Medieval Death Trip

For our 4th anniversary, we celebrate Halloween with one of the great tales of the unquiet dead from the Icelandic sagas -- namely, Grettis saga and the story of Grettir's fight with the revenant Glámr. We also recommend three good horror movies that relate to revenants and medieval themes.

This episode we hear three tales from a miracle catalogue compiled in the hopes of winning official sainthood for King Henry VI, whose reputation needed all the help it could get after the events of his reign. We also take a look at the state of peasant parenthood in late medieval England.

Previously, we heard Odoric (or Odoricus) of Pordenone (or Friuli) describe his travels as a Franciscan missionary to the Far East. This episode, we get an attempt by a later chronicler to craft a saint's life for the traveler, using surprising little material from Odoric's writing, but finding many other marvels and miracles to include.

Audio credit: Naqqāra/nagara sound clip from a performance by Ghanshyam "Gotoo" Solanki, produced by Udaipur Shakti Works. Used under Creative Commons CC-BY 3.0 license.

At last we reach the coast of China with Friar Odoricus in the final episode of our medieval travelers series. We also take a look at the Renaissance exploration advocate and scholar, Richard Hakluyt, whose name adorns the learned Society that produced many of the translations we've used in this series and who himself provides the translation of Odoricus featured in this episode.

Special audio credits:

Music playing under Hakluyt excerpt: John Dowland's "Semper Dowland Semper Dolans," performed by I Solipsisti, used under the CC-BY 3.0 license.

Gibbon sound recording by Freesound.org user RTB45, also used under the CC-BY 3.0 license.

In our third travelers episode, we catch up with the explorer and diplomat Ibn Battuta, as he narrowly avoids disaster in Southern India, though his entourage is not so lucky. We also get some of the first written descriptions of the people of the Maldives, and discuss the status of slaves in Ibn Battuta's traveling household.

This episode includes modified versions of recordings originally by Samuel Corwin and Nimisha Shankar, used under the CC-BY license.

In the second installment of our medieval travelers series, we follow Marco Polo into the deserts of Iran and learn about the hazards of the road, including a lethal wind.

We kick off a miniseries of texts from medieval travelers by continuing with Gerald of Wales as he sets out to tour Wales with Archbishop Baldwin, collecting stories from the region and getting involved in a few escapades of his own.

We're back for some late summer episodes with a look at how medieval authors cozied up to potential patrons, with a specific look at Gerald of Wales. Coincidentally, we also announce our Patreon campaign! You can support us at www.patreon.com/mdtpodcast/ and get an audiobook of Jordanus's Wonders of the East.

It's a special Saint Patrick's Day episode, in which we hear about the contests between the saint and some Irish magicians, as related in Muirchu's 7th-century Life of St. Patrick.

This episode we continue with Walter Map's De nugis curialium and learn that politics really is hell.