Gone Medieval - Smallfolk Under Siege: Visions of Medieval Violence

Episode Date: September 3, 2024

In the year 940 in North-Eastern France, a young peasant girl began to experience vivid visions that mirrored the brutal conflict engulfing her world. Flothilde's visions were written down by one of the era's most respected historians, creating a unique record of how 'smallfolk' experienced the violent power struggles around them. Dr. Eleanor Janega is joined by Dr. Fraser McNair, whose translation of the Visions of Flothilde reveals the horror that she experienced as her community was torn apart.Gone Medieval is presented by Dr. Eleanor Janega and edited by Ella Blaxill. The producer is Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original TV documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Sign up HERE for 50% off your first 3 months using code ‘MEDIEVAL’ https://historyhit.com/subscriptionYou can take part in our listener survey here: https://uk.surveymonkey.com/r/6FFT7MK Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, I'm Dr. Eleanor Yonaga and welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We uncover the greatest mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and the latest groundbreaking research from the Vikings to the Normans, from kings to popes, to the Crusades.

We delve into the rebellions, plots, and murders that tell us who we really were and how we got here. The year is 940, the place Levant in northeastern France. A storm of violence is striking terror into the region's inhabitants as two rival candidates for Archbishop battle to take control of its cities and countryside, ravaging crops and destroying infrastructure. Caught in the midst of the turmoil, a young peasant girl, whose world is being turned upside down,

begins to experience vivid and haunting visions of demons, cruel, implacable, and utterly terrifying, that somehow mirror the brutal conflict engulfing her world. Her name is Fultild, and her visions are captured in writing by Flood Art, a distinguished clergyman and one of the era's most respected historians. I'm Dr. Eleanor Yanaga. And in this episode of Gone Medieval from History Hit, I'm joined by Dr. Frazier McNair, who's a research fellow at Eberhard-Kiles University in Tibingen.

His translation of the visions of Flotilde reveals the horror that a poor young woman experienced as her community was torn apart by a violent power struggle. Frasier, welcome to Gone Medieval, first of all. Thank you. It's great to be here. I'm really happy to talk about the 10th century. I am really excited in particular to talk about Flodilda. and your sources because I think it's so incredibly important to talk about peasants, you know, my favorite group of people, which is to say, you know, everybody, 80% of people. And we don't get to hear a lot from medieval peasants, and especially not kind of in the 10th century

or even in the earlier parts of the medieval period more generally. And I think one of the things that this story really shows us and reminds us of is the fact that peasants a lot of times are the main targets of generalized violence in the early medieval period. I mean, sure, I'm not saying that you're not a lord attacking other lords, but, you know, there you want to kidnap somebody and ransom them. Whereas, you know, it's really cool to destroy somebody's crops and deprive them of taxation revenue or it's a great way of stopping infrastructure from working against your opponents and kind of forgetting that the peasantry are humans who experience. these things as humans. So I suppose a nice bummer way to start us out here is by talking about the kinds of violence that the peasantry really experienced in the Frankish lands at this point in time. Well, you've already mentioned several of the main ones. So the destruction of infrastructure is a big one,

both the cutting down of things like olive groves, of vines, burning crops, harvesting crops is another thing that's like a zero-sum game there. Fodorard, the person who wrote down Floatilt's Visions, complains in his annals in 947 that marauding troops harvested all of the wine from his benefits, so from the church and estate that he had for his own personal use from other nearby estates as part of their military campaigning. Another obvious kind of violence that they some from is just killing. The 80% figure or whatever thing,

figure we like, but it's important to remember, as you say, that this is a large percentage of the population, so by sheer numbers, if nothing else, most of the violence who are going to be doing is against peasants, and then on top of that, they're less well trained, less well armed, often not resisting. These are low-risk targets in a lot of ways. Again, Floodeward complains the following year in 948 that the same armies kill 40 people at his church in Cornice. Interestingly, he's upset about this. Florid is a chronicler not known for editorialising. He is a writer who very much keeps his feelings,

even his political opinions to himself. But this is one of the occasions where he comes out of his shell and talks about how bad the people who killed the 40 men in his church were. Presumably, of course, as a cleric, he would have known them. He probably would have been there for marriages, baptisms, funerals of relatives. He would have had an emotional stake in these lives, even though they were from different social ranks. One thing you don't see very much in internal violence is enslavement. This is something that comes up with contemporary raids from

