This episode, we return to the Lanercost Chronicle for some examples of clergy behaving in some unclergylike ways, with a particular look at the decline and fall of clerical marriage in the medieval church.
This Episode’s Texts:
-
The Chronicle of Lanercost: 1272–1346. Trans. Sir Herbert Maxwell. Glasgow: James Maclehose and Sons, 1913. (Available at
archive.org.)
-
Ordericus Vitalis.
The Ecclesiastical History of England and Normady. Vol. 4. Trans. Thomas Forester. London: Henry G. Bohn, 1856. (Available at
Google Books.)
References:
- Brooke, C.N.L. “Gregorian Reform in Action: Clerical Marriage in England, 1050-1200.” Cambridge Historical Journal 12.1 (1956): 1-21.
- Frazee, Charles A. “The Origins of Clerical Celibacy in the Western Church.” Church History 57 Supplement: Centennial Issue (1988): 108-126. Reprinted from Church History 41 (1972): 149-167.
- McLaughlin, Megan. “The Bishop in the Bedroom: Witnessing Episcopal Sexuality in an Age of Reform.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 19.1 (Jan. 2010): 17-34.
Image: Detail depicting the sin of adultery from British Library MS Royal 6 E VI f. 61.
On this episode, we look at a couple of diggers of relics: first, Elfred (or Aelfred or Alfred), who brought the relics of the Venerable Bede to Durham Cathedral; and second, antiquarian James Raine, who dug up those same relics in the early 19th century.
Images of the cast of the skull of Bede and its lovely, TARDIS-blue storage box.
References
- Simeon of Durham. Simeon’s History of the Church of Durham. Trans. Joseph Stevenson. Church Historians of England. Vol. 3, pt. 2. London: Seeley’s, 1855. 619-711. Google Books.
- Symeon of Durham. Libellus de exordio atque procursu istius, hoc est Dunhelmensis, ecclesie: Tract on the Origin and Progress of this the Church of Durham. Ed. and Trans. David Rollason. Oxford: OUP, 2000.
- Geary, Patrick J. Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages. Revised ed. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 1990.
- Raine, James. A Brief Account of Durham Cathedral, with Notices of the Castle, University, City Churches, &c. Newcastle: Blackwell & Co., 1833. Google Books.
- Story, Joanna, and Richard N. Bailey. “The Skull of Bede.” The Antiquaries Journal 95 (2015): 325-50.
- Warner, Richard. A History of the Abbey of Glaston; and the Town of Glastonbury. Bath: Richard Cruttwell, 1826. Google Books.
Image
Photo of the present-day tomb of Bede, by Robert Scarth. Used under Creative Commons License (CC BY-SA 2.0)
After much delay, Medieval Death Trip is back to ring in 2016 (just not on the conventional date for New Year’s Day) with a very special episode. What would it sound like if all the previous MDT episodes got together and made a monstrous baby? It might turn out a little bit like this.
Texts
All of that have been featured on the show so far!
References
Ware, R. Dean. “Medieval Chronology: Theory and Practice.” Medieval Studies: An Introduction. 2nd ed. Ed. James M. Powell. Syracuse: Syracuse UP, 1992. 252-257.
Further Reading
Lydia Fairchild case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lydia_Fairchild
Images
We celebrate the Winter Solstice with a return to the Chronicle of Dale Abbey, where attempts to capitalize on the Hermit’s Dale don’t go smoothly.
References
Hope, W.H. St John, ed. and trans. “Chronicle of the Abbey of St Mary de Parco Stanley, or Dale, Derbyshire.”
Journal of the Derbyshire Archæological and Natural History Society 5 (Jan. 1883): 2-29. [Available at
Google Books.]
Kerry, Charles. “Depedale, and the Chronicle of Thomas de Musca, Canon of Dale Abbey.” Pamphlet reprinted from
Reliquary, Quarterly Archæological Journal and Review, 1886. [Available at
Google Books.]
This episode, Thanksgiving is making us feel a bit nostalgic about home comforts, so we look at the story of the Hermit of the Dale from the Chronicle of Dale Abbey.
References
Hope, W.H. St John, ed. and trans. “Chronicle of the Abbey of St Mary de Parco Stanley, or Dale, Derbyshire.”
Journal of the Derbyshire Archæological and Natural History Society 5 (Jan. 1883): 2-29. [Available at
Google Books.]
Kerry, Charles. “Depedale, and the Chronicle of Thomas de Musca, Canon of Dale Abbey.” Pamphlet reprinted from
Reliquary, Quarterly Archæological Journal and Review, 1886. [Available at
Google Books.]
This episode we celebrate our one-year anniversary on Halloween, with the tale of a mistreated werewolf: the Lai of Bisclavret by Marie de France.
This week’s text:
- “The Lay of the Werewolf” in French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France. Trans. Eugene Mason. 1911. Project Gutenberg.
References:
- Bynum, Caroline Walker. “Metamorphosis, or Gerald and the Werewolf.” Speculum 73.4 (Oct. 1998): 987-1013. JSTOR.
- Trębicki, Grzegorz. “Supragenological Types of Fiction versus Contemporary Non-Mimetic Literature.” Science Fiction Studies 41.3 (Nov. 2014): 481-501. JSTOR.
- TV Tropes: “Not Using the Z Word“
- TV Tropes: “Genre Blindness“
- Translation of the Canon Episcopi by H.C. Lea, reprinted in: Levack, Brian P., ed. The Witchcraft Sourcebook. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2015. 36-37.
Image: Illumination from “Ysengrin et les anguilles” from MS at Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris. (Yes, those are technically foxes, but I think they look enough like zombie werewolves to fit today’s episode!)
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