You can now help support Medieval Death Trip through becoming a patron of us on Patreon. For as little as $1 (U.S.) a month, you’ll not only be helping to make the show possible, but you’ll also get an audiobook copy of the Mirabilia Descripta, or Wonders of the East by Jordanus, the 14th-century bishop of Columbum in India (and translated by Col. Henry Yule, whose extensive footnotes provide a whole second historical text providing a 19th-century British perspective on India).
To learn more, visit http://www.patreon.com/mdtpodcast/
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.
Today’s Texts:
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Muirchu. Life of St. Patrick. St. Patrick: His Writings and Life, edited and translated by Newport J.D. White, Macmillan, 1920.
References:
- Conway, Moneure D. “The Saint Patrick Myth.” The North American Review, vol. 137, no. 323, Oct. 1883, pp. 356-371. JSTOR.
- Hood, A.B.E., editor and translator. St. Patrick: His Writings and Muirchu’s Life. Phillimore, 1978.
Image: Detail from British Library Egerton MS 747, f. 12r.
Fox sound effect from http://www.freesfx.co.uk.
This episode we continue with Walter Map’s De nugis curialium and learn that politics really is hell.
Today’s Texts:
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Map, Walter. De Nugis Curialium. Translated by Montague R. James, historical notes by John Edward Lloyd, edited by E. Sidney Hartland, Cymmrodorion Record Series, no. 9, Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 1923.
- Homer. The Odyssey. Translated by A.T. Murray, Harvard University Press, 1919. [at Perseus]
- Anglo-Saxon Riddles of the Exeter Book, translated by Paull Franklin Baum (1963). Available at: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxon_Riddles_of_the_Exeter_Book/59
References:
- Bartlett, Robert. England Under the Norman and Angevin Kings: 1075-1225. Clarendon Press, 2000.
- Brooke, C.N.L. Introduction. De Nugis Curialium: Courtier’s Trifles, by Walter Map, edited and translated by M.R. James, revised by C.N.L. Brooke and R.A.B. Mynors, Clarendon Press, 1983.
- Turner, Ralph V. “The Reputation of Royal Judges under the Angevin Kings.” Albion, vol. 11, no. 4, Winter 1979, pp. 301-316. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4048542.
- Echard, Siân. “Map’s Metafiction: Author, Narrator and Reader in De nugis curialium.” Exemplaria, vol. 8, no. 2, 1996, pp. 287-314.
Image: Sarcophagus in Vatican Museums featuring images of Sisyphus, Ixion, and Tantalus. Photo by Dan Diffendale (used under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 2.0)
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.
Today’s Texts:
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Map, Walter. De Nugis Curialium. Translated by Montague R. James, historical notes by John Edward Lloyd, edited by E. Sidney Hartland, Cymmrodorion Record Series, no. 9, Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 1923.
References:
- Brooke, C.N.L. Introduction. De Nugis Curialium: Courtier’s Trifles, by Walter Map, edited and translated by M.R. James, revised by C.N.L. Brooke and R.A.B. Mynors, Clarendon Press, 1983.
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Horace. De Arte Poetica. Horace: Satires, Epistles and Ars Poetica, translated by H. Rushton Fairclough, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard UP, 1929.
Image: Detail of demons carrying off a monk from The Hague, KB, 71 A 24, fol. 27v
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.
Today’s Texts:
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William of Malmesbury.
Chronicle of the Kings of England. Ed. J.A. Giles. Trans. John Sharpe and J.A. Giles. London: George Bell & Sons, 1895.
Google Books.
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Pliny the Younger.
Letters. Translated by William Melmoth, revised by F.C.T. Bosanquet, The Harvard Classics, vol. 9, part 4, .F. Collier & Son, 1909–14. Bartleby,
http://www.bartleby.com/9/4/1083.html.
- Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol, in Prose, Being a Ghost Story of Christmas. 1843. Project Gutenberg, www.gutenberg.org/files/46/46-h/46-h.htm.
References:
- Belsey, Catherine. “Shakespeare’s Sad Tale for Winter: Hamlet and the Tradition of Fireside Ghost Stories.” Shakespeare Quarterly, vol. 61, no. 1, Spring 2010, pp. 1-27. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40731136.
- Bennett, Gillian. “‘Alas, Poor Ghost!’ Case Studies in the History of Ghosts and Visitations.” Chapter 5. Alas Poor Ghost, UP of of Colorado and Utah State UP, 1999, pp. 139-172. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt46nwwn.8.
- Rife, J. Merle. “Marley’s Ghost in Athens.” The Classical Journal, vol. 34, no. 1, Oct. 1938, pp. 42-43. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3291010.
Image: Alec Guinness as Jacob Marley in Scrooge (1970), as stylized by Google Deep Dream.
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.
Today’s Texts:
- Roger de Hoveden. Annals of Roger de Hoveden. Translated by Henry T. Riley, vol. 1, H.G. Bohn, 1853. Google Books.
- Jacobus de Voragine. The Golden Legend, or Lives of the Saints. Translated by William Caxton, edited by F.S. Ellis, J.M. Dent, 1900. Google Books.
References:
- Carabine, Deirdre. John Scottus Eriugena. Oxford UP, 2000.
- Dionysius the Areopagite. The Works of Dionysius the Areopagite. Translated by John Parker, James Parker and Co., 1897. Google Books.
- Nerney, Denis S. “Iohannes Scottus Eriugena.” Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, vol. 24, no. 95, Sept. 1935, pp. 415-432. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/30097229.
Image: 17th-century etching of the martyrdom of St. Cassian of Imola by Jan Luyken (Wikipedia).
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