Acilius Aviola was (according to Pliny) concluded dead, both by his domestics and physicians; he was accordingly laid out upon the ground for some time, and then carried forth to his funeral pile: but as soon as the flames began to catch his body, he cried out that he was alive, imploring the assistance of his schoolmaster, who was the only person that had tarried by him: but it was too late; for encompassed with flames, he was dead before he could be succoured.
XXII.
Plato tells us of Erus Armenius being slain in battle, among many others; when they came to take up the dead bodies upon the tenth day after, they found, that though all the other carcases were putrid, this of his was entire and uncorrupted; they therefore carried it home, that it might have the just and due funeral rites performed to it. Two days they kept it at home in that state, and on the twelfth day, he was carried out to the funeral pile; and being ready to be laid upon it, he returned to life, to the admiration of all that were present. He declared several strange and prodigious things, which he had seen and known, during all that time that he had remained in the state of the dead.
XXIII.
One of the noble family of the Tatoreidi, being seized with the plague in Burgundy, was supposed to die thereof, and was put into a coffin to be carried to the sepulchres of his ancestor, which were distant from that place some four German miles. Night coming on, the corpse was disposed in a barn, and there attended by some rustics. These perceived a great quantity of fresh blood to drain through the chinks of the coffin; whereupon they opened it, and found that the body was wounded by a nail that was driven into the shoulder through the coffin; and that the wound was much torn by the jogging of the chariot he was carried in; but withal, they discovered that the natural heat had not left his breast. They took him out, and laid him before the fire: he recovered as out of a deep sleep, ignorant of all that had passed. He afterwards married a wife, by whom he had a daughter; married afterwards to Huldericus a Psirt; from his daughter came Sigismundus a Psirt, chief Pastor of St. Mary’s Church in Basil.
XXIV.
In the year 1650 Anne Green was tried at Oxford, before Serjeant Umpton Croke, for the murder of her bastard child, and by him sentenced to be hanged; which sentence was accordingly executed on the fourteenth day of December, in the Castle-Yard, Oxford, where she hung about half an hour, being pulled by the legs, and, after all, had several strokes given her on the stomach with the butt end of a musket. Being cut down, she was put into a coffin, and carried to a house to be dissected; where when they opened the coffin, notwithstanding the rope remained fast jammed round her neck, they perceived her breast to rise: whereupon one Mason, a tailor, intending an act of humanity, stamped on her breast and belly; and one Oran, a soldier, struck her with the butt end of his musket. After all this, when Sir William Patty, Dr. Willis, and Mr. Clarke, came to prepare the body for dissection, they perceived some small rattling in her throat, which induced them to desist from their original design, and began to use means for her recovery; in which they were so successful, that within fourteen hours she began to speak, and the next day talked and prayed very heartily. Nor did the humanity of the Doctors stop, till by obtaining a pardon for her, they secured that life, which their skill had restored. She was afterwards married, had three children, lived in good repute among her neighbours, at Steeple-Barton, and died in 1659. What was very remarkable, and distinguished the hand of Providence in her recovery, she was found to be innocent of the crime for which she suffered; and it appeared the child had never been alive, but came from her spontaneously, four months after conception.
XXV.
In the year 1658, Elizabeth, the servant of one Mrs. Cope, of Magdalen parish, Oxford, was convicted of killing her bastard child, and was according hanged at Green-ditch, where she hung so long, that one of the by-standers said, if she was not dead, he would be hanged for her. When cut down, the gallows being very high, she fell with such violence to the ground, that seemed sufficient of itself to have killed her. After this, she was put in a coffin, and carried to the George Inn, in Magdalen parish; where signs of life being observed in her, she was blooded, and put to bed to a young woman; by which means she came to herself, and, to all appearance, might have lived many years: but the next night, she was, by the order of one Mallony, a bailiff of the city, barbarously dragged to Gloucester Green, and there was hanged upon a tree, till she was dead.