Medieval Death Trip

This episode, we explore a character analysis of an unpopular leader, as William of Malmesbury explains how the virtues of William Rufus transformed into his greatest vices. Along the way, we also learn why pointy shoes are indicators of moral degradation.

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.

Orderic Vitalis. The Ecclesiastical History of England and Normandy. Vol. 2. Translated by Thomas Forester, Henry G. Bohn, 1854.

This Halloween, we celebrate our fifth anniversary with five terrifying tales of demonic activity from the Lanercost Chronicle.

Today's Text:

The Chronicle of Lanercost: 1272–1346. Translated by Herbert Maxwell, James Maclehose and Sons, 1913.

We return from our hiatus with an exploration of life in Tudor grammar school classroom, as described in a compilation of translation exercises composed for his students by a master of the Magdalen School, Oxford.

Today's Text:

Nelson, William, editor. A Fifteenth Century Schoolbook: From a Manuscript in the British Museum (MS. Arundel 249). Oxford, 1956. https://archive.org/details/fifteenthcentury00nelsuoft.

As a treat to all of our listeners while the regular show is on vacation for July, here's the commentary track I made for the 1981 film Dragonslayer. This was originally released this past winter just to our Patreon supporters, but now everyone can get have chance to enjoy it. Note that this includes a long introduction featuring a reading of the legend of St. George and the Dragon. If you want to jump straight to the actual commentary synced to the film, you'll need to skip ahead to around the 18-minute mark of the file.

This episode we encounter another saintly curse, this time at the hands of St. Maughold, the patron saint of the Isle of Man, and on our way to that miracle story, we catch up on the trials and tribulations of the Manx dynasty of Godred Crovan since we last saw them in Ep. 44. As a bonus, we'll also hear the origin story of St. Maughold, a.k.a. MacCuil the bandit, a.k.a., Cyclops, as recorded in Muirchu's Life of St. Patrick.

Today's Texts:

The Chronicle of Man and the Sudreys. Edited by P.A. Munch, translated by Alexander Goss, vol. 1, The Manx Society, 1874. Google Books.

Muirchu. Life of St. Patrick. St. Patrick: His Writings and Life, edited and translated by Newport J.D. White, Macmillan, 1920.

References:

Kinvig, R.H. The Isle of Man: A Social, Cultural, and Political History. Charles E. Tuttle, 1975.

Mood, A.W. The Folk-Lore of the Isle of Man. Brown & Son, 1891. Sacred-texts.com.

This episode we go to Durham with its greatest chronicler, Simeon, to first hear about the short, shameful, and Cuthbert-cursed 10th-century episcopate of Bishop Sexhelm, and then we pick up about a hundred years later with the similarly flawed bishop brothers, Aegelric and Aegelwin. Finally, we wrap up by seeing what happens when a priest who just slept with his wife gets unexpectedly called upon to perform Mass.

Today's Texts:

Simeon of Durham. Simeon's History of the Church of Durham. Church Historians of England, edited and translated by Joseph Stevenson, vol. 3, part 2, Seeley's, 1855, pp. 619-711. Google Books.

The History of Ingulf. The Church Historians of England, edited and translated by Joseph Stevenson, vol. 2, part 2, Seeleys, 1854, pp. 565-725. Google Books.

References:

Hutchinson, William. The History and Antiquities of the County Palatine of Durham. Vol. 1, G. Walker, 1817. Google Books.

Symeon of Durham. Libellus de exordio atque procursu istius, hoc est Dunhelmensis, ecclesie: Tract on the Origin and Progress of this the Church of Durham. Edited and translated by David Rollason, Oxford UP, 2000.

Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologia, 2 Part 2, Q. 76, Art. 1. Available at http://www.newadvent.org/summa/3076.htm, which reproduces the text of the Second and Revised Edition, 1920, literally translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province.

This episode, we turn to another genre of wisdom literature: the fable. We look at four versions of the fable of the Mouse and the Frog from across one-and-a-half millennia, with quasi-classical versions from the Vita Aesopi and the Romulus Aesop and medieval elaborations on the story by Marie de France and Robert Henryson.

Today's Texts:

Life of Aesop. Translated by Anthony Alcock, Roger-Pearse.com, 4 Aug. 2018, https://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2018/08/14/life-of-aesop-translated-by-anthony-alcock/.

"The Mouse and the Frog." The Comedies of Terence and The Fables of Phædrus, translated by Henry Thomas Riley, George Bell & Sons, 1891, p. 456. Google Books.

Marie de France. "The Mouse and the Frog." The Fables of Marie de France, translated by Mary Lou Martin, Summa Publications, 1984, pp. 36-42.

Henryson, Robert. "The Taill of the Paddok and the Mous." The Poems and Fables of Robert Henryson, edited by David Laing, William Paterson, 1865. Google Books.

References:

Adrados, Francisco Rodríguez. History of the Graeco-Latin Fable. Translated by Leslie A. Ray, vol. 1, Brill, 1999.

Daly, Lloyd W., translator and editor. Introduction. Aesop Without Morals, Thomas Yoseloff, 1961, pp. 11-26.

Fox, Denton, editor. The Poems of Robert Henryson. Clarendon Press, 1981.

Kiser, Lisa J. "Resident Aliens: The Literary Ecology of Medieval Mice." Truth and Tales: Cultural Mobility and Medieval Media, edited by Fiona Somerset and Nicholas Watson, Ohio State UP, 2015, pp. 151-167. Academia.edu, www.academia.edu/11171687/Resident_Aliens_The_Literary_Ecology_of_Medieval_Mice.

Jacobs, Joseph. The Fables of Aesop. Vol. 1, History of the Æsopic Fable, 1889, Burt Franklin, 1970.

Mann, Jill. From Aesop to Reynard: Beast Literature in Medieval Britain. Oxford UP, 2009.

Martin, Mary Lou. Introduction. The Fables of Marie de France, translated by Mary Lou Martin, Summa Publications, 1984, pp. 1-30.

O'Connor, Flannery. "Writing Short Stories." Mystery and Manners, FSG, 1970, pp. 87-106.

Skillen, Anthony. "Aesop's Lessons in Literary Realism." Philosophy, vol. 67, no. 260, Apr. 1992, pp. 169-181. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3751449.

[Greek text of the fable in the Vita Aesopi, Ch. 21:]

Vita Aesopi. Edited by Antonius Westermann, Williams and Norgate, 1845, p. 54. Google Books.

[Romulus Latin Text in:]

"Mus et Rana." Phaedri Fabularum Aesopiarum libri quinque, quales omni parte illustratos publicavit Joann. Gottlob. Sam. Schwabe. Accedunt Romuli Fabularum Aesopiarum libri quatuor, quibus novas Phaedri Fabellas cum notulis variorum et suis subjunxit, edited by J. B. Gail, vol. 2, 2nd ed., N.E. Lemaire, 1826, p. 386. Google Books.

Music by Chris Lane.

This episode we take a look at Sólarljóð, an Old Norse poem that mixes a Christian tour of heaven and hell with the stylings of eddic poetry. We also consider what it might have in common with one of the fugues of the Great Revival.

Today's Texts:

"Song of the Sun." The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson, translated by Benjamin Thorpe and I.A. Blackwell, Norrœna Society, 1906, pp. 11-120. Google Books.

References:

Cobb, Buell E., Jr. The Sacred Harp, A Tradition and Its Music. U of Georgia P, 1978.

Larrington, Carolyne, and Peter Robinson. Introduction to "Anonymous, Sólarljóð." Poetry on Christian Subjects, edited by Margaret Clunies Ross, Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 7, Brepols, 2007, pp. 287-357.

"Sólarljóð -- Anon SólVII." Skaldic Project.

Wright, Thomas. St. Patrick's Purgatory: An Essay on the Legends of Purgatory, Hell, and Paradise, Current During the Middle Ages. John Russell Smith, 1844. Google Books.

Zaleski, Carol. Otherworld Journeys: Accounts of Near-Death Experience in Medieval and Modern Times. Oxford UP, 1987.

Audio Credit: "Greenwich" performed by Cork Sacred Harp, from the first Ireland Sacred Harp Convention, 2011. Used under CC-BY-3.0 license. https://soundcloud.com/corksacredharp/183-greenwich.

As the recovery process begins after the April 15th fire the consumed the roof of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, we reflect on the event, we learn how to make stained glass from a 12th-century artisan, and we hear about the architectural glories of the cathedral as described by Elizabeth Boyle O'Reilly shortly after the First World War.

Today's Texts:

Theophilus. De Diversis Artibus / An Essay Upon Various Arts. Translated by Robert Hendrie, John Murray, 1847. Google Books.

O'Reilly, Elizabeth Boyle. How France Built Her Cathedrals: A Study in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries. Harper and Brothers, 1921. Google Books.

Adams, Douglas and Mark Carwardine. Last Chance to See. Ballantine, 1990.

Audio excerpt from:

Adams, Douglas and Mark Carwardine. Last Chance to See CD-ROM. The Voyager Company, 1992.

This episode, we return to an old favorite, the Lanercost Chronicle, to hear how Charles of Valois stoked violence between Normandy and the merchants of the Cinque Ports, as well as witnessing the Virgin Mary acting as a celestial attorney.

Today's Texts:

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

Matthew of Westminster (Matthew of Paris). Flowers of History, Especially Such as Relate to the Affairs of Britain. Translated by C.D. Yonge, vol. 2, Henry G. Bohn, 1853. Google Books.

References:

Little, A.G. "The Authorship of the Lanercost Chronicle." The English Historical Review, vol. 31, 1916, pp. 269-279. Google Books.

Stevenson, Joseph. Preface. Chronicon de Lanercost. Bannatyne Club, 1839, pp. i-xxi. Google Books.

Zaleski, Carol. Otherworld Journeys: Accounts of Near-Death Experience in Medieval and Modern Times. Oxford UP, 1987.