Montague Summers

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Montague Summers (born April 10, 1880 in Clifton near Bristol (southern England), † August 10, 1948 in Richmond near London) was a British literary scholar, demonologist and occult writer.

Adolescence and alleged ordination to the priesthood

Montague Summers was born the youngest son of a wealthy brewery owner, banker and justice of the peace. The young man interested in literature was about to embark on a career in the Church of England . But even during his studies at Trinity College in Oxford and at the Theological College of Lichfield, he became interested in witches , vampires and werewolves . He was evidently homosexual and in his first volume of poetry Antinous (1907) - in an unmistakable allusion to Antinous , the favorite boy of the Roman emperor Hadrian - he admitted his inclinations. At times he is said to have belonged to the Uranian Poets , a group of poets who openly propagated homoeroticism. In 1908, the budding clergyman Summers, who was employed as a deacon in Bath , was charged with homosexual relationships with minors. The offense could not be proven beyond doubt, but his hoped-for career in the Anglican State Church was over afterwards.

In protest, it is said in the popular biographies, Montague Summers left the Anglican Church, converted to Catholicism and had himself ordained a priest. The pictures that exist of him always show him in the costume of a Catholic clergyman, as was customary in the 19th century. Whether the description of this part of his life is true in all respects is questionable, because his ordination is not confirmed by the records of a single British diocese. There is much to suggest that he was a member of one of the numerous Old Catholic free churches. Some of these Old Catholic Free Churches not only represented an extremely conservative theology, but also justified the Jewish pogroms and, above all, the early modern witch hunts , which was quite attractive to Summers.

Summers let various rumors spread in his environment, such as the claim that he had not only received the (old) Catholic priestly ordination, but rose to the office of bishop of his church. It remains unclear which diocese he should have headed. Rumor has it that it was the so-called Diocese of Glastonbury. The southern English city of Glastonbury has been associated with the Grail myth since the Middle Ages and therefore enjoys a certain fame in esoteric - occult circles. However, there is no official Catholic bishopric of the same name. He never presided over a parish, but taught literature and Latin at various private schools, always wearing the costume of a Catholic clergyman and allowing himself to be addressed as a Reverend . In his environment it was sometimes rumored that Summers had received a special kind of assignment from "high up" in the Vatican, namely the systematic research of the witchcraft. Probably he had started the rumor personally to explain the apparent contradiction between his spiritual status and occult interests.

It remains unclear whether the self-appointed clergyman joined the Ordo Templi Orientis of the major Viennese industrialist Carl Kellner (1850–1905). What is certain, however, is that Montague Summers had joined the magical, discreet society Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn , of which the writer Bram Stoker , the spiritual father of Count Dracula, was a member. Through his occult interests he came into contact with other experts. He had a special friendship with Aleister Crowley (1875–1947), which was apparently based on mutual admiration.

Research on the history of witches

Summers advocated the thesis that the devil ( Satan ) is a real being who threatens the salvation of mankind and makes use of many helpers on earth. He not only studied the works of the most important demonologists, but also translated them into English in order to use these “testimonies” to show his contemporaries the danger posed by Satan and his followers. The authors he edited include Jean Bodin , Henri Boguet , Nicholas Rémy and Francesco-Maria Guazzo . Summer's most important contribution to demonology was his translation of the Malleus Maleficarum, the witch's hammer , into English. For Summers, as a devout demonologist who was convinced of his mission, this work represented a scientific feat and a journalistic measure against the witchcraft in his home country, which he saw rampant at the time. Summers saw the Hexenhammer as more than just a historical document. He praised this work as one of the most important, wisest and most remarkable books in the world ( "One of the most important, wisest and weightiest books in the world" ).

The period between the world wars in Britain was marked by the rebirth of an abundance of supposedly ancient cults such as Druidism and Wicca and new forms of paganism and Satanism . For years, Summers led a literary feud with the Egyptologist Margaret Murray , who had put forward the theory now accepted by feminist New Age witches that medieval and early modern witches were a holdover from the ominous "ancient religion" . For Summers, the witches were neither the last priestesses of an ancient cult nor the innocent victims of fanatical witch hunters, but criminals in league with the devil . Thus the confessions were not extorted admissions of guilt, but reflected the extent of the actual crimes of the sorceresses.

