Medieval Halloween: How All Hallows’ Eve Was Really Celebrated

Pumpkins, costumes and children demanding sweets at the door: Halloween feels thoroughly modern and American. But the name, the date and some of its oddest customs come straight out of the Middle Ages. Medieval Halloween wasn’t a party night, it was the eve of one of the most important church festivals of the year, followed by a day for remembering the dead. Bells rang through the night, candles burned for the souls in Purgatory, and the poor went from door to door asking for cakes in return for prayers. Here’s how All Hallows’ Eve was really celebrated, and which bits of our Halloween are much younger than you’d think.

What does “Halloween” actually mean?

“Hallow” is an old English word for a saint or holy person, the same word you find in “hallowed be thy name”. All Hallows’ Day was the feast of all the saints, on 1 November, and the evening before it was All Hallows’ Eve, or All Hallows’ Even. Over time, especially in Scotland, the phrase was squeezed down to “Hallowe’en”. So the name itself is a medieval church calendar entry in disguise.

How All Saints’ Day ended up on 1 November

The early Church honoured its martyrs on many different dates. In the 600s, the Pantheon in Rome was turned into a church dedicated to the Virgin and the martyrs, with its feast in May. Then, in the 700s, Pope Gregory III dedicated a chapel in St Peter’s to all the saints, and the feast came to be held on 1 November, possibly the date of the dedication. In the 800s, under Pope Gregory IV and the Frankish emperor Louis the Pious, the 1 November feast spread across the Frankish lands and much of western Christendom.

Why November? You will often read that the Church chose the date to take over the Celtic festival of Samhain, which marked the end of the harvest and the start of winter around the same time. It’s a popular idea, but historians are divided. Some see a deliberate link; others, such as the historian Ronald Hutton, argue that the earliest sources don’t connect Samhain with the dead, and that the 1 November date came from Rome or the Germanic world rather than from Celtic custom. The honest answer is that we don’t know for certain.

All Souls’ Day: remembering the dead

All Saints’ Day was for those already in heaven. Everyone else needed help. In the early 1000s (traditionally in 998, though probably after 1030), Odilo, the abbot of the great monastery of Cluny in Burgundy, ordered all the monasteries under Cluny to pray for the souls of the dead on 2 November, the day after All Saints. The custom spread across Europe and became All Souls’ Day. If you’re curious about the monks who ran these vast networks of prayer, see what life was like in a medieval monastery.

Behind All Souls lay the belief in Purgatory, a place or state where the souls of the saved were cleansed of their sins before entering heaven. The living could help them along with prayers, Masses and charity. That belief also drove the trade in pardons described in our article on medieval indulgences. Together, All Hallows’ Eve, All Saints and All Souls formed the heart of medieval Halloween: a short season, sometimes called Hallowtide, devoted to the saints and the dead.

Medieval Halloween customs: bells, candles and soul cakes

So what did people actually do? In late medieval England, church bells were rung on the night of All Hallows to comfort the souls in Purgatory, sometimes for hours, and candles were lit in churches and churchyards. Parishioners paid for Masses for their dead relatives, and many parishes kept lists of their dead to be remembered in prayer. For more on the parish church at the centre of all this, see the medieval Church.

Then there were soul cakes. By the end of the Middle Ages, poor people and children in parts of England would go from house to house at Hallowtide “souling”: asking for small spiced cakes, or for food and money, and promising in return to pray for the household’s dead. Shakespeare mentions the custom in passing in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, comparing someone’s whining to “a beggar at Hallowmas”. Many historians see souling as one of the ancestors of trick-or-treating, though the modern American version only took shape in the 20th century.

In Scotland and Ireland, people also went “guising” in disguise at this time of year, singing or performing for food, but the earliest hints date from the 1500s, and most detailed descriptions of guising come much later.

What happened to medieval Halloween?

The Reformation hit Hallowtide hard. Protestant reformers rejected Purgatory, so prayers for the dead seemed pointless at best. In England, from the 1540s and especially under Edward VI and Elizabeth I, authorities tried to stop the ringing of bells on All Hallows night, which they saw as superstition. Some customs survived anyway in the countryside, especially in Scotland and Ireland, and later crossed the Atlantic with emigrants.

The bits that aren’t medieval

Now for the myth-busting. Many things we think of as “ancient” Halloween traditions are much more recent.

The carved pumpkin is the obvious one, and nobody at a medieval Halloween would have recognised it. People in Ireland and Scotland carved lanterns from turnips and other root vegetables, and these are documented in the 1800s. Pumpkins, a plant from the Americas, took over in North America in the 19th century. One of the earliest meanings of “jack-o’-lantern” was the will-o’-the-wisp, the flickering lights seen over marshes. Black cats, witches on broomsticks and haunted houses became Halloween favourites even later, largely through early-20th-century postcards, parties and, later, films. And trick-or-treating as we know it, with costumes and bags of sweets, spread across the United States between the 1930s and the early 1950s.

Witches are a story of their own, and they weren’t burned in anything like the numbers people imagine in the Middle Ages. Medieval Halloween itself, though, was very real: a night of bells and candles, prayers for the dead and the first knock on the door asking for a treat. Something to think about next time you open the door to a small skeleton. And if the next visitor wears a cape and fangs, meet the real prince behind the costume: Vlad the Impaler.

Frequently asked questions

Did people celebrate Halloween in the Middle Ages?

Yes, as All Hallows’ Eve, the eve of All Saints’ Day on 1 November. It was a religious occasion rather than a party, followed by All Souls’ Day on 2 November.

Is Halloween a pagan festival?

Partly debated. The name and date come from the Christian feast of All Saints. A link to the Celtic festival of Samhain is often claimed, but historians disagree about how direct it is.

What were soul cakes?

Small spiced cakes handed out at Hallowtide to people who went from door to door, in return for prayers for the household’s dead.

When did people start carving pumpkins for Halloween?

In North America in the 19th century. Before that, people in Ireland and Scotland carved lanterns from turnips and other root vegetables.

Sources

• Wikipedia, Halloween
• Wikipedia, All Saints’ Day
• Wikipedia, All Souls’ Day
• Wikipedia, Soul cake
• Encyclopaedia Britannica, Halloween