WEBVTT - From the Vault: The Holy Undead, Part 2 0:00:05.720 --> 0:00:08.280 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name 0:00:08.360 --> 0:00:11.559 is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're out 0:00:11.600 --> 0:00:13.760 on fall break this week. So we're bringing you an 0:00:13.800 --> 0:00:16.840 episode from the vault. This is the sequel to the 0:00:16.840 --> 0:00:20.360 episode that aired on Tuesday. This is The Holy Undead 0:00:20.400 --> 0:00:25.640 Part two, originally published October one. Let's jump right in. 0:00:29.240 --> 0:00:31.560 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of My 0:00:31.680 --> 0:00:41.200 Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:41.440 --> 0:00:44.320 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and 0:00:44.320 --> 0:00:46.800 we're back at you with the second part of our 0:00:46.840 --> 0:00:50.960 series about the Holy Undead. So in the last episode 0:00:51.080 --> 0:00:55.040 we talked about various tales of what you what you 0:00:55.080 --> 0:00:57.840 might call the pious or the holy undead. These would 0:00:57.880 --> 0:01:02.920 be ghosts, revenants, zombies that don't seem to be purely 0:01:03.000 --> 0:01:06.119 demonic entities of the night, but instead they take part 0:01:06.200 --> 0:01:09.080 in activities that are considered by the people telling the 0:01:09.120 --> 0:01:13.320 tales to be wholesome and and and good. In particular, 0:01:13.600 --> 0:01:17.520 these these are undead that love going to church, and 0:01:17.600 --> 0:01:21.280 yet at the same time, they're not usually entirely benign. 0:01:21.680 --> 0:01:25.759 They retain this aura of menace. Sometimes they offer ill 0:01:25.840 --> 0:01:29.280 omens to people or sometimes they even uh they go 0:01:29.400 --> 0:01:32.160 hands on and get a little violent. So Rob, in 0:01:32.160 --> 0:01:34.679 the last episode, you told a wonderful story that was 0:01:34.720 --> 0:01:38.959 based on an old Swedish folk tale called the Hooded Congregation. 0:01:39.240 --> 0:01:42.160 And this is a tale in which a woman is 0:01:42.160 --> 0:01:45.160 awoken in the dark of night on Christmas I think, 0:01:45.240 --> 0:01:48.920 or is it Christmas Eve? I believe it's Christmas Eve 0:01:49.120 --> 0:01:52.520 slash early Christmas morning. Yeah. Yeah, and so so their 0:01:52.600 --> 0:01:54.800 church bells and she hears them out in the dark. 0:01:54.880 --> 0:01:57.559 And then so of course the church bells are ringing. 0:01:57.600 --> 0:01:59.160 That means you need to go to church. So she 0:01:59.240 --> 0:02:02.240 goes to church, but she finds it full of hooded 0:02:02.360 --> 0:02:06.000 figures who were eventually revealed to be the undead, including 0:02:06.040 --> 0:02:09.920 her own dearly departed sister. And when when she discovers this, 0:02:10.040 --> 0:02:13.359 the attack and she narrowly escapes. Yeah. It's a it's 0:02:13.360 --> 0:02:15.840 a fun story and it uh it really it relates 0:02:15.880 --> 0:02:19.840 to this um, this trend that we see in um 0:02:19.960 --> 0:02:24.720 in in Nordic traditions of these revenants, these these physical 0:02:25.240 --> 0:02:29.720 undead um, these these corporeal undead that you can they 0:02:29.720 --> 0:02:31.799 can touch you, they can grab you, that you can 0:02:31.840 --> 0:02:35.560 wrestle and do battle with the if need be. And 0:02:35.760 --> 0:02:39.640 uh yeah, in many cases they are, they're they're quite malevolent, 0:02:39.960 --> 0:02:43.400 but in other cases they are, they're almost benign, just 0:02:43.480 --> 0:02:46.920 attending church, going about their their business doing church stuff, 0:02:47.360 --> 0:02:51.960 um as the not quite rested dead or want to 0:02:51.960 --> 0:02:54.640 do right. And so we also ended up talking about 0:02:54.639 --> 0:02:57.480 a bunch of medieval ghost stories of of the pious 0:02:57.560 --> 0:03:02.000 undead that are translated and analized in a wonderful historical 0:03:02.040 --> 0:03:04.120 paper that we're going to continue talking about in this 0:03:04.200 --> 0:03:07.120 episode and again. So the reference on this paper is 0:03:07.160 --> 0:03:11.640 that it's called Revenants, Resurrection and Burnt Sacrifice