Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/424

 place by marking on it the sign of the cross and the letters I. X. N. K. ([Greek: Iêsous Christos nika], 'Jesus Christ conquers'), both of them with the avowed purpose of preventing any evil spirit from entering the dead body and making of it a vrykolakas. In Rhodes a piece of ancient pottery, inscribed with the same words but marked with the pentacle instead of the cross, is placed in the mouth of the dead for the same purpose. Clearly then in these two islands this ecclesiastical view has been fully accepted by the people; and what I can illustrate by customs in these cases I know to be equally true of Greece in general. Whenever an explanation is sought of the resuscitation of the dead, the answer, if any be forthcoming, lays the responsibility for it on the Devil.

This opinion, as I have said, is abundantly justified by the conduct of modern vrykolakes; but I am inclined to think that it was held also, by the Church at any rate, in the pre-Slavonic age when revenants were of a less diabolical character. The actual practice of excommunication was thought to have been instituted by St Paul, who twice speaks of 'delivering persons unto Satan .' The early ecclesiastical interpretation of this phrase is clearly given by Theodoretus ; commenting upon the sentence, "To deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus," he draws special attention to the fact that the body, and not the soul, is to be subjected to diabolic affliction, and then adds, 'We are taught by this, that those who are excommunicated, that is to say, severed from the body of the Church, will be assailed by the devil when he finds them void of grace.' In other words, the bodily punishment inflicted by the act of excommunication was 'possession' by the devil.

Now Theodoretus, it is true, says nothing in this passage as to the continuance of the punishment after death. But clearly if demoniacal possession was the effect of excommunication, and if also, as we have seen, the sentence of excommunication remained valid after death, it must have followed that the dead body no less, pp. 335 and 339.]