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Officially, we Britons
have been Christians

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for more than 1,500 years...

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.. but scratch the surface,

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and you'll find our ancestors
believed in far more

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than Christ and the cross.

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Pagan gods, witches,
demons, evil spirits,

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were all proclaimed
as terrifying fact.

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Now I want to uncover what beliefs
and fears really built Britain.

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'This week, along with a team
of top historians,

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' I'm investigating the dark superstitions
we once had about dead bodies.'

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I'll be discovering
why our ancestors were

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so scared of corpses they'd
mutilate them in their graves.

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What power enabled a dead body
to convict a murderer?

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If at any point the corpse began to
bleed, this would be seen as a sign of guilt.

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Why would our forefathers
think a corpse was full of life?

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It's almost breathing.

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'And when did you need
to kill someone a second time?'

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He's certainly not going
to rise from the dead again now.

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In sure and certain hope
of the resurrection to eternal life

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through Our Lord Jesus Christ,
we commend to Almighty God,

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our brother Anthony,

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and we commit his body to the ground.

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Earth to earth.

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Ashes to ashes.

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Dust to dust...

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What happens to us when we die
is a question that's intrigued

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and perplexed humankind
more than any other.

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Even today when scientists
paint a bleak picture of death

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being the end of everything,

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there are still millions of people

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who cliing to a belief
in the afterlife.

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But for our ancestors, this didn't
just mean an everlasting soul.

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It meant the body lived on too.

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The idea of the body being needed
after death is age-old.

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Thousands of years ago, the ancient
Egyptians lavished fortunes

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mummifying the deceased
for the next world.

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But here in Britain
we had a nasty habit

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of attacking dead bodies,
rather than preserving them.

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It's a tradition that started
back in pagan times,

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and continued right through
to the 19th century.

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'I want to find out what this
macabre practice was all about

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'and why our ancestors
thought it was necessary.

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'So I've come to London's East End
to meet historian Dr Mark Robson.

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'He's been researching
one of the last known cases

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'of corpse mutilation.

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'Just 200 years ago,
the body of a dead man

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'was paraded along these streets...

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'..and then staked
through the heart'

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We're talking about someone
called John Williams.

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He was thought to have been the
murderer of at least seven people.

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Where this blue partition now is,
next to the pub,

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used to be a draper's shop
of the Marr family,

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and that was the first
set of victims.

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John Williams was arrested,

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but before his trial,
he committed suicide in prison.

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His corpse was then subjected to
a barbaric centuries-old practice.

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The ritual began with his corpse
being loaded on a cart.

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It was then paraded
through the streets

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in front of thousands of people.

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So, this is the place where
the most important event of all

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happened in this parade.

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Because once Williams's body
reached this point,

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a particular kind of ritual
had been prepared for it.

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This is where the body gets staked.

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So the staking took place
on this crossroads?

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Yeah. Right in the middle there.

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By the time the parade arrived
coming up this street,

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the grave had already been
dug in preparation for it.

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But this isn't a proper grave.

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This is a small hole into which
the body had to be forced.

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At that point, the stake is driven
through your back...

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..then you're quickly buried again,
first in quicklime...

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..then in soil.

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It's quite extraordinary, isn't it,

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to think that 200 years ago,
slap-bang there in the middle

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of this crossroads,
there's some bloke with a stake?

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Absolutely.

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How high up did the stake stick?

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There was enough of the stake left
to still appear above ground level,

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to act as a constant reminder
of what it was

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that had happened on this spot.

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But what makes this macabre story
even more astonishing

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is that this wasn't
an isolated incident.

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We know of at least
seven other stakings,

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bizarrely all suicides, that
took place around the same time.

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BELLS PEAL

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And as the parliamentary archives
reveal,

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the British Government
was well aware of what was going on.

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There's lots of evidence, particularly
in the East Anglia region,

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where there are at least
half a dozen that are recorded.

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What have you got?

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This is a piece from
the Ipswich Journal from 1779

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in which it takes us through
the case of Sell and Carter

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and it tells us that Sell
"took a dose of arsenic

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"and he expired about
seven o'clock in the evening.

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"The coroner's inquest sat
on the body and brought in

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"their verdict self - murder,
in consequence of which

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"he was buried in the King's highway

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"and a stake driven
through his body."

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Got another one here, Mary Turrel.

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"The unfortunate wretch took poison.
A coroner's inquest was held.

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"When the jury gave their verdict,
on the same evening

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"she was buried in the highroad with
a stake driven through her body."

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What intrigues me is that it's
not just kind of daft old peasants

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who are believing this.

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You've got the coroner, you've got
the jury all buying into it.

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The authorities seem to be
colluding in this practice.

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Absolutely, yeah.

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And in the end it has to be a higher
authority which puts an end to it.

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And so in 1823, we actually get
an act passed which specifically

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outlaws this part
of the punishment of criminals.

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And it talks very specifically
about the stake.

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So what's it say?

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"That such coroner or other
officer shall give directions for

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"the private interment of the
remains of such person, "felo de se".

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"Without any stake being driven
through the body." Yeah.

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It's this mark of a superstitious
attitude towards the body

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that gets outlawed.

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These stakings were
some of the last cases

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in the macabre history of
British corpse mutilation.

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I want to find out
where this tradition came from.

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Why did our ancestors fear the dead?

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And what was it about suicide
in particular

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that could make your
corpse an object of terror?

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To uncover the answers,
I need to go back in time

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to see when this practice of
corpse mutilation first started.

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'So I'm on my way to see two
remarkable Scottish skeletons

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'from the 2nd century AD...

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'..a time when
we were resolutely pagan.

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'Archaeologist Sue Anderson
was one of the team

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'that excavated
these two decapitated men.'

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These are so weirdly laid out.
I s this how they were found?

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Yes, pretty much so. This one
had his head between his legs.

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The other one was
holding his skull.

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We've seen bodies like this down south
before, in England, in the fourth century.

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These ones are 2nd century,
which is quite early

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for a decapitated body.

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Any idea how old this person was?

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I think he's in his
fifties, possibly slightly older.

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Have you any idea whether
the head was chopped off

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before they were killed, or whether
it was severed after they were dead?

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Well, the evidence suggests
that they were cut off after death.

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And, the reason for that is
we've got several small cuts

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which don't go
right through the neck,

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just as deep as the bone
to begin with,

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and then the final cut goes through.

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It would be difficult to do that

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if somebody was still alive and
kicking.

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So, if you were killing me
in that way...

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It would be three small cuts,
one of which went through,

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but the other two didn't.
It would have been very bloody,

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if the person had been alive, but we
believe that they were dead at the time,

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and because, if you cut somebody
through there when they're alive,

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then you get a lot of blood

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and you wouldn't be able to see
what you were doing.

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So if you wanted to kill them
by removing their head,

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you'd do the traditional
chopping their head off that way.

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Yeah.
What about the other one?

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This one, he's the same age,

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but in this case, he was actually
buried holding his head to one side.

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Why?

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Well, it may be something
to do with the Celtic religions

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where a severed head was seen as
quite a powerful object,

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possibly to do with magic,
possibly to do with healing,

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but there are other
theories about that.

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Like what?

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Well, the suggestion that he might
have had his head cut off

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to stop him walking among
the living, as a ghost.

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That's quite a popular theory.

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So the practice of mutilating
a corpse to prevent it

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rising from the dead could date back
more than 2.000 years,

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and the stakings suggest it lasted
deep into the 19th century.

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'So what was going on
in the minds of our ancestors?

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'Why did they believe
a corpse could live again?

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'And what did they fear
it would do?

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'I've come to Northumberland

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'to meet Professor John Blair
at Alnwick Castle.'

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Morning, Tony!

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'He thinks an account of a servant's
death in the 12th century

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'could yield vital clues.

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'It was written by a contemporary
historian, William of Newburgh,

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'when Britain wasn't pagan,
but so fervently Christian

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'that Richard the Lionheart was spreading
the faith through the bloody Crusades.'

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Here is William of Newburgh's story,

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and he describes how a man of
bad life came to the castle

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and then he married,
but William says that

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that was actually a disaster for him,
because he heard things

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about his wife and became suspicious,
and so he told her

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he was going to go away for
a few days, but in fact,

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he crept back secretly
and cliimbed into the room

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and got up and hid in the rafters.

