The Past and Present Society Wraiths, Revenants and Ritual in Medieval Culture Author(s): Nancy Caciola Reviewed work(s): Source: Past & Present, No. 152 (Aug., 1996), pp. 3-45 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Past and Present Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/651055 . Accessed: 04/12/2011 13:56 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Oxford University Press and The Past and Present Society are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Past & Present. http://www.jstor.org WRAITHS,REVENANTSAND RITUALIN MEDIEVALCULTURE* INTRODUCTION Whena humanbeingdies . . . the bodythatgavecomfortto manypeople whileit was alive,provokeshorrorin the samepeopleaftPrdeath.Hence the saying: Humanfleshis viler thana sheep'sskin. Whena sheepdies, its remains(ruina) are still worth something, The skin is stretchedand writtenon, both sides. Whena humanbeing dies, both fleshand bonesdie.l As this fourteenth-centurypreacherplaced nib to parchment,he was moved to reflect upon the durability of the words he put down, as contrastedwith the destructionof his body to come. His melancholythoughts were realized, for although the manu- script still exists, the author'sname, along with the details of his bodily existence, are lost. This particularwriter's musing on the eternity of death is deceptive, however, for the finality of his tone contrasts sharply with the fluid conceptions of death and afterlife that are expressed in other medieval texts. Indeed, the last line in particular "when a human being dies, both flesh and bones die" actuallycontradictsa significantbody of evid- ence about medieval attitudes towards life, death and afterlife. This article is about that body of evidence. In the following pages I explore the ongoing processes of construction, dissolution and reconstruction of the life/death boundaryin Europeanculture roughly between the twelfth and the fifteenth centuries. I shall argue that definitionsof death and of life may be grouped into two broad models that competed with one another,even as they overlappedwithin variouscultural milieux: a spiritual model of life and afterlife, characteristicof * I shouldlike to acknowledgethe kind encouragement of Diane OwenHughes, LesterLittle,RichardS. CohenandMichaelMacDonald. 1Fasciculusmorum:A Fourteenth-CenturyPreacher'sHandbook,i.l3, ed. Siegfried Wenzel(UniversityPark,1989),p. 98. 4 PASTAND PRESENT NUMBER 152 the theological and learned medical traditions, and a material model prevalentamong lay sectors of society that were less con- cernedwith the theologicalissues of spirit and soul. In so arguing, I hope to throw light upon the diversity of cultural traditions within the Middle Ages. Despite the large bibliography on the history of attitudes towards death that has developed since the 1970s, especially in France,2few studiesdiscussthe multiplicityof relevanttraditions, at least for the Middle Ages. This neglect is in part caused by the problematicnature of the evidence. The obvious places to look for data wills, monumentalsepulchres,the provision of masses, the artesmoriendi describe the fears and practicesof the wealthy, the literate and the religiously committed. Sources for the reconstructionof alternativetraditionsabout death and afterlifeare more difficultto exploit, for the textualgenres closest to the oral or "popular"milieu exempla collections,peniten- tials, inquisitorialproceedings,hagiographies have been pre- served mainly through the activities of ecclesiasticalcollectors and redactors.3And though the ecclesiasticalsphere preserves much valuabledata for the historian,it is also "the creatorof a universality a posteriori".4 That is to say, even as ecclesiastics preserved notice of variant traditions, they also reinterpreted them to conform to their own cultural standardsand beliefs, leaving the impression of universality where diversity existed. 2 For a bibliographical sampling,I referthe readerto the reviewessayby Stephen Wilson,"Deathandthe SocialHistorians: SomeRecentBooksin FrenchandEnglish", Social History, v (1980), pp. 435-51;JaneTaylor(ed.), Dies illa: Death in the Middle Ages (Liverpool,1984);Annales E. S. C., xxxi (1976), passim; HermanBraet and WernerVerbeke(eds.), Death in the Middle Ages (Louvain,1983);andthe remaining notesthroughoutthis article. 3For discussionof exempla, see Jean-ClaudeSchmitt, The Holy Greyhound: Guinefort, Healer of Children since the Thirteenth Century, trans. Martin Thom (Cambridge,1983);Jean-ClaudeSchmitt,Religione,folklore, e societa nell'Occidente medievale,trans.LuciaCarle(Rome,1988);MarieAnnePolode BeaulieuandJacques Berlioz,"Exempla:A Discussionand CaseStudy",in JoelRosenthal(ed.), Medieval Womenand the Sourcesof MedievalHistory (Athens,Ga, 1990),pp. 37-65.Onpeniten- tials,see AronGurevich,"PopularCulturein the Mirrorof the Penitentials",in his Medieval Popular Culture:Problemsof Belief and Perception,trans.JanosM. Bakand Paul A. Hollingsworth(Cambridge,1988), pp. 78-103. For hagiography,the best sourceis AndreVauchez,La saintete en Occident au dernierssiecles du Moyen Age (Rome, 1981).For inquisitorialproceedings,see CarloGinzburg,Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method, trans.JohnandAnneTedeschi(Baltimore,1989),pp. 156-64. Of generalinterestis AndreVauchez(ed.), Faire croire:modalitesde la diJ?fusion et de la receptiondes messagesreligieuxdu XIIe au Xve siecle (Paris,1981). 4 HuguesNeveux, "Leslendemains de la mortdansles croyancesoccidentales(vers 1250-vers1300)",Annales E.S.C., xxxiv (1979),p. 249.  WRAITHS,REVENANTSAND RITUAL s The task of the historian is to undo this process, to recover multiplicity when hints of it exist by unravelling the different strandsof culturalinterpretationthat are woven into the evidence. As JonathanZ. Smith has noted, the historian'srole is "to com- plicate, not to clarify".5 Indeed, the process of reconstructingnon-canonicalbeliefs is fraught with complicationsrather than clarity. Not least among these complicationsis the fact that "popularculture" does not, as such, exist.6 As a set of discursive terms, the dichotomy of popularand elite has been created and maintainedby historians as a means to differentiatethe canonicalideals of the literatefew from the less well-documented mentalities of the populus. Yet popularculture is invariablydefinedby what it is not literate, urban, clerical rather than by what it iS.7 One result of this imprecision has been a tendency to overemphasizethe position of normative, high culture in relation to popular beliefs and practices. This has occurred in two distinct ways: either the popular is seen as an inferior version of an elite norm; or else popularculture is envisagedas largely cut off from high culture, resulting in a "two-tiered model".8 In either case, the culture split is often constructedalong the lines of intellectualdogma or belief versus daily ritual and praxis. This is in turn a loose replicationof indigenousmedievalcategoriesof orthodoxyversus superstztzo. 5JonathanZ. Smith,Map is not Territory:Studiesin the History of Religion(Chicago, 1993),p. 290. 6 See Jean-ClaudeSchmitt," 'Religionpopulaire'et culturefolklorique",Annales E.S.C., xxxi (1976),pp. 941-53;FrancisRapp,"Reflexionssur la religionpopulaire au Moyen Age", in BernardPlongeron(ed.), La religionpopulaire dans l'Occident chretien(Paris,1976), pp. 51-98; GaborKlaniczay,The Uses of SupernaturalPozoer: The Transformationof Popular Religion in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. KarenMargolis,trans.SusanSingerman(Princeton,1990),pp. 1-9; MaryR. O'Neil, "From 'Popular'to 'Local'Religion:Issues in EarlyModernEuropeanReligious History", Religious Studies Rev., xii (1986), pp. 222-8; John Van Engen, "The ChristianMiddleAgesas anHistoriographical Problem",Amer. Hist. Rev., xci (1986), pp. 519-52; for a responseto Van Engen, see Schmitt,Religione,folklore, e societa nell'Occidentemedievale, pp. 1-27. An informativediscussionof the issues from a slightlydifferentperspectivemaybe foundin CatherineBell, 'CReligion andChinese Culture:Towardan Assessmentof 'PopularReligion'", History of Religions, xxix (1989),pp 35 57. 7 For a comparative perspectiveon how binarydiscursivecategoriescan impede, ratherthanexpedite,analysisof religiousculturein the past, see RichardS. Cohen, "DiscontentedCategories:Hinayanaand Mahayanain IndianBuddhistHistory",il Amer. Acad. Religion, lxiii (1995),pp. 1-25. 8 Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and F?wnction in Latin Christianity (Chicago,1981). 6 PASTAND PRESENT NUMBER 152 Although it is useful to maintain contrastive distinctions between "popular"and "elite" culture, we should not make the mistake of confoundingdiscursivecategorieswith an actual his- toricaldualism. When discussingculturalvariancein the Middle Ages, it is importantto recognizethat these differentperspectives are largely relational: "popular" and "elite" come into play through analysisof social dynamics, rather than as pre-existent data. These categories must be seen as expressing ideological tensions between models of cultural interpretation,rather than as static strata or levels of culture in opposition. However, to define popular and elite only relationallyis also an enterprise fraughtwith hazard.As ChristopherHerberthas noted, following E. B. Tylor, culture is difficult to define as other than a set of abstractrelationshipsamong the elements of a "complex whole" embracingreligion, social mores, art, politics and so forth. Yet these relationshipsare not actually observable:they are simply theorized as a basis of culturalcoherence.9This realizationadds yet another caveat to the historian'stask. On the one hand, we must avoid essentializingour analytic tools by imputing a false sense of historicalconcretenessto them. On the other, we must recognize "medievalculture"as a conceptualabstractionand the idea of "popular and elite medieval cultures" as a second- generationabstraction. Fortunately, abstractionsare not inappropriateto academic discourse,even when they are problematicand difficultto define. "Culture" has been and continues to be a useful conceptual category in the humanitiesand social sciences; so too can terms such as "popular"and "elite" continueas tools in the discussion of past societies, for they representa pragmaticstrategyof inter- pretation. However, I shall deliberately allow these terms to remainundefined:they are simplydiscursivemarkersfor discrim- inatingamongdifferentviewpoints,ratherthanhistoricalactualit- ies that can be preciselydelimitedthroughempiricaldata.Indeed, the very idea of formulatingspecifichistoricaldefinitionsof pop- ular and elite culture is a paradox, for the production of an abstractionby definitioninvolves a slippagefrom the observable to the non-observable. 9 ChristopherHerbert, Culture and Anomie: Ethnographic Imagination in the Nineteenth Century(Chicago,1991),pp. 4, 10.  WRAITHS,REVENANTSAND RITUAL 7 II DEFININGDEATH The social significanceof death is constructedwith great variety and complexity within different cultural contexts.l? Medieval conceptionsof death were fluid:as I shall demonstrate,one could die a "good" or a "bad" death; one could undergo a temporary or a more permanentdeath; and one could die a partialdeath- that is, a death of the personalitywithout a death of the body, or vice versa. Patrick Geary has defined the dead in the Middle Ages as an "age class'':ll this neatly encapsulatesthe social reci- procity between the living and the dead, and the continuedinflu- ence that the latter exerted over the former throughoutmedieval society. Intimacy between the living and the dead was possible because death was not envisagedas a full extinguishingof either body or spirit. In doctrinalterms, the body awaitedresurrection even as it decayed,l2 while the soul entered one realm of a tripartiteafterlife.l3In some local, popular traditionstoo, both spirit and body were believed to live on though in rather different ways than those elaboratedby the theologians of the time. I turn first to the learned tradition, for it possessed a well- articulatedset of medical definitionsand theologicaldoctrinesof death and the afterlife. Centralto medieval medical theories of life was the notion of spiritus as the principle of human vitality, a doctrinethat has significantimplicationsfor social and religious history as well.l4 Derived from Galenicmodels and enhancedby 10Cf.RobertHertz,Death and the Right Hand, trans.RodneyandClaudiaNeedham (Glencoe,Ill., 1960);RobertHertz, "Contribution a une etudesur la representation collectivede la mort", in his Sociologiereligieuseet folklore, 2nd edn (Paris, 1970), pp. 1-83;JonathanParryandMauriceBloch(eds.), Death and the Regenerationof Life (Cambridge,1982);JackGoodyandCesarePoppi, "FlowersandBones:Approaches to the Deadin Anglo-American andItalianCemeteries",Comp.Studiesin Society and Hist., xxxvi (1994),pp. 146-75. 11PatrickJ. Geary,Living with the lDeadin the Middle Ages (Ithaca,1994),p. 36. 12 CarolineWalkerBynum,The Resurrectionof the Body (New York, 1994). 13 JacquesLe Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, trans.ArthurGoldhammer (Chicago, 1981);AlanE. Bernstein,The Formationof Hell: Death and Retributionin the Ancient and Early ChristianWorlds(Ithaca,1993);AronGurevich,HistoricalAnthropologyof the Middle Ages, ed. Jana Howlett (Chicago, 1992), pp. 50-89; Aron Gurevich, "PopularandScholarlyMedievalCulturalTraditions:Notesin the Marginof Jacques Le Goff'sBook", YlMedievalHist., ix (1983),pp. 71-90. For Englishtranslations of primarysourcedocumentson purgatory,see Visionsof Heaven and Hell beforeDante, trans.EileenGardiner(New York,1989). 