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0:28

In the early modern period, it

0:30

was patently clear to everyone that

0:32

supernatural beings, foremost among them the

0:34

devil, were at work in the

0:36

world, intervening in human affairs. But

0:40

how exactly did such beings

0:42

manifest themselves? Were they visible

0:44

or invisible? And how do we make sense

0:46

of this in an age in which people

0:48

believed they were living under a providential God?

0:52

Was such belief in the supernatural confined to

0:54

ordinary folk or shared by the literate elites?

0:57

And can we find the origins of beliefs

0:59

in vampires, zombies and revenants in this

1:02

age too? And

1:04

finally, given such beliefs, what is

1:06

the historically sensitive and appropriate method

1:08

by which to consider them, as

1:11

they differ so very much from contemporary

1:13

conviction? Joining me

1:15

to kick off our month of specials

1:17

on supernatural beings in the early modern

1:19

world is Professor Darren

1:21

Aldridge, a professor of early

1:23

modern history at the University of Worcester. Darren

1:26

Aldridge's books include The

1:29

Supernatural, In Tudor and Stuart England, and

1:32

The Devil, a very short introduction.

1:41

Professor Aldridge, welcome to Not Just the

1:43

Tudors. Hello, Susannah, it's good to be here. Today

1:45

we're going to be talking about some

1:47

of the sort of things that in

1:49

our modern world constitute fiction. In fact,

1:51

as you put it, the staples of

1:54

the fantasy genre, the zombies and vampires,

1:56

along with things like dragons and witches.

1:58

And what I was struck... and reading

2:00

your work is the approach you

2:03

take to this study. Because so

2:05

often when we think of beliefs

2:07

in the past about supernatural ideas,

2:10

we think of the people who

2:12

held those beliefs as being somehow

2:15

much more credulous or unintelligent or

2:17

irrational than ourselves. And

2:19

your approach is completely different. And

2:22

it's one that undermines as

2:25

reductionist the kind of tagline of

2:27

the 19th century historians, the Leopold

2:29

von Ranker, that the purpose of

2:31

history is to discover what really happened. So

2:33

could you perhaps start by explaining

2:35

your approach to studying supernatural beliefs

2:37

in the early modern period? My

2:40

approach is to ask

2:43

not what really happened when

2:45

people described apparitions of ghosts

2:47

or showers of blood or

2:49

other mysterious phenomena, but

2:51

rather what did these things mean to the people

2:53

that described them? And how did

2:55

they make sense of them? That's really the question that

2:57

I ask. I think if I

2:59

ask the question, what really happened in

3:02

the context of somebody meeting the devil,

3:04

for example, I think I'd

3:06

be doing parapsychology rather than attempting to do

3:08

history, because what matters to me, I think,

3:10

is the sense that people made of these

3:12

phenomena. My starting point always

3:15

as a historian is looking at

3:17

the lives and the beliefs of

3:19

national people. We can't really

3:21

talk about the choices and the actions of

3:24

men and women in the past if we

3:26

assume that they are a bit daft. So

3:29

my starting point really is to assume that

3:31

people in the past are less rational than

3:33

I am, often much smarter

3:35

than I am, but they believe different things

3:37

to me. And consequently, they made sense of

3:40

the things that they came across or they

3:42

read about in a way that's often very

3:44

different to the way that I would make

3:47

sense of them. But that's not

3:49

because I'm clever than them. It's because I

3:51

live in a different context. You've

3:53

written quite a lot about the devil, and I

3:55

think we should probably start with him. This is

3:58

a period in which there is

4:00

very much a sense that the devil is

4:03

at work in the world. And

4:05

I wonder if we should characterize

4:07

this almost, I know

4:09

it was a heresy, but almost as a kind

4:11

of dualism. You've got a kind of

4:14

interventionist devil personally operating to upset people's

4:16

lives just as perhaps in the same

4:18

way they might have believed that God

4:20

would step in to help them. I

4:23

think that sometimes it can seem like

4:25

a kind of dualism, but it wasn't.

