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Conquest? What conquest? The other dramatic events that really mattered in 1066
1066 is synonymous with the battle of Hastings. Yet while Duke William was launching his conquest of England, the rest of Europe had its own crises to contend with. Charles West takes us on a tour of the continent during a dramatic year
It was the summer of 1066 and two powerful leaders were rallying their supporters behind them and preparing for war. Their clash would result in political chaos, the spilling of much blood, and one of those leader’s violent deaths. Yet the people of England barely noticed. That’s because the clash took place hundreds of miles to the south-east on the Italian peninsula, and it involved two figures – a renegade cleric named Arialdo and Guido da Velate, the archbishop of Milan – who have rarely troubled British history books. These two men had been butting heads since the 1050s and, by 1066, their intense rivalry had pitched the city-state of Milan into chaos. The trouble started when Arialdo and his supporters began accusing Milan’s formidable clerical elite of corruption, chiefly because the city’s priests were married – a longstanding local practice that many non-Milanese found deeply shocking. Things quickly turned violent: armed skirmishes erupted on the streets. The showdown was soon heading for a bloody denouement. We might suppose that the pope in Rome would take a dim view of an open rebellion against the clerical hierarchy in a major Italian city. But from the middle of the 11th century, the papacy was occupied by men who agreed that the Catholic church was in desperate need of an overhaul, and so they sided with Arialdo. In March 1066, Pope Alexander II went so far as to excommunicate Archbishop da Velate because of the charges Arialdo laid against him. It was a radical move. And it backfired spectacularly. The canny archbishop was able to spin his excommunication to his benefit by positioning himself as the champion of Milanese traditions against toxic ‘external’ interference. An enraged local populace turned on Arialdo and chased him out of the city. In June 1066, while he was making his way to Rome, emissaries of da Velate hunted down Arialdo and murdered him. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/GettyImages-931173370webready-9665804-e1769423234953.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A painting shows four men sitting at a table covered with glasses of wine. Three of them are dressed in red cloaks with gold trimming, and wide red hats. The other man is dressed all in gold and wears a tall, layered gold and white crowned hat" title="In 1066 Pope Alexander II (second from left) excommunicated the Archbishop of Milan, who was accused of corruption (Image by Getty Images)" /> Mob power 1066 is surely the most famous date in all of English history, synonymous with one event: Harold II and William of Normandy’s bitter struggle for the throne of England. We think of charging Norman knights and Anglo-Saxon foot soldiers, of the battle of Hastings and a famous arrow in the eye – all recorded in exquisite detail by the Bayeux Tapestry. Yet as Arialdo’s fate on the road to Rome proves, the Norman conquest was far from the only significant event to occur in Europe in 1066. In fact, while Norman and Anglo-Saxon forces slugged it out at Hastings, people from Spain to Scandinavia, Kyiv to Constantinople were embroiled in events every bit as momentous as those unfolding in England. By exploring those events in the round, we can build a better picture of the currents convulsing the lives of the people of Europe in the late 11th century. Read more | 1066: who was the rightful king? Take Arialdo’s uprising in Milan as an example. This wasn’t just an urban revolt, but also a sign of how western Europe was being shaped by its growing economy in the late 11th century. After the fall of the Roman empire, many western European towns had shrunk to a shadow of their former selves. But from the ninth century, or perhaps earlier, they had been steadily growing again. In 1066, Milan’s population had grown large enough for urban mobs to prove seriously troublesome for governing elites – as Archbishop da Velate discovered. This posed a problem that had not been encountered in the Christian west for centuries. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/GettyImages-146324414webready-77668b0-e1769423035894.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A knight is purified in a medieval relief from a holy-water font in northern Italy. By the late 11th century, urban mobs were increasingly challenging clerical elites in cities such as Milan (Image by Getty Images)" title="A knight is purified in a medieval relief from a holy-water font in northern Italy. By the late 11th century, urban mobs were increasingly challenging clerical elites in cities such as Milan (Image by Getty Images)" /> Life on the frontline Milan wasn’t the only conurbation to be rocked by significant violence in 1066. The city of Barbastro is located in what’s now north-eastern Spain, but in the 1060s it was on the frontier between Muslim Iberia – also known as Al-Andalus – and the Christian kingdoms of the north. That placed it right on the frontline of one of the most contested swathes of territory in 11th-century Europe. Barbastro had been in Muslim hands since the Arab conquest of Iberia in the eighth century. All that was to change dramatically in 1064. For, two years before the Norman conquest of England, a Christian force besieged and conquered the city. The composition of this army was varied – and even included some Normans – but it was probably led by Sancho Ramírez, ruler of the kingdom of Aragon. Pope Alexander II – the same pontiff who would go on to excommunicate the archbishop of Milan – was involved, actively encouraging the siege. In a letter referring to the troops participating in the attack on Barbastro, he wrote that, “by the authority of the holy apostles Peter and Paul, we both lift their penance and make a remission of their sins”. Exactly what he meant by this terse statement has been widely debated. But on the face of it, it sounds a lot like the terms given by Pope Urban II to participants of the First Crusade three decades later in 1095. Yet, for all Alexander’s words of encouragement, the Christian triumph in Barbastro was short-lived. Thanks to the efforts of Ahmad al-Muqtadir, the emir of Zaragoza, by 1066 Barbastro was back in Muslim hands – and would remain so for nearly four decades. While kingdoms in the north of Spain, such as Castile and Aragon, did make major territorial gains late in the 11th century, the fate of Barbastro proves that there was nothing inevitable about the Christian reconquest of Iberia. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/BAL555342webready-65c8ded-e1769423374470.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A colourful manuscript illustration shows large groups of soldiers mounted on horses fighting one another" title="The Christian reconquest of Spain, depicted in a 13th-century manuscript. Events in Barbastro in the mid-11th century suggest this was a messy, contested affair (Image by Bridgeman Images)" /> Pagans v Christians Most of Europe in 1066 lay under Muslim or Christian control. But this was not the case everywhere. In the far north, the Sámi peoples, who lived chiefly from their reindeer herds, steadfastly resisted efforts to convert them to Christianity. So, too, did Slavic-speaking peoples around the Baltic coastline, including a group in present-day north-eastern Germany known as the Wends, who fended off various invasions from Saxony in the east. In the summer of 1066, this resistance crystallised into an uprising against a man called Gottschalk, one of the Wends’ own rulers. Gottschalk had converted to Christianity and wanted the pagan populace to follow suit, but they took a different view. The uprising claimed the lives of not only Gottschalk but also, in November that year, John Scotus, a missionary from Scotland or Ireland, who had become bishop of Mecklenburg in modern-day Germany. Read more | The crusade against the odds: how the First Crusade succeeded despite the obstacles If a contemporary chronicler named Adam of Bremen is to be believed, John’s murder was particularly grisly. “And because [John] confessed Christ, he was beaten with cudgels and then was led in mockery through one city of the Slavs after another,” Adam tells us. “Since he could not be turned from the profession of Christ, his hands and feet were lopped off and his body was thrown upon the road. Cutting off his head, the barbarians fixed it on a spear and offered it to their god Radegast in token of their victory.” Debate has gone back and forth as to how literally we should take Adam’s account, since Christian monks’ descriptions of pagan practice were always heavily layered with their presumptions. What can’t be disputed, however, is that this part of Europe remained pagan for nearly another century. The allure of monotheism was not irresistible. Families at war To the east of the pagan people of the Baltic coastline lay Kyivan Rus. This was medieval Europe’s largest territory – stretching from the Gulf of Finland down to modern-day Ukraine – and, from 978 until his death in 1015, it was dominated by Volodymyr the Great. He was a formidable ruler who had converted to Orthodox Christianity in 988 as part of an alliance with the Byzantine empire, fought wars of conquest, and sired many children. That was all well and good, but four decades later, Volodymyr’s propensity for producing offspring was causing problems. In the 1060s, Rus was ruled over by one of Volodymyr’s grandsons, Iziaslav I, and his wife, Gertrude of Poland. Iziaslav had reigned as Grand Prince of Kyiv since 1054 but, by the middle of the following decade, his position was increasingly being challenged by rival relatives. By 1068, such was the intensity of the dynastic struggles, that Iziaslav and Gertrude were forced to flee into exile in Poland. There they sought help from Gertrude’s family. Her nephew agreed to help and, with a contingent of Polish warriors behind him, Iziaslav returned to power in Kyiv in 1069. We have some insight into Gertrude’s state of mind at this perilous moment in her life, thanks to the survival of a remarkable manuscript, now in the town of Cividale in northern Italy. It’s a psalter – a book of psalms – and was originally made in the 10th century. Yet it somehow ended up in Gertrude’s hands. While the book was by this point perhaps a century old, Gertrude made adjustments to it, including copying personal prayers into its margins and blank spaces. These heartfelt additions give a sense of her anxieties as she resided in a foreign, turbulent country: “O holy Helena, most Christian of queens… I beg you humbly … that you may deign to turn the hearts of your servants to peace and love and affection towards me, as our Lord Jesus Christ opened the heart of your emperor [Constantine] to remember you, and filled it with love.” Even though this piece of evidence is unique to Gertrude, she was hardly the first elite woman in 11th-century Europe to find herself in a country with which she was no longer familiar. At that point, kings tended to prefer marrying women from abroad, just as William the Conqueror chose the daughter of the Count of Flanders as his wife. The result was a criss-crossing of dynasties taking place over several generations. A proud teacher If the examples on these pages teach us anything, it’s that 1066 witnessed no shortage of wars and rebellions. Yet there’s much more to the late 11th century than violence and unrest. To illustrate this point, let us turn to a letter from a scholar named Goswin, schoolmaster in the cathedral in Mainz, to a former student called Walcher. In the letter, Goswin thanked his former pupil for sending him a book, which Walcher had personally copied after reading. Strikingly for the modern reader, Goswin suggested that the excellent quality of the scribal work justified the corporal punishment he had inflicted upon Walcher when he taught him as a child. For most of the letter, though, Goswin reminisces about his younger days studying and teaching in Liège. He compared the educational environment of the city favourably to Plato’s academy, while festooning the letter with learned quotations from Horace, Cicero and other classical writers. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/BAL4619329webready-f17b02e-e1769423807871.