorry, Abelard. But we like talking about you. We like thinking about you. So there you go.
Michelle Butler 58:39
He’s one of these people who is so smart, but also simultaneously so stupid.
Anne Brannen 58:44
How many of them have we met in our lives? Yes, many.
Michelle Butler 58:47
Oh, my God, we…it’s a trope. We all know these people.
Anne Brannen 58:51
Yeah, and I think myself, I know many of them well. I think it’s the intellectual arrogance that gets you in trouble. You know, it’s like, you know, you’re so smart. And you really are so smart. And you’re able to argue everybody else under the table. And it’s something you then start believing in and, and it isn’t necessarily intelligence about all things. Like certainly not intelligence about how to behave in your lodgings with your student. At any rate. So that was our discussion of the horrible crime that was done to Abelard in Paris, in 1117, around about then. The next time you hear from us, we will be discussing the Lords of Misrule. There’s a long history to this, like Europe 500 to 1600. We want to talk about the Lord of Misrule, because it will be a Christmassy sort of thing.
Michelle Butler 59:48
Oh yeah
Anne Brannen 59:49
So that’s our plan. This has been True Crime Medieval. where the crimes are just like they are today only with less technology. You can find us on Apple podcast and Spotify and Stitcher and all the places where the podcasts are hanging out. And you can also find us at True Crime Medieval dot com–truecrimemedieval is all one word–where you can find the little blurbs that I write. And the show notes that Michelle does and transcripts, which we’re working on. Laurie Dietrich did many for us. And Michelle is putting more together. And you can leave comments for us there and let us know if there are any crimes, medieval crimes that you think we should look at. We’ve got a whole year ahead of us planned out, so we’re not running out of medieval crimes anytime soon. It is after all 1000 years, and people behave behave very badly every year and it’s an entire continent and so there’s many things going on.
Michelle Butler 1:00:36
It appears to be a thing that just can go on forever, because basically everything we research, I find at least one other crime to add to our list. I just added like three yesterday.
Anne Brannen 1:01:00
So we could do this for…we could do this till we get tired of it, I suppose. Yes, leave a review for us, would you? We would love that and let people know about us if you like it. Yeah, yeah, that’s what we’re doing. So that’s us. Bye.
Michelle Butler 1:01:15
Bye!
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
53. St. Brice’s Day Massacre, England November 13, 1002
Anne Brannen 0:25
Hello and welcome to True Crime medieval 1000 years of people behaving badly. I’m Anne Brannen. I’m your host in Albuquerque.
Michelle Butler 0:35
And I’m Michelle Butler in Maryland, the most medieval state in America.
Anne Brannen 0:40
Today. Today, we are discussing the St. Bryce’s Day Massacre of the 13th of November 1002. So, you know, in the middle of things. And as usual, I’m going to explain how we get to it. In 1002, the King of England was Aethelred Unrede and–okay, little sidebar here. Sidebar. Aethelred Unrede means Aethelred the Uncounseled. It does not mean Aethelred the Unready. So I know that you hear Aethelred the Unready blah blah blah blah blah blah. Unrede does not mean ‘unready,’ it means ‘uncounseled.’ And so–and we only call him Aethelred the Unready because it sounds like unready in, you know, from Middle English on but it isn’t. And also if you say Aethelred the Unready you’re missing the wonderful pun in Old English because Aethelred actually means ‘the well counseled.’ And so what you’re saying is ‘the well counseled uncounseled.’ And so that’s hilarious and really just stop that unready business. Anyway, he ordered the Danes in England to be killed. And that has come down to us, you know, obviously a story about genocide, or at least attempted genocide and there was indeed some slaughter, but at question is exactly how much there was and what’s going on. So why did Aethelred order the Danes in England to be slaughtered? Background. The Vikings had started raiding England about 800. I believe we’ve covered this on a couple of different things. By 865 they had started settling in England. They had York, East Anglia, Essex. The territory that they controlled was called the Danelaw. And it took up all of what’s now England–not Wales, not Scotland, because they weren’t England. They weren’…they hadn’t been conquered at that point–took up all of England except for Northumbria and Mercia and Wessex. The Vikings continued to reign Wessex which is by the late 9th century is where the king of England was situated. Alfred the Great called himself the King of the Angles and Saxons and he was at Wessex. And later, Edward the Elder, who was his son, took the Eastern territory back, and then his son, Athelstan, took back Northumbria. So in 927, the English territory had an English king, the kings are going to go back and forth, and eventually the Normans are going to take over, but we’re gonna leave that at the moment and move on. Even so, what had been Viking territory, the Danelaw, had a substantial number of Danish settlers. They’d been there for several generations. The language had, their language had influenced the English language, the culture, the cultures were mixing. So the Danelaw was really was not like the rest of England. And the Danes in Wessex…there were Danes in Wessex…they were settlers, but mostly they were Viking mercenaries and raiding parties and what was left of the Great Heathen Army. I’m not kidding. That’s what the English called it, the Great Heathen Army.
Michelle Butler 3:55
I love that, by the way. I think…I just adore when, you know, stuff like this gets awesome names.
Anne Brannen 4:03
I know. I mean, really, you would think that we had made…you would think the Victorians had made that up. But no, it’s the Old English, the Great Heathen Army. That had invaded in 865. And they made a treaty with Alfred the Great and that’s when they gave up Wessex. Okay. And so that’s why Alfred was in Wessex. Okay. All right. But as I said, the raids continued. So, Aethelred the Uncounseled had inherited a lot of Danish- English tension. Now, um, ‘unready’ is not what he was, but he certainly was a sort of ineffectual king and he was thought of fairly early as one of those and so we don’t have to, I don’t think we have to try to salvage his reputation because it’s already screwed. And he did not handle the Danish-English tension really well. He’s only going to cause more problems. One of which is this. In 1002 Aethelred was told that the Danish men in England were going to kill him and his counselors and take the kingdom. The evidence for this is in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle. So, okay, fair enough. And so he ordered a massacre so as to not be killed and have his counselors killed and the kingdom taken. Okay. And it was set for the 13th of November that year, which is St. Bryce’s feast day. Sidebar sidebar. St. Bryce was a Frankish Bishop and he’d been sanctified on account of his humility when he was Bishop of Tours. And so there’s no drama there. And really, we wouldn’t even remember St. Bryce, except there was a massacre on his feast day. And that’s why we remember him. So there were a lot of deaths that day. At Oxford, St. Fridaswides Church, which is now Christchurch Cathedral, was burnt down with–a charter from 1004 states–the Danes of the town inside. They had sought sanctuary, and the townspeople burnt the church down on top of them. And so Aethelred gave them money to rebuild because they’d lost their ornaments and books in the process of massacring the Danes of Oxford. Gee, am I not feeling bad about the damn ornaments and books. Any rate. Because you understand these are settlers. They were just hanging out and doing their Scandinavian stuff, whatever it was, but um, the order… Here’s the deal. The order could not have been carried out across England because nobody was going to slaughter Danes in the Danelaw. Everybody was related to each other. They’d been there for five generations or whatnot. So no, this didn’t happen in the Danelaw. Oxford was a frontier town. And so there was a lot of raiding going back and forth in Oxford. And the targets of the decree apparently were raiders and mercenaries in the frontier settlements. So that’s the target.
And there’s a couple of archeological finds, mass graves, that seem to be connected to this. Although, it turns out, probably not. One is an Oxford. It’s a mass grave of young adult Scandinavian men, but the carbon dating shows that it’s before 1002. So that isn’t the St. Bryce’s massacre. That’s probably an earlier raiding party that lost. And there’s another in Dorset, which could have come, its carbon dated that it could come from 1002 of Scandinavians. But there’s no injuries. Everybody was beheaded. And so they might have been Scandinavian hostages, but they wouldn’t have been warriors because they didn’t have any injuries. If you have a party of warriors that have all been beheaded, some of them are going to have a bunch of marks on their bones from various places where they got hit. And they couldn’t have been killed by an angry mob, because I don’t think there’s any angry mob in history that has carefully beheaded a great deal of people. That’s not kind of how it works. They attack people from all sides and whack them with things. And obviously that didn’t happen. So. So the two archeological findings that we thought maybe were connected? Mmmm. Probably not. But we do know from the charter that there was a massacre at Oxford. Okay. 50 years later is when the stories start. William of Jumieges, in it’s called The Deeds of the Norman Dukes, says that women were killed by packs of dogs and children were crushed under stones. We have to remember that this William worked for William the Conqueror. And one of the lines of, one of the lines of argument here, one of the things that’s going on is that Svein Forkbeard, who invaded England and deposed Aethelred in 1013, did so because of the massacre. 10 years afterwards, I guess. And he was really so angry that he was like…and the Vikings then waited for 10 years before they had revenge. I don’t know. I’m thinking not. And that that was the reason for the establishment of the house of Denmark, which, you know, went back and forth with the house of Wessex and eventually would lead to William the Conqueror’s claim to the throne, blah, blah, blah. But that reasoning, that Svein invaded because of the massacre, just not only does it not make sense on account of the 10 years difference, but also it doesn’t show up in Scandinavian sources. And believe me, the Scandinavians would be talking about how he needed revenge if that was going on. But it’s not in there and it’s not in any English sources before William the Conqueror, so noooo. But it was a great story. Here’s the deal. It was a great story, and so versions of it show up in the histories then after that, and the best and most damning is from our favorite William of Malmesbury. He says that Aethelred ordered all the settlers to be killed, that this is the reason that Svein invaded. And he adds the detail that one of the Danes that got murdered was Gunhilde, who was the sister of Svein, which is why he was personally so upset about the massacre that he had to invade 10 years later. But none of the Scandinavian sources says he had a sister named Gunhilde. No, so no, we don’t believe that either. At any rate. So Aethelred did give the order and Danes were killed. Mostly, probably, fighting men were killed though at least in Oxford, noncombatant settlers were killed. So badness happened and Aethelred ordered it. And the massacre did not help Danish-English relations. Let’s have a little moment here where we consider history and think about all the times that making massacres has really helped with tensions. Okay, none. All right, let’s move on. Svein Forkbeard did invade in 1013. And Aethelred went into exile. He went into Normandy with his sons, Edward and Alfred, and Svein ruled England for five weeks. And then he died in 1014. And his his son Cnut inherited England by decree of people of the Danelaw. But Aethelred came back and drove Cnut out of England, but Aethelred died in 1016, and Cnut came back and became king of England. And Danish rule went on after that until 1042, when Aethelred’s son Edward took over. That was Edward the Confessor, and he would die in 1066. And Harold Godwinson would be king from the sixth of January to the 14th of October in 1066, at which point he would lose the Battle of Hastings to William the Conqueror. So a whole new set of Vikings, which was the Normans would take over all of England and add French to the Old English Danish language. And there you go. So that’s the massacre, there was a massacre, and there were civilians killed at Oxford inside the damn church. But one of them was not Svein’s sister, Gunhilde, who didn’t exist. She didn’t exist. She wasn’t there. And so she couldn’t have died at Oxford, because there wasn’t any her being there. And that’s your background. By me.
Michelle Butler 12:24
It is really interesting how quickly this becomes a moral lesson.
Anne Brannen 12:30
50 years.
Michelle Butler 12:31
Yeah, it’s very, very fast that the stories have to grow up around it, too. You know, I was a little bit puzzled at first, because really is this much worse than…? I mean, this is a bad time in history.
Anne Brannen 12:46
Yes. There’s other massacres, some of which we’ve discussed so far, and others of which we’ll discuss later. Why? Why is this one so big?
Michelle Butler 12:54
Yeah, right. Why are the Norman historians having vapors over this? You have all these other things going on. Well, because it allows them to tell a story that’s very much in their benefit.
Anne Brannen 13:03
Right.
Michelle Butler 13:04
We’re barely 10 years out from the Battle of Malden in 991, where the English army gets wiped out to a man, basically.
Anne Brannen 13:13
There’s a poem about it in Old English, and it’s one of my favorite Old English poems. Basically, what happens is that the Vikings are on one side of a bridge and the English are on the other side, and the Vikings can’t get across. And so there’s a whole bunch of insults back and forth. And they say, ‘Yeah, well, if you were, if you weren’t such cowards, you’d let us come across the bridge.’ And so the English say, ‘oh, yeah, well, you come across the bridge.’ and so the Vikings do and then they slaughter them. And then they take Malden and my, I think the women of Malden are back there going? ‘Noooo. Noooooooo! Damn it.’ That’s what I think. I love the Battle of Malden sidebar. Sorry.
Michelle Butler 13:51
No. Well, I mean, I mentioned it because it’s, you know, a thing that just happened, right? It’s, it’s not like Aethelred woke up one day and said, I feel like killing some Danes. There’d been a lot of tension and conflict throughout his entire reign. So I’m not condoning attempted genocide. That’s not what I’m saying. I am saying that, picking it up, and pretending like it was the worst thing that happened within a half century on either side is quite disingenuous.
Anne Brannen 14:25
Yes, because horrible things were happening both sides. This is true.
Michelle Butler 14:28
It’s not like the Danes were showing up and saying, ‘Hey, would you mind if we, like, settle in some of the land you’re not using?’
Anne Brannen 14:36
So you had rabbit holes, my dear? I do I believe you had your usual rabbit holes. I’m really looking forward to them.
Michelle Butler 14:42
The first thing I have for you is the new scholarly biography of Aethelred.
Anne Brannen 14:47
Yay!
Michelle Butler 14:48
So if you’re going to read about Aethelred a good place to start is the biography that came out in 2016. It’s called Aethelred the Unready and it’s by…
Anne Brannen 14:56
Oh nooo. No, no, no.
Michelle Butler 14:59
You’ve got to call it that, though, so people can find it because that’s the name they know. It’s by Levi Roach and it is part of Yale University Press’s English Monarch series. I’ve used three so far of the 26 of them, and they’re really quite good. So what Roach is doing is part of a scholarly trend that began in the 1970s as the millennial anniversary of Aethelred’s ascension approached. This is part of a reevaluation of Aethelred’s bad rap–
Anne Brannen 15:31
Wait, wait, wait, wait, I have a little. Just give me a second here to digest this. Recognize Aethelred and try to rehabilitate him? Okay. All right. Okay. We move on. Sorry.
Michelle Butler 15:46
The argument is not that he was a good king–
Anne Brannen 15:49
Because he wasn’t, is the deal.
Michelle Butler 15:51
The argument is that he has been portrayed as an order of magnitude worse king than the people before him and the people after him, which is probably not fair.
Anne Brannen 16:05
Like nobody worse than him till you get to King John, something like that.
Michelle Butler 16:08
Right. That’s the argument that gets made. And the rehabilitation of him is not so much trying to say ‘no, no, he’s a he’s a misunderstood genius.’ It’s not that, it’s, mmm, really, really, does he deserve to be on the list of the half dozen worst kings ever? Because that seems as if he’s getting blamed for a bunch of things that were part of a context he inherited and not so much a crisis he caused.
Anne Brannen 16:36
So basically, this is a rehabilitation in order to make him to be seen as mediocre rather than godawful.
Michelle Butler 16:50
Yes…I’m sure there are people who want to go further than that and try to really make out that he actually did. He did survive. There’s that. He did manage to hold on to the throne for a long time. However, this scholarly, more nuanced, reassessment is not really making its way into the mainstream. I don’t care what Roche says about that. He’s claiming it is. But the things that I found, do not suggest that that’s true. The more kind of cursory resources that you’ll find out just on the internet–and I include some of those in the show notes–just unambiguously say that he was a bad king.
Anne Brannen 17:25
Okay. Okay, so we’re, we’re all agreed he wasn’t a great king, and he wasn’t even really a sort of good one.
Michelle Butler 17:32
I would say that that’s true.
Anne Brannen 17:33
Yes. All right.
Michelle Butler 17:34
I did also look up the archeology. And I found most of the same kind of things you were finding. That, you know, we have these two mass graves that were found really recently. 2008 and 2009.
Anne Brannen 17:47
Well, part of this is all about how you’re not allowed to dig up things in England without checking to see if you’re finding stuff. And if you are, you’re supposed to tell people and you know, basically all of England is covering up some interesting stuff, stuff of one kind or another. And so, yeah, when you’re building things, you’re all the time finding stuff like, I don’t know, dead kings in parking lots. Stuff like that. Yeah.
Michelle Butler 18:14
The dig in 2008, at St. John’s College in Oxford, they were wanting to build a new dorm. And so they had to do that archaeological assessment. The mass grave was sort of a sidebar to their actual big finding, which was the Neolithic henge.
Anne Brannen 18:32
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Because it turns out that Oxford was much more of an important spiritual site and ritual site than we had thought. Yeah.
Michelle Butler 18:43
So that was pretty interesting. And then of course, later on the the ditch that surrounded the henge was being used as a as a landfill, basically. And that’s where they found the mass grave. Some people tried to argue that it might actually be St. Bryce victims, but the radiocarbon analysis is now sort of suggesting that’s probably not true. I did read a really interesting blog post that was arguing that even if these aren’t massacre victims, if it’s a raiding party that went sideways and got themselves killed, that’s also important information because that’s then part of the context. For what happens with the massacre.
Anne Brannen 19:34
Yeah. The Vikings continued to raid into Wessex. That was going on. Yeah.
Michelle Butler 19:40
I spent a lot of my research time getting sucked into reading about Emma of Normandy.
Anne Brannen 19:46
And I didn’t even mention her. So Emma of Normandy. How did she fit into this?
Michelle Butler 19:52
Emma of Normandy was Aethelred’s second wife. Um, he had had an earlier, obviously, an earlier wife and he had a bajillion children with the earlier wife. And she only, I think dies in, I believe she dies over Christmas in the year 1001, which is a very difficult thing to say. Yeah. And so he marries, Aethelred marries Emma of Normandy. He’s 20 years older than her. For reasons that are complicated. She is the daughter of the Norman Duke, the Duke of Normandy. And the idea I think, is that if they forge this marriage alliance, the Duke of Normandy will have to stop allowing the Viking, the Danish Viking, ships to hang out in his harbors because that’s part of what’s happening is that the the Danes are coming from Denmark and camping out over in Norman harbours and using that as their base from which to strike England. It’s much closer to come from Normandy than to come from Denmark and Aethelred of course doesn’t like that and wants to to use this marriage to twist Richard’s arm and have him stopped doing that. I don’t believe that happened. I think Richard just threw his sister to the wolves. So, Emma of Normandy marries Aethelred and has two, three, well, two sons and a daughter with him. I ended up being really fascinated with her because she’s the mother to two kings of England. And stepmother to two others.
Anne Brannen 21:51
Whoa, whoa.
Michelle Butler 21:54
And she is the great aunt of William the Conqueror. She is one tough cookie. She is married to Aethelred and then after his death, Cnut marries her.
Anne Brannen 22:15
Oh. Oh!
Michelle Butler 22:17
Yes! Right! And that of course made me think of Olga, right? That’s exactly what they the Devlians wanted to do to Olga. Olga managed to resist them. But Emma was not in a position to resist Cnut. Some sources think that this was the only way to save her children’s lives. The ones that she had with Aethelred.
Anne Brannen 22:41
Got it. Got it.
Michelle Butler 22:42
That Cnut would have had them killed otherwise because they’re rivals and indeed they turn out to be, anyway, rivals to the throne.
Anne Brannen 22:50
Yeah, because there’s a difference between whom the English in general want to be king and whom the Danish settlers in general want to be king. Yeah.
Michelle Butler 23:01
But she’s much more than the wife of these two kings and rivals. She ends up being a player in English politics all on her own. She has children with Cnut. She has children with Aethelred. Two of her sons, by the two different husbands, end up being king of England. Edward the Confessor with Aethelred and Harthacnut with Cnut.
Anne Brannen 23:32
Yes, okay. Yeah, yeah.
Michelle Butler 23:35
And it makes my eyeballs cross that those half brothers…you know, when you read about them without the context of their mom, it looks like there’s just, okay the Danish king and the English King, are they’re rivals for the throne, but they’re half brothers. The stepchildren, Edmund Ironside, who was Aethelred’s son with his previous wife, and Harold Harefoot, which is Cnut’s son with his other wife. They both end up being king of England too.
Anne Brannen 24:09
Is she alive during all this? How long does she…so she sees all four?
Michelle Butler 24:16
She lives to age 70. She she lives past…let me double check this for sure, but I believe she lives past the Norman Conquest of England.
Anne Brannen 24:28
What a life.
Michelle Butler 24:30
She’s so impressive. She dies…oh, I beg your pardon. She dies in 1052. So she doesn’t see the Norman Conquest. But she sees a lot.
Anne Brannen 24:44
So she dies when the English are in charge.
Michelle Butler 24:47
The one of the pieces I find her to be so interesting is that she’s actively structuring her own story. She commissioned during her lifetime a book about herself called the Encomium Emmae Reginae. In praise of Queen Emma.
Anne Brannen 25:10
Now that is a title, that is a good title for an autobiography, isn’t it? ‘In Praise of Me.’
Michelle Butler 25:18
It’s commissioned during her lifetime. It’s written during her lifetime. And we have…we thought we only had one eleventh century copy but a second one was found in 2008.
Anne Brannen 25:31
Where?
Michelle Butler 25:32
Hanging out in the Devon Record Office.
Anne Brannen 25:34
There is so much in the record offices across England. There’s so much in boxes that hasn’t been catalogued yet . There’s just …y’all , a ton.
Some archivist had a good day in the Devon Record Office in 2008.
I can only hope they were a graduate student and they get a dissertation out of it. That’d be great.
Michelle Butler 25:55
Eleanor Parker, this is this is a quote, says about the Encomium: “The Encomium reveals an active and forceful woman participating in the writing of history, reshaping the story of her own life in a way that suited her interests.” What’s pretty interesting about the Enconium is that it does not mention she was married to Aethelred.
Anne Brannen 26:15
Really?
Michelle Butler 26:16
It mentions Aethelred, and it mentions her sons and it does not mention that she was married to him. It just skates right past her first marriage. Because at that point, it’s more important for her to be trying to paper over the fact that she has kids with these two different kings.
Anne Brannen 26:38
So when she’s having it written the Danes are in…?
Michelle Butler 26:44
It’s written in 1042, about 10 years before her death.
Anne Brannen 26:51
And that’s when the switch is. 1042 is when the switch is from the Danes to the English.
Michelle Butler 26:58
Yep. And of course, we’ve looked before at the way in which the Normans really understood the power of writing history.
Anne Brannen 27:05
Oh boy, did they. Writing and rewriting. Writing and making up.
Michelle Butler 27:12
Annoyingly, in the later Middle Ages, this book gets renamed as the Gesta Cnutonis Regis. The Deeds of King Cnut. Rat bastards. It’s not his book.
Anne Brannen 27:24
Whoa. No, we shall not call it that. We spurn that with our feet.
Michelle Butler 27:30
It’s still sometimes referred to that way, but it’s not his book. She had it written. It’s her book.
Anne Brannen 27:36
No.
Michelle Butler 27:37
Dammit.
Anne Brannen 27:38
In praise of her.
Michelle Butler 27:41
In praise of Queen Emma.
Anne Brannen 27:42
So, in praise of her. What is it that she’s been doing that she gets praised for other than producing kings?
Michelle Butler 27:50
She is a behind the scenes wheeler dealer. She helps create alliances, she helps hold alliances together.
Anne Brannen 28:00
Oh, and of course she’s a wonderful position for that, isn’t she? There’s a kind of intersection of Norman and Danes and English all together.
Michelle Butler 28:10
She’s good at the talking. And her mother was Danish. So it’s likely that she spoke Danish. And she–you might say to yourself, gosh, wouldn’t it be cool to have some historical fiction about her and indeed, she is the subject of an ongoing historical fiction series that started…It’s Patricia Bracewell’s trilogy, it started with The Shadow on the Crown, which was published in 2013. And which I’ve read some of and the third book in the series, the Steel beneath the Silk was just released in 2021. I’m not very far into the first book, but I am I am listening to it. Because I can do that while I take care of the chickens and do other things.
Anne Brannen 28:56
And this is really about Emma, it’s not actually about Cnut?
Michelle Butler 28:59
Oh, no, it is it is for sure about Emma. It’s not first person, but it’s third person attached to Emma–
Anne Brannen 29:07
Got it.
Michelle Butler 29:07
–Following her around. You know, standard really medieval, you know…is it marital rape when it’s an arranged marriage? I mean, probably? But that’s a philosophical question, because how could it be anything else?
Anne Brannen 29:25
Yeah, yeah. And what does this matter to the Middle Ages?
Michelle Butler 29:28
No, not really.
Anne Brannen 29:30
They don’t care. It’s a concept that doesn’t exist. Yeah.
Michelle Butler 29:34
Content warning for modern readers. If that sort of thing is gonna…but you should expect it going into this.
Anne Brannen 29:44
Well, if you watched Game of Thrones, you can certainly take this on. I would think.
Michelle Butler 29:49
The more I read about the early Middle Ages, the more fascinating this whole thing is because we’re kind of…we’re kind of implicitly told that the pre-conquest politics are simpler.
Anne Brannen 30:04
Oh, no.
Michelle Butler 30:06
But they’re really not.
Anne Brannen 30:08
No.
Michelle Butler 30:09
But I think we’re implicitly taught that. That so much of it is just about might making right and and there isn’t a bunch of diplomacy Oh, this is not true. It’s just as complicated as anything that’s going on in the later Middle Ages or, or now really.
Anne Brannen 30:27
Uh-hm. It was certainly at the level of different cultures coming into being in a country and fighting on out but even like, even just in Scandinavia itself, it is so complex. And England itself, it’s so complex. In Normandy, it’s so complex. And then they go fight each other, it gets even more, I guess even more hard to follow through really.
Michelle Butler 30:52
I don’t know if there’s a movie or anything. I have to say I didn’t do that. I knew so few–
Anne Brannen 31:00
Is there a heavy metal album?
Michelle Butler 31:03
I don’t know if there’s a heavy metal album about Emma, but there could very easily be.
Anne Brannen 31:09
Yeah, we’re gonna have to make a whole collection of heavy metal albums. I wonder if there’s one about Joan of Arc. Heavy metal albums about the Middle Ages.
Michelle Butler 31:18
I didn’t know very many of the facts about Emma of Normandy. So I spent quite a lot of time just reading about her. But it’s quite exciting to find out that she commissioned her own praise book.
Anne Brannen 31:31
Yeah, I like that a lot. Who wrote it? Was it a monk? Was it a cleric? What was going on?
Michelle Butler 31:40
Let me pull it up. What do we know about this? Gonna have to go to the actual page about the Encomium. It has its own Wikipedia page. Isn’t that awesome?
Anne Brannen 32:01
Is it available? Can we can we buy it and read this thing?
Michelle Butler 32:06
Oh, yes. Yes, it’s been published. This is very exciting. Everything I read about it warns a person not to be credulous with it.
Anne Brannen 32:19
So we have to bring our salt cellar while we’re reading it.
Michelle Butler 32:23
Because it’s very much her telling–
Anne Brannen 32:27
Well–
Michelle Butler 32:28
The ‘her’ that she wants–
Anne Brannen 32:29
Well, any book that’s called ‘the praise of me’. You would want to bring your salt cellar to, quite obviously.
Michelle Butler 32:37
it was written in Latin by a monk of St Bertin’s. Or ‘Bertine,’ maybe in Normandy.
Anne Brannen 32:44
Oh.
Michelle Butler 32:46
So she had it written in Normandy.
Anne Brannen 32:48
‘Hmm. Yeah. So it’s actually a part of that whole Norman construction of ‘we write history.’ It’s kind of like when we say who, you know, ‘who writes the history? It’s the victors.’ And in the Normans’ case, it’s so literal.
Michelle Butler 33:05
They of course had to evacuate back to Normandy.
Anne Brannen 33:11
I don’t know about that. Tell me that.
Michelle Butler 33:13
You know when Svein invades, Aethelred and Emma and their children had to go to Normandy.They they left the country. And then Emma’s sons ended up staying there. Even after her marriage to Cnut, they ended up staying in Normandy. Because, you know, every time I’ve heard about Edward the Confessor, and that one of the things the English people didn’t like about him is that he really was not raised there, he was raised in France and you think to yourself, why on earth was somebody raised in France who ends up being king of English? Well, that’s why. They were, they were in exile. They were in exile. In fact, her son Alfred, when she had come back to England to work things out with Cnut and end up in that arrangement with him where she ends up marrying him, her son, Alfred, they attempt a rescue and he ends up being caught and blinded and dying of his injuries.
Anne Brannen 34:15
Horrible. Ah, so how, um…when Edward the Confessor then came back…came to England from exile in France, how old was he?
Michelle Butler 34:28
Ooh, that’s a good question. Edward the Confessor. Let’s check.
Anne Brannen 34:34
I hadn’t really, because I hadn’t realized that either.
Michelle Butler 34:40
I quite enjoyed reading about Emma. She is such a tough cookie. Finding out that she was, you know, singing her own praises made me so happy.
Anne Brannen 34:56
Yeah, Cnut had one of his brothers executed.
Michelle Butler 35:00
Eadwig. Yeah, that was the last of Aethelred’s sons from his first wife. And he had him executed. So yeah, she was between a rock and a hard place there and decided that it was going to be best to marry him.
Anne Brannen 35:20
Okay, so he was he was in Normandy, mostly in Normandy at least, in exile for about 25 years. And he…okay, so he went back to England in 1036. So the answer to how long he was gone was in between 1014 and 1036. Whatever that math is.
Michelle Butler 35:46
Yeah, so roughly 20 years he ends up spending…
Anne Brannen 35:49
Okay, and so 1036 and he was born in…oh, like, around, let’s say 1002. So he was about 35. So he’s about 35 when he went to England, and he had been in and out of England a couple of times when he was younger, but really, basically, yeah, he was raised in Normandy, and maybe he was some in Italy. And yeah, so no wonder William would think that he had such a strong claim to the throne when really, Edward…Edward is related to Harold Godwinson. And he’s related to William, and Harold Godwinson has been growing up in England and William has been growing up in Normandy and Edward the Confessor grew up in Normandy. I didn’t realize that. Yeah, thank you.
Michelle Butler 36:51
Yeah, this this was very interesting.
Anne Brannen 36:55
I was very glad to do this particular episode. Because it gave me a chance to kind of sift through and make sense of what I knew to be a difficult period of time, Danish English , like what exactly had happened when, was not clear to me. So I was glad to get to go do this. Yay. But I’m very sorry about the people that got burned in the church at Oxford and wherever else. Terrible things happen that we didn’t hear about. I guess that if there had been other churches whose ornaments and books had been messed up, we would have heard about them in a charter. So maybe there was only one. Maybe there was only one place where it got that out of hand and it was Oxford. Okay, that’d be great. But bad Oxford. It would be nice if there were not a whole lot of them. But we don’t know.
Michelle Butler 37:51
Yeah. I don’t know. This one is difficult because it becomes a political justification so quickly for the Normans. The Normans are very good at this kind of political storytelling. They’re the ones that discover King Arthur’s grave at Glastonbury and can say to the Welsh, ‘knock it off, he’s not coming back. He’s super dead. Look, we have his bones.’ They very much understand the value of a good political narrative. And this becomes a political narrative for them very, very quickly in justifying the Norman Conquest. So it’s difficult to push back past once something has become embedded, a version of events has become embedded so strongly, it’s hard to push past it and get back to what actually happened.
Anne Brannen 38:57
Right, right. Right. And this is not one of the cases where we can say honest to God, nothing happened here. Something did happen. But it wasn’t what the Normans said it was.
Michelle Butler 39:07
Oh, something definitely happened. I’m not persuaded it is as far outside the norm as what later historians want to claim for this time period. But it’s also not clear whether the victims of this massacre were former raiders who had recently settled down or people who had actually been there for a while, because we’re in Oxford and you really could kind of have either one there in that border, border space.
Anne Brannen 39:46
Yeah. It’s not the Danelaw.
Michelle Butler 39:49
People taking refuge in a church sort of implies to me that they’re civilians. But–
Anne Brannen 39:53
Right. Yes. Usually your military forces would be fighting back.
Michelle Butler 39:59
It would be nice if we did, in fact have some undeniable archaeological proof, some people who actually…finding some actual bodies of the victims and then we would we have much better idea. All we have now are ones that might be, maybe not be, we doubt it, we don’t know.
Anne Brannen 40:19
Well, maybe one of the other Oxford colleges will need to make a dorm. Yeah, we need more dorms or you know, whatever.
Michelle Butler 40:30
Find some bodies. Just dig up Oxford we find–
Anne Brannen 40:32
Parking lots. Parking lots seem to work pretty well too.
Michelle Butler 40:37
Can’t dig a hole in the ground in England without finding something.
Anne Brannen 40:40
Hitting something. Have you ever watched the Detectorists?
Michelle Butler 40:47
Oh, yeah, we watched the first season of the Detectorists. Yeah.
Anne Brannen 40:50
We love that. Yes, you can take your metal detector all over England and find all kinds of things. So. Do we have more on…? Do we have more on this today?
Michelle Butler 41:03
I do not. I very much enjoyed getting a chance to look at some of this. But that was pretty much what I had.
Anne Brannen 41:16
But I got my background. So that’s our discussion for you on St. Bryce’s Day Massacre. And now you know about it. And also who say Bryce was, but you will have forgotten this all pretty….St Bryce is gonna go right by your head, because you know, he was some nice guy. He was a saint, because he was nice. Oh, well. Whatever. And so much for that. The next time you hear from us, we are going back to Paris and we are going back to the universities because we want to discuss the assault on Abelard.
Michelle Butler 41:50
Ah! Oh, wow. Okay. Wow, it’s…this is this is like a big crime. Right? So I…oh, wow. Are we doling the big ones out to ourselves slowly so we don’t blow through all the big ones right away? Because you would think that after having done this for two years, we would have gotten around to Abelard before now.
Anne Brannen 42:10
No, no, no, we still have a bunch of big crimes coming up. There may be a point at which we run out of things and then we’ll just, like, stop doing the podcast, but we aren’t there yet. No, we get to do Abelard. Bad things were done to Abelard. So we’ll get to talk about the universities and we’ll get to talk about philosophy. And we’re also going to talk about Heloise because she was around at this time also, hence the assault. And we’d like to say that one of our beloved listeners gave us this suggestion. We had him on the schedule already. But we do want to thank you for telling us that really, really it’s a good crime to go to and we’re looking forward to it.
Michelle Butler 42:52
Somebody else who knows the importance of telling his own story.
Anne Brannen 42:55
Oh, Abelard. Good lord. Abelard. So um, that’s all for us today. We…this has been True Crime Medieval, where the crimes are just like they are today only with less technology. You can find us on Spotify and on Apple podcasts and on Stitcher and all the places where the podcasts hang out. We’d love it if you left a review. Thank you very much. And for some reason or other, we’ve been getting a bunch of downloads lately. You were telling me this, Michelle?
Michelle Butler 42:59
Yeah I don’t know what has happened but the number of likes on our Facebook page went up a lot. We’re over 200. And the last three episodes in a row have been more than 1000 downloads. So that’s pretty exciting. So whatever, whatever people are doing, keep doing it.
Anne Brannen 43:43
You know we’re not in this for the money. Hence the not having a Patreon or asking you to buy any merchandise or asking you to listen to ads. We’re doing this because we are just having an awful good time. But we’re glad if you like it too. That’s great. And thank you. So we’d love reviews. And we’d love if you left comments over at Truecrimemedieval.com, True Crime Medieval is all one word. And you can find there the little blurb that I write and the show notes that Michelle does and the transcripts. Laurie Dietrich has done a great deal of them and Michelle is doing some more. We’re working on those. And, uh. Bye!
Michelle Butler 44:21
Bye!
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
52. Special Episode: Elizabeth Bathory Commits Serial Murder, Castle of Csejte, Hungary 1590-1610
Anne Brannen 0:25
Hello and welcome to True Crime Medieval, 1000 years of people behaving badly. I’m Anne Brannen. I’m your host in Albuquerque.
Michelle Butler 0:35
And I’m Michelle Butler, in Maryland, the most medieval state in America.
Anne Brannen 0:40
But she really is in Maryland.
Michelle Butler 0:42
I definitely am back in Maryland, where it has suddenly become fall. Boom. It is 62 degrees out.
Anne Brannen 0:51
Yeah, it’s suddenly cold here. Got kinda…wasn’t cold when you were here, but it’s cold now.
Michelle Butler 0:58
I like fall weather. So this is okay with me. But it was quite a fast shift. And there was a lot of wind.
Anne Brannen 1:05
We had that too yesterday. We had wind, we had rain, we had colds coming in. And we are due to get the heaters back on but not for another week. And so we’re just trying to keep the parrot warm. That’s the deal.
Michelle Butler 1:21
Can’t really put a sweater on the parrot.
Anne Brannen 1:23
No, no.
Michelle Butler 1:25
You could put sweaters on the dogs, but not really the parrot.
Anne Brannen 1:29
Laura actually ordered a coat for the dog this morning. It’s the first time she’s ever owned a short haired dog. And she went out for a walk and it was really cold and the dog was shivering. And so now the dog is getting a coat. We wanted to let you know that we are aware that we missed some time in putting out one of our lovely discussions of the bad behavior of people in the Middle Ages. And the reason is that one of us got a little overwhelmed for a while because she was having eye surgery, cataract surgery. Happy to tell you that I can see really well now and so that’s great. Yay. But I was, you know, I was busy. Also the parrot. The parrot has some wound on his leg which won’t heal and so I started calling him The Fisher King but at any rate there was a whole bunch of medical stuff going on and back and forth there. That’s where we were.
Michelle Butler 2:24
But the eye surgery thing is definitely worth it. That was a good way to spend a week.
Anne Brannen 2:30
Two weeks. Two weeks. Yes, it was two weeks of it. Yeah, cuz eye surgery one week on one eye and then the other on the other. It’s marvelous, because I have 2020 vision and I never have had that in my life before. So it isn’t just the cataracts. I got fancy little lenses. It’s just like putting your glasses inside your eye. Okay, I don’t want to think about that anymore. Let’s move on. The last time that you heard from us, we were all excited because it was our anniversary, which indeed it was. Yes. And that it was our 50th episode, which alas, it wasn’t. It was actually our 51st. We’re having trouble counting because a bunch of stuff happened and we got out of order and we didn’t know where we were so. So we’re on 52 today. But there you go. And this is a special episode. It’s special because we’re moving on down into the early modern age and out of the Middle Ages. This is not a medieval badly behaved person. This is an early modern badly behaved person. And indeed she was a Calvinist. And as I have noted before, you cannot be a Calvinist and be medieval. You can’t. You can’t. It just doesn’t exist. But you will probably have heard of her. Lots of times we do things that are obscure. She’s not obscure. We’re talking about Elizabeth Bathory, or Báthori Erzsébet who murdered girls and women in Hungary from 1598 to 1610. Or not. But we’ll get to that later. She was born in 1560. And her father was a baron and she was related to the King of Poland and one of the princes of Transylvania and lots of other important noble people. She was very well educated. She knew a lot of languages. She was raised Calvinist and she was married at 15 in a very fancy wedding, which is how she acquired the castle of Csejte, which will become important later. That’s how she got that. And her husband got ill and died after a few years in 1604. Okay. It’s while he was ill, that apparently, she began to behave very, very badly. Before that she’d been helpful to local women. She’d been running the estate while her husband was at war. She was generally well behaved as far as we know, as far as we know. There’s some other rumors that she wasn’t but as far as we know, but by about 1603 Her dreadfulness was being talked about throughout Hungary. The investigation started in 1610 and was ordered by the king. The investigation started in March, and in December, she was arrested, along with four servants who were accused of being accomplices. And their trials were held in January of 1611. And the upshot of that is that the servants were…two were burned at the stake. One was beheaded. One was put in prison for all the rest of their life.
Michelle Butler 5:22
Jeez louise.
Anne Brannen 5:24
After having been tortured until they confessed, even though they were the main witnesses.
Michelle Butler 5:29
Ah. That seems fair.
Anne Brannen 5:30
Yeah. Keep that in mind. Elizabeth’s family worked hard to keep her property from being seized by the Crown. Not, I think, not for her, but you know, to keep it in the family. And so to keep the scandal down, she was placed under house arrest. She didn’t go to trial. She didn’t go to trial. There’s no verdict. She was just in house arrest and at Csejte castle until 1614, when she died in her sleep of natural causes.
Michelle Butler 5:56
Oh, that seems super convenient.
Anne Brannen 5:59
No, it really is. I really actually have no question about this. She was getting issues, she was getting ill. She told her…if I remember this right, she told her servants that she couldn’t… her hands were really cold. She couldn’t really feel them. And she went to bed and she didn’t wake up. We don’t know where she was buried, by the way. The locals didn’t want her buried in the local cemetery. Why was that? I don’t know. So her body was, you know, sent back to her birth place, and it’s there, we guess, someplace, but we don’t know where. Okay, well. So what was she accused of doing? We didn’t put one of those official…I didn’t say…we don’t usually do this at the beginning, where we say ‘some of this material may not be suitable for all people and you might wish to be really careful about what you hear.’ And we should have said this for Elizabeth Bathory. But so I’m saying it now. The official charge was murdering 80 girls. But the stories even at that time, were going beyond that. The investigator had 300 witnesses. And the rumors were that she tortured her servants. That she lured girls to the castle, or she kidnapped them, and that she burned them with irons. She put them out in the cold to freeze to death. She stuck pins under their fingernails. Covered them in honey so that bugs ate them and chewed their flesh while they were living. Sewed up their mouths, cut off their hands and noses, and sliced the skin between their fingers. And then when they were dead she ate them. She ate them when they were dead. And also that she had sex with the devil. And that she kept a book where she recorded the deaths which came to about 650. Okay, story. So those were the stories.That’s pretty much what you’ve heard, Michelle, of the official…of the stories that were being said at the time?
Michelle Butler 7:45
Yes, but I have source questions.
Anne Brannen 7:50
Yes, we’re gonna get to that. Okay. Keep that in mind, oh, listeners. So what the witnesses said, other than the dead servants, you know, who were being tortured, was that relatives had been sent to the castle and never come back and that they’ve seen various dead bodies with the marks of torture, which they found various places, like in the graveyards and whatnot. A couple of court officials said that they’d seen atrocities. The investigator, when he went to arrest Elizabeth who was eating dinner at the time– she wasn’t actually engaged in beheading people or torturing them–he said that he found a dead girl. Okay. All right, then. There’s problems with the evidence. The investigator said that he had caught her red-handed. I mean, literally with blood on her hands. But the arrest was made before any of the victims were discovered. Almost all of the witnesses were reporting what other people had said. It was all hearsay. Nobody had complained about anything. And this was…everybody was just like…they were spreading rumors. And this was at a time and place when apparently people were like really ready to complain about anything. And there were no official complaints at all. That’s problematic. And the book, this book where supposedly she wrote down the 650 victims, was never actually produced. Nobody’s ever seen it. One of the servants claimed to have seen it. It’s just not there.
Michelle Butler 9:17
One of tortured servants?
Anne Brannen 9:23
Yeah, we don’t know what they said. They apparently didn’t write this down. The legal record is not real full. No survivors or victims’ families were ever involved in the court procedures. They weren’t interrogated. They didn’t give evidence. From an outward legal point of view, there was no evidence. But the stories got worse over time. Promulgated especially by a history that was written by a Jesuit in 1729 who thought that being Protestant had made her insane. So there’s that, you know. She was said to have drunk her victim’s blood so as to keep her beauty and then later that she bathe in her victim’s blood. Same reason. So what was going on? Bathory’s husband had–and we get this out of private letters, it’s not part of the legal records–asked the man who was then the investigator to protect Bathory and her children. Supposedly the family was known for sadism and depravity. Although how this happened, I don’t know. Where are we getting that evidence? I don’t know. ‘They were all…they were horrible. They were terrible. They were like Vlad Tepes. They were bad.’ I guess. I don’t know. They said her husband taught her torture methods, and so maybe he at least knew what she was doing. Whatever. But the investigator and the Bathorys. This is the important part. We’re part of a Protestant ruling class in Upper Hungary, whilst Hungary was ruled by the Catholic Hapsburgs, and indeed, the 30 Years War, which will make Hungary Catholic, is on the horizon. So it would make sense that the family and the associated legates would want to keep the scandal down by having no eye witnesses’ testimony or putting Bathory herself on trial or even interrogating her, because they didn’t do either one of those. They just said, ‘Hello, you’re arrested, stay in your house.’ That was it. Her servants were executed pretty quickly with not much test…like as quickly as they could do it, as she is gotten out of the way. There’s not even a verdict. So my estimation of all this is that Bathory was probably at least violent toward her servants. And it looks like from private correspondence that’s only recently been looked at, that she was indeed torturing and killing girls, though certainly not 650 of them. That the whole affair went through without much legal evidence makes it look like she was framed. I don’t think she was. She was very badly behaved. But she wasn’t as badly behaved as later stories made her out to be. There’s no bathing in blood. There’s no vampirism. What exactly happened? We don’t know, because the legal stuff was simply kept scanty. It’s like there’s a whole lot of it, but there’s nothing in it, if you see what I mean. But at any rate, mistakes were made. She’s in the Guinness World Records for 650 victims, which didn’t exist, and much of what you read about her gives rumor as fact. I mean, if you go and Google, everything just says all this stuff without questioning it whatsoever. ‘She bathes her victims’ blood…’ No. She said to be the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula, but she wasn’t. I mean, by the way, Bram Stoker didn’t even know the real story of Dracula, Vlad Tepes. He just liked the name, you know. No, Elizabeth Bathory? No. The eyewitness accounts. Here’s what happened. The eyewitness accounts– and ‘eye witness’ I say in air quotes because it’s like ‘eyewitness’ to hearsay–the eyewitness accounts were published in 1817. This dovetailed with a vampire scare in Europe and took off. And from there things mushroom. Wikipedia has a separate page for Elizabeth Bathory in popular culture. It goes on and on. It’s longer than the page about Elizabeth Bathory. It’s got novels, poetry, comics, plays, television, films, radio, video games. And with that, I hand things over to Michelle. Michelle, what’d you find out when you were looking for Elizabeth Bathory? Our heroine?
Michelle Butler 13:29
It is entirely possible that of the topics we have covered so far, Elizabeth Bathory has the longest pop culture resume, which surprises me a lot.
Anne Brannen 13:43
Why?
Michelle Butler 13:43
Because we have covered Joan of Arc.
Anne Brannen 13:47
That’s true. That’s true.
Michelle Butler 13:48
We’ve covered Dracula.
Anne Brannen 13:51
True, true.
Michelle Butler 13:52
But I’m willing to stand by the assertion that Elizabeth Bathory has the longest pop culture CV.
Anne Brannen 14:03
I think so. I think this is actually true.
Michelle Butler 14:05
It is stunning. There are no fewer than eight bands–not songs–bands that take their name from her.
Anne Brannen 14:19
Like what do they call themselves? Like the Blood Countess?
Michelle Butler 14:23
No, no, they call themselves either Elizabeth or the Hungarian version of her name or Bathory. It’s just stunning. You can get lost on YouTube for a really long time with videos on her. Mostly they’re very sensational. Most assume…like we were talking about telling rumor as fact, most of them do that. Some are arguing that she got a bum rap, that she wasn’t actually guilty. There have been so many movies. There’s operas. There’s toys. Okay, I’m going to tell you right now, I’m a little bit concerned about the toys. Why?
Anne Brannen 15:07
What kind of toys? Like little Elizabeth Bathory dolls?
Michelle Butler 15:12
Uh huh. There’s more than one. I’m bothered by the toys. There’s been radio dramas and documentaries and close to a dozen films. I think a lot of what’s going on with her presence in pop culture is that it’s such an intriguing story with so little facts at the center that you can put there whatever you’d like to find there. So I I’m gonna own up that I did not have the stomach to watch these films–
Anne Brannen 15:46
Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Michelle Butler 15:48
Okay. But what I watched was trailers, but even the trailers were very interesting because they were positing things like, the husband was into BDSM and got her into BDSM. And then when he wasn’t well anymore, she started bringing in unwilling participants.
Anne Brannen 16:10
Well before it had been consensual.
Michelle Butler 16:14
Okay, but, all right–
Anne Brannen 16:16
Yeah, we got no evidence for that. Nice story.
Michelle Butler 16:19
We’re just basically making things up and putting them on a historical figure at that point. Okay, fine. There’s a different movie that is positing that she gets into all of this sketchy stuff to try to keep her youth because she has taken a lover who is much younger than herself.
Anne Brannen 16:40
Ah yes, there’s a whole series of… I didn’t say anything about that. There’s a whole series of the rumors concerning her sexuality and sexual behavior, you know, all of it transgressive, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, evidence? No.
Michelle Butler 16:56
It’s a platform to discuss. We see this so much with the Middle Ages. It becomes a platform to discuss things that are too transgressive to talk about in the present time. It’s a safer place to have those conversations. We saw this as early as the 16th century. Shakespeare is using the Middle Ages as a place to talk about topics he’s not allowed to talk about in the 1590s. But he’s allowed to talk about them in the Wars of the Roses.
Anne Brannen 17:28
The alien land, the people who are not us, because they are so far away. We have so evolved that we no longer bathe in blood and stick pins under people’s fingers and throw ’em in the snow.
Michelle Butler 17:40
Not everybody was fooled. Elizabeth, the first, you know…’Know you not that I am Richard the second?’ She wasn’t ecstatic about the Earl of Essex having ‘Richard the Second’ performed just before his ill fated rebellion. But but this is a move we see fairly often, that the Middle Ages becomes this country where we can discuss the things that we can’t discuss now, or we can indulge appetites that we know to be out of the mainstream, but because it’s back there. So even in the trailers, there was a lot of gratuitous nudity. Okay, fine. So, if somebody else wants to go look those up and watch them, knock yourself out. Go check out the Wikipedia page. What I ended up looking at that looking at was was the tourism.
Anne Brannen 18:33
Ah! Do tell.
Michelle Butler 18:38
Slovakia, not being stupid, has turned this…has just made the absolute most out of her castle as a tourist destination. You can sign up to go on Elizabeth Bathory tours. There are various companies that will take you on tours. There’s an article on CNN in their travel section about the blood Countess of Slovakia and this being used as a tourist thing and this is pretty recent. I was actually surprised by that part. The castle became ruined in the 18th century and was abandoned. It was only in 2014 that Slovakia opened it back up and is hitting really hard to tourism. And it’s so kitschy. It’s delightful. They have wineries that sell deep red wine called Bathory.
Anne Brannen 19:39
Oh, no, no, no, no.
Michelle Butler 19:44
Actually, it’s delightful. I don’t know that I would do it, but I could see where somebody might really enjoy it. They have all of these Elizabeth Bathory themed drinks and food items and magnets, you know, all the lovely souvenir stuff. And really, I have no problem with this. If you’re Slovakia, you got to do what you can. It’s not like Ireland, where there’s more people in the United States with Irish descent than there are people in Ireland. You gotta get out there and hustle. I don’t begrudge them their side hustle here. You do what you got to do.
Anne Brannen 20:26
Now, the castle. I’ve seen pictures of the castle and really basically what you have are like a few sort of walls, right? So you can’t…they didn’t refurbish things where you could stay at the castle?
Michelle Butler 20:38
No, no, not at all. It has been left a ruin.
Anne Brannen 20:41
So you have to stay in the nearby town?
Michelle Butler 20:44
Yes, you do. And the castle is owned by the town so everybody is all in on the tourism.
Anne Brannen 20:51
Oh my god. Of course. Of course. Of course. So okay, so I have another question. In case you figured this out. The tours. Where do the tours go? I mean, to the castle and back, or is there some other place? Walking around the castle?
Michelle Butler 21:07
There are other places. Let me pull that back up.
Anne Brannen 21:09
Because I can see if there’d be someplace in the castle. ‘Now here’s where we think the dungeon was. And here’s where we think the living room was and here’s where we think the bathtub was.’
Michelle Butler 21:20
So there is a tour from Slovakia Touring.com called the Elizabeth Bathory Bloody Legend tour.
Anne Brannen 21:29
Oh, that sounds good. Yes.
Michelle Butler 21:31
So you go to the castle and see the castle and the scenic views of the castle. You go through the ruin of the castle, you go to the town catacombs–
Anne Brannen 21:43
Where she isn’t.
Michelle Butler 21:48
You go to a wine tasting with the kitchi-ly named wines. And then you go to a museum that has an Elizabeth Bathory display in it.
Anne Brannen 21:59
Ah! What’s in the Elizabeth Bathory display? Do you know? ‘Here’s a letter she wrote asking for more needles.’
Michelle Butler 22:08
So what they’re claiming they have in the museum is some of her clothing, paintings of her–mostly they have copies of the paintings, they’re saying, because the original ones were stolen.
Anne Brannen 22:20
By whom?
Michelle Butler 22:21
It does not say
Anne Brannen 22:24
Stolen? From where and by whom?
Michelle Butler 22:28
And then they have historical weapons and jewelry. They actually are doing some archaeological work at the castle so I expect there are some things that were found there.
Anne Brannen 22:39
Great. Maybe bones. That would be useful.
Michelle Butler 22:41
But we’re making so much out of so little here and I’m here for it. You do it, Slovakia.
Anne Brannen 22:47
Yeah, I mean, you might as well. There was so little there to begin with. There was some bad things that happened but what’s been made out of it is so much bigger. You might as well. ‘Here’s some bad things that happened and you, you people that know the legend, come see the place where Elizabeth Bathory was doing some stuff in between eating dinner and breakfast.’
Michelle Butler 23:11
It doesn’t feel substantively different than having people go to Vlad Tepes’ castle and claiming it’s a Dracula…Or worse. Ely. The abbey. ‘Oh, well, this is where Bram Stoker got the idea. So we’re part of the Dracula tour.’ Oh, come on. And it actually is a really interesting castle. It’s quite large. It’s been reconstructed a few times. The archaeology shows that it’s been inhabited since well before the Middle Ages. They can trace habitation back to Neolithic times. So it in itself is a pretty interesting site.
Anne Brannen 23:49
This was her husband’s. This came into the family. She’s from elsewhere.
Michelle Butler 23:54
Yes, exactly.
Anne Brannen 23:55
And he was of a lower social class. I mean, he was nobility still. But he was lower than she was, so she didn’t change her name. He took hers.
Michelle Butler 24:06
Yes, I saw that. That was pretty interesting. So many movies, so many movies that I did not watch.
Anne Brannen 24:14
You know what Wikipedia does not include in the list under television is Penny Dreadful. And one of the characters in Penny Dreadful is really clearly an Elizabeth Bathory clone. So I’m just adding that. I don’t mess with Wikipedia. I don’t say things to Wikipedia. I don’t edit Wikipedia. But if I was going to edit Wikipedia, I would add Penny Dreadful to the Elizabeth Bathory in popular cultural page under television.
Michelle Butler 24:41
There’s so much pop culture that is springboarding from it. It’s clearly doing something important for people. But I think that has to do more with imagination and what we’re making from it than what is actually there to work from. This is one of those places where the absence in the middle is very fruitful for people rather than the story itself. It may actually be one of the reasons that this is a much more popular story in pop culture than Gilles de Rais. Because we know so much more about what actually happened with Gilles de Rais.
Anne Brannen 25:18
Although I find what actually happened with Gilles de Rais much more interesting than what, you know, is supposed to have happened with Elizabeth Bathory. But that’s me.
Michelle Butler 25:27
But they’re such similar stories. Now one thing that Elizabeth Bathory story has is the potential for arguing–and I did see this in some of the trailers–that none of this happened, that she was set up by these men who wanted to take her stuff.
Anne Brannen 25:43
Yes, yes. And I actually myself was very swayed by that. Because that was what made sense to me. Until I saw that…at the point at which historians were arguing that, they had not seen the private letters, which are not part of the legal, they’re not part of the legal collection. They’re held in the archives. The private letters between her husband, you know, to the Inquisitor, the Inquisitor and his wife, there’s details in there. Something was indeed happening. And so I can no longer believe–much to my sorrow–I can no longer believe that this was entirely fabricated. It wasn’t entirely fabricated. There was a core of something and then it got made much bigger than it was.
Michelle Butler 26:29
It’s probably relevant that we have at this time, in the 16th century, the growth of the concern about witchcraft that is going to blossom into the full blown witch trials, both in the colonies and in England. I think what we have here is a prequel, a prequel of what we’re going to see with the witchcraft hysteria.
Anne Brannen 26:55
Yeah. Yeah.
Michelle Butler 26:57
Not that she’s entirely innocent–I’m willing to believe that there is a problem here–but the ways in which it becomes overblown and exaggerated and made off into…now we’re bathing in blood to maintain your youth and now we’re having sex with devils. Those are the kind of accusations that get pulled in to the witchcraft trials. Just you know, hear my air quotes, ‘just’ murdering some people because you’re a sadist is bad enough. But that’s entirely different than ‘we’re dabbling in the dark arts.’ Everybody was losing their minds in the 16th and 17th centuries over witchcraft accusations.
Anne Brannen 27:40
Yeah. Which kind of dovetails into the whole problem of the Protestant-Catholic problem, which is going on. It’s a really volatile time, in terms of religious belief and religious power and what’s going on and who thinks what and where the problem is.
Michelle Butler 28:00
Bram Stoker does a really good job of having that be part of his novel, actually. I was impressed with that. Part of the interest is this Protestant Englishman is going to this Catholic country and he is both attracted and repelled.
Anne Brannen 28:16
Right. And there’s this lovely twist because she’s Protestant. And she’s not Catholic. So by the time Stoker is talking about the area, it’s become Catholic again. It’s re-catholicized after the 30 Years War. She’s Calvinist.
Michelle Butler 28:31
I actually did not know too much about this. Or if I had–I guess I always have to include the caveat-if I had read about it, I’d forgotten. It’s likely that I did read about it because I read a lot of superstition, vampire stuff as a kid, but I did not remember Elizabeth Bathory. Which means I probably hadn’t run into it in college.
Anne Brannen 28:56
Well, and she’s not medieval. There really would have been no reason for you to run into her. I forget why I ran into her. But as we noted last time, the Brannens tend to know more about badnesses than other people. We don’t know why. That’s just our… it’s our forte. We know a lot about bad behavior. We ourselves are so good. Just putting that out. Goodness happening over here in Brannen land. Okay. So here’s what’s interesting to me also…what you’re saying is that..so you’ve made the claim that she’s way more important in terms of popular popular culture than even Vlad Tepes. And so you’re comparing her to Dracula and saying…well, there’s a difference between what comes down to us that’s associated with Dracula, and what comes down to us that has to do with Dracula, that being Bram Stoker’s–
Michelle Butler 29:51
But I think the reason for that is that Elizabeth Bathory does not have a definitive novel. Bram Stoker creates Dracula.
Anne Brannen 30:00
Right. And it isn’t Vlad Tepes, who is very badly behaved–witness all the slaughtering of Saxons–but wasn’t actually a vampire. And nobody thought he was. There wasn’t any vampirism going on. Yeah.
Michelle Butler 30:16
She’s essentially her own strand of legend, like Robin Hood, or King Arthur. This is a strand of legend that emerges at the interface–
Anne Brannen 30:28
She actually was there. We want to say this caveat. No King Arthur, no Robin Hood, but there really was an Elizabeth Bathory.
Michelle Butler 30:34
Right. But you probably have some history way, way, way, way, way back in the mist of you know, the beginning of Robin Hood or the beginning of King Arthur, even though we don’t know what that is anymore.
Anne Brannen 30:47
I’ll grant you the Robin Hood. I will not grant you the King Arthur. I will not move on King Arthur. He was not there. So I’m saying. But I’ll give you Robin Hood. Maybe there was somebody someplace something.
Michelle Butler 30:58
Okay. We can talk about King Arthur later. It may be a semantic difference, because I think that by the time you get to the core of King Arthur, the historical person has so nothing to do with what develops there’s then a really legitimate question about whether he…whether we’re just naming something because we need an origin story.
Anne Brannen 31:19
Fair enough. Yeah.
Michelle Butler 31:21
Rather than it being somebody who an actual legend grew from. But I think that’s what has happened here is that a legend has grown from this moment in history.
Anne Brannen 31:32
So that in some way, I think, if I’ve got this right, what you’re saying is that we needed–as a culture–we needed the story of a woman who bathed in blood.
Michelle Butler 31:41
We must have, because it keeps getting retold.
Anne Brannen 31:44
So why…?
Michelle Butler 31:46
It’s doing some kind of job. And it’s been doing some kind of job for hundreds of years now. And what’s interesting is that for some people, this is a misogynistic story about the evils of vanity and what women will do to maintain their youth and it becomes a metaphor for plastic surgery and Botox. For other people, it’s a story of empowerment and the dangers of being a really powerful woman because you attract all these enemies who come to take you out and slander your name. So this is what I mean about how you could put any…you can make the story into anything you need it to be, which allows a lot of retellings.
Anne Brannen 32:29
A lot of this comes from the fact that legally so little real evidence was there in the records, there’s just–
Michelle Butler 32:40
Yeah, I have to say if their plan was to keep it quiet, that bombed. No, it was not kept quiet.
Anne Brannen 32:47
Well, not over time. I think in the short run, it actually did what they needed it to do. The land stayed in the family, you know. But the thing was, the story kept growing so it went beyond. It went beyond this little piece of what would become Slovakia. It went beyond into at least the European globe.
But the family, their names were not dragged into it. It’s just her.
It’s just her. It’s just her. So yeah, so that worked.
Michelle Butler 33:16
Yeah. I was not in the right headspace to be looking at really grody stuff this week. So I looked at the castle.
Anne Brannen 33:24
Anybody who wants some Halloween movies can go on over to the Wikipedia page and look at the film section to see what they can find on Netflix or Amazon Prime or whatnot. Or perhaps just go to YouTube. Can you actually find these things on YouTube? Not just the trailer.
Michelle Butler 33:41
You know, a lot of the movies are new. 2008ish. So not really. They’re not really free yet. However, there’s lots of gratuitous boobs floating in tubs of water. I mean, the ones attached to Elizabeth because it appears to be a requirement that she’s sitting in a tub of water naked and you have to see her. Why she can’t slide a little lower and be under the water, I guess, is because…
Anne Brannen 34:09
So she’s in a tub…she’s continually in tubs of water, not tubs of blood?
Michelle Butler 34:14
No, no. She’s in tubs where the water has been stained to look like blood.
Anne Brannen 34:19
Oh, I see. Okay, so theoretically, this is pictures of her supposedly bathing in blood. It’s just that we know that–unless something has gone really, really wrong with props, as we know from some things that happened this week they could–it’s not really blood. It’s water. Okay.
Michelle Butler 34:33
It just felt a little excessive in a couple of three minute trailers. But it’s her iconography. So they have to have it.
Anne Brannen 34:41
Yeah. And so that’s the thing. This ties into ideas about women. It ties into sexuality. It ties into violence. It ties into sadomasochism. It ties into the occult…it’s like, what else?
Michelle Butler 34:58
Yeah, it’s catnip, really, for everybody who wants to talk about all the transgressive things that we’re not supposed to admit to now.
Anne Brannen 35:07
And so much more, as you say, than Gilles de Rais and I’m not…I don’t know. Gilles de Rais…there was actually evidence at the trial of Gilles de Rais. So there’s that. We refer you to our earlier podcast about Gilles de Rais–
Michelle Butler 35:21
The cursed podcast.
Anne Brannen 35:22
Serial killer and a buddy of Joan of Arc. Yeah, it was really early on that we did Gilles de Rais.
Michelle Butler 35:27
Yeah. That was when we learned that you can’t do gory episodes for Christmas.
Anne Brannen 35:35
Yes.
Michelle Butler 35:37
Terrible things happen.
Anne Brannen 35:38
Well, was it for… I don’t know whether it was… Okay. So here’s the story. In case you missed all this. We recorded the Gilles de Rais episode, which was all about horrible serial murders, yet again, of children. And…things happened. It fell off. Like the recording completely disappeared. And then we had to have somebody find it. Then Michelle completely lost the show notes. And she had to re-find them. And then Laurie completely lost the transcript. And she had to re-find it. And what with one thing and another, we decided that was not good to talk about Gilles de Rais much at all. But I don’t know that it had to do with Christmas, or whether it had to do with the fact that Gilles de Rais was probably doing some things with the devil, although we’re not sure exactly what. So. But one thing or another. So we’ll see. We’re doing this for Halloween. So it’s a little safer. We’ll see whether or not we lose the Elizabeth Bathory recording and have trouble with the show notes and the transcription, or whether it just kind of goes through because it’s Halloween, and she wasn’t actually messing with the devil. And it wasn’t Christmas. So we’ll see.
Michelle Butler 36:51
I think it’s important to be seasonally appropriate.
Anne Brannen 36:56
Yeah, it was not good to be doing serial murders for Christmas. And things went much better when we did Thomas Beckett. That’s a much better Christmas story. If you’re going to have dead people for Christmas, you really got to think carefully about what you’re doing. All righty. Michelle, do you have anything else that you want to say about Elizabeth Bathory, who was either maligned or not, or maybe some maligned but not much.
Michelle Butler 37:22
I am glad. Glad? Maybe glad is the wrong word. It feels…I don’t even know what the right way to say this is. I am glad to know that you think she probably is at least partially guilty because it would be quite a tragedy and a travesty if she was wholly and entirely framed.
Anne Brannen 37:44
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that would be…Although that would be certainly, you know, a story. That would be…that would certainly be a story. But I don’t think this is the story of horrible, horrible lies being told about a woman who was completely innocent. I think this is a story about horrible lies being told about a woman who was badly behaved.
Michelle Butler 38:07
So exaggerations, rather than whole cloth.
Anne Brannen 38:10
Yes, exaggerations, rather than whole cloth.
Michelle Butler 38:14
That feels, while still morally dubious, less morally dubious.
Anne Brannen 38:20
Um-hmm.
Michelle Butler 38:22
I think Joanna of Naples was entirely unfairly accused of her husband’s murder because she strikes me as being way too competent to have killed her husband in that bungling fashion.
Anne Brannen 38:34
The time that her first husband got thrown out of a window with a cord around his genitals. That time?
Michelle Butler 38:39
Oh, yes, that time. I thought a lot about her as I was reading about Elizabeth Bathory, because I kind of felt like Joanna of Naples could have been slandered in this way, but managed to not get slandered in this way, even though there was efforts made to slander her. And that the difference here might be that Joanna was in fact innocent of an awful lot of what she was accused of, but Elizabeth was guilty of enough that they could make it stick.
Anne Brannen 39:10
Yes. Indeed. Yeah, I think so. Looks like. It looks like she actually was.
Michelle Butler 39:17
But she has gained eternal fame as a dreadful, dreadful figure of legend. Holy smokes.
Anne Brannen 39:25
Whether or not she bathed in blood, she is now eternally youthful. In the legend. Yeah, that’s not good. So that is our discussion of Elizabeth Bathory. Our special episode. Elizabeth Bathory, who really was badly behaved, although not as badly behaved as you’ve been told. So that’s what it was. This has been True Crime Medieval where the crimes are just like they are today only with less technology. We are on Apple podcasts, Spotify podcast, Stitcher podcast, and all the places where the podcasts hang out. You can find us at Truecrimemedieval.com. Truecrimemedieval is all one word. And there you can find the show notes, which Michelle does and the transcripts, which are done by Michelle and Laurie Dietrich, and various blurbs and things that I write. And you can leave comments there, which we would love. And we’d also love it if you left reviews in the various places you find this. That’d be great. And um, yeah, that’s it. Oh, I know. And if you know of any crimes in the Middle Ages that you think that we should discuss, please let us know. And we’ll take it unto under under advisement. Someone recently asked for Abelard, and he’s on our list. We’ll be doing Abelard at some point.
Michelle Butler 40:54
And the source of that movie just came out, The Last Duel. We’ll get to it. We’ll swing back around to it when it comes out in paperback. I don’t know. Yeah. I’m just being funny because I know it’s already out. But I don’t really want to mess up the schedule to hit it now.
Anne Brannen 41:13
No, we have a little schedule. Although I already messed it up. I forget for what reasons but there you go. So that’s all for us today. We’ll talk to you later. Bye.
Michelle Butler 41:22
Bye.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
51. Pope Stephen VI is Murdered, Rome, Italy 897
Anne Brannen 0:22
Hello, and welcome to True Crime Medieval, 1000 years of people behaving badly. I’m Anne Brannen. I’m your host in Albuquerque.
Michelle Butler 0:32
Plot twist. I’m Michelle Butler, and I’m an Albuquerque as well.
Anne Brannen 0:37
Yeah, she used to be in really medieval state, but now she’s in a ancient state, those being very different things entirely. And while you were in Albuquerque, Michelle, was it the Balloon Fiesta time? Dadadah!
Michelle Butler 0:50
It is! We got to go down and see them…pump up, I guess it would be called…
Anne Brannen 1:00
Inflate. Inflate.
Michelle Butler 1:02
There we go. The balloons.
Anne Brannen 1:05
Yeah, and you know, and glow and everything. Now, they did not go up in the air the last two days of the Fiesta. And that’s, alas, when we were going, But it’s very exciting to stand in the balloon field and have the balloons go up. Hundreds of them. Just inflating is enough. Although it’s very nice, really, to see them all ascend. But it was too windy. Because there was wind and it was going toward the mountains and what you don’t want to be, if you’re in a balloon, is with the wind going to the mountains. That’s just a sort of sad thing.
Michelle Butler 1:38
That would not be healthy.
Anne Brannen 1:40
It’s also very special today, not just that Michelle is in Albuquerque visiting and seeing the dogs and the parrots and the ancient cat and whatnot. And the balloons, as we said. It’s also our 50th episode. And our second birthday. So it’s very special. So we’ve been inflicting medieval history hilarity on the airwaves for two years now and 50 times.
Michelle Butler 2:13
Wow.
Anne Brannen 2:16
And we continue. Today we are discussing that time in 897, in Rome, when Pope Stephen the sixth got murdered. It was so sad. It’s the entire focus…this whole podcast is all going to be about Steven getting strangled while he was in prison. Nope, that’s it. Really, it’s the background that’s of interest. In 897, Pope Stephen the sixth–or actually, if you’re looking at anything that’s been written before the 1960s, he’s Pope Stephen the seventh, but we’re not going to worry about that because we’re just not gonna–whilst he was in prison, and so that’s the crime. But to be really honest, it’s not getting strangled in prison that Pope Stephen is known for. He’s famous for the reason he’d been thrown in prison and strangled, which is that there were a lot of people who were pretty horrified by him and also pissed off. And he had made a sort of crucial mistake, in a politically volatile time, which was that he had had the seven months dead corpse of an earlier Pope dug up so that he could try him for crimes against the church. So we are very happy to tell you that putting rotting corpses on trial was for the early medieval people over the top. They had a limit. That was it.
Michelle Butler 3:47
Always good to know where the line is.
Anne Brannen 3:49
You need to know these things. So okay, background. How did we get there? How we got here is that the Empire that Charlemagne had put together–we call this the Carolingian Empire because of Carol is the one who put it together Charlemagne–it was kind of splintered. And there were some smaller states and there were factions and so there’s theoretically an empire but in reality, there’s lots of fighting and being annoyed at each other and small things. And because Charlemagne had been crowned emperor by Pope Leo the third in 800, the papacy was intertwined and interwoven with the politics of what we call the Holy Roman Empire, which was the Carolingian Empire wholly after the pope made Charlemagne the Emperor. Other than that, it just would have been the Roman Empire, you know, part two. Or part 44, depending on how you’re looking at. Even though it wasn’t enormously unified, it was never nevertheless an entity. It was an empire and you could be an emperor. So, we go back, Pope Formosus–and this means, you know, having a beautiful countenance, which is sort of hilarious because the last time that he was in the papal seat, he didn’t look so good–he had been named Bishop of Porto in 864, and the Legate to Bulgaria in 866. He got excommunicated when he fled Rome, because he had supported the uncle of Louis the second of Italy–that was also named Louis, the uncle was–rather than Charles the Bald, whom the nobles had elected emperor. So he supported the wrong guy for emperor. So after the death of Louis the second, Charles the Bald became emperor. And the excommunication was for abandoning his diocese without permission, on account of running away from Rome.
Michelle Butler 5:54
Right. Okay.
Anne Brannen 5:54
Okay. And also for wanting to be the Archbishop of Bulgaria, because you weren’t supposed to, like, want to be bishop or Pope or anything.
Michelle Butler 6:03
Right. Right. Right.
Anne Brannen 6:03
That was wrong. Even though probably a bunch of people had it in their heads.
Michelle Butler 6:09
I would think.
Anne Brannen 6:10
You had to be quiet about it, was the deal. So anyway, he’d been…there’d been some other stuff too, like, you know, trashing the cloisters at Rome when he was leaving. That was kind of…whatever, that wasn’t good.
Michelle Butler 6:22
That’s tacky.
Anne Brannen 6:22
Yeah, very. So he got reinstated as a priest in 878. And un-excommunicated, so that was nice. And then he was elected Pope in 891. Fair enough. And then he sort of immediately got involved in all kinds of contentious politics. I mean, I’m just gonna say some of them here. The Patriarch of Constantinople wanted him to reinstate the priest that the patriarch had ordained because Pope Stephen the fifth, who had been the predecessor to Formosus, he had been…the Western Pope had nullified the ordinations of these eastern bishops who had been ordained by the patriarch.
Michelle Butler 7:08
We’re not at the schism, yet, but we’re working up to it.
Anne Brannen 7:10
We’re getting to the Schism. And you can see why. Because what’s going to happen is that Formosus will not agree to reinstate the priests because a previous predecessor had nullified this. And so this would be all sacred on account of his role. So that wasn’t good. But the Eastern bishops actually decided to ignore him and they considered the bishops you know, un-nullified So, there you go. He got involved in a fight over the French throne, why not? And then he wanted a–this will lead to problems, this is what is going to lead to the real problem–he wanted Guy the third of Spoleto, when he was Emperor, to not be emperor. He wanted Arnulf of Corinthia. He wanted him to be emperor. So Arnulf invaded Italy. Guy died. Arnulf invaded again. And then he took Rome. After which Formosus crowned him emperor.
Michelle Butler 7:10
Okay.
Anne Brannen 8:14
So when he died in 896, he was followed by Boniface the sixth who was Pope for 15 days and then died of gout. So he really doesn’t matter. But there he is. He’s gone. Some people said he was poisoned, but I think it was just gout, but why not poisoning because nobody’s really dying well these days. So then we come to Steven the sixth, who is our hero, who’s going to be strangled and therefore, know, a horrible crime is done to him. He was supported by Lambert and also his mother Ageltrude. Lambert was the son of Guy the third. He was supposed to be the next emperor. Only Formosus had–
Michelle Butler 8:54
Right.
Anne Brannen 8:55
Had helped this other guy get in. So the Spoleto contingent really disliked Formosus. Okay, so Stephen went overboard really in supporting the Spoleto contingent because he could have just kind of, like, ignored anything that Formosus had done, but no. What he did was–and we think the Spoletto contingent probably instigated this whole thing– what he did was he had a Cadaver Synod. Which in Latin was called the Synodus Horrenda, which I think is actually a better name.
Michelle Butler 9:29
I think so too.
Anne Brannen 9:30
Although ‘Cadaver’ is sort of nice. So that’s a better name, but it was the Cadaver Synod as we call it, because you remember that Formosus had crowned Arnulf Emperor rather than Lambert of Spoleto, who was the son of the Emperor Guy, you know. And so it’s the Spoleto contingent that backs Stephen as Pope. In 897–this is right after he becomes Pope, and he becomes Pope right after the Spoleto contingent comes back into Rome. Guy came into Rome with Lambert and Ageltrude–and made Stephen Pope and he convened the Synod almost immediately. So the Spoleto contigent and Stephen, they’re both really, really angry at Formosus. And he’d been dead for, you know, quite some time at that time. About seven months because you remember, there was a two week period of another pope in there. So he’s dead. But apparently he needed for political reasons to be publicly denounced and humiliated, which is hard to do when you’re dead. You know, people don’t seem to care. So Stephen had the corpse dug up and propped up in the ecclesiastical chair with all his ecclesiastical finery on, and he got this deacon to answer for the corpse. I like to have the idea that the deacon is standing behind the throne, you know, kind of talking like the dead Pope. But I don’t know that this is true. This is just my picture of it. And so the deacon was answering and unsurprisingly, the deacon wasn’t actually a very good advocate for Formosus. He didn’t really give good answers. He wasn’t very good at answering the accusations that Stephen was screaming at it. And we’re told that it wasn’t like…it wasn’t one of those kind of things where Stephen says, ‘and did you do such a thing?’ It’s like, he was yelling. He had, according to Stephen, violated canon law. He had served as bishop while he was actually demoted and not even supposed to be serving as bishop. And he committed perjury one of the times that he said he’d behave and he wouldn’t. And he was guilty, totally guilty. He was so guilty. The deacon didn’t help at all. He was guilty. So Stephen cut off the three fingers of Formosus’ hand that he’d been using to bless people when he wasn’t dead. And then he got stripped of all his papal garments and then and he was thrown into some really unimportant grave. But that wasn’t enough for Stephen. He had him dug up again and thrown into the Tiber River. He washed up on shore after a while and started performing miracles, which wasn’t really good. That kind of mitigates the effect of the severe humiliation if you’re performing…
Michelle Butler 12:20
Not accomplishing the goal.
Anne Brannen 12:22
No, it doesn’t work. As you remember, the political landscape was very volatile. The Roman people didn’t like the Cadaver Synod. They didn’t think it was a good thing. And they didn’t like the corpse desecration. They didn’t like that, either. And so Stephen was relieved of his papal duties and thrown into prison, where he got strangled. And I want so badly to know who it was that strangled him but we don’t know. It’s in the passive voice. ‘He was strangled.’ I don’t know. By God, maybe. Anyway, he was strangled. So much for that. And then we go further. In 897 there was a new Synod which completely annulled, completely annulled, the Cadaver Synod, which really hadn’t been much of a Synod in the first place. And reburied Formosus, in all his papal regalia, in St. Peter’s Basilica, where all the Popes get buried. And then in 898, there was yet another Synod, which said, ‘Yes, that synod that just happened, they were completely correct.’ And went even further and excommunicated a bunch of the cardinals who had been in on the very bad Synod and–my favorite part–instituted a ruling which was that there would never again be any trial of a corpse, which there hasn’t been actually so far.
Michelle Butler 13:38
That’s not something I thought we had to say out loud.
Anne Brannen 13:41
No, you wouldn’t think…you wouldn’t think really you need to make rules about you know, not having dead people on trial. Later still, in about 910 the then-Pope who had been part of the Cadaver Synod overturned the Synod which had overturned that Synod.
Michelle Butler 14:02
I didn’t find that part.
Anne Brannen 14:05
He reinstated Formosus’ convictions and he had nice things written on Stephen’s tomb but nobody really has been paying attention to this. Nobody dug up Stephen and had a trial for him which I think it would have been fair but anyway, we haven’t. This is…this is really, to be fair, a sort of low point in papal history.
Michelle Butler 14:29
Yeah. It’s not a good look.
Anne Brannen 14:32
There are other bad things the papacy does but really, you know, this is just so awful. So that was our crime. We had a terrible crime, which was that Stephen got strangled. Which, actually, we don’t…I don’t actually feel real bad about this. Do you feel real bad?
Michelle Butler 14:49
Not especially.
Anne Brannen 14:50
I don’t actually care much about Stephen. Although I will say that I noticed that he’s a very creative person. There’s an element of artistry to this whole thing, you know.
Michelle Butler 15:02
It’s theater.
Anne Brannen 15:03
It is theater. It’s a theatrical performance. ‘We couldn’t get you while you were alive, we’re going to get you while you’re dead.’ And indeed, there’s going to be some little deacon behind the throne, speaking for you, but not well.
Michelle Butler 15:16
Some of the sources I was seeing were saying that the deacon’s sitting behind, you know, speaking for the corpse. Stephen would ask questions, and then the deacon would would answer. ‘Why did you do such and such a thing?’ And the deacon would just say, ‘Because I was evil.’
Anne Brannen 15:35
Yeah, I don’t think that’s a real good advocate. Yeah, no. It’s really a put up job to try dead people in the first place. If you’re gonna have other people speaking for them, but you know, not saying anything really for them and all…this makes it even worse.
Michelle Butler 15:51
It’s one thing, really, to dig him up. I mean, this is already bad. To dig him up, put him on the throne, and try him. But then to have that last little extra crazy sauce of having the deacon back there confessing for the court.
‘I was bad.’
‘Because I was evil.’
Anne Brannen 16:08
But see, the thing is, you’re supposed to be able to…can you repent after you’re dead? I mean, if you can be tried after you’re dead, you ought to be able to repent after you’re dead, which I thought you couldn’t. Because if you’re gonna be like, ‘I was evil, I was evil.’ What are we, in Dante’s Inferno? You’ve got to be able to…perhaps the deacon could have said, ‘I was really evil, but now I’m sorry.’
Michelle Butler 16:30
Yeah, no. This is about revenge, not repentance.
Anne Brannen 16:34
That’s true. So um, as usual, I did all this historical background. So now we know how we got here. And Michelle has gone off on some rabbit hole. I don’t know what it is, although I know what was happening because it was at my dining room table. But now I get to find out what it was. What’da get?
Michelle Butler 16:52
So here’s the thing. Not unexpectedly, this has just been catnip for various creatives.
Anne Brannen 17:02
I love the Victorian art. It’s just too hilarious.
Michelle Butler 17:06
The Victorian…the John Paul Laurens’ 1870 painting is the best of the lot, I’m gonna tell you.
Anne Brannen 17:13
Yeah, the pope don’t look so…the dead Pope don’t look so good in that one. He really doesn’t.
Michelle Butler 17:18
I was a little bit surprised, actually, at the number of 20th and 21st century works of art of various types that derives inspiration….
Anne Brannen 17:32
The 21st century? Even now, we’re still doing this?
Michelle Butler 17:34
Yes. We are still doing this.
Anne Brannen 17:36
So apparently, lots of other people knew about this. About the…I mean, I knew about the Cadaver Synod to be fair.
Michelle Butler 17:43
I get the impression that everybody who works inspired by it…because they hadn’t heard of it before, they think nobody’s done it before. But I found–and this seems totally fair to me–enough heavy metal songs based on the Cadaver Synod that you could have a tiny little themed dance party with its own playlist.
Anne Brannen 18:05
Okay, wait, wait, wait, I have to have a…okay, didn’t we just have some heavy metal in the…?
Michelle Butler 18:12
The Charlemagne one.
Anne Brannen 18:12
Charlemagne.
Michelle Butler 18:13
I know, and now I’m like–
Anne Brannen 18:14
Christopher Lee was doing heavy metal about the slaughter of the Saxons.
Michelle Butler 18:19
Now I’m wondering if if I’ve looked for everything we did, was there some metal band who covered it? Could I have a Pinterest board?
Anne Brannen 18:27
Yeah. Or like we could have a whole special episode wherein we discuss the heavy metal takes on medieval crimes.
Michelle Butler 18:34
There’s one band that goes beyond writing songs about it. They’re called Cadaver Synod. They’re a heavy metal band in Hawaii. And they exist right now. Just take that next extra step.
Anne Brannen 18:49
I like it that the Cadaver Synod has become a thing that we know about.
Michelle Butler 18:53
It’s a thing. So there are sculptures you can buy right now.
Anne Brannen 18:58
Really?
Michelle Butler 18:58
Yeah, there are sculptures you can buy right now.
Anne Brannen 19:01
Is it the dead Pope or Stephen?
Michelle Butler 19:02
It’s the dead Pope.
Anne Brannen 19:03
Of course. Because Steven is not interesting, except for dragging up the dead pope.
Michelle Butler 19:07
So you can drop $650 on one. I saw that listed on the artist’s website and that exists right now. There’s another one I was telling you about earlier, the one with the wooden dck. I don’t understand what’s going on with that.
Anne Brannen 19:26
I don’t understand even what we’re talking about.
Michelle Butler 19:27
So there’s a different one of the dead Pope that exists right now. It’s a contemporary piece of art, where the dead pope is skeletal and for inexplicable reasons has been given a wooden dick. Except that I think that part of what’s going on with people’s interest in the Cadaver Synod is that it’s so transgressive that it opens the door for more transgressiveness.
Anne Brannen 19:53
Fair enough. I love it that it was transgressive in the Middle Ages. They did not think this was a good idea.
Michelle Butler 20:02
The thing is, I’m not sure everybody working with it now understands that. I think they’re they’re attracted to it because it’s transgressive. But they think that because it happened in the Middle Ages, it must not have been at that time.
Anne Brannen 20:16
Yeah, because lots of people were digging up popes. You could dig up various corpses, they didn’t have to be popes, you could dig up a bunch of corpses and have trials. No, this didn’t happen. This was not a thing. It was not a medieval thing that you dug people up and have–
Michelle Butler 20:30
No, but the treatments of it seem to imply that they didn’t find it as transgressive as we find it. There are two separate rock musicals based on the Cadaver Synod.
Anne Brannen 20:46
Really?
Michelle Butler 20:47
I am totally serious.
Anne Brannen 20:49
When are they from?
Michelle Butler 20:51
2017 and 2020.
Anne Brannen 20:53
No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You’re kidding me? You’re kidding me? And where were these rock…where were they?
Michelle Butler 21:00
So the one from 2017 debuted at the New York Musical Festival. And you can see clips from it–
Anne Brannen 21:11
On YouTube?
Michelle Butler 21:11
On YouTube.
Anne Brannen 21:12
So we will provide you links.
Michelle Butler 21:13
I will say the first song isn’t bad. I mean, it didn’t go off and go to Broadway or anything. But it’s not terrible. The first song is kind of cute. They have the singers assuring the audience, ‘This really happened.’
Anne Brannen 21:29
What could you really do? Otherwise you think, no–
Michelle Butler 21:31
‘Guys, this really, really happened.’
Anne Brannen 21:33
‘It really did.’
Michelle Butler 21:35
The guy who wrote it is very young. Robbie Florian is the author’s name. He’s very young. He’s got to be in his mid 20s. He cannot be much older than that. And that’s interesting, because there’s also–I’m going to leave aside the other rock musical for a second–there’s also a play that was written in 1968 by an undergraduate in Texas.
Anne Brannen 21:58
Texas, at the University in Austin?
Michelle Butler 22:04
It was first produced in Austin at St. Edwards University. He was an undergraduate at that time. This is Joseph Dispenza, who was a writer who lived from 1942 to 2015, who– just a total sidebar–is a fascinating human being all on his own.
Anne Brannen 22:24
Of course
Michelle Butler 22:25
He spent eight years as a Catholic monk before he decided he didn’t want to do that anymore, and then left.
Anne Brannen 22:31
Uh huh. Did he write the play about the dead Pope on trial before or after he left the monastery?
Michelle Butler 22:38
After. He was a monk for eight years. And then left and went…that’s why he’s writing it, writing the play as an undergraduate although he’s about 26 at that point.
Anne Brannen 22:49
Got it. Okay. The time Frame. I was wondering.
Michelle Butler 22:51
There is a film of this production.
Anne Brannen 22:55
Oh, delicious. Is it on YouTube?
Michelle Butler 22:59
Ah no. It’s in the Texas archive. But I’ll put a link in the show notes.
Anne Brannen 23:02
Oh okay.
Michelle Butler 23:03
I only found this 25 minutes ago so I have not in fact watched this.
Anne Brannen 23:09
There were balloons. We were busy.
Michelle Butler 23:11
I got stuck on the rock musicals yesterday when I was finishing up my research.
Anne Brannen 23:17
Wow, wow. It’s always fascinating to me when we hit these things that are like enormously popular.
Michelle Butler 23:24
And I do actually know that this sounds like a nutty sort of thing to have as a basis of a musical. But I just think I should mention that there is a musical on Broadway right now that debuted in the same year, 2017, at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival that is historically based–this is Six–based on–
Anne Brannen 23:46
Oh, Six.
Michelle Butler 23:46
–the wives of Henry the eighth. A lot of musicals are historically based. Pippin. We are even in the same kind of timeframe with Pippin. So it’s really not as odd as it sounds. The reviews of the Cadaver Synod musical are kind of mixed. Some people liked it, some didn’t. Some thought it was…I’ll post some of those as well.
Anne Brannen 24:14
What are the titles of these two? Are they both called Cadaver Synod?
Michelle Butler 24:17
The one is called the Cadaver Synod Musical. And the other one is called Formosus, which is from 2020. It’s an Italian production, but the singing is done in English. So they have captions. That is very nonlinear in its narrative. So what it’s doing…it’s really kind of interesting, because it has living tableaus and the strobe lights go like this [hand gestures] and show you what’s going on with the tableaus. So…do with it what you will.
Wait…I’m gonna back again. 2020?
2020.
Anne Brannen 25:04
So…Italy is in the middle of the pandemic horrible crisis where people are singing to each other out the windows, because everybody’s on lockdown, and they’re debuting a cadaver play?
Michelle Butler 25:15
No, that’s when the film was released.
Anne Brannen 25:20
Oh.
Michelle Butler 25:20
My guess would be that it was done in 2019.
Anne Brannen 25:22
Okay, thank you. Because I would…because that was also going to be surreal and I wanted some backstory about that.
Michelle Butler 25:28
No, the date on the film is 2020.
Anne Brannen 25:32
Okay.
Michelle Butler 25:33
But probably it was done before that. It was wild. It was absolutely wild. I was not really expecting…the metal songs, that wasn’t a big shock. How many of them there are? That was a little bit of a shock. But I was not expecting a musical. And I was not expecting a snarky, funny musical. The one from Italy is very serious. ‘We have artistic things to say, we’re using strobe lights and rock music.’
Anne Brannen 26:10
‘Because it was a serious moment in the history of something I know.’
Michelle Butler 26:14
The one from the New York Music Festival is kind of snarky.
Anne Brannen 26:17
So…I have to say that, you know, I don’t think it speaks well of me that I find this all so hilarious, but I do. I find the Cadaver Synod fairly hilarious. Does the New York musical also find it fairly hilarious?
Michelle Butler 26:34
He’s trying to use it…The first song is the only one that is online in full. So it’s hard to…I have to guess the rest of it from what the reviews are talking about. But one of the reviews compares it to Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
Anne Brannen 26:53
Hmm.
Michelle Butler 26:54
In terms of, you know, it has some things to say that are serious and interesting, but it’s being done through this venue of, or through this mode of, being a little irreverent and snarky.
Anne Brannen 27:07
Okay. Here’s my problem. I want to know what it is that that is serious to be said about this thing. See, there’s not a lot of dramatic tension in digging up a corpse and having a trial. Because…the dead pope doesn’t care. He’s not there. He’s dead. There’s just a body. What do we learn from this? Do we learn that we should not dig up corpses and put them on trial? Because I think we knew that already. I don’t think that’s a surprise. In other words, I think this is an interesting moment in history. But I don’t see how it can be the plot of anything. There’s no plot here. There’s some stuff that happened. I mean, maybe you could have a whole lot of discussion with Stephen. His inner dialogue and his turmoil about ‘Shall I or shall I not dig up the corpse of my predecessor? Or maybe the Spolettos, they’re really all ‘do dig up the corpse’? Maybe that’s going on, but the trial itself? I mean, it’s hilarious, it could be a high point of a musical, but it’s not a plot. Anyway, what you got?
Michelle Butler 28:09
It says it’s loosely based on the Cadaver Synod. The first piece of it, Act One, tells us what’s going on and the second act wants to kind of explain why it all went down and is making the argument that Formosus and Steven had a relationship. Had a falling out.
Anne Brannen 28:36
Oh, well, okay. They didn’t like each other. Sure. But it’s not positing that they were like, you know, good friends and then had a falling out, or lovers for the love of God. It’s not positing that…?
Michelle Butler 28:46
Oh, no, it is positing that.
Anne Brannen 28:48
It is positing that.
Michelle Butler 28:49
This is a different review than what I found before.
Anne Brannen 28:53
In other words, you have to add some imagined stuff in there in order to make it into actually a plot.
Michelle Butler 29:00
Well, there’s…actual stuff is kind of thin on the ground.
Anne Brannen 29:04
Okay, to be fair.
Michelle Butler 29:05
This one, you know, did not end up on Broadway. Although I’m not gonna drag Robbie Florian because, I mean, he’s very young looking. I’ll pull up a picture of him.
Anne Brannen 29:20
You cannot see this, oh our listeners. But because we’re in the same room. I’m getting to see the picture.
Michelle Butler 29:26
As soon as it loads
Anne Brannen 29:27
As soon as it loads. Oh, my God. What is he? 14?
Michelle Butler 29:31
He’s very young. But I do think that it’s interesting that this one and the one from 1968 are written by very young men. I wonder what it is that is attracting young playwrights to this.
Anne Brannen 29:48
What could it be? Young men wanting to write about a thing where corpses get dug up and humiliated? I don’t know. It seems so odd. So at any rate, old guys aren’t going oh, let’s do this.
Michelle Butler 30:04
I think it’s the transgressiveness.
Anne Brannen 30:05
What they’re saying is, hey, let’s talk about Charlemagne and the Saxons. That’s what they’re saying.
Michelle Butler 30:12
So, that’s what I had for you.
Anne Brannen 30:15
Thank you. So there weren’t any historical novels? Again, plot issue.
Michelle Butler 30:22
Not that I dug up and I think that’s interesting. Ha, ha, ha, sorry.
Anne Brannen 30:28
[laughter] All right. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry that I did not catch that hilarious joke. It went by too fast for me.
Michelle Butler 30:34
I didn’t mean it.
Anne Brannen 30:37
So fast. I just didn’t see it.
