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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And because we're

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Speaker 1: out for full break this week, we're pulling an episode

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Speaker 1: from the vault. This is a good one. I think

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Speaker 1: you're in for a real treat. This was called The

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Speaker 1: Holy Undead Part one, originally published October nineteen. What what

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Speaker 1: Happens when the Dead get real pious? Yeah, these are

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Speaker 1: some fun episodes, and they're also it was interesting how

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Speaker 1: these were our Halloween episodes. Are some of our Halloween

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Speaker 1: episodes from last year, but they're also really kind of

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Speaker 1: Christmas episodes as well, so uh so, so take them

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Speaker 1: however way you wish to take them, either celebrate Halloween

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Speaker 1: or celebrate Christmas a little bit early, or both. Welcome

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Speaker 1: to Stuff to Blow your Mind, production of My Heart Radio. Hey,

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Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is

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Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And of course it's

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Speaker 1: October here on the podcast, so we've got to be

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Speaker 1: talking about the undead. But this is a real special

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Speaker 1: episode because today is the day that the undead go

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Speaker 1: to church. That's right. Uh And this topic ended up

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Speaker 1: being a whole lot of fun to research and uh

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Speaker 1: and and right on, because I I knew some of this,

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Speaker 1: but I did not know all of it. Uh. And

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Speaker 1: I think the key thing is when when you think

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Speaker 1: of the undead, when you think of zombies in particular, like,

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Speaker 1: what what do you think about? For me? One line

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Speaker 1: that instantly comes into my mind that I remember hearing

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Speaker 1: at a at a young age and is is from

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Speaker 1: the trailer for George romero zombie classic Dawn of the Dead,

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Speaker 1: When there is no more room in Hell that dead

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Speaker 1: will walk the earth very much suggests that reanimated corpses

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Speaker 1: shambling around are a distinctly satanic phenomena. Uh, though as

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Speaker 1: in George Romero's universe, I think it is. I think

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Speaker 1: that's actually more a naturalistic interpretation. Don't they say, what's

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Speaker 1: the deal? Like a satellite comes to Earth or something

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Speaker 1: like that? What do they say in the first one? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think it's some sort of satellite crashes, And but

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Speaker 1: there's kind of it's kind of like hearsay, right, or

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Speaker 1: it's what the media is saying. It's it's it's ultimately um,

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Speaker 1: it's it's out of our hands. And I guess that

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Speaker 1: that leads me to the next very broad distinction that

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Speaker 1: I tend to make with zombie films is that you

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Speaker 1: have you have environmental zombie films, and you have sort

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Speaker 1: of necromantic or magical zombie films, and the environmental something

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Speaker 1: has happened that causes an extreme reversal in how death works.

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Speaker 1: The dead instead of staying dead, they rise, and so

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Speaker 1: it might be some sort of supernatural event, which that

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Speaker 1: that quote uh kind of implies. It's like, well, humans,

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Speaker 1: you done send up Hell and now there's no more room,

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Speaker 1: so the dead are going to walk the earth. It's

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Speaker 1: it's kind of our fault, but it's ultimately a larger

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Speaker 1: systematic error that's going on. Okay, So in your view,

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Speaker 1: environmental causes could still be supernatural, but they would be

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Speaker 1: supernatural mechanistic rather than like supernatural directed will yeah you

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Speaker 1: know there or or if it's if it is directed,

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Speaker 1: it's it's like on a divine level, it's like, well,

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Speaker 1: God's had it. He's just letting the zombies rome now,

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Speaker 1: you know, and it's God reasons for that taking place,

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Speaker 1: um or you know, it could even be scientific, but

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Speaker 1: it's like a scientific accident by human science. So you're

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Speaker 1: trying to make zombie bio weapons. Well you shouldn't have

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Speaker 1: done that. Now, look what's happening. The dead are walking. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: here's the rage virus. Though I guess a complication with

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Speaker 1: that is you know, resident Evil twenty eight days later,

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Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. A lot of that is often, uh,

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Speaker 1: there's a blurring of the lines between what is undead

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Speaker 1: and what is just some infected form of human being

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Speaker 1: right right now. That The other area that the necromantic

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Speaker 1: or magical interpretation this is. This is more where you

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Speaker 1: have someone or something intentionally raising the dead through the

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Speaker 1: use of mad um generally to do something, to do

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Speaker 1: the bidding of their master, you know, who might be

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Speaker 1: a warlock or a demon or another powerful undead being,

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Speaker 1: maybe a mad scientist, even an alien mastermind or a

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Speaker 1: dark like minor deity. That's sort of thing. But it's like,

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Speaker 1: I need something done, I need some I need I

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Speaker 1: need an army of the dead. So I'm gonna raise

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Speaker 1: up an army of the dead to do specific dead things,

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Speaker 1: as opposed to like, well, now all the dead rise

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Speaker 1: from the grave and they do dead things. Right, I

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Speaker 1: am the witch queens and Obia I say a bunch

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Speaker 1: of skeletons, you pop up out of the ground and

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Speaker 1: get you some swords and shields and go kills in

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Speaker 1: bad so. Either way, I guess, very broadly speaking, there's

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Speaker 1: plenty of examples I know that kind of break this.

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Speaker 1: Zombies are either a thing that just kind of happens

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Speaker 1: and as part of the new natural order of things

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Speaker 1: or the unnatural order of things, or it's something that

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Speaker 1: is done by an agent of the evil. Um today

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Speaker 1: we're gonna be We're gonna be getting into I guess

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Speaker 1: both of these categories a little bit. But in a way,

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Speaker 1: we're also discussing a third category, you know, the holy,

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Speaker 1: undead pious zombies and church going perhaps god worshiping wraiths

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Speaker 1: and revenants who might just pack the local cathedral. You know.

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Speaker 1: I would say that this is mostly new to me,

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Speaker 1: but it has been so wonderful getting into these stories

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Speaker 1: because they are so full of weird ambiguities and contradictions.

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Speaker 1: I think that often suggest very interesting and enlightening things

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Speaker 1: about the cultural climate in which these tales arise, right,

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Speaker 1: and also the sort of the cultural soil, sort of

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Speaker 1: oftentimes the pre Christian soil from which these myths and

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Speaker 1: folk tales have germinated and then changed forms a little

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Speaker 1: bit in the Christian era, you know, just to go

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Speaker 1: back to Donna the Dead briefly though, the idea of

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Speaker 1: the dead going to church, Uh, it is a little

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Speaker 1: bit like the dead going to the mall and Don

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Speaker 1: of the Dead. You know, they just show up and

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Speaker 1: they're gonna do They're gonna do what humans do at

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Speaker 1: the mall. They're just gonna wander around, um and uh

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Speaker 1: and in Yeah, I feel like it manages up a

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Speaker 1: little bit with some of the stories we're talking about here, yeah,

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Speaker 1: and Dawn of the Dead. It's interesting because, uh, there

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Speaker 1: is an assumption in the Rameiro zombie universe that the

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Speaker 1: zombies are operating at a very low, very reduced level

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Speaker 1: of cognition. You know, they have very limited ability to reason.

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Speaker 1: I mean, they can clearly like use their brains enough

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Speaker 1: to sort of like move towards the thing they want

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Speaker 1: to eat. But but it doesn't get much more complicated

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Speaker 1: than that with them. But I think one of the

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Speaker 1: characters in Dawn of the Dead says, why are they

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Speaker 1: all coming here to the mall? This must be someplace

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Speaker 1: that was important to them in life and without anything

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Speaker 1: else to do without any brains to eat in the

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Speaker 1: nearby area, they just sort of drift back to a

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Speaker 1: place that was significant in their lives and almost as

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Speaker 1: if by force of habit. And that's kind of interesting too,

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Speaker 1: because it suggests that whatever it is you would really

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Speaker 1: say you want to be doing when in your afterlife,

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Speaker 1: maybe you would say, i'd I'd go, I don't know,

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Speaker 1: visit my still living relatives and give them new is

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Speaker 1: from beyond the grave or something. In fact, what you

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Speaker 1: do is walk the steps you've walked a hundred times before.

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Speaker 1: And where does that take you? You go to the mall. Baby. Now,

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Speaker 1: some would say there's no ethical consumption of brains under capitalism,

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Speaker 1: but I guess that I'd have to discuss that another episode.

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Speaker 1: Let's let's get back to religion though. Oh yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: so we should talk about maybe a specific example to

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Speaker 1: get us going of of one of these stories about

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Speaker 1: about the church going undead. So the story I wanted

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Speaker 1: to start with here, I wanted to start with because

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Speaker 1: it's ultimately the story I've had the longest um exposure to,

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Speaker 1: I guess in my life. I started looking into this

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Speaker 1: and then I realized, oh, I have I've read some

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Speaker 1: version of this story before. Uh and uh, I want

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Speaker 1: to take I want to take at least some of

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Speaker 1: you back to the Enchanted World book series from Time

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Speaker 1: Life Books. Um. Uh. Some of us had these, some

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Speaker 1: of us didn't. I was lucky enough. I think my

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Speaker 1: aunt had purchased these, and I kind of temporarily inherited them.

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Speaker 1: But I also still have them decades later. Um and

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Speaker 1: and ultimately it's gonna it will be hard to make

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Speaker 1: me give them up because they, ultimately, uh put played

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Speaker 1: I think an important role in my my childhood. But

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Speaker 1: if you were watching TV in the early nineteen eighties,

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Speaker 1: you might remember a TV spot for these books, starring

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Speaker 1: the legendary Vincent Price. I will buy anything Vincent Price

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Speaker 1: tells me to. Yeah, I wonder what else was he? Uh?

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Speaker 1: Was was he a pitching back then unsleeved? The delicious

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Speaker 1: flaky crust of a hot pocket? Oh? Man? Oh? He

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Speaker 1: would have been great for Tomstone Pizza, right, Vincent Price

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Speaker 1: Tomstone because they were going for more of a Western thing. Though, Man,

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Speaker 1: Vincent Price impression was bad. I gotta work on that. Well,

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Speaker 1: why don't why don't we? I encourage everyone to look

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Speaker 1: this up. This particular commercial up on YouTube. But let's

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Speaker 1: go and have just a little audio sample of it,

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Speaker 1: because it's Yeah, it's vincent price, it's fabulous. On evenings,

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Speaker 1: to like this, I'd like to parrol up with a

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Speaker 1: good books short of book that lets the imagination run

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Speaker 1: away with you. If you're like me and enjoy the

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Speaker 1: mysterious and the unexpected, you'll love the Enchanted World. Each

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Speaker 1: volume brings to life so vividly those inhabitants of the

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Speaker 1: other world, witches and wizards, goh Scoblands, and avenging Nights.

