Villains and Virgins History Podcast

The Camino de Santiago pilgrimage is exploding in popularity these days, but the modern travellers are part of a tradition that is over 1000 years old.  How did the Camino begin?  Why did medieval people go on pilgrimages anyway?  From drinking wine used to wash skulls, to pilgrims in chains, this episode explores the world of medieval Christianity, and the surprising traditions around pilgrimage, including why the Camino is boomin...

The grandsons of Charlemagne slide into civil war, with thousands of Franks killing each other over the division of the empire.  Though the Treaty of Verdun ends the bloodletting, Frankish troubles are far from over.  Vikings sail up the Seine and sack Paris, finally leaving after being bought off by King Charles of West Francia.  However Louis the German, King of East Francia, makes Viking raiders return what they stole from his t...

Roger II has played a high stakes game to secure his c...

Roger II inherits his father’s position as ruler of Sicily and begins to take over parts of Southern Italy as well.  Along the way a daring plan leads Norman knights out of a desperate situation, and a Crusader king proposes marriage.  Norman state-building in Sicily takes on a unique character, and Norman knights fight armies led ...

The Vikings terrorised coastal Europe in their longboats, plundering and killing as they went.  Some of them were offered a deal: they could accept land and settle in France, in exchange for defending the area from other raiders.  These Vikings became known as Normans, and while the name changed, the game remained the same.  They begin arriving in Italy, and soon become the most coveted military muscle for hire.  The Pope himself b...

The Peasants' War was the largest peasant uprising prior to the French Revolution.  Hundreds of thousands of ordinary people organise a labour strike and dare to demand a measure of fairness.  They use the ideas of Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation to do it.  Luther wants nothing to do with the rebels, and supports the German nobles in killing these "mad dogs".  The heavy cavalry and the landsknecht armies of the Swabian...

This is the story of the biggest peasant uprising prior to the French Revolution. Inspired by the writing of Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation, it was a shocking challenge to the social order. Serfs occupied castles, executed nobles, and plundered monasteries.  Events that lasted less than a year would result in thousands of peasant deaths, and change the direction of the Reformation itself.  This episode is the first in...

In this episode we watch England execute a king.  This is the strange tale of how England became a Protestant country, and why the Church of England is the way it is.  Along the way we watch militant Scottish Reformers challenge the power of the monarch, and uncover the roots of the Covenanters and Presbyterian churches.  The episode culminates in the English Civil War, as competing versions of church and state vie for the future o...

John Calvin is one of the major figures of the Protestant Reformation, famous for his doctrine of pre-destination.  This episode covers his time in Geneva, and how he turned that city into a grim and terrifying experiment in theocracy.  It is also the story of Protestants burning a heretic at the stake, in a bizarre moment of borrowing the very punishments that had been used to suppress them.  This episode captures a dramatic momen...

What is the Protestant Reformation and why does it matter?  To begin to understand how thoroughly it has shaped Western Europe and North America we must travel back in time to see the world as it was before the Reformation.  This episode is all about the Middle Ages, when an emperor braved the Alps in winter to appeal to a Pope, and thousands of people in Southern France were slaughtered by Crusaders.  It is a world of towering cat...

1492 was a year that changed everything.  In Castile, it was the end of the Reconquista, as Isabella and Ferdinand ended a decade long war with a triumphant ride through the streets of Granada.  It was also the year they signed the Alhambra Decree, which banished all Jews from Castile, and it was the beginning of the end of Moorish presence as well.  The connection between these two events and the Spanish Inquisition was a drive fo...