14 The main worksthat I will rely on in the followingdiscussion are: Nancy G. Siraisi,TaddeoAlderotti and his Pupils: Two Generationsof Italian Medical Learning icont. on p. 8) 8 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 152 Arab influences, spiritus was often subdivided into three classes or physiologicalsystems: spiritus animalis, spiritus naturalis and spiritus vitalis.15 The animalspirit was held to reside in the brain, and was responsible for psychic phenomena and the nervous system; the naturalspirit had its basis in the liver and regulated involuntary systems.l6 Both these kinds of spirit derived from the vital spirit, which was manufacturedin the left ventricle of the heart from inhaled air and thence diffused throughout the body via the arteries.17 In the process, spiritus regulatedthe vital signs: heartbeat, pulse, respirationand maintenanceof proper body temperature.l8Spirituscould also be seen in the form of tears, which were held to be an eSusion of spirit caused by an excess of emotion constrictingthe heart; its effects could be felt in fevers and chills, since it was responsiblefor the generationof body heat.l9 Not surprisingly, spiritus was considered instru- mental in the processes of vision, in provocation to laughter, falling in love and penile erection.20Thus, rather than being an abstractor numinousentity, the spiritus was considereda material (albeit highly refined)substancewithin the body, one that inter- acted with the body's internalorgans and moved along its path- ways. Indeed, spiritus was thought to regulate all the most importantphysiologicalsystems in the human organism:medic- ally defined, spiritus constitutedthe principleof life itself. By contrast, in theologicalparlancethe soul was traditionally held to be the principleof life. Yet the greatscholastictheologians, (n. 14 cont.) (Princeton,1981);Nancy G. Siraisi,Medievaland EarlyRenaissance Medicine:An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice(Chicago,1990);Marie-Christine Pouchelle, TheBodyandSurgeryin theMiddleAges,trans.RosemaryMorris(New Brunswick, 1990);DanielleJacquartandClaudeThomasset,SexualityandMedicinein theMiddle Ages,trans.MatthewAdamson(Princeton,1988);JamesBono, "MedicalSpiritsand the MedievalLanguageof Life", Traditio,x1 (1984), pp. 91-130; M. D. Chenu, "Spiritus:vocabulairede l'ame au XIIe siecle", Revuedes sciencesphilosophiqueset theologiques, xli (1957), pp. 209-32;G. Verbeke,L'evolution de la doctrinedupneuma du stoicismea S. Augustin(New York, 1987); Ruth Harvey, The Imsard Wits: Psychological Theoryin theMiddleAgesandin theRenaissance (London,1975). 15Jacquartand Thomasset,SexualityandMedicinein theMiddleAges,pp. 48-50; Bono, "MedicalSpiritsandthe MedievalLanguageof Life", pp. 92-4. l6Jacquartand Thomasset,Sexualityand Medicinein the MiddleAges,pp. 48-9; Siraisi,TaddeoAlderottiand his Pupils,p. 166; Pouchelle,Bodyand Surgeryin the MiddleAges,p. 117. 17 Siraisi,Taddeo AlderottiandhisPupils,p. 166. 18 Siraisi, MedievalandEarlyRenaissance Medicine,p. 107. 19Siraisi,TaddeoAlderottiandhisPupils,p. 228. 20 Ibid.,pp. 218, 228;Jacquart andThomasset,SexualityandMedicinein theMiddle Ages,pp. 84, 83.  WRAITHS,REVENANTSAND RITUAL 9 from Hugh of Saint-Victor to Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas,desired to harmonizethe naturaland the divine orders. As a result, throughoutthe twelfth and thirteenthcenturiestheo- logians increasinglybroadenedthe definition of spiritus So as to ally it with the soul, thus uniting the realms of theology and medicine.2l For example, it was speculated that at the general resurrection the heart would be the first part of the body to resurrect, presumablybecause this seat of the vital spiritus was necessary above all for the return of the soul and of life.22 Ultimately, although spiritus was formally understoodto be the operative intermediarybetween the materialityof the body and the immaterialityof the soul, and thus to share in the properties of each, it came to be regardedas a "special"categoryunto itself. What in medical terms was conceived as a barely materialsub- stance was renderedeven more insubstantialwithin the religious sphere. As James Bono has noted: As a spirit-matterdichotomybecamea dominantcategoryfor analyzing relationshipsamongthings. . . spiritus was no longerjusta rarefiedform of matter, like air or blood; it becamea kind of substanceessentially differentfrom the ordinarymatterout of which the body is formed. . . Latinauthors. . . wishedto createa languageembracingboththe phenom- enon of life and the experienceof salvationwithin a unifiedconceptual framework. In short, the spiritualmodel of life, deathand afterlifeincreasingly emphasized the incorporealityof the vital principle by contrast with the material nature of the body and the tangible world. Spirituseven came to be associatedwith celestial spirits and the divine image. Thus the salvific history of the individual was linked both to the celestialmacrocosmand to the physicalmicro- cosm.24This incorporationof spiritus within the soteriological system that PierreChaunuhas dubbed "the religionof the soul"25 has broad implicationsfor the religious history of the period. As 21 See Bono, "Medical Spirits and the Medieval Languageof Life"; Chenu, "Vocabulaire de l'ameau XIIesiecle". A. R. Brown,"Deathandthe HumanBodyin the LaterMiddleAges: 22 Elizabeth The Legislationof BonifaceVIIIon the Divisionof the Corpse",Viator, xii (1981), p. 240. 23 Bono, "MedicalSpiritsand the MedievalLanguage of Life", pp. 98-9. "DiscerningSpirits:SanctityandPossession 24 For moreon this, see NancyCaciola, in the LaterMiddleAges"(Univ. of MichiganPh.D. thesis, 1994). 25 PierreChaunu,La mort a Paris, XVIe, XVIIe et XVIIIe sie'cles(Paris,1978).See also PierreChaunu,"Mourira Paris(XVIe-XVIIe-XVIIIe siecles)",Annales E.S.C., xxxi (1976),pp. 29-50.  AND PRESENT PAST 152 NUMBER 10 model was not the Ishalldemonstrate,however, this spiritual Middle Ages. definitionof life, death and afterlife in the only III THE POSSESSED CORPSE handsfrom theirsideswhen they walk Peoplewho move theirarmsandmoving aboutdo muchharm. . . [for]by theirarmsaboutin sucha waX, to the ground.6 deffunctorum) they knockmanysoulsof the dead(animas beset much of the Thisquotation exemplifiesthe problems that for medievalattitudestowards death. On the one hand, evidence that points to the centrality thereexists a set of talesand fragments of certainmedi- ofthe deadwithin the syncretistthought-systems noted above, hand, as I have evalcommunities. On the other through ecclesiastical nearlyall this evidence is transmitted reinterpreted the meaningsof writerswho both transcribedand certainties. In the thesetales to fit with their own theological it is the Latin presentcase the remark is actually fourth-hand: who translation of the vernaculartestimony of a village woman, of the wording wasreporting the speech of a friend. Although community the way in which this thestatementmay not represent testifies to a actuallyspoke about the deceased, it nevertheless the living and the mentaloutlook on the coinciding worlds of quite crowded dead.The seen world is interspersedwith another, ease. and the two may collide with levelof unseen reality, unseen aspects of Similarly,recoveringboth the seen and the seen and medieval religious mentalities involves negotiating both for the grain" unseenlevels of the texts: reading "against markedly, and for what is left unsaid. A primary whatis said too the interpreta- meansof reading against the grain is to separate facts" of "cultural tions of ecclesiasticalauthors from the basic descrip- most minimal the story. By "culturalfacts" I mean the (hence "facts") tion of what actionsare reportedto have occurred that circulated the and were held as true by the communities quotationabove in the report (hence "cultural"). For example, of the soul (as there is a contradictionbetween the immaterialityfact that these writers) and the the word anima was used by Latin over by those "souls of the dead" may be physically knocked eveAquede Pamiers (1318-1325), ed. 26Le registred'inquisitionde 3tacquesFournier, I would like to thank Miriam 1965), i, pp. 544-5. J. Duvernoy, 3 vols. (Toulouse, a crucial juncture. at Shadis for helping me obtain this text swiftly  WRAITHS,REVENANTSAND RITUAL ll among the living insensitive enough to walk about with their arms swinging. The use of the word anima by the notary even if cognate to the lost vernacularof the witness-represents an interpretation,a translationof one semanticsystem into another.27 The "culturalfact", by contrast,is that this communitybelieved that the dead had a tangibleform that could be hit, and that they could in consequencefall down. This idea hints at an alternative conceptionof the basisof vitality than the spiritualmodel discus- sed earlier, one that views the principle of (after)lifenot only as material,but as embodied. It is to this model that I now turn. Considerthe following anecdote: In the town of NivellesI saw a virginworthyof God . . . She rosein the earlymorningto go to church,observingthe stipulatedhours[forprayer]. It happenedone time that the deadbody of a certaindeceasedman was broughtto the church in the evening without her knowing about it. Gettingup in the middle of the night, the virgin went to churchand foundthe deadman, but she was hardlyafraid,or just a little, so she sat down and beganher prayers.When the Devil saw this he lookedupon her with malice(invidet), and enteringthe deadbody he movedit at first in the coffin.The virginthereforecrossedherselfandbravelyshoutedto the Devil, "Lie down! Lie down, you wretch, for you have no power againstme!"Suddenlythe Devil roseup withthe corpseandsaid,"Truly, now I will have power againstyou, and I will revenge myself for the frequentinjuriesI havesufferedat your hands!"Whenshe saw this, she was thoroughlyterrifiedin her heart, so with both handsshe seized a staff toppedwith a cross, and bringingit down on the headof the dead man she knockedhim to the ground.Throughsuch faithfuldaringshe put the demonto flight.28 This tale, with its complex intertwiningof local popular and of clerical beliefs, was first written down in the mid-thirteenth century by the Dominican Thomas of Cantimprein his manual for preachers, Bonum universalede apibus. Thomas probably adapted the tale from gossip he had heard in Nivelles, an area within his sphere of mobility, in order to teach certain points of dogma about unclean spirits and, more importantly, about the death of the human body. Alongside these teachings,however, a delicate reading of the story may reveal much about local ideas that conflicted, even as they coexisted, with ecclesiasticalteach- ings. To explore these other ideas, we must extricate Thomas's 27 For a thoughtful collection of essays on this theme within modern anthropological discourse, see James Clifford and George Marcus (eds.), Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography(Berkeley, 1986). 28 Thomas of Cantimpre, Bonumuniversalede apibus,ii.57.8: Thoma Cantimpratani, S. Th. Doctoris,OrdinisS. Dominici,et EpiscopiSuffraganeiCameracensis,Miraculorum, et exemplorummemorabilium sui temporis,libri duo (Douai, 1597), p. 452. 12 PASTAND PRESENT NUMBER 152 interpretationof the incident from the cultural facts that he is reporting. Two questions of boundary transgressionare at issue here: between the living and the dead, and between flesh and spirit. First, Thomas, consistentwith ecclesiasticaldoctrine,is emphas- izing the fact that the corpse itself does not come to life: it is mere dross moved by the demon. The body is uncoordinated, stiff and unnatural.Neither the flesh nor the spirit of the dead man is an active principle, as Thomas repeatedlyemphasizesin such redundantphrasesas "the dead body of a certain deceased man". Thus the body is usable by any spirit, not just the original human spirit of the deceased. In fact, bodies are often referred to as a sort of clothing in hagiographers'descriptionsof spiritual dislocation:entering and exiting the body is like "putting on a tunic" or "shedding a garment".29Even Augustine had likened the body to a piece of clothing or jewellery, one "worn" in a particularly intimate manner.30This conception is linked, of course, both to the medical concept of the spirit as the principle of life or vitality, and to the theory of the generalresurrectionat the end of time, when the bodies of the dead will rise and be reunited with their original human spirits: the garment, once abandoned,will be put on again. The resurrectionis the inverse of this possessedcorpse:a gloriousreturnof the humanspirit, as opposed to an unclean spirit slipping inside the body and using it. Iconographic evidence also suggests a basic parallelism in medieval conceptionsof how a human spirit and a demon might use the body: the exit of the humanspirit at death was portrayed in precisely the same way as the exit of an unclean spirit in exorcism scenes. Either spirit may leap out through the mouth, the gatewayto the body's spiritualsystem in medievalphysiologi- cal terms. The body, as some sort of envelope or tool, could be put on by any spirit and used as a meansto interactmore directly with the tangible world. Thomas's language emphasizes the demon's manipulationof the body as an object: "[The Devil] moved [the body] at first in the coffin . . . suddenlythe Devil rose up with the corpse". There is a clear subject/objectdistinctionbetween the unclean spirit as mover, and the body as inert matter. Nor was Thomas alone in 29 See, for example, Vita Venerabilis Idae Virginis,ii.5.26, ed. DanielPapebroch, in Acta Sanctorum,Aprilis,ii (Antwerp,1675),p. 178. 30 Brown,"Deathand the HumanBodyin the LaterMiddleAges", p. 223.  