The Medici Podcast
How an Independence War Inspired a Ski Competition
A rebel leader and future king makes a dramatic escape across the Swedish countryside in the dead of December. This is the story of how this adventure inspired a famous competition centuries later. Sources Gustafsson, Harald. “A State That Failed?: On the Union of Kalmar, Especially Its Dissolution.” Scandinavian Journal of History 31:3-4 (2006): 205-220.…
The Forgotten Woman Who Helped Shape The Protestant Reformation
Someone sticks up for a university student accused of heresy. This starts the public career of one of the most assertive, formidable voices of the early Protestant Reformation, a voice that would probably be better remembered if not for the fact that they were a woman. Sources MacCulloch, Diarmaid. The Reformation: A History (Viking, 2003).…
The Peasant Revolt That Changed Eastern Europe
A soldier named György Dózsa helps turn an army of peasant crusaders into a full-on revolution. His war on the nobles who ruined his country’s recent reforms is destined to have an impact, just not the one he wanted… Sources Albert-László. Barabási. Bursts: The Hidden Patters Behind Everything We Do From Your E-Mail to Bloody…
The Queen Who Became a Professional Writer
Marguerite de Navarre is the sister and wife of kings. While coping with being an agent of her brother and navigating the religious turmoil, she still found the time to become a bestselling author and perhaps the “first modern woman.” Sources Cholakian, Patricia F. and Rouben C. Marguerite de Navarre: Mother of the Renaissance (Columbia…
The Actual First Bible Translated into English (And The Man Who Died For It)
An Oxford grad and private tutor has a dream of making the first English Bible translated directly from Hebrew and Greek. Unfortunately, his ambition becomes a matter of life and death once his scholarly endeavors become just another front in the war to decide Europe’s religious future. Sources Daniell, David. The Bible in English: Its…
The Drop-Out Who Destroyed a Society
In 1519, Europeans made their first diplomatic contact with an urbanized empire in the Americas—and, within a few years, that empire will no longer exist, in no small part because of a failed law student from Spain. Sources Cortés, Hernán. Letters from Mexico, trans. A.R. Pagden (Orion Books, 1971). Florentine Codex, vol. 9, trans. Arthur J.O.…
Primary Source Reading: I Modi
I Modi is the first published book to be censored by order of the Catholic Church. It wasn’t so much its sexual explicitness that drew the ire of the Pope, but the book’s joyful celebration of sex without procreation, among other things. Support the show on Patreon here to hear it. Source Read: Romano, Giulio;…
Primary Source Reading: The Articles of the Peasants of Stühlingen
In 1524, the peasants of Stühlingen came up with 62 written articles of complaint to be submitted to the imperial courts of the Holy Roman Empire. This articles represented, though, grievances peasants across Germany had with the clergy and the nobility, which would explode into the German Peasants’ War. Support the show on Patreon to…
Martin Luther on Trial
Martin Luther braves persecution by the Church to come to the city of Worms to have his case heard by Emperor Charles V. In this contest between a reviled monk who is the son of a mine owner and a monarch whose empire spans an ocean, the victor is perhaps not the person one would…
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