The Heretic’s Handbag: Folk Magic and Survival in Medieval France
00:01From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected placesto 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 historiansas 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
00:27with a brand-new release every weekexploring 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.
01:03we delve into the rebellions, plots, and murders that tell us who we really were.And how we got here.The air in the Inquisitor's stone chamber at Pommier hung heavy and damp.Jacques Fournier, the bishop of Pommier and future Pope Benedict XIV,presided over a heavy wooden table.His piercing gaze rarely missing a detail.He was feared for conducting the most meticulous and fastidious inquisition of the Middle Ages.Opposite sat 46-year-old Beatrice de Plancel, a widow from the Peridian region of Languedoc in southern France.
01:53Between them were strewn the contacts of her bag, the raw and intimate evidence of a forbidden life.Fournier leaned forward and prodded up.a cluster of shrivelled leather-like scraps.And what are these? he asked.Those belong to my grandsons, Beatrice replied,her Ossetan tongue firm and unabashed.A Jewish woman she'd once methad shared a piece of advice, she explained.
02:25Carrying around the dried umbilical cords of her grandsonswould guarantee that she would never lose a lawsuit.With this arming pragmatism,she added that since no one had ever brought a lawsuit against her,she had not yet been able to verify if the charm worked.Swift notes were made before the bishop prodded the next item.Rags stiffened with dark, dried stains.And flinching, Beatrice readily admitted
02:53that the rags were soaked with her daughter's very first menstrual blood.She'd been told, she said,that if she brewed a drink containing this blood for her new son-in-law,the man would never be unfaithful to her name.daughter. As Fornier's hand moved to a few unassuming morsels of dried, crumbling bread,Beatrice deliberately evaded them, offering no story or explanation. The Inquisitor noted hersilence with quiet satisfaction. He needed no explanation. He understood what those crumbsrepresented. Definitive proof of Beatrice's involvement with the forbidden sect known as the Cathars.
03:41We only know of Beatrice de Plancel today because of her trial record, now preserved in the Vatican'slibrary. The Inquisitors wrote it down, unvarnished, unornamented. In so doing and quite unwittingly,these men, tasked with rooting out heresy in the Languedoc, created one of the most remarkable,documents of the Middle Ages.Beatrice was no queen, saint, or celebrated martyr.She never commanded an army or changed the course of a kingdom.History would almost certainly have forgotten her completelyhad Jacques Fournier not decided to investigate what she believed,
04:24with whom she had slept and what she carried in her bag.The trial transcripts were created by men intent on extinguishing heresy,but instead preserved in astonishing detail the world they were trying to destroy.Joining me to discuss Beatrice de Plancel is historian and author Catherine Pangonis,whose recent book, A History of France in 21 women,recounts the story of Beatrice along with eight score of her compatriots,from Eleanor of Aquitaine and Joan of Arc to Coco Chanel and Brigitte Bardot.We've spoken to Catherine before on Gone Medieval,
05:05about Christine de Paisant.And it was such a great conversationthat we've asked her back todayto tell us more about Beatrice de Plancourt.Her interrogation by the Inquisitionoffers an uncommonly vivid, unscensored windowinto the daily existence,intimate liaisons, folk magic,
05:23and religious beliefs of an ordinary medieval woman.Well, Catherine, welcome back to Gone Medieval.Thank you very much for having me.Happy to be here.I'm delighted to finally get you to myself,doesn't get to have all the fun. And in particular, I'm really excited because today we're goingto talk about one of my very, very, very favorite medieval women, who is Beatrice de Plancel.And I think that it's fair to frame her as absolutely wild. You know, she's got one of the more
05:56interesting lives that we get to see. But she comes to our attention as a result of the Inquisitiondocuments as a result of the church's action against what I,like to call the good men and women of Laguedoc. I don't like the term cathar, right? Because I feel likethat's what the church calls them. And I feel like the church are not great in terms of actuallycharacterizing what we see. And Beatrice is important for that story. In order to talk about it,I think we kind of have to begin at the beginning and say, what is, you know, catharsim?What is it that the church says that this group of people that they refer to as the cathars believe?Yeah, so catharism, as it is known in academic circles.
06:44Now, it's perhaps not what they would have called themselves, as you rightly put.They would have called themselves the Bon-Critian, the good Christians.And they probably saw themselves as a type of Protestant who were trying to get back to the reality of the Christian religion.But they 100% saw themselves as Christians.But they were definitely seen as heretics.And they believed in a very different type of Christianity that was prescribed by the Catholic Church.and it's got roots in the east in Gnosticism and bognolismand all these different movements that have trickled into Europe
07:14through various routes and channels, part of it pilgrimage,part of it crusades, part of it general travelling and migration,but at this exchange of ideas and spiritual conceptsthat is happening in the Middle Ages.And essentially, catharism, the key differences,they have a very dualistic worldview.So this is the sense that God and the devilare locked in an eternal power struggle, and this affects all things.
07:41And then there are parts of life which are sacred and clean,and there are parts of life which are profane and not.And they draw this distinction between these two different spheres in lifeand these clashing powers of good and evil.And there are two different types of cathars as well.They divide the followers of this into two camps.One are the credentes, which are the believers,but who have not yet undergone the ritual of consolamentum.
08:06And then there are those that have undergone this sort of sacred ritual,ritealitual rite of which turns them into perfect or le parfait.And perfects are meant to set a religious example,and it wouldn't be practical for every cathar to be a perfectbecause they abstain from sexual intercourse, so they die out pretty fast.So most of the follows of the religion are credentes,and take the ritual of consulamentum on their deathbedsand become parfes in the last moments of their lives.
