IMVU: My avatar page: g3nn3vi3

About Me

g3nn3vi3
Avatar since: 10/05/07

Female
Age: 34
United States - IL
Last log on: 11/21/09

"Dropped from heaven, freed from hell, fallen into the arms of angels."

View my pictures

V----V

Oranges and lemons,

Say the bells of

St. Clement's

You Are 64% Evil

You are very evil. And you're too evil to care.
Those who love you probably also fear you. A lot.

How Evil Are You?

You Can Definitely Spot a Liar

Maybe you have good instincts. Or maybe you just have a lot of experience with liars.
Either way, it's pretty hard for someone to pull a fast one on you. You're like a human lie detector.

Can You Spot a Liar?

My Messages

Leave a message / gift

Home page

Mahzeil

11/20/09

NEXT THEME NIGHT NOV. 21st Theme Night Date: November 21st Theme Night Time: approx. 7:00pm PST Theme Night Theme: Sultan's harem Theme Night Dress Code: the sensual middle east or "I dream of Genie"

Home page

ErikDeLavergne

11/19/09

My thanks for returning the comment, and your immense generosity. I see that the room is your own work, and good work it is. It's obvious that a lot of hard work and creativity were poured into the details.

Home page

ErikDeLavergne

11/19/09

Lovely homepage, the Egyptian theme is well done ^^

Home page

BlueBadgeofCourage

11/17/09

love ur page ty for the badges i'll be bk to watch mor videos ty so much

Home page

Stolzimherz

11/15/09

yes i was sleeping sorry :P

Home page

MrsJacquez

11/12/09

thanks for badges love em =)

Home page

fairytaiIprincess

263

11/12/09

hello, just dropping in, your hp is really great and thanks for the badges.

Home page

Guest_iiKaulitz

11/09/09

hi i adored u name i like u avipic kisses and hugs ^^

Home page

Brenraven

11/07/09

your mix was killer last night!

Home page

Guest_CrAzYb00

165

11/06/09

Droppin a hello. and wanted to thank you for the badges. :)

Home page

LilGloomy

107

11/04/09

Just passing through, so thought I would say hi. :D

Home page

MajesticBlackOrchid

179

11/03/09

[NV]ALIVET..

mwah! ^_^

Home page

MajesticBlackOrchid

179

11/03/09

XD Thanks for the prezzie! You didn't have to do that And yeah, since it was SUCH a DRASTIC name change I figured it would be best to Change my avi pic, as well as let my good friends know, so ppl wouldn't be like... "who the hell are you" lol! Hope to talk to you soon!!

Home page

MajesticBlackOrchid

179

11/03/09

XxxKellymmmxxX Is Now: MajesticBlackOrchid :) (i love your avi pic btw!!)

Home page

Anarkiatears

10/29/09

blebleble ^^

Home page

Anarkiatears

10/29/09

blebleble ^^

Home page

decadentpreacher

10/28/09

you know that isn't necessary, but thank you,maybe i'll bother coming on imvu more often

Home page

ApollyonsRedemption

10/26/09

i completely understand hun . just remember , its good to have you around again. sometimes no matter how brief the initial time spent together was , an impression is made. I'm glad we all made enough of a good impression that we can all be around together again ! See you around sweetie . btw , ur feets smellz funny

Home page

MutePaladin

10/25/09

- empty message -

10/25/09

- empty message -

10/25/09

- empty message -

10/25/09

Aww thanks Genn ^^

Home page

Guest_kiki951

1452

10/25/09

thaanksies 43 thee badges:P i lub yhur page have a great day

10/25/09

Hello you

212

10/24/09

Thank you for the badges.

Home page

RavynSelene

10/23/09

Halloween Party Tonight will be @ RavynThunder Halloween Spooktacular...See you there!

Home page

TheSexyAmelia

488

10/23/09

Thank you for the badge, and wonderful hp. I love it!

Home page

RubyPepperpot

135

10/21/09

Thank u 4 the badge!

Home page

kana75sa

10/21/09

ChattyNatt..

Its triggerless! hehe

Home page

TwistedDream4220

10/17/09

Hey. Thanks for the Sticker hehe

Home page

CaRaMaLE

406

10/17/09

thk 4 badge ^^

10/15/09

*heart*

652

10/11/09

thanks for purchasing my KingBed.AsianFlowerB&W. remember if you own this item, make sure to leave a review. i really appreciate the support. :) take care. +Envy+

Home page

RavynSelene

10/10/09

Double, double, toil and trouble, Fires burn, and caldrons bubbleâ�¦ Calling all witches, Demons and Creatures Of the Night! You are invited to our Annual SPOOK-TACULAR Halloween Party.. Friday, October 23rd At the bewitching hour of 9Pm EST Your Ghostly Hosts: Chevy & Ravyn Will Be DYING to Seeeee youâ�¦ Muahahaha Room Will be announced that Mourning. Prizes, and Credits For Best Costumes Male/Female, & Best Couple!

Home page

PaxDeamhan

10/08/09

Club Giger

WOW!ty for gift! it's grooveh! think i might have something for yoo toos!

Home page

callmeINU

10/07/09

- empty message -

10/06/09

- empty message -

Guest_QUEENBLACKEVEXV

10/02/09

I love you page s wonderfull and ty for blings kiss for u eve

Home page

DreamerPaw

1254

10/01/09

I was just out doing a little badge hunting and thought I would drop in and snag yours. Thanks for making them available. Have a great weekend. --Jenna

Home page

DarksideRaven

2496

10/01/09

Hey U, It's been awhile since my last visit. How have you been? Have a Blessed filled week! ~~Big Hugs~~ ~DR~

Home page

vanity816

09/26/09

thx a lot 4 the badge and your page is so cool

Home page

Guest_sexxxykristy

09/24/09

hi nice page,stop by an return the favor ;) thanks for the badges

Home page

Guest_AZALA666

1154

09/23/09

Greetings:) Many thnx for ur cool badges and wow... u have a very nice homepage. :P u love EGYPT,so do I . HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND

Home page

ComTesSe68

09/21/09

hellow, your homepage is very wowww beautiful. I want thank you for your badges. I'm fan of Egypte history. Friendly, ComTesSe

Home page

Mahzeil

09/18/09

NEXT THEME NIGHT SEPT. 19th Theme Night Date: September 19th Theme Night Time: approx. 7:00pm PST Theme Night Theme: Neo-Victorian Steam Punk 2.0 Theme Night Dress Code:you know... be very steam punky

Home page

Kittsie

2096

09/18/09

just passing by admiring homes, very nice one you have! wish you a great weekend:)

Home page

iSexMySelf

287

09/17/09

Cuteee homepage. :) And Thnks For The Badges Much Appreciated :D

Home page

Devilsome

09/10/09

Hello, thanks for your purchase of my"Cinched top V2". Hope you are enjoying it. Don't forget to leave a review :)

Home page

PhobicFear

128

09/10/09

I love your page. Egyptian dieties are fasinating. Well I saw the INGSOC sticker and had to buy it and see your page. Have you read 1984? I've read it and watched some of the movie. It's pretty good. Well, just stopped by to say hi so hi. :P

Home page

omarelhakiem

09/09/09

hello.u have awesome page it so nice . sure u love Egypt .so i can say iam now in my country hp.thx

My Music

Contact Me

THE VAMPIRE
HIS KITH AND KIN
by Montague Summers
London, K. Paul Trench, Trubner [1928]

INTRODUCTION
IN all the darkest pages of the malign supernatural there is no more terrible tradition than that of the Vampire, a pariah even among demons. Foul are his ravages; gruesome and seemingly barbaric are the ancient and approved methods by which folk must rid themselves of this hideous pest. Even to-day in certain quarters of the world, in remoter districts of Europe itself, Transylvania, Slavonia, the isles and mountains of Greece, the peasant will take the law into his own bands and utterly destroy the carrion who--as it is yet firmly believed--at night will issue from his unhallowed grave to spread the infection of vampirism throughout the countryside. Assyria knew the vampire long ago, and he lurked amid the primaeval forests of Mexico before Cortes came. He is feared by the Chinese, by the Indian, and the Malay alike; whilst Arabian story tells us again and again of the ghouls who haunt ill-omened sepulchres and lonely cross-ways to attack and devour the unhappy traveller.

The tradition is world wide and of dateless antiquity. Travellers and various writers upon several countries have dealt with these dark and perplexing problems, sometimes cursorily, less frequently with scholarship and perception, but in every case the discussion of the vampire has occupied a few paragraphs, a page or two, or at most a chapter of an extensive and divaricating study, where other circumstances and other legends claimed at least an equal if not a more important and considerable place in the narrative. It maybe argued, indeed, that the writers upon Greece have paid especial attention to this tradition, and that the vampire figures prominently in their works. This is true, but on the other band the treatise of Leone Allacci, De Graecorum hodie quorundam opinationibus, 1645, is of considerable rarity, nor are even such volumes as Father François Richard's Relation de ce qui s'est passé de plus remarquable a Sant-Erini, 1657, the Voyage au Levant (1705)

{p. vi}

of Paul Lucas, and Tournefort's Relation d'un Voyage du Levant (1717), although perhaps not altogether uncommon and certainly fairly well known by repute, generally to be met with in every library. The study of the Modern Greek Vampire in Mr. J. G. Lawson's Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion has, of course, taken its place as a classic, but save incidentally and in passing Mr. Lawson does not touch upon the tradition in other countries and at other times, for this lies outside his purview.

Towards the end of the seventeenth century, and even more particularly during the first half of the eighteenth century when in Hungary, Moravia, and Galicia, there seemed to be a veritable epidemic of vampirism. the report of which was bruited far and wide engaging the attention of curia and university, ecclesiastic and philosopher, scholar and man of letters, journalist and virtuoso in all lands, there appeared a large number of academic theses and tractates, the majority of which had been prelected at Leipzig, and these formally discussed and debated the question in well-nigh all its aspects, dividing, sub-dividing, inquiring, ratiocinating upon the most approved scholastic lines. Thus we have the monographs of such professors as Philip Rohr, whose "Dissertatio Historico-Philosophica" De Masticatione Mortuorum was delivered at Leipzig on 16 August, 1679, and issued the same year from the press of Michael Vogt; the Dissertatio de Uampyris Seruiensibus of Zopfius and van Dalen, printed at Duisburg in 1733; and the De absolutione mortuorum excommunicatorum of Heineccius, published at Helmstad in 1709. Of especial value are Michael Ranft's De Masticatione Mortuorum in Tumulis Liber, Leipzig, 1728, and the Dissertatio de Cadaueribus Sanguisugis, Jena, 1732, of John Christian Stock. These dissertations, however, are extremely scarce and hardly to be found, whilst even so encyclopaedic a bibliography as Caillet does not include either Philip Rohr, Michael Ranft, or Stock, all of whom should therein assuredly have found a place. In this connexion must not be omitted the De Miraculis Mortuorum, Leipzig, Kirchner, 1670, and second edition, Weidmann, 1687, a treatise by Christian Frederic Garmann, a noted physician, who was born at Mersebourg about 1640 and who practised with great repute at Chemnitz. Garmann discusses many curious details and continued to amass so vast a collection of notes that after his

{p. vii}

death there was published in 1709 at Dresden by Zimmerman a very much enlarged edition of his work, "exornatum, diu desideratum et expetitum, beato autoris obitu interueniente."

During the eighteenth century the tradition of the Vampire was dealt with by two famous authors, of whom both concentrated upon this as their main theme, that is to say by Dom Augustin Calmet, O.S.B., in his Dissertations sur les Apparitions des Anges, des Démons et des Esprits et sur les revenants et vampires de Hongrie, de Bohême, de Moravie, e de Silésie, Paris, 1740, and by Gioseppe Davanzati, Archbishop of Trani and Patriarch of Alexandria, in his Dissertazione sopra I Vampire, Naples, 1774. As I have very fully considered both these important works they require no more than a bare mention here.

Of a later date we find in French a few books such as the Histoire des Vampires (1820) of the enormously prolific Collin de Plancy, the Spectriana (1817) and Les ombres sanglantes (1820) of J. p. R. Cuisin, and Gabrielle de Paban's Histoire des Fantômes et des Demons (1819) and Démoniana (1820), but these with many more of that class and epoch, although they are sometimes written not without elegance and industry and one may here and there meet with a curious anecdote or local legend, will not, I think, long engage the consideration and regard of the more serious student.

In English there is a little book entitled Vampires and Vampirism by Mr. Dudley Wright, which was first published in 1914; second edition (with additional matter), 1924. It may, of course, be said that this is not intended to be more than a popular and trifling collection and that one must not look for accuracy and research from the author of Roman Catholicism and Freemasonry. However that may be, it were not an easy task to find a more insipid olio than Vampires and Vampirism, of which the ingredients, so far as I am able to judge, are most palpably derived at second, and even at third hand. Dom Calmet, sometimes with and sometimes without acknowledgement, is frequently quoted and continually misunderstood, In what the "additional matter" of the second edition consists I cannot pretend to say but I have noticed that the same anecdotes are repeated, e.g. on p. 9 we are told the story of a shepherd of "Blow, near Kadam, in Bohemia," and the relation is said to be taken (via Calmet, it is plain,)

{p. viii}

from "De Schartz [rather Charles Ferdinand de Schertz], in his Magia Postuma, published at Olmutz in 1706." On p. 166 this story, as given by "E. p. Evans, in his interesting work on the Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals," is told of "a herdsman near the town of Cadan," and dated 1337. Pages 60-62 are occupied with an Oriental legend related by "Fornari, in his History of Sorcerers," by which is presumably intended the Histoire curieuse et pittoresque des sorciers . . . Revue et augmentée par Fornari, Paris, 1846, and other editions, a book usually catalogued under Giraldo, as by Caillet and Yve-Plessis, although the latter certainly has a cross-reference to Fornari. In greater detail Mr. Dudley Wright narrates this legend which be has already told (pp. 60-62), on pp. 131-137. Such repetition seems superfluous. In the Bibliography we have such entries as "Leo Allatius," Encyclopaedia Britannica"; "Frazer's Golden Bough," Nider's Formicarius," "Phlegon's Fragments," "William of Newbury," all of which are not merely unscholarly and slovenly, but entirely useless from the point of view of reference. I also remark blunders such as "Philip Rehrius," "Nicolas Ramy's Demonolatrie," "Rymer's Varney the Vampire." Who Rymer might be I cannot tell. Varney the Vampire was written by Thomas Preskett Prest.

It may, I think, not unfairly be claimed that the present work is the first serious study in English of the Vampire, and kindred traditions from a general, as well as from a theological and philosophical point of view. I have already pointed out that it were impossible to better such a chapter as Mr. J. C. Lawson has given us in his Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion, a book to which as also to Bernhard Schmidt's Das Volksleben der Neugriechen und das Hellenische Alterthum, I am greatly indebted. But any wider survey of the vampire tradition will soon be found o demand an examination of legend, customs, and history which extend far beyond Greece, although in such an inquiry the beliefs and practice of modern Greece must necessarily assume a prominent and most material significance.

In the present work I have endeavoured to set forth what might be termed "the philosophy of vampirism," and however ghastly and macabre they may appear I have felt that here one must not tamely shrink from a careful and detailed consideration

{p. ix}

of the many cognate passions and congruous circumstances which--there can be no reasonable doubt--have throughout the ages played no impertinent and no trivial but a very vital and very memorable part in consolidating the vampire legend, and in perpetuating the vampire tradition among the darker and more secret mysteries of belief that prevail in the heart of man.

In many countries there is thought to be a close connexion between the vampire and the werewolf, and I would remark that I have touched upon this but lightly as I am devoting a separate study to the werewolf and lycanthropy.

The Vampire, his Kith and Kin will be shortly followed by The Vampire in Europe, in which work I have collected and treat of numerous instances of vampirism old and new, concretely illustrating the prevalence and phases of the tradition in England and Ireland, in ancient Greece and Rome as well as in modern Greece, in Hungary and Bohemia, in Jugo-Slavia, Russia, and many other lands. In this volume will be found related in detail such famous cases as that of Arnold Paul, Stanoska Sovitzo, Millo the Hungarian, the vampires of Temeswar, Kisilova, Buckingham, Berwick, Melrose Abbey, Croglin Grange, and many more.

A survey of "The Vampire in Literature" which I attempt in Chapter V of the present volume has not, to the best of my belief, been usefully essayed by any English writer. I cannot hope that my purview is complete, for I feel confident that several pieces must inevitably have escaped me. Here too one is faced with the question what to notice and what to exclude. Vampirism is so wide a term that in some senses it might arguably be held to cover no small range of ghost stories and witch sagas where the victims peak and pine and waste away until they fall into an early grave. The choice is bound to be somewhat arbitrary, and so open to censure and objections, both on account of inclusions and omissions, and, superficially at least, these criticisms will hardly seem a little rigid and unfair. There is one vampire story, an excellent fiction and admirably discoursed, which I heard very many years ago, and which I believe is in print, but it has till now completely baffled all my recent explorations. I have no doubt that some of my readers will know the tale.

The Bibliography has offered its own difficulties with

{p. x}

reference to the choice of books for inclusion, and a certain amount of selection seemed inevitable. I have, I hope, duly listed the majority of those works which deal with the Vampire and the vampire tradition at any length, or which even if they devote but a few pages to the Vampire have given the subject serious and scholarly consideration. The denizens of Grub Street, ever busily agog, have from time to time attempted to scribble something on sorcery, on the invisible world, on occult crafts, and of late they seem to have been especially pretentious and prolific. I am well aware that in a number of trivial and catch-penny compositions it may be found that actually more space has been devoted to the vampire than is afforded in several of the volumes I mention, important studies which cover a fairly wide range in travel, in folk-lore, in demonology. Whilst, obviously enough, all the titles I include have by no means the same value even the least remarkable owns a particular reason to justify its presence. Under fiction it seemed to me that one should cast the net a little wider, and accordingly--on account of its very rarity if for no other reason--I have found a place for so poor a book as Smyth Upton's The Last of the Vampires, and what is more a rampant tract such as The Vampyre (1858) is not excluded. It will be remarked that many of the books to which I refer in my chapters and whence I quote are not to be found in this Bibliography as they lie something outside its scope. Moreover to rehearse books of reference and the standard authors seemed entirely superfluous.

During the course of a long and arduous task I have been much helped by the kindly and valuable suggestions of many friends amongst whom I must particularly mention Mrs. Agnes Murgoçi, the late Chevalier W. H. Grattan Flood, Dr. Havelock Ellis, Dr. Rouse, Mr. Edward Hutton, Mr. W. J. Lawrence, and Mr. N. M. Penzer. I am especially grateful to Dr. R. Campbell Thompson for generous permission to quote at length the exorcisms from his classic works upon Babylonian demonology and Semitic magic. Both Mr. G. Willoughby-Meade and his publishers have put me under great obligations by allowing me so extensively to use his work Chinese Ghouls and Goblins, Constable and Co., 1928.

I cordially thank my friend Mr. Laurence Housman for giving me leave to reproduce his drawing "Cauchemar," as also

{p. xii}

Messrs. Macmillan for a similar permission with regard to the illustration of Malay vampires, which originally appeared in Dr. W. W. Skeat's Malay Magic.

The little cylinder delineated upon the cover of the book is a reproduction from the Revue d'Assyriologie, vol. VII, and represents a Babylonian vampire. The original is in the Louvre collections.

IN FESTO B.M.V. del Divino Aiuto.
1928.

CHAPTER I
THE ORIGINS OF THE VAMPIRE
THROUGHOUT the whole vast shadowy world of ghosts and demons there is no figure so terrible, no figure so dreaded and abhorred, yet dight with such fearful fascination, as the vampire, who is himself neither ghost nor demon, but yet who partakes the dark natures and possesses the mysterious and terrible qualities of both. Around the vampire have clustered the most sombre superstitions, for he is a thing which belongs to no world at all; he is not a demon, for the devils have a purely spiritual nature, they are beings without any body, angels, as is said in S. Matthew xxv. 41, "the devil and his angels."[1] And although S. Gregory writes of the word Angel, "nomen est officii, non naturae,"--the designation is that of an office not of a nature, it is clear that all angels were in the beginning created good in order to act as the divine messengers ({Greek a?'ggeloi}), and that afterwards the fallen angels lapsed from their original state. The authoritative teaching of the Fourth Lateran Council under Innocent III in 1215, dogmatically lays down: "Diabolus enim et alii daemones a Deo quidem natura creati sunt boni, sed ipsi per se facti sunt mali." And it is also said, Job iv. 18: "Ecce qui seruiunt ei, non sunt stabiles, et in Angelis suis reperit prauitatem." (Behold they that serve him are not steadfast, and in his angels he found wickedness.)

John Heinrich Zopfius in his Dissertatio de Uampiris Seruiensibus, Halle, 1733, says: "Vampires issue forth from their graves in the night, attack people sleeping quietly in their beds, suck out all their blood from their bodies and destroy them. They beset men, women and children alike, sparing neither age nor sex. Those who are under the fatal malignity of their influence complain of suffocation and a total deficiency of spirits, after which they soon expire. Some

{p. 2 }

who, when at the point of death, have been asked if they can tell what is causing their decease, reply that such and such persons, lately dead, have arisen from the tomb to torment and torture them." Scoffern in his Stray Leaves of Science and Folk Lore writes: "The best definition I can give of a vampire is a living, mischievous and murderous dead body. A living dead body! The words are idle, contradictory, incomprehensible, but so are Vampires." Horst, Schriften und Hypothesen über die Vampyren, (Zauberbibliothek, III) defines a Vampire as "a dead body which continues to live in the grave; which it leaves, however, by night, for the purpose of sucking the blood of the living, whereby it is nourished and preserved in good condition, instead of becoming decomposed like other dead bodies."

A demon has no body, although for purposes of his own he may energize, assume, or seem to assume a body, but it is not his real and proper body.[2] So the vampire is not strictly a demon, although his foul lust and horrid propensities be truly demoniacal and of hell.

Neither may the vampire be called a ghost or phantom, strictly speaking, for an apparition is intangible, as the Latin poet tells us:

Par leuibus uentis uolucrique simillima somno.[3]

And upon that first Easter night when Jesus stood in the midst of His disciples and they were troubled and frightened, supposing they had seen a spirit, He said: "Uidete manus meas, et pedes, quia ego ipse sum: palpate, et uidete: quia spiritus carnem, et ossa non habet, sicut ne uidetis habere." (See my hands and feet, that it is I myself; handle and see: for a spirit hath not flesh and bone, as you see me to have.)[4]

There are, it is true, upon record some few instances when persons have been able to grasp, or have been grasped by and felt the touch of, a ghost, but these phenomena must be admitted as exceptions altogether, if indeed, they are not to be explained in some other way, as for example, owing to the information of a body by some spirit or familiar under very rare and abnormal conditions.

In the case of the very extraordinary and horrible hauntings of the old Darlington and Stockton Station, Mr. James Durham, the night-watchman, when one winter evening in the porter's cellar was surprised by the entry of a stranger

{p. 3}

followed by a large black retriever. This visitor without uttering a word dealt him a blow and he had the impression of a violent concussion. Naturally he struck back with his fist which seemed however to pass through the figure and his knuckles were grazed against the wall beyond. None the less the man uttered an unearthly squeak at which the dog gripped Mr. Durham in the calf of the leg causing considerable pain. In a moment the stranger had called off the retriever by a curious click of the tongue, and both man and animal hurried into the coal-house whence there was no outlet. A moment later upon examination neither was to be seen. It was afterwards discovered that many years before an official who was invariably accompanied by a large black dog had committed suicide upon the premises, if not in the very cellar, where at least his dead body had been laid. The full account with the formal attestation dated 9th December, 1890, may be read in W. T. Stead's Real Ghost Stories, reprint, Grant Richards, 1897, Chapter XI, pp. 210-214.

Major C. G. MacGregor of Donaghadee, County Down, Ireland, gives an account of a house in the north of Scotland which was haunted by an old lady, who resided there for very many years and died shortly after the beginning of the nineteenth century. Several persons who slept in the room were sensibly pushed and even smartly slapped upon the face. He himself on feeling a blow upon the left shoulder in the middle of the night turned quickly and reaching out grasped a human hand, warm, soft, and plump. Holding it tight he felt the wrist and arm which appeared clothed in a sleeve and lace cuff. At the elbow all trace ceased, and in his astonishment he released the hand. When a light was struck nobody could be seen in the room.

In a case which occurred at a cottage in Girvan, South Ayrshire, a young woman lost her brother, a fisher, owing to the swamping of his boat in a storm, When the body was recovered it was found that the right hand was missing. This occasioned the poor girl extraordinary sorrow, but some few nights later when she was undressing, preparatory to bed, she suddenly uttered a piercing shriek which immediately brought the other inmates of the house to her room. She declared that she had felt a violent blow dealt with an open hand upon her shoulder. The place was examined,

{p. 4}

and distinctly marked in livid bruises there was seen the impression of a man's right hand.

Andrew Lang in his Dreams and Ghosts (new edition, 1897), relates the story of "The Ghost that Bit," which might seem to have been a vampire, but which actually cannot be so classed since vampires have a body and their craving for blood is to obtain sustenance for their body. The narrative is originally to be found in Notes and Queries, 3rd September 1864, and the correspondent asserts that he took it "almost verbatim from the lips of the lady" concerned, a person of tried veracity. Emma S------ was asleep one morning in her room at a large house near Cannock Chase. It was a fine August day in 1840, but although she had bidden her maid call her at an early hour she was surprised to hear a sharp knocking upon her door about 3.30. In spite of her answer the taps continued, and suddenly the curtains of her bed were slightly drawn, when to her amaze she saw the face of an aunt by marriage looking through upon her. Half unconsciously she threw out her hand, and immediately one of her thumbs was sensibly premed by the teeth of the apparition. Forthwith she arose, dressed, and went downstairs, where not a creature was stirring. Her father upon coming down rallied her a little upon being about at cockcrow and inquired the cause. When she informed him he determined that later in the day he would pay a visit to his sister-in-law who dwelt at no great distance. This he did, only to discover that she had unexpectedly died at about 3.30 that morning. She had not been in any way ailing, and the shook was fearfully sudden. On one of the thumbs of the corpse was found a mark as if it had been bitten in the last agony.

The disturbances at the Lamb hostelry, Lawford's Gate, Bristol, which aroused something more than local interest in the years 1761-62, were not improbably due to witchcraft and caused by the persecutions of a woman who trafficked in occultism of the lowest order, although on the other hand they may have been poltergeist manifestations. The two little girls, Molly and Debby Giles, who were the subjects of these phenomena, were often severely bitten and pinched. The impressions of eighteen or twenty teeth were seen upon their arms, the marks being clammy with saliva and warm spittle, "and the children were roaring out for the pain of the

{p. 5}

pinches and bites." On one occasion whilst an observer was talking to Dobby Giles she cried out that she was bitten in the neck when there suddenly appeared "the mark of teeth, about eighteen, and wet with spittle." That the child should have nipped herself was wholly impossible, and nobody was near her save Mr. Henry Durbin who recorded these events, and whose account was first printed in 1800, the year after his death, since he did not wish his notes to be given to the public during his lifetime. On 2nd January, 1762, Mr. Durbin notes: "Dobby cried the hand was about her sister's throat, and I saw the flesh at the side of her throat pushed in, whitish as if done with fingers, though I saw none. Her face grew red and blackish presently, as if she was strangled, but without any convulsion or contraction of the muscles." Thursday, 7th January, 1762, we have: "Dobby was bitten most and with deeper impressions than Molly. The impression of the teeth on their arms formed an oval, which measured two inches in length." All this certainly looks as if sorcery were at work. It may be remembered that in Salem during the epidemic of witchcraft the afflicted persons were tormented "by Biting, Pinching, Strangling, etc." When Goodwife Corey was on trial, "it was observed several times, that if she did but bite her under lip in time of examination, the Persons afflicted were bitten on their arms and Wrists, and produced the Marks before the Magistrates, Minister, and others."

In The Proceedings of the National Laboratory of Psychical Research, Vol. I., 1927, will be found an account of the phenomena connected with Eleonore Zügun, a young Rumanian peasant girl, who in the autumn of 1926, when only thirteen years old was brought to London by the Countess Wassilko-Serecki, in order that the manifestations might be investigated at "The National Laboratory of Psychical Research," Queensberry Place, South Kensington. The child was said to be persecuted by some invisible force or agent, which she knew as Dracu, Anglice the Devil. There were many extraordinary happenings and she was continually being scratched and bitten by this unseen intelligence. It must suffice to give but two or three instances of the very many "biting phenomena." On the afternoon of Monday, 4th October, 1926, Captain Neil Gow an investigator in his report, notes:

{p. 6}

"3.20. Eleonore cried out. Showed marks on back of left hand like teeth-marks which afterwards developed into deep weals. . . . 4.12. Eleonore was just raising a cup of tea to her lips, but suddently {sic} gave a cry and put the cup down hastily: there was a mark on her right hand similar to that caused by a bite. Both rows of teeth were indicated." Of the same incident, Mr. Clapham Palmer, an investigator who was also present writes: "Eleonore was in the act of raising the cup to her lips when she suddenly gave a little cry of pain, put down her cup and rolled up her sleeve. On her forearm I then saw what appeared to be the marks of teeth indented deeply in the flesh, as if she or someone had fiercely bitten her arm. The marks turned from red to white and finally took the form of white raised weals. They gradually faded but were still noticeable after an hour or so." Such bitings not infrequent occurred, and photographs have been taken of the marks.

It were an interesting question to discuss the cause of these indentations and no doubt it is sufficiently remarkable, but however that may be such inquiry were impertinent here, for it is clearly not vampirism, nor indeed cognate thereto. The object of the Vampire is to suck blood, and in these cases if blood was ever drawn it was more in the nature of a scratch or slight dental puncture, there was no effusion. Again the agent who inflicted these bites was not sufficiently material to be visible, at any rate he was able to remain unseen. The true vampire is corporeal.

The vampire has a body, and it is his own body. He is neither dead nor alive; but living in death. He is an abnormality; the androgyne in the phantom world; a pariah among the fiends.

Even the Pagan poet taught his hearers and his readers that death was a sweet guerdon of repose, a blessed oblivion after the toil and struggle of life. There are few things more beautiful and there are few things more sad than the songs of our modern Pagans who console their aching hearts with the wistful vision of eternal sleep. Although perhaps they themselves know it not, their delicate but despairing melancholy is an heritage from the weary yet tuneful singers of the last days of Hellas, souls for whom there was no dawn of hope in the sky. But we have a certain knowledge and a fairer surety

{p. 7}

for "now Christ is risen from the dead, the first-fruits of them that sleep." Yet Gray, half Greek, seems to promise to his rustics and his hinds as their richest reward after life of swink and toil dear forgetfulness and eternal sleep. Swinburne was glad:

That no life lives for ever
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.
. . . . .
Only the eternal sleep
In an eternal night.

Emily Brontë lusted for mere oblivion:

Oh, for the time when I shall sleep
Without identity.
And never care how rain may steep,
Or snow may cover me!

Flecker in utter despair wails out:

I know dead men are deaf, and cannot hear
The singing of a thousand nightingales . . .
I know dead men are blind and cannot see
The friend that shuts in horror their big eyes,
And they are witless--

Even more beautifully than the poets have sung, a weaver of exquisite prose has written: "Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no to-morrow. To forget time." Poor sorry souls! How arid, how empty are such aspirations when we think of the ardent glowing phrase of the Little Flower: "Je veux passer mon ciel à faire du bien sur la terre!" And "Even in the bosom of the Beatific Vision the Angels watch over us. No, I shall never be able to take any rest until the end of the world. But when the Angel shall have said 'Time is no more,' then I shall rest, then I shall be able to rejoice, since the number of the elect will be complete."

So we see that even for those who take the most pagan, the most despairing, the most erroneous views, the ideal is oblivion and rest. How fearful a destiny then is that of the vampire who has no rest in the grave, but whose doom it is to come forth

{p. 8}

and prey upon the living. In the first place it may briefly be inquired how the belief in vampirism originated, and here it is not impertinent to remark that the careful investigations in connexion with psychic phenomena which have been so fruitful of recent years, and even modern scientific discovery, have proved the essential truth of many an ancient record and old superstition, which were until yesterday dismissed by the level-headed as the wildest sensationalism of melodramatic romance. The origins of a belief in vampirism, although, of course, very shadowy, unformed and unrelated, may probably be said to go back to the earliest times when primitive man observed the mysterious relations between soul and body. The division of an individual into these two parts must have been suggested to man by his observation, however crude and rough, of the phenomenon of unconsciousness, as exhibited in sleep and more particularly in death. He cannot but have speculated concerning that something, the loss of which withdraws man for ever from the living and waking world. He was bound to ask himself if there was any continuance in any circumstances at present veiled from, and unknown to, him of that life and that personality which had obviously passed elsewhere. The question was an eternal one, and it was, moreover, a personal one which concerned him most intimately, since it related to an experience he could not expect to escape. It was clear to him before long that the process called death was merely a passage to another world, and naturally enough he pictured that world as being very like the one he knew, only man would there enjoy extended powers over the forces with which he waged such ceaseless war for the mastery during his period on earth. It might be that the world was not so very far away, and it was not to be supposed that persons who had passed over would lose their interest in and affection for those who for a little while had been left behind. Relations must not be forgotten just because they did not happen to be visibly present, any more than to-day we forget one of the family who has gone on a voyage for a week or a month or a year. Naturally those whose age and position during their lifetime had entitled them to deference and respect must be treated with the same consideration, nay, with even more ample honours since their authority had become mysteriously greater and they would be

{p. 9}

more active to punish any disrespect or neglect. Hence as a family venerated the father of the house both in life and after death, which was the germ of ancestral worship, so the tribe would venerate the great men, the chieftains and the heroes, whose exploits had won so much not only for their own particular houses, but for the whole clan. The Shilluk, a tribe who dwell upon the western bank of the White Nile, and who are governed by a single king, still maintain the worship of Nyakang, the hero who founded the dynasty and settled this people in their present territory. Nyakang is conceived as having been a man, although he did not actually die but vanished from sight. Yet he is not altogether divine, for the great god of the Shilluk, the creator of mankind and the world, Juok, is without form, invisible and omnipresent. He is far greater than and far above Nyakang, and he reigns in those highest heavens where neither the prayers of man can reach his ears, nor can he smell the sweet savour of sacrifice.

Not only Nyakang, but each of the Shilluk kings after death is worshipped, and the grave of the monarch becomes a sanctuary, so that throughout the villages there are many shrines tended by certain old men and old women, where a ritual which is practically identical in each separate place is elaborately conducted. Indeed, the principal element in the religion of the Shilluk may be said to be the veneration of their dead kings.[5]

Other African tribes also worship their dead kings. The Baganda, whose country Uganda lies at the actual source of the Nile, think of their dead kings as being equal to the gods, and the temples of the deceased monarchs are built and maintained with the utmost care. Formerly when a king died hundreds of men were killed so that their spirits might attend upon the spirit of their master, and what is very significant as showing that these people believe the king and his ghostly followers could return in forms sufficiently corporeal to perform the very material function of eating is that on certain solemn days at earliest dawn the sacred tomtom is beaten at the temple gates and crowds of worshippers bring baskets of food for the dead king and his followers lest being hungry he should become angered and punish the whole tribe.[6]

In Kiziba, which lies on the western side of the Lake Victoria Nyanza, the religion of the natives consists of the worship

{p. 10}

of their dead kings, although there is a supreme god Rugada, who created the world, man and beasts, but even their hierarchs know little about him and he receives no sacrifice, the business of the priests being to act as intermediaries between the people and the dead monarchs.[7]

So the Bantu. tribes of Northern Rhodesia acknowledge a supreme deity, Leza, whose power is manifested in the storm, in the torrential rain clouds, in the roar of thunder and the flash of lightning, but to whom there is no direct access by prayer or by sacrifice. The gods, then, whom these tribes worship are sharply divided into two classes, the spirits of departed chiefs, who are publicly venerated by the whole tribe, and the spirits of relations who are privately honoured by a family, whose head performs the sacerdotal functions upon these occasions. "Among the Awemba there is no special shrine for these purely family spirits, who are worshipped inside the hut, and to whom family sacrifices of a sheep, a goat, or a fowl is made, the spirit receiving the blood spilt upon the ground, while all the members of the family partake of the flesh together. For a religious Wemba man the cult of the spirit of his nearest relations (of his grandparents, or of his deceased father, mother, elder brother or maternal uncle) is considered quite sufficient. Out of these spirit relatives a man will worship one whom he considers as a special familiar, for various reasons. For instance, the diviner may have told him that his last illness was caused because he had not respected the spirit of his uncle; accordingly he will be careful in the future to adopt his uncle as his tutelary spirit. As a mark of such respect he may devote a cow or a goat to one of the spirits of his ancestors."[8] This custom is very significant, and two points should be especially noted. The first is that the deceased, or the spirit of the deceased, is not merely propitiated by, but partakes of, blood, which is spilt for his benefit. Secondly, the deceased, if not duly honoured, can cause illness, and therefore is capable of exercising a certain vengeful or malevolent power. The essential conception that underlies these customs is not so very far removed from the tradition of a vampire who craves to suck blood and causes sickness through his malignancy.

Very similar ideas prevail among the Herero, a Bantu tribe of German South-West Africa, who believe that Ndjambi {p. 11} Karunga, the great good god who dwells in heaven above is far too remote to be accessible, wherefore he neither receives nor requires worship and offerings. "It is their ancestors (Ovakuru) whom they must fear; it is they who are angry and can bring danger and misfortune on a man . . . it is in order to win and keep their favour, to avert their displeasure and wrath, in short to propitiate them, that the Herero bring their many offerings; they do so not out of gratitude, but out of fear, not out of love, but out of terror."[9] The Rev. G. Viehe, a missionary among the tribe writes: "The religious customs and ceremonies of the Ovaherero are all rooted in the presumption that the deceased continue to live, and that they have a great influence on earth, and exercise power over the life and death of man."[10]

The religion of the Ovambo, another Bantu tribe of German South-West Africa, runs on practically the same lines. The supreme being, Kalunga, the creator, desires neither adoration nor fear. The whole religion is the worship, or rather the propitiation, of the spirits of the dead. Every man at death leaves behind him a phantom form which continues a certain kind of life (not very clearly defined) upon earth, and this spirit has power over the living. Especially may it cause various kinds of sickness. The spirits of private persons can only exert their influence over the members of their own families; the souls of chiefs and great warriors have a much wider scope, they can influence the whole clan for weal or woe; they can even to some extent control the powers of nature and ensure a bountiful corn-crop by their careful provision of rain, since under their kindly direction there shall be neither too little nor too great an abundance. Moreover, they can ward off disease, but if on the other hand they be offended they can visit the tribe with pestilence and famine. It may be particularly noted that among the Ovambo the phantoms of dead magicians are dreaded and feared in no ordinary manner. The only way to prevent the increase of these dangerous spirit folk is by depriving the body of its limbs, a precaution which must be taken immediately after death. So it is customary to sever the arms and legs from the trunk and to cut the tongue out of the mouth, in order that the spirit may have no power either of movement or of speech, since the mutilation of the corpse has rendered a ghost, who would

{p. 12}

assuredly be both powerful and truculent, inoperative and incapable.[11] It will later be seen that the mutilation, the cutting off of the head, and especially the driving of a stake through the body with other dismemberments, were resorted to as the most effective means, short of complete cremation, of dealing with a vampire, whilst according to Theosophists only those become vampires who have during their lifetime been adepts in black magic, and Miss Jessie Adelaide Middleton says that the people who become vampires are witches, wizards and suicides.[12]

Canon Callaway has recorded some very interesting details of Amatongo or Ancestor Worship among the Zulus.[13] A native account runs as follows: "The black people do not worship all Amatongo indifferently, that is, all the dead of their tribes. Speaking generally, the head of each house is worshipped by the children of that house; for they do not know the ancients who are dead, nor their laud-giving names, nor their names. But their father whom they knew is the head by whom they begin and end in their prayer, for they know him best, and his love for his children; they remember his kindness to them whilst he was living, they compare his treatment of them whilst he was living, support themselves by it and say, 'He will still treat us in the same way now he is dead. We do not know why he should regard others besides us; he will regard us only.' So it is then although they worship the many Amatongo of their tribe, making a great fence around them for their protection; yet their father is far before all others when they worship the Amatongo. Their father is a great treasure to them even when he is dead." It would appear that among the Zulus the spirits of those who are recently deceased, especially the fathers and mothers of families, are most generally venerated and revered. As is natural, the spirits of the remoter dead are forgotten, for time passes and their memory perishes when those who knew them and sang their praises follow them into the world beyond. As we have remarked, in nearly every case we find recognized the existence of a supreme being, who is certainly a high spiritual power that had never been a man, and the homage paid to whom (in those very rare instances[14] where such worship is conceived of as desirable or even possible) differs entirely from the cult of the dead, be they family ancestors

{p. 13}

or some line of ancient kings. There are, of course, many other gods in the African pantheon, and although the natives will not allow that these were ever men, and indeed sharply differentiate in ritual practice their worship from the cult of the spirits and phantoms, yet in nearly all cases it is to be suspected, and in many cases it is certain, that these gods were heroes of old whose legend instead of becoming faint with years and dying away grew more and more splendid until the monarch or the warrior passed into pure deity. A similar process holds forth in heathen religions the wide world over. and with regard to the Baganda polytheism the Rev. J. Roscoe remarks "The principal gods appear to have been at one time human beings, noted for their skill and bravery, who were afterwards deified by the people and invested with supernatural powers."[13]

It is said that the Caffres believe that men of evil life after death may return during the night in coporeal form and attack the living, often wounding and killing them. It seems that these revenants are much attracted by blood which enables them more easily to effect their purpose, and even a few red drops will help to vitalize their bodies. So a Caffre has the greatest horror of blood, and will never allow even a spot fallen from a bleeding nose or a cut to lie uncovered, but should it stain the ground it must be instantly hidden with earth, and if it splotch upon their bodies they must purify themselves from the pollution with elaborate lustral ceremonies.[16] Throughout the whole of West Africa indeed the natives are careful to stamp out any blood of theirs which happens to have fallen to the ground, and if a cloth or a piece of wood should be marked thereby these articles are most carefully burned.[17] They openly admit that the reason for this is lest a drop of blood might come into the hands of a magician who would make evil use of it, or else it might be caught up by a bad spirit and would then enable him to form a tangible body. The same fear of sorcery prevails in New Guinea, where the natives if they have been wounded will most carefully collect the bandages and destroy them by burning or casting them far into the sea, a circumstance which has not infrequently been recorded by missionaries and travellers.[18]

There are, indeed, few if any peoples who have not realized the mysterious significance attached to blood, and examples

{p. 14}

of this belief are to be found in the history of every clime. It is expressed by the Chinese writers on medicine[19]; it was held by the Arabs[20], and it is prominent among the traditions of the Romans.[21] Even with regard to animals the soul or life of the animal was in the blood, or rather actually was the blood. So we have the divine command, Leviticus xvii. 10-14: "Homo quilibet de domo Israel, et de aduenis qui peregrinantur inter eos, si comederit sanguinem, obfirmabo faciem meam contra animam illius, et dispertam eam de populo suo. Quia anima carnis in sanguine est: et ego dedi illum uobis, ut super altare in eo expietis pro animabus uestris, et sanguis pro animae piaculo sit. Idcirco dixi filiis Israel: Omnis anima ex uobis non comedet sanguinem, nec ex aduenis, qui peregrinantur apud uos. Homo quicumque ex filiis Israel, et de aduenis, qui peregrinantur apud uos, si uenatione atque aucupio ceperit feram uel auem, quibus esci licitum est, fundat sanguinem eius, et operiat illum terra. Anima enim omnis carnis in sanguine est: unde dixi filiis Israel: Sanguinem uniuersae carnis non comedetis, quia anima carnis in sanguine est: et quicumque comederit illum, interibit." (If any man whosoever of the house of Israel, and of the strangers that sojourn among them, eat blood I will set my face against his soul, and will cut him off from among his people: Because the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you, that you may make atonement with it upon the altar for your souls, and the blood may be for an expiation for the soul. Therefore I have said to the children of Israel: No soul of you, nor of the strangers that sojourn among you, shall eat blood. Any man whatsoever of the children of Israel, and of the strangers that sojourn among you, if by hunting or by fowling, he take a wild beast or a bird, which is lawful to eat, let him pour out its blood, and cover it with earth. For the life of all flesh is in the blood: therefore I said to the children of Israel: You shall not eat the blood of any flesh at all, because the life of the flesh is in the blood, and whosoever eateth it, shall be cut off.)[22] The Hebrew word which is translated "life"[23] in this passage and particularly in the phrase "Because the life of the flesh is in the blood," also signifies "Soul," and the Revised Version has a marginal note: "Heb. soul." Since then the very essence of life, and even more, the spirit or the soul in some mysterious way lies in the blood we have

{p. 15}

a complete explanation why the vampire should seek to vitalize and rejuvenate his own dead body by draining the blood from the veins of his victims.

