As a true crime subject, our Viking child is problematic: who is he? We don’t know. How did he die? We don’t know. Why did he get thrown in the tidal pool that’s now the back gardens of Dublin Castle? We don’t know. When did this happen? We don’t know. But we know something bad happened. And Michelle gets to talk about archeology and awesome civil disobedience in the service of history.
The Primary Russian Chronicle tells us much about the revenge that Olga of of the Kievan Rus took on the Drevlians after they killed her husband. And most of it is surely mythological. Entire boatloads of ambassadors being dropped into a trench, dug overnight in the royal hall? Two groups of ambassadors slaughtered, without the Drevlians getting suspicious? Flocks of bird set on fire, and then burning a town down? No, no, and no. However, Anne stands firm on the blood feast, and Michelle stands firm on the idea that the Primary Russian Chronicle should have been published under its name in direct translation, “Tale of Bygone Years.” It’s true that Olga converted and saved a lot of Christians later, though, so the saintliness part we are just fine with.
After the Normans conquered England, the pope sanctioned them, on account of how much slaughtering had gone on. So, being sanctioned, they were very sorry. Which is why William the Conqueror founded Battle Abbey, where the Battle of Hastings was. And when he did that, he gave the monks some special rights (mostly having to do with not being required to listen to the bishop), but they didn’t get written down, because nobody needed to; the king, after all, had said so. But time moved on, and written culture became the thing, so the monks needed a charter to prove the things William said. So they made some. About seven of them. They were very nice looking forgeries, but nobody believed them. However! There was a forgery ring running out of Winchester Abbey. Really. You can’t make this stuff up.
From the middle of the 5th century until 1204, Constantinople was the largest, the wealthiest, the most sophisticated, the most important city in Europe. Then the 4th Crusade, which had intended to go retake Jerusalem, went to the center of Eastern Christianity and besieged it, sacked it, crippled it, and destroyed — for at least 800 years — the relations between the Roman Christians and the Byzantine Christians. None of this makes any sense, except that money was involved and people behaved badly. Michelle explains how Western scholarship has dealt with this major crime (it wasn’t until the 1950’s that it was described as a crime), and Anne explains the money. Follow the money.
If you are an Earl, and you are sent a safe conduct pass to go talk to the King, you’re safe, right? You can go meet them, and calmly discuss that alliance you made with a couple of other noblemen, one that is not in favor of the king and his kingly position. Calmly, yes, and then you can go home. Unless it’s 1452, and you’re in Scotland, and you’re one of the Douglases, and the king is known for having a very bad temper. In which case you might get stabbed 26 times and thrown out a window. Really, given Scots history before that, one might have been able to predict that; noblemen getting stabbed despite their safe conduct passes is sort of a theme.
It’s very rude to copy books secretly whilst staying with one of your old teachers, even if you are very careful not to harm the books, and don’t use cheese sandwiches as bookmarks. That’s what we learn from this episode. Also that the ancient kings of Ireland liked to use cattle as examples of just about everything. And that the O’Neills were willing to go to war with the High King over a book. Michelle and Anne discuss the meaning of copyright law, which really has nothing to do with copying a manuscript in 6th century Ireland. Though to every cow belongs her calf, and to every book its copy. We guess. In good news, there’s no torture. Though there are some deaths — about 3,000, at the Battle of the Book. Darn.
At the end of May 1593, the most important and influential playwright in England died at the age of 29. Rumor and gossip and a great many history books and literature collections would say, over the centuries, that he died in a tavern brawl. To be fair, his earlier history with drunken brawl involvement makes this plausible. But the evidence — or rather, the lack of evidence — given at the inquest makes it clear that he was being got rid of. Oh, besides being a writer, he was involved in Walsingham’s Elizabethan espionage net. There’s that. In this special episode, stepping out of the middle ages and into the early modern era, we discuss the evidence. Also Michelle has found some musicals. Yikes.
Joanna of Naples had a hell of a life. There were unhappy marriages, there were murders, there were invasions, there was the Black Death, there was the Papal Schism, and there was a tangled ball of plots and tussles over the inheritance of the Neapolitan throne. At the end of it all, she was murdered and thrown into a well. And then she enjoyed hundreds of years of a Very Bad Reputation. But recently, scholarship has turned the tide! She was an excellent leader, who was beleaguered by a whole lot of men across Europe, though mostly in her bedchamber, who thought that really, women shouldn’t be rulers! Michelle gets quite passionate about this. And manages to convince Anne as well, though for Anne the jury is still out on whether or not she was in on the plot to throw her first husband through a window.
First some undergraduates got drunk over in a tavern, and then they didn’t pay, and so the townspeople beat them up. That was Shrove Tuesday. Fair enough. On Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, when they were supposed to be repenting and thinking about their sinful lives, the students got some buddies together and went and trashed the pub, beat up the taverner, and looted and trashed the nearby businesses. But the townspeople couldn’t do anything about it, cause the local law couldn’t do anything to the students, and the church wouldn’t. So the townspeople went to the Queen, who said the students should be punished. Which the town guards interpreted as a command to kill whatever random students they came across. Which they then did. And then the whole university got very mad and disbanded and everybody left town, and the townspeople had lots fewer customers than they had earlier. Well! That was Lent, 1229, Paris. A very holy time, as you can see. Oh, and by the way. The strike wasn’t the crime. All that Lenten hoohah was.
