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To celebrate my birthday—yes I was a Halloween baby—I decided to do a short episode recounting my one up-close and personal experience with a ghost. No, it was not a ghost of some one who died in the Middle Ages. In fact, I don’t know who it was.  But since ‘Tis But A Scratch” is a medieval podcast, I  start with three ghost stories from the Middle Ages. 

It probably comes as no surprise that medieval people believed in ghosts, and ghost stories are scattered through medieval monastic chronicles, hagiographies, preaching manuals, and medieval literature. Ghost stories in medieval England, France, and Germany are mostly about apparitions of the sinful dead to living relatives. These began proliferating in the eleventh century, at the same time that the Catholic Church was developing its theology of Purgatory. Monks and preachers used these stories to emphasize the need to purge one’s sins, even after death. When the Church introduced the idea that the living could lessen the suffering of the dead in Purgatory by doing good deeds or contributing lands and money to monasteries and churches in return for prayers, these stories were used by preachers as fund raisers. The tradition in medieval Scandinavia was different. There the ghosts are not spirits but revenants, reanimated corpses. 

I’ve chosen examples illustrating each genre. Two of them were written down around the year 1400. The first is from an Icelandic Saga, Grettir’s Saga. The second is from a collection of twelve ghost stories written by a monk of Byland Abbey, in Yorkshire. Both are about revenants, reanimated corpses, but of very different sorts.  Rounding things out is a ghost story from an earlier source, the autobiography of an early twelfth-century French Benedictine abbot, Guibert of Nogent. 

I’m afraid that you might find my personal ghost story a bit dull in comparison, but I can assure you that it was anything but dull when I lived it. And just in case you are wondering: NO! I DO NOT BELIEVE IN GHOSTS!.

Happy Halloween!

I used the following English translations in this podcast (each of which I emended slightly):

Grettir’s Saga, trans. G. H. Hight (1914): https://www.sagadb.org/grettis_saga.en2

“Twelve Medieval Ghost Stories,” trans. A.J. Grant, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 27 (1924): 362-379, posted on the “Medieval Histories” website: https://www.medieval.eu/medieval-histories-time-travelling-to-the-middle-ages/

C.C. Swinton Bland of , The Autobiography of Guibert, Abbot of Nogent-sous-Coucy, trans. C.C. Swinton Bland (London: George Routledge: New York: E.P. Dutton, 1925), which I revised somewhat following Paul J. Archambault, trans., A Monk’s Confession: The Memoirs of Guibert of Nogent (Penn State U. Press, 2004). Bland’s translation is in the public domain and posted in its entirety at  https://sourcebooks.web.fordham.edu/basis/guibert-vita.asp

This episode includes a short snippet from "The Unknown," a track from KeMi's album "Shadowscapes." https://artlist.io/royalty-free-music/album/shadowscapes/13040

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Intro and exit music are by Alexander Nakarada

If you have questions, feel free to contact me at [email protected]

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Yes, we have finally come to the end of our series "From Bishop of Rome to the Papal Monarchy." In this episode, Ellen and I talk about the pontificate of Innocent III, which historians see as the apex of the papal monarchy. Among the topics we cover are Innocent III's ideology of Caesaropapism, his contribution to the crusading movement, his combat against heresy, his defense of the papal states, and his dedication to Church Reform. Innocent III was the most powerful and effective pope of the Middle Ages.  His control over the Roman Catholic episcopate was uncontested, as evidenced by the Fourth Lateran Council. But his Caesaropapism, his assertion of papal supremacy over both the clergy and the laity, including Christian rulers, was more theoretical than real. He claimed to be the supreme judge over the rulers of Christendom, and was successful in doing so in a number of high profile cases, but his successes were contingent upon the need of those kings either to have papal support or, at the very least, not to be opposed by the papacy. Similarly, he could launch crusades against the Church’s domestic and foreign enemies, but once a crusade was ongoing, he had little power to direct it—even when the crusaders were disobeying his direct orders, as happened twice during the Fourth Crusade. When examined closely, papal supremacy over Christendom was always contingent, even during the apex of the papal monarchy. 