Vikings or from Hungarians. There are many counts of slavery. Going right up to beyond the peasantries to the highest levels, we have in fact a first-person account from Bishop Adel Elm of Seiz describing his experiences being enslaved by Vikings, which he was very pleased to have escaped from with the help of St. Obituna by jumping into the sawm estuary, when the horse he was tied up on the back of fell over in the waves. But it doesn't seem like the Franks themselves did much in the way of population transfer. I guess I have a question there. Is this one of those things that we tend to see as a result of Christianization because it's really frowned upon to enslave other Christian people if you are a Christian, which is sort of how the Vikings are getting

around rather a lot of this, right? They're like, well, I'm a pagan, so I don't particularly care about all this. Or is this a Frankish thing where we see less of that? You know, for example, if we were over in the German lands, would we see more enslavement? Yeah, I think it is largely a Christianisation thing. One of the things I think that is just this constant confessional division between enslaved persons, or more actually, I suppose, enslaved persons who are moved around. You can argue exactly about levels of Frankish unfreedom, but they tend to stay in one place. And I suspect that in addition to the Christianization aspect, there's a little bit of, to discourage your own people. It's a Pandora's box that you might not want to open.

So how do we know about these kinds of... So you say that we know that crops and infrastructure are hit. Obviously, we have this particular piece of evidence. But are there other things that really tell us what local populations are going through when there are violent disturbances of this kind? Yes, I would in fact say it is almost ubiquitous when we have accounts of warfare. It is often not dwelt upon, but it is extremely common in virtually any kind of source, any kind of genre. So by the time you get to the 11th century, even charters, that is legal documents, are going to be much more explicit about the way violence against infrastructure is used as a technique of mass violence.

That's quite interesting, you know, because I suppose a lot of people tend to think that things like charters are quite dry, you know, that this is just a legalistic, something that's telling you who gave who, what, and what this means, but you can still get these glimpses of humanity within them, really. Oh, absolutely. I always say that a charter, although the easiest way to define it is a legal document. It's really half legal document, half sermon. And sure, there's plenty of boring sermons out there. But if you want a guaranteed audience for whatever it is, you're saying, because these things are read out normally, obviously a big asterisk, because these things are dealt with in a hundred different ways, but normally they are read out.

So you can put whatever you like in there. So charters can be used for things like autobiography, they can tell saints' lives, and a lot of the time, especially with things like charters recording dispute settlements or court cases, they will tell you a lot about why they, because the people who won, are usually the people who write the charter, what they were complaining about and why they were right to complain about it. I guess that brings me to my next question, which is how reliable are these sources? We've got charters written by whoever the victor is. You know, we hear rather a lot from monks or clerics, you know, the people who are literate, who are trained up to write about things. Does that give us a kind of skewed perspective on what's going on? To an extent,

certainly the authors of our sources, and during the Carolingian period, it has to be said, we have some laywriters, including some laywriters heavily involved in warfare, like a guy called Knit Hard, who was writing in the first half of the night century and whose skull was found still with the sword blow that killed him. But again, he is one of these people, he's well trained, he's well equipped, he is literate, therefore Ibsi Factor part of the elite. He has the shield, that the peasants don't. Now, it has to be said, not all of the elite are going to be shielded all the time in the same war that Nithard writes about a sister of Bernard of Settomania. Her name is Gerberger. Bernard of Septermania is one of the highest ranking nobles of the kingdom. She is accused

of being a witch by one of the kings leading the civil war put in a barrel and drowned and river. So it's not always fun and games, even if you are part of the elite. But in the 10th century, in fact, it often is, unless you annoy the Flemish specifically, who are much more willing to assassinate you than other people seem to be, then you're often quite safe, at least from things like death or personal injury. I was about to ask, I was like, what are the Flemish doing? Killing, I guess they're killing. Yeah. Yes, there are three really high profile assassinations masterminded by the counts of Flanders. They kill an archbishop and two other counts, and that's extremely unusual.

