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True Crime Medieval112. Sverker the Elder is Murdered, Alebäck Bridge, Sweden, December 25, 1156The first ruler of the House of Sverker, Sverker the Elder, had come out as the winner among contenders for the position of Ruler of Sweden, even though he wasn't from royal roots. He was the ruler of the country, but various pieces of Sweden were considering themselves under or not under his authority, and other countries altogether were also working on taking Sweden or bits of it (that would be Denmark and Russia), and what with one thing and another, life wasn't very restful. And then one of the Danes got a trusted servant to murder Sverker. It w...2025-07-2933 minTrue Crime Medieval111. Massacre of the Latins, Constantinople, Byzantine Empire, April 1182In the beginning, by which I mean before 1054, the Church was united, though the Eastern and Western pieces had lots of theological differences, which they could just not iron out. But then it was 1053, and the Patriarch of Constantinople closed all the Latin churches in the city, and after that, the Pope of Rome tried to get the Patriarch to recognize him (the Pope) as the head of the Church, which he wouldn't, and then they excommunicated each other, and we had The Great Schism of 1054. But there was still lots and lots of trade between the East and...2025-07-0353 minTrue Crime Medieval110. St. Mikhail of Chernihiv is Assassinated by the Golden Horde, Batu Khan's Camp, Kyivan Rus, 1246Mikhail of Chernihiv, the Grand Prince of Kyiv and Prince of Chernihiv, went to several neighboring states to ask for help fighting the Golden Horde -- he had the idea that there would be strength in alliance -- but nobody would help, on account of they were too busy fighting each other, and also the Mongols had not actually gotten to their houses yet, so why should they care. Then the Golden Horde destroyed Kyiv, and told Mikhail he had to come give obeisance to Batu Khan, and he did that, but he wouldn't worship idols, which was part...2025-05-2134 minTrue Crime Medieval108. April Fool's Episode: Pope Joan, Rome 855-857For all of the middle ages, almost everybody believed that earlier in church history, there had been a pope who was, instead of being male, a woman, who met, alas, a Bad End. She wasn't there, as some people suspected then, and as we know now, but the story is so damn good it's hard to let go of. Whichever version of the story you're dealing with. Anne explains the different versions of Pope Joan and how we know she wasn't there, and Michelle is delighted by the vast amount of popular works telling her story. Musicals! No kidding! An...2025-04-2933 minTrue Crime Medieval109.King Duncan Gets Killed, Pitgaveny, Scotland 14 August 1040King Duncan did indeed get killed, in 1040, and Macbeth was around, and maybe even was near him at the time, but Duncan wasn't old, he wasn't asleep in bed, and there was no crime, because Macbeth's forces slaughtered Duncan's forces in battle, and Duncan was one of the slaughtered. In this episode, Anne explains all of the history that can be explained -- it's a slippery bunch of facts, but there was a King Duncan, he did die, and Macbeth was king after him. Michelle explains the historical sources, and mentions the novels, but really what she wanted to...2025-04-2933 minTrue Crime Medieval107. Church Sanctuary in the Middle AgesAs we all know, if you were accused of a crime in the middle ages, or if you were in danger, and you ran to a nearby church, you could have sanctuary, and then you were safe. Well, this is true, more or less, but exactly what you needed to do, and how the whole thing worked, changed over time and across the continent. Michelle and Anne wanted to know more about the mechanisms of sanctuary, so they went to find out, and will tell you all about it. Anne can explain to you the ceremony you would follow...2025-03-2640 minTrue Crime Medieval106. Special Episode: Axlar-Björn Pétursson is Executed for Serial Murder, Snæfellsnes Peninsula, Iceland 1596There's not a lot of murder in Iceland -- there was a disconcerting spike in the number of homicides last year, 8 altogether -- so, obviously, there aren't a lot of murderers. And none of the murderers of Iceland are serial killers. With one exception. In the last part of the 16th century, not long after Iceland had been forced to institute the death penalty for capital crimes (this was Denmark's idea), Axlar-Björn Pétursson, who lived out on the west coast, on the Snæfellsnes Peninsula, murdered lots of people who came by his farm looking for work, and...2025-03-1740 minTrue Crime Medieval105. St. Adalbert of Prague is Martyred, Truso, Poland 997Adalbert of Prague wanted very much to go Christianize the Prussians, but they were just not having it, so they hacked him up and cut his head off, and that is why he is a Saint, with an enormous number of churches around the globe dedicated to him. Anne spends time thinking about what was the snack that we are told Adalbert and his companions were eating before the murder, and Michelle considers the recently discovered account of Adalbert that is older than the one we had, although really what she’s interested in is St. Bruno of Querfurt, th...2025-03-1238 minTrue Crime Medieval105. St. Adalbert of Prague is Martyred, Truso, Poland 997Adalbert of Prague wanted very much to go Christianize the Prussians, but they were just not having it, so they hacked him up and cut his head off, and that is why he is a Saint, with an enormous number of churches around the globe dedicated to him. Anne spends time thinking about what was the snack that we are told Adalbert and his companions were eating before the murder, and Michelle considers the recently discovered account of Adalbert that is older than the one we had, although really what she's interested in is St. Bruno of Querfurt, the...2025-03-1139 minTrue Crime Medieval103. Pino III Ordelaffi Poisons a Whole Lot of People, Forli, Northern Italy, 1463-1480From the 12th century to Renaissance, the Ordelaffi family ruled the commune of Forli, in Northern Italy. On and off. Also, on and off again. When they weren't fighting others for the commune -- Florence, the Emperor, the Pope -- they were fighting each other, and in 1376, poison became a favorite weapon, when Sinibaldi I Ordelaffi poisoned first his uncle and then his cousin, so that he could have Forli. He's not even our protagonist, though, because we lit, for this episode, on Pino III Orderlaffi, who started poisoning wives, a sibling, and his mom, and is therefore sort...2024-11-0946 minTrue Crime Medieval102. William de Burgh Starves his Cousin Walter to Death, Greencastle, Ulster 1332William 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...2024-10-0140 minTrue Crime Medieval101. Defenestrations of Prague, Prague, Bohemia 1419, 1483, 1618Humans 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. 2024-08-0641 minTrue Crime Medieval98. April Fool's Episode: Debunking the Chastity BeltThere 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...2024-04-041h 10True Crime Medieval97. Galeazzo Maria Sforza, the Duke of Milan, is Assassinated, Milan, Duchy of Milan 1476Sometimes 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 o...2024-03-3133 minTrue Crime Medieval95. Henry d'Almain is Murdered, Viterbo, Italy 1271Henry 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 f...2024-03-2340 minTrue Crime Medieval93. Michael Servetus is Murdered, Geneva, Republic of Geneva 1553Michael 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...2024-02-2851 minTrue Crime Medieval92. Special Episode: The New Guys Celebrate Christmas, Plymouth (Massachusetts), December 25, 1621On the second Christmas that the Pilgrims spent in Plymouth (the first had been spent cutting down trees and building houses), the governor of the colony, William Bradford, gathered the men together so that they could all go do the Lord's work (which was probably cutting down trees and building houses). Some of the colonists were newly arrived, and hadn't come for religious reasons, but more for finding wealth and opportunity in the New World. This portion of the men did not think that Christmas didn't exist and should not be recognized. They thought it did exist and they...2023-12-2548 minTrue Crime Medieval91. Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck Pretend to be Kings, England 1487 and 1491So, there were those two boys in the Tower of London, Edward V, King of England, who was 12, and Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York, who was 9, and they disappeared one summer after their uncle Richard declared them illegitimate and became King Richard III. And it was a total mystery as to what happened to them, and still is, and Richard III was not king for very long before Henry Tudor, who was on one side descended from Tudur ap Gronwy Fychan, which made the English no never mind, but on the other side descended from King Edward III, an...2023-12-221h 00True Crime Medieval89. Vasvilkas, Grand Duke of Lithuania, is Assassinated, Volodymyr, Ukraine 1267Vasvilkas, the Grand Duke of Lithuania, got assassinated for a reason that Michelle considers the stupidest assassination reason the podcast has seen so far, that being that when Vasvilkas, the Monk Prince, decided to give up the throne so he could go back to being a monk, he gave it to a brother in law, and another brother in law thought that Vasvilkas should have made him a co-ruler, so he murdered Vasvilkas. As MIchelle points out, he still didn't get to be co-ruler. So she went off to read about the changing legend of Vasvilkas, and Anne got...2023-12-0235 minTrue Crime Medieval87. King Philip Augustus Fakes a Genealogy, Paris, France 1194Philip, the King of France, married Ingeborg of Denmark, and it would have been a really great political alliance, except that after the wedding night Philip wanted out. So he asked the pope to annul the marriage, saying that it hadn't been consummated, on account of witchcraft, and he sent Ingeborg to a convent. But Ingeborg said the marriage HAD been consummated, and the pope wouldn't annul the marriage, so Philip had a genealogy made up showing that his marriage to Ingeborg violated canon law because they were too closely related, since Philip's first wife had been Ingeborg's first c...2023-10-1243 minTrue Crime Medieval86. Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor, Does Various Bad Things, Germany, Italy, and Sicily, 1169-1197Sandwiched between two legendary Holy Roman Emperors -- his father, Frederick Barbarossa, and his son, Frederick II -- Henry VI, who was not legendary, and who died at the age of 31 (his dad died at 67 and his son at 55; lots more time to rack up legendary activities), nevertheless managed to acquire a nickname -- "The Cruel" -- in large part because of his belief in the efficacy of torturing political opponents in public. Besides discussing Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor, Anne explains how many Crusades there were and why Henry was all set to go off on Crusade #3 1/2 when h...2023-10-0555 minTrue Crime Medieval85. Eorpwald of East Anglia is Murdered, East Anglia c. 627Eorpwald, the ruler of East Anglia c 624, after his father died, converted to Christianity because Edwin, the Deorian king, converted to Christianity, and managed to connect pretty much the entire eastern coastal kingdoms of England. So that lasted a few years, but then he got assassinated, on account of having converted to Christianity, and East Anglia became pagan again for a while. Eorpwald, the first ruler in England to be killed for being Christian, was therefore a martyr, and a saint. His murder is our crime, so we talk about that, but really, Anne gets to talk about Old Eng...2023-09-081h 12True Crime Medieval83. Hugh de Lacy is Assassinated, Durrow, Ireland 1186Hugh de Lacy, one of the Anglo-Normans who was sent to bring order to Ireland (where the Anglo-Normans were having a lot of trouble), was inspecting the military installation he was having built at Durrow (where St. Columba had previously built a monastery), when he was murdered by one of the Irish who wanted him dead, by being hit on the head with an ax. So there you are. There is your crime. We discuss this, yes we do, but really we are discussing Hugh de Lacy because he built Trim Castle, and Michelle really really really wanted to t...2023-08-2144 minTrue Crime Medieval82. Arthur of Brittany Disappears, Rouen, France c. 1203In 1199, when Richard the Lionheart died, there were two possible claimants to the throne of England -- his younger brother John, and his nephew Arthur. John was a bit over 30 years old; Arthur was about 12. John, the youngest surviving son of Henry II, was by Norman law the rightful heir. Arthur, the eldest son of Geoffrey, John's older brother, was by the laws of Brittany, the rightful heir. Also, John was in England and Arthur was in Brittany. Also, John was the person who was, well, John. Ruthless, is what he was. You can guess who it is who w...2023-08-0143 minTrue Crime Medieval81. Johannes Ryneken is Executed for Adulterating Saffron, Nuremberg Germany, 1444By the 15th century, Nuremberg was making a reputation and a lot of money out of being the main saffron import location in Europe. So the town burgesses took it very seriously when spice merchants sold saffron that wasn't fully saffron, but had various other things added to it. Very seriously indeed. So seriously that it was possible to be, as Johnanes Ryneken was, in 1444, executed for being a very bad spice merchant indeed. Anne especially enjoyed this episode, because she got to talk ALL about saffron, but Michelle was Quite Annoyed at the lack of scholarly citations. Also...2023-07-1842 minTrue Crime Medieval80. William de Marisco is Executed for Treason, London England 1242The de Mariscos were a family that continually got into trouble, on account of continually misbehaving. When William de Marisco was executed at the Tower of London in 1242, it was ostensibly for attempting to have the king murdered, but since he'd also been pirating from the Isle of Lundy, and murdering messengers, he was going to end up being executed at some point anyway. Besides explaining the de Mariscos, we have two rabbit holes! Anne is fascinated by the Isle of Lundy, and Michelle is fascinated by Matthew Paris, and really, there's a lot going on in this episode.2023-06-1342 minTrue Crime Medieval79. Snorri Sturluson Is Assassinated, Reykholt, Iceland 1241Snorri Sturluson, the great Icelandic poet and historian and lawspeaker of the Althing, got involved in Norwegian/Icelandic politics, and it ended very badly. For him, for one thing, as the king of Norway arranged for 70 men to stab Snorri in his basement, and for Iceland, which devolved into chieftain battles and eventually unified with Norway and the Norwegian king became the boss of everything. The Althing still exists, though, and Iceland is independent now, and Snorri is one of the most influential poets of the early middle ages. We explain all this. Anne still wonders why you need 70...2023-05-101h 01True Crime Medieval78. Special Episode: April Fool's Debunking of the Myth of the Medieval Shame FluteIf you go and peruse the internet, you will discover many discussions of the medieval shame flute, an instrument created specifically to be fastened to a bad musician, in order to shame him. There are pictures. There is a lot of certainty about this. Alas, it wasn't there. Michelle went to find them, and, though there are a couple of torture museums which have examples, those are not medieval examples. In fact, do we think that there were ever any shame flutes, even after the middle ages? We do not. Because we think, really, when bad musicians come to...2023-04-1441 minTrue Crime Medieval77. Diarmait Mac Murchada Invites the Anglo-Normans into Ireland, Leinster, Ireland 1167At the end of the 12th century, the kings of Ireland had been fighting amongst themselves, and the high king got involved, and what with one thing and another Diarmait Mac Murchada, who had been the king of Leinster, and then had been ousted, and then had gotten in again, got ousted again, and then had the very bad idea of getting help from the Anglo-Normans. And they did help, didn't they, and then they took Ireland over. This could have been foreseen by anybody who had been paying attention to how the Normans operated. Diarmait, at any rate, go...2023-04-0458 minTrue Crime Medieval76. Special Episode: Richard Walweyn Wears Padded Pants, London, England 1565One day in London in 1565, Richard Walweyn was arrested for wearing the wrong pants, and put in jail until he could prove he owned some proper ones. And why were these the wrong pants? Cause they were puffed out, and he was a servant. Makes no sense, right? Nah. But in times of unease, people like to try to get everybody to wear the right clothes, eat the right things, buy the right stuff. Whatever those things are that year. We discuss sumptuary laws over time, we discuss the hell which would be More's Utopia, if you found yourself...2023-03-1245 minTrue Crime Medieval75. Crime Rise in the Great Famine, Europe 1315-1322In 1315, the crops throughout Europe failed. And then they failed the year after that. And then the year after that. It was raining. And it rained and rained and rained. After that , it rained some more. One of the greatest natural disasters of the middle ages was the Great Famine, in which so many people of Europe died that the population didn't reach the level it had been before the rain started until the 19th century. Naturally, the crime rate rose. That's a fact. However, the cannibalism and infanticide stories, though they were very well known, don't have any e...2023-02-281h 41True Crime Medieval74. Dafydd Gam ap Llewelyn ap Hywel kills his kinsman Richard Fawr ap Dafydd, Brecon High Street, Wales late 14th CenturyBefore 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 t...2023-02-1145 minTrue Crime Medieval72. The Jews of York are Massacred, York, England 1190A 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 s...2022-12-1337 minTrue Crime Medieval71.Special Episode: Guy Fawkes Attempts to Blow Up King James and Parliament, London, England November 5, 1605Special 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. 2022-11-0352 minTrue Crime Medieval70.King Alboin is Murdered, Verona, Italy 572King 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...2022-11-0143 minTrue Crime Medieval69. King Olaf Kills Klerkon in the Market Place, Novgorod, Russia 10th Century.