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

It is not said that this young woman had incurred excommunication, but apparently she was bound by a vow or promise which she had made, to accomplish these pilgrimages, which she imposed upon the other young wife who succeeded her. Also, we see that she did not enter the Church of St. Nicholas; she only accompanied the pilgrims to the church door.

We may here add the instance of that crowd of pilgrims who, in the time of Pope Leo IX., passed at the foot of the wall of Narne, as I have before related, and who performed their purgatory by going from pilgrimage to pilgrimage.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

ARGUMENT CONCERNING THE EXCOMMUNICATED WHO QUIT CHURCHES

All that we have just reported concerning the bodies of persons who had been excommunicated leaving their tombs during mass, and returning into them after the service, deserves particular attention.

It seems that a thing which passed before the eyes of a whole population in broad day, and in the midst of the most redoubtable mysteries, can be neither denied nor disputed. Nevertheless, it may be asked, How these bodies came out? Were they whole, or in a state of decay? naked, or clad in their own dress, or in the linen and bandages which had enveloped them in the tomb? Where, also, did they go?

The cause of their forthcoming is well noted; it was the major excommunication. This penalty is decreed only to mortal sin.509 Those persons had, then, died in the career of deadly sin, and were consequently condemned and in hell; for if there is naught in question but a minor excommunication, why should they go out of the church after death with such terrible and extraordinary circumstances, since that ecclesiastical excommunication does not deprive one absolutely of communion with the faithful, or of entrance to church?

If it be said that the crime was remitted, but not the penalty of excommunication, and that these persons remained excluded from church communion until after their absolution, given by the ecclesiastical judge, we ask if a dead man can be absolved and be restored to communion with the church, unless there are unequivocal proofs of his repentance and conversion preceding his death.

Moreover, the persons just cited as instances do not appear to have been released from crime or guilt, as might be supposed. The texts which we have cited sufficiently note that they died in their guilt and sins; and what St. Gregory the Great says in the part of his Dialogues there quoted, replying to his interlocutor, Peter, supposes that these nuns had died without doing penance.

Besides, it is a constant rule of the church that we cannot communicate or have communion with a dead man, whom we have not had any communication with during his lifetime. "Quibus viventibus non communicavimus, mortuis, communicare non possumus," says Pope St. Leo.510 At any rate, it is allowed that an excommunicated person who has given signs of sincere repentance, although there may not have been time for him to confess himself, can be reconciled to the church511 and receive ecclesiastical sepulture after his death. But, in general, before receiving absolution from sin, they must have been absolved from the censures and excommunication, if such have been incurred: "Absolutio ab excommunicatione debet præcedere absolutionem à peccatis; quia quandiu aliquis est excommunicatus, non potest recipere aliquod Ecclesiæ Sacramentum," says St. Thomas.512

Following this decision, it would have been necessary to absolve these persons from their excommunication, before they could receive absolution from the guilt of their sins. Here, on the contrary, they are supposed to be absolved from their sins as to their criminality, in order to be able to receive absolution from the censures of the church.

I do not see how these difficulties can be resolved.

1. How can you absolve the dead? 2. How can you absolve him from excommunication before he has received absolution from sin? 3. How can he be absolved without asking for absolution, or its appearing that he hath requested it? 4. How can people be absolved who died in mortal sin, and without doing penance? 5. Why do these excommunicated persons return to their tombs after mass? 6. If they dared not stay in the church during the mass, when were they?

It appears certain that the nuns and the young monk spoken of by St. Gregory died in their sins, and without having received absolution from them. St. Benedict, probably, was not a priest, and had not absolved them as regards their guilt.

It may be said that the excommunication spoken of by St. Gregory was not major, and in that case the holy abbot could absolve them; but would this minor and regular excommunication deserve that they should quit the church in so miraculous and public a manner? The persons excommunicated by St. Gothard, and the gentleman mentioned at the Council of Limoges, in 1031, had died unrepentant, and under sentence of excommunication; consequently in mortal sin; and yet they are granted peace and absolution after their death, at the simple entreaty of their friends.

