Did Alfred Burn the Cakes? & Other Medieval Myths
00:01 From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries
00:27 with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Welcome to Gone Medieval. Today we're going medieval myth busting. Some myths of the Middle Ages are universally known, like did Alfred really burn the cakes? But others are so strange you want them to be true. For example, did William Wallace fire bolts of lightning from his backside? And perhaps most importantly does the Pope owe an apology to all cats everywhere? I'm Matt Lewis and I've invited Dr. Enaner Dhaniga down from her ivory tower to separate the medieval facts from the medieval fibs.
01:10 And thanks to all of you who suggested myths that you've always known but weren't always sure whether they were true or not. We're here to put your minds at rest. Let the myth busting begin. Okay Matt, I want to start us off with a strong one, right? Because this is a classic actual myth from the medieval period. and this is about your friend and mine, King Alfred the Great. Now cast your mind back to the Viking invasions, okay? And the myth is that King Alfred the Great is hiding from the Vikings. They're invading the kingdom. It's overrun.
01:59 And as a part of this, he takes shelter in a poor woman's cottage. And she doesn't know who this guy is. And she's like, yeah, sure, buddy, you can hide out here. Vikings everywhere. But while I am out doing some chores, can you just keep an eye on these cakes that I have by the fire. Okay, so Alfred, yeah, yeah, absolutely. But he's, you know, pondering, pondering on the fate of the kingdom and doesn't pay attention to the cakes. The cakes subsequently burn and the old lady comes back and is like, what is this? And gives him a good hiding, right? So this is one of these
02:34 like really traditional stories that gets told about Alfred the Great. I think it's actually one of the things you hear most about him, even above and beyond his career. But unfortunately, It just isn't true, right? No. So it's a myth that appears later. It does appear in medieval sources, but it crops up much, much later. And it kind of tells us around 8-7-8,
02:56 Alfred is having all of these setbacks with the Vikings. He's been pushed back to Athelny, this island in the midst of his lands, which might be Glastonbury. Who knows? Go and stand on Glastonbury tour and see what you think. And that he is hiding out. And as you say, you know, he's in this woman's cottage,
03:13 all she asks him to do is keep an eye on the cakes and he can't do that. It's a story for the ages, isn't it? Men aren't very good at the one thing that you've given them to do. Am I right? Because he's thinking about 50 other things, obviously. But I think it's one of those things that is meant to present Alfred as this kind of humble human king who is facing real crises. And it kind of is suggested that he's not betraying these huge crises on his face.
03:39 This woman doesn't know who he is. He's not going everywhere, proclaiming himself to be the mighty Alfred and demanding abasance from everybody around him. But I think there's also a little bit of a moral lesson in there that you can concentrate on all of these really big, huge issues that are concerning you. And the danger is you let the little things get away from you too. You let the cakes burn because you're doing something you think is much more important. And there's a lesson in there for Kings, I think, in you have to have this macro.
04:10 but you also retain the micro view as well. You have to be aware of so many different things that are going on. So I think it's meant to drive home to us that Alfred allowed himself to get distracted by the huge things when it's the little things that will really help him make a difference. And I mean, I think here also there's this idea of yes, you're thinking about politics, you're thinking about the great needs of the kingdom, but what's going on for the small folk? What is happening for your actual subjects who are faced with these things? And fundamentally, they just want to put the cakes on the table, right? They just want to eat. tonight. And so I do think that it presents you with this nice story about what kings ought to be
04:47 doing, which is, I think, most often the way that we learn, especially about the earlier medieval kings. They're presented as allegories. They're presented as a way of thinking about the concept of kingship more generally, right? Yeah. And I think they're great ways, stories like this are great ways of summarizing Alfred, of filling in gaps that we might have in the source material. So we don't know what he's doing while he's in Athel. So here's an opportunity to imagine the kind of thing that might have been going on, how he's learning the lessons. And it's almost searching for an explanation for why he comes back from this and is then so devastatingly successful against the Vikings. You know, what has he learned while he's been away?
05:26 What's his secret? Was he bitten by a spider? And he's come back to superpowers? I don't know. No, he just burnt some cakes and learned his lesson. Well, listen, is this the first ever example of a celebrity bakeoff? Oh, it could be going horribly wrong. Exactly, right?
05:39 Classic. Classic stuff. Right, I'm going to move us on to the next myth, which is one I think that you'll like. I'm pretty sure he'll enjoy this one. Okay, all right. Joan of Arc, often portrayed as this lone visionary girl who miraculously and reinvigorates the cause of the French kings against the English invaders at the beginning of the 15th century, kind of 1429. And there is this impression that when she's captured, she's sold, she's burned at the stake. in Ruan and that this is all the actions of the Roman Church, that the Roman Church has taken
06:18 this poor young girl, prosecuted her as some kind of witch, burned her at the stake. So the Catholic Church has killed Joan of Arc. Oh, this one drives me up a wall, right? Because what that does is it presents the Catholic Church as a monolith, which it simply is not. And fundamentally, this is also a really interesting one because you get it presented more often in Protestant societies, which I find very interesting. Because what it does is it serves as this way of kind of saying that Joan of Arc is like a proto-Protestant of some type. And I mean, really, the truth about this is Joan gets captured, right, and she's immediately handed over to Rouen, which is controlled by the English at the time, right? Because it's Normandy, right? That's the traditional place that English
07:13 kings control, right? And more particularly, she is in the hands of a bishop called Pierre Caution, and he is the bishop of Beauvais. And technically, technically, right, he's allowed to do this, right? And it's him and also the academics at the University of Paris. Let's keep in mind that universities are staffed entirely by members of the clergy at the time, right? And they are all. And they are all very specifically on the side of the English cause, right? And that is more particularly because remember when we did the other week, the Burgundian-Armniac Civil War, they're in with the Burgundians, right?