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.2022-10-2657 minTrue Crime MedievalLlewelyn the Great Hangs William de Braose, Aber Garth Celyn , Wales May 2, 1230So, 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...2022-10-1750 minTrue Crime Medieval67. Peter von Hagenbach is Convicted of War Crimes, Breisach, Germany 1474Laws 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...2022-09-2841 minTrue Crime Medieval66. Henry of Trastámara Massacres the Jews of Toledo, Toledo Spain, 1355Henry 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...2022-09-1942 minTrue Crime Medieval65. King Lambert is Assassinated (or not), Marengo, Italy 898After 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 t...2022-08-1046 minTrue Crime Medieval64. Jeanne de Clisson takes up piracy, Brittany 1343In 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 o...2022-07-1338 minTrue Crime Medieval63. The Children of Hamelin Disappear, Hamelin, Lower Saxony, 1284In 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...2022-07-0533 minTrue Crime Medieval60. Jacques le Gris Rapes Marguerite de Carrouges, Normandy, January 1386In 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 f...2022-04-1654 minTrue Crime Medieval59. Bran Ardchenn, King of Leinster, and his wife Eithne are Assassinated, Cell Cúile Duma, Ireland May 6, 795The 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.2022-04-0849 minTrue Crime Medieval58. The Pazzi Conspiracy, Florence, Italy, Easter 1478In 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 me...2022-03-0843 minTrue Crime Medieval57. Stephen of Blois Breaks His Oath, London England, December 1135In 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 o...2022-01-271h 04True Crime Medieval55. Winter Shenanigans (Lords of Misrule), Europe 500-1600It'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.2022-01-0354 minTrue Crime Medieval54. Fulbert's Henchmen Attack Peter Abelard, Paris, France 1117One 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 nun...2021-12-291h 01True Crime Medieval52. Special Episode: Elizabeth Bathory Commits Serial Murder, Castle of Csejte, Hungary 1590-1610(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 to...2021-11-2041 minTrue Crime Medieval51. Pope Stephen VI is Murdered, Rome, Italy 897In 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. 2021-10-2838 minTrue Crime Medieval49.Edward I Steals the Stone of Scone, Scone, Scotland 1296Edward 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.2021-09-2950 minTrue Crime Medieval48. Viking Child Murdered, Dublin, Ireland 9th-10th C. 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. 2021-08-2743 minTrue Crime MedievalSt. Olga Massacres the Drevlians, Ukraine, 945The 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...2021-08-1152 minTrue Crime MedievalIn Which We Explain a Brief HiatusWe 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!2021-07-2802 minTrue Crime Medieval46. Battle Abbey Forges Charters, Sussex, England mid 12th CenturyAfter 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 pr...2021-07-1455 minTrue Crime Medieval45. The Sack of Constantinople, April 8-13, 1204From the middle of the 5th century until 1204, Constantinople was the largest, the wealthiest, the most sophisticated, the most important city in Europe. Then the 4th Crusade, which had intended to go retake Jerusalem, went to the center of Eastern Christianity and besieged it, sacked it, crippled it, and destroyed -- for at least 800 years -- the relations between the Roman Christians and the Byzantine Christians. None of this makes any sense, except that money was involved and people behaved badly. Michelle explains how Western scholarship has dealt with this major crime (it wasn't until the 1950's that it w...2021-06-3051 minTrue Crime Medieval44. King James Murders the Earl of Douglas, Stirling Castle, Scotland 1452If you are an Earl, and you are sent a safe conduct pass to go talk to the King, you're safe, right? You can go meet them, and calmly discuss that alliance you made with a couple of other noblemen, one that is not in favor of the king and his kingly position. Calmly, yes, and then you can go home. Unless it's 1452, and you're in Scotland, and you're one of the Douglases, and the king is known for having a very bad temper. In which case you might get stabbed 26 times and thrown out a window. Really, given Sco...2021-06-1652 minTrue Crime Medieval43. St. Columba Violates Nonexistent Copyright Laws and Starts a War, Movilla Abbey, Ireland 560It's very rude to copy books secretly whilst staying with one of your old teachers, even if you are very careful not to harm the books, and don't use cheese sandwiches as bookmarks. That's what we learn from this episode. Also that the ancient kings of Ireland liked to use cattle as examples of just about everything. And that the O'Neills were willing to go to war with the High King over a book. Michelle and Anne discuss the meaning of copyright law, which really has nothing to do with copying a manuscript in 6th century Ireland. Though to e...2021-06-0252 minTrue Crime Medieval42. Special