A Delayed Demonologist

In the early 20th century the British Egyptologist Margaret Murray claimed that the witch trials were actually aimed at a pagan, pre-Christian religion. Evaluating Murray's work in 1994, Jacqueline Simpson wrote (as quoted on the English Wikipedia entry on Murray):

'So what was the appeal of her work? Part of the answer lies in what was at the time perceived as her sensible, demystifying, liberating approach to a longstanding but sterile argument between the religious minded and the secularists as to what witches had been. At one extreme stood the eccentric and bigoted Catholic writer Montague Summers, maintaining that they really had worshipped Satan, and that by his help they really had been able to fly, change shape, do magic and so forth… In the other camp, and far more numerous at least among academics, were sceptics who said that all so-called witches were totally innocent victims of hysterical panics whipped up by the Churches for devious political or financial reasons; their confessions must be disregarded because they were made under threat of torture. When The Witch-Cult in Western Europe appeared in 1921, it broke the deadlock.' (Margaret Murray: Who believed her, and why? in Folklore, 105 (1994): 89-96)

In a recent introduction to the subject published in Germany, Hexen und Magie (Campus Verlag, 2007), Dr. phil. habil. Johannes Dillinger talks of 'Verspätete Dämonologen', delayed demonologists, and mentions 'Summers who in the first third of the 20th century besides anthologies of horror stories published several monographs about magic as well as English translations of some demonological treatises with chatty introductions. Whether Summers, as he claimed, was really a priest has yet to be proved. His spleen or perhaps rather his sales trick consisted in posing as an ultra conservative Catholic. Summers wrote as if he literally accepted witchcraft as a reality. His works are at best of interest as a curiosity of historiography.' (p. 114) *

That Summers was controversial I have previously shown examples of, and more can be found in his books. In the introduction to A Popular History of Witchcraft he e.g. states that ‘the present study aims at presenting a clear view of the Practice and Profession of Witchcraft, as it was carried on in former centuries and now prevails amongst us. I am convinced that it is most necessary to realize that this is no mere historical question, but a definite factor in politics of to-day, as well as in social life and the progress of humanity.
The Black International of Satan – that is the canker which is corrupting and destroying the world.’ (p. xvi)

Such extreme statements are perhaps easier to find in his books on witches and witchcraft, so perhaps his books on vampires are a different kettle of fish? If, however, you read an interesting letter that is reproduced on pp. 391-3 of the new, critical edition of The Vampire: His Kith and Kin, you can see that Summers himself in September 1934 wrote:

'Scholars have been generous enough to recognize me as the greatest living English authority upon historical witchcraft. My HISTORY OF WITCHCRAFT is accepted as the standard book upon the subject. I have written six books upon witchcraft, and I have further translated and edited nine treatises, some of great length, covering the whole area of historical and mediaeval witchcraft.'

So what were these 'six books upon the subject of witchcraft'? Checking with the bibliography by Timothy d’Arch Smith, I suppose the books are: The History of Witchcraft and Demonology (1926), The Geography of Witchcraft (1927), The Discovery of Witches: A Study of Master Matthew Hopkins (1928), The Vampire: His Kith and Kin (1928), The Vampire in Europe (1929), and The Werewolf (1933). So to Summers himself, his two books on vampires must be treated as part of his oeuvre upon witchcraft, and not as something distinct from those books. Actually, vampires are briefly mentioned in The Geography of Witchcraft (p. 503-4), and in the introduction to The Werewolf, he calls it ‘a successor to my study, The Vampire’ (p. ix)

Apparently these subjects are not separate, but according to Summers really just different themes within the overall subject of witchcraft. Subjects whose reality he claimed to believe in, while at the same time stressing their universality: 'A subject as old as the world and as wide as the world' according to his The History of Witchcraft and Demonology (p. ix), and a subject that had not lost its relevance in the early twentieth century:

‘My aim throughout my new work has been to show how the profession and practice of witchcraft are the same always and in all places, be it in some remote English village, in a quiet cathedral city, in the sweltering hinterland of Jamica, or in savage Africa.’ ‘Up and down England there is hardly a village without a witch. In our great cities, our larger towns, our seats of learning, Satanists abound and are organized (as of old) into covens of wickedness. Black Masses are celebrated in Mayfair and Chelsea; in Wapping and Shoreditch; in Brighton; in Birmingham; in Liverpool; in Edinburgh.’ (A Popular Introduction to Witchcraft, p. xiii and 258)