Whoa, okay. Fair enough, Flemish. I won't be messing with them anytime soon. I suppose we also hear when things like monasteries get attacked rather a lot in this era. I mean, oftentimes from Vikings and things like that, because, again, they don't care about God, so hey-ho. But these people, even if you're not a member of the elite in terms of being a member of the no-bibis, or, you know, perhaps you were a member of the nobility and then you joined the church. But do they also have, I suppose, run-ins with violence, is what I'm trying to say? Yes. So although monasteries are not being plundered for all of their church wealth quite as intensively as, say, a Viking army would be, often by the 10th century, they are fortified hard points and they will be subject to attack.

equally something like a cathedral church, which is in the middle of a walled city, will be subject to attack whenever that city is besieged. Equally, the violence attendant on, I don't want to call it day-to-day politics necessarily, but normal things is going to affect clerics specifically when that normal thing is, for example, electing bishop. For example, in 9 to 5, the Archbishop of Reams, a guy called Saelfth dies. allegedly he is poisoned, although it's Fodorard making that accusation 30 years later with an enormous chip on his shoulder for reasons that will become very apparent as we go on.

So Saelfth dies and his replacement is a four-year-old boy named Hugh. Unsurprisingly, Hugh is not distinguished at this point for his learning. He does have the advantage of being the son of Count Herbert II of Vermandois, the local potentate. And what Herbert does is he gets the clergy of Reims, who are supposed to acclaim the new bishop. Ian Reims surrounds the place with his soldiers. And it seems pretty contentious. There are reports of injuries. I seem to recall there is a report of death.

And the whole thing rattles down for several decades afterwards. Again, we'll get into it. But it also reflects Fauduard specifically. So the really potted version of what happens is that Hugh gets kicked out in 931 and comes back in 940, when he comes back, Fodorouard, who appears to have been trying to run away to tour in the west of France, reams being in the east of France, is imprisoned by Herebert and stripped of all his benefices.

So Flauard himself, he's not getting arms, legs lopped off. He doesn't seem to be in much danger of death, probably not much danger of injury, but nonetheless he is subject to violence at the time that he is writing, the visions of Floodild. Well, speaking of writing the visions of Floodild, can you tell us a bit about this? You're working on translating this document. And can you explain to our audience who are not huge nerds for the medieval peasantry like me what is so unusual and interesting about this document in particular? So the visuals of Flotild are absolutely fascinating because they are

about as good as we're getting towards a peasant side view of 10th century, politics and warfare. It is not perfect. It is absolutely not perfect. This is not straight from the horse's mouth. And the relationship between FloTild and Flodeward appears to have been a complex one and how they affected one another. Nonetheless, the top line is it's pretty good. And it is virtually unique in representing even through filters, a perspective of someone like Floodild. I'll stop you there. Who's Flotild? So, Flotild, she is a peasant girl.

We only know about her from what Floddorne tells us. There is a short entry in his annals and what we can infer from her visions. So we know that she is a peasant girl. Flauade calls her a poor girl. She is from a place called Le Valle, which is outside Rheims. It's about less than a day's walk to the northeast. She is a serf belonging to the monastery of Saint-Pierre at Aveni. She started having visions in March 940 and she died in Christmas 941.

Incredible because these are complex things that she's reporting. And I mean, I suppose that might have something to do with Floodeward himself. So I guess we have to ask who's Floodeward? And can we take his stories about her seriously? So Flodeward, he is the canon and archivist of the Cathedral Church at Reams. He's born in around 839, 840, we're able to put a pretty solid date on it, and he becomes a very senior and important cleric in the cathedral church by the 940s. So a few years after he writes the visions, he's leading embassies, to go and see the German emperor Otto the Great, try and get Reims' property back. As far as the reliability of his versions of Float Hill's visions are, one of the fascinating things about them, and this is something that a historian called Jeffrey Kojogh has really brought out, is that by the standard,

of vision traditions, they're very strange. There is a long tradition of Carolingian authors writing visions. And specifically, there's a long tradition of that at reams, especially for political purposes. FloTill doesn't really have any of this. One of the things you'll note when you read it is it goes from place to place. It jumps around. She's in one place and then all of a sudden she's in another place. The vocabulary is different. This is not coming from literary antecedents. So, I think it is more or less what Flotild told Flodeward. Now, that's not saying that Flodeward and Flotild have no influence on one another. And in fact, I think the opposite is true.

