OPINIONS OF THE JEWS, GREEKS, AND LATINS CONCERNING THE DEAD WHO ARE
LEFT UNBURIED.
The ancient Hebrews, as well as the greater number of other nations,
were very careful in burying their dead. That appears from all
history; we see in the Scripture how much attention the patriarchs
paid in that respect to themselves and those belonging to them; we
know what praises are bestowed on the holy man Tobit, whose principal
devotion consisted in giving sepulture to the dead.
Josephus the historian[369] says that the Jews refused burial only to
those who committed suicide. Moses commanded them[370] to give
sepulture the same day and before sunset to any who were executed and
hanged on a tree; "because," says he, "he who is hung upon the tree is
accursed of God; you will take care not to pollute the land which the
Lord your God has given you." That was practiced in regard to our
Saviour, who was taken down from the cross the same day that he had
been crucified, and a few hours after his death.
Homer,[371] speaking of the inhumanity of Achilles, who dragged the
body of Hector after his car, says that he dishonored and outraged the
earth by this barbarous conduct. The Rabbis write that the soul is not
received into heaven until the gross body is interred, and entirely
consumed. They believe, moreover, that after death the souls of the
wicked are clothed with a kind of covering with which they accustom
themselves to suffer the torments which are their due; and that the
souls of the just are invested with a resplendent body and a luminous
garment, with which they accustom themselves to the glory which awaits
them.
Origen[372] acknowledges that Plato, in his Dialogue of the Soul,
advances that the images and shades of the dead appeared sometimes
near their tombs. Origen concludes from that, that those shades and
those images must be produced by some cause; and that cause, according
to him, can only be that the soul of the dead is invested with a
subtile body like that of light, on which they are borne as in a car,
where they appear to the living. Celsus maintained that the
apparitions of Jesus Christ after his resurrection were only the
effects of an imagination smitten and prepossessed, which formed to
itself the object of its illusions according to its wishes. Origen
refutes this solidly by the recital of the evangelists, of the
appearance of our Saviour to Thomas, who would not believe it was
truly our Saviour until he had seen and touched his wounds; it was
not, then, purely the effect of his imagination.
The same Origen,[373] and Theophylact after him, assert that the Jews
and pagans believe that the soul remained for some time near the body
it had formerly animated; and that it is to destroy that futile
opinion that Jesus Christ, when he would resuscitate Lazarus, cries
with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come forth;" as if he would call from a
distance the soul of this man who had been dead three days.
Tertullian places the angels in the category of extension,[374] in
which he places God himself, and maintains that the soul is corporeal.
Origen believes also that the soul is material, and has a form;[375]
an opinion which he may have taken from Plato. Arnobius, Lactantius,
St. Hilary, several of the ancient fathers, and some theologians, have
been of the same opinion; and Grotius is displeased with those who
have absolutely spiritualized the angels, demons and souls separated
from the body.
The Jews of our days[376] believe that after the body of a man is
interred, his spirit goes and comes, and departs from the spot where
it is destined to visit his body, and to know what passes around him;
that it is wandering during a whole year after the death of the body,
and that it was during that year of delay that the Pythoness of Endor
evoked the soul of Samuel, after which time the evocation would have
had no power over his spirit.
The pagans thought much in the same manner upon it. Lucan introduces
Pompey, who consults a witch, and commands her to evoke the soul of a
dead man to reveal to him what success he would meet with in his war
against Caesar; the poet makes this woman say, "Shade, obey my spells,
for I evoke not a soul from gloomy Tartarus, but one which hath gone
down thither a little while since, and which is still at the gate of
hell."[377]
The Egyptians[378] believed that when the spirit of an animal is
separated from its body by violence, it does not go to a distance, but
remains near it. It is the same with the soul of a man who has died a
violent death; it remains near the body--nothing can make it go away;
it is retained there by sympathy; several have been seen sighing near
their bodies which were interred. The magicians abuse their power over
such in their incantations; they force them to obey, when they are
masters of the dead body, or even part of it. Frequent experience
taught them that there is a secret virtue in the body, which draws
towards it the spirit which has once inhabited it; wherefore those who
wish to receive or become the receptacles of the spirits of such
animals as know the future, eat the principle parts of them, as the
hearts of crows, moles, or hawks. The spirit of these creatures enters
into them at the moment they eat this food, and makes them give out
oracles like divinities.
