[463] This story is apparently the same which we related before under
the name of Haidamaque, and which happened in 1729 or 1730.

CHAPTER XI.

ARGUMENTS OF THE AUTHOR OF THE "LETTRES JUIVES," ON THE SUBJECT OF
THESE PRETENDED GHOSTS.

There are two different ways of effacing the opinion concerning these
pretended ghosts, and showing the impossibility of the effects which
are made to be produced by corpses entirely deprived of sensation. The
first is, to explain by physical causes all the prodigies of
vampirism; the second is, to deny totally the truth of these stories;
and the latter means, without doubt, is the surest and the wisest. But
as there are persons to whom the authority of a certificate given by
people in a certain place appears a plain demonstration of the
reality of the most absurd story, before I show how little they ought
to rely on the formalities of the law in matters which relate solely
to philosophy, I will for a moment suppose that several persons do
really die of the disease which they term vampirism.

I lay down at first this principle, that it may be that there are
corpses which, although interred some days, shed fluid blood through
the conduits of their body. I add, moreover, that it is very easy for
certain people to fancy themselves sucked by vampires, and that the
fear caused by that fancy should make a revolution in their frame
sufficiently violent to deprive them of life. Being occupied all day
with the terror inspired by these pretended ghosts or _revenans_, is
it very extraordinary, that during their sleep the idea of these
phantoms should present itself to their imagination and cause them
such violent terror? that some of them die of it instantaneously, and
others a short time afterwards? How many instances have we not seen of
people who expired with fright in a moment? and has not joy itself
sometimes produced an equally fatal effect?

I have seen in the Leipsic journals[464] an account of a little work
entitled, _Philosophicæ et Christianæ Cogitationes de Vampiriis, à
Joanne Christophoro Herenbergio_; "Philosophical and Christian
Thoughts upon Vampires, by John Christopher Herenberg," at
Gerolferliste, in 1733, in 8vo. The author names a pretty large number
of writers who have already discussed this matter; he speaks, _en
passant_, of a spectre which appeared to him at noonday. He maintains
that the vampires do not cause the death of the living, and that all
that is said about them ought to be attributed only to the troubled
fancy of the invalids; he proves by divers experiments that the
imagination is capable of causing very great derangements in the body,
and the humors of the body; he shows that in Sclavonia they impaled
murderers, and drove a stake through the heart of the culprit; that
they used the same chastisement for vampires, supposing them to be the
authors of the death of those whose blood they were said to suck. He
gives some examples of this punishment exercised upon them, the one in
the year 1337, and the other in 1347. He speaks of the opinion of
those who believe that the dead eat in their tombs; a sentiment of
which he endeavors to prove the antiquity by the authority of
Tertullian, at the beginning of his book on the Resurrection, and by
that of St. Augustine, b. viii. c. 27, on the City of God, and in
Sermon xv. on the Saints.

Such are nearly the contents of the work of M. Herenberg on vampires.
The passage of Tertullian[465] which he cites, proves very well that
the pagans offered food to their dead, even to those whose bodies had
been burned, believing that their spirits regaled themselves with it:
_Defunctis parentant, et quidem impensissimo studio, pro moribus eorum
pro temporibus esculentorum, ut quos sentire quicquam negant escam
desiderare proesumant._ This concerns only the pagans.

But St. Augustine, in several places, speaks of the custom of the
Christians, above all those of Africa, of carrying to the tombs meats
and wine, which they placed upon them as a repast of devotion, and to
which the poor were invited, in whose favor these offerings were
principally instituted. This practice is founded on the passage of the
book of Tobit;--"Place your bread and wine on the sepulchre of the
just, and be careful not to eat or drink of it with sinners." St.
Monico, the mother of St. Augustine,[466] having desired to do at
Milan what she had been accustomed to do in Africa, St. Ambrose,
bishop of Milan, testified that he did not approve of this practice,
which was unknown in his church. The holy woman restrained herself to
carrying thither a basket full of fruits and wine, of which she
partook very soberly with the women who accompanied her, leaving the
rest for the poor. St. Augustine remarks, in the same passage, that
some intemperate Christians abused these offerings by drinking wine to
excess: _Ne ulla occasio se ingurgitandi daretur ebriosis._

St. Augustine,[467] however, by his preaching and remonstrances, did
so much good, that he entirely uprooted this custom, which was common
throughout the African Church, and the abuse of which was too general.
In his books on the City of God,[468] he avows that this usage is
neither general nor approved in the Church, and that those who
practice it content themselves with offering this food upon the tombs
of the martyrs, in order that through their merits these offerings
should be sanctified; after which they carry them away, and make use
of them for their own nourishment and that of the poor: _Quicumque
suas epulas eò deferant, quad quidem à melioribus Christianis non fit,
et in plerisque terrarum nulla talis est consuetudo; tamen quicumque
id faciunt, quas cùm appossuerint, orant, et auferunt, ut vescantur
vel ex eis etiam indigentibus largiantur._ It appears, from two
sermons which have been attributed to St. Augustine,[469] that in
former times this custom had crept in at Rome, but did not subsist
there any time, and was blamed and condemned.

Now, if it were true that the dead could eat in their tombs, and that
they had a wish or occasion to eat, as is believed by those of whom
Tertullian speaks, and as it appears may be inferred from the custom
of carrying fruit and wine to be placed on the graves of martyrs and
other Christians, I think even that I have good proof that in certain
places they placed near the bodies of the dead, whether buried in the
cemeteries or the churches, meat, wine, and other liquors. I have in
our study several vases of clay and glass, and even plates, where may
be seen small bones of pig and fowls, all found deep underground in
the church of the Abbey of St. Mansuy, near the town of Toul.

It has been remarked to me that these vestiges found in the ground
were plunged in virgin earth which had never been disturbed, and near
certain vases or urns filled with ashes, and containing some small
bones which the flames could not consume; and as it is known that the
Christians did not burn their dead, and that these vases we are
speaking of are placed beneath the disturbed earth, in which the
graves of Christians are found, it has been inferred, with much
semblance of probability, that these vases with the food and beverage
buried near them, were intended not for Christians but for heathens.
The latter, then, at least, believed that the dead ate in the other
life. There is no doubt that the ancient Gauls[470] were persuaded of
this; they are often represented on their tombs with bottles in their
hands, and baskets and other comestibles, or drinking vessels and
goblets;[471] they carried with them even the contracts and bonds for
what was due to them, to have it paid to them in Hades. _Negotiorum
ratio, etiam exactio crediti deferebatur ad inferos._

Now, if they believed that the dead ate in their tombs, that they
could return to earth, visit, console, instruct, or disturb the
living, and predict to them their approaching death, the return of
vampires is neither impossible nor incredible in the opinion of these
ancients.

But as all that is said of dead men who eat in their graves and out of
their graves is chimerical and beyond all likelihood, and the thing is
even impossible and incredible, whatever may be the number and quality
of those who have believed it, or appeared to believe it, I shall
always say that the return (to earth) of the vampires is
unmaintainable and impracticable.

Footnotes:

[464] Supplem. ad visu Erudit. Lips. an. 1738, tom. ii.

[465] Tertull. de Resurrect. initio.

[466] Aug. Confess. lib. vi. c. 2.

[467] Aug. Epist. 22, ad Aurel. Carthag. et Epist. 29, ad Alipi. Item
de Moribus Eccl. c. 34.

[468] Aug. lib. viii. de Civit. Dei, c. 27.

[469] Aug. Serm. 35, de Sanctis, nunc in Appendice, c. 5. Serm. cxc.
cxci. p. 328.

[470] Antiquité expliquée, tom. iv. p. 80.

[471] Mela. lib. ii. c. 4.

CHAPTER XII.

CONTINUATION OF THE ARGUMENT OF THE "DUTCH GLEANERS," OR "GLANEUR
HOLLANDAIS."

On examining the narrative of the death of the pretended martyrs of
vampirism, I discover the symptoms of an epidemical fanaticism; and I
see clearly that the impression made upon them by fear is the true
cause of their being lost. A girl named Stanoska, say they, daughter
of the Heyducq Sovitzo, who went to bed in perfect health, awoke in
the middle of the night all in a tremble, and shrieking dreadfully,
saying that the son of the Heyducq Millo, who had been dead for nine
weeks, had nearly strangled her in her sleep. From that moment she
fell into a languishing state, and at the end of three days died.

For any one who has eyes, however little philosophical they may be,
must not this recital alone clearly show him that this pretended
vampirism is merely the result of a stricken imagination? There is a
girl who awakes and says that some one wanted to strangle her, and who
nevertheless has not been sucked, since her cries have prevented the
vampire from making his repast. She apparently was not so served
afterwards either, since, doubtlessly, they did not leave her by
herself during the other nights; and if the vampire had wished to
molest her, her moans would have warned those of it who were present.
Nevertheless, she dies three days afterwards. Her fright and lowness,
her sadness and languor, evidently show how strongly her imagination
had been affected.

Those persons who find themselves in cities afflicted with the plague,
know by experience how many people lose their lives through fear. As
soon as a man finds himself attacked with the least illness, he
fancies that he is seized with the epidemical disease, which idea
occasions him so great a sensation, that it is almost impossible for
the system to resist such a revolution. The Chevalier de Maifin
assured me, when I was at Paris, that being at Marseilles during the
contagion which prevailed in that city, he had seen a woman die of the
fear she felt at a slight illness of her servant, whom she believed
attacked with the pestilence. This woman's daughter was sick and near
dying.

Other persons who were in the same house went to bed, sent for a
doctor, and assured him they had the plague. The doctor, on arriving,
visited the servant, and the other patients, and none of them had the
epidemical disorder. He tried to calm their minds, and ordered them to
rise, and live in their usual way; but his care was useless as
regarded the mistress of the family, who died in two days of the
fright alone.

Reflect upon the second narrative of the death of a passive vampire,
and you will see most evident proofs of the terrible effects of fear
and prejudice. (See the preceding chapter.) This man, three days after
he was buried, appears in the night to his son, asks for something to
eat, eats, and disappears. On the morrow, the son relates to his
neighbors what had happened to him. That night the father does not
appear; but the following night they find the son dead in his bed. Who
cannot perceive in these words the surest marks of prepossession and
fear? The first time these act upon the imagination of the pretended
victim of vampirism they do not produce their entire effect, and not
only dispose his mind to be more vividly struck by them; that also
does not fail to happen, and to produce the effect which would
naturally follow.

Notice well that the dead man did not return on the night of the day
that his son communicated his dream to his friends, because, according
to all appearances, these sat up with him, and prevented him from
yielding to his fear.

I now come to those corpses full of fluid blood, and whose beard, hair
and nails had grown again. One may dispute three parts of these
prodigies, and be very complaisant if we admit the truth of a few of
them. All philosophers know well enough how much the people, and even
certain historians, enlarge upon things which appear but a little
extraordinary. Nevertheless, it is not impossible to explain their
cause physically.

Experience teaches us that there are certain kinds of earth which will
preserve dead bodies perfectly fresh. The reasons of this have been
often explained, without my giving myself the trouble to make a
particular recital of them. There is at Thoulouse a vault in a church
belonging to some monks, where the bodies remain so entirely perfect
that there are some which have been there nearly two centuries, and
appear still living.

They have been ranged in an upright posture against the wall, and are
clothed in the dress they usually wore. What is very remarkable is,
that the bodies which are placed on the other side of this same vault
become in two or three days the food of worms.

As to the growth of the nails, the hair and the beard, it is often
perceived in many corpses. While there yet remains a great deal of
moisture in the body, it is not surprising that during some time we
see some augmentation in those parts which do not demand a vital
spirit.

The fluid blood flowing through the canals of the body seems to form a
greater difficulty; but physical reasons may be given for this. It
might very well happen that the heat of the sun warming the nitrous
and sulphureous particles which are found in those earths that are
proper for preserving the body, those particles having incorporated
themselves in the newly interred corpses, ferment, decoagulate, and
melt the curdled blood, render it liquid, and give it the power of
flowing by degrees through all the channels.

This opinion appears so much the more probable from its being
confirmed by an experiment. If you boil in a glass or earthen vessel
one part of chyle, or milk, mixed with two parts of cream of tartar,
the liquor will turn from white to red, because the tartaric salt will
have rarified and entirely dissolved the most oily part of the milk,
and converted it into a kind of blood. That which is formed in the
vessels of the body is a little redder, but it is not thicker; it is,
then, not impossible that the heat may cause a fermentation which
produces nearly the same effects as this experiment. And this will be
found easier, if we consider that the juices of the flesh and bones
resemble chyle very much, and that the fat and marrow are the most
oily parts of the chyle. Now all these particles in fermenting must,
by the rule of the experiment, be changed into a kind of blood. Thus,
besides that which has been discoagulated and melted, the pretended
vampires shed also that blood which must be formed from the melting of
the fat and marrow.

CHAPTER XIII.

NARRATION EXTRACTED FROM THE "MERCURE GALENT" OF 1693 AND 1694,
CONCERNING GHOSTS.

The public memorials of the years 1693 and 1694 speak of _oupires_,
vampires or ghosts, which are seen in Poland, and above all in Russia.
They make their appearance from noon to midnight, and come and suck the
blood of living men or animals in such abundance that sometimes it flows
from them at the nose, and principally at the ears, and sometimes the
corpse swims in its own blood oozed out in its coffin.[472] It is said
that the vampire has a sort of hunger, which makes him eat the linen
which envelops him. This reviving being, or _oupire_, comes out of his
grave, or a demon in his likeness, goes by night to embrace and hug
violently his near relations or his friends, and sucks their blood so
much as to weaken and attenuate them, and at last cause their death.
This persecution does not stop at one single person; it extends to the
last person of the family, if the course be not interrupted by cutting
off the head or opening the heart of the ghost, whose corpse is found in
his coffin, yielding, flexible, swollen, and rubicund, although he may
have been dead some time. There proceeds from his body a great quantity
of blood, which some mix up with flour to make bread of; and that bread
eaten in ordinary protects them from being tormented by the spirit,
which returns no more.

