Medieval Death Trip

Better late than never, it's Episode 9, wherein we hear Eberhard the German's description of his own doomed conception, after a fashion, by which he introduces his handbook of Latin composition, the Laborintus.

Today, we continue with Thomas of Monmouth's tales from the shrine of William of Norwich. This time, instead of miracle cures, we get an example of a miracle injury -- in other words, a good old-fashioned smiting. On the way we get a visit from a sinister pig and learn that candles might be valued more than a life.

This episode we return to the The Life and Miracles of St. William of Norwich to look at three cases of cures for toothache, followed by a glance at some actual medieval dental treatments. Get those worms out of your teeth!

Medieval Death Trip returns with the first episode of 2015, in which we take year-end retrospectives to the extreme and sample all the year 14s for each century covered by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, followed by a look at the great Cottonian Library Fire of 1731.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Our first full episode examines a tale of pirates, prisons, and poisonous toads, and the gruesome aftermath of combining those three elements together. This episode's text is from The Life and Miracles of St. William of Norwich by Thomas of Monmouth.

Medieval Death Trip launches with this Prologue episode, in which the premise and basic principles of this podcast are sketched out.