The young solitary spoken of in the acta sanctorum of the Greeks, who after having quitted his cell through incontinency and disobedience, had incurred excommunication, could he receive the crown of martyrdom in that state? And if he had received it, was he not at the same time reconciled to the church? Did he not wash away his fault with his blood? And if his excommunication was only regular and minor, would he deserve after his martyrdom to be excluded from the presence of the holy mysteries?

I see no other way of explaining these facts, if they are as they are related, than by saying that the story has not preserved the circumstances which might have deserved the absolution of these persons, and we must presume that the saints – above all, the bishops who absolved them – knew the rules of the church, and did nothing in the matter but what was right and conformable to the canons.

But it results from all that we have just said, that as the bodies of the wicked withdraw from the company of the holy through a principle of veneration and a feeling of their own unworthiness, so also the bodies of the holy separate themselves from the wicked, from opposite motives, that they may not appear to have any connection with them, even after death, or to approve of their bad life. In short, if what is just related be true, the righteous and the saints feel deference for one another, and honor each other ever in the other world; which is probable enough.

We are about to see some instances which seem to render equivocal and uncertain, as a proof of sanctity, the uncorrupted state of the body of a just man, since it is maintained that the bodies of the excommunicated do not rot in the earth until the sentence of excommunication pronounced against them be taken off.

CHAPTER XXIX.

DO THE EXCOMMUNICATED ROT IN THE GROUND?

It is a very ancient opinion that the bodies of the excommunicated do not decompose; it appears in the Life of St Libentius, Archbishop of Bremen, who died on the 4th of January, 1013. That holy prelate having excommunicated some pirates, one of them died, and was buried in Norway; at the end of seventy years they found his body entire and without decay, nor did it fall to dust until after absolution received from Archbishop Alvaridius.

The modern Greeks, to authorize their schism, and to prove that the gift of miracles, and the power of binding and unbinding, subsist in their church even more visibly and more certainly than in the Latin and Roman church, maintain that amongst themselves the bodies of those who are excommunicated do not decay, but become swollen extraordinarily, like drums, and can neither be corrupted nor reduced to ashes till after they have received absolution from their bishops or their priests. They relate divers instances of this kind of dead bodies, found uncorrupted in their graves, and which are afterwards reduced to ashes as soon as the excommunication is taken off. They do not deny, however, that the uncorrupted state of a body is sometimes a mark of sanctity,513 but they require that a body thus preserved should exhale a good smell, be white or reddish, and not black, offensive and swollen.

It is affirmed that persons who have been struck dead by lightning do not decay, and for that reason the ancients neither burnt them nor buried them. That is the opinion of the physician Zachias; but Paré, after Comines, thinks that the reason they are not subject to corruption is because they are, as it were, embalmed by the sulphur of the thunderbolt, which serves them instead of salt.

In 1727, they discovered in the vault of an hospital near Quebec the unimpaired corpses of five nuns, who had been dead for more than twenty years; and these corpses, though covered with quicklime, still contained blood.

CHAPTER XXX.

INSTANCES TO DEMONSTRATE THAT THE EXCOMMUNICATED DO NOT DECAY, AND THAT THEY APPEAR TO THE LIVING

The Greeks relate514 that under the Patriarch of Constantinople Manuel, or Maximus, who lived in the fifteenth century, the Turkish Emperor of Constantinople wished to know the truth of what the Greeks asserted concerning the uncorrupted state of those who died under sentence of excommunication. The patriarch caused the tomb of a woman to be opened; she had had a criminal connection with an archbishop of Constantinople; her body was whole, black, and much swollen. The Turks shut it up in a coffin, sealed with the emperor's seal; the patriarch said his prayer, gave absolution to the dead woman, and at the end of three days the coffin or box being opened they found the body fallen to dust.