This episode includes musical snippets from 

Nunc Scio Vere (Introitus) Catholic Missa https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSpBhfE7ljA

Dies Irae, Tu es Petrus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OBB5-bP6qs

Medieval music: Cantiga de santa maria n. 383 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZEzmTQlmBU) [Steve Tyler: Hurdy Gurdy, Cittern Marco Cannavo: Hurdy Gurdy Ricardo De Noronha: Percussion]

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Intro and exit music are by Alexander Nakarada

If you have questions, feel free to contact me at [email protected]

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In this, the fourth--and penultimate--episode of our continuing series on the medieval papacy, my wife Ellen and I examine the establishment of the papal monarchy in the twelfth century. We discuss how the Investiture Controversy transformed the papacy and the Church; how the growth of papal governance and business along with its need for increased revenues made it a target for the same Church reformers who had formerly been its most fervent supporters; and how those developments brought the papacy into conflict with the Holy Roman Emperors Frederick I Barbarossa and his son Henry VI. I hope you will join us for this and the final episode of the series, on the pontificate of Innocent III, the apex of the papal monarchy.

This episode includes musical snippets from

Musician Ernst Stolz playing the pilgrims' song,  "O Roma nobilis" on tenor vielle, recorder and gemshorn. From his YouTube channel "My Years with Early Music: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wf3_3065gmU)

Nunc Scio Vere (Introitus) Catholic Missa https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSpBhfE7ljA

Listen on Podurama https://podurama.com

Intro and exit music are by Alexander Nakarada

If you have questions, feel free to contact me at [email protected]

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About eight months ago, Jenny and I released a couple of episodes dealing with the historical context of the Norman Conquest. I am delighted to have Jenny back to talk with me about the significance of the Norman Conquest and the Norman Settlement in English history. In this, the first of two episodes, Jenny and I look at the events following the Battle of Hastings and examine how the Norman Conquest has been interpreted over the centuries.  I hope you will join us. 

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Intro and exit music are by Alexander Nakarada

If you have questions, feel free to contact me at [email protected]

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The subject of today’s episode, the pontificate of Pope Gregory VII and the Investiture Controversy, is a staple of undergraduate medieval surveys. The first episode I posted after our summer hiatus was actually one that I wrote for a different podcast, “BEEF With Bridget Todd.” It told of the feud between Pope Boniface VIII and King Philip the Fair of France that culminated in that pope’s humiliation at the hands of agents of the king. The so-called Outrage of Anagni in 1302 marked the effective end to the medieval papacy’s claims to supremacy over Christendom’s secular rulers. And if you haven’t already done so, you might want to give it a listen.  In this episode, we will see the first time that a pope, Gregory VII, advanced such a claim, and, although it resulted in his personal humiliation, how it laid the foundation for the Papal Monarchy. 

        My cohost once again is my partner for life and inspiration for all things medieval, my wife Ellen. I hope you will join us in this fourth and penultimate episode of our series “From Bishop of Rome to the Papal Monarchy.”

Listen on Podurama https://podurama.com

Intro and exit music are by Alexander Nakarada

If you have questions, feel free to contact me at [email protected]

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After a summer hiatus, we are finally back with a new episode, the third in our series on the medieval papacy, “From Bishop of Rome to the Papal Monarchy.” The previous covered the tenth-century nadir of the papacy, when it was dominated by powerful Roman families and used to enhance their power and control over the city and the papal states. In this episode, my favorite co-host Ellen Harrison Abels and I explain how the foundations of the papal monarchy were laid in the mid eleventh century by a super pious German king, Henry III, in his capacity as Holy Roman Emperor working hand in glove with his hand-picked German pope (and cousin) Pope Leo IX. The engine of change was the so-called Gregorian Reform (after Pope Gregory VII, whom we will discuss in the next episode). This was the eleventh- and twelfth-century papacy's attack on the clerical abuses of simony, the practice of purchasing spiritual offices/church positions and clerical unchastity. By 1050 both were regarded by monastic reformers as serious abuses among the secular clergy (i.e. the priesthood). Reformers, influenced by the rise of a commercial economy, interpreted as simony the traditional practice of bishops thanking with gifts the kings and princes who had appointed them to their sees. The older view was that it was simply good manners (the reciprocity of gift-giving). 

 With the backing of Emperor Henry III, Pope Leo IX not only claimed but exerted papal authority over the other bishops of western Christendom in his zeal to cleanse the Church of simony and clerical unchastity. But the death of Henry III and the succession of a child to the throne of Germany, threatened to return the papacy into the hands of the Roman nobility. This led to Pope Nicholas II issuing a papal election decree in 1059, the papacy's declaration of independence, not only from the Roman nobility but (in less certain terms) from the Holy Roman Emperor himself. In this episode Ellen and I also discuss the origins of the Great Schism between the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Church, and how that explains why Roman Catholic priests are required to be celibate but Greek Orthodox priests can marry.