08:33And this is very important, and this will link back to beas well because there's particular things involved with that ritual, which she's caught out on,shall we say. And there are very interesting parts of the religion. It's very sort of, and some peoplewill see it as proto-feminist. There's lots of things that Cathars preach that would resonate withpeople today. For example, they believe that the soul was genderless. And they put a lot moreemphasis on the importance of the soul than the importance of the body. So with that in mind,they allowed women to become perfects, which were essentially their priests and their spiritualleaders. So that was very progressive and very threatening to the church. Also, they preached early
09:10vegetarianism and veganism, again, because they thought you shouldn't be eating meat and killinganimals. And again, it was this emphasis on the souls being incarcerated in bodies and so on and soforth. So it was a pretty complicated branch of heresy, but quite forward-looking in someways, but essentially it was an offshoot of Christianity that the Catholic Church and FrenchCrown were quite determined to stamp out during the Middle Ages. And you can kind of see why. And you can kind ofsee why they would be interested in stamping it out because it does call into question, I think,overarching structures of religion that obviously the church is very interested in keeping a life.You know, for them, the important thing is always going to be having a final say over how
09:52religion is mediated, who gets to mediate that religion. And I mean, also, yeah, I mean,fundamentally dualism is at odds with traditional Catholic teachings, you know, this idea that thephysical world is linked more particularly to sin, for example. It's one that is very difficult toget on board with if you're Catholic because the point is that you should sort of be able toovercome that. Or indeed, if you can't overcome that, that's fine because it's part of, you know,the point of being human. And that's, you know, what the church is for is to mediate that.But I do think that this is a really interesting group of individuals because we see that theytend to be up in these kind of
10:35especially Pyrenean villages.It's sort of like a south,eastern kind of block.Can you tell us a little bit about what was going onin the area at the time?What is it about Montailleux that meansthat these Cathars are about?Yeah, exactly.
10:53So by the time we get to Beatrice's lifeand Beatrice is born around the 1270s,like maybe roughly 1275, something like that,catharism has been essentiallycrushed in the region. So it wasn't that it originated in these mountain villages and wasalways confined to them. It was actually far more widely spread across southern France, northernSpain, even parts of Italy, northern Italy. It's this sort of belt of southern France,but very scented on the long dock. But by the time Beatrice is born, the Albigensian crusade
11:22has happened, which is the massive military movement organized, partly for religious reasons,but in my view, mainly for political ones, earlier in the 12th century, two centuries.stamp out the Cathar heresy. The Abbotentian Crusade began in 1209 and gave Northern French noblesand monarchy the opportunity to intervene in the Long Dock, which was very popular with them, because theSouth had always been a huge rival to the powers of Northern Lords and indeed the King of France.They had very powerful dukes in the South who at various points in history were more powerfulthan the King of France himself. So this was an opportunity to have a legitimate reason to go to waragainst people in South. And there were prominent nobles who were cathars. This wasn't isolated to villages
12:04at first. But essentially, the Albigensian crusade was pretty successful in breaking the power ofthe South and forcing catharism, like firstly burning alive many cathars and slaughtering many more.We have this famous massacre at Beziere where the Christians going in to storm Beziers say,oh, but how do we know which ones are Cathars and which aren't? And the leader of that movement says,kill them all because God will know his own.So the massacres are huge and they do succeed in crushing catharism in the South.And then what we have later in the time in Beatrice's lifetime is we have pockets ofthe heresy surviving in these very remote villages and these villages are remote.
12:44I know this firsthand because I flew into Carcasson Airport and was trying to drivethrough Cathar country to visit Montailles and Cassou and these other places importantto Beatrice's life.And my car broke down on a Friday night just out.side Montaille, and couldn't be fixed until the Monday, which left me with an unplanned weekendin these mountains. And so I had to walk from village to village, and you were talking 10, 15 milesin between each, and it was winter. And it was pretty miserable. So I can vouch for theremoteness and difficult accessibility of these villages. And geez, yeah, and that was even with
13:18proper footwear and stuff. So it really, the geography was very important because these villageswere so small and so remote that they just weren't considered important enough.really to be monitoring and sending people to.And they were ecosystems in themselves,technically under authority of the wider lords,but they never sent their men there.It was rare.They were very isolated and left under themselves,
13:40normally under the control of dukes and lords in the region, of course,but practically left to their own devicesand governed from within, more or less.And this gave the people there a lot of autonomy.And catharism existed in the shadowsand was really passed down within families.It became something passed on, yeah,through kin, marriage, this sort of thing, kept on the down low.
14:01And that was possible in these areas were nowhere elsebecause there wasn't a lot of education,there wasn't people to discuss it.There weren't people prying into it.They really were left to their own devices.And so in these small places it could survivewithout causing too much trouble.I think we really see that tendency,
14:19you know, the fact that this is a strange placewith strange interconnected, very tiny communitiesthat you sort of, you need to want to go there.Yes, there has to be a reason.There has to be a reason.And also, it's also at this time, there isn't wide literacy.There's some literacy, but it's priests and notaries who are the literate ones in these villages.And so there isn't a lot of written correspondence flying around full of heretical beliefs.
14:45If you really wanted to find out about the presence of catharism in Montaille, you had to go there and sit people down for a chat, which ultimately is what happens.But if you don't do that and you don't have a specific reason to do that,How would you ever know?And I think that this really becomes clear in the case of Beatrice because I think her understanding of what's going on is fairly muddled.I think that that's a fair thing to say.But I guess we have to kind of introduce Beatrice.Who is she?How does she come to our attention?
15:13Yeah, it's a really good point.So Beatrice is nobody, but at the same time, she's everything.It's very interesting.So Beatrice is born, yeah, in the 1270s in a village called Cassou, which is a long walk from Montaille.can confirm long uncold.And then when she's a teenager at some point around the age of 16, 17,she marries the chattelan, so the man who owns the chateau in Montaille.And again, I've been to this chateau.
15:40It looks cold and draughty.And even if you imagine before it's fallen down, I imagine it's not a fun place, let's justsay, it's a very remote village.But she lived in the castle.If you were going to live anywhere in Montaieu, you'd probably want to be in the castle.So she's minor.I really want to emphasize minor.She's minor in a nobility.
15:56This is not a woman who doesn't do any labour.This isn't a woman with fleets of handmaidens.Yes, she's one of the wealthier women in her village,but it's a tiny village and it's not a wealthy or comfortable place.She has a marriage to this man called Baron Gerdar de Rockford,but this doesn't bring her a lot of pretension.Her husband's servants try to rape her while he's away, things like this.She's got a lot of challenges, shall we say.
16:17But her marriage is technically successful in that they have children,but then she's left a widow.But essentially she grows up in this town,and she's from a family that has been long associated with catharism.So I think her father and there's evidence of catharism in her family.And this is actually something that brings her husband's servant who will try to rape her,brings them intimacy at first because he's a secret cathar and he talks to herabout trying to run away with him, not necessarily a romantic way,
16:44but run away with him to join the other cathars in a different place and to travel with him,to join them.I think it was in northern Italy he was trying to persuade her to go.So we know she's got cathar sympathies.I'm not sure I agree with you that she's muddled.I think in the records that we, I'll get to the records,but I think in the records we have a first,she may sound muddle, but I think she might be playing dumb.
