The Corpse of Evidence

Call for papers for an edited volume temporarily entitled:

The Corpse of Evidence. Cadavers and Proofs in Early modern European Forensic Medicine.

We invite scholars to submit abstracts for a proposed volume on the history of early modern European forensic medicine. At the center of the volume is the cadaver, observed, dissected and manipulated to provide answers to the questions of doctors, lawyers, theologians. How did the practices of interrogation of the dead body evolve in the different European countries and how did the concept of proof change?

Proposals are encouraged which, while based on specific case studies, can provide ample stimulus for reflection and allow for comparisons between countries with different cultural, and particularly scientific, traditions.

We welcome submissions on the following subjects:

• Medical-legal Literature
• Dissection practices and narratives
• Resistance to dissection
• Postmortem phenomena
• The corpse in the history of mentalités
• Comparative analyses between the various European legal systems
• Comparisons of doctors, lawyers and theologians
• Pathological anatomy and teratology
• Processes of beatification and sanctification in the Catholic Church

Those interested should submit a 300 word abstract describing the essay they propose to write. Authors should include a short cv, affiliation and contact information with their abstracts, which should be sent electronically to Dr. Francesco Paolo de Ceglia: francescopaolo.deceglia@uniba.it

The deadline for submission is November 1, 2013.

Thanks to Dr. de Ceglia of the Centro Interuniversitario di Ricerca "Seminario di Storia della Scienza" at the Università degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro for notifying me. De Ceglia has published a paper on Giuseppe Davanzati's view on vampires: The Archbishop's Vampires.

A surgeon's eyewitness accounts from Transylvania and Wallachia

Most of what was written on vampires in the eighteenth century consisted of commentaries on either a very small corpus of eyewitness accounts from officials of the Habsburg authorities or the Catholic Church or of various tales of vampires and revenants from around Europe. The most careful and comprehensive study based on first hand examinations of both those who complained of being attacked by a bloodsucker and of the bodies of the suspected vampires, was written in 1756 by a regimental surgeon, Georg Tallar.

Tallar was born in Mainz around 1700, and studied medicine there and in Straβburg. He then pursued a career as a surgeon and physician in the Habsburg army for more than thirty years, serving in Transylvania, Wallachia and the Banat. As Tallar mastered the local languages of those regions, he was not only able to discuss the subject of vampires first hand with the people who actually believed in them.

The new edition of Tallar's book and two pages from the manuscript shown in the Dracula. Woiwode und Vampir exhibition catalogue

Tallar witnessed five incidents in which people claimed to be attacked by vampires – or actually: Moroi – and in three cases he was himself involved in examining those who were ill as well as the corpses that were exhumed. He had actually even known some of those who, after their demise, were suspected of being bloodsuckers.

The Wallachians who were ill and claimed to have been attacked by a bloodsucker, told Tallar that they had been in bed for a couple of days, and that their heart hurt. When asked where the heart sits, they pointed, not to the heart, but to the stomach and the intestines. They said that, whenever they tried to fall asleep, the bloodsucker appeared in the shape of this or that deceased man or woman, standing in front of them or in a corner. Some said that they saw the bloodsucker when they were asleep, but many of the afflicted actually saw nothing. Still, they believed that it was necessary to open the graves to look for the Moroi. Although exhuming and destroying corpses was prohibited by law, they were willing to break the law to seek out and destroy the bloodsucker. In fact, people were so afraid of falling prey to the vampire, that they dared not walk about after dark.

Examining them, Tallar found that they complained from pains and aches in various part of the body, including strong headaches, and that their tongue would turn first pale and then become brownish red and dry as wood. They were very thirsty, and had a faint and erratic pulse.

In each case, only Wallachians were affected by the bloodsucker, whereas neither soldiers, German settlers, nor local Serbs became ill, so Tallar concluded that the Wallachians did not suffer from an epidemic, but rather an endemic disease. Considering the traits of the Wallachians, he concluded that the food eaten by them, especially during the fasts that they fanatically observed during Winter - consisting of e.g. cabbage, garlic, and sauerkraut - was the cause of the disease. In fact, administering a simple vomitive often cured the diseased!

Tallar also discusses various beliefs concerning the dead and their graves, refuting the beliefs and providing various natural causes for the phenomena. He e.g. refutes the belief that the bloodsuckers are more harmful on Saturdays, by exhuming and examining the corpses on various days of the week, showing that the state of the corpses were independent of the day of the week.