4:27

And it wasn't because people

4:30

who thought seriously about the devil's

4:32

agency, well they acknowledged that it

4:34

was considerable. They almost always insisted

4:36

that the devil did nothing without

4:38

permission from God. So

4:41

the devil was always working for God, but

4:43

their working relationship was terrible. The devil didn't

4:45

want to work for God, he could only

4:47

do what he was permitted to do, like

4:50

any other wicked agent. In

4:52

that way, through this curious, fascinating,

4:54

complicated doctrine of providence, dualism was

4:57

avoided. The devil was always subordinate

4:59

to God. Nonetheless,

5:01

the devil could intervene with God's

5:04

permission in all sorts of interesting

5:06

and extraordinary ways. And people in

5:08

the Tudor and Stuart period were

5:10

alive to these interventions, I think

5:12

much more than we are. And

5:16

they incorporated the devil's activity

5:18

as part of their understanding

5:20

of the world. And

5:23

the feeling I get about the

5:25

devil really is that he helped

5:27

to expand possibilities. He expanded explanations

5:29

for people. So that things

5:32

today that we might only interpret

5:34

in naturalistic ways might also, in

5:36

the past, have been understood with

5:38

reference to the activities of various

5:41

spirits. But predominantly, the spirit that

5:43

was involved in these expanded understandings

5:45

of what was going on tended

5:48

to be the devil. The devil

5:50

could very physically manifest in the

5:52

world in corporeal form, wasn't he?

5:55

What forms did he take and why in

5:57

this period? The devil

5:59

theoretically... could assume a

6:01

form that manifested itself to

6:03

the external senses. But

6:06

I would quickly caution that most

6:08

people in this period who thought

6:11

carefully and wrote about the Devil

6:13

tended to assume that his ordinary

6:15

operation was invisible, and most of

6:17

the time when he did manifest

6:20

himself he did so as

6:22

an invisible spirit of temptation. That

6:25

said, it was possible theoretically for the

6:27

Devil to appear to the outward senses.

6:30

And when that was the case, he

6:33

might, for some people, for example

6:35

in cases of witchcraft manifest in

6:37

the form of what were sometimes

6:39

described as familiar spirits, or

6:42

he might in different contexts beguile

6:44

people in the disguise of an

6:47

apparition of a saint or

6:49

the ghost or some other

6:51

supernatural presence that

6:53

sought to mislead, to

6:55

deceive. And in

6:57

the case of those who believed

7:00

in the more extreme versions of

7:02

witchcraft theory, the Devil might manifest

7:05

himself physically to witches in order

7:07

to enter compact

7:09

with them or even have sex

7:11

with them in the most extreme

7:13

and lurid and unpleasant instances. But

7:15

those things seem to me to

7:17

be outriders. Those are unusual manifestations

7:19

of the Devil that people typically

7:21

did not expect to take place.

7:24

In this period people were far

7:26

more concerned and wrote far more

7:28

about the Devil's activities inside the

7:30

mind as an

7:33

unseen agent of temptation. I

7:35

mean I'm very struck by you saying people who are

7:37

thinking seriously about this or writing about this,

7:40

and of course that immediately directs us to

7:42

quite a small slither of society. Do

7:45

you think that there is a

7:47

distinction here to be drawn between

7:49

what the elite educated ranks

7:51

of society are concluding about demonology and

7:54

the Devil versus the rest of society?

7:56

Or is this a distinction we need

7:58

to think of in terms of

8:00

the for and after the Reformation or

8:02

are all of these ways of dividing it

8:04

up flawed in some way? I

8:07

think we can think about before and after

8:09

the Reformation for sure and one of the

8:11

things that happens during the Reformation I think

8:14

is that the devil's role as a spirit

8:16

of temptation tends for various reasons to be

8:18

emphasized. These include the

8:20

existence of what were perceived on

8:23

all sides to be false churches.

8:26

How does a false church come about? The

8:29

spirit of delusion perhaps was at

8:31

work. The devil was a spirit of falsehood.

8:33

He was the father of lies and so

8:35

it helped people to understand why seemingly

8:38

sincere and good

8:40

Christians or folk who imagined they

8:42

were Christians came to leave in

8:44

damnable things. So the

8:47

devil was understood very much as the

8:49

spirit behind false belief of all kinds.

8:51

There's an awful lot of false belief

8:53

that people worried about doing the Reformation.

8:55

So I think for that reason and

8:58

for various others you can talk about before

9:00

and after the Reformation with reference to the devil.

9:02

The devil changes but I

9:04

think there's also a distinction

9:06

to make between what we

9:09

might call the understanding of

9:11

ordinary people and the understandings

9:13

of well-educated typically Protestant thinkers

9:15

in England and

9:18

the major distinction that strikes me between

9:21

these two ways of thinking about the

9:23

devil and indeed spirits of all kinds

9:26

is that in cheap print at

9:28

least and I think in folklore to a

9:30

large extent also the devil and

9:33

other spirits tend to be

9:35

much more corporeal, tactile, visible.