Footnotes:

[472] V. Moréri on the word _stryges_.

CHAPTER XIV.

CONJECTURES OF THE "GLANEUR DE HOLLANDE," DUTCH GLEANER, IN 1733.--NO.
IX.

The Dutch Gleaner, who is by no means credulous, supposes the truth of
these facts as certain, having no good reason for disputing them, and
reasons upon them in a way which shows he thinks lightly of the
matter; he asserts that the people, amongst whom vampires are seen,
are very ignorant and very credulous, so that the apparitions we are
speaking of are only the effects of a prejudiced fancy. The whole is
occasioned and augmented by the bad nourishment of these people, who,
the greater part of their time, eat only bread made of oats, roots,
and the bark of trees--aliments which can only engender gross blood,
which is consequently much disposed to corruption, and produces dark
and bad ideas in the imagination.

He compares this disease to the bite of a mad dog, which communicates
its venom to the person who is bitten; thus, those who are infected by
vampirism communicate this dangerous poison to those with whom they
associate. Thence the wakefulness, dreams, and pretended apparitions
of vampires.

He conjectures that this poison is nothing else than a worm, which
feeds upon the purest substance of man, constantly gnaws his heart,
makes the body die away, and does not forsake it even in the depth of
the grave. It is certain that the bodies of those who have been
poisoned, or who die of contagion, do not become stiff after their
death, because the blood does not congeal in the veins; on the
contrary, it rarifies and bubbles much the same as in vampires, whose
beard, hair, and nails grow, whose skin is rosy, who appear to have
grown fat, on account of the blood which swells and abounds in them
everywhere.

As to the cry uttered by the vampires when the stake is driven through
their heart, nothing is more natural; the air which is there confined,
and thus expelled with violence, necessarily produces that noise in
passing through the throat. Dead bodies often do as much without being
touched. He concludes that it is only an imagination that is deranged
by melancholy or superstition, which can fancy that the malady we have
just spoken of can be produced by vampire corpses, which come and suck
away, even to the last drop, all the blood in the body.

A little before, he says that in 1732 they discovered again some
vampires in Hungary, Moravia, and Turkish Servia; that this phenomenon
is too well averred for it to be doubted; that several German
physicians have composed pretty thick volumes in Latin and German on
this matter; that the Germanic Academies and Universities still
resound with the names of Arnald Paul, of Stanoska, daughter of
Sovitzo, and of the Heyducq Millo, all famous vampires of the quarter
of Médreiga, in Hungary.

Here is a letter which has been written to one of my friends, to be
communicated to me; it is on the subject of the ghosts of
Hungary;[473] the writer thinks very differently from the Gleaner on
the subject of vampires.

"In reply to the questions of the Abbé dom Calmet concerning vampires,
the undersigned has the honor to assure him that nothing is more true
or more certain than what he will doubtless have read about it in the
deeds or attestations which have been made public, and printed in all
the Gazettes in Europe. But amongst all these public attestations
which have appeared, the Abbé must fix his attention as a true and
notorious fact on that of the deputation from Belgrade, ordered by his
late Majesty Charles VI., of glorious memory, and executed by his
Serene Highness the late Duke Charles Alexander of Wirtemberg, then
Viceroy or Governor of the kingdom of Servia; but I cannot at present
cite the year or the day, for want of papers which I have not now by
me.

"That prince sent off a deputation from Belgrade, half consisting of
military officers and half of civil, with the auditor-general of the
kingdom, to go to a village where a famous vampire, several years
deceased, was making great havoc amongst his kin; for note well, that
it is only in their family and amongst their own relations that these
blood-suckers delight in destroying our species. This deputation was
composed of men and persons well known for their morality and even
their information, of irreproachable character; and there were even
some learned men amongst the two orders: they were put to the oath,
and accompanied by a lieutenant of the grenadiers of the regiment of
Prince Alexander of Wirtemberg, and by twenty-four grenadiers of the
said regiment.

"All that were most respectable, and the duke himself, who was then at
Belgrade, joined this deputation in order to be ocular spectators of
the veracious proof about to be made.

"When they arrived at the place, they found that in the space of a
fortnight the vampire, uncle of five persons, nephews and nieces, had
already dispatched three of them and one of his own brothers. He had
begun with his fifth victim, the beautiful young daughter of his
niece, and had already sucked her twice, when a stop was put to this
sad tragedy by the following operations.

"They repaired with the deputed commissaries to a village not far from
Belgrade, and that publicly, at night-fall, and went to the vampire's
grave. The gentleman could not tell me the time when those who had
died had been sucked, nor the particulars of the subject. The persons
whose blood had been sucked found themselves in a pitiable state of
languor, weakness, and lassitude, so violent is the torment. He had
been interred three years, and they saw on this grave a light
resembling that of a lamp, but not so bright.

"They opened the grave, and found there a man as whole and apparently
as sound as any of us who were present; his hair, and the hairs on his
body, the nails, teeth, and eyes as firmly fast as they now are in
ourselves who exist, and his heart palpitating.

"Next they proceeded to draw him out of his grave, the body in truth
not being flexible, but wanting neither flesh nor bone; then they
pierced his heart with a sort of round, pointed, iron lance; there
came out a whitish and fluid matter mixed with blood, but the blood
prevailing more than the matter, and all without any bad smell. After
that they cut off his head with a hatchet, like what is used in
England at executions; there came out also a matter and blood like
what I have just described, but more abundantly in proportion to what
had flowed from the heart.

"And after all this they threw him back again into his grave, with
quicklime to consume him promptly; and thenceforth his niece, who had
been twice sucked, grew better. At the place where these persons are
sucked a very blue spot is formed; the part whence the blood is drawn
is not determinate, sometimes it is in one place and sometimes in
another. It is a notorious fact, attested by the most authentic
documents, and passed or executed in sight of more than 1,300 persons,
all worthy of belief.

"But I reserve, to satisfy more fully the curiosity of the learned
Abbé dom Calmet, the pleasure of detailing to him more at length what
I have seen with my own eyes on this subject, and will give it to the
Chevalier de St. Urbain to send to him; too glad in that, as in
everything else, to find an occasion of proving to him that no one is
with such perfect veneration and respect as his very humble, and very
obedient servant, L. de Beloz, ci-devant Captain in the regiment of
his Serene Highness the late Prince Alexander of Wirtemberg, and his
Aid-de-Camp, and at this time first Captain of grenadiers in the
regiment of Monsieur the Baron Trenck."

Footnotes:

[473] There is reason to believe that this is only a repetition of
what has already been said in Chapter X.

CHAPTER XV.

ANOTHER LETTER ON GHOSTS.

In order to omit nothing which can throw light on this matter, I shall
insert here the letter of a very honest man, who is well informed
respecting ghosts. This letter was written to a relation.

"You wish, my dear cousin, to be exactly informed of what takes place
in Hungary concerning ghosts who cause the death of many people in
that country. I can write to you learnedly upon it, for I have been
several years in those quarters, and I am naturally curious. I have
heard in my lifetime an infinite number of stories, true, or pretended
to be such, concerning spirits and sorceries, but out of a thousand I
have hardly believed a single one. We cannot be too circumspect on
this point without running the risk of being duped. Nevertheless,
there are certain facts so well attested that one cannot help
believing them. As to the ghosts of Hungary, the thing takes place in
this manner: A person finds himself attacked with languor, loses his
appetite, grows visibly thinner, and, at the end of eight or ten days,
sometimes a fortnight, dies, without fever, or any other symptom than
thinness and drying up of the blood.

"They say in that country that it is a ghost which attaches itself to
such a person and sucks his blood. Of those who are attacked by this
malady the greater part think they see a white spectre which follows
them everywhere as the shadow follows the body. When we were quartered
among the Wallachians, in the ban of Temeswar, two horsemen of the
company in which I was cornet, died of this malady, and several
others, who also were attacked by it, would have died in the same
manner, if a corporal of our company had not put a stop to the
disorder by employing the remedy used by the people of the country in
such case. It is very remarkable, and although infallible, I never
read it in any ritual. This is it:--

"They choose a boy young enough to be certain that he is innocent of
any impurity; they place him on an unmutilated horse, which has never
stumbled, and is absolutely black. They make him ride about the
cemetery and pass over all the graves; that over which the animal
refuses to pass, in spite of repeated blows from a switch that is
delivered to his rider, is reputed to be filled by a vampire. They
open this grave, and find therein a corpse as fat and handsome as if
he were a man happily and quietly sleeping. They cut the throat of
this corpse with the stroke of a spade, and there flows forth the
finest vermilion blood in a great quantity. One might swear that it
was a healthy living man whose throat they were cutting. That done,
they fill up the grave, and we may reckon that the malady will cease,
and that all those who had been attacked by it will recover their
strength by degrees, like people recovering from a long illness, and
who have been greatly extenuated. That happened precisely to our
horsemen who had been seized with it. I was then commandant of the
company, my captain and my lieutenant being absent. I was piqued at
that corporal's having made the experiment without me, and I had all
the trouble in the world to resist the inclination I felt to give him
a severe caning--a merchandize which is very cheap in the emperor's
troops. I would have given the world to be present at this operation;
but I was obliged to make myself contented as it was."

A relation of this same officer has written me word, the 17th of
October, 1746, that his brother, who has served during twenty years in
Hungary, and has very curiously examined into everything which is said
there concerning ghosts, acknowledges that the people of that country
are more credulous and superstitious than other nations, and they
attribute the maladies which happen to them to spells. That as soon as
they suspect a dead person of having sent them this illness, they
inform the magistrate of it, who, on the deposition of some witnesses,
causes the dead body to be exhumed. They cut off the head with a
spade, and if a drop of blood comes from it, they conclude that it is
the blood which he has sucked from the sick person. But the person who
writes appears to me very far from believing what is thought of these
things in that country.

At Warsaw, a priest having ordered a saddler to make him a bridle for
his horse, died before the bridle was made, and as he was one of those
whom they call vampires in Poland, he came out of his grave dressed as
the ecclesiastics usually are when inhumed, took his horse from the
stable, mounted it, and went in the sight of all Warsaw to the
saddler's shop, where at first he found only the saddler's wife, who
was frightened, and called her husband; he came, and the priest having
asked for his bridle, he replied, "But you are dead, Mr. Curé." To
which he answered, "I am going to show you I am not," and at the same
time struck him so hard that the poor saddler died a few days after,
and the priest returned to his grave.

The steward of Count Simon Labienski, starost of Posnania, being dead,
the Countess Dowager de Labienski wished, from gratitude for his
services, to have him inhumed in the vault of the lords of that
family. This was done; and some time after, the sexton, who had the
care of the vault, perceived that there was some derangement in the
place, and gave notice of it to the ________, who desired, according to
the received custom in Poland, that the steward's head might be cut
off, which was done in the presence of several persons, and amongst
others of the Sieur Jouvinski, a Polish officer, and governor of the
young Count Simon Labienski, who saw that when the sexton took this
corpse out of his tomb to cut off his head, he ground his teeth, and
the blood came from him as fluidly as that of a person who died a
violent death, which caused the hair of all those who were present to
stand on end; and they dipped a white pocket-handkerchief in the blood
of this corpse, and made all the family drink some of the blood, that
they might not be tormented.

CHAPTER XVI.

PRETENDED VESTIGES OF VAMPIRISM IN ANTIQUITY.

Some learned men have thought they discovered some vestiges of
vampirism in the remotest antiquity; but all that they say of it does
not come near what is related of the vampires. The lamiæ, the strigæ,
the sorcerers whom they accused of sucking the blood of living
persons, and of thus causing their death, the magicians who were said
to cause the death of new-born children by charms and malignant
spells, are nothing less than what we understand by the name of
vampires; even were it to be owned that these lamiæ and strigæ have
really existed, which we do not believe can ever be well proved.

I own that these terms are found in the versions of Holy Scripture.
For instance, Isaiah, describing the condition to which Babylon was to
be reduced after her ruin, says that she shall become the abode of
satyrs, lamiæ, and strigæ (in Hebrew, _lilith_). This last term,
according to the Hebrews, signifies the same thing, as the Greeks
express by _strix_ and _lamiæ_, which are sorceresses or magicians,
who seek to put to death new-born children. Whence it comes that the
Jews are accustomed to write in the four corners of the chamber of a
woman just delivered, "Adam, Eve, begone from hence _lilith_."

The ancient Greeks knew these dangerous sorceresses by the name of
_lamiæ_, and they believed that they devoured children, or sucked away
all their blood till they died.[474]

The Seventy, in Isaiah, translate the Hebrew _lilith_ by _lamia_.
Euripides and the Scholiast of Aristophanes also make mention of it as
a fatal monster, the enemy of mortals. Ovid, speaking of the strigæ,
describes them as dangerous birds, which fly by night, and seek for
infants to devour them and nourish themselves with their blood.[475]

These prejudices had taken such deep root in the minds of the
barbarous people that they put to death persons suspected of being
strigæ, or sorceresses, and of eating people alive. Charlemagne, in
his Capitularies, which he composed for his new subjects,[476] the
Saxons, condemns to death those who shall believe that a man or a
woman are sorcerers (striges esse) and eat living men. He condemns in
the same manner those who shall have them burnt, or give their flesh
to be eaten, or shall eat of it themselves.