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All right, I'm this bloke.

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Yep, you go up to the roof.

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Up here we've got the rafters.

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Right, I'm the bloke
watching his wife.

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The wife's committing adultery,
with a young man

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and you get so angry that you forget
you're perched on a rafter,

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you fall off
and you crash down into the room.

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You're horribly injured.

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Not dead?

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Not dead, just injured,

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and his wife pretends to be anxious

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and she comforts him,
but he pushes her away.

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"Oh, go away, you adulterous whore!"

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And the wife says,"You've hit your
head and you're seeing things."

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Oh, I am!

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So you're carried off to bed
and the priest comes

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and offers you the last rites.

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I don't want them!
I'll have them tomorrow.

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Yes,...
but by tomorrow, he's dead.

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So he never gets the sacrament,
and he dies during the night,

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but despite that,
he's given Christian burial

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and he's taken off
to the churchyard.

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Dying without taking the last rites
was considered

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a terrible thing in
12th-century Britain.

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It meant the soul couldn't pass
securely through to the next life.

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Newburgh's account reveals
that the people of Alnwick

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were about to find out
just how terrifying

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the consequences could be.

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The night after the funeral,

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the dead man got up out of the grave
and he walked around the town.

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And what did the people of the town
think of that?

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They ran into their houses
and they bolted the doors.

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I'm not surprised!

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But it didn't do them any good

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because the air became infected
by the putrid corpse...

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.. so that there was a plague.

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Many people died
and quite a lot more got ill

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and those who survived
mostly ran away.

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So, after a few days,
the town was almost deserted.

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The walking corpse appeared
to be hellbent on killing

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all who lived here.

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But what could the villagers do
to slay this unholy monster?

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Their solution was truly gruesome.

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Two young men whose father
had died because of this

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took the law into their own hands
and they got a mattock,

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came down to the graveyard
and started to open the grave.

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00:13:43,250 --> 00:13:45,598
It's like a Hammer horror,
isn't it?

239
00:13:47,178 --> 00:13:50,073
William then says that
when they uncovered the corpse,

240
00:13:50,074 --> 00:13:52,768
they found that it was
horribly bloated and swollen

241
00:13:52,769 --> 00:13:54,000
and the face was red.

242
00:13:54,008 --> 00:13:54,786
Yes?

243
00:13:54,906 --> 00:13:57,841
And, the shroud in which the body
had been wrapped was torn to shreds.

244
00:14:02,562 --> 00:14:06,268
And this is where the story ends,
because the two brothers carried

245
00:14:06,269 --> 00:14:09,612
the body out of the town
and they built a big pyre to burn it.

246
00:14:10,008 --> 00:14:12,250
But then they realised
they couldn't burn the body

247
00:14:12,251 --> 00:14:14,048
until they'd taken the heart out.

248
00:14:14,056 --> 00:14:15,551
So they got their mattock,...

249
00:14:15,671 --> 00:14:16,905
cut open the side of the body...

250
00:14:18,353 --> 00:14:20,024
..took out the heart..

251
00:14:20,667 --> 00:14:22,859
and throw it on the fire.

252
00:14:24,236 --> 00:14:27,278
And as the heart burnt,
all the bad air blew away

253
00:14:27,764 --> 00:14:29,357
and the sick people recovered

254
00:14:29,530 --> 00:14:33,510
and the town was back again on
its feet after this awful plague.

255
00:14:36,308 --> 00:14:38,280
This isn't a ghost story.

256
00:14:38,768 --> 00:14:42,637
This is about a fear that
the dead can physically rise

257
00:14:42,638 --> 00:14:46,160
out of their graves
in order to harm people.

258
00:14:46,174 --> 00:14:47,948
When the people here in Alnwick

259
00:14:47,957 --> 00:14:51,248
opened the coffin of their
plague- breathing corpse,

260
00:14:51,368 --> 00:14:53,464
they believed they had
physical evidence

261
00:14:53,472 --> 00:14:56,418
that this was a fact
and not fiction.

262
00:14:56,538 --> 00:14:59,389
I want to find out exactly
what it was they saw

263
00:14:59,405 --> 00:15:03,361
and what they thought their
undead creature really was.

264
00:15:04,749 --> 00:15:07,934
'I'm about to conduct
my own gruesome experiment

265
00:15:07,935 --> 00:15:11,939
'to find out why a corpse
can seem very much alive.'

266
00:15:14,261 --> 00:15:16,960
I'm trying to uncover why we Britons

267
00:15:16,968 --> 00:15:20,340
have such a lurid history
of corpse mutilation.

268
00:15:20,341 --> 00:15:23,543
From the Romans
right up until the 19th century,

269
00:15:23,663 --> 00:15:28,218
our ancestors butchered dead bodies
to keep the living safe.

270
00:15:30,322 --> 00:15:33,503
My quest has led me
to 12th-century Alnwick -

271
00:15:33,623 --> 00:15:37,800
a town that was terrorised
by a plague- breathing corpse.

272
00:15:39,872 --> 00:15:42,380
When the good people of Alnwick
dug up the body

273
00:15:42,381 --> 00:15:45,649
in order to slay the corpse,
they saw something

274
00:15:45,650 --> 00:15:49,289
that made them believe
that body had lived on after death.

275
00:15:49,290 --> 00:15:53,010
But what was it they saw that made
them believe that that was possible?

276
00:15:55,728 --> 00:15:57,062
To find out,

277
00:15:57,070 --> 00:16:00,665
I'm going to dig up a body
that's been buried for three weeks.

278
00:16:02,970 --> 00:16:06,890
Doctor Anna Williams and Doctor Karl
Harrison, of the forensic department

279
00:16:06,906 --> 00:16:12,070
at Cranfield University, have come
along to help me examine the corpse.

280
00:16:13,532 --> 00:16:19,974
There's a three-week-old pig
under here,... somewhere.

281
00:16:20,094 --> 00:16:21,971
We've chosen a pig...

282
00:16:22,300 --> 00:16:25,489
because apparently it decays
in a similar way to...

283
00:16:25,609 --> 00:16:27,546
a human being.

284
00:16:27,756 --> 00:16:32,342
It's one that was shot
because its leg was broken.

285
00:16:32,582 --> 00:16:34,614
I've no idea
what it's going to be like.

286
00:16:34,810 --> 00:16:36,940
I've never done
anything like this before.

287
00:16:38,197 --> 00:16:41,195
Oh, the lid's coming up.
Oof!

288
00:16:42,573 --> 00:16:43,547
Shall I take it off?

289
00:16:43,557 --> 00:16:44,269
Yes.

290
00:16:46,592 --> 00:16:50,986
'The pig has been wrapped in
a cotton shroud and buried in earth,

291
00:16:51,018 --> 00:16:53,663
'like most 12th-century corpses.

292
00:16:53,783 --> 00:16:56,772
'Our box is simply
to stop animals eating it.'

293
00:16:57,663 --> 00:16:59,880
These mildew patches...

294
00:17:00,667 --> 00:17:05,238
If you, er, if you feel the top,
you feel there's still...

295
00:17:05,358 --> 00:17:08,997
a lot of tension there,
of gaseous decomposition.

296
00:17:09,251 --> 00:17:13,411
It's taut, isn't it, under
the shroud? Like a big balloon.

297
00:17:13,817 --> 00:17:17,929
Ooh! Oof...
There it goes.

298
00:17:18,604 --> 00:17:20,243
There we go.

299
00:17:20,363 --> 00:17:22,895
Oh, I got a handful of maggots here,
look.

300
00:17:22,896 --> 00:17:24,968
It's crawling with them
down this end.

301
00:17:24,969 --> 00:17:26,644
Phwoar! Oh, I got a fair sniff.

302
00:17:26,645 --> 00:17:27,982
I think
you're down at the snout end.

303
00:17:27,998 --> 00:17:29,714
Oh, dear. Dear, oh, dear. Yeah.

304
00:17:33,500 --> 00:17:35,307
Eurgh...

305
00:17:36,215 --> 00:17:37,297
Ugh.

306
00:17:37,757 --> 00:17:39,377
Very taut and bloated.

