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The Greek Church at one time taught that the bodies of persons upon whom the ban of excommunication had been passed did not undergo decomposition after death until such sentence had been revoked by the pronouncement of absolution over the remains, and that, while the bodies remained in this uncorrupted condition, the spirits of the individuals wandered up and down the earth seeking sustenance from the blood of the living. The non-corruption of a body, however, was also held to be one of the proofs of sanctity; but, in this case, the body preserved its natural colour and gave an agreeable odour, whereas the bodies of the excommunicated generally turned black, swelled out like a drum, and emitted an offensive smell. Very frequently, however, when the graves of suspected vampires were opened, the faces were found to be of ruddy complexion and the veins distended with blood, which, when opened with a lancet, yielded a supply of blood as plentiful, fresh, and free as that found in the veins of young and healthy living human beings. For many centuries in the history of Greek Christianity there was scarcely a village that had not its own local vampire stories which were related by the inhabitants and vouched for by them as having either occurred within their own knowledge or been related to them by their parents or relatives as having come within their personal observation or been verified by them.

The bodies of murderers and suicides were also held to be exempt from the law of dissolution of the mortal remains until the Church granted release from the curse entailed upon them by such act. The priests, by this assumption of power over the body as well as over the soul, made profitable use of this superstitious belief by preying upon the fears and credulity of the living. They also included in this ecclesiastical law of exemption from corruption after death those who in their lives had been guilty of heinous sins, those who had tampered with the magic arts, and all who had been cursed during life by their parents. These were all said to become vampires. This belief spread to other branches of the Christian Church, and the story is related that St Libentius, Archbishop of Bremen, who died 4th January 1013, once excommunicated a gang of pirates, one of whom died shortly afterwards and was buried in Norway. Seventy years afterwards his body was found quite entire and uncorrupted, nor did it fall to ashes until it had received absolution from the Bishop Alvareda.

Leo Allatius, a Roman Catholic, describes a corpse which he found in an undecomposed condition. He implies that the Greeks connected the circumstance with the power invested in them by the text: “Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven,” and by which they hold that the soul is excluded from all hope of participation in future bliss so long as the body remains undecomposed. Poqueville, another writer, also states that whenever a bishop or priest excommunicated a person he added to the general sentence of excommunication the words: “After death, let not thy body have power to dissolve.”

A manuscript was discovered many years ago in the Church of St Sophia at Thessalonica, which is an interesting commentary upon the power claimed by the Church over excommunicated bodies. The manuscript states that:

(1) Whoever has been laid under any curse or received any injunction from his deceased parents that he has not fulfilled, after his death the forepart of his body remains entire;

(2) Whoever has been the object of any anathema appears yellow after death, and the fingers are shrivelled;

(3) Whoever appears white has been excommunicated by the divine laws;

(4) Whoever appears black has been excommunicated by a bishop.

It was held possible to discover, by means of these signs, the crime for which, as well as the person on whom, the judgment had been pronounced. One horrible result of this ghastly superstition was the custom which was at one time prevalent among the Greeks of Salonica, as well as the Bulgarians in the centre of European Turkey, and other nations, of disinterring indiscriminately the bodies of the dead after they had been buried for twelve months, in order to ascertain from the condition of the remains whether the souls were in heaven or hell, or perambulating the neighbourhood as vampires.

This assumed ecclesiastical power acted occasionally, however, injuriously on the clergy themselves. There is on record one instance where a priest was killed in revenge for the death of a man whose illness was attributed to the sentence of excommunication that had been passed upon him. On another occasion a bishop of some diocese in Morea was robbed by a band of brigands as he was passing through a portion of the Maniate territory. When the deed was done the mountaineers bethought themselves that the bishop would, in all probability, excommunicate them as soon as he reached a place of safety. They saw no means of averting this, to them, dreadful calamity, except by the committal of a further and more heinous crime; and so they set out in pursuit of the unfortunate bishop, whom they eventually overtook and murdered.