Wherein it may be remarked, first of all, that they believed there
were people who ate men alive; that they killed and burnt them; that
sometimes their flesh was eaten, as we have seen that in Russia they
eat bread kneaded with the blood of vampires; and that formerly their
corpses were exposed to wild beasts, as is still done in countries
where these ghosts are found, after having impaled them, or cut off
their head.

The laws of the Lombards, in the same way, forbid that the servant of
another person should be put to death as a witch, _strix_, or _masca_.
This last word, _masca_, whence _mask_, has the same signification as
the Latin _larva_, a spirit, a phantom, a spectre.

We may class in the number of ghosts the one spoken of in the
Chronicle of Sigibert, in the year 858.

Theodore de Gaza[477] had a little farm in Campania, which he had
cultivated by a laborer. As he was busy digging up the ground, he
discovered a round vase, in which were the ashes of a dead man;
directly, a spectre appeared to him, who commanded him to put this
vase back again in the ground, with what it contained, or if he did
not do so he would kill his eldest son. The laborer gave no heed to
these threats, and in a few days his eldest son was found dead in his
bed. A little time after, the same spectre appeared to him again,
reiterating the same order, and threatening to kill his second son.
The laborer gave notice of all this to his master, Theodore de Gaza,
who came himself to his farm, and had everything put back into its
place. This spectre was apparently a demon, or the spirit of a pagan
interred in that spot.

Michael Glycas[478] relates that the emperor Basilius, having lost his
beloved son, obtained by means of a black monk of Santabaren, power to
behold his said son, who had died a little while before; he saw him,
and held him embraced a pretty long time, until he vanished away in
his arms. It was, then, only a phantom which appeared in his son's
form.

In the diocese of Mayence, there was a spirit that year which made
itself manifest first of all by throwing stones, striking against the
walls of a house, as if with strong blows of a mallet; then talking,
and revealing unknown things; the authors of certain thefts, and other
things fit to spread the spirit of discord among the neighbors. At
last he directed his fury against one person in particular, whom he
liked to persecute and render odious to all the neighborhood,
proclaiming that he it was who excited the wrath of God against all
the village. He pursued him in every place, without giving him the
least moment of relaxation. He burnt all his harvest collected in his
house, and set fire to all the places he entered.

The priests exorcised, said their prayers, dashed holy water about.
The spirit threw stones at them, and wounded several persons. After
the priests had withdrawn, they heard him bemoaning himself, and
saying that he had hidden himself under the hood of a priest, whom he
named, and accused of having seduced the daughter of a lawyer of the
place. He continued these troublesome hauntings for three years, and
did not leave off till he had burnt all the houses in the village.

Here follows an instance which bears connection with what is related
of the ghosts of Hungary, who come to announce the death of their near
relations. Evodius, Bishop of Upsala, in Africa, writes to St.
Augustine, in 415,[479] that a young man whom he had with him, as a
writer, or secretary, and who led a life of rare innocence and purity,
having just died at the age of twenty-two, a virtuous widow saw in a
dream a certain deacon who, with other servants of God, of both sexes,
ornamented a palace which seemed to shine as if it were of silver.
She asked who they were preparing it for, and they told her it was for
a young man who died the day before. She afterwards beheld in the same
palace an old man, clad in white, who commanded two persons to take
this young man out of his tomb and lead him to heaven.

In the same house where this young man died, an aged man, half asleep,
saw a man with a branch of laurel in his hand, upon which something
was written.

Three days after the death of the young man, his father, who was a
priest named Armenius, having retired to a monastery to console
himself with the saintly old man, Theasus, Bishop of Manblosa, the
deceased son appeared to a monk of this monastery, and told him that
God had received him among the blessed, and that he had sent him to
fetch his father. In effect, four days after, his father had a slight
degree of fever, but it was so slight that the physician assured him
there was nothing to fear. He nevertheless took to his bed, and at the
same time, as he was yet speaking, he expired.

It was not of fright that he died, for it does not appear that he knew
anything of what the monk had seen in his dream.

The same bishop, Evodius, relates that several persons had been seen
after their death to go and come in their houses as during their
lifetime, either in the night, or even in open day. "They say also,"
adds Evodius, "that in the places where bodies are interred, and
especially in the churches, they often hear a noise at a certain hour
of the night like persons praying aloud. I remember," continues
Evodius, "having heard it said by several, and, amongst others, by a
holy priest, who was witness to these apparitions, that they had seen
coming out of the baptistry a great number of these spirits, with
shining bodies of light, and had afterwards heard them pray in the
middle of the church." The same Evodius says, moreover, that
Profuturus, Privus, and Servilius, who had lived very piously in the
monastery, had talked with himself since their death, and what they
had told him had come to pass.

St. Augustine, after having related what Evodius said, acknowledges
that a great distinction is to be made between true and false visions,
and testifies that he could wish to have some sure means of justly
discerning between them.

But who shall give us the knowledge necessary for such discerning, so
difficult and yet so requisite, since we have not even any certain and
demonstrative marks by which to discern infallibly between true and
false miracles, or to distinguish the works of the Almighty from the
illusions of the angel of darkness.

Footnotes:

[474]
  "Neu pransæ lamiæ vivum puerum ex trahat alvo."
                   _Horat. Art. Poet._ 340.

[475]
  "Carpere dicuntur lactentia viscera rostris,
           Et plenum poco sanguine guttur habent,
           Est illis strigibus nomen."

[476] Capitul. Caroli Magni pro partibus Saxoniæ, i. 6:--"Si quis à
Diabolo deceptus crediderit secundùm morem Paganorum, virum aliquem
aut foeminam strigem esse, et homines comedere; et propter hoc ipsum
incenderit, vel carnem ejus ad comedendum dederit, vel ipsam comederit
capitis sententià puniatur."

[477] Le Loyer, des Spectres, lib. ii. p. 427.

[478] Mich. Glycas, part iv. Annal.

[479] Aug. Epist. 658, and Epist. 258, p. 361.

CHAPTER XVII.

OF GHOSTS IN THE NORTHERN COUNTRIES.

Thomas Bartholin, the son, in his treatise entitled "_Of the Causes of
the contempt of Death felt by the Ancient Danes while yet Gentiles_,"
remarks[480] that a certain Hordus, an Icelander, saw spectres with
his bodily eyes, fought against them and resisted them. These
thoroughly believed that the spirits of the dead came back with their
bodies, which they afterwards forsook and returned to their graves.
Bartholinus relates in particular that a man named Asmond, son of
Alfus, having had himself buried alive in the same sepulchre with his
friend Asvitus, and having had victuals brought there, was taken out
from thence some time after covered with blood, in consequence of a
combat he had been obliged to maintain against Asvitus, who had
haunted him and cruelly assaulted him.

He reports after that what the poets teach concerning the vocation of
spirits by the power of magic, and of their return into bodies which
are not decayed although a long time dead. He shows that the Jews have
believed the same--that the souls came back from time to time to
revisit their dead bodies during the first year after their decease.
He demonstrates that the ancient northern nations were persuaded that
persons recently deceased often made their bodily appearance; and he
relates some examples of it: he adds that they attacked these
dangerous spectres, which haunted and maltreated all who had any
fields in the neighborhood of their tombs; that they cut off the head
of a man named Gretter, who also returned to earth. At other times
they thrust a stake through the body and thus fixed them to the
ground.

  "Nam ferro secui mox caput ejus,
  Perfodique nocens stipite corpus."

Formerly, they took the corpse from the tomb and reduced it to ashes;
they did thus towards a spectre named Gardus, which they believed the
author of all the fatal apparitions that had appeared during the
winter.

Footnotes:

[480] Thomas Bartolin, de Causis Contemptûs Mortis à Danis, lib. ii.
c. 2.

CHAPTER XVIII.

GHOSTS IN ENGLAND.

William of Malmsbury says[481] that in England they believed that the
wicked came back to earth after their death, and were brought back in
their own bodies by the devil, who governed them and caused them to
act; _Nequam hominis cadaver post mortem dæmone agente discurrere._

William of Newbridge, who flourished after the middle of the twelfth
century, relates that in his time was seen in England, in the county
of Buckingham, a man who appeared bodily, as when alive, three
succeeding nights to his wife, and after that to his nearest
relatives. They only defended themselves from his frightful visits by
watching and making a noise when they perceived him coming. He even
showed himself to a few persons in the day time. Upon that, the Bishop
of Lincoln assembled his council, who told him that similar things had
often happened in England, and that the only known remedy against this
evil was to burn the body of the ghost. The bishop was averse to this
opinion, which appeared cruel to him: he first of all wrote a schedule
of absolution, which was placed on the body of the defunct, which was
found in the same state as if he had been buried that very day; and
from that time they heard no more of him.

The author of this narrative adds, that this sort of apparitions would
appear incredible, if several instances had not occurred in his time,
and if they did not know several persons who believed in them.

The same Newbridge says, in the following chapter, that a man who had
been interred at Berwick, came out of his grave every night and caused
great confusion in all the neighborhood. It was even said that he had
boasted that he should not cease to disturb the living till they had
reduced him to ashes. Then they selected ten bold and vigorous young
men, who took him up out of the ground, cut his body to pieces, and
placed it on a pile, whereon it was burned to ashes; but beforehand,
some one amongst them having said that he could not be consumed by
fire until they had torn out his heart, his side was pierced with a
stake, and when they had taken out his heart through the opening, they
set fire to the pile; he was consumed by the flames and appeared no
more.

The pagans also believed that the bodies of the dead rested not,
neither were they safe from magical evocations, so long as they
remained unconsumed by fire, or undecayed underground.

  "Tali tua membra sepulchro,
  Talibus exuram Stygio cum carmine Sylvis,
  Ut nullos cantata Magos exaudiat umbra,"

said an enchantress, in Lucan, to a spirit she evoked.

Footnotes:

[481] William of Malms. lib. ii. c. 4.

CHAPTER XIX.

GHOSTS IN PERU.

The instance we are about to relate occurred in Peru, in the country
of the Ititans. A girl named Catharine died at the age of sixteen an
unhappy death, and she had been guilty of several sacrilegious
actions. Her body immediately after her decease was so putrid that
they were obliged to put it out of the dwelling in the open air, to
escape from the bad smell which exhaled from it. At the same time they
heard as it were dogs howling; and a horse which before then was very
gentle began to rear, to prance, strike the ground with its feet, and
break its bonds; a young man who was in bed was pulled out of bed
violently by the arm; a servant maid received a kick on the shoulder,
of which she bore the marks for several days. All that happened before
the body of Catharine was inhumed. Some time afterwards, several
inhabitants of the place saw a great quantity of tiles and bricks
thrown down with a great noise in the house where she died. The
servant of the house was dragged about by the foot, without any one
appearing to touch her, and that in the presence of her mistress and
ten or twelve other women.

The same servant, on entering a room to fetch some clothes, perceived
Catharine, who rose up to seize hold of an earthen pot; the girl ran
away directly, but the spectre took the vase, dashed it against the
wall, and broke it into a thousand pieces. The mistress, who ran
thither on hearing the noise, saw that a quantity of bricks were
thrown against the wall. The next day an image of the crucifix fixed
against the wall was all on a sudden torn from its place in the
presence of them all, and broken into three pieces.

CHAPTER XX.

GHOSTS IN LAPLAND.

Vestiges of these ghosts are still found in Lapland, where it is said
they see a great number of spectres, who appear among those people,
speak to them, and eat with them, without their being able to get rid
of them; and as they are persuaded that these are the manes or shades
of their relations who thus disturb them, they have no means of
guarding against their intrusions more efficacious than to inter the
bodies of their nearest relatives under the hearthstone, in order,
apparently, that there they may be sooner consumed. In general, they
believe that the manes, or spirits, which come out of bodies, or
corpses, are usually malevolent till they have re-entered other
bodies. They pay some respect to the spectres, or demons, which they
believe roam about rocks, mountains, lakes, and rivers, much as in
former times the Romans paid honor to the fauns, the gods of the
woods, the nymphs, and the tritons.

Andrew Alciat[482] says that he was consulted concerning certain women
whom the Inquisition had caused to be burnt as witches for having
occasioned the death of some children by their spells, and for having
threatened the mothers of other children to kill these also; and in
fact they did die the following night of disorders unknown to the
physicians. Here we again see those strigæ, or witches, who delight in
destroying children.

But all this relates to our subject very indirectly. The vampires of
which we are discoursing are very different from all those just
mentioned.

Footnotes:

[482] Andr. Alciat. Parergon Juris, viii. c. 22.

CHAPTER XXI.

REAPPEARANCE OF A MAN WHO HAD BEEN DEAD FOR SOME MONTHS.

Peter, the venerable[483] abbot of Clugni, relates the conversation
which he had in the presence of the bishops of Oleron and of Osma, in
Spain, together with several monks, with an old monk named Pierre
d'Engelbert, who, after living a long time in his day in high
reputation for valor and honor, had withdrawn from the world after the
death of his wife, and entered the order of Clugni. Peter the
Venerable having come to see him, Pierre d'Engelbert related to him
that one day when in his bed and wide awake, he saw in his chamber,
whilst the moon shone very brightly, a man named Sancho, whom he had
several years before sent at his own expense to the assistance of
Alphonso, king of Arragon, who was making war on Castile. Sancho had
returned safe and sound from this expedition, but some time after he
fell sick and died in his house.

