'Then there is a commotion and they run to the grave and dig to see the remains of the man . . . and the dead man—one who has long been dead and buried—appears to them to have flesh and blood and nails and hair . . . and they collect wood and set fire to it and burn the body and do away with it altogether. . . .'
Then, after denying the reality of such things, which exist in imagination ([Greek: kata phantasian]) only, the nomocanon with some inconsistency continues: 'But know that when such remains be found, the which, as we have said, is a work of the Devil, ye must summon the priests to chant an invocation of the Mother of God, . . . and to perform memorial services for the dead with funeral-meats[1].'
Allatius then leaving the nomocanon pronounces his own views. 'It is the height of folly to deny altogether that such bodies are sometimes found in the graves incorrupt, and that by use of them the Devil, if God permit him, devises horrible plans to the hurt of the human race.' He therefore advocates the burning of them, always accompanied by prayers.
To the fact of non-decomposition he cites several witnesses—among them Crusius[2] who narrates the case of a Greek's body being found by Turks in this condition after the man had been two years dead and being burnt by them. Moreover Allatius himself claims to have been an eye-witness of such a scene when he was at school in Chios. A tomb having for some reason been opened at the church of St Antony, 'on the top of the bones of other men there was found lying a corpse perfectly whole; it was unusually tall of stature; clothes it had none, time or moisture having caused them to perish; the skin was distended, hard, and livid, and so swollen everywhere, that the body had no flat surfaces but was round like a full sack[3]. The face was covered with hair dark and curly; on the head there was little hair, as also on the rest of the body, which appeared smooth all over; the arms by reason of the swelling of the corpse were stretched out on each side like the arms of a cross; the hands) and the appropriate funeral-meats ([Greek: kollyba]) see below, pp. 534 ff.], 'like a (distended) wine-skin,' [Greek: Politês, Parad.] I. 575.]
