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ground for a specific period of time, priests and family members returned to the gravesite and carefully exhumed the body to examine it for clues as to the status of the person’s soul in the afterlife. The length of time the body was required to remain in the ground varied from region to region. In some areas the period was as short as twelve months, while in others, such as Romania, children were disinterred after three years, adults after five, and the elderly after seven. In the Orthodox faith the body’s decay was synonymous with the absolution of sins, and the soul could not be free until its former shell had turned to dust. If by some unnatural means the body did not decay, the soul could become trapped within and eventually turn to vampirism for nourishment. If the processes of the body were proceeding naturally and the bones showed to be white, it marked a sure sign that the soul had entered heaven and was now at peace. Once the priests were satisfied that all was well with the deceased, the bones were washed and dressed in fresh linen before receiving a second and final burial.
    One of the fundamental differences between the Eastern and Western branches of the church was the very question of the body’s incorruptibility and how to interpret the phenomenon. For the Roman Catholic, the process was solely in the hands of God, and if a body remained undecayed after resting in the grave for a period of time it was a sign of sainthood, often accompanied by the fragrance of flowers or other pleasant odors. For the Greek Orthodox, however, it meant the body had become fouled by evil and/or that the church had placed a ban of excommunication upon the deceased so the earth would not receive it. Excommunication was a tool used by the priesthood against those who had committed grievous sins against the church and its authority, and it excluded the offender from the community of the church and therefore from God. This power, the Eastern Church insisted, was invested in them from God, as evidenced in the Book of Matthew (16:19) by the passage “And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”
    For all intents and purposes, excommunication was a punishment worse than death for a Christian and was frequently reserved for unrepentant criminals, heretics, suicides, sorcerers, and as in the case of the Great Schism, political enemies too. Those suffering from this ecclesiastical ban could not enter the kingdom of heaven nor would their body decompose after death unless the sentence was revoked by a pronouncement of absolution over the remains by a priest. In a manuscript discovered in the Church of St. Sophia at Thessalonica, an interesting commentary describes the conditions found in excommunicated bodies and provides insight on how the church interpreted them. Anyone, it says, who had a curse placed upon them or did not fulfill certain obligations to their parents would remain partially undecayed after death. Anyone sanctioned by the church would appear yellow and their fingers would shrivel. A body that appeared white meant that it had been excommunicated by divine law. Finally, a body that appeared black had been excommunicated by a bishop.
    Examples of such ecclesiastical curses litter the early histories of the church, including the tale of a man who converted to Christianity from Islam, but because he remained sinful and impious he was excommunicated by the church. After his death he was buried in the Greek Church of St. Peter the Apostle in Naples, where his body remained undecayed for many years. When the Metropolitan Athansius and several other churchmen visited the site, they preformed a solemn absolution over his and several other undecayed bodies held at the church, all of which immediately turned to dust.
    Another was a story recounted by the noted