17:02I think this is a woman who has grown up around these ideas.And I think it's likely she fully understands them and does care, actually,because that's my interpretation.Oh, I kind of like that.No, I love this idea because it is more fun to think of her as,I suppose, more of an active participant in the,this and saying, oh, I don't know, there were just several men who tried to convince me to run awaywith them. When you look at Beatrice, you feel overwhelmingly sorry for her, but you also, you feel
17:31overwhelmingly sorry for most medieval women, actually. But if we put that aside, I do think she seemsquite intentional in lots of ways. And we'll get to that. But anyway, Beatrice comes to our attention.The reason I say, while she's nobody, she's also everything and everybody, is because Beatrice is one of thebest documented women of the Middle Ages alongside Joan of Art. We talk about the trial of Joan ofArc and how it's phenomenal because Joan is so articulate and they try to write down everythingshe said. This is the thing about men who are taking their job seriously. In the case of Joanof Arc, it's because they didn't want to be accused of doing things wrong. So they took verydetailed notes. In the case of this inquisition against the Cathars, it really comes down to the
18:14Inquisitor, who's this sort of phenomenal guy. I don't mean in a good way in terms of I don'tmean phenomenal and that, oh, what a great guy, I'd love to hang out with him. But in terms of hiscommitment to his job and his fastidiousness is phenomenal. And I think he really believes in whathe's doing. And at this point, he starts off not necessarily destined for greatness and he ends upPope by the time he's 50. And this is before he's reached that. He's an inquisitor in southernFrance. And this is one of the first inquisitions. Everyone's heard of the Spanish Inquisition.We get used to this idea of interrogating people about their beliefs. But Jacques Funier really pioneeredthis. And actually from medieval inquisitor, another thing to his credit is he used torture
18:54sparingly and execution sparingly, which I know doesn't sound like a very high bar, but the baris really on the floor for inquisitors. And anyone that is not actively conducting grotesqueviolence and legalized murder is actually really good by Martin Sanders for an inquisitor.But he interrogates Beatrice, and he's very interested in her, not only for herself. I actuallythink he's not that interested in convicting her of anything. I don't think he's interested in burningher. I don't think he sees her as this big problem. He wants to get to a man called Pierre Clair,who's a real piece of work, and Beatrice is involved with him. He really wants her testimony againstothers, who he's very fixed on convicting, less on focused on her. And in so doing, he gets her
19:40to talk us through her whole life, almost, almost cradle to grave.And she just answers his questions with such frankness.And she gives us images of intimate daily life in a medieval community,not among the ruling classes.It's another reason Joan of Barker is so interesting.She's a peasant who rises to greatness,and then we get glimpses of what her childhood was like.And there are very few documents like this because of illiteracy.
20:06Beatrice was never going to sit down and write a journal,but because she was interrogated by this very,meticulous inquisitor. We have details about her combing the lice out of her lover's hair in thebath by the window. We have details about what she said to the guy who tried to rape her when shekicked him out of bed and screamed for her servants. We have these very intimate snapshots ofparts of medieval life. And beyond that, we also, and I think you'll probably ask me questions aboutthis later, but we also know the really weird stuff she's got in her handbag. And we also hearabout, we hear about her superstitions, we hear about her personal beliefs, we hear about her
20:43quite strange methods of birth control. So we get a very intimate portrait of medieval life froma woman who wasn't actually important and that's very rare. And that's why she stands out as suchan interesting figure of the Middle Ages, not because she did anything particularly remarkable,unlike Jane of Arc, but because we have her voice on record so clearly and we can hearher speaking to us and telling her story nearly a thousand years later. And yes, it's under pressure.It's an inquisition. But she still seems to speak with real frankness and not mince words.It's a very interesting testimony. And that's why she's one of the most, one of my favoritewomen that I wrote about in my last book about French women. She does give us this incredible
21:25glimpse into what village life is like, which I think is incredibly important because ordinarilywe hear a lot about people in cities.And we hear a lot about people who are in quite grand castles.But as you say, you know, that's not what this is.And poor Beatrice, you know, sure, she's a member of the nobility.But I think, you know, a member of the merchant class in Paris has more money than Beatrice does.And probably a more comfortable life.I think that that would be fair to say.
21:51Yeah, definitely more pocket money.I don't know the wealth of her husband.But in terms of, yes, day-to-day, yes.And Beatrice would have been toiling in her own house as well, kind of thing.So we see her talking about kind of her very very very.village life. And it's interesting because it doesn't reveal this really obvious demarcationbetween her as a noble person and people in the village, right? Because she's like attendingdances. She's working. She's hanging out with ordinary people. And then it seems like things,
22:21as you say, become much more perilous for her sort of around 24 years old when her husband dies,right? And, you know, her husband, like, look, her husband's her job, right? She was,was married for political reasons as most members of the nobility are. And it's not like thisis something that particularly keeps her up at night. But it does mean that she's left opento a lot more sexual coercion, as you say. So can we get a little into the entire situationwith Raymond Roussel? Yeah. So Roman Roussel is he's there when her husband's alive. So he'sher husband's steward and he's this closet cathar who tries to dissuade bitches to run away with him.But they have these dinners tete-tete. That's because her husband's traveling, he's away,
23:08whatever. They're spending time together. And you get the sense of a slightly isolated womanwho seems to have a friend. But then she's appalled when he makes sexual advances. And I thinkhe actually hides in her bedroom, is it, and is like under her bed. And then she goes to bed and then heclimbs in and he's like, shh. And she's like, what on earth are you doing? And he's like,duh, trying to swayed her to sleep with him. And she just starts yelling her head off and says,I will scream, I will get my maids in here. And then eventually she's waited not to tell herhusband. And then she's at first, she's confused. Then she's outrage. And we even have her words inthe record. She says to Funier, what does this mean? And he urged me to be quiet. To this,
23:47I replied, how now, you peasant? Shall I keep quiet then? And started to scream to call her maids up.So this prompts Raymond to flee and to get out as quickly as possible.And Beatrice really admonishes him, gives him a very severe telling off, which seems very mild, given the circumstances.But she tells him that she won't tell her husband because she doesn't want to escalate things.And that's actually quite sad in itself, because I think one of the reasons she chooses not to escalate thisand have this man quite rightly punished for trying to rape her in behaving the way that he did is because she'sworried that she'll be implicated in terms of, we talk about victim blaming today, but it's a wholeother thing in the Middle Ages. It's the shame attached, whether or not you're willing or not,
24:35the shame attached to extramarital sex or anything close to it is quite severe in some cases.We're going to actually, I think we'll get on to this, but sexual morals are a little bitlooser in these Pyrenean villages at this time. But nevertheless, she was worried about how a storylike that would reflect on her and how her husband would react towards her as well so that sheagrees to keep it quiet. And I think a really interesting point here is, you know, the thingI'm always going on about is how sexual amorers in the middle ages aren't exactly what people thinkthey are, but they are extant in particular for women of the nobility. Like, that's who theyexist for. You know, if you're a peasant woman, it's sort of like, well, treat yourself. No one's
25:15going to be really checking in on it. But especially here, what we're seeing is thisdifferentiation in class. And even if, yeah, Beatrice is a member of the lower nobility, she's notexactly going to be showing up at the royal court any time now, I think her saying, you know,how now you peasant, it shows that there is this demarcation. And, you know, courtly love is onething. You know, if you are members of the high nobility and you are sort of dating each otherbehind, you know, the husband's back, that's one thing. It's something else entirely.if you're shagging the peasantry, right?And also in particular, I think here,
25:57you know, Roussel's, he's a convicted heretic, right?So it's sort of like if she brings this up,it's going to shine a light on her own religious beliefsand she just can't have that.So it's like she's able to fend Roussel off,but also it reveals that what she's relying on in order to do it,are these really nebulous ideas about class and what she can get like her ladies in waiting to kind ofhelp her out with, right?