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Speaker 1: Call now and enter the Enchanted World with the first book,

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Speaker 1: Wizards and Witches my favorite subject. It's an intriguing account

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Speaker 1: of sorcery, spells, and deception. Other books include ghosts, fairies,

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Speaker 1: and elves and dragons. Painstakingly researched by the editors of

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Speaker 1: Time Life Books, each volume is exquisitely illustrated and portrayed

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Speaker 1: with master works of art. Each volume is superbly written

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Speaker 1: and bound in luxurious fabric. So rob I I was

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Speaker 1: never lucky enough to have these books as a kid,

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Speaker 1: But but I guess if you had access to them,

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Speaker 1: I would assume that these books made you the terrible

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Speaker 1: adult you are today. Oh yeah, probably so they were

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Speaker 1: pretty great because each one well, first of all, as

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Speaker 1: as Vincent Price reminds us, each one is bound in

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Speaker 1: luxurious fabric, curious, yes, And each one is a different color,

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Speaker 1: which I distinctly remember, because each book deals with a

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Speaker 1: different topic, and you know, c have fairies, you have

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Speaker 1: camelo giants, uh, you know, mermaids and so forth. I

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Speaker 1: didn't have them all, but I had a number of them,

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Speaker 1: and I distinctly remember there were, of course two black books,

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Speaker 1: black bound books. One of them was on ghosts and

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Speaker 1: the other one was on night creatures, and these were

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Speaker 1: in a you know, sort of a childhood way. These

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Speaker 1: were both my favorites of the series, but also the

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Speaker 1: most feared. I remember that they'd be on the shelf

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Speaker 1: and I could barely bring myself to look at their

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Speaker 1: spines on the bookshelf if the sun had gone down,

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Speaker 1: because I knew how terrifying the illustrations were in there,

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Speaker 1: and how terrifying the contents of the stories were. Um

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Speaker 1: and I certainly wasn't going to pull one of these

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Speaker 1: books off the shelf at night, because the cover art

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Speaker 1: was absolutely horrible on each of them. Oh that's so wonderful.

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Speaker 1: And when I say the mentioned the art, it was

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Speaker 1: all the books featured a combination of say, woodcuts and

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Speaker 1: uh and old paintings, you know, as well as new

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Speaker 1: custom illustrations matching up with the with the stories from

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Speaker 1: different artists. And we'll mention one in particular in a bit, uh,

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Speaker 1: specific artists, all with different styles. So it was it's

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Speaker 1: just a visual to light. I highly recommend if you

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Speaker 1: have a chance to pick up any of these books

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Speaker 1: and you're interested in these topics, do so. I think

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Speaker 1: they must have printed billions of these things, because I

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Speaker 1: just looked around the other day, and you can pick

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Speaker 1: them up for like dollar a dollar or two dollars each.

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Speaker 1: I think in some cases if you buy them used.

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Speaker 1: I wonder how that looks urious fabric holds up. I

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Speaker 1: think it holds up all right. I don't know how

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Speaker 1: luxurious it it really looks these days, but uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: the books are holding together, and that's that's enough. So

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Speaker 1: the Ghost Book, like I said, was particularly scary, and

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Speaker 1: it featured a tale of the pious undead. So it's

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Speaker 1: it's a short section in the book titled the Hooded Congregation,

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Speaker 1: and it is fantastically illustrated and perhaps written. I think

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Speaker 1: the writers are all just it's listed as like by

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Speaker 1: folks at the Time Life Books or something, so he

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Speaker 1: might have written it as well, but he at least

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Speaker 1: illustrated it. Talking about Caldicott Medal winning author Chris Van Allsburg,

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Speaker 1: if the name didn't ring a bell, let me just

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Speaker 1: say this is this is the artist who illustrated and

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Speaker 1: wrote the books Jumanji in one and The Polar Express

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Speaker 1: in uh, both known for very elegant illustrations. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: ultimately very you know, ghostly and you know, kind of

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Speaker 1: a yeah, ultimately ghostly. And so it's like this. I

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Speaker 1: never really liked the Polar Express because it did feel

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Speaker 1: kind of cold and uh and like it's something of

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Speaker 1: the spirit world. And I was like this, I don't

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Speaker 1: know this, this isn't my Christmas. But the Hooded Congregation

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Speaker 1: in the Time Life Books. Here the illustration style apps

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Speaker 1: absolutely works and it's it's fabulous. It's um. So what

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Speaker 1: we have here is a series of haunting black and

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Speaker 1: white images. And I sent these two images of these

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Speaker 1: two Joe, so you could look at these as well.

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Speaker 1: And then you have text pages that feature tiny images

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Speaker 1: of a woman in a casket, and as you proceed

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Speaker 1: through the story, her face shrivels towards the skull. It's

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Speaker 1: absolutely wonderful. These are indeed beautiful. Though I'm almost kind

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Speaker 1: of glad I didn't look at these illustrations as a kid,

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Speaker 1: because if I had, I am positive, I would have

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Speaker 1: cemented an unbreakable association between the ghostly hooded figures in

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Speaker 1: the congregation, and especially the second illustration here, and the

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Speaker 1: bad guys in Charlton Heston and the Omega man. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: there's this kind of a similar such way and going

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Speaker 1: on with the hooded figures. All right, So I'm gonna

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Speaker 1: briefly roll through the story here. Uh And I'm sorry

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Speaker 1: for the Christmas creep everyone, but this is a holiday story.

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Speaker 1: So it takes place Christmas morning. We're somewhere in the

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Speaker 1: Swedish mountain centuries ago, and a young woman has awoken

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Speaker 1: extremely early and she hears the sound of church bells.

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Speaker 1: So what does she do? The church bells are ringing.

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Speaker 1: You need to get your your butt to church. So

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Speaker 1: she ventures out into the darkness. Uh And and you know,

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Speaker 1: it's it's a dark time of year, it's a cold time,

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Speaker 1: of year, the cold, the cold is biting. She makes

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Speaker 1: her way to the village church and uh the door

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Speaker 1: is open. Inside the pews are filled with black, hooded

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Speaker 1: figures and a hooded priest and gray stands at the

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Speaker 1: stands on at the front of the church is reciting

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Speaker 1: in psalms, you know, leading folks and song, that sort

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Speaker 1: of thing, normal church business, except everything's a little weird. Um.

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Speaker 1: The woman is led in, she takes a seat, and

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Speaker 1: then a figure sits beside her. And then that figure

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Speaker 1: that is seated beside her pulls back her hood and

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Speaker 1: reveals the death shriveled face of her dead sister. Whoa,

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Speaker 1: you don't see that coming. Yeah, And she she cries out,

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Speaker 1: you are the dead. And then all the hoods fall

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Speaker 1: back from the other worshippers, and it's revealed that they

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Speaker 1: are all indeed the dead in various states of decay. Uh.

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Speaker 1: It's written in this telling of the story that the

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Speaker 1: oldest are little more than shadows. But you see, you know,

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Speaker 1: some still have flesh on them, and they're uh, they

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Speaker 1: seem to be physical apparitions, though for the most part.

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Speaker 1: Her sister, her undead sister here warns her to flee

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Speaker 1: while she can, and she gets up to do so,

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Speaker 1: but of course the congregation gets to their feet as well.

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Speaker 1: They chase after, they claw after with these skeletal fingers,

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Speaker 1: and she feels them jabbing at her back as she

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Speaker 1: reaches the door to to leave the church, and they

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Speaker 1: pull the scarf from her neck and the process. So

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Speaker 1: she gets away. She runs to the village priest's house

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Speaker 1: and he's being ready to go to church to open

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Speaker 1: it up. He didn't know that the church has already open,

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Speaker 1: at least for some folks. Uh So they go back

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Speaker 1: together and they find that the church is completely empty.

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Speaker 1: But then there is her scarf on the floor, shredded

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Speaker 1: to pieces by those skeletal fingers. This is such an

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Speaker 1: unusual type of story because of this strange blending of themes.

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Speaker 1: So there is clear menace implied by the beings of

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Speaker 1: the church. These are not just you know, righteous Christians

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Speaker 1: who have passed on the kind of people that Dante

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Speaker 1: might encounter in in the paradiso, where they'd be, you know,

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Speaker 1: humbly praising God from the point of the afterlife. Uh. No,

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Speaker 1: that they are in church and they are praising God.

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Speaker 1: But they're also dangerous, Like they immediately they attack and

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Speaker 1: they poke with the bony fingers, they shred the scarf.

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Speaker 1: These things, on the surface level at least, seem incongruous. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: like how can like, Okay, they hate the living, well

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Speaker 1: we expect that of the death and right, but they

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Speaker 1: love God. That seems kind of strange, right you think

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Speaker 1: that the uh, this would match up more with our

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Speaker 1: our idea of the satanic undead, the devilish undead, the

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Speaker 1: unholy undead, as opposed to holy zombies at church. So yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's a simple, weird little ghost story. And the illustrations

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Speaker 1: especially always haunted me when I looked at the pictures.

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Speaker 1: But but I don't think I ever really thought about

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Speaker 1: about why. And uh, I think, you know, it had

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Speaker 1: to do with the darkness of the undead having such

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Speaker 1: a presence in both a church and a Christmas story.

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Speaker 1: I know that that that you know, I did think

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Speaker 1: about that when I was a kid. But you know,

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Speaker 1: but but you know, here was the kicker. It was

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Speaker 1: as if the ghosts were supposed to be there, you know,

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Speaker 1: not vile invaders intent on desecrating the church and destroying

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Speaker 1: those who love God or something, you know. But but

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Speaker 1: they were, they were doing their thing. It was like

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Speaker 1: it was their time to be in the church, and

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Speaker 1: the village girl had simply wandered into the night church,

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Speaker 1: where she did not belong and where the dead worship

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Speaker 1: while we sleep. It almost makes you wonder. The fact

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Speaker 1: that they're in church praying before they attack her makes

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Speaker 1: you kind of like reframe the story. It makes you

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Speaker 1: wonder did she do something wrong, like did she step

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Speaker 1: on their turf or offend them in some way maybe

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Speaker 1: by pointing out the fact that her sister was dead. Um,

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Speaker 1: you know, is that unwelcome news to them in some

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Speaker 1: way or something like that? Yeah, so what does it

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Speaker 1: all mean? Well, we're gonna get into that. But uh,

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Speaker 1: initially though, I was like, all right, I've i've I've

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Speaker 1: read the timeline version, I've reread the timeline version. Now,

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Speaker 1: well what's what are some of the original versions of it? Well? Um,

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Speaker 1: I I found a wonderful blog post, well written nicely

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Speaker 1: cited by Camilla Christiansen on and on the blog Legends

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Speaker 1: of the North Legends of the North thought blog spot

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Speaker 1: dot com. Um they are a native Norwegian blogger, and

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Speaker 1: uh they write about it a bit here and point

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Speaker 1: out that the tale is usually known as the Midnight

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Speaker 1: Mass of the Dead, and Christiansen writes that the tale

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Speaker 1: seems to originate from Germanic Romance and Slavic regions, and

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Speaker 1: that while there were there are many variations of this

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Speaker 1: tale to be found throughout Europe. The oldest date back

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Speaker 1: to the sixth century by historian Gregory of Tours, while

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Speaker 1: it pops up in Nordic writings during the seventeen hundreds,

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Speaker 1: and and we'll get more into some other traditions that

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Speaker 1: seemed to weave their way into this particular tale as

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Speaker 1: we proceed, but the story generally follows a basic format.

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Speaker 1: A man or a woman they wait too early, perhaps

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Speaker 1: confused by church bells and or the darkness of winter

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Speaker 1: months in northern climates. Thinking themselves late to church, they

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Speaker 1: rushed to u to the church and soon realized that

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Speaker 1: they have wandered into the midnight Mass of the dead.

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Speaker 1: A deceased loved one urges them to flee, and in

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Speaker 1: some tellings um such as the one in the Enchanted

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Speaker 1: World Book, they make it out alive and they merely

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Speaker 1: lose a garment that becomes proof of what occurred, you know.