Michelle Butler 30:39
But it is interesting that everything that I found that is working with it, is theatrical.
Anne Brannen 30:46
Oh, yeah.
Michelle Butler 30:50
I find that really interesting because the original event is so theatrical.
Anne Brannen 30:53
Yeah, it’s absolutely performative. The entire point of it is…there’s no real point to it. It gets nothing done other than a performance.
Michelle Butler 31:03
This is not a thing that inspires a contemplative historical novel. This inspires additionally theatrical….
Anne Brannen 31:10
Although you know what? I bet you that Byron could have written an epic poem on this if he’d wanted to. I bet you Byron could have.
Michelle Butler 31:17
Oh, yeah. He could have done anything.
Anne Brannen 31:19
Yeah, yeah.
Michelle Butler 31:21
Yeah.
Anne Brannen 31:21
So I think you could write an epic poem, but you would have to go…it would have to be far flung and go many places, and the whole corpse thing on trial would just be a piece of it. Yeah.
Michelle Butler 31:31
It attracts equally theatrical and over the top people to do more over the top things.
Anne Brannen 31:41
Well, it is… I mean, I can see why. Because although I don’t see really a lot of plot going on, that theatrical…the theatrical presentation of the corpse….But see, that’s the thing. You found theater, but you also found art. Because it’s so visual.
Michelle Butler 31:59
Exactly. There’s wood cuts. I didn’t find a whole lot of other paintings. The sculptures I thought was pretty interesting because that’s not only visual, it’s tactile. And of course it’s focusing on the dead body.
Anne Brannen 32:16
The body. It’s all about the dead body.
Michelle Butler 32:18
Yeah. I don’t feel terrible about Stephen being hanged.
Anne Brannen 32:24
I don’t feel enormously terrible about the about the Cadaver Synod itself either because I don’t think, really, it kind of mattered because the dead guy was already dead. Whatever was going to happen to him had already happened. So yeah. Any rate, that’s our anniversary crime. A theatrical empty thing of great nothingness and hilarity. Happy anniversary, hon.
Michelle Butler 32:55
Honestly. I can’t imagine why people don’t know about this, because it’s so macabre.
Anne Brannen 33:02
I can’t remember where I first heard about it. But I did know about it.
Michelle Butler 33:05
It’s one of those things where when you’re first learning about the Middle Ages, if somebody tells you this happened, you’re like, ‘No, somebody made that up. That’s a wicked slander after the fact.’ No. It really happened.
Anne Brannen 33:16
You might. Or you might think, ‘well, this is just proof of how really alien the Middle Ages are and how they have nothing to do with us.’
Michelle Butler 33:24
But it is really important that it was not in fact, everybody going ‘oh, yeah, this is fine, we do this all the time.’ It horrified people to the point where they overthrew Stephen.
Anne Brannen 33:34
Yeah, and desecration of corpses for political reasons? Yeah, that happens all the time. Happens all the time. Mussolini came to my mind immediately.
Michelle Butler 33:45
They put the heads of traitors…They really are doing things with bodies.
Anne Brannen 33:51
Yes. The heads of traitors were going–
Michelle Butler 33:52
The drawing and quartering.
Anne Brannen 33:53
–would be going up on over the wall. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So there’s a performative… performative punishment. That’s a kind of field from which this comes, but it’s just… usually, you know, you don’t put people on trial. And I think that that’s the line over. It’s that, law is actually a real thing. To do performative things with the law, I think that’s what the problem is.
Michelle Butler 34:24
Hmm.
Anne Brannen 34:25
I mean, it’s bad, dug up the corpse, blah, blah, blah.But corpses get desecrated all the time. That’s not the issue. The issue is that the corpse was put on trial.
Michelle Butler 34:34
I think it matters too that it’s the church and in particular the Pope.
Anne Brannen 34:39
Right. And the church had gotten so involved in politics that it was almost…it was impossible to tell them apart at this point.
Michelle Butler 34:47
This does give me a little bit more sympathy for the guys in the next century, who are really the ones to say ‘ we need some reform here, we gotta clean this up.’
Anne Brannen 34:56
Yes. Spoiler alert. Things kind of got so bad with the politicization of the church that there will be a reform. But they don’t have to reform the digging people up and putting them on trial. It’s not a thing. Of course there’s not a whole lot to say about this because there’s no there there. There’s just a scene.
Michelle Butler 35:25
Tableau vivant though. It’s kind of it’s a tableau vivant.
Anne Brannen 35:30
Tableau mort. Tableau mort. So the next time…so that’s our discussion of the moment that there really was just macabre stupidity going on over in Rome. The next time that you hear from us, we’re going to be having a special episode, because it’s going to be Halloween, and we’re going to move out of the Middle Ages and into the early modern period. Because really, we need to talk about Elizabeth Bathory who is a notorious god awful serial killer of children. People think of her as medieval but she’s not–
Michelle Butler 36:08
Another one?
Anne Brannen 36:09
Oh, yeah. People think of her as medieval but she’s not. She was a Calvinist. You can’t be a Calvinist and be medieval. It’s just like…it just doesn’t happen. But we’ll talk about Elizabeth Bathory because she’s dreadful and it’ll be our Halloween episode.
Michelle Butler 36:22
All right, that sounds good.
Anne Brannen 36:23
Yeah.
Michelle Butler 36:24
From a content point of view.
Anne Brannen 36:26
Content point of view. Yeah. It was very bad from a reality point of view. Had you heard of Elizabeth Bathory? You knew her?
Michelle Butler 36:32
No, this was not somebody I knew about
Anne Brannen 36:34
Oh, yeah. Bathing in the blood of children.
Michelle Butler 36:36
It’s very interesting which bad things you’ve heard of.
Anne Brannen 36:39
I hear about a lot of bad things. It’s part of the Brannen hobby. So that’s where we’re at for now. This has been True Crime Medieval where the crimes are…okay, is that crime just like it is today? I don’t think…I don’t know.
Michelle Butler 36:58
Maybe we metaphorically try dead people?
Anne Brannen 37:06
Our usual motto is ‘the crimes are just like they are today only with less technology’ but we’re wondering if indeed this point…hmm, I don’t know that it is.
Michelle Butler 37:14
People get strangled still.
Anne Brannen 37:15
Oh sure. It’s the strangling? Yeah, okay. Strangling people. Yeah, that is true, because the actual crime was Stephen getting strangled. Yes, we still do that, and we don’t even need technology. We are on Apple podcast and Spotify podcast and Stitcher podcast and all the places where the podcasts hang out. We would love if you left a review. If you go to true crime medieval dot com, Truecrimemedieval is all one word, you can find the shownotes which Michelle does and transcriptions which are done by Laurie Dietrich, and I provide a blurb and some picture and whatnot. And you can reach us through there and you can leave comments and that would be really lovely. We’d love that. Yeah. So yeah, happy anniversary. Bye.
Michelle Butler 37:48
Bye!
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
50. Charlemagne Massacres the Saxons, Verden, Lower Saxony 782
Anne Brannen 0:26
Hello and welcome to True Crime Medieval, 1000 years of people behaving badly. I’m Anne Brannen, and I’m your host in Albuquerque.
Michelle Butler 0:36
I’m Michelle Butler, in Maryland, the most medieval state in America.
Anne Brannen 0:41
Today we are discussing an early medieval crime, which is the Massacre of Verden in Verden, Saxony, October 782. We’re going way back–early, early–because we get to talk about Charlemagne. Charlemagne is a much more controversial figure than you might think, if you just were like not really paying enormous amounts of attention in your world history class. So first, we start with the background. In the fall of 782, Charlemagne, who had been attempting to subjugate the Saxons for quite some time at that point, ordered the execution of–the Chronicles tell us–4,500 Saxons after a Saxon victory at Suntel where Widukind, the Saxon leader, had annihilated a Frankish force. This included counts, nobles, most of the troops. Charlemagne took his army into Lower Saxony and ordered that all of the men who had fought with Widukind be rounded up, and then he enslaved some but he beheaded 4,500 in one day. Though there’s some attempts to refute this, it’s clearly historically true. The number might be larger than the actual body count or actually it might be smaller, but at any rate, the massacre did happen and this was even for the time a little shocking. Well, how did things get to that stage? Charlemagne–the nickname ‘the great’ might be contemporary with him, but if not, it existed soon after his death–Charlemagne had inherited the position of King of the Franks from his father Pippin, who had died in 768. Until 771, he was co ruler with his brother Carloman. After Carloman’s death, Charlemagne ruled alone. Okay. We know him now as the ruler who united most of Europe and converted it to Christianity. The Franks had been before his activity, the only Roman Catholic Christian tribe in Europe, and spread that across pretty much all of Europe. Pieces of Europe didn’t go under, but almost all of it did, and the Pope crowned him Holy Roman Emperor in 800. So why did he work so hard at this? He was actually on campaign most of his lifetime. He worked so hard at conquering Europe. One site that I found–and I think this is what I remember being told about Charlemagne in my youth–it says this: “Charlemagne was determined to improve education and religion and bring Europe out of turmoil. And to do this, he launched a 30 year military campaign of conquest that united Europe and spread Christianity.” What a nice man. Yeah, he was so nice. He was canonized, by the way, in 1165, when Frederick Barbarossa was Holy Roman Emperor, but–
Michelle Butler 3:47
I did not know that.
Anne Brannen 3:48
I know! Of course you don’t, because the Catholic Church does not actually recognize him as a saint, which is why you’ve never heard of St. Charlemagne. That’s not his name. I had not heard of that, either. It was a political thing. Anyway, it’s very true that Charlemagne, in order to keep the Frankish kingdom safe, had to wage wars at the borders, which ended up–since he mostly won–making the kingdom very, very, very large. It’s also true that he converted a large portion of Europe to Christianity, which he did by force, actually. It wasn’t like, Charlemagne went in and said, ‘Now that I’ve won this battle, I’d like to tell you about Jesus. Would you like to love him as I do?’ And then everybody said, ‘Oh, yes, we do.’ No, that’s not what happened. He actually made you convert or you died, is how this worked.
Michelle Butler 4:39
But you still had a choice.
Anne Brannen 4:40
[laughter] Yes, yeah. Same choice that the Jews would be given later throughout much of Europe. You know, convert or die. The Saxons were especially problematic. The Saxons occupied territory to the east of the Franks. There wasn’t a clear terrain boundary between the two peoples. There was really nice flat land. This was some really nice flat land which was easily crossed, which they did. The Saxons were in what’s now the northwest corner of Germany, and they had remained pagan after their association with the Merovingians, which they had when the Roman Empire fell. I tell you, all these tribes, all through Europe. They had, along with their neighboring tribes, the Angles and the Jutes, invaded Britain in 449, establishing Sussex, West Sussex and Essex. That would be South Saxons, West Saxons, East Saxons, but in old Saxony, they were independent. Their faith centered on the Irminsul, which translates as ‘great pillar.’ But the roots go back to one of the names for Odin. The Irminsul, which was a divine tree that connected heaven and earth, is a version of a Yggdrasil that we find in Norse mythology. There was representations of this, of course. A lot of what you’ll see, it’s like Charlemagne is just going to tear down the run the holy tree. No, and he’s going to tear one of the holy trees down and people, all sorts of Christians, tore down other holy trees. And indeed, they would do that all through Europe, for the Saxon and the Celtic people, all of whom had very sacred trees, which they cut down, all the Christians cut down because you can’t be having sacred trees when you’re worshiping Jesus. Okay. So there was a physical representation of this tree. There was a tree over in the Teutoburg forest. So the Saxons resisted Christianity quite seriously and murdered missionaries, as for instance St. Boniface. He was a martyr because of the Frisians and the Saxons. They resisted Christianity, and as they had been doing for a long time–as for instance, Britain–they raided their neighbors. So they wouldn’t be Christians, and they invaded their neighbors, one of whom was the Franks. So one example of this–this is the example that brought the wrath of Charlemagne down upon them–was the sacking of the church at Deventer in 772. The Franks then invaded Saxony and cut down the Irminsul at Heresburg. That’s what they did. And that was the beginning of the Saxon wars, and they lasted from 772 to 804. Widukind was their main leader. His name, by the way, translates to ‘child of the wood,’ which therefore means ‘Wolf.’ It’s one of the kennings. It’s like Beowulf, which means ‘Bee-Wolf’ and therefore means ‘bear.’ So ‘child of the wood, wolf. We know nothing about him except what came to us in Frankish writing. So it’s like, what do we know about the Druids? What the Roman said. That’s always problematic. The war went on for 30 years, because the Saxons simply would not give up. Charlemagne kept winning and making decrees, such as capital punishment for anybody who was still performing pagan rites and the Saxons kept uprising. They had a very great victory at Suntel, at which point Charlemagne had been fighting for about 10 years with them, and clearly made the order for the massacre as an attempt to cause the Saxons to submit and probably also because he was really really miffed. But the Saxons didn’t submit. The uprisings are going to continue until 804 when the last of the rebellions was put down and Wikipedia gives us some interesting statistics. We don’t know how many Franks died but in 782, at the Massacre of Verden, 4500 Saxons were executed. In 798 about 3000 were killed and deportations from 795 to 804 amounted to 18,670 people. That’s a lot. That’s a lot of people the Saxons lost. Those are just the ones that got counted. For Charlemagne, though, that lasted 30 years of his life, and he was gonna live for another 10 but he was busy elsewhere as well. He subdued Aquataine and Gascony in 769. He conquered Lombardy in 776. He took the Basque lands in 797. He took Bavaria in 794. In 803 he had what’s now Hungary. In 796, he had the Croatians and he finally died of illness in his late 60s in the spring of 814, with a whole bunch of plans that were unfinished. So let’s take a little moment now where we think of what else did Charlemagne want to do, and how much of Europe was indeed left.
Michelle Butler 9:54
He was kind of like my dad. My dad always said, really tongue in cheek, that he didn’t want to own the whole world, just the land that touched what he already owned.
Anne Brannen 10:03
There you go. There you go. Charlemagne was like that. So what happened? As we’ve seen, the massacre did not end the Saxons wars. They kept going for quite a while. So as a means of making the Saxons give up, it didn’t really work too well, although it might have made Charlemagne feel better for a while and it took a bit for the Saxons to recover because, you know, most of their fighting men were dead at that point. They had to you know, raise more. And Charlemagne has been for centuries in an exalted position historically, so that makes the massacre a problem. It’s not really a problem until more recently, like the 18th century and on, but it’s a problem. So there’s some historians who have made various evil-mitigating arguments. Like the ‘this wasn’t so bad’ kind of arguments.
Michelle Butler 10:58
Yeah, yeah.
Anne Brannen 11:01
Okay, one: It was okay to murder all the Saxons because they had sworn allegiance and so therefore, they had committed treason, which it as you know, punishable by death. Fair enough. Or another idea, the Chronicles were lying, and all the Saxons actually died in battle, and Charlemagne didn’t massacre them at all. Or–and this is my favorite–they weren’t beheaded. There was a clerkly error, and decollare, which means ‘taking their heads off’ had been a miss-writing for delocare, which means they got deported. They survived. Ta-da!
Michelle Butler 11:46
That sounds totally like what we do in the eighth century.
Anne Brannen 11:49
Yeah, no, they didn’t. He massacred them. The historians are in agreement. Charlemagne really did do this. He had 4500 warriors decapitated. Michelle and I’ve discussed medieval war crimes already. The medieval idea of war crimes is not ours. But there is an idea of things you aren’t supposed to do. And this was one of them. You don’t slaughter 4500 captured people. You can enslave them. That seems apparently reasonable, but you don’t slaughter them. He cut their heads off when they can’t fight back. The great emphasis on why it’s so important to cut these guys’ heads off points to a deep uneasiness, even amongst contemporaries, about the action. It wasn’t okay. So it’s been a problem. In the 18th century the idea…for quite some time, it wasn’t an issue at all. Of course, he killed all the Saxons because who wouldn’t, I guess. I don’t know.
Michelle Butler 12:45
Particularly after the Crusades because essentially it becomes a proto crusade. Of course it was fine.
Anne Brannen 12:51
Yeah they insisted on not being Christians. I mean, you have no other course, do you, except to slaughter them all? That’s the medieval idea and so that makes sense to them. But in the 18th century, the idea that it was very bad started to become an idea. I like Voltaire. Voltaire said that Charlemagne was 1000 fold murderer. Yay, Voltaire. But it really became a flashpoint in Nazi Germany. Hermann Gauch an adjutant for culture said that Charlemagne should be called Charles the Slaughterer. But Charlemagne in Nazi Germany was sometimes seen as a leader who Christianized the pagan Saxons, that being good, and sometimes as a murderous, genocidal tyrant, that being bad. He was a real problem. How is it that we, as Nazis, deal with Charlemagne, and the fact that he murdered a bunch of Saxons? The massacre itself was commemorated in Verden in 1935, with a monument that was both a memorial to the victims and a meeting place for the SS. The inscription read, I quote here “To baptism-resistant Germans massacred by Carl, the Slaughterer of the Saxons.” I’m especially fond of the baptism-resistant part.
Michelle Butler 14:10
I can see where he would be a figure they would want to rehabilitate, though. I mean, he conquered Europe. He basically did what they were setting out to do. So of course, they would want to bring him in as a secular saint, basically.
Anne Brannen 14:24
Yes, but he was problematic. He was Frankish you know, so it was problematic. He had murdered the Saxons. By the way, one of our earlier podcasts focused on another massacre of the Saxons, although it’s in the 15th century, because Vlad Tepes, Dracula, will slaughter them also in very naughty bad fashion. So there’s more dead Saxons earlier in our podcast. The annual celebration of Charlemagne in Aachen which is where he’s buried got canceled for a while under the Nazis but finally, Hitler finally ordered Alfred Rosenberg–who was one of the main people promulgating the horribleness of Charlemagne idea–he ordered him to stop attacking Charlemagne. And Goebbel started saying some nice things about Charlemagne. So his official rehabilitation came in 1942 when the Nazis celebrated his 1200 year anniversary of his birth, but it was confusing. It was really confusing. We have writings from the time, people saying, wah? what is this with Charlemagne? We hate him? We like him? What are we supposed to feel about Charlemagne? Because you know, you really did want to know what you were supposed to be thinking because that was really sort of important in terms of the keeping your own head on. You wanted to know. Charlemagne was in, Charlemagne was out, Charlemagne was in, Charlemagne was out. Any rate, the Nazis finally said he was okay.
Michelle Butler 15:58
Did you tell me that they had plays about…?
Anne Brannen 16:02
Oh, ho ho! They did have plays. Some of them had to get shut down. Because they ended up being so…if you’re going to say that Charlemagne is bad– which people were some of the times–when he’s bad, because this involves the church, massacring people because they are baptism resistant, as it has been mentioned before, this made some people kind of upset. Because, you know, even Nazi Germany was full of Christians and Bavaria was full of Catholics, so they were upset. Yeah, there were there were plays. I thought you were gonna find those. But you went down a different rabbit hole, which we’re gonna–
Michelle Butler 16:43
Oh man did I ever.
Anne Brannen 16:45
–get to hear in about a minute. Okay. So it was confusing. On the other hand, Widukind became legendary. I mean, no problem here amongst the Saxons. Widukind. Yay. He became Blessed Widukind on account of he built so many churches. Because one of the things he did at the end of the Saxon war was that he converted. I hadn’t told you that. But he did. He had been baptism resistant for 30 years, but then he converted. He built a bunch of churches, apparently, and so that’s why he’s Blessed. Several royal families in the Holy Roman Empire were descended from him. By the way, concerning Charlemagne, it really is true that a very large percentage of people whose roots are in Europe are descended from Charlemagne. He had a lot of children, and they had a lot of children, and they had a lot of children. This is just exponential. So when you meet people who say, ‘Well, I’m descended from Charlemagne.’ The correct answer to this is ‘Big deal, I am too, big deal.’ Alright. Of course, though Charlemagne was problematic for the Germans, Widukind was not. By the 20th century, he was a heroic legendary figure who defended the gods and beliefs of Germany. I really myself personally, I’m still pissed off about the tree, but okay. He defended the beliefs of Germany because Christianity was a Middle Eastern religion, wasn’t it? Hmm. So the Nazis really liked that. I mean, they loved that part. They had a problematic relationship to Christianity anyway, as you can imagine. So he was thought to be buried in Angier in in a tomb, there was a tomb made for him in 1100. But the body…the remains that are there in that tomb are those of a young woman. But in 1971, three graves in front of the altar were excavated, and they were three men. They were the bodies of three men who had died in the early ninth century. They were all of them, according to the DNA, related, and one of them is thought to be Widukind.
Michelle Butler 18:57
Huh.
Anne Brannen 18:58
Yeah. Isn’t that nice? We have his body. Much of what we know comes from the Franks, of course. Charlemagne’s main historian was Einhard, who served both Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, his son and wrote Vita Caroli Magne, the biography of Charlemagne, from his own experiences and also working with the Royal Frankish annals, the Chronicles. So that’s where our information mostly comes from. So there was a massacre. Charlemagne did, indeed, massacre 4,500 Saxons, partly because it was the kind of war move you make when you’re trying to make people be very afraid of you and back down, and partly because he was really, really, really annoyed. It wasn’t actually a very enormously useful war move. The war kept continuing and the fact that he had murdered all these people was something that made him not entirely good. He was a devout, pious man. He liked to read. He read a bunch of Christian books, he liked to read Christian books. He was really serious about the whole spreading of Christianity in terms of the faith. But he was also very serious about it because if you’re going to conquer a people, and they live right next door to you, and you are going to be the boss of them, you need them to actually be living or saying they live in the same kind of faith system, or it just does not work. So the spreading of Christianity throughout Europe was partly about the faith and how much he loved his faith. But it was partly political. That’s how you conquer people. You burn down their sacred trees and force them to convert at knifepoint. And so that’s, that’s Charlemagne.
Michelle Butler 20:54
I was taught a little bit about this massacre as an undergraduate.
Anne Brannen 20:59
Were you really? Because I was never.
Michelle Butler 21:01
Just a wee bit. I was taught about his conversion by the sword approach. But–
Anne Brannen 21:07
Oh okay.
Michelle Butler 21:07
–the vast majority of what I was taught about Charlemagne was about him being a hero of literacy.
Anne Brannen 21:14
Ah. Yeah.
Michelle Butler 21:15
I was still being taught the version of Charlemagne that claimed that he himself never did learn to read, which we now know isn’t true. But that was this old fashioned belief about him, and that he is essentially the person who makes the Renaissance possible, because there’s all of these Greek and Roman books that are deteriorating by the eighth century, and he sets up a scriptorium. He brings in the scholar Alcuin from England to set it up and run the place and just start copying things like mad before they fall apart.
Anne Brannen 21:50
He did. This is true. He did.
Michelle Butler 21:53
It sounds like a legend, but the modern font, Times New Roman, comes directly from his scriptorium. Alcuin develops this new script that can be written more quickly and more legibly, and then that becomes the basis for…the Renaissance scholars think so many of these books are written in that that they think that that’s the original Roman script. So they’re imitating it for early printing, which then becomes the basis for the digital Times New Roman. It sounds completely bogus, but it’s basically true. So we very much were taught ‘Charlemagne is a hero of literacy, and that massacre over there was unfortunate. But you know, it’s the eighth century. It’s what you do. Look at this. This part’s really interesting. Oh, Times New Roman.’
Anne Brannen 22:46
Yeah. Well, the thing is, he can be a hero of literacy and also be a murderous slaughterer of the Saxons. Humans are just nuts. Humans are complex. So I think of him as both these things. I mean, yay, that Carolingian script is so easy to read. Early manuscripts are so easy to read. They kinda get harder to read as time goes on, and eventually you end up with Elizabethan Secretary hand which is…oooohhh.
Michelle Butler 23:13
It is a fair point that the papyrus, the Roman and Greek papyrus, was disintegrating, and that Charlemagne’s copying program saves an awful lot of books that we wouldn’t have otherwise.
Anne Brannen 23:25
Sure. Sure, sure. So that was good. Yay. So what else do we like about Charlemagne? Literacy? Uh, okay. I like literacy.
Michelle Butler 23:41
I was taught that he managed to put together an empire that was unusually large for that time, and that was pretty impressive.
Anne Brannen 23:51
Well, that was also true. It was very, very true. One of the things that’s also true…Like, this whole thing about how he needed to bring, you know, peace to Europe? Oh, my God. It is true, that the various tribal systems were fighting amongst each other. It’s true he managed to make some of that stop at least by erasing tribal distinctions.
Michelle Butler 24:17
I ran across a blog post that was trying to argue that the sacking of Lindisfarne happens because of this massacre, and I think it’s bogus.
Anne Brannen 24:29
Okay. All right. Okay. I’m guessing that’s going to be bogus, but I really want to hear the logical line here. Please report.
Michelle Butler 24:38
So the logic is that the Vikings who attack Lindisfarne had just assumed that the Christians they find there are going to behave with the kind of wanton destruction that Charlemagne had against their pagan brethren at Verden, and so they just proactively slaughtered them all. I think this is completely bogus.
Anne Brannen 25:04
Well, yeah, because…weren’t the Vikings slaughtering people?
Michelle Butler 25:10
I think this is an attempt to excuse one massacre by randomly bringing in another one.
Anne Brannen 25:19
How much did the Vikings care about the Saxons? It’s not like, ‘these are our brethren.’
Michelle Butler 25:25
Yeah, I don’t think that the Vikings would have looked at the Saxons and said ‘yes. that’s our people.’ They’re different people.
Anne Brannen 25:32
No, no, no the sacred trees were not unifying forces.
Michelle Butler 25:37
I just found it interesting because we’ve talked about the ways in which there’s the apologists for Charlemagne trying to excuse his massacre. But now we have the apologists for the Vikings wanting to say, ‘well, you know, you need to put Lindisfarne in context. It wasn’t an unprovoked attack on some defenseless people. It was a proactive attack on some defenseless people because they were scared that this thing was going to happen to them like what happened to the Saxons.’
Anne Brannen 26:08
Yes, because the monks at Lindisfarne behaved so much like Charlemagne did and had just as much military force, didn’t they? I mean, there’s all this discussion of the Lindisfarne army. No, okay, no, it didn’t exist. Yeah, this is bogus. But there is a lot of wanting to rehabilitate people. We need to have them be really great and so therefore we’re going to excuse all the godawful things they did. Now there’s a reason that the tagline for our podcast is ‘1000 years of people behaving badly.’ Because Michelle and I consider the humans to be a kind of species, which behaves badly a lot, and sometimes behave goodly. They’re great. Sometimes the humans are wonderful. Sometimes they are very, very wonderful, and we celebrate them. Yay! Often they’re really badly behaved. I think Charlemagne can be someone who’s devote and literate and wanting to save books, and trying to take care of his country and still have been someone who had a little fit and slaughtered the Saxons when he should not have done so.
Michelle Butler 27:22
He clearly sees himself as the actual inheritor of Rome. He has himself crowned as Holy Roman Emperor. It’s not like the Romans were kind, gentle overlords.
Anne Brannen 27:35
Are there any kind, gentle overlords? Let’s think a minute.
Michelle Butler 27:41
Yeah, they don’t last very long. There’s a difference…there is pragmatic and bloodthirsty. The Romans are pretty pragmatic. They only murder you when…but generally speaking, they don’t go in and just kind of slaughter people. They need people to grow the crops and stuff.
Anne Brannen 27:59
Yes, they’re very practical.
Michelle Butler 28:00
But they do understand the value of a terroristic and public execution. They were very good at that.
Anne Brannen 28:09
Hence that line of people that followed Spartacus on crosses. Yeah, they do. They do understand that. As a tactic it can work. It can also work the other way where people are energized to not behave anymore. Oh, well. Any rate. Then of course, you go down to history, and there’s the whole ‘what do people think of you later?’
Michelle Butler 28:39
I spent a little bit of time, not a lot, looking at the woodcuts because there’s an awful lot of 19th century woodcuts about Charlemagne that are pretty interesting. They’re very 19th century in their portrayal of the medieval past. The medieval past looks an awful lot like nice century opera.
Anne Brannen 29:01
They have really nice clothes.
Michelle Butler 29:04
Yeah, Charlemagne, man, he looks exactly like he walked out of a Wagnerian opera, how weird. But this is the part where I’m confessing that I got super stuck on Christopher Lee and didn’t manage to climb back out of the rabbit hole. And here’s why.
Anne Brannen 29:22
Now first, you have to explain to everybody. Christopher Lee. Remind everybody who this is.
Michelle Butler 29:27
Christopher Lee was an actor best known in recent years as Saruman in The Lord of the Rings, films and then in The Hobbit movies. He also, a little bit earlier than that, was Count Dooku. Before that, he played Dracula about 10 times in various horror movies and pretty much created the look of Dracula cemented into people’s minds. That look of Dracula as kind of posh, good looking…one of the reviews of his performance of Dracula says that he makes you think that women probably wouldn’t mind being chewed on.
Anne Brannen 30:05
I like it that we have yet another connection to Dracula in this podcast.
Michelle Butler 30:11
Oh, that’s right. I hadn’t thought about that. So I had known from the Tolkien connection that when Christopher Lee was 88 and then 91, he had released a couple of heavy metal albums, on which he sings he’s. He’s quite a good singer. He’s got a really great voice. There’s a reason he got cast as Saruman. What I didn’t remember or know, at that point, was that they’re about Charlemagne. I’m telling you, I couldn’t make my brain work after I found this.
Anne Brannen 30:44
So these are two heavy metal albums about Charlemagne?
Michelle Butler 30:47
Yes. And there are songs specifically about the massacre.
Anne Brannen 30:51
Uh huh.
Michelle Butler 30:52
Yes.
Anne Brannen 30:55
What does he have to say?
Michelle Butler 30:57
It is absolutely in sympathy with Charlemagne.
Anne Brannen 31:01
Oh, I see.
Michelle Butler 31:03
One of them is called ‘Charlemagne: By the Sword and the Cross.’ That’s the one that came out in 2010. The other one–his follow up sequel album because he’s got more to say about Charlemagne–is called ‘Charlemagne: The Omens of Death.’ The first one is kind of an experimental album. It’s heavy metal like but the second one is death metal. There’s a song called ‘The Massacre of the Saxons.’ I don’t really feel the need to be sued or sent a cease and desist by his estate, so I’m not going to hit play. But if you, oh, listener, want to go over to YouTube, you can find his songs and the videos for them.
Anne Brannen 32:00
Will you give us the links to this?
Michelle Butler 32:02
I can certainly do that. I watched a few of them. I listened to a few of them. They are right on that line. I saw several reviews talking about that they were really great. I don’t know heavy metal well enough to be able to judge that. For me, they teeter right on the line between being awesome and being ridiculous.
Anne Brannen 32:26
It seems to me that if you’re going to connect heavy metal and Charlemagne, you’re really on the line already.
Michelle Butler 32:33
But it’s…oh, and he’s descended from Charlemagne through his mother.
Anne Brannen 32:38
Yeah, who isn’t?
Michelle Butler 32:39
The thing that’s awesome about this is…there’s so many things that are awesome about this, but one of them is that Charlemagne, of course, becomes this figure of legend. He’s one of the nine worthies. All throughout the Middle Ages, he becomes this figure of legend that the rest of the Middle Ages are looking back to. Christopher Lee is a figure of legend. It makes complete sense to me that he looks at Charlemagne and says, ‘that’s somebody I need to sing about.’ Christopher Lee–there are people who say maybe he didn’t do some of the things that he claims he did in the second world war–but he was in the military. He supposedly was a spy and an assassin. Again, again, he is the source for that. It’s his autobiography that says that. But there are fascinating stories about him. For example, from the filming of The Lord of the Rings, where Peter Jackson says to him–they’re talking about how Saruman’s death is gonna play out–and Peter Jackson says to him, ‘Now imagine the sound a man might make when you stab him in the back.’ Christopher Lee just says, ‘I don’t have to imagine that but go on.’
Anne Brannen 32:45
[laughter]
Michelle Butler 33:10
So he himself is this amazing figure of legend. He’s the oldest person to ever release a heavy metal album. He was 91 when that second one came out. No, sorry, the second Charlemagne one. He has three other ones. He’s holds the record for the oldest person to ever release a heavy metal album. He holds the record as the oldest person to ever narrate a video game because he was asked to narrate for Saruman in one of the Lord of the Rings games. He’s such an overwhelming and awesome figure that I’m delighted to get to talk a little bit about Christopher Lee’s larger than life-ness. Because it is absolutely in the same ballpark as Charlemagne’s larger than life-ness. When I first saw it, it made my brain explode because it didn’t make any sense. The more that I stared at it, it made lots of sense that Christopher Lee would say to himself, ‘you know what? I gotta go back 1000 years to find somebody who’s as good as me.’ He was Ian Fleming’s step cousin and Ian Fleming claimed later that the war exploits that his dear cousin Christopher told him about were the inspiration for James Bond.
Anne Brannen 35:22
I had not heard that.
Michelle Butler 35:23
Now, do I believe this? I have no idea. Because both of them are really good at self aggrandizement. But it’s a great story.
Anne Brannen 35:31
It’s a good story. I always love your rabbit holes. I never know what they’re going to be. I thought for sure that you were going to go down the Nazi plays about Charlemagne rabbit hole. I was surprised when I discovered that no, you were in the heavy metal rabbit hole.
Michelle Butler 35:47
I’m over here with Christopher Lee and his making up his own personal legend, possibly, but he’s a hoot. He has such a great movie career. He was buddies with Peter Cushman. He did about 20 films with Peter Cushman. No, that’s not his name. Peter Cushing.
Anne Brannen 36:05
So the songs that are in sympathy with Charlemagne concerning the massacre. Why is it that it’s good to massacre the Saxons? According to Christopher Lee’s heavy metal album?
Michelle Butler 36:15
I’m going to pull the lyrics up here so that we can talk about that. I didn’t have problems finding this before but I’m going to…here it is. “Does a man have to fight all his life–” Actually, when I’m reading it, I’m not going to do it justice. The music is actually pretty good. “Does a man have to fight all his life only in death to take flight to the skies? Warmongers vie to take my throne. No respect is ever shown.” So the lyrics to the Massacre of the Saxons posit Charlemagne is absolutely the hero. He’s defending against borderlands raids. “They come in their hordes, ransacking villages, taking the spoils with nothing to lose and possessions few. Bold, sturdy, fearless and cruel.” It’s a defensive move.
Anne Brannen 37:08
Yes. Okay, got it. Got it. And also I heard in the first part that you read that they’re disrespectful.
Michelle Butler 37:17
They’re disrespectful. He is in charge and they wouldn’t renounce their heathen ways.
Anne Brannen 37:23
Yeah. I mean, there you go.
Michelle Butler 37:25
Christopher Lee is a hoot. He has a whole different album of heavy metal Christmas songs.
Anne Brannen 37:31
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Okay. Wait, no, no, no, I can’t. Okay, I got into my brain the part about Christopher Lee having heavy metal songs concerning Charlemagne. But I don’t think I can jump to heavy metal Christmas. I don’t think I can.
Michelle Butler 37:50
What if I told you that one of the songs was called “Jingle Hells?”
Anne Brannen 37:55
Okay, well, that I could see might be a heavy metal song.
Michelle Butler 37:58
So you l understand how I got stuck in this rabbit hole because my brain…I kept running into things and my brain kept exploding.
Anne Brannen 38:06
So are all the songs… the songs on the Christmas album are not, you know, ‘Have a Holly Jolly Christmas.’ They’re not your usual Christmas songs, right? They’re rewritings of the Christmas songs? Or reimaginings?
Michelle Butler 38:18
Exactly. As heavy metal. Oh, man. It’s wild. He was working with one of the lead guitarists on Judas Priest.
Anne Brannen 38:29
I didn’t know that. What was he doing?
Michelle Butler 38:34
Richie Faulkner is one of the people he was working with on this Charlamagne album. Richie Faulkner is one of the lead guitarists for Judas Priest. They apparently had a little love fest when they met because Christopher Lee said to him, ‘I love what you guys are doing’ and Richie Faulkner said to him, ‘You started it. We all grew up watching Dracula, and that’s really metal.’
Anne Brannen 39:01
So then you have the lovely circle of it. Okay, okay. Okay. I figured Dracula was gonna come back in here.
Michelle Butler 39:08
I didn’t expect to be talking about death metal today but here we are.
Anne Brannen 39:12
No, no, no, no. Although, I don’t know. Going from the horrible massacre to death metal…mmmm…I can see it.
Michelle Butler 39:22
It’s pretty metal. I was not expecting to have my piece of this be about Christopher Lee and his death metal but I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised that Charlemagne makes his way back around to pop culture because he really really really is such a figure of pop culture in the Middle Ages. He has this life and his own kind of personal legend- making of himself, with getting himself crowned as the Holy Roman Emperor and stuff.
Anne Brannen 39:59
Right.
Michelle Butler 39:59
But then what happens afterwards is he becomes this prototypical model king that everybody’s trying to be. He has such an important afterlife in the medieval imagination. He’s living in the eighth century, so that by the 14th century, that’s hundreds of years later, he’s a figure of legend. Just because we call this–I’m sorry, I found one of my soapboxes–just because we call this all one period, it isn’t. It’s 1000 years. 500 years have passed. He’s, you know, he’s further away than George Washington is.
Anne Brannen 40:35
Oh, my. Okay, so we recap. Charlemagne. There’s lots to admire about Charlemagne. He has inspired many, many works of art, including Christopher Lee’s heavy metal albums.
Michelle Butler 40:51
Two. There’s two!
Anne Brannen 40:54
That we’re glad to know about. He is connected to Dracula in interesting sorts of ways and was great at saving books and literacy and was a very devout Christian.
Michelle Butler 41:08
And it is true we have him to thank for Times New Roman, even though it sounds like people are just making that up.
Anne Brannen 41:16
Nope. He gave us Times New Roman, and all those nice things. And he massacred the Saxons and when he conquered people, when he conquered Europe and made it Christian, he did so by the sword. That was who he was. We just want to have this all, you know, a rounded view of Charlemagne and his connections to Dracula. And so that’s us.
Michelle Butler 41:42
I wasn’t expecting Dracula to come up in this.
Anne Brannen 41:45
I don’t know. Why not. Why not?
Michelle Butler 41:50
I mean, I didn’t dig into any of the movies. I’m sure there’s tons of movies about Charlemagne. But again, I did the Google thing about Charlemagne and this metal album came up and that was the end. I was like, what?
Anne Brannen 42:05
And that was it? What was it? Yeah, yeah.
Michelle Butler 42:07
‘I guess I know what I’m doing. Because that’s too good to just leave by the side of the road.’ It’s weird when pieces of my life come together like this, because I had this whole other existence as somebody who taught Tolkien.
Anne Brannen 42:21
Right.
Michelle Butler 42:21
So I wasn’t expecting that to show up here. But here we go.
Anne Brannen 42:26
Yeah, there it is. All connected. The next time we see…the next time you hear from us, we are still going to be in the early Middle Ages, although 100 years later than this. We’ll be in Italy, 897. Because Pope Stephen got murdered. That was not nice.
Michelle Butler 42:41
Oh my. I don’t know anything about this. I mean, I know I say that. I do know some things. But I know I always do say that. But I really actually don’t know anything about this.
Anne Brannen 42:52
I can’t wait to find out what your rabbit hole is because, you know.
Michelle Butler 42:55
Could be Christopher Lee again, who knows? He appears to have a hand in everything. He says he saw the last execution by guillotine in France.
Anne Brannen 43:07
Well, he might well have done. I mean, wasn’t it in the 50s?
Michelle Butler 43:11
1970s. l
Anne Brannen 43:12
1970s. It was that late.
Michelle Butler 43:14
His autobiography is a hoot of near misses. He’s like the Forrest Gump of the 20th century. The real one.
Anne Brannen 43:23
Well, maybe he maybe he has opinions about Pope Stephen getting murdered. We’ll have them are any rate. This has been True Crime Medieval, where the crimes are just like they are today only with less technology. You can find us on Spotify and Stitcher and Apple podcast and many places where the podcasts are hanging out, we are there also. You can reach us at True Crime Medieval.com, Truecrimemedieval is all one word. There you can find links to the podcast, the show notes which are done by Michelle, and the transcriptions which are done by Laurie Dietrich, and the little blurbs and pictures which are provided by me. You can leave comments and you can leave reviews over at podcast places and we’d love to hear from you. If you’ve got any medieval crimes that you think we should know about, let us know and we’ll take them under advisement. So that’s us. No matter how good you are, don’t go massacre people. That’s what we have to say.
Michelle Butler 44:30
Not even if you invent a new font. I’m just saying. It only goes so far.
Anne Brannen 44:37
Bye.
Okay, so I’m starting this and you say some things now too. Would you say a bunch of stuff.
Michelle Butler 44:59
All righty. So this morning my backyard was like a petting zoo. I got back from the vet. I was taking Gray Tail to the vet. I was supposed to be taking Gray Tail and Thunder but Thunder hid under Alex’s bed and wouldn’t come out. So I had to take Gray Tail to the vet and I come home. In my backyard there are three deer under the playhouse and one baby fox chilling in the sun eyeing up my chicken coop.
Anne Brannen 45:34
But so far everybody’s alive?
Michelle Butler 45:36
My chickens are so dumb. I walk out. They’re like, wuh? I’m like, you can’t do this, you know, go away. You need to go chill somewhere else, baby fox, and my chickens are all, ‘wut? what was the problem?’
Anne Brannen 45:49
He was our friend. He’s our best friend.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
49. Edward I Steals the Stone of Scone, Scone, Scotland 1296
Anne (00:09):
Hello and welcome to True Crime Medieval, 1000 years of people behaving badly. I’m Anne Brannen and I’m your host in Albuquerque.
Michelle (00:37):
I’m Michelle Butler in Maryland, the most medieval state in America.
Anne (00:41):
You may have noticed that our recording did not show up at the usual time. And that is because we had technological difficulties, which involved one of us having a new computer and not realizing that the factory had set the recording volume at 33%, which really isn’t enough to actually make any noise. And so it took us a while to figure that out. Okay. It was me, it was my computer. It took me a while to figure it out. It was me. Michelle had nothing to do with it. It was all my fault.
Michelle (01:16):
No, the previous technical difficulties were my fault with having my microphone set up wrong. But this time I’m innocent.
New Speaker (01:22):
No, she’s totally innocent.
Michelle (01:23):
It’s a weird choice for the factory setting to be so super low.
Anne (01:31):
Yeah. And I didn’t know it. I didn’t realize it until I tried to do the sound editing and discovered that I was in many places completely inaudible, which wasn’t actually good, really? That couldn’t be fixed. It wasn’t one of those things, because if you made it louder, if you, if you upped the, if you up the volume at all, [Charlie Brown distorted adult voice noises] I got very distorted. It was not good. So any rate we’re back. Hi. And today we are discussing that time a while back when Edward I stole the Stone of Scone. And so this is in Scone in Scotland in 1296. That’s what we’re talking about today. And we have, we have really enjoyed learning about this. I was looking forward to it immensely.
Michelle (02:20):
Oh, yeah. Oh, man. This was great. This was great. I had such a great time doing the research for this.
Anne (02:29):
I did too. And yeah, I did too. And so, our background. We’ll start with our background. Edward I of England who had become king in 1274 was really, really, really good at conquering and subjugating his neighbors.
Michelle (02:44):
Oh man. It’s like, it’s a super power. He’s super good at this.
Anne (02:49):
He is. Yeah, unfortunately. Yeah, it doesn’t make us happy, but there you are. He had conquered Wales in 1283 and built Norman castles all over it. And after that Scotland, which had been having a succession crisis and we talked in great detail about this in our podcast about Robert the Bruce killing John Comyn at the high altar. Scotland had been having a succession crisis and he had gotten involved in that and in brief the succession crisis, which is called the Great Cause. I think that’s a hilarious name for a succession crisis but…
Michelle (03:25):
I know! I ran across that term. What the heck is that? I thought maybe…I thought maybe it was independence. No, no,
Anne (03:36):
No, no, no. Cause that would make sense to me. The great cause would be independence, but no, no. It was trying to figure out who was going to be king. There were 13 claimants to the throne of Scotland and all, at the time of the succession crisis and the guardians of Scotland had asked King Edward to arbitrate, which he did, but as a condition, he required feudal allegiance from Scotland. And then he gave the crown to John Balliol, all who was weak. And then he took, um, he took over Scottish rulings and he ordered the Scottish king to come to the English court to be subject to English law, Balliol renounced his feudal homage in March, 1296. And so England invaded Scotland. You might suspect as I do, that Edward had actually engineered all of this just so as to have a reason for invading. The war would last in different stages until the 1st of May, 1328, when Edward the Third would sign the Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton, which recognized the independence of Scotland and Robert, the Bruce was key. Things would fall apart and Edward the Third would invade and start the second war of Scottish independence in 1333, which was going to last till 1357, but spoiler for history: eventually James the Sixth of Scotland, whose was the son of Mary Queen of Scots, inherited the English throne. And so the personal union of the two countries existed at that time. And it would become a political union in 1707. Campaigns to leave the union and be independent, Scottish independence, started in 1853 and that kept going on until today. And actually that’s going to matter. It’s not just looking into the future, it’s going to matter to the Stone of Scone discussion, but at the moment, right now where we are, the pro-independence party has won a majority of votes in the Scottish parliament. But they’ve said that they’re not, there’s not going to be a referendum until we’re out of the whole COVID pandemic.
Michelle (05:53):
And Brexit really changed the politics of that because in the last referendum, it just squeaked past to stay with England. But, but I suspect that that might go differently. Now, now that England has left.
Anne (06:13):
Yeah. Scotland might eventually, might actually vote for independence. Yeah. So, now we’re going to go back to 1296. Okay. Back to 1296. Edward the First invaded on account of Scotland had broken its feudal homage. Oh really? Oh, come on. Anyway. So he had invaded and one of the places that he trashed, you trash places if you’re invading, was Scone, because it was at that time, the seat of royal authority in Scotland. It’s Edinburgh now, but it was Scone then. So it’s where the kings were crowned or made official. There weren’t really coronations at that time, but they were officially made kings. Whilst trashing places and killing people, Edward also acquired what we now call spoils of war. That’s not what they were called then, but that’s what we call them now. And spoils of war generally are, like, prisoners, which in the Middle Ages, you get prisoners and then you can get ransom for them. So that was some money there. Or you might get horses or equipment or various treasures. As for instance, when the Venetian crusaders took the bronze statues of the horses of the horses in Constantinople at the Hippodrome. They took them to St. Mark’s Basilica. That was spoils of war. It was a stupid, bad war and actually a giant crime, but it was spoils of war. Okay. Spoils of war do not generally involve big rocks. Rocks aren’t worth money unless they’re made out of gold or silver, which this isn’t, and they’re very heavy. So they might be moveable goods, but only just, but Edward took the stone, which weighs about, by the way, 335 pounds out of Scone Abbey and dragged it back to Westminster Abbey and put it under the seat of a wooden throne.
Michelle (08:10):
He made that throne specifically.
Anne (08:13):
Yes, he did. He took the Stone of Scone back and he made a chair for it. So, why? What is this 335 pound rock that is worth dragging from Scone to London? The stone was brought to Scone by Kenneth MacAlpin, who was the king of the Picts and what would become Scotland after Vikings had made staying at the Abbey at Iona completely untenable. And so it had been, um, uh, what do you call it? There’s a word for it. Abandoned. So it had been abandoned. He moved the relics to Dunkeld and he took the Stone to Scone. It had gotten to Iona. Well, we don’t really know. We don’t know how it actually had gotten there, but the story is that Jacob had used it as the pillow he was sleeping on when he dreamed of angels and that ladder going up and down to heaven, a very uncomfortable pillow. I don’t want to sleep myself on 335 pound rocks, but whatever. And then it went all around. It went to Egypt and Spain and blah, blah, blah. And it ended up a Tara where Irish kings were crowned and finally got to Scone, but no, this actually didn’t happen. And the reason we know this didn’t happen besides the fact that this is a very fanciful story–it doesn’t really fit with history–is that the sandstone, which the stone is made out of is from around Scone. So no. It was from there. And so maybe MacAlpin did bring a stone from Iona to Scone, but it wasn’t this one. So at any rate, this comes from the area, but it was there at any rate and McAlpin established it. That was in about 8 43. And either the king sat on it when they were getting invested or it was an altar, but there it was. And it was a very important symbol of the sovereignty of Scotland. And that is why Edward stole it. So he took it to Westminster Abbey and he put it in the coronation chair and Robert the Bruce was going to be the next Scottish king crowned, but not on that stone because you know, he was in Scone Abbey but he wasn’t on the stone. And that was in 1306. In 1328. England was supposed to return the Stone to Scone as part of a peace treaty. But the Abbot wouldn’t give it up. It was apparently chained to the floor. And then the Abbot spruced up the gilding on the chair, apparently because it was so exciting that was that they were getting to keep the relic. So it stayed in England. Even though it belonged in Scotland, it had been stolen from Scotland, and England said they were giving it back, England did not. And so English Kings got crowned on it. They’ve been using, they have been using it. Though after James the Sixth…the First…James the Sixth slash the First took over, it was Scottish Kings too. But you know, the English Kings have been, British kings have been getting crowned there. And for a while, they were only just English. Until, until, and now we come into the second part of the stealing of the Stone of Scone. In 1950, four Scottish students, they were from the University of Glasgow. They were part of a group that championed Scottish independence. They drove down to London. They were, um, it’s an 18 hour trip, we were told. And they got into Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey at night. And they took the Stone out from under the chair. It broke into two pieces. I found that quite alarming. But they got the two pieces and the two cars and they got away. And the larger piece was so heavy that the springs on the car sagged badly. So how the hell they were going to get it back if they hadn’t actually broken it? I don’t know. But at any rate, they got it back to Scotland and they had the two pieces. They got the two pieces back to Scotland and they paid a stonemason to put the two pieces back together. He did this with a brass rod, uh, and they took the Stone to Arbroath Abbey, which there, there had been a treaty there. One of the many peace treaties had been there. Cause Scone Abbey was long gone. There wasn’t any Abbey, you couldn’t go back to Scone. You could go to the place, but you can’t go to the Abbey. Although, they’ve set up kind of like a stone there to memorialize where the Stone of Scone was at Scone. And so you can see that the Abbey’s gone. And eventually, it was taken back to Westminster Abbey in February of 1952. So it had about a year of liberation. And by the way, the police knew exactly who had taken the stone, but the students weren’t prosecuted because it would not, it would have been politically problematic to do that. Can you imagine? Scotland was going to go really up in arms if you prosecuted students for stealing things that actually belong to Scotland. Sir Henry Shawcross said in parliament that it was just vulgar vandalism, a show of disregard for the Abbey. So they just weren’t even going to pay attention to it at all. Heh, heh. Yeah, right. But the students were very popular and quite vocal about the whole thing. Ian Hamilton, who’s now a lawyer and a politician wrote a book about it. He’s 95. He’s not dead yet. Gavin Vernon, who is now dead, was an engineer. And on the 50th anniversary of the return of the Stone to Westminster, he went to that ceremony and Westminster led him in for a special visit. The person who who opened the door said, “Welcome back, Mr. Vernon.” I liked that part. Kay Matheson, the only woman in the group–she had been driving one of the cars–became a teacher and a Gaelic scholar. She’s dead as well. And Alan Stuart, who’s also now dead, became a Glasgow businessmen. And now the Stone is back in Scotland. It’s at Perth city hall. Scone was close to Perth and it’s at Perth city hall because in 1996, the British government, in an attempt to be conciliatory because more Scottish referendums were right around the corner, they declared that the Stone would go back to Scotland and it would stay there unless the British people needed it for coronations. So I’m really looking forward to see what happens at the next coronation. Will the Stone of Scone be taken back to Westminster? Because you know what? I bet money, nope. I don’t think it’s going.
Michelle (14:51):
It’s only on loan. They didn’t return it to Scotland. It’s on loan, which I think is a dick move. I’m just going to be honest. If you’re going to go through all this, ‘oh, it’s been 700 years, we feel bad about it, please don’t vote to leave, here’s your rock back, but not really. We still own that.’ It’s the most British thing ever. So English.
Anne (15:24):
I totally agree with all of this. I totally do. But you know, a good thing is, it’s going to be hard to hide though. I mean, I’m reminded of, I won’t name the city, but there’s a city in England where I was doing research and there were these manuscripts that were from there that were supposed to be being held in a different city library altogether. What the city would do is say, ‘we really need the medieval manuscript of the blah, blah, because we’re having a ceremony.’ And so then that would get loaned to them. And then oddly enough, it never went back because they couldn’t find it. It used to be here but now it’s gone. But you see you can do that with manuscripts, but I don’t know if you can do that with a 335 pound rock. I think they’re going to have to be…I think Scotland’s going to have to be just more direct in that and say, ‘No, you may not have the Stone back, which is actually our Stone. Go away.’ Okay.
Michelle (16:32):
It would be so much more politically savvy to have said, ‘Here it is,. Here, it’s back. It’s yours. May we borrow it? IWhen it’s time to crown somebody?”
Anne (16:49):
Yes
Michelle (16:50):
Not, ‘We licked it. It’s ours. We’re taking it back anytime we want.’
Anne (16:54):
I would’ve liked that. That would have been a good move. ‘We’d really love to be able to borrow it. Do you think you could agree to that? We know it’s your Stone, but we’ve gotten so fond of it and it looks really good in the chair.’
Michelle (17:07):
‘We haven’t, we haven’t yet accepted that you’re, like, participants in this union. You’re still the lesser partner.’
Anne (17:17):
‘Yeah. We’re leaving, leaving you, stupid. We’ve taken our rock and leaving. That’s what.’
Michelle (17:27):
I had seen a claim that independence from England is the most commonly celebrated holiday around the globe. And I went to try to find out if that’s true. Fifty-two countries have independence from England as a holiday. And, according to QI–they’re usually right on top of things–roughly every seven days, somewhere around the globe, a country is celebrating independence from England. You know, who needs to learn to stay home and mind their own business? It would be the English.
Anne (18:08):
They definitely need to give the rocks back.
Michelle (18:12):
They did the same thing in Wales. Did you know that? I didn’t know that. Edward the First, when he conquered Wales, stole their regalia as well. And it has disappeared.
Anne (18:26):
Oh yeah. I’m sure it has.
Michelle (18:28):
The Stone still exists. He didn’t grind it down or something. But the Welsh regalia, there was a crown and there was something else and it’s gone. It just disappeared into the Abbey. Never to be seen again.
Anne (18:44):
They’ve melted it down at some point to pay for one of the wars of conquest.
Michelle (18:49):
During that last 10 years of his reign, Edward the First spent a million pounds on war because he had problems in Scotland, of course. He was trying to take over Scotland. You could just stay home and mind your own goddamn business. But no.
Anne (19:11):
They broke their feudal agreement, Michelle, sure you see that is a valid reason to go and slaughter them and steal their rocks. Surely you understand that.
Michelle (19:19):
There was trouble in Wales because anytime Edward isn’t looking directly at them, there’s trouble in Wales. And there’s trouble in Gascony because Philip the Fourth is sneaky. Usually Edward, the First is pretty trickster-y. There’s a few incidents from his life that are very tricky, such as, for example, when, before he was king during the Baron’s War, Simon de Montfort was up in arms, literally against Henry the Third and Edward’s, the prince at that point, army intercepted reinforcements that were coming, headed by Simon de Montfort’s two oldest sons. He captured them and he took the banners and he put them in front of his own army, which allowed him to get closer to Simon de Montfort’s army before they realized that it was a trick.
Anne (20:17):
Yeah, I remember this, yes.
Michelle (20:18):
He’s very sneaky. But anyway, the trickster got tricked by Phillip the Fourth with this Gascony thing, because he got told, ‘okay, we have to act in public like I’m going to take Gascony from you, but really what’s going to happen is I’m going to grant it back to you.’ And of course that part didn’t happen.
Anne (20:41):
It’s like the Stone of Scone. Yeah. We’re going to take it for a while, but…
Michelle (20:48):
So Edward really, really wanted to go kick ass over in Gascony and take his land back. Take this area back that had historically been his, but he’s just bleeding money, trying to prosecute all these wars in all these different places. And he ends up…actually, reading of Edward the First made me a little bit more sympathetic to Edward the Second, because he inherited a mess.
Anne (21:14):
He inherited a mess and it looked then like, you know, his father was so strong and did so many things. Yes, he did. And left a mess for the son who was not the kind of king he was anyway. Yeah. It wasn’t fair.
Michelle (21:31):
I’ve learned some really interesting stuff about Edward the First from this reading. At the time of his death, he was the longest lived English king.
Anne (21:39):
Really? How old was he?
Michelle (21:39):
68.
Anne (21:42):
Well, that is pretty good. Yeah.
Michelle (21:44):
He lived to a ripe old age. Part of what caused his death was how mad he was at Robert the Bruce. He had a stroke or something. He was so angry. When he found out that Robert the Bruce had rebelled, his health starts into this precipitous decline. He’s actually trying to raise an army and get up there. And he eventually just dies by the side of the road, he’s so angry about it.
Anne (22:15):
Yeah, he was never really able to make the Scots behave.
Michelle (22:21):
I learned that he was the most widely traveled English Monarch until the modern age.
Anne (22:27):
Whoa.
Michelle (22:29):
He had been everywhere. He’d been to Wales and Scotland and France and Sicily. And he was on crusade. He nearly got assassinated while he was on crusade. Yeah. He’s an interesting dude. I enjoyed reading about him. That doesn’t necessarily mean I’m more sympathetic to him, but I did find it very interesting to read about him.
Anne (22:55):
I find him interesting. But I do not like him. Hammer of the Scots and Curse of Wales.
Michelle (23:01):
He flat-up robbed the Templar headquarters in London, which I actually want to circle back to at some point as a separate crime.
Anne (23:09):
Oh, okay. Cause we’ve covered the Templars, but we can talk about that particular piece of it because we were focusing on the fact they all got slaughtered in France. Yeah.
Michelle (23:19):
He broke in and robbed them in order to finance their resistance to Simon de Montfort.
Anne (23:29):
Good Lord. Well, what else did you find out? Cause you were telling me you found out many lovely things.
Michelle (23:36):
I did! I learned so much. It was great. I very much enjoyed reading about Edward.
Anne (23:44):
Let’s not forget that the whole point we’re here today is that he stole the Stone.
Michelle (23:48):
I know! I’m not going to say that he has his good parts. He’s very competent. He’s a very competent king who follows an incompetent one. Henry the Third is so bad at his job that the barons take over and make him a puppet and say, ‘you know, you can’t do anything without us approving it.’ And we end up in a civil war, which, you know, if you’ve been paying attention, it’s the second civil war in two generations. Because before the generation, before this, it was Stephen and Matilda. Henry the Third, this just wasn’t his jam. He wasn’t interested in tournaments. He would go and fight wars, but kind of half-heartedly. And so people were mad at him because he…it would be different if he had all the taxes and then won, but he had all the taxes and keep losing. The lesson Edward took was if you fight, you better win. And generally speaking, there’s only one battle that he was in, that he lost. And it was his first one, the battle of Lewes.
Anne (25:00):
Huh. So he got really good at battles, real quick.
Michelle (25:02):
Oh yeah. He figured out real quickly that if the throne was going to survive, it was up to him because Henry the Third was really bad. I’m not saying he was a bad person. He, you know, appears to have been a lovely person and very devout, but not so great at what a medieval Monarch needs to be. Whereas Edward was very good at what the job demanded, which was often to be quite a bad person. He was devoted to his wife. That is one thing we can say.
Anne (25:35):
Right! So it’s one of the royal connections, one of the royal marriages that actually seems to have been good.
Michelle (25:44):
They had at least 16 pregnancies, which implies they liked each other fairly well. And to the best of my knowledge, Edward does not have illegitimate children.
Anne (25:55):
Which is very unusual.
Michelle (25:58):
Yeah. They have a lot of children together, but they lose a lot of children. Edward the Second is not their oldest son. He’s not even their second son. He’s the third or possibly the fourth of their sons. He’s young when Eleanor of Castile finally gives it up, you know, after all those pregnancies and dies. But yes, it was very bad of him to steal the Stone.
Anne (26:23):
He did a lot of bad things.
Michelle (26:29):
It’s one of those things that I really think it’s important because it sounds so obscure, right? The king of England in 1293 made off with this block of sandstone that the Scots had used for hundreds of years to crown their kings. And it supposedly makes a noise when the right king sits on it.
Anne (26:51):
Oh, I didn’t know that part. What noise?
Michelle (26:53):
It’s supposedly is, I don’t know, like a whoopee cushion or something where it groans if the right king sits on it–grrrwwwww–which would be hysterical if it actually happened.
Anne (27:06):
I wonder if it doesn’t anymore, now that there’s that brass rod through it. It maybe broke its sound box.
Michelle (27:13):
So this is one of the things that’s so great about medieval history, right? You would think that this would matter to exactly nobody, but it turns out it matters to everybody. It mattered that they stole it and it mattered that they kept it. And it mattered enough that in 1950, four Scottish nationalists decided to steal it back. Because number one, they had just seen Ireland get their independence. Hey, why not us? And two, the kind of cultural genocide against Scotland and Ireland was proceeding apace. After 1707, Scotland was often not called ‘Scotland’ officially. It was called ‘North Britain.’
Anne (27:58):
Oh no. No.
Michelle (28:01):
Yeah. Yes. I thought that that part was made up, but that’s real. I looked it up.
Anne (28:08):
Um, no. No, I didn’t know that. And I’m appalled. Was Ireland Far West Britain and Wales was West Britain? There’s that remark in James Joyce’s The Dead that Gabriel’s in west Britain.
Michelle (28:25):
Oh, maybe, maybe. I don’t know. I didn’t look that up. Maybe Ireland was called West Britain.
Anne (28:32):
I don’t know whether that is true in general or whether it’s just Joyce’s joke. I don’t know.
Michelle (28:37):
So I have a little bit more about about the theft in 1950. I did not know this. You probably knew this going in, but I had never heard of this. And I enjoyed every moment of learning about this. Ian Hamilton is a firecracker.
Anne (28:59):
That the one who’s still alive, right? As of this recording. Yes.
Michelle (29:04):
He becomes a QC. Which I think is a prosecutor. And when he is sworn to the bar in 1954, there is a whole kerfuffle because he doesn’t want to swear allegiance to Queen Elizabeth the Second, because Scotland does not have an Elizabeth the Second, she’s an Elizabeth the First.
Anne (29:32):
He didn’t actually win.
Michelle (29:35):
No, he got told that, you know, for heaven sakes, just swear the oath and monarchs are allowed to number themselves as they wish. He wrote a book, not terribly long after the theft, 1952, maybe 1953, called Stone of Destiny, where he lays out, this is what we did. And then it was reissued with some editing and a new introduction in 2008, when a movie was released based on it.
Anne (30:11):
Have you seen this movie?
Michelle (30:13):
I have seen this movie.
Anne (30:15):
Oo, oo, oo!
Michelle (30:17):
I am here to tell you that if you want to spend a wee little bit of time being Scottish and enjoying their bid for independence, this is the place to go and not Braveheart. For one thing, a much higher percentage of what happens in the movie is true.
Anne (30:35):
Yay! Well, so that’s really a low bar when we’re talking about Braveheart, frankly. But still.
Michelle (30:41):
It is a delightful mix of a farce and a heist movie.
Anne (30:48):
Oh, I’m so going and finding this.
Michelle (30:50):
So many things go wrong during the course of their theft. Right? So, the original plan is that Ian Hamilton is supposed to sneak into one of the chapels that is under construction and hide there under a tarp. Only he gets discovered by the night watchman and the night watchman thinks he’s a homeless person who has tried to find a place to stay where it’s basically warm and tosses him out.
Anne (31:20):
Okay. Um, because it really wouldn’t have occurred to the night watchman that he was there to steal the Stone of Scone.
Michelle (31:27):
Right. So then they have to actually kind of come in through one of the doors, which they come in through the only door that’s made out of pine, because it had had to be replaced after the war. The rest of them are all oak and they figured, that’s the engineers, the two engineers in the group, Alan and Gavin , figure out this is the only way we’re getting in. You’re not, you’re not breaking through oak. So they come in, they come in through there, they break the stone, right. So it’s just a farce. And then–
Anne (31:54):
They broke the Stone by dropping it, when they took it out of the chair, is that what happened?
Michelle (31:58):
No, what happened was, it has handles on each end and when they tried to move it, the handle and part of the Stone on one end cracked right off.
Anne (32:09):
Oh. Well, it is a very old rock to be sure.
Michelle (32:15):
So then he drops the…they’re using Ian’s coat to slide it across the stones of Westminster Abbey and his car keys fall out. And he has to come back later and all he’s got are matches. He’s forgotten the flashlight. He has a book of matches. He’s lighting one by one to try to find his car keys. You watch the movie…I watched the movie before I read his book, and I went back to read the book, thinking, surely some of this stuff got added. Pretty much not! At the end when they go in two different directions and they hide because now they’ve broken the Stone in two pieces. So they send Kay off in one car with one piece of it. And Ian and Alan go off in the other car. They leave Gavin to take the train home because they figured the car can’t handle one more person, plus three quarters of the Stone.
Anne (33:14):
Right.
Michelle (33:14):
So they go off to hide it and they pick a random field and hide it. And when they come back for it…Alan’s father is concerned. Alan’s father is a stone mason, and he is concerned that after having been inside for 600 years, that that sandstone may not do so well with the dead of winter. So he makes them go back and collect it fairly quickly. And when they do, there’s a gypsy encampment right on top of where they hid it. So they have to basically talk to the gypsies and say, Hey, can we…
Anne (33:52):
Excuse us? Can we have this rock?
Michelle (33:54):
And they say, wait until this guy, this one guy leaves because he’s an outsider. He’s from the town. He’ll rat you out. But once he leaves, they help him. They help them get it in the car.
Anne (34:05):
Of course they do. Yay, the Romani.
Michelle (34:11):
According to Ian and his book, he talks about how one of the guys who’s with him, um, gives this whole speech to the gypsies about how ‘we really value freedom. And you value freedom. The English have been bad to you. They’ve been bad to us. We’ve done this thing that’s illegal, but not immoral…can you help us?’ And the gypsies are like, ‘yeah, we’re good with that. We hate them too.’ And you think this has to be made up.
Anne (34:43):
But no.
Michelle (34:44):
By and large, it’s not. It’s such a farce. It’s such a farce and it makes it delightful movie. You have to get past the fact that Daredevil, Rumpelstiltskin and Peregrine Took are plotting to steal back the Stone of Destiny because that’s the actors.
Anne (35:06):
Ah!
Michelle (35:11):
Charlie Cox is Ian Hamilton. I was already a big Charlie Cox fan. I am an even bigger Charlie Cox fan now.
Anne (35:18):
So we have to forget that we know the actors from elsewhere.
Michelle (35:23):
Uh-huh. Because otherwise it gets really weird, really fast.
Anne (35:27):
I guess it would.
Michelle (35:27):
Why does Daredevil want the Stone of Destiny? Why is Pippin helping him? It actually a really fun movie. I mean, it’s not a life changing movie, but it’s a lot of fun and it definitely is much more of a, you know, better film to have your solidarity…if you want to have your solidarity with Scotland, go here.
Anne (35:51):
All right.
Michelle (35:52):
Much better. By the way, the influence on Scottish national identity of this is enormous. Nobody rats them out.
Anne (36:02):
No. Nobody ratted them out.
Michelle (36:04):
Nobody rats them out. They’re all, everybody is celebrating this. They’re not prosecuted because the English are concerned that they will literally have riots in the streets.
Anne (36:13):
Right. Because the Scots are so happy with them.
Michelle (36:15):
And now the song that is played at Scottish sporting events is “Flower of Scotland.” It has emerged—it was written in 1967–it has emerged as an unofficial national anthem. And it is all about driving Edward the First out of Scotland. Isn’t that wild? So, I mean, this is the great thing about history. All these things that seem completely obscure, matter. This, this, this matters right now to how Scotland thinks about itself.
Anne (36:51):
Yeah. It really matters that English Kings were crowned on this symbol of Scottish sovereignty for hundreds of years.
Michelle (37:02):
Yeah, it really, really does. I I’m happy to report that Ian Hamilton’s book is well worth reading. For one thing, he’s quite a good writer.
Anne (37:14):
Oh, he had an interesting life. Did you find anything out about Kay? I’m interested, you know, in the one woman who’s part of this whole heist.
Michelle (37:23):
I found her obituary. It was–I found her obituary and Alan’s obituary and Gavin’s obituary. That was kind of sad. I was like, are any of them still alive? And I finally found Ian Hamilton, who’s still alive. He was in the movie, by the way. He has a cameo.
Anne (37:42):
What is he doing?
Michelle (37:44):
He is an English shopkeeper.
Anne (37:53):
Hahaha!
Michelle (37:53):
He’s on Twitter! He tweets!
Anne (37:57):
I definitely going to find him.
Michelle (37:59):
He’s a hoot and a half. I had to look up so many words in his book because he keeps throwing just random Scots words in there.
Anne (38:08):
Well, they’re not really random
Michelle (38:10):
For me, for me. I had never heard of things like kenspeckle, which apparently means ‘to be noticeable,’
Anne (38:21):
That makes sense. Stand
Michelle (38:22):
Or ‘stand out.’ Kenspeckle. And so I learned some new words. Yes, yes. I was very happy to discover the bookend theft to 1296.
Anne (38:35):
I like it, that it got stolen back and I like it that it’s been given back, although only like really lent though, as I say, I don’t believe it’s ever going back to Westminster. I think that’s over,
Michelle (38:49):
You know, I don’t know. Because the English monarchy is on such thin ice anyway, how do they try to be pushy about this? I mean, this is one of the things that happened to them when the theft happened. They hadn’t learned–they learned a wee a little bit, you know, after shooting everybody in Ireland led to a national revolt and then independence. So they learned a tiny bit, nobody went to jail, but they completely…they’re still really angry about it. And they closed the border between England and Scotland for the first time in 400 years to check all…after the theft in 1950, they closed the border to check all the cars going back over to Scotland.
Anne (39:33):
Yeah. And this was after there had already been a treaty that they would give the Stone back. Yeah. There is an awful lot of political emotion that is invested in that Stone.
Michelle (39:50):
Wikipedia does not call this a theft, by the way. It calls it a ‘removal’, just in case you wondering where their sympathies were.
Anne (40:01):
I like that. Although I myself think of it as a liberation, but I go further than Wikipedia did. Yeah. It got liberated. The Stone of Scone got liberated.
Michelle (40:11):
One of my favorite pieces of Ian Hamilton’s book is when they were trying to figure out how heavy the Stone was going to be. He goes to John McCormick, who–this is one of the changes in the updated version of the book. He could not name John McCormick in 1954 because John McCormick was the head of the Scottish independence movement. And so it couldn’t, it could not come out that he had helped with this.
Anne (40:35):
Right. No.
Michelle (40:37):
So he goes to him and says, okay, we’ve got this plan, but you never going to believe this, but I have done all this reading about the Stone and nowhere does it say what it actually weighs. He, says, I can help you. And he takes him to a stone mason who has a replica of the Stone because the previous generation’s bunch of Scottish nationalists, of which John McCormick was one of them, had concocted a plan to steal it back and swap it with that replica.
Anne (41:13):
Oh, that would have been brilliant.
Michelle (41:15):
And they had made that replica. They had this whole plan that was awesome. They had a plan for a daring daylight raid that was gonna involve an oversized wheelchair and a space under it for for the Stone. And they were going to swap it for the Stone and put the replica in its place. And England would be none the wiser. They got defeated, like the Daleks, by stairs.
Anne (41:41):
Yeah. There’s stairs.
Michelle (41:44):
There are stairs going up to where the coronation chair is.
Anne (41:49):
So you can slide the Stone down the stairs on your coat, but you can’t take it. And it was the fifties. So there wasn’t like it wasn’t…it hadn’t been all fitted up so that you could take wheelchairs up there.
Michelle (42:01):
Yeah. And that plan was was from the twenties or thirties because it’s the prior generation. But yeah, they had a replica there for them to practice with.
Anne (42:11):
I didn’t know that, but you know, if you were going to swap it out and so then you have the real Stone of Scone and you’ve gone on back to Scotland, you have to tell people. It isn’t like England was never going to find out because at some point you go, yay. Look what we have here. Party down, party down. Celebration! Here is our Stone of Scone back where it belongs. And at that point, England was going to find out what you’ve done.
Michelle (42:36):
Right. And Ian Hamilton talks about this in his book that they realized fairly quickly after the theft that they were going to have to return it because people were getting really anxious. The Scottish people were getting anxious, not knowing where it was and it was turning popular opinion against them. So that was why they took it back to the ruins of Arbroath Abbey and phoned in that it was there. And they figured that that was a test for England. Were they gonna haul it right back to Westminster Abbey, or were they gonna maybe take the hint and leave it? And of course what they did was they bundled it right back to Westminster Abbey right away, because they can’t…they have no humor about themselves, I guess.
Anne (43:25):
Yes. I don’t know. They have very good humor, but not about the Stone of Scone. Well, it was spoils of war. And see, that’s the thing about spoils of war. Spoils of war are things you take by force and they are yours rightfully because you were bigger at that moment. You know? So that’s the thing about spoils of war. You don’t generally get them back.
Michelle (43:44):
But he didn’t ultimately…it’s funny because he took it, but ultimately this conquest was unsuccessful.
Anne (43:51):
Yup
Michelle (43:51):
Edward was not able to make it stick.
Anne (43:55):
Nope
Michelle (43:55):
Partially because…he was pretty old at that point. 10 years earlier, he might have been able to pull it off, but Edward was in his sixties by that point.
Anne (44:04):
Well, this was the first war of Scottish independence, and there’s going to be a second war of Scottish independence. And then Scotland is going to be independent until the thrones get allied because of James. And then of course in the 18th century, there’s the political union.
Michelle (44:19):
This is an interesting crime, right? Because this is another one of those, the people at the time…well, partially it depends on your perspective. The English would not have seen it as a crime and continue to do. But as you say, spoil of war, that was fairly common to take something.
Anne (44:43):
But it’s so interesting because, you know, taking regalia from Wales that is normal. I will take your crown and your gold and your sceptre and a bunch of cows. But to take that giant rock, because it’s a symbol…that was…I don’t like it, but I can see how clever it was because it was an absolute symbol. That Scotland was to be subjugated.
Michelle (45:11):
So I don’t really have too much else about this. I enjoyed it an awful lot. I enjoyed reading about Edward the First, who I guess had always been in the background for me for Edward the Second, but I hadn’t really had a chance to look at him directly.
Anne (45:27):
And I know him, so…I know him because of Scotland, but mostly because of Wales. And so, so the Stone of Scone is back in Perth, at least close to where it was and Scotland has it back and we’ll see what happens. We’ll see what happens at the next coronation. And we’ll also see what happens at the next referendum after the plague is over.
Michelle (45:53):
Yeah. It barely failed last time. So it may pass this time.
Anne (46:00):
Oh yeah. It was so disappointing. Well, the next time we meet…so that’s our discussion of the Stone of Scone. We are, we’re glad it’s back in Scotland. And we think it was, we are of the opinion, that it was a crime to take it out. That’s what we think. That’s our discussion. And the next time that you hear from us, we will be, we’ll be way far away, different time. We’ll be in 782 in Saxony because Charlemagne massacred the Saxons. And so we’re going to talk about that.
Michelle (46:32):
Oh! Okay.
Anne (46:32):
Yeah. Every once in a while we have to go back back, back in time, back in time, I tell you.
Michelle (46:38):
I don’t know anything about this. So this will…
Anne (46:41):
It’ll give us a chance to talk about Charlemagne and, you know, make fun of the Frankish system of giving the kingdom to all kinds of children instead of trying to keep it together. So that’s what we’ll do. Yeah. Well, this has been True Crime Medieval, where the crimes are just like they are today only with less technology. Although….yeah…with less technology, because Edward the First did not have cars. They were, you know…
Michelle (47:09):
But those were…the cars they were working with. This is actually a really interesting piece.
Michelle (47:15):
One of them…they had two, one of them is only an eight horsepower car. So this is why it took them 18 hours, and it wasn’t the safest thing to be doing in the dead of winter. One of the cars doesn’t have antifreeze. So they have to…there’s one time where they have to sleep in their car after he gets booted out the first night and they have to wait until the next night to take another shot at it. They have to sleep in their cars and they’re having to wake up every two hours to start that car and drive it around a little bit so that it doesn’t freeze solid and break the head gasket. There’s no heater in the car. They’re freezing on the drive. It’s winter. And it’s a particularly cold December. They plan this for Christmas day because they figure everybody is going to be so sloshed they won’t be paying attention.
Anne (48:06):
Right. Well, and so this is simply, uh, this is a function of having university students stealing…these are kinds of cars that you have when you’re a student, you know?
Michelle (48:18):
Yeah. They’re not even theirs. One of them is rented. And the other one…the whole reason Alan is allowed to go as he has access to a car. Yeah, definitely. It’s definitely a shoestring operation.
Anne (48:31):
Well, in this case, we had two crimes. The crimes were just the same, except one had, like…one had car transportation? The other …probably Edward had an easier time getting that thing back since he’s working with carts and horses. We can be found on Spotify and Stitcher and Apple Podcasts and all the places where the podcasts are hanging out. You can reach us and find links to the podcast and links to the show notes and the transcriptions at true crime,medieval.com, true crime medieval is all one word. Michelle does the show notes, and Laurie Dietrich does the transcriptions. And I’m the one that does, like, the picture and the little blurb explaining what we’re doing. That’s what we’re all doing. Yeah. Leave comments, uh, and leave reviews. We’d love to hear from you. And if you have crimes, medieval crimes, that you think we should pay attention to, please let us know. Uh, we’ll take them under consideration. And we’re always looking for medieval crimes. Cause it was 1000 years. There’s always something we’re missing.
Michelle (49:47):
This was one of those yummy episodes where I walked away with like six things to add to our list.
Anne (49:53):
Oh, good. Good, good, good, good. So we’ll have, so you will add to our list. Excellent. So that’s all for us. Bye!
Michelle (50:01):
Bye!
48. Viking Child Murdered, Dublin, Ireland 9th-10th C.
Anne Brannen 0:24
Hello, and welcome to True Crime Medieval, 1000 years of people behaving badly. I’m Anne Brannen. I’m your host in Albuquerque.
Michelle Butler 0:34
And I’m Michelle Butler in Maryland, the most medieval state in America.
Anne Brannen 0:39
And we’re glad to be back. We had a hiatus of one episode long, because life kind of got in the way. What we have to say, basically, is that it’s good to get vaccinated. But you still can get breakthrough cases of COVID. They’re not fun and somebody has to take care of you. But we’re back. We’re back. Hi, Michelle.
Michelle Butler 1:08
Yay.
Anne Brannen 1:08
There’s no breakthrough cases at your house, right?
Michelle Butler 1:11
Honestly, my kids hardly leave the house. I had to take Mark to the dentist this morning and they had a little questionnaire yesterday, when they called me. ‘Has he been out of the country in the last two weeks?’ I’m like, I’m not sure he’s been out of the house. It’s like 95 here. Those of us that sunburn in seven and a half minutes don’t go outdoors.
Anne Brannen 1:36
Michelle’s actually going to leave Maryland, the most medieval state in the United States, and come to New Mexico in a couple of weeks. So we’re looking forward to that. And it’s okay, because we’ve all tested negative now. Whee! And today for our horrible medieval crime, we are talking about what is probably a crime of someone. They found the skeleton of a Viking child in Dublin during excavations over at Dublin Castle. It’s pretty clear that something very sketchy was going on. Because the body had…there had been a shroud around it, we know because of a brooch that’s there. The child’s about 10 to 12, a boy, and had been thrown into the Black Pool. That’s kind of sketchy. He didn’t just fall in while he was, you know, looking for turtles or something. No, something happened to him. So we’re talking about a probably murdered Viking child in what’s now Dublin, but was at that time, just Dubh-linn. They’re doing construction work on Dublin Castle. Dublin Castle is where there was a tidal pool, the Black Pool, Dubh-linn, Dublin. There was a Black Pool and the Viking settlement had been established there about 840 AD. This child dates from like the 9th or 10th century. So sometime in the first Viking Age, I’m going to get to this, because today, I’m going to do your background, as usual, then Michelle’s taking it to town, because this is Michelle’s topic.
Michelle Butler 3:22
Yeah.
Anne Brannen 3:23
The thing is, both Vikings and the Irish were concerned with burial practices. They didn’t just wrap children in shrouds and throw them in the Black Pool. He wasn’t buried. So something’s gone wrong. Something was wrong. It’s something sketchy. So something was wrong, and he might have been murdered. Some people think he might have died in warfare, because there’s a lot of battles at this time back and forth. More on that later. But as Michelle and I were talking about this beforehand, if he died on the battlefield, he wouldn’t have been wrapped in a shroud and thrown in the Black Pool. He would have been wrapped in a shroud and buried someplace. So we’re thinking probably murder, because the Irish had been attacking Dublin and also the Vikings were fighting with each other. So here’s our background. When the Vikings got to Ireland, there was some small settlement that had been established there already around the seventh century. There was, at that time, the Black Pool, this dark tidal pool. It was at the point where the Poddle River met the Liffey, and that is now the site of the gardens behind Dublin Castle. The Vikings got there at about 841, and there were more than two settlements. Where modern Dublin is, there was the Viking settlement at the tidal pool. There was an Irish settlement, which was up the river a bit at what’s now Church Street where it comes to the river. There had been humans in the area before history, but those were the settlements that would become Dublin. The Black Pool, by the way, got filled in in the 18th century, that’s why it’s not water anymore and is a garden instead. The Vikings had control over the area, though, even despite the Irish settlement. Dublin Castle, which was going to be the center of Anglo Norman power, was built in 1204 on the orders of King John. It was a defensive work. It’s no longer part of British power in Ireland on account of there was a war of independence. So since 1922 it’s been an Irish, not a British, building for important state ceremonies. So that’s what Dublin castle’s doing but the Vikings in Dublin: They started raiding Ireland in 795. These were the Norwegians. There was a podcast where we went into this in great deal…that was the raid on…?
Michelle Butler 6:01
Lindisfarne, probably.
Anne Brannen 6:03
Yes. Our podcast on the raid on Lindisfarne. We go into Viking history, you know, Viking history overall. This is Viking history Ireland. Focusing on down. They established a naval base at the Black Pool. It was a good harbor site. That was their main base. They established other naval bases nearby. At that time, they were bases from which they were raiding. The Irish faught back. They destroyed the Dublin settlement in 849. In 851, another set of Vikings, possibly Danish, defeated the Norwegian Vikings, who were back in Dublin. By the way, the leader of the Swedish Vikings was going to be killed in 856 by Rodri the Great, who is one of the main reasons that the Vikings did not actually get a stronghold in Wales. Yay. I’m in favor of the Vikings in some part but I’m also in favor of Wales. I’m really impressed with them not being in Wales like whoa, that’s kind of very impressive, Mr. Rodri. Throughout the last half of the ninth century–this is when our young boy died–the Vikings were working together. Dublin was their base. They also made alliances sometimes with some of the Irish leaders but there were battles in Ireland, they were battling in Britain, they were battling in Scotland, they were just all over the British Isles. In 902 the Irish took over Dublin and for 15 years it was an Irish settlement. Though non-warrior Norseman were still there. The farmers and the merchants and traders and people that made jewelry and whatnot. They were still hanging out. But that was the end of the first Viking era. 902. However, the Vikings came back in 914 and they refounded Dublin and also Limerick, Cork, Waterford, and Wexford. Dublin was the biggest, though. In 980, the Irish defeated Dublin at the Battle of Tara, and that was the end of the second Viking Age. Going forward a little, what happens after that…Brian Boru would die at Clontarf in 1014, although his forces won. The popular idea is that he defeated the Viking invaders, but that’s not true. It was really a battle between Irish forces, and the Norseman were allied with Leinster, so that’s just not true. The Vikings didn’t just raid. They had made settlements. They’d intermarried. They had an extraordinarily large impact on Ireland. They brought cities, which Ireland had not had. They brought a whole bunch of technology, especially military technology. There was of course, that long boat. They changed the language. They established trade routes, which hadn’t existed. They brought coins, which hadn’t existed. They influenced art a great deal. They brought in rabbits. I was so excited to learn this. They brought in rabbits. Why? Because rabbits breed really quickly. You can bring them on your boats and have a source of meat whilst you’re going around trying to find people to steal things from. Yay, rabbits. Did you know that rabbits had a military use, Michelle? Because I did not.
Michelle Butler 9:30
I knew that rabbits were not native to Ireland. I didn’t know it was the Vikings who brought them.
Anne Brannen 9:35
It’s the Vikings! The Vikings brought rabbits to Ireland. St. Patrick would take the snakes out, but the Vikings brought the rabbits. Okay. Also the other thing they contributed– loads and loads and loads of DNA and that is why my co host Michelle has red hair. Tada!
Michelle Butler 9:57
Me and the other mutants
Anne Brannen 10:00
No, no, I’m in favor of gingers. I fight for them. I’m not one myself, but I fight for them. So that’s the background to our little dead boy. At some time during that–maybe the first Viking era, maybe the second, but some time in there–he apparently got murdered and wrapped in a shroud and thrown in the Black Pool.
Michelle Butler 10:24
Yeah, I was the one who pushed for this topic. I knew it was a little bit of a stretch when I asked for us to consider this because it’s a pretty short story when you just do the bare facts. They found the body. The kid was killed. The end.
Anne Brannen 10:47
It was true. It was a crime. It is true it was the Middle Ages. So that’s fair game.
Michelle Butler 10:56
I wanted to include this for a couple of reasons. It is almost certainly a crime. Somebody murdered this kid and covered it up. We know this because of the evidence of violence on the body, and also that the body was hidden. Those two things put together make it very hard to come up with a scenario in which it’s something other than a violent death. Because an accident you wouldn’t have to cover up like this.
Anne Brannen 11:23
Also, I want to point out that as a covered-up crime, it was quite successful, because we only recently found out about it. You know, more than 1000 years later.
Michelle Butler 11:34
One of the reasons that I wanted to include this topic is that it’s a brand new discovery. The archeological dig that uncovered this is…this body was discovered in September of 2020.
Anne Brannen 11:51
Really?
Michelle Butler 11:52
This is a hot off the press issue.
Anne Brannen 11:54
Very recent.
Michelle Butler 11:56
This is a dig that was happening alongside Dublin Castle during COVID. Some of the best sources I found for information about it was actually on the archeologist’s personal Facebook page where he was posting photos from the dig, which was very, very fascinating. So the reason I wanted that is that because the past is past, sometimes we assume it’s static. But I thought it was important to have this new discovery. We learn new stuff all the time.
Anne Brannen 12:32
Okay.
Michelle Butler 12:33
There have been…in the digs about Viking Dublin, there have been bodies found that show the evidence of violence, but not the evidence of murder in this exact same way. So for example, this same dig found the body of a full grown man who had had his hands and feet chopped off, but they were talking about that as a punishment for certain kinds of insults against the ruler.
Anne Brannen 13:04
Not something you would have to hide.
Michelle Butler 13:07
Yes, because that was somebody who was properly executed. That’s different than, somebody clubbed a kid over the head and then slipped them into the river. This particular dig is also really, really important because it shows that the Viking longfort in in Dublin was twice as large as previously known. They had kind of suspected that because there had been burials found further down the river from the site at Wood Quay, which I’m going to talk about in a couple minutes. But now we know that it ran the entire length of the river. It was twice as large. This is an enormous find.
Anne Brannen 13:43
That is, yeah.
Michelle Butler 13:44
But this evidence of murder within the longfort feels like a really big deal to me. Also, because of the nature of evidence and what survives, our topics tend to focus on rich people. This is not a rich person. This is probably just a regular family. And either their child disappeared and they had no idea what happened. Or something happened within the family and they had to cover it up. But this is not the king son. There’s no evidence at all that some Viking king’s son went missing at this time period. This is an everyday person and I didn’t want to pass up the opportunity to talk about a crime that happened to a middle class person or a working class person. We have so little of that that we can point to. Not that it didn’t happen, just that we don’t have the evidence.
Anne Brannen 14:41
That was one of the reasons that I’ve been so happy that we could talk about our prostitute in Germany, for instance. Because we have real evidence and she was not noble for sure.
Michelle Butler 14:54
This is a problem generally with the past. The people whose stuff survives, the people whose writing survives…the wealthier you are, the more likely your stuff is going to survive. And your stories are going to survive. I think we’ve talked about this before. That this is why so much Arthurian literature survives but you can read all surviving Robin Hood stories in a semester. Everything up to the 20th century, you can read in one semester.
Anne Brannen 15:28
You can’t do all of Arthur in one semester.
Michelle Butler 15:30
Oh, golly, gee, you could barely do 10% of Arthur, if you read till you drop.
Anne Brannen 15:37
Yes. So we get to focus on someone who’s not royalty, a little boy who got murdered and thrown in the Black Pool.
Michelle Butler 15:47
With Richard the third, we saw how you can’t just murder children and get away with it. In some ways, it was easier for whoever murdered this child to get away with it, than Richard, because somebody noticed that those princes were missing.
Anne Brannen 16:02
And as you point out, they were princes, they were not just little boys. But you know, when we were talking about…it’s also a matter of how much is going on. When we were talking about Gilles de Rais, one of the things that was going on was that lots of kids were going missing from the area apparently and so that was noticeable. They were poor, but there was a preponderance of dead missing children. Otherwise, he might have gotten away with it if it just had been a few.
Michelle Butler 16:30
Right? If it it had been one or two, you know, because stuff happened. You didn’t have cell phones. What one of the terrible realities about the not too distant past is that it is entirely possible for a child to disappear and you never find out what happened.
Anne Brannen 16:48
Right. All right. So it’s a new discovery. And it’s the kind of crime that we don’t get to talk about much on True Crime Medieval on account of it is not royal or nobility. Excellent. What else?
Michelle Butler 17:05
The other thing is that this allows us to look at the possibly prime example of how important archaeology is. More is now known about Viking Dublin than any other early medieval capital in Europe, because of the digs that have happened in Dublin.
Anne Brannen 17:25
That includes York?
Michelle Butler 17:26
Yes, that includes York.
Anne Brannen 17:27
Okay.
Michelle Butler 17:28
More than half a million artifacts were recovered. There’s a major set of digs, of which Wood Quay is the last one that happens, between 1968 and 1981. Over those, in the course of a little bit more than a decade, they recover more than half a million artifacts.
Anne Brannen 17:52
But it’s only at this point that we’re finding out just how big this settlement was.
Michelle Butler 17:58
Right. Those digs were happening around Christchurch, which is a little bit further along the river than Dublin Castle.
Anne Brannen 18:10
Okay.
Michelle Butler 18:11
So what happens…Let me actually talk about Wood Quay a little bit. I was completely fascinated to discover this. I kind of knew it, but I didn’t know it in this level of detail. This is one of the reasons that then I wanted to talk about this and bring it to your attention because every piece of this almost got lost.
Anne Brannen 18:31
Okay.
Michelle Butler 18:33
Every piece of it. The site that we now know to have occupied a whole lot of the Viking longfort and certainly Viking Dublin…because for the first 100 years, Viking Dublin was basically a slave emporium. It was called a longfort in the records, whereas 100 years later when we’re in the 10th century, it’s called a dun in the records. That means a fortress. So at that point, it’s more urban, but for the first 100 years, it’s, alas, a slave emporium. It’s very, very lucrative for the Vikings to show up, kidnap as many people as they can get ahold of, or have one set of Irish people kidnapping some of their neighbors and selling them to the Vikings. That happened too. There’s an astonishing amount of information about what they did with those people that they kidnapped from Ireland. They were taken as far as Turkey to the slave markets in Turkey. They were taken back to Norway. 20% of contemporary Norwegians have Irish DNA, traceable–
Anne Brannen 19:42
Just as a little point then. So I have Viking DNA through my Irish roots, and I have Irish DNA through my Viking roots. Okay. All right. Just checking.
Michelle Butler 19:54
20% of the men who ended up being early settlers of Iceland were captive Irishmen and 50 to 60% of the women were captive Irish. There’s a great story that apparently is true, or at least based on a true story, that one of those women was an Irish princess who got taken off to Iceland in captivity and ended up having a son there. Her family ends up coming to look for her because all the other heirs have died and they need that kid.
Anne Brannen 20:32
He’s a lost Irish Prince! I don’t know that I…but it’s a good story.
Michelle Butler 20:42
It’s a good story. Anywho. So this plot of land behind Christchurch, between Christchurch and and the River Liffey…in 1958, the government of Ireland decided this is where they needed to put four new buildings to be civic offices. They gave the contract out and they started to bulldoze. There was the discovery that they were turning up a lot of medieval artifacts. At that point, it becomes this great big fight. Because the longer you delay the contract, the more it’s costing. There was also a belief…I think they probably denied it later, but at the time, you can see in the newspapers, some of the counselors are saying, ‘We don’t care because they were interlopers. They were just Vikings. Bulldoze all of it.’
Anne Brannen 21:45
‘Although I have red hair, I don’t care about the Vikings and they have nothing to do with me.’
Michelle Butler 21:52
‘They were invaders, we don’t care about their city, bulldoze it all.’
Anne Brannen 21:55
‘Screw them all.’ Okay, that’s a little short sighted but okay.
