Medieval Death Trip

This time on Medieval Death Trip, we celebrate Black Friday weekend with some black magic in our belated Halloween anniversary episode. We look at a couple of quite different medieval witches, a Cornish wildwoman from the Life of St. Samson and the famous Witch of Berkeley, as well as a report of a night-hag from the 18th century.

Today's Texts

- William of Malmesbury. Chronicle of the Kings of England. Edited by J.A. Giles, translated by John Sharpe and J.A. Giles, George Bell & Sons, 1895. Google Books.

- The Liber Landavensis, Llyfr Teilo, or the Ancient Register of the Cathedral Church of Llandaff. Edited by W.J. Rees, William Rees, 1840. Google Books.

- Burnett, George. Specimens of English Prose-Writers from the Earliest Times to the Close of the Seventeenth Century, with Sketches Biographical and Literary, Including an Account of Books as Well as of Their Authors; with Occasional Criticisms, etc. Vol. I, Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1807. Google Books.

- Sprenger, James, and Henry Kramer. Malleus Maleficarum. Originally published 1486. Translated by Montague Summers, 1928. Sacred-Texts.com.

Audio Clips:

- The Tragedy of Macbeth. Directed by Joel Coen. Apple Studios, 2021.

- The Witch. Directed by Robert Eggers. A24, 2015.

- The Witches. Directed by Nicholas Roeg. Warner Bros., 1990.

- The Blair Witch Project. Directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez. Artisan Entertainment, 1993.

- Suspiria. Directed by Dario Argento. Produzioni Atlas Consorziate, 1977.

- Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Directed by Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones. EMI Films, 1975.

- The Wizard of Oz. Directed by Victor Fleming. MGM, 1939.

- Clash of the Titans. Directed by Desmond Davis. United Artists, 1981.

- Young Frankenstein. Directed by Mel Brooks. 20th Century Fox, 1974.

Additional Music Credit: Ludwig van Beethoven, Coriolan Overture, composed in 1807 (the same year Burnett published his Specimens of English Prose Writers), and performed by the Musopen Symphony (CC-PD).

Chapters

00:00:00: Introduction

00:04:54: Movie witchlore montage

00:10:12: Introduction, cont.

00:14:00: Text: from the Malleus Maleficarum

00:21:10: Introduction, cont.

00:23:24: Text: from The Life of St. Samson in the Book of Llandaff

00:27:44: Commentary

00:45:36: Text: from William of Malmesbury's Gesta Regum Anglorum

00:51:50: Commentary

01:04:21: Text: from George Burnett's Specimens of English Prose Writers

01:09:40: Commentary

01:11:38: Mystery Word: baggaged

01:17:03: Outro

This episode we examine the fate of another royal head, that of King Oswald of Northumbria, and the miracles associated with his relics and the dirt from his grave, as reported by the Venerable Bede.

Today's Text

Bede. Beda's Ecclesiastical History. The Church Historians of England, translated by Joseph Stevenson, 1853. Google Books.

References

Fowler, J.T. "On an Examination of the Grave of St. Cuthbert in Durham Cathedral Church, in March, 1899." Archaeologia, vol. 57, no. 1, Jan. 1900, pp. 11-28. Archive.org.

Raine, James. St. Cuthbert, with an Account of the State in Which His Remains Were Found upon the Opening of His Tomb in Durham Cathedral, in the Year MDCCCXXVII. Geo. Andrews, 1828. Google Books.

Featured Music: Extracts from Franz Schubert, Piano Trio in E flat major, D. 929 (composed in 1827, the year Raine opened Cuthbert's tomb), and Edward Elgar, Variations on an Original Theme (Enigma), Op. 36 (published in 1899, the year Fowler opened Cuthbert's tomb) both via CC-PD license at MusOpen.org.

This extra minisode of Medieval Death Trip offers a bit of historical perspective on the recent death of Queen Elizabeth II by looking back at accounts of the death of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603. Also, a surprisingly relevant but brief account of the Calendar (New Style) Act of 1750.

Text:

- Birch, Thomas. Memoirs of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, from the year 1581 til her death. In which the secret intrigues of her court, and the conduct of her favourite, Robert earl of Essex, both at home and abroad, are particularly illustrated. From the original papers of ... Anthony Bacon, esquire, and other manuscripts never before published. A. Millar, 1754. Google Books.

Audio Credits:

- Dowland, John. "Lacrimae Verae." Performed by I Solipsisti. Used under CC-BY 3.0 license. https://musopen.org/music/43281-lachrimae-or-seven-tears/

- Stanley, John. "Stanley Voluntary, Op. 7 no. 5 (trumpet and organ arr.)." Performed by Michel Rondeau. Used under CC-BY 3.0 license. https://musopen.org/music/44104-voluntary-op-7-no-5-trumpet-and-organ-arr/

This episode we return to the Lanercost Chronicle (and a bit of Capgrave's Chronicle) to get some serious history concerning the fall of the last native prince of Wales, before getting some a less serious dinner party anecdote about a couple of monkeys. Much hand-wringing is also given to the appropriate pronunciation of the name Llewellyn/Llywelyn.