The Egyptians believed[379] that when the spirit of a beast is
delivered from its body, it is rational and predicts the future, gives
oracles, and is capable of all that the soul of man can do when
disengaged from the body--for which reason they abstained from eating
the flesh of animals, and worshiped the gods in the form of beasts.
At Rome and at Metz there were colleges of priests consecrated to the
service of the manes,[380] lares, images, shades, spectres, Erebus,
Avernus or hell, under the protection of the god Sylvanus; which
demonstrates that the Latins and the Gauls recognized the return of
souls and their apparition, and considered them as divinities to whom
sacrifices should be offered to appease them and prevent them from
doing harm. Nicander confirms the same thing, when he says that the
Celts or the Gauls watched near the tombs of their great men to derive
from them knowledge concerning the future.
The ancient northern nations were fully persuaded that the spectres
which sometimes appear are no other than the souls of persons lately
deceased, and in their country they knew no remedy so proper to put a
stop to this kind of apparition as to cut off the head of the dead
person, or to impale him, or pierce him through the body with a stake,
or to burn it, as is now practiced at this day in Hungary and Moravia
with regard to vampires.
The Greeks, who had derived their religion and theology from the
Egyptians and Orientals, and the Latins, who took it from the Greeks,
believed that the souls of the dead sometimes appeared to the living;
that the necromancers evoked them, and thus obtained answers
concerning the future, and instructions relating to the time present.
Homer, the greatest theologian, and perhaps the most curious of the
Grecian writers, relates several apparitions, both of gods and heroes,
and of men after their death.
In the Odyssey,[381] Ulysses goes to consult the diviner Tyresias; and
this sorcerer having prepared a grave full of blood to evoke the
manes, Ulysses draws his sword, and prevents them from coming to drink
this blood, for which they appear to thirst, and of which they would
not permit them to taste before they had replied to what was asked of
them; they (the Greeks and Latins) believed also that souls were not
at rest, and that they wandered around the corpses, so long as they
remained uninhumed.[382] When they gave burial to a body, they called
that _animam condere_,[383] to cover the soul, put it under the earth
and shelter it. They called it with a loud voice, and offered it
libations of milk and blood. They also called that ceremony, hiding
the shades,[384] sending them with their body under ground.
The sybil, speaking to AEneas, shows him the manes or shades wandering
on the banks of the Acheron; and tells him that they are souls of
persons who have not received sepulture, and who wander about for a
hundred years.[385]
The philosopher Sallust[386] speaks of the apparitions of the dead
around their tombs in dark bodies; he tries to prove thereby the dogma
of the metempsychosis.
Here is a singular instance of a dead man, who refuses the rite of
burial, acknowledging himself unworthy of it. Agathias relates[387]
that some pagan philosophers, not being able to relish the dogma of
the unity of a God, resolved to go from Constantinople to the court of
Chosroes, King of Persia, who was spoken of as a humane prince, and
one who loved learning. Simplicius of Silicia, Eulamius the Phrygian,
Protanus the Lydian, Hermenes and Philogenes of Phoenicia, and
Isidorus of Gaza, repaired then to the court of Chosroes, and were
well received there; but they soon perceived that that country was
much more corrupt than Greece, and they resolved to return to
Constantinople, where Justinian then reigned.
As they were on their way, they found an unburied corpse, took pity on
it, and had it put in the ground by their own servants. The following
night this man appeared to one of them, and told him not to inter him,
who was not worthy of receiving sepulture; for the earth abhorred one
who had defiled his own mother. The next day they found the same
corpse cast out of the ground, and they comprehended that it was
defiled by incest, which rendered it unworthy of the honor of
receiving burial, although such crimes were known in Persia, and did
not excite the same horror there as in other countries.
The Greeks and Latins believed that the souls of the dead came and
tasted what was presented on their tombs, especially honey and wine;
that the demons loved the smoke and odor of sacrifices, melody, the
blood of victims, commerce with women; that they were attached for a
time to certain spots or to certain edifices, which they haunted, and
where they appeared; that souls separated from their terrestrial body,
retained after death a subtile one, flexible, aerial, which preserved
the form of that they once had animated during their life; that they
haunted those who had done them wrong and whom they hated. Thus Virgil
describes Dido, in a rage, threatening to haunt the perfidious
AEneas.[388]
When the spirit of Patroclus appeared to Achilles,[389] it had his
voice, his shape, his eyes, his garments, but not his palpable body.
