In September, 1327, Edward II, who was by that time no longer King of England, was murdered, at Berkeley Castle. Probably. We discuss what happened, what could have happened, what didn’t happen, and oh of course why the king was a former king, and why the former king had to be gotten rid of. Michelle explodes lots of myths. And we decide that though we would not like for Edward II to be our ruler, he was probably a wonderful dinner companion.
Marguerite Porete wrote a book. One bishop said it was heretical and burnt it. Three theologians said it wasn’t heretical, just really difficult for regular people to work with, on account of in order to follow it, you’d have to be as spiritually ardent as Marguerite Porete, and very few people were. The head Inquisitor of France got a committee together, and they said the book was heretical and she should take it back and say sorry. She didn’t. They burned her and the book both. The crowd wept. The book (since not all the copies had been burnt) became very popular, but nobody knew who had written it. But we know now! It was Marguerite. In this episode, we explain what she wrote. And Michelle discovers that really Philip IV of France was quite dreadful and she’s sorry she had such pity for him when we covered the Tour de Nesle affair, and really he got what was coming to him.
William de Braose invited Seisyll ap Dyfnwal and some other local Welsh leaders over for Christmas dinner, at which they were all going to agree to live in peace and whatnot. This made sense to the Welsh, who normally wouldn’t have trusted William de Braose any further than they could throw him, because for them, it was the time of reconciliation! Settling debts! Being nice! So you can imagine what a shock it was when William had the doors shut and murdered everybody. Then, because he wasn’t done yet, he went on over to Seisyll’s castle, captured his wife Gwladys, and slaughtered his 7 year old son Cadwaladr. Merry Christmas! Naturally, the Welsh never forgot this. Anglo-Norman and Welsh relations were set back for decades, and they hadn’t been good to begin with. (Bonus! Popper the parrot decides to chime in.)
We go back to the early years of our 1000 year mandate, to discuss some of the Merovingians! Lots of people murdered each other and got murdered; here, we’re covering Sigebert, who was assassinated by his sister in law. Also, we include Sigebert’s wife Brunhilda, who managed to do lots of damage before her eventual execution. And Michelle gets to explain why the Nibelungenlied really has not got much to do with this couple. She read the whole damn thing, too. Bless her heart. (Also Anne’s right-left dyslexia causes her to tell you that east is west; but no; Austrasia is the eastern piece of Merovingia. You should let her drive you around. That’s exciting.)
When English commoners marched on London in 1381, killing court officials, Flemish immigrants, and anybody associated with John of Gaunt, it was after they had been through years of social unrest following the Black Death, and several harsh taxes. The Revolt is well known even now, not because of the peasants’ demands (which they didn’t get — abolishment of serfdom? executions of all of the king’s councilors? get real), but because John Ball was giving sermons to them (to either rouse their spirits or incite them to riot, depending on how you look at it), and he was preaching the abolishment of class divisions, and the abolishment of private property. That’s what we remember. (He didn’t get his demands, either.)
The Burgundians were fighting a civil war with the rest of France; they allied with the English, who were fighting the French in the last section of the Hundred Years’ War; Joan had been causing them both trouble by inspiring the French to fight; the Burgundians captured her and sold her to the English; the English convened an ecclesiastical court and had her condemned for heresy, on a technicality, so they could burn her at the stake. That was how they got rid of a prisoner of war who was being led by saints and angels. We explain the process, and Michelle finds reasons to admire both the snow sculptures of Arras and the poet Southey.
Vlad Țepeș — Vlad the Impaler, also called Dracula, since he was the son of Vlad Dracul– had a reputation for cruelty even during his lifetime, due to the fact that Germany had the printing press and he had impaled the Transylvanian Saxons after destroying much of southern Transylvania. Nowadays, he’s conflated with Dracula the Vampire, but Bram Stoker made that up. But it was a war crime, even by late medieval standards, to impale an entire population on stakes. In this episode, Anne discusses history and medieval war crimes, and Michelle discusses vampires. Because of Bram Stoker.
Over the course of the Black Death, Christians across Europe carried out massacres, imposed exiles, and confiscated the goods of their Jewish neighbors, though the Pope tried to stop them. It was the worst wave of massacres of the Jews in Europe before those of WWII. But the context of the massacres is the hundreds of years before and after, of crimes just as horrific though not as concentrated. We discuss that background, and focus on two examples: Erfurt and Strasbourg, both in 1349.
In 1324, Alice Kyteler and several other Anglo-Norman citizens of Kilkenny were accused of witchcraft. Kyteler’s husband had died under suspicious circumstances, and the new bishop was obsessed with witchcraft: perfect storm. What do your hosts believe? Yes to the poisoned husband. No to the nine red roosters and the four and a half peacocks. And her cohorts, including Petronilla de Meath, who was burned at the stake? Wrong place, wrong time. Oh, and Kyteler got away.
On the 23rd of March, 1369, the noble, worthy Pedro of Castile, the glory of Spain (we’re quoting Chaucer here) was treacherously murdered by Henry of Trastámara, his half brother and rival for the throne. And that is what we were planning on talking about. Promise. But we got sidetracked, Anne by the interesting litany of the murders that Pedro himself committed, and Michelle by the interesting rabbit-hole of a play written in 1818 by Ann Doherty. We cover the murder of Pedro, we really do. It’s in there someplace.
