The history behind Jesus' death

[Patrick Degan]

Probably a source for horror literature about being buried alive written by Edgar Allen Poe and other authors of the era.

[Akkleptos]

Apparently, Rousseau was being misquoted in the source in which I first came across with the reference. In fact, he was trying to illustrate how debatable are the common sources -from which historical evidence is often derived, by the way- with a single, demolishing argument. He did a far better work than I did in the other post, and in fewer words. Well, but he was Rousseau!

If there is in this world a well-attested account, it is that of vampires. Nothing is lacking: official reports, affidavits of well-known people, of surgeons, of priests, of magistrates; the judicial proof is most complete. And with all that, who is there who believes in vampires?

However, I found this other quote, supposedly from Voltaire's Dictionnaire philosophique, where he explains:

These vampires were corpses, who went out of their graves at night to suck the blood of the living, either at their throats or stomachs, after which they returned to their cemeteries. The persons so sucked waned, grew pale, and fell into consumption; while the sucking corpses grew fat, got rosy, and enjoyed an excellent appetite. It was in Poland, Hungary, Silesia, Moravia, Austria, and Lorraine, that the dead made this good cheer.

I can only assume he was just stating the nature of the belief, rather than sharing it.

Holy crap, do you have any links to more information on French Vampires? I have never heard about this before.

Well, I stumbled across a handful of links on the vampire outbreaks in the 18th century:

During the 18th century there was a major vampire scare in Eastern Europe. Even government officials frequently got dragged into the hunting and staking of vampires. The word vampire only came into the English language in 1732 via an English translation of a German report of the much-publicized Arnold Paole vampire staking in Serbia. It all started with an outbreak of alleged vampire attacks in East Prussia in 1721 and in the Austro-Hungarian Empire from 1725 to 1734.

The report was suppossedly made famous in Western Europe by an article on it in the French periodical Le Glaneur Historique, from which The London Journal reprinted an English translation, thus introducing the word "vampire" to the English language.

The text of the original report, in German, can be found here: Copia eines Schreibens aus dem Gradisker District. The German speakers here might want to take a look at it.

The Piotr Plogojowitz case, according to Wikipedia:

Plogojowitz died in 1725, and his death was followed by a spate of other sudden deaths (after very short maladies, reportedly of about 24 hours each). Within eight days, nine persons perished. On their death-beds, the victims allegedly claimed to have been throttled by Plogojowitz at night. Furthermore, Plogojowitz's wife stated that he had visited her and asked her for his opanci (shoes); she then proceeded to move to another village. In other legends it is said that Plogojowitz came back to his house demanding food from his son, and when the son refused Plogojowitz brutally murdered his own son. The villagers decided to disinter the body and examine it for signs of vampirism, such as growing hair, beard, and nails and absence of decomposition.

<snip>
Together with the Veliko Gradište priest, he viewed the already exhumed body and was astonished to find that the characteristics associated with vampires in local belief were indeed present. The body was undecomposed, the hair and beard were grown, there were "new skin and nails" (while the old ones have peeled away), and blood could be seen in the mouth. After that, the people, who "grew more outraged than distressed", proceeded to stake the body through the heart, which caused a great amount of "completely fresh" blood to flow through the ears and mouth of the corpse. Finally, the body was burned. Frombald concludes his report on the case with the request that, in case these actions were found to be wrong, he should not be blamed for them, as the villagers were "beside themselves with fear". The authorities apparently did not consider it necessary to take any measures regarding the incident.

The Arnold Paole case, again, on Wiki.

This outbreak is only known from Flückinger's report about the second epidemic and its prehistory. According to the account of the Medveđa locals as retold there, Arnold Paole was a hajduk who had moved to the village from the Turkish-controlled part of Serbia. He reportedly mentioned often that he had been plagued by a vampire at a location named Gossowa (perhaps Kosovo) but that he had cured himself by eating soil from the vampire's grave and smearing himself with his blood.

About 1725, he broke his neck in a fall from a haywagon. Within 20 or 30 days after Paole's death, four persons complained that they had been plagued by him. These people died shortly after. Still ten days later villagers, advised by their hadnack (a military/administrative title) who had witnessed such events before, opened his grave. They saw that the corpse was undecomposed "and that fresh blood had flowed from his eyes, nose, mouth, and ears; that the shirt, the covering, and the coffin were completely bloody; that the old nails on his hands and feet, along with the skin, had fallen off, and that new ones had grown". Concluding that Paole was indeed a vampire, they drove a stake through his heart, to which he reacted by groaning and bleeding, and burned the body. They then disinterred Paole's four supposed victims and performed the same procedure, to prevent them from becoming vampires.

(my italics)


More on the vampire epidemic in the 18th century:

Magia Posthuma is the title of a book written by the Catholic lawyer Karl Ferdinand von Schertz in 1704. In the book von Schertz examines the case of a spectre that roamed about and harmed the living. Several of these cases were known in Moravia where von Schertz published his book, as well as in neighbouring areas. Only two decades later, a similar case was investigated by Austrian officials in North Eastern Serbia. The local people called the spectre a vampire. This incident inspired the deacon Michael Ranft to publish a study On the mastication of the dead. Just a few years later, in 1732, another case of vampirism was investigated in Serbia. Reports of this investigation were published throughout Europe with the consequence that the interest in vampires exploded.

Vampires became the topic of numerous learned articles and books. Cases of magia posthuma or vampirism, however, kept occurring. In 1755 empress Maria Theresa aided by her court physician Gerard van Swieten began passing laws against the exhumation and destruction of corpses as well as other acts of superstition. Within decades, however, vampires caught the imagination of poets and authors of gothic fiction.

Subsequently popularized by Bram Stoker in his 1897 novel Dracula and numerous movies, vampires have become part of everyday modern mythology, but the historical and cultural background has not yet been fully explored and understood. In fact, the modern conception of the vampiric count bears little or no resemblance to the revenants of the 18th century, and several modern books rather obscure than enlighten us on the early modern European revenants and vampires. This blog is an informal and personal contribution to the enterprise of exploring and understanding what happened and why.

[Enforcer Talen]

When I was involved in religious debates a few years back, my two favorite websites for arguing against the historical Jesus were ebonmusings.org and jesusneverexisted. They have a lot of good essays, and if you want to throw fundies a bender, try some of those methods.

[ray245]

When I was involved in religious debates a few years back, my two favorite websites for arguing against the historical Jesus were ebonmusings.org and jesusneverexisted. They have a lot of good essays, and if you want to throw fundies a bender, try some of those methods.

Are they even Historians? I fail to see any reason why I should listen to people who might not even have any sort of training in history.