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Speaker 1: Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio

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Speaker 1: and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Minky. Listener discretion is advised.

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Speaker 1: In the more than two years since I've been putting

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Speaker 1: Noble Blood out into the world, by far, the most

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Speaker 1: frequently requested subject for me to cover is the Hungarian

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Speaker 1: countess Elizabeth Bathory. Chances are if you're a fan of

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Speaker 1: historical trivia or true crime corners of the Internet, you

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Speaker 1: at least have a passing familiarity with Bathory. She's often positioned,

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Speaker 1: including by the Guinness Book of World Records, as the

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Speaker 1: most prolific female serial killer of all time. In the

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Speaker 1: centuries since Elizabeth Bathory's life, her story has traveled as

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Speaker 1: folklore and word of mouth, horror story, as pop history,

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Speaker 1: and now spooky Internet irreverence. The basic version of the

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Speaker 1: narrative is that Elizabeth Bathory was a wealthy and powerful

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Speaker 1: countess in sixteenth and seventeenth century Hungary, and that her

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Speaker 1: estates became nightmare dens of sadistic torture that she inflicted

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Speaker 1: first on her servant girls and then eventually as time

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Speaker 1: went on and the daughters of noblemen too young girls

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Speaker 1: who had been sent to her palaces to learn basic

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Speaker 1: courtly etiquette. Stories of Elizabeth Bathory often include gruesome details

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Speaker 1: of her torture. That she would take a girl and

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Speaker 1: strip her naked before covering her with honey and sending

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Speaker 1: her out into the fields to be devoured by insects.

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Speaker 1: Bathory would stick needles beneath fingernails, cut off flesh, whip

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Speaker 1: servants with stinging nettles, or forced girls naked into freezing

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Speaker 1: ice baths. There was seemingly no end to Elizabeth Bathori's depravity,

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Speaker 1: nor to her creative means of indulging her sadism. Most

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Speaker 1: popular culture depictions of Elizabeth Bathory also include one very

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Speaker 1: specific element that the countess not only murdered young girls,

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Speaker 1: but that she bathed in their blood, believing that it

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Speaker 1: would keep her forever young and beautiful. It's the perfect detail,

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Speaker 1: incredibly visual and cinematic. Can't you picture it now, the

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Speaker 1: aging Countess, vain and ever fearful, lowering herself into a

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Speaker 1: golden tub filled with crimson. It gives her motivation for

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Speaker 1: the murders beyond insanity or mere sadism. It makes the

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Speaker 1: story unforgettable. If you know the name Elizabeth Bathory, at all.

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Speaker 1: It's because, you know, Elizabeth Bathory, the bloody serial killer,

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Speaker 1: the blood countess. But what if we been wrong about

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Speaker 1: her this entire time? What if Elizabeth Bathory was completely innocent.

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Speaker 1: In recent years, a few scholars have attempted to reframe

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Speaker 1: Elizabeth Bathory not as a murderous but as a victim

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Speaker 1: of circumstances, manipulated by the Hungarian crown and the encroaching

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Speaker 1: Habsburg power, punished for being a wealthy and powerful woman

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Speaker 1: in the wrong family, conveniently disposed of on trumped up charges.

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Speaker 1: Those scholars suggest that, as so often happens, hundreds of

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Speaker 1: years of rumors and exaggeration have taken root, and when

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Speaker 1: a story is better than the truth, well that story

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Speaker 1: is almost impossible to kill. Now, personally, I'm not certain

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Speaker 1: I'm fully convinced one way or the other. I think

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Speaker 1: the problem with certain pieces of evidence is that they

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Speaker 1: can be explained reasonably in either direction. But to put

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Speaker 1: the case into modern legal parlance, there's certainly reasonable doubt,

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Speaker 1: and I think it's worth trying to understand why maybe

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Speaker 1: a famous historical monster might have just been a woman

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Speaker 1: all along. I'm Dana Schwartz, and this is noble blood.