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Speaker 1: But in other tellings the dead just simply tear them

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Speaker 1: to pieces or otherwise drag them into the realm of death.

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Speaker 1: And while it's not always Christmas Eve, uh, we do

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Speaker 1: see this idea that, you know, what is Christmas but

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Speaker 1: the darkest evening of the year. It's this time when

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Speaker 1: the veil between the worlds of the living and the

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Speaker 1: dead are the thinnest. So it kind of while at

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Speaker 1: first you might think, oh, Christmas is not a time

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Speaker 1: for the dead to come back to life, Well, you know,

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Speaker 1: maybe if if you're talking about you know, modern and

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Speaker 1: Santa Claus traditions, but if you're getting into the older

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Speaker 1: ideas of of winter religion and winter legends and winter traditions,

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Speaker 1: then then yes, this is a time when death is

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Speaker 1: very close. This reminds me of a line that comes

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Speaker 1: from another story that I'm going to talk about in

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Speaker 1: a bit from a from a medieval Christian bishop who

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Speaker 1: wrote about similar types of tales of of the pious undead.

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Speaker 1: This guy is like a tenth to eleventh century German

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Speaker 1: bishop named teet marvon Merseburg, and after telling a story

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Speaker 1: kind of similar to this, uh, teeth Mark concludes with

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Speaker 1: the statement, as day is to the living, So night

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Speaker 1: is conceded to the dead. Uh. And I love that

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Speaker 1: phrase night is conceded to the dead, as if, like it,

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Speaker 1: it is ground that has been lost. The dead have

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Speaker 1: taken it and it belongs to them. And of course

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Speaker 1: I guess that would seem especially true in the winter,

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Speaker 1: when the night is the longest. Yeah. So it's easy

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Speaker 1: to see like this, this idea of a dual world.

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Speaker 1: There's the world of the night, in the world of

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Speaker 1: of the day, there's the world of the living. There's

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Speaker 1: a little world of the dead. Uh. It also makes

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00:21:31,200 --> 00:21:33,399
Speaker 1: me wonder too if tales like this might have something

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Speaker 1: to do with the idea that if we have human

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Speaker 1: spaces uh, in this case, artificial human spaces like church interiors,

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Speaker 1: the places of stone and wood that exists for particular purposes.

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Speaker 1: So if this space is for you know, X, then

401
00:21:47,600 --> 00:21:50,919
Speaker 1: does X occur even when we are not there? Uh?

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00:21:51,160 --> 00:21:53,119
Speaker 1: You know, an empty church is not at a church

403
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Speaker 1: in some respects, so perhaps it remains occupied even when

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00:21:56,320 --> 00:21:59,720
Speaker 1: we are not in the church. Um, I'm not sure

405
00:21:59,840 --> 00:22:03,240
Speaker 1: that that makes sense. That I was kind of mulling

406
00:22:03,280 --> 00:22:06,560
Speaker 1: over it, and uh, yeah, like a place that we

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Speaker 1: have created, like absolutely, such as an enclosed place it,

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00:22:10,240 --> 00:22:12,040
Speaker 1: you know, it can't it can't just be a wild

409
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Speaker 1: place again, you know, unless it decays and becomes one

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Speaker 1: with nature. Like it's it's still a church, but it's

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00:22:18,640 --> 00:22:20,560
Speaker 1: it's not a church if the people are not gathered

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Speaker 1: in it. That's a very good point about the conceptualization

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Speaker 1: of sacred spaces. So like is a to a medieval

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Speaker 1: Christian would they consider a building to be a genuine

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Speaker 1: Christian church if it is at its at the time

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Speaker 1: of its construction, say, consecrated to the Christian religion? Or

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Speaker 1: does it depend on its day to day use. Yeah, anyway,

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Speaker 1: just something worth worth worth keeping in mind as we proceed. Now,

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Speaker 1: you know, if the undead here though, again they sound pious,

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00:22:55,800 --> 00:22:58,920
Speaker 1: but they also sound a bit violent and hostile. Um,

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Speaker 1: you know, there seems to be wrong vibes of the

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Speaker 1: dead hate the living here and Christiansen points out in

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Speaker 1: their blog that pre Christian traditions and Norse folklore, you know,

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Speaker 1: are are often about undead beings who have it in

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Speaker 1: for the living, particularly when it comes to uh at

426
00:23:13,480 --> 00:23:19,240
Speaker 1: least a couple of different types of undead creatures. Uh.

427
00:23:19,320 --> 00:23:21,960
Speaker 1: And this led me to the work of in k

428
00:23:22,280 --> 00:23:27,639
Speaker 1: Chadwick from six they wrote Norse Ghosts, an article that

429
00:23:27,680 --> 00:23:30,520
Speaker 1: was published in the journal Folklore, and Chadwick points out

430
00:23:30,520 --> 00:23:33,840
Speaker 1: that the ghosts of Scandinavian and Iceland, uh that they

431
00:23:33,840 --> 00:23:38,400
Speaker 1: stand out for being physical animated corpses, not ethereal spirits,

432
00:23:38,440 --> 00:23:41,919
Speaker 1: but but the actual reanimated bodies of the dead. So

433
00:23:41,960 --> 00:23:43,960
Speaker 1: when we talk about the dead coming back and say

434
00:23:44,000 --> 00:23:47,159
Speaker 1: walking through a wall in your house, uh, well, in

435
00:23:47,200 --> 00:23:50,400
Speaker 1: the in the North and s Line tradition, they're coming

436
00:23:50,440 --> 00:23:52,920
Speaker 1: through the wall. They're busting through like the kool aid man.

437
00:23:53,160 --> 00:23:54,840
Speaker 1: You know, they're not going to just pass through it

438
00:23:54,920 --> 00:23:58,000
Speaker 1: like a spirit. Yeah. And it's interesting because sometimes stories

439
00:23:58,040 --> 00:24:02,040
Speaker 1: of encounters with the living dead don't specify one way

440
00:24:02,119 --> 00:24:05,640
Speaker 1: or another whether you're talking about an insubstantial spectral kind

441
00:24:05,640 --> 00:24:09,280
Speaker 1: of reanimation or a reanimation of the physical body. So

442
00:24:09,320 --> 00:24:12,280
Speaker 1: I think there's a bias in modern ghost stories towards

443
00:24:12,320 --> 00:24:15,720
Speaker 1: the spectral apparition without mass. But in a lot of

444
00:24:15,720 --> 00:24:17,760
Speaker 1: these older stories, yeah, you're talking about a creature with

445
00:24:17,800 --> 00:24:21,239
Speaker 1: a body that might be more aptly called something like

446
00:24:21,280 --> 00:24:24,480
Speaker 1: a revenant rather than a rather than a ghost. Though

447
00:24:24,680 --> 00:24:28,320
Speaker 1: people describing stories that are clearly referring to beings with

448
00:24:28,400 --> 00:24:32,200
Speaker 1: physical bodies still use the term ghost stories a lot. Yeah,

449
00:24:32,240 --> 00:24:35,440
Speaker 1: you definitely see that in the in the literature. But

450
00:24:35,440 --> 00:24:37,480
Speaker 1: but yeah, these are these are stories where the dead

451
00:24:37,840 --> 00:24:40,680
Speaker 1: are are so physical that you can wrestle them. Uh.

452
00:24:40,720 --> 00:24:44,240
Speaker 1: There's there's one that Chadwick mentions. Uh, this is the

453
00:24:44,280 --> 00:24:48,000
Speaker 1: Swedish tale of the shepherd Glamor, who in the gretast Saka,

454
00:24:48,359 --> 00:24:50,119
Speaker 1: goes to work on a farm in Iceland and is

455
00:24:50,200 --> 00:24:53,160
Speaker 1: killed by a supernatural force. And so he then returns

456
00:24:53,200 --> 00:24:56,760
Speaker 1: to haunt the farm, killing both livestock and human servants.

457
00:24:57,320 --> 00:24:59,320
Speaker 1: And in the hero of the saga, Greta Are the

458
00:24:59,359 --> 00:25:03,000
Speaker 1: strong shows up and waits for him, then wrestles him.

459
00:25:03,600 --> 00:25:06,520
Speaker 1: And many scholars have made the connection here between this

460
00:25:06,600 --> 00:25:09,760
Speaker 1: tale and that of Beowulf and Grenville. You know, it's like,

461
00:25:10,160 --> 00:25:11,919
Speaker 1: is the monster problem. There's some sort of thing that

462
00:25:12,000 --> 00:25:14,800
Speaker 1: comes at night, so the hero waits for it and

463
00:25:14,840 --> 00:25:19,080
Speaker 1: then enters into a physical contest with it when it arrives. Now,

464
00:25:19,080 --> 00:25:23,080
Speaker 1: Gretis eventually slays the undead horror in this tale um used.

465
00:25:23,080 --> 00:25:25,879
Speaker 1: I think he uses a sword on it, but the site,

466
00:25:26,200 --> 00:25:30,400
Speaker 1: the mere sight of moonlight and the creature's eyes it

467
00:25:30,400 --> 00:25:33,160
Speaker 1: it causes a sort of curse, and Grets is never

468
00:25:33,480 --> 00:25:36,520
Speaker 1: comfortable alone in the dark again, it like scars him

469
00:25:36,560 --> 00:25:39,680
Speaker 1: for life and has this kind of deteriorating effect on

470
00:25:39,800 --> 00:25:42,760
Speaker 1: his psyche. And the modern context wouldn't be tempted to

471
00:25:42,760 --> 00:25:47,040
Speaker 1: say he's gotten PTSD from this conflict. Yeah, exactly. So

472
00:25:47,080 --> 00:25:49,760
Speaker 1: there there are at least a couple of different beings

473
00:25:49,800 --> 00:25:52,400
Speaker 1: that are that are generally any talked about in these traditions.

474
00:25:52,440 --> 00:25:56,160
Speaker 1: There's the hugboy and the dragger, and these are both

475
00:25:56,359 --> 00:26:00,400
Speaker 1: undead barrow dwellers. So in some cases the draw already

476
00:26:00,480 --> 00:26:03,919
Speaker 1: said to build his own barrow in life. So he's like,

477
00:26:04,720 --> 00:26:06,840
Speaker 1: you know, he's like a local lord or something, and

478
00:26:06,880 --> 00:26:10,600
Speaker 1: so he builds this barrow, this vault of stone and earth,

479
00:26:11,000 --> 00:26:14,320
Speaker 1: fills it with riches, and in some cases the individual

480
00:26:14,720 --> 00:26:20,080
Speaker 1: uh is said to have themselves buried alive in the barrow. Um.

481
00:26:20,840 --> 00:26:23,800
Speaker 1: This is interesting, like the the idea that Chadwick mentions

482
00:26:23,960 --> 00:26:27,639
Speaker 1: that there are these accounts of of this important individual,

483
00:26:28,119 --> 00:26:30,560
Speaker 1: and there reaches the time when I guess that this

484
00:26:30,600 --> 00:26:33,359
Speaker 1: individual is thinking about death and the end of their life.

485
00:26:33,600 --> 00:26:36,720
Speaker 1: And rather than quote die on straw, which you know,

486
00:26:36,760 --> 00:26:39,480
Speaker 1: brings the vision the idea of of of dying of

487
00:26:39,520 --> 00:26:42,159
Speaker 1: old age or dying of sickness in a bed. The

488
00:26:42,240 --> 00:26:44,160
Speaker 1: idea is you get you get twelve of your men

489
00:26:44,240 --> 00:26:47,399
Speaker 1: with you, and you just get apparently just super drunk

490
00:26:47,880 --> 00:26:51,119
Speaker 1: um on spirits, and then you all go into the tomb,

491
00:26:51,880 --> 00:26:54,000
Speaker 1: which again has filled with riches and I think even

492
00:26:54,040 --> 00:26:56,800
Speaker 1: some food and stuff, and then they seal you in

493
00:26:57,119 --> 00:27:00,480
Speaker 1: and that's that's it. That's your that's your ernie into

494
00:27:00,560 --> 00:27:03,199
Speaker 1: the end of the afterlife. This actually reminds me of

495
00:27:03,240 --> 00:27:05,800
Speaker 1: something that I was going to get into later that

496
00:27:06,080 --> 00:27:08,119
Speaker 1: is featured in in a paper that we're going to

497
00:27:08,200 --> 00:27:10,000
Speaker 1: talk about. This may actually end up being in in

498
00:27:10,000 --> 00:27:12,960
Speaker 1: the next part of this series, but this is in

499
00:27:13,040 --> 00:27:16,640
Speaker 1: a paper by a historian of the Middle Ages at

500
00:27:16,680 --> 00:27:20,879
Speaker 1: you see San Diego named Nancy Mandeville Cacciola, and the

501
00:27:20,920 --> 00:27:24,840
Speaker 1: paper is called Revenants, Resurrection and Burnt Sacrifice. It's the

502
00:27:25,160 --> 00:27:28,080
Speaker 1: paper that gets strongly into these, uh, these stories of

503
00:27:28,119 --> 00:27:31,720
Speaker 1: the pious dead told by by Tetmar, the medieval chronicler.

504
00:27:31,760 --> 00:27:34,920
Speaker 1: I already mentioned, but there's a part that I found

505
00:27:35,000 --> 00:27:39,199
Speaker 1: very interesting where she explains sort of the the frequently

506
00:27:39,359 --> 00:27:44,159
Speaker 1: encountered common sense logic about what leads to the state

507
00:27:44,359 --> 00:27:48,399
Speaker 1: of restless death versus peaceful death in the Middle Ages,

508
00:27:48,480 --> 00:27:51,359
Speaker 1: and that this is a an idea that probably exists

509
00:27:51,400 --> 00:27:54,600
Speaker 1: mostly outside of Christian teachings. It was something that was

510
00:27:54,640 --> 00:27:58,679
Speaker 1: common among pagan thinking of of medieval Europe, but that

511
00:27:58,840 --> 00:28:02,280
Speaker 1: had a sort of continent innued folk belief life, even

512
00:28:02,359 --> 00:28:06,320
Speaker 1: after a region had often been supposedly Christianized, and so

513
00:28:06,480 --> 00:28:09,320
Speaker 1: she writes as follows, this was the notion that those

514
00:28:09,359 --> 00:28:12,639
Speaker 1: who were subject to a quote bad death that was

515
00:28:12,840 --> 00:28:16,880
Speaker 1: violent or sudden were unlikely to lie quietly in their graves.

516
00:28:17,359 --> 00:28:20,600
Speaker 1: In such cases, the life force exits the body too

517
00:28:20,680 --> 00:28:24,320
Speaker 1: quickly before the individual can make peace with the prospect

518
00:28:24,359 --> 00:28:27,359
Speaker 1: of dying, while the trauma of a painful or violent

519
00:28:27,440 --> 00:28:30,359
Speaker 1: death added to the fear among survivors that such a

520
00:28:30,400 --> 00:28:34,080
Speaker 1: dead person might feel resentful of the living. In the

521
00:28:34,080 --> 00:28:37,800
Speaker 1: felicitous phrase of Lesser k Little So, quoting another scholar here,

522
00:28:38,040 --> 00:28:42,840
Speaker 1: these bodies expired with quote energy still unexpended, and thus

523
00:28:42,840 --> 00:28:45,480
Speaker 1: were considered to be at high risk of returning from

524
00:28:45,520 --> 00:28:50,320
Speaker 1: their graves. The flesh itself retained an element of untrammeled vitality.

525
00:28:51,680 --> 00:28:55,640
Speaker 1: Now I see some differences here, because that's emphasizing one

526
00:28:55,640 --> 00:28:58,200
Speaker 1: of the main things about the so called bad death

527
00:28:58,280 --> 00:29:00,480
Speaker 1: that leads to a body getting back up out of

528
00:29:00,520 --> 00:29:03,720
Speaker 1: the grave being that they were not ready for death

529
00:29:03,760 --> 00:29:06,720
Speaker 1: when it happened. And the drawer here that you're talking about,

530
00:29:06,720 --> 00:29:10,440
Speaker 1: it seems like they are specifically and intentionally ready and

531
00:29:10,520 --> 00:29:14,160
Speaker 1: yet there's still some kind of element of badness about this. Uh,

532
00:29:14,200 --> 00:29:16,520
Speaker 1: this death scenario, isn't there? Like it seems like that

533
00:29:16,560 --> 00:29:20,160
Speaker 1: there's something greedy about their approach to death. Yeah, and

534
00:29:20,160 --> 00:29:22,400
Speaker 1: this I think it gets kind of complicated again. There

535
00:29:22,440 --> 00:29:25,000
Speaker 1: is a very the idea that it is very premeditated

536
00:29:25,040 --> 00:29:27,120
Speaker 1: and and in fact, one of the things that Chadwick

537
00:29:27,120 --> 00:29:30,400
Speaker 1: brings up is that um is that some cases, in

538
00:29:30,440 --> 00:29:34,360
Speaker 1: some cases future Draga individuals are said to have undertaken

539
00:29:34,400 --> 00:29:38,840
Speaker 1: a preliminary journey to supernatural regions prior to their final

540
00:29:38,920 --> 00:29:42,320
Speaker 1: disappearance into the barrow, which makes which for me at

541
00:29:42,400 --> 00:29:45,080
Speaker 1: least made me think about the Necromongers and chronicles of Riddick.

542
00:29:45,120 --> 00:29:47,960
Speaker 1: I don't have remember this that the Lord Marshall there

543
00:29:47,960 --> 00:29:50,959
Speaker 1: is said to have visited the under verse and returned.

544
00:29:51,440 --> 00:29:54,400
Speaker 1: You know this idea that that you've you've kind of made. Yeah,

545
00:29:54,440 --> 00:29:57,600
Speaker 1: this this initial jaunt into death and you've come back

546
00:29:57,640 --> 00:29:59,360
Speaker 1: and you've checked it out and you can say, all right,

547
00:29:59,400 --> 00:30:03,360
Speaker 1: it's good, the lodgings are great, let's do this. I

548
00:30:03,400 --> 00:30:06,240
Speaker 1: can guarantee this is a connection that has never before

549
00:30:06,320 --> 00:30:10,560
Speaker 1: been made in the folklore literature. But I do wonder

550
00:30:10,640 --> 00:30:15,080
Speaker 1: if the writers of that were inspired. But um, anyway,

551
00:30:15,280 --> 00:30:20,640
Speaker 1: there this idea that that there's still something off. This

552
00:30:20,720 --> 00:30:22,280
Speaker 1: seems to be the kids. So first of all, they're

553
00:30:22,320 --> 00:30:26,280
Speaker 1: multiple tales of this going on. And in some of

554
00:30:26,320 --> 00:30:28,800
Speaker 1: the tales, the men don't stay content in their barrows.

555
00:30:28,840 --> 00:30:32,560
Speaker 1: They hunger for blood, they venture back out, you know,

556
00:30:32,640 --> 00:30:35,360
Speaker 1: and and the messing with with livestock or they're they're

557
00:30:35,360 --> 00:30:38,520
Speaker 1: coming after living humans. But there are also these cases

558
00:30:38,560 --> 00:30:42,800
Speaker 1: where a descendant of the individual and the barrow returns

559
00:30:42,880 --> 00:30:46,080
Speaker 1: to it and engages in a kind of ritual combat

560
00:30:46,200 --> 00:30:49,200
Speaker 1: with them. So, um, you can kind of, you know,

561
00:30:49,240 --> 00:30:52,720
Speaker 1: imagine it as being perhaps you know, about generational issues

562
00:30:52,880 --> 00:30:56,800
Speaker 1: and family wealth and treasure. It's pretty interesting, or at

563
00:30:56,840 --> 00:30:59,760
Speaker 1: least it it makes me think of this kind of scenario.

564
00:31:00,360 --> 00:31:03,720
Speaker 1: Descendant might come back and be like, hey, grandfather, Uh,

565
00:31:03,840 --> 00:31:06,520
Speaker 1: you've got a lot of a lot of gold in there. Um,

566
00:31:06,800 --> 00:31:10,040
Speaker 1: you know, the living need that gold. Uh, So I

567
00:31:10,040 --> 00:31:14,280
Speaker 1: can imagine the kind of conflict that would ensue. Now.

568
00:31:14,360 --> 00:31:18,520
Speaker 1: Chadwick also shares two different accounts of note because they're

569
00:31:18,560 --> 00:31:22,400
Speaker 1: both examples of a story in which the undead don't

570
00:31:22,440 --> 00:31:25,040
Speaker 1: appear to hate the living, but they have issues with

571
00:31:25,080 --> 00:31:28,480
Speaker 1: the living that are that are pretty important. So one

572
00:31:28,720 --> 00:31:33,880
Speaker 1: is from thet or fourteenth century Abrigia saga. It's the

573
00:31:33,920 --> 00:31:38,080
Speaker 1: story of Thorguna, who is this Christian woman who wishes

574
00:31:38,120 --> 00:31:40,600
Speaker 1: that her body be buried when she dies in a

575
00:31:40,680 --> 00:31:45,280
Speaker 1: Christian cemetery. But as as as it occurs, uh, she

576
00:31:45,440 --> 00:31:48,280
Speaker 1: dies two days journey away from the place that she

577
00:31:48,400 --> 00:31:51,479
Speaker 1: wants to be buried. So what is her family has

578
00:31:51,520 --> 00:31:53,800
Speaker 1: to do well that to to you know, meet her wishes,

579
00:31:53,840 --> 00:31:56,480
Speaker 1: they have to take her body on this two day

580
00:31:56,560 --> 00:31:59,680
Speaker 1: journey to a place where she can be buried. But

581
00:31:59,760 --> 00:32:02,440
Speaker 1: during the journey they have to find somewhere to sleep

582
00:32:03,160 --> 00:32:05,800
Speaker 1: rather than just sleep out of you know, exposed to

583
00:32:05,800 --> 00:32:10,480
Speaker 1: the elements. They stopped by a local farmhouse and they say, hey,

584
00:32:10,520 --> 00:32:12,760
Speaker 1: can we spend the night here? And the farmer says

585
00:32:12,800 --> 00:32:15,960
Speaker 1: absolutely not, not having people come in here with a

586
00:32:15,960 --> 00:32:20,320
Speaker 1: dead body. So the farmer goes back into his house,

587
00:32:20,520 --> 00:32:23,000
Speaker 1: you know, they go about it, goes about his business

588
00:32:23,000 --> 00:32:24,840
Speaker 1: with the family. They go to bed, but then in

589
00:32:24,880 --> 00:32:27,760
Speaker 1: the night they hear a sound in the larder, and

590
00:32:27,800 --> 00:32:32,240
Speaker 1: they go and they discover their the reanimated corpse of

591
00:32:32,280 --> 00:32:36,240
Speaker 1: the woman, and she is in their cooking supper for everybody.

