Name: 為什麼中世紀的人認為鬼魂是真的？ (Why did Medieval people think ghosts were real? | History in a Nutshell | Animated History)
Uploaded: 2025-07-31T21:01:10.000Z
Duration: 4 min 28 s

Why do people in the Middle Ages believe in ghosts?

What comes to mind when you think of a ghost?

Perhaps an eerie apparition of a Victorian housekeeper tracing the halls of a stately home?

也許是一個維多利亞時期的女管家的陰森幻影在追尋著一座莊園的大廳？

Today, we might think of ghosts as a Halloween staple, or a clever way to build up a story.

今天，我們可能會認為鬼魂是萬聖節的主打產品，或者是編造故事的巧妙方法。

But back in the Middle Ages, they were considered to be very real and confirmed medieval Christian belief.

但在中世紀，它們被認為是非常真實的，並證實了中世紀的基督教信仰。

Tales of the supernatural were often written by monks and nuns and affirmed the importance of being a good Christian to ensure a pleasant afterlife.

超自然的故事通常由僧侶和尼姑撰寫，肯定了成為一名好基督徒以確保來世幸福的重要性。

But why were monks writing ghost stories?

但僧侶們為什麼要寫鬼故事呢？

To answer that question, we need to break down the fundamentals of early Christianity a bit more.

要回答這個問題，我們需要對早期基督教的基本原理進行更深入的分析。

Originally, Christians believed that those who had committed the most serious of sins were on a one-way ticket to eternal damnation.

最初，基督徒認為，那些犯下最嚴重罪孽的人都是永墮地獄的單程票。

The only way to avoid this was to repent before death.

避免這種情況的唯一辦法就是在死前懺悔。

People who did not repent for their sins would be cast into the fiery inferno.

不為自己的罪行懺悔的人將被扔進烈火地獄。

The souls of people who lived good lives, unblemished by sin, could access heaven and eternal bliss, which sounds a lot more preferable.

那些生活美好、沒有受到罪惡玷汙的人的靈魂可以進入天堂，獲得永恆的幸福，這聽起來更可取。

However, by the 1100s, the church taught that there was a third state after death.

然而，到了 1100 年代，教會教導人們死後還有第三種狀態。

This was called purgatory, a place where the souls of people who had sinned could be purified through temporary punishment.

這就是所謂的煉獄，一個讓犯了罪的人的靈魂通過暫時的懲罰得到淨化的地方。

Now it was believed that the living could help a soul in purgatory by doing good words such as saying prayers, giving money to the poor, even righting wrongs.

人們相信，活著的人可以通過做善事來幫助煉獄中的靈魂，比如祈禱、給窮人錢，甚至寫下冤情。

Doing these good words on behalf of a soul would shorten the time they were tormented in purgatory.

為靈魂說這些好話可以縮短他們在煉獄中受折磨的時間。

The monastery's primary function was to say prayers for the dead,

修道院的主要功能是為死者祈禱，

so it's no wonder we find that several ghost stories from around 1100 to 1400 are written in monasteries and feature ghosts coming back to ask for the help of the living or warning people about their own fate should they not change their ways.

所以難怪我們會發現，大約 1100 年到 1400 年間的幾個鬼故事都是在修道院裡寫成的，故事中的鬼魂會回來請求活人的幫助，或者警告人們如果不改過自新，就會面臨自己的命運。

Some of the best-known ghost stories were written by a monk of Byland Abbey in Yorkshire in about 1400.

約 1400 年，約克郡貝蘭德修道院的一位修道士寫下了一些最著名的鬼故事。

The ghosts of these stories usually appear in the form of an apparition, sometimes a burning bale of hay or a scary horse.

這些故事中的鬼魂通常以幽靈的形式出現，有時是一捆燃燒的乾草或一匹可怕的馬。

After taking human form, the ghost would ask the mortal for help, like in one of the stories where the ghost of a local monk asks for help in returning some silver spoons he stole from the monastery.

化為人形後，鬼魂會向凡人求助，比如在一個故事中，當地僧侶的鬼魂請求凡人幫助歸還他從寺院偷走的銀湯匙。

Sometimes these tasks were at great expense to those being haunted, but they completed them in the name of Christian charity.

有時，這些任務會讓被鬼魂纏繞的人付出巨大的代價，但他們還是以基督徒慈善的名義完成了這些任務。

In fact, ghost stories were a really good way of promoting the Christian way of life or even persuading you to become a monk or nun.

事實上，鬼故事是宣傳基督教生活方式，甚至說服你成為僧侶或修女的好方法。

If you found yourself haunted by a ghost looking for a favor, chances are you'd still sleep soundly at night, but not always.

如果你發現自己被鬼魂糾纏，想讓鬼魂幫你的忙，你很可能晚上仍然睡得很香，但並不總是這樣。

One of the Byland stories talks of a terrifying presence known as a revenant that rises from his grave in the cloister walkway before travelling over the moors to gouge out the eye of its former mistress,

拜蘭島的一個故事提到了一個可怕的存在，被稱為亡魂，它從修道院走道上的墳墓中爬出，然後穿過荒原，挖出了它前女主人的眼睛，

aka the ghost you don't want to meet in a monastery at night.

也就是晚上在修道院裡你不想遇見的鬼魂。

Revenants, meaning one who return, are the restless dead and rise from their grave to torment the living.

亡魂，意為回歸者，是焦躁不安的死者，從墳墓中爬出，折磨生者。

The only way to deal with these evil beings is to destroy them, usually by dismembering the body, cutting off the head, extracting the heart, chopping it limb from limb and burning the remains.

對付這些邪惡生物的唯一辦法就是消滅他們，通常是肢解屍體、砍下頭顱、挖出心臟、剁碎四肢、焚燒遺體。

Not something easily done before Sunday Mass.

在主日彌撒前做這件事並不容易。

Revenants probably have their origins in the beliefs of the pre-Christian Anglo-Saxons and other Germanic invaders who settled in Britain after the Romans left.

復仇者可能起源於基督教之前的盎格魯-撒克遜人和其他日耳曼入侵者的信仰，他們在羅馬人離開後定居在英國。

In the 1530s, England started the slow, painful process of changing from a Catholic to a Protestant country, the English Reformation.

1530 年代，英國開始了從天主教國家向新教國家緩慢而痛苦的轉變過程，即英國宗教改革。

Protestants rejected the idea that praying for the dead did any good.

新教徒拒絕接受為死者祈禱有任何好處的觀點。

You either went straight to heaven or hell and there was nothing you could do about it.

要麼直接上天堂，要麼下地獄，你對此無能為力。

This meant that ghosts couldn't exist, so they dismissed tales of tormented souls haunting the living as nothing more than superstition.

這意味著鬼魂是不可能存在的，所以他們認為受折磨的靈魂纏繞著活人的故事不過是迷信而已。

By the mid-16th century, these stories, especially those about ghosts in purgatory, were largely erased from most people's faith.

到 16 世紀中葉，這些故事，尤其是關於煉獄鬼魂的故事，在大多數人的信仰中基本被抹去了。

But belief in ghosts didn't entirely go away and reports of hauntings in Protestant England came to be associated with demonic intervention,

但對鬼魂的信仰並沒有完全消失，在新教英格蘭，鬧鬼的報導與惡魔的干預有關，

while ruined abbeys acted as the perfect backdrop for nightmarish stories of apparitions in the night.

而廢墟修道院則成為夜間幽靈惡夢故事的完美背景。