Dan Snow's History Hit - Marginalised in the Middle Ages with Eleanor Janega

Episode Date: June 29, 2021

Much of Medieval history focuses on the kings, queens, bishops, and the nobility of the period, but what do we know about those people on the margins of society? Like today the elite made up only a small percentage of the population and the vast majority of the population of medieval Europe were peasants or craftspeople. There were other groups who were forced to the very edge of society such as sex workers, leppers, jews and immigrants. But as Elena Janega, today's guest on the podcast, has discovered there is a surprising amount to be discovered about these marginalised groups. What she has found calls into question many of our assumptions and preconceptions about life in the middle ages.Eleanor Janega is a medieval historian specialising in social history. She is a lecturer at the London School of Economics, hosts the 'Going Medieval' series on History Hit TV and runs a popular blog of the same name on intersections between medieval history and pop culture.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. We have returned, Team History has returned from the Chalk Valley History Festival. Things got pretty loose, things got pretty loose. To everyone who joined us in the bar on Saturday night, it was great to meet you. It was great to meet all the festival goers who came up and talked about podcasts. Your encouragement, the knowledge that you are out there, is what keeps me going on this mad adventure. Because the rest of the time the time I'm not meeting you

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And speaking of history at.tv, that brings me to today's guest, because today's guest has stormed the charts of history at.tv, that brings me to today's guest, because today's guest has stormed the charts of history at.tv. Her series of medieval lives has displaced several of my shows from the top slot, which you might think would be annoying, but it's not, because they're so good they deserve to be at the top of the charts. Dr. Eleanor Janneger teaches history in London, London School of Economics. She is simply the best on

social media. She appears on podcasts all the time, and she's on my podcast now. I'm very lucky to have her. We've talked before in this podcast about the medieval period, its bad reputation. We've talked about science and education in the Middle Ages. I thought we'd get together this time and talk about some of the marginalized of the Middle Ages, from women to lepers to Jews, all the kind of communities we don't hear too much about in the Middle Ages. And obviously, Emily Yannicka, in her usual style, brings them all into stunning technicolor. She's got a new book out. Please go and check it out. You've all heard of graphic novels. Well, she's got a graphic nonfiction. She's got a graphic history of the middle ages it's absolutely fantastic go and check that out after this podcast

and you can see all of her tv shows dominating the most viewed page of historyhit.tv head over there and subscribe in the meantime though here she is herself ellen eanaga enjoy enjoy. Eleanor, thank you very much for coming back on this podcast. Well, thank you so much for having me, Dan. You know, it's difficult. It's a bit of pill to swallow because you keep thrashing me in the History Hit TV most viewed charts, but you know, I'm a big enough guy. Yeah, I mean, you're kind enough to allow me to continue to steal the spotlight and I appreciate that for one. Well, also smuggle a bit of george michael propaganda exactly right so listen congratulations on your book and what really struck me it was so fascinating about this book is

obviously the stuff in there about kings and emperors and and prince bishops but there's a lot of on the overlooks groups of medieval history which actually is kind of by far the majority of people who lived in that period, right? Yeah, that's true. That's true. When you include women, very simply. But like, let's start with, because you and I have talked before about aristocrats and the church, but talk to me about some of these other groups. Like how heterodox was medieval Europe? Well, this is one of the interesting things, because a lot of the time,

if you look at the history or what exactly is written down, you go, oh, well, here's a bunch of dudes who are, you know, either in the church or they are knights and kings and they don't like the church and they grapple over power. And that's the story of the medieval period. But when you start getting into it, you can kind of look through various cracks to find different groups. So one of the things that I really try to talk about, as you mentioned, it's kind of actually the majority of people is women. But it's hard for us to find women in the medieval period because of how attitudes towards women are in the medieval period. So there's a sort of big conception, all of their conceptions are based on classical modes of thought. So they really internalize a lot of stuff from, for example,