592
00:32:36,560 --> 00:32:39,040
Speaker 1: And so at this point that what can you do?

593
00:32:39,080 --> 00:32:41,680
Speaker 1: They humbly accept the meal, enjoy the meal, and they

594
00:32:41,760 --> 00:32:45,000
Speaker 1: let the family stay tonight. This is very interesting and

595
00:32:45,040 --> 00:32:48,440
Speaker 1: how it compares to the the undead going to church,

596
00:32:48,560 --> 00:32:51,320
Speaker 1: because again this is a kind of unusual, like it's

597
00:32:51,400 --> 00:32:55,720
Speaker 1: the undead engaging in the sort of uh, the wholesome

598
00:32:55,760 --> 00:32:59,920
Speaker 1: and nutritious activities of the living. Yeah. Chadwick also specific

599
00:33:00,040 --> 00:33:02,479
Speaker 1: he mentions that the woe the dead woman is naked

600
00:33:03,080 --> 00:33:05,760
Speaker 1: whilst um uh you know, messing around in the larger

601
00:33:05,760 --> 00:33:08,640
Speaker 1: and cooking supper, which which is interesting too because it

602
00:33:08,920 --> 00:33:12,600
Speaker 1: brings to mind this idea of like um of of

603
00:33:12,640 --> 00:33:15,080
Speaker 1: like perfect honesty, you know, like like she is the

604
00:33:15,120 --> 00:33:20,080
Speaker 1: one who is also the honesty, but also there's something

605
00:33:20,120 --> 00:33:23,480
Speaker 1: improper about it as well, you know, like um, it

606
00:33:23,520 --> 00:33:25,480
Speaker 1: seems to match up well with this idea of the

607
00:33:25,640 --> 00:33:28,239
Speaker 1: of the the apparition that is sort of shaming the

608
00:33:28,280 --> 00:33:31,040
Speaker 1: farmers for not doing the right thing. But then on

609
00:33:31,080 --> 00:33:33,200
Speaker 1: the same level, I mean, it is like a zombie

610
00:33:33,240 --> 00:33:36,320
Speaker 1: in your kitchen cooking dinner. It's a little bit weird, uh,

611
00:33:36,360 --> 00:33:38,200
Speaker 1: But you brought it on yourself by not letting these

612
00:33:38,200 --> 00:33:41,520
Speaker 1: people stay in your barn, right. This also kind of

613
00:33:41,560 --> 00:33:43,880
Speaker 1: reminds me of one of the stories that we uh

614
00:33:44,200 --> 00:33:47,520
Speaker 1: in inverted form, but it has some similarities to one

615
00:33:47,560 --> 00:33:49,640
Speaker 1: of the stories we looked at from Tales from a

616
00:33:49,760 --> 00:33:53,080
Speaker 1: Chinese studio that involves the travelers on the road who

617
00:33:53,080 --> 00:33:54,840
Speaker 1: are forced to stay in the room with the dead

618
00:33:54,880 --> 00:33:58,239
Speaker 1: woman's body. Oh yes, yeah, and and that yeah, that

619
00:33:58,280 --> 00:34:00,840
Speaker 1: deals to with the proper bear with the dead and

620
00:34:00,880 --> 00:34:04,800
Speaker 1: what happens when you stand between um the dead and

621
00:34:04,920 --> 00:34:08,880
Speaker 1: the burial that they desire. Now there's a there's another

622
00:34:09,160 --> 00:34:13,000
Speaker 1: um uh story from that same saga the Chadwick mentions,

623
00:34:13,360 --> 00:34:16,360
Speaker 1: and this one's This one's more humorous. I really like

624
00:34:16,480 --> 00:34:19,080
Speaker 1: this one. Basically, you have a boatload of drowned men,

625
00:34:19,280 --> 00:34:22,000
Speaker 1: all from the same boat, but they show up at

626
00:34:22,000 --> 00:34:24,200
Speaker 1: a feast they were going to anyway, and they first

627
00:34:24,239 --> 00:34:26,440
Speaker 1: of all the insist on warming themselves by the fire,

628
00:34:26,880 --> 00:34:28,640
Speaker 1: and I think this kind of causes a stir. But

629
00:34:28,680 --> 00:34:31,439
Speaker 1: then on top of that, they insist on taking their

630
00:34:31,480 --> 00:34:34,799
Speaker 1: seat at the feast table. So the living guests are

631
00:34:35,080 --> 00:34:37,640
Speaker 1: are perturbed by this, and they say, no, you can't

632
00:34:37,640 --> 00:34:40,360
Speaker 1: be here, You've got to leave, and then quote legal

633
00:34:40,400 --> 00:34:45,720
Speaker 1: proceedings were instituted against them. Uh from here. The story

634
00:34:45,760 --> 00:34:49,279
Speaker 1: apparently takes on this on the idea that takes on

635
00:34:49,320 --> 00:34:53,080
Speaker 1: the guys of like Icelandic legal pleadings, with the dead

636
00:34:53,120 --> 00:34:55,840
Speaker 1: men making their case, the living men making their case,

637
00:34:56,120 --> 00:35:00,000
Speaker 1: and the dead men lose and and then agree. They're like, okay,

638
00:35:00,000 --> 00:35:03,120
Speaker 1: I will leave, and they go I like that it all.

639
00:35:03,200 --> 00:35:05,920
Speaker 1: It's a tale of the dead walking among the living,

640
00:35:05,960 --> 00:35:09,680
Speaker 1: but ultimately engaging in a legal dispute. The dead countersue

641
00:35:09,719 --> 00:35:12,880
Speaker 1: the living. Yeah, that would make for a hell of

642
00:35:12,880 --> 00:35:17,720
Speaker 1: a courtroom drama. The dead sue living like an undead

643
00:35:17,800 --> 00:35:20,719
Speaker 1: lawyer hero as sort of a zombie Tom Cruise and

644
00:35:20,760 --> 00:35:24,239
Speaker 1: a few good men. Oh yeah, kind of a kind

645
00:35:24,239 --> 00:35:26,399
Speaker 1: of kind of a lawyer Lich. This is a gold

646
00:35:26,440 --> 00:35:31,520
Speaker 1: nobody steal our idea. UM. I also love this too

647
00:35:31,560 --> 00:35:34,360
Speaker 1: because I think you know, if you if you if

648
00:35:34,400 --> 00:35:36,600
Speaker 1: you don't have any familiarity with the various sagas, it's

649
00:35:36,640 --> 00:35:39,759
Speaker 1: easy to think of it's easy to imagine that these

650
00:35:39,800 --> 00:35:41,839
Speaker 1: are gonna be tales that are just about violence, and

651
00:35:41,880 --> 00:35:44,279
Speaker 1: certainly there's violence in them, but there's also a lot

652
00:35:44,320 --> 00:35:47,600
Speaker 1: of like, yeah, you know, family feuding and intrigue and

653
00:35:47,680 --> 00:35:51,880
Speaker 1: also legal proceedings. So fitting that we have that matchup

654
00:35:51,920 --> 00:36:00,719
Speaker 1: with a ghost story as well, Thank thank thank All Right, well,

655
00:36:00,760 --> 00:36:02,800
Speaker 1: I guess the next thing I wanted to talk about

656
00:36:03,000 --> 00:36:06,560
Speaker 1: was some scholarship that I've been getting into on this

657
00:36:06,680 --> 00:36:11,319
Speaker 1: historical figure known as Bishop tet Mar of Mercyborg and

658
00:36:11,480 --> 00:36:15,759
Speaker 1: UH and his stories about the pious undead. And I

659
00:36:15,840 --> 00:36:17,880
Speaker 1: think we're not going to have time to fully discuss

660
00:36:18,040 --> 00:36:20,200
Speaker 1: this one in this episode, but we can start getting

661
00:36:20,200 --> 00:36:21,719
Speaker 1: into it and then we'll have to continue in the

662
00:36:21,760 --> 00:36:24,759
Speaker 1: next part of the series. But just a hat tip

663
00:36:24,840 --> 00:36:27,360
Speaker 1: on sources here. I know we first found out about

664
00:36:27,360 --> 00:36:30,080
Speaker 1: this subject by that there was a good short summary

665
00:36:30,360 --> 00:36:33,479
Speaker 1: in UH in j Store Daily by Olivia Gershon called

666
00:36:33,480 --> 00:36:36,360
Speaker 1: the Pious Undead of Medieval Europe. But this actually pointed

667
00:36:36,400 --> 00:36:39,920
Speaker 1: to a long scholarly paper that I UH that I

668
00:36:39,960 --> 00:36:42,640
Speaker 1: went and read and it's just wonderful. So this paper

669
00:36:42,760 --> 00:36:47,600
Speaker 1: is called Revenance, Resurrection and Burnt Sacrifice by Nancy Mandeville Cacciola,

670
00:36:48,000 --> 00:36:50,360
Speaker 1: who again I mentioned her before, but she's a medieval

671
00:36:50,400 --> 00:36:55,400
Speaker 1: historian University of California, San Diego, focusing on religious history.

672
00:36:55,920 --> 00:36:59,280
Speaker 1: And this article was published in a in a journal

673
00:36:59,320 --> 00:37:02,720
Speaker 1: called pred Nature Critical and Historical Studies on the Predator

674
00:37:02,800 --> 00:37:06,960
Speaker 1: Natural inteen. Uh. This appears to be some kind of

675
00:37:07,040 --> 00:37:10,160
Speaker 1: collection or journal that's put out by Penn State University Press.

676
00:37:10,760 --> 00:37:13,279
Speaker 1: And so it gets into this figure of the the

677
00:37:13,560 --> 00:37:16,839
Speaker 1: of Bishop Teetmr and the stories that he tells. Now,

678
00:37:16,880 --> 00:37:19,799
Speaker 1: the historical context of Bishop Tetmr. And I have to say,

679
00:37:19,800 --> 00:37:20,920
Speaker 1: by the way, I had to look up how his

680
00:37:21,000 --> 00:37:24,239
Speaker 1: name is pronounced. It is spelled t h i e

681
00:37:24,320 --> 00:37:26,880
Speaker 1: t m e er, but I think it would be

682
00:37:26,960 --> 00:37:30,239
Speaker 1: teete Mar, sort of deep mar, kind of one of

683
00:37:30,239 --> 00:37:33,280
Speaker 1: those you know, it's like that the difficult to pronounce,

684
00:37:33,400 --> 00:37:37,279
Speaker 1: like d t h thing in the Germanic languages. But

685
00:37:37,320 --> 00:37:39,239
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna say tete Mark because I think that's

686
00:37:39,239 --> 00:37:42,319
Speaker 1: about as close as we can consistently get. Um. So

687
00:37:42,560 --> 00:37:46,720
Speaker 1: his context is Autonian. He he is an Autonian figure.

