story. A gentleman named Humbert, son of a lord named Guichard de
Belioc, in the diocese of Macon, having declared war against the other
principal men in his neighborhood, a gentleman named Geoffrey d'Iden
received in the melee a wound of which he died immediately.
About two months afterwards, this same Geoffrey appeared to a
gentleman named Milo d'Ansa, and begged him to tell Humbert de Belioc,
in whose service he had lost his life, that he was tormented for
having assisted him in an unjust war, and for not having expiated his
sins by penance before he died; that he begged him to have compassion
on him, and on his own father, Guichard, who had left him great
wealth, of which he made a bad use, and of which a part had been badly
acquired. That in truth Guichard, the father of Humbert, had embraced
a religious life at Clugni; but that he had not time to satisfy the
justice of God for the sins of his past life; that he conjured him to
have mass performed for him and for his father, to give alms, and to
employ the prayers of good people, to procure them both a prompt
deliverance from the pains they endured. He added, "Tell him, that if
he will not mind what you say, I shall be obliged to go to him myself,
and announce to him what I have just told you."
Milo d'Ansa acquitted himself faithfully of his commission; Humbert
was frightened at it, but it did not make him better. Still, fearing
that Guichard, his father, or Geoffrey d'Iden might come and disturb
him, above all during the night, he dare not remain alone, and would
always have one of his people by him.
One morning, then, as he was lying awake in his bed, he beheld in his
presence Geoffrey, armed as in a day of battle, who showed him the
mortal wound he had received, and which appeared yet quite fresh. He
reproached him keenly for his want of pity towards his own father, who
was groaning in torment. "Take care," added he, "that God does not
treat you rigorously, and refuse to you that mercy which you refuse to
us; and, above all, take care not to execute your intention of going
to the wars with Count Amedeus. If you go, you will there lose both
life and property."
He said, and Humbert was about to reply, when the Squire Vichard de
Maracy, Humbert's counselor, arrived from mass, and immediately the
dead man disappeared. From that moment, Humbert endeavored seriously
to relieve his father Geoffrey, and resolved to take a journey to
Jerusalem to expiate his sins. Peter the Venerable had been well
informed of all the details of this story, which occurred in the year
he went into Spain, and made a great noise in the country. The
Cardinal Baronius,[552] a very grave and respectable man, says that he
had heard from several very sensible people, and who have often heard
it preached to the people, and in particular from Michael Mercati,
Prothonotary of the Holy See, a man of acknowledged probity and well
informed, above all in the platonic philosophy, to which he applied
himself unweariedly with Marsilius Ficin, his friend, as zealous as
himself for the doctrine of Plato.
One day, these two great philosophers were conversing on the
immortality of the soul, and if it remained and existed after the
death of the body. After having had much discourse on this matter,
they promised each other, and shook hands upon it, that the first of
them who quitted this world should come and tell the other somewhat of
the state of the other life.
Having thus separated, it happened some time afterwards that the same
Michael Mercati, being wide awake and studying, one morning very
early, the same philosophical matters, heard on a sudden a noise like
a horseman who was coming hastily to his door, and at the same he
heard the voice of his friend Marsilius Ficin, who cried out to him,
"Michael, Michael, nothing is more true than what is said of the other
life." At the same, Michael opened his window, and saw Marsilius
mounted on a white horse, who was galloping away. Michael cried out to
him to stop, but he continued his course till Michael could no longer
see him.
Marsilius Ficin was at that time dwelling at Florence, and died there
at the same hour that he had appeared and spoken to his friend. The
latter wrote directly to Florence, to inquire into the truth of the
circumstance; and they replied to him that Marsilius had died at the
same moment that Michael had heard his voice and the noise of his
horse at his door. Ever after that adventure, Michael Mercati,
although very regular in his conduct before then, became quite an
altered man, and lived in so exemplary a manner that he became a
perfect model of Christian life. We find a great many such instances
in Henri Morus, and in Joshua Grandville, in his work entitled
"Sadduceeism Combated."
Here is one taken from the life of B. Joseph de Lionisse, a missionary
capuchin.[553] One day, when he was conversing with his companion on
the duties of religion, and the fidelity which God requires of those
who have consecrated themselves to them, of the reward reserved for
those who are perfectly religious, and the severe justice which he
exercises against unfaithful servants, Brother Joseph said to him,
"Let us promise each other mutually that the one who dies the first
will appear to the other, if God allows him so to do, to inform him of
what passes in the other world, and the condition in which he finds
himself." "I am willing," replied the holy companion; "I give you my
word upon it." "And I pledge you mine," replied Brother Joseph.
Some days after this, the pious companion was attacked by a malady
which brought him to the tomb. Brother Joseph felt this the more
sensibly, because he knew better than the others all the virtues of
this holy monk. He had no doubt of the fulfilment of their agreement,
or that the deceased would appear to him, when he least thought of it,
to acquit himself of his promise.
In effect, one day when Brother Joseph had retired to his room, in the
afternoon, he saw a young capuchin enter horribly haggard, with a pale
thin face, who saluted him with a feeble, trembling voice. As, at the
sight of this spectre, Joseph appeared a little disturbed, "Don't be
alarmed," it said to him; "I am come here as permitted by God, to
fulfill my promise, and to tell you that I have the happiness to be
amongst the elect through the mercy of the Lord. But learn that it is
even more difficult to be saved than is thought in this world; that
God, whose wisdom can penetrate the most secret folds of the heart,
weighs exactly the actions which we have done during life, the
thoughts, wishes, and motives, which we propose to ourselves in
acting; and as much as he is inexorable in regard to sinners, so much
is he good, indulgent, and rich in mercy, towards those just souls who
have served him in this life." At these words, the phantom
dissappeared.
Here follows an instance of a spirit which comes after death to visit
his friend without having made an agreement with him to do so.[554]
Peter Garmate, Bishop of Cracow, was translated to the archbishopric
of Gnesnes, in 1548, and obtained a dispensation from Paul III. to
retain still his bishopric of Cracow. This prelate, after having led a
very irregular life during his youth, began towards the end of his
life, to perform many charitable actions, feeding every day a hundred
poor, to whom he sent food from his own table. And when he traveled,
he was followed by two wagons, loaded with coats and shirts, which he
distributed amongst the poor according as they needed them.
One day, when he was preparing to go to church, towards evening, (it
being the eve of a festival,) and he was alone in his closet, he
suddenly beheld before him a gentleman named Curosius, who had been
dead some time, with whom he had formerly been too intimately
associated in evil doing.
The Archbishop Gamrate was at first affrighted, but the defunct
reassured him and told him that he was of the number of the blessed.
"What!" said the prelate to him; "after such a life as you led! For
you know the excesses which both you and myself committed in our
youth." "I know it," replied the defunct; "but this is what saved me.
One day, when in Germany, I found myself with a man who uttered
blasphemous discourse, most injurious to the Holy Virgin. I was
irritated at it, and gave him a blow; we drew our swords; I killed
him; and for fear of being arrested and punished as a homicide, I
took flight without reflecting much on the action I had committed. But
at the hour of death, I found myself most terribly disturbed by
remorse on my past life, and I only expected certain destruction; when
the Holy Virgin came to my aid, and made such powerful intercession
for me with her Son, that she obtained for me the pardon of my sins;
and I have the happiness to enjoy beatitude. For yourself, who have
only six months to live, I am sent to warn you, that in consideration
of your alms, and your charity to the poor, God will show you mercy,
and expects you to do penance. Profit while it is time, and expiate
your past sins." After having said this, he disappeared; and the
archbishop, bursting into tears, began to live in so Christianly a
manner that he was the edification of all who knew him. He related the
circumstance to his most intimate friends, and died in 1545, after
having directed the Church of Gnesnes for about five years.
The daughter of Dumoulin, a celebrated lawyer, having been inhumanly
massacred in her dwelling,[555] appeared by night to her husband, who
was wide awake, and declared to him the names of those who had killed
herself and her children, conjuring him to revenge her death.
Footnotes:
[551] Biblioth. Cluniae. de Miraculis, lib. i. c. 7, p. 1290.
[552] Baronius ad an. Christi 401. Annal. tom. v.
[553] Tom. i. p. 64, _et seq._
[554] Stephani Damalevini Historia, p. 291. apud Ranald continuat
Baronii, ad. an. 1545. tom. xxi art. 62.
[555] Le Loyer, lib. iii. pp. 46, 47.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
EXTRACT FROM THE POLITICAL WORKS OF M. L'ABBE DE ST. PIERRE.[556]
I was told lately at Valogne, that a good priest of the town who
teaches the children to read, had had an apparition in broad day ten
or twelve years ago. As that had made a great deal of noise at first
on account of his reputation for probity and sincerity, I had the
curiosity to hear him relate his adventure himself. A lady, one of my
relations, who was acquainted with him, sent to invite him to dine
with her yesterday, the 7th of January, 1708, and as on the one hand I
showed a desire to learn the thing from himself, and on the other it
was a kind of honorable distinction to have had by daylight an
apparition of one of his comrades, he related it before dinner without
requiring to be pressed, and in a very naive manner.
CIRCUMSTANCE.
"In 1695," said M. Bezuel to us, "being a schoolboy of about fifteen
years of age, I became acquainted with the two children of M.
Abaquene, attorney, schoolboys like myself. The eldest was of my own
age, the second was eighteen months younger; he was named
Desfontaines; we took all our walks and all our parties of pleasure
together, and whether it was that Desfontaines had more affection for
me, or that he was more gay, obliging, and clever than his brother, I
loved him the best.
"In 1696, we were walking both of us in the cloister of the Capuchins.
He told me that he had lately read a story of two friends who had
promised each other that the first of them who died should come and
bring news of his condition to the one still living; that the one who
died came back to earth, and told his friend surprising things. Upon
that, Desfontaines told me that he had a favor to ask of me; that he
begged me to grant it instantly: it was to make him a similar promise,
and on his part he would do the same. I told him that I would not. For
several months he talked to me of it, often and seriously; I always
resisted his wish. At last, towards the month of August, 1696, as he
was to leave to go and study at Caen, he pressed me so much with tears
in his eyes, that I consented to it. He drew out at that moment two
little papers which he had ready written: one was signed with his
blood, in which he promised me that in case of his death he would come
and bring me news of his condition; in the other I promised him the
same thing. I pricked my finger; a drop of blood came, with which I
signed my name. He was delighted to have my billet, and embracing me,
he thanked me a thousand times.
"Some time after, he set off with his brother. Our separation caused
us much grief, but we wrote to each other now and then, and it was but
six weeks since I had had a letter from him, when what I am going to
relate to you happened to me.
"The 31st of July, 1697, one Thursday--I shall remember it all my
life--the late M. Sortoville, with whom I lodged, and who had been
very kind to me, begged of me to go to a meadow near the Cordeliers,
and help his people, who were making hay, to make haste. I had not
been there a quarter of an hour, when about half-past-two, I all of a
sudden felt giddy and weak. In vain I leant upon my hay-fork; I was
obliged to place myself on a little hay, where I was nearly half an
hour recovering my senses. That passed off; but as nothing of the kind
had ever occurred to me before, I was surprised at it and feared it
might be the commencement of an illness. Nevertheless it did not make
much impression upon me during the remainder of the day. It is true I
did not sleep that night so well as usual.
"The next day, at the same hour, as I was conducting to the meadow M.
de St. Simon, the grandson of M. de Sortoville, who was then ten years
old, I felt myself seized on the way with a similar faintness, and I
sat down on a stone in the shade. That passed off, and we continued
our way; nothing more happened to me that day, and at night I had
hardly any sleep.
"At last, on the morrow, the second day of August, being in the loft
where they laid up the hay they brought from the meadow, I was taken
with a similar giddiness and a similar faintness, but still more
violent than the other. I fainted away completely; one of the men
perceived it. I have been told that I was asked what was the matter
with me, and that I replied, 'I have seen what I should never have
believed;' but I have no recollection of either the question or the
answer. That, however, accords with what I do remember to have seen
just then; as it were some one naked to the middle, but whom, however,
I did not recognize. They helped me down from the ladder. The
faintness seized me again, my head swam as I was between two rounds of
the ladder, and again I fainted. They took me down and placed me on a
large beam which served for a seat in the large square of the
capuchins. I sat down on it and then I no longer saw M. de Sortoville
nor his domestics, although present; but perceiving Desfontaines near
the foot of the ladder, who made me a sign to come to him, I moved on
my seat as if to make room for him; and those who saw me and whom I
did not see, although my eyes were open, remarked this movement.
"As he did not come, I rose to go to him. He advanced towards me, took
my left arm with his right arm, and led me about thirty paces from
thence into a retired street, holding me still under the arm. The
domestics, supposing that my giddiness had passed off, and that I had
purposely retired, went every one to their work, except a little
servant, who went and told M. de Sortoville that I was talking all
alone. M. de Sortoville thought I was tipsy; he drew near, and heard
me ask some questions, and make some answers, which he has told me
since.
"I was there nearly three-quarters of an hour, conversing with
Desfontaines. 'I promised you,' said he to me, 'that if I died before
you I would come and tell you of it. I was drowned the day before
yesterday in the river of Caen, at nearly this same hour. I was out
walking with such and such a one. It was very warm, and we had a wish
to bathe; a faintness seized me in the water, and I fell to the
bottom. The Abbe de Menil-Jean, my comrade, dived to bring me up. I
seized hold of his foot; but whether he was afraid it might be a
salmon, because I held him so fast, or that he wished to remount
promptly to the surface of the water, he shook his leg so roughly,
that he gave me a violent kick on the breast, which sent me to the
bottom of the river, which is there very deep.
"Desmoulins related to me afterwards all that had occurred to them in
their walk, and the subjects they had conversed upon. It was in vain
for me to ask him questions--whether he was saved, whether he was
damned, if he was in purgatory, if I was in a state of grace, and if I
should soon follow him; he continued to discourse as if he had not
heard me, and as if he would not hear me.
"I approached him several times to embrace him, but it seemed to me
that I embraced nothing, and yet I felt very sensibly that he held me
tightly by the arm, and that when I tried to turn away my head that I
might not see him, because I could not look at him without feeling
afflicted, he shook my arm as if to oblige me to look at and listen to
him.
"He always appeared to me taller than I had seen him, and taller even
than he was at the time of his death, although he had grown during the
eighteen months in which we had not met. I beheld him always naked to
the middle of his body, his head uncovered, with his fine fair hair,
and a white scroll twisted in his hair over his forehead, on which
there was some writing, but I could only make out the word _in_, &c.
"It was his same tone of voice. He appeared to me neither gay nor sad,
but in a calm and tranquil state. He begged of me when his brother
returned, to tell him certain things to say to his father and mother.
He begged me to say the Seven Psalms which had been given him as a
penance the preceding Sunday, which he had not yet recited; again he
recommended me to speak to his brother, and then he bade me adieu,
saying, as he left me, _Jusques_, _jusques_, (_till_, _till_,) which
was the usual term he made use of when at the end of our walk we bade
each other good-bye, to go home.
"He told me that at the time he was drowned, his brother, who was
writing a translation, regretted having let him go without
accompanying him, fearing some accident. He described to me so well
where he was drowned, and the tree in the avenue of Louvigni on which
he had written a few words, that two years afterwards, being there
with the late Chevalier de Gotol, one of those who were with him at
the time he was drowned, I pointed out to him the very spot; and by
counting the trees in a particular direction which Desfontaines had
specified to me, I went straight up to the tree, and I found his
writing. He (the Chevalier) told me also that the article of the Seven
Psalms was true, and that on coming from confession they had told each
other their penance; and since then his brother has told me that it
was quite true that at that hour he was writing his exercise, and he
reproached himself for not having accompanied his brother. As nearly a
month passed by without my being able to do what Desfontaines had told
me in regard to his brother, he appeared to me again twice before
dinner at a country house whither I had gone to dine a league from
hence. I was very faint. I told them not to mind me, that it was
nothing, and that I should soon recover myself; and I went to a
corner of the garden. Desfontaines having appeared to me, reproached
me for not having yet spoken to his brother, and again conversed with
me for a quarter of an hour without answering any of my questions.
"As I was going in the morning to Notre-Dame de la Victoire, he
appeared to me again, but for a shorter time, and pressed me always to
speak to his brother, and left me, saying still, _Jusques_, _Jusques_,
and without choosing to reply to my questions.
"It is a remarkable thing that I always felt a pain in that part of my
arm which he had held me by the first time, until I had spoken to his
brother. I was three days without being able to sleep, from the
astonishment and agitation I felt. At the end of the first
conversation, I told M. de Varonville, my neighbor and schoolfellow,
that Desfontaines had been drowned; that he himself had just appeared
to me and told me so. He went away and ran to the parents' house to
know if it was true; they had just received the news, but by a mistake
he understood that it was the eldest. He assured me that he had read
the letter of Desfontaines, and he believed it; but I maintained
always that it could not be, and that Desfontaines himself had
appeared to me. He returned, came back, and told me in tears that it
was but too true.
"Nothing has occurred to me since, and there is my adventure just as
it happened. It has been related in various ways; but I have recounted
it only as I have just told it to you. The Chevalier de Gotol told me
that Desfontaines had appeared also to M. de Menil-Jean; but I am not
acquainted with him; he lives twenty leagues from hence near Argentan,
and I can say no more about it."
This is a very singular and circumstantial narrative, related by M.
l'Abbe de St. Pierre, who is by no means credulous, and sets his whole
mind and all his philosophy to explain the most extraordinary events
by physical reasonings, by the concurrence of atoms, corpuscles,
insensible evaporation of spirit, and perspiration. But all that is so
far-fetched, and does such palpable violence to the subjects and the
attending circumstances, that the most credulous would not yield to
such arguments. It is surprising that these gentlemen, who pique
themselves on strength of mind, and so haughtily reject everything
that appears supernatural, can so easily admit philosophical systems
much more incredible than even the facts they oppose. They raise
doubts which are often very ill-founded, and attack them upon
principles still more uncertain. That may be called refuting one
difficulty by another, and resolving a doubt by principles still more
doubtful.
But, it will be said, whence comes it that so many other persons who
had engaged themselves to come and bring news of the immortality of
the soul, after their death, have not come back. Seneca speaks of a
Stoic philosopher named Julius Canus, who, having been condemned to
death by Julius Caesar, said aloud that he was about to learn the truth
of that question on which they were divided; to wit, whether the soul
was immortal or not. And we do not read that he revisited this world.
La Motte de Vayer had agreed with his friend Baranzan Barnabite that
the first of the two who died should warn the other of the state in
which he found himself. Baranzan died, and returned not.
Because the dead sometimes return to earth, it would be imprudent to
conclude that they always do so. And it would be equally wrong
reasoning to say that they never do return, because having promised to
revisit this world they have not done so. For that, we should imagine
that it is in the power of spirits to return and make their appearance
when they will, and if they will; but it seems indubitable, that on
the contrary, it is not in their power, and that it is only by the
express permission of God that disembodied spirits sometimes appear to
the living.
We see, in the history of the bad rich man, that God would not grant
him the favor which he asked, to send to earth some of those who were
with him in hell. Similar reasons, derived from the hardness of heart
or the incredulity of mortals, may have prevented, in the same manner,
the return of Julius Canus or of Baranzan. The return of spirits and
their apparition is neither a natural thing nor dependent on the
choice of those who are dead. It is a supernatural effect, and allied
to the miraculous.
St. Augustine says on this subject[557] that if the dead interest
themselves in what concerns the living, St. Monica, his mother, who
loved him so tenderly, and went with him by sea and land everywhere
during her life, would not have failed to visit him every night, and
come to console him in his troubles; for we must not suppose that she
was become less compassionate since she became one of the blest:
_absit ut facta sit vita feliciore crudelis_.
The return of spirits, their apparition, the execution of the promises
which certain persons have made each other, to come and tell their
friends what passes in the other world, is not in their own power. All
that is in the hands of God.
Footnotes:
[556] Vol. iv. p. 57.
[557] Aug. de Cura gerend. pro Mortuis, c. xiii. p. 526.
CHAPTER XL.
DIVERS SYSTEMS FOR EXPLAINING THE RETURN OF SPIRITS.
The affair of ghosts having made so much noise in the world as it has
done, it is not surprising that a diversity of systems should have
been formed upon it, and that so many manners should have been
proposed to explain their return to earth and their operations.
Some have thought that it was a momentary resurrection caused by the
soul of the defunct, which re-entered his body, or by the demon, who
reanimated him, and caused him to act for a while, whilst his blood
retained its consistency and fluidity, and his organic functions were
not entirely corrupted and deranged.
Others, struck with the consequence of such principles, and the
arguments which might be deduced from them, have liked better to
suppose that these vampires were not really dead; that they still
retained certain seeds of life, and that their spirits could from time
to time reanimate and bring them out of their tombs, to make their
appearance amongst men, take refreshment, and renew the nourishing
juices and animal spirits by sucking the blood of their near kindred.