26:30So I think we were saying it's interesting.I think truly in these villages, I think the boundaries between class are far more blurred.It's more that she's a married woman and he's her husband's servant, I think, is the issue here.And I think her calling him a peasant in this context, we'd have to go back to what original word she used.But we are looking through three layers of translation because Beatrice would have said this in Occitan, whatever this word was, which has then been translated into Latin as best it can by Jacques Funier's Amanuensis, which were then translating from Latin to English.I actually don't have those trans, like exactly what words they are.So I wouldn't zoom in too much on the use of the word peasant.But I think what the outrage here is that she's a married woman and that he's her husband's servant and he's meant to be protecting her.
27:15and he's suddenly crossed this boundary from this sort of spiritual friendship to trying to rape her.So he's totally misinterpreted because he also clearly didn't think this would happen, right?This is an exercise in self-delusion on his part because he, from what we see, he hasn't hummed armed with a knife.He hasn't, like, this isn't a real, he's trying to overpower her.I think he really thinks.Otherwise, why else would he do this with her maids within calling distance?So he's really misjudged this.Oh, yeah.
27:43Like, he thinks he's in.he's like, oh, this is a romantic interlude.Here I am like under the bed.And isn't that going to be romantic?The Ridley Scott last duel film with a sort of forced performance by Jody Comer as amedieval woman who is, who accuses someone of rape.And then we see it from the three perspectives.The guy really thought it didn't see it that way.
28:02And I'm sure Raymond Roussel is laboring under these same delusions.But yeah, we definitely see Beech's predicament.And this episode shows us something.It shows us the access this man would have had to her rooms.that we think of the Chattelaine as being in the tower and very protected. It is not the case.She's got maids servants nearby, but there are no guards. There's very few people protecting her,and the person who's meant to be protecting her, as we see, cannot be trusted at all.So I think we see actually how deconstructed these mountains villages societies are,
28:30and how close they are. The fact that he really thought he had a chance is actually quite telling,in fact. So, yeah, that would be my take on that.I think that it's interesting here because as we see sort of Beatrice's, I don't know, career as a heretic move forward.And I tend to use the term heretic for her because I think, you know, I'm used to looking at it in the Latin.And that's the word that you use it.And she's like, yeah, I'm a heretic.Which is the way, which I always thought was like a pretty refreshing, you know, because she's like, yeah, I don't know.It's like, you guys don't like this.
29:28What, like, what do you want me to do?But she has this initially.really terrifying ordeal withRoussel. And then the nextthing that she kind of picks up on is atotally different relationshipwithanother man
29:44who is essentially trying the samething. And again, this highlightsthe interconnected, sort ofincestuous type, the waythese villages function, because they're very smallcommunities with a few families, kindof thing, and not a lot of diversity.Like, the dating pool is small.
30:00And even during, I think,and I think even during her marriage to Berengar, she is, she's raped by another man from the village,a guy who is of less repute, shall we say, because I think he's from a noble family in the village,the Clareg family, which we're going to come back to, they're very important, but he's illegitimate.So he's of the Clareg family, but he doesn't have full status, but he is still except in the village of the community.He rapes her, and she describes this as a rape.But then later, following her husband's death, she agrees to become his mistress and seems to enter as far as we can see into,a consensual sexual relationship with him where he keeps her. So this is where we see these
30:36sort of these class barriers being more fluid and also her vulnerability and also the amount offreedom she had. The idea that she could become a lower status man's mistress without herfather or brothers intervening is quite interesting or sons by this point. And the fact thatthis passes in the village. She's not outcast from the community for this. So we see how fluid the morals,the sexual limitations and the class boundaries are.It's very surprising, I think, to most peopleto see just how lax things could be in a medieval village.And also, in talking about female agency,
31:12we don't know why she chose to start a relationship with this man.She clearly describes the first sexual encounter as a rape.Whether or not that's true, because she was still marriedand so that's the term she chose to use,it's hard to say, like, we will never know for certain.But, like, perhaps she really felt forced to enter into this relationshipbecause it was known that they'd had this encounter before,because maybe she's left very financially precarious following her husband's death.
31:37Maybe she wasn't well provided for.It's hard to know exactly why, but she does seem to become kept as his mistress.And then we come to perhaps the most significant relationship of her life,which is the most surprising, is she eventually leaves him to have a full-blowna relationship with his cousin, who is another than the village priest, which is bizarre.So, yeah. And it will entertain you to know that when I visited Montailleux, nearly a thousand years later, or 800 years, something like that, the mayor of Montaou is still a man from the Clegg family.So the Cleggs are still active in Montaille. Yeah.So I'm somewhat obsessed with the Clegg the priest, right? Because what I like so much is Beatrice is, Beatrice is,
32:27It's explanations of basically his pickup lines to her because she's like, hey, aren't you a priest?And shouldn't we not be having sex given A, that you're a priest and B, we're not married?And I talk about this all the time, right?When he's like, well, actually.So you might think that.But all sex is sinful, right?Because everything that happens in the world is sinful.And actually, if you really think about it, married sex is more sinful.
32:57because you think it isn't sinful.And you think that it's fine because you're married,but it's not fine.So it's more honest to have an affair with me,your priest, and I have sex with me because you know it's sinful.And it's just...Yeah.And I'm not even exaggerating.