Aristotle, who thinks that women are kind of like, if you take a man and turn him inside out, then that's what a woman is, right? So the default human being is a man. And then a woman is sort of not a man, right? She's not a man. And that's how you know about it. And therefore, sort of everything that men aren't, and there's this kind of negative shadow. So men are rational, women are irrational, men are pious, women are not. All of these things. And so women get kind of pushed to the corners of things. And it can be really hard to hear from them because, so for example, you wouldn't necessarily,

if you don't have a ton of money, you're not going to be educating your daughter to a super high standard. If there's only enough money to educate one kid in the family, you're going to push your boys forward. So women kind of get locked in the family, you're going to push your boys forward. So women kind of get locked in the back cupboard in a way. And it can be easy to think that women are not there at all. But actually, if you start looking for them, women are involved in every single part of society, and they're doing just as much work as men are. So women, for example, who are peasants are working

alongside men in the fields, they do pretty much everything that men do, although there are certain particular types of work that are seen as really feminized. So for example, making cloth or yarn or wool, that's a woman's game. Interestingly, brewing beer is often very feminine. And a lot of brewing beer goes down. People just love to brew beer in the medieval period. So that's something that women do. And then at higher levels, for example, in the cities, so among guilds and things like that, we talk about men and only men can be in guilds, but women are always there behind the scenes doing exactly the same job that their husbands are doing. So if you can find these women's names, which we can't always because sometimes it's just the wife of Thomas whoever, so we don't get to know a lot about her, but we can see that they are trading. They're lending money to people. They're going on long distance

missions to get money. So there are all these really interesting stories that women have to tell and things that they have to do, but we're kind of blocked from seeing them by medieval men who just are like, no, there's nothing to see here. That's just an inside out guy. I would ignore that if I were you. Well, don't even start me on Eleanor of Aquitaine. Oh yeah. Her first husband, I mean, total Muppet. And then, you know, Henry, young Henry, Richard and John. I mean, if I hadn't been for her, this Plantagenet empire of, you know, she was making that happen, right? I am extremely biased about Eleanor of Aquitaine because I was named after her. Oh, really? So yeah, I'm a joint venture of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Eleanor of Castile. So it's nominative determinism here, people.

But it's true. Eleanor of Aquitaine is the one that kept England on a level A in even keel. B really centered on a European stage. So her kind of bringing it back out to the fore over and over again, it was like, oh yeah, we must pay attention to that. And the way that people reacted to an extremely powerful woman like this is very strange. So for example, in the medieval period, when she leaves her first husband, there's all these rumors made up about her having an affair with Saladin because they'd gone on crusade together. And while they were there, she was like, that is it. I can't stand

this guy. It's over. And everyone was like, well, she must've been sleeping with Saladin. That's why, that's how this happened. And like, that's how they react to a very powerful woman or someone who is really able to throw her weight around. And interestingly, that is one of these medieval tropes. Like, so that's a thing about medieval women, right? Is that they're extremely sexually aggressive is the way that they are conceptualized. So women are sexually aggressive, they're kind of sexually profligate, they don't know how to hold themselves together. So if Eleanor of Aquitaine is leaving her husband, of course it's for a sexual reason, right? Not just because he's an idiot, but yet she's just

had enough, you know? You know, my grandma, I'm sure your grandma would have done something. She said, you know what, you're in a relationship you gotta go traveling you gotta stress test that and travel is the one does it now i imagine going on a crusade is like an extreme version of that absolutely imagine you know it's not only do you have to go travel you have to take armed guards every step of the way you're gonna get there and there's no nice hotel at the end it's just kind of like a sweltering baking city and you're surrounded by extraordinarily hostile people. Have fun. And let's talk about the women from the Queen who was accused of being sexually active to people for whom sex was a way of sustaining themselves. I'm very interested in this,

your recent brilliant book. You devote quite a lot of time to sex workers. Yeah. Because whether it's choice or... That was a way of sustaining yourself, I guess, right? Yeah, the thing about sex work in the medieval period is that, A, it's sort of a constant, right? Because it's seen as being absolutely necessary for the functioning of a peaceful society. So the idea here, ask Thomas Quinas, and Thomas Quinas will tell you that sex work is the cesspool that keeps the kingdom of God clean. It kind of expunges all of the rough elements of society. Wow. Which kind of tells you exactly how people

