The Reeve's Tale: A Medieval Miscellany with Andrew Reeves

As we approach Halloween, it's only appropriate that in this episode we discuss ghosts and revenants in the Middle Ages. Today's episode will be an interview with Alexander Zawacki. Dr. Zawacki is a lecturer in Digital Humanities at the University of Göttingen. He also publishes a Substack called It's Only Dark, a discussion of all things spooky. Link: It's Only DarkFurther ReadingPrimary SourcesJoynes, Andrew, ed. Medieval Ghost Stories: An Anthology of Miracles, Marvels and Prodigies. Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2001.This is your one-stop shop for medieval ghost stories. Joynes has gathered together a collection of ghost stories from a wide variety of medieval sources and translated them into modern English for the reader.Awntyrs off Arthure at the Terne Wathelyne. Edited by Robert J. Gates. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1968.This Middle English text is an Arthurian romance that also opens with a rather horrific ghost story. Requires reading in Middle English, but well worth it.Secondary SourcesCaciola, Nancy Mandeville. Afterlives: The Return of the Dead in the Middle Ages. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2016.This book has everything that you would want to know about the walking dead in the Middle Ages. Who reported on them, what medievals believed about them, and how belief in the undead varied across Europe.Schmitt, Jean-Claude. Ghosts in the Middle Ages: The Living and the Dead in Medieval Society. Translated by Teresa Lavender Fagan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.This book is a history of ghosts in the Middle Ages by Jean-Claude Schmitt, a scholar of religious history and the overlap and conflict of folk beliefs with the teachings of the Church as an institution. Many of Schmitt's sources are religious texts, wherein we encounter ghosts who usually have some unfinished business.Want to talk about this episode? Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/ujcEcCtxE9

Medieval people had a working, observation-based theory of the structure and working of the cosmos. As a result, they also had a science of magic. You may be asking: A science of magic? Isn't that a contradiction? I hope that by the end of the episode, you'll see that it isn't. We'll briefly cover astrology, magic, and alchemy, and along the way, we may find an answer to that age-old question: magnets, how do they work?Further ReadingKieckhefer, Richard. Magic in the Middle Ages. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.This little book of about 200 pages has just about everything you need to know about the history, theory, and practice of magic in the Middle Ages. It's very accessibly written for both the student and general-interest reader alike. I borrowed liberally from his chapter on astrology and natural magic.Collins, David J., ed. The Cambridge History of Magic and Witchcraft in the West. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.This is an in-depth history of magic in the Western Tradition. It's written by some of the leading experts in the history of medieval magic, and is an excellent combination of accessibility and "crunch."Want to talk about this episode? Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/ujcEcCtxE9

How did medieval people understand their relation to the objects seen in the sky, from the sun and moon, to the planets and stars? In this episode, we'll talk about how medieval people understood the shape and structure of the known universe from God setting things into motion to our own world.Further ReadingLewis, C.S. The Discarded Image. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964.Here it is again! This time I'll ask you to read it for Lewis's explanation of the shape of the world and where everything fit into their cosmology.Maurer, Armand. Medieval Philosophy. 2nd ed. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Meidaeval Studies, 1982.This excellent little introduction to medieval philosophy will help you get a background as to how the people of medieval world made sense of their world through reason, and how medieval schoolmen sought to integrate the tools of human reason with the teachings of the Christian religion.Want to talk about this episode? Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/ujcEcCtxE9

In addition to God, the devil, and the angels and demons, medieval people believed in a class of beings living just outside of sight, of creatures that you'd see only from the corner of your eye. These creatures associated with glens and groves were often known as the fairies, or the elves, and they're going to be the topic of this episode.Further ReadingLewis, C.S. The Discarded Image. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964.This book covers the way that medieval people understood the structure of the universe, from the earth at the center all the way to the heavens that surround what we moderns call the solar system. And in his chapter The Longaevi, he discusses medieval belief in elves, those creatures that didn't really fit into that cosmology.Green, Richard Firth. Elf Queens and Holy Friars: Fairy Beliefs and the Medieval Church. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.This is an excellent book that has more recent scholarship than Lewis on medieval belief in elves, and also has an excellent discussion of how medieval churchmen dealt with belief in elves.Want to talk about this episode? Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/ujcEcCtxE9

