Vampires and Crucifixes

The image is familiar, and even tiring, to all horror movie lovers: an academic vampire hunter, for example, Abraham Van Helsing, faces a vampire who flees in terror in the presence of a crucifix.

The idea that vampires hate crosses and crucifixes is remarkably widespread in vampiric literature of the 20th and 21st centuries, to the point of becoming commonplace with no room for objection, just as other popular traditions may be, for example: that vampires are not reflected in mirrors, that they cannot survive in sunlight, that they only feed on the blood of the living, or that they exclude any type of garlic-flavored delicacy from their diet.
The expansion, but especially the definitive establishment of the idea that vampires can be chased away with a crucifix, comes directly from the cinema, and in particular from 20th century vampire films, which used this recognized religious object as a kind of spiritual weapon against bloodsuckers.

However, crucifixes are not mentioned in any classic vampire legend, much less as a spiritual repellent.

There are no myths, not even tiny popular traditions of yesteryear, that affirm that vampires fear the cross.
Where, then, does this commonplace of modern cinema and literature come from?

Naturally, as in so many other cases, from Bram Stoker’s vampire novel: Dracula.

The great merit of Bram Stoker was to extrapolate the Christian image of the Christo Mortuis, the Latinized Dead Christ, used both in exorcisms and in ritual-like maneuvers and operations to expel demons and other minions of Satan, and transform it into a powerful weapon against the vampires

Before Dracula, I insist, there are no mentions of any kind, neither in literature nor in legend, that ensure that vampires hate crucifixes and even less that they work as a prophylaxis against their attacks.
Now, the funny thing is that Bram Stoker does not make crosses and crucifixes an infallible weapon against vampires either.

On the contrary, each time they are used throughout the novel they prove to be quite ineffective.

In the first chapter of Dracula, a woman gives a rosary to Jonathan Harker to protect him from the thirsty bloodsuckers of that land; and the lawyer, a rather inflexible-tempered Protestant, even seems to mock this idolatrous belief intimately.

It would be redundant to clarify that, with or without a crucifix, Harker was literally emptied by the blasphemous kisses and caresses of Dracula’s three girlfriends.
Later, Bram Stoker gives an account of the disturbances that the captain of the Demeter, a boat that transported Dracula to England, had to face, who was found dead by the port authorities tied to the helm and with the cross of a rosary in his hands, showing again the uselessness of this item against vampires.

Even Professor Abraham Van Helsing prescribes the use of crosses to protect the delicate Lucy Westenra, an object that turns out to be a mere decorative fantasy for the count, who feeds on the girl’s blood repeatedly and in the presence of the cross.

It is curious that a folkloric tradition was invented exclusively for a novel, and that even within its own universe does not function as an effective prophylactic way against vampires, has gained so much ground in the popular imagination.
It is inimaginable not to use a crucifix though in a possible attack…

http://dimidesan.com/index.php/2021/10/16/what-it-feels-like-to-be-bitten-by-a-vampire/

http://dimidesan.com/index.php/2021/10/01/bram-stokers-private-fantasies/