by a 0:03:11.800 --> 0:03:15.959 historian named Nancy Mandeville Cacciola, who is a medieval historian 0:03:16.040 --> 0:03:19.560 at University of California, San Diego. And this was published 0:03:19.560 --> 0:03:22.920 in fourteen in a journal called Predator Nature Critical and 0:03:22.960 --> 0:03:26.679 Historical Studies on the Predator Natural. And this paper focuses 0:03:26.760 --> 0:03:30.320 on stories told by a tenth to eleventh century German 0:03:30.360 --> 0:03:34.720 bishop named tete marvon Merseburg. And so around the year 0:03:34.800 --> 0:03:38.240 ten thirteen to ten eighteen or so, uh teit Mar 0:03:38.320 --> 0:03:42.280 was writing an eight volume historical text called the Chronic 0:03:42.280 --> 0:03:45.400 con which was supposed to be about the glories of 0:03:45.440 --> 0:03:48.480 the Ottonian dynasty, and this was a series of Saxon 0:03:48.600 --> 0:03:52.440 Christian kings that he served under who were involved in 0:03:52.600 --> 0:03:56.960 conquering and christianizing lands that previously belonged to various Slavic 0:03:57.040 --> 0:03:59.640 pagan people's uh so, so this was a sort of 0:03:59.720 --> 0:04:04.200 coll Anneal frontier zone. And within recent memory, the former 0:04:04.240 --> 0:04:09.160 inhabitants of one town within this zone had been massacred 0:04:09.280 --> 0:04:12.760 during a revolt of the locals. And so in the 0:04:12.760 --> 0:04:16.200 middle of this history, Tetmar goes into a digression about 0:04:16.200 --> 0:04:19.120 a story of the undead from this fortified town where 0:04:19.160 --> 0:04:21.800 there had been a massacre. This town is called vols Laban, 0:04:22.520 --> 0:04:24.520 and the story goes that there is a priest who 0:04:24.600 --> 0:04:28.479 arrives at church to sing Matten's matins as spelled m 0:04:28.480 --> 0:04:30.839 A t I n s. That means like an early 0:04:30.880 --> 0:04:33.880 morning prayer. The medieval Catholics had a lot of interesting 0:04:33.960 --> 0:04:35.960 names for like the different prayers you would say at 0:04:36.000 --> 0:04:37.680 the different times of day. I don't remember them all, 0:04:37.680 --> 0:04:41.720 but there's like mattins, there's lauds. I remember. These are 0:04:41.800 --> 0:04:44.960 used as sort of like a time delineation. Chapter headings 0:04:44.960 --> 0:04:48.159 in In the Name of the Rose, if I recall correctly. Um. 0:04:48.160 --> 0:04:50.320 But so he's there for Mattins so the morning prayer 0:04:50.960 --> 0:04:53.400 and uh. And when he shows up at the church, 0:04:53.440 --> 0:04:56.080 he goes to the cemetery and he sees a multitude 0:04:56.200 --> 0:04:59.520 of dead people there. These are revenants, and they are 0:04:59.640 --> 0:05:04.560 worse apping they're making offerings to a revenant priest, and 0:05:04.640 --> 0:05:07.080 so the living priest who has just arrived, he makes 0:05:07.080 --> 0:05:09.120 the sign of the Cross, and then he walks through 0:05:09.160 --> 0:05:11.960 the crowd of the undead until he sees a woman 0:05:12.040 --> 0:05:15.120 he knows one who had died just recently, and she 0:05:15.240 --> 0:05:17.880 asks him, Hey, what are you doing here. He says, 0:05:17.960 --> 0:05:20.800 I'm here to sing Matin's and she's like, well, you 0:05:20.839 --> 0:05:23.080 don't need to do that, because we already did it. 0:05:23.520 --> 0:05:25.160 And then she's like, by the way, you're going to 0:05:25.279 --> 0:05:28.760 die soon, and then he did. That's what tite Mar 0:05:28.839 --> 0:05:32.160 tells us. But then he also explains that the point 0:05:32.240 --> 0:05:35.320 of him relaying the story is to prove the truth 0:05:35.480 --> 0:05:39.080 of the Catholic doctrine of the resurrection of the dead 0:05:39.160 --> 0:05:42.440 in Christ, which he says that the formerly pagan Slavs 0:05:42.480 --> 0:05:45.560 do not understand very well. He thinks they need correcting 0:05:45.720 --> 0:05:49.320 on this subject. Though I also wonder sort of if 0:05:49.400 --> 0:05:53.120 this persuasive framing, like I'm trying to prove the truth 0:05:53.160 --> 0:05:57.400 of the resurrection, if this persuasive, apologetic framing is really 0:05:57.440 --> 0:06:00.839 the reason he tells these stories, because aparently after telling 0:06:00.839 --> 0:06:03.640 this first one, he digresses from his from his history 0:06:04.000 --> 0:06:06.640 to just tell a bunch of other ghost stories, including 0:06:06.640 --> 0:06:08.880 an awesomely grizzly tale that we're going to get to 0:06:08.960 --> 0:06:11.200 in just a bit. Yeah, you're right. It does make 0:06:11.240 --> 0:06:15.320 you wonder is this about about using the ghost stories 0:06:15.520 --> 0:06:19.559 to uh, to support Christianity, or is it about finding 0:06:19.560 --> 0:06:21.719 an excuse to keep these ghost stories around just because 0:06:21.720 --> 0:06:24.479 they're really cool. Yeah, maybe he just wanted to tell 0:06:24.520 --> 0:06:26.640 them because he thought they were really fun, And then 0:06:26.680 --> 0:06:28.760 he's like, oh, I need a good reason to say 0:06:28.800 --> 0:06:32.000 I'm doing this. Well, actually they prove that that Christianity 0:06:32.080 --> 0:06:34.480 is true. Yeah, and I should. I don't want to 0:06:34.480 --> 0:06:36.840 say just fun, because I mean, certainly ghost stories can 0:06:36.880 --> 0:06:40.280 be fun, but also ghost stories can be culturally important, 0:06:40.320 --> 0:06:42.440 and they are you know that they are part of 0:06:42.480 --> 0:06:45.880 one's cultural background, So there's there's an added incentive to 0:06:45.880 --> 0:06:48.200 to keep them around if it all possible, because they 0:06:48.240 --> 0:06:50.760 are they are a part of your history. Yeah, and 0:06:50.800 --> 0:06:53.120 I think this is very much part of something that 0:06:53.120 --> 0:06:55.920 that Cachiola is going to argue in this paper. But 0:06:56.000 --> 0:06:57.920 picking back up with that paper of hers, I want 0:06:57.920 --> 0:07:00.720 to go into some of the historical, cultural, in religious 0:07:00.720 --> 0:07:04.320 context that she explains to help us better understand what 0:07:04.400 --> 0:07:07.040 these stories might have meant in their in their time 0:07:07.040 --> 0:07:09.440 and place. So one thing she says is that during 0:07:09.480 --> 0:07:14.040 this period, religion and politics were deeply linked. German rule 0:07:14.200 --> 0:07:19.120 was self consciously formulated as Christian rule, and the Ottonian 0:07:19.200 --> 0:07:25.600 dynasty mythologize themselves consciously as the so called Last World Emperors. 0:07:25.640 --> 0:07:29.119 So they were thinking of themselves as as great kings 0:07:29.120 --> 0:07:32.400 who would by conquest, expand Christianity to the ends of 0:07:32.400 --> 0:07:36.240 the earth and thus bring about the second Coming of Christ. Oh. Wow, 0:07:36.320 --> 0:07:39.160 the Last World Emperors. I love that it sounds sounds 0:07:39.200 --> 0:07:42.920 positively evil. Yeah, And it's the funny thing. So this 0:07:42.960 --> 0:07:45.520 is something that people might not realize like they think. Oh, 0:07:45.680 --> 0:07:47.840 people in the twentieth century are always saying that the 0:07:47.880 --> 0:07:49.840 world the end is coming soon. You know that this 0:07:50.000 --> 0:07:54.400 religious apocalypticism. It says, I've I've received a revelation from 0:07:54.400 --> 0:07:56.680 God and I know finally the end is happening now. 0:07:56.920 --> 0:07:59.040 People in the tenth and eleventh century thought this way 0:07:59.080 --> 0:08:02.400 to people all the time throughout every century of of 0:08:02.760 --> 0:08:04.840 Christian history of thought that they were living in the 0:08:04.920 --> 0:08:09.040 end times. This is just a perennial phenomenon. But because 0:08:09.080 --> 0:08:12.280 of the linking of religion and politics here, the military 0:08:12.320 --> 0:08:15.240 expansion of the Ottonians was also an expansion of the 0:08:15.280 --> 0:08:19.200 Catholic Church. So when they would go and establish fortified 0:08:19.200 --> 0:08:23.200 military outposts along the frontier, they were also establishing new bishoprics, 0:08:23.240 --> 0:08:26.400 they were establishing new footholds for the Church. And so 0:08:26.440 --> 0:08:30.000 in the paper, Caciola makes the argument that though the 0:08:31.000 --> 0:08:36.240 Slavic rebellions against the German conquest and German power were 0:08:36.440 --> 0:08:40.680 were obviously they would have had many complex reasons for 0:08:40.760 --> 0:08:43.360 doing this. She does make the case that it really 0:08:43.400 --> 0:08:47.559 looks like one of those reasons was religious resistance, resistance 0:08:47.600 --> 0:08:51.280 to the Christianizing impulse of the Germans and protecting their 0:08:51.320 --> 0:08:55.520 traditional ancestral beliefs. Uh So, she writes, as one example 0:08:55.559 --> 0:08:58.520 of this quote, centers of German power, which were of 0:08:58.559 --> 0:09:02.240 course also Christian religion centers, were targets for attack among 0:09:02.280 --> 0:09:07.040 these Slavic revolts. Uh continuing this included the Cathedral of 0:09:07.120 --> 0:09:10.440 have Alburg and the and the Bishopric of Brandenburg, where 0:09:10.440 --> 0:09:13.960 the remains of the last bishop parentheses tit martells Us 0:09:14.000 --> 0:09:17.160 he had been assassinated by his own flock, were dragged 0:09:17.160 --> 0:09:20.480 from his tomb and despoiled. The nunneries of Kalba and 0:09:20.640 --> 0:09:24.800 hillers Laban were also not spared, showing that institutions with 0:09:24.880 --> 0:09:29.120 predominantly religious rather than political associations were targeted as well. 0:09:30.640 --> 0:09:34.959 So this is some evidence that the Slavic rebellions against 0:09:35.000 --> 0:09:37.360 the Ottonians they were not just trying to protect their 0:09:37.400 --> 0:09:41.480 political autonomy, but they were also resisting the the the 0:09:41.520 --> 0:09:44.560 conversion impulse. They were saying, no, we like our religious beliefs, 0:09:44.559 --> 0:09:47.240 we'd like to keep them. Please. Now. Another thing that's 0:09:47.240 --> 0:09:50.560 worth clarifying is that talking about pagan Slavs of the 0:09:50.600 --> 0:09:53.960 region is a shorthand, because of course this is not 0:09:54.120 --> 0:09:57.880 one monolithic culture with one monolithic religion, but rather a 0:09:57.920 --> 0:10:01.679 collection of different tribes with their own distinct cultures and beliefs. 0:10:02.160 --> 0:10:05.160 Uh Though, it does seem that a general motivating factor 0:10:05.240 --> 0:10:09.120 for the tribal rebellions against the Saxon Ottonians was defense 0:10:09.160 --> 0:10:13.480 of these pagan religious beliefs against the Christianization mission, and 0:10:13.800 --> 0:10:17.959 of course paganism itself is not a religion, not one 0:10:18.320 --> 0:10:21.280 unified religion at this time. In this context, it simply 0:10:21.320 --> 0:10:25.280 means any of the non Abrahamic religions, so this would 0:10:25.280 --> 0:10:29.360 not usually be any kind of polytheism. And unfortunately there's 0:10:29.360 --> 0:10:32.720 a lot we don't know about these pagan religious beliefs. 0:10:33.240 --> 0:10:37.240 There was clearly plenty of diversity between them, though like 0:10:37.320 --> 0:10:40.800 many religions, they broadly seem to have included some elements 0:10:40.800 --> 0:10:44.600 of ancestor worship, as well as some common shared views 0:10:44.640 --> 0:10:48.520 about what constituted a good versus a bad death, and 0:10:48.720 --> 0:10:53.080 some similar beliefs about the afterlife. Now, another interesting thing 0:10:53.160 --> 0:10:56.400 about the political and religious history that here is that 0:10:56.559 --> 0:11:01.199 it's worth understanding that in this place and time, conversion 0:11:01.559 --> 0:11:07.679 religious conversion would almost necessarily be a somewhat flimsy concept. 0:11:08.480 --> 0:11:11.800 People in lands conquered by by Christians in the Middle 0:11:11.840 --> 0:11:16.480 Ages would often get baptized as Christians and then simply 0:11:16.520 --> 0:11:20.719 continue to practice their original pagan beliefs, either exclusively or 0:11:20.760 --> 0:11:24.840 alongside Christian worship. And one way I think to help 0:11:24.920 --> 0:11:28.200 understand this is that not all religions have exactly the 0:11:28.240 --> 0:11:31.520 same contours sort of that they don't all make stake 0:11:31.640 --> 0:11:35.920 the same ground, right, Like the role of Christianity versus 0:11:35.960 --> 0:11:39.120 the local paganisms was not a one to one comparison 0:11:39.200 --> 0:11:42.560 in a number of ways. For example, the Catholic Church 0:11:42.600 --> 0:11:48.960 had organized dogmas and a concept of religious universality and exclusivity. 0:11:49.040 --> 0:11:52.320 So this is a religion that conceptualizes itself as the 0:11:52.400 --> 0:11:55.120 one religion that is true and it should be the 0:11:55.160 --> 0:11:58.600 religion of the entire world. Uh. Sometimes people who grow 0:11:58.640 --> 0:12:02.520 up in Christian society's assume that all religions are like this, 0:12:02.640 --> 0:12:06.440 with this belief in universality and exclusivity. But that's not 0:12:06.520 --> 0:12:10.240 at all true. Like most religions in history appear to 0:12:10.280 --> 0:12:14.120 have been much looser, more defined by ritual rather than belief, 0:12:14.280 --> 0:12:19.560 and without necessary ideas of universality or exclusivity. You know, 0:12:19.600 --> 0:12:22.240 we were talking about this just yesterday in the context 0:12:22.280 --> 0:12:26.520 of the Indiana Jones movies, the Indiana Jones franchise. Excepts 0:12:26.559 --> 0:12:31.359 all religions and even and even like like fringe beliefs 0:12:31.400 --> 0:12:34.600 and ancient aliens and what have you. Oh, yeah, that's funny. 0:12:34.640 --> 0:12:36.839 That's one thing I kind of appreciate about it. It's 0:12:36.880 --> 0:12:40.760 got a sort of totalizing mythology and maybe one that 0:12:40.760 --> 0:12:43.679 seems sort of geographically linked to so that it's like 0:12:43.720 --> 0:12:46.760 where maybe when you go into a geographical area that 0:12:46.800 --> 0:12:50.640 has predominantly one religion, that that religion mainly applies within 0:12:50.760 --> 0:12:54.880 that geography. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so in this region Hebrew 0:12:54.920 --> 0:12:58.000 got is real and this region Shiva is real? Um 0:12:58.720 --> 0:13:00.800 or was it Shiva Cali? It's and so long since 0:13:00.800 --> 0:13:04.680 I've seen um the Second Indiana, I think both the 0:13:04.720 --> 0:13:06.680 second one that the movie has got a lot of problems. 0:13:06.720 --> 0:13:09.120 But yeah, Collie is sort of the bad guy and 0:13:09.120 --> 0:13:12.320 it Eshivahs the good god. And okay, it's more complicated 0:13:12.320 --> 0:13:16.000 than that. The folks, if so, don't don't use the 0:13:16.000 --> 0:13:18.920 Second Indiana Jones movie is your your guide into the 0:13:18.960 --> 0:13:23.480 world of Hinduism. Um but u. But still, I think 0:13:23.480 --> 0:13:25.560 it's an interesting point about the idea yet that in 0:13:25.559 --> 0:13:28.040 the Indiana Jones world, like all these faiths are real 0:13:28.200 --> 0:13:31.280 and they don't seem to exclude one another unless you say, 0:13:31.320 --> 0:13:34.880 well that the Egyptian gods, the Egyptian pantheon is kind 0:13:34.880 --> 0:13:37.960 of excluded from the uh. All the happenings that go 0:13:38.040 --> 0:13:40.560 on in um Indiana Jones and the you know, the 0:13:40.600 --> 0:13:42.480 raiders of the Lost art. Well, do we know that? 0:13:42.559 --> 0:13:44.600 For sure? We never see a contest of the gods. 0:13:44.640 --> 0:13:47.600 They're like the Pharaoh's magicians. Never true, we don't get 0:13:47.640 --> 0:13:50.080 to see what they can do, that's right. And maybe 0:13:50.120 --> 0:13:53.040 they're just watching on you know, they're they're they're sleeping, 0:13:53.080 --> 0:13:56.320 who knows. I know, for one, I'm pretty certain that 0:13:56.400 --> 0:13:59.000 there's there's bound to be some sort of Indiana Jones 0:13:59.080 --> 0:14:02.960 related media from comics or TV series or something that 0:14:03.040 --> 0:14:06.720 actually involves Egyptian gods. So if it's out there, someone 0:14:06.760 --> 0:14:09.680 tell me about it. Well, I think one consequence of 0:14:09.960 --> 0:14:14.720 the different types of groundstaking games that are that are 0:14:14.760 --> 0:14:18.160 being played by the different religions at this time means that, 0:14:18.400 --> 0:14:21.800 for example, so the Christians might insist that you believe 0:14:21.840 --> 0:14:25.400 in no gods except the Christian Trinity, but many of 0:14:25.440 --> 0:14:30.320 the European polytheists at this time could simply incorporate new gods. 0:14:30.440 --> 0:14:33.960 So it's possible that they might well view a conversion 0:14:34.000 --> 0:14:38.680 to Christianity rather as a kind of incorporation exercise. So 0:14:38.760 --> 0:14:41.400 like we have our gods, we have our rituals, and 0:14:41.480 --> 0:14:44.040 now here's this other thing sort of added on top 0:14:44.080 --> 0:14:46.720 of that. And here's also Jesus and the Catholic Church. 0:14:47.680 --> 0:14:49.040 So it's kind of like this. It's almost like a 0:14:49.120 --> 0:14:52.720 chemical situation where the pre existing religion uh is more 0:14:52.720 --> 0:14:57.840 inclined to bond with with additives, even though those additives 0:14:57.920 --> 0:15:00.240 are you know, tend to be a tend to have uh, 0:15:00.400 --> 0:15:03.560 you know, exclusive ideas in them. Uh. You know, it 0:15:03.840 --> 0:15:06.560 doesn't it doesn't matter. When push comes to shove, the 0:15:06.600 --> 0:15:10.960 polytheistic religion is going going to absorb the monotheistic uh, 0:15:11.440 --> 0:15:15.440 even if to some outsiders it it appears uh in 0:15:15.480 --> 0:15:19.280 some cases that you've set aside the old ways, right. Yeah, 0:15:19.320 --> 0:15:23.000 so so, Cacchiolo writes that given these religious starting points, 0:15:23.040 --> 0:15:25.840 what you would probably expect to see at this place 0:15:25.840 --> 0:15:29.240 in time is not a just sort of exchange of 0:15:29.280 --> 0:15:32.040 the old gods for the new, but rather a sort 0:15:32.040 --> 0:15:36.040 of what she calls an untidy syncretic admixture, you know, 0:15:36.040 --> 0:15:39.440 syncretism against the mixing of religious beliefs, a sort of 0:15:39.520 --> 0:15:43.160 mixing and blending and hybridization process that would arrive at 0:15:43.200 --> 0:15:47.520 these new combinatorial beliefs. Um. And she gives us one 0:15:47.600 --> 0:15:51.680 interesting example of this. Uh. She talks about a text 0:15:51.880 --> 0:15:57.920 known as the Merseburg Charms uh quote short rhythmic invocations 0:15:57.960 --> 0:16:03.240 of the valkyries full Wodan and Freya, composed an archaic 0:16:03.320 --> 0:16:07.080 German but carefully transcribed onto a leaf of an otherwise 0:16:07.240 --> 0:16:11.080 entirely Christian manuscript found in the library of the Cathedral 0:16:11.120 --> 0:16:14.240 of Merseburg. And then she has a great comment it 0:16:14.360 --> 0:16:17.520 is pleasing to think that Titmar himself might have encountered it. 0:16:20.120 --> 0:16:21.640 And and then of course we're going to drive home 0:16:21.680 --> 0:16:23.640 something we've mentioned before in the show is that, of 0:16:23.680 --> 0:16:27.280 course humans are capable of having multiple and conflicting um 0:16:27.400 --> 0:16:31.640 beliefs and ideas, particularly as it pertains to the you know, 0:16:31.680 --> 0:16:33.960 the origins of the world and the inner workings of 0:16:34.000 --> 0:16:37.080 the supernatural realm. So um. You know, we see that 0:16:37.120 --> 0:16:40.080 even today, and many people who think that they are, 0:16:40.240 --> 0:16:44.160 you know, a pure subscriber to one particular brand of faith, 0:16:44.600 --> 0:16:46.720 if if they're to self analyze, they might find that 0:16:46.760 --> 0:16:49.640 they actually have some ideas from other other faiths and 0:16:49.800 --> 0:16:53.440 sort of non faith origin sort of mixed up in 0:16:53.520 --> 0:16:57.160 their supernatural understanding of the world or the same One 0:16:57.160 --> 0:17:01.200 person actually quite easily switches gears but tween different belief 0:17:01.240 --> 0:17:04.280 systems depending on the context. Yeah, I mean to come 0:17:04.320 --> 0:17:07.040 back to this example. Perhaps perhaps you are you know, 0:17:07.080 --> 0:17:08.879 a Christian when you were at the Christian church or 0:17:09.400 --> 0:17:12.960 walking among the Christian gravestones, but then when you're in 0:17:13.000 --> 0:17:16.399 the woods or when you were you know, walking the shore. Uh, 0:17:16.480 --> 0:17:18.879 then perhaps it's the the older gods that called to you, 0:17:18.920 --> 0:17:21.280 and so this other way of looking at the world, 0:17:21.880 --> 0:17:23.520 or you could look at it as a night and 0:17:23.600 --> 0:17:31.639 day thing that might yeah, yeah, thank thank you, thank you. 0:17:32.640 --> 0:17:34.320 So I think we should get back to teit Mar's 0:17:34.359 --> 0:17:37.160 ghost stories. Uh. And so the first place I guess 0:17:37.200 --> 0:17:40.080 would be to comment a little more on that first story, 0:17:40.119 --> 0:17:42.640 the one about the priest who arrives to sing Matten's 0:17:42.680 --> 0:17:45.920 and and finds the congregation the multitude of dead there 0:17:46.359 --> 0:17:49.040 and they're making offerings to a dead priest and then 0:17:49.080 --> 0:17:51.600 they and then one of them is someone he knows 0:17:52.040 --> 0:17:55.040 tells him, I think you're gonna die soon, and then 0:17:55.119 --> 0:17:57.760 he does. So I wanted to go through a few 0:17:57.760 --> 0:18:00.520 observations about the story that they catch you ala notes 0:18:00.560 --> 0:18:02.800 that are probably worth logging for when we look at 0:18:02.800 --> 0:18:06.480 the other ones. Uh. First, it's worth noting that instead 0:18:06.520 --> 0:18:10.320 of going to another plane of existence in this story, 0:18:10.560 --> 0:18:13.440 the returned dead or the revenants they hang out here 0:18:13.480 --> 0:18:16.440 on earth, so they're not going off to heaven. This 0:18:16.520 --> 0:18:18.879 is where they live. They're here on earth and this 0:18:18.960 --> 0:18:23.960 is where they do their business. Second, they are bodily reanimations, 0:18:24.000 --> 0:18:27.400 not in substantial specters. This has come up several times already, 0:18:27.440 --> 0:18:32.080 but this is apparently common, especially throughout the pagan mythology 0:18:32.119 --> 0:18:34.719 of Northern Europe, that uh, you know, it's not just 0:18:34.800 --> 0:18:38.600 like a gas like ghost that forms an image that 0:18:38.680 --> 0:18:41.240 you could walk right through. These are undead with mass 0:18:41.280 --> 0:18:43.919 and heft they can grab you. Yeah, they are the 0:18:44.000 --> 0:18:48.240 literal dead. They are you know, decaying bodies and skeletons 0:18:48.560 --> 0:18:52.080 going about their business. Another thing, so these dead are 0:18:52.359 --> 0:18:54.320 said to be in the version of the story, we 0:18:54.359 --> 0:18:58.919 get faithful Christians who worship the Christian God even after death, 0:18:59.480 --> 0:19:02.760 which is an interesting thing because I think another common 0:19:02.880 --> 0:19:05.960 modern assumption that would be that like a religion is 0:19:06.040 --> 0:19:09.200 something that people maybe need during life. You know, it's 0:19:09.240 --> 0:19:13.120 it's in order specifically to prepare you for the afterlife, 0:19:13.520 --> 0:19:15.760 So there would be no need in the afterlife for 0:19:15.760 --> 0:19:19.320 people to continue doing religious practices. But here that that 0:19:19.400 --> 0:19:22.520 assumption is clearly not on display. The dead also need 0:19:22.560 --> 0:19:25.919 to go to church and of course, in thinking about this, 0:19:26.000 --> 0:19:31.200 our mind can easily go to Christian doctrines of of 0:19:31.240 --> 0:19:33.919 the of the dead returning to life be at the 0:19:34.080 --> 0:19:39.560 resurrection of Christ um after death or um the idea 0:19:39.760 --> 0:19:42.239 that once we die, our bodies just kind of hang 0:19:42.280 --> 0:19:45.960 around for a while until the physical resurrection occurs at 0:19:45.960 --> 0:19:49.720 the end of time UM. Which you can imagine how 0:19:50.680 --> 0:19:54.800 how that idea would um would come to life if 0:19:54.840 --> 0:19:58.679 you had these pre existing concepts of revenant spirits, like 0:19:58.760 --> 0:20:02.440 it's my body just in the ground awaiting um Christ's return. Well, 0:20:02.440 --> 0:20:04.280 what else is it doing? Is it going to church? 0:20:04.880 --> 0:20:07.520 There's it just lazy bones. This is something we mentioned, 0:20:07.640 --> 0:20:09.960 uh we mentioned last time. So the Catholic teaching at 0:20:10.000 --> 0:20:13.399 the time emphasized the inertness of the dead body until 0:20:13.480 --> 0:20:16.080 the general resurrection at the second coming of Christ. So 0:20:16.520 --> 0:20:20.359 they they would emphasize, no, until Jesus comes back, your 0:20:20.359 --> 0:20:22.800 body just stays there. It doesn't do anything. And so 0:20:22.880 --> 0:20:25.840 this is clearly in contradiction with that. And yet this 0:20:25.920 --> 0:20:28.040 is also something we talked about in the previous episode. 