True Crime Medieval

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.

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. 

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.

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.

There were not, in the Middle Ages, any chastity belts. They did not exist. Really, they didn't. They show up later, when enlighted ages say that they were used in the Middle Ages. Then, enlightened ages invented them, and now you can buy them on Amazon. Michelle explains how we know they didn't exist, and how they got invented, and why the later ages that invented them said the Middle Ages did it. Anne, on the other hand, had a lot of fun researching the state of chastity belts now. Oh, and that hacking episode. Pro tip: don't attach your private parts to the internet.

Sometimes when our medieval rulers get assassinated we can see why, and that's the case for Galeazzo Maria Sforza, who was a very bad sort of person. So, not surprisingly, he got stabbed to death by conspirators. Two of them were out for personal gain, but one was a poet who was, he believed, serving the greater communal good, which charms Anne. We tell you all about Sforza and the assassination, which is, really, the point  of this episode, but the gem of information for Michelle was that one of the churches of Florence got burnt down on account of spectacular stage effects that were really too spectacular.

During the Fragmentation of Poland, which lasted from 1138 to 1320, Leszek Bialy -- Leszek the White -- managed to reign as the High Duke of Poland four times, the last reign going on for 16 years before it ended, on account of his having been assassinated. That's a long reign, during the age of fragmentation, when the realm was, well, fragmented, and the position of High Duke got passed around pretty often.  Leszek was attending a conference of several dukes when he was attacked in his bath, escaping naked on his horse for a short distance before the attackers caught up with him.  So, he's well known for that, because it's dramatic, and a  great subject for painting, but he's also famous for refusing to go on crusade because there was no beer in the Holy Land.  Which is a really true thing; there's documentation.

Henry d'Almain didn't really want to fight in the Second Barons' War,  because the leaders of the two sides were both his uncles, and when his uncle Simon de Montfort was killed and mutilated in the last battle, he wasn't part of that, so it was really unseemly for his cousins, the sons of Simon de Montfort, to find him in a church in Italy and slaughter him while he was clinging to the altar. As vengeance goes, it was a really stupid vengeance that didn't settle anything, and only got the de Montfort boys into more trouble. (Their father wouldn't have done such a thing; the de Montforts were going downhill, that generation.)  Anne wrassles with her grudging respect for Simon de Montfort, and Michelle finds a really badly behaved Victorian scholar. Because bad behavior transcends the Middle Ages. 

We thought it would be interesting to talk about the Crimean Slave Trade, but we had not known that would, essentially, cover all of written history and all of the Old World. But it was on the schedule, and we found it interesting. So! We'll start with the mother of Carlo de Medici, Maddelena, who was captured in or sold from Circassia (it's over on the northeast shore of the Black Sea), and then sold in Crimea to a Venetian who took her to Venice and sold her to Cosimo de Medici, who took her to Florence. The Crimean slave trade was the major location of international slave trading from the 15th century until the 18th century, though it had existed much earlier. Maddelena was one of millions of people who were forcibly passed through the ports of Crimea. We distill a giant topic! But we mention Cervantes. He was one of the millions. Oh, and Captain John Smith.  Pocahontas gets a mention. She wasn't one of the slaves. She just got stuck with one of the stories. 

Michael Servetus was one of those brilliant people who can be a bit annoying. He read and/or spoke Spanish and French and Hebrew and Latin and Arabic and Greek and who knows what all. He studied and/or wrote books on theology, medicine, mathematics, law, and some other stuff. He wrote poetry. He had a bunch of degrees. But he had to leave the Studium of Zaragoza because of a fight with the High Master; he nearly got the death penalty in Paris for translating Cicero's De Divinatione (but they decided to just make him withdraw the book instead); he was in prison for a few days for injuring a physician who attacked him out of jealousy; he was arrested in France for heresy, and the Catholics were going to burn him at the stake; but he escaped --- and then, instead of going to Italy, he went to Geneva, where John Calvin, who disagreed with Servetus in lots of ways, was instrumental in getting him burned at the stake there. So it was the Protestants who finally killed him, rather than the Catholics. It wasn't John Calvin's finest moment. But on the other hand, Calvin had argued for cutting Servetus's head off rather than burning him with his books.  Well, almost all of his theolgy. Three copies of the theology text survived, and Michelle will tell you all about them.