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Hello, I'm Matt Lewis.
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And I'm Dr. Eleanor Jaenega and we're.
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Just popping up here to tell you some insider info.
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Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com subscribe or find the link in the show Notes for this episode.
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Hey, what's up?
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D
It's Mario Lopez. Back to school is an exciting time, but it can also be overwhelming and kids may feel isolated, a vulnerability that human traffickers can exploit. Human trafficking doesn't always look like what you expect. Everyday moments can become opportunities for someone with bad intentions. Whether you're a parent, teacher, coach or neighbor, check in, ask questions, stay connected. Blue Campaign is a national awareness initiative that provides resources to help recognize suspected instances of human trafficking. Learn the signs and how to report@dhs.gov blue campaign.
- [01:57]
E
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- [02:22]
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People hello, I'm Dr. Eleanor Jennica and welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We uncover the greatest mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and the latest groundbreaking research. From the Vikings to the Normans, from Kings to Popes to the Crusades, we delve into the rebellions, plots and murders that tell us who we really were and how we got here. Before we get going today, a word of warning. Are we talking about medieval saints? Yes. Does this mean that this conversation is entirely Holy. No, it does not. We've got a little bit of fruity language and some stories that involve discussion of genitalia, so you might want to have a listen and see if little ears are up for it this week. Back in January, Amy Jeffs, the author of Saints A Legendary Of Heroes, Humans and Magic, joined Matt Lewis here on Gone Medieval to tell us all about St. Edward the Confessor and a few other saintly characters associated with the first wintry months of the year. Then in April, Amy spoke to me about springtime saints, including the dragon slaying St. George. Absolutely love him. And in July, Amy returned to talk to Matt about summertime saints, particularly St. Christopher. Do go back and have a listen to those episodes if you haven't done so already. And today, to celebrate this newly arrived season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Amy Jeffs is here again to tell me more about Franz's miraculous evangelist, St. Martin of Tours, and St. Ursula, a princess so committed to martyrdom that she would lead an army of 11,000 virgins into death, allegedly, and provide the world with an inexhaustible supply of relics. But first, what would autumn be without Bonfire Night? And what would bonfire Night be without falling fireworks and the spinning, sputtering Catherine wheel? For that particular autumnal custom, we have to know something about St. Catherine of Alexandria. This is her story.
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Night presses down on Alexandria like a velvet shroud. The city, once home to poets and gods, now cowers under the shadow of the emperor Maxentius. The stones of its streets bear witness to the spilt blood of Christians. Among the flickering torchlit marble colonnades, a devout young noblewoman in unblemished white moves swiftly. Catherine is a daughter of privilege, a scholar without equal who can humble priest and philosopher alike. In these early hours, word has reached her that Maxentius himself is in the temple, commanding all to kneel. Catherine bursts in, her eyes flashing like drawn steel. Her voice rings out to the furthest corner of the hall. Sire, your gods are powerless and blind. If truth is what you seek, then test me. Let your wisest abate me. If they can better my words, I will kneel. The emperor is insulted, amused even. Over the following days, he summons 50 of the empire's greatest philosophers to face Catherine's challenge. She is unperturbed, measured, irresistible. She speaks of one God, a grace beyond the reach of swords, of love that outlives empires one by one. The philosophers falter. Their questions turn to stammers, and in the silent shadows, some cross themselves unnoticed. Maxentius Laughter turns to rage. He orders his faltering philosophers to be burned alive. When Catherine refuses to yield, the Emperor tries another weapon. Temptation, gold, jewels, even his hand in marriage. But her voice is steady. I am wed to Christ. My heart is his alone. The Emperor is humiliated and calls for a new torture. The breaking wheel. Four great spiked wheels interlock to rip the body asunder. With each turn, Catherine is bound to the device. The crowd murmur prayers. Guards avert their eyes. The wheels begin to turn slowly, creaking. And then an eruption of steel and wood. The wheels fly apart. Spikes tear through Pillars crush. Statues impale their operator. In the heart of the wreckage, Catherine raises herself untouched, haloed in clouds of torchlit dust. The people roar in amazement. But Maxentius will not relent. He orders Catherine to be dragged to the place of execution. As the blade falls to silence her once and for all. Some witness a dove rise from her body. Others speak of sweet oil seeping into the sand. In time, Catherine's story travels beyond Alexandria. Carried by traders, priests and poets, she becomes the patron saint of learning, of young women, of those who would rather die than betray the truth. She will forever be depicted with a broken wheel, a sign that wit can defy cruelty, that faith can shatter the engines of tyranny. And in their darkest hours, when injustice looms, peasant and scholar alike whisper her name. Catherine, trusting that her courage might yet be theirs.