This episode includes snippets from Gregorian chants sung by 

the Institute of Christ The King Sovereign Priest (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvT2siwqZCI); 

the Schola du Séminaire Saint-Curé-d'Ars (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7I7vXcZR0A); and the Schola of the Vienna Hofburgkapelle (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjrsqJaLDOg). 

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Intro and exit music are by Alexander Nakarada

If you have questions, feel free to contact me at [email protected]

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After a summer hiatus “’Tis But A Scratch: Fact & Fiction About the Middle Ages” is back—well, not actually quite yet. I am busily working on the final two episodes of our series on the medieval papacy, “From Bishop of Rome to the Papal Monarchy.” I should have episode three on the Gregorian Reform and the Investiture Controversy out in a week or so.  But to tide you over, here is an episode on a related subject from a different podcast, “BEEF with Bridget Todd.” In it, Bridget Todd tells the story of the feud between Christendom’s two most powerful rulers at the turn of the fourteenth century, Pope Boniface VIII and King Philip the Fair of France, a conflict that would determine the fate of the late medieval papacy. Making it even more relevant to this podcast, the script is by yours truly, Prof. Richard Abels. 

On September 7, 1303, William of Nogaret, chief legal advisor and fixer for King Philip IV of France, and Sciarra Colonna, a member of a powerful Italian family, led an armed band into the town of Anagni in the hills east of Rome. They had been told that Pope Boniface VIII had gone to the papal palace in Anagni, the town in which the pope had been born, to prepare a bull of excommunication against the French King.  Nogaret’s mission was to seize the pope and compel him either to renounce the papacy on the spot or be brought back to France to stand trial before a general council.  Colonna, whose grievances were personal and familial, had his own agenda. He was prepared to kill the man who claimed to be God’s vicar on earth if he proved stubborn. 

What later was to known as the Outrage of Anagni pitted the most powerful secular ruler in Christendom against the head of the Church to which he belonged.  Pope Boniface VIII was the spiritual leader of Christendom and claimed supreme God-given authority over the princes of the earth. As pope, he was also ruler of the papal states in Italy and the CEO of the largest and wealthiest, if most diffuse, corporation in Western Europe, a corporation that had extensive offices in France. It may not surprise you that the root of the conflict was a dispute over money. But it’s best to begin with who these two men were and what the relationship between Church and State was in Western Europe in the late thirteenth century. 

BEEF with Bridget Todd. BEEF is an original scripted non-fiction storytelling podcast that focuses on famous historical rivalries, mostly between innovators in pop culture and business. 

Award-winning host Bridget Todd tells the stories of legends in their fields and how they tried to stomp out their competition only to find that their enemies become the driving force behind their success, ultimately changing the world as we know it. Past episodes have covered feuds such as the rivalry between basketball players Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain, 19th-century British explorers of the Nile Sir Richard Burton and Capt. John Hanning Speke, and Marc Antony and Octavian Caesar. They even have an episode on Beer vs Gin: England’s Favorite Beverages.

This episode also includes some truly insightful observations by Dr. Cecilia Gaposchkin of Dartmouth College. And the podcast’s acclaimed host, Bridget Todd, is excellent as usual. I hope you enjoy it. And if you do, you might want to check out other episodes of “BEEF with Bridget Todd.” It isn’t a medieval podcast, but if you enjoy history and story-telling, I think you will like it.  You can listen to it wherever you get your podcasts. 

Listen on Podurama https://podurama.com

Intro and exit music are by Alexander Nakarada

If you have questions, feel free to contact me at [email protected]

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Now for something completely different from tracing the development of the papacy from bishop of Rome to the papal monarchy--but, don't worry, I will be completing that series soon.  In this episode, I chat with author Garry J. Shaw about his fascinating new book from Yale University Press, Cryptic: From Voynich to the Angel Diaries, the Story of the World's Mysterious Manuscripts. The book tells the stories behind nine puzzling medieval and early Modern European texts. In our interview Garry talks about the three that fall within the chronological confines of the Middle Ages. 

We begin with the "unknown language" and "unknown script" concocted by the remarkable twelfth-century German abbess, mystic, polymath, and composer of sacred music, Hildegard of Bingen.  

