Catholicism Archives - Page 2 of 2

#33 Ghosts from Purgatory

By boneandsickle | September 26, 2019

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 44:13 — 40.5MB)

Hear how notions of Purgatory influenced medieval ghost stories, the tradition of All Souls’ Day, and a Neapolitan “cult of skulls.”

We set the scene with a clip from “The Lyke Wake Dirge,” a 14^th–century British song sung or chanted as a sort of charm over the body of the deceased in the night before burial. It describes the perils confronted by the soul during its journey into the afterlife, describing a “thorny moor,” and “Bridge of Doom,” which must be traversed to arrive in a none-too-friendly Purgatory.

We take a moment to review the historical Catholic concept of Purgatory, one usually associated with fire and torment, albeit of a temporary rather than everlasting nature and geared toward the further purification of the soul bound for Heaven.

Souls in Purgatory, Missal of Eberhard von Greiffenklau, Walters Manuscript

Gregory the Great, the 6th-century pope, is one of the earliest influences on the notion of Purgatory offering as evidence a ghost story of a wicked bishop condemmed to haunt the baths. We also hear of a grisly apparition of Gregory’s dead mother that supposedly appeared in a church where, legend has it, Gregory was saying mass.

From the 8th-century English chronicler Bede, we hear of a man named Drythelm who is granted a vision of Hell, that is “not the Hell you imagine,” (i.e., Purgatory instead) and of the Irish saint. Fursey, who was flown by an angel over purgatorial fires, where a surprising encounter with a demon provides him a curious souvenir.

St. Patrick went one better than ghost stories, at least according to legend. With a tap of his bishop’s crook, he’s said to have cracked open the earth to reveal a gateway to Purgatory itself, all in an effort to convert those stubborn pagans who wanted something a bit more concrete to validate the gospel. A variety of medieval legends chronicle adventures through this underworld, and the site (though not the cave itself) is still open to visitors to a tiny Irish island in Loch Dergh (“the lake of the cave.”)

Though it’s not specifically Purgatory, descriptions of hellish torments identical to those that might be experienced there are particularly plentiful in the 12^th-century Irish text The Vision of Tondal. Mrs. Karswell reads for us all the best passages.

Following a snippet of a late medieval ballad from Norway, Draumkvedet* or “The Dream Poem,” which relates its own story of a visionary journey into the afterlife, we discuss the relationship between All Souls’ Day, prayers for the dead, the cult of the Anima Sola (“lonely soul” suffering in purgatory), and the strange Neapolitans “cult of skulls,” including that of “Princess Lucia,” a legendary lovesick suicide.

Next we hear some stories of frustrated demons and a graveyard full of grumbling corpses from Jacobus da Varagine,1260 compilation of saint stories, Legende Aurea, or The Golden Legend, followed by the utterly bizarre ghost stories written on some spare pages of a manuscript collection by a 13th-century Cisterian monk from the abbey of Byland in Yorkshire, or “The Byland Ghost Stories.”

From 14th-century France, we hear a story known in modern English as The Ghost of Guy, describing a series of ghostly visitations by a soul condemned to Purgatory — and the surprisingly colorful reason they were necessary!

Our last ghost story comes from The Adventures of Arthur, a story from northern England, probably set down in the late 14^thcentury. It tells of a particularly loathsome manifestation of Queen Guinevere’s mother that rises from within a lake with some pious advice for her daughter.

Cult of Skulls, Fontanelle Cemetery, Naples

We end with two more modern efforts to provide evidence of souls suffering in the afterlife: Rome’s very small, and very odd Museum of the Souls in Purgatory created by a particularly obsessive 19th-century priest and a classic urban legend in audio form captured from late-night airwaves of a few decades ago.

* Norwegian listeners: my apologies for any errors in pronunciation of “Draumkvedet.”

#30 Loup-Garou, Werewolves in France

By boneandsickle | July 22, 2019

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 39:56 — 36.6MB)

The werewolf (Fr: loup-garou) epidemic of 16th-century France forms the core of our show, but we also include some medieval French werewolf tales as well as the legend of a figure connected to both werewolves and Bluebeard.

In our last episode on Bluebeard, I promised to recount a legend that may have inspired Charles Perrault’s story. This would be the story of Count Conomor, or “Conomor the Accursed,” a 6^th-century ruler of Brittany. Here the role of Bluebeard’s new wife is played by Trephine, the daughter of a rival count. Through her forbearance, she came to be regarded in local traditions as a saint (therefore the chapel depiction below). Her adventures include interaction with the helpful ghosts of Conomor’s slain wives, decapitation by Conomor (with miraculous cure) and a magic ring The curse upon this wicked count continues into the afterlife, during which he is condemned to roam the countryside in the form of a werewolf.