WRAITHS,REVENANTSAND RITUAL 13 this particularemphasis: other ecclesiasticalauthors also inter- preted the movementof a corpse after death in preciselythe same way. For example, a tale from the anonymous Life of Ida of Louvain, another thirteenth-centuryvirgin from the northern Low Countries,emphasizesthe way in which a dead body's limbs may be manceuvredby an unclean spirit: One time at night she beheldas if a bier was placedbeforeher . . . and on it . . . the corpseof a certaindeceasedman. Leapinginto it, the skin- changinginventorof all evil stood the body on its feet, and thus moving forwardinsideit andtogetherwith it (sic in ipsosimulcumipsoprogrediens), he approachedthe maidservantof God.3' The passageexplicitly describeshow the demon enters the body, props it up on its feet and then makes it take a few steps. One can easily picture it gracelesslyshamblingforward.Like Thomas of Cantimpre,the author of this story also emphasizesa strong subject/objectdistinctionbetween unclean spirit and dead body. In so doing, both authors emphasize the point that the only animate force is the possessing spirit, the demon; the man, by contrast,is only a thing, a mere cadaver.In essence, this "official" view of reanimatedcorpses denies any transgressionbetween the living and the dead, and instead makes the centralaction a trans- gression between flesh and the demonic spirit. Corpses cannot come back to life, but they may temporarilybe inhabitedby an unclean spirit that takes the place of the departedhuman spirit. Only at the resurrectionmay the dead truly be said to live again. This opposition between different ways of reanimating the body was even invoked in an ecclesiasticalritual for consecrating cemeteries, which prayed God to protect the body's safety from demonic misuse or reanimationuntil the true and final resurrec- tion; a blessingwhich evokes the extraordinaryimage of medieval demons seeking out cemeteries in order to rob graves of their occupants:"Grant,distributorof kindnesses,a seat of repose for the bodies of your menservantsand womenservantsenteringinto this cemetery,a place fortifiedagainstall incursionsof evil spirits, so that at the resurrectionof their bodies and spirits ... they may be worthy to receive the eternal blessing".32 31Vita Idae, i.2.8 (ed. Papebroch,p. 160). 32"Famulorumfamularumque tuarumcorporibusin hoc cimiteriumintrantibus quietis sedem ab omni incursionemmalorumspirituumdefensisbenigniislargitor tribueut postanimarumcorporumque resurrectionem . . . beatitudinem sempiternam perciperemereantur":BibliotecaApostolicaVaticana,BorgheseMS. 35, "Ordoad benedicendumcoemeterium",fo. 74r-v. 14 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER152 Other macabretales emphasizedthe total death of the body in slightly diSerent ways. For example, the mid-thirteenth-century DominicanJean de Mailly tells an exemplumof a demon animat- ing the corpse of a beautiful young woman in order to tempt a pious man.33On the one hand, the tale is a meditation on the transitorynature of secular delights, but the fact that the girl's body turns putrid as soon as the demon leaves it also emphasizes the death of the body, as opposed to the illusory life given it by the uncleanspirit. More explicit on the theme of demonicposses- sion versus the living dead is another tale from Thomas of Cantimpre.This exemplumtells of the animatecorpseof a knight who appearsto his former servant, asks him to remove from his wound the point of the lance that killed him (as verificationof his own materiality),and then lectureshim on the evils of tourna- ments.34Thomas follows up his lesson against institutionalized violence, however, with an explanationof how the movement of a corpse might come about, utilizing the theologicalmetaphorof the body as garment: Sincethe structure(organismo) of a deadbody remainsbehind,just as a man can [use] a structuredbody (corpus organisatum) like a garment,so the Devil can sneakinto it andcanmouldthe mouthto voicesandwords again,and recallthe tendonsto the movementof its members.35 Again,it is not the body which moves and gives life, but the spirit. This interpretationof revenantsas possessed by demons is in accordwith the broaderintellectualbackgroundof these ecclesi- asticalauthors. Their culturalconstructionof animatecorpses as demonicallypossessedwas supportedboth by the learnedmedico- theologicaltradition, with its model of the spiritualbasis of life and the inertia of corporealmatter, as well as by more general anxieties of the ecclesiastical milieu about the predations of demons. Even within a didacticwork such as Thomas'sDe apibus, however, the very terms of the argumentreveal the beliefs that the preacherwas attempting to eradicate.For example, we see in Thomas's relentless insistence on the absolute non-vitality of the corpse that attackedthe virgin ("the dead body of a certain deceased man"), an argumentagainst the opposite proposition: 33 Jeande Mailly,Abregedesgesteset miraclesdes saints, cxix.16, trans.A. Dondaine (Paris,1947),pp. 338-9. 34Thomasof Cantimpre, De apibus,ii.49.6:Thoma Cantimpratani. . . Miraculorum, pp. 367-8. 35 Ibid., ii.49.7: Thoma Cantimpratani. . . Miraculorum,pp. 368-9.  WRAITHS,REVENANTSAND RITUAL 15 that the dead do have a continuing vitality of their own. If we separatethe ecclesiasticalinterpretationsof these events as caused by demons from the basic "culturalfacts" that they report, we are left with a diSerent set of ideas: dead men sometimes roam from their graves and attack the living. As I shall demonstrate, such terrifying events minus the possessing demon-were well within the realm of plausibilityfor certainmedievalcultural * . ml leux. IV THE LIVINGCORPSE Belief in corpses coming back to life is well attested for parts of medieval Europe, most notably Iceland, but also England, the Low Countries, northern France and parts of Germany. The Icelandicsaga literaturepresents the most extensive portrayalof this set of beliefs. The importanceof revenantswithin Icelandic culture is attested by the existence of a specific word for the undead in Old Icelandic:draugr.36Most famous, perhaps, is the revenantGlamof Grettissaga.37In life, Glamwas a widely disliked shepherd who was killed violently possibly by another (unnamed)draugr.After Glam'sbody was bllried, it nevertheless wanderedfrom its grave at night, stampingon the rooftops and storehouses and terrifying the local inhabitants. Eventually, Glam'scorpse killed two living men. The draugrwas only put to rest after a terrific battle with Grettir (the saga's protagonist), who beheadedthe revenantand reburiedit with its head between its legs.38The same sagacontainsanothersuch confrontation,this time between Grettirand the draugrKar, for the sakeof a treasure the corpse watches over. Kar, too, is subdued by beheading.39 More peaceableis the revenantof Thorgunnain Eyrbygg:ya saga, who cooked dinner for those bearingher corpse away for burial. However, Thorgunna's death also brought on what might be calledan epidemicof aggressiverevenantsback at the farmwhere 36 For a discussionof the word,see Gurevich,HistoricalAnthropology of theMiddle Ages,ed. Howlett,pp. 116-21. 37 TheSaga of Grettirthe Strong,chs. 32-5, trans.GeorgeAinslieHight (London, 1914),pp. 86-100;for the original,see GrettissagaAsmundarsonar, ed. GuAniJonsson (IslenzkFornrit,vii, Reykjavik,1936),pp. 107-23. 38For the frequencyof this means of disposalof revenants,see Paul Barber, Vampires, Burial,andDeath(New Haven, 1988),p. 25. 39 Grettissaga,ch. 18 (trans.Hight, pp. 42-6; ed. Jonsson,pp. 56-61). 16 PASTAND PRESENT NUMBER 152 she had lived. The first to die mysteriouslywas the farm's shep- herd. His draugr in turn killed anotherman namedThorir Wood- Leg and the two of them were seen together at night. Then six more men perishedin the vicinity, followed by six who drowned at sea and came back to the farm, dripping seawater. The two bands of revenantshad a fight, the sailorsagainstThorir Wood- Leg's troop; next, a local witch died and was seen walkingabout with her dead husband. Finally, the whole lot was banished through a formal legal procedure against them for trespassing, along with an exorcism of the house.40Earlierin Eyrbygg.ia saga the case of the draugrThorolf is recounted: after dying from sheer rage he, too, killed so many men that the valley he haunted was abandonedby the living-though the area was well popu- lated with revenants, who wandered about with Thorolf.4l Laxdaelasagatells of the extreme violence of the revenantKiller- Hrapp thus: "Difficult as he had been to deal with during his life, he was now very much worse after death, for his corpse would not rest in its grave; people say he murderedmost of his servants".42Hrapp's body was finally dug up and reburied far from the district.These talesrepresentonly a few of the numerous referencesto draugar in Old Icelandicliterature. Yet although the Icelandic phenomenonof living corpses has been widely studiedand discussed,43its counterparton the north- ern Europeanmainland,and in England and Scotland,has been 40 Eyrbyggya saga, chs. 51-5, trans. Hermann Palsson and Paul Edwards (Harmondsworth, 1989),pp. 131-41;for the original,see Eyrbyggya saga,ed. Einar O1. Sveinssonand MatthlasDordarson(Islenzk Fornrit, iv, Reykjavik, 1935), pp. 139-52. 41Ibid., chs. 33-4 (trans. Palsson and Edwards,pp. 92-5; ed. Sveinssonand Dordarson, pp. 91-5). 42Laxdaelasaga, ch. 17, trans. Magnus Magnussonand Hermann Palsson (Harmondsworth,1969), p. 78; for the original,see Laxdoelasaga, ed. EinarO1. Sveinsson(IslenzkFornrit,v, Reykjavik,1934),pp. 39-40. 43For an introductionto this voluminousbody of literature,see, in general, Gurevich,HistoricalAnthropology of theMiddleAges;ClaudeLecouteux, FantoAmes et revenantsau MoyenAge(Paris,1986);HildaR. EllisDavidson,"The RestlessDead: An IcelandicGhostStory",in HildaR. Ellis Davidsonand W. M. S. Russell(eds.), TheFolkloreof Ghosts(Cambridge,1981), pp. 155-75, 256-9; ReidarChristiansen, "The Dead and the Living", Studia Norvegica, ii (1946), pp. 3-96; Juha Pentikainen,"The Dead withoutStatus",in ReimundKvidelandand HenningK. Sehmsdorf(eds.), NordicFolklore:RecentStudies(Bloomington,1989),pp. 128-34; KathrynHume, "From Saga to Romance:The Use of Monstersin Old Norse Literature",Studiesin Philology,lxxvii (1980),pp. 1-25.  WRAITHS,REVENANTSAND RITUAL 17 largely neglected.44While this oversight may be due to the fact that the undead are less pervasive in the continentaland insular contexts than in the Icelandic, there is nevertheless a body of evidence about these revenants that is strikingly similar to tales of the Icelandicdraugar. Numerous "horror" stories of the undead may be found in chronicles and exempla collections from northern Europe from the late twelfth century on. The tales I examinedin the previous section about demonically animated revenants are not isolated instances,but part of a longer continuumof storiesaboutreanim- ated corpses, many of which are told with a high degree of local detail and verisimilitude.In most cases, the dead are presented not as possessed, but as coming back to life on their own. The thirteenth-centuryscholastic and bishop of Paris Guil- laume d'Auvergne, for example, captured the essence of this belief in refreshinglyminimalistfashion. He referred to tales he had heard, "many times, about certain dead men who kill other men from amongthe living".45Even while he ridiculesthe notion that the dead can come backto life, he testifiesto how widespread the belief was: certaindead men can move and act, and they are malevolent, even murderous,towards the living. The possessed corpses discussed in the previous section would fit nicely within Guillaume'sdefinitionof this phenomenon,but he might equally well have had in mind incidentslike that in the thirteenth-century Historiae memorabiles,a text from Colmar by the Dominican Rudolf von Schlettstadt.In a tale entitled "On Henry, who was seriouslywounded by dead men", we are told of a man travelling 44 Most studiesof deathin the MiddleAges do not deal specifically with the idea of revenants.See Jean-ClaudeSchmitt,Les revenants:les vivants et les morts dans la societe medievale (Paris, 1994); Lecouteux,FantoAmes et revenants au Moyen Age; Neveux, "Lendemainsde la mort dans les croyancesoccidentales";Karl Frolich, "Germanisches Totenrechtund Totenbrauchtum im SpiegelneuererForschung", HessischeBlatter fur Volkskunde,xliii (1952), pp. 41-63; NikolausKyll, Tod, Grab, Begrabnisplatz, Totenfeier(Bonn, 1972);RonaldFinucane,Appearancesof the Dead: A CulturalHistory of Ghosts(New York, 1984).All these worksdiscussrevenantsin part(the Frenchwordrevenantalsoappliesto ghosts).Barber,Vampires,Burial, and Death, gives a cross-culturalview. For a critique,see Otto GerhardOexle, "Die Gegenwartder Toten", in Braet and Verbeke(eds.), Death in the Middle Ages, pp. 19-77. Oexle disbelievesin the notion of the lebendeLeichnam as a medieval phenomenon(pp. 58-65), but he presentsan interestingpointof view none the less. Oexle'scritiqueis basedlargelyuponthe workof GunterWiegelmann,"Der 'lebende Leichnam'im VoLksbrauch", Zeitschriftfur Volkskunde,lxii (1966),pp. 161-83. 45 Guillaumed'Auvergne,De universo,ii.3.24: GuilielmiAlverni episcopiParisiensis ... opera omnia, 2 vols. (Paris, 1674, repr. Frankfurt-on-Main, 1963), i, p. 1069, col. b.  PAST AND PRESENT 18 NUMBER152 neara river who is suddenlyattackedby three dead men mounted on horseback, whom he recognizes and later names. One is a recentlymurderedknight. After beatinghim savagely,the reven- ants leave Henry for dead, but he survives.46These blood- curdling dead men certainly tried their best to kill Henry, yet despite their malicious nature, they are not c emonlc possesslonm any way. . . . associated with Similarly, the thirteenth-century Cistercian Caesarius of Heisterbachprovides an illuminatingglimpse into the themes of local revenant belief in his Dialogus dominant Thomas and the anonymous hagiographerof Ida miraculorum. Like of Louvain, Caesariusinterpreteda few such incidentsas demonic of the body: two tales speak of dead bodies reanimation "living with an evil spirit in place of the soul".47 In the second of this departureof the demon promptsthe long-deadbody pair the to theatrically,into dust.48Caesarius,however, is more crumble, rathersanguine about the undead: they appear commonly in the world of theliving with no explanationother than their own volition. And, asGuillaumed'Auvergnenoted, they were often believed to have evilintentions. Considerthe following narratives.A servantis master'schildren while they answer a call of supervisingher nature at dusk. Suddenlyshe notices a "monster" in the form of a apallid face and tatteredclothing emerge woman with from a cemetery, stare ather over the fence, then enter the household next door. The apparition soon re-entersits grave, but the entire familyof boursdies soon after.49In Caesarius'snext tale, neigh- the emergence froma sepulchreof anotherdead "monster"in human form is a portentof impending death for the living as well: two canons whowitnessed the event die shortly after.50 More detail is given in a laterexemplumthat discussesthe corporeal,but invulnerable, revenant of a knight named Henry: He was extremelywicked,and judgedrapes, adultery,incest, lying and Rudolf von Schlettstadt,Historiae memorabiles: 46 Zur Dominikanerliteraturund Kulturgeschichte des 13. 