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A painting showing a man dressed in a long red shift, holding a book and reading it to a small group of men sitting around him" title="Peter Abelard was an important French theologian and philosopher, shown here teaching at the school he established on the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève (Image by Bridgeman Images)" /> But Goswin didn’t only reminisce on past times. He also commented on new trends – unfavourably. These days, he claimed, avarice had taken over everywhere, and he and his fellow scholars were not suitably remunerated for their efforts. The biggest target of his ire, though, was the new generation of students: “Fleeing instruction in the gravity of moral discipline, they are blown about like light chaff in every wind of doctrine… They do homage to vain and pestiferous novelties of phrasings and questions… Also if they gather some scrap of arcane or verbose knowledge, they wander like vagabonds through the fields of learning, discoursing to no one’s satisfaction.” This might read very much like the complaint of an ageing academic about the frivolities of the young, but it’s been argued that Goswin was actually putting his finger on a genuine development in educational practice. In the mid-11th century, intellectual energy was beginning to drain away from the old and rather conservative cathedral schools such as Mainz or Liège, heirs to the Carolingian Renaissance, and into the more disputatious classes held by a new generation of charismatic teachers. This new wave of educators was epitomised by men such as Peter Abelard of Paris, a firebrand whom, we can safely surmise, Goswin would have disliked immensely. Read more | Not 1066 again! Should we ditch our obsession with dates? Heavyweight battles For all Goswin’s musings on intellectual decay in the continent’s greatest seats of learning, we have to conclude our tour of 1066 Europe by returning to a more visceral theme: conflict. This particular outbreak of bloodletting was on a such a scale that it put even the Norman conquest in the shade. At the heart of the conflict was one of the world’s great polities: the Byzantine empire. This had dominated much of the Mediterranean world since the fourth century AD when it had emerged as a continuation of the Roman empire (which is why it is often referred to as the Eastern Roman empire). In 1066, with the mighty city of Constantinople as its capital, it stretched from the Adriatic in the west to Antioch on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. However, by the middle of the 1060s, the empire was coming under pressure from multiple external forces. Turkic-speaking nomads were launching raids across the river Danube in the Balkans, with a particularly large incursion taking place in 1065. Meanwhile, in the eastern provinces, Byzantine forces had to contend with the Seljuk Turks, a powerful nomadic consortium who had converted to Islam, conquered Baghdad, and were now regularly unleashing raids in Anatolia. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/BAL4778974webready-1ede7f5-e1769423696271.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="An illustration of two ships with groups of men on them, facing each other on the sea. Below the boats, a naked man is swimming in the water" title="A soldier swims to attack an enemy ship in a Byzantine treatise from the conflict-ridden 11th century (Image by Bridgeman Images)" /> Byzantine historians who recorded these events tended to see them as premonitions of the disaster that would befall the empire a few years later. At the battle of Manzikert in 1071, Byzantine emperor Romanos IV Diogenes was defeated and taken prisoner by a Turk force led by Alp Arslan, sultan of the Seljuk empire. Romanos was treated honourably by his captors and soon released, but his humiliation unleashed a civil war. On his return to Constantinople, Romanos was brutally blinded by internal enemies and died from his injuries. For Byzantine historians of the time such as John Skylitzes, the seeds of this defeat were visible years before, because emperors failed to pay enough attention to the military threats menacing their borders. Skylitzes reserved some of his most stinging criticisms for Romanos’s predecessor, Constantine X, observing that: “Far more than anything else, the emperor yearned and desired to increase state revenues and to hear private law cases… while having less to do with other imperial duties, by which I mean maintaining military superiority and the fighting prowess of our soldiers.” We should beware the hindsight on display here, though. As King Harold and Duke William both discovered at Hastings, battles were unpredictable affairs, and the outcome of Manzikert was never a foregone conclusion. If, in 1066, Constantine X had devoted himself chiefly to the running of his empire, that was because it was, quite reasonably, the top priority. Although there were military problems, he could draw on enormous financial and ideological resources to overcome them. Indeed, these resources allowed Byzantium to effect a recovery and it remained a mighty state into the later 11th century, as the crusaders discovered when they surged east from 1095. Meanwhile, back in England, the country was reeling from the battle of 1066, and some contemporaries elsewhere in Europe acknowledged its drama. In Bavaria, the chronicler Frutolf of Michelsberg devoted his entire entry for the year 1066 to it. “England was pitifully attacked and eventually conquered by the Norman William, who was made king. Soon afterwards he sent virtually all the bishops of that kingdom into exile and the nobles to their deaths. Those of the middle rank he forced into the service of his knights, and all the wives of the indigenous people into marriage with the newcomers.” There’s no doubt that the Norman Conquest was an extraordinary event for the English and Normans alike. Yet, taking a wide view, it was just one of the ways in which the tectonic plates of European politics and society were dramatically shifting in the 11th century. Charles West is a professor of medieval history at the University of Edinburgh and author of Europe in the Eleventh Century: Beyond Revolution and Reform (Oxford University Press, 2025) This article was first published in the January 2026 issue of HistoryExtra magazine
Dolly Jørgensen considers why the pig was so vital to urban life in the Middle Ages
They killed children, exhumed dead bodies and caused an almighty stink. So why, asks this Long Read written by Dolly Jørgensen, were our medieval ancestors so dependent on the urban pig? HistoryExtra Long Reads brings you the best articles from BBC History Magazine, direct to your ears. Today’s feature originally appeared in the October 2024 issue, and has been voiced in partnership with the RNIB.
