100 Nasty Women of History Page 3
‘When a woman is making love with a man, a sense of heat in her brain which brings forth with it sensual delights communicates the taste of that delight during the act, and summons forth the emission of the man’s seed, and when the seed has fallen into its place, that vehement heat descending from her brain draws the seed to itself and holds it.’ Heyooooo! That’s what she said!
Hildegard had plenty of time to contemplate, if not experience, the summoning forth of the emission of a man’s seed, as a nun’s life in 12th-century Germany was by its nature cloistered from the distractions of the world. Hildegard was born in 1098, and was given away at age 14 to a convent. That was the rule with children. It’s a bit like a loyalty card in a coffee shop. Have nine kids, give the tenth to God. Wrap them in a shroud, give them a fake funeral, and hand ’em over to the lil’ baby Jesus, never to be seen by sinful society again.2
The strict regimen of the convent demanded that each day the nuns have eight hours’ sleep, four hours’ prayer, four hours’ study, and eight hours of manual labour, which entailed, I dunno, putting up retaining walls and stuff. But at least on Sundays they got to watch reality TV. Everything was rumbling along just fine for Hildegard, going about her nun life, doing nunny things, and thinking nunny thoughts, when what should happen but she should be struck by an intense vision:
And it came to pass when I was 42 years and 7 months old, that the heavens were opened and a blinding light of exceptional brilliance flowed through my entire brain. And so it kindled my whole heart and breast like a flame, not burning but warming, and suddenly I understood the meaning of expositions of the books.
It sounds very much like the female orgasm according to Hildegard’s contemplations on that topic above; however, her sudden understanding of the meaning of expositions in the books was really about Jesus stuff. It would take a bit more time, though, before Hildegard would finally run out of fucks to give about what people thought of her and so become an international celebrity genius. Because even having received a direct vision of God, which is pretty cool, Hildegard still suffered imposter syndrome:
‘Although I heard and saw these things,’ she explained, ‘because of doubt and low opinion of myself, and because of diverse sayings of men, I refused for a long time a call to write, not out of stubbornness, but out of humility,’ which just goes to show that nobody should listen to the diverse sayings of men.
Hildegard eventually got over her self-doubts and took her show on the road, or, at least, took her visions on the road by writing them down, interpreting and sharing them, while remaining cloistered in the nunnery. In this way she became an ecclesiastical mega celeb, receiving envoys from popes and dishing out blessed advice to whomever needed it. She even set up her own monasteries, like the strong empowered career woman that she was.
But Hildegard didn’t let her spiritual fame distract her from her many other talents. Hildegard is most famous nowadays, among classical music fans at least, for her work as a composer. You can hear her music either by going online or by suddenly encountering a chorus of angels in a moment of religious ecstasy. In fact, one of her most famous works is the Canticles of Ecstasy. Old Hildy loved a bit of ecstasy.
But no, having a direct line to God, dishing out political advice to 12th-century power players like popes and clergymen, and producing a vast quantity of medieval music wasn’t enough to fill Hildy’s regimented four hours of study each day. She’s also considered one of the founders of natural sciences and medicine, based on her time in the convent’s gardens and observations of illnesses and their cures.
In her medical book, Causes and Cures, we find many helpful remedies that may well cure our modern ailments. For example, if you are struck by excessive horniness, the best thing to do is to get in a sauna with some lettuce. That’ll sort you right out.
If you should come down with ‘jaundice’, by which she means an STI, there’s only one cure according to Hildegard: ‘A bat, knocked senseless, tied to the loins of a human and left to die, is guaranteed to cure that person’s jaundice.’ Guaranteed, or your money back!
Anyway this is why the average life expectancy of a person in medieval Germany was minus 25. And for bats it was even shorter! But we cannot fault her: Hildegard was at the cutting edge of 12th-century medicine and science.
