EXCOMMUNICATION AND ITS POWER
The Greek Church at one time taught that the bodies of persons upon whom
the ban of excommunication had been passed did not undergo decomposition
after death until such sentence had been revoked by the pronouncement
of absolution over the remains, and that, while the bodies remained in
this uncorrupted condition, the spirits of the individuals wandered up
and down the earth seeking sustenance from the blood of the living. The
non-corruption of a body, however, was also held to be one of the proofs
of sanctity; but, in this case, the body preserved its natural colour
and gave an agreeable odour, whereas the bodies of the excommunicated
generally turned black, swelled out like a drum, and emitted an offensive
smell. Very frequently, however, when the graves of suspected vampires
were opened, the faces were found to be of ruddy complexion and the veins
distended with blood, which, when opened with a lancet, yielded a supply
of blood as plentiful, fresh, and free as that found in the veins of
young and healthy living human beings. For many centuries in the history
of Greek Christianity there was scarcely a village that had not its own
local vampire stories which were related by the inhabitants and vouched
for by them as having either occurred within their own knowledge or been
related to them by their parents or relatives as having come within their
personal observation or been verified by them.
The bodies of murderers and suicides were also held to be exempt from
the law of dissolution of the mortal remains until the Church granted
release from the curse entailed upon them by such act. The priests, by
this assumption of power over the body as well as over the soul, made
profitable use of this superstitious belief by preying upon the fears and
credulity of the living. They also included in this ecclesiastical law of
exemption from corruption after death those who in their lives had been
guilty of heinous sins, those who had tampered with the magic arts, and
all who had been cursed during life by their parents. These were all said
to become vampires. This belief spread to other branches of the Christian
Church, and the story is related that St Libentius, Archbishop of Bremen,
who died 4th January 1013, once excommunicated a gang of pirates, one
of whom died shortly afterwards and was buried in Norway. Seventy years
afterwards his body was found quite entire and uncorrupted, nor did it
fall to ashes until it had received absolution from the Bishop Alvareda.
Leo Allatius, a Roman Catholic, describes a corpse which he found in
an undecomposed condition. He implies that the Greeks connected the
circumstance with the power invested in them by the text: “Whatsoever
thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven,” and by which they
hold that the soul is excluded from all hope of participation in future
bliss so long as the body remains undecomposed. Poqueville, another
writer, also states that whenever a bishop or priest excommunicated a
person he added to the general sentence of excommunication the words:
“After death, let not thy body have power to dissolve.”
A manuscript was discovered many years ago in the Church of St Sophia at
Thessalonica, which is an interesting commentary upon the power claimed
by the Church over excommunicated bodies. The manuscript states that:
(1) Whoever has been laid under any curse or received any injunction
from his deceased parents that he has not fulfilled, after his death the
forepart of his body remains entire;
(2) Whoever has been the object of any anathema appears yellow after
death, and the fingers are shrivelled;
(3) Whoever appears white has been excommunicated by the divine laws;
(4) Whoever appears black has been excommunicated by a bishop.
It was held possible to discover, by means of these signs, the crime for
which, as well as the person on whom, the judgment had been pronounced.
One horrible result of this ghastly superstition was the custom which
was at one time prevalent among the Greeks of Salonica, as well as the
Bulgarians in the centre of European Turkey, and other nations, of
disinterring indiscriminately the bodies of the dead after they had been
buried for twelve months, in order to ascertain from the condition of the
remains whether the souls were in heaven or hell, or perambulating the
neighbourhood as vampires.
This assumed ecclesiastical power acted occasionally, however,
injuriously on the clergy themselves. There is on record one instance
where a priest was killed in revenge for the death of a man whose illness
was attributed to the sentence of excommunication that had been passed
upon him. On another occasion a bishop of some diocese in Morea was
robbed by a band of brigands as he was passing through a portion of the
Maniate territory. When the deed was done the mountaineers bethought
themselves that the bishop would, in all probability, excommunicate them
as soon as he reached a place of safety. They saw no means of averting
this, to them, dreadful calamity, except by the committal of a further
and more heinous crime; and so they set out in pursuit of the unfortunate
bishop, whom they eventually overtook and murdered.
Many years ago a Greek of Keramia complained to the Pasha of Khania that
the papás of his village had excommunicated him and so been the indirect
cause of his having been bewitched. The Pasha sent for the priest, threw
him into prison, and only released him upon payment of a fine of 300
piastres.