A revived St. Tryphine. Statue in chapel of St Trémeur, near Carhaix, Brittany — The decapitated but ambulatory St. Trephine. Statue in chapel of St Trémeur (her son), near Carhaix, Brittany

Our next segment looks at some medieval werewolf stories, including the 12-century poem by a Marie de France, “Bisclavret,” in which the werewolf plays a surprisingly sympathetic role, the tale of Sir Hugues de Camp-d’Avesnes, condemned to an afterlife as a werewolf for burning a town in the 1131, and that of the knight Raimbaud de Pulet, who in a fit of despondent madness becomes a werewolf.

The French werewolf epidemic, which between 1520 and 1630, resulted in the execution of more than 30,000 individuals was the result of a link forged between the werewolf and a new, more aggressive attitude toward witchcraft arising in ecclesiastic councils taking place in Basel Switzerland in the 1430s. The first regions in France to begin prosecutions were therefore naturally those adjacent to Switzerland. Many there were overseen by Henry Bouguet, a judge who tried approximately 600 witchcraft cases in the locality. Most of the stories recounted in this episode come from his writings on the subject, while others come from the The Werewolf by highly eccentric English scholar Montague Summers, who was discussed in Episode 1.

Montague Summers and his classic volume on werewolves

The first of Bouget’s cases examined is that of Michel Verdun, who shortly after a wolf attack in which the beast is wounded is discovered treating a matching wound on his arm. Verdun’s testimony implicated two other men likewise said to transform themselves into wolves, Philibert Montot, and Pierre Bourgot, who provides a lurid testimony including accounts of bloody crimes committed in wolf form, attendance at a witches’ sabbath and being initiated into his wicked ways by a black rider he meets in the forest.

The Beast of Gevaudan. Outside the witchcraft paradigm discussed in the episode, but a nice image.

The next case discussed (and judged by Bouget) is that of Gilles Garnier, who also spoke of a forest meeting with a diabolical figure who presented him the magic ointment necessary for transformation. Garnier’s case is interesting in that he brought home human flesh from his werewolf attacks for his wife to enjoy.

Another case in this same area mentioned by Boguet is that of the Gandillons, a whole family of alleged werewolves. It begins with a female werewolf, Perrenette Gandillon, who attacks a brother and sister and is then killed by a mob. Her sister, Antoinette confesses to also being a werewolf and attending a witches sabbath, as do her father and brother. Wilkinson reads for us a colorful description of the wolf-like behavior of the male Gandillons in their prison cells.

Outside of Bouget’s jurisdiction, we find the case of the Werewolf of Chalons, a tailor discovered abducting children and butchering them in his shop. We also hear the story of Jean Grenier from Bordeaux (see the comic below).

The show closes with an account of 20th-century lycanthropy from Grenier’s home town of Bordeaux. When an unnamed assailant confesses to murdering a stranger invited into his home for a meal in 1989, he is examined by prison psychiatrist Michel Bénézech, who makes the diagnosis of “pathological lycanthropy.” The quotes we hear from Bénézech are from the BBC show “The Secret Life of Ghosts & Werewolves.”

Story of Jean Grenier from "The Usborne Guide To The Supernatural World" (1979) — Story of Jean Grenier from “The Usborne Guide To The Supernatural World” (1979)

#24 Possessed Nuns and Holy Demoniacs

By boneandsickle | April 18, 2019

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 41:10 — 37.7MB)

This episode finds the Devil where you’d least expect him: stories of possessed nuns and demonic attacks on the rigorously devout.. It’s a bit of a follow-up to our last episode on Ghastly Saint Stories.

We open with a clip from the 1999 film Stigmata, in which we hear it asserted that those marked by God with the stigmata are also more likely than others to be subject to attacks by Satan. Not a great film, but these types of characters straddling the line between the holy and damned, are our subject of our episode.

Our first case is that of 19th-century South Tyrolean stigmatic Maria Theresia von Mörl. Her reputation for holiness drew tens of thousands of devout visitors, but this holy figure was also beset by by beastly manifestations, which Wilkinson details for us.

Stigmatic Maria von Mörl, subject to demonic attacks.

A more famous 16^th-century personage bearing diabolical stigmata would be Magdalena de la Cruz, abbess of the Franciscan Convent of Santa Isabel de los Angeles outside Cordoba, Spain. We hear of her childhood, characterized by saintly (and gruesome) emulation of the Savior, her alleged miracles, and her early years as abbess, during which she instituted a particularly harsh program of mortification. She seems to have gone a bit far with a particularly presumptious miracle that lost her followers, eventually admitting to bit of a demonic involvement.

We’re getting to the famous possessed nuns of Loudun, France, but first I provide a little background on earlier demonic outbreaks in convents of 17th-century France, which seem to have set the pattern fr Loudun. Along the way, some documents recording curiously animalistic behavior of possessed nuns are briefly explored.

Our Loudun segment opens with a clip from a trailer for Ken Russel’s controversial 1971 film The Devils, which we learn was based on a 1960 play based on a 1952 nonfiction book on the subject by Aldous Huxley. We also hear a snippet from the lovely 1961 Polish film by Jerzy Kawalerowicz, Mother Joan of the Angels, which loosely adapts the Loudun story, picking up where Russel and Huxley’s narrative ends. Another Pole who interpreted the story was Christoph Penderecki, who in 1961 wrote the opera The Devils of Loudun. We hear a bit of Penderecki’s music under our account of the Loudun phenomena.

