True Crime Medieval

Before Davy Gam got famous amongst the English for helping out at Agincourt and getting knighted, and being in general an acceptable Welshman on account of helping out the English and fighting Welshmen, he had killed a kinsman in Brecon, had fought under John of Gaunt, and had fought against Owain Glyndŵr, the leader of the last great Welsh rebellion and the last Welsh Prince of Wales. As you can imagine, a Welshman famous amongst the English for bravely serving them and fighting at Agincourt is not necessarily a Welsh hero. But! He gives Anne an excuse for talking about Owain Glyndŵr, and Michelle an excuse for explaining why John Powys is not as good an author as Tolkien. Also, we discuss how it is that families in an occupied country might well find themselves on different sides of a conflict. 

Once upon a time, a group of parishioners in a village in Saxony danced in the churchyard during Christmas Mass, and so the priest cursed them and then they danced without ceasing for a year. This story was told, with variations, throughout Europe, from the 10th century (at least) through the 16th century. And! It really happened! Ok, not the dancing without ceasing for a year part, but the dancing without being able to stop? That really happened. From the 14th through the 17th century, groups of people throughout Europe would start dancing maniacally, and be unable to stop. Sometimes they did this till they died. And we still don't know why this occurred, though it is recognized as a Thing That Really Happened. We discuss dancing mania, the cursed carolers legends, and try to make sense of it all. 
 Happy Holidays!

A wave of anti-Semitism and atrocities against the Jews swept England starting in 1189, when Richard Lionheart was crowned, and mobs in London attacked the Jews in that city. The worst of the atrocities happened in York, when the local mobs burnt and pillaged Jewish homes; when the Jews retreated to the castle keep (they were, theoretically and legally, under the protection of the king), the York mob besieged the wooden keep with  stones, and murdered some of the Jews, having lured them out of the keep with the promise of safety if they converted. The Jews of York committed suicide, and burnt down the keep. Lately, work has been done to create an honorable, respectful, and informative permanent exhibit, making sure that this piece of York history is known and remembered. Michelle, having found no operas and novels featuring this atrocity, explains the history of York castle. And also Henry III's toilet.

Special Episode! It's the third birthday of True Crime Medieval, but, more importantly really, it's the 417th anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot not actually coming off; if it had, not only King James and all of Parliament would have been destroyed, but also several blocks around, including Westminster Abbey.  We discuss the Plot, why it didn't work, what's been going on with November 5th celebrations since then, and, because Michelle finds this stuff, Edgar Allan Poe and his hatred for William Harrison Ainsworth's historical novel about the whole affair. 

King Alboin was a very successful king of the Lombards, and conquered the Gepids, and took Rosamund, the daughter of the king of the Gepids, as his wife, and everything was great, but then Rosamund murdered him, with the help of her lover. She was probably not very happy about the marriage, since she was still mourning the deaths of her father and her grandfather and her brother, so probably being married to the guy that killed them wasn't fun. The story got embellished pretty quickly; Alboin made Rosamund drink out of the skull of her father, for instance -- nice detail but your hosts don't believe it happened. As time went on, the story stopped being about Alboin and started being about Rosamund. Michelle watched an entire  movie from 1961, and says we should not do that, but she gives us a link anyway. Just in case.

Blanca, the rescue Goffin's Cockatoo, is a guest cohost on this episode, about that time that Olaf, before he was king of anything, whacked Klerkon, the viking who had enslaved him when he was a toddler. We discuss the Kyivan Rus, Novgorod, Vikings, blood money, the sagas, and, to Anne's surprise, Longfellow.  Blanca the Cockatoo has a lot to say. We don't know why. Also we don't know what she was saying.

So, one day in 1230, William de Braose was over at Llewelyn the Great's castle, and he was found in Llewelyn's private chambers with Joan, who was Llewelyn's wife. As well as the daughter of the King of England. Now, according to Welsh law, Llewelyn would then have been in his rights to beat William up, but instead, there was a trial, and William ended up being hung from some tree or other; two are in the running for being The Tree, but who knows. At any rate, messing around with the Queen did not carry the death penalty in Wales, but Llewelyn hung him anyway, and then wrote to his widow to see if she still wanted their children to get married. And she did, so they were. And what scandalizes Michelle most about all this is that the de Braoses and the relatives of Llewelyn were so intermarried that you don't know what to call their various relations. Also, that William and Joan and Llewelyn were all middle aged and not teenagers and really there is no excuse for all this.

