Ken Follett's Journey Into the Dark Ages (2012) s01e02 Episode Script
Great Women
The Middle Ages.
A time when women had few rights.
I'm Ken Follett, author of two bestselling novels set in the Middle Ages - the Pillars Of The Earth and World Without End.
My books feature women who defy the odds in a tough and unforgiving world.
The role of women in the Middle Ages is often underestimated.
They are seen as repressed and subjugated, but in fact many women were real movers and shakers.
The heroines in my books are inspired by a real-life characters.
Some women, like Joan of Arc, led armies into battle.
Some wrote bestselling books that challenged authority.
Some were medical pioneers, some wrote about music, nature - and even sex.
Some became saints, others paid a high price for their independent spirit.
In the 12th century, the Catholic Church dominated the lives of rich and poor alike.
Beautiful cathedrals celebrated the glory of God.
Monuments to the power of priesthood.
It's hard to exaggerate the influence of the church in the Middle Ages.
It claimed control of every aspect of life, from birth to death and beyond, to heaven and hell.
A few brave people rebelled, but no-one could ignore the power of the Catholic Church.
Pater noster Men of the cloth, monks, priests, bishops, and the Pope controlled the church.
They kept women out of power.
But one remarkable woman became a major figure in the church, challenging men in their traditional domain.
She was the German nun Hildegard von Bingen.
We think of her as a composer, as a writer, as an early scientist and a doctor.
She could do everything.
And this was extraordinary at that time.
Hildegard was a prophet, haunted by terrifying visions.
Her story is a tale of power, religious fanaticism, conspiracy, and sex.
The cards were stacked against women but Hildegard, the visionary, defied them all - monks, abbots, popes, and emperors.
Her story is extraordinary.
You couldn't make it up.
Hildegard grew up near the River Rhine in Germany, the tenth child in a noble family.
But her childhood was short.
Before she was 12, she was sent to the monastery of Disibodenberg.
Run by monks, it included a small but strictly segregated nunnery that became Hildegard's home.
When we think about life in a mediaeval nunnery, it seems like a prison.
But in fact, a nun could become powerful and influential if she was intelligent, shrewd, and if she played her cards right - as Hildegard von Bingen did.
In the nunnery, Hildegard learned basic Latin and studied theology.
This gave her an education not usually available to women.
She also studied herbal medicine which she put to use in the monastery's infirmary.
These are the ruins of the former monastery at Disibodenberg, where Hildegard received her education.
It consisted of over 40 monks and just a few strictly segregated nuns.
Hildegard, as nosy as she was, she didn't want to stay inside, and she took this entrance here, or this way out - her way out into her garden.
So she always left out, left her room, tried to work in the garden, used to learn everything of what she could in order to really become a good medical helper, medical assistant, a doctor - whatever.
She was nosy and she wanted to learn there.
The abbess of the nunnery, Jutta von Sponheim, kept a close watch on her nuns - including the ambitious Hildegard.
Jutta liked the idea of self-denial.
She wrapped herself in chains, she seems to have eaten very, very little - I think today we might call it anorexic.
It was a way of being as penitential as you could be, and denying yourself, again, all the pleasures of life.
Jutta chastised herself to enhance her servitude to God.
So long as this abbess was in charge, Hildegard had to contain her ambitions.
We know that Hildegard struck up a friendship with one of the novices, Richardis von Stade, a well-educated nun from a wealthy and influential family.
Clearly, Hildegard was completely taken with this young woman, and we don't know exactly how, and there will be people who assume some sort of lesbian relationship.
I think you can see it as a sort of crush.
They were probably going stir crazy in this small space in a hillside monastery.
Hildegard confided in Richardis that ever since her childhood, she had had intense religious visions, sometimes triggered by illness.
Hildegard described her experience - "Heaven was opened, and a fiery light of exceeding brilliance came "and permeated my whole brain.
" "Not like a burning, but like a warming flame, "as the sun warms anything that its rays will touch.
" As time went by, Hildegard's visions grew stronger.
She wanted to tell the world about them.
Her chance came when Jutte von Sponheim died of a fever.
Hildegard was appointed as Jutte's successor.
She was now abbess of the Disibodenberg nunnery.
Hildegard had this sense of a new authority.
She was in charge, for the first time in her life, of her nuns, but she also felt that this was the time to break out and speak about her visions.
Not only speak about them, but write them down.
That was the key task and desire of her life at that moment, but it wasn't done.
It wasn't what women did.
The traditions of the Catholic Church were stacked against Hildegard.
Church doctrine prohibited women from preaching.
The Christian church has always been down on women.
Any woman who wanted to make any kind of progress in the Middle Ages had to be a skilful negotiator.
They must have been very smart women, those women who came into prominence and became abbesses and prioresses.
And of course, they're just the kind of women that I like to write about.
Although Hildegard was abbess, she still had to defer to Abbot Kuno, the overall head of the monastery.
In 1138, Hildegard set off with her confidante Richardis, and their appointed secretary, the monk Volmar, to go and see the Abbot.
The church had banned women from writing about religion.
But Hildegard argued that her case was different.
She had visions handed down to her by God.
It was her duty to have them written down.
Writing down her visions - that was her route through doors which were closed to all other women.
That was what gave her an entree into the higher theological world which was so forbidden to women, or so held at arm's length.
Kuno was wary.
But when Hildegard argued that a visionary among the nuns would attract pilgrims - and donations - to the monastery, the Abbott eventually agreed.
Hildegard dictated 26 religious visions to Volmar who translated them into Latin.
The resulting book, the Scivias, consisted of more than 150,000 words.
Hildegard saw the lord of the universe on an iron-coloured mountain.
She described the cosmos, and choirs of angels, and the fall of Adam and Eve.
Buoyed by her success, Hildegard expanded the scope of her writing.
She wrote about music, medicine, nature and the human body - including sex, a taboo subject for nuns.
There are some very, very vivid - and you have two say they are unbelievably vivid - descriptions of lovemaking and of sex behaviour of men and women using very vivid imagery of the thresher pounding his seed - clearly written with considerable knowledge of what men and women get up to.
Hildegard writes about female orgasm and people go wow! How did she know? We all keep asking ourselves that question because there's no more vivid a description than she gives.
Today, an illuminated copy of Hildegard's book Scivias survives in the vaults of a German monastery.
It's a three-part account of creation, redemption, and salvation.