07:52 Because the Burgundians have cash, and they're like, whatever it takes, babe, like they've been promised fabulous riches, right? Because it's initially the Burgundians that capture Joan and hand her over, hand-over seller to the English. Right. And that can be confusing for us because it's already weird because, like, wait, no, isn't Burgundy part of France?
08:08 It's like, yeah, yes, and no, it is now, it wasn't then, right? And what they are doing is very technically above board. They're like, technically, I have the right to try Joan of Arc as a heretic. And they get her on these very specific and persnickety legal things, dressing like a man, saying that her visions are incorrect, and also disobedience, right? Because they're saying we are, we are representatives of the church, sort of, yeah. and we're telling you not to do this and you won't knock it off, right? And she does at a point in time say, yes, okay, I am a heretic and then the visions tell her, no, you should put men's clothing back on.
08:48 And there's this very, very careful legal framework that they put forward. But I and many other historians would argue they're doing that because it's dodgy, right? Like this is very, very dodgy stuff. And if you had other more French sympathetic bishops involved, they would be like, what are you doing? you can't try her as a heretic. The papacy does not know about this, right? So when people say the church, they often mean the Pope. The Pope doesn't know this is happening.
09:16 They're just like, yeah, maybe like, let's get rid of this chick. We're filled in all the right forms. Complete, completely. And fundamentally, what happens is once the 100 years war dies down, the church is immediately like, absolutely not. This is, whoa, not the case, right? And also, I think the thing of like, oh, making her a saint, that's kind of like overriding it and they know they've done something bad.
09:39 She doesn't become a saint for quite some time, right? They say that was really bad. She's blessed, right? She's blessed, Joan of Arc. Fantastic news for her. But her sainthood doesn't come along until the modern era anyway. So this whole idea that this is the church feeling bad about having done something wrong obscures the truth about the church more generally,
10:00 which is that there are individuals who run individual courts. In theory, you can kick up to the church. the Pope, but if people want to keep it secret, they can keep it secret. And this idea that the church is doing this like behind the back of the French, that doesn't really work. It doesn't pan out in this way when there's so much chaos coming, very particularly from the English and Burgundians. And so that's why it's also a very pervasive myth, because the truth is just so complex that it takes several minutes to explain it, right? Yeah, absolutely. And it does speak to the political influence that is going on because the way that this plays out isn't necessarily
10:37 the way the church might have wanted it to play out. It plays out the way the English wanted it to play out because one conviction for heresy isn't enough to execute Joan of Arc and it's pretty clear they want to execute her and be rid of her. They need a second instance of heresy after her first conviction, which is why her ending up back in men's clothes. Potentially under The threat of all kinds of horrors and torture is so important. It feels like here we're seeing the church being driven by the political wants and needs of the English. Which happens all the time, which happens all the time, right? And it's one of these things that is a constant thorn for the church.
11:17 They're always going back and forth saying, really, our bishops should be free to serve the church more generally, but they're always getting pressure from above and from the local nobles and royalty who they are also members of, right? You do not become the bishop if you are from a poor family. You're from these noble and princely families. So he is getting this pressure from family members. He's getting this pressure from politicians. So it isn't as easy as just saying the church did something ever. That's not how the church works. Yeah. Important. Well, from one person who was burnt to a few who may have been threatened with bodily harm, I want to talk. You're going to like this one. Matt, would you say that Joan of Navarre, Elizabeth Woodville, and Chiquetta of Luxembourg were witches?
12:05 Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. I wonder if they were. I think this is really, they're really interesting cases. So Henry V, imprisons his stepmother, Joan of Navarre, on charges that she's a witch. And as a result of this, he's able to confiscate all of her lands and money, which is really significant amounts of lands and money, at a time when he needs lands and money to go. to war in France. Yep. Slightly suspicious. And it's interesting that on his deathbed,
12:34 one of the things that Henry Veth does is order the release of Joan of Navarre, almost with an apology. Sorry, step-mom. Oh, my bad. I didn't really mean it. He knows what he's done here. This is the political weaponisation of charges of witchcraft against women, which becomes increasingly prevalent in the 15th century.
12:55 And particularly as we move through the century, I mean, we get to Eleanor Cobham, you know, in the middle of the 15th century, who is married to Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, the uncle of Henry the 6th, the youngest brother of Henry V. And she is charged with witchcraft for going and visiting this lady Kate called Marjorie Jormaine, who is known as the witch of I. And she's charged with trying to have the date of death of the king, Henry the 6th, foretold so that her husband, Humphrey, will succeed.
13:25 Now, she admits to going and trying to get some fertility. medicine from Marjorie Jormaine so that she can conceive and have a child, but she said, I absolutely did not do the rest of that. And the government find themselves, actually, they want to charge her with treason for foretelling the death of the king. But they find out there is no legal mechanism in 15th century England for trying a woman for treason. See, if you go back to Magna Carta, it's all about how you try men for treason. Right. By a panel of their peers and it specifically says men. So no one's quite what you do about a woman who might have committed treason or you want to charge with treason.