Michelle Butler 22:03
So what ends up happening…there’s two amazing books about this. I’m trying to summarize it in tiny little pieces, but it went on forever. The best one, the one I would definitely recommend, is called “Wood Quay: The Clash over Dublin’s Viking Past.” ‘Quay’ for those of you who might possibly be Midwestern like me, is spelled inexplicably, q-u-a-y. What ends up happening is, they’re trying to hurry this along. Just bulldoze it before anybody finds out. Bulldoze it. Screw this all. Word starts leaking out. There’s an organization that still exists formed called Friends of Medieval Dublin. It’s an amazing effort of civil disobedience to try to get in the way. They show up and they’re protesting and they’re climbing on the bulldozers. A woman who ends up being…what is her name? Hold on, I can find out. Her name is Mary Robinson.
Anne Brannen 23:11
That’s the President.
Michelle Butler 23:12
She ends up being president of Ireland from 1990 to 1997. She’s one of the famous people. There’s this whole set of famous people who come and occupy the site.
Anne Brannen 23:24
That’s adorable. I love that. Yay! Could we be friends of medieval Ireland? Can we like join from afar?
Michelle Butler 23:33
I liked them on Facebook so I could see what they were up to.
Anne Brannen 23:37
We’re going to post the link. Friends of Medieval Ireland.
Michelle Butler 23:40
This results in a march on September 23, 1998. A march of 20,000 people in downtown Dublin outside of Christchurch. That may not sound like a lot, but you have to calibrate to the population of Ireland at that time. That is roughly one in every five Dubliners showing up.
Anne Brannen 24:09
That is a really good pull for a civil disobedience activity or any kind of giant march. I’m just saying. One in five of a city. Not bad at all.
Michelle Butler 24:21
It’s one in every 150 of the general population of Ireland because Ireland’s population in 1978 was only three and a half million. It would be as if one and a half million people in the United States–and I had to do some serious math to figure this out–
Anne Brannen 24:38
Bravo, bravo.
Michelle Butler 24:43
It would be as if one and a half million people in the United States in 1978 marched to save an archeological site.
Anne Brannen 24:51
Yeah, that’s not gonna happen. Is it? No, no. So we’re impressed with Dublin.
Michelle Butler 24:58
I’m dreadfully impressed. A whole crap-ton of stuff was actually bulldozed. There were so many things that ended up being bulldozed, because they’re trying to do it as fast as possible, or before people find out and shut them down. So much stuff was bulldozed and take it to the dump, random humans were following the trucks to the dump and helping themselves to medieval artifacts.
Anne Brannen 25:23
Which are now kind of distributed around Dublin?
Michelle Butler 25:26
Yep. There were workmen who ended up with such impressive collections of medieval artifacts that they have in their neighborhood museums things that they donated.
Anne Brannen 25:40
Of course. Well, I’m glad they just didn’t, you know, keep it on their mantelpiece. That’s very good that it got donated to local museums. Just here’s a little sideline. Those of us who are familiar with this podcast are kind of curious. How many books did you end up getting on this, Michelle? You were happy for the hiatus, right, because it gave you two more weeks to find stuff?
Michelle Butler 26:07
It gave me two more weeks to read. I had already gotten the books. There’s the one that I just mentioned, “Wood Quay: The Clash over Dublin’s Viking Past.” That was great. There’s another one called “Viking Dublin Exposed: The Wood Quay Saga,” which is difficult to find, because if you type that name into Amazon, what you get are a bunch of bodice rippers. I love romances as much as the next person but not when I’m looking for an archeology book.
Anne Brannen 26:38
Right. They get in the way. Yeah.
Michelle Butler 26:41
There’s a giant, giant book by the archaeologist who oversaw most of this called “Viking Dublin and the Wood Quay Excavations.” But the one that probably is a really great and onramp is called “Dublin and the Viking World,” which is by some of the people who now run Dublinea. Because one of the awesome ironies of the Wood Quay…the public having to come and march enmasse to save this archaeological site, is that now there’s a museum in a former Guild Hall, right across the street from Christ Church, that houses a bunch of the stuff that was found. The museum was founded in 1993 and it used to focus on Norman era and going forward Dublin, but after the discoveries at Wood Quay and some of the rest of the digs, they now have this enormous living history Viking Dublin and it’s one of the biggest draws in Dublin. it is a major tourist destination in Dublin.
Anne Brannen 27:50
Do they have…like at the Viking Museum in York, there’s this wonderful little train ridey thing where you get to sit in on a little cart, and they take you all around underneath and it’s like Viking York with smells and everything? It’s very nice. And then you can get souvenirs. Do they have one of those little rides? Because I’m in favor of the ride.
Michelle Butler 28:15
Not unless it’s been added in the last few years. I was last in Dublinea in 2011. The thing is about Wood Quay is, the discoveries from this particular dig are just really hard to overstate. Before this dig, there were people arguing that the Viking origins for Dublin were not necessarily true, that this was an overstatement, because no evidence had been found of it. There was argument that this part of Dublin behind Christchurch couldn’t possibly have been the original Dublin because it was too boggy to build on. What they found when they dug…they got 15 feet down and what they found was 13 layers of habitation. You can now map Viking Dublin at 30 year intervals for 200 years. It is an astonishing discovery. Because what would happen is that the buildings would slowly sink because it was muddy. It’s right alongside a river.
Anne Brannen 29:30
So they were right that was boggy and a place you should not build. Kind of like over in San Francisco where there’s a whole bunch of land which has actually been put on top of ships which had been foundered. It works pretty well until there’s an earthquake and then it doesn’t work so good. So it’s true. There’s some places where you should not be building, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t built on. That’s our lesson for the day.
Yeah. The houses had to be rebuilt every 20 to 30 years. They would cut them off because they’re just post and wattle–
So it wasn’t a big deal to rebuild them.
Michelle Butler 30:10
Yeah. You cut them off to about a foot high and you fill in, which helps also kill vermin. So if you have any lice, as you’re going to, when you fill in with dirt, you help start over clean. They had sidewalks. Here I am in the godforsaken suburbs, without sidewalks. The Vikings had sidewalks. Not concrete, of course. They were either planks–boardwalks–or they were post and wattle.
Anne Brannen 30:46
But you had to have sidewalks, wouldn’t you? Because otherwise you’d stand around talking to somebody and you’d sort of just start sinking, sinking slowly into the ground. So you have that little sidewalk to stand on. That’s my guess.
Michelle Butler 30:58
This dig found the original Viking embankment–ninth century earthen work–that was around their original longfort. Is it still there? No. They bulldozed it. There’s pictures though. They also found during this dig, part of the later but still Viking, stone city wall. Part of that is still there. That’s actually in one of the basements. You can go see it. It’s in…in the ground floor of one of those civic buildings is a space you can rent. It’s called Wood Quay Venue. You can go in and you can see this. This was terribly exciting, the whole public work to make sure that this just didn’t all get bulldozed away.
Anne Brannen 31:51
That’s wonderful community work. Wonderful city work. Yeah.
Michelle Butler 31:58
I thought that was such an important thing. Maybe it would be going too far to call it a crime, but it would have been pretty terrible if they had just entirely bulldozed Viking Dublin. I think it’s a really important moment of how what we know about the past is so dependent on what we do now. Because we can we can lose this.
Anne Brannen 32:25
All this stuff that we wouldn’t know, except that the community got involved.
Michelle Butler 32:29
The pictures from this march are quite amazing. Mary Robinson is there. There’s a whole bunch of long haired hippie people dressed up like Vikings.
Anne Brannen 32:45
Well, yeah, I mean, you want to enjoy yourself whilst you’re doing on your civil disobedience.
Michelle Butler 32:52
There’s also a connection, an archeological connection, with Denmark. In Roskilde. I think probably we’ve mentioned Roskilde before. The Roskilde Viking museum holds the five ships that were found in the 1960s that were originally scuttled in order to block the channels of the fjord. They end up being tremendously well preserved in the cold water. When they’re found in the 60s, they become the basis for this museum. They’re really great because they’re five different types of Viking ships. Awesome. The cool thing about this is that in the late 1990s, in order to expand the museum, they started digging–
Anne Brannen 33:54
Oh nooooo
Michelle Butler 33:55
They found nine more ships that had been washed against the shore during a storm and buried. Among those ships is the biggest, at least as far as I know, Viking ship to ever have been found. I swear I’m getting back to Ireland here in a second. Analysis of those timbers for that ship, shows that it was built in Dublin.Or at least the timbers for that ship were built in Dublin. Or cut in Dublin. Probably the ship was built in Dublin, but at least the timbers. It’s Irish oak. A replica of that ship was built in 2004 and sailed from Denmark to Dublin. It’s called…if you go search for the Sea Stallion of Glendalough, you can see it will.
Anne Brannen 34:58
Wow.
Michelle Butler 34:58
Sorry, my current thing is saying that is the second largest Viking ship ever to be found.
Anne Brannen 35:02
They found something else?
Michelle Butler 35:03
They found a bigger one.
Anne Brannen 35:04
I wonder where.
Michelle Butler 35:05
It’s enormous. It’s huge. It is big enough for a crew of 60. It’s absolutely huge. It’s 100 feet long.
Anne Brannen 35:19
And they lost it in a storm.
Michelle Butler 35:21
They lost it in a storm. This is one of my favorite stories because it sounds so made up. Here we are. We got this great museum. We got these five boats. Everything’s awesome. Oh, we got this idea. We’re going to build a shipyard. We’re going to build boats just the way the Vikings would have done them. Oh, we need more space to do that. Oh, let’s start digging. Oh.
Anne Brannen 35:48
Oh, indeed.
Michelle Butler 35:51
Nine more ships. They’re not even done with those. I was at Roskilde in 2014. The new ships, the new discoveries, are not on display yet. Because preservation–
Anne Brannen 36:04
Can take a while. Yeah.
Michelle Butler 36:08
You have to spray them with–
Anne Brannen 36:09
You have to be really careful. Because once you get something that’s been preserved in the water out of the water and it dries up…if you just were to drag it on out, it would get ruined.
Michelle Butler 36:18
Exactly. So it has to be soaked for years in a mixture of water and glycerol. I guess it soaks it up? We’re in science land here. So I don’t know what I’m talking about. But I’m pretty sure it’s that. So I don’t have a ton more about this. I thought it was really important to talk about. There’s so many things that they found. So many combs. Oh my gosh, so many combs. Just yesterday…this is the great thing about archaeology. We’re constantly finding new stuff. Just yesterday, there was an announcement of a really interesting Viking grave that has been found that appears to show someone who is intersex. Isn’t that interesting? I love archaeology. It’s a good thing that I found literature before I found the even more expensive and difficult careers. At least I can stay home and read books about the people going out and getting eaten by the midges while they’re doing the digs. I definitely recommend reading about Wood Quay though, because it is a soap opera. There’s this whole ‘we want to pretend like we’re doing this right. So we’re having the National Museum of Ireland come in and do a dig.’ But we’re also turning the screws on them to have them do it fast and claim that it’s being done but not really do it. We want to have this whole thing go fast. There’s lawsuits. There’s sit-ins. There’s marches. It’s got everything.
Anne Brannen 37:57
Do you know why it was that last September they were digging in the Dublin Castle garden?
Michelle Butler 38:05
Yes, it was a planned dig that was excavating a quarry. So it wasn’t an accidental discovery. This was part of a dig that was planned.
Anne Brannen 38:17
The quarry must have been on the edge of the pool, when it was a pool?
Michelle Butler 38:23
The archaeologist was Alan Hayden. Or is Alan Hayden. On his Facebook gallery, he’s got lots of pictures from the excavation. But this was covered on Irish news. I found video of it on YouTube where they’re talking about the Viking child.
Anne Brannen 38:44
What kind of a quarry was it? What were they mining?
Michelle Butler 38:47
Stone?
Anne Brannen 38:48
My experience of Ireland is that you wouldn’t really have to go mining a lot to find stone. It’s basically lying all around.
Michelle Butler 38:56
So they’re excavating a site here…on the Facebook page whay they’re saying that this is somewhat unusual because there are pieces of this site that are more like what you would see in a rural settlement. There’s a grain drying kiln–
Anne Brannen 39:14
So it’s a farm. It’s a farmstead there at the military establishment at the Blackpool.
Michelle Butler 39:22
Yes.
Anne Brannen 39:24
So we have a child who was murdered and thrown into the Black Pool over by a quarry. Although we don’t know if the quarry was there at the same time as the death.
Michelle Butler 39:41
Right. It’s pretty clear from their dig that they’re finding things from several different layers. Because some of their finds are medieval floor tiles.
Anne Brannen 39:52
Yeah those are later. Much, much later. Okay. Well that’s our true crime. In this particular episode a Viking child–Oh, how do they know he’s Viking and not Irish?
Michelle Butler 40:07
I assume–
Anne Brannen 40:08
Oh, the brooch.
Michelle Butler 40:10
That’s an assumption they’re making based. I suppose it’s possible that somebody murdered an Irish child and tossed them in the river wrapped up in a Viking cloak.
Anne Brannen 40:24
Viking cloak. Viking settlement, Viking child.
Michelle Butler 40:29
As they do further…some of the really interesting stuff happening in archaeology now involves being able to analyze mineral content in the bones. And that can tell you where someone–
Anne Brannen 40:40
Right. So they can tell whether it’s a Dublin child or someone from Norway.
Michelle Butler 40:44
Which is really cool, because that has allowed them to demonstrate that the integration of those cultures, the Hiberno-Norse culture, was emerging much earlier than what we thought. It’s only a generation or two in, that you start having a much more composite culture. Whereas it had always been sort of portrayed as the Viking show up and they’re colonizers, they don’t really interact with you. No, no, no, ythat’s the English.
Anne Brannen 41:20
The master colonizers of the universe, yes.
Michelle Butler 41:26
The Vikings start intermarrying much faster.
Anne Brannen 41:31
That’s our discussion of the murdered Viking child that they found behind Dublin Castle last September. And archaeology and some later crimes where the future president of Ireland went around with a whole lot of other people demanding that history be paid attention. So the next time that we talk to you, we’re going to actually go back to England, because we’re going to discuss that time that Stephen of Blois broke his oath. He had said that he was going to support Henry’s daughter, the Empress Matilda, and she would be Queen of England. Did he do that? No, ah, no, he went to war. So as we said earlier on our podcast about the wreck of the White Ship, which killed off the only clear heir to Henry’s throne, because it was a drunken teenage party that went badly, badly wrong. We said that that was the cause of the Civil War. And it kind of was. Only this was actually the Civil War really starting. So this is Stephen misbehaving, if you’re going to count oath breaking as misbehaving. Of course, if you’re Stephen, it would just be, I guess, not. Anyway, that’s what we’re going to talk about next time, Stephen and Matilda. This has been True Crime Medieval where the crimes are just like they are today but with less technology. I guess, actually, it’s the same technology if you’re going to wrap bodies up in cloaks and throw them in the river. It’s really doesn’t take a lot of technology. We’re on Apple podcast, I heart podcast, Spotify, Stitcher. Please leave a review, we’d appreciate that. You can reach us at Truecrimemedieval.com. Truecrime medieval is all one word. You can find the show notes, which are written by Michelle. T transcripts, which are done for us by Laurie Dietrich. You can reach us all through the web page, and you can leave comments. We’d love to hear from you. If you have medieval crimes you think that we should pay attention to, please let us know. That’s all for us. Bye.
Michelle Butler 43:39
Bye.
47. St. Olga Massacres the Drevlians, Ukraine, 945
Anne Brannen 0:25
Hello and welcome to True Crime Medieval, 1000 years of people behaving badly. I’m Anne Brannen, and I am your host in Albuquerque.
Michelle Butler 0:35
And I’m Michelle Butler in Maryland, the most medieval state in America.
Anne Brannen 0:41
It’s killingly hot here. And it’s the monsoon. So it’s muggy, which doesn’t make any sense. We’re hoping that things get better. How is it in Maryland?
Michelle Butler 0:52
Same. It’s like 95 here and humid. But that’s situation normal for Maryland. The first summer I moved here, it was 106.
Anne Brannen 1:03
Oh no.
Michelle Butler 1:04
I know. I went to Dublin in August of 2011, when we moved here. It was 106 when I got on the plane in Dulles, and it was 65 degrees when I got off the plane in Dublin. I was like, Why did my people leave here? Then I remembered the whole starving thing. But clearly this is where my DNA wants to be.
Anne Brannen 1:35
I went with some cousins to Norway one summer. We were visiting our homeland. One of my cousins who lives in Texas bought a whole lot of new shorts for the expedition because it was in the summer and wore none of them when we got to Oslo. Luckily, our cousin Leif had a lot of extra sweaters that she could lend her American cousins. We left for much the same reason. There was the whole food thing. Humans are like that. They’re all the time wanting some food.
Michelle Butler 2:12
There was a headline in the Irish paper last week about highs in the high 70s: “Series of Scorchers Continues.”
Anne Brannen 2:21
As we say in the south, bless their hearts, bless their hearts. Before we go on to our topic for today, we have an addendum because Michelle discovered that she had forgotten about something concerning the siege of Constantinople in popular literature. What was it?
Michelle Butler 2:44
I told you that there really weren’t any books, and certainly not any really good books, set in the siege of Constantinople. I completely forgot that on my shelf, I have Alan Gordon’s ‘A Death in the Venetian Quarter,’ which is from 2002. It’s the third book in his medieval mystery series, which is why I wasn’t remembering that I had it. I had done all this research because I was planning on teaching a medieval history course through the lens of modern contemporary mysteries that are set in the Middle Ages, so it was in the wrong space in my brain. Anyway, it’s a really great book and the main character…it’s actually kind of Shakespearean inspired from the events of ‘Twelfth Night,’ but then putting them back in the real Middle Ages. So the main character is purportedly Feste from ‘Twelfth Night.’
Anne Brannen 3:43
What does any of this have to do with Constantinople and the siege thereof?
Michelle Butler 3:47
He and his wife are sent to Constantinople to look into why some of the members of their Fools Guild have been disappearing in Constantinople. They end up stuck there when the siege happens. In fact, there’s this amazing scene where Feste has to escape. You know the chain that goes across…?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, the chain in great harbor. Yeah.
He’s on the other side when the attack starts. The only way for him to get out is to tightrope walk across the chain back over to the city. I know it sounds insane. But within the context of the book, it works really well. Because you believe he can do it because it’s his job, as a tumbler and a fool. Some random person does it, you’re not going to believe it.
Anne Brannen 4:36
But yeah, he’s trained. Yeah, he could get across Niagara Falls that way. Okay. Yeah, if he had to, but there wasn’t a seige of Niagara and he wasn’t there. Okay, fair enough. Can you give us a spoiler alert? They survived the siege? Because a lot of people didn’t.
Michelle Butler 4:53
There are more books in the series. So yeah.
Anne Brannen 4:56
Okay, not much of a spoiler alert.
Michelle Butler 5:02
There are eight books in the series, from 1999 to 2010. The first one is called Thirteenth Night.
Anne Brannen 5:09
I’m going to look these up. Well, thank you for adding that in. We’ll put that onto the site too. Because we really need to have that in there. Would you stick it in the show notes for Constantinople? I’ll redo them.
Michelle Butler 5:23
Sure. Let me make a little note of that, because I can make promises but if I don’t make a note, I won’t remember.
Anne Brannen 5:28
And you don’t have ADHD?
Michelle Butler 5:30
No, but I live with a house full of people who do. It’s like situationally imposed.
Anne Brannen 5:37
I think that happens to Laura sometimes too. Today. Today. Today, we are discussing St. Olga massacring the Drevlians. This happened in Korosten in Ukraine in 945. She’s a saint. We had an earlier saint who started a war–that was Columba–now we have a saint who massacred a bunch of people. The information we’ve got about this all comes from what in English is called the Russian Primary Chronicle–Michelle’s going to take this to task later–which was first written in Kiev about 1113 and then revived in 1116 and 1118. The main two copies we’ve got are from the 14th and 15th centuries. It’s extremely important on East Slavic history, but it’s got some chronological issues and whatnot. At any rate, history and story is what we have now. Olga’s husband was Igor the first and he was one of the Vikings who ruled Kievan Rus. The name Rus, by the way, means ‘the people who row’ which is thing, which indeed they did. These are the Varangians, which is the Greek word for Viking, which comes from the Norse for ‘sworn companions.’
Michelle Butler 6:58
We met these guys before, in the siege of Constantinople.
Anne Brannen 7:02
The word Viking itself, which is what the Norse used, we’re not entirely sure about the etymology of but it, seems to mean something about rowing. We call them also the Norse, the North men, you know, the Normans. Any rate, these are more Vikings. They settled many places, including Kievan Rus, Kiev being the main city. It’s still the biggest city in Ukraine. That’s where our heroine is based. Igor the first was the son of the first ruler of Kievan Rus. He besieged Constantinople at one point. He didn’t get in. In our Constantinople episode, as we said, the time when the Fourth Crusade got into Constantinople, that’s the first of many sieges that actually worked. He didn’t get in, but he got a treaty. He also might have been plundering some Arab ships on the Caspian Sea. But what brought him down was his dealings with the Drevlians. Now, the Drevlians lived about 100 miles to the northwest of Kiev. It’s about two days. It takes two days to get there. They were not happy about paying tribute to the Kievan Rus. So they stopped paying it when Igor’s father died in 912. Igor went in 945. There had been someone else in the interval, and then he had become king. So he went to collect the tribute, and they paid it. They paid the tribute, but he decided he wanted more. So he went back to get more and they killed him. Our chronicle says that they killed him by tying his legs to a couple of young trees, bending down the trees, tying his legs, and letting go. Then he got ripped apart. That’s what we’re told. Maybe that’s true, maybe not. Anyway, Olga, who was his wife, was not happy about this. After he died, she was the ruler of Kievan Rus because her son was only three years old at the time that his dad died. So she was the ruler. The Drevlians sent ambassadors to her–again, the Chronicle tells us this–the Drevlians sent ambassadors to her to work out an agreement that she would marry Mal, their leader, who was the guy who had killed her husband. Okay. They asked that she marry him, at the same time that they told her that they had murdered her husband. The timing of this is just so stupid. She told them that since her husband was dead, she might as well marry Mal. She put in an order that the negotiators be honored, and so the negotiators–who were going to be honored by the Kievan Rus– should go get back on their boat and then instead of walking or riding into the city, they were going to be carried in their boat. Oh, so this was great. So they did that. They went back to the boat, and the next day the Kievan Rus people carried them–doot-to-doo–in the boat and dropped them in this trench that Olga had had dug and then they buried them alive. Okay. Maybe this happened. So then Olga, who was not done with the Drevlians by any means, she said to them to send some more important guys to Kiev so that they could accompany her back to Korosten so that there would be a great display of honor. Since the previous Drevlian ambassadors were all dead, the Drevlians had no idea that the negotiations had already broken down. So they sent another batch of distinguished ambassadors. Those guys were invited to bathe before appearing before Olga. They all went to the bathhouse and Olga burnt it down. Okay. The Drevlians still–theoretically, if we are believing this story–still didn’t have any idea what was going on and they seem to have not even been made suspicious by the fact that none of their ambassadors had either come home or sent any messages. So when Olga sent yet another message to them that they should prepare a funeral feast for her visit so that she could properly mourn at her husband’s grave before she remarried, this only makes sense. I totally believe it. So they did that. She had specifically asked that they prepare a bunch of mead. Olga and some of her men got there, and they had a funeral fee. The Drevlians got really, really, really drunk. Then Olga ordered her men to kill all of the people who were there. And so they did. Then they went and killed more people there. That was the blood feast, which we promised you. Blood feast, funeral feast, mead-drunk Drevlians, all dead. But that’s not all. No, no. Olga was not done with the Drevlians because they weren’t all dead. Some of them were still alive. She gathered an army. The Kievan Rus and the Drevlians faught each other for about a year. Then Olga besieged Korosten. That didn’t get her anywhere. And so…so she sent in another messenger.Now, little sidebar. By this point, if I was a Drevlian, or maybe anybody at this point, and I got a message from Olga of the Kievan Rus, I would not obey it. But she sent a message–because they were, of course, still holding out–asking for tribute. They said they didn’t trust her. But she said that she was done. That killing all those negotiators had caused her to feel like things were even and she was okay. All she needed in order to not slaughter anymore Drevlians was that each house in Korosten would send her two pigeons and two sparrows, and that would be okay. Now, I want to say quite frankly–again, this is another sideline–this is not a usual sort of tribute. Were I asked to send two pigeons and two sparrows to someone who had been besieging me for a year and before that had slaughtered a whole bunch of my comrades and relatives, I would say to myself, ‘Why? Why? Why pigeons and sparrows? Why?’ Well, the reason was, because…they were like, ‘Oh, yes, we’ll send you the pigeons and sparrows’ and they sent them. The reason was that Olga had her soldiers tie sulfur to all the birds. Then that night, they set them on fire, and the birds flew home. Of course, they all died, I’m just mentioning that whole little slaughter of a giant flock here. So all the houses were set on fire and the city burned down. Anybody who escaped was either killed or enslaved. That was how the Drevlians became subject to the Kievan Rus, and Olga was the leader. Da-da-da. Some of that might have been true, but probably not all of it. At any rate, Olga did indeed conquer the Drevlians one way or another. I’m doubting the trench with a boat thrown in it. I’m doubting the bathhouse set on fire. I’m doubting the birds set on fire also, which comes from I think, a much earlier story, but I’m actually okay with the blood feast. I think maybe the blood feast really happened. But perhaps Michelle has something else to say about it. I’m moving on though. So how did Olga become not only a saint, but one of the most important saints in the Eastern Orthodox Church? Because really, this behavior so far would not lead you to think that she could be venerated as a holy woman. Well. After continuing to rule to rule Kievan Rus for a while, she went to Constantinople to visit the Emperor. The Emperor told her, after talking for a while and being in mind of what a good ally Kievan Rus would be, that she was extremely intelligent and she could rule with him. She said she couldn’t cuz she was a pagan, but the emperor could baptize her. So the Emperor and the Patriarch baptized her, and they taught her all about the faith. Then when the Emperor asked her to marry him, she pointed out that she couldn’t because they were forbidden by the laws of consanguinity, because he was her godfather. Okay, some of that might be true. The story itself is extremely unlikely, but she did get baptized. She might well have been baptized, probably was baptized before she ever went to Constantinople. But it’s a nice story, isn’t it? Olga’s full of stories. This is all stories. Michelle, it’s all stories. Anyway, she did get baptized at some point, and she did go to Constantinople too. She tried to convert her son, but he wouldn’t convert, although he agreed not to persecute Christians in the realm. That’s actually the most important thing that she did. Because that’s the point at which the Christians become able to live without getting killed in amongst the Rus. Olga built churches. When she died in 969, her son allowed a Christian burial, and there was no pagan funeral feast. This is also a big deal. Her grandson, who was Vladimir, converted in 988. In 1547, she was named a saint in the Russian Orthodox Church, and she’s called equal to the apostles in the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, and that’s because of her work in spreading the faith in that area. There’s countless churches and cathedrals throughout the world dedicated to her, though most of them, of course, are in Ukraine and Russia. But that’s why she’s a saint. She’s a saint because when she converted to Christianity, she managed to get her son to stop killing the Christians. That was a big deal. Michelle, wasn’t that a nice story? Didn’t you like my stories?
Michelle Butler 16:57
Okay. This was an interesting one.
Anne Brannen 17:00
Totally believable, don’t you think? Totally.
Michelle Butler 17:02
I don’t even know where to start with this. Olga is sitting right at this crossroads of mythology and history. There definitely was this person. She definitely converted. There’s a biography that existed of her. I got the paperback of the Medieval Academy of America’s translation of the Russian Primary Chronicle, which as far as I know, is the only translation of it into English. It was done in 1930. One of the footnotes for this says that there was an early biography of her that existed, that is now gone. There are bits of it that are preserved in later texts, which is how we know it existed, but it seems to have focused exclusively on her conversion.
Anne Brannen 18:01
Yeah. Cuz that really would be important. What’s interesting is the early biography is focused on the conversion, and not the very dramatic slaughtering people by interesting means.
Michelle Butler 18:17
I quite enjoyed the different scholars I was looking at hedging their bets about how much of this they think happened. The editors and translators of the Russian Primary Chronicle–which, by the way, is a sad title to give something that in the original is known as the Tale of Bygone Days because that’s how it starts. What exactly would be wrong with keeping that? Does it sound too awesome to cite in an academic work? What is wrong with, “As it says in the Tale of Bygone Days?” Do you just think nobody will take you seriously? We have to change it to the Russian Primary Chronicle.
Anne Brannen 19:03
Yes. Which is in no way a tale of bygone days.
Michelle Butler 19:11
The only piece they call bullshit on is the birds. [laughter] Okay, here we go. I’m just gonna read the footnote for you. I had a lot of fun with the footnotes. This was another work in which the footnotes had a lot going on. Okay, here we go: “The legendary account of Olga’s triple revenge is complicated by the introduction of the incendiary bird motif, fairly common elsewhere,” and then they give a list of all the other places where it shows up. But really? This is the part where you go, hmmm maybe not? They cite an article called ‘The Legend of the Incendiary Birds’ from 1916 that apparently pulls together all of them. They’re saying that it came into Russia from Scandinavia. It shows up in Snorri. It shows up with Harold Hardrada in Sicily and in a story of Fridelev at Dublin.
Anne Brannen 20:17
I just want to point out that we’re not believing the birds set on fire because they are showing up in so many different places that it’s clearly a kind of motif. But it might be that the Scandinavians were just really addicted to setting birds on fire. I just want to mention that. Do I believe it? No, but we can move on.
Michelle Butler 20:37
It could be that it’s a technique that works really well and so people keep reusing it, but I kind of doubt it.
Anne Brannen 20:45
The war techniques of the Scandinavians: knives, swords, whacking people–
Michelle Butler 20:51
Axes.
Anne Brannen 20:52
Axes, and birds on fire. No.
Michelle Butler 20:55
It sounds to me like one of those things that shows up in stories because it sounds really great on paper and probably doesn’t work so well in real life.
Anne Brannen 21:05
I do not believe you can actually set an entire city on fire by sending the birds…also, as someone who actually has birds–oh, look, there’s the parrot–I’m wondering how it is we’re knowing or even thinking that the birds, who are carrying this flaming sulfur are actually going back to their houses, making it there without dying and get trying to get into the thatch. Are we agreed? Because we’re agreed. Didn’t happen. No flaming birds.
Michelle Butler 21:36
I think it’s improbable.
Anne Brannen 21:39
But what bothers you is that that’s the only thing that they’re taking issue with? The scholars?
Michelle Butler 21:46
For the editors of the Russian Primary Chronicle, that’s the part where they have to leave the ride.
Anne Brannen 21:55
So they’re down with the giant trench that the boat gets put into?
Michelle Butler 22:04
They’re not taking an explicit position one way or the other. It’s just when we get to the birds, they say, ‘well, you know, there’s these other places that this shows up, so that tends to detract from the credibility.’ I do want to read–because I did think this was really interesting–the part where the Drevlians…is that their name?
Anne Brannen 22:26
It’s the Drevlians, yes.
Michelle Butler 22:28
They send the offer to her for the first time, from the Russian Primary Chronicle. They say, “See, we have killed the Prince of Rus. Let us take his wife Olga for our Prince Mal, and then we shall obtain possession of–” oh God, the kid’s name. Svot…? Sevot…? What is his name?
Anne Brannen 22:51
Sviatoslav?
Michelle Butler 22:52
Thank you. “We will obtain possession of [the prince] and work our will upon him.” I thought that was really interesting because I was reading all of these synopses of Olga’s story and it’s always talked about as her taking revenge. But the Chronicle is positing it foremost, before we ever get to revenge, as she’s got to protect her kid. They’re clearly out to get a hold of her kid and kill him.
Anne Brannen 23:25
Yeah, they did not like the Kievan Rus. They didn’t like them and they didn’t want to pay them any money. There’s nothing in there, I think, about ‘oh, and then let us go get Kiev and live there.’ They want to stay where they are. They just want to be left alone. I actually have a lot of sympathy for the Drevlians.
Michelle Butler 23:47
It’s clearly the case that Olga did something fairly aggressive because she survives and the kid survives.
Anne Brannen 23:56
Yeah, yeah.
Michelle Butler 23:57
So something happened other than, you know, begging because that doesn’t work in the 10th century. She has to have put on a pretty strong front. Did it involve digging trenches and complicated sieges and setting bathhouses on fire? That’s not probable from my point of view. One of the other scholars I was looking at does not hedge their bets. Barbara Evans Clements just says “This bloody tale is probably a myth.”
Anne Brannen 24:35
Fair enough. I like the blood feast though. As I said, the blood feast seems reasonable. Get people drunk. Kill them. We see that happening all through history. Not as a story, but as a thing that happens. ‘Here. Have a drink. Whack.’
Michelle Butler 24:50
That’s a thing that we have lots of attestation of in the real historical records.
Anne Brannen 24:56
Mm hmm. She must have besieged the city because she was able to take power. Were flaming birds involved? Nah. No flaming birds. She had an army and she used it. So that’s where we stand. But it’s quite an involved little myth and it’s so coherent as it comes down to us. All these Drevlians. ‘Let’s send more ambassadors. Where are the last ones? We don’t know. Send some anyway.’ The Drevlians cannot have been that stupid emass. Some of them, sure, but all of them? Nah.
Michelle Butler 25:37
The Chronicle also has…it’s not just her story that has some folklore elements to it. There’s an earlier ling, Oleg, who is told by the soothsayer that his horse is going to cause the death of him. So he has the horse killed. Then he drags the soothsayer in to say, ‘Hey, check it out. I’ve got the dead horse right here. You’ll notice that it’s dead and I’m not, so you were wrong.’ While they’re standing there by the corpse, a snake comes out of the horse’s head, and bites Oleg, and he dies.
Anne Brannen 26:22
Oh, so that’s how Oleg bit it. All right. Oleg bit the dust because of a snake.
Michelle Butler 26:28
All I’m saying is that in the early part of the Chronicle, it’s not just Olga whose story is a little embellished by some folklore. What Clements has to say about Olga’s story is, ” Scandinavian folklore delights in stories of widows exacting hideous revenge.” So she says this is a thing.
Anne Brannen 26:51
That’s interesting in and of itself.
Michelle Butler 26:53
I do think that’s interesting. I myself do not know the Norse Sagas as much as I should. So I can’t myself right this instant say, ‘oh, yeah, I remember an example of that.’ But I have reason to think that she knows what she’s talking about. The other person I was looking at talks about Olga as…that this is an important story for the Christianization of Russia, because you have Olga operating as a linkage between things that the pagan part of Russia thought was really important. The taking revenge, the acting with strength–
Anne Brannen 27:33
Right, right, right.
Michelle Butler 27:35
Her then converting and becoming this important figure…essentially, she’s operating as a figure who allows the one to coexist with each other within her own story.
Anne Brannen 27:51
That makes a lot of sense to me. And I note that after she converts, she doesn’t massacre anybody else. So that seems to be an element of Christianity for Olga, the non massacring people. Fair enough?
Michelle Butler 28:06
Yes. That’s Joanna Hubbs. She talks about how Olga’s story has this folklore element to it, the set of three, but that it has this important job of linking the pagan past and its values with Christianity, allowing them to coexist, which I find to be plausible and persuasive. There is a lot of stuff about Olga on the internet. She’s having a moment. There are tons of videos on YouTube. I didn’t even try to pull things together for all of them. It’s very easy to find them. Just go to YouTube and hunt her up. You’ll find lots of discussion of her as this badass Viking princess. She shows up in two different books by different authors. One called ‘Princesses Behaving Badly’ and the other one called ‘Saints Behaving Badly.’ That itself was pretty interesting. Her story is again calling to people and they’re finding it interesting and wanting to retell it.
Anne Brannen 29:15
But the focus in all the stuff you’ve found seems to be–am I right in this?–on the conquering of the Drevlians? It’s not about the conversion…it’s the conversion that’s why she’s so important. She’s as big as the apostles. That has nothing to do with the Drevlians. I don’t know if she repented. But at any rate, that’s her pagan past and that’s where the focus is right now, isn’t it?
Michelle Butler 29:49
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. The modern interest in her on the web, it’s definitely about the bloody revenge part of her story, not so much the conversion part. Although the conversion part still has that interesting trickster element that we see in the earlier part.
Anne Brannen 30:09
Which probably didn’t happen either.
Michelle Butler 30:13
Probably not. We know a little bit about her and her son from…there’s a Byzantine Chronicle that mentions them. The version of her husband’s death, where he’s tied between the two trees, is in that Chronicle, not in the Primary Chronicle.
Anne Brannen 30:31
Got it.
Michelle Butler 30:32
His name is Leo…and I don’t remember, Leo of somewhere or other. It’s a Byzantine Chronicle. Again, this isn’t a part of the world I’ve spent a lot of my scholarly time in. I knew intellectually, there was a connection between Russia and Byzantium. I hadn’t really looked at it. But there’s trade missions going back and forth. There’s the occasional attempt to steal some territory, going back and forth. We have the presence in their Chronicles, where they’re talking a little bit.
Anne Brannen 31:04
Does the Byzantine chronicle give us the story about how Olga tricks the Emperor into not being able…she keeps her power and doesn’t have to marry him, and the excuse is that he’s her godfather? Does that include that? Or is that just the Russian?
Michelle Butler 31:22
I think so. But I did not look that particular chronicle up. I was more interested in looking at the Russian Primary Chronicle. I read about that one rather than going and reading the translation of that one.
Anne Brannen 31:35
How much did the translation cost you, by the way? Because really, this is all adding up, all these books you go get.
Michelle Butler 31:42
It was about 30 bucks. It wasn’t bad. I wouldn’t have bought it if it was any more than that.
Anne Brannen 31:46
No, no, no, not that 200 hundred dollars.
Michelle Butler 31:49
The other ones I was able to borrow from the library.
Anne Brannen 31:53
Oh, good. Oh, good.
Michelle Butler 31:56
The one, Joanna Hubbs’, is “Mother Russia” and Barbara Evans Clements’ book about the history of women in Russia, I was able to borrow those. So that was good. The Russian Primary Chronicle I wanted to look at because I was finding a bunch of people citing it, but not talking about important things like: when was it written? how close to her life was it written? when did the manuscript survive from? This is all important stuff. Because I think part of what happens when when we say, ‘oh, there’s a chronicle it says this,’ that sounds to modern ears like the equivalent of an embedded reporter being there, jotting stuff down. If what we have instead is something that’s written 200 years after her and then our surviving manuscripts are 300 years or 200 years after that, that’s a lot of time for errors and exaggerations to come in. This is something we know about Arthurian literature that it makes life really hairy trying to track down any kind of historical basis of the Arthurian legend.
Anne Brannen 33:08
Well, of course, it’s made worse in that there isn’t one. It’s just a story. But even the Chronicle is put together from various sources, isn’t it? We have it, but various things go into it.
Michelle Butler 33:24
So what I learned, and you’ll be shocked to know this, is that there’s argument about that.
Anne Brannen 33:30
Oh, silly me. Why did I just assume?
Michelle Butler 33:35
We don’t do scholarly consensus. Not really. There’s some people who think that it’s a compilation and there’s some people who think that it’s mostly the work of one person. The names of the people who edited the book, by the way, are worth mentioning because they’re amazing. The original editor and translator of the Russian Primary Chronicle is Samuel Hazzard Cross.
Anne Brannen 34:01
Ah!
Michelle Butler 34:03
He died rather early. A colleague, or possibly a graduate student, went back to the text and made the changes that Dr. Cross was planning on making the colleagues name is Olgerd. Olgerd P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor. They’re awesome name.
Anne Brannen 34:27
That’s quite a name.
Michelle Butler 34:28
I know. It’s great. I love the Olgerd part, because it’s like our heroine for the day. So the book itself has a fascinating story about how it got there, with the original editor dying and the new guy happened to pick it up.
Anne Brannen 34:42
Samuel Hazard Cross died suddenly, in 1946, of a heart attack. I want to read this to you. This is from the Harvard Crimson in October 15, 1946. “Slavic Scholar Samuel Cross Dies Suddenly. The University suffered a heavy loss yesterday in the sudden death of Samuel Hazzard Cross”–1912 is when he had graduated–“Professor and Chairman of the Committee of Slavic Languages and Literature, who has long been recognized as one of the country’s leading experts on Russia and general Slavonic linguistic studies. Stricken during the day, Professor Cross was taken to the Cambridge City Hospital, where he died at four o’clock of a heart attack. He had been seen at breakfast and on the street during the day, but had failed to attend one of his morning classes. He was 55 years old.”
Michelle Butler 35:36
Oh, wow. He did die young.
Anne Brannen 35:39
That’s the part I liked. I like how he’s was seen at breakfast. Because that matters. I don’t know why that’s in there. But okay. Yes, I’m sorry, I interrupted.
Michelle Butler 35:52
He really is one of the first people working on Russian sources and translating them into English. They were translated into other Slavic languages well before they were translated into English. Like I say, as far as I know, this is the only translation into English of the Russian Primary Chronicle.
Anne Brannen 36:12
And what’s its real name? Tales of times gone by?
Michelle Butler 36:18
‘The Tale of Bygone Years.’
Anne Brannen 36:21
Okay, ‘The Tale of Bygone Years.’ So I want to point out that he’s the one who called it the primary Russian Chronicle, instead of ‘The Tale of Bygone Years.’ We can like him anyway. But he did that. But I’m confused. If he died in 1939, somebody had to finish it.
Michelle Butler 36:41
Dr. Cross had gone through and done the entire translation. But as you know, through the course of doing something, you find out all the things you didn’t do. right. He had all these changes planned that he didn’t get to do.
Anne Brannen 36:54
But it had already been published in 1930?
Michelle Butler 36:57
I think so, let me take a quick peek here.
Anne Brannen 37:01
He was working on stuff for another edition maybe?
Michelle Butler 37:03
I think that probably is true. Okay. “This translation is based on the English version published by the late Professor Samuel Hazzard Cross in volume 12 (1930) of the Harvard Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature, which was the first English rendering of this highly important Slavic source. Professor Cross, however, was not entirely satisfied with this first edition of his translation, and intended for a long time to prepare a new revised and enlarged edition of this work, which was to be accompanied with commentaries. But his many activities during World War II did not allow him to prosecute this task with desired speed and his premature death occurred while he was still working on it.”
Anne Brannen 37:46
Got it. Okay. He was doing another edition. Because he knew some more stuff. Yeah. All right. Thank you. I was a little unclear.
Michelle Butler 37:54
Then the Medieval Academy of America got a hold of the second scholar and asked him to finish it.
Anne Brannen 38:02
Okay.
Michelle Butler 38:03
I think one of the things that we end up coming up against so often is how difficult it is to sift history. We have the sources, but they have to come down to us. They have to have been preserved. Who’s translating them? When were they written down? It’s tempting to want to say that all of that doesn’t matter. But it does matter. That’s the only ladder we have to get there.
Anne Brannen 38:34
Yeah. Working on all those pieces of it can illuminate things that aren’t illuminated if you just simply take things at face value. So the Tale…I’m still not remembering it.
Michelle Butler 38:49
The Tale of Bygone Days.
Anne Brannen 38:52
The Tale of Bygone Days. I love that. The Tale of Bygone Days. I wish Dr. Cross had given us that title. That would have been nice. But we honor him anyway, even if he didn’t. The Tale of Bygone Days.
Michelle Butler 39:07
One of the things I enjoyed reading in Barbara Evans Clements’ discussion was how because Russia was so big, it was really hard for lords to actually exert much in the way of influence on the peasants because they could just pick up and move. So this whole thing about not wanting to pay the tribute is a dicey prospect because people can just get up and leave. If you get too pushy, they get up and they leave.
Anne Brannen 39:43
But they didn’t.
Michelle Butler 39:44
Probably the Drevlians were there before they were.
Anne Brannen 39:48
Oh yeah, the Drevlians were Slavs. The Kievan Rus were Vikings who came in and took things over. Yeah, they had been there before. They had been there before. Before we wrap things up, I want to just–I’m over on YouTube–I want to just read some of the titles. I’m not gonna read them all. Some of the titles of the YouTube videos. ‘St Olga, the mass murderer.’ ‘Hell hath no fury.’ ‘Olga of Kiev, a saint you wouldn’t want to mess with.’ ‘The greatest revenge story in history, Olga of Kiev.’ Yeah, very few of these are about Olga, a saint.
Michelle Butler 40:36
It’s really dangerous to go to the past and say, ‘Well, that’s really improbable. I don’t believe it. Because then we just keep reinscribing. When there is something unusual that happens in the past, like we’re having to go back and take another look at the archaeology because people assumed that any skeleton that was found with weapons must be a man, so they didn’t actually bother to look at that more closely. They’re finding out, ‘whoops, some of these Viking graves are in, fact, women even though they have weapons in there.’ But I’m going to exercise a little bit of common sense and determine that I think that Olga by and large is more…the revenge part of the story is more folktale than…but I do think she must have been a pretty tough cookie, because she doesn’t end up married to Mal and her kid survives.
Anne Brannen 41:27
She gets actual tribute from the Drevlians. She does. The revenge story is common for the Viking stories, and the various aspects of the revenge story, which come in a lovely set of three, a folkloric pattern. I totally don’t believe the carrying people around in boats and then throwing them in a trench. The burning people in a bath house is actually plausible. We have all through history various groups of people getting put into buildings and having them burned down over their heads. So that is a thing. Blood feast: also possible. So I believe that but totally out: the boat in the trench and the burning birds. That’s where I at, using my common sense.
Michelle Butler 42:38
Particularly since the trench was supposed to have been dug right in her hall.
Anne Brannen 42:45
That part I’d missed. It wasn’t some trench outside? They took up the paving stones and stuff?
Michelle Butler 42:51
Right in her home.
Anne Brannen 42:52
It didn’t happen. It didn’t happen. Even the tying somebody to two trees and tearing them apart…maybe so, maybe so. It was a well known way of killing political enemies. So maybe that happened. But for all I know her husband, who seemed to have wanted a lot of money, did indeed go and get tribute, did indeed say, ‘you know I want some more’ and got killed. Maybe they just stabbed him though. Could be.
Michelle Butler 43:24
Maybe, but like going back part feels to me like it’s setting up…that feels like story more to me than fact because it feels like it’s setting up that he dies because of his own hubris. It’s far more likely to me that that he shows up and they say, ‘we haven’t paid this for decades, we’re not paying you now, stab stab.’
Anne Brannen 43:48
That actually does seem much more reasonable. It really does. But here’s the deal. Even if you take all the embellishments out, it’s still a really interesting story. There was a woman who was, because of her husband’s early demise, a ruler of Kievan Rus and she was able to keep power until she handed it over to her son, and she converted to Christianity and managed to keep Christians from getting slaughtered. Okay, that story is good enough.
Michelle Butler 44:27
It’s difficult to overemphasize how much trouble she’s in when he dies in 945. To manage to hold on to power and the kid staying alive, that’s pretty impressive. This is not a time period in which that happens.
Anne Brannen 44:44
No. Throughout all of Europe and elsewhere through Greece and Rome, it’s just constant. Somebody dies and then his wife and kids get slaughtered. This is a theme in history. It’s not a myth. That’s just what you do. You got to get rid of them so that you can move on. No, she managed to stay alive and her child stayed alive. And then a bunch of Christians did so hey. Instead of thinking of her as a horrible murderer, we could think of her as a survivor who managed to stay alive. On the other hand, she probably did kill a bunch…she probably did have a bunch of…who are they? I keep forgetting.
Michelle Butler 45:29
They’re Drevlians.
Anne Brannen 45:31
She probably did have a bunch of Drevlians killed because that’s what happens when you have battles.
Michelle Butler 45:36
I suspect that she had to demonstrate that it was more costly to go up against her than to go along with her. Probably it took a little while before that lesson sunk in.
Anne Brannen 45:50
So one of the things that’s interesting to me is how important that story is, in terms of constructing an idea of a strong princess, a strong queen. She can’t just be strong, she has to be incredibly murderous.
Michelle Butler 46:13
I think of Joanna. Joanna of Naples is pretty interesting. Life was not any easier for her 500 years later, trying to hold on to power. We talked at that time about how her rule is essentially one man after another showing up and saying, ‘I believe I’d like your kingdom’ and her having to say, ‘I believe you can’t have it.’
Anne Brannen 46:39
Over and over.
Michelle Butler 46:40
It cannot have been easier for Olga 500 years earlier.
Anne Brannen 46:44
Her story also gets embellished. She probably didn’t murder her husband. She comes down as a murderess.
Michelle Butler 46:53
That’s true.
Anne Brannen 46:54
On the other hand, Mabel DeBelleme. Some women were really badly behaved. Yes, they were.
Michelle Butler 47:04
The Trickster part of Olga story is pretty interesting. They haven’t forgotten that they’re Vikings who value that kind of cleverness. Loki is their guy.
Anne Brannen 47:18
Yeah, the thread remains.
Michelle Butler 47:21
It is one of those moments of be careful what you watch on the internet, when it comes to medieval things. Because maybe it’s telling you the full story, and maybe it’s not quite understanding the nuances of the source material.
Anne Brannen 47:42
Yeah, I have these arguments all the time with people who are like ‘it’s in the sources.’ I’m like, ‘Yes, it is. And nevertheless.’
Michelle Butler 47:51
You know what else is in the sources, right at the beginning of the Russian Primary Chronicle? “After the flood, the sons of Noah divided the earth among them. To the lot of Shem fell the Orient.” So it starts right with the Flood. Just because it’s in the Chronicle, and then talks about how they divided up the land among the sons of Noah, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a fact. To be fair, our concept of fact and objectivity is not theirs. They absolutely do have a concept of truth and they know the difference between truth and made up stuff. But the job of the Chronicles isn’t necessarily to only convey certifiable facts. The job is to create ‘Where did our people come from?’
Anne Brannen 48:42
This is one of the stories that serves as a foundation for where our people came from. Our Olga. She was a badass. That’s a piece of the story early on. It isn’t just that people nowadays on the web are enjoying Olga’s reputation as a badass, and it’s completely out of context. That’s the reputation she had. This is who our saint is. Our saint is someone who moved from paganism that was absolutely bloodthirsty into another thing altogether. Yeah. Just because it’s not true in terms of fact, doesn’t mean it’s not true in terms of emotion and metaphor.
Michelle Butler 49:30
I agree. I think that she ends up being able to do both things, because she has both parts of the story. They need her to both be tough and to be able to be a Christian.
Anne Brannen 49:44
You emphasize and exaggerate the toughness because it’s a crucial piece of what the story means. I think she was formidable, but. As I say, I stand behind the blood feast. I’m gonna stand with the blood feast. Because the funeral feast was important, it was important piece of the paganism and so she had to go have a funeral feast where her husband died, and it’s so normal and natural to just let your horrible hosts get drunk and then kill them. Fair enough. That I’ll go with.
Michelle Butler 50:22
History is on our side. You can barely go a Christmas in medieval Europe without somebody having a blood feast somewhere.
Anne Brannen 50:33
Ah, history of blood feasts. So next time we get together, we’re still with the Vikings. Although we’re still with the Vikings, we’re in Dublin. We’re in Dublin.
Michelle Butler 50:44
Oh. Yay! We’re over to my stomping ground
Anne Brannen 50:48
We’re going over to your stomping ground. There’s a Viking child murdered in the ninth century in Dublin. That was very bad. Somebody behaved very badly, although I don’t think we know who. But we will get to talk about Vikings in Dublin. Woohoo!
Michelle Butler 51:04
There’s lots of great stuff. We’ll be talking about the importance of archaeology.
Anne Brannen 51:11
Michelle will have lots to say about this. So that’s our assessment of Olga of Kiev. She was indeed quite strong and quite intelligent. She also helped Christianity in Russia. But there was a bunch of myths stuck in there. We’re just saying. This has been True Crime Medieval, where the crimes are just like they are today but with less technology. We are on Apple podcast, I heart podcast, Spotify, and Stitcher. Please leave a review. We’d really appreciate that. You can reach us at Truecrimemedieval.com, truecrimemedieval is all one word. There you can find the show notes, which are written by Michelle and the transcripts, which are done for us by Laurie Dietrich. You can also reach us all through the web page. You can leave comments. We would love to hear from you. If you have medieval crimes, we’d love to hear what they are. Please let us know. We’ll think about it. So that’s all for us today. Bye.
Michelle Butler 52:12
Bye!
45. The Sack of Constantinople, April 8-13, 1204
Anne Brannen 0:34
Hello, and welcome to True Crime Medieval, 1000 years of people behaving badly. I’m Anne Brannen. I am your host in Albuquerque.
Michelle Butler 0:44
And I’m Michelle Butler in Maryland, the most medieval state in America.
Anne Brannen 0:51
In Albuquerque, it is extremely hot. Very, very hot. Extremely hot. Sure, desert but we’re high desert, it shouldn’t get this hot as it’s getting. It’s bad. It’s a little humid too, because it’s monsoon time. If it’s humid, and it’s hot, then the swamp coolers don’t work because they work by evaporation, which causes, every year, my wife to think that really what we need to do is switch to air conditioning. We don’t, because it’s going to be all better later. But nevertheless, right at the moment, it’s not good.
Michelle Butler 1:26
We’re having a tiny little respite of nice weather. It’s a high of about 75. So I let the grass…I just ignored it while it was 91 and raining so that I could mow today when it’s not going to be so horrible.
Anne Brannen 1:49
So after we finish our discussion today, Michelle will go and mow the lawn and I will stay inside in the cool, such as we can have it with the swamp cooler. Yeah, shade. Shade is what you need in Albuquerque. Today we are discussing a really really giant crime. We’re discussing the Sack of Constantinople in 1204, from the 13th to the 16th of April. It was the end of the siege of 1204, which followed the siege of 1203, which was all part of the Fourth Crusade. Here’s your background. Pope Innocent the third had called a crusade to recapture Jerusalem from Muslim control. Jerusalem had been lost to the Muslims in 1187, Saladin had taken almost everything else as well. So the Third Crusade had been launched in 1189, which took some of the lands back but not Jerusalem, and they made a truce with Saladin. That crusade, the Third Crusade, had exacerbated the relations between the Latin Church and the Eastern Church, and relations were already kind of tense. The Byzantines hadn’t helped Frederick the first get across the Dardanelles, so he was pissed about that. Richard the first had taken Cyprus and given it to the Knights Templar, and so the Byzantines were pissed about that. Things weren’t great. Constantinople, which was the major city of the Byzantine Empire, was also the major city of all Christendom. It was humongous. I think Michelle has more on this later. Oh, well, maybe you have…did you want to discuss the immensity of…? Yeah, you’re excited about Constantinople.
Michelle Butler 3:33
It’s enormous. It’s absolutely huge. Constantinople at this time, is half a million to 600,000 in population. That is an order of magnitude larger than any city in Europe, including Rome, because Rome had been a big city but had contracted after the barbarian–
Anne Brannen 4:01
They founded Constantinople, which was first called New Rome. They had found founded it where Byzantium was, so it had been Byzantium, then it became Constantinople. Later, it’s gonna become Istanbul, but we haven’t gotten there yet.
Michelle Butler 4:14
For comparison, 100 years later, just before the Black Death strikes, London has a population of 40,000. And that’s a high population.
Anne Brannen 4:25
Yeah, because the Black Death hit when population was high. Constantinople was humongous. It impressed the hell out of Michelle, as you see. And it was immensely wealthy. It was sophisticated. It was civilized. It was cultured. It was a center of trade. It was on the Silk Road. It was a center of trade to the Mediterranean, the Black Sea Persia, China, India. It was really really, really a desirable sort of place with a lot of–
Michelle Butler 4:54
And amazingly fortified. I went down this rabbit hole–
Anne Brannen 4:58
Three walls! It had three walls.
Michelle Butler 5:01
The fortifications…96 towers.
Anne Brannen 5:07
Yeah. There had been many sieges of Constantinople, but this is not going to be a good one whatsoever. So why–you might ask yourself–why is the Fourth Crusade attacking this Christian city? The Fourth Crusade, theoretically, was going to go and take care of Jerusalem and make it Christian again, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The Crusaders had… this is it: it was financial. The Crusaders had made a deal with Venice in order to get across the sea. Because that’s part of the problem. First of all, a crusade takes an enormous amount of money. It also takes an enormous amount of moving things around and getting across the sea is not easy. They couldn’t afford to pay Venice for the fleet. So Venice made a deal with them. If they captured Zara, which had been going back and forth between Venice and Croatia and Hungary…if the Crusaders would capture Zara, Venice would take them across the sea. The Pope forbid this attack on a Catholic city–which Zara was–but the Crusaders did it anyway. The citizens of Zara of hung flags with crosses on the walls kind of like, ‘Christian city. Hello. Don’t attack fellow Christians. No, no.’ But that didn’t matter. I don’t know if you know this, Michelle, but you’ll like this part. Simon de Montfort refused to attack.
Michelle Butler 6:39
I saw that.
Anne Brannen 6:41
It’s the one good thing I know about Simon de Montfort.
Michelle Butler 6:43
You know how far-out bad you have to be for Simon de Montfort to be going ‘That’s a bridge too far. I’m out.’
Anne Brannen 6:53
Too far for Simon de Montfort, who will later run over the Albigensians.
Michelle Butler 6:58
He slaughters the Cathars happily and steals everything from them.
Anne Brannen 7:04
They’re the wrong kind of Christian. Yeah. He’s gonna be awful. Simon de Montfort wouldn’t attack, yes. That lets you know how bad this was. The Crusaders attacked anyway, despite Simon de Montfort and those lovely flags which let them know that this was wrong, and they took the city in about a week and a half. Then the Crusaders and the Venetians fought amongst themselves about the plunder. The Pope excommunicated everybody who was non-Venetian. Because the Venetians see this was part of a political thing. Fine, fine, fine, you can attack another Christian city if it’s all about politics, but you cannot attack another Christian city if you’re on the damn crusade. So there you go. That’s an important distinction, apparently. Though it makes really no difference on the ground while you’re getting slaughtered. The leaders of the crusade did not tell all their people that they were excommunicated. They just didn’t tell them. If you don’t know, does this make any difference to you? Because they didn’t want to lose them. The pope actually did take back the excommunication in 1203. He decided that there was some kind of political reasons. Anyway he took it back. Okay, but there were more complications. Alexios the fourth Angelos, who was the son of the Byzantine Emperor Isaac the second Angelos, was living with Philip of Swabia, who was married to Alexios’ sister Irene. So he was living there. Boniface of Montferrat was Phillip’s cousin. Of course. He left the Crusader fleet in order to visit Philip, and maybe Alexios–we’re actually unclear on what he was doing over there. Alexios promised to pay the debt that the Crusaders still owed Venice, and give them money and soldiers and let them borrow the Byzantine Navy and put the Eastern Orthodox Church under the Roman Pope–I don’t know how he was gonna actually do that. Because he wasn’t in charge of it–if the Crusaders would go to Constantinople and topple the current Emperor (who was his uncle, by the way) and let him be emperor. Okay, this is ridiculous. This promise cannot possibly be upheld. Some of the Crusader leaders knew this and said nah and they went off to Syria. But most of them were like, ‘Oh, that sounds great. Let’s take that deal.’ The pope directly told them not to attack any more Christians, unless they were getting in the way of the Crusades. (What does that mean?) They got to Constantinople on the 23rd of June 2003, all ready to attack. The Crusaders took the tower of Galata, which was at the northern end of the chain, the giant chain across the Golden Horn which was the inlet to the Bosphorus. On the 11th of July, they attacked Constantinople by sea and land. Isaac the second was restored as emperor after his brother fled the city and Alexios was established as co-emperor. Okay. Alrighty, then. But was that the end? No, it was not. Not surprisingly, he couldn’t fulfill his promise. Hello, duh. He didn’t have the money. He even had a bunch of valuable icons melted to try to come up with this money. It didn’t in any way come up anywhere near what he had promised the Crusaders and plus, it really upset the citizens of Constantinople, because they loved their religious statues and he had melted a whole bunch of them. So he asked for some time. ‘We’ll give you some time.’ Then he led some of the Crusaders on a campaign to go kill Alexios the third–you remember, his uncle, the most recently deposed emperor.
Michelle Butler 11:07
Right. He had fled with a bunch of stuff.
Anne Brannen 11:11
This stuff moves around in this all the time. There was a riot in Constantinople. Latin residents got killed. The Crusaders attacked a mosque, which was defended by both Muslim and Byzantine citizens. Yay. That’s a little part in here that I like. But the Crusaders set up a giant fire which burned in Constantinople for three days. Further more falling apart, falling apart. At the level of emperor, Isaac the second died, apparently of natural causes. Okay, fine, because you could do that in those days. You could actually die of not being assassinated, murdered or falling in battle. You really could. It was odd.
Michelle Butler 11:52
But that’s not common for the Byzantine emperors for this half century.
Anne Brannen 11:59
No, it’s really not. The Byzantine Senate elected a new Emperor, who said ‘no thank you’ and went into a church and secluded himself there. Apparently a very intelligent guy. Then another leader killed off Alexios on the fourth, so he’s gone, the guy that made the bad deal. That leader, Alexios Doukas, became emperor Alexios the fifth and he fortified the city and got ready. Also, he refused to honor the contract that his stupid predecessor had made. So the Crusaders attacked again. That was on the eighth of April. They were badly defeated. It had to do with bad weather and the Byzantine defenders. They were badly defeated. But the clergy in the crusade army, exhorted the Crusaders to understand not that this was a sign from God that they should lay off and stop bothering Constantinople. No, no. They exhorted the Crusaders to understand that God was testing them, and they should keep on. See, the thing is, you can make it…you can say anything. ‘God wanted me to do this.’ God wanted them to keep on. Also the other thing that clergy did was suppress a letter from the Pope which specifically told them not to attack Constantinople. So they did attack again, and that was on the 12th of April 1204. They got into the city, and they sacked Constantinople for three days. They destroyed or stole Greco-Roman art, Byzantine art. They destroyed churches and monasteries and libraries. They killed civilians, and they stole and destroyed their stuff, too. Bizarrely enough–I hadn’t known this–there was a distinction amongst the Crusaders. The Venetians actually understood art, and so they stole it. In fact, the bronze horses of the Hippodrome are still over at St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice. But the French destroyed it. If you hear stuff in the background, it’s work happening in Michelle’s house, where they are attempting to make a piece of the house which has kind of cast off like an iceberg and is going off somewhere else, they’re making it come back home. It really is okay, everything’s gonna be fine, but it’s really in some ways dramatic. So that’s what that is, if you hear that.
Michelle Butler 14:37
It sounds like we’re under siege here at my house. They’re at the walls.
Anne Brannen 14:44
Luckily you are not, because being under siege is not good, as we understand. They destroyed Hagia Sophia. The Crusaders established the Latin empire of Constantinople. That was established then in 1204. Constantinople was recaptured by Micheal the eighth Paleologos in 1261. But to the medieval Christians, Constantinople had been a locus of defense against the incursion of Islamic forces into Europe, and the Fourth Crusade crippled it. So this is very ironic, isn’t it just, because you send out this force, ‘we’re going to, by God, we’re gonna make the entire world be Christian, so we’re going to go to Jerusalem and take care of that. But on the way on the way, we’re going to attack the main place that’s keeping Christianity over here in Eastern Europe, we’re going to attack this.’ Well, too bad for you. Because Constantinople was completely weakened. The Ottoman Turks captured it in 1453. Sometime after that, they renamed it Istanbul, which was the Greek name for Constantinople. So. Byzantium, Constantinople, Istanbul.
Michelle Butler 16:03
The amount of money they owed the Venetians was a lot. They had contracted with the Venetians to supply enough ships to transport 4500 knights and their horses, plus another 20,000 infantry and support staff. With all the numbers of people that they expected to show up, they thought they needed transport for 32,000 crusaders, and about half that number is who showed up in Venice, which is the whole start of their problem.
Anne Brannen 16:46
Venice had been sending all its funds, putting this stuff together. So Venice was in trouble financially, because of having done this, I remember that.
Michelle Butler 16:57
The Doge agreed to spend an entire year building these ships, because it added up to about 120 ships they had to build. They designed these super awesome horse transport ships, where the plank comes down, and the knight goes out, fully armed. You could do a sea to land attack, you didn’t have to unload everything, and then saddle up. It was just really awesomely designed ships. But the whole thing was expensive. He committed the resources of Venice. He shut down all the rest of their commercial activity. They went all in for supporting this. The contract was for 85,000 marks, which is more than the income of either the King of England or the King of France for an entire year. So Venice was absolutely going to be ruined. Because the planners of the Fourth Crusade totally overestimated how many people were going to show up. And in particular, how many people with money were gonna show up.
Anne Brannen 18:12
That seems to me to be something that was very foreseeable, given how expensive Crusades were, and that they were not quite as popular as they had been.
Michelle Butler 18:23
And it’s not actually that long since the Third Crusade. This is 1202. Richard the first fought in the Third Crusade, and he dies in 1199. There hasn’t been enough time to build back up. These things work better if you wait an entire generation and let people grow up, let there be some more wealth accumulated. The reserves were tapped. I mention this because–as we’ll talk a little bit later–some of the scholarly reactions and a lot of people want to throw the Doge under the bus and blame him for this whole thing. I kind of want to get out in front of blaming the Doge because I don’t think that’s fair. I think there’s enough blame to go around. Making him into the Lex Luthor, mustache-twisting supervillain of this piece feels grossly unfair.
Anne Brannen 19:22
No, because there’s a whole lot of bad behavior in this. There’s not like a person who was badly behaved. There’s a great deal of bad behavior.
Michelle Butler 19:31
I kept finding amateur historians and blog posts wanting to say it’s all the Doge’s fault. I’m not going with that, and I’m concerned that some of these older scholars, like the first half of the 20th century, who want to do that….that feels to me inextricably bound up with the anti-Italian sentiment of the early 20th century.
Anne Brannen 19:56
Mm hmm. Yeah.
Michelle Butler 19:58
Because he’s a really impressive dude. I’m not necessarily thrilled with everything he did and the whole ‘let’s attack Zara because they’ve annoyed me’ seems super problematic, but that man was almost 90 years old and blind and he still managed to hold on to power in Venice. I am impressed with him.
Anne Brannen 20:22
But he made a really bad decision in this.
Michelle Butler 20:25
Oh for sure. Absolutely.
Anne Brannen 20:27
Our money for a year putting together stuff for the Crusaders that aren’t going to show up and have money to pay us back.
Michelle Butler 20:35
Yeah, that was not good decisions.
Anne Brannen 20:38
Bad decision. Very bad decision. Yeah. I have some medieval voices, a couple of different ones. Nicetas Choniates. He’s a historian and government official. He’s a Greek Byzantine. This is what he said about the sack of Constantinople. “Oh, city, city. Aye, of all cities universal boast, super mundane wonder, nurse of churches, leader of the faith, guide of orthodoxy, beloved topic of orations, the abode of every good thing. Oh city that has drunk at the hand of the Lord the cup of his fury, Oh city consumed by fire.” And Pope Innocent the third correctly foresaw that one of the things that would happen because of this is that the schism between the Eastern Church and the Western Church would be made much, much, much deeper and wider. The Western Church and the Eastern Church had had a lot of tension, and there’s a big, big giant split now, but this is what Pope Innocent the Third said after this whole thing where people didn’t listen to him even though he excommunicated them. “How indeed will the Church of the Greeks, no matter how severely she is beset with afflictions and persecutions, return into ecclesiastical union and to a devotion for the apostolic see, when she has seen in these Latins only examples of perdition and the works of darkness, so that she may and with reason detest the Latins more than dogs.” So in other words, if you wanted to get the Eastern Church back allied with us, it’s over now. It was actually already over, but it was really over then. Now, I do want to skip ahead because currently, what’s going on with issues with the sack of Constantinople nowadays? Pope John Paul the Second in 2001 gave an apology of sorts for the Sack of Constantinople to Christodoulos to the Archbishop of Athens and again, he apologized to Bartholomew the First, the Patriarch of Constantinople in 2004 when he was visiting the Vatican and Bartholomew accepted the…it was not really an apology so much some remorse for how bad things had been. But Bartholomew accepted it as an apology, and later on in the city itself, he said “the spirit of reconciliation is stronger than hatred. We receive with gratitude and respect your cardinal gesture for the tragic events of the Fourth Crusade. It is a fact that a crime was committed here in the city 800 years ago. The spirit of reconciliation of the resurrection incites us towards reconciliation of our churches.” So officially, there is some harmony, but that was a crime that affected so much spiritually, politically, financially. It affected so much of history and was just horrible. So the Fourth Crusade went off to retake Jerusalem and on the way instead they destroyed Constantinople.
Michelle Butler 24:21
I really enjoyed learning about this because my–and probably yours too–perspective on the Middle Ages. springboards off of England and Ireland, and so Constantinople is really far away from England and Ireland. I haven’t really ever had an opportunity to focus on it specifically. This is one of those things that exists, that I’d heard about having happened, but I hadn’t really looked at it and I really…it was already pretty appalling. But knowing more about Constantinople makes it more appalling. I didn’t know how much continuity there was between the Roman Empire and what was extant in Constantinople in 1204. A whole lot of things survived in Constantinople that had already been lost in Rome. One of the tensions between Constantinople and Rome was who was the legitimate heir of that empire? Rome said, ‘Well, we’re here, duh, it’s us.’ And Constantinople said, ‘Yeah, but we have the stuff. And we have the culture and more of it is actually intact here.’ They had the Hippodrome that they were still using, they had all kinds of classical art. It was in many ways still a classical city.
Anne Brannen 25:48
So much of that classical art was destroyed by the Franks. They just completely destroyed the statues of Hera, of Aphrodite. The Christian leaders, they destroyed those two. They just destroyed everything, because they couldn’t tell the difference. And because they were just awful. What the hell. I’d forgotten this part, that the noble leaders of the crusade, they’d gotten all…they took this house and that house, they got to have that. They had ordered their soldiers not to loot and mess things up because they wanted this stuff. But it was irrelevant. It didn’t matter.
Michelle Butler 26:39
There was an operational civil service in Constantinople unlike anything that exists in the rest of Europe at this point. They develop it eventually. But it’s later. At this point, in Constantinople, you have you have a civil service. If you want your kid to go into the civil service there, it’s eunuchs who are the civil servants. So you have them made a eunuch when they’re young and then they’re trained in the things that you need to know. It’s quite demanding. The education required to be a civil servant in Constantinople is really quite demanding. You have to be taught diplomacy, you have to be taught the seven liberal arts, you also have to be able to write really well. So they have you do a lot of imitation of classical style. And of course, all of that goes sideways.
Anne Brannen 27:41
At this point, the universities have just recently been established in Europe, and they’re going to be the equivalent of…they’re going to give the equivalent of a civil servant education ander the aegis of the church.
Michelle Butler 27:53
There was a secular civil service that ran the government in Constantinople. They’re not priests. I had no idea that was a thing. Very, very intriguing.
Anne Brannen 28:07
Gone, just gone, just destroyed.
Michelle Butler 28:11
Unsurprisingly, there are more primary sources about the Sack of Constantinople than there are historical fiction novels about it. Nobody wants to write about…it’s really hard to make it sound heroic, and that thing you want to imagine and visit imaginatively. There’s a lot of historical fiction about the First Crusade. There’s a lot about the Third Crusade. But the Fourth Crusade is this thing that we want to pretend didn’t happen. I did find a couple but even those are largely books about some side character who gets caught up in it. There’s 19th century artwork, which I think is a fascinating.
Anne Brannen 28:57
There’s lots of that because it was very dramatic. Very romantic. Dramatic.
Michelle Butler 29:02
I think there’s something really interesting about one of the most famous paintings of the Sack of Constantinople being commissioned by the last king of France.
Anne Brannen 29:13
Oh, really? Tell me about that.
Michelle Butler 29:17
This is the one I kept finding the most. The image I kept finding most often. I’ll put a link to that. But there is lots of scholarship about the Sack of Constantinople. There’s a really excellent book. Let me find the reference to this book. It’s by Jonathan Harris, and it is called Byzantium and the Crusades. I read a couple of books about it, but this is the one that is trying to talk about the sack from Byzantium’s point of view. In his introduction, he talks about how scholarship has addressed the sack, and there have been theories that go in and out of fashion as to what is going on. First, there was a theory that this was a series of bad decisions. Nobody has bad intent exactly. But each decision that gets made is made independently, and so the whole thing was essentially an accident.
Anne Brannen 30:23
Um. Okay. Wait, wait.
Michelle Butler 30:27
He’s not saying that’s what he believes. He’s trying to walk us through the history of theories of why the Sack of Constantinople happened.
Anne Brannen 30:35
I get that. I get that. But I’m kind of trying to figure out how people could think that the sacking of Zara was a sort of accident, and why people would think that the sacking of Constantinople…that’s a decision. I mean, they had to go there. It’s not like they happen to be like hanging out around Constantinople then somebody threw a stone. They had to go to Constantinople and they went there specifically to sack it, to take it. That was the whole… it seems to me that needs a whole lot of mental gymnastics to get yourself around the idea that ‘well, really nobody meant to do this.’ They meant to do it. They meant to go Constantinople.
Michelle Butler 31:26
He says that was the approach taken by scholarship–Western scholarship, of course–before the mid 19th century. That the Sack of Constantinople happens as the unfortunate outcome of a series of accidents. Then we shift to the supervillain theory. Various scholars pick somebody as the mastermind for all of this, and it’s usually Venice, and in particular, Enrico Dandolo. There’s his last name. The Doge is the mustache-twisting Sidney Whiplash of the scenario, planning from the beginning that he is going to direct this army towards first Zara and then Constantinople. There is tension between Venice…Zara used to be their adherent and now they’ve gone over to Hungary and that annoys Venice. There’s tension between Constantinople and Venice, because Constantinople had earlier in the 1100s given the Venetians some special privileges in terms of trading. So they had a little enclave within Constantinople and their arch rivals, the Genoans, convince the Emperor to take away some of those privileges and also to round the Venetians up and kill them. So there’s some bad blood. The theory is not insane but it also isn’t supported by what we know. There’s no evidence to suggest that the Doge was planning this from the beginning, but it is persuasive because of that bad blood.
Anne Brannen 33:26
The bad blood didn’t hurt. Got it. Okay.
Michelle Butler 33:30
But he’s not the only one that gets blamed. There’s scholars who want to put all the blame on Philip of Swabia. There’s the ones who want to blame Monferrant–
Anne Brannen 33:43
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I want to go back to Philip of Swabia. Because as far as I can tell, all he did was have some people over to stay, and then they made a deal. So what, he gives people dinner, they make a deal, so it’s all his faul? This makes no sense.
Michelle Butler 34:01
Harris does not talk about this in detail. What he says after he discusses in fairly decent detail the theory about the Doge, he says “other theories have sought to blame the German Imperial claimant, Philip of Swabia, the crusade leader Boniface of Monferrat, and even Innocent the Third himself, only to come up against similarly cogent objections.” As the ones that, you know, shot down the theory about the Doge.
Anne Brannen 34:29
Yeah. No. It’s like, no.
Michelle Butler 34:33
Once the supervillain theories fall out of favor, now what develops is a theory that suggests that what you have here is a clash…let me just quote him here. “A classic case of the clash of civilizations, that the that Eastern culture and Western culture weren’t really interacting with one another, the Crusades, bring them into into contact with the inevitable result that they’re not going to get on.” This is Steven Runciman. He’s back.
Anne Brannen 35:09
Oh, Runciman. Give us our time period so that we know where we are when.
Michelle Butler 35:15
Runciman is writing in the 50s, the 1950s. He is not the first person to advance that theory, but he is the one who popularized it because he wrote a lot. And he’s also a really good writer.
Anne Brannen 35:31
This is influenced by a recent World War.
Michelle Butler 35:36
Probably. Here’s the quote that Harris provides us from Runciman. “There are idealists who fondly believe that if only the peoples of the world could get to know each other, there would be peace and goodwill forever. This is a tragic delusion. It is indeed possible for men and women of education to enjoy the company and customs of foreigners and to feel sympathy for them. But simpler folk who find themselves in a country whose language and habits are unintelligible to them are apt to feel at a loss and resentful.” So it’s also influenced by a little bit of snobbery.
Anne Brannen 36:12
Yeah, yeah. And the idea that really, the problem about the Sack of Constantinople is the soldiers themselves, because everybody told them to behave, and they didn’t. So there you go. Because there’s simple folk who cannot understand the subtleties of other people. I tell you, I’m just gonna have to bang my head against the wall. Give me a minute.
Michelle Butler 36:35
One of the problems with this theory, which has been very popular, and still, as I was researching on the web, I was finding blog posts that were advocating this theory because Runciman has been very influential. He writes very well. He writes very persuasively and accessibly. He’s not speaking just to other scholars. You remember, he’s the independent scholar who’s actually living in Constantinople. He’s the first one in western scholarship to talk about what happened to Constantinople as a crime and an absolute crime. But a couple of problems with the theory is that it’s not actually true that the east, that Constantinople, and the west were not having contact with one another. There was lots of contact.
Lots. Hence the tension.
The most ferocious guards, the fighters in Constantinople, were the Varangian guards, who were a whole bunch of mercenaries from Scandinavia and England. They’re what the Vikings did after they stopped Viking.
Anne Brannen 37:50
Mm hm. Yep.
Michelle Butler 37:52
So there isn’t that conflict. They were very closely intertwined.
Anne Brannen 37:58
There’s an enormous amount of trading. There’s enormous amount of deal making.
Michelle Butler 38:04
Next he says that it’s hardly surprising…here, we’ll just quote him. “It is hardly surprising that in recent years, most scholars have discarded the idea that the Fourth Crusade’s Sack of Constantinople was the culmination of mounting hostility, and I’ve come to conclude that no convincing overall theory can be advanced.” Now, Harris, his tone is very funny here, because he was pretty irritated about the clash of cultures theory. He’s even more irritated about what has taken its place, which essentially says, ‘We have no idea what caused it, we don’t know, it’s too complicated.’
Anne Brannen 38:42
It’s just people behaved badly, as they do. And we don’t know. We just don’t know. So he didn’t like either of these. What is his theory?
Michelle Butler 38:51
His theory, the premise of his book…let’s just quote him again. “This book aims to advance another view of Byzantine interaction with Western Europe, the Crusades, and the Crusader States. It argues that the key or at least a key lies not in generalized hostility between peoples or impersonal chance theory, but in the nature of the Byzantine Empire and the ideology which underpinned it.” What he goes on to argue is that the cause of the conflict between Constantinople and the West is that Constantinople, and the people who are running it, have this idea about themselves as an empire, as the legitimate heir of Rome, and no amount of reality is budging that and that is what leads to the conflict, because the other side thinks the same thing.
Anne Brannen 39:48
The heirs of Rome.
Michelle Butler 39:50
He thinks it is ultimately an argument about who is the legitimate heir to the Roman Empire.
Anne Brannen 39:55
In which case, it’s still a Roman war.
Michelle Butler 40:00
I thought this was really interesting. I liked his book quite a lot. I liked the information he provided about what was going on in Constantinople at this point, what the society was like. He’s the one who talks about the civil service and the fact that this was a secular civil service in a way that didn’t exist in the rest of Europe. But I think his idea that, at the foundation of this, you have an argument about who gets to inherit the mantle of being the Roman, the heirs of Rome, is very interesting. I’m not saying that I’m persuaded. But I think it’s a lot more interesting than just throwing up your hands and saying, ‘We have no idea, this is really complicated.’
Anne Brannen 40:42
In some ways then it seems related to the argument about why it is we have to go slaughter the Albigensians. It’s because they might be Christians, but they’re the wrong Christians.
Michelle Butler 40:55
I think that’s an interesting connection. Because, as we know, from the Albigensian episode, that’s happening pretty quickly after this. It does not take very long for the idea of crusading to go from ‘we’re going to kill those people over there who have a different religion and our holy city’ to ‘now we’re using a finer grain sieve and those Christians don’t count so we’re gonna kill them, too.’ As much as anything, the Sack of Constantinople points out the importance of who is writing history. The Byzantine histories, of course, see what happened very, very differently. It doesn’t take until the 1950s, for somebody to be willing to say that it was a crime.
Anne Brannen 41:48
It can’t have helped that Constantinople, I think rightly, saw itself as not just an inheritor of Rome itself, but also as the best place in Europe. The best place, period.
Michelle Butler 42:10
There was a lot of justification for that approach.
Anne Brannen 42:14
I think it was, actually. As far as medieval cities go from all of Europe into what’s now Turkey? Yeah.
Michelle Butler 42:25
I’m not gonna let Innocent the third…I don’t want to let him off the hook too easily. Because yes, he did do the excommunications and he did object to the Sacking of Constantinople. But he also continued to maintain the papal line, that he was the boss of all Christendom. Whereas the Eastern Church said, ‘no, there are five patriarchs and they’re all equal.’ This was one of the big conflicts that led to the schism in 1054. Innocent continuing to promote that and imply very strongly that the church in Constantinople was a heretic because they wouldn’t go along with that necessarily contributes to an atmosphere that creates the potential for this sacking to happen.
Yes. And then afterwards, even in the piece that I read, he thinks the sacking of Constantinople was horrible, and that the Latins were acting like dogs. But the reason that it’s a problem is that it’s going to make it even harder to get the Byzantium to come be under the aegis of Rome. That’s still a piece of what…he’s not really just talking about them as equal fellow Christians. He is not.
That’s been connected to the Crusades from the beginning. When we looked at the earlier one, where we were talking about Urban and he originally called a crusade, that was inextricably linked with Urban’s desire to increase the power of the papacy. So it’s very problematic.
Anne Brannen 44:16
Yes, yes. Yes.
Michelle Butler 44:18
In that sense, the Sacking of Constantinople is an absolutely predictable result of Urban the Second taking the stance that ‘I am in charge of you all and I’m going to increase the power of papacy because I am the only true boss of Christendom.’
Anne Brannen 44:35
Mm hmm. Yeah. And putting armies together to–
Michelle Butler 44:39
I’m throwing Urban all the way under the bus because I think he was horrible.
Anne Brannen 44:44
I’m fine with this. Yes, I’m fine with this.
Michelle Butler 44:46
If anybody is a mustache-twisting supervillain Snidely Whiplash, it’s Urban the Second.
Anne Brannen 44:56
Yeah. Oh, so much destroyed. So much destroyed.
Michelle Butler 45:01
This is a cultural disaster on the level of the Protestants going around England and smashing everything. Its books too. It’s not just the artwork. They sack libraries. What is wrong with you? I can kind of understand stealing valuable things, but what is wrong with you when you go into the libraries and just set them on fire? Come on.
Anne Brannen 45:24
Not only did they burn the libraries, they destroyed the Bibles in the Hagia Sofia.
Michelle Butler 45:29
What the heck.
Anne Brannen 45:32
What is wrong with you, indeed. It was really bad. It was really, really bad. Constantinople did not recover. It’s an important city. It’s the largest city in the area that Turkey controls. It’s still there. There’s crossroads and everything. But it never recovered. It. This was a sack of a city of unbelievable proportions.
Michelle Butler 46:02
Honestly, I don’t have anything else. It’s so awful.
Anne Brannen 46:06
We got no movies. We’ve got no historical novels. There are a couple, though you said it’s side characters who happen to kind of find themselves in Constantinople?
Michelle Butler 46:20
Yeah, there really are not. People who want to write about the Crusades write either about the First Crusade because it’s successful, or about the third, since that’s awash in interesting personalities with Richard the first and Philip Augustus and Frederick Barbarossa and Saladin. They just don’t write about the Fourth Crusade because everybody’s awful. Except for that one dude, who has the good sense when they offer him to be the emperor of–
Anne Brannen 46:53
Oh! That guy.
Michelle Butler 46:53
–says no. I think I’ll just go become a monk. That’s what I’m gonna do.
Anne Brannen 46:59
Totally, totally leaving. ‘We’ve elected you the Emperor.’ ‘No, no, you haven’t. That’s not happening.’ Yeah, you don’t want to be Emperor. Okay, well, this was very bad crime that many, many, many people did–thousands of people–did this bad crime. And we’re sorry. We’re sorry that this happened. That’s how it is. But the next time that we’re getting together, we’re doing something and now for something totally different.
Michelle Butler 47:30
It was this the forged…?
Anne Brannen 47:33
Yes. The next time we get together, we’re going to be talking about forged documents. You’re the one that came up with this, and I don’t know anything about this. Where are…?
Michelle Butler 47:41
I love this. Oh, my God, I love this.
Anne Brannen 47:45
Where are the forged documents? Battle Abbey?
Michelle Butler 47:50
It was just really a good idea for them to have some documents that said that they had more privileges than what they do. It’s great. They just make them up.
Anne Brannen 47:59
Good. So we’re gonna go back to…like, nobody’s gonna die, right?
Michelle Butler 48:03
I don’t think so. I mean, I don’t want to swear to that. I didn’t think anybody died with Columbcille copying a book, and then it turned out there was a giant battle that may have been connected.
Anne Brannen 48:19
But to the best of our knowledge, there’s no deaths, there’s no tortures. There’s no cities that get sacked and civilizations shattered. Just some charters are gonna get forged.
Michelle Butler 48:34
By some super sneaky but probably not super villainy level monks.
Anne Brannen 48:39
Okay. Well, that’s what we’ll talk about next time, which will be a little break from all this, you know, shattering of civilizations and a whole bunch of art.
Michelle Butler 48:44
This was traumatic. I found a documentary on YouTube that walked me through the actual military…it had little map and it had the little markers and it showed you, the knights went over here and then they went up here and then they attacked here. It really walked you through the military strategy of it.
Anne Brannen 49:13
They had three damn walls. They had three walls.
Michelle Butler 49:18
I think I read in Harris’s book that it had never fallen from outside before.
Anne Brannen 49:24
No, it hadn’t.
Michelle Butler 49:25
They had every reason to be very secure and to feel very confident about their defenses.
Anne Brannen 49:31
If you look up Siege of Constantinople on Wikipedia, there’s a list for you to choose from. But this is the one where they fell. I know that they managed–the weather was in their favor–I know they managed to breach one of the walls. What happened after that?
Michelle Butler 49:49
I think one of the things that happened is that there was a sortie–we saw this happen in the Albigensian crusade as well–there was a sortie that came out to address them and they managed to chase them back and get to the gates before they could get them closed, which is how they got in.
Anne Brannen 50:07
Got it. Got it. Alrighty then. We’ll say goodbye for now. This has been True Crime Medieval, where the crimes are just like they are today but with less technology. Heartbreaking. We’re on Apple podcast, I heart podcast, Spotify, Stitcher, all the places where the podcasts hang out. Please leave a review. We’d really appreciate that. You can reach us at Truecrimemedieval.com, truecrimemedieval.com is all one word. Where you can find the show notes which are written by Michelle and the transcripts, which are done for us by Laurie Dietrich. You can also reach us all through that web page. You can leave comments. We would love to hear from you. If you have medieval crimes that you think we should discuss, please let us know. We will definitely take them into consideration. Now we say goodbye.
Michelle Butler 51:01
With a thought towards Constantinople. Goodness gracious.
Anne Brannen 51:06
Byzantium, Constantinople, Constantinople, Istanbul.
Michelle Butler 51:12
Really kind of the second fall of the Roman Empire.
Anne Brannen 51:16
This made us very sad. Bye.
46. Battle Abbey Forges Charters, Sussex, England mid 12th Century
Anne Brannen 0:26
Hello, and welcome to True Crime Medieval, 1000 years of people behaving badly. I’m Anne Brannen. And I’m your host in Albuquerque.
Michelle Butler 0:35
And I’m Michelle Butler in Maryland, the most medieval state in America.
Anne Brannen 0:41
It’s actually kind of cool here. We had a hot spell that was dreadful, but it’s actually kind of cool. So that’s nice. We like that. Is it still summer where you are in Maryland?
Michelle Butler 0:53
It’s supposed to be 96 today. It’s hot.
Anne Brannen 0:56
I’m so sorry. We’re going up to 71.
Michelle Butler 1:01
That sounds nice.
Anne Brannen 1:04
Today, we’re not discussing…there are no tortures. There’s no wars. Nobody dies even. Just nobody dies because of the crime we are discussing today, which concerns Battle Abbey and some forged charters. So we’re discussing forgery in the Middle Ages, at Battle Abbey in Sussex, England, mid 12th century and so forth and so on. Michelle’s going to give you the details of that. Battle Abbey–I’m doing background now–Battle Abbey is in Battle, in which is in Sussex, and it’s still there, though, it’s partially ruined. It’s on the site of the Battle of Hastings, hence the name. You can still go there, assuming the plague ban is off or whatever. I don’t know what the rules are today at Battle Abbey. You have to go look that up. Who knows? They’ve got stuff to do there. Things for the kids. They’ve got artifacts, and they’ve got tours, and naturally there is a tea room. I tell you, the tea rooms of the English historical sites. You don’t want to miss them, because they have nice stuff.
Michelle Butler 2:13
Can I sidebar about a tea room?
Anne Brannen 2:16
Yes, tell me about the tea room.
Michelle Butler 2:17
The one and only time I have been to England, I was an undergraduate. I had made friends with an only child, which is a really good thing to do if you’re from a big family, because only children have more money.
Anne Brannen 2:32
Oh, do they? Okay, okay.
Michelle Butler 2:34
Apparently. Her dad used his frequent flyer miles to get us to England. We went to the British Museum. They served–at least, at that time–the tea in actual china cups. I thought I was having an out of body experience. As an American where every single thing when you go out to eat–any kind of fast food–is served in paper cups or plastic cups. It’s was real china cups. I thought I had landed on another planet.
Anne Brannen 3:13
Now was this china mugs or cups and saucer?
Michelle Butler 3:16
Yeah.
Anne Brannen 3:17
It was china mugs. Yeah. Yes, they do. There’ll be some scones. Sometimes you can get sausage rolls, which are, you know, really important. Oh, yeah. Tea rooms. Now the tea room over at the British Library is very, very nice. The British Library is great, period. It’s got that big tower. It has a tower of glass in the middle of it with King Edward’s library and it’s just awesome. But any rate. Tea rooms. They got a tea room at Battle Abbey. We’ve never been there. But we recommend it because hey, it’s a tea room. It’s at a historic site in England. It’s going to be good. Battle Abbey is still gorgeous. It’s just…It’s just wonderful. The way it all got started was that Pope Alexander the second ordered the Normans, who had invaded and conquered England in 1066–notably at the Battle of Hastings, although there were some other battles but the Battle of Hastings was where William the Conqueror was–and he ordered them to do penance. Now, they didn’t have to do penance by giving England back. Darn. But they just had to be sorry. So they were sorry. William started building an abbey. He pledged to build an abbey with the high altar at the spot where Harold Godwinson–who was the king of England before William took it over–where he was killed. It was not a good spot to put the high altar but he put it there anyway. The story about Harold Godwinson, by the way, is that he was shot in the eye by an arrow but that looks like a later addition. An earlier Norman account says that four knights killed him and hacked his body up, which frankly sounds to me more probable. Anyway, the high altar at Battle Abbey is supposed to be where he fell. William died before the abbey was finished. So it’s his son William the second–That would be William Rufus, and we refer you to our earlier podcast discussing whether or not William Rufus was murdered in a hunting accident in New Forest. We think, no, it was an accident, but lots of people thought it was murder–at any rate, William Rufus dedicated it. Now, medieval charters could be of different kinds. The Magna Carta is one, for instance. They delineate rights and privileges and laws and such. Royal charters can get issued for founding cities or universities or religious houses, among many other things. These charters or abstracts of the charters would get copied into cartularies and they’re very useful nowadays for studying these time periods and whatnot. However, there were a lot of forgeries of these charters that gave religious houses various privileges. There were a lot of forgeries, which is what Michelle really mostly is going to be talking about. Battle Abbey was founded by William and it was quite grand. You might well expect that William had granted the abbey a lot of rights and privileges. A whole lot of charters attest to this fact. It was supposed to be an independent abbey, so the monks who had been sent there from Marmoutier were not to be under the orders of that abbey, which generally they would be because it was their mother abbey, but no, they were kind of spliced off and didn’t have to obey them. Even more important, William obviously ordered that the Bishop of Chichester had no authority over the abbey. That’s a big one. Over the years, they more or less got along with the bishop. But that right would mean not just that the bishop couldn’t give them orders, but that basically they didn’t have to do what the bishop said, and well, that was a big deal. So there were some charters. There was a charter presented to Henry the second in 1155 which stated that Battle Abbey would be free of bishops, and there’s a foundation charter, which also states the exemptions from bishopric orders and there’s a charter wherein Henry the first repeats the exemptions, and there’s more charters from William. There’s lots and lots of charters, proving that Battle Abbey is not to be messed with by the bishops. But there’s a problem, which is that they are all forgeries. Michelle, take it away.
Michelle Butler 8:05
I love this so much. Oh, my gosh. I adored learning about Battle Abbey, which I had heard of, but hadn’t really done anything with. There are tons of beautiful videos on YouTube, where people have visited Battle Abbey, and then they post their visit. Or sometimes they take their drones there and do drone aerial [photography].
Anne Brannen 8:29
The problem is that the drone cannot go to the tea room, I just want to point this out.
Michelle Butler 8:35
The other problem is that people are now assuming that the church is ‘here’ and that that meant that the battle must have been over ‘here’ in this field beside the church, which is not correct. You have to pay attention to the official site, the Battle Abbey site, where I spent a lot of time rather than over on YouTube, where the people are just kind of guessing.
Anne Brannen 8:57
I see. So over on YouTube, the assumption often is that the church was already there when the battle happened?
Michelle Butler 9:08
I don’t know what they’re assuming, but they’re assuming that the battle was in this field that is now beside the church rather than–
Anne Brannen 9:17
Oh, okay.
Michelle Butler 9:18
–right there.
Anne Brannen 9:20
So they don’t know about Harold Godwinson falling under the high altar, because that would have been difficult to do if the church had already been there?