But I think there is a danger of denying Flotild agency by just going, oh, Faudaard is writing down what he wants to write and using the imprimatur of her as a visionary to justify it. Yeah, I think that's a really interesting point, because certainly I'm used to seeing InVisions, as you say, I always kind of call it ironic violence, like the ironic punishments that, you know, nobles are facing in purgatory. So, you know, they've got a burning shield and it's weighing them down, you know, things that it relates very specifically oftentimes to the political violence that they meet out in the world. And this isn't to say that there isn't violence in Fotild's actual visions that she reports.

But I find it quite interesting because the violence is not played out in the violence. is not played out in this way, in this kind of like telling us a really obvious story. It's not saying here is a mirrored reflection of the violence that we see in this world. Can you talk us through a little bit of what she is trying to get across in these visions? So Flodeward has 13 visions over the course of about a year. And they evolve somewhat. So the first vision, very straightforward, she's taken away in a rapture. she's in a beautiful place.

Nice. By the time you get to the middle ones, then that you start getting stuff that's a bit more pointed. So you have visions by the time you get to things like three and four, which are very clearly reflections of her own experiences.

This is where she's attacked by demons on horseback, who are very clearly otherworldly reflections of the local soldiery doing around, inflicting arbitrary cruelty seemingly because they, can. They try and capture her. They try and throw her down wells into deep water, into valleys.

It's oddly boyish in a way. It's like pulling the wings off flies. By the time you get to Vision 5, which is the most explicitly political one, then she's trying to communicate several things. First of all, unhappiness. She's approached by demons. She tries to cross herself. The demons say, no, no, you can't do that. This year, the kingdom is ours. Of the two competing candidates for the Archipiscopal Sea of Reims, so Hugh has by this point grown up to be a fairly well-trained young cleric on one hand and a guy called Art Hald on the other. She sees Art Hald condemned by Reims' patron saint Remigius. She condemns false oaths, particularly the false oath sworn by the frangish magnates towards the king, Louis VIII, who came over from England where he'd grown

up, probably the only King of France to be a native English speaker in fact. And the false oath they swore to him where they invited him that they've now broken by fighting against him. And she expresses support for Hugh and the need for him to raise the standards of the clergy in the local area, make sure that there is no sexual misconduct among the clergy, that everyone who looks up to holy relics is literate, and so on. By the time we get to the final visions, and this is one of the things I find really interesting about Fodorod and Flotilt's relationship, is that you can see them trying to, I feel like, use one another is too strong a word, but definitely trying to direct the other towards things

favourable to them. So one of the reasons, the other reasons that I'm happy that Flodeward isn't using float-hild for his own political ends is that he doesn't really have ends. He doesn't know what's happening. Everything is up in the air. It's very confusing that the certainties of the old Carolingian regime are much less certain in this decades-long civil war. So one of the things that he wants is for God to tell him what's happening. And Flotil is only one of several visionaries that he is interested in for this purpose. So, obviously, that expresses itself in really big ways, like the condemning of people being traitors to the king, which bishop gets condemned by St. Remigius.

But it's also really specific. Visions 12 and 13 relate to a cross, a valuable crucifix, which was stolen from Reims' Church. What Flodeward is clearly trying to do is get Flotild to tell him where the thieves have gone. And Flotild, she tries, but obviously she doesn't know. So there are visions of this cross going to Trier, but it's not probably the smoking gun Flauard would have liked. Equally, Vision 9 has Flotild going to this attractive place, seeing herself in a black veil and being told that she should become a nun, which is an extremely useful.

vision to have if you come from a poor background, you're not going to have much in the way of dowry for a monastery, but you have patronage from this high-ranking cathedral cleric. Yeah, that's just a bit of a hint there over and over again, which I love for her get what you need out of this too. I've got a question here. So when we say visions, what do we mean like this? Are these incredibly detailed dreams? Are they kind of trances while she is awake? Does she feel as though she sees these things physically in front of her because, you know, vision is a really imprecise term, I suppose. Yes, and I'm afraid it's imprecise in the Latin as well. However, the very strong implication is that these are vivid dreams.

They happen at night. Often they seem to happen in third person. For example, when she is attacked by these demon knights, she sees herself being captured by them, being pulled around and tried to be thrown in things. Other visionaries Floodeward was interested in, seem to have done similar kind of dream things, but very extreme ones. There's a girl named Ozana, who apparently had visions, which involve lying, unmoving in a near-death state for a full week

before waking up and revealing some, but not all of them. So I think these are dreams, but they're potentially, as in Ozana's case, dreams happening in ways that are nonetheless fairly dramatic. I kind of struck when I was having a cursory glance at some of these visions. not only by the violence that Votild talks about, you know, this being tormented by these demons, but also we have a lot of named saints showing up, which I really love, because I kind of try to explain the saints to non-medievalists as saying, you know, it's kind of like superheroes, right? They all have varying powers. They all have varying things that they're

particularly good at. And Fletald is really just pulling them out, you know, and she's like, oh, well, here's St. Peter, here's the Virgin. And oftentimes, you know, it's like San Martin or people that you and I wouldn't necessarily know. But do we see any kind of patterns in terms of the saints that she's shouting out that are showing up in her visions? They're often very local and they're usually very big. So you say Remigius, for example, is the local saint. Martin, for all that he's, you know, not necessarily got that much clout today amongst a largely secular British population, nonetheless is one of the big sort of Superman-Badman kind of saints, if you like, in the 10th century. There's one thing I find really interesting about

the saints that she cites, and to an extent the superhero analogy helps here because she cites saints like St. Morris, who is a soldier saint, but he shows up, like all the other saints, more or less as a cleric, as someone in robes without arms, without armour, which is a bit like invoking the punisher and he hasn't got any guns. I find this fascinating because I think whatever Flotil wants done about the violence that she's surrounded by, it clearly doesn't involve good violence. It's not that Morris shows up and he's got a phalanx of armed angels on horseback. It's that he is part of the clergy. And I find this really interesting because it funnels into things that will happen later in the 10th century,

involving a movement known as the Peace of God, which is where clerics will gather together big groups of people to swear oaths about when and how they can do violence in an attempt to regulate it. And the Peace of God is often seen as extremely weird and usually fairly like Aquitania and Aquitaine already, that's the South of Front, already has a little bit of an asterisk about being weird anyway.

so it's weird on weird. But yet we see, I think, quite similar approaches to violence in the visions from a peasant girl in a completely different region of the kingdom half a century earlier. I suppose I was also really struck with the things she's kind of asking for, they come up time. And again, you know, we see these same demands, you know, that I mean, she's making them, but she says the saints are making them, right? We don't want the clergy having sexual relationships, right? That comes up all the time. It would be nice if the clergy could read. That's a big one. So I see these things crop up even in 14th century Prague, you know, so 400 years later. We have these same problems that are still happening over and over again, where common people are saying, my priests aren't particularly holy and they're not really ready to give me the things that I need, you know, in order to be a good Christian. And I was just kind of struck by the. the fact that like, here's Fletal doing our best to really advocate for the people and say these are the things that I want out of clergy. And it never really takes, does it? You know, there's these reform movements over and over again. But I find it quite interesting seeing this being driven

at the level of such a young peasant girl. It does show us that when we see reform movements like the peace of God or, you know, later on the Franciscans and, you know, people like this who come in, oftentimes we are persuaded as saying, oh, this is something that's driven by the clergy, these is elites talking to other elites. But there is this demand from ordinary people. Yes, indeed. I actually think that one of the reasons that it comes up over and over again is that you only need one bad apple for the whole barrel to look a little bit off.

And indeed, I think the fact that Flo Tild is so invested in this kind of demonstrates it. By this point in the 940s, you've had well over a century of. of impetus from the Royal Court to try and get the Christian people, the populace, to be better, be more godly, learn your creed, learn your salter even. And it seems to have worked to a very great extent. People really did internalize what they were being told and care about it. Obviously, the disadvantage there is if you have an entire population, more or less, that has been conditioned to expect certain things of the priests and then you have Father Whitgar or whoever, who everyone knows is a bit of a wrong in, then that's going to get its inky tendrils out into their mounds.

So do you have any particular favorite visions of Flotilds? Yes, I've already mentioned three, four and five, which the first two, three and four, those are the ones where she is attacked. I think these are the ones that have the most relevant to the peasant experience. of warfare because there's several things you can pull out of them. First of all, if you imagine these demons on horseback are in front of floatild, and floatild is the average height of a modern French woman, then they're twice her size. If she's smaller, obviously, it's bigger. If they're on the back of a full-size warhorse, they tower over her. And obviously, they're physically larger too.

They weigh a lot. Talking a fully armed soldier on a war horse is just a big person, very loud. one of the visions she's in her father's house, and she hears just this cacophony of demons outside. And again, relating that to the experiences she'd have been having. That's the trampling of the hooves. It's the clanking of the armour. It's the shout. I did try and look up exactly how loud we thought a knight was.

I couldn't find much in the way of precise information, but about the sound of a loud lawnmower, I think, was more or less what I pulled out. So, they're big, they're loud. they're omnipresent. She can't get away from them, even with this lack of otherworldly topography where she's in one place and she's then in another place and then she's in a third place. There's always a demon there. And I think that speaks to the sort of oppressive nature of, again, relating it back to real life, of raiding parties, foraging parties, armed bands roaming around looking for the usual things armies are looking for, places to sleep, things they can sell, things they can eat, things that you as a peasant community have and come. can't stop them from taking. And then there's the arbitrary cruelty. Like I say, they try and get hold of her. They try and physically throw her into wells, into valleys. So I suppose, you know, perhaps this is being someone who works on sexuality talking, right? But, you know, when I hear about being thrown into a well or thrown into a valley, this seems quite euphemistic in terms of talking about penetration or thinking about penetration. But is that me being a sex historian who is

looking to see things that I can work on everywhere? I suspect this because the imagery is so Freudian. However, I wonder if Flotild would have needed to be euphemistic. 10th century people did not have Victorian mores about sexuality. And Fodorod did regard Floodild as a virgin. So at the very least, whatever she is claiming to happen, she doesn't think it's happened to her, or she is claiming that and presumably people in her community that he is asking to check her bona fides are supporting it. One wonders if it is just what it is on the surface, a kind of very adolescent cruelty that is a lot less about sex and more about power. We can do this petty thing because we're so big and armed and elite. Absolutely. And I suppose we do see violence like this that is dangerous. Let's make that clear. You know, going thrown down a well, that is a great way to bonk your head and drown, obviously. But we do see these kinds of exaggerated, almost playful violence across the spectrum of Europe at this time. Surely my forebearers in Prague didn't come up with defenestration for no reason. It is violent. People die. But there's also this bombastic or playful. side to it as well, where it just makes a show of here's something outrageous, here's something

oversized and that we can just do and there's nothing to be done about it. Yes, I think one of the things that violence like this is really trying to get at is a sense of shame in the victim, and this is something that's very explicit when you've seen Vikings described as doing this sort of thing. They will use the people writing about Viking torture, I guess you call it, will be using words like nasty insults or vicious junks. The Vikings will putting the boot in and people will die from it. There's a case in the miracles of San Batown where a few monks, the rest of the community flees and a few monks stay behind to guard the building. And the Vikings do just have this fun that kills some of them,

wounds others, and I think really goes after their sense of shame because it's not, if you like, serious violence. It's violence with that cruel edge of mockery. Yeah. Who's what it's doing here is just compounding that these peasants aren't really people to them, right? These aren't people who have rich inner lives and who are deserving of respect. These are people that can be completely thrown away. And I think that's one of the things that's so incredibly important about this source is people have a really romanticized view of the Middle Ages. You know, I often say that when you talk to non-medievalists, they think that the landscape is entirely populated with kings and knights are these nice guys who,

just write poetry and go to tournaments and, you know, free damsels in distress. But really, they're bullies a lot of the time. They're not nice people. I would rather hang out with a medieval peasant any day of the week than one of the knights who's doing these things. And, you know, again, when we talk about Vikings, we sort of expect it from them because they're pagans. We expect them to be violent. But we're talking about Christian knights in the Frankish lands. These are supposed to be the superlative nicest guys possible. And Fultild's terrified of them to the point that she sees them as demoniac. Yeah, I mean, well before the age of chivalry here, the Latin word Meles, which is later translated as knight, has a lot of Roman overtones, the word soldier.

So when you see Milites roaming around, we are definitely not talking about knights of shining armor. We are talking about armored boather boys on horseback. I think one of the older words from the Mervingian period. several hundred years earlier that really gets at this nicely, is you'll see exactly this kind of armed man described as a pure, a boy, in the sense of, I'll send the boys round. Oh, gosh, that's threatening. That is so threatening when you think about it.