14:02 And so they turn to witchcraft as the next available best option, really. And so she is pursued on these charges of witchcraft. She's forced to do penance walking through the streets of London. And she's forced to have her marriage to Humphrey annulled. She spends the rest of her life about 15 years as a prisoner of Henry V's, Henry the Sixth government, sorry. And this is just very, very clearly a trumped-up political charge, which is really trying to get at her husband. It's not even about her. She's paying the price for the attack they want to make on Humphrey.
14:38 And it's actually at this point that the government then also changes the law to say, we're going to find a way to try women for treason as well, just in case we ever want to. And they essentially say that they'll be tried by a panel of their peers, male peers, though, not female peers. And that the punishment for a woman who's committing treason is being burned at the stake similarly to those. of witchcraft or heresy. And then you get on to people like Elizabeth Woodville and
15:01 Jaketta of Luxembourg. And here we see the height of the Wars of the Roses when you've got Edward IV falling out with his cousin, the Earl of Warwick. The Earl of Warwick is again, politically weaponising these attacks on women as a way to attack Edward VIII. It's not good form to go directly for the king. You go for the softer targets around him. And the women are now becoming potential political levers against the men. People have seen it happen to Humphrey with Eleanor. Why don't we just do that again? And so Warwick launches all of these attacks on Jeketa and Elizabeth Woodville,
15:36 saying they use witchcraft to ensnare Edward to trick him into marrying Elizabeth Woodville. And Shakespeare will take this and run with it by the end of the 16th century to say that Richard, Richard III, is then claiming that Elizabeth Woodville is casting spells on him that have withered his arm and all of this kind of thing as well. So again, I think what we have to see here is generally political attacks on men, through the vehicle of charges of witchcraft against women that are close to them. Now, I think that that is really important as well because it is this new thing that we see cropping up at the end of the medieval period. And obviously this will continue to snowball.
16:14 And then by the time you get to the early modern period, we see, you know, you can just throw charges of witchcraft around willy-nilly. It's very interesting because you just don't see this in the earlier medieval period at all. medieval period at all. It's just not something that anyone ever does. And you see it almost exclusively even in the later medieval period in these highly politicized context. Like the concept of the witch is so new at all. And it's just thrown specifically at these well-connected political women who are being kind of inconvenient. Yeah. This is something very, very different from the much more serious kind of witchcraft trials and the witch crazes and things like that that happen in the early modern period, particularly in the 17th century, you think James the sixth and first, genuinely
17:00 terrified that witches are causing trouble in his kingdom. That really isn't happening here at the end of the medieval period. No, absolutely not. And one of the big things that you will notice is these women largely survive. Despite, I mean, it's not a great life. Nobody wants to be imprisoned, but they're not being hung. So that's something. Yeah. Some good news. A little like good news. Hang on Joe's small positives. I'm going to bring you in one here that I think you will like. There is a persistent myth. And you and I have just made a program about Henry the second and Eleanor of Aquitaine.
17:35 Yay. Great fun to do and we would love to do more. Yes. One of the most persistent stories that we hear about Eleanor of Aquitaine is that as she's older than Henry, as she's aging, Henry is taking mistresses. True. True. There is a mistress that he gets particularly attached to, Rosam and Clifford. considered to be fair Rosamond, a beautiful young woman,
17:59 and that Eleanor is so consumed by bitter, bitter, rage and jealousy. And Henry is so scared that Eleanor is going to do something to Rosamond that he builds this maze, and he puts Rosamond in a cottage at the centre of the maize so that Eleanor can't possibly find her. Only Henry can find his way in on those lonely nights when he wants a bit of company. But Eleanor somehow, because she's an incredibly clever woman, finds her way through this maze, finds Rosamond and
18:27 in most sources, poisons Rosamond and kills her. And probably does a wicked cackling laugh at the end of it. I'm sure. Because she's succeeded. Did Eleanor of Aquitaine murder Rosamond Clifford? No. No, leave my girl alone, right? This does Eleanor of Aquitaine so dirty on a number of levels.
18:48 In the first place, you know, when Henry's taken up by Roseman, Henry and Eleanor are already estranged, right? Eleanor's been back in Poitiers. She's like, yeah, that's great. Cheers. You know, I've had eight million children, roughly. I'm good. You have fun, right?
19:05 And more importantly, I think, this would not be possible because when Rosamond Clifford dies, Eleanor is under arrest by Henry II and being kept in Sarum Castle outside Salisbury. So the entire story, I mean, like, let aside, you know, the fact that atopiary maze is created. And, you know, we all know, Rosamond is actually at court. Like, Henry's like, that's my girlfriend, ladies and gentlemen, isn't she hot? Right.
