True Crime Medieval

Robert the Bruce was not yet King of the Scots when he stabbed John Comyn in front of the high altar in Greyfriars' Church in Dumfries. But he would be, pretty soon, in spite of being excommunicated for violence in the church. We explain the fight for the crown of Scotland and the interfering bossiness of Edward I of England, but we don't explain whether the Bruce murdered Comyn or it wa...

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 cr...

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 disbande...

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...

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 r...

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 here...

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 ima...

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's 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 mu...

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 o...

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 techn...

Vlad Țepeș -- Vlad the Impaler -- 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, and it's true Vlad Dracula was one of his names, but it had nothing to do with vampires and Bram Stoker made the whole...

Over the course of the Black Death, Christians across Europe carried out massacres, imposed exiles, and confiscated the goods of their Jewish neighbors, though the Pope tried to stop them.  It was the worst wave of massacres of the Jews in Europe before those of WWII.  But the context of the massacres is the hundreds of years before and after, of crimes just as horrific though not as concentrated....

In 1324, Alice Kyteler and several other Anglo-Norman citizens of Kilkenny were accused of witchcraft. Kyteler's husband had died under suspicious circumstances, and the new bishop was obsessed with witchcraft: perfect storm. What do your hosts believe?  Yes to the poisoned husband. No to the nine red roosters and the four and a half peacocks. And her cohorts, including Petronilla de Meath, w...

On the 23rd of March, 1369, the noble, worthy Pedro of Castile, the glory of Spain (we're quoting Chaucer here) was treacherously murdered by Henry of Trastámara, his half brother and rival for the throne.  And that is what we were planning on talking about.  Promise. But we got sidetracked, Anne by the interesting litany of the murders that Pedro himself committed, and Michelle by the intere...

Eustace the Monk, AKA Eustace the Outlaw, AKA Eustace the Pirate, AKA Eustace the Mercenary, AKA Eustace the Admiral of the French Fleet, led a varied and exciting existence, hired as a pirate mercenary first by the English, then by the French.  Everything was great until the Battle of Sandwich, at which he lost his head.

In 1440, King James of Scotland was 10 years old, and the power struggles around the throne were deadly.  The Douglases weren't, at the moment, as powerful as they had been, but would be stronger any minute, as the 16 year old 6th Earl of Douglas would indeed be getting older.  Unless somebody murdered him first!  There's an idea!  Were the 6th Earl and his little brother invited to Edin...

In 1414, Philip IV of France had three adult sons, all married.  There should have been no problem with the royal lineage.  Too bad that Philip's three daughters-in-law all got into trouble, because two of them were having affairs with a couple of Norman brothers who were knights of the household.  Too bad, indeed. Torture, executions, dungeon incarcerations, and the dying off of the Capetian...

As far as we can figure out, the only reason that anybody knows anything about Fra Alberigo, who murdered a couple of kinsmen at a banquet in 1285 in Faenza, is that Dante stuck him in the traitors' level of hell in the Inferno .  Horrible crime! Violation of the ancient laws of hospitality!  But he didn't get arrested, he didn't go to trial, he just ended up in Hell before he actua...

Living as a prostitute in the municipal brothel in Nördlingen, Els von Eystett, forced to have an abortion, refused to be silent, even after she was beaten by the brothel-keeper.  She and the other women working in the brothel testified against the brothel-keeper and the madam, giving details about the horrible conditions they worked in.  The city officials believed them, and they won the case. Re...

Marshall of France and war hero, Gilles de Rais spiraled downward precipitously, ending up being executed for murder, sodomy, torture, and heresy in 1440.  Whether or not he actually sold his soul to the devil in the process is debatable. In good news, though, he produced an awesome dramatic extravaganza before he started murdering children.

The fact that some people think that Stephen of Blois -- or maybe Ranulf Meschin -- caused the sinking of la Blanche-Nef allows us to consider it a True Crime.  It wasn't.  But it was the worst teenage drunken party in history, and that's good enough for us.

Outside of our 1000 year mandate!  It's the renaissance!  But only just, since Michelle points out it's still the Middle Ages in England.  And there's a lurid murder!  And a play by Shelley!  That came lots later, though.

In the last episode, we left young Edward V and his brother Richard in the Tower. They went into the Tower in June of 1483.  They never came out alive, to anyone's knowledge.  In this episode, we discuss what happened -- what the rumors were, what the theories are now. 

Edward V, King of England (12 years old) and his brother Richard, the Duke of York (aged 9) went into the Tower of London in 1483 and never came out.  In the first part of this story, we discuss the Cousins' War, and how the boys ended up in the Tower in the first place.

On August 9, 1157, three rival claimants to the Danish throne met for what was supposed to be a peace banquet celebrating their agreement to divide Denmark.  What actually happened was:  Canute dead, Valdemar wounded, Sweyn blamed.   Justified preemptive strike or premediated murder? Join us as we discuss early Danish politics, family dinner parties, and White Mash, that excellent medieval treat. ...