In the ancient chronicles there is a mention of the dead, whose bodies remained incorrupt for centuries and looked as if people had just fallen asleep. In the common people, the finds of such "living corpses" caused mystical fear. The strange dead were mistaken for vampires - they cut off their heads, drove an aspen stake into their hearts, and then burned their bodies, thereby destroying evidence of the existence of the phenomenon of incorruptibility. And now people interested in this phenomenon are forced to collect information bit by bit …
Here are some examples from the facts collected by the researchers.
… In 1485 Rome was excited by an extraordinary fact. The Roman Chronicles, a chronicle of the events of that time, reported about him very reliably and in detail. Lombard masons at the construction site of the Church of Santa Maria Nuova found a sarcophagus with the body of a girl. She - apparently about fifteen years old - lay as if alive. The complexion is fresh. The skin is damp. Lips bright, scarlet … But the most amazing thing was that she smiled gently and calmly, as if she had a wonderful dream … All Rome came running to this spectacle, there was such a crush that several curious people were trampled. And then Pope Innocent, fearing that the dead pagan would not be declared a saint by the will of the people, ordered to remove the body from the sarcophagus … When they lifted her, she was still warm, as if full of living blood streaming through the veins … having developed, fell on the shoulders and chest,why she became even more beautiful … Then the papal soldiers secretly buried her at night somewhere near Porto Pincho.
The story, placed in the Roman Chronicles, for many centuries inspired writers and history buffs, who put forward various assumptions about the dead beauty, whose physical attractiveness has not been taken away by time.
At the end of the 15th century, anatomical examination of corpses, including forensic autopsy, was strictly prohibited. Therefore, the girl from the sarcophagus avoided the surgeon's lancet, or at least a needle, with the help of which it would be possible to understand whether she had preserved blood circulation.
A century and a half later, the corpse of the French nun Roselyn, preserved without any signs of decomposition, was still examined by doctors.
Roselyn was a nun for over forty years in the community of Dominicans in the Provencal area of La Sel-Roubaud. The chronicle of the monastery does not mention whether she was distinguished by special piety during her lifetime. Therefore, the rest of the nuns were sincerely amazed when, after the death of her 60-year-old sister Roselyn, her body retained the appearance of living, her skin elastic, and her eyes shine. The nuns called a doctor. He ruled out lethargy, and Roselyn was buried in the monastery cemetery. Five years later, her grave was opened and was convinced with horror: Roselyn had not changed at all.
In the summer of 1660, King Louis XIV of France arrived at the monastery with his mother, Anna of Austria. The worthy guests gazed in amazement at the body that had not changed for three centuries. It gave the impression of being alive (of course, only the face and hands were open). After that, the young king studied the eyes of the nun with no less interest, which were as if alive. Then he turned to the court physician Antoine Vayot to pierce his eye with tweezers. The wounded eyeball reacted in the same way as the eye of a living person: the pupil narrowed, lost its luster, and a drop of pinkish liquid flowed out from the puncture site. When Anna of Austria, after leaving the monastery, scolded her son, he, with his usual directness, declared that he wanted to catch the nuns in a hoax, but now he believes in "this miracle."
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The first protocol on the examination of the corpse of Sister Roselyn, signed by doctors, was drawn up in 1887. Four doctors, in the presence of the bishop of the diocese of Var, examined the deceased, more than 550 years after her death. It was unanimously stated that the nun's skin was fresh and elastic, the hands and feet were bent. After pressing with a finger, the body returns to its previous state. Apparently, the respect for the deceased, who enjoyed general worship even without official canonization, did not allow opening Roselyn's vein, let alone performing an autopsy.
And seven years after this inspection, something no less amazing happened: the nun's body, which had been resting for several centuries in a marble sarcophagus, which resisted the decomposition and influence of time, suddenly turned into a dried, wrinkled mummy in a few days.
The phenomenon of incorruptibility was also "demonstrated" by a certain Jean Le Wasser, a city councilor from Lille. In 1625, at the age of 65, he died and was buried in a church in a heavy oak coffin.
A hundred and fifty years passed, the French Revolution broke out, and the brutal sansculottes began to loot the houses of wealthy people. The church has also been desecrated. The robbers broke into the crypt doors and began to smash the coffins in search of jewelry. When Le Wasser's coffin was opened, the robbers saw the corpse of an elderly man, which looked as if it had died a minute ago: there were no signs of decay and even mold on the clothes.
The robbers were drunk, and one of them pulled out a knife, daring to cut off the deceased's ring finger, which had a sapphire ring. And then, to the great amazement of the grave defilers, fresh, dark red blood flowed from the crippled brush. The robbers fled in terror.
The news of an unusual and inexplicable phenomenon became known to doctors.
Two military surgeons went to the church, easily found the remains of the city councilor in the destroyed crypt and ordered them to be taken to the hospital. A resection was performed, the heart was removed from the body, completely unchanged. One of the surgeons took it and kept it in the anatomical office, from where it disappeared twenty years later.
Le Wasser's body was on display in the church, from where the altar and sacred images had already been taken out. This was done “to expose harmful religious superstitions,” as the revolutionary leaflet with the loud title “True Patriot” reported.
It was summer, the heat was intense, but despite this, Le Wasser, lying in an open coffin, gave the impression of being alive. None of the many visitors to the desecrated church did not smell the slightest smell of decay …
Fearing that a return to religion would begin among the inhabitants of Lille because of the amazing dead man, the city's revolutionary tribunal caught himself and two weeks later ordered him to be buried in a grave for the poor. A few years later, the cemetery was razed to the ground, and any exhumation that could check the state of the dead body in the future became impossible …
One of the most frequently visited places in Naples is the Cathedral, built in the 14th century, which houses three relics of Saint Januarius, the patron saint of the city. These are the skull, the remains of dried tissue and the blood of a saint. Cancer, which stores blood, resembles an old lantern like those that were supplied with carriages: two convex glass plates are connected by a metal frame. Inside are two glass ampoules, tightly closed with silver stoppers. The smaller one is empty, with only a few brown spots visible on the walls.
The large ampoule is filled with some kind of opaque and caked substance, perhaps reminiscent of ancient blood.
Miracles associated with the blood of saints are not only a privilege of Naples. The historian of the church Beranger-Guéran described in the book "Blood that Lives" similar phenomena occurring in different countries: the blood of saints, stored in 23 ampoules from very ancient times, undergoes similar changes on certain days of the year.
What could it be? Hoax? Or the extraordinary, not yet studied properties of the human body? The magazine "Miracles and Adventures" reports that French scientists, even before the Second World War, created a scientific institute engaged in the study of the phenomena of physical death and the process of gradual dying of individual cells and tissues of a living organism. They argue that it is possible that blood contains components that have not yet been discovered by modern science, which can be restored almost infinitely after the death of the organism - hence the cases of preserving bodies that do not undergo decomposition.
The phenomenon of incorruptibility, no doubt, needs more thorough verification. And if it still exists, it is in this direction that discoveries are possible that can realize the dreams of mankind about immortality or at least an increase in the life span.
From the book: “XX century. Chronicle of the inexplicable. Opening after opening Nikolay Nepomniachtchi