It will be remembered that in a famous necromantic passage in the Odyssey[24], when Ulysses calls up the ghosts from the underworld, in order that they may recover the power of speech, he has to dig deep a trench and therein pour the blood of sacrifice, black rams, and it is only after they have quaffed their fill of this precious liquor that the phantoms may converse with him and enjoy something of their human powers and mortal faculties.

Among the many references to funereal customs and the rites of mourning in Holy Writ there is one which has a very distinct bearing upon this belief that blood might benefit the deceased. The prophet Jeremias in fortelling the utter ruin of the Jews and the complete desolation of their land says: "Et morientur grandes, et parui in terra ista: non sepelientur neque plangentur, et non se incident, neque caluitium fiet pro eis."[25] (Both the great and little shall die in this land; they shall not be buried nor lamented, and men shall not cut themselves, nor make themselves bald for them.) And again the same prophet tells us that after the Jews had been carried away in captivity of Babylon: "Uenerunt uiri de Sichem et de Silo, et de Samaria octoginta uiri: rasi barba, et scissis uestibus et squallentes: et munera, et thus habebant in manu, ut offerrent in domo Domini."[26] The word "squallentes" which the Douai Version renders "mourning" is translated by the Authorised Version as "having cut themselves" and the same rendering is given in the Revised Version. These customs of shaving part of the head and the beard which is referred to in the words "nor make themselves bald for them" and more particularly the practice of cutting or wounding the body in token of mourning were strictly forbidden as savouring of heathenish abuse. Thus in Leviticus xix. 28, we read: "Et super mortuo non incidetis carnem uestrum, neque figuras aliquas, aut stigmata facietis uobis. Ego Dominus." (You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh, for the dead, neither shall you make in yourselves any figures or marks: I am the Lord.) And again (xxi. 5) the same command with regard to mourning is enforced: "Non radent caput, nec barbam, neque in carnibus suis facient incisuras." (Neither shall

{p. 16}

they shave their head, nor their beard, nor make incisions in their flesh.) S. Jerome, however, tells us that the custom persisted. For he says in his Commentary on Jeremias, xvi. 6, which may be dated 415-420:[27] "Mos hic fuit apud ueteres, et usque hodie in quibusdam permanet Iudaeorum, ut in luctibus incidant lacertos, et caluitium faciant, quod Iob fecisse legimus."[28] And yet these observances had been, as we saw, most sternly forbidden, nay, and that most emphatically and more than once. Thus in Deuteronomy they are sternly reprobated as smacking of the grossest superstition: "Non comedetis cum sanguine. Non augurabimini, nec obseruabitis somnia. Neque in rotundum attondebitis comam: nec radetis barbam. Et super mortuo non incidetis carnem uestram, neque figuras aliquas, aut stigmata facietis uobis. Ego Dominus." (You shall not eat with blood. You shall not divine nor observe dreams. Nor shall you cut your hair round-wise: nor shave your beard. You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh, for the dead, neither shall you make in yourselves any figures or marks: I am the Lord.) "Filii estote Domini Dei uestri: non uos incidetis, nec facietis, caluitium super mortuo. Quoniam populus sanctus es Domino Deo tuo: et te elegit ut sis ei in populum peculiarem de cunctis gentibus, quae sunt super terram." (Be ye children of the Lord your God: you shall not cut yourselves, nor make any baldness for the dead; because thou art a holy people to the Lord thy God: and he chose thee to be his peculiar people of all nations that are upon the earth.)

Presumably these two customs were thus sternly prohibited as largely borrowed by the Jews from the Pagan people around them, who might indeed as having no hope make such extravagant and even indecent exhibition of their mourning for the departed, but which practices would at the least be highly unbecoming in the chosen people of Jehovah. Assuredly, even if they go no deeper, these observances are tainted with such savagery and seem so degrading that it is not surprising to find ordinances among other peoples, for instance the code of Solon at Athens, forbidding mourners to wound and scratch their faces and persons. The laws of the Ten Tables also which were largely based on this earlier legislation do not permit women to tear and disfigure their faces during the funeral rites. These two customs, shaving the head and

{p. 17}

lacerating the face, are found the whole world over at all times and among all races. The former hardly concerns us here, but it is interesting to inquire into the idea which lay at the root of this "cuttings in the flesh for the dead." This practice existed in antiquity among the Assyrians, the Arabs, the Scythians and such peoples as the Moabites, the Philistines, and the Phoenicians.[29] Jordanes tells us that Attila was lamented, "not with womanly wailing, empty coronach and tears, but with the blood of warriors and strong men."[31] Among many African tribes, among the Polynesians of Tahiti, the Sandwich Islands and the whole Pacific Archipelago; among the Aborigines of Australia, New Zealand and Tasmania; among the Patagonians; among the Indians of California and North America; as. among very many other races, mourning for the dead is always accompanied by the laceration of the body until blood freely flows, and it is even not unknown for relatives of the deceased to inflict terrible mutilations upon themselves, and he who is most pitiless and most barbarous is esteemed to show the greater honour and respect to the departed. The important point lies in the fact, that blood must be shed, and this appears to constitute some covenant with the dead, so that by freely bestowing what he requires they prevent him from returning to deprive them of it forcibly and in the most terrifying circumstances. If they are not willing to feed him with their blood he will come back and take it from them, so naturally it is believed to be far better to give without demur and gain the protection of the ghost, rather than to refuse what the phantom will inevitably seize upon in vengeance and in wrath.

Many Australian tribes considered blood to be the best remedy for a sick and weakly person, and there is, of course, no small modicum of truth in the idea when we consider the scientific transfusion of blood as is practised in certain cases by doctors at the present time, a remedy of which there are many examples in the middle ages and in later medicine.[31] Bonney, the Australian traveller, tells us that among certain tribes on the Darling River in New South Wales, "a very sick or weak person is fed upon blood which the male friends provide, taken from their bodies in the way already described"[32] that is to say by opening a vein of the forearm and allowing the blood to run into a wooden bowl or some similar vessel. "It

{p. 18}

is generally taken in a raw state by the invalid, who lifts it to his mouth like jelly between his fingers and thumb." It must be remembered that the Aborigines firmly believe in the existence of the soul after death, and since blood during the life proves the most helpful and sustaining nourishment it will communicate the same vitalizing qualities if bestowed upon one who has passed beyond, for they do not entertain the idea that death is any great severance and separation.

This certainly gives us a clue to the belief underlying the practice of scratching the body and shedding blood upon the occasion of a death, and there can be no doubt that, although possibly the meaning was obscured and these lacerations came to evince nothing more than a proof of sorrow at the bereavment, yet fundamentally the blood was offered by mourners for the refreshment of the departed to supply him with strength and vigour under his new conditions.[33] These practices, then, involved a propitiation of the dead; further, a certain intimate communication with the dead, and assuredly bear a necromantic character, and have more than a touch of vampirism, the essence of which consists in the belief that the dead man is able to sustain a semi-life by preying upon the vitality, that is to say, by drinking the blood of the living. Accordingly we are fully able to understand why these customs, heathenish and worse, were so uncompromisingly denounced and forbidden in the Mosaic legislation. It was no mere prohibition of indecorous lamentations tinged with Paganism, but it went something deeper, for such observances are not free from the horrid superstition of black magic and the feeding of the vampire till he suck his full of hot salt blood and be gorged and replete like some demon leech.

The word Vampire (also vampyre) is from the Magyar vampir, a word of Slavonic origin occuring in the same form in Russian, Polish, Czech, Serbian, and Bulgarian with such variants as Bulgarian, vapir, vepir; Ruthenian vepyr, vopyr, opyr; Russian upir, upyr; South Russian upuir; Polish upier. Miklosich[34] suggests the Turkish uber, witch, as a possible source. Another derivation, which is less probable is from the root Pi--to drink, with the prefix va, or av. From the root Pi--come the Greek {Greek pi'nw} I drink, some tenses of which are formed from the root Po--, such as a perfect {Greek pe'pwka}[35]; a future passive {Greek poðh'somai}[36]; to which must be added the perfect infinitive

{p. 19}

{Greek pepo'sðai}[36] which occurs in Theognis.[37] Hence we have the Aeolic {Greek pw'nw}, and also probably {Greek potamo's}, properly perhaps of fresh, drinkable water {Greek po'timon u!'dwr}.[38]

The Sanskrit is pâ, pî, pi-bâmi (bibo); pâ-nam (potus) pâ-tra (poculum); Latin po-tus, po-to, po-culum, etc., with which are connected bibo and its many forms and compounds (root--bi-); Slavonic, pi-tî (bibere); Lithuanian, po-ta (ebriositas), and a vast number of other variants.

Ralston must certainly be quoted in this connexion, although it should be borne in mind that he is a little out of date in some details. The Songs of the Russian People from which (p. 410) I cite the following passage was published early in 1872. Of Vampires he writes: "The name itself has never been satisfactorily explained. In its form of vampir [South Russian upuir, anciently upir], it has been compared with the Lithuanian wempti = to drink, and wempti, wampiti = to growl, to mutter, and it has been derived from a root pi [to drink] with the prefix u = av, va. If this derivation is correct, the characteristic of the vampire is a kind of blood-drunkenness. In accordance with this idea the Croatians called the vampire pijauica; the Servians say of a man whose face is coloured by constant drinking, that he is 'blood-red as a vampire'; and both the Servians and the Slovaks term a hard drinker a Vlkodlak. The Slovenes and Kashubes call the vampire vieszey, a name akin to that borne by the witch in our own language as well as in Russian. The Poles name him upior or upir, the latter being his designation among the Czekhs also." The Istrian vampire is strigon, and among the Wallachians there is a vampire called murony. In Greece there are some local names for the vampire, (Cyprus), {Greek sarkwme'nos}, "the one who has put on flesh"; (Tenos), {Greek a?naikaðou'menos}, "he who sits up in his grave" in Cythnos, {Greek a?'lyutos} "incorrupt"; in Cythera, {Greek a?na'rraxo}, {Greek la'mpasma,}, and {Greek la'mpastro}, three words of which I can suggest no satisfactory explanation and which ever so great an authority on Greece as Mr. J. C. Lawson finds unintelligible. Newton, Travels and Discoveries in the Levant (I, p. 212) and more particularly Pashley, Travels in Crete (II, p. 207), mention a term used in Rhodes and generally in Crete, {Greek kataxanos}, the derivation of which is uncertain. Pashley thinks it may have meant a "destroyer," but Mr. Lawson connects it with Kara and the root {Greek xan--}, I gape or yawn, in

{p. 20}

allusion to the gaping mouth of the vampire, os hians, dentes candidi, says Leone Allacci.

St. Clair and Brophy in their Twelve Years' Study of the Eastern Question in Bulgaria, 1877, have a note (p. 29, n. 1): "The pure Bulgarians call this being [the Vampire] by the genuine Slavonic name of Upior, the Gagaous (or Bulgarians of mixed race) by that of Obour, which is Turkish; in Dalmatia it is known as Wrikodlaki, which appears to be merely a corruption of the Romaic {Greek bruko'laks}."

The word vampir, vampyr, is apparently unknown in Greece proper and the general modem term is {Greek bruko'lakas}, which may be transliterated as vrykolakas (plural vrykolakes). Tozer gives the Turkish name as vurkolak, and Hahn records that amongst some of the Albanians {Greek bourbola'k-ou} is used of the restless dead. It is true that in parts of Macedonia where the Greek population is in constant touch with Slavonic neighbours, especially in Melenik in the North-East, a form {Greek ba'mpuras} or {Greek bo'mpuras} has been adopted," and is there used as a synonym of vrykolakas in its ordinary Greek sense, but strangely enough with this one exception throughout the whole of Greece and the Greek islands the form "Vampire" does not appear. Coraes denies the Slavonic origin of the word vrykolakas, and he seeks to connect a local variant {Greek borbo'lakas} with a hypothetical ancient word {Greek mormo'lyks}[40] alleged to be the equivalent of {Greek mormolu'kh} which is used by the geographer Strabo, and {Greek mormolukei'a} used by Arrianus of Nicomedia in his {Greek Diatribai` E?pikth'tou}[41] and the more usual {Greek mormolukeîon}[42] found in Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazuasae (417):

{Greek

eî?ta dia toûton taîs gunaikwnítisin
sfragîdas èpibállousin h'?dh kaì moxloús,
thrôûntes h!mâs, kaì proséti Molottikoùs
tréfousi, mormolukêîa toîs moixoîs, kúnas.

}

The word occurs again in Plato, Phaedo[43]: "{Greek toûton oû!n peirw'meða peíðein mh` dedíenai tòn ðánaton w!'sper tà mormolúkeia}". It is, of course, a derivation and diminutive of Mormo ({Greek Mormw'}), a hobgoblin, or worse, a ghoul of hideous appearance. The theory is patriotic and ingenious, but Bernard Schmidt and all other authorities agree that it is entirely erroneous and the modern Greek word vrykolakas must undoubtedly be identified with a word which is common

{p. 21}

to the whole Slavonic group of languages. This word Slovenian volkodlak, vukodlak, vulkodlak, is a compound form of which the first half means "wolf," whilst the second half has been identified, although the actual relation is not quite demonstrable, with blaka, which in Old Slavonic, New Slavonic, and Serbian signifies the "hair" of a cow or a horse or a horse's mane.[44] Yet whatsoever the analytical signification of the compound may precisely be, the synthesis in the actual employment of all Slavonic tongues, save one, is the equivalent of the English "werewolf"; Scotch "warwulf"; German "Werwolf" and French "loup-garou." The one language in which this word does not bear this interpretation is the Serbian, for here it signifies "a vampire."[45] But it should be remarked in this connexion that the Slavonic peoples, and especially the Serbians believe that a man who has been a werewolf in his life will become a vampire after death, and so the two are very closely related.[46] It was even thought in some districts, especially Elis[47] that those who had eaten the flesh of a sheep killed by a wolf might become vampires after death.[48] However, it must be remembered that although the superstitions of the werewolf and the vampire in many respects agree, and in more than one point are indeed precisely similar, there is, especially in Slavonic tradition, a very great distinction, for the Slavonic vampire is precisely defined and it is the incorrupt and re-animated dead body which returns from its grave, otherwise it cannot be said strictly to be a vampire. As we shall have occasion to observe it were, perhaps, no exaggeration to say that the conception of the vampire proper is peculiar to Slavonic peoples, and especially found in the Balkan countries, in Greece, in Russia, in Hungary, Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia. There are, of course, many variants, both Western and Oriental; and other countries have tales of vampires which exactly fit the Slavonic norm, but outside the districts we have specified the appearances of the vampire are rare, whilst in his own domain even now he holds horrid sway, and people fear not so much the ghost as the return of the dead body floridly turgescent and foully swollen with blood, endued with some abominable and devilish life.

In Danish and Swedish we have vampyr; the Dutch is vampir; the French le vampire; Italian, Spanish, Portuguese,

{p. 22}

vampiro; modem Latin, vampyrus.[49] The Oxford English Dictionary thus defines vampire: "A preternatural being of a malignant nature (in the original unusual form of the belief an animated Corpse), supposed to seek nourishment and do harm by sucking the blood of sleeping persons; a man or woman abnormally endowed with similar habits." The first example which has been traced of the use of the word in literature seems to be that which occurs in The Travels of Three English Gentlemen, written about 1734, which was printed in Vol. IV. of the Harleian Miscellany, 1745, where the following passage occurs: "We must not omit Observing here, that our Landlord [at Laubach] seems to pay some regard to what Baron Valvasor has related of the Vampyres, said to infest some Parts of this Country. These Vampyres are supposed to be the Bodies of deceased Persons, animated by evil Spirits, which come out of the Graves, in the Night-time, suck the Blood of many of the Living, and thereby destroy them." The word and the idea soon became quite familiar, and in his Citizen of the World (1760-2) Oliver Goldsmith writes in every-day phrase: "From a meal he advances to a surfeit, and at last sucks blood like a vampire."

Johnson, edited by Latham, 1870, has: "Vampire. Pretended demon, said to delight in sucking human blood, and to animate the bodies of dead persons, which, when dug up, are said to be found florid and full of blood." A quotation is given from Forman's Observations on the Revolution in 1688, 1741, which shows that so early the word had acquired its metaphorical sense: "These are the vampires of the publick and riflers of the kingdom." David Mallet in his Zephyr, or the Stratagem, has:

Can Russia, can the Hungarian vampire
With whom call in the hordes and empire,
Can four such powers, who one assail
Deserve our praise should they prevail?

A few travellers and learned authors had written of vampires in the seventeenth century. Thus we have the famous De Graecorum hodie quorundam opinationibus of Leone Allacci,[51] published at Cologne in 1645; there are some detailed accounts in the Relation de ce qui s'est passé a Sant-Erini Isle de l'Archipel[51] by Father François Richard, a Jesuit

{p. 23}

priest of the island of Santorini (Thera), whose work was published at Paris in 1657; Paul Ricaut, sometime English Consul at Smyrna in his The Present State of the Greek and Armenian Churches Anno Christi, 1678, 8vo, London, 1679,[52] mentions the tradition with a very striking example, but he does not actually use the word vampire. In 1679 Philip[53] Rohr published at Leipzig his thesis De Masticatione Mortuorum, which in the eighteenth century was followed by a number of academic treatises, such as the Dissertatio de Hominibus post mortem Sanguisugis, uulgo dictis Vampyren, by John Christopher Rohl and John Hertel, Leipzig, 17 32; the Dissertatio de cadaueribus sanguisugis of John Christian Stock, published at Jena in the same year; the Dissertatio de Uampyris Seruiensibus of John Heinrich Zopfius and Charles Francis van Dalen which appeared in the following year; all of which in some sense paved the way for John Christian Harenberg's Von Vampyren.[54]

In 1744 was published at Naples "presso i fratelli Raimondi" the famous Dissertazione sopra I Vampiri of Gioseppe Davanzati, Archbishop of Trani. This book had already widely circulated in manuscript--"la sua Dissertazione sopra i Vampiri s'era sparsa per tutta l'Italia benchè manoscritta," says the anonymous biographer--and a copy had even been presented to the Holy Father, the learned Benedict XIV, who in a letter of 12th January, 1743, graciously thanked the author with generous compliment upon his work. "L'abbiamo subito letta con piacere, e nel medesimo Tempo ammirata si per la dottrina, che per la vasta erudizione, di cui ella è fornita"; wrote the Pope. It will not then be unfitting here to supply some brief notice--of the Dissertazione sopra I Vampiri, which although it ran into a second edition, "Napoli. M.DCC.LXXXIX. Presso Filippo Raimondi," in England seems almost entirely unknown since strangely enough even the British Museum Library lacks a copy. We would premise that as the good Archbishop's arguments and conclusions are philosophical it is quite allowable for us, whilst fully recognizing his scholarship and skill in handling his points, not to accept these but rather to maintain the contrary.

Gioseppe Davanzati was born at Bari on 29th August, 1665. After having commenced his studies at the Jesuit {p. 24} College in his native town, he passed at the age of fifteen to the University of Naples. Already had he resolved to seek the priesthood, and after a course of three years, his parents being now dead, he entered the University of Bologna, when he greatly distinguished himself in Science and Mathematics. Some few years were next spent in travelling, during which period he made his headquarters at Paris, "essendo molto innamorato delle maniere, e de'costumi de' Francesi." Spain, Portugal, the Low Countries, Germany, Switzerland were visited in turn, and we are told that he repeatedly expressed his wish to cross over to England, "nobil sede dell 'Arti e delle Scienze" but that by some accident his desire was again and again frustrated. Early in the reign of Clement XI, (1700-1721) he was recalled to Italy, and having been raised to the priesthood by the Bishop of Montemartino (Salerno) he was appointed Treasurer of the famous Sanctuary of S. Nicholas at Bari. His genius speedily attracted attention, and before long he was sent by the Pope as Legate Extraordinary to the Emperor Charles VI, to Vienna, a difficult and important mission which he discharged so admirably well that upon his return he was rewarded with the Archbishopric of Trani and other honours. This noble prelate remained high in favour with the successors of Clement XI, Innocent XIII (1721-1724), Benedict XIII (1724-1730), and Clement XII (1730-1740), and when on the death of this latter Pontiff Cardinal Prospero Lorenzo Lambertini was elected and took the title of Benedict XIV an old and intimate friend of his own was sitting in the chair of S. Peter. Although five and seventy years of age, Archbishop Davanzati journeyed to Rome to kiss the feet of the new Pope by whom he was welcomed with the utmost kindness and every mark of distinction. Upon the death of Monsignor Crispi, Archbishop of Ferrara, the Supreme Pontiff on 2nd August, 1746, preconized Gioseppe Davanzati as Patriarch of Alexandria, a dignity vacant by the aforesaid prelate's decease. Early in February, 1755, Archbishop Davanzati contracted a severe chill which turned to inflammation of the lungs. Upon the night of the sixteenth of that month, having been fortified with the Sacraments of the Church be slept peacefully away, being aged 89 years, 5 months, and 16 days.

The Dissertazione sopra I Vampiri owed its first suggestion

{p. 25}

to the various discussions which were held at Rome during the years 1738-39 in the apartments of Cardinal Schrattembach, Bishop of Olmütz, and which arose from the official reports of vampirism submitted to him by the chapter of his diocese. The cardinal sought the advice and co-operation of various learned members of the Sacred College and other prelates of high repute for experience and sagacity. Amongst these was Davanzati who frankly confesses that until the Cardinal consulted him and explained the whole business at length he had no idea at all what a vampire might be. Davanzati commences his work by relating various well-known and authenticated cases of vampires, especially those which had recently occurred in Germany during the years 1720-1739. He shows a good knowledge of the literature of the subject, and decides that the phenomena cannot enter into the category of apparitions and ghosts but must be explained in a very different way, He finds that with but few exceptions both ancient and modern philosophers seem ignorant of vampirism, which he justly argues with pertinent references to the Malleus Maleficarum and to Delrio must be diabolical in origin be it an illusion or no. He next considers at some length in several chapters of great interest the extent of the demon's power. Chapter XIII discusses "Della forza della Fantasia," and in Chapter XIV be argues "Che le apparizioni de'fantasmi, e dell' ombre de' Morti, di cui fanno menzione gli Storici, non siano altro che effetto di fantasia." Here we take leave to join issue with him, and to-day it will very generally be agreed that his line of argument is at least perilous. Nor can we accept "Che l'apparizione de' Vampiri non sia altro che paro effetto di Fantasia." The truth lies something deeper than that as Leone Allacci so well knew. Yet with all its faults and limitations the Dissertazione sopra I Vampiri is deserving of careful consideration for there is much that is well presented, much that is of value, although in the light of fuller investigations and clearer knowledge the author's conclusion cannot be securely maintained.

Even better known than the volume of Davanzati is the Dissertations sur les Apparitions des Anges, des Démons et des Esprits, et sur les Revenants et Vampires de Hongrie, de Bohême, de Moravie, et de Silésie, published at Paris,

{p. 26}

chez Debure l'ainé, 2 vols., 12mo, 1746.[55] The work was frequently reprinted, and translated into English 1759; into German 1752; second edition 1757-8. In its day it exercised a very great influence, and as it is still constantly referred to, it may not be impertinent to give a brief account of the eminent authority, its author.

Dom Augustin Calmet, who is so famous as a biblical exegetist, was born at Ménil-la-Horgne, near Commercy, Lorraine, on 26th February, 1672; and died at the Abbey of Senones, near Saint-Dié, 25th October, 1757. He was educated by the monks of the Benedictine Priory of Breuil, and in 1688 he joined this learned order in the abbey of St. Mansuy at Toul, being professed in the following year, and ordained 17th March, 1696. At the Abbey of Moyen-Moutier, where he taught philosophy and theology, he soon engaged the help of the whole community to gather the material for his vast work on the Bible. The first volume of this huge commentary appeared at Paris in 1707, Commentaire littéral sur tous les livres de l'Ancien et du Nouveau Testament; and the last of the twenty-three quarto volumes was published only in 1716. Several most important reprints were issued throughout the eighteenth century, including two Latin versions, the one by F. Vecelli which came from houses at Venice and Frankfort, six volumes folio, 1730; the other by Mansi, Lucca, 9 vols., folio, 1730-1738 of which version there are at least two subsequent editions It is impossible that in some small points so encyclopædic a work should not be open to criticism, but its merits are permanent and the erudition truly amazing. Yet this was only one of many learned treatises which Dom Calmet published on Biblical subjects, and so greatly was their value esteemed that his dissertations were rapidly translated into Latin and the principal modern European languages. When we add to these his historical and philosophical writings the output of this great scholar is well-nigh incredible. So remarkable a man could not fail to hold high honours in his own Congregation, and it was only at his earnest prayer that Pope Benedict XIII refrained from compelling him to accept a mitre, since this Pontiff on more than one occasion expressed himself anxious to reward the merits and the learning of the Abbot of Senones.

To-day, perhaps the best known of Dom Calmet's works

{p. 27}

in his Traité sur les Apparitions des Esprits, et sur les Vampires, and in his preface he tells us the reasons which induced him to undertake this examination. One point which lie emphasizes must carefully be borne in mind and merits detailed consideration. Vampires, as we have seen, particularly infest Slavonic countries, and it does not appear that this species of apparition was well known in western Europe until towards the end of the seventeenth century. There undoubtedly were cases of vampirism, as will be recorded in their due order, and certain aspects of witchcraft have much in common with the vampire tradition, especially the exercise of that malign power whereby the witch caused her enemies to dwindle, peak and pine, draining them dry as hay. But this is not vampirism proper. The fuller knowledge of these horrors reached western Europe in detail during the eighteenth century, and it at once threw very considerable light upon unrelated cases that had been recorded from time to time, but which appeared isolated and belonging to no particular category. Writing in 1746, Dom Calmet, who had long studied the subject, remarks that certain events, certain movements, certain fanaticisms, certain phenomena, it may be in the physical or in the supernatural order, distinguish and characterise certain several centuries. He continues: "In this present age and for about sixty years past, we have been the hearers and the witnesses of a new series of extraordinary incidents and occurrences. Hungary, Moravia, Silesia, Poland, are the principal theatre of these happenings. For here we are told that dead men, men who have been dead for several months, I say, return from the tomb, are heard to speak, walk about, infest hamlets and villages, injure both men and animals, whose blood they drain thereby making them sick and ill, and at length actually causing death. Nor can men deliver themselves from these terrible visitations, nor secure themselves from these horrid attacks, unless they dig the corpses up from the graves, drive a sharp stake through these bodies, cut off the heads, tear out the hearts; or else they burn the bodies to ashes. The name given to these ghosts is Oupires, or Vampires, that is to say, blood-suckers, and the particulars which are related of them are so singular, so detailed, accompanied with circumstances so probable and so likely, as well as with the most weighty and well-attested legal deposition

{p. 28}

that it seems impossible not to subscribe to the belief which prevails in these countries that these Apparitions do actually come forth from their graves and that they are able to produce the terrible effects which are so widely and so positively attributed to them. . . . The Brucolaques (vrykolakes) of Greece and the Archipelago are Apparitions of quite a new kind." The author then says that he has solid reasons for treating the subject of Vampires, and especially for dealing with those who infest Hungary, Moravia, Silesia and Poland, although he well knows that he is laying himself open to damaging criticism on both sides. Many persons will accuse him of temerity and presumption for having dared to cast doubts upon certain details in these well-authenticated accounts, whilst others will attack him for having wasted his time in writing seriously on a subject which appears to them frivolous and inept. "Howbeit," he continues, "whatever line anyone may choose to adopt, it is to my mind useful and indeed necessary to investigate a question which seems to have an important bearing upon Religion. For if it be a truth that Vampires may actually thus return from their graves, then it becomes necessary to write in defence of, and to prove, this truth; if it be an error and an illusion, it follows in the interests of religion that those who credit it must be undeceived and that we should expose a groundless superstition, a fallacy, which may easily have very serious and very dangerous consequences."

In the first chapter of his Second Volume, which section directly discusses Vampires,--the first volume being preliminary and generally concerned with apparitions of various kinds,--Don Calmet again defines a Vampire, and at the risk of a certain amount of repetition his words must once again be quoted[56]: The Apparitions (Revenans) of Hungary, or Vampires . . . are men who have been dead for some considerable time, it may be for a long period or it may be for a shorter period, and these issue forth from their graves and come to disturb the living, whose blood they suck and drain. These vampires visibly appear to men, they knock loudly at their doors and cause the sound to re-echo throughout the whole house, and once they have gained a foothold death generally follows. To this sort of Apparition is given the name Vampire or Oupire, which in the Slavonic tongues means

{p. 29}

a blood-sucker. The only way to obtain deliverance from their molestations is by disinterring the dead body, by cutting off the head, by driving a stake through the breast, by transfixing the heart, or by burning the corpse to ashes."

It may be remarked here that although in the course of this book there will be occasion to deal with many ghosts of the vampire family and to treat of cognate superstitions and traditions the essential feature of the Vampire proper lies in the fact that he is a dead body re-animated with an awful life, who issues from his tomb to prey upon the living by sticking their blood which lends him new vitality and fresh energies. Since he is particularly found in Greece it is to a Greek writer we may go for a description of this pest. One of the earliest--if indeed he were not actually the first--of the writers of the seventeenth century who deals with vampires is Leone Allacci, (Alacci), more commonly known as Leo Allatius.[57] This learned scholar and theologian was born on the island of Chios in 1586, and died at Rome 19th January, 1669. At the age of fourteen he entered the Greek College in Rome, and when he had finished his academic course with most honourable distinction, returned to Chios where he proved of the greatest assistance to the Latin Bishop Marco Giustiniani. In 1616 Allacci received the degree Doctor of Medicine from the Sapienza, and a little later, after having been attached to the Vatican library, be professed rhetoric at the Greek College. In 1622 Pope Gregory XV sent him to Germany to superintend the transportation to Rome of the Palatinate library of Heidelberg, which Maximillian I had presented to the Pope in return for large subsidies that enabled the war to be carried on against the federation of Protestant Princes. This important task, which owing to a disturbed state of the country was one of immense difficulty, Allacci accomplished most successfully, and during the reigns of Urban VIII and Innocent X he continued his work in the Vatican library, especially concentrating upon the Palatinate manuscripts. In 1661 Alexander VI, as a recognition of his vast researches and eminent scholarship, appointed him custodian of the Library. He was an earnest labourer for reunion, in which cause he wrote his great work De Ecclesiae Occidentalis atque Orientalis perpetua consensione, published at Cologne in 1648, a dissertation wherein all points of agreement are emphasized, whilst the differences are treated as lightly as possible.

{p. 30}

Allacci, in his treatise De Graecorum hodie quorundam opinationibus, Cologne, 1645, discusses many traditions, and amongst others he deals at some length with the vampire, concerning whom he says: "The vrykolakas is the body of a man of wicked and debauched life, very often of one who has been excommunicated by his bishop. Such bodies do not like other corpses suffer decomposition after burial nor fall to dust, but having, so it seems, a skin of extreme toughness become swollen and distended all over, so that the joints can scarcely be bent; the skin becomes stretched like the parchment of a drum, and when struck gives out the same sound, from which circumstance the vrykolakas has received the name {Greek tumpaniaîos} ('drum-like ')." According to this author a demon takes possession of such a body, which issues from the tomb, and, generally at night, goes about the streets of a village, knocking sharply upon doors, and summoning one of the household by name. But if the person called unwittingly answers he is sure to die on the following day. Yet a vrykolakas never cries out a name twice, and so the people of Chios, at all events, always wait to hear the summons repeated before they reply to anyone who raps at their door of a night." This monster is said to be so fearfully destructive to men, that it actually makes its appearance in the daytime, even at high noon,[58] nor does it then confine its visits to houses, but even in fields and in hedged vineyards and upon the open highway it will suddenly advance upon persons who are labouring or travellers as they walk along, and by the horror of its hideous aspect it will slay them without laying hold on them or even speaking a word." Accordingly a sudden death from no obvious cause is to be regarded with the gravest suspicion, and should there be any kind of molestation, or should any story of an apparition be bruited abroad they hasten to exhume the corpse which is often found in the state that has been described. Thereupon without any delay "it is taken up out of the grave, the priests recite the appointed prayers, and it is thrown on to a fiercely blazing pyre. Before the orisons are finished skin will desquamate and the members fall apart, when the whole body is utterly consumed to ashes." Allacci proceeds to point out that this tradition in Greece is by no means new nor of any recent growth, for he tells us "in ancient and modern times alike holy men and men of great piety who have received the

{p. 31}

confessions of Christians have tried to disabuse them of such superstitions and to root this belief out of the popular imagination." Indeed a nomocanon or authoritative ordinance[59] of the Greek church is cited to the following effect: "Concerning a dead man, if he be found whole, the which they call vrykolakas.

"It is impossible that a dead man should become a vrykolakas, unless it be by the power of the Devil who, wishing to mock and delude some that they may incur the wrath of Heaven, causeth these dark wonders, and so very often at night he casteth a glamour whereby men imagine that the dead man whom they knew formerly, appears and holds converse with them, and in their dreams too they see strange visions. At other times they may behold him in the road, yea, even in the highway walking to and fro or standing still, and what is more than this he is even said to have strangled men and to have slain them.

"Immediately there is sad trouble, and the whole village is in a riot and a racket, so that they hasten to the grave and they unbury the body of the man . . . and the dead man--one who has long been dead and buried--appears to them to have flesh and blood . . . so they collect together a mighty pile of dry wood and set fire to this and lay the body upon it so that they burn it and they destroy it altogether."

What is exceedingly curious is that after so emphatically declaring these phenomena to be a superstition and an idle fantasy, the nomocanon continueth as follows: "Be it known unto you, however, that when such an incorrupt body shall be discovered, the which, as we have said is the work of the Devil, ye must without delay summon the priests to chant an invocation to the All Holy Mother of God . . . and solemnly to perform memorial services for the dead with funeral-meats."[60] This provision is at any rate pretty clear evidence that the author or authors of this ordinance must have had some belief in the vrykolakas, and it appears to me that they would not have added so significant a cautel unless they had deemed it absolutely necessary, and having salved their consciences by speaking with rigid officialism, they felt it incumbent upon them to suggest precautions in case of the, expected happening and the consequence of difficulties and mistrust. In fact, they were most obviously safeguarding themselves.

{p. 32}

Allacci, at any rate, had no hesitation about declaring his own views, and he thoroughly believed in the vampire. He says, and says with perfect truth: "It is the height of folly to attempt to deny that such bodies are not infrequently found in their graves incorrupt and that by use of them the Devil, if God permit him, devises most horrible complots and schemes to the hurt and harm of mankind." Father François Richard, reference to whose important work has been made above, distinctly lays down that particularly in Greece the devil may operate by means of dead bodies as well. as by sorcerers, all this being allowed by some inscrutable design of providence. And there can be no doubt that the vampire does act under satanic influence and by satanic direction. For the wise words of S. Gregory the Great, although on another occasion,[61] may most assuredly be applied here: "Qui tamen non esse incredibilia ista cognoscimus, si in illo et alia facta pensamus. Certe iniquorum omnium caput diabolus est: et huius capitis membra sunt omnes iniqui." All this, of course, under divine permission. The authors of the Malleus Maleficarum in the First Part teach us how there are "Three Necessary Concomitants of Witchcraft, which are the Devil, a Witch, and the Permission of God." So are these three necessary concomitants of Vampirism, to wit, the Devil, the Dead Body, and the Permission of God." Father Richard writes: "The Devil revitalizes and energizes these dead bodies which he preserves for a long time in their entirety; he appears with the actual face and in the likeness of the dead, stalking abroad up and down the streets, and presently he will parade the country roads and the fields; he bursts his way into men's houses, filling many with awful fear, leaving others dumb with horror, whilst others are even killed; he proceeds to acts of violence and blood, and strikes terror into every heart." The good Father proceeds to say that at first he believed these appearances to be merely ghosts from Purgatory returning to ask for help, masses and pious prayers"; but on learning the details of the case he soon found that he had to deal with something very other, for such ghosts never commit excesses, violent assaults, wreaking the destruction of cattle and goods, and even causing death. These appearances then are clearly diabolical, and the matter is taken in hand by the priests who assemble on a Saturday, that being the only

{p. 33}

day of the week on which a vrykolakas rests in his grave and cannot walk abroad.

It may be remembered that Saturday was the one day of the week which was particularly avoided by witches for their assemblies, and that no Sabbat was held on this day. for Saturday is sacred to the Immaculate Mother of God.[63] "It is well known," says that great Doctor S. Alphonsus,[64] "that Saturday is dedicated by Holy Church to Mary, because, as S. Bernard tells us, on that day, the day after the death of Her Son, She remained constant in faith." (Per illud triste Sabbatum stetit in fide, et saluata fuit Ecclesia in ipsa sola; propter quod, aptissime tota Ecclesia, in laudem et gloriam eiusdem Uirginis, diem Sabbati per totius anni circulum celebrare consueuit.)[61] In England this excellent practice of devotion was known as early as Anglo-Saxon times, since in the Leofric Missal a special mass is assigned to Saturdays in honour of Our Lady.

Mr. G. F. Abbott, in his Macedonian Folklore,[66] relates that in Northern Greece "People born on a Saturday (hence called {Greek Sabbatianoì} or Sabbatarians) are believed to enjoy the doubtful privilege of seeing ghosts and phantasms, and of possessing great influence over vampires. A native of Socho assured the writer that such a one was known to have lured a vrykolakas into a barn and to have set him to count the grains of a heap of millet." While the demon was thus engaged, the Sabbatarian attacked him and succeeded in nailing him to the wall . . . At Liakkovikia it is held that the Sabbatarian owes his power to a little dog, which follows him every evening and drives away the vrykolakas. It is further said that the Sabbatarian on these occasions is invisible to all but the little dog."

The priests then on a Saturday go in procession to the grave where lies the body which is suspect. It is solemnly disinterred, "and when they find it whole, they take it for certain that it was serving as an instrument of the Devil."

This abnormal condition of the dead is held to be a sure mark of the vampire, and is essential to vampirism proper. In the Greek Church it is often believed to be the result of excommunication, and this is indeed an accepted and definite doctrine of the Orthodox Church, which must be considered in turn a little later.

{p. 34}

It is not impossible, I think, that cases of catalepsy, or suspended animation which resulted in premature burial may have helped to reinforce the tradition of the vampire and the phenomenon of vampirism. Some authorities consider catalepsy as almost entirely, if not wholly, psychic, and certainly not a disease in any correct sense of the word, although it may be a symptom of obscure diseases arising from nervous disorders. A celebrated medical authority has pronounced that "in itself catalepsy is never fatal." It belongs to the domain of hypnotism, and is said to be refreshing to the subject, especially when he is exhausted by long mental exertion or physical toil. Very often it arises from conscious or subconscious auto-suggestion, and it has been described as "the supreme effort of nature to give the tired nerves their needed repose." No doubt the fatal mistake so often made in the past was that of endeavouring by drastic measures to hasten restoration to consciousness., instead of allowing nature to recuperate at will. If the attempt is successful it comes as a fearful shock to the nerves which are craving for rest; if the effort is seemingly without result the patient is in imminent danger of an autopsy or of being buried alive, a tragedy which, it is to be feared, has happened to very many. It is clear that as yet serious attention has not been adequately given to this terrible accident. A quarter of a century ago it was computed that in the United States an average of not less than one case a week of premature burial was discovered and reported. This means that the possibility of such danger is appalling. In past centuries when knowledge was less common, when adequate precautions were seldom, if ever, employed, the cases of premature burial, especially at such times as the visitation of the plague and other pestilences must have been far from uncommon. Two or three examples of recent date, that is to say occuring at the end of the last century, may profitably be quoted as proving extremely significant in this connexion.

A young lady, who resided near Indianopolis, came to life after fourteen days of suspended animation. No less than six doctors had applied the usual tests, and all unhesitatingly signed certificates to witness that she was dead. Her little brother against this consensus of opinion clung to her and declared that she had not died. The parents were in bitter

{p. 35}

agony, but at length it was necessary to remove the body. The boy endeavoured to prevent this, and in the excitement the bandage which tied up the jaw was loosened and pushed out of place, when it appeared that her lips were quivering and the tongue gently moving. "What do you want, what do you want?" cried the child. "Water," distinctly, if faintly, came the answer from the supposed corpse. Water was administered, the patient revived, and lived her full span of years, healthy and normal until she was an old woman.

A lady who is now the head matron of one of the largest orphan asylums in the United States has been given over as dead no less than twice by the physicians in attendance; her body has twice been shrouded in the decent cerements of the grave; and twice has she been resuscitated by her friends. On the second occasion, in view of the former experience, extraordinary precautions were taken. All known tests were applied by the physicians, and humanly speaking all possible doubt was set at rest. The doctors had actually left the house, and the undertaker was at his sad business. It chanced that the body was pierced by a pin, and to the joy of her friends it was noted that a small drop of blood shortly afterwards oozed from the puncture. The family insisted upon the preparations being stayed; vigorous treatment was unremittingly applied, and the patient returned to life. To-day she is an exceptionally active and energetic administratrix. It should be remarked that the lady declared that she had never for a moment lost consciousness, that she was fully cognizant of all that went on around her, that she perfectly understood the meaning of all the tests which were so assiduously employed, but that all the while she felt the utmost indifference with regard to the result. The verdict of the physicians that she was dead did not cause her either the slightest surprise or the smallest alarm. A very similar accident occurred to a gentleman of good estate, one of the most prominent citizens of Harrisburg, in Pennsylvania. After a long illness he apparently died from inflamatory rheumatism, which was complicated with heart trouble. All preparations were made for the funeral, but his wife determined that this should not take place for at I-east a week, so great was her fear of premature burial. In the course of two or three days it was noticed that the body had moved; the eyes were wide open, and

{p. 36}

one of the arms had altered the position in which it had been carefully placed. His wife shrieked out his name, upon which he slowly arose, and with assistance was supported to a chair. Even before the arrival of the physicians, who were instantly summoned, he had regained a marked degree of strength, together with an ability of movement which had not been possible throughout the whole course of his illness. He was soon in excellent health, and what is very remarkable, he stated that during the time of suspended animation he was perfectly aware of everything that was going on all around, that the grief of his family filled him with terrible agony, and he dreaded the preparations for interment, but that he was unable to move a muscle or utter a word.

The death of Washington Irving Bishop, the well-known thought-reader, caused a great sensation at the time. On many occasions he had been in a cataleptic state for several hours, and once, at least, his trance was so long that two physicians pronounced him to be dead. There is little doubt that eventually the autopsy was performed with irregular haste, and that the unfortunate subject was not dead before the surgeon's knife had actually penetrated his brain.

Although through the ages few cases have been actually recorded the incidents of premature burial and of autopsy performed on the living must be numberless. One such accident nearly occurred to the great humanist Marc-Antoine Muret,[68] who, falling ill upon a journey, was conveyed to the local hospital as a sick stranger, name unknown. Whilst he lay, not even unconscious, upon the rough pallet, the physicians, who had been lecturing upon anatomy and were anxious to find a subject to illustrate their theories, gathered round in full force. They eagerly discussed the points to be argued, and deeming the patient dead, the senior physician gravely pronounced, pointing to the patient: "Faciamus experimentum in anima uili." The eyes of the supposed corpse opened widely, and a low, but distinct voice answered: "Uilem animam appellas pro qua Christus non dedignatus est mori."

As was customary in the case of prelates, when Cardinal Diego de Espinosa, Bishop of Sigeunza and Grand Inquisitor of Spain under Philip II died after a short illness, the body was embalmed before it lay in state. Accordingly in the presence of several physicians the surgeon proceeded to operate

{p. 37}

for that purpose. He had made a deep incision, and it is said that the heart had actually been brought into view and was observed to beat. The Cardinal recovered consciousness at the fatal moment, and even then had sufficient strength to grasp with his hand the scalpel of the anatomist. In the earlier years of the nineteenth century both Cardinal Spinola and the octogenarian Cardinal della Somaglia were prepared for embalmment before life was extinct.

In the Seventh Book of the Historia Naturalis, (liii, 52, ed. Brotier, Barbou, 1779), Pliny relates many instances of persons who, being deemed dead, revived. "Auiola consularis in rogo reuixit: et quoniam subueniri non potuerat præ ualente flamma, uiuus crematus est. Similis causa in L. Lamia prætorio uiro traditur. Nam C. Ælium Tuberonem prætura functum a rogo relatum, Messala Rufus, et plerique tradunt. Hæc est conditio mortalium: ad has, et eiusmodi occasiones fortunæ gignimur, uti de homine ne morti quidem debeat credi. Reperimus inter exempla, Hermotini Clazomenii animam relicto corpore errare solitam, uagamque e longinquo multa annunitiare, quæ nisi a præsente nosci non possent, corpore interim semianimi: donec cremato eo inimici (qui Cantharidæ uocabantur) remeanti animæ uelut uaginam ademerint. Aristeæ etiam uisam euolantem ex ore in Proconneso, corui effigie, magna quæ sequitur fabulositate. Quam equidem et in Gnossio Epimenide simili modo accipio: Puerum æstu et itinere fessum in specu septem et quinquaginta dormisse annis: rerum faciem mutationemque mirantem uelut postero experrectum die: hinc pari numero dierum senio ingruente, ut tamen in septimum et quinquagesimum atque centesimum uitæ duraret annum. Feminarum sexus huic malo uidetur maxime opportunus, conuersione uuluæ: quæ si corrigatur, spiritus restituitur. Hue pertinet nobile apud Græcos uolumen Heraclidis, septem diebus feminæ exanimis ad uitam reuocatæ.

Uarro quoque auctor est, xx. uiro se agros diuidente Capuæ, quemdam qui efferretur, foro domum remaasse pedibus. Hoc idem Aquini accidisse. Romæ quoque Corsidium materteræ suæ maritum sumere locato reuixisse, et locatorem funeris ab eo elatum. Adiicit miracula, quæ tota indicasse conueniat. E duobus fratribus equestris ordinis, Corsidio maiori accidisse, ut uideretur exspirasse, apertoque testamento recitatum

{p. 38}

heredem minorem funeri institisse; interim cum, qui uidebatur extinctus, plaudendo conciuisse ministeria, et narrasse "a fratre se uenisse, commendatum sibi filiam ab eo. Demonstratum præterea, quo in loco defodisset aurum nullo conscio, et rogasse ut iis funebribus, quæ comparasset, efferretur." Hoc eo narrante, fratris domestici propere annuntiauere exanimatum illum: et aurum, ubi dixerat, repertum est. Plena præterea uita est his uaticiniis, sed non conferenda, cum sæpius falsa sint, sicut ingenti exemplo docebimus. Bello Siculo Gabienus Cæsaris classiarus fortissimus captus a Sex. Pompeio, iussu eius incisa ceruice, et uix cohærente, iacuit in litore toto die. Deinde cum aduesperauisset, cum gemitu precibusque congregata multitudine petiit, uti Pompeius ad se ueniret, aut aliquem ex arcanis mitteret: se enim ab inferis remissum, habere quæ nuntiaret. Misit plures Pompeius ex amicis, quibus Gabienus dixit: "Inferis diis placere Pompeii causas et partes pias: proinde euentum futurum, quem optaret: hoc se nuntiare iussum: argumentum fore ueritatis, quod peractis mandatis, protinus exspiraturus esset": idque ita euenit. Post sepulturam quoque uisorum exempla, sunt: nisi quod naturæ opera, non prodigia consectamur.

It was truly said by Pliny that "Such is the condition of humanity, and so uncertain is men's judgement that they cannot determine even death itself." The words of the wise old Roman have been re-echoed by many a modern authority. Sabetti in his Tractatus XVI, "De Extrema Unctione," Compendium Theologiæ Moralis, (ed. recognita T. Barrett; Pustet; 1916; p. 776) asks: "Quid sacerdoti agendum sit, si ad ægrotum accedat, eumque modo mortuum, ut uulgo dicitur, inueniat? In the course of resolving this, he lays down: "Iam age ex sententia plurimorum medicorum doctissimorum probabile est homines in omnibus ferme casibus post instans mortis, ut uulgo dicitur, seu post ultimam respirationem, intus aliquamdiu uiuere, breuius uel diutius, iuxta naturam causae quae mortem induxit. In casibus mortis ex morbis lenti progressus probabile est uitarn interne perdurare aliquot momenta, sex circiter, uel, iuxta quosdam peritos, unam dimidiam horam: in casibus uero mortis repentinae uita, interna perdurat longius, forte non improbabiliter, usque ad putrefactionem." Professor Huxley wrote: "The evidence

{p. 39}

of ordinary observers on such a point as this (that a person is really dead) is absolutely worthless. And, even medical evidence, unless the physician is a person of unusual knowledge and skill, may have little more value." The British Medical Journal[70] remarks: "It is true that hardly any one sign of death, short of putrefaction, can be relied upon as infallible." Sir Henry Thompson wrote: "It should never be forgotten that there is but one really trustworthy proof that death has occurred in any given instance, viz., the presence of a manifest sign of commencing decomposition." And Professor p. Brouardel emphatically declares: "We are obliged to acknowledge that we have no sign or group of signs sufficient to determine the moment of death with scientific certainty in all cases." Colonel E. p. Vollum, M.D., Medical Inspector of the United States Army, and Corresponding Member of the New York Academy of Sciences, who himself was upon one occasion almost buried alive, most emphatically declared that "even stoppage of the beating of the heart, and breathing, for a considerable time, with all other appearances of death, excepting decomposition, do not make it certain that a person is dead," and he also added the terrible warning that "the suspended activity of life may return after the body has been interred." It is unnecessary to enter into these partial cases of premature burial, but there is overwhelming evidence that such accidents were far from uncommon. Dr. Thouret, who was present at the destruction of the famous vaults of Les Innocens, told Mons. Desgenettes that there could be no doubt many of the persons must have been interred alive, since the skeletons were found in positions which showed the dead must have turned in their coffins. Kempner supplies similar particulars when describing disinterments which have taken place in New York and other districts of the United States, also in Holland and elsewhere.

The celebrated investigator, Dr. Franz Hartmann, collected particulars of more than seven hundred cases of premature burial and of narrow escapes from it, some of which occurred in his own neighbourhood. In his great work Premature Burial[71] he tells us of the terrible incident which happened to the famous French tragedienne, Mile. Rachel, who on 3rd January, 1858, "died" near Cannes, and who was to be embalmed, but after the proceedings had commenced she suddenly

{p. 40}

returned to life, only to expire in reality some ten hours later from the shock and from the injuries which had been inflicted upon her. Another case which is of particular interest as having occurred in Moravia, where the belief in vampires is particularly strong, is that of the postmaster in a small town who, as it was thought, died in a fit of epilepsy. About a year afterwards it became necessary to disinter some of the bodies from the graveyard in order to enlarge one of the transepts of the parish church, and the dreadful fact was revealed that the unfortunate postmaster must have been buried whilst still alive, a discovery which so horrified the physician who had signed the death certificate that he lost his reason.

In the chancel of S. Giles, Cripplegate, there is still to be seen a monument sacred to the memory of Constance Whitney, whose many virtues are described in somewhat rhetorical fashion upon a marble tablet. A figure above this scroll represents the lady in the act of rising from her coffin. This might be taken to be a beautiful symbolism, but such is not the case, for it represents an actual circumstance. The unfortunate lady had been buried while in a condition of suspended animation, and consciousness returned to her when the sexton opened the coffin and desecrated the body in order to steal a valuable ring which had been left upon one of her fingers.[72] In former years when the rifling of tombs and body-snatching were by no means an infrequent practice, many similar cases came to light, and there can be no doubt that no inconsiderable proportion of persons were buried in a state of trance or catalepsy.

The story of Gabrielle de Launay, a lady whose cause was tried before the High Court of Paris, about 1760, caused a profound sensation throughout the whole of France. When eighteen years of age Gabrielle, the daughter of M. de Launay, the President of the Civil Tribunal of Toulouse, was betrothed to Captain Maurice de Serres. Unhappily the latter was suddenly ordered abroad to the Indies on active service. The President, fearing that his child might die in a foreign land, refused to allow the marriage to be celebrated immediately so that she might accompany her husband under his protection. The lovers parted heart-broken, and in about two years' time news reached France of the gallant young soldier's death. {p. 41} This, however, proved to be false, although his safety was not known until, after an absence of well-nigh five years, be presented himself once more in Paris. Here he happened to pass the church of S. Roch, the entire facade of which was heavily draped with black and shrouded for the funeral of some person of distinction. Upon enquiry, he learned that the mourning was on account of a young and beautiful lady who had died suddenly after two days' illness, the wife of the President du Bourg, who before her marriage had been Mlle. Gabrielle de Launay. It appeared that, owing to the report of the death of Maurice de Serres, M. de Launay had compelled his daughter to marry this gentleman, who although nearly thirty years her senior was a figure of great wealth and importance. As may be imagined, the young captain was distracted with grief, but that night, taking a considerable sum in gold, he visited the sexton of the cemetery of S. Roch and with great difficulty bribed him to exhume the corpse of Madame du Bourg in order that he might once more look upon the features of the woman whom he had so passionately loved. With every precaution, under the pale light of a waning moon, the terrible task was completed, the coffin was silently unscrewed, and the unhappy lover threw himself upon his, knees in an agony of grief. At last the grave-digger suggested that everything must be replaced in order, when with a terrible cry the young officer suddenly seized the cold, clay body and, before the bewildered sexton could prevent him, threading his rapid course among the tombs, with lightning speed he disappeared into the darkness. Pursuit was useless, and nothing remained but for the poor man to replace the empty shell in the grave, to shovel back the earth and arrange the spot so that there might be no trace of any disturbance. He felt sure, at least, that his accomplice in so terrible a crime, a sacrilege which would inevitably bring the severest punishment upon those concerned in it, must maintain silence, if only for his own sake.

Nearly five years had passed when M. du Bourg, who upon the anniversary of his wife's death each June attended a solemn requiem, as he was passing through a somewhat unfrequented street in the suburbs of Paris came face to face with a lady in whom he recognised none other than the wife whose death he had mourned so tenderly and so long. {p. 42} As he attempted to speak, she with averted looks swept past him as swiftly as the wind and, leaping into a carriage with emblazoned panels, was driven quickly away before he could reach the spot. However, M. du Bourg had noticed the arms of the noble house of de Serres, and he determined that inquiry should at once be made. It was no difficult task for a man of his position to obtain an order that the grave of his wife might be examined, and when this was done the empty broken coffin turned suspicion into certainty. The fact that the sexton had resigned his post and had gone no one knew where, but seemingly in comfortable circumstances shortly after the funeral of Madame du Bourg lent its weight to the investigations which were now taken in hand. Experienced lawyer that he was, M. du Bourg accumulated evidence of the first importance. He found that it was said that Captain Maurice de Serres had married his young and lovely wife, Madame Julie de Serres, some five years previously and, as it was supposed, then brought her back with him from some foreign country, to Paris.

The whole city was astounded when the President du Bourg demanded from the High Court the dissolution of the illegal marriage between Captain Maurice de Serres and the pretended Julie de Serres, who, as the plaintiff steadfastly declared, was Gabrielle du Bourg, his lawful wife. The novelty of the circumstances caused the profoundest sensation, and vast numbers of pamphlets were exchanged by the faculty, many of whom maintained that a prolonged trance had given rise to the apparent death of Madame du Bourg, and it was stated that although she had continued to exist for a great number of hours in her grave, cases of similar lethargies had been recorded, and even if such fits were of the rarest, yet the circumstance was possible. Madame Julie de Serres was summoned to appear in Court and answer the questions of the Judges. She stated that she was an orphan born in South America, and had never left her native country until her marriage. Certificates were produced, and on every side lengthy arguments were heard, which it is unnecessary to detail. Many romantic incidents ensued, but these, however interesting, must be passed over, for it shall suffice to say that eventually, mainly through the sudden introduction of her little daughter, amid a pathetic scene, the identity of Julie

{p. 43}

de Serres with Gabrielle du Bourg, née Launay, was established and acknowledged. In vain did her advocate plead that her marriage to M. du Bourg had been dissolved by death, although this fact most certainly ought to have been accepted as consonant with sound theology.[78] None the less the result was that, in spite of her prayer to be allowed to enter a cloister, she was ordered to return to her first husband. Two days after, the President du Bourg awaited her arrival in the great hall of his mansion. She appeared, but could scarcely totter through the gates, for she had but a few moments previously drained a swift poison. Crying "I restore to you what you have lost," she fell a corpse at his feet. At the same moment Captain de Serres died by his own hands.

It cannot escape notice that these events very closely resemble that novella of Bandello (II, 9), which relates the true history of Elena and Gerardo, adventures nearly resembling the tragic tale of Romeo and Juliet. Elena and Gerardo are the children of two nobles of Venice, Messer Pietro and Messer Paolo, whose palaces fronted each other on the Grand Canal. Gerardo chances to see Elena at her window, and from that hour he knows neither happiness nor sleep until he has declared his consuming passion. A kindly nurse brings them together, and in her presence they exchange rings and vows of tenderest love before the statue of Madonna the Virgin, spending long nights in amorous ecstasy and bliss. For these unions were fast binding, although not a sacrament, indeed, until then had received the benison of Holy Church. It is a common saying to apply to any man: "Si, è ammogliato; ma il matrimonio non è stato benedetto." Wherefore the spousals of the lovers remained a secret.

In a little while Messer Paolo, thinking great things of his son's career in the world, dispatches the young man to Beirut, and Gerardo needs must go. But when he had been absent some six months Messer Pietro informs his daughter that he has appointed a day for her marriage with a young man of ancient house and fair estate, and not daring to tell her father what had passed, she sunk under her silent grief, and upon the evening before her new nuptials she fell into a swoon across her bed, so that in the morning she was found cold and stark as a stiffening corpse. The physicians assembled in numbers and talked learnedly; remedies of every sort were applied

{p. 44}

without avail; and no one doubted she was dead. So they carried her to church for burial and not for marriage. That night they bore in sombre and silent procession upon a black gondola to the Campo which is hard by San Pietro in Castello, where lies the Sacred Body of Venice's great patriarch, San Lorenzo Giustiniani. They left her there in a marble sarcophagus outside the church, with torches blazing around.

Now it happened that Gerardo's galley bad returned from Syria, and was newly anchored at the port of Lido. Many friends came to greet him, and as they talked, marking the funeral cortège, he idly asked who was gone. When be learned it was Elena, grief fell upon him like a cloud of night. But he dissembled until all had departed, when, calling his friend the captain of the galley, he told him the whole story of his love, and swore he would once again kiss his wife, even if he had to break open her monument. The captain tried in vain to dissuade him, but seeing it was of no avail the two men took a boat and rowed together to San Pietro. It was long after midnight when they landed and made their way to the place of sepulture. Pushing back the massive lid, Gerardo flung himself upon the body of his Elena. At length the good captain, who feared the Signors of the Night would visit the spot and put them under arrest, compelled the hapless lover to return to the boat, but he could no whit persuade him to leave Elena's body, and this Gerardo bore in his arms and reverently laid it in the boat, himself clasping it in his arms with many a sad kiss and bitter sigh. The captain, much alarmed, scarce dared to make for the galley, but rowed up and down and out to the open lagoon, the dying husband yet laid by his dead wife. However, the sea-breezes freshened with their salt tang, and far over the waters the horizon lightened towards dawn. It was then that the spark of life awoke in Elena's face; she moved gently, and Gerardo, starting from his grief, began to chafe her hands and feet. They carried her secretly to the house of the captain's mother; here she was put in a warm bed, possets and food were administered; presently she opened her eyes, and lived. A gracious and lordly feast was made by Messer Paolo for his son's return, and when all the company were assembled Gerardo entered, leading Elena in bridal array, and kneeling at his father's feet he said: "Lo, my father, I bring you my wedded wife whom I have this day

{p. 45}

saved from death." Great were the rejoicings, and Messer Pietro was summoned from his house of mourning to a home of gladness. So when the whole truth had been told him and he welcomed back not only his dead daughter but her husband also with a joyful heart and with thanksgiving, he blessed the young couple, and on the morrow morn Holy Church with solemn rite hallowed the bond of matrimony whose, joys had already been sweetly consummated.

The parallels between the two adventures are very striking. Our main interest in the sad story of de Serres and his love, which assuredly might have ended far otherwise, lies in the fact that the unfortunate Gabrielle du Bourg was actually buried as dead in her coffin, and only restored to life after several days had passed. Occasionally epitaphs may be seen both abroad and in England, which record some premature burial. Such a one was placed over the tomb of a Mrs. Blunden in the cemetery of Basingstoke, Hampshire, and this tells how the unfortunate lady was prematurely interred, but the original inscription is to a large extent obliterated.[71] Unfortunately overwhelming evidence proves that such terrible accidents are far from rare, for Mr. William Tebb, in his authoritative work Premature Burial[76] had collected of recent years from medical sources alone two hundred and nineteen narrow escapes from being buried alive; one hundred and forty-nine premature interments that actually took place; ten cases of bodies being dissected before life was extinct; three cases in which this shocking error was very nearly made; and two cases where the work of embalmment had already begun when consciousness returned.

There is no greater mistake than to suppose that most cases of premature burial, and of escape from premature burial, happened long ago, and that even then the majority of these took place under exceptional conditions, and for the most part in small towns or remoter villages on the continent. Amazing as it may appear in these days of enlightenment, the number of instances of narrowest escapes from premature burial, and also of this terrible fate itself, has not decreased of recent years, but it has, on the contrary, increased. In a letter on page 1,104 of the Lancet, 14th June, 1884, the witness describes in detail the appearance presented by two bodies which he saw in the crypt of the cathedral of Bordeaux, when

{p. 46}

part of the cemetery there had been dug up and many graves disinterred. In La Presse Médicale, Paris, 17th August, 1904, there is an article, "The Danger of Apparent Death," by Doctor Icard of Marseilles, whose study La Mort réelle et la Mort apparente when published in 1897 attracted great attention. The writer, an eminent figure in the medical world, describes in detail some twelve cases of the revival of persons who had been certified as dead by their doctors, the body in one instance recovering consciousness when several physicians were present and the funeral ceremonies had actually commenced. It should be remarked that Dr. M. K. Boussakis, Professor of Physiology at the Faculty of Medicine of Athens, was one of the eye-witnesses upon that occasion, and a similar case is mentioned on the authority of Dr. Zacutus Lusitanus, who was also present. It should be remembered that Greece is the country where belief in the vampire still most strongly survives.

A terrible case of actual interment whilst still alive is described in a letter published in the Sunday Times, 6th September, 1896. Some years ago the Paris Figaro, in an article of some length considered the terrible possibilities of being buried alive, and within fifteen days the editor received over four hundred letters from different parts of France, and all these were from persons who had either themselves been buried alive, or been on the point of being so interred, or who had escaped a premature grave through some fortunate accident.

In September, 1895, a boy named Ernest Wicks was found lying on the grass in Regent's Park, apparently dead, and after being laid out in the S. Marylebone mortuary was brought back to life by the keeper, Mr. Ellis. When the doctor arrived the lad was breathing freely though still insensible, and a little later he was removed to the Middlesex Hospital. Here the surgeon pronounced him to be "recovering from a fit." At an inquest held at Wigan, 21st December, 1902, Mr. Brighouse, one of the County Coroners for Lancashire, remarked with great emphasis upon the extraordinary circumstances, for he informed the jury that the child upon whom they sat had "died" four times, and the mother had obtained no less than three medical certificates of death, any one of which would have been sufficient for the subject to have been buried. In 1905, a Mrs. Holden, aged twenty-eight, living at Hapton, near Accrington, "died," and the doctor did not hesitate

{p. 47}

to give a certificate of death, when all the arrangements for the funeral were made. Fortunately, the undertaker noticed a slight twitch of the eyelids, and eventually the woman's life was saved, and she lived well and strong under perfectly normal conditions. On 7th January, 1907, the Midland Daily Telegraph reported the case of a child who "to all intents and purposes died" whilst an operation was being performed upon it. However, the patient who had been certified dead more than half-an-hour before recovered. On 14th September, 1908, the papers published the details of an extraordinary trance of a Mrs. Rees, Nora Street, Cardiff, who appeared to have had a very narrow escape from premature burial. To go back some forty years, there may be found fully reported in the British Medical Journal, 31st October, 1885, the famous case of a child at Stamford Hill who fell into convulsions and passing into a trance was supposed to have died, recovering consciousness only after five days. Hufeland, dealing with these instances of trance, remarks that "Six or seven days are often required to restore such cases. Dr. Charles Londe[76] says that fits of this kind "last for days and days together," and that "it seems not improbable that people may have been buried in this state in mistake for death." A case of exceptional interest is described as occurring in 1883 by the Professor of Medicine in the University of Glasgow, Dr. W. T. Gairdner.[77] The person whom he was treating remained in a trance which lasted twenty-three consecutive weeks, and so remarkable a circumstance attracted very considerable attention at the time, giving rise to a lengthy controversy.

It should be more widely known that the ordinary simulacra of death are utterly deceptive and Dr. John Oswald remarks in his profound work Suspended Animal Life,[78] "in consequence of an ignorant confidence placed in them [the signs of death] persons who might have been restored to life . . . have been consigned to the grave." In September, 1903, Dr. Forbes Winslow emphasized the fact that "all the appearances of death may be so strikingly displayed in a person in a cataleptic condition that it is quite possible for burial to take place while life is not extinct," and he added "I do not consider that the ordinary tests employed to ascertain that life is extinct are sufficient; I maintain that the only satisfactory proof of death is decomposition."

{p. 48}

Even from this very hasty review, and examples might be multiplied, indeed are multiplying in every direction almost daily, terrible truth though it may be, it is obvious that premature burial is by no means an uncommon thing, whilst recovery from catalepsy or deep trances, sometimes lasting very many days, is even more frequent, and such cases have been recorded in all ages, times without number. It is, I think, exceedingly probable that extraordinary accidents of this kind, which would have been gossiped and trattled throughout large districts, and, passing from old to young, whispered round many a winter's fireside, were bound soon to have assumed the proportions of a legend which must, consciously or unconsciously, have continually gathered fresh accretions of horror and wonder in its train. It is possible, I say, that hence may have been evolved some few details which notably helped to swell the vampire tradition. I do not for a moment wish to imply that these circumstances, which we have just considered at some length, however striking and ghastly, were in any way the foundation of the belief in vampires. I would rather emphasize that the tradition goes far deeper and contains far more dark and scathful reality than this. I would not even suggest that premature burial and resuscitation from apparent death added anything essentially material to the vampire legend, but I do conceive it probable that these macabre happenings, ill-understood and unexplained, did serve to fix the vampire tradition more firmly in the minds of those who had been actual witnesses of, or who by reliable report knew of similar occurrences, and were fearful and amazed.

There are to be read examples of persons who, after death, have given evident signs of life by their movements. One such case is related by Tertullian,[79] who tell s us that he himself witnessed it, "de meo didici." A young woman, who had once been in slavery, a Christian, after she had been married but a few months died suddenly in the very flower of her age and happiness. The body was carried to the church, and before it was entrusted to the earth, a service was held. When the priest, who was saying the requiem "praesente cadauere," raised his hands in prayer, to the astonishment of all the young girl who was lying upon her bier with her hands laid in repose at her side, also lifted her hands and gently clasped them as if she too were taking part

{p. 49}

in the supplication of the Mass, and then toward the end she refolded them in the original position.

Tertullian also says that on one occasion, when a body was about to be interred, a body which was already in the grave seemed to draw to one side as though to make place for the newcomer.

In the life of S. John the Almsgiver, Patriarch of Alexandria, written by Leontius Archbishop of Cyprus, we are told that when the saint who was aged sixty-four, died at Amanthus in Cyprus, 11th November, 616,[80] his body was brought with great veneration and holy observance to the principal church of that place. Here was opened a magnificent tomb in which two bishops had already been buried. It is said that out of respect the two bodies drew one to the right and one to the left, and that this took place in the sight of all who were present, "non unus, neque decem, neque centum uiderunt, sed omnis turba, quae conuenit ad eius sepulturam." It must be remembered that Archbishop Leontius had his facts from those who had actually been present at the interment, and the same account may be found in the Menology of Symeon metaphrastes.

Evagrius Ponticus relates[81] the legend of a certain Anchorite named Thomas, who died in the Nosokomeion at Daphne, a suburb of Antioch, where was the shrine of the martyr S. Babylas.[82] The hermit, a stranger, was buried in that part of the cemetery used for beggars and the very poor. In the morning, however, the body was found to be lying by a rich Mausoleum in the most honourable part of the grounds. It was again interred, but when on the following day it was found by the sexton that the same thing had happened a second time, the people hastened to the patriarch Ephraim[83] and told him of the marvel. Thereupon the body was borne with great rejoicing with an attendance of wax flambeaux and fuming frankincense into the town, and honourably enshrined with worship meet in one of the churches, and for many years the city annually observed the festival of the Translation of S. Thomas Eremita. The same story is related by the ascetical writer, the monk Johannes Moschus, in his very beautiful treatise {Greek Deimw'n} Pratum spirituale, "The Spiritual Meadow,"[84] but Moschus says that the remains of the hermit rested in his grave whilst in veneration for his

{p. 50}

sanctity the bodies of those who were buried near had been found to have issued forth and modestly lay at some considerable distance.

In Hagiology there are many instances of the dead hearing, speaking and moving. Thus in the life of S. Donatus, the patron of Arezzo, who succeeded the first bishop S. Satyrus towards the end of the third century, we are told that Eustasius, receiver-general of the revenues of Tuscany, being called away on a journey, for safety sake left the public funds in the hands of his wife, Euphrosina. This lady, being afraid that her house might be robbed, secretly buried the chests in the earth. She told the matter to no one, but unhappily before her husband's return she expired suddenly in the night, and it was quite unknown where she had concealed her charge. Eustasius was beside himself with grief and fear, for it seemed inevitable that be should be accused of peculation by his enemies, and condemned to death. In his despair he betook himself to S. Donatus, and the holy man asked him that they might visit the grave of Euphrosina. A great company gathered in the church, when the saint, going up to the grave, said in a loud voice that might be heard by all: "Euphrosina, tell us we pray thee, where thou didst put the public funds." The woman answered from her tomb, and certainly her accents were heard revealing the hiding-place. S. Donatus went with the receiver-general to the spot indicated, and there they found the money carefully secured.[85]

It is related in the life of the famous Anchorite, S. Macarius of Egypt, who died A.D. 394,[86] that one of the monks of his laura was accused of murder, and as those who lay the charge spoke with great gravity and sureness, S. Macarius bade them all resort to the grave of the deceased, where, striking his staff upon the ground, he adjured the dead man in these words: "The Lord by me bids you tell us whether this man, who is now accused of your murder, in truth committed the crime, or was in any way consenting thereto?" Immediately a hollow voice issuing from the tomb declared: "Of a truth he is wholly innocent, and had no hand at all in my death." "Who then," inquired the saint, "is the guilty one?" The dead man replied: "It is not for me, my father, to bear witness; let it suffice to know that he who has been accused is innocent. Leave the guilty in the hands of God. Who

{p. 51}

can say whether the all-holy and compassionate God may not have mercy upon him and bring him to repentance."[87]

In the history of S. Rheticus, as related by C. Vettius Aquilinus Juvencus, the Latin poet of the fourth century, who was so popular in the Middle Ages,[88] we are told that when the saint had expired," his body was carried in solemn procession to the grave of his deceased wife, and suddenly, to the amazement of all present, the dead mail arose on his bier and said: "Dost thou remember well, my dear wife, that which thou didst ask me upon thy death-bed? Lo, here am I come to fulfil the promise made so long syne. Receive me then whom you have sweetly expected all this while." At these words it appeared as if the deceased wife, who had been dead for many years, revived again, and breaking the linen bands which enswathed her, she stretched forth her hands to her husband. (Deprensa est laeuam protendens femina palmam, inuitans socium gestu uiuentis amoris.) The corpse was lowered into the tomb, and there the twain lie in peace, awaiting the resurrection of the just.[90]

Not unsimilar is the legend of S. Injurieux, whose dead body moved out of its own grave to repose in that of his wife Scholastica. Injurieux was a noble senator of Clermont in Auvergne, who married in virgin wedlock a lady of rank, Scholastica. S. Gregory of Tours, in his Historia Francorum,[91] tells us that Scholastica died first, and Injurieux, standing by the coffin in which her body was laid, as she was about to be carried forth to burial said in the presence of all: "I thank Thee, O, God, for having bestowed upon me this maiden treasure, which I return into Thy hands unspotted, even as I received it." The dead wife smiled at these words, and her voice was heard to reply: "Why dost thou speak, O my husband, of these things which concern no one but ourselves?" Hardly had the lady been buried in a magnificent tomb, when the husband died also, and for some reason was temporarily interred in a separate grave, at a distance from the monument of his wife. On the next morning it was found that Injurieux had left the place where he had been laid, and his dead body reposed by the side of that of Scholastica. No man dared disturb the two corpses, and to the present day the senator and his wife are popularly called "The Two Lovers."[92]

In his Vies des Saints[93] Monsignor Guérin relates the following

{p. 52}

story S. Patrick[94]: "St. Patrice commande à la mort de rendre ses victimes afin que leur propre bouche proclame devant le peuple la vérité des doctrines qu'il leur annonce; ou bien il s'assure si son ordre de planter une croix sur la tombe des chrétiens, et non des infidèles, a été fidélement exécuté, en interrogeant les morts eux-mêmes, et en apprenant de leur bouche s'ils ont mérité ce consolant hommage."

In this connexion--the tradition of a dead person who speaks--the story of S. Melor may be not impertinent. About the year 400 A.D., there was a certain Duke of Cornwall named Melian, whose brother, Rivold, conspired against him and put him to death. The duke had left a young son, Melor, whom the usurper feared to slay, but sent to be brought up under the strictest rule in one of the Cornish monasteries, where the novice continually edified the community by his holy life, having (so it is said) the gift of miracles. After a few years Rivold, being afraid lest the boy should depose him, bribed a soldier named Cerialtan to murder Melor secretly. This was accordingly done. The assassin cut off the head of Melor, and carried it to the duke. He had murdered the boy in the depths of the forest, whither he had enticed him, and as he was making his way through the thicket lie chanced to look back his eyes being attracted by a great light. And lo, all around the body stood a company of angels, robed in white albs, and holding in their hands tapers which glistered as golden stars. When he had gone a little further, the wretched murderer was overcome by parching thirst, and almost fainting on his path he cried out in an agony: "Wretched man that I am! I die for a draught of cool water." Then the head of the murdered boy spoke to him, saving: "Cerialtan, strike upon the grass of this lawn with thy stick, and a fountain shall spring forth for thy need." The man did so, and having quenched his thirst at the miraculous well, be went swiftly on his way. Now when the head was brought into the presence of Duke Rivold this evil tyrant smote it with his hand, but he instantly sickened, and three days afterwards he died. The head was then taken back to the body and was honourably buried with it. And not many years afterwards the relics were translated with great worship to the town of Amesbury, which is in Wiltshire.[95]

In his Histoire hagiologique du diocèse de Valence,[96] l'abbé

{p. 53}

Nadal tells us that when S. Paulus[97] succeeded S. Torquatus as bishop of St-Paul-Trois-Châteaux, shortly after his consecration a certain Jew, a common usurer, came up to him in the streets of the city and loudly demanded a large sum of money which, as he said, had been lent to Bishop Torquatus, the predecessor of Paulus. In order to ascertain whether this claim was equitable or not, S. Paulus, robed in full pontificals, visited the tomb of S. Torquatus in the cathedral, and touching the place of sepulture with his crozier requested Torquatus to declare whether the money had been repaid or no. The voice of the dead bishop immediately answered from the grave: "Verily hath the Jew received his money, returned unto him at the appointed time, with interest, ay, and double interest." The chronicles tell us that this undoubtedly took place, for many were present and bear witness that they both saw and heard these things.

Eugippius, who succeeded the martyr S. Vigilius in the see of Trent, has left us a life of S. Severinus, who was one of the last Christian bishops among the Roman inhabitants of the district of the Danube, immediately before the withdrawal to Italy. On one occasion S. Severinus having watched all night by the bier of a priest named Silvanus bade him at dawn once more speak to his brethren who longed to hear his voice, for he had been an eloquent and fervent preacher. Silvanus opened his eyes and the saint asked him if he wished to return to life. But the dead man answered: "My father, detain me no longer here I pray thee, nor delay for me that hour of everlasting rest which those who sleep in Jesus most sweetly enjoy." And then, closing his eyes, in this world he woke no more.

This happening must at once bring to mind the famous miracle of S. Philip Neri, who was the spiritual director of the Massimo family. In 1583 the son and heir of Prince Fabrizio Massimo died of a fever at the age of fourteen, and when, amid the lamentations of the bereaved parents and the weeping relatives, S. Philip entered the room, he laid his hand upon the brow of the youth, and called him by name. Upon this the dead boy returned to life, opened his eyes, and sat up in the bed. "Art thou unwilling to die?" asked the saint. "No," sighed the youth gently. "Art thou resigned to yield they soul?" "I am." "Then go," said S. Philip. "Va,

{p. 54}

che sii benedetto, e prega Dio per noi!" The boy sank back on his pillow with a heavenly smile, and a second time expired. On 16th March every year a festa is held in the family chapel within Palazzo Massimo in memory of this miracle.[98]

It is related in the life of S. Theodosius the Cenobite, written by Bishop Theodore of Petra[99] (536), that a large sepulchre having been made near the monastery, S. Theodosius said: "The tomb is now finished indeed, but who will be the first among us to occupy it?" Whereupon a certain monk named Basil, falling upon his knees, prayed that this honour might be his, and within the space of about a month, without pain or disease, he passed away as a man who takes his rest in sleep. Yet for full forty days afterwards S. Theodosius, at matins and at the other hours, saw the dead monk still occupying his place in the choir. It was he alone who saw the monk, but others, especially one Aetius, heard his voice. Whereupon Theodosius prayed that all might see the apparition of Basil, and assuredly the eyes of all were opened so that they beheld him in his wonted place in their midst. When Aetius would joyfully have embraced the figure it vanished from his touch, saying the words: "Hold, Aetius. God be with You, my father and my brethren. But me shall ye see and hear no more."

It was the custom of S. Gregory, Bishop of Langres,[100] to rise from his bed at night, when everyone else was fast in repose, and going quietly into the church to spend several hours at his devotions. This was long unobserved, but it so happened that one night one of the brethren lay awake, and he observed the bishop on his way down the corridors. From curiosity he stole softly after him, and presently saw him enter the Baptistry, the door of which seemed to open to him of its own accord. For some time there was silence; and then the voice of the bishop was heard chanting aloud the antiphon, when immediately afterwards many voices took up the psalm, and the singing, decani and cantori, continued for the space of three hours. "I, for my part;" says S. Gregory of Tours, "think that the Saints, whose Relics were there venerated and preserved, revealed themselves to the blessed man, and hymned praises to God in company with him."

Examples of later date when under exceptional conditions dead persons have returned to life, are not infrequently to

{p. 55}

be found. S. Stanislaus the Martyr, Bishop of Cracow,[101] had bought for church purposes very ample estates from one Peter. This man died some few years afterwards, whereupon his heirs claimed the property. They had discovered that the bishop had taken no acquittance, and accordingly as he had no document to show in proof of his right, the courts ordered him to return the land to the plaintiffs. But the saint went to the tomb of the deceased, and having touched the body he bade it to arise and follow him. Peter instantly obeyed the summons, and this pale and ghastly figure accompanied the bishop into the King's Court. Whilst all trembled and were sore amazed Stanislaus said to the Judge: "Behold, my lord, here is Peter himself who sold me the estate. He has come even from the grave to vindicate the truth." In hollow accents the phantom or corpse confirmed the statement of the bishop in every particular, and fearful as they sat the judges reversed their former decision. When this bad been done the figure seemed to fade away from their sight. The body had returned to the tomb, and here it lay decently composed, having yielded up his breath a second time.[102]

A not dissimilar incident is said to have occurred in the life of S. Antony of Padua, whose father was accused at Lisbon of having been privy to the death of a certain nobleman, even if he had not actually slain him, as was implied. The saint, having requested that the body of the murdered man should be brought into court, solemnly adjured him saying: "Is it true that my father in any way consented unto or contrived thy assassination?" With a deep groan the body made reply: "In no wise is the accusation true. It is altogether false and framed of malice." Whereupon the magistrates convinced by this positive declaration set free the prisoner.[103]

On 9th March, 1463, S. Catherine of Bologna, a Poor Clare, died at the convent there, and so great was her reputation for sanctity that rather more than a fortnight after her burial, her body was disinterred and placed in the church upon an open bier for the veneration of all. The vast, crowds who came were struck with the fact that her face retained a fresh and glowing colour, far more lively, indeed, than during her life. Amongst others who visited the remains was a little maid of eleven years old by name Leonora Poggi. As out of reverence she stood at some distance, it was noticed that the

{p. 56}

body not only opened wide its eyes, but made a sign with the hand, saying: "Leonora, come hither." The girl advanced trembling, but S. Catherine added: "Do not be afraid; you will be a professed nun of this community, and all in the convent will love you. Nay, more, you shall be the guardian of this, my body." Eight years afterwards Leonora refused the hand of a wealthy suitor of high rank, and took the veil in the house of Corpus Domini. Here she lived for no less than five and fifty years, reaching an extreme old age with the love and respect of the whole sisterhood. She was indeed for half a century the guardian of the most holy relic of the body of S. Catherine.[104]

Immediately after the death of that great ecstatica, S. Maria Maddelena de Pazzi, who expired 25th May, 1607, the body of the holy Carmelite was honourably laid upon a catafalque in the nuns' church of S. Maria degli Angeli, whilst all Florence thronged thither to kiss her feet and touch were it but her raiment with medals and rosaries. Among the first who visited the convent and who were favoured by being allowed to venerate the body before the multitude won admittance was a certain pious Jesuit, Father Seripandi, and in his company chanced to be a young man of noble family whom he was striving to turn from the most dissolute courses. Whilst the good priest knelt in prayer the youth scanned intently the countenance of the Saint, but she frowning slightly gently turned away her face as if offended at his gaze. He stood abashed and dumbfounded, when Father Seripandi said: "Verily, my son, this Saint would not suffer your eyes to behold her, inasmuch as your life is so licentious and lewd." "It is true," cried the young man, "but God helping me I will amend my ways in every particular." He did so, and before long was distinguished by no ordinary piety and observance of religion.[105]

Similar cases of the resuscitation of the dead, corpses that arose from their graves, the movement of dead bodies, might indeed be almost indefinitely multiplied. And it is not at all impossible that as these extraordinary circumstances happened in the lives of the Saints, so they would be imitated and parodied by the demon, for, as Tertullian has said, "diabolus simia Dei."

It has been well remarked that man has always held the

{p. 57}

dead in respect and in fear. The Christian Faith, moreover, has its seal upon the sanctity of death. Even from the very infancy of humanity the human intelligence, inspired by some shadow of the divine truth, has refused to believe that those whom death has taken are ought but absent for a while, parted but not for ever. It has been argued, and not without sound sense, that primitive man desired to keep the dead, to preserve the mortal shell, and what are the tomb, the cave of prehistoric man, the dolmen of the Gaulish chieftain, the pyramid of Pharaoh, but the final dwelling-place, the last home? As for the actual corpse, this still had some being, it yet existed in the primitive idea. There can be nothing more horrible, no crime more repellent, than the profanation of the dead.

Dr. Épaulard says: "Les vraies et graves profanations, de veritables crimes, reconnaissent pour mobile les grandes forces impulsives qui font agir l'être humain. Je nommerai cela vampirisme, quitte à expliquer par la suite l'origine de cette appellation.

"L'instinct sexuel, le plus perturbateur de tons les instincts, doit être cité en première ligne comme, l'un des facteurs les plus importants du vampirisme.

"La faim, besoin fondamental de tout être vivant, aboutit dans quelques circonstances à des actes du vampirisme. On pourait citer maint naufrage et maint siège célèbre on la nécessité fit loi. Le cannibalisme du bien des tribes savages n'a pas d'autre origine que la faim à satisfaire.