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B
Amy welcome back to Gone Medieval.
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G
Oh, it's good to be here.
- [09:06]
B
I just can't stay away from you. But I'm really excited to have one of my favorite guests to talk about some of my favorite saints today. It really seems like the autumnal saints are kind of the ones for me.
- [09:18]
G
But of that spooky season free song.
- [09:20]
B
Absolutely. And I think that we would be remiss if we didn't kind of start with one of the Middle Ages heaviest hitters, I think, who's St. Catherine of Alexandria. And St. Catherine of Alexandria has always been one of my favorites because she's the patron saint of scholars.
- [09:35]
G
Yes.
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B
So, you know, nerds like me love to talk about her. And her Facebook day is on the 25th of November, and that is about 20 days after Guy Fawkes night here in the UK. And I think a lot of people would be most familiar with St. Catherine because of her association with the Catherine wheel. Can you tell us a little bit about the relationship between St. Catherine and her wheels?
- [10:03]
G
Yes. So in Jacobus Varad's 13th century golden legend account of Catherine of Alexandria's martyrdom, we're told that she has taken on the Governor of Alexandria, arguing with him about his rejection of Christianity, his desire for everyone to worship the Roman gods. And he's imprisoned her for 12 days. She's managed to, in that time, convert the prison guard and the governor's wife. And he brings her out to this great arena and there's always people watching, and he's going to spectacularly torture her. And the device he's brought in to torture her with is a contraption made of four wheels moving sort of in contrary motion to each other with spikes on them so that she will be ripped apart in front of the crowd. But she prays, and an angel descends from heaven and destroys the contraption and explodes in front of the crowd, gives the crowd a completely unexpected spectacle. And so this is the device. I mean, what happens then is that he chops off her head, which is more effective. And I think it's really interesting, actually, this question of what kills a martyr in these early stories, and that something with such direct human agency as a sword being swung through the air is effective. And I suppose that a theologian could comment on this, but maybe you, Eleanor, this kind of free will element of execution, of direct execution, but this torture device is just sitting there, waiting to be smoked by an angel.
- [11:35]
B
Oh, yeah, because all of these saints, when we have, you know, these archetypical, incredibly popular in the medieval period, saints from the late antique period and then the Christianization of Rome, you get them to have these fantastic tortures. You know, I'm thinking St. Bartholomew and getting his skin flayed off, or St. Margaret bursting out of the dragon, that is Satan. And they all just get killed in humdrum kind of way right after that, because it's meant to be shown that they are able to work miracles in order to be a saint, they need to be able to work a miracle. And these big bombastic displays of, you know, bursting out of the belly of a dragon, breaking this wheel in front of a crowd of onlookers. That's important to showing that they have access to holy support and that they can create miracles. But it's also important for their sainthood that they become martyrs. They need to die, and they need to kind of die specifically at the hands of humans, as you say. So it needs to not just be direct interference from Satan in the form of a dragon. It needs to not just be something for sport. It has to be something where they really double down even after something terrible has been diffused.
- [12:49]
G
Yeah. And I think that martyrdom then creates the Opportunity for that amazing juxtaposition of the visible versus the invisible, or the literal versus the kind of celestial, I suppose. In Prudentius's 4th century account of two Spanish martyrs, he writes how at the moment that they died, their names were written in blood on earth and in gold in heaven. That's the moment where the plane fractures and they become their true selves in the celestial sphere. The torture and the suffering creates this opportunity to display the saints, Virtus, their power, that power that is at once spiritual but embodied, and which makes their relics so important.
- [13:34]
B
Absolutely. And I think in the case of St. Catherine, this is one of our ultimate important saints. She comes up over and over again in the medieval period, and I don't suppose that's any surprise. I mean, her legend is incredible. You have this really intensely intelligent woman who has the ability to persuade those around her, which is why she becomes associated with scholars, because she understands the legalities of Roman law as well as Christianity, and she is able to make arguments for these things within a very specific legalistic structure. She's defiant. She's not afraid of speaking truth to power. And she has this incredible endurance. You know, she's able to put up with over and over again, these tortures, these slings and arrows, this sword of Damocles, as it were, holding over her head. And these are really the things that her memory reflects in the Middle Ages. Right?