I see no miracle in this: everybody knows that bodies which are sometimes found quite whole in their tombs fall to dust as soon as they are exposed to the air. I except those which have been well embalmed, as the mummies of Egypt, and bodies which are buried in extremely dry spots, or in an earth replete with nitre and salt, which dissipate in a short time all the moisture there may be in the dead bodies, either of men or animals; but I do not understand that the Archbishop of Constantinople could validly absolve after death a person who died in deadly sin and bound by excommunication. They believe also that the bodies of these excommunicated persons often appear to the living, whether by day or by night, speaking to them, calling them, and molesting them. Leon Allatius enters into long details on this subject; he says that in the Isle of Chio the inhabitants do not answer to the first voice that calls them, for fear that it should be a spirit or ghost; but if they are called twice, it is not a vroucolaca,515 which is the name they give those spectres. If any one answers to them at the first sound, the spectre disappears; but he who has spoken to it infallibly dies.

There is no other way of guarding against these bad genii than by taking up the corpse of the person who has appeared, and burning it after certain prayers have been recited over it; then the body is reduced to ashes, and appears no more. They have then no doubt that these are the bodies of criminal and malevolent men, which come out of their graves and cause the death of those who see and reply to them; or that it is the demon, who makes use of their bodies to frighten mortals, and cause their death.

They know of no means more certain to deliver themselves from being infested by these dangerous apparitions than to burn and hack to pieces these bodies, which served as instruments of malice, or to tear out their hearts, or to let them putrefy before they are buried, or to cut off their heads, or to pierce their temples with a large nail.

CHAPTER XXXI.

INSTANCE OF THE REAPPEARANCES OF THE EXCOMMUNICATED

Ricaut, in the history he has given us of the present state of the Greek church, acknowledges that this opinion, that the bodies of excommunicated persons do not decay, is general, not only among the Greeks of the present day, but also among the Turks. He relates a fact which he heard from a Candiote caloyer, who had affirmed the thing to him on oath; his name was Sophronius, and he was well known and highly respected at Smyrna. A man who died in the Isle of Milo, had been excommunicated for some fault which he had committed in the Morea, and he was interred without any funeral ceremony in a spot apart, and not in consecrated ground. His relations and friends were deeply moved to see him in this plight; and the inhabitants of the isle were every night alarmed by baneful apparitions, which they attributed to this unfortunate man.

They opened his grave, and found his body quite entire, with the veins swollen with blood. After having deliberated upon it, the caloyers were of opinion that they should dismember the body, hack it to pieces, and boil it in wine; for it is thus they treat the bodies of revenans.

But the relations of the dead man, by dint of entreaties, succeeded in deferring this execution, and in the mean time sent in all haste to Constantinople, to obtain the absolution of the young man from the patriarch. Meanwhile, the body was placed in the church, and every day prayers were offered up for the repose of his soul. One day when the caloyer Sophronius, above mentioned, was performing divine service, all on a sudden a great noise was heard in the coffin; they opened it, and found his body decayed as if he had been dead seven years. They observed the moment when the noise was heard, and it was found to be precisely at that hour that his absolution had been signed by the patriarch.

M. le Chevalier Ricaut, from whom we have this narrative, was neither a Greek, nor a Roman Catholic, but a staunch Anglican; he remarks on this occasion that the Greeks believe that an evil spirit enters the bodies of the excommunicated, and preserves them from putrefaction, by animating them, and causing them to act, nearly as the soul animates and inspires the body.

They imagine, moreover, that these corpses eat during the night, walk about, digest what they have eaten, and really nourish themselves – that some have been found who were of a rosy hue, and had their veins still fully replete with the quantity of blood; and although they had been dead forty days, have ejected, when opened, a stream of blood as bubbling and fresh as that of a young man of sanguine temperament would be; and this belief so generally prevails that every one relates facts circumstantially concerning it.

