Catholics vs Monsters: Dracula

Before the name Dracula became the most well known vampire depicted in film, music, pop-culture and in comics, it was the name of a 1897 novel written by Irish protestant, Bram Stoker. Stoker created the devilish, vampiric character part from a true story about Vlad III and part from a biblical and Christian worldview. He wrote the story in an effort to bridge the cultural and political gap between Catholics and Anglicans, in England at that time. 

As a Protestant who was well familiar with Irish-Catholicism, Bram Stoker gave a nod to his Catholic readers by highlighting Dracula’s past as a Catholic who ruthlessly defended his Romanian people against the incursion of Muslim invaders.  The name Dracula is the diminutive from the Latin word draco, meaning dragon. So Dracula means ‘little dragon’. This is probably because his father Vlad II was a member of the Order of the Dragon, a Catholic chivalric order of knights founded in 1408 by Sigismund of Hungary. Or it could just be that dragons are associated with the devil in the bible (Rev 12). 

‘Vlad the Impaler’, a 15th century ruler of Wallachia (a region of modern day Romania) had his enemies' impaled bodies fixed to the tips of large wooden poles as a sign of his willingness to defend his Christian territory from muslim invaders in the most violent ways. When he employed these scare tactics on the Germans, propaganda began to spread throughout Europe describing Vlad dipping his breakfast in the blood of his enemies as he sat eating surrounded by bodies impaled above him and body parts strewn beneath his feet. Eventually this tactic of extreme brutality of violence and blood letting became a tendency that turned his heart against his Catholic Faith. He became a power hungry apostate by renouncing his faith. As an enemy of the Church he was cut off from the sacraments and this opened him up to invite a full demonic possession, becoming the legendary anti-Christ. It is no wonder that his legend merged with the vampire canon. 

Catholic Sacramentals and Averion to Holiness

Stoker armed Dracula’s enemies with the power of Catholic sacramentals.  In fact, the chief nemesis of Dracula, Abraham Van Helsing, himself a Catholic, is known for his aggressive use of Catholic paraphernalia to wage war against vampires. 

Abraham van Helsing is something of a renaissance man. He is highly educated and scientific yet he is acutely aware of the supernatural. He may have been an elite scientist but he was not shackled by the narrow confines of a materialistic scientism. He epitomizes the Catholic ideal of striking a balance in his character between both faith and reason. Stoker leads the reader into a realization that Van Helsing is Catholic through his use of sacramentals and holy matter to stir up the aversion to holiness that plagues the spirituality of Dracula. 

Mysterious and holy things like wooden stakes, blessed garlic, rosaries, a crucifix and a consecrated Host are employed as weapons against the demonic blood sucking monster. Van Helsing represents the Confirmed Catholic layperson whose mandate is to spread and defend the Faith and who has access to grace for the sake of waging spiritual warfare against the evil found within and without. He does however employ these sacramentals in a way that is not in keeping with Catholic orthodoxy. We can blame Stokers' protestantism for either not knowing or not caring about the intricacies of Catholic spiritual warfare.

Even Jonathan Harker, one of the protestant allies of Van Helsing came to appreciate the efficacious power of holy matter in the face of a demonic attack. When the hotel owner’s wife takes a crucifix attached to a rosary from her neck and offers it to him as a protection against evil, Harker said, “I did not know what to do, for, as an English Churchman, I have been taught to regard such things as in some measure idolatrous.” Three chapters later, Harker is shaving in a mirror and Dracula comes up from behind to suck up the blood that seeped out of a small razor cut. He uses the rosary and the crucifix to fend off the attack. Recalling the incident he said, “Bless that good, good woman who hung the crucifix round my neck! For it is a comfort and a strength to me whenever I touch it.”

Eucharistic Imagery

Stoker knew that according to the Old Testament, blood is the life force of every creature. In the blood is life. The blood therefore belongs to God as the lifegiver. In the book of Leviticus it is forbidden to eat meat with blood in it. When offering animal sacrifices the Levites separated out the blood by draining it into bowls and offered it directly to God both on the altar outside the Temple and in the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement. 

Every covenant is sealed or ratified by the blood of the victim offered. The blood is sprinkled or splashed on the altar or sometimes on the people signifying that a pact is legally in effect. Blood also makes atonement for sin, spiritually and legally cleansing the place of worship, the altar and by extension, those engaging in the sacrifice. “Since the life of a living body is in its blood, I have made you put it on the altar, so that atonement may thereby be made for your own lives, because it is in the blood, as the seat of life, that makes atonement” (Lev 17:11). 

Jesus told his followers that unless they drink his blood they would not have life within them. “Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” Jn 6:53.

In a weird inverted twist Stoker makes blood the life-force for Dracula. In fact, Dracula is undead only in as much as he satisfies his lustful desire for the consumption of blood. Much like a spider, sucking the blood of his victims keeps him alive. 

Dracula is the anti-Christ when it comes to eucharistic theology. Instead of drinking the Blood of the immortal and divine Christ for the sake of a new life, divine life, or eternal life, he drinks the blood of mortals in order to perpetuate life in this valley of tears, this sinful fallen world. 

He doesn’t give his life for others by selflessly saying ‘This is my blood shed for you”. On the contrary, he greedily takes the life from others by saying to his victims or atleast thinking to himself, ‘This is your blood shed for me”. 

Inversion and Apostasy

This theme of inversion from good to evil runs through the story. Christ is ’The Way’ and ‘The Gate’ to God the Father in heaven. Dracula is the dead-end of our spiritual journey locking his victims in a perpetual zombie-like world of the undead. Christ is ‘The Light of the World’ and Dracula is the shadowy figure of darkness who shrieks in the light. Christ is ‘The Good Shepherd’ and Dracula is like a wolf chasing down and devouring the sheep. Christ is the ‘Resurrection and the Life’. Dracula is half dead, alive only at night. He may be everlasting but it’s always and only in a fallen world where he spreads his vampirism like an infectious, parasitic plague. 

Since Dracula is mostly a fictional character originating from the imagination of a 19th century Protestant we may wonder, Is it relevant to Catholics in 2024? Furthermore, the story has been retold so much that it has lost its original sense of horror and has lapsed into a sentimental reminder of what used to scare us. But what Dracula represented as an anti-Christ and as an apostate should still cause us a sense of inner vigilance and dread.  No one could doubt that the spirit of apostasy is alive and well in our culture and in our time period. If that vampire is the literary and fictional symbol of an evil, spirit of anti-Christ among us and within us, then we all have a mandate to participate in the killing of Dracula. 

Killing Dracula

The novel ends with a final battle in which two men seize Dracula and decapitate him while stabbing him in the heart. Dracula’s body disintegrates into dust. Finally defeated, he is no longer a danger. In this final death scene one of the men dies of his wounds. He was struck in his left side from which he bled out. That Christ-like sacrifice was required in order for good to triumph over evil. He was a Christ-figure who gave up his life to save the souls of others. In the end Christ is proven right. The greatest love anyone can have is to lay his life down for his friends. Love wins against evil, the Christ, who is Love Incarnate is amplified and glorified in the defeat of the anti-Christ because it is the power of love that created everything from the beginning. So how do we kill the Draculas in our world and more urgently in our hearts? With a sacramental union between ourselves and God, with an effort to remain in grace and with Christ-like love.