Gone Medieval - St. Catherine & Autumnal Saints

Episode Date: October 21, 2025

**This episode contains graphic references to genitalia**Did you know that the Catherine Wheel firework takes its inspiration from St. Catherine of Alexandria? How did a 4th-century noblewoman convert fifty of the empire's greatest philosophers to Christianity before they were executed alongside her?Dr. Eleanor Janega is once again joined by historian and storyteller Amy Jeffs, this time to uncover the fascinating stories of medieval saints connected to the autumn. In addition to St. Catherine, there's St. Martin of Tours who achieved sanctity through charity and humility rather than martyrdom, and St. Ursula, the British princess who led an impossible pilgrimage that ended in mass martyrdom at Cologne, and produced an "ocean of relics" that flooded European churches and captured imaginations across the continent.More:St. Christopher & Summertime SaintsSt. George & Springtime SaintsEdward the Confessor & New Year SaintsGone Medieval is presented by Dr. Eleanor Janega. The narrator is Sophie Gee. This episode is edited and produced by Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

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. Eleanorianica 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. Before we get going today, a word of warning, are we talking about medieval saints? Yes. Does this mean that this conversation is entirely holy? No, it does not. We've got a little bit of fruity language and some stories that involve discussion of genitalia. So you might want to have a listen and see if little ears are up for it this week. Back in January, Amy Jeff's, the author of Saints,

a legendary of heroes, humans, and magic, joined Matt Lewis here on Gone Medieval to tell us all about St. Edward the Confessor and a few other saintly characters associated with the first wintry months of the year. Then, in April, Amy spoke to me about springtime saints, including the dragon slaying St. George. Absolutely love him. and in July, Amy returned to talk to Matt about summertime saints, particularly St. Christopher. Do go back and have a listen to those episodes if you haven't done so already. And today, to celebrate this newly arrived season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Amy Jeff's is here again to tell me more about France's miraculous evangelist St. Martin of Tor and St. Ursula, a princess so committed to martyrdom that she would lead an army of alexia, 11,000 virgins into death, allegedly, and provide the world with an inexhaustible supply of relics. But first, what would autumn be without bonfire night? And what would bonfire night be without fireworks and the spinning sputtering Catherine wheel? For that particular autumnal custom, we have to know something about St. Catherine of Alexandria. This is her story. Night presses down on Alexandria like a velvet shroud.

The city wants home to poets and gods, now coweres under the shadow of the emperor Maxentius. The stones of its streets bear witness to the spilt blood of Christians. Among the flickering torch-lit marble colonnades, a devout young noblewoman in unblemished white move swiftly. Catherine is a daughter of privilege, a scholar without equal who can humble priest and philosopher alike. In these early hours, word has reached her that MacSentius himself is in the temple, commanding all to kneel. Catherine bursts in her eyes flashing like drawn steel. Her voice rings out to the furthest corner of the hall. Sire, your gods are powerless and blind. If truth is what you seek, then test me.

Let your wisest abate me. If they can better my words, I will kneel. The emperor is insulted, amused even. Over the following days, he summons 50 of the empire's greatest philosophers to face Catherine's challenge. She is unperturbed, measured, irresistible. She speaks of one God, a grace beyond the reach of swords, of love that outlives empires. One by one, the philosophers falter.

Their questions turn to stammer, and in the silent shadows, some cross themselves unnoticed. Maxentius's laughter turns to rage. He orders his faltering philosophers to be burnt alive. When Catherine refuses to yield, the emperor tries another weapon. Temptation. Gold, jewels, even his hand in marriage. But her voice is steady. I am wed to Christ.

My heart is his alone. The Emperor is humiliated and calls for a new torture. The braking wheel. Four great spiked wheels interlock to rip the body asunder with each turn. Catherine is bound to the device. The crowd murmur prayers. guards avert their eyes the wheels begin to turn

slowly creaking and then an eruption of steel and wood the wheels fly apart spikes tear through pillars crush statues impale their operator in the heart of the wreckage Catherine raises herself

untouched hailed in clouds of torch-lit dust the people roar in amazing but Maxentius will not relent. He orders Catherine to be dragged to the place of execution. As the blade falls to silence her once and for all, some witness a dove rise from her body. Others speak of sweet oil seeping into the cern. In time, Catherine's story travels beyond Alexandria, carried by traders, priests and poets. She becomes the patron. and saint of learning, of young women, of those who would rather die than betray the truth.