307
00:17:39,378 --> 00:17:42,086
Yeah. Every time I breathe in,
it makes me want to gag.

308
00:17:43,580 --> 00:17:47,987
'Rather than wasting away, the pig
i s actually surprisingly big.

309
00:17:48,346 --> 00:17:52,113
'This is due to the gases produced
when flesh decomposes

310
00:17:52,114 --> 00:17:55,746
'getting trapped within the carcass,
causing it to swell.'

311
00:17:56,997 --> 00:18:00,602
What happens to all this gas
that's inside it?

312
00:18:00,722 --> 00:18:03,990
Well, there are only really one
or two places that it can come out,

313
00:18:04,110 --> 00:18:08,761
and that could make it sound
as though it was still alive.

314
00:18:08,881 --> 00:18:13,654
If it comes out the mouth,
it might grunt...or the other end.

315
00:18:13,870 --> 00:18:15,664
That would be creepy, wouldn't it?

316
00:18:15,665 --> 00:18:18,429
If you'd dug up a body
and it farted! Oh, my, oh, my!

317
00:18:19,662 --> 00:18:21,722
You can see it's bloody bubbles

318
00:18:21,738 --> 00:18:24,091
that are actually coming
out of the nose, can't you?

319
00:18:24,461 --> 00:18:25,666
It's almost breathing.

320
00:18:26,196 --> 00:18:28,240
I magine if you're
a 12th-century peasant

321
00:18:28,562 --> 00:18:32,257
and you saw someone who had
been in a grave for three weeks

322
00:18:32,265 --> 00:18:35,398
and their mouth was bubbling
with this bloody stuff.

323
00:18:36,482 --> 00:18:41,796
Actually the hair hasn't decayed
or broken up or anything, has it?

324
00:18:41,804 --> 00:18:43,916
Not at all.
Very resilient in the grave

325
00:18:43,924 --> 00:18:47,097
and would be around for some time,
as would the skin be.

326
00:18:47,121 --> 00:18:50,612
And I believe that
people used to think that the hair

327
00:18:50,613 --> 00:18:52,529
continued to grow after death

328
00:18:52,649 --> 00:18:56,892
because it looked longer than when
they'd last seen the person alive,

329
00:18:56,940 --> 00:18:59,467
And,... but that's just caused

330
00:18:59,486 --> 00:19:03,603
by the skin shrinking back,
due to dehydration.

331
00:19:03,619 --> 00:19:05,059
The same thing with the nails.

332
00:19:05,060 --> 00:19:09,562
The skin around the cuticles shrinks
back, making the nails look longer.

333
00:19:09,777 --> 00:19:12,475
But you can see why,
if you'd just dug up a person

334
00:19:12,476 --> 00:19:14,002
and all this was going on,

335
00:19:14,010 --> 00:19:18,134
you'd think that under the ground
they'd been chomping at the shroud

336
00:19:18,254 --> 00:19:21,217
and trying to get it off,
and still bleeding...

337
00:19:24,314 --> 00:19:27,360
When the two brothers
dug up the corpse at Alnwick,

338
00:19:27,361 --> 00:19:30,440
they cut open the body
to take out the heart

339
00:19:30,560 --> 00:19:34,365
But slicing the flesh may have
given them even more reason

340
00:19:34,366 --> 00:19:36,926
to think this corpse
was still alive.

341
00:19:40,072 --> 00:19:41,275
Oh, that's really bubbling,
i sn't it?

342
00:19:41,276 --> 00:19:43,801
You can see the amount of gas that's
still trapped within the tissues.

343
00:19:43,809 --> 00:19:47,113
Yeah, yeah.
You can really see, can't you,

344
00:19:47,114 --> 00:19:50,164
what it would have been like
if that was coming out of the mouth

345
00:19:50,172 --> 00:19:52,822
of a dead body that had been
underground for three weeks?

346
00:19:53,136 --> 00:19:55,639
You'd be really freaked out,
wouldn't you?

347
00:19:55,759 --> 00:19:56,678
Absolutely.

348
00:19:57,393 --> 00:20:00,696
It's easy to understand why,
800 or 900 years ago,

349
00:20:00,816 --> 00:20:04,707
our ancestors would have thought
there was still life in corpses.

350
00:20:05,050 --> 00:20:08,771
You've got the bubbling blood
round the mouth and the nose,

351
00:20:08,772 --> 00:20:09,950
lots of hair.

352
00:20:09,951 --> 00:20:11,648
If it had been a human being,

353
00:20:11,656 --> 00:20:14,893
the nails would have been
appearing to grow,

354
00:20:15,013 --> 00:20:17,658
and this bloating
is really quite interesting

355
00:20:17,674 --> 00:20:22,699
because it makes the body
really look quite sleek and alive.

356
00:20:22,700 --> 00:20:25,239
This pig may be dead,

357
00:20:25,251 --> 00:20:28,374
but it wouldn't be difficult
to believe it was still alive.

358
00:20:29,837 --> 00:20:32,559
So it was our ancestors'
lack of knowledge

359
00:20:32,560 --> 00:20:35,322
of how the human body decays
after death

360
00:20:35,323 --> 00:20:38,713
that helped fuel beliefs
that corpses can live on.

361
00:20:40,440 --> 00:20:42,455
But what was it
the two brothers thought

362
00:20:42,456 --> 00:20:44,771
this undead creature actually was

363
00:20:44,772 --> 00:20:46,485
when they uncovered it?

364
00:20:47,593 --> 00:20:50,093
Today,
the word zombie springs to mind.

365
00:20:50,793 --> 00:20:53,652
But this is the language
of 20th-century horror films,

366
00:20:54,199 --> 00:20:57,928
and, of course, our medieval
ancestors didn't go to the movies.

367
00:21:01,059 --> 00:21:04,944
What they did have as a reference,
though, was a book.

368
00:21:05,064 --> 00:21:09,579
A book in which a body rose
from the dead. Not as a ghost,

369
00:21:09,699 --> 00:21:14,436
but - just like their corpse -
as real flesh and blood.

370
00:21:14,556 --> 00:21:17,083
And it was a book
they would have known well,

371
00:21:17,203 --> 00:21:20,269
because it's one of the most
influential in the whole of history.

372
00:21:22,717 --> 00:21:25,456
I'm trying to find out
why our ancestors

373
00:21:25,464 --> 00:21:30,482
were so afraid of dead bodies that
they'd mutilate them in their graves.

374
00:21:30,602 --> 00:21:33,269
I've discovered that a corpse
doesn't always

375
00:21:33,277 --> 00:21:35,441
decompose as you might think.

376
00:21:37,281 --> 00:21:41,592
And this fuelled the belief
our bodies can live on in death.

377
00:21:44,507 --> 00:21:48,886
But what intrigues me
i s what else was behind this belief?

378
00:21:48,895 --> 00:21:51,973
And when it comes to ideas
about what happens to the body

379
00:21:51,978 --> 00:21:56,609
and soul in the afterlife, there's
only one place to go, the Church.

380
00:22:00,806 --> 00:22:05,737
In medieval times, the doctrine of
the Church wasn't open to question.

381
00:22:05,857 --> 00:22:07,940
Doubt was heresy.

382
00:22:11,032 --> 00:22:14,538
People believed
what they heard here was fact

383
00:22:14,658 --> 00:22:18,902
This is where we could discover
the truth about our creation

384
00:22:18,903 --> 00:22:21,280
and the ends of our mortal lives.

385
00:22:22,699 --> 00:22:27,087
The key part of the medieval
religious service was the mass.

386
00:22:28,031 --> 00:22:29,670
It was based on the idea

387
00:22:29,686 --> 00:22:33,350
of eating the flesh and
drinking the blood of Jesus Christ,

388
00:22:34,635 --> 00:22:38,327
a man who had
miraculously risen from the grave.

389
00:22:41,478 --> 00:22:44,748
To show me what this has to do with
the un-dead in Britain,

390
00:22:44,763 --> 00:22:47,166
Professor Peter Marshall has
invited me to

391
00:22:47,167 --> 00:22:49,343
St Andrew's Church in Chesterton.

392
00:22:50,405 --> 00:22:53,892
Every mass is the performance
of a miracle,

393
00:22:53,907 --> 00:22:55,787
through the words of the mass,

394
00:22:55,803 --> 00:22:58,555
the priest repeating the words
of Jesus from the last supper.

