Several legal texts from the late twelfth century refer to a popular belief known as cruentation: the idea that an otherwise completely inanimate corpse, stilled for days, weeks, even years, might begin to bleed afresh when in the presence of its murderer. The concept was founded on the notion that perpetrators of such crimes underwent an indelible exchange of spirits with their prey during the act of killing, the severity of their malicious intentions and mortal sins somehow conducted through the murder weapon and into the body of the victim. Even though it was dead, the corpse of someone grievously wronged in this way could briefly live again to pump blood from its wounds, seeking posthumous vengeance by identifying its enemies in a magical form of proto-forensic proof.
Medieval Bodies: Life and Death in the Middle Ages ~by Jack Hartnell
