Lots of the images of Pope Joan show her sitting in papal state, but there are also lots of images of Pope Joan giving birth in the streets of Rome. Here, she’s not riding a horse, but she is leading a procession. And she’s totally shocked that there’s now a baby in the street. (c. 1450, Spencer Collection)
For all of the middle ages, almost everybody believed that earlier in church history, there had been a pope who was, instead of being male, a woman, who met, alas, a Bad End. She wasn’t there, as some people suspected then, and as we know now, but the story is so damn good it’s hard to let go of. Whichever version of the story you’re dealing with. Anne explains the different versions of Pope Joan and how we know she wasn’t there, and Michelle is delighted by the vast amount of popular works telling her story. Musicals! No kidding! And too many novels to list.
Claiming sanctuary didn’t always work; this painting, “Sanctuary,” by Richard Burchett (1867), illustrates one of the times it seemed like it was working, but no; here, the priests are trying to get Edward IV to not kill the Lancastrian soldiers who have sought sanctuary after losing the Battle of Tewkesbury. Alas for the Lancastrians, the Yorkists were pretty riled up, and though the priests here are going to be ok, the soldiers will not.
As we all know, if you were accused of a crime in the middle ages, or if you were in danger, and you ran to a nearby church, you could have sanctuary, and then you were safe. Well, this is true, more or less, but exactly what you needed to do, and how the whole thing worked, changed over time and across the continent. Michelle and Anne wanted to know more about the mechanisms of sanctuary, so they went to find out, and will tell you all about it. Anne can explain to you the ceremony you would follow when it was time to leave the church, and the rules about church sanctuary these days, and Michelle can tell you about very interesting sources, and the problems with figuring out how sanctuary works, even in the middle ages. Oh, and by the way, it didn’t always work. Sometimes people hacked you to death in front of the altar. Then THEY were in trouble.
This is the rendition of Axlar-Björn that appears on one of the informative plaques on Snæfellsnes; there is also a large pile of rocks in the area, which is the last remaining of three piles under which pieces of Axlar-Björn’s body were buried, all far apart so that he could not come back. I have some quarrel with this picture, though, because Axlar-Björn did not stalk the countryside with his axe; he waited till you came by his house, and then killed you and took all your stuff. If you stayed at your house, you were safe.
There’s not a lot of murder in Iceland — there was a disconcerting spike in the number of homicides last year, 8 altogether — so, obviously, there aren’t a lot of murderers. And none of the murderers of Iceland are serial killers. With one exception. In the last part of the 16th century, not long after Iceland had been forced to institute the death penalty for capital crimes (this was Denmark’s idea), Axlar-Björn Pétursson, who lived out on the west coast, on the Snæfellsnes Peninsula, murdered lots of people who came by his farm looking for work, and became Iceland’s one and only serial killer. And then, on account of the death penalty part, didn’t get to just go be an exiled outlaw. Besides the details, such as they are, of Axlar-Björn’s crimes, Anne is quite taken by Snæfellsnes and its eco-tourism, and Michelle, though she appreciates the folk-tale quality of the whole story, really wants to let us all know about Jón Árnason, the eminent Icelandic folk tale collector, because he was a self-taught scholar who is deserving of high honor, and Michelle does admire scholars who get lots done on a budget.
Here we see the very annoyed pagan Balts killing St. Adalbert, who will be sanctified within a couple of years. This is one of the 18 panels on the doors on the Gniezno Cathedral in Poland. Where St. Adalbert’s relics might be. Or not. It depends on whether the Bohemians got the right ones when they raided the cathedral. But are they St. Adalbert’s bones? Cause what if he was actually killed in Königsberg/Kalingrad?
Adalbert of Prague wanted very much to go Christianize the Prussians, but they were just not having it, so they hacked him up and cut his head off, and that is why he is a Saint, with an enormous number of churches around the globe dedicated to him. Anne spends time thinking about what was the snack that we are told Adalbert and his companions were eating before the murder, and Michelle considers the recently discovered account of Adalbert that is older than the one we had, although really what she’s interested in is St. Bruno of Querfurt, the Second Apostle to the Prussians, who admired Adalbert so much that he went off to the Balkans just like his hero, and got slaughtered in Lithuania. Michelle’s quite taken by the fact that nobody really outside of Poland pays any attention to Bruno. Alas.
Soon after the Abbasids conquered the Umayyades, they moved the capital to Baghdad, which they built, and established a dynasty that included science, poetry, philosophy — and great feasting, such as we see here. It’s important to note that in the case of this illustration, some centuries after the supposed banquet with the Umayyades in Palestine, the guests are not being used as a table.