Yeah, I think it's important not to over-romanticize the peasants either, though. This is a world of omnipresent violence at every level. I mean, float held as a woman in a family unit would have been under the authority of her father, who may or may not have been terribly gentle about expressing it. We don't know anything about her family at all, but certainly casual violence would not be unexpected. One of the main things that is different about elites is simply that they have a greater capacity

because of their tendency to go around in large groups with very good equipment, having been trained to do nothing else. Getting back onto Foteau, what happens to her after all of this? We have these incredible visions. there's so many of them, she's suddenly moving in circles with these incredibly important people. Does she manage to live her dream and become a nun after all of this? She doesn't seem to. So as I say, she has visions for about a year. And then shortly a few months afterwards, she dies.

She dies in Christmas 941. Her memory is also forgotten. I mentioned that she has visions about one archbishop being suburb. supported by St. Remigius over another archbishop. So we have this big archipiscopal battle back and forth. How is an incredibly important city, an incredibly important cathedral town, which is how you get battles like this. But can you tell us exactly what's going on with these guys?

Yes. So you have in 925 Archbishop's Salf of Reims dies, as I mentioned earlier. As I will mention later, Herbert the 2nd of Vermindoir, the local count has the city surrounded by his soldiers and installs his four-year-old son, Hugh, as the new archbishop. And he's got enough local muscle in the vicinity that no one seems to object about this too much. He gets a refugee bishop from Provence to go and do the actual bishop bits and takes over control of the land holdings for himself. This only lasts so much. One of the reasons he is able to do it is this is all happening in the aftermath of the very big civil

war where King Charles the Simple has been deposed and imprisoned. And it's none other than your boy Hariburt, who has imprisoned him and is keeping him as a sort of Trump card potential counter king against his own brother-in-law, a man named Ralph of Burgundy, who is the new king. But Herbert tries to blackmail him one too many times, essentially. Ralph and Herbert start fighting. Poor Charles gets pulled out of jail. Turns out he's actually fairly useless as a Trump card, put back in jail, dies, and then you have Ralph and Herbert going hammer and tongs at one another. And this is crucial because one of the things Ralph does, Hugh's uncle, no less, kicks him out of his sea and replaces him with a monk from the Abbey of San Basel called Artolt. Then Ralph dies in 936 and King Lumi IV is brought back over from England under the sort of stewardship or management of this guy called Hugh the Great, who is another one of these brothers in London.

or Herbert, Ralph and Hugh were all married to three sisters. Louis has better things to do with his life than be a puppet of Hugh. An Arthold ends up on Louis's side against Hugh. So in 940, Hugh gets into Reims, kicks Arthold out and puts Hugh back in. They attempt to come up with some sort of compromise. It doesn't really work. This is the time when Flodeward is writing Flotild's visions. And indeed, one of the things that makes them so poignant is that we know that exactly this time, there is a lot of fighting happening exactly where Floodild is. Artald at one point besieges a fortification that is only a few hours walk from the Abbey of Aveni, which remember is the place where Floodild is a serf beholden to. And there are going to be foraging parties

coming out from the siege of the city. It is all happening at this time. Artild gets thrown into a comfortable retirement, including, in fact, being given the Abbey of Abeney. But it doesn't really last. In 945, Louis is captured by Normans, sold to Hugh, and strips of almost literally everything he has, and this is too much. There is a big German army, because the King of Germany, Otto the Great, is Louis's brother-in-law, comes in, defeats Hugh, kicks Hugh of Vermindois, the Archbishop, out of Reims, has a very big church council at a place called Ingleheim in 948 to settle once and for all who is the proper Archbishop of Reims and unsurprisingly decides Arthold and Artold is then secure for the rest of his life. What happens to float in all of this? Does she get her choice of Archie Episcopal candidate on the throne? Does she get to become a nun? Does she live her dream? Or is this all

one peasant girl amongst a bunch more powerful people. Flotel doesn't do much after her visions. As I mentioned, she has these visions over the course of about a year between March 940 and 941, and then she dies in Christmas, 941. Flodeward then writes up her visions after her death, puts a notice about her in his annals, and then, crucially, forgets her,