She will forever be depicted with a broken wheel, a sign that wit can defy cruelty, that faith can shatter the engines of tyranny. And in their darkest hours, when injustice looms, peasant and scholar alike whisper her name. Catherine, trusting that her courage might yet be theirs Amy, welcome back to Gone Medieval Oh, it's good to be here I just can't stay away from you I'm really excited

to have one of my favorite guests to talk about some of my favorite saints today. It really seems like the autumnal saints are kind of the ones for me. But of that spooky season free song Absolutely, and I think that we would be remiss if we didn't kind of start with what of the Middle Ages

heaviest hitters, I think, who's St. Catherine of Alexandria. And St. Catherine of Alexandria has always been one of my favorites because she's the patron saint of scholars. Yes. So, you know, nerds like me love to talk about her. And her face day is on the 25th of November

and that is about 20 days after Guy Fawkes Knight here in the UK. And I think a lot of people would be most familiar with St. Catherine because of her association with the Catherine wheel. Can you tell us a little bit about the relationship between St. Catherine and her wheels? Yes. So in Jacobus de Varagenae's 13th century golden legend, account of Catherine of Alexandria's martyrdom, we're told that she has taken on the governor of Alexandria, arguing with him about his rejection of Christianity,

his desire for everyone to worship the Roman gods. And he's imprisoned her for 12 days. she's managed to in that time convert the prison guard and the governor's wife and he brings her out to this great arena and there's always people watching and he's going to spectacularly torture her and the device he's brought in to torture her with is a contraption made of four wheels moving sort of in contrary motion to each other with spikes on them so that she will be ripped apart in front of the crowd but She prays, and an angel descends from heaven and destroys the contraption and explodes in front of the crowd. It gives the crowd a completely unexpected spectacle.

And so this is the device. I mean, what happens then is that he chops off her head, which is more effective. And I think it's really interesting, actually, this question of what kills a martyr in these early stories? And that something with such direct human agency as a sword being swung through the air is effective. And I suppose that a theologian could comment on this, but maybe you, Eleanor, this kind of free will element of execution, of direct execution. But this torture device is just sitting there waiting to be smoked by an angel. Oh, yeah, because all of these saints, when we have, you know, these arch typical, incredibly popular in the medieval period saints from the late antique period and then the Christianization of Rome, you get them to have these fantastic tortures. You know, I'm thinking St. Bartholomew and getting his skin.

flayed off or St. Margaret bursting out of the dragon that is Satan. And they all just get killed in humdrum kind of way right after that because it's meant to be shown that they are able to work miracles. In order to be a saint, they need to be able to work a miracle. And these big, bombastic displays of, you know, bursting out of the belly of a dragon, breaking this wheel in front of a crowd of onlookers. That's important to showing that they have access to holy support and that they can create miracles. But it's also important for their sainthood that they become martyrs. They need to die.

And they need to kind of die specifically at the hands of humans, as you say. So it needs to not just be direct interference from Satan in the form of a dragon. It needs to not just be something for sport. It has to be something where they really double down, even after something terrible has been diffused. Yeah, and I think that martyrdom then creates the opportunity for that amazing juxtaposition of the visible versus the invisible or the literal versus the kind of celestial, I suppose.

In Predentius' fourth century account of two Spanish martyrs, he writes how at the moment that they died, their names were written in blood on earth and in gold in heaven. That's the moment where the plane fractures and they become their true selves in the celestial sphere. The torture and the suffering creates this opportunity to display the saints virtus, their power, that power that is at once spiritual but embodied and which makes their relics so important. Absolutely. And I think in the case of St. Catherine, this is one of our ultimate important saints. She comes up over and over again in the medieval period. And I don't suppose that's any surprise. I mean, her legend is incredible. You have this really intensely

intelligent woman who has the ability to persuade those around her, which is why she becomes associated with scholars, because she understands the legalities of Roman law as well as Christianity. And she is able to make arguments for these things within a very specific legalistic structure. She's defiant. She's not afraid of speaking truth to power. And she has this incredible endurance. You know, she's able to put up with over and over again these tortures, these things. and arrows, the sword of Democles as it were holding over her head. And these are really the things

that her memory reflects in the Middle Ages, right? Yes. And I think there's a real temptation when we're looking at historical sources to take too seriously the first resonance they have with our modern experience. And I think with St. Catherine, we have this I certainly had. when I embarked on this research project to write the book I've written about saints the sense of, well, St. Catherine, she's this feminist icon. Didn't women sort of kneel before her and think, I too should become a great rhetorician.

