Invoke the ban against them,
That they no more return to this neighbourhood.
By Heaven be ye exorcised! By Earth be ye exorcised!
Greek Christianity, as already stated, has been credited by many with the origin of the vampire belief, but this contention is hardly borne out by facts. The belief was undoubtedly developed greatly under the influence of the Greek Church, and utilised by the Greek priests as an additional power which they possessed over the people. It did not become prominent in Greece until after the establishment of Christianity, and there are many remarkable stories told of vampire apparitions among the Slavonic races bordering on Greece, as well as among the Arabians. In later times, Father Richard, a French Jesuit of the seventeenth century, went as a missionary to the Archipelago, and has left an account of the islands of Santerini in which he discourses at length upon the bucolacs or vampires of that district.
Some Greeks believe that the spectre which appears is not really the soul of the deceased, but an evil spirit which enters his body after the soul of the owner has been withdrawn. Thus Leo Allatius, in describing the belief, says: “The corpse is entered by a demon which is the source of ruin to unhappy men. For frequently emerging from the tomb in the form of that body and roaming about the city and other inhabited places, especially by night it betakes itself to any house it fancies, and, after knocking at the door, addresses one of the inmates in a loud tone. If the person answers he is done for: two days after that he dies. If he does not answer he is safe. In consequence of this, all the people in Chios, if anyone calls to them by night, never reply the first time; for if a second call is given they know that it does not proceed from the vrykolaka but from someone else.”
In the Menées des Grecs it is recorded that an ecclesiastic of Scheti, being excommunicated by his superior for some act of disobedience, quitted the desert and came to Alexandria, where he was apprehended by the governor of the city, stripped of his religious habit, and strongly solicited to sacrifice to the idols of the place. The man bravely resisted the temptation, and was tortured in several ways, till at last they cut off his head, and threw his body out of the city to be devoured by dogs. The next night it was carried away by the Christians, who, having embalmed it and wrapped it up in fine linen, interred it in an honourable part of the church with all the respect due to the remains of a martyr. But at the next celebration of the Mass, upon the deacons crying out aloud as usual, “Let the catechumens and all who do not communicate retire,” his grave instantly opened and the martyr retired into the church porch. When Mass was over he came again of his own accord into the grave. Not long afterwards it was revealed by an angel to a holy person, who had continued three days in prayer, that the deceased ecclesiastic had been excommunicated by his superior, and would continue bound till that same superior had reversed the sentence. Upon this a messenger was despatched to the desert after the holy anchorite, who ordered the grave to be opened and absolved the deceased, who, after this, continued in his grave in peace.
Pitton de Tournefort, in his Voyage into the Levant, gives the following interesting account: “We were present at a very different scene and one very barbarous at Myconi. The man, whose story we are going to relate, was a peasant of Myconi, naturally ill-natured and quarrelsome; this is a circumstance to be taken notice of in such a case: he was murdered in the fields, nobody knew how or by whom. Two days after his being buried in a chapel in the town it was noised about that he was seen to walk about in the night with great haste, that he tumbled about other people’s goods, put out their lamps, gripped them behind, and played a dozen other monkey tricks. At first the story was received with laughter, but the thing was looked upon seriously when the better sort of people began to complain of it: the papás themselves gave credit to the fact, and no doubt had their reasons for so doing; masses were duly said; but for all this the peasant drove his old trade and heeded nothing they could do. After divers meetings of the chief people of the city, of priests and monks, it was gravely concluded that it was necessary in consequence of some musty ceremonial to wait till the ninth day after the interment should be expired.
“On the tenth day they said one Mass in the chapel where the body was laid in order to drive out the demon which they imagined was got into it. After Mass they took up his body and got everything ready for blowing out his heart.... The corpse stunk so abominably that they were obliged to burn frankincense, but the smoke mixing with the exhalations from the carcase increased the stench; every person averred that the blood of the corpse was extremely red. The butcher swore that the body was still warm....”
Pitton concludes the story by ridiculing the theory that this was the body of a vampire or vroucolaca.