Ghosts and the Walking Dead in Medieval England

Manuscript of the Roman de la Rose, BnF Ms 378 fol. 1r.

Medieval England inherited a strong belief in ghosts from earlier times. Romans, ancient Britons, Angles, Saxons, and Vikings all shared a belief in ghosts and hauntings. However, medieval England was part of Christendom, so such phenomena had to somehow be rationalised within a medieval Christian worldview. This resulted in a unique fusion of older pagan beliefs and medieval Christian thinking.

But what did people living in medieval England think of ghosts and hauntings? How did they attempt to rationalise them? And what kind of ghost stories did they tell?

Church Teachings

From a Church perspective, the appearance of ghostly apparitions in circumstances other than those ordained by God was problematic. The tendency was to dismiss such phenomena as either demonic deception or foolish pagan superstition. The idea that the spirits of the dead could be contacted by the living by means of magic was especially abhorred. Such practices were condemned as necromancy and considered to be gravely sinful.

Despite this, most people, including many clergymen, continued to believe in ghosts and hauntings in circumstances other than those the Church was entirely comfortable with.

The Church taught that, upon their death, the damned went to hell and the saints went to heaven. Neither could return unless God willed it for some specific purpose. However, there was also a large grey area. Most people in medieval England were Christians who regularly confessed their sins and received absolution. These people were therefore technically saved. However, they were also sinners and, as such, not pure enough to be admitted directly to heaven when they died. For them, a period of purgatorial purification was required.

Purgatory

Purgatory, the medieval Church believed, involved punishment and suffering for sins committed in life. Sometimes this purification process could take decades, maybe even centuries, before the departed soul was deemed worthy of entry to heaven. However, the Church also believed it was possible for the living to help the departed shorten their stay in purgatory. Indeed, 2 Maccabees 12:46 actively encouraged the living to pray for the dead to free them from their sins.

Most theologians were willing to accept that ghosts could arise if God specifically willed it. They also accepted that the living could aid those in purgatory by praying for their souls. It therefore followed that God might allow spirits in purgatory to appear to the living to request their aid in easing their suffering. Some senior Church figures were still uncomfortable even with this belief, but it appears to have been very widely held. Indeed, many medieval ghost stories were told by clergymen as part of their sermons.

The Ghost of Haydock

An example of one such story concerns a man from Haydock who was visited by the ghost of his former mistress in 1373. This ghost had been granted divine permission to approach her former lover to seek his aid. She implored him to help her, explaining that she was suffering in purgatory for her sins, but if priests could be found who were willing to say masses for her, she could be freed. She then provided her lover with several hairs from her head. To her lover’s surprise, these hairs were black, even though her hair had been golden in life.

The man did as the ghost asked and found that, after the performance of each mass, one strand of hair changed its colour from black to gold. When all the hairs finally changed to gold, the woman’s soul was freed from purgatory.

The priest who originally wrote this story ends his cautionary tale with the proverb, ‘Praise be the power of the mass.’

The Canon of Newbury

Another tale, from around the same time, recounts how a spectral apparition attacked a man while he was speaking with a ploughman in a field. The ghost launched a frenzied assault in which he shredded his victim’s clothing. The ploughman was so terrified that he fled the scene. This ghost was corporeal enough to shred the clothing of its victim, and for its victim to eventually overpower it in a physical struggle.

We are informed that, once the ghost was defeated, the man ‘conjured it up.’ Once subdued, the apparition confessed that it was the ghost of a canon of Newbury and that it had been excommunicated for stealing silver. It begged the man to take the silver and return it to the prior of the monastery, in the hope that this act might absolve it of its sins. This, we are told, the man did, thereby allowing the ghost to be laid to rest finally.

The reference to a man literally conjuring the spirit of a dead canon shows just how ingrained the concept of necromantic conjuration was in the medieval psyche. And this was despite all the church’s efforts to stamp out such superstitions. In this case, it appears as a casual reference in a tale written by a clergyman.