Hildegard had a very special theology of her own.
I think the use of a very vivid language and of these images help to turn her into a true teacher of the church.
Hildegard the visionary had become the main attraction of the Disibodenberg monastery, a female prophet attracting pilgrims and donations.
Hildegard felt it was time to move on from Disibodenberg.
She wanted her own nunnery - independent of monks.
It set her on a collision course with Abbot Kuno.
Hildegard von Bingen was one of the most influential women of the Middle Ages.
By the year 1150, she wanted to take her monastery away from the control of the powerful Abbot Kuno in Disibodenberg.
This is the last living room that Hildegard used to live in.
The convent had grown from three people originally, to now 15, 16, 17, 18, and as you can see here, she didn't have to leave because she didn't have enough room - she didn't like it here, she wanted to be on her own, she wanted to decide what to do, when to do it, and how to do it.
Abbot Kuno told Hildegard that she was not allowed to leave.
Hildegard fell ill, unable to move.
Powerful visions suggested that she would not recuperate until she was given permission to start her own independent nunnery.
The abbot was outmanoeuvred, and he agreed that Hildegard and her nuns could leave Disibodenberg.
Her new nunnery would be directly on the Rhine, one of the main navigation routes in Germany.
It went to a place called the Rupertsburg which is in Bingen - and that's how Hildegard of Bingen got her name - and set up a rather mod-cons sort of monastery.
Although her monastery on the Rupertsburg no longer exists a successor, the nearby St Hildegard's monastery in Eibingen remains dedicated to Hildegard's memory, including her many musical compositions.
She was the first named composer in all Christendom, really.
There's a body of work - about 77 songs, and it's of a very high quality, and the music is rather beautiful.
Hildegard's music has recently gained huge popularity.
A CD of her music became a bestseller.
It appeals to something in people who want something that's very pure and still, and ethereal and unadulterated, and I think they find that in Hildegard.
Hildegard became one of the most influential women in Christendom.
She wrote to kings in England, she wrote to the Emperor Barbarossa, she wrote to the Pope, to the local bishops.
I would have thought they all knew of Hildegard.
Hildegard's visions, books and letters, and her music attracted new recruits from noble families with their substantial dowries.
Gratia plena.
Hildegard had gained the independence she'd always wanted.
It even allowed her to break the dress code of Saint Benedict - as a rival abbess complained.
"They say that on feast days your virgins wear crowns of gold "filigree.
And that they adorn their fingers with gold rings.
"And all this in spite of the prohibition of the great "shepherds of the church.
" But Hildegard had become powerful enough to ignore such criticism.
The women wore flowing gowns, and what was more, their hair was long.
Hildegard had her own theories.
She thought that her women were virginal.
They were not sullied by marriage, as she perceived it, and therefore, why shouldn't they wear flowing gowns and have their hair long? Sadly, Hildegard's professional success was marred by personal disappointment.
Richardis was appointed abbess of a nunnery in the north and had to leave.
Hildegard was grief-stricken.
Richardis was the only person that we know that she absolutely had some heartfelt feeling for.
And Richardis left her.
Richardis abandoned her monastery.
You can call it a tragedy - Hildegard would probably have thought it was part of the path that God wanted for her.
But to us today, it seems a great sadness.
Hildegard lived to 81, a great age in those times.
Her bones have been preserved, but it's her books about medicine, music, and theology but make popular today, and have helped her gain sainthood in 2012.
Hildegard von Bingen stood up to popes and emperors.
She wrote about religion and science, and even sex.
Some call her the Iron Lady of the Middle Ages.
In the 12th century, Hildegard worked within the Catholic Church.
For all her brilliance, she didn't challenge religious orthodoxy.
120 years after Hildegard's death, at the end of the 13th century, a courageous woman did just that.
Marguerite Porete believed the church needed to change its ways.
Her controversial message set her on a collision course with the church hierarchy.
She was hauled up before the mediaeval equivalent of the KGB - the Inquisition.
In my novel World Without End, one of the main characters is a feisty nun called Carys, who's inspired by the independence and courage of Marguerite Porete.
Marguerite was a free spirit, and a brave writer, prepared to risk everything - even her life.
It was the year 1300.
Women were not generally allowed to write about religious matters.
But Marguerite Porete, a female scholar, broke with convention.
Marguerite Porete is really known to us only as a French mystic woman, who reported to us of her visions.
We don't know otherwise really much about her background.
This is not worth for those women to talk about.
They want to talk about God, and Marguerite talks about her mystical vision - that's what we know about her.
We also know that Marguerite wrote a book about religion which brought her into conflict with the church.
The title came to be The Mirror Of Simple Souls.
The book is a treatise, a spiritual handbook for those who would follow the seven steps that she sets it out - the soul's itinerary to total annihilation and union with God.
Marguerite's path to salvation challenged the foundations of church rule.
Her book contained a controversial message - you don't need the church to get close to God.
This was a dangerous message in the early 14th century.
But she wrote a radical revolutionary claim.
Marguerite was so certain of her convictions that she made several copies of her book.
Which was easier said than done.
They didn't use paper in the Middle Ages.
The books were made of parchment, which comes from the skin of sheep and calves, and you can imagine, you don't get many pages this big out of a sheep.
So it's expensive.
The process, then, once you have the sheets - the process of making the ink, is time-consuming, and the writing itself This looks as if it's been printed - that's because it's been so beautifully and neatly written.
But that takes a long time.
So each individual book was a work of art.
And they were very expensive.
Marguerite sent copies to influential clerics, including the ultraconservative Bishop of Cambrai, Guy de Colmieu.
He read it through and was alarmed by what he saw as heretical portions in it, in particular the notion that a perfected soul no longer needs the rituals and sacraments of the church.
Marguerite was summoned to Bishop de Colmieu's Palace at Cambrai to hear his views on The Mirror Of Simple Souls.
He considered the book heretical, and he burned it.
The Bishop is incensed, in a way - I mean, shocked! How does this woman dare to claim more religious authority than the Bishop himself?! In a legal sense, at that point, she has had her first strike.
Inquisitorial process in this period was essentially a two-strike system.
One opportunity with warning and perhaps penance, second strike - one is in very deep waters.
Marguerite faced the Inquisition - the most powerful and frightening organisation of its time.
It was the job of the Inquisition to seek out and punish heretics.
Being accused of heresy was like being accused of terrorism today.