Four months after his death, Sancho showed himself to Pierre
d'Engelbert, as we have said. Sancho was naked, with the exception of
a rag for mere decency round him. He began to uncover the burning
wood, as if to warm himself, or that he might be more distinguishable.
Peter asked him who he was. "I am," replied he, in a broken and hoarse
voice, "Sancho, your servant." "And what do you come here for?" "I am
going," said he, "into Castile, with a number of others, in order to
expiate the harm we did during the last war, on the same spot where it
was committed: for my own part, I pillaged the ornaments of a church,
and for that I am condemned to take this journey. You can assist me
very much by your good works; and madame, your spouse, who owes me yet
eight sols for the remainder of my salary, will oblige me infinitely
if she will bestow them on the poor in my name." Peter then asked him
news of one Pierre de Fais, his friend, who had been dead a short
time. Sancho told him that he was saved.

"And Bernier, our fellow-citizen, what is become of him?" "He is
damned," said he, "for having badly performed his office of judge, and
for having troubled and plundered the widow and the innocent."

Peter added, "Could you tell me any news of Alphonso, king of Arragon,
who died a few years ago?"

Then another spectre, that Peter had not before seen, and which he now
observed distinctly by the light of the moon, seated in the recess of
the window, said to him--"Do not ask him for news of King Alphonso; he
has not been with us long enough to know anything about him. I, who
have been dead five years, can give you news of him. Alphonso was with
us for some time, but the monks of Clugni extricated him from thence.
I know not where he is now." Then, addressing himself to his
companion, Sancho, "Come," said he, "let us follow our companions; it
is time to set off." Sancho reiterated his entreaties to Peter, his
lord, and went out of the house.

Peter waked his wife who was lying by him, and who had neither seen
nor heard anything of all this dialogue, and asked her the question,
"Do not you owe something to Sancho, that domestic who was in our
service, and died a little while ago?" She answered, "I owe him still
eight sols." From this, Peter had no more doubt of the truth of what
Sancho had said to him, gave these eight sols to the poor, adding a
large sum of his own, and caused masses and prayers to be said for the
soul of the defunct. Peter was then in the world and married; but when
he related this to Peter the Venerable, he was a monk of Clugni.

St. Augustine relates that Sylla,[484] on arriving at Tarentum,
offered there sacrifices to the gods, that is to say, to the demons;
and having observed on the upper part of the liver of the victim a
sort of crown of gold, the aruspice assured him that this crown was
the presage of a certain victory, and told him to eat alone that liver
whereon he had seen the crown.

Almost at the same moment, a servitor of Lucius Pontius came to him
and said, "Sylla, I am come from the goddess Bellona. The victory is
yours; and as a proof of my prediction, I announce to you that, ere
long, the capitol will be reduced to ashes." At the same time, this
man left the camp in great haste, and on the morrow he returned with
still more eagerness, and affirmed that the capitol had been burnt,
which was found to be true.

St. Augustine had no doubt but that the demon who had caused the crown
of gold to appear on the liver of the victim had inspired this
diviner, and that the same bad spirit having foreseen the
conflagration of the capitol had announced it after the event by that
same man.

The same holy doctor relates,[485] after Julius Obsequens, in his Book
of Prodigies, that in the open country of Campania, where some time
after the Roman armies fought with such animosity during the civil
war, they heard at first loud noises like soldiers fighting; and
afterwards several persons affirmed that they had seen for some days
two armies, who joined battle; after which they remarked in the same
part as it were vestiges of the combatants, and the marks of horses'
feet, as if the combat had really taken place there. St. Augustine
doubts not that all this was the work of the devil, who wished to
reassure mankind against the horrors of civil warfare, by making them
believe that their gods being at war amongst themselves, mankind need
not be more moderate, nor more touched by the evils which war brings
with it.

The abbot of Ursperg, in his Chronicle, year 1123, says that in the
territory of Worms they saw during many days a multitude of armed men,
on foot and on horseback, going and coming with great noise, like
people who are going to a solemn assembly. Every day they marched,
towards the hour of noon, to a mountain, which appeared to be their
place of rendezvous. Some one in the neighborhood bolder than the
rest, having guarded himself with the sign of the cross, approached
one of these armed men, conjuring him in the name of God to declare
the meaning of this army, and their design. The soldier or phantom
replied, "We are not what you imagine; we are neither vain phantoms,
nor true soldiers; we are the spirits of those who were killed on this
spot a long time ago. The arms and horses which you behold are the
instruments of our punishment, as they were of our sins. We are all on
fire, though you can see nothing about us which appears inflamed." It
is said that they remarked in this company the Count Emico, who had
been killed a few years before, and who declared that he might be
extricated from that state by alms and prayers.

Trithemius, in his _Annales Hirsauginses_, year 1013,[486] asserts
that there was seen in broad day, on a certain day in the year, an
army of cavalry and infantry, which came down from a mountain and
ranged themselves on a neighboring plain. They were spoken to and
conjured to speak, and they declared themselves to be the spirits of
those who a few years before had been killed, with arms in their
hands, in that same spot.

The same Trithemius relates elsewhere[487] the apparition of the Count
of Spanheim, deceased a little while before, who appeared in the
fields with his pack of hounds. This count spoke to his curé, and
asked his prayers.

Vipert, Archdeacon of the Church of Toul, cotemporary author of the
Life of the holy Pope Leo IX., who died 1059, relates[488] that, some
years before the death of this holy pope, an infinite multitude of
persons, habited in white, was seen to pass by the town of Narni,
advancing from the eastern side. This troop defiled from the morning
until three in the afternoon, but towards evening it notably
diminished. At this sight all the population of the town of Narni
mounted upon the walls, fearing they might be hostile troops, and saw
them defile with extreme surprise.

One burgher, more resolute than the others, went out of the town, and
having observed in the crowd a man of his acquaintance, called to him
by name, and asked him the meaning of this multitude of travelers: he
replied, "We are spirits which not having yet expiated all our sins,
and not being as yet sufficiently pure to enter the kingdom of heaven,
we are going into holy places in a spirit of repentance; we are now
coming from visiting the tomb of St. Martin, and we are going straight
to Notre-Dame de Farse." The man was so frightened at this vision that
he was ill for a twelvemonth--it was he who recounted the circumstance
to Pope Leo IX. All the town of Narni was witness to this procession,
which took place in broad day.

The night preceding the battle which was fought in Egypt between Mark
Antony and Cæsar,[489] whilst all the city of Alexandria was in
extreme uneasiness in expectation of this action, they saw in the city
what appeared a multitude of people, who shouted and howled like
bacchanals, and they heard a confused sound of instruments in honor of
Bacchus, as Mark Antony was accustomed to celebrate this kind of
festivals. This troop, after having run through the greater part of
the town, went out of it by the door leading to the enemy, and
disappeared.

That is all which has come to my knowledge concerning the vampires and
ghosts of Hungary, Moravia, Silesia, and Poland, and of the other
ghosts of France and Germany. We will explain our opinion after this
on the reality, and other circumstances of these sorts of revived and
resuscitated beings. Here follows another species, which is not less
marvelous--I mean the excommunicated, who leave the church and their
graves with their bodies, and do not re-enter till after the sacrifice
is completed.

Footnotes:

[483] Betrus Venerab. Abb. Cluniac. de miracul. lib. i. c. 28. p.
1293.

[484] Lib. ii. de Civ. Dei, cap. 24.

[485] Aug. lib. ii. de Civ. Dei, c. 25.

[486] Trith. Chron. Hirs. p. 155, ad an. 1013.

[487] Idem, tom. ii. Chron. Hirs. p. 227.

[488] Vita S. Leonis Papæ.

[489] Plutarch, in Anton.

CHAPTER XXII.

EXCOMMUNICATED PERSONS WHO GO OUT OF THE CHURCHES.

St. Gregory the Great relates[490] that St. Benedict having threatened
to excommunicate two nuns, these nuns died in that state. Some time
after, their nurse saw them go out of the church, as soon as the
deacon had cried out, "Let all those who do not receive the communion
withdraw." The nurse having informed St. Benedict of the circumstance,
that saint sent an oblation, or a loaf, in order that it might be
offered for them in token of reconciliation; and from that time the
two nuns remained in quiet in their sepulchres.

St. Augustine says[491] that the names of martyrs were recited in the
diptychs not to pray for them, and the names of the virgin nuns
deceased to pray for them. "Perhibet præclarissimum testimonium
ecclesiastica auctoritas, in quâ fidelibus notum est quo loco martyres
et que defunctæ sanctimoniales ad altaris sacramenta recitantur." It
was then, perhaps, when they were named at the altar, that they left
the church. But St. Gregory says expressly, that it was when the
deacon cried aloud, "Let those who do not receive the communion
retire."

The same St. Gregory relates that a young priest of the same St.
Benedict,[492] having gone out of his monastery without leave and
without receiving the benediction of the abbot, died in his
disobedience, and was interred in consecrated ground. The next day
they found his body out of the grave: the relations gave notice of it
to St. Benedict, who gave them a consecrated wafer, and told them to
place it with proper respect on the breast of the young priest; it was
placed there, and the earth no more rejected him from her bosom.

This usage, or rather this abuse, of placing the holy wafer in the
grave with the dead, is very singular; but it was not unknown to
antiquity. The author of the Life of St. Basil[493] the Great, given
under the name of St. Amphilochus, says that that saint reserved the
third part of a consecrated wafer to be interred with him; he received
it and expired while it was yet in his mouth; but some councils had
already condemned this practice, and others have since then proscribed
it, as contrary to the institutions of Jesus Christ.[494]

Still, they did not omit in a few places putting holy wafers in the
tombs or graves of some persons who were remarkable for their
sanctity, as in the tomb of St. Othmar, abbot of St. Gal,[495] wherein
were found under his head several round leaves, which were indubitably
believed to be the Host.

In the Life of St. Cuthbert, Bishop of Lindisfarn,[496] we read that a
quantity of consecrated wafers were found on his breast. Amalarius
cites of the Venerable Bede, that a holy wafer was placed on the
breast of this saint before he was inhumed; "oblata super sanctum
pectus positâ."[497] This particularity is not noted in Bede's
History, but in the second Life of St. Cuthbert. Amalarius remarks
that this custom proceeds doubtless from the Church of Rome, which had
communicated it to the English; and the Reverend Father Menard[498]
maintains that it is not this practice which is condemned by the
above-mentioned Councils, but that of giving the communion to the dead
by insinuating the holy wafer into their mouths. However it may be
regarding this practice, we know that Cardinal Humbert,[499] in his
reply to the ____________ of the patriarch Michael Cerularius,
reproves the Greeks for burying the Host, when there remained any of
it after the communion of the faithful.

Footnotes:

[490] Greg. Magn. lib. ii. Dialog. c. 23.

[491] Aug. de St. Virgin. c. xlv. 364.

[492] Greg. lib. ii. Dialog. c. 34.

[493] Amphil. in Vit. S. Basilii.

[494] Vide Balsamon. ad Canon. 83. Concil. in Trullo, et Concil.
Carthagin. III. c. 6. Hippon. c. 5. Antissiod. c. 12.

[495] Vit. S. Othmari, c. 3.

[496] Vit. S. Cuthberti, lib. iv. c. 2. apud Bolland. 26 Martii.

[497] Amalar. de Offic. Eccles. lib. iv. c. 41.

[498] Menard. not. in Sacrament. S. Greg. Magn. pp. 484, 485.

[499] Humbert. Card. Bibliot. P. P. lib. xviii. et tom. iv. Concil.

CHAPTER XXIII.

SOME OTHER INSTANCES OF EXCOMMUNICATED PERSONS BEING CAST OUT OF
CONSECRATED GROUND.

We see again in history, several other examples of the dead bodies of
excommunicated persons being cast out of consecrated earth; for
instance, in the life of St. Gothard, Bishop of Hildesheim,[500] it is
related that this saint having excommunicated certain persons for
their rebellion and their sins, they did not cease, in spite of his
excommunications, to enter the church, and remain there though
forbidden by the saint, whilst even the dead, who had been interred
there years since, and had been placed there without their sentence of
excommunication being removed, obeyed him, arose from their tombs, and
left the church. After mass, the saint, addressing himself to these
rebels, reproached them for their hardness of heart, and told them
those dead people would rise against them in the day of judgment. At
the same time, going out of the church, he gave absolution to the
excommunicated dead, and allowed them to re-enter it, and repose in
their graves as before. The Life of St. Gothard was written by one of
his disciples, a canon of his cathedral; and this saint died on the
4th of May, 938.

In the second Council, held at Limoges,[501] in 1031, at which a great
many bishops, abbots, priests and deacons were present, they reported
the instances which we had just cited from St. Benedict, to show the
respect in which sentences of excommunication, pronounced by
ecclesiastical superiors, were held. Then the Bishop of Cahors, who
was present, related a circumstance which had happened to him a short
time before. "A cavalier of my diocese, having been killed in
excommunication, I would not accede to the prayers of his friends, who
implored to grant him absolution; I desired to make an example of him,
in order to inspire others with fear. But he was interred by soldiers
or gentlemen (_milites_) without my permission, without the presence
of the priests, in a church dedicated to St. Peter. The next morning
his body was found out of the ground, and thrown naked far from the
spot; his grave remaining entire, and without any sign of having been
touched. The soldiers or gentlemen (_milites_) who had interred him,
having opened the grave, found in it only the linen in which he had
been wrapped; they buried him again, and covered him with an enormous
quantity of earth and stones. The next day they found the corpse
outside the tomb, without its appearing that any one had worked at it.
The same thing happened five times; at last they buried him as they
could, at a distance from the cemetery, in unconsecrated ground; which
filled the neighboring seigneurs with so much terror that they all
came to me to make their peace. That is a fact, invested with
everything which can render it incontestable."