3'ahrhunderts, ch. 47, ed. Erich pp.110-11. Kleinschmidt(Cologne,1974), 47 Caesarius of Heisterbach,Dialogusmiraculorum,xii.3-4, ed. (Cologne, 1851),ii, p. 317. JosefStrange,2 vols. 48 Ibid., xii.4 (ed. Strange, ii, pp. 317-18). 49 Ibid., xi.63 (ed. Strange, ii, pp. 313-14).The previoustaleidentifiesthis tion as "Mors",Deathpersonified:ibid., xi.62 (ed. appari- 50Ibid., xi.64 (ed. Strange, Strange,ii, p. 313). ii, p. 314).  WRAITHS,REVENANTSAND RITUAL 19 similarthingsto be virtues.After he had died . . . he appearedto many people wearingthe sheepskinthat he used to wear when he was alive, and he especiallyfrequentedthe home of his daughter. . . He was often felled (caedebatur)with a sword,but could not be wounded:he emitted a soundas if a soft bed were beinghit.5l The terrifiedgirl eventuallyrid her home of the revenantthrough an aspersionof holy water. Similarly,anotherdead man, this time a usurer, pounded on the door of his son, who wisely refused him entry: the corpse then hung on the door some snakes and toads universallyconsideredvenomousin medievalthought as proof of his evil intention.52In these examples, there is no indication of demonic intervention:the dead simply come back to life on their own and interact with the tangible world. Like the Icelandic draugar,they have three dimensions and material capabilities. Most importantly, they are presented as ill- intentionedfrom their own desires or instinct not as animated by the Devil for the downfall of the human race. Indeed, many tales of the undeadexplicitly reject the demonic interpretation.The demonic-possessionschool of thought about revenants, as best representedby Thomas of Cantimpreand the hagiographerof Ida of Louvain, was distinctly a minority view- point. Texts such as chroniclesand histories,which lack the same didactic agenda as exempla collectionsor hagiographies,univer- sally reject or ignore the possibility of demonic animation in regardto revenants.For these more historicalauthors,the trans- gression involved in a corpse coming back to life is one between life and death, rather than between flesh and unclean spirit. For example, severalentries in WalterMap's twelfth-centuryEnglish chronicle De nugiscurialium tell of the predationsof living, not possessed, corpses. The chronicler's tone gives these tales in particularan air of immediacy:for Walterand his contemporaries, these were strange, but real events. One incident concerns a revenant ravaging its former neighbourhood. A local knight, William Laudun, complainsto the bishop about it: "Lord,I take refugewith you seekingadvice.A certainevil Welshman quiterecentlydied irreligiouslyin my village,and immediatelyafterfour nightshe took to walkingbackto the villageeachnight,andwill not stop callingout by name each of his neighbours.As soon as they are called they take ill, and within three days they die, so that alreadyvery few are left." 51Ibid., xii.15 (ed. Strange, ii, p. 327). 52 Ibid., xii. 18 (ed. Strange, ii, p. 328).  PAST AND PRESENT 20 NUMBER152 Interestinglyenough, the bishop suggests that the body may fact be demonicallyreanimated,and advises William in to open the tomb and sprinklethe corpsewith plenty of holy water. this strategyis a dismalfailure:the revenantcontinues However, its nightly visits, demonstratingthat an indwelling demon is not the source of the problem. The corpse moves under its own power. Only when the knight William himself chases the corpse back to its grave, and cleaves open its head "to the neck", does it cease its troublemaking.In conclusion, Map himself explicitly sets aside the demonic viewpoint, and instead opines that the cause of the phenomenonis unknowable:"We know about the true stancesof this event, but we do not know the cause".53circum- of Map's tales describes the vagabond corpse of a Another man, "who they say died irreligiously",54that wanders for over a before being cornered at the town limits by a crowd month of local townspeople.Only after the corpse receives a proper burial thatis, when a cross is placed to mark the grave does it cease itswandering. Belief in the living dead, ratherthan the possesseddead, is also attestedin medieval Brittany. An anonymous Breton storyraises the possibility of demonic animation, but revenant then dis- missesthe idea. The subject of this tale is a gentler revenant, a bakerwho comes back ostensibly to help his widow knead the bread,though she is frightenedratherthan gratifiedby its assist- ance.After several nightly visits, some young men chase the cadaverthrough the town, and it throws stones at them to ward offpursuit. They explicitly ask the corpse whether it is a dead manor the illusion of an evil spirit. However, the revenant managesto slip away without answering. The next day, the communitydisinters the body and decides that it was indeed a livingcorpse when they find its legs covered with the fresh mud thatit had run through the night before. At first the locals heap heavystones on the grave, but the cadaver'snightly onlycease after the communitylater dismembersit.55 wanderings Still more revenant tales may be found in William of Newburgh's chronicle Historia rerumAnglicarum.In discussing thecase of a wanderingcorpse in Buckinghamin 1196, William 53 WalterMap, De nugiscurialium:Courtiers'Trifles,ii.27, ed. C. N. L. BrookeandR. A. B. Mynors(Oxford,1983),pp. M. R. James,rev. 54 Ibid.,ii.28 (ed. James,rev. 202-4. BrookeandMynors,p. 204). 55 Schmitt,Revenants, p. 173.  WRAITHS,REVENANTSAND RITUAL 21 notes that "such things often happenedin England",56and then gives three additionalexamples of terrifyinglydisruptivereven- ants.57The Buckinghamcase concernsthe corpse of a sinful man that is aggressivetowardsits remainingfamily. It crawlsinto bed with its widow, nearly crushingher with its weight, then attacks other family members when they try to intervene. Although the locals suggest to the bishop that the corpse must be disinterred and burnt to ashes, he convinces them that a letter of absolution for the man's sins, if laid in the tomb, will be just as effective and it is. The second case, in Berwick, concerns the cadaverof a wealthy man that wandersabroadat night, terrifyingthe people and causing the dogs to howl loudly at its malign presence. This time, the expedient of burning the revenant is undertaken by some local youths, who dig up the offending corpse, dismember it and cremateits remains.The third case is that of a too-secular chaplainin the vicinity of Melrose Abbey: this man, known in life as the hundeprestbecause of his love of hunting, returnedto give his attentionsto his former mistress.Terrified,she recruited some young men to watch by the cemetery for her. Upon the corpse's return to its hideout, one of them "killed" the revenant by hitting it with an axe. When the grave was later opened, the gaping wound was clearly visible, and appearedas fresh as if the corpse were alive. Despite this incapacitatingwound, however, the locals burned the cadaverfor good measure. William's final case is perhapsthe most frightening:a wicked and choleric man died suddenly in a fall from his rooftop, after he spied his wife in bed with another man. He, too, wanderedat night, attacking all he met and leaving them on the point of death, while a pack of dogs followed after him, howling and whining. The locals, in fear of the revenant's malice as much of a possible pestilence from the corruptionof the air causedby the rottingcorpse, began to leave the district in droves. Finally, two brothers dug up the cadaverand burned it to ashes. Williamof Newburgh seems to have studied revenantsat some length: he explains how he searchedin vain for parallelincidents in earlier literatureand emphasizesthe newness of the phenom- enon. Yet he, too, like the authorsof many of the other texts we 56 William of Newburgh, Historia rerumAnglicarum,v.22, in Chroniclesof the Reigns of Stephen,Henry II, and RichardI, ed. Richard Howlett, 4 vols. (Rolls Ser., London, 1884-9), ii, p. 475. 57 Ibid., v.23-4 (ed. Howlett, pp. 476-82). 22 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 152 have examined, professes perplexity as to the mechanism by which the re-animationof a corpse might come about, and hesit- ates to ascribeit to demonic intervention: Certainlythe factthatcadaversof the dead,havinggot out of theirgraves, shouldbe borneaboutby I know not what spirit to terrorizeor injure the living . . . would not easilybe acceptedas true if there were not so many examplesat hand from our own time, and if the testimonywere not so abundant. . . If I wantedto writeabouteveryincidentof this sort . . . it wouldbe too complicatedand onerous.S8 Despite the frequency William ascribes to these events, he remainspuzzled by them. The explanationthat demons possess dead bodies and move them does not entirely satisfy him, as his use of the open phrase, "borneabout by I know not what spirit", indicates. Ultimately William, like WalterMap and Caesariusof Heisterbach,fails to assign a cause to the corpses' wanderings. A Yorkshirecollection of twelve revenantstories, dating from about 1400, shows marked similarities to William's histories. Althoughin this text the Latin word used to refer to these beings is "spirit" (spiritus), all the tales involve tangible bodies. In one anecdote, for example, a woman "catches" a spirit and unac- countably decides to carry it home on her back. An observer notes that "the woman's hands were sinking deeply into the spirit'sflesh, as if the flesh of the spirit were putridand not solid, but illusory''.S9This is an interesting contradiction:on the one hand, the being is a "spirit" and "illusory";on the other, it can be caught and carried home, and it has flesh (for which two different words are used: carneand caro).A case with parallels to William of Newburgh's hundeprest has the rector of Kerby leaving his grave at night and molesting his former concubine, until his corpse is disinterredand thrown, along with its coffin, into a local body of water.60One tale builds to a dramatic conclusion: Concerningthe spirit of Robert, the son of Robertde Boltebo of Killebourne zvhowas caughtin the cemetery.The youngerRobertdied andwas buried in the cemetery,but he usedto go out fromhis graveat nightandterrify and disturbthe townspeople,and the dogs of the town used to follow him and howl mightily.Finally,some young men . . . decidedto catch 58 Ibid.,v.24 (ed. Howlett,p. 477). 59 M. R. James, "Twelve Medieval Ghost-Stories",Eng. Hist. Rev., XXXVii (1922),p. 418. 60 Ibid.Onthe disposalof potentialrevenantsin water,see Barber,Vampires,Burial, and Death, pp. 147-53;Schmitt,Revenants,alsodiscusseswateras a boundarybetween the livingand the dead,throughout.  WRAITHS,REVENANTSAND RITUAL 23 him somehowif they could,and they met at the cemetery.But when he appeared,they all fled except two, one of whom was named Robert Foxton. He seized him as he was going out from the cemeteryand put him on the church-stile,while the othershoutedbravely,"Holdhim fast until I can get there!"But the other one answered,"Go quicklyto the parishpriest so that he can be conjured!"... The parishpriest came quicklyand conjuredhim in the name of the Holy Trinity . . . Having been conjuredin this way, he answeredfrom the depthsof his entrails; not with his tonguebut as if froman emptyjar,andhe confessedvarious trespasses.6l There are several parallelshere to earlier tales, especially those of William of Newburgh. Like William's first story, absolution of sins puts the revenant to rest; like some of William's other tales, the howling of the local dogs is a sign of the thing's malign nature. An interestingand unusualdetail, however, is the discus- sion of the corpse's voice: althoughclearlyendowed with a body that can be grasped and held, the revenant speaks, eerily, from its depths. Again, it is worth noting here that no outside agency, spiritual or otherwise, is posited as the cause of the corpse's wanderings:the dead man is sentient and comes back to life of his own fierce volition. An anecdotefrom the thirteenth-centuryScottish Chroniconde Lanercost,which has been attributedto an Augustinianmonk,62 also leaves aside the possibility of demonic animation of the corpse. Again, the protagonistis a man of the church who did not live up to his calling: At that time a certainman wearingthe habit of holy religion,who had lived perversely,died in the worst way, being bound by sentenceof excommunication . . . For a long time afterhis body had been buriedit vexedmanypeoplein the samemonasterywith a sensoryillusion(sensibili illusione)in the shadeof night. The child of darknesstransferredhimself to the houseof . . . a knightin orderto test the faithof the simple,and it terrified[the family]by contendingagainstthem in broaddaylight. . . Havingassumeda body (whethernaturalor aerialis uncertain,but it was hideous,gross and tangible)he used to come at noondayin the habitof a blackmonkand settle on the highestpartsof the homesor storehouses . . . He so savagelythrewto the groundandbatteredthosewho attempted to fighthim as nearlyto shatterall theirjoints. . . One eveningwhilethe headof the familywassettledaroundthe hearthalongwithhis household this deadlything ( funestus) came into their midst, throwingthem into confusionwith missilesand blows.63 61 James,"TwelveMedievalGhost-Stories", p. 418. 62JamesWilson,"Authorshipof the Chronicleof Lanercost",Scot. Hist. Rev., x (1912-13),pp. 138-55. 63 Chroniconde Lanercost,ed. JosephStevenson(Edinburgh, 1839), pp. 163-4 (a. 1295).I shouldlike to thankHansBroedelfor bringingthisreferenceto my attention. 