There has lately been printed a dissertation on the uncertainty of the
signs of death, and the abuse of hasty interments, by M. Jacques
Benigne Vinslow, Doctor, Regent of the Faculty at Paris, translated,
with a commentary, by Jacques Jean Bruhier, physician, at Paris, 1742,
in 8vo. This work may serve to explain how persons who have been
believed to be dead, and have been buried as such, have nevertheless
been found alive a pretty long time after their funeral obsequies had
been performed. That will perhaps render vampirism less incredible.
M. Vinslow, Doctor, and Regent of the Medical Faculty at Paris,
maintained, in the month of April, 1740, a thesis, in which he asks if
the experiments of surgery are fitter than all others to discover some
less uncertain signs of doubtful death. He therein maintained that
there are several occurrences in which the signs of death are very
doubtful; and he adduces several instances of persons believed to be
dead, and interred as such, who nevertheless were afterwards found to
be alive.
M. Bruhier, M.D., has translated this thesis into French, and has
made some learned additions to it, which serve to strengthen the
opinion of M. Vinslow. The work is very interesting, from the matter
it treats upon, and very agreeable to read, from the manner in which
it is written. I am about to make some extracts from it, which may be
useful to my subject. I shall adhere principally to the most certain
and singular facts; for to relate them all, we must transcribe the
whole work.
It is known that John Duns, surnamed Scot,[558] or the Subtile Doctor,
had the misfortune to be interred alive at Cologne, and that when his
tomb was opened some time afterwards, it was found that he had gnawn
his arm.[559] The same thing is related of the Emperor Zeno, who made
himself heard from the depth of his tomb by repeated cries to those
who were watching over him. Lancisi, a celebrated physician of the
Pope Clement XI., relates that at Rome he was witness to a person of
distinction being still alive when he wrote, who resumed sense and
motion whilst they were chanting his funeral service at church.
Pierre Zacchias, another celebrated physician of Rome, says, that in
the hospital of the Saint Esprit, a young man, who was attacked with
the plague, fell into so complete a state of syncope, that he was
believed to be really dead. Whilst they were carrying his corpse,
along with a great many others, on the other side of the Tiber, the
young man gave signs of life. He was brought back to the hospital and
cured. Two days after, he fell into a similar syncope, and that time
he was reputed to be dead beyond recovery. He was placed amongst
others intended for burial, came to himself a second time, and was yet
living when Zacchias wrote.
It is related, that a man named William Foxley, when forty years of
age,[560] falling asleep on the 27th of April, 1546, remained plunged
in sleep for fourteen days and fourteen nights, without any preceding
malady. He could not persuade himself that he had slept more than one
night, and was convinced of his long sleep only by being shown a
building begun some days before this drowsy attack, and which he
beheld completed on his awaking. It is said that in the time of Pope
Gregory II. a scholar of Lubec slept for seven years consecutively.
Lilius Giraldus[561] relates that a peasant slept through the whole
autumn and winter.
Footnotes:
[558] Duns Scotus.
[559] This fact is more than doubtful. Bzovius, for having advanced it
upon the authority of some others, was called _Bovius_, that is,
"Great Ox." It is, therefore, better to stand by what Moreri thought
of it. "The enemies of Scotus have proclaimed," says he, "that, having
died of apoplexy, he was at first interred, and, some time after this
accident having elapsed, he died in despair, gnawing his hands. But
this calumny, which was authorized by Paulus Jovius, Latomias, and
Bzovius, has been so well refuted that no one now will give credit to
it."
[560] Larrey, in Henri VIII. Roi d'Angleterre.
[561] Lilius Giraldus, Hist. Poet. Dialog.
CHAPTER XLI.
VARIOUS INSTANCES OF PERSONS BEING BURIED ALIVE.
Plutarch relates that a man who fell from a great height, having
pitched upon his neck, was believed to be dead, without there being
the appearance of any hurt. As they were carrying him to be buried,
the day after, he all at once recovered his strength and his senses.
Asclepiades[562] meeting a great funeral train of a person they were
taking to be interred, obtained permission to look at and to touch the
dead man; he found some signs of life in him, and by means of proper
remedies, he immediately recalled him to life, and restored him in
sound health to his parents and relations.
There are several instances of persons who after being interred came
to themselves, and lived a long time in perfect health. They relate in
particular,[563] that a woman of Orleans was buried in a cemetery,
with a ring on her finger, which they had not been able to draw off
her finger when she was placed in her coffin. The following night, a
domestic, attracted by the hope of gain, broke open the coffin, and as
he could not tear the ring off her finger, was about to cut her finger
off, when she uttered a loud shriek. The servant fled. The woman
disengaged herself as she could from her winding sheet, returned home,
and survived her husband.
M. Bernard, a principal surgeon at Paris, attests that, being with his
father at the parish of Real, they took from the tombs, living and
breathing, a monk of the order of St. Francis, who had been shut up in
it three or four days, and who had gnawed his hands around the bands
which confined them. But he died almost the moment that he was in the
air.
Several persons have made mention of that wife of a counselor of
Cologne,[564] who having been interred with a valuable ring on her
finger, in 1571, the grave-digger opened the grave the succeeding
night to steal the ring. But the good lady caught hold of him, and
forced him to take her out of the coffin. He, however, disengaged
himself from her hands, and fled. The resuscitated lady went and
rapped at the door of her house. At first they thought it was a
phantom, and left her a long time at the door, waiting anxiously to be
let in; but at last they opened it for her. They warmed her, and she
recovered her health perfectly, and had after that three sons, who all
belonged to the church. This event is represented on her sepulchre in
a picture, or painting, in which the story is represented, and
moreover, written, in German verses.
It is added that the lady, in order to convince those of the house
that it was herself, told the footman who came to the door that the
horses had gone up to the hay-loft, which was true; and there are
still to be seen at the windows of the _grenier_ of that house,
horses' heads, carved in wood, as a sign of the truth of the matter.
Francois de Civile, a Norman gentleman,[565] was the captain of a
hundred men in the city of Rouen, when it was besieged by Charles IX.,
and he was then six-and-twenty. He was wounded to death at the end of
an assault; and having fallen into the moat, some pioneers placed him
in a grave with some other bodies, and covered them over with a little
earth. He remained there from eleven in the morning till half-past six
in the evening, when his servant went to disinter him. This domestic,
having remarked some signs of life, put him in a bed, where he
remained for five days and nights, without speaking, or giving any
other sign of feeling, but as burning hot with fever as he had been
cold in the grave. The city having been taken by storm, the servants
of an officer of the victorious army, who was to lodge in the house
wherein was Civile, threw the latter upon a paillasse in a back room,
whence his brother's enemies tossed him out of the window upon a
dunghill, where he remained for more than seventy-two hours in his
shirt. At the end of that time, one of his relations, surprised to
find him still alive, sent him to a league's distance from Rouen,[566]
where he was attended to, and at last was perfectly cured.
During a great plague, which attacked the city of Dijon in 1558, a
lady, named Nicole Lentillet, being reputed dead of the epidemic, was
thrown into a great pit, wherein they buried the dead. The day after
her interment, in the morning, she came to herself again, and made
vain efforts to get out, but her weakness, and the weight of the other
bodies with which she was covered, prevented her doing so. She
remained in this horrible situation for four days, when the burial men
drew her out, and carried her back to her house, where she perfectly
recovered her health.
A young lady of Augsburg,[567] having fallen into a swoon, or trance,
her body was placed under a deep vault, without being covered with
earth; but the entrance to this subterranean vault was closely walled
up. Some years after that time, some one of the same family died. The
vault was opened, and the body of the young lady was found at the very
entrance, without any fingers to her right hand, which she had
devoured in despair.
On the 25th of July, 1688, there died at Metz a hair-dresser's boy, of
an apoplectic fit, in the evening, after supper.
On the 28th of the same month, he was heard to moan again several
times. They took him out of his grave, and he was attended by doctors
and surgeons. The physician maintained, after he had been opened, that
the young man had not been dead two hours. This is extracted from the
manuscript of a bourgeois of Metz, who was cotemporary with him.
Footnotes:
[562] Cels. lib. ii. c. 6.
[563] Le P. Le Clerc, _ci devant_ attorney of the boarders of the
college of Louis le Grand.
[564] Misson, Voyage d'Italie, tom. i. Lettre 5. Goulart, des
Histoires admirables; et memorables printed at Geneva, in 1678.
[565] Misson, Voyage, tom. iii.
[566] Goulart, loca cetata.
[567] M. Graffe, Epit. a Guil. Frabi, Centurie 2, observ chirurg. 516.
CHAPTER XLII.
INSTANCES OF DROWNED PERSONS RECOVERING THEIR HEALTH.
Here follow some instances of drowned persons[568] who came to
themselves several days after they were believed to be dead. Peclin
relates the story of a gardener of Troninghalm, in Sweden, who was
still alive, and sixty-five years of age, when the author wrote. This
man being on the ice to assist another man who had fallen into the
water, the ice broke under him, and he sunk under water to the depth
of eight ells, his feet sticking in the mud: he remained sixteen hours
before they drew him out of the water. In this condition, he lost all
sense, except that he thought he heard the bells ringing at Stockholm.
He felt the water, which entered his body, not by his mouth, but his
ears. After having sought for him during sixteen hours, they caught
hold of his head with a hook, and drew him out of the water; they
placed him between sheets, put him near the fire, rubbed him, shook
him, and at last brought him to himself. The king and court would see
him and hear his story, and gave him a pension.
A woman of the same country, after having been three days in the
water, was also revived by the same means as the gardener. Another
person named Janas, having drowned himself at seventeen years of age,
was taken out of the water seven weeks after; they warmed him, and
brought him back to life.
M. D'Egly, of the Royal Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres, at
Paris, relates, that a Swiss, an expert diver, having plunged down
into one of the hollows in the bed of the river, where he hoped to
find fine fish, remained there about nine hours; they drew him out of
the water after having hurt him in several places with their hooks. M.
D'Egly, seeing that the water bubbled strongly from his mouth,
maintained that he was not dead. They made him throw up as much water
as he could for three quarters of an hour, wrapped him up in hot
linen, put him to bed, bled him, and saved him.
Some have been recovered after being seven weeks in the water, others
after a less time; for instance, Gocellin, a nephew of the Archbishop
of Cologne, having fallen into the Rhine, remained under water for
fifteen hours before they could find him again; at the end of that
time, they carried him to the tomb of St. Suitbert, and he recovered
his health.[569]
The same St. Suitbert resuscitated also another young man who had been
drowned several hours. But the author who relates these miracles is of
no great authority.