688
00:37:46,960 --> 00:37:50,239
Speaker 1: And uh, this is a historical designation that comes from

689
00:37:50,280 --> 00:37:54,280
Speaker 1: the name Otto. It describes the reign of a series

690
00:37:54,320 --> 00:37:59,560
Speaker 1: of kings. These were Saxon kings in medieval Germany, including

691
00:37:59,640 --> 00:38:02,080
Speaker 1: three animed Otto and two named Henry. So you got

692
00:38:02,120 --> 00:38:05,120
Speaker 1: Henry the First, also known as Henry the Fowler, and

693
00:38:05,200 --> 00:38:08,040
Speaker 1: I think this is because he was allegedly tending to

694
00:38:08,120 --> 00:38:10,719
Speaker 1: a bunch of bird nets when he received news that

695
00:38:10,760 --> 00:38:13,719
Speaker 1: he had been made king. And then after Henry the First,

696
00:38:13,760 --> 00:38:16,200
Speaker 1: you got Auto one, then you got your Auto too,

697
00:38:16,400 --> 00:38:18,839
Speaker 1: then you got your Auto three, and then finally you're

698
00:38:18,920 --> 00:38:22,360
Speaker 1: Henry two. So these would have all been uh German

699
00:38:22,520 --> 00:38:25,400
Speaker 1: Saxon king's beginning in the ninth or tenth century and

700
00:38:25,400 --> 00:38:28,359
Speaker 1: then going into the eleventh seen in some ways as

701
00:38:28,360 --> 00:38:32,720
Speaker 1: an artistic and cultural revival period of the the older

702
00:38:32,760 --> 00:38:36,480
Speaker 1: Holy Roman Empire. So this would have artistic traditions with

703
00:38:36,520 --> 00:38:39,839
Speaker 1: the basis in Byzantine and carol Ingian art and architecture.

704
00:38:40,239 --> 00:38:44,040
Speaker 1: But these were also Christianizing kings who had a who

705
00:38:44,080 --> 00:38:47,640
Speaker 1: saw themselves as having an important role in the history

706
00:38:47,640 --> 00:38:51,080
Speaker 1: of the world as Christianizers, as as spreading the faith

707
00:38:51,120 --> 00:38:55,400
Speaker 1: of Jesus by conquest and so to go to Cacciola's article,

708
00:38:55,560 --> 00:38:58,759
Speaker 1: the story begins with with a tale based in a

709
00:38:58,840 --> 00:39:02,920
Speaker 1: place called vals Leban, which is a town along the

710
00:39:02,920 --> 00:39:05,600
Speaker 1: Elba River. So this town could be seen as a

711
00:39:05,680 --> 00:39:09,239
Speaker 1: kind of colonial outpost in a way. Uh the Ottonian

712
00:39:09,360 --> 00:39:11,879
Speaker 1: king Henry the First again, that's Henry the Fowler, He's

713
00:39:11,920 --> 00:39:14,880
Speaker 1: the first one. He had been fighting a war of

714
00:39:15,000 --> 00:39:19,040
Speaker 1: conquest against the tribes of the surrounding lands to cement

715
00:39:19,160 --> 00:39:23,920
Speaker 1: the rule of his German Christian dynasty over the religiously

716
00:39:24,040 --> 00:39:28,280
Speaker 1: pagan and ethnically Slavic peoples in the area. And vals

717
00:39:28,360 --> 00:39:31,279
Speaker 1: Laban was a fortified town, one of a number like

718
00:39:31,400 --> 00:39:34,919
Speaker 1: it along the Elba which served to protect this northeastern

719
00:39:34,960 --> 00:39:40,560
Speaker 1: region of Henry's Astonian kingdom. And in the year nine nine,

720
00:39:40,680 --> 00:39:44,040
Speaker 1: the town of wals Laban was attacked in a revolt

721
00:39:44,160 --> 00:39:46,560
Speaker 1: by the by the nearby people's and we're told that

722
00:39:46,640 --> 00:39:51,160
Speaker 1: all of its inhabitants were slaughtered. Caciola writes, quote our

723
00:39:51,200 --> 00:39:55,239
Speaker 1: chief source for this event, videkind of Corve reports in

724
00:39:55,360 --> 00:39:59,280
Speaker 1: his Deeds of the Saxons that other quote barbarous nations

725
00:39:59,400 --> 00:40:02,400
Speaker 1: of Slaw likewise began to rebel when they saw the

726
00:40:02,480 --> 00:40:06,120
Speaker 1: successful devastation of this revolt led by a group known

727
00:40:06,160 --> 00:40:09,200
Speaker 1: as the Red dari I. The spread of the rebellion

728
00:40:09,280 --> 00:40:12,360
Speaker 1: was checked, however, when Henry the First seized the Slavic

729
00:40:12,440 --> 00:40:18,320
Speaker 1: fortress of Lenzen, and so after this massacre allegedly took place,

730
00:40:18,440 --> 00:40:22,400
Speaker 1: vals Laban was then rebuilt and the Ottonian dynasty again

731
00:40:22,560 --> 00:40:27,239
Speaker 1: gained control over the area. And Caciola tells us that

732
00:40:27,480 --> 00:40:29,960
Speaker 1: the great massacre at this town not only played a

733
00:40:30,040 --> 00:40:33,239
Speaker 1: role in the military and political history of the Ottonian era,

734
00:40:33,680 --> 00:40:38,279
Speaker 1: but it also gave rise to supernatural urban legends, including

735
00:40:38,360 --> 00:40:42,600
Speaker 1: one reported by another chronicler of the Ottonians. This is

736
00:40:42,640 --> 00:40:45,760
Speaker 1: the guy you know by now, This is Titmar of Merzeburg.

737
00:40:46,280 --> 00:40:49,480
Speaker 1: So Titmar was a bishop. I've seen it claimed elsewhere

738
00:40:49,520 --> 00:40:53,400
Speaker 1: somewhere that Titmar was the first bishop of Merzeburg, but

739
00:40:53,400 --> 00:40:56,440
Speaker 1: but no, Cachiola says he was the second bishop of

740
00:40:56,440 --> 00:41:01,040
Speaker 1: this town. He was born around nine to what Catchiola

741
00:41:01,120 --> 00:41:04,840
Speaker 1: calls an exalted warrior bloodline. I think this means his family,

742
00:41:04,960 --> 00:41:09,640
Speaker 1: including Tetmar himself, had served in a military capacity under

743
00:41:09,640 --> 00:41:13,200
Speaker 1: the Ottonian kings. Tetemar himself had been a military adviser

744
00:41:13,280 --> 00:41:17,759
Speaker 1: to Henry the Second, the the later Autonian king, and

745
00:41:17,800 --> 00:41:21,680
Speaker 1: then from the years ten thirteen to ten eighteen Tetmar

746
00:41:21,800 --> 00:41:25,319
Speaker 1: set out to record this massive eight volume history of

747
00:41:25,400 --> 00:41:30,080
Speaker 1: the Autonian dynasty known as the chronic Con And note

748
00:41:30,080 --> 00:41:33,040
Speaker 1: this is probably not a super objective history. It sounds

749
00:41:33,080 --> 00:41:35,360
Speaker 1: like he was firmly in the business of making the

750
00:41:35,400 --> 00:41:39,839
Speaker 1: Ottonian kings look awesome, though nevertheless, it's probably still also

751
00:41:40,040 --> 00:41:43,600
Speaker 1: a pretty good source of of of life and tales

752
00:41:43,600 --> 00:41:47,640
Speaker 1: and beliefs of the period that he though he definitely

753
00:41:48,000 --> 00:41:50,439
Speaker 1: he's pro Autonian, he's going to tell you good things

754
00:41:50,480 --> 00:41:53,800
Speaker 1: about them. So apparently tete Mark gets to this massacre

755
00:41:53,840 --> 00:41:56,600
Speaker 1: at Valls Laban toward the beginning of his history, and

756
00:41:56,680 --> 00:42:00,279
Speaker 1: Catchiola writes that here he starts sort of drif sting

757
00:42:00,360 --> 00:42:05,760
Speaker 1: away from the public political history and getting into personal memory. First,

758
00:42:05,800 --> 00:42:08,479
Speaker 1: talking a bunch of saying a bunch of things about

759
00:42:08,560 --> 00:42:11,360
Speaker 1: his own famili's association with the history of the place.

760
00:42:12,080 --> 00:42:15,280
Speaker 1: And then suddenly he just starts getting into ghost stories.

761
00:42:15,320 --> 00:42:19,040
Speaker 1: He tells a haunted church story he once heard about

762
00:42:19,080 --> 00:42:21,839
Speaker 1: this town. So here I'm going to read directly from

763
00:42:21,840 --> 00:42:26,120
Speaker 1: Caciola's translation of the story in tit Mar's Chronicon quote.

764
00:42:26,560 --> 00:42:29,040
Speaker 1: So that no one who is faithful to Christ may

765
00:42:29,080 --> 00:42:32,360
Speaker 1: doubt the future resurrection of the dead, but may proceed

766
00:42:32,440 --> 00:42:36,600
Speaker 1: to the joy of blessed immortality zealously and through holy desire.

767
00:42:37,040 --> 00:42:40,400
Speaker 1: I shall confide certain things that I have verified as true,

768
00:42:40,840 --> 00:42:43,279
Speaker 1: and which occurred in the town of valse Laban when

769
00:42:43,320 --> 00:42:47,000
Speaker 1: it was rebuilt after its destruction. The priest of that

770
00:42:47,120 --> 00:42:50,800
Speaker 1: church used to sing Matin's there at the first blush

771
00:42:50,800 --> 00:42:53,960
Speaker 1: of dawn. But when he arrived at the cemetery for

772
00:42:54,160 --> 00:42:57,600
Speaker 1: the dead, he saw in it a great multitude of

773
00:42:57,640 --> 00:43:00,960
Speaker 1: them making offerings to a priest who was standing at

774
00:43:01,000 --> 00:43:04,520
Speaker 1: the doors to the sanctuary. At first he stopped in

775
00:43:04,600 --> 00:43:07,680
Speaker 1: his tracks, but then, strengthening himself with the sign of

776
00:43:07,680 --> 00:43:11,520
Speaker 1: the Holy Cross, he tremblingly went through the whole crowd

777
00:43:11,560 --> 00:43:15,399
Speaker 1: to reach the oratory without acknowledging any of them. One

778
00:43:15,480 --> 00:43:17,879
Speaker 1: of them, a woman whom he knew well and who

779
00:43:17,880 --> 00:43:21,000
Speaker 1: had died recently, asked him what he was doing there.

780
00:43:21,520 --> 00:43:24,520
Speaker 1: After he told her why he had come. She returned

781
00:43:24,560 --> 00:43:27,759
Speaker 1: that everything had already been taken care of by them,

782
00:43:27,840 --> 00:43:30,360
Speaker 1: and also that he did not have long to live.

