A
revenant is a visible ghost or animated corpse that was believed to return from the grave to terrorize the living. The word "revenant" is derived from the French,
revenir, "to return"; in French, "revenant" means "returning".
Fear of the walking dead is older than the oldest literature. The threat
I shall raise up the dead and they shall eat the living.
I shall make the dead outnumber the living.
is repeated by
IshtarIshtar is the Assyrian and Babylonian counterpart to the Sumerian Inanna and to the cognate northwest Semitic goddess Astarte.-Characteristics:Ishtar is a goddess of fertility, love, war, and sex...
twice in the Akkadian literature and also by her Underworld sister,
EreshkigalIn Mesopotamian mythology, Ereshkigal was the goddess of Irkalla, the land of the dead or underworld. Sometimes her name is given as Irkalla, similar to way the name Hades was used in Greek mythology for both the underworld and its ruler.Ereshkigal was the only one who could pass judgement and...
.
Belief in revenants lies beneath the universal rituals for propitiating the dead, to keep them in their place.
A
revenant is a visible ghost or animated corpse that was believed to return from the grave to terrorize the living. The word "revenant" is derived from the French,
revenir, "to return"; in French, "revenant" means "returning".
Fear of the walking dead is older than the oldest literature. The threat
I shall raise up the dead and they shall eat the living.
I shall make the dead outnumber the living.
is repeated by
IshtarIshtar is the Assyrian and Babylonian counterpart to the Sumerian Inanna and to the cognate northwest Semitic goddess Astarte.-Characteristics:Ishtar is a goddess of fertility, love, war, and sex...
twice in the Akkadian literature and also by her Underworld sister,
EreshkigalIn Mesopotamian mythology, Ereshkigal was the goddess of Irkalla, the land of the dead or underworld. Sometimes her name is given as Irkalla, similar to way the name Hades was used in Greek mythology for both the underworld and its ruler.Ereshkigal was the only one who could pass judgement and...
.
Belief in revenants lies beneath the universal rituals for propitiating the dead, to keep them in their place. Vivid imagings of revenants emerged in
Western EuropeWestern Europe is the collection of countries in the westernmost region of Europe, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a cultural entity—the region lying west of Central Europe...
(especially
Great BritainGreat Britain is an island lying to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island. With a population of about 59.6 million people, it is the third most populated island on Earth. Great Britain is surrounded by over 1000 smaller...
, and later carried by
Anglo-NormanThe Anglo-Normans were mainly the descendants of the Normans who ruled England following the Norman conquest by William of Normandy in 1066. A small number of Normans were already settled in England prior to the conquest...
invaders to
IrelandIreland is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island in the world. It lies to the north-west of continental Europe and is surrounded by hundreds of islands and islets. To the east of Ireland, separated by the Irish Sea, is the island of Great Britain...
) during the
High Middle AgesThe High Middle Ages was the period of European history in the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries . The High Middle Ages were preceded by the Early Middle Ages and followed by the Late Middle Ages, which by convention end around 1500....
. Though later legend and folklore depicts revenants as returning for a specific purpose (e.g., revenge against the deceased's killer), in most Medieval depictions they simply return to harass their surviving families and neighbours. Revenants share a number of characteristics with folkloric vampires.
Many stories were documented by
English historians in the Middle AgesEnglish historians in the Middle Ages helped to lay the groundwork for modern historical historiography, providing vital accounts of the early history of England, Wales and Normandy, its cultures, and revelations about the historians themselves....
.
William of NewburghWilliam of Newburgh or Newbury , also known as William Parvus, was a 12th century English historian and Augustinian canon from Bridlington, Yorkshire....
wrote in the 1190s, "one would not easily believe that corpses come out of their graves and wander around, animated by some evil spirit, to terrorize or harm the living, unless there were many cases in our times, supported by ample testimony". Stories of revenants were very personal, always about a specific individual who had recently died (unlike the anonymous
zombieA zombie is a creature that appears in folklore and popular culture typically as a reanimated corpse or a mindless human being. Stories of zombies originated in the Afro-Caribbean spiritual belief system of Vodou, which told of the people being controlled as laborers by a powerful sorcerer...
depicted in
modern popular cultureZombies are regularly encountered in horror and fantasy themed fiction and entertainment. They are typically depicted as mindless, shambling, decaying corpses with a hunger for human flesh, and in some cases, human brains in particular...
), and had a number of common features.
Analysis
Medieval stories of revenants have common features. Those who return from the dead are wrongdoers in their lifetime, often described as wicked, vain or unbelievers. Often the revenants are associated with the spreading of disease among the living. The appropriate response is usually exhumation, followed by some form of decapitation, and burning or removal of the heart.
Several stories imply that sucking of blood has occurred. Because of this, revenants have sometimes been described as "
vampireVampires are legendary creatures said to subsist by feeding on the life essence of living creatures, generally by drinking their blood. Although typically described as undead, some minor traditions believed in vampires that were living people....
s" by a number of authors of popular books about vampire legends, starting with
Montague SummersAugustus Montague Summers was an eccentric English author and clergyman. He is known primarily for his 1928 English translation of the medieval witch hunter's manual, the Malleus Maleficarum, as well as for several studies on witches, vampires, and werewolves, in all of which he professed to...
.