This came to be understood as a threat not only against Christendom, but against the very foundations of political authority.
Heresy was a crime against the throne.
The Inquisition had a horrifying arsenal of torture instruments.
They were kept secret, and then shown to the accused just before their ordeal.
Marguerite was shown a cruel device called the pear.
Segments of bronze, screws and iron made up the pear.
The oral pear, the vagina peer, and the anal pear were inserted into the cavities of torture victims, inflicting unimaginable injuries and pain.
The oral pear was applied to the mouth of a heretic.
For most people, the threat of a mediaeval heresy trial was enough to silence them for good.
Not Marguerite Porete.
In the Middle Ages, few women dared to take on the might of the Catholic Church or the Inquisition.
But Marguerite Porete was different.
Marguerite was ordered to stop writing, or face trial for heresy.
What would I do if I was told to stop writing or face execution? I'd stop.
But Marguerite continued to write her book.
She even added 17 more chapters.
That is the unbelievable courage.
This woman faces death at the stake, and yet she keeps writing.
Marguerite went farther - she read from her book publicly.
It was in French, not Latin, so that everyone could understand.
At this time of growing discontent with the priesthood, she struck a chord with her message that salvation doesn't require the church, just your personal love of God.
This is what I think is most interesting about her story - she had such confidence in the power and the righteousness of her ideas.
De cela parmi des The Inquisition was relentless.
But Marguerite was steadfast.
She certainly knew what she was facing.
The moment she picked up the book again, she had essentially, in a legal sense, already committed heresy.
The fact that she continues to distribute it means that she was really standing by her ideas, and I think she knew perfectly well the risk that she was running.
In 1308, several years after she was told to stop writing, Marguerite was arrested for heresy.
In this chain of events, the Bishop of Cambrai forwards Marguerite and her book to an inquisitor in Paris.
This is the Dominican inquisitor William of Paris.
He asks her, "Is this the book that was "condemned by the Bishop of Cambrai?" And she says, "Yes.
" "Is this book that you were told explicitly not to write "and distribute again?" "Yes.
" At that moment, in a legal sense, Marguerite admitted her guilt and heresy.
That was her second strike.
Marguerite understood that she faced the death penalty.
Her only chance was to renounce the book, but this she would not do, so in 1308 she was thrown into jail - still, she refused to renounce her teaching.
This inner strength of that woman.
You don't have to believe her, but we must admire her.
And we can only admire the poetry that she created.
It is some of the most beautiful stuff ever written in French medieval literature.
Marguerite refused to give evidence to her judges, knowing what this meant for her.
In 1310, she was found guilty of heresy, and sentenced to be burned at the stake.
Onlookers described her as being very serene and very dignified as she went to her death.
It was apparently moving for those who are watching - according to sources, many had tears in their eyes as they watched her endure her death at the stake.
Marguerite was one of the first medieval reformers to be executed for their right.
After her death, her book and its revolutionary message were copied into many languages.
They killed Marguerite, but they couldn't destroy her work.
Her book survived - you can buy it today.
21st-century scholars still pore over it.
The Mirror Of Simple Souls - what a great title.
Marguerite Porete was one of the great women of the Middle Ages.
In 1429, 100 years after Marguerite's execution, a soldier returned from battle.
A warrior of a different kind.
One of the most successful fighters of the late Middle Ages.
Not a man but a virgin girl.
Joan of Arc.
Joan was a simple peasant girl, guided by divine visions.
She dazzled the French court led the French army to a victory that laid the foundation for a united France.
For her courage, she paid the ultimate price.
Captured and then burned by the English and their allies.
This is the legend of Joan of Arc, revered as heroine and saint.
But this is not the whole story as new historical research suggests.
Joan of Arc is the most famous woman of the Middle Ages.
Even today, politicians speak of her with awe.
But new research suggests that the rise and fall of this medieval superstar may have been carefully stage-managed by the secretive French court.
Joan of Arc was born in 1412 in the small village of Domremy in eastern France.
The pious daughter of a farmer and tax official, there was nothing in her background to suggest this girl would one day become the leader of the French army.
Professor Larissa Taylor is one of the world's leading experts on the life of Joan of Arc.
I imagine that Joan of Arc as a child was a tomboy.
There is no evidence whatsoever she was.
But Joan was always a bit odd.
She went to church a bit too often, she went on local pilgrimages, and the other children made fun of her for that.
They mocked her, saying "Come - dance with us!" Or "Go with us to the fairy tree.
" And Joan simply was a bit more serious than that.
The teenage Joan believed her God-given destiny was to save France.
Divine visions instructed her to leave her village, and save her country.
France had been at war for 90 years, and had lost nearly half its territory.
Rampaging troops raided the neighbourhood where Joan lived.
In the midst of the chaos, young Joan was convinced that the key to saving the kingdom was the dauphin Charles - heir to the French throne, sidelined by his rivals, a man riddled with self-doubt.
The dauphin at this point in time was not very active.
You could even call him inert.
He only had a few followers, a few counsellors who stayed loyal to him.
He had no money - he could not raise a war.
Joan wanted to see the dauphin crowned King of France.
She told a local nobleman about her visions.
Impressed, he sent her to his friends at the French court.
It was a ten-day journey to the castle of Chinon, where the demoralised dauphin had locked himself away.
His men were exhausted, and lacked the will to fight the English siege army at Orleans.
He might have given up the fight, but his powerful mother-in-law, Yolande of Aragon, was determined to turn around Charles's flagging fortunes.
She worked in secret, so we don't know a lot about her.
It was her modus operandi to work behind the scenes, pull the strings, set things in motion, and she had a network of spies throughout France, throughout parts of the rest of Europe as well.
Yolande needed someone to inspire the superstitious dauphin and his soldiers on the battlefield.
There was a recent prophecy, sometimes attributed to the prophet Marie d'Avignon, that a virgin in armour would defeat the English in battle.
At the French court, Yolande had already rejected several candidates for the role of virgin warrior.
Joan was different.
She was completely convinced of her divine mission to break the English stranglehold over France.
It's one of the most remarkable stories of the Middle Ages - Joan of Arc was a teenage girl who led France to a famous victory over the English.
New evidence suggests Joan's rise to fame was the work not so much of God, but of a powerful woman in the French court, Yolande of Aragon.
Most historians, both in France and throughout the world, believe that Yolande was looking for someone to be a figurehead for the French army, a figurehead who would get Charles going, revive the French cause, and terrify the English.
