But so as not to break with customary belief, let us suppose it to be the fatal destiny of certain women and some men that they should fly rapidly through the countryside at night, entering into houses and pestering the sleepers, bestowing on them such weighty cares that they weep. Let us imagine them eating the food in the houses, lighting the lamps, making sleepers uncomfortable by rearranging their posture, moving little children from one place to another.
This is what we were told by a most worthy and Christian prelate, Archbishop Humbert of Arles, a churchman of proven faith and exemplary manners. At the time when he was a little child, under the attentive gaze of his parents and in the care of a most Christian mother, he was placed one night in his cradle wrapped in swaddling clothes, beside his parents’ bed. At about midnight, a wailing was heard. Waking with a start, his mother put out her hand to the cradle but could not find her child. Fearfully she lit a candle and searched everywhere for her baby, finally finding the child in a muddy puddle left from the water with which she had washed her feet earlier that evening. The baby was lying there without crying, still wrapped up, and when he saw the light, he began to smile at his mother. She called the nurse and her husband, and nobody doubted that this had been the work of some kind of nocturnal phantom. Indeed, in places habitually frequented by such phantoms, many people are aware of occasions when infants have been found in the morning tumbled from their cradles outside their houses, despite the fact that the doors of the houses were closed.
Moreover, it happened to us that, in our own cellar, it was not possible to draw off a single drop of wine from casks which had been full. Despite all our efforts, and with the spigot removed, nothing came out but air. Just one hour later, the casks were so full again that we lacked for nothing …
Gervase then proceeds to discuss further the theories of St Augustine and other church fathers about the insubstantiality of the creatures which might have been responsible for such occurrences. He concludes: As for what these things mean, I can only reply: ‘The dispositions of God are unfathomable …’
The Cemetery of Aliscamps
Part III, Chap. XC
Most worthy prince, let me tell you about wonderful events, miracles indeed, deriving from the divine power of God. The capital of the kingdom of Burgundy … is the city of Arles, which has been favoured since ancient times. It was Trophimus, the disciple of Jesus, ordained by the apostles Peter and Paul, who converted the region to the Christian faith on the journey to Spain when he was accompanied by St Paul. Shortly afterwards Trophimus and other holy bishops resolved to establish in the southern part of the city a holy cemetery where the bodies of the truly faithful might receive burial. This was appropriate, since the conversion of the entire region of Gaul had its beginning with the church at Arles, and so all those who died in Christ, wherever they came from, might receive the grace of common burial. From that time, consecrated by these holy men and by Christ’s blessing, the custom arose among the princes and churchmen of Gaul that the greatest barons who died fighting the pagans in the Pyrenees and the mountains of the south should be buried there. Some of them were brought in chariots, some on wagons, others were transported on horseback: all of them were carried to the cemetery at Aliscamps, to join such gallant knights as Vivien, Bertrand, Aistulf and countless others.
Many of the remains of such great barons were brought by river down the Rhône. And what was most marvellous, none of the dead men sealed in their coffins ever floated beyond the city of Arles, however strong the wind or the storms which propelled their craft. They simply halted their downstream course and revolved in the current until they came ashore to be transported to the holy cemetery. Still greater marvels occurred, which were witnessed by countless men and women. Custom required that the bodies of the dead should be transported down river in large casks coated with wax and with chests containing silver, by way of alms for such a sacred place. About ten years ago, a cask with its remains cleared the narrow passage between the two banks at the point where the castles of Tarascon and Beaucaire face each other. Some boys from Beaucaire leapt into the water, dragged the cask ashore and, without touching the corpse, stole the hidden silver. Pushed back into the middle of the stream, the cask remained there. Neither the force of the current, nor the efforts of the young thieves, could propel it downstream. Turning gently in the stream, it remained immovable, with the proof of its ransacking visible to all. Up in the fortress, the chatelain of the count of Toulouse guessed by divine inspiration that injury had been done to the corpse by the inhabitants of the town. He made enquiries in secret, and when the facts came to light with the help of God, the chatelain ordered the silver to be put back beside the corpse and fined the wrongdoers heavily. With the restoration of the treasure, the remains of the dead man continued its journey downstream unaided by any human hand, and arrived at the city of Arles less than an hour later, to be buried in all honour and glory …
The Flying Mortar
Part III, Chap. XCIX
We should know that not only the living, but the dead as well, can be jealous if their spouses look elsewhere. In your Highness’s kingdom of Arles, for instance, there was a man called William of Mostiers, who was distinguished by his lineage and notable for his courtesy and gallantry. He had married a woman of similar worth, who was kind and wise, by whom he had a number of children. On his death-bed he called upon his wife to swear that after his death she would not marry a man who had been his mortal enemy. He added that, if she did marry this man, he would kill her, and pointed to a nearby grinding-mortar which he said he would use as a weapon. Moved by despair, the woman was disposed to grant her dying husband whatever he wished, and promised to remain a widow.