Chez l'homme se développe énormément l'instinct de propriété. D'où le travail, d'où, chez certains, le vol. Nous venons de voir que la coutume de tons les temps fut d'orner les morts de ce qu'ils aimaient à posséder. Les voleurs n'ont pas hésité à dépouiller les cadavres. . . . Les parlements et les tribunaux eurent assez souvent à châtier des voleurs sacrilèges."[106]

Vampirism, then, in its extended and more modern sense, may be understood to mean any profanation of a dead body, and it must accordingly be briefly considered under this aspect. "On doit, entendre par vampirisme toute profanation de cadavres, quel que soit son mode et quelle que soit son origine."

In France there have been many cases of sacriligious theft from the dead. In 1664 Jean Thomas was broken on the wheel for having disinterred the body of a woman and stolen

{p. 58}

the jewels in which she was buried; and well-nigh a century before, in 1572, a grave-digger Jean Regnault was condemned to the galleys for having stolen jewels and even winding-sheets from corpses. In 1823, Pierre Renaud was sentenced at Riom for having opened a tomb with intent to steal. Not many years after, the police captured the band "de la rue Mercadier," seven ruffians who made it their business to violate graves and the vaults of rich families and who thus had stolen gems and gold to the value of no less than 300,000 francs. It is well-known that the notorious Ravachol forced open the tomb of Madame de Rochetaillée in the expectation that she had been buried in her jewels, but found nothing of this kind, as the lady was merely wrapped in her shroud of lawn.

On 12th July, 1663, the Parliament of Paris heavily sentenced the son of the sexton of the cemetery attached to Saint-Sulpice. This young wretch was in the habit of exhuming corpses and selling them to the doctors. In the seventeenth century the Faculty of Paris was allowed one dead body a year, and the famous physician, Mauriccau lay under grave suspicion of having illegally procured bodies to dissect for his anatomical studies.

In England the Resurrection Men added a new terror to death. Even the bodies of the wealthy, when every precaution had been taken, were hardly safe against the burgling riflers of vault and tomb, whilst to the poor it was a monstrous horror as they lay on their sick beds to know that their corpses were ever in danger of being exhumed by ghouls, carted to the dissection theatre, sold to 'prentice doctors to hack and carve. In his novel, The Mysteries of London, G. W. M. Reynolds gives a terrible, but perhaps not too highly coloured, picture of these loathsome thefts. Irregular practitioners and rival investigators in the anatomy schools were always ready to buy without asking too many questions. Body-snatching became a regular trade of wide activities. One of the wretches who plied the business most successfully even added a word to the English language. William Burke, of the firm Burke and Hare, who was hanged 28th January, 1829,[107] began his career in November, 1827. This seems to have commenced almost accidentally. Hare was the keeper of a low lodging-house in an Edinburgh slum, and here died an old soldier owing a considerable amount for his rent. With

{p. 59}

the help of Burke, another of his guests, they carried the corpse to Dr. Robert Knox, of 10 Surgeon's Square, who promptly paid £7 10s. for it. The Scotch had the utmost horror of Resurrection Men, and bodies were not always easy to procure, although the vile Knox boasted that he could always get the goods he required. It is said that relations would take it in turns to stand guard over newly-dug graves, and the precaution was not unnecessary. Another lodger at Hare's fell ill, and it was decided that he should be disposed of in the same way. But he lingered, and so Burke smothered him with a pillow, Hare holding the victim's legs. Dr. Knox paid £10 for the remains. Since money is so quickly earned they do not hesitate to supply the wares. A friendless beggar woman; her grandson, a dumb-mute; a sick Englishman; a prostitute named Mary Paterson, and many more were enticed to the lodgings and murdered. Quite callously Burke confessed his method. He used to lie on the body while Hare held nose and mouth; "in a very few minutes the victims would make no resistance, but would convulse and make a rumbling noise in their bellies for some time. After they had ceased crying and making resistance we let them die by themselves." Dr. Knox contracted that he would pay £10 in winter and £8 in summer for every corpse produced. At last the whole foul business comes to light.

Up the close and down the stair,
But and ben with Burke and Hare,
Burke's the butcher, Hare's the thief,
Knox the boy that buys the beef.

So sang the street urchins. Burke confessed, and was hanged. Hare turned King's evidence, but it would seem that was hardly needed, for the suspicion which connected these ruffians with the numerous disappearances was overwhelming from the first, and soon became certainty. It was a grave scandal that both the villains and their paramours, together with Dr. Knox, who, in spite of his denials, undoubtedly was well aware of the whole circumstances, were not all five sent to the gallows. It is true that the mob endeavoured to catch them and would have torn them to pieces. To the mob they should have been duly thrown. That they escaped by some legal quibble or flaw speaks ill indeed for the age.

{p. 60}

That species of Vampirism known as Necrophagy or Necrophagism, which is Cannibalism, is very often connected with the religious rites of savage people and also finds a place in the sabbat of the witches. Sir Spenser St. John, in his description of Haiti, gives curious details of the Voodoo cult when cannibalism mingles with the crudest debauchery. Among the Kwakiutl Indians of British Columbia the cannibals (Hamatsas) are the most powerful of all the Secret Societies. They tear corpses asunder and devour them, bite pieces out of living people, and formerly they ate slaves who had been killed for their banquet.[103] The Haida Indians of the Queen Charlotte Islands practise a very similar religion of necrophagy.[109] Among the ancient Mexicans the body of the youth whom they sacrificed in the character of the god Tetzcatlipoca was chopped up into small pieces and distributed amongst the priests and nobles as a sacred food.[110] In Australia the Bibinga tribe cut up the bodies of the dead and eat them in order to secure the reincarnation of the deceased. The same ceremony was observed by the Arunta.[111] Casper, Vierteljahrschrift, viii (p. 163) mentions the case of an idiot who killed and ate a baby in order to impart to himself the vitality of the child. It should be remarked that necrophagy enters very largely into the passions of the werewolf, and there are innumerable examples of lycanthropists who have devoured human flesh, and slain men to feed upon their bodies. Boguet recounts that in the year 1538 four persons charged with sorcery, Jacques Bocquet, Claude Jamprost, Clauda Jamguillaume and Thievenne Paget, confessed that they had transformed themselves into wolves and in this shape had killed and eaten several children. Françoise Secretain, Pierre Gandillon and George Gandillon also confessed that they had assumed the form of wolves and caught several children whom they had stripped naked and then devoured. The children's clothes were found without rent or tear in the fields, "tellement qu'il sembloit bien que ce fust vne personne, qui les leur eut deuestus."[112]

A remarkable instance of necrophagy which caused a great noise in the eighteenth century is said to have given de Sade a model for Minski, "l'ermite des Appenins," in Juliette, iii (p. 313). The horrible abode of this Muscovite giant is amply described. The tables and chairs are made of human bones,

{p. 61}

and the rooms are hung with skeletons. This monster was suggested by Blaise Ferrage, or Seyé, who in 1779 and 1780 lived in the Pyrenees, and captured men and women whom he devoured.[113]

One of the most terrible and extraordinary cases of cannibalism was that of Sawney Beane, the son of peasants in East Lothian, who was born in a village at no great distance from Edinburgh towards the close of the fourteenth century. He and a girl in the same district wandered away in company, and took up their abode in a cave on the coast of Galloway. It is said this cavern extended nearly a mile under the sea. Here they lived by robbing travellers, and carrying off their bodies to their lair they cooked and ate them. Eight sons and six daughters they gendered, and the whole tribe used to set forth upon marauding expeditions, sometimes attacking as many as five and six persons travelling in company. Grandchildren were born to this savage, and it is said that for more than five and twenty years these cannibals killed men on the highway and dragging the prey to their lair fed upon human flesh. Suspicion was often aroused, and even panic ensued, but so skilfully had nature concealed the opening to the cave that it was long ere the gang could be traced and captured. The whole family were put to death amid the most horrible torments in the year 1435 at Edinburgh. It is probable that in the first place Beane and his female companion were driven to necrophagy by starvation, and the horrid craving for human flesh once tasted became a mad passion. The children born into such conditions would be cannibalistic as a matter of course.

Sawney Beane was made the subject of a romance--Sawney Beane, the Man-eater of Midlothian, by Thomas Preskett Prest, who, between the years 1840 and 1860 was the most famous and most popular purveyor of the "shocker" which circulated in immense numbers. Prest's greatest success was Sweeney Todd, a character who was once supposed actually to have lived, but who is almost certainly fiction. It will be remembered that Todd's victims disappeared through a revolving trap-door into the cellars of his house. Their bodies, when stripped and rifled, were handed over to be used by Mrs. Lovett, who resided next door and kept a pie-shop which was greatly frequented. Once it so happened that the supply ran short

{p. 62}

for a while, as Todd for some reason was unable to dispatch his customers, and mutton was actually used in the pies. Complaints were made that the quality of the pies had deteriorated, the meat had lost its usual succulence and flavour.

In a manuscript, which has never been printed,[114] written about 1625 by the brother of Henry Percy, ninth Earl of Northumberland,[115] George Percy, who was twice Deputy-Governor of Virginia, and entitled A Trewe Relatyon of the Proceedings and Occurrences of Momente which have Happened in Virginia from . . . 1609 untill 1612, details are given of the terrible conditions under which the early colonists had to live. Starvation sometimes faced them, and not only were corpses then dug out of graves and eaten, but "one of our colony murdered his wife . . . and salted her for his food, the same not being discovered before he had eaten part thereof, for which cruel and inhuman fact I adjudged him to be executed, the acknowledgment of the deed being enforced from him by torture, having hung by the thumbs, with weights at his feet a quarter of an hour before he would confess the same."

As is often recorded in history during long and terrible sieges, starvation has driven the wretched citizens of a beleagured town to devour human flesh. An example of this may be found in the Bible, which tells us of the horrors when Jerusalem was encompassed by Benadad of Syria during the reign of King Joram (B.C. 892), Kings IV (A. V. Kings II), vi, 24-30: "Congregauit Benadad rex Syriae, uniuersum exercitum suum, et ascendit, et obsidebat Samariam. Factaque est fames magna in Samaria: et tamdiu obsessa est, donec uenundaretur caput asini octoginta argenteis, et quarta pars cabi stercoris columbarum quinque argenteis. Cumque rex Israel transiret per murum, mulier quaedam exclamauit ad eum; dicens: Salua me domine mi rex. Qui ait: Non te saluat Dominus: unde te possum saluare? de area, uel de torculari? Dixitque ad eam rex: Quid tibi uis? Quae respondit: Mulier ista dixit mihi: Da filium tuum, ut comedamus eum hodie, et filium meum comedemus eras. Coximus ergo filium meum, et comedimus. Dixique ei die altera: Da filium tuum ut comedamus eum. Quae abscondit filium suum. Quod cum audisset rex, scidit uestimenta sua, et transibat per murum. Uiditque omnis populus cilicium, quo uestitus erat ad carnem intrinsecus."

{p. 63}

(Benadad king of Syria gathered together all his army, and went up, and besieged Samaria. And there was a great famine in Samaria; and so long did the siege continue, till the head of an ass was sold for fourscore pieces of silver, and the fourth part of a cabe of pigeon's dung, for five pieces of silver. And as the king of Israel was passing by the wall, a certain woman cried out to him, saying: Save me, my lord O king. And he said: If the Lord doth not save thee how can I save thee? Out of the barnfloor, or out of the winepress? And the king said to her: What aileth thee? And she answered: This woman said to me: give thy son, that we may eat him to-day, and we will eat my son to-morrow. So we boiled my son, and ate him. And I said to her on the next day: Give thy son that we may eat him. And she hath hid her son. When the king heard this, he rent his garments, and passed by upon the wall. And all the people saw the hair-cloth which he wore within next to his flesh.)

W. A. F. Browne, sometime Commissioner for Lunacy in Scotland, has a very valuable paper Necrophilism, which was read at the Quarterly Meeting of the Medico-Psychological Association, Glasgow, 21st May, 1874. He points out that in Ireland, under the savagery of Queen Elizabeth, when the rich pastures were burned into a wilderness, "the miserable poor . . . out of every corner of the woods and glens came creeping forth upon thin hands, for their legs could not bear them, they looked like anatomes of death; they spoke like ghosts crying out of their graves; they did eat the dead carrions; happy when they could find them; yea, they did eat one another soon after; insomuch as the very carcasses they spared not to scrape out of their very graves." During the Siege of Jerusalem by Titus, during the Plague in Italy in 450, cannibalism was rife. During a famine in France in the eleventh century "human flesh was openly exposed for sale in the market-place of Tournus." A man had built a hut in the forest of Macon and here he murdered all whom he could entice within his doors, afterwards roasting the bodies and feeding on them. Browne says that there came under his notice in the West Indies two females who frequented graveyards at night. It does not appear that they exhumed bodies but they used to sleep among the tombs, and these dark wanderings, as might be expected, thoroughly scared

{p. 64}

the native population. He also adds: "The abodes of the dead have been visited, violated; the exhumed corpses, or parts of them, have been kissed, caressed, or appropriated, and carried to the homes of the ravisher, although belonging to total strangers." He also says: "I was much struck, when frequenting the Parisian asylums as a student, with the numbers of anæmic, dejected females who obtruded upon me the piteous confession that they had eaten human flesh, devoured corpses, that they were vampires, etc." Dr. Legrande du Saulle says that in many members of a Scottish family there appeared connate necrophagism.[116] Prochaska mentions a woman of Milan also tempted children to her house and ate them at her leisure. A girl of fourteen, belonging to Puy de Drôme, is described as having displayed on all occasions an extraordinary avidity for human blood and as sucking greedily recently inflicted wounds. The brigand Gaetano Mammone, who long terrorized South Italy, was accustomed as a regular habit to drain with his lips the blood of his unhappy captives.[117] In another instance a man who dwelt apart in a cave in the South of France seized a girl of twelve years old, strangled her, violated the corpse, and then inflicting deep gashes upon it with a knife drank the blood and devoured the flesh. He kept the remains in his retreat but subsequently interred them. He was judged insane.[118]

In the sixteenth century there dwelt in Hungary a terrible ogress, the Countess Elisabeth Ba'thory, who for her necro-sadistic abominations was known as "la comtesse hongroise sanguinaire." The comte de Charolais (1700-1760), "de lugubre mémoire," loved nothing better than to mingle murder with his debauches, and many of the darkest scenes in Juliette but reproduce the orgies he shared with his elder brother, the Duke of Burgundy.

Dr. Lacassagne, in his study Vacher l'éventreur et les crime's sadiques, Lyon-Paris, 1899, has collected many cases of necro-sadism. Joseph Vacher, who was born at Beaufort (Isère), 16th November, 1869, was guilty of a series of crimes which lasted from May, 1894, to August, 1897. He was tramping during those years up and down France, immediately after his release as cured from an asylum where be had been confined for attempting to rape a young servant who refused his hand in marriage. Vacher's first crime seems to have been committed

{p. 65}

19th May, 1894, when in a lonely place he killed a working girl of twenty-one. He strangled her and then violated the body. on 20th November of the same year he throttled a farmer's daughter aged sixteen at Vidauban (Var), violated the body and mutilated it with his knife. In the same way on 1st September, 1895 at Bénonces (Ain), he killed a lad of sixteen, Victor Portalier, and slashed open the stomach. Three weeks later he strangled a shepherd boy of fourteen, Pierre Massot-Pellet, and mutilated the body. In all some eleven murders with violation were traced to Vacher, the last being that of a shepherd lad aged thirteen, Pierre Laurent, at Courzieu (Rhône), 18th June, 1897. The body was indescribably hacked and bitten. Probably this maniac was guilty of many more assaults which did not come to light.

In England the sensation caused by the mysterious mutilations by Jack the Ripper will not easily be forgotten. The first body was found at Whitechapel, 1st December, 1887; the second, which had thirty-nine wounds, 7th August, 1888. On 31st of the same month a woman's corpse was found horribly mutilated; 8th September a fourth body bearing the same marks, a fifth on 30th September; a sixth on 30th November. On the 1st June, 1889, human remains were dredged from the Thames; 17th July a body still warm was discovered in a Whitechapel slum; on 10th September of the same year the last body.

The classic instance of "vampirism," Serjeant Bertrand, will be fully dealt with in a later chapter.

Andréas Bickel killed women after having both raped and mutilated them in an indescribable manner. Dr. Épaulard quoting from Feuerbach, Ahtenmœsigen Darstellung merkwürdzer Verbrechen says that Bichel declared: "Je puis dire qu'en ouvrant la poitrine, j'étais tellement, excité que je tressaillais et que j'aurais voulu trancher un morceau de chair pour le manger." In the year 1825 a vine-dresser named Léger, a stalwart fellow of four and twenty, left his home to find work. He wandered about the woods for a week or more, and was then seized with a terrible craving to eat human flesh. "Il rencontre une petite fille de douze ans, la viole, lui déchire les organes génitaux, lui arrache le coeur, le mange et boit son sang, puis enterre le cadavre. Arrêté peu après, il fait tranquillement l'aveu de son crime, est condamné et executé."[119]

66 THE VAMPIRE

A famous case was that of Vincenzo Verzeni,[120] a necrophagist and necrosadist, who was born at Bottanuco of an ailing and impoverished stock and arrested in 1872 for the following crimes: an attempt to strangle his cousin Marianna, a girl of twelve years old; a similar attempt to throttle Signora Aruffi; aged twenty-seven; a similar attempt upon Signora Gala; the murder of Giovanna Motta (les viscères et les parties génitales sont arrachées du corps, les cuisses lacérées, un mollet detaché. Le cadavre est nu); the murder and mutilation of Signora Frizoni, aged twenty-eight; an attempt to strangle his cousin Maria Previtali, aged nineteen. Whilst he was committing these crimes "pour prolonger le plaisir, il mutila ses victimes, leur suça le sang, et détacha même des lambeaux pour les manger."

Those vampirish atrocities which are urged by sexual mania are generally classified as necrophilia and necrosadism--"La nécrophilie est la profanation qui tend à toute union sexuelle avec le cadavre: coït normal ou sodomique, masturbation, etc. Le nécrosadisme est la mutilation des cadavres destinée à provoquer un éréthisme génital. Le nécrosadisme diffère du sadisme en ce qu'il ne recherche pas la douleur, mais la simple destruction d'un corps humain. Les nécrosadisme aboutit parfois à des actes de cannibalisme qui peuvent prendre le nom de nécrophagie . . . . Nécrophiles et nécrosadiques sont la plupart du temps des dégénéres impulsifs on debiles mentaux, ce que prouvent lour vie antérieure et leurs tares héréditaires. Ce sont en outre bien souvent des hommes auxquels un contact professionel avec le cadavre a fait perdre toute répugnance (fossoyeurs, prêtres, étudiants en médicine)." The word nécrophilie seems, to have been first suggested by a Belgian alienist of the nineteenth century, Dr. Guislain; nécrosadisme is used by Dr. Épaulard.

Necrophilia was not unknown in ancient Egypt, and was carefully provided against as Herodotus tells us, Book II, lxxxix: {Greek Tàsde gunaîkas tw^n e?pifánewn a?ndrw^n, e?peàn teleuth'swsi, ou? parautíka didoûsi tarixeúein ou?dì o!`sai a?'n e!`wsi eu?eidées kárta kaì lógou pleûnos gunaîkes: a?ll?èpeàn tritaîai h!` tetartraîai génwntai, ou!'tw paradidoûsi toîsi tarixeúousi. tôûto de poieûsi ou?'tw toûde ei!'neken, i!'na mh` sfi oî tarixeutaì mísgwntai th^jsi gunaiksí: lamfðh^nai gar tinà fasì misgómenon nekrw^j prosfátwj gunaikós kateipeîn dè tòn o!mótexnon.} Wives of noblemen and women

{p. 67}

of great beauty and quality are not given over at once to the embalmers; but only after they have been dead three or four days; and this is done in order that the embalmers may not have carnal connexion with the corpse. For it is said that one was discovered in the act of having intercourse with a fair woman newly dead, and was denounced by his fellow-workman."

It was said that after Periander, tyrant of Corinth, had slain his wife he entered her bed as a husband. In the Praxis Rerum Criminalium of Damhouder, at the end of the sixteenth century we have: "Casu incidit in memoriam execrandus ille libidinis ardor, quo quidam feminam cognoscunt mortuam."

A very large number of cases of necrophilia has been collected by various authorities, of which it will suffice to give but a few examples. "En 1787, près de Dijon, à Cîteaux, un mien aïeul, qui était médecin de cette célèbre abbaye, sortait un jour du convent pour aller voir, dans une cabane située au milieu des bois, la femme d'un bûcheron que la veille il avait trouvée mourante. Le mari, occupé à de rudes travaux, loin de sa cabane, se trouvait forcé d'abandonner sa femme qui n'avait ni enfants, ni parents ni voisins autour d'elle. En ouvrant la porte du logis, mon grand-père fut frappé d'un spectacle monstrueux. Un moine quêteur accomplissait l'acte du coït sur le corps de la femme qui n'était plus qu'un cadavre."[121]

In 1849 the following case was reported: "Il venait de mourir une jeune personne de seize ans qui appartenait a une des premières familles de la ville. Une partie de la nuit s'était écoulée lorsqu'on entendit dans la chambre de la morte le bruit d'un meuble qui tombait. La mère, dont l'appartement était voisin, s'empressa d'accourir. En entrant, elle apperçut un homme qui s'échappait en chemise du lit de sa fille. Son effroi lui fit pousser de grands cris qui réunirent autour d'elle toutes les personnes de la maison. On saisit l'inconnu qui ne répondait que confusément aux questions qu'on lui posait. La première pensée fut que c'était un voleur, mais son habillement, certains signes dirigèrent les recherches d'un autre côté et l'on reconnut bientôt que la jeune fille avait été déflorée et polluée plusiers fois. L'instruction apprit que la garde avait été gagnée à prix d'argent: et bientôt d'autres révélations prouvèrent que ce malheureux, qui avait

{p. 68}

reçu une éducation distinguée, jouissait d'une très grande aisance et était lui-même d'une bonne famille n'en était pas à son coup d'essai. Les débats montrérent qu'il s'était glissé un assez grand nombre de fois dans le lit de jeunes filles mortes et s'y était livré à sa détestable passion."[122]

In 1857 the case of Alexandre Siméon, a necrophilist who was always feeble-minded--he was born in 1829, a foundling--and who eventually became wholly insane, attracted considerable attention. His habits were of the most revolting nature, and "Siméon, trompant la surveillance, s'introduisait dans la salle de morts quand il savait que le corps d'une femme venait d'y être déposé. Là, il se livrait aux plus indignes profanations. Il se vanta publiquement de ces faits."[123]

Dr. Morel, Gazette hebdomadaire de médicine et de chirurgie, 13th March, 1857, relates: "Un acte semblable à, celui de Siméon a été commis à la suite d'un pari monstrueux, par un élève d'une école secondaire de médicine, en présence de ses camarades. Il est bon d'ajouter que cot individu, quelques années plus tard, est mort aliéné."

Dr. Moreau, of Tours, in his famous study Aberrations du sens génésique, 1880, quoting from the Evénement, 26th April, 1875, relates an extraordinary case at Paris in which the culprit, L-----, was a married man and the father of six children. The wife of a neighbour having died, L-----undertook to watch in the death chamber, whilst the family were arranging the details of the interment. "Alors une idée incompréhensible, hors nature, passa par l'esprit du veilleur de la morte. il souffla, les bougies allumées près du lit, et ce cadavre, glacé, raidi, déjà, au décomposition fut le proie de ce vampire sans nom." The profanation was almost immediately discovered owing to the disorder of the bed and other signs. L----- fled, but at the instance of Dr. Pousson and the husband, who was half mad with grief and rage, he was arrested and inquiry made. A quel délire a-t-il obéi?

In Les causes criminelles et mondaines, 1886, Albert Bataille gives an account of Henri Blot, "un assez joli garçon de vingt-six ans, à figure un peu blème. Ses cheveux sont ramenés sur le front, à la chien. Il porte à la lèvre supérieure une fine moustache soigneusement effilée. Ses yeux, profondement noirs, enfoncés dans l'orbite, sont clignotants. Il a quelque chose de félin dans l'ensemble de la physionomie; quelque

{p. 69}

chosi aussi de l'oiseau de nuit." "Le 25 mars, 1886, dans la soirée, entre 11 heures et minuit Blot escalade une petite porte donnant dans le cimetière Saint-Ouen, se dirige vers la fosse commune, enlève la cloison qui retient la terre sur la dernierè bière de la rangée. Une croix piquée au-dessus de la fosse lui apprend quo le cercueil est le corps d'une jeune femme de dix-huit ans, Fernando Méry, dite Carmanio, figurante de théâtre, enterrée la veille.

"Il déplace la bière, l'ouvre, retire le corps de la jeune fille qu'il emporte à l'extremité de la tranchée, sur le remblai. Là, il pose, par précaution, ses genoux sur des feuilles de papier blanc enlevées à des bouquets et pratique le colt sur le cadavre. Ensuite, il s'endort probablement, et ne se réveille que pour sortir du cimitière assez à temps pour ne pas être vu, mais trop tard pour replacer le corps." A curious point is that when the profanation was discovered a man named Duhamel wrote a letter avowing that he had committed the violation. He was confined at Mazas, since he gave such full details that he was truly believed to have been guilty. Whilst under the observation of two doctors he proved to be of unsound mind. On 12th June Blot again violated a tomb, he fell asleep, was discovered and arrested. On 27th August, when brought to trial, and the judge expressed his horror of such acts, he replied callously: "Que voulez-vous, chacun a ses passions. Moi le cadavre, c'est la mienne!" Dr. Motet was unable to certify him insane, and he was sentenced to two years' imprisonment.

Dr. Tiberius of Athens communicated the following case. A young medical student, some seven years ago, made his way at night into the mortuary chapel where lay the body of a beautiful actress who had just died, and for whom he had long nourished an insensate passion. Covering the cold clay with passionate kisses he violated the corpse of his inamorata. It should be remarked that the body had been dressed in the richest costume and covered with jewels, as it was to be carried thus in the funeral procession.

Necrophilia is said to be common in certain Eastern countries. "En Turquie, dans les endroits où les cimetières sont mal gardés, on a souvent vu, parâit-il d'abjects individus, la lie du peuple, contenter sur des cadavres qu'ils exhumaient leurs désirs sexuels."

{p. 70}

The case of Victor Ardisson, who was called by the papers "le vampire du Muy," and who was arrested in 1901 upon multiplied charges of the exhumation and violation of dead bodies, was studied in great detail by Dr. Épaulard, who summed up his verdict in these words: "Ardisson est un débile mental inconscient des actes qu'il accomplit. Il a violé des cadavres parce que, fossoyeur, il lui était facile de se procurer des apparences de femme sous forme de cadavres auxquels il prêtait une sorte d'existence."[124]

The motive of the Leopold and Loeb case which occurred at Chicago, and which was so widely discussed throughout America in 1924 was necrosadism. Having killed the unfortunate boy the two wretched degenerates violated the body. It may not untruly be said that this morbid crime sprang in the first place from a false philosophy. With ample money at their command, their minds rotted with the backwash of Freud, these two young supermen conceived themselves above all laws. They had exhausted every erotic emotion, and sought something new to thrill their jaded nerves. These vilenesses and abominations would be ended by a return to the true philosophy, the lore of the Schoolmen and Doctors.

There are not unknown--in fact there are not uncommon--amazing cases of what may be called "mental necrophilia," a morbid manifestation for which suitable provision is made in the more expensive and select houses of accomodation.

In his study La Corruption Fin-de-Siècle Léo Taxil remarks: "Une passion sadiste des plus effrayantes est celle des détraqués auxquels on a donné le nom. de 'vampire.' Ces insensés veulent violer des cadavres. Cette dépravation du sens génésique, dit le docteur Paul Moreau de Tours constitue le degré le plus extrême des déviations de l'appetit vénérien." He also speaks of "chambres funèbres" as being not uncommon in certain brothels. "D'ordinaire, on dispose, dans une pièce de l'établissement des tentures noires, un lit mortuaire, en un mot, tout un appareil lugubre. Mais l'un des principaux lupanars de Paris a, en permanence, une chambre spéciale, destinée aux clients qui désirent tâter du vampirisme.

"Les murs de la chambre sout tendus de satin noir, parsemi de larmes d'argent. Au milieu est un catafalque, très riche. Une femme, paraissant inerte, est là, couchée dans un cercueil découvert, la tête reposant sur un coussin de velours. Tout

{p. 71}

autour, de longs cierges, plantés dans de grandes chandeliers d'argent. Aux quatre coins de la pièce, des urnes funéraires et des cassolettes, brûlant, avec des parfums, un mélange d'alcool et de sel gris, dont les flammes blafardes, qui éclairent le catafalque, donnent à la chair de la pseudo-morte la couleur cadavérique.

"Le fou luxurieux, qui a payé dix louis pour cette séance, est introduit. Il y a un prie-dieu oû'il s' agenouille. Un harmonium, placé dans un cabinet voisin, joue le Dies irae ou le De Profundis. Alors, aux accords de cette musique de funérailles le vampire se rue sur la fille qui simule la défunte et qui a ordre de ne pas faire un mouvement, quoiqu'il advienne."

It might not unreasonably be thought that the catafalque, the bier, the black pall, would arouse solemn thoughts and kill desire, but on the contrary this funeral pomp and the trappings of the dead are considered in certain circles the most elegant titillation, the most potent and approved of genteel aphrodisiacs.

CHAPTER II
THE GENERATION OF THE VAMPIRE
IT may now be asked how a human being becomes or is transformed into a vampire, and it will be well here to tabulate the causes which are generally believed to predispose persons to this demoniacal condition. It may be premised that as the tradition is so largely Slavonic and Greek many of these causes which are very commonly assigned and accredited in Eastern Europe will not be found to prevail elsewhere.

The Vampire is one who has led a life of more than ordinary immorality and unbridled wickedness; a man of foul, gross and selfish passions, of evil ambitions, delighting in cruelty and blood. Arthur Machen has very shrewdly pointed out that "Sorcery and sanctity are the only realities. Each is an ecstasy, a withdrawal from the common life." The spiritual world cannot be confined to the supremely good, "but the supremely wicked, necessarily, have their portion in it. The ordinary man can no more be a great sinner than he can be a great saint. Most of us are just indifferent, mixed-up creatures; we muddle through the world without realizing the meaning and the inner sense of things, and, consequently our wickedness and our goodness are alike second-rate unimportant . . . the saint endeavours to recover a gift which he has lost; the sinner tries to obtain something which was never his. In brief, he repeats the Fall . . . it is not the mere liar who is excluded by those words[1]; it is, above all, the "sorcerers" who use the material life, who use the failings incidental to material life as instruments to obtain their infinitely wicked ends. And let me tell you this; our higher senses are so blunted, we are so drenched with materialism, that we should probably fail to recognize real wickedness if we encountered it.)"[2]

Huysmans has said in Là Bas: "Comme il est très difficile d'être un saint, il reste à devenir un santanique. C'est un

{p. 78}

des deux extrêmes. On peut avoir l'orgueil de valoir en crimes ce qu'un saint vaut en virtus."

It has been said that a saint is a person who always choses {sic} the better of the two courses open to him at every step. And so the man who is truly wicked is he who deliberately always choses the worse of the two courses. Even when he does things which would be considered right he always does them for some bad reason. To identify oneself in this way with any given course requires intense concentration and an iron strength of will, and it is such persons who become vampires.

The vampire is believed to be one who has devoted himself during his life to the practice of Black Magic, and it is hardly to be supposed that such persons would rest undisturbed, while it is easy to believe that their malevolence had set in action forces which might prove powerful for terror and destruction even when they were in their graves. It was sometimes said, but the belief is rare, that the Vampire was the offspring of a witch and the devil.

Throughout the trials and in the confessions of witches there are many details of the coitus of the devil and the witch, but those examples given by Henri Boguet in his great and authoritative work Discours des Sorciers (Third edition, Lyons, 1590) may stand for many. He devotes Chapter XII to the connexion of the devil and the witch: "L'accouplement du Demon avec la Sorciere et le Sorcier . . . 1. Le Demon cognoit toutes les Sorcieres, & pourquoy. 2. Il se met aussi en femme pour les Sorciers, & pourquoy. 3. Autres raisons pour les quelles le Demon cognoit les Sorciers, & Sorcieres." More than one witch acknowledged that Satan had known her sexually, and in Chapter XIII Boguet decides: "L'accouplement de Satan auce le Sorcier est réel and non imaginaire. . . . Les uns donc s'on mocque~t . . . mais les confessions des Sorciers que j'ay eu en main, me font croire qu'il en est quelque chose. Lautant qu'ils ont tout recogneu, qu'ils auoient esté couplez auec le Diable, & que la semeuce qu'il iettoit estoit fort froide . . . Iaquema Paget adioustoit, qu'elle auoit empoigné plusiers fois auec la main le me~bre du Demon, qui la cognoissoit, & que le membre estoit froid comme glace, lo~g d'un bon doigt, & moindre en grosseur que celuy d'vn homme: Tieuenne Paget, & Antoine Tornier adioustoient aussi, qui le membre de leurs Demons

{p. 79}

estoit long, & gros comme l'un de leurs doigts." That eminent scholar and demonologist, Ludovico, Maria Sinistrari, O.S.F., tells us in his De Demonialitate "it is undoubted by Theologians and philosophers that carnal intercourse between mankind and the Demon sometimes gives birth to human beings; and that is how Antichrist is to be born, according to some doctors, for example, Bellarmine, Suarez, and Thomas Malvenda. They further observe that, from a natural cause, the children thus begotten by Incubi are tall, very hardy and bloodily bold, arrogant beyond words, and desperately wicked." S. Augustine, De Ciuitate Dei, XV, 23, says: "Creberrima fama est multique se expertos uel ab eis, qui experto essent, de quorum fide dubitandum non esset, audisse confirmant, Siluanos et Panes, quos uulgo incubos uocant, inprobos saepe extitisse mulieribus et earum adpetisse ac perigisse concubitum; et quodsam daemones, quos Dusios Galli nuncupant, adsidue hanc immunditiam et tentare et efficere, plures talesque adseuerant, ut hoc negare impudentiae uideatur." "And seeing it is so general a report, and so many view it either from their own experience or from others, that are of indubitable honesty and credit, that the sylvans and fawns, commonly called incubi, have often swived women, desiring and acting carnally with them; and that certain devils whom the Gauls called 'Duses' do continually practise this uncleanness and lure others to it, which is affirmed by such persons and with such weight that it were the height of impudence to deny it." Charles René Billuart, the celebrated Dominican (1685-1757) in his Tractatus de Angelis tells us: "The same evil spirit may serve as a succubus to a man, and as an incubus to a woman." The great authority of S. Alphonsus Liguori in his Praxis confessariorum, VII, n. iii, lays down: "Some deny that there are evil spirits, incubi and succubi, but writers of weight, eminence and learning, for the most part lay down that such is verily the case." Sinistrari, as we have noted, says that the children born of the devil and a witch are "desperately wicked," and we have just seen that persons of more than ordinarily evil life are said to become Vampires.

With the exception of England,--for witches were invariably hanged among us,--the universal penalty for witchcraft

{p. 80}

was the stake; and cremation, the burning of the dead body, is considered to be one of the few ways, and perhaps the most efficacious manner, in which vampirisin can be stamped out and brought to an end. That witches were hanged in England is a fact which has often been commented upon with some surprise, and persons who travelled in France and Italy were inclined to advise the same punishment should be inflicted at home as in all other countries. It was felt that unless the body were utterly consumed it might well prove that they had not stamped out the noxious thing. In Scotland, in 1649, when Lady Pittadro, who was incarcerated upon a charge of sorcery, died before her trial, her body was buried in the usual way. But considerable excitement followed and there were instant complaints to those in high places since the Scotch General Assembly considered that the body should have been burned and the following entry occurs among the records: "Concerning the matter of the buriall of the Lady Pittadro, who, being under a great scandall of witchcraft, and bein incarcerat in the Tolbuith of this burgh during her trialI before the Justice, died in prison. The Commission of the General Assembly, having considered the report of the Committee appointed for that purpose, Doe give their advyse to the Presbyterie of Dumferling to show their dislike of that fact of the buriall of the Lady Pittadro, in respect of the manner and place, and that the said Presbyterie may labour to make the persons who hes buried her sensible of their offence in so doeing; and some of the persons who buried hir, being personallie present, are desired by the Comission to show themselvis, to the Presbyterie sensible of their miscarriage therein."[3] Again in 1652 some persons who had been resident in France and who probably had followed the famous prosecutions at Louviers expressed their surprise that in England the gallows and not the stake was the penalty for this species of crime. In the Louviers case, a horrid record of diabolism, demoniac masses, lust and blasphemy, on 21 August, 1647, Thomas Boullé, a notorious Satanist, was burnt alive in the market-square at Rouen, and what is very notable the body of Mathurin Picard who had died five years before, and who had been buried near the choir grille in the chapel of the Franciscan nuns which was so fearfully haunted, was disinterred, being found (so it is said)

{p. 81}

intact. In any case it was burned to ashes in the same fire as consumed the wretched Boullé and it seems probable that this corpse was incinerated to put an end to the vampirish attacks upon the cloister. At Maidstone, in 1652, "Anne Ashby, alias Cobler, Anne Martyn, Mary Browne, Anne Wilson, and Mildred Wright of Cranbrooke and Mary Read, of Lenham, being legally convicted, were according to the Laws of this Nation, adjudged to be hanged, at the common place of Execution. Some there were that wished rather they might be burnt to Ashes; alledging that it was a received opinion among many, that the body of a witch being burnt, her bloud is prevented thereby from becomming hereditary to her Progeny in the same evill."[4]

It is even recorded that in one case the witch herself considered that she should be sent to the stake. A rich farmer in Northamptonshire had made an enemy of a woman named Anne Foster. Thirty of his sheep were discovered dead with their "Leggs broke in pieces, and their Bones all shattered in their Skins." Shortly after his house and several of his barns were found ablaze. It was suspected that Anne Foster had brought this about by sorcery. She was tried upon this charge at Northampton in 1674, and "After Sentence of Death was past upon her, she mightly desired to be Burned; but the Court would give no Ear to that, but that she should be hanged at the Common place of Execution."[5]

These two categories are those to which, it is generally believed, cases of vampirism may be assigned, and the remainmg classes are almost entirely peculiar to Czecho-Slovakia, Jugo-Slavia, Greece and Eastern Europe.

The vampire is believed to be one who for some reason is buried with mutilated rites. It will be remarked that this idea has a very distinct connexion with the anxious care taken by the Greek and Roman of classical times that the dead should be consigned to the tomb with full and solemn ceremony. Example might be multiplied upon example and it will suffice to refer to the passage in the Iliad where the soul of Patroclus is represented as urgently demanding the last ceremonial observances at the tomb.

"Sleep'st thou, Achilles, mindless of thy friend,
Neglecting, not the living, but the dead?
Hasten my funeral rites, that I may pass {p. 82}
Through Hades' gloomy gates; ere those be done,
The spirits and spectres of departed men
Drive me far from them, nor allow to cross
Th' abhorred river; but forlorn and sad
I wander through the wide-spread realms of night.
And give now thy hand, whereupon to weep;
For never more, when laid upon the pyre,
Shall I return from Hades; never more,
Apart from all our comrades, shall we two,
As friends, sweet counsel take; for me, stern Death,
The common lot of man, has op'd his mouth;
Thou too, Achilles, rival of the Gods,
Art destin'd here beneath the walls of Troy
To meet thy doom; yet one thing must I add,
And make, if thou wilt grant it, one request.
Let not my bones be laid apart from thine,
Achilles, but together, as our youth
Was spent together in thy father's house,
Since first my Sire Menœtius me a boy
From Opus brought, a luckless homicide,
Who of Amphidamas, by evil chance,
Had slain the son, disputing o'er the dice
Me noble Peleus in his house receiv'd,
And kindly nurs'd, and thine attendant nam'd;
So in one urn be now our bones enclos'd
The golden vase, thy Goddess-mother's gift."
Whom answer'd thus Achilles, swift to foot:
Why art thou here lov'd being? why on me
These several charges lay? whate'er thou bidd'st
Will I perform, and all in one short embrace,
Let us, while yet we may, our grief indulge."
Thus as he spoke, he spread his longing arms.
But nought he clasp'd; and with a wailing cry,
Vanish'd, like smoke, the spirit beneath the earth.[6]

Having slain her husband the atrocious Clytemnestra heaps sin upon sin and outrages not merely all decent feeling and human respect, but in some mysterious way insults the majesty of heaven itself in that, a supreme act of wanton insolence, she "dared to lay her husband in the tomb without mourning and without lamentation or dirge," for an adequate show of outward grief was considered an essential and religious part of any Greek funeral. In bitter accents Electra cries:[7]

{Greek i!w` daï'a
pántolme mâter, daï'ais e?n e?kforaîs
á?neu politân á!nakt?
á?neu dè penðhmá?twn
é?tlas a?noímwkt'on á?ndra ðápsai.}

{p. 83}

As Sophocles has shown us in that great drama which some not without reason consider the supremest excellence of Greek tragedy, the heroism of Antigone carries her to heights of dauntless strength in this cause of divine charity. To scatter a few handfuls of dust upon her brother's body which lies unburied on the Theban plain, she gladly lays down her own life, she flouts the man-made law of a weak and odious tyrant, resisting him to his very face, calmly as in stern duty bound without vaunt or show of audacity, appealing against the petty and precisian tribunals of a day to the eternal judgement-seat of powers more ancient and more awful than the throne of Zeus himself, casting away her plighted troth to Hæmon as though it were a trifle, and less than a trifle of no account, going gladly and serenely to her tragic doom. This contempt of human ordinances, this icy despising of human passions, of love itself, give the figure of Antigone something statuesque, something superbly cold in the very loveliness of her nobility, and remind us, although in her utter detachment even she, the purest Greek maiden, is far far below the Spanish mystic, of S. Teresa, who in pages that are chilly as ice, yet glow like fire, descants upon the nullity of human affections and the inflexible demand of the eternal law. So in the grand yet hard enthusiasm of Antigone there is no room for sentiment. The only touches which might seem some concession to human weakness but serve to make the absence of romantic sympathies more notable and more terrible. In a passage of the Kommos she bewails her own virgin knot untied, yet she has no more than some six words to throw away upon her betrothed:

{Greek w?^ fíltað? Aî?mon, w!^s s` a!timáksei path'r}

When we consider the steadfastness and inflexible purity of her purpose we shall to some extent realise how tremendous was the ideal that inspired her, and we are able to appreciate what price it seemed fitting to a Greek should be paid for the just and ritual performance of the last duties to the dead.

