We interrupt our regularly scheduled Gerbert d'Aurillac series with a special Halloween anniversary detour into a Victorian version of his Dark Legend: the 1888 short story, "The Demon Pope," by Richard Garnett. Today's Text Garnett, Richard. "The Demon Pope." The Twilight of the Gods and Other Tales. John Lane, 1903, pp. 86-98. Google Books. Music Credit: "Mephisto Polka," by Franz Liszt (1882-3), performed by Sofja Gülbadamova used under a CC-BY 3.0 license (MusOpen).
This is medieval death trip for Tuesday, October 31, 2023.
Episode 103 the Demon Pope by Richard.
Garnett hello, and welcome to medieval death trip, the show where we explore the.
Wit and weirdness of medieval texts, or.
In today's case, medievalistic texts.
I'm your host, Patrick Lane.
In a study crowded with books, a victorian gentleman peruses a dusty tome and makes notes for a tale of devilry and deceit ripped from the headlines of a medieval chronicle.
And as he inscribes some ancient words of the text on his own manuscript, a portal through time is opened up and his lines spill out as interlopers in our own trek through the history of Gerbert Doriac, also known as Pope Sylvester II.
Yes, our annual Halloween episode has barged.
In and interrupted our little Gerbert series, but not really, since we are indeed still looking at a descendant of the dark legend of the magician pope, as composed by a somewhat forgotten master of fantastical literature and historical weird fiction.
It was on all Hallows eve of.
2014 that the prologue and first episode.
Of this show were posted to the.
Web, which means this marks our 9th.
Year going into our 10th.
It hasn't always been a smooth journey, and the milestones have not always been spaced at regular intervals.
But I'm so delighted to have had all of you along for the ride.
And here's looking to hopefully a fruitful 10th year.
Ive built up quite a list of things I want to get to in our next span of episodes, and fingers crossed, well be able to cap it all off with a big 10th anniversary special.
But here for our 9th, we are diverting slightly from our period to look at a representation of the middle ages from another historical and literary perspective.