783
00:43:30,840 --> 00:43:33,359
Speaker 1: He reported this to his neighbors, and it turned out

784
00:43:33,360 --> 00:43:36,920
Speaker 1: to be true. I love a ghost story or a

785
00:43:36,960 --> 00:43:39,279
Speaker 1: weird story that that Indians like. That was just sort

786
00:43:39,320 --> 00:43:42,920
Speaker 1: of a basic sourcing of the material. Somebody told me

787
00:43:43,000 --> 00:43:44,960
Speaker 1: this and or there was evidence of it and it

788
00:43:45,080 --> 00:43:47,680
Speaker 1: was true. Yes, And Tite mar I love earlier on

789
00:43:47,760 --> 00:43:51,839
Speaker 1: also says, I have verified this story is true. I'm

790
00:43:51,880 --> 00:43:54,680
Speaker 1: not sure how, but that's what he says. And uh,

791
00:43:54,960 --> 00:43:56,799
Speaker 1: and well, but the part that turned out to be

792
00:43:56,840 --> 00:43:59,640
Speaker 1: true and the implication in the last sentences they told

793
00:43:59,719 --> 00:44:02,440
Speaker 1: him he did not have long to live. He reported

794
00:44:02,480 --> 00:44:04,799
Speaker 1: this to his neighbors and it turned out to be true,

795
00:44:04,800 --> 00:44:06,879
Speaker 1: So that's that's also saying like, oh, yeah, he did

796
00:44:06,920 --> 00:44:11,360
Speaker 1: die shortly after that. So Catchiola notes that, however weird

797
00:44:11,440 --> 00:44:14,200
Speaker 1: this story is, its point of view does not seem

798
00:44:14,239 --> 00:44:17,239
Speaker 1: to be totally unique for its time and place and

799
00:44:17,440 --> 00:44:19,640
Speaker 1: for its place in history. In medieval Europe, there were

800
00:44:19,640 --> 00:44:23,279
Speaker 1: lots of stories about what she calls the continuing vitality

801
00:44:23,400 --> 00:44:26,960
Speaker 1: and power of the dead. But the really funny thing

802
00:44:27,040 --> 00:44:29,799
Speaker 1: about this history is that it seems like as soon

803
00:44:29,840 --> 00:44:33,560
Speaker 1: as Tete Martell's one story about zombies, he gets so

804
00:44:33,640 --> 00:44:37,279
Speaker 1: excited that he essentially derails his history of the Ottonian

805
00:44:37,360 --> 00:44:40,680
Speaker 1: kings for several pages, just telling a bunch of other

806
00:44:40,800 --> 00:44:44,759
Speaker 1: random stories about reanimated corpses that he has heard and

807
00:44:44,960 --> 00:44:47,960
Speaker 1: I love this. I like I wish more recent political

808
00:44:48,000 --> 00:44:50,960
Speaker 1: hagiographies were like this. Today. You know, some somebody's writing

809
00:44:51,400 --> 00:44:53,919
Speaker 1: about the great George Washington and how he never told

810
00:44:53,920 --> 00:44:56,000
Speaker 1: a lie and all that, But then they get sidetracked

811
00:44:56,000 --> 00:44:58,920
Speaker 1: for like a ten page digression about people they know

812
00:44:59,000 --> 00:45:02,759
Speaker 1: who have seen werewolf wolves. Oh, that would be good.

813
00:45:03,040 --> 00:45:04,920
Speaker 1: So to finish off part one here, I think maybe

814
00:45:04,960 --> 00:45:08,360
Speaker 1: we can list and reflect on some general observations that

815
00:45:08,400 --> 00:45:11,640
Speaker 1: Cacchiola makes about this story in particular, and then in

816
00:45:11,680 --> 00:45:13,719
Speaker 1: the next part we can come back to more of

817
00:45:13,719 --> 00:45:16,640
Speaker 1: of teite Mar's tales of ghosts and and and undead

818
00:45:16,680 --> 00:45:20,080
Speaker 1: beings and and uh and branch out from there. But

819
00:45:20,200 --> 00:45:24,160
Speaker 1: regarding this one particular story, a few things worth noting.

820
00:45:24,239 --> 00:45:28,160
Speaker 1: First of all, Catchiola calls these undead beings revenants, and

821
00:45:28,239 --> 00:45:31,719
Speaker 1: this is worth pointing out because although these are sometimes

822
00:45:31,760 --> 00:45:35,760
Speaker 1: referred to as ghost stories, like we were saying earlier,

823
00:45:35,800 --> 00:45:38,840
Speaker 1: the word ghost in modern parlance usually refers to a

824
00:45:38,960 --> 00:45:43,600
Speaker 1: spectral in substantial being rather than a bodily reanimation. Uh.

825
00:45:43,680 --> 00:45:46,080
Speaker 1: The ladder of which again may have been called revenants

826
00:45:46,080 --> 00:45:49,320
Speaker 1: in the past, would probably often be called zombies today.

827
00:45:49,960 --> 00:45:53,279
Speaker 1: So even though the phrase ghost story is often used

828
00:45:53,280 --> 00:45:55,840
Speaker 1: to describe what teite Mar is doing here, you should

829
00:45:55,840 --> 00:45:59,399
Speaker 1: not automatically assume spectral in substantial beings. In fact, these

830
00:45:59,480 --> 00:46:03,600
Speaker 1: very clearly seemed to be reanimated corpses that have physical mass,

831
00:46:04,080 --> 00:46:06,840
Speaker 1: and so Cacchiola goes on to argue that tit Mar's

832
00:46:06,880 --> 00:46:10,680
Speaker 1: ghost stories haven't received a lot of scholarly attention. Uh

833
00:46:10,719 --> 00:46:13,680
Speaker 1: and in general, she thinks that medieval historians have kind

834
00:46:13,719 --> 00:46:17,560
Speaker 1: of underappreciated the importance of ideas about the dead in

835
00:46:17,640 --> 00:46:22,240
Speaker 1: medieval culture, and so contra that that lack of attention

836
00:46:22,239 --> 00:46:25,120
Speaker 1: to the subject. She argues, for example, that quote the

837
00:46:25,200 --> 00:46:28,319
Speaker 1: majority of medieval people who believed that they had had

838
00:46:28,400 --> 00:46:32,640
Speaker 1: direct experience of the supernatural realm did so in intimate

839
00:46:32,680 --> 00:46:37,560
Speaker 1: confrontation with dead human beings, rather than through encounter with

840
00:46:37,600 --> 00:46:41,440
Speaker 1: a transcendent deity. So if she's correct in that argument,

841
00:46:41,480 --> 00:46:44,359
Speaker 1: this mean, according to Tacchiola, people at the time were

842
00:46:44,440 --> 00:46:47,560
Speaker 1: more likely to believe they'd had an encounter with a

843
00:46:47,640 --> 00:46:51,279
Speaker 1: ghost or revenant rather than with say, God himself, or

844
00:46:51,280 --> 00:46:54,080
Speaker 1: with Christ or the Virgin Mary. And these might have,

845
00:46:54,200 --> 00:46:57,799
Speaker 1: given the right context, be equally taken as evidence of

846
00:46:57,840 --> 00:47:01,880
Speaker 1: the supernatural realm, but the these more mundane encounters with

847
00:47:02,040 --> 00:47:04,960
Speaker 1: just dead people and dead souls were were actually the

848
00:47:05,000 --> 00:47:08,560
Speaker 1: more common thing for regular people to experience, and she

849
00:47:08,680 --> 00:47:10,200
Speaker 1: argues there are there are a lot of things that

850
00:47:10,360 --> 00:47:14,080
Speaker 1: historians can potentially learn from these ghost stories. So first

851
00:47:14,080 --> 00:47:18,160
Speaker 1: of all, they can suggest details about local pagan beliefs

852
00:47:18,160 --> 00:47:21,600
Speaker 1: that existed before Christianity and then probably in some form

853
00:47:21,680 --> 00:47:26,359
Speaker 1: continued to exist after the Christianization of a region. Uh.

854
00:47:26,440 --> 00:47:28,640
Speaker 1: In the case of tet Mars ghost stories, these would

855
00:47:28,640 --> 00:47:32,919
Speaker 1: be local Slavic pagan beliefs UH. And these beliefs, even

856
00:47:32,960 --> 00:47:36,719
Speaker 1: though the Christian chroniclers might want to kind of suggest

857
00:47:36,880 --> 00:47:39,960
Speaker 1: that these beliefs are wiped out by the Christianization of

858
00:47:40,000 --> 00:47:43,560
Speaker 1: a population, in fact they may well be partially preserved

859
00:47:43,640 --> 00:47:46,880
Speaker 1: in stories like this. And so one example here is

860
00:47:46,920 --> 00:47:51,680
Speaker 1: that Catholic doctrine placed a pretty clear and strong emphasis

861
00:47:51,760 --> 00:47:55,120
Speaker 1: on what what is called in this paper the inertness

862
00:47:55,239 --> 00:47:58,200
Speaker 1: of the human body after death. And this would be

863
00:47:58,280 --> 00:48:01,760
Speaker 1: of course apart from the general resurrection in Catholic beliefs.

864
00:48:01,760 --> 00:48:04,960
Speaker 1: So the the Catholic belief about the afterlife is you know,

865
00:48:05,120 --> 00:48:07,040
Speaker 1: you die and then your body goes to the grave,

866
00:48:07,120 --> 00:48:09,920
Speaker 1: and it doesn't do anything after that until the second

867
00:48:09,920 --> 00:48:12,960
Speaker 1: coming of Christ, when the dead are raised and then uh,

868
00:48:12,960 --> 00:48:14,920
Speaker 1: and then God will judge the living and the dead.

869
00:48:15,400 --> 00:48:19,279
Speaker 1: But these kind of stories reflect alternative beliefs about you know,

870
00:48:19,360 --> 00:48:22,360
Speaker 1: they don't reflect that emphasis on the inertness of the

871
00:48:22,400 --> 00:48:26,000
Speaker 1: human body before the general resurrection. They say. So, the

872
00:48:26,040 --> 00:48:29,160
Speaker 1: fact that these stories involved dead bodies popping up from

873
00:48:29,160 --> 00:48:32,560
Speaker 1: the grave to go to church and worship together at

874
00:48:32,680 --> 00:48:37,000
Speaker 1: night suggests other sources of beliefs about the afterlife, not

875
00:48:37,120 --> 00:48:41,680
Speaker 1: just Catholic doctrines. But secondly, it's really interesting that you

876
00:48:41,680 --> 00:48:45,200
Speaker 1: remember that Titmar Before he actually tells the story, he

877
00:48:45,640 --> 00:48:49,520
Speaker 1: sort of gives a disclaimer paragraph, like he He's like, now,

878
00:48:49,600 --> 00:48:52,120
Speaker 1: I've got a rhetorical purpose in telling you this, and

879
00:48:52,239 --> 00:48:54,680
Speaker 1: is that and it is that this story will affirm

880
00:48:54,760 --> 00:48:58,440
Speaker 1: Catholic doctrine itself. He says that his story proves the

881
00:48:58,560 --> 00:49:02,799
Speaker 1: Christian doctrine of bodily resurrection and can be used as

882
00:49:02,840 --> 00:49:06,239
Speaker 1: evidence against anyone who is skeptical that the dead will

883
00:49:06,280 --> 00:49:09,560
Speaker 1: be raised in Christ at the end of time. Uh So,

884
00:49:09,600 --> 00:49:11,880
Speaker 1: he says that like the local Slavic people's do not

885
00:49:12,000 --> 00:49:15,160
Speaker 1: have a correct understanding of the resurrection, and he hopes

886
00:49:15,239 --> 00:49:19,040
Speaker 1: this story will help correct them and now and then.

