Originally published on September 16, 2026 (Episode 475).
Content Warning: This episode contains frank discussions of rape, sexual assault, and physical violence and is not suitable for children.
Introduction
On a winter morning in 1472, a prosecutor arrived at a poor widow’s home in the St. Nicholas district of the city of Dijon. He was there to interview a pregnant woman named Jehanne, an immigrant from the county of Lorraine. She had reportedly been abducted and sexually assaulted by several men, and Jacques Borestal–technically the substitute prosecutor of Dijon–began his investigation by taking Jehanne’s testimony.
This was far from the first such case that Borestal had investigated. For about thirty years he had investigated dozens of allegations of rape, as well as dozens more of theft, violence, assault and abduction. Many times his investigations of rape ended when, asking the victim if she wished make a criminal complaint, she declined to do so. But Jehanne said that she did.
This decision is at the heart of Sara McDougall’s new book Justice for Jehanne: The Tale of Medieval Survivor. It is a window into a world of cruelty and repentance, of heart-stoppingly casual violence in which “safety and security remained impossible dreams”, and in which nearly everyone in society had extraordinarily limited options for justice and restitution.
About the Guest
Sara McDougall is Professor of History at John Jay College of the City University of New York, and a member of the faculty in Biography and Memoir, French, History, and Medieval Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center. She studies gender and justice in the Middle Ages, with particular attention to women’s encounters with legal and religious institutions in medieval France. Her previous books are Royal Bastards: The Birth of Illegitimacy, 800–1230 and Bigamy and Christian Identity in Late-Medieval Champagne.
For Further Investigation
Sara McDougall, Justice for Jehanne: The Tale of a Medieval Survivor (Princeton University Press, 2026)
—, Royal Bastards: The Birth of Illegitimacy, 800–1230 (Oxford University Press, 2016)
—, Bigamy and Christian Identity in Late-Medieval Champagne (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012)
Caroline Dunn, Stolen Women in Medieval England: Rape, Abduction, and Adultery, 1100–1500 (Cambridge University Press, 2012)
Ruth Mazo Karras and Katherine E. Pierpont, Sexuality in Medieval Europe: Doing Unto Others, 4th ed. (Routledge, 2023)
Trevor Dean, Crime in Medieval Europe, 1200–1550 (Longman, 2001)
Related Episodes
The Saint, the Count, and Sourcing: Leah Shopkow on recovering the past by reading difficult sources like a historian
House of Lilies: Justine Firnhaber-Baker on the Capetian dynasty and the making of medieval France
Mass Expulsion: Rowan Dorin on law, religious authority, and the spread of expulsion in medieval Europe
A Terrible Intimacy: Melvin Patrick Ely on using court records to recover lives shaped by violence and unequal power
Tags
Sara McDougall, Justice for Jehanne, Medieval History, Medieval France, Dijon, Women’s History, Legal History, History of Crime, Sexual Violence, Gender History, Rule of Law, Historical Method