Footnotes:

[500] Vit. S. Gothardi, Sæcul. vi. Bened. parte c. p. 434.

[501] Tom. ix. Concil. an 1031, p. 702.

CHAPTER XXIV.

AN INSTANCE OF AN EXCOMMUNICATED MARTYR BEING CAST OUT OF THE EARTH.

We read in the _menées_ of the Greeks, on the 15th of October, that a
monk of the Desert of Sheti, having been excommunicated by him who had
the care of his conduct, for some act of disobedience, he left the
desert, and came to Alexandria, where he was arrested by the governor
of the city, despoiled of his conventual habit, and ardently solicited
to sacrifice to false gods. The solitary resisted nobly, and was
tormented in various ways, until at last they cut off his head, and
threw his body outside of the city, to be devoured by dogs. The
Christians took it away in the night, and having embalmed it and
enveloped it in fine linen, they interred it in the church as a
martyr, in an honorable place; but during the holy sacrifice, the
deacon having cried aloud, as usual, that the catechumens and those
who did not take the communion were to withdraw, they suddenly beheld
the martyr's tomb open of itself, and his body retire into the
vestibule of the church; after the mass, it returned to its sepulchre.

A pious person having prayed for three days, learnt by the voice of an
angel that this monk had incurred excommunication for having disobeyed
his superior, and that he would remain bound until that same superior
had given him absolution. Then they went to the desert directly, and
brought the saintly old man, who caused the coffin of the martyr to
be opened, and absolved him, after which he remained in peace in his
tomb.

This instance appears to me rather suspicious. 1. In the time that the
Desert of Sheti was peopled with solitary monks, there were no longer
any persecutors at Alexandria. They troubled no one there, either
concerning the profession of Christianity, or on the religious
profession--they would sooner have persecuted these idolators and
pagans. The Christian religion was then dominant and respected
throughout all Egypt, above all, in Alexandria. 2. The monks of Sheti
were rather hermits than cenobites, and a monk had no authority there
to excommunicate his brother. 3. It does not appear that the monk in
question had deserved excommunication, at least major excommunication,
which deprives the faithful of the entry of the church, and the
participation of the holy mysteries. The bearing of the Greek text is
simply, that he remained obedient for some time to his spiritual
father, but that having afterwards fallen into disobedience, he
withdrew from the hands of the old man without any legitimate cause,
and went away to Alexandria. All that deserves doubtlessly even major
excommunication, if this monk had quitted his profession and retired
from the monastery to lead a secular life; but at that time the monks
were not, as now, bound by vows of stability and obedience to their
regular superiors, who had not a right to excommunicate them with
grand excommunication. We will speak of this again by-and-by.

CHAPTER XXV.

A MAN REJECTED FROM THE CHURCH FOR HAVING REFUSED TO PAY TITHES.

John Brompton, Abbot of Sornat in England,[502] says that we may read
in very old histories that St. Augustin, the Apostle of England,
wishing to persuade a gentleman to pay the tithes, God permitted that
this saint having said before all the people, before the commencement
of the mass, that no excommunicated person should assist at the holy
sacrifice, they saw a man who had been interred for 150 years leave
the church.

After mass, St. Augustin, preceded by the cross, went to ask this dead
man why he went out? The dead man replied that it was because he had
died in a state of excommunication. The saint asked him, where was the
sepulchre of the priest who had pronounced against him the sentence
of excommunication? They went thither; St. Augustin commanded him to
rise; he came to life, and avowed that he had excommunicated the man
for his crimes, and particularly for his obstinacy in refusing to pay
tithes; then, by order of St. Augustin, he gave him absolution, and
the dead man returned to his tomb. The priest entreated the saint to
permit him also to return to his sepulchre, which was granted him.
This story appears to me still more suspicious than the preceding one.
In the time of St. Augustin, the Apostle of England, there was no
obligation as yet to pay tithes on pain of excommunication, and much
less a hundred and fifty years before that time--above all in England.

Footnotes:

[502] John Brompton, Chronic. vide ex Bolland. 26 Maii, p. 396.

CHAPTER XXVI.

INSTANCES OF PERSONS WHO HAVE SHOWN SIGNS OF LIFE AFTER THEIR DEATH,
AND WHO HAVE DRAWN BACK FROM RESPECT, TO MAKE ROOM OR GIVE PLACE TO
SOME WHO WERE MORE WORTHY THAN THEMSELVES.

Tertullian relates[503] an instance to which he had been witness--_de
meo didici_. A woman who belonged to the church, to which she had been
given as a slave, died in the prime of life, after being once married
only, and that for a short time, was brought to the church. Before
putting her in the ground, the priest offering the sacrifice and
raising his hands in prayer, this woman, who had her hands extended at
her side, raised them at the same time, and put them together as a
supplicant; then, when the peace was given, she replaced herself in
her former position.

Tertullian adds that another body, dead, and buried in a cemetery,
withdrew on one side to give place to another corpse which they were
about to inter near it. He relates these instances as a suite to what
was said by Plato and Democritus, that souls remained some time near
the dead bodies they had inhabited, which they preserved sometimes
from corruption, and often caused their hair, beard, and nails to grow
in their graves. Tertullian does not approve of the opinion of these;
he even refutes them pretty well; but he owns that the instances I
have just spoken of are favorable enough to that opinion, which is
also that of the Hebrews, as we have before seen.

It is said that after the death of the celebrated Abelard,[504] who
was interred at the Monastery of the Paraclete, the Abbess Heloisa,
his spouse, being also deceased, and having requested to be buried in
the same grave, at her approach Abelard extended his arms and received
her into his bosom: _elevatis brachiis illam recepit, et ita eam
amplexatus brachia sua strinxit_. This circumstance is certainly
neither proved nor probable; the Chronicle whence it is extracted had
probably taken it from some popular rumor.

The author of the Life of St. John the Almoner,[505] which was written
immediately after his death by Leontius, Bishop of Naples, a town in
the Isle of Cyprus, relates that St. John the Almoner being dead at
Amatunta, in the same island, his body was placed between that of two
bishops, who drew back on each side respectfully to make room for him
in sight of all present; _non unus, neque decem, neque centum
viderunt, sed omnis turba, quæ convenit ad ejus sepulturam_, says the
author cited. Metaphrastes, who had read the life of the saint in
Greek, repeats the same fact.

Evagrius de Pont[506] says, that a holy hermit named Thomas, and
surnamed Salus, because he counterfeited madness, dying in the
hospital of Daphné, near the city of Antioch, was buried in the
strangers' cemetery, but every day he was found out of the ground at a
distance from the other dead bodies, which he avoided. The inhabitants
of the place informed Ephraim, Bishop of Antioch, of this, and he had
him solemnly carried into the city and honorably buried in the
cemetery, and from that time the people of Antioch keep the feast of
his translation.

John Mosch[507] reports the same story, only he says that it was some
women who were buried near Thomas Salus, who left their graves through
respect for the saint.

The Hebrews ridiculously believe that the Jews who are buried without
Judea will roll underground at the last day, to repair to the Promised
Land, as they cannot come to life again elsewhere than in Judea.

The Persians recognize also a transporting angel, whose care it is to
assign to dead bodies the place and rank due to their merits: if a
worthy man is buried in an infidel country, the transporting angel
leads him underground to a spot near one of the faithful, while he
casts into the sewer the body of any infidel interred in holy ground.
Other Mahometans have the same notion; they believe that the
transporting angel placed the body of Noah, and afterwards that of
Ali, in the grave of Adam. I relate these fantastical ideas only to
show their absurdity. As to the other stories related in this same
chapter, they must not be accepted without examination, for they
require confirmation.

Footnotes:

[503] Tertull. de Animo, c. 5. p. 597. Edit. Pamelii.

[504] Chronic. Turon. inter opera Abælardi, p. 1195.

[505] Bolland. tom. ii. p. 315, 13 Januar.

[506] Evagrius Pont. lib. iv. c. 53.

[507] Jean Mosch. pras. spirit. c. 88.

CHAPTER XXVII.

OF PERSONS WHO PERFORM A PILGRIMAGE AFTER THEIR DEATH.

A scholar of the town of Saint Pons, near Narbonne,[508] having died
in a state of excommunication, appeared to one of his friends, and
begged of him to go to the city of Rhodes, and ask the bishop to grant
him absolution. He set off in snowy weather; the spirit, who
accompanied him without being seen by him showed him the road and
cleared away the snow. On arriving at Rhodes, he asked and obtained
for his friend the required absolution, when the spirit reconducted
him to Saint Pons, gave him thanks for this service, and took leave,
promising to testify to him his gratitude.

Here follows a letter written to me on the 5th of April, 1745, and
which somewhat relates to what we have just seen. "Something has
occurred here within the last few days, relatively to your
Dissertation upon Ghosts, which I think I ought to inform you of. A
man of Letrage, a village a few miles from Remiremont, lost his wife
at the beginning of February last, and married again the week before
Lent. At eleven o'clock in the evening of his wedding-day, his wife
appeared and spoke to his new spouse; the result of the conversation
was to oblige the bride to perform seven pilgrimages for the defunct.
From that day, and always at the same hour, the defunct appeared, and
spoke in presence of the curé of the place and several other persons;
on the 15th of March, at the moment that the bride was preparing to
repair to St. Nicholas, she had a visit from the defunct, who told her
to make haste, and not to be alarmed at any pain or trouble which she
might undergo on her journey.

This woman with her husband and her brother and sister-in-law, set off
on their way, not expecting that the dead wife would be of the party;
but she never left them until they were at the door of the Church of
St. Nicholas. These good people, when they were arrived at two
leagues' distance from St. Nicholas, were obliged to put up at a
little inn called the Barracks. There the wife found herself so ill,
that the two men were obliged to carry her to the burgh of St.
Nicholas. Directly she was under the church porch, she walked easily,
and felt no more pain. This fact has been reported to me by the
sacristan and the four persons. The last thing that the defunct said
to the bride was, that she should neither speak to nor appear to her
again until half the pilgrimages should be accomplished. The simple
and natural manner in which these good people related this fact to us
makes me believe that it is certain.

It is not said that this young woman had incurred excommunication, but
apparently she was bound by a vow or promise which she had made, to
accomplish these pilgrimages, which she imposed upon the other young
wife who succeeded her. Also, we see that she did not enter the Church
of St. Nicholas; she only accompanied the pilgrims to the church door.

We may here add the instance of that crowd of pilgrims who, in the
time of Pope Leo IX., passed at the foot of the wall of Narne, as I
have before related, and who performed their purgatory by going from
pilgrimage to pilgrimage.

Footnotes:

[508] Melchior. lib. de Statu Mortuorum.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

ARGUMENT CONCERNING THE EXCOMMUNICATED WHO QUIT CHURCHES.

All that we have just reported concerning the bodies of persons who
had been excommunicated leaving their tombs during mass, and returning
into them after the service, deserves particular attention.

It seems that a thing which passed before the eyes of a whole
population in broad day, and in the midst of the most redoubtable
mysteries, can be neither denied nor disputed. Nevertheless, it may be
asked, How these bodies came out? Were they whole, or in a state of
decay? naked, or clad in their own dress, or in the linen and bandages
which had enveloped them in the tomb? Where, also, did they go?

The cause of their forthcoming is well noted; it was the major
excommunication. This penalty is decreed only to mortal sin.[509]
Those persons had, then, died in the career of deadly sin, and were
consequently condemned and in hell; for if there is naught in question
but a minor excommunication, why should they go out of the church
after death with such terrible and extraordinary circumstances, since
that ecclesiastical excommunication does not deprive one absolutely
of communion with the faithful, or of entrance to church?

If it be said that the crime was remitted, but not the penalty of
excommunication, and that these persons remained excluded from church
communion until after their absolution, given by the ecclesiastical
judge, we ask if a dead man can be absolved and be restored to
communion with the church, unless there are unequivocal proofs of his
repentance and conversion preceding his death.

Moreover, the persons just cited as instances do not appear to have
been released from crime or guilt, as might be supposed. The texts
which we have cited sufficiently note that they died in their guilt
and sins; and what St. Gregory the Great says in the part of his
Dialogues there quoted, replying to his interlocutor, Peter, supposes
that these nuns had died without doing penance.

Besides, it is a constant rule of the church that we cannot
communicate or have communion with a dead man, whom we have not had
any communication with during his lifetime. "Quibus viventibus non
communicavimus, mortuis, communicare non possumus," says Pope St.
Leo.[510] At any rate, it is allowed that an excommunicated person who
has given signs of sincere repentance, although there may not have
been time for him to confess himself, can be reconciled to the
church[511] and receive ecclesiastical sepulture after his death. But,
in general, before receiving absolution from sin, they must have been
absolved from the censures and excommunication, if such have been
incurred: "Absolutio ab excommunicatione debet præcedere absolutionem
à peccatis; quia quandiu aliquis est excommunicatus, non potest
recipere aliquod Ecclesiæ Sacramentum," says St. Thomas.[512]

Following this decision, it would have been necessary to absolve these
persons from their excommunication, before they could receive
absolution from the guilt of their sins. Here, on the contrary, they
are supposed to be absolved from their sins as to their criminality,
in order to be able to receive absolution from the censures of the
church.

