It was quite a shock to the rest of Europe when the Vikings, who had been raiding in Scandinavia and making little raids occasionally in Europe, pillaged The Holy Isle of Lindisfarne. The Vikings were pumped, though; it was a very profitable day. That was the beginning of the Viking Age. We discuss the Viking Age, why it was clear to the Vikings that raiding (as opposed to thievery) was not a crime, and why Hnefatafl, which everybody calls Viking chess, isn’t really like chess at all.
After having lost Cyprus, their last holding in the Middle East, the Knights Templar no longer had a bunch of Christian pilgrims to protect, so they tried to figure out what to do next. Find new mandate? Join the Hospitalers? Well, no, neither one, darn it. Philip IV of France, who owed a whole hell of a lot of money to the order, strong armed the Pope, with the result that the order got disbanded and the French Templars got exterminated. We’re both annoyed at Philip, Pope Clement V, Sir Walter Scott, and anybody continuing to tell lies about the Templars. It’s not that we approve of them, really. We just hate the lies. Oh, and we think King Denis I of Portugal is awesome.
It’s true that Edward II was a very bad ruler; one of his problems was that he would adhere loyally to his favorites. And though his loyalty to Piers Gaveston gave him difficulties, his loyalty to Hugh Despenser got him dead. Why, oh, why, did Edward think so highly of Hugh Despenser, the greedy dangerous, annoying chancellor who was so very dreadful that the queen invaded the country to get rid of him? And is the only Englishman to have a war named after him? Why? We don’t know that. But we do know that really Hugh should have been sent away long before things fell apart. In this episode, we discuss the dreadfulness of Hugh, and the exciting news that we have perhaps found some of his bones. Oh, and that execution. It was bad.
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.