Stretched, crushed and impaled: 10 shocking torture methods from medieval history
Medieval torturers knew what they were doing when it came to inflicting pain. In fact, their reputation has seen them credited over the centuries with devices that are more mythical than medieval. From the rack to the rat, discover the most gruesome torture methods…
So, you’re a person living in the medieval period and you find yourself on the wrong side of the law, or simply on the wrong side of the powerful. What worries you most: being locked up in a cell, being fined or being publicly humiliated in the stocks? Or none of the above. There are punishments that are far more troubling – with brutal and deadly consequences. During this period, an appalling assortment of torture methods and devices were used to punish, extract confessions (regardless of the truth) and, perhaps most importantly, instil fear. They inflicted unspeakable horrors on their victims, so much so that we still feel their legacy to this day. Yet, contrary to popular belief, these methods were not ubiquitous forms of punishment in the medieval period. "I think torture is much less prevalent than we so often believe," explains Dr Hannah Skoda, speaking on an episode of the HistoryExtra podcast. “There’s a really horrible phrase in the legal records where it says someone was ‘put to the question’, which means that they’re going to be tortured. But even there, there’s a strong sense that this was something problematic and to be avoided if possible.” What’s more, some of the most notorious devices known today were never used in the medieval period at all. Still, when torture was employed it would be horrific for those ‘put to the question’ as they were stretched, crushed, or impaled. Let’s explore 10 of the most infamous medieval torture methods… The rack Arguably the most infamous of them all, the rack was introduced to England in the 15th century by the Duke of Exeter. As Dr Hannah Skoda explains, he was the constable of the Tower of London so the device became known as “The Duke of Exeter’s Daughter”. Read more | The clever medieval trick that destroyed the last stand of stubborn paganism in Europe Victims were laid out on a rectangular frame and their wrists and ankles tied with ropes at the top and bottom. The ropes were attached to a mechanical crank, which, when turned, stretched the body and pulled the joints beyond breaking point. As the interrogation process continued, the strain was increased, inflicting agony and forcing the victim to relent and spill their secrets. This relentless tension dislocated joints, snapped ligaments, and could even tear limbs from the body. The Judas cradle Just to look at this pyramid-shaped device is enough to make you wince. In medieval times, the threat of it alone could inspire people to confess to whatever the torturers wanted. The victim would be perched above the Judas Cradle, also known as the Judas Chair, and lowered – often by ropes – on to the spiky top. Their weight eventually forced the tip of the pyramid into their body, causing it to rip through the pelvis. There is much evidence in historical accounts that though this device varied in design, it was used across medieval Europe, but has been most associated with the Spanish Inquisition. The pear of anguish As the name suggests, this handheld metal contraption was in the shape of a pear – and allegedly caused a lot of anguish. It consisted of four ‘leaves’ that were joined at the base and unfurled, like a flower, with the turn of a screw. The pear was inserted into the victim’s mouth – or other orifices – and the leaves were opened to inflict excruciating pain and cause internal damage. While not typically fatal, it could cause enough pain for a confession or as a precursor to more lethal forms of torture. But the pear is not without its controversy, with some historians questioning whether it was a medieval torture device at all. The presence of springs in the design suggest that it might actually date to the early modern period. The brazen bull Legend has it that the brazen bull was invented long before the medieval period. In ancient Greece, Perillus of Athens came up with the idea and proposed it to the tyrant Phalaris as a form of execution. It did not go well, as Skoda explains: “Phalaris told Perillus to get inside to demonstrate it, which he rather stupidly did. And then he died a hideous and terrifying death by means which he had invented himself.” The hideous and terrifying death in question was to be roasted alive. The condemned would be placed inside the hollow metal bull and then a fire lit beneath, which gradually heated the metal and turned the bull into an oven. It is said Phalaris commanded Perillus to design the bull so that smoke rose in the form of incense. More grotesque additions to the spectacle were the pipes inside the bull, which channelled the victim’s scream to create a sound mimicking the bellowing of a bull, and how the thrashing of the suffering within caused the bull to appear alive. Famous for its Greek origins, was this device used in the medieval period, if at all? Historians have argued that knowledge of the brazen bull, like other torture devices, was kept alive as a cautionary tale – or as a means of showing the tyranny of rulers. Rat torture Unlike the more complicated pieces of apparatus in this list, the idea of the rat torture was elegant in its simplicity, but no less brutal. The aim was to force a hungry and desperate rat to eat its way through a victim’s body. The unfortunate recipient would be laid down and restrained, before the torturer trapped the rat on their stomach (possibly under a bucket). The trap was then heated until the rat, now panicking, desperately sought any way out they could. The best way would be down, through the stomach. This led to a drawn out and extremely painful death as the victim’s insides were eaten. The tongue tearer <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/09/GettyImages-1911056911-84073ad-e1726058155162.jpg" width="619" height="413" alt="The torture of Hans Bret, an Englishman captured in Antwerp in 1576. Bret sits chained to a rock where his tongue is removed with hot tongs. He was later he is burned at the stake." title="The torture of Hans Bret, an Englishman captured in Antwerp in 1576. Bret sits chained to a rock where his tongue is removed with hot tongs. He was later he is burned at the stake." /> The purpose of this tool, which resembles a pair of gardening shears, was as straightforward as the name suggests. The tongue tearer, which would be heated over a fire first, was designed to be clamped onto a person’s tongue and rip it out. The executioner twisted and pulled – whatever worked, and caused the most pain. This ended up being a useful way of dealing with those accused of blasphemy or spreading heretical ideas: silencing them in the most literal way possible. The wheel Also known as the breaking wheel or Catherine wheel, this especially gruesome form of execution device for criminals was used from antiquity up until the 19th century. Nothing more than a large wheel, like from a cart, it was a versatile tool to cause suffering. The victim could have it dropped on their limbs, almost certainly breaking them, or they could be tied to the spokes and beaten. Or both, of course. The wheel could be turned over a fire or pushed down a rocky hillside, while some versions included spikes that impaled the back. To conclude the horrific display, the wheel could then be hung as a warning to others. This was due to the belief, similar to crucifixion, that this prevented the deceased from the transition to resurrection. The thumbscrew Another simple yet brutally effective device, the thumbscrew is supposed to have originated in the Russian army before making its way to Europe. A person’s thumbs (or other digits) were placed between two metal bars that formed a vice, which would then be closed when a screw was tightened, crushing the bones. Variations included pointed spikes or nails to pierce the flesh. While not typically fatal, the thumbscrew was a wicked method of extracting confessions or punishing minor offences. The iron maiden Despite its reputation as one of the most recognisable of medieval torture devices, there is no evidence of the Iron Maiden being used during the period. According to Skoda: “The earliest reference [of it being used] seems to be 1802.” As the story goes, the victim was enclosed with an upright iron coffin with an interior lined with spikes, which were driven into the body when the doors were shut. This did not mean instant death, though. The spikes were of specific lengths to pierce vital organs while prolonging the suffering, with it taking hours for the victim to bleed out. It gets worse. Two spikes in the Iron Maiden were positioned to pierce the eyes. The heretic’s fork Used during the Spanish Inquisition, the heretic’s fork looked like a double-ended fork, each with two prongs, held by a leather strap that went around the victim’s neck. One end went under the chin and the other against the breastbone. Once on, the wearer could neither speak nor sleep, as any movement would drive the forks into their flesh. Intended to punish and extract confessions from those accused of heresy, the method was not meant to kill, but torment – pushing the victim to the brink of madness. Want to learn more about medieval torture devices and methods? Listen to Dr Hannah Skoda on this episode of the HistoryExtra podcast.
