Habsburg maps of Kisolova and Frey Hermersdorf online

Thanks to an international co-operation between a number of archives, including the Austrian State Archives, historical maps of the Habsburg Empire are now available in both 2D and 3D as layers on top of current Google Earth maps. The maps are searchable, so you can seek out a number of places that are e.g. relevant to the history of vampires and posthumous magic, including those shown below: Kisolova, the site of the first 'vampire case' concerning a certain Peter Plogojowitz, and Frey Hermersdorf, the site of an instance of magia posthuma that was investigated by the court physicians Johannes Gasser and Christian Wabst, described and analyzed by Gerard van Swieten, before prompting Empress Maria Theresa's decree concerning magia posthuma and other superstitions.

Historical Maps of the Habsburg Empire is an excellent resource worth investigating.

Pietas Austriaca

'After the Habsburg lands had recovered to some extent from the consequences of the Thirty Years' War, the populace of this region was struck by yet another misfortune: the plague. It came from Hungary in 1678 and quickly spread to the west. It is thought to have claimed some fifty thousand victims in Vienna alone. In an effort to escape this epidemic, the royal household fled to Prague in 1679. Here too, however, the number of fatalities was not insignificant: some six thousand people met their death in the city by the Moldau.

The plague had barely been brought under control when disaster once again struck the still-suffering populace. This time it was the Turks. As is well known, they stood before the gates of Vienna in 1683 after having plundered and pillaged the surrounding countryside. Although the Turks could be repulsed by the relieving army under the command of King John III of Poland (John Siebiski), the running fights exhausted the resources of the strained populace. During subsequent years the invaders were increasingly driven back to the east and defeated in a series of battles by Prince Eugene of Savoy, the emperor's famous general. The final triumph over the Turks and over the Plague, with the latter returning, however, in a devastating epidemic in 1713, marked the "birth" of the Pietas Austriaca, the lived piety of the Habsburgs. In gratitude for having survied such extreme misfortune, people erected plague columns and similar monuments in many places and held pilgrimages and processions in honor of the saints who had protected them. The most magnificent testimony to this newly strengthened piety was certainly the Karlskirche (Church of St. Charles) in Vienna that Emperor Charles VI, fulfilling a vow, had built by Johann Bernhard Fischer in 1713. The spirit of the times also found expression in music, where court ceremony and lived piety met ...'

From the liner notes to CPO's 2006 2CD Vienna 1700: Baroque Music from Austria, one of a number of interesting albums exploring the music of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Breaking with the Baroque

'By the middle of the eighteenth century, there were signs that the appeal of graphic violence in Catholic Baroque culture was waning. Popular culture never lost its fascination with violence and crime, and the decrease in the number of public executions within the Habsburg realms cannot be taken as evidence that the public was less interested in these spectacles, rather, it demonstrated that the central government was starting to take a different view of public displays of physical punishment. What had changed was the sense of simultaneous distancing and identification with the sufferer that had characterized the Baroque encounter with violence. The distancing had originally made it possible to view animal baiting, or even the execution of a criminal, without the on-lookers experiencing any stirrings of empathy toward the sufferers, but curiosity or pleasure instead. Yet the pious Catholic also identified with the sufferings of saint or martyr because of the different moral context in which the torments were inflicted. Suffering of ordinary mortals or of saints, like the suffering of Jesus, could produce positive results for the sufferer or for others. Suffering blocked out the less important day-to-day world, and a meditation on denial and suffering invited the participant to enter another world where closeness to God was the reward for the act of distancing oneself from the material. The promoters of the Enlightenment did not share this view, but were much more concerned with the possibilities of happiness being achieved through less painful and non-supernatural means.

The breakdown of this seeming fusion of what appear to be polar opposites, empathy and distancing, was further fostered by a more dispassionate and analytical view of the body, in particular, the human body. The anatomical Wachsenpräparaten created in the 1780s for the Josephinum, the surgical institute established in Vienna by Joseph II, are the clearest demonstration of the break with the Baroque in the Habsburg world. Although their postures and the tasseled pillows on which some of them are displayed are reminiscent of the waxen figures in Baroque reliquaries, these figures are guardians of a mystery with no theological or moral implications. They are instead aids to instruction at a state-supported school that teaches a practical skill imparted by a scientist rather than a priest, where no clergy are employed and whose every detail bears the mark of enlightened despotism.'

According to Dr. Paul Shore, St. Louis University, in The Eagle and the Cross: Jesuits in Late Baroque Prague (Saint Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2002), p. 50-1.