I hope Hildegard’s description of female pleasure was based on a bit of personal experience, perhaps courtesy of a fellow naughty nun, as some historians and Hildegard fans believe was the case, because boy did she deserve a break from her career of writing books on science and medicine, keeping her dream journal of visions, writing poetry, composing 77 songs, advising popes, and, of course, tying bats to diseased dicks.
8
Margery Kempe
c. 1373–1438
The mystic Margery Kempe lived from 1373 until 1438, which, as every little girl and boy knows, was a chaotic time in the religious life of England. See, the Roman Catholic Church in England was having all kinds of drama with heretics, those great troublemakers of history. Margery was about to make much more trouble for them than most.
Margery was living a perfectly normal life as a 14th-century gal, pottering about what is now King’s Lynn and enjoying her well-off status, when who should turn up at the foot of her bed but Jesus H. Christ himself, looking like a cool drink of water. While seeing Jesus Christ in your bedroom would be a bit of a shock to anyone, no matter your religious beliefs, for Margery he’d turned up just in the nick of time.
See, Margery was having some trouble with demons. She’d just given birth to her first child, and was stressing about some sins she hadn’t confessed. Naturally, she feared she might die and go straight to the fiery pits of hell. (It’s not clear what the sin was that she was so worried about, so let’s just assume it was something kinky.)
So there she was, being tormented by demons telling her she should burn in hell for all eternity, when Jesus pops along and reassures her, ‘It’s chill, I haven’t forsaken u,’ then flounces off back to heaven. Margery was like, ‘Awesome,’ and that was that for 15 years.
Margery carried on her life, giving birth to a casual 13 more children with her boo, John Kempe. It wasn’t until her 40s that Margery started to experience more visions, and that her career of religious weeping would really kick off, proving that you’re never too old to get famous for crying. This time, the visions were more intense than ever, with encounters with Jesus in which he’d ravish her soul, and then some. According to my pal Tim who knows all about sexy medieval mystics, ‘women were seen as more inclined to sensuality and “fleshiness” back then and therefore given to particularly emotional, physical expressions of spirituality. But this also gave them a special connection to Christ who had taken on human flesh.’ Hot.
Margery, ever the keeno, started to wear a ring and say that she was actually married to Jesus. And not just nun married. Married married. In her visions, she’d feel the pain of his crucifixion, and it sucked. She’d also have conversations with Mary, God, and other such Christian celebrities. This was the real deal, and Margery knew it was time to make changes in her life. She stopped eating meat, and also made a pact with her pre-existing, non-Jesus husband that they wouldn’t have sex any more. (A PACT LIKE GETTING MARRIED, AMIRITE FELLAS?!) Anyway, she was married to Jesus now, and things were going great.
Margery began to preach – which women weren’t meant to do at the time – and speak about her sometimes-horrifying visions. She saved her extra good crying for holidays like Palm Sunday and Good Friday, and set out on a grand tour to take her weeping on the road. She travelled across Europe, and went all the way to Jerusalem. It was like Eat, Pray, Love, but mostly Pray. Although she apparently loved a good dinner party, so there was also plenty of Eat. And, of course, further ravishings by Jesus. So yes, it was exactly like Eat, Pray, Love.
Margery travelled in groups, as you did in those days, but faced trouble on account of being really fucking annoying, constantly telling people off for their variou
s unholy actions, and, of course, weeping. Her travelling companions were also irritated that she’d dress in white, suggesting she was a virgin, when they knew her to have 14 children. And so they were total jerks to her, not letting her eat with them, stealing her money, and ditching her. But in the end, we’re not sitting around talking about A History of Jerks, so sucks to be them, really.
To make her pilgrimage more difficult and therefore more on brand, Margery would give away her money. When people gave her more money, she’d give that away too. Like when rich kids on their gap years insist on catching the Zika virus in order to give themselves a better story.