Michelle Butler 9:31
It would have been way worse if they were actually fighting in a church.
Anne Brannen 9:36
We would have heard about that.
Michelle Butler 9:38
So here’s the thing. We have two collections of charters. One was collected in the 13th century and one in the 14th century. Not every single thing that survives is a forgery. But like eight of them are.
Anne Brannen 9:54
Is there anything that survives that actually attests rightfully to William saying that Battle Abbey did not have to obey the bishops?
Michelle Butler 10:06
No.
Anne Brannen 10:07
Okay. All right. That’s the main thing. All the other charters…the charters that are not forgeries say something different.
Michelle Butler 10:17
They’re just not that old. The real ones that survive are not that old. The ones that are purporting to be the earliest ones are the forgeries. There’s records that survive. There, cellarers’ records, there’s quite a few of those, but not this early. There is a juicy abbey chronicle that was written around 1200, which is really, really useful to collate with the charters because the person writing it, his central concern is to tell the story of the monks’ efforts to keep their abbey free from episcopal demands.
Anne Brannen 11:01
So the charters were important.
Michelle Butler 11:04
He’s largely present. In fact, he speaks for some of the events as somebody who saw them. I also found it really interesting that the story that he tells as the chronicler, is that it’s the community of monks, not the abbot, that are fighting for these rights, because the abbot was nearly always appointed from the outside. What happened was when a new abbot would show up, the monks would have to teach him ‘okay, this is how things are done around here.’
Anne Brannen 11:34
‘Don’t listen to the bishop, is what.’
Michelle Butler 11:36
‘No, don’t do that.’ The Chronicle is also very carefully worded. The chronicler does not assert that the charters are real. He asserts that the rights are real.
Anne Brannen 11:54
Uh huh. Okay.
Michelle Butler 11:55
Then he talks about when the charters are displayed publicly for the first time. So he’s very careful not to lie.
Anne Brannen 12:09
Doesn’t that kind of cause us to think that he knew that the charters were forgeries? Even though the rights were real?
Michelle Butler 12:20
That is the conclusion of the scholar I’m working from, who is Eleanor Searle. We’re gonna talk a little bit more about her later because she is the expert on Battle Abbey. Certainly in the 20th century, and I don’t see anything that implies somebody else has stepped into this yet.
Anne Brannen 12:44
So the rights are real, but the charters are not. The rights are a tradition, then, that the fake charters attest to.
Michelle Butler 12:52
Yes, yes.
Anne Brannen 12:53
Okay.
Michelle Butler 12:54
Eleanor Searle concludes that the rights were granted, but they were granted verbally. As the culture changes from an oral culture to a written culture, they need written backup that they did not have.
Anne Brannen 13:11
Oops! Didn’t see that coming. The king told you something. That was a big deal. Why would you have to write this down? Everybody knew. No, we don’t know, it’s 200 years later.
Michelle Butler 13:25
She also asserts, though, that one of the reasons that it doesn’t get written down by William the first, in addition to him dying before the Abbey’s consecrated, is that he’s got his own problems at this point with Archbishop Anslem. He’s fussing with his Archbishop of Canterbury. It’s really tricky for him to put in writing that there’s this other abbey that has the same rights as Canterbury Abbey.
Anne Brannen 13:54
Got it. I mean, yes, Yes. Canterbury. That’s actually one of the things that one of the charter says, isn’t it? That it’s exactly the same rights as Canterbury.
Michelle Butler 14:04
Exactly. That’s exactly right.
Anne Brannen 14:07
Yeah, so he’s juggling Church-State issues. Fair enough.
Michelle Butler 14:12
Oh, so much of that is going on in here. The chronicler claims that William the Conqueror established the monastery to be free of its mother abbey, like you mentioned, that it’s free of the demands of the bishop, so the bishop can’t do things to them. The chronicler does not assert that the protections were made at the time of the monastery’s foundation in the form of a charter and it’s unfortunate that the Conqueror died before the abbey was dedicated. Here’s the list of rights that Battle Abbey asserts in the 12th century. That new abbots are to be blessed at the monastery, not at the Cathedral in Chichester.
Anne Brannen 14:58
Neener neener!
Michelle Butler 15:00
That new abbots are not required to take an oath of obedience to the Bishop of Chichester.
Anne Brannen 15:05
Yeah that’d be big.
Michelle Butler 15:07
That the Bishop of Chichester could not put the abbey under interdict or excommunicate anybody from it.
Anne Brannen 15:15
If indeed he got annoyed for any reason.
Michelle Butler 15:19
Say. As is gonna happen here shortly. They could invite the bishop to come and perform ordinations, but they weren’t required to.
Anne Brannen 15:30
Yeah, the problem with that is that you started a tradition and then the bishops start thinking you ought to do it.
Michelle Butler 15:37
The right to be free from the bishop’s demands of hospitality. So the bishop can’t just show up and demand that they house him. The freedom from mandatory attendance at the synod, so the bishop can’t just summon the abbot. And freedom from episcopal dues.
Anne Brannen 16:00
That is big. That is big. Whoa, no money, they’re not having to send money. Whoa.
Michelle Butler 16:09
Things are okay until 1154. Things are okay. Only the first abbot was blessed at Battle. The other ones after that were blessed at Chichester. The abbots did end up taking an oath of obedience to the bishop. So they gave on that one. Abbots did attend the synod when summoned, and they provided hospitality to the bishop. But the compromise for that first period of time, that first 70 years between the founding of the monastery and then when things come to a boil in 1154, the compromise is that they’re doing those things, but they’re being done voluntarily. Not because you made us, but it’s being done voluntarily. Things could get touchy. Bishop Seffrid, the bishop of Chichester from 1125 to 1145, got pushy when they came to the Abbey. They got pushy with the cellarers and were in fact denied supper. Because they tried telling them to bring us supper instead of asking nicely.
Anne Brannen 17:24
Right. That’s a big deal. That’s a big deal. Okay.
Michelle Butler 17:31
The crisis happens in 1154 because you start getting head butting between the abbot whose name is Walter de Luci–he’s abbot from 1139 to 1171–and Bishop Hilary of Chichester, who’s Bishop from 1147 to 1169. The chronicle doesn’t say what kicked it off, but it comes to a head over the abbot’s refusal to come to the synod when summoned. Bishop Hilary digs in his heels and then says, ‘Well, fine, I’m going to claim all of the episcopal rights’ and things escalate. The bishop enlists Archbishop Theobald and the Pope on his side. The abbot goes to his brother, Richard de Luci, who is the Justiciar, the king’s Chief Minister. So they each go and find the bigger kids in the playground.
Anne Brannen 18:34
Yeah, yeah.
Michelle Butler 18:37
It’s at an impasse until King Stephen dies. Once King Stephen dies, the bishop assumes that Richard de Luci, the Justiciar, is no longer going to have much in the way of authority. So the bishop pounces. He excommunicated the abbot. He appeals to the Pope, and the Pope says to Walter, ‘you have to do what he says.’ But Richard, the brother, is still a wily politician. He goes and puts the screws to Archbishop Theobald, who gets it Bishop Hilary to back off. I love every piece of this.
Anne Brannen 19:19
How long is this? This goes on for years, yeah? How many?
Michelle Butler 19:27
In 1155, Henry the second is now King. [laughter] Walter shows up before Henry the second with a charter saying, ‘no problem. I have proof.’
Anne Brannen 19:51
Yes. Yes. Excellent. Excellent move, Walter. Mm hmm.
Michelle Butler 19:57
Most likely this had been forged right after the death of Stephen when they realized that things were about to hit the fan.
Anne Brannen 20:05
Right, right, right. At any rate, it was pretty recent. Yes.
Michelle Butler 20:11
Bishop Hilary and Archbishop Theobald both object. They’re like ‘we’ve never heard of this charter. We have no idea. This sounds really sketchy to us.’ Henry the second says, ‘Okay, I’m going to get my chancellor to hold on to it, and we’re going to schedule the time to get together and hear it read.’ Guess who the chancellor was? Oh my god, guess who it was. Do you remember? This is Thomas Becket.
Anne Brannen 20:32
This is Beckett. Oh!
Michelle Butler 20:36
He had just become a chancellor in January.
Anne Brannen 20:40
Oooooohh. Yeah, right. Right. Okay.
Michelle Butler 20:43
So brand new, still shiny around the edges, Chancellor Thomas Beckett gets hauled into this mess. They arrange for a reading before the chancellor, the archbishop, the bishop, and the abbot. And of course, the king. The phrase, ‘the abbey of Battle shall be entirely free from all subjection of bishops as Christchurch Canterbury’ landed like a grenade.
Anne Brannen 21:14
I can imagine. Especially the part about, you know, we’re gonna have equal rights with Canterbury. I can imagine that some people took exception to that really.
Michelle Butler 21:28
The coolest thing about these forgeries is that people kind of suspected.
Anne Brannen 21:35
Right, right, right.
Michelle Butler 21:37
It’s not like modern people have looked at these and said, ‘Hmm, these are sketchy.’ People then, at that port, were like, ‘Hmm, these are sketchy. If you had these, and you’ve been sitting on them for 80 years, why hasn’t anybody seen them before now?
Anne Brannen 21:44
‘They were in a special cabinet. We didn’t know where they were. But we were cleaning, we were cleaning and we found them. We were cleaning in honor of the death of King Steven, and that’s when we found it.’ I could see where, you know, you’d have some things to say.
Michelle Butler 22:14
Here’s a couple of reasons that modern scholars know that this is a forgery. I’m gonna just quote from Eleanor Searle at this point: “The foot of the charter is folded and the seal tag threaded through the double thickness, a method that does not, as far as is known, predate 1120. The seal and fold could conceivably have been a forger’s improvement when making a copy of a genuine diploma whose old fashioned form he did not understand. But that can scarcely have been the case with this charter. The list of witnesses” this is my favorite part “is completely impossible for charter of the Conqueror. William Fitz Osbourne–whose title of Earl, created in 1067, is omitted–was dead by late February 1071. Yet he is made a fellow witness of Maurice, Bishop of London, who was consecrated in 1086 and of William, Earl of Warren, whose title was created by William the second in 1088, and of Hugh, Earl of Chester, whose title was almost certainly created after 1071 and lastly, of Roger de Montgomery, who was created Earl in 1174.”
Anne Brannen 23:32
So basically, the forger added a bunch of old timey dead people.
Michelle Butler 23:38
Yes, who cannot possibly have been witnessing a charter together.
Anne Brannen 23:43
I love this. But you know, they were around at that time. Pretty much.
Michelle Butler 23:52
Henry the second–who we know from the Beckett episode has a terrible temper– admirably controlled his temper under these circumstances. He suggests what apparently to him seems like a compromise, but really just consists of ‘oh, just take that clause out.’ Abbot Walter says no. He just flatly refuses.
Anne Brannen 24:18
No, because it’s the whole point of the forgery.
Michelle Butler 24:20
It’s the whole point! Henry the second is just completely clueless. He doesn’t throw anything at anybody which, you know, kudos to him because that’s his planned mode of…at least he didn’t say ‘will no one rid me of this meddlesome abbot?’
Anne Brannen 24:35
Yeah, he didn’t say that. Yeah. He will later though. It was gonna be sad.
Michelle Butler 24:42
So two years later, in May of 1157, the whole crowd gets back together. The abbot shows up with this William the first charter and two more. A supposed William the second charter and one from Henry the first. The William the second charter, there’s actually a link where they have a scan of it and you can go practice paleography on it.
Anne Brannen 25:07
I saw that one. I loved it.
Michelle Butler 25:10
So this one is known to be fake because the seal is a bad copy and there’s stuff going on in the Latin with Ego and Nobis in referring to the king. I.e. whether it’s a singular or plural, and that’s particularly a 12th century problem. The script however–and I found this really interesting. This is true with all the charters The scripts are not problems–they have samples of old writing, they can go back and copy. It’s the other things that trip them up.
Anne Brannen 25:44
I saw that. The forgeries are actually beautiful forgeries. It’s just that they contain things which could not have been true.
Michelle Butler 25:52
The Henry the first charter isn’t extant, so there’s only some educated guesses about what’s in it. This is my favorite part. Are you ready for my absolute favorite part?
Anne Brannen 26:02
Ready for your favorite? I can’t imagine what it’s going to be since we already–
Michelle Butler 26:05
Oh, my God. The conference is still going on. They take a little break. They come back. Abbot Walter whips out yet another forged charter.
Anne Brannen 26:19
Wait, wait, wait. Long was the break?
Michelle Butler 26:22
I don’t know. Eleanor Searle doesn’t talk about that.
Anne Brannen 26:27
It wasn’t a 15 minute break.
Michelle Butler 26:29
No, it must have been a couple of weeks. A few days. I don’t know. Because her article doesn’t talk about that.
Anne Brannen 26:38
But they come back and they have found another charter.
Michelle Butler 26:43
He’s got yet another one. This one claiming to be from William the first and witnessed by Lanfranc and the Bishop of Chichester. Because one of the complaints of the Bishop of Chichester, of Hilary, had been that none of these other three charters that Walter had showed them so far were witnessed by the Bishop of Chichester. So he just happened to have found this one.
Anne Brannen 27:09
Did they get the name of the Bishop of Chichester in 1071? Did they get that right?
Michelle Butler 27:16
I don’t know. Hopefully. So my favorite piece, my favorite piece of this is that this led me off into this rabbit hole about a forgery ring at Westminster Abbey. Because for this one, Walter got help from a forgery ring running out of Westminster Abbey.
Anne Brannen 27:49
So tell us the date…
Michelle Butler 27:51
[laughter]
Anne Brannen 27:53
Okay, so when you can, tell us the dates of the forgery ring at Westminster Abbey. When was this running?
Michelle Butler 28:05
It is roughly in the 1140s and the 1150s.
Anne Brannen 28:11
Okay, so it’s a brief period of time.
Michelle Butler 28:24
I’m just saying right now I want to a podcast about this later.
Anne Brannen 28:34
We will look more into the forgery ring at Westminster Abbey.
Michelle Butler 28:37
Nobody ever told me that one of the reasons that somebody comes in and wants to reform the church around 1200 is that there’s an active forgery network going on among the monasteries.
Anne Brannen 28:51
Unbelievable. Well, thank you. I’m glad to know this.
Michelle Butler 28:55
The abbot of Westminster Abbey at this point was Gervais, who was an illegitimate son of King Stephen. It’s under his aegis that was Westminster Abbey becomes a center for forgery.
Anne Brannen 29:16
Wow.
Michelle Butler 29:17
I’s a big hairy deal. They’re forging charters, but it’s not just charters. They’re drafting that Vita Edwardi, which was used to try to canonize Edward the Confessor.
Anne Brannen 29:36
Mm hmm. Right. Yeah.
Michelle Butler 29:39
There was a bunch of studies being done between 1952 and 1962 by a number of scholars that demonstrated. I’m just going to quote this because this is a great phrase, “the productivity and the dazzling effrontery of the Westminster atelier.’ I had to look that word up, it’s an artesian craft shop.
Anne Brannen 30:10
They’re craftspeople, these forgers.
Michelle Butler 30:12
They’re actually quite good at it, ‘At its height had established Westminster as the locus classicus of English monastic monastic forgery in the 12th century.’
Anne Brannen 30:26
Well, it’s something to be proud of, isn’t it? We can write that in our history.
Michelle Butler 30:31
They’re so good at it. They have fake seals, they have templates for what the forged documents of whatever type you need should look like.
Anne Brannen 30:43
Wow. Wow. So the monasteries across England know that this is where to go to get your proof that you have whatever rights you’re trying to say you have.
Michelle Butler 30:58
It’s a crime of opportunity. Westminster has become the foremost monastic center for forging pre conquest and immediately post conquest documents. There’s so much upheaval around the Conquest that you might as well grab what you can get.
Anne Brannen 31:15
Mm hmm.
Michelle Butler 31:19
On the basis, kind of, of these four charters, Battle wins this round. The king rules for them. It’s likely that the influence of Richard de Luci helps with this because nobody really all the way believes… it’s like knowing when your student has plagiarized, but you can’t prove it.
Anne Brannen 31:39
Yep, yep. Yep.
Michelle Butler 31:42
You would think that at this point, they would be done with forging.
Anne Brannen 31:47
You should think so, yes. Because they have a whole collection at this point. They got an entire shelf of forged documents.
Michelle Butler 31:54
They already got four. Between 1157 and 1174, they forge four more.
Anne Brannen 32:05
Now are these four saying pretty much the same thing? ‘We have the same rights as Canterbury?
Michelle Butler 32:12
A couple, but then a couple are for other things.
Anne Brannen 32:17
Since the others worked so well. ‘We own all the cows.’
Michelle Butler 32:22
Odo, who’s abbot from 1174 to 1200, was skeptical of the early charters and didn’t try to press the exemption. He just went along with the bishop of Chichester because he was pretty sure he was on thin ice. After 1200, the bishop of Chichester comes sniffing around again. The monks are ready with three more. So if you’re counting along at home, we’re up to seven forged charters. It doesn’t work. They try one last ditch effort. They get told to write up a new charter. When they do, they slip the exception clause into it and they hope nobody’s going to notice at the signing.
Anne Brannen 33:05
Oh my goodness.
Michelle Butler 33:07
But the bishop does notice. He tells them, ‘guys you made a mistake. You made a tiny little mistake. I’m sure it was on accident, but go home and write it up properly.’ If that one counts, we’re up to eight forgeries.
Anne Brannen 33:29
I think that one counts. That’s a failed forgery. But nevertheless, it was a forgery.
Michelle Butler 33:36
Oh, my goodness. Oh, this was great. I enjoyed this a lot. So Professor Searle, Eleanor Searle, thinks that William the first probably did grant these rights, and may even have given them something written down. A writ, rather than a charter. But he did not actually issue a charter. The foundation charter of William the second didn’t include the exception either. Both of them were fussing with high churchmen at this point. You remember the one in William the second’s case was his uncle, that guy who lied to him. I don’t remember his name right at the moment. It might have been another Odo. When they got up to the city that they captured, he kind of winked at his men. Remember this? I was really outraged. I’m still outraged. Liar.
Anne Brannen 34:37
I don’t… he winked it just men and then what happened? Remind us.
Michelle Butler 34:41
He had been captured after a siege. He had risen up against William the second. William and his men were escorting him back to his city because he was supposed to surrender the city to them. Instead what happened is that when they got outside his city Odo kind of winked at his men, ‘open the gates, guys.’ But what actually happened is they open the gates to him and then they slammed the door shut. William the second had to beseige him again.
Anne Brannen 35:13
It was very naughty.
Michelle Butler 35:15
Very naughty. Golly gee.
Anne Brannen 35:17
I have a question. If William the first had given Battle Abbey a writ, would that have held the same authority as a charter? Or did they actually need a charter in order to go up against the bishop?
Michelle Butler 35:32
I think they needed a charter. But I think that if they’d have had a copy of the writ, they would have dragged it out.
Anne Brannen 35:39
I think so too.
Michelle Butler 35:41
I don’t think at that point they could put their hands on their copy of the writ and they were they were forging stuff. It really is this complicated time period, where you’re transitioning between ‘my word is my bond’ and ‘pics or it didn’t happen.’ It’s got to be written down. At least for government stuff like this.
Anne Brannen 36:04
Yep. And it’s a big deal. You still didn’t have to have either writs or charters to make smaller kinds of agreements. But this is a big thing to give to an abbey. You don’t have to obey the bishop. That’s big. You got to write it down.
Michelle Butler 36:23
The scholar whose work I’m indebted to for all this is Eleanor Searle, who appears to have been the person working on Battle Abbey in the 20th century. She’s kind of an impressive–okay, I should say, I have no idea about what her personal life was like, so if she had a hobby of kicking puppies, I’m not advocating that–I am saying she apparently was an amazing scholar.
Anne Brannen 36:54
Okay, fair enough. We speak to scholarship. We don’t know character. Fair enough.
Michelle Butler 37:00
She was the first woman to study at the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies in Toronto.
Anne Brannen 37:05
Wow.
Michelle Butler 37:06
She started working on Battle Abbey in the 1960s. She edited and published the cellarers, the accounts of the cellarers, in 1967. Then this article about the forged documents in 1968. Another book about Battle Abbey in 1974. She edited the chronicle of Battle Abbey in 1980. Then she has an amazingly titled book, ‘Predatory Kinship and the Creation of Norman Power: 840-1066’ from 1988. That is the best title for a book about the Normans.
Anne Brannen 37:54
Predatory kinship indeed.
Michelle Butler 37:56
Predatory kinship. It’s a perfect description of how they operated. Her work is amazing. It makes me really sad that I can’t get a hold of any of it because it’s so out of print. They’re spectacularly expensive used. It’s very frustrating to have somebody have done all of this amazing work and now it’s essentially inaccessible. Within a generation. This book on predatory kinship is only from 1988. I don’t know what it means, seriously, to have people do this kind of work, in this kind of detail, and then have it disappear because it’s out of print. The Battle Abbey Chronicle is $220 used.
Anne Brannen 38:48
Yeah, you can’t do that. You can’t do it. This is not a standalone or unusual case. The same thing is true of the Welsh genealogies done by Peter Bartrum, who managed to actually make sense of most of the medieval Welsh genealogies, which tend to contradict each other sometimes for various sorts of reasons.It’s still the gold standard and not only is it out of print, it’s not held in many places, certainly in America. I’m in Albuquerque, and the closest volume to me, if I want to go to a library, is in San Antonio.
Michelle Butler 39:28
I am beyond irritated about this.
Anne Brannen 39:31
It’s $400 used.
Michelle Butler 39:33
If they’re not going to keep it in print, they should be required to have it available digitally. Digitize it!
Anne Brannen 39:39
I’m sorry, hon, that you could not get your book.
Michelle Butler 39:42
I don’t like the fact that her life’s work is really useful and and inaccessible. I couldn’t even get a hold of these books although I can use a family connection to a university library because the university has put them in storage. They’re doing work on something, and you can’t get them.
Anne Brannen 40:05
You can’t get somebody to go to storage? Usually you can write a little chit and they go and get them.
Michelle Butler 40:10
I don’t know whether this is a COVID thing or whether they’re doing work on the facilities, but they are inaccessible right now. They’ve been put into deep off campus storage. Normally you could request it. But not right now.
Anne Brannen 40:24
So it’s not really the same thing as the Library of Alexandria. These things all do exist someplace. It’s just that they are inaccessible. They’re not gone forever.
Michelle Butler 40:33
I don’t really know who would be able to get a hold of them. If the University Library is not making them available and they cost 200 bucks used, even for tenure track people that’s going to be prohibitive. It’s not just independent scholars for whom that’s going to be a bridge too far.
Anne Brannen 40:53
No, that would have been a bridge too far for me for sure.
Michelle Butler 40:56
But I very much would have liked to have learned more about Eleanor Searle. It’s actually difficult to look up information about her because so many things are named after her. There’s a visiting professorship at the Huntington that is named for her. If you search ‘Eleanor Searle Professor,’ what you get is everybody who has served in the visiting professorship.
Anne Brannen 41:17
There’s things named after her and we can’t get her books. That’s just surreal.
Michelle Butler 41:22
There’s a room in Florida, a faculty lounge, which I didn’t know she had any connections to Florida, but really, I can’t find very much about her as an individual, nor can I get a hold of her books.
Anne Brannen 41:34
Well, we are outraged.
Michelle Butler 41:36
I am outraged.
Anne Brannen 41:38
Grieved. Outraged and grieved. Yes.
Michelle Butler 41:41
But I got to learn about a really amazing–kind of–about a really amazing scholar who did some really cool work on Battle Abbey.
Anne Brannen 41:48
As to Battle Abbey…so what finally ended up? They dragged out all these fake charters. What finally ended up with their relationship with the bishop?
Michelle Butler 41:58
Oh, they lost. Here is how Eleanor Searle ends her article about this. It’s a little bit long, but I think it’s probably worthwhile. “Our reconstruction of Battle Abbey’s struggle for exemption up to 1215 can be summarized thus: William the first very probably did forbid any outside interference with the monks who were building his abbey, and very probably issued a writ to this effect, but he did not issue a charter of exemption from episcopal authority, nor did the foundation charter of William the second include such an exemption. The tradition of the de facto protection preserved and insisted upon by the monks was strong enough to command some respect from the early Anglo Norman bishops, for Battle Abbey did enjoy an exemption of sorts, although much less than their later forgeries claimed. The battle between Abbot Walter de Luci and Bishop Hilary of Chichester in the mid 12th century, made such a customary and ill defined exemption no longer possible. Only then did Battle Abbey begin to forge charters of the Norman kings.” Then she talks about the three groups of charters. “The first group of forgeries marks an important change in Anglo-Norman society. It marks the end of an epoch in which oral tradition had a real force, and in which Norman diocesan and Abbey had shared an attitude to authority within the church. In a more document minded age among men who could not share their carefully preserved memory of the Conqueror’s verbal commands, the monks of Abbey defended their tradition by forgery. By 1215, they had created charters of each Anglo-Norman lord and bishop who had honored their exemption, not systematically, but meeting each new challenge as it arose over some 60 years with a new forged charter.” And yeah, after 1215, it doesn’t work. They’re caught up with the reforms that are going on in the church. They’re forced to give in. They’re forced to come back into line and follow the bishop, like everybody else.
Anne Brannen 44:01
That is actually put into writing in some way? There’s some kind of order? If that decision is made, there’s some kind of order.
Michelle Butler 44:10
Yes, yes, yes. That’s the charter that they were trying to slip that phrase in, when they were being forced to sign it.
Anne Brannen 44:16
All right, so that charter is agreed upon with the forged piece taken out.
Michelle Butler 44:22
Yes.
Anne Brannen 44:23
Okay. All right. So the bishop did get to run things in the end.
Michelle Butler 44:28
Yeah. She says “there is no evidence that would lead one to suppose that the monks of Battle ever again forged or tampered with a charter concerning their liberties.” They gave in after 1215. They signed the charter with the ecclesiastical privilege phrase not in it and they have to come into line and follow the Bishop of Chichester.
Anne Brannen 44:50
Like everybody else.
Michelle Butler 44:52
It was fun while it lasted.
Anne Brannen 44:54
The only place really that has this kind of authority is the cathedral of Canterbury. That’s it. Because that’s the archbishop. Oh, well. Fun while it lasted. This was a sweet little crime, not actually any really bad ramifications to it at all. It just simply has to do with a kind of perception of oneself. That they were special. This was a special Abbey and they became simply an abbey.
Michelle Butler 45:36
It’s also part of Norman lords fighting with each other. Walter de Luci is the brother of Richard de Luci, who is the king’s right hand man. When you’re pulling the high church officials from the ranks of the nobility, they don’t forget they’re nobility.
Anne Brannen 45:57
No, no, they’re still nobles, and cousins. They’re all cousins. As you say, some of them are brothers. But other than that they’re all cousins.
Michelle Butler 46:06
Oh, god, they’re all related to each other. The king’s illegitimate son is running the forging ring over at Westminster.
Anne Brannen 46:12
Well, I’m glad we found something to do with this time.
Michelle Butler 46:15
So many of our previous podcasts were coming in here. We had Beckett in here. We had William Rufus. We also had Mabel de Belleme because her husband shows up in this. Roger de Montgomery must have felt particularly bad about the Conquest because he not only founded a monastery in Shrewsbury, which he’d been given, he also founded a Cluniac priory. A bunch of them did this. It’s not just William. A number of the lords involved went ahead and decided to found–
Anne Brannen 46:49
Because they were sorry. They were sorry. They were sorry that they had killed so many people and conquered England. They didn’t give it back. They did not give it back but they found it a bunch of abbeys. Well, thank you, Normans. It’s all better now. Everything’s fine.
Michelle Butler 47:07
I was reading–I think it must have been on Battle Abbey’s site–about how much violence was involved in the Conquest and it’s bad even by medieval standards.
Anne Brannen 47:19
Explain.
Michelle Butler 47:20
The number of lords who get dead as a result of the Conquest…the English nobility is almost obliterated. There’s a lot of damage to the countryside. It really is quite bad. I’m not terribly surprised that the Pope decided this is not…although you know what’s interesting. It’s too early for crusading language, because it’s 1066. But we’re only a generation–I found this really fascinating–we’re only a generation before the First Crusade and there is a religious element to the Conquest that I didn’t really know about.
Anne Brannen 48:01
I don’t either. What was it?
Michelle Butler 48:03
Pope Alexander sanctioned the invasion with the idea that Harold was a perjurer. The invasion was going to teach him a lesson and reform the English church because they’re backing him. There is this proto crusading element to the Conquest that I hadn’t heard about before. It made me go back and check the dates. Yeah, we’re only a generation before the First Crusade.
Anne Brannen 48:32
So Alexander sanctioned the invasion, but then said that they had been too violent when they did it.
Michelle Butler 48:39
So it seems.
Anne Brannen 48:41
That kind of makes no sense. But okay. I mean, it was too violent but why did he sanction it and then say it was too…what did he expect? ‘Hello, I’m William the Conqueror. These are my fancy horses, which I have brought over from Normandy. We would like your land, Mr. Godwinson.’ ‘Oh, okay. I think that all the stuff that we were going through about who was the legitimate heir to England was just…I was really wrong. Here’s my crown. Okay, let’s go have dinner.’ That would have been fine. That would have been an invasion of England, which did not make people unhappy.
Michelle Butler 49:16
He was supposed to kill them nicely.
Anne Brannen 49:18
‘Kill them nicely. You were supposed to kill him nicely. You were not supposed to have four people hack Harold Godwinson into pieces. What was just wrong. Wrong, wrong wrong. Not to mention all the other dead Englishmen.’ Yeah, it’s true. The other thing, though, about the noble families, the Old English families that were already as to the nobility, is that William parceled out England, and so made all these earls and then there was the earls of England and they were Normans. Yeah. English lost that for sure.
Michelle Butler 49:51
I’m going to be sitting for a while with the idea that the Norman Conquest was sanctioned as a kind of crusade 0.5.
Anne Brannen 50:00
Beta. It was a beta crusade.
Michelle Butler 50:02
Because they do the same thing 100 years later with the invasion of Ireland. That is also sanctioned by the church.
Anne Brannen 50:08
What were the Irish doing that they needed…? I can think of many things that the Irish might have been doing but what had the Irish been doing that the Pope sanctioned an invasion?
Michelle Butler 50:18
It was the same argument. That the Irish church needed to be reformed. They weren’t necessarily following the Roman calendar yet. They weren’t necessarily on board with clerical celibacy.
Anne Brannen 50:31
They did their tonsures wrong
Michelle Butler 50:33
The tonsures were wrong. They were monastically organized rather than parish organized. There were all sorts of things the Celtic Church was out of step with the Roman church on and it was sanctioned by the Pope.
Anne Brannen 50:50
The Old English church was too so…what’s really, I think, sort of alarming here is that the Norman church was behaving? No, they’re Normans. They were not behaving. Oh well. If you want somebody to go invade a country and kind of do it without too much bloodshed, you really don’t want to send the Normans. Just don’t do that at all. That’s not a good idea.
They don’t know how to stay home and just play cards or something.
Well, they’re still Vikings. They’re Vikings.
Michelle Butler 51:26
They always gotta be killing somebody.
Anne Brannen 51:27
They’re Vikings that speak French. So do we have anything more on our Battle Abbey forgeries? I enjoyed that. Thank you for sending us over there because I would not have come up with that myself. That was good.
Michelle Butler 51:41
I enjoyed reading about why we know they’re forgeries, and how even at the time, people kind of knew they were forgeries, but they couldn’t prove it.
Anne Brannen 51:51
I like the whole history of why you would start making these forgeries in the first place. It was to prove something that you truly believed. It wasn’t like the monks made this up. ‘Well, William told us that we didn’t have to listen to you.’ They believed it. And it was probably true that Williams said ‘you’re the special abbey, you’re Battle Abbey. We stuck the altar over where we hacked Harold Godwinson to death so that’s really special.’ I’m sure he said that. Or something along those lines. They were forging something that they believed to be true. But it didn’t work.
Michelle Butler 52:25
They were not lying so much as needing written documentation of something that they were pretty sure was true.
Anne Brannen 52:36
They were producing evidence that did not really exist. Well, there’s our forensics. We can tell they were forgeries, because the people that signed them were already dead at the time that these things were supposedly written. That’s pretty funny. You really need to know your history if you’re going to make forgeries. Well, the next time we get together, we get another blood feast. We haven’t had a blood feast in quite some time.
Michelle Butler 52:59
I’m astonished we didn’t end up with one in May of 1157. With the abbot and the bishop butting heads before the not at all calm Henry the second.
Anne Brannen 53:14
Well, luckily, we did not actually have a blood feast. That was a good thing. But Saint Olga of Kiev orchestrated blood feast in 945. So we’re going over to Kiev, how about that?
Michelle Butler 53:31
Woo-hoo!
Anne Brannen 53:30
She was angry with some people and she invited them to dinner and then they died. That being the essence of a blood feast, really. Well. So that’s what we have to share with you on the forgeries of Battle Abbey. This has been True Crime Medieval, where the crimes are just like they are today only with less technology. We’re on Apple podcast, I heart podcast, Spotify, Stitcher, all the places where the podcasts are hanging out. Please leave a review. We appreciate that. You can reach us at True Crime Medieval.com, truecrimemedieval is all one word. You can find the show notes written by Michelle and the transcripts, which are done for us by Laurie Dietrich, and you can reach us all through that webpage. You can leave comments. We’d love to hear from you. If you’ve got medieval crimes that you think we should discuss, please leave them for us and we’ll take them under consideration. There were a lot of medieval crimes and we’re not, I’m sure, going to be able to think of them all by ourselves. It would be nice to a list. Did you know about the…especially blood feasts. We’re low on blood feasts. Done a lot of blood feasts and we love the blood feasts and we need some more.
Michelle Butler 54:45
Or poisonings. We haven’t had a good poisoning for a while.
Anne Brannen 54:48
We haven’t. We haven’t. We started out with poisonings. So we say goodbye.
Michelle Butler 54:53
Bye.
44. King James Murders the Earl of Douglas, Stirling Castle, Scotland 1452
Anne Brannen 0:26
Hello and welcome to True Crime Medieval, 1000 years of people behaving badly. I’m Anne Brannen and I’m your host in Albuquerque.
Michelle Butler 0:36
And I’m Michelle Butler in Maryland, the most medieval state in America.
Anne Brannen 0:42
And we’re in Scotland. We’re in Scotland today. Every once in a while we like to go back to Scotland because there’s a lot of murders in Scotland. Today we’re discussing the day that King James the Second murdered William Douglas, the eighth Earl of Douglas, which was 22nd of February 1452. Really, he did murder him. Was this an accident? No, it wasn’t. He totally murdered him. So, your background. You ready, Michelle? I’ll give you the background.
Michelle Butler 1:12
All right, hold on. Okay, all right. I’m ready.
Anne Brannen 1:18
Here we go. Now, some of this background, actually, we already covered in our Black Dinner episode because William’s father, James–James Douglas, not, obviously, James Stewart–that was the seventh Earl, had gained power after James the first had been assassinated. Now we go back. James the first had been badgering and executing and generally annoying the nobles of the country. So he got assassinated. His Queen, who was a Beaufort, you remember, got wounded, but she escaped and she rescued her child who was then of course, James the Second. He was six at this point. James the first was assassinated and his successor was a bitty bitty thing. The country needed regents, because six year old people cannot run the country on their own. We’re all agreed on this. Maybe the six year olds aren’t, but we outnumber them, so whatever. That was in 1437, that James the Second became king. The regent at that point was his nephew, who was Archibald Douglas. That was the fifth Earl of Douglas. But he died of a fever in 1439, and the power got shared then kind of shakily among a Crichton and a Livingston and the James Douglas that we’re talking about, this James Douglas who’s the father of the William Douglas, who is the victim of our particular podcast today. We get various victims at various times amongst the Douglases and the Stewarts but this is ours for today. So his dad was instrumental in orchestrating what we call the Black Dinner. You remember?
Michelle Butler 3:05
Oh yeah.
Anne Brannen 1:19
Yes. At which William Douglas–you understand that’s like his grand nephew or something, they’re related–William Douglas, who was the sixth Earl, and Archibald’s son, if you’re keeping track of this–was murdered at the age of 16, along with his younger brother. Okay, so he helped orchestrate that. Because, as you will see, the Douglases don’t mind to kill each other off. They spend a lot of time doing this. And so we have this. At that point, James Douglas, the one who helped orchestrate the Black Dinner and kill off the young Earl, he became the Earl of Douglas, and his brother Archibald’s line was no longer in power on account of the Black Dinner and a bunch of death. Okay. James’ son, William Douglas, our victim in this particular podcast, he became Earl three years later in 1443. Then what he did was, he went off to Rome for the Jubilee. Every few years, there’s a Jubilee. So he went to the Jubilee on an extended journey. He had safe conduct passes that let him travel all through England and France and Flanders, and he didn’t come back to Scotland until 1451. All righty, why not? So he left. That was in August of 1451. Because he had a job to do. He was one of the Scottish conservators looking over this truce that was going on at the time with England. It was short lived. At any rate, he had been gone for a while. While he was gone, King James, who was grown up by then and no longer a bitty thing, had been attacking Douglas lands, theoretically because the Douglases had been misbehaving and harassing nearby lords but–and frankly, they probably had been–because the Douglases had become so powerful, James wanted out from under them. You remember it was William’s father who had helped kill off Archibald Douglas’s line. A lot of power. Okay. So William Douglas got back into the country in 1451 in August, as I said, and things kind of stayed uneasy and tense until February of 1452. Which is where we are today. At which point, one of William’s close friends–and this was actually a relative also, he was a cousin–
Oh, imagine my shock.
Who isn’t? They’re all cousins. Everybody is a cousin. He got a summons to visit the king and also a safe conduct which was apparently written in James’s own hand, as far as I can tell, that he was supposed to go to Sterling and see the King. He was uneasy about this but of course he had the safe conduct and that’s really precious, isn’t it, and so you will be safe with that. I guess he was safe getting there. Any rate, he went, despite history and being Scottish, he went–he probably knew better but he did–and the king demanded–
Michelle Butler 6:12
Yes, he should have known better.
Anne Brannen 6:14
Because it’s constant. ‘Come to dinner.’ Or like ‘come to’…I mean, Robert the Bruce killed John Comyn in front of the high altar. It was the same thing. ‘It’ll be safe there because it’s sanctuary. Until I lose my temper.’ The point at which the Scots lose their tempers it’s all ‘Katie bar the door.’ At any rate, the king demanded that Douglas dissolve this agreement that Douglas had been in on with Alexander Lindsey and John of Islay, which was and I quote, “a bond against all men, including the king” end of quote. This had all gotten put together after John of Isaly had captured some royal castles in the north. Alexander Lindsey, also from the North, had joined up with Douglas. There’s apparently some discussion as to whether or not this really was intended to bring the king down. But whether or not it was actually intended to bring the king down, it was definitely intended as something that was not in favor of the king. All right. Douglas refused to dissolve the alliance, and James lost his temper and stabbed him. Now, we get this from the Auchinleck chronicle. It’s a fragment, but it’s fairly contemporary. It tells us that James stabbed the earl 26 times which I believe we call overkill.
Michelle Butler 7:38
It does not suggest decisions made with a cold head.
Anne Brannen 7:46
No. This is hot headed. He lost his temper. James was known for…James the fiery face was known for losing his temper. James had a red birthmark on his face. The understanding amongst the people at the time was that the reason he had this was that it was an indication of his temper, which he also had, and was being inflicted on William Douglas at that time. So he stabbed him 26 times and they throw him out the window. Now, Michelle, at some point, I think we need to make a little list of all the people in the podcast that we’ve collected so far who get assassinated and thrown out a window. What is this throwing out of windows thing? This is constant. Beatrice Cenci’s dad: thrown out the window. Joanna of Naples’ first husband: thrown out the window. There’s a lot of throwing out the window.
Michelle Butler 8:38
It’s the defenestration list.
Anne Brannen 8:42
You can’t just stab people and leave them in the hall or the bedroom. No, you have to throw them out the window. It isn’t like, ‘oh, this person must have died out here.’ No. Because there’s blood all in the bedroom. Anyway, they throw him out the window. James’ couriers were in on this too. They stabbed Douglas a bunch, and apparently Sir Patrick Gray is the one that whacked him in the head with a pole-axe. So he was dead. He was very dead. Now, Douglas had no issue and so his brother James Douglas then became the ninth Earl of Douglas. Well, that was our crime. I’m going to be telling you also what happened after that, but you want to add anything in here, Michelle? There’s William Douglas. He’s dead.
Michelle Butler 9:29
They went through quite a lot of Douglases in fairly rapid succession. The Earl of Douglas. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Also, I think an understated public service that we’re providing with this podcast is disabusing people of wanting to be royalty in the Middle Ages.
Anne Brannen 9:51
Yeah. Or nobility of any kind.
Michelle Butler 9:54
It is horrible.
Anne Brannen 9:58
What you want to do–if you find yourself in one of those time wrinkle things and you find yourself back in the Middle Ages–what you want to do is figure out how to fly under the wire. You do not want to associate yourself with power. Power is not great.
Michelle Butler 10:15
Don’t even be a goldsmith. It’s too close.
No. No.
Be a nice blacksmith. Something where you’re just not getting anybody’s attention.
Anne Brannen 10:26
Right. You want to be above an actual peasant or serf because that’s just too hard. So hard, so hard. You want to have a trade. So learn to trade. Grocer would be fine. You can drag food around. That would be okay.
Michelle Butler 10:43
Apparently, if you are a con artist, be a baker. We learned that a few months ago.
Anne Brannen 10:50
Yeah. But then if they catch you, it’s really bad. You don’t want to do that. I think being a weaver would be all right, but not an embroiderer. Again, too close. Too close. No.
Michelle Butler 11:05
I’m glad I don’t have little kids anymore to where we have the Disney princess thing in the house. Because it’s ruined.
Anne Brannen 11:17
I have to say myself that I never really enjoyed the Disney princesses. Although I did like Snow White. She was around when I was a kid. I like Snow White. But that was mostly on account of the singing with the little animals. I mean, birds come and sing and do your housework. It’s great. I was into that.
Michelle Butler 11:38
To be honest, I think the amazing clothing was the attraction for my kids.
Anne Brannen 11:46
Hmm, yeah, the Disney Princesses are indeed dressed nicely. That’s true. Any rate. So Douglas’s getting killed off right and left and here’s another one. We’re gonna have some more in a minute, because I’m going to explain what happened after that. Did things calm down then? Was King James able to say ‘okay, Douglas, dead, everybody just stand back and calm down and stop’? No, no, no. What we had was Civil War, intermittent civil war until 1455. It didn’t go well. The king was continually being defeated. Things were not going well for the king whatsoever. But what he did–so he wasn’t so great at the whole fighting thing, and the winning of battles–but what he was really good at was leveraging patronage. He ended up getting a bunch of the Douglas allies over to his side, and that’s what happened. At the Battle of Arkinholm, which was May the first, 1455, it was a small battle, but it ended up being very decisive. James, James Douglas, who was the ninth Earl, because he inherited it from his overly stabbed father was in England. He was rallying support. So he wasn’t there for the battle, but his three brothers were. Archibald, who was the Earl of Moray, was killed in the battle, and his head was cut off and presented to the king. Hugh Douglas, who was the Earl of Ormond, was captured at the battle and executed. And John Douglas, who was the Lord of Balvenie, got away and went to England because Scotland was way too hot at that point. So what that was, was not just the end of the Civil War, fighting with James the Second, it was the end of the black Douglases. So now I’m going to explain the black Douglases and the red Douglases. Would you like that, Michelle, if I explained that to you?
Michelle Butler 13:46
Yeah. And then I want us to talk a little bit about the ways that this intriguingly parallels the Wars of the Roses. I had no idea that this was going on up here in Scotland at the same time. Very fascinating.
Anne Brannen 14:03
Yeah. Yeah. Because it’s cousins fighting each other, in different realms. Okay, so here’s the whole thing about the Douglases. The earldom…the earl of Douglas had been defeated, and the earldom, meaning the lordship and the lands, were given over to George Douglas, the fourth earl of Angus, and he was one of the red Douglases. George Douglas was a red Douglas. William Douglas and his son James were black Douglas. The black line was descended from William the Hardy, through an illegitimate son of Sir James Douglas, who was called the Black Douglas, and he was important during the wars of Scottish independence in the 14th century. The red line was descended from an illegitimate son of William Douglas, the first Earl of Douglas and so they were related. But they were descended from William Hardy through two different lines. The black Douglases had been the ones–that’s the Earl of Douglas–they were the ones who had all this power. Okay. So they’re related, but they were at odds. They had a tense relationship all this time. It kind of went back and forth. George Douglas, the Earl of Angus, for instance, had, along with William–this is our victim Douglas of the day–had been raiding the north of England, but that was the last time they joined together. During the Civil War, after the murder of William, the earl of Angus allied with King James who was, by the way, his first cousin, hello. Any rate, so he allied with James Stewart rather than with the Douglases and he became the leader of the king’s forces. So that was why when the black Douglases lost power, the red Douglases gained it. They remain the Earls of Angus, but they gained all that black Douglas land. So they were the ones who were powerful from then on. And there you go.
Michelle Butler 16:17
Then does the Earl of Douglas just cease to be a title?
Anne Brannen 16:20
Yes, yes, it’s over.
Michelle Butler 16:22
Yeah, I don’t think James would be able to allow that to descend to anybody. If he wants to put an end to their power, it would be very dangerous for him to give that title even to somebody else, because there’s so much heritage coming with it.
Anne Brannen 16:43
He gives all the the lands to the earls of Angus. The title of the earl of Angus is now held by the Duke of Hamilton.
Michelle Butler 16:51
And both of these lines are descended from illegitimate children, which is really interesting.
Anne Brannen 16:57
Yeah, yeah. Certainly in Wales, and Wales more than anyplace else, but also in Scotland, the illegitimacy is not as much an issue as it is…the Anglo-Normans are just nuts about that. To the point at which they’re willing to completely forego, like lose lines entirely, because they’ve got no, quote unquote, “legitimate heirs.” And to be frank, as it goes on down…I don’t know what Henry Tudor might have done, had his illegitimate son survived, rather than dying fairly young. We might not have had a Queen Elizabeth.
Michelle Butler 17:38
That’s an interesting question. I knew that he had Henry Fitzroy, but I didn’t remember that Henry Fitzroy died young.
Anne Brannen 17:45
Yeah, Bessie Blount’s son died. He died, I think, early teens or something like that.
Michelle Butler 17:51
It stinks to be an illegitimate kid of the Anglo Norman lords because they expect you to work for them. But you will never ever get to work your way into the line. They expect you to be there and help support the family. But you’re never going to be able to inherit the good stuff. They set you up with minor holdings, over there. But you’re expected to come and fight for the legitimate line. Like Matilda’s brother was instrumental at supporting her claim. Yeah, this was fascinating. I didn’t know any of this history, and I did not know that there was this mirror image civil war going on up in Scotland, between two branches of the same family, the Douglases and the Stewarts and of course, the Douglases amongst themselves, like we have with the Lancastrians and the Yorkists.
Who are basically two lines of plantagenets, trying to fight it out and then killing each other off so that neither one of them has the throne and its the Tudors.
You have a similar destination of the nobility in Scotland with all of this fighting. That’s why the Livingstons are able to grab some power. They’re not a big deal until there’s this vacuum.
Anne Brannen 19:22
Yeah, it’s just so dumb. I understand okay, we want the power. But it’s so short-sighted and it is doesn’t work very well. Also, to be fair, at least in Scotland apparently a bunch of temper is going on too, which you don’t hear so much about in the Cousins War in England. It’s much more premeditated godawfulness going on.
Michelle Butler 19:53
There’s a fair amount of lust-based bad decisions going on in the Cousins War. Edward could have held on to that throne if he’d have married properly.
Anne Brannen 20:07
Yeah, dragging the Woodvilles into the royal presence was kind of a mistake. I like Anthony Woodville though but oh well. Things don’t go well for him.
Michelle Butler 20:22
It’s not a good time to be nobility. It’s just awful. And this sort of violence feeds off of itself.
Anne Brannen 20:34
Yeah. Cuz then you have to…no wonder we get to the point where what we’re going to have is the Jacobean revenge tragedy. It’s really basically what you’re seeing in history’s, over and over and over and over and over. ‘I’m really angry at you because you killed such-and-such and so we’re going to slaughter you at the high altar.’
Michelle Butler 20:56
Are we gonna talk about James getting killed by his cannon? James the Second is really fascinated by artillery, like his dad was, and was really interested in the possibilities of artillery for warfare. He had just got a new cannon–I think it was called the Lion–and of course, there’s a huge problem with 15th century cannon. The gunpowder is not…you know, the prototypes of things, first generation, beta versions of things do not always work all that awesome.
This is the beta cannon.
This is the beta cannon, and he’s standing too close to it, and it explodes and takes off one of his legs and he bleeds to death. He was only 29.
Anne Brannen 21:51
Oh, really? I didn’t realize that. So what year is that? Do you know offhand?
Michelle Butler 21:57
- But he hasn’t made it to his 30th birthday yet. Because his birthday is in October and he was killed on the third of August.
Anne Brannen 22:06
So it’s five years after he wins that battle against the Douglases. Things have been calm for five years and so then he blows himself up. He hoists himself with his own petard. That is actually how that phrase is supposed to be used. He hoists himself with his own petard. God. Violent ends for all of them. Good lord. So then, who’s king after that? Just wondering. Is it James the third?
Michelle Butler 22:36
Yeah, his son, James the third. And I’m trying to work out how old he was. when he came to the throne. He was born….oh, God, it was another kid. It was another child king because he was born in 1451.
Anne Brannen 22:50
Oh okay.
Michelle Butler 22:53
His mom acts as his Regent until she dies, and then it must be someone else because he still would be little. They had a really rough run of it there.
Anne Brannen 23:06
So he died in battle, James the third. All right. Good Lord. Yeah. The Stuarts and the Douglases both. Okay, so yeah. So that’s my background, and my explanation of our lovely murder for the day. Last time we met, we had no murders. It was all about a copyright issue, which didn’t actually exist, although there was a war later, but it was a tiny one. But today, we had a bunch of deaths and it was all sad. I believe you went and found some plays?
Michelle Butler 23:39
I did. Yeah. This was…I want to talk about the plays. But this was a flat up murder. I was a little bit shocked by the lack of ambiguity. Everybody knew. He just killed him.
Anne Brannen 23:51
Yeah. While he was on safe conduct to have a little discussion, he lost his temper and killed him. There’s no…
Michelle Butler 24:01
There’s no wiggle room.
Anne Brannen 24:04
Nah. Nah. It doesn’t, of course, really solve anything. But we have a civil war, you know. No, it was not a good move.
Michelle Butler 24:12
So what I have for you is how James, for his relatively short but extremely eventful reign, shows up in…I’m going to mention the historical fiction, but mostly I’m going to tell you about the plays.
Anne Brannen 24:29
Of course.
Michelle Butler 24:32
One of the things that I did not know until we started doing this podcast was how much 19th century historical fiction there is about the Middle Ages.
Anne Brannen 24:42
Oh, it goes on and on. They were so obsessed, obsessed, with the Middle Ages.
Michelle Butler 24:47
Almost every topic we’ve had, if it’s not obscure, has one or two 19th century novels about it. Sometimes I really like going and looking at the 19th literary novels. This week, my brain wasn’t in 19th century prose space, so I didn’t do that. Cuz you got to be in exactly the right frame of mind to do 19th century prose.
Anne Brannen 25:13
I’m kind of not often there. Well, it depends. I love 19th century prosse, if it’s like, oh, I don’t know, let’s say Eliot and Dickens and whatnot, or pretty much any of the Russians but no, the mediocre 19th century prose, I never can handle. I just can’t do that. No.
Michelle Butler 25:30
Sometimes I’m in the right frame of mind because I have a melodramatic vein in my soul. So sometimes I can do it. But I wasn’t there this week. Anybody who wants to go look at the list of the 19th century historical novels is welcome to go check it out on Wikipedia.
Anne Brannen 25:49
How long is this list? Is it a really long list?
Michelle Butler 25:52
There’s one from 1862. There’s one from 1891. There’s one from 1899. He shows up in a Dorothy Dunnett novel, which is cool.
Anne Brannen 26:06
Oh, who is this?
Michelle Butler 26:08
Dorothy Dunnett is a–she’s really brilliant–historical fiction author who’s an influence on Game of Thrones actually.
Anne Brannen 26:17
Ah.
Michelle Butler 26:18
Mostly she’s writing books set in Scotland.
Anne Brannen 26:23
Okay.
Michelle Butler 26:25
So there’s a series of plays that was originally written in 2014, and then was staged again in 2016, for the Edinburgh International Festival. They’re written by Rona Munro. It’s called the James plays. There’s one for James the first, one for James the second, and one for James the third.
Anne Brannen 26:49
That’s so tidy.
Michelle Butler 26:52
They are obviously in conversation with Shakespeare’s history plays. The reviews often comment on that comparison, and the playwright was commissioned to write these. I cannot help but conclude that part of what is going on here is this internal debate in Scotland about independence and the independence vote that was going on at about this time, and of course, will be coming back with Brexit and everything. But it’s also the case that the author, as well as the reviews, talks about wanting to provide Scotland with an equivalent of Shakespeare’s history cycle. And of course, in particular, his Wars of the Roses plays.
Anne Brannen 27:49
Right. So this really fits.
Michelle Butler 27:51
They’re very interesting plays. They’re written in…it’s not that they’re written in Scots, but they’re definitely produced with a pretty heavy Scottish accent. I watched the trailer for the plays on YouTube, and could have benefited from subtitles. What happens then is that the characters who are not from Scotland stick out.
Anne Brannen 28:24
Ah, yes.
Michelle Butler 28:25
The French princesses who are being married into this family stick out because they have totally different accents. The play that is about James the Second, according to the reviews, is generally the weakest of the three. I will say that I would have…10 out of 10 would have produced and would definitely watch on the stage. The way it’s constructed is…because he was a little boy when he came to the throne…it’s not told from the six year old’s point of view, it is told as things being remembered by him later, and in particular, things being remembered by him later in the form of nightmare. It’s like James is so traumatized, by the time he’s an adult, he cannot remember his childhood except through nightmare.
Anne Brannen 29:16
So when he’s remembering the Black Dinner, for instance–and we refer you to our earlier podcast– he’s remembering it as something that actually happened? That would be one of the classically traumatizing moments for the young King James even though it didn’t…I mean, they killed the Douglases but there wasn’t actually a dinner with a bull’s head.
Michelle Butler 29:37
The play is actually pretty clever about how it handles the Black Dinner because it is being told through his memory and he’s been set up as somebody who’s telling his story through his nightmares. In the scene that is his nightmare memory of it, there is this moment where a bull’s head is on a tray, but then the next thing that happens is a man who is clearly a nightmare figure with a bull’s head comes in and is the one attacking the other two. So it isn’t necessarily taking the position that it happened, literally, but it is this thing that’s happening in his memory.
Anne Brannen 30:22
Right. Right. Right. Fair enough. I like that. That’s very smart.
Michelle Butler 30:27
It opens with a scene, right after his father’s assassination where he is totally freaked out and is hiding in a chest. It’s his cousin William, the one that he ends up…because what the play does is it structures looking at the relationship between the two of them. It posits the idea that they were friends until they weren’t.
Anne Brannen 30:56
Fair enough.
Michelle Butler 30:57
One of the reviews compares it to like Hal and Hotspur as if they grew up together.
Anne Brannen 31:06
Yeah, yeah. Nice.
Michelle Butler 31:07
Which I think is a good way of thinking about it. It posits that James is, as you might expect, pretty traumatized by everything he’s gone through, and indeed struggles with not hiding in that box. He sleepwalks when he’s having nightmares and goes back into the box. Of course, the play is then setting up the box as a metaphor, because he’s constantly in the box. But I really liked it. I thought it was pretty cool. I liked the way in which the play is setting up the two of them trying to be friends, and having the older people in their lives making that impossible, because the older people in their lives are so ruled by their ambition, that it doesn’t allow the two of them to be friends. So the young King James is this pawn being pulled back and forth between Livingston and Creighton. William’s father, the one who arranged the Black Dinner, beats the crap out of William at least three times on the stage, because William won’t live up to the amount of ambition he wants him to have. The dad is positioning them to depose James and put William in his place. William doesn’t want that. He’s resisting it.
Because it’s not a pleasant place to be actually. Does the play have the murder in there, when James loses his temper?
Yes.
Anne Brannen 32:46
You’d have to have it. If you’re gonna be having this play and have the whole thing with the friendship between these two people, one of whom murders the other, you’d really have to include the murder. I’m glad that it does.
Michelle Butler 32:57
And it’s an interesting arc. I would say that the play’s sympathy is with James. It’s not that it’s hard on William. There is sympathy for William. But the play’s greater sympathy is with James.
Anne Brannen 33:14
Interesting.
Michelle Butler 33:15
He cannot just exist in the world. There’s all of these people pushing at him. What gets set up is that he and William keep telling each other ‘look, it’s you and me against these people, we got to stick together.’ Then James ends up married to Mary. Once she’s pregnant, she starts poking at him to assert himself. So there’s this Lady Macbeth undertone going on with her. She says to him, ‘you’re not in charge. You do what these old men tell you to do. I want my son to be a prince, a real prince.’
Anne Brannen 33:56
It’s true that the Douglases were indeed running things. They had a great deal of power. He wanted out from under. Fair enough.
Michelle Butler 34:08
According to the play, Mary gets James to send William away, to send him off to be an envoy to the Pope.
Anne Brannen 34:15
Yeah he has to go the Julibee. For years.
Michelle Butler 34:16
So he can consolidate his base of power and you know, seize a couple of things of William’s. Then when William comes home, he goes to him and basically says ‘what the hell, man?’ and also ‘you’re not doing that to me again.’ This is the conversation between them that really leads up to the murder. It is a really tense conversation where they’re saying to each other, ‘I want to still be friends with you.’ But James is saying ‘but I am the king and I’m in charge’ and William is like ‘you’re in charge of everything except me. You will not tell a Douglas what to do. You can be in charge of everything else but not me.’
Anne Brannen 35:05
Yeah, you really have to kill off the Douglases instead of trying to get them to obey. This is a true thing concerning at least the black Douglases.
Michelle Butler 35:17
The conversation whips the two of them up into this fury of being mad at each other. They supposedly want to come to terms, but neither one of them are going to abandon that position. William finally says to him, ‘Look, buddy, you can be a charge of everything else. But I need you to know that I can walk in here at any time, kill your baby, fuck your sister, and hit your wife in the face. And that will happen if I want it to.’ And that’s what tips James over into killing him.
Anne Brannen 35:54
That is so interesting, because that of course has no…this isn’t out of history. This is out of our playwrights brain. But that’s really interesting. Because you end up having to like, ‘well, what is it that pushes somebody so far over the edge that they stab someone else 26 times? Is that just simply ‘no, I don’t think that I will do that thing?’ Nuh-huh. There has to be some kind of kindling. There has to be some kind of fire. You have to have it make sense. You want to make something up, and that’s kind of scary. Like, well, of course, you have to stab somebody 26 times. So yeah, the sympathy is with James. Yeah.
Michelle Butler 36:34
I think it would produce very well.
Anne Brannen 36:37
It’d be interesting to see it as a trilogy, wouldn’t it? I’d like to see that. Mm hmm.
Michelle Butler 36:41
I was telling you earlier that I haven’t read the other two plays because all three of them are quite long. But the reviews like to talk about the one with James the First. He spent all that time in captivity with Henry the Fifth. The play deliberately inverts Shakespeare’s heroic understanding of Henry the Fifth by having him be really all about power and quite coarse. The plays are written in modern dialect and Henry the Fifth drops the F bomb a lot. At one point, he tells James, the whole king gig is just fucking women you don’t know and killing your relatives. Which I feel is a fairly accurate description.
Anne Brannen 37:43
Medieval royal history, yes.
Michelle Butler 37:45
Medieval kingship. But I’m sure that went over well with the English. Take that, Agincourt. But, of course, you know, it probably is closer to what Henry the Fifth was actually like, in real life. He was one tough cookie.
Anne Brannen 38:05
Yeah. And Agincourt is not like this courtly…Agincourt is a battle won on account of the battlefield and some good technology amongst the longbowmen. It isn’t anything about…it’s not romantic.
Michelle Butler 38:27
God, I hope somebody has written a book, though, about the importance of Agincourt as a metaphor for the English because they’re constantly dragging that out as a way to psych themselves up for whatever horrible thing they have to face.
Anne Brannen 38:43
Right, right. You know, Agincourt is one of my favorite things and so I think about it a lot. My dad, he’d taken himself on a tour of World War One battle sites that his father was in. His father was one of the few people to survive and come home, one of those East Texas boys that came on home from World War One after fighting in France. He wrote a book and my father was doing the intro. And so he was on this little tour, and he went to Agincourt. Was my grandfather at Agincourt? No, but my dad knows how much I love Agincourt. So he went to Agincourt and he took pictures of everything so that he could send it back to me and he told me that in the parking lot, there were no French cars.
Michelle Butler 39:36
[laughter] Surprise, surprise.
Anne Brannen 39:41
It was all English cars in the parking lot at Agincourt.
Michelle Butler 39:47
I was happy to have some drama on this go. It always makes me cheerful when there’s some drama. It makes me happier when it’s great drama.
Anne Brannen 39:57
Yes, because sometimes we have drama and it’s kind of crappy drama. So obviously, we can’t really go and see this. But you said there’s trailers on YouTube?
Michelle Butler 40:10
There’s some trailers and there are reviews. The play is very accessible. There is one standalone biography of James the Second, and you’re welcome to go spend like 40 bucks on it used but I didn’t.
Anne Brannen 40:27
When is it from? How old is it?
Michelle Butler 40:29
It’s relatively recent. 2015. But it was published in England, and it’s hard to get here. I would have liked to have read it. But it was too costly. Working on a budget here.
Anne Brannen 40:45
So there’s like time and money constraints.
Michelle Butler 40:49
It’s not available electronically, which is really irritating. There’s basically one scholar, Christine McGladdery, who cares about James the second. We seem to be running across that a lot, that there will be a scholar who has focused on a particular… we saw that with Edward the second. William Rufus had a particular scholar, this one scholar has decided this is their thing. Happy to have somebody because somebody’s got to go dig through the archives and find this stuff, and it’s not going to be me. I’m happy to read people’s scholarship. I do not wish to go dig through archives.
Anne Brannen 41:31
Mmm, not these days. You know, what I’d also like to know…as far as I can tell, the Douglases, on the other hand, are coming down through popular culture basically through the Black Dinner, which of course, as we know, didn’t actually exist. So I’d like to know more about how the Douglases are appearing, because they’re a major force. But everything centers around the Black Dinner.
Michelle Butler 41:59
It’s a busy time in Scotland. You got assassinations. They’re pretty stone cold. I understand that they’re all related to each other, so you got to get over the idea of killing relatives, or you’re just not going to make it. But it’s stone cold for the great uncle to have arranged the Black Dinner.
Anne Brannen 42:22
Just as a precis for those of you who don’t feel like going and finding the podcast about the Black Dinner. As we were saying earlier, the young Earl of Douglas gets killed off and so does his younger brother. This does happen. What the myth is, is that they’re invited to a dinner and there’s a black bull’s head brought out to signify, in some kind of ancient tradition which never existed, that there’s going to be a death and then so they’re screaming and upsetting. And the boy king, King James, is crying and all upset and they kill these two these two young Douglases. The Douglases were invited to come to court. They knew better but they did, and they were executed. That’s what happened. There was no bull. There was no dinner. But the dinner and the bull, that’s a much better story than we visited and got our heads cut off. It’s like that’s, well, whatever. We want a black dinner and a bull involved, that’s what we want before we’re gonna pass that on into popular culture.
Michelle Butler 43:29
Another Scottish person killed a Scottish person…
Anne Brannen 43:34
Well, killed his relative. Yeah, yeah. And I want to point out, was this in between the black Douglases and the red Douglases? No, no. This was black Douglas and black Douglas.
Michelle Butler 43:50
Clearing the path.
Anne Brannen 43:51
Clearing the path for my particular branch of my branch. Any rate, so there wasn’t any Black Dinner. But there were some deaths. We didn’t mention that when James the Second’s father was assassinated–we did talk about the assassination–but we did not point out that the reason they caught him whilst he was trying to get away was that he’d gone down into a sewer, which it turned out had been blocked up, because they had been losing tennis balls down it and so they blocked it so as to save the tennis balls. And that’s how the king died. We didn’t mention that part. We should mention that again, because that’s a nice little detail. The tennis balls.
Michelle Butler 44:33
That is the sort of thing that if you put it in a novel people would say, ‘Ah, come on.’
Anne Brannen 44:40
Yes, people would not believe getting stuck in a sewer on account of having to save the tennis balls but they will believe a dinner with a black bull’s head stuck in the middle of the table. I just can’t explain this, as to what people will believe and not believe because one was true and one wasn’t, and you see which has come down through history.
Michelle Butler 44:58
But that’s dramatic not, you know, the king died because of a farcical dumb.
Anne Brannen 45:06
I find the tennis balls highly dramatic. I can only hope–really this is what I’m hoping–is that as he was caught on that side of some little grate that had blocked off the sewer that he could see some tennis balls. On the other side.
Michelle Butler 45:22
I will say that this would never have happened to a Norman. Because a Norman understood that having having a bolt hole was way more important than being able to make sure the tennis balls didn’t roll away.
Anne Brannen 45:35
Nah, the Normans don’t get caught in the sewers because of the tennis ball. What the Normans do, is they take their boats out drunkenly in the middle of the night and then you know, kill everybody off by going onto a rock that everybody knew was there. They’ll do that. Or having hunting accidents in the New Forest. They do that.
Michelle Butler 45:56
Those all involve a lot of, you know, spunk and ofermod.
Anne Brannen 46:05
Okay. Not just kind of trying to run away and getting caught.
Michelle Butler 46:11
Nickel and diming the place by trying to keep the tennis balls and forgetting that that was your escape route, if anything bad ever happened.
Anne Brannen 46:21
Well, maybe he just thought that nothing bad would ever happen. Oh, wait, no, that’s stupid.
Michelle Butler 46:26
That would be a super dumb approach to being King of Scotland.
Anne Brannen 46:30
‘Nothing bad will happen to me. I’m fine.’
Michelle Butler 46:33
Maybe he learned to play tennis while he was all holed up there with Henry the Fifth.
Anne Brannen 46:39
Oh, that would be even funnier, wouldn’t it? Because yes, there was a bunch of that going on.
Michelle Butler 46:45
There’s a lot of intermarriage going on with the Scots and the French at this point–it’s that thing going on because they’re ganging up against the English–so maybe they just learned it directly from the French.
Anne Brannen 46:58
Are we done with what we have to say about the murder, the horrible murder, the overkill murder of William Earl of Douglas?
Michelle Butler 47:06
I sure think so. I hope somebody around here does these plays, but I’m betting that there are not enough Scottish expats around here for it to show up. Maybe they will film them at some point. They must have gone over okay, because they premiered in 2014 and they were revived in 2016, which suggests to me that things went over pretty well. I would have liked to have seen them. There are a few rehearsal videos and people talking about it videos. I’ll put a few links up from what’s on YouTube. Have fun with their Scottish accents. Oh my goodness.
Anne Brannen 47:46
We’ll get back to the Scots at some point. I know that we’re going to do a special episode where we go back into the early modern period and cover all those deaths around Darnley kills Rizzio and then Darnley gets murdered. We’ll do that but we’re not going to do that for a while. We’re not doing that til like around December. Next podcast. Do you remember what we’re doing next?
Michelle Butler 48:12
Oh gosh, I always fail this quiz.
Anne Brannen 48:16
[laughter] Of course you do.
Michelle Butler 48:21
I don’t have this superpower.
Anne Brannen 48:23
I know. It’s a list. It’s called a list. We’re sharing the list. But at any rate, we’ve got another special episode. Not in terms of time. Our last special episode, we went outside in terms of time and went into the early modern period. We’re gonna stay in the Middle Ages, but we’re going to go to Byzantium. We’re going to talk about the sack of Constantinople.
Michelle Butler 48:42
Oooooh.
Anne Brannen 48:42
Byzantium. 1204.
Michelle Butler 48:43
That was a big crime.
Anne Brannen 48:45
That was very bad. The sack of Constantinople. So we’re going to talk about that.
Michelle Butler 48:51
Yet another crusade that did the wrong wrong things.
Anne Brannen 48:55
I’m trying to think…crusades did that do the right thing? Are any coming to your mind? Because they are not in my mind. Crusades were just bad.
Michelle Butler 49:03
Clearly the vast majority of them just went off and hit whatever was most convenient and/or profitable.
Anne Brannen 49:10
The thing is, even if they’re actually obeying the mandate, the mandate is foundationally godawful. There can be no good crusade in the middle ages. There just can’t, because it’s like, ‘Let’s go kill people who aren’t Catholic.’ And then it’s like, ‘Let’s go kill people who aren’t the right kind of Catholic’ and then it’s ‘Let’s go kill people who aren’t us and have some stuff we would like.’ It’s just bad. Well, that was our discussion of yet another Scottish murder where kings lose their temper and sad things happen. And somebody gets thrown out a window. Oh, and they buried him there. By the way, that was the other thing. Like throw him out a window, bury him there. There’s graves all underneath the windows, the medieval windows. There’s all these people buried.
Michelle Butler 49:57
It has to have been an upper floor because you didn’t have windows big enough to throw somebody out of on the first or second story of any kind of defensible structure.
Anne Brannen 50:11
Well, if you’re gonna throw somebody out of a window, you don’t throw them out the first…if you’re gonna throw them out and you’re on the first floor, you just simply kind of chuck them out the door. You don’t go around, like, let’s open the window and throw them out into the rosebush. That makes no sense.
Michelle Butler 50:24
That would be very unsatisfying,
Anne Brannen 50:28
You’ve got to be up so that you throw him down. It’s very meaningful, I gather. But that’s been our discussion of the murder of William Douglas by King James the Second. This has been True Crime Medieval, where the crimes are just like they are today only with less technology. We are on…did you have something?
Michelle Butler 50:50
No, it just doesn’t take much technology to stab somebody and then throw them out a window. That’s pretty basic stuff. So yeah, you could totally still do that.
Anne Brannen 50:59
You could, but today, you might shoot them and throw them out a window. That was the thing that was not available, tase them, and then shoot them and throw them out a window. Two things not available. You can find us on Apple podcast, and Stitcher and Spotify–any place the podcasts are hanging out, we are there. We are at truecrimemedieval.com, true crime medieval is all one word. If you go there, you can find my little discussions with pictures. You can find the show notes, which are written by Michelle and the transcripts, which are done for us by Laurie Dietrich. You can also find links to other podcasts there, and of course, the entire catalog. We’re up into the 40s at this point. Yeah, we’ve done lots of stuff. You can leave reviews over on Apple podcasts. We would love that, please do that. Thank you. Spread this around if you know people who would be interested in these lovely historical discussions of crimes in the Middle Ages. You can also over at truecrimemedieval leave comments for us. We really appreciate that and we get to them when we can and answer. If you have crimes that you think we should look at, please let us know. We’ll take those into consideration. Bye.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
43. St. Columba Violates Nonexistent Copyright Laws and Starts a War, Movilla Abbey, Ireland 560
Anne Brannen 0:23
Hello and welcome to True Crime Medieval, 1000 years of people behaving badly. I’m Anne Brannen, and I’m your host in Albuquerque.
Michelle Butler 0:34
And I’m Michelle Butler in Maryland, the most medieval state in America, which no longer has a state song that refers to Abraham Lincoln as a tyrant and urges Maryland to rise up against the northern scum. So it’s been a good week here in Maryland. They passed the law to revoke the Civil War sympathizing state song and the governor signed it this week.
Anne Brannen 1:05
I’m pleased to hear this. It was a little archaic and stupid and wrong and not actually having anything to do with reality at any time whatsoever. Do you have another state song to replace it?
Michelle Butler 1:22
Not yet. We just jettisoned the one that was urging us to join the Confederacy two generations too late. Go figure.
Anne Brannen 1:34
For those of you who missed the earlier story, it wasn’t even at the time of the actual Civil War that this thing was instituted as the state song of Maryland. Everybody who had been in it was dead by the time they stuck it in so… Whatever. Yay Maryland. Good luck to you and I hope you end up with one that’s better than ours. “Oh fair New Mexico, we love you so.” Which, I have mentioned earlier, was written by the blind daughter of Pat Garrett, the sheriff who shot Billy the Kid down south in southern New Mexico– because that’s one of our claims to fame. Anyway we have a really bad state song on account of that and I’d like for us to throw it out but we probably won’t because, you know, we have other things actually to occupy us. Like trying to keep the cartels out and things like that. So state song, whatever. ‘Fair New Mexico we love you we love you so.’ yeah. Anyway. And your chickens are okay?
Michelle Butler 2:34
They’re still eating cicadas.
Anne Brannen 2:37
So they decided not to be afraid…they were having little terror fits about the cicadas but they’ve decided to eat them instead?
Michelle Butler 2:46
Once they discovered they were tasty. This is the one tiny area of their life where they remember they’re descended from dinosaurs. When I throw the cicadas into the coop with them, they run around like the predators their ancestors were and catch the cicadas and eat them.
Anne Brannen 3:06
Yay. I’m pleased to hear this. Because they were terrified of them at first.
Michelle Butler 3:10
Oh, man. I went out the first day and their coop was covered with cicadas which…a lot of people are afraid of bugs too. So I don’t want to harass my chickens too hard. But I come out and underneath their coop there’s a little area they can hang out and it has a little grated window in it, with wire so air can get in there. These three chicken faces are staring at me–“Help, Mom, help!”–through the little grate.They’re just terrified.
Anne Brannen 3:44
They weren’t terrified of the fox that was biting their feet, but they’re terrified of the cicadas. Well, I’m glad they’re eating the cicadas. That’s good. Life moves on. Today, we are discussing a medieval crime that has no dead people. Well, actually, I was gonna say it had no dead people. It doesn’t in the first part but then it kind of does later. But the main crime is that St Columba violated a copyright law which did not exist in 560. Okay. That’s the main thing. Columba had been born in 521 in Tír Chonaill. He’s supposedly the great great grandson of Niall of the Nine Hostages, who might or might not have existed, kind of like the end of this long line of mythical Irish kings that didn’t exist. At any rate, he might be related to Niall of the Nine Hostages who might or might not have been there. Columba studied with Finnian of Movilla, who’s going to come up later, and then later he studied with a different Finnian at the monastery of Clonard. He studied a bunch of other places. He became a monk and a priest–he was learned–and eventually in 563, he went to Scotland, where he founded churches. He served as a missionary. He got involved in politics. He wrote hymns. He transcribed books. And he died in either 593 or 597 depending on which scholar you are convinced by. But the reason he left Ireland and went to Scotland is the subject for the day. In 560, while he was staying with his old teacher, Finnian of Movilla, he borrowed a Psalter and copied it secretly. There’s another source that says it was actually the Vulgate, which hadn’t existed in Ireland before. At any rate, even if it was just a Psalter, it was the Vulgate version. So whatever. Finnian demanded that Columba hand over the copy because he hadn’t given permission for it to be copied, and Columba refused to hand over the copy. So Finnian took this matter to Diarmait mac Cerbaill, who was the Ardri, the High King at the time. He took it to him for arbitration. Finnian’s argument was that the book belonged to him and should not have been copied without his permission. Columba’s argument was that the book itself hadn’t been harmed. If you go to our University of Paris episode, Michelle quotes in great detail from some medieval scholar who’s all upset at how badly the manuscripts are being treated. But Columba did not put cheese sandwiches in this book as a bookmark. So you know, that wasn’t going on. Just saying. The book hadn’t been harmed, and that its contents needed to be spread as far as possible, and that people who owned books were obligated to share the knowledge in the books, and that not sharing knowledge was a greater offense than carefully copying a book without hurting it. And sticking cheese sandwiches in the middle. He didn’t mention the cheese sandwiches. I’m just saying that. This is what Columba said: “It is not right that the divine words in that book should perish, or that I or any other should be hindered from writing them or reading them or spreading them among the tribes.” Fair enough. That’s his argument. But Diarmuit ruled for Finnian and his reasoning, here’s the quote that comes down to us, “To every cow belongs its calf, and to every book, its copy.” Okay. So this is an argument pitting the physicality of a book against the information in the contents. The book is giving birth to another version of itself, which is like a child of it, and so that belongs with the book, I guess, and you shouldn’t take it away. Unless you’re going to slaughter it and eat it for dinner. The analogy, I don’t think, makes sense. But it’s a quote. We love it. Alright, fair enough. However, Columba refused to hand the book over. Despite the ruling. Naughty. This is one of the main saints of Ireland. So the Battle of Cúl Dreimhne, sometimes called the Battle of the Book, took place in 561. Now, tradition tells us–though modern scholarship disputes this–that Columba incited the O’Neill clan to rebel, and that about 3000 people died in the battle. The battle happened, fair enough. But why it happened. That’s what’s under dispute. There’s an alternate version in which Columba incites the rebellion because Diarmuit violated sanctuary by killing Curnan of Connacht while he was under Columba’s protection, but at any rate, whatever issues Colombia had with Diarmuit, the O’Neills and the High King had been at odds for quite some time. So there was maybe a battle coming any way. There was a battle. Columba had been involved. This was not good. Because, you know, it’s really unpriestly to be inciting battles. That really is. So he was tried by the Synod of Teltown where Saint Brendan of Bur–this is St. Brendan, the elder, not his friend, Saint Brendan the Navigator who sailed off to find the Garden of Eden and got someplace but we don’t know where it was. Some people think he got to North America, but there’s no evidence to that. But at any rate, this is the other St. Brendan–argued for him. I think it’s like a character reference. So instead of excommunicating Columba, the Synod exiled him and that’s why he ended up in Scotland. Tada. Columba’s a third of the three patron saints of Ireland. There’s Patrick and Bridget and Columba. He’s one of the 12 apostles of Ireland. He’s a really big deal and many things are named after him. He was very important. You were telling us on another podcast, Michelle, that you went to a little house of his? Is that what you did?
Michelle Butler 10:07
Oh, that’s right. We saw a little building in Kells, that probably is not St. Columcille’s house, but it’s definitely old and it’s called St Columcille’s house.
Anne Brannen 10:30
So you saw his house. Was it a nice house? Were there any books in it? That would be important.
Michelle Butler 10:36
So this is a ninth century structure. So it’s not his house. But it’s definitely named for him, which, of course, speaks to his fame. Everything was named for him.
Anne Brannen 10:47
Yeah, everything’s named for him. And he might have been in a house that was there and then got torn down and that one was built. We could go with that. Maybe. I don’t know. He was in Kells at any rate. So the book itself is, by tradition–maybe this is true, you may not–the book itself is Royal Irish Academy 12R33. It’s called the Cathach. And it’s being digitized. It’s supposed to be published this year, which is the 1500th anniversary of Columba’s death. So maybe that’ll happen. We’ll give you the link, you can go online and look at this. It’s a Psalter. It’s a Vulgate version, in Latin. It’s a fragment of what was the original book. It’s got Psalms 10 to 13, and it’s all written in one scribe’s hand, which, you know, maybe it is Columba’s. It’s an early majuscule script with ornamental capitals at the beginning of each psalm. But the Royal Irish Academy says that modern scholarship has cast doubts on the authenticity of the book. The Academy also points out that the story of Columba copying the book first appears in a life of the saint, which was written by Manus O’Donnell in the early 16th century. The academy notes and I quote here, “the story is sometimes cited as the earliest example of copyright, but it reflects attitudes to manuscript ownership in the 16th, rather than the 6th, century.” If you go and Google ‘St. Columba copies book,’ you will find a great deal of discussion about this instance being connected to copyright issues. But…copyright issues? Yes or no. The first copyright law was the statute of Anne in England 1710, which legislates that the author of a work is the owner of its copyright. But before that, in the 16th century, in England, the government had established the London Company of Stationers who had an exclusive right to print books, and to search out and destroy unauthorized printing presses and books. Later the king’s printer would be the only printer who was allowed to print the Bible. So there’s this distinction between what is actually in three dimensions, a manuscript or a printed book, as different from the issue of who owns the content. It was never an issue who had written the content of the Psalter, which was, you know, King David, obviously, but the problem was, who owns the actual thing itself, and that was gonna be an issue after printing came in. It would be an issue because you could print so many things. The government was, with the London Stationers, putting some control over how much stuff was getting out. They were also controlling what things were getting printed, because you could print lots of stuff, couldn’t you, and you could really disseminate it. Whereas manuscript copying is much more difficult, and you don’t get as many things out.
Michelle Butler 14:23
It made sense to me, though, that there could be issues in sixth-century Ireland with copying a book without permission, and that the person who owns the book could get really annoyed because this was one of the centers of scholarship in early medieval Ireland. One of the ways you attract students is by having a great library.
Anne Brannen 14:45
Right.
Michelle Butler 14:46
If somebody comes and copies a book and you didn’t give permission, that’s taking away your competitive advantage, particularly if it’s a book that’s in high demand and is rare. The original owner of the book, Finnian, it felt to me like he had an actual grievance, because that takes away some of his competitive advantage in terms of attracting students.
Anne Brannen 15:13
So it goes beyond a matter of politeness, ‘I borrowed your book and copied it in secret without asking you,’ which is rude. But you don’t really legislate a lot of rudeness. Not much. That would get us nowhere. The entire world would be in jail continually.
Michelle Butler 15:29
There’s a fair amount of competition among the various teachers. Rulers are sending their children–their their sons, of course–from all over Europe. They’re sending their sons to Ireland to be educated. I know that when we talked about the University of Paris, we talked about the emergence of the university as being a late 11th century situation. But you have similar schools going on in Ireland, they just don’t…you don’t have a continuous existence like you do with the University of Paris or with Oxford, or with the University of Bologna. But early medieval Ireland has some pretty amazing schools, and everybody who has aspirations of wanting to be educated in Europe sends their children there to learn. There’s competition among the monasteries for those, essentially, foreign exchange students. When I was chatting with Alex about this, he was like, ‘this is really stupid that Finnian would freak out about this.’ But that’s not really what’s going on here. What’s going on is, if this is really one of the first copies of that work, whatever it was, if it was the Psalms or something else, to hit Ireland, it’s bad form for Columba to copy it without permission, because now he’s removed an advantage that school had.
Anne Brannen 16:56
Fair enough. That’s good to know.
Michelle Butler 16:59
I really enjoyed every piece of the research of this. It’s something I had run into before. I had not run into the caveat that the source for it is so late.
Anne Brannen 17:13
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It is a problem.
Michelle Butler 17:17
It is a problem.
Anne Brannen 17:18
It’s not mentioned in early histories. Although, you know, when does this battle start getting called the Battle of the Book? Do we know that?
Michelle Butler 17:29
You know, I didn’t look that particularly thing up? Let me let’s find out.
Anne Brannen 17:32
Yeah, now, I want to know.
Michelle Butler 17:34
I was reading the intro to a recent edition of ‘The Life of St. Columcille’ by Adomnan. He writes that for the 100th anniversary of Columcille’s death. So it’s a lot closer than the one that’s written 1000 years later, but it’s still not contemporary. He definitely does not mention this. But the editor of this biography is talking about how, in his introduction, it’s difficult to then just throw out the story altogether, because the author of this–
Anne Brannen 18:20
Adomnan, yes.
Michelle Butler 18:23
He doesn’t give a reason for why Columcille leaves Ireland, but he does mention the battle twice. He uses the battle as a way to date it. The editor says, you know, that’s a little… We can’t say that it’s causation. But it sure is interesting that he mentioned that battle twice in relation to Columcille leaving Ireland. The editor doesn’t want to push it too far, because the Vita doesn’t mention this whole thing with the copying of the book, but he does mention the battle.
Anne Brannen 19:04
There is a battle.
Michelle Butler 19:06
There is for sure a battle.
Anne Brannen 19:07
And Columba leaves.
Michelle Butler 19:05
And the Annals of Ulster talk about Columba’s connection to that battle. The Annals of Ulster say that the battle was won because of the prayers of Columba.
Anne Brannen 19:28
Oh goodness. So Columba did indeed have something to do with this battle. We’ve got that variant story of Diarmuit violating sanctuary. So Columba had something to do with the battle. It may or may not have been the book. Before we started recording, you were talking about an example you know, of the length of Irish memory. You were talking about a bell.
Michelle Butler 19:56
One of the reasons I’m not willing…I know 1000 years is a really long time. If it were anywhere else, that would be the end of the discussion for me. But it’s Ireland. The memories are so long. I was at the National Museum of Ireland, I don’t know, five or six years ago at this point, and there’s a bell and a bell shrine at the National Museum of Ireland. In the discussion of it, it talks about how this bell was in the possession of one family for 800 years. When they finally turned it over, at the end of the 19th century, to the museum, they told them, ‘This is St. Patrick’s bell.’ The National Museum of Ireland rolled their eyes and said, ‘Yeah, right.’
Anne Brannen 20:54
‘Right. Yeah, totally believing that. Thank you so much for your lovely gift.’
Michelle Butler 21:05
As it happens, it is. I did find it on the National Museum of Ireland’s webpage that the inscription…here I’ll just quote from their website, “the inscription along the edge of the backplate records the name of the craftsman and his sons who made the shrine and the name of the king of Ireland,” which I’m not even gonna try to pronounce, “who commissioned the shrine in the late 11th century.” The name of the keeper of the bell is also mentioned and it stayed in the possession of his family, the keeper of the bell, for the next 800 years till the end of the 19th century, whereupon they turned it over to the National Museum of Ireland and said, ‘hey, just so you know…’
Anne Brannen 22:00
‘Yeah, we should let you know. I mean, this is our bell, we kept it, you know, we dusted it, and we didn’t hurt it for 800 years.’ So one of the things that’s a problem for me with this is that there are the two competing stories. The violation of sanctuary and ruling against Columba on the book. But calling it The Battle of the Book…it does seem like it may well have a much longer history than gets written down. However, as scholars, we have to point out–really late, you know. It doesn’t get written down for quite some time. Very, very late, very, very late.
Michelle Butler 22:47
There’s a couple other reasons that I find it plausible, even though we can’t say definitively that this happened. It’s such a not-complimentary story that it’s difficult for me to imagine…usually when things get attached to a saint, it’s things that burnish up his sainthood, not things where he’s behaving sketchy and causes a battle, and then has to flee the country.
Anne Brannen 23:05
Yes, yes, yes. It would make much more sense if the main story was Columba got the O’Neal’s to fight the battle because he was so enraged at the violation of sanctuary. So there was a reason for causing the battle. Much more than, you didn’t like it that the king of Ireland ruled against you when you copied the book from your old teacher. That’s not a nice story about Columba at all. I agree with you there. The fact that Columba doesn’t come across well in this leads some veracity to it.
It’s not a saintly story. Even with the little addition of ‘and there was a holy light that burned miraculously for him so he could see to copy it,’ which would sort of imply that God was cool with the plagiarism.
Yeah, I’m not buying that.
Michelle Butler 24:27
It’s not his best side.
Anne Brannen 24:29
No, no. The king of Ireland said he had stolen a book, and he said, ‘I did not’ and he ran away with it. And then he made the O’Neills kill a bunch of people and he got sent to Scotland.
Michelle Butler 24:46
I do not know if the Psalter that survives is the one that he copied, if he copied anything, but that book itself has an amazing story.
Anne Brannen 24:58
Oh, tell me.
Michelle Butler 24:58
It’s awesome. In the late 11th century, it has a book shrine that was made for it by a man named Sitric of Kells. And that’s cool. So it’s got its own little shrine, which is gonna come back into the story in a second. This book ends up in the possession of the O’Donnells and it becomes an heirloom of their house. They carry it into battle with them–
Anne Brannen 25:24
Of course, they do. Yah.
Michelle Butler 25:39
–as a talisman. It’s the most Irish thing I ever heard of.
Anne Brannen 25:45
Carrying a book. Yeah. Later on one of the Scotsmen is going to carry Robert the Bruce’s heart into battle. But that kind of makes sense. He was a war-like King. ‘He was king and here’s his heart, we’re going to battle.’ Carrying a book into battle, that is very Irish, isn’t it. I like that.
Michelle Butler 26:05
It’s what its name. The Cathach. It means ‘battler.’
Anne Brannen 26:13
What I’m really impressed by also here, I just like to mention, is that apparently the book was not harmed. So whoever is carrying the book into battle was taking pretty good care of it.
Michelle Butler 26:24
They carried it around…. What is the place that holds the manuscript?
Anne Brannen 26:33
That’s the Royal Academy.
Michelle Butler 26:36
They’re the ones that are saying that they carry it three times. Right hand wise, what would that be? Counter-clockwise?
Anne Brannen 26:44
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, that’s clockwise. Counter clockwise is the getting rid of things direction. This is clockwise, bringing things in.
Michelle Butler 26:58
Deosel. That’s the word.
Anne Brannen 27:01
Yeah.
Michelle Butler 27:03
So they carry it three times that way around the field of battle as a talisman. I think that’s awesome.
Anne Brannen 27:12
Yes, it is. And, you know, it reminds me of beating the bounds, which will go on down through the Middle Ages, where you take your saint’s relic for the church, and you go out and you walk the bounds of the parish, around, same direction. It’s a way of containing and calling in the power. So it makes sense to me. Yeah. They took the book around. Deosel. Three times. Yeah. This is obviously totally Christian and in no way a kind of pagan remnant of anything. Just mentioning that. Since we’re talking about the saints.
Michelle Butler 27:54
At some point they forget there is a book in there.
Anne Brannen 27:59
[laughter]
Michelle Butler 27:59
In 1813–I love this because this harkens back to the supposed beginning of the book of it happening without permission. In 1813 a guy named Sir William Betham cracks it open without permission.
Anne Brannen 28:20
Oh, no, no, no. Why?
Michelle Butler 28:24
Because he wanted to see what was inside.
Anne Brannen 28:28
Oh, well, of course. Silly me.
Michelle Butler 28:35
This results in a court case because Lady O’Donnell, who it belonged to, is so mad at him that he’s cracked open her book shrine. So he has to apologize and he is fined–and this is a lot of money–264 pounds, 8 shillings, 4 pence.
Anne Brannen 29:03
That is a lot of money. And I’m intrigued by the shillings and pence which are unnecessary really. You could round up or down, I would think. Like, how are they calculating this so exactly that you end up with the four pence on there? What are you paying for?
Michelle Butler 29:24
He’s paying a fine and he’s paying her court costs.
Anne Brannen 29:29
Oh, okay. So he pays a fine, which will be a round number, and he pays the court costs, which are in some way having to do also with, you know, hiring people and whatnot.
Michelle Butler 29:40
I loved the book ending of it. You know, this book supposedly starting its life without permission and then getting rediscovered in 1813 without permission. This part is for sure true. The 1813 part.
Anne Brannen 29:58
Yeah, these things we believe because they got written down at the right time. Now did Lady O’Donnell not know that there was a book in there?
Michelle Butler 30:05
So what happened was, the book got misplaced for a bit. It got taken to France in 1691. It wandered about a little bit and then made its way back, via an Irish monastery in Flanders, to Ireland, wandered around, made its way back to an O’Donnell in County Mayo. It was there that Sir William Betham got a hold of it and cracked it open without permission.
Anne Brannen 30:43
Okay, so by that time, it was just a really fancy shrine with something in it, and nobody knew what but it had been all over Europe. Beating the bounds of Europe.
Michelle Butler 30:54
Somebody knew it belonged to the O’Donnell’s, though, because it made its way back to the O’Donnell’s. It was taken to France in 1691 by a Colonel Daniel O’Donnell. Then made its way back via the Irish monastery to County Mayo and got back to the O’Donnell’s. So they clearly knew it belonged to the O’Donnell’s, which is also a really fascinating piece of this.
Anne Brannen 31:18
Right, but they didn’t know what was in it. So after it got opened–oh, naughty, naughty–but now we know what’s in there. Now. Since we can see pictures of the Psalter over on the Royal Academy of Ireland site, I’m guessing that it’s no longer in the shrine. Obviously, if it’s being digitized, it is outside of the shrine, it can be manipulated, it can be handled. So where’s the shrine?
Michelle Butler 31:45
Oh, that’s a good question.
Anne Brannen 31:49
How did this end up at the Royal Academy?
Michelle Butler 31:52
It is in the National Museum of Ireland.
Anne Brannen 31:56
Okay, so the book and its shrine got separated. Did they get separated at the time that this naughty person opened it up? Or do the O’Donnells donate them separately?
Michelle Butler 32:11
The book and its shrine got given to the Royal Irish Academy. Then the Royal Irish Academy sent the book shrine on in the 1930s to the National Museum of Ireland. But the book required a fair amount of… you know, it’d been sitting in there for like 150 years. It required a fair amount of maintenance.
Anne Brannen 32:39
Yeah, it really did it. It was in really bad…I did know that it was in really bad shape. We’re gonna give you a link to this. So here’s a quote from the the Royal Irish Academy site. “The leaves, when taken from the casket, were caked together and cockled.” What is ‘cockled?’
Michelle Butler 33:04
I assumed that meant browned and wrinkled, given the context clues of what they describe later, but we probably have to check for sure.
