nans_, of Hungary, Moravia, and
similar ones, which appear only for a little time in their natural
bodies.

Footnotes:

[452] The reverend fathers the Bollandists, believed that the life of
St. Stanislaus, which they had printed, was very old, and nearly of
the time of the martyrdom of the saint; or at least that it was taken
from a life by an author almost his cotemporary, and original. But
since the first edition of this dissertation it has been observed to
me that the thing was by no means certain; that M. Baillet, on the 7th
of May, in the critical table of authors, asserts that the life of St.
Stanislaus was only written 400 years after his death, from uncertain
and mutilated memoirs. And in the life of the saint he owns that it is
only the tradition of the writers of the country which can render
credible the account of the resurrection of Pierre. The Abbe Fleuri,
tom. xiii. of the Ecclesiastical History, l. 62, year 1079, does not
agree either to what is written in that life or to what has followed
it. At any rate, the miracle of the resurrection of Pierre is related
as certain in a discourse of John de Polemac, delivered at the Council
of Constance, 1433; tom. xii. Councils, p. 1397.

CHAPTER IV.

CAN A MAN WHO IS REALLY DEAD APPEAR IN HIS OWN BODY?

If what is related of vampires were certainly true, the question here
proposed would be frivolous and useless; they would reply to us
directly--In Hungary, Moravia, and Poland, persons who were dead and
interred a long time, have been seen to return, to appear, and torment
men and animals, suck their blood, and cause their death.

These persons come back to earth in their own bodies; people see them,
know them, exhume them, try them, impale them, cut off their heads,
burn them. It is then not only possible, but very true and very real,
that they appear in their own bodies.

It might be added in support of this belief, that the Scriptures
themselves give instances of these apparitions: for example, at the
Transfiguration of our Saviour, Elias and Moses appeared on Mount
Tabor,[453] there conversing with Jesus Christ. We know that Elias is
still alive. I do not cite him as an instance; but in regard to Moses,
his death is not doubtful; and yet he appeared bodily talking with
Jesus Christ. The dead who came out of their graves at the
resurrection of the Saviour,[454] and who appeared to many persons in
Jerusalem, had been in their sepulchres for sever