33:15That's literally his argument, at least according to Beatrice, you know.Oh, no, absolutely.It's crazy.And the thing that really gets me about their relationshipis that he first propositions her while she's making,confession to him. So she goes to church and she kneels and goes, forgive me, Father, for I havesin. It's been like whatever since my last confession. And he just goes like, oh my God, you're sohot. I must have you. I was like, oh, girl, are you single? Hey, hey, girl, what's up? Oh, because,
33:42oh, are you confessing extramarital affairs? Because I could, I could do that.I get in on that. Yeah. And it's also, she's probably confessing. She's probably also officiallyconfessing her relationship with his own cousin. The whole thing is madness. And she says she's reallyshocked when he lunges at her and tries to kiss her when she's making confession. And she's just a bitbemused and leaves the church. But then eventually, yes, she makes this argument they shouldn't havesex because if you have sex with the priest, apparently it means you will never see the face of God.And then he launches into his whole, actually, I know why you're saying that, but it's actuallymisinterpretation. Actually, it's better to have sex with priests. You'll actually be closer to God
34:18kind of thing, which you've illustrated very well. And then they do end up having a full-blown relationshipfor years, including he wants to have sex with her all the time,and to the extent that he makes a bed for them in secret behind the altar in the church,they can hook up on Christmas Eve between services.This is like the level that we're at.She goes along with it, and they seem to love each other.You know, I mention, you know, you talk about these intimate scenes.You know, she describes having chats with him about sort of vaguely philosophical topics
34:49while combing the lice out of his hair.You know, they seem to have quite a deep adult relationship at times.times. But then it eventually ends and I think he rebounds by having an affair with his teenagecousin and anyway, she remarries, life goes on. But it's a very, it's a very interestinginterlude. And again, shining a light on actually the medieval society is not necessarilyat all how we see it. And actually, if you look at the records from the whole of the JacquesFunier Inquisition, I think you find out that about 10% of the village of Montaille are inextramarital relationships or living in sin as it were. So it's really not, and these are all
35:22accepted. So it's really not what you would expect from this, this period and region.And I think that all of this taking place in the church is so interesting as well, becauseit's a thing that we see repeatedly across the medieval period is we'll see theseinjunters on the part of the church will they'll say, please don't have sex in the, in the churchover and over again. And we might think that's kind of funny, but actually, you know, it's,it's sort of like a building that's empty a lot of the time. A lot of people don't have privacy. Ifyou are attempting to have an affair.And it is cold in the mountains.
35:57Yeah, like you're not going to go outside, right?So it creates the space where in these illicit affairs can happen,which is kind of ironic, right?Because obviously we are meant to think of the church as a sacred place.I mean, poor Beatrice, you know, she's in confessionwhere she's essentially sexually attacked by this man.And which is this incredible inversion of the church's usual role.is a place of sanctuary, you know?
36:24And it is really difficult to look at it.At the same time, I don't want to tell Beatrice, well, no, actually, you shouldn't havehad a relationship with this man.Because, you know, as you say, I think that, like, the incredible intimacy and the detailthat we get about their relationship shows that something went on here, right?And also, I think from her standpoint, it's like, you know, here's a woman who married a manmuch older than her, you know, did the expected thing.And I think that what we see in this particular relationship, the fact that they're having these philosophical discussions, well, at least he's kind of like treating her as someone within intellectual capacity.
37:02Yeah, and that's why I think she's likely to understand a little bit more.I think the problem for Paul Beatrice is that catharism, as it is fed to her, is pretty butchered, right?Because I think she's not literate.So she's not reading, like, cortex and drawing her conclusions.her exposure to the religion that she adopts or doesn't, as the case may be,is fed through people like Pierre Clegg,who are also using it to further their own sexual agenda and so forth.So she is getting a, she is getting a butch of catharsim,
37:32but I think this is the hot topic of the time,and people do feel very strongly about it.So even if she's getting it in dribs and drabs,I think she is still being involved in quite serious conversationsand does grasp a lot.And even if some of it is being recast to make her think having sex with a priest is a great idea and so forth,I think some parts of it will be being given to her properly.And that Cathars do care about converting other Cathars and defending their religion.
37:59So I think that it is likely.And we also see that Pierre does seem to care about Beatrice.It's a bit weird.It's a very toxic, weird relationship.And he seems to be a sort of Manson-esque figure in some ways because he's a very persuasive, charming man, it seems.He's a powerful man in the village and he has a lot of sexual partners.So when Beatrice dumps him, he doesn't run off with his cousin actually.I've checked.
38:20He has an affair with his teenage niece and others and many others in the village.So he's clearly persuasive and somehow persuades other people and his family in the villageto allow him access to their female relatives.And these women, they seem to consent in some case, if not all.But he clearly still has a thing for Beatrice because even once she's remarried and moves away,he visits her and he sends her present.There's this one occasion where, again, we get a nice little glimpse,but he brings her two blouses, two nice shirts, two nice tops,
38:52in the Barcelona style.So the idea of American GIs bring blue jeans or whatever,this whole sort of like the sought-after fashion,and she has sex with them again and in her new homeand has her maid stand in the doorway and keep watchwhile they get it on in the cellar, something like that.So even after they've moved on, she's remarried,he's had sex with numerous of the other villages, including his own relatives,
39:15he still seeks her out and they have some kind of ongoing connection.So it's a weird one.We don't judge.Love is complicated, but there's something there.Whatever it is and whether or not it's a relationship that I think looks healthy or not,they clearly had feelings for each other that lasted over a period of time.And that's what's so funny is at the end of this, when she's being under the Inquisition,he's there too and they're being kept in the same prison.
39:38If you wonder, are they passing notes?Do they see each other?Is there break time?We don't know.But it's a very weird love storyand their lives are deeply intertwinedfor a very long time.I'm really interested in the detail
39:51that we get from this particular storywithin Beatrice's testimony.Because, I mean, really,the Inquisitors have done this incredible jobrecording all these little things.And one of the things that I find most intriguingis the whole discussion about contraceptivesthat they use.
40:10because I get asked a lot about medieval contraceptives, which, you know, contraceptives, not really.It's what I would say, you know, abort efficiency.They certainly have contraceptives less so.But can we talk a little bit about what Pierre believes to be a contraceptive deviceand what it tells us about medical knowledge at the time?Yeah, like, yes.I think you might be better.I'm going to ask you to correct me on.
