Gone Medieval - The Medieval Moon

Episode Date: September 2, 2025

When medieval people gazed at the moon, they saw more than just a glowing orb in the night sky.  For them, the moon was a powerful yet fragile presence—both distant and intimate, symbolising not only love and beauty, but also exile, loss, and mystery. Dr. Eleanor Janega is joined by Dr. Ayoush Lazikani, author of The Medieval Moon: A History of Haunting and Blessing, to explore how cultures across the globe—from England and Wales to China, Japan, South America, and beyond—imagined and interacted with the moon during the Middle Ages.  From astronomy and astrolabes to Japanese lunar princesses and European folktales, their conversation reveals the moon as a universal yet deeply mysterious force that bound humanity together across cultures.More:The Green Manhttps://open.spotify.com/episode/5EocBSBHa0TgdoiGuzpEr7Life and Legends Along the Medieval Coastlinehttps://open.spotify.com/episode/3YamBjNHcVY3l3YMO7HTPKGone Medieval is presented by Dr. Eleanor Janega. Audio editor is Amy Haddow, the producer is Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world. to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, I'm Dr. Eleanorianica and welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We uncover the greatest mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and the latest groundbreaking research from the Vikings to the Normans, from kings to popes, to the Crusades.

We delve into the rebellions, plots, and murders that tell us who we really were. And how we got here. When they looked up at the moon, medieval people all around the world saw something that seemed both powerful yet fragile. It was distant, but it was intimate. And sometimes it was all of those things at once. The moon could represent love, beauty, and gentle. But it could also be about pain, hatred, and violence. When it was full, it was associated with fullness and fertility.

Yet in its crescent and other forms, the moon could seem broken or even wounded. One example can be found in the 14th century English poem, The Man in the Moon. Picture this. The night is crisp. The stars are twinkling and up in the sky the full moon. hangs like a lantern. But look closer and you might just see him, the man in the moon, trudging across that silvery orb with a bundle of thorns strapped to his back and a look of eternal bewilderment on his face. No one really knows how he got there, but the poem tells us he's been exiled for the petty crime of stealing thorns, perhaps to mend a hedge or perhaps just for a bit of mischief.

Up on the moon, he's doomed to shuffle endlessly, terrified that he'll tumble off the edge into the starry abyss below. Meanwhile, down on earth, the poet is watching the man in the moon's predicament with a mix of sympathy and exasperation. The man in the moon stands and strides. On the moon, he maketh his abode. He is clad in a hood of thorn, a great burden. he bears in his arms. He bears a thorny bush that is the reason he shivers and shudders.

When the frost comes, he bites his face. The thorns prick him, the man groans. For all his labour, he gets no thanks. He carries the thorns for a hedge. Now ask I you, men, who may this be? Who is the man in the moon ye see? And so the man in the moon, remains stubbornly out of reach, a figure of both pity and comedy, forever trudging across the lunar landscape. Today I'm joined by Dr. Ayush Lazakani, the stipendary lecture in Old and Middle English at Exeter and Mansfield College's Oxford. In her new book, The Medieval Moon,

a history of haunting and blessing, she reveals the many ways medieval people felt and wrote about the moon. Ranging across the world from China to South America, Korea to Wales. The book explores how different cultures interacted with the moon and reveals the moon as both a haunting and blessing presence that profoundly shaped medieval imagination, science, and spirituality. Ayush, welcome to God Medieval. Thank you so much for having me, Eleanor. It's lovely to be here. Now, I am so excited to have you on because I absolutely loved this book. And one of the things that I thought, was most exciting about it is how you've really pulled together moon traditions from so many cultures. You know, there's the same old kind of European Middle Ages that I would expect to see.