Still from Russel's "The Devils" — Still from Russel’s “The Devils”

The Loudun story primarily revolves around two characters: Jeanne des Anges, Mother Superior of the convent, who becomes obsessed with Father Grandier, a parish priest with a reputation for sexual indiscretions. Des Anges, interprets erotic dreams about the priest as diabolic visitations, a fear that quickly infests the entire convent. Wilkinson reads for us an account of the extraordinary symptoms exhibited by the nuns who believed they’d been possessed. The story does not end well for Grandier, though des Anges, as we learn, goes on reporting more fantastic details of her struggle against Satan, eventually producing a strange but much coveted holy relic.

After our Loudun segment, you’ll hear a clip from the film The Exorcism of Emily Rose, and a bit later, the German film Requiem. Both are based (the former more freely) on the case of Anneliese Michel, a young Bavarian woman, who died in 1976 shortly after a series of exorcisms. We hear a bit about her psychiatric issues, which proved untreatable by conventional means, and the process of minor and later full rites of exorcism the family turned to. I’ve included Michel’s story alongside possessed nuns as Michel’s followed a similarly rigorous spiritual discipline, one which oddly became more aggressive in tandem with the growth of her “demonic” destructive and self-destructive behavior. We learn of Michel’s belief that her suffering under demonic forces served a redemptive role as penance for others and of a small, but devoted following she has drawn among Catholics who believe she was chosen by God as a “victim soul,” a concept we discussed in the last show. We also hear a snippet of disturbing tape recordings made during the exorcism. The show ends with a news story about the house in which these events took place and the strange rumors it engendered.

#23 Ghastly Saint Stories

By boneandsickle | March 30, 2019

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:28 — 39.8MB)

Our collection of ghastly stories of saints highlights notions of extreme self-mortification as a spiritual practice along with a preoccupation with the saintly body after death.

While these aspects of Catholicism are anathema to secular outsiders and jarring to many contemporary adherents, they’ve been embraced by the Gothic. We begin with an illustrative clip from John Huston’s 1979 adaptation of Flannery O’Connor’s Southern Gothic classic Wise Blood.

The case of 15^th-century Florentine Maria Magdalena de’Pazzi provides an example in terms of extreme mortification from an early age. Wilkinson reads some passages noting her ingenious use of found materials in her program of suffering. Along the way, we note some more traditional tools of self-punishment like the cilice, or hair-shirt and its varieties.

Submission to the natural process can also be a form of mortification when it comes to the carnivorous habits of insects. We hear some stories in this regard from the hagiographies of Ita of Killedy, St. Macarius of Alexandria, as well as Rita of Cascia.

St. Rita of Cascia 18th-century, artist unknown.

The story of Belgium’s holy woman Christina the Astonishing includes not only fantastical tales of self-destructiveness, but also her resurrection from death at the age of 21. Some listeners will be familiar with Christina from the song of that name by Nick Cave, from which we hear a clip. Christina’s ability to smell “the scent of human corruption,” we also learn, was shared by saints Joseph of Cupertino, Saint John of the Cross, and Gemma Galgani, to name a few.

Christina the Astonishing appearing in the 1630 Fasti Mariani calendar of saints

There is a complimentary concept to the smell of sin, namely the ” Odor of Sanctity” often said to waft from the body of a saint. In saint stories, this seems to be most often mentioned in contexts least likely to be associated with pleasant smells, that is, sickness, death, and long after death when the body should be at its most foul. We hear a particularly odd story in this regard from the hagiography of 14^th-century Dutch Saint Lidwina.

Next up is the topic of saintly incorruptibility, or the unnatural preservation of a body after death. We learn a bit about what standards are here applied when it comes to cannonization and hear a few outstanding cases.

The capacity to occasionally move after death is also attributed to number of these mummified saints. We hear some rather unsettling stories illustrating this — St. Rita of Cascia and Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi again, as well as the blessed Pietro of Gubbio, and an earthquake story involving the animated corpse of St. Eustochia of Messina, Italy.

The remainder of the show looks at stigmatics, those said to bear marks similar to the five “Holy Wounds” received by Christ in his Passion. We hear a creepy, old recording telling the tale of “Little Rose” Ferron, a 20th-century stigmatic from Rhode Island as well as some graphic first-hand accounts of visits with stigmatics Therese Neumann (Bavaria) and Maria Domenica Lazzari (South Tyrol). Some remarkable watercolors of Lazzari here.

We end or collection of ghastly saint stories with some particularly ghastly stories of holy people ingesting unholy things for the sake of holiness (St. Catherine of Genoa and St. Veronica Giuliani) as well as St. Catherine of Siena, who also provides a final anecdote as a sort of palette -cleanser.