Editing Revenant (section)

==Selected stories==

===William of Newburgh===

Belief in souls returning from the dead was common in the 12th century, and ''Historia'' by [[William of Newburgh]] (1136–1198) briefly recounts stories he heard about revenants, as do works by his contemporary, Walter Map.<ref name="Keyworth2007">{{cite book|author=David Keyworth|title=Troublesome Corpses: Vampires & Revenants, from Antiquity to the Present|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Cq4qAAAAYAAJ|date=1 January 2007|publisher=Desert Island Books|isbn=978-1-905328-30-7}}</ref>

William wrote that stories of supposed revenants were a "warning to posterity" and so common that, "were I to write down all the instances of this kind which I have ascertained to have befallen in our times, the undertaking would be beyond measure laborious and troublesome."<ref name="Book 5"/> According to William, "It would not be easy to believe that the corpses of the dead should sally (I know not by what agency) from their graves, and should wander about to the terror or destruction of the living, and again return to the tomb, which of its own accord spontaneously opened to receive them, did not frequent examples, occurring in our own times, suffice to establish this fact, to the truth of which there is abundant testimony."<ref name="Book 5">{{cite book |title=Historia rerum Anglicarum |chapter-url=http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/williamofnewburgh-five.html#24 |chapter=Book 5, Ch. 24 |title-link=Historia rerum Anglicarum |access-date=2005-01-07 |archive-date=2014-02-19 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140219150159/http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/williamofnewburgh-five.html#24 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

One story involves a man of "evil conduct" absconding from justice, who fled from York and made the ill-fated choice to get married. Becoming jealous of his wife, he hid in the rafters of his bedroom and caught her in an act of infidelity with a local young man, but then accidentally fell to the floor mortally wounding himself, and died a few days later. As Newburgh describes:

{{blockquote|
A Christian burial, indeed, he received, though unworthy of it; but it did not much benefit him: for issuing, by the handiwork of Satan, from his grave at night-time, and pursued by a pack of dogs with horrible barkings, he wandered through the courts and around the houses while all men made fast their doors, and did not dare to go abroad on any errand whatever from the beginning of the night until the sunrise, for fear of meeting and being beaten black and blue by this vagrant monster.}}

A number of the townspeople were killed by the monster and so:

{{blockquote|
Thereupon snatching up a spade of but indifferent sharpness of edge, and hastening to the cemetery, they began to dig; and whilst they were thinking that they would have to dig to a greater depth, they suddenly, before much of the earth had been removed, laid bare the corpse, swollen to an enormous corpulence, with its countenance beyond measure turgid and suffused with blood; while the napkin in which it had been wrapped appeared nearly torn to pieces. The young men, however, spurred on by wrath, feared not, and inflicted a wound upon the senseless carcass, out of which incontinently flowed such a stream of blood, that it might have been taken for a leech filled with the blood of many persons. Then, dragging it beyond the village, they speedily constructed a funeral pile; and upon one of them saying that the pestilential body would not burn unless its heart were torn out, the other laid open its side by repeated blows of the blunted spade, and, thrusting in his hand, dragged out the accursed heart. This being torn piecemeal, and the body now consigned to the flames...
}}

In another story Newburgh tells of a woman whose husband recently died. The husband revives from the dead and comes to visit her at night in her bedchamber and he "...not only terrified her on awaking, but nearly crushed her by the insupportable weight of his body." This happens for three nights, and the revenant then repeats these nocturnal visits with other nearby family and neighbours and "...thus become a like serious nuisance," eventually extending his walks in the broad daylight around the village. Eventually the problem was solved by the bishop of Lincoln who wrote a letter of absolution, upon which the man's tomb was opened wherein it was seen his body was still there, the letter was placed on his chest, and the tomb sealed.<ref>{{cite book |title=Historia rerum Anglicarum |chapter-url=http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/williamofnewburgh-five.html#22 |chapter=Book 5, Ch. 22 |title-link=Historia rerum Anglicarum |access-date=2005-01-03 |archive-date=2014-02-19 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140219150159/http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/williamofnewburgh-five.html#22 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

===Abbot of Burton===

The English Abbot of [[Burton Abbey|Burton]] tells the story of two runaway peasants from about 1090 who died suddenly of unknown causes and were buried, but:

{{blockquote|
the very same day in which they were interred they appeared at evening, while the sun was still up, carrying on their shoulders the wooden coffins in which they had been buried. The whole following night they walked through the paths and fields of the village, now in the shape of men carrying wooden coffins on their shoulders, now in the likeness of bears or dogs or other animals. They spoke to the other peasants, banging on the walls of their houses and shouting "Move quickly, move! Get going! Come!"
}}

The villagers became sick and started dying, but eventually the bodies of the revenants were exhumed, their heads cut off, and their hearts removed, which ended the spread of the sickness.<ref>{{citation|title=England Under the Norman and Angevin Kings |page=613}}</ref>

===Walter Map===

The chronicler [[Walter Map]], a [[Welsh person|Welshman]] writing during the 12th century, tells of a "wicked man" in [[Hereford]] who revived from the dead and wandered the streets of his village at night calling out the names of those who would die of sickness within three days. The response by bishop [[Gilbert Foliot]] was "Dig up the body and cut off the head with a spade, sprinkle it with [[holy water]] and re-inter it."<ref>{{cite book|title=De nugis curialium|chapter=Book 2, Ch. 27|title-link=De nugis curialium}}</ref>