Traité sur les apparitions des esprits et sur les vampires ou les revenans de Hongrie, de Moravie, &c.

## Author Information

Author Page - Calmet

Antoine Augustin Calmet, O.S.B. (26 February 1672 – 25 October 1757), a French Benedictine monk, was born at Ménil-la-Horgne, then in the Duchy of Bar, part of the Holy Roman Empire (now the French department of Meuse, located in the region of Lorraine).

Calmet was a monk as well as a learned man, and one of the most distinguished members of the Congregation of St. Vanne. In recognition of these qualities he was elected prior of Lay-Saint-Christophe in 1715, Abbot of St-Léopold at Nancy in 1718, and of Senones Abbey in 1729. He was twice entrusted with the office of Abbot General of the congregation. Pope Benedict XIII wished to confer episcopal dignity upon him, but his humility could not be brought to accept the honor. Calmet died at Senones Abbey, in the Vosges, near Saint-Dié, on 25 October 1757.

## Summary

Calmet describes the vampire as a "revenant corpse" thus distinguishing the intangible ghosts such as phantoms or spirits. He conducted a synthesis of studies on the subject and considers that vampirism is the result of undernourished Balkan. As Calmet amassed numerous reports on events of vampires, his attempt to refute false claims of vampirism proved difficult:

They see, it is said, men who have been dead for several months, come back to earth, talk, walk, infest villages, ill use both men and beasts, suck the blood of their near relations, make them ill, and finally cause their death; so that people can only save themselves from their dangerous visits and their hauntings by exhuming them, impaling them, cutting off their heads, tearing out the heart, or burning them. These revenants are called by the name of oupires or vampires, that is to say, leeches; and such particulars are related of them, so singular, so detailed, and invested with such probable circumstances and such judicial information, that one can hardly refuse to credit the belief which is held in those countries, that these revenants come out of their tombs and produce those effects which are proclaimed of them.

Calmet analyzed many famous cases including that of Arnold Paole. Calmet also investigated the Lettres juives in which an account of a vampire had been recorded in 1732 Hungary, witnessed by officers of the tribunal of Belgrade and an officer to the emperor's troops at Graditz. Although the letters were published as an epistolary novel, it was widely believed to be accurate and true records by the populace at the time.

Also investigated were various judicial cases of dead persons reported to return from the grave and attack and suck the blood of the living. One such case was in 1730 of a soldier lodged at the house of a peasant in Hungary. As the soldier sat with the homeowner and the rest of the company at the table for dinner, a person he did not know came into the home and quietly sat at the table with them. The homeowner appeared frightened and was discovered deceased the next day. After inquiry, the soldier learned that the father of the homeowner had died and was buried 10 years before and the family believed the man who came the previous night was the father's body.

The soldier informed the regiment, giving notice to the general officers who commissioned the captain of the infantry to further investigate. The captain, accompanied by other officers, a surgeon and an auditor had recorded dispositions of the family who confirmed the soldier's report and also received dispositions of all the residents of the village. The corpse of the father was ordered to be exhumed and was found to be in the likeness of a man recently deceased but with the blood-flow of a living man. The Count de Cabreras ordered the corpse's head to be cut off and to be reinterred in his tomb.

The count also received other information of another man dead for more than thirty years that was reported by family to have come back to his house on three separate occasions during meal time. On the first he had sucked the blood from the neck of his brother, the second time from one of his sons, and the third from one of the servants in the house, all three of which had died immediately after. Upon this disposition, the commissary took the suspected corpse from the grave, finding it to be like the first corpse discovered with a living blood-flow and he ordered them to run a large nail through the temple then placed the body back into the grave.

## Impact

Calmet analyzed a report that was written from a priest who learned information of a town being tormented by a vampiric entity 3 years earlier. After having traveled to the town to investigate and collect information of the various inhabitants there, the priest learned that a vampire had tormented many of the inhabitants at night by coming out from the nearby cemetery to haunt many of the residents at their beds.

An unknown Hungarian traveler came to the town during this time and helped the town by setting a trap at the cemetery which ultimately led to the decapitation of the vampire that resided there and curing the town of their torment. This story was retold by Sheridan Le Fanu and adapted into the thirteenth chapter of the novella *Carmilla*, a work that heavily inspired Bram Stoker's classic *Dracula*.

### Essays and Papers

Note: this is just a very brief sampling found during a quick google search.

* https://muse.jhu.edu/article/10415
* https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110234190.135/html
* https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/preternature.4.2.0181
* https://www.jstor.org/stable/26321260
* https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14725886.2013.857871?journalCode=cmjs20
* https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9809.2010.00860.x

## More Information and Refrences

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trait%C3%A9\_sur\_les\_apparitions\_des\_esprits\_et\_sur\_les\_vampires\_ou\_les\_revenans\_de\_Hongrie,\_de\_Moravie,\_%26c.
* Ildefonso Cathelinot and Gilles Banderier (2008). Jérôme Millon (ed.). Reflections on the Apparitions Treatise of Calmet. ISBN 9782841372232.
* Hoyt, Olga (1984). Lust for Blood:The Consuming Story of Vampires. Chelsea: Scarborough House. ISBN 0-8128-8511-2.
* Calmet, Augustine (30 December 2015). Treatise on the Apparitions of Spirits and on Vampires or Revenants: of Hungary, Moravia, et al. The Complete Volumes I & II. 2016. ISBN 978-1-5331-4568-0.

## Get it

* https://books.google.com/books/about/Treatise\_on\_the\_Apparitions\_of\_Spirits\_a.html?id=8txczgEACAAJ
* https://www.amazon.com/Treatise-Apparitions-Spirits-Vampires-Revenants/dp/1533145687
* https://openlibrary.org/works/OL17619608W/Treatise\_on\_the\_Apparitions\_of\_Spirits\_and\_on\_Vampires\_or\_Revenants\_of\_Hungary\_Moravia\_et\_al.
* https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/treatise-on-the-apparitions-of-spirits-and-on-vampires-or-revenants-of-hungary-moravia-et-al-the-complete-volumes-1-and-2-expanded-edition\_dom-augustin-calmet/10807589/

## Free Version

In English - The Phantom World Book One and  The Phantom World Book Two

In French - Traité sur les apparitions des esprits can be viewed and read online at the National Library of France website: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k68179p.image.f2.langFR.pagination