- [14:29]
G
Yes. And I think there's a real temptation when we're looking at historical sources to take too seriously the first resonance they have with our modern experience. And I think with St. Catherine, we have this. I certainly had when I embarked on this research project to write the book I've written about the saints, the sense of, wow, St. Catherine, she's this feminist icon. Didn't women sort of kneel before her and think, I, too, should become a great rhetorician. I, too, should be a great scholar? It was in reading Eamon Duffy more closely and talking about these saints that they're not intended as role models. These kinds of saints, not these extravagant martyrs. They are protectors. And one of the stories I thought about and kind of reimagined in the book was to do with the Shrine of St. James Compostella and about a pilgrim called Gerald who gets tricked by the devil into cutting off his own penis.
- [15:25]
B
Well, we've all been there.
- [15:26]
G
Well, the devil is pretending to be St. James, and so he thinks he's being told by his beloved saint, who he's made pilgrimage to every year of his adult life, to do this thing in penance for having fornicated. And so he's like, okay, if that's what I must do to atone for this sin. Then the act kills him and he goes off his soul. And in medieval ways of imagining things, we can imagine a little naked Gerald. I do not know whether in soul form he has his janitors or not. He's been taken across this landscape. Any second, he's expecting to see the jaws of hell, realizing something's gone terribly wrong. But then he realizes that somebody's pursuing the demon. And he looks over his shoulder, and he sees the real St. James kind of, you know, riding on a cloud. And he drives the demons away from hell and into this kind of, like, celestial version of Rome with the Basilica of St. Peter, but the heavenly version and the Virgin Mary sitting in front of the basilica in front of a beautiful meadow. She's enthroned. She's looking super majestic, and she's got the kind of heavenly tribunal set up in front of her. And the demons with Gerald's little soul among them, sort of shoved into a pen. And they are the kind of the criminals, I suppose, but they want to argue, to take Gerald with them. They're saying, he's ours. And St. James says, no, he stands in front of the Virgin and says, she's my pilgrim. And he advocates for Gerald, says he was deceived by the devil, these demons came up with a foul trick, and you should let him live. So then Gerald wakes back up, and he comes back to life on the road to Compostella. And it does say that his genitals never did grow back. But anyway, looking at that story made me realize is that you have Catherine arguing for you at the heavenly tribunal. She's going to argue the devil out of the room. He doesn't stand a chance. And so this may be what we're seeing here is this acceptance that you're not going to be Catherine. You're going to need some help on the other side, and you're going to want her. You're going to light candles for her and pray to her. Yeah.
- [17:31]
B
She essentially is a lawyer for your soul, right?
- [17:34]
G
Yeah, she. To a lawyer.
- [17:36]
B
Yeah. And I think an interesting way to think about her, and she's one of the holy helpers in the Middle Ages, so one of the ones that you really call on in desperate times. And I think a great way of thinking about them is kind of something akin to superheroes now, where the idea when you see a superhero movie or something isn't that you yourself are going to be the superhero. The idea is that there are these characteristics that humanity has that are overarching, that we can all sort of call upon. And that, to me, is what is on display with St. Catherine. She's legendary in this particularized way because of what she's capable of doing.
- [18:12]
G
And I'd say she's also, I think, in a medieval way of thinking about it, supermanly. The fact that she can argue so well shouldn't be a woman's skill in a way that's like a lot of these female virgin saints have shown their ability to overcome feminine frailty and take on the male ability to live in the desert, to undergo great physical hardship or think really cleverly, you know.
- [18:35]
B
But one of the things we certainly see over and over within medieval art in relationship to Catherine is the wheel itself. And indeed, this is how one identifies her. I'm always talking about how medieval saints, especially women, are almost always interchangeable. Right. Because in order to be a saint, you must have been beautiful, because to be holy is to be divine and imperfect, understanding with God. And so that means you're hot because, you know, form reflects nature. And so they're always blonde, they always have a high forehead and so on and so forth. And so the way that, you know, that you're dealing with Catherine is that the wheel will be around there somewhere. You know, sometimes she's wearing a beautiful dress with wheels all over it, sometimes she's standing next to the wheel. But you see the wheel in art. But it's also something that people personally want to keep on them as a reminder.
- [19:21]
G
Yeah. The thing that's coming into my mind is the pilgrim badge. When I was working with the Pilgrim souvenir collection at the British Museum. I mean, it might not be a pilgrim badge, let's say, devotional badge of a little wheel. I live near Bristol in. I think it was in the 1890s when the harbour was dredged, or I think it was drained to be for something to happen. They found a whole load of medieval devotional badges in the mud, including a Catherine badge, which is on display in the em shed. I don't know whether this is something to indicate membership of a confraternity or just a personal devotional allegiance. Maybe it falls under the same category as St. George badges or badges of St. Christopher. Yeah, I think it's just generally exceedingly popular saint.
