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Thietmar of Merseburg sits in his nightly scriptorium, illuminated by candlelight, scratching out the newest lines of his historical work, the Chronicon sive Gesta Saxonum - the Chronicle of the Deeds of the Saxons. As bishop of Merseburg, he intends to chronicle the deeds of his people: the Saxons, the great Ottonian kings and emperors, and his own family, the counts of Walbeck. But tonight, the self-critical, cynical, and eccentric clergyman wants to write instead on signs of the dead, on ghosts, and how the Lord himself works in his most mysterious ways in the blood-drenched border regions of Latin Christendom
along the River Elbe. With this short primer, based on Thietmar of Merseburg's self-description, we want to welcome you to the topic of 10th-century ghost stories and how it comes about that a Christian bishop in 10th-century Germany inserts otherworldly encounters within his historiographical account of the Eastern Frankish Empire - especially as Thietmar is usually considered a quite correct, if somewhat politically biased, source for his lifetime.
Let us take a look at the first of these ghost stories and listen to what the bishop himself retells: "So that none of Christ's faithful may doubt the future resurrection of the dead, but may set out with holy longing toward the joys of blessed immortality, I wish to relate certain events which, as I have been reliably informed, took place in the city of Walsleben following its destruction and subsequent reconstruction. At the first light of dawn on Easter Day, the priest of that church was in the habit of singing Matins. However, when he came to the courtyard of the deceased, he saw a large crowd there offering
sacrifices to the priest standing before the church doors. At first he stood still; but then, after protecting himself with the sign of the holy cross, he entered the oratory trembling, without recognizing a single person. There, a woman who had recently departed from this world and was well known to him asked him what he wanted there. After he explained why he had come, she foretold that they had accomplished all this and that he would live only a short time longer. He later reported this to his neighbors, thereby confirming that these things were true." If we follow recent research on Thietmar's Chronicon,
several insightful reasons emerge as to why Thietmar speaks about ghosts and revenants. In addition to recounting the history of his own diocese and that of the Ottonian Empire, Thietmar was centrally concerned with serving the memoria of certain individuals, as well as his own. Memoria generally refers to the remembrance of the deceased within the Christian tradition. The deceased were to be commemorated especially through the prayers of the living. This was essential to medieval beliefs, for no human is infallible during their lifetime;
therefore, the living help the deceased when they care for the deceased's soul through prayer. One prays for them to the saints and to the Lord personally in a kind of intercession, especially on the anniversary of their death. A glance at the obituary register of his own diocese of Merseburg, as well as that of the monastery of Quedlinburg, vividly illustrates how deeply Thietmar was preoccupied with the memory of others and of himself: numerous individuals who appear as characters in Thietmar's work and who also die within it are recorded in these books.
Thietmar himself also has a corresponding entry. He therefore felt it was important to treat the dead in his personal network appropriately. We can safely interpret the concept of "network" very broadly, including his family, relatives, important benefactors and patrons of his diocese, companions, mentors, and colleagues, but also his own brother's comrades-in-arms - though Thietmar himself admits that he does not do justice to all these people. On one occasion, he had the grave of his predecessor opened and the body removed in order to prepare a
suitable burial site for his sister-in-law in the same spot. A man had to set priorities. However, Thietmar faces a problem with this idea of Memoria: many people in his own diocese had only recently become formal Christians or still adhered to the pagan beliefs of the West Slavic pantheon. Still other Slavs may have been baptised, yet some of them simultaneously practised aspects of their old pagan rituals and traditions alongside their Christian faith. They did not, therefore, believe in the principle of the resurrection of the body according to the
Christian creed. But the concept of the living dead would not have been foreign to them, albeit without the Christian idea of it being part of the second coming of Christ. Some researchers see Thietmar's ghost stories as rooted in this missionary context of spreading Christianity alongside lingering, if not resurgent, pagan beliefs in the Elbe region: It was necessary to convey the concepts of the immortality of the Christian soul not only to the new Christians but also to the pagan Slavs. Thus, the verdict here would be:
Where people lived only inadequately according to Christian values and beliefs, their spirits roam, denied access to the afterlife. Perhaps, then, Thietmar intended his ghost stories to inspire the people of his diocese to embrace the true faith and turn away from their old traditions. Yet even more than to convert his flock, Thietmar sought to strengthen his fellow Christians in their faith through his ghost stories, should they ever waver. But let us look at another ghost story, this time brought forth by Thietmar's niece, who suffered from a physical illness