Usually our special episodes move out of our 1000 year time zone, but for this one we stay in the middle ages and move off of the European continent, to one of the incidents in the fall of the Umayyad caliphate and the rise of the Abbasid caliphate, a blood feast! We haven’t had one of those for a while, and we were very excited, but then we did our due diligence and discovered that it probably didn’t happen. That is, the Umayyades were slaughtered, alright, but probably not at a banquet where they got clubbed to near death after hearing insulting poetry, and then served as banquet tables when rugs got thrown over them while they finished dying and the Abbasides kept eating. No. Probably not. Sorry.
This bust of Pino III Ordelaffi, created during Ordelaffi’s lifetime by Francesco di Simone Ferrucci, is held at Musei di San Domenico, and you can go see it. If it offers you lunch, politely refuse.
From the 12th century to Renaissance, the Ordelaffi family ruled the commune of Forli, in Northern Italy. On and off. Also, on and off again. When they weren’t fighting others for the commune — Florence, the Emperor, the Pope — they were fighting each other, and in 1376, poison became a favorite weapon, when Sinibaldi I Ordelaffi poisoned first his uncle and then his cousin, so that he could have Forli. He’s not even our protagonist, though, because we lit, for this episode, on Pino III Ordelaffi, who started poisoning wives, a sibling, and his mom, and is therefore sort of iconic in the history of Ordelaffi badnesses. Michelle loved this episode, cause she got to learn all about poison in medieval and Renaissance Italy. She will tell you all about it.
Here we may see the lovely Northburgh Castle, in Greencastle, where William de Burgh starved his cousin Walter to death on account of Walter was opposing him in some plan he had concerning Ulster. Northburgh would have looked much better in 1332, as, obviously, it would be very easy to escape from, in its current condition. (Photo by Von Radosław Botev – Eigenes Werk, Attribution, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3934661)
William Donn de Burgh, the 3rd Earl of Ulster, was, alas, not so great at being the Earl of Ulster. Starving his cousin Walter Liath de Burgh to death led to Walter’s sister Gylle (also of course a cousin of William’s) getting her husband to have him murdered. And then, the whole succession problem — there were several cousins wandering around, and William’s heir was a girl, and that was right out — led to the Burke Civil War. What with one thing and another, though the de Burghs married into the Plantagenets and so became ancestors of the English royal family, they were also instrumental in causing Lots of Problems for England, in their attempt to keep Ireland under control, so their contribution to history is sorta vexed. Michelle is somewhat distressed by the lack of historical fiction about these people, but greatly mollified by the idea of touring Carrickfergus.
In this lovely illustration of the first defenestration of Prague (c.1900, Adolf Liebscher) we think you can figure out why the defenestrated persons of this episode did not survive.
Humans have been throwing each other out of windows pretty much as long as humans have had windows more than one story or so off the ground, but only Prague is famous for them. Two of them actually led to wars, even. We are very happy to tell you about the famous defenestrations, wherin all sorts of officials got thrown out of windows, and Michelle is happy to tell you about the tourist trade. Oh, and also Susan Howe’s poem “Defenestration of Prague,” which is, of course, about Ireland. Because metaphors.
Here’s your hint as to the winner of the Best Episodes According To Us contest. In this early 20th century painting by Newell Convers Wyeth, King Edward I is getting ready to invade Scotland. Because he says it’s his.
It’s Episode 100! So we both went through the episodes we’ve published so far, to pick our favorites. Out of them, we picked three apiece, and then, as a grand winner, the one that turned up on both of our lists — not the highest favorite of either of us, but pretty damn beloved. We explain why they all made the cut. And had a lot of fun, remembering them. Here’s to the next 100! We do have a pretty long list to see us through. it’s a 1000 years and an entire continent, and people behave badly lots of the time. Works for us.
This is just what Juilane looked like when she was trying to kill her father! Except that the clothes here are about 200 years later than she lived. And she would have been aiming down, since she was trying to shoot him over the castle wall. (Smithfield Decretals 1300, 1340 f.43, British Library)
It was unusual for medieval women to kill their fathers, and especially unusual for them to use crossbows to do it. Juliane de Fontrevault tried both, but she missed King Henry I, who was at the time besieging her castle in Normandy. There had been an altercation, you see, which led to a major hostage failure, wherein Juliane’s husband Eustace blinded the young hostage sent to Henry, and Henry blinded and cut the noses off the two girls sent to him as hostages. Who were his grandchildren, by the way. Eventually Henry forgave both Juliane and Eustace; Eustace got to keep a castle and Juliane got to go to Fontevrault Abbey, which was at that time all shiny and new, and her daughters got to go with her. So! It all turned out really well! A happy family story. You’re welcome.
