"Wicked" Medieval Women and the Monks Who Loathed Them
Send us a text In this episode Ellen and I discuss three "wicked" medieval women and the monastic authors who loathed them. We begin with the Anglo-Saxon Queen Ælfthryth, a champion of the Tenth-Century Benedictine Reform movement in England, who appears in the twelfth-century Liber Eliensis as a lascivious witch responsible for the murders of her stepson King Edward the Martyr and Byrhtnoth, the first abbot of Ely. We then turn to an early twelfth-century French countess, S...