n no doubt that
these are the bodies of criminal and malevolent men, which come out of
their graves and cause the death of those who see and reply to them;
or that it is the demon, who makes use of their bodies to frighten
mortals, and cause their death.

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

Footnotes:

[514] Vide Malva. lib. i. Turco-graecia, pp. 26, 27.

[515] Vide Bolland. mense Augusto, tom. ii. pp. 201-203, et Allat.
Epist. ad Zachiam, p. 12.

CHAPTER XXXI.

INSTANCE OF THE REAPPEARANCES OF THE EXCOMMUNICATED.

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

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

But the relations of the dead man, by dint of entreaties, succeeded in
deferring this execution, and in the mean time sent in all haste to
Constantinople, to obtain the absolution of the young man from the
patriarch. Meanwhile, the body was placed in the church, and every day
prayers were offered up for the repose of his soul. One day when the
caloyer Sophronius, above mentioned, was performing divine service,
all on a sudden a great noise was heard in the coffin; they opened it,
a