In the midst of Twilight mania (which, yes, is big in Italy too), we’re delighted to alert readers to a breaking story about a Venetian “vampire” recently excavated in a mass grave on the small island of Lazzaretto Nuovo that can be dated to an outbreak of the plague in 1576.
The news broke at a meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Scientists in Denver, when Matteo Borrini of the Universita di Firenze announced that he and his archaeoloical team had excavated the skeleton of a Renaissance woman whose skull was imaled through the mouth with a brick.
Why a brick through the mouth? It seems that during the plague, it was commonly believed that the disease was spread by female vampires.
Borrini told a meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences in Denver that when Europe was in the grips of the plague there was a widespread belief that the disease was spread by female vampires. Most likely, this idea can be attributed to the dribble of blood that often flowed from the mouth of plague victims.
Women who bled at the mouth at death were thought to be vampires. Furthermore, it was thought that when such “vampires” were buried, they would feed on their dead neighbors until they had gained enough strength to rise from the grave and to suck the blood of the living, thereby further spreading the plague.
Thus, it was up to gravediggers to identify possible vampire women and to impale them with a brick to keep them from feeding in the grave.
It was thought that these vampires, who were buried next to the bodies of plague victims, fed on their dead neighbors until they felt strong enough to rise from the grave and begin feeding on the living, perpetuating the cycle of contamination.
Borrini said gravediggers had shoved the brick into the woman’s mouth with such force that it had broken some of her teeth.
Photos: Matteo Borrini