395
00:22:58,675 --> 00:23:02,043
The priest transforms
the bread and wine

396
00:23:02,059 --> 00:23:05,637
into the literal physical body
and blood of Christ.

397
00:23:05,689 --> 00:23:08,268
At the high point of the mass
a bell is rung,

398
00:23:08,276 --> 00:23:10,479
the bread is lifted aloft?

399
00:23:10,704 --> 00:23:14,905
the congregation looks at it
and they are seeing their God.

400
00:23:15,226 --> 00:23:18,849
Jesus's body has become
literally, physically present.

401
00:23:18,865 --> 00:23:22,036
So the Church isn't just
interested in spirituality,

402
00:23:22,037 --> 00:23:23,565
it's interested in the body?

403
00:23:23,573 --> 00:23:26,698
Oh, absolutely. I mean you can't
have Christianity without the body.

404
00:23:26,725 --> 00:23:29,668
Its central idea, of course,
is that God takes a body

405
00:23:29,684 --> 00:23:31,137
in becoming Jesus Christ,

406
00:23:31,153 --> 00:23:34,366
the idea of the incarnation,
and that that body of Jesus,

407
00:23:34,382 --> 00:23:38,500
when it dies on the cross
is, three days later, raised again.

408
00:23:40,666 --> 00:23:43,060
But our ancestors weren't just told

409
00:23:43,076 --> 00:23:45,712
that the corpse of Jesus could
live again,

410
00:23:45,832 --> 00:23:49,221
they too could rise
from the dead when the time came.

411
00:23:50,420 --> 00:23:53,796
If you're looking in that direction,
you would have seen

412
00:23:53,812 --> 00:23:56,225
this fantastic mural

413
00:23:56,345 --> 00:23:59,576
in all its glory, which is,
it's all about bodies, isn't it?

414
00:23:59,587 --> 00:24:03,325
Absolutely, and this is extending
the story of Christ's resurrection

415
00:24:03,479 --> 00:24:06,203
to the general resurrection
of all the dead.

416
00:24:06,323 --> 00:24:08,122
This is what is called
a doom painting

417
00:24:08,138 --> 00:24:10,089
and the word "doom" here
means judgement.

418
00:24:17,817 --> 00:24:20,818
The end of time, when Jesus
returns in majesty,

419
00:24:20,835 --> 00:24:23,917
the graves open
and the bodies rise up,

420
00:24:24,304 --> 00:24:27,228
and the bodies
of those who are saved

421
00:24:27,236 --> 00:24:30,396
are reunited with their souls
and led off to bliss in heaven.

422
00:24:30,516 --> 00:24:32,099
The bodies of those who are damned

423
00:24:32,556 --> 00:24:36,735
are reunited with their souls for
even more intense torments in hell.

424
00:24:40,559 --> 00:24:44,282
And those good and bad are actually
real human beings with real bodies?

425
00:24:44,315 --> 00:24:47,294
Absolutely, it's not, of course,
a doctrine of the Church that

426
00:24:47,295 --> 00:24:50,819
the dead would walk again physically
before the day of the resurrection,

427
00:24:50,830 --> 00:24:53,807
but if we remember that
people here are every week,

428
00:24:53,927 --> 00:24:56,927
looking at these scenes,
the idea of the body

429
00:24:56,937 --> 00:25:00,215
and the body rising from the tomb is
going to be a pretty familiar one.

430
00:25:02,738 --> 00:25:07,098
For our ancestors, death clearly
wasn't the end of the human body,

431
00:25:07,360 --> 00:25:10,335
it had a vital role to play
in the afterlife.

432
00:25:10,364 --> 00:25:13,885
To let us physically meet our maker
on the day of judgement.

433
00:25:14,921 --> 00:25:16,773
But this didn't necessarily mean

434
00:25:16,784 --> 00:25:21,074
that a human corpse would remain
motionless in its grave until then,

435
00:25:21,194 --> 00:25:25,449
because many people believed that
even after its death it retained

436
00:25:25,450 --> 00:25:29,604
some kind of force or spirit
and that energy could get it

437
00:25:29,605 --> 00:25:31,461
to do amazing things,

438
00:25:31,581 --> 00:25:35,325
like communicate with the living
from the other side.

439
00:25:35,595 --> 00:25:38,603
That's incredible, because it
actually feels quite clammy,

440
00:25:38,604 --> 00:25:41,359
although if he was really dead
there would be rigor mortis.

441
00:25:41,479 --> 00:25:46,516
It's a superstition portrayed in
1591 by Britain's greatest writer,

442
00:25:46,540 --> 00:25:50,034
William Shakespeare,
in the tragedy Richard III.

443
00:25:51,560 --> 00:25:54,878
Actress Annabelle Apsion
and a special effects team

444
00:25:54,998 --> 00:25:58,629
are helping me look at the scene in
which the future King Richard III

445
00:25:58,749 --> 00:26:02,485
approaches the corpse
of Henry VI, the man he murdered.

446
00:26:03,978 --> 00:26:05,962
Annabelle researched
this superstition

447
00:26:06,082 --> 00:26:09,333
for her role of Lady Anne with
the Royal Shakespeare Company.

448
00:26:10,657 --> 00:26:13,401
We're about to take the body off
to have him buried

449
00:26:13,434 --> 00:26:15,723
and you make them put him down.

450
00:26:15,731 --> 00:26:17,683
- I'm Richard III?
- Yes, you are.

451
00:26:17,803 --> 00:26:19,384
You're, you're bad.

452
00:26:19,437 --> 00:26:22,975
"Stay, you that bear the corpse,
and set it down."

453
00:26:23,095 --> 00:26:24,714
And then you say...

454
00:26:25,290 --> 00:26:27,741
"My lord, stand back
and let the coffin pass.

455
00:26:27,758 --> 00:26:28,898
"Unmannered dog!

456
00:26:29,018 --> 00:26:31,257
"Stand thou when I command!

457
00:26:31,292 --> 00:26:33,594
"Advance thy halberd higher than my
breast,

458
00:26:33,610 --> 00:26:37,305
"or by St Paul I'll strike thee
to my foot."

459
00:26:37,996 --> 00:26:38,990
That wasn't bad, was it?

460
00:26:39,014 --> 00:26:40,365
Very good.

461
00:26:40,556 --> 00:26:42,002
And now I tell you
to go away.

462
00:26:42,014 --> 00:26:45,045
"Avaunt, thou dreadful minister
of hell, thou has but power

463
00:26:45,046 --> 00:26:49,685
"over his mortal body, his soul thou
canst not have, therefore be gone!"

464
00:26:49,713 --> 00:26:50,704
Which means?

465
00:26:50,824 --> 00:26:54,028
So what she said is that you
could have power over his body,

466
00:26:54,148 --> 00:26:55,871
but not over his soul.

467
00:26:55,887 --> 00:26:58,409
But what now happens,
suggests that his soul is still

468
00:26:58,425 --> 00:27:01,767
in his body because he starts to
bleed when his murderer comes near.

469
00:27:01,945 --> 00:27:03,557
So now the big reveal.

470
00:27:03,573 --> 00:27:05,909
Yes. So now I'm going to say, OK,

471
00:27:05,920 --> 00:27:08,605
if you want to hang around,
see what you've done.

472
00:27:09,036 --> 00:27:11,328
" If thou delight to view
thy heinous deeds

473
00:27:11,336 --> 00:27:14,005
"behold this pattern of
thy butcheries."

474
00:27:14,428 --> 00:27:18,353
So now the blood starts to come out,
which he wasn't expecting.

475
00:27:18,396 --> 00:27:21,103
"Oh, gentlemen, see, see,

476
00:27:21,370 --> 00:27:25,649
"dead Henry's wounds open their
congealed mouths and bleed afresh.

477
00:27:25,905 --> 00:27:28,378
"Blush, blush thou lump of foul
deformity,

478
00:27:28,611 --> 00:27:31,567
for'tis"thy presence that exhales
this blood, from cold

479
00:27:31,687 --> 00:27:33,989
"and empty veins where no
blood dwells."