I too should be a great scholar. It was in reading Aymond Duffy more closely and talking about these saints that they're not intended as role models, these kinds of saints, not these extravagant martyrs. They are protectors. and one of the stories I thought about and kind of reimagined in the book

was to do with the shrine of St. James and Compostella and about a pilgrim called Gerald who gets tricked by the devil into cutting off his own penis. Well, we've all been there. Well, the devil is pretending to be St. James and so he thinks he's being told by his beloved saint

who he's made pilgrimage to every year of his adult life to do this thing in penance for having fornication. And so he's like, okay, if that's what I must do to atone for this sin, then the act kills him. And he goes off his soul. And in medieval ways of imagining things, we can imagine a little naked Gerald. I do not know whether in soul form he has his janitor's or not. He's been taken across this landscape. Any second he's expecting to see the jaws of hell, realizing something's gone terribly wrong.

But then he realizes that somebody's pursuing the demon and he looks over his shoulder and he sees the real St. James. kind of, you know, riding on a cloud. And he drives the demons away from hell and into this kind of like celestial version of Rome with the basilica of St. Peter, but the heavenly version. And the virgin Mary is sitting in front of the basilica in front of a beautiful meadow.

She's enthroned. She's looking super majestic. And she's got the kind of heavenly tribunal set up in front of her. And the demons with Gerald's little soul among them is sort of shoved into a pen. and they are the kind of the criminals, I suppose, but they want to argue to take Gerald with him. They're saying he's ours.

And St. James says, no, he stands in front of the version and says, she's my pilgrim, and he advocates for Gerald. Says he was deceived by the devil. These demons came up with a foul trick, and you should let him live. So then Gerald wakes back up and he comes back to life on the road to Compostella. And it does say that his genitals never did grow back. But anyway, looking at that story made me really. realize is that you have Catherine arguing for you at the heavenly tribunal. She's going to argue

the devil out of the room. He doesn't stand a chance. And so this may be what we're seeing here is this acceptance that you're not going to be Catherine. You're going to need some help on the other side and you're going to want her. You're going to light candles for her and pray to her. Yeah, she essentially is a lawyer for your soul, right? Yeah. She's a lawyer, yeah. I think an interesting way to think about her. And she's one of the holy helpers in the Middle Ages. So one of the ones that you really call on in desperate times. And I think a great way of thinking about them is kind of something akin to superheroes now, where the idea when you see a superhero movie or something isn't that you yourself are going to be the superhero, the idea is that there are these

characteristics that humanity has that are overarching that we can all sort of call upon. And that, to me, is what is on display with St. Catherine. She's legendary in this particularized way because of what she's capable of doing. And I'd say she's also, I think, in a medieval way of thinking about it, super manly. The fact that she can argue so well shouldn't be a woman's skill in a way. That's like a lot of these female virgin saints have shown their ability to overcome feminine frailty. Take on the male ability to live in the desert to undergo great physical hardship or think really cleverly. But one of the things we certainly see over and over.

over within medieval art in relationship to Catherine is the wheel itself. And indeed, this is how one identifies her. I'm always talking about how medieval saints, especially women, are almost always interchangeable, right? Because in order to be a saint, you must have been beautiful, because to be holy is to be divine and imperfect understanding with God. And so that means you're hot because, you know, form reflects nature. And so they're always blonde. They always have a high forehead and so on and so forth. And so the way that's the way that's, you know, you're not. And so forth. And so way that you know that you're dealing with Catherine is that the wheel will be around there somewhere. You know, sometimes she's wearing a beautiful dress with wheels all over it. Sometimes she's

standing next to the wheel. But you see the wheel in art, but it's also something that people personally want to keep on them as a reminder. Yeah. The thing that's coming into my mind is the Pilgrim badge. When I was working with the Pilgrim souvenir collection at the British Museum, I mean, it might not be a pilgrim badge. Let's say devotional badge of a little wheel. I live near Bristol in, I think it was in the 1890s when the harbour was dredged or I think it was drained to be something to happen. They found a whole load of medieval devotional badges in the mud, including a Catherine badge, which is on display in the emshed. I don't know whether this is something to indicate membership of a confraternity or just a personal devotional allegiance.

