by Brian Righi
Convinced that these strange signs marked Paole as the vampire plaguing their village, the men drove a stake through his heart, immediately causing the corpse to let out a terrible groan and sending a massive amount of blood flying from the wound. The body was then dragged from its coffin, the head cut off, and the remains burned, before being returned to the grave. In like manner the bodies of the victims were also exhumed and treated to prevent the vampirism from spreading.
After this, things seemed to quiet down for a time until the winter of 1731, when as many as ten villagers died in the space of a few weeks from an unknown illness that caused pain in the sides and chest, prolonged fever, jerking limbs, and finally death. Panic consumed the village once more, and there was talk that vampires were yet again at Medvegia’s doorstep. The village elders in turn appealed to Oberstleutnant Schnezzer, the Austrian military commander of the region, for help. He, however, feared an outbreak of disease rather than of vampires and sent an infectious-disease specialist, one Doctor Glaser, to investigate the reports. Glaser, after examining the villagers and their homes, was nevertheless at a loss to explain the cause of the inexplicable deaths. By now the situation had reached such a pitch that terrified villagers were banding together at night in groups for protection. Glaser’s only recourse was to suggest to his superiors that they allow the village to exhume and “kill” the supposed vampires in order to appease the growing delirium.
Taking the good doctor’s advice, the Supreme Commander of Belgrade, Botta d’Adorno, elected to send a commission of military officers and surgeons under the direction of Doctor Johann Flückinger to investigate the matter. On January 7th, under the watchful eye of the commission, the elders of Medvegia hired a group of passing Gypsies to open the graves of suspected vampires in the village cemetery and search them for signs of the curse. In all, thirteen of the seventeen corpses exhumed appeared undecayed, with fresh blood around the mouth and what looked to be new skin and nails growing under the old. One corpse, belonging to a sixty-year-old woman who was known for her thinness in life, was found bloated and full of blood. Some of those bearing the marks of the vampire belonged to the same men who helped destroy the corpse of Arnod Paole, and in doing so had smeared their bodies with his blood for protection.
After the surgeons performed their medical examinations of the corpses and agreed that the bodies bore the traditional signs of the vampire, the hired Gypsies cut off the heads, burned the remains, and scattered the ashes into a river. Doctor Flückinger submitted the details of the incident in a report entitled Visum et Repertum, or “Seen and Discovered,” which he sent to the Imperial Council of War at Vienna. Following this second round of purging, the villagers seemed content in the belief that they were now finally free of the vampire scourge.
Part of the reason these two cases caught the public imagination so powerfully was that they were so well documented and involved official government investigations, lending them an air of credibility. Picked up by a hungry press, they were told and retold across Europe with a speed faster than ever before. Theologians and philosophers debated their existence, and writers cashed in on the stories. The problem worsened even more when credulous peasants, caught up in the fervor, began digging up and desecrating bodies at an alarming rate. Dismayed by the increasing trend, Empress Maria Theresa of Austria ordered her personal physician, Gerhard van Swieten, to investigate the claims of vampires infecting her territories to the east.
In the end, van Swieten concluded that the creatures did not in fact exist outside the superstitious minds of the peasantry, and the empress enacted strict laws prohibiting the further desecration of bodies. Although the belief persisted among local populations (even today there are occasional reports of this occurring in remote eastern areas), this crackdown effectively sounded the end of the vampire panic. Yet despite the new laws and official government denials, the image of the vampire did not diminish, but found new life as its legend continued to grow and change through the centuries, becoming stronger and more feared than ever before.
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Be careful when you fight the monsters, lest you become one.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
3
In the Shadow
of the Cross
When Christianity first landed on the shores of Italy around 40 CE, the belief in vampires had long existed among the pagan peoples of Europe. Born from the teachings of a small rabble of Jewish missionaries, Christianity spread across the land replacing, incorporating, or conquering all others before it. Initially the fledgling church met with stiff resistance from Roman rulers, who scoffed at its monotheistic doctrine of salvation and were enraged that believers refused to bow before Roman divinity. Almost from the start, persecutions hounded the new faith wherever it cropped up, and accusations of child sacrifice, cannibalism, and blood drinking were commonly leveled against it.
In even the farthest-flung provinces of the Roman Empire, Christians were dragged from their homes and imprisoned or tortured until they denounced their faith. Those who refused faced the threat of public execution in the arena by some of the cruelest methods possible, including crucifixion, burning at the stake, stoning, or within the jaws of a hungry lion. Conditions such as these drove the church underground, and small groups were forced to congregate secretly in the back rooms of homes or in the dark catacombs of the city’s burial grounds.
Eventually the storm of Roman persecutions passed, and Christianity came to outlast even the Caesars themselves. What began as a grassroots movement among the downtrodden and displaced in time gained inroads into the more affluent levels of society as well. In 312 CE, Emperor Constantine I adopted the cross as his standard at the Battle of Milvian Bridge after a vision from God guaranteed him victory should his men fight under the Christian symbol. Following this miraculous victory over a much larger force, Constantine converted to Christianity and went on to become the sole ruler of the Roman Empire. Suddenly the church found itself at the head of a vast kingdom stretching from the misty isles of the Britons to the exotic lands of North Africa and the ancient kingdoms of the East.
Dark Days
At the beginning of the church’s reign, it paid little heed to the issue of vampirism, preferring to view it as the product of backward pagan imaginations to be discouraged with the light of reason whenever possible. In 1054, however, an event occurred that shook Christianity to its very core and ushered in a new age of turmoil and strife that forever changed the face of the church and forced it to confront such beliefs head on. Known by historians as the “Great Schism,” the change came about when the Eastern and Greek section of the church centered in Constantinople formally broke from the Western and Latin section based in Rome. The East, with its inclination towards philosophy and mysticism, became known as the Eastern Orthodox Church, while the West, which was guided by a more legalistic mentality, became known as the Roman Catholic Church.
Of course nothing was cordial about the split, as Pope Leo IX of the Roman branch excommunicated the Patriarch of Constantinople, Michael Cerularius, who returned the favor with his own excommunication of the pope. Both sides pointed to doctrinal issues such Rome’s claim to universal papal supremacy or changes to the Nicene Creed, but the truth of the matter lay in larger factors that were sweeping the land at the time, affecting not only the church but the very fabric of European society itself.
Europe was entering one of the darkest periods in its history, filled with waves of foreign invaders, internal conflicts, devastating wars, famines, and unstoppable plagues that consigned entire villages to the grave. Weakened by divisions, heresies, and a growing Islamic presence in the east, it’s only natural that cracks should appear within the church. How they reacted to these pressures, however, was a different matter altogether, as the church found itself taking an increasingly harder line against anything that threatened its security and supremacy.
As ea
rly as 1184, the Roman Catholic branch reacted by sanctioning a series of inquisitions to stamp out heretics and other enemies of the church, which for the first time included witches and vampires. What was once the superstitious imagining of ignorant pagans was now public enemy number one in the eyes of the church, and even the most learned churchmen found themselves fearing the impenetrable forests and lonely crossroads at night, which they supposed teemed with all manner of vampire and devil. At first the religious tribunals of inquisitors had no more authority than to imprison or fine offenders, but as their power grew so too did their methods of persuasion, and untold numbers of innocent lives were lost at the hands of overzealous inquisitors who tortured and burned in the name of God.
With the church taking a much keener interest in the existence of vampires, it would come to produce some, if not all, of the most reliable research over the next few hundred years on the topic. Not only did church scholars, priests, and monks begin studying vampirism, but they also cast the creatures to fit more accurately within the Christian framework. In 1645 the Roman Catholic scholar and trained physician Leo Allatius penned the first systematic approach to vampires, entitled De Graecorum hodie quorundam opinationibus, which when translated means “On Certain Modern Opinions among the Greeks.”
In this groundbreaking work, Allatius turned his attention to the Greek vampire, or vrykolakas, and transformed it from its previous pagan origins of the walking dead to a more sublimely evil creature enlisted to do the work of the devil. In one of the book’s most often-quoted passages, Allatius writes that “the corpse is entered by a demon which is the source of ruin to unhappy men. For frequently emerging from the tomb in the form of that body and roaming about the city and other inhabited places, especially by night, it betakes itself of any house it fancies, and, after knocking at the door, addresses one of the inmates in a loud tone. If the person answers he is done for: two days after that he dies” (Wright 1987, 38).
One the sources Allatius relied heavily upon as an authority for the work was the dreaded Malleus Maleficarum, or The Witch’s Hammer. Written in Germany in 1486 by the inquisitor Heinrich Kramer, the book was the witch-finder’s bible of its time and laid out the system by which witches existed and the procedures to find them out and convict them. Three conditions were said to be necessary for witchcraft to exist, which he noted were the devil, the witch, and the permission of God. Allatius likewise applied the same formula to the vampire, which the Malleus Maleficarum called succubus, and claimed that for vampires to exist all that was needed was the dead body, the devil, and the permission of God.
Ancient Foes
To the masses of European peasants who depended on the early church for its knowledge and divine protection against all evil creatures, the holy men who made up the church’s ranks were the superheroes of their time. Compared to the damnation and chaos the vampire represented, the church promised salvation and order—a light in a land that seemed to be devoured by darkness. The priest, after all, was the first one you called if you suspected a vampire may be lurking in your neighborhood, for it was he who had the knowledge and authority to fight such monsters. This relationship forever defined the church as the nemesis of the vampire in the traditions that followed, mixing the Christian motifs of crucifixes, holy water, blessed objects, the Eucharist, and sacred ground into the legends of the ancient creature.
For example, in the 1190s the English historian and churchman William of Newburgh drafted a fascinating work entitled Historia rerum Anglicarum, or the History of English Affairs, in which appeared the tale of a revenant plaguing the countryside. The sinister event was said to have occurred in the vicinity of Melrose Abbey, a monastery in the south of Scotland founded by an order of Cistercian monks in 1136. A priest famous for his corrupt and sinful ways, known as the “Hundeprest” because of his love for hunting rather than performing his religious obligations, died one day and was buried in the abbey’s adjacent cemetery. Soon after his demise, his corpse was seen wandering through the cemetery at night. At first the loathsome creature tried to enter the abbey but found it could not cross the holy structure’s entrance on account of the prayers of the monks within.