Church authorities began to get quite worried about Margery, who was prancing around the world wailing her little heart out, and decided to put her on trial in Leicester for something called Lollardism3. This was a sect begun by a fellow named John Wycliffe, who had been kicked out of Oxford for his criticisms of the Roman Catholic Church. He believed that everything they said and did was idolatry and therefore Bad. He was concerned with clerical power and corruption, and believed lay people could and should be able to read the scriptures and preach. Needless to say, the Catholic Church wasn’t having it, from John, from Margery, or from anyone. The idea of female mystics or lay women being spiritual authorities made them feel itchy all over. Beyond suspecting Margery’s religious ideas and her brazen lady-preaching, the authorities also weren’t keen on the idea that somebody’s wife could just stop having sex with her husband and travel the world weeping. What if other people’s wives got the same idea? It’d be chaos. Thankfully for fans of weeping, Margery convinced them she wasn’t as naughty as they thought, denied their accusations, and escaped burning at the stake. Hurrah!
Margery passed the rest of her days making money by praying for people, pilgrimming around, becoming gal pals with a fellow lady mystic, Julian of Norwich, and, of course, continuing to refine her weeping technique. In her last years, she hired a priest to record her memoirs into a book that may be the first autobiography in the English language, The Book of Margery Kempe. The priest was sceptical of her visions at first, until he apparently also started weeping whenever he read the Bible. Weeping can be contagious.
We wouldn’t know a thing about Margery today, however, if it weren’t for the poshest thing that has ever happened. In the 1930s, some English merrymakers went looking for a spare ping-pong ball in the back of a cupboard in their lovely country home, and there they discovered the one and only Book of Margery Kempe. We don’t know, however, if they found a spare ping-pong ball. In any case, rich people should tidy out their cupboards more often.
The Book of Margery Kempe is likely not 100% accurate, but rather, a portrait of a late medieval life with a nice Valencia filter on it. Which is fair enough on Margery’s part. Though she was never sainted, her book ensured her story would live on, even if she had to spend a couple of centuries gathering dust in the back of a posh person’s cupboard first.
Women with impressive kill counts
9
Artemisia I of Caria
5th century BC
You may remember Artemisia of Caria from the movie 300: Rise of an Empire, the sequel to that all-time greatest hyper-masculine wankfest of a film, 300. If you haven’t seen 300, the plot consists of 300 men in the ancient Greek city-state of Sparta pointing their rock-hard pecs at each other and making poor military decisions. In the sequel, Rise of an Empire, we enjoy slightly less ab-tastic Greek forces locked in naval battle ten years after the Spartan heroes met their idiotic deaths. Their foe, this time, is Artemisia. You can tell she’s a baddie right away, because she wears lots of eyeliner and her hair is a darker shade of brown than the Spartan women, and you can tell she is meant to be respected as ‘one of the boys’ and a soldier in her own right, because there’s a whole introductory montage to show how bloodthirsty she is.
Artemisia lived in the 5th century BC in the Kingdom of Caria, in what is now the western bit of Turkey. She took over as ruler of Caria after her husband died, as so many of the husbands do in this book (RIP to all the husbands out there). Despite her Greek origin, Artemisia was an ally of Xerxes and the Persian Empire. You’ll remember Xerxes from 300 for his facial jewellery, weird voice, and great eyebrows.
Artemisia was a skilled military tactician, unlike those fuckers in the first 300, and the only female commander in the Greco-Persian wars. She apparently would swap her ships’ Persian flags for Greek ones in the interests of sneakiness. The Greeks were so keen to capture her that they put a 10,000 drachma reward on her head, which is worth at least a fiver in today’s money.
In the film the scaredy Greek soldiers whisper that Artemisia ‘has sold her soul to Death itself’, which cannot be historically confirmed or denied. It is also unclear whether or not she invited the leader of the Greek fleet, Theoblahblahblah, to try and convince him to join forces with her through the power of her seduction and her sexy, swinging breasts, an invitation he refused after a quickie, leading her to swear bloody vengeance. Which, I’m just gonna guess, didn’t happen IRL, but who knows? People in Ancient Greece must have had sex, so why not on ships in the middle of negotiations?