Overall, Tallar is an exemplar of the medical enlightened man, emphasizing – like Gerard van Swieten – the lack of education among the Wallachians, while at the same time mentioning that they are not so stupid not to accept his medical remedies against the disease, when they notice that people get cured.

From Medicinische Jahrbücher des kaiserl. königl.
österreichischen Staates Band 56 (Wien, 1846)

Tallar wrote his Visum-Repertum Anatomico-Chirurgicum after the vampire incident in Hermersdorf that prompted Empress Maria Theresa to stop the burning of corpses associated with magia posthuma, but his manuscript was left unpublished for almost thirty years, until the Viennese publisher Johann Georg Möβle came upon it and decided to publish it in 1784.

A reviewer in the Viennese Realzeitung für das Jahr 1784, expressed the wish that Tallar had used his proficiency in the Wallachian language to publish his observations on the matter in that tongue. Excerpts from the book turned up in Johann Dionis John’s Lexikon der K. K. Medizinalgeseze in 1790, and in an article in the Medicinische Jahrbücher des kaiserl. Königl. Österreichischen Staates in 1846.

Now, almost 250 years after its first publication, Tallar’s book has been reprinted by Nicolaus Equiamicus in a slim volume that replaces Möβle’s introduction by a new one by Equiamicus, and adds a few explanatory footnotes, while slightly updating the language of the original. Tallar’s original is readily available online (see my list of links), but Equiamicus is to be commended for providing us with a handy edition of this essential text on vampire beliefs. And it is available for just €7.90.

Sleep paralysis and 'a sensationalist cock-and-bull story'

'From 12th-century 'revenants' to today's teen thriller Twilight, belief in vampires has been an enduring theme in cultural history,' and in the September issue of the BBC History magazine, Richard Sugg writes about a few incidents of vampire history. Sugg is a lecturer in the English department at Durham University, has written Mummies, Cannibals and Vampires: The History of Corpse Medicine from the Renaissance to the Victorians and the forthcoming The Smoke of the Soul: Medicine, Physiology and Religion in Early Modern England, and is currently preparing Faces of the Vampire: From Holy Terror to Vampotainment. Elsewhere, it has been pointed out that one of the 'vampire cases' that Sugg reports, probably is simply 'a sensationalist cock-and-bull story'. Sugg, apparently, supports the theory that vampire beliefs are based on experiences of sleep paralysis:

'In her recent book on sleep paralysis, Shelley Adler related how the religious beliefs of Hmong people from south-east Asia led to several nightmare-related deaths during and after the 1970s. Therese attack, which occurred in the USA among Hmong refugees, were thought to be due to angry ancestral spirits and subsequently inspired the horror film A Nightmare on Elm Street.

So vampires (or nightmares incorporating them) really can kill you - if you believe in them. Anyone who has suffered from sleep paralysis nightmares will understand this level of terror. And if you suffered such an attack in a little Serbian or Greek village a century or more ago, what explanation could there be - except something supernatural and demonic?'

The Werewolf in European Culture

Matthew Beresford, author of From Demons to Dracula: The Creation of the Modern Vampire Myth, is shortly publishing a book on the related subject of werewolves: The White Devil: The Werewolf in European Culture. According to the publishers, Reaktion Books,

'The werewolf - a human with the ability to shapeshift into a wolf- is a creature with a firm hold on the modern imagination. It prowls our countryside and cinema screens alike on the eve of a full moon. Yet the birth of the werewolf myth can be traced back thousands of years into prehistory. The White Devil tracks the development of the myth of the terrifying lycanthrope as it progresses through history to the present day.

How do Iron Age bog bodies, Roman gods, Joan of Arc, Adolf Hitler, and Sigmund Freud all feature in the story of the werewolf myth? Matthew Beresford answers these questions and more in considering early death and burial rites, mythology, folklore, archaeological evidence and local superstitions through to medieval literary offerings, werewolf trials, medical explanations, alleged sightings, and cinema.

The White Devil draws on a wide variety of sources in order to understand why the werewolf has been part of cultural beliefs and mythology across Europe, tracing mankind's fascination with the beast over time. From the early wolf cults to the Anglo-Saxon criminal punishments, medieval werewolf executions and folkloric tales of noble werewolves, as well as psychological and medical explanations, it offers a new understanding of how the werewolf has survived within European culture for thousands of years.'