40:40this. My recollection, because I have to say, although I remember obviously laughing and beingscandalized at the time, it wasn't that their birth control methods, I didn't write them downto come back to. But from what I recall, I think it's some sort of bundle of herbs. Yep. No,you're right. A bundle of weird stinky herbs that he asks her to wear as like a weird necklacearound her neck between her breasts and like maybe over her stomach during intercourse. And thatwill prevent pregnancy. And then I think she says, oh, can I keep this? Like when they're done. And he saysabsolutely not because it's mine. And I don't want you to use it with other men when I'm not with youbecause it's this clearly so effective, useful thing. But hey, like, Eleanor, it worked. So it's like
41:24there's a lot of talk today about the burden being on women and contraceptions, so forth and hormonaltreatments. But maybe we just need to work out what those herbs were because it worked. She, as far as we know,Beatrice had lots of children, but she never had Pierre's.You know, a contraceptive king?I mean, who's to say?What does this reveal about medical knowledge at the time clearly far more advanced than that?No, I think, yeah, I think if we were to look at it from a scientific perspective,I'd say that Pierre Clags of views on contraception were probably not the most advanced
41:59and was somewhat primitive and witchy.But it's great to strike that chord because it can bring us to perhaps the most fun stuffabout Beatrice, which is the witchy stuff. So shall we go there? Oh, yes, can we please? Because I'msort of obsessed with the witchy stuff, obviously. My favorite part of Beatrice's testimony, when Jack Funierempties her handbag over the desk in the Inquisition Room. And I don't know if you've seen thoseVogue videos where you get love, but being like, oh my God, and this is the face mist I use. So I canget fresh on the go and stuff like that. Beatrice doesn't have a face.missed, alas, but she does have equally revealing and useful tips for what a woman should never be
42:43without. One is, I think, what's the weirdest one? Is it the umbilical cords? Yeah. So she has some thingsthat I think that when I read the description, it makes me think of the chews I give my dog,these long dried out bits of flesh. And Mr. Funier is like, what's this one? Could you tell usabout this object? And she said, oh yeah, those are my grandson's umbilical cords. And I keep thembecause a Jewish woman I met told me that if I held onto these,as long as I had them with me, I would never lose a lawsuit.But actually, I haven't been sued.So I don't know if it works, but why not?
43:16Just in case.She seemed to know what she was about.And Jacques Funia doesn't say very much about this.He passes on to the next thing.And what about this?And he gets some sort of brown, dried out bits of cloth.And he's like, what's going on here?I like to imagine he picks them up and then drops it suddenly.
43:31He says, what's this?And she says, oh, yeah, those are bits of cloth that I'vesoaked with my daughter, Philippa's blood from her first period. And Philip was a mother at thispoint, so it's probably a while ago. And he's like, quat? And she says, oh yeah, no, I kept thembecause, again, and I was told that if I used them sort of like a tea bag, if I make it a drink withthem, put them in hot water, then give that to Philippa's husband. He'll never beunfaithful to her. I've got that to do that. And Jack Funnier's like, okay. And then theymove through these other objects. And one of them is a small silver knife and there are various other
44:05slightly witchy things, but the thing he then really zooms in on more than the umbilical cordsor the dried blood. He's really not after her as a witch, although he really would have enoughto go on here if you were. But what he really focuses in on some bits of bread, which to usmight sound like the most tame thing in there, oh yeah, like a sandwich I forgot to eat,just not very good at hygiene, blah, blah, blah, but no, it's the special type of bread that isused in the ritual of the consulamentum. And so it's the fact that she's got sort of cathar bread on heris the link that she's a heretic.And she kind of just skates over this.
44:38And the records don't show her being reinterrogated on this.But we know the fact that it's written there in the list that they see it as evidence against her.Yeah.And I think that this is so incredibly interesting because it does tell us an awful lot about how ordinary people are organizing their lives.And I find the thing about the period blood tea as a love spell to be really interesting.because if we look at a quite famous medieval source,Bouchard of Verm's corrector, which is basically it's a guidebook for priests.So here's some things that you can ask at confession.
45:40And he has all these quite bizarre love potions within it.And he says, well, you should ask at confession if they're doing these love spells.And it'll be sort of like love spells about putting honey down your body.And then like mixing that with seeds and then feeding the seeds to your.husband in order to make him love you, things like that.And you're sort of like, oh, well, is this real?Or is this a sort of thing that priests who have no idea about sex would make up?And then you have Beatrice be like, ah, yeah, that's the period blood magic.
46:13And you're like, oh, wow, okay.So these things are actually real, right?Yeah, I think this is the thing.It's whether you want to call it witchcraft, superstition, folk magic old wives tales,this sort of, we'd call it superstition, but this sort of knowledge that's handed down person to person,but it's still very strong at this time. And the education is so weak. And even Christian education,we see the education that you'd get from the church. For Beatrice's case and point, this is the priest who'steaching her, as the one who's trying to seduce it. It's so patchy. And so I think so much,
46:49and life is so fragile at these times. People have so little power. They have no ombudsmanand citizen advice bureau and NGOs and social services helping them.Healthcare is pretty much next to non-existent.There's no doctor in Montau-U.It's not a thing.It's all maybe there's an apothecary in a town.Maybe there's a nun or a monk who works in the infirmary and has some knowledge.People don't have the same support structures around them that we take for granted.
47:20And I think in that, and so something has to fill a void in terms of advice,or guidance or like even placebo affects healthcare.So it's there because it's needed.And whether it's presented as witchcraft or local remedies or whatever,it's a big part of people's lives.And that they don't have the sort of scientific trainingthat is not developed in this way to question it and second guess it.So yeah, a doctor might pass through very rarely.
47:46You're otherwise reliant on apothecaries.And there's in some of the stuff.Some old herbal remedies do stand up scrutiny.Medieval remedies, pain relief is Willow Bark.that's aspirin, I think.So some of them do stand up scrutiny.And to be honest, as a medieval person,if I had some willow bark tea and it cured my headache
48:03and the same person who gave me the willow bark teatold me to pour honey on myself to avoid pregnancy,to me as a medieval person,there's no reason why one would work on the other wouldn't.So people are more willing to buy into these sort of things.And also, they don't understand how sex works, right?They don't understand the details yet of sperm and all the rest of it.I think, yeah, that's why there's a gap and it needs to be filled and necessity drives invention, so on and so forth.
