Thursday, March 13, 2014

Five top (but often overlooked) stories about medieval crime

Eric Jager is an award-winning professor at UCLA. His books include the widely acclaimed The Last Duel, The Book of the Heart, The Tempter's Voice, and the newly released Blood Royal: A True Tale of Crime and Detection in Medieval Paris by Eric Jager.

One of his five top little-known but history-changing medieval crime stories, as shared at The Daily Beast:
Who Murdered Geoffrey Chaucer?
by Terry Jones

An investigation by the Oxford-educated Terry Jones (also of Monty Python fame) into the mysterious death (ca. 1400) of England’s premier medieval poet. Was Chaucer murdered? And, if so, was it because his writings contained heresy? Or because he supported the deposed King Richard II rather than the usurper Henry Bolingbroke? Chaucer’s murder, if true, did not so much change history as warn people that England had changed course with the new Lancastrian regime.
Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue