On this episode, we look at an example of the kind of odd incidents you might find preserved in a medieval chronicle -- in this case, the Lanercost Chronicle. We have three short episodes from the account of the year 1288, and then one spectacular lightning strike from 1291.

We return from our hiatus with an exploration of life in Tudor grammar school classroom, as described in a compilation of translation exercises composed for his students by a master of the Magdalen School, Oxford.

Today's Text:
Nelson, William, editor. A Fifteenth Century Schoolbook: From a Manuscript in the British Museum (MS. Arundel 249). Oxford, 1956. https://archive.org/details/fifteenthcentury00nelsuoft.

This Halloween, we celebrate our fifth anniversary with five terrifying tales of demonic activity from the Lanercost Chronicle.

Today's Text:
The Chronicle of Lanercost: 1272–1346. Translated by Herbert Maxwell, James Maclehose and Sons, 1913.

First episode in a two-parter: we look at story from Symeon of Durham's History of the Church of Durham involving a person who reawakens from apparent death to share a vision of the afterlife that portends bad things for the bishop of Durham.

In the second installment of our medieval travelers series, we follow Marco Polo into the deserts of Iran and learn about the hazards of the road, including a lethal wind.

It's a special Saint Patrick's Day episode, in which we hear about the contests between the saint and some Irish magicians, as related in Muirchu's 7th-century Life of St. Patrick.

This episode, we explore a character analysis of an unpopular leader, as William of Malmesbury explains how the virtues of William Rufus transformed into his greatest vices. Along the way, we also learn why pointy shoes are indicators of moral degradation.

Today's Texts:
William of Malmesbury. Chronicle of the Kings of England. Edited by J.A. Giles, translated by John Sharpe and J.A. Giles, George Bell & Sons, 1895.

Orderic Vitalis. The Ecclesiastical History of England and Normandy. Vol. 2. Translated by Thomas Forester, Henry G. Bohn, 1854.

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

This episode we tap into the Ragnarok zeitgeist and go back to the medieval Norse sources: Snorri Sturluson's Gylfaginning and the apocalyptic poem Völuspá.

Episode 4 continues the story of the murder of Bishop Walcher of Durham foreseen in our previous episode. Text from Simeon of Durham's History of the Church of Durham.

This episode we look at the less than stellar reputation of King John during the First Barons' War, as recounted in the Melrose Chronicle, and consider the relationship of medieval texts to immediate politics.

This episode we take a look at Sólarljóð, an Old Norse poem that mixes a Christian tour of heaven and hell with the stylings of eddic poetry. We also consider what it might have in common with one of the fugues of the Great Revival.

Today's Texts:
"Song of the Sun." The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson, translated by Benjamin Thorpe and I.A. Blackwell, Norrœna Society, 1906, pp. 11-120. Google Books.

References:
Cobb, Buell E., Jr. The Sacred Harp, A Tradition and Its Music. U of Georgia P, 1978.

Larrington, Carolyne, and Peter Robinson. Introduction to "Anonymous, Sólarljóð." Poetry on Christian Subjects, edited by Margaret Clunies Ross, Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 7, Brepols, 2007, pp. 287-357.

"Sólarljóð -- Anon SólVII." Skaldic Project.

Wright, Thomas. St. Patrick's Purgatory: An Essay on the Legends of Purgatory, Hell, and Paradise, Current During the Middle Ages. John Russell Smith, 1844. Google Books.

Zaleski, Carol. Otherworld Journeys: Accounts of Near-Death Experience in Medieval and Modern Times. Oxford UP, 1987.

Audio Credit: "Greenwich" performed by Cork Sacred Harp, from the first Ireland Sacred Harp Convention, 2011. Used under CC-BY-3.0 license. https://soundcloud.com/corksacredharp/183-greenwich.

This Halloween marks our third anniversary, and we ring in our fourth year with two versions of King Arthur's famous battle with the man-eating giant of Mont St. Michel.

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

Today's Text:
Patrick. Confession. St. Patrick: His Writings and Life, edited and translated by Newport J.D. White, Macmillan, 1920, pp. 31-51. Google Books.

References:
Adams, J.N. An Anthology of Informal Latin, 200 BC - AD 900: Fifty Texts with Translations and Linguistic Commentary. Cambridge UP, 2016.

Bieler, Ludwig. "The Place of Saint Patrick in Latin Language and Literature." Vigiliae Christianae, vol. 6, no. 2, Apr. 1952, pp. 65-98. JSTOR, doi:10.2307/1582579.

de Paor, Máire B. Patrick: The Pilgrim Apostle of Ireland. Regan Books–HarperCollins, 1998.

Gellrich, Jesse M. Discourse and Dominion in the Fourteenth Century: Oral Contexts of Writing, Politics, and Poetry. Princeton UP, 1995.

Hood, A.B.E, editor and translator. St. Patrick: His Writings and Muirchu's Life. Phillimore, 1978.

Kelly, David. "St Patrick's Writings: Confessio and Epistola." Saint Patrick's Confessio, Royal Irish Academy, 2011, www.confessio.ie/more/article_kelly#.

McCaffrey, Carmel, and Leo Eaton. In Search of Ancient Ireland: The Origins of the Irish, from Neolithic Times to the Coming of the English. New Amsterdam Books, 2002.

Olden, Thomas, translator. The Confession of St. Patrick. George Drought, 1853. Google Books.

Get more info at: http://www.medievaldeathtrip.com

This episode we celebrate our one-year anniversary on Halloween, with the tale of a mistreated werewolf: the Lai of Bisclavret by Marie de France.

This episode we celebrate the winter's solstice with a grab-bag of comets, eclipses, and meteors, as well as earthquakes, tempests, and plagues.

On this episode, get a different version of the story of Edgar's love for the married Aelfthryth, this time in a blending of history with courtly romance from Gaimar's L'Estoire des Engleis.

This episode is the first in our three-part series looking at encounters with the remains of St. Cuthbert, starting in this installment with a quick look at the discovery that his body had not decayed in 698, eleven years after his death, as recounted by the Venerable Bede, and then taking a longer look at the so-called "Anonymous Account" of the inspection of his body during his translation into Durham Cathedral in 1104.

Today we plunge into some hard-core scholasticism, as we hear Thomas Aquinas wrestle with the thorny question: "If all dead bodies are resurrected at the Last Judgment, what happens to the bodies of cannibals, whose bodies are made up of the flesh of those they have eaten, who also need to be resurrected?" We also wrap up with a reflection on George Romero and the zombie apocalypse.

On this episode, we hear an account of the great Croyland (or Crowland) Abbey fire of 1091, purportedly written by the abbot at the time, Ingulf.