Erzebeth Bathory, in my opinion one of the most interesting women in history.
Ravaging the countryside and ridding it of hundreds of virgins believing that bathing in their blood would keep her beauty and youth, she constantly thought up new ways of torture in the process.
Below you will find some exerpts of biographies on her life and times.. be warned!
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~Iron Maiden~
" In 1729 a Jesuit priest unearthed in the archives in Budapest a document which, because of the horrific nature of its content had lain under lock and key for more than a century. It was the record of the trial of the Countess Erzebeth Bathory who believed that her beauty would be everlastingly preserved if she bathed in the blood of young and beautiful virgins. The Beast of Csetje, as she was locally known, proved to be a female Gilles de Rais; and like that renowned French nobleman whose perverted taste she shared, Erzebeth too had to stand trial. But because she was a member of one of Hungary's most illustrious families and wife of a famous general, Ferencz Nadasy, she was not put to death but immured in one of her own castles, where atfter three years she died in 1614 - unrepentant of her crimes."
Was she a psychopath, or merely a sexual sadist, who in an age when witchcraft flourished, resorted to the final outrages out of boredom and frustration? We shall never know the devious perplexities that drove this beautiful and gifted woman to the most inhuman pastimes.
Valentine Penrose "Erzebeth Bathory La Comtesse Sanglante" (translated into "Countess Dracula" by Alexander Trocchi)
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~The rack~
"The cult of Elisabeth Bathory, the Blood Countess, has been gathering momentum since the nineteenth century. A contempary of Shakespeare and descendant of tyrants and princes, this Hungarian noblewoman was one of the most powerful and charismatic grandees of her day.
History and folklore have celebrated Elisabeth Bathory as the first and most prolific female serial killer, purportedly the murderer of more than six hundred innocent girls in whose blood she is said to have bathed to preserve her own beauty. Literature has recorded in graphic detail the tortures inflicted by her own nobles and peasant girls alike.
A complex anti-heroine for our times, Tony Thorne's extensive research has revealed the real Elisabeth to have been much more than a deranged and dangerous autocrat. Was she a living vampire and sorceress, as her accusers claimed, or a victim of the machinations of powerful men, outraged by her independence, her wealth and her splendid pride?
In an impressive feat of scholarship, Tony Thorne has returned to the origings of the Bathory myth in the Carpathian Mountains and the marshes and forests of Central Europe. He has retraced the footsteps of the real Countess Dracula as she moved between her castles, scattered across the old kingdom of Greater Hungary, and has explored the archives of her prosecutor and arch-enemy, Count George Thurzo. He has also investigated her family's records and examined many sources, seen for the first timer by a Western scholar. He brings vividly to life an almost forgotten era and a little-known landscape- a society in which late-flowering chivalry and romantic poetry struggled to survive amid bitter feuds, devastating epidemics and related atrocities.
The truth of the case as revealed here is far richer and stranger than the many fictional accounts - by the Brothers Grimm, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch and Hammer Horror Films among others - of the life, the condemnation and the lingering death of the Blood Countess, Elisabeth Bathory.
Tony Thorne "Countess Dracula, the life and times of Elisabeth Bathory the Blood Countess"
"Reluctantly, they parted their bodies. Her hand found his and held it tightly as he hesitated in the doorway. He blew her one last kiss and was gone.
The Countess moved slowly to the small window and peered up at the vivid moon. Her cheeks were flushed and red with excitement and apprehension. She bit her lip to stop it quivering.
Tomorrow, she foresaw, she would feast on his young body. And she would make love as she had not done in twenty years."
Michael Parry "Countess Dracula"
I am always interested in new findings about Erzebeth...
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Erzebeth Links: