From long-lost Viking ships to kings buried in unexpected places; from murders and power politics, to myths, religion, the lives of ordinary people: Gone Medieval is History Hit’s podcast dedicated to the middle ages, in Europe and far beyond.
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Very quickly here, that Theodoric is an Ostrogoth. Are these the only kind of barbarians that we see eating into the empire at the time? No. The Ostrogoths are what the historian Peter Heather calls a gothic supergroup, where these gothic tribes had existed for many centuries and occasionally made incursions across the Danube or across the Rhine and attacked within the empire. Marcus Aurelius spent the emperor who died in 180 AD spent the latter part of his reign fighting the Marcomanni, and people like that were making incursions into the empire. So these smallish tribes had existed for a long time and were regarded by the Romans as barbarians. But, ultimately, say, by the 400, they had banded together and become much larger and more efficient groups. And in some ways, they had banded together because of a threat coming from the east. In some ways, what we call the Gothic invasions of the Roman Empire are groups of refugees fleeing a terror that has risen in the east, which are the Huns. And the Huns begin coming probably due to climate change. I mean, there are all sorts of parallels with modern life, but there were obviously adverse climatic events, probably drought in Central Asia beginning about the 3 fifties. The 3 100 AD seemed to have been a very difficult period climatically across the world. And the Huns swept out of Central Asia, this group of people who are classified as a militarized nomadic people. And I think there's probably no terrifying news you could have in the 300 or 400 AD than to hear that that cloud of dust on the horizon is a militarized nomadic people, I e, the Huns coming for you. The the Huns were interested in capturing gold and silver and things like that. They were simply interested in plunder rather than creating a territory for themselves. And so the
Hey, I'm Ryan Reynolds. At Mid Mobile, we like to do the opposite of what big wireless does. They charge you a lot. We charge you a little. So naturally, when they announced they'd be raising their prices due to inflation, we decided to deflate our prices due to not hating you. That's right. We're cutting the price of mint unlimited from $30 a month to just $15 a month. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. $45 up front for 3 months plus taxes and fees, promo rate for new customers for limited time, unlimited more than 40 gigabytes per month, slows, full turns at mintmobile.com. Best podcast. Here's a show that we recommend. Hey, folks. It's Mark Marron from WTF. I've been talking to all kinds of famous people in my garage since 2009, including a sitting president. You know, I I don't imagine you were flying in here on the chopper thinking like, you know, I I am nervous about Mark. No. I wasn't. Okay. Well, that's good. That would be a problem. It wouldn't be If the president was feeling stressed about it. It's coming to my garage. Coming to your garage. And now there's even more WTF when you to the full marin to get weekly bonus content and all WTF episodes ad free. Listen to WTF wherever you get podcasts and subscribe to the full marin@go.acast.com/wtf. Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere, acast.com. Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval. I'm Matt Lewis A rise England, 6 kings, and the making of the English state is the fabulous new book from Caroline Burke and Richard Partington that tells between the reigns of King John and Richard II with a Henry and a few edwards thrown in between. Dutch car
Of Devon or Cornwall until the 9th century, essentially. So this is a fairly large amount of Vlad, and it's also really fertile. Like, that's a nice piece of what is now England to control. So what is Wasos' political place in all of this in England before it comes to power? Is it reflected at all? I would imagine this is a fairly wealthy and prosperous bit of land. Yes. And and one thing also is it has large amounts of coastline. I I mean, if you compare it to somewhere like the Kingdom of Mercia, for example, if you look at the heartland of Mercia, it's relatively speaking landlocked while Wessex in comparison has the advantage of easier access to the seas through that. One thing I should say is that when we're talking about the rise of Wessex, historians are normally talking about the first half of the ninth century. Prior to that, Wessex is certainly an established kingdom in the 8th century and the 7th centuries. And in the 8th century, the period immediately preceding the rise, the increasing dominance of Wessex in Southern Britain. Mercia was the most powerful kingdom. But Mercia never quite has direct control over Wessex. So it has its own kings throughout the period. It has a semblance of autonomy and independence to an extent that I think is greater than when you look at Mercia's relationship with its other neighboring kingdoms in the 8th century. I suppose that these relationships play a huge part of coming into any form of prominence. You've got really powerful kingdoms on your doorstep. There are very difficult relationships in between varying rulers. My next question then is we say, oh, Wessex comes to prominence or Wessex comes to power, but it already existed. So what is it that in this period makes us say that Wessex is emerging as a very prominent player within the political landscape? That's a really good question because
For some, the death of a mighty ruler like Oswald isn't a cause for celebration, but for the Mercians, it was no small feat. One that could only be achieved by a kingdom of strong ambitious rulers with significance. Welcome to Gone Medieval. I'm Matt Lewis. In our cycle through the most significant kingdoms of the Anglo Saxon period, we've arrived at frankly the best one. And I say that as someone who grew up within its bounds. So obviously, it's beyond debate here. Last episode, we traced the rise and fall of the Northumbrian Kingdom, its religious clout, and its recurring conflicts. This episode, we're looking at its almost perpetual enemy, the kingdom of Mercia. We discovered how before a unified England existed, the British Isles were divided up into petty kingdoms, each vying for power with varying degrees of success. Mercia was one such kingdom, and it had more success than most, to put it lightly. Occupying the English heartlands, the mighty Midlands, Mercia's reach was vast. At its most powerful, its territory included London and almost all the lands south of the river Humber. Mercia dominated Anglo Saxon politics for 3 centuries. It was the last Anglo Saxon kingdom to adopt Christianity. It remained for a long time a realm of sub kingdoms, a federation of tribes acting together under one ruler. Some of the best known figures in medieval history ruled during this period, the most legendary being Penda, and Off.
By the time the second crusade comes around where they're like, we're not doing it this way. We're getting the fancy lads together, and we're going on a boat. Yeah. I think there is an element of that. I think that the way that crusading becomes more of a matter of these big expeditions and a much higher outlay of cost is kind of gatekeeping. The 1st crusade and its success had proved a challenge to the legitimacy or the sole legitimacy, the appropriation of legitimacy for Boyle and upper aristocratic figures because a lot of sort of middling nobility and knights had gone and become basically the heroes of Latin Christendom. And that was potentially threatening that the people of not the very upper ranks could gain so much reputation, so much honor. And so the whole reframing of crusade in a more royal key in the late half of the 12th century, particularly into 13th when you get, for example, Saint Louis, who is really making his whole deal being a Saint King Crusader hybrid, then this is very much an appropriation of crusading away from it. Its more humble boots to a certain extent. I think it's also important to note though that with regard to the first crusade, we're still not talking about peasants. The expedition you allude to with Peter the Hermit is often or used to be called more frequently the peasant's crusade. And this is simply largely not true. The sources do emphasize that these tended to be somewhat lower class individuals who participated in it, But we're still talking mostly about Knights. This historiographical perception has been fueled by the fact that one of them is called water the penniless. But water the penniless is a translation of water in French. And means without possessions, but it's also the name of the place where Walter came from. So he wasn't penniless. He came from a place called. And so we can see that lots of these participants who we can identify were not peasants by any stretch of the imagination. And those that Peter led may have been from slightly
