“I knew,” he said, “a certain person who, for some misdemeanours committed in the Morea, fled over to the Isle of Milo, where, though he escaped the hand of justice, he could not avoid the sentence of excommunication, from which he could no more fly than from the conviction of his own conscience, or the guilt which ever attended him; for the fatal hour of his death being come, and the sentence of the Church not revoked, the body was carelessly and without solemnity interred in some retired and unfrequented place. In the meantime the relatives of the deceased were much afflicted and anxious for the sad estate of their dead friend, whilst the peasants and islanders were every night affrighted and disturbed with strange and unusual apparitions, which they immediately concluded arose from the grave of the accursed excommunicant, which, according to their custom, they immediately opened, when they found the body uncorrupted, ruddy, and the veins replete with blood. The coffin was furnished with grapes, apples, and nuts, and such fruits as the season afforded. Whereupon, consultation being taken, the Kaloires resolved to make use of the common remedy in those cases, which was to cut and dismember the body into several parts and to boil it in wine, as the approved means of dislodging the evil spirit and disposing the body to a dissolution. But the friends of the deceased, being willing and desirous that the corpse should rest in peace and some ease given to the departed soul, obtained a reprieve from the clergy, and hoped that for a sum of money (they being persons of a competent estate) a release might be purchased from the excommunication under the hand of the Patriarch. In this manner the corpse was for a little while freed from dissection, and letters thereupon sent to Constantinople with this direction, That in case the Patriarch should condescend to take off the excommunication, that the day, hour, and minute that he signed the remission should be inserted in the document. And now the corpse was taken into the church (the country people not being willing it should remain in the field), and prayers and masses were daily said for its dissolution and the pardon of the offender; when one day, after many prayers, supplications, and offerings (as this Sofrino attested to me with many protestations), and whilst he himself was heard performing divine service, on a sudden was heard a rumbling noise in the coffin of the dead party, to the fear and astonishment of all persons then present; which when they had opened they found the body consumed and dissolved as far into its first principles of earth as if it had been several years interred. The hour and minute of this dissolution was immediately noted and precisely observed, which being compared with the date of the Patriarch’s release when it was signed at Constantinople, it was found exactly to agree with that moment in which the body returned to its ashes.”