Pausanias tells us that Lysander's honour was for ever smirched, not because he put to death certain prisoners of war, but because "he did not even throw handfuls of earth upon their dead bodies."[9] It will be remarked that to the ancient Greek even this symbolism of inhumation sufficed, if

{p. 84}

nothing more could be done. Such indeed was the minimum but it was enough, and this little ceremony was by Attic Law enjoined upon all who happened to chance upon a corpse that lay unburied. To us it would seem wholly inadequate, if not nugatory and vain, but to the Greeks--and who knows how much wiser they were in this than are we?--this act had a mystical significance, for it was as Ælian has so happily expressed it "the fulfilment of some mysterious law of piety imposed by nature."[10] It was even believed that animals when they came upon the dead of their kind, would scrape with their paws a little earth over the body. To the modern man burial in the earth, or it may be cremation, is a necessary and decorous manner for the disposal of the dead. Yet in the Greek imagination these rites implied something far more, and they involved a certain provision for the welfare of that which was immaterial but permanent, the spirit or the soul. So long as the body remains the soul might be in some way tied and painfully linked with it, a belief which as we have noted, was held by Tertullian and many other of the early writers. But the dissolution of the body meant that the soul was no longer detained in this world where it had no appointed place, but that it was able to pass without let or hindrance to its own mansion prepared for it and for which it was prepared. Of old, men dutifully assisted the dead in this manner as a pious obligation, and as we have seen in the most famous case of all, that of Antigone, they were prepared to go to any length and to make any sacrifice to fulfil this obligation. It was in later years, especially under the influence of Slavonic tradition that not only love but fear compelled them to perform this duty to the dead, since it was generally thought that those whose bodies were not dissolved might return, reanimated corpses, the vampire eager to satisfy his vengeance upon the living, his lust for sucking hot reeking blood, and therefore the fulfilment of these funeral duties was a protection for themselves as well as a benefit to the departed.

Very closely linked with this idea is the belief that those persons become vampires who die under the ban of the church, that is to say who die excommunicate. Excommunication is the principal and most serious penalty that the Church can inflict, and being so severe a penalty it naturally presupposes some very grave offence. It may be roughly defined

{p. 85}

as a punishment that deprives the guilty of all participation in the common spiritual benefits enjoyed by all the members of the Christian society. There are certainly other corrective measures which entail the loss of certain particular rights; and among these are such censures as suspension for clerics, interdict for clerics and laymen and whole communities, irregularity ex delicto, and others. The excommunicated person does not cease to be a Christian, for his baptism can never be effaced but he is considered as an exile, and even, one may say, as non-existing, for a time at any rate, in the sight of ecclesiastical authority. But such exile comes to an end, and this the Church most ardently desires, so soon as the offender has given adequate satisfaction, yet meantime his status is that of an alien and a stranger.

Since excommunication is the forfeiture of the spiritual privileges of a certain society, it follows that those only can be excommunicated who by any right whatsoever belong to this society. Moreover, strictly speaking, excommunication can only be declared against baptized and living people, a point to be considered in detail later. Moreover, in order to fall within the jurisdiction of the forum externum, which alone can inflict excommunication, the offence incurring this penalty must be public and external. For there is a well-defined separation between those things appertaining to the forum externum, or public ecclesiastical tribunal, and the forum internum, or tribunal of conscience. At the same time, in the Bull "Exsurge Domine," 16th May, 1520, Leo X, rightly condemned the twenty-third proposition of Luther according to which "excommunications are merely external punishments, nor do they deprive a man of the common spiritual prayers of the Church." Pius VI, "Auctorem Fidei," 28th August, 1794, also condemned the forty-sixth proposition of the pseudo-synod of Pistoia, which maintained that the effect of excommunication is exterior only, because of its own nature it excludes only from exterior communion with the Church, as if, said the Pope, excommunication were not essentially also a spiritual penalty binding in heaven and affecting souls. The aforesaid proposition was therefore condemned as "falsa et perniciosa," false and pernicious, already reprobated and condemned in the twenty-third proposition of Luther, and, to say the very least, it incurs the technical mark

{p. 86}

"erronea" (erroneous), since it contradicts a certain (certa) theological conclusion or truth which is clearly and necessarily deducible from two premises, of which one is an article of faith, and the other naturally certain. Most assuredly the Church cannot (nor does she seek or wish to) oppose any obstacle to the interior and personal relation of the soul with its Creator. Nevertheless the rites of the Church are the regular and appointed channel through which divine grace is conveyed, and therefore it follows that exclusion from these rites inevitably entails the privation of this grace, to whose prescribed and availing sources the excommunicated person. no longer has access.

It should be mentioned that both from a moral and juridical standpoint the guilt requisite for the incurring of excommunication implies various conditions of which the three most important are, first the full use of reason; second sufficient, if not absolute, moral liberty; and thirdly a knowledge. of the law and even of the penalty, for it follows that if such knowledge be lacking there cannot be that disregard of the ecclesiastical law known as contumacy, the essence of which consists in deliberately performing an action whilst being very fully aware and conscious not merely that the action is forbidden but also that it is forbidden under a certain definite penalty, the exact nature of which is itself defined and known. Wherefore various causae excusantes, extenuating circumstances, are often present, and these so mitigate the culpability that they prevent the incurring of excommunication. It is hardly necessary to enter into an examination of such circumstances as in practice there may well be, and indeed are, many considerations and exemptions which have to be taken into account, but generally speaking lack of the full use of reason, lack of liberty resulting from fear--a person who is physically constrained or morally terrorized has no freedom of will and is not responsible--or ignorance, even affected ignorance, may anyone of them be obstacles to incurring that measure of peccability which is requisite to deserve an extreme spiritual penalty. Affected ignorance is a lack of knowledge in those who might reasonably and without grave difficulty inform and enlighten themselves, but they are not, bound to do so, and since every penal law is to be strictly interpreted, if such a statute positively and in set terms exacts knowledge on the part of

{p. 87}

the culprit, he is excused even by affected ignorance. Again, excommunication may be "occult," when the offence entailing it is known to no one or to almost no one at all. That is to say when no scandal has been given. This, it should be remarked, is valid in the forum internum only, and although he who has incurred occult communication should be absolved as soon as possible, he is not obliged to abstain from external acts connected with the exercise of jurisdiction, and moreover, since he has the right to judge himself and to be judged by his director according to the exact truth and his apprehension thereof, consequently in the tribunal of conscience he who is reasonably certain of his innocence cannot be compelled to treat himself as excommunicated, albeit he must be reasonably and justly persuaded.

It may now be briefly inquired, who can excommunicate? The general principle is that whoever enjoys jurisdiction in the forum externum can excommunicate, but only his own subjects. Therefore whether excommunications be technically a iure or ab homine they may come from the supreme Pontiff alone or from a general council for the whole Church; from the Bishop for his diocese; from a Prelate nullius for quasi-diocesan territories; and from regular Prelates for their subjects, that is to say for religious orders. Yet further anyone can excommunicate who has jurisdiction in the forum externum by virtue of his office even although this be delegated, for instance, legates, vicars capitular, and vicars-general can exercise this power. But a parish priest cannot inflict this penalty, nor may he even declare that it is incurred which is to say he may not pronounce this in an official manner as a judge. The right to absolve evidently belongs to him who can excommunicate and who has imposed the censure, and obviously it belongs to any person delegated by him to this effect, since the power, being of jurisdiction, may be committed to another. Technically, excommunications are divided into four classes: those particularly reserved to the supreme Pontiff; those simply reserved to the supreme Pontiff; those reserved to the Bishop (to the ordinary); and those nemini reseruatae, that are not reserved. Accordingly, generally speaking, only the Holy Father can absolve from the first two kinds of excommunication, although naturally his power extends to all kinds; Bishops (and ordinaries)

{p. 88}

can rescind excommunications of the third class; whilst the fourth kind, nemini reseruatae, can be revoked by any priest having authority without the need of a particular delegation. Over and above this, there exist in practice certain concessions since bishops enjoy very liberal faculties and indults, which are moreover, most widely communicable whereby they are empowered to absolve in foro interno from all cases except those which are most definitely and nominatim reserved to the Supreme Pontiff. There are also the circumstances technically known as "Urgent Cases," when the power granted is valid for all cases, without exception, legally reserved though they may be to the highest authorities, even to the Pope himself, and even for the absolution of an accomplice (Holy Office, 7th June, 1899). Finally canon law lays down that at the point of death or in danger of death, all reservations cease and all necessary jurisdiction is supplied by the Church. "At the point of death," says the Council of Trent (Session XIV, c. vii), "in danger of death," says the Rituale Romanum, any priest can absolve from all sins and censures, even if he be without the ordinary faculty of confessor or if he himself be excommunicated. He may even do this in the presence of another priest who is duly and canonically authorized, enjoying jurisdiction (Holy Office, 29th July, 1891).

It has been said by a modern historian: "The awful import of Excommunication barely can be realized at the present time. People idly wonder why the excommunicated take their case so seriously--why they do not turn to find amusement, or satisfaction, in another channel,--why they persist in lying prone in the mire where the fulmination struck them. And, indeed, in modem times the formal sentence rarely is promulgated, and only against persons of distinction like the German Dr. Döllinger or the Sabaudo King Vittoremanuele II di Savoja, whose very circumstances provided them with the means to allay the temporal irritation of the blow."[11] The immediate effects of excommunication are summed up in the two famous verses:

Res sacrae, ritus, communio, crypta, potestas,
praedia, sacra, forum, ciuilia iura uetantur.

It may be well now to glance very briefly at the history of the actual practice of excommunication. Among the Jews

{p. 89}

exclusion from the synagogue was a real excommunication, and it is this to which reference is made in 1 Esdras x, 7 and 8: "and proclamation was made in Juda and Jerusalem to all the children of the captivity, that they should assemble together into Jerusalem. And that whosoever would not come within three days, according to the counsel of the princes and the ancients, all his substance should be taken away, and he should be cast out of the company of them that were returned from captivity." It was this exclusion which was feared by the parents of the man who was born blind, who when they were questioned by the Pharisees would give no definite answer with reference to the healing of their son, "because they feared the Jews: for the Jews had already agreed among themselves, that if any man should confess him to be Christ, he should be put out of the synagogue."[12] Again we are told, "many of the chief men also believed in him; but because of the Pharisees they did not confess him, that they might not be cast out of the synagogue." The Apostles were told: "they will put you out of the synagogues; yea, the hour cometh, that whosoever killeth you, will think that he doth a service to God."[14] This penalty exercised by the Jews foreshadowed later censures, for it is said: "in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may stand. And if he will not hear them: tell the Church. And if he will not hear the Church, let him be to thee as the heathen and Publican. Amen I say to you, whatsoever you shall bind on earth, shall be bound also in Heaven; and whatsoever you shall loose upon earth shall be loosed also in heaven."[15] According to the Orthodox Church this power was transmitted to the successors of the apostles that is to say the bishops, so that they too had the faculty of binding and loosing. But something very definite was further implied. This faculty had actual physical consequences and the Greeks held that excommunication arrested the decomposition of a body after death. In fact the incorruptibility of the body of any person bound by a curse was made a definite doctrine of the Orthodox Church. The very wording of the text certainly admitted of such an interpretation. {Greek a?mh`n légw u!mîn, ó!sa e?àn dh'shte e?pì th^s gh^s é?stai dedeména e?n tw^j ou?ranw^j. Kaí ó!sa e?àn lúshte épì th^s gh^s, é?stai leluména e?n tw^j ou?ranw^j.}

The word {Greek lúw} "loose" expresses equally the ideas of dissolution

{p. 90}

and of absolution, while {Greek déw} "bind" signifies their respective and several opposites. Accordingly forms of absolution had to be provided which might be read over bodies found in such a condition, for it was thought that this might be brought about by well-nigh any curse, although an episcopal anathema was considered the most weighty and the most terrible. Nevertheless it might be that these conditions resulted from the curse of a parent even from an imprecation uttered by a man against himself, or from the ban of a priest, for in the Orthodox Church the power of excommunicating belonged to priests as well as to bishops, but they should not exercise it without episcopal sanction.[16] One such absolution runs thus: "Yea, O Lord our God, let Thy great mercy and marvellous compassion prevail; and, whether this Thy servant lieth under curse of father or mother, or under his own imprecation, or did provoke one of Thy holy ministers and sustained at his hands a bond that hath not been loosed, or did incur the most grievous ban of excommunication by a bishop, and through heedlessness and sloth obtained not pardon, pardon Thou him by the hand of Thy sinful and unworthy servant; resolve Thou his body into that from which it was made; and stablish his soul in the tabernacle of saints."[17] So in the burial service an orison is made that the body may be dissolved into the dust of which it was made, {Greek diályson ei?s tà e?ks w^! sunetéðh}, and in a solemn Requiem, is offered the supplication, "Unbind the curse, be it of priest or of arch-presbyter," {Greek Lûson katáran, e?íte i!eréws e?íte a?rxieréws}.

Naturally, as is clearly expressed, the curse which the Orthodox Church regarded as most weighty and most effective was the ban of excommunication by a bishop, and therefore the formula of excommunication doomed the offender to remain whole after death, and the body was not freed until absolution had been read over it and the excommunication formally revoked.

However, a considerable difficulty arose. It was discovered that excommunication sometimes failed to produce the expected physical result, and the body crumbled to dust in the ordinary way. Accordingly this had to be reckoned with and explained and Leone Allacci in his De quorundam Graecorum opinationibus[18] cites a nomocanon de excommunicatis which sets out to explain how it is that sometimes excommunication

{p. 91}

can fail of its result. "Concerning persons excommunicate the which sadly incur episcopal excommunication and after death are found with their bodies 'not loosed' ({Greek á?luta})."

Certain persons have been duly, rightly, and lawfully excommunicated by their bishops, as evil doers and transgressors of the divine law, and they have without penance and amendment, or without receiving absolution died in the state of excommunication, and so have been buried, and in a short time after their bodies have been found "loosed" ({Greek leluména}) and shredded joint from joint, bone from bone.

Exceeding strange and marvellous is this that he who hath been lawfully excommunicated should after his death be found with his body "loosed" ({Greek leluménos tò sw^ma}) and the joints of the body separate.

So extraordinary a circumstance was immediately submitted to a conclave of expert theologians, who after long debate decided that any excommunicated person whose body did not remain whole had no more hope of salvation because he was no longer in a state to be "loosed" and absolved by the bishop who had excommunicated him, but that he was already damned in hell. If not absolutely essential, the removal of the ban was if possible to be affected by the same person who had pronounced it, and this provides, against an excommunicated person obtaining absolution too easily.[19] Of course a superior might rescind the anathema pronounced by one of his subjects, a bishop could always remove an excommunication pronounced by a simple priest, but under certain conditions this regulation must certainly prove excessively awkward. There is, f or example, the well known instance told by Christophorus Angelus in his {Greek E?gxeirídion perì th^s katastásews tw^n sh'meron eu?riskoménwn E!llh'nwn},[20] who relates that a bishop was excommunicated by a council of his peers, and his body remained "bound, as it were iron, for the space of a hundred years," after which time a second council of bishops at the same place pronounced absolution, and immediately as they spoke the words the body "crumbled to dust."

The nomocanon de excommunicatis goes on to say that those that are found excommunicate, namely with their bodies whole and 'not loosed' ({Greek á?luta}), these require absolution, in order that the body also may attain freedom from the

92 THE VAMPIRE

bond ({Greek désmon}) of excommunication. For even as the body is found bound ({Greek dedémenon}) in the earth, so is the soul bound ({Greek dedemính}) and tormented by Satan. And whensoever the body receives absolution and is loosed ({Greek luðh^j}), from excommunication, by the power of God the soul likewise is set free from the bondage of the Devil, and receiveth the life eternal, the light that hath no evening, and the joy ineffable."

Leone Allacci[21] considered this Orthodox dogma of the physical results of excommunication and a subsequent absolution to be certain beyond any matter of dispute, and he mentions several cases, which he says were well known and proved, which demonstrate the truth of this belief. Athanasius, Metropolitan of Imbros, recorded that at the request of the citizens of Thasos he read a solemn absolution over several bodies, and before the holy words were even finished all had dissolved into dust. Very similar was the example of a converted Turk who was subsequently excommunicated at Naples, and who had been dead some years before he obtained absolution from two Patriarchs, and his body dissolved, so that he was at rest.

An even more remarkable instance is that of a priest who had pronounced a sentence of excommunication, and who afterwards turned Mohammedan. This did not affect the victim of his curse, who though he had died in the Christian faith, yet remained "bound." This circumstance which caused the greatest alarm was reported to the Metropolitan Raphael, and at his earnest request the Mohammedan, though after much delay and hesitation consented to read the absolution over the body of the dead Christian. As he was pronouncing the final words the body fell completely to dust, The Mohammedan thereupon returned to his former faith and was put to death for so doing.

I do not know whether this is the same tradition as is recorded by Mr. Abbott in his Macedonian Folk-lore, p. 211, but I gather that the examples are not identical, although they have various points of similarity. I quote Mr. Abbott's most striking account at length. "How great is the dread of an ecclesiastic's wrath can be realized from the following anecdote related to the writer as a 'true story' by a person who entertained no doubts as to its authenticity. 'Many years ago there was an Archbishop of Salonica who once in a moment of anger cursed a man of his diocese: "May the earth refuse to

{p. 93}

receive thee." ({Greek h! gh^s nà mh' se dexth^j}). Years went by, and the Archbishop embraced Islam. Owing to his erudition and general ability, he was raised by the Mohammedans to the office of head Mullah. Meanwhile, the individual who had incurred the prelate's wrath died, and was buried in the usual fashion. Now it came to pass that when, at the expiration of three years, the tomb was opened, the inmate was found intact, just as if he had been buried the day before. Neither prayers nor offerings availed to bring about the desired dissolution. He was inhumed once more; but three years later he was still found in the same condition. It was then recalled to mind by the widow that her late husband had been anathematized by the apostate Archbishop. She forthwith went to the ex-prelate and implored him to revoke the sentence. This dignitary promised to exert his influence, which it appears had not been diminished a whit by his apostasy; for once a bishop always a bishop. Having obtained the Pasha's permission, he repaired to the open tomb, knelt beside it, lifted up his hands and prayed for a few minutes. He had hardly risen to his feet when, wondrous to relate, the flesh of the corpse crumbled away from the bones, and the skeleton remained bare and clean as if it had never known pollution.'"

It will not be impertinent here to give c. xiii, of the Power of Excommunication, and upon what frivolous occasions it is made use of, from Ricaut's The Present Stale of the Greek and Armenian Churches, 8vo, 1679.

"The Third Command of the Church is Obedience towards their Spiritual Pastors and Teachers, 1 Cor. iv, 1, Let a man so account of us as of the Ministers of Christ, and Stewards of the Mysteries of God: which is text that they often repeat in their Churches.. and raise consequences from thence of the sublimity of their Office, and of the reverence and honour due from the people toward their Clergy; so that though they want the advantages of Riches and Ornament to render them respected in the eyes of the Vulgar; yet their people being affected with their divine and separated Qualifications, do not submit only in spiritual matters, but even in Temporals refer themselves to the determination of their Bishop, or Metropolite, according to that of S. Paul, 1 Cor. vi. 1, Dare any of you having a matter against another, go to Law before the unjust, and not before the Saints? But that which most enforces this

{p. 94}

Duty of Obedience, is a sense of the Power of Excommunication, which rests in the Church, of which they so generally stand in fear, and the most profligate and obdurate conscience in other matters startles at this sentence, to which whilst any is subjected, he is not only expelled the limits of the Church., but his conversation is scandalous, and his person denied the common benefits of Charity and assistance, to which Christian or Humane duty doth oblige us.

"In the Exercise of this censure of Excommunication, the Greek Church is so ready and frequent, that the common use of it might seem to render it the more contemptible; but that the Sentence is pronounced with so much horrour, and the same effects which have ensued thereupon, not only to the living, but also to the Corps and Carcasses of such who have dyed under Excommunication, are related with that evidence and certainty as still confirms in the people the efficacy of that Authority which the Church exercises therein. The form of Excommunication is either expressive of the party with his name and condition, secluding him from the use of Divine Ordinances, or otherwise indefinite of any person who is guilty of such or such a Crime or Misdemeanour. As. for Example, if any person is guilty of Theft, which is not discovered, an Excommunication is taken out against him, whosoever he be, that hath committed the Theft, which is not to be remitted until Restitution is made; and so the fault is published and repeated at a full Congregation, and then follows the Sentence of Excommunication in this form.

"If they restore not to him that which is his own, and possess him peaceably of it, but suffer him to remain injured and damnifyed; let him be separated from the Lord God Creatour, and be accursed, and unpardoned, and undissolvable after death in this World, and in the other which is to come. Let Wood, Stones, and Iron be dissolved but not they: May they inherit the Leprosie of Gehazi, and the Confusion of Judas; may the earth be divided and devour them like Dathan and Abiram; may they fight and tremble on earth like Cain, and the wrath of God be upon their heads and Countenances; may they see nothing of that for which they labour, and beg their Bread all the days of their lives; may their Works, Possessions, Labours, a Services be accursed; always without effect or success, and blown away like dust; may they have the curses of the holy

{p. 95}

and righteous Patriarchs Abram, Isaac and Jacob; of the 318 Saints who were the Divine Fathers of the Synod of Nice, and of all other holy Synods; and being without the Church of Christ, let no man administer unto them the things of the Church, or bless them, or offer Sacrifice for them, or give them the {Greek A?ntídwron} or the blessed Bread, or eat, or drink, or work with them, or converse with them; and after death, let no man bury them, in penalty of being under the same state of Excommunication, for so let them remain until they have performed what is here written.

"The effect of this dreadful Sentence is reported by the Greek Priests to have been in several instances so evident, that none doubts or disbelieves the consequences of all those maledictions repeated therein; and particularly, that the body of an excommunicated person is not capable of returning to its first Principles until the Sentence of Excommunication is taken off. It would be esteemed no Curse amongst us to have our Bodies remain uncorrupted and entire in the Grave, who endeavour by Art, and Aromatic spices, and Gums, to preserve them from Corruption: And it is also accounted, amongst the Greeks themselves, as a miracle and particular grace and favour of God to the Bodies of such whom they have Canonized for Saints to continue unconsumed, and in the moist damps of a Vault, to dry and desiccate like the Mummies in Egypt, or in the Hot sands of Arabia. But they believe that the Bodies of the Excommunicated are possessed in the Grave by some evil spirit, which actuates and preserves them from Corruption, in the same manner as the Soul informes and animates the living body; and that they feed in the night, walk, digest, and are nourished, and have been found ruddy in Complexion, and their Veins, after forty days Burial, extended with Blood, which, being opened with a Lancet, have yielded a gore as plentiful, fresh, and quick, as that which issues from the Vessels of young and sanguine persons. This is so generally believed and discoursed of amongst the Greeks, that there is scarce one of their Country Villages, but what can witness and recount several instances of this nature, both by the relation of their Parents, and Nurses, as well as of their own knowledge, which they tell with as much variety as we do the Tales of Witches and Enchantments, of which it is observed in Conversation, that scarce one story is ended before another begins of like wonder. But to let pass the

{p. 96}

common and various Reports of the Vulgar, this one may suffice for all, which was recounted to me with many asseverations of its truth, by a grave Candiot Kaloir, called Sofroino, a Preacher, and a person of no mean repute and learning at Smyrna.

"'I knew' (said he) 'a certain person, who for some misdemeanours committed in the Morea, fled to the Isle of Milo, where though he avoided the hand of Justice, yet could not avoid the Sentence of Excommunication, from which he could no more fly, than from the conviction of his own Conscience, or the guilt which ever attended him; for the fatal hour of his death being come, and the Sentence of the Church not being revoked, the Body was carelessly and without Solemnity interred in some retired and unfrequented place. In the mean time the Relations of the deceased were much afflicted, and anxious for the sad estate of their dead Friend, whilst the Paisants and Islanders were every night affrighted and disturbed with strange and unusual apparitions, which they immediately conclude arose from the Grave of the accursed Excommunicant, which, according to their Custom, they immediately opened, and therein found the Body uncorrupted, ruddy, and the Veins replete with Blood: The Coffin was furnished with Grapes, Apples, and Nuts, and such fruit as the season afforded: Whereupon Consultation being made, the Kaloires resolved to make use of the common remedy in those cases, which was to cut and dismember the Body into several parts, and to boyl it in Wine, as the approved means to dislodge the evil Spirit, and dispose the body to a dissolution: But the friends of the deceased, being willing and desirous that the Corps should rest in peace, and some ease given to the departed Soul, obtained a reprieve from the Clergy, and hopes, that for a sum of Money (they being Persons of a competent Estate) a Release might be purchased from the Excommunication under the hand of the Patriarch: In this manner the Corps were for a while freed from dissection, and Letters thereupon sent to Constantinople, with this direction, that in case the Patriarch should condescend to take off the Excommunication, that the day, hour and minute that he signed the Remission should be inserted in the Date. And now the Corps were taken into the Church (the Country-people not being willing they should

{p. 97}

remain in the Field) and Prayers and Masses daily said for its dissolution, and pardon of the Offender: When one day after many Prayers, Supplications and Offerings (as this Sofronio attested to me with many protestations) and whilst he himself was performing Divine Service, of a sudden was heard a rumbling noise in the Coffin of the dead party, to the fear and astonishment of all persons then present; which when they had opened, they found the Body consumed and dissolved as far into its first Principles of Earth, as if it had been seven years interred. The hour and minute of this dissolution was immediately noted and precisely observed, which being compared with the Date of the Patriarchs release, when it was signed at Constantinople, it was found exactly to agree with that moment in which the Body returned to its Ashes.' This story I should not have judged worth relating, but I heard it from the mouth of a grave person, who says, 'That his own eyes were Witnesses thereof; and though notwithstanding I esteem it a matter not assured enough to be believed by me, yet let it serve to evidence the esteem they entertain of the validity and force of Excommunication. I had once the curiosity to be present at the opening of a Grave of one lately dead, who, as the people of the Village reported, walked in the night, and affrighted them with strange Phantasmes; but it was not my fortune to see the Corps in that nature, nor to find the Provisions with which the spirit nourishes it, but only such a Spectacle as is usual after six or seven days Burial in the Grave; howsoever, Turks as well as Christians discourse of these matters with much confidence.'

"This high esteem and efficacy being put on Excommunication, one would believe that the Priests should endeavour to conserve the reverence thereof, being the Basis and main support of their Authority; and that therefore they should not so easily make use thereof on every frivolous occasion, that so familiarity might not render it contemptible and the salvation of men's Souls not seem to be played with on every slight and trivial Affair: But such is the much to be lamented poverty in this Church, that they are not only forced to sell Excommunications, but the very Sacraments; and to expose the most reverend and mysterious Offices of Religion unto sale for maintenance and support of Priesthood.

{p. 98}

"The taking off Excommunications after death hath been usual, but the Excommunicating after death may seem a strange kind of severity; for so we read that Theodosius, Bishop of Alexandria, excommunicated Origen two hundred years after his decease.

"On the same Authority of Excommunication depends the power of re-admission again into the Church, which according to the Greek Canon is not to be obtained easily, or at every cold request of the Penitent, but after proof of trial first made of a hearty and serious conversion, evidenced by the constant and repeated actions of a holy life, and the patient and obedient performance of Penance imposed and enjoined by the Church. Such as have apostatized from the Faith, by becoming Turks, under the age of 14 years, upon their repentance, and desire of return to the Church, sought earnestly with tears, signified and attested by forty days fasting with bread and water, accompanied with continual Prayer day and night, are afterwards received solemnly into the Church in presence of the Congregation, the Priest making a Cross on the Forehead of the Penitent with the Oyl of Chrism, or the {Greek múron Xrísmatos} usually administered to such who return from the ways of darkness and mortal sins.

"But of such who in riper years fall away from the Faith (as many Greeks do for the sake of Women, or escape of punishment) their re-admission or reception again into the Church is more difficult; for to some of them there is enjoined a Penance of six or seven years humbling themselves with extraordinary Fasts, and continual Prayer; during which time they remain in the nature of Catechumeni, without the use or comfort of the Eucharist, or Absolution, unless at the hour of death; in which the Church is so rigorous, that the Patriarch himself is not able to release a Penance of this nature, imposed only by a simple Priest; and for receiving Penitents of this nature there is a set Form or Office in the Greek Liturgy.

"But now we have few Examples of those Apostates who return from the Mohametan to the Christian faith; for none dares own such a Conversion but he who dares to dye for it; so that that practice and admirable part of Discipline is become obsolete and disused. Yet some there have been, even in my time, both of the Greek and Armenian Churches, who have afforded more Heroick Examples of Repentance, than any of

{p. 99}

those who have tryed themselves by the Rules and Canons prescribed; for after that they denyed the Faith, and for some years have carried on their heads the Badge or distinction of a Mohametan, feeling some remorses of Conscience, they have so improved the same by the sparks of some little grace remaining, that nothing could appease or allay the present torment of their minds, but a return to that Faith from whence they were fallen. In this manner, having communicated their anguish and desires to some Bishop or grave person of the Clergy, and signifying with all their Courage and Zeal to die for that faith, which they have denyed; they have been exhorted, as the most ready expiation of their sin, to confess Christ at that place where they have renounced him; and this they have resolutely performed by leaving off their Tulbants, and boldly presenting themselves in publick assemblies and at the time of publick prayers in the Church; and when the Turks have challenged them for having revolted or relapsed again from them, they have owned their Conversion, and boldly declared their resolution to dye in that old Faith wherein they were baptized; and, as a Token or Demonstration thereof, being carried before the Justice of the City or Province, they have not only by words owned the Christian doctrine, but also trampled their Turkish Tulbants or Sashes under their Feet, and withstood three times the demand, whether they should still continue to be Mohametans, according as it is required in the Mohametan Law: For which, being condemned to dye, they have suffered death with the same cheerfulness and courage that we read of the Primitive Martyrs, who daily Sacrificed themselves for the Christian Verity.

"Considering which, I have, with some astonishment, beheld in what manner some poor English men, who have fondly and vilely denyed the faith of Christ in Barbary and the parts of Turky, and become, as we term them Renegados, have afterwards (growing weary of the Customes of Turks to which they were strangers) found means of escape, and returned again into England, and there entered the Churches, and frequented the Assembly of God's people, as boldly as if they had been the most constant and faithful of the Sheepfold: At which confidence of ignorant and illiterate men I do not so much admire, as I do at the negligence of our

{p. 100}

Ministers, who acquaint not the Bishops herewith, to take their Counsel and Order herein: But perhaps they have either not learned, or so far forgot the ancient Discipline of ours, and all other Christian Churches, as to permit men, after so abominable a Lapse and Apostasie, boldly to intrude into the Sanctuary of God with the same unhallowed hands and blasphemous mouths, with which they denyed their Saviour and their Country. But what can we say hereunto? Alas! Many are dissenters from our Church; which by our divisions in Religion, hath lost much or its Power, Discipline and esteem amongst us; and men, being grown careles and cold in Religion, little dream or consider of such methods of Repentance; for whilst men condem the Authority, and censures of the Church, and disown the power of the Keys, they seem to deprive themselves of the ordinary means of Salvation, unless God, by some extraordinary light and eviction supplies that in a sublimer manner, which was anceintly effected by a rigorous observation of the Laws and Canons of the Church.

"It is a strange Vulgar Errour that we maintain in England, that the Greek Church doth yearly excommunicate the Roman, which is nothing so; and common reason will tell us, That a Church cannot excommunicate another, or any particular Member thereof, over which it pretends no Jurisdiction or Authority; and that the Greek Church hath no such Claim of Dominion or Superiority over the Roman, no more than it own a subjection to it, is plainly evinced in the third Chapter of this Book: and this I attest to be so, upon enquiry made into the truth thereof, and on Testimony of Greek Priests eminent and knowing in the Canons and Constitutions of their Church: Though we cannot deny but that anceintly one Patriarch might renounce the Communion of another, over whom he had no Jurisdiction, for his notorious Heresie; as S. Cyril did to Nestorius before the Assembly of the Council of Ephesus."

It has been said that excommunication can only be incurred by living persons, but in this the belief and practice of the Orthodox Church differ from the Catholic Church, since, as has already been remarked, Theodosius of Alexandria who died in 567 excommunicated Origen who died in 253 or 254.[22] Moreover, the fact that Theodosius was deposed for

{p. 101}

heresy by Pope S. Agapitus I[23] on that pontiff's arrival in Constantinople, in 536, would not according to the Greek idea invalidate this excommunication. With regard to living persons those who have never been baptized are not members of the Christian Society, and therefore obviously they cannot be deprived of rights they have never enjoyed; whilst as even the baptized cease, at death, to belong to the Church Militant, the dead cannot be excommunicated. This is not to say that technically, after the demise of some member of the Christian community it may be declared that such a person incurred excommunication whilst on earth. In the same strict sense he may be released from excommunication after his death, and the Rituale Romanum contains the following right for absolving an excommunicated person already dead.

"RITUS ABSOLUENDI EXCOMMUNICATUM IAM MORTUUM. If it so come to pass that any excommunicated person who has departed from this life gave evident signs of contrition, in order that he shall not be deprived of ecclesiastical burial in consecrated ground, but rather that he shall be holpen by the prayers of the Church, in so far as this may be done, let him be absolved after this manner.

"If the body be not yet buried, let it be lightly beaten with a rod or small cords after which it shall be absolved as followeth; and then having been absolved let it be buried in consecrated ground.

But if it hath been already buried in unconsecrated ground, if it may be conveniently done, let the body be exhumed, and after it hath been lightly beaten in like manner and then absolved let it be buried in consecrated ground; but if the body cannot conveniently be disinterred, then the grave shall be beaten lightly and the absolution shall be pronounced.

"And if the body be already buried in consecrated ground, it shall not be disinterred, but the grave shall be lightly beaten.

"Let the Priest say the Antiphon: The bones that have been humbled shall rejoice in the Lord; together with the psalm Miserere.

"And when they have made an end of the psalm let the body be absolved, and the Priest shall say: By the authority granted unto me I absolve thee from the bond of excommunication, which thou hast incurred (or, which thou art said to have

{p. 102}

incurred) on account of such and such a thing, and I restore thee to the communion of the faithful, in the, in the name of the Father, + , and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

"Then shall be said the psalm, De profundis, and at the end thereof:

V. Rest eternal grant unto him, O Lord.

R. And let perpetual light shine upon him.

Kyrie eleison. Christe eleison. Kyrie eleison. Our Father.

V. And lead us not into temptation.

R. But deliver us from evil.

V. From the gate of hell.

R. O Lord, deliver his soul.

V. May he rest in peace.

R. Amen.

V. O Lord hear my prayer.

R. And let my cry come to Thee.

V. The Lord be with you.

R. And with thy spirit.

Let us pray.

Prayer. Grant, we beseech Thee O Lord, to the soul of thy servant, who hath been held in the bond of excommunication, a place of refreshment, rest and repose, and the brightness of Thy eternal light. Through Christ our Lord. R. Amen."

It is now necessary to inquire into certain extraordinary cases which are recorded and which are true beyond all manner of doubt of persons who died excommunicated and whose bodies were seen to rise from the tomb and leave the sacred precincts where they were buried. In the first place we have the very famous account given by S. Gregory the Great[24] of the two dead nuns, generally called the "Suore Morte." Two ladies of an illustrious family had been admitted to the sisterhood of S. Scholastica. Although in most respects exemplary and faithful to their vows, they could not refrain from scandal, gossip, and vain talk. Now S. Benedict was the first to lay down the strictest and most definite laws concerning the observance of silence.[25] In all monasteries and convents, or every order, there are particular places, called the "Regular Places" (the Church, refectory, dormitory, etc.) and special times, above all the night hours, termed the "Great silence," wherein speaking is unconditionally prohibited. Outside these places and times there are usually

{p. 103}

accorded "recreations" during which conversation is not only permitted but encouraged, though it must be governed by rules of charity and moderation. Useless and idle prattling is universally forbidden at all times and in all places. Accordingly, when it was reported to S. Benedict that the two nuns were greatly given to brabble indiscreetly, the holy Abbot was sore displeased, and sent them the message to the effect that if they did not learn to refrain their tongues and give a better example to the community he must excommunicate them. At first the sisters were alarmed and penitent, and promised to amend their idle ways; but the treacherous habit was too strong for their good resolves; they continued to give offence by their naughty chatter, and in the midst of their folly they suddenly died. Being of a great and ancient house they were buried in the church near the high altar; and afterwards on a certain day, whilst a solemn High Mass was being sung, before the Liturgy of the Faithful began, and the Catechumens were dismissed by the Deacon crying: "Let those who are forbidden to partake, let those who are excommunicated, depart from hence and leave us!" Behold, in the sight of all the people the two nuns rose up from their graves, and with faces drooping and averted, they glided sadly out of the Church. And thus it happened every time the Holy Mysteries were celebrated, until their old nurse interceded with S. Benedict, and he had pity upon them and absolved. them from all their sins so that they might rest in peace.[26]

S. Augustine tells us[27] that the names of the Martyrs upon the diptychs were recited, but not to pray for them, whilst the names of nuns, who were recently deceased were recited in order to offer prayers on their behalf. Perhibet praeclarissimum testimonium Ecclesiastica auctoritas, in qua fidelibus notum at, quo loco Martyres, et quo defunctae Sanctimoniales ad Altaris Sacramenta recitantur. It has been suggested that it was at this point the two nuns may have withdrawn from the church, but S. Gregory expressly says that it was at the moment when the Deacon chanted in a loud voice the ritual praise bidding those who were not in full communion go forth from the holy place.

S. Gregory also relates that a young monk left the monastery without permission and without receiving any blessing

{p. 104}

or dismissal from the Abbot. Unhappily he died before he could be reconciled, and he was duly buried in consecrated ground. On the next morning his corpse was discovered lying huddled up and thrown out of his grave, and his relations in terror hastened to S. Benedict, who gave them a consecrated Host, and told them to put It with all possible reverence upon the breast of the young religious. This was done, and the tomb was never again found to have cast forth the body.[26]

This custom of putting a Eucharistic Particle in the grave with a dead person may seem to many very extraordinary, but it was by no means unknown in former centuries. in the Uita Basilii, the Life of S. Basil the Great, which was often attributed to Amphilochius of Iconium,[29] but is now recognized to be spurious and of about the ninth century, we are told that S. Basil reserved a portion of a consecrated Particle, even a third part, in order that It should be buried with him. Several Synods, howbeit assemblies of no supreme authority, had already condemned this practice, and others of a later date prohibited it as contrary to the end of the Blessed Sacrament as instituted by Jesus Christ.[30]

None the less in various places the custom persisted of reverently putting Particles in the graves of persons who were much honoured for their sanctity, and thus in the tomb of S. Othmar (Audomar), who died 16th November, 759, on the island of Werd in the Rhine, and whose body was transferred ten years later to the monastery of S. Gall, being solemnly entombed in 867 in the new Church of S. Othmar at S. Gall,[31] a number of Particles were found to have been placed on the spot where his head reposed.[32]

In a life of S. Cuthbert, Bishop of Lindisfarne, Patron of Durham, which is reprinted by the Bollandists,[33] it is said that at one of the Translations of his body a number of Particles were found in the coffin. Amalarius of Metz, upon the authority of the Venerable Bede says in his great treatise De ecclesiasticis officiis[34] that these Particles were put upon the breast of the saint before he was buried: "oblata super Sanctum pectus posita." This circumstance however, is not mentioned by Bede, but it occurs in the Uita S. Cuthberti, written between 698 and 705 by a monk of Lindisfarne. Amalarius considers that this custom was doubtless derived

{p. 105}

from the Roman Church, and that thence it was communicated to England. Nicholas-Hugues Ménard, the famous Maurist,[35] in his glosses upon the S. Gregorii I Papae Liber Sacramentorum, which he printed, Paris, 1646,[36] from a manuscript Missal of S. Eligius, states that it was not this custom which was condemned by the various Councils, but an abuse which had crept up and which consisted in giving communion to the dead, and actually placing the Sacred Host in their mouths. However that may be, we know that Cardinal Humbert, of Silva Candida, legate of S. Leo IX, in the middle of the eleventh century, in his answer to the various objections and difficulties which had been raised by Michael Caerularius, Patriarch of Constantinople, author of the second and final schism of the Byzantine Church,[37] reproached the Greeks with the custom of burying any Particles which might remain over after the Communion of the people at Holy Mass.

It is said that even to-day in many places throughout Greece upon the lips of the dead is laid a crumb of consecrated bread from the Eucharist. Out of reverence this has often been replaced by a fragment of pottery on which is cut the sign of the Cross with the legend I.X.NI.KA. (Jesus Christ conquers) at the four angles. Theodore Burt, The Cyclades, informs us that locally in Naxos the object thus employed is a wax cross with the letters I.X.N. imprinted thereon, and this moreover still bears the name {Greek naûlon}, fare, showing that the tradition is closely connected with the old custom of placing the "ferryman's coin" in the mouth of a dead man, the fee for Charon. Now Charon, who has assumed the form Charos, is entirely familiar to the modem Greek peasant, but his is not merely as classical literature depicts him, Portitor Stygis, the boatman of Styx, he is Death itself, the lord of ghosts and shadows. Until recent years, at all events, the practice prevailed in many parts of Greece of placing in the mouth (more rarely on the breast) of a deceased person a small coin, and in the district of Smyrna this was actually known as "passage-money," {Greek tò peratíkion}[38] Yet strangely enough although both custom and name survived the reason for the coin had been forgotten, and for a century or more (save it might be obscurely in some very remote spot)[39] it was not associated in any way with Charos. Possibly the original meaning of the coin has vanished in the mists of dateless

{p. 106}

antiquity, and even in classical days the original significance was lost, so it came then to be explained that the obol was Charon's fee, whereas this is but a late and incorrect interpretation of a custom whose meaning went deeper than that, which had existed before mythology knew of a ferryman of hell.

The soul was supposed to escape by the mouth, which as it is an exit from the body is also the entrance to the body, and naturally it is by this path that the soul, if it were to return to the body, would re-enter, or by which an evil spirit or demon would make its way into the body. The coin, then, or charm seems most likely to have been a safeguard against any happening of this kind. In Christian days the Holy Eucharist or a fragment inscribed with sacred names will be the best preventative. Moreover not infrequently the piece of pottery placed in the mouth of the dead has scratched upon it the pentacle of magic lore. It is extremely significant that in Myconos this sign is often carved on house doors to preserve the inmates from the vampire, vrykolakas. So in Greece at all events the custom of burying a consecrated Particle with a corpse, or of putting a crumb of the Host between the dead man's lips originated as a spell to counteract the possibility of vampirism.

It should be remarked that a consecrated Host placed in the tomb where a vampire is buried will assuredly prevent the vampire from issuing forth out of his grave, but for obvious reasons this is a remedy which is not to be essayed, since it savours of rashness and profanation of God's Body.

There are in history many other examples of excommunicated persons who have not been able to rest in consecrated ground. In the year 1030, S. Godard, Bishop of Hildesheim in Lower Saxony, was obliged to excommunicate certain persons for their crimes and filthy sacrileges. Nevertheless, so powerful were the barons and over-lords, their protectors, that they buried the bodies of their followers in the Cathedral itself, in the very sanctuary. Upon this the bishop launched the ban of excommunication against them also; but, none the less, utterly disregarding the censures they forced their way into the various churches. Upon the next high festival in truth, the rebellious nobles were present with a throng of armed attendants in the Cathedral itself. The aisles were

{p. 107}

packed with worshippers, and afar off spanned by the vaulted roof the High Altar blazed with a myriad tapers whose glow was reflected in the mirror of polished gold and the crystal heart of great reliquaries. The Bishop, his canons around him, pontificated the Mass. But after the Gospel, S. Godard turned from the altar, and in ringing tones of command bade all those who were under any censure or ban to leave the sacred building. The living smiled contemptuously, shrugged a little and did not stir, but down the aisles were seen to glide in awful silence dark shadowy figures, from whom the crowds shrank in speechless dread. They seemed to pass through the doors out of the sacred place. When the service was done the bishop absolved the dead, and lo, the ghastly train appeared to re-enter their tombs. Thereupon the living were so struck with fear that they sought to be reconciled, and after due penance absolution was granted them.