At the beginning of 1429, Joan was tested for her religious orthodoxy and for her virginity in preparation for her meeting with the Dauphin.
It was a decisive moment.
But when she entered the court, someone else was sitting on the throne.
The court waited to see whether Joan's visionary powers would reveal the deception to her.
The Dauphin sat, not on the throne, but off to one side.
Joan saw through the trick and identified the real Dauphin.
Those present were amazed by her visionary abilities.
According to legend, this was her first miracle.
But all was not as it seemed.
In this spot, according to legend, Joan of Arc miraculously picked out the Dauphin from a crowd.
Except that she didn't.
She'd already met him.
She met with Charles in secret with only a few counsellors.
Then she was presented to the court here and she miraculously picked out the Dauphin, Charles.
It was a perfect example of medieval spin.
Yolande of Aragon had found in Joan a suitable candidate who could play along with her clever public relations tricks and dazzle the French court.
Joan's real challenge was to inspire the Dauphin's troops on the battlefield.
Yolande left nothing to chance.
My hypothesis is that Joan was being trained secretly because it would have served no purpose if the English and everyone else knew that this girl was being fitted out for a part to terrify them.
She was trained in horsemanship, how to wield a sword, carry a banner, wear armour, and it would have been a period of intensive training.
For Yolande and the Dauphin, the strategic city of Orleans was the first key target.
Orleans had remained loyal to France even though it had been under siege by the English for more than six months.
French relief troops were on their way but Yolande was convinced they lacked the will to defeat the English.
When news of Joan arrived, the people were just exuberant about this fact.
It was still being supplied, but who knew how long they could hold out? Finally, towards May 7th and May 8th, they decided to attack.
Joan's courage and charisma inspired the wavering French army.
For the first time in years, the English were on the defensive.
Then disaster struck.
She received an arrow wound between her breastplate and her shoulder near her neck.
Some said that the wound penetrated about six inches through her body.
At that point, the English soldiers erupt in joy, this is the moment they've been waiting for, this scary maid was being taken away and the French were demoralised.
They had come to her, to fight with her.
Then Joan performed another miracle.
She marched back into the field.
Gathering all her strength, she seemed to rise from the dead.
This changed the complete tide of what happened at Orleans.
Here, she came back from the dead and the French soldiers, their morale was completely boosted at this point.
The reinvigorated French defeated the English at Orleans, the first such victory in decades, thanks to Joan's miraculous recovery.
A miracle, indeed.
Unless her injury had been stage-managed.
The interesting question about that is, what really happened? Could she have survived a serious wound of that nature? I don't think so.
I think what may have happened is either she was nicked and they used the opportunity for a bit of trickery, or they may even have planned it ahead of time.
Because Joan said to her confessor, "Tomorrow, blood will flow from my breast.
" And it was known in manuals of medieval warfare that people did this, it was a way of fighting.
After 90 years of war, the French, led by Joan of Arc, inflicted a significant defeat on the English and their allies.
It was the first in a series of French victories, as city after city opened their gates to the virgin warrior and the forces of France.
On 17th July 1429, the Dauphin was crowned King of France in the re-conquered city of Reims.
As far as Yolande was concerned, the mission had been accomplished.
But unfortunately, Joan had other ideas.
Deeply convinced of her divine mission, Joan now wanted to liberate the French capital, Paris.
For Yolande and the new King, Charles, this was the wrong strategy at the wrong time.
She did not fully understand the political situation.
Paris could not have been taken without treachery from within.
And when the King called off the siege of Paris after two days, with a defeat, with much loss of French life that was the point when Joan's star began to fade.
On 23rd May 1430, England's Burgundian allies captured Joan during a skirmish outside the city of Compiegne.
Charles and Yolande made no attempt to buy Joan's freedom.
The French court didn't lift a finger to help.
They had no use for Joan any longer.
Joan was taken to the English-controlled city of Rouen.
Here, she was thrown into a dungeon and put on trial by French clerics allied to England.
Joan was accused of wearing men's clothing, a heresy in the Middle Ages.
After five months in prison, Joan's resolve weakened as she faced execution.
The prosecutors gave her the chance to save her life if she would confess to some of the charges against her.
She was taken to one of the main churches in Rouen.
Tell me what happened to Joan of Arc on this spot.
They brought her here to what was the Cemetery of Saint-Ouen, This whole space was filled with onlookers, people who were in the back could not even hear what was being said.
A fire was ready to be set and she was shown that, and she was offered the ability to repent of her sins.
Joan did sign, she made a small circle with a cross on it.
For now, Joan was spared execution.
Her tormentors were not finished with her.
They sent her to a freezing cold cell.
To avoid the charge of heresy, which carried the death penalty, Joan had to promise never again to wear male clothing.
But her jailers laid a trap and sent her a bundle of warm clothes.
Male clothes.
If she put them on, her fate would be sealed.
Whether out of desperation or out of defiance, Joan decided to put on her war clothing.
For one last time she was the virgin warrior.
On 30th May 1431, a distressed Joan was taken to her execution in the centre of Rouen.
Today, a cross and a modern church commemorate the event.
So this is the place where the story reaches its cruel climax? Indeed, it did.
In this square, the horse-drawn carriage taking Joan to her execution arrived around 8am on May 30th of 1431.
Joan prayed, she wept, but she was taken up to a large plaster execution scaffold so that everyone packed into this tiny square, about 800 people, would see that she died there that day and that she was human and that she was a woman.
Even her clothes were shown once they had burned so that no-one could be in any doubt that she truly died.
Then at the end of the day, after about eight hours, she probably died of smoke inhalation, but after about eight hours, they had to incinerate her body completely so that no-one could take a relic.
The executioner then took her ashes and threw them into the Seine.
Joan of Arc was a remarkable woman but the peasant farm-girl was the victim of power politics.
Once it was clear that she had a mind of her own she became expendable.
The death of Joan, at the age of only 19, was the birth of the legend of Joan of Arc, the most famous woman of the Middle Ages, one of the most famous women of all time.
Joan of Arc is one of three women who show that even in the sexist Middle Ages, a woman could become a force to be reckoned with.
Hildegard the nun, who outwitted the male priesthood, Marguerite the writer, who died for the sake of her book, and Joan of Arc, the warrior who fought for the idea of France as one country.