HistoryExtra Academy video lecture: faith and worship in late-medieval England
HistoryExtra Academy late-medieval England course
In her first lecture Professor Hannah Skoda explains how religion sat at the heart of medieval life, and explores the cult of John Schorne, the humble Buckinghamshire rector credited with forcing the Devil inside a boot
View Green Video on the source website Explore more learning from week one of our course on late-medieval England Black Death facts: your guide to "the worst catastrophe in recorded history" – reading time 9 mins The winter storms that rocked medieval Europe – reading time 6 mins The medieval church calendar: a guide to the holy days – reading time 5 mins Podcast episode: Margery Kempe: medieval mystic – listening time 53 mins The medieval church: your guide to religion and worship in the Middle Ages – reading time 8 mins
The Decameron: sex, plague, and a medieval Love Island
With the release of a new Netflix drama based on Boccaccio's The Decameron, Rebecca Bowen explains why this text was a medieval bestseller, which helped people come to terms with the horrors of the plague
What would you do if your home town was ravaged by plague? Would you lock your doors and hide? Run for the hills? Or accept that the end was nigh and party? Boccaccio's The Decameron - a medieval bestseller written during the Black Death - considers all these options. With the launch of a new Netflix series based on the pivotal work, David Musgrove chats to historian Rebecca Bowen to find out more – and uncover why its author thought that risqué stories could help people come to terms with the horror of the plague. You can hear our podcast on medieval keep fit here
Anne Curry traces the story of Joan of Arc, the medieval peasant girl who took war-torn France by storm
Joan of Arc has gone down in history as the virgin saviour of France – a patriotic martyr who was unjustly burnt at the stake at the hands of her Anglo-Burgundian opponents. But there's more to the story than that. Speaking to Emily Briffett, historian Anne Curry charts the extraordinary rise and fall of the young peasant girl from Domrémy, whose visions and prophecies brought her face to face with King Charles VII and led to her spiritual leadership over the armies of France before ending in her unfortunate demise.
The Capetians: everything you wanted to know
Everything you wanted to know about history (podcast series)
Justine Firnhaber-Baker answers listener questions on the long-standing and influential medieval French dynasty
How did the Capetian dynasty hold on to the French throne for such a long time during the Middle Ages? How did deep-seated religious beliefs shape their rule? And what was the ‘Capetian miracle’? Speaking to Emily Briffett, Justine Firnhaber-Baker answers listener questions on the influential French dynasty – from how they popularised the name 'Phillip' and the iconic fleur-de-lis, to their religiously-inspired 'royal touch'.
Plague, leprosy & murder: unlocking the secrets of medieval bones
Broadcaster and academic Professor Alice Roberts explores what the study of human bones can tell us about disease and violence in medieval Britain
What secrets can medieval human remains unlock? With exciting new developments in the science of palaeopathology, researchers are able to glean much more from human bones than ever before. Speaking to David Musgrove, Professor Alice Roberts explores what the study of these bones can tell us about disease and violence in medieval Britain – considering how learning about historical diseases, like the Black Death and leprosy, can help us to understand and tackle modern diseases too. Alice Roberts is the author of Crypt: Life, death and disease in the Middle Ages (Simon & Schuster, 2024) Buy now on Bookshop.org Buy now on Amazon Buy now on Waterstones
The medieval church: your guide to religion and worship in the Middle Ages
Professor Nicholas Orme answers key questions about religion and worship in the Middle Ages
Why was the Church so important in medieval England? The Church in the Middle Ages was more than just a way of connecting with God; it was a whole belief system. Christianity in medieval times didn’t just focus on people’s relationship with God. It also set out to explain history, science, ethics, how one should behave, and so on. Whole areas of study that we would now separate into science or sociology or politics, fell under religion in the medieval centuries. What’s more, the Church was responsible for many things which, nowadays, we would look to the government to care for, such as education, morality, and charity. The Church also had an important role in medieval life, which it has somewhat lost today. Nowadays, there are lots of different things you can be doing on a Sunday morning rather than attending church services. In a rural community of the Middle Ages, the local church would have been a major place to meet and socialise. Many churches developed social organisations of maidens (girls aged from 12 up to marriage), young men of similar ages, and married women or ‘wives’. So church was not just a place where people worshipped on a Sunday; it was a place where friendship groups could gather, too. Read more | What was life like for a medieval housewife? Where and how did the Church get its wealth? The Church was not a single body, so you cannot say that it was rich any more than you can say that British society today is rich. There were enormous variations of wealth within the Church and its various institutions. At one extreme, there were archbishops and bishops who received huge salaries, although they had to pay the costs of their administrations out of their own pockets. At the other end of the scale, poor chaplains and curates earned about £3–£5 a year, which wasn’t much different to the annual income of artisans and labourers. Monasteries, too, might be rich or barely able to survive. There were huge variations in wealth. Did you know? The Church was one of the main distributors of charity during the medieval period and gave out alms – such as money or food – to the poor and needy. Hospitals, run by religious orders, cared for the sick and poor, and gave shelter to travellers. As to where the money came from, the Church possessed endowments. Individuals over the centuries gave lands and money, particularly to support monasteries since monks could not go out into the world and earn money for themselves. The clergy of the parish churches were supported by tithes and offerings. Tithes were the most important part of their income, allowing them to receive a tenth of agricultural production – corn, barley and rye, and one tenth of newborn animals – calves, piglets, lambs, as well as honey, milk, cheese and so on. Offerings of money formed a smaller part of clergy income. They were made four times of the year and at baptisms, marriages and funerals. Parish sizes and wealth