Peter and Paole - Two "Real" Vampires Quiz

Answer: Serbia

Though Serbia had been a dominant power in Southeast Europe in the fourteenth century under Tsar Stephen Dusan, the area had been essentially under Turkish domination since the Battle of Kosovo in 1389. Many folklorists credit the Muslim Ottomans' very lenient attitude toward the local customs of their multinational subjects for the proliferation of vampire hunts and other folk customs of the region. These probably would have come under greater scrutiny in a Catholic country with an active Inquisition.

Answer: The Habsburg Empire

The Habsburgs had won the Belgrade Pashalik (the region surrounding the modern-day capital of Serbia), along with other territories in the Balkans, in 1718 in a war with the Ottoman Empire. They would lose this territory back to the Turks in 1739, due in no small part to the resentment fostered among the Serbs by their heavy-handed rule.

That these stories were first popularized by the Austrians rather than the Serbs themselves is not surprising in historical context. Serbian as a written language didn't really come into being until the nineteenth century, around the same time as national independence. Up until then, those Serbs who were literate wrote in a Slavonic dialect, which mirrored the Church language but was not spoken widely. In 1988, scholar Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak wrote a now-famous essay, "Can the Subaltern Speak?", criticizing scholars of her own time for presuming to represent economically disadvantaged peoples of the former colonies. As is obvious from the nature of the early vampire reports, this cycle of elites speaking for the regular people is not a new thing.

Answer: No

The citizens of Kislova, the Serbian village where Plogojowitz had lived, claimed that the vampire had lain on them and wrapped his fingers around their throats. The ubiquitous bite on the throat, alas, is a creation of Gothic fiction.

Cryptically enough, the Habsburg Imperial Provisor who made the report also noted that Plogojowitz's wife had claimed the vampire had visited her and asked for his shoes - and then left for another village. Given Serbian vampires' propensity for occasional conjugal visits, it is possible that this is a euphemism for something more salacious.

Answer: All of these

The Austrian official - accompanied by the local priest - did note that Peter's nose had fallen off, but didn't think this significant. What he did think was significant was that the body had traces of blood around its mouth, which he surmised Plogojowitz had sucked from his victims.

The immediacy of this situation, by the way, does underscore that traditional vampires were not immortal scourges that haunted areas for generations like Dracula. Rather, they were acute problems to be dealt with. In sum, the function of the vampire in a folk ritual, if you want to conceive of it that way, is to be destroyed.

Answer: Impaled by a wooden stake, then cremated

The unnamed bureaucrat further remarks that the body flowed freely with fresh blood, along with "other wild signs which I will pass by out of respect". (This is almost certainly another euphemism; those extremely curious can send me a note.) It is worth mentioning that, according to Paul Barber (whose book "Vampires, Burial, and Death" is the source of most of this quiz), all of the above are entirely consistent with reasonable processes of decomposition.

Answer: All of these applied in part

Historically, hajduci (the proper Serbian plural of the term) were bandits who lived in a unique relationship with the agrarian body of the Serb population. For the most part, they robbed mainly the ruling Turks, and as such were idealized as freedom fighters; many of the heroic Serbian ballads extol the legendary courage and daring of the hajduci.

However, given that they were thoroughly outside the law and more than occasionally stole from Serbs as well, they could not be said to be on good terms with the people in general.

This relationship was further strained when the Austrians largely co-opted the Hajduks, enlisting them as local militias for control of the Serbian territories they had won from the Turks in 1718. A century later, the first kings of Serbia would be drawn from hajduk ranks, but in Arnold Paole's time, the hajduk was a very marginal figure.

Answer: He was attacked by a vampire while serving in the army

According to the report of Habsburg military surgeon Johannes Fluckinger, Paole had tried to forestall his fate by eating soil from the vampire's grave and smearing himself with the vampire's blood. Apparently, this didn't take.

It should be noted that all of these reports were made with the benefit of five years hindsight, and constructive memory may well have played a part. In folklore, this is referred to as the transformation of a tale from a "memorate" to a "fabulate". Generally speaking, the longer the time elapsed between the vampire hunt and the recording of the story about it, the more supernatural character the story acquires.

Answer: They exhumed him and the four people he killed, pierced their bodies with stakes, and cremated them

It is worth noting that Paole was said to have exhibited many of the same vampiric signs that Peter Plagojowitz evidenced - his body appeared undecayed, there was blood around his mouth, he had new nails and skin, and he bled copiously when pierced. Interestingly enough, the concern shown by the Dracula films of the 1960s that blood on the vampire's ashes would restore him to life is not in evidence in this case - Paole's peers seem to have given the ashes a rather respectful burial.

Answer: By preying on sheep that people later consumed

This later infestation seems to underscore the hajduk/vampire connection in this episode. Of the fifteen disinterred bodies, five were hajduks, and all of these were confirmed vampires. Of the other confirmed vampires, each had some peculiarity of burial, such as being partially consumed by animals, that would "mark" them as potential vampires.

Answer: True

Fluckinger's report was translated and reprinted in several gazettes of Western Europe; one such reprint in "Gentleman's Magazine" in 1734 is recognized by the "Oxford English Dictionary" as one of the two first uses of the term "vampyre" in English; the other, a political speech from that year, almost certainly is a quote of the other. One very reputable scholar, Katharina Wilson (in Alan Dundes' "The Vampire: A Casebook") makes the convincing argument that Fluckinger may have coined the term. This is a minority opinion, albeit a fascinating one.

For the record, the word "vampire" is not used in the official account of Plogojowitz's case; it is used here only as a convenience.

Thanks for taking this quiz! If you have any questions, corrections, or comments, especially those that would make this a better quiz, please let me know.