Saint Photios the Great's prayer for rebuking ghouls



The following prayer was discovered in 1926 in the highly interesting Tübingen Euchologion, an 13th-century Book of Needs from Constantinople, currently housed in the library of the University of Tübingen. It appears under the heading, "A Prayer for Rebuking and Putting to Rest Ghouls that Dwell in Cemeteries, by Photios, Patriarch of Constantinople." The prayer appears in no other extant manuscript and its attribution to Photios has no corroboration. It is one of the earliest instances in Greek literature of the word βρυκόλακας (rendered as "ghoul" here). The translation given below is that made by the English Byzantinist Sir Richard Winslade and published in Oxford's Review of Theological Studies,  vol 31, Spring 1929, p. 34.


O restless fiend of charnel gloom, I do adjure thee,
By Him who nullified the grave thou hauntest,
By Him who enthralled Death which enthralleth thee,
By Him who shall raise the bones thou gnawest-
Cease from troubling the slumber of the saints,
But take thy rest and in silence wait,
Till that Day come whereon the Lord of All shall call thee forth,
With all thy brethren and thine accursed Master,
And set thy paces in a sepulcher of fire,
Whose Name we magnify, together with His beginningless Father,
And His All-Holy and Quickening Spirit,
Now and forever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

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