Anne Brannen 33:15
Right…wrinkled, creased…the pages are wrinkled and creased. Wait a minute, wait a minute. Let me get back. Here I am. “The leaves, when taken from the casket, were caked together and cockled.” They were all wrinkled up. “In 1920, in the British Museum bindery, the leaves were separated and mounted in paper frames and the butt joints were overlaid with white net. In 1980-81, more elaborate repair and rebinding work was carried out by Roger Powell and his assistant Dorothy Cumpstey at a cost of 6150 pounds for the repair and 250 pounds for the case. The paper mounting from which the vellum leaves had come adrift–” I like the Royal Irish Academy. They write nice– “from which the vellum leaves had come adrift was replaced by new vellum mounts specially stained to match the color of the original leaves. Pieces of degreased fish skin were used for joining butted edges in the vellum mounts. The leaves, assembled in sections, were sewn within a zigzag of handmade paper onto cords and bound in English oak boards. The spine was covered in white alum- tawed pigskin. To keep the vellum under pressure and to prevent cockling” more wrinkling, “the re-bound manuscript was put into a special box designed by David Powell, and made by George Taylor in Edward Barnsley’s workshop.” I just love that. Now it’s in another special box, but it’s not a shrine. It’s just a special box.
Michelle Butler 34:51
This is a really important book. Whether or not St. Columcille is the one who copied it, it’s a really important book. It’s one of the very earliest manuscripts we have from Ireland. It’s not the really fancy illuminated manuscripts, although you can see the beginning of that, because you have the initials that do the characteristic step-down, each one dropping in size until we get to the regular size of the script.
Anne Brannen 35:21
They’re really beautiful. You can see on the page…we’ll put a page up for illustration. It’s just gorgeous. It’s not…there’s some red in it, but there’s not illumination. But the script itself is really clear and readable. And the ornate capitals are very lovely.
Michelle Butler 35:44
So you want to know a little bit about the guy who who wrote the 1532…?
Anne Brannen 35:51
I do. I know nothing about him. What you got?
Michelle Butler 35:54
His name is Manus O’Donnell, and he is the king of the O’Donnells.
Anne Brannen 36:01
Oh I didn’t know that. I thought he was just some guy.
Michelle Butler 36:04
He’s actually kind of cool. His dad went off on pilgrimage–the king, you know–in 1511.
Anne Brannen 36:17
As one does.
Michelle Butler 36:18
Leaving his son, Manus, in charge. When the dad comes back, Manus is like, ‘you know what, as it happens, I’m good at this. So no, thanks. I’m not giving the kingdom back to you.’ The dad goes for help to the Maguires but Manus makes an allegiance with the O’Neills and manages to hold on to the kingdom. So he’s a really interesting guy, because he’s this kind of standard issue, Anglo-Irish king and scholar. He either wrote or commissioned this biography of St. Columcille. It is in Irish, by the way, it’s not in Latin. It is in Irish.
Anne Brannen 37:11
Yay, the use of the vernacular. Yay.
Michelle Butler 37:16
It has been digitized. I can give you a link for it as well. There’s a really lovely illumination of St. Columcille at the beginning of it with some very nice Tudor roses, by the way.
Anne Brannen 37:33
Lord. The ubiquitous Tudor roses.
Michelle Butler 37:40
Yes. Partially because he was forced to go through that ‘surrender and regrant’ thing.
Anne Brannen 37:51
Yes. Can you explain that to our listeners, please?
Michelle Butler 37:55
So there was all this trouble when Henry the Eighth left the church and started his own church. The Catholic Irish were not super thrilled with this. There was a whole uprising, most famously in 1537. Silken Thomas and his five uncles were executed for the rebellion in Leinster. The 12 year old who was the survivor, the surviving heir to the Earldom of Kildare, his aunt, Lady Eleanor McCarthy, married Manus O’Donnell to keep him safe. Yeah, he’s an interesting guy. I enjoyed reading a little bit about him. I don’t actually know whether he carried the book into battle with him, but I would be willing to bet even odds that he did.
Anne Brannen 38:49
Even though this is so late, getting made up out of whole cloth seems odd when you’re writing a hagiography. But as we know, things did get made up out of whole cloth. We’ve spent a year and a half discussing things that got made up out of whole cloth in the Middle Ages or later, that got made up out of whole cloth about the Middle Ages, so why not? But this is not a complementary story.
Michelle Butler 39:18
It’s possible Manus wrote this book. He was a poet. Several of his poems survive. They are also written in Irish.
Anne Brannen 39:29
Hmm. So it’s possible he did.
Michelle Butler 39:32
Oh, you know what? I’m sorry, I forgot to finish the ‘surrender and re-grant’ description.
Anne Brannen 39:39
Oh, sorry. We go back.
Michelle Butler 39:43
I got sidetracked.
Anne Brannen 39:44
Yeah, the fact that he got married and that’s how he was saved. That was just so darling. Okay, go back to explaining these things please.
Michelle Butler 39:53
What happens is that in order to bring the Irish Lords back into his fold, Henry the Eighth is forced to do this thing where the Irish Lords come and they surrender to him, and then he regrants their land to them under his new Protestant regime.
Anne Brannen 40:15
Yeah, it’s not good times No, and there’s gonna be problems later. Is this going to solve things? No, it isn’t. It isn’t. Things are gonna get bad.
Michelle Butler 40:29
Things are very bad in Ireland in the 16th century. It’s a rough time. We should do a special episode about things you can do to get your self banished out of Ireland for in the 16th century.
Anne Brannen 40:41
Oh, yes, we should do that. Let’s add that onto our list.
Michelle Butler 40:45
Owning a law book, owning a harp, so many things. You can get sent to Maryland, say, is what happens to you. You can get sent to Maryland.
Anne Brannen 40:56
I don’t even know what to say about that. Where I suppose later you can help establish the medieval nature of–although it’s early modern–you can help establish the medieval nature of Maryland. Although the jousting really gets brought in later. At any rate, that’s our discussion of a thing which was not really a copyright issue.
Michelle Butler 41:23
I did find an article that wants to talk about how 18th century Ireland really does ignore English copyright, basically, on purpose. They’re not part of the UK yet, and you know, screw over the English every chance you get. There is a enormous trade in going to England, buy a book, bring it back, reprint it in Ireland, and not pay anybody anything.
Anne Brannen 41:54
That’s so naughty, and yet makes me just so cheerful. We were talking about how…often, you like to go and find the ways in which our subject matters get taken on down into modern literature and art. That doesn’t happen with this, but it does come on down into some legal discussions. You were talking about the internet?
Michelle Butler 42:26
Yeah, this was really interesting. Discussion of Columcille and his book keeps popping up in discussions of open source–people who want to argue that ‘information wants to be free.’
Anne Brannen 42:42
Right, right.
Michelle Butler 42:43
I found this a lot being cited.
Anne Brannen 42:47
Yeah. ‘Here’s what St. Columba says about information. That’s why we should be able to download music.’ Yeah. What that ignores is, of course, the issue of authorship, because King David was not going to be getting paid for writing the Psalms. He hadn’t been paid for writing the Psalms ever. But certainly even if he had been, it’d been a very long time because he was dead. There’s no King David estate to pay to.
Michelle Butler 43:19
It amuses me a lot that the 21st century cutting-edge techies want to say, ‘but we have this 1000 year old precedence, so ha.’ That’s really adorable.
Anne Brannen 43:37
As I say, it ignores some kind of basic issues, but it is interesting that it’s still getting dragged in. Did you find it anyplace else? I’m guessing not.
Michelle Butler 43:49
It’s mostly there. I didn’t go look to see whether there’s any adorable children’s books attempting to retell this in a cute way.
Anne Brannen 43:57
I’m thinking not. No, no, let’s not go look because we’re we’re busy. We’re busy women, we cannot be going around looking for things that we know damn well don’t exist.
Michelle Butler 44:07
I do think that the words that are put into the mouth of the High King about ‘to every cow belongs its calf, to every book, its copy.’ That rings really true to me because of the importance of cows. If somebody’s making it up later, they either remember, or cows are still very important.
Anne Brannen 44:27
That does seem…there’s a ring of truth to that, isn’t it? I mean, it doesn’t make any sense because the cows don’t actually own their calves, who often get taken away and made into veal. So that makes no sense. And the books don’t really own their copies because the books being nonsentient no idea where the copies are. I could be wrong about this, but I don’t think they do. So it really doesn’t actually make any sense as a legal argument or even a statement whatsoever, but it does ring true as something that might cause people to think it’s said something at the time on account of the cows, which are so important. But it isn’t true. I mean, it makes no sense whatsoever. Not really true.
This was really fascinating. I found this one really interesting. Things I didn’t know.
Yeah, I liked it, too. It was nice having a little rest from all the death, although we’re getting back there again. Do you remember what we’re doing next time? Do you have anything else? That was all our stuff, right?
Michelle Butler 45:38
I don’t know whether we want to point out that this isn’t actually one of those things where a whole bunch of non-specialists think that this is true, but all the specialists know it’s not. I ran across any number of good websites and good books–because of a research project, I have quite a few books about Irish history just on the shelf, and roughly half of them relate this story without any kind of footnote that says, ‘Oh, by the way.’ The other half relate the story and say, ‘Oh, by the way, it’s probably not true.’ So this is really one of those kind of mushy areas of ‘probably not, but maybe.’
Anne Brannen 46:24
Probably not, but maybe. It’s not out of the realm of possibility. As we say, the idea that actually it doesn’t make Saint Columba look good is a weight over on the ‘could this be true’ side. Yeah, certainly could. Also the cow who doesn’t actually own her calf, but the High King said she did. I like the cow.
Michelle Butler 46:56
The High King’s job is to just say things.
Anne Brannen 46:59
Yeah.
Michelle Butler 47:03
One piece that I found interesting reading about Columcille is that apparently he was born into a pagan family, but it would have been embarrassing for his biographer to acknowledge that so he pretends like that’s not true.
Anne Brannen 47:18
That is interesting. I didn’t know that. I just knew the part about Niall of the Nine Hostages.
Michelle Butler 47:25
Apparently.
Anne Brannen 47:26
Apparently. St. Patrick had been born into a Christian family. So you know, that was nice. That’s kind of good.
Michelle Butler 47:34
I do not remember what we’re doing next time. I’m sorry.
Anne Brannen 47:37
You do not? Well, I’ll tell you. We’re going back. We’re going back to death.
Michelle Butler 47:42
Oh no.
Anne Brannen 47:42
Yeah, we’re going back to death and Scotland which are often intertwined, really. King James murders Douglas in Scotland, 1452. That’s where we’re going next. We have no end of dead Scottish people in our list. This has been True Crime Medieval, where the crimes are just like they are today, only with less technology. Absolutely true.
Michelle Butler 48:08
Yeah, for real. Illegal downloads all over the place.
Anne Brannen 48:15
We can be found on Apple podcast and Spotify and Stitcher and any place where the podcasts are hanging out. You can find us also on Truecrimemedieval.com, truecrimemedieval is all one word, where you can find links to the podcast and you can find links to the show notes, which are written by Michelle and the transcripts which are done for us by Laurie Dietrich. You can also reach us all through the About section on the web page. You can leave comments. We would love to see comments. We respond to them. You can leave us a suggestion suggestions for medieval crimes. We take those into account. And if you will go over to Apple podcasts and leave us a review we would like that especially. It’s one of the ways that more people can find us, but pass it around if you think somebody would like to know about terrible true crimes in the middle ages because as far as I know we’re the only true crime podcast that covers that. The forensics are really different and don’t get discussed much, except for that part about corpses bleeding if you parade the murderer by. Yeah. Not a lot of forensics. So that’s it for us and we thank you. Bye.
Michelle Butler 49:34
Bye.
42. Special Episode: Christopher Marlowe is Assassinated, Deptford, England, 1593
Anne Brannen 0:24
Hello and welcome to True Crime Medieval, 1000 years of people behaving badly. I’m Anne Brannen, and I’m your host in Albuquerque.
Michelle Butler 0:34
And I’m Michelle Butler, here in rather humid Maryland.
Anne Brannen 0:40
Now you’re supposed to say the part about how Maryland is the most medieval state in the United States.
Michelle Butler 0:45
Oh, it totally is.
Anne Brannen 0:46
Yeah.
Michelle Butler 0:46
It is the most medieval state in America because jousting is our state sport and we have the best state flag ever. Fight me. It’s the best.
Anne Brannen 0:57
You have to say that part because it’s become part of our tagline. There’s some things we say the same all the time. So you have to say that. Maryland, the most medieval state in America. So.
Michelle Butler 1:07
I’m just melting in the humidity and my hair is curling up. I’m not friends with humidity.
Anne Brannen 1:17
Nor am I. I was born into it, but I’m not. How hot is it there?
Michelle Butler 1:22
It’s not hot enough to justify turning on the air conditioning yet. Because it’s only about 75 but it’s quite quite humid. Yesterday was it was hotter than this and it’s supposed to be cooler again tomorrow. We’re supposed to go back into the 60s. Hence all of us are just wilting, putting up with the humidity today and waiting for the weather to change. Did I send you the pictures of the windstorm last week, when the top of my big tree came off and squashed one of my little trees?
Anne Brannen 1:54
I did not see that. No. That’s a windstorm.
Michelle Butler 2:00
Everything has it out for my little apple trees. The deer eat them. The squirrels climb them and break branches, trying to take the apples off. Which they totally do and then they take one bite out of the apple at the bottom like Ramona. Now the big tree beside it, the windstorm broke the top of it off and it came down–squash!–and cut one of my little apple trees in half like Robin Hood.
Anne Brannen 2:33
Or William Tell. It’s the William Tell of apple trees. ‘Not only did we get the apple, we got the entire tree.’ Well, no, I did not know and I’m sorry for the apple tree. I hope that, you know, if it can’t be repaired, it can be replaced.
Michelle Butler 2:54
Just in time for the cicadas.
Anne Brannen 2:56
It’s all death and destruction at your house, isn’t it. Oh, and foxes biting the chicken’s legs. Are the chickens okay now? I saw that fortress you built for them.
Michelle Butler 3:11
My chickens are concerned they’re going to be asked to go over the top any day now but they have 50 feet of barbed wire around the chicken coop. We have not had them calling the ‘I’m in mortal peril’ shriek that they do when there’s a fox rather than go inside. ‘Help. There’s a fox!’
Anne Brannen 3:32
‘Biting my leg at the moment but let’s all stay right here by the fence.’ I suppose you could let them out and then, you know, the smart ones would reproduce and the other ones would have their legs eaten off by foxes. No, it’d be too sad. Don’t do that.
Michelle Butler 3:49
A week ago I saw a fox heading towards my backyard. So I grab up an umbrella which was the only thing close, I go outside and I’m chasing the fox away from my chicken coop with the umbrella. All three chickens are standing in the enclosure just blinking at me, watching. They’re not evacuating into the coop. They’re just watching me scream at the fox, ‘Get out of here. Get out of here. Yeah, you better run.’
Anne Brannen 4:13
‘This is so entertaining.’
Michelle Butler 4:16
My chickens are like, ‘what? What’re you doing?’
Anne Brannen 4:19
‘We like the fox. He’s our friend.’
Michelle Butler 4:23
They’re not the smartest ones I’ve ever had.
Anne Brannen 4:26
Apparently not. Apparently not. I’ve known smart chickens. I don’t think these are them.
Michelle Butler 4:32
These are not it. I also put some New Mexico style dried chilies around my coop so that if the fox tries to bite through they’ll get a mouthful of dried chili.
Anne Brannen 4:43
I like this idea. I don’t think that we even do that here, where we are in New Mexico and have dried chilies. I don’t remember having seen anybody hang them around so as to keep, I don’t know, the coyotes off that’s a good idea. I like that. And even if the chickens eat it, it won’t bother them because chickens, chickens and birds, can’t taste it. That’s why you can put hot peppers in the bird seed and it would keep the squirrels out. Theoretically, although in reality nothing keeps the squirrels out because they’re an unstoppable force.
Michelle Butler 5:23
Alex has been trying to make friends with the crows. So he’s been putting peanuts out for the crows and read about that trick of putting cayenne pepper in with the peanuts to try to keep the squirrels away. The crows are now so spoiled. He feeds them at 10am every day, and if he’s not out there, they start cawing. They start hollering for him. ‘Alex, you’re late. We’re ready for the peanuts.’
Anne Brannen 5:44
‘Where’s our cayenne pepper?’ Tell him to put some shiny stuff out because they’ll really like that too. They might start bring him presents.
Michelle Butler 5:52
His cat hates the crows, with just so much passion. Thunder sits in the window and watch the crows. Thunder’s not what you’d call generous with her affections anyway, and doesn’t like sharing Alex’s affections with anybody. So Thunder hates the crows. The crows are bigger than Thunder, so it’s not a good ambition for her.
Anne Brannen 6:18
No, no, no. Thunder should stay inside and not touch the crows. Yes, the most medieval state in America and it has jousting and a fancy flag and a bunch of chickens. So there you go. We’re having a special episode today. Besides the fact that we’ve been blathering for a while. We’re having a special episode because as you know, we are medieval and we have 1000 years of people behaving badly. But we’re going beyond our mandate and into the early modern period. Because we want to talk about Christopher Marlowe. So that’s what we’re doing. We’re talking about Christopher Marlowe. Yay.
Michelle Butler 7:03
How could we not talk about Christopher Marlowe?
Anne Brannen 7:05
No, no, no, we have to talk about Kit Marlowe. Marlowe was born in Canterbury in 1564, and he died on the 30th of May 1593, at the age of 29.
Michelle Butler 7:18
Wow. Well done with placing this for the anniversary of his death, by the way.
Anne Brannen 7:25
I know. I know. I know. It’s our May issue. I did that on purpose. What Michelle’s being impressed about is that I made a schedule for us for like, I don’t know, about a year or something. We were recognizing holidays and things, and so at any rate, we’re having Christopher Marlowe, who we’ve wanted to talk about for a while. We’re having him in May, because he died in May. He was, at the time of his death, a very well known playwright. He was highly influential. His lead actor was Edward Alleyn, and so that didn’t hurt because he was really, really popular. His literary career had been going on for six years at the time that he died. He was also, we’re pretty sure, a government spy. He had attended Corpus Christi College in Cambridge on a scholarship. His father was a shoemaker in Canterbury. He got his BA degree from Corpus Christi College in 1584, and he took his MA degree in 1587. But he nearly didn’t, because first of all, he kept taking these long leaves of absence. Second, because there were rumors that he was intending to become a Catholic priest, which would have been absolutely illegal in England at that time. And cause for death, really. Not just illegal, but actually, capital punishment would get involved. But the Privy Council intervened. They sent a letter to Cambridge, commending his faithful service to the Queen and though the letter has annoyingly disappeared, we don’t have that, we do have the Privy Council minutes and they make it clear that the Queen did not want helpful people such as Marlowe defamed by people who didn’t know a damn thing about what he was doing for the country. Exactly what he was doing, we don’t know. But that’s the sort of language that’s used to talk about espionage. That and many other things cause us to believe that he was a spy for the Elizabethan government. So that was all going on while he was still at Cambridge. He also wrote a play and he was doing translations. He was very busy even when he was a student. And you know, if you were paying attention to our information that we gave you in the podcast about the University of Paris strike, he would have also been very busy getting quite drunk on the weekends because that was part of what was going on in colleges. So he graduated–he did graduate–and he went to London. He started his literary career. His second play–because he’d written one when he was in college–his second play, Tamburlaine, was produced about 1587. And it was so popular that it shows up…it’s a major influence on the drama of the time. And was in blank verse. That was new. That was great. Yay. In the next few years–Michelle’s gonna talk more about this later–but in the next few years, he wrote the Jew of Malta, Dr. Faustus–that’s my favorite–Edward the second and the Massacre at Paris, which was first performed in January of the year he died, just a few months before. So that’s the last play that he wrote. And he wrote poetry. While he was still at Cambridge, he’d done Dido the Queen of Carthage, that play, and he also translated some of Ovid’s poetry. But that got banned and burned in public in 1599, at which point, Marlowe was already dead, so he didn’t know anything about that.
I didn’t know that. I did not know that. That’s interesting.
Well, because, you know, Ovid’s love poetry. Yeah, it’s not good. Alright. So he was known as an atheist, though that might have been a cover for his espionage. Jury’s out on that. He might have been gay. Also not entirely clear. The evidence that we’ve got is from rumors, after his death, and all the homoeroticism in his literary works. But we’ve not got rumors even during his lifetime as to actual connections or liaisons. But I’m willing to believe this. Makes sense to me. He was arrested. Marlowe’s career of illegitimate activities: He was arrested in 1589, after being involved in an argument with his neighbor, which turned into a brawl, in which Marlowe’s friend, the poet, Thomas Watson, killed the neighbor. Marlowe was released a couple of weeks later, and Watson was released five months later, because the death was apparently due to self defense. So that was in 1589. He got arrested in January of 1592, after he was involved in a coin counterfeiting operation, though that came to nothing. There were never any charges and he wasn’t in prison, and that might well have had something to do, again, with espionage. In May of 1592, he got arrested again, and then released, on account of he’d been threatening constables. I don’t think he actually hit them. I think he just threatened them. In September of 1592, he assaulted somebody in Canterbury, and he got released again. Then in May of 1593, things got really very bad. So we’re leading up to his death. His friend, Thomas Kyd, who was another important playwright. The Spanish tragedy. He wrote the Spanish Tragedy. I love that play. ‘Hieronimo’s mad again.’ It’s the beginning of the great genre of revenge tragedy, which eventually Hamlet will get caught up in. Because Hamlet’s just this, you know, guy going to school and getting drunk on the weekends. Then he goes home, and he gets caught into a revenge tragedy–rrrrr, it keeps growing. Because what happens if you get caught in a revenge tragedy is it keeps going until there’s a humongous amount of bodies on the stage and you can’t get out of it. Hamlet keeps trying. ‘What am I doing? Why am I…?’ No, you can’t think your way through a revenge tragedy, you just all go nuts and then you die. Anyway, so that was Thomas Kyd. Yay. He had been arrested on May the 12th, 1593. He thought that he’d been fingered by an informant–that’s what he believed–as the author of “divers lewd and mutinous libels,” which had been posted all around London, which threatened refugees. They were Protestants who had settled in London. When Kyd’s rooms were searched, fragments of an heretical tract were found, and Kyd said–and understand that this is almost certainly under torture. Do we have records of this? No. Do we need records of it? No. That’s how things worked–Kyd said, and he wrote this in letters to the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, that the tract was Marlowe’s and that Marlowe was a treasonous atheist. Uh oh. So the arrest warrant for Marlowe was issued on the 18th of May. Marlowe presented himself to the Privy Council on the 20th but there wasn’t actually a meeting that day. So he was ordered to report daily, which he did, but he died 10 days later. What the hell happened? We actually don’t really know, though there’s been lots of speculation. Oh, so much speculation over the years, various theories. Now, I’m grateful to Wikipedia for dragging all this stuff together and I’m going to give you this list. It’s too hilarious. Various theories: he was stabbed to death by a serving man who was his rival in ‘lewd love.’ Or: he was killed in a drunken fight, which, you know, since he’d been involved in them earlier is like, hey. Or: Audrey Walsingham, who was the wife of his patron Thomas Walsingham had him murdered because she was jealous.
Michelle Butler 15:23
Oh!
Anne Brannen 15:23
Or: Sir Walter Raleigh had him murdered so that Marlowe wouldn’t incriminate him because torture was going to get involved now that he was going to go see the Privy Council. Or: somehow he got murdered while the Earl of Essex was attempting to get him to incriminate Raleigh. Or: Burleigh and Cecil had him murdered because his plays said bad things about Catholics. That’s one of my favorites. You know, I think we just throw that one out. Or: it was an accident during an argument over money. Another possibility–a drunken argument over money. Or: whole bunches of the Privy Council thought he might reveal them to be atheist, so they had him offed. Or: the Queen ordered him killed on account of his atheism. Although, since she’s the queen, why she couldn’t just get him arrested…? And oh, wait, she did. Or: one of the guys in the brawl murdered him on account of his being jealous of his relationship with Walsingham. Or: here’s the best. He did not die at all. It was faked, and they got him out of the country. Da da da, da, da. That’s your list.
Michelle Butler 16:46
Oh, my.
Anne Brannen 16:48
We don’t know. Well, what evidence do we actually have? Okay, yay. We have the inquest report. Ah! That’ll solve it all, won’t it? But no. The inquest report was found in 1925. So all these rumors had been running around, as though theoretically the inquest report–oh, yay, here it is–was going to solve things. But it doesn’t, because it’s problematic. The inquest says that during the day of the 30th of May 1593, Marlowe was in Deptford, which was across the river from London proper, though now London includes that area south of the old city. It’s next to Southwark. He had been at a house owned by Eleanor Bull, who rented out rooms and served meals to, apparently, government agents. He was there with: Ingram Frizer, who would be the man who stabbed him, and was a businessman and occasional con man who was a business agent for Thomas Walsingham; Nicholas Skeres, who was a con man and government agent working for both Thomas Walsingham and his much more important relative Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth’s secretary and spy master; and Robert Poley, a spy hired by the Privy Council. The three of them stated that Frizer and Marlowe had argued that evening over the bill. Marlowe grabbed Frizer’s dagger and wounded him, and Frizer struggled with him and then stabbed him just over the right eye and killed him instantly. Okay. But here’s the problems. This sort of leaves some things out. Such as: 1) neither Eleanor Bull nor her servants were called as witnesses. 2) there was no evidence given as to why the men were gathered together at all, or what they talked about for six hours before Marlowe actually got murdered, or who could even booked the room and paid for it. And 3) there was no medical evidence about the cause of death, and nobody who wasn’t already in that room identified the corpse. Moreover, the witnesses, if you will have noticed this by my description, were…none of them were any better than sketchy. They were not reliable witnesses whatsoever. So the upshot of all this is that we do not actually know what happened. Some scholars are convinced that Marlowe did not die at that time and the entire thing was a setup meant to get him away from what was going to be a very bad time with the agents of the Privy Council, who had already been you know, working on Thomas Kyd. So here’s what I have. My reasoning is that Marlowe actually did die. Probably someone other than the three minor players in the room benefited from it and probably ordered it. This is why. I don’t believe that Marlowe survived and got spirited away. Marlowe was such a hothead and not above brawling over a bill, but if that was so, there would be more clear evidence as to the circumstances and this evidence would not be so sketchy. If he had actually not died and had gotten away, we would have heard something. There was no way in hell that Kit Marlowe was going to be off someplace else in England or on the continent, keeping his mouth shut and not being involved in all kinds of things. Or even refraining from getting arrested for being drunk and hitting somebody in the head, or you know, annoying various people. There was no way in hell. So he died. It seems to me that the reason this information that we’ve gotten is so unconvincing, and with, you know, not good witnesses is that there was indeed something else going on. But what it is, we don’t know. So that’s where I’m at.
Michelle Butler 20:47
I find that persuasive. I definitely think that he is not the personality type who’s going to thrive in witness protection. He’s gonna be the guy who screws it all up by calling the ex girlfriend, ‘Hey, you want to hook up’ and blowing the whole thing.
Anne Brannen 21:08
Or deciding he has to get in on another scam.
Michelle Butler 21:13
His ability to live a quiet life is non existent.
Anne Brannen 21:17
Absolutely non existent. I don’t think I know…we were working on Malory and Malory’s arrest record. I’m not even convinced that Malory had done all the things that Malory got arrested for. I’m totally convinced that Marlowe not only did everything he got arrested for, but that he did a lot of other stuff that nobody bothered to bring him in for. He clearly was living over the top.
Michelle Butler 21:48
I definitely agree that it’s a sketchy inquest. It clearly had a framework constructed, and then is attempting to plaster over and hoping nobody notices where the holes are. That the other people in the house haven’t been talked to, that there’s no discussion about why these guys were together. They’re not friends. There’s no reason to think that they were just socially hanging out at this place where none of them live.
Anne Brannen 22:17
No, they were all connected through the Walsinghams and espionage. They were all connected under things that were not being talked about.
Michelle Butler 22:28
We haven’t mentioned the phrase ‘the Elizabethan police state,’ but it’s fair to remind people about the Elizabethan police state.
Anne Brannen 22:38
Elizabeth had inherited a kingdom that had been through absolute hell. Back and forth. Protestant, Catholic. It was the kind of place where one day you were safe, and the next day you weren’t, depending on what your religion was. And there were problems on the continent also. Back and forth. Protestant, Catholic. Which actually Marlowe had even written about in one of his plays. Peace was brought to the country, and one of the ways it happened was that there was an enormous amount of not just surveillance in terms of government spying, but as neighbors you were encouraged to, you know, let the church court know, if your next door neighbor hadn’t gone to church, which she was supposed to do. You were supposed to go to the state church, you are not supposed to be a member of any other church. I’ve seen records where people got into trouble because they miss church because they were trying to save their cow that fell in a ditch. ‘Well, there’s a fine for you.’ It was quite repressive in a lot of ways that don’t get mentioned when people are talking about the wonders of the Elizabethan era. Lots of stuff going on in the Elizabethan era that was just really great. But there was a price that was paid for it.
Michelle Butler 24:10
It really is arguably the first modern surveillance state.
Anne Brannen 24:17
There’s Kit Marlowe at the core of it. He’d been working for the government in espionage, since…he was clearly recruited while he was at Cambridge, as a lot of other spies in England will be later. They’re gonna show up all through John LeCarre. English tradition. ‘Let’s go over to the college–‘
Michelle Butler 24:42
Which college, in particular, do you recruit the spies out of in Cambridge?
Anne Brannen 24:48
This I don’t know. I think they come out of Oxford too, but it’s really…it’s obviously where you go and get these brilliant impressionable young men and get them to go do various excitingly secret things.
Michelle Butler 25:05
His recruiter was not the very best judge of character when it came to picking Marlowe to be a spy.
Anne Brannen 25:11
No…because Marlowe was good at it, clearly, in terms of the intelligence and in terms of the bravery, but he was not really good at in terms of keeping his head down.
Michelle Butler 25:22
The flying under the radar part, he’s not doing so great with.
Anne Brannen 25:26
George Smiley, he was not. At any rate, this has to have been a setup in some way. Six hours, they’d been together talking. They were walking around in the garden, talking for six hours, and then all of a sudden, he’s dead. Something was going on. And we don’t know what it is. And we are never going to know.
Michelle Butler 25:50
But it’s really fascinating to me how much we don’t, still, talk about this. I’m not a Renaissance scholar, but I am a medievalist, and I did, in fact, do a ton of work on Elisabethan…you know, Shakespeare, I’ve read nearly all of Marlowe, and the discussion of Marlowe’s death is still to this day, he was killed in a tavern brawl. I was utterly astonished to find this inquest and find out that, ‘oh, he was killed in the tavern brawl’ is a rumor that ran around right after he died, but isn’t actually even the official story of what happened. I had no idea about any of this. This was just fascinating.
Anne Brannen 26:39
No tavern was involved. I think there was probably a struggle, but I don’t think it was a brawl. Alcohol may well have been involved since it always was. But no, it wasn’t a tavern brawl.
Michelle Butler 26:50
This…this is just fascinating. It has become a piece of lore that is replicated, but is is not true.
Anne Brannen 26:59
Yes. As is much, actually, of what we’ve been talking about for the more than a year now that we’ve been doing the 1000 years of bad behavior podcast. There’s so many things that we believe that really aren’t true, never were true, don’t have any evidence for them, and are outright lies.
Michelle Butler 27:18
I guess this surprised me this much because I thought I knew it. It was one of these places where I thought I knew a little bit about this. I’ve certainly read the lion’s share of his work.
Anne Brannen 27:31
I had read The Reckoning, which is wonderful. So I had known that the tavern brawl story wasn’t true. So I had known that. I love this. It’s just, what the hell was going on in the Walsingham spy ring?
Michelle Butler 27:46
What is The Reckoning? I don’t know that. This is Charles Nickels’ The Reckoning: the Murder of Christopher Marlowe? Oh. I’m so glad I hadn’t found this earlier. I didn’t really have time to read a book this week. Awesome.
Anne Brannen 28:00
Oh, I love this. I think I’ll go reread it because I like this book so much. So I had known that, but I hadn’t ever pulled everything together. I was glad to do that. Yeah, it was fun. I hadn’t decided what I thought about it. I do not think he survived. Nah. I do think that it is very, very likely that under torture, he was going to say way more than Kyd was able to.
Michelle Butler 28:26
It’s interesting, though, that the Privy Council intervene to make sure he got his degree. But then when he gets arrested, they’re clearly deciding he’s expendable, because nobody’s intervening for him at that point.
Anne Brannen 28:43
No. No. It’s possible that one of the things that had happened was that it had become clear over the time since he had been an undergraduate and then a graduate student, that he was a liability. That because of that hotheadedness he was a liability. But it’s a great grief because we lost him way too early. He was brilliant.
Michelle Butler 29:14
This is kind of what I want to talk about. He was only 29 years old when he died. He and Shakespeare were the same age. Marlowe was maybe three months older than Shakespeare. If Shakespeare had been killed this at the same age, that same year, 1593, he would be a minor poet that people do dissertations on that nobody ever reads. Either the poetry that he wrote or the dissertation. He would not be a major figure. Whereas Marlowe is a major figure. I’m going to go back over to my list of his works. Tamerlane the first English play written in blank verse, which is of course, iambic pentameter that doesn’t rhyme, which becomes the way you write plays for at least 100 years and probably longer, only I don’t know that time period as well. But it becomes the standard. And his is the first one.
Anne Brannen 30:18
It gives a lot of flexibility. It means that it’s not as sing songy or rhythmic as rhymed poetry is, but still it’s got this lovely cadence to it. You can really write tragedy in blank verse. Obviously, because people did.
Michelle Butler 30:42
Blank verse becomes this wonderful means of expression because it’s close enough to spoken English to be able to sound naturalistic when it’s delivered, but it’s poetry. And so it sounds like the way we wish we sound.
Anne Brannen 31:00
That’s a good way to put it. Thank you. I like that.
Michelle Butler 31:03
It’s a great middle point between naturalistic and poetic and it’s wonderful. He’s the one out of the forefront of it. Edward the second is the first big history play. Shakespeare owes a giant chunk of his production to the existence of Edward the second. Shakespeare goes on and writes the Henry six plays, Richard the second, Richard the Third, Henry the fifth, Henry the fourth parts one and two, Henry the eighth. All of which are possible because Marlowe has shown it’s possible in Edward the Second. Doctor Faustus, which I had read as an undergraduate and then read again later after I had read all of the morality plays from the Middle Ages. Doctor Faustus is in such interesting conversation with the earlier morality plays, in which people do terrible things, but then they repent and they’re saved. Of course, at the end of Doctor Faustus…he does all these terrible things, and he maybe repents, maybe doesn’t repent, it’s really unclear whether his repentance is sincere, but he’s not saved. It’s this amazing inversion of 200 years of dramatic convention.
Anne Brannen 32:27
I love Faustus.
Michelle Butler 32:29
We can talk a little bit about how often his works have been filmed because they’ve been filmed amazingly often. Also, if we needed any reason to know that he doesn’t have the sense of self preservation that God gave a squirrel–
Anne Brannen 32:44
Or your chickens.
Michelle Butler 32:46
My chickens and Marlowe appear to have the same amount of self preservation. Marlowe’s last work, The Massacre at Paris, is about the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, which had just happened in Paris in 1572. The first rule of surviving Elizabeth Play Club is that you do not write about what’s happening right now. You write about what happened 300 years ago. You can’t do this.
Anne Brannen 33:18
You can’t do it. Especially if what it’s about is religion.
Michelle Butler 33:24
This is one of his works that I hadn’t read. So when I was reading up on it up, I was like, are you kidding me? He wrote about something that happened in 1572 and he thought that was a good idea? Elizabeth is going to remember this happening and he thought it was a good idea? Oh, my God. You cannot be serious. So we have these plays that are enormously influential. I swear to you that through the 1590s everybody’s plot note says ‘go imitate Christopher Marlowe,’ because that’s all what they’re doing in the 1590s. But then he has this poem, “The Passionate Shepherd to his Love,” which everybody takes a crack at responding to. It starts with Raleigh writing a snarky response. Everybody knows this poem. You know it, even if you don’t think you do, because it’s the one that starts “Come live with me and be my love, and we will all such pleasures prove.”
Anne Brannen 34:20
Yep. Everybody’s run across it.
Michelle Butler 34:25
Everybody knows this poem. And it must just be a rite of passage for all English poets that you have to write a snarky response to it. It has its own Wikipedia page with a list of people responding to it. William Carlos Williams wrote one.
Anne Brannen 34:48
Did he really? I didn’t know that.
Michelle Butler 34:50
He did! Let me find it. Because it’s hilarious. It’s called “Raleigh was Right,” by William Carlos Williams. “We cannot go to the country/ for the country will bring us/ no peace /What can the small violets/ tell us that grow on furry stems/ in the long grass/ among lance-shaped leaves?/ Though you praise us/ and call to mind the poets/ who sung of our loveliness it was/ long ago!/ long ago!/ When country people/ would plow and sow with/ flowering minds and pockets/ at ease–if ever this were true./ Not now. Love itself a flower/ with roots in a parched ground/ Empty pockets/ make empty heads. Cure it/ if you can, but do not believe/ that we can live today in the country/ for the country will bring us/ no peace.”
Anne Brannen 35:48
Hmm. “If ever were true.”
Michelle Butler 35:51
“If ever it were true.” I’m gonna forgive somebody who was 29 years old when he died for being a little bit of a romantic at heart. Not that we see that in the plays. He’s hardcore over in the plays.
Anne Brannen 36:03
Yeah.
Michelle Butler 36:03
But “The Passionate Shepherd” is and everybody wants to take a crack at him about it. It starts with Raleigh.
Anne Brannen 36:14
Oh, Raleigh. Maybe Raleigh was all pissed because Christopher Marlowe was going to turn him into the Privy Council.
Michelle Butler 36:22
Let me read to you from “The Passionate Shepherd’s” own Wikipedia page. Here is a partial list of the people who wrote poems in response to it. John Donne. Isaac Walton. Robert Herrick. C. Day Louis. William Carlos Williams. Dorothy Parker, whose version I tried to find but didn’t, but I’m sure it’s hilarious because she’s the master of snark.
Anne Brannen 36:50
She is indeed.
Michelle Butler 36:52
Ogden Nash. I found that one. WD Snodgrass. Douglas Crase. And Greg Delanty, who is still alive, so this is still happening, right now, that poets are feeling the need to go respond to Christopher Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd.”
Anne Brannen 37:12
I’m looking this up.
Michelle Butler 37:13
It was used in a whole lot of films. But one of them, the one that I remember most strongly, is Ian McKellen’s Richard the Third that was filmed in 1995. It uses a swing version of, you know, “Come live with me and be my love.” That one. Did you see that film?
Anne Brannen 37:36
I did not. I have a little gift for you. Here’s Dorothy Parker’s. I’ll read you a little bit of “The Passionate Freudian to his Love.” “Only name the day, and we’ll fly away/ In the face of old traditions/ To a sheltered spot, by the world forgot,/ Where we’ll park our inhibitions./ Come and gaze in eyes with the lovelight lies/ as its psychoanalyzes,/ And when once you glean what your fantasies mean,/ life will hold no more surprises.”
Michelle Butler 38:12
You’ve done okay when for hundreds of years after you were not killed in a tavern brawl, but yet ended up dead, people are still responding to your poem. And feeling the need to snark.
Anne Brannen 38:27
Yeah, yeah. No, Marlowe hasn’t ever left us.
Michelle Butler 38:33
There’s a whole other Wikipedia page that lists a tiny little sample of all the places he shows up in fiction, which is itself… I’m going to tell you I looked at it and my brain exploded and I decided not to talk about it really at all. He is constantly pulled in. If anything takes place, and even kind of tangentially close, to the Elizabethans, Marlowe has to wander through.
Anne Brannen 39:00
He never died! He never died.
Michelle Butler 39:04
There is one where he literally never died. He’s a vampire. He just tangetially shows up in connection to the main characters, who are the actual real vampires that the story’s about. Marlowe just kind of wanders through in the background.
Anne Brannen 39:23
What is this one? What is this one?
Michelle Butler 39:26
It was listed on the Wikipedia page. I looked at this movie and decided I didn’t want to watch it, to be honest.
Anne Brannen 39:32
I don’t want to watch it. I just want to know what it was.
Michelle Butler 39:36
Hold on…it was called Only Lovers Left Alive and it was 2013. And it’s John Hurt playing Marlowe, who is still alive as a vampire in the 21st century. So you can go over to Wikipedia and see the list. The long, long, long, long list of books where he is tangentially mentioned, including the one by an author named Michelle Butler Hallett. That stopped me for a second.
Anne Brannen 40:10
Yeah. ‘Did I write this? I don’t remember. Did I get married again? Have I got a new last name?’ I’m glad you worked your way through that.
Michelle Butler 40:23
I did pull out a couple of particularly fun ones to share with you. It was interesting that you mentioned Marlowe and Malory together because guess who also has an IMDB page like Malory.
Anne Brannen 40:40
No, no.
Michelle Butler 40:43
He does.
Anne Brannen 40:44
So what has Christopher Marlowe been doing in the movies lately?
Michelle Butler 40:48
Christopher Marlowe has an IMDB page that points up how many times his plays have been made into movies. Starting with Faustus in 1947.
Anne Brannen 41:07
Okay, so he’s a screenwriter. Did he get any awards? Because I remember Malory was up for an award which he was not going to be able to walk to the stage and get.
Michelle Butler 41:15
Yeah he was up for a Nebula. Let’s see. And here it does indeed, on his IMDB page, say he was killed in a tavern brawl by a former friend, allegedly over a bill. Although it goes on to say “there is now some evidence that suggests that his death was in fact an assassination.”
Yeah, pretty much.
But being killed in a tavern brawl has definitely stuck as the erroneous explanation.
Anne Brannen 41:47
Well, to be fair, his life before that was such that being killed in a tavern brawl would really fit in quite nicely. Now, getting assassinated as part of his whole spy career–that also fits in quite nicely. But being killed in a tavern role is not out of line for his character. So there’s that.
Michelle Butler 42:13
I see on his IMDB page that there was a episode of Wishbone based on Dr. Faustus, which I have not seen. But I bet it’s really interesting.
Anne Brannen 42:24
Wishbone’s good.
Michelle Butler 42:25
It’s called ‘Flea-bitten Bargain.’ Alright, so here’s what I have to share with you. There was a musical on Broadway in 1981, about Christopher Marlowe.
Anne Brannen 42:44
I have never heard of this. I was alive in 1981. And I do not remember having heard of this.
Michelle Butler 42:51
There’s a YouTube video. I haven’t found a clips from the musical itself. But there is a YouTube video in which a couple of people talk about it, and sing a couple of songs from it. It’s not especially difficult to understand why it bombed. It closed so quickly. But then they left–I love this little detail–they left the box office open, just in case they might sell enough tickets to relaunch the show. But that didn’t happen. It’s really quite terrible. So I will post the link to the 1981 Broadway show about Christopher Marlowe that is, probably deservedly, forgotten.
Now, did they have him dying in a tavern brawl?
Probably. I really have no idea.
That’s my guess. It doesn’t sound like it would have gotten into the subtleties of how Marlowe might have died.
There is an effort right now going on to make a new musical about Marlowe, that is being headed up by– he’s probably actually a scholar of Marlowe, but he’s also the membership chair for the Marlowe society. His name is Julian Ng. They’ve got a website called Kittmusical.com. They’ve been releasing songs as they work on them. The two songs that have been released are sung by Marlowe, “Shoemaker’s Son and “A Different Vow,” they didn’t hit me nearly as much as the one that is sung by Elizabeth, where she’s quite angry and she’s threatening to start murdering people just because she’s bored.
Anne Brannen 45:02
So this is Queen Elizabeth as the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland
Michelle Butler 45:07
Pretty much.
Anne Brannen 45:08
Okay. Why not? Why not? Off with their heads.
Michelle Butler 45:15
It’s also being filmed in the actress’s backyard because it’s happening in June of 2020.
Anne Brannen 45:21
Hmm. Okay.
Michelle Butler 45:23
So that’s a thing. There was supposed to be being a movie made about Marlowe–there’s reference to it on the website of the Marlowe society. When you go to look it up, the only articles you find are from 2018. And then you find that the guy who was supposed to be producing it is dead.
Anne Brannen 45:44
Ah. You need your producers.
Michelle Butler 45:48
He was supposed to be working on a movie called ‘Christopher Marlowe.’ What they’re saying in the article is, we hope this won’t kill the project. But I haven’t found anything about it since 2018. So I have some questions about that. I found it really interesting, looking at his presence in historical fiction, because usually, he’s not the main character. Usually he is the intriguing person who walks in and joins the company, but not so much stories focused on him in particular. So there’s the show, ‘Upstart Crow’ that is–
Anne Brannen 45:48
Yay! Yay!
Michelle Butler 46:04
About Shakespeare, and it’s very funny. It’s set, obviously, before 1593, but it’s set early in Shakespeare’s career. He’s just trying to get his career off the ground. Marlowe’s already established so he’s always wandering through–
Anne Brannen 46:50
Swashbuckling, swashbuckling and dressed really well.
Michelle Butler 46:54
And sort of encouraging Shakespeare but really kind of not.
Anne Brannen 47:03
Stealing his stuff as much as possible. Yeah, yeah. It’s a good joke. Upstart Crow. Excellent. Go watch it. Was it on BBC? I think I watched mine on BritBox.
Michelle Butler 47:17
That sounds correct to me. Christopher Marlowe has had quite a quite an extensive afterlife in historical fiction.
Anne Brannen 47:26
But it’s interesting that it’s mostly as a side character. Is there anything that you ran across that’s actually focused on Marlowe?
Michelle Butler 47:36
Yeah, there definitely are.
Anne Brannen 47:39
Other than the bad musical and the perhaps good musical.
Michelle Butler 47:42
Yeah, there definitely are. There’s a book from 1895, a novel that was the first to argue that his death was faked. You can find it online if you wish to read it. I read about three pages and decided that was enough of that. There is a historical novel from 1978 called Enter a Spy: The Double Life of Christopher Marlowe, that is super colossally out of print. So if you want to read it, you got to order it with more than like four days, I’m just saying, because you don’t get it in time.
Anne Brannen 48:21
If you’re like trying to get it in time for a podcast recording.
Michelle Butler 48:24
Say you have a hard deadline. Say. The thing about the books that are focused on him is…I’m a little hesitant to say this without having looked at them, but the descriptions of them make it seem as if they are unhealthily interested in his sexuality. So there’s one in which he–the one I just mentioned, Enter a Spy–in which Marlowe has an affair with Francis Walsingham. There’s a different one in which he is involved with Shakespeare. So there’s a lot of shipping going on with various men that he may have run across in real life. But he does end up showing up in a lot of other stories.
Anne Brannen 49:11
I’d like to know…that one that you decided not to read, that supposes that he survived, I’d like to know what they envision him doing. Like, did he go back to Canterbury and take up shoemaking? You know, take over his dad’s shoemaking office. What does he do?
Michelle Butler 49:34
Ziglar, in the novel, claims that Marlowe wrote Hamlet.
Anne Brannen 49:39
Ah, yes. So he continued to be a playwright in London only just really sort of secretly. Why yes, that does seem so like something that Marlowe might do.
Michelle Butler 49:55
That shows up in a 2012 novel as well, arguing that he faked his death and then feeds plays to Shakespeare, which are actually what he wrote because Marlowe would totally be able to give up credit like that.
Anne Brannen 50:11
Oh, yeah, totally. All of those kinds of theories are grounded in a class issue, which is that Shakespeare did not go to university, so how could he have been producing these wonderful things? Whereas Marlowe was one of the many Cambridge playwrights. But there were other playwrights who didn’t go to the university who also did really well. It’s just wasn’t just Shakespeare.
Michelle Butler 50:44
There’s a whole genre in trying to guess who wrote Shakespeare’s plays, because it couldn’t possibly have been him.
Anne Brannen 50:52
Where I’m at is, that it was Shakespeare. I’m thinking that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare’s plays. Occam’s Razor. I’m telling you, that does it for me. Also I think Marlowe wrote Marlowe’s plays. But you know, one of the things that’s been going on is a lot of work on what it is that Marlowe might have collaborated on or if Shakespeare might have collaborated on, so there’s a lot of work going on in looking at what got done by more than one person, people working together. And that is of interest to me, because, you know, I think Shakespeare wrote his stuff. But do I think that he might have been collaborating? Of course I do. Since we know that he did, in some ways. More than even we had known? Sure, why not. Why not. But that doesn’t mean that he was collaborating on account of being inept.
Michelle Butler 51:43
This is kind of our second botched assassination in a row, which really suggests to me that assassinations are often not especially well handled, or at least the ones we detect. I was thinking of Joanna’s husband, Andrew. That was just handled very sloppily.
Anne Brannen 52:03
That was a bad, bad, very bad assassination, and could have been done much more elegantly and much less dramatically as well. Michelle is referring to our podcast on the assassination of Joanna, Queen of Naples, which we just did. In the course of all that, we discuss the assassination of her first husband, who got thrown out a window with a cord tied around his genitals, but he had been strangled before then. Yay. But at any rate, yes, botched assassination. Yeah, this was not a really good one. As an assassination goes. Which is one of the reasons I think that probably Marlowe was fighting back. I only hope so. I don’t think that you just are naturally like, ‘I’m going to stab this guy right above his eye.’ You’re usually aiming someplace else, don’t you think?
Michelle Butler 52:55
That was an interesting little tidbit. The inquest is also really interesting to make sure to get on record that Marlowe struck the first blow so everybody else is covered.
Anne Brannen 53:10
Absolutely. Self Defense. It was self defense. ‘I had to stab Marlowe above his eye, right above his eye’–you often get told in his eye, but it was right above his eye–‘and he died instantly.’
Michelle Butler 53:22
You have to hit somebody pretty hard…because your skull is pretty…I mean, I’m not a medical person, but–
Anne Brannen 53:32
It’s very hard to like just whack somebody with a dagger through their skull. Through the eye, yes. But they’re very clear that that’s not what it is. That it’s above the eye. So yeah, I would have liked to have had some medical personage in on this as to what exactly happened to Marlowe.
Michelle Butler 53:53
They didn’t, and in that sense I was reminded of Edward the second’s death, where there was not very much allowance made for anybody to come and look at the body, which then fueled rumors that it wasn’t actually him.
Anne Brannen 54:11
Yeah, maybe. Because he got away and he went to France. That’s what I was thinking about Marlowe. Maybe he left England entirely, went to the continent, and was hanging out in whatever that monastery was that Edward the second theoretically went to when he didn’t really die at Berkeley Castle. So there’s like maybe this place there, you know…
Michelle Butler 54:31
[laughter] England runs a safe house over in Italy for the highborn nutballs who have to be spirited out of the country.
Anne Brannen 54:48
That’s what I’m thinking. That was my theory. That was my theory. Who knows who was there in between, Edward the second and Marlowe, because you know, there’s some time in there. So here’s the monks, keeping up their little thing, ‘we take in the people.’ And so then you have your little life there. I mean, there’s no TV, so you can’t sit around and watch the TV, but you have your little life there. I don’t know what you’re doing. This never gets explained. What were they doing for the rest of their lives? Tending the bees? That’s what it was. They were taking care of bees and chickens.
[laughter]. Oh, God, I love the portrait that you said we’re going to use. The famous one.
Yes.
Michelle Butler 55:28
With the awesome coat. He’s very young in it, but he absolutely looks…most of the time, you don’t really get good personality portrayed yet. But his personality is very clear in that and it is definitely the ‘I am a cocky so-and-so. And if I get killed because I annoyed somebody don’t be surprised.’
Anne Brannen 55:59
Yeah. Also, ‘I’m really gorgeous. And so if you want to think up stuff about my sex life, go ahead. It was all true.’
Michelle Butler 56:07
‘And this is the best coat I own, get all the detail in. Look at the buttons.
Anne Brannen 56:15
Absolutely. Yeah. I do love me some Marlowe. I love him as a poet. I love him as a playwright. I love him just as a human being. I’m very fond of Marlowe. Yeah, I think he got assassinated. That’s what I think.
Michelle Butler 56:30
Well, at some point, if you annoy people enough…
Anne Brannen 56:33
Or if you cause…if there’s enough danger. I mean, these were really dangerous times. The thing about torture is that people will say anything, and sometimes they actually say true stuff. You could worry about this.
Michelle Butler 56:47
He was only 29 though.
Anne Brannen 56:48
20-damn-9. Yeah.
Michelle Butler 56:50
Shakespeare lives to 1616. He lives almost twice as long. So he gets a lot more done. But man, did Marlowe accomplish a lot with the time that he had. I’m so impressed with his output.
Anne Brannen 57:04
Yeah, that was amazing. That’s six years of a literary career and completely changes English literature.
Michelle Butler 57:13
Here is a really great…here’s the epigram–epigram, that’s the right word–at the beginning of that 1895 book. “It is not for any man to measure. Above all, it is not for any workman in the field of tragic poetry lightly to take upon himself the responsibility or the authority to pronounce what it is that Christopher Marlowe could not have done.”
Anne Brannen 57:43
Ah, yeah. Yeah. That is so…that is very true.
Michelle Butler 57:49
It’s not by Ziegler. It’s a quote from Algernon Charles Swinburne, but I thought it was a pretty accurate assessment of Christopher Marlowe.
Anne Brannen 57:57
And here is what’s engraved on the stone for Marlowe. “Near this spot lie the mortal remains of Christopher Marlowe, who met his untimely death in Deptford on May 30, 1593.” And then the quote is from Dr. Faustus: “Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight.”
Michelle Butler 58:21
Mmmm. Hmmm. Might have, if he’d have gotten past the wild 20s.
Anne Brannen 58:27
Might have. Yeah. Who knows what his middle age or old age would have been. But he lived as he lived, and he was who he was, and you don’t know how much of what fueled that brilliance as a writer was also what fueled what killed him. You perhaps could not have had one without the other. We know that humans are complex, but he died way too early. And oh, yeah, it was a true crime. A true crime. Do we think that it was actually self defense? Nah? We don’t really. I don’t. Do you, Michelle?
Michelle Butler 59:07
No, I don’t think so. I don’t have any good guesses as to who in particular decided they wanted to silence him. But would I be surprised if one of these dudes had been named Torrell? No, since that appears to be who they always find for the hired killers. But these guys clearly were not…they’re the low level lackeys.
Anne Brannen 59:31
They really are. Oh, I wish I knew what they were talking about. Six hours. Six hours. They didn’t just take him on over to Eleanor Bull’s and kill him. No, six hours they were talking. Yeah, the last days of Christopher Marlowe were not easy ones. So that’s us. That’s our discussion of Christopher Marlowe. We’re very fond of him. We honor his memory and we think he got a bad deal over at Eleanor Bull’s on the 30th of May 1593. That’s what we think. Although, quite frankly, had he had to go over and be subjected to the Privy Council’s agents, that might not have been any fun either. Thomas Kidd survived it, though he was broken. You didn’t really thrive after the Elizabethans tried to get information out of you. You didn’t go on to have a happy full life with, you know, all the pieces of you working. That didn’t happen. So next up…do you remember what we’re doing next?
Michelle Butler 1:00:34
I don’t.
Anne Brannen 1:00:35
I will tell you. The next thing we’re going to do is a copyright issue from 561, in Ireland, when Saint Columba gets accused of copying a book that he should not have copied. Yay. So there’s not gonna be any deaths. There’s no deaths, no torture, there’s just St. Columba not behaving himself.
Michelle Butler 1:01:00
That’s right. I remember this. He borrows that book and he makes a copy, and then the original owner of the book is cheesed, and takes him to court because the ancient Irish were more litigious than anybody could possibly guess.
Anne Brannen 1:01:15
As we know, students are going to be copying text in Paris, in boatloads later, but yeah, you weren’t supposed to just copy the book without getting some permission. So we’re gonna talk about books and you know, copying books and scribal things and whatnot, but there’s not going to be any deaths. Every once in a while we have a crime, which is not a death. That’s kind of like refreshing. Also, the no torture part. I always like that. Always a nice thing. This has been True Crime Medieval, where the crimes are just like they are today only with less technology. Sometimes. We can be found on Apple podcasts, Spotify, other places where podcasts hang out. We have a web page, which is at Truecrimemedieval.com. And we’ve been been working on that, let me tell you, we have a web page. If you go to Truecrimemedieval.com, truecrimemedieval is all one word, you can find the show notes, which are done for us by Michelle, and the transcripts, which are done for us by our beloved Laurie Dietrich. There I put in a picture and say some stuff. You can get a hold of us through there. You can contact all of us through the web page. We’d love it if you left comments. We’d love to hear from you. If you have suggestions as to what kinds of medieval crimes we might look at, we’d love to hear that too. We’ll take that under advisement. And leave us a review. We were really grateful for the reviews. They make us more visible to people who might be interested. So if you think we’re worth listening to then let people know. Is there anything else I’m supposed to put in that I forgot in there, Michelle? Because sometimes I forget. The ADHD brain. I lost my notes and I don’t remember what I’m doing.
Michelle Butler 1:03:04
I don’t think so. I think that’s it.
Anne Brannen 1:03:06
We don’t know. Anyway, so that’s it. We’ll see you later and talk about books. Bye.
Michelle Butler 1:03:16
Bye.
41. The Assassination of Queen Joanna of Naples, Muro Lucano, Italy 1382
Anne Brannen 0:25
Hello and welcome to True Crime Medieval, 1000 years of people behaving badly. And oh, so badly. I’m Anne Brannen. I’m your host in Albuquerque.
Michelle Butler 0:38
I’m Michelle Butler in Maryland, the most medieval state in America. But thank God it is not like medieval Naples. That’s what I learned.
Anne Brannen 0:49
Yes. Today we’re discussing the assassination of Joanna the Queen of Naples. But the deal, is the assassination of Joanna, Queen of Naples, in 1382 comes at the end of a long, long, long, long line of other bad behaviors, hence, her being assassinated in Naples 1382.
Michelle Butler 1:09
That’s not even the crime I thought we were doing. There was like four other ones before this that I thought were candidates.
Anne Brannen 1:16
The thing is, you have to consolidate. So the assassination. We’re gonna start with that. We’re gonna just like put it all under ‘the assassination.’ Because you go, ‘Oh, there’s a crime.’ ‘Yes, that’s a crime.’ Indeed. Let’s go with that. So, Naples. You remember we did the Sicilian Vespers?
Michelle Butler 1:38
Yes.
Anne Brannen 1:40
After the Sicilian Vespers, Sicily got divided up and one of the pieces of it was Naples. So that’s how come we’re in Naples. Then there was going back and forth, who owns Naples, yada, yada, blah, blah, blah. But on the 27th of July 1382, Joanna of Naples, who was imprisoned at the time, died before Louis the first of Aragon could come rescue her. Her captor said that she had died of natural causes, but absolutely no one believed it. None of the chronicles say she died of natural causes. The only person who says that Joanna of Naples died of natural causes is the person who had her in prison. Everybody else thinks no. We don’t know exactly what happened, because none of the witnesses gave any statements. Maybe she was strangled. Maybe she was smothered with either feather mattresses or a pillow. But at any rate, everybody believes she was murdered. Since she was excommunicated at the time, she couldn’t be buried in holy ground. So they threw her in a well.
Michelle Butler 2:47
That’s…that’s just bad.
Anne Brannen 2:50
So how did we get to the point at which the queen of Naples was thrown into a well? I will now tell you because it’s–ta-da-da–background. Joanna had become queen of Naples more or less in 1343 when her father died, but the route to the throne was really vexed. She was the oldest of the surviving children of Charles, who was the Duke of Cambria, who was the only surviving son of Robert who was the King of Naples. This is Robert the Wise, by the way. Bless his heart, I don’t know how he got that name. Anyway, Charles, her father, died suddenly in 1328. So Robert, wise King of Naples, had a problem, which was that he had no male heir. It’s like the theme of European nobility. ‘Oh my god, there’s no male heir, now we’re going to have a war, we’re going to abolish the monasteries.’ They’re going to do some damn thing or other. He had no male heir and in Naples a woman could theoretically inherit the throne. It wasn’t really done. Also, the royal family was descended from the Capetians of France, who had made it illegal for women to inherit the throne, thereby causing lots and lots of problems in their royal family and the English royal family and, apparently, the Neapolitan royal family. The standing law was that a woman could inherit the throne, but she had to be married and her husband would really rule. So it was some kind of like, you could be the queen, but somebody else was going to make decisions. I guess, you know, the Queen was supposed to be dusting or something, I don’t know what, vacuuming. So Robert named Joanna and her new baby sister Maria, who had been born after Charles’s death, as his successors. Okay. Now, there were other contenders for the throne. They were guys. Robert’s nephew, Charles the first of Hungary, and Robert’s brothers, Philip and John. They were all contenders for the throne. Uh oh, uh oh. Oh, oh, and the Pope. This was John the twenty-second. He was involved in all this. Things weren’t really great at the moment between the king and the Pope but the pope backed the king anyway.
Michelle Butler 5:11
The Pope’s in Avignon at this point?
Anne Brannen 5:14
The Pope’s in Avignon at the time, but we actually aren’t at the schism yet. We’re just having the pope in Avignon. Schism’s gonna come later. Along with the Black Death. We’re not there yet.
Michelle Butler 5:24
Joanna’s like the Forrest Gump of medieval history. She’s there for all the big ones.
Anne Brannen 5:29
She’s there for all the big things, you know, stuck in Naples. So Joanna was invested with the right to Siciliy and Robert’s brother John swore fealty, but Robert’s brother Philip didn’t. Charles the First of Hungary got the Pope to order that Joanna and Maria were supposed to marry his sons. So this is how Hungary gets involved. It’s his father’s brother in law, something like that. Anyway, so the Pope orders that Joanna and Maria are supposed to marry his sons. Then some confusing stuff goes back and forth, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I’m leaving a bunch of stuff out here, guys. I’m just telling you. Eventually, Charles’s son, Andrew, marries Joanna in September of 1333. Joanna was eight and Andrew was six. So Andrew was in Naples, and he grew up in Naples, but everybody thought of him as Hungarian. So they made fun of him. So that was Andrew’s childhood. What I want–here’s what I want. I want you, my friend Michelle, who does historical fiction, I want you to write a book about Andrew. Andrew. Oh my god. So there he is. He’s six years old, being raised in Naples and bullied by the people who will not stop thinking about him as Hungarian. Great. So later on, about 10 years later, Robert was dying. He did various organizational things that you do on your deathbed, if you’re a king, one of which was to rule that Joanna couldn’t rule until she was 21. Even though she was then at 18, an adult according to custom. Why not? Let’s just make things worse. Okay. So he died, and Andrew and Joanna finally consummated their marriage. Da-ta-da, that must have been wonderful. No, no, it wasn’t. They never ever, ever, ever ever got together again till much later, except on like at major functions where you have to wear your crowns and or you know your little tiaras or whatnot and go around with sashes. So then she was Queen more or less. Relations with her sister fell apart because her sister went and got married in secret. Her relations with her husband, which weren’t good, got worse when Andrew’s mother, Queen Elizabeth, demanded that Andrew be crowned and she got the Pope involved, who wrote to Joanna and told her that she could rule the kingdom alone just like a man if she crowned Andrew. I think that’s a nice little touch. You just have put a crown on his head. He needed the crown for his manliness. He absolutely did. He was 16, after all, at this point. There’s more trouble with the Pope and her council and her papal legate, blah, blah, blah. So at some point, she started talking to Andrew again and then she got pregnant. Yay, so everything’s fine.
Michelle Butler 8:32
For a while.
Anne Brannen 8:34
There was war in Piedmont. The pope threatened to excommunicate her if she kept parceling out royal estates to her supporters. She abandoned her husband again. The pope ordered that he be crowned. So some of Joanna’s supporters murdered Andrew. Because, why not? I mean, that was going to fix it all. In 1345, they were on a hunting trip and Andrew was set upon. Joanna it was in in her own bedroom and apparently she didn’t hear a thing. He got strangled and thrown out a window with, we are told, a rope tied around his genitals, but we are hoping that he was dead already from the strangulation when they threw them out the window. So that’s what happened to Andrew. 1345. How old is he at this point?
Michelle Butler 9:21
This could be a Henry the Second and Beckett situation, where somebody thinks they’re gonna do the king a favor and take of–
Anne Brannen 9:29
I don’t know. You think?
Michelle Butler 9:31
‘Will no one rid me of this meddlesome husband?’ Because it causes all kinds of problems for her. I think that Joanna is smart enough that if she had actually arranged to have her husband killed, more foresight and planning would have gone into it, to make sure that a) she’s not quite so easy to–
She was in the bedroom nearby!
–and b) that she has anticipated the problems that are gonna come her way and has started to deal with them. She’s caught on the back foot, which makes me think that someone thinks they’re doing her a favor when they’re really not.
Anne Brannen 10:15
I guess that’s possible. That hadn’t occurred to me and that actually could well be true. Andrew was 18, by the way. What a lovely life he had. He never did get his crown. I think that’s wrong. Okay. So Joanna was quite shocked. It was awful. She said so. Then she had the baby which was a son named Charles Martel. Now, this is not the Charles Martel who is the Carolingian, Charles Martel, but it’s a very popular name. It shows up all through the former Frankish kingdom. But anyway, they named him Charles Martin. In this chaos, Northern Italian lands got lost to the Marquis of Montferrat and the Hungarians accused her of the murder of Andrew–duh–after she said she was going to marry one of her cousins, Lewis of Toronto. Lewis’s brother Robert attacked and then the Hungarians decided to invade. Joanna did marry Lewis, and he got lots of power and titles, which the Neapolitans did not like. Louis…it was just really…he wasn’t great. By the way, things were already pretty chaotic because apparently there were like bands of roving noblemen terrorizing the populace. I do not know what was going on in Naples through this whole time, but it was not good.
Michelle Butler 11:31
And Robert tried to marry her himself. He imprisons her for a while, and tries to force her into marrying him. It’s dreadful.
Anne Brannen 11:43
It really is dreadful. So then the Hungarians invaded. All right, so that where you are. The Hungarians invade in 1348. They took Naples, and they beheaded Joanna’s cousin Charles in the same place that Andrew had been murdered.
Michelle Butler 11:59
That’s her sister’s husband, by the way. That’s the person who her sister had run off and married. Thanks a bunch. This is a bonus blood feast.
Anne Brannen 12:16
It really is. The Hungarians come in and it’s just, too bad for you.
Michelle Butler 12:22
When Lewis is invading Charles is like, ‘hey, I want to be on your side.’ Louis is like, ‘awesome, come over to my place. We’re gonna have a dinner right here in this same place where my brother died, but that’s fine. Oh, and bring your brothers when you come over.’ Charles is like, ‘okay.’
There’ll be a black bull’s head stuck on the table.
There’s some people who tell a story that the waiters are nudging Charles, ‘we’ve heard bad things, dude, you better go,’ and Charles was like, ‘No, I think everything’s fine.’
Anne Brannen 13:05
‘I’m waiting for the dessert. I’ve heard it’s going to have a lovely–‘
Michelle Butler 13:09
He has him beheaded right where his brother was killed. Which isn’t actually funny. But it’s funny because Charles is so dense through this whole thing. Charles thinks that because he sucked up to Louis that everything’s gonna be fine. And it was not fine.
Anne Brannen 13:24
No. The extent to which the people involved in this entire story don’t understand each other’s motivations, or what they’re going to do, is just astounding, actually. So Joanna’s son died. He was two. Joanna fled to Marseilles. Good move. They liked her. Then she went to Provence. They didn’t like her. Then she went to Avignon to see the Pope and he exonerated her for the murder, which she might or might not have done. Then she had another baby, Catherine, and then it was the Black Death, which was, as Michelle pointed out to me earlier, before we started recording, a footnote in the history of Joanna of Naples. I mean, really, the Black Death is like the main thing that happens in this particular century. We’re like, oh, yeah, Black Death, Naples.
Michelle Butler 14:11
Italy is hit really hard by the Black Death.
Anne Brannen 14:14
Italy got hit really hard. Yes. So Louis of Hungary left Naples because duh, and Joanna and her husband Louis went back and did not die of the Black Death. Amazingly enough.
Michelle Butler 14:28
I was really surprised to learn that Naples and other cities in Italy were hit so bad by the Black Death that they did not reach pre-plague population levels again until the 18th century.
Anne Brannen 14:43
I didn’t know it was that long. No, Italy got hit hard. Lots of places where it was like more than half.
Michelle Butler 14:49
Yeah, it was 50% in Naples.
Anne Brannen 14:52
Yeah. Well, we don’t care about that. Because we’re like, where are Joanna and Louis? So they went back. But the Hungarians had been behaving so badly that the Neapolitans were actually happy to see them. Nice little wrinkle. So there they were. Louis was awful and he became the power. He got rid of Joanna’s supporters. He executed one of them. He got crowned. He got a crown. Then he died in 1362. He caught a cold while he was bathing and it got worse and worse. Okay, fine, fine, fine. Nobody thinks he was murdered. I don’t. But why did he die of a cold and didn’t get murdered? It makes no sense.
Michelle Butler 15:33
Wait, this is her second husband? I read that he died of another round of the plague, in 1362.
Anne Brannen 15:41
Oh, really? Because I read that he died because he caught a cold while he was bathing. But really, the plague makes much more sense. So probably what happened is he caught a cold while he was bathing and then it turned the plague, because, you know, his defenses were down.
Michelle Butler 15:57
It’s bacterial and–
Anne Brannen 15:58
At any rate, he’s dead and he didn’t get murdered. He was sick. So she got married again. What a wonderful marriage this was. She got married to James–
Michelle Butler 16:07
Oh god.
Anne Brannen 16:09
Okay, come on. Don’t spoil it. She got married to James the fourth of Majorca, who was quite and very insane, on account of having been imprisoned for 14 years in an iron cage by his uncle, who was Peter the fourth of Aragon.
Michelle Butler 16:24
Who we’ve seen before, I’m pretty sure. Isn’t he Peter the cruel?
Yeah, this is Peter the cruel.
I felt like this was almost like the uber-episode because all of these things showed back up. At the beginning, we’ve got Philip the fourth of France because he’s a contemporary of Robert the wise. We’ve got the Sicilian Vespers and then it connects up with Peter the cruel. Oh, my goodness.
Anne Brannen 16:57
Yes. Yeah. Because we had…one of the podcasts was about the murder of Peter the cruel, who was sometimes called Peter the just, and he was pretty dreadful too. As, for instance, putting his nephew in an iron cage for 14 years. So like, why did he do that? Why? Because James’ father had died fighting Peter, his brother in law, who was quite angry at his refusal to pay homage to him. He decided, therefore, to invade Mallorca, as one does. So James the fourth had to be gotten out of the way. I don’t know about the iron cage. I think that’s just mean. I understand the necessity to get James the fourth out of the way for 14 years. Why he’s in an iron cage…? But then, as we say, Peter, the cruel.
Michelle Butler 17:47
But how bad are your marital options, that this seems like a good idea?
Anne Brannen 17:56
Well, you know, Henry the eighth wasn’t available.
Michelle Butler 18:01
I know she was convinced by this point that marrying her cousins was causing her to lose babies. So she wanted to go a little further afield. She’s probably not wrong about all the inbreeding, but durn. This guy.
Anne Brannen 18:18
Yeah. It wasn’t good.
Michelle Butler 18:18
I mean…he’s not okay. Who would be, really?
Anne Brannen 18:22
No, he wasn’t. You would think after 14 years in an iron cage…he was nuts. So he decided to try to get Mallorca back. But he certainly didn’t have the wherewithal for that. He got captured. He got ransomed. He tried to get some other lands back and he got captured. He died in 1375. He might have been poisoned, we don’t know. So then things calm down for a while. However, the papal schism began. That’s the other big thing besides the Black Death that happens in Europe in this century. Pope Urban the sixth, the one who was in Rome, declared Joanna a heretic when she supported Clement the seventh, who was the pope in Avignon. The Hungarians invaded Naples again in 1380 and took the city in July of 1381 and imprisoned Joanna and then she got murdered. So there you are, the story of Joanna. Um, just a little footnote. So Charles of Durazzo was King of Naples, as well as being the King of Jerusalem and the King of Hungary, in May of 1382. But he got assassinated in 1386 by Elizabeth of Bavaria, but that’s a different story. Just letting you know that it had started badly, and it would continue badly, and what we have in the middle is a bunch of bad behavior. Yeah. That’s your background.
I kind of liked that ending for him.
Well, it was, you know, apropos,
Michelle Butler 19:52
Because he was the husband of her niece, Margaret. So, Maria’s youngest daughter Margaret married this yet-another-cousin who has the same name as her dad. So that’s creepy.
Anne Brannen 20:13
And very confusing if you’re trying to follow it.
Michelle Butler 20:15
Holy cow. He’d been sent–this Charles had been sent–to Joanna’s court and raised there. So both of these, her niece and Charles, she was involved in their upbringing. The treachery that’s involved in Charles deciding, ‘I’m gonna throw in my lot with the Hungarians’ is vile.
Anne Brannen 20:42
Mm hmm.
Michelle Butler 20:44
This wasn’t a stranger. He was raised by this woman. Joanna could not catch a break. This is what I learned from this. Whenever things start to go okay, something bad happens.
Anne Brannen 20:56
I think that’s true. But I think she also wasn’t very pleasant.
Michelle Butler 21:01
I don’t…I don’t have a good sense of her personally, because her story is so much of being surrounded by guys who think she shouldn’t have what she has and they want to take it from her. It’s hard to figure out whether her sharp elbows come from her personality or from that everybody’s trying to, you know, ‘well, you’re not a dude, so you shouldn’t have that, I believe I’ll have it.’ From first to last, she’s surrounded by is men who think that they should have her kingdom instead of her.
Anne Brannen 21:32
Even that young husband.
Michelle Butler 21:34
Yeah. From Andrew to Lewis. Even James. I was actually really surprised to read in this biography–I have a couple book suggestions–the biography that I read most closely says that two of these husbands were abusive. They hit her in public. People saw it.
Anne Brannen 21:59
That’s amazing. Yeah, she was in a very bad position. The thing is, even if you were male, obviously, in this particular place, you were in danger. But she was in a very bad position being female, and so therefore having to fight doubly for the power, which her grandfather had said she could have.
Michelle Butler 22:20
She seems to have gotten, finally…after three terrible husbands, the fourth one seems to have not been terrible. The fourth one, Otto, seems to have actually agreed to the marriage contract and then stuck by it where, you know, he signs on the line and says, ‘I will help run the armies, I will help defend the country, I will not try to run the country,’ signed Otto. Which all the rest of them, all the rest of them, had agreed to, but then went back on the instance they were in her bed. Jerks.
Anne Brannen 22:57
She’s very pretty. In the portraits we have of her, she’s really very pretty.
Michelle Butler 23:05
For all of those troubles, she manages to stay on the throne for 30 years, which is really impressive. I’m impressed.
Anne Brannen 23:13
It’s true. But I think, Michelle, you have to agree that she wasn’t a really great ruler.
Michelle Butler 23:26
I think there were an awful lot of challenges that were outside of her control. I think that anybody would struggle to pull the economy back together in the wake of the Black Death. There were some climate problems going on. Robert the Wise was fortunate to have been ruling during a time of good climate and good harvests. So everybody…they were growing a lot of grain and making money. Then when Joanna took over, the climate shifted, and so now you have crop failures. On top of it, Edward the third was borrowing money from her bankers. Naples was doing a lot of banking. Edward the third borrowed a bunch of money from them to go finance his war in France, and then just decided he wasn’t going to pay them back, causing the banks to fail in Naples. So I think that if Joanna doesn’t have a lot of successes to point to, I think she was constantly trying to put out fires that she hadn’t started.
Anne Brannen 24:35
I like it that you’re a fan of Joanna.
Michelle Butler 24:37
I am a fan of Joanna. This is crap from first to last.
Anne Brannen 24:44
All right. I will support you in this. Sometimes we have disagreements, but I will support you in this. I will be a fan of Joanna. Do you think she knew? Do you think she knew that her husband was getting murdered?
Michelle Butler 24:54
I think that Joanna is a far smarter operator than that. I think that she had to know that if Andrew was killed in this kind of way, it would bring the Hungarians down on them. I think this was a misguided supporter.
Anne Brannen 25:09
But the thing is, she didn’t hear anything. It wasn’t like she ran out of her bedroom going, ‘No, no, no, please don’t do this.’ She didn’t do that.
Michelle Butler 25:18
Well, okay,
Anne Brannen 25:20
Henry the second was not actually in Canterbury when Thomas Beckett got his head bashed in. But Joanna was on that hunting trip.
Michelle Butler 25:28
Joanna was about four or five months pregnant at this point, and Andrew came back–
Anne Brannen 25:36
[laughter]
Michelle Butler 25:36
Hold on, hold on. Andrew came back really late at night. The kind of fatigue that’s involved with a pregnancy–
Anne Brannen 25:36
That’s true. That fifth month.
Michelle Butler 25:50
It was like 1am when he came home. She…maybe. Maybe. It’s at least plausible to me that she could have slept through it because they didn’t kill him in her bedroom. They sent a message. ‘Hey, we got this letter.’
Anne Brannen 26:06
Do you know how far away the bedrooms were? Would they like on different wings of the hunting place?
Michelle Butler 26:11
I don’t know. I don’t know. She just seems smarter to me than to do this. lf you’re gonna kill him, make it look like an accident. You know?
Anne Brannen 26:25
It would be so easy. It’s so easy to make it look like an accident.
Michelle Butler 26:28
It’s so dumb to do it in such a way that it’s obviously a murder. This has all of the kind of air of a rash action around it like, ‘Oh, we’re gonna kill him.’
Anne Brannen 26:40
Like alcohol is involved. ‘Let’s go strangle the…let’s go strangle him. Also I got a great idea of tying a cord around his genitals why you kill him.’
Michelle Butler 26:49
‘The queen will be so happy.’ What’s up with all this? I don’t know. I think if Joanna was going to kill him, it would have been poisoning or possibly ‘he just ate something that didn’t agree with him.’
Anne Brannen 27:02
Yeah, this happens all the time.
Michelle Butler 27:06
Those things that Cangrande got poisoned with.
Anne Brannen 27:11
Foxglove. Cangrande della Scala. He got foxglove.
Michelle Butler 27:15
‘I don’t know how the foxglove got in his water, huh, mystery.’
Anne Brannen 27:18
‘We don’t know. It was really pretty. Somebody probably just stuck it…’. Okay, I will accept this. This is the stance of True Crime Medieval. That Joanna of Naples was a very fine woman who had a really bad time for decades and decades, and then she got murdered. Okay. So you were telling me you found… what, you found a play or something? What did you find?
Michelle Butler 27:42
So what I got here is that Joanna is in the midst of a reassessment. The take on her for a long time was that she was not a great queen and she probably had affairs and who knows whose kids they were even anyway. All the kind of standard baloney.
Anne Brannen 28:15
Uh huh.
Michelle Butler 28:15
But there’s a couple of new books out about Joanna, that I will list in the show notes. I have one–It’s called The Lady Queen–and that’s more of a general audience. It’s published by Little Brown. The other one is the most recent scholarly biography, that’s from Cornell University Press. So I guess jump in wherever you feel most comfortable. I read the general audience one pretty carefully and just kind of looked at the other one. Also somebody did–I think this must be an undergraduate–a 15 minute introduction to Joanna on YouTube.
Anne Brannen 29:07
Ooo! You’re going to give us the link?
Michelle Butler 29:07
Yes. They’re working from this other person’s assessment, which I’ll also give you, a blog post. But it’s kind of fun. It has a lot of fun video editing. I think the maker must be an undergraduate because it’s listed as being a medieval history project, and they don’t know how to pronounce a couple of the words, which is kind of sweet. People are getting after them in the comments, but come on, man, if all you did was read it, you don’t necessarily know how to pronounce Charles Martel.
Anne Brannen 29:47
That sounds like a really fun way to fulfill whatever the assignment was. I like that.
Michelle Butler 29:57
There’s some historical fiction about Joanna. Not as much as I was expecting, given this drama from first to last in her life, whichseems–
Anne Brannen 30:08
Plus you can have…how many sex scenes can you have–
Michelle Butler 30:11
Holy cow.
Anne Brannen 30:12
–with all these husbands. And of course, the non sex scenes, you know, as you’re growing up in the castle together before you finally consummate your marriage.
Michelle Butler 30:22
Joanna’s last husband by the way, Otto, tried really hard to defend Naples against the Hungarian invasion. But he was at a major disadvantage. They didn’t have as many soldiers as the Hungarians did. He actually was captured by them.
Anne Brannen 30:43
Did they kill him?
Michelle Butler 30:44
No. But Otto is almost 60 years old when that’s happening. He’s out leaving the army personally. I want to hand it to him for being out leading the army personally when he’s almost 60 years old. He’s not even Italian. He’s German. She found a minor German nobleman who felt so ecstatic about the idea of marrying the queen of Naples that he behaved himself and was loyal to her.
Anne Brannen 31:14
Yeah, I don’t know. The queen of Naples. Because the thing is, then you get Naples and the Hungarians and there’s all this stuff. I don’t know. It’s not–It’s not a quiet little throne to marry into.
Michelle Butler 31:26
Oh, my Lord. There’s so much turmoil. I mean, the Middle Ages are not known for long periods of peace and prosperity, but holy smokes. Fourteenth-century Naples was particularly difficult. Oh, my goodness. I forgot to even mention the judicial killings. Joanna’s best friend and that foster mother…she ends up having to allow them to be tortured and killed for their supposed role in the death of Andrew. That was horrible. And we didn’t talk about–maybe we should talk about this as a separate crime–when the younger sister Maria, after she’s widowed because Louis of Hungary has her husband Charles killed in the same spot where Andrew was killed, she gets grabbed by this other guy who’s decided he’s gonna make his way to the throne by forcibly marrying, ie raping, Maria and forcing the family to accept that. And his dad–every piece of this is gross–his dad and he cooked up the scheme together. He apparently rapes Maria in the presence of his father, so that there’s a witness. Then the two of them hold her off to a priest and say, ‘it’s a done deal, marry us.’ When they get back to Naples, Maria tells Joanna what happened, and the family does not go along with it. They have the father arrested, they have the rapist arrested. Everybody just looks the other way when Maria takes three guys and goes to the cell where they’re holding the rapist and watches them kill him in her presence. That would normally be worth mentioning on its own, but it’s just kind of one of the things happening in the wide and ranging reign of Joanna, in which dreadful stuff was happening all the time.
Anne Brannen 33:54
Did you get to look at any any of the historical fiction?
Michelle Butler 33:57
I did. And here’s what I have for you. There is coverage of Joanna by Dumas.
Anne Brannen 34:07
No!
Michelle Butler 34:07
I know! Isn’t that exciting? I think we talked about this before, that Alexander Dumas the father has an eight volume set of early true crime literature called Celebrated Crimes.
Anne Brannen 34:30
Yeah, we did mention this. Is this in there?
Michelle Butler 34:33
I was trying to remember…I think it might be the Tour de Nesle where it showed up before but I’m not sure because I think that was a play.
Anne Brannen 34:43
Yeah, there was a Tour de Nesle play.
Michelle Butler 34:45
I know that Dumas has shown up before and I know that his early true crime literature has shown up before, but I don’t remember where. I’m sorry. His coverage of Joanna is kind of the standard way it was handled at that point. His Celebrated Crime series was published between 1839 and 1840. And I will tell you that it’s absolutely in his style. It’s very purple-y prose. I assume it must be in the French, because it is in the translation and I just cannot imagine why why you would do this. “Keep me from those dread apparitions in which this terrible hour arise before me. Twice have you seen me battling with a superhuman horror. My brow has been bathed in sweat, my limbs rigid, my cries have been stifled by a hand of iron.” I don’t think you would do that in the translation if it wasn’t there in the French.
Anne Brannen 35:50
I don’t think so. Probably not. By the way, the reason you didn’t remember where we’d come across Dumas’s true crime before…it’s the Cenci and it was so early. That was when we were first doing podcasts.
Michelle Butler 36:07
That’s right. That’s right. He does. He does carry that. So his treatment of Joanna is very much in the ‘she’s a bad girl’ approach that was so common up until about 20 years ago. He accepts the rumors of Joanna’s affairs. He accepts her guilt in Andrew’s death. Andrew is dense. There’s a scene where Joanna is diligently braiding a cord of golden silk to to have him strangled with and Andrew’s like–
Anne Brannen 36:44
Or tie around his genitals, one or the other.
Michelle Butler 36:47
‘What are you doing, honey?’ ‘Oh, I’m just making something.’ Dumas has Andrew ask her. Dumas accepts the rumors that she left Andrew unburied for three days. He builds a teeny tiny bit on what was there and has Charles of course, thrown over the balcony where Andrew died. Which isn’t exactly what happened, but you can see where, when you’re tightening up a narrative–
Anne Brannen 37:21
Yes, yes.
Michelle Butler 37:22
–that you would do that.
Anne Brannen 37:23
He would want to do that.
Michelle Butler 37:24
And then Dumas has Joanna strangled with a cord of golden silk and thrown over the same balcony.
Anne Brannen 37:33
Oh, good. Good, good. Yes. So yeah, just like the one that she had them use to murder her husband. True crime. True crime. So it isn’t really true crime. It’s actually dramatic narrative.
Michelle Butler 37:50
It’s heavily fictionalized and highly melodramatic, which often I’m in the mood for. I mean, I’ve read The Count of Monte Cristo and some of his other…it that the right Dumas? I always get confused between the son and the father.
Anne Brannen 38:06
I don’t know.
Michelle Butler 38:06
They’re all kind of one body of Dumas work for me. So sometimes melodrama works for me. But I will tell you, I preferred the book, which is almost exactly contemporary, that was written by an American author in 1838. Her name is Louisa Jane Hall. She has a play called ‘Miriam: A Dramatic Sketch,’ and then a novel called ‘Joanna of Naples: an Historical Tale.’ It’s interesting because all of the rest of her works are biblical based. And then she writes this.
Anne Brannen 38:51
Huh.
Michelle Butler 38:52
Isn’t that wild? She writes this novel about Joanna.
Anne Brannen 38:56
That this would be the only non biblical subject? Why? why?
Michelle Butler 39:02
She wrote hymns. She wrote this dramatic sketch about Miriam. She wrote something about Hannah, the mother of Samuel, and she wrote about Joanna of Naples.
Anne Brannen 39:19
Our biblical heroine, Joanna of Naples.
Michelle Butler 39:23
She is very much, you know, New England…How do I want to describe this? The New England educated crowd. She’s not in Kansas somewhere. She’s in Massachusetts. Doing literary things. I’m checking here. I think she was married to a preacher, a pastor. I’m checking but I’m not finding.
Anne Brannen 39:54
Hence all the Biblical stuff.
Michelle Butler 39:57
There it is. She married Reverend Edward Hall, a Unitarian minister, of Providence, Rhode Island.
Anne Brannen 40:05
She was Unitarian. Interesting.
Michelle Butler 40:08
Her book about Joanna…I’m not going to claim it’s a forgotten masterpiece.
You’re not going that far.
But it’s a better book than Dumas’. Sorry, Dumas. But Dumas is doing something different. He’s writing sensationalistic, purple prose. She’s trying to write more about her characters as people. It’s still very much a product of its time. But the point of view characters are Joanna, Margaret, and Charles. Margaret the niece. Maria’s youngest–
Anne Brannen 41:00
Who marries Charles. Got it.
Michelle Butler 41:03
The book opens in 1381, when it’s all about to go sideways, where Charles is just about to betray her. This book is very much about these two women realizing they’ve been betrayed by this man. There are really fascinating scenes where Margaret realizes what Charles is up to.
Anne Brannen 41:32
You know, I like this, that she’s focusing on these two women. Is her take on Joanna that Joanna is a bad person of many affairs and…?
Michelle Butler 41:43
No, not at all. It’s so different. This is why this is so fascinating. This book is almost exactly contemporary with Dumas.
Anne Brannen 41:54
Right. Nobody’s saying that. Everybody’s saying how awful she is.
Michelle Butler 41:59
It’s so different. So let me read you…it’s a little bit of a long passage so we may not want to include all of this, but I want to–
Anne Brannen 42:07
Well, you just put this in. Y’all get ready now because we’re gonna get some stuff.
Michelle Butler 42:12
Both for the comparison of the prose. But also this is her description of Joanna. She done a physical description, but that doesn’t really matter. This is the important part. “The sadness of her countenance was not that of a single hour’s sorrow. A settled thoughtfulness was in her fine but deep sunk eyes, which marked her for one who had long been familiar with the lessons of affliction. Yet this was a queen. In one of the fairest realms on Earth, she had been the loveliest and loftiest, the theme of poets in that land of song, and fitted by the graces of her mind, as well as person, to wake and claim admiration from the most gifted intellects of the age. It was the beautiful but unfortunate Joanna, Queen of Naples, whose existence had opened with every prospect of earthly felicity which the heart of women could crave, and who had been early taught that rank, beauty, wealth and talent cannot ward off the fitting trials of this life from a helpless human being.”
Anne Brannen 43:27
That is very, very different, yes., from the other thing that you read for us. Wow. Yeah. Well, I’m glad I’m glad that Joanna has had her champions. Yay.
Michelle Butler 43:40
Her book is, you know, of its time. Joanna, one of her good qualities is that she’s womanly, like you’re supposed to be in 1838. The actual bad guy of the piece is the monk. It’s anti-Catholic, that’s where I’m going with this. It manages to be a book about the Middle Ages that is anti-Catholic. The bad guy of the book is the monk who persuades Charles to betray Joanna.
Anne Brannen 44:12
Oh, I see. Because Charles doesn’t think it up on his own.
Michelle Butler 44:16
Charles gets his arms twisted. There are actually scenes from Charles’s point of view where he’s really conflicted about what to do and not sure that this is such a great idea. The monk is constantly like toxic masculinity-ing him. ‘If you don’t do this, why are you letting this girl push you around? You’re the dude, you should be in charge. It’s a blot against your manliness to allow this to go on.’
Anne Brannen 44:44
Well, and to be fair, this actually was a theme of the entire reign.
Michelle Butler 44:48
Yeah she didn’t necessarily have to make that up on her own. She portrays Joanna as kind of a proto Protestant who–
Anne Brannen 44:58
Ah, yes, of course.
Michelle Butler 44:59
Of course she does, because 1838. She deals with the different stories about Joanna’s death by having… it’s a really kind of strange scene. The murderers show up, and they’re immediately intimidated by how queenly and possessed Joanna is. She has to tell them ‘no, no, I understand why you’re here. I get it.’ And they say, ‘Well, we’re sorry. But you know, we gotta do what we gotta do.’
Anne Brannen 45:36
The way you have your discussions with your murderers, yeah.
Michelle Butler 45:40
‘But what we can offer you is, is a menu of death options.’
Anne Brannen 45:45
Oh God no.
Michelle Butler 45:48
‘–and you can pick among them.’ Because there are different rumors about how she was killed. The strangling with the cord, being suffocated between two feather mattresses, or poison–
Anne Brannen 46:04
Also a pillow. There’s one where a pillow is involved
Michelle Butler 46:07
Joanna kind of walks through her options with them. She’s not thrilled about the strangulation. She’s not excited about the whole suffocation between the mattresses, she says that sounds like suffering would be involved. So she picks poison, and she drinks it voluntarily when they give it to her.
Anne Brannen 46:27
Uh huh.
Michelle Butler 46:28
There’s an imagined deathbed reconciliation with Charles, where he’s feeling really bad. He’s arrived too late. She’s already drunk the poison. I understand why she wants to let him off the hook. But. But. Anyway, it’s an interesting book.
Anne Brannen 46:45
No, Charles was awful. But except for the monk, our author has a very charitable view of humans in general.
Michelle Butler 46:58
Yeah, I think that’s true. And she’s not an incompetent writer. We saw that from the passage that I read to you. She doesn’t appear to have much in the way of other work. So very interesting. It was not, I’m going to tell you, the easiest book to find. I did find it but it was not the easiest one to find. I found it online, finally, a scanned copy that in itself is fascinating from the notes from the original owner of it. There are notes about the person who gave the book to their niece, so that was all really interesting.
Anne Brannen 47:44
So this is like one of those meta books, there’s levels and levels of levels.
Michelle Butler 47:48
I have one more thing to share with you. This is the biography. This is from the biographer who…I probably should actually just go ahead and tell you her name. This is Nancy Goldstone’s The Lady Queen: The Notorious Reign of Joanna, the First Queen of Naples, Jerusalem and Sicily, which was published in 2018. So it’s a pretty recent biography.
Anne Brannen 48:15
Very recent.
Michelle Butler 48:16
So here’s what she has to say in the epilogue about Joanna. “History has not been kind to or even honest about Joanna. Her story, when it is recounted at all, focuses entirely on her notoriety as the queen who murdered her husband, and not on the many impressive accomplishments of her reign.” Then she goes on to talk about all the bad things that people say about her. And here’s her rebuttal to that. “But the facts are these: During her long eventful reign, Joanna held together a large and farflung dominion, which included Provence and all of Southern Italy, and even expanded her rule, however briefly, into Sicily and Piedmont. She was the last medieval ruler to do so. After her death, Provence broke away from the kingdom and was ruled by Louis of Anjou’s heirs, who eventually incorporated the county into France. For more than 30 years, this queen fed the poor and cared for the sick, built churches and hospitals, reduced crime and promoted peace, protected trade and introduced new industry within her borders. She guided her subjects to recovery from the many instances of plague, war, famine, and depression endemic to the”–I think economic depressions is what’s meant there–“endemic to the second half of the 14th century. The odds against her securing her reign were enormous. That she would survive to rule for 30 years, impossible. And yet she did. She has earned the right to be remembered for what she was. The last great sovereign in the Angevin tradition, a worthy successor to Charles of Anjou and Robert the Wise. To this day, there is still no monument or funeral statuary commemorating Joanna the first at the church of Santa Chiara, and the band of excommunication remains in force.”
Anne Brannen 50:11
Wow. Okay, I like that. I like that. So that’s how we can end this then. That Joanna of Naples was treated very badly, not only during her lifetime, but all the time afterwards. And it’s just wrong.
Michelle Butler 50:31
The two books…the scholarly one that I’m going to give you the link to is 2015. And this one’s from 2018. So this reassessment of her in scholarly circles is really quite recent.
Anne Brannen 50:46
Hmm, yeah. And quite profound. This is a 360 degree turn from what’s been going on.
Michelle Butler 50:57
Yeah, one of the reasons that her siege–when the Hungarians were showing up in that last go in 1382– one of the reasons the siege couldn’t hold as long is that she had let people in. She had let 500 citizens in and they went through their stocks faster.
Anne Brannen 51:21
A charitable Woman. So I’m glad to vindicate her. That’s great.
Michelle Butler 51:30
I had never heard of her. This was really fascinating. I was glad to learn about her.
Anne Brannen 51:37
And be a fan. Yeah.
Michelle Butler 51:40
Well, she’s a major descendent–I don’t know, five or six generations down–from Eleanor of Aquitaine but you can see the shadow, I think, of Eleanor of Aquitaine. I was impressed with her. I was not impressed with the dudes around her. Yeah. She was impressive. The men around her were not. They were uniformly awful. Except Otto, that last one.
Anne Brannen 52:09
See, I don’t know how awful Andrew was. Because there’s all this like, ‘give Andrew the crown.’ That’s actually not him. That’s all the people around him.
Michelle Butler 52:17
That’s his mom. His mom was kicking hard.
Anne Brannen 52:20
That’s his mom and the Pope. So I don’t know how bad Andrew was. I think that Andrew was simply a pawn in all this stuff. He’s married at age six, and he’s murdered at 18.
Michelle Butler 52:35
Goldstone says that Andrew, when it looked like he was going to be getting crowned, as he was coming up to being 18, had himself a new banner made.
Anne Brannen 52:50
Oh, okay.
Michelle Butler 52:51
That was sort of suggesting that he was interested in it.
Anne Brannen 52:58
Yeah, that does suggest that he also wanted a crown if he needed new banner.
Michelle Butler 53:03
But he had a bad time. He’d been living in a foreign land. He was being raised away and being treated terrible. So yeah, we can give Andrew a little bit of a pass.
Anne Brannen 53:17
Okay, a little bit of a pass. But basically, we are fans of Joana of Naples.
Michelle Butler 53:24
His clueless father leaves him in Naples with a nurse and a sommelier. Because you’re six years old, you need somebody to make sure that the wine is good. I mean, come on.
Anne Brannen 53:40
Well, you might be six years old, but you have a position and so you will be feeding people and so they have to be fed well.
Michelle Butler 53:50
I hope it’s that and not–
Anne Brannen 53:52
Not that they’re teaching him right then how to tell the difference between good and bad wine.
Michelle Butler 54:03
This was very interesting reading.
Anne Brannen 54:06
I’m glad that you enjoyed it.
Michelle Butler 54:08
There’s no movie. Can you believe it? There should be a movie about Joanna.
Anne Brannen 54:16
There definitely should be a movie. You totally could get a movie out of this.
Michelle Butler 54:20
Absolutely. This was like three seasons of Game of Thrones all at once. Is it Christopher Marlowe next?
Anne Brannen 54:31
It it. It is.
Michelle Butler 54:33
All right!
Anne Brannen 54:33
The next time you hear from us, we will be doing a special episode. We’re leaving the Middle Ages. That’s just because we want to, we want to talk about Christopher Marlowe. And we can because this is our podcast. So that’s what we’re gonna do. So we won’t be in the Middle Ages. We’ll be in the early modern era, discussing the murder of Christopher Marlowe, of whom we are also very fond, although he wasn’t really as well behaved as he could have been to, to be fair
Michelle Butler 55:00
There’s so much with Christopher Marlowe.
Anne Brannen 55:04
You’re not going to be able to get through all this. You’re gonna have to decide what it is you’re doing, because you’re not going to be able to get through all the Marlowe stuff, just saying.
Michelle Butler 55:12
There’s so much for him.
Anne Brannen 55:14
So that’s been our discussion of Joanna of Naples, much maligned Joanne of Naples, who did not kill her husband and throw him out the window, just saying. This has been True Crime Medieval where the crimes are just like they are today only with less technology. You know, you don’t really hear about people being smothered between featherbeds anymore, do you? I mean, it’s just not a thing.
Michelle Butler 55:37
But we can still throw people out of windows.
Anne Brannen 55:41
The throwing people out of windows, absolutely. That’s available as an option. We’re on Apple podcast, I heart podcast, Spotify and Stitcher. Any place that the podcasts are hanging out, we’re there. Please leave a review. We’d really appreciate that. You can reach us at Truecrimemedieval.com, where you can find the show notes, which are written by Michelle, the transcripts, which are done for us by Laurie Dietrich. You can also reach us all through the web page. You can leave comments there. We’d love to hear from you. If you have medieval crimes that we should discuss, please let us know. We’ll take it under advisement. That’s our day today. Bye.
Michelle Butler 56:20
Bye.
40. University of Paris Strike, Paris, France 1229
Anne Brannen 0:26
Hello and welcome to True Crime Medieval, 1000 years of people behaving badly. I’m Anne Brannen. I’m your host in Albuquerque.
Michelle Butler 0:37
And I’m Michelle Butler in Maryland, the most medieval state in America.
Anne Brannen 0:42
We’re so happy to be recording at the moment because we have spent 45 minutes trying to figure out why sometimes the little microphones are being recognized and sometimes they’re not. I don’t know, it’s like, it’s all tech stuff and we’re medievalists. Today we’re talking about the University of Paris. (Speaking of medievalists.) We’re talking about the University of Paris strike in 1229. Now, to be fair, the strike is not the people behaving badly. That’s just a bargaining tool. The people behaving badly came before the strike. That’s what we’re talking about.
Michelle Butler 1:23
They were quite bad.
Anne Brannen 1:24
It was a great deal of badness. Yes. On Shrove Tuesday in 1229–it was in March that year–the Carnevale, which of course as you all know means ‘farewell to meat,’ was near its end, because that’s what’s happening on Shrove Tuesday. It’s the last day before Lent starts and you have to eat up all your meat, as well as all your pancakes, because you’re about to have 40 days of no meat, no eggs, no dairy, no butter. You’re gonna have to eat a whole bunch of salt fish. Anyway, it was nearing its end. Carnevale, the time before Lent, involved (as it does now) a great deal of drinking and behaving badly and whatnot. So that’s what was going on. It’s kind of like now, if you go down to New Orleans, let’s say, for Mardi Gras, which is, you know, Fat Tuesday. It’s the same thing. Shrove Tuesday. You go down to Mardi Gras, you party, party, party, party, party, and then at midnight–you have to party very hard because at midnight on Shrove Tuesday–the mayor and the police come through Bourbon Street. They shut everything down. So then it’s all over, because then you’re having Lent, during which you have enormously good behavior–or not, as we are about to see. At any rate, it was Paris. It was 1229. It was Shrove Tuesday. Everybody was really, really drunk. Over in St. Marcel, which is like a suburb of Paris, there was a bunch of students and they didn’t want to pay the bill for their drinks. So the tavern owner and other townspeople beat them up. The next day–and I want to point out, Michelle, that this was on Ash Wednesday. Everybody should be going around being really sorry for all their sins and having ashes on their heads, but noooo. What they did–very bad. The students came back with friends, beat up the tavernor, destroyed the tavern, rioted in the streets, and damaged a whole bunch of property. This was a very bad start to Lent, quite frankly. However, the students were covered legally on account of benefit of clergy. They weren’t clergy, and they weren’t necessarily planning on being priests, but they had the right of clergy because the university was run by the church. So the townspeople filed complaints with the church court, which didn’t really want to do anything about this because a few years before this, in 2009, Cambridge University had been founded by students and teachers who had left Oxford after some students–three students–got hung in Oxford, a woman died, and the Oxford townspeople thought it was those students. Whether or not it was I’m really unclear because there wasn’t any trial or nothing like that. At any rate they were upset and so they went and founded Cambridge. The Paris university did not want for that kind of thing to happen. Everybody to run to Toulouse or something like that, no good. So they weren’t going to do anything. However, Blanche of Castiel was at that time regent of France on account of her child, Louis, the ninth being really young. Michelle, do you remember that Blanche is the one who later is going to try to keep this shepherd’s crusade out of the Left Bank where the university is, trying to keep more riots from happening? Do you remember that? Because we already had that when we were talking about the Crusades.
Michelle Butler 1:30
You know, I didn’t remember that.
Anne Brannen 2:52
That is who it is. Any rate, Blanche demanded that the students be punished. Unfortunately, the way that this got handled was that the city guard went out and killed a bunch of students that they found in the street, who probably had not had anything to do with the Lenten riot whatsoever. And so the university shut down. Now, this strike lasted for two years, and in that time, there were no classes. The students disbanded. Some of them went to be students elsewhere. Some of them just took leave of absence for a while, perhaps still drinking in the streets of Paris, I don’t know. Some of them went and got jobs, I think, but not clear about that. Any rate they weren’t there. The Latin Quarter, which is where the students mostly were living….why is it called Latin Quarter? Michelle, do you remember?
Michelle Butler 6:16
I would assume it’s because that’s the official language of the university.
Anne Brannen 6:20
Yes, because that’s what the students are all speaking with each other. First of all, because they’re supposed to, and second of all, because they come from all over Europe, and speak different languages. The thing that they have in common is Latin. Which, however, I have to say, the townspeople don’t really speak, so…at any rate, the Latin Quarter was hard hit economically, because the university was a big part of the economy there. I mean, it’s really this kind of mixed blessing. You want the students to come spend money at your tavern. You want them to drink enough that they’re spending a lot of money, but you don’t want them to destroy the tavern.
Michelle Butler 7:01
It’s encouraging to know that this has been a problem, basically, since the beginning, though.
Anne Brannen 7:06
Since the beginning. Yeah. Because it’s a bunch of young people. In Paris, they were younger than they were in Bologna. You entered the school of arts at maybe 13 or 14, and you could become one of the masters, I think, in your 20s. In Bologna, which was focused on the law, you didn’t enter until later and you couldn’t be a master until around 30. So yes, the students of Paris tended to be young, and they were away from home, and they were all hanging out together. It was a big deal. But more on that later. It wasn’t until April of 1231 that the Pope put the University of Paris under direct papal authority, which took it out from under both the secular authority and the authority of the local church, and allowed the masters to suspend lectures for all kinds of reasons. It gave the university actually much more power. But the whole thing about the benefit of clergy, and the students not being subject to the local law, is that clergy were subject to ecclesiastical law. Even if you murdered somebody, you went to the church court. Definitely if all you’re doing is smashing up a tavern, whatever, the church court didn’t have to do anything about it. And the secular court couldn’t do anything at all. By the way, this was not the first student riot in Paris. The first student riot in Paris had been in 1200, when a German student’s servant had been set upon in a tavern–all this stuff starts in taverns, every single bit of it, I’m just saying–and compatriots came to his aid and beat up the taverner. The citizens then assaulted a university building and killed a bunch of students and, boy did the King come down on them. It was very sad. Anyway. So, how did all of this get started? Why are the students rioting? I will now explain. Its background time. We still don’t have a background song, do we?
Michelle Butler 9:24
We need one though.
Anne Brannen 9:25
We totally need a background song. The European universities had evolved from schools that were at cathedrals and monasteries, the classes being taught by monks. Pope Gregory initiated reforms that emphasized canon law and study of sacraments. That was near the end of the 11th century. In 1079, Pope Gregory decreed that there would be regulated cathedral schools established. Because of this emphasis on learning canon law and the stuff about sacraments, education became necessary if you wanted to go up the church ladder, and the schools grew. They grew kind of quickly. This caused problems because when they got bigger, it was harder for the smaller towns to deal with them at all, and so they went to the cities. They ended up having more teachers where before they maybe had only one. Anyway, the University of Bologna was established in 1088. Paris was 1150. Oxford was 1167. Paris was associated with the cathedral at Notre Dame. Fair enough. They had different kinds of structures, though. In Bologna, the students hired and paid the teachers. In Paris, the church paid the teachers. In Oxford and Cambridge, the crown and state paid the teachers, which meant that when Henry the Eighth, dissolved the monasteries, the universities were okay, because they were not under the church. Yay, Oxford and Cambridge. Which was not going to be a problem in Paris and Bologna because people didn’t dissolve the monasteries there, did they? That was a little English fad. Because the masters of Paris were not paid by the students, they ran things. Paris became the coveted place to go be a teacher throughout Europe, because you had so much power. So that was nice. In Paris there–I’m going to explain this now–there were four faculties. First, there was Arts, which was the biggest, and which you had to graduate from in order to go into one of the other three. For those of you who are interested, I’m now going to tell you what the arts are. Grammar, Rhetoric, Dialectics, Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy. There was a strong emphasis in the universities on science. They were Aristotle based. Once you graduated from the arts, you could go into one of the other, the three higher schools, which were Medicine, Law, and Theology. So that’s how the school was divided. The students were divided into four nations, which were France, Normandy, Picardy, and England. So theoretically, you were in a group of students that spoke your language, your native tongue, although really you were supposed to be conversing in Latin and that’s how you converse with all the students. But the nation of England also included students from Germany and Scandinavia and Eastern Europe, and eventually it started getting called the German nation. Basically all the people who weren’t from some place in France or near France were all gathered together.
Michelle Butler 12:53
I like that three of the four nations are bits of modern day France.
Anne Brannen 12:59
Yeah, they’re all bits of modern day France. But they were totally different.
Michelle Butler 13:05
Totally different.
Anne Brannen 13:06
Yeah, they spoke different languages and everything. If you had come in from, oh, I don’t know, let’s say York, they were all gonna sound the same to you, I’m telling you. The students wore–because they were under clerical law, they were associated with clerics–they had tonsures. At least in Paris they did. They had tonsures, you know, they shaved the top of their heads. They wore clerical robes. That’s where we get Town and Gown. The gown with its hood and its cap clearly marked students. They had the colors of the university that they were associated with. Still do, still do. Just want to say, the University of California at Berkeley, if you get a doctorate there, you get gold braid on your polyester gown. I’m just saying.
Michelle Butler 13:54
My husband has his degrees from Carnegie Mellon University and their hood is Andrew Carnegie’s plaid.
Anne Brannen 14:01
It is the plaid. It’s very striking. So when you get a group of professors together for matriculation, or commencement or whatnot, we wear the robes because we’re being all official and making the parents feel better about the whole deal. We’re very colorful, actually. They used to be all black robes, and you would have the colors of the university. Now there are lots of different colors. I forget where those red ones are from. But those are really exciting. Anyway, so you could tell who they were. It wasn’t like you could go around being a student and behave politely and people would know who you were. Hence getting murdered by the city guard in Paris even if you hadn’t been in the riot because you totally looked like a student. The robes also make it clear that you’re not doing physical labor. It’s a status, social status, besides marking you as exempt from the law, and so there’s a lot of social tension, emotional tension, political tension between the town people and the students. Because the towns need the money. That’s why the strikes mattered. It isn’t like you were ‘You horrible students go away, you nasty students. Our lives are so good without you, and then they leave.’ And it’s better. No, no, they leave and you have no money, because they’re the ones who were renting the lodging that you were renting out and they were eating in your restaurants, and they were drinking in your pubs. And they were buying your cloth and your whatever it is, they’re buying books and whatnot.
Michelle Butler 15:33
Paris has an amazing book trade group building up around the university.
Anne Brannen 15:37
Yes. So the universities acted much like guilds did in that they could negotiate. They negotiated rents for lecture halls and lodging, because originally, they didn’t actually have their own buildings. They rented places to teach. And then they would get their own buildings. These buildings ended up being close around together, so they’re in an area now. Although this often kind of sprawls out throughout the town. Cambridge University takes up a lot of space in Cambridge in different ways. They could leave; if they didn’t like the situation, they didn’t have to stay there. Because the students came from all over Europe, and they were often unable to converse with the townspeople, unless I guess if they came from one of those three French schools. They were just so difficult. Also they had manners and customs, which were not those of the places they were in. But it’s not just students, but the universities themselves. That could be problematic. They gobbled up city lands. They passed laws that affected the town. In 1270, for instance, Henry the third of England at the request of the University of Cambridge, banned tournaments and jousting in Cambridge, and within five miles out of Cambridge. Not just not just tournaments and jousting banned in the university. No, no, the city itself. If you were in Cherry Hinton, you couldn’t do it either, because you’re within five miles of Cambridge. You know, it’s tacky. In 1449, Henry the sixth allowed Cambridge to banish any prostitutes or women of ill repute from four miles around Cambridge. In 1604–I don’t know if you know about this one–James the first would allow the university to prohibit plays, except in Latin, which were all happening in Cambridge University, and bull baiting and interludes and comedies and games for five miles around Cambridge. So no traveling players could go through whatsoever. So much for that. So the strike at Paris was very effective. It lasted for two years, and then they came back with more power. It was very effective in terms of the people who were striking.
Michelle Butler 17:59
It’s really hard to overestimate how central the University of Paris becomes. We have important universities now. But you know, is MIT more important than Harvard? They’re both important. But the University of Paris was the place to be.
Anne Brannen 18:18
Yeah. Well, there were divisions, and the University of Paris was the place to be if you were a theologian. Paris focused on theology, which is one of the reasons the students can be younger, because Bologna focused on law.
Michelle Butler 18:34
Yes. And they’re a little bit older.
Anne Brannen 18:36
They’re a little bit older.
Michelle Butler 18:39
But it’s definitely notable, we could spend a solid three months, if not four months, just doing University related crimes and the conflicts with the towns. There’s so many times that this happens over the course of the Middle Ages.
Anne Brannen 18:57
We’re just gonna focus on two of them. We’re doing Paris today, and we thought we’d do the St. Scholastica Riot at Oxford also. There end up being universities throughout Europe, as there are today, and there ended up being completely bad behavior in between the town and gown people all through the Middle Ages, as there are today.
Michelle Butler 19:21
I would not say that it’s necessarily always one side or the other that’s the aggressor. It’s just tension that every once in a while breaks out into something else, often because alcohol’s involved and now there’s no longer good decision making.
Anne Brannen 19:21
Alcohol seems to be involved in almost all of the incidents.
Michelle Butler 19:22
I did not know a whole lot about the history of where the universities came from. I did know some stuff already about the book trade around Paris because I done reading for that for a different project.
Anne Brannen 20:04
So the book trade starts up in the middle ages.
Michelle Butler 20:08
Yes, absolutely. The University of Paris and the need of the students to have textbooks is one of the driving factors moving book copying from being an exclusively monastic activity to one in which most of the work is being done by secular copyists.
Anne Brannen 20:28
Oh, that makes sense.
Michelle Butler 20:29
Because the demand is just so high. There’s a system called the pecia–this is probably how this is pronounced–‘pecia,’ where you have textbooks at the local scrivener, near the university–there’s a bunch of bookshops, there’s like 28 bookshops around the University of Paris, which is a lot.
Anne Brannen 20:57
That’s a whole lot. That would be a whole lot, you know, now.
Michelle Butler 21:04
Probably are not 28 bookshops around the University of Paris now. So you have all of these bookshops, and they have the textbooks that the students are required to have. But you can rent a quire at a time to take it home and copy it, and then bring it back and rent the next quire.
Anne Brannen 21:28
Oh, so you’re copying your own texts?
Michelle Butler 21:31
Yes. If you’re not wealthy enough to buy your own copy, you can, for a lesser amount, rent it quire by quire and take it home and copy it.
Anne Brannen 21:43
So that’s kind of like a really intense version of taking notes.
Michelle Butler 21:48
It’s also very similar to something we do now. Now you can either buy your textbooks or you can rent them. So we still have a system that differentiates between how much cash on hand you have at the beginning of the semester. You probably learn a lot, copying your textbook.
Anne Brannen 22:11
I would think you would.
Michelle Butler 22:15
It’s definitely less expensive.
Anne Brannen 22:17
It’s not really the same thing as buying a textbook and then taking your yellow highlighter and highlighting the entire thing, which more or less I’ve seen done. You’re actually reading it.
Michelle Butler 22:30
Even with having to buy your parchment and with the rental fee, it’s still less expensive–significantly less expensive–to get your textbook that way than by just buying a premade copy of the book. Although the bookstores did offer that. Because some students are dirt poor, the way we think about the kind of stereotypical undergraduate but some of them are not. Some of them are from more well to do families. They tend to actually be the troublemakers because they’re kind of marking time before they go off and do something else and may or may not actually be intending to get a degree.
Anne Brannen 23:12
Well, this has not changed, has it?
Michelle Butler 23:14
No, no, it felt very…the thing that I walk away with is that I knew that a whole ton of modern university things are from the medieval university, but I didn’t know exactly how many or that they’ve been there from the beginning. For example, we have some 14th century really nasty whining from…let me pull this up…from Richard de Bury.
Anne Brannen 23:51
So an Englishman.
Michelle Butler 23:52
An Englishman. He’s complaining bitterly. So. Richard de Bury, who is not a nobody–he lives from 1281 to 1345, he studied at Oxford, he was chosen to be the tutor to Prince Edward, the future King Edward the third.
Anne Brannen 24:14
Oh. Yeah. Okay.
Michelle Butler 24:16
In 1345, he wrote a book called Philobiblon. In it, he talks about his love of books, and his complete dislike of his fellow undergraduates.
Anne Brannen 24:30
This fellow undergraduates from when he was an undergraduate.
Michelle Butler 24:33
Right. This is his view…I said ‘fellow’ because it’s not like he wasn’t ever a student. He’s not commenting from outside the university entirely but is now commenting as an adult, and actually towards the end of his life because he dies in 1345. He is commenting on student behavior as he sees it at that point. This is kind of lengthy, but I think it’s worth it.
Anne Brannen 25:03
So this is student behavior at Oxford. He went to school at Oxford. Did he teach there also?
Michelle Butler 25:10
No. He studied at Oxford, but then he became the tutor to the Crown Prince.
Anne Brannen 25:16
All right. Yes. All right.
Michelle Butler 25:18
He’s an official of the King of England, although he was also bishop of Durham, and then High Chancellor of England. So he’s kind of a big deal.
Anne Brannen 25:24
Yeah. All right.
Michelle Butler 25:32
Here, it’s gonna sound like the most cranky person at of faculty meeting ever. “You may happen to see some headstrong youth lazily lounging over his studies. And when the winter’s frost is sharp, his nose running from the nipping cold drips down, nor does he think of wiping it with his pocket handkerchief until he has bedewed the book before him with the ugly moisture. Would that he had before him no book, but a cobbler’s apron. His nails are with fetid filth as black as jet, with which he marks any passage that pleases him. He distributes a multitude of straws, which he inserts to stick out in different places, so that the stalks remind him of what his memory cannot retain. These straws, because the book has no stomach to digest them, and no one takes them out, distend the book from its wanted closing and at length, being carelessly abandoned to oblivion, go to decay. He does not fear to eat fruit or cheese over an open book, or carelessly carry a cup to and from his mouth, and because he has no wallet at hand, he drops into books the fragments that are left.Constantly chattering, he is never weary of disputing with his companions, and while he alleges a crowd of senseless arguments, he wets the book lying half open and his lap with sputtering showers. Aye, and then hastily folding his arms, he leans forward on the book, and by a brief spell of study invites a prolonged nap. And then, by way of mending the wrinkles, he folds back the margin of leaves to no small injury of the book.” He’s so cheesed at how he sees people mistreating books.
Anne Brannen 27:32
Bad behavior, bad behavior on the part of students toward the books. I like the part about using straws as bookmarks, which apparently is not a good idea. Because, you know, it’s like using your pen as a bookmark in that it distorts it, but then also, then it decays.
Michelle Butler 27:51
I’m pretty sure that it hasn’t been more than a couple of years since there was a viral picture going around of somebody who had returned–right now–a book to the library with a toasted cheese sandwich in it as a bookmark. So he’s quite annoyed with the bad behavior of the students. So, in terms of sources, I read a book from 2008 called The University in Medieval Life: 1179 to 1499. That is a pretty nice general introduction. It’s meant for a general reader. One thing that’s nice about it is it provides a lot of cultural context.
Anne Brannen 28:41
Oh, that is very good.
Michelle Butler 28:43
What else is going on in the Middle Ages.
Anne Brannen 28:46
Because so often when you’re focusing on one thing, you kind of are missing the ways in which whatever it is ties to everything else. Hence me mentioning Blanche of Castile.
Michelle Butler 28:57
Yes. So that would be the place to start if you’re interested in the university, and how it got started. The author is pretty well versed in this scholarship. The other thing I read is as a much older book. I was pleasantly surprised by both of them because The University in Medieval Life is published by McFarland and McFarland books, some of them are really great, and some of them are not so great. The quality can really vary with McFarland. But the other one is from 1895. It’s known to be a seminal study of the creation of the universities. I almost didn’t read it cuz I was expecting it to be super boring. I will say that the author whose name is Hastings Rashdall–
Anne Brannen 30:04
That’s a good name.
Michelle Butler 30:05
That’s a great name. I was deeply misled by his Wikipedia page as to what he was going to be like, because he is listed as “an English philosopher, theologian, historian, and Anglican priest,” who was also the son of an Anglican priest, and whose other really well known work is called The Idea of Atonement and Christian Theology. Now, I am really super sorry for stereotyping, but I expected his book to be way dry.
Anne Brannen 30:36
I thought, this sounds like a person who, who focuses on the boring, yes.
Michelle Butler 30:41
So I was really surprised to get over to his book and find out that it is it is full of sass. Spectacularly full of sass.
Anne Brannen 30:54
The seminal work on the universities is full of sass. I like that. I like that.
Michelle Butler 31:02
The preface starts out with sass. He talks about how he never really intended to write this book. It came out of an essay, he won this contest in 1883, and then, I don’t know, something happened, and he ends up writing this book. Here’s the quote. “The essay was, of course, written in less than a year. The revision has occupied more than eleven.” So he’s so funny.
Anne Brannen 31:30
Yeah, if you revise an essay into a book, it does sort of take a while.
Michelle Butler 31:34
Oh my gosh. He has two volumes, and the first one has three sections. The third section is about Paris. So I read the section about Paris, and he pulls no punches. My God. So get this. This is on the first page. He is complaining about du Boulay’s book. He’s telling us what he thinks about a book about the university by a scholar whose last name is du Boulay. “His inaccuracies and inconsistencies are only equalled by his tedious prolixity–“
Anne Brannen 32:16
[laughter]
Michelle Butler 32:20
Oh god, it gets better.
Anne Brannen 32:21
Oh, this is my favorite kind of scholarly writing.
Michelle Butler 32:26
“He was perhaps the stupidest man that ever wrote a valuable book.”
Anne Brannen 32:41
[laughter] So he lets you know where he stands as a writer on all this. Oh, my God.
Michelle Butler 32:49
Next page, he has a phrase about…still going on with…he’s very straightforward with his opinion about previous scholarship.
Anne Brannen 33:04
Apparently.
Michelle Butler 33:05
Yes. He describes so and so as having “attacked with the characteristic bitterness of the 17th century scholar.” As I told you earlier, I apparently was under the mistaken impression that people in the 19th century had a few more fucks to give but he has none. Oh my god. And the footnotes. This is the stuff he’s willing to say in the main text.
Anne Brannen 33:29
Oh, no footnotes. There must be actual gunpowder in the footnotes.
Michelle Butler 33:34
At one point he says, ‘I have no idea where so and so got the idea that that says that because it does not.’
Anne Brannen 33:45
I’m totally going and finding this book. This sounds like a very, very, very good book. Books I want to read before I die.
Michelle Butler 33:55
He has so many amazing quotes. Here. I’ve got to give you a couple more. “The myth which attributes the foundation of the University of Paris to Charles the Great is one which ought long since to have ceased to be mentioned by serious historians, even for the purpose of refutation.” Boom.
Anne Brannen 34:21
I’d love to hear what he has to say about the droit de seigneur.
Michelle Butler 34:27
One of my favorite pieces in here–in addition to all the snark because there’s so much of it–he talks about a bunch of myths that develop fairly quickly about where the University of Paris came from.
Anne Brannen 34:44
Uh huh.
Michelle Butler 34:45
And that’s really fascinating. He talks about this myth that develops that it was started by Charlemagne. The University of Paris seems to be really interested in pushing its history backwards.
Anne Brannen 34:57
Partly because Bologna had come before. That’s why Cambridge pushes its history back also. Because, you know, it actually spun off from Oxford, but it’s got some reason that its charter is earlier. That’s what that’s all about. ‘God started my university in the year ought.’
Michelle Butler 35:19
He talks about–I think might be my favorite rumor–I’m going to just quote in here. “In the 15th century, a papal legate gravely ascribes the foundation of the schools at Paris to Bede, whom he declares to have stopped there on his way to Rome.”
Anne Brannen 35:41
The Venerable Bede was so busy.
Michelle Butler 35:43
Starting the University of Paris.
Anne Brannen 35:45
So busy. Well, why didn’t he do it in England, but whatever.
Michelle Butler 35:50
That’s a great sort of thing, right? Why do they want to attribute it to Bede? Why not pick a random Frenchman?
Anne Brannen 35:58
Yeah, there were a bunch of them. Well, what has he got to say about the University of Paris? Does he talk about the strike?
Michelle Butler 36:05
Yes, he does. But I don’t know that–
Anne Brannen 36:08
It’s not going to tell us any more than we already know?
Michelle Butler 36:09
Not any more, unless we want to enjoy his snark because he’s definitely there.
Anne Brannen 36:19
Is his description of the fight a good one?
Michelle Butler 36:22
Yes. He’s very droll, I guess you would say. He starts the section with “the university, as we have already seen, and shall have frequent occasion to observe, lived upon its misfortunes.” What he means is that every time there’s a conflict, they come out ahead.
Anne Brannen 36:40
Yes. Okay. All right. They definitely came out ahead after the strike.
Michelle Butler 36:47
He’s talking about, in particular, this one. You have this conflict, and because of the strike, the university ends up with more privileges than what it had before. So let me find my other one about how founding the university ruined everything.
Anne Brannen 37:06
Oh, yes. I want to hear that. Is this the same guy?
Michelle Butler 37:12
No, this is a different.
Anne Brannen 37:14
Didn’t sound like he thought that founding the university ruined his entire life.
Michelle Butler 37:17
No, this is…oh, here’s this. This is just a lovely sidebar. Our buddy Orderic.
Anne Brannen 37:25
Orderic! We hear from him so often. Orderic. What does Orderic say?
Michelle Butler 37:34
Orderic talks about the importance of copying books.
Anne Brannen 37:39
Uh huh. And not spitting on them, I guess, and putting your cheese sandwich inside.
Michelle Butler 37:43
He tells a story about–now I’m quoting from The University in Medieval Life–“he recounts the tale told by the Abbot Thierry about a sinful monk who was nevertheless a devoted copyist and a fine illustrator of holy texts. When this monk died, so the story runs, God weighed each and every letter of his work against his many sins. In the end, the monk was saved from the clutches of the devil only because he had copied one letter more than the number of his sins.” That is very much an Orderic sort of story.
Anne Brannen 38:20
It really is, because you got to make a moral out of everything if you’re Orderic. Well, that would mean wouldn’t it, that those students that had to copy all their text out really kind of paid for a lot of the drinking.
Michelle Butler 38:33
I–true. That’s, that’s, that’s true.
Anne Brannen 38:37
I totally want to hear about the how the universities ruined everything. From a medieval point of view.
Michelle Butler 38:44
Here it is. “The French theologian and poet Philippus de Grevia became a magister there” in the University of Paris “in 1206, and was the university chancellor from 1218 to 1236.”
So this is really early. The university’s only about 50 years old at this point.
Yes. He complains to his colleagues…we’re barely two generations into the university and he’s already whining about the good old days. Quote: “At one time, when each magister taught independently, and when the name of the university was unknown, there were more lectures and disputations and more interest in scholarly things. Now, however, when you have joined yourselves together in a university, lectures and disputations have become less frequent, everything is done hastily, little is learnt, and the time needed for study is wasted in meetings and discussions.”
Anne Brannen 39:59
Ha!
Michelle Butler 40:00
He’s bitching about faculty meetings!
Anne Brannen 40:03
He bitching about faculty meetings in 1208. I love that. It’s true. It describes every faculty meeting ever.
Michelle Butler 40:15
Ever.
Anne Brannen 40:19
I like the part about how people are thinking too fast, too. I mean, you’re getting stuff done on this time schedule, instead of just sitting around in somebody’s living room talking about, you know, God.
Michelle Butler 40:33
They went and organized it. Now it’s no fun anymore.
Anne Brannen 40:37
Yeah, it used to be fun. He wasn’t even there for that. He wasn’t there then. He just is taking this on some kind of faith.
Michelle Butler 40:47
Rashdall makes a really interesting point about the ways in which the university organizes itself takes some aspects from the developing code of chivalry that’s emerging at that time, and then some other things from the trade guilds, which are also emerging at that time. I hadn’t really thought about either one of those connections, but it’s very interesting. He makes the point about how, in terms of the chivalry stuff, a lot of the rituals and oaths that develop among the faculty and students, and even the kind of hazing things that take place when you’re welcoming a new student, and especially when you’re graduating somebody to being a master, those rituals have resonance with what’s happening with the chivalry. I thought that was fascinating. Because I had not thought about that at all. He points to something that is happening very, very early, that is very similar to the kind of hooding that we still do now. It was the recognition of the newcomer–this is also where he’s talking about the overlap with chivalry–“it was the recognition of the newcomer by his old master and other members of the profession, his incorporation into the society of scholars. The new master had a cap placed upon his head.” Which is hooding.
Anne Brannen 41:26
Yeah, yeah.
Michelle Butler 41:45
We do the same thing now.
Anne Brannen 42:31
We have a thing…you know, we put it over people’s heads, but you’re in front…the person that you studied under does the hooding and you’re in front of the faculty of the place. Yeah. I remember telling one of my doctoral students that I was going to kill him if he didn’t go through the hooding. I said, You owe me. I like that. You have to come to the hooding.
Michelle Butler 42:58
Yeah. It says here that that cap–which isn’t a hood, at this point, it’s a cap–“the beretta was regarded as” and I’m quoting here Rashdall in one of his infamous footnotes–“the beretta was always regarded as the most important of the insignia of the office.Bachelors taught uncovered.” That’s still true. Getting to wear your hood, the fancy hood, is a big deal.
Anne Brannen 43:27
That is a big deal. Yeah, yeah. When you walk with the other people that have their hoods, yes. Yeah, it’s a good ceremony. The students I’ve had, who didn’t want to do it, and I talked them into it all have without exception said that they were glad they did it. It’s really quite a moment. The hooding. I was at my father’s hooding. It was at the University of Texas at Austin. He was in a black gown and the hood has orange in it. I was five. I was so excited. I was like, That’s my daddy. I went home and wrote in my journal, daddy looks like a witch. Black and orange, black and orange.
Michelle Butler 44:09
The other really, really important piece that comes out of this strike is the recognition that that’s something that’s available to them. The Pope issues a bull in 1231 that acknowledges…it gives the papal sanction to the right to strike.
Anne Brannen 44:29
Yeah, yeah.
Michelle Butler 44:30
I learned all kinds of things I didn’t know. I did know that there was quite a lot of conflict between the town and the gown. I didn’t know how many of the university related things are going all the way back to the 12th century, or at least the early 13th century. I also didn’t know that the Chancellor of the Cathedral School in Paris tried really hard to squash….he saw the emerging University of Paris as a threat and tried to get rid of it.
Anne Brannen 45:09
Well, you would.
Michelle Butler 45:11
Yeah, of course you would.
Anne Brannen 45:12
And indeed the cathedral schools became…they didn’t disappear. But they became much smaller. They were very different thing altogether. They were not a place where you went for higher education.
Michelle Butler 45:25
So the other…we don’t necessarily have to include this, but I wanted to share it with you because I think it’s really a useful observation about medieval universities.
Anne Brannen 45:35
Uh huh.
Michelle Butler 45:36
So now I’m back to The University in Medieval Life. “The universities appeared on the scene, not because of medieval students amor sciendi, love of knowledge for its own sake, but because these young men soon recognized the need to organize and protect themselves from rapacious townsmen and officials who were eager to profit from such a captive market. That said, it must be recognized that amor sciendi did in fact, have a critically important role to play. The concept of the university as a remote, otherworldly institution selflessly dedicated to the Aristotelian ideal of bios theoretikos (intellectual training) has often been reviled, but there is much truth in it. It is this truth, in fact, that helped ensure the university’s survival in the Middle Ages and it’s remarkable expansion in later times–up to an including our own day. Indeed, if universities had only been trade schools, they would almost certainly have disappeared during the Renaissance, like many other medieval institutions.”
Anne Brannen 46:47
Well. Well, well. And we’re seeing a shift again, now, away from the learning for learning’s sake. I don’t think I’ll be around to see kind of how it ends up. But that’s why the university system is in danger at the moment.
Michelle Butler 47:06
Yeah. I think that that tension has been there for forever. Do you have learning for learning’s sake? Or are we training these guys to go do administration? Because that’s a lot of what they’re doing, both secular and Church Administration.
Anne Brannen 47:22
That’s right. You needed this education in order to move up and be the tutor for the king’s son and the Bishop of Durham.
Michelle Butler 47:32
But I think that her observation that the university isn’t just a trade school is importan. If it were in fact, just like the guild of goldmongers or blacksmiths or whatever, it wouldn’t have survived past the Middle Ages. It was a very striking observation to me.
Anne Brannen 47:58
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I’ll leave it in.
Michelle Butler 48:00
There was something worth keeping.
Anne Brannen 48:02
Yea. But it has always been a sort of problematic thing within the larger society. What exactly is it? What do you do with it? And how do you keep it under control? And what is it doing?
Michelle Butler 48:18
Privilege but not too much privilege? Yeah.
Anne Brannen 48:21
Mm. Yes and still doing the same stuff, gobbling up land. The universities aren’t growing the way they used to, but boy, when they were growing, they just gobble things up. Berkeley just took over the little town of Berkeley. There’ll be places like…I’m reminded of this, if you’re in Cambridge, and you’re walking on down to the river, there’s a place where you have to go around a building. You can’t go straight to the river. You’re on this thing called Mill Street, which theoretically goes to the mill, which used to be there on the water, but you you have to jag around. And the reason is that a university building has been stuck there in the middle of things.
Michelle Butler 49:07
It’s pretty interesting to look straight at the tensions between universities and the towns that they’re in. Sometimes we look at this and look strictly at the ways in which students do have quite a lot of privilege and that’s still true. Universities like to try to handle things in-house. There’s very much still a inside amount of justice. If you have one student accuse another student of sexual assault, you would think that the thing to do would be to pick up the phone and call the cops, but still a lot of this gets handled in-house because you have this tradition of dealing with problems, even crimes, in-house.
Anne Brannen 49:55
Yeah, and then it gets universities in trouble.
Michelle Butler 49:58
Mm hmm. The observation, though, that you have this captive audience and you can have innkeepers and people renting and the people selling them food and all of that stuff. And indeed, dormitories are still more expensive than it would be to rent an apartment. The last time I had to pay for my kid to have a year worth, it was $12,000 just for his room and board.
Anne Brannen 50:27
Oh god.
Michelle Butler 50:28
I know.
Anne Brannen 50:29
It’s really much cheaper to live off campus and eat ramen noodles. It reminds me to some extent of what it’s like for the townspeople of tourist towns–
Michelle Butler 50:43
Oh, yeah.
Anne Brannen 50:43
Where your economy is dependent upon the visitors and the visitors, bless their hearts, are problematic. They don’t know the customs of the area. They don’t know really how to behave themselves. I am sitting in a tourist town. Not as much as Taos, for instance, or Santa Fe. But Albuquerque, still. You can’t go to Old Town in the summer because the whole thing is just completely packed with people having come in from wherever it is they’re coming in from. We need that. We need that money, but it’s highly annoying if you want to go to the museum.
Michelle Butler 51:32
I think that’s a good connection. I know Ireland struggles with this concept of paddywackery, where they’re performing Irishness for the tourists. It may not actually be how anybody lives anymore. But it’s what the American tourists are expecting. So that’s what people do.
Anne Brannen 51:56
Yeah. And then you resent that.
Michelle Butler 52:01
Which I think is probably why I found so many ruins with beer bottles and and cigarettes in them. If you’re a teenager growing up in that you have to resent it even more than you just resent everything because you’re a teenager.
Anne Brannen 52:18
Yeah, cuz it’s just the place where you live. So the townspeople of the Latin Quarter need the students to survive. Because that’s how the economy has been put together. The pubs that are there. The lodgings that are there. The shops that are there. The bookshops that are there, especially, they’re there because the students have needed them. They’ve grown dependent on that particular income stream. And the income stream behaves very badly because it gets drunk. And often does not understand the customs. Yeah, a lot of tension.
Michelle Butler 53:08
It almost is surprising that there aren’t more problems. I’m no longer surprised that there were this many riots. I’m surprised that there were this few.
Anne Brannen 53:19
It’s like a whole bunch of powder kegs all over Europe.
Michelle Butler 53:25
There’s another crime that we could cover at one point where–and this was pretty serious–they kidnap this young woman in Bologna in 1321. A student is executed for kidnapping a notary’s daughter from her father’s house. Presumably they’re intending to abuse her. But Bologna doesn’t mess around with it. He and some of his buddies get executed.
Anne Brannen 53:55
I’d like to do that. I’d like to learn more about Bologna. Let’s put that on our list.
Michelle Butler 54:01
I thought that was kind of interesting. I’m really kind of stunned at how many students. We’re not talking hundreds of students. The universities grow fast. And they become very big.
Anne Brannen 54:14
They grew really, really fast because that was the only avenue. You had to go through there in order to go into the clerical trades. To go anywhere up the church ladder, you had to go through there.
Michelle Butler 54:30
There were about 4000 taverns in Paris.
Anne Brannen 54:36
Oh my god.
Michelle Butler 54:37
Which sold 700 barrels of wine every day.
Anne Brannen 54:43
Yeah, I’m surprised there weren’t more riots too. So do we have any more on our stuff here?
Michelle Butler 54:49
I was trying to see if I knew the actual number of students at Paris. Just trying to see if I had it, because my memory is that it’s in the thousands.
Anne Brannen 55:00
That’s amazing. It’s all Pope Gregory.
Michelle Butler 55:03
It’s hard to wrap my head around the fact that we’re within maybe 150 years, maybe 200 years, of the date of the Beowulf manuscript and the founding of the University of Paris, because they feel like such different time periods.
Anne Brannen 55:20
Mm hmm.
Michelle Butler 55:23
It changes so fast. I really didn’t realize that the University of Paris become so big so quickly. I had sort of imagined there being a few dozen students not 2000.
Anne Brannen 55:39
There were a few dozen to begin with, you know, but it grew. We’ll be back to the university when we get to Abelard.
Michelle Butler 55:51
I didn’t know that either. That his street preaching was very important in the creation of the university.
Anne Brannen 56:00
He had some trouble becoming a master. Abelard just had a lot of troubles, is what Abelard had.
Michelle Butler 56:05
He seems exactly like the sort of person to die in a duel with Aaron Burr at age 44, or whatever. He seems like that personality.
Anne Brannen 56:16
He is. He manages to kind of move it into some other things. But yeah, he’s, he’s hot-headed. So was there more?
Michelle Butler 56:28
I can’t find the thing that says how many students they were, but I think it’s a couple thousand.
Anne Brannen 56:35
The next time you hear from us, we will be discussing the assassination of Joanna of Naples, which is Italy in the 14th century. So hey, we’re moving. So that’s all for us today. This has been True Crime Medieval, where the crimes are just like they are today.
Michelle Butler 56:55
Really, really the same actually.
Anne Brannen 56:58
I know. Sometimes it’s the technology. I mean, the hitting people with sticks. This is absolutely the same as it is today. Some students got drunk and roughed up a tavern. We’re on Apple podcast, I heart podcast, Spotify and Stitcher, all the other places where the podcasts hang out. Please leave a review. We’d really appreciate that. You can reach us at truecrimemedieval.com, truecrimemedieval is all one word. There you can find the show notes which are written by Michelle, the transcripts which are done for us by Laurie Dietrich, and you can also reach us all through the web page. You can leave comments. We’d love to hear from you. If you have medieval crimes that you think that we should discuss, please let us know. We will take that under advisement. That’s all for us today. Bye.
Michelle Butler 57:51
Bye.
39. April Fool’s Episode: Ferdinand II of Aragon Abolishes the Droit de Seigneur, Extremadura, Spain 1486
Anne Brannen 0:24
Hello and welcome to True Crime Medieval, 1000 years of people behaving badly. I’m Anne Brannen and I’m your host in Albuquerque.
Michelle Butler 0:35
And I’m Michelle Butler, in Maryland, the most medieval and, today, quite soggy, state in America. It’s been raining since about 4 am.
Anne Brannen 0:47
We had such a storm last night that I actually thought it was hail but it might have been raindrops being thrown against the window with great abandon by the storm. It snowed up on the mesa but it didn’t snow here. It’s very cold. So yeah, we’re having weather in Albuquerque, and we’re having weather in Maryland. Y’all are probably having weather too. We don’t know what it is because it’s elsewhere. Today, we are celebrating April Fool’s Day by discussing Droit de Seigneur or Jus Prima Noctus, which is–supposedly–the legal right of a lord to take the virginity of any bride on her wedding night, instead of, you know, her husband doing it. Now. First of all, we want to be real clear on this. Do we think that people were raped in the Middle Ages? Yes, we do. Do we think that lords misbehave themselves a lot in the Middle Ages? Yes, we do. Do we think that sometimes they raped peasant women? Yes, we do. We do not in any way think that these things didn’t happen. However, what we don’t think is that this was a legal right. Or even really a custom, but we’ll get to that later. Fair enough. Am I stating this correctly, Michelle?
Michelle Butler 2:16
I am all together on board with that assessment.
Anne Brannen 2:19
We don’t want anybody to think that, you know, we don’t think that women got raped in the Middle Ages, because that would be not just non-feminist, but entirely stupid. So we don’t think that. But so this is an idea that a lot of people believe in. It’s a very popular idea. Michelle will be explaining to us some ways in which it shows up in our popular literature and culture, even today.
Michelle Butler 2:44
And politics. I’ve got a couple examples of it being cited to justify political moves.
Anne Brannen 2:50
I’m just gonna have to hit somebody with a hammer. All right. So our first question is, how did we get to the point where we even thought this thing existed? I’m now going to explain that because as usual, my job is background and history and of course, egging Michelle on.
Michelle Butler 2:51
[laughing] Okay.
Anne Brannen 2:52
In places, there was a fee that was paid for marriage, by peasants to the lord of the land that they were bound to, and who paid it is a changeable thing. What it was for is unclear. It might have been because the bride was leaving the lands that she was on, but basically, it was probably just a tax on getting married because in the feudal society, the lords of the land were very good at figuring out ways that you should give them money, besides just being required to live on their lands and work the lands forever and a goddamn day.
Michelle Butler 3:55
It’s worth remembering that we pay for a marriage license even now.
Anne Brannen 4:00
Oh, my God, that gives the judge the right to take the maidenhead of any woman that’s getting married. No? Oops, there was a little jump in the logic. Yeah, we do. We pay now. My child, by the way, is getting married soon, but they’re having a Quaker wedding. Did you know that in some states in America, you can have a marriage just simply by saying your vows to each other and having two witnesses? And that’s legal. It’s legal in Pennsylvania. Has been for hundreds of years. Why? Because it’s a Quaker marriage. So that’s what they’re having. They still have to pay for the license, but they’re not paying for an officiant.
Michelle Butler 4:44
That’s lovely. I didn’t know that was possible.
Anne Brannen 4:47
I didn’t know it was possible. I did know it was a Quaker marriage. Drew and Maddie figured it out. I told them was a Quaker marriage and so now they’re all excited because, ‘awesome, history,’ so you know, woohoo. But they still had to pay for a license. Later it became interpreted as being a payment so that the lord didn’t exercise his droit de seigneur, but there’s no evidence that that’s ever what it was. Okay. What kinds of things might be evidence? There’s a biography that was written in the early 10th century by Odo of Cluny, which reports a nobleman who’s planning to rape one of his serfs, and then there’s a miracle, so he doesn’t and he gets converted, or whatnot. But that’s not about a legal act. And it’s not even about a custom. It’s just about somebody intending to be evil. There’s a French poem from the 14th century, where a lord claims the Jus Prima Noctus. So there’s clearly some kind of notion of it, by the 14th century, but this is fiction. It’s not showing up in the laws, and it’s not showing up in the customs, but it’s being talked about in fiction. So when did we first start talking about this as an actual thing? Hector Boece is a Scottish historian. He’s the first person to record the right. This was like in 1527. He said that the right had existed, apparently, throughout all damn time, until the late 11th century, when it got abolished, apparently. He attributed the law to some invented king who never existed. So this whole theory is kind of suspicious, since it doesn’t have anything to do with reality. After that, he was the authority for lots of other legal scholars and historians, because there you are, somebody said it. The English in the 18th century, by the way, noted that this was a Scottish custom. And the English never did it. Just saying.
Michelle Butler 4:59
Yeah.
Anne Brannen 5:50
So that this was a legal right in the Middle Ages, or at least a custom, was strongly believed by the 16th century, when–we remind everybody–historians and philosophers and theologians and popular culture started getting really invested in proving that the Middle Ages was a barbaric time, and that thank God we have all escaped from them into these much more cultured and sane and morally sound times that we live in today. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So any rate there’s a context to this, which is Middle Ages bad, thank God, we got out.
Michelle Butler 7:28
You can’t have the Renaissance if you don’t have something you’re leaving.
Anne Brannen 7:34
If you’re gonna be a phoenix rising from the ashes, you got to burn something down, don’t you just? So hosts of these guys, historians, legal scholars on through the 20th century, just pass this on as total reality. It’s a great story, too, isn’t it, about the ghastliness of the Middle Ages? You can really make very, very effective paintings, one of which at least we’ll stick up on the website.
Michelle Butler 8:01
The paintings are awful. The 19th century loves this as a subject of art and they’re uniformly horrible.
Anne Brannen 8:13
Uniformly. That’s kind of like…I just put the the death of William Rufus up on the site, and I had a big choice of interesting paintings of the romantic death of Billy Rufus. It’s the same thing here. You can really punch the emotion up. But there were voices saying, ‘Wait, no, where’s the evidence?’ David Dalrymple in 1776 said that Boece’s version was entirely legendary. This is a true thing. But he was a Scotsman. So everybody said he was just saying that because he was trying to make the Scots not seem so barbaric in spite of the oatmeal and kilts. Alright. So this goes on. More, and worse and worse versions, more and more bizarre lies. I want to add in here some other terrible horrible lies that were told…was the feudal system good? No, it was not. Were lords well behaved? No, they weren’t. But I tell you what was not legal, and they didn’t do it, was disembowel serfs so they could warm their feet in their intestines. So, like, just stop it. So there’s no evidence of the droit de seigneur as a right. There’s no real evidence of it as a custom. There’s some evidence that it completely got made up, seeing as how the first person who wrote about it as a thing made stuff up that didn’t exist whatsoever. Do you have anything to add to all that before I go on to Ferdinand of Aragon?
Michelle Butler 9:52
There’s another historian writing at roughly the same time as Boece, who doesn’t mention that king that he talks about at all. That other historian’s name is John Major. He also wrote a history of Scotland, in 1521. Just a few years, like five, before Boece and he does not mention that King Evanus, the one that was supposed to have created this custom–
Anne Brannen 10:24
Yeah, the person who didn’t exist.
Michelle Butler 10:26
–1000 years beforehand and then King Malcolm–good king Malcolm!–in the 11th century was the one who outlawed it.
Anne Brannen 10:36
On account of St. Margaret, his wife. ‘I made him do that.’
Michelle Butler 10:41
It’s real real likely that Boece just makes up King Evenus because there’s no other sources for this guy at all.
Anne Brannen 10:51
There’s not. No, I’ve never heard of him. He doesn’t show up in the genealogies and there’s a bunch of made-up people in the genealogies, let me tell you. No, he’s not there.
This is all the time a thing with this. People say, ‘Oh, I’m sure this existed in the past.’
In the past.
Michelle Butler 11:08
Over there, in that barbaric time and that barbaric place.
Anne Brannen 11:12
Yes, yes, yes. Somebody else who wasn’t really like us, not like us. No, no, somebody else did this thing, which we will now tell stories about and also make some movies. Walter Scott’s going to get involved in here, isn’t he just. Once again, Walter Scott.
Michelle Butler 11:12
Yeah. He’s on the list.
Anne Brannen 11:30
People I’d like to hit with a hammer. Walter Scott, near the top. So, given the fact that there’s no evidence for it, not really, why then did Ferdinand the second of Aragon abolish it in 1486 if it didn’t exist? Background, background, background. Gonna have background.
Michelle Butler 11:52
We need a theme song for the background.
Anne Brannen 12:01
God, I love background. I’m in this for the background. Don’t you know I’m totally, totally totes. The Sentencia Arbitral of Guadalupe, which Ferdinand gave, is a legal decree. This was, by the way, at the monastery of Santa Maria de Guadalupe in Extremadura in Spain, hence the name.
Michelle Butler 12:21
This is that Ferdinand, right? Isabella and Ferdinand, Columbus’s Ferdinand?
Anne Brannen 12:28
Yes, it is. The same people who were all about the Inquisition and making the recusant Jews be, you know, very, very unhappy and badly treated. Yes, he’s not entirely great. And yet, here’s the moment where he is tolerable to the people of True Crime Medieval. He’s being tolerable at this moment. Okay, fair enough. He gave this sententiae as a legal decree, and it marked the end of the wars of the Remences. These are a couple of peasant revolts, one that lasted from 1462 to 1472, and the next from 1484 to 1486. The Remences were the Catalan serfs, and after the Black Death, the loss of workforce in Catalan had led to some of the worst conditions for servitude in Europe. Really bad. The Sentencia Arbitral overturned the feudal system in Catalan to a degree, although it got translated into economic payments, but the Catalonian peasants ended up with more freedom than the peasants in the rest of Europe for a few centuries. When I say it translated into economic terms, I mean that they had to pay a fee per farm and they had to pay homage to the Lord. But the Sentencia Arbitral specifically abolished a list of what was called Evil Customs, or called mals usos. The evil customs included–I’m not even going to give you all the evil customs, just some of them–the lord got a third of a peasant’s inheritance if he didn’t have any descendants, the lord confiscated a third of the property of anybody who died without a will. Let’s have a little moment where we think about what we think the percentage was of illiterate peasants who died without a will.
Michelle Butler 14:33
I would think pretty high. ,
Anne Brannen 14:35
It’s very high. The Lord confiscated a wife’s dowry if she committed adultery. I’m like, okay, whatever. They just…they added that in. The whole thing with wills…’oh, I’m going to get some of your money.’ But like, ‘I’m gonna get your money if you commit adultery?’ Why? Who cares? Anyway. The lord got paid by the peasants for his goods if they got obliterated in an accidental fire. It’s kind of like a wicked evil form of insurance. The peasants had to use the lord’s mills and ovens and forges, and they had to work the lord’s lands, yada, yada. In Castile there were some additions to this that were not actually written down but were a custom, including letting the lord seize your cattle. Women who were breastfeeding had to give up their kids and go breastfeed the lord’s baby if his wife couldn’t do it, stuff like that. But the Jus Prima Noctus is not one of the evil customs. However, it’s included in the Sentencia. So it’s at least an issue at that point. It’s at least something that the peasants who were signing this agreement demanded as being taken off, and so by the end of the 15th century, in Catalan, a place where the lords of the area had gotten more out of hand than any other place in Europe, some of them had to have been practicing it, and giving its supposedly ancient history, is the foundation for the act. So what this looks like, is that the story gets invented, and then taken da-da-da-da through the centuries, ‘The Badnesses of the Former Times that are Not Us,’ and by the time you get to the end of the Middle Ages, people are saying, ‘well, yeah, it’s all right. It’s been alright forever, they used to do it in Scotland a long time ago. And now we’re doing it.’ And so the story had become real, at least to some extent, by that point.
Michelle Butler 16:43
We see that so much in the 15th century where stories are getting told about the earlier Middle Ages, that by the very, very end of the Middle Ages, people are like, ‘Hmm, I wonder if that was true.’ And starting to act like it is true. Chivalry, knighthood, are so different in the 15th century, then they are 300 years earlier, 200 years earlier, because they’re taking their own stories seriously by that point. It’s such an interesting cultural moment. We’re not really medieval anymore. But we’re not really early modern. We’re in this weird sort of transitional moment of reassessing the medieval and we’re so far away from some of this that it’s hard for people to assess what’s real about that past time. I’m fascinated by the 15th century.
Anne Brannen 17:41
It’s a very interesting time indeed. Yeah. So here we have this. There’s no evidence for this thing at all. Until it we see a law being passed against it. Because all of a sudden, it started being an issue when the lords of the feudal lords of Catalan began misbehaving themselves so badly that feudalism got taken away from them, basically. That’s my conclusion, I think. Why is he abolishing this thing that didn’t happen? So the April Fool is Ferdinand. The April Fool is really the Lords of Catalan, who thought that this was a thing and then went and did it.
Michelle Butler 18:29
So just as a sidebar, we’re living at a time right at the moment where there there is no evidence of voter fraud and yet there’s like 40,000 laws being advanced trying to deal with it.
Anne Brannen 18:44
I grant you that that is true.
Michelle Butler 18:46
So I can understand why a previous time period might look around and say, ‘oh, there’s this thing that we kind of feel like might be happening. So let’s make a law against it.’
Anne Brannen 18:58
So this wasn’t on the law books, and we don’t have evidence it was custom. So you’re saying it’s possible that it actually wasn’t happening at all. But the peasants were so used to being mistreated, that they made the jump into taking this ancient story as being true. Because it didn’t happen to me. But I heard happened, to a friend of mine.
Michelle Butler 19:21
I heard they do this over there and we want to make sure they don’t do it here. But I’m also willing to believe that the lords got together and said, ‘Hey, have you heard this story? Do you do that? That would be sort of cool. I’d like to do that.’
Anne Brannen 19:41
Either way, I would accept. But what’s seems pretty clear to me has happened is that a made up story has been in some way caused to become either true in reality, or true in law. Does that make sense?
Michelle Butler 19:57
Oh, yeah. It is utterly, utterly fascinating that by 1482, there’s enough of this rumor floating around, that there’s anxiety about whether it could be true. At that point it goes into law in order to prevent it. That’s when we see it in law, when they’re trying to prevent it.
Anne Brannen 20:20
Fair enough. Fair enough. I would really like for that to be true. Rather than the lords of Catalan said, ‘Hey, yo, this is our ancient right.’ But I would buy either one, because the humans have shown capacity in both directions. But it wasn’t there before. It just wasn’t there.
Michelle Butler 20:42
One of the books that I read makes the point that if this existed, the French farces would have been all over it. Because the French farces aren’t afraid to take on anything. And we don’t have any.
Anne Brannen 20:54
No, no, there’s no evidence. There’s just no evidence for it until Ferdinand.
Michelle Butler 21:00
It becomes this giant signpost for later centuries as a way to define, ‘that’s what that time period was like.’
Anne Brannen 21:11
Yes. When really, it’s later times.
Michelle Butler 21:14
It becomes one of the big stickers that gets slapped on the Middle Ages. And it’s not true. But it has proven to be a very pervasive and enduring myth. That, actually, is mostly what I read about.
Anne Brannen 21:31
It’s something that people want to believe–as a whole, not us–that people would like to believe about the Middle Ages, and that they would like to believe that these times are different, the ones that we’re living in.
Michelle Butler 21:46
Okay, another sidebar. If somebody can say, on tape, ‘what you do is you grab them by the pussy and if you’re famous enough, you can get away with it’ and still get elected President, I would say that we’re not altogether having abandoned the idea that powerful people can misuse their power against women and get away with it.
Anne Brannen 22:08
That is true. That is true.
Michelle Butler 22:11
So much of what we do with the past is we put things onto it that are true about ourselves, but we don’t want to deal with. So we put it back there and say, ‘Okay, that.’ One of the books that I read talked about this a lot, because in the 18th century is when all of the plays about this purported medieval law become hugely popular.
Anne Brannen 22:38
That’s right. Voltaire is the first one who actually uses the term ‘droit de seigneur.’
Michelle Butler 22:44
Yes. So you have all these plays, and this particular scholar, Boureau, is making the point that what had happened was that with the Protestant Reformation, all the brothels get closed as a matter of public morality. So now you have these households, and the young men of the household do not have this ability to step outside of the household and deal with their sexuality. In particular, the young masters of the household are not being taken off to have their sexual initiation at the brothels. Instead, there’s pressure put on the servants, the women servants, in the household to take up that role.
Anne Brannen 23:32
That is interesting. Because it isn’t just that the sexual energy has to go someplace, it’s the idea that the sexual energy is entitled to go someplace, that is driving all of this. It’s entitled to go someplace. Where does it go? ‘Well, in the Middle Ages, we did thus-and-such. The good old days.’
Boureau is making the argument that these plays become popular at that time, as a way of pushing it back and saying, ‘at least we’re not as bad as those guys. We have this thing we’re doing, but it’s not as bad as that.’
No, there’s a great deal of entitlement to women’s bodies going on in the Middle Ages. This in particular is not one of the forms that it took in large part.
Michelle Butler 24:25
I was reminded of Andreas Capellanus’ The Art of Courtly Love, where he has an entire section that is essentially a guide to figuring out whether that woman you just rode by is okay for you to rape. It’s a guide to rape, basically.
Anne Brannen 24:43
Right, right.
Michelle Butler 24:46
We’re not saying that there’s this idealized past where everybody was well behaved and bad things never happened. But there’s a really big difference between things that happen as opportune abuses of power and abuses of power that are written into the law.
Anne Brannen 25:10
Yes. And I would say even abuses of power that are…
Michelle Butler 25:18
Customarily accepted?
Anne Brannen 25:20
Yeah. Okay. Customarily accepted. I was looking for a verb for it but yeah, that are customarily accepted. It’s interesting to me, because you can see how this would get invented. Because the power dynamic is there. So you can see how it would get invented. You can also see how it would get misused. But that it is still such a focus for thinking about the Middle Ages is really, I think, what is amazing to me. But we do this a lot. Torture, for instance. The Middle Ages, they were full of torture–not us, you know, except for Guantanamo, for instance. ‘Oh, we don’t do that…except.’ Except. Except. It’s the middle ages.
Michelle Butler 26:13
All the bad things.
Anne Brannen 26:15
All the bad things. So what did you find, oh, my Michelle, in your looking for ‘What We Do with this Silly Idea’?
Michelle Butler 26:24
So here’s what I got for you. A really good, scholarly starting point for anybody who wants to read about this would be to go to, surprisingly, a chapter in a book called The Medieval Chastity Belt.
Anne Brannen 26:43
Oh, no. Noooo.
Michelle Butler 26:46
I swear to you, this chapter exists because…here’s the conversation I imagined between the author and the editor. Editor says, ‘we love your book, but it’s a monograph right now, so I need you to add 30 pages for it to be long enough for me to publish it as a book.’ And author says, ‘okay, okay, I think I can do that.’ And so we get this random chapter about the First Night myth in the book about the chastity belt.
Anne Brannen 27:21
This is a book about the chastity belt myth, isn’t it? They’re weren’t really any. We’re going to do that. Next April. We’ll talk about chastity belts because they weren’t there either.
Michelle Butler 27:31
This is a book called ‘The Medieval Chastity Belt: A Mythmaking Process.’ That’s primarily what he’s talking about. He has another little sidebar about the myth that everybody believed the Earth was flat until 1492. But that’s just literally a sidebar. It’s not a whole chapter. It has a chapter, though, about the First Night thing and it’s a really nice launching point.
Anne Brannen 27:58
Oh, good.
Michelle Butler 28:00
The book is fairly recent. It’s from 2007. It’s a pretty clear and concise introduction to this. He has a nice quote here at the beginning of it: “Although some historical documents suggest that something similar might have happened here or there, averall, the notion that a lord was entitled to sleep with the bride of a newlywed couple borders on the absurd. Nevertheless, its mythic status has had a deep impact on modern imagination about the medieval past.”
Anne Brannen 28:42
I’m totally down with this.
Michelle Butler 28:44
Yes. So this is exciting. And it was even more exciting, because he pointed me to a couple of great books and a slight little scholarly moment of tension, which was fun.
Anne Brannen 28:59
Oh, goody, good.
Michelle Butler 29:00
I know! Tiny scholarly background. The author of this is a German scholar who worked at–let me make sure I’m getting the right university in Arizona–he was and possibly still is a medievalist in the department of German Studies at the University of Arizona, but he is from Germany. And that’s important. He, in his chapter, points to an 1881 book by a fellow German, and this book is by Karl Schmitt–SCHMITT–who, Classen says, put the nail in the coffin. This was the definitive study to prove that the right was never a thing. Schmitt goes through all of the references that supposedly prove that it was a thing and systematically disproves them.
Anne Brannen 30:05
Yay!
Michelle Butler 30:06
Yes. So there’s that. Then there’s a book from 1998 called ‘The Lord’s First Night: The Myth of the Droit de Cuissage’ by Alain Boureau. This is a really good book too. But he’s looking less at disproving that it was ever a thing and looking more at why it became a thing.
Anne Brannen 30:39
Yeah. Which is also interesting.
Michelle Butler 30:41
Yes. But Classen is irritated on Schmitt’s behalf that this really important book from 1881 exists and Boureau doesn’t mention it until page 91.
Anne Brannen 30:55
[laughter] Oh, the scholars.
Michelle Butler 31:02
I know. Here we go. I want to quote it because I love it when you can detect these little moments of like, not all is well among the community.
Anne Brannen 31:17
Yes, I want to hear this,
Michelle Butler 31:21
“Boureau, above all, refers to Carl Smith’s monograph, praising its outstanding scholarship and objectivity. But his German was obviously lacking. Otherwise, he would have engaged with this highly erudite work from the start, and would not have waited until page 91.”
Anne Brannen 31:39
[laughter]. He should have brought it at least by page 25, obviously.
Michelle Butler 31:50
I have to agree, though, that, he really kind of waits a long time and then sort of mentions, ‘Oh, yeah, there’s this book from 1881, that totally already proves this thing I’m telling you I’m proving.’ “I would not have waited until page 91, where he even comments on it with a certain condescension, ‘myopic.'”–he calls it myopic–“when in fact, Schmitt had already dealt a deadly blow to the myth of this ignobly fabled medieval custom, and Boureau could only contribute more specific French and Italian perspectives and data.”
Anne Brannen 32:41
[laughter] It’s noble to be a scholar. It’s really good.
Michelle Butler 32:47
I just love the little undercurrent of French and German that’s going on.
Anne Brannen 32:54
Yeah. ‘You didn’t know German well enough, obviously.’
Michelle Butler 32:59
‘You didn’t really read it, did you?’
Anne Brannen 32:58
‘A few French things that were just hanging around. Whatever.’
Michelle Butler 33:05
As far as I can tell, that book, Schmitt’s 1881 book, which is so important, has never been published in English. I certainly was not able to locate…maybe you, as the queen of the internet can find it. But I could not find an English translation of it. Which might explain one reason this is holding out for us because we don’t have the book that says, ‘Okay, let me go through it all real slowly and I’ll explain it to you like you’re in kindergarten. That’s fake. That’s fake. That’s fake. That’s fake.’ This book also, Boureau’s book, was published originally in French. We have a translated edition of it. This is a really great book, I found it fascinating. He’s the one who talks about the 18th century growing sexual contact between servants and households, because of the closing of the brothels. He talks about the belief in the first night myth and its role in the French Revolution, which I didn’t know about. It makes total sense that going up to the French Revolution, you have to make the aristocracy seem really, really bad. One of the ways you do this is you play up this idea that they were going around asserting their right to sleep with all the brides. Among other things. It actually talks about the Barber of Seville, which I figure you know better than I do.
Anne Brannen 34:41
I do know it some.
Michelle Butler 34:45
Hold on. No, it’s The Marriage of Figaro. I’m sorry. I don’t know opera at all.
Anne Brannen 34:56
My parent likes both of them, and so do I. What is it they say?
Michelle Butler 35:03
The Marriage of Figaro has the right as a big part of its plot.
Anne Brannen 35:07
Yeah. Poor Suzanna. Yes.
Michelle Butler 35:12
And that apparently was helping–
Anne Brannen 35:15
When is that from?
Michelle Butler 35:17
Let me look back and see. 1786. Here’s Boureau talking about that. “The play’s plot,”–The Marriage of Figaro–“seems to espouse the cause of political and social unrest by showing the last throes of a landed aristocracy stubbornly demanding its privileges and its abusive rights.”
Anne Brannen 35:41
And the servants cleverly turning the tables and getting out of it. Yeah, yeah.
Michelle Butler 35:48
Boureau also makes the point that generally speaking, as medievalists, we’re really uncomfortable talking about this, because most of us haven’t had it taught to us and we don’t actually know whether it’s a real thing or not. So mostly, we just sort of sidestep it. This is really interesting, because I went to my bookshelf and pulled off–I have three books about medieval sexuality just kind of hanging out here after all this time accumulating them. James Brundage’s, which is a great big book, and is sort of the definitive book about where the law and sex interact. It’s called ‘Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe,’ which is a definitive and giant book, does not mention it at all. Isn’t that wild?
Anne Brannen 36:36
Since it wasn’t there, that would make sense, but it’s a myth that needs to get addressed in terms of talking about what people think about sexuality in the Middle Ages. Yep. Interesting. Okay.
Michelle Butler 36:57
I have another book called ‘Handbook of Medieval Sexuality,’ which was very, very useful in our previous episode about abortion. Also does not mention it. I have another book called ‘Sexuality in Medieval Europe: Doing Unto Others,’ which is cleverly titled and funny. Only mentions it twice, and the mentions are to say this was not a thing. That’s all it says. It doesn’t explain why it wasn’t a thing. It just says there was no evidence for this and moves on. So that seems to me to kind of bear out what Boureau is saying, that we prefer to sidestep this discussion if we can. There’s another book from 1984 called ‘The Droit de Seigneur in European and American Literature’ that actually deals with that piece of it, how it shows up in literature. It’s referenced in George Orwell’s ‘1984.’
Anne Brannen 38:03
You know what, I did not remember that.
Michelle Butler 38:06
Isn’t that fascinating? It’s in the section right at the beginning, I think this is towards the beginning, of ‘1984,’ where our main character is wondering about how he’s supposed to tell what’s real and what’s not, and all he has is the history books–Boureau gives a giant quote about this–and he’s listing all the things that he’s told in the history books might be real. That there were capitalists who owned everything, and there was a law that the capitalists had the right to sleep with any woman working in one of his factories, and it was called the Jus Prima Noctis. He has absolutely no idea whether…okay, so here it is in George Orwell’s ‘1984.’ It’s referenced…I’m flabbergasted by what Boureau has pulled together here at the beginning of this book. In 1992, the French National Assembly was debating how to rewrite some of its legal code. They weren’t sure what to call sexual harassment. Because they don’t like the term ‘sexual harassment’ because that comes from English.
Anne Brannen 39:27
I get that. I totally get that. Yeah.
Michelle Butler 39:30
They decide to go with…the French press is pushing for them to use what they see as the native equivalent, le droit de cuissage. Okay. 1992.
Anne Brannen 39:48
So this myth is being dragged out of the past, because ‘this is the language of our people for this thing,’ which never existed. Huh.
Michelle Butler 40:00
It was referenced by…it might be better if I just quote this. “When Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan, the General Secretary of the French Communist Party Georges Marchais justified Soviet intervention in the name of the Enlightenment, claiming that the ‘feudal Afghans’ practice the droit de cuissage.”
Anne Brannen 40:39
Oh my god. Well, you know, a lot of the discussion among scholars about the droit de seigneur talked about anthropological routes, and so that was putting it back even further on to other places, you know, other times. So this is about taking a culture which exists now and attributing to them a thing which is seen as primitive.
Michelle Butler 41:20
Yeah. Boureau talks about that in one of his chapters, the idea that some scholars think that if it existed, it’s the remnants of a pagan fertility rite.
Anne Brannen 41:33
Oh no. No, no, no. No, no, no, no, no, it isn’t.
Michelle Butler 41:42
He’s definitely not saying that’s true. He’s saying that some people have argued it.
Anne Brannen 41:46
Well, they were wrong. Also, as we noted last time, William Rufus was not part of a pagan sacrifice either. So let’s just mention that and move on.
Michelle Butler 41:56
So I have one ridiculous and fun thing to share with you.
Anne Brannen 42:00
Okay. What is it?
Michelle Butler 42:01
Because using it to justify the invasion of Afghanistan is pretty heavy.
Anne Brannen 42:06
Yeah, it’s pretty bad.
Michelle Butler 42:08
Charlton Heston was in a movie in 1965 called ‘The Warlord’ that uses the Jus as a plot point, a major plot point, not like, oh, we just mentioned this thing over here. It’s a major plot point. He is playing this lord…Hold on, I’ll go over to it on IMDb. He is playing a lord in the 11th century, who has a thing for this woman Forsyth and she refuses to leave her fiance and so the lord is delighted to discover he’s got this option.
Anne Brannen 42:52
How did he find this? Is he like reading old law books or something? He’s like looking through the library? ‘What are my rights as a feudal lord? What do I get to do? Because you know I already took all the money from the adulterous women.’
Michelle Butler 43:09
The entire thing is in fact on YouTube, but I made it through the trailer and I’m not going any farther.
Anne Brannen 43:17
No, no, I can’t. I can’t do it. I can’t. I’m just gonna have to take your word for it.
Michelle Butler 43:24
Even more troubling is the review on IMDb from 2-fucking–004. I cannot believe this. Somebody wrote in 2004, “a painstakingly accurate historical–“
Anne Brannen 43:50
Oh come on. [laughter]
Michelle Butler 43:50
And it goes on from there.
Anne Brannen 43:52
You know, in general, a rule of thumb is that if Charlton Heston in the cast list, ‘historically accurate’ is not a thing you want to put on there. But um, that’s just me. That’s just me.
Michelle Butler 44:08
Oh, I’m sorry, the love interest’s, so to speak, name is Bronwyn. It’s played by Rosemary Forsyth. I’m sorry. I was willing to buy that they named her Forsyth. I saw an interview with her, fairly recently because she was a young woman in the movie and she was a much older woman in the interview. I saw an interview with her about this. That I actually managed to watch the whole way through. But again, the interviewer is saying to her ‘What was it like to be in this gritty, medieval-realistic movie? Unlike Camelot, which is all about the pastels, but this was gritty realism.’
Anne Brannen 44:54
Did she have an answer for this?
Michelle Butler 44:57
She sidestepped into talking about what it was like to be the only woman on set.
Anne Brannen 45:02
Okay, that’s much better. Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. Yeah, cuz that’s part of medieval realism too. There were really no women in the Middle Ages at all. Except, you know, if you happen to be with them on their wedding night. Or if they committed adultery and you got to take their money. Other than that, no women in the Middle Ages. It was all about war. Mm hmm. Well, April Fool’s you know. Um, we haven’t discussed ‘Braveheart’ yet. I think we need to mention ‘Braveheart which is…I don’t know… ‘Braveheart’ is kind of our most hated…we have lots of hated things on True Crime Medieval, many of them actually medieval, but a ‘Braveheart’ is one of our current dislikes.
Michelle Butler 45:52
It’s definitely, definitely guilty of reviving…even now, if you search up ‘historical fiction droit de seigneur,’ you’re gonna get all these purported historical romances that use it as a jumping off point. Which…I don’t know. That’s just not doing it for me. An arranged marriage that becomes a love match? That works for me because that’s less abusive, but this is the basis of historical romance does not work for me from the get-go.
Anne Brannen 46:30
No, no. Either for ‘oh, it turns out I love you,’ kind of like ‘the Luke and Laura,’ you know, soap opera thing, or the ‘Oh, thank you for rescuing me.’ Can we just not do this? Ugh. Braveheart.
Michelle Butler 46:52
Yeah, he just plops it in there like it’s a thing that everybody knows.
Anne Brannen 47:00
It’s one of the reasons that you have to have freeeeeeedoooomm. You have to have freedom because of the badnesses. And that’s one of the badnesses. How bad could these people be? This is how bad. And it’s essentially driving the laws in Catalon serfdom. It’s one of those, ‘how bad could it be?’ This is how bad. This is how bad.
Michelle Butler 47:23
Boureau makes the point that when this is talked about, it’s always talked about as ‘the people over there, in the past, the ones that we don’t really think are all the way human anyway.’ So it’s attributed to the Scots, it’s attributed to the Irish, it’s attributed to the Native Americans after colonization of North America.
Anne Brannen 47:48
It’s attributed to the Afghans. Jesus.
Michelle Butler 47:54
Boureau’s book is very good. I was troubled at first that he was going to get all French on me and start talking about theory, because the introduction does take a little waltz into theory, but then he goes back to history.
Anne Brannen 48:12
A little theory goes a long way, huh?
Michelle Butler 48:18
I had a terrible adventure getting a hold of this book, because I thought I already owned it. I had seen this book at Kalamazoo. It has a very striking cover.
Anne Brannen 48:32
Is this the one that you sent me the picture of? And we think we’re gonna use?
Michelle Butler 48:35
Yes.
Anne Brannen 48:35
Because the cover is so striking as to be sort of numbing, actually.
Michelle Butler 48:39
So I saw this book at the book fair at Kalamazoo a few years ago, and I thought I had purchased it, and I can’t find it anywhere on my bookshelf. In a moment of stupid, thinking I’m going to resist the evil empire, I order it from the University of Chicago Press rather than from Amazon. This was a mistake. Because the University of Chicago Press did not understand my urgency and my need to get a hold this book.
Anne Brannen 49:13
Amazon is an evil evil thing, but it does understand that you want your thing right now.
Michelle Butler 49:24
I ordered the book on March 11. If I had ordered it from Amazon, I would have had it on March 13. On March 17, almost a full week later, I finally get a lackadaisical email from the University of Chicago Press saying, ‘Oh, just so you know, we’ve shipped the book.’ I’m like, ‘what do you mean, you’ve shipped the book?’ It should be getting here. I needed the book days ago.
Anne Brannen 49:52
This is how the evil empire maintains its impure-ocity.
Michelle Butler 50:00
It must have been carried to me by carrier pigeon, because I got it on Monday. The 20th.
Anne Brannen 50:06
Oh, my goodness.
Michelle Butler 50:08
Yes.
Anne Brannen 50:08
You’ve done a lot of work diligently. We record on Wednesday, oh, beloved listeners. This is two days later. She got that book two days ago.
Michelle Butler 50:22
Thank you, University of Chicago Press. What kind of timeframe did you think I was working on here? So. So here is the moral to the story. When you’re at Kalamazoo, in the book fair, and you see a book and you think, ‘that’s interesting.’ Do not have a moment of virtue and say to yourself, ‘but I’m a medieval drama person. I don’t need that book. Why would I ever need that book? Don’t spend the 20 bucks on that book right now.’ Oh, you go ahead and buy the book. Because you might end up a medieval generalist, doing a podcast, and then you need everything.
Anne Brannen 51:05
You had no idea. You had no idea that you were going to end up in a podcast, which you hadn’t even heard of at that time. So there you go.
Michelle Butler 51:13
I’m taking that as a sign that if I think I should buy the book, I should buy the book.
Anne Brannen 51:19
Just buy the book. Because yeah, we probably need to talk about it at some point. So anything more on this thing, which didn’t exist?
Michelle Butler 51:31
No, but I’m really glad to have had a chance to go back and find out solidly why we know it didn’t exist. Because you do sometimes…you know, you go along and you know something, and then all these other people think they know something, and it starts to get confusing.
Anne Brannen 51:48
Yes.
Michelle Butler 51:50
Everybody knows, everybody knows, that brides got married in June, because that’s right after they had their annual bath, and so they smell good. I don’t think that’s true.
Anne Brannen 51:58
That’s not true. Everybody knows that people used a lot of cinnamon in order to cover up the taste and odor of the spoiled meat that they were eating. No. No. No. Everybody knows. Everybody knows. Yes. So part of the absurdity of this also, which we should mention, is that the entire structure of this First Night business depends upon a virginity that can be taken, therefore the virginity being there.
Michelle Butler 52:33
Right.
Anne Brannen 52:35
You were telling me about church court records?
Michelle Butler 52:37
We know from Shakespeare’s time, but it’s not going to be much different earlier, that a third of brides were already pregnant on their wedding day. Because we can do math, right? We know when the when the wedding happens, we know when the birth happens, we just have to do a minor bit of subtraction and discover that. So I just cannot imagine that claiming the right to sleep with a woman, you know, deep in the throes of morning sickness in that first trimester is really going to be a good time. At least that’s not what I remember.
Anne Brannen 53:11
No, no, it wouldn’t. And I don’t believe that in medieval Europe, people were waiting until they got married, all the time, because they were so well behaved. No. Because you know why? I think they were human. I’m thinking they were human. And I’ve met the humans. So this is insane. It’s not just that it presumes that the Middle Ages were more barbaric than we are–whoever we are, who’s repeating this myth–but also that they were in some bizarre way better behaved. All right. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t have it both ways.
Michelle Butler 53:51
That’s true. I hadn’t thought about that. But it does assume both barbarity and chastity.
Anne Brannen 54:00
Just nuts. It’s just…so really, please, please, we beg of you here on April 1, be very careful about telling lies about other cultures and other times. It’s not polite, and it’s stupid. It’s tacky.
Michelle Butler 54:26
It wasn’t super uncommon for working class people….if you had to wait to get married until you finished your apprenticeship and then your journeyman…you couldn’t get married until you were almost done with the equivalent of graduate school, so you were like 26, 27 years old. What you’re really doing when you get married is being able to set up your own household, away from your parents. So it’s not uncommon for couples to have an understanding and sometimes a couple of kids before they actually are officially married. That would be very disappointing to the lord to get some mother of two hauled in there.
Anne Brannen 55:08
The kids running around screaming, looking for their little wooden horses. Yeah, that’s not good. No, no, no, no. This is just insane. But we’re so willing to believe it. Everybody knows that there was droit de seigneur. We hope that you know that there wasn’t. Do people behave like that? Yes, they do sometimes. And in fact, sometimes it becomes an entire custom. And sometimes it’s just a thing that’s happening all the time. But it was not a custom in the Middle Ages. It was not a law in the Middle Ages. It was not a right that lords had in the Middle Ages, although some of them would have done that. But it just wasn’t there. It’s a thing that got invented, and then put onto the Middle Ages, because the Middle Ages are always the place where bad things happened, as opposed to now, which is entirely well behaved.
Michelle Butler 56:05
Everybody is so good now.
Anne Brannen 56:07
They are. Thank God we are living now. Post Middle Ages. In this happy time of good behavior. Yay. The next time that you hear from us, we will be discussing the University of Paris strike, which took place in France, obviously, in 1229. So yay, we get to talk about the town-gown problems of the Middle Ages, which still to some extent we have. Yeah, we like this.
Michelle Butler 56:38
Because undergraduates were not any better behaved.
Anne Brannen 56:43
Oh, no, they were. They were all so well behaved. Under undergraduates were well behaved and nobody ever slept with each other before marriage. It was the Middle Ages. Okay, none of this makes sense. All right, we move on. No, undergraduates were so badly behaved that there were deaths involved. So really, that’s what we’ll talk about. University of Paris. Later on, we’ll do Oxford, but we’re doing Paris now. This has been True Crime Medieval, where the crimes are just like they are today only with less technology. And the lies…I don’t know. People made things up then too, I’m just saying. We are on Apple podcasts, I Heart Podcast, Spotify, Stitcher, any place that the podcasts are hanging out, we’re apparently there these days. Please leave a review. We’d love that. I believe we have like 22 reviews on Apple. We have a little slow build up here. We’re not one of those podcasts that became like really famous all of a sudden. In fact, we haven’t become really famous at all. But we have more listeners now than we did a year ago. C’est la vie. You can reach us at True Crime Medieval dot com, truecrimemedieval is all one word. There you can find the show notes, which are written by Michelle, the transcripts, which are done for us by Laurie Dietrich. You can also reach us all through the web page and you can leave comments. We’d love to hear from you. If you have medieval crimes that you think we should pay attention to, please let us know. We’ll take it under advisement. And let us know also if you have things that you want to correct us on or add to what we said because then we’ll say them after you do that, and we find them out. And yeah, so that’s us.
Michelle Butler 58:36
Bye.
Anne Brannen 58:38
Michelle Butler 58:38
Bye. Happy
Anne Brannen 58:39
April Fool’s Day. Don’t believe lies. That’s what we have to say. Bye.
The Death of William Rufus, New Forest, England, August 2, 1100
Anne: Hello and welcome to True Crime Medieval, One Thousand Years of People Behaving Badly. I’m Anne Brannen. I’m your host in Albuquerque.
Michelle: And I’m Michelle Butler, in Maryland, the most medieval state in America.
Anne: And today we are talking about the death of King William II of England, also known as William Rufus, and called, by me, ‘Billy Rufus’ for no reason whatsoever, except I made it up when I was, what? Eighteen. And learning this as an undergraduate.
So, at any rate, Billy Rufus. We’re talking about the death of him. He was born sometime around 1060. We don’t know. But we know what day he died, which was the second of August, 1100. Because he was hunting, and he got shot with an arrow. It was really sad.
He was the third son of William the Conqueror, and the background of this is important. So before we get to the horrible hunting getting-shot-in-the-breast-with-an-arrow incident in William Rufus’ life, this is what was going on before then:
William the Conqueror had died in 1087, and by the time that he died he had secured Normandy. This is after a lot of fighting in Normandy, but he had been Duke of Normandy. There he was. And Edward of England had died in 1051. And Edward of England didn’t have any children, and he apparently chose William as his successor, even though William, as you can tell by his name, he was in Normandy. Why? Well, William was the grandson of Richard II of Normandy, and Richard’s sister Emma was Edward’s mother, so William was Edward’s first cousin once removed. Fair enough.
Godwin, the Earl of Wessex, wasn’t happy about this. He was in exile at the time of Edward’s death, when Edward named his successor. Which would be one of the reasons he wasn’t named as successor. Edward was his son-in-law, and in 1052 Godwin returned to England. He had an army, he got his lands back, and he died in 1053, and so his son Harold, which would be Edward’s brother-in-law… I hope you’re following all this. I might have to put a chart in, like we did with the Scottish succession problem. We might have to put a chart in, because it’s way more complicated than I had remembered. You know, “Oh, William’d been named successor, but Harold wanted it.” No, way more complicated than that.
At any rate, Harold inherited his father’s earldom and he became the main English contender for the throne of England. Although, I’m going to have to tell you, the son of Edmund Ironside—that would be Edward the Exile—who was another first cousin once removed of Edward, was also a contender. But that’s the last I’m going to say about him, because it goes nowhere.
All right. So. Everything was unstable.
Harold was crowned king, at any rate, in January of 1066. So then everything was calm, wasn’t it? England had an English king. No! In September, William invaded. Allies had already attacked through Northumbria first, but William invaded in September, and so that was the Battle of Hastings, and yada yada. And William won. All right.
William, who was the Duke of Normandy, was now also the King of England. And he had his new lands surveyed and accounted for, on account of he needed to know where the taxes were coming from, and he had to keep track of things. So that’s the Domesday Book which means “doomsday” book, which means the book of Judgment Day, meaning that, like, if everything stopped right now, this is who owns what. And he parceled out the lands, and he parceled out earldoms, and he had an interesting life but we’re going to jump to his death.
All right.
He was in Normandy at the time that he died. He left Normandy, which were really coveted lands, to his first son. He didn’t leave England to his first son. He left Normandy to his first son. And that would be Robert Curthose, Duke of Normandy. Richard, who was the second son, was already dead. He had died in 1070, because he had a hunting accident in the New Forest. I’m going to give you a list of people who have hunting accidents in the New Forest but, at any rate, he was one of them. And William, the third son, was left England, and so he was going to be king. And the last son, who was Henry, inherited some money.
Michelle: Would you like to hear a story about William the Conqueror’s funeral?
Anne: Oh, honey! I so want to hear this story. What is your story?
Michelle: So, William the Conqueror gets taken off to the church where they’re going to have his funeral, and then they’re going to inter him. And the monks are trying to, you know, have the service, and they get interrupted from the gathered crowd in the church by this guy who says, “Hold up! You cannot bury him here yet. The land that this church is built on was stolen from my family and I am not allowing this to go forward until I am paid, because this was just stolen.” And the crowd went, like, “Yeah, that’s true. You know, he totally is a descendant of this family that the land was stolen from.” And the monks had to pay this guy off before they could continue with the interment.
Anne: So much for unifying Normandy.
Oh, and then his body exploded, didn’t it?
Michelle: Yes.
Anne: It was really a kind of noxious smell. It was very sad.
Michelle: Yep. Yep.
Anne: Poor William the Conqueror. We don’t know how much this cost, do we?
Michelle: You know what, I could look back at the biography and look it up. Emma Mason is kind of the world’s expert on William Rufus, and she starts her biography of him back with the dad, setting up the conquest and setting up what happens to drop William into it, that he has to get scurrying across the channel to try to get back a hold of things. Because he was with him. He was in Normandy with him, and he had to try to scurry across there before some English person took it into their head that they could, maybe, take it back.
Anne: He left before his father died.
Michelle: Yeah. Yes indeed. He was gone and there’s snottiness in Orderic’s discussion of this, about how Henry was the only one that even went to their dad’s funeral.
Anne: Well, he didn’t have any land to take care of! Henry had been given nothing except some money. He didn’t have to go secure anything.
Henry securing things will be a later part of this story.
Michelle: And, of course, when William the Conqueror knew he was dying he told his son, “You’ve got to get back to England. You have to be Johnny-on-the-spot or you’re not going to be able to hold it.”
Anne: OK, so, let’s all be fair. William did not abandon his father on his deathbed so much as leave when he told him to do so, as to go make hay whilst the sun was shining. OK. Fair enough.
Michelle: Obeying his last command.
Anne: Yes. OK. Let’s say that. I like that. Obeying his last commands. “Cough cough. Go to England! Cough cough.” All right. Thank you.
So, at any rate, he died, and he had a very sad funeral, which none of us want to have, because it was tacky beyond belief.
Michelle: My god! It was just like the horrible version of the future in A Christmas Carol. His servants are stealing crap off his body!
Anne: It’s a wonderful thing to conquer a great deal of the Western world.
Robert and William immediately went to war. Because they both wanted England and Normandy both. Because, see, one of the problems was that the nobles who had gone to England from Normandy with William had been given lots of lands in England when he parceled out all the earldoms, and whatnot, and they owned land in both England and Normandy. In the same way that William had ruled both these realms, they were connected to both realms. And it’s problematic if you own a bunch of land in one place and then you also own a bunch of land in another place because sometimes, like, people, you know, you have to figure out where your allegiance goes. So it made sense to make England and Normandy one unit, again, but of course the problem was that you were going to have to have either Robert or William Rufus, and you couldn’t have both.
Michelle: I like how the two uncles, though, William the Conqueror’s half-brothers, Odo and… I forget the other one’s name, decide that they want Robert because he’s going to be easier to push around than William Rufus, so they join in on the rebellion against William, and then they lie. William Rufus catches Odo—because this rebellion happens quickly, like, 1089. I mean it’s, like, instantaneous.
Anne: She’s talking about the earls’ rebellion, yeah?
Michelle: Yeah.
Anne: Because there’s a bunch of earls and they’re like, “OK, we’re just gonna go to war.”
Michelle: He captures Odo, who’s one of the leaders. William’s forces get a hold of him. And Odo swears all these oaths to him about, you know, “Just let me go back up to my holding in the North and I’ll turn it over to you and things will be fine.” But when he gets back up there, when he tells his men, “Go ahead and open the gates,” he kind of winks at them to let his guys know that he’s in trouble, and instead what they do is they come out and they kill off William’s forces that were there escorting Odo, and they all go back inside and slam the doors and he has to besiege him again!
Anne: Billy Rufus did not have an easy time of it, I will just say.
Michelle: God almighty! And that’s his half-uncle!
Anne: I like your outrage. Because everybody’s so badly behaved. You would think, as much time as we’ve been reading about the Middle Ages, and as much time as we’ve been doing the podcast all about the bad behavior in the Middle Ages, you would think that you would not be so outraged. But I like it that you are. It was family! And they had an oath! Yeah, and so… yeah.
Michelle: Horrible.
Anne: These are sacred things. Sacred things.
Michelle: He’s a bishop! I mean…
Anne: And he’s a bishop. Yeah, that’s true. He’s a bishop.
Michelle: Because, really… Not supposed to behave like that! He should set a better example.
Anne: Yes, he should. We all agree. We all agree here.
There’s another clergyman that’s telling William that he should arrest Odo and William’s, like, “I can’t arrest the Archbishop.” He said, “No, but you can arrest the Earl of…” whatever he’s the earl of.
Michelle: Oh, that’s right. I’d forgot about that. That’s true.
Anne: What is he the earl of?
Michelle: Kent, or something. I don’t know. It’s in the North.
Anne: I think it is.
Michelle: I could look it up.
