List of unusual deaths in the Middle Ages

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Lists of unusual deaths
Antiquity
Middle Ages	Renaissance	Early modern period
19th century	20th century	21st century
Animal deaths

This list of unusual deaths includes unique or extremely rare circumstances of death recorded throughout the Middle Ages, noted as being unusual by multiple sources.

• 
  John II Komnenos on a boar hunt
• 
  Frederick Barbarossa's strange drowning gave rise to legends that he was still alive
• 
  Gruffudd ap Llywelyn ab Iorwerth falls to his death from the Tower of London

Middle Ages

Name of person	Image	Date of death	Details
Li Bai		762	According to popular legend, the Chinese poet got drunk while riding his boat along the Yangtze River and tried to hug the moon's reflection. He then fell off and drowned. [1] [2]
Louis III of France		5 August 882	The king of West Francia died aged around 18 at Saint-Denis. Whilst mounting his horse to pursue a girl who was running to seek refuge in her father's house, he hit his head on the lintel of a low door and fell, fracturing his skull. [3] [4]
Basil I		29 August 886	The Byzantine emperor's belt was entangled between antlers of a deer during a hunt and the animal subsequently dragged him for 16 miles (26 km) through the woods. Because of this accident, Basil contracted fever and he died shortly afterwards. [5] [6] [ unreliable source? ]
Sigurd the Mighty		892	The second Earl of Orkney strapped the head of his defeated foe Máel Brigte to his horse's saddle. Brigte's teeth rubbed against Sigurd's leg as he rode, causing a fatal infection, according to the Old Norse Heimskringla and Orkneyinga sagas. [6] [ unreliable source? ] [7] [8]
Hatto II		18 January 970	The archbishop of Mainz is claimed in legend to have been punished for his cruelty to the poor by being eaten alive by rodents. [9] [10]
Edmund Ironside		30 November 1016	According to Henry of Huntington, the English king was stabbed whilst on a toilet by an assassin hiding underneath. [11] [12]
Béla I of Hungary		11 September 1063	After the Holy Roman Empire decided to launch a military expedition against Hungary to restore his nephew Solomon to the throne, the Hungarian king was seriously injured when "his throne broke beneath him" in his manor at Dömös, later succumbing at a creek near Nagykanizsa. [8] [13]
Crown Prince Philip of France		13 October 1131	The French prince who co-ruled with Louis VI died while riding through Paris when his horse tripped over a black pig that was running out of a dung heap. [6] [ unreliable source? ] [8] [9]
Henry I of England		1 December 1135	According to Henry of Huntington, while visiting relatives, the English king ate too many lampreys against his physician's advice, causing a pain in his gut which led to his death. [8] [12] [14] [15]
John II Komnenos		1 April 1143	The Byzantine Emperor cut himself with a poisoned arrow during a boar hunt, subsequently dying from sepsis. [16] [17]
Pope Adrian IV		1 September 1159	The only Englishman to serve as Pope reportedly died after choking on a fly while drinking spring water. [6] [ unreliable source? ] [7] [9]
Victims of the Erfurt latrine disaster		26 July 1184	While Henry VI, the King of Germany, was holding an informal assembly at the Petersburg Citadel in Erfurt, the combined weight of the assembled nobles caused the wooden second story floor of the building to collapse. Most of the nobles fell through into the latrine cesspit below the ground floor, where about 60 of them drowned in liquid excrement. [6] [ unreliable source? ] [18]
Frederick Barbarossa		10 June 1190	While leading the German army on the Third Crusade, the Holy Roman Emperor unexpectedly drowned while bathing in the Saleph. [9] [19]
Enguerrand III, Lord of Coucy		1 January 1242	Enguerrand III, French nobleman and Lord of Councy, died at 60 years of age when, during a rough ride, he fell off his horse and impaled himself on his own sword. [20] [ verification needed ]
Gruffudd ap Llywelyn ab Iorwerth		1 March 1244	The first-born son of Llywelyn the Great died while attempting to lower himself from the Tower of London in an escape attempt. The rope, made out of sheets and other fabrics, snapped, and his neck was broken in the fall, according to English monk and chronicler, Matthew Paris. [6] [ unreliable source? ] [21] [ self-published source? ]
Al-Musta'sim		20 February 1258	The last Abbasid Caliph of Baghdad, was executed by his Mongol captors by being rolled up in a rug and then trampled by horses. [8] [22]
Edward II of England		21 September 1327	The English king was rumoured to have been murdered after being deposed and imprisoned by his wife Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer, by having a horn pushed into his anus through which a red-hot iron was inserted, burning out his internal organs without marking his body. [7] [12] [23] [ verification needed ] [24] However, there is no real academic consensus on the manner of Edward II's death, and it has been plausibly argued that the story is propaganda. [24] [25] [26]
Charles II of Navarre		1 January 1387	The contemporary chronicler Froissart relates that the king of Navarre, known as "Charles the Bad", suffering from illness in old age, was ordered by his physician to be tightly sewn into a linen sheet soaked in distilled spirits. The highly flammable sheet accidentally caught fire, and he later died of his injuries. [9] [27] [28]
Martin of Aragon		31 May 1410	The Aragonese king died from a combination of indigestion and uncontrollable laughing. According to legend, Martin was suffering from indigestion, caused by eating an entire goose, when his favorite jester, Borra, entered the king's bedroom. When Martin asked Borra where he had been, the jester replied with: "Out of the next vineyard, where I saw a young deer hanging by his tail from a tree, as if someone had so punished him for stealing figs." This joke caused the king to die from laughter. [6] [ unreliable source? ] [7]