480
00:27:33,990 --> 00:27:36,109
It would be extraordinary,
wouldn't it,

481
00:27:36,110 --> 00:27:39,214
if you were a really confident
person, you'd killed someone,

482
00:27:39,487 --> 00:27:43,291
you came in to look at their body
and then it started bleeding?

483
00:27:43,411 --> 00:27:47,015
It proves to her that you were
the murderer of her father.

484
00:27:47,275 --> 00:27:52,979
"Thy deed inhuman and unnatural
provokes this deluge most unnatural."

485
00:27:53,099 --> 00:27:55,115
So she's saying this is proof that
you're the killer.

486
00:27:55,452 --> 00:27:58,368
Do you think that
the audience in those days

487
00:27:58,488 --> 00:28:00,560
would have realised
the significance of this,

488
00:28:00,600 --> 00:28:02,520
that it was pointing the finger at me
as the murderer?

489
00:28:02,528 --> 00:28:05,812
Yes, definitely, because this was
a commonly held superstition,

490
00:28:05,820 --> 00:28:09,009
that if you murdered somebody
and you went close and they bled,

491
00:28:09,025 --> 00:28:12,929
that was proof that you were indeed
the murderer. So, yes, they would get that.

492
00:28:14,444 --> 00:28:17,336
I magine how you would feel
if you saw that.

493
00:28:17,456 --> 00:28:20,493
Came into a room, there was a
dead body, and that's what you saw.

494
00:28:23,151 --> 00:28:26,805
So, Shakespeare wasn't using
dramatic licence.

495
00:28:27,466 --> 00:28:30,125
The belief that the corpse
of a murder victim

496
00:28:30,245 --> 00:28:33,958
had the power to identify its killer
was so deeply held,

497
00:28:34,078 --> 00:28:36,914
it was used as evidence
in murder trials,

498
00:28:37,034 --> 00:28:39,538
right up to the 19th Century.

499
00:28:41,915 --> 00:28:44,462
It's an incredible belief.

500
00:28:44,582 --> 00:28:47,908
So what did people think was
actually going on?

501
00:28:48,028 --> 00:28:50,388
Historian
Doctor Lindsey Fitzharris,

502
00:28:50,389 --> 00:28:53,965
and pathologist Doctor Stuart
Hamilton are going to show me.'

503
00:28:55,077 --> 00:28:57,527
This idea that the corpse would
bleed in the presence

504
00:28:57,543 --> 00:29:00,067
of a murderer goes all the way
back to the 6th Century,

505
00:29:00,074 --> 00:29:01,737
just after the fall
of the Roman empire,

506
00:29:02,123 --> 00:29:04,284
and it persists
well into the 19th Century.

507
00:29:04,572 --> 00:29:07,280
So these ideas were very prevalent
and, in fact,

508
00:29:07,281 --> 00:29:08,979
they were given legal recognition,

509
00:29:09,533 --> 00:29:11,107
starting in the 9th Century.

510
00:29:11,131 --> 00:29:12,371
OK, so how did that work?

511
00:29:12,384 --> 00:29:13,942
If I could just step you through it.

512
00:29:13,943 --> 00:29:15,878
If you were the suspect
and you were entering,

513
00:29:15,894 --> 00:29:17,950
you would slowly approach
the corpse.

514
00:29:17,951 --> 00:29:19,560
Rather like Richard III did?

515
00:29:19,680 --> 00:29:21,791
Absolutely, and you would call
out his name

516
00:29:21,829 --> 00:29:24,241
as you circled the bier
two or three times.

517
00:29:24,257 --> 00:29:26,920
Henry, Henry! Yeah.

518
00:29:27,040 --> 00:29:29,192
And then at the end
you would touch the wounds,

519
00:29:29,208 --> 00:29:31,072
or you would even
prod the wounds.

520
00:29:31,088 --> 00:29:34,370
Oh, really? No wonder it started
bleeding if I'm prodding them.

521
00:29:34,587 --> 00:29:35,334
Yeah?!

522
00:29:35,342 --> 00:29:37,599
And if at any point
the corpse began to bleed,

523
00:29:37,607 --> 00:29:39,282
this would be seen
as a sign of guilt.

524
00:29:39,402 --> 00:29:40,700
It's all a bit of a lottery.

525
00:29:40,820 --> 00:29:43,501
You could have five people walking
around the body and feeling it,

526
00:29:43,502 --> 00:29:44,867
who knows when
it's going to bleed?

527
00:29:44,868 --> 00:29:48,498
Absolutely, it depends on
what injury they touch themselves,

528
00:29:48,506 --> 00:29:51,888
it depends on how much blood has
accumulated in that injury.

529
00:29:52,008 --> 00:29:54,712
So, if you're stood on the left
not the right,

530
00:29:54,728 --> 00:29:55,962
you're the one who goes to jail.

531
00:29:56,130 --> 00:29:59,721
I suppose the big question is,
why did people believe that a corpse

532
00:29:59,737 --> 00:30:03,416
might deli berately bleed in order to
point the finger at their murderer?

533
00:30:03,536 --> 00:30:07,473
It revolved around this idea that
as humans we have three parts to us.

534
00:30:07,489 --> 00:30:09,313
Our body, which is corporeal.

535
00:30:09,314 --> 00:30:11,264
Our soul, which is incorporeal

536
00:30:11,272 --> 00:30:13,991
and this middling substance that
connects everything

537
00:30:13,992 --> 00:30:15,152
and it's a life force.

538
00:30:17,325 --> 00:30:19,800
It's this life force
that contains the memories

539
00:30:19,801 --> 00:30:21,348
and the passion of the person

540
00:30:21,598 --> 00:30:23,437
and if a person's life is cut short,

541
00:30:23,959 --> 00:30:27,081
that life force lingering around
the body after death,

542
00:30:27,082 --> 00:30:29,725
might become enraged
in the presence of a murderer

543
00:30:29,733 --> 00:30:31,757
and this might cause
the corpse to bleed.

544
00:30:33,037 --> 00:30:37,536
So if a life force or energy was
believed to linger after death,

545
00:30:37,957 --> 00:30:41,007
it wasn't that big a step to think
that a murderer could be

546
00:30:41,008 --> 00:30:43,772
identified by the body
of his victim.

547
00:30:44,447 --> 00:30:48,285
Or that a corpse might need to be
physically staked to the ground

548
00:30:48,545 --> 00:30:50,619
to prevent it
coming back to life.

549
00:30:52,305 --> 00:30:53,999
And that's not all.

550
00:30:54,023 --> 00:30:58,536
Some of our ancestors believed
the vitality in a corpse was so real

551
00:30:59,107 --> 00:31:04,898
it could be physically harvested and
then used in an extraordinary way.

552
00:31:06,235 --> 00:31:09,356
When consumed, it had
healing powers.

553
00:31:09,857 --> 00:31:14,645
Yes, I'm about to find out why
our ancestors believed in eating

554
00:31:14,765 --> 00:31:16,980
the bodies of the un-dead.

555
00:31:18,427 --> 00:31:22,594
I'm finding out why our ancestors
wanted to protect the living

556
00:31:22,714 --> 00:31:24,797
by mutilating corpses.

557
00:31:25,311 --> 00:31:26,946
I've learnt that
many people believed

558
00:31:26,947 --> 00:31:30,597
a life force remained in the body
after death.

559
00:31:30,987 --> 00:31:34,425
It could enable a corpse
to denounce a murderer,

560
00:31:34,545 --> 00:31:35,712
but this wasn't all.

561
00:31:36,318 --> 00:31:39,338
Some people thought
this supernatural energy

562
00:31:39,603 --> 00:31:42,474
also had the power
to heal the sick...

563
00:31:42,594 --> 00:31:45,274
if you could get it inside you.

564
00:31:47,097 --> 00:31:50,630
Medical historian Dr Richard Sugg
is going to show me

565
00:31:50,750 --> 00:31:54,202
some of the stomach-churning
recipes our ancestors used

566
00:31:54,322 --> 00:31:57,161
to transform dead bodies
into medicine.

567
00:31:59,070 --> 00:32:04,087
Astonishingly, cannibal cures were
in widespread use from Roman times,

568
00:32:04,095 --> 00:32:06,698
right up until the 18th Century.

