Sexual Sin and the Walking Dead in the Chronicle of Lanercost

Compiled from two earlier chronicles, the Chronicle of Lanercost (ca. 1346) is a prime source of information on the Wars of Scottish Independence. The first part of the chronicle (1201– 97), written by Richard of Durham, contains numerous exempla designed to entertain as well as edify. While the exemplum concerning the revenant of an excommunicated monk from Paisley Abbey that terrorized the household of Sir Duncan de Insula, killing his son, is well-known in modern scholarship on the supernatural, its exact critical function is yet to be fully explored. The aim of this article, then, is to analyze the literary function and wider thematic relevance of this undead encounter. I argue that the ontological transgressions of the dead monk’s reappearance, the unstable nature of his postmortem body, and the eventual death of Sir Duncan’s son speak to the spiritual and social crises caused by sexual transgression. Taking into account the specific narrative placement of the exemplum, I further argue that the story’s allusions to sodomy, sexual sin, and the breakdown of natural order allegorize the moral and political fallout from the Scottish repudiation of the English crown in 1295.