At the instigation of Abbot Odolric of Conques the Council of Limoges held in 1031 proclaimed the "Truce of God" that is to say a temporary suspension of hostilities, and the fathers threatened with general excommunication those feudal lords who would not swear to maintain it. There thence arose a consideration of the effects of excommunication, and it was agreed by all that although so severe a sentence must not be lightly denounced, once delivered the utmost respect must be paid to its provisions. In order to illustrate this, the Bishop of Cahors related a recent event which was known to his whole diocese and which could be proved by a number of independent witnesses. For his ceaseless rapine and unrepented murders, his evil examples of a lewd and licentious life, his blasphemies and infidelity, a certain nobleman whose castle was hard by the city had been excommunicated, and not long afterwards he had fallen in some midnight foray. The friends of the deceased never doubted that the bishop would give absolution, and they made great instance that he should do so, in order that the dead man might be buried with solemn dirge and requiem, with meed of trentals hereafter sung, in the vault of his ancestors, which was one of the most striking monuments in S. Peter's Church. However, the whole territory had for so long been harried by marauding violence that the bishop considered an example must be made in order to teach the rest of the plundering nobles a lesson,

{p. 108}

and he refused either to raise the ban or to permit the wonted ceremonies at the funeral. Nonetheless in defiance of his orders an armed band of soldiers marched into the town, and buried the dead body in the tomb, carefully closing it and mortarizing it after them. However, on the following morning the body was discovered naked, bruised and banged in the market square as though it had been violently thrown out of the church, although there was no mark or sign that the tomb had been in any way tampered with or touched. The soldiers, who had buried their leader, having opened the monument found only the cerements in which the corpse had been erstwhile wound, and so they buried it there a second time, placing seals and bars upon the church door inasmuch as it was impossible for anyone to enter. On the following morning, however, the body was discovered to have been thrown forth with even more contumely than before. Nevertheless they interred it a third time, but with the same result. This was repeated no less than five times in all, and at last they huddled the poor rotting carrion as best they might into a deep hole dug in some lonely spot far from consecrated ground. These terrible circumstances filled the hearts of all with such amaze that the neighbouring barons one and all, very humbly betook themselves to the bishop, and under most solemn promises made a treaty binding themselves to respect all the privileges of the church and amend their lives in every particular.

A very remarkable incident is related in the Greek Menion[40] that is to say the collection of the twelve books, one for every month, that contain the offices for immovable feasts in the Byzantine rite, and which in some wise correspond to the Propiuum sanctorum in the Roman breviary. The legend, it is true, offers certain difficulties which will be considered later, but it is certainly worth repeating as showing the extreme, and indeed exaggerated views the Greeks attached to excommunication. A certain coenobite of the desert near Alexandria had been excommunicated by the archimandrite for some act of disobedience, whereupon he forsook his monastery, left the desert and came to the city. No sooner, however, had he arrived here than he was arrested by the orders of the Governor, stripped of his habit, and ordered to offer sacrifice in the temple to idols. The Coenobite

{p. 109}

refused, and after having been long tortured in vain, at length he was put to death, his head being struck off, and the trunk thrown out beyond the town walls to be devoured by the wild beasts. But the Christians took it up during the night and having embalmed it with rich spices and shrouded it in fair linen, they buried it honourably in a prominent place in the Church, since they regarded him, and with justice, as a Martyr. But upon the next Sunday when the Deacon had chanted the ritual formula, bidding the Catechumens and those who should not be present to withdraw, all were sore amazed when the tomb suddenly opened and the body of the Martyr glided there from and was seen lingering in the narthex of the church. When the Mass was done the body seemed to return once more to its grave.

The whole community was filled with fearful awe and confusion, and a Basilian nun of great piety having fasted and prayed for the space of three days received a revelation from an angel who informed her that the Coenobite was still excommunicate since he had disobeyed his superior, and that he would remain under the ban until the superior himself granted him absolution. Thereupon a company of honourable persons journeyed to the monastery, and besought the archimandrite to pronounce the words. In all haste the holy old man accompanied them to the church. Here they opened the tomb of the Martyr and a full absolution was pronounced. Thereafter he lay at rest in his appointed place.

There are several details in this account which appear very suspicious. In the first place, at the period that the desert was the resort of Coenobites, the days of persecution, so far as Alexandria was concerned, at any rate, were a thing of the past. In the city complete toleration prevailed, and indeed if there had been any prosecutions, not Christianity but the Pagan rites would have been suppressed and the heathen temples closed. Christianity in this century was honoured throughout the whole of Egypt, and Alexandria was one of the strongholds. In the second place, the monks of the desert were not Coenobites, that is to say members of a definite religious community having a Superior, but they were rather solitary hermits, belonging to no religious family, each being independent, and no hermit would have had the power to excommunicate one of his fellows. In the third place, no

{p. 110}

details are given with regard to the reasons why this monk was supposed to have incurred a major excommunication, and this, the gravest of all censures, is the only ban which excludes from participation in the sacred Mysteries. It is true, perhaps, that if a Religious broke his vows, left his monastery, abandoned his habit, and disregarding the commands of the Church betook himself to some populous city where he proceeded to live, as a secular, a life that was far from careful, such a person would presumably give great scandal and by his actions he might indeed incur the major excommunication, but we are not told that in the case of the Coenobite anything of this sort happneed, {sic} we are not informed of aggravating circumstances, and further it must be borne in mind that at the period these events were said to take place the hermits of the desert were not, as are Religious to-day, bound by vows of stability[41] and of obedience to their Superiors, who had not the right to pronounce a sentence of Major excommunication.

It should perhaps be explained that until recently excommunication was of two kinds, Major and Minor. Sabetti thus concisely explains:[42] "Excommunicatio est censura, per quam quis priuatur communione Ecclesiæ; seu censura, qua Christianus bonis spiritualibus Ecelesiæ communibus, quorum distributio ad ipsam pertinet, uel omninio uel ex parte priuatur. Separat igitur excommunicatum a societate seu communione uisibili fidelium et bonis quae eam, ut talis est, consequuntur.

Distinguitur excommunicatio in maiorem, quæ priuat omnibus bonis Ecclesiæ communibus, et minorem, quæ bonis aliquibus tantum priuat. Maior in iure nonnunquam anathema uocatur; atque tunc præsertim, quando propter hæresim uel hæresis suspicionem infligitur, ant peculiaribus quibusdam adhibitis cærimoniis solemnius denuntiatur.--Insuper excommunicati excommunicatione maiori, alii dicuntur tolerati, quos fideles non tenentur uitare; alii non tolerati seu uitandi, quos uitare debent." Briefly this is to say that minor excommunication is a prohibition from receiving the sacraments, what we call in theology the passive use of the sacraments. Major excommunication is that which we have already defined, and which now practically remains in force, whilst the technical anathema does not differ essentially from excommunication but is emphasized with special

{p. 111}

ceremonies and the most solemn promulgation of this terrible sentence.

In a life of S. Augustine the Apostle of England, which has been printed by the Bollandists,[43] John Brompton relates the following history. S. Augustine had long been endeavouring to persuade a certain nobleman of great wealth to pay the appointed tithes, but out of obstinacy these were constantly refused, which did great mischief and caused others to become discontented and impudently follow so bad an example. On a certain great feast day whilst High Mass was being solemnly sung S. Augustine was inspired to pronounce to the people that all who had been excommunicated must leave the sacred edifice. To the horror and amaze of the assistants an ancient tomb was seen to open, and there issued forth the desiccated yet incorrupt body of a man who had been buried a century and a half before. When the service was done S. Augustine in solemn procession went to the tomb whither the dead man had been seen to glide back as "ite missa est" was chanted, and here he solemnly adjured him, bidding him say why he had appeared. The dead man replied that he was excommunicate. The Saint asked where was buried the priest who had pronounced the sentence. It appeared that the tomb was in the cathedral at no great distance. Going thither the Archbishop bade the priest declare why he had excommunicated the dead man. A dark shadowy figure was seen to hover among the pillars of the nave and a low far-off voice answered: "I excommunicated him for his misdeeds, and particularly because he robbed the church of her due, refusing to pay his tithes." "Let it suffice, brother," returned the Saint, "and do you now at our bidding and at our request absolve him and free him from the censure." The shadowy figure repeated the loosening words, and faded from sight. They then returned to the tomb of the dead man, who said in a gentle whisper: "I thank you, O my father, for now at last may I find rest and repose."

Certain authorities have cast very grave doubts upon this story, for they point out that firstly, even in the time of S. Augustine himself there was no obligation in Britain to pay tithes, and these were most assuredly not required under pain of excommunication. This is very true, but there is no

{p. 112}

reason at all why the legend should not be correct in detail although very considerably antedated. It is more than probable that the incident occured in a far later century, and that the chronicler of Canterbury attributed it, perhaps in geniune {sic} error, for the tale had come down by word of mouth, or perhaps with pardonable inexactitude, to the days of S. Augustine around whose great and glorious figure had clustered so many reverend legends, so many ancient traditions.

Melchior, Abbot of the Cistercian house of Zwettl, in his work De Statu Mortuorum relates that a young scholar of the town of Saint-Pons, having unfortunately incurred the penalty of excommunication was killed, and shortly afterwards he appeared to one of his friends begging him to betake himself to the Bishop of Rhodez and from him to seek absolution. The friend did not hesitate to do as he was asked, and although it was mid-winter with the snow lying deep upon the ground, for it was a season of exceptional severity, he at once set out upon the journey. When he had gone some little distance the road branched, and he was undecided which path to take. With much hesitancy he proceeded towards the left, when he felt (as he thought) his cloak gently pulled, but at first he took no notice, deeming it merely the wind and the storm. A moment after his cloak was caught again and there could be no mistaking the tug. He turned and found himself gently guided into the other road. Eventually he reached the town, and obtained audience of the Bishop, who upon hearing his tale at once raised the ban with a full and plenary absolution. The young man discovered that had he continued the path to the left he must have wandered far among the snow-drifts where he would inevitably have perished of cold and exposure. That night his friend appeared to him with a glad and smiling countenance and thanking him for the pains he had been at assured him that he should by no means lose his reward.

Dom Augustin Calmet records at length a letter, dated 5 April, 1745, which he received from a correspondent who had read with great interest the manuscript of this learned writer's Dissertation sur les apparitions des anges, des démons et des esprits.[44] The writer says: "A man living at Létraye, a village which is not very many leagues from the town of Remiremont (Vosges),[45] lost his wife at the beginning of last {p. 113} February, but married again in the week before Lent. At eleven o'clock in the evening on his marriage day, the late wife appeared and spoke to the new bride, and the result of this was that the bride declared that she must on behalf of the dead woman undertake to perform seven pilgrimages.[46] Since that day and always at the very same hour the ghost has appeared and it was distinctly heard to speak by the parish priest as well as by a number of other persons. On the 15 March, at the very moment when the woman was about to proceed to the church of S. Nicolas to which the pilgrimage was to be made, the ghost suddenly stood in her path and bade her hasten, adding that she must not allow herself to be alarmed, or in any way deterred by any accident or sickness that might befall her on the way.

Accordingly the woman set out with her husband, her brother-in-law and her sister-in-law, and she is very certain that the dead wife remained by her side until she actually came to the door of the church of S. Nicolas. When these good people arrived at a distance of some two leagues from the place, S. Nicolas' church, they were obliged to halt at an inn by the wayside which is known as "The Shelter" (les Baraques). Here the woman suddenly became so ill that the two men were compelled to carry her right up to the church, but no sooner had she arrived at the door than she was able to walk without any difficulty and her pain vanished in a moment. "This amazing occurrence was related to me and also to the Father Sacristan by all the four pilgrims; and it was reported that the last thing which the dead woman told the new bride was that when one half of the pilgrimages had been duly accomplished she would be seen no more. The plain and straightforward way in which these good folk told us the story does not allow one to doubt that they were reporting actual facts." Upon this relation, Calmet comments: "It is not said that the young woman who died was under any sentence of excommunication; but apparently she was bound by a solemn promise or a vow that she must have made to perform these pilgrimages, which she obliged her successor to discharge on her behalf. It should be remarked that the ghost did not enter the church dedicated to S. Nicolas, but apparently for some reason remained at the door."

{p. 114}

A very extraordinary circumstance is related by Wipert, Archdeacon of the celebrated see of Toul, who wrote the life of Pope S. Leo IX, a Pontiff, who had been for more than twenty years Bishop of Toul,[47] and who died in March, 1054. The historian[48] tells us that some years before the death of S, Leo IX, the citizens of Narni, a little burgh which is picturesquely situated on a lofty rock at the point where the river Nera forces its way through a narrow ravine to join the Tiber, were one day greatly surprised and indeed alarmed to see a mysterious company of persons who appeared to be advancing towards the town. The magistrates, fearing some surprise, gave orders that the gates should be fast closed, whilst the inhabitants incontinently betook themselves to the walls. The procession, however, which was clothed in white and seemed from time to time to vanish among the morning mists and then once again to reappear, was obviously no inimical. band. They passed on their way without turning to right or to left, and it is said they seemed to be defiling with measured pace almost until eventide. All wondered who these persons could be, and at last one of the most prominent citizens, a man of great resolution and courage resolved to address them. To his amazement he saw among them a certain person who had been his host many years before Ascoli, and of whose death he had been not recently informed. Calling upon him loudly by his name he asked: "Who are you, and whence cometh this throng?" "I am your old friend," was the reply, "and this multitude is phantom; we have not yet atoned for the sins we committed whilst on earth, and we are not yet deemed worthy to enter the Kingdom of Heaven; therefore are we sent forth as humble penitents, lowly palmers, whose lot it is with pains and with much moil to visit the holy sanctuaries of the world, such as are appointed unto us in order. At this hour we come from the shrine of S. Martin, and we are on our way to the sanctuary of Our Lady of Farfa."[49] The goodman was so terrified at these words that he fell as in a fit, and he remained ill for a full twelvemonth. It was he who related this extraordinary event to Pope S. Leo IX. With regard to the company there could be no mistake; it was seen not by one person or even by a few, but by the whole town. Although naturally enough the appearance of so vast a number would give rise

{p. 115}

to no little alarm since hostile designs would be suspected, so crowded a pilgrimage in the eleventh century would not by any means be a unique, even if it were an exceptional event. Whole armies of pious persons were traversing Europe from shrine to shrine, whilst the enthusiasism {sic} for the pilgrimage to Jerusalem was greatly on the increase and was, before many years had passed to culminate in the Crusades. Even by the end of the tenth century hospices had been built throughout the whole valley of the Danube, the favoured route to the Holy Land, where pilgrims could replenish their provisions. In 1026, Richard, Abbot of Saint-Vannes, led seven hundred pilgrims into Palestine, all expenses being discharged by Richard II, Duke of Normandy. In 1065, over twelve thousand Germans, who had crossed Europe, under the command of Gunther, Bishop of Bamberg, while on their way through Palestine had to seek shelter in a ruined fortress where they defended themselves against troops of marauding Bedouins.[50] Gunther actually died in this year at Odenberg (Sopron) in Hungary while engaged on a Crusade. In 1073, Pope S. Gregory VII was seriously contemplating the leading of a force of fifty thousand men to the East, military pilgrims who would repulse the Turks, rescue the Holy Sepulchre, and re-establish Christian unity. Therefore in itself the appearance of this company of pilgrims outside the walls of Narni, if remarkable, would be a very possible and understandable circumstance.

In his Antidote against Atheism, III, 12, Dr. Henry More relates some remarkable instances of multitudinous phantoms. He says: "Our English Chronicles also tell us of Apparitions, armed men, foot and horse, fighting upon the ground in the North part of England, and in Ireland, for many evenings together, seen by many hundreds of men at once, and that the grass was trodden down in the places where they were seen to fight their Battles: which agreeth with Nicolea Langbernhard her Relation of the cloven-footed Dancers, that left the print of their hoofs in the ring they trod down for a long time after.

"But this skirmishing upon the Earth, puts me in mind of the last part of this argument, and bids me look up into the Air. Where, omitting all other Prodigies, I shall only take notice of what is most notorious, and of which there can by

{p. 116}

no means be given any other account, than that it is the effect of the Spirits. And this is the Appearance of armed Men fighting and encountering one another in the Sky. There are so many examples of these Prodigies in Historians, that it were superfluous to instance in any. That before the great slaughter of no less than fourscore thousand made by Antiochus in Jerusalem, recorded in the second of Maccabees Chapter 5. is famous. The Historian there writes, 'That through all the City, for the space almost of fourty days, there were seen Horsemen running in the Air in cloth of Gold, and arm'd with Lances, like a band of Soldiers, and Troops of Horsemen in array, encountring and running one against another, with shaking of shields, and multitude of pikes, and drawing of swords, and casting of darts, and glittering of golden ornaments, and harness of all sorts.' And Josephus writes also concerning the like Prodigies that happen'd before the destruction of the City by Titus, prefacing first, that they were incredible, were it not that they were recorded by those that were Eve-Witnesses of them.

"The like Apparitions were seen before the Civil Wars of Marius and Sylla. And Melanchthon affirms, that a world of such Prodigies were seen all over Germany, from 1524 to 1548. Snellius, amongst other places, doth particularize in Amortsfort, where these fightings were seen not much higher than the house-tops; as also in Amsterdam, where there was also a Sea-fight appearing in the Air for an hour or two together, many thousands of men looking on."

It is not said that it was actually the bodies of those who were dead who were thus seen passing by the walls of Narni, on the contrary we are given to understand that it was a spectral host, but with regard to those persons who were excommunicated we are to believe that physically they are bound by the ban, and that in the cases of resuscitation it is the actual body which appears. It is related in the life of Libentius I, Archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen, who died 4 January, 1013, ruling his see during the reign of King Svend Tdeskaeg,[51] that he excommunicated a number of pirates, and that one of them having been slain was buried on the Norwegian coast. Here by some chance well-nigh fifty years later the body was dug up, and being found intact most widespread terror ensued, until at length a bishop

{p. 117}

was found who understanding the circumstances pronounced the necessary absolutions, when the corpse crumbled to dust. One account states that this prelate was Alured of Winchester, although it seems difficult to suppose that this is correct. It is related that the bodies of those who have been struck by lightning are very often found intact, an opinion maintained by the medical writer Zachias, but Ambroise Paré explained this since he says that such persons are as it were embalmed with the sulphur, which is a preventative of corruption acting in the same way as salt. During a terrible fire at Quebec in 1705, the Ursuline Convent was destroyed and unhappily five nuns perished. More than twenty years later their bodies which had been buried in a layer of hot ashes were not merely found intact but even bled copiously in a thick stream.

Malva relates in his Turco-græcia[52] that at the time of a certain Patriarch of Constantinople, who he names Maximus or Emanuel, and whom he places towards the end of the fifteenth century, the Ottoman Sultan was desirous of inquiring into the truth of this belief which was so universally held by the Greeks, namely that the body of a person who had died excommunicate remained whole. The Patriarch caused to be opened, the tomb of a woman, who was notorious as having been the mistress of an Archbishop of Constantinople, and the body was found entire. The Turkish officials then enclosed it in a coffin which was bound round and hermetically sealed with the Emperor's own signet. The Patriarch after having said the appointed prayers, pronounced a solemn absolution over the dead woman, and three days afterwards when the coffin was opened there was only to be seen a handful of dust. Upon this Calmet aptly remarks: "I do not see any miracle here, since everybody knows that sometimes bodies are found entire and complete in a monument or sarcophagus, and that they crumble to dust immediately they are exposed to the air," and the learned Abbot very pertinently adds: "I do not see how the Archbishop of Constantinople could after death validly absolve a person who was presumably impenitent and who had died excommunicate."[53] It will readily be remembered in this connexion that the famous vaults of S. Michan's church in Dublin, for some reason possess the horrid property of preserving corpses from decay for centuries. As Mr. H. F. {p. 118} Berry tells us in his Preface (p. vi) to The Registers of the Church of S. Michan, Dublin, 1907: "As is well-known the preservative qualities of the vaults under S. Michan's Church are most remarkable, and decay in the bodies committed to them is strangely arrested. The latest writer on the subject (D. A. Chart, Story of Dublin) in a short notice of the Church, speaks of being struck (among others) "by a pathetic baby corpse, from whose plump mists still hang the faded white ribbons of its funeral." This coffin bears the date, 1679; yet the very finger and toe nails of the child are still distinct. The antiseptic qualities are believed to be largely attributable to the extreme dryness of the vaults and to the great freedom of their atmosphere from dust particles."

It is generally admitted that the circumstances which attend the decomposition of the human body are very difficult in their manifold complications since atmosphere, situation with other accidents play so important and obscure a part, whence these laws are still very imperfectly understood owing to the immense practical difficulties, one might almost say the impossibility, of systematic investigation. Doctors A. C. Taylor and F. J. Smith in their Medical Jurisprudence[54] which is universally accepted as a standard and completely authoritative work, comment on these phenomena in very plain terms, frankly acknowledging the doubts and uncertainty that still envelop the whole question." The action of the environment, the inherent potentialities of the microbes, and the state of their vitality at any moment involve such an enormous number of varying and variable factors that it becomes quite impossible to explain on a rational basis of ascertained fact . . . the extraordinary variations in the circumstances of putrefaction that have been observed." And a little later the same authorities tell us that "sometimes one body has been found more decomposed after six or eight months burial than another which has lain interred for a period of eighteen months or two years."[55] An eminent American medical expert, Dr. H. p. Loomis, says: "I have seen bodies buried two months that have shown fewer of the changes produced by putrefaction than others dead but a week."[56]

The Greeks, as we have seen in some detail, generally regarded the fact that a body was found intact as a sign that the person

{p. 119}

had died excommunicate or under some curse, and was at any rate in a state of unhappiness, of painful detention or probation. It is now necessary to consider an aspect of the question which is diametrically and entirely opposed to this idea, namely those cases where incorruption is an evidence of extraordinary sanctity, when the mortal remains of some great saint having been exhumed after death are found to be miraculously preserved for the veneration of the faithful. It is not perhaps even to-day generally recognized how solemn and weighty, how lengthy and detailed a process is that inquiry which must precede those decrees regarding religious honour paid to a deceased person distinguished for eminent holiness of life whether it be that permissive cultus known as Beatification, or that complete preceptive universal cultus known as Canonization. The real trial of a subject proposed for Canonization may be said to begin when a number of very exhaustive examinations have already been made, which for all their rigour are preliminary and ordinary, and the Apostolic process commences which investigates the Virtues and Miracles of the person. S. Thomas defines a miracle as an effect which is beyond the "Order of the whole of created nature." And he explains this by telling us that, if a man throws a stone up into the air, such a motion is no wise miraculous, for though it exceed the powers in a nature of a stone, it is produced by the natural power of man, and therefore it does not exceed the power of the whole of created nature. Besides genuine miracles a number of marvellous phenomena may be and indeed are exhibited, many of which are due to natural powers, as yet imperfectly known or entirely unknown, to hallucination, or to fraud. Therefore miracles do not constitute sanctity of themselves, and Benedict XIV discusses in his great work De Seruorum Dei Beatificatione et Beatorum Canonizatione, IV, pars. I, c. iv, De Fine Miraculorum, et de differentiis inter uera et falsa Miracula.[57] The same great authority lays down that heroic virtues are the first and most decisive witness to sanctity; "visions, prophecies and miracles are only of secondary importance, and they are absolutely ignored if proof of heroic virtues is not forthcoming." This is further insisted upon by Scacchus,[58] and Castellinus[59] prudently says: "Not all the just are to be canonized by the Church, but those who have shone forth with heroic

{p. 120}

virtues." However, the value of miracles must not be underestimated, and unfortunately in many directions there seems a tendency to fall into this grave error. Benedict XIV has a very important and weighty chapter, De Miraculorum necessitate in causis Beatificationis et Canonizationis, which might be studied with profit and instruction. It is not possible to give in detail here the various classes of Causes whose circumstances require a various number of miracles, but it may suffice to say that if the virtues or the martyrdom of the subject are proved by eye-witnesses two miracles are required for beatification and two for canonization. If, however, the virtues or the miracles have been established by evidence which is not that of eye-witnesses (testes de auditu), four miracles are required for beatification and two for canonization. It should be remarked that in all cases the miracles required for canonization must be wrought after beatification, and must be proved by eye-witnesses. Among these miracles which have to be established by evidence before a decree of Beatification is pronounced, the supernatural preservation of the body of a saint is sometimes admitted, and although such a miracle is investigated with the most scrupulous care none the less it is regarded as a high and exceptional distinction. It is generally hoped that at the exhumation of a person whose cause has been begun the body may be found to be preserved incorrupt, but this is by no means invariably the case. Thus Monsignor Benson in a letter dated 4 March, 1904, written from Rome, says: "Mr.----- and I went yesterday to the exhuming of the body of Elizabeth Sanna,[60] who died thirty-five years ago in the odour of sanctity. They hoped to find the body incorrupt; but it was not so . . . it was very interesting to see the actual bones of the Saint, and the Franciscan habit in which she was buried as a Tertiary of S. Francis; and to think that very possibly every one of the fragments would be a venerated relic some day."[61]

It must then be carefully borne in mind that the preservation of the bodies of saints is a very remarkable miracle, and is in no wise to be compared with that preservation of bodies which may occur from time to time under conditions with which we are imperfectly acquainted. It may be well to give a few examples of this supernatural phenomenon. {p. 121} Not altogether unconnected and certainly deserving of a brief consideration are those cases of irradiation when the bodies or the garments, or perhaps the rooms of great saints and mystics became luminous, emitting rays of light, a fact which although certainly it did not originate the introduction of the nimbus or aureola into art may probably have influenced painting to a very large extent. It is a great mistake to say with Gerard Gietmann[62] that all such symbols are suggested by natural phenomena, scientifically accounted for in text books on physics. Although the nimbus was early in use in the monuments of Hellenic and Roman art this had little, if any, influence in the Middle Ages and in earlier Christian times. For as Durandus tells us, and correctly, it was to passages in the scriptures that reference was made for authority to depict the halo as signifying holiness and dignity.[63] "Sic omnes sancti pinguntur coronati, quasi dicerunt. Filiae Hierusalem., uenite et uidete martyres cum coronis quibus coronauit eas Dominus. Et in Libro Sapientiae: Iusti accipient regnum decoris et diadema speciei de manu Domini. Corona autem huisusmodi depingitur in forma scuti rotundi, quia sancti Dei protectione diuina fruuntur unde cantant gratulabundi: Domine ut scuto bonae uoluntatis tuae coronasti nos" (For thus are all the Saints depicted, crowned, as if they were to say: "O daughters of Jerusalem, come ye and see the Martyrs with the crowns with which their Lord crowned them."[64] And in the Book of Wisdom: "The Just shall receive a kingdom of glory and a crown of beauty at the hands of the Lord."[65] Now a crown of this kind is depicted in the form of a round buckler, because they enjoy the heavenly protection of God, wherefore they sing in perfect happiness: "O Lord thou hast crowned us as with the shield of thy good-will.") It may be remarked that Pope Gregory the Great (about 600) allowed himself to be painted with a square nimbus, and Johannes Diaconus[66] tells us that this was the sign for a living person and not a crown. Other examples of this ornamentation have come down to us from the following centuries and they show that even children were sometimes represented with this square nimbus.

It were impertinent to trace the development of the nimbus halo, glory, and aureola in art, but this cannot fail to have been affected by the irradiation of the mystics and ecstaticas. {p. 122} The Dominican convent of Adelhausen, which was founded by the Consort of Egon II of Urach, Count of Freiburg (1218-36), is famous in the history of German mysticism and was the theatre of the most amazing phenomena. Christina Mechthild Tuschelin, a nun of this house who, it is said, only broke silence once during the whole of her religious life,[67] was very frequently illumined with such a glory of brightness that nobody could look upon her, and at times the community were obliged to request her to absent herself from the choir in order that they might recite their office without distraction.

Another famous Dominican, S. Vincent Ferrer, was often surrounded by light, and on more than one occasion it was thought that either he, or indeed the whole room was ablaze, and persons ran there in great alarm to extinguish the fire, Often too, his white habit was actually scorched although there was no fire in the room.

It may be worth noting that the appearance of a room or a building upon fire has been remarked under very different conditions and proceeding from a very different origin. When the notorious Dr. John Dee was Warden of Manchester College, a position he obtained in 1595 and resigned on account of failing health in 1602 or 1603, he often excited suspicion by the extraordinary, and some whispered unhallowed, nature of his studies which he often pursued in spite of his seventy years and more until the break of day. One mid-night, the whole college was aroused by the fierce glare of a mighty fire, and it was seen that the warden's lodgings were bursting into flame in every direction. In a few moments a crowd had hastily rushed to the spot and buckets of water were brought, when the flames suddenly died away, and almost immediately Dr. Dee appeared from his house to thank them for their care and assure them that he had been able to subdue the conflagration. It is said that on the next day the building bore no mark of fire, which circumstance together with the fact that he had so mysteriously extinguished the flames went far to increase his sombre reputation in the town.

The halo is by no means merely an artistic symbolism. A bright glow was often perceived to surround the head of S. Rose of Lima, and the same was not infrequently remarked in the cases of Thomas Lombard and the lay brother Barnaby of Pistoia. This is also recorded of S. Ravello, a Bishop of

{p. 123}

Ferrara, and of S. Afra of Augsburg, whose Passio is not later than the end of the fourth century. The Olivetan chronicles in their record of the founder of this austere reform, Bernardo Ptolomei, say that he was often seen to be encircled with light, a phenomenon which also distinguished Giovanni-Battista de Lanuza, and the Poor Clare, Antonia of Florence, who died in 1472. A glory in the shape of a star was observed on the forehead of Diego Lauda, and this is also related of that marvellous ecstatic Cecilia Baldi of Bologna. The description of S. Dominic which Cecilia Cesarini used to give must be very familiar to all. She loved to tell how, save when the sorrow of others moved him to compassion, he was always joyous and happy, and very frequently a radiant light played about his temples and illumined his sweet smiles. The countenance of Dominica of S. Mary literally blazed with light when she received Holy Communion, and the same marvel was observed in the case of Ida of Louvain, a stigmatized Cistercian nun of the Convent of Valrose, who died in 1300.

There are many more recent examples of this supernatural light, as for instance in the case of S. Alphonsus Liguori whose countenance when he preached one day in the Cathedral of Foggia, a ferverino in honour of Our Lady became exceedingly luminous and beamed with rays of dazzling brilliance. Again the Venerable Antony Claret, who died 24 October, 1870, was not infrequently seen to be haloed in a great splendour of golden glory whilst saying Mass in the Royal Chapel at Madrid. This miracle was witnessed by many, and Queen Isabella II solemnly took oath to that effect, requiring it to be placed upon record. The same phenomenon was witnessed by the whole congregation when the Venerable Claret was addressing them from the pulpit in the Cathedral at Vichy.[68]

It will not appear surprising that this irradiation often seems to reach its greatest intensity at the hour of death when the last bonds which tie man to the earth are being broken. S. John of the Cross in his last moments was surrounded by so brilliant a corruscation that those who were present were bound to turn away their eyes dazzled and blinded. When a pious widow, Gentile of Ravenna was dying the whole room appeared to shine, a phenomenon which was repeated in the case of Diego Ortiz, whilst the same is recorded of the {p. 124} Dominican nun, Maria Villani of Naples (1584-1670), who has had few rivals in her profound works on mysticism.

Very many other examples might be given, but we will now mention a few instances in which the irradiation continued even after the soul had left the body. Such was the case with S. Alfrida, a daughter of King Offa of Mercia; whilst the bodies of S. Juventius and S. Maximus reflected so penetrating a brilliance that nobody could bear to gaze upon them. Similar circumstances are said to have occurred at the tomb of S. Wilfred who was enshrined in the Church of S. Peter at Ripon, and also at the tomb of S. Kunigunde, who is buried in the Cathedral of Bamberg.

Of Blessed Walter the Premonstratensian Abbot of Ilfeld in Hanover, who died in 1229, the Nobertine chronicle tell us that when the holy body was being carried on its bier to the tomb, so great a glory shone all around it that the religious who were inceding in solemn procession after the remains of their dead father were fain to veil their eyes. "B. Walterus. . . Moriens cum ad sepulchrum deferretur, tanta lux diuinitus immissa defuncti corpus irradiauit, ut religiosi adsistentes eam uix ferre possent." Upon this an old poet wrote the following lines:

De B. Waltero circa cuius feretrum coposia lux resplenduit.

Corporis bos radios pia gens stupet, immemor ante
Illius aetherea cor rutilasse face.
Et quid-ni stupeat, solem dum mergitur undis,
Clarius exstinctam spargere posse facem?
Ecce suae carnis WALTERVS lege solutus,
Ad tumulum moestis fratribus abripitur.
Non patitur uirtus, indignaturque sepulcro
Claudier, in cincres, non abitura leues:
Ucrum oritur, radio circumfulgente Feretrum,
Ut solet Eois Lucifer ortus aquis.
O uir Sancte, tuis si lux hic tanta fuisti,
In coelo qualis quantaque stella micas![69]

It is not surprising that persons whose holiness and asceticism bad been so great during their lives, that their bodies were subjected to so extraordinary a phenomenon as irradiation, should after death have remained incorrupt. The connexion between the two is very obvious, and it should be remarked that incorruption is one of the commonest circumstances

{p. 125}

recorded in hagiology. Although it is impossible to give more than a few examples from very many, it may be mentioned that in the case of S. Edward the Confessor, who died 5 January, 1066, when the body was examined in 1102, it was found to be incorrupt, the limbs flexible, and the cerements fresh and clean: whilst two years after canonization (1161) the body, stiff incorrupt, was translated to a tomb of the greatest magnificence. When eighty years after the first deposition the body of S. Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln, who died 1200 and was buried in Lincoln Cathedral, was taken up to be translated to a richer shrine it was found to be wholly intact. Perhaps one of the most remarkable instances of the mortal remains of a Saint which are yet supernaturally preserved is that of the Poor Clare, S. Catherine of Bologna, who died 9 March, 1463 and whose body is venerated in a small yet exquisitely elegant sanctuary attached to the convent of Corpus Domini at Bologna. It is a remarkable circumstance that here it is not preserved under crystal or glass but is seated, dressed in sumptuous brocades, jewelled and crowned, in an embroidered chair in the centre of the room. The body is desiccated, but in no sense decayed. In the Carmelite Convent of the Piazza Savonarola at Florence is the body of S. Maria Madalena de'Pazzi who died 25 May, 1607. This was exhumed in 1608, on account of the damp, when it was found to be entire and flexible, and it was officially certified to be intact in 1639 and again in 1663. It is still perfect and whole where it repose; in an elaborate shrine of crystal and gold. In the same Church is the incorrupt body of Maria Bartolomea Bagnesi, a Dominican Tertiary, whose death took place on Whit-Tuesday 1577. The body of another great Saint of Florence, S. Antoninus, which was unburied for eight days, remained flexible. This great Archbishop died 2 May, 1459, and in 1589, when his tomb was examined the holy remains were found to be still intact.

In Montefalco, high among the Umbrian uplands, lies the body of the Augustinian S. Clare, one of the glories of that ancient Order so rich in hallowed and venerable names, and one of the most marvellous ecstaticas of all time. Born about 1275, perhaps a few years earlier, she became Abbess of the Convent of Montefalco and seemed to dwell more in Heaven than on earth. Gifted with the spirit of prophecy

{p. 126}

and the grace of working miracles, she was the subject of extraordinary ecstasies and raptures, which were prolonged from days to weeks. She died, 17 August, 1308, at three o'clock in the morning, and when her heart was extracted from her body this was opened and therein impressed upon the very flesh were seen a figure of Christ crucified, the scourge, the Crown of Thorns, the column, the lance, three nails, the sponge and reed. This relic is venerated at Montefalco to-day. Even now her body lies there perfect and intact. The hands and face are clearly visible, exquisitely pale and lovely, untouched by any fleck of corruption. It has not been embalmed, but Lorenzo Tardy says that throughout Italy of all the bodies of Saints which are venerated incorrupt the body of S. Clare of Montefalco is the loveliest and most free from any spot or blemish during the passing years.

Moreover when her heart was opened the blood flowed forth in great abundance and was carefully collected in a glass vial. Although normally coagulated it has preserved in colour a bright fresh red as though newly spilled. At rare intervals this blood liquefies and becomes from being opaque and congealed, humid, lucent, transparent, and freely-flowing. On occasion it has been known actually to spume and bubble. There are ample records that this took place in 1495, 1500, 1508, 1570, 1600, and 1618.[70]

It is known that new blood has frequently oozed from the arm of S. Nicolas, O.S.A., which is preserved at Tolentino, but the most famous of these blood-miracles is, of course, that of S. Januarius, the Patron of Naples. Here the blood of the Saint which is contained in two phials, enclosed in a silver reliquary, is held out by the officiating priest eighteen times in the year before the congregation in the Cathedral. Upon the altar is exposed the silver bust containing the Head of the Saint. After an interval, sometimes a space of hardly more than two minutes and sometimes (but very rarely) well nigh an hour the congealed mass in the phials becomes crimson and liquid, and on occasion froths and bubbles up within the ampolla.[71] Science having exhausted itself to find some explanation of the phenomenon confesses a miracle. The same liquefaction takes place with regard to some other Relics of peculiar sanctity, the blood of S. {p. 127} John Baptist, of S. Stephen, the Proto-Martyr, of S. Patricia, and especially of S. Pantaleone, Relics of whose blood preserved at the Convent of the Incoronazione, Madrid, at Naples, and at Ravello, liquefy upon the feast day of the Saint afterwards returning to a congealed substance. It would appear a relic of the blood of S. Pantaleone at Valle della Lucarina remains liquid all the year round. As one might expect, sceptics both without--and alas! within the Church have attempted to find some natural explanation, but without avail. One notoriously rationalistic writer is "strongly inclined to believe that such alleged blood-relics always liquefied if they were exposed long enough to light and air," a suggestion which is demonstrably false. The same maggot-monger has audaciously ventured to declare: "If we could suppose some substance or mixture had been accidentally discovered which hardened when shut up in the dark, but melted more or less rapidly when exposed to the light of day in a warmer atmosphere, it would be easy to understand the multiplication of alleged relics of this character, which undoubtedly seems to have taken place in the latter part of the sixteenth century." It is instructive to remark what wild hypotheses men will build and what shifts men will seek who endeavour to escape from facts.

On 20 May, 1444, the celebrated missionary and reformer S. Bernardine of Siena died at Aquila in the Abruzzi. It was the Vigil of the Ascension and in the choir the friars were just chanting the Antiphon to the Magnificat, Pater, manifestaui nomen tuum hominibus . . . ad Te uenio, alleluja. The body was kept in the Church for twenty-six days after death, and what is very remarkable there was a copious flow of blood after twenty-four days. The people of Siena requested that so great a treasure might be handed over to them, but the local magistrates refused to do this, and with obsequies of the greatest splendour, S. Bernardine was laid to rest in the Church of the Coventuals. Six years later, 24 May, 1450, the Saint was solemnly canonized by Nicolas V. On 17 May, 1472, the body, yet without speck or mar, was translated to the new Church of the Observants at Aquila, which had been especially built to receive it, and here it was enclosed in a costly shrine presented by Louis XI of France. This Church having been completely destroyed by an earthquake

{p. 128}

in 1703, was replaced by another edifice where the relics of S. Bernardine are still venerated. The body was still intact in the seventeenth century.

With regard to the flow of blood, the same phenomenon was observed and even yet continues in the case of S. Nicolas of Tolentino, who died 10 September, 1306, and who is buried in his Basilica there. Two hundred years after his death some persons who had concealed themselves in the church over night endeavoured to cut off an arm and carry it as a relic. No sooner had they commenced this operation and gashed the flesh with a knife than blood flowed freely as from a living body.

The first Patriarch of Venice, S. Lorenzo Giustiniani, died I January, 1455, and so great was the concourse of people to venerate his remains that the body lay in the Church of San Pietro di Castello (formerly SS. Sergio e Bacco) for no less than sixty-seven days, exposed to the air. Although it had not been embalmed the face continued of a fresh and ruddy complexion as in life. The body of the Franciscan, S. John Capistran, who died 23 October, 1456, was found to be incorrupt in 1765; and the body of the Augustinian nun, S. Rita of Cascia is still intact in her convent shrine among the Tuscan Hills. The body of S. Didacus, a lay brother of the Friars Minor who died at Alcala on 12 November, 1463 was exhumed four days after death and remained above ground for six months, supple and whole; it was still without blemish in 1562. As late as 1867, the body of the foundress of the Ursulines, S. Angela Merici, who died at Brescia, 27 January, 1540, was found to be entire.

It may not impertinently be remarked here that the Orthodox Russian Church includes in its calendar a number of bishops, monks, and holy hermits, whose bodies have been discovered to be intact at some considerable period after death, and if not actually in these days an entirely necessary condition for canonization incorruption is at any rate regarded as evidence of extraordinary sanctity. At Kieff there is (or was) a famous sanctuary which contained the bodies of no less than seventy-three venerable religious. I have been told by those who have visited this shrine that these are incorrupt, although dark and mummified. They are robed in rich vestments and laid out in open coffins for general honour and

{p. 129}

worship. Hassert speaks of the body of S. Basil of Ostrog, which was entire although much desiccated." At Cetienje Schwarz saw the body of S. Peter I, the Vladika, who died in 1830.[73] "Dieser dürre, steinharte Kadaver," he calls it. It should be remarked that these remains are always described as parched, sere and withered, and in no way retaining the freshness, the natural colour and complexion of life, which so often distinguishes the incorrupt bodies of Saints of the Catholic Church.

Perhaps to these mummified Relics, there could be few contrasts more striking indeed than the body of S. Catherine of Genoa--to take the first example that occurs--which, when I venerated it some years ago in the chapel of her own Ospedale seemed as though the Saint were but reposing in her shrine, as though she might open her eyes and gently smile upon her clients who knelt in humblest prayer. The extraordinary phenomena connected with the body of S. Teresa who died at Alba de Tormes, 4 October, 1582, are so well-known and have been so often described in detail that it is only necessary slightly to refer to them. The nuns fearing that this great treasure would be taken from them hastily buried her on the morrow after her death. A mass of bricks, stones, mortar and lime was hurriedly piled on the coffin lid. For many days strange knockings were heard as from the grave itself. There issued a mysterious perfume which varied not only in degree but in kind, for sometimes it was like lilies, sometimes like roses, sometimes like violets and often like jasmin. The community upbraided themselves that they had not given their mother more honourable burial, and at length it was resolved that the body should be secretly exhumed. This took place on 4 July, 1583. It was discovered that the lid of the coffin had been broken by the rubble heaped upon it, and the wood was rotten and decayed. The habit was stained and smelt of damp and earth, but the holy remains were as sound and entire as on the day they were laid in earth. They removed the mouldering clothes, washed the body, scraping off the earth with knives, and it was remarked that the scrapings of earth were redolent of the same perfumes as filled the grave. Moreover, both earth and cerements were saturated with a fragrant oil that exuded from the body. Yepes who wrote in 1614, the

{p. 130}

year the Saint was beatified particularly draws attention to this fragrant effusion, and later when the remains were again examined it was found that a sheet of fair linen with which the body had been covered was odorous from the same defluxion. This phenomenon classes S. Teresa among the Saints who are technically known as Myroblites ({Greek muróblutes},) from whose Relics exude balm and aromatic ichors. Of these perhaps S. Nicolas of Myra, who lies at Bari, is the most famous. There may also be named S. Willibrord, the Apostle of Holland; S. Vitalian; S. Lutgarde; S. Walbruga; S. Rose, of Viterbo; the Blessed Mathia de' Nazzarei, a poor Clare of Matelica; S. Hedwige, of Poland; S. Eustochium; S. Agnes of Montepulciano, the Dominican nun; S. Maria Maddalena de'Pazzi; and the ecstatic Carmelite Marguerite Van Valkenissen, foundress of the convent of Oirschot in Brabant.