Three women who defied convention and who inspired people for hundreds of years thereafter.
A time when women had few rights.
I'm Ken Follett, author of two bestselling novels set in the Middle Ages - the Pillars Of The Earth and World Without End.
My books feature women who defy the odds in a tough and unforgiving world.
The role of women in the Middle Ages is often underestimated.
They are seen as repressed and subjugated, but in fact many women were real movers and shakers.
The heroines in my books are inspired by a real-life characters.
Some women, like Joan of Arc, led armies into battle.
Some wrote bestselling books that challenged authority.
Some were medical pioneers, some wrote about music, nature - and even sex.
Some became saints, others paid a high price for their independent spirit.
In the 12th century, the Catholic Church dominated the lives of rich and poor alike.
Beautiful cathedrals celebrated the glory of God.
Monuments to the power of priesthood.
It's hard to exaggerate the influence of the church in the Middle Ages.
It claimed control of every aspect of life, from birth to death and beyond, to heaven and hell.
A few brave people rebelled, but no-one could ignore the power of the Catholic Church.
Pater noster Men of the cloth, monks, priests, bishops, and the Pope controlled the church.
They kept women out of power.
But one remarkable woman became a major figure in the church, challenging men in their traditional domain.
She was the German nun Hildegard von Bingen.
We think of her as a composer, as a writer, as an early scientist and a doctor.
She could do everything.
And this was extraordinary at that time.
Hildegard was a prophet, haunted by terrifying visions.
Her story is a tale of power, religious fanaticism, conspiracy, and sex.
The cards were stacked against women but Hildegard, the visionary, defied them all - monks, abbots, popes, and emperors.
Her story is extraordinary.
You couldn't make it up.
Hildegard grew up near the River Rhine in Germany, the tenth child in a noble family.
But her childhood was short.
Before she was 12, she was sent to the monastery of Disibodenberg.
Run by monks, it included a small but strictly segregated nunnery that became Hildegard's home.
When we think about life in a mediaeval nunnery, it seems like a prison.
But in fact, a nun could become powerful and influential if she was intelligent, shrewd, and if she played her cards right - as Hildegard von Bingen did.
In the nunnery, Hildegard learned basic Latin and studied theology.
This gave her an education not usually available to women.
She also studied herbal medicine which she put to use in the monastery's infirmary.
These are the ruins of the former monastery at Disibodenberg, where Hildegard received her education.
It consisted of over 40 monks and just a few strictly segregated nuns.
Hildegard, as nosy as she was, she didn't want to stay inside, and she took this entrance here, or this way out - her way out into her garden.
So she always left out, left her room, tried to work in the garden, used to learn everything of what she could in order to really become a good medical helper, medical assistant, a doctor - whatever.
She was nosy and she wanted to learn there.
The abbess of the nunnery, Jutta von Sponheim, kept a close watch on her nuns - including the ambitious Hildegard.
Jutta liked the idea of self-denial.
She wrapped herself in chains, she seems to have eaten very, very little - I think today we might call it anorexic.
It was a way of being as penitential as you could be, and denying yourself, again, all the pleasures of life.
Jutta chastised herself to enhance her servitude to God.
So long as this abbess was in charge, Hildegard had to contain her ambitions.
We know that Hildegard struck up a friendship with one of the novices, Richardis von Stade, a well-educated nun from a wealthy and influential family.
Clearly, Hildegard was completely taken with this young woman, and we don't know exactly how, and there will be people who assume some sort of lesbian relationship.
I think you can see it as a sort of crush.
They were probably going stir crazy in this small space in a hillside monastery.
Hildegard confided in Richardis that ever since her childhood, she had had intense religious visions, sometimes triggered by illness.
Hildegard described her experience - "Heaven was opened, and a fiery light of exceeding brilliance came "and permeated my whole brain.
" "Not like a burning, but like a warming flame, "as the sun warms anything that its rays will touch.
" As time went by, Hildegard's visions grew stronger.
She wanted to tell the world about them.
Her chance came when Jutte von Sponheim died of a fever.
Hildegard was appointed as Jutte's successor.
She was now abbess of the Disibodenberg nunnery.
Hildegard had this sense of a new authority.
She was in charge, for the first time in her life, of her nuns, but she also felt that this was the time to break out and speak about her visions.
Not only speak about them, but write them down.
That was the key task and desire of her life at that moment, but it wasn't done.
It wasn't what women did.
The traditions of the Catholic Church were stacked against Hildegard.
Church doctrine prohibited women from preaching.
The Christian church has always been down on women.
Any woman who wanted to make any kind of progress in the Middle Ages had to be a skilful negotiator.
They must have been very smart women, those women who came into prominence and became abbesses and prioresses.
And of course, they're just the kind of women that I like to write about.
Although Hildegard was abbess, she still had to defer to Abbot Kuno, the overall head of the monastery.
In 1138, Hildegard set off with her confidante Richardis, and their appointed secretary, the monk Volmar, to go and see the Abbot.
The church had banned women from writing about religion.
But Hildegard argued that her case was different.
She had visions handed down to her by God.
It was her duty to have them written down.
Writing down her visions - that was her route through doors which were closed to all other women.
That was what gave her an entree into the higher theological world which was so forbidden to women, or so held at arm's length.
Kuno was wary.
But when Hildegard argued that a visionary among the nuns would attract pilgrims - and donations - to the monastery, the Abbott eventually agreed.
Hildegard dictated 26 religious visions to Volmar who translated them into Latin.
The resulting book, the Scivias, consisted of more than 150,000 words.
Hildegard saw the lord of the universe on an iron-coloured mountain.
She described the cosmos, and choirs of angels, and the fall of Adam and Eve.
Buoyed by her success, Hildegard expanded the scope of her writing.
She wrote about music, medicine, nature and the human body - including sex, a taboo subject for nuns.
There are some very, very vivid - and you have two say they are unbelievably vivid - descriptions of lovemaking and of sex behaviour of men and women using very vivid imagery of the thresher pounding his seed - clearly written with considerable knowledge of what men and women get up to.
Hildegard writes about female orgasm and people go wow! How did she know? We all keep asking ourselves that question because there's no more vivid a description than she gives.
Today, an illuminated copy of Hildegard's book Scivias survives in the vaults of a German monastery.
It's a three-part account of creation, redemption, and salvation.
Hildegard had a very special theology of her own.