- [20:06]
B
So she does become associated oftentimes with, for example, educational institutions or guilds. So, I mean, I think this is one of the reasons why we're identifying these badges, not necessarily as pilgrim badges, but they could be devotional because you don't know. This might just mean that you're in some guild who particularly love St. Catherine, because St. Catherine is so clever and guild members are so clever. This is the sort of person that you would pray to. This is the sort of person who would be overlooking, for example, universities we often see her associated with. So maybe it just means you're kind of a clever person and you want everybody to know. Or maybe it means you've gone on some kind of pilgrimage. Who knows? Who knows?
- [20:45]
G
And that is the delightful thing about this mystery. We know that, that her cult was really popularized. So she died, said to have died in 305. In the 6th century, a monastery is built in Sinai called St. Catherine's Monastery. Her body was said to have been found nearby with her hair still growing. It had been born there by an angel. Obviously this monastery becomes the kind of gateway to Jerusalem for pilgrims traveling to the Middle East.
- [21:16]
B
Is that how her cult really develops?
- [21:19]
G
You have this 6th century monastery established in Sinai. It becomes known because it's on a pilgrimage route. So it becomes known to northwestern Europeans traveling to Jerusalem. But in the 11th century, a church in Rouen acquires her relics. And this is what really establishes her cult in northwestern Europe. But into the later Middle Ages, the cult of saints becomes less dependent on relics and more image fueled. That's when her cult really takes on this new power. Because you've got every parish church will have an image of Catherine on the wall or on a panel. And so there's this possibility to venerate Catherine wherever you are, really.
- [21:58]
B
Do we have any evidence that St. Catherine was more popular with women than she was with men? Is this something modern to say, oh, wow, it's incredible, there's a woman. Surely this is something to do with women, or is she one for all comers?
- [22:12]
G
I haven't read anything in particular on that. The first thing that comes to mind is that a saint like Margaret of Antioch is particularly associated with women. But I think it would also be wrong to assume that the saints evoked in Labour, of whom St Margaret is one necessarily had to be women, because we know also that women in labour were praying to St. Stephen. Or there's another one, St. Julius, I think.
- [22:34]
B
Well, I hate to move on from St. Catherine because I could talk about her all day, but we need to talk about Saint Martin, Saint Martin of Tours. He's one of these heavy hitters and we see him come up on 11 November. Can you tell me a little bit more about him? Because one of the things that I think is really cool about St. Martin is that he's not a martyr, which is like a, you know, very, very rare for the antique Saints.
- [22:59]
G
So, yeah. St. Martin of Tours dies in 397. He was a Roman soldier who converts to Christianity, travels to Gaul, and is the kind of St. Patrick of Gaul. He's a missionary saint, and his legend was written in the 5th century by a member of the community that he founded in Tours by. And I think this name is absolutely fantastic. Sulpicius Severus. I think anyone that's a medievalist is familiar with the iconography of Martin's great miracle, which is he divides his cloak for a beggar, and it's often shown in medieval manuscripts, him dressed as a Ro soldier, and he's holding out his cloak, and he's cutting it in half with his sword and giving half the cloak to a beggar. And I remember on Twitter somebody saying, it's a bit stingy, isn't it? You're just giving half his cloak. Why don't you give him the whole cloak? When you read the legend by Sulpicius Severus, you realize that actually there's more of a story behind it. And medieval artists are just being medieval artists by doing what they did. I'll come to that. But he's a Roman soldier. He's traveling through Tours, near Tours, and it's a bitterly cold winter and everybody is suffering, especially the poor, and he has been giving away his garments because he's a wealthy Roman soldier. He's been giving away his garments the whole time he's been on the road, and he is now only in his cloak. And then it's when he sees a man begging at the gates of Tours who has nothing, that he is faced with this decision. Does he disgrace himself as a soldier and as a. I suppose, in the medieval way of thinking things as a knight, or does he leave this man to suffer? And the compromise he reaches is that he can divide his cloak, and I think we can safely assume this is the kind of big cloak that probably covers the horse's bum. And so he's, you know, in dividing his cloak, he's able to maintain his modesty and keep this man warm. And I think that in typical medieval artist style, when he's shown in full soldierly uniform, that's just them indicating to the viewer that he's a soldier, there's that kind of collapsing of the narrative into a single image. That medieval artists so often do. But it's a very, therefore a very beautiful story. And when he's become bishop, he then has this glorious legacy of bringing Christianity to Gaul.
- [25:21]
B
I think we have to talk a little bit more about the cloak though, because it's a bit like the magic pudding. You know, it's one of those relics where, you know, you can put every bit of St. Martin's cloak together and I think you could make a parachute out of the thing at this point in time.
- [25:34]
G
It breeds etymologies. And so the great one that I think is fascinating is that a little structure was built to house the relic of St. Martin's cloak at tours. And this structure was called the capella because capella meant little cape. And that is where we, it is said, get our word chapel and the Latin cappella, meaning a small church. And so the idea that that stems from this bit of cloak, this little cap.
- [26:14]
A
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- [27:40]
B
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- [27:41]
D
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H
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- [29:13]
B
The cape itself, though, you know, the reason why we have so much of it, even though it's supposed to be only little, is that kings use this relic a lot. Right? Like a way of kind of making friends and influencing people is, you know, the French king will be like, hey, bit of St. Martin's cloak. What do you think about that? Right?
- [29:30]
G
No, and it's the role that they come to play in politics and diplomacy is really fascinating. I do want to talk about the saucy side of St. Martin.
- [29:41]
B
Go on.
- [29:42]
G
When I was writing this book, I really wanted to show saints stories suffused everyday culture and they made it out of the kind of official biographies and the official lives into stories that are kind of like spin off stories and quite different worlds from the world of hagiography. And when I was an undergraduate studying doing a course on old French literature, we were given some fabio Erotique to work on and one of these was called St. Martin's Four Wishes. It so happens there is an absolutely fantastic translation online if people want to look it up. St. Martin's four wishes. And it tells us about a farmer who is the stock character of the gullible rustic. He is so devoted to Saint Martin. Everything he does he says by Saint Martin this or to Saint Martin this. And one day he's out there in the fields. St. Martin appears to him like A genie, and says to him, you are such a faithful devotee that I have decided to give you four wishes. And so he goes off home to his wife, tells her, you never guessed, darling. I've been given four wishes by St. Martin. And she is the wily, smart, quick, the stereotypical. I suppose she's a slightly untrustworthy woman. And she says, yeah, sure, sure, okay, well, why don't you give me the first wish? And he says, oh, no, you'll wish for something stupid like a spool of hemp. And she says, oh, no, don't worry, I won't waste my wish. And so she eventually, haven't I given you everything you wanted? Haven't I always served you? Haven't always pleased you, you know. She said, oh, fine, I'll give you the first wish. And the first thing she said, maybe she doesn't believe him. And she just does this to see. Just to make it a funnier situation. She says, I want you to be covered from head to toe in penises.
- [31:31]
B
Hell, yeah.
- [31:33]
G
Yeah. And I don't just mean one kind, I mean all of the possible kinds. She's. I want them old, in their prime. I want them. And she goes off on this incredible list. Every manner of penis that can be described, she lists. And she finishes by saying, because your one prick never was enough.
- [31:51]
B
Oh, of course. Typical woman.
- [31:53]
G
Yeah. And so then there's, I imagine, a flurry of popping sounds. And he's got penises like they are. They're sticking out from his threadbare. The knees of his trousers. They're all over him. And it says. And the biggest one of all was right in the middle of his forehead.
- [32:09]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [32:10]
G
And so he retaliates with a wish in kind, lex talionis, classical. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, vulva for a penis. So he says, I want you to be covered from head to toe in vulvas. Which, of course comes true. And he says, not just any kind of. And so she has hairless ones, hairy ones, big ones, small ones, four across her forehead, I believe it says all over the place. And they kind of stand there in horror looking at each other, and they use their. So now two wishes have been used up. They use the third wish to get rid of all their genitals, which of course goes wrong. So I'll leave everyone hanging on, as it were, how they solve this. But I think what the story shows, because I suppose with humour, often it's bouncing off something real. So this mockery of somebody that is so devoted to a saint that they invoke their name with everything they do. There's another story from the later Middle ages of a man who praised the Hail Mary so much that when he's buried, a lily grows out of his grave with Ave Maria written on every leaf. And when they dig down, they found that its roots are curled up in his mouth. And that St. Martin was one of these saints who inspired great devotion and who was known throughout society.
- [33:23]
B
How do we get to that point? Because, you know, with St. Catherine, you have this great, exciting story. She stands up to the emperor, she breaks the wheel. It's like a movie or something. And, you know, Saint Martin, fantastic. We love to give away our cloak. Wonderful times, not being naked, but, you know, he doesn't even die or anything like that. So what is it that makes him such a big medieval saint on the calendar? And don't say penises.
