The Medieval Ghosts of Byland Abbey

Dark Histories

Ben Cutmore

History

4.8 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 11 April 2022

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Some time around the turn of the fifteenth century, a Cistercian monk of Byland Abbey took it upon himself to pen a series of ghost stories on the empty pages of a folio containing some of the library's more prestigious works. A medieval monk scribbling down ghost stories was, in truth, not entirely unusual. In the case of the Byland monk, however, the stories seemed to be less concerned with religious matters and more with grisly details of the spirits themselves. Undead rising from the graves, shapeshifting from human to animal and back again, hunting down the living to gouge their eyes from their skulls. The monk was, in his way, reporting on the folklore of the day, leaving behind one of the middle ages' more unique documents on belief in the afterlife. Republished in its original Latin by medievalist and author M.R. James in 1922, the stories had, perhaps, more in common with his own writings than they did that of the church and opened a window on the prevalence of Pagan beliefs and folklore tradition that maintained throughout medieval Europe. SOURCES Scmitt, Jean-Claude (1998) Ghosts in the Middle Ages: The Living and the Dead in Medieval Society. The University of Chicago Press, London, UK. Bartlett, Robert (2008) The Natural and the Supernatural in the Middle Ages. Cambridge Universtoy Press, Cambridge, UK. Joynes, Andrew (2001) Medieval Ghost Stories. The Boydell Press, Woodbridge, UK. Grant, A.J. (1924) Twelve Medieval Ghost Stories. Yorkshire Archeological Journal, Vol. XXVII. Yorkshire, UK. Fleischhack, Maria & Schenkel, Elmar (2016) Ghosts - or the (Nearly) Invisible: Spectral Phenomena in Literature and the Media. Peter Lang, NY, USA. Harrison, Stuart (2022) History of Byland Abbey. [online] English Heritage. Available at: ---------- For almost anything, head over to the podcasts hub at darkhistories.com Support the show by using our link when you sign up to Audible: http://audibletrial.com/darkhistories or visit our Patreon for bonus episodes and Early Access: https://www.patreon.com/darkhistories The Dark Histories books are available to buy here: http://author.to/darkhistories Dark Histories merch is available here: https://bit.ly/3GChjk9 Connect with us on Facebook: http://facebook.com/darkhistoriespodcast Or find us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/darkhistories & Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dark_histories/ Or you can contact us directly via email at [email protected] or via voicemail on: (415) 286-5072 or join our Discord community: https://discord.gg/cmGcBFf The Dark Histories Butterfly was drawn by Courtney, who you can find on Instagram @bewildereye Music was recorded by me © Ben Cutmore 2017 Other Outro music was Paul Whiteman & his orchestra with Mildred Bailey - All of me (1931). It's out of copyright now, but if you're interested, that was that.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Sometime around the turn of the 15th century, a sisterish and monk of Byland Abbey took
0:06.1	it upon himself to peniseries of ghost stories on the empty pages of a folio containing some
0:11.5	of the library's more prestigious works.
0:15.2	Many evil monks scribbling down ghost stories was, in truth, not entirely unusual.
0:21.5	In the case of the Byland monk, however, the stories seemed to be less concerned with
0:25.9	religious matters and more with grisly details of the spirits themselves.
0:31.7	Undead rising from the graves, shapeshifting from human to animal and back again, hunting
0:37.4	down the living to gouge their eyes from their skulls.
0:41.5	The monk was, in his way, reporting on the folklore of the day, leaving behind one of
0:46.8	the mid-lages more unique documents on belief in the afterlife.
0:51.2	Republished in its original Latin by Medievalist and author, MR James, in 1922, the stories
0:57.5	had, perhaps, more in common with his own writings than they did that of any of the church,
1:03.0	and opened a window on the prevalence of pagan beliefs and folklore tradition that maintained
1:07.7	throughout medieval Europe.
1:10.5	This is Dark Histories, where the facts are worse than fiction.
1:19.3	Hello and welcome to Dark History, Season 6, Episode 6.
1:24.0	I'm a host, Ben, as always, and it's a pleasure to be back at the microphone.
1:30.6	This week, we've got a slightly different sort of story or series of stories.
1:37.4	My trusty laptop that I take with me everywhere to, you know, to make all the episodes and
1:42.8	stuff has decided that it's going to give up on life.
1:46.4	So until I get around to Jimmy and with a screwdriver later this week, yeah, I was a
1:52.1	little bit stuck on how to work, so I had to, it wasn't actually that bad, just meant
	...

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