Father Theophilus Reynard, who has written a particular treatise on this subject, maintains that this return of the dead is an indubitable fact, and that there are very certain proofs and experience of the same; but that to pretend that those ghosts who come to disturb the living are always those of excommunicated persons, and that it is a privilege of the schismatic Greek church to preserve from decay those who incurred excommunication, and have died under censure of their church, is an untenable assumption; since it is certain that the bodies of the excommunicated decay like others, and there are some which have died in communion with the church, whether the Greek or the Latin, who remain uncorrupted. Such are found even among the Pagans, and amongst animals, of which the dead bodies are sometimes found in an uncorrupted state, both in the ground, and in the ruins of old buildings.516

CHAPTER XXXII.

VROUCOLACA EXHUMED IN PRESENCE OF MONSIEUR DE TOURNEFORT

Monsieur Pitton de Tournefort relates the manner in which they exhumed a pretended vroucolaca, in the Isle of Micon, where he was on the 1st of January, 1701. These are his own words: "We saw a very different scene, (in the same Isle of Micon,) on the occasion of one of those dead people, whom they believe to return to earth after their interment. This one, whose history we shall relate, was a peasant of Micon, naturally sullen and quarrelsome; which is a circumstance to be remarked relatively to such subjects; he was killed in the country, no one knows when, or by whom. Two days after he had been inhumed in a chapel in the town, it was rumored that he was seen by night walking very fast; that he came into the house, overturning the furniture, extinguishing the lamps, throwing his arms around persons from behind, and playing a thousand sly tricks.

"At first people only laughed at it; but the affair began to be serious, when the most respectable people in the place began to complain: the priests even owned the fact, and doubtless they had their reasons. People did not fail to have masses said; nevertheless the peasant continued to lead the same life without correcting himself. After several assemblies of the principal men of the city, with priests and monks, it was concluded that they must, according to some ancient ceremonial, await the expiration of nine days after burial.

"On the tenth day a mass was said in the chapel where the corpse lay, in order to expel the demon which they believed to have inclosed himself therein. This body was taken up after mass, and they began to set about tearing out his heart; the butcher of the town, who was old, and very awkward, began by opening the belly instead of the breast; he felt for a long time in the entrails without finding what he sought. At last some one told him that he must pierce the diaphragm; then the heart was torn out, to the admiration of all present. The corpse, however, gave out such a bad smell, that they were obliged to burn incense; but the vapor, mixed with the exhalations of the carrion, only augmented the stink, and began to heat the brain of these poor people.

"Their imagination, struck with the spectacle, was full of visions; some one thought proper to say that a thick smoke came from this body. We dared not say that it was the vapor of the incense. They only exclaimed "Vroucolacas," in the chapel, and in the square before it. (This is the name which they give to these pretended Revenans.) The rumor spread and was bellowed in the street, and the noise seemed likely to shake the vaulted roof of the chapel. Several present affirmed that the blood of this wretched man was quite vermilion; the butcher swore that the body was still quite warm; whence it was concluded that the dead man was very wrong not to be quite dead, or, to express myself better, to suffer himself to be reanimated by the devil. This is precisely the idea of a vroucolaca; and they made this name resound in an astonishing manner. At this time there entered a crowd of people, who protested aloud that they clearly perceived this body was not stiff when they brought it from the country to the church to bury it, and that consequently it was a true vroucolaca; this was the chorus.

"I have no doubt that they would have maintained it did not stink, if we had not been present; so stupefied were these poor people with the circumstance, and infatuated with the idea of the return of the dead. For ourselves, who got next to the corpse in order to make our observations exactly, we were ready to die from the offensive odor which proceeded from it. When they asked us what we thought of this dead man, we replied that we believed him thoroughly dead; but as we wished to cure, or at least not to irritate their stricken fancy, we represented to them that it was not surprising if the butcher had perceived some heat in searching amidst entrails which were decaying; neither was it extraordinary that some vapor had proceeded from them; since such will issue from a dunghill that is stirred up; as for this pretended red blood, it still might be seen on the butcher's hands that it was only a very fœtid mud.