Vampires and werewolves

Summers became particularly well known and valued in occult circles for his two books on vampires and one on werewolves. The three books represent a collection of material that can still be used today, but since Summers firmly believed in the existence of bloodsuckers and shapeshifters, he also classified other horror characters from popular beliefs of various cultures and eras as vampires, even if they were not at all was about the undead, but about the living (witches) or demons , i.e. beings who were never human and therefore could not become vampires. Therefore, the long lists of alleged vampire creatures that have been copied from Summers and that haunt the relevant Internet sites should be treated with great caution.

Summers and literary studies

By 1930, Summers had become so firmly established as an expert on occult issues in the British literary scene that his books appeared in major academic publishers and became bestsellers. This success allowed him to settle down as a private scholar and to devote himself to the history of English literature in addition to occultism. It is hardly surprising that he dealt with the genesis of the classic horror novel and published a standard work on the subject in 1938: The Gothic Quest: The History of the Gothic Novel . Two years later, a bibliography on the topic followed, an indispensable tool to this day for every scientist who is seriously concerned with the history of the Gothic novel .

His most important works include a standard work on theatrical poetry of the late 17th century, the so-called Restoration Period . In 1921 Montague Summers published an anthology Restoration Comedies and thus gave the impetus to a literary study of this long underestimated epoch of English theater history. His standard work The Restoration Theater appeared in 1934, immediately after his book on werewolves. A theater group he founded especially for this purpose was dedicated to the re-performance of Restoration Comedies . On the occasion of his death, the Times printed an obituary in which Summers' demonological activities were silently passed over. Instead, the newspaper praised his important contributions to the academic study of English theater history.

The British writer Dennis Wheatley (1897–1977) had frequent contact with Summers since the 1930s, as the novelist asked the nationally known occultist several times for advice and suggestions. In one of his best-known novels, To the Devil a Daughter (1953), Wheatley borrowed generously from the character of Summers for the character of the pastor and satanist Canon Copely-Syle. Christopher Lee played the demonic cleric in the 1976 film adaptation of the novel.

criticism

Summers writing style, reminiscent of baroque literature , shapes his publications. Experts considered Summers occult topics to be inappropriate for academic research, and his books on occultism did not meet the requirements of academic accuracy. The oeuvre of Montague Summers presents itself as testimony to a unique passion for collecting, which, despite the striving for completeness, is paired with a complete lack of criticism. In his endeavor to unearth as much evidence as possible of bloodsucking activities, he put every haunted creature that met even one of the basic criteria for the phenomenon "vampire" under this term, so that in his related works there are also horror figures who by no means fall under the heading “living corpse”. With considerable diligence, Summers sifted through all conceivable folklore and ethnographic works for vampires and werewolves, not only for scientific interest, but to provide evidence of the existence of evil and its innumerable variants. Montague Summers was convinced of the existence of witches, vampires and werewolves and advocated the view that they were known and feared by all races and at all times. This explains why Summers took alleged eyewitness accounts of werewolf and vampire phenomena, as they were published in the occult literature of his time and in the sensational press, at face value.

Despite his erudition, Summers found it impossible to sort through the vast amounts of collected material. Long quotations from various foreign languages, primarily from Latin, aim to convey scientific quality. It is thanks to Summers' diligence that the only two copies of the otherwise lost pamphlet about the "Werewolf von Bedburg ", Peter Stübbe , who was executed in 1589 , were rediscovered.

The main works of Montague Summers on occult subjects

• The History of Witchcraft and Demonology. (London 1926. - Reprint: London 1969).
• The Geography of Witchcraft . (London 1927).
• A Popular History of Witchcraft. (London 1937).
• Witchcraft and Black Magic. (London 1946. Reprint New York 2000).

German edition: Witches and black magic. (Festa Verlag, Leipzig 2005 ISBN 978-3-935822-93-0 )

• The vampires. His Kith and Kin . (London 1928).
• The Vampire in Europe. (London 1929. Several reprints currently available).
• The werewolf . (London 1933. Several reprints currently available).

literature

• Frederick S. Frank: Montague Summers. A Bibliographical Portrait . Scarecrow Press, Metuchen NJ 1988, ISBN 0-8108-2136-2 ( The Great Bibliographers Series 7).
• Michael Siefener : Summers! In: Quarber Merkur 34 (1997), Vol. 85, pp. 112-121.
• Massimo Introvigne : La stirpe di Dracula. Indagine sul vampirismo dall'antichità ai nostri giorni. A. Mondadori, Milan 1997, ISBN 88-04-42735-3 , pp. 142-149 ( Oscar saggi 517).

Web links

• Short biography