Several instances are related of drowned persons who have remained
under water for several days, and at last recovered and enjoyed good
health. In the second part of the dissertation on the uncertainty of
the signs of death, by M. Bruhier, physician, printed at Paris in
1744, pp. 102, 103, &c., it is shown that they have seen some who have
been under water forty-eight hours, others during three days, and
during eight days. He adds to this the example of the insect
chrysalis, which passes all the winter without giving any signs of
life, and the aquatic insects which remain all the winter motionless
in the mud; which also happens to the frogs and toads; ants even,
against the common opinion, are during the winter in a death-like
state, which ceases only on the return of spring. Swallows, in the
northern countries, bury themselves in heaps, in the lakes and ponds,
in rivers even, in the sea, in the sand, in the holes of walls, and
the hollows of trees, or at the bottom of caverns; whilst other kinds
of swallows cross the sea to find warmer and more temperate climes.
What has just been said of swallows being found at the bottom of
lakes, ponds, and rivers, is commonly remarked in Silesia, Poland,
Bohemia, and Moravia. Sometimes even storks are fished up as if dead,
having their beaks fixed in the anus of one another; many of these
have been seen in the environs of Geneva, and even in the environs of
Metz, in the year 1467.
To these may be added quails and herons. Sparrows and cuckoos have
been found during the winter in hollow trees, torpid and without the
least appearance of life, which being warmed recovered themselves and
took flight. We know that hedgehogs, marmots, sloths, and serpents,
live underground without breathing, and the circulation of the blood
is very feeble in them during all the winter. It is even said that
bears sleep during almost all that period.
Footnotes:
[568] Guill. Derham, Extrait. Peclin, c. x. de aere et alim. def.
[569] Vita S. Suitberti, apud Surium, I. Martii.
CHAPTER XLIII.
INSTANCES OF WOMEN WHO HAVE BEEN BELIEVED TO BE DEAD, AND WHO HAVE
COME TO LIFE AGAIN.
Very clever physicians assert[570] that in cases of the suffocation of
the womb, a woman may live thirty days without breathing. I know that
a very excellent woman was six-and-thirty hours without giving any
sign of life. Everybody thought she was dead, and they wanted to
enshroud her, but her husband always opposed it. At the end of
thirty-six hours she came to herself, and has lived a long time since
then. She told them that she heard very well all that was said about
her, and knew that they wanted to lay her out; but her torpor was such
that she could not surmount it, and she should have let them do
whatever they pleased without the least resistance.
This applies to what St. Augustine says of the priest Pretextas, who
in his trances and swoons heard, as if from afar off, what was said,
and nevertheless would have let himself be burned, and his flesh cut,
without opposing it or feeling it.
Corneille le Bruyn,[571] in his Voyages, relates that he saw at
Damietta, in Egypt, a Turk whom they called the Dead Child, because
when his mother was with child with him, she fell ill, and as they
believed she was dead, they buried her pretty quickly, according to
the custom of the country, where they let the dead remain but a very
short time unburied, above all during the plague. She was put into a
vault which this Turk had for the sepulture of his family.
Towards evening, some hours after the interment of this woman, it
entered the mind of the Turk her husband, that the child she bore
might still be alive; he then had the vault opened, and found that his
wife had delivered herself, and that his child was alive, but the
mother was dead. Some people said that the child had been heard to
cry, and that it was on receiving intimation of this that the father
had the tomb opened. This man, surnamed the Dead Child, was still
living in 1677. Le Bruyn thinks that the woman was dead when her child
was born; but being dead, it would not have been possible for her to
bring him into the world. It must be remembered, that in Egypt, where
this happened, the women have an extraordinary facility of delivery,
as both ancients and moderns bear witness, and that this woman was
simply shut up in a vault, without being covered with earth.
A woman at Strasburg, who was with child, being reputed to be dead,
was buried in a subterranean vault;[572] at the end of some time, this
vault having been opened for another body to be placed in it, the
woman was found out of the coffin lying on the ground, and having
between her hands a child, of which she had delivered herself, and
whose arm she held in her mouth, as if she would fain eat it.
Another woman, a Spaniard,[573] the wife of Francisco Aravallos, of
Suasso, being dead, or believed to be so, in the last months of her
pregnancy, was put in the ground; her husband, whom they had sent for
from the country, whither he had gone on business, would see his wife
at the church, and had her exhumed: hardly had they opened the coffin,
when they heard the cry of a child, who was making efforts to leave
the bosom of its mother.
He was taken away alive and lived a long time, being known by the name
of the Child of the Earth; and since then he was lieutenant-general of
the town of Herez, on the frontier of Spain. These instances might be
multiplied to infinity, of persons buried alive, and of others who
have recovered as they were being carried to the grave, and others who
have been taken out of it by fortuitous circumstances. Upon this
subject you may consult the new work of Messrs. Vinslow and Bruyer,
and those authors who have expressly treated on this subject.[574]
These gentlemen, the doctors, derive from thence a very wise and very
judicious conclusion, which is, that people should never be buried
without the absolute certainty of their being dead, above all in times
of pestilence, and in certain maladies in which those who are
suffering under them lose on a sudden both sense and motion.
Footnotes:
[570] Le Clerc, Hist. de la Medecine.
[571] Corneille le Bruyn, tom. i. p. 579.
[572] Cronstand, Philos. veter. restit.
[573] Gaspard Reies, Campus Elysias jucund.
[574] Page 167, des additions de M. Bruhier.
CHAPTER XLIV.
CAN THESE INSTANCES BE APPLIED TO THE HUNGARIAN GHOSTS?
Some advantage of these instances and these arguments may be derived
in favor of vampirism, by saying that the ghosts of Hungary, Moravia,
and Poland are not really dead, that they continue to live in their
graves, although without motion and without respiration; the blood
which is found in them being fine and red, the flexibility of their
limbs, the cries which they utter when their heart is pierced or their
head being cut off, all prove that they still exist.
That is not the principal difficulty which arrests my judgment; it is
to know how they come out of their graves without any appearance of
the earth having been removed, and how they have replaced it as it
was; how they appear dressed in their clothes, go and come, and eat.
If it is so, why do they return to their graves? why do they not
remain amongst the living? why do they suck the blood of their
relations? Why do they haunt and fatigue persons who ought to be dear
to them, and who have done nothing to offend them? If all that is only
imagination on the part of those who are molested, whence comes it
that these vampires are found in their graves in an uncorrupted state,
full of blood, supple, and pliable; that their feet are found to be in
a muddy condition the day after they have run about and frightened the
neighbors, and that nothing similar is remarked in the other corpses
interred at the same time and in the same cemetery. Whence does it
happen that they neither come back nor infest the place any more when
they are burned or impaled? Would it be again the imagination of the
living and their prejudices which reassure them after these
executions? Whence comes it that these scenes recur so frequently in
those countries, that the people are not cured of their prejudices,
and daily experience, instead of destroying, only augments and
strengthens them?
CHAPTER XLV.
DEAD PERSONS WHO CHEW IN THEIR GRAVES LIKE HOGS, AND DEVOUR THEIR OWN
FLESH.
It is an opinion widely spread in Germany, that certain dead persons
chew in their graves, and devour whatever may be close to them; that
they are even heard to eat like pigs, with a certain low cry, and as
if growling and grunting.
A German author,[575] named Michael Rauff, has composed a work,
entitled _De Masticatione Mortuorum in Tumulis_--"Of the Dead who
Masticate in their Graves." He sets it down as a proved and sure
thing, that there are certain dead persons who have devoured the linen
and everything that was within reach of their mouth, and even their
own flesh, in their graves. He remarks,[576] that in some parts of
Germany, to prevent the dead from masticating, they place a motte of
earth under their chin in the coffin; elsewhere they place a little
piece of money and a stone in their mouth; elsewhere they tie a
handkerchief tightly round their throat. The author cites some German
writers who make mention of this ridiculous custom; he quotes several
others who speak of dead people that have devoured their own flesh in
their sepulchre. This work was printed at Leipsic in 1728. It speaks
of an author named Philip Rehrius, who printed in 1679 a treatise with
the same title--_De Masticatione Mortuorum_.
He might have added to it the circumstance of Henry Count of
Salm,[577] who, being supposed to be dead, was interred alive; they
heard during the night, in the church of the Abbey of Haute-Seille,
where he was buried, loud cries; and the next day, on his tomb being
opened, they found him turned upon his face, whilst in fact he had
been buried lying upon his back.
Some years ago, at Bar-le-Duc, a man was buried in the cemetery, and a
noise was heard in his grave; the next day they disinterred him, and
found that he had gnawed the flesh of his arms; and this we learned
from ocular witnesses. This man had drunk brandy, and had been buried
as dead. Rauff speaks of a woman of Bohemia,[578] who, in 1355, had
eaten in her grave half her shroud. In the time of Luther, a man who
was dead and buried, and a woman the same, gnawed their own entrails.
Another dead man in Moravia ate the linen clothes of a woman who was
buried next to him.
All that is very possible, but that those who are really dead move
their jaws, and amuse themselves with masticating whatever may be near
them, is a childish fancy--like what the ancient Romans said of their
_Manducus_, which was a grotesque figure of a man with an enormous
mouth, and teeth proportioned thereto, which they caused to move by
springs, and grind his teeth together, as if this figure had wanted to
eat. They frightened children with them, and threatened them with the
Manducus.[579]
Some remains of this old custom may be seen in certain processions,
where they carry a sort of serpent, which at intervals opens and shuts
a vast jaw, armed with teeth, into which they throw cakes, as if to
gorge it, or satisfy its appetite.
Footnotes:
[575] Mich. Rauff, altera Dissert. Art. lvii. pp. 98, 99, et Art. lix.
p. 100.
[576] De Nummis in Ore Defunctorum repertis, Art. ix. a Beyermuller,
&c.
[577] Richer, Senon, tom. iii. Spicileg. Ducherii, p. 392.
[578] Rauff, Art. xlii. p. 43.
[579]
"Tandemque venit ad pulpita nostrum
Exodium, cum personae pallentis hiatum
In gremio matris fastidit rusticus infans."
_Juvenal_, Sat. iii. 174.
CHAPTER XLVI.
SINGULAR INSTANCE OF A HUNGARIAN GHOST.
The most remarkable instance cited by Rauff[580] is that of one Peter
Plogojovitz, who had been buried ten weeks in a village of Hungary,
called Kisolova. This man appeared by night to some of the inhabitants
of the village while they were asleep, and grasped their throat so
tightly that in four-and-twenty hours it caused their death. Nine
persons, young and old, perished thus in the course of eight days.