Many years ago a Greek of Keramia complained to the Pasha of Khania that the papás of his village had excommunicated him and so been the indirect cause of his having been bewitched. The Pasha sent for the priest, threw him into prison, and only released him upon payment of a fine of 300 piastres.

During a local war a native of Theriso was taken ill: the cry went up: “It is an aphorismos.” The papás was accused, reviled, and threatened with murder unless the curse was removed; but the man continued to get worse, and eventually died. So firm was the belief of everyone in the neighbourhood that the ban had caused the man’s death that some of his companions regarded it as a duty to avenge his fate, and, in consequence, they sought out the priest and shot him.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century the Metropolitan of Larissa was informed that a papás had disinterred two bodies and thrown them into the Haliæmon on pretence of their being vrukólakas. Upon being summoned before the bishop the priest admitted the truth of the accusation, and justified his act by saying that a report had been current that a large animal, accompanied with flames, had been seen to issue from the grave in which these two bodies had been buried. The bishop fined the priest 250 piastres, and sent a proclamation throughout the diocese that, in future, similar offences would be punished with double that fine and be accompanied with loss of position.

Martin Crusius tells the following curious story. There were about the court of Mahomet II. a number of men learned in Greek and Arabic literature, who had investigated a variety of points connected with the Christian faith. They informed the Sultan that the bodies of persons excommunicated by the Greek clergy did not decompose, and when he inquired whether the effect of absolution was to dissolve them, he was answered in the affirmative. Upon this, he sent orders to Maximus, the Patriarch of that period, to produce a case by which the truth of the statement might be tested. The Patriarch convened his clergy in great trepidation, and after long deliberation they ascertained that a woman had been excommunicated by the previous Patriarch for the commission of grievous sins. They ascertained the whereabouts of her grave, and when they had opened it they found that the corpse was entire, but swollen out like a drum. When the news of this reached the Sultan, he despatched some of his officers to possess themselves of the body, which they did, and deposited it in a safe place. On an appointed day the liturgy was said over it and the Patriarch recited the absolution in the presence of the officials. As this was being done—wonderful to relate!—the bones were heard to rattle as they fell apart in the coffin, and at the same time, the narrator adds, the woman’s soul was also freed from the punishment to which it had been condemned. The courtiers at once ran and informed the Sultan, who was astonished at the miracle, and exclaimed: “Of a surety the Christian religion is true.” Calmet also relates this story, and adds that the body was found to be entirely black and much swollen; that it was placed in a chest under the Emperor’s seal, which chest was not opened until three days after the absolution had been pronounced, when the body was seen to be reduced to ashes.

During the long war between the Christians and Mohammedans in the island of Crete, it became a matter of astonishment that ravages caused by vampires were no longer the subject of conversation. “How can it be, when the number of deaths is so great, that none of those that die become katakhanás?” was the question asked, to be met with the answer: “No one ever becomes a katakhaná if he dies in time of war.”

Leo Allatius also relates that he was told by Athanasius, Metropolitan of Imbros, that, on one occasion, being earnestly entreated to pronounce the absolution over a number of corpses that had long remained undecomposed, he consented to do so, and before the recitation was concluded they all fell away into ashes.

Rycaut relates a similar occurrence, to which he appends the following remark: “This story I should not have judged worth relating, but that I heard it from the mouth of a grave person who says that his own eyes were witnesses thereof.”

The Hydhræans (or Hydhrioks) say there used to be a great number of vampires in Hydhra, and that their present freedom is to be attributed solely to the exertions of their bishop, who banished them all to Santoréhe, where, on the desert isle, they now exist in great numbers, wandering about, rolling stones down the slope towards the sea, “as may be heard by anyone who passes near, in a kaík, during the night.”

