Dracula, Prince of Many Faces

by Radu R Florescu

  Michael Beheim relates the subsequent conversation that took place in the lofty throne room: “Dracula asked the monk many questions but mostly he wished (with his twisted sense of humor) to find out from the monk [whether] the many victims for whose death he was responsible and for whose soul presumably the holy man was praying, God had a place reserved for him in paradise. ‘In a way,’ added the prince, ‘could he in the eyes of God be considered a saint, since he had shortened the heavy burdens of so many unfortunate people on this earth?’ ” What concerned Dracula most was the expiation of his own crimes after death — a concern also implicit in his attention to “good works” (construction of monasteries, gifts to the Holy Mountain of Athos, services for the dead). Obviously intimidated in the presence of the awesome impaler, Brother Michael attempted to assuage Dracula's fears of hellfire. “ ‘Sire, you can obtain salvation,’ replied the monk, ‘for God in His Mercy has saved so many people, even when his Divine Mercy was belatedly expressed at the moment of death.’ ” By such meek, hypocritical words Brother Michael undoubtedly succeeded in saving his own life. But Dracula wished additional reassurance, and he hastily called for the other friar, Hans the Porter, asking him more bluntly this time, “Sire monk, tell it to me straight, what will be my fate after death?” The latter, with the courage of his convictions, was far more forthright in his answers, and reprimanded the prince for his crimes: “Great pain and suffering and pitiful tears will never end for you, since you, demented tyrant, have spilled and spread so much innocent blood. It is even conceivable that the devil himself would not want you. But if he should, you will be confined to hell for eternity.” Then, with a pause, Brother Hans added: “I know that I will be put to death by impalement without judgment for the honesty of my words devoid of flattery, but before doing so, give me the privilege of ending my sermon.” Annoyed yet fearful, Dracula allowed the friar to proceed, replying: “Speak as you will. I will not cut you off.” Then followed what surely must have been one of the most damning soliloquies that Dracula ever allowed anyone to utter in his presence: “You are a wicked, shrewd, merciless killer, an oppressor, always eager for more crime, a spiller of blood, a tyrant, and a torturer of poor people! What are the crimes that justify the killing of the pregnant women you have impaled? What have their little children done, some of them three years old, others barely born, whose lives you have snuffed out? You have impaled those who never did any harm to you. Now you bathe in the blood of the innocent babes who do not even know the meaning of evil! You wicked, sly, implacable killer! How dare you accuse those whose delicate and pure blood you have mercilessly spilled. I am amazed at your murderous hatred! What impels you to seek revenge upon them? Give me an immediate answer to these charges.” These extraordinary words both amazed and enraged Dracula. However, he contained his anger and replied calmly, reasserting his own Machiavellian political philosophy, particularly as applied to the killing of innocent children, the mention of which had struck a raw nerve. “I will reply willingly and make my answer known to you now. When a farmer wishes to clear the land he must not only cut the weeds that have grown but also the roots that lie deep underneath the soil. For should he omit cutting the roots, after one year he has to start anew, in order that the obnoxious plant not grow again. In the same manner, the babes in arm who are here will someday grow up into powerful enemies, should I allow them to grow into manhood. I wish to destroy and uproot them. Should I do otherwise, the young heirs will otherwise easily avenge their fathers on this earth.”

  Hans, who knew his fate was sealed, insisted on having the last word: “You mad tyrant, do you really think you will be able to live eternally? Because of the blood you have spilled on this earth, all will rise before God and His kingdom demanding vengeance. You foolish madman and senseless unhearing tyrant, your whole being belongs to hell!” Dracula then became mad with fury. The monk had pricked him where it hurt most, in his conscience and in his misguided belief that because of his being anointed, God in His mercy would have pity on his soul. He seized the monk with his own bare hands and impaled him on the spot. Forsaking the usual procedure, by which the stake was introduced from the buttocks up, he forced the monk to lie down on the floor, and repeatedly struck him through his head. After Hans quit writhing in pain on the bloodstained floor and expired, Dracula had him hanged by a cord by the feet, head downward. He then hoisted the unfortunate wretch in front of the Franciscan monastery on a high stake. For good measure he impaled his donkey as well.