Anne: Yeah, so he’s arrested not as an archbishop, but as a secular nobleman. Because he gets to be both those things. All right.
So, as to being King of England, William’s… He wasn’t very liked but as far as I can tell he’s not worse than any of the other Normans. I mean he may actually be better than a bunch of… He’s certainly better than King John, let’s say that. But he had a temper, and he was impetuous sometimes. But, you know… And he had quarrels with the Church. Power quarrels, because the Archbishop of Canterbury and the King of England are these two power forces that don’t actually always see eye-to-eye and, you know, one of them has to win. But he did found Bermondsey Abbey, and he managed to keep the Anglo-Norman earls in line after some, you know, the little fight here. Which his father had trouble doing. He kept the Scots from invading, and he built some castles in the Welsh marches. These last two things are good, from an English point of view. I reserve my judgment on them.
And he also acted as Regent in Normandy when his brother Robert went on the First Crusade, and so for that little piece of time, up until his death, England and Normandy were ruled by the same person. So that was nice.
Michelle: I found that relationship with Scotland to be really interesting.
Anne: How so?
Michelle: Because later on, with Edward I, and he’s demanding that the Scottish King do homage to him, and act as his vassal? It kind of… When we were doing Edward I, and the murder of Edward II, it kind of looked like that just came out of nowhere. But that actually happened earlier. The King of Scotland had done homage and become the vassal of William the Conqueror, and then the Scottish King did that again with William Rufus, so Edward I wasn’t, like, pulling that out of his ear.
Anne: OK.
Michelle: That was something that had happened so, you know, in that one particular moment, I will give Edward I a little bit of a pass because he didn’t actually make that up. That was something that had existed.
Anne: I don’t like to give Edward I any passes in the name of Wales and Scotland, but OK. All right. I will nod to history. Fair enough.
Michelle: It was only ridiculous. It wasn’t entirely ridiculous.
Anne: OK. Fair enough.
The chroniclers say that William was hated, but since they were all clergymen and they did not like how he treated the Church, this may be a little biased, so it’s hard to say. It’s also true his court was very much French, not English. I mean, really, this is just the second generation. He was born in Normandy. So that didn’t endear him to the English and, plus, he had a luxurious court, and so contemporaries connected it to effeminacy so, you know, it didn’t have that hearty English feel, apparently.
After his death, writers began to call him a sodomite but there’s no rumors of homosexual activity as separate from luxurious behavior and effeminacy during his lifetime. He had no wife. He had no partners that we know of. He had no children. So it’s easy to make any kind of rumor about his sexuality because we’ve got no notion as to what it was. We actually do not. There’s nothing about illegitimate children. There’s nothing about hanging out with women down at the bar. There’s nothing about hanging out with men down at the bar. There’s not… He’s got some beloved companions but they don’t… The level of companionship doesn’t rise to the level of the companionship that Edward II was having with Gaveston and what’s-his-name. So, we don’t know. We just don’t know. And so people have filled up that gap by making things up.
But what we know about him is that he had a temper. He liked luxury. He was actually apparently very courageous and strong and, you know, not afraid of things and he would whup your ass, apparently. So, at any rate, that’s what we know about William.
Now, before we go to how he died, which is, like, a major thing, and really what we’re talking about in the crime podcast, did you want to add stuff here about him? Because I know you did a lot of work on that.
Michelle: So, the chroniclers who write about him are not only largely monastic chroniclers, they were not high-level leaders in their monasteries and Emma Mason, the biographer, points out that that means that they don’t really understand the ways in which the Church is often connected into the politics.
Anne: Huh.
Michelle: So, for example, Odo being the Earl of Kent and the Bishop of Bayeux, there’s nobody at that level who is writing the chronicles. They’re all kind of lower-level monks and they have a much more idealistic understanding of what the Church is supposed to be doing. So they’re much harder on him than, you know, like, Odo would be, right? Maybe not him, in particular…
Anne: Yeah, maybe not.
Michelle: … but somebody who’s a higher-level churchman and understands the ways in which high-ranking churchmen have to be able to do a little realpolitik.
Anne: OK, so they have a simplistic notion of what the relationship between the Church and the crown is, and how that works?
Michelle: Yes. And I thought that was a fair point.
Anne: That is a fair point, and I like that.
Michelle: She talks about how very, very difficult it is to even get a picture of him because so many of these sources during his lifetime are that. There’s one, from Geoffrey Gaimar, who is not. He’s a Norman. A layperson, who’s writing more based on the chansons that would have been floating around about William.
Anne: Oh that’s a good source!
Michelle: But those are more positive, right?
Anne: Right.
Michelle: But that went nowhere. It doesn’t influence anything that follows afterward. It’s the negative monastic portrayal that…
Anne: Right. That we inherit.
Michelle: … that influences studies of him way down into the nineteenth and even twentieth centuries.
Anne: Wow.
My remark about the chanson, by the way, is from knowing that… My idea that really it’s not good to figure out what a time period or a person is like, historically, from whatever is going on in popular literature at the time…
Michelle: Yeah, no.
Anne: … because they don’t always have any kind of relationship to the same realms of truth, and so that’s why I thought that was hilarious. But yeah, the chansons would really be much nicer about him, and I… Because he was brave, wasn’t he? And a soldier, and you could make romances. Why not?
Michelle: Yeah, and he won a lot of battles. He, you know, he manages to put down that rebellion in 1089. You know, he’s constantly fussing with somebody. He has trouble in Wales, but everybody has trouble in Wales…
Anne: Yay!
Michelle: … that’s why Wales has more castles per square mile than anywhere else in Europe.
Anne: Yes. We were not well behaved in terms of what the English thought of as good behavior. Owain Glyndŵr! Owain Glyndŵr forever! OK. We move on. Yeah. No. He had trouble in Wales? Hello.
Michelle: Everybody has trouble in Wales.
Anne: We invented Corgis. I just want to point that out.
So, shall we go to how he died? Are you ready for this?
Michelle: Yes.
Anne: OK. How he died:
On the second of August, 1100, William went hunting in New Forest.
Now we’re going to have a little segue, because I want to talk about New Forest. It’s still called New Forest although it’s not very new anymore. William the Conqueror had proclaimed it a royal forest. It had been some hamlets and some farmsteads. They got obliterated for the new area, though really the land isn’t good for farming so it wasn’t like it was this great prosperous thing that got obliterated but, you know, there was some activity. And the thing about the royal forest: The royal forest, only the King and nobles, by permission, are allowed to hunt there. That’s it. The royal forests are royal forests. But they also run cattle. There’s some farming. They can use the land for resources, and they also use them as wildlife preserves. Henry I is going to have lions and leopards in his royal forest.
Michelle: Oh why?
Anne: I know! I don’t know where he got them though.
So he went hunting in New Forest, which is where you go hunting if you are royal. He went hunting and he got shot. That’s what happened. Now we leave. OK, wait, no. I’ll tell you more. He got shot by an arrow that was shot by one of his men, and he died, and that is actually the earliest account we have. That is it. William went hunting. He got shot by an arrow that was, you know, shot by one of his men, and he died. And that is the entirety of the account. In the Anglo-Saxon chronicles, that’s it.
But soon there’s more. Later accounts tell us that the man who shot him was William Tirel, who did it by accident, because there’s an arrow that glanced off a tree and hit the King, and that then Tirel jumped on his horse and got the hell away and went to France. William of Malmesbury tells us that the King pulled the arrow out of his own breast, which of course caused him to die more quickly, and also tells us that the body was put was on a cart, bled all the way to Winchester, and was buried in the tower, and then the tower fell down. Although another chronicler tells us that the King managed to keep it together long enough to tell Tirel to flee, and get away, and run! Because it wasn’t his fault and the King was dying by his own hand, really, because he was so bad. And another version is that the hunting party abandoned the King’s body for a few days and peasants brought it in a little later.
But here’s the thing: Nothing happened. There was no inquiry that we have any evidence of. Nobody got in trouble. The King was just dead. That’s it.
Michelle: And Henry, who spent very little time in England, was conveniently there.
Anne: Yes. Henry was part of the hunting party.
Michelle: And it just so happens that William was planning an expedition in France. It just so happens that this prevented him from invading another part of France, other than Normandy. Isn’t that a coinky-clonk?
Anne: Yes, it’s quite a coinky… What the hell word is that? Where do you get these things? Is this a midwestern thing that ya’ll say?
Michelle: Probably.
Anne: Because we do not say that. I’m just… coinky-quonk? Yes. It was what some of us refer to as a coincidence.
Michelle: Emma Mason actually thinks it’s the French who arranged his assassination.
Anne: Oh does she really?
Michelle: And just sort of winked at Henry. “You might want to go spend summer with your brother.” Because they’re the ones that benefit.
Anne: That benefit the most?
Michelle: Mmhmm.
Anne: Even more than Henry, who becomes King of England?
Michelle: Yep, because they do not… What’s going on is there’s another lord who is having to offer him Maine in order to go off and do something or other. It’s like what he did with Robert Curthose where it was mortgaged to him to finance going off to…
Anne: Uh-huh.
Michelle: So it’s like that, only so now he’s going to be allowed to go take up residence in this other part of France, and you know the actual part of France that was held by the Kings of France, at this point, was really small, and they weren’t… Her theory is that they did not want him to hold that part of France too, because then he holds more of France than they do.
Anne: Yeah, indeed. It’s bad enough having the Vikings own Normandy. I mean, lordy.
Michelle: Yeah.
Anne: I had not heard the French-are-behind-it theory but I’m down with it. I like that. Because there’s a bunch of theories, naturally. Naturally. The theories that it wasn’t an accident become quite common and quite pervasive. By the way, I want to skip ahead a little. In the twentieth century, Margaret Murray is going to advance the theory that the King had been killed with his agreement, because he was a pagan and allowed himself to be killed…
Michelle: What?
Anne: No, you’ve got to wait ‘til the end of this. And allowed himself to be killed as a sort of kingly nature god so as to ensure the fecundity of the land. That’s Margaret Murray. But Margaret also thought that there were other sacrifices of this same nature including Thomas Becket, Gilles de Rais, Joan of Arc.
So, here’s the deal: None of her evidence is contemporary, and all of it is misunderstood, so we’re going to leave that there, but I remember this being a big deal with a bunch of my buddies. I never bought it, myself. I was, like, nooooo. Because William Rufus was not actually a pagan! For one thing! That’s a little difficult. He wasn’t even a secret pagan. He was just, you know, this… It’s true that little bits of paganism kind of like survived on in through the Christian Era and, you know, it’s like my grandmother was still putting milk out for the fairies, and that was in the twentieth century, you know. But no, William Rufus was not allowing himself to be killed by his beloved companion with an arrow so that the land would be fecund. He got killed by an accident. It might have been murder, and it might have been an accident, but it wasn’t about the fecundity of the land. I’m just saying. OK. All right. So. You’ve got this down? You’re understanding this now? After your little outrage there for a minute?
Michelle: OK. I don’t buy that.
Anne: No. Nobody buys that.
Michelle: I mean it’s possible it was just an accident. You know, on the accident side of the ledger we do have… He’s already had two family members die by accident in New Forest. His brother Richard was killed there. Richard was maybe sixteen? And he was out hunting and somehow manages to get himself smushed between a branch and his saddlebow. I’m not even positive… Are you backing the horse up? I’m not even sure how that’s possible.
Anne: He was going real fast and he ran into a tree, is what I have read.
Michelle: So, he gets killed in New Forest, and then Robert’s son, also named Richard…
Anne: Mmhmm. Yep. Also.
Michelle: … was killed in New Forest, I believe the same year that William dies.
Anne: Hunting is really dangerous in the Middle Ages. It’s just really… I’m going to give you a list of dead royal people in a minute but yeah. Yeah. No, it could well have been an accident, and it might well have been murder, but it wasn’t pagan sacrifice.
So the big theory, of course, is murder. The King was murdered. So Tirel had no reason, on his own, to murder the King, so then the question is who was it? Who was he working for? If indeed it was Tirel at all. That’s also a piece of information that shows up later. And so the obvious answer would be William Rufus’ younger brother Henry, who inherited the English throne and became Henry I of England, and was in the hunting party. And Rufus had had a dream the night before, we’re told—Again, it’s later chroniclers. I think they’re making it up—that he was going to die, and apparently some other people had prophetic dreams, and so maybe that was all true, but no.
For me, the most compelling evidence about Henry is that William was shot in the afternoon. By that night, Henry was 22 miles away in Winchester where he succeeded in wrangling the royal treasury away. He was selected King the next day by a council assembled very hastily while William was getting buried. Henry left for London, seventy miles away, and was crowned on August 5. So this is all really, really quick.
Michelle: Yeah. Three days later.
Anne: Mmhmm. The breadth of those actions and the quickness of their execution is very suspicious, I think.
Michelle: I agree. I think that the fact that Henry is present, the fact that he moves so quickly. He’s not William’s named successor. William and Robert had had an agreement, after they settled their differences, that they would be each other’s heir.
Anne: Yes. Yeah. Henry grabbed the throne. Yeah. Yeah, he did.
But I have a counterpoint to this. C. Warren Hollister, in 1973, wrote about this, and he argues that that’s not any big deal, noting that when Henry himself would die, completely unsuspiciously, Stephen of Blois would do the very same thing, hasten to grab the throne, hasten to be crowned, and he had had no notice. And when William I had died, everybody cut out immediately and went to take care of their affairs, including, as we have noted, Rufus going off to England before his father was even dead. And so Hollister thinks that this is actually not that unusual. And Tirel, who had been in Rufus’ favor, was a close companion, and he himself said that he had not fired the shot, and that he wasn’t even in that piece of the forest, and at the point at which he says this he was safe in France and had no reason to lie.
So it’s the issue of the lack of inquiry. This is also… This has been an issue for me.
Michelle: Yeah.
Anne: But Hollister argues that there may well have been an inquiry and that the chroniclers simply didn’t report it. We have other instances of that, where we know that there’s an inquiry but we know it only from other sources. And that they don’t make an inquiry for hunting accidents unless there is evidence of ill intent, which would mean it was murder. They don’t. He doesn’t expect an inquiry for a hunting accident. And he also points out that there were no rumors that Henry had had his brother killed. That is all later stuff that people have said. And, hunting accidents—now I go through my little list—hunting accidents were enormously common. As we’ve already said, William Rufus’ older brother had already died, smashing himself into a tree. Robert Curthose’s son, as we’ve mentioned, was shot by accident in the New Forest.
The Earl of Hereford had died from being shot in the breast by a knight who was shooting wildly at a stag. Malcolm of Morville died by being shot accidentally by Adulf of St. Martin. Basil I died when his belt got caught in the stag’s horns.
Michelle: Oh! God!
Anne: I know. Doesn’t that sound awful?
John II Komnenos pricked himself with poisoned arrows. Fulk of Jerusalem got crushed under his horse, and Valdemar the Young of Denmark was shot accidentally while he was on a hunt. This is something that happens.
So I went into the study of this convinced that this was murder. I have now become convinced it was an accident.
Michelle: Interesting.
Anne: Yeah.
So what have you to say on this matter? Because you read someone who is convinced that the French set it up, which I had not even heard! That’s our new rumor.
Michelle: I don’t think that Emma Mason is necessarily pushing that theory. I think that she’s saying, you know, before we decide to hang Henry in effigy, there is this whole other thing that needs to be looked at. But, you know, on the one hand all of these other accidents would imply that this is probably also an accident just, you know, on the law of averages. But the nephew Richard having been killed just earlier in the year, either in April or May, suggests that maybe somebody got the idea of how to get rid of William from that thing having just happened?
Anne: Could be. But there’s no suspicion. There was no suspicion that it was anything but an accident. All of the accusations of murder come later.
Michelle: It probably is. But I feel, kind of, for William. I’m going to be honest. He had a rough go of it for the thirteen years he was King. My goodness. He hardly had any time. I mean his chair didn’t even get warm. He didn’t get to sit down long enough.
Anne: Yeah. I was thinking, myself, you know, because I’ve not run across any popular fiction—you may have—and I thought, you know, why not? Because this is really a candidate for historical fiction and romanticization, and it just doesn’t happen. And it may be that he just simply wasn’t around long enough. But still. Still!
And, of course, you know, the chroniclers do have some nice embellishments of their own. I liked the part… I like to picture that he’s shot in the breast, he pulls the arrow out and, as he’s dying, he says, “Run! Run! This is not your fault!” I find that highly stirring and so, sure! Why not? Do I believe it? Not for a New York minute. But I find it a very lovely story. I think it’s a good story.
Michelle: I very much enjoyed reading Emma Mason’s biography of him. It’s quite well written. She knows a lot about him. I enjoyed learning a bunch of things I didn’t already know about him. I enjoyed learning about his conflict with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Anselm, and it kind of prefigures that conflict between Becket and Henry II. And I very much enjoyed learning that Thomas à Becket pushed for Anselm to be canonized as part of his conflict with Henry II. He’s trying to set up a saintly predecessor.
Anne: Mmhmm. Yeah. We had mentioned that when we were talking about Becket and I hadn’t made this kind of connection. OK. Yeah.
Michelle: I enjoyed finding out that William has a favorite oath. Like, a swear.
Anne: Uh-huh? You must tell us about his favorite oath.
Michelle: I enjoyed this a lot. He’s got… His favorite oath is, “By the holy Face at Lucca!” And I finally looked it up, after about the fourteenth time it showed up, because this is clearly a thing he actually said. And what’s really fascinating about it is that this… It’s a real relic that still exists.
Anne: I have to say, is it like the Face of Boe?
Michelle: No, but it sounds like it. That’s one of the reasons I had to go look it up. Like, what the heck is this?
Anne: By the Face of Boe! Which really turns out to be Captain Jack, doesn’t it? But at any rate, we move on.
Michelle: It’s a wooden crucifix…
Anne: Ah!
Michelle: … that is in the cathedral of St. Martin in Lucca, and for a long, long time we thought that the version that they have is a copy that was made in the twelfth century. But recent testing… This is so exciting! This is new information.
Anne: Yay!
Michelle: Recent testing from 2020, six months ago, has discovered that they have the original.
Anne: Whoa!
Michelle: It is an eighth-century carving. It is now known to be the oldest surviving wooden relic in Europe that we still have. Isn’t that cool?
Anne: This is very cool. And this is the very, very thing that William was swearing oaths by.
Michelle: Yes! He probably never saw it. He probably heard about it from Bishop Baldwin, who had seen it, in his travels, and talked about it.
Anne: Why did it make such an impression on him? I mean, because there’s…
Michelle: I have no idea!
Anne: Because, you know, there’s a lot of crucifixes hanging around Europe at this point. Why this one?
Michelle: I know! It’s just such a… It’s actually this really kind of charming part of his personality that he has this swear but it’s not… It’s like, “Jehoshophat!” Right? It’s kind of calm. It’s not really horrible.
Anne: And it’s totally obscure, even at that time…
Michelle: I know!
Anne: Because, you know, people in England and Normandy hadn’t seen this thing.
Michelle: It’s delightful! I just love it.
There’s an almost certainly apocryphal story of William and Henry causing a breach, causing the fight between Robert and their father. This is probably not true but I love it, so I’m going to share it with you. The chronicles tells a story of William and Henry—the younger brothers—going up on the roof where Robert—the older brother, Robert Curthose—and his followers were having a party. They were all in Normandy. And taking up the roof tiles and peeing down on them.
Anne: You know, I don’t know why you would think that is apocryphal because that seems to me to be the kind of thing that you wouldn’t make up. You know what I mean?
Michelle: So here’s what happened. According to the chronicles, the followers got mad at Robert, his retainers, and said, “Why are you putting up with this?” You know? “Your little brothers are up on the roof peeing down on us. First of all, you know, it’s gross, and secondly they’re clearly making fun of you.”
So Robert gets really, really mad, but he can’t get hold of the brothers and he takes off with his followers and leaves William the Conqueror’s army, and they actually end up in conflict for a number of years after this.
Anne: Huh.
Michelle: Now, I kind of think this is not, probably, true because I don’t actually think that Robert ended up fighting with his father because his little brothers peed on him. And there’s a major—this is one of my big issues with it—there’s a big time gap, an age gap, between William and Henry. There’s, like, ten years between them. So I’m having trouble imagining a thirteen-year-old and a three-year-old peeing down on the older brother. But I will say that this strikes me as being very much in the nature of boys. My father told a story about him and his brother opening up the window and peeing on their older brother and a date, who were down by the front door.
Anne: Yes, this does… See that’s what strikes me. I don’t believe the part about going to war over it. I believe the part about they peed… You know, one or more of the brothers peed on Robert Curthose. That’s what I believe. I totally believe that. And then it got embellished, and it got made into a bigger thing. Totally, I believe that. And I’m willing to believe it was William because, at that point, Henry was too young.
Michelle: Yeah. So, yeah, I learned a lot of stuff. I learned some more about the Domesday Book.
Anne: What did you learn about the Domesday Book?
Michelle: I learned that it is mostly a product of William Rufus’ realm rather than William the Conqueror’s…
Anne: Yeah, he didn’t get it done. Yeah.
Michelle: Because, William the Conqueror, he doesn’t even start it until 1085.
Anne: Yeah, which is very late! Since he’s going to die soon after that.
Michelle: He probably starts the Domesday Book not as a result of the conquest of England, but as a result of some threats from Denmark, and needs to do an inventory.
Anne: That I did not know. I like that. So, Denmark? Who’s ruling Denmark at this point? I’ve got to look that up.
Michelle: They’re having some problems with Denmark, and so he needs to do an inventory of what’s available in the country, and who’s in charge of what.
Anne: OK.
Michelle: I also found out that there’s tremendous controversy in Domesday Book studies—who knew?—about what the relationship is between the inquest—the evidence-gathering that William I started—and the book that William II had written.
Anne: Uh-huh.
Michelle: That the fact-finding was not necessarily done in order to produce a book.
Anne: I see! I see.
Michelle: Isn’t that interesting?
Anne: That is, actually. Yeah. Because I thought they were writing it all down. But they weren’t necessarily collating it. OK. Fair enough.
Michelle: Yeah, these were two different things that happened. William I sent them out to gather a bunch of information, and find out who was in charge of each piece of the land, which then of course was useful for knowing who, you know, to call up when you need something…
Anne: Uh-huh.
Michelle: … but also then for taxation purposes.
Anne: Of course.
Michelle: But it’s William who has the book written. And the book… I had so much fun looking online at facsimiles of copies. It’s beautiful.
Anne: It really is.
Michelle: It’s the most beautiful book. And the level of organization in the bigger portion of it—because it’s two pieces—I learned so much wonky stuff about the Domesday Book. The bigger piece of it is spectacularly well organized. Like, at the beginning of each… It’s organized by county and then at the beginning of each section, which probably were separate books originally, like, so they could consult them more easily, as pamphlets?
Anne: Uh-huh.
Michelle: Like the books of the Bible were separate, originally?
Anne: Right.
Michelle: In the Middle Ages?
Anne: Right.
Michelle: Anyhow there’s a list of the land holders in that county, all nicely organized according to status, so the King is listed first, and then the abbots and then, you know, if there’s any earls, and it just goes down the list, and each of them has a number by it that then corresponds to that person’s section, later on, which sounds really basic, but this is organizational cutting-edge!
Anne: It is so brilliant. The Normans were actually very good at organization. They really, really were.
Michelle: You know, my husband works at an information school, right? So I told him he needs to go give them a talk about how the Normans held on to England with cutting-edge information technology.
Anne: Right on!
Michelle: I mean, they’ve got the list, and it’s got numbers, and then you can easily look it up!
Anne: It’s true. It’s true.
Michelle: It is! Yeah, they have this whole pioneering thing that… I was astounded, actually, because, you know, books don’t even have titles at this point…
Anne: Right.
Michelle: … and there certainly isn’t an index or anything like that.
Anne: No.
Michelle: So this was very impressive.
Anne: No, it’s very impressive, actually. It’s funny, because it seems so simple to us, but it’s really… it’s highly impressive.
Michelle: The other really fascinating thing I learned is that the Earl of Warwick who, you know, is such a huge figure, from here on out, for the rest of the Middle Ages?
Anne: Right.
Michelle: The Earl of Warwick is a position that is created after William successfully puts down that rebellion of 1089…
Anne: Oh!
Michelle: … because he gets a bunch of help from Richard of Beaumont and makes him Earl of Warwick.
Anne: OK. So it’s not one of William the Conqueror’s earls.
Michelle: No. It’s William Rufus’s.
Anne: All right.
Michelle: It’s a reward for this guy who had his back during that rebellion.
Anne: All right! Alrighty then. Later on a whole other one will be Kingmaker…
Michelle: Yeah.
Anne: For a while.
Michelle: Some later descendant. Yeah.
Anne: A later descendant. Yeah.
So yeah, so Denmark—so I looked this up—Yeah, Canute IV is raiding England in 1085, and he plans an invasion to take the throne of England—I’m in Wikipedia. He called up a fleet of 1000 Danish ships, 60 Norwegian longboats, and planned to meet with Count Robert of Flanders, so that is exactly what’s going on. The Danes are about to invade. Yeah.
Michelle: So yeah. I found out that there is a wider and deeper pool of Domesday Book studies than I really knew existed.
Anne: Yeah. There’s wider and deeper pools of everything, really. Or it’s a bog. There’s a wider and deeper bog.
Michelle: But it’s just beautifully written. The handwriting is gorgeous. And it’s in this very, very legible Carolingian miniscule. You’ve got the list of names. The numbers are rubricated, so it’s very well designed to be a useful reference work.
Anne: Yeah. It’s very clearly readable…
Michelle: Yeah.
Anne: … and then you can go back and forth. Yeah.
Michelle: Yeah. And the idea that each of the counties were different little books? We can tell that, that’s not a theory, because of the wear on the folios. So, cool! And apparently people still consult the Domesday Book to try to make cases about their ancestors.
Anne: Yes, and they still drag it up if they’re talking about genealogy too. Often when they do that they actually get things wrong, but whatever.
Michelle: So I found out, also, that it was called the King’s Book.
Anne: Yes. Domesday was later. Yeah.
Michelle: Yeah. It’s a little bit later that it’s called that, but I also found out that Orderic—our man Orderic—was, of course, all over this, since we’re right in his time period, and he was the first chronicler known to have called William the Conqueror, “the Bastard.”
Anne: Of course he was! We remind our listeners that it’s Orderic Vitalis who thinks that the White Ship sank on account of everybody committing sodomy on it, when really—whether they were or not—getting drunk and hitting a rock is enough of an explanation.
Yeah, he’s a very moralistic chronicler, is our Orderic.
Michelle: And there’s a lot of changes that happen—in between when William is born, you know, and when Orderic is writing—about what constitutes a legitimate marriage. There’s a real tightening, and Henry tries to argue that he’s the more legitimate heir because he was born after the conquest, so of course he should be King of England. What the heck that has to do with anything?
Anne: Well, because they didn’t have England before then. This totally makes sense to me. Yeah. Go Henry go!
Michelle: And I just want to remind everybody that Henry is our dude who’s the dad of the prince who died in the White Ship, and he himself was known to have had at least twenty illegitimate children.
Anne: Yes, he had a whole lot of children, but only one of them was one that could inherit the throne, and that guy drowned as a young man, on the White Ship. Drunk, we know. Committing sodomy? We have no idea.
Michelle: And the husband of Mabel showed back up in my reading for this as well, because he was one of William’s lords.
Anne: The husband of which Mabel?
Michelle: Mabel, Mabel de Bellême.
Anne: Oh! Mabel de Bellême! OK. Yes. OK.
Michelle: Things all come together with this one, really.
Anne: A thousand years of medieval history, really, there’s a whole lot there. Yes, Mabel de Bellême, from that horrible family that everybody said was so bad, in Normandy. We did a podcast about that. And her husband, yes, her husband is Roger de Montgomery. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Michelle: And he was one of William Rufus’ lords—of course William the Conqueror’s, but then William Rufus’—and was reputed to be siding with Robert in that conflict that they had, but was clever enough to not be so obvious about it that William has to do something about it after it gets settled.
Anne: Yeah, that would have been a hard position, really. But, you know, like all those other nobles, he’s got lands in England. He’s got lands in France. He’s really got a… You know you had to balance things very carefully, and you often ended up having to go to war, and you had to figure out what side was probably going to win because that’s actually… It’s not like people were going, “Morally, I belong to the whatever.” Maybe. Mostly you had to figure out what side you thought was the best bet, and go in there.
Michelle: This was a tough couple decades. I mean, it’s not like Norman rule is always really peaceful, but this was a particularly… I mean, when I was reading the biography, there were a whole bunch of auxiliary murders that I just sort of made note of, to add to our list.
Anne: Oh good! So we can hit those later. Yeah.
Michelle: The King of Scotland gets killed in an ambush!
Anne: I think we have him on our list. Yeah.
Yeah, I want to find some dreadful crimes during William the Conqueror’s reign because then we get to talk some about that, but yeah.
Yeah, this murder… And that’s not even to mention the hunting accidents. The plain old, damn, running your horse into a tree accidents, you know? There’s lots of stuff going on. It’s a very bloody time.
Michelle: Yeah, I want to put the death of the King of Scotland on our list because it’s really interesting, because he’s killed by one of William Rufus’ noblemen who thinks he’s going to get rewarded, and actually William is so mad at him!
Anne: It’s like those guys that go and kill Becket. “Oops!” “Oops, sorry! I thought that’s what you wanted! I really thought that!” Damn.
So we have Domesday Book, we have medieval hunting, we have William Rufus going off on a nice, old hunting jag and never coming home. And that’s what we’ve got.
You got anything else we need to say about William Rufus?
Michelle: I mean, I guess it’s not terribly surprising that when you go off to kill, you know, six-hundred-pound animals with sharp-y things, that somebody gets dead, fairly regularly.
Anne: No, it isn’t. It isn’t.
Theoretically the stag hunting is not even as deadly as things like, for instance, hunting wild boars. That’s the worst. You don’t go hunting wild boars without losing some of the dogs, and some of the boys that are beating the bushes. It’s like, so deadly.
Michelle: But hunting today is… I mean, hunting is still dangerous. You can get shot by another hunter, you know? Sometimes people have heart attacks and fall out of their deer stands. So it’s still…
Anne: OK. Wait. Wait, wait, wait. Having a heart attack and falling out of your deer stand really has nothing to do with hunting. That just has to do with where you were when you had your heart attack.
Michelle: Well, except that you did all the work to get yourself out into the woods, and you climbed up into the deer stand, and now you are overstressed, and you sit down and have your heart attack.
Anne: OK, instead of having it while you’re jogging. OK. Fair enough.
Michelle: And I assume that, in the Middle Ages, as now, once there’s beer involved, then it’s just a little bit worse…
Anne: Right.
Michelle: … in terms of the likelihood of an accident.
Anne: Yes.
Which we hadn’t even thought of but, you know, they go out in the morning on that hunt, and he’s shot in the afternoon, so god knows what they’ve been imbibing all that time.
That’s our new theory! Alcohol was involved! We can write a book.
Michelle: I think it’s fair. I mean…
Anne: I think that’s, yes, that’s one everybody knows.
So yeah, so all my life I’ve been convinced that William Rufus was murdered, and I was shocked to come to the end of my work on this and going, “Huh, I kind of don’t think so.” I think he went out in the morning and got shot by accident. That’s what I’m thinking. And that it happened to be really advantageous for several people, including his younger brother.
Michelle: I hope we come up with another crime in Henry I’s time, because I would like to circle back to him because I think it’s very interesting that he has, you know, this death that is so fortuitous for him, even if he did not arrange it, and then, you know, the accident of the White Ship, which some people do try to claim was a murder, and absolutely wasn’t, it was just bad decision making by young people. You know, those two things as bookends for his reign are really, really interesting.
Anne: Yeah, because he’s shattered. He’s shattered by the death of his son on the White Ship. Yeah, his son, and other children, and a great many relatives. That was a horrible, horrible accident.
And it really was an accident!
Yeah, so this is, I think, another example of, “It really was an accident!” Only, you know, we want to make a story about it being a murder.
Michelle: It is interesting, though, that there aren’t contemporary rumors…
Anne: No.
Michelle: … whereas, like, when we go down to Richard III, right? When his nephews… There were rumors. Right away.
Anne: Immediately there’s rumors. Immediately.
Michelle: … that he had… Yeah.
Anne: Yeah, and I think he had. But no, there weren’t, and it was… No, Henry was never talked about as someone who was a fratricide. He never was. And so I’m thinking, “No.” The contemporaries accepted it as a hunting accident, and that’s why there was no inquiry. It happened to be the King, but it could have been anybody. That’s why there was no inquiry.
Tirel, on the other hand, I don’t know. But I think Tirel was like, you know, why… And some go, “Why did Tirel run?” Well I think Tirel ran because Tirel was not an idiot. Even, you know… And he said he wasn’t there! He said it wasn’t him.
Michelle: OK, total sidebar, but that name, Tirel, appears to be basically a synonym for “murderer.” Isn’t… I mean Shakespeare uses that all the time…
Anne: Uh-huh.
Michelle: … in his plays, for the hired lackey to kill somebody.
Anne: I wonder where this comes from. Tirel.
Michelle: I’m positive that’s true, that in a couple of his plays that there are hired lackeys to, you know, randomly dispose of…
Anne: In a different realm they’re going to bring down Joffrey Baratheon but, you know, I don’t know. Tirel’s a good name.
Michelle: That name kept pegging me, and I finally figured out what it was ringing, what bell it was ringing for me. It’s because, whenever there’s a murderer in Shakespeare, he’s called that.
Anne: James Tirel was an English knight, a trusted servant of King Richard III, and allegedly he confessed, and so that’s why Shakespeare uses his name. That’s why. That’s where it comes from.
Yes, and so one Tirel apparently shot William and then another Tirel apparently might have killed some kids in the Tower.
Michelle: I’m writing—not even connected to reality, historical fiction—I’m positing a secret guild of assassins in England, and they’re named Tirel.
Anne: There you go! There you go. I think that’s good. I like it that it now has other, you know, resonances, with Game of Thrones. Which we haven’t mentioned in a while and so, there you go.
Michelle: That’s true.
Anne: I know.
I like to bring it back in. Bringing it back in.
So is that it for our Billy Rufus?
Michelle: I don’t have anything else. That was my whole list of interesting things that I learned.
Anne: I’m glad to… I really was looking forward to thinking about William Rufus, but I’m shocked. Yeah. No. People behaving badly in terms of shooting their arrows in the wrong direction. That’s where you go.
The next time that you hear from us it will be our April 1 episode. We’re going to celebrate April Fool’s Day by commemorating the point at which the King of Spain outlaws droit du seigneur, which didn’t actually ever exist, and so there you go!
Michelle: I think that’s a delightful choice. I’m so excited about that.
Anne: Yeah, that was me. I did that. And would you want to explain droit du seigneur, in case people don’t remember it immediately?
Michelle: So, if you’ve seen Braveheart, you know what this is. This is this idea that the lord claims the right to sleep with any bride on her wedding night, and then hand her back as “soiled goods” to her husband the next morning.
Anne: Why am I getting the impulse to hit somebody, somewhere, someplace?
Michelle: I know.
Anne: There’s nothing. Nobody to hit here. The parrot’s sleeping. OK, at any rate. Yeah. Yes, that’s that idea, and so it’s outlawed. We all believe it. No, you and I don’t believe it because we are no fools, but everybody believes it because it sounds so medieval, and Ferdinand’s even going to say it can’t ever happen, but no, it wasn’t there.
Michelle: It’s really safe, as a general rule of thumb, that if you saw it in Braveheart, assume it’s a lie.
Anne: Oh Jesus. Every single thing in Braveheart. I swear to god. “Freedom!” Yeah, no. No! Just no. Frankly, anything that Mel Gibson says… OK… We’re not even going to go to that thing where he, like, you know, the whole thing about Jesus. No, let’s not go there.
Crimes committed in the name of film. Hmm.
Well, that’s all for us, for William Rufus. This has been True Crime Medieval, where the crimes are just like they are today, but with less technology. Apparently people still shoot each other in the forest, I’m just saying.
Michelle: It’s true.
Anne: It’s true! Just mostly not with arrows, but sometimes with arrows.
We’re on Apple podcasts, iHeart podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, all those places where podcasts live. Please leave a review on Apple, we’d really appreciate that. Maybe it’s just me, but I have this, like, little goal that we have enough reviews that we actually show up on Apple if you search under “true crime.” We don’t show up there yet. We show up on “medieval.” If you search for “medieval,” that’s where we are. But I want “true crime.” I totally want “true crime.” I don’t know if I’m going to get that.
You can reach us at truecrimemedieval.com, where you can find the Show Notes, which are written for us by Michelle, the transcripts, which are done for us by our beloved Laurie Dietrich, and you can also reach us all through the web page, and you can leave comments! We would love to hear from you. If you have medieval crimes that you’d like for us to discuss, please let us know. We’ll take them under advisement. And if you want to add anything or correct anything about one of our podcasts, please let us know, because then we’ll say what you said! We’ll say!
And yeah, so that’s it for us. Yeah. So bye!
Michelle: Bye!
St. Patrick Gets Kidnapped, Roman Britain, late 5th C.
Anne: Hello and welcome to True Crime Medieval, One Thousand Years of People Behaving Badly. I’m Anne Brannen. I’m your host in Albuquerque.
Michelle: And I’m Michelle Butler, in Maryland, the most medieval state in America, where the sun is finally shining for the first time in two weeks! It’s very exciting.
Anne: Oh! That’s adorable. That’s adorable. We had a giant snowstorm and the sun was still shining, but hey, New Mexico.
Today, in honor of St. Patrick’s Day, which is going to be showing up in a while, we will be talking about St. Patrick. Various crimes connected therewith. But first, one of our listeners had something that he was telling Michelle about the Book of Kells. We were talking about the Book of Kells, and how it was found under a sod, and we found this, like, you know, what the hell?
Michelle, please report on (not sure, sounds like “user’s”) experience.
Michelle: Right, so my brother-in-law pointed out that if you cut grass and then you put something under it, then the grass on top is going to die. Even if you put it back down on top of the book, and somebody will eventually come and check on that. Which seems like a perfectly valid observation to make. And possibly is a reminder that I don’t go outdoors as much as I should.
Anne: Yes, and we are told it was under a sod, meaning not just in the dirt, but under a sod. So that the sod had turned yellow totally makes sense to us, and we thank you, Michelle’s brother-in-law, for contributing that. Thank you! Yay the listeners!
So, St. Patrick. St. Patrick was born in Britain… He was born in Britain. We’re going to get to that later. Sometime in the fifth century. We don’t know when but, you know, sometime in the fifth century, someplace. Where, we don’t know. When, we don’t know. He calls himself Patricius, and he never uses any other name, so “Patrick” is fine to call him.
We have two surviving works of his, both in Latin. There’s a confession of his life and there’s a letter to the soldiers of Coroticus, so any details we have of his life really are from that. There’s some stuff that comes from the Irish annals, but they’re written about a hundred years later so, whatever.
Now. He was born someplace in Roman Britain. The place candidates are Ravenglass in Cumbria, Birdoswald, which is over near Carlisle, maybe Northampton, Scotland, Wales. He tells us specifically where he’s from but, you know, it means nothing because we don’t know where that was. He tells us that his father was Calpurnius, who was a deacon, who was son of Potitus, a priest, and that they were at this unknown place called Bonaven Tabernia, wherever that was.
At some point in the Confession, he talks about Britain as “near to my native land,” and also this is unclear. But even though his father and his grandfather were Christian, Patrick sort of wasn’t much, until he got captured by Irish pirates when he was sixteen, along with, he tells us, thousands of others, because, as he explains, God was annoyed with them because they were not being very good Christians.
So he tells us, also, that he hesitated to write all this stuff down because, unlike people who never had to change their ways of speaking since childhood, he had to translate it. He had to translate his speech and words into a foreign language. And he calls himself a country person, and unlearned. His father, actually… He comes from an estate. So I don’t know. “Country person,” whatever. And “unlearned?” I don’t know. He studied in Europe.
Michelle: I got the impression that he was always a little self-conscious about the years that he missed while he was enslaved in Ireland. That those were some really important education years that he kind of felt like he never got back.
Anne: I think that that’s true. And that there’s also, as we know, this convention in medieval autobiography where you explain that you don’t know anything, so I think both those things are operating.
Michelle: Mmm.
Anne: But I have also seen scholars talk about his Latin as rustic, and so his Latin was not, you know, enormously wonderful, I suppose.
In Ireland he was a shepherd. More on that later. And he prayed continually and he began to love God more and more, and there was a voice… About six years on, into being in Ireland as a slave, there was a voice that told him that he would be going home soon, and so he ran away and he got into a ship full of pagans. And when they got to land they were starving, and he confidently told them that God was going to help, which God did, in the form of a bunch of pigs, and so they all converted. And this kind of becomes a theme with him, really.
But he got captured again, and then he was freed, by God, after two months and, in a few years he was back in Britain with his parents but, he had a vision of a man named Victoricus bringing a bunch of letters from Irish people—who I suppose all could write—begging him to come back, so eventually he did. And he wanted to go home but he never did, because he was supposed to stay and, at any rate, yeah, so that’s his story. He went to Ireland. He converted people. He wasn’t that uneducated because we know that he studied in Europe and we also know that he was ordained by Saint Germanus of Auxerre, but the return to Ireland… This going back to Ireland might have to do with some charges which were brought against him for something he did when we was… before he’d been captured into slavery—the first time, when he was about fifteen—and we have no idea what it was. We have no idea what it was. Some people think it was financial. But this dangerous trek around Ireland, converting people, was, as far as he was concerned, a penance for something that he’d done in his youth, at about fifteen years old. So, the crime of St. Patrick. We have no idea what it was! But he was really, really sorry.
And the legends start up about him about two hundred years later. Now, so, I have some things to say about all this.
First of all, he wasn’t actually the first person to bring Christianity into Ireland.
Michelle: No, there was a bishop, Palladius, who was sent there.
Anne: Yeah, there was a bishop who was sent there by the Pope at the beginning of the fifth century, so a few decades before St. Patrick got there. But we don’t know his name and we know St. Patrick’s name.
Michelle: Mmhm.
Anne: Because St. Patrick wrote stuff. See, this is why, you know, the writing things down is, like, so important.
So, he wasn’t really the first but he is the famous, famous, famous one, and he wrote stuff and legends started springing up about him. About two hundred years after he died the legends started. And we’re not going to go into the legends, because you know the legends. There were snakes involved. There was a bunch of things with druids. Blah blah blah. At any rate.
Irish piracy! Fifth century! That’s what I want to talk about.
There were regular slave raids on Britain, and St. Patrick happened to be one of the captives, and so that’s really a big deal. But those slave raids had started… They were, like… A couple centuries after Roman Britain was getting destabilized, in the fifth century, Dublin was going to become a major slave trading center under the Vikings, in the ninth century, but when the Vikings put in that slave trade, slavery was already well-established in Ireland.
The laws in Ireland held the slave class as the lowest of the non-free classes. Meaning you weren’t in a kinship group, because that was how things were organized in Ireland. You belonged to some kind of family whatsit. There was moveability. You could work your way up. You could eventually get out, and actually going and getting more members of this class was discouraged, in general, by the laws, but not necessarily paid attention to. But, at any rate, the slave raids from Ireland on Britain were part of this Hiberno-Roman relations that’s just… This goes back and forth.
The Romans, after invading Britain, had made their trade routes with Ireland stronger. They’d already had them, but they made them even stronger. We’ve got Roman coins and jewelry that we found at Tara and Cashel and Dunsink. And there was also a slave trade that was going from Roman Britain into Ireland. So, from… So the Irish people were getting taken on into Roman Britain, and this was because the economy of Roman Britain was agricultural, and so it was especially lovely to have slaves to do the hard labor. That’s why that was going on.
But Roman Britain fell apart, and the trajectory reversed, and so the Irish were taking slaves from Roman Britain.
The Roman Empire had also brought Christianity to Ireland. That’s decades before Patrick, as we’ve said. And they’d also brought the Latin alphabet, which is the basis of the Ogham alphabet, which was invented in Irish settlements in Wales. So there’s all that. But, Gaelic Ireland was also growing crops, but the mainstay of the economy was cattle. And then after cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, and so that’s why what St. Patrick was doing was being a shepherd. He was not working the crops. They weren’t the big deal. So.
We have evidence of Irish raiding from the Roman military installations at Cardiff, Anglesey, and the Cumbria coastal sites, and so we know that there was this back-and-forth. And, here’s the deal… This is especially for Michelle who, in our last podcast, when we were explaining about the Swedish pirates from a few hundred years later, was very interested in the boats!
They had to have been using oared ships with mast and sails, and that is an indication of continental maritime technology and so, that early, there was movement of technological maritime ideas.
Michelle: Hmm.
Anne: Because they weren’t using… “The Irish raiders showed up in the currachs!”
Michelle: Yeah, no.
Anne: No, they didn’t. You cannot put thousands of people into your little currach. No. No, they had actual real ships. We just don’t hear about them as much. I think they’re not as romantic.
Michelle: But I do want a little moment of silence for whoever was brave, in Bronze Age Ireland, and put probably a little cow, you know, into a currach and took it across, so that they could start having cows in Ireland. That would have been a tricky endeavor.
Anne: Well, thank you. A moment of silence for the cow-toting across the Irish Sea.
Michelle: That was some serious bravery, even with him only being a calf, to…
Anne: Yeah. There’s no point, really, in putting a currach picture on the website, because currachs were not involved, in this particular story…
Michelle: No.
Anne: But can you link to one in the Show Notes, Michelle? So that people can see why we know very well that St. Patrick was not captured by somebody steering a currach?
Michelle: Sure.
Anne: That was not happening. But yeah, so, St. Patrick. He really did exist. He wrote some stuff, that’s how we know about him. And, because he wrote some stuff, and that we know about him, he became extremely famous and extremely beloved. They’ve got lots of stories about him, and Michelle found films.
Michelle: I did! This is interesting. I didn’t go digging around in all of the historical fiction. There’s a fair amount of historical fiction about St. Patrick.
Anne: Now, this historical fiction… Does it involve currachs? Because I’m betting it does! A lot, a lot.
Michelle: Probably. I am…
Anne: “They had masted, oared ships with which they got whole bunches of people and took them back to take care of the cattle.” No! Nobody says this! It’s all “Currachs. The Irish currach…” No. It was not!
More debunking going on. One thousand years of people behaving badly and generating an enormous amount of trash. OK.
OK, so, historical fiction. There was a bunch?
Michelle: There’s quite a lot of it, and of course it starts in the actual Middle Ages, because you have all of these, you know, legends growing up. You’ve got the vitae which are theoretically not lying, but hagiography ends up lying. Probably not on purpose.
Anne: I think hagiography always, like, tells the truth metaphorically.
Michelle: That’s a nice way to think about it.
Anne: Yes, it’s a very nice way of putting that. So, was St. George, for instance… St. George. A lot of people don’t know that St. George is a martyr, but he was. There was a dragon, and then there was a martyr. So, first of all, did St. George fight a dragon? Probably not. Was he martyred…? He was one of those martyrs that got martyred, like, several times, like, you know, they cut his head off and they boiled him in oil and they did all kinds of things—they cut his entrails up—they did all kinds of things to him and he kept… St. Michael kept bringing him back. I myself, personally, would get annoyed by this, but St. George? No, no! He, you know… And so did he actually… I’m willing to believe he was a Christian convert and a martyr. Dragons? No. Getting killed several times, and brought back by St. Michael? No. But metaphorically, see? Metaphorically that’s all true! At a spiritual level! And so, therefore, all the snakes out of Ireland? No. No. But metaphorically! If you see what I mean.
Michelle: So, I do have a recommendation for an intro biography…
Anne: Yay!
Michelle: … about St. Patrick that is academically informed but not impenetrable prose, which I do tend to try to find those. So this is by Philip Freeman and it’s called St. Patrick of Ireland: A Biography. It’s…
Anne: Does it have currachs in it? This is going to be my line…
Michelle: No.
Anne: … For how we know that something is actually paying attention to reality.
Michelle: No. It does not. It’s not real long. It’s about 160 pages, and so it’s a fairly concise introduction to…
Anne: Because we don’t really know anything!
Michelle: Well, and talking a little bit about, you know, what would his life have been like as a, you know, they’re not lords but… So what was his life like before he got captured? What would it have been like during his, you know, enslavement time? How do you find your way back from the west of Ireland to get a boat to escape, make your escape? Because I’m pretty sure that, in this time in Ireland, they shaved the slaves’ heads, so that it was obvious who was an escaped slave.
Anne: And yet… And yet! They agreed to take him back.
Michelle: Yeah.
So the coolest stuff I found, the particular rabbit hole I went down this time, was film. OK. So I found some OK-ish films. I found a couple of truly dreadful ones. And I found some old ones! This was what was really, really striking to me, is how early in the history of film St. Patrick ends up in it.
Anne: Hmm.
Michelle: There is a film from 1912 in the US…
Anne: Whoa! That is quite early!
Michelle: Yeah!
The Life of St. Patrick: From the Cradle to the Grave. If it still exists, I can’t find it. I know it did exist.
Anne: So we can’t go to YouTube and watch it?
Michelle: Not as far as I can tell. Maybe somebody else can find it, but I did not find it. That one I can’t find a whole lot about, but it’s not nearly as… That’s fine, because it’s not nearly as interesting as the 1920 silent film from Dublin.
Anne: Ooh! Well, it’s from Dublin. This makes sense.
Michelle: I read all about this because…
Anne: Of course the Dublin film people are going to be more interested in St. Patrick. Though the 1912 is very interesting indeed, but still. Were you able to find this, and see this?
Michelle: I know it exists. But it is not on the internet as far as I can tell.
Anne: Darn.
Michelle: It is in an archive in… I believe in England. And they appear to hold the rights to it, which means it’s not on the web as far as I can tell.
But every piece of this is fascinating! The guy who made it, the filmmaker is named Norman Whitten. He was born in 1881 in London, OK? So this is the first piece I’m fascinated with, that he’s not Irish.
Anne: Yeah. Yeah, nothing about this. Yeah.
Michelle: He was the first actor to play the Mad Hatter!
Anne: No!
Michelle: I know!
Anne: I love him! He… He is now a hero of mine. I must have pictures. Yes. OK. Thank you.
Michelle: And he married the young woman who played Alice in that production.
Anne: Of course he did. Of course he did. That’s also very nice to know. And sort of weird, but OK.
Michelle: So they moved to Dublin in 1913…
Anne: Why?
Michelle: … and set up a film company. I have no idea. To set up a film company called General Film Supply, which you wouldn’t think, from the title, was actually making movies. You’d think they were, like, selling film and cameras and stuff.
Anne: Yeah. To the vast film industry of 1913 Ireland, right?
Michelle: Yeah. So they set up a company and they… His company made newsreels, advertising, things like that. To be shown before the main feature.
Anne: OK. OK, that’s interesting. Because that’s a nice little… That’s a nice little niche. Yeah, OK. Fair enough.
Michelle: Yeah. His company produced the first animated film in Ireland, in 1917, called Ten Days Leave, which does not survive but what we think is probably about a soldier in the first world war on a ten day’s leave, because that seems… Context clues suggest that that might be what’s going on.
Anne: OK. OK.
Michelle: So, when the Rising happened, he filmed the release of Sinn Féin prisoners and then he made a film called Sinn Féin Review, in 1919, that was promptly seized by the police, during a showing, and banned.
Anne: Huh. Can we find it? Is it on YouTube?
Michelle: You know, I didn’t look for that one. I didn’t look for that one.
Anne: Because I want that!
Michelle: I know! Probably it doesn’t survive.
Anne: No.
Michelle: Given everything else that happened in the Rising, it probably did not survive. The English probably took that out and burned it immediately.
Anne: The British were not… The British weren’t having an enormous amount of charity toward this. Toward anybody, at this point.
Michelle: This guy is fascinating because he’s doing all these things but he doesn’t appear to be politically motivated. He just thinks there’s an… He’s not Irish. He doesn’t have particular sympathies, but he appears to know his audience. Where he’s living, in Dublin.
Anne: That is very interesting. That is very interesting indeed.
Michelle: Yeah. He… When he filmed the release of the Sinn Féin prisoners in 1917, he had his footage in the movie theaters that night, because he was able to develop the film there, whereas other companies had to send their film to London to be processed. So he was Johnny-on-the-spot with that. Then he made what he claimed was just a newsworthy event, you know? Newsworthy coverage of things that were happening in the Sinn Féin Review, and it got totally seized and probably destroyed by the English.
So that’s the background for this dude who, in 1920, makes his debut feature film called In The Days of St. Patrick…
Anne: Huh.
Michelle: That starred his own son as young Patrick. There was another actor who played Patrick as an adult. But the subtitles for it were in both Irish and English…
Anne: Maith an buachaill!
Michelle: It was…
Anne: And this was… Tell me again, this is 1920?
Michelle: 1920.
Anne: OK. Yeah, so yeah, he does know his audience.
Michelle: Yes.
Anne: This is part of the Revival.
Michelle: Yes.
Anne: Yeah, OK.
Michelle: Yes.
Anne: OK. Got it. Awesome.
Michelle: And it’s very much drawing on, you know, both what really happened in Patrick’s life but also the legends. So there’s a scene about him driving the snakes out of Ireland. Every… Oh my god! Everything about this is amazing! They had basically an embedded journalist in the production, because the journalist was an extra in the film, and would write up chatty columns for his newspaper after every couple days of filming.
Anne: Do you know what the newspaper was?
Michelle: Oh, I can find out! Because I’ve got the article from the website Early Irish Cinema. What the heck is this guy’s name? His abbreviation is J.A.P. Bioscope! The newspaper is Bioscope.
Anne: Yeah, I want to know where it’s based.
Michelle: That’s a good question, that I did not think to ask. I’m trying to also find out the name of the journalist, because he’s being abbreviated there as JAP. Who the heck is that?
Anne: Oh my god. “Originally published by Archibald Hunter in 1908 and edited by actor John Cabourn, The Bioscope emerged at a time when cinemas were beginning to sprout up around London and an opportunity in the market presented itself.” This is a London…
Michelle: It’s a London…?
Anne: This is a London publication.
Michelle: Fascinating.
Anne: That is. Indeed.
Michelle: So it’s a column called “Irish Notes,” that this journalist is writing for.
Anne: Got it. Got it.
Michelle: And he is also an extra in the film, so he has all these chatty dispatches from the film, and the work they were actually doing.
Anne: I don’t think we know… I don’t think we know his name.
Michelle: Oh, OK. So, here… So it’s just JAP?
Anne: All we know of him is that he’s JAP.
Michelle: OK.
But it’s just stunning, right? Because they have all of this publicity while they’re filming, and really unusually for a film at this time, this film is shown in Dublin and then it’s shown in England and then it comes to the United States.
Anne: That’s quite a trajectory. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Michelle: Yeah.
Anne: So it tours the United States, or just comes to, like, New York?
Michelle: Let’s see if there… Let’s see if they say in more detail than I’m remembering.
Anne: I’m guessing New York and Boston.
Michelle: “British dates began to appear…” Let’s see… Then it comes… It comes to Washington.
Anne: Whoa!
Michelle: Washington and Phibsboro?
Anne: Yeah, I don’t know. But it goes to Washington. OK. At any rate. So this is… This film does pretty well?
Michelle: Yeah. This appears to be the high point of his filmmaking career, to be honest. There’s an interesting quote here from the article in Early Irish Cinema, on earlyirishcinema.com. Quote:
“Whitten was very clearly making a political film, but one very different from his banned Sinn Féin Review.”
And then they give the name of the film, in Irish. It looks like Aimsir Padraig, which means I’m pronouncing it wrong. Because nothing is pronounced the way it looks.
“So the film…”
This film, about St. Patrick…
“… was political in appealing to an Irish separatism based not on the politics of Sinn Féin and the IRA but on Catholicism and Gaelic culture expressed in the speaking of Irish or aspiring to.”
And then:
“The learning of Irish is depicted in the film in a scene that is Patrick’s only really positive experience as a slave in Ireland.”
When he’s learning the language.
I would really like to see this film.
Anne: I want to see that film too.
Michelle: There are stills from it, but…
Anne: Well, I want to see the Sinn Féin film. That’s awesome.
Michelle: Yeah, that too.
Anne: But yeah, I would like to see this. That is… That’s… I… And I wonder, like, what… Why? Why did he go to Ireland? Like… No connection! His wife’s got no connection. Like, what the hell?
Michelle: No.
Anne: Was he just seeing a market that, you know, wasn’t saturated yet, so he had…
Michelle: Maybe. It is sort of interesting though that this Englishman, you know, comes to Ireland and gets involved with the very early days. Makes this pro-Irish film and then, when his business fails, returns to England.
Anne: OK, so the business did fail?
Michelle: Yeah. The business fails.
Anne: OK. Well, I’m sorry. And what did he do when he went back to England? Is he still an actor? Is he still doing film? What’s he doing?
Michelle: He does other things. He ends up serving as an ARP warden.
Anne: ARP?
Michelle: Air Raid Patrol.
Anne: Ah! Oh. That’s in the Second World War.
Michelle: Yep.
When he was still in Ireland, in 1917, he set up Ireland’s first regular newsreel service. So this guy was all over the place. I mean, he clearly was really good at starting things, and not so great at keeping them running. And he seems to really have been inspired and, you know, knowing what would be a big thing, but really being bad at the follow through.
Anne: I wonder if ADHD is involved. But we move on.
Michelle: Possibly.
Anne: As someone who knows intimately what that is like, I wonder about it anyway.
Michelle: He lived to 1969. Can you…? I mean, this is just mind-blowing.
Anne: Really?
Michelle: Right?
Anne: Really?
Michelle: He’s born in 1881, he lives to 1969. He sees the Beatles.
Anne: So he dies in London?
Michelle: Yep.
Anne: OK.
Michelle: And he is buried there.
Anne: OK. Well, we like him. We find him interesting and just very… Yeah. So that’s what we think. All right. True Crime Medieval, in favor of… What’s his name again?
Michelle: His name is Norman Whitten.
Anne: True Crime Medieval, in favor of Norman Whitten. OK. So there was a St. Patrick film in 1920…
Michelle: In 1920, and I’m just… I’m just so… I mean, I’m not surprised that right at the beginning of the Republic, St. Patrick is called on.
Anne: Sure.
Michelle: I’m not surprised by that. But the fact that it’s happening in film so quickly did kind of surprise me.
Anne: And the article you read said that it was clearly political? What made that clear?
Michelle: Because of the subtitles being in both English and Irish.
Anne: Of course. That alone. That alone is enough. Yeah.
Michelle: Yeah.
Anne: That situates you. That situates you in the culture and political spectrum in Ireland in 1920. Yes it does.
Michelle: Yeah. When it’s been illegal for so long, having it there on the film is going to be… There’s no way that’s not a political statement.
Anne: Yeah, and since it’s a silent film, you’re not having to have people speak in Irish, but you can have bilingual captions. Fair enough.
Michelle: Yeah.
Anne: I would love to know who was doing the captions. At any rate, we can’t…
Michelle: Oh, wait a second! No, no, we do know that.
Anne: Oh no! You’re kidding me!
Michelle: “The film’s titles…”
Here I’m back to quoting from that extremely informative article on earlyirishcinema.com…
“The film’s titles were specially designed by William J. Walsh, and an opening title listed the Irish translator…”
Oh my god!
“… F.I.A.C.H.R.A…”
That’s his first name.
Anne: OK. Wait. Wait, wait.
Michelle: Or her.
Anne: Wait, wait, wait. F.I.A.C.H…
Michelle: C.H.R.A… Uh-huh.
Anne: Fiachra.
Michelle: And then the last name is E.I.L.G.E.A.C.H.
Anne: OK. Fair enough. All right. I’m going to look this up and see if I can find where they are from. Because, the reason I’m interested is that there’s a lot of back-and-forth between native Irish speakers and the people who were learning it, and that is an interesting issue. Yeats was never able to learn it. He was sad about that. He just couldn’t do it.
Patrick Pearse did. Of course. Brendan Behan is going to learn his in jail, actually. From one of the Freedom Fighters. Fiachra…
Michelle: I looked at other films about St. Patrick, but this is the only one that I found that makes a big deal out of the Irish. Out of the Gaelic. Which is still, then, striking, right? Because I’m looking at other films from as recently as last year.
Anne: Wow. Wow. OK, hold on. Whoops….Hold on, hold on. Because this is actually interesting. Got it! All right, because we are totally going to put this in.
Michelle: I also just ran across, about three minutes ago, on Norman Whitten’s page, on Early Irish Cinema, that he filmed the Corpus Christi procession in Galway…
Anne: No!
Michelle: … and I will be looking up that.
Anne: Oh, no! Oh, oh!
Michelle: Yep.
Anne: OK. The person who did the Irish captions for the film…
Michelle: Yeah, OK?
Anne: Originally his name… OK, I’m telling you.
Michelle: Cool.
Anne: Originally his name is Richard Foley. Risteard Ó Foghludha. He is a member of the Gaelic League. That’s what I was wondering.
Michelle: Ohhhh!
Anne: He was born in Cork. His parents both spoke Irish and he was a teacher, journalist, writer. He wrote in Munster Gaelic—because that’s what Cork is—he wrote poetry.
Michelle: And the Gaelic League had been declared illegal in 1919.
Anne: Yeah, well, he was in it. And… Yeah, he founded a branch of Conradh na Gaeige, the Gaelic League, “along with Seosamh Ó Tórna, Seán Ó Cuiv and Seán Ceallaigh. And he chose the motto for that branch—‘Múscail do mhisneach, a Bhanba’ (Awaken your courage, Banba)—and was its honorary secretary for nine years.” And yeah, so, he was… That’s what I was wondering, is where they… Because if there… The reason I was wondering is that they were making a work in Dublin in 1920. The odds were that they were working with someone from the Gaelic League, and I was right.
Michelle: Yeah.
Anne: Richard of Foley. Maith an buachaill. Thank you! OK. So that was fun. So that was the 1920 production. A lot on the 1920 production.
Michelle: Yeah. Sorry. That was by far the most interesting one I found.
Anne: Well, I found it fascinating because, you know, Irish history and this time period I know pretty well.
So what else did you find? Because I’m going to want to hear about the bad ones, but first of all were there other good ones?
Michelle: There’s… At this point what we have is a range from competent to awful.
Anne: OK.
Michelle: So Patrick had a moment. I actually was sort of surprised at the paucity of films about Patrick that I was finding. So there’s a documentary from the year 2000 called St. Patrick: Apostle of Ireland that is… It’s about what you would expect. It’s a little dull. But what it does do well is uses a lot of quotations from Patrick’s own words, with voiceover…
Anne: OK, that’s nice.
Michelle: … of some very pretty parts of Ireland. It opens with a St. Patrick’s Day parade, and has this contrast of voiceover from Patrick, you know, kind of doing that down-grading of himself thing? While we’re seeing images of this parade that is honoring him. Which is nice. That was nice filmmaking. The director is listed as David Tennant, and I don’t think it could possibly be the one we’re all thinking of.
Anne: Oh, but we want it to be, don’t we! No… Because David Tennant…
Michelle: We do…
Anne: If it was David Tennant it was totally not going to be boring. Oh, come on.
Michelle: And it’s not claimed. If it’s his, he’s not claiming it on his IMDB page.
Anne: Yeah. No. No, no, no, no.
Michelle: It’s totally competent. It’s just dull. It’s what you would expect from, you know… The kind of documentary that everybody fell asleep, in the seventh grade, watching?
Anne: Yes. That one. Got it.
Michelle: There’s another documentary called In the Footsteps of St. Patrick, from 2016, that is, in fact, on YouTube, and can be watched if one has more patience than me. Because I bailed after the first few minutes.
Anne: Wait. Wait, wait, wait.
Michelle: Sorry.
Anne: St. Patrick: Apostle of Ireland. By David Tennant. And here’s a picture of David Tennant coming out of what looks like a Dr. Who police box except that it’s green, with a shamrock.
Michelle: What?
Anne: Yes. That David Tennant.
Michelle: No way.
Anne: Yes.
Michelle: How do you find this stuff? I dug and dug. I spent an hour and a half yesterday trying to ascertain whether it was the David Tennant.
Anne: I Googled “David Tennant St. Patrick,” and there he is. Just telling you.
Michelle: Dammit.
Anne: Yep. So, here’s what I want to know, is how the hell David Tennant made a boring movie about St. Patrick. Especially if he’s got the, you know, the Dr. Who St. Patrick time machine. I’m just saying.
Michelle: It would have been really, really… He would have been really young. Because this is from the year 2000. Huh. Well. Somebody scrubbed it from his IMDB page.
It’s not bad. It’s competent. It’s just boring.
Anne: Yeah, and I just did not think that you could put boring in the same sentence with David Tennant, unless what you were doing was contradicting something. Oh well.
Michelle: The nicer way to say it is that it’s very calm. It’s a very calm documentary, right? It has a lot of pretty pictures of Ireland, a lot of pictures… Or a lot of St. Patrick’s own words. A couple of grey-haired, you know, scholars with their hair flying everywhere, who you need the subtitles to understand.
Yeah, I think, if one is not cranky, it’s probably charming.
Anne: Ah, were you cranky when you were watching this?
Michelle: Well, I was getting increasingly cranky trying to figure out if it was David Tennant who directed it!
Anne: One of Scotland’s greatest actors, directing this thing.
Michelle: As a very young person.
Anne: Yeah, I’m not… It’s funny because, you know, it’s not easy to find, quite frankly.
Michelle: Well, you want to know about the bad ones?
Anne: Yes. Please to tell me… Let’s get off the… We’ll get off the David Tennant hamster wheel. Tell me about the bad St. Patrick movies, because I might want to find them.
Michelle: OK. There’s a reasonably competent documentary from 2016, so there’s a twenty-year period in there where Patrick is hot, from 2000 to 2020, because there’s a bunch of stuff coming out.
Anne: Why?
Michelle: Yeah, I have no idea. That one’s actually all on YouTube. I’ll put a link in it, but I don’t want to spend a lot of time on it. There’s a movie that was just released last year called I Am Patrick from the Christian Broadcasting Network, that they managed to get John Rhys-Davies to star as Old Patrick in it. He’s played by three different actors in that film. Him young, being kidnapped, and then as a middle-aged man when he comes back and is evangelizing Ireland, and then as an old man, when he’s kind of looking back on things, and that’s who John Rhys-Davies plays. Anyway, it looks like a perfectly competent movie. I watched the trailer. I watched some of the behind-the-scenes things. I cannot bring myself to pay money for this, because I would have had to have spent, like, eight bucks to rent it, and I didn’t want to.
Anne: Right. OK. Fair enough. Yeah. Fair enough.
Michelle: It looks competent. Most of that’s what the reviews say, is that it’s a perfectly competent if not riveting sort of film. So if you want a truly horrifically terrible…
Anne: Yes, I do.
Michelle: … St. Patrick movie, the one you have to go watch, as much as you can stand—I made it through three and a half minutes…
Anne: Oh really?
Michelle: … of…Oh god!
Anne: You’ve got a strong stomach for this kind of crap, huh?
Michelle: Oh lord! So, it’s called St. Patrick: The Irish Legend. It came out in the year 2000. It’s a made-for-TV movie starring some big names, actually. Patrick Bergin who I loved, as Robin Hood. I mean, he’s my favorite Robin Hood. So I had some hope for this, even though it was made for television. And Malcolm McDowell.
Anne: No! Very good!
Michelle: Who is also a good actor. So here’s what happened, OK? So right at the beginning of the film, the druids…
Anne: No! No! No!
Michelle: The druids are going to sacrifice this young woman to their, you know, pagan gods, and St. Patrick shows up and he, like—St. Patrick is played by Patrick Bergin—he, like, raises his staff, and horrific CGI purple lightning comes down from the sky and strikes the head druid, who was going to do the human sacrifice, and then Patrick comes over and he’s got a hammer and he, like—they move the young woman first—He smashes the altar and it splinters, with more bad CGI lightning effects, and then I was done.
Anne: Um. In the year 2000 bad CGI effects were not necessary. Also? The druids? No. Just stop.
Michelle: Oh my god.
Anne: So we don’t know what happens after that, except that we’re expecting more CGI stuff.
Michelle: I’m pretty sure that, if one were to watch it, it would make the one that came out last year look amazing, as opposed to merely competent. Because… And actually I think this is a true thing, the one that came out last year is very much focusing on Patrick and his spiritual experience, his conversion experience, like, as opposed to St. Patrick who’s, like, coming in to kick druid ass, which appears to be…
Anne: Right.
Michelle: … what the other one is doing. St. Patrick, Beowulfian superhero! I’m not saying I actually recommend any of these, I’m just saying that this is what I found.
Anne: Well, you know, when St. Patrick talks, actually, about his own life, there are… Except for, like, you know, miracle pigs showing up and whatnot, it’s not about superheroes. It’s about “I went here,” and “I went there,” and “I, you know, told people stuff.” That’s it. There’s no CGI effects with druids.
Michelle: I was, as I told you, flabbergasted to find the film—the I Am Patrick one— made by the Christian Broadcasting Network, because my experience spending six traumatizing years as a church librarian in an evangelical…
Anne: Oh I remember this. Yes.
Michelle: … establishment…
Anne: I remember this piece of your life.
Michelle: … was very traumatizing because everybody hated the Middle Ages, all the time. Like, anything that was medieval and/or Catholic was strictly not actually Christian, so coming across a film about Patrick by this particular group really, really, really, really surprised me. I mean, C.S. Lewis was still controversial among the evangelicals when I was there. Which was weird.
Anne: Well, he was pretty high Anglican.
Michelle: So this film, I think, is an interesting indication of something, but, again, I wasn’t paying money to watch it. Sorry. I did find… It was on Netflix for a little while so I thought, “Maybe I’m going to get to watch it and not have to spend money,” but it was off of Netflix by the time I was looking.
Anne: Oh, too bad.
Michelle: Too bad.
Anne: Too bad, yeah.
Michelle: I would have at least scrolled through it. But it does look very competent. The trailers look competent. Ireland looks pretty. They have drone pictures.
Anne: That is very interesting. Like, what is their interest in St. Patrick?
Michelle: Yeah.
Anne: What would be one of the things that would be nice about watching it would be to find out kind of what the take is, on St. Patrick…
Michelle: Mmhm.
Anne: … and what it is he has to say to evangelical Christians today. Yeah. It would be nice to know.
Michelle: Well, I found some interesting films. That’s what I did. I read a biography and I found some films. The more I read about Norman Whitten, it was, like, “I’ve just got to keep reading about this guy because he is wild!” I want to read a biography of Norman Whitten. So somebody better go write this guy a biography.
Anne: Yeah, I want to see his stuff. I want to know about him.
Yeah, so that’s my favorite thing, so far. And so, yeah, that’s the deal about St. Patrick. He really was there. He really did convert people, and he really did write some stuff about that. But what becomes of him is something very different from… Other than the converting people part, something very different from what he was.
He gets used. It’s like Joan of Arc. He gets used.
Michelle: Yeah. Joan is an interesting comparison, because this is one of these figures who comes down from the Middle Ages that people have heard of, and probably know about 10% fact.
Anne: Yeah. I mean, he was very brave. He was very spiritual. He was strongly religious-minded, and he did what he thought was right. There’s no smiting druids with fire from God. That didn’t happen. Snakes? No.
Michelle: And of course he’s important, historically, because we don’t have a whole lot of sources from this time period that are from this time period.
Anne: Yeah.
Michelle: We have things later that purport to be about this time period, but not things that are actually fifth century. Written in the fifth century, that we know for sure existed then.
Anne: And it’s a really vexed time, you know? With Roman Britain falling all apart, and the relations between the Irish and Britain, and the Scots and Britain, and the Welsh and Britain, and the Welsh and Irish, and the Welsh and Scots, and Scots and Irish… All of those, very fraught, and Patrick’s kind of in the middle of all that, traveling all around.
So. Yeah, so happy St. Patrick’s Day. He was there. He committed a horrible crime. We don’t know what it was. Then horrible crimes were committed on him. We do know what they were. And they were part of the fabric of Hiberno-Roman life. And we have his writing. Happy St. Patrick’s Day.
Michelle: I think he must have been a very charismatic figure.
Anne: Yes, I think so. To have survived all of those things that he did, I think so. I would love to know, though, what did he do at fifteen years old? We’ll never know.
Michelle: That he felt so bad about! I know!
Anne: Yeah, I mean, there were trials and witnesses, yeah. And he… Afterwards… Yeah. What was it? But we don’t know.
For him, the details of what he had done were not the issue. That he had done something, and that he repented it, and that he served his penance by walking amongst the Irish for the rest of his life, that’s really the point.
But for us, we’re True Crime Medieval, so we wanted to know what the crime was. But we don’t know. All we know is about Irish raiders.
St. Patrick. He behaved very badly, and then he was good.
Michelle: So our next one is the murder of William Rufus.
Anne: Billy Rufus! Billy!
Michelle: Who was totally killed by accident.
Anne: Totally killed by accident. And nothing was nefarious about this. Yeah, so the next time we see you we’ll be discussing the death of King William II from England, whom everybody always calls William Rufus, except for me. I call him Billy Rufus. I have since I was an undergraduate, I don’t know why, I just do. Billy Rufus! Gonna talk about Billy Rufus. He totally got assassinated on a hunting trip, but theoretically it’s an accident. So we’ll talk about Billy.
Michelle: It was an accident!
Anne: Oh no! Yeah. Which never got investigated. Right. “I shot the King dead but nobody cared.” Uh huh. Uh huh. Yeah. Billy Rufus. So that’s what we will be doing the next time we see you.
This has been True Crime Medieval, where the crimes are just like they are today, only with less technology. We’re on Apple podcasts, iHeart podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher. Anyplace where the podcasts are going on, we seem to be there. Please leave a review on Apple, we’d really appreciate that. You can reach us at truecrimemedieval.com. And you can find the Show Notes, which are written by Michelle, the transcripts, which are done for us by Laurie Dietrich, and you can also reach us all through the webpage. And you can leave comments! We would love to hear from you. And if you have medieval crimes we should discuss, please let us know. And if you have things to say about explaining some stuff we didn’t know, tell us. Because then we’ll—as we did, with Michelle’s brother-in-law—we will say that.
Yeah. Please let us know. And so that’s us, signing off. Happy St. Patrick’s Day and bye!
Michelle: Bye!
The Piratical Victual Brothers, North and Baltic Seas, 1393-1440
Anne: Hello and welcome to True Crime Medieval, One Thousand Years of People Behaving Badly. I’m Anne Brannen. I’m your host in Albuquerque.
Michelle: And I’m Michelle Butler, in Maryland, the most medieval state in America.
Anne: And before we start today, we’d like to tell you that over the course of the last year, while we’ve been working on this podcast—which we enjoy the hell out of but, you know, we’re not professionals, we’re just enjoying ourselves—we’ve been working on the sound issues. Thank you so much, all of you, for letting us know that the sound issues were there. We did know. And mostly every time we recorded something, I tried to make the sound be the same but it just wasn’t ever, and my sound was working and Michelle’s was very low, and she’s in Maryland and I’m in New Mexico. We’re not in the same place, and we were having trouble making things work. But, we have figured it out! Pretty sure about this. Please let us know if the sound is not equal. And we’re attaching, to this particular episode…
Michelle: Are we then?
Anne: Yes we are. We’re attaching, to this particular episode, the lovely tape that we made whilst we were trying to figure out the sound issues. There’s no information in there, really, but we thought it was pretty funny. So, now we know. Yay! We’re all working together.
Michelle: It’s helpful to remember we’re medievalists.
Anne: Yeah, we’re not technicians, we’re medievalists. Michelle, do you have any advice for people who are using microphones?
Michelle: Well, it helps to read the instructions. To not go by what you see in the movies, it turns out.
Anne: As it turns out, yes. As it turns out, imitating Art does not necessarily work in Life. And in general that’s true, isn’t it? Yes, we know.
So, at any rate, that’s happening. Then you can just, you know, after our lovely music at the end you can hear the outtakes if you want, and not, if you don’t. We add them as Easter eggs, but this one we’re just telling you about.
Michelle: So, paper was the cutting-edge technology for the time period we study. I’m just making sure that we point that out.
Anne: Yeah, paper. And printing. I mean, it went so far as printing. There was some paper, and then they invented printing. Oh my god. What was that?
Michelle: And the spinning wheel.
Anne: The spinning wheel! Yeah, and then there was the spinning jenny. In reality we are not actually Luddites, we both have, like, iPads and, you know, iPhones, and I’ve got how many external hard drives running around over here. But this whole microphone thing? OK. All right. Directions? Who knew?
At any rate, we go on. We go on. Today we’re discussing the Victual Brothers, who were terrible, horrible pirates. They were Swedish pirates. They worked from 1393 to about 1440, and they were so, so awful.
They were pirates. They worked in the North Sea and the Baltic Sea about 45 years, and they didn’t actually start out as pirates, they started out—as many pirates do—they started out as privateers. They were blockade-runners, like Rhett Butler, I suppose, only with not the same kind of clothes. The Dukes of Mecklenburg had hired them in 1392 to keep Stockholm supplied while Queen Margaret of Denmark was besieging the city. Why was Queen Margaret besieging the city? Now we’re going to have some Scandinavian history.
Margaret was the daughter of Valdemar V of Denmark. So she… Well, wait. Let’s go back. Valdemar, her father, was the youngest son of Christopher II of Denmark. Christopher was not good at being a ruler. When Christopher’s brother Eric died, the nobles of Denmark elected him King, but they required him to sign a charter which severely limited his power to raise funds, or do much of anything without the nobles agreeing to it, and so he over-taxed the peasants and the German territories held by Denmark. Because he needed the money. And that’s what he did.
And so he was overthrown, for a few years, during which Jutland was lost to Danish rule. And then he became King again, in 1329. Don’t ask me about this. I don’t know. It’s going back and forth. And he had even less power. That time, he had to sign even more things away. So he mortgaged more and more of Denmark to the Germans.
Now, this is a thing that I didn’t know was going on, but apparently you could mortgage away your territory, and then you got money, and then, supposedly, you paid the rent to the Germans. Did you know that this was going on, Michelle? I don’t… Because they didn’t do this in England and France, did they?
Michelle: I am not entirely certain there was a piece of this entire episode I knew before I started my research. So, everything is new.
Anne: Everything’s new. And you know Sweden. You’ve actually been there. But not the mortgage part. All right.
Michelle: I didn’t know that, no.
Anne: So he died in prison, and Valdemar inherited a broken country. Fair enough. He set himself to paying off the mortgages. I want to say that’s very admirable. You should always pay off your mortgages.
So he bought Jutland back, and he bought North Friesland back, and he got Zealand back, but then the Black Death came in, and the Black Death cut into taxation funds drastically. Really drastically.
Little side note here: Scandinavia was really badly hit by the Black Death. You know, we say there’s, like, a third to a half of Europe died in the Black Death, but that wasn’t, like, the same, everywhere you went. Scandinavia was so badly hit, it was maybe 60%.
Michelle: I was going to say Denmark is really densely populated, because it’s so much smaller than Norway or Sweden, that that’s one of the reasons that the Black Death hit hard there.
Anne: Fair enough. It hit Norway hard too. Even despite the less dense population. Scandinavia, it was bad. My people are from Mandal, and I once asked one of my cousins… I could tell it meant “man-valley,” you know, and I said, “Well, why is it called Mandal?” And she said, “Oh, because after the Black Death there was only one man left in the valley.” I’m, like, “Alrighty then!” She said, “Yeah, Qvensdal is right over… you know, there’s one woman left over in Qvensdal.”
Now, I kind of think that’s apocryphal, but it’s a measure of what the Black Death meant to Scandinavia. And it’s still showing up in the names.
At any rate, so, he didn’t get a lot of money, at that time, but he was still able to take some land back from Sweden, and then he took on, unfortunately, the Hanseatic League. Do you know a lot about the Hanseatic League, Michelle? Because I’m going to tell you!
Michelle: I didn’t. I know more than I used to.
Anne: The Hanseatic League was a big deal. It was a confederation of merchant guilds and whole market towns, for commercial goals but also defense, and it started, like, in the late 1100s in North Germany. At its height, the Hanseatic Territories were around the Baltic Sea, the North Sea, inland towns… It was vast.
They were in what would become Northern Flanders, Northern Germany, Northern Prussia, but there were cities involved. Bergen, in Norway. London, York, Novgorod. They were so powerful.
So, this meant protection from piracy. It meant strong commercial trading sites and routes. In the foreign outposts, like London, they tended to keep to themselves, which is why you don’t hear a lot about it in English history. Because they weren’t, like, mingling with the townsfolk. They had their little, you know, enclave. And they had all their trade. They probably knew Chaucer. You know, because the wool trade.
It was weakened by the sixteenth century but it still reverberates. Lufthansa means “air hansa.”
Michelle: Oh! Interesting.
Anne: Yes it does. Lufthansa. And there’s a new Hanseatic League, which was formed in 2018, which is a coalition of several northern countries working as a kind of block within the EU. So, the Hansa. It’s still in our heads. Or the heads of people.
Michelle: Yeah.
Anne: Oh yeah.
So, at any rate, so Valdemar attacked the Swedish town Visbee, which was a member of the Hanseatic League, in 1361, and he captured King Magnus’ son’s fiancée and he put her in a nunnery, and he forced Magnus to agree to marry his son to Valdemar’s daughter Margaret. She’s going to be showing up as Queen Margaret, but we’re not there yet. She’s still real young.
The nobles elected Albert of Mecklenburg as the King of Sweden instead. Oh, too bad. Albert enlisted the Hanseatic League, which was already annoyed because Visbee was, you know, a Hanseatic League city, and so Sweden and Norway were allied with the Hanseatic League, and Albert… They captured Copenhagen and they forced Valdemar out of Denmark. OK.
He was allowed back in, four years later, you know. Four years later he was allowed back, but he died after that, in 1375. That’s that. Margaret. Now we come to Margaret.
Really, honestly, we’re going to get to the pirates in a while, but we’re still doing backgrounds to the pirates. Why piracy? OK.
Margaret. So, you remember she was affianced to the Crown Prince of Sweden, for a while? OK. That fell through, during all the fighting back and forth, but she married Haakon, who was King, then, of Sweden, rather than being the Crown Prince anymore. They got married anyway. In 1363, things had gone bad. She was ten years old. Older than she had been when they got engaged the first time.
So, in 1364, her husband was deposed from the Swedish throne, and the nobles elected Albert of Mecklenburg as King of Sweden.
So, that’s when the nobles elected Albert of Mecklenburg as King of Sweden. And then, when her father died, in 1375, she got her son elected King of Denmark. She was the regent and Olav, the son, became King of Norway as well, in 1380. So the child is King, in name, of Norway and Denmark, but Margaret is actually ruling things, and the kid died, in 1387. He was, like, sixteen years old.
Michelle: Aww.
Anne: So… Yes, very sad. I’m sure he would have had a lovely life, if he’d lived, given how things go for all these people.
So, Margaret was ruling Denmark and Norway, and she decided she wanted Sweden as well. Because why not? So she invaded Sweden, and in 1388 the Swedes declared that she was the ruler, and the deposed King lost a battle to her, despite having called her “King Pants-less.”
Michelle: OK.
Anne: I know. I like that so much. I’d like to be able to—King Pants-less!—I’d like to be able to use that in something, but I don’t know what… You can! You’re the… You do historical fiction. You should use that someplace.
At any rate, but, Stockholm held out, and did not agree that she was ruling things, so the Mecklenburg princes hired the Victual Brothers, and now we come to the pirates.
All right. So, they were hired in 1392 to fight Denmark. They were blockade-runners. They’re named after their first job, which was to provide provisions. There you go! And, also, they, you know, they fought at sea. But they were the Victual Brothers because they provide provisions, when you’re blockaded. They’re going to go way beyond that, but that’s what they did at first, so that’s their name.
The Hanseatic League, in the main, supported them, and Sweden, but the Hansa surrendered Stockholm to Margaret in 1398.
Michelle: Hmm.
Anne: Yes. So, what the Victualers did, in between all this time—like, they were hired in 1392? By 1393 they were misbehaving. They had strongholds in some coastal towns in the Baltic Sea. By 1393 they had sacked Bergen. They sacked towns in Finland, Sweden, Russia. And, over the course of their history, they completely decimated the herring trade.
Now, I think, really, to people in 2021, decimating the herring trade doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it is a big deal in Europe because all of Europe is eating salted herring for a sizeable portion of the year, besides Lent, because it’s cheap and they’re getting their herring from the North Sea and the Baltic Sea.
Michelle: Yeah. It’s a big deal.
Anne: In fact, the young Anne Brannen, while she was hanging out with her Norwegian grandfather, was taught, as a child, to eat herring, because we’re still eating herring! The Norwegians still eat herring. Herring is a big deal. But in the Middle Ages it was a really big deal.
And, so, decimating the herring trade is a bad, bad thing. And they disrupted the rest of trade disastrously. They were just awful.
So, Queen Margaret decided to take them on. And she gathered Denmark, Sweden, Norway, the Hanseatic League together, and the Victual Brothers got driven out of their main headquarters in Gutland in 1398, and after that the Hanseatic League tried to take the Baltic trading back, and so the Victual Brothers moved their operations to Friesland, and they called themselves… At that point there’s a branch of them that’s called the Likedeelers. The Equal Sharers. So, they gave… They robbed… You know they were pirates, and then they gave things to the poor, so they were actual Robin Hood figures, which I figured you would like, Michelle, since you are our Robin Hood expert. Here we have real ones! They’re Swedish pirates.
Michelle: I had read a book about pirates fairly recently that…. The book I had mentioned, Enemy of All Mankind? It was about the early modern pirate, but one of the things about those pirates is that they were also in… Not exactly communist, but they split the booty equally, you know?
Anne: Oh!
Michelle: They had rules about how their plunder was split up amongst themselves, and it was how they kept their groups together.
Anne: Wow.
Michelle: Having agreed-upon rules ahead of time, how they were going to divvy things up. So, the Captain got, you know, the equivalent of three shares, the Quartermaster got the equivalent of two shares, and each crew member got an equal share.
Anne: The Likedeelers were doing this?
Michelle: No, that was the later one, but I suspect these guys are doing something similar.
Anne: Ah.
Michelle: From that name.
Anne: Yes, and the fact that they… The fact that this group remains a kind of loose organization for 45 years? That’s pretty good, I think. A pretty good record for, you know, criminal activity of any kind. Forty-five years.
Michelle: I’m deeply impressed with them turning the whole island of Gotland into a pirate haven.
Anne: Yeah. We should have a map with pirate havens throughout the years. Yeah. There’s our Swedes. At any rate, they got thrown out of Gotland.
They moved activities, also, to France and even Spain, so they were all over. But, in 1401—and this is going to be a big deal for reasons unclear, actually, really to me, although I’m sure Michelle will be able to explain much of this—
Michelle: OK!
Anne: Hamburg forces caught and executed Klaus Störtebeker, who was their most famous leader, along with about… Along with his crewmen. But the Victual Brothers burnt Bergen to the ground in 1429, and they were still a force in 1440.
And, I want to share… I have this thing I found. It is… Like, Henry IV… At one point Henry IV made an agreement with the Hanseatic League, and it actually mentions the Victual Brothers.
Michelle: Oooh! I didn’t find that!
Anne: I know, I thought you’d like this. And so here’s the excerpt that concerns the Victual Brothers:
“In the meanwhile, Norway enjoyed peace under the government of a woman until Albertus, King of Sweden, who had now seven years continued in captivity under Queen Margaret, was to be set at liberty. Which, when the common soldiers of Rostock and Vismere called the Vitalians…”
That’s our guys.
Michelle: Hmmm.
Anne: “ … perceived (who whilst their King was holden captive in the right of the fore-named cities for the behalf of their lord the King being prince of Meckleburg by birth, undertook and waged war all the time of his captivity)…”
We’re out of the parentheses now…
“… Banding their forces together they resolved at their own costs and charges but in the right of the said cities to sail into the three kingdoms and to take such spoils as they could lay hold on. These common soldiers therefore seeing an end of their tyrannical and violent dealing to approach, sailed into Norway, into the town of Norburn, being a mart town for all the merchants of Germany, who transporting fishes from thence…”
That’s the herring trade…
“… do bring thither merchandises of all kinds, especially corn…”
That means wheat, not American maize…
“… into the scarcity whereof unless it be brought out of other countries that kingdom, as we have said, is very much subject. Departing out of their ships and going on shore they set upon the town and by fire and sword they easily compelled the inhabitants dwelling in weak wooden houses to give place. Thus these battalions, entering and surprising the town, conveyed such spoils unto ships as then flees, and having laden their ships with these booties they returned home for like into the ports of their own cities without all respect they robbed and rifled the goods as well of the Germans as of the Norwegians, and like lewd companions wasting and making havoc of all things, proved themselves never the wealthier, for it is not the guise of such good fellows to store up or preserve aught. The citizens at the first seemed to be enriched, albeit afterward no man misdoubting any such calamity, goods ill gotten were worse spent.”
Michelle: Wow.
Anne: Thus, Henry IV’s secretary, concerning the battalions, or the Victual Brothers, as we know them.
At any rate, so, in 1401—back to 1401—the Hamburg forces caught their most famous leader. And the legends about Klaus Störtebeker are so many of them. So, here’s what was said about Klaus Störtebeker, his demise.
His ship was disabled by molten lead being poured into the chain controlling the rudder. He offered his captors a gold chain long enough to go all around Hamburg, but they refused. He asked for as many men as his beheaded body could walk by to be freed after his execution, and he made it past eleven but the executioner tripped the dead, headless body and so then they executed everybody anyway.
And after executing all seventy-three guys, the senate asked the executioner if he was tired and the executioner said nah, he could execute the senate as well, and they executed him.
OK. This is all nonsense.
Michelle: It’s a good story though.
Anne: Yeah, it’s a lot of good stories.
There’s a bill in Hamburg that’s from 1400 that includes the expense for digging graves for thirty Victual Brothers, not 73. So that’s when he died. It was a much smaller crew then as legend has it. And so there’s thirty of them that got executed, and the headless body walking past eleven? We’re thinking not.
The skull—we have a skull—the skull that has been reconstructed… If you go to Wikipedia—and we’re going to use this for our picture too—you can see the lovely reconstruction of what Klaus Störtebeker looked like, which probably not. But it’s his skull. We’ve decided it’s his skull. That was found in 1878, and it got stolen from the museum it was in, in 2010, by a couple of guys, but then the police got it back a year later. And there’s several statues of him in Northern German cities. He’s popular! He’s a very popular guy! He was a dead pirate, and so Michelle’s going to explain this all to me because I do not understand why there are statues of Klaus Störtebeker all over Northern Germany. Why?
Michelle: It’s probably Robert Louis Stevenson’s fault.
Anne: Oh no!
Michelle: He’s the one…
Anne: No!
Michelle: He’s the one who made pirates out to be fascinating in Treasure Island, and set off the modern fascination with pirates.
Anne: OK. All right. We’ll blame it on Treasure Island. Why not? Although the connection between the Scottish version of Treasure Island and the German version of Klaus Störtebeker is not clear to me, but I’m going to believe.
At any rate, you told me that you knew a lot about ships. That you went down a ship rabbit hole. Is this true?
Michelle: Yeah. I was… I started my research with a book called Seafarers, Merchants, and Pirates in the Middle Ages, and the first four chapters don’t talk about any of those, but they do talk about how people got around on the sea, so they talk about… The book starts with what the ships were like, how they did their navigation, all of that sort of stuff. And so I got really stuck in what would the ships have been like, that the Hanseatic League and the pirates were using.
Anne: Indeed, that does sound like something that you would be interested in, and me too, now that you’ve found it, because I was, like, why? Why, why are we needing pirates to defend Stockholm, and so I answered that, but I hadn’t thought about the ships. Do tell?
Michelle: So they are… The ships that they would have been using are called… The model is called a cog, and it’s different than the earlier Viking ships because, well, a couple of really interesting ways. These ships are developing between around 1100 to 1200, and they’re not developing directly from Viking ships, but they definitely become more popular and more widely used. They’ve got clinker-built sides, like Viking ships, but the bottoms are flat…
Anne: Huh.
Michelle: … and those are carvel. So, clinker-built, the planks overlap. So, if you think about what a longship looks like, that’s got that really distinctive overlapping of the planks on the side?
Anne: Right.
Michelle: And you see that on the side of the cogs, but the bottoms are carvel-built, which means that the planks are end-to-end. And so what you end up having here is a ship that holds… It’s not a lot longer. It’s not longer, actually. Some of the Viking ships are a hundred and ten feet long, you know, like the Sea Stallion of Glendalough? By the time you get to the end of the Viking period, you had these great, big, longships. These aren’t that long, but they can hold a lot more. Even the Viking ships that are built for merchants—so not the war ships, but the ones that are built for trading—can only hold one or two tons. Cogs can hold 90 to 130 tons of cargo.
Anne: Whoa.
Michelle: I know!
Anne: So, the Hanseatic League naturally is happy about that.
Michelle: Yes!
Anne: Are these ships being used just in Northern Europe, or are they popular throughout the world, or what?
Michelle: These are mostly the ones that are used in the north. The clinker-built style is very popular in the north of Europe, which makes sense, right? Because that’s something that’s being used widely by the Vikings. The flat, end-to-end, carvel-building is much more down in the Mediterranean, and so then you start having interaction between them and people are kind of picking and choosing which pieces to put into their boat. But these are really great ships for the purposes of trading because they hold so much stuff, but they still go pretty fast. We had assumed—this is one of the cool things about experimental archeology—we had assumed that they were probably clunkier and slower than longships, because they kind of look clunkier and slower, but experimental archeology with rebuilt ones show that they can go up to ten knots, which, compared to eleven for Viking longships is, you know, pretty close.