A few years after his death, however, on the advice of her friends she married the very knight who had been the sworn enemy of her husband. She had not forgotten her promise to her dead husband, nor the threat which he had made on his death-bed, but was forced into the marriage in spite of her doubts (when she had mentioned her dying husband’s threat, her friends had replied that the dead could do no harm). Returning from the church on her wedding day, and sitting for a moment among the other women, she suddenly gave a piercing cry: ‘Alas, wretch that I am, I have dared to break my marriage vow! And now my husband is coming to kill me with the mortar!’
And indeed, before the very eyes of the wedding guests, the spirit of the dead man raised the mortar and brought it crashing down on his wife’s head. Although the crowd all wished to fend off the blow of the mortar, they could not see how it was lifted up to fly through the air. The woman’s dying cries were proof enough that she had been struck a mortal blow …
The Ghost of Beaucaire
Part III, Chap. CIII
It often happens that we have to endure the mockery of many people when we tell them about infernal punishment. For them, any talk of the other world is pointless, and they ask, ‘How do they, who have neither seen nor undergone such experiences, know such things?’ It has all been made up, they say, because they do not believe what is to be found in the Scriptures. They would be prepared to listen only to the words of a dead person who had come to life again, or who appeared to the living after the point of death.
To this I reply that in such unworthy times as ours, those who have been dead for just four days are not allowed to re-awaken and make known the condition of the dead. And even if some of the dead are allowed to come back and appear to us, not all of them have authority to reveal what they have seen. Even Paul, raised to the third level of Heaven, where he saw the mysteries of God, was not allowed to tell of them to men. As for Lazarus, he has been called the Witness of Hell because he wrote many things about the conditions in the infernal regions, although his book is often taken to be apocryphal and is not greatly esteemed. The reason he is given this title is not because he unveiled all that he saw but because from many things he chose to tell of a few, to the extent that the Almighty allowed him to do so. But in order to refute those who, in their igno
rance, make their obstinate stand on the basis of the supposed impossibility of the dead returning, I am going to give a detailed account of an event which occurred recently near here. It is an event so unprecedented that our hearts and spirits should marvel at it, and our physical bodies tremble.
It occurred during July 1211, in the thirteenth year of the pontificate of Innocent III and during the second year of Your Highness’s imperial reign. In the kingdom and diocese of Arles, in the town of Beaucaire, lived a young girl. She was a virgin, eleven years old, who came from an honest, pious and well-to-do family. She had a cousin, who came originally from the city of Apt; he was a charming, confident young man in his first years of adolescence, whose beard had not yet started to grow. He had been sent away from his own neighbourhood because of certain youthful excesses and had arrived in Beaucaire, where, through ill-fortune and through no fault of his own, he was mortally wounded in a fight. As his life ebbed away, he forgave his murderer and, having received the last rites in true contrition, died and was buried.
