Countess Dracula (48 page)

10
Revický,
Báthory Erzsébet.

11
Andrei Codrescu,
The Blood Countess,
Simon & Schuster, New York, 1995.

12
Jozef Ko
č
iš,
Alžbeta Báthoryová a Palatín Thurzó,
Martin, 1981.

13
Stephen's life is alluded to by, among others, László Nagy in
A Rossz Hírü Báthoryak,
Budapest, 1984; Elisabeth's brother's correspondence was analysed by Zsuzsana Bozai in her unpublished thesis, ‘Hungarian Aristocratic Women of the Seventeenth Century' (Budapest, 1995).

14
Sándor Makkai,
Órdögszekér,
Budapest, 1925.

15
The letter is in the Nádasdy family archive in the Hungarian National Archives in Budapest.

16
The letter to Andrew Keresztúry is in the Hungarian National Archives in Budapest.

17
The document is in the records of the Vasvár-Szombathely Chapter (protocols of 1610) in the Vas County Archives.

18
In the Hungarian National Archives in Budapest.

19
The letter was discovered among the Miscellaneous Papers of the Nádasdy family in the Hungarian National Archives.

20
The letter is in the Thurzó archive at Byt
č
a.

21
Nagy,
A Rossz Hírü Báthoryak.

22
In the Byt
č
a Archive.

23
George Závodský, ‘Diarium', preserved in the Thurzó archive at Byt
č
a.

24
In the Byt
č
a Archive.

25
Ibid.

1
The letter is in the Thurzó archive at Byt
č
a.

2
The letter in Latin is in the Hungarian National Archives in Budapest.

3
Quoted in Irma Szádeczky-Kardoss,
Báthory Erzsébet – Igazsága,
Budapest, 1993.

4
The certified evidence is in the Thurzó archive in the Hungarian National Archives in Budapest.

5
See p. 69.

6
See also p. 69.

7
The letters are in the Thurzó archive at Byt
č
a.

8
In the Hungarian National Archives in Budapest.

9
Ibid.

10
Ibid.

11
Ibid.

12
The document was summarised by von Elsberg from the original in the Imperial Treasury Archive in Vienna.

13
As note 12.

14
The original is in the Hungarian National Archives in Budapest.

15
In the Thurzó archive in Budapest.

16
See p. 63.

17
George Závodský, ‘Diarium', in the Thurzó archive at Byt
č
a.

18
See p. 135.

19
The current interpretation of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century legal conventions was given to the author by Dr Irma Szádeczky-Kardoss.

20
Quoted in Szádeczky-Kardoss,
Báthory Erzsébet.

21
In the Thurzó archive at Byt
č
a.

22
The guest list, from the Thurzó archive at Byt
č
a, is reproduced in Jožef Ko
č
iš,
Byt
č
iansky Zámok,
Martin, 1974.

23
In the Hungarian National Archives, Budapest.

24
Denis Sinor,
History of Hungary,
George Allen & Unwin, London, 1959.

25
Magyarország Törtenete,
‘1526–1686' section, ed. Ágnes R. Várkonyi, Budapest, 1987.

26
Zsigmond Móricz,
Tündérkert,
Budapest, 1921.

27
Magyarország Törtenete.

28
The letters are in the Hungarian section of the Haus, Hof und Staatsarchiv in Vienna.

29
In the Thurzó archive at Byt
č
a.

30
Magyarország Története.

31
The references are from the
Chronicles of Csejthe,
published by András Komáromy in
Történelmi Tár,
Budapest, 1899.

32
The phrase from the will was probably a coded reference, for the family's benefit only, to the
Č
achtice estate as well as the treasury kept there.
Č
achtice had been a wedding gift from Francis Nádasdy.

33
Chronicles of Csejthe.

34
The document was lodged in the archives of the Esztergom Chapter in Trnava.

35
Margaret Nicholas,
The World's Wickedest Women,
Octopus Books, London, 1984.

36
The will with Paul Nádasdy's note is in the Nádasdy archive in the Hungarian National Archives in Budapest.

37
(‘Elisabeth Báthory . . . Francisci Nádasdy Relicta Vidua, ante annos propemodum aliquot ob ingentia inaudita, et crudelissima sua facinora in perpetuous carceres detrusa, in eisdem Cheytae misere, tempore nocturno expiravit...') The sources relating to Elisabeth Báthory's death were published by Györgyí Gyurikovics in
Tudományos Gyüitemény,
Budapest, 1839.

38
Ibid.

39
Countess Susannah Lorántffy, for instance, was derided in Catholic pamphlets of 1641 as a cow pulling the wagon of Protestantism (she had merely supported the publication of a new Bible).

1
Dr Irma Szádeczky-Kardoss mentions the Istvánffy reference in a footnote in her
Báthory Erzsébet – Igazsága,
Budapest, 1993, but admitted to the author that she was unsure of its provenance.

2
One of the few surviving copies of Túróczi's work can be found in the Hungarian Academy of Science Institute of Literature, Eötvös József College Library. The selections quoted are from a new translation by the author and Pál Ritoók.

3
Michael Wagner,
Beyträge zur Philosophischen Anthropologie und den Damit Werwandten Wissenschaft,
Vienna, 1794.

4
Tudományos Gyüitemény,
Budapest, 1839.

5
Max Bauer,
Titanen der Erotik. Lebensbilder aus der Sittengeschichte alles Zeiten und Volker,
Berlin, 1931.

6
R. A. von Elsberg,
Die Blutgräfin. Elisabeth Báthory,
Breslau, 1894.

7
‘H
ő
vér'
(nom de plume
of Dezs
ő
Rexa),
Erzsébet Báthory: Remarks on the Painting by István Csók, from Historical Sources,
Grand Hotel, Budapest, 1896.

8
Ibid.

9
Kálmán Benda,
Egy Új Forrástudomány: a Psychográfológia,
Budapest, 1974.

10
Gabrielle Raskó,
A Nöi Bünözés,
Budapest, 1978.

11
Barna Marthy,
Élet és Irodalom
51–52, Budapest, 1979.

12
Jozef Ko
č
iš,
Alžbeta Báthoriová a Palatín Thurzó,
Bratislava, 1981.

13
József Antall and Károly Kapronczay, ‘Aus der Geschichte des Sadismus: Elisabeth Báthory,' in
Die Waage. Zeitschrift der Chemie Grunenthal,
Rheinland, 1973; reprinted as ‘Tükkel Szurkálta' in the journal
Magyarország,
Budapest, July 1974.

14
László Nagy's comments are taken from the transcript of
Társalgó
, a discussion broadcast on Hungarian radio on 26 May 1985.

15
In conversation with the author, Budapest, May 1995.

16
Michael Farm,
Heroine des Grauens, Elisabeth Bathory,
Munich, 1989.

17
Szádeczky-Kardoss,
Báthory Erzsébet.

18
The author is grateful to Dr Tünde Lengyelová in Bratislava and to Zsuzsana Bozai, Tibor Lukács and Pál Ritoók in Budapest for sharing their ideas with him and for reacting to his opinions. Dr Lengyelová and Zsuzsana Bozai also most generously made available to him the results of their own researches in the form of notes and documents.

19
Hungarians are extremely sensitive to what they see as simplistic analogies with their recent regimes, but to an outsider the comparison seems broadly to apply.

20
See p. 234.

21
Many works of fiction and some factual treatments have accused Countess Báthory of nursing ‘abnormal longings' and, of course, homosexuality is just as much a ‘besetting vice' of closed institutions as cruelty. But concepts of shame would have prevented any acknowledgement, and perhaps even recognition, of lesbianism; and intensely intimate but platonic friendships between women were common, particularly in societies in wartime.