I think the use of a very vivid language and of these images help to turn her into a true teacher of the church.
Hildegard the visionary had become the main attraction of the Disibodenberg monastery, a female prophet attracting pilgrims and donations.
Hildegard felt it was time to move on from Disibodenberg.
She wanted her own nunnery - independent of monks.
It set her on a collision course with Abbot Kuno.
Hildegard von Bingen was one of the most influential women of the Middle Ages.
By the year 1150, she wanted to take her monastery away from the control of the powerful Abbot Kuno in Disibodenberg.
This is the last living room that Hildegard used to live in.
The convent had grown from three people originally, to now 15, 16, 17, 18, and as you can see here, she didn't have to leave because she didn't have enough room - she didn't like it here, she wanted to be on her own, she wanted to decide what to do, when to do it, and how to do it.
Abbot Kuno told Hildegard that she was not allowed to leave.
Hildegard fell ill, unable to move.
Powerful visions suggested that she would not recuperate until she was given permission to start her own independent nunnery.
The abbot was outmanoeuvred, and he agreed that Hildegard and her nuns could leave Disibodenberg.
Her new nunnery would be directly on the Rhine, one of the main navigation routes in Germany.
It went to a place called the Rupertsburg which is in Bingen - and that's how Hildegard of Bingen got her name - and set up a rather mod-cons sort of monastery.
Although her monastery on the Rupertsburg no longer exists a successor, the nearby St Hildegard's monastery in Eibingen remains dedicated to Hildegard's memory, including her many musical compositions.
She was the first named composer in all Christendom, really.
There's a body of work - about 77 songs, and it's of a very high quality, and the music is rather beautiful.
Hildegard's music has recently gained huge popularity.
A CD of her music became a bestseller.
It appeals to something in people who want something that's very pure and still, and ethereal and unadulterated, and I think they find that in Hildegard.
Hildegard became one of the most influential women in Christendom.
She wrote to kings in England, she wrote to the Emperor Barbarossa, she wrote to the Pope, to the local bishops.
I would have thought they all knew of Hildegard.
Hildegard's visions, books and letters, and her music attracted new recruits from noble families with their substantial dowries.
Gratia plena.
Hildegard had gained the independence she'd always wanted.
It even allowed her to break the dress code of Saint Benedict - as a rival abbess complained.
"They say that on feast days your virgins wear crowns of gold "filigree.
And that they adorn their fingers with gold rings.
"And all this in spite of the prohibition of the great "shepherds of the church.
" But Hildegard had become powerful enough to ignore such criticism.
The women wore flowing gowns, and what was more, their hair was long.
Hildegard had her own theories.
She thought that her women were virginal.
They were not sullied by marriage, as she perceived it, and therefore, why shouldn't they wear flowing gowns and have their hair long? Sadly, Hildegard's professional success was marred by personal disappointment.
Richardis was appointed abbess of a nunnery in the north and had to leave.
Hildegard was grief-stricken.
Richardis was the only person that we know that she absolutely had some heartfelt feeling for.
And Richardis left her.
Richardis abandoned her monastery.
You can call it a tragedy - Hildegard would probably have thought it was part of the path that God wanted for her.
But to us today, it seems a great sadness.
Hildegard lived to 81, a great age in those times.
Her bones have been preserved, but it's her books about medicine, music, and theology but make popular today, and have helped her gain sainthood in 2012.
Hildegard von Bingen stood up to popes and emperors.
She wrote about religion and science, and even sex.
Some call her the Iron Lady of the Middle Ages.
In the 12th century, Hildegard worked within the Catholic Church.
For all her brilliance, she didn't challenge religious orthodoxy.
120 years after Hildegard's death, at the end of the 13th century, a courageous woman did just that.
Marguerite Porete believed the church needed to change its ways.
Her controversial message set her on a collision course with the church hierarchy.
She was hauled up before the mediaeval equivalent of the KGB - the Inquisition.
In my novel World Without End, one of the main characters is a feisty nun called Carys, who's inspired by the independence and courage of Marguerite Porete.
Marguerite was a free spirit, and a brave writer, prepared to risk everything - even her life.
It was the year 1300.
Women were not generally allowed to write about religious matters.
But Marguerite Porete, a female scholar, broke with convention.
Marguerite Porete is really known to us only as a French mystic woman, who reported to us of her visions.
We don't know otherwise really much about her background.
This is not worth for those women to talk about.
They want to talk about God, and Marguerite talks about her mystical vision - that's what we know about her.
We also know that Marguerite wrote a book about religion which brought her into conflict with the church.
The title came to be The Mirror Of Simple Souls.
The book is a treatise, a spiritual handbook for those who would follow the seven steps that she sets it out - the soul's itinerary to total annihilation and union with God.
Marguerite's path to salvation challenged the foundations of church rule.
Her book contained a controversial message - you don't need the church to get close to God.
This was a dangerous message in the early 14th century.
But she wrote a radical revolutionary claim.
Marguerite was so certain of her convictions that she made several copies of her book.
Which was easier said than done.
They didn't use paper in the Middle Ages.
The books were made of parchment, which comes from the skin of sheep and calves, and you can imagine, you don't get many pages this big out of a sheep.
So it's expensive.
The process, then, once you have the sheets - the process of making the ink, is time-consuming, and the writing itself This looks as if it's been printed - that's because it's been so beautifully and neatly written.
But that takes a long time.
So each individual book was a work of art.
And they were very expensive.
Marguerite sent copies to influential clerics, including the ultraconservative Bishop of Cambrai, Guy de Colmieu.
He read it through and was alarmed by what he saw as heretical portions in it, in particular the notion that a perfected soul no longer needs the rituals and sacraments of the church.
Marguerite was summoned to Bishop de Colmieu's Palace at Cambrai to hear his views on The Mirror Of Simple Souls.
He considered the book heretical, and he burned it.
The Bishop is incensed, in a way - I mean, shocked! How does this woman dare to claim more religious authority than the Bishop himself?! In a legal sense, at that point, she has had her first strike.
Inquisitorial process in this period was essentially a two-strike system.
One opportunity with warning and perhaps penance, second strike - one is in very deep waters.
Marguerite faced the Inquisition - the most powerful and frightening organisation of its time.
It was the job of the Inquisition to seek out and punish heretics.
Being accused of heresy was like being accused of terrorism today.
This came to be understood as a threat not only against Christendom, but against the very foundations of political authority.