but nevertheless served as abbess of the monastery of Saint Lawrence. After Thietmar told her about the ghostly gatherings from Walsleben, she replied with a story of her own: "During the time of Bishop Balderich, who presided over the holy see of Utrecht for eighty years or more, he restored and consecrated a church that had fallen into disrepair due to age in a place called Deventer and entrusted it to a priest. When this priest went there very early one day, he saw the dead offering sacrifices in the church and in the forecourt and heard them singing. When
he reported this to the bishop shortly thereafter, the bishop ordered him to sleep in the church; yet the following night he was thrown out by the deceased, along with the bed on which he had been resting. Frightened, he complained about this to the bishop. But the bishop ordered him, having been anointed with the relics of the saints and sprinkled with holy water, not to desist from guarding his church. The priest obeyed his lord's command and intended to sleep in the church once more; yet, driven by fear, he awoke while lying down. And behold, at the usual hour the dead came,
lifted him up, placed him before the altar, and reduced his body to fine ashes in the fire. When the bishop heard this, moved by remorse, he ordered a three-day fast to help both himself and the soul of the deceased. Much, my son, I could have said about all this, had not illness prevented it. As the day is given to the living, so the night is given to the dead. A mortal should not seek to know more, as Saint Paul admonishes, than is necessary for sobriety." In the view of this story, other researchers raise an objection: Who was supposed to read Thietmar's texts or listen to his sermons? Do these ghost stories
not rather reflect the fears of a bishop and his entourage in a volatile border region marked by frequent contact with neighboring peoples? Let us look at some context to ground this idea. In 983, after the death of Emperor Otto II, numerous Slavic groups between the Elbe and Oder rivers rose up against Ottonian rule. The so-called Slavic Revolt had not only broken the empire's supremacy east of the Elbe but also severely set back the Christian mission in these areas, taking on harsh anti-Christian traits in the process: Churches had been plundered, priests and
clergy killed, holy sites desecrated, and relics lost. The body of the Bishop of Brandenburg, who had been killed in a local uprising some years earlier, was dragged from its grave, stripped of its garments, and the grave desecrated. Thietmar's father, Count Siegfried, had taken part in the hastily organised defence against the Slavic incursions, and this struggle between the Empire and the Slavic groups east of the Elbe continued throughout Thietmar's lifetime. As bishop, he himself participated in military campaigns and border security operations. Along
with the fortified settlements in the region, control over places of worship and graves also changed hands several times between Christians and pagans. More than one settlement was abandoned because of the fighting, and places people leave, according to Thietmar, are occupied by spirits. Thus, the burgward - a fortified administrative district on the Slavic frontier - of Walsleben, the setting of our first story, was destroyed during the Slavic uprising of 983 and only recently rebuilt by the Saxons - and this was not the first time the settlement had been destroyed:
Widukind of Corvey already reports that the settlement founded under Henry I was destroyed by the Slavs in 929 and its inhabitants were killed by force. The ghosts in this story appeared to the priest as he was about to sing Matins and offer sacrifices to their own ghostly priest. The Matins was a prayer within the Christian Liturgy of the Hours, recited between midnight and early morning. The sacrifices here are presumably pious offerings for the salvation of their own souls. Of particular importance here are the words of the female spirit speaking to the priest:
Matins had already been sung; the services of the living priest are therefore no longer necessary. The spirits of Walsleben here imitate the corresponding Christian rites for the commemoration of the deceased, thereby reflecting the proper Christian world order, which cannot be upheld by the living in this place. Deventer, the setting of the second story, located in what is now the Netherlands, had been plundered and occupied several times by pagan Northmen after 875. Bishop Balderich of
Utrecht, whose family had driven out the Northmen in the course of the 10th century, restored order to his diocese. In doing so, he also had Deventer rebuilt, as it was also the seat of the bishopric while Utrecht was under the control of the Northmen. When the priest in this story enters his church, he finds the ghosts inside, which escalates the previous story. In that story, the ghosts gathered in the churchyard and thus did not enter the sacred building. The ghosts later prove unimpressed by prayers, holy water, a bishop's blessing, and relics, and are not deterred from killing the priest by burning him before the altar.