Today's Text

- The Chronicle of Lanercost: 1272–1346. Translated by Herbert Maxwell, James Maclehose and Sons, 1913. (Available at archive.org.)

- Capgrave, John. The Chronicle of England. Edited by Francis Charles Hingeston, Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, and Roberts, 1858. Google Books.

Audio credit: "The Monkeys." The Kids in the Hall, season 5, episode 12, Broadway Video International, 8 Feb. 1995.

This episode we conclude the story of the peasant lad who spurned a humble farming life to go off live the high life with a robber knight and, as we shall see, did not ultimately get the life he expected. Here is the final part of Meier Helmbrecht.

Today's Text

Wernher der Gartenaere. Meier Helmbrecht. In Peasant Life in Old German Epics, translated by Clair Hayden Bell, Columbia UP, 1931.

Audio Credit: A Clockwork Orange. Directed by Stanley Kubrick. Warner Bros., 1972.

We continue with Part 2 (of 3) of the 13th-century peasant epic Meier Helmbrecht, in which Helmbrecht returns to his family after a year as squire to a robber knight, and cultures clash accordingly.

Today's Text:

Wernher der Gartenaere. Meir Helmbrecht. In Peasant Life in Old German Epics, translated by Clair Hayden Bell, Columbia UP, 1931. Archive.org.

In this episode we learn how important good hair is to becoming a medieval cattle rustler with part one of the 13th-century poem Meier Helmbrecht.

Today's Text:

Wernher der Gartenaere. Meir Helmbrecht. In Peasant Life in Old German Epics, translated by Clair Hayden Bell, Columbia UP, 1931. Archive.org.

This episode, we follow up on a question from Ep. 90 about why the wandering worker Thomas Fuller might have fallen in with a criminal shepherd by looking at a pair of vagrancy and labor laws from the economically disrupted decades following the Black Death: the Statute of Laborers of 1351 and the Commons' Petition against Vagrants of 1376. We also learn a bit about late medieval prisons.

Today's Texts:

Henderson, Ernest F., editor and translator. Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages. George Bell and Sons, 1892, pp. 165-168. Google Books.

"Commons' Petition Against Vagrants" of 1376," reprinted in R.B. Dobson, The Peasants' Revolt of 1381. MacMillan, 1970, pp. 72-74. Google Books.

References:

Clark, Elaine. "Institutional and Legal Responses to Begging in Medieval England." Social Science History, vol. 26, no. 3, Fall 2002, pp. 447-473. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40267786.

Geltner, Guy. "Medieval Prisons: Between Myth and Reality, Hell and Purgatory." History Compass, vol. 4, 2006, pp. 1-14, doi: 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2006.00319.x. Available at guygeltner.net.

We finish off our Medieval True Crime miniseries with a look at two hangings from the year 1484 and explore some of the practices surrounding and meanings of hanging as a mode of execution in medieval Europe.

Today's Text

Knox, Ronald, and Shane Leslie, editors and translators. The Miracles of King Henry VI. Cambridge UP, 1923.

References

Merback, Mitchell B. The Thief, the Cross and the Wheel: Pain and Spectacle of Punishment in Medieval and Renaissance Europe. U of Chicago P, 1999.

In this (belated) episode marking our seventh anniversary, we learn about the infernal realms, straight from the devil's mouth, going from a 11th-century Old English text to the 16th-century stage. We also learn why you shouldn't attack your father with an ax and what demonic possession has in common with e. Coli.

Today's Texts:

Kemble, John M., editor and translator. The Dialogue of Salomon and Saturnus, with an Historical Introduction. The Ælfric Society, 1848, pp. 86-88. Google Books.

Faust Book. In Early English Prose Romances, edited by William John Thoms. Nattali and Bond, 1858. Digital text available at the Perseus Project.

Marlowe, Christopher. The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus from the Quarto of 1604. Edited by Alexander Dyce. Project Gutenberg, 2009.

de Vitry, Jacques. Exempla of Jacques de Vitry. Edited by Thomas Frederick Crane, David Nutt, 1890. Google Books.

Gregory the Great. The Dialogues of Saint Gregory, Surnamed the Great: Pope of Rome & the First of That Name. Translated by P.W., edited by Edmund G. Gardner, Philip Lee Warner, 1911. Digital text edited by Roger Pearce, 2004, https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/gregory_00_dialogues_intro.htm.

References

Andrew, Malcom. “Grendel in Hell.” English Studies, vol. 62, no. 5, 1981, pp. 401–410.

Robinson, Fred C. "The Devil's Account of the Next World: An Anecdote from Old English Homiletic Literature." Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, vol. 73, no., 1/3, 1972, pp. 363-371. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43345366.