From the Alpenzoo in Innsbruck, Austria

Witchcraft in Early Modern Poland

Out in November from palgrave macmillan: Witchcraft in Early Modern Poland, 1500-1800 by Wanda Wyporska, who has studied the documents from witchcraft trials stored at Polish court archives. According to the publishers, 'Witchcraft in Early Modern Poland, 1500-1800 is the first comprehensive study of Polish demonology examined together with the records of witchcraft trials in Wielkopolska. Wyporska's detailed exploration reveals many different versions of the witch: from harbinger of evil to much-admired housewife, shattering the assumption that the witch was universally loathed. Contemporary voices reveal an awareness of the dynamics behind the persecution and an intensely critical attitude towards abuses rife in the courtroom. This groundbreaking new work looks at the many reasons why individuals used witchcraft, accused each other and admitted to carrying out witchcraft. It goes behind the trials to discover narratives of abuse, power struggles, and the relationships between men and women in the early modern period.'

A Financial Nightmare

The city of Detroit filed for bankruptcy this Summer, and there has been much speculation whether it will be decided to auction off pieces of art from the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) to alleviate the city's debt of $18 billion. Although it appears to be unclear whether parts of the collection can be sold at all, Christie's has recently been hired to appraise the collection.

One of the paintings from the DIA's collection is Fuseli's Nightmare, that has been the subject of a few posts here, and that I myself got to see at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris earlier this year. It's hardly on the top ten list of art that the institute owns, as it includes several famous pieces by e.g. Tintoretto, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Hans Holbein, Titian, Bruegel, Rembrandt, and Degas, but it is certainly a piece of art that has played an important role in art and cultural history for over 200 years, including in cinema, as was one of the themes of the L'ange du Bizarre exhibition at Orsay (and formerly at the Schwarze Romantik exhibition at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt), so it would be a shame to see it along with other important pieces sold off to private collectors.

Rarities at Schloss Ambras: Vlad Tepes

The 1655 engraving of the Danish physician and antiquarian Ole Worm's collection of various animals, plants, minerals and other objects, the Museum Wormianum, is one of the most famous examples of the Schatz-, Kunst-, Raritäten-, and Wunderkammern from the sixteenth and seventeenth century. After the death of Worm, King Frederik III obtained the collection and integrated it with his own art collection. The original collection no longer exists, but I suppose it is hard not to wonder what it would have been like to visit Worm's museum, and, if my memory serves me right, an attempt was actually made to temporarily reconstruct the Museum for an exhibition at Rundetårn in Copenhagen some 25 years ago.

The only collection of this kind that survives to this day, is the one started by Ferdinand II of Tyrol at Castle Ambras just outside Innsbruck in 1580, and it is fortunately readily accessible to the public. It is, however, not easy for the modern visitor to find out what the unifying principle behind the collection was, as it consists of natural objects, art and handicraft from around the globe, some fantastic, some very exotic, some grotesque, and some more ordinary, like the portraits of the Renaissance authors Petrarca, Dante, and Boccaccio, as well as that of the Wallachian ruler Vlad Tepes.

Castle Ambras at Innsbruck, Austria

I first read of 'the fascinating and rather frightening gallery of rogues and monsters at Castle Ambras' many years ago in the then instant classic In Search of Dracula, in which historians Raymond T. McNally and Radu Florescu wrote, that 'a visit to Castle Ambras, particularly to the "Frankenstein Gallery", as the modern-day guides insist on calling it, is a startling experience, even for the most stout-hearted.'

According to the two historians, 'Ferdinand II, Archduke of the Tyrol, who owned Castle Ambras during the 16th century, had a perverse hobby of documenting the villains and deformed personalities of history. He sent emissaries all over Europe to collect portraits of such persons, and reserved a special room in the castle for displaying them. It made no difference whether the subjects were well-known or comparatively obscure. What did matter was that they be actual human beings, not imagined ones.'

The catalogue for sale at the castle, Meisterwerke der Sammlungen Schloss Ambras, is, however, more prosaic in describing the Archduke's collection mania. Apart from collecting armoury and weapons and building a library, the Archduke was in full harmony with the ideology of that day and age, collecting examples of antiquitas, antiquity, mirabilia, wonders, abnormalities, and artefacts, scientifica, scientific instruments of all sorts, as well as exotica, objects of non-European origin. The collection was intended to comprise a compendium of works of nature and art that reflected the macrocosm of God.

The notion that such a collection should reflect God's macrocosm did, however, not mean that it should be a microcosm of God's creation or Nature or an inventory as e.g. the daunting Naturhistorisches Museum in Vienna, but in fact only 'a microcosm or Compendium of all rare strange things,' as a French physician had inscribed over his own cabinet. 'Early modern collections excluded 99.9 percent of the known universe, both natural and artificial - namely, all that was ordinary, regular, or common,' writes Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park in Wonders and the Order of Nature (2001).

In fact, the Wunderkammer and its curiosities should not only stimulate an emotional response, it was 'provocatively subverting or straddling the boundaries of familiar categories. Was a winged cat bird or animal? Was coral vegetable or mineral? Was a gilded cocnut shell nature or art? Distraction as well as disorientation amplified the onlooker's wonder. Not only did individual objects subvert commonplaces or shatter categories; from every nook and cranny uncountable rarities clamored simultaneously for attention. The cabinets paid visual tribute to the variety and plenitude of nature, albeit very partially sampled. Stuffed with singularities, they astonished by copiousness as well as by oddity. Collectors did not savor paradoxes and surprises, they piled them high in overflowing cupboards and hung them from the walls and ceilings. The wonder they aimed at by the profusion of these heterogeneous particulars was neither contemplative nor inquiring, but rather dumbstruck.' (Daston and Park, p. 272-3)

Obviously there is much more to Archduke Ferdinand's collection than the mere interest in horrors that McNally and Florescu would have us believe back in 1972.

The famous portrait of Vlad Tepes, 60 cm by 50 cm, was painted during the second half of the sixteenth century, and it is usually assumed to have been copied from another painting that may be lost. It is known to have been located in Archduke Ferdinand's library by 1596. In fact, according to the inventory of 'allerlai gmäl und taflen' from that year, the painting is simply described as 'Dux Balachie' (as mentioned in the catalogue from the Dracula. Woiwode und Vampir exhibition at Castle Ambras in 2008). The lower part of the painting is painted white, perhaps in an order to remove a name or title.

Incidentally, the Dracula. Woiwode und Vampir catalogue mentions that the letters 'S T', probably the initials of the otherwise anonymous artist, can be found on the middle button, cf. the photo below. 

When McNally and Florescu visited the castle forty years ago, the portrait of Vlad Tepes was situated to the right of 'the portrait of Gregor Baxi, a Hungarian courtier who in the course of a duel had one eye pierced by a pale. The other eye degenerated into a bloodied and deformed shape. Baxi managed to survive this condition for one year, long enough for the portrait to be completed with the actual pale protruding from both sides of the head - which made medieval history. It is strangely appropriate that this impaled victim should be located close to Dracula, whose eyes are depicted slightly turned to the left and seem to gaze in satisfaction at this macabre scene.'

During my visit, the truly unusual portrait of Gregor Baxi was exhibited as part of a fascinating exhibition about the history of knights, along with a reconstruction of an impaled skull similar to the painting of Baxi made as part of a research project that concluded that the pale penetrated Baxi's head so low that the brain would have been left intact.

As can be seen from the photo of this blogger in front of the portrait of Vlad Tepes, it was placed next to the painting of a disabled man suffering from a genetic disease of the connective tissue, possibly Thomas Schweicker, who used his feet for producing art and calligraphy:

'The naked man is illustrated together with a collectible from a chamber of art and curiosities in the background. This means he is already presented in the environment where his picture is displayed. A red sheet of paper was attached to the painting, so that only the left shoulder was visible. If the observer wanted to see more, he had to lift the paper.' (from the text next to the painting)

Below the disabled man is a painting of a dwarf, perhaps one of the dwarfs present at the court of the Archduke, including 'the Italian Magnifico, who had the looks of an eighty-year old at the age of eighteen. Magnifico presumably suffered from progeria, a disease where the body ages prematurely.'

To the left of this set of paintings is a painting of a giant and a dwarf, and to the right Pedro Gonzalez, 'The Wolfman of Munich' according to McNally and Florescu, along with his two children. I intend to return to these portraits in another post.

Outside the castle is a large garden consisting of, I suppose, both a more baroque and a more romantic and naturalistic garden, both worth a walk up and down the heights. Next to the castle one finds a very cold cave, the Bacchus Grotto, where noble visitors were requested to ceremoniously pass a test in which they were put in fetters until they had drunk a cup of wine. Afterwards they were freed and signed a ledger. These Trinkbücher still exist and are exhibited at the castle.

The castle seen from the Bacchus Grotto

No ceremony is required to enter the castle these days, apart from paying a few Euros. It is truly a great place to visit, and so is Innsbruck and the surrounding Alps. Of particular interest in my opinion is the Tiroler Volkskunstmuseum, and if you fancy Renaissance and early Baroque music, you might consider the Innsbruck Festival of Early Music. Believe it or not, during my visit, one of the local cinemas, Cinematograph, was actually showing Werner Herzog's Nosferatu!