MedievalistsMedievalism is the system of belief and practice characteristic of the middle ages or devotion to elements of that period, which has been expressed in areas such as architecture, literature, music, art, philosophy, scholarship, and various vehicles of popular culture...
are, however, largely skeptical towards this interpretation, possibly because vampire legends are believed to have originated in Eastern European
folkloreFolklore is the body of expressive culture, including stories, music, dance, legends, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, customs, and so forth within a particular population comprising the traditions of that culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which...
and became known to the Western public only later through reports coming from the East in the 18th century. Vampires do not appear in Western
fictionFiction is a branch of literature which deals, in part or in whole, with temporally contrafactual events...
(with modifications) until the late 18th century and early 19th century, starting with authors such as
Robert SoutheyRobert Southey was an English poet of the Romantic school, one of the so-called "Lake Poets", and Poet Laureate for 30 years from 1813 to his death in 1843...
, Lord Byron and John William Polidori. However, anthropologists and folklorists tend to blur distinctions between the various forms of "walking dead", for which counterparts exist in the myths and legends of nearly every civilization dating back to earliest history.
William of Newburgh
William of NewburghWilliam of Newburgh or Newbury , also known as William Parvus, was a 12th century English historian and Augustinian canon from Bridlington, Yorkshire....
(1136?-1198?) wrote of a number of cases "...as a warning to posterity." He says these stories were very common and that "were I to write down all the instances of this kind which I have ascertained to have befallen in our times, the undertaking would be beyond measure laborious and troublesome".
One story involves a man of "evil conduct", on the run from the law, who hides out in the province of York and makes the ill-fated choice to get married. Becoming jealous of his wife, he hides in the rafters of his bedroom and catches her in an act of infidelity with a local young man, but then accidentally falls to the floor mortally wounding himself, and dies a few days later. As Newburgh describes:
- A Christian burial, indeed, he received, though unworthy of it; but it did not much benefit him: for issuing, by the handiwork of Satan, from his grave at night-time, and pursued by a pack of dogs with horrible barkings, he wandered through the courts and around the houses while all men made fast their doors, and did not dare to go abroad on any errand whatever from the beginning of the night until the sunrise, for fear of meeting and being beaten black and blue by this vagrant monster.
A number of the townspeople were killed by the monster and so:
- Thereupon snatching up a spade of but indifferent sharpness of edge, and hastening to the cemetery, they began to dig; and whilst they were thinking that they would have to dig to a greater depth, they suddenly, before much of the earth had been removed, laid bare the corpse, swollen to an enormous corpulence, with its countenance beyond measure turgid and suffused with blood; while the napkin in which it had been wrapped appeared nearly torn to pieces. The young men, however, spurred on by wrath, feared not, and inflicted a wound upon the senseless carcass, out of which incontinently flowed such a stream of blood, that it might have been taken for a leech filled with the blood of many persons. Then, dragging it beyond the village, they speedily constructed a funeral pile; and upon one of them saying that the pestilential body would not burn unless its heart were torn out, the other laid open its side by repeated blows of the blunted spade, and, thrusting in his hand, dragged out the accursed heart. This being torn piecemeal, and the body now consigned to the flames....
In another story Newburgh tells of a woman whose husband recently died. The husband returns from the dead and comes to visit her at night in her bedchamber and he "...not only terrified her on awaking, but nearly crushed her by the insupportable weight of his body." This goes on for three nights, and the revenant goes on to repeat these nocturnal visits with other nearby family and neighbours and "...thus become a like serious nuisance", eventually extending his walks in the broad daylight around the village. Eventually the problem was solved by the bishop of Lincoln who wrote a letter of absolution, upon which the man's tomb was opened wherein it was seen his body was still there, the letter was placed on his chest, and the tomb re-interred and sealed.
Abbot of Burton
The English Abbot of
Burton- Canada :* Burton, British Columbia* Burton, New Brunswick* Burton, Ontario* Burtons, Nova Scotia* Burton, Durham Region, Ontario* Burton, Parry Sound District, Ontario* Burton, Prince Edward Island* Lac-Burton, Quebec* Burton Lake, Saskatchewan- England :...
tells the story of two runaway peasants from around 1090 who died suddenly of unknown causes and were buried, but:
- the very same day in which they were interred they appeared at evening, while the sun was still up, carrying on their shoulders the wooden coffins in which they had been buried. The whole following night they walked through the paths and fields of the village, now in the shape of men carrying wooden coffins on their shoulders, now in the likeness of bears or dogs or other animals. They spoke to the other peasants, banging on the walls of their houses and shouting "Move quickly, move! Get going! Come!"
The villagers became sick and started dying, but eventually the bodies of the revenants were exhumed, the heads cut off and their hearts removed, which put an end to the spread of the sickness.
Walter Map
The chronicler
Walter MapWalter Map was a medieval writer of works written in Latin. Only one work is attributed to Map with any certainty: De Nugis Curialium.-Life:...
, an Englishman writing in the 12th century, tells of a "wicked man" in
HerefordHereford is a cathedral city, civil parish and county town of Herefordshire, England. It lies on the River Wye, approximately east of the border with Wales, southwest of Worcester, and northwest of Gloucester...
who rose from the dead and wandered the streets of his village at night calling out the names of those who would die of sickness within three days. The response by bishop
Gilbert FoliotGilbert Foliot was a medieval English monk and prelate, successively Abbot of Gloucester, Bishop of Hereford and Bishop of London. Born to an ecclesiastical family, he became a monk at Cluny Abbey in France at about the age of twenty...
was "Dig up the body and cut off the head with a spade, sprinkle it with
holy waterIn Anglicanism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Old Catholicism, Oriental Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, and some other churches, holy water is water which has been sanctified by a priest or bishop for the purpose of baptism or for the blessing of persons, places, or things.Holy water is water that has been...
and re-inter it".