24 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 152 The revenantsucceedsin killing the family'sheir on this occasion, underliningits brutalandvengefulnature.Althoughthe unknown chroniclerdoes not inform the reader whether the creaturewas ever disposed of, it is plainly a corporeal revenant, with its "hideous, gross and tangible" body.64 Moreover, the guiding force of the "malignantcreature" is its own internal will. The authorspecifiesthat the corpse was permittedto wanderby God, but there is no questionof demonic possessionor reanimationby anythingother than the creature'sown residuallife-force. Horror at the potential life of the corpse is also supportedby a varietyof non-textualevidence throughoutnorthernEurope indeed, one can still see in cemeteriesand churchespaintingsof revenantsquite similarto those describedin literarytexts. I am referring here to the dance of death motif, the late medieval iconographyin which grinning, half-decomposedcorpses frenet- ically lead away a variedprocessionof humans;and to the related theme of the three living / three dead.65The latter theme made its way into French literature in the thirteenth century, and spread into iconography during the fourteenth.66 The tale describesa pleasure-partyof three young noblemenwho suddenly find themselves in a cemetery. There they are confronted by a group of three decayingcorpses:these revenantdead are upright and animate, with their emaciatedlimbs showing through their 64The referenceto its bodypossiblybeing"aerial"is a theologicalspeculationthat was probablyinspiredby familiaritywith Augustiniantheoriesaboutthe bodiesof supernaturalcreatures:this is the word Augustineused to describethe bodies of angels and demons. See Augustine,De divinatione daemonum,ed. J.-P. Migne, Patrologialatina (hereafterP.L.), 221 vols. (Paris,1844-64),xl, cols. 581-92;trans. Ruth WentworthBrown,"The Divinationof Demons",in Augustine,Treatiseson Marriage and Other Subjects,ed. RoyJ. Deferrari(Fathersof the Church,xxvii, New York,1955),pp. 421-40. 65 On the danceof deathmotif, see PhilippeAries, The Hour of our Death, trans. Helen Weaver(New York, 1977), ch. 3; Emile Male, ReligiousArt in France: The Late Middle Ages. A Study of Medieval Iconographyand its Sources,ed. HarryBober, trans.MarthielMathews(Princeton,1986);HelmutRosenfeld,Der mittelalterliche Totentanz: Entstehung Entzvickl1mg- Bedeutung, 2nd edn (Cologne, 1968); WolfgangStammler,Die Totentanzedes Mittelalters (Munich,1922);JamesClark, The Dance of Death in the Middle Ages and in the Renaissance(Glasgow,1950);Karl Kunstle,Die Legendeder Drei Lebendenund der Drei Toten und der Totentanznebst einemExkursuberdie3takobslegende (Freiburgim Breisgau,1908);LeonardKurtz,The Dance of Death and the MacabreSpirit in EuropeanLiterature(Geneva,1975);Florence Whyte, The Dance of Death in Spain and Catalonia (Baltimore,1931); The Danse Macabreof Women:Ms. fr. 995 of the BibliothequeNationale, ed. AnnTukeyHarrison (Kent,Ohio, 1994);JeanBatany,"Un imageen negatifdu fonctionnalisme social:les dansesmacabre",in Taylor(ed.), Dies illa, pp.15-28. 66Male,ReligiousArt in France, ed. Bober,p. 324.  WRAITHS,REVENANTSAND RITUAL 25 tattered shrouds. The famous lines, "What you are, we once were; what we are, you will become", derive from this tale, which was popular in vernacularand in Latin literature,as well as in iconographicdepictions. The speech of the dead indicatesa continuitybetween the living and the dead communities.By the fifteenth century, the story had been appropriatedby clerical patrons and writers, who disseminatedthe tale as a meditative exemplum on the brevity of this life.67 Although the dansemacabrehas sometimesbeen interpretedas deriving from the three living / three dead theme,68Emile Male sees its origins in literature reaching back earlier, in germinal form, to the twelfth-century work of the poet Helinand.69 Whateverits precise origins, by the beginning of the fourteenth century the dansemacabreexisted in the form of a moralityplay, to be publicly performedwith actors playing dead men in their winding-sheetsand taking the hands of the living from all walks of life.70 Although there is debate about the earliest pictorial depictionsof the dance of death,7lthe earliest fresco that can be positively dated was painted in the cemetery of the Innocents in Paris in 1424.72Eventually, the theme spread throughout northern Europe, with important representations in Brittany (Kermaria-en-Isquit),Germanyand England. It is importantto note that, contraryto the widespreadbelief that the dansemacabreand the three living / three dead motifs depict skeletons, in fact the medieval iconography only rarely involved bony figures.73Invariablythe figures of the dead were shown as emaciated corpses, midway through the process of decay. Typically, the artists portrayed skin stretched taut over bony limbs, but burst open over the entrails-an area of the body subject to early decomposition.74Some artists also showed 67 Ibid.,p. 328. 68 See Kunstle,Legendeder Drei Lebenden undder Drei Totenundder Totentanz; Kurtz,Danceof DeathandtheMacabreSpiritin European Literature. 69 Male,Religious Art in France,ed. Bober,p. 329; the poeticoriginsof the theme are alsodiscussedby Batany,"Imageen negatifdu fonctionnalisme social". 70 Male,Religious Art in France,ed. Bober,pp. 329-30. 71 For variouschronologies and geographicalemphases,cf., for example,Clark, Danceof Deathin theMiddleAgesandin theRenaissance; Rosenfeld,Mittelalterliche Totentanz; Male,Religious Art in France,ed. Bober. 72 Male,Religious Art in France,ed. Bober,p. 331. 73 Ibid., p. 334; Barber, Vampires, Burial, and Death, p. 90; Schmitt,Revenants, p. 165.The predominance of the half-decomposed corpseor transiin macabreicono- graphyis alsonotedby Aries,Hourof ourDeath,p. 113. 74 Barber,Vampires, Burial,andDeath,p. 90.  26 PASTAND PRESENT NUMBER 152 worms at work in the cadaversto demonstratethe putridity of the remainingflesh. This is a vital detail, for the dance of death and the three living / three dead motifs are iconographic counter- points to revenant stories, intimately related to the same set of mental attitudes. These dead men are not insubstantial illusions, but corporealrevenants. And just as tales of the undead were reinterpretedby some churchmenin termsof demonicanimation, the iconography,too, was appropriatedby the church in order to convey a message of secular transience and memento mori. Regardlessof how these various representationswere used and interpretedwithin ecclesiasticalthought,however, the geographic coincidenceof the macabreiconographyand tales about corpses coming back to life is striking. I shall return to these themes below. V FLESH AND BONES Tales of revenants, though scattered chronologically from the mid-twelfthcentury to the end of the fifteenth, acrossthe north of Europe, and textually throughout geographically disparate authorsand genres, nevertheless display a basic unity of form. Guillaume d'Auvergne'sdescriptionof the belief remainsa useful one:he claims to have heard tales, "many times, about certain deadmen who kill other men from among the living".75This briefcommentmay serve as the basis for teasingout some funda- mentalsimilaritiesbetween revenanttales. First, Guillaumenotes that he had heardof such events "many times".He was not alone in his observation. Although some authorsclassifiedsuch events as prodigiaor mirabilia thatsuggest the extraordinary others discuss the words ofthe dead in a matter-of-fact, naturalisticway: wanderings "the younger Robert died and was buried in the cemetery, but he used to outfrom his grave at night";76"a certainman, who go they say died irreligiously, used to wanderabout publicly for a month or more . . .in his shroud".77Althoughsuch appearances were invariably terrifying to the populace, the writers' laconic tone suggests that revenants were not unique or unknown. Furthermore, several 75 Guillaume d'Auvergne, De universo,ii3.24(Operaomnia, i, p. 1069, col. b). 76James,"Twelve Medieval Ghost-Stories", p. 418. 77 Map, De nugis curialium,ii.28 (ed. James, rev. Brooke and Mynors, p. 204).  WRAITHS,REVENANTSAND RITUAL 27 texts testified to the frequency of such events. As William of Newburgh wrote, "[these stories] would not easily be accepted as true if there were not so many examples at hand from our own time, and if the testimony were not so abundant".78As it is, evidence for the medievalbelief in corporealrevenantsis fairly well attested. From these passages one senses that many more such incidentswere discussedand deemed credibleby local com- munities than were actuallyrecorded. A corollaryto this point, however, is the fact that not all the dead were believed to wander. Only "certaindead men" (again to borrowGuillaumed'Auvergne'sformulation)left their graves. How and why was a corpse believed to become a revenant? There seem to be two related answers to this question: the manner of the individual's life and the manner of his or her death. Indeed, these two factors can scarcely be separated. Caesariusof Heisterbach,for example, enumeratedfour different kinds of death: that of those who live well and die well; that of those who live well and die badly; that of those who live badly but die well; and that of those who both live and die badly.79 Indeed, though not always explicitly articulated,the distinction between a "good" and a "bad" deathwas widespreadthroughout medieval society (as it is cross-culturally80)and was thought to provide a vital clue to the ultimate fate of the deceased. The "good" death has been characterizedby Philippe Aries as the "tame" death:81it is ritualized,foreseeable,even welcomed. This concept reached its fullest expression in the late medieval ritual artesmoriendi,manualsfor "dying well".82By contrast,the "bad" death, as Caesariusexplains, is sudden or violent; those who die badly are torn too soon from this world and are unpreparedfor the next.83These ideas are found not only in Caesarius'sDialogus, however. The significanceof the individual'smannerof life and death is a theme in nearlyall medievalrevenanttales: the undead are most often presentedas having lived an evil life leading to a bad end. 78 Williamof Newburgh,Historia rerumAnglicarum,v.25 (ed. Howlett,p. 477). 79 Caesariusof Heisterbach,Dialogus miraculorum,xi. 1 (ed. Strange,ii, p. 266). 80 See Blochand Parry(eds.), Death and the Regenerationof Life. 81 Aries,Hour of our Death, pp. 5-92. 82 RogerChartier, "Lesartsde mourir,1450-1600",Annales E.S.C., xxxi (1976), pp. 29-50. Still valuableis the classicworkof AlbertoTenenti,II sensodella mortee l'amoredella vita nel Rinascimento(Francia e Italia) (Turin, 1957). 83 Caesariusof Heisterbach,Dialogus miraculorum,xi. 1 (ed. Strange,ii, p. 267). 28 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER152 To begin with the mannerof life, from Caesariuswe have the cases of a usurer and of a violent and dissolute man prone to every kind of criminal behaviour. Map's dead Welshman is "evil". William of Newburgh discusses a wealthy man and a choleric and jealous husband; and both William of Newburgh and the anonymousYorkshirecollectionof revenanttales include restless dead men who find repose through absolution of their sins. Likewise, the Icelandicevidence emphasizesthe unpleasant nature, in life, of those who become draugar,such as the surly and irreligiousGlamor the violentKiller-Hrapp.Especiallyprone to revenancy in England and Scotlandwere secularizedmen of the church: William of Newburgh's hundeprestis a prime example, to which may be added the Chroniconde Lanercost's "man wearing the habit of holy religion, who had lived per- versely";84and the rector of Kerby mentioned in the Yorkshire collection. Such men of religionabdicatedtheir sacredduties and became embroiledin pursuitsthat were properlythe preserveof the laity: sex and violence. Equally importantas these details of a sinful life, however, is the precisemannerof the individual'sdeath. Many storiesspecify the bad death of those who laterbecome the undead:WalterMap explicitly notes in each of his cases that those involved died "irreligiously". Similarly, both Thomas of Cantimpreand the Dominican Rudolf von Schlettstadt'sHistoriaememorabiles give examplesof killed or murderedmen as revenants;one of William of Newburgh'srevenantsfell to his death while watchinghis wife in bed with another man; and the revenant in the Chroniconde Lanercosthad not only lived wickedly, but died under sentence of excommunication.85 Deaths like these occurredbefore "one's house was in order", so to speak. Similarly,those revenantswho we are told were put to rest through the absolutionof their sins must not only have led impropermorallives, but also presumably died without proper confession. Related to the mannerof death is the question of proper burial: it will be recalled that one of WalterMap's revenantswas put to rest after a cross was placed to mark its grave. In Iceland, being lost at sea appearsto have been consideredan especiallyunfortunatedeath, as was death at the handsof a draugr:both forms of dying commonlyresultedin 84 Chroniconde Lanercost,ed. Stevenson, p. 163 (a. 1295). 85 Ibid.  