feel about sex work, right? So it's not that it's great. No one is saying, oh, I absolutely love sex work. It's my favorite thing. But everyone is saying it's something that's absolutely necessary for society to function. The idea is that if unmarried men, very specifically, don't have access to regular sex, then they will become violent and they might riot. So you have sex workers then to kind of act as an intermediary there. And the thing about being a sex worker is it's open to essentially any woman. So say you grow up as a peasant, you're technically unfree, right? But you're tired of living in the countryside, so you abscond and you make it to the city. If you can sustain yourself in the city for, it's a year in the day, and then after a year

in the day, you will become free if no one comes to claim you. But all you have is peasant skills. And this isn't to say that they aren't skills, but there are a lot fewer cows to be milked in town. If you want to brew beer in town, people already have a kind of monopoly on that. So it's very difficult to get into it if you don't have money. But what is open to women is sex work. So it's a way of women being independent. And actually, in a lot of cases, you can make some pretty good money in sex work. So there's also a lot of hand

wringing about it in that case, because sometimes women just get a little too free when they're sex workers, right? So one thing that we will see, for example, in the lives of who we call the prostitute saints. So you've got Afro of Augsburg, you've got Saint Catherine of Alexandria, and you've got Mary Magdalene. And the way that they'll be talked about in their saints' lives is that they are fabulously, incredibly wealthy sex workers who just make tons and tons of money, but then they convert, they give it all up for God. So this is really seen as a thing in the medieval period that is possible. So not only is it something that's open to women, but it's something open to women where you can make a really good

living without having to have any money to put into it. So sure, there's lots of trades that are open to women like pulling cloth or running bath houses, things like that. It's still a business that you can do, but how are you going to get the capital together if you're just some girl from the countryside? And this is something that doesn't require capital. Interestingly for the sex work thing too, is that there is a kind of idea and conception that ideally though, you'll leave sex work at some point. And there's a way that things kind of differ there than for us, because for medieval people, sex work is very much a job that you can have. And then when you're done with it, you're done and nobody cares. So if you are

doing sex work, technically you're sinning, technically, which seems very unfair. But you can then have all those sins forgiven just by going to your parish priest. You confess. You say, you know, I've been a sex worker. I'm over it. I don't want to do it anymore. And he'll say, okay, bless you, my child. Your penance is that you need to go get married. And if you go get married, like, that's it. Job done. Like, the whole slate is wiped clean. So there's always this kind of road, quote unquote, back for sex workers. You can always be a respectable woman again. Whereas the way that we think about it is we're like, oh, if this is something that happens

to you, then that's it for the rest of your life. That's what you've done. And it's this tragedy. It's a real horrible thing. But for medieval people, it's sort of like, you know, it's not the best job, but yeah, you know, you got to do it. And whole sections of the city will be kind of cordoned off in a way that we sort of think of as red light districts. And it's something that people expect cities to have. So I'm really here to kind of talk about sex workers because I think it's really neat actually to see some women get a little bit of independence and common women, right? Because you can see rich women have a successful weaving business. But it's nice to kind of see that there are some options, even if it's something that we don't

really have a comfortable relationship with. For medieval people, this is a way of women having independence. And that's important to kind of witness that for them. You're listening to Dr. Elmer Yanniger We're talking Middle Ages again More after this What caused the anarchy? How did medieval migrants shape the language I'm speaking right now? Who won the Hundred Years' War?

Could England's lost patron saint be buried under a tennis court in Suffolk? How did England's last medieval king end up under a car park? And were the Dark Ages really all that dark? I'm Dr Kat Jarman. And I'm Matt Lewis. On Gone Medieval, we'll uncover the most exciting and unexpected stories about the Middle Ages, hearing from the best and brightest minds. We will disentangle fact from fiction, bring you the latest discoveries, and reveal how the so-called Dark Ages laid the foundations for much of the world we're living in today. Subscribe to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. land a viking longship on island shores scramble over the dunes of ancient egypt and avoid the poisoner's cup in renaissance florence each week on echoes of history we uncover the epic stories