Episode: Christopher Marlowe is Assassinated, Deptford, England, 1593At the end of May 1593, the most important and influential playwright in England died at the age of 29. Rumor and gossip and a great many history books and literature collections would say, over the centuries, that he died in a tavern brawl. To be fair, his earlier history with drunken brawl involvement makes this plausible. But the evidence -- or rather, the lack of evidence -- given at the inquest makes it clear that he was being got rid of. Oh, besides being a writer, he was involved in Walsingham's Elizabethan espionage net. There's that. In this special episode, st...2021-05-191h 04True Crime Medieval41. The Assassination of Queen Joanna of Naples, Muro Lucano, Italy 1382Joanna of Naples had a hell of a life. There were unhappy marriages, there were murders, there were invasions, there was the Black Death, there was the Papal Schism, and there was a tangled ball of plots and tussles over the inheritance of the Neapolitan throne. At the end of it all, she was murdered and thrown into a well. And then she enjoyed hundreds of years of a Very Bad Reputation. But recently, scholarship has turned the tide! She was an excellent leader, who was beleaguered by a whole lot of men across Europe, though mostly in her bedc...2021-05-0558 minTrue Crime Medieval40. University of Paris Strike, Paris 1229First some undergraduates got drunk over in a tavern, and then they didn't pay, and so the townspeople beat them up. That was Shrove Tuesday. Fair enough. On Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, when they were supposed to be repenting and thinking about their sinful lives, the students got some buddies together and went and trashed the pub, beat up the taverner, and looted and trashed the nearby businesses. But the townspeople couldn't do anything about it, cause the local law couldn't do anything to the students, and the church wouldn't. So the townspeople went to the Queen, who...2021-04-2158 minTrue Crime Medieval39. April Fool's Episode: Ferdinand II of Aragon Abolishes the Droit de Seigneur, Spain 1486Everybody knows that the Droit de Seigneur (the right of a feudal lord to sleep with a bride on her wedding night) existed. Except it didn't. Why, then, did Ferdinand II of Aragon abolish it in 1486? Why indeed. We discuss this. Also we discuss the history of the first night myth. And Michelle explains why you should buy books when you see them, instead of waiting till later.2021-04-071h 01True Crime MedievalThe Death of William Rufus, New Forest, England, August 2, 1100One day the King of England went out hunting, and did not come back, on account of having been shot by one of his hunting companions. Henry, his younger brother, became King in just a few days, and there was no inquest. Nobody at the time thought anything of this, really, because dying whilst hunting in the New Forest was pretty common, but later, lots of people Got Suspicious. We discuss this. Also the fact that the Face of Lucca doesn't really have anything to do with the Face of Bo.2021-03-241h 03True Crime Medieval37. St. Patrick Gets Kidnapped, Roman Britain, late 5th C.In honor of St. Patrick's day, we have no snakes, no druids. We talk about Irish pirates capturing young Patricius, which was a crime, and then St. Patrick being all remorseful about something which was some sort of crime but nobody knows what it was, and then, having done all that, we talk a whole lot about St. Patrick movies, including a silent film from 1920 with which we are totally impressed, and another from 2000, which involves David Tennant and has us bemused. Also there is information about currachs, which have nothing to do with St. Patrick being kidnapped. Happy S...2021-03-1050 minTrue Crime Medieval36. The Piratical Victual Brothers, North and Baltic Seas, 1393-1440After being hired to help run victuals into Stockholm through Queen Margaret of Denmark's blockade, the Victual Brothers turned to piracy, decimating the herring trade and annoying the Hanseatic League. Anne explains all that stuff, and Michelle waxes poetic about the medieval cog, which was apparently an awesome sort of ship. And as a special treat, we append the recording we made wherein we figured out why our sound issues hadn't been solved. 