The biggest battle Artemisia fought was in 480 BC, the Battle of Salamis, in which the Greeks and Persians fought over a delicious platter of salami4. Artemisia had advised Xerxes against the battle, and was proved right when the Persians were tricked into entering the straits of Salamis and routed by the Greeks’ smaller, more agile ships. Nevertheless, she escaped unscathed, possibly by ramming into a fellow Persian ship so that the Greeks would think she was on their side, or so says the Greek historian Herodotus, a known messy bitch who lived for drama. Whatever happened, Xerxes was pleased with her work, and said, ‘My men have turned into women and my women into men!’ Good one, Xerxes.
So that’s Artemisia. She got the job done with her smokey eyeliner and her naval battling gumpshun and her possible sexploits, as we all must in this life.
10
Æthelflæd
c. AD 870–918
A list of nasty women would be incomplete without talking about England’s medieval queen who practically invented being a nasty woman: Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians.
No, I haven’t just smashed my big sausage fingers on the keyboard – her name is spelled like that, with joined up As and Es, because medieval English people had NO space to spare in their illuminated manuscripts. To understand how it’s pronounced, imagine the sound you make when you’re about to take a shower but right before you get in you notice there’s a spider by the drain. That’s ‘æ’.
Æthelflæd was born in 870 something, and was the eldest child of King Alfred the Great, who is remembered in history for being just great. One of the great things about dear Alfred was that he taught his daughter all the kinds of things you have to know to rule a medieval kingdom: military strategy, economic stuff, legal stuff, how to collect taxes and chill with monks, and most importantly, how to kill a Viking with a massive pointy sword.
This last skill would frequently come in handy over the course of Æthelflæd’s life, including when she and her bridal party were attacked by Vikings and she had to fight them off until only she, a bodyguard, and a maidservant were left alive. Thankfully, though, Æthelflæd understood that it’s important to keep a positive attitude in life, and didn’t let a bloody massacre get in between her and her new boo. Her marriage to Æthelred, Lord of the Mercians, would consolidate the kingdoms of Wessex and Mercia, bringing the many kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England one step closer to a consolidated kingdom – something the Vikings were probably keen to prevent. This is why nobody likes Vikings.
If you’ve watched Game of Thrones, you’re probably aware of what a faff it is to try and unite lots of warring kingdoms, especially if you haven’t got any dragons to spare and you keep getting distracted by tits. Though she didn’t have any dragons, that we know of, Æthelflæd wielded significant political and military power in an age when women were not usually allowed t
o assume such roles.
When her Great father died, and her OK husband got sick, Æthelflæd took on more and more of the work of ruling, including leading and fighting in important battles. When some more goddamn Vikings attacked Chester in 905, she fought alongside her men, luring the enemy inside the city walls by feigning a retreat before slamming the gates shut, trapping them inside and surprising them with a vicious attack. Æthelflæd, a practised Viking-killer, then got in on the action with her trusty sword. Imagine caring that much about Chester.
In 911, Æthelflæd’s husband died (RIP). Unusually, she was so respected by the aristocracy for her military and political skill, that she was able to stay on as the sole ruler with the title Lady of the Mercians, the girl version of her late husband’s title, Lord of the Mercians. After all, they knew she’d been the one running the show for the previous decade or so anyway.
During her solo rule, Æthelflæd continued to win important battles and work toward the consolidation of the kingdoms of England with her little bro, Edward. She fought yet more Vikings to get them out of Wales in 915, then invaded Wales in 916 because the Welsh had murdered some English abbot and she was pissed off. In 917 she recaptured Derby from the Danes, and that’s why we get to enjoy Derby today. The kingdoms of Leicester and York submitted to her rule outright. She rebuilt Roman roads and built the cathedral in Gloucester that still stands.
Æthelflæd was making great progress against the Vikings when, alas, she died in 918. Remarkably, her rule passed on to her daughter, Ælfwynn, who had been co-ruling with her mother, as any good daughter would. It would be the first woman-to-woman succession in all of Europe, not to be repeated for another 600 years with the succession of Lady Jane Grey to Mary to Elizabeth I.