Laws regulating war crimes have existed since ancient times, and trials of people who have committed them have existed as well; the trial of Peter von Hagenbach wasn't unusual for being a trial to judge whether he has violated laws of war when he was holding down Breisach for Charles the Bold; it was unusual because it was an international trial, and because part of the judgement included the decree that if soldiers are given orders they know to be wrong, they are culpable if they follow those orders. The trial would be cited as precedent for the Nuremberg trials after World War II. We discuss the trial, we discuss war crimes, and Michelle presents a children's book which posits von Hagenbach as a hero to be emulated. We are both scandalized.

Henry of Trastámara, of Henry of Castile, the Fratricidal, was not as friendly with the Jews of Spain as his half-brother, Pedro the Cruel, or Pedro the Just (depending on your interpretation of him) had been. He's "The Fratricidal," by the way, because he murdered his half-brother Pedro the Cruel or Just.  Henry wasn't yet king in 1355 -- that is, he hadn't murdered his half-brother yet -- but was at war with him, and wherever Henry took some power, Jews were murdered.  The massacre at Toledo was the beginning of his crimes against the Jews; Toledo was important as a center of Jewish intellectual and religious life in Spain. So we explain this, and the background, of course. And Michelle found a recipe for medieval Challah. So there's that.

After a short (he was 18) but eventful and busy life, Lambert, King of Italy and Holy Roman Emperor, was assassinated during a boar hunt. That's one rumor. The other rumor is that he fell off his horse and died. Evidence? Witnesses? Nah, not really. But we both have an opinion on this, which is that a story that has a king sleeping on the ground during a boar hunt is fundamentally flawed, and we don't buy it.  On the other hand, Michelle found two translations of the chronicle which tells us these rumors, so she had a very good time.

In 1343, Olivier de Clisson, who had backed the wrong candidate for the then empty Duke of Brittany position, as far as the king of France was concerned, was invited to a tournament, and then seized and executed for treason without a trial.  This greatly angered his wife, Jeanne, so she gathered a troupe of men and harassed the French, becoming quite beloved by the English, who were fighting France, in the beginning of the Hundred Years War. She also became a pirate, more or less. At least, she was attacking French ships and slaughtering Frenchmen. We discuss the question of piracy and what it is, really; and Michelle laments having had only Disney princesses as role models, in her youth, since apparently Jeanne would have been a much better model of womanly behavior.

In 1284, the children of Hamelin disappeared. Unless you translate the Latin differently, and they all died. Over the centuries, the story of what happened to them would get more and more intricate. Was there a Pied Piper involved? Probably not, though there may have been a musician. Were there rats? Nah. They don't show up in the stories for a few hundred years. But something happened, as the Hamelin chronicles tell us. What the hell it was we don't know. We explain the possible fates of the children of Hamelin, as invented over the centuries, and Michelle raves about the ways in which the town of Hamelin is currently cashing in on the legend. 

Capturing an enemy and holding them for ransom, in the middle ages, wasn't necessarily a crime. However, kidnapping a fellow crusader was not ok, since the pope has said that all the crusaders were supposed to treat each other well (by not capturing their lands and goods while they were off fighting, or kidnapping them and holding them for ransom), and also, there's a difference between holding a fellow noble for ransom and kidnapping the king of England. To be truthful, as far as medieval crimes go, this one isn't very criminal -- just sort of dumb, and tacky, but it gives a chance to discuss the rehabilitation of Richard's reputation (he wasn't a horrible king! he was ok!) and the importance of historical fiction. 

In 1210, King John of England left Maud de Braose and her son William in Corfe Castle and let them starve to death, either because Maud had been shirty with one of his messengers, or because John owed William money and didn't want to pay it back, or because, well, who knows.  John was like that.  Maud, on the other hand, had, before getting thrown into the dungeon at Corfe Castle, had impressed the Welsh by defending a castle against them, and, apparently, or at least the Welsh said so, magically building a castle in one night all by herself. In this episode, we discuss the horrible badness of King John, and why it's not a good idea to learn history from Disney movies.

