Medieval Ghost Stories: An Anthology of Miracles, Marvels and Prodigies by Andrew Joynes

Author:Andrew Joynes [Joynes, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Literature & Fiction, History & Criticism, Movements & Periods, Medieval, History, World, Criticism & Theory
ISBN: 9781782045038
Amazon: B00RKXXTOY
Publisher: Boydell Press
Published: 2001-05-02T22:00:00+00:00

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 ignorance, 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.

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