One night, in Paris, thugs broke into the room of Peter Abelard, renowned theologian and philosopher, and beloved teacher, and castrated him.  Because Fulbert, the uncle of Heloise, was REALLY annoyed that Abelard and Heloise were keeping their marriage secret.  Which they had entered into so that Fulbert wouldn't be so upset about the affair that they had been having.  Also their son, Astrolabe, or, as Anne likes to think of him, Global Positioning System. Fulbert just had no moderation. Abelard went off to be a monk for while and then wander around, Heloise went off to run a nunnery, they both wrote lots of letters, and Astrolabe (after being raised by Abelard's sister Denise) grew up to work in at least two churches. And then later Abelard and Heloise became very famous as tragic lovers. And you can go and leave letters on their supposed grave in Paris, asking them for help with your love affairs, though really that doesn't seem like a great idea, given all that bad luck they had, and also they probably aren't there. The end.

 King  Æthelred of England really did not have the wherewithal to successfully deal with the Danish/English tension that he had inherited with the throne, which had been caused by Viking raids for about 100 years,  notably established by what the English called The Great Heathen Army, which took over much of England.  Oh, too bad. One solution, he thought, was to kill off all the Danes in England.  This did not work. For one thing, the Danes did not in fact get killed off, though the English did kill some of them -- notably in Oxford, where they burnt the church down with Danish settlers gathered inside. For another thing, the Vikings invaded again, not long after the Massacre. The throne of England went back and forth between the English and Danes, after that, for some decades, until, in 1066, the Normans would invade and take everything over, establishing a NEW Viking dynasty, one which spoke French. And liked to write history. 

(Special Episode -- Post-Medieval!) Between 1590 and 1610 (probably), Elizabeth Bathory tortured and killed girls and women (probably).  When all of that got stopped, she was arrested -- but never accused -- and four of her servants were arrested, tortured, and put on trial.  Three of them were executed, and the last imprisoned for life. Elizabeth was put under house arrest. She was never accused, she never went to trial, and she died of natural causes. What. The. Hell. We discuss the scanty evidence, we discuss the mushrooming of the Stories About Her Horrible Badness, and Michelle's rabbit hole concerns current tourism in Slovakia, which is making a killing (ha ha) from tours of the ruins of her castle, and selling really dark red wine. Since one of the stories is that she bathed in blood to keep her good looks. She didn't.  But she was indeed very badly behaved.

In 897, in Rome, Pope Stephen VI was strangled, in prison.  There. That's the True Crime. We don't know who did it -- a representative of the people of Rome, we suppose. The interesting part of this crime is not that he got murdered, but why he got murdered. Which was that he had dug up the  7 months dead corpse of a predecessor and put it on trial. In fancy papal garb. With a deacon giving answers to questions, since the dead pope on trial couldn't do it. We bring you The Cadaver Synod! And Michelle finds musicals. 

One day, after the Saxons won one of the many battles in the Saxon Wars, Charlemagne, who was pretty annoyed, ordered the mass execution of 4,500 warriors.  This didn't really tarnish his golden reputation until the 18th century, when it began to bother people.  We discuss the Saxons, Charlemagne's reputation, the trouble that the Nazis had in figuring out how to talk about him, and, oddly enough, Christopher Lee and his heavy metal Charlemagne albums. 

Edward I invaded Scotland in 1296, on account of (he said) their broken feudal obligations. Amongst the usual spoils of war -- prisoners, horses, weapons, nice gold stuff -- he took a rock. Weighing about 335 pounds. We discuss the theft of the Stone of Destiny, and its subsequent history.  Including, to our delight, a 20th century liberation of the Stone, wherein four university students break into Westminster Abbey and take the stone back to Scotland. Then it went back to England.  Now it's in Scotland again.  It's a very important rock, really.

 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.

We interrupt our regular programming to explain that COVID hijacked our schedule. Don't worry, all is well; it's just busy around here. We will be back in two weeks for our usual discussion of the bad behaviour of long dead people. Stay safe!

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.