In 1386, Marguerite de Carrouges accused Jacques le Gris of having raped her, and though the French Parliament could not come to an agreement as to whether or not le Gris was guilty, we know that he was, because Marguerite's husband Jean killed le Gris in a trial by combat, so that's settled. Although le Gris' descendants would keep trying to convince everybody that actually somebody else raped her.  The evidence for this was either nonexistent or unconvincing. The case is currently known both because of the 2004 book The Last Duel, by Eric Jager, which was then made into a 2021 film, The Last Duel, directed by Ridley Scott. We discuss the historical record of the crime and the trials, and Michelle discusses the film (Spoiler Alerts!), which, as usual, she has a lot of opinions about. Oh, and by the way, it wasn't actually the last French judicial duel. Near the end though, and the title is great!

The Irish Annals are full -- full, we tell you -- of detailed histories of the kings of Ireland.  Only mostly the details are their names, how long they ruled, and how they died. Though Bran Ardchenn and Eithne were burned to death in a church, we don't know more than that. In this episode, we discuss early Irish history, the Book of Leinster, and Anne's annoyance at not knowing exactly how Bran and Eithne died. Because "burned to death" doesn't really explain much.

In 1478, in Florence, the banking family of the Medici was very powerful. Very powerful indeed. But another banking family, the Pazzi, were not happy with this.  No, no! They wanted to be more powerful in Florence than the Medici were! So they created A Plan. Well, a few plans, really, but finally  one of the plans was carried out, which was to kill two of the Medici at High Mass in the Cathedral, after which the citizens of Florence were going to say, yay! hoorah! Now the Pazzi will be our leaders! Only they didn't, and all of the members of the Pazzi Conspiracy got hung from the windows of the city hall, and Lorenzo de' Medici, who (unlike his brother) had survived the Conspiracy, continued to be Lorenzo the Magnificent.  Michelle is Highly Scandalized by all this.  Highly, I say. 

In 1127, Stephen of Blois swore an oath that when Henry I, King of England, died, Stephen would support Henry's daughter (and Stephen's cousin), Empress Maud, as queen ruler of England.  But in 1135, when Henry died, Stephen hightailed it to London and grabbed the throne. In this episode, we discuss the civil war that followed, and several interesting bits of it -- Empress Maud escapes from Oxford by walking over the iced river in a blizzard; Queen Matilda, Stephen's wife, manages to get the citizens of London to throw Matilda out, by playing the girl card; Stephen pays the wages of the mercenaries that Henry, Maud's son, hired when he invaded Stephen's kingdom; William of Blois, Stephen's son, signs away the throne of England because really he has more sense than most of his family. Also, if that rapey song in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers bothers you -- as well it might, even if the brothers do come to understand that just grabbing women is not the way to create marriages with them -- Michelle has fixed this for you by writing a verse which is all about the awesomeness of Norman women.  Which she sings.  Life is good.

One evening in March of 1566, Mary, Queen of Scots, was sitting with one of her half-sisters and her secretary David Rizzio, eating supper. Suddenly, the door slammed open; Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, and his cohorts burst in, stabbed Rizzio, and pointed a gun at the Queen.  Who was 6 months pregnant at the time, with the future James I/IV. Then the band of conspirators took Rizzio out, stabbed him 56 times, and threw him down the stairs. We'll give you all the background to this, and also explain what happened to Darnley, but in essence, all the conspirators were in on a Stupid Plot, which was meant to get Darnley, Mary's husband, declared King of Scotland. (That, by the way, did not happen.) So that was a very bad evening for Mary, Queen of Scots, though probably not the worst, since later on her cousin Elizabeth, Queen of England, was going to keep her in captivity and then cut her head off. Besides Rizzio's demise, we discuss why the Nazis were all for Mary and not Elizabeth. Fun times!

It's important, in the middle of the winter, to take part in raucous activities, and there were lots in medieval Europe. Boys being bishops, men and women switching clothes, parishioners gambling in the churches, and, unsurprisingly, most everybody drinking.  Lots. Besides giving you the history, Anne explains a Christmas Celebration Gone Terribly Wrong, and Michelle tells you about that time that the Tudors used the Christmas celebrations as a prelude to an execution. Tacky.