  One can well imagine the effect of this gruesome sight on the remaining monks. They were terrified and abandoned their monastery. Brother Michael and Brother Jacob crossed into Transylvania and then sought refuge, like many of their colleagues from Gorrion, in various Benedictine houses in lower Austria. Since Lambach was the oldest and the most prestigious Benedictine establishment, the two lay brothers sought refuge there first. There they related their unsavory adventures to scribes, and the tales were undoubtedly colored by the anguish of a close escape. It is in this manner that the first Dracula horror story was born, at the end of 1462.

  From Lambach, we know that at least Brother Jacob moved to Melk, a far larger abbey, which in fact had been founded by the monks from Lambach. This abbey, the inspiration for Umberto Eco's detective thriller The Name of the Rose, still sits in a commanding position on a hill dominating the Danube and is one of the most palatial Benedictine houses in Europe. It houses more than a hundred monks, who run a most prestigious secondary school. In the fifteenth century, the more elegant and elaborate quarters of the abbey were reserved for the members of the imperial family, which included the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III. His own palace at Wiener Neustadt lay but a few miles away.

  It was at Melk that Brother Jacob met other Benedictine refugees from Transylvania, whose records can still be found in the archives of the monastery. One who signed himself Johannes de Septem Castris (meaning John of the Seven Fortresses, the German name for Transylvania), was likely another Benedictine, born a year before Dracula. Eventually he became prior of the monastery. Another refugee was a certain Blasius from Bistria, a township that had been severely attacked both by Dracula and Mihály Szilágy. Dracula's “horrors” undoubtedly became a conversational highlight among the Romanian and German Catholic monks now attached to this grandiose monastery. Proof of their interest is the fact that the Dracula story was inserted into the history of the abbey, composed by the Romanian prior covering the events of the years 1461 to 1477. Dracula horror tales could have been read to the monks at mealtime, during which the law of silence prevailed, as a break from the habitual reading of the lives of saints.

  Michael Beheim, by his name clearly of Bohemian origin, was the son of a simple weaver, born on September 27, 1416, in Sulzbach, in the German state of Württemberg. A typical ambitious young man without money, from early youth onward he led a life of travel and adventure. First, he enrolled as a soldier of fortune; he then studied music and even indulged in religious and biblical studies. His main avocation, however, was that of singing poems to the accompaniment of various musical instruments, as a minstrel at the courts of the powerful patrons he served. He also developed a gift for writing historical ballads. Beheim first worked for the powerful Count Ulrich Cilli when the latter accompanied King Ladislas V Habsburg, after the liberation of Belgrade. Following the assassination of the count, which he described in some detail in a tome entitled Ten Poems on the History of Austria and Hungary, he returned with King Ladislas V to Vienna, and served him as a court poet during 1457. It was sometime before the death of Ladislas that Beheim decided to switch his allegiance to the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III, residing at his court in Wiener Neustadt. The poet witnessed the emperor's humiliation when he was besieged in his palace by the Viennese people. Beheim nevertheless remained true to his master and was duly rewarded with the post of poet laureate and imperial page — a risky proposition at a time when the insurgent populace made a habit of assassinating the imperial sycophant. Af
ter the emperor's liberation by the Bohemian king George Podebrady, Beheim served various masters in Hungary and Bohemia. He later accompanied the emperor to Wiener Neustadt, and for some years accepted the post of court historian and troubadour. By that time Beheim's skill at writing history in verse had been refined. He had composed, among other works, a fairly accurate description of the Varna crusade, based on the eyewitness account of a volunteer in the Christian armies, Hans Mägest. As we have seen, the latter often spoke of the important role played by Dracula's father and his brother Mircea in that campaign.

