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 Contemptus Mortis a 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 daemone 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 strigae, 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 cure, 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 Caesar,[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 Papae.

[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 praeclarissimum testimonium

ecclesiastica auctoritas, in qua fidelibus notum est quo loco martyres

et que defunctae 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 posita."[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, Saecul. 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 _menees_ 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, quae 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 Daphne, 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 Abaelardi, 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 cure 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 praecedere absolutionem

a peccatis; quia quandiu aliquis est excommunicatus, non potest

recipere aliquod Ecclesiae 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. quaestiuncula 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, traite des Excommunicat. et Manitoires.

[512] D. Thom. in iv. Sentent. dist. 1. qu. 1. art. 3. quaestiunc. 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 Pare,

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-graecia, 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 Breme, 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 AEsculapius

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 AEsculapius

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 AEsculapius 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] AElian, 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 AEtolia, 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

AEtolians 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 Caesar 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 Chryseis, 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 quae

Jam peritura modis....

Et imagine cerea

Largior arserit ignis."

[541]

"An quae movere cereas imagines,

Ut ipse curiosus, et polo

Deripere lunam."

[542]

"Limus ut hic durescit, et haec 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 Boethius,[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?

M. de St. Andre, physician to the king, in his Letters on Witchcraft,

would explain the effects of these devotings, supposing them to be

true, by the evaporation of animal spirits, which, proceeding from the

bodies of the wizards or witches, and uniting with the atoms which

fall from the wax, and the atoms of the fire, which render them still

more pungent, should fly towards the person they desire to bewitch,

and cause in him or her sensations of heat or pain, more or less

violent according to the action of the fire. But I do not think that

this clever man finds many to approve of his idea. The shortest way,

in my opinion, would be, to deny the effects of these charms; for if

these effects are real, they are inexplicable by physics, and can only

be attributed to the devil.

We read in the History of the Archbishops of Treves that Eberard,

archbishop of that church, who died in 1067, having threatened to send

away the Jews from his city, if they did not embrace Christianity,

these unhappy people, being reduced to despair, suborned an

ecclesiastic, who for money baptized for them, by the name of the

bishop, a waxen image, to which they tied wicks or wax tapers, and

lighted them on Holy Saturday (Easter Eve), as the prelate was going

solemnly to administer the baptismal rite.

Whilst he was occupied in this holy function, the statue being half

consumed, Eberard felt himself extremely ill; he was led into the

vestry, where he soon after expired.

The Pope John XXII., in 1317, complained, in public letters, that some

scoundrels had attempted his life by similar operations; and he

appeared persuaded of their power, and that he had been preserved from

death only by the particular protection of God. "We inform you," says

he, "that some traitors have conspired against us, and against some of

our brothers the cardinals, and have prepared beverages and images to

take away our life, which they have sought to do on every occasion;

but God has always preserved us." The letter is dated the 27th of

July.

From the 27th of February, the pope had issued a commission to inform

against these poisoners; his letter is addressed to Bartholomew,

Bishop of Frejus, who had succeeded the pope in that see, and to

Peter Tessier, doctor _en decret_, afterwards cardinal. The pope says

therein, in substance--We have heard that John de Limoges, Jacques de

Crabancon, Jean d'Arrant, physician, and some others, have applied

themselves, through a damnable curiosity, to necromancy and other

magical arts, on which they have books; that they have often made use

of mirrors, and images consecrated in their manner; that, placing

themselves within circles, they have often invoked the evil spirits to

occasion the death of men by the might of their enchantments, or by

sending maladies which abridge their days. Sometimes they have

enclosed demons in mirrors, or circles, or rings, to interrogate them,

not only on the past, but on the future, and made predictions. They

pretend to have made many experiments in these matters, and fearlessly

assert, that they can not only by means of certain beverages, or

certain meats, but by simple words, abridge or prolong life, and cure

all sorts of diseases.

The pope gave a similar commission, April 22d, 1317, to the Bishop of

Ries, to the same Pierre Tessier, to Pierre Despres, and two others,

to inquire into the conspiracy formed against him and against the

cardinals; and in this commission he says:--"They have prepared

beverages to poison us, and not having been able conveniently to make

us take them, they have had waxen images, made with our names, to

attack our lives, by pricking these images with magical enchantments,

and innovations of demons; but God has preserved us, and caused three

of these images to fall into our hands."