References

1. Simon, Ed (25 April 2017). "There's Nothing in the World Smaller Than the Universe". Poetry Foundation . Retrieved 29 September 2024. Because the likelihood of Li Bai dying from simple infirmity in 762 isn't as strange and beautiful as the traditional story of his demise—that he drowned in the Yangtze River while drunkenly trying to embrace the moon's reflection—the apocryphal tale is to be preferred.
2. Ha, Jin (23 January 2019). "The Poet with Many Names—and Many Deaths". The Paris Review . Retrieved 28 September 2024. But the third version of his death is far more fantastic: in this version, he drowns while drunkenly chasing the moon's reflection on a river, jumping from a boat to catch the ever-shifting orb.
3. Maclean, Simon (2003). Kingship and Politics in the Late Ninth Century: Charles the Fat and the End of the Carolingian Empire. Cambridge University Press. p. 116. ISBN   978-1-139-44029-5 . Retrieved 29 September 2024. Note also the Germundus in D CIII 142, perhaps the same man whose daughter had been involved in the bizarre death of Louis III...
4. Edward Dutton, Paul (2004). Carolingian Civilization: A Reader (2nd ed.). University of Toronto Press. p. 516. ISBN   978-1-55111-492-7. Louis the Stammerer died in 879 and his son Louis III, under unusual circumstances, in 882.
5. Treadgold, Warren (1997). A History of the Byzantine State and Society. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. p. 461. ISBN   0-8047-2630-2. According to the official story, he was injured by a giant stag while hunting with Leo's friend Zaützes and some other dignitaries. Yet the details given were highly improbable, and the dying emperor claimed an attempt had been made on his life.
6. "Top 10 Strangest Deaths in the Middle Ages". Features. Medievalists.net. 16 July 2023. Retrieved 14 October 2024.
7. "10 Historical Figures Who Died Unusual Deaths". Medieval. History Hit. 14 July 2014. Retrieved 1 September 2024.
8. Steve (7 August 2019). "20 Unusual Deaths from the History Books". History Collection. Retrieved 5 September 2024.
9. Wanley, Nathaniel; Johnston, William (1806). "Chapter XXVIII: Of the different and unusual Ways by which some Men have come to their Deaths § 7". The Wonders of the Little World; Or, A General History of Man: Displaying the Various Faculties, Capacities, Powers and Defects of the Human Body and Mind, in Many Thousand Most Interesting Relations of Persons Remarkable for Bodily Perfections or Defects; Collected from the Writings of the Most Approved Historians, Philosophers, and Physicians, of All Ages and Countries – Book I: Which treats of the Perfections, Powers, Capacities, Defects, Imperfections, and Deformities of the Body of Man. Vol. 1 (A new ed.). London. pp. 110–117. ASIN   B001F3H1XA. LCCN   07003035. OCLC   847968918. OL   7188480M . Retrieved 23 July 2024– via Internet Archive.
10. Cavendish, Richard (May 2013). "Death of Archbishop Hatto". History Today . Vol. 63, no. 5. Retrieved 29 September 2024. Hatto died two years later, aged about 63, and improbable stories began to spread about his death... The weirdest tale was that he was overwhelmed and eaten alive by an army of mice, which he deserved because of his cruel treatment of the poor during a famine.
11. Brigden, James. "The 8 weirdest British monarch deaths in history". Sky HISTORY. Retrieved 3 October 2024.
12. Design, Silver Monkey Web (5 August 2021). "The five most bizarre deaths of English monarchs". Portals to the Past. Archived from the original on 12 August 2021. Retrieved 27 August 2024.
13. Turner, Tracey; Kindberg, Sally (2011). Dreadful Fates: What a Shocking Way to Go! . Kids Can Press. p.  8. ISBN   978-1-55453-644-3 – via Internet Archive.