or deliberately forgets her. I mentioned earlier that one of the works Floddouard wrote later was the history of the Church of Reims. Flotild does not appear anywhere in the history of the Church of Reams, despite the fact that a lot of the other visionaries that Floddeward knew of mentions in his annals, even talk to himself, do. And part of the reason for that is because Floatilt, as you implied, supported Hugh of Vermindler as Archbishop, or at least the visions she would. was getting supported Hugh of Vermon-Dwaras Archbishop. And after 948, especially in the history, which is addressed to the German Archbishop who was presiding over the synod that finally kicked Hugh out in 948, it is extremely impolitic to mention this visionary who was having visions, which are no longer, I was going to say, no longer politically useful, but honestly, that's a

fairly cynical way of looking at it. They were proven wrong. Whatever else, the gospel say that the devil can do miracles too. I don't think, fly. Flaudeauard would necessarily have seen Floatild is under satanic influence, but her visions were definitely wrong. Artold came back. Flodeward ended up being a major supporter of his. So whatever St. Remigius was doing in condemning him, it couldn't have been actually condemning him. The visions were pre-in-imperically wrong, I suppose. I suppose if they don't come true, they can't have been true, and that allows you to kind of sidle away uncomfortably from things that wouldn't necessarily...

Exactly. If you're looking for answers from God and the answers are wrong, then what are you going to do? You're going to not mention her and your lengthy history of your judge. So does this translation cast more light onto what we know about the violence that peasants undergo? Or is this just kind of a more firsthand account of things that we would already expect to see? So I think there's three things that the translation helps to make clearer about 10.5. century politics and society. The first is that although we generally tend to expect this kind of ravaging to be an important part of early medieval warfare, it's rarely as visceral as this. This is something coming again through a filter, but I think nonetheless pretty directly. Floatild doesn't have the shelter of elite status. She doesn't have the shelter of clerical status.

Even her options for physical retaliation are relatively limited, even compared to a male of her social class, reading these terrifying, huge, omnipresent demons, just dealing with her arbitrarily. I rarely feel as visceral as I do when reading FloTild. I think it brings into sharply what is often expressed in more tropological terms in communication from elites to elites. It really gives you a better sense of that kind of lived experience. The second thing I think that makes it a really useful translation to have is that it situates flow-tilled in wider political currents, and it makes those political currents seem less unusual. One of the major problems we have with 10th century France specifically is just how fragment from the source base is.

The phrase dark age was invented about the 10th century, however much we don't like it now. It does illustrate just how wide net you have to cast to build up a most. And if you're missing a central piece, then things like the peace of God, which I mentioned earlier, are going to come across as extremely unusual because you don't have that missing peace. I wouldn't claim that Flotild is the central peace, but she's certainly a kind of bridging fragment of it that gives a sense of a wider political imaginary within the West Frankish kingdom, how even someone on a relatively limited geographical educational social background is thinking about politics, is thinking about religion, has a sense of what the solutions to the problem she sees are.

And that brings me on to the third point, which I think is really helpful to have a translation of this source for, which is that it shows you something really interesting about how peasant communities are responding to political upheavals around them, what they think about it, the kind of solutions they might want to put in place, and in the case of Flotild, how she tried to implement it. We could argue forever about whether or not her visions are quote, unquote, genuine. Is she making them up? Is she actually seeing something? But whatever it is, she is running with it all the way to a man only one step below, the very top of society, someone who has been in the royal entourage. someone who will be sent on embassies to emperors and write on first name terms to archbishops.

It's a really interesting view into the nature and the limits of the agency that someone like Flotild can exert. I suppose my last question here then, Vezzar, is how can people see this translation for themselves? I think it's really important for people to have an opportunity to hear from Flotilda. Is there anywhere we can find out more? Yes. The place to go is my blog. The Historian Sketchpad, which is at Salutamundo, that's S-A-L-U-T-E-M-U-N-D-O. Dot WordPress.com.

Honestly, the easiest way to find it is to Google Historia the Sketchpad. I set it up 10 years ago, and it's got quite strong, like, 14-year-old hot mail account energy, honestly. I love it. That has the translation of FlowTilds. It's online. It's free. It's one of many translations that I and my co-writer Sam Otto Salisbee have done on that blog that you can equally find for free.

And if you want to see more in the future, then you can follow me on Twitter at Ralph Torter. That's Ralph T-O-R-T-O-R-T-A and at ralph.byski.com. Frasier, thank you so, so much for coming on to speak to us today. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me. It's been a lot of fun. Thanks to Dr. Frasier McNair and to you for listening to Gomedy. from History Hit. Matt Lewis will reclaim the Gone Medieval

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