The Phantom World; or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The same Trithemius relates elsewhere487 the apparition of the Count of Spanheim, deceased a little while before, who appeared in the fields with his pack of hounds. This count spoke to his curé, and asked his prayers.

Vipert, Archdeacon of the Church of Toul, cotemporary author of the Life of the holy Pope Leo IX., who died 1059, relates488 that, some years before the death of this holy pope, an infinite multitude of persons, habited in white, was seen to pass by the town of Narni, advancing from the eastern side. This troop defiled from the morning until three in the afternoon, but towards evening it notably diminished. At this sight all the population of the town of Narni mounted upon the walls, fearing they might be hostile troops, and saw them defile with extreme surprise.

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXII.

EXCOMMUNICATED PERSONS WHO GO OUT OF THE CHURCHES

St. Gregory the Great relates490 that St. Benedict having threatened to excommunicate two nuns, these nuns died in that state. Some time after, their nurse saw them go out of the church, as soon as the deacon had cried out, "Let all those who do not receive the communion withdraw." The nurse having informed St. Benedict of the circumstance, that saint sent an oblation, or a loaf, in order that it might be offered for them in token of reconciliation; and from that time the two nuns remained in quiet in their sepulchres.

St. Augustine says491 that the names of martyrs were recited in the diptychs not to pray for them, and the names of the virgin nuns deceased to pray for them. "Perhibet præclarissimum testimonium ecclesiastica auctoritas, in quâ fidelibus notum est quo loco martyres et que defunctæ sanctimoniales ad altaris sacramenta recitantur." It was then, perhaps, when they were named at the altar, that they left the church. But St. Gregory says expressly, that it was when the deacon cried aloud, "Let those who do not receive the communion retire."

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

This usage, or rather this abuse, of placing the holy wafer in the grave with the dead, is very singular; but it was not unknown to antiquity. The author of the Life of St. Basil493 the Great, given under the name of St. Amphilochus, says that that saint reserved the third part of a consecrated wafer to be interred with him; he received it and expired while it was yet in his mouth; but some councils had already condemned this practice, and others have since then proscribed it, as contrary to the institutions of Jesus Christ.494

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

In the Life of St. Cuthbert, Bishop of Lindisfarn,496 we read that a quantity of consecrated wafers were found on his breast. Amalarius cites of the Venerable Bede, that a holy wafer was placed on the breast of this saint before he was inhumed; "oblata super sanctum pectus positâ."497 This particularity is not noted in Bede's History, but in the second Life of St. Cuthbert. Amalarius remarks that this custom proceeds doubtless from the Church of Rome, which had communicated it to the English; and the Reverend Father Menard498 maintains that it is not this practice which is condemned by the above-mentioned Councils, but that of giving the communion to the dead by insinuating the holy wafer into their mouths. However it may be regarding this practice, we know that Cardinal Humbert,499 in his reply to the of the patriarch Michael Cerularius, reproves the Greeks for burying the Host, when there remained any of it after the communion of the faithful.

CHAPTER XXIII.

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXIV.

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXV.

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXVI.

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

Tertullian relates503 an instance to which he had been witness —de meo didici. A woman who belonged to the church, to which she had been given as a slave, died in the prime of life, after being once married only, and that for a short time, was brought to the church. Before putting her in the ground, the priest offering the sacrifice and raising his hands in prayer, this woman, who had her hands extended at her side, raised them at the same time, and put them together as a supplicant; then, when the peace was given, she replaced herself in her former position.

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

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

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

Evagrius de Pont506 says, that a holy hermit named Thomas, and surnamed Salus, because he counterfeited madness, dying in the hospital of Daphné, near the city of Antioch, was buried in the strangers' cemetery, but every day he was found out of the ground at a distance from the other dead bodies, which he avoided. The inhabitants of the place informed Ephraim, Bishop of Antioch, of this, and he had him solemnly carried into the city and honorably buried in the cemetery, and from that time the people of Antioch keep the feast of his translation.

John Mosch507 reports the same story, only he says that it was some women who were buried near Thomas Salus, who left their graves through respect for the saint.

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

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

CHAPTER XXVII.

OF PERSONS WHO PERFORM A PILGRIMAGE AFTER THEIR DEATH

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

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

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