- [33:50]
G
Yeah, okay, so that was. It is an obscure reference. I don't even know if you couldn't stop a medieval person in the street and say, tell me the St. Martin penis story. But I'm sure they would know the cloak story. I mean, I guess it's this missionary element that after the martyrs, like Catherine and George Christopher's one of them, too, the next big swathe of saints is the missionaries Patrick, Martin, Boniface, Columba. And they are very important to Rome. You know, they are important for doing the gospel imperative of taking the good news to every corner of the earth. And so they are celebrated for that apostolic mission that they're undertaking. Their relics become tools in themselves as well for continuing that mission. So that's when Martin dies and his cloak is being displayed at tours and as all part of this mission of evangelization.
- [34:50]
B
So what sort of things do we do for Martinmas? What happens for his feast day?
- [34:54]
G
Well, still, on the feast of St. Martin in some continental European countries, you eat goose. That's a big thing. Martinmas there was by the. In the Reformation, there's one text called the Popish Kingdom, which scorns the feast of St. Martin's a time that everyone just uses as an excuse to get drunk.
- [35:14]
B
Oh, no.
- [35:16]
G
The other thing is to be settling debts and charitable giving and emulating in that way, you know, he's a role model in a way that's more achievable than the spectacular martyrs.
- [35:26]
B
We have to have normal ones too, you know. So, loathe as I am to move away from penis stories, we've got another one of the absolute banger saints, one of my very Very favorites coming up, which is Saint Ursula. And the great thing about Saint Ursula is she's not just a saint on her own. Right. You get thousands in one. When you get Saint Ursula. Can you tell us a little bit about what St Ursula's deal is?
- [35:56]
G
Yeah. So St Ursula is said to have been a British princess who is a devout Christian, but she's asked to marry a pagan prince. She agrees, but only if he converts and if she can undertake a pilgrimage to Rome. And she takes with her 11,000 other virgins. And this legend, I mean, you end up with even more people being added on. So it's something like 26,000 people. Once you've added in all the servants and the fiances of all the virgins, it's like army essentially going to Rome. It's all set in the 4th century. So there is the threat, the kind of the antagonist in the Ursula legend is the Huns. And she knows she's going to be martyred. I think she's even heard that she is a prophecy that she's going to be martyred in Cologne. So she hurries back to Cologne, excited for this opportunity to become a martyr and they meet the Huns there and they are all executed in Cologne. Oh, I went to the dorm museum in Vienna and saw amazing panel painting of all the. They were a very, very popular cult in the late Middle Ages. And you get these gorgeous late medieval panel paintings of the nobility, these women with their classic kind of gigantic foreheads and very low cut dresses and cinched in waists and plaited hair. And historically speaking, you know, we find the story in the golden legend, but we also find it in Chronicles of Britain, of the deep history of Britain, a version of it. The characters don't quite align, but they were kind of conflated in later centuries, this sort of load of virgins that go off to be brides for a military colony in Brittany who get swept off in a big storm at sea in their boats and end up being shipwrecked and being murdered by pagan kings. We know that in the sort of 4th or 5th century, an inscription was found in Cologne referring to the deaths of some holy virgins. By the 8th or 9th centuries, this has been upgraded to thousands of martyrs, female virgin martyrs at the orders of Maximian. In 1155, workers in Cologne unearthed a mass grave or mass burial, which included bones not only of women, but also men and children. This was interpreted as having they'd found the burial site of the women, but the presence of the children and men may have led to the augmentation of the legend as having all of their kind of retinue and servants with them, as well as just the women. 1185. The Basilica of. Of Saint Anna Sila is built in Cologne, and it has this vast relic collection which, a bit like the little fragments of St. Martin's cloak, can be dispersed in reliquaries for all kinds of different reasons. There was a belief that false relics would kind of eject themselves. And by the late Middle Ages, you've got these amazing reliquary collections of the young women shown at the reliquary busts of these noble young women, all looking quite similar and with similar expressions of piety or mild perplexity. And they were kind of displayed en masse in churches. And there's a fantastic story, I mean, maybe fantastic in the most literal sense of the word, of a monastery in Denmark which was celebrating its Christmas morning. The monks all filed into the church where they had a huge display of reliquary busts of Ursula virgins, which apparently burst into song together to celebrate with the monks.
- [39:42]
B
Of course they did. You know, I mean, for me, this is one of these stories, right? Because again, you know, that thing that I said earlier about how all of the female saints look alike in the Middle Ages because they're all beautiful. And there's one way to be beautiful. It's hilarious when it comes to ursula and her 11,000 friends, because it's just like, well, here's a bunch of blonde chicks with high foreheads. I hope you like that. You know, and. And you see this all the time. You know, if you go to Cologne Cathedral, there are altars that are dedicated just to the saints. And very interestingly, if you go to the Basilica Saint Ursula in Cologne, which of course I have, because just who I am as a person, they've done that early modern thing of having an ossuary, and a lot of the relics are now decorating the church that you're spelling out. You know, Saint Ursula pray for us. Yeah, they have endless skulls and all of these things. And it's an interesting one for me because there's the, you know, ursula and the 11,000 virgins. And as you say, we kind of. We sort of work up to that. You know, we didn't start with 11,000, but we get to 11,000 eventually. Do you think the 11,000 has to do with this discovery of so many bones that you can kind of send them out into the world? Or is this one of these, you know, 11,000. That's just quite a big number. And, you know, medieval people think about numbers in a way that's different to how we do.
- [41:08]
G
Yeah, that's a good question. It's a sort of chicken and egg because there's obviously this interest in a female army. And I think that that comes up in the way it's written about. Maybe it's rooted in archaeology, but sometimes I think with medieval stuff, you also need to accept that they were way more bookish than we are and they looked for textual authority for things. So maybe the archaeology just supports it. A textual tradition.
- [41:50]
A
Hey, what's up?
- [41:51]
D
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- [42:27]
H
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- [42:53]
B
One of the huge plus sides of having eleven thousand and one theoretical martyrs here is you get lots and lots of relics that you can send out, which the good people of Cologne are very happy to do because it keeps them important as a center of pilgrimage. And everyone is really happy to get hold of these relics. But we have some really interesting connections to her cult here in England, right?
- [43:17]
G
Yeah. And I think because there was this story of a British princess called Ursula who was shipwrecked with her 11,000 virgins as part of this mission to Armorica to marry all the soldiers there and then martyred. There's this kind of idea that Ursula is somehow, you know, she's owned by the 13th, 14th centuries. This was very much co opted by the English crown in the early Tudor period. We have this fascinating situation where Catherine of Aragon is brought over to marry Arthur Tudor. Arthur has the name Arthur. There's already inspiring in people's minds a connection with the deep history of Britain. And when Catherine of Aragon is greeted off her ship. So she lands at Southampton and she's accompanied by 11 English noblewomen of the Upper nobility, and they're all dressed alike with a larger company of what's called knights wives. And it seems to be a kind of imitation of sort of presenting her as a new Ursula to marry King Arthur. And when she gets to London Bridge, she's greeted by another Ursula tableau, which must have been spectacular, like all. It must have been thousands of women. I mean, they didn't go small on these kinds of pageants in London for royal reasons, you know, so just what a thing sort of to witness. And I think it's very poignant because, of course, in the reign of Henry viii, you get the cult of saints completely suppressed, but just how it was still part of that culture and how it could be tied, you know, the Earth's dealer cult in particular was tying in to secular history. Can you tell us a little bit.
- [44:56]
B
About the pageants and retellings of Saint Ursula before Henry VIII goes and ruins everything?
- [45:03]
G
Yeah. So one of the insights we get into the kinds of spectacles that were inspired by the cult of saints is through actually authors who were completely opposed to it. There's a poem by somebody called Thomas Naugurg and It's written in 1570 and it's translated by Barnaby Goudge here. Another very interesting, lovely name. Anyway, Christ's Passion here derided, is with sundry masques and plays Fair Ursula with her maidens all doth pass amid the ways and valiant George with spear thou killest the dreadful dragon. Here the devil's house is drawn about, Wherein there doth appear a wondrous sort of downed sprites with foul and fearful look Great Christopher doth wade and pass with Christ amid the brook. And he goes on to describe all of these, presumably, these pageant wagons showing the saints and picking up, like you said, on that visual language of the cult of saints that everybody understood, or at least every Christian understood.
- [45:59]
B
I think that it sucks when people are down on the cult of Saint Ursula because it's this really nice way for more women and girls to participate in the saints pageants. I can just imagine the little girls getting all, you know, dolled up for the little pageant and, oh, they're one of the virgins. And it, like.
- [46:15]
G
It's just so cute.
- [46:16]
B
There's like a. It's like a nativity play or something. And to take that away from girls who don't get to participate and, you know, that's one of the big things that we see from the Reformation is a big crackdown on women participating in religious things. And I just think it's really Sad. Yes.
