Scholomance

The Scholomance[lower-alpha 1] (Romanian: Şolomanţă [ʃoloˈmantsə], Solomonărie [solomonəˈrie]) was a fabled school of black magic in Transylvania, which was run by the Devil, according to folkloric accounts. The school enrolled about ten students to become the Solomonari. Courses taught included the speech of animals and magic spells. One of the graduates was chosen by the Devil to be the Weathermaker and tasked with riding a dragon to control the weather.

This article is about the school. For the magic-users, see Solomonari.

The school lay underground, and the students remained unexposed to sunlight for the seven-year duration of their study. The dragon (zmeu or balaur) was kept submerged in a mountaintop lake, south of Hermannstadt (now called Sibiu by its Romanian name), according to some accounts.


Folklore

An early source on the Scholomance and Dracula folklore was the article "Transylvanian Superstitions" (1885), written by Scottish expatriate Emily Gerard.[2][3] It has been established for certain this article was an important source that Bram Stoker consulted for his novel, Dracula.[lower-alpha 2][6][4] Gerard also published similar material in Land Beyond the Forest (1888), which Stoker might have also read,[2] and other commentators stated this was Bram Stoker's direct source for Scholomance in his novel.[7]

Twenty years earlier, a description of the Scholomance and its pupils (the Scholomonariu) was given in an article written by Wilhelm Schmidt (1817–1901), a German schoolteacher at the Romanian town of Hermannstadt.[8][9]

Curriculum

The school, it was believed, recruited a handful of pupils from the local population.[10] Enrollment could be seven, ten, or thirteen pupils.[11] Here they learned the language of all living things,[12][13][16] the secrets of nature, and magic.[13] Some sources add specifically the pupils were instructed on how to cast magic spells, ride flying dragons, and control the rain.[11]

The duration of their study was seven[13][11] or nine years,[6] and the final assignment for graduation required the copying of one's entire knowledge of humanity into a "Solomonar's book".[6]

There was also the belief that the Devil instructed at the Scholomance.[lower-alpha 3] Moses Gaster remarked that this association with the Devil indicates that the memory of the school's origins as having to do with King Solomon had completely faded.[1]

Location

The Scholomance, according to Gerard, was at some unspecified location deep in the mountains, but the dragon (correctly spelled zmeu,[18] though given phonetically in German as ismeju[19]) was stabled underwater in a small mountaintop lake south of Hermannstadt in central Romania (modern Sibiu, Romania, called Nagyszeben in Hungarian).[14] Stoker's novel locates the Scholomance near a non-existent "Lake Hermannstadt".[20]

The Solomonărie, as it was called by the Romanians, was situated underground, according to Romaninan folklorist Simion Florea Marian. Students there shunned sunlight for the seven-year duration of their training.[13][lower-alpha 4]

Weathermaker
Further information: Solomonari § Dragon-riders and weather

By some accounts, one of the ten graduating students would be chosen by the Devil to be the Weathermaker (German: Wettermacher[17]) and to ride a dragon (zmeu in Romanian)[18] in this errand;[12][15][3] every time the dragon glanced at the clouds, rainfall would come.[17] But according to legend, God made sure the dragon would not weary, because if it plummeted, it would devour a great part of the earth.[17] The Solomonari's dragon-mount was, however, a balaur according to folklorist Marian's account.[22]

Origins
See also: Solomonari § Origin and name

Scholomance is a Germanization,[23] Solomonărie was the Romanian form according to the popular beliefs collected by Marian,[24][13] and an alternate Şolomanţâ is given elsewhere.[25][26]

These forms suggest a tie to King Solomon,[25] and it has been pointed out that one account in folklore describes the Solomonari as disciples of the weather-controlling ways of Solomon.[27] Additionally, some assimilation might have occurred with Salamanca, Spain, the famed city of learning, with medieval stories of a sorcery taught by the devil located in the Cueva de Salamanca.[29][30]