19:32 And everyone is like, oh, very hot girlfriend. Well done, Henry, right? So she's not being kept in any cottage, in any center of any maze. Yeah, yeah. But then how does Eleanor get out of imprisonment to get through said maze to find Rosamond and kill her? Right? Like, what's she going to do? Say to the guards, oh, hey, guys, I know that I'm under a house arrest, but could you let me out so I can go kill my husband who you work for as girlfriend? That'd be great, right? And then what she presumably goes back in. And like, the entire thing is a 14th century invention. This is when we find that the story starts swirling. And this is a specific time when we're seeing Eleanor talked about more commonly in general. And it's one of numerous allegations that's thrown. at Eleanor at this time. So this is also the time when people are alleging that she is having an affair with Saladin on the Second Crusade, which, uh, sure, babe. Right? Definitely. It's not like he's a
20:30 10 year old boy or anything. No, no, but you know, like, listen, her beauty is so legendary that even 10 year olds are drawn to it, right? And, you know, very obviously modern scholars are like, this is very clearly about the fact that people don't like it when a lady is powerful, right? And we understand that. We see where it comes. But even, in the 20th century. This was still being taught in English schools. And I know this because people have come to talk to me about it and said that they were taught this. And I'm like, well, that's a shame that you were taught this thing. But I think it's really an instructive story because its persistence does show us exactly the playbook for how powerful women are treated. Right.
21:11 There's there's this specific thing where the thing about women is actually the men in their life. The thing about women is their sexual lives and their raging jealousy and dislike of other women. And not that this is an incredibly powerful woman who is currently under house arrest because she's managed to negotiate kind of a treaty with her husband after her sons revolted against him. Right. Like this is, she's making power moves, incredible political plays. And we're like, oh, she's jealous. Shut up. Yeah. It kind of points us to two main things, doesn't it? that almost every voice that we hear from the medieval period is a powerful man or a monk, you know, who have very particular images of women.
21:50 This is the time at which the church is really solidifying its idea that all women are the daughters of Eve, who are just driven by their unrestrained libidos and are corrupting men left, right and center. So that everything that goes wrong isn't a man's fault. It's a woman who's driven it to him. And it's exclusively men that are telling you this. and also that as these myths accumulate around a woman like Eleanor, there's she a number of them, the idea that she's having an affair with Saladin
22:15 and an affair with her uncle, that she might have slept with Henry's dad and all of these kinds of things. All of those add up to tell us that she is an incredibly significant and powerful woman because people are so relentlessly attacking her. Yeah, if you are the right kind of medieval queen, no one talks about you, which is incredibly frustrating for those.
22:37 of us who are interested in medieval queens. But people talk about Eleanor because she's very good at her job. She's great at her job. And others would argue that she's maybe not very good because they should have to think about her. They shouldn't have to think about it, Nellonor. But too bad, actually. Team Eleanor for life.
22:56 We love her. She would never do that. She's a girl's girl. Yeah. No criticism here. No, absolutely not. I think we need to crack on with some more myths. We're maybe going to talk a little bit about Robert the Bruce right after
23:07 this break. All right, Matt. Are you ready for Robert the Bruce Times? I'm always ready for Robert the Bruce Times. This is a good one though. This is a really fun one. We like an actual, actual myth here. And this myth is the idea that Robert the Bruce, oh, he's down on his look. He's in hiding. He's defeated. And while he is hiding, he observes a spider in its web. And it's trying to kind of spin or climb up its web over and over again. But it keeps falling, right? And eventually, after trying and trying and trying, the spider gets up there. It gets up there, right?
24:10 And it manages to finish its web and do its thing. And Robert LeBruce is like, hey, I'm like that spider. I will succeed if I simply keep at it. And so he internalizes this as lessons in persistence. and eventually he goes on to win Scottish independence. Lovely, lovely little Pat story. It definitely happened, yes. Yeah, absolutely.
24:36 The end. No, the idea that Robert isn't busy enough that he can literally just sit there for days and watch a spider trying to build the web. Mistifies me. So we're around kind of 1306 here. Robert the Bruce is definitely facing setbacks. If he's trying to make himself the king of Scotland in the face of the efforts of Edward I of England, who is still just about around at this point. There is an ongoing war. Edward, you know, Edward is very, very good at war. Robert is facing setbacks. Lots of his relatives
25:09 have been captured or killed. It looks like he's losing. And we get this idea that, again, you know, he goes into hiding. And it's similar to the Alfred story, I think, isn't it? This one doesn't crop up for maybe 500 years later. It seems to be Walter Scott, who kind of creates this myth of the idea that Robert the Bruce is sitting there watching this spider. And I think similarly to the Alfred one, we need to be thinking about people who are looking for some kind of explanation for what's happened. What's the epiphany that Robert had that turned all of this around? Because things look so bad for him and then he emerges from this moment to achieve ultimate
25:49 victory. I mean, partly what happens is Edward the first dies and Edward the second arrives. That's helpful. It's helpful for Robert's cause. And so I think, again, we're looking at how do you explain all of these things? And there's a really nice moral story to be delivered in the idea that that patience is a virtue, that if at first you don't succeed, you try and try again. And that we can all, even kings that can learn something from a humble spider who keeps plodding away.
26:19 Because again, there's the reference to the ordinary people who are forced to work and work and toil and toil to get what they want. they're not like the nobles who can most often just buy what they want or grab it and take it Robert is learning lessons of humility that make him more like a normal ordinary person, making more kind of relatable for everybody. So it's an effort to make these popular kings like Alfred and like Robert the Bruce, one of us, one of the lads. And I mean, unfortunately, anytime you've got a story this good, you know, a story that really encapsulates something,
26:55 it's almost always going to be a literary invention, right? This has come up with by an author who's good at making stories, you know. It's like, oh, I've got a metaphor. We're going to write it down. And that doesn't mean that there isn't something historical to learn from it because we can understand the way that people wish to present kingship, the way that they wish to historicize things, the way that they want to make people seem more human.
27:21 But anything that nice and patch isn't going to turn out, sadly. No. Right, for our next one, we're going to stay in the same kind of period. Okay, great. And I'm going to try my best not to do a Scottish Braveheart accent. Wally and Wallace! Get out! No! He's seven feet tall and shoots fireballs from his eyes and pulse of lightning from his ass at the English. And that did happen, yeah. Documented at the moment. That's right. That's right. Correct. Yeah. So at the end, we can all go home. So again, these are stories that get told about the Scottish Freedom Fighter who is around at a similar time to
27:55 Robert the Bruce, that he becomes this kind of mythical giant figure. And in the retelling, he's forever taller and forever having these additional superhuman powers in an effort to explain what people perceive to be his success. So is he seven foot tall and can he shoot lightning from his ass? Oh, sadly no. Okay, this is one of these ones where we actually have the literary bead on it as well. So it's about 160 years after. William Wallace lived. And it comes to us in an epic poem that is called The Wallace. And it's written by a guy known as Blind Harry.
28:34 Great name. We love this. And yeah, it's a metaphor, babe. Like, it's about how big and strong he is and how he's got these magical powers. But also, it's very specifically presenting William Wallace, you know, with the lightning bolts from the bum, right? This is humorizing it. It's saying, you know, there is something to his crudity, to his, like, not noble status, even though he absolutely was a noble, right? There's something about the every man of William Wallace, right? And it, again, humanizes him whilst at the same time mythologizing him.
29:07 So he's seven feet tall, he's got these magical powers, but literally, but that's it, period. And this is also kind of linked to the fact that there is a William Wallace sword. And it's at the, it's at the Wallace monument. And it's huge. It's like five feet tall. And so it's like, Oh, only a seven foot tall guy could have swung that around. And I mean, listen, he probably was a big guy. That is a large sword. Yeah, absolutely. But, I mean, was that ceremonial?
29:36 Or was he just really, really good with a long sword? You know, many such cases. So, yeah, it's a great story. We love it. We definitely want to talk about it, for sure. Lightning from the bum can't go wrong. But, yeah, of course it's not. Of course it's not real.
29:50 But it just tells us something about the kind of things that people in the situation of those around William Wallace who are trying to lead this rebellion against something as powerful in this period as the English crown. They feel like they need a hero. They may not have ever seen William Wallace in person. They may never have encountered him.
30:09 And that means that all of these stories can grow up around him. And it has the sense of them telling stories around the fire in the evening and Wallace starts off at six foot and then he's six foot two and then he might be six foot four. What if he's six foot six?
30:24 And he just eventually gets bigger and bigger in the retelling of these stories. Because it's also a way to embolden all of these people who are risking every single thing that they have, including their lives, to follow this cause. If they believe they're following someone seven foot tall who's able to call down lightning upon his enemies, that gives you a little bit of heart, doesn't it? Oh yeah, absolutely. You want to imagine that there are heroes on your side. And there's no real difference between this. And for example, stories about the Trojan War. and, you know, the gods getting involved on the sides of the Greeks or the Trojans, right?
30:56 It's the same sort of thing where we're mythologizing in order to give a nice pedigree and encourage people, encourage people in the cause, right? Yeah. Well, you know, staying on the battlefield. I got a good one for you. A lot of people asked about this as well. So is it true that knights can't move in armor, right? Because there's this idea of the knight.
31:18 When you see plate mail, they are just so weighed down. by it that they can't run. You know, if you fall off your horse, you're just going to lay there. You have to be lifted by a whole team onto said horse. And I mean, this comes into play a lot of times in movies. You know, it's like, oh, it's funny. They're kind of like falling down. But I think also there is a big thing here where people get battlefield armor
31:45 and tournament armor confused. And that's also likely because the armor that we are most likely to see, is tournament armor now because you go to the museum and you're going to see like the best of the best, the fanciest. You know, you're going to see Maximilians tournament armor, for example, right? Yeah. And I mean, shout out to your favorite film of Minor Knight's Tale, where you see all of these knights desperately struggling to get onto their horses while Heath Ledger strolls in and hops on the back of his and his new lightweight armor. Perfect. I love it. This is just simply not true. And I think it comes from our imagination that
32:17 that looking at that much metal feels like it must weigh you down. But the question is, if it did, if it stopped you moving, and I think we probably have to, before I answer it, we have to balance this slightly with, there are stories of people, you know, falling on the field of battle and being trampled into the mud and drowned because they can't get up in their armour.