Heresy was a crime against the throne.
The Inquisition had a horrifying arsenal of torture instruments.
They were kept secret, and then shown to the accused just before their ordeal.
Marguerite was shown a cruel device called the pear.
Segments of bronze, screws and iron made up the pear.
The oral pear, the vagina peer, and the anal pear were inserted into the cavities of torture victims, inflicting unimaginable injuries and pain.
The oral pear was applied to the mouth of a heretic.
For most people, the threat of a mediaeval heresy trial was enough to silence them for good.
Not Marguerite Porete.
In the Middle Ages, few women dared to take on the might of the Catholic Church or the Inquisition.
But Marguerite Porete was different.
Marguerite was ordered to stop writing, or face trial for heresy.
What would I do if I was told to stop writing or face execution? I'd stop.
But Marguerite continued to write her book.
She even added 17 more chapters.
That is the unbelievable courage.
This woman faces death at the stake, and yet she keeps writing.
Marguerite went farther - she read from her book publicly.
It was in French, not Latin, so that everyone could understand.
At this time of growing discontent with the priesthood, she struck a chord with her message that salvation doesn't require the church, just your personal love of God.
This is what I think is most interesting about her story - she had such confidence in the power and the righteousness of her ideas.
De cela parmi des The Inquisition was relentless.
But Marguerite was steadfast.
She certainly knew what she was facing.
The moment she picked up the book again, she had essentially, in a legal sense, already committed heresy.
The fact that she continues to distribute it means that she was really standing by her ideas, and I think she knew perfectly well the risk that she was running.
In 1308, several years after she was told to stop writing, Marguerite was arrested for heresy.
In this chain of events, the Bishop of Cambrai forwards Marguerite and her book to an inquisitor in Paris.
This is the Dominican inquisitor William of Paris.
He asks her, "Is this the book that was "condemned by the Bishop of Cambrai?" And she says, "Yes.
" "Is this book that you were told explicitly not to write "and distribute again?" "Yes.
" At that moment, in a legal sense, Marguerite admitted her guilt and heresy.
That was her second strike.
Marguerite understood that she faced the death penalty.
Her only chance was to renounce the book, but this she would not do, so in 1308 she was thrown into jail - still, she refused to renounce her teaching.
This inner strength of that woman.
You don't have to believe her, but we must admire her.
And we can only admire the poetry that she created.
It is some of the most beautiful stuff ever written in French medieval literature.
Marguerite refused to give evidence to her judges, knowing what this meant for her.
In 1310, she was found guilty of heresy, and sentenced to be burned at the stake.
Onlookers described her as being very serene and very dignified as she went to her death.
It was apparently moving for those who are watching - according to sources, many had tears in their eyes as they watched her endure her death at the stake.
Marguerite was one of the first medieval reformers to be executed for their right.
After her death, her book and its revolutionary message were copied into many languages.
They killed Marguerite, but they couldn't destroy her work.
Her book survived - you can buy it today.
21st-century scholars still pore over it.
The Mirror Of Simple Souls - what a great title.
Marguerite Porete was one of the great women of the Middle Ages.
In 1429, 100 years after Marguerite's execution, a soldier returned from battle.
A warrior of a different kind.
One of the most successful fighters of the late Middle Ages.
Not a man but a virgin girl.
Joan of Arc.
Joan was a simple peasant girl, guided by divine visions.
She dazzled the French court led the French army to a victory that laid the foundation for a united France.
For her courage, she paid the ultimate price.
Captured and then burned by the English and their allies.
This is the legend of Joan of Arc, revered as heroine and saint.
But this is not the whole story as new historical research suggests.
Joan of Arc is the most famous woman of the Middle Ages.
Even today, politicians speak of her with awe.
But new research suggests that the rise and fall of this medieval superstar may have been carefully stage-managed by the secretive French court.
Joan of Arc was born in 1412 in the small village of Domremy in eastern France.
The pious daughter of a farmer and tax official, there was nothing in her background to suggest this girl would one day become the leader of the French army.
Professor Larissa Taylor is one of the world's leading experts on the life of Joan of Arc.
I imagine that Joan of Arc as a child was a tomboy.
There is no evidence whatsoever she was.
But Joan was always a bit odd.
She went to church a bit too often, she went on local pilgrimages, and the other children made fun of her for that.
They mocked her, saying "Come - dance with us!" Or "Go with us to the fairy tree.
" And Joan simply was a bit more serious than that.
The teenage Joan believed her God-given destiny was to save France.
Divine visions instructed her to leave her village, and save her country.
France had been at war for 90 years, and had lost nearly half its territory.
Rampaging troops raided the neighbourhood where Joan lived.
In the midst of the chaos, young Joan was convinced that the key to saving the kingdom was the dauphin Charles - heir to the French throne, sidelined by his rivals, a man riddled with self-doubt.
The dauphin at this point in time was not very active.
You could even call him inert.
He only had a few followers, a few counsellors who stayed loyal to him.
He had no money - he could not raise a war.
Joan wanted to see the dauphin crowned King of France.
She told a local nobleman about her visions.
Impressed, he sent her to his friends at the French court.
It was a ten-day journey to the castle of Chinon, where the demoralised dauphin had locked himself away.
His men were exhausted, and lacked the will to fight the English siege army at Orleans.
He might have given up the fight, but his powerful mother-in-law, Yolande of Aragon, was determined to turn around Charles's flagging fortunes.
She worked in secret, so we don't know a lot about her.
It was her modus operandi to work behind the scenes, pull the strings, set things in motion, and she had a network of spies throughout France, throughout parts of the rest of Europe as well.
Yolande needed someone to inspire the superstitious dauphin and his soldiers on the battlefield.
There was a recent prophecy, sometimes attributed to the prophet Marie d'Avignon, that a virgin in armour would defeat the English in battle.
At the French court, Yolande had already rejected several candidates for the role of virgin warrior.
Joan was different.
She was completely convinced of her divine mission to break the English stranglehold over France.
It's one of the most remarkable stories of the Middle Ages - Joan of Arc was a teenage girl who led France to a famous victory over the English.
New evidence suggests Joan's rise to fame was the work not so much of God, but of a powerful woman in the French court, Yolande of Aragon.
Most historians, both in France and throughout the world, believe that Yolande was looking for someone to be a figurehead for the French army, a figurehead who would get Charles going, revive the French cause, and terrify the English.
