Medieval Death Trip

This episode we dive into Walter Map's De nugis curialium for a satirical lesson in administrative chaos, choler, and corruption, and also how generally terrible we are.

This Christmas Eve episode, we take a look a medieval forebear of the Ghost of Jacob Marley, as well as a role-model from ancient Rome.

This episode as school breaks for the holidays, we look at one account of the life of translator, philosopher, and part-time court comedian John Scotus Eriugena, who allegedly met a rather bad end at the hands of disgruntled students.

This episode we tap into the Ragnarok zeitgeist and go back to the medieval Norse sources: Snorri Sturluson's Gylfaginning and the apocalyptic poem Völuspá.

This Halloween marks our third anniversary, and we ring in our fourth year with two versions of King Arthur's famous battle with the man-eating giant of Mont St. Michel.

This episode we (that is, I) wax autobiographical as we look at our first saga text, an account of the death of King Magnus Barefoot during his attempted conquest of Ireland in 1103. Also, there are some thoughts on the idea of the progress of literary technique.

This episode we crack open the Chronicle of Man and the Sudreys to look at the Isle of Man and the rise of the royal house of King Orry, Godred Crovan, and King Magnus Barefoot of Norway is warned in a dream to leave Norway and never return.

Today we plunge into some hard-core scholasticism, as we hear Thomas Aquinas wrestle with the thorny question: "If all dead bodies are resurrected at the Last Judgment, what happens to the bodies of cannibals, whose bodies are made up of the flesh of those they have eaten, who also need to be resurrected?" We also wrap up with a reflection on George Romero and the zombie apocalypse.

We conclude our three-part look at the remains of St. Cuthbert with James Raine's account of his 1827 exhumation of Cuthbert's body and the recovery of some extraordinary early medieval artifacts.

Featured Music: Extracts from Franz Schubert, Piano Trio in E flat major, D. 929 and Piano Trio no. 1 in B flat major, D. 898, both composed in 1827. (via MusOpen.)

In Part II of our "Cuthbert's Body" series, we hear Reginald of Durham's description of what was found inside Cuthbert's coffin in the investigation preceding the Cuthbert's translation in 1104, and we consider what incorruptibility meant for a medieval audience.