Revenants and the Walking Dead

The idea of corpses returning from the grave to haunt the living dated back to pagan times. In Old French, such entities were called ‘revenants,’ meaning ‘returning,’ as in returning from the grave. They were a feature of old pagan beliefs that persisted long into the Middle Ages. Such things were regarded as pagan superstition and were hard to reconcile with Church theology at the time. Nevertheless, such phenomena were attested long after the Norman conquest and clearly remained deeply ingrained in popular culture.

Perhaps the most famous accounts of the walking dead were supplied by William of Newburgh. William was an Augustinian canon famous for writing the Historia rerum Anglicarum. It was a history of England, covering the period from 1066 up to 1198 (the time William finished it). William provided four reports of revenant activity in the Historia. He informs us that he limited the number of accounts to four because: 

“It would be beyond measure laborious and troublesome to write down all the instances of this kind which I have ascertained to have befallen in our times.”
— William of Newburgh, Historia rerum Anglicarum (c. 1198)

The Undead Farmer

One of William’s stories occurred in Bedfordshire and concerned a farmer who accidentally stabbed himself with a knife after tripping and falling. His wound proved fatal, and he quickly bled out before he could receive his last rites.

The local priest did his best to mitigate this unfortunate circumstance. Nevertheless, his wife, aware that her husband had not led an especially Christian life, consulted a local wise woman. Following her advice, the wife placed a jet bead on her husband’s coffin, hoping this would be sufficient to protect his corpse from demonic forces. She also hung ‘mare stones’ in the rafters of her house to act as an additional warding.

But her precautions were of no use. The farmer’s corpse rose from the grave the very next night and forced its way into the marital bed. Terrified, the only thing the unfortunate woman could do was pray to the Virgin Mary as the revenant’s corpse crushed her.

Over the next few nights, the revenant continued to haunt not only his wife but also many of the other villagers. It even viciously attacked local farm animals.

The Church Intervenes

William tells us that the villagers sought the help of the local archdeacon, who, in turn, consulted the bishop of Lincoln. The bishop, in turn, consulted with his colleagues. One of these, William de Montibus, master of Lincoln’s cathedral school, claimed to have some knowledge of revenants. De Montibus told the bishop that revenants of this kind were not uncommon and that the ‘traditional’ way the English dealt with the problem was to exhume the corpse and cremate it.

However, this old pagan remedy was problematic. Cremating the corpse might prevent the unquiet spirit from rising again, but it ran the risk of damning the soul of the deceased. Instead, the bishop was determined to find a solution more in keeping with Christian teachings. In the end, he decided that a scroll of absolution might well do the trick.

Absolution and Vampirism

The bishop commanded that the revenant’s coffin should be opened and the scroll placed on the chest of the corpse. He reasoned that if the corpse was possessed by a demon, the sacred word would bind the demon in the grave. If, however, the body was possessed by the restless ghost of the farmer, the scroll would lay the ghost to rest. Either way, the revenant would not return.

Following the bishop’s instructions, the body was exhumed. The corpse was found to be swollen with blood, and the funeral shroud torn to shreds. It stank of decay but was still unnaturally warm and pliable. These were the sure signs of a blood-sucking fiend: a vampire. The scroll of absolution, sealed in a lead case, was placed on the chest of the revenant, and the coffin was resealed. We can only wonder whether this resulted in the binding of any demons or any form of exorcism.

Ghosts and Hauntings in Medieval Christendom

The medieval Church clearly struggled to rationalise lingering beliefs related to ghosts, haunting, and revenants. However, clearly, these beliefs were so deeply ingrained in the minds of most people that it was impossible to eradicate them.

Instead, the medieval Church had to somehow accommodate and explain such phenomena as best it could. To a degree, it was able to achieve this by constructing its own theological framework within which these hauntings could be accommodated. In so doing, the medieval Church injected its own Christian mythology and beliefs into how we think about ghosts today. Modern-day perceptions of ghosts and the unquiet dead are therefore founded upon a fusion of old pagan and medieval Christian beliefs.