32:36 But that's to do with the fact that the mud is sucking them down and pulling them down and filling up their armour. And there are stories of people trying to flee the battle crossing rivers and things like that and drowning, because if you fall over in water in some of this stuff and it becomes waterlogged, then you probably are in real trouble. But if you're a medieval night, what is the benefit to you of putting so much protection on
32:58 that weighs so much that you literally can't move, that you just become a stationary turret for everybody to attack? And you're just kind of standing there desperately trying to hit anyone that comes near enough and hope they don't push you over because then you're really done for. There is a balance to be had between mobility and defence. if you put a medieval suit of armour on, I think most people would be surprised at how light it is and just how freely you can move,
33:23 particularly your arms and your legs. You want to be able to swing a sword or a mace or something like that. You want to be able to move and turn around and face an enemy. Helmets are all about getting the right balance of protection and vision because it's all well and good being well protected, but if you can't see anything, you're still in trouble. And there are, you know, our very own Luke Tomes of history hits, has donned a suit of medieval armour for a YouTube video
33:50 and wandered around London, riding on a line bike. He goes to the gym and does a workout in it. So go and watch that video and see how people move. There are clips all over the internet of people who've put on medieval armour and run an assault course alongside a modern day, kind of fully equipped squaddy. Most night's suit of armour weighs roughly the same as a fully kit out modern British Army person with a Bergen and all of that kind of stuff. We don't think that they can't move. So why do we think medieval knights can't? You know, Google medieval
34:25 knights doing assault courses. They're jumping over things left, right and center. Because it simply wouldn't make sense to make something that restricted your movement so much and made it so hard to fight that you're just a sitting target. Yeah, I mean, I wore a suit of armor for my medieval pleasure series when we were doing sport. And I don't know. really surprised. You know, I knew that it wasn't that heavy, but it was very doable. And it wasn't even my armor, right? It wasn't made to measure for me. I was using someone else's so it was hanging at slightly different points. You absolutely can do whatever, especially if you're used to training with it, right? Because the key is training, and all these guys do all day long is train,
35:04 right? So I think that maybe this is one of those ones where people just like to imagine a past that says medieval people are particularly foolish. They just don't know what they're doing. And so as a result of this, they put on silly armor that actually makes it more difficult to fight, right? And, you know, maybe also it's us wanting to poke some fun, perhaps at nobility, right? Yeah.
35:27 Like, oh, how silly it is that they're doing this when, you know, ordinary people who are just down in the muck with a pike are moving about freely. Yeah. And there is also an element of, we know, for example, that people will adapt their armor to the type of battle that they're in. if you're fighting in a cavalry, predominantly cavalry battle, you might wear different amounts and
35:45 different types of armour. You might leave bits off if you're fighting on foot instead. If you're fighting in the woods and you need to be super mobile, you might leave off your leg armour altogether. There is a sense in which you don't have to put that whole suit of armour on every single time. You pick the bits that are going to help you win the fight that you're in right now. Right, our next myth is a slightly problematic one for me. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. I once wrote in a book. that medieval staircases in castles tend to turn clockwise. And that this is to favour the defenders who are generally coming down the stairs and are fighting right-handed.
36:22 So your sword hand has more space. And it disadvantages those coming up the stairs who can't fight kind of round the pillar in the middle on the stairs. So that this is castles being designed in a defensive way so that those trying to protect the castle have a huge, huge advantage. in a sword fight over those who might be attacking the castle. I wrote this in a book and I'm scared. Oh, Matt. But this is really pervasive, right? I've definitely heard guides say this in castles.
36:54 And then, of course, I've been like, oh, excuse me, I think you'll find, you know, because I'm the worst person in the entire world. But sadly, no. There is no real specific thing about them always going clockwise. I have personally been to multiple counterclockwise ones at North. Castle, famously, we, has been redone recently. We've been there. I climbed it and cried. No, no. You know, the, the white tower certainly has it. Cannellworth has it. So there's lots and lots of examples of this. And really, the thing about these counterclockwise or clockwise spiral
37:30 staircases, they save space. It's just a really great way to get a staircase in into smaller spaces and making sure that you've got enough room for, you know, the towers or what have you on either side, you know, you want to use all the room you can on the Great Hall so that everyone can go in there and have a very nice party, right? And the truth of the matter is, by the time someone has breached the castle walls, you're in trouble, right? Like, no one is designing a castle with the idea that, oh yeah, and then when they come in, we're going to have like a swash-shbuckling adventure on the stairs, right? You're trying to keep them out. If they've made it in at all whatsoever, you're in trouble. And that's just the fact of the matter. Now, there will be a keep that you can retreat to,
38:12 but they are not going to be coming out. But this is pervasive because, you know, it's fun. It's like a pub fact. And so it isn't, it brings me no joy to bust this one because, you know, many fine individuals have been taken in by it. But it is one of those ones that just gets said so often. You know, it's that common sense kind of story. And that's why it's difficult to get rid of it. Yeah, and James Wright, who's a building's archaeologist, I spoke to him about, he was very kind. He didn't take the mickeyore to me too much. But he said, you know, most surveys will say it's kind of 50-50, roughly, whether they go clockwise or counter-clockwise. And that this myth seems to have emerged from, I think it's a 19th century French kind of historian who was also obsessed with fencing.
38:56 Oh. So he was visiting castles and thinking, well, if I was sword fighting here, his brain was just looking for those things. He spotted it and he kind of just created this myth. that then everybody latched onto, and he just made it up because he happened to have an obsession with fencing. But it does also talk about the fact that quite often castles, we think of them being solely military, defensible positions. Now, they definitely are. They're big stone walls. But like you say, by the time someone's in, you're already in trouble. The idea is to keep them out altogether. And these places also have to be comfortable, functional homes and regal,
39:36 estates for people to live in as well. Not every way in which they're designed is about if someone is about to get into my bedroom and kill me, this is how I'm going to stop them. Yeah, I think that's right. And also, you know, when castles do survive to us these days, a lot of the time, we're only left with the defensive structures. You know, we just have the stairs and the walls and the apartments and the nice things that people used to live in are often fall into bits now. So it's a lot easier to forget that this is also a palace. You know, this is also supposed to be a nice place to to have friends over and impress dignitaries, right? So yeah, I think that it does take a little bit of imagination
40:13 to get to that next part. I do miss those days though. You know, historians used to just be able to make things up with a convincing story. No, we're not allowed to do that anymore, right? Let me take history in my hobby and create a myth that will endure forever. Exactly.