that inspire assassin's creed we're stepping into feudal japan in our special series, Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. So there was a realistic pathway from sex work to becoming a craftsperson, artisanal, owning tools, having capital. Yeah, absolutely the case. So if you are able to bank enough money in this particular world there are businesses that are then open to you right so for

example a big one is owning bath houses so bath houses huge in the medieval period because i'll say one more time i thought medieval people didn't wash i know right i know because medieval people love to bathe just like we like to go to the spa, they like to go to the bathhouse once a week. But obviously, it's really annoying if you don't have running water. Moving all that water around is really heavy and difficult and heating it all up and cleaning it and over and over again. So people go to bathhouses to go have their big, nice bath every week. And that's a kind of feminized trade. So that's one that you can really get into. And there's this real tension here

because there will be these specific pronouncements over and over again where they're like, look, you cannot have a brothel in a bathhouse. It's either a bathhouse or it's a brothel. It cannot be both. And people really kind of like having a brothel that's a bathhouse. So for example, here in London,

the stews as they're called on the South Bank along Southwark, some of them are just bathhouses. And that's where most people go to get their bath in London. But some of them are not bathhouses. And there'll be all these rules about like, you can't serve food other than pies, it will be like a big thing that's regulated because it's getting too sexy if you're serving food that's more than a pie in a bathhouse. But that's one big way that women kind of get out of it is they'll run a bathhouse instead. You could get into things like market trading. So market trading is really available to a lot of women. And it's like market trading now.

If you get enough goods together, you pay your fee to be in the market. And a lot of the big markets that exist now existed then. So Ledenhall was a big market, Smithfield, places like that, Covent Garden. And you could go there with your eggs or whatever and make a perfectly fine living. And then there's always just kind of like women's hands are needed for whatever else. Brewing, that could be open to you if you get enough money together, stuff like that. Running inns, that's a big feminine thing. So it's interesting what they consider women's work versus not.

And most of those things I've mentioned, they don't necessarily mean that men are excluded from it. There are very few trades that men don't do as well. It's just that it will be that more women tend to do it. So I think the only one I can really think of off the top of my head is that for some reason silk weaving in particular is like, no, women silk weave. Men don't weave silk. Okay,

look, it's like a specific women's guild a lot of the time. Why that is, I'm not exactly sure. You know, we have the barbecuing thing in the present day, which is something I've never understood. Okay, so let's go other groups, which you mentioned in your book, which I was really interested by. I mean, lepers, you know, it's become a kind of byword, but actually, what's the reality there? Yes. I'm really interested in lepers in particular because they're kind of omnipresent in the medieval period. So a leprosy is endemic to Europe and it comes up a lot. So it's funny because, you know, it comes up a lot in the Bible and that's the way a lot of us learn about it. And it comes up over and over in the medieval period because people are absolutely terrified

of getting leprosy. Fair enough. It still seems really bad. I don't want leprosy. Thank you. But it's also really difficult in a world because the't want leprosy, thank you. But it's also really difficult in a world because the thing that leprosy does is that it kind of ruins your body's ability to protect itself. So one can, for example, lose limbs or fingers, things of that nature, but it's not leprosy that does that. It'll be other infections and your body can't fight them off. So obviously in a world where 80% of everyone is a peasant, that's really bad. If you don't have a hand or something like that, that's really going to curtail your ability to do anything. Also it just is no one's first choice is losing limbs in a horrible way. So people are

really frightened of it. So what ends up happening is that a lot of the time towns will make these specific places for people with leprosy to live, so-called Lazar houses a lot of the time. And they are oftentimes just outside of cities. And one of the things that's really interesting about Lazar houses is we used to think, oh, well, they're just outside of cities because people are so terrified of leprosy that they don't want to have any people with leprosy in the city itself. They live in the Lazar house, they go into the city to beg, then they go back to the Lazar house. But what we're realizing now is that Lazar houses are just outside of the city all the time because the rich people who endow them, like it's a huge charity thing and it's like a big flex. So if you want to do something