During a local war a native of Theriso was taken ill: the cry went up:
“It is an aphorismos.” The papás was accused, reviled, and threatened
with murder unless the curse was removed; but the man continued to get
worse, and eventually died. So firm was the belief of everyone in the
neighbourhood that the ban had caused the man’s death that some of his
companions regarded it as a duty to avenge his fate, and, in consequence,
they sought out the priest and shot him.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century the Metropolitan of Larissa
was informed that a papás had disinterred two bodies and thrown them into
the Haliæmon on pretence of their being vrukólakas. Upon being summoned
before the bishop the priest admitted the truth of the accusation, and
justified his act by saying that a report had been current that a large
animal, accompanied with flames, had been seen to issue from the grave
in which these two bodies had been buried. The bishop fined the priest
250 piastres, and sent a proclamation throughout the diocese that, in
future, similar offences would be punished with double that fine and be
accompanied with loss of position.
Martin Crusius tells the following curious story. There were about
the court of Mahomet II. a number of men learned in Greek and Arabic
literature, who had investigated a variety of points connected with the
Christian faith. They informed the Sultan that the bodies of persons
excommunicated by the Greek clergy did not decompose, and when he
inquired whether the effect of absolution was to dissolve them, he was
answered in the affirmative. Upon this, he sent orders to Maximus, the
Patriarch of that period, to produce a case by which the truth of the
statement might be tested. The Patriarch convened his clergy in great
trepidation, and after long deliberation they ascertained that a woman
had been excommunicated by the previous Patriarch for the commission of
grievous sins. They ascertained the whereabouts of her grave, and when
they had opened it they found that the corpse was entire, but swollen out
like a drum. When the news of this reached the Sultan, he despatched some
of his officers to possess themselves of the body, which they did, and
deposited it in a safe place. On an appointed day the liturgy was said
over it and the Patriarch recited the absolution in the presence of the
officials. As this was being done—wonderful to relate!—the bones were
heard to rattle as they fell apart in the coffin, and at the same time,
the narrator adds, the woman’s soul was also freed from the punishment to
which it had been condemned. The courtiers at once ran and informed the
Sultan, who was astonished at the miracle, and exclaimed: “Of a surety
the Christian religion is true.” Calmet also relates this story, and
adds that the body was found to be entirely black and much swollen; that
it was placed in a chest under the Emperor’s seal, which chest was not
opened until three days after the absolution had been pronounced, when
the body was seen to be reduced to ashes.
During the long war between the Christians and Mohammedans in the
island of Crete, it became a matter of astonishment that ravages caused
by vampires were no longer the subject of conversation. “How can it be,
when the number of deaths is so great, that none of those that die become
katakhanás?” was the question asked, to be met with the answer: “No one
ever becomes a katakhaná if he dies in time of war.”
Leo Allatius also relates that he was told by Athanasius, Metropolitan of
Imbros, that, on one occasion, being earnestly entreated to pronounce the
absolution over a number of corpses that had long remained undecomposed,
he consented to do so, and before the recitation was concluded they all
fell away into ashes.
Rycaut relates a similar occurrence, to which he appends the following
remark: “This story I should not have judged worth relating, but that I
heard it from the mouth of a grave person who says that his own eyes were
witnesses thereof.”
The Hydhræans (or Hydhrioks) say there used to be a great number of
vampires in Hydhra, and that their present freedom is to be attributed
solely to the exertions of their bishop, who banished them all to
Santoréhe, where, on the desert isle, they now exist in great numbers,
wandering about, rolling stones down the slope towards the sea, “as may
be heard by anyone who passes near, in a kaík, during the night.”
At the second Council of Limoges, held in 1031, the Bishop of Cahors
made the following statement: “A knight of my diocese being killed in a
state of excommunication, I refused to comply with the request of his
friends, who solicited me earnestly to give him absolution. My resolution
was to make an example of him, in order to strike terror into others.
Notwithstanding this, he was buried in a church dedicated to St Peter by
some soldiers or knights without any ecclesiastical ceremony, without
any leave, and without the assistance of any priest. The next morning
his body was found out of the grave, perfectly entire, and without any
token of its having been touched. The soldiers who buried him opened the
grave and found nothing but the linen which had been wrapped about his
body. They then buried him afresh and covered the grave with an enormous
quantity of earth and stones. The next day the corpse was found out of
the grave again, and there were no symptoms of anyone having been at
work. The same thing was repeated five times, and at last they buried
him in unconsecrated ground, at a distance from the churchyard, when no
further incident occurred.”