The widow of the same Plogojovitz declared that her husband since his
death had come and asked her for his shoes, which frightened her so
much that she left Kisolova to retire to some other spot.
From these circumstances the inhabitants of the village determined
upon disinterring the body of Plogojovitz and burning it, to deliver
themselves from these visitations. They applied to the emperor's
officer, who commanded in the territory of Gradiska, in Hungary, and
even to the cure of the same place, for permission to exhume the body
of Peter Plogojovitz. The officer and the cure made much demur in
granting this permission, but the peasants declared that if they were
refused permission to disinter the body of this man, whom they had no
doubt was a true vampire (for so they called these revived corpses),
they should be obliged to forsake the village, and go where they
could.
The emperor's officer, who wrote this account, seeing he could hinder
them neither by threats nor promises, went with the cure of Gradiska
to the village of Kisolova, and having caused Peter Plogojovitz to be
exhumed, they found that his body exhaled no bad smell; that he looked
as when alive, except the tip of the nose; that his hair and beard had
grown, and instead of his nails, which had fallen off, new ones had
come; that under his upper skin, which appeared whitish, there
appeared a new one, which looked healthy, and of a natural color; his
feet and hands were as whole as could be desired in a living man. They
remarked also in his mouth some fresh blood, which these people
believed that this vampire had sucked from the men whose death he had
occasioned.
The emperor's officer and the cure having diligently examined all
these things, and the people who were present feeling their
indignation awakened anew, and being more fully persuaded that he was
the true cause of the death of their compatriots, ran directly for a
sharp-pointed stake, which they thrust into his breast, whence there
issued a quantity of fresh and crimson blood, and also from the nose
and mouth; something also proceeded from that part of his body which
decency does not allow us to mention. After this the peasants placed
the body on a pile of wood and saw it reduced to ashes.
M. Rauff,[581] from whom we have these particulars, cites several
authors who have written on the same subject, and have related
instances of dead people who have eaten in their tombs. He cites
particularly Gabril Rzaczincki in his history of the Natural
Curiosities of the Kingdom of Poland, printed at Sandomic in 1721.
Footnotes:
[580] Rauff, Art. xii. p. 15.
[581] Rauff, Art. xxi. p. 14.
CHAPTER XLVII.
REASONINGS ON THIS MATTER.
Those authors have reasoned a great deal on these events. 1. Some have
believed them to be miraculous. 2. Others have looked upon them simply
as the effect of a heated imagination, or a sort of prepossession. 3.
Others again have believed that there was nothing in all that but what
was very simple and very natural, these persons not being dead, and
acting naturally upon other bodies. 4. Others have asserted[582] that
it was the work of the devil himself; amongst these, some have
advanced the opinion that there were certain benign demons, differing
from those who are malevolent and hostile to mankind, to which (benign
demons) they have attributed playful and harmless operations, in
contradistinction to those bad demons who inspire the minds of men
with crime and sin, ill use them, kill them, and occasion them an
infinity of evils. But what greater evils can one have to fear from
veritable demons and the most malignant spirits, than those which the
ghouls of Hungary cause the persons whose blood they suck, and thus
cause to die? 5. Others will have it that it is not the dead who eat
their own flesh or clothes, but serpents, rats, moles, ferrets, or
other voracious animals, or even what the peasants call
_striges_,[583] which are birds that devour animals and men, and suck
their blood. Some have said that these instances are principally
remarked in women, and, above all, in a time of pestilence; but there
are instances of ghouls of both sexes, and principally of men;
although those who die of plague, poison, hydrophobia, drunkenness,
and any epidemical malady, are more apt to return, apparently because
their blood coagulates with more difficulty; and sometimes some are
buried who are not quite dead, on account of the danger there is in
leaving them long without sepulture, from fear of the infection they
would cause.
It is added that these vampires are known only to certain countries,
as Hungary, Moravia, and Silesia, where those maladies are more
common, and where the people, being badly fed, are subject to certain
disorders caused or occasioned by the climate and the food, and
augmented by prejudice, fancy, and fright, capable of producing or of
increasing the most dangerous maladies, as daily experience proves too
well. As to what some have asserted that the dead have been heard to
eat and chew like pigs in their graves, it is manifestly fabulous, and
such an idea can have its foundation only in ridiculous prepossessions
of the mind.
Footnotes:
[582] Rudiga, Physio. Dur. lib. i. c. 4. Theophrast. Paracels. Georg.
Agricola, de Anim. Subterran. p. 76.
[583] Ovid, lib. vi. Vide Debrio, Disquisit. Magic. lib. i. p. 6, and
lib. iii. p. 355.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
ARE THE VAMPIRES OR REVENANS REALLY DEAD?
The opinion of those who hold that all that is related of vampires is
the effect of imagination, fascination, or of that disorder which the
Greeks term _phrenesis_ or _coribantism_, and who pretend by that
means to explain all the phenomena of vampirism, will never persuade
us that these maladies of the brain can produce such real effects as
those we have just recounted. It is impossible that on a sudden,
several persons should believe they see a thing which is not there,
and that they should die in so short a time of a disorder purely
imaginary. And who has revealed to them that such a vampire is
undecayed in his grave, that he is full of blood, that he in some
measure lives there after his death? Is there not to be found in the
nation one sensible man who is exempt from this fancy, or who has
soared above the effects of this fascination, these sympathies and
antipathies--this natural magic? And besides, who can explain to us
clearly and distinctly what these grand terms signify, and the manner
of these operations so occult and so mysterious? It is trying to
explain a thing which is obscure and doubtful, by another still more
uncertain and incomprehensible.
If these persons believe nothing of all that is related of the
apparition, the return, and the actions of vampires, they lose their
time very uselessly in proposing systems and forming arguments to
explain what exists only in the imagination of certain prejudiced
persons struck with an idea; but, if all that is related, or at least
a part, is true, these systems and these arguments will not easily
satisfy those minds which desire proofs far more weighty than those.
Let us see, then, if the system which asserts that these vampires are
not really dead is well founded. It is certain that death consists in
the separation of the soul from the body, and that neither the one
nor the other perishes, nor is annihilated by death; that the soul is
immortal, and that the body destitute of its soul, still remains
entire, and becomes only in part corrupt, sometimes in a few days, and
sometimes in a longer space of time; sometimes even it remains
uncorrupted during many years or even ages, either by reason of a good
constitution, as in Hector[584] and Alexander the Great, whose bodies
remained several days undecayed;[585] or by means of the art of
embalming; or lastly, owing to the nature of the earth in which they
are interred, which has the power of drying up the radical humidity
and the principles of corruption. I do not stop to prove all these
things, which besides are very well known.
Sometimes the body, without being dead and forsaken by its reasonable
soul, remains as if dead and motionless, or at least with so slow a
motion and such feeble respiration, that it is almost imperceptible,
as it happens in faintings, swoons, in certain disorders very common
amongst women, in trances--as we remarked in the case of Pretextat,
priest of Calame; we have also reported more than one instance,
considered dead and buried as such; I may add that of the Abbe Salin,
prior of St. Christopher,[586] who being in his coffin, and about to
be interred, was resuscitated by some of his friends, who made him
swallow a glass of champagne.
Several instances of the same kind are related.[587] In the "Causes
Celebres," they make mention of a girl who became _enceinte_ during a
long swoon; we have already noticed this. Pliny cites[588] a great
number of instances of persons who have been thought dead, and who
have come to life again, and lived for a long time. He mentions a
young man, who having fallen asleep in a cavern, remained there forty
years without waking. Our historians[589] speak of the seven sleepers,
who slept for 150 years, from the year of Christ 253 to 403. It is
said that the philosopher Epimenides slept in a cavern during
fifty-seven years, or according to others, forty-seven, or only forty
years; for the ancients do not agree concerning the number of years;
they even affirm, that this philosopher had the power to detach his
soul from his body, and recall it when he pleased. The same thing is
related of Aristaeus of Proconnesus. I am willing to allow that that is
fabulous; but we cannot gainsay the truth of several other stories of
persons who have come to life again, after having appeared dead for
three, four, five, six, and seven days. Pliny acknowledges that there
are several instances of dead people who have appeared after they were
interred; but he will not mention them more particularly, because, he
says, he relates only natural things and not prodigies--"Post
sepulturam quoque visorum exempla sunt, nisi quod naturae opera non
prodigia sectamur." We believe that Enoch and Elijah are still living.
Several have thought that St. John the Evangelist was not dead,[590]
but that he is still alive in his tomb.
Plato and St. Clement of Alexandria[591] relate, that the son of
Zoroaster was resuscitated twelve days after his (supposed) death, and
when his body had been laid upon the funeral pyre. Phlegon says,[592]
that a Syrian soldier in the army of Antiochus, after having been
killed at Thermopylae, appeared in open day in the Roman camp, and
spoke to several. And Plutarch relates,[593] that a man named
Thespesius, who had fallen from the roof of a house, came to himself
the third day after he died (or seemed to die) of his fall.
St. Paul, writing to the Corinthians,[594] seems to suppose that
sometimes the soul transported itself without the body, to repair to
the spot where it is in mind or thought; for instance, he says, that
he has been transported to the third heaven; but he adds that he knows
not whether in the body, or only in spirit--"Sive in corpora, sive
extra corpus, nescio, Deus scit." We have already cited St.
Augustine,[595] who mentions a priest of Calamus, named Pretextat,
who, at the sound of the voices of some persons who lamented their
sins, fell into such an ecstasy of delight, that he no longer breathed
or felt anything; and they might have cut and burnt his flesh without
his perceiving it; his soul was absent, or really so occupied with
these lamentations, that he was insensible to pain. In swoons and
syncope, the soul no longer performs her ordinary functions. She is
nevertheless in the body, and continues to animate it, but she
perceives not her own action.
A cure of the Diocese of Constance, named Bayer, writes me word that
in 1728, having been appointed to the cure of Rutheim, he was
disturbed a month afterwards by a spectre, or an evil genius, in the
form of a peasant, badly made, and ill-dressed, very ill-looking, and
stinking insupportably, who came and knocked at the door in an
insolent manner, and having entered his study told him that he had
been sent by an official of the Prince of Constance, his bishop, upon
a certain commission which was found to be absolutely false. He then
asked for something to eat, and they placed before him meat, bread,
and wine. He took up the meat with both hands, and devoured it bones
and all, saying, "See how I eat both flesh and bone--do the same."
