From Saints to Stigoi: A Theoretical Link Between Matthew 27 and Vampire Folklore

Matthew 27 : 52–53 preserves a brief, enigmatic notice: at Christ’s resurrection “many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised” and “appeared to many.” Patristic writers acknowledge the event yet remain silent about the later fate of these holy ones. By the High-Middle Ages, however, Europe teemed with tales of revenants and vampires—incorrupt corpses that rise by night, drink blood, and flee the cross. This paper proposes that the vampire legend is a distorted cultural memory of that first-century resurrection ripple.Stage 1 reconstructs the historical kernel: glorified witnesses briefly walking in Jerusalem. Stage 2 traces Roman polemic that mis-construed the Eucharist as a cannibalistic “blood-feast,” merging immortality with blood-drinking. Stage 3 follows the rumour into medieval folk religion, where plague-era corpse panic transformed reports of incorrupt saints into fear of the restless dead. Stage 4 shows how Slavic burial customs weaponised Christian symbols (cross, holy water, Host) against these revenants, cementing an “anti-sacrament” mythology later fossilised by Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897).By mapping biblical text, patristic hints, imperial slander, and ethnographic data, the study suggests that the vampire may function as a negative photograph of Christian immortality: every folkloric weakness inverts a saintly strength. Re-examining Matthew 27 therefore invites theologians and folklorists alike to treat resurrection narratives as potential seeds of European vampire lore and to recognise how sacred memory can ossify into secular myth when refracted through fear and time.