Maybe it falls under the same category as St. George badges or badges of St. Christopher. I think, yeah, I think, yeah, so just generally exceedingly popular saint. So she does become associated oftentimes with, for example, educational institutions or guilds. So, I mean, I think this is one of the reasons why we're identifying these badges, not necessarily as pilgrim badges, but they could be devotional because you don't know. This might just mean that you're in some guild who particularly love St. Catherine, because St. Catherine is so clever and guild members are so clever. This is the sort of person that you would pray to. this is the sort of person who would be overlooking, for example, universities. We often see her associated with.

So maybe it just means you're kind of a clever person and you want everybody to know. Or maybe it means you've got on some kind of pilgrimage. Who knows? Who knows? And that is the delightful thing about this mystery. We know that she, her cult was really popularized. So she died, she said to have died in 305. In the 6th century, a monastery is built in Sinai called St. Catherine's Monastery. Her body was said to have been found nearby with her hair still growing, being born there by an angel.

Obviously. This monastery becomes the kind of gateway to Jerusalem for pilgrims traveling to the Middle East. Is that how her cult really develops? You have this 6th century monastery established in Sinai. It becomes known because it's on a pilgrimage route. So it becomes known to northwestern Europeans traveling to Jerusalem. but in the 11th century, a church in Rouen acquires her relics, and this is what really establishes her cult in northwestern Europe.

But into the later Middle Ages, the cult of saints becomes less dependent on relics and more image-fueled. That's when her cult really takes on this new power, because you've got every parish church, will have an image of Catherine on the wall or on the panel. And so there's this possibility to venerate Catherine wherever you are, really. Do we have any evidence that St. Catherine was more popular with women than she was with men? Is this something modern to say, oh, wow, it's incredible. There's a woman. Surely this is something to do with women?

Or is she one for all comers? I haven't read anything in particular on that. The first thing that comes to mind is that a saint like Margaret of Antioch is particularly associated with women. But I think it would also be wrong to assume that the saints evoked in labour of whom St. Margaret is one necessarily had to be women. because we know also that women in labor were praying to St. Stephen or there's another one St. Julius, I think. Well, I hate to move on from St. Catherine because I could talk about her all day. But we need to talk about St. Martin, St. Martin of Tour. He's one of these heavy hitters.

We see him come up on the 11th of November. Can you tell me a little bit more about him? Because one of the things that I think is really cool about St. Martin is that he's not a martyr, which is like, you know, very, very rare for the antique saints. So, yeah, St. Martin of Tour dies in 397. He was a Roman soldier who converts to Christianity, travels to Gaul, and is the kind of St. Patrick of Gaul. He's a missionary saint. And his legend was written in the fifth century by a member of the community that he founded in Tur, by, and I think this name is absolutely.

Absolutely fantastic. Sulteus Severus. I think anyone that's medievalist is familiar with the iconography of Martin's Great Miracle, which is he divides his cloak for a beggar. And it's often shown in medieval manuscripts him dressed as a Roman soldier, and he's holding out his cloak and he's cutting it in half with his sword and giving half the cloak to a beggar. And I remember on Twitter somebody saying,

it's a bit stingy, isn't it? You're just giving half his cloak. Why are you giving the whole cloak? When you read the legend by Sulpicius Severus, You realize that actually there's more of a story behind it and medieval artists are just being medieval artist by doing what they did, I'll come to that. But he's a Roman soldier, he's traveling through Tour,

and it's a bitterly cold winter and everybody is suffering, especially the poor. And he has been giving away his garments because he's a wealthy Roman soldier, he's been giving away his garments the whole time he's been on the road. And he is now only in his cloak. And then it's when he sees a man begging at the gates of Torch who has nothing that he is faced with this decision.

Does he disgrace himself as a soldier and as a, I suppose, in the medieval way, thinking things as a knight? Or does he leave this man to suffer? And the compromise he reaches is that he can divide his cloak. And I think we can safely assume this is the kind of big cloak that probably covers the horse's bum. And so he's, you know, in dividing his cloak, he's able to maintain his modern. and keep this man warm.