Forced away, the revenant roamed the countryside making terrible noises until it reached the bedchamber of its former mistress. Night after night it appeared to her until she could take no more and appealed to the monastery’s friars for help. To answer her desperate pleas, four monks set themselves over the priest’s tomb at night armed with whatever weapons they could find. The night was cold, and as midnight approached three of the monks left to warm themselves at a nearby house. No sooner had they passed from view than the revenant appeared to the remaining monk and rushed upon him with a terrible noise. The monk remained firm, however, and struck the creature with a mighty blow from his axe, causing it to retreat once more back into its grave. The next morning, the four monks gathered at the tomb of the priest and found the corpse with a large wound upon its side matching that of the monk’s axe from which fresh blood still flowed, filling the grave. The monks then carried the body some distance from the monastery, where they burned it and scattered the ashes to the wind.
A second account from the same source was reported to William of Newburgh by the archdeacon of Buckinghamshire and other religious men whom he does not name. Accordingly, in the county of Buckinghamshire, northwest of London, a certain man died and was laid in a tomb on the eve of Ascension Day, which is celebrated forty days after Easter and marks Christ’s ascension to heaven. Unexpectedly, on the following night the deceased man appeared in the bedchamber of his wife and nearly smothered her to death with his weight. For three nights these attacks continued until the wife surrounded herself with companions to guard her sleep, who chased the revenant away with loud shouts and other noises.
Denied one victim, it turned its attention to others in the village, who were also forced to keep guards while they slept. Even the village livestock was not safe from its evil mischief. Eventually the creature became bold enough to appear in daylight and assault its victims even while in the midst of groups of people. After some time of this, the inhabitants of the village could take no more and turned to the archdeacon of the county for help, who having no experience in such matters wrote to Bishop Hugh of Lincoln for instructions. The bishop, who was later canonized as a saint, consulted various church scholars of the time and was amazed to learn that such creatures had plagued other parts of Britain over the years and that the only remedy was to burn the revenant’s body. The thought of burning the body seemed sacrilegious to the bishop, however, so he wrote a letter of absolution with his own hand and ordered it placed in the grave of the vampire. When the letter arrived back at the village, the man’s tomb was opened and the letter placed upon its chest, and thereafter he never appeared again.
A final tale to help drive the point home can be found in William Ralston’s 1872 Songs of the Russian People, which despite its name is actually a book featuring some of the greatest examples of Slavic mythology, tradition, and folklore ever written. In one passage there is a brief tale about a terrible sinner who died one day and was taken to the local church so that a vigil could be kept over the body in preparation for burial. The sacristan who was to keep the watch and recite the psalms was a clever man and brought along a rooster with him. That night, as the twelfth hour approached, the corpse sprang from the coffin, and with its deadly jaws opened wide, rushed at the man. The sacristan quickly gave the bird a pinch, causing it to crow at that very moment. Thinking dawn had come, the vampire fell to the ground a motionless corpse.
Tales such as these played a role in the lives of the average European peasant that extended beyond mere storytelling. They also reinforced critical stereotypes the church wished to espouse, the most important of which was that the church could explain the existence of the creatures and knew how to dispose of them. Whether through divine prayer, absolution, the cold steel of an axe, or the
cunning of the clergyman, the church was asserting its authority over the vampire. In almost every report or fragment of folklore to be found on vampires, one of the first things the frightened villagers do in each case is to enlist the aid of the local priest.
Excommunication
Even though both branches of the church seemed to develop a deep fascination with vampires and vampirism, the topic without a doubt found its most fertile ground in the domains of the Eastern Orthodox Church where pagan traditions still heavily influenced the people. One important circumstance that helped foster the belief in vampires was the church’s doctrine that the fate of a person’s soul was inexorably linked to the condition and care of the body after death. In the Eastern Orthodox Church there were generally five prescribed types of funeral rites that could be performed depending on the deceased’s station in life, which included services for laymen, children, monks, priests, and a special service for those buried during Bright Week, which is the week of Easter.
As discussed in the preceding chapter, funerary rites were closely observed to ensure the safety of the soul during its passage from the body to the afterlife, and any breach in the ritual could have dire consequences not only for the deceased but for the entire village. The process began with the corpse being ceremonially washed and anointed with sacred oils before being put on display in the home for a period of time. After the wake, the deceased was carried to the church, where services were conducted for the repose of the soul. The body was then placed in an anteroom of the church, where priests kept a vigil throughout the night reciting prayers and reading aloud from the Bible. The next morning a procession of mourners bearing crosses, flags, and censers of frankincense escorted the body to its final resting place, where more services were conducted and the coffin was lowered into the ground to be covered by dirt. Traditionally the church buried its dead facing the east towards the rising of the sun and then oriented the grave marker, which was usually a cross, at their feet rather than their head to ensure that the soul could pray facing the cross while it waited to be freed from the body.
