PseudoPod 454: Eastern Promise
- Author : Stewart Horn
- Narrators : Ian Stuart and Hugo Jackson
- Host : Alasdair Stuart
- Audio Producer : Graeme Dunlop
- Discuss on Forums
“Eastern Promise” originally appeared in Crowded Magazine issue 2, 2013.
Eastern Promise by Stewart Horn‘In more western parts of Europe, incorrupt corpses were apt to induce almost the opposite response. A lack of decay was taken to be evidence that the individual had died in a state of perfect grace, immaculate and sinless. There are reputed to be whole, perfect bodies secreted among the other saintly relics in churches all over France, Spain, Italy and Prussia, and all those that remain intact have since been canonized. Many such corpses were said to emanate an ‘odour of sanctity’ for some time after death, described as akin to the smell of fresh flowers; it may be principally this olfactory phenomenon, coupled with geographical and religious incidence, that determined which corpses were worshipped as saints, and which destroyed as demons or vampires.’
M. Rhodes, Demonology and Vampirism in Europe, 1897
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