- [46:32]
G
And I think it's sad to have, you know, it was a real case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, because these festivities that would have taken place in towns and villages where there would have been amazing amateur dramatics and costume creation and the way that, you know, different groups of craftspeople would produce their own wagons. So I think in the. Oh, which is it? The York mystery plays, it says that the Thatchers are responsible for the Nativity. And so I'm just like, oh, that would have looked great. The stable, really smart. And then the shipwrights are doing the Noah's Ark scene. And you could just imagine the competition. I mean, I know we were talking about men again, but, you know, it's the opportunity for people to display their skills that there may be. And so, you know, what people could have done with their dressmaking and their hair styling skills for however many young women and girls they could muster in their village. I just feel like the whole community would have been showing off to itself in producing these spectacles. I wish they could come back without it becoming too complicated.
- [47:37]
B
Bring them back, you know, So I think that Saint Ursula and the Virgins is one of the really interesting myths because certainly we see a lot of enthusiasm for it. You know, this is the sort of stuff that pageants are made for, right? Like dress all the little girls up, let them go to town. It's fantastic for cologne because they can situate themselves in the middle of this grand story and pass out relics like they're candies. You know, it's great for the English monarchy because they can say, oh, we have access to this particular saint and legend because it's a. It's a part of our DNA, as it were, but we still see skepticism. You know, there is much in the way that there's this really common sort of joke that gets thrown around, which is heresy, which is that, oh, if the Eucharist really was Jesus's body, then his body must have been as big as a mountain if we're eating it every time. And we. We also see this real skepticism sometimes about Ursula and her virgin martyrs. And, you know, just about how can there really be 11,000 of anyone? How are they all getting everywhere in ships? You know, you see, this is kind of like a knee jerk reaction to it. And I find that interesting because it shows us that there is this sort of push and pull for people with saints.
- [48:55]
G
It's really good. I think when we see debate within history and we're not presenting a historical period as being Kind of unilaterally decided on a culture, you know, and it's. The cult of saints appears to begin with the. We are, prior to Christianity's legalization, with the persecution of Christians and the heroic resistance of some Christians prior to their execution, which led to veneration of their sites of burial as kind of almost like a popular vote. They were special people, and they become these early saints. And we know that missionaries are going into northwestern Europe and finding holy bones and relics to be particularly effective tools for converting people. We know that by the time Christianity is well and truly established, theologians are questioning whether or not this is really doctrinal, but it's so deeply rooted in. In kind of everyday practice of Christianity that there's kind of no going back now. This is part of the living faith of Christianity in the Middle Ages, the cult of saints, the veneration of holy figures from the Bible and the remains of saints. But, you know, in various quote, unquote, heresies throughout the Middle Ages, you get this being brought up and being challenged. It's kind of, with it becoming politically expedient, I suppose, that they stop being heresies, start being kind of new branches of Christianity, reforming movements. And I would like to, just as we're wrapping up on Ursula, just make a little shout out to Cordula, who, of course, is the one virgin who didn't give herself up for martyrdom on the feast day of 20th October. She hid in a ship and then comes out the next day and receives martyrdom. So we've got two feast days for Ursula and the virgins, the 20th of October and the 21st.
- [50:50]
B
I love that. You know, it's not enough to have one, we gotta have two, baby. You know, it's so nice. I love all of the autumnal saints because I think autumn is such a great time for celebrating. You know, the harvest's coming in, we're out of the terrible heat of summer, but we're not into the crushing boredom and cold of winter. You know, why not party about it? You and just 11,000 of your best friends.
- [51:13]
G
Exactly.
- [51:14]
B
Well, Amy, it's a delight to have you on as always, and such a wonderful excuse to talk about some of the Middle Ages favorite people.
- [51:22]
G
Absolutely. It's always a joy to be on here and to hear your amazing knowledge about the cult of saints is such a treat.
- [51:30]
B
And if you want to hear Amy talking about love and death in medieval ballads, do go back and listen to our episode from a few weeks back when we talked about her new book with the illustrator Gwen burns old stories of love and death from traditional ballads. Remember, you can enjoy unlimited access to award winning original TV documentaries, including my recent film the Medieval Apocalypse and ad free podcasts by Science. Signing up@historyhit.com subscription. You can follow Gone Medieval on Spotify, where you can leave us comments and suggestions, or wherever you get your podcasts. And tell all your friends and family that you've gone medieval. Until next time.
- [52:29]
J
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