All Souls’ Day: Soul Cakes, Prayer and Memory
EverydayLife, ReligionMagicandBelief Rachel Elwiss Joyce EverydayLife, ReligionMagicandBelief Rachel Elwiss Joyce

All Souls’ Day: Soul Cakes, Prayer and Memory

s the bells of All Saints’ Day fall silent, a gentler sound takes their place: the slow, measured knell for the departed.

2 November, All Souls’ Day, was the moment when the living turned their hearts toward those of the departed, the ordinary people, not the saints, who still journeyed through Purgatory.

The season of light ended not in mourning, but in the hope that love and prayer could reach beyond the grave.

Origins and Etymology

The word soul comes from Old English sawol, “the spiritual essence of a person.”

The “Mass of Souls,” or Soul Mass Day, was first proclaimed in 998 AD by Abbot Odilo of Cluny. He ordered that every monastery in his order should celebrate a Mass for “all the faithful departed.” From Cluny, the custom spread throughout Europe.

Yet its roots run deep into pagan soil.

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The Revenant of Hereford: Walter Map’s Medieval Walking Dead
HistoricalFiction, ReligionMagicandBelief Rachel Elwiss Joyce HistoricalFiction, ReligionMagicandBelief Rachel Elwiss Joyce

The Revenant of Hereford: Walter Map’s Medieval Walking Dead

It’s Halloween, or ‘All Halliow’s Eve’, stolen from the pagans! You might think it’s all jack-o’-lanterns, witches, and restless spirits, but long before pumpkins and trick-or-treaters, medieval storytellers were already spinning tales of the restless dead. One of the most chilling comes from Walter Map, a 12th-century courtier, wit, and author of De Nugis Curialium (Courtiers’ Trifles).

Did you know, Walter Map is a character in Rachel Elwiss Joyce’s second novel in the ‘Nicola de la Haye Series’?

Map’s collection of gossip, marvels, and supernatural tales contains one of England’s earliest written accounts of a revenant — a corpse that would not rest quietly in its grave.

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