2021-02-2450 minTrue Crime Medieval35. Mabel de Bellême is Murdered, Bures, Normandy 1079Mabel de Bellême, wealthy Norman landowner, belonged to the de Bellême family. They were infamous for cruelty and general wickedness. Mabel exercised her share of the wickedness and cruelty; eventually one of the many Normans she impoverished gathered his brothers and murdered her. We discuss the de Bellêmes, when we're not discussing Orderic Vitalis, the monk who chronicled their history. (For those of you who have forgotten, it's Orderic who thought that the White Ship crashed on account of sodomy, rather than the rock in the harbor and everybody being drunk in the middle of the night.2021-02-1048 minTrue Crime MedievalThomas Malory Goes to Prison for Treason, London 1468Sir Thomas Malory of Newbold Revel got into lots of legal trouble in 1443, 1451, 1452, and might or might not have done the things he got accused of, but he did indeed enter into a plot, along with Richard Neville, to overthrow King Edward IV, for which he ended up in prison. Too bad for him! But lucky for us, because that's when he wrote The Hoole Book of Kyng Arthur and of His Noble Knyghtes of The Rounde Table, which got published, after his death, by William Caxton, which is why we know it. Caxton, by the way, made a bun...2021-01-271h 03True Crime MedievalThe Theft of the Book of Kells, Kells 1006Happy New Year! An episode without any deaths! The "chief treasure of the western world" (as the Annals of Ulster reported) was stolen from the Abbey of Kells in 1006, surprisingly, not by Vikings. The thieves tore off the cover, which was encrusted with gold and jewels, we figure, and threw away the manuscript itself, which was found 2 months and 20 days afterwards, "under a sod." Besides the book itself, and some other book which was like it in being thrown in a bog, and Kells, why we want to go there, Michelle also tells us about finding relatives in Meath...2021-01-131h 02True Crime Medieval32. Special Episode! Peter Konieczny from Medievalists.net Explains Con Artists in Medieval LondonIt's a Special Episode! Peter Konieczny joins us, to share his knowledge and stories about frauds in medieval London. A fake Earl's son, who needs you to help a lot, really, no kidding. Fake government inspectors who need you to hand over the ale so they can test it, bye-bye. Bakers who steal bits of your dough so as to make extra loaves and shortchange you. Merchants who put dirt in cinnamon. London's a scary place. Many thanks to Peter and medievalists.net.2020-12-3048 minTrue Crime Medieval31.Christmas Episode: The Murder of Thomas Becket, Canterbury 1170After years of annoying each other, and fighting about the boundaries between church power and royal power, Henry II of England lost his temper with Thomas Becket, at Christmas, and said something (we don't actually know what, exactly) which caused four knights who didn't know him very well (and hence didn't realize that he lost his temper all the time and would be getting over it in a while) to go down to Canterbury and murder the Archbishop. Bad career move, really. And Thomas Becket, who was then after all a martyr, started healing people and performing miracles pretty...2020-12-161h 19True Crime Medieval30. Albigensian Crusade, Languedoc 1209-1229Once the Latin Church figured out how to justify slaughtering people who weren't believing the things they were supposed to believe, according to the Latin Church, it was a short leap from slaughtering them in the Holy Land to slaughtering them in Europe. The Cathars were being very wrong, very wrong indeed, on account of being dualists and not believing in things like baptism and the resurrection. So the Pope called a crusade against them. And the French monarchy was glad to help, since the Languedoc -- where most of the Cathars were hanging out -- was rich and en...2020-12-021h 03True Crime Medieval29. People's Crusade, France and Germany, 1096At the end of 1095, Pope Urban II called for the first of several crusades, wherein the Latin Christian Europeans were supposed to go take the Holy Land away from the Islamic rulers who held it at that time. So the nobility of Europe, mostly from France, started putting together forces and money, so as to travel and fight. That was the Prince's Crusade, the First Crusade, and it would leave Europe in the summer of 1096. It takes a while to gather the wherewithal needed for such a venture. Unless you just plan on being a mob! In that case, you ca...2020-11-1849 minTrue Crime Medieval28. The Sicilian Vespers, Sicily, Easter 1282On Easter Monday, 1282, the Sicilians revolted against the French government that had been in place since 1266; in the course of a few weeks 4,000 to 8,000 French people were slaughtered, depending on what source you are reading. We explain how things got to such a pass, and Michelle has a lovely trip down a rabbit hole wherein she discovers the awesomeness of Stephen Runciman. George Orwell makes a cameo appearance.2020-11-0443 minTrue Crime Medieval27. Halloween Episode: Arche the Miller and his Drunken Buddies Pretend to be Ghosts, Cambridgeshire, England 1592When Arche the Miller and a bunch of his cohorts got very very drunk and pretended to be ghosts, they were living in Early Modern England, but they were pretending to be Medieval Ghosts, new ghosts having not been invented yet. In this episode, we explain medieval ghosts and how to pretend to be one, tell medieval ghosts stories, and try to wrap our minds around the well-known medieval forensic tool wherein murdered bodies bleed when the murderer comes by. Happy Halloween!2020-10-211h 09True Crime MedievalRobert the Bruce Kills John Comyn, Dumfries Scotland, 1306Robert 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 was self-defense, because we don't really know. Because chroniclers. 