Heresy allegations could be convenient placeholders for grievances motivated by power
A portrait of Alice Kyteler by American artist Paddy Shaw, which was sent to the Kyteler’s Inn in Kilkenny. Picture by Dylan Vaughan
Seven hundred years ago, on November 3, 1324, Richard de Ledrede, the Bishop of Ossory, sat by a window in his opulent bishop’s palace in Church Lane, Kilkenny. Below, in Irishtown, he could see Petronilla de Midia being bound to a stake, having been flogged through “six parishes”.
From his ecclesiastical eyrie, Ledrede had a perfect view of the pyre upon which the convicted heretic stood, bruised and broken. He watched as the tinder was set alight, and impassively observed as the blaze became an inferno, consuming the young woman and silencing her screams.