"After all these arguments, they bethought themselves of going to the marine, and burning the heart of the dead man, who in spite of this execution was less docile, and made more noise than before. They accused him of beating people by night, of breaking open the doors and even terraces, of breaking windows, tearing clothes, and emptying jugs and bottles. He was a very thirsty dead man; I believe he only spared the consul's house, where I was lodged. In the mean time I never saw anything so pitiable as the state of this island.

"Everybody seemed to have lost their senses. The most sensible people appeared as phrenzied as the others; it was a veritable brain fever, as dangerous as any mania or madness. Whole families were seen to forsake their houses, and coming from the ends of the town, bring their flock beds to the market-place to pass the night there. Every one complained of some new insult; you heard nothing but lamentations at night-fall; and the most sensible people went into the country.

"Amidst such a general prepossession we made up our minds to say nothing; we should not only have been considered as absurd, but as infidels. How can you convince a whole people of error? Those who believed in their own minds that we had our doubts of the truth of the fact, came and reproached us for our incredulity, and pretended to prove that there were such things as vroucolacas, by some authority which they derived from Father Richard, a Jesuit missionary. It is Latin, said they, and consequently you ought to believe it. We should have done no good by denying this consequence. They every morning entertained us with the comedy of a faithful recital of all the new follies which had been committed by this bird of night; he was even accused of having committed the most abominable sins.

"The citizens who were most zealous for the public good believed that they had missed the most essential point of the ceremony. They said that the mass ought not to be celebrated until after the heart of this wretched man had been torn out; they affirmed that with that precaution they could not have failed to surprise the devil, and doubtless he would have taken care not to come back again; instead of which had they begun by saying mass, he would have had, said they, plenty of time to take flight, and to return afterwards at his leisure.

"After all these arguments they found themselves in the same embarrassment as the first day it began; they assembled night and morning; they reasoned upon it, made processions which lasted three days and three nights; they obliged the priests to fast; they were seen running about in the houses with the asperser or sprinkling brush in their hands, sprinkling holy water and washing the doors with it; they even filled the mouth of that poor vroucolaca with holy water. We so often told the administration of the town that in all Christendom people would not fail in such a case to watch by night, to observe all that was going forward in the town, that at last they arrested some vagabonds, who assuredly had a share in all these disturbances. Apparently they were not the principal authors of them, or they were too soon set at liberty; for two days after, to make themselves amends for the fast they had kept in prison, they began again to empty the stone bottles of wine belonging to those persons who were silly enough to forsake their houses at night. Thus, then, they were again obliged to have recourse to prayers.

"One day as certain orisons were being recited, after having stuck I know not how many naked swords upon the grave of this corpse, which was disinterred three or four times a day, according to the caprice of the first comer, an Albanian, who chanced to be at Mico accidentally, bethought himself of saying in a sententious tone, that it was very ridiculous to make use of the swords of Christians in such a case. Do you not see, blind as ye are, said he, that the hilt of these swords, forming a cross with the handle, prevents the devil from coming out of that body? why do you not rather make use of the sabres of the Turks? The advice of this clever man was of no use; the vroucolaca did not appear more tractable, and everybody was in a strange consternation; they no longer knew to which saint to pay their vows; when, with one voice, as if the signal word had been given, they began to shout in all parts of the town that they had waited too long: that the vroucolaca ought to be burnt altogether; that after that, they would defy the devil to return and ensconce himself there; that it would be better to have recourse to that extremity than to let the island be deserted. In fact, there were whole families who were packing up in the intention of retiring to Sira or Tina.

"So they carried the vroucolaca, by order of the administration, to the point of the Island of St. George, where they had prepared a great pile made up with a mixture of tow, for fear that wood, however dry it might be, would not burn quickly enough by itself. The remains of this unfortunate corpse were thrown upon it and consumed in a very little time; it was on the first day of January, 1701. We saw this fire as we returned from Delos: it might be called a real feu de joie; since then, there have been no more complaints against the vroucolaca. They contented themselves with saying that the devil had been properly caught that time, and they made up a song to turn him into ridicule.