We see a description of similar charms in a letter, written three

years after, to the Inquisitor of Carcassone, by William de Godin,

Cardinal-Bishop of Sabina, in which he says:--"The pope commands you

to inquire and proceed against those who sacrifice to demons, worship

them, or pay them homage, by giving them for a token a written paper,

or something else, to bind the demon, or to work some charm by

invoking him; who, abusing the sacrament of baptism, baptize images of

wax, or of other matters with invocation of demons; who abuse the

eucharist, or consecrated wafer, or other sacraments, by exercising

their evil spells. You will proceed against them with the prelates, as

you do in matters of heresy; for the pope gives you the power to do

so." The letter is dated from Avignon, the 22d of August, 1320.

At the trial of Enguerrand de Marigni, they brought forward a wizard

whom they had surprised making waxen images, representing King Louis

le Hutin and Charles de Valois, and meaning to kill them by pricking

or melting these images.

It is related also that Cosmo Rugieri, a Florentine, a great atheist

and pretended magician, had a secret chamber, where he shut himself up

alone, and pricked with a needle a wax image representing the king,

after having loaded it with maledictions and devoted it to destruction

by horrible enchantments, hoping thus to cause the prince to languish

away and die.

Whether these conjurations, these waxen images, these magical words,

may have produced their effects or not, it proves at any rate the

opinion that was entertained on the subject--the ill will of the

wizards, and the fear in which they were held. Although their

enchantments and imprecations might not be followed by any effect, it

is apparently thought that experience on that point made them dreaded,

whether with reason or not.

The general ignorance of physics made people at that time take many

things to be supernatural which were simply the effects of natural

causes; and as it is certain, as our faith teaches us, that God has

often permitted demons to deceive mankind by prodigies, and do them

injury by extraordinary means, it was supposed without examining into

the matter that there was an art of magic and sure rules for

discovering certain secrets, or causing certain evils by means of

demons; as if God had not always been the Supreme Master, to permit or

to hinder them; or as if He would have ratified the compacts made with

evil spirits.

But on examining closely this pretended magic, we have found nothing

but poisonings, attended by superstition and imposture. All that we

have just related of the effects of magic, enchantments, and

witchcraft, which were pretended to cause such terrible effects on the

bodies and the possessions of mankind, and all that is recounted of

doomings, evocations, and magic figures, which, being consumed by

fire, occasioned the death of those who were destined or enchanted,

relate but very imperfectly to the affair of vampires, which we are

treating of in this volume; unless it may be said that those ghosts

are raised and evoked by magic art, and that the persons who fancy

themselves strangled and finally stricken with death by vampires, only

suffer these miseries through the malice of the demon, who makes their

deceased parents or relations appear to them, and produces all these

effects upon them; or simply strikes the imagination of the persons to

whom it happens, and makes them believe that it is their deceased

relations, who come to torment and kill them; although in all this it

is only an imagination strongly affected which acts upon them.

We may also connect with the history of ghosts what is related of

certain persons who have promised each other to return after their

death, and to reveal what passes in the other world, and the state in

which they find themselves.

Footnotes:

[550] Hector Boethius, Hist. Scot. lib. xi. c. 216, 219.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

INSTANCES OF PERSONS WHO HAVE PROMISED TO GIVE EACH OTHER NEWS OF THE

OTHER WORLD AFTER THEIR DEATH.

The story of the Marquis de Rambouillet, who appeared after his death

to the Marquis de Precy, is very celebrated. These two lords,

conversing on the subject of the other world, like people who were not

very strongly persuaded of the truth of all that is said upon it,

promised each other that the first of the two who died should bring

the news of it to the other. The Marquis de Rambouillet set off for

Flanders, where the war was then carried on; and the Marquis de Precy

remained at Paris, detained by a low fever. Six weeks after, in broad

day, he heard some one undraw his bed-curtains, and turning to see who

it was, he perceived the Marquis de Rambouillet, in buff-leather

jacket and boots. He sprang from his bed to embrace his friend; but

Rambouillet, stepping back a few paces, told him that he was come to

keep his word as he had promised--that all that was said of the next

life was very certain--that he must change his conduct, and in the

first action wherein he was engaged he would lose his life.

Precy again attempted to embrace his friend, but he embraced only

empty air. Then Rambouillet, seeing that his friend was incredulous as

to what he said, showed him where he had received the wound in his

side, whence the blood still seemed to flow. Precy soon after

received, by the post, confirmation of the death of the Marquis de

Rambouillet; and being himself some time after, during the civil wars,

at the battle of the Faubourg of St. Antoine, he was there killed.