great for the community, you say, I'm sponsoring a Lazar house and everyone goes, wow, that is really holy. What a nice person you are. So people put them on the roads just outside of cities. So it's like, that's my Lazar house. You like that? Do you see my Lazar house? And so we had to completely change our mind about the way we think about it. But having said that, the reason why we thought that Lazar houses are outside of cities because people don't like people with leprosy around is because people are really quite mean about people with leprosy. So it's kind of seen a lot of the time as a sort of punishment from God. So if you have leprosy, it's oftentimes seen as that you're being punished for being guilty of one of the seven deadly sins, if not all of them. Your lust, your sloth, your wrath,

anything like that. So there's a really famous book of sermons, for example, that's written specifically for priests who go into communities of people with leprosy to preach. And the whole beginning of it, the guy who writes them is like, oh man, I hate lepers. They are the worst. And you know, the thing about lepers is they are lazy and they are just always in a bad mood and they are always eating too much. And he just like gives this whole preamble about how much he hates lepers and how they're absolutely the worst. But being like, but yeah, yeah, yeah. They're children of God too. You probably need to see to their needs. And then there's your sermon to give to them. So it's this really tense relationship for these

people because everybody wants to kind of help them, but everyone just wants to be sort of seen as helping them in this really conspicuous way. They've got a terrible disease. Everyone is kind of rude to them, acts like, oh, well, yeah, that disease is terrible, but didn't you bring it on yourself? Where are you being sinful? So there's these huge communities of people who are really suffering from a terrible disease, and they're living this very marginalized life where they mostly just beg. That's pretty much the only thing that they can do. So they have a little bell, and they go into town, and they ring their bell so that everybody knows that they're coming, and then they'll come and get alms. But it's never in this way that is very kind of wholehearted.

It's always in a kind of form of display. And so they just had a hell of a time, people with leprosy. And they're everywhere. So it's really interesting. Let's finish up by talking about another group or groups, ones that have been seized upon by the modern day, the contemporary culture warriors. Exciting stuff for us all to have to deal with. And that is the question of foreign born people in these communities. And whether that's Jewish communities who could of course be indigenous for several generations, but were then thrown out and moved somewhere else, or foreign people like in the late medieval, we've discovered there were foreign born sailors from as far away as North Africa on the Mary Rose. Now, how visible would these

communities have been? And obviously, it would, I guess, depend on where we're talking about in Europe at what particular time. Yeah, I mean, you've kind of hit the nail on the head. So for example, if you're in Sicily, if you are in what is now southern Spain, if you are in southern France, no one is surprised if an African is there. Fine. It's the Mediterranean, baby. It's, you know, the former Roman Empire and people are moving around rather a lot. And in fact, places, for example, like Sicily are very hotly contested. So sometimes what you and I would call Italians, quote unquote, are living there. But it starts the medieval period being Greek. So kind of being under the control of Byzantium gets taken over by North Africans and becomes hugely Muslim. It's then taken over by

Normans. That's the real out of left field one to me. I mean, that's crazy. Yeah. So that's going to have huge groups of people. Now, places like London, they're interesting too, because they go through different phases, right? So obviously here in London, we have kind of various forms of the early English people. So you might have someone in from Wessex. You might have someone in from Winchester who knows exactly who's in London. Then you have the Danes come through, right? And there's a fairly significant Danish population, especially in London because it's a big trading town.

And then, of course, you have the Normans come in. And interestingly, it's with the Normans that we have Jewish people come into England. These Jewish people occupy this really nuanced part of society in the medieval period where, much like lepers and sex workers, who it's like, well, we need this, but we're not sure we like it. Basically, Christians are not allowed to lend money to each other at interest. That is a sin. That is called usury.

Jewish people have this same rule, but for themselves in the medieval period. So it's perfectly fine for them to lend money at interest to Christians. So Christians seize on this and say, well, actually we need some people to lend money at interest because we're trying to get some business going here.