Three to five days later, he appeared at night to the young girl, who had been very dear to him when he was alive, as she prayed in the lamplight. She greeted him, but fearfully – not just because she was naturally shy, but because it is normal for the living to have a heartfelt fear of the dead. But, in the manner of all those who are come back by divine permission, he calmed the young girl’s fear and said gently to her: ‘Cousin, do not be afraid. It is my deep and longstanding affection for you which has brought me back, by God’s will, and you must not think that I could do you any harm! I am only permitted to speak to you, and it is through you alone that I am allowed to reply to others who may question me.’ The girl asked how it was that a person who was dead had been able to return to this world. As soon as the spirit heard this, it groaned, and as though in particular affliction at the word ‘dead’, said: ‘O my dear, never let that word leave your lips again. For the bitterness of death is so great and so incomparable that, once one has experienced it, one’s tormented spirit cannot even bear to be reminded of it.’
While the spirit and the young girl were speaking to each other, her parents, who were still awake, were able to hear the girl’s words, but not the voice of the dead man. When they asked their daughter who she was speaking to, she asked them in return: ‘Can’t you see my cousin William, who died the other day, speaking here in front of me?’ Fearfully, they made the sign of the cross, and the dead man went way.
On the seventh day after his death, at about the hour of Tierce, he appeared once more to the young girl, who was alone in the family room. Her father and mother had gone with friends and neighbours to the monastery of Saint-Michel of Frigolet, which was a couple of miles away, to hear mass for his departed soul. When the girl saw him, she greeted him enthusiastically, and asked where he had come from and who had accompanied him on his return to this world. He replied that he dwelt among spirits in the air, undergoing the pain of the purgatorial fire, adding that the prior and the monks of Saint-Michel had at that very moment sprinkled him with gentle and refreshing water, and had brought great benefit to him by their masses and their prayers.
The girl asked him to let her see his companion. He gestured to his left, and almost behind him there appeared a black horned devil, spitting flames and breathing fire. The girl quickly dipped her hand into the holy water which, according to Provençal custom, was always placed in the room. She flicked some towards the devil which disappeared as soon as the water touched it. The dead man said this sprinkling of holy water brought him great relief and relieved the pain of burning. St Gregory says [Dialogues IV, 30, 2] that the fire with which spirits are tormented is corporeal, that is to say physical: for if an incorporeal spirit, the soul, can inhabit and bestow life upon the physical body, why can that spirit not remain captive in order to undergo mortification after death?
… Within a few days the rumour had spread throughout the neighbourhood, and people crowded in to see the young girl, wondering at such unprecedented events. A good friend of ours, a knight from the district of Saint-Gilles, set out to see for himself what was going on, and after addressing a good many questions to the dead man through the girl’s mouth, he said: ‘Now then, my dear, ask your cousin whether anyone has done him a good turn today.’ The dead man replied that, for the good of his soul, the knight had given two pence to a beggar as he left Saint-Gilles. Our friend confirmed that he alone knew this to be true.
On another occasion, the Prior of Tarascon came to verify what was being said. When he asked the young girl whether she had seen her cousin recently, she replied that his spirit came at fixed and pre-determined times. She added that she could see him coming even as they spoke. When the Prior asked eagerly: ‘Where is he then… ?,’ the girl suggested that the Prior should move aside, since he had almost stepped on the dead man’s foot. As the girl relayed the Prior’s questions to the spirit, she saw the dead man’s head turned as though to await the answers of a counsellor whom she could not see. Eventually, prompted by this unheard voice, the dead man replied that he was still undergoing the torments of Purgatory in the air, although they were less severe than usual, and that he had an angel as his companion. The Prior asked him to reveal his companion to the girl, and she saw on his right hand a shining white figure with shimmering wings, and with a face full of a brilliant luminosity. The angel’s name, said the dead man, was Michael, and he was the guardian of many souls …
Gervase goes on to give a lengthy account of the cross-examination to which local ecclesiastics subject the young man’s ghost, eliciting information about the afterlife which corresponds to descriptions contained in the Dialogues of Gregory the Great. At one point the ghost of the young man foretells the future, but Gervase deems it discreet not to divulge information which ‘might forestall the designs which God has ordained, and lead to idle speculation’. However, Gervase does send, secretly and by a trustworthy messenger, information obtained from the young man’s ghost which might help his imperial patron the Emperor Otto improve his standing in God’s eyes!