It was this incorruptibility which was the immediate cause of the first official steps being taken to secure the beatification and canonization of Teresa de Jesus. Before the body was replaced after exhumation the Provincial, Father Geronymo de la Madre de Dios, better known as Gracian, cut off the left hand and bore it away with him to Avila in a locked casket, when blood flowed freely from the wound. Two years later it was decreed by the general Carmelite Chapter that the body should be translated to the convent of Avila, which as the birthplace of the Saint and as her first foundation undoubtedly had the best claim to these Relics. But in order to spare the nuns of Alba the fathers decided that the transference should be performed secretly, and accordingly the officials who were entrusted with this business opened the tomb at nine o'clock on the night of 24th November, 1585, and in fulfilment of their orders, whilst the sisterhood was engaged at Matins in the choir above, exhumed the body. To mitigate the grief of the convent it was decided that the left arm should be severed and that they should be allowed to retain this. Fray Gregorio de Nacianceno who was entrusted with this overcome with emotion, drew a sharp knife and severed the limb. He afterwards told Ribera that it was the greatest sacrifice of himself God had ever called upon him to make. It was remarked that the bone was as sound, and the flesh as soft, and its colour as natural as

{p. 181}

if the saint were alive. When the precious remains arrived at the convent of San José of Avila it was laid on record that the body without sign of corruption, for when they lifted it out of the chest it seemed that of one asleep. Ribera has left us a minute description of the remains which he examined thoroughly on 25th March, 1588, and his account is so interesting it will not be impertinent to quote it in full. He writes: "I saw the sainted body, greatly to my satisfaction, on 25th March of this year of 1588, as I examined it thoroughly, it being my intention to give the testimony I give here. I can describe it well. It is erect, although bent somewhat forward, as is usual with old people; and by it, it can well be seen that she was of very good stature. By placing a hand behind it to lean against, it stands up, and can be dressed and undressed as if she were alive. The whole body is of the colour of dates, although in some parts a little whiter. The face is of a darker colour than the rest, since, the veil having fallen over it, and gathered together a great quantity of dust, it was much worse treated than other parts of the body; but it is absolutely entire, so that not even the tip of the nose has received any injury. The head is as thickly covered with hair as when they buried her. The eyes are dried up, the moisture they possessed having evaporated, but as for the rest entire. Even the hairs on the moles on her face are there. The mouth is slightly shut, so that it cannot be opened. The shoulders, especially, are very fleshy. The place whence the arm was out is moist, and the moisture clings to the hand, and leaves the same odour as the body. The hand exceedingly shapely, and raised as if in the action of benediction, although the fingers are not entire. They did ill in taking them, since the hand that did such great things, and that God had left entire, ought for ever to have remained so. The feet are very beautiful and shapely, and, in short, the whole body is covered with flesh. The fragrance of the body is the same as that of the arm, but stronger. So great a consolation was it to me to see this hidden treasure, that to my thinking it was the best day I ever had in my life, and I could not gaze at her enough. One anxiety I have, lest some day they should separate it, either at the request of great personages or at the importunity of the monasteries; for by no means should this be done, but it should remain as God left it, as a testimony

{p. 182}

of his greatness, and the most pure virginity and admirable sanctity of the Mother Teresa de Jesus. To my thinking, neither he who asks it nor he who grants it, will act like true sons of hers."

Having dealt with so celebrated a case in some detail we may very briefly pass in review some four or five other instances more premising that these have been selected from a very great many, something at random, and not because they present any remarkable or unique phenomena which it would not be tolerably easy to parallel in other accounts. On the other hand they are no less memorable than is the case of S. Teresa herself: For example, the body of S. Pascal Baylon, who died at Villa Reale, 15th May, 1592, although covered with quick-lime, was found nine months later to be entire and incorrupt, and in 1611 expert surgeons declared that the preservation was miraculous. Again the body of S. Philip Neri, who died 25th May, 1595, was discovered perfectly intact eight months after burial, and was still entire when examined in 1599, 1602, and 1639. In the cases of two saints who died in 1608, Francis Caracciolo, who expired at Agnone in the Abruzzi, 4th June, 160 8; and Andrea Avellino, who was struck down by apoplexy at Naples on 10th November of the same year, there were noticed curious blood phenomena. The body of S. Francis remained flexible, and when an incision was made blood freely flowed. The body of S. Andrea was found incorrupt more than a year after he had been buried. A quantity of blood that had been received in a phial did not congeal, but is constantly observed to be still liquid. In the case of S. Camillus de Lellis who died at Rome, 14th July, 1614, the body remained soft and flexible. At her convent in the Umbrian aerie of Città di Castello reposes the unflecked and whole body of the Capuchiness, S. Veronica Giuliam, who died 9th July, 1727. There it may be seen, reposing as though she were not dead, but slept.

This list might be greatly prolonged without much research or difficulty; however, it is no doubt already sufficiently ample, and I have thought it worth while to treat the subject of the incorruptibility of the bodies of saints in some detail, as though of course, this phenomenon is in itself not to be regarded as evidence of sanctity, the preservation of the body of a person who has led a life of heroic virtue when this

{p. 138}

eminent holiness has been officially and authoritatively recognized, may be admitted as a miracle, that is to say as supernatural. More than once attention has been drawn to the fact that there exist parodies of these phenomena, and as incorruptibility is often attached to sanctity so is it an essential of the very opposite of holiness, the demonism of the vampire. It has been said that the vampire, as a demon reanimates the corpses of entirely innocent people, but this is very doubtful and it is probable that the only bodies thus to be infested and preserved by dark agency are those of persons who during their lives were distinguished by deeds of no ordinary atrocity. Very often too the vampire is a corpse reanimated by his own spirit who seeks to continue his own life in death by preying upon others and feeding himself upon their vitality that is to say by absorbing their blood since blood is the principle of life.

Dr. T. Claye Shaw in his study, A Prominent Motive in Murder[74] has given us a most valuable and suggestive paper upon the natural fascination of blood which may be repelling or attractant, and since Dr. Havelock Ellis has acutely remarked that "there is scarcely any natural object with so profoundly emotional an effect as blood,"[75] it is easy to understand how nearly blood is connected with the sexual manifestations, and how distinctly erotic and provocative the sight or even the thought of blood almost inevitably proves. It would appear to be Plumröder, who in 1830 was the first to draw definite attention to the connexion between sexual passions and blood. The voluptuous sensations excited by blood give rise to that lust for blood which Dr. Shaw terms hemothymia. A vast number of cases have been recorded in which persons who are normal, find intense pleasure in the thought of blood during their sexual relations, although perhaps if blood were actually flowing they might feel repulsion. Yet "normally the fascination of blood, if present at all during sexual excitement, remains more or less latent, either because it is weak or because the checks that inhibit it are inevitably very powerful."[76]

Blood is the vital essence, and even without any actual sucking of blood there is a vampire who can--consciously, or perhaps unconsciously--support his life and re-energize his frame by drawing upon the vitality of others. He may

{p. 134}

be called a spiritual vampire, or as he has been dubbed a "psychic sponge." Such types are by no means uncommon. Sensitive people will after complain of weariness and loss of spirits when they have been for long in the company of certain others, and Laurence Oliphant in his Scientific Religion has said: "Many persons are so constituted that they have, unconsciously to themselves, an extraordinary faculty for sucking the life-principle from others, who are constitutionally incapable of retaining their vitality." Breeders tell us that young animals should not be herded with old ones; Doctors forbid young children being put to sleep with aged individuals. It will be remembered that when King David was old and ailing his forces were recruited by having a young maiden brought into closest contact with him, although he was no longer able to copulate. Et rex Dauid senuerat, habebatque aetatis plurimos dies: cumque operiretur uestibus, non calefiebat. Dixerunt ergo ei serui sui: Quaeremus domino nostro regi adolescentulam uirginem, et stet coram rege, et foueat eam, dormiatque in sinu suo, et calefaciat dominum nostrum regem. Quaesierunt igitur adolescentulam speciosam in omnibus finibus Israel, et inuenerunt Abisag Sunamitidem, et adduxerunt eam ad regem. Erat autem puella pulchra nimis, dormiebatque cum rege, et ministrabat ei, rex uero non cognouit eam, III Kings (AV. I Kings) 1, 1-4. (Now King David was old, and advanced in years; and when he was covered with clothes he was not warm. His servants therefore said to him: "Let us seek for our lord the king, a young virgin, and let her stand before the king, and cherish him, and sleep in his bosom, and warm our lord the king." So they sought a beautiful young woman in all the coasts of Israel, and they found Abisag, a Sunamitess, and brought her to the king. And the damsel was exceeding beautiful, and she slept with the king; and served him, but the king did not know her.) The vitality of the young and lovely maiden served to re-energize the old Monarch, who thus drew upon her freshness and youth, although there was no coitus.

In an article on Vampires, Borderland, Vol. III, No. 3, July, 1896, pp. 353-358, Dr. Franz Hartmann, mentions the "psychic sponge" or mental vampire. He says: "They unconsciously vampirize every sensitive person with whom

{p. 135}

they come in contact, and they instinctively seek out such persons and invite them to stay at their houses. I know of an old lady, a vampire, who thus ruined the health of a lot of robust servant girls, whom she took into her service and made them sleep in her room. They were all in good health when they entered, but soon they began to sicken, they became emaciated and consumptive and had to leave the service."

Vampirism in some sort and to some degree may be said to leave its trace throughout almost all nature. Just as we have the parasitic men and women, so have we the parasitic plants, and at this point there imposes itself upon us some mention of the animal which directly derives a name from habits which exactly resemble those of the Slavonic Vampire--the Vampire Bat. There has been much exaggeration in the accounts which travellers have given of these bats and many of the details would seem to have been very inaccurately observed by earlier inquirers. The Encyclopædia Britannica says[77] that there are only two species of blood-sucking bats known--Desmodus rufus and Diphylla ecaudata. These inhabit the tropical and part of the sub-tropical regions of the New World, and are restricted to South and Central America. Their attacks on men and other warm-blooded animals were noticed by very early writers. Thus Peter Martyr (Anghiera)

who wrote soon after the conquest of South America, says that in the Isthmus of Darien there were bats which sucked the blood of men and cattle when asleep to such a degree as even to kill them. Condamine in the eighteenth century remarks that at Borja, Ecuador, and in other districts they had wholly destroyed the cattle introduced by the missionaries. Sir Robert Schomburgh relates that at Wicki, on the river Berlice, no fowls could be kept on account of the ravages of these creatures, which attacked their combs making them appear white from loss of blood.

Although long known to Europeans the exact species to which these bats belonged were not to be determined for a long time, and in the past writers have claimed many frugivorous bats, especially Vampyrus spectrum, a large bat of most forbidding appearance, to be the true Vampire. Charles Darwin was able to fix at least one of the blood-sucking species. He says that the whole circumstance was much doubted in

{p. 136}

England, but "we were bivouacking late one night near Coquimbo in Chile, when my servant, noticing that one of the horses was very restive went to see what was the matter, and fancying he could detect something, suddenly put his hand on the beast's withers, and secured the vampire." (Naturalist's Voyage Round the World, p. 22.)

Travellers say the wounds inflicted by these bats are similar in character to a cut from a sharp razor when shaving. A portion of the skin is taken off, and a large number of severed capillary vessels being thus exposed, a constant flow of blood is maintained. From this source the blood is drawn through the exceedingly small gullet of the bat into the intestine-like stomach, whence it is, probably, gradually drawn off during the slow progress of digestion, while the animal sated with food, is hanging in a state of torpidity from the roof of its cave or from the inner side of a hollow tree.

This is exactly the Vampire who with his sharp white teeth bites the neck of his victim and sucks the blood from the wounds he has made, gorging himself, like some great human leech, until he is replete and full, when he retires to his grave to repose, lethargic and inert until such time as he shall again sally forth to quench his lust at the veins of some sleek and sanguine juvenal.

CHAPTER III
THE TRAITS AND PRACTICE OF VAMPIRISM
IT was generally supposed that all suicides might after death become vampires; and this was easily extended to those who met with any violent or sudden death. Mr. Lawson tells us that there persists a tradition in Maina, where the Vendetta is still maintained, that a man whose murder has not been avenged is liable to become a vrykolakas.[1] The Mainotes who derive their name from the place Maina, near Cape Taenaron (Matapan), even yet preserve many of the customs and characteristics of their ancestors, and historically are known to be of a more pure Greek descent than the inhabitants of any other district. Indeed, the peninsula which thrusts into the sea the headland of Taenaron has both social and religious customs of its own. The population is distributed into small villages, while here and there a white fortress will denote the residence of a chief. A traveller writing in 1858, remarks: "The Maina country is wild and beautiful, singularly well cultivated, considering the difficulties to be surmounted, and producing crops that put to shade the rich plains of Argos and Arcadia; whilst the interesting mountain people exercise the highland virtues of hospitality and independance to an extent unknown in the low countries." It has been said that the last traveller who saw Maina while retaining some remains of its primitive cateran glories was Lord Carnarvon, who in 1839 explored the Morea and has left us an extraordinarily interesting account of his journey.

The population of this district continued the worship of the Pagan deities for full five hundred years after the rest of the Roman Empire had embraced Christianity, and they were not finally converted until the reign of the vigorous Emperor Basil I, 867-886. Gibbon described them as "a domestic and perhaps original race, who, in some degree, might derive their blood from the much-injured Helotes."[2] And even yet

{p. 141}

they boast of their descent from the ancient Spartans, whilst the histories of Leonidas and Lycurgus, who figure partly as saints and partly as gallant brigands, are still retold round the winter fireside. The whole district, including Kaka Voulia (the Land of Evil Counsel), is formed by the hummocks and escarpments of Mount Taygetos, and, with the exception of a long strip of coast line, which the Venetians called Bassa Maina, it is steep and hilly and for the most part barren. The conquest of the Morea was completed by Mahomet II in 1456-1460, but Maina could never be thoroughly subdued, and its inhabitants remained as entirely independent as were the Highlanders before Culloden.

As has been remarked, ancient traditions still persevere, and among these customs not the least obstinate is the Vendetta. A man who has been murdered is unable to rest in his grave until he has been avenged. Accordingly he issues forth as a vampire, thirsting for the blood of his enemy. In order to bring about his physical dissolution and to secure his repose it is necessary for the next of kin to slay the murderer, or at least some near relative of the murderer. Unless this is done the man upon whom the duty of avenging blood devolves is banned by the curse of the dead, and if so be that he is himself cut off before he can satify the desires of the deceased, the curse will yet cling to him even in death, and he too must become a vampire. It should be remarked that this view of blood-guilt is found in the Attic dramatists, and is in fact the mainspring of the whole story of Orestes. In the tragedy of this name by Euripides, Tyndareus, the father of Clytemnestra, remonstrates very reasonably, and indeed unanswerably with Orestes. But the hero replies and argues that if he has not avenged his father

Had not his hate's Erinyes haunted me?[3]

Again in the Choephoroe of Aeschylus Orestes pursues the same idea saying that unless he avenges his father, a stern duty which has devolved upon him, lie will be punished in turn by the avengers of his father's wrongs. It may be remarked that in Maina to-day no recourse must be had to law for such cases, nor must the injured person satisfy himself by calling upon the aid of the police. To do this were incredibly base, the subterfuge of a recreant and a craven. Even if it be a life's whole work a man is expected, either secretly

{p. 142}

or by an open attack, to slay the murderer of his relative, and he is highly applauded when he has accomplished this pious deed. It must be appreciated that he is regarded as herein directed and inspired by the dead man who returns from his grave as a vampire craving for blood. Even if no other motive or incentive prevailed, in spite of natural shrinking and may be even cowardice, a man would undoubtedly prefer to shed blood for blood, especially when this might be done in secrecy or by craft, rather than run the terrible risk of himself becoming a vampire, finding no rest in the grave, but returning to haunt and persecute even those who were most dear to him, an unclean thing accursed. of God, a foul goblin of dread most hateful to man.

So great is the horror which the act of suicide, although considered admirable in the decadence of Greece and Rome, inspires in every man of sane mind that it, is not at all surprising it should be deemed that the unfortunate wretches who have destroyed themselves become vampires after death. According to the Zoroastrian creed, suicide is a most fearful crime, and is classed among the marg-arzan, the abominable offences. Aristotle in his Ethics, V, xv, terms suicide a sin against the State, and as Cicero tells us Pythagoras forbade men to depart from their guard or sentry-go in life without an order from their commanding-officer, who is God. "Uetatque Pythagoras iniussu imperatoris, id est, dei, de praesidio et statione uitae decedere." (De Senectute, XX, 73). The highest pagan argument against suicide will be found in Plato's Phaedo (61E-62E), but it is drowned in the mighty voice of the great Saint of Hippo, which peals in no unwavering tones down the centuries: "For if it be not lawful for a private man to kill any man, however guilty, unless the law have granted a special allowance for it, theft surely whosoever kills himself is guilty of homicide: and so much the more guilty doth that killing of himself make himself, by how much the more guiltless he was in that cause for which he killed himself. For if the act of Judas be worthily detested, and yet the Truth saith, that by hanging of himself, he did rather augment than expiate the guilt of his wicked treachery, because his despair of God's mercy in his damnable repentance, left no place in his soul for saving repentance; how much more ought he to

{p. 143}

forbear from being cause of his own death, that hath no guilt in him worthy of such a punishment as death; for Judas in hanging himself, hanged but a wicked man and died guilty, not only of Christ's death, but of his own also; adding the wickedness of being his own death, to that other wickedness of his, for which he died." (De Ciuitate Dei, I, xvii.)

It may be well very briefly to present the teaching of the Church concerning positive and direct suicide. If done without God's permission this always constitutes a grave injustice towards Him. To destroy a thing is in effect to dispose of it as an absolute master and to act with regard to it as one who has full and independent dominion over it. But God has reserved to Himself dominion over life. Man cannot create life, and he does not possess this full and absolute right over his own life. Consequently suicide must be reckoned as an attempt against the dominion and right of ownership of the Author of life. To this injustice is super-added a serious offence against the charity owed by man to himself, since by self-murder he deprives himself of the greatest good in his possession. Moreover this sin may be aggravated by other circumstances, such as an offence against conjugal, paternal, or filial duty; an offence against justice or charity; if by taking his own life a man eludes existing obligations of justice or acts of charity which he could and should perform. That suicide is unlawful is the general teaching of Holy scripture which condemns the act as a most terrible crime, and to arouse the horror of all against Holy Church denies the suicide the rites of Christian burial. Again, suicide is directly opposed to the most natural and powerful tendency of all created things, and especially of intelligent man, the preservation of life. Indeed very large numbers of physicians, moralists, and jurists lay it down as a general rule that suicide is always due to dementia, so great is the horror which this atrocious deed inspires in every man of sane mind. As a generalization this may be admitted to be true, for it is impossible to think that those who have the calm and right use of their reason should deliberately destroy themselves, and the conditions which are necessary to incur the full culpability of an act can only in exceptional instances be conceived of as being present in the case of a suicide. Sabetti inquires: "Quaenam ad peccatum mortale

{p. 144}

requirantur?" And his answer is given as follows: "Tria necessario requiruntur, scilicet materia grauis uel in se, uel ob circumstantias; aduertentia plena ad malitiam grauem actus; consensus plenus uoluntatis in præuaricationem. Itaque,

Requiritur 1°. materia grauis, secus non posset haberi lex obligans sub graui.

Requiritur 2°. plena aduertentia mentis, secus non habebitur plena deliberatio.

Requiritur 3°. plenus consensus uoluntatis, quia nisi peccator cum pleno consensu plenaque deliberatione obiectum peccati Deo præferat, et sic finem suum ultimum in creatura constituat, nequit dici a Deo totaliter recedere. Insuper a bonitate diuina prorsus alienum est, hominem æternæ damnationi addicere siue propter transgressionem leuem siue propter actum non perfecte liberum et uoluntarium.--Cf. S. Alphons, nn. 5, 6 et 53."[5]

The Christian Middle Ages were free from the terrible tendency of suicide, but with the loss of Faith it re-appeared, and Masaryk in his study Der Selbstmord als sociale Massenerscheinung der modernen Civilisation (Vienna, 1881), considered it to be the special evil of these later days. Sad to relate self-destruction has fearfully increased since the Great War, but it may perhaps be mitigatingly advanced that the reason of the world tottered almost to eternal delirium during the chaos and welter of blood, and the balance is not recovered yet.

It is true that among certain nations there appears to be an indifference to human life, nay, a contempt of death itself, which often takes the most extravagant and the most outrageous forms. The Goths, the heathen Vandals, and Norse savages not only approved but sought suicide and violent death. It is, of course, only among the utterly benighted that it is possible for such abominable ideas to obtain. For example, there existed among a tribe of robbers in Southern India customs of the utmost ferocity. Such practices as the following certainly prevailed during the eighteenth century, but they have no doubt, long since been happily suppressed. If two persons had quarrelled, sometimes for the most trifling reasons, a man would kill himself merely in order to be revenged on his adversary. He believed that

{p. 145}

his ghost would be able to return and harry the surviver {sic}, or at least that some dire retribution must fall on the head of his enemy who drove him to such extreme measures.[6] Again, custom required that if a man committed suicide, letting it be known that it was on this account, the person with whom he had had the difference that led to this abominable act must immediately follow his example.[7]

Lord Avebury's statement:[8] "It is said that in China, if a rich man is condemned to death, he can sometimes purchase a willing substitute at a very small expense," has been traversed and Professor Parker would not commit himself any further than by saying: "It is popularly stated that substitutes can be bought for Taels fifty, and most certainly this statement is more than true, so far as the price of human life is concerned; but it is quite another question whether the gaolers and judges can always be bribed."[9] Dr. W. T. A. Barber, who had been a missionary in China, relates that he had known very large numbers of persons who committed suicide out of spite against some one else, "the idea being, first, the trouble given by minions of the law to the survivor; second that the dead would gain a vantage ground by becoming a ghost, and thus able to plague his enemy in the flesh."[10]

It is not surprising to learn that in ancient times, before the advent of Christianity, among such savage people as the Celts and the Thracians suicide was not only common but treated with the most appalling lightness and even flippancy. Thus Athenæus, speaking of the banquets of the Thracians, quotes from Seleueus as follows: "And Seleueus says, 'that some of the Thracians at their drinking parties play the game of hanging; and fix a round noose to some high place, exactly beneath which they place a stone which is easily turned round when any one stands upon it; and then they cast lots, and he who draws the lot, holding a sickle in his hand, stands upon the stone, and puts his neck into the halter; and then another person comes and raises the stone, and the man who is suspended, when the stone moves from under him, if he is not quick enough in cutting the rope with his sickle, is killed and the rest laugh, thinking his death good sport.'"[11]

Upon the authority of the famous Stoic philosopher, Posidonius, Athenæus tells us of similar brutalities which took place among the Celts. He writes: "But Posidonius,[12] in the

{p. 146}

third, and also in the twentieth book of his Histories, says 'The Celtæ sometimes have single combats at their entertainments. For being collected in arms, they go through the exercise, and make feints at, and sometimes they even go so far as to wound one another. And being irritated by this, if the bystanders do not stop them, they will proceed even to kill one another. But in olden times,' he continues, 'there was a custom that a hind quarter of pork was put on the table, and the bravest man took it; and if any one else laid claim to it, then the two rose up to fight, till one of them was slain. And other men in the theatre having received some silver or gold money, and some even for a number of earthen vessels full of wine, having taken pledges that the gifts promised shall really be given, and having distributed them among their nearest connexions, have laid themselves down on doors with their faces upwards, and then allowed some bystander to cut their throats with a sword.'

"And Euphorion the Chalcidian, in his Historical Memorials, writes as follows: 'But among the Romans it is common for five minæ[13] to be offered to any one who chooses to take it, to allow his head to be cut off with an axe, so that his heirs might receive the reward: and very often many have returned their names as willingly, so that there has been a regular contest between them as to who had the best right to be beaten to death.'"[14] These atrocious examples serve to show us something of the evil and the corruption of which Christianity cleansed the pagan world, although it is to be feared that the battle is not yet won, since it is a notorious and deplorable fact that at the hour of such a crisis as the Great War the respect due to human life became cheapened in men's eyes, with the consequence that murder and deeds of violence once more broke out in every direction showing that savage instincts were dominated indeed, but in many cases not wholly eradicated. It does not require a keen perception to see the direct agency of the devil here, and these atrocities which bred so callous and cruel a spirit are by no means altogether unconnected with the recrudescence of necromancy and black magic which foul arts once more grew green and were almost openly pursued on every side.

The belief that a man has not complete dominion over his own life and that it is unlawful for him to take it is certainly a

{p.147}

feeling naturally implanted in the human breast, and it was only when nations were entirely barbarian or had became decadent and corrupt that the notion of suicide was held up as noble and even heroic. Whatever certain among the later Greeks may have practised and taught, in earlier days, as we have seen, the act of suicide was regarded as a dark and presumptuous deed. They truly felt that there was in it something of {Greek a?sébeia},[15] something of that {Greek ú!bris} which so surely stirred the wrath of heaven and inevitably called down righteous vengeance. Indeed the evil and malice of suicide did not end with death but continued beyond the grave. The umbra of a man who had slain himself was dreaded and feared. So in ancient Athens it was the custom to cut off the hand of a suicide and to cremate it or at least to bury it far from his body, the object of such mutilation being to prevent his ghost from attacking the living.[16]

Similar beliefs exist among native African tribes. Thus the Wajagga of East Africa dread the spectres of suicides. When a man has hanged himself a certain complicated ceremonial becomes imperative. They take the rope from his neck and suspend a goat in the noose, after which the animal is swiftly slain. The idea seems that hereby the phantom will be in some way appeased, and he will not be so likely to tempt human beings to follow his evil example.[17]

The Baganda of Central Africa have an even greater horror of the ghosts of suicides, and the most elaborate precautions are invariably taken to protect themselves against these dangerous visitors. The body of a man who has destroyed himself is removed as far from all human habitation as possible, to waste land or to a cross-road, and there is utterly consumed with fire. Next the wood of the house in which the horrid deed has been done is burned to ashes and scattered to the winds; whilst if the man has hanged himself upon a tree this is hewn to the ground and committed to the flames, trunk, roots, branches and all. Even this is hardly deemed to be sufficient. Curiously enough there is a lurking idea that the ghost of a suicide may survive after the cremation of the body, so horrible is this crime felt to be and so irradicated the taint that this terrible deed establishes. This is extremely significant since the cases in which cremation, a complete purgation and destruction by fire, cannot obliterate guilt and

{p. 148}

destroy the evil infection are indeed exceptional, and it might be no easy task to find a parallel instance. However, the Baganda when passing by the spot where the body of a suicide has been burned always take good care to pelt it with sticks and clods of earth to prevent the ghost from catching them. Although these places in particular are dangerous to the last degree, there are other graves that may be haunted by phantoms, which as they have no bodies are not strictly vampires, but which certainly belong to the vampire family. Such are those remote places where persons who have been accused of black magic and who failed to satisfy the ritual ordeals have been burned to death, as also those spots where persons of evil and atrocious life have been cremated or interred.[18] The Maraves, a tribe of South Africa, who also burned witches alive, whenever they had occasion to pass the place of doom, pelted it with stones, and it is said that in some instances of spots considered particularly ill-omened a regular cairn or tumulus of loose stones has arisen." In Madagascar too, certain solitary graves bear an exceedingly ill-repute, so that the chance traveller with averted face throws stones at them or large lumps of earth in order to prevent the ghost following in his tracks and seizing on him.[20] It must be remarked, and this is very important, that the sticks and stones, or heavy clods of earth with which a grave is pelted are not meant merely as a symbolical insult and expression of righteous indignation, but are actually missiles which will strike and hurt the being who haunts the spot of interment. So since the haunter can be struck and injured by these very material objects,--the heavier they are the better,--he must himself possess a certain concrete substantiality, and inasmuch as objects make an impression upon him he must exist under some kind of physical condition. Doubtless the exact idea is not very clearly defined in the minds of those who are so careful to pelt the grave, yet if stones will not merely ward off an attack from the haunter, but when in the course of time they become piled up into a small cairn they serve to keep the deceased in his place, that is to say in the grave, there must be some sort of material entity which can be so materially frustrated and obstructed. Here then we have the essential and complete vampire.

It is recorded by a traveller about the middle of the last

{p. 149}

century that when he was journeying in company with two Mussulmans from Sidon to Tyre, as he drew near the latter city he noticed a great pile of stones by the wayside, whereupon his companions began to pick up all the loose pebbles that came to hand and discharged them violently at the heap at the same time uttering the most fearful imprecations. When they had passed and were at some little distance they explained that a notorious brigand, whose hands were stained with the hideous cruelties and innocent blood, had been slain there, and buried on the spot half a century before. The stones they threw and their curses were directed against this villain. It might be thought in this case that the missiles were a mark of loathing and contempt, but it seems far more probable that they were intended to serve a very utilitarian purpose, that is actually to keep off the wretch who would still be haunting the pit into which his body had been cast fifty years since.[21]

It even appears that in many parts of Syria when brigands are killed by the highway, or vagrom murderers are dispatched in the open country side beyond the walls of a city the body is left to rot unburied where it lies, and after a while it is merely covered over with a heap of stones; moreover everyone who passes by is bound to quoit a stone or stick to add to the pile under the penalty of incurring some dreadful misfortune. It is supposed that heaven will horribly curse the person who fails to throw his flinty tribute as he goes.[22]

It is not only among rude African tribes and in the East that the graves of persons who have led cruel and anti-social lives, particularly the spots where suicides have been buried, are thus places of execration and fear, but in Pomerania and in West Prussia, not to instance many other districts, the spots where persons who have wrought their own destruction happen to be interred are regarded as unlucky in the highest degree, and there is no more malevolent and harmful spectre than the suicide's ghost. A man who has destroyed himself must not defile God's acre, in no wise may he be buried in the churchyard but at the place where the desperate deed was done, and everybody who passes by will cast a stone on the spot unless he wishes the ghost of the suicide to plague him nightly and to give him no rest until he is driven to the same dreadful fate. It is said that, as in Africa piles of sticks

{p. 160}

and stones accumulate to a great size, so similar cairns rise upon these haunted spots in the more remote districts along the cold shores washed by the Baltic Sea.

It is not surprising to find that in a country such as Russia, which through the ages has so often tottered to madness and of late years fallen into stark lunacy, during the seventeenth century an epidemic of suicide raged. It persisted, indeed, at spasmodic intervals throughout the eighteenth and even the nineteenth centuries, but it was somewhat earlier than this that the troubles of that luckless nation blazed out in furious frenzy. As when the year 1000 approached a fearful apocalyptic mania inflamed many parts of Europe, and men imagining that the world was about to come to an end, that almost any hour, any moment the Angel's clarion would blare, heaven and earth shrivel like some parching scroll and the Judge be set on His awful throne, in their hundreds deserted cities and homes to wander abroad preaching fevered repentance and the most extravagent {sic} forms of penance, or else in frantic despair abandoned themselves to debauchery and violence, so in Russia some mad visionary who proclaimed that the crack of doom was appointed for the year 1666[23] set the whole country aflame with terror. In many parts, men ceased to labour in the fields, relinquished their businesses and all social intercourse, barricaded themselves in their houses behind closed windows and fast-barred doors, awaiting the end with the gloomiest forebodings. As might have been expected, great numbers completely lost their senses and scores of dangerous lunatics not only infested the highroad but even invaded villages and towns preaching that the only way to escape the wrath to come was to prevent the final day by self-destruction. They were, moreover, very willing and eager to help those who shrank from so severe a test, and before long red murder was rife in every direction. Their services, however, were not required as frequently as might have been supposed for the delirium spread with such alarming rapidity that not merely households but whole communities eagerly devoted themselves to death. If in some paroxysm of wild hysteria a man had declared his intention of becoming a martyr, for so these poor wretches were deemed, the pious duty devolved upon his friends and relations of seeing that he scrupulously fulfilled his vow. Should he

{p. 151}

wish to change his mind or in any way seek to escape his fate he was pursued and saved in spite of himself by being put to death in the most atrocious torments. A veritable reign of terror ensued, and northern Russia seemed well-nigh depopulated. It were superfluous to enter into the horrible details, but it may suffice to say that at first starvation was the usual method by which these maniacs committed suicide. In the forest of Vetlouga, one fanatic at huge expense actually built a tower without doors and windows, into the body of which persons were lowered through a trap in the roof. But this was too long a process; it gave space for reflection and with the pangs of hunger reason resumed her sway. Those within yelled to be released, but all in vain. To shouts and clamour succeeded groans and fainter lamentations, until as the days passed all was still. Another remedy was found and presently the method which was preferred and which was officially prescribed as safer and more pleasing to God was immolation by fire. Accordingly, the missionaries of this horrible impiety proclaimed safety through the flame; as the prophet Elias had ascended to heaven in a blazing chariot, so the deluded wretches were taught they would ascend to a glorious and delightful eternity from the midst of the conflagration. Hundreds and even thousands perished in huge holocausts. Whole areas were strictly enclosed, the candidates took their places therein and the compound having been previously drenched with pitch, bitumen, and inflammable oils torches were applied at many points. If any overcome by agony escaped with scorched and blackened limbs they were caught and hurled back into the heart of the pyre. These immolations generally took place during the dark winter season and from midnight until the faint streaks of dawn the red glow of these horrid furnaces could be seen in every direction. For hundreds of verstas the land became a veritable Tophet. As the morning broke, hordes of wolves attracted by the stench of roasting flesh assembled to pull trunks and limbs from the embers; a dark cloud of suffocating smoke, greasy with human fat that fouled both ground and houses, hung low in the sky, and ere many days were past the plague was stalking abroad with fatal voracity. It was not until the most vigorous measures had been taken that these terrible practices could be checked, and it seems that the

{p. 152}

venom of the madness persisted long and late, for as recently as 1860, fifteen persons in the district of Olonetz committed suicide by fire, whilst during the winter of 1896-1897, twenty-four religious fanatics buried themselves alive in a pit near Tiraspol.[24] The monk, Falaley, constantly preached that death was man's only means of salvation and that he must have done with this life of sin. One night under his influence, eighty-four persons congregated near the river Perevozinka and began to pray. Many of them were already half-crazed through excessive fasting, and they almost covered themselves with brambles and brushwood to which fire was to be set at a given signal. A woman, taking alarm at the thought of so horrible a death, escaped and informed the authorities. When the police arrived the fanatics shrieked that Antichrist was approaching, and setting fire to the pile most perished in the flames. A few who were rescued received sentences of imprisonment and deportation, but a fanatic called Souchkoff, managed to escape and continued to preach the gospel of death. Maddened by his doctrine in one locality alone, sixty families resolved to commit suicide at a certain moment, and a peasant, named Petroff, entering a neighbour's house cut down his wife and children with a hatchet. In a barn hard by, a dozen men with their wives had assembled and amid hymns of triumph they laid their heads upon an improvised block to be hacked off by Petroff. In another hut a woman and three children were dispatched at their own earnest request. At length when he was weary, Petroff himself kneeled down and was slain by Souchkoff. Between 1860 and 1870, a maniac named Chadkin, proclaimed that Antichrist was here, and all most follow him to the forests and there die of hunger. A large number assembled and his most devoted followers saw to it that nobody could escape. After a few days the sufferings of the crowds were fearful and the place rang with their screams and groans. Nevertheless Chadkin and his apostles did not waver. When some poor creature, frantic with agony, managed to break away and informed the police, the devotees at once began to kill all who had gathered together, and by the time the authorities had arrived in the utmost haste there were found but three survivors.

Buddhist monks in China are often recorded to have

{p. 158}

sought their Nirvana through an act of self -immolation by fire, and it is said that every year among the lamaresais of Tien-tai, in the province of Tai-chow, some half-a-dozen bonzes thus devote themselves to death. These unfortunate persons believe that their voluntary destruction crowns the monastery with honours and blessing, they are aware that they will be worshipped after their suicide, and they suppose that they will become the divinities of the district and possess the power to protect the whole neighbourhood, to grant fair weather and lucky seasons, a bounteous harvest and all prosperity. Such public incinerations are conducted with great ceremony, and take place upon a major festival which is bound to attract crowds of pilgrims and reverent suppliants to the spot.[25] It is said that among the Eskimo of Bering Strait a sorcerer has been known to burn himself alive, fully believing that thus he will return to life as a shaman with much greater powers and a far fuller knowledge of magic than he had hitherto enjoyed.[26] It may be remembered that even such low motives as vanity and a craving for mere notoriety have proved an incentive sufficiently powerful to induce men to seek a dramatic, if painful death by fire. Thus the charlatan Peregrinus after a career of the most braggart ostentation courted undying fame by self-immolation upon a pyre at the Olympic festival, which extraordinary performance attracted throngs not only of sensible persons who despised and mocked him but of encomiasts and apologists who regarded him as at the least a hero, if not something nearly approaching to deity.[27] It can hardly be argued that higher motives inspired Empedocles if the account preserved by Diogenes Laertius[28] to which Horace[29] makes reference be true, namely that hoping by a sudden disappearance he might be accounted a god, the philosopher flung himself into the crater of Mount Aetna, but that the suicide was revealed owing to the fact that the volcano almost immediately after threw up one of his sandals, and thus betrayed the manner of his death.

Josephus states that the Jews used not to bury the bodies of those who had destroyed themselves until after sunset. In Scotland it is still thought that the body of a suicide will not fall to dust until the time when he should have died in the order of nature,[30] and it is very generally held that a such

{p. 154}

a one must be buried with the grave facing north and south. This belief also existed in England and there are graves facing north and south to be seen at Cowden (Kent) and Bergholt (Suffolk), which are locally said to be those of persons who have destroyed themselves, for it is almost universally declared that Christian burial should be with the head in west, looking eastward[31]. As is well-known, in England until the time of George IV, it was the general practice to bury suicides at the cross-roads, where a stake was driven through the body. In the year 1823, it was enacted that the body of a suicide should be buried privately between the hours of nine o'clock and twelve at night with no religious ceremony. In 1882, this law was altered, and the body may now be committed to the earth at any time and with such rites or prayers those in charge of the funeral think fit or may be able to procure. In certain country places it is still supposed that the spirit of the last person buried in a graveyard has to keep watch lest any suicide should be interred there. One explanation of the reason why persons who had taken their own lives should be buried at the cross-roads was that the ghosts of murdered persons were supposed to walk until the bodies had been recovered and committed to the churchyard with Christian rites, and since this was impossible in the case of suicides, a stake was driven through them when deposited at the cross-roads in order to keep the ghost from wandering abroad.[32] It is certain that the idea here is the same as that of driving a stake through the vampire, for sometimes this precaution was taken in the case of persons who might perchance become vampires, an operation performed not as an indignity but as a preventitive. Burchard of Worms tells us: "Cum aliquis, femina parere debit, et non potest, in ipso dolore si mortem obierit, in ipso sepulchro matrem cum infante palo in terram transfigunt." And again: "Fecisti quod quaedam mulieres instinctu diaboli facere solent, cum aliquis infans sine baptismo mortuus fuerit, tollunt cadauer paruuli, et ponunt in aliquo secreto loco, et palo corpusculum transfigunt, dicentes, si sic non fecissent, quod infantulus surgeret et multos laedere posset." The reason for the selected spot of the suicide's grave being a cross-road is further explained by the belief that when the ghost or the body issues from the grave and finds that there

{p. 155}

are four paths stretching in as many directions he will be puzzled to know which way to take and will stand debating until dawn compels him to return to the earth, but woe betide the unhappy being who happens to pass by when he is lingering there perplexed and confused. Accordingly after sunset, every sensible person will avoid all crossroads since there are no localities more certainly and more fearfully haunted and disturbed. It will readily be remembered that the Romans were far more precise than we used to be in their definition of cross-roads and employed no less than three terms, biuium when the road branched into two, triuium when the road forked into three, and quadriuium when the intersection of the ways gave four arms. The prophet Ezechiel tells us that Esarhaddon took his stand in biuio when he wished to divine: "Stetit enim rex Babylonis in biuio, in capite duarum uiarum, diuinationem quaerens, commiscens sagittas: interrogauit idola, exta consuluit." (xxi, 21.) "For the king of Babylon stood in the highway, at the head of two ways, seeking divination, shuffling arrows: he enquired of the idols, and consulted entrails." Triuia is the common name given to Diana, when as Hecate she was invoked at the crossways. Chariclides Comicus in Meineke's Comicorum Fragmenta, IV, p. 556, has {Greek triodîtas}, and invokes: {Greek E!káth triodîti, trímorfe, tripróswpe}.

Varro, De Lingua Latina, VII, 16, writes "Titanis Triuia, Diana est, ab eo dicta Triuia, quod in triuio ponitur fere in oppodis Graecis, uel quod luna dicitur esse, quae in caelo tribus uiis mouetur in altitudinem et latitudinem et longitudinem." Macrobius, Saturnalia, I, ix, notes: "Dianae uero ut Triuiae uiarum omnium iidem tribuunt potestatem."

In Wales it was said that witches slept by day under any boulder that might be at a cross-road, and when dusk had fallen they crept forth to steal little children and feast upon their flesh. The gallows was often erected at the cross-roads, and here the criminal hung in chains, and nourished by his rotting flesh the mandrake grew. Many are the superstitions which cluster around the mandrake or mandragora--"the semi-human" as Columella (De re rustica, x, 19) calls it. It was the plant of fertility, the plant of magical virtue and occult power. In Germany it bears the name of the Little Gallows Man, and it was believed that when a murderer or

{p. 156}

thief was hanged and his semen or urine fell to the ground there grew up the mandrake. In England the same superstition prevailed, and in his pasquil A Character of an Ugly Woman or a Hue and Cry after Beauty, 1678, the Duke of Buckingham wrote: "Imprimis, as to her Descent, some Heralds derive her Pedigree from that of the Scotch Barnacles, and say, that she dropt from some teeming Gallows, or sprung up like Mandrakes from the S--- of some gibbitid Raggamuffian." No one must dare uproot the mandrake for it moans and shrieks so fearfully that the digger will die with the yells ringing in his ears. A dog is taken and round his tail is tied a string, one end of which is attached to the plant. A man whose ears are fast stopped with wax and wool, tempts the dog away with some dainty. As the animal tugs at the cord the mandrake will be pulled from the ground, but the poor beast will fall dead at the horrid scream it gives. But there has been secured a talisman, nay, more a familiar.

