THE SCENE: The passage below is a prime example blending of religious and supernatural elements that typifies many popular medieval European fables.
THE TEXT: A knight in Northumberland was seated alone in his house after dinner in summer about the tenth hour, and lo! his father, who had died long before, approached him clad in a foul and ragged shroud. He thought the appearance was a devil and drove it back from the threshold, but his father said: “Dearest son, fear not. I am your father, and I bring you no ill; but call the priest and you shall learn the reason of coming.” He was summoned, and a crowd ran to the spot; when falling at his feet the ghost said: “I am that wretch whom long since you excommunicated unnamed, with many more, for unrighteous withholding of tithes; but the common prayers of the church and the alms of the faithful have by God’s grace so helped me that I am permitted to ask for absolution.” So being absolved he went, with a great train of people following, to his grave and sank into it, and it closed over him of its own accord. This new case has introduced a new subject of discussion into the books of divinity.
– De Nugis Curialium, Walter Map, 12th Century AD