9:37

They tend to interact in

9:39

a very direct and sometimes

9:41

physical fashion with real

9:43

people. That's true I

9:46

think of angels. I think it's true of

9:48

ghosts as well, fairies, all manner of spirits

9:50

of people described in

9:53

ballads with other forms of cheap print

9:56

whereas educated folk with one or

9:58

two exceptions. did not discard

10:01

the possibility that spirits might appear

10:03

in this way, but they

10:05

were much more interested in

10:07

spirits as invisible

10:09

entities, as what Joseph Glanville

10:12

described in the later 17th

10:14

century as invisible intelligent agents

10:16

at large in the world.

10:19

And that idea of the

10:21

devil and other spirits as

10:24

invisible intelligent agents, I think was

10:26

much more important and perhaps the

10:28

main way of understanding these things

10:31

among educated folk, whereas for the

10:34

rest of the population, for ordinary

10:36

people, the devil and other

10:38

spirits tended to be much more

10:40

tangible, at least in the

10:43

records that survive and certainly in the printed

10:45

sources that are still with us from that

10:47

time. And in

10:49

that invisible sphere of operation, the

10:52

activity of the devil and his demons could

10:54

be insidious. And I don't understand if they

10:56

could place ideas in the human mind. Is

10:59

this how they explain melancholy, do you think?

11:01

I think the capacity for the devil

11:04

to place thoughts in people's minds was

11:06

part of the understanding of temptation in

11:08

this period. Because one of the things

11:10

that the devil could do as a

11:12

deceiver was intrude his own ideas into

11:14

the heads of mortals in such an

11:16

insidious way and so well

11:19

disguised, that it was

11:21

often difficult to distinguish these

11:23

satanic cognitions from the subject's

11:25

own cognitions. And

11:27

in this way, by invisibly intervening

11:30

in human thought processes, the

11:32

devil could induce people towards

11:35

doing bad things, having bad thoughts, and

11:38

also could pluck at our

11:40

vulnerabilities and our weaknesses as

11:42

part of our fallen nature.

11:45

The devil, invisibly intruding, indiscernible

11:47

satanic thoughts into the mind

11:49

was part of temptation and

11:52

that's an insidious operation. But

11:55

also the devil was believed sometimes

11:57

to flash hideous

11:59

obscene shocking, revolting

12:01

ideas suddenly into people's heads.

12:04

And this is much less subtle

12:06

and it seems to me from

12:08

the devil's perspective rather less effective

12:10

because when people received these thunderbolts

12:12

of obscenity or blasphemy or whatever

12:14

they were obviously satanic. They

12:17

came from somewhere else. They seemed not

12:19

to be insidious and possibly

12:21

one's own thought but actually

12:23

something that shocked, something that repelled and

12:25

the pastoral theology that deals with this

12:27

advised people. If this happens to you,

12:30

if you have a sudden shocking, terrible

12:32

thought then first it

12:34

may not be your thought, it's possible that it comes

12:36

from somewhere else. And if

12:38

you are shocked by this thing

12:40

that suddenly flashes into your mind,

12:42

that's good because it indicates that

12:45

you are not going to be

12:47

inveigled by the devil into acquiescing

12:49

in this dreadful idea.

12:52

It was possible for early modern

12:55

folk, completely rationally, to

12:57

imagine foreign thoughts inside their

12:59

own mind. And today that

13:03

understanding of one's own

13:06

mind might easily be mistaken

13:08

for a symptom of mental illness.

13:11

And I think that indicates the

13:13

separation between ourselves and those in

13:15

the fairly remote past for

13:18

whom the agency of

13:20

Invisible Intelligent Spirits was alive.

13:23

It was a real thing. It

13:25

was possible to have what Charles

13:27

Taylor, the philosopher, has called an

13:29

unbuffered mind, a

13:32

mind that was not self-contained

13:34

but was open to occult

13:36

influences of various kinds, including

13:39

perhaps most importantly the insinuations

13:41

and occasionally the thunder strikes

13:44

of evil spirits. I

13:46

mean it's actually quite helpful, isn't it, to

13:48

be able to think without evil

13:51

thing I thought it wasn't me and

13:53

I'm being tempted towards something but

13:55

this isn't precisely who I am.