And I think that in typical medieval artist style, when he's shown in full soldierly uniform, that's just them indicating to the viewer that he's a soldier. There's that kind of collapsing of the narrative into a single image that medieval artists so often do. But it's therefore a very beautiful story. And when he's become bishop, he then has this glorious legacy of bringing Christianity to gore.

I think we have to talk a little bit more about the cloak, though, because it's a bit like the magic pudding. It's one of those relics where you can put every bit of St. Martin's cloak together and I think you can make a parachute out of the thing at this point in time. It breeds etymologies. And so the great one that I think is fascinating is that a little structure was built to house the relic of St. Martin's cloak at Torch. And this structure was called the Capella,

because Capella meant little cape. and that is where we, it is said, get our word chapel and the Latin cappella meaning a small church. And so the idea that that stems from this bit of cloak, this little cape. The cape itself, though, you know, the reason why we have so much of it, even though it's supposed to be only little, is that kings use this relic a lot, right?

Like a way of kind of making friends and influencing people is, you know, the French king will be like, hey, a bit of St. Martin's cloak. What do you think about that, right? No, and it's the role that they come to play in politics and diplomacy is really fascinating. I do want to talk about the saucy side of St. Martin. Go on. When I was writing this book, I really wanted to show saints' stories suffused everyday culture,

and they made it out of the kind of official biographies and the official lives into stories that are kind of like spin-off stories. and quite different worlds from the world of hagiography. And when I was an undergraduate, I was studying, doing a course on old French literature, we were given some Fabio Echotique to work on. And one of these was called St. Martin's Four Wishes. It so happens there is an absolutely fantastic translation online if people want to look it up, St. Martin's Four Wishes.

And it tells us about a farmer who is the stock character of the gullible rustic. He is so devoted to St. Martin that everything he does, He says by St. Martin this or to St. Martin this. And one day, and he's out there in the fields, St. Martin appears to him like a genie and says to him, you are such a faithful devotee that I have decided to give you four wishes. And so he goes off home to his wife, tells her, be never guessed, darling. I've been given four wishes by St. Martin. And she is the wily, smart, quick, stereotypical, I suppose she's a slightly untrustworthy woman.

And she says, yeah, sure, sure, okay. Well, why don't you give me the first wish? And he says, oh, no, you'll wish for something stupid like a spool of hemp. And she says, oh, no, don't worry, I won't waste my wish. And so she eventually, haven't I given you everything you wanted? Haven't I always served you? Haven't I always pleased you? You know, she said, well, fine, I'll give you the first wish.

And the first thing, she said, and maybe she doesn't believe him. And she just does this to see, just to make it a funnier situation. She says, I want you to be covered from head to toe in penises. Hell yeah. Yeah. And I don't just mean one kind. I mean all of the possible kinds. She says, I want them old, in their prime.

I want them. And she goes off on this incredible list. Every manner of penis that can be described she lists. And she finishes by saying, because your one prick never was enough. Oh, of course, typical woman. Yeah. And so then there's, I imagine, a flurry of popping sounds. And he's got penises, like they are sticking out from his threadbare, the knees of his trousers,

they're all over him. And it says, and the biggest one of all was right in the middle of his forehead. Oh, yeah. And so he retaliates with a wish in kind, Lex Talionis, classical eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, vulva for a penis. So he says, I want you to be covered from head to toe in vulvers, which of course comes true. And he says, not just any kind. and so she has hairless ones, hairy ones, big ones, small ones, four across their forehead, I believe it says, all over the place

and they kind of stand there in horror looking at each other and they use their, so then our two wishes have been used up, they use the third wish to get rid of all their genitals, which of course goes wrong. So I'll leave everyone hanging on how, as it were, how they solve this, but I think what the story shows, because I suppose with humour often it's bouncing off something real. So this mockery of somebody that is so devoted to a saint

that they invoke their name with everything they do. There's another story from the later Middle Ages of a man who praised the Hail Mary so much that when he's buried, a lily grows out of his grave with Ave Maria written on every leaf. And when they dig down, they found that its roots are curled up in his mouth. And that St. Martin was one of these saints who inspired great devotion and who was known throughout society. How do we get to that point?

