From long-lost Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder,

power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond.

Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger and some of the world's leading historians,

as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life only on

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Hello, I'm Matt Lewis. Welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history.

We've got the most intriguing mysteries, the gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the Vikings to the printing press,

from kings to popes to the crusades. We cross centuries and continents to delve into rebellions,

plots and murders, to find the stories big and small that tell us how we got here. Find out who we really were. We've gone medieval.

I want you to picture a young widow in medieval Paris, three children in her care. Debt's

piling up, a courtroom battle over her late husband's estate dragging on for years.

No patron, no power, no plan.

Except one radical decision.

She will make a living with her mind and her pen.

This woman is Christine de Pizanne, and she's about to become Europe's first professional female writer.

At a time when women were seen as weak, silent and sinful, Christine picked up a pen and answered back.

She wrote poetry for kings and queens. She debated scholars in public. She created allegorical cities where women

ruled. She defended women's intelligence, morality and dignity, centuries before the word

feminism even existed. And when France was collapsing into civil war, she wrote one of history's

first political biographies of a living woman, celebrating Joan of Arc as a national hero.

...