When Ulysses went down to the infernal regions, he saw there the
divine Hercules,[390] that is to say, says Homer, his likeness; for he
himself is with the immortal gods, seated at their feast. AEneas
recognized his wife Creuesa, who appeared to him in her usual form,
only taller and more majestic.[391]
We might cite a quantity of passages from the ancient poets, even from
the fathers of the church, who believed that spirits often appeared to
the living. Tertullian[392] believes that the soul is corporeal, and
that it has a certain figure. He appeals to the experience of those to
whom the ghosts of dead persons have appeared, and who have seen them
sensibly, corporeally, and palpably, although of an aerial color and
consistency. He defines the soul[393] a breath sent from God,
immortal, and having body and form. Speaking of the fictions of the
poets, who have asserted that souls were not at rest while their
bodies remain uninterred, he says all this is invented only to inspire
the living with that care which they ought to take for the burial of
the dead, and to take away from the relations of the dead the sight of
an object which would only uselessly augment their grief, if they kept
it too long in their houses; _ut instantia funeris et honor corporum
servetur et moeror affectuum temperetur_.
St. Irenaeus[394] teaches, as a doctrine received from the Lord, that
souls not only subsist after the death of the body--without however
passing from one body into another, as those will have it who admit
the metempsychosis--but that they retain the form and remain near this
body, as faithful guardians of it, and remember naught of what they
have done or not done in this life. These fathers believed, then, in
the return of souls, their apparition, and their attachment to their
body; but we do not adopt their opinion on the corporeality of souls;
we are persuaded that they can appear with God's permission,
independently of all matter and of any corporeal substance which may
belong to them.
As to the opinion of the soul being in a state of unrest while its
body is not interred, that it remains for some time near the tomb of
the body, and appears there in a bodily form; those are opinions which
have no solid foundation, either in Scripture or in the traditions of
the Church, which teach us that directly after death the soul is
presented before the judgment-seat of God, and is there destined to
the place that its good or bad actions have deserved.
Footnotes:
[369] Joseph Bell. Jud. lib. iii c. 25.
[370] Deut. xxi. 23.
[371] Homer, Iliad, XXIV.
[372] Origenes contra Celsum, p. 97.
[373] Origenes in Joan. ix. &c. Theophylac. ibid.
[374] Tertull. lib. de Anima.
[375] Origenes contra Cels. lib. ii.
[376] Bereseith Rabbae. c. 22. Vide Menasse de Resurrect. Mort.
[377]
"Parete precanti
Non in Tartareo latitantem poscimus antro,
Assuetamque diu tenebris; modo luce fugata
Descendentem animam primo pallentis hiatu
Haeret adhuc orci."
_Lucan, Pharsal._ 16.
[378] Porphyr. de Abstin. lib. ii. art. 47.
[379] Demet. lib. iv. art. 10.
[380] Gruter, p. lxiii. Mauric. Hist. de Metz, preface, p. 15.
[381] Homer, Odyss. sub finem. Horat. lib. i. satyr. 8. Aug. de Civit.
Dei, lib. vii. c. 35. Clem. Alex. Paedag. lib. ii. c. 1. Prudent.
lib. iv. contra Symmach. Tertull. de Anim. Lactantius, lib. iii.
[382] Virgil, AEn. iii. 150, _et seq._
"Propterea jacet exanimum tibi corpus amici,
Heu nescis! totamque incestat funere classem.
Sedibus hunc refer ante suis et conde sepulcre."
[383]
"Animamque sepulchro
Condimus, et magna supremum voce ciemus."
[384]
"Romulus ut tumulo fraternas condidit umbras,
Et male veloci justa soluta Remo."
[385]
"Haec omnis, quam cernis, inops inhumataque turba est.
Centum errant annos, volitantque haec littora circum."
[386] Sallust. Philos. c. 19, 20.
[387] Stolust. lib. ii. de Bella Persico, sub fin.
[388]
"Sequar atris ignibus absens;
Et cum frigida mors animae subduxerit artus,
Omnibus umbra lecis adero: dubis, improbe, poenas."
[389] Homer, Iliad, XXIII.
[390] Ibid. Odyss. V.
[391]
"Infelix simulacrum etque ipsius umbra Creuesae
Visa mihi ante oculos, et nota major imago." _Virgil, AEneid_ I.
[392] Tertull. de Anim.
[393] Ibid.
[394] Iren. lib. ii. c. 34.