Because, you know, with St. Catherine, you have this great exciting story. She stands up to the emperor. She breaks the wheel. It's like a movie or something. And, you know, St. Martin, fantastic. We love to give away our cloak. Wonderful times not being naked. But, you know, he doesn't even die or anything like that.

So what is it that makes him such a big medieval saint on the calendar? And don't say penises. Yeah, okay. So it is an obscure reference. I don't even know if you couldn't stop a medieval person in this. tell me the St. Martin Pina's story. But I'm sure they would know the cloak story. I guess it's this missionary element

that after the martyrs like Catherine and George, Christopher's one of them too. The next big swath of saints is the missionaries. Patrick, Martin, Boniface, Colomber. And they are very important to Rome. You know, they are important for doing the gospel. imperative of taking the good news to every corner of the earth. And so they are celebrated for that apostolic mission that they're undertaking.

Their relics become tools in themselves as well for continuing that mission. So that's when Martin dies and his cloak is being displayed at Tor. And there's all part of this mission of evangelization. So what sort of things do we do for Martin Miss? So what happens for his feast day? Well, still, on the Feast of St. Martin in some continental European countries, you eat goose. That's a big thing, Martin must. There was, by the, in the Reformation, there's one text called the Popish Kingdom, which scorns the Feast of St. Martin's a time that everyone just uses it as an excuse to get drunk.

Oh, no. The other thing is to be settling debts and charitable giving and emulating. In that way, you know, he's a role model in a way that's more achievable. than the spectacular martyrs. We have to have normal ones too, you know. So loathe as I am to move away from penis stories. We've got another one of the absolute banger saints.

One of my very, very favorites coming up, which is St. Ursula. And the great thing about St. Ursula is she's not just a saint on her own, right? You get thousands in one when you get St. Ursula. Can you tell us a little bit about what St. Ursula? what St Ursula's deal is. Yeah, so St. Ursula is said to have been a British princess who is a devout Christian,

but she's asked to marry a pagan prince, she agrees, but only if he converts and if she can undertake a pilgrimage to Rome. And she takes with her 11,000 other virgins. And this legend, I mean, you end up with even more people. being added on. So it's something like 26,000 people once you've added in all the servants and the fiancés of all the virgins. It's like army essentially going to Rome. It's all set in the fourth century. So there is the threat, the kind of the antagonist in the Ursula legend is the Huns. And she knows she's going to be martyed. I think she's even heard that she is a prophecy

that she's going to be martyed in Cologne. So she hurries back to Cologne, excited for this opportunity to become a martyr. And they meet the Huns there and they are all executed in Cologne. Oh, I went to the Dorm Museum in Vienna and saw an amazing panel painting of all the... They were a very, very popular cult in the late Middle Ages

and you get these gorgeous late medieval panel paintings of the nobility, these women with their classic kind of gigantic, foreheads and very low-cut dresses and cinched in waists and plaited hair and historically speaking we find the story in the golden legend but we also find it in chronicles of britain of the deep history of britain a version of it the characters don't quite align but they were kind of conflated in later centuries this load of virgins that go off to be brides for a military colony in Brittany who get swept off in a big storm at sea in their boats and end up being shipwrecked and being murdered by pagan kings.

We know that this or fourth or fifth century an inscription was found in Cologne referring to the deaths of some holy virgins. By the 8th or 9th centuries, this has been upgraded to thousands of martyrs, female virgin martyrs at the orders of Maximian. in 1155 workers in Cologne unearthed a mass grave or mass burial

which included bones not only of women but also men and children this was interpreted as having they'd found the burial site of the women but the presence of the children and men may have led to the augmentation of the legend as having all of their kind of retinue and servants with them as well as just the women

1185 the basilica of of St. Anastila is built in Cologne, and it has this vast relic collection, which a bit like the little fragments of St. Martin's cloak, can be dispersed in reliquaries for all kinds of different reasons. There was a belief that false relics would kind of eject themselves. And by the late Middle Ages, you've got these amazing reliquary collections of the young women

shown at the reliquary busts of these noble young women all looking quite similar and with similar expressions of piety or mild perplexity and they were kind of displayed en masse in churches and there's a fantastic story

maybe fantastic in the most literal sense of the word of a monastery in Denmark which was celebrating its Christmas morning the monks all filed into the church where they had a huge display of reliquary busts of Ursula virgins which apparently burst into songs together to celebrate with the monks.

