Arnold Paole

Dore Illustration for Dante's Divine Comedy

The case of Arnold Paole took place in 1727-1728 in the Serbian village of Medvegia (also spelled Meduegna), near Belgrade, although another epidemic broke out in 1732. Five years after the death of Arnod Paole, seventeen people died in under three months from alleged vampire attacks in the same village and, on December 12th 1731, the Austrian Emperor ordered that an inquiry should be carried out by Regimental Field Surgeon Johannes Fluckinger, who authored the report Visum et Repertum (Seen and Discovered).

Flückinger’s report was published and became a best seller. By March of 1732, the accounts of the vampire activities reached the periodicals of England and France. Due to it’s in depth documentation, this writing became the future center of studies and molded many views on vampire beliefs. It also had much influence with two catholic scholars, Dom Augustin Calmet and Giuseppe Davanzati, who prepared books on vampirism.

The fear of vampirism was so widespread that Empress Maria Theresa of Austria passed лавс making it illegal to exhume or desecrate a body after her personal physician, Gerhard ван Swieten, investigated and determined that vampires do not exist.

In 1727 Paole returned home to the village of Medvegia. Paole himself told of an encounter he'd had with a vampire while stationed in Грееце. Arnold was bitten by a vampire while he was serving as a soldier in his country's army. The Repertum states that Paole “had eaten from the earth of the vampire's grave and had smeared himself with the vampire's blood, in order to be free of the vexation he had suffered.”

Peter Plogojowitz: Real vampire?

The Premature Burial, Antoine Wiertz

 
The following is a translation of the statement made by Imperial Provisor Frombald, who had witnessed these particular events in 1725.

        After a subject by the name of Peter Plogojowitz had died, ten weeks past - he lived in the village of Kisilova, in the Rahm District - and had been buried according to the Raetzian custom, it was revealed that in this same village of Kisilova, within a week, nine people, both old and young, died also, after suffering a twenty-four hour illness. And they said publicly, while they were yet alive, but on their death-bed, that the above-mentioned Plogojowitz, who had died ten weeks earlier, had come to them in their sleep, laid himself on them, and throttled them, so that they would have to give up the ghost. The other subjects were very distressed and strengthened even more in such (beliefs) by the fact that the dead Peter Plogojowitz's wife, after saying that her husband had come to her and demanded his opanky, or shoes, had left the village of Kisilova and gone to another. And since with such people (which they call vampires) various signs are to be seen - that is, the body undecomposed, the skin, hair, beard and nails growing - the subjects resolved unanimously to open the grave of Peter Plogojowitz and to see if such above-mentioned signs were really to be found on him.

        To this end they came here to me and, telling of these events, asked me and the local pope, or parish priest, to be present at the viewing. And although I at first disapproved, telling them that the praiseworthy administration should first be dutifully and humbly informed, and its exalted opinion about this should be heard, they did not want to accommodate themselves to this at all, but rather gave this short answer: I could do what I wanted, but if I did not accord to their custom, they would have to leave house and home, because by the time a gracious resolution was received from Belgrade, perhaps the entire village - and this was already supposed to have happened in Turkish times - could be destroyed by such an evil spirit, and they did not want to wait for this.

        Since I could not hold such people from the resolution they had made, either with good words or with threats, I went to the village of Kisilova, taking along the Gradisk pope, and viewed the body of Peter Plogojowitz, just exhumed, finding, in accordance with thorough truthfulness, that first of all I did not detect the slightest odor that is otherwise characteristic of the dead, and the body, except for the nose, which was somewhat fallen away, was completely fresh. The hair and beard - even the nails, of which the old ones had fallen away - had grown on him; the old skin, which was somewhat whitish, had peeled away, and a new fresh one had emerged under it. The face, hands, and feet, and the whole body were so constitued, and they could not have been more complete in his lifetime. Not without astonishment, I saw some fresh blood in his mouth, which, according to the common observation, he had sucked from the people killed by him. In short, all the indications were present that such people (as remarked above) are said to have. After both the pope and I had seen this spectacle, while the people grew more outraged than distressed, all the subjects, with great speed, sharpened a stake - in order to pierce the corpse of the deceased with it - and put this at his heart, whereupon, as he was pierced, not only did much blood, completely fresh, flow also through his ears and mouth, but still other wild signs (which I pass by out of high respect) took place. Finally, according to their usual practice, they burned the often-mentioned body, and in hoc casu, to ashes, of which I inform the most laudable Administration, and at the same time would like to request, obediently and humbly, that if a mistake was made in this matter, such is to be attributed not to me but to the rabble, who were beside themselves with fear.

        Imperial Provisor, Gradisk District


        From Vampires, Burial, and Death , by Paul Barber (Yale University Press, 1988).

Elizabeth Bathory, Blood Countess

Copy of the lost 1585 original portrait of Erzsébet Báthory lost

 Countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed (Báthory Erzsébet in Hungarian, Alžbeta Bátoriová in Slovak; 7 August 1560 – 21 August 1614) was a countess from the renowned Báthory family of nobility in the Kingdom of Hungary. Although the number of murders is debated, she has been labeled the most prolific female serial killer in history and is remembered as the "Blood Countess."

Erzsebet Bathory, known more commonly in the Western world by the anglicised name Elizabeth, was born August 7th, 1560, the daughter of Baron George Bathory and Baroness Anna Bathory. George and Anna were both Bathorys by birth; he a member of the Ecsed branch of the family and of the Somlyo. Such inbreeding was not uncommon in the aristocracy of 16th Century Eastern Europe, as the purity of the noble line was seen as paramount.

The Bathory were one of the most powerful Protestant families in Hungary, and numbered warlords, politicians and clerics among its members. Elizabeth's ancestor Stephan Bathory had fought alongside Vlad Dracula in one of his many successful attempts to reclaim the Wallachian throne, and his namesake, Elizabeth's cousin, became Prince of Transylvania in 1571, and was later elected King of Poland. Other members of the family were less respectable however, including Elizabeth's brother (also called Stephan), a noted drunkard and lecher.

Elizabeth was highly-educated for her time, being fluent in Hungarian, Latin and Greek in a time when most Hungarians of noble birth - even men, who generally would have been better schooled than their female kin - were all but illiterate. She is also said to have been a great beauty, although it is unlikely that anyone would have openly said otherwise of the daughter of such a prominent family. At the age of eleven, Elizabeth was engaged to Count Ferenc Nadasdy, a skilled warrior and athlete, but as reported by his own mother's hand, 'no scholar'. He was - by varying reports - five or 15 years Elizabeth's senior. It was Ferenc's mother, Ursula, who arranged this engagement, one which would give considerable prestige to the Nadasdy family.

In seeking to divine the genesis of Elizabeth's sadistic behaviour it has been suggested that she might have been insane from childhood. It is said that the young Elizabeth suffered from seizures accompanied by loss of control and fits of rage, which may have been caused by epilepsy, possibly stemming from inbreeding. She was also able to witness the brutal justice handed down by her family's officers on their estates at Ecsel. One anecdote describes an incident in which a gypsy, accused of theft, was sewn up in the belly of a dying horse with only his head exposed, and left to die. Such tales afford a grisly reminder that her own acts - while excessive even by the standards of the time - were not so very far removed from deeds which would have been considered quite normal.

In 1574 Elizabeth fell pregnant by a peasant lover. She was quietly sequestered until the child, a daughter, was born and given to peasant foster parents to be raised. In 1575 she was married to Ferenc in a gala festival to which the Holy Roman Emperor himself, Maximillian II, was invited, sending a delegation and a lavish gift with an apology for his unavoidable absence. His reason was the danger of travelling in turbulent times, and there is little to suggest that he was seeking to avoid either family. Elizabeth retained her maiden name, and Ferenc added it to his own, less distinguished one, becoming Ferenc Bathory-Nadasdy