Rycaut states that the following story was related to him with many
asseverations of truth by a grave _Candive Kalois_ called Sofronio, a
preacher, and a person of no mean repute and learning at Smyrna.
“I knew,” he said, “a certain person who, for some misdemeanours
committed in the Morea, fled over to the Isle of Milo, where, though
he escaped the hand of justice, he could not avoid the sentence of
excommunication, from which he could no more fly than from the conviction
of his own conscience, or the guilt which ever attended him; for the
fatal hour of his death being come, and the sentence of the Church
not revoked, the body was carelessly and without solemnity interred
in some retired and unfrequented place. In the meantime the relatives
of the deceased were much afflicted and anxious for the sad estate of
their dead friend, whilst the peasants and islanders were every night
affrighted and disturbed with strange and unusual apparitions, which they
immediately concluded arose from the grave of the accursed excommunicant,
which, according to their custom, they immediately opened, when they
found the body uncorrupted, ruddy, and the veins replete with blood. The
coffin was furnished with grapes, apples, and nuts, and such fruits as
the season afforded. Whereupon, consultation being taken, the Kaloires
resolved to make use of the common remedy in those cases, which was to
cut and dismember the body into several parts and to boil it in wine, as
the approved means of dislodging the evil spirit and disposing the body
to a dissolution. But the friends of the deceased, being willing and
desirous that the corpse should rest in peace and some ease given to the
departed soul, obtained a reprieve from the clergy, and hoped that for a
sum of money (they being persons of a competent estate) a release might
be purchased from the excommunication under the hand of the Patriarch.
In this manner the corpse was for a little while freed from dissection,
and letters thereupon sent to Constantinople with this direction, That
in case the Patriarch should condescend to take off the excommunication,
that the day, hour, and minute that he signed the remission should be
inserted in the document. And now the corpse was taken into the church
(the country people not being willing it should remain in the field), and
prayers and masses were daily said for its dissolution and the pardon
of the offender; when one day, after many prayers, supplications, and
offerings (as this Sofrino attested to me with many protestations), and
whilst he himself was heard performing divine service, on a sudden was
heard a rumbling noise in the coffin of the dead party, to the fear and
astonishment of all persons then present; which when they had opened they
found the body consumed and dissolved as far into its first principles
of earth as if it had been several years interred. The hour and minute
of this dissolution was immediately noted and precisely observed, which
being compared with the date of the Patriarch’s release when it was
signed at Constantinople, it was found exactly to agree with that moment
in which the body returned to its ashes.”
In most countries the vampire was regarded as a night-wanderer, but
resting in its grave on Friday night, so that the ceremony of absolution
had to be performed on that night or during Saturday, because, if the
spirit was out on its rambles when the ceremony took place, it was
unavailing.
The Sfakians generally believe that the ravages committed by these
night-wanderers used in former times to be far more frequent than they
are at the present day, and that they have become comparatively rare
solely in consequence of the increased zeal and skill possessed by
members of the sacerdotal order.
Tournefort relates an entertaining story of a vampire that woefully
annoyed the inhabitants of Myconi. Prayers, processions, stabbing with
swords, sprinklings of holy water, and even pouring the latter in large
quantities down the throat of the refractory _vroucolaca_ were all tried
in vain. An Albanian who chanced to be at Myconi objected to two of these
remedies. It was no wonder the devil continued in, he said, for how
could he possibly come through the holy water? And as to swords, they
were equally effectual in preventing his exit, for their handles being
crosses, he was so much terrified that he dare not pass them. To obviate
the latter objection, he recommended that Turkish scymetars should
be used. The scymetars were accordingly put in requisition, but the
pertinacious devil still retained his hold of the corpse and played his
pranks with as much vigour as ever. At length, when all the respectable
inhabitants were packing up to take flight to Syra or Tinos, an effectual
method of ousting the _vroucolaca_ was fortunately suggested. The body
was committed to the flames on January 1st, 1701, and the spirit being
thus forcibly ejected from its abode, was rendered incapable of doing
further mischief.
There is a story told of St Stanislaus raising to life a man who had been
dead for three years, whom he called to life in order that he might give
evidence on the saint’s behalf in a court of justice. After having given
his evidence, the resuscitated man returned quietly to his grave.