At the beginning of 1429, Joan was tested for her religious orthodoxy and for her virginity in preparation for her meeting with the Dauphin.
It was a decisive moment.
But when she entered the court, someone else was sitting on the throne.
The court waited to see whether Joan's visionary powers would reveal the deception to her.
The Dauphin sat, not on the throne, but off to one side.
Joan saw through the trick and identified the real Dauphin.
Those present were amazed by her visionary abilities.
According to legend, this was her first miracle.
But all was not as it seemed.
In this spot, according to legend, Joan of Arc miraculously picked out the Dauphin from a crowd.
Except that she didn't.
She'd already met him.
She met with Charles in secret with only a few counsellors.
Then she was presented to the court here and she miraculously picked out the Dauphin, Charles.
It was a perfect example of medieval spin.
Yolande of Aragon had found in Joan a suitable candidate who could play along with her clever public relations tricks and dazzle the French court.
Joan's real challenge was to inspire the Dauphin's troops on the battlefield.
Yolande left nothing to chance.
My hypothesis is that Joan was being trained secretly because it would have served no purpose if the English and everyone else knew that this girl was being fitted out for a part to terrify them.
She was trained in horsemanship, how to wield a sword, carry a banner, wear armour, and it would have been a period of intensive training.
For Yolande and the Dauphin, the strategic city of Orleans was the first key target.
Orleans had remained loyal to France even though it had been under siege by the English for more than six months.
French relief troops were on their way but Yolande was convinced they lacked the will to defeat the English.
When news of Joan arrived, the people were just exuberant about this fact.
It was still being supplied, but who knew how long they could hold out? Finally, towards May 7th and May 8th, they decided to attack.
Joan's courage and charisma inspired the wavering French army.
For the first time in years, the English were on the defensive.
Then disaster struck.
She received an arrow wound between her breastplate and her shoulder near her neck.
Some said that the wound penetrated about six inches through her body.
At that point, the English soldiers erupt in joy, this is the moment they've been waiting for, this scary maid was being taken away and the French were demoralised.
They had come to her, to fight with her.
Then Joan performed another miracle.
She marched back into the field.
Gathering all her strength, she seemed to rise from the dead.
This changed the complete tide of what happened at Orleans.
Here, she came back from the dead and the French soldiers, their morale was completely boosted at this point.
The reinvigorated French defeated the English at Orleans, the first such victory in decades, thanks to Joan's miraculous recovery.
A miracle, indeed.
Unless her injury had been stage-managed.
The interesting question about that is, what really happened? Could she have survived a serious wound of that nature? I don't think so.
I think what may have happened is either she was nicked and they used the opportunity for a bit of trickery, or they may even have planned it ahead of time.
Because Joan said to her confessor, "Tomorrow, blood will flow from my breast.
" And it was known in manuals of medieval warfare that people did this, it was a way of fighting.
After 90 years of war, the French, led by Joan of Arc, inflicted a significant defeat on the English and their allies.
It was the first in a series of French victories, as city after city opened their gates to the virgin warrior and the forces of France.
On 17th July 1429, the Dauphin was crowned King of France in the re-conquered city of Reims.
As far as Yolande was concerned, the mission had been accomplished.
But unfortunately, Joan had other ideas.
Deeply convinced of her divine mission, Joan now wanted to liberate the French capital, Paris.
For Yolande and the new King, Charles, this was the wrong strategy at the wrong time.
She did not fully understand the political situation.
Paris could not have been taken without treachery from within.
And when the King called off the siege of Paris after two days, with a defeat, with much loss of French life that was the point when Joan's star began to fade.
On 23rd May 1430, England's Burgundian allies captured Joan during a skirmish outside the city of Compiegne.
Charles and Yolande made no attempt to buy Joan's freedom.
The French court didn't lift a finger to help.
They had no use for Joan any longer.
Joan was taken to the English-controlled city of Rouen.
Here, she was thrown into a dungeon and put on trial by French clerics allied to England.
Joan was accused of wearing men's clothing, a heresy in the Middle Ages.
After five months in prison, Joan's resolve weakened as she faced execution.
The prosecutors gave her the chance to save her life if she would confess to some of the charges against her.
She was taken to one of the main churches in Rouen.
Tell me what happened to Joan of Arc on this spot.
They brought her here to what was the Cemetery of Saint-Ouen, This whole space was filled with onlookers, people who were in the back could not even hear what was being said.
A fire was ready to be set and she was shown that, and she was offered the ability to repent of her sins.
Joan did sign, she made a small circle with a cross on it.
For now, Joan was spared execution.
Her tormentors were not finished with her.
They sent her to a freezing cold cell.
To avoid the charge of heresy, which carried the death penalty, Joan had to promise never again to wear male clothing.
But her jailers laid a trap and sent her a bundle of warm clothes.
Male clothes.
If she put them on, her fate would be sealed.
Whether out of desperation or out of defiance, Joan decided to put on her war clothing.
For one last time she was the virgin warrior.
On 30th May 1431, a distressed Joan was taken to her execution in the centre of Rouen.
Today, a cross and a modern church commemorate the event.
So this is the place where the story reaches its cruel climax? Indeed, it did.
In this square, the horse-drawn carriage taking Joan to her execution arrived around 8am on May 30th of 1431.
Joan prayed, she wept, but she was taken up to a large plaster execution scaffold so that everyone packed into this tiny square, about 800 people, would see that she died there that day and that she was human and that she was a woman.
Even her clothes were shown once they had burned so that no-one could be in any doubt that she truly died.
Then at the end of the day, after about eight hours, she probably died of smoke inhalation, but after about eight hours, they had to incinerate her body completely so that no-one could take a relic.
The executioner then took her ashes and threw them into the Seine.
Joan of Arc was a remarkable woman but the peasant farm-girl was the victim of power politics.
Once it was clear that she had a mind of her own she became expendable.
The death of Joan, at the age of only 19, was the birth of the legend of Joan of Arc, the most famous woman of the Middle Ages, one of the most famous women of all time.
Joan of Arc is one of three women who show that even in the sexist Middle Ages, a woman could become a force to be reckoned with.
Hildegard the nun, who outwitted the male priesthood, Marguerite the writer, who died for the sake of her book, and Joan of Arc, the warrior who fought for the idea of France as one country.
Three women who defied convention and who inspired people for hundreds of years thereafter.