Medieval Death Trip

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...

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 M...

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...

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.c...

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, Nor...

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 Upo...

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 Wes...

We conclude St. Patrick's Confessio this episode, taking a look at Patrick's education and literary style, as well as the cultural context of missionary activity in the 5th century. We also are left wondering if that money was just resting in his account... (/FatherTed) Today's Texts: Patrick. Confession. St. Patrick: His Writings and Life, edited and translated by Newport J.D. White, Macmillan, 1...

This March, we're going back to one of the earliest surviving St. Patrick texts, his own autobiographical Confessio. This episode we'll hear the first half, which covers Patrick's abduction from the coast of 5th-century Britain into slavery in Ireland and continues up to the start of his mission to convert the Irish some thirty years later. Today's Text: Patrick. Confession. St. Patrick: His Writi...

For Valentine's Day, we have a tale not so much of love, but of supernatural seduction. This is the story of a chaste young woman of the town of Dunwich stalked by a devil, as reported in The Life and Miracles of St. William of Norwich by Thomas of Monmouth. We also take a look at real and fictional Dunwich (a town of the Lovecraft mythos), and examine what exactly (or inexactly) an incubus was th...

We kick our 2019 with a return to narrative history, hearing about a terrible way to die and how not to profit off the deaths of others during a plague from William of Malmesbury's Gesta Regum Anglorum, and we also look all the way back to the first book of Samuel to learn how to rid oneself of some particularly uncomfortable plagues from God. We also discover how Raiders of the Lost Ark should ha...

Listeners! This weekend (Feb. 9-10) I'll be updating many of the descriptions and tags on old episodes in our podcast RSS feed. There is a possibility that some podcast manager apps (especially iTunes) will interpret these changes as a whole lot of new episodes being posted and may try to download them all. As a precaution to save bandwidth, you might go to your settings for this podcast in your p...

In this final episode in our holiday chess series, we finish off the last pages in William Caxton's The Game and Playe of the Chess, looking at the pawn and the importance of the common people to the realm, and we consider the how to explain pawns becoming queens in a medieval context.

This fourth installment of our holiday chess series finishes off the back rank of pieces: the bishop (or alphyn), the knight, and the rook. We also explore a long-standing Wikipedia beef over rook terminology, and recommend a modern board game that plunges you into the paranoid world of zombie survival. Caxton, William. The Game and Playe of the Chesse. Edited by Jenny Adams, TEAMS Middle English...

In the third episode of our holiday series of excerpts from William Caxton's The Game and Playe of the Chesse, we learn about how the king and queen move, which was a bit different in the 15th century than it is today. We also consider the difficulty of working out the rules of an ancient game, even when you have the remarkable fortune to find them written down, as seen in the case of the Royal Ga...

In this second installment of our holiday series of excerpts from William Caxton's The Game and Playe of the Chesse, we hear about the layout of the chessboard and what it represents. We also look at some of the games that chess replaced in Europe, including the Roman ludus latrunculorum, the Celtic fidchell or gwyddbwyell, and the Norse tafl or hnefatafl. And finally, we consider different ways i...

We kick off a holiday miniseries of chess lore from William Caxton's The Game and the Playe of the Chesse with one version of how chess was invented. We then some historical corrections to this account and also hear one of the earliest written accounts of chess, the Persian Chatrang-namak.

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 b...

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 cre...

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 Sam...

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.