Heart-Eaters

Last year I mentioned a book by Christa A. Tuczay about demonic crimes in the Donau Monarchy: Die Herzesser: Dämonische Verbrechen in der Donaumonarchie (Seifert Verlag, 2007). I bought a copy of it when I was in Vienna, and from the parts that I have read I can say that it is a nice and informative book about subjects like cannibals, werewolves, murderers and vampires from the countries that have been part of the Donau monarchy!

There are about a dozen pages about vampires that provide an overview of some of the 18th century vampire cases, including Georg Tallar's examinations of victims of vampires. Gilles de Rais, Elisabeth Báthory, Vlad Tepes and a few other well-known characters are also briefly described, slightly ironically, as Tuczay says in her afterword: 'obwohl sie sicherlich meist nicht zum Lachen reizen, sich aber mit einer Prise Humor leichter ertragen lassen.'

The 'heart eaters' mentioned in the title refer to various tales of literal and symbolic eaters and stealers of hearts, including Le Livre du cuer d'amours espris by René d'Anjou, which exists in an illuminated manuscript in Vienna (see the above illustration which is shown in black and white in the book). In this poem the poet is in love and dreams that Amor takes out his heart and gives it to Desire, cf. the illustration. In other tales, the heart of a lover is served as food by the cuckolded husband to his wife.

The foreword is by Mark Benecke, and there are useful notes specifying sources and further reading. All in all 160 illustrated pages at €19.90, and once again: it is in German...

Addendum: I notice that Tuczay is also one of the editors of a new anthology entitled Faszination des Okkulten: Diskurse zum Übersinnlichen published by Francke Verlag that also published the Poetische Wiedergänger anthology on vampires.

Wir Maria Theresia

Some time ago I was asked if I knew of any web site containing Maria Theresa's announcements concerning magia posthuma. I found a site that contains an excerpt of one here, but this might be an opportunity to copy this text in toto:

Wir Maria Theresia etc., liebe Getreue etc.

Wir haben eine zeitlang müßfällig wahrnehmen müssen, daß nicht allein Verschiedene von unseren Landes Innwohneren in ihrer Leichtglaubigkeit so weith gehen, daß Sie dasjenige, was Ihnen ein Traum, oder Einbildung vorstellet, oder durch andere betrügerische Leute vorgespiegelt wird, für Gespenste und Hexerey halten, nicht minder denen für Besessen sich ausgebenden Leüthen, alßoglich den Glauben beymessen, sondern daß sie auch in dieser ihrer Leichtglaubigkeit offtmahls von einigen mit Vorurtheil eingenohmenen Geistlichen gestärcket worden, wie dann letzthin in unserem Marggraffthum Mähren die Sache so weith getrieben worden, daß von der Geistlichkeit verschiedene Cörper unter dem Vorwand, daß sie mit der sogenannten magia posthuma behafftet gewesen, aus dem Freüdhof ausgegraben, und einige davon verbrennet worden, wo doch hiernächst bey der erfolgten Untersuchung sich nichts anderst, als was natürlich ware, befunden hat. Wie zumahlen aber hierunter mehrentheils Aberglauben und Betrug stecken, und wie dergleichen sündliche Müßbräuche in unseren Staaten künfftighin keinesweegs zu gestatten, sondern vielmehr mit denen empfindlichsten Straffen anzusehen gemeynet seyn, alß ist under gnädigster Befehl, daß künftig in allen derley Sachen von der Geistlichkeit ohne Concurrenz des Politici nichts vorgenohmen, sondern allemahl, wann ein solcher Casus eines Gespenstes, Hexerey, Schatz-Graben, oder eines angeblich vom Teüffel Besessenen vorkommen sollte, derselbe der politischen Instanz soforth angezeiget, mithin von dieser mit Beyziehung eines vernünfftigen Physici die Sache untersuchet, und eingesehen werden solle, ob, und was für Betrug darunter verborgen, und wie sodann die Betrüger zu Bestraffen seyn werden. Ihr werdet solchemnach diese unsere allerhöchste Anordnung nicht allein dorten, wo ihr es nöthig erachtet, kundmachen, sondern dieselbe auch vornehmlich denen geistlichen Ordinariis mit dem Beysatz intimiren, daß sie ihren untergebenden Consistoriis und Geistlichen diesfalls die erforderliche Pastoral-Instruction ertheilen, und sie dadurch von ihren Vorurtheilen, mit welchen einige behafftet seyn könnten, ableiten, als auch vor allen dahin anweisen sollen, in vorbesagten Fällen allemahl die Sach denen pollitischen Stellen anzuzeigen, und die genaue Untersuchung vorgehen zu lassen, worüber sodann de casu in casum der Bericht Uns zu erstatten seyn wird.
Hieran beschiehet etc. und Wir verbleiben.

Geben Wienn den 1. Martij 1755.

Magic and Superstition in Europe

On a trip to London last weekend I picked up a book called Magic and Superstition in Europe: A Concise History from Antiquity to the Present by Michael D. Bailey, assistant professor of history at Iowa State University.

I have not read the book yet, but in about 250 pages Bailey attempts to survey the history of concepts like magic, superstition and witchcraft, even including a few references to vampires like this one:

After 1736, officials in the English government and church were effectively enjoined against expresing any credence in the new superstitious belief in witchcraft. Needless to say, widespread belief in witchcraft and other forms of magic did not vanish in England in this year, nor in France in 1862, nor anywhere else in Europe as witch hunting came to an end. In some areas, other beliefs that might explain unexpected death or misfortune arose or took on renewed strength. For example, in the Hungarian region of Transylvania, belief in vampires may well have taken on new life even as central authorities became increasingly skeptical about witchcraft. Debates about vampires circulated around the Habsburg court in Vienna and may have influenced Maria Theresa's mid-eighteenth-century legislation effectively ending witch trials. Mostly, though, belief in witchcraft and magic simply endured, and continued to be expressed in local communities as it always had been. For despite all the sound and fury attached to the great witch hunts of Europe, witch hunts and witch trials were never the way most common people dealt with witchcraft. (p. 174)

The painting on the book cover is The Magic Circle by John William Waterhouse (1886).

Von Gottes Gnaden

Interestingly, you have to turn to page 667 in Ottenfeld and Teuber's book on Austrian military between 1700 and 1867, Die Österreichischeer Armee von 1700 bis 1867, to read this on the medical aspect of military life in the early 18th century:

"Es ist in diesen Blättern beinahe noch gar nicht über die Pflege der Verwundeten und erkrankten Soldaten geschrieben worden; sehr erklärlich, weil eine solche organisatorisch gar nicht bestand; zwar waren jedem Truppenkörper Aerzte zugewiesen und wurden auch Spitäler errichtet, auch seit Alters her für Invaliden schlecht und recht gesorgt, hiemit war aber Alles geschehen. Stand die Armee im Lager, so konnten in den benachbarten Ortschaften Marodenhäuser errichtet werden, wenn man es nicht vorzog, Schwererkrankte und Verwundete den zunächstliegenden Gemeinden einfach zu überlassen; im Gefechte standen hinter dem ersten und zweiten Treffen requirite Bauernwagen, welche die Verwundeten abschoben; die Soldatenweiber, leichter Verwundete, Marschmarode und Officiersdiener bildeten sodann die Sanitätsmannschaft, der man allenfalls einige Unterofficiere und Soldaten der Truppe unter einem Invaliden-Officier vorsetzte, und so fungierte ein Feldspital – wie man sieht – von Gottes Gnaden."

So, obviously the medical standards of the Feldscherer, no doubt including those who examined the corpses of suspected vampires in Serbia, did not impress Teuber.

Theories and Myths of Evil and Vampires

"This is a book about evil. More precisely, it is a book about human evil, and its central question is whether there can be a secular conception of evil, whether that idea can tell us anything about the human condition, explain anything about what human beings do, in the absence of its more familiar territory of the supernatural and the demonic. In seeking to understand human evil it asks the question whether evil exists at all, and one possible answer I take very seriously is that it does not."

Thus Phillip Cole of Middlesex University opens the first chapter of his 2006 book The Myth of Evil (Edinburg Univ. Press), and interestingly one of many themes in the book is vampirism, which is particularly dealt with (along with witchcraft) in the fourth chapter on Communities of Fear (pp. 77-94). As he writes, "The point of studying these historical events is to develop a political philosophy of evil, an awareness of how it has been used to marginalise and oppress. If we can make no philosophical or psychological sense of evil, it may be that this political sense is all there is." (p. 77)

Cole is inspired by what Rousseau wrote about vampires, or rather by what Christopher Frayling writes about Rousseau:

"The point he [Rousseau] made about them [vampires] was that however little so-called 'attested histories' instructed us about the status of vampires, they revealed much about the nature of authority in civilized society." (Vampires: Lord Byron to Count Dracula, p. 33)

Cole writes of the witch hunts and the vampire cases:

"I will suggest that we can draw general patterns about the nature of power in 'civilised' society from these two great panics in European history, and the most important element is the centrality of fear in constituting the identity of political communities. Rather than political communities forming themselves around shared identities, they are formed through the exploitation by political authorities of social fears and insecurities, by focusing those fears upon some threatening 'evil' figure - the vampire, the witch, the Jew, the migrant, the asylum seeker, the Gypsy, the 'Islamicist' terrorist - and claiming to protect the 'genuine' members from these deviant and dangerous threats. Political communities are constituted by an irrational horror of imaginary monsters. In this process, those who seek to hold or gain power do not only create the threatening figure, they also create the community itself, or a particular form of it, with themselves at its centre. The witch craze, the vampire epidemics, and, I will argue in the final chapter of this book, our present panics over such phenomena as immigration and terrorism are exactly parallel. What is especially terrifying about the vampire and the witch is their ambiguity - their ability to be among us without detection, and, in the case of the vampire, their ability to pass across borders undetected. They are the enemy within, and therefore, a source of intense fear and panic, which can be exploited in the pursuit of political power." (p. 81)