569
00:32:07,592 --> 00:32:10,561
And the key ingredient,
not surprisingly,

570
00:32:10,681 --> 00:32:13,710
was a corpse full of life force.

571
00:32:14,818 --> 00:32:18,234
Ideally, if you had a young man
and he died of a violent death, er...,

572
00:32:18,615 --> 00:32:21,145
and preferably if he hadn't
bled out his blood,

573
00:32:21,265 --> 00:32:24,061
then you had in his body...

574
00:32:24,181 --> 00:32:26,583
the prime essence of human vitality.

575
00:32:26,595 --> 00:32:29,009
There was even a belief that
if he'd lived, say...

576
00:32:29,010 --> 00:32:31,673
He was supposed to live
to say, 80,

577
00:32:31,793 --> 00:32:34,548
and he died when he was 20 -
because he died prematurely,

578
00:32:34,668 --> 00:32:37,896
you could absorb those extra
60 years of vitality

579
00:32:37,897 --> 00:32:39,095
from that man's body.

580
00:32:39,215 --> 00:32:41,918
To us, nowadays, it just
seems like cannibalism, doesn't it?

581
00:32:42,131 --> 00:32:44,581
It was. One of the strange things
about this subject

582
00:32:44,582 --> 00:32:46,966
is it's been almost whitewashed
out of history books,

583
00:32:46,974 --> 00:32:48,774
because people are
embarrassed about it.

584
00:32:49,633 --> 00:32:53,113
Medicinal cannibalism may be
a historical embarrassment

585
00:32:53,731 --> 00:32:58,226
but, in the past, people would do
anything for a cure from the grave.

586
00:32:59,851 --> 00:33:04,152
The sick, for instance, were often
to be found at public executions -

587
00:33:04,272 --> 00:33:07,891
not just to see the blood,
but to drink it.

588
00:33:08,011 --> 00:33:10,521
There are numerous
accounts of people drinking blood

589
00:33:10,533 --> 00:33:14,531
at the scaffolds in Scandinavia,
Germany, Austria,

590
00:33:14,651 --> 00:33:16,735
and even Italy,
actually, as well.

591
00:33:16,855 --> 00:33:19,643
Certainly, there's one account,
at least, of someone at a scaffold

592
00:33:19,659 --> 00:33:23,872
cliutching the dying body
with the neck severed from the head

593
00:33:23,992 --> 00:33:27,237
and just drinking it from the neck
of the criminal in Germany.

594
00:33:29,877 --> 00:33:30,872
OK, you ready?

595
00:33:30,873 --> 00:33:32,387
So here we go.

596
00:33:32,597 --> 00:33:33,778
Gently does it.

597
00:33:34,603 --> 00:33:36,424
'By the 17th Century,

598
00:33:36,597 --> 00:33:38,557
'people thought
that distilling blood

599
00:33:38,677 --> 00:33:41,504
'could make the life force within it
even more potent.'

600
00:33:43,348 --> 00:33:46,075
This is it. This is it. It is a very
different colour

601
00:33:46,099 --> 00:33:48,504
from what we started with.
We're getting that kind of gold.

602
00:33:48,527 --> 00:33:50,816
This, allegedly,
is the colour they associated

603
00:33:50,832 --> 00:33:54,736
with the spirits of the soul.
The blood... The soul in the blood

604
00:33:54,744 --> 00:33:56,835
was supposed to be
something like this colour.

605
00:33:56,836 --> 00:33:58,511
Whoa! Ho- ho- ho!

606
00:33:58,535 --> 00:34:01,089
You can see why people might have
thought they were potent.

607
00:34:01,386 --> 00:34:03,748
You're right - the idea is power.
It smells powerful

608
00:34:03,753 --> 00:34:06,150
and maybe it's powerful.
It's medicine, it tastes bad.

609
00:34:06,270 --> 00:34:06,972
Shall I try it?

610
00:34:07,231 --> 00:34:10,442
I think the smell is nature's way of
telling us,"Don't" really.

611
00:34:11,336 --> 00:34:12,871
Actually, I don't even know
why I asked -

612
00:34:12,872 --> 00:34:14,567
it does smell fairly disgusting.

613
00:34:14,591 --> 00:34:16,422
I guess, if you were desperate enough,
you might do it.

614
00:34:18,233 --> 00:34:21,184
'But the blood was just
the aperitif.

615
00:34:21,594 --> 00:34:23,554
'The life force of a corpse

616
00:34:23,570 --> 00:34:27,613
'could be extracted from all manner
of different body parts.

617
00:34:27,733 --> 00:34:32,568
'Luckily, today we're using a pig
skull, rather than a human one.'

618
00:34:33,618 --> 00:34:36,739
This is coming away really nicely,
actually. I thought that

619
00:34:36,859 --> 00:34:40,096
I'd be no good at this but I've got
loads of shavings already.

620
00:34:40,104 --> 00:34:44,175
What do you think the logic was
behind eating grated skull?

621
00:34:44,176 --> 00:34:47,179
Well, although a skull
looks very dead and very dry -

622
00:34:47,187 --> 00:34:48,806
more than anything
from a corpse, I suppose -

623
00:34:49,125 --> 00:34:52,700
they still believed you could get
vitality out of it, at this stage.

624
00:34:52,820 --> 00:34:55,766
If it had died a violent death,
which was the common instruction

625
00:34:55,886 --> 00:34:58,637
for the type of skull you needed,
then they believed

626
00:34:58,638 --> 00:35:02,004
that this violent death had
conditioned the body of the person,

627
00:35:02,005 --> 00:35:05,722
and the soul had kind of been forced
up into the skull and trapped there,

628
00:35:05,723 --> 00:35:08,628
and it could be trapped for
quite a long time and then tapped.

629
00:35:08,817 --> 00:35:11,971
Who would have looked
to human body parts for a cure?

630
00:35:12,589 --> 00:35:14,404
Far as we know,
pretty much everyone.

631
00:35:14,524 --> 00:35:17,747
We know that Charles II,

632
00:35:17,748 --> 00:35:20,260
Mary - Queen Mary - and William III

633
00:35:20,276 --> 00:35:22,605
were all given preparations
of human skull, for example,

634
00:35:22,797 --> 00:35:24,500
particularly on their deathbeds.

635
00:35:24,620 --> 00:35:26,909
It was so closely associated with Charles,
how was called "the king's drops",...

636
00:35:26,910 --> 00:35:28,992
everyone knew it as
"the king's drops".

637
00:35:30,916 --> 00:35:36,272
But for some, the richest source
of this mysterious curative vitality

638
00:35:36,392 --> 00:35:39,949
was the soft, bloody organ
inside the skull.

639
00:35:41,141 --> 00:35:44,834
This is my favourite now - something
called cerebral pate. And...

640
00:35:44,835 --> 00:35:48,132
I think you just said
"cerebral pate".

641
00:35:48,799 --> 00:35:51,803
Strange, but true. What we've got
here is a pig's brain -

642
00:35:51,923 --> 00:35:55,274
it would have been a human brain -
and we've got some hearts,

643
00:35:55,275 --> 00:35:57,998
not for the heart itself
but for the arteries.

644
00:35:57,999 --> 00:36:02,673
And veins and nerves also
get mashed up into this pate,

645
00:36:02,793 --> 00:36:04,408
in our pestle and mortar here.

646
00:36:04,641 --> 00:36:06,854
The brain is all prepared
earlier, which is nice,

647
00:36:07,207 --> 00:36:10,019
and we'd like an artery
or two out of there.

648
00:36:10,139 --> 00:36:11,636
I can see it sticking out there.

649
00:36:11,637 --> 00:36:14,135
It's waiting for you.
It's begging to be taken out.

650
00:36:14,357 --> 00:36:15,471
There we go.

651
00:36:15,637 --> 00:36:16,942
- Bit of spinal marrow.
- Yeah.

652
00:36:16,950 --> 00:36:18,284
That's the finishing touch - lovely.

653
00:36:18,469 --> 00:36:20,974
So, er, spoons at the ready
and let's go.

654
00:36:22,677 --> 00:36:26,875
I'm not sure I'd be crazy
about eating spoonfuls of this.

655
00:36:28,015 --> 00:36:31,893
'The final stage was to take
this truly organic mush

656
00:36:32,479 --> 00:36:36,600
'and distil it into an even more
concentrated and potent form.'

