28. Not all corpses that didn’t decompose belonged to vampires…
Hundeprest and the man from Buckinghamshire couldn’t rot because of their sins. They only found rest once given absolution or chucked in a burning fire (the usual punishment for medieval heretics). But it’s interesting to note that someone’s body failing to decompose could mean the very opposite. Several medieval saints are famous for their stubborn refusal to rot. In the late 7th century, for example, monks exhumed the remains of Cuthbert of Lindisfarne (above) to put them in a reliquary. Astonishingly, Cuthbert’s body hadn’t changed one iota in the intervening 9 years, and everyone called it a miracle.