With this ghost story Thietmar deliberately plays on his contemporaries' fear that the most important spiritual sanctuaries and practices of their faith are failing. Furthermore, he also alludes to another fear of his contemporaries with the burning of the priest on the altar. Christians at the time considered cremation a primary pagan practice, especially as it destroyed the body of the deceased. This is sometimes interpreted as an indication of the resurgence of pagan customs, given the presence of the Northmen in Deventer and its surroundings in what is now the Netherlands and Frisia. The fact that the priest here attains
martyrdom at the hands of the spirits places him in a tradition with Saint Boniface and other missionary saints of the East Frankish Empire, who were killed by Thietmar's own ancestors. Overall, the ghost story is a clear allusion to life in the borderlands of Christianity. The fact that the dead, as spirits, perform Christian rites or burn a priest vividly illustrates the concern of Thietmar and his fellow Christians who lived in the affected areas: How do we deal with those among us who were not buried according to the proper rites, or whose final resting place on consecrated ground was disrupted by military conflicts and could no
longer be taken care of? But what is Thietmar's very own thought on ghosts and the living dead? Thietmar recounts another story about a deceased woman who, surrounded by grieving relatives and friends, sits up, calls for her husband, gives instructions, and comforts those around her before finally sinking back down. He believes that most ghosts and the living dead are illusions created by the devil to lead doubting Christians astray; only the foolish believe that they are truly dead. Those Christians who have been properly buried according to the rites and have earned it before
the Judge of the World will not rise from the dead until the Last Judgment. Thietmar does, however, make one exception: God grants very pious people the privilege of returning to their bodies, as with the aforementioned woman. But at times, one cannot help but attribute a certain fascination with the living dead to Thietmar, despite his strict judgment, especially since he refers to his own sources in his accounts of ghosts and thus seeks to attest to their credibility. So while the day is given to the living, the night is given to the dead, according to Thietmar's niece, he himself attests to many other otherworldly encounters
like lights dancing upon graves, recently deceased bishops who recommend their own successors, and many pagan traditions, which we encourage you to read up on. Thietmar of Merseburg's ghost stories are far more than mere horror tales from the early Middle Ages. They offer a rare glimpse into the mindset and imagination of a society that lived amid the confidence of Christian salvation, political uncertainty, and the constant presence of death. In the border regions east of the Elbe, where wars, uprisings, and religious conflicts
devastated entire settlements, questions about the fate of the dead became an urgent reality. The ghosts of Walsleben and Deventer reflect both Christian notions of memoria, resurrection, and intercession, as well as the fears of a society whose churches were destroyed, graves desecrated, and religious certainties repeatedly shaken. For Thietmar, such accounts served as a warning, a source of comfort, and a lesson. They were intended to strengthen the faithful in their faith and illustrate how closely the fate of the living remained linked to that of the dead.
Although Thietmar ultimately classifies most of the apparitions as diabolical deceptions, he treats them with remarkable attention and documents them with a commitment to historical credibility. This is precisely what makes his accounts a unique source for the fears, hopes, and religious beliefs of the 10th and early 11th centuries-a world in which the boundaries between the living and the dead often seemed more permeable than they do to us today. We hope you enjoyed this journey into Thietmar's ghost stories, and we promise there are more
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