Of course they did. I mean, for me, this is one of these stories, right? Because again, you know, that thing that I said earlier about how all of the female saints look alike in the Middle Ages because they're all beautiful and there's one way to be beautiful. It's hilarious when it comes to Ursula and her 11,000 friends because it's just like, well, here's a bunch of blonde chicks of high foreheads. I hope you like that, you know.

And you see this all the time, you know, if you go to Cologne Cathedral, There are altars that are dedicated just to the saints. And very interestingly, if you go to the basilica, St. Ursula in Cologne, which of course I have, because it's just who I am as a person. They've done that early modern thing of having an ossuary. And a lot of the relics are now decorating the church that you're spelling out, you know, St. Ursula pray for us. Yeah. They have endless skulls and all of these things. And it's an interesting one for me because there's the, you know, Ursula and the 11,000 virgins.

And as you say, we kind of, we sort of work up to that. You know, we didn't start with 11,000, but we get to 11,000 eventually. Do you think the 11,000 has to do with this discovery of so many bones that you can kind of send them out into the world? Or is this one of these, you know, 11,000, that's just quite a big number. And, you know, medieval people think about numbers in a way that's different to how we do. Yeah, that's a good question. Is it sort of chicken and egg? Because there's obviously this interest in a female army.

And I think that that comes up in the way it's written about. Maybe it's rooted in archaeology, but sometimes I think with medieval stuff, you also need to accept that they were way more bookish than we are and they looked for textual authority for things. So maybe the archaeology just supported a textual tradition. One of the huge plus sides of having 11,001, theoretical martyrs here is you get lots and lots of relics that you can send out, which the

good people of Cologne are very happy to do, because it keeps them important as a center of pilgrimage, and everyone is really happy to get hold of these relics. But we have some really interesting connections to her cult here in England, right? Yeah, and I think because there was this story of a British princess called Ursula, who was shipwrecked with her 11,000 virgins, as part of this mission to, Amorica to marry all the soldiers there, and then martyred. There's this kind of an idea that Ursula is somehow,

you know, she's owned by the 13th, 14th centuries. This was very much co-opted by the English crown. In the early Tudor period, we have this fascinating situation where Catherine of Aragon is brought over to marry Arthur Tudor. Arthur has the name Arthur. there's already inspiring in people's minds

a connection with the deep history of Britain and when Catherine of Aragon is greeted off her ship so she lands at Southampton and she's accompanied by 11 English noble women of the upper nobility and they're all dressed alike with a larger company of what's called Knights Wives and it seems to be a kind of imitation

of presenting her as a new Ursula to marry King Arthur and when she gets to London Bridge she's greeted by another Ursula Tableau which must have been spectacular. Like, it must have been thousands of women. I mean, they didn't go small on these kinds of pageants in London for royal reasons. So I would just, what a thing to witness?

And I think it's very poignant because, of course, in the reign of Henry the 8th, you get the cult of saints completely suppressed. But just how it was still part of that culture and how it could be tight, you know, the Ursula cult in particular was tying in to secular history. Can you tell us a little bit about the pageants and retellings of St Ursula before Henry VIII goes and ruins everything? Yeah, so one of the insights we get into the kinds of spectacles that were inspired by the Cult of Saints is through actually authors who were completely opposed to it. There's a poem where somebody called Thomas Nowagurg, and it's written in 1517, and it's translated by Barnaby Guge here, another very interesting, lovely name. Anyway, Christ's fashion here derided is with sundry masks and plays,

fair Ursula with her maidens all doth pass amid the ways. And valiant George with spear thou killest the dreadful dragon here. The devil's house is drawn about wherein there doth appear. A wondrous sort of downed sprites with foul and fearful look. Great Christopher doth wade and pass with Christ amid the brook. And he goes on to describe all of these, presumably these pageant wagons showing the saints and picking up, like you said, on that visual language of the cult of saints that everybody understood,

or at least every Christian understood. I think that it sucks when people are down on the cult of St. Ursula, because it's this really nice way for more women and girls to participate in the saints' pageants. I can just imagine the little girls getting all, you know, dolled up for the little pageant,

and, oh, they're one of the virgins. And it's just so cute. There's like a, it's like an nativity play or something. And to take that away from girls who don't get to participate. that's one of the big things that we see from the Reformation is a bit crackdown on women participating in religious things. I just think it's really sad. Yes, and I think it's sad to have, you know, there's a real case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater because these festivities that would have taken place in towns and villages where there would have been amazing amateur dramatics and costume creation and the way that, you know, different groups of craftspeople would produce their own wagons.