657
00:36:37,638 --> 00:36:42,395
So we've taken human brain,
spinal cord, heart, lungs.

658
00:36:42,515 --> 00:36:45,046
This is the "creme de la creme"
of the human body, isn't it?

659
00:36:45,166 --> 00:36:46,885
People actually
believed in the soul.

660
00:36:46,893 --> 00:36:49,517
They believed the soul was very
much in the body.

661
00:36:49,518 --> 00:36:52,684
It was a power, it was an entity,
and this is

662
00:36:52,685 --> 00:36:54,880
the distillation of the soul.

663
00:37:01,061 --> 00:37:05,262
The belief in the curative power
of the human body was so strong

664
00:37:05,263 --> 00:37:09,531
that in the 15th Century,
even the dying pope Innocent VIII

665
00:37:09,539 --> 00:37:12,574
was believed to have drunk
the blood of living children,

666
00:37:12,694 --> 00:37:15,454
in a desperate bid
to prolong his life.

667
00:37:16,422 --> 00:37:20,896
But this vitality, or life force,
ironically wasn't so popular

668
00:37:21,225 --> 00:37:22,844
with those about to die.

669
00:37:22,860 --> 00:37:26,492
They wanted full separation
of body and soul.

670
00:37:26,612 --> 00:37:29,197
The only time
they wanted to rise from their grave

671
00:37:29,198 --> 00:37:32,410
was on the day of judgement -
certainly not before.

672
00:37:34,981 --> 00:37:37,897
So, how could you ensure
your soul went to heaven,

673
00:37:38,017 --> 00:37:41,939
while your body remained
undisturbed below ground?

674
00:37:41,940 --> 00:37:45,885
In other words, how could you avoid
becoming one of the undead?

675
00:37:46,005 --> 00:37:50,315
Well, apparently, the answer
was all down to what you did

676
00:37:50,316 --> 00:37:53,128
in those final precious moments.

677
00:38:03,824 --> 00:38:07,651
Let's say that I'm a medieval man
and I'm about to die...

678
00:38:07,771 --> 00:38:09,928
although, actually, I'd have been
one of the lucky ones

679
00:38:09,936 --> 00:38:13,518
because, in those days, most people
would be dead by their mid '30s.

680
00:38:13,519 --> 00:38:15,697
So I'd be a really old bloke.

681
00:38:16,083 --> 00:38:18,171
So I've had this long life

682
00:38:18,179 --> 00:38:21,504
but, nevertheless, I'm really
worried about dying...

683
00:38:21,505 --> 00:38:23,329
not because, like nowadays,

684
00:38:23,330 --> 00:38:25,895
you're concerned that
it's going to take a long time

685
00:38:25,896 --> 00:38:30,318
and it'll be painful and messy,
but because of the procedures.

686
00:38:30,438 --> 00:38:34,972
If I don't get them right,
my soul could be in big trouble.

687
00:38:35,092 --> 00:38:37,555
(INHALES DEEPLY)
OK, this is it!

688
00:38:38,170 --> 00:38:39,697
I'm about to meet my maker.

689
00:38:41,310 --> 00:38:42,717
Goodbye.

690
00:38:49,082 --> 00:38:52,866
'Now that I'm facing my final hours
as a medieval man,

691
00:38:53,300 --> 00:38:56,065
'Professor Peter Marshall
has agreed to guide me

692
00:38:56,066 --> 00:39:00,439
'through the correct religious
protocols to ensure a good death.'

693
00:39:00,559 --> 00:39:02,437
Right, well I'm going to need you,
aren't I?

694
00:39:02,461 --> 00:39:04,099
- You certainly are!
- OK.

695
00:39:04,115 --> 00:39:08,211
So I'm now representing the church.

696
00:39:08,219 --> 00:39:10,271
I'm the village priest,

697
00:39:10,272 --> 00:39:13,343
and here we are in your bed chamber.

698
00:39:13,351 --> 00:39:14,227
Yeah!

699
00:39:14,243 --> 00:39:15,970
Quite a lot of people here,
probably,

700
00:39:15,978 --> 00:39:18,024
all gathered around
the deathbed here

701
00:39:18,025 --> 00:39:20,737
to encourage you to make
the best possible death.

702
00:39:20,857 --> 00:39:22,834
What do you mean,
"the best possible death"?

703
00:39:22,840 --> 00:39:28,029
Well, one that means that your soul
is ready to be received

704
00:39:28,149 --> 00:39:31,612
by God up in heaven. And this is
more difficult than it sounds,

705
00:39:31,628 --> 00:39:34,384
because though this may just
look like an ordinary bed chamber,

706
00:39:34,385 --> 00:39:37,609
this is in fact a battleground -
a spiritual battleground -

707
00:39:37,845 --> 00:39:41,001
and all around us
are invisible forces.

708
00:39:41,121 --> 00:39:44,823
Well, invisible to me, but probably
visible to you, as the dying person.

709
00:39:44,943 --> 00:39:46,660
So while everybody else is going,

710
00:39:46,675 --> 00:39:51,005
"Oh, poor dear, we'll miss him,"
I'm hallucinating this apocalypse?

711
00:39:51,217 --> 00:39:54,742
Either you're hallucinating or you,
in fact, can see these realities

712
00:39:54,743 --> 00:39:56,699
that are usually hidden
from the rest of us.

713
00:39:58,679 --> 00:40:02,037
It was thought that
a medieval person on their deathbed

714
00:40:02,157 --> 00:40:04,126
could sometimes see the devil,

715
00:40:04,127 --> 00:40:08,396
or demons that would stop the spirit
leaving the body in peace.

716
00:40:08,627 --> 00:40:11,979
Correct religious protocols
known as the last rites

717
00:40:11,980 --> 00:40:14,444
could be a way
to protect your spirit

718
00:40:14,460 --> 00:40:17,310
and ensure you didn't become
one of the undead.

719
00:40:19,124 --> 00:40:20,618
And there are really
three of these.

720
00:40:20,626 --> 00:40:23,096
Three sacraments,
or special rituals,

721
00:40:23,097 --> 00:40:25,796
the first of which is confession.
Confession of sins.

722
00:40:25,797 --> 00:40:28,718
You've done this before, many times,
but this is the big one -

723
00:40:28,719 --> 00:40:31,642
this is the final opportunity
to get off your chest

724
00:40:31,643 --> 00:40:33,837
anything that is
weighing down your conscience.

725
00:40:33,838 --> 00:40:34,944
OK.

726
00:40:34,945 --> 00:40:36,549
Right, so let's hear it.

727
00:40:36,860 --> 00:40:38,732
I was a bit grouchy this morning.

728
00:40:38,852 --> 00:40:41,052
(INHALES SHARPLY)
OK, that's pretty bad,

729
00:40:41,053 --> 00:40:43,873
but I think, in the circumstances,
we can... We can forgive it.

730
00:40:43,881 --> 00:40:45,503
So I now absolve you,...

731
00:40:45,511 --> 00:40:47,206
- Yep, yep.
- ..as God's representative.

732
00:40:47,207 --> 00:40:50,840
Ego te absolvo in nomine Patris,
et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.

733
00:40:50,960 --> 00:40:52,735
- OK, we've done that.
- I feel lighter already.

734
00:40:52,751 --> 00:40:54,061
Excellent.

735
00:40:54,077 --> 00:40:57,949
My soul would now be cleansed,
but for our ancestors,

736
00:40:58,069 --> 00:41:01,297
the physical flesh
needed to be sin-free, as well.

737
00:41:01,579 --> 00:41:05,797
Er..., we now move to the next stage,
which involves these -

738
00:41:05,813 --> 00:41:10,691
special oils, with which I am going
to consecrate parts of your body.

739
00:41:10,715 --> 00:41:14,960
This is the ritual known, rather
alarmingly, as "extreme unction".

740
00:41:15,080 --> 00:41:16,426
Why's it extreme?

741
00:41:16,427 --> 00:41:20,010
It's extreme because it's final.
It just means"the last" -

742
00:41:20,018 --> 00:41:22,362
the last anointing of the body.
"Unction" is"anointing".

743
00:41:22,701 --> 00:41:23,910
And where do you anoint me?

