Dear Folk,
Today, August 21, 1614, an elderly lady who had been walled up in a dark castle room for three years finally passed on to her reward. She was extremely well-educated, a legendary beauty, a countess, a widow of a soldier, cousin of a king, and a wealthy landowner in a hotly contested part of Europe. And yet, all records of her were sealed for more than a century, and her name was forbidden to be spoken in Hungarian society.
Erzsébet or in English "Elizabeth" Bathory was born in 1560 and although many think of her as Hungarian, she lived in what is now the Slovakian Republic. It was a time when the Ottoman Turks and the Roman Catholics collided very close to her home. Death and war seemed everywhere. Protestantism was becoming popular with the mob and royalty seemed so brittle.
Okay, not everyone in a war zone grows up to be twisted and bad. Elizabeth, however, showed early signs of it. When she was a wee tyke, she would work herself into extreme rages. No one could predict what the child would do next. At around the age of 4 or 5, Elizabeth had had violent seizures. These may have been caused by epilepsy or another neurological disorder and may have something to do with her "psychotic" behavior later in life.
In 1571 cousin Stephan became king of Transylvania. Incidentally, that literally translates into "the place beyond the forest;" don't you feel wise now? Stephen later became king of Poland, so Elizabeth was well connected. She was married at fifteen to Count Ferenc Nadasdy. Now, a soldier like the Count is away most of the time fighting in the wars; in fact he was nicknamed "The Black Hero of Hungary." His absence meant that his new bride had to take over running the household. Part of her duties was disciplining the staff – mostly young girls. She found she liked that quite a bit.
While her husband was away Elizabeth's manservant Thorko (I want a manservant named Thorko!) introduced her to the occult. For a brief time Elizabeth eloped with a "dark stranger". Upon her return the count did forgive her for leaving. You have to understand, Elizabeth was rich, smart, and extremely beautiful. One doubts that the Count stayed chaste out on campaign; right? Back at the castle, Elizabeth couldn't tolerate her domineering mother-in-law. Maybe I have been lucky there. Stepmoms and mothers-in-law have always been nice.
With the help of her old nurse Ilona Joo, she began to torture the servant girls. Her other accomplices included the major-domo János Ujvary, Thorko, a forest witch named Darvula and a witch Dorottya Szentes. Again, we are talking of folks who would probably hang out with Szandor LaVey and Charlie Manson. These are hardly folk who listen to Stevie Nicks and read Starhawk.
The first ten years of their marriage, Elizabeth bore no children because she and Ferenc shared so little time together as he pursued his "career." Then around 1585, Elizabeth gave birth to a girl whom she named Anna, and over the following nine years gave birth to two more girls, Ursula and Katherina, and in 1598 bore her first and only son, Paul. Judging from letters she wrote to relatives, she was a good wife and protective mother, which was not surprising since nobles usually treated immediate family very differently from the lower servants and peasant classes. What would you expect?
It was before unions and OSHA. It was a time where the cruelty of nobles towards servants was common. Elizabeth's brutality bordered on the edge of inhumanity. No longer was she content to punish girls for infringements of her rules, but now she would go out of her way to find the smallest excuses to punish them. She delighted in the torture and deaths of her victims far beyond what her contemporaries could accept.
In 1600, at age 51, Count Ferenc died in battle and thus began Elizabeth's period of atrocities. First, she sent her hated mother-in-law away from the Castle. By this time it is thought that she had dabbled into some forms of sorcery, attending rituals that included the sacrificing of horses and other animals.
Elizabeth had devised many tortures over the years. For example, she would have servant girls stripped naked and taken outside in the dead of winter, then have water poured over them until they froze to death as grotesque statues.
Then there was her fascination with blood. One day she slapped a servant-girl for brushing her hair too hard. The girl's lip split and blood fell on Elizabeth's hand. She noticed then, that the skin of her hand regained the elasticity and smoothness it had in her youth. Elizabeth was a beautiful woman, said to be the most glamorous in Europe, and she obsessed about her appearance, not only that but she also had a terrible fear of aging. All this led to the tales of her bathing in the blood of her young servant-girls to rejuvenate herself. She was also known to bite her victims while she tortured them. Honestly, I did leave out the worst parts.
Eventually in 1609, Elizabeth made the fatal mistake of preying on girls of noble parentage. Elizabeth was arrested by Count Thurzo and his compatriots, an arrest that was political in nature. The aging Countess -- quite old for those times of ill health and early death -- had become an embarrassment, particularly since she had begun to kill members of the royalty, and despite (and perhaps because of) her high placement in the Bathory family as cousin to the Polish king and holder of vast amounts of royal land.
Anna Darvulia had died sometime earlier, probably of tuberculosis. Ferenc Nadasdy had been killed in battle several years earlier.
Two trials brought by Thurzo were held in 1611, one in Hungarian and one in Latin. A later tribunal with more than 200 witnesses was convened by King Matthias II. After someone found a journal in Elizabeth's handwriting which detailed the killing of over 650 girls, Elizabeth and her servants were found guilty and had their punishments set by the Bicse judge. Ilona Joo and Dorattya Szentes were tortured and burned at the stake in 1611. Janos Ujvary was beheaded. Katalin Beneczky was spared death, and I cannot find anyone who knows what happened to her..
Elizabeth herself was confined to her torture chamber, stonemasons were brought to wall up the windows and doors with the Countess inside. They left a small hole through which food could be passed. King Matthias II demanded the death penalty for Elizabeth but because of her cousin, the prime minister, he agreed to an indefinitely delayed sentence, which really meant solitary confinement for life.
On July 31, 1641 Elizabeth (age 54) dictated her last will and testament to two cathedral priests from the Esztergom bishopric. She wished that what remained of her family holdings be divided up equally among her children, her son Paul and his descendants were the basic inheritors though. Late in August of the year 1614 one of the countess's jailers wanted to get a good look at her, since she was still reputedly one of the most beautiful women in Hungary. Peeking through the small aperture in her walled-up cell, he saw her lying face down on the floor. Countess Elizabeth Bathory was dead. Her body was intended to be buried in the church in the town of Cachtice, but the grumbling of local inhabitants found abhorrent the idea of having the "infamous Lady" placed in their town, on hallowed ground no less! Considering this, and the fact that she was "one of the last of the descendants of the Ecsed line of the Bathory family", her body was placed to the northeastern Hungarian town of Ecsed, the original Bathory family seat.
What have we learned from this? It isn't right to torture and kill folks even if they are servants? Don't keep a journal telling folks exactly what heinous crimes you have committed? The rich often get off with lighter sentences than the poor? How about: pay attention to little kids who tear the wings off butterflies.
If you are sending any of these missives off to anyone, even those in the land beyond the forest, please leave my name and sig attached. Do check with the Archive occasionally, I am finding old stuff to put up there.
Using Grecian Formula instead of that messy plasma,
J. Ellsworth Weaver
SCA – Sir Balthazar of Endor
AS – Polyphemus Theognis
TRV – Sebastian Yeats