varied hugely from one to another, so being a parish priest didn’t indicate what income you might receive. Incomes could vary from as much as £80 or £100 a year to as little as £3 or £4. What would the sensory experience of a medieval church have been like? Ideally, churches were to be neat and colourful, with hangings of coloured fabric on the altar. Clergy wore coloured vestments for mass and some other services. But it all depended on how much a church could afford. It is often thought that the inside walls of all medieval churches were decorated, and they were up to a point, but sometimes the decoration would have been quite simple – imitation brickwork, plaster or stencil patterns, for example. There are many records of churches lacking watertight roofs, window glass and satisfactory furnishings, and some would have looked rather shabby. Read more | Dan Jones on the surprisingly modern Middle Ages Inside, churches would have smelt of damp, candle smoke, incense and possibly the bodies of dead worthies buried beneath the floor. At a well- attended service you would also have sung in royal and noble chapels, from which it spread to cathedrals, monasteries, and the wealthier parish churches. Many lesser churches can have heard it only from visiting singers on special occasions. Was attending church compulsory? From puberty you were expected to go to church on Sundays and for religious festivals. There were about 40 or 50 important festivals in the church calendar, so for about 90 days of the year, you would be expected to be in church, at least for mass in the morning. However, the Church had to accept that it could not impose complete attendance and exceptions had to be made for shepherds, fishermen and servants. In practice, making people attend church was difficult. A priest could refuse to hear their confessions or report them to the church courts where they might be fined or made to do public penance, but it was a long-winded process. There were always some people in a parish who did not go to church very often. Attending church on Easter Sunday was absolutely compulsory for all adults, however, so almost everyone would have been there on that festival. Were children required to attend church? Small children were often taken to church because they could not be safely left at home. Equally, there are records of accidents that happened when parents left them at home, possibly in the care of an elder sibling. As mentioned, children did not have to attend church until puberty: indeed 15th and 16th-century congregations could be unforgiving about the restlessness and noise of younger children in church. Read more | The clever medieval trick that destroyed the last stand of stubborn paganism in Europe There were no services specially for children except on Saint Nicholas Day (6 December) and the Feast of the Holy Innocents (28 December), when a boy would be dressed as a bishop, with a mitre and staff, and preside over the service with a retinue of other boys. When the Reformation came, however, the first Book of Common Prayer – in English – in 1549, decreed that parish priests should hold regular classes in church to provide religious instruction. What happened during a medieval church service? We know little about how churches were used before 1300. Until then, the likelihood is that there were not many seats, except for the nobility and gentry who sat in the chancel with the clergy. Instead, the congregation may have mostly stood, unless they brought their own stools, and knelt at significant points in the mass. The most important of these was the point at which the bread and wine of the Eucharist was consecrated and held up by the priest to be venerated. Read more | Social mobility in the Middle Ages: could medieval people improve their station? Seating seems to have become more common during the 14th century, and normal during the 15th. Congregations wished to imitate the seated nobility, and people wanted seats that recognised their social rank. Parish church authorities were eventually obliged to put in general seating and grade it accordingly. The wealthy would sit (or stand or kneel) in seats at the front, with their inferiors further back. Seating was allocated by the churchwardens, the lay officers who looked after the church fabric and furnishings, and fees were usually charged for seats. As for the religious experience, services were conducted in Latin mand took place in the chancel at the east end of the church, which had a big screen separating it from the western nave where most of the congregation were placed. People were not expected to follow the text of the service or say responses as they would do today. That role was performed by the parish clerk, with the congregation watching from a distance. If you were pious, you might bring a rosary or a prayer book with you and say quiet prayers, so there would have been a subdued murmur of voices in the nave alongside the service itself. What most people do not realise is that, by the 15th century, the Latin mass included some material in English. At the beginning, all were sprinkled with holy water, and heard an English verse reminding them of their baptism. Then, in the middle of the service, there were announcements, and prayers for the pope, the king, the crops and individuals in need. There was sometimes (but not necessarily often) a sermon. At the end of the service, an ordinary loaf was blessed and divided up, another English verse was said, and everyone was given a fragment of the bread. Medieval congregations were not given the communion bread and wine at mass, hence the ‘substitute’ of the holy loaf. Only at Easter did the congregation receive the communion bread, and even then not the wine. Were men and women separated during church services? This is hard to answer. Sometimes they were, and sometimes they weren’t. Wealthy people do not seem to have been separated according to sex because we hear of nobility, gentry and merchants sitting with their wives in the chancel or side chapels. The rest of the congregation may well have been separated, but the practice probably varied from church to church. At times when they were separated, women would usually have been placed on the north side of the church, and men on the south side. The reason for this is that the north side was considered to be the ‘safe’ side, while the south was considered ‘unsafe’. The rood – the figure of Christ on the cross set above the entrance to the chancel – always faced west. A figure of the Virgin Mary was placed at his right (north), with Saint John the Evangelist to his left (south). The north side, the side presided over by the Virgin Mary, was considered to be the side of the saved, and women were seated here because they were deemed to be more open to temptation. Men were placed on the ‘unsafe’ side because they were reckoned to be better able to stand up to evil. But equally