48:29And people need some comfort. So, yeah.I mean, I think also within a Beatrice's testimony, you know, we see these gaps in religious information and religious education as well.Because, you know, for example, she goes back to the incredibly well-worn mountain analogy for the conception of transubstantiation.Do you want to talk about this? Because this comes up a lot in heresy trials, kind of across.Europe, especially at this time.I actually don't want to because I don't know very much about it, but I'd love, but I would lovefor you to, Anna, please.All right, okay.
49:04So there's this thing that she does.So under questioning, she is asked if she'd ever question the concept of transubstantiation.Okay.And so transubstantiation is this idea that during the mass, the bread and wine that is used forcommunion is transformed literally into the body and blood of Christ.And then, you know, obviously you consume it at Eucharist and it's this a very meaningful moment.But there's a thing that we see across the Middle Ages come up over and over again where they're like, ha, ha, ha.Well, if that's literally Jesus's body, his body would have had to have been the size of a mountain.
49:42And because we're all eating it all the time.And it's really an interesting one because, like, obviously the church is outraged every time they hear it.because they're like, how dare youmisunderstandwhat transubstantiation is?And it's sort of like, well, whose fault is that?Right?Because it's a pretty difficult concept,
50:02actually, to get your head around.It's something that Protestants reject kind of outright.Eventually, we will see in groups,for example, like the Lollards,they push instead for an idea of like consubstantiation,which is like, well, it's two things at once.It is bread and wine.And it's also the body and blood of Christ.
50:18And the Protestant one is like, guys,it's just a metaphor. But Catholics really are saying, no, that's what that's what it is? And then they getmad if you don't believe it. And it's like, what pastoral care is going on up here in order toexplain to ordinary people what that is and what that means, right? And then you get mad at Beatriceabout it, right? They don't get too mad at her. I think she's ultimately, she's sentenced towear the yellow cross the rest of her life. But that's fairly light compared to heretics in laterperiods. And I think they do accept that there's a lack of education. And also, I think it would bevery hard for someone like Jack Funier who is, who's a meticulous person. I think he is a man
50:55of conscience. As I said, the bar is on the floor, but nevertheless, to the except he's a, he's aconstruction of his environment, he's a medieval man. I'm not defending him. But I think to the extent that hecan be, he's a man of conscience, I think it would be very hard for him to really attack and pillorya woman like Beatrice, whose education has been given to her by someone like Pierre Clegg. And thechurch has clearly failed this woman, right? In terms of education and spiritual guidance and everything. Yeah, soexactly. I think, yeah, it's, I'm with you. Like, these are reasonable questions to ask. There should beanswers given with understanding and in the name of guidance and education rather than justpunishment. But yes, at this time, as we say, the bar is on the floor. But yeah. Yeah. And I mean,
51:42I think that what you can say is in terms of her relationship with the structure of the church overall,You know, obviously her ex-lovers aside is the most contact that she has with the structure of the church, the authority of the church comes, you know, when they essentially arrest her, right?You know, like, here she is, you know, at a point in time, she's like, 46, she has to go on the run with her new boyfriend.Who is also a priest.Who is also a priest, right?And much younger, 20, 30 years younger than her.I mean, like, so now it's illegal to be a cougar, right?No, we have to circle back to this.
52:20Beatrice is, she's got something.She's got something.There's just like Pierre is clearly like a Manson-esque, like persuasive, attractive figure.I think Beatrice is also, I'd love to see them in a movie, is all I can say, yeah.I think she's clearly the village haughty.I think that that has to be said, you know, like she's a target, right?And so, you know, she's 46.She's on the run with her 30-year-old boyfriend.
52:43Fantastic.Great work.I love to see it.I think an Orthodox priest at this point is she's a very important.She's a very flexitarian Christian as Beatrice.I think she's just pragmatic, you know.It's just sort of like, well, who cares?And it's like at this point in time, they know that they are in the sites of the Inquisition, right?
53:03And I think Beatrice is probably more of a target for their ire because of her position, you know, her rank.You know, what do you do?You know, you go and you try to find the most well-connected people.I don't think it's at a rank.I think it's about the fact that they know she can.rat out Pierre Clegg. I think they're really afterhim. So I think that's a big part of it.Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it seems
53:24to me that you're the Villajani andyou have had a seriesof relationships that we kind of want to get into, right?And so, you know, her first bigamount of time with anyone from the Church Authority is likethe series of examinations and like reallyinvolvedlike basic inquisitorial
53:43questionings. Oh yeah. And they didn't torture herbut I think it was still a really miserableexperience because it was eight examinationsand I think they took place over quite awide period of time and she was in prison in betweenand prison would have been lousymedieval prisonlousy yeah I think
53:59and she is worn down by the lastinterrogation you can tell she's exhaustedand she's becoming ill I think by the lastone so it's and she's notold by our standards but she's old for medievalsigners she's a grandmother at this time I think it isquite tough on her so yeaha very tough process
54:14listen she's older than me and if I was putin medieval prison, I too would probably break down, you know.All of us are.And it's interesting because, you know, there's these eight different interrogations, as you say,and there's kind of a mental toll as a result of this, you know,a really difficult thing to keep anything alike a straight line of narrative going across them, I think.And she's afraid.Ultimately, she isn't burned, but people are burned for being heretics.
54:46and they have stuff on her.So she's in prisonand possibly living in fearof torture and execution.So the mental toll is profound.Also, she's probably not seeing her children,her grandchildren,she's isolated.
54:59We don't know who she's sharing a cell with.We don't know what conditions are like,but she's very much in fear.Yeah.It's interesting because she just seems tocome to the conclusionthat the way to go is justtotal transparency.
55:12Because what do you think?Do you think that's what we're seeing hereor do you think that this is calculated?Because she's obviously very intelligent.If what they're after is Pierre Clegg, right,do you think that she's...Yeah, is she ratting about...I think she's picking her battles
55:30and she's probably trying to distract themand give them enough to give them what they wantwithout incriminating herself too much.So I think she's probably accepted.When you go into something like this,not that I've done it,but you have to assess what can you get away with and what can you not get away with.And I think she probably realizes, I can't position myself as a good Christian woman who knows
55:55nothing about it. I can't position myself as perfectly chaste, an exemplar of society, so on andso forth. But she also probably wants to make it clear she doesn't want to position herselfas a cathar perfect. She may well have been a cathar perfect. Women often were, high-ranking women inthese communities often were perfect. She has consulamentum bread in her back. We don't know,but she doesn't want to talk about any of that because that, if it comes out, is really,it could be a death sentence and it could be much more serious. But if she can distract,shock, or with all the affairs and with all the details about Pierre Clegg and Pierre Clegg'sher, she tells us the heresies that Pierre Clegg tells her. So she is ratting on him in those
56:41moments and she's a lot of the discussion does focus on him and I think she probably does knowthat he is their aim because she's tipped off in advance that they're after her we don't knowwhat that tip off contained maybe it was they want you because of pierre clack and she and barcelshe and her her new boyfriend they flee together not before having sex again by the wayin public with the maid standing watch as usual she's so real for that you know yeah but shebut yes we don't know exactly what she knows but i think she's trying to give them enoughI think she knows she can't plead total ignorance, but she doesn't want to focus on the heresy.She doesn't want to.