887
00:49:19,080 --> 00:49:22,040
Speaker 1: A third point that Caciola makes is that these stories

888
00:49:22,080 --> 00:49:27,040
Speaker 1: provide some evidence not just of lingering pagan beliefs alongside

889
00:49:27,200 --> 00:49:32,359
Speaker 1: Christian beliefs, but of direct syncretism, actually the blending of

890
00:49:32,400 --> 00:49:37,359
Speaker 1: different religious inputs into new hybrid forms of religion. This,

891
00:49:37,400 --> 00:49:40,480
Speaker 1: of course, happens constantly throughout the history of religions all

892
00:49:40,480 --> 00:49:42,240
Speaker 1: over the world. In fact, I think you could argue

893
00:49:42,239 --> 00:49:46,279
Speaker 1: that basically all existing religions today are a result of

894
00:49:46,360 --> 00:49:51,080
Speaker 1: past syncretisms, that previous religious traditions have in a way

895
00:49:51,160 --> 00:49:54,000
Speaker 1: been combined or mixed and matched to form new ones.

896
00:49:55,600 --> 00:49:57,759
Speaker 1: And so the argument would be that it appears to

897
00:49:57,800 --> 00:50:01,320
Speaker 1: also be happening here in a frontier context, where German

898
00:50:01,440 --> 00:50:05,759
Speaker 1: Christianity and Slavic Paganism are mixing with one another, not

899
00:50:05,840 --> 00:50:10,960
Speaker 1: just existing alongside one another, but actually combining into hybrid forms,

900
00:50:11,680 --> 00:50:16,880
Speaker 1: producing what Cachiola calls quote paganized Christianities and baptized pagan

901
00:50:16,920 --> 00:50:21,120
Speaker 1: traditions uh quote. They express a pagan logic about life

902
00:50:21,160 --> 00:50:24,400
Speaker 1: after death, but somewhere along the line of transmission they

903
00:50:24,400 --> 00:50:28,040
Speaker 1: were adapted to a Christian semantic field and I thought

904
00:50:28,080 --> 00:50:30,759
Speaker 1: this was really interesting in the following way. So I'll

905
00:50:30,760 --> 00:50:33,560
Speaker 1: read another quote from Kachiola and then, uh, let's say

906
00:50:33,600 --> 00:50:35,879
Speaker 1: what I was thinking about it. She says that this

907
00:50:35,960 --> 00:50:38,880
Speaker 1: is uh, this is common throughout different parts of partially

908
00:50:38,960 --> 00:50:43,120
Speaker 1: Christianized medieval Europe. Quote. The Catholic Church, for all its

909
00:50:43,160 --> 00:50:47,160
Speaker 1: careful policing of dogma, was unusually tolerant of a wide

910
00:50:47,200 --> 00:50:50,520
Speaker 1: spectrum of ideas about death in the afterlife. It is

911
00:50:50,560 --> 00:50:54,080
Speaker 1: striking that stories of ghosts and revenants, for example, while

912
00:50:54,120 --> 00:50:58,480
Speaker 1: not quite orthodox, were never declared heretical either. They occupied

913
00:50:58,520 --> 00:51:03,839
Speaker 1: a capacious middle round of toleration without endorsement, an unusually

914
00:51:03,880 --> 00:51:08,799
Speaker 1: ambiguous emplacement for such a significant area of thought. Uh,

915
00:51:08,800 --> 00:51:11,799
Speaker 1: and that really inspired me. I was wondering, like, what

916
00:51:12,080 --> 00:51:14,920
Speaker 1: is the logic, what is the even maybe the subconscious

917
00:51:14,960 --> 00:51:19,000
Speaker 1: logic lying behind this distinction of like which types of

918
00:51:19,040 --> 00:51:23,399
Speaker 1: doctrines are rigorously policed by the Church and deviation from

919
00:51:23,440 --> 00:51:27,080
Speaker 1: them is deemed heretical versus which kinds of doctrines are

920
00:51:27,120 --> 00:51:29,640
Speaker 1: treated more loosely and with just kind of like a

921
00:51:29,680 --> 00:51:32,920
Speaker 1: look the other way tolerance. It seems that beliefs in

922
00:51:33,040 --> 00:51:36,640
Speaker 1: various forms of the undead, while they're not within the

923
00:51:36,760 --> 00:51:40,680
Speaker 1: church's belief structure. They're also not forbidden. They're just sort

924
00:51:40,680 --> 00:51:43,360
Speaker 1: of like allowed to go on, you know, like the

925
00:51:43,400 --> 00:51:45,640
Speaker 1: like the clergy would just kind of say like okay,

926
00:51:45,640 --> 00:51:47,440
Speaker 1: and they just look the other way and not bother

927
00:51:47,560 --> 00:51:49,640
Speaker 1: with it. Yeah, and I guess a lot of that

928
00:51:49,719 --> 00:51:53,440
Speaker 1: probably gets back into the reality of of some of

929
00:51:53,480 --> 00:51:56,640
Speaker 1: these events that were talking about, you know, uh, the

930
00:51:56,680 --> 00:51:59,399
Speaker 1: same sort of paranormal events that happened today where someone

931
00:51:59,480 --> 00:52:03,320
Speaker 1: has an ex arians they see something they can't quite explain,

932
00:52:04,000 --> 00:52:06,680
Speaker 1: and there are these pre existing ideas about what that

933
00:52:06,760 --> 00:52:09,120
Speaker 1: might be, and yeah, how far are you going to

934
00:52:09,200 --> 00:52:14,560
Speaker 1: get are rolling out and and maintaining this new religion

935
00:52:14,640 --> 00:52:16,440
Speaker 1: in this area if you just tell people, oh, well

936
00:52:16,480 --> 00:52:19,320
Speaker 1: that that thing you thought you saw it's not real. Um.

937
00:52:19,360 --> 00:52:21,479
Speaker 1: But then and then you can also imagine the inner

938
00:52:21,520 --> 00:52:24,920
Speaker 1: experience of that, Like you you can't deny the mystery

939
00:52:25,000 --> 00:52:28,640
Speaker 1: of an experience that you you had better to to

940
00:52:28,840 --> 00:52:32,280
Speaker 1: allow that to exist under the umbrella of the faith

941
00:52:32,400 --> 00:52:36,000
Speaker 1: than to make it be a contest between the two,

942
00:52:36,360 --> 00:52:39,239
Speaker 1: because one of them the the you know, the the

943
00:52:39,280 --> 00:52:42,120
Speaker 1: ghostly encounter, Like it's going to be possible that that

944
00:52:42,239 --> 00:52:44,719
Speaker 1: is going to be the experience that feels more real

945
00:52:44,840 --> 00:52:47,279
Speaker 1: and more authentic. Yeah, I think you're you're dead on

946
00:52:47,400 --> 00:52:49,480
Speaker 1: with that. And this is a sort of consideration that

947
00:52:49,520 --> 00:52:52,640
Speaker 1: Catchilo raises in her paper. I think this seems highly

948
00:52:52,640 --> 00:52:56,359
Speaker 1: plausible to me that you could imagine that, you know,

949
00:52:56,400 --> 00:53:01,279
Speaker 1: maybe Catholic clergy of this time would be seeing a

950
00:53:01,280 --> 00:53:03,520
Speaker 1: a sort of trade off where they'd say, Okay, well,

951
00:53:04,080 --> 00:53:06,880
Speaker 1: we could be really strict about making sure people have

952
00:53:07,080 --> 00:53:10,000
Speaker 1: no pagan beliefs or practices, but if we do that,

953
00:53:10,080 --> 00:53:12,120
Speaker 1: they're not going to accept the Catholic Church at all.

954
00:53:12,719 --> 00:53:14,399
Speaker 1: So you kind of get them in the door by

955
00:53:14,480 --> 00:53:17,960
Speaker 1: letting them go halfway. That This isn't any any specific

956
00:53:18,000 --> 00:53:20,480
Speaker 1: case I'm looking at, but you can imagine them saying, well, maybe, okay,

957
00:53:20,520 --> 00:53:22,759
Speaker 1: so if they get baptized and they come to church

958
00:53:22,840 --> 00:53:25,759
Speaker 1: on certain occasions and stuff, you don't you don't have

959
00:53:25,920 --> 00:53:28,560
Speaker 1: to like fight them tooth and nail on believing in

960
00:53:28,640 --> 00:53:32,480
Speaker 1: dragger or something, because if you did, maybe they'd stop

961
00:53:32,520 --> 00:53:36,040
Speaker 1: coming to church or wouldn't get baptized in the first place. Yeah. Yeah,

962
00:53:36,040 --> 00:53:38,799
Speaker 1: I mean, ultimately, with with you're gonna have to to

963
00:53:39,120 --> 00:53:43,080
Speaker 1: establish this, uh, this new religion on the on the bedrock,

964
00:53:43,160 --> 00:53:46,160
Speaker 1: on the soil of the pre existing culture. Now, I

965
00:53:46,160 --> 00:53:48,239
Speaker 1: think we're hitting the time limit on part one of

966
00:53:48,280 --> 00:53:50,960
Speaker 1: this series here, but there's so much more interesting stuff

967
00:53:51,000 --> 00:53:53,919
Speaker 1: to talk about. Tet Mark gets into some much more

968
00:53:54,000 --> 00:53:57,640
Speaker 1: grizzly stories later on, and so I can't wait to

969
00:53:57,719 --> 00:54:00,640
Speaker 1: further plumb his digression from the autone Me and King's

970
00:54:00,719 --> 00:54:03,000
Speaker 1: and and just telling you about every weird ghost story

971
00:54:03,040 --> 00:54:05,239
Speaker 1: he ever heard. So I'm so excited to come back

972
00:54:05,280 --> 00:54:07,439
Speaker 1: to that next time. That's right when there's no more room,

973
00:54:07,480 --> 00:54:10,160
Speaker 1: and how the dead shall go to church. So join

974
00:54:10,280 --> 00:54:12,960
Speaker 1: us in the next episode when we continue on in

975
00:54:13,000 --> 00:54:15,920
Speaker 1: this fascinating journey. In the meantime, if you would like

976
00:54:16,000 --> 00:54:17,919
Speaker 1: to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind,

977
00:54:17,960 --> 00:54:19,640
Speaker 1: you'll find them in the Stuff to Blow your Mind

978
00:54:19,719 --> 00:54:24,040
Speaker 1: podcast feed. We have core episodes on Thursdays and Tuesdays.

979
00:54:24,280 --> 00:54:27,760
Speaker 1: We have an artifact episode on Wednesday, listener mail on Monday,

980
00:54:28,000 --> 00:54:29,920
Speaker 1: and on Fridays we do a little weird house cinema.

981
00:54:29,960 --> 00:54:32,160
Speaker 1: That's our time to set most of the most of

982
00:54:32,200 --> 00:54:34,640
Speaker 1: the serious consideration aside and just focus in on a

983
00:54:34,680 --> 00:54:37,800
Speaker 1: weird film. Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio

984
00:54:37,880 --> 00:54:40,680
Speaker 1: producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get

985
00:54:40,719 --> 00:54:42,960
Speaker 1: in touch with us with feedback on this episode or

986
00:54:42,960 --> 00:54:45,360
Speaker 1: any other, to suggest topic for the future, just to

987
00:54:45,400 --> 00:54:48,240
Speaker 1: say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff

988
00:54:48,280 --> 00:54:58,000
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your

989
00:54:58,000 --> 00:55:00,960
Speaker 1: Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts

990
00:55:00,960 --> 00:55:03,040
Speaker 1: for My heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,

991
00:55:03,239 --> 00:55:18,560
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