Innsbruck seen from Hafelekarspitze (2.334 m above sea level)

Directions to go to Munich

From Bram Stoker's Notes for Dracula: A Facsimile Edition by Robert Eighteen-Bisang and Elizabeth Miller p. 34-5: 'Directions in letter of Count to go to Munich stop at Quatre Saisons & wait instructions. Start on same day & arrive direct service. Visit to Pinacothek museum & to Dead House - telling how brought about.'

According to Bram Stoker's notes for Dracula, Jonathan Harker's travel route was: London - Paris - Munich - Salzburg - Vienna - Budapest - Klausenburg - Bistritz. In Munich he stayed at the Quatre Saisons hotel, now Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten in Maximilianstrasse, part of the Kempinski group. Opened in 1858 as a state of the art hotel, it is still considered one of the leading hotels of the world. Judging by the only Kempinski hotel I have myself stayed at, the luxurious Hotel Adlon in Berlin, the Vier Jahreszeiten is no doubt worth a stay - if you can afford it.

Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten

The relationship between the short story Dracula's Guest and Dracula, the novel, is disputed, but elements from the short story can be found in some of Stoker's notes for the novel. These include a visit to the Pinakothek, which at the time consisted of two collections, the Alte Pinakothek and the Neue Pinakothek. Today a Pinakothek der Moderne has been added. The collections exhibit many well-known and important pieces of art, e.g. Michael Pacher's 15th century set of four paintings from St. Augustine's life, including that of the Devil showing Augustine the Book of Vices. Currently the Alte Pinakothek is exhibiting an interesting collection of motifs from the Old Testament.

Alte Pinakothek

Stoker possibly intended Harker to visit the Opera for a performance of Wagner's Flying Dutchman, no doubt at the Nationaltheater München. There are, of course, also other things to enjoy while in Munich.

'Vampire skeletons' in Poland

See Dziennik zachodni for more photos

While constructing a ring road in Gliwice in South West Poland, formerly part of Silesia, four skeletons were found with their heads cut off and e.g. placed between the skeleton's legs. Archaeologist Dr. Jacek Pierzak says that it is hard to date the skeletons, but they are believed to come from the early modern period. Tests will date them and may provide a better understanding of whether they were e.g. victims of a cholera epidemic, executed criminals, or indeed people who the locals wished to prevent from becoming revenants.

The latter theory has made some Polish web sites write about incidents of vampirism in the areas that are now part of Poland, and, of course, Silesia was one of the areas where beliefs in magia posthuma was not uncommon in the early modern period. The press mentions a more recent example from the village Stare Mierzwice  Masovia, about 100 km to the East of Warsaw, where in 1914 a corpse was dug up, beheaded, and the head placed between the legs.

Thanks to Leon Aguilera Radford for notifying me of this news story.

A well-illustrated history of a modern myth

When in Paris a couple of months ago, I picked up a number of books at the Musée d'Orsay, including Jean Marigny's Vampires de la legende au mythe moderne published in 2011 by Éditions de La Martinière.

Large format, nicely bound with blood red edges, and fully illustrated in colour, it also includes three special booklets containing cover art, posters and stills from vampire novels and films. There are, in fact, a number of illustrations that you will probably not find elsewhere. The text, however, follows relatively traditional lines: 'Vampires' from various periods and regions across the globe, as well as listing Vlad Tepes, Elizabeth Bathory and Gilles de Rais as persons who inspired the vampire myth, and the main portion of the book traces the fictional vampire from John Polidori's Lord Ruthven to True Blood and manga.

Essentially, this is a colourful introduction to the subject, but those interested in vampires from a more historical or folkloric point of view, should rather seek out Marigny's Sang pour sang: Le réveil des vampires (translated into English as Vampires: The World of the Undead) or the volume Colloque de Cerisy: Les Vampires.

'Aujord'hui, le vampire est omniprésent sur nos écrans, dans nos libraires et dans le multiples manifestations. Cette vitalité exubérante est sans doute un signe de santé mais elle peut aussi mener rapidement à seuil de saturation. La mode actuelle des vampires a-t-elle des chances de durer? Nul ne peut le dire. On peut raisonnablement supposer que le vampire, devenu trop banal, connaîtra dans les années à venir une nouvelle période de récession - mais on sait aussi qu'il est immortel ...' (from Marigny's conclusion).