So they will invite Jewish people into the kingdom. And that's what happened in England after the Norman conquest. They said, we would really like to get some Jewish people in here. Please come in. We're going to give you special rights. You're only going to be under the rule of the king. You're not going to have to be beholden to every other law. And then they are expected to lend money in return. But this is the thing is that it's not just that they're expected to lend money. It's that they are prevented from doing literally anything else. So the only thing that they can do, I mean, sure, you could be a grocer to your own Jewish community,

but you're not allowed to sell things to Christian. You're not allowed to be a peasant. You're not allowed to do literally anything else other than this. Jewish people do that. And here in England, they do it very well. And unfortunately for them, they're too good at their jobs. And the crown ends up getting into rather a lot of debt with them. And so rather than deal with this in any kind of useful way, and then by the time this happens, it's been a couple hundred years, you know, Jewish people have been in England for a while. We have the edict of expulsion and they are just told to leave just summarily and not without several pogroms, for example, like in York, almost the entire Jewish community is killed.

So there's this real tension where it's like, obviously, foreign born people come into London all the time for various different reasons. Even if you're invited, though, if you're from to sort of the wrong group, obviously, there's no real concept of nationality at this point in time. No one is saying, oh, I'm English. But they are not seen as having any kind of place within society unless it's specifically on the part of the king. And the same sort of plays out across Europe. It happens, especially in the German lands. It happens periodically in Prague. It happens in Venice. Essentially the same thing where Jewish people are asked to do a service prevented from doing anything other than it, then everyone gets mad at them for it. So it's one of the most frustrating and it makes you want to tear your hair out with medieval

people because they are so incredibly anti-semitic. And also just kind of doing the same thing over and over again. You just watch them do something, decide they're mad, and then do it again. It's incredibly frustrating to watch. but we learn lots of really interesting things from jewish communities we have great and thriving and interesting jewish communities all across europe that bring us some really interesting philosophy in spain where things are a little more chill for the majority of the medieval period early modern period a real different story there i was gonna say you know it's the old where does that line fall somewhere around 1492 i guess yeah exactly you

know after we've got spanish unification all bets are off but when you have various kingdoms on the iberian peninsula you have huge jewish communities huge muslim communities and huge christian communities and they're always engaging in really interesting kind of philosophical debates in writing and they love to argue with each other so we have these great just absolute sheaves of theologians writing to each other and trying to convince them that their religion is the best. And it's really kind of lovely and heartening because you can tell that they really kind of care for each other in this way. But they're like, oh, you, you know, you watch them just kind of debate religion in this lovely way. So it really kind of depends on where you're from. So in Spain, things are a

lot more multicultural. In places like London, stuff can be pretty multicultural. But I am not here to tell you that a village in rural Northumbria particularly has a lot of different cultures going on. But you would be surprised how many people do move around and how communities are kind of set up. It's not to say that there is this one overbearingly white Christian, anything that's going on, or that anywhere you go, it's monoglot. They only speak their local language. There's always tons of stuff happening. Well, it sounds like your career at the moment, so I'm going to let you go. Tons of stuff happening there. Thanks for making all the TV shows for us and being so brilliant.

And tell everyone what your new book is called. My new book is called The Middle Ages, A Graphic Guide. It is out on Icon Press and can be ordered anywhere good books are sold. Unfortunately for our friends in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and America, it's not out till September, but you can pre-order. Everyone in the UK, though, we're good to go. I got my copy. I'm enjoying it very much

indeed you know what it's graphic it is and you know not in the way that everyone expects for me i was a little nervous when i opened it in front of my children i know you can't trust me i was like this could go two ways this could really go to it um thank you very much that was awesome. Thank you, Dan. Thanks, folks, for listening to this episode of Dan Snow's History. As I tell you all the time, I love doing these podcasts. They are the best thing I do professionally. I feel very lucky to have you listening to them. If you fancied giving them a rating review, obviously the best thing i do professionally i feel very lucky to have you listening to them if you fancied giving them a rating review obviously the best rating review possible would be ideal it makes a big difference to us i know it's a pain but we'd really really be grateful

and if you want to listen to the other podcasts in our ever increasing stable don't forget we've got suzanne lipscomb with not just the tudors that's flying high in the charts we've got our medieval podcast gone medieval the brilliant matt lewis in the charts. We've got our medieval podcast, Gone Medieval, the brilliant Matt Lewis and Cat Jarman. We've got the ancients with our very own Tristan Hughes. And we've got warfare as well, dealing with all things military. Please go and check those out wherever you get your pods. you