there were other customs that dictated where you sat, such as certain seats being tied to particular properties. Going to church was a very different experience from what it is today. It centred on ceremony not on instruction. Yet through regular attendance, the form and much of the meaning of services could become understood, and for literate people, at least, services could be supplemented by reading instructive books at home. Nicholas Orme is emeritus professor of history at the University of Exeter. His most recent book is Going to Church in Medieval England (Yale University Press, 2021) Interview by HistoryExtra content director Dr Dave Musgrove. Words by BBC History Revealed editor Charlotte Hodgman This article was first published in the Christmas 2021 issue of BBC History Revealed Explore more learning from week one of our course on late-medieval England Video lecture: Faith and worship in late-medieval England – watching time 19 mins Black Death facts: your guide to "the worst catastrophe in recorded history" – reading time 9 mins The winter storms that rocked medieval Europe – reading time 6 mins The medieval church calendar: a guide to the holy days – reading time 5 mins Podcast episode: Margery Kempe: medieval mystic – listening time 53 mins
Eggs, bunnies and Jesus Christ: the history and origins of Easter
How does Easter relate to Jesus? Where does the word ‘Easter’ come from? And when did we start eating Easter eggs? Historian Emma J Wells explores the origins of this springtime celebration…
Easter was originally a celebration of Ishtar, the Babylonian goddess of sex, fertility, war, and religiously-sanctioned prostitutes, right? Wrong. Well, bunnies and eggs can’t possibly have anything to do with this most holy festival commemorating Jesus Christ’s resurrection from the dead, then. Actually… they do. Like its festive and spooky cousins, Christmas and Halloween, Easter evolved over centuries, blending Christian and non-Christian elements together. Hence the origins of the springtime celebration are far more complicated than you might expect, due in part to misconceptions which continue to circulate. So, let’s put the bunnies, eggs and all other frivolities in one basket in search of an explanation. This, in a nut-, or should I say, eggshell, is how the festival of Easter evolved… Where does the word ‘Easter’ come from? The term seemingly derives from the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring, Eostre, who was celebrated as she escaped Winter’s harsh clutches. But Eostre wasn’t quite the pagan deity who, we are commonly told, transformed a bird into an egg-laying hare companion, e.g. the forerunner to the Easter bunny. In fact, the only actual surviving mention of Eostre comes from 8th-century monk the Venerable Bede, whose writings suggest the English people called the fourth month Eosturmonath or Eostre-Month (marking the spring equinox) after the goddess, and feasts were celebrated in her honour. Where did the Anglo-Saxons come from? The Northumbrian monk clearly had some influence, as the name stuck – at least in the English-speaking world. Many cultures, however, refer to the season by terms translated from ‘Pesach’ (Hebrew) or ‘Passover’: the Jewish celebration of the liberation of the Children of Israel from Egypt by Moses as told in the book of Exodus. Passover was celebrated on the first full moon after the vernal (spring) equinox, therefore on the 14th day of the seventh Hebrew month of Nisan. The Christian calendar was also constructed around Passover, as Jesus, its own Messiah, similarly freed humanity from bondage, sin and evil. Listen | Historian and author Tom Holland discusses the history of Christianity – he argues that it has had a transformative and enduring impact on the western mindset How does Easter relate to Jesus? When was the Last Supper? The Last Supper was the final meal Jesus shared with his disciples before his Crucifixion, when the bread and goblet of wine were dispersed as elements of his own body on the day now known as Maundy Thursday, named from the Latin ‘commandment’ which Jesus gave to his disciples at the meal. The New Testament gospels are clear that Jesus held the Last Supper; was crucified at Golgotha (Calvary) in Jerusalem (on Good Friday from the Old English ‘guode’ meaning ‘holy’) and resurrected three days later from the tomb in which he had been interred (on Easter Sunday) during preparations for Passover. The synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) actually present the Last Supper as a Passover Seder (Jewish ceremonial meal), though some items appear missing. Christ was therefore perceived as the New Pascha (Latin for ‘Passover’), and the celebration of his resurrection became the first Christian feast. In turn, Easter was referred to as the ‘Paschal month’ for Christ as the paschal or sacrificed lamb (of God). A history of the Bible: who wrote it and when? <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2020/04/JesusLastSupperEaster-aa2c150-scaled.jpg" width="2560" height="1620" alt="The Last Supper" title="'La Sagrada Cena' (The Last Supper), 1562 (c1934), commissioned for the high altar of the church of San Esteban of Valencia. Jesus sits with his apostles consecrating the sacred host at The Last Supper and final meal shared with his Apostles in Jerusalem before his crucifixion. (Photo by The Print Collector/Getty Images)" /> When is Easter celebrated? Easter is held on the Sunday after the first ecclesiastical full moon (which keeps, more or less, in step with the astronomical Moon) following the vernal (spring) equinox (on or around 21 March) of the northern hemisphere, when the sun is exactly above the equator, and day and night are of almost equal length. Listen | What might have happened to Jesus’s body following his crucifixion in the first century AD? Historian and author Tom Holland investigates on this podcast. Who decided that Easter would be celebrated on this day? As Jesus was crucified during the Passover festival and resurrected thereafter, it was logical to commemorate these events in close proximity. But when, exactly? Passover was celebrated according to the Jewish lunar calendar which didn’t correlate with the Christian Julian solar calendar, thereby causing confusion. In 325 CE, Emperor Constantine, the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity, decided to take charge of the matter. He convened the Council of Nicaea and decreed that Christ’s resurrection was far too important to be connected with the festival of another faith. Since the days following the winter solstice gradually became longer and lighter, this provided ideal symbolism for the rebirth of Christ, “the light of the world”, as clarified in John’s Gospel. When did Christianity first arrive in Britain? Constantine thus ordained that Easter was to fall in close proximity to a similar significant time in the solar year: the Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox. So, did the issues surrounding the calculation of the Easter date end with the Nicaea decree? No – confusion rumbled on. Nicaea only confirmed the date, not the method of calculation. So, on which Sunday should they celebrate? Disagreements emerged as differing methods – associated with the calendars of the Roman and Irish Christian missionaries prevalent in England’s Northumbrian kingdoms – resulted in Easter being celebrated twice (after elaborate tables known as ‘Computus’ were constructed by each in hopes of correctly identifying the important date). Strife over the differentiation led Oswiu, king of Northumbria (654/55–670), to call upon all leading churchmen and nobles in 664 to the double monastery of Streaneshalch at Whitby, governed then by the Abbess Hild, in an effort to head off any further divisions within his kingdom. The Synod of Whitby, as it became known, favoured Rome’s calculations for Easter. Of course, complications didn’t exactly end there, but there was some consensus – and, ever since, Easter has been held on the first Sunday following the full moon (Paschal Moon) on or after the vernal equinox. Listen | Archaeologist David Petts and Lisa Wilkins of DigVentures discuss an extraordinary Viking-era discovery that’s been made on the monastic site of Lindisfarne in Northumbria Why do we go to church at Easter? When did Easter church services first begin? In the northern hemisphere, each year the end of winter’s darkness was met with excitement over the coming of spring’s light. By the Middle Ages, it was only natural to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus at this seasonal time, with religious services mirroring the changes. During the three days of Holy Week leading up to Easter Sunday – named the Triduum – the medieval populace would spend a vast amount of time attending church, and for the duration of this most holy period in the Christian calendar. The midnight/early hour offices of Matins and Lauds (essentially, morning prayers) were combined and pushed to a more convenient time on preceding evenings so that worshippers could attend an unforgettable liturgical event named Tenebrae (Latin for ‘darkness’ or ‘shadows’). What is the oldest church in England? Tenebrae services were a solemn affair: they centred around the gradual extinguishing of candles set upon a candleholder known as a hearse, in commemoration and prolonged meditation of Christ’s suffering – only the central candle remained lit, representing Christ as the light of the world. Easter Sunday service then commenced at dawn, with the congregation gathering outside the church for hymns before entering for a joyful Mass. Dismissed in grace and forgiveness, worshippers filed out to begin celebratory feasting. What do Easter eggs represent? One of the primary tropes associated with this season of renewal was the egg from which life bursts forth. This was no Christian invention – the symbol had been used by Anglo-Saxon pagans to celebrate spring, and likely even earlier. Identifying exactly when the connection between Easter and the empty shell as a metaphor for Christ’s tomb began is difficult, though such links abound in medieval England. Eggs were one of the foods forbidden during Lent, the 40-day fasting period of reflection and penitential preparation leading up to Easter. In the medieval period, any eggs laid during Lent were boiled for preservation so that when Easter Sunday rolled around, eggs were back on the menu. And eggs weren’t just used as a food source: a rural practice known as ‘pace-egging’ (after ‘paschal’) was common, where costumed groups roamed villages for eggs then given as gifts (similar to ‘mumming’) to the church as Good Friday offerings and to the lord of the manor. Historical recipes: how to make Russian Easter sweet bread Kulich And many of these eggs were brightly painted; a practice truly ancient. Red was used to symbolise the blood of Christ, first by early Christians then the Orthodox Church; while in Germanic regions, they were coloured green and hung on trees on Maundy or ‘Green’ Thursday. In England, they were often boiled with onions for a golden patina, though at Easter 1290, King Edward I purchased a colossal 450 eggs to be decorated with colours or gold leaf for distribution amongst his household. Eggs then seemingly found their way into party games. There are suggestions that 16th-century German Protestant reformer Martin Luther organised egg hunts for his congregation, primarily to teach the lesson of Christ’s resurrection in emulation of the disciples discovering the risen Christ in the tomb on Easter morning. Somehow, the idea formed between bunnies or hares and the laying of those eggs. Both were ancient symbols of rebirth in the spring, and hares were particularly associated with seasonal rituals and even the Virgin Mary because of their astonishing powers of fertility – hares are, of course, known for being immensely fertile, hence the phrase “at it like rabbits”! Sex and the (Vatican) City: a brief history of clerical celibacy Where did the Easter bunny originate? And when did we start eating chocolate Easter eggs? As explained above, hares became associated with Easter because of their powers of fertility. But the entire concept of the ‘Easter Bunny’ is much more recent. He likely became the large colourful rabbit we know and love today due to American influence, but 17th-century Heidelberg-based physicians Georg Franck von Franckenau and Johannes Richier in De ovis paschalibus (‘About Easter eggs’) did describe hares hiding baskets of brightly painted eggs for children to find. Yet there is an earlier reference (from 1572) to an Easter ‘Hare’ which appeared at night to ‘lay’ eggs, again for children to search. This continued as German settlers came to America and continued the tradition, thereby spreading it throughout the nation. It is also from them that our beloved Swiss-made ‘chocolate bunnies’ derive, after they fashioned Easter cakes in the shape of a hare which was shown ‘laying' (or should that be, excreting) its egg-shaped droppings. But it was not until the Victorian era that Easter eggs and hunts became popular in England. Historic traditions and religious celebrations infiltrated the new concept of ‘family time’ owing to a higher disposable income. So as Queen Victorian was seen to hold Easter egg hunts for her children around her many palaces, the population followed suit. Eggs were sold more as toys and novelty gifts – some containing dolls – before they turned edible, first in France and Germany, then crossing the channel in 1873, when Fry’s (J S Fry of Bristol) produced the first chocolate Easter egg in the UK. Read more | When women tied up men for Jesus: why Henry VIII tried to ban the medieval festival of Hocktide Emma J Wells is an ecclesiastical and architectural historian at the University of York