13:57

You know It actually is a useful.

14:00

The mechanism to think about oneself

14:02

as actually being on impeached by

14:04

these images that are coming at

14:06

you. Prose. Would deniability.

14:08

Most of the time when. Typically.

14:11

Court devote protestants reflected upon

14:13

these satanic insinuations in the

14:16

mines. Say. Didn't

14:18

think that the Devil's involved

14:20

with.them off the hook because

14:22

they were strongly aware of

14:24

their own fallen nature and

14:26

the idea that men and

14:28

women are an outwardly sinful

14:30

by nature was cited into

14:32

Protestant understandings of him and

14:34

kind. And it was only

14:36

really see the intervention of

14:38

God thank God splice that

14:40

men and women mites obtain

14:42

salvation they could ever merited

14:44

that they might say God's

14:46

goodness be made worthy. So.

14:49

I don't think that's typically English

14:51

Protestants used. The devil is a

14:53

splitting mechanisms. That said, people even

14:56

today will sometimes suddenly shockingly have

14:58

strange thoughts in their minds. It

15:00

certainly happens to me. it happens

15:03

to lots of people. I talked

15:05

about this, and I think that

15:07

the idea of Satanic interventions on

15:10

that times may simply has helped

15:12

people to understand something that happens

15:15

I suspect quite commonly as part

15:17

of human consciousness. And

15:19

at the moment, when these things happen,

15:21

lead tens probably not to talk about

15:23

them. Hey, that's. Because

15:26

we didn't have a language for understanding

15:28

some of the story source says into

15:30

a month. know. one thing that this

15:32

understanding the Devil did give people in

15:34

the past was away at least making

15:36

sense of his expenses. But I think

15:38

by and large the devil was not

15:40

used as a mechanism to shove off

15:42

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about did manifestation of the

17:59

devil in the form of demons. I

18:01

know that James the Sixth, when he wrote

18:04

it, demonology talks about

18:07

incubae and succubi, male and female

18:09

forms of demons respectively. What should

18:11

we know about them? And this

18:13

is perhaps a little bit ahistorical,

18:15

but I wondered as I was

18:17

thinking about it whether we should

18:19

see them as sort of an early example

18:22

of what becomes known as a vampire. I

18:25

think in one sense the

18:28

kind of demonic interventions that

18:30

King James sometimes mentioned related

18:34

directly to vampire beliefs

18:38

in that James interestingly

18:41

and perhaps somewhat atypically claimed that

18:43

it was possible for demons to

18:45

possess the bodies of the dead.

18:47

And he goes into a little

18:50

detail about this. He suggests for

18:52

instance that this could happen to

18:54

any dead person with

18:56

God's permission if the devil were

18:59

inclined and permitted to take possession

19:01

of the body. And I think

19:03

the instance that James uses is

19:05

possessed corpses actually opening the doors

19:08

of people's houses. And I

19:10

think that is similar to the

19:12

theological understanding of what became

19:15

known later as vampires or

19:17

revenants. They were

19:19

simply corpses not resurrected

19:21

by the devil but

19:23

reanimated, possessed, occupied. And

19:26

I imagine jerked about like grotesque

19:28

puppets by evil spirits.

19:31

And I think in that regard, yes,

19:33

James is tapping

19:36

into a tradition that is associated with

19:38

the vampire as an animated corpse brought

19:40

back not to life but to some

19:42

grotesque semblance of life by

19:45

its occupation by the devil. I think

19:47

in other respects James

19:50

and most early modern writers

19:52

on witchcraft were confronted with something

19:55

of a problem when it came

19:57

to the physical manifestations of the

19:59

devil. for the reasons I've already touched

20:01

upon. In English demonology,

20:03

certainly, and I'm thinking here of

20:05

people like William Perkins and Thomas

20:08

Keeper a little bit later, the

20:10

expectation that the devil was

20:12

primarily a spiritual entity who operated normally

20:14

inside the mind led to the development

20:17

of the idea of a satanic pact

20:19

between the devil and the witch is

20:21

something that could happen inside the mind.

