Some time ago I was googling around for something—actually I probably used excite at the time—and came across the story of a woman who was called “the most evil woman in history.” Please, I do not wish to debate whom should be given that title.
I am recalling the 1500s or the 500s, i.e. 16th or 6th century, that she murdered maybe her husband and children, possibly with poison. I’m pretty sure it was involved somehow. It may have been part of her plot to marry someone whom she couldn’t marry, by killing a man’s wife or killing her husband.
The name that keeps coming to mind sounds like “fregedonia.” Something with an F, a G, a D, and an N; but I’m not going to bank on that.
My searches have yielded zip, zero, zilch, in that order. I recall at the time that when I searched for her name I got plenty of hits, so I didn’t think she was too obscure.
Would anybody be so kind as to help? It would be greatly appreciated.
You’re not talking about Lucretia Borgia? That can sound a little like “fregedonia”, and she did live in the 15th century, and she did have a bad reputation.
This probably isn’t what you were thinking of, but there was a nurse of midwife named Fazekas who during and after WWI supplied arsenic to the women of Nagyrev, Hungary, to dispose of their inconvenient husbands and other family members. http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/weird/nurse/5.html?sect=3
Her french name was Fredegonde. I don’t know her Latin name. Fredegondia, perhaps? She was a queen of the Francks, during the 6th century.
She was long lived, and involved in the bloody successions issues between the various branches of the merovingian dynasty. She’s famous in particular for the execution of her rival Brunehault, an old women who was tortured for days, and then killed by having her dragged behind a running horse.
Fredegund was arch-bitch, of this there is no doubt. Her most egregious acts were eliminating the sons of her husband Chilperic by previous wives ( Clovis was murdered, Merovech driven to suicide when his defensive counter-coup failed ), to clear the way for her own children.
But in fairness the whole Merovingian dynasty was incredibly violent in this period. Chilperic himself had one of his wives ( Galswinth ) murdered and assassination was the name of the game. Gregory of Tours tended to poor the blame on Fredegund as being the source of a lot of the evil in this period, but there was plenty of blame to go around. Fredegund was more an exemplar than an exception.