57:16And so she gives them enough.Maybe she knows a lot of people are using the mountain metaphor.I think she is tactical on what she chooses to share.I think she's also tired, even the most composed people under the pressure of interrogation,they crack and they can ramble on about other things and go off and tents.I don't think it's perfectly planned and correct courtroom appearance kind of thing.But I think she is trying to be strategic with what she revealson what she doesn't. And I think she's quite
57:41a piece with selling Pierre Clareg down the river,as she should be at this point.But yes, I think that's about that.That's my read on it. I think she doesunderstand catharism. I think it's perfectlypossible that she was a perfect.We don't know, but I think it's possible.It's also possible she wasn't
57:56really a cathar, but just a sympathizer. We don't know.But I think she was very involved in the movement.I think she did understand the movement.But she's chosen to try and focus onthe questions they're asking about Clagand the village, rather thanbring focus on to herself and her particularation with catharism, which she wants to avoid gettinginto.
58:14I think that it's really quite interesting because fundamentally, her strategy pays off.You know, like, you could say it isn't a strategy.It simply is, you know, her being honest or, you know, maybe she simply lived the dreamand got her ex-boyfriend in trouble.Yeah, it's kind of a jerk.It's kind of great.But, you know, she is released.You know, Claire dies in prison, right?
58:36he doesn't make it out of there.And it's true, she has to wear, you know, the Yellow Cross that means that you're a heretic, the cuarjean.And that is going to mean, in theory, that your public identity changes.But I don't know, like within this particular social milieu, there's going to be a lot of sympathizers, right?So she did spend a year in prison, which I think was probably pretty rubbish as it goes and very stressful and took at all on her.But yes, she is released and she has the yellow cross.But you're right.Catharism has always, not always, but certainly since the 13th century slightly before,
59:14catharism has been linked to the long dock.And there are pockets of sympathies.We don't know where she goes after this.We just don't know.We don't know where she goes.The record ends.But there will be pockets of sympathizers around.How enforceable is it that she wears a yellow cross every day?
59:30In practice, if she goes to a place where people don't care and there aren't that much government,we don't know.And also, it could even have been a badge of pride in some circles.Today, the Yellow Cross, the Cathar Cross, is the symbol of the entire region of OxyTenny,which is one of the biggest regions of France.It's very proudly associated with the South and has been for a long time.So you're right.If she found the right place, she could find herself among friends and sympathizers,
59:54and to what extent this is a punishment is hard to say.I think it's more the case that whenever she goes to a major town,she has to wear her her her heretic cape.But I don't think she, I don't think it's a huge day-to-day punishment in this, in a practical sense, yeah.So just to kind of wrap us up, you and I both agree this is one of our favorite women in the medieval period, full stop.And I think what I really love about her is, is her ordinariness, right?She is ordinary in terms of the fact that she isn't this incredibly powerful, wealthy woman.But she's extraordinary in that.
01:00:29she does seem to be able to come up against the most difficult bit of the church machine and sort of live to tell the chale.She's able to navigate a world where she's constantly facing off, you know, sexual violence, but she's able to kind of pick up new partners here and there.She moves in ways eventually, I think especially in her older years, where she's very clearly making decisions.on her own.And we have this great record of it.And, you know, as you say, there are, there are problems with that we don't necessarilyknow what it is we're doing with a document like this because you have to attemptto interpret it one way or another, right?
01:01:18But what we definitely see from these documents is that there is, you know, aninvisibility about women like this ordinarily.We will never get to know about.complex women who are shagging the priest behind the altar and who are kind of like moving aroundin rural villages. But it's so sad that when we do get to find out about it, it's in thisincredibly hostile source, right? Yeah, 100%. No, she's fascinating as women. And what I find,and I agree with you, I wish we had some, we do have a few diaries, almost of women fromthe middle ages, not diaries, a few, very few, but some, like Julian of Norwich, Marjorie Kemp,
01:02:01even, oh, what's the woman who had Margaret of Beverly? I think it's written by her brother,but we're meant to be in her words. So we do have a few chronicles of medieval womenspeak, telling their own stories, and those are wonderful. But Beatrice, I think that's, yeah,everything you say is true, but we do still get this great portrait of her. And the reason I findher so compelling is because she is like in every woman, right? She's, the weird stuff in herbag. She's a mum. She's a mum and a grandma. She's got her grandsons and bellic cord. We canand maybe she was present at the birth of her grandsons.Maybe she was delivering her own grandsons.
01:02:33That's amazing.And she has the blood from her daughter for the first period.So she knows she's on hand talking to her daughters about puberty and growing up and love.And she wants her daughter's husband to be faithful to her enough to carry around this horrible blood in her handbag this whole time.So we get these glimpses of her just as although, yes, she's at the heart of this heretical movement and she's under Inquisition.and she is having these very strange relationshipsto the priest, but also it's very parenthood,Gilmore Girls, she's dating her daughter's teacher.
01:03:03Her last boyfriend, the priest,he's meant to be teaching her daughtersand they get something going on.So there's these very real, relatable parts of the human experienceand the female experience,even within this sort of hostile court documentthat's actually an interrogation.But we get glimpses of, okay, so much is different,
01:03:21but so much is the same.And intimacy and family life and love and griefand vulnerability.Yeah, I think that's why Beatrice stands out as so interestingand so compelling as a character, even though, yes,she's not important, she doesn't achieve much in her life.It's just for these glimpses of real life that makes her so interesting.Catherine, it has been an absolute and unmitigated pleasure to talk to you about her today.
01:03:47Thank you so much for coming on.Thank you, Eleanor.My thanks again to the brilliant Catherine Panganis,and thank you for listening to Gone Medieval from History Hit.Remember, you can enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original TV documentaries,including my recent film with Matt Lewis,The Ascent to Power, Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II,as well as ad-free podcasts by signing up at historyhit.com
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