20:23

It didn't require any external manifestation of

20:26

the devil at all, and

20:28

I think that is rather

20:30

indicative of the emphasis within

20:33

English Protestantism of an invisible

20:35

devil as a spirit of

20:37

temptation. It makes

20:39

a problem, I think, for people

20:41

who want to take seriously the

20:43

allegations of ordinary people against supposed

20:46

witches in this period, because ordinary

20:48

people, as I've indicated already, tended

20:50

to imagine spirits or demon-like wicked

20:52

creatures that may or may not

20:54

have been manifestations of the devil

20:57

in much more concrete terms. When ordinary

20:59

people thought about witches and the spirits

21:01

that were attached to witches, they tended

21:03

to think of them as

21:06

things that could scuttle down the chimney or

21:08

come in through the window or appear in

21:10

a field when you're walking at night, and

21:14

that isn't really the way that educated,

21:16

devout English Protestants thought about the

21:19

devil. It was quite hard to

21:21

square those two understandings. Do

21:23

we have evidence of popular belief

21:26

in revenants in the undead, the

21:28

walking dead, zombies, whatever you want

21:30

to call them today, as well

21:32

as seeing it represented in some

21:35

high-level demonologies like that by King

21:37

James? I think in

21:39

the late Middle Ages there

21:41

are, in some collections of

21:43

fabulous stories, accounts of zombie-like

21:45

creatures that were understood

21:48

as the

21:50

roaming dead, probably possessed by

21:52

evil spirits, and often spreading

21:54

diseases and just appearing in,

21:56

as you can imagine, hideous

21:58

stinking forms. I

22:01

don't know of many accounts of

22:03

that type that survive from the

22:05

later period that is my main

22:07

business. I wouldn't be surprised if

22:09

such stories were still circulating, but

22:11

I don't know of them in

22:13

any detail. The idea of the

22:15

reanimated corpse in my own research

22:17

has occurred seldom, and when you

22:19

come across it tends to be

22:21

as a theoretical option in the

22:23

work of scholars

22:25

like King James. I think

22:27

Thomas Brand, a bit later

22:29

in the 1640s, also considered

22:33

the possibility that demons might sometimes

22:35

occupy the bodies of corpses. But

22:38

that's really quite an exotic idea

22:40

that maybe wasn't even mainstream for

22:42

Protestant intellectuals in this period. And

22:45

possibly it persisted in popular culture. I've not

22:47

come across much evidence of it, I have

22:49

to say. What I've

22:51

come across evidence for is not the determinant of

22:54

whether or not things were believed in at the

22:56

time. In some of your

22:58

work, without a tool diminishing or

23:00

dismissing early modern ideas, you've thought

23:03

about how modern medical research can

23:05

give a different conceptual framework to

23:07

some of these ideas of what people might have

23:10

thought of as reverential vampires at the time. How

23:13

in other words can different conceptual frameworks

23:15

explain the same phenomenon? I think

23:17

it happens all the time. People have

23:19

spooky experiences, and back at the

23:21

turn of the last century, William

23:23

James, the view that what he

23:25

described as religious experiences often involving

23:28

supernatural presences of various kinds had

23:30

the quality of seeming intensely real

23:32

to those that experienced them. And

23:35

James, at least, was clear that these

23:37

are real things. People really have these

23:39

experiences. The question that

23:42

follows is, are these merely events

23:44

inside the mind, or do

23:46

they relate to something that's going on externally?

23:48

And as a naturalist myself, I would say

23:50

no. We have to assume that these things

23:52

happen only inside the mind. That

23:55

said, if we assume that spooky

23:57

experiences happen to various people... different

24:00

times in different contexts,

24:02

then yes, those speaking experiences could

24:04

be framed. They could be made

24:06

sense of in various ways. And

24:09

a good example of this is

24:11

a quite common sleep disorder that

24:13

today I think is normally described

24:15

as sleep paralysis disorder. And it

24:18

affects a sizable minority of the

24:20

population. It's affected myself. And

24:22

what happens is that you wake up

24:24

and you find yourself unable to move

24:26

in the most mild versions of this

24:28

syndrome. In more extreme cases, you

24:31

might wake up and feel there's a pressure

24:33

on your chest. And in the worst cases,

24:35

you might wake up with this pressure on

24:37

your chest and feel

24:39

terrified. You might imagine that

24:41

something dreadful is coming towards

24:43

you. And that

24:46

experience, which today is recognized

24:48

as sleep paralysis disorder and

24:51

is explained as a sleep

24:53

dysfunction, was described

24:55

by people in the early

24:57

modern period variously as a

25:00

kind of bewitchment. It crops

25:03

up sometimes in accusations of

25:05

witchcraft. And also I

25:07

think mostly in Eastern Europe, and

25:10

perhaps a bit later in the 18th century,

25:12

those same symptoms are described as vampire attacks.