You know, there's English things, there's French and German things, there's Italian things. They're different from each other. It's not always the same. But you've also got Arabic and Chinese and Japanese and Indian and Persian and Mayan and Polynesian. And I was so delighted to see this because it's such a great contribution to this new. field of studies we're really calling the global Middle Ages, looking at everything in context together. And what were you hoping to show by casting this very, very wide net? Thank you very much, Eleanor, for such kind words about the book as you very much appreciated. And yeah, so with taking a global perspective, I thought it was really important to try to not limit the medieval period to just Europe, because that tends to.

not in all studies by any means, but there's been a tendency to think of the medieval world as just Europe. And Jonathan C, for example, has said that there needs to be a trajectory towards disengaging medieval from just Europe. So what I really hope to achieve was to think of the medieval world as multifaceted, as having many regions contributing to it, as having many different cultures, language traditions, all of which contribute to what is the medieval world. And the book hopes to be some contribution to that. By no means does it do that perfectly. There's a lot of, you know, Eurocentric emphasis, which I did try to avoid. But part of the issue also is using the English language itself. There's a risk of homogenising the traditions. But I tried to use key terms from the different languages so that we can talk about particular traditions

using their particular language and terms and terminology. Yes, that's really what I hope to achieve to contribute to what Geraldine Heng has termed the global Middle Ages, thinking of the Middle Ages through a global perspective. I loved that aspect of the book. And I I thought it was so wonderful how you do really work at bringing out all of these cultural traditions in equal footing. So would you say that the moon is something that unites all of the varying cultures that you've presented? When you look at the way that it's presented globally in the medieval period, can we say that this is a universal to an extent? I think so. I think because, of course, the moon is visible to everyone who is cited, and will be visible, you know, through stories and through different kinds of cultural traditions,

different songs, different folk tales around the world. I think it can be a universalizing aspect to all these different traditions, although they do have differences. So, for example, some European traditions, it's often a man in the moon or a woman in the moon that's seen, whereas in some Asian traditions like the Korean and the Chinese and others, it's a hair that's seen. So there are these differences. But I think because the moon is available to experience in whatever form to people around the world, I think it can be quite universalizing. I think that's a really good point because I find it interesting that, yes, you know,

we have this sort of desire to put a human or an animal or something on the bone. But the point is even if that's different, we all want to see something. there. There's this desire to look at the moon and have it be legible in a particular way. Everyone's attempting to get to that point. Yes, definitely. There's that desire to kind of make the moon readable, to reach out to the moon, to populate it or to imagine that it's somehow a reflection of Earth or can be brought closer to us. And as you know, one of the chapters of the book deals with travels to and from the moon. So the tradition of the man in the moon, the tale of the bamboo cutter where we have a moon princess who comes to us, the Japanese story. There's also the Italian

poem, The Frenzy of Orlando, where we have a night travel to the moon. So yes, I think there's a lot of desire to know the moon, to make it inhabitable, to make it reachable in some way. What do you say in terms of thinking about the moon globally? Is the moon always sort of presented in this sort of mysterious or transformative way? Because this is something that we experience from the Earth as always being changeable as being mutable. You know, it's always moving. It's changing shape. Is that something that people react to on a global scale?

That's a really interesting question. I think the idea of mutability, at least. in the research I've done, I found particularly pronounced in a lot of European traditions. But on the other hand, we do, for example, have Chinese traditions of the moon, goddess of Zhang Ge, who is presented as being quite lonely on the moon. So I think, yes, the mutability I found particularly pronounced in a lot of European traditions. So, for example, the poem Pearl, which is a Middle English poem, about, well, we believe about a father who's lost his infant daughter and sees her in heaven. And there's a lot of emphasis on the moon as changeable as mutable.

So, yes, I found it particularly pronounced in texts of the European tradition, but that isn't to say that it's not present in other traditions as well. How struck were you while you were doing this study by the similarities in moon traditions? You've already mentioned this universal desire to travel to the moon, this idea that it's something that we could actually get to. But, you know, a lot of these cultures are people that simply wouldn't encounter each other. So, you know, a lion is never going to come into contact with a Welsh person at this point in time. But is there something that they would have in common in terms of thinking about the moon? Yes, so to take that example, there's a lot of emphasis, again, on this idea of making the moon reachable in some way, whether as embodying it in a divine figure, the moon becoming a deity, or in love traditions. So, for example, if we take the Welsh, the Arabic, the Persian, all of them talk about this moon as symbol or standard. for the beloved. I wouldn't be able to speak to the degree to which Persian, Arabic, influenced Welsh, I'd need to do a lot more research about that, or vice versa, how Welsh influenced