The Werewolf echoes his words on witchcraft: 'As old as time and as wide as the world, the belief in the werewolf by its very antiquity and its universality affords accumulated evidence that there is at least some extremely significant and vital element of truth in this dateless tradition, however disguised and distorted it may have become in later days by the fantasies and poetry of epic sagas, roundel, and romance.' (The Werewolf, p. 1)

And of course, vampires according to Summers are as universal as werewolves and witches: 'The tradition is world wide and of dateless antiquity.' (The Vampire: His Kith and Kin p. ix), although it may not be quite as prevalent in Summers’s own time as the Black Mass: 'Cases of vampirism may be said to be in our time a rare occult phenomenon. Yet whether we are justified in supposing that they are less frequent to-day than in past centuries I am far from certain. One thing is plain: - not that they do not occur but that they are carefully hushed up and stifled.' (The Vampire in Europe, p. xx-xxi).

Summers, however, does note in places that the vampire – at least in its more strict sense – can be located to certain parts of Europe at a certain period, but overall his universal vampire concept is one of the most influential aspects of his books.

Examples from anthropology and archaeology are provided as proof and foundation for the antiquity and universality of the phenomena. So when specialists decide to use the word ‘vampire’ in translations of e.g. cuneiform texts from Sumer and Babylonia, Summers can appropriate these ‘vampires’ to conform to his ancient vampire concept.

Although prevalent in many popular vampire books, universality is not at the heart of many modern studies that rather stress the vampire's historicity by discussing whether the vampire is unique, and if the vampire was really of Slavic origin. In a recent - and excellent - book on magic and witchcraft published in Denmark, it is stated that the Romans 'did not have a specific term for the category revenant. Indeed, the concept 'revenant' in the meaning 'walking corpse' appears to have been unknown to them. The examples that are usually shown hereof, in my opinion do not concern walking corpses, but apparently dead people. It should be added that further categories like bloodsucking vampires, zombies and poltergeists in antiquity were unknown phenomena, notions and phantasies. They have all been invented more recently, i.e. within the last couple of centuries.' (Allan A. Lund: Magi og hekseri: Fra den romerske oldtid til og med middelalderen (Gyldendal, 2010), p. 106)

And writing of Summers and other 'vampirologists' in 2010, Erik Butler in Metamorphoses of the Vampire in Literature and Film says: ‘Because they have bought into the fiction of vampire antiquity, many popular and scholarly discussions of the vampire fall victim to a lure posed by vampire stories, and they accept the monster as a near-eternal being whose existence reaches back to the ancient world.’ (p. 3)

As Summers was a professed Catholic, it is interesting to compare his work to those of prominent Roman Catholics who wrote on the subject of e.g. vampires, most notably Dom Calmet and Giuseppe Davanzati. Both Calmet and Davanzati responded to the scepticism of 18th century Enlightenment. Calmet tried to uphold Catholic dogma while at the same time approaching the subject from a sceptical and historical point of view, whereas Davanzati basically dismissed the vampire belief as ignorance and superstition. No wonder then that Summers could not abide by Davanzati, saying without further explanation: Nor can we accept “Che l’apparizione de’ Vampiri non sia altro che paro effetto di fantasia.” The truth lies something deeper than that as Leone Allacci so well knew.' (The Vampire: His Kith and Kin, p. 25) Obviously, it was hard for Summers to accept that a prominent Catholic dismissed the vampire as an effect of the imagination.

Compared to Calmet and Davanzati, Summers's project might be termed anti-Enlightenment, as he attempts to establish his own mythological pseudo-Orthodox Catholicism, apparently wishing to revert to some (probably unhistorical) Christian fervor in opposition to witches, Satanists, vampires and werewolves.

Similarly, he probably would not have sympathised with Gerard van Swieten and Empress Maria Theresa, who were both Catholics opposing superstition. In the bibliography of The Vampire: His Kith and Kin, Summers refers to the 1768 Abhandlung des Daseyns der Gespenster Nebst einem Anhange vom Vampyrismus (the first entry in the bibliography), but I doubt that he read it, because he does not refer to the incident that Gerard van Swieten dealt with in the Anhang.

Re-reading parts of Summers’s The Vampire: His Kith and Kin, I honestly can not help wondering whether he really believed what he wrote. Was he confident in his belief that evil forces, Satanists, vampires and shapeshifters were lurking in the shadows of contemporary Britain? Or was it to some extent merely a fictional ploy to make the reader’s blood curl, perhaps inspired by the penny dreadfuls and Gothic horrors he enjoyed?

His 'occult' books are in their construction and style not dissimilar to Baroque books: anthologising various curious stories to make some points, e.g. of a philosophical nature, but essentially entertaining the reader with strange and marvellous stories. I suppose one could remove most of a book like The Vampire: His Kith and Kin and still provide enough material to say what Summers essentially has to say about the vampire, its origins, generation, traits and practices. A summary could be stated in perhaps a few pages. That, of course, would remove a lot of the entertainment value, as well as the supposed documentation.

Fortunately, there is more to be found in the follow up, The Vampire in Europe, and no doubt, much of the value of Summers’s books on the subject stems from his interest in collecting stories and documents. His analysis and his beliefs, on the other hand, are at best mostly ephemeral.

I myself am no Summers buff. I admired his books when I was much younger, which was also at a time when I had little access to much of the material on vampires that is now available. It was also at a time when witchcraft literature was still bogged down by Gerard Gardner, Erica Jong and others whose approach to the subject - like that of Montague Summers - mixed historical fact with fiction. Summers’s books contain a lot of material, which can be used for inspiration and entertainment, but I would recommend people to check the sources before trusting old Montague’s research and analysis.

Gerard O'Sullivan writes about Summers in a paper published in 2009 in The Antigonish Review (No. 159, p. 111-131):

'The mere mention of Montague Summers's name calls to mind Erving Goffman's trenchant "managed stigma" (Goffman [Stigma. Notes on the management of spoiled Identity] 1963). Summers was, and at the very same time, both victim and beneficiary of a spoiled public persona - one which he stage-managed with great skill and, evidently, no little glee. Rumors of bad behavior, occult dabbling, and a purported friendship with none other than Aleister Crowley (they were not friends, but acquaintances, and dined together only twice) swirled around Summers through most of his life.

Summers did little if anything to dispel the rumors. He was alsways, as Fr. Sewell noted, mal vu in the eyes of London's Catholic clerisy, who had no doubt that Summers was in holy orders, but could not be certain as to their origin, liceity, or canonical regularity. And Summers's very public literary battles with academic critics and scholars whom he perceived as encroaching upon his fields of specialization - the Restoration stage, gothic literature, and the supernatural - left him a figure alternately loathed and praised in the British press.' (p. 113)

Recently, Summers has even been called a ‘freak’ by Florian Kührer in his recent book on vampires, Vampire: Monster - Mythos - Medienstar (2010): ‘A “freak” of a special kind, Montague Summers (1880-1948) – in popular lexica described as a “literary historian, demonologist and occult author” – must be numbered among the leading creators of the modern vampire mythos. His admirers, who have immortalized him biographically, but also Summers himself have ensured that the story of his life moves between legend, rumour and serious information.’ (p. 244) **

More specifically, Kührer has this to say about Summers's work on vampires: ‘In his zeal of (false) piety lay also the weakness of Summer’s oeuvre: He read his folkloric sources only from the perspective of a demon hunter and classified almost every phenomenon, that only slightly fitted the profile, as a vampire. Consequently, Summers left us with not only an entertaining panoptikon of monsters, but also succeeded in contributing significanttly to an inflation of the vampire mythos. A great number of “vampirologists” to this day crib from the occult “reverend” and duplicate unreflectingly his phantasms. The World Wide (Vampire) Web has once more duly reinforced the tendency.’ (p. 246) ***

So we are back at Summers’s invention of an ancient and universal vampire. Hagen Schaub in Vampire: Dem Mythos auf der Spur (here quoted from the 2011 edition) talks of the misunderstanding of mixing up living corpses with gods and demons, for which Summers is the main perpetrator, ‘who as the first collected an infinite number of international bloodsuckers, which even today infest many vampire books. Furthermore, one must be cautious because not everything is well researched, and many of Summers’s entities have little in common with a vampire. And when you know that the man was convinced of the existence of vampires, his work relativises itself, and one must ask the question if his oft-quoted works really ought to be the basis of current books and not least internet sites about vampires.’ (p. 32-3) ****

David Keyworth in Troublesome Corpses (2007) simply notes that ‘Montague Summers’ oft-quoted The Vampire in Europe (1929), for example, although scholarly and interesting to read, is often inaccurate in many regards.’ (p. 6) In fact, nearly 35 years ago Christopher Frayling in 1978 noted in The Vampyre: Lord Ruthven to Count Dracula noted that both Summers’s books and Dudley Wright’s single book on vampires ‘are unreliable, and have for too long been treated as gospel. Tony Faivre’s Les Vampires (1962) and Sturm and Volker’s Von denen Vampiren oder Menschensaugern (1973) are both much more scholarly, and can be trusted more than the (many) Summers derivatives.’ (p. 331)

All these critical comments are in a way a testament to the influence of Montague Summers on the field, but at the same time they show how ridiculous it would be to uphold him and his work as an authority on vampires in the 21st century. His research is flawed and erroneus. His project is idiosyncratic and dated. His concept of the vampire as 'world-wide and of dateless antiquity' was extremely influential in the past, but today it must be considered a dead end.

Klaus Hamberger, of course, mentions Summers's two books on vampires in his bibliography of secondary literature in Mortuus non mordet from 1992, one of the most important books on vampire history published in the 20th century. But it is quite obvious, that Summers play little or no role in the book, and that there are so many other sources that are far more important than Montague Summers will ever be.

In many ways, I think the writer(s) of German Wikipedia nailed it, when writing of Summers:

‘Characteristic of Summers’s books is his style that is reminiscent of baroque literature. Scholars found Summers’s occult themes unfit as academic research, because his books about the occult did not meet the demands of academic precision. The works of Montague Summers is a testament to a unique passion for collecting, whose ambition for completion is paired with a lack of critical discrimination. In his efforts to track down as many proofs as possible of the acts of bloodsuckers, he placed any ghost that fulfilled just one of the fundamental criteria of the phenomenon “Vampire”, under this denomination, so that in his works on the subject one also find monsters that in no way belong to the category of “living corpses”. In his remarkable industry he searched in all kinds of works of folklore and ethnology for vampires and werewolves, not only from a scientific interest, but also to prove the existence of Evil and its innumerable variants. Montague Summers was convinced of the existence of witches, vampires and werewolves, and maintained the point of view that these were known and feared by all people at all times. This explains why Summers considered eyewitness accounts of vampires and werewolves, as they were published in the occult literature and the sensationalist press of his time, to be genuine.

Despite his erudition it was impossible for Summers to put the incredible amount of collected material into order. With long quotes in various foreign languages, in particular Latin, he wished to give an air of scholarship. Thanks to Summers’s research, both copies of the otherwise lost leaflet about the Werewolf from Bedburg, the in 1589 executed Peter Stübbe, were rediscovered.’ *****

Original quotes in German

*) 'Die Hexenlehre hat auch noch im 20. Jahrhundert Befürworter gefunden: dummdreiste Reaktionäre und Autoren, die den auflagensteigernden Effekt extremer Meinungen erkannt haben (Laven 1907/08; Petersdorff 1995). Summers legte im ersten Drittel des 20. Jahrhunderts neben Anthologien von Horrorstories mehrere Monografien über Magie sowie mit geschwätzigen Einleitungen ausgestattete englische Übersetzungen einiger dämonologischer Traktate vor. Ob Summers, wie er behauptete, tatsächlich Priester war, mag dahingestellt bleiben. Sein Spleen oder wohl eher noch sein Verkaufstrick bestand darin, sich als ultrakonservativer Katholik zu gebärden. Summers schrieb, als akzeptiere er Hexerei im dämonologischen Vollsinn als Wirklichkeit. Sein Œvure ist allenfalls als Kuriosum der Wissenschaftsgeschichte von Interesse.'

**) Ein “Freak” der besonderen Art war Montague Summers (1880-1948) – in populären Nachschlagewerken als “Litteraturwisscenschaftler, Dämonologe und okkultistischer Schriftsteller” beschrieben, der zu den maßgeblichen Schöpfern des modernen Vampir-Mythos gezählt warden kann. Seine Verehrer, die ihn biographisch verewigt haben, aber auch Summers selbst, sorgten dafür, dass sich die Geschichten über sein Leben zwischen Legenden, Gerüchten und seriösen Informationen bewegen.’

***) ‘In seinem (schein)heiligen Eifer liegen aber auch die Nachteile von Summers Oeuvre: Er las seine volkskundlichen Quellen nur aus der Perspektive des Dämonenjägers und klassifizierty nahezu jades Phänomen, das auch nur im Ansatz auf das Profil paste, als Vampir. Summers hinterließ uns somit nicht nur einunterhaltsames Panoptikum von Monstern, sondern leistete auch einen großen Beitrag zur Aufblähung des Vampir-Mythos. Ein Gutteil der “Vampirologen” schreibt bis heute vom okkulten “Reverend” ab und vervielfältigt unreflektiert seine Phantasmen. Das World Wide (Vampire) Web hat diese Tendenz noch einmail gehörig verstärkt.’

****) ‘Für diese Vermischung ist vor allem der selbst ernannte Reverend und Okkultist Montague Summers (1880-1948) verantwortlich, der als Erster eine unendlich große Zahl von internationalen Blutsaugern zusammengetragen hat, die auch heute noch in vielen Vampirbüchern ihr Unwesen treiben. Mitunter ist hier aber Vorsicht geboten, denn nicht alles ist wirklich gut recherchiert, und manche von Summers angeführte Figur hat mit einem Vampir wenig gemeinsam. Und wenn man weiß, dass der mann von der Existenz von Vampiren überzeugt war, relativiert sich seine Arbeit ohnehin und es stellt sich die Frage, ob seine noch immer viel zitierten Werke wirklich Basis aktueller Bücher und vor allem von Internetauftritten über Vampire sein sollten.’

*****) 'Summers an Barockliteratur erinnernder Schreibstil prägt seine Publikationen. Der Fachwelt galten Summers Okkult-Themen als akademischer Forschung unangemessen, darüber hinaus entsprachen seine Bücher über Okkultismus nicht den Anforderungen akademischer Genauigkeit. Das Œuvre von Montague Summers stellt sich als Zeugnis einer einzigartigen Sammelleidenschaft dar, die sich bei allem Streben nach Vollständigkeit mit einem vollständigen Mangel an Kritikfähigkeit paart. In seinem Bemühen, möglichst viele Belege für das Treiben von Blutsaugern aufzustöbern, packte er jedes Spukwesen, das auch nur eins der Grundkriterien für das Phänomen „Vampir“ erfüllte, unter diesen Begriff, so dass sich in seinen diesbezüglichen Werken auch Schreckensgestalten finden, die keineswegs unter die Rubrik „lebender Leichnam“ fallen. In erheblicher Fleißarbeit durchforstete Summers alle nur denkbaren volks- und völkerkundlichen Werke nach Vampiren und Werwölfen, nicht nur aus wissenschaftlichem Interesse, sondern um den Beweis für die Existenz des Bösen und seiner unzähligen Varianten zu erbringen. Montague Summers war von der Existenz von Hexen, Vampiren und Werwölfen überzeugt und verfocht die Ansicht, dass diese bei allen Völkern und zu allen Zeiten bekannt und gefürchtet gewesen seien. So erklärt sich, weshalb Summers angebliche Augenzeugenberichte von Werwolf- und Vampirerscheinungen, wie sie in der okkultischen Literatur seiner Zeit und in der Sensationspresse publiziert worden waren, für bare Münze nahm.

Trotz Gelehrsamkeit war es Summers unmöglich, die Unmassen an gesammeltem Material zu ordnen. Lange Zitate aus diversen Fremdsprachen, vornehmlich aus dem Lateinischen, wollen Wissenschaftlichkeit vermitteln. Dem Forscherfleiß von Summers ist zu verdanken, dass die beiden einzigen Exemplare der ansonsten verlorenen Flugschrift über den „Werwolf von Bedburg“, dem 1589 hingerichteten Peter Stübbe, wiederentdeckt wurden.'

Observing, understanding and participating

Montague Summers obviously had a firm belief in witches and vampires, whereas modern scholars take on a more phenomenological approach, like e.g. David Keyworth who writes in the introduction to his Troublesome Corpses:

“And while it can be argued that perceived reality is no more than a shared consensus, a social construct that results from a collective belief in a particular world-view, authenticated and maintained by the participants involved and the world-view that was prevalent at the time, I do not personally believe that corpses can arise from their coffins to feed upon the blood of the living.” (p. 9)

Keyworth refers to Berger and Luckmann’s famous (or infamous, if you like) and highly influential The Social Construction of Reality (1966) which is e.g. known for its view that Haitian voodoo beliefs are as “real” as the Western belief in neuroses and “libidinal energy”. Unfortunately, I only own the book in a Danish translation, so I can’t quote the relevant part of the book.

Darren Oldridge, whom I have quoted and referred to before – on vampire beliefs and observations, and on the rationality of our ancestors in general - on the other hand finds that it is essential that we try to understand the rationality of the strange histories of the past.

A marriage between the phenomenological approach and the attempt to understand is in my view beautifully described by Michael E. Bell in the prologue to Food for the Dead: On the Trail of New England’s Vampires. Describing a class he attended during his education, he writes of folklorist Wayland Hand:

“My epiphany came the day Wayland told us about the disappearance of giants from Europe. This was not a rapid, catastrophic event like the extinction of the dinosaurs. It was, rather, a more lengthy demise with the final death blow administered by the Industrial Revolution. As Wayland talked about the giants, I noticed that he stopped looking at us, and his eyes seemed to focus somewhere beyond the windowless walls of our Bunche Hall classroom. His voice, naturally soft, grew softer. He spoke about how Christians stigmatized the giants as devils, in league with Satan. He described how industry’s widening circle of smoke and clamor finally pushed the giants from their homes. His voice dropped to a near whisper, and I’m sure I saw tears well up, as he described how the giants shrank, deeper and deeper into the forests and caves. Demonized, and no longer able to find refuge, the giants vanished. When Wayland concluded, it dawned on me that he wasn’t talking only about giants no longer appearing in the folklore record. He was describing the extinction of a species. I thought, this is incredible: Wayland Hand, a meticulous, reasoning scholar – a professional folklorist – actually believes in giants.” (p. XI-XII)

Bell himself feels compelled to divide himself into two identities: The rational, observing scholar, and the guy who can suspend his disbelief to “participate wholeheartedly, without reservation”. (p. XIII)

Personally, I would be careful in stating my own approach to understanding the background of magia posthuma in such terms, but I suppose that a true understanding requires that you attempt to come as close as possible to viewing the investigated phenomena through the eyes of the observers, in casu peasants, Austrian military personnel, Catholic priests, medical scholars etc.

In fact, this is also what Keyworth attempts to do: “Indeed, I will follow what Robert Darnton in The Great Cat Massacre (1984) called ‘cultural’ or ‘ethnographic’ history, and try to understand the situation from the participant’s point of view, not just cite the official version of events as evidenced by the historiographical sources, and take a non-judgmental, empathetic attitude towards the experiences and intentions of participants involved in the events described, given the cultural context of such traditions.” (p. 9)

No doubt, it can be hard and also very unpleasant to try to intellectually “participate” in events involving revenants, diseases, and the exhumation, examination and destruction of corpses, but as Oldridge has pointed out, “it is the very strangeness of these ideas – from a modern perspective – that makes them worth looking at.” (Strange Histories, p. ix)

Coming attractions

I should perhaps mention that I have not forgotten that I have promised to write about David Keyworth's Troublesome Corpses, I just need to find an adequate amount of time to do so. Furthermore, I would like to mention that I hope to soon write a little about Peter Kremer's Dracula's Vettern: Deutschlands vergessene Vampire (Dracula's cousins: Germany's forgotten vampires), which is a miracle of a work that I have not yet finished digesting! And finally, I hope to be able to post more on von Schertz's Magia posthuma, so these are but some of the 'coming attractions' that should keep you visiting this blog every now and then! ☺

The Vampire Subculture

Although I usually steer pretty clear of the subject of 'vampire subcultures', I would like to point out that David Keyworth's paper The Socio-Religious Beliefs and Nature of the Contemporary Vampire Subculture (Journal of Contemporary Religion Vol. 17, No. 3 (2002), pp. 355-370) is an interesting and certainly unsettling introduction to the subculture of people who in some way identify with vampires, even to the extent of drinking human blood. Keyworth's paper covers various aspects, including the wealth of internet resources and the popular role-playing game Vampire: The Masquerade. He even mentions that there are Christian groups who are so opposed to the vampire subculture that they consider themselves 'vampire-hunters'!

Personally I feel no inclination or fascination for this subculture, but Keyworth's paper comes in handy for better assessing the background of those web sites that you stumble upon, when searching the net for information on Magia Posthuma and related subjects.

Illustrating Keyworth

There are two figures in the Keyworth paper on the uniqueness of the 18th century vampire. Both are contributions from Rob Brautigam, but I think there are a couple of errors in the captions. Anyway, one of the figures is by Albert Decaris and is called Le Vampire transfixé according to the French web site L'universe du gothique. The caption describes the illustration as: 'Soldiers destroying a vampire'. Now, I can't remember the details of every vampire case, but I find it hard to believe that e.g. Austrian soldiers of the 18th century would be very keen on actually staking a corpse. The illustration is probably from a fictional vampire tale, and it is truly a remarkable depiction of the staking of a vampire, but from my point of view the act seems apocryphal.

Update: Rob Brautigam has kindly told me that the captions got interchanged at the editors. He also mentions that the Albert Decaris etching has no title or caption in the book where it was originally printed, Jean Mistler's novel Le Vampire (Editions du Rocher, 1944). The other illustration is from L'Echo des Feuilletons (ca. 1866-7).

Keyworth and the Uniqueness of the Vampire

Now I have obtained and read a paper by G. David Keyworth, who was mentioned in one of my recent posts. It seems that Keyworth wrote a thesis on 'the socio-religious beliefs and nature of the contemporary vampire subculture' before completing a PhD thesis on 'the unnatural history of troublesome corpses and vampires in Europefrom the medieval period to the twentieth century'. The paper I refer to, Was the Vampire of the Eighteenth Century a Unique Type of Undead-corpse? published in Folklore 117 (December 2006), p. 241-260, is obviously based on his work for the latter thesis.

Augustin Calmet in his Dissertation on revenants and vampires claimed that “in no history do we read anything similar, so common, or so decided, as what is related to us of the vampires of Poland, Hungary, and Moravia.” ("Mais en nulle Histoire on ne lit rien d'aussi commun ni aussi marqué que ce qu'on nous raconte des Vampires de Pologne, de Hongrie & de Moravie." II, vii). In his paper Keyworth aims to “test the validity of Calmet’s notion that eighteenth-century vampires were a unique type of revenant.” Consequently, Keyworth compares and contrasts the vampires of the 18th century with tales and cases of revenants and other 'troublesome corpses' from the 12th century and onwards.

Some of his examples will be well known, e.g. those from William of Newburgh and Henry More, whereas others are more obscure. The older sources are mainly from England, Iceland and parts of northern Europe, and Keyworth seems to be fascinated by the old Norse draugrs. He refers to various writings on the Greek vrykolakas (e.g. Allatius and Tournefourt) before coming to the oupire and vampire of the 18th century, which are described via quotes from Harleian Miscellany, Mercure Argent, the Lettres Juives, and the reports from Kisiljevo and Medvedja.

Further on he refers to writers on theosophy and spiritualism, who had notions of 'astral' and 'posthumous' vampirism. He also mentions von Görres' mystical views in Die Christliche Mystik (1836-42), and finally compares the New England 19th century 'vampires cases' with those of the 18th century.

All in all this makes for an interesting peek into the historical development of notions about revenants.

As for Keyworth's question: 'Were the Vampires of the Eighteenth Century Unique?', he concludes that:

“The Slavic vampire of the eighteenth century remains a unique type of revenant, given its supposed thirst for human blood.” (p. 256)

I feel that the paper is much too biased towards England and northern Europe, whereas in my opinion it is particularly interesting to know if the same trend can be found if you incorporate material from various continental European countries. Quite a few books have been written about the revenants and apparitions of the medieval period, so material should be readily available.

Furthermore, I am a bit wary of the use of e.g. the Harleian Miscellany as evidence, because this text is mainly based on other sources. In general I prefer to try to go to the most original sources, in particular those written by people who were present when examining cases of purported vampirism. Keyworth mentions two examples (and his source is obviously Paul Barber's Vampires, Burial, and Death), but there are others. In particular the military physician Georg Tallar's examination of 'vampire victims' is important.

These sources are also important when considering the 'blood sucking' of 18th century vampires. Were they really supposed to suck blood and how? In many cases the victims complained of other symptoms than losing blood, e.g. suffocation.

Keyworth does however note that the notion of blood sucking could be inferred from the post mortem effects on the human body:

“Slavic culture, however, as we have seen emphasised the apparent accumulation of blood within the organs and bodily cavities of such corpses, this being taken as supposed evidence that the deceased had been sucking the blood of the living.” (p. 257)

But is this enough evidence to claim the uniqueness of the 18th century vampires?

In my opinion there are still unanswered questions. Keyworth touches upon important aspects of the history of vampires and revenants, but I do not feel convinced by his conclusion, or perhaps I just view things from a different perspective? However, now I have even more reason to look forward to reading Keyworth's book!

Shroudeater and other troublesome corpses

I have been in touch with Rob Brautigam a couple of times. He has been interested in vampires for about four decades and currently has a nice web site which is devoted to the study of vampires in a way that is in many ways similar to my own interest in the subject. For a long time, the web site, which is called Shroudeater, hasn't been updated, but I just happened to notice that he has updated it a few days ago.

Among the updates are new books that have been added to the bibliography, including a brand new book in the Desert Island Books Dracula series, which I was unaware of. Desert Island Books has otherwise specialised in books by, about or related to Bram Stoker and Dracula, but with the new book called Troublesome Corpses written by David Keyworth, it seems that they have published a book that focuses on vampires and other revenants. This is what Brautigam has to say about it:

"Excellent study by a brilliant Australian scholar about undead corpses in Europe. David Keyworth has discovered an amazing lot of absolutely fascinating material, and he has managed to present it in such a way that it actually makes sense, even to someone as shallow as myself. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED."

So I have just ordered it and look forward to finding out more about this book, which is probably based on Keyworth's 2006 thesis, The Undead: An Unnatural History of Vampires and Troublesome Corpses in Western Europe from the Medieval Period to the Twentieth Century that carries this ambitious abstract:

"In this thesis, I undertake a multi-disciplinary survey and descriptive analysis of vampires and other types of undead-corpse in Europe from the medieval period to the twentieth century. Broadly speaking, the first three chapters of the thesis discuss the typology and folklore of vampires and undead-corpses, and so too the burial practices associated with such revenants. The remaining chapters delve into the etiological explanations for the existence of undead-corpses, the vampire infestations of the eighteenth century, the reasons for declining belief in walking-corpses thereafter, and the increasingly popular notion of astral vampirism in the nineteenth century. In the early eighteenth century, popular belief in the existence of undead-corpses was fuelled by numerous reports of vampire outbreaks across Eastern and Central Europe. In his Treatise on Vampires and Revenants (1746), Augustin Calmet argued that although there may have been troublesome undead-corpses and ‘vestiges of vampirism’ in the past, the vampires of eighteenth-century Europe were inherently unique. In the first chapter of this thesis, I investigate Calmet’s assertion and compare/contrast the distinguishing features of the various types of undead-corpse that supposedly existed in Europe from the medieval period to the Enlightenment, and argue that the outstanding characteristic of eighteenth-century vampires was their implied thirst for blood, and that the vampire is indeed a unique type of undead-corpse. In the second chapter, I assess to what extent undead-corpses like the vampire acquired the characteristics formerly attributed to other folkloric beings. Subsequently, I undertake a folkloric analysis of vampires and undead-corpses in Europe from the twelfth to the eighteenth century and compare/contrast their features with that of other folkloric entities like ghosts, incubi/succubi, witches and fairies. I demonstrate that a distinction can be made between the folkloric vampire and ‘historical’ vampires of the eighteenth century like Arnod Paole. And argue that although medieval revenants were very corporeal beings, subsequent undead-corpses like the spectrum of sixteenth-century Silesia, and so too the vampire of folklore, took on a more semi-corporeal nature, indulged in all manner of supernatural activity and acquired many features formerly attributed to other folkloric beings. In the third chapter, however, I delve into the various burial practices associated with vampires and revenants, the prophylactic measures used against them, and the methods employed to dispatch the undead. I argue that the main reason for impaling vampires with a wooden stake and other such practices was simply to hasten the decomposition of the deceased, given that there was no guarantee that a corpse was actually dead until the flesh had rotted from the bones. In the next chapter, I discuss eschatological notions like Purgatory and excommunication, and argue that by the end of the seventeenth century, three main theological/metaphysical notions had developed to explain the existence of undeadcorpses. Firstly, undead-corpses were inhabited and enlivened by the actual soul of the deceased individual and empowered by some sort of remnant energy or vestigium vitae, which took on a life of their own until the body had decomposed and the remnant energy had dissipated. Secondly, it was the Devil that reanimated the corpse, rather than the deceased soul, in the same manner that the Devil could possess and manipulate a living body. Furthermore, necromancers could raise the dead through sorcery, albeit with demonic help. Thirdly, the Devil could create a semi-corporeal body of congealed air and appear in the guise of someone recently deceased in order to torment the living. I argue that it was the earthbound soul of the deceased that supposedly animated the vampires of the eighteenth-century. In the fifth chapter, I outline the socio-religious topography of the vampire outbreaks in eighteenth-century Europe and discuss the reactions of the Austro-Hungarian authorities, under whose jurisdiction the outbreaks occurred. Similarly, I discuss the response of the intelligentsia and the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, the state religion of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to the vampire infestations. I demonstrate that official belief in undead-corpses had waned by the Enlightenment, and that the civil authorities were keen to enlighten and re-educate the populace, and initiated official investigations into further outbreaks of vampirism, and introduced legislative measures to eradicate such beliefs. In particular, I review the various natural explanations furnished by the educated elite at the time to account for vampires. I argue that it was difficult for the authorities and educated elite to eradicate belief in undead-corpses largely because the masses and lower echelons of the Church at the time were fuelled by a pre-modern belief-system that had itself promoted belief in revenants. In the final chapters, I note that although the occasional vampire outbreak still arose in nineteenth century Europe and undead-corpses were reputedly responsible for consumption in late nineteenth-century New England (USA), popular belief in walking corpses per se had largely ceased. Nonetheless, the rise of spiritualism, theosophy and popular occultism at the time encouraged a reinterpretation of the traditional vampire and fuelled the notion of ‘astral’ vampires. Finally, I elaborate upon the importance of the vampire to our own lives and note that occasional belief in flesh-and-blood vampires still occurs today, and that a contemporary Vampire subculture has arisen of ‘living’ individuals who claim to be the ‘real’ vampires."