40:48 I've got one. That bothers me because you and I, we're both cat lovers. Many such cases love to see a small animal around in the area. a creature, if you will. But there's a really persistent myth. And apparently this exists. I've heard it both from people in the global north. But I've also heard this very specifically from Turkish people.
41:10 And there is an idea that Pope Gregory the 9th in the 13th century declared that cats were demonic. And he had them all killed all across Europe. Okay. And as a result of all the cats in Europe being killed, it was overrun with rats. It was overrun with rats. And that is why the black death happened. And so, you know, it's this church's war on cats, right? Is part of the reason why the black death happens. And there's also kind of like this thing where people are like, oh, the papacy should apologize to cats, you know, because there was this cat genocide. And then that led to the black. The Black Death, right?
41:59 Do you want to start us off? There are times, my daughter has a kitten called Derek. Derek. There are times when I'm convinced he might be slightly evil. There might be some demonic work going on there. But generally, he's just very cute. So we do have, in 1233, we do have this papal bull voxynrama, which starts to describe lots of heretical, kind of magical ceremonies that are taking place.
42:24 And it does mention the use of. a black cat during at least one of these ceremonies. So we do have a link there to the idea that the papacy is saying black cats are involved in demonic worship and dodgy magic and things that they shouldn't be involved in. It's only other black cats. Yeah. In that one paper ball. It's not all cats. And there is no sense anywhere from that that the papacy is ordering the destruction of every cat in Europe and somehow blaming them for all of the evil in the world. And the idea that it contributes to the black death, I mean, for one thing, all the cats haven't been killed. But we can explain the black death in a myriad of ways. It's human trade routes that are causing the black death.
43:08 Kind of not saying there's not enough cats to kill the rats that the humans are bringing is a little bit like saying it's not really our fault. Well, I think this is a really interesting one too because ironically, right, they're like, oh, well, the church was so stupid. Everyone in Europe is stupid for listening to the church and doing cat genocide question mark. ignores the fact that, and I can't stress this enough, the black death happened across Afro-Eurasia. It's like, cool, so why did the black death happen in Beijing? Why did the black death happen in Damascus? Why did the black death happen in Baghdad where it was absolutely atrocious? It happened in Alexandria, right? It happens all across Afro-Eurasia and not everyone killed cats, right? And I mean, also it's a weird one because everyone focuses on the rats,
43:55 Leave the rats alone. It's the fleas. Fleas did this, not rats. So there are all these steps that you have to ignore in order to tell this story. And it just shows how woefully ignorant people still are about the Black Death. They seem to think that it's something that happened exclusively in Europe. And nothing could be further from the truth. Everyone experienced it at the same rates. And indeed, what we tend to see is that it's worse in places where people are living really cheap by Jowel,
44:23 which is why places like Baghdad. I have it really, really bad because there's just so many people living there, right? Yeah, we did a great episode with Thomas Asperidge recently on the kind of global impact and the ways in which different cultures and different religions confronted and dealt with the threat of the black death. But it is a little bit of that kind of European exceptionalism, isn't it? And looking for some kind of reason why Europeans weren't able to deal with the black death. Why is it that we couldn't do this? It couldn't be because we don't understand it.
44:51 They're trying to avoid it being God's displeasure with everybody. so we'll blame one Pope for killing all the cats. Great, sorted. Wonderful. I mean, we just didn't have antibiotics. There's nothing you can do about the Black Death until we invent antibiotics. It's going to be several centuries. That's it, right? So I think we probably need to say that the papacy doesn't owe cats an apology for a universal genocide in the 13th century. My cat believes she's owed an apology for every time she doesn't get more treats. But that's another story entirely.
45:21 Yeah, every cat is entitled. Just not to an apology from the Pope in the assistance. That's right. That's right. Yeah. I'm going to bring us on to one now. I'm slightly, I'm nervous about raising this one. All right. But we've got lots of myths that we could have confronted here, and hopefully we'll be able to come back and do some more, maybe.
45:39 But this is one that I couldn't let slip by in the first episode that we're doing. For a very, very long time, people have referred to the early medieval period as the Dark Ages. It's a term that can be used for that period, but which has been used prejoratively to talk about the fact that people then were living in an intellectual and artistic and cultural darkness that with the absence of the Roman Empire to teach us all to be wonderful, intelligent people,
46:15 we all took a step backward and became stupid. We forgot how to do things, we forgot how to make things Like everyone woke up in the morning and couldn't tie a shoelace anymore, didn't know how to forge a sword, couldn't make any kind of art. And that therefore this period, until we get a little bit further on and we get kind of the medieval renaissancees that begin to emerge in the 11th and 12th centuries and things like that, that everyone was living in this cultural dark age. This is a really frustrating one. And indeed, I've run into people who believe that the term dark ages refers to the middle age. ages more broadly and not just the early medieval period. And it's a really annoying one because the term dark ages is a specifically useful phrase for historians that breached containment
47:06 and people don't know what it means. Right. So it's ironic because the misapplication of the term is by people who are like, I'm very smart. I'm a very clever person. It's like, yeah, except for you don't know how to use this term. Right. And we've had to just stop using it. We've had to start saying early medieval period, which I don't have a problem with, right? But the term dark ages here very specifically refers to a lack of sources, not, and I underline this, not intellectual decline, right? And I've heard people say, oh yeah, well, then why aren't there a many sources then? Because it was 1,500 years ago, bro. It's a really long time. I don't think that people really have the wherewithal to understand what a long time period this is, right?
47:51 And you're writing things down on parchment. The world is lit only by fire, right? So things burn down all the time. And guess what? You lose manuscripts as a result of that. Parchment is also edible to the little guys like Micey's and rats. And they come in and they say yum, yum, yum. And if you don't get to it in time, they will eat your parchment, right?
48:12 You also see very particularly a privileging of older things. at the time. So people have such a reverence for Rome then as well, which is I wrong, because everyone's like, oh, they're idiots and they don't know anything about Rome. They only care about Rome, dude. The only thing they care about is Rome. So if you've got a choice between saving something that is Roman in character and saving something that, I don't know, Clovis wrote, well, he was King of the Franks. They're going to be like, oh, keep the Roman one. Who cares about Clovis, right? So there's this constant curation that is going on over 1,500 years, which means you lose these particular manuscripts. And, you know, we see this all over the world, for example.
48:56 We know that we've lost innumerable sources in tropical regions because things rot, right? So we just don't get to know what's going on there because 1,500 years is a really long time ago. And if you're writing on, say, banana leaves as they are on like Sulawesi, for example, that's going to rot. right? So we don't get to know because that is just how source survival works. So you have to understand that the way things are now, yeah, that's not how things always were. And, you know, one of the big things that was really brought home to me when I was studying for my master's and I was learning how to read medieval manuscripts because it's very difficult. You know, we have copies of medieval manuscripts that outnumber books that were published in the 1920s, right? Because people were
49:41 like, that books are not very good. Pulpit. Screw. it. That doesn't mean that book didn't exist, right? It means that as a culture, we decided that one of these things is more important than the other, and that's a process that is happening all the time. And I mean, ironically, anyone who wants to make this argument that the Middle Ages is uniquely ignorant, uniquely stupid, and basing it on this idea of the Dark Ages is so ignorant that they don't even know what Dark Ages means. And I mean, I'm talking about rotten things. You know, let's talk about Henry VIII.
50:13 Oh my Lord. Here's an example of someone who essentially caused the loss of vast numbers of manuscripts from libraries with the dissolution of the monasteries. Those things were just destroyed. And we also do have examples of manuscripts from that kind of later medieval early modern period that are reusing older bits of paper and bits of parchment that might be from the early medieval period. So they're just being recycled and reused or they're being destroyed as part of purges.
50:42 that are going on across Europe, most famously, I guess, Henry VIII and the dissolution of the monasteries. But it also, I mean, it's interesting how archaeology is beginning to shed more light on what was once the Dark Ages. It's becoming a great source of evidence and material for it.
51:00 But even referring to written sources is ignoring stuff like, I mean, the Lindisfarne Gospels, you know, there are absolutely beautiful pieces of art that survive from, this period that were being created in what people are trying to paint as this cultural backwater. Listen, if you are really this determined to persist with this myth, I mean, I think also it has to do with this whole myth of the Renaissance, which I'm sorry, but if you really believe in the
51:29 Renaissance and this idea that like suddenly the world got better, I'm afraid you've fallen prey to an infomercial. And all that is is that Veselius is the great sculptors, which was just a book designed to sell Michelangelo to you, has worked on you. Or maybe, I don't know, you are leaning a little bit too much into Petrarch. Petrarch is beefing with my favorite guy, Charles the Fourth, the Holy Roman Emperor. And he's like, nothing's good. If it's not Italian, you can't be in Prague. Shut up. Roman things are good. Right. And ironically, that's happening in the 14th century, which is the Middle Ages, right? So all of these things are very explicit propaganda campaigns. And congratulations, you fell for it.
52:11 And again, it's also an annoyingly Eurocentric view of things because there are people in the near East and the Middle East, Islamic scholars who become the kind of the custodians of ancient Greek and Roman wisdom, which Europeans rediscover when they go off on the Crusades in the 11th century and beyond that. And they come back to Europe and they're all like, look what we found. Meanwhile, Islamic scholars are like, what do you mean? I mean, literally the Spanish kingdoms are like, yeah, we have a scriptorium. We've been doing that. And everyone's like, oh, really? well, I wasn't going down to the Iberian Peninsula. Maybe you should, dog.
52:44 I don't know. Yeah. Those sources do exist in other places, don't they? Right, exactly. So, and the entire thing is incredibly frustrating. And I think also it's just one of these things, again, people like to pat themselves on the back, don't they? People like to pretend that they somehow are more clever than, you know, a millennium of people who were just as difficult, intelligent, you know, sometimes silly. as anyone else. But yeah, I mean, don't blame medieval people for stuff that early modern people
53:18 like Henry the 8th did. Come on. Yeah. Be better than that. I feel like you might need a little lie down in a dark end up after being wound up about that one. And that might that might be enough myths for us to bust for today. But we've got a whole list of other ones that we could come back and do another time if people would like to hear them. Oh, absolutely. Myths are us. I will say that. And please, we really want to do more of these. So let us know if you want to come with us on a journey. Thank you for joining us today on Gone Medieval from History Hit. If you want more myths busted, just let us know. Ella and I will be back again next week.
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