Anne: That’s pretty good.
Michelle: That’s pretty fast.
They cannot go up onto the beach like longships. They have to be… Because of the flat bottom?
Anne: Right.
Michelle: So they cannot do that. They have to be unloaded at quays, or if it’s a marshy area you can bring them close to shore during high tide, and then let the tide go out and quickly unload everything, and then the tide comes back in and you can go back out. But of course, once you have a lot of trading going on, you start having merchant… You know, port cities with dedicated quays? And actually the Hanseatic League started using cranes to unload.
Anne: Ah! So that’s when that starts. Yeah. Because in port cities now you see those cranes.
Michelle: Yeah.
Anne: So that’s how old they are? Lovely.
Michelle: Yep, they’re using cranes. They move over to an end rudder, rather than a steerboard because of the size of the boat, but you still have one mast, you still have the square sail and, and..! Because you’ve got all this stuff on board, you have to have the ships be a little bit defensible, so you have a structure on each end that’s a little bit like a castle, right? So you have the fore-castle and the aft-castle, and you have crossbowmen in there to try to hold the pirates off.
And that part of the ship is still called that! The focsle comes from fore-castle. I didn’t know any of that. That’s so cool.
Anne: I did not know that that’s where that came from, but that makes sense, doesn’t it? The front castle.
Michelle: We have one of these that survives. It was built in 1380, and just as it was getting done it broke loose from the quay and floated away, and then sank because there was no ballast in it, and it was found in 1962, and it is the best-preserved merchant ship from medieval Northern Europe. It’s called the Bremen Cog.
So I got to do some reading about archeology. I’m very excited.
So this is a really good representation of what everybody’s ships would have been like, involved in this pirate-y situation.
Anne: So that ship, the ship that’s been recovered that’s in Bremen?
Michelle: Yep.
Anne: I’m guessing, since that’s its name?
Michelle: It’s in the German Maritime Museum.
Anne: Oh, OK. All right. OK.
So, wait. I have a question, though, because it makes sense that the Hanseatic League is using these ships that can carry a lot and can defend themselves. The pirates are using this? Because they’re actually raiding, they’re not carrying stuff… I mean, they’re looting things but they’re not looting, you know, tons and tons.
Michelle: They appear to be. I was trying to nail that down, that they are also using the same kind of ship. When… I know that accounts of them being captured talk about, you know, “Captured: So-and-so and his cog.” So they’re at least referring to the ship by the same name.
Anne: OK. OK. All right. I’ll buy it then.
So yeah. All right. So then they’re good not just for defense but also for attack.
Michelle: They must be fast enough to be able to do it. But this is the standard for a ship at that point in Northern Europe, so I would think they would have to be, because a lot of what they would be sailing is the stuff they had captured.
Anne: Right. Right. Right, being pirates. Well, thank you. I did like that.
Michelle: Yes, this was very exciting. I learned a lot about shipbuilding, and navigation, and when the metal compass came into use. It’s not yet, by the way.
Anne: When is it?
Michelle: It’s in the late Middle Ages that you start having the magnetic compass.
Anne: Ah, yeah. I’ve seen pictures of it. So that’s later. All right. Yeah, we’re still pretty early on.
So you did ships, and you also… I believe that you also were working on the later incarnations of Klaus Störtebeker.
Michelle: So, this is awesome. There is a Störtebeker Festival. Open-air theater. I am so excited about this. I would go see this.
Anne: Oh, totally.
Michelle: Even though I could not understand it.
Anne: Where is it?
Michelle: So, it is in the small town of Ralswiek on the Isle of Rugen in Northern Germany.
Anne: OK.
Michelle: It was founded in 1959 as part of an East German cultural initiative. Which I would like to know more about, but could not find.
Anne: Yeah, because… So, at some point the East German communists said to themselves, “I know! I know what we need to celebrate our heritage! Let’s have a festival named after a pirate!” Yeah, I want to know how that worked. So, and we don’t. We’re sorry, guys. If you know, please put it in the comments section on the website.
Michelle: It has become Germany’s most successful open-air theatrical events.
Anne: Oh really?
Michelle: And is broadcast on German public television. This is a big deal!
Anne: Hmm.
Michelle: There are photos on YouTube from the 1959 incarnation of it. It employs more than 140 extras, 20 main actors, 30 horses, 4 ships.
Anne: So it’s a play about the piracy?
Michelle: Yes! And since 1993, the way they have done it is they tell his story as a cycle over a number of years.
Anne: Ah!
Michelle: So, they tell the whole story like every four to… So something is happening every year, but the whole story, you have to come back, like, over the course of four to six years to see everything.
Anne: How much is that? I mean, so, so all I know about is the execution. The, what, there’s an entire play about how he gets his nickname?
Michelle: There’s a whole set. On their web… There’s a website that tells us what the performances have been since 1993. So, in 1993 the play was being done, How to Become a Pirate.
Anne: Oh, that’s good. It’s good to know these things. Yeah.
Michelle: So they’re telling… This… I’m so happy about this. It’s done as a cycle. There’s… On YouTube there is a bunch of videos, actually, from it, and the thing that really struck me is how much of it is about pyrotechnics. They have amazing special effects. You know? The mast on the ship falls over, and it looks like the ship is burning, and there’s fights. They appear… I was trying to nail this down, because you can see this awesome castle that they’re using as a set, and I was trying to nail down whether that was custom-built for this, or whether it was an existing castle, and it looks—you know, I can’t assert this for 100% but I’m 90% sure—that it’s a custom-built set for these performances.
Anne: Well, focusing on pyrotechnics just totally makes sense to me, because it’s exciting…
Michelle: Absolutely.
Anne: … to have things blow up on stage. And if you have piracy, with a bunch of fighting and gunfire, you can have lots of pyrotechnics and that would be fun. That would be lots of fun.
Michelle: The pirate captain Claus is riding the most beautiful Friesian, which is how you signal you’re the good guy. If you’re riding a Friesian.
Anne: Oh really? So this… Yeah, because it’s… Obviously, although this is a play, this is a very big humongous festival about a pirate. It isn’t about a bad pirate.
Michelle: No.
Anne: It’s clearly about a good pirate.
Michelle: He is the hero of the piece.
Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the play approves of everything he does. That’s… You know, like Robin Hood, right? He’s huge. I found so many places where he’s showing up. There’s a 1924 poem about Klaus. He… A mini-series was done about him, in German, in 2006. There’s a documentary from 2007. There’s a movie that was released in 2009 called Twelve Paces Without a Head. I think it goes without saying that the fictional versions draw at least as much on the legends around him as around the actual history.
Oh, there’s a novel. I forgot about the novel that was written in 1996. So he’s a really pretty big cultural presence in Northern Germany. The… There’s actually a section of Northern Germany that renamed itself as Störtebeker Land, in order to try to encourage tourism.
Anne: So, do you think this has to do with the Robin Hood structure?
Michelle: That, and the time period that we’re looking at here is also when the Pirates of the Caribbean movies are coming out, so it may be something that’s pinging off that as well.
Anne: Hmm.
Michelle: Because you could kind of see Klaus being like Jack Sparrow.
Anne: Not from that reconstructed head, no. But yeah, sure.
Michelle: But legend, legend-wise. Legend-wise.
So we were talking about the ways in which Klaus shows up as a hero in early twenty-first-century fiction and movies, and the modern Northern German consciousness. I’m stunned by the discovery of this open-air theater. It’s very exciting.
I very much enjoyed watching the videos of their performances on YouTube.
Anne: So we’ll put links in, yeah?
Michelle: You can get YouTube to provide auto-generated and translated captions, which get about 80% of the meaning, and you can kind of guess at the rest.
Anne: Uh-huh.
Michelle: So what’s really interesting about it is that it’s a family-run affair.
Anne: Oh really?
Michelle: It’s not… At this point it’s not really a government undertaking. It’s run by a family.
Anne: But at first… So, was the government under… It was a government production and then the family took it over at some point?
Michelle: At some point, yeah. It looks like a lot of fun. It looks like… You know how when you go to Disney or Universal they have shows, within the park? It kind of looks like that. There’s a lot of pyrotechnics, there’s some plot. It looks fun.
Anne: Yeah, really thinking about this whole elevation of the head of the Victual Brothers as a hero, it seems to me, it seems to me, that if you’re looking at this little piece of history, and you’ve got this incredibly interesting pirate and… Who has all these legends about, you know, his interesting death and walking around headless and whatnot for a while until he gets tripped up by the executioner. That is something that’s compelling and understandable, you know?
Michelle: Mmhm.
Anne: And the background of it is decades and decades and decades of Scandinavian back-and-forth fighting that, frankly, is a little hard to follow. And it would make sense to me that the hero of the people is the pirate.
Michelle: Also because the Hanseatic League was a shipping and trading monopoly, so they got to set prices. So you can kind of understand how somebody who is fussing with them and taking stuff from them and maybe selling it at a lower cost would be popular with consumers.
Anne: Mmhm. Yeah. This actually makes sense to me.
So the Victual Brothers are… They’re terrible, bad people, and they messed up the herring trade. Naughty, naughty! But, from the point of view of not the rulers but the people in general—besides being Robin Hood figures—they’re the good guys.
Michelle: This is something we do. We’re not… It’s not so different than how we pick our folk heroes. Not really. I mean, Robin Hood has been popular in English since the Middle Ages. It’s been popular literally since before we have written text. The earliest surviving texts we have of Robin Hood are at least two hundred years later than the emergence of the legend itself.
Anne: And he didn’t even exist. And here we have this guy, he was really there! Hamburg had to pay to bury him! We have his skull. So, you know, yeah. Sure.
Michelle: It seems to me that one of the reasons they’re able to get away with this for half a century is that it’s in everybody’s best interest to work with them until the pirates step over a line and they chase them out and the pirates just go somewhere else.
Anne: Well, this is true.
Michelle: They just keep moving around.
Anne: This is true of other pirates who have been privateers, that the government uses them as long as they need them, and then when they don’t need them anymore, they execute them. Yeah. This was true for the pirates who were operating in Colonial America. Yeah.
Michelle: There’s a lot of ocean in the north up there, and a lot of islands and fjords. Places for them to hide. So it doesn’t surprise me that they’re able to just keep moving around, and it takes a long time before governments collectively get annoyed enough with them to try to do something about it.
Anne: Yeah, and if they’re giving stuff to the poor people, then they’ve got sanctuary. They’ve got allies. They’ve got places to hide. Yeah.
Michelle: I kept thinking of Eustace, while I was reading about this.
Anne: We are referring to Eustace the pirate. We had a podcast on him. He was also helping out governments. Yeah. What were you thinking about Eustace?
Michelle: Eustace is earlier, because he dies in 1217. I suppose one of the lessons here is that there probably are always privateers working in this… You know, if you’re going to have a boat, and you’re going to have ocean, and you’re going to have trade, you’re going to have people trying to steal the thing before it gets from Point A to Point B.
Here is what my book about the seafarers, merchants, and pirates says:
“Among the captains that we know about there was at least one Danish aristocrat and two mendicant monks from Visbee.”
Anne: Wow.
Michelle: Now I suspect there’s a good story behind how two mendicant monks ended up being pirate captains.
Anne: Yeah. Now that is like Eustace.
Michelle: Yeah.
Anne: He wasn’t a mendicant, but he was a monk.
Michelle: But I didn’t run across that anywhere else, so I’d have to go digging for that. I got very excited about the Bremen Cog and how it had to be soaked for 18 years in the preserving solution that has glycerol in it. You know how you have to… And I think if it’s been under water like this, you have to…. You can’t just take it out because it will dry out and warp. It has to be preserved. And I got to see the Vasa while I was in Sweden, so of course I was thinking about that…
Anne: Oh, the Vasa! Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Michelle: It’s like the Vasa, in that it’s a rare, mint-condition, preserved…This one wasn’t in as great a shape because when it crashed, you know, it broke? Whereas the Vasa just basically sank to the bottom of Stockholm harbor and sat there for four hundred years. This was broken up, but it was never used, it was… It broke away from the quay and crashed before it was… It was not quite finished. Somebody had a very bad day, there. “Guess what, Hans? Your new boat? I’ve got bad news.”
Anne: “We were almost done, sorry!”
Michelle: “Sorry! Now it’s at the bottom of the…”
They were dredging and… They were dredging to expand the channel, and that’s when they found it, in 1962.
Anne: Oh cool.
Michelle: And they had to excavate it faster than they would have liked, because people kept showing up to try to take pieces. They had sightseers showing up at their dig, trying to walk off with bits. Because it was so exciting. But I will post something about the Bremen Cog, because you can buy a model and build your own!
Anne: Oh hon! Oh honey!
Michelle: Isn’t that cool?
Anne: Yes. Yes, so is your family getting this for Christmas?
Michelle: Alex would probably enjoy this. You can get… He likes to build models. You can buy a kit and build your own Bremen Cog, because all the pieces come and you have to snap them out and put them together. But it looks hard.
Anne: I might get one for Drew. I bet he would like that. It’s good to have models of medieval boats around your house, you know? You never know.
Are we done with our Victualers?
Michelle: I believe that is all I know. Let me look at my notes… Make sure I haven’t forgotten anything.
Anne: I think I gave all the history I can do.
Michelle: Alex was watching the YouTube video with me, over my shoulder, and was very excited about the special effects from the drama, as well.
All righty, that’s what I know.
Anne: That’s all I know too.
So that’s our discussion, for you, of the Victual Brothers, the naughty, bad pirates who disrupted the herring trade and are now the heroes of Northern Europe because, I don’t know, because that’s how the humans are.
And the next time we see you, or actually the next time you hear from us, we’ll be discussing the kidnapping of St. Patrick, because it’s going to be our St. Patrick’s Day broadcast.
Michelle: Oh, excellent!
Anne: Yeah! Yeah, and he was Welsh. Ha ha!
Michelle: Primary sources! Woo hoo!
Anne: Yeah, you’ll be happy.
This has been True Crime Medieval, where the crimes are just like they are today, only with less technology. We’re on Apple podcasts, iHeart podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, any place you can hear podcasts. You can also download us directly from the website.
Please leave a review on Apple. That would be wonderful. We would really appreciate that.
And you can reach us at truecrimemedieval.com, where you can find the show notes, which are written by Michelle, the transcripts, which are done for us by Laurie Dietrich, and you can also reach us all through the webpage. And you can leave comments there. We would love to hear from you, and if you have medieval crimes that you think we should discuss, please let us know. We’ll take that into consideration.
And so that’s all for us. Take care of yourselves. Bye!
Michelle: Bye!
Mabel de Bellême is Murdered, Bures, Normandy 1079
Anne: Hello and welcome to True Crime Medieval, One Thousand Years of People Behaving Badly. I’m Anne Brannen. I’m your host in Albuquerque.
Michelle: And I’m Michelle Butler, in Maryland, the most medieval state in America.
Anne: And today we are discussing the murder of Mabel de Bellême, who was born, like, in 1035 or so, and she died in 1079 when she got her head cut off by somebody she’d really made quite angry. Like, I mean, you can imagine! When do you go around cutting people’s heads off? And she was lying in bed after having had a bath. So we’re going to discuss the murder of Mabel de Bellême. Although really, the story is not so much the murder of Mabel de Bellême, which was kind of inevitable, but her terrible badnesses before then, and the terrible badnesses of her father…
Michelle: The inevitable consequences arrive to Mabel.
Anne: To Mabel. And then the dreadful badnesses of her son, because really, the de Bellêmes were notorious, in Normandy, for being really godawfully behaved. And so that’s our story today. That’s what we’re talking about.
The house of Bellême was a very prominent Normandy family. Really, when we’re talking is about the time of Robert I of Normandy, who’s the father of William the Conqueror of Normandy, who’s the father of Robert Curthose of Normandy. Just, like, that whole time period. And the Bellêmes had a nicely problematic origin. If you go and look it up you’re going to see very decisive things that tell you who the first of the de Bellêmes were, the founder of the family, and it’s going to contradict things all over the place, but by the time that we’re dealing with them, they had a reputation for wickedness.
Mabel’s grandfather had been connected to Richard I, the Duke of Norwich, who’s the Conqueror’s dad, but then later he revolted and then he had to beg for forgiveness, in bare feet with a saddle on his back, which I think is a very nice medieval detail. Nobody requires these kinds of things anymore, and as a little dramatic ritual I think it’s really good. Bare feet and a saddle. At any rate, so he was sad. And his son, William Talvas, who was Mabel’s dad, had a vassal who was a vassal of another lord—you know how this goes, you can swear allegiance to lots of people, and then inevitably they go to war and you have to, like, you can’t actually fight on both sides and so you piss somebody off—in this case William Talvas was pissed off, and the vassal, who was William Fitz Giroie, supported the other guy in a dispute, and William Talvas took it quite badly, and so he invited William Fitz Giroie to his—Talvas’—second wedding, at which he had him seized and mutilated and blinded and then, you know, thrown on out, and he ended up—Giroie ended up—being a monk.
So this led to retaliation. Duh. And finally one of Talvas’ sons exiled him from Normandy. I swear to god, you can’t make this stuff up.
So, Mabel went with him. Oh, and by the way, he had also… William Talvas had also murdered his first wife. Had his first wife murdered on her way to church because he wasn’t really in favor of that. Not Mabel’s mom. Some other mom.
So, Mabel went with him. And the Montgomerys took them in. We’re still in Normandy. And Mabel ended up marrying Roger de Montgomery sometime in the early 1050s.
Now, Roger de Montgomery was a major councilor to Duke William, who was later going to be the Conqueror, and Montgomery was not part… He didn’t take part in the invasion. He wasn’t one of the many councilors and noble Norman knights who went with William the Conqueror and all those Percheron horses, and went over and conquered England. He wasn’t part of that, because he stayed in Normandy, running things.
Fair enough. So William rewarded him. He gave him Arundel. He made him the Earl of Shrewsbury. So, Mabel had inherited an enormous amount of land in Normandy, and Roger de Montgomery had a whole lot of land in England—we’re talking about Arundel and his being the Earl of Shrewsbury—and so this was a really, really powerful match. They ended up with a great deal of territory, and they also ended up having ten children, so they must have gotten along, to some extent at least. More on that later, I do believe.
So, besides all the land, Mabel had apparently also inherited the de Belleme cruelty, and just plain badness.
No, we go back. We recall William de Giroie, who had been mutilated and blinded, you know, because he went to a wedding. This doesn’t count as a blood feast because, first of all, he wasn’t dead. But it does count as a dinner at which bad things were done to guests, which I think is kind of like the larger category under which ‘blood feast’ comes.
Michelle: This is clearly a thing for the Normans. The mutilating and blinding thing. Because we saw that in the first Crusade… not the First Crusade, the Albigensian Crusade.
Anne: Oh yeah. Was it Beziers? Do you remember where it is?
Michelle: There were so many battles. I’m sorry. I remember it was the guy who, then, they wouldn’t let back into England. Montfort. Simon de Montfort.
Anne: Simon de Montfort. Right. Yeah, Simon de Montfort had a lot of prisoners blinded and mutilated. Yeah, they were really into that. This happens a lot.
And so we recall him, and there he is, off in a monastery—more on the monastery later—but he’s off in the monastery, being a monk. Do we let things go, then? Do the Bellêmes say to themselves, “Hey, we have totally avenged ourselves on that family with the vassal who backed the wrong lord, and should have backed us?” No, no. No, no. Mabel went for his son. Now, this was Arnold de Echauffour. And she took a bunch of his lands. By the way, that’s really, basically, what she spends her adult life doing, is taking people’s lands. But she took a bunch of his lands. She got William, the Duke of Normandy—he wasn’t Conqueror yet—she got him to confiscate them and then she grabbed them, but later William promised to give Arnold’s lands back, and so Mabel decided to poison Arnold because, you know. So, alas, alas, alas, Arnold didn’t fall for it, but her husband’s brother drank the poisoned wine and it killed him instead. Luckily for Mabel it wasn’t, like, right there. It was one of those slow-acting poisons. So he got some time… He was quite far away from the castle before he actually keeled over.
Michelle: I’m sorry, that’s just the moment where I just… You know, that happens in Hamlet, and it’s always one of the weirdest moments on stage because it’s so… It feels so contrived, right? It feels like it’s hard to believe, even in the realm of fiction. So when I read that this thing had been done in real life…
Anne: We always like to explain what the poison was, as we did for Cangrande della Scala, where we explained how foxglove works, and I believe, in the one about abortion in Germany…
Michelle: Oh yeah.
Anne: … Where we explained how they were doing it. Unfortunately we do not know what this poison was, and so we can’t tell you. We like to tell you, not so that you would use it, but so that you know not to eat it. At any rate. Yes. So, she killed her husband’s brother instead, but she did manage to poison Arnold later, so she got him. And she, in general, also, she didn’t like the clergy. But she especially didn’t like the monks over St. Evroul. Now, that’s the monastery where William Fitz Giroie had ended up as a monk. That’s the connection there.
Michelle: Ah.
Anne: So that fact that her… Yeah! It’s the same monastery. But her husband really liked that monastery, but she didn’t, and so she couldn’t, I don’t know, just go poison them or whatever it might occur to her, so what she would do—and this would become a… This is a weapon that is used a lot later, in Tudor times—what she would do is go visit them, with a whole lot of people. All the retainers that she could get. And the thing is, this is really expensive, isn’t it? Because, you know, noble people show up on your doorstep, hello! You are supposed to feed them. And you’re supposed to feed all their retainers. And you’re supposed to give everybody a place to stay. And you’re even supposed to entertain them, when we get to the Tudors. I don’t know if these monks are entertaining Mabel, but they might well be, because there are entertainers running around, we just don’t know. Wish we had the household accounts for St. Evroul. But we don’t. Oh well. At any rate. So, she punished them by making them go bankrupt every once in a while.
Michelle: At one of those times they may have made an attempt on her life, or at least tried to make her sick, because she ends up taking ill and having to leave.
Anne: Yeah. There’s a piece of the story also, then, we’re told… That piece of the story I believe. And maybe they poisoned her and maybe they didn’t, but that she got sick and had to leave, I believe. I don’t believe the part where she makes herself well by suckling an infant who then dies from the poison, but sucks it all out of her. The reason I don’t believe this is that I have a twenty-first century understanding of biology, and so I’m not buying that, but it’s the kind of story that got connected to her.
At any rate, she didn’t die. They didn’t manage to kill her.
Michelle: That is some Lady Macbeth-level…
Anne: Yes.
Michelle: … Stuff, right there.
Anne: Oh, Mabel!
Over the years, she managed to break a whole lot of noble families. She took their lands and she impoverished them. The amount of land that she ended up having power over, in Normandy, is just immense. Yeah, she just… If you were one of her neighbors—and you would become her neighbor, you know, because she would steal the land next to you, and then you would be a neighbor—If you were one of her neighbors, it was sad. It was just sad.
Michelle: We talked about this with the Albigensian Crusade but, one of the most important things I have learned, through the course of us doing Norman research, is that their noble ladies are just as scary as the lords.
Anne: Yes. They are.
Michelle: My goodness.
Anne: We remember that they’re Vikings.
Michelle: Holy cow are they Vikings! They’re just Vikings that came and stayed, which is worse.
Anne: They’re Vikings that came and stayed, and learned how to eat French food. That’s who they are. Yes. The Normans.
And you remember, we had a… What was the podcast where we explained… Lindisfarne, wasn’t it? Where we explained the Vikings.
Michelle: Yeah.
Anne: The Vikings did not… The Vikings thought that theft was really not good. Because it was cowardly. But raiding! Raiding is good, because everybody has a chance. And this is a form of raiding, you know? It’s not like she’s going in the night and stealing things. She’s doing this quite obviously by manipulating powerful people and the law, so it fits nicely into the Viking creed, I think. But not ours. No, Mabel, no! Bad Mabel!
All right, and finally one of them hit back. Hugh Bunel had lost his ancestral lands to her. He was the son of Robert de Jalgeio, and it was his castle that had been lost, and so a couple of years later—and this is interesting, because it’s not immediately. It’s not immediately. It’s a couple of years later. They’ve had to live with the loss of their lands and their impoverishment—He and some of his brothers broke into her bedroom and cut her head off while she was lying in bed, having gotten out of her bath. That’s what they did.
And they got away because they burnt a bridge behind them. Really. Honestly. You can’t make this stuff up.
So he was a fugitive. He was a fugitive, and the people that were looking for him were William the Conqueror and Mabel’s family, not the Montgomerys. Not her husband, but Mabel’s family and William the Conqueror. So Hugh ended up living with Muslims. He learned their language, he learned their customs, and what did he do with this knowledge? Did you read this part? Because I’m about to tell you.
Michelle: No. I don’t know.
Anne: I’m going to tell you! What he did with this knowledge was, when Robert Curthose—who was one of William the Conqueror’s sons—Robert Curthose was in the First Crusade, at the Siege of Jerusalem. Hugh, the fugitive, went into service with him, and he had twenty years of knowledge of the language and the customs and so he helped Curthose against the Muslims, that’s what he did.
Michelle: Huh.
Anne: So, although he was a victim of Mabel, we don’t want to think, “Oh, that poor guy! He had to kill her, but then he was so nice.” No! He wasn’t! They’re all awful! They’re awful.
Michelle: Any of them that aren’t awful get dead so fast you don’t find out about them.
Anne: Yeah, if they had survived, they would have been dreadful.
So, yeah. That’s what happens to Mabel and her killer. Her son—Mabel’s son, Robert de Belleme, whose father is Montgomery—was also very badly behaved, according to the chroniclers. With his father, Roger de Montgomery, and several other nobles, he rebelled against William Rufus, who was the King of England after William the Conqueror died. William had given England to William Rufus, and Normandy to Curthose. So he rebelled against William Rufus, and was in favor of Robert Curthose, who’s later going to be helped by Hugh, his mom’s killer! These people! They’re all so interconnected. I just don’t know how they manage to get through a day of their lives with any kind of semblance of sanity.
So, this didn’t end well, but William Rufus spared their lives. And we’ll have more on William Rufus in a future podcast, because William Rufus is going to die in a hunting accident. Please see air quotes around “hunting accident,” because it seems really weird. “We went out hunting and an arrow hit him and we don’t know what happened!” Seems highly unlikely, but that’s what we’ve got.
Back in Normandy, along with Henry of Normandy—who would later be King Henry I—Bellême and Henry fell out with Robert Curthose, whom they had been supporting. There were castles besieged. There was a bunch of death. But then the Montgomery Bellêmes finally made peace with Robert Curthose and when he died—when his father died—Mabel’s son inherited his mother’s holding in Normandy. That’s what he got.
His warring with other Normans continued. Eventually he was imprisoned for a rebellion against Henry I, and he died in prison. OK. Fair enough.
His reputation as cruel and wicked seems in large part to be due to the reputation of his family, because the whole family… It’s like the de Bellemes are like this iconic, badly behaved Norman family. Quite frankly, I don’t see that they’re being much worse than anybody else but, you know, that’s what… They’re really, really bad, according to history.
And he might be the inspiration for Robert the Devil, who’s this legendary Norman knight who was the son of Satan, because his mom made a deal with the devil. Might be the inspiration for that, but there’s some other contenders for that as well.
Michelle: I don’t know that story.
Anne: Yeah. I’m bored by it. But yeah, so you have to go find the story of Robert the… It’s, you know, it’s one of those legends. He does bad things, none of which Robert de Bellême actually did.
Mabel de Bellême is renowned as an especially cruel and wicked medieval noblewoman, but what we know of her—and Michelle is going to talk a lot more about this, because we all know the kinds of things that Michelle likes to talk about—what we know of her comes from Orderic Vitalis and his History of the House of Bellême, and has got to be colored by the fact that the monastery that Orderic belonged to, St. Evroul, had been founded by the Giroie family—you remember that’s where William Fitz Giroie ended up—that’s why. After he got mutilated and blinded.
But definitely, you know, there’s got to be a history there. I mean, Mabel ended up with an enormous amount of land, and she obtained it by force, and she might have poisoned some people, and she certainly made the family angry enough that they murdered her in her bed.
But there’s an epitaph on her tomb, which Orderic talks to us about. Did you see this? Did you look at this?
Michelle: No, I’m sorry. I mostly read about Orderic…
Anne: No, no, that’s OK. I just wondered if I was telling you stuff you already knew. Let me see if I can find this, because I want to read it to you.
Now, the thing is, Orderic wrote this in Latin and I… It took me a while to find this thing in Latin because, you know, I was, like, “This cannot be real.” And the reason I was thinking this is that what we have… If you go and look up her epitaph you will find it, and it’s in translation…
Michelle: Do we still have her tomb, or is this the only witness we have to this?
Anne: No, the tomb is gone. The tomb is gone, although we’ve got a drawing of it that I probably will use. The tomb is gone, and what we have is Orderic’s giving us the Latin, and I finally found the Latin, which I’m not going to… I’m not going to put this on you, although we might stick it in the show notes, but I finally found the Latin, and I want to just say, before I read to you the translation into English of the epitaph, I want to say to you that, although the things which are said about her are more or less the things that are said in Latin, the Latin is really plain and the English is totally fulsome, so don’t think that this is the actual epitaph. This is, like, a pumping up of the Latin, which is much simpler. But I’m going to read you her epitaph. This is the kind of poetry that I just can’t stand, it’s like… You’ll see why.
“Sprung from the noble and the brave,
Here Mabel finds a narrow grave.
But, above all woman’s glory
Fills a page in famous story.
Commanding, eloquent, and wise
And prompt to daring enterprise,
Though slight her form, her soul was great,
And, proudly swelling in her state.
Rich dress, and pomp, and retinue,
Lent their grace and honors due.
The border’s guard, the country’s shield
Both love and fear her might revealed
‘Til Hugh, revengeful, gained her bower
In dark December’s midnight hour.
Then saw the deepest o’erflowing stream
The ruthless murder’s poignard gleam
Now friends, some moments kindly spare
For her soul’s rest to breathe a prayer.”
And so, the murder is in there, but it’s all, like, for no reason at all. For no reason at all, “Hugh, revengeful,” for nothing, since there’s nothing in there, nothing, nothing, nothing there to tell you what he might want revenge for. What, is he just jealous of all her rich dress and pomp and retinue, and her daring enterprise and her commandment and her eloquence and her wisdom?
Michelle: Where was she buried?
Anne: She was buried in Troarn. How close is that? It’s in the Calvados, in the Normandy region. So she’s buried in Normandy. She was born in Normandy, she owned a bunch of Normandy, she lived in Normandy, she died in Normandy, and she’s buried in Normandy. She’s a Norman. That’s who she is. She’s a Norman.
Yeah, no, the Latin. Like, if you look at the Latin it’s so much shorter and just so much simpler, but it does say the same kinds of things. You know, she was really great and Hugh killed her.
Michelle: For no good reason.
Anne: Yeah, for no good reason. Yeah.
Michelle: Rude.
Anne: Yeah, she died, and there’s no good reason. And Orderic himself was… Like, the monks were, you know, saying nice things about her, like, for custom and not for reality, is more or less what he says. But Orderic, Orderic did not like her at all.
Michelle: No!
Anne: Did he, Michelle?
Michelle: No, not even a little bit.
Anne: Michelle, Michelle, do you have anything to say to us about Orderic, who has shown up in our podcast I think twice before this, has he not?
Michelle: OK. So, yeah, so that’s the thing. When I was looking at this I very quickly noticed that Orderic Vitalis, this is his third appearance for us. He showed up in the White Ship. He’s one of the sources for the White Ship.
Anne: That’s right. Isn’t he the one who thought that the White Ship had crashed on account of everybody was committing sodomy? Yep. Yes, yeah. Orderic’s the chronicler who tells us the White Ship sunk because everybody was committing sodomy on board. Where, like, spoiler! Is that why? No! It was because it was dark and they were drunk and they ran into a rock. That’s why the White Ship was really… You could have done it, if you were completely pure of heart, except for the being drunk part, but sodomy had nothing to do with it.
At any rate, yeah, so, Orderic. He showed up in the White Ship.
Michelle: He showed up for the White Ship, and then he was also our source for the Halloween episode, with that ghost story.
Anne: That’s right, he has a ghost story in his history of Normandy.
And he’s the main source for our Mabel de Bellême. I want to point something out here. It’s like… I went Orderic… Orderic, I saw people saying, is generally considered, you know, to be a solid historian. Oh really? Because the three times we’ve got him I’m, like, “I don’t think so!” At any rate, yeah.
Michelle: So, I figured it was time for me to learn something about Orderic because, you know, this was the third time he’d shown up, and I really didn’t know anything about him. So I went off and looked up stuff about Orderic.
Anne: Yay!
Michelle: So, he was born in 1075, which, first of all, is an important piece of information because he was a child when Mabel was killed. So he is connected, and sort of has some first-hand information, but not really, because he knows what… He’s connected to these people, but he knows what he’s being told. He has no first-hand knowledge whatsoever. He was a little kid.
But, he is connected to this group. His father was Odelarius, and he was a priest to Mabel’s husband Roger. So his dad worked for Roger of Montgomery, and after the Conquest, when Roger gets given parts of Shrewsbury… So, he gets given stuff over by Wales, because, you know, all the good bits of England had been doled out by that point.
Anne: No, wait, wait, wait, he’s also given Arundel, and Arundel is a really crucial…
Michelle: Really nice? Important?
Anne: Yeah, it’s a really crucial defense, and it’s good… So he got Arundel and some stuff on the border.
Michelle: Yeah, so that stuff on the border was a problem because, you know, the Welsh weren’t going quietly.
Anne: No, we were badly behaved. I just want to point this out. Yay! Yay us!
Michelle: But he was apparently fairly good at… Roger, I mean, was apparently pretty decent at holding that, because he manages to not lose it back to the Welsh. Also, Shrewsbury… I was completely—this is a total sidebar—but his castle at Shrewsbury must have been amazing. Roger… The castle that Roger built at Shrewsbury?
Anne: Uh-huh?
Michelle: There had been a defense there, before, because it’s an obviously awesome defensive site because the River Severn does this little, like, drop down and forms a bag…
Anne: And that’s where the city is?
Michelle: Yes, that’s where the city is. And what they do, then, is they build a castle at the neck of the bag, so the only land route into the city has this defensive fortification.
Anne: Right, it’s a giant moat.
Michelle: It’s a giant moat. It is absolutely the place to build a castle, and to have a nice city behind it.
Anne: If you’ve got high walls, it’s really hard to scale because you’ve got not a lot of traction in the water.
Michelle: There is nothing left, really, of the Norman castle. There is still a castle there. If you look up ‘Shrewsbury Castle,’ you’ll find it, but it’s much later. The Norman castle gets destroyed later. A later castle is rebuilt in the same location, is what happens. But, the dad, Odelarius, is a really interesting dude, because when he comes with Roger to England, after the Conquest, he a) gets married and b) gets a lot of stuff from the English Church, and apparently he has guilt over both of these things.
Anne: This is really un-… Is he not really a Norman? Because he’s abandoning his birthright and being sorry for some stuff?
Michelle: Clerical marriage was not yet illegal, when he marries this Englishwoman, but it is on the outs. It’s becoming frowned upon.
Anne: Uh-huh.
Michelle: And actually is forbidden—for by the time Orderic is writing most of his works, the clerical marriage has been forbidden—because it was forbidden in the First Lateran Council of 1123. And then the prohibition was reinforced in the Second Lateran Council in 1139, so Odelarius apparently has some guilt about it. Not enough guilt, right? Because he’s got three kids with her, so clearly whatever guilt he has is, you know, falling by the wayside when he goes back to visit his wife. He has three little boys with her in fairly rapid succession. Orderic is the oldest and then Benedict and then Everard, but Odelarius spends the rest of his life—and his children’s lives, he hauls them into it too—feeling bad. So he sends poor Orderic—I feel so sorry for this kid—off to the monastery in Normandy, but he doesn’t speak the language.
Anne: Oh my god! He’s an English child!
Michelle: Yeah. He speaks English and Latin.
Anne: Because I think of him as a Norman, but that’s later in his little life.
Michelle: Yeah.
Anne: Huh.
Michelle: When he’s ten he gets sent… His father sends him as a child oblate to the monastery in Normandy, and he does not speak the language. He talks—in one of the kind of places in the history where he drops into autobiography—he talks about showing up and not being able to understand anybody.
Anne: Wow. Wow. Wow.
Michelle: And having to learn Norman French.
Anne: So yeah, so he goes back to his father’s homeland, but it’s not his homeland.
Michelle: No. In fact, he has those two names, Orderic Vitalis, because when he gets there, the Norman monks look at him and say, “That is a disgusting English name,” and they give him a new name. So they call him Vitalis, not his English name.
Anne: God damn.
Michelle: I know. I feel…
Anne: I did not know this. Thank you.
Michelle: Isn’t this fascinating?
Anne: I always love it when you go and find this stuff.
Michelle: So he gets sent over there, as this, you know, sacrifice on the altar of his father’s guilt. The dad’s still not feeling appeased, so he himself and the youngest son, they all end up being monks, basically.
Anne: What happens to the wife? Does he become a monk after she’s dead or, like, while she’s still in the process of being alive?
Michelle: The answer is we don’t know, but we think she must have been dead by 1180 because the children start getting doled out to other people to take care of, by that point.
Anne: Oh, OK. All right. OK.
Michelle: So when Orderic is five, he gets sent to an English priest to be taught to read and write.
Anne: OK. So, yeah. OK.
Michelle: And at least one of the people who works on Orderic thinks that his mom must have been dead by that point, because five is awfully young to be being sent off, and, more importantly, by the time he’s ten and he’s being sent off, when he remembers that and writes about it in his Historia, he doesn’t talk about a sad parting from his mother. He talks about this really tearful parting from his father.
Anne: OK. Got it.
Now, his father could have entered a monastery even while his wife was alive, but she would have had to agree to it, and there’d have to be permission from the bishop.
Michelle: Yeah.
So, one of the things that I found that I was… I mean, nerd-gasm! Autograph copies of his work survive!
Anne: Oh no!
Michelle: Written in his own hand.
Anne: No!
Michelle: I know!
Anne: Wow.
Michelle: I know!
Anne: Are they in the library in Paris?
Michelle: Probably. It didn’t… We can check that? Where they are?
Anne: I always like to know these things.
Michelle: So his interpolated copy, that he wrote, of somebody else’s work, William of Jumieges, he wrote… So this guy wrote a history of the dukes of Normandy, and one of Orderic’s first works is to copy that and interpolate it. Then he writes his own, the Historia Ecclesiastica, but both of those survive in his autograph copy. And the copy he made of Bede’s works.
Anne: Oh god! That’s wonderful!
Michelle: Isn’t that amazing? I’m so excited.
Anne: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Michelle: Oh my god!
The other thing that I found that was really interesting… Well, a couple of things are really interesting. One is that, under the Normans, for all of their violence, there’s this renaissance of writing history. They’re really interested in making sure that their version of events… I suppose that would be the cynical approach. You could think of it as, “Oh my gosh, this is, like, one of the first renaissances! They’re looking back to Josephus!” Who they actually really are using as a model. You know, “We’ve got to write some history.” The other way would be to think, “Man, we want to make sure that our version of events gets written down.” But by the 1130s, one in ten books being written was a history. Which is a mind-boggling statistic.
Anne: Yeah, I did not know that. I love it that the Normans were all into recreating their history. “Here’s what we did. It totally was good and made sense and had nothing to do with being really, really bad. Nothing.
Michelle: There’s a whole bunch of them. William of Malmesbury, John of Worcester, Henry of Huntingdon, there’s this whole… That’s why we had so many sources for the White Ship.
Anne: Right. That’s right. That’s right, that’s right.
Michelle: Because there’re all these guys writing history. And Orderic’s Historia was never really lost. Some of these things, you know, we have re-found them, but during their time, you know, a generation or two after they were written they’d kind of fallen into obscurity? His never was. It was continued. Like, later people came along and added stuff later. It was copied, in the sixteenth century—the early sixteenth century—because the twelfth century script had become hard to read. So people were still wanting… And then it was printed, in 1619. I am flabbergasted by these two facts.
Anne: Mmhmm. So this is a continuous history of the Normans.
Michelle: Yeah, that is being… That people are coming back to. They’re re-reading it, they’re re-consulting it. It’s 13 volumes, OK? So when we talk about it being copied in the sixteenth century, that’s, like, somebody’s life’s work. Just mind-boggling.
Anne: This would have an enormous impact, then, in how it is we think about the Normans.
Michelle: Yeah.
Anne: Because this is what Orderic told… Although, to be fair, I don’t believe that anybody kept thinking that sodomy is what brought the White Ship down, but, you know, this view of the de Bellemes as being, like, the worst of the worst, is fed by this, over a long period of time.
Michelle: Yeah, his version is definitely a very influential version of…
Anne: Goodness. Goodness, goodness.
Michelle: It still has not been entirely translated and published in English.
There is the scholarly edition. It was published by Marjorie Chibnall, and it’s the one that people go to now, but it omits, I think, the first two books, because they have nothing to do with the Normans. They’re kind of, like, prequel, that he wrote later, that are about the history of the world, and so when she did her edition, they made the decision not to translate and publish those. Which means it hasn’t entirely been published in English.
Anne: Do you know, has it entirely been published in French?
Michelle: Um, I assume that version printed in 1619…
Anne: Ah! Might well be.
Michelle: Printed. Let me look at what…
Anne: That could have been in Latin.
Michelle: Let me look at the book here, see what it says. OK, so here we got it. Here we have it. So, OK, so “Between 1503 and 1536, Dom William Vallin, a monk at Saint-Evroul, copied…
Anne: Of course.
Michelle: …Books I to VI and IX to XIII from the three surviving autograph codices, which, he claimed, could not be read” because, you know, of the script. And then it was published a hundred years later, in 1619. The first complete edition of the Historia was published by Andre Duchesne.
Anne: Duchesne.
Michelle: That’s funny.
Anne: That is funny. The reason this is hilarious is that Michelle and I both have prior doings with Duquesne University of the Holy Spirit, spelled totally differently. This is Duchesne.
Michelle: But the very first thing I did, when I got accepted, was make sure to be able to spell the university’s name.
Anne: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And people call it ‘Doo-Kez-Knee.’ It’s not. It’s not ‘doo-kez-knee.’
Michelle: So the complete… It was published completely in 1619, in five volumes. Which remained the basic printed text from which all subsequent extracts were derived, until the nineteenth century. And then it was printed again in the mid-nineteenth century, and it remains the only complete edition of the entire text that has been published, books 1 to 13.
Anne: OK.
Michelle: This thing is enormous. And so influential. So, yes, that’s what I learned about Orderic, our source for so many things. I have acquired a couple books about him, and I just figure every time he pops up I’ll also circle back and read a chapter.
Anne: He’s going to show up whenever we talk about the Normans. This is what’s going to happen. He’s going to be around.
You know, one of the things we like to talk about is the ways in which our protagonists come down to us in popular fiction, and Mabel de Belleme does not.
Michelle: No, I sure didn’t find anything.
Anne: No. We know about her as an historical figure. There’s lots of studies about her. Lots of feminist studies, and studies concerning Orderic and his misogyny, actually, but yeah, she’s a subject for the writing of scholars, she’s not a subject for the writing of novelists.
Michelle: Gosh, you probably could make her sympathetic, but it would really involve making sure that you’re deeply in her point of view.
Anne: What is her point of view?
Michelle: Because objectively what she’s up to is pretty dreadful. But they’re all pretty dreadful.
Anne: What’s her point of view? How can you be… I mean, it was like, “I want some stuff!” I think that’s her point of view. “I want some stuff, and you’ve annoyed me,” basically.
Michelle: Her point of view is, “If I do it, it’s right.”
Anne: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, you’d actually have to do it from the point of view of somebody else, but I don’t think that you could even do it from the point of Hugh the murderer, because, really, you could be really sympathetic to him, until you got to the First Crusade and, you know, he was a traitor to people who had taken him in and taken care of him. That’s kind of rude. No, so. No, no. Won’t work.
Michelle: Well, now I understand, though, why his autograph copies survive, because his work was so important, and it was seen as being important.
Anne: Mmhm, from the beginning, obviously. Yeah.
Michelle: Yeah. They saved that stuff.
That just blew my mind, when I read that, because we have so few manuscripts that we know were written, you know, written out by the person who composed them.
Anne: We do have one piece of Chaucer’s handwriting, and it’s a little bit of a note that survives, in French, that he wrote as part of his job as Comptroller of the Wool Trade. That’s it. We don’t have this stuff. We don’t have things. And he was important in his time, too. But no.
Michelle: And this is so much earlier than Chaucer.
Anne: Do you know who was Orderic associated with, that gave him such… That made him be so known, so early?
Michelle: Well, he’s writing the history within the context of the monastery as his, like, assigned job…
Anne: Uh-huh. So they’re keeping it. Yeah. So it survives there.
Michelle: Yeah.
Anne: Yeah, if you go to Wikipedia, “Modern historians view him as a reliable source.” I’m like, “OK. OK. A reliable source. OK. Kind of.”
Michelle: Kind of.
Anne: Yeah. Yeah. But he wasn’t actually associated, personally, with any great figures. He wasn’t, like, in the retinue of somebody. When we were talking about Sigebert, we were talking about a chronicler who was actually in on the scene. Orderic wasn’t. But he did get to hear about things, since he’s at this monastery. People come by, and whatnot.
Michelle: He certainly is well read. He’s read a lot of stuff. He ends up writing a lot of stuff.
Anne: Yeah. The ghost story. Wasn’t the ghost story part of a travelogue?
Michelle: He relates that story as, “This is this thing that this priest told me, and it just happened, like, three weeks ago.” But he’s not like his dad. His dad was, you know, earlier in his life was the household priest for Roger Montgomery, and there’s, you know there’s a discussion in here about child oblation, that this was a thing. You know, child sacrifice, it’s not all that uncommon.
Anne: No, it wasn’t an unusual thing.
Michelle: One of the people working on him talks about his real mixed feelings about being sent away by his dad, like this.
Anne: Yeah, he didn’t have a lot of choice about that. But, so, he’s a monk. He remains a monk. He lives in the monastery. He does do some traveling but that’s where he’s at. And he writes a history that never gets forgotten. That’s just so unusual.
Michelle: Yeah, there’s a… Well this is just random, and we don’t necessarily have to include this, but it’s fascinating:
“Orderic’s detailed information about Odelarius’s promise of money and land highlights a common feature of such ceremonies at which family members would be present to give their consent: the ‘laudatio parentis.’ Children would accompany their fathers so that in due course they could pass on knowledge of the event.”
He relates this oral culture thing, where little kids get taken along to important ceremonies so that later on, in the future, they are able to give first-hand witness to the agreement. In fact he goes on to say that sometimes the kids would get slapped at this event, to make sure they remember it.
Anne: Right. And this is the distinction, ‘in living memory.’
Michelle: Yes.
Anne: Because they’re there, then, the living memory is longer than it would be if there was no one… If there wasn’t a child there who’s going to be living longer than the adults.
Michelle: Yeah.
Anne: Huh. I had not heard of that. Thank you.
Michelle: Isn’t that fascinating?
Anne: Yeah.
Michelle: They get brought along so that they are able to provide this oral culture continuity about important agreements. That has absolutely nothing to do with Mabel, but I thought it was, like, a really fascinating sort of moment where the oral culture and the written culture are at this moment of uneasy interaction. “We’re going to write stuff down, but we’re also going to slap a kid, to make sure they remember it.”
Anne: Well, it hasn’t got to do with Mabel, but it does have to do with Orderic, so. Yeah.
Anything else on Mabel?
Michelle: I had practically nothing on Mabel.
Anne: Mabel de Bellême.
So that is our explanation and discussion of the murder of Mabel de Bellême, and why it happened, and the whole phenomenon of the creation of the de Bellêmes as a kind of iconica;ly godawful Norman family, way above the godawfulness of all the other Norman families, and so they’re very special in that way, and so we honor them on True Crime Medieval, because they committed a bunch of ‘em. Yeah.
And the next time that you hear from us, we will be discussing the Victual Brothers, because we’re going back to piracy, because, you know, you need some pirates. You need some pirates every once in a while, so we’re going to have Swedish pirates from the fourteenth century. Ta-da!
Michelle: Awesome! I don’t know anything about this, this will be great!
Anne: And now for something completely different. Swedish pirates from the fourteenth century.
Michelle: Swedish pirates are not all that far away from, like, the Normans, who are basically Vikings.
Anne: Yeah, so one of the things we’ll have to discuss, the difference between Swedish pirates and Vikings. Let’s find out.
No, this is a whole family which is really badly behaved, and that’s also something I enjoy. I enjoy the badly behaved families. Why look, here was one! The de Bellêmes. So.
So, that’s all for us today. This has been True Crime Medieval, where the crimes are just like they are today, but with less technology. We’re on Apple podcasts, iHeart podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, anyplace you can listen to podcasts. You can also go… If you go to our site, you can click directly on the link and download it from there.
Please leave a review. We appreciate that. And you can reach us at truecrimemedieval.com, where you can find the show notes, which are written by Michelle, and the transcripts, which are done for us by Laurie Dietrich. You can click on the podcast link and hear it from there, and you can also reach us all through the web page, and you can leave comments. We would love to hear from you. And if you have medieval crimes that you’d like for us to discuss, please let us know. We’ll take it under consideration. And please leave a review in any of the places where you can leave them. It helps to get other people to know who we are. And you can also tell your friends, because we’re all medieval crimes, all the time. Except for when we’re going to do some Early Modern because we’re just going to expand. So, that’s all for us. Bye.
Michelle: Bye!
Sir Thomas Malory Goes to Prison for Treason, London, 1468
Anne: Hello and welcome to True Crime Medieval, One Thousand Years of People Behaving Badly. We’re very glad to get to talk to you today, because there’s been some very bad behavior! Very bad behavior in our nation, this week, and so we’re… as usual, we’re glad to be able to talk about some very old bad behavior that happened a long time ago.
I’m Anne Brannen. I’m your host in Albuquerque.
Michelle: And I’m Michelle Butler in Maryland, the most medieval state in America.
Anne: And today, we are talking about Sir Thomas Malory, who ended up in prison for, well, actually when he finally ended up in prison it was for something that really, he actually had done, but he had gotten into trouble a lot, before then. 1443, 1451, 1452, 1468. Finally, in 1468, he actually really had done some things. The others… we don’t really know how much they were true. But, Sir Thomas Malory. And he’s of interest not just because he had a crime, but because he is the author of Morte d’Arthur, which is a highly influential text about King Arthur. So we have a lot to say about that, later, because, hello, literature and us! But this is the guy we have finally decided is, yes, the Thomas Malory who wrote the Morte d’Arthur. There are some other possibilities. The other possibilities are the Thomas Malory of Papworth, who wasn’t ever knighted, so he can’t have been Sir Thomas Malory. And Thomas Malory of Hutton-Conyers, who also wasn’t knighted, and therefore could not have been Sir Thomas Malory. And some Welsh guy, we don’t know what… we’ve completely unidentified. But, Malory might have been Maelor, which, OK, fine, but no. At any rate, so this is Thomas Malory of Newbold Revel. Sir Thomas Malory of Newbold Revel. He was born about 1415 and he was… Hello?
Michelle: I was going to say that not everybody… One of the biographies I read thinks that that probably is too late of a date. Field says it’s that late, but this one, Hardyment, thinks it’s probably… he was probably born earlier than that.
Anne: So we don’t know really when his birthday is, but we know it was in the very first part of the fifteenth century.
Michelle: It’s got to be in that twenty-year time period between 1399 to 1420.
Anne: Well, thank you then! That’s sort of a while. But at any rate, it’s in there someplace. And he was the son of Sir John Malory, and by the eighth of October in 1441 he had been knighted, so he’s knighted sometime before then. But that’s the point at which we know that he had… by that time he’s Sir Thomas Malory.
So this is great for True Crime Medieval because it’s like, you know, we get a crime and we get Morte d’Arthur. So it’s cool. But there’s a crime. Yay.
He served under Henry Beauchamp. He was elected to Parliament in 1443 for Warwickshire. He was an elector for Northamptonshire. He served on a royal commission for Warwickshire and, in 1449, he was a member of Parliament for Great Bedwyn. And then, after that, things sort of start to fall apart.
As early as 1443 he and an accomplice were accused of kidnapping and robbery. Of robbing some guy named Thomas Smythe, though he wasn’t convicted for that. In 1451 he was accused of ambushing Humphrey Stafford, the Duke of Buckingham, who had… Buckingham had inherited his mother’s lands, which were pretty vast, and this included the Midlands, where Thomas Malory was operating, and they ended up in some giant personal feud.
Michelle: It’s a really bad idea to get a nobleman mad at you.
Anne: Yeah, because Malory’s not a noble, he’s a knight. He’s not actually an Earl. But that wasn’t proven. However, later that year he extorted money from several people, he broke into a house, he stole some goods, and he raped the woman of the house, and then he attacked her again a couple of months later, and he and his cohorts were ordered to be arrested, but they weren’t, and they continued to commit violent robberies and the like, and finally he did get arrested, and then he escaped. And, most of the people—if not all of them—most of the people that he is said to have been attacking were Buckingham supporters. Michelle has more to say about this in a bit.
So finally there was a trial. Yay! There was a trial, an actual trial. That was the late summer, August of 1451, and that trial happened in Buckingham’s place of power and Malory got convicted, and he was sent to London, to the Marshalsea prison, and I want to say some things about Marshalsea. Because Marshalsea is gone now, but you’ll read that it’s in London. It is. Where it was is now London, but at that point it was not actually London, it was Southwark, and that was separate from London. And later, by the eighteenth century, it would become… it would house mostly debtors, many of whom starved because they didn’t have money to pay for their food, which was what you had to do if you wanted to not die in prison, and that’s where Dickens’ father got sent, so it’s Marshalsea…
Michelle: Oh!
Anne: I had told Michelle that Dickens was going to show up. It’s Marshalsea that’s in Dickens’ mind when he’s writing his debtor prison scenes. That’s what he’s thinking of. And it’s actually going to get torn down in 1870, so Dickens is alive to see that, and he says “Good riddance.” Yay. So he was sent to Marshalsea.
And, he demanded a re-trial with a jury that was made up of people from his county, which seems quite fair, doesn’t it? But he didn’t get one. But he was released. But then, in March of 1452 he was back at Marshalsea. I’m not clear why, on this. He escaped. Back in prison within a month. Released on bail in May 1453. Then he was arrested in Colchester for robbery and horse thieving. He escaped, he was caught, he was taken back to Marshalsea, and finally he was pardoned. Yay. In 1461.
So he’d been convicted once by that point. OK, fine, for stuff.
Do you want to say something about all that? Because I’m going to get into what he actually… what we know he actually did. But would you like to say something about this early crime spree, which seems fairly dramatic and not so nice?
You had something you wanted to say about the stuff with Buckingham, and whether or not any of those crimes actually happened?
Michelle: So one of the points that’s being made in Christina Hardyment’s biography from 2005—which is a nice place to go, to have an introduction to Malory. It’s similar to the book that I had read about Becket in that it is a historian, who is not a medievalist, but a historian who is, you know, competent to go and gather all this stuff and read it and weigh it, and it’s published by a popular press rather than an academic press, all of which adds up to a readable book, because it’s intended for a general audience rather than an academic audience.
Anne: Does it give you citations, so you know where stuff comes from, or is it more general than that?
Michelle: There is an absolutely humongous bibliography.
Anne: Yay! All right. OK.
Michelle: And there are quite a lot of notes as well.
Anne: OK. Good.
Michelle: So I think it is better noted than the Becket one was.
Anne: OK.
Michelle: There was an interesting connection with Becket, actually, that gets mentioned, because this book goes pretty far back, and talks about Malory’s family, to explain where they got their money from, before it talks about Malory specifically.
Anne: Where did they get their money from?
Michelle: They are descended from Normans, and through a couple hundred years of good marrying…
Anne: Ah.
Michelle: … they become a family with some holdings…
Anne: OK.
Michelle: You know, seven thousand acres…
Anne: OK.
Michelle: … in the Midlands, in Warwickshire. Which is pretty amazing. But here is this really interesting connection with Becket, since we just did Becket.
Henry IV…
And here I’m just going to start quoting…
“…was the first English King to be anointed at his coronation with a miraculous oil, preserved in a crystal phial enclosed in a solid gold eagle. nly just rediscovered, it had, men said, been given to St. Thomas Becket by the Virgin Mary herself.”
Anne: Probably so. Sure. I’ll go with that. Yeah.
Michelle: I’m sure that that’s totally what happened. Henry IV the Usurper absolutely did not need to pull a trump card out of the air in the form of a magic oil that Thomas Becket had gotten from the Virgin Mary.
Anne: And we’re connecting this to Malory? Tell me the link.
Michelle: Oh, oh sorry. The link is that John Malory almost certainly was having to work hard to ingratiate himself with Henry IV, because his overlord, Thomas Holland, had just been executed for trying to lead a rebellion over Twelfth Night against the newly-ensconced Henry IV.
Anne: Who had… you know, the Virgin Mary had actually given him some oil.
Michelle: Yeah.
Anne: OK.
Michelle: So John Malory ends up having to go fight against the Scots, and then into Wales, trying to work his way back into the good graces of the King. And he was actually in prison for a little while. After Thomas Holland’s failed… the overlord Thomas Holland’s failed attempt to capture Henry IV over Twelfth Night, then his… John Malory ends up in prison for a little while. In the Tower!
Anne: In the Tower!
Michelle: Because he’s under suspicion of having been part of the plot.
Anne: Interesting. Everything gets all connected. So, yes, but the crimes that Malory did, or is said to have done, before 1468, the problem is that he’s being charged with these crimes in Buckingham’s lands, right? And he’s being charged for harming Buckingham’s supporters, and there’s some question as to whether or not this actually happened? Is that what you were telling me?
Michelle: Oh, yes, the… Hardyment wants to make the point that the fifteenth century is of course during this time of tremendous upheaval, right? We start with the usurpation of Henry IV and the almost probably murder—“disappearance”—of Richard II. “Died of pure grief!” Mmhmm.
Anne: Aha. Yeah.
Michelle: And then of course we slide into the Wars of the Roses by the middle of the fifteenth century, and one of the things that’s happening during that time period is the discovery that as the legal structures have grown and become more complicated, they can be weaponized.
Anne: Uh-huh. So you could indeed, if you were someone who had a great deal of power, get a minor knight arrested for things which he might not have done.
Michelle: Yes. Which of course is something we still see, right? You have the ability to file frivolous lawsuits and tie things up and, you know, there are ways to take the legal system and turn it into a bludgeon against somebody else. And of course, with the amount of chaos that is going on throughout the fifteenth century, it’s not impossible to have been on the wrong side of the Wars of the Roses and even, you know, earlier than that, and end up in somebody’s sights. Somebody powerful’s sights.
Anne: OK, so in Malory’s case, he’s accused of a whole lot of stuff, he’s convicted once, but the one time when he’s convicted it’s with a jury that is made up of Buckingham’s men. So, what we know is that he was accused of a whole bunch of things, and that he might or might not have done them. So that’s where we’re standing on this, yeah?
Michelle: Yeah.
Anne: OK.
Michelle: I think that’s fair. It’s one of these kind of meta… potentially meta-crimes, right? Because he’s accused of a crime, but it’s possible that the accusation itself is a criminal misuse of the justice system.
Anne: OK. All right. OK. So. So we go on, and he’s actually pardoned, in 1461. Fair enough. At the point at which Edward IV comes into power. But by 1468 he changed from being a Yorkist—even though Edward IV had been the one who pardoned him—into entering into a plot with Richard Neville to overthrow the King. OK. This actually happened. This hasn’t got anything to do with Buckinghamshire. So, prison again. In 1468. And then there were a couple of general pardons, because we’re going back and forth with Lancaster, York, and people switch sides, people get pardoned. There’s a lot of flux, in the air. And if you want to hear more about that, you can go to our podcast on the Princes in the Tower Part I, where we explain the Cousins’ War, which is what the War of the Roses actually is. But I move on.
So there are a couple of general pardons, and he didn’t get pardoned, and he wasn’t released until 1470, which is when King Edward went into exile and Henry IV became King again for a while, and then he died in 1471. And the marker over his grave, which was in the church, refers to him as “Valens Miles.” “Valiant Soldier.” Nothing about anything else, and so he actually did do something which he went to prison for, rightly, which was, really, you’re not supposed to be in plots against the King. It’s called insurrection and treason, isn’t it Michelle?
Michelle: Hmmm.
Anne: Yes it is. OK. We’re very familiar with insurrection and treason today. At any rate, so yeah, so he wasn’t included in the general pardons.
Michelle: Yep, he had come to someone’s specific attention.
Anne: Yeah. Yeah, I think it’s safe to say that during his lifetime, Thomas Malory pissed a whole lot of people off. I think that’s fair. Don’t you think so, Michelle?
Michelle: He doesn’t seem to have been a “go along to get along” sort of guy.
Anne: No, he wasn’t. Yeah. Yeah. Yet we think that he wrote… and the reason he comes down to us and our attention… he’s not just another knight who was part of all this back and forth before and during the Wars of the Roses, he’s also the person that we believe wrote Morte d’Arthur, which probably would have happened while he was at Newgate, not Marshalsea, because at Newgate he would have had access to the library at the Greyfriars monastery which was, like, next door or something. And he must have had access, in terms of the Arthurian works that come down to him, that he includes, that are clearly his sources for the Morte d’Arthur.
The Vulgate Cycle, the Post-Vulgate Cycle, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain, the alliterative Morte d’Arthur, the stanzaic Morte d’Arthur. None of them Welsh, because of course he couldn’t read Welsh, even if it had been in the library, which I kind of doubt. But, yeah, anything from France. So none of the German, none of the Welsh.
Michelle: No, but that means he can read Latin and French.
Anne: Mmhm. He can read Latin, French, and English. Yeah. So he’s pretty damn well educated.
Michelle: And that’s a lot of material.
Anne: That is so much material! As Michelle and I can attest, because we’ve read it. He used all this material, and he put together this work, which was in eight books. We think of it as a thing with some unity, but that may be only because when William Caxton—the guy who made printing a big deal in England—when William Caxton published it, he put it all together as one work. So the extent to which Malory thought of it as one work is debated.
Michelle: Yeah. It doesn’t matter whether a random knight in the fifteenth century is committing a bunch of crimes or just has annoyed somebody and is being accused of them spuriously. But it matters that the guy who has been identified as the author of the Morte has been accused of those things, because it feels so incompatible with the book.
Anne: Doesn’t it just? Which is all about chivalry…
Michelle: Yes.
Anne: … like, and crap like that.
Michelle: Yeah, this is what has been giving people trouble ever since the discovery of those records. Because we didn’t know. The records were discovered in the 1920s… of the criminal… the court records? Those weren’t discovered until the 1920s, and then the Winchester Manuscript was found in 1934, so the twentieth century was big for Malory studies.
Anne: Oh, and the Winchester Manuscript, by the way—little sideline—was found… somebody was looking at a manuscript that… manuscripts don’t have titles. They have incipits, the thing that they begin with. And so it began with one thing, and he kept reading it and it turned out to be the Morte d’Arthur. And we had had no manuscript of it before. We had had Caxton’s printed text. And so that’s when we were able to see the earliest version that we’ve got of what Malory had put together.
Yeah, and so you can build an entire career on finding that kind of thing.
Michelle: Yeah, that is the sort of thing that little graduate students go to bed dreaming of. It’s not sugarplums. It’s undiscovered manuscripts.
Anne: Yes. “My dissertation. Stuff I found in a box.”
Michelle: And there are significant differences. Caxton edited out… not, not… there aren’t huge differences in the stories themselves, but there’s much more about Malory, in the manuscript, because there’s several places at the end of tales where he says, you know, please pray for the author of this work who is currently imprisoned…
Anne: Oh yeah, that’s how we know that he wrote it in prison and not at his house, in between incarcerations. Because he says so.
Michelle: That all of that had been edited out by Caxton. There’s just one plea at the end of the manuscript, or at the end of the printed edition, where Caxton allows that one to stand and have the author reach out to the reader and ask for prayers. But in the manuscript there’s about six of them. Increasingly sad, actually.
Anne: Well that may well mean that he had thought of it as different books, because you typically would end a book with an exhortation to pray for the writer. You don’t usually stick it in the middle.
Michelle: Yeah. I think that Eugene Vinaver, who edited the Winchester Manuscript, used those as markers for where to separate it into separate tales.
Anne: So the thing about the Arthurian legend, it’s like, in general, the popular conception of the Arthurian legend is that it’s a legend. But it isn’t. It’s a whole lot of different separate stories that have some characters and plotlines in common, or not. Because the Morte d’Arthur is the most ubiquitous and pervasive of the Arthurian texts that come down to us, we tend to think of it as a unified story, but it’s not.
The first mention we have of Arthur is Nennius’ history from the ninth century, but that’s not a reliable history, even if it was written by a Welshman. I’ve got to admit, it’s not. And there might have been an actual Arthur. Maybe not. But there’s no substantive evidence for him, and he’s not in any of the histories from the time that he’s supposedly living in. He’s supposedly in a battle that’s happening in the sixth century. None of the contemporary histories—and we do have them—mention him, which you would think they would, if he’s that big a deal. But the literary sources start in Wales and Brittany, and are completely varied. Sometimes he’s a warrior, he’s a superhero, he’s connected to deities and fairies, depending on which text you’re reading. Then he’s in some Latin texts from about the eleventh century on, and in some lives of the saints.
Geoffrey of Monmouth is the first that writes substantially of him that we have extant, from about 1138. It features him, and that had a lot of impact on future tellings, but in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries he shows up in romances in French. Marie de France. Chretien de Trois. The Vulgate Cycle. The Post-Vulgate Cycle, and Malory pulls a whole lot of that together, you know, as I say, excluding the Welsh.
So all that early stuff just isn’t in there at all. But this work has been so pervasive. Thanks originally to Caxton, because it got printed.
Michelle: Yes, it’s not the third book published by Caxton. It’s within a decade. Because it’s in 1476 that Caxton comes back to England and sets up, you know, the first printing shop in England. And it’s in 1485 that he’s publishing Morte d’Arthur.
Anne: So yeah, so, Morte d’Arthur is seen by him as one of these emblematic giant works that needs to be presented in English.
Michelle: It’s Chaucer, you know, who was not a living author. He had died in 1399, so Chaucer was, by this point, an author with a really big reputation. So he publishes all of Chaucer. He publishes Lydgate. He publishes John Gower. And so by then, pivoting and publishing Malory, he’s making a statement about how important he thinks Morte d’Arthur is.
Anne: Yeah, and he takes out a great deal of the “please pray that I be let out of prison” stuff.
Michelle: Yeah, Caxton seems to have done the last generation of famous authors, and then turned his attention to the recently, you know, contemporaries. Because Malory was dead by then, of course. He’d died in 1471. But it wasn’t that much…
Anne: It wasn’t that long ago. Right.
So most of the Arthurian works which follow use him as a template. It’s like, if you know Tarot cards, you know? You go to buy a deck of Tarot cards, you are most likely going to be buying a deck that is either the Rider-Waite deck that Pamela Colman Smith illustrated, or one of its clones, because the Rider-Waite is so ubiquitous and so pervasive that that’s what people tend to think of when they think of Tarot cards. But it’s actually… no. There’s other systems entirely that you could use, and so Malory’s Morte d’Arthur is like that. People tend to think of that as being the template, but it wasn’t. He had put some things together. Nowadays, that’s what’s ubiquitous, and one of the versions that I find most amusing would be T.H. White’s Once and Future King, because, among other things, one of the things he’s doing—and he keeps coming in, as the narrator, and trying to explain this—he’s trying to make sense of the Morte d’Arthur altogether, which it kind of doesn’t, because the characters act differently in different pieces of it, and so T.H. White explains, with psychological reasons, how this might be so. I find this highly amusing.
You know, it seems to me that we need, like, little medals for attempting to do a podcast about the Middle Ages whilst our country is in such difficulties. I would like a medal. Would you like a medal? Let’s make medals.
Michelle: I really, really wanted to read more of the giant biography than I got through, but I felt like I had two and a half functioning brain cells this last week.
Anne: Most of it was spent either doom scrolling or actually watching the news. That’s what I was doing. And I kept waking up in the middle of the night to do more doom scrolling, just in case something had happened. Which, indeed, sometimes it had.
Michelle: Last night was the first night I’ve slept through the night since last Wednesday.
Anne: Yeah, so by the time any of you are listening to this… we will have recorded this two weeks before you actually get it, and so who knows what’s going on in the nation called America at the point at which you get this. But at any rate. Malory. Morte d’Arthur.
Michelle: But Malory is such a… and Morte d’Arthur is such an apropos thing to be looking at and to be talking about, because Malory takes the Arthurian legend and instead of it being a story about individual sins, it becomes a story about the danger of civil war. It’s… he takes it and he makes it a reflection, you know, on the turmoil that he’d lived through. The tragedy becomes about a society ripping itself apart.
Anne: It’s no longer a story about a great warrior who fights in battles and it’s no longer even really—although it’s in there—the story about, you know, there’s this romantic adultery which shows up twice, because there’s not just Lancelot and Guinevere, there’s also this entire segue where what we’re hearing about is Tristan and Isolde. So that seems to be something he’s really interested in. That’s simply about how the country rips itself apart.
Michelle: Sometimes Morte d’Arthur gets talked about as being a translation…
Anne: No!
Michelle: It is not a translation. He is making very deliberate choices about what to include and what to exclude, and I think that there is an argument to be made that Malory’s version of the Arthurian legend has survived, and the legend itself then continues to be retold in English when it doesn’t really… you know, it’s kind of a dead story in French and in German, even though it was humongous, and being told everywhere throughout Europe in the Middle Ages. The only place where it successfully transitions after the Middle Ages, and continues to be a living vein of story, is in English, and it’s because of Malory. Malory is sitting at this moment where he is Medieval enough to understand, but Early Modern enough to translate, and he provides this cultural translation. He takes the Arthurian story, he eliminates… you know there’s this whole collection of stories about Merlin that were in his source material that he just omits.
Anne: He has Merlin in there, but yeah, there’s a great deal more that doesn’t come down to us through Malory.
Michelle: He doesn’t have, you know, the stuff about Merlin’s birth and the two dragons and Vortigern and inviting Hengist and Horsa over, that whole thing he’s just eliminated it. He eliminates a whole bunch of the magic from his source material and heightens the military strategy parts of things. So battles are won, not because something woo-woo happened, but because somebody came up with a great strategy.
Anne: You would expect this from a soldier.
Michelle: Yeah. It’s like, you know, I’m not wild about the concept of the gritty reboot, but this is kind of the gritty reboot. Where he’s taking it… taking something that had been strictly in the realm of romance and trying… he can’t do it as much as he… he can’t do it completely, because Arthur really is strongly in the realm of romance, but trying as much as possible to infuse it with some military reality, and some human reality.
Anne: The military reality kind of takes it back to some of its earlier roots, although that magic is in there in a lot of the… certainly the Welsh… and its human reality how? What are you thinking?
Michelle: I’m thinking about how he focuses on the unresolvable tragedy of the adultery, right? That none of them are… I mean, Guinevere’s kind of a bad person, but she’s a bad person because she’s spoiled, not because of the adultery. You know?
Anne: Yeah.
Michelle: She’s childish and selfish and spoiled and expects to get things her own way, but it’s not the adultery that makes her a bad person, it’s those personality traits. Lancelot is not a bad person. Arthur is not a bad person. They’re all flawed and interesting. So there’s this dramatic tragedy, right? That is at the core of it, that I think ends up being why it holds together. It’s kind of a trick that he manages to create a story where we don’t have contempt for Arthur, because he’s being cuckolded. He makes this move where Arthur putting up with the adultery is strength rather than weakness, because he is sacrificing his reputation… not his reputation, his personal kind of pride… for the purpose of keeping the Round Table together, keeping his society together, because it’s like this public vs. private? It’s OK, the only person being hurt, if the adultery can be kept quiet, is him, and he’s willing to take that. Once it becomes external, he has to deal with it, because now it’s something that’s endangering the entire society. But Arthur becomes this Christ-like figure in Malory, in terms of being able to… being willing to take on personal suffering for the purpose of sparing other people, and that’s a pretty strong writing move, because Arthur in the French sources had very much become a sidelined figure. It wasn’t his story anymore. The French sources had decided “No, no, really Lancelot is the star of this whole thing. But of course! The French knight!”
Malory… I mean, it’s not… people have been saying forever that Malory the author sees himself in Lancelot, and I think that’s probably fair. This flawed knight who keeps making mistakes but is trying.
Anne: What’s interesting, then, if you’re thinking about what it is that Malory does with Grail material—because the Quest of the Holy Grail is much more involved in Chretien—you end up with Percival. My favorite piece of that is where Percival could see the Grail but he doesn’t, because he forgets to ask the important question, “Whom does the Grail serve?” And he doesn’t ask it because he’s being polite, and so… Which teaches us that we should not pay attention to being polite so much as actually to getting the job done. But really, in Malory, it’s been cut down somewhat, and of course you would think that everybody thinks that Lancelot’s going to bring the Grail home, but that’s because they don’t know about the affair with Guinevere yet, and it’s his illegitimate son, Galahad, who actually manages it. In Chretien this is… Galahad gets to get it because he’s pure in heart. And Galahad is this product of not just being illegitimate but also of deceit, and Lancelot being fooled. It’s a nicely problematic thing, because Galahad himself is not carrying all the sins of Lancelot. He just doesn’t. He’s all pure, and he gets to go get the Grail. But Lancelot doesn’t get the Grail anymore, I suppose, than Malory does.
Michelle: I should have mentioned earlier that, when Malory is accused of rape, it’s possible that that is an accusation that’s being brought by the husband. Because you can—as the husband, if your wife has had adultery with somebody—you can accuse the seducer of rape, because you didn’t go along with it, as the husband. So it’s possible that what’s going on there is an illicit relationship, which seems to be something people are kind of circling because it’s the same woman twice, and that it’s her husband who is pressing that case.
Anne: That it might not actually be assault and rape, it might be an affair?
Michelle: Maybe seduction and adultery.
Anne: Yeah, there’s some things we can’t actually tell about that language, that’s true.
Michelle: And because of who can make the accusation, right? The husband can do that to save face.
Anne: Which Arthur does not.
Michelle: Arthur does not. “I can have as many wives as I want but no”… You know, “I can have as many wives as need be”… I’m paraphrasing here because I don’t have my copy of Malory in front of me right this instant, which was an oversight on my part. But he says something like, “Wives are a dime a dozen, but such a collection of noble knights will never be seen again on the face of the earth,” so I’m going to tolerate this rather than break my society apart.
Yeah, it’s in his hands that the Arthurian legend becomes a story of a society that tears itself apart because it becomes factionalized, and it felt very apropos this week.
Anne: Yes it did. Yes it did. And Gawain. Gawain torn about what to do. Yeah.
Michelle: His handling of the characters, you know, they don’t in every story start to feel like real people, but the psychological insight, particularly in the last piece, the fall of the Round Table, and the handling of the revealing of the adultery and Arthur having to deal with it, he very much presents each of these figures as well-intended, right? Except Mordred, of course. Mordred and Aggravaine are the bad guys. They just want to see the world burn. But the rest of them are making the best decision in bad circumstances, and you feel for all of them. You feel for Gawain when his brothers have died. You feel for Lancelot. He didn’t intend to kill Gareth. He knighted Gareth.
Anne: Yeah, it is… He adds in that. You can see that, to be fair, that’s what T.H. White is building on.
Here’s the piece that Michelle is talking about. This is Chapter Nine.
“So turn we again on to King Arthur that when it was told him how and in what manner of wise the Queen was taken away from the fire…”
This is when Lancelot had saved her, because she’s being burnt for treason and adultery.
“… and when he heard of the death of his noble knights, especially Sir Gaheris and Sir Gareth’s deaths, the King swooned for pure sorrow, and when he awoke of his swoon then he said ‘Alas that ever I have crown upon my head, for now I have lost the fairest fellowship of noble knights that ever held Christian King together. Alas my good knights be slain away from me, now within these two days I have lost forty knights and also the noble fellowship of Sir Lancelot and his blood, for now I may never hold them together no more with my worship. Alas that ever this war began. Now, fair fellows,’ said the King, ‘I charge you that no man tells Sir Gawain of the death of his two brethren, for I am sure,’ said the King ‘When Sir Gawain heareth tell that Sir Gareth is dead he will go nigh out of his mind. Mercy,’ said the King, ‘Why slew he Sir Gareth and Sir Gaheris? For I dare say as for Sir Gareth, he loved Sir Lancelot above all men earthly.’ ‘That is truth,’ said some knights, ‘But they were slain in the hurtling as Sir Lancelot thrang in the thick of the press, and as they were unarmed he smote them and wist not whom that he smote and so unhappily they were slain.’ ‘The death of them,’ said Arthur, ‘Will cause the greatest mortal war that ever was. I am sure, wist Sir Gawain and Sir Gareth were slain I should never have rest of him ‘til I had destroyed Sir Lancelot’s kin and himself both, or else he to destroy me, and therefore,’ said the King, ‘Whit you well my heart was never so heavy as it is now, and much more am I sorrier for my good knights’ loss than for the loss of my fair Queen, for Queens I might have enow, but such a fellowship of good knights shall never be together in no company, and now I daresay,’ said King Arthur, ‘That there was never Christian King held such a fellowship together and alas that ever Sir Lancelot and I should be at debate. Ah Aggravaine, Aggravaine,’ said the King, ‘Yay so forgive it thy soul for thine evil will that thou and thy brother Sir Mordred hadst done to Sir Lancelot had caused all this sorrow.” And ever among these complaints the King wept and swooned.”
Michelle: He’s really, really brilliant.
Anne: He is. I will grant you that.
Michelle: And it just, you know, we keep poking at it because the book he wrote and the life he appears to have led do not match.
Anne: Which is one of the reasons that we’d like to think that perhaps what is going on, and could of course be going on, is that Buckingham is just simply hounding him, and he hasn’t actually done all these dreadfulnesses, or they have been misspoke.
Michelle: One of the things that is striking about Morte d’Arthur is its handling of Lancelot and Guinevere’s adultery. Malory sidesteps it wherever possible.
Anne: Whereas the French tend to focus on it.
Michelle: Yes. So in his version of… So, for example, in his version of Guinevere being kidnapped… this is the Chretien’s, the original story is Chretien’s Lancelot the Knight of the Carte, and there’s absolutely adultery that happens there. In Malory’s version of it, he’s trying to, kind of like, sidestep it. And, you know, maybe it happened… Even later on, when Lancelot is flat-up captured by Mordred and Aggravaine in the Queen’s chamber, Malory has this little sidebar of, “Well, you know, we have no idea what they were actually up to in here, so get your mind out of the gutter.”
Anne: They were reading books together.
Michelle: They could have been playing chess, you have no idea.
Anne: Chess is good. Chess is good. Yeah.
Michelle: He really, really feels for Lancelot, and tries as much as possible to burnish him, even though he’s inherited a ton of stuff that Lancelot is doing that he’s not supposed to be doing.
He also… I mean, there’s so many things I love about Morte d’Arthur. There is this lovely kind of moment of skepticism about trial by combat, where Lancelot says, “Oh, I’ll fight for the Queen,” and the other knights are, like, “That seems bogus to us, because you always win.”
Anne: Yeah, so that doesn’t mean anything.
Michelle: Yes! Skepticism about whether that has anything to do with God.
There’s a great moment when she’s accused of having poisoned a knight with a poisoned apple, and the knights object to Arthur having anything to do with her defense, and they say to him, “You are just first among equals, you are but a knight as we are.” And the more I read about medieval things, the more shocking that statement is. That they say to the King, “No, you’re not anything special. You’re just first among equals. That’s what the Round Table means.”
It is hard to overestimate the importance of Morte d’Arthur. Pretty much every version of the Arthurian story in English that comes after him either derives from him or is in tension with him.
Anne: Including The Mists of Avalon.
Michelle: Yeah.
Anne: Which seems to not be like Morte d’Arthur at all, but is a response to Morte d’Arthur.
Michelle: Yeah.
Anne: It’s all in there. A re-reading of it. A re-imagining of the original.
Michelle: He’s such a huge, huge presence.
Anne: Yes, and to be fair, it’s not just because Caxton printed him. It’s because it’s a really a good book!
Michelle: It’s just beautifully written.
Anne: And you can focus on different pieces of it, depending on what interests you most.
Michelle: I have a well-thumbed Middle School adaptation that is almost certainly my entryway into being a medievalist. The one that I had as a child.
Anne: And Malory did end up in prison for something he actually really had done, because he was plotting against the King. An interesting little piece of this, isn’t it just? But whether or not he had done all the other things he’s accused of, he certainly is someone who knows the military well. He knows how power works, very well. He knows what it’s like to be incarcerated. He knows what it’s like to be out of favor with people in power, and he knows what it is to move against the King.
Michelle: Yeah, he has an understanding of the dangers of this kind of conflict. He certainly writes, in the earlier… You know, some of the earlier pieces, like Gareth’s story, are more like the romance that he uses as the source material, but the end of his book is really very different than a lot of his source material. That mourning for the loss of the ideal. And that is kind of a thing in the fifteenth century. There is this huge… As knighthood is transitioning out of being a military… It’s moving from being a military force to being a social force, they’re creating this ideal of the Arthurian and are doing more with it as a cultural presence, so they’re having tournaments that are Arthurian-themed tournaments, and… I’m trying to think of an equivalent to this. I guess it’s kind of like doing Revolutionary War re-enacting, but that’s not really a good equivalent of it.
The Arthurian is being used in the fifteenth century as a response to the turbulent times that they are in, as a way to posit a less turbulent past to be used as an ideal to get out… You know, a path out of the turbulence that they’re currently living in. It’s trying to hail back to a past where we behaved better, that didn’t actually exist.
But what Malory ends up doing is codifying and in some ways creating the version of the Middle Ages that is now the cultural version that everybody thinks of. It’s interesting, because here at the end of the Middle Ages you have, like, the beginning of medieval cosplay. Because this is what they’re doing in the tournaments. They’re dressing up like King Arthur. They’re doing all these things. And Malory is just perfectly positioned to be the translator of that for the later centuries, and it took us a long time to realize that that was less of a representation of reality than we thought it was, partially because he’s so convincing, in his telling.
Anne: Well, and so he’s writing in a very turbulent time, where indeed these ideals have been lost. I mean you can’t even tell, really, who’s King. Who’s supposed to be King? What “King” even means, sometimes, when you’ve got two Plantagenet lines fighting it out in the War of the Cousins, and decimating England in the process.
Michelle: Yeah, many of the major battles of the Wars of the Roses are happening right in the Midlands, right where the Malorys are living.
Anne: Yeah, they’re in the middle of stuff. And he becomes someone who changes sides, you know, from one King to another. And to be fair, to be fair, I don’t know, they’re both sort of, you know, feeble kings. Edward’s better, I suppose. So there’s an ideal there but, and again, the ideal hadn’t been there to begin with, and we’ll just end up leaving all this stuff and going into the Tudors, that’s what we’ll end up with.
Michelle: But they try to latch on to some of it, and use it, you know? Henry VII names his first son Arthur. He’s trying to latch on to that ideal, that concept that had been put out there. Henry VIII still has tournaments that are Arthurian-themed. But, you know, you can see the fifteenth century becoming this end of, the real end of the Middle Ages, with Richard III being the last English king to die in battle.
So, I’ve got a couple of other interesting bits about Malory, if you want to hear them.
Anne: Do tell. Do tell. We’re getting depressed here, guys. We’re getting really depressed because we’re like…
Michelle: I really do love the fifteenth century, though. Even though it’s such a disaster, because it’s such an interesting disaster. They’re fighting over so many things that are so influential. I don’t think we grasp how many things that are being fought out, in the Middle Ages, influence the little colony that’s created a couple hundred years later, over here, on the other side of the pond. Yeah, where they’re fighting out who’s more important, the King or the law? We’re still apparently having that argument.
Anne: Apparently we are. We had thought it was over, but apparently not. Alas.
Michelle: Pointing back to how central that particular argument actually is.
So I was surprised when I was doing the research here to find out what things don’t exist about Malory. I was absolutely expecting to find tons of historical fiction about him. He’s an interesting guy!
Anne: Yes, very interesting.
Michelle: I was absolutely expecting to find lots of historical fiction focused on Malory. I didn’t.
Anne: That’s shocking to me. And I think that since historical fiction is one of the things that you do, I think you should write it. I would like… That’s my request. Please write me a historical fiction about Malory, thank you very much.
Michelle: Yeah, it made my fingers itch. And it may be partially because it was only in 1999 that P.J.C. Field, who is the world’s leading expert on Malory as a topic of study, published The Life and Times of Sir Thomas Malory. I remember this book coming out. It was a big, hairy deal to have this book come out that argues persuasively that Thomas Malory of Newbold Revel is the author. When I was first taught Malory, as an undergraduate, it was all, “Well, we’re not really sure. Could be this guy, could be that guy.” And then this book came out.
Anne: Right. Yeah, that’s what I had been taught. We didn’t really know who he was. It was just some guy named Thomas Malory, and we didn’t know… Now we do! We know who he was.
Michelle: Now we do. It was kind of a hard motor scooter because we did have all those records and it was really causing trouble to try to figure out how he could both write this book of courtesy but also have this kind of rap sheet.
Anne: Although, to be fair, as we know from Gawain and the Green Knight, the whole concept of being a chivalric knight in King Arthur’s court requires that you obey several different laws, none of which actually are compatible. The Christian Rule, the Chivalric Rule, and the Military Rule, and they kind of don’t always fit together, and so, really, it just would make sense that he was obeying several different rules at once, and some of them self-serving, perhaps. Yes.
Michelle: So, 1999 wasn’t actually that long ago, so it may be that one of the reasons we don’t have that flood of historical fiction about Malory is that it just hasn’t trickled out there yet.
Anne: You have to get on this quick. You have to get in there quick. This is your next job, madam. I’m just saying.
Michelle: I think we need a version that is like that movie about Dickens. The Man Who Invented Christmas…
Anne: Uh-huh.
Michelle: … Where it is both his life and the characters, and you get to see where he interacts with things that then provide inspiration for A Christmas Carol.
Anne: I will go along with that. And I’m looking forward to reading it. Sometimes, dear listeners, I get to read the manuscripts, and so I’m looking forward to this, yes.
Michelle: The other thing that I found out about him, and that I was stunned to discover, is that he has an IMDB page! Isn’t that amazing? Because Morte d’Arthur is so often cited as a source for movies, he gets screenplay credit.
Anne: So, screenplay credit, but no historical fiction. I don’t know. I think… I don’t know that he would mind that.
Michelle: He was nominated for a Hugo in 1982 for partial writing credit for Excalibur, for John Boorman’s Excalibur.
Anne: Did he get this Hugo?
Michelle: He did not win this Hugo.
Anne: It was going to be hard to give it to him. I would have liked to see him at the presentations. That would have been quite interesting.
Michelle: The writing team for Excalibur, which he was credited as being part of, was nominated for a Hugo. I think you are an amazing writer when you get nominated for a Hugo five hundred years after you die.
Anne: Yes, I think that that is true. That is truly an accomplishment, and I’m impressed.
Michelle: The Hugo was won that year, for best dramatic presentation, by Raiders of the Lost Ark. Which I can live with.
Anne: OK, yeah. Ok, sure, right. Why not? Yeah. OK.
Michelle: But Excalibur was nominated.
Anne: It was in there. He had a nomination.
Michelle: Yep. As the source for the screenplay.
Anne: I’d like to see him get an Oscar. That’s another goal, now, that I have. I want you to write a book, and I want Malory to get an Oscar. I have now, goals. That’s good.
Michelle: Some of the screenplay credits on IMDB, three of them are for porn. Arthurian… it’s porn based on Morte d’Arthur. It’s… I’d have to actually go back and look at it, so I get this name right. I’ve got to get the name right, because the name is hilarious.
Anne: God knows we don’t want to get that wrong.
Michelle: Xcalibur: the Lords of Sex. There’s three of them. And it’s not “Excalibur” It’s just an “X.” “Xcalibur.”
Anne: “Xalibur.”
Michelle: “Xcalibur.”
Anne: OK. Sure. Yeah. “Xcalibur.”
Michelle: So maybe those three credits, you know, we don’t necessarily want to point to.
Anne: No! I’m going to include them! If we’re going to include the credits for screenwriting, we’ve got to include that, because that’s just how it is. And besides, Lancelot! Guinevere! Tristan! Isolde! I’m sorry, it’s all in there.
Michelle: But at the end, as I’m sure you remember, of T.H. White’s The Once and Future King, he has King Arthur, the dying King Arthur, look up at the little page boy and ask him to tell his story, and he has that be Malory.
Anne: And that’s Malory. Yeah.
Michelle: That’s delightful.
Anne: It is. It’s very good.
Oh, and by the way, I’m sure you all know, Listeners, but Camelot, the musical, is based on The Once and Future King, just in case you… As is, I think, that whole Disney thing, but Camelot even much better. So.
Michelle: So sometimes Malory is the grand-text rather than the immediate text. Right? So, Once and Future King is based on Malory, but then that is the source for Camelot, so it’s more like the grand-text.
Anne: Yes, you could do a whole little chart of all the Arthurian texts that exist, I mean that you could find. Because some of them are actually… They fall… Some of them, like, I’ve read, but they’ve, like, fallen out of print, and they’re gone and nobody mentions them. Arthurian texts are all over.
You could do a giant chart of all of them and how they’re related to each other. That would be lovely, and somebody should do that. That would be good.
Michelle: He’s read so many of them, so you have the funnel coming into Malory, and then you have the waterfall coming after him.
Anne: And then, still, some absolute inventions. The Lady of Shalott, that’s what? Tennyson, isn’t it?
Michelle: Tennyson.
Anne: Yeah, Tennyson’s Lady of Shalott, that’s not Morte d’Arthur. He made that up.
Michelle: Yeah. Oh! You remember, in an earlier podcast, we were talking about Tennyson’s plays?
Anne: Yes! We were. And I wasn’t impressed.
Michelle: I had, like, a brain fart, and pretended I didn’t know what The Foresters was about. Of course I know what it’s about. It’s Robin Hood. He wrote a Robin Hood play. I just wasn’t… The Robin Hood part of my brain wasn’t online that day.
Anne: Which is unusual, because usually it’s right there for you.
Michelle: We were talking about something else, and my brain was full. Of course I know what that’s about.
Anne: Yeah, our brains get full.
So, anything else on Malory?
Michelle: I recommend… I think I said this already but the places to go to, to read about Malory would be… For an academic source it would be P.J.C. Field’s The Life and Times of Sir Thomas Malory, that proves that it’s Sir Thomas Malory of Newbold Revel. That’s from 1999. And then Christina Hardyment’s Malory, the Knight Who Became King Arthur’s Chronicler. You know, you have to make allowances with it, that it is being written by a historian who is coming to the medieval text, so I think there’s a couple things in it that are probably a little out of date, although it does… I was happy that she pointed out that he almost certainly saw the Coventry plays.
Anne: Did she? Of course!
Michelle: They only lived seven miles from Coventry.
Anne: I love that. Malory saw the Coventry plays. Yes.
Michelle: But it’s a very big old meaty biography that does a lot of contextualization for the time period, so she talks about how children, you know… So the book, right at the beginning, talks about where the Malorys got their money, how they ended up with seven thousand acres of an estate, what sort of things would have been happening when he was born, how babies were christened. I mean, there’s all this contextualization about time period, as much as about the man himself.
Anne: I am going to go get it, as soon as we are done recording.
Michelle: And it’s very readable, but medievalists are probably going to find a few things to quibble with that are no longer how we think about the Middle Ages, but generally speaking I would say that that’s not really going to be a thing.
Anne: All right. So, let’s end with this. This is the end of Morte d’Arthur:
“Here is the end of the whole book of King Arthur and his noble knights of the Round Table that, when they were whole together, there was ever a hundred and forty. And here’s the end of ‘The Death of Arthur.’ I pray you all, gentlemen and gentlewomen, that read this book of Arthur and his knights, from the beginning to the ending, pray for me while I am alive that God send me good deliverance and when I am dead, I pray you all pray for my soul. For this book was endeth the ninth year of the reign of King Edward IV by Sir Thomas Malory, knight, as Jesu help him for his great might, as he is the servant of Jesu, both day and night.”
Michelle: You know what’s wild is he was writing Morte d’Arthur… It is exactly contemporaneous with Mankind. How likely is it that my two favorite pieces of medieval literature are from that some ten-year time period? They’re exactly contemporaneous.
Anne: Well, the next time that we get together we will be discussing the murder of Mabel de Belleme.
Michelle: Ooh! I know nothing about that! I’ll learn lots of things.
Anne: So that will be exciting. That’s in Normandy in the eleventh century. So we’re going backwards and we’re going to Normandy. Yay.
And this has been True Crime Medieval, where the crimes are just like they are today, but with less technology. We’re on Apple podcasts, iHeart podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher. Any place that you can listen to podcasts, that’s where we are. Please leave a review. We’d appreciate that. And you can reach us at truecrimemedieval.com, where you can find the show notes, which are written by Michelle, the transcripts, which are done for us by Laurie Dietrich, and you can also reach us all through the web page. And you can leave comments. We would love to hear from you. And if you have medieval crimes that you think we should discuss, please let us know, and we’ll take it under consideration.
And we bid you farewell! Bye!
Michelle: Bye!