Not much happened in the Middle Ages, right?
Probably some plague, some dukes and nobles that weren't so covered in mud, and strange
women lying around in ponds distributing swords.
That last part might not be totally historical, but there were a lot of weird, messed up things
going on in the Middle Ages anyway.
The Crusades were a series of holy wars waged by the Catholic Church in an attempt to regain
control of the Holy Lands.
So it follows that the Children's Crusade would be a war waged by children.
That couldn't be right, could it?
Well, turns out It totally is.
One group of Crusaders was led by a 12-year-old shepherd named Stephen, who claimed Christ
had appeared to him and told him to go forth and conquer.
When Philip of France refused to offer his merry band of pre-teens support on their crusade
and instead told him to go home, he took matters into his own hands.
Thousands of children mustered to the call of both Stephen and another child leader named
Nicholas.
Word spread, and while it's not clear what exactly happened to all of the children of
the Children's Crusade, what historians do know is that most of them didn't return home.
Some were killed when the ships they'd hired to take them closer to the Holy Land were
wrecked, and others boarded ships that took them to Egypt and a life of slavery, instead
of to the righteous war they'd planned.
While it's thought some of Nicholas' crusade may have made it as far as the Holy Land,
history has essentially forgotten their grand designs and devotion.
If the term "mob football" sounds like more riot than sport, that's a pretty accurate
impression of what medieval football actually was — a super-violent precursor to the modern
game.
The ball was a leather bladder, and the goals were a random distance apart — anywhere
from a few hundred yards to miles.
Anyone could join in, there was no limit to players, and … that was pretty much it.
It started around the eighth century, and early rules included only two: no murder,
and no manslaughter.
They were different times.
Some of the stories say the whole thing started not with a ball, but with the head of a Danish
prince who learned the hard way Britain wasn't about to be conquered easily.
Kings spent a huge part of the Middle Ages trying to ban it and encouraging their good
citizens to pick up a useful pastime instead, like archery and learning to kill people in
a more civilized manner.
The bans didn't work.
People loved their football — bumps, bruises, accidental death, and all.
In 1484, the ironically-named Pope Innocent VIII [the Eighth] kicked off the season of
the witch with a papal bull denouncing German witches.
He started by blaming witches for the Little Ice Age, a period of cold and crop failures
that led to mass starvation and crime.
Then, he appointed his witch-hunters.
The general events that followed in the centuries afterward are pretty well-known.
There was a lot of torture, some trials, and some executions.
But before then, people weren't so fast to condemn women as witches.
In 1159, church scholar John of Salisbury summed up his beliefs like this:
"Who is so blind as not to see that this is all a mischievous illusion caused by demons?
This is shown, [...] by the fact that it is always the simpler men and women, and those
less firm in the faith, that believe these things."
"We did do the nose.”
“The nose?”
“And the hat.
But she is a witch."
In other words, anyone who believed in witches was simple-minded and faithless.
Looking at you, Pope Innocent VIII.
"And what do you burn apart from witches?”
“More witches!”
"Shhh!"
Cannibalism in the Middle Ages was oftentimes a matter of survival.
Famines and war killed off huge percentages of the population, and it's impossible to
say what anyone would do until they're in circumstances like these.
On December 12, 1098, Crusaders massacred Muslim soldiers and civilians alike in a city
in what's now modern-day Syria.
That massacre came at the end of a long siege, and around 20,000 people were killed after
being promised mercy.
That's horrible.
Just as horrible were the cold winter, dwindling supplies, and starvation.
Contemporary chroniclers wrote that the Crusaders driven to boiling and grilling the bodies
of their conquered foes.
Famine struck Egypt in 1201, and human flesh was pickled and jarred … just in case.
Human meat was on the menu in 10th-century China, and medieval European cities were also
driven to cannibalism during multiple famines in the 13th and 14th centuries.
As much as 15 percent of Europe's population died during 14th century starvation alone,
and to put that in perspective, that would be like today's EU losing the entirety of
Poland, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Austria, and Hungary.
In 897, Pope Stephen VI held a bizarre trial in Rome, and it ushered in what even devout
Catholics call the most corrupt era of the papacy.
It's complicated, but here's the gist.
Stephen VI had been pope for less than a year when he ordered one of his predecessors, Pope
Formosus, get dug up out of the ground and placed on trial.
Formosus had already been excommunicated, and the trial was pretty much Stephen yelling
at a corpse for crimes, such as wanting to be the pope.
No one's sure exactly what Stephen's motivations were, but Formosus was found guilty, was stripped
of his papal finery, had his blessing fingers cut off, and reburied.
Stephen then had him dug up yet again and thrown into the Tiber River.
Rumors started circulating that his body had washed up and started performing miracles
— because why not?
Mob justice came for Stephen, he was removed from office, installed in a jail cell, and
mysteriously strangled not long after.
The next pope overturned the verdict, and outlawed the whole idea of corpse trials...though,
let's be real, it kind of shouldn't really need outlawing, right?