25:16

And of course, those symptoms could be

25:18

understood as simply an

25:20

assault by the devil involving

25:23

neither vampires or witches. And

25:26

if you've had the experience, I

25:28

think you would vouch that actually

25:30

that's pretty convincing explanation. Actually, it's

25:32

quite emotionally satisfying, because

25:34

the experience is rather terrifying.

25:37

Unfortunately for me, I don't

25:40

have those explanations available. Or maybe I should

25:42

say it's fortunate for me that I don't.

25:45

I have to rely upon what I

25:47

understand of modern sleep science. All that

25:49

I've got to explain these things is

25:51

this thing I call sleep paralysis disorder.

25:54

But that does illustrate I think the

25:56

way in which identical symptoms in different

25:58

contexts at different times. might

26:00

be understood quite nationally

26:03

within the framework

26:05

of beliefs within those particular times. But

26:08

we can assume that people are describing essentially

26:11

the same thing. You mentioned

26:13

early on providence and

26:15

I wonder if you can sort of

26:18

make sense for me of the relationship

26:20

between providence and all this interventionist supernatural

26:22

activity, the extent to which the

26:25

devil is permitted to intervene by God.

26:27

In terms of early modern thinking, how

26:29

did this all add up? The

26:32

doctrine of providence had all kinds of profound

26:34

consequences for the way that people understood the

26:36

world. One of these was that it

26:38

provided a means by

26:41

which extraordinary sites and

26:43

events might be understood.

26:46

For instance during the English Civil Wars

26:48

there were accounts of armies fighting battles

26:50

in the sky, most famously, above the

26:52

site of the Battle of Edge Hill

26:54

in 1642. Now those remarkable

26:57

and spooky, we might

27:00

say, supernatural occurrences

27:02

could be understood within

27:04

the framing of providence

27:06

as divine portents or

27:09

warnings or indications of

27:11

God's displeasure because

27:14

God was capable as

27:17

the governor of the world, sometimes

27:19

to send extraordinary signs of this

27:21

kind in order to communicate something

27:24

important to men and women. One

27:27

thing that providence did was provide

27:29

a rational framework, I think, for

27:31

making sense of extraordinary reports of

27:33

this kind. Now interestingly another effect

27:36

of providence, it seems to me,

27:38

was actually to imbue a

27:41

supernatural significance, a religious significance,

27:44

to what we might think of as mundane events,

27:47

a dramatic storm that perhaps accompanied

27:49

a person's death might be understood

27:51

as simply a storm or as

27:54

something providential. It might be taken the

27:56

displeasure of God at the person's life

27:59

or it might indicate that

28:01

nature itself with God's permission

28:04

was expressing its sadness

28:06

at the passing of this person. When Oliver

28:08

Cromwell died in 1658, a few days

28:12

earlier there was a terrible storm

28:14

which was variously reported in providential

28:17

terms by Cromwell's enemies as signs

28:19

of the devil coming to reclaim

28:21

him with God's permission or

28:24

as an indication of the

28:27

earth itself mourning the death of

28:29

this great leader. So

28:31

providence could be understood in different ways that

28:33

were attached to things that perhaps today we

28:35

wouldn't even think of in

28:37

supernatural terms at all because after all it was

28:39

just a storm a few days before somebody died.

28:42

So one of the effects of providential

28:44

thinking I think was to

28:46

instill in natural events and

28:49

sometimes we might think today

28:51

really quite commonplace events a

28:54

religious meaning. So providence could make

28:56

sense of the extraordinary but also

28:58

it could make the apparently ordinary

29:01

significant in quasi supernatural

29:03

wise. Well thank

29:05

you for this tour around

29:07

the gobsmackingly strange beliefs of

29:09

a previous age that nevertheless

29:12

gives us a way into understanding their

29:14

world and as you said at the

29:17

very beginning of considering not

29:19

exactly what happened but what it meant

29:21

to them. It's been fascinating stuff. Thank

29:23

you so much for your time. Thank

29:25

you very much I've enjoyed talking to you. And

29:34

thanks to you for listening to Not Just the

29:36

Tudors from History Hit and also

29:38

to my researcher Alice Smith and

29:40

my producer Rob Weinberg. We

29:42

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