Then he took up the wine-cup, and swallowed it at a draught, asking
for another, which he drank off in the same fashion. After that he
withdrew, without bidding the cure good-bye; and the servant who
showed him to the door having asked his name, he replied, "I was born
at Rutsingen, and my name is George Raulin," which was false. As he
was going down stairs he said to the cure in German, in a menacing
tone, "I will show you who I am."
He passed all the rest of the day in the village, showing himself to
everybody. Towards midnight he returned to the cure's door, crying out
three times in a terrible voice, "Monsieur Bayer!" and adding, "I will
let you know who I am." In fact, during three years he returned every
day towards four o'clock in the afternoon, and every night till dawn
of day. He appeared in different forms, sometimes like a water-dog,
sometimes as a lion, or some other terrible animal; sometimes in the
shape of a man, or a girl, when the cure was at table, or in bed,
enticing him to lasciviousness. Sometimes he made an uproar in the
house, like a cooper putting hoops on his casks; then again you might
have thought he wanted to throw the house down by the noise he made in
it. To have witnesses to all this, the cure often sent for the beadle
and other personages of the village to bear testimony to it. The
spectre emitted, wherever he showed himself, an insupportable stench.
At last the cure had recourse to exorcisms, but they produced no
effect. And as they despaired almost of being delivered from these
vexations, he was advised, at the end of the third year, to provide
himself with a holy branch on Palm Sunday, and also with a sword
sprinkled with holy water, and to make use of it against the spectre.
He did so once or twice, and from that time he was no more molested.
This is attested by a Capuchin monk, witness of the greater part of
these things, the 29th of August, 1749.
I will not guarantee the truth of all these circumstances; the
judicious reader will make what induction he pleases from them. If
they are true, here is a real ghost, who eats, drinks, and speaks, and
gives tokens of his presence for three whole years, without any
appearance of religion. Here follows another instance of a ghost who
manifested himself by actions alone.
They write me word from Constance, the 8th of August, 1748, that
towards the end of the year 1746 sighs were heard, which seemed to
proceed from the corner of the printing-office of the Sieur Lahart,
one of the common council men of the city of Constance. The printers
only laughed at it at first, but in the following year, 1747, in the
beginning of January, they heard more noise than before. There was a
hard knocking near the same corner whence they had at first heard some
sighs; things went so far that the printers received slaps, and their
hats were thrown on the ground. They had recourse to the Capuchins,
who came with the books proper for exorcising the spirit. The exorcism
completed they returned home, and the noise ceased for three days.
At the end of that time the noise recommenced more violently than
before; the spirit threw the characters for printing, whether letters
or figures, against the windows. They sent out of the city for a
famous exorcist, who exorcised the spirit for a week. One day the
spirit boxed the ears of a lad; and again the letters, &c., were
thrown against the window-panes. The foreign exorcist, not having been
able to effect anything by his exorcisms, returned to his own home.
The spirit went on as usual, giving slaps in the face to one, and
throwing stones and other things at another, so that the compositors
were obliged to leave that corner of the printing-office and place
themselves in the middle of the room, but they were not the quieter
for that.
They then sent for other exorcists, one of whom had a particle of the
true cross, which he placed upon the table. The spirit did not,
however, cease disturbing as usual the workmen belonging to the
printing-office; and the Capuchin brother who accompanied the exorcist
received such buffets that they were both obliged to withdraw to their
convent. Then came others, who, having mixed a quantity of sand and
ashes in a bucket of water, blessed the water, and sprinkled with it
every part of the printing-office. They also scattered the sand and
ashes all over the room upon the paved floor; and being provided with
swords, the whole party began to strike at random right and left in
every part of the room, to see if they could hit the ghost, and to
observe if he left any foot-marks upon the sand or ashes which covered
the floor. They perceived at last that he had perched himself on the
top of the stove or furnace, and they remarked on the angles of it
marks of his feet and hands impressed on the sand and ashes they had
blessed.
They succeeded in ousting him from there, and they very soon perceived
that he had slid under the table, and left marks of his hands and feet
on the pavement. The dust raised by all this movement in the office
caused them to disperse, and they discontinued the pursuit. But the
principal exorcist having taken out a screw from the angle where they
had first heard the noise, found in a hole in the wall some feathers,
three bones wrapped up in a dirty piece of linen, some bits of glass,
and a hair-pin, or bodkin. He blessed a fire which they lighted, and
had all that thrown into it. But this monk had hardly reached his
convent when one of the printers came to tell him that the bodkin had
come out of the flames three times of itself, and that a boy who was
holding a pair of tongs, and who put this bodkin in the fire again,
had been violently struck in the face. The rest of the things which
had been found having been brought to the Capuchin convent, they were
burnt without further resistance; but the lad who had carried them
there saw a naked woman in the public market-place, and that and the
following days groans were heard in the market-place of Constance.
Some days after this the printer's house was again infested in this
manner, the ghost giving slaps, throwing stones, and molesting the
domestics in divers ways. The Sieur Lahart, the master of the house,
received a great wound in his head, two boys who slept in the same bed
were thrown on the ground, so that the house was entirely forsaken
during the night. One Sunday a servant girl carrying away some linen
from the house had stones thrown at her, and another time two boys
were thrown down from a ladder.
There was in the city of Constance an executioner who passed for a
sorcerer. The monk who writes to me suspected him of having some part
in this game; he began to exhort those who sat up with him in the
house, to put their confidence in God, and to be strong in faith. He
gave them to understand that the executioner was likely to be of the
party. They passed the night thus in the house, and about ten o'clock
in the evening, one of the companions of the exorcist threw himself at
his feet in tears, and revealed to him, that that same night he and
one of his companions had been sent to consult the executioner in
Turgau, and that by order of the Sieur Lahart, printer, in whose house
all this took place. This avowal strangely surprised the good father,
and he declared that he would not continue to exorcise, if they did
not assure him that they had not spoken to the executioners to put an
end to the haunting. They protested that they had not spoken to them
at all. The Capuchin father had everything picked up that was found
about the house, wrapped up in packets, and had them carried to his
convent.
The following night, two domestics tried to pass the night in the
house, but they were thrown out of their beds, and constrained to go
and sleep elsewhere. After this, they sent for a peasant of the
village of Annanstorf, who was considered a good exorcist. He passed
the night in the haunted house, drinking, singing, and shouting. He
received slaps and blows from a stick, and was obliged to own that he
could not prevail against the spirit.
The widow of an executioner presented herself then to perform the
exorcisms; she began by using fumigations in all parts of the
dwelling, to drive away the evil spirits. But before she had finished
these fumigations, seeing that the master was struck in the face and
on his body by the spirit, she ran away from the house, without asking
for her pay.
They next called in the Cure of Valburg, who passed for a clever
exorcist. He came with four other secular cures, and continued the
exorcisms for three days, without any success. He withdrew to his
parish, imputing the inutility of his prayers to the want of faith of
those who were present.
During this time, one of the four priests was struck with a knife,
then with a fork, but he was not hurt. The son of Sieur Lahart, master
of the dwelling, received upon his jaw a blow from a pascal taper,
which did him no harm. All that being of no service, they sent for the
executioners of the neighborhood. Two of the persons who went to fetch
them were well thrashed and pelted with stones. Another had his thigh
so tightly pressed that he felt the pain for a long time. The
executioners carefully collected all the packets they found wrapped up
about the house, and put others in their room; but the spirit took
them up and threw them into the market-place. After this, the
executioners persuaded the Sieur Lahart that he might boldly return
with his people to the house; he did so, but the first night, when
they were at supper, one of his workmen named Solomon was wounded on
the foot, and then followed a great effusion of blood. They then sent
again for the executioner, who appeared much surprised that the house
was not yet entirely freed, but at that moment he was himself attacked
by a shower of stones, boxes on the ears, and other blows, which
constrained him to run away quickly.
Some heretics in the neighborhood, being informed of all these things,
came one day to the bookseller's shop, and upon attempting to read in
a Catholic Bible which was there, were well boxed and beaten; but
having taken up a Calvinist Bible, they received no harm. Two men of
Constance having entered the bookseller's shop from sheer curiosity,
one of them was immediately thrown down upon the ground, and the other
ran away as fast as he could. Another person, who had come in the same
way from curiosity, was punished for his presumption, by having a
quantity of water thrown upon him. A young girl of Ausburg, a relation
of the Sieur Lahart, printer, was chased away with violent blows, and
pursued even to the neighboring house, where she entered.
At last the hauntings ceased, on the 8th of February. On that day the
spectre opened the shop door, went in, deranged a few articles, went
out, shut the door, and from that time nothing more was seen or heard
of it.
Footnotes:
[584] Homer de Hectore, Iliad XXIV. 411.
[585] Plutarch de Alexandro in ejus Vita.
[586] About the year 1680; he died after the year 1694.
[587] Causes Celebres, tom. viii. p. 585.
[588] Plin. Hist. Natur. lib. vii. c. 52.
[589] St. Gregor. Turon. de Gloria Martyr. c. 95.
[590] I have touched upon this matter in a particular Dissertation at
the Head of the Gospel of St. John.
[591] Plato, de Republ. lib. x.; Clemens Alexandr. lib. v. Stromat.
[592] Phleg. de Mirabilis, c. 3.
[593] Plutarch, de Sera Numinis Vindicta.
[594] 1 Cor. xiii. 2.
[595] Aug. lib. xiv. de Civit. Dei, c. 24.
CHAPTER XLIX.
INSTANCE OF A MAN NAMED CURMA WHO WAS SENT BACK INTO THE WORLD.
St. Augustine relates on this subject,[596] that a countryman named
Curma, who held a small place in the village of Tullia, near Hippoma,
having fallen sick, remained for some days senseless and speechless,
having just respiration enough left to prevent their burying him. At
the end of several days he began to open his eyes, and sent to ask
what they were about in the house of another peasant of the same
place, and like himself named Curma. They brought him back word, that
he had just expired at the very moment that he himself had recovered
and was resuscitated from his deep slumber.
Then he began to talk, and related what he had seen and heard; that it
was not Curma the _curial_,[597] but Curma the blacksmith, who ought
to have been brought; he added, that among those whom he had seen
treated in different ways, he had recognized some of his deceased
acquaintance, and other ecclesiastics, who were still alive, who had
advised him to come to Hippoma, and be baptized by the Bishop
Augustine; that according to their advice he had received baptism in
his vision; that afterwards he had been introduced into Paradise, but
that he had not remained there long, and that they had told him that
if he wished to dwell there, he must be baptized. He replied, "I am
so;" but they told him, that he had been so only in a vision, and that
he must go to Hippoma to receive that sacrament in reality. He came
there as soon as he was cured, and received the rite of baptism with
the other catechumens.