And so I think in the, oh, which is it, the York mystery plays, it says that the Thatchers are responsible for the nativity. And so I'm just like, oh, that would have looked great, the stable, really smart. And then the shipwrights are doing the Noah's Ark scene. And you could just imagine the competition. I mean, I know where we were talking about men again. But, you know, it's the opportunity for people to display their skills that there may be any. And so, you know, what people could have done with their dressmaking and their hairstyling skills.

for however many young women and girls they could muster in their village. I just feel like the whole community would have been showing off to itself in producing these spectacles. I wish they could come back without it becoming too complicated. Bring them back, you know. So I think that St. Ursula and the Virgins is one of the really interesting myths because certainly we see a lot of enthusiasm for it. You know, this is the sort of stuff that pageants are made for. Right.

Like dress all the little girls up, let them go to town. It's fantastic for Cologne because they can situate themselves in the middle of this grand story and pass out relics like their candies. You know, it's great for the English monarchy because they can say, oh, we have access to this particular saint and legend because it's a part of our DNA, as it were. But we still see skepticism. You know, there is much in the way that there's this really common sort of joke that gets thrown around. which is heresy, which is that, oh, if the Eucharist really was Jesus's body, then his body must have been as big as a mountain if we're eating it every time. And we also see this real skepticism sometimes about Ursula and her virgin martyrs.

And, you know, just about how can there really be 11,000 of anyone? How are they all getting everywhere in ships? You know, you see, this is kind of like a knee-jerk reaction to it. And I find that interesting because it shows us that there is this sort of push and pull for people with saints? It's really good, I think, when we see debate within history and we're not presenting a historical period

as being kind of unilaterally decided on a culture, you know, and it's the cult of saints appears to begin with the, we are prior to Christianity's legalisation with the persecution of Christians and the heroic resistance of some Christians prior to their execution, which led to veneration of their socialization,

their sites of burial as kind of almost like a popular vote, they were special people and they become these early saints. And we know that missionaries are going into northwestern Europe and finding holy bones and relics to be particularly effective tools for converting people. We know that by the time Christianity is well and truly established, theologians are questioning whether or not, this is really doctrinal, but it's so deeply rooted in kind of everyday practice of Christianity that there's kind of no going back now. This is part of the living faith of Christianity in the Middle Ages, the cult of saints, the veneration of holy figures from the Bible and the remains of saints. But in various quote-unquote heresies throughout the

Middle Ages, you get this being brought up and being challenged. It's kind of, we With it becoming politically expedient, I suppose, that they stop being heresies, start being kind of new branches of Christianity, reforming movements. And I would like to just, as we're wrapping up on Ursula, just make a little shout out to Cordula, who of course is the one virgin who didn't give herself up for martyrdom on the feast day of the 20th of October. She hid in a ship and then comes out the next day and receives martyrdom. So we've got two feast days for Ursula and the Virgin. of October and the 21st. I love that. You know, it's not enough to have one. We've got to have two, baby.

You know, it's so nice. I love all of the autonnel saints because I think autumn is such a great time for celebrating. You know, the harvest is coming in. We're out of the terrible heat of summer, but we're not into the crushing boredom and cold of winter. You know, why not party about it? You and just 11,000 of your best friends. Exactly. Well, Amy, it's a delight to have you on as always.

such a wonderful excuse to talk about some of the Middle Ages favorite people. Absolutely. It's always a joy to be on here and to hear your amazing knowledge about the cult of saints is such a treat. And if you want to hear Amy talking about love and death in medieval ballads, do go back and listen to our episode from a few weeks back when we talked about her new book with the illustrator Gwen Burns. Old songs, stories of love and death from traditional ballads. Remember, you can enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original TV documentaries. including my recent film, The Medieval Apocalypse, and add free podcasts by signing up at historyhit.com forward slash subscription.

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