WRAITHS,REVENANTSAND RITUAL 29 revenancy, as did death through loss of self-control (such as Thorolf's death from sheer rage in Eyrbyggia saga). The underlyinglogic of belief in revenantsis that of a remaining life-force in the bodies of those who projectedstrong ill will, or who died too suddenly, leaving "energy still unexpended", in Lester Little's felicitous phrase.86The bad death of a malicious person gave cause for fear that his cantankerousvitality might live on within the corpse itself: hence Guillaumed'Auvergne's observation that revenants "kill other men from among the living". This, as I have emphasized, was a common aspect of tales of the undead. Nearly all are represented as dangerous, terrorizingvillages and bringingothers to an untimely demise. A death before the end of one's naturallifetime leads to aggression against the places and people of one's life. These revenantsbeat and smother the living, at times succeeding in killing them; or else they call on the living to come and join them in the world of the dead. They are particularlyapt to attackthose with whom they had had some sort of connection:familymembers,mistresses and residentsof the town where they lived. The unruly packs of dogs that follow them about, howling, testify to their malign nature. Given this logic, it is not surprisingthat preventive measures against potential revenants may be discerned in some medieval practices relating to the disposal of the dead indeed, the evidence for such practices antedates many of the tales related above. The early eleventh-century penitential of Burchard of Worms, known as the Correctorand incorporatedinto the same author'sDecretum,discussesmany contemporary"superstitions", including the course of action to be followed in the case of an untimely (that is, bad) death.87One entry concerns the disposal of the body of an unbaptizedinfant, which was to be buried in a remote place and pierced through with a stake, or else "the little infant would rise up and injure many".88The following section prescribes penance for those who bury in like manner stillborninfantsand women who die in childbirth.89In such cases of bad or prematuredeath, the body is disposed of in a location 86 LesterK. Little,BenedictineMaledictions:LiturgicalCursingin Romanesque France (Ithaca,1994),p. 151. 87 On Burchard, see in particularKyll, Tod, Grab,Begrabnisplatz,Totenfeier,passim. 88 Burchard of Worms,Decretum,xix.5, ed. J.-P. Migne,P.L., cxl, col. 974. 89 Ibid., cols. 974-5. 30 PASTAND PRESENT NUMBER 152 outsidethe normalactivitiesof the living;and the staketransfixing it to the earthpreventsit from wandering.Latersourcesmention alternativemeansof deprivingthe dangerousdead of local mobil- ity: suicides, for example, were commonly disposed of in rivers in the Middle Ages.90Denied burial in the common cemetery of the community, the bodies of these unfortunateswere instead banished to parts unknown, so that their corpses might not become revenants.9l Moreover, water was itself an important barrierwithin medievalthought about the dead: rivers are often presentedas liminal spaces between the realms of the living and the dead in otherworldvisions.92In one revenant tale, at least, the attackof the dead took place next to a river: the story of the knight Henry in the Historiaememorabiles. Similarly, in the Yorkshirecollection, the corpse of one revenantwas disposed of in water, while another revenant who walked with a living man at night refused to continue when they came to a river.93Fear of revenants and their disposal in watery places may also help to explain the bog burialsuncovered by archaeologistsin northern Europe:these bodies were discoveredpinned into peat bogs with thornsand stakes.94The treatmentof such remainsmay be juxta- posed with the observationof the first-centuryRoman historian Tacitus that according to the justice system of the Germanic tribes, "the coward, the shirker and the unnaturallyvicious are drowned in miry swamps under a cover of wattled hurdles":95a 90Jean-ClaudeSchmitt, "Le suicide au Moyen Age", Annales E. S. C., xxxi (1976),pp. 3-28. 91The relatedissue of wateras a barrierbetweenthe living and the deadcannot be discussedat lengthhere.See Schmitt,Revenants,p. 210;Barber,Vampires,Burial, and Death, pp. 147-53. Perhapsrelatedto this belief is the section in Burchard's Correctorthat describesthe practiceof pouringwaterunderthe departingbier of a dead man:perhapsthe water, even after its evaporation,formsa symbolicbarrier preventingthe corpse'sreturn?Burchardof Worms,Decretum, xix.5 (ed. Migne, cols. 964-5). 92 See varioustexts in Visionsof Heaven and Hell beforeDante, trans.Gardiner. On riversas placesof power generally,see Peter Dinzelbacher,"I1ponte come luogo sacronellarealtae nell'immaginario", in SofiaBoeschGajanoand LucettaScaraffia (eds.), Luoghisacri e spazi della santita (Turin, 1990),pp. 51-60. 93 James,"TwelveMedievalGhost-Stories", p. 413. 94 For a detailedarchaeological discussion,see P. V. Glob, The Bog People: Iron- Age Man Preserved,trans.RupertBruce-Mitford (New York,1969).I wouldlike to thankLesterLittlefor bringingthisworkto my attention.SeealsoBarber,Mampires, Burial, and Death, pp. 141, 145. 95 Tacitus,Germania, ch. 12, ed. M. Winterbottom and R. M. Ogilvie(Oxford, 1975),p. 43; trans.HaroldMattingly(Baltimore,1954),p. 110.Again,I amindebted to LesterLittlefor this reference.  WRAITHS,REVENANTSAND RITUAL 31 specialmeansof executionand bodily disposalfor those convicted of living an evil life. The prime importanceof physically con- straining the undead is provided in the following case from Caesariusof Heisterbach,in which a corpse's transformationinto a revenantis interruptedin processu: Concerning the knightEverhardwhosat up on his bier.At that time in the sameprovincediedanotherknightnamedEverhard,andhe wasa criminal . . . In the middleof the mght his corpsesat up on the bier and struck terrorinto all who werepresent. . . Aftertyingup the body, they buried it beforemass.96 By hindering the body with bonds, the physical activities of a potential revenant (once again, a wicked man) are minimized.97 The corpse is then buried as soon as possible even before morning mass. These practices point once more to the corporealityof the revenants: these are not wraith-like apparitions, but fleshly corpses. Indeed, by contrast with the epigraph to this article ("when a human being dies, both flesh and bones die"), a close reading of the sources suggests that the source of these corpses' vitality inheres specifically within the conjunctionof flesh and bone. The fresherthe cadaver,the more dangerousit is. William of Newburgh, for example, places great emphasis upon the intactnessof the cadaversthat become revenants.In his tales, the bodies in question are all recently deceased, and they gush forth copious amounts of blood when wounded.98Moreover, the pre- ferred remedy for revenantsthat William presents is cremation, a form of complete destructionof the flesh. (Presumablyit would be difficult to re-kill a dead man by any means other than total 96 Caesariusof Heisterbach,Dialogus miraculorum,xii. 1 (ed. Strange,ii, p. 324). 97 On the tying-upof potentialrevenantsin variouscultures,see Barber,Vampires, Burial, and Death, passim. 98 This is not usuallyattributed to blood-sucking,althoughWilliamof Newburgh refersto his lastcorpseas "sanguisuga": HistoriarerumAnglicarum,v.24 (ed. Howlett, p. 482). Propervampiresare rarein medievalsources,thoughEtiennede Bourbon makesmentionof a (living) blood-suckingwere-woman:E. de Bourbon,Anecdotes historiques,legendes,et apologues,iv.7.364, ed. A. Lecoy de la Marche(Paris,1877), p. 320. NancyPartnerdiscussesthe casesin Williamof Newburgh,adoptingthe term "vampire":N. Partner,Serious Entertainments(Chicago,1977),pp. 134-40.In this regard,it is puzzlingthat elsewhereshe deniesany blood-suckingin William'stales, despitethe fact that the last case is clearlythat of a blood-sucker:ibid., p. 137. For the laterhistoricaldevelopmentof vampires,see Barber,Vampires,Burial, and Death; StephanHock, Die Vampyrsagenund iAre Verwertungin der deutschen Literatur (Berlin,1900). 32 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 152 bodily destruction.)In all William'scases, burningis the immedi- ate solution suggested by the frightenedtownspeople.99 Similarly, Thomas of Cantimprein De apibusexplicitly links the possibility of reanimationto the incorruptionof the corpse (though again with his characteristicdemonic interpretation): "[The animationof a dead body by a demon] is not possible for long, for the body is fluid by nature, and cannot preserve the necessaryvigour without an enliveningspirit. The body corrupts swiftly when its humourslows down''.l??Here Thomas suggests that the body is dangerouslypotent, and apt to become reanim- ated, until the flesh is fully corrupted and destroyed. It must have "the necessaryvigour", which is eliminatedby putrefaction. Yet alongsidehis demonicinterpretationmay be discerneda basic connection between flesh and vitality. If we separateThomas's interpretationof revenants as demonically possessed from the "culturalfacts" he is reporting, we are left with the belief that cadaversare only in danger of becoming revenantsbefore they "corrupt" and are reduced to bones. Again, Guillaumed'Auvergne also stressed the importanceof remainingflesheven as he refutedbelief in revenants.His descrip- tion of the revenant belief continues: "the bodies of those dead men, at the time when they seem to be doing this thing, either are lying intact in their graves, or at the very least their bones and the rest of their bodies, zvhichdecay has not yet beenable to consume,are there''.l?l Like Thomas, William implies that once the decompositionof a body was complete, it would no longer have been considered a potential revenant. The question of a reanimatedskeleton is never raised: there must be flesh upon the bone. The importanceof the remainingflesh in iconographicrepres- entationsof the living dead now takes on greaterresonance:the revenantsin the dansemacabreand three living / three dead motifs are within the fleshy "danger-zone" during which the undead may wander. If the flesh itself is vital, then the representationof these revenants as in the process of decay takes on an added 99 Williamof Newburgh,Historia rerumAnglicarum,v.24 (ed. Howlett,p. 482). lOOThomasof Cantimpre,De apibus,ii.49.7:ThomaeCantimpratani. . . Miraculorum, p. 369.Note thatthispassageis a continuation of the quotationattachedto n. 35 above. 101Guillaumed'Auvergne,De 1lniverso,ii.3.24 (Opera omnia, i, p. 1069, col. b; my emphasis).  WRAITHS,REVENANTSAND RITUAL 33 There is a liminalperiodin whichthe deathof significance.l02 the personalityis absolute,but the deathof the fleshis not yet complete.Psychicdeathandphysicaldeathdo not coincide.It is onlywhenthebodyhaspassedthroughits "wet"enfleshedstage, andbecome"dry"bones(to borrowcategoriesfromanthropolo- gical studiesof deathl03)that it is fully defunct.Dichotomies betweenfleshandspirit,as well as betweenlivinganddead,are brokendown. Aside from burialpracticesspecificallyaimedat preventing revenants,othernorthernEuropeantraditionssurrounding dis- posalof the deadbodyarealsocharacterized by a desireto avoid the fleshof the corpseas muchas possible.This hintsat a more generaldistastefor the newlydead.Fromthe twelfthcenturyit wascommonin northernEuropefor a deadbodyto be sewninto a shroud,then nailedinto a woodencoffinmaskedwith cloth. Theidentityof thedeceasedwasrevealed(if at all)onlyby means of a woodenor wax efflgyplacedon the lid of the coffin:the fleshitselfhadto remainboxedup andconcealed. 104 Thispractice hasthe doubleeffectof constraining thefleshas muchaspossible, andof replacingthe "empty"physicalidentityof the corpsewith the moreacceptableneutralityof an artisticrepresentation. Once the body was interred,it might well have a handfulof the so-called"flesh-eating" soil of the cemeteryof the Innocentsin Parisaddedto the grave. This earthwas highlyprizedfor its allegedcapacityto reducea bodyto barebonesin nine days.l05 Amongthehighestlevelsof thenobilitya different,butequally interesting,set of new funeralpracticesalsomadetheirappear- ancearoundthis time,as ElizabethA. R. Brownhasshownin a fascinatingarticle.106Thehabitof immediately boilingor dismem- 102 One representation of the dansemacabrebearsan additionalresemblanceto certainrevenanttales: those that involve shape-shifting.The Yorkshirecollection includesseveraltalesthatdescribethe bodilyformof the revenantas takingon animal shapes,suchas thatof a dog or a bird.Similarly,the Icelandicevidenceoftenpresents revenantsas takingon animalform,particularly thatof a seal.This bearscomparison with the iconographyof the danceof deathas shownin the churchof Kermaria-en- Isquit,in Brittany.In this particularexample,some of the dancingdeadfiguresare shownwith the headsof animals. 103 On "dry" and "wet" bodiesand their cross-cultural valences,see Bloch and Parry(eds.), DeathandtheRegeneration of Life.The relatedissueof secondaryburial is discussedin Hertz, "Representation collectivede la mort". l04Aries, 105 58. of ourDeath,pp. 127, 168-70. Hour Ibid.,p. 106For a discussionof thesepractices,see Brown,"Deathandthe HumanBodyin the LaterMiddleAges",passim. For a modification of her earlieressay'sconclusions (cont. on p. 34) 34 PASTAND PRESENT NUMBER152 beringa bodyto extractthe bonesmayalsohavebeenintended to hurrythe body throughits dangerousfleshystageas quickly aspossible.Thecustomis bestknownin caseswhereanindividual haddiedoverseasandtheremainshadto berepatriated forburial. However,it is widelyattestedin England,France,Germanyand the Low Countrieseven in caseswherethe personhad died in bed. Philipthe Fair referredto the habitof dismembering the body for pluralburialas "the practicesof his ancestors''.l07 Likewise,Boncompagno referredto boilinganddismemberment as the 'sGermancustom"for disposalof the body, while Saba Malaspinaspoke of strippingthe bones of flesh as "ancestral customin France".108 The traditionbearscross-cultural compar- ison with practicesof secondaryburial,in whichbodiesare dis- posed of in two distinctstages that are often relatedto the decompositionof the flesh.l09WithinEuropeanculture,such practiceshavebeeninterpreted as a meansof multiplyingprayers forthedeadby multiplyingtheplacesof burial.However,boiling anddismembering mightalsobe seenas an attemptto hastenthe dissolutionof the body;as a meansto deprivethe corpseof its individuality andso submergeit withinthe ancestralgroup;and alsoasa wayof scattering thelimbsso asto preventthepossibility of revenants.In fact, dismemberment was the methodadopted in the caseof the undeadBretoncorpsediscussedearlier.ll?The totaldestruction of thefleshwasthekeyto combating thepotency of the deadbody.Whetherby naturaldecayor humaninterven- tion,thefleshmustbe dissolvedforthecorpseto be trulydefunct. Fragmentsof folklorecan also help elaboratethe notionof vitalityas inherentin the materialcomponentsof the body. Emphasison the fleshthatremainsuponthe bonesas the source of life invitescomparisonwith the mythicmotif of the animal thatis re-enfleshedafterhavingbeeneaten.lllHere,too, themes ( n. 106 cont.) based on the same evidence, see Elizabeth A. R. Brown, "Authority, the Family, and the Dead in Late Medieval France", FrenchHist. Studies,xvi (1989-90), pp. 803-32. 107 Brown, "Death and the Human Body in the Later Middle Ages", p. 254. Cited ibid.,pp. 227 (Germany), 232 (France). 109Cf. Hertz, "Representation collective de la mort"; Bloch and Parry (eds.), Death andtheRegeneration of Life. 0 Schmitt, Revenants,p. 174. 111For more on this topic, see Maurizio Bertolotti, "Le ossa e la pelle dei buoi: un mito popolare tra agiografia e stregoneria", Quaderni storici,xli (1979), pp. 470-99; Klaniczay, Usesof Supernatural Pozoer,ed. Margolis, pp. 129-50; Carlo Ginzburg, Ecstasies:Deciphering the Witches'Sabbath,ed. Gregory Elliott, trans. Raymond Rosenthal (New York, 1991).  REVENANTSAND RITUAL WRAITHS, 35 The the deadcomingbackto life arelinkedto fleshandbone. of a sinister exists throughoutEuropein both a saintlyand tale version.It is toldin a ninth-centuryhagiography of St Germanus Auxerre,wherethe saintresurrectsa calf of afterhe haseatenit byfoldingthebonesintotheskinandpraying it.ll2A variant over De ofthis type may also be found in Thomasof Cantimpre's pregnant apibus,wherean ox is killedin orderto cure an ailing woman, andthe abbotof a monasterysecretlyresurrectsit.ll3In SnorriSturluson's Edda,datingfromthefirsthalfof thethirteenth century, a similartale is told of Thor.ll4Aftereatingtwo goats placedin fordinner,Thor asksthat the bonesbe collectedand the marrow for theskins. One leg-boneis damaged,however, hammer,the hadbeeneaten.WhenThorhits the skins with his animals take on flesh and come back to life-but one limps. Interestingly, the sametoposis presentin someItalianwitchcraft confessions fromthefourteenthto theearlysixteenthcenturies.ll5 Thesewitnessesexplainto theirinterrogators thattheyoccasion- allyattendfeasts,afterwhichthe bonesof one of thethe oxen slain when "lady" fordinnerareplacedin its skinandrevivified a magictwig. whopresidesoverthe festivitiestouches them with Ifa bone were lost or broken,it couldbe replaced by a little serve just as well. Finally, one pieceof wood, which would an animal. versionof the tale involves a person rather than of some Burchardof Worms'sCorrectorcensuresthe belief and then womenthatthey cankill humanbeings,eat theirflesh backto placestrawor woodunderthe skinandbringthe person as they life.ll6The commonsubstratumof these tales, diverse as located are in time and place, points to a definition of life withinthe conjunctionof flesh and bone (or their substitutive material equivalents):the skeletalstructure,overlaidwith the flesh,togetherforman animate body.ll7 See Bertolotti, "Ossa e 112 The earliest hagiography does not mention the incident. The anecdote is retold of Germanus in Jacobus de Voragine, la pelle dei buoi", p. 478. 1993), ii, p. 29. Granger Ryan, 2 vols. (Princeton, The GoldenLegend,trans. William 113 Thomas of Cantimpre, De apibus, ii.25.5: Thom Cantimpratani. . . Miraculorum, pp. 212-13. 114 SnorriSturluson, Gylfaginning, ch. 44, in his Edda, ed. Anthony Faulkes (Oxford, pp. 37-8. The relevant passage 1982), p. 37; trans. Anthony Faulkes (London, 1987), e la pelle dei buoi", p. 480. is quoted, in Italian translation, in Bertolotti, "Ossa 115 For more on this kind of witchcraft confession, see Bertolotti, "Ossa e la pelle dei buoi", pp. 470-2, 487-92; Ginzburg, Ecstasies, ed. Elliott; Klaniczay, Uses of SupernaturalPozoer, ed. Margolis, pp. 129-50. 116 Burchard of Worms, Decretum, xix.5 (ed. Migne, col. 973). magical uses. Gerald of Wales ll7Dry animal bones alone also had important of rams in order to mentions the Welsh practice of boiling the right shoulder-blades on p. 36) (cont. 36 PASTAND PRESENT NUMBER152 Similarly,a tensionbetweentwo differentdefinitionsof life materialandspiritual is alsomanifestin themedievaldevotion to relics.Despitetheprotestsof theologians thatrelicsthemselves werenot animateor sentient beingmerematterleft behindin the world while the soul of the saint dwelt in heaven the widespread imputationof a powerfulvirtusto saints'relicsparal- lels revenantbeliefsin severalimportantways.ll8In bothcases, the localcommunity'sevaluationof individuals'mannerof life anddeathis centralto the definitionof theirbodiesas powerful after death.ll9Saints,like revenants,were likely to die before theirtime, throughpersecutionor simpleausterity,thusleaving "energystillunexpended" in theirphysicalremains.120Moreover, the emphasisupon the relics'incorruptionagainsuggeststhat continuingvitalitywas connectedto the congruenceof fleshand bone.Indeed,a processof discerningbetweenthe goodandthe bad deadis suggestedby the eighth-centuryIndiculus supersti- tionumet paganiarum, whichnotesthat someerroneously"pre- tendto themselvesthatthe deadof anykindaresaints".121 Relics maythusbe seenas a specialcategoryof the undead. These fragmentsof beliefand customcoherearounda belief thatthe bodypossessedvitalityas longas it remainedintact.This materialdefinitionof life contrastssharplywith the medico- theologicaltradition,whichprivilegesthe numinouselementof the spirit-soulas the mainelementin the definitionof life. In the local traditionsof northernEurope,the life-forceis literally embodied,heldwithinthe fleshandbone;whilein ecclesiastical (n. 117 cont.) clean them of flesh; afterwards, they were used to cast lots and prophesy the future: Geraldof Wales, ItinerariumKambriae,i. 11, ed. James F. Dimock (Rolls Ser., London, 1868), p. 87. 118 See Brown, Cult of the Saints; Vauchez, Saintete en Occident;Patrick J. Geary, Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages (Princeton, 1990); Geary, Living zuiththe Dead in the Middle Ages; Joan Petersen, "Dead or Alive? The Holy Man as Healer in East and West in the Later Sixth Century", 1 Medieval Hist., ix (1983), pp 91-8. 1l9For a discussion of the centrality of local community participationin the forma- tion of a reputation for sanctity after death, see Nancy Caciola, "Through a Glass, Darkly: Recent Work on Sanctity and Society", Comp. Studies in Society and Hist., xxxviii (1996), forthcoming. 120 Miri Rubin, "Choosing Death? Experiences of Martyrdom in Late Medieval Europe", in Diana Wood (ed.), Martyrs and Martyrologies(Studies in Church Hist., xxx, Oxford, 1993), pp. 153-83. 121 "Indiculus superstitionum et paganiarum", no. 25, in Capitularia regum Francorum,ed. Alfred Boretius and Victor Krause (Monumenta GermaniaeHistorica, Legum sectio ii, 2 vols., Hanover, 1883-97), i, p. 223.  REVENANTSAND RITUAL WRAITHS, 37 doctrinethe life-force may be either embodiedor not dependingon whetherit is in the fleshly"garment"or awaiting finalresurrection. the Thesedifferingviewpointsled to differing of reportsof wanderingcorpses,as either the interpretations deador as possessedby demons.Yet corporealrevenants living werenotalwaysseenasmalignor demonic:as I shalldemonstrate, thosewho died peacefullycould also returnfrom the grave, zoutanyaggresslvemtent. * a Wlt * VI RITUALSOF THE DEAD Although the restlessdeadweremostoftenenvisionedin predat- to make orytermsduringthe MiddleAges thatis, as desiringpresent thelivingcrossover into their own realm some tales Talesof themas havingan activesociallife amongthemselves. feastspresidedoverby DianaorHerodias,orof Harlequin's spirit are fairly armyand its ritualizedprocessionsand tournaments, and its wellknownto modern This historians.l22 "wild horde" feminine counterpartof the "goodthings"were said to appear withparticular frequencyaroundthe Emberdays,thefourweeks of oftransitionbetweenthe seasons.However,suchapparitionsthan the thedead were apparentlyconceivedas less corporeal wraiths the revenants discussed above, sincein orderto see these them livinghadto leavebehindtheirown bodiesandencounter onequalterms,as disembodied spirits.Suchmeetingscouldonly the Friuli, beconductedby specialistssuchas the benandanteinunprepared orarmarieslike ArnaudGelisin Pamiers. 123Were an individual to meet the disembodied dead, they couldbe just as dangerousas corporealrevenants.As I have arguedto elsewhere, Italy, and a lesser in some areasof Europe(particularlyin consid- extentin otherareas)shadesandspiritsof the dead were Cultsin the Sixteenth CarloGinzburg,TheNight Battles: WitchcraftandAgrarian(New York, 1986); 122 and Seventeenth Centuries, trans. John and Anne Tedeschi pp. 115-46;Richard Ginzburg,Ecstasies,ed. Elliott,pp. 89-121;Schmitt,Revenants, Mass.,1952),pp. 23-4, 78-81; Bernheimer, Wild Men in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, (Stuttgart,1942),pp. 86-96; W. E. Peuckert,DeutscherVolksglaubedes Spatmittelalters - Rhein: Studien zur Geschichte WaldemarLiungman, Traditionswanderungen Euphrat 1937-8). Fora collectionof documents on the horde, 2 pts (Helsinki, der Volksbrauche, und wilder see KarlMeisen, Die Sagen vom wutenden Heer arrangedchronologically, gager (Munster, 1938). trans. 123 See Emmanuel LeRoyLadurie,Montaillou: The PromisedLand of Error, BarbaraBray(New York, 1978),pp. 342-56. 38 PASTAND PRESENT NUMBER152 ered likely suspects in the spiritualpossession of the living: the disembodieddead seeking a new body.l24 Corporealrevenantshad ritualsof their own as well, the most importantof which was the dance. This harmlessactivity differs markedly from the malevolent tales of the undead discussed above, suggesting that these revenantshave come to terms with their new status. Furthermore,since sourceson the dancesof the dead do not give informationon the mannerof life (or of death) of the dancers, one might speculate that these revenants lived and died less spectacularlythan their more aggressive counter- parts.Ratherthanpreyingon the living, the dancingdeadtransfer their energies to their new community. Walter Map mentions such incidents twice in his De nugiscurialium.In the first, a man buries his wife only to see her dancingshortly after: a certainknightburiedhis truly deadwife, then snatchedher backfrom a circle-dance.Afterwardshe had childrenand grandchildren with her, and the familysurvivesto this day. Those who tracetheir originto her have become a large groupgand everyonecalls them <'childrenof the deadwoman"(filii mortue). 25 Map's tone suggests an utter lack of surpriseat someone finding the dead dancingin this way. The fact that the woman dies, and that her husband then snatches her back from a dance, is pre- sented as entirely logical, in no need of further explanation. Similarly, Map's second tale also concerns an intermarriage between the living and the dead. Here we are told of a nobleman who "snatched the most beautiful of a group of nocturnally dancing women'',l26wed her and had a son. The end of the anecdoteexplicitly notes that she had been abductedfrom among the dead, who were quite annoyedat the man's temerity. Female revenants, though rare among the individual, hostile variety of the undead, seem to have been common as dancers.Perhapsthis is related to women's relatively tenuous connections with vio- lence: women did not lead the kinds of lives, nor die the kinds of death, associatedwith the evil undead. Thomas of Cantimprementions a dance of "demons" dressed as monks sighted near Cologne in 1258. Yet these figures could equally well have been interpretedas a group of the dead. As I 124 See Caciola, "Discerning Spirits". 125 Map, De nugis curialium,ii. 13 (ed. James, rev. Brooke and Mynors, p. 160). 126 Ibid., iv. 10 (ed. James, rev. Brooke and Mynors, pp. 348-50).  WRAITHS,REVENANTSAND RITUAL 39 have demonstratedabove, the demonization of revenants is a characteristictrait of Thomas of Cantimpre'sDe apEbus: In the presentyear 1258nearthe city of Cologne. . . a huge circle-dance of demonsin the habitsof white monkswas seen in the open partof the fields.Withtheirvoicesliftedon high, they weredancingin time (tripudi- ans) and joyouslyleaping(exultans).The people of the villagegathered therealongwith the priest,but whenthey wantedto approachthe dance, the demonsedged, dancing,towardsa river the same distancethat the men ag7proached, until the whole malignantcrowddisappearedinto the river. The demonic explanation seems to be Thomas's preferred explanation,but this tale was in all likelihoodbased upon a local belief in a sighting of revenants. Since Thomas did not give credence to the undead, he interpretedthe boisterousdancersas demonic. For those who believed in the dead's return, however, there would be no reason to interpret these human figures in human dress as anything other than revenants:once again, the culturalfacts of the tale differ from the collector'sinterpretation. There is nothing demonic in these dancers' aspect, and the fact that they escape the approachof the living by entering a river is suggestive. As I have noted above, rivers were often seen as boundariesbetween the realms of the living and the dead. A similardance, this time conductedin a cemetery, is attested in a story in Rudolf von Schlettstadt'sHistoriaememorabiles, "On the rector of the church of Basel, who reported that he saw the dead". This man held several benefices,and was in the course of visiting each of his churches: Finally, he arrivedat a churchwhose vicar had a house borderingthe cemetery. . . He slept well and, after havinghad sweet dreamsup until the hourof eleven, he awokeand got up to ease his bladder.Afterwards he returnedto bed, with the windowthatlookedout on to the cemetery still open, in orderthat he mightsee the calmnessof the sky and winds. Then suddenlyhe saw many men in the cemetery,runningto and fro withlittle torchesandlamps,whileotherswereperforminga circle-dance and singingthis song togetherin a deep voice: If I were still in the shorthome, As I am in the long home, Then I would, beforemy end, 127 Thomas of Cantimpre,De apibus,ii.57.42: Thoma Cantimpratani. . . Miraculorum, p. 475. This chapter is also found separately in British Library, Harley MS. 2316, fo. lOV:H. L. D. Ward and J. A. Herbert (eds.), Catalogueof Romancesin the Department of Manuscriptsin the British Museum, 3 vols. (London, 1883-1910), iii, p. 575 (no. 24); Frederic C. Tubach, Index exemplorum:A Handbookof Medieval Religious Tales (Helsinki, 1969), p. 113 (no. 1413). 