  Clearly Beheim's appetite had been whetted for work on yet another member of that extraordinary family. Circumstances abetted this choice of subject. It was at Wiener Neustadt that Beheim first met the perambulatory monk Brother Jacob. The monk often went marketing in Wiener Neustadt, the most important center southeast of Melk. Knowing that the monk was a refugee from Wallachia, Beheim deliberately sought out Brother Jacob. The first interview apparently took place at the imperial palace on December 12, 1462. They met many times more at an unnamed monastery within the city. Jacob was acting as an informant, much in the manner of Mägest for the Varna crusade, on the strange life and deeds of Dracula. The interviews took place during the spring and summer of 1463, continuing for roughly four months — enough time for the accumulation of solid notes on Beheim's part. Likely the poem was completed in the winter of 1463.

  This poem represents by far the most extensive contemporary account of Dracula's life story. Totaling 1,070 lines, the original manuscript was deposited in the library of the University of Heidelberg, where most of Beheim's other original manuscripts are located. They ended up there because Beheim finished his career in the service of Count Frederick I of Heidelberg. He entitled the poem the Story of a Bloodthirsty Madman Called Dracula of Wallachia and read it to the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III during the late winter of 1463, like a good troubadour, accompanying his reading with music. The story of Dracula's cruelties was evidently to the taste of the diseased mind of the emperor, for it was read on several occasions from 1463 to 1465 when the latter was entertaining important guests. There is no question that deliberate distortions were introduced into the German text by Beheim for dramatic effect or for the benefit of the emperor's audience.

  We have dwelt on the manner in which this German propaganda was exploited by the chancellery of the Hungarian king Matthias, who needed incriminatory material to justify Dracula's arrest and to avoid the crusade that he had promised to the papal curia. It is likely that the Hungarian chancellery decided to print its own version of the Dracula story, which came close to Brother Jacob's account at Vienna in the same year (1463) — though the actual work has never been found. Its contents, however, were uncritically incorporated in the work of the Viennese professor Thomas Ebendorfer, Chronicorum regum romanorum, one year before his death in 1464. In addition, this very negative view of Dracula was cited by a number of German and Hungarian humanists such as Leonardus Hefft, a notary from Regensburg, John Pannonius, a propagandist and panegyrist of the Hungarian king, and János Vitéz, bishop of Oradea and later primate of Hungary. The German story, systematically spread by the Hungarian chancellery throughout the various capitals of Europe for propaganda purposes, was thus also

  disseminated in the guise of university lectures, aimed at a relatively small and sophisticated audience.

  The progressive popularization of the Dracula story, however, was due to the coincidence, in the second half of the fifteenth century, of the invention of the printing press and processes for the cheap production of rag paper. In effect, the idea of writing books for profit was introduced. The first Dracula printing destined for the public at large, undoubtedly copied from the Lambach manuscript, was produced in 1463 in either Vienna or Wiener Neustadt in the form of a news sheet, an early newspaper of sorts. It was published by a certain Ulrich Han, a disciple of Gutenberg, who had founded his German printing press at Mainz.

  Following the former prince's rehabilitation and marriage into the Hungarian royal family, the anti-Dracula propaganda campaign had outlived its usefulness; King Matthias lost interest in subsidizing these hostile tracts. However, this change of attitude in no way prevented money-hungry printers from seeing the commercial possibilities in popularizing the original narratives. The continued publication of the sensational tales confirms the fact that the horror genre conformed to the tastes of the fifteenth-century reading public. We suspect that Dracula stories, in fact, became, during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century, the first best-sellers on a nonreligious motif — under various catchy and unsavory titles such as The Frightening and Truly Extraordinary Story of a Wicked Blood-drinking Tyrant Called Prince Dracula. Sales of each would have been upwards of 300 to 400 books a year. (Bibles, as usual, sold more copies.) In order to prove this point conclusively, bibliophiles and eminent scholars such as our colleague Matei Cazacu, who has already completed a remarkable bibliography of all the German prints, must continue their search among the earliest of them by contacting antiquarians, bibliophiles, or simply private families who are not always aware of the precious relics in their possession.