those traditions. I mean, certainly there may have been contact. It's just, it's difficult to assess, but certainly I was struck in the languages of love when talking about the moon associated with love in particular. There was a lot of similarity, a lot of resonance, traditions like the Sufis, the Welsh poet Daphethwilam, the Hindu mystic and poet Mirabai, all of them share this emphasis on associating the moon with love and the one who is beloved. I absolutely love that. And I think it's so nice because it's something that we still kind of do, you particularly think about the moon in this romantic way, you know, as, you know, sort of casting light on romantic possibilities or, you know, the idea of being moonstruck. We still got that. And I think that it's such a nice connection to everyone in the medieval period. Yes, yes, that idea of being a glow with moonlight, of having your first kiss under moonlight that's still very prevalent in a lot of cultures today.

And I think that is a real connecting point between us and the medieval past. And that's part of what the book also hopes to reach is a kind of bridge, forming a bridge not just across cultures, but also across past and present, to see both the differences and the similarities between us and people who lived in the medieval period. However, we define that that's a whole other issue. You opened the book with this great study of old English riddles from the 10th century Exeter book, which I absolutely love this section. Were these some of the earliest mentions of the moon you found? How are we depicting it in this riddle sense? Yes. So they're among some of the earliest depictions.

Although the moon is mentioned, for example, in the work of Bede, historian and chronicler, in the earliest medieval period. So there are mentions of the moon before the Exeter book, but they're particularly striking, as you say, in that they use the medium of the riddle to explore the moon. I found that really apt in a way because the moon is such a riddle itself. We can't quite reach it. It has lots of different meanings. It's quite playful in how we engage with it. It's not easily decipherable. All of that is quite riddick in a way.

So I thought that the use of the riddle to explore what the moon is is actually quite apt. And the examples I gave was from Old English and Old Norse where there is this use. of the riddle form to try to decipher what the moon is. But in doing that, it also hints at how the moon is not easily containable, just like the solution to a riddle is not necessarily easily containable. It might bring up lots of different solutions. I love it. I mean, I'm such a sucker for a riddle. I can't help it. You know, I think maybe this is a medievalist problem. I don't know. I'm so bad at them, but I love them. That I definitely feel you on that.

Yeah, I can never get the solution, but I just love them. But do you find that in these riddles we see the moon as kind of a comforting feature of the universe? You know, you mentioned already that sometimes in the Chinese tradition, we can kind of see it as a lonely thing, something that is a little bit melancholic. But here for the English, are we seeing it as almost a friend, would you say? That's so interesting. Although there's a lot of emphasis on the moon as changeable, as presenting something mutable, unsteady,

as something also reflecting the painfulness of change in Earth, we do have some, in the European traditions, some aspect of the moon is comforting. for example, in images of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, the Virgin Mary, where we see her standing on a full moon. That's a very comforting image. And so although there is all this emphasis on the moon as perhaps a bit sinister in some ways and a bit removed, we do get breakages into the consciousness of the moon being quite comforting, like these images of the immaculate conception. and also in thinking further afield in traditions where the beloved one is like a moon, those can be very comforting images as well in the Hindu, the Islamic traditions.

Yeah, I really loved the riddle that talks about the moon as sort of being in perpetual exile, which, you know, reminds me a bit of the goddess of the moon in China. You know, she's ended up with this rabbit-pounding bay leaves because she's stolen elixir. very naughty. But, you know, the way that I was immediately struck by the resonance when they say that the moon is homeless for a long time, but it provides comfort through the Middle Earth to many children. And I thought that is, that's such an interesting thing, you know, this idea of kind of a wandering moon that is still interacting with us in a way. Yes, yes, absolutely. I mean, to think of that, idea of the comfort of the moon. I imagine in a time before electricity, the moon at night would be very comforting to have that light pierce the darkness. I imagine may well have been very comforting to a lot of people. And in terms of it being in perpetual exile, not having a home

for a long time and travelling as a lonely wanderer, I think when it comes to the old English riddle that speaks a lot to interests in the Old English elegies, for example, like the lonely wanderer or the lonely seafarer alone and the moon kind of, I think, reflects those traditions in the elegies, these laments of a lonely wandering exiled figure. And I think a lot of, a lot of the traditions that the book looks at also are interested in ideas of of exile to and from the moon. So like the man in the moon tradition, we have a man exiled to the moon. In the tale of the bamboo cutter, the Japanese story I mentioned earlier, we have a moon princess exiled to the earth for a time. So I think the moon is kind of fertile ground for exploring themes of exile

and not having a secure home. I think that's so interesting as well, because that is something that is a bit of a universal in the medieval context. One of the biggest punishments that you can have at the time is just being told that you can't be around the people that you know, the people that you love. And to identify with the moon on this, I think is so beautiful because it still shows our human desire to connect with the world around us, to see ourselves as reflected in the universe. And I find that is so sweet, I suppose. Yeah, yeah, that's a lovely thought to try to see ourselves in the moon, try to create a narrative for our own experiences in looking at the moon and seeing it as a reflection of our lives.

And I think that is maybe part of the reason that some earlier Chinese sources see sort of pre-10th century, see Shangay as the Chinese goddess of the moon as a kind of lonely figure. In a sense, it's trying to humanize the moon and to project our own experiences onto the moon. Another tradition that does that really powerfully, I think, is in the frenzy of Orlando, the Italian poem, where really the moon is a mirror reflection of Earth, all the things that are cast away from Earth find their way into the moon. And it becomes a kind of distorted mirror reflection of Earth, where a lot of what we've discarded, what we've neglected,

find their way onto the Moon. So it's filled with kind of human frailties and foibles. the moon becomes a kind of body that carries all of those frailties. I mean, culturally, we have this desire to humanize the moon. But how do we see it astronomically at the time? Because it's really common, particularly in the European traditions, to consider that the moon is a planet, right? Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. So the idea in a lot of traditions, If we take the European tradition as one example influenced by the astronomer Ptolemy, there is the emphasis of the moon as a planet, one of many planets that move in concentric circles away from the earth. And the moon is the closest one to the earth. That was the idea. And it was also associated as a planet with what is moist. It was associated a lot with wetness, moisture, and also the phlegmatic humour, because, of course, a lot of medieval medicine was informed by ideas of the humours, these liquids in the body that were balanced or imbalanced. And it was, the moon was associated in particular with the phlegmatic humour. And yeah, moistness, either too much moistness or providing moistness where there hasn't been enough moistness.

So yes, that was the idea that it was a planet, but the planet of all the planets closest to the Earth. And I find that really interesting, this connection to the humors and the flammatic, because you also mentioned that in a lot of the text you look at, they talk about how it's kind of got a double nature, right? Because oftentimes when we think about the flammatic, because it's moist, it's supposed to be sort of dark, you know, and certainly it's wet. but the moon is luminous, right? The moon can light things up. So we have this kind of tension that is happening at the time. I mean, and obviously, of course, we associate it with moistness because the moon controls the tides. Everyone's really clear on that.

So, yes, there's something to do with water, but how does that then wrestle with the concept of it being so bright? Really interesting. I think the idea of, yeah, that that, brightness, a lot of different authors tackle with that idea. For example, there's an interest in why it has a dark side and a light side. We see that interest, for example, in Dante. And there was also debate early pre-medieval with figures like the church father Augustine, who wondered whether the moon generated its own light or, if it reflected the light of the sun. And he uses that as two ways in which the moon can

symbolize the church, the Christian church. So I think there's, I think to answer your question more directly, I think there are parallel interests. There's one interest in the moisture-inducing nature of the moon. And then there's there's, there are these parallel interests in the light of the moon, where the light comes from and why it has dark, dark spots. But the moon, you know, it's got obviously this influence on health. I say obviously, they think it's obvious. A little less so does. Yeah. But they also think that it can influence things about generalized life on Earth as well, right? Can you talk a little bit about that? Yes. So there's, you mentioned, for example, the influence on the tides that was very clearly

understood in the medieval period. It was believed to influence trees, chopping down trees at particular phases of the moon had different influence effects on the timber that was produced. It was believed to affect different sea creatures. There was also in the book of John Mandeville, which is this kind of fantastical travel narrative that exists in many versions, but in, in one of the versions, it talks about how people who are under the influence of the moon are very quick and energetic and always on the move, whereas people who are under the influence of other planets might not have that effect. So there's this sense of the moon influencing the natural world, but also influencing people's temperaments as well.

And this has knock-on effects, right? Because, But I mean, at least from a European perspective, I know people are really obsessed with understanding the faces of the moon and how it moves around. You know, there are practical reasons for this in terms of, you know, someone's got to figure out when Easter is going to be, for example. And then you've got to look at the moon for that. But also, I'm thinking here about the European obsession with astrolabes. You know, we've got Abalard and Eloise naming their son Astrolabe. Chaucer writes this entire treaty about how to understand. how to use an astrolabe for his son, right?

So this is clearly linked, I think, to this idea that you need to understand what the stages of the moon are so that you can figure out how life is going to go on Earth. Do you think that's fair? Yes, absolutely. There was so much emphasis in the medieval period and in different parts of the world with establishing the phases of the moon and establishing the phases of the moon and establishing. which zodiacal sign the moon was in. Both were crucial for making calculations and also making predictions for, for example, when someone should have particular healing regimens, when someone should have bloodletting done, even more practical things, when one should set off on a journey, when it will be a good time to make friends.

There was even we get evidence of this idea that the moon could influence or predict how successful a journey would be, but also if you were imprisoned, how long you would be in prison for and whether you would be released. So it had this calculating where the moon was and what its phases were. Both were crucial for a lot of medieval science and medieval prognostication or the telling of future events through the moon in what were called moon books, these manuscripts that people use that could tell you the particular position of the moon, for example. And you've already mentioned a little bit about the Chinese goddess of the moon, but there seems to be rather a lot of interest in having a god. or a deity or somebody who is associated with the moon. Can you give us some other examples about that? Yes.

So in the book, I particularly focus on the Chinese goddess Shungay and Diana or Artemis in the Greco-Roman tradition. She's associated with the moon very, very richly. In one of Chaucer's poems, we see her standing on a waxing moon. she's associated with the moon's phases, the moon's powers. We see her in paintings or different kinds of artworks or texts that associate her both with hunting and the moon. So she's associated with the hunt, with the forest, but also very much with the moon. We get, for example, I don't think actually I talk about this in the book,

It's an Italian poem by the poet Boccaccio, where he talks about the goddess Diana. It's called Diana's Hunt. And there's references to the moon there. So she's a key example of another goddess who's associated with the moon. And do these deities from culture to culture have the same sort of, I don't know, proclivities. Do they have the same sort of way of relating to them? So interesting. I think really my feeling in studying the works is that I find Shangay, the Chinese goddess, more relatable than Diana or Artemis, partly because there is that tradition of understanding her as being lonely on the moon. There is that tradition of her as having been a mortal woman who drunk an elixir and is assigned to the moon for the rest of eternity. So I think that. that those sort of work to make her more relatable.

Also the fact that, yeah, she has this companion, the jade hair, and sometimes the toad. I find it's like she has pets. It's very sweet. So there are ways in which she is seen as being more relatable in some of the artworks or poems that survive about her. And the contrast I'm particularly thinking of in the case of Diana or Artemis, is in a Chaucer's poem The Night's Tale, where a girl, Emily, prays to her, begging to remain a virgin. She doesn't want to be in a relationship with a man because she has these two men fighting over her. And Diana just ignores her and sort of coolly,

coolly turns her away. So that was just my feeling in studying the sources. I found Shangay, at least more approachable than Diana or Artemis. You've had some other great examples of stories from all over the world. And one of the ones I was most struck by it, because I'd never heard it before, is the one that you found from Abutsu's diary, the Japanese author, and the Diary of the Waning Moon. Can you tell me a little bit about it? Yes. So Abutsu was a Japanese woman who was going on a journey. She was 13th century.

and the journey was essentially punctuated by her encounters with the moon. And her seeing the moon, seeing its phases, she was in a sense accompanied by the moon on her journey. She kept looking at the moon and writing about it, writing about what phase it was in, writing about what it made her feel, what it made her think. So we get this sense of the moon and moonlight being a kind of companion on a journey. in Abutsu's Japanese text.

That's so interesting to me because again we have this emotive connection to the moon, right? This idea of the moon as a companion, and maybe the moon itself is a little bit lonely, but it's something that can ease our loneliness as humans. Yes, definitely. I think we find that with Abutsu in abundance, the moon really is a kind of companion to her on her journey. and it's almost like a friend. She keeps looking to the moon.

She writes poems influenced by earlier poets on the moon. It is a kind of inspiration to her, but also a gentle companion. And we also get Chinese poets from different periods who talk about sitting with the moon or imagining an encounter with a spouse under the moon. So the moon becomes a kind of... supportive influence on human relationships. I'm thinking also of Korean sejo poetry that also talks about the moon as this companion in the rhythms of everyday life. The changing of the seasons and how the moon is also there throughout all the changing seasons and itself is going through phases,

like we go through phases. So yes, a lot of Korean, Chinese, Japanese in particular, I'm thinking of materials that think of the moon as this kind of companion or friend. So we've got on the one hand, you know, nice companion moon who is our friend. But also, you've already spoken a bit about the loneliness of the moon or the moon is a place of exile. So Chong He is experiencing that when she's told to go to the moon after she comes immortal. But we also at the beginning of this episode heard a bit about the man in the moon poem. So do you think that there's something here not just about, you know, the moon is out of reach and so it's this lonely place? But could this also be sort of a reflection on class or social divides, you know, and how you can end up being a bit out of place as a result of kind of wandering outside of your social context?

Yes, I mean, the man in the moon is explored in a English poem. that the book includes in a manuscript called the Harley manuscript. And in that poem, it could possibly have been an example of classist humour, where we have an upper-class audience of different kinds, mixed genders, perhaps, laughing at a labourer or people of the working class, if we can use that term. So, for example, we have, the man who's exiled on the moon is exiled for stealing brushwood or material to make hedges. So that signals his class, but also the man, there's another man who calls out to the man exiled on the moon. Or at least, I'm assuming it's a man, but it could be of a different gender, is calling out to the moon. and that speaker also seems to be of belonging to a working-class milieu.

So there's a sense in which this poem is perhaps an example of an upper-class audience sort of looking at these working-class figures and thinking how ridiculous they are. And isn't it silly that one man got exiled to the moon and another person is calling out to him? So that poem in particular deals, I think, a lot with class. In terms of transgressing or going beyond social proprieties, I think we see that, for example, in guides written for religious recluses or anchorites. There's a text called Ancinawissa or Guide for Ancaresses, where it talks about the moon essentially symbolizing what are the things that a human should reject.

So at least what a religious recluse should reject according to this text. So emphasis on material goods rather than spiritual goods, emphasis on desires. All of that, the author of this guide for religious recluses says, all of that needs to be trampled down like a woman standing on the moon, he says. So all the things that are rejected, that a religious recluse should have rejected in entering that life, become symbolized through the moon. And the recluse has to then kind of stand on the moon. And the author gets this image from a biblical book where it talks about a woman standing on the moon. And so he uses that image where the moon represents everything you have to repress and reject. And in a way, that standing on the moon prevents you from transgressing.

That's really interesting. Because in a way, too, you've already mentioned the tale of the bamboo cutter from Japan. And in some ways, it's sort of the opposite. Right. So on the one hand, we've got, you know, the Chinese stories about exile to the moon or the man in the moon is exiled. You need to exile. You need to exile. your worst habits in order to become an ideal anchores. But the tail of the bank boo-cutter is sort of doing that in reverse, because here we have the moon princess coming to Earth and being raised and then sort of having to go back to the moon. Can you tell us a little bit about this? Yes, so that's very true. We have a moon princess who is in a sense exiled from the moon to the earth. So it's the opposite way to the man in the moon that we talked about earlier, who we talked about earlier, who's exiled to the moon. She is exiled from the moon to earth. And the way the story goes, and it's been adapted, as some people might know, in a studio

Ghibli animation, a man cutting bamboo, an older man cutting bamboo, finds this little girl bathed in light, and he takes her home and he and his wife raise her. and various adventures ensue, but the real emphasis is on this close bond between the moon princess and her adoptive earthly parents. And what happens in the end is that a moon troop comes to take her back and she's forcibly taken and through the various magical gifts that she's given, she forgets us. but the people who've looked after her and the people who've come to know her never forget her. So it's this interesting case of the moon leaving its imprint on Earth and then abandoning us again but forever remaining with us in some way. In the third chapter of your book, you move on from these great cultural stories to talk a little bit about the role that the moon plays in prophecy. Can you tell us something about the prophetic abilities of the moon?

Yeah, absolutely. So the moon is often involved in prophecy. One English text I can think of, the letter of Alexander to Aristotle, which is found in the same manuscript as Beowulf has a section in which Alexander goes to visit these magical trees. and they're the trees of the sun and the moon. And once these trees are touched by sunlight or moonlight, they can speak prophecies. So what we see in this text, this English text, that's based on a Latin source, is the moon and the sun and trees all working in unison. So it's this natural cohesion that takes place in order to speak a prophecy to fulfill prophetic demands. And interestingly, Alexander can't directly understand the trees.

It has to be translated to him. So we have tree language conveyed to a priest who then translates to Alexander. So the moon is involved in allowing prophecies to be spoken, but in that text, but it's not easily accessible. It has to be translated. And that is the interesting thing, right, is that we feel so close to the moon. And we're sure that it has all this influence about us, but we still need, there's still kind of mystery about it. There's still this need to translate. There's still this need to figure out exactly what it is going to be doing or how we can really interpret these signals.

And I think we see this a little bit also you talk about in Troilius and Cressida that's written by Chaucer. Because you've got the moon there that influences events, but they're not. And again, just like all of the tales that you were telling us before, there's also this moon as a confidant there. Yes, so Troilus actually calls out to the moon in his despair when he's separated from Crusader. They're separated, as your listeners may know, through a hostage swap. So a prisoner from the Greek camp is swapped with Crusader in the Trojan camp. and he calls out to the moon in pain a lot like we perhaps reflective of what we see in the Chinese poetry I mentioned in Abutsu. They weren't necessarily calling out in pain, but they were kind of imagining the moon as this companion, this confidant.

And Troilus definitely appeals to that similar idea of speaking to the moon of your sorrows. And yet at the same time, the moon is involved in causing his sorrows, or at least symbolizing his sorrows. So Crusader says she will come back once the moon moves out of a particular star sign, but she doesn't come back at that time. So the moon's position in a sense causes pain to Troilus and yet he still calls out to it. And that is so interesting, right? you know, because I guess from a European perspective, most people would think that when you read texts like this and to be talking to the moon like this or, you know, in Chaucer's knight's tale, praying to Diana or, you know, seeing the moon as a deity or something that

is connected with you, I think that a lot of people would consider that should be not acceptable in a Christian context. Like, how does the church receive these? kind of activities, this looking to the moon for advice or seeing it as having influence on favorable conditions for anything from medicine to cutting trees. A good example of that of the church's response, part of the church's response to using the moon for prophecy or seeing the moon as somehow changing Earth in some way beyond scientific ways is Elfretch who was a Anglo-Saxon monk who wrote various saints' lives and homilies. And he is very clear that you should not use the moon to make prophecies or to predict the future in

some way. You can only look to God, he says, for those for making decisions in your life. He does accept that the moon influences the natural world and he's over the only okay with that part of it, but he's not okay with people then saying the moon, the position of the moon will influence my life today. He's not okay with that. Conversely, the moon as a symbol, it really appeals to a lot of people who work in the church. So a lot of Christian writers, like monks or priests, write about the moon as a symbol of the church itself. I mentioned Augustine earlier, the church father, but if we go into the medieval period, lots of different authors talk about the moon as representing the church. And the way that symbol or representation

works is that just like the moon reflects the light of the sun, so does the church. reflect the true light of Christ. So in that image, Christ is the sun and the church is the moon. And I talked a bit about the anchoritic text that talks about the moon being trampled, but equally the moon could represent the church that holy institution for Christians. It's really interesting because we also see that this idea at play in the allegory of the sun and moon, which is about the papal imperial rivalry. And the papacy says that they are the sun. So this time the papacy gets to be the sun.

They get to be the sun and they have the power of God. And that is just reflected by the Holy Roman emperor who is kind of getting that because they said, oh, we don't want to do the violence. You have to do that. So you're just bouncing it off. And I find these so funny because it shows us that there is this really clear understanding of how the luminosity of the moon works and what's. lighting it up at the time. And I think it's so funny how you can kind of see the allegory change

and move depending on what the church wants. It's very amusing to me. Yeah, it is really funny and thought-provoking. So the church could be represented by the moon, but in other contexts, the papacy is the sun and the state is the moon. So political office separate from the church becomes the moon. So it's used in a very different way. In some sense that might speak to that desire to dominate the moon, to kind of colonize it in a way and bend it to our will. Sometimes symbolism can work that way, but other times it can work in a more equal way, perhaps. It's just a possibility that it's more about the moon being a confidant or friend, that it symbolizes. positive aspects in our lives rather than being used in intense political or religious debates.

I'm going to ask you a huge question here. And if it's too big, you can tell me to shut up. Kind of coming towards the end of our conversation. Can we say that there is a way that the moon has been understood by the medieval mind, you know, writ large in a global sense? Or is that too much, am I trying to cram too many people from too many cultures into one question? That's, again, so interesting. I don't think so. I think it's difficult to find a kind of monolithic single reading of the moon. Actually, in the book, I suggest we think about medieval moons in the plural,

that in a sense there are different moons depending on the viewer, depending on the cultural tradition in which they're rooted and from which they're coming. So that would be my feeling. I don't think we can have an overarching medieval view of the moon, but we can have different conversant, sometimes conflicting ideas of the moon across, of multiple moons across cultures. I absolutely love that because, you know, it really shows that you can sort of be presented with the same object.

And depending on how you relate to, I don't know, liminality, or depending on where your scientific strictures press you, you can come up with really different ways of relating to this one big, beautiful thing in the sky. Yeah, absolutely. I quote James Atley in the book who talks about moonlight being alchemical, like alchemy, it changes what it touches. And in a sense, I try to sort of use that as a representation of how we might encounter. to the moon. It changes depending on who we are, changes alchemically almost, depending on where we're positioned and what our background is and what our traditions are. Do you think that there's something about the moon, you know, in this changeable nature, this otherness, you know, it's close to us, but it's far away. It's changing all the time in a way where we see ourselves as a little

bit more static here on Earth, but perhaps see ourselves as changing in our lifespan. Do you think that this makes it more particularly apt to reflections about social problems or class or indeed, you know, gender. Do you think that there's just something there that strikes us all? Yes, I think so. I think it's changeability. It's perhaps part of the appeal of thinking of different ways of understanding the moon. The fact that it itself changes, it looks like it's changing shape, it changes position, that can then speak to us in terms of how we might understand different concepts in the moon. And you mentioned gender and that's something that I could have explored more in the book. I think future studies may well, what I hope will want to do

that, is what gender we can understand the moon to be because in some traditions there's a real emphasis on the femininity of the moon. And yet in others we have a man in the moon. And I think it doesn't always correspond to, for example, grammatical gender doesn't always correspond to wider traditions. It's very variable what gender the moon is ascribed. And that would be an interesting question, I think, to be explored further more than I could in the book. Well, it's no wonder you couldn't. You've already packed so much into this book. Thank you.

It's an absolute tour de force and a real delight. and I'm so, so glad that you could come on to talk to us about it today. Thank you so much, Ayush. Oh, thank you so much. It's been an absolute delight. Thank you. My thanks once again to Dr. Ayush Lazzucani and to you for listening to Gone Medieval from History Hit.

If you liked learning about the medieval relationship between legend and nature, why not check out our past episode, Life and Legends, along the Medieval Coastline? Remember, you can enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original TV documentaries, including my recent film, The Medieval Apocalypse, and add free podcasts by signing up at historyhit.com forage slash subscription. You can follow Gone Medieval on Spotify, where you can leave us comments and suggestions or wherever you get your podcasts, and tell all your friends and family that you've Gone Medieval. Until next time.