40 PASTAND PRESENT NUMBER 152 Turn towardsmanygood things, And send themon my own behalf.l28 The verse is included in the text in Middle High Germanand is even set to musicalnotation. The use of a vernacularlanguagein this context is a tantalizingclue to the story's oral foundation. Where did the Dominican collector of these tales hear the song in its original tongue and jot down the tune? These questions must remain unanswered. What is clear, however, is that the verse derivesfrom some local communitywhere it was performed as a song of the dead. The references to the "short home" (kurtzAaim) and the "long home" (langkhaim)identify the singers with the dead, and also indicate how parallelthe worlds of the living and the dead were thought to be: each has its properrealm or home, with distinct names and customs. To these literaryreferencesto the dances of the dead must be added the iconographicmotif of the dansemacabre,in which the bodies of the dead, some carrying musical instrumentsand all lifting their feet in measuredtime, also perform a circle-dance. Yet in these representationsthe dead are interspersedwith the living, a fact that suggests some interestingconnections.For not only did the dead dance in churchyards,but so, too, did the living, both in cemeteriesand at vigils, wakesor commemorations for the dead:l29perhapsthe little verse just quoted derives from such a context. Indeed, such practiceshave long genealogies.As earlyas the eighth century,the Indiculussuperstitionum et pagania- rumheaded its list of condemnedpracticeswith "sacrilegeat the tombs of the dead''.l30In the ninth century, Hincmarof Reims discussedthe traditionalone-year anniversaryrites for the dead, which included feasting and convivia in which the dead were representedamong the living by maskedrevellers.131In the early eleventh century, Burchardof Worms instructed confessors to 128 Rudolfvon Schlettstadt, Historiae memorabiles,ch. 20, ed. Kleinschmidt, p. 72. The Germantext of the verse readsas follows:"wer ich da zw kurtzhaim/ als ich bin zw langkhaim/ so wolt ich vor meinemende/ gutzvil beywenden/ undfur mich sendenn".I am indebtedto CraigM. Koslofskyfor help with translatingtheselines. 129 For a generaltreatment, see LouisGougaud,"Ladansedansles eglises",Revue d'histoireecclesiastique,xv (1914),pp. 5-22, 229-43. l30''Indiculussuperstitionumet paganiarum",no. 1 (ed. Boretiusand Krause, p. 223). 131 Hincmar of Reims,"Quomodoin conviviisdefunctorumaliarumvecollectarum gererese debeant",Capitulariapresbyterisdata anno 852, ch. 14, ed. J.-P. Migne, P.L., cxxv, col. 776. Formoreon masksandthe dead,see Schmitt,Religione,folklore, e societa nell'Occidentemedievale,pp. 206-38.  WRAITHS,REVENANTSAND RITUAL 41 enquireof their penitents,"Haveyou attendedthe vigils over the corpsesof the dead, in which the bodiesof Christiansare guardedby a paganritual,and have you sung diabolicalsongs thereandparticipated in dances?''l32Thomasof Cantimpre men- tions identicalpracticesin the thirteenthcentury,censuringthe customary"games"(ludi) playedat vigilsover the biersof the dead.133 By farthe mostdetailedmedievaldescriptionof the traditional circle-dancesheldin cemeteriesderivesfromthe twelfth-century workof Geraldof Wales,whoseItinerariumKambriaereadsmuch like the diaryof an anthropological expedition.Geralddescribes the ecstaticdanceshe witnessedin the localcemeteryas follows: Here you may see men or girls, eitherin the church,in the cemetery,or in the circle-dancethatwindsthroughthe cemeterywith songs,suddenly fall to the ground.At firstthey are led into an ecstasyandarein a trance (guietos); then immediately,as if rapt into a frenzy, they leap up. Then they mime, with handsand feet, in front of everyone,whateveractions they are accustomedto engagein improperlyon feast-days.You might see this one put his handto the plough;anotheras if goadingoxen. Each of them, as if to ease their work, emits traditionalcries in a barbarous tone. You might see this one imitatea cobbler,that one, a tanner;or a girl, as if she were carryinga distaff,now pullingout the threadat length with her handsand arms,and then, whenit is out, windingit backon to the spindle.One, as she waLks,seemsto workfibreon the loom;another sits as if all is readyand tossesa shuttlefrom side to side, from handto hand,and with flourishesand rhythmshe seemsto weave.l34 Apartfrom Gerald'sinterpretation of these mimedgesturesas representing illicitactivitiescarriedouton feast-days,thisaccount stayscloseto the level of culturalfact, andis remarkable for its detailand sympatheticpresentation. His descriptionof miming, or theatricalelements,as centralto the celebrationalso may be comparedto Burchardof Worms'scensureof dances,held on feast-daysin frontof the church(in thecemetery?),thatinvolved cross-dressing. 135 A centuryafterGerald,the Dominican Etienne de Bourbonwas unableto containhis repugnanceat dancesin cemeteries,which utterly scandalizedhim. The dancesoften appearin his collectionof exempla,along with appropriately scathingremarksand exhortationsto abandonthe custom.One tale tells of a churchstruckby lightningaftera groupof local 132 Burchardof Worms,Decretum,xix.5 (ed. Migne,col. 964). 133 lwhomasof Cantimpre,De apibus,ii.49.23:Th Cantimpratani. . . Miraculonum, pp. 376-7. 134 GiraldusCambrensis,ItinerariumKambriae,i.2 (ed. Dimock,pp. 32-3). 135 Burchard,Decretum,x. 39 (ed. Migne,col. 839). 42 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER152 young people "performedcircle-dancesthe whole night long in the cemetery''.l36Although clearly not all the dances mentioned in this work are directly concernedwith the dead-cemeteries, as centrally located open spaces, would have been a natural ground for any kind of dance it is likely that at least some served as a ritual means of interactingwith the dead.l37Indeed, certaincircle-dances most notablya "bridge-dance"or "arch- dance", in which the circle of dancers threads itself under the claspedhands of one link were closely associatedwith funeral events or fertility cycles for precisely this reason:by dancing in this way, one symbolicallycrossed the border between life and death, guaranteeingfecundity for the living and harmony with the dead.l38As the Middle Ages wore on, church councils con- tinuallyinveighedagainstsuch activities:in 1208, Eudes de Sully, archbishopof Paris, forbade dances, especially in three places: churches, processions and cemeteries. In 1212 or 1213, the Council of Paris adopted this prohibition, singling out circle- dances of women in churchyardsfor specific condemnation.The Council of Rouen in 1231 forbade any dances to be held in a cemetery,as did the Councilof Wurzburgin 1298and the Statutes of Treguier in the late thirteenthor early fourteenth century.l39 The Rouen prohibitionreappearsin 1405.14?In 1435, the Council of Basel referred to the "Feast of Fools, or of Innocents, or of Children",and to the dances that were shamelesslyheld on this occasion "even in the cemetery''.l4l Thus there exist threebodies of evidencewith thematicsimilar- ities: reports of dances of the dead; the dances of the living in cemeteriesor in other contexts that involve death; and the danse macabremotif, which includes both living and dead. Certain connections, though tenuous, may be made between them. The l36Etiennede Bourbon,Anecdoteshistoriques,legendes,et apologues,iii.6.195 (ed. Lecoyde la Marche,p. 169). 137 Ibid., iii.6.194-5,iv.7.275,iv.12.462(ed. Lecoyde la Marche, pp. 168-9,229-30, 398-9).Forsimilarexempla,seealsoLa Tabulaexemplorumsecundumordinemalphabeti, ch. 35, ed. J. Th. Welter(Paris, 1926), p. 11; Fasciculusmorum,v.8 (ed. Wenzel, p. 444). For a closereadingof one of theseepisodes,see Schmitt,Religione,folklore e societa nell'Occidentemedievale,pp. 98-123. On the dancesas ritualinteractionwith the dead,see CurtSachs,WorldHistory of the Dance, trans.BessieSchonberg(New York, 1937),pp. 251-3, 257-8. 138 Sachs,WorldHistory of the Dance, pp. 162-3. 139 For all the foregoing,see Gougaud,"Dansedansles eglises",pp. 12-13. 140 Aries,Hour of our Death, p. 69. 141 Charlesdu Plessisd'Argentre,Collectiojudiciorum,3 vols. (Paris, 1728-36),i, pp. 231, 243-7.  REVENANTSAND RITUAL WRAITHS, 43 iconographic motifmayrepresentin pictorialformthe perceived coexistence of seen and unseenworlds.When the living held dancesin cemeteries,mightthey havebelievedthemselvesto be dancing with the deadamongthem,as shownin the frescoes acircle-danceof the livingupona circle-danceof the dead? Thereis someevidenceto this effect.For example,according led toFlorenceWhyte, dancesin the cemeteryat Montserrat directlyto the paintingof a dance of death frescoin the church. Monks at the Abbeyof Montserrat patronizedthe dansemacabre saw as its sombrememento mori themebecauseof what they associations.l42But mindfulness of mortality may mean different thingswithindifferentsemanticsystems.The danceof the living withthe dead,whichto the monkswas a symbolof the brevity ofthislife, mayhavebeento othersa celebration of thecontinuity ofthe livingandthe dead as one circular community. The ritual in differentways when seen dancerelatesto the iconography fromdifferentperspectives. Similarly, Emile Male emphasizes early theperformativeoriginsof the dansemacabretheme:an "script" fourteenth-century manuscript, for example,containsa forsuch a performance, in which the living would dancethe danceof death.l43Furthermore, thereis also evidenceof actual stagingsof the motif.In 1393,a representation of the theatrical of dansewas performedin Caudebec;in 1449, the Franciscans had it performedin the churchof St John. Gerald of BesanSon be Wales'sdescriptionof the Welshcemeterydance could also interpreted as suchan event:perhapsthe activitiesmimedby the dancersamongthe gravesrepresentedthe differentprofessions death anddailyactivitiesin whichone mightbe engagedwhen comes,just as the later dansemacabreiconography macabre pictorially representsthe same theme. Even though the danse acquireda historyanda meaningof its own withinecclesiastical traditions,it appearsto have been based upon performative dramas,that were in turnappropriated from traditionaldances with ritualovertones. Thus traditionalbeliefs, ritualand iconographyoverlapand traceuponone anothera culturalmapof the common activities Some cemetery dances may well have of both living and dead. their servedthe apotropaic purpose of fixing revenants within ownsocialsphere,theirown"longhome",lesttheyprowlamong 142 Whyte, Danceof Deathin Spainand Catalonia,p. 45. 143 Art in France,ed. Bober, pp. 329-30. Male, Religious 44 PASTAND PRESENT NUMBER152 the living:dancingrevenantsdo not appearto havebeenviolent. By rituallytransgressing the borderof life anddeath,suchprac- tices mighthave been perceivedas a way of strengthening the borderitself. This wouldmakethe dancesof the livinga form of sympatheticmagic,by which the dead were encouragedto remainwithintheirown realm.144At the sametime, they celeb- ratedthe communallinkagesbetweenlivinganddead. VII CONCLUSION We historians,too, areconstantlyseekingout the deadandthen attemptingto "fix" themin theirown place:thoughmy aimin this articlehas been to pin down ideas and mentalattitudes towardsthe dead,ratherthandeadbodies.I haveexploredthree linkedissuesin the socialhistoryof ideas,whileemphasizing the multiplicityof possibleresponsesthey evoked. First, how did differentmedievaltraditionsor communities definelife and death?This articleproposesa loosegroupingof definitionsinto two models:the spiritual,characteristic of the elite learnedtraditionsof the MiddleAges; and the material, associatedwith the popularculturalsphereof northernEurope. Thus the doctrineof the spiritus as the principleof life was contrastedwith the ideaof a physicalvirtus residingin the flesh andbone.Yet despitesuchdifferencesin the conceptionof life's and death'sphysicalprocesses,neverthelessthere was a broad culturalconsensusaboutotheraspectsof deathas an experience. In particular,therewas widespreadconcernaboutthe "good" and the "bad"death:agreementon the importanceof meeting deathwell preparedwas commonin nearlyall sectorsof medi- evalsociety. Secondly,whatkindsof afterlifewere possible,and how was the continuingvitality of the body interpreted?Again, in addressingthesequestionsI haveemphasizedboththe unityand the diversityof medievalculture.All the sourcesagreeupona conceptof afterlife:deathis not the end of life. However,the spiritualand the materialmodelsof life and of deathare each associatedwith a particularview of afterlife.In the spiritual l44HelmutRosenfeldinterpretsthe dance of death iconographyas servingthe apotropaicpurpose of wardingoff plague: Rosenfeld,Mittelalterliche Totentanz, pp. 298-9.  WRAITHS,REVENANTSAND RITUAL 45 model,theafterlifeis a numinous,wraithlikeexistenceandmove- ments of a body after deathmay take place only throughthe intervention of a spirit thatis, by a demonpossessinga corpse. In the materialmodel, of course,the conceptionof vitalityas inherentin fleshand bonesmakesa special,corporealform of afterlifepossibleuntil the completedecayof the corpse.Here afterlifeoccursas a revenant,ratherthanas a wraith. Thirdlyand finally,how did communitiesachievea balance between the overlappingrealmsof the living and the dead? Althoughinterestin the continuingsocialimportance of the dead wasa featureof medievalcultureas a whole,ritualtechnologies for dealingwith the deaddifferedaccordingto tradition.While ecclesiasticaldoctrinepromotedthe provisionof massesand prayersfor thosein purgatoryas the bestmeansof assuagingthe tormentsof one's ancestors,local communitiesin northern Europeapparently interactedwiththeirdeadthroughritualdanc- ing. I haveofferedan interpretation of theseenigmaticdancesas bringingtogetherthe livinganddeadmembersof the community intoone circularchain;at the veryleast,the graveyarddancesof the living replicatedsocialactivitiesthat were reportedof the dead.Yet thesedancesmayalsohaveservedas the basisfor the iconographyof the dansemacabrethat was promotedby the institutional church:onceagain,the borderbetweenpopularand elite culturewas subjectto a processof dynamicexchangethat accountsformuchof thecreativityof medievalcultureasa whole. Universityof California,San Diego Nancy Caciola