  Besides the lost Vienna print of 1463, no fewer than thirteen different ghastly fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Dracula stories have been discovered in print thus far, all of them in the various German states within the former empire. Two were published in Nuremberg by the printer Mark Ayrer in 1488, followed by another edition by Peter Wagner, and one in Lübeck by a typographer named Bartholomaeus Gothan, all in the same year. The year 1491 saw an edition printed in Bamberg by Hans Spörer; one was issued in 1493 in Leipzig by Martin Landsberg. In 1494, Christoph Schnaitter took his chance with an edition in Augsburg; Ambrosius Huber published one in Nuremberg in that same year. Interest may have been particularly strong in Nuremberg, because the older citizens remembered Dracula's father, who had journeyed there to be invested in the Dragon Order, or else because of its trade connection with Transylvania. In 1500 there was a publication by Mathias Hupfuff at Strassburg, indicating that there was also interest on the subject in this imperial city far removed from Transylvania. Hamburg, in the sixteenth century, was a Baltic city equally removed from Transylvanian trade, but a Dracula narrative by Des Iegher [Eiger] was printed there in 1502. Augsburg was linked by strong banking and financial interests with the Transylvanian Saxons; Melchior Ramminger published several editions of the story there, and he was evidently successful, since Matheus Francken reprinted the book nine years later. Jobst Gutnecht committed yet another edition to print in Nuremberg in 1521.

  The business of collecting Dracula pamphlets, begun by Romanian bibliophiles such as Ion Caradja, was continued more recently in the United States by Abraham Samuel Wolf Rosenbach. He was successful in finding a rather unusual version of the Dracula story, printed in Nuremberg in 1488 with a colored woodcut of the prince on the cover, not very dissimilar from the Ambras portrait. The early printers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were apparently beginning to learn the art of packaging their works with appropriate images or engravings to catch the eye of their readers. Gutenberg himself had shown the way in a book entitled Türkenkalender, urging the Christian world to embark on a crusade, printed in 1462, the year of Dracula's arrest. It had a striking picture on its first page, portraying gruesome Turkish atrocities, meant to encourage his readers to take up the cross. The printers of the Dracula tales, who had begun using on their title pages woodcuts of the prince modeled upon the original Ambras portrait, began, with time, and presumably to enhance sales, to take liberties with this original portrait, distorting the prince's features and throwing his face out of proportion. The Nuremberg and Augsburg prints of 1520, for instance, lend him a far sterner and more cruel countenance than the prints of the 1480s. In the Leipzig edition of 1493, Dracula, portrayed in a military outfit, looked particularly somber and ferocious. The image that appeared on the cover of the Nuremberg edition of 1499 and the Strassburg one of 1500 was especi
ally suggestive — it referred to an incident that took place at the foot of Tîmpa Hill in Braov. The prince is depicted having a meal; the food is laid out in front of him on a table. Around him are strung innumerable dead or dying impaled victims in a variety of grotesque positions, the poles penetrating either their chests or their buttocks. Beside Dracula are his henchmen, using axes and hacking off the limbs of yet other victims; heads, legs, arms, and memberless torsos are strewn haphazardly around Dracula's chair. In other Dracula tracts, woodcuts with religious themes appeared alongside the horrible images, either to arouse the reader's indignation or else to induce thoughts of divine retribution. Providing a suitable ending to one Dracula tract was the image of the crucifixion of Christ, with Mary Magdalen and the Blessed Virgin standing by.

  The net result of the anti-Dracula propagandistic efforts subsidized by the Hungarian king and the commercialization of the subject by German printers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was the blackening of Dracula's reputation following his death. This dreadful image took root mostly in the Germanies. Popular acceptance of it was reflected in the arts. In recent years W. Peters, a German art historian from Saxony, chanced to visit an exhibition of fifteenth-century paintings at the Belvedere Museum in Vienna; he came across one of Saint Andrew in which the saint was crucified in a particularly cruel fashion. Upon examining the witnesses whom the artist had introduced as plausible personalities likely to enjoy the macabre scent, Peters recognized the features and costume of Dracula. The co-authors have visited the famed Cathedral of St. Stephen in Vienna, where, in a small chapel at the rear of the church, a series of paintings depict Christ's Calvary on stations of the cross. In one painting the unknown artist, presumably wishing to include the familiar face of someone who might enjoy the sorrowful Calvary, chose a figure very reminiscent of Dracula as a witness.