St. Augustine was not informed of this adventure till about two years
afterwards. He sent for Curma, and learnt from his own lips what I
have just related. Now it is certain that Curma saw nothing with his
bodily eyes of all that had been represented to him in his vision;
neither the town of Hippoma, nor Bishop Augustine, nor the
ecclesiastics who counseled him to be baptized, nor the persons living
and deceased whom he saw and recognized. We may believe, then, that
these things are effects of the power of God, who makes use of the
ministry of angels to warn, console, or alarm mortals, according as
his judgment sees best.
St. Augustine inquires afterwards if the dead have any knowledge of
what is passing in this world? He doubts the fact, and shows that at
least they have no knowledge of it by ordinary and natural means. He
remarks, that it is said God took Josiah, for instance, from this
world,[598] that he might now witness the evil which was to befall his
nation; and we say every day, Such-a-one is happy to have left the
world, and so escaped feeling the miseries which have happened to his
family or his country. But if the dead know not what is passing in
this world, how can they be troubled about their bodies being interred
or not? How do the saints hear our prayers? and why do we ask them for
their intercession?
It is then true that the dead can learn what is passing on the earth,
either by the agency of angels, or by that of the dead who arrive in
the other world, or by the revelation of the Spirit of God, who
discovers to them what he judges proper, and what it is expedient that
they should learn. God may also sometimes send men who have long been
dead to living men, as he permitted Moses and Elias to appear at the
Transfiguration of the Lord, and as an infinite number of the saints
have appeared to the living. The invocation of saints has always been
taught and practised in the Church; whence we may infer that they hear
our prayers, are moved by our wants, and can help us by their
intercession. But the way in which all that is done is not distinctly
known; neither reason nor revelation furnishes us with anything
certain, as to the means it pleases God to make use of to reveal our
wants to them.
Lucian, in his dialogue entitled _Philopseudes_, or the "Lover of
Falsehood," relates[599] something similar. A man named Eucrates,
having been taken down to hell, was presented to Pluto, who was angry
with him who presented him, saying--"That man has not yet completed
his course; his turn has not yet come. Bring hither Demilius, for the
thread of his life is finished." Then they sent Eucrates back to this
world, where he announced that Demilius would die soon. Demilius lived
near him, and was already a little ill.
But a moment after they heard the noise of those who were bewailing
his death. Lucian makes a jest of all that was said on this subject,
but he owns that it was the common opinion in his time. He says in the
same part of his work, that a man has been seen to come to life again
after having been looked upon as dead during twenty days.
The story of Curma which we have just told, reminds me of another
very like it, related by Plutarch in his Book on the Soul, of a
certain man named Enarchus,[600] who, being dead, came to life again
soon after, and related that the demons who had taken away his soul
were severely reprimanded by their chief, who told them that they had
made a mistake, and that it was Nicander, and not Enarchus whom they
ought to bring. He sent them for Nicander, who was directly seized
with a fever, and died during the day. Plutarch heard this from
Enarchus himself, who to confirm what he had asserted said to
him--"You will get well certainly, and that very soon, of the illness
which has attacked you."
St. Gregory the Great relates[601] something very similar to what we
have just mentioned. An illustrious man of rank named Stephen well
known to St. Gregory and Peter his interlocutor, was accustomed to
relate to him, that going to Constantinople on business he died there;
and as the doctor who was to embalm him was not in town that day, they
were obliged to leave the body unburied that night. During this
interval Stephen was led before the judge who presided in hell, where
he saw many things which he had heard of, but did not believe. When
they brought him to the judge, the latter refused to receive him,
saying, "It is not that man whom I commanded you to bring here, but
Stephen the blacksmith." In consequence of this order the soul of the
dead man was directly brought back to his body, and at the same
instant Stephen the blacksmith expired; which confirmed all that the
former had said of the other life.
The plague ravaging the city of Rome in the time that Narses was
governor of Italy, a young Livonian, a shepherd by profession, and of
a good and quiet disposition, was taken ill with the plague in the
house of the advocate Valerian, his master. Just when they thought him
all but dead, he suddenly came to himself, and related to them that he
had been transported to heaven, where he had learnt the names of those
who were to die of the plague in his master's house; having named them
to him, he predicted to Valerian that he should survive him; and to
convince him that he was saying the truth, he let him see that he had
acquired by infusion the knowledge of several different languages; in
effect he who had never known how to speak any but the Italian tongue,
spoke Greek to his master, and other languages to those who knew them.
After having lived in this state for two days, he had fits of madness,
and having laid hold of his hands with his teeth, he died a second
time, and was followed by those whom he had named. His master, who
survived, fully justified his prediction. Men and women who fall into
trances remain sometimes for several days without food, respiration,
or pulsation of the heart, as if they were dead. Thauler, a famous
contemplative (philosopher) maintains that a man may remain entranced
during a week, a month, or even a year. We have seen an abbess, who
when in a trance, into which she often fell, lost the use of her
natural functions, and passed thirty days in that state without taking
any nourishment, and without sensation. Instances of these trances are
not rare in the lives of the saints, though they are not all of the
same kind, or duration.
Women in hysterical fits remain likewise many days as if dead,
speechless, inert, pulseless. Galen mentions a woman who was six days
in this state.[602] Some of them pass ten whole days motionless,
senseless, without respiration and without food.
Some persons who have seemed dead and motionless, had however the
sense of hearing very strong, heard all that was said about
themselves, made efforts to speak and show that they were not dead,
but who could neither speak, nor give any signs of life.[603]
I might here add an infinity of trances of saintly personages of both
sexes, who in their delight in God, in prayer remained motionless,
without sensation, almost breathless, and who felt nothing of what was
done to them, or around them.
Footnotes:
[596] August. lib. de Cura pro Mortuis, c. xii. p. 524.
[597] _Curialis_--this word signifies a small employment in a village.
[598] IV. Reg. 18, et. seq.
[599] Lucian, in Phliopseud. p. 830.
[600] Plutarch, de Anima, apud Eusebius de Praep. Evang. lib. ii. c.
18.
[601] Gregor. Dial. lib. iv. c. 36.
[602] See the treatise on the Uncertainty of the Signs of Death, tom.
ii. pp. 404, 407, _et seq._
[603] Ibid. lib. ii. pp. 504, 505, 506, 514.
CHAPTER L.
INSTANCES OF PERSONS WHO COULD FALL INTO A TRANCE WHEN THEY PLEASED,
AND REMAINED PERFECTLY SENSELESS.
Jerome Cardan says[604] that he fell into a trance when he liked; he
owns that he does not know if, like the priest Pretextat, he should
not feel great wounds or hurts, but he did not feel the pain of the
gout, or the pulling him about. He adds, the priest of Calama heard
the voices of those who spoke aloud near him, but as if from a
distance. "For my part," says Cardan, "I hear the voice, though
slightly, and without understanding what is said. And when I wish to
entrance myself, I feel about my heart as it were a separation of the
soul from the rest of my body, and that communicates as if by a little
door with all the machine, principally by the head and brain. Then I
have no sensation except that of being beside myself."
We may report here what is related of the Laplanders,[605] who when
they wish to learn something that is passing at a distance from the
spot where they are, send their demon, or their souls, by means of
certain magic ceremonies, and by the sound of a drum which they beat,
or upon a shield painted in a certain manner; then on a sudden the
Laplander falls into a trance, and remains as if lifeless and
motionless sometimes during four-and-twenty hours. But all this time
some one must remain near him to prevent him from being touched, or
called; even the movement of a fly would wake him, and they say he
would die directly or be carried away by the demon. We have already
mentioned this subject in the Dissertation on Apparitions.
We have also remarked that serpents, worms, flies, snails, marmots,
sloths, &c., remain asleep during the winter, and in blocks of stone
have been found toads, snakes, and oysters alive, which had been
enclosed there for many years, and perhaps for more than a century.
Cardinal de Retz relates in his Memoirs,[606] that being at Minorca,
the governor of the island caused to be drawn up from the bottom of
the sea by main force with cables, whole rocks, which on being broken
with maces, enclosed living oysters, that were served up to him at
table, and were found very good.
On the coasts of Malta, Sardinia, Italy, &c., they find a fish called
the Dactylus, or Date, or Dale, because it resembles the palm-date in
form; this first insinuates itself into the stone by a hole not bigger
than the hole made by a needle. When he has got in he feeds upon the
stone, and grows so big that he cannot get out again, unless the stone
is broken and he is extricated. Then they wash it, clean it, and dress
it for the table. It has the shape of a date, or of a finger; whence
its name of _Dactylus_, which in Greek signifies a finger.
Again, I imagine that in many persons death is caused by the
coagulation of the blood, which freezes and hardens in their veins, as
it happens with those who have eaten hemlock, or who have been bitten
by certain serpents; but there are others whose death is caused by too
great an ebullition of blood, as in painful maladies, and in certain
poisons, and even, they say, in certain kinds of plague, and when
people die a violent death, or have been drowned.
The first mentioned cannot return to life without an evident miracle;
for that purpose the fluidity of the blood must be re-established, and
the peristaltic motion must be restored to the heart. But in the
second kind of death, people can sometimes be restored without a
miracle, by taking away the obstacle which retards or suspends the
palpitation of the heart, as we see in time-pieces, the action of
which is restored by taking away anything foreign to the mechanism, as
a hair, a bit of thread, an atom, some almost imperceptible body which
stops them.
Footnotes:
[604] Hieron. Cardanus, lib. viii. de Varietate Verum, c. 34.
[605] Olaus Magnus, lib. iii. Epitom. Hist. Septent. Perecer de Variis
Divinat. Generib. p. 282.
[606] Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, tom. iii. lib. iv. p. 297.
CHAPTER LI.
APPLICATION OF THE PRECEDING INSTANCES TO VAMPIRES.
Supposing these facts, which I believe to be incontestably true, may
we not imagine that the vampires of Hungary, Silesia, and Moldavia,
are some of those men who have died of maladies which heat the blood,
and who have retained some remains of life in their graves, much like
those animals which we have mentioned, and those birds which plunge
themselves during the winter in the lakes and marshes of Poland, and
in the northern countries? They are without respiration or motion, but
still not destitute of vitality. They resume their motion and activity
when, on the return of spring, the sun warms the waters, or when they
are brought near a moderate fire, or laid in a room of temperate heat;
then they are seen to revive, and perform their ordinary functions,
which had been suspended by the cold.