In the 1160s, the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem made a play to conquer Egypt, assisted by the forces of the Eastern Roman Empire. Although these armies came within an ace of victory, in the end, they were outmaneuvered by the forces of Aleppo, and it would be Saladin who conquered the Fatimid Caliphate. In this episode, I'll be discussing this lesser-known story from the history of the Crusades.Special thanks to my friend and colleague Dr. Adam Bishop, a crusade historian who fact-checked the script of this episode for me.Further ReadingSecondary SourcesFulton, Michael. Contest for Egypt. The Collapse of the Fatimid Caliphate, the Ebb of Crusader Influence, and the Rise of Saladin. Leiden: Brill, 2022.The definitive history of the fall of Egypt to Saladin. If my twenty-odd minute discussion of this set of campaigns has whetted your appetite for more, this will give you the whole story in great detail.Riley-Smith, Jonathan. The Crusades: A History. 3rd ed. London: Bloomsbury, 2014.If you want a good, definitive history of the Crusades but don't necessarily want to read a 900-page doorstop, this book is a good little read. This account is quite good and also devotes a great deal of attention to later crusading after the fall of the Crusader States.Tyerman, Christopher. God's War: A New History of the Crusades. Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2006.This good, fat book provides a one-volume history of the Crusades from the background of the idea of Holy War all the way through the fall of the Crusader states as well as the aftermath. Tyerman's scholarly expertise shines through on every page, but it's an extremely readable, accessible book.Primary SourcesWilliam of Tyre. A History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea. Translated by E.A. Babcock and A.C. Krey. New York: Columbia University Press, 1943.This is William of Tyre's account of the history of the Crusades and Crusader States from the First Crusade through 1184, and you can read about Amalric from a man who knew him personally.Pulp FictionHoward, Robert E. "Gates of Empire."Robert E. Howard, pulp writer most famous for having written stories of the barbarian warrior Conan also wrote historical fiction. This is his story of the fall of the Fatimid caliphate? Is it historically accurate? Of course not! Is it rip-roaring fun? Abso-freaking-lutely!Want to talk about this episode? Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/ujcEcCtxE9

Most of what we read by medieval people themselves of course comes down to us in the books that they left us. That much is obvious. But what exactly does it mean for the book to have been a physical object? How was the book made? Who bought books? To answer these and other questions, I'll be discussing the nature of the medieval book as a physical thing.Further ReadingClemens, Raymond, and Graham, Timothy. Introduction to Manuscript Studies. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2007.This book as everything you might want to know about manuscripts. For everyone from the general reader to the new graduate student, you can find out nearly everything about medieval books, archival materials, and more besides, covering everything from the making and storing of the book to how to read its handwriting.Shailor, Barbara A. The Medieval Book: Illustrated from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991This is a shorter, more general introduction to the medieval book, which has most of what you'd want to know about the medieval book's production.Want to talk about this episode? Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/ujcEcCtxE9

What, if anything, can dreams tell us? Medieval people had all sorts of beliefs about whether dreams could be predictive or if they should be avoided as deceits. Much of what they believed was the heritage of Greco-Roman and biblical beliefs, to include the Bible, myth, and philosophy of mind. In this episode, we'll do a quick run-through of what medieval people believed about dreams and their predictive power.Further ReadingPrimary SourcesMacrobius. Commentary on the Dream of Scipio. Translated by William Harris Stahl. New York: Columbia University Press, 1952.This is the work itself that ended up being the source on dream interpretation in the Middle Ages. Martin, Lawrence T. Somniale Danielis: An Edition of a Medieval Latin Dream Interpretation Handbook. Frankfurt: Peter D. Lang, 1981.This is the Latin edition, but it's simple Latin and it's also got a decent guide to the manuscripts.Secondary SourcesKruger, Steven F. Dreaming in the Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.What it says on the can. A good guide to what medieval people believed about dreams and dreaming.Roest, Bert. "Divination, Visions and Prophecy according to Albert the Great." In Media Latinitas : a collection of essays to mark the occasion of the retirement of L.J. Engels, edited by Jozef Engels Lodewyk et al., 323-8. Turnhout: Brepols, 1996.An outline of what Albertus Magnus thought about how dreams work and how he assimilated the works of Avicenna and Aristotle.Want to talk about this episode? Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/ujcEcCtxE9

There's a lot of material out there that didn't quite make it into the Bible over the course of the second and third centuries. Some of this material, called apocryphal or pseudepigriphal, is stuff that fits in with the tone of the rest of scripture and is edifying. Other material, though, gives us giants and wizards, dragons and lions, and a boy Jesus who is quite frankly terrifying. That's what we'll be discussing in this episode.Further ReadingElliott, J.K. The Apocryphal Jesus: Legends of the Early Church. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.A brief introduction to the apocryphal literature of the New Testament like infancy gospels and apocalypses, together with translations.1 Enoch. Edited and translated by George W.E. Nickelsburg and James C. VenderKam. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012.The text itself. Here, you'll read about the Watchers, about Enoch's journey to the ends of the earth, the fates of the righteous and the wicked, and more besides.Knibb, Michael. Essays on the Book of Enoch and Other Early Jewish Texts and Traditions. Leiden: Brill, 2009.A really excellent, in-depth collection of scholarly essays on the Book of Enoch.Want to talk about this episode? Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/ujcEcCtxE9