We then turn to another strange early fifteenth-century manuscript, the Bellicorum instrumentorum liber, Book of the Instruments of War, by Giovanni Fontana, whom Garry Shaw characterizes as "a true pre-Renaissance man."  Fontana was entranced with the "natural magic of mechanical creations" and the "practical knowledge gained from experiments and observation of nature." But this did nothing to lessen his belief in supernatural forces operating in the world. He was also "a world class prankster" with a fascination for ciphers. All these came together in the Bellicorum instrumentorum liber, an enciphered illustrated catalogue of imagined machines, ranging from rocket-powered chairs and fanciful siege engines to mechanical witches. 

We conclude with perhaps the most famous of all mysterious manuscripts, the early fifteenth-century Voynich codex, whose content has resisted decipherment by professional code-breakers and cryptographers.  (Spoiler: we won't be able to tell you what the Voynich manuscript actually says, but Dr. Shaw has a good idea what the manuscript is, why it was produced, and why no one has been able to decipher it.  If you disagree with him, just go online to Yale University library's posting of Voynich and have your own go at it!)

I hope you will join us.

Cryptic: From Voynich to the Angel Diaries, the Story of the World's Mysterious Manuscripts by Garry J. Shaw. Yale University Press, 2025. (https://www.amazon.com/Cryptic-Voynich-Diaries-Mysterious-Manuscripts/dp/0300266510)

The manuscripts that we discuss in this episode can be viewed online at:

Hildegard of Bingen's Unknown Language: An Edition, Translation and Discussion by Sarah L. Higley (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007): https://epdf.pub/hildegard-of-bingens-unknown-language-an-edition-translation-and-discussion-the-48385c392ef3ce461b6703d8f09d435e57514.html

Voynich Manuscript. Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library:  https://collections.library.yale.edu/catalog/2002046

Giovanni Fontana, Instrumentorum bellicorum liber. The Munich DigitiZation Center (MDZ) https://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/0001/bsb00013084/images/index.html?fip=193.174.98.30&seite=54&pdfseitex=

This episode includes three musical snippets: 

Hildegard of Bingen's votive antiphon for the dedication of a Church, "O orzchis Ecclesiam" (Ensemble Sequentia, with Barbara Thornton. Deutsche Harmonium Mundi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?)v=AGCAOf9gjBM&t=7s)

O orzchis Ecclesia,
armis divinis precincta
et iacincto ornata, tu es caldemia
stigmatum loifolum
et urbs scientiarum.
O, o, tu es
etiam crizanta
in alto sono et es
chorzta gemma. (Hildegard's 'lingua ig

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Intro and exit music are by Alexander Nakarada

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I finally saw the movie "Conclave," and really enjoyed it. As you probably know, it is about the contentious election of a pope in a conclave of the college of cardinals. The movie, however, never explains what the word conclave actually means or how and why that papal electoral procedure began. This episode will remedy that omission.

The intro music is from the Academy Award nominated overture to the movie "Conclave" by the composer Volker Bertelmann 

Listen on Podurama https://podurama.com

Intro and exit music are by Alexander Nakarada

If you have questions, feel free to contact me at [email protected]

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In this second episode of a three part series, my favorite cohost Ellen and I survey the development of the papacy from the eighth through the early eleventh century. Among the topics we discuss are who and what the Merovingian and Carolingian dynasties of Francia were; Pope Zacharias' legitimization of Pepin the Short's deposition of a puppet Merovingian king and his elevation to the throne; the "donation of Pepin" that created the papal states; the "Donation of Constantine," forged in the papal chancery to justify the donation of Pepin; the partnership between Charlemagne and the papacy in reforming the Western Church; Pope Leo III's coronation of Charlemagne as Emperor of the Romans on Christmas Day, 800; and how the papacy was reduced once again to being the local bishops of Rome under the control of the Roman aristocracy in the tenth century after the collapse of the Carolingian empire. This is the period that historians see as the nadir of the institution that featured some memorably bad popes, though we conclude with a few good ones under the Ottonian emperors.

This episode includes audio snippets 

Musician Ernst Stolz playing the pilgrims' song,  "O Roma nobilis" on tenor vielle, recorder and gemshorn. From his YouTube channel "My Years with Early Music: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wf3_3065gmU)

Gregorian Chant - Agnus Dei, posted by fgl music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YZI4cyBkvI

Listen on Podurama https://podurama.com

Intro and exit music are by Alexander Nakarada

If you have questions, feel free to contact me at [email protected]