Even in the mythology of Ceylon the cross-roads play an ominous part. Thus in the Yakkun Nattanawa, which is defined by its translator, John Callaway, as "a Cingalese poem descriptive of the Ceylon system of demonology," it is said of the Black She-Devil: "Thou female Devil, who acceptest the offerings at the place where three ways meet, thou causest the people to be sick by looking upon them at the place where four ways join together." The devil Maha-Sohon watches "to drink the blood of the elephant in the place where the two and three roads meet together." Maha-Sohon is the devil of the tombs, "therefore go not in the roads by night: if you do so you must not expect to escape with your life." Another devil, Oddy, stands where three ways meet, watching, and hot for mischief. Again the Devil of the Victim "watches and looks upon the people, and causes them to be sick at the place where three roads meet, and where four ways meet."

Ralstan[33] says that it is a common Russian belief that at cross-roads, or in the neighbourhood of cemeteries, an animated corpse often lurks watching for some unwary traveller whom it may be able to strangle and devour, eagerly quaffing the warm blood from his veins. In Cornwall to-day cross-roads are most carefully avoided after night-fall,[34] but this may be because it is commonly accepted that at the cross-roads

{p. 157}

witches from all the world over assemble for their sabbat. It seems more likely that these particular spots are avoided because of the vampires, for Henry Boguet tells us: "Les Sorciers tienne~t leurs sabbats indiffereme~t en tons lieux."[35] Bernhard Ragner says that if you go to a cross-road between eleven o'clock and midnight on Christmas eve and listen, you will hear what most concerns you for the coming year.[38] It may be pointed out that this is the one night throughout the year when strange wonders happen. It is then that the thorn that sprang at Glastonbury from the Sacred Crown which the holy old man, S. Joseph of Arimathea, brought with him from Palestine, when Avalon was still an island, bourgeons into fragrant blossoms. The Cornish miners seem to hear the sound of singing choirs that arise from submerged churches by the shore, and others said that bells, beneath the ground where villages had been, upon that eve yearly ring a glad peal. At midnight the oxen, the cattle, and all the beasts kneel and adore, as they adored in the stable-cave at Bethlehem. No evil thing hath power, and as the Officer in Hamlet[37] tells us:

Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long;
And then, they say, no spirit can walk abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallow'd and so gracious is the time.

In certain districts of East Prussia on Christmas Eve candles are kept burning all night in the houses and no window is shuttered. It is supposed that the spirits of the dead will return in friendly-wise and the opportunity is given to them to warm themselves, so that on future occasions when they haunt the villages with more malicious intent they may remember those who are kind to them Christmas after Christmas and spare those houses from molestation and injury.[38]

Not only are those who die excommunicate, that is to say solemnly and officially cursed by the Church, liable to become vampires, but more, those who die under any kind of such ban, especially if it be the malison of a parent, or if it be a man who has perjured himself in a grave matter and called down upon his own head damnation and all manner of evil should

{p. 158}

what he asseverate be untrue. The belief in the fearful power of a curse, especially the curse of a father or a mother, which, whether rightfully or wrongfully adjured, works out its vengeance through the whole stock of kith and kin, involving in misfortunes and destruction, innocent and guilty alike, finds supreme illustration in the masterpieces of Greek tragedy. It is the mighty theme of the trilogy of the Oresteia, for from the very outset of the Agamemnon there is a brooding and oppressive sense of multitudinous crimes, of sins done long years ago which have swelled and accumulated their guilt like some black cloud of transgressions about to burst over the doomed race in a welter of tragedy and blood. The evil wrought by Thyestes, the crimes of his grandsire Tantalus, the atrocious banquet of Atreus, have yet to be expiated in misery, in anguish and affliction. When the weird Trojan woman approaches the threshold she scents the carnage of the shambles and horrors manifold, and as the pang of inspiration thrills her she shrieks aloud: "The Furies are in this house; blood-surfeited, but not assuaged, they hold perpetual revel here. It is the crime of Atreus and of Thyestes which they hunt, and woe will follow woe."

{Greek th`n gàr stéghn th'nd? oú?pot? e?kleípei xoros
súmfðoggos ou?k eú?fwnos. ou? gàr eû? légei,
kaì mh`n pepwkw's g?, w!s ðradsúnesðai pléon,
bróteion aî!ma kw^mos e?n dómois ménei,
dúspemptos é?ksw, suggónwn E?rinúwn.}

Sophocles also no less fearfully shows us the tale of Oedipus and his children, the legend of the house of Laius, whose family was as equally famous among the Greeks as the stock of Atreus for its overwhelming disasters, the bitter fruit of an undying curse which destroyed the whole race. Laius, the son of Labdacus, had wrought a mighty evil. Lusting after the beauty of Chrysippus, the son of Pelops, with violence he raped the lad who belonged to another, and thus had sinned the sin of {Greek ú!bris} since he both betrayed another's love and used brute force in doing so.[39] For this crime his whole progeny was involved in destruction. He married Jocasta, the sister of Creon of Thebes, and the oracle warned him that his son should kill him. When a boy was born to the royal pair they cruelly exposed their child, a helpless infant, to the

{p. 159}

wild beasts on Mount Cithaeron, but the will of heaven is not frustrated by the impotence of man. Many years after as King Laius is riding privately in his chariot attended by only five servants they meet a young man upon the road. The king bids him make way, commanding him in rough and insolent terms. A quarrel arises. The stranger, a stalwart warrior, strikes down the master and certain of the servants, but one escapes and fled away for his life. Presently Oedipus solves the riddle of the monstrous Sphinx, when the Thebans, in gratitude, since their old monarch has been slain by robbers on the highway elect him to rule over them, giving him the lady Jocasta to wife. He governs the state in great prosperity, and four children are born to him, two sons, Polyneices and Eteocles; two daughters, Antigone and Ismene. It is the calm before the storm; a fearful plague afflicts the city, and when the divine Phoebus Apollo is consulted he answers that the murderer of Laius must be driven from the land. The old prophet, Teiresias, the mystic whose converse is in heaven, but who yet in his stern pride still retains much of humanity, is asked to rede the enigma. He answers with deep sighs and groans, seeking to be led home again, until goaded by the impatience and hot temper of the king he flashes forth the truth. But it is not immediately recognized, and Oedipus begins formally to inquire into the circumstances of the death of his predecessor. Detail is heaped upon detail and at last the horrible revelation forces itself upon his soul. Mad with terror, Jocasta hangs herself within her bed-chamber, and Oedipus tearing from her dress the buckles and clasps of gold strikes out his eyes that are unworthy to look upon the golden light of day. One moment a king, the next a beggar, red with parricide, polluted with the fires of incest, accursed of God and man, in the bitterness of utter dereliction he must go forth desolate and alone. He dare not even bid farewell to his sons and daughters for they are the children of doom, seed of that admixture too fearful to be named. In the next play, the Oedipus Coloneus, we find him many years afterwards, a mysterious figure set apart by heaven in awful loneliness. He is waiting in a place of peculiar sanctity, the reverent groves of the Semnai Theai, the holy goddesses of divine retribution, waiting for his silent passage to the shadowy world. And even here the evil ambitions of his sons would

{p. 160}

fain disturb him at the end. But he is far removed from the strife and passion of this world, and when young Polyneices, fair, false and fickle, endeavours to enlist his father's sympathies the lad receives the awful answer: "Dry were your eyes, hard as stone your heart, dumb your lips, when I went forth from Thebes friendless and alone. Here then is your reward: before the Walls of Thebes you shall perish, pierced by your brother's hand, and there your brother shall die slain by you." This terrible imprecation is only too terribly fulfilled, and defying the laws of King Creon, who would have the curse-polluted ghosts of the brothers seek for rest in vain even in Hades, Antigone meets her doom. Nor does Creon, the respectable Creon, weak and spiteful, impotent, yet a tyrant, escape scathless. His malice is sharply punished, owing to his own folly and cruelty he loses both wife and son, for he has forgotten that great truth which S. Thomas enunciated, that "reason is the first principle of all human works,"[40] and "the secular power is subject to the spiritual even as the body is subject to the soul." So owing to his impiety he is left without child to carry on his name, bereaved of all, broken and collapsed, piteously confessing himself--{Greek mátaion á?ndra}--feckless and foolish old man.

It has seemed worth while thus very briefly and inadequately to review these two great themes of Greek tragedy, since in both instances they set forth in detail the terrible and relentless working of a curse, which it may be said has something of that divine vengeance that visits "the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation." And so something of this old Greek doctrine was very true, for who can foresee the end of the working of a curse? Even to-day there are places and there are properties in England which owing to deeds of blood and violence in their acquisition entail some dire misfortune upon all who seek to enjoy and possess them. Such a place is the ruined Abbey of Glastonbury, and of many another house--Tintern, Newstead, Cowdray, Waverley, Barlings, Croxton, Dureford--the tale is true. De male quaesita non gaudet tertius haeres, says the old adage, and it is well known that lands wrested from the Church will not descend in due course owing to a failure of heirs. Such a case has come under my own observation, and Aubrey in his Miscellanies cites Hinton Charterhouse

{p. 161}

on Mendip and Butleigh, near Glastonbury as never having passed to the third generation. So did Cromwell's generals and adherents transmit a troubled inheritance to their descendants. Fairfax House, Putney, had its haunted chamber which was never used.

It must be remembered that a solemn curse is not merely an expletive or an imprecatory exclamation, perhaps quite meaningless, but it is far more than this; it is significant and operative. The malediction is conceived as having a certain efficacious power, and it may be noted that this force if rightly launched does not seem to exhaust itself. No more terrible fate could be imagined than for a man to become a vampire, and this was the inevitable consequence if he were not cleared of a merited malison. The old proverb says:

Curses are like young chicken
And still come home to roost.[41]

This adage is terribly exemplified in the vampire who is supposed when he returns from his grave first to attack those who on earth have been his nearest and dearest. Of all curses the parental malediction is most dreaded, and curiously enough in Macedonia, Mr. Abbott tells us that a godfather is regarded with even greater respect than the actual parents and his "malediction is dreaded even more than that of a Bishop."[42] At the present day in Greece many of the usual imprecations definitely refer to the fact that the person so cursed will become a vampire after death. Such imprecations as the following are in common use. "May the earth not receive him," ({Greek Nà mh'n ton dexthj? h! gh^s}) "May the ground not consume him" ({Greek Nà mh'n ton fálhj tò xw^ma}) "May the earth not digest thee" ({Greek H! gh^ nà mh' de xunépshj}): "May the black earth spew thee up" ({Greek H! maúrh gh^ ná s? a?nakseráshj}) "Mayest thou remain incorrupt," ({Greek Na meínhjs á?lwmtos}); "May the earth not loose thee" which is to say may the body not decompose ({Greek Nà mh' se luw'shj h! gh?}); "May the ground reject thee" ({Greek Ná se blálhj tò xw^ma}); "Mayest thou a become in the grave like rigid wood" ({Greek Koutoûki nà blhj?s}); "May the ground reject him wholly" ({Greek Tò xw^ma ?kserás? tóne}), which last phrase is the most terrible of all since it is nothing other than an unspeakably impious parody of the prayer which is uttered by the mourners at every Greek funeral {Greek O!ðeòs ?xwrés? tóne}, "May God forgive him."

{p. 162}

Since even the curse uttered by a man in moments of anger and impatience may have such terrible effects, in Greece it is necessary that there should be some expedient which may dissipate and dispel the forces to which these words have given an impetus capable of producing the most serious and horrible results. Accordingly at a Greek death-bed there is carried out a certain ritual to attain this end. A vessel of water is brought to the bedside and he throws into it a handful of salt, and when this is dissolved the sick man sprinkles with the lymph all those who are present saying: "As this salt dissolves so may my curses dissolve"; {Greek w!s luw'nei t?a?láti, nà luw!soun h!j katárais mou}. This ceremony absolves all persons whom he may have cursed in his lifetime from the evil of a ban which after death he would no longer be able to revoke. The relations and friends then solemnly forgive the dying man for ought that he may have done against them and all present declare that they bear no grudge nor anger in their hearts. It is said that if the passage be a difficult one it is supposed that somebody whom the sick man has injured has not forgiven him. If it can be guessed who this may be, he is if possible, brought to the bed-side to declare his forgiveness of any injury he may have suffered. If, however, he be dead a portion of the cerements must be sought and burned to ashes in the bed-chamber of the dying person, who is fumigated with the smoke. These elaborate precautions and the extraordinary care which is taken, for it must often be a matter of very great difficulty either to secure the attendance of the living individual or to get hold of a portion of the necessary shroud, serve to show what immense importance the modern Greek attaches to the absolution from a curse, and what horror the thought of a vampire inspires.

It is obvious that those who die unbaptized or apostate will be liable to become vampires after death, and throughout the south of Europe there still persist large numbers of ceremonies and superstitions connected with a christening whose object it is to secure the child a long, happy and healthy life.

In England as in many other countries it is thought lucky to be born on one of the great church festivals, especially if it be a Sunday. In certain districts of Yorkshire even to-day it is commonly said that "Sunday children are secure from

{p. 163}

the malice of evil spirits."[43] Again a child born on a Saturday, although he may have "to work hard for his living" is considered to enjoy occult powers, to have the faculty of second sight, to be able to see ghosts and phantoms, and indeed to be so attuned to the supernatural that he can never be harmed even by the vampire. It is very probable that as Saturday is the seventh day of the week those born upon this day are considered as akin to a seventh son, who was so popularly believed to possess extraordinary powers of healing and the like. The old English rhyme is well known, and perhaps the following is one of the most usual forms:

Monday's child is fair of face,
Tuesday's child is full of grace,
Wednesday's child is sour and grum,
Thursday's child has welcome home,
Friday's child is free in giving,
Saturday's child works hard for his living.
And the child that is born on Christmas Day
Is great, and good, and fair, and gay.

Although, as we have said, in England it is considered am omen of a happy life to be born upon some festival the exact opposite is the case in Slav countries.[44] In Greece, particularly, nothing could be more disastrous, and of all seasons Christmas Day is the most unlucky. In many districts it is accounted a terrible thing for any child to be born at any time between Christmas and the Epiphany; such babies are called {Greek e!ortopiásmata} or "feast-blasted," and after death they will assuredly become vampires. Even during life such a child is a Callicantzaros.

The Callicantzaros is one of the most extraordinary and most horrible of all the creatures of popular superstition. Leone Allacci says that they only appear and have power during the week from Christmas to New Year's Day,[45] but other authorities extend this time until Twelfth Night. During the rest of the year it is vaguely supposed that they sojourn in some mysterious Hades or under-world. Local traditions differ as to whether they are actually demons or whether they are human. Allacci, who certainly inclines to the latter view, says that children born in the octave of Christmas are liable to be seized with a terrible mania, that they rush to and fro with the most amazing speed, that their nails grow to a

{p. 164}

terrible length like the talons of a bird of prey whilst their hands become as crooked claws. If they meet any person on the highway they seize him and put the question: "Tow or lead?" If he answer: "Tow" he may escape unharmed, but if he be inadvertent enough to reply: "Lead," they grip him with terrible force, mangle him with their talons and often tear him to pieces, devouring him wholemeal.[46] During the seventeenth century this belief so strongly prevailed that the most cruel precautions were taken in the case of children who might be suspected to be liable to become Callicantzari, since the soles of their feet were exposed to a fire until the nails were singed and so their claws clipped, and even to-day in parts of Greece these practices prevail in a highly modified form, for among the Ægean islanders it is said that the small Callicantzari are particularly prone to attack and devour their own brothers and sisters, which is another strong link with the tradition of the vampire who, as we have noted before, seeks the destruction of his own kin.[47]

It is difficult to convey any idea of the popular notions concerning the appearance of a Callicantzaros, as almost every local account differs from others in almost every particular. For the most part they are considered to be very gaunt[48] and of enormous strength. On the other hand there are some who are dwarfed and stunted. The larger variety generally appear as ineffably hideous monsters with black distorted faces, eyes glaring red like fire, huge ears such as those of a donkey, great gaping mouths furnished with a slobbering scarlet tongue and sharp gleaming teeth, from which streams their fetid breath in horrid gusts. Again the pigmy Callicantzaros may appear in the shape of a child, but in this case it is usually deformed in some grotesque and painful manner. On the other hand they are sometimes harmless hobgoblins, full of mischief maybe, but objects of laughter rather than fear, though they may play many a naughty and tiresome trick not unlike the kobold and the leprechaun. A hundred tales are told of their pranks, but it is the more gruesome and the fiercer monsters with whom we are mainly concerned since it is from their ranks that the vampire is recruited, for most of them become vampires after death (a fact which seems to point to their human origin), and not infrequently they are supposed to indulge their vampirish

{p. 165}

fancies during life. It will be noticed that in the various accounts of the Callicantzari there exist many contradictions, and we must bear in mind that such diversities are often due to the original conception of these creatures, whether they are regarded as demons or monsters who are suffered to plague the countryside for a certain number of days during the Christmas season, or whether they are regarded as human beings afflicted with a terrible curse, the victims of a most horrible possession, doomed never to rest not even in the grave.

Near akin to the latter conception is the werewolf, who may be regarded as a man or woman, who either of his or her own will through black magic is able to change into the form of a wolf, or who in classical times was believed to be so changed owing to the vengeance of the gods; and in later days was believed to be so changed owing to the enchantment of a witch or some manner of diabolic possession. Moreover, a werewolf may be a person who without any actual metamorphosis is obsessed with all the savage passions and ferocity of a wolf, so that he will attack human beings in the same way as the actual wild animal.

It may be asked, is it possible that a person should be so transformed? Henry Kramer and James Sprenger, the learned authors of the supremely authoritative Malleus Maleficarum, in discussing the question distinctly answer "No, it is not possible." They allow that by horrid charms and spells a certain subjective delusion or glamour may be caused, so that by the evil art of a sorcerer a man may appear to himself and to all others who gaze upon him to be a wolf, or indeed another kind of animal, but there cannot be any actual physical change of a man into an animal. This glamour or ocular illusion is sometimes known as "sight-shifting," a convenient correlative to the accepted term "shape-shifting" which is conceived of as an objective fact. Moreover, in his De Ciuitate Dei, XVIII, 18, S. Augustine says: "Nor can the devils create anything (whatever shows of theirs produce these doubts) but only cast a changed shape over that which God has made, altering only in show. Nor do I think the devil can form any soul or body into bestial or brutal members, and essences; but they have an unspeakable way of transporting man's phantasy in a bodily shape, unto other senses (this though it be not corporal, yet seems to carry itself in corporal

{p. 166}

forms through all these things) while the bodies of the men thus affected lie in another place, being alive, but yet in an ecstasy far more deep than any sleep. Now this phantasy may appear unto other senses in a bodily shape, and a man may seem to himself to be such an one as he often thinks himself to be in his dream, and to bear burdens, which if they be true burdens indeed, the devils bear them, to delude men's eyes with the appearance of true burdens, and false shapes." We must bear in mind that these explanations come from the highest authority, one of the greatest Doctors of the Church, and will, I think, very fairly cover most of the cases of the werewolf.

In early days it was recognized that a werewolf might be a person who was afflicted with a horrible mania, and Marcellus Sidetes, who lived in the reigns of Hadrian and Antoninus Pius, circa A.D. 117-161, wrote {Greek Perì lukanðrw'pou}, a long medical poem in Greek hexameter verse, consisting of forty-two books, of which only a couple of fragments remain. He says that Lycanthropy is a disease, a kind of insanity or mania when the patient was afflicted with hideous appetites, the ferocity, and other qualities of a wolf. He further tells us that men are attacked with this madness chiefly in the beginning of the year, and become most furious in February; retiring for the night to lone cemeteries and living precisely in the manner of ravening wolves.

Under Lycanthropia, Burton[49] notes as follows: "Lycanthropia, which Avicenna calls Cucubuth, others Lupinam Insaniam, or Wolf-Madness, when men run howling about graves and fields in the night, and will not be persuaded but that they are wolves, or some such beasts. Aetius (Lib. 6, cap. 11) and Paulus (Lib. 3, cap. 16) call it a kind of melancholy; but I should rather refer it to madness, as most do. Some make a doubt of it whether there be any such disease. Donat ab Altomari (Cap. 9, Art med.) saith, that he saw two of them in his time: Wierus (De praestig. Daemonum, 1, 3, cap. 21) tells a story of such a one at Padua, 1541, that would not believe to the contrary, but that he was a wolf.

He hath another instance of a Spaniard, who thought himself a bear; Forrestus (Obseruat. lib. 10, de morbis cerebri, cap. 15) confirms as much by many examples; one amongst the rest of which he was an eye-witness, at Alcmaer, in Holland, a poor

{p. 167}

husbandman that still hunted about graves, and kept in churchyards, of a pale, black, ugly, and fearful look . . . this malady, saith Avicenna, troubleth men most in February, and is now-a-days frequent in Bohemia and Hungary, according to Heurnius (Cap. de Man.). Schernitzius will have it common in Livonia. They lie hid most part all day, and go abroad in the night, barking, howling, at graves and deserts; they have usually hollow eyes, scabbed legs and thighs, very dry and pale (Ulcerata crura, sitis ipsis adest immodica, pallidi, lingua sicca) saith Altomarus (Cap. 9, Art. Hydrophobia); he gives a reason there of all the symptoms, and sets down a brief cure of them." It is remarkable that most of these features are found in the vampire, especially the unquenchable thirst, "sitis immodica" which is emphasized by the famous physician Antonio Donato Altomari, who was one of the most learned authorities of his day. It is also remarkable that the malady is reported as being very prevalent in Bohemia, Hungary, and Livonia, countries in which the vampire is most frequently found. There is in fact a very close connexion between the werewolf and the vampire, and the lycanthropist is liable to become a vampire when he dies.

In parts of Greece, particularly in Elis,[50] it is said that even those who eat the flesh of a sheep that has been killed by a wolf are apt to become vampires after their death, and this serves to show how powerful the pollution of the werewolf was supposed to be. In Norse saga, Ingiald, the son of King Aunund, was timid whilst a boy, but after eating the heart of a wolf he gained strength and courage and became the boldest of heroes.[51] It might be thought that so far from inspiring a person with a thirst for blood the flesh of a sheep would homœopathically infuse qualities of gentleness, and indeed the Abipones of Paraguay were most careful to avoid mutton lest it should make them slack and fearful in the fight.[52] But in this instance it will be seen that the characteristics of a sheep have been absorbed, so to speak, and infected by the ferocity of the wolf. Curiously enough in Uganda the Baganda greatly fear the ghosts of sheep, which they believe would return and kill a man if they saw him give them the fatal blow. Hence when a sheep is to be killed one man occupies its attention in some way and another, whose presence the animal must not suspect, swiftly slaughters it before

{p. 168}

a glimpse of him can be caught. In this way the sheep is tricked because the ghost does not know whom to haunt and punish for its death. Moreover, sheep give health and protection to cattle, and a ram is almost invariably sent into the pastures with a herd of cows. Should a sheep die in a house nobody must dare openly to mention the fact, which may only be alluded to in the most covert and circumlocutionary phrase, for were anyone to say, "the sheep is dead," its ghost sorely angered would assuredly afflict the unlucky speaker with some disease and possibly even kill him outright.[53] It is worth noting that among the ancient Greeks it was thought that any garment made from the fleece of a sheep which had been worried or torn by a wolf would have a bad effect upon the wearer and set up some roseola and an intense irritation of the skin.[54] It is certainly curious to note the whole mass of tradition which, as it would seem, the wide world over is connected with the sheep, and in particular when this animal has been attacked or slain by a wolf.

Even as some kind of vampirish infection was held to proceed from the wolf, the vampire himself will even more strongly convey this taint, and therefore, unless the most drastic and immediate remedies are applied, a person who is attacked by a vampire and whose blood has been sucked will become a vampire in turn imbued with a craving to pass on the horrible pollution. This is perhaps, and with good reason, the most dreaded quality of the vampire, and examples thereof occur again and again in legend and history.

It is far more curious that it should be thought that those over whose dead bodies a cat or any other animal has passed should become vampires. This belief widely exists amongst Slavonic peoples, and is to be found in some parts of Greece. It also prevails in China where a cat is never allowed to enter a room with a corpse for the body still contains the Kuei, the lower or inferior soul of Yin original, and by leaping over it the cat will impart something of its original savage or tigerish nature and the dead man may become a vampire.[55] It should be explained that it is a common belief among the Chinese that there are two "souls"; the higher soul which after death seeks the divine life, the heavenly source of its being; and the lower soul, which is gross, returning to the

{p. 169}

earth and dwelling in the grave until the complete dissolution of the corpse.

It is believed among Slavonic nations, as it was firmly believed throughout England and in many districts of France, that witches turn themselves into cats, and among the Oraons (or Uraons) a primitive hill tribe of Bengal, we have a vampire cat who is a Chordewa, a witch who is able to change her soul into a black cat and who then visits and frequents the houses where there are sick and dying people. Such a cat has a peculiar way of mewing quite differently from the noise of other cats, and is easily recognized. It steals quietly into a house almost like a shadow leaps lightly on the bed, eats of the food that has been prepared for the sick man and gently licks his lips. When it is able to accomplish this latter the invalid has no chance of recovering, in which connexion we must remember, as has been remarked before, that the soul is supposed to take its departure from the mouth of a dying person. Even if this cat be seen it is extraordinarily difficult to catch it, since it has a supernatural activity and will fight and scratch with the malice of a demon. However, they say that persons have sometimes succeeded, and then the woman out of whom the cat (her soul) has come remains insensible, in a state of coma as deep as death, until the cat re-enters her body. Any wound inflicted upon the cat is produced upon her. For example if they cut it, or break a leg, or destroy its sight, the woman will simultaneously suffer the same mutilation. So great a horror had the Oraons of these witches that formerly they used to burn any person that was suspected to be a Chordewa.[56]

It is a circumstance of very frequent occurrence in the witch trials of all countries that a witch who has appeared in the likeness of a cat, a hare, or any other animal and has met with an accident or been mutilated under that form is found to be marked with the same wound or to be suffering from the same harm in her human shape when this is resumed.[57]

It is not difficult then to see why, if some animal of ill-omen,--and the cat seems to be particularly unfortunate,--leaps over a corpse, the dead person should be considered in danger of becoming a vampire. In Greece, particularly in Macedonia, the most pious care is taken to prevent any such calamity. The body is watched all night long by relatives and friends,

{p. 170}

and this is deemed a work of true charity by which they acquire great merit, it brings a blessing upon their own souls ({Greek psukikó}), if, in spite of all their care some cat does jump across the body, the dead man must be pierced through with two long "sack-needles" ({Greek sakkorráfais}), in order to secure his rest and to guard against his return. It is well to scatter mustard seed on the roof and on the threshold, and the wise man will barricade his door with brambles and thorns. Should the vampire return he cannot fail to occupy himself with counting the seeds, and it will be dawn, when he must return to his grave, long before he completes the tale. Should he endeavour to pass through the bushes he will inevitably be caught and held fast by the briars. Ralston tells us that the Serbs and the Bulgarians keep this vigil even more carefully than the Greeks. "In some places the jumping of a boy over the corpse is considered as fatal as that of a cat. The flight of a bird above the body may also be attended by the same terrible results; and so may--in the Ukraine--the mere breath of the wind from the Steppe."[58] What is extremely curious is that this tradition still lingers in the north of England, and if a cat or dog pass over a corpse the animal must be killed at once. The reason for this has been entirely forgotten, but the survival is very remarkable as showing that once there existed a dread of vampires in England which to-day is entirely forgotten. Thomas Pennant says that in Scotland: "No dog or cat must be allowed to leap over the corpse or enter the room. It is reckoned so ominous, their doing so that the poor animal is killed without mercy."[59] It is even still the custom that all animals shall be shut up till the funeral procession has left. It is believed that a cat will not remain in the house with an unburied corpse; and rooks (we know) will abandon the place till after the funeral, if the rookery be near the mansion. The explanation given by John Jamieson[60] that if a cat has leapt over a corpse the first person on to whose lap he may afterwards jump, or who may take him up in his arms, is stricken with blindness would seem to be a later invention, a reason made up to explain the ill-omen, when the vampire tradition had disappeared, and so the real reason had been entirely forgotten.

Having investigated the various reasons why any person

{p. 171}

should become a vampire, and discussed the fatal accident which may bring about this terrible doom various points present themselves which invite some inquiry. Although the belief varies in different parts of the world, and it is generally understood that vampires only operate by night, as King David says:[61] "Non timebis a timore nocturno" (Thou shalt not be afraid of the terror of the night), yet it is also supposed that under certain conditions vampires may wander abroad during the day, and that the vampire truly is daemonium meridianum (the noonday devil)." Therefore we may ask by what signs, if any, is a vampire to be recognized. Again, how does a vampire leave his grave? For we must remember that the vampire is tangible, and can make his presence felt in a very unmistakable and terrible manner. This difficulty has been very clearly stated by Dom Calmet who writes as follows: "How can a corpse which is covered with four or five feet of earth, which has no room even to move or to stretch a limb, which is wrapped in linen cerements, enclosed in a coffin of wood, how can it, I say, seek the upper air and return to the world walking upon the earth so as to cause those extraordinary effects which are attributed to it? And after all that how can it go back again into the grave, when it will be found fresh, incorrupt, full of blood exactly like a living body? Can it be maintained that these corpses pass through the earth without disturbing it, just as water and the damps which penetrate the soil or which exhale therefrom without perceptibly dividing or cleaving the ground? It were indeed to be wished that in the histories of the Return of Vampires which have been related, a certain amount of attention had been given to this point, and that the difficulty had been something elucidated.

"Let us suppose that these corpses do not actually stir from their tombs, that only the ghosts or spirits appear to the living, wherefor do these Phantoms present themselves and what is it that energizes them? Is it actually the soul of the dead man which has not yet departed to its final destination, or is it a demon who causes them to be seen in an assumed and phantastical body? And if there bodies are spectral, how do they suck the blood of the living? We are enmeshed in a sad dilemma when we ask if these apparitions are natural or miraculous.

{p. 172}

"A priest, who is recognized as possessing intellectual qualities far beyond the ordinary, told me that some little time since when he was travelling in Moravia, Mgr. Jeanin, a Canon of the, Cathedral of Olmutz, asked for his company to a village named Liebava, which the good canon was officially about to visit as Commissary of the Episcopal Court to investigate the well-authenticated reports concerning a Vampire who had recently caused much trouble and disorder in the village Liebava.

"They journeyed thither; witnesses were cited and heard; the ordinary canonical procedure was observed in every detail. The witnesses gave evidence that a certain well-known citizen who had formerly resided at Liebava after his death had sorely tormented the whole district, inasmuch as for a space of three or four years he had issued forth from the cemetery and had entered several houses. It was true these visitations were now ceased, because a certain Hungarian who passed through the village at the time when the terror was at its height avowed that he could cope with the evil and lay the Vampire to rest. In order to fulfil his promise he mounted the clock-tower of the church, and watched for the moment when the vampire came out of his grave, leaving behind him in the tomb his shroud and cerements, before he made his way to the village to plague and terrify the inhabitants.

"When the Hungarian from his coin of vantage had seen the Vampire depart on his prowl, he promptly descended from the tower possessed himself of the shroud and linen carrying them off with him back to the belfry. The Vampire in due course returned and not finding his sere-clothes cried out mightily against the thief, who from the top of the belfry was making signs to him that he should climb and recover his winding-sheet if be wished to get it back again. The Vampire, accordingly, began to clamber up the steep stair which led to the summit of the tower, but the Hungarian suddenly gave him such a blow that he fell from top to bottom. Thereupon they were able to strike off his head with the sharp edge of a sexton's spade, and that made an end of the whole business.

"The priest who related this history to me, himself saw nothing of these happenings, neither was anything witnessed

{p. 173}

by the Right Reverend Canon who was acting as Episcopal Commissioner. They only received the reports of the peasants of that district, a folk who were very ignorant, very credulous, very superstitious, and brimful of all kinds of wonderful stories concerning the aforesaid Vampire.

"For my part I think the whole history vain and utterly without foundation, and the more absurd and contradictory are the various tales which were told, the more strongly am I confirmed in the opinion which I have formed.

"Supposing, indeed, there were any truth in the accounts of these appearances of Vampires, are they to be attributed to the power of God, to the Angels, to the souls of those who return in this way, or to the Devil? If we adopt the last hypothesis it follows that the Devil can endue these corpses with subtilty and bestow upon them the power of passing through the earth without any disturbances of the ground, of gliding through the cracks and joints of a door, of slipping through a keyhole, of increasing, of diminishing, of becoming rarified as air or water to penetrate the earth; in fine of enjoying the same properties as we believe will be possessed by the Blessed after the Resurrection, and which distinguished the human Body of our Lord after the first Easter Day, inasmuch as He appeared to those to whom He would show Himself for 'Jesus cometh, the doors bein shut, and stood in the midst, and said: Peace be to you,' Jesus uenit ianuis clausis, S. John, xx, 26.

"Yet even if it be allowed that the Devil can re-energize dead bodies and give them movement for a certain time can he also bestow these powers of increasing, diminishing, becoming rarified, and so subtle that they can penetrate the earth, doors, windows? We are not told that God allows him the exercise of any such power, and it is hard to believe that a material body, gross and substantial can be endowed with this subtility and spirituality without some destruction or alteration of the general structure and without damage to the configuration of the body. But this would not be in accord with the intention of the Devil, for such a change would prevent this body from appearing, from manifesting itself, from motion and speech, ay, indeed from being eventually cut to pieces and burned as so often happens in the case of Vampires in Moravia, Poland, and Silesia."[63]

{p. 174}

These difficulties which Dom Calmet with little perception has raised can be very briefly answered, and they are not only superficial, but also smack of heterodoxy. In the first place, the story that he tells is far from satisfactory, and even if it were--what it may be--much exaggerated one can hardly brush aside the vast vampire tradition because one instance proves to be overdrawn. In any case the business of the watcher from the belfry and the demand that the Vampire should regain his shroud by climbing the stairs to the top of the tower do not bear the mark of truth, but what is certainly significant is that the Vampire was decapitated and that then the hauntings ceased. I conceive that the story of the cerements is mere elaboration, but that the grave of the Vampire was traced, opened, and that his head was severed from his body. This eliminates some highly charged details whilst it does not touch the facts of the case. So we see that the story when divested of these trappings offers nothing impossible, that is to say nothing extraordinary or unusual in such histories.

Dom Calmet asks are the appearances of Vampires to be attributed to God, or to the souls of those who return or to the Devil? I answer that for the hauntings of a Vampire, three things are necessary: the Vampire, the Devil, and the Permission of Almighty God. Just as we know, for we learn this from the Malleus Maleficarum, that there are three necessary concomitants of witchcraft, and these are the Devil, a Witch, and the Permission of Almighty God (Part 1). So are these three necessary concomitants of Vampirism. Whether it be the Demon who is energizing the corpse[64] or whether it be the dead man himself who by some dispensation of Divine Providence has returned is a particular which must be decided severally for each case. So much then for Dom Calmet's question, to whom are the appearances of Vampires to be attributed.

Can the Devil endow a body with these qualities of subtilty, rarification, increase, and diminishing, so that it may pass through doors and windows? I answer that there is no doubt the Demon can do this, and to deny the proposition is hardly orthodox. For S. Thomas says of the devil that "just as he can from the air compose a body of any form and shape, and assume it so as to appear in it visibly, so, in the same way,

{p. 175}

he can clothe any corporeal thing with any corporeal form, so as to appear therein." Moreover almost any séance will be sufficient reply to Dom Calmet's question. In his Modern Spiritism (1904), Mr. T. Godfrey Raupert says: "Photographs, or small drawing-room ornaments have thus been seen to change their places, and articles kept in a room other than that occupied by the sensitive, have been brought through closed doors and deposited at a spot previously indicated--in some instances placed into the hands of the person requesting the apport of the article. Many such remarkable instances of apport and of matter passing through matter have been observed under the strictest possible test conditions, and will be found recorded in the late Leipzig Professor Zoellner's deeply interesting work Transcendental Physics. The writer has himself observed one instance of this kind in a private house, and in circumstances entirely precluding the possibility of deception. There is, perhaps, no phenomenon which so distinctly exhibits the action of extraneous and independent intelligence as this one." (pp. 35-36.) Matter, then, can pass through matter, and the séance answers Dom Calmet. We may, if we will, adopt the ectoplasmic theory to explain the mode whereby the Vampire issues from his grave, but although this is very probably true (in some instances at all events) it is not necessarily the only solution of the problem. According to Catholic theologians evil spirits, if permitted to materialize their invisible presence, to build up a tangible and active body, do not absolutely require the ectoplasm of some medium.

Not very dissimilar to the dilemma of Dom Calmet are the views hold by an eminent authority, Dr. Herbert Mayo, who was sometime Senior Surgeon of Middlesex Hospital, Professor of Anatomy and Physiology in King's College, Professor of Comparative Anatomy in the Royal College of Surgeons, London. In his well-known work, On the Truths contained in Popular Superstitions, he devotes his second Letter, or rather Chapter, to "Vampyrism," concerning which he says "The proper place of this subject falls in the midst of a philosophical disquisition," but he adds for the benefit of the inquirer that it is "a point on which, in my time, school-boys much your juniors entertained decided opinions." He continues to inform us that during the middle of the eighteenth

{p. 176}

century: "Vampyrism spread like a pestilence through Servia and Wallachia, causing numerous deaths, and disturbing all the land with fear of the mysterious visitation, against which no one felt himself secure.

"Here is something like a good solid practical popular delusion. Do I believe it? To be sure I do. The facts are matter of history: the people died like rotten sheep; and the cause and method of their dying was, in their belief, what has just been stated. You suppose, then, they died frightened out of their lives, as men have died whose pardon has been proclaimed when their necks were already on the block, of the belief that they were going to die? Well, if that were all, the subject would still be worth examining. But there is more in it than that." He then gives an account in very full detail of a Vampire at Belgrade in the year 1732, he describes the circumstances in which the body was disinterred, It leaned to one side, the skin was fresh and ruddy, the nails grown long and evilly crooked, the mouth slobbered with blood from its last night's repast. Accordingly a stake was driven through the chest of the Vampire who uttered a terrible screech whilst blood poured in quantities from the wound. Then it was burned to ashes. Moreover, a number of other persons throughout the district had been infected with vampirism. Of the facts there can be no question whatsoever. The documents are above suspicion, and in particular the most important of these which was signed by three regimental surgeons, and formally counter-signed by a lieutenant-colonel and sub-lieutenant. Even Dr. Mayo is obliged to allow: "No doubt can be entertained of its authenticity, or of its general fidelity; the less that it does not stand alone, but is supported by a mass of evidence to the same effect. It appears to establish beyond question, that where the fear of Vampyrism prevails, and there occur several deaths, in the popular belief connected with it, the bodies, when disinterred weeks after burial, present the appearance of corpses from which life has only recently departed." It is very instructive to note how the writer proceeds with the greatest subtility and no little cleverness to extract himself from logical consequences it might have seemed impossible to avoid, and how he explains an exceptional circumstance by circumstances which are far more

{p. 177}

amazing and difficult to believe. With the utmost suavity and breadth of mind he continues: "What inference shall we draw from this fact?--that Vampyrism is true in the popular sense?--and that these fresh-looking and well-conditioned corpses had some mysterious source of preternatural nourishment? That would be to adopt, not to solve the superstition. Let us content ourselves with a notion not so monstrous, but still startling enough: that the bodies, which were found in the so-called Vampyr state, instead of being in a new or mystical condition, were simply alive in the common way or had been so for some time subsequently to their interment that, in short, they were the bodies of persons who had been buried alive, and whose life, where it yet lingered, was finally extinguished through the ignorance and barbarity of those who disinterred them. . . . We have thus succeeded in interpreting one of the unknown terms in the Vampyr-theorem. The suspicious character, who had some dark way of nourishing himself in the grave, turns out to be an unfortunate gentleman (or lady) whom his friends had buried under a mistake while he was still alive, and who, if they afterwards mercifully let him alone, died sooner or later either naturally or of the premature interment--in either case, it is to be hoped, with no interval of restored consciousness." I submit that Dr. Mayo has not succeeded in solving any difficulty at all connected with vampirism. No doubt, as we have already considered in some detail, cases of premature burial, which were far more common than was generally supposed, would have helped to swell the tradition, but that they can have originated it is impossible, and it is absurd to put forward the terrible accident of premature burial as an explanation to cover all the facts. It is quite impossible that a person who had been interred when in a coma or trance should have survived in the grave.

Before we deal with the signs by which it is reputed a vampire may be recognized; the method in which a vampire presumably leaves his grave; and the way by which a vampire may be released or destroyed, we will briefly inquire into Dr. Mayo's explanation of the actual visit of the vampire to a victim and the subsequent consequences, the terrible anæmia and hæmoplegia which may result in death followed by the vampire infection. And here we find that Dr. Mayo

{p. 178}

quite honestly and frankly confesses that he is completely at a loss to give any solution of the difficulty. It is most instructive to read those inconclusive pleas which he is driven to put forward but which his own good sense cannot accept. He writes: "The second element which we have yet to explain is the Vampyr visit and its consequences,--the lapse of the party visited into death-trance. There are two ways of dealing with this knot; one is to cut it, the other to untie it.

"It may be cut, by denying the supposed connexion between the Vampyr visit and the supervention of death-trance in the second party. Nor is the explanation thus obtained devoid of plausibility. There is no reason why death-trance should not, in certain persons and places, be epidemic. Then the persons most liable to it would be those of weak and irritable nervous systems. Again, a first effect of the epidemic might be further to shake the nerves of weaker subjects. These are exactly the persons who are likely to be infected with imaginary terrors, and to dream, or even to fancy, they have seen Mr. or Mrs. such a one, the last victim of the epidemic. The dream or impression upon the senses might again recur, and the sickening patient have already talked of it to his neighbours, before he himself was seized with death-trance. On this supposition the Vampyr visit would sink into the subordinate rank of a mere premonitory symptom.

"To myself, I must confess, this explanation, the best I am yet in a position to offer, appears barren and jejune; and not at all to do justice to the force and frequency, or, as tradition represents the matter, the universality of the Vampyr visit as a precursor of the victim's fate. Imagine how strong must have been the conviction of the reality of the apparition, how common a feature it must have been, to have led to the laying down of the unnatural and repulsive process customarily followed at the Vampyr's grave, as the regular and proper preventive of ulterior consequences." Dr. Mayo proposes therefore "to try and untie this knot" a result which he singula

Send to:

Message:
Public:	0 / characters used

Gift:	( cr) by ( cr) by ( cr)
	*Select product OR music to send as a gift

Gift Product:

Gift Music:

Gift wrap:
	Note: Gifts can only be purchased with credits.
Recaptcha:	Type the two words shown above.



	Reset Giftlist: To permanently remove your giftlist items from the Gift product menu please Click here