I do not see how these difficulties can be resolved.

1. How can you absolve the dead? 2. How can you absolve him from
excommunication before he has received absolution from sin? 3. How can
he be absolved without asking for absolution, or its appearing that he
hath requested it? 4. How can people be absolved who died in mortal
sin, and without doing penance? 5. Why do these excommunicated persons
return to their tombs after mass? 6. If they dared not stay in the
church during the mass, when were they?

It appears certain that the nuns and the young monk spoken of by St.
Gregory died in their sins, and without having received absolution
from them. St. Benedict, probably, was not a priest, and had not
absolved them as regards their guilt.

It may be said that the excommunication spoken of by St. Gregory was
not major, and in that case the holy abbot could absolve them; but
would this minor and regular excommunication deserve that they should
quit the church in so miraculous and public a manner? The persons
excommunicated by St. Gothard, and the gentleman mentioned at the
Council of Limoges, in 1031, had died unrepentant, and under sentence
of excommunication; consequently in mortal sin; and yet they are
granted peace and absolution after their death, at the simple entreaty
of their friends.

The young solitary spoken of in the _acta sanctorum_ of the Greeks,
who after having quitted his cell through incontinency and
disobedience, had incurred excommunication, could he receive the crown
of martyrdom in that state? And if he had received it, was he not at
the same time reconciled to the church? Did he not wash away his fault
with his blood? And if his excommunication was only regular and minor,
would he deserve after his martyrdom to be excluded from the presence
of the holy mysteries?

I see no other way of explaining these facts, if they are as they are
related, than by saying that the story has not preserved the
circumstances which might have deserved the absolution of these
persons, and we must presume that the saints--above all, the bishops
who absolved them--knew the rules of the church, and did nothing in
the matter but what was right and conformable to the canons.

But it results from all that we have just said, that as the bodies of
the wicked withdraw from the company of the holy through a principle
of veneration and a feeling of their own unworthiness, so also the
bodies of the holy separate themselves from the wicked, from opposite
motives, that they may not appear to have any connection with them,
even after death, or to approve of their bad life. In short, if what
is just related be true, the righteous and the saints feel deference
for one another, and honor each other ever in the other world; which
is probable enough.

We are about to see some instances which seem to render equivocal and
uncertain, as a proof of sanctity, the uncorrupted state of the body
of a just man, since it is maintained that the bodies of the
excommunicated do not rot in the earth until the sentence of
excommunication pronounced against them be taken off.

Footnotes:

[509] Concil. Meli. in Can. Nemo. 41, n. 43. D. Thom. iv. distinct.
18, 9. 2, art. 1. quæstiuncula in corpore, &c.

[510] S. Leo canone Commun. 1. a. 4. 9. 2. See also Clemens III. in
Capit. Sacris, 12. de Sepult. Eccl.

[511] Eveillon, traité des Excommunicat. et Manitoires.

[512] D. Thom. in iv. Sentent. dist. 1. qu. 1. art. 3. quæstiunc. 2.
ad. 2.

CHAPTER XXIX.

DO THE EXCOMMUNICATED ROT IN THE GROUND?

It is a very ancient opinion that the bodies of the excommunicated do
not decompose; it appears in the Life of St Libentius, Archbishop of
Bremen, who died on the 4th of January, 1013. That holy prelate having
excommunicated some pirates, one of them died, and was buried in
Norway; at the end of seventy years they found his body entire and
without decay, nor did it fall to dust until after absolution received
from Archbishop Alvaridius.

The modern Greeks, to authorize their schism, and to prove that the
gift of miracles, and the power of binding and unbinding, subsist in
their church even more visibly and more certainly than in the Latin
and Roman church, maintain that amongst themselves the bodies of those
who are excommunicated do not decay, but become swollen
extraordinarily, like drums, and can neither be corrupted nor reduced
to ashes till after they have received absolution from their bishops
or their priests. They relate divers instances of this kind of dead
bodies, found uncorrupted in their graves, and which are afterwards
reduced to ashes as soon as the excommunication is taken off. They do
not deny, however, that the uncorrupted state of a body is sometimes a
mark of sanctity,[513] but they require that a body thus preserved
should exhale a good smell, be white or reddish, and not black,
offensive and swollen.

It is affirmed that persons who have been struck dead by lightning do
not decay, and for that reason the ancients neither burnt them nor
buried them. That is the opinion of the physician Zachias; but Paré,
after Comines, thinks that the reason they are not subject to
corruption is because they are, as it were, embalmed by the sulphur of
the thunderbolt, which serves them instead of salt.

In 1727, they discovered in the vault of an hospital near Quebec the
unimpaired corpses of five nuns, who had been dead for more than
twenty years; and these corpses, though covered with quicklime, still
contained blood.

Footnotes:

[513] Goar, not. in Eucholog. p. 688.

CHAPTER XXX.

INSTANCES TO DEMONSTRATE THAT THE EXCOMMUNICATED DO NOT DECAY, AND
THAT THEY APPEAR TO THE LIVING.

The Greeks relate[514] that under the Patriarch of Constantinople
Manuel, or Maximus, who lived in the fifteenth century, the Turkish
Emperor of Constantinople wished to know the truth of what the Greeks
asserted concerning the uncorrupted state of those who died under
sentence of excommunication. The patriarch caused the tomb of a woman
to be opened; she had had a criminal connection with an archbishop of
Constantinople; her body was whole, black, and much swollen. The Turks
shut it up in a coffin, sealed with the emperor's seal; the patriarch
said his prayer, gave absolution to the dead woman, and at the end of
three days the coffin or box being opened they found the body fallen
to dust.

I see no miracle in this: everybody knows that bodies which are
sometimes found quite whole in their tombs fall to dust as soon as
they are exposed to the air. I except those which have been well
embalmed, as the mummies of Egypt, and bodies which are buried in
extremely dry spots, or in an earth replete with nitre and salt, which
dissipate in a short time all the moisture there may be in the dead
bodies, either of men or animals; but I do not understand that the
Archbishop of Constantinople could validly absolve after death a
person who died in deadly sin and bound by excommunication. They
believe also that the bodies of these excommunicated persons often
appear to the living, whether by day or by night, speaking to them,
calling them, and molesting them. Leon Allatius enters into long
details on this subject; he says that in the Isle of Chio the
inhabitants do not answer to the first voice that calls them, for fear
that it should be a spirit or ghost; but if they are called twice, it
is not a vroucolaca,[515] which is the name they give those spectres.
If any one answers to them at the first sound, the spectre disappears;
but he who has spoken to it infallibly dies.

There is no other way of guarding against these bad genii than by
taking up the corpse of the person who has appeared, and burning it
after certain prayers have been recited over it; then the body is
reduced to ashes, and appears no more. They have then no doubt that
these are the bodies of criminal and malevolent men, which come out of
their graves and cause the death of those who see and reply to them;
or that it is the demon, who makes use of their bodies to frighten
mortals, and cause their death.

They know of no means more certain to deliver themselves from being
infested by these dangerous apparitions than to burn and hack to
pieces these bodies, which served as instruments of malice, or to tear
out their hearts, or to let them putrefy before they are buried, or to
cut off their heads, or to pierce their temples with a large nail.

Footnotes:

[514] Vide Malva. lib. i. Turco-græcia, pp. 26, 27.

[515] Vide Bolland. mense Augusto, tom. ii. pp. 201-203, et Allat.
Epist. ad Zachiam, p. 12.

CHAPTER XXXI.

INSTANCE OF THE REAPPEARANCES OF THE EXCOMMUNICATED.

Ricaut, in the history he has given us of the present state of the
Greek church, acknowledges that this opinion, that the bodies of
excommunicated persons do not decay, is general, not only among the
Greeks of the present day, but also among the Turks. He relates a fact
which he heard from a Candiote caloyer, who had affirmed the thing to
him on oath; his name was Sophronius, and he was well known and highly
respected at Smyrna. A man who died in the Isle of Milo, had been
excommunicated for some fault which he had committed in the Morea, and
he was interred without any funeral ceremony in a spot apart, and not
in consecrated ground. His relations and friends were deeply moved to
see him in this plight; and the inhabitants of the isle were every
night alarmed by baneful apparitions, which they attributed to this
unfortunate man.

They opened his grave, and found his body quite entire, with the veins
swollen with blood. After having deliberated upon it, the caloyers
were of opinion that they should dismember the body, hack it to
pieces, and boil it in wine; for it is thus they treat the bodies of
_revenans_.

But the relations of the dead man, by dint of entreaties, succeeded in
deferring this execution, and in the mean time sent in all haste to
Constantinople, to obtain the absolution of the young man from the
patriarch. Meanwhile, the body was placed in the church, and every day
prayers were offered up for the repose of his soul. One day when the
caloyer Sophronius, above mentioned, was performing divine service,
all on a sudden a great noise was heard in the coffin; they opened it,
and found his body decayed as if he had been dead seven years. They
observed the moment when the noise was heard, and it was found to be
precisely at that hour that his absolution had been signed by the
patriarch.

M. le Chevalier Ricaut, from whom we have this narrative, was neither
a Greek, nor a Roman Catholic, but a staunch Anglican; he remarks on
this occasion that the Greeks believe that an evil spirit enters the
bodies of the excommunicated, and preserves them from putrefaction, by
animating them, and causing them to act, nearly as the soul animates
and inspires the body.

They imagine, moreover, that these corpses eat during the night, walk
about, digest what they have eaten, and really nourish themselves--that
some have been found who were of a rosy hue, and had their veins still
fully replete with the quantity of blood; and although they had been
dead forty days, have ejected, when opened, a stream of blood as
bubbling and fresh as that of a young man of sanguine temperament would
be; and this belief so generally prevails that every one relates facts
circumstantially concerning it.

Father Theophilus Reynard, who has written a particular treatise on
this subject, maintains that this return of the dead is an indubitable
fact, and that there are very certain proofs and experience of the
same; but that to pretend that those ghosts who come to disturb the
living are always those of excommunicated persons, and that it is a
privilege of the schismatic Greek church to preserve from decay those
who incurred excommunication, and have died under censure of their
church, is an untenable assumption; since it is certain that the
bodies of the excommunicated decay like others, and there are some
which have died in communion with the church, whether the Greek or the
Latin, who remain uncorrupted. Such are found even among the Pagans,
and amongst animals, of which the dead bodies are sometimes found in
an uncorrupted state, both in the ground, and in the ruins of old
buildings.[516]

Footnotes:

[516] See, concerning the bodies of the excommunicated which are
affirmed to be exempt from decay, Father Goar, Ritual of the Greeks,
pp. 687, 688; Matthew Paris, History of England, tom. ii. p. 687; Adam
de Brême, c. lxxv.; Albert de Stade, on the year 1050, and Monsieur du
Cange, Glossar. Latinit. at the word _imblocatus_.

CHAPTER XXXII.

VROUCOLACA EXHUMED IN PRESENCE OF MONSIEUR DE TOURNEFORT.

Monsieur Pitton de Tournefort relates the manner in which they exhumed
a pretended vroucolaca, in the Isle of Micon, where he was on the 1st
of January, 1701. These are his own words: "We saw a very different
scene, (in the same Isle of Micon,) on the occasion of one of those
dead people, whom they believe to return to earth after their
interment. This one, whose history we shall relate, was a peasant of
Micon, naturally sullen and quarrelsome; which is a circumstance to be
remarked relatively to such subjects; he was killed in the country, no
one knows when, or by whom. Two days after he had been inhumed in a
chapel in the town, it was rumored that he was seen by night walking
very fast; that he came into the house, overturning the furniture,
extinguishing the lamps, throwing his arms around persons from behind,
and playing a thousand sly tricks.

"At first people only laughed at it; but the affair began to be
serious, when the most respectable people in the place began to
complain: the priests even owned the fact, and doubtless they had
their reasons. People did not fail to have masses said; nevertheless
the peasant continued to lead the same life without correcting
himself. After several assemblies of the principal men of the city,
with priests and monks, it was concluded that they must, according to
some ancient ceremonial, await the expiration of nine days after
burial.

"On the tenth day a mass was said in the chapel where the corpse lay,
in order to expel the demon which they believed to have inclosed
himself therein. This body was taken up after mass, and they began to
set about tearing out his heart; the butcher of the town, who was old,
and very awkward, began by opening the belly instead of the breast; he
felt for a long time in the entrails without finding what he sought.
At last some one told him that he must pierce the diaphragm; then the
heart was torn out, to the admiration of all present. The corpse,
however, gave out such a bad smell, that they were obliged to burn
incense; but the vapor, mixed with the exhalations of the carrion,
only augmented the stink, and began to heat the brain of these poor
people.

"Their imagination, struck with the spectacle, was full of visions;
some one thought proper to say that a thick smoke came from this body.
We dared not say that it was the vapor of the incense. They only
exclaimed "Vroucolacas," in the chapel, and in the square before it.
(This is the name which they give to these pretended _Revenans_.) The
rumor spread and was bellowed in the street, and the noise seemed
likely to shake the vaulted roof of the chapel. Several present
affirmed that the blood of this wretched man was quite vermilion; the
butcher swore that the body was still quite warm; whence it was
concluded that the dead man was very wrong not to be quite dead, or,
to express myself better, to suffer himself to be reanimated by the
devil. This is precisely the idea of a vroucolaca; and they made this
name resound in an astonishing manner. At this time there entered a
crowd of people, who protested aloud that they clearly perceived this
body was not stiff when they brought it from the country to the church
to bury it, and that consequently it was a true vroucolaca; this was
the chorus.