Source: Re-told from the Latin Otia Imperialia Gervasii Tilburiensii, ed. G.W. Leibnitz, Scriptores rerum Brunswicensium I, Hanover 1707, pp. 987–96. An edition of Part III of the Otia Imperialia was published in French as Le Livre des Merveilles, ed. and trans. A. Duchesne, Paris (Les Belles Lettres) 1992.
The Chronicle of Henry of Erfurt
Henry of Erfurt was a German Dominican who died in 1370, and who compiled his Liber de Rebus Memorabilioribus, or ‘Book of Remarkable Events’, as part of a Chronicle of his times. In this entry for the year 1349, the chronicler gives an account of the interrogation of a cheerful and lively ghost called Reyneke, or Reinhard, who seems to have come to town and taken up temporary residence in a house which, given the numerous references to an overburdened host, was probably an inn. The account is noteworthy both for the detail of the phantom hand with which Reyneke announces his presence, and for the impression that is conveyed of the dead leading an untroubled ‘parallel’ existence in the mountain ranges near the town where the conversation with Reyneke occurs. In the to-and-fro of the dialogue between the townspeople and the ghost, and in Reyneke’s apparent attachment to the serving maid in the house where he is staying, there are echoes of Gervase of Tilbury’s description of the interrogation of the Ghost of Beaucaire. The ejection from their makeshift accommodation of the importunate townspeople who insist on staying in the house resembles another of Gervase’s stories about mischievous nocturnal spirits causing havoc in wine-cellars, while the marvellous preparation by Reyneke of an impromptu banquet recalls Memorabilia accounts of attentive servants (‘The Tale of King Herla’ and ‘King Arthur and the Butterfly Bishop’) as well as the story of the Ghostly Butler in the Gesta Romanorum (see Part Four).
The Hand of Reyneke
In 1349, the second year of the reign of Charles IV, another ghost revealed itself in the town of Cyrenbergh, part of the domain of the landgrave of Hesse. Although I am
not sure whether it did actually occur, or whether it was a ‘fantasma’ or product of men’s imaginations, the occurrence was said to have been something quite remarkable: a little human hand, soft and elegant, allowed itself to be seen and touched, and perhaps as many as a thousand people did indeed touch and feel it. Nothing apart from the hand was visible or tangible, but one could also hear quite distinctly the hoarse whispering voice of a man.
Someone asked this being who he was, and he replied: ‘Truly I am a man like yourself, and a Christian. I was baptised in the town of Göttingen.’
‘But what is your name?’
‘Reyneke’, came the reply.
‘Are you alone?’
‘No, there is a great crowd of us. We eat, drink, marry, have children, arrange the weddings of our daughters and the marriages of our sons. We sow and we reap and we carry on our lives just like you.’
‘But where precisely do you live? Is it here?’
‘We live inside the mountain of Kyrkenbergh, which is next to the town of Cyrenbergh. Here, in the town, each of us is welcomed in turn at this house by the worthy fellow who is our host.’
‘But do not some of you live in that other mountain which is called Berenbergh [the modern Dornberg]?’
‘Yes, many do indeed live there. But my folk are well-established and noble: those people, by contrast, are bandits who cause great disturbances and invade their neighbours’ land …’
‘Is it possible for others to stay in this house with you?’
The reply came: ‘We do not want this, lest our host be over-burdened. For the time being, it is enough that he should extend a warm welcome to us. It is, however, possible for him to receive others if they have a family or marriage connection.’ Nevertheless some of the townspeople wished to try, and despite the reluctance of the host, insisted on staying. Accommodation was prepared for them among the barrels of the wine-cellar, so that they might be as comfortable as possible in the circumstances. That night an indescribable tumult arose. Terrified, they shouted out for help, and were told by Reyneke: ‘All of this noise and disturbance was because you insisted so stubbornly on staying. But for the present learn from this and calm yourselves.’ Then, seating himself on a barrel, he carried on talking with them for some time.
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