Abbey of Saint-Leger, Cote d’Or, France — Circa 999
Bedroom visitation
Rodulphus Glaber, a monk and chronicler, writes “Not so long ago such (visions) happened to me, by the favor of God. At the time I was staying in the monastery of the martyr Saint-Leger, also named Abbaye de Champeaux. I saw one night, before Matines, a hideous little monster of vaguely human form appear at the foot of my bed. It seemed to be, as much as I could discern, of medium size with a frail neck, a thin face, very black eyes, a wrinkled and narrow forehead, a goatee, straight and pointed ears, straight and dirty hair, dog teeth, a sharp occiput, its breast swollen, a bump on the back, hanging buttocks and dirty clothes, with its whole body appearing to shake. “He grabbed the edge of the bed in which I was lying and shook it with terrible violence and said: ‘You will not stay here any longer.’ And at once I woke up terrified, and suddenly I saw the figure I just described. It was gnashing its teeth while repeating the same thing: ‘You will not stay here any longer.’ I got up from bed at once and ran to the monastery, where I kneeled in front of the altar of the very Holy Father Benedict, extremely terrified. And I began to recall the offenses and serious sins I had committed by being impudent or negligent.”
Source: Rudolphi Glabri, Historiarum Libri Quinque ab anno incarnationis DCCC usque ad annum MXLIV, book V, chapter I, paragraph 2. According to Ernest Petit (“Raoul Glaber,” in Revue Historique, XLVIII, 1892) Glaber stayed in Saint-Leger between 997 and 1005 AD. This is the first of his visions. The five books of his Historiae contain other such experiences as well as many anecdotic accounts of superstitions around the year 1000. Epilogue to Part I-A What can we say about the above sightings? They range in credibility and significance from curious events where a natural explanation is improbable (but not entirely impossible, if some of the elements of the observation were reported mistakenly) to extraordinary stories that have evoked paranormal, or even mystical interpretations among the people of the time. All of them made enough of an impact for a record to have been kept by the witnesses and later chroniclers. The very fact that they have come down to us through so much troubled history is quite remarkable. These reports do not constitute “evidence” for physical visitation by non-human creatures. All we can say is that they are consistent with modern descriptions of unidentified phenomena and the secondary effects surrounding them. In fact, we could have stopped our work at the year 1000 and we would have presented a fair cross-section of phenomena gathered by modern authors under the label of ufology, including abductions and hard traces. These ancient records show how powerful the concept of such intervention into human affairs can be: most of our religious texts today can be traced to such events, and to the philosophical movements they triggered. About the year 1000 many things changed on our planet. Large towns became real cities; in Europe, the feudal system stabilized society. Stone castles and monasteries would become genuine centers of learning while commerce expanded, bringing faraway lands in more frequent contact with Europe. Even the Crusades, the source of so much pillage and bloodshed, would soon play a role in creating an infrastructure for the exchange of knowledge, the rudiments of international banking and the management of complex projects. The nature of the reports will be even more intriguing and detailed in the following sections. PART I-B Chronology: 1000 to 1500 AD The Second Millennium opened with intense religious fervor: the world was in terrible fear of cosmic upheaval, the Last Judgment and the end of the world, but a new spirit of exploration also appeared: Viking Leif Ericson (c. 980-1020), the son of Eric the Red, discovered America while Christianity reached Iceland and Greenland. The Chinese perfected their invention of gunpowder. Normans extended their influence to England after the battle of Hastings (1066). Conflict between different faiths intensified, leading in 1096 to the first of eight murderous Crusades that would force the blending of two great civilizations and help introduce new philosophical ideas, including Hermeticism, into European kingdoms barely emerging from the Dark Ages. The rudiments of science arrived in Europe from the Middle East, with primitive astronomical instruments, early tables of star positions, and knowledge of Greek medicine and philosophy transmitted by Arabic scholars. The first cathedrals were built, the gothic style appeared at Saint-Germain-des-Pres in Paris, and the first account of the use of a mariner’s compass was noted (in 1125). During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, a new invention started its slow spread into Western Europe from Spain, with the adoption of paper as a replacement for parchment. Far less expensive, paper greatly accelerated the spread of knowledge. The twelfth century would also see the founding of Cambridge University in England, the compilation of the Edda mythologies in Scandinavia, and the teachings of Albertus Magnus. Early in the thirteenth century Fibonacci introduced Arabic numerals into Europe, and the great University movements expanded in all countries, from Brussels and Salisbury to Salamanca, Siena, Toulouse and Vicenza, supported by great scholars like Roger Bacon (1214-1294). Libraries appeared everywhere, preserving ancient knowledge and contemporary chronicles. Travelers became increasingly ambitious, encouraged by Marco Polo’s voyage to China from 1271 to 1295. Knowledge about the world began circulating more widely, while the Crusades ended (in 1291) with the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem settling in Cyprus. Things took a disastrous turn in the mid-fourteenth century when the Black Death devastated Europe, killing a third of the population of England (1347). Early in the fifteenth century the Chinese compiled the first Encyclopedia (in 22,937 volumes!), a civil war began in France, Joan of Arc led the French armies against England, and Portuguese navigators found the first Negroes near Cap Blanc in western Africa, starting the slave trade again. Everything suddenly accelerated in the last years of the fifteenth century: Leonardo da Vinci made his famed scientific discoveries, Copernicus studied at Cracow, the first terrestrial globe was constructed in Nuremberg, Johan Gutenberg used metal plates for printing and the king and queen of Spain, against the advice of their committee of experts, financed the voyage of an Italian navigator named Christopher Columbus. The world had changed. 76. Case: W027