"I have no doubt that they would have maintained it did not stink, if
we had not been present; so stupefied were these poor people with the
circumstance, and infatuated with the idea of the return of the dead.
For ourselves, who got next to the corpse in order to make our
observations exactly, we were ready to die from the offensive odor
which proceeded from it. When they asked us what we thought of this
dead man, we replied that we believed him thoroughly dead; but as we
wished to cure, or at least not to irritate their stricken fancy, we
represented to them that it was not surprising if the butcher had
perceived some heat in searching amidst entrails which were decaying;
neither was it extraordinary that some vapor had proceeded from them;
since such will issue from a dunghill that is stirred up; as for this
pretended red blood, it still might be seen on the butcher's hands
that it was only a very foetid mud.

"After all these arguments, they bethought themselves of going to the
marine, and burning the heart of the dead man, who in spite of this
execution was less docile, and made more noise than before. They
accused him of beating people by night, of breaking open the doors and
even terraces, of breaking windows, tearing clothes, and emptying jugs
and bottles. He was a very thirsty dead man; I believe he only spared
the consul's house, where I was lodged. In the mean time I never saw
anything so pitiable as the state of this island.

"Everybody seemed to have lost their senses. The most sensible people
appeared as phrenzied as the others; it was a veritable brain fever,
as dangerous as any mania or madness. Whole families were seen to
forsake their houses, and coming from the ends of the town, bring
their flock beds to the market-place to pass the night there. Every
one complained of some new insult; you heard nothing but lamentations
at night-fall; and the most sensible people went into the country.

"Amidst such a general prepossession we made up our minds to say
nothing; we should not only have been considered as absurd, but as
infidels. How can you convince a whole people of error? Those who
believed in their own minds that we had our doubts of the truth of the
fact, came and reproached us for our incredulity, and pretended to
prove that there were such things as vroucolacas, by some authority
which they derived from Father Richard, a Jesuit missionary. It is
Latin, said they, and consequently you ought to believe it. We should
have done no good by denying this consequence. They every morning
entertained us with the comedy of a faithful recital of all the new
follies which had been committed by this bird of night; he was even
accused of having committed the most abominable sins.

"The citizens who were most zealous for the public good believed that
they had missed the most essential point of the ceremony. They said
that the mass ought not to be celebrated until after the heart of this
wretched man had been torn out; they affirmed that with that
precaution they could not have failed to surprise the devil, and
doubtless he would have taken care not to come back again; instead of
which had they begun by saying mass, he would have had, said they,
plenty of time to take flight, and to return afterwards at his
leisure.

"After all these arguments they found themselves in the same
embarrassment as the first day it began; they assembled night and
morning; they reasoned upon it, made processions which lasted three
days and three nights; they obliged the priests to fast; they were
seen running about in the houses with the asperser or sprinkling brush
in their hands, sprinkling holy water and washing the doors with it;
they even filled the mouth of that poor vroucolaca with holy water. We
so often told the administration of the town that in all Christendom
people would not fail in such a case to watch by night, to observe all
that was going forward in the town, that at last they arrested some
vagabonds, who assuredly had a share in all these disturbances.
Apparently they were not the principal authors of them, or they were
too soon set at liberty; for two days after, to make themselves amends
for the fast they had kept in prison, they began again to empty the
stone bottles of wine belonging to those persons who were silly enough
to forsake their houses at night. Thus, then, they were again obliged
to have recourse to prayers.

"One day as certain orisons were being recited, after having stuck I
know not how many naked swords upon the grave of this corpse, which
was disinterred three or four times a day, according to the caprice of
the first comer, an Albanian, who chanced to be at Mico accidentally,
bethought himself of saying in a sententious tone, that it was very
ridiculous to make use of the swords of Christians in such a case. Do
you not see, blind as ye are, said he, that the hilt of these swords,
forming a cross with the handle, prevents the devil from coming out of
that body? why do you not rather make use of the sabres of the Turks?
The advice of this clever man was of no use; the vroucolaca did not
appear more tractable, and everybody was in a strange consternation;
they no longer knew to which saint to pay their vows; when, with one
voice, as if the signal word had been given, they began to shout in
all parts of the town that they had waited too long: that the
vroucolaca ought to be burnt altogether; that after that, they would
defy the devil to return and ensconce himself there; that it would be
better to have recourse to that extremity than to let the island be
deserted. In fact, there were whole families who were packing up in
the intention of retiring to Sira or Tina.

"So they carried the vroucolaca, by order of the administration, to
the point of the Island of St. George, where they had prepared a great
pile made up with a mixture of tow, for fear that wood, however dry it
might be, would not burn quickly enough by itself. The remains of this
unfortunate corpse were thrown upon it and consumed in a very little
time; it was on the first day of January, 1701. We saw this fire as we
returned from Delos: it might be called a real _feu de joie_; since
then, there have been no more complaints against the vroucolaca. They
contented themselves with saying that the devil had been properly
caught that time, and they made up a song to turn him into ridicule.

"Throughout the Archipelago, the people are persuaded that it is only
the Greeks of the Greek church whose corpses are reanimated by the
devil. The inhabitants of the Isle of Santorin have great
apprehensions of these bugbears; those of Maco, after their visions
were dissipated, felt an equal fear of being punished by the Turks and
by the Bishop of Tina. None of the papas would be present at St.
George when this body was burned, lest the bishop should exact a sum
of money for having disinterred and burned the dead body without his
permission. As for the Turks, it is certain that at their first visit
they did not fail to make the community of Maco pay the price of the
blood of this poor devil, who in every way became the abomination and
horror of his country. After this, must we not own that the Greeks of
to-day are not great Greeks, and that there is only ignorance and
superstition among them?"[517]

So says Monsieur de Tournefort.

Footnotes:

[517] This took place nearly a hundred and fifty years ago.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

HAS THE DEMON POWER TO CAUSE ANY ONE TO DIE AND THEN TO RESTORE THE
DEAD TO LIFE?

Supposing the principle which we established as indubitable at the
commencement of this dissertation--that God alone is the sovereign
arbitrator of life and death; that he alone can give life to men, and
restore it to them after he has taken it from them--the question that
we here propose appears unseasonable and absolutely frivolous, since
it concerns a supposition notoriously impossible.

Nevertheless, as some learned men have believed that the demon has
power to restore life, and to preserve from corruption, for a time,
certain bodies which he makes use of to delude mankind and frighten
them, as it happens with the ghosts of Hungary, we shall treat of it
in this place, and relate a remarkable instance furnished by Monsieur
Nicholas Remy, procureur-general of Lorraine, and which occurred in
his own time;[518] that is to say, in 1581, at Dalhem, a village
situated between the Moselle and the Sare. A goatherd of this village,
named Pierron, a married man and father of a boy, conceived a violent
passion for a girl of the village. One day, when his thoughts were
occupied with this young girl, she appeared to him in the fields, or
the demon in her likeness. Pierron declared his love to her; she
promised to reply to it on condition that he would give himself up to
her, and obey her in all things. Pierron consented to this, and
consummated his abominable passion with this spectre. Some time
afterwards, Abrahel, which was the name assumed by the demon, asked of
him as a pledge of his love, that he would sacrifice to her his only
son, and gave him an apple for this boy to eat, who, on tasting it,
fell down dead. The father and mother, in despair at this fatal and to
both unexpected accident, uttered lamentations, and were inconsolable.

Abrahel appeared again to the goatherd, and promised to restore the
child to life if the father would ask this favor of him by paying him
the kind of adoration due only to God. The peasant knelt down,
worshiped Abrahel, and immediately the boy began to revive. He opened
his eyes; they warmed him, chafed his limbs, and at last he began to
walk and to speak. He was the same as before, only thinner, paler, and
more languid; his eyes heavy and sunken, his movements slower and less
free, his mind duller and more stupid. At the end of a year, the demon
that had animated him quitted him with a great noise; the youth fell
backwards, and his body, which was foetid and stunk insupportably, was
dragged with a hook out of his father's house, and buried in a field
without any ceremony.

This event was reported at Nancy, and examined into by the
magistrates, who informed themselves exactly of the circumstance,
heard the witnesses, and found that the thing was such as has been
related. For the rest, the story does not say how the peasant was
punished, nor whether he was so at all. Perhaps his crime with the
demon could not be proved; to that there was probably no witness. In
regard to the death of his son, it was difficult to prove that he was
the cause of it.

Procopius, in his secret history of the Emperor Justinian, seriously
asserts that he is persuaded, as well as several other persons, that
that emperor was a demon incarnate. He says the same thing of the
Empress Theodora his wife. Josephus, the Jewish historian, says that
the souls of the wicked enter the bodies of the possessed, whom they
torment, and cause to act and speak.

We see by St. Chrysostom that in his time many Christians believed
that the spirits of persons who died a violent death were changed into
demons, and that the magicians made use of the spirit of a child they
had killed for their magical operations, and to discover the future.
St. Philastrius places among heretics those persons who believed that
the souls of worthless men were changed into demons.

According to the system of these authors, the demon might have entered
into the body of the child of the shepherd Pierron, moved it and
maintained it in a kind of life whilst his body was uncorrupted and
the organs underanged; it was not the soul of the boy which animated
it, but the demon which replaced his spirit.

Philo believed that as there are good and bad angels, there are also
good and bad souls or spirits, and that the souls which descend into
the bodies bring to them their own good or bad qualities.

We see by the Gospel that the Jews of the time of our Saviour believed
that one man could be animated by several souls. Herod imagined that
the spirit of John the Baptist, whom he had beheaded, had entered into
Jesus Christ,[519] and worked miracles in him. Others fancied that
Jesus Christ was animated by the spirit of Elias,[520] or of Jeremiah,
or some other of the ancient prophets.

Footnotes:

[518] Art. ii. p. 14.

[519] Mark vi. 16, 17.

[520] Matt. xvi. 14.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

EXAMINATION OF THE OPINION WHICH CONCLUDES THAT THE DEMON CAN RESTORE
MOTION TO A DEAD BODY.

We cannot approve these opinions of Jews which we have just shown.
They are contrary to our holy religion, and to the dogmas of our
schools. But we believe that the spirit which once inspired Elijah,
for instance, rested on Elisha, his disciple; and that the Holy Spirit
which inspired the first animated the second also, and even St. John
the Baptist, who, according to the words of Jesus Christ, came in the
power of Elijah to prepare a highway for the Messiah. Thus, in the
prayers of the Church, we pray to God to fill his faithful servants
with the spirit of the saints, and to inspire them with a love for
that which they loved, and a detestation of that which they hated.

That the demon, and even a good angel by the permission or commission
of God, can take away the life of a man appears indubitable. The angel
which appeared to Zipporah,[521] as Moses was returning from Midian to
Egypt, and threatened to slay his two sons because they were not
circumcised; as well as the one who slew the first-born of the
Egyptians,[522] and the one who is termed in Scripture _the Destroying
Angel_, and who slew the Hebrew murmurers in the wilderness;[523] and
the angel who was near slaying Balaam and his ass;[524] the angel who
killed the soldiers of Sennacherib, he who smote the first seven
husbands of Sara, the daughter of Raguel;[525] and, finally, the one
with whom the Psalmist menaces his enemies, all are instances in proof
of this.[526]

Does not St. Paul, speaking to the Corinthians of those who took the
Communion unworthily,[527] say that the demon occasioned them
dangerous maladies, of which many died? Will it be believed that those
whom the same Apostle delivered over to Satan[528] suffered nothing
bodily; and that Judas, having received from the Son of God a bit of
bread dipped in the dish,[529] and Satan having entered into him, that
bad spirit did not disturb his reason, his imagination, and his heart,
until at last he led him to destroy himself, and to hang himself in
despair?

We may believe that all these angels were evil angels, although it
cannot be denied that God employs sometimes the good angels also to
exercise his vengeance against the wicked, as well as to chastise,
correct, and punish those to whom God desires to be merciful; as he
sends his Prophets to announce good and bad tidings, to threaten
punishment, and excite to repentance.

But nowhere do we read that either the good or the evil angels have of
their own authority alone either given life to any person or restored
it. This power is reserved to God alone.[530] The demon, according to
the Gospel,[531] in the last days, and before the last Judgment, will
perform, either by his own power or that of Antichrist and his
subordinates, such wonders as would, were it possible, lead the elect
themselves into error. From the time of Jesus Christ and his Apostles,
Satan raised up false Christs and false Apostles, who performed many
seeming miracles, and even resuscitated the dead. At least, it was
maintained that they had resuscitated some: St. Clement of Alexandria
and Hegesippus make mention of a few resurrections operated by Simon
the magician;[532] it is also said that Apollonius of Thyana brought
to life a girl they were carrying to be buried. If we may believe
Apuleius,[533] Asclepiades, meeting a funeral convoy, resuscitated the
body they were carrying to the pile. It is asserted that Æsculapius
restored to life Hippolytus, the son of Theseus; also Glaucus, the son
of Minos, and Campanes, killed at the assault of Thebes, and Admetus,
King of Phera in Thessaly. Elian[534] attests that the same Æsculapius
joined on again the head of a woman to her corpse, and restored her to
life.

