Pojednání o upírech - Moderní studie starého unikatního díla – Calmet Dom (2006)

Since its first publication in 1746, Augustine Calmet's book on revelations has never left the bestseller lists. Nevertheless, it can be said that it has never been fully appreciated; that is precisely why this annotated study is being published, offering this work to the Czech reader in the perspective of its time and today. Cardinal Calmet was captivated by reports of Hungarian and Slavic vampires and set out to investigate them. He amassed a remarkable amount of evidence regarding similar phenomena from almost all of Europe at the time and studied many ancient sources for comparison. He rejected everything he considered a product of local superstitions, but at the same time, he examined everything related to the question of survival after bodily death. He documented individual manifestations in 150 more or less accurate cases, thereby laying the foundation for the study of clinical death. His results most likely led him to accept the idea of reincarnation, which he could not discuss openly for understandable reasons. Essentially, he adhered to the modern scientific method: he avoided personal conclusions and left the final judgment entirely to the reader. This book is a loose complement to Jaromír Kozák's publication "A Glimpse Behind the Curtain of Death," which maps the development of knowledge about clinical death in Europe over the past 300 years and simultaneously...