Whereas it is quite obvious that those fearing vampires usually went to the authorities to deal with actual cases of vampires and Magia Posthuma, the authorities generally neither instigated nor approved of the belief in vampires. This was the case with the Habsburg military surgeons, and this seems to have been the case with many cases of Magia Posthuma in e.g. Moravia and Silesia. That is, the notion that the authorities themselves deliberately sought to control or even suppress the populace by the belief in vampires and Magia Posthuma, is based on little or no historical evidence.

One proponent of this theory is Gabriel Ronay who in a chapter called Vampire Trials in his 1972 book The Dracula Myth wrote:

"The Inquistion, the Roman Church's instrument for dealing with schismatics and the like, was already in decline, the witch-hunt in the Protestant territories was slowly abating and heresy had lost much of the social dread attached to it. A vigorously pursued and dogmatically justified campaign against the widely feared vampires, however, offered a useful lever with which to re-establish the Catholic Church's dominant position and reassert its spiritual influence in the mixed border areas. With the motive clearly established, there can be little doubt as to whom the hunting down and prosecution of alleged un-dead vampires benefited. The psychological weapon furnished by the nature of the accusations was exploited to the maximum effect to belabour the Orthodox rite Church. The trials also provided a legal forum to discredit the fellow congregationalists of alleged vampires who, in the recorded cases in Hungary's southern border areas, were Slovenes, Serbs or other aliens." (p. 27)

Certainly, revenants played an important role in debates in e.g. the 17th century, but I find it hard to recognize Ronay's description of "a vigorously pursued and dogmatically justified campaign against the widely feared vampires" when reading material from e.g. the original vampire cases. The authorities generally regarded vampires as superstition and generally had no reason to encourage the belief, in fact, they tried to discourage it. Ronay's idea of a "campaign" is probably very appealing to the modern reader, because it is easy to grasp, but a theory should also be based on source material, and in my opinion it is hard to find documentation for Ronay's "campaign".

Cole is perhaps slightly more sophisticated and his analysis in some ways more interesting, but it is based on very little source material and even includes material on the fictional vampire! Regarding "the vampire phenomenon", he mentions that "historical scholarship here is much inferior to the work on the witch trials."(p. 86) And this lack of knowledge of the historical background is probably why his analysis of the vampire cases is not quite convincing.

Gerard van Swieten commemorated

Earlier this year the Münze Österreichs, the Austrian Mint, issued a 50 Euro gold coin commemorating Gerard van Swieten (1700-1772). The coin is the first in a series called Großen Mediziner Österreichs, i.e. Great Austrian Physicians, and it seems only fitting that the first coin is dedicated to the memory of van Swieten who played a major role in developing medicine and medical education in 18th Century Austria.

However, as those of us who are interested in the history of magia posthuma of the 18th Century know, van Swieten played an important role in trying to stop the belief in magia posthuma. In a recent book on vampire slayers, Slayers and their Vampires: A Cultural History of Killing the Dead by Bruce McClelland (University of Michigan Press, 2006), he is even called "the Lowlands slayer", and it is claimed that "in 1755, Maria Theresa dispatched Van Swieten to Hermersdorf, Moravia, to investigate the postmortem treatment of a certain 'Rosina Polackin'".

However, I can find no evidence of Van Swieten playing this active role in the investigation himself.

In his written remarks on the affair and on vampirism in general, Van Swieten only mentions that the Empress sent two other physicians to investigate this case of magia posthuma: the Professor of Anatomy, Johannes Gasser, and the court physician, Christian Wabst. As has been noted by vampire historians, this was the first time physicians of this calibre were sent to investigate a vampire case, which in itself is a testament to the progress of medicine during the few decades that had passed since the famous Serbian vampire cases. It was the report of Gasser and Wabst to Empress Maria Theresa that prompted Van Swieten to write about vampires and to recommend to the Empress that she should pass a law against digging up corpses and burning them because of beliefs in magia posthuma.

The role of Van Swieten and Maria Theresa in the history of the magia posthuma has only recently been recognized in vampire books in English, no doubt aided by Gábor Klaniczay's paper on The Decline of Witches and the Rise of Vampires under the Eighteenth-Century Habsburg Monarchy which has become a standard text in the historical study of witchcraft.