744
00:41:23,911 --> 00:41:26,160
Well, we anoint the various
parts of your body

745
00:41:26,161 --> 00:41:30,853
representing the opportunities
for sin, provided by the senses.

746
00:41:30,875 --> 00:41:34,029
- Yeah?
- So we start with the eyes. Yeah.

747
00:41:35,011 --> 00:41:39,304
Nose, mouth, ears, hands.

748
00:41:39,866 --> 00:41:43,433
Even, perhaps, the groin area,
which is an area...

749
00:41:43,457 --> 00:41:45,537
- I'll leave you to do that one, possibly.
- Yes.

750
00:41:45,548 --> 00:41:49,310
And while we do this, we ask God
to forgive you all the sins

751
00:41:49,311 --> 00:41:51,915
that you've caused
through misuse of your senses.

752
00:41:51,916 --> 00:41:53,862
So now we've strengthened the body,

753
00:41:53,982 --> 00:41:56,528
symbolically strengthened the soul,

754
00:41:56,648 --> 00:41:58,553
and the final of the last rites -

755
00:41:58,673 --> 00:42:01,555
the final sacrament -
is the giving of communion.

756
00:42:01,556 --> 00:42:06,157
So I have here in this special
container the consecrated wafer.

757
00:42:06,277 --> 00:42:10,057
Remember, of course, that this is physically,
literally, the body of Christ.

758
00:42:10,225 --> 00:42:12,037
So can I die now?
Feel free.

759
00:42:12,038 --> 00:42:14,111
Actually, I'm feeling quite well
now - I don't think I'm going to...

760
00:42:14,112 --> 00:42:15,818
No, no, time to go.

761
00:42:26,449 --> 00:42:28,347
With all the protocols followed,

762
00:42:28,348 --> 00:42:31,337
my soul, or spirit,
should go to heaven.

763
00:42:31,597 --> 00:42:34,289
My physical body
should now be at rest.

764
00:42:35,800 --> 00:42:38,446
I'd be happy,
and those left on Earth

765
00:42:38,447 --> 00:42:42,394
would know they wouldn't be troubled
by my corpse or spirit.

766
00:42:46,363 --> 00:42:48,988
But what if these procedures
weren't followed?

767
00:42:50,603 --> 00:42:53,273
What happened to you
if you had a bad death?

768
00:42:53,274 --> 00:42:56,211
Well, you might be less likely
to go to heaven, for a start

769
00:42:56,212 --> 00:42:58,409
And a lot of the worry
around bad deaths

770
00:42:58,410 --> 00:43:02,672
seems to reflect a fear of ghosts
returning, to haunt the living -

771
00:43:02,673 --> 00:43:04,698
of spirits
that could not be at rest.

772
00:43:04,699 --> 00:43:06,777
Many ghost stories
from the Middle Ages -

773
00:43:06,778 --> 00:43:08,864
and, indeed, for centuries
afterwards -

774
00:43:08,882 --> 00:43:13,244
involved murder victims,
suicides,

775
00:43:13,364 --> 00:43:15,236
various forms of these bad deaths.

776
00:43:15,252 --> 00:43:18,778
- Like Hamlet's father.
- Absolutely! That's a wonderful example.

777
00:43:18,794 --> 00:43:23,028
Hamlet, of course, returns to
his son, describing his murder

778
00:43:23,037 --> 00:43:26,576
and emphasising how he hasn't had
an opportunity to make a good death.

779
00:43:26,577 --> 00:43:30,239
He's been cut off,
even in the blossoms of his sin.

780
00:43:30,241 --> 00:43:32,892
"Unhouseled, disappointed,
unaneled."

781
00:43:33,012 --> 00:43:33,850
What does that mean?

782
00:43:33,970 --> 00:43:36,675
That means precisely
that he hadn't received

783
00:43:36,676 --> 00:43:38,496
the three last rites
of the church -

784
00:43:38,497 --> 00:43:41,546
confession, communion,
and extreme unction.

785
00:43:44,320 --> 00:43:46,014
And I now realise

786
00:43:46,022 --> 00:43:49,347
that it's the difference between
a good death and a bad death,

787
00:43:49,348 --> 00:43:53,421
that's the key to the whole mystery
of corpse mutilation.

788
00:43:54,570 --> 00:43:56,541
The 19th Century stakings,

789
00:43:56,661 --> 00:43:59,518
where my journey into
this macabre practice began,

790
00:43:59,935 --> 00:44:03,325
were done on people
who had committed suicide.

791
00:44:03,622 --> 00:44:06,987
They'd cut their own lives short
and died bad deaths.

792
00:44:08,055 --> 00:44:10,835
This meant their souls,
and even their corpses,

793
00:44:10,850 --> 00:44:12,085
were to be feared.

794
00:44:12,786 --> 00:44:15,509
And the only way for the living
to protect themselves

795
00:44:15,782 --> 00:44:19,565
was to pin their dead bodies
and their restless spirits

796
00:44:19,607 --> 00:44:20,880
firmly to the ground.

797
00:44:23,176 --> 00:44:26,661
There's something very physical
and very final about this act.

798
00:44:26,662 --> 00:44:29,481
It's a real"job done" moment.

799
00:44:29,489 --> 00:44:33,771
You can imagine that the person who
ran the stake through John Williams

800
00:44:33,779 --> 00:44:35,522
must have thought:

801
00:44:35,843 --> 00:44:39,042
"He's certainly not going to
rise from the dead again now."

802
00:44:42,821 --> 00:44:46,323
In 1823, the British government
finally tried

803
00:44:46,331 --> 00:44:50,849
to lay the superstitious practice
of corpse mutilation to rest.

804
00:44:52,557 --> 00:44:57,084
The afterlife was now supposed to be
a purely spiritual affair.

805
00:44:57,085 --> 00:45:00,978
The physical body would no longer
play a role after death,

806
00:45:01,337 --> 00:45:05,690
and the idea of cremation gradually
became more and more acceptable.

807
00:45:07,737 --> 00:45:09,463
But despite these measures,

808
00:45:09,471 --> 00:45:14,001
there are still echoes of our
superstitious fear of dead bodies.

809
00:45:20,129 --> 00:45:24,107
Even today, we tend to associate
the corpse with the soul.

810
00:45:24,227 --> 00:45:27,123
For instance, we'll go back
to the departed's grave

811
00:45:27,124 --> 00:45:29,677
in order to talk to their spirit.

812
00:45:29,797 --> 00:45:32,207
And even when they're nothing
but ashes,

813
00:45:32,208 --> 00:45:35,912
we think very carefully about
where we're going to place them.

814
00:45:35,913 --> 00:45:39,633
Because that's where we believe
their spirit lingers, too.

815
00:45:42,157 --> 00:45:43,637
In sure and certain hope

816
00:45:43,788 --> 00:45:46,206
of the resurrection to eternal life
through our Lord...

817
00:45:46,254 --> 00:45:51,006
And remember, next time you see
a black veil at a funeral,

818
00:45:51,007 --> 00:45:54,850
it's actually intended to protect
the living, not honour the dead,

819
00:45:54,882 --> 00:45:58,860
because a veil... can stop
the deceased's lingering spirit

820
00:45:58,861 --> 00:46:02,697
recognising you,... and so,
hopefully, it will leave you alone.

821
00:46:02,933 --> 00:46:07,120
The Lord make his face to shine
upon him, and be gracious unto him,

822
00:46:07,547 --> 00:46:09,798
and give him peace.
Amen.

823
00:46:10,687 --> 00:46:15,752
Perhaps unknowingly,
our fear of the undead lives on.

824
00:46:16,989 --> 00:46:19,631
'Next week, evil spirits.

825
00:46:19,944 --> 00:46:22,938
'I'll be finding out
why our ancestors lived in terror

826
00:46:23,058 --> 00:46:24,475
'of demons and fairies.

827
00:46:25,476 --> 00:46:29,817
'How could an evil spirit enter your
body and control you from within?'

828
00:46:29,977 --> 00:46:31,552
It's really scary.

829
00:46:31,830 --> 00:46:34,455
And why would a fairy
drive you to murder?

830
00:46:35,197 --> 00:46:36,298
No!

831
00:46:56,957 --> 00:46:59,772
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