2020-10-071h 15True Crime MedievalThe Viking Raid on Lindisfarne, Northumbria 793It 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.2020-09-231h 07True Crime MedievalPhilip IV Slaughters the French Knights Templar, Paris, 1310After 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 t...2020-09-091h 13True Crime MedievalThe Sheer Dreadfulness of Hugh DespenserIt'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 be...2020-08-261h 13True Crime MedievalThe Murder of Edward II, Berkeley Castle, England 1327In 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.2020-08-121h 15True Crime MedievalThe Murder of Marguerite Porete, Paris, France 1310Marguerite 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) bec...2020-07-2946 minTrue Crime MedievalThe Massacre at Abergavenny, Wales, Christmas 1175William 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 Gwla...2020-07-1550 minTrue Crime MedievalThe Murder of Sigebert, Vitry-en-Artois 575We 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 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 easter...2020-07-0143 minTrue Crime MedievalThe Peasants' Revolt, England 1381When 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 ab...2020-06-171h 11True Crime MedievalThe Murder of Joan of Arc, Rouen 1431The 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 pr...2020-06-031h 14True Crime MedievalVlad Țepeș Slaughters the Transylvanian Saxons, Wallachia, 1460Vlad 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 thing 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 Mi...2020-05-2049 minTrue Crime MedievalCrimes Against the Jews, Latin Europe, 1348-1349Over 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. We discuss that background, and focus on two examples: Erfurt and Strasbourg, both in 1349.2020-05-0639 minTrue Crime MedievalAccusations of Witchcraft against Alice Kyteler, Kilkenny 1324In 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, who was burned at the stake? Wrong place, wrong time. Oh, and Kyteler got away.2020-04-2253 minTrue Crime MedievalThe Murder of Peter of Castile, Montiel, Spain, 1369On 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 interesting rabbit-hole of a play written in 1818 by Ann Doherty. We cover the murder of Pedro, we really do. It's in there someplace.2020-04-0856 minTrue Crime MedievalEustace the Monk, Battle of Sandwich, England, 1217Eustace 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.2020-03-2558 minTrue Crime MedievalThe Black Dinner, Edinburgh 1440In 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 Edinburgh, given a mock trial and beheaded? Yes. Yes, they were. Was there a dinner first, at which their upcoming deaths were announced by a black bull's head being slammed on the table? No, and...2020-03-1151 minTrue Crime MedievalThe Tour de Nesle Scandal, Paris, 1314In 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 line would follow. Oh, and Isabella the She Wolf was involved. (Bonus! Michelle explains the Three Rules of Regifting, none of which the princesses paid any attention to. Big mistake.)2020-02-2658 minTrue Crime MedievalFra Alberigo, Faenza 1285As 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 actually died, because Dante tweaked theology, and so now he lives on. Forever. In footnotes to the Inferno. We discuss the Jovial Friars, the 9th circle of hell, and me...2020-02-1237 minTrue Crime MedievalEls Von Eystett, Nördlingen, 1471Living 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. Really. Also, Nördlingen was built inside a meteor crater. Really.2020-01-2940 minTrue Crime MedievalGilles de Rais, Nantes, 1440Marshall 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.2020-01-1547 minTrue Crime MedievalThe White Ship Disaster, Barfleur, Normandy, 1120The 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.2019-12-1847 minTrue Crime MedievalBeatrice Cenci, Rome 1599Outside 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.2019-12-0437 minTrue Crime MedievalThe Princes in the Tower, Part 2, London, 1483In 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. 2019-11-2139 min