22
Peter Pázmány,
Sermons,
Pozsony, 1636.

23
Quoted in Szádeczky-Kardoss,
Báthory Erzsébet.

24
Lithgow,
Travels.

25
Gilberto de Mello Freyre,
Casa-grande e Senzala,
Rio de Janeiro, 1933.

26
Brian Masters,
The Dukes,
London, 1976. (Some critics questioned the elasticity of the author's definition of madness, which seemed to include eccentricity and even extreme idleness.)

27
Béla Tóth,
A Magyar Anekdótakincs
(‘Treasury of Hungarian Anecdotes'), 6 vols, Budapest, 1899–1904.

28
Letters by Edward Barton in
Purchas, his Pilgrimes,
London, 1625.

1
A good recent analysis of witch-trials in Europe is Robin Briggs,
Witches and Neighbours,
HarperCollins, London, 1996.

2
Éva Pócs,
Fairies and Witches at the Boundary of South-Eastern and Central Europe,
Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, Helsinki, 1989.

3
The sources of citations are, respectively, Kamocsa 1717 reported in Alapi 1914, Szalonak 1755 reported in Schram 1970, Szeged 1728 reported in Kovács 1899, collected by Éva Pócs in ibid.

4
E. Chishull,
Travels in Turkey and Back to England,
London, 1747.

5
Father Túróczi used a description of these cellars to introduce his version of the Báthory story (see Appendix). In his work of the 1890s, von Elsberg reproduced a sketch map showing the layout of the cellars as described to him by local people. Today only holes in the ground filled with rubble can be seen in the village by the site of the old château and on the hillside beneath the castle ruins.

6
Earle Hackett,
Blood: The Paramount Humour,
Adelaide, 1973.

7
The Greek Herbal of Dioscorides,
translated into English by John Goodyer in 1655.

8
Béla Tóth,
Mendemondák. A Világtörténet Furcsaságai
(‘Legends of Hearsay, Curiosities in World History'), Budapest, 1896.

9
Richard de Ledrede, Bishop of Ossary,
A Contemporary Narrative of Proceedings against Dame Alice Kyteler, for Sorcery in 1324,
published in London by the Camden Society in 1843.

10
The Kyteler case and similar prosecutions are mentioned in Anne Llewellyn Barstow,
Witchcraze,
Pandora, San Francisco, 1994.

11
These ideas are put forward by the Hungarian historian Gábor Klaniczay in a series of works on witchcraft and shamanism, including ‘The Accusations and the Universe of Popular Magic', in Bength Ankarloo and Gustav Henningsen (eds),
Early Modern Witchcraft: Centres and Peripheries,
OUP, Oxford, 1990.

12
Zsuzsana Bozai, ‘Hungarian Aristocratic Women of the Seventeenth Century' (unpublished thesis), Budapest, 1995.

13
John Paget, Esq.,
Hungary & Transylvania,
John Murray, London, 1839.

14
Komáromy,
Torténelmi Tár,
pp. 626–52.

15
Quoted in Bozai, ‘Hungarian Aristocratic Women'.

16
Ibid.

17
Ibid.

18
The papers of the case are incomplete. Those surviving are in the Esterházy archive in the Hungarian National Archives in Budapest.

19
The legal aspects and the parallels between the Báthory and Listhius cases are explored in Irma Szádeczky-Kardoss,
Báthory Erzsébet – Igazsága,
Budapest, 1993, and were kindly elucidated for this author during discussions with Dr Szádeczky-Kardoss in Budapest in 1995.

20
(Largely) factual versions of Anna Báthory's story can be found in András Komáromy, ‘A “Bübájos” Báthory Anna',
Századok,
Budapest, 1894, and Bertalan Kis, ‘Báthory Anna Házasságai',
Századok,
Budapest, 1899. More recently, her life was neatly summarised in László Nagy,
A Rossz Hírü Báthoryak,
Budapest, 1984.

1
Borbála Benda, ‘Menus from the Estate of Csejthe, 1623–1625' (unpublished thesis), Budapest, 1995.

2 D. M. Thomas, Elegy to Isabel le Despenser, 1976.