14. Hollister, Charles Warren (2003). Frost, Amanda Clark (ed.). Henry I. New Haven, US and London, UK: Yale University Press. pp. 467–468, 473. ISBN   978-0-3000-9829-7 – via Google Books. Henry's unexpected death on 1 December was a great shock.
15. Paoletti, Gabe (31 July 2019) [Originally published 13 November 2017]. Kuroski, John (ed.). "The Strange Deaths Of 16 Historic And Famous Figures". All That's Interesting. Retrieved 8 August 2024. Many of history's most important figures have suffered strange deaths that do not seem to befit their noble legacy.
16. Cartwright, Mark (29 January 2018). "John II Komnenos". World History Encyclopedia. Retrieved 3 October 2024. John's reign ended in a freak accident while the emperor was out hunting; falling on a poisoned arrow or perhaps contracting septicemia from the wound.
17. Magdalino, Paul (2002). The Empire of Manuel I Komnenos, 1143–1180 (illustrated ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 41. ISBN   978-0-521-52653-1 – via Google Books. [John's] unexpected death early in 1143 thus averted a decisive confrontation between Byzantium and the crusader states. But it did not mark an immediate change either in the confidence or in the orientation of imperial policy. Indeed, its unusual circumstances brought to the throne the very member of the imperial family around whom this policy had been built.
18. "Curio #1: The Erfurter Latrinensturz". The Fortweekly. April 2018. Archived from the original on 3 September 2019. Retrieved 6 February 2023. The Erfurter Latrinensturz was a bizarre tragedy that occurred in the city of Erfurt in the year 1184...
19. Munz, Peter (1969). Frederick Barbarossa: A Study in Medieval Politics. Cornell University Press. p. 5. ISBN   978-0-8014-0511-2. The strange manner of his death gave rise in Germany to weird stories that he might still be alive.
20. Tuchman, Barbara W. (2011). A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century. Random House Publishing Group.
21. Dean, Kristie (4 April 2015). "Mayhem, Treachery and Death: Gruffudd ap Llywelyn" . Retrieved 13 November 2024. Some moments in history seem too unbelievable to be true. The story of the life and death of Gruffudd ap Llywelyn is one such story.
22. Frater, Jamie (2010). Listverse.Com's Ultimate Book of Bizarre Lists . Canada: Ulysses Press. p.  400. ISBN   978-1569758175.
23. Schama, Simon (2000). A History of Great Britain: 3000BC–AD1603. London: BBC Worldwide. p. 220.
24. "The world's most unusual assassinations". World. BBC News. 16 February 2017. Retrieved 19 October 2024.
25. Mortimer, Ian (11 April 2003). "King Edward II's Death – Red-Hot Poker or Red Herring?". In-depth. Times Higher Education . Archived from the original on 20 January 2012. Retrieved 19 October 2024.
26. Phillips, Seymour (2010). Edward II. Yale University Press. pp. 560–565.
27. Froissart, John (1804) [c. 1404]. Sir John Froissart's Chronicles of England, France and the Adjoining Countries, from the Latter Part of the Reign of Edward II to the Coronation of Henry IV. Vol. III. Translated by Johnes, Thomas. Hafod Press. p. 561 – via Google Books. At this moment an extraordinary event happened at Pamplona, which seemed a judgement from God.
28. von Kotzebue, August (1805). "Kotzebue's Travels". In Bernard & Sultzer (ed.). A Collection of Modern and Contemporary Voyages & Travels. Vol. 1. London: Richard Phillips. p. 27 – via Google Books. That statue of Peter of Navarre reminds us of the singular death of his father, Charles II, denominated the Wicked.

Works cited

• Barber, Richard; Barker, Juliet (1989). Tournaments: Jousts, Chivalry and Pageants in the Middle Ages. Boydell. pp. 134, 139. ISBN   978-0-85115-470-1.