At the second Council of Limoges, held in 1031, the Bishop of Cahors made the following statement: “A knight of my diocese being killed in a state of excommunication, I refused to comply with the request of his friends, who solicited me earnestly to give him absolution. My resolution was to make an example of him, in order to strike terror into others. Notwithstanding this, he was buried in a church dedicated to St Peter by some soldiers or knights without any ecclesiastical ceremony, without any leave, and without the assistance of any priest. The next morning his body was found out of the grave, perfectly entire, and without any token of its having been touched. The soldiers who buried him opened the grave and found nothing but the linen which had been wrapped about his body. They then buried him afresh and covered the grave with an enormous quantity of earth and stones. The next day the corpse was found out of the grave again, and there were no symptoms of anyone having been at work. The same thing was repeated five times, and at last they buried him in unconsecrated ground, at a distance from the churchyard, when no further incident occurred.”

Rycaut states that the following story was related to him with many asseverations of truth by a grave Candive Kalois called Sofronio, a preacher, and a person of no mean repute and learning at Smyrna.

“I knew,” he said, “a certain person who, for some misdemeanours committed in the Morea, fled over to the Isle of Milo, where, though he escaped the hand of justice, he 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 revoked, the body was carelessly and without solemnity interred in some retired and unfrequented place. In the meantime the relatives of the deceased were much afflicted and anxious for the sad estate of their dead friend, whilst the peasants and islanders were every night affrighted and disturbed with strange and unusual apparitions, which they immediately concluded arose from the grave of the accursed excommunicant, which, according to their custom, they immediately opened, when they found the body uncorrupted, ruddy, and the veins replete with blood. The coffin was furnished with grapes, apples, and nuts, and such fruits as the season afforded. Whereupon, consultation being taken, 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 boil it in wine, as the approved means of dislodging the evil spirit and disposing the body to a dissolution. But the friends of the deceased, being willing and desirous that the corpse should rest in peace and some ease given to the departed soul, obtained a reprieve from the clergy, and hoped 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 corpse was for a little 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 document. And now the corpse was taken into the church (the country people not being willing it should remain in the field), and prayers and masses were daily said for its dissolution and the pardon of the offender; when one day, after many prayers, supplications, and offerings (as this Sofrino attested to me with many protestations), and whilst he himself was heard performing divine service, on 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 several years interred. The hour and minute of this dissolution was immediately noted and precisely observed, which being compared with the date of the Patriarch’s release when it was signed at Constantinople, it was found exactly to agree with that moment in which the body returned to its ashes.”

In most countries the vampire was regarded as a night-wanderer, but resting in its grave on Friday night, so that the ceremony of absolution had to be performed on that night or during Saturday, because, if the spirit was out on its rambles when the ceremony took place, it was unavailing.

The Sfakians generally believe that the ravages committed by these night-wanderers used in former times to be far more frequent than they are at the present day, and that they have become comparatively rare solely in consequence of the increased zeal and skill possessed by members of the sacerdotal order.

Tournefort relates an entertaining story of a vampire that woefully annoyed the inhabitants of Myconi. Prayers, processions, stabbing with swords, sprinklings of holy water, and even pouring the latter in large quantities down the throat of the refractory vroucolaca were all tried in vain. An Albanian who chanced to be at Myconi objected to two of these remedies. It was no wonder the devil continued in, he said, for how could he possibly come through the holy water? And as to swords, they were equally effectual in preventing his exit, for their handles being crosses, he was so much terrified that he dare not pass them. To obviate the latter objection, he recommended that Turkish scymetars should be used. The scymetars were accordingly put in requisition, but the pertinacious devil still retained his hold of the corpse and played his pranks with as much vigour as ever. At length, when all the respectable inhabitants were packing up to take flight to Syra or Tinos, an effectual method of ousting the vroucolaca was fortunately suggested. The body was committed to the flames on January 1st, 1701, and the spirit being thus forcibly ejected from its abode, was rendered incapable of doing further mischief.

There is a story told of St Stanislaus raising to life a man who had been dead for three years, whom he called to life in order that he might give evidence on the saint’s behalf in a court of justice. After having given his evidence, the resuscitated man returned quietly to his grave.