0:20:28.600 --> 0:20:33.520 There appears to have been a pretty wide uh tolerance 0:20:33.880 --> 0:20:37.719 for various beliefs about the undead, even if they weren't 0:20:37.760 --> 0:20:40.520 if there were beliefs about the undead that we're not 0:20:40.760 --> 0:20:44.600 strictly in line with Catholic teaching. For some reason, this 0:20:44.680 --> 0:20:46.800 is an area of belief that the Church did not 0:20:46.880 --> 0:20:50.359 seem to police very strongly. And we're broadly tolerant of 0:20:50.760 --> 0:20:54.080 people sort of coloring outside the lines on beliefs about 0:20:54.080 --> 0:20:57.200 the dead. But to come back to Titmar's first ghost 0:20:57.240 --> 0:21:00.239 story here, there there are some weird elements that are 0:21:00.280 --> 0:21:04.159 illuminating on top of the more straightforward elements we just mentioned. 0:21:04.800 --> 0:21:07.120 First of all, so again we we noticed that these 0:21:07.160 --> 0:21:09.960 dead are pious from a Christian point of view. They're 0:21:10.000 --> 0:21:12.359 going to church, they're worshiping God, and yet at the 0:21:12.400 --> 0:21:17.160 same time they project what Catchiola calls a strong aura 0:21:17.280 --> 0:21:20.479 of menace that seems to be about right. These are 0:21:20.520 --> 0:21:23.320 not like happy, nice ghosts who are like hey, sweet, 0:21:23.320 --> 0:21:27.119 you know, they're scary and the priest is terrified of them. 0:21:27.160 --> 0:21:29.080 He has to do the sign of the Cross before 0:21:29.080 --> 0:21:32.359 he can go in, go in among the crowd. And 0:21:32.400 --> 0:21:35.040 then here's another interesting thing. I didn't notice this, but 0:21:35.119 --> 0:21:38.439 she points this out in the analysis. Not only is 0:21:38.480 --> 0:21:41.520 the priest given a true omen of his own impending death, 0:21:41.640 --> 0:21:45.600 that part's creepy enough, but more so his office has 0:21:45.680 --> 0:21:50.080 been usurped. They are performing the morning Mass that he 0:21:50.240 --> 0:21:53.680 came there to do. They are doing the priest's job 0:21:53.840 --> 0:21:57.920 for him. So there's an interesting implied interplay of ideas 0:21:58.000 --> 0:21:59.919 here when when you look at what could have been 0:22:00.200 --> 0:22:03.119 the inputs. Number one, you'd have Okay, they're appearing in 0:22:03.160 --> 0:22:07.160 this Catholic church. And again, the Catholic doctrine emphasized the 0:22:07.240 --> 0:22:10.280 inertness of the dead body, So this is not really 0:22:10.359 --> 0:22:13.359 totally within the you know, the central teachings of the church. 0:22:13.400 --> 0:22:16.840 And yet obviously here's here's titmur a Catholic bishop recording 0:22:16.880 --> 0:22:20.399 this event um and yet it includes these elements that 0:22:20.400 --> 0:22:24.120 would seem to come from European paganism that had these 0:22:24.119 --> 0:22:27.280 sort of common sense ideas about what would lead somebody 0:22:27.280 --> 0:22:29.159 to get up out of their grave and walk around. 0:22:29.520 --> 0:22:32.560 And generally this would be associated with what would be 0:22:32.600 --> 0:22:37.840 considered a bad death, people who say died of like 0:22:37.880 --> 0:22:41.520 a painful or violent death, or died young, or died 0:22:41.600 --> 0:22:44.679 with unfinished business. That these are generally the kinds of 0:22:44.680 --> 0:22:48.480 people who were believed to have energy still left in 0:22:48.560 --> 0:22:51.800 them because they had something unresolved or they died too young, 0:22:52.240 --> 0:22:53.920 and they would be the ones who would be likely 0:22:53.960 --> 0:22:57.800 to get up out of their graves. Right. Another area 0:22:57.880 --> 0:23:02.960 being the revenants of individuals who had not been buried properly. Uh. 0:23:03.000 --> 0:23:06.400 And during the Christian period this becomes had a case 0:23:06.440 --> 0:23:09.520 of had not been given a proper Christian burial. Right. 0:23:09.600 --> 0:23:13.000 So you're you're combining these weird connotations of you know, 0:23:13.280 --> 0:23:15.840