History of the Germanized form

Scholomance has been suspected of not being a genuine Romanian term, but rather a misnomer, created through the corrupted Germanization of "Solomonari", the term for the students and not the school. Such a view was given by Elizabeth Miller, a scholar specializing in Dracula studies.[23]

A mistaken idea that "Scholomance" was a neologism first reported in 1885 by Emily Gerard was at one time current in English-speaking circles.[lower-alpha 5][6] The terms "Scholomance" and "Scholomonariu" appear in the Austrian journal Österreichische Revue in 1865.[32][lower-alpha 6]

Modern analysis

Some modern commentators have referred to the school as "L'École du Dragon"[11] or "The School of the Dragon".[34]

In literature

Bram Stoker, who studied Gerard's work extensively,[23] refers to it twice in Dracula, once in chapter 18:

The Draculas were, says Arminius, a great and noble race, though now and again were scions who were held by their coevals to have had dealings with the Evil One. They learned his secrets in the Scholomance, amongst the mountains over Lake Hermanstadt, where the devil claims the tenth scholar as his due.

And in chapter 23:

He dared even to attend the Scholomance, and there was no branch of knowledge of his time that he did not essay.

Stoker's reference to "Lake Hermanstadt" appears to be a misinterpretation of Gerard's passage, as there is no body of water by that name. The part of the Carpathians near Hermannstadt holds Păltiniş Lake and Bâlea Lake, which host popular resorts for people of the surrounding area.

In the fantasy novel Lord of Middle Air by Michael Scott Rohan, the character of wizard Michael Scot reveals that he dared to train at the Scholomance on two occasions, as there was so much knowledge it could not all be learnt in one night.

The novel Anno Dracula by Kim Newman cites the same quotation from Stoker's Dracula in chapter 23.

The YA novel Lady Midnight by Cassandra Clare uses the Scholomance as a Shadowhunter training academy to train elite Shadowhunters in her spinoff to The Mortal Instruments, The Dark Artifices.

The novel A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik is the first in a series entirely in the setting of the Scholomance.

In computer games

The name has been reused in the computer game industry to refer to other schools of dark magic:

The warlocks in Bungie's Myth II: Soulblighter are described as having been trained at a school of magic named the Scholomance.

In Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft, the Scholomance is a ruined castle held by undead forces whose cellars and crypts are now used to train necromancers and create undead monsters. Like its legendary namesake, the Scholomance in World of Warcraft is in the middle of a lake.

See also

Explanatory notes
  1. In German, the pronunciation is equivalent to "Scholomantze".[1]
  2. In an interview with Jane Stoddard, Stoker is quoted as saying ".. I learned a good deal from E. Gerard's 'Essays on Roumanian Superstitions' [sic.] which first appeared in The Nineteenth Century, and were afterwards published in a couple of volumes".[4][5]
  3. Schmidt only acknowledges this was firmly held belief in Hermannstadt.[17] But Gaster presents it as something generally held.[1]
  4. Marian depicts these students as evil folk, a sort of strigoi (vampire).[21]
  5. For instance, Elizabeth Miller writes that Gerard must have been the first to publish the word Scholomance.[6] Occult writer Rosemary Guiley stated it was "possible that Gerard garbled another term she heard, as she probably did with the word Nosferatu".[31]
  6. Also, "Scholomonáriu", a Germanization of Solomonari is found glossed in a German book published 1781.[33]

References

Citations
  1. Gaster (1884), p. 284.
  2. Miller (2005), p. 183.
  3. Gerard, Emily (1885), "Transylvanian Superstitions", The Nineteenth Century, 18: 130–150
  4. Miller (2005), p. 276.
  5. Crişan, -Marius-Mircea (2016), Wynne, Catherine (ed.), "4 Bram Stoker and Gothic Transylvania", Bram Stoker and the Gothic: Formations to Transformations, Springer Publishing, pp. 66–67, ISBN 9-781-1374-6504-7
  6. Ramsland, Katherine (2002), The Science of Vampires, Penguin, p. 33, ISBN 9-781-1012-0423-8
  7. Stoker, Bram (1979). McNally, Raymond T.; Florescu, Radu R (eds.). The Essential Dracula: A Completely Illustrated & Annotated Edition of Bram Stoker's Classic Novel. Mayflower Books. p. 194. ISBN 9-780-8317-2993-6.
  8. F. Hillbrand-Grill: "Schmidt, Wilhelm (1817-1901), Historiker". In: Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Vol. 10, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1994, ISBN 3-7001-2186-5, p. 299 f. (Direct links to "p. 299", "p. 300") (xml)
  9. Schmidt, Wilhelm (1865), "Das Jahr und seine Tage in Meinung und Brauch der Romänen Siebenbürgens", Österreichische Revue, 3 (1): 219–220; expanded article Schmidt (1866), pp. 16–19
  10. Majuru, Adrian (2006), "Khazar Jews. Romanian History And Ethnography", Plural Magazine, 27: 234
  11. Martin, Laplantine & Introvigne (1994), p. 143.
  12. Lore of Fogarasch (Făgăraș) district and beyond, Schmidt (1866), p. 16
  13. Marian (1878), pp. 54–56; German tr., Gaster (1884), pp. 285–286
  14. Gerard (1885), p. 136.
  15. Leland, Charles Godfrey (1891), Gypsy Sorcery and Fortune Telling, pp. 128–129.
  16. or just "language of animals".[14][15]
  17. Lore of Hermannstadt, Schmidt (1866), p. 16
  18. Florescu, Radu R; McNally, Raymond T. (2009). Dracula, Prince of Many Faces: His Life and His Times. Little, Brown. Ismeju [the correct Romanian spelling is Zmeu, another word for dragon ISBN 9-780-3160-9226-5
  19. Schmidt (1865), p. 219 only gives "Drachen", Schmidt (1866), p. 16 adds to it: "Drachen―Ismeju".
  20. Florescu & McNally (2009), p. 217.
  21. Marian (1878), pp. 54–56; German tr., Gaster (1884), p. 285: "Die Solomonari sind bösartige Leute, eine Art »Strigoi« (Vampyre)".
  22. Marian (1878), pp. 54–56; German tr., Gaster (1884), p. 285: "Mit diesem Zaum zäumen die Solomonari die ihnen anstatt Pferde dienenden Drachen (Balauri)" or, "With these [golden] reins, the Solomonari rein their dragons (balauri) that they use instead of horses".
  23. Miller, Elizabeth, quoted in Ramsland (2002), p. 33
  24. Marian (1878), pp. 54–56.
  25. Șăineanu, Lazăr (1895). Basmele Române. Bucuresci: Lito-tip. C. Göbl. p. 871.
  26. Oișteanu (2004), p. 221.
  27. Müller, Friedrich von (1857). Siebenbürgische Sagen (in German). Kronstadt: J. Gött. pp. 177–178., cited by Gaster (1884), p. 283
  28. Oișteanu (2004), p. 221: "În 1884, Moses Gaster a acordat apelativului în discuţie o etimologie combinată: „Şolomonar este rezultatul dintre şolomanţă [de la Salamanca – n. A.O.] + solomonie [de la Solomon – n. A.O.]"
  29. Moses Gaster's observation was the first (Gaster (1884), p. 283), according to Oișteanu.[28]
  30. Charles Godfrey Leland (1891) also pointed this out.[15]
  31. Guiley, Rosemary (2004), "Scholomance", The Encyclopedia of Vampires, Werewolves, and Other Monsters, Infobase Publishing, p. 254;
  32. Schmidt, Wilhelm (1865), "Das Jahr und seine Tage in Meinung und Brauch der Romänen Siebenbürgens", Österreichische Revue, 3 (1): 219; reissued: (1866), Hermannstadt, A. Schmiedicke
  33. Sulzer, Franz Joseph (1781). Geschichte des transalpinischen Daciens (in German). 2. Vienna: Rudolph Gräffer. p. 265.
  34. Guiley, Rosemary (2004), "Scholomance", The Encyclopedia of Vampires, Werewolves, and Other Monsters, Infobase Publishing, p. 254

Bibliography
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