Thus, vampires in their graves returned to life after a certain time,
and their soul does not forsake them absolutely until after the entire
dissolution of their body, and when the organs of life, being
absolutely broken, corrupted, and deranged, they can no longer by
their agency perform any vital functions. Whence it happens, that the
people of those countries impale them, cut off their heads, burn them,
to deprive their spirit of all hope of animating them again, and of
making use of them to molest the living.
Pliny,[607] mentioning the soul of Hermotimes, of Lazomene, which
absented itself from his body, and recounted various things that had
been done afar off, which the spirit said it had seen, and which, in
fact, could only be known to a person who had been present at them,
says that the enemies of Hermotimes, named Cantandes, burned that
body, which gave hardly any sign of life, and thus deprived the soul
of the means of returning to lodge in its envelop; "donec cremato
corpore interim semianimi, remeanti animae vetut vaginam ademerint."
Origen had doubtless derived from the ancients what he teaches,[608]
that the souls which are of a spiritual nature take, on leaving their
earthly body, another, more subtile, of a similar form to the grosser
one they have just quitted, which serves them as a kind of sheath, or
case, and that it is invested with this subtile body that they
sometimes appear about their graves. He founds this opinion on what is
said of Lazarus and the rich man in the Gospel,[609] who both of them
have bodies, since they speak and see, and the wicked rich man asks
for a drop of water to cool his tongue.
I do not defend this reasoning of Origen; but what he says of a
subtile body, which has the form of the earthly one which clothed the
soul before death, quite resembles the opinion of which we spoke in
Chapter IV.
That bodies which have died of violent maladies, or which have been
executed when full of health, or have simply swooned, should vegetate
underground in their graves; that their beards, hair, and nails should
grow; that they should emit blood, be supple and pliant; that they
should have no bad smell, &c.--all these things do not embarrass us:
the vegetation of the human body may produce all these effects. That
they should even eat and devour what is about them, the madness with
which a man interred alive must be transported when he awakes from his
torpor, or his swoon, must naturally lead him to these violent
excesses. But the grand difficulty is to explain how the vampires come
out of their graves to haunt the living, and how they return to them
again. For all the accounts that we see suppose the thing as certain,
without informing us either of the way or the circumstances, which
would, however, be the most interesting part of the narrative.
How a body covered with four or five feet of earth, having no room to
move about and disengage itself, wrapped up in linen, covered with
pitch, can make its way out, and come back upon the earth, and there
occasion such effects as are related of it; and how after that it
returns to its former state, and re-enters underground, where it is
found sound, whole, and full of blood, and in the same condition as a
living body? Will it be said that these bodies evaporate through the
ground without opening it, like the water and vapors which enter into
the earth, or proceed from it, without sensibly deranging its
particles? It were to be wished that the accounts which have been
given us concerning the return of the vampires had been more minute in
their explanations of this subject.
Supposing that their bodies do not stir from their graves, that it is
only their phantoms which appear to the living, what cause produces
and animates these phantoms? Can it be the spirit of the defunct,
which has not yet forsaken them, or some demon, which makes their
apparition in a fantastic and borrowed body? And if these bodies are
merely phantomic, how can they suck the blood of living people? We
always find ourselves in a difficulty to know if these appearances are
natural or miraculous.
A sensible priest related to me, a little while ago, that, traveling
in Moravia, he was invited by M. Jeanin, a canon of the cathedral at
Olmutz, to accompany him to their village, called Liebava, where he
had been appointed commissioner by the consistory of the bishopric, to
take information concerning the fact of a certain famous vampire,
which had caused much confusion in this village of Liebava some years
before.
The case proceeded. They heard the witnesses, they observed the usual
forms of the law. The witnesses deposed that a certain notable
inhabitant of Liebava had often disturbed the living in their beds at
night, that he had come out of the cemetery, and had appeared in
several houses three or four years ago; that his troublesome visits
had ceased because a Hungarian stranger, passing through the village
at the time of these reports, had boasted that he could put an end to
them, and make the vampire disappear. To perform his promise, he
mounted on the church steeple, and observed the moment when the
vampire came out of his grave, leaving near it the linen clothes in
which he had been enveloped, and then went to disturb the inhabitants
of the village.
The Hungarian, having seen him come out of his grave, went down
quickly from the steeple, took up the linen envelops of the vampire,
and carried them with him up the tower. The vampire having returned
from his prowlings, cried loudly against the Hungarian, who made him a
sign from the top of the tower that if he wished to have his clothes
again he must fetch them; the vampire began to ascend the steeple, but
the Hungarian threw him down backwards from the ladder, and cut his
head off with a spade. Such was the end of this tragedy.
The person who related this story to me saw nothing, neither did the
noble who had been sent as commissioner; they only heard the report of
the peasants of the place, people extremely ignorant, superstitious
and credulous, and most exceedingly prejudiced on the subject of
vampirism.
But supposing that there be any reality in the fact of these
apparitions of vampires, shall they be attributed to God, to angels,
to the spirits of these ghosts, or to the devil? In this last case,
will it be said that the devil will subtilize these bodies, and give
them power to penetrate through the ground without disturbing, to
glide through the cracks and joints of a door, to pass through a
keyhole, to lengthen or shorten themselves, to reduce themselves to
the nature of air, or water, to evaporate through the ground--in
short, to put them in the same state in which we believe the bodies of
the blessed will be after the resurrection, and in which was that of
our Saviour after his resurrection, who showed himself only to those
whom he thought proper, and who without opening the doors,[610]
appeared suddenly in the midst of his disciples.
But should it be allowed that the demon could reanimate these bodies,
and give them the power of motion for a time, could he also lengthen,
diminish, rarefy, subtilize the bodies of these ghosts, and give them
the faculty of penetrating through the ground, the doors and windows?
There is no appearance of his having received this power from God, and
we cannot even conceive that an earthly body, material and gross, can
be reduced to that state of subtility and spiritualization without
destroying the configuration of its parts and spoiling the economy of
its structure; which would be contrary to the intention of the demon,
and render this body incapable of appearing, showing itself, acting
and speaking, and, in short, of being cut to pieces and burned, as is
commonly seen and practiced in Moravia, Poland, and Silesia. These
difficulties exist in regard to those persons of whom we have made
mention, who, being excommunicated, rose from their tombs, and left
the church in sight of everybody.
We must then keep silence on this article, since it has not pleased
God to reveal to us either the extent of the demon's power, or the way
in which these things can be done. There is even much appearance of
illusion; and even if some reality were mixed up with it, we may
easily console ourselves for our ignorance in that respect, since
there are so many natural things which take place within us and around
us, of which the cause and manner are unknown to us.
Footnotes:
[607] Plin. Hist. Natur. lib. vii. c. 52.
[608] Orig. de Resurrect. Fragment. lib. i. p. 35. Nov. edit. Et
contra Celsum, lib. vii. p. 679.
[609] Luke xvi. 22, 23.
[610] John xx. 26.
CHAPTER LII.
EXAMINATION OF THE OPINION THAT THE DEMON FASCINATES THE EYES OF THOSE
TO WHOM VAMPIRES APPEAR.
Those who have recourse to the fascination of the senses to explain
what is related concerning the apparition of vampires, throw
themselves into as great a perplexity as those who acknowledge
sincerely the reality of these events; for fascination consists either
in the suspension of the senses, which cannot see what is passing
before their sight, like that with which the men of Sodom were
struck[611] when they could not discover the door of Lot's house,
though it was before their eyes; or that of the disciples at Emmaus,
of whom it is said that "their eyes were holden, so that they might
not recognize Jesus Christ, who was talking with them on the way, and
whom they knew not again until the breaking of the bread revealed him
to them;"[612]--or else it consists in an object being represented to
the senses in a different form from that it wears in reality, as that
of the Moabites,[613] who believed they saw the waters tinged with the
blood of the Israelites, although nothing was there but the simple
waters, on which the rays of the sun being reflected, gave them a
reddish hue; or that of the Syrian soldiers sent to take Elisha,[614]
who were led by this prophet into Samaria, without their recognising
either the prophet or the city.
This fascination, in what way soever it may be conceived, is certainly
above the usual power known unto man, consequently man cannot
naturally produce it; but is it above the natural powers of an angel
or a demon? That is what is unknown to us, and obliges us to suspend
our judgment on this question.
There is another kind of fascination, which consists in this, that the
sight of a person or a thing, the praise bestowed upon them, the envy
felt towards them, produce in the object certain bad effects, against
which the ancients took great care to guard themselves and their
children, by making them wear round their necks preservatives, or
amulets, or charms.
A great number of passages on this subject might be cited from the
Greek and Latin authors; and I find that at this day, in various parts
of Christendom, people are persuaded of the efficacy of these
fascinations. But we must own three things; first, that the effect of
these pretended fascinations (or spells) is very doubtful; the second,
that if it were certain, it is very difficult, not to say impossible,
to explain it; and lastly, that it cannot be rationally applied to the
matter of apparitions or of vampires.
If the vampires or ghosts are not really resuscitated nor their bodies
spiritualized and subtilized, as we believe we have proved, and if our
senses are not deceived by fascination, as we have just seen it, I
doubt if there be any other way to act on this question than to
absolutely deny the return of these vampires, or to believe that they
are only asleep or torpid; for if they truly are resuscitated, and if
what is told of their return be true--if they speak, act, reason, if
they suck the blood of the living, they must know what passes in the
other world, and they ought to inform their relations and friends of
it, and that is what they do not. On the contrary, they treat them as
enemies; torment them, take away their life, suck their blood, cause
them to die with lassitude.
If they are predestinated and blessed, whence happens it that they
disturb and torment the living, their nearest relations, their
children, and all that for nothing, and simply for the sake of doing
harm? If these are persons who have still something to expiate in
purgatory, and who require the prayers of the living, why do they not
explain their condition? If they are reprobate and condemned, what
have they to do on this earth? Can we conceive that God allows them
thus to come without reason or necessity and molest their families,
and even cause their death?
If these _revenans_ are really dead, whatever state they may be in in
the other world, they play a very bad part here, and keep it up still
worse.
Footnotes:
[611] Gen. xix. 2.
[612] Luke xxiv. 16.
[613] 2 Kings iii. 23.
[614] 2 Kings iv. 19, 20.
CHAPTER LIII.
INSTANCES OF PERSONS RESUSCITATED, WHO RELATE WHAT THEY HAVE SEEN IN
THE OTHER WORLD.
We have just seen that the vampires never speak of the other world,
nor ask for either masses or prayers, nor give any warning to the
living to lead them to correct their morals, or bring them to a better
life. It is surely very prejudicial to the reality of their return
from the other world; but their silence on that head may favor the
opinion which supposes that they are not really dead.