But if we possessed the certainty of all these events which we have
just cited--I mean to say, were they attested by ocular witnesses,
well-informed and disinterested, which is not the case--we ought to
know the circumstances attending these events, and then we should be
better able to dispute or assent to them. For there is every
appearance that the dead people resuscitated by Æsculapius were only
persons who were dangerously ill, and restored to health by that
skillful physician. The girl revived by Apollonius of Thyana was not
really dead; even those who were carrying her to the funeral pile had
their doubts if she were deceased. What is said of Simon the magician
is anything but certain; and even if that impostor by his magical
secrets could have performed some wonders on dead persons, it should
be imputed to his delusions and to some artifice, which may have
substituted living bodies or phantoms for the dead bodies which he
boasted of having recalled to life. In a word, we hold it as
indubitable that it is God only who can impart life to a person really
dead, either by power proceeding immediately from himself, or by means
of angels or of demons, who perform his behests.

I own that the instance of that boy of Dalhem is perplexing. Whether
it was the spirit of the child that returned into his body to animate
it anew, or the demon who replaced his soul, the puzzle appears to me
the same; in all this circumstance we behold only the work of the evil
spirit. God does not seem to have had any share in it. Now, if the
demon can take the place of a spirit in a body newly dead, or if he
can make the soul by which it was animated before death return into
it, we can no longer dispute his power to restore a kind of life to a
dead person; which would be a terrible temptation for us, who might be
led to believe that the demon has a power which religion does not
permit us to think that God shares with any created being.

I would then say, supposing the truth of the fact, of which I see no
room to doubt, that God, to punish the abominable crime of the father,
and to give an example of his just vengeance to mankind, permitted the
demon to do on this occasion what he perhaps had never done, nor ever
will again--to possess a body, and serve it in some sort as a soul,
and give it action and motion whilst he could retain the body without
its being too much corrupted.

And this example applies admirably to the ghosts of Hungary and
Moravia, whom the demon will move and animate--will cause to appear
and disturb the living, so far as to occasion their death. I say all
this under the supposition that what is said of the vampires is true;
for if it all be false and fabulous, it is losing time to seek the
means of explaining it.

For the rest, several of the ancients, as Tertullian[535] and
Lactantius, believed that the demons were the only authors of all the
magicians do when they evoke the souls of the dead. They cause
borrowed bodies or phantoms to appear, say they, and fascinate the
eyes of those present, to make them believe that to be real which is
only seeming.

Footnotes:

[521] Exod. iv. 24, 25.

[522] Exod. xii. 12.

[523] 1 Cor. x. 10; Judith viii. 25.

[524] Numb. xxii.

[525] Tob. iii. 7.

[526] Psa. xxxiv. 7.

[527] 1 Cor. xi. 30.

[528] 1 Tim. i. 20.

[529] John xiii.

[530] 1 Sam. ii. 6.

[531] Matt. xxiv. 24.

[532] Clem. Alex. Itinerario; Hegesippus de Excidio Jerusalem, c. 2.

[533] Apulei Flondo. lib. ii.

[534] Ælian, de Animalib. lib. ix. c. 77.

[535] Tertull. de Anim. c. 22.

CHAPTER XXXV.

INSTANCES OF PHANTOMS WHICH HAVE APPEARED TO BE ALIVE, AND HAVE GIVE
MANY SIGNS OF LIFE.

Le Loyer, in his book upon spectres, maintains[536] that the demon can
cause the possessed to make extraordinary and involuntary movements.
He can then, if allowed by God, give motion to a dead and insensible
man.

He relates the instance of Polycrites, a magistrate of Ætolia, who
appeared to the people of Locria nine or ten months after his death,
and told them to show him his child, which being born monstrous, they
wished to burn with its mother. The Locrians, in spite of the
remonstrance of the spectre of Polycrites, persisting in their
determination, Polycrites took his child, tore it to pieces and
devoured it, leaving only the head, while the people could neither
send him away nor prevent him; after that, he disappeared. The
Ætolians were desirous of sending to consult the Delphian oracle, but
the head of the child began to speak, and foretold the misfortunes
which were to happen to their country and to his own mother.

After the battle between King Antiochus and the Romans, an officer
named Buptages, left dead on the field of battle, with twelve mortal
wounds, rose up suddenly, and began to threaten the Romans with the
evils which were to happen to them through the foreign nations who
were to destroy the Roman empire. He pointed out in particular, that
armies would come from Asia, and desolate Europe, which may designate
the irruption of the Turks upon the domains of the Roman empire.

After that, Buptages climbed up an oak tree, and foretold that he was
about to be devoured by a wolf, which happened. After the wolf had
devoured the body, the head again spoke to the Romans, and forbade
them to bury him. All that appears very incredible, and was not
accomplished in fact. It was not the people of Asia, but those of the
north, who overthrew the Roman empire.

In the war of Augustus against Sextus Pompey, son of the great
Pompey,[537] a soldier of Augustus, named Gabinius, had his head cut
off by order of young Pompey, so that it only held on to the neck by a
narrow strip of flesh. Towards evening they heard Gabinius lamenting;
they ran to him, and he said that he had returned from hell to reveal
very important things to Pompey. Pompey did not think proper to go to
him, but he sent one of his men, to whom Gabinius declared that the
gods on high had decreed the happy destiny of Pompey, and that he
would succeed in all his designs. Directly Gabinius had thus spoken,
he fell down dead and stiff. This pretended prediction was falsified
by the facts. Pompey was vanquished, and Cæsar gained all the
advantage in this war.

A certain female juggler had died, but a magician of the band put a
charm under her armpits, which gave her power to move; but another
wizard having looked at her, cried out that it was only vile carrion,
and immediately she fell down dead, and appeared what she was in fact.

Nicole Aubri, a native of Vervius, being possessed by several devils,
one of these devils, named Baltazo, took from the gibbet the body of a
man who had been hanged near the plain of Arlon, and in this body went
to the husband of Nicole Aubri, promising to deliver his wife from her
possession if he would let him pass the night with her. The husband
consulted the schoolmaster, who practiced exorcising, and who told him
on no account to grant what was asked of him. The husband and Baltazo
having entered the church, the woman who was possessed called him by
his name, and immediately this Baltazo disappeared. The schoolmaster
conjuring the possessed, Beelzebub, one of the demons, revealed what
Baltazo had done, and that if the husband had granted what he asked,
he would have flown away with Nicole Aubri, both body and soul.

Le Loyer again relates[538] four other instances of persons whom the
demon had seemed to restore to life, to satisfy the brutal passion of
two lovers.

Footnotes:

[536] Le Loyer, des Spectres, lib. ii. pp. 376, 392, 393.

[537] Pliny, lib. vii. c. 52.

[538] Le Loyer, pp. 412-414.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

DEVOTING TO DEATH, A PRACTICE AMONG THE PAGANS.

The ancient heathens, both Greeks and Romans, attributed to magic and
to the demon the power of occasioning the destruction of any person by
a manner of devoting them to death, which consisted in forming a waxen
image as much as possible like the person whose life they wished to
take. They devoted him or her to death by their magical secrets: then
they burned the waxen statue, and as that by degrees was consumed, so
the doomed person became languid and at last died. Theocritus[539]
makes a woman transported with love speak thus: she invokes the image
of the shepherd, and prays that the heart of Daphnis, her beloved, may
melt like the image of wax which represents him.

Horace[540] brings forward two enchantresses, who evoke the shades to
make them announce the future. First of all, the witches tear a sheep
with their teeth, shedding the blood into a grave, in order to bring
those spirits from whom they expect an answer; then they place next to
themselves two statues, one of wax, the other of wool; the latter is
the largest, and mistress of the other. The waxen image is at its
feet, as a suppliant, and awaiting only death. After divers magical
ceremonies, the waxen image was inflamed and consumed.

He speaks of this again elsewhere; and after having with a mocking
laugh made his complaints to the enchantress Canidia, saying that he
is ready to make her honorable reparation, he owns that he feels all
the effects of her too-powerful art, as he himself has experienced it
to give motion to waxen figures, and bring down the moon from the
sky.[541]

Virgil also speaks[542] of these diabolical operations, and these
waxen images, devoted by magic art.

There is reason to believe that these poets only repeat these things
to show the absurdity of the pretended secrets of magic, and the vain
and impotent ceremonies of sorcerers.

But it cannot be denied that, idle as all these practices may be, they
have been used in ancient times; that many have put faith in them, and
foolishly dreaded those attempts.

Lucian relates the effects[543] of the magic of a certain Hyperborean,
who, having formed a Cupid with clay, infused life into it, and sent
it to fetch a girl named Chryseïs, with whom a young man had fallen
in love. The little Cupid brought her, and on the morrow, at dawn of
day, the moon, which the magician had brought down from the sky,
returned thither. Hecate, whom he had evoked from the bottom of hell,
fled away, and all the rest of the scene disappeared. Lucian, with
great reason, ridicules all this, and observes that these magicians,
who boast of having so much power, ordinarily exercise it only upon
contemptible people, and are such themselves.

The oldest instances of this dooming are those which are set down in
Scripture, in the Old Testament. God commands Moses to devote to
anathema the Canaanites of the kingdom of Arad.[544] He devotes also
to anathema all the nations of the land of Canaan.[545] Balac, King of
Moab,[546] sends to the diviner Balaam to engage him to curse and
devote the people of Israel. "Come," says he to him, by his messenger,
"and curse me Israel; for I know that those whom you have cursed and
doomed to destruction shall be cursed, and he whom you have blessed
shall be crowned with blessings."

We have in history instances of these devotings and maledictions, and
evocations of the tutelary gods of cities by magic art. The ancients
kept very secret the proper names of towns,[547] for fear that if they
came to the knowledge of the enemy, they might make use of them in
their invocations, which to their mind had no might unless the proper
name of the town was expressed. The usual names of Rome, Tyre, and
Carthage, were not their true and secret names. Rome, for instance,
was called Valentia, a name known to very few persons, and Valerius
Soranus was severely punished for having revealed it.

Macrobius[548] has preserved for us the formula of a solemn devoting
or dooming of a city, and of imprecations against her, by devoting her
to some hurtful and dangerous demon. We find in the heathen poets a
great number of these invocations and magical doomings, to inspire a
dangerous passion, or to occasion maladies. It is surprising that
these superstitious and abominable practices should have gained
entrance among Christians, and have been dreaded by persons who ought
to have known their vanity and impotency.

Tacitus relates[549] that at the death of Germanicus, who was said to
have been poisoned by Piso and Plautina, there were found in the
ground and in the walls bones of human bodies, doomings, and charms,
or magic verses, with the name of Germanicus engraved upon thin plates
of lead steeped in corrupted blood, half-burnt ashes, and other
charms, by virtue of which it was believed that spirits could be
evoked.

Footnotes:

[539] Theocrit Idyl. ii.

[540]
  "Lanea et effigies erat, altera cerea major
  Lanea, que poenis compesceret inferiorem.
  Cerea suppliciter stabat, servilibus ut quæ
  Jam peritura modis....
  Et imagine cereâ
  Largior arserit ignis."

[541]
  "An quæ movere cereas imagines,
  Ut ipse curiosus, et polo
  Deripere lunam."

[542]
  "Limus ut hic durescit, et hæc ut cera liquescit.
  Uno eodemque igni; sic nostro Daphnis amore."--_Virgil, Eclog._

[543] Lucian in Philops.

[544] Numb. xxi. 3.

[545] Deut. vii. 2, 3; xii. 1-3, &c.

[546] Numb. xxii. 5, &c.

[547] Peir. lib. iii. c. 5; xxviii. c. 2.

[548] Macrobius, lib. iii. c. 9.

[549] Tacit. Ann. lib. ii. art. 69.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

INSTANCES OF DEVOTING OR DOOMING AMONGST CHRISTIANS.

Hector Boëthius,[550] in his History of Scotland, relates that Duffus,
king of that country, falling ill of a disorder unknown to the
physicians, was consumed by a slow fever, passed his nights without
sleep, and insensibly wasted away; his body melted in perspiration
every night; he became weak, languid, and in a dying state, without,
however, his pulse undergoing any alteration. Everything was done to
relieve him, but uselessly. His life was despaired of, and those about
him began to suspect some evil spell. In the mean time, the people of
Moray, a county of Scotland, mutinied, supposing that the king must
soon sink under his malady.

It was whispered abroad that the king had been bewitched by some
witches who lived at Forres, a little town in the north of Scotland.
People were sent there to arrest them, and they were surprised in
their dwellings, where one of them was basting an image of King
Duffus, made of wax, turning on a wooden spit before a large fire,
before which she was reciting certain magical prayers; and she
affirmed that as the figure melted the king would lose his strength,
and at last he would die when the figure should be entirely melted.
These women declared that they had been hired to perform these evil
spells by the principal men of the county of Moray, who only awaited
the king's decease to burst into open revolt.

These witches were immediately arrested and burnt at the stake. The
king was much better, and in a few days he perfectly recovered his
health. This account is found also in the History of Scotland by
Buchanan, who says he heard it from his elders.

He makes the King Duffus live in 960, and he who has added notes to
the text of these historians, says that this custom of melting waxen
images by magic art, to occasion the death of certain persons, was not
unknown to the Romans, as appears from Virgil and Ovid; and of this we
have related a sufficient number of instances. But it must be owned
that all which is related concerning it is very doubtful; not that
wizards and witches have not been found who have attempted to cause
the death of persons of high rank by these means, and who attributed
the effect to the demon, but there is little appearance that they ever
succeeded in it. If magicians possessed the secret of thus occasioning
the death of any one they pleased, where is the prince, prelate, or
lord who would be safe? If they could thus roast them slowly to death,
why not kill them at once, by throwing the waxen image in the fire?
Who can have given such power to the devil? Is it the Almighty, to
satisfy the revenge of an insignificant woman, or the jealousy of
lovers of either sex?