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Speaker 1: In the sixteenth century, when Elizabeth Bathory was born, Transylvania

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Speaker 1: was a principality within the Kingdom of Hungary. The Holy

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Speaker 1: Roman Empire was a looming neighbor ruled by the powerful

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Speaker 1: Habsburg family. At certain periods in history, Hungary and the

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Speaker 1: Holy Roman Empire would have the same monarch. That's what

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Speaker 1: the Habsburgs certainly wanted to consolidate their power, for their

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Speaker 1: leader not only to be emperor but also king of Hungary,

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Speaker 1: and why not Lithuania and Poland as well. Transylvan Out

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Speaker 1: was a pebble in their shoe, a stronghold for Eastern

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Speaker 1: independence from Western Habsburg influence of these little principalities, and

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Speaker 1: the Bathories were one of the most influential families across

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Speaker 1: those principalities. Elizabeth born August seventh, fifteen sixty was a

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Speaker 1: product of an illustrious lineage. Her paternal uncle was the Voivode,

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Speaker 1: or highest ranking official of Transylvania. Her father was a baron.

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Speaker 1: Elizabeth's mother was also a Bathory, and on that side,

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Speaker 1: her grandfather was a previous by vote of Transylvania, and

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Speaker 1: her uncle, Stephen Bathory, was the King of Poland and

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Speaker 1: Grand Duke of Lithuania. Some here that Elizabeth's parents were

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Speaker 1: both Bathories, and we've that into their Halloween story about her,

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Speaker 1: that being in bred was the source of her mental illness,

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Speaker 1: her sadism. There were reports of her having epilepsy in

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Speaker 1: her childhood. Surely that too, some believe is the result

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Speaker 1: of her parents blood being too close. Fortunately for Elizabeth,

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Speaker 1: her parents were from two extremely distant branches of the family,

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Speaker 1: though the name had been preserved. Her mother and father

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Speaker 1: were separated from their last common ancestor by seven generations

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Speaker 1: and two hundred years. But Elizabeth was sickly as a

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Speaker 1: young child, prone to seizures that were diagnosed in the

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Speaker 1: sixteenth century as falling sickness. Some say that one of

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Speaker 1: the treatments involved opening a cut and letting the blood

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Speaker 1: of a healthy person enter the body, and so that too,

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Speaker 1: is used as a morbid little detail to foreshadow Elizabeth's

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Speaker 1: alleged blood lust. The rumors about Elizabeth Bathory's life are countless,

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Speaker 1: and I've found that most sources on the Internet either

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Speaker 1: willfully forego actual evidence or just except that Elizabeth today

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Speaker 1: lives more as folklore than an actual historical figure. One

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Speaker 1: of the rumors is that when Elizabeth was thirteen, she

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Speaker 1: had an affair with a peasant boy and gave birth

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Speaker 1: to a child. There's no evidence of that. What we

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Speaker 1: do know is that when she was ten years old,

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Speaker 1: she was engaged to Count Ference Nadashti, who was five

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Speaker 1: years older than her and from one of the most

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Speaker 1: powerful noble families over in the Kingdom of Hungary. The

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Speaker 1: pair were married when Elizabeth was fifteen and Ference was twenty,

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Speaker 1: at an event with four thousand and five hundred guests

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Speaker 1: in attendance. We don't know if the pair were in love,

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Speaker 1: but they seemed to at least like each other well

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Speaker 1: enough to have five known children, three of whom survived

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Speaker 1: to adulthood. But the purpose of their marriage, like most

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Speaker 1: early modern marriages, wasn't happiness. This marriage codified an incredibly

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Speaker 1: lucrative allotans, one that would make the couple two of

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Speaker 1: the most powerful figures in Eastern Europe at the time,

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Speaker 1: with enough the states scattered across Hungary that an army

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Speaker 1: could traverse the country by using their properties as protective

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Speaker 1: lily pads. If it's difficult for you to visualize the

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Speaker 1: very complicated geopolitics at the time. Think of Transylvania and

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Speaker 1: Hungary as a square rectangle situation. All squares are rectangles,

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Speaker 1: but not all rectangles are squares. Transylvania was a part

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Speaker 1: of Hungary, but there were parts of the Kingdom of

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Speaker 1: Hungary that existed outside of Transylvania. At the start of

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Speaker 1: the sixteen hundreds, when Elizabeth was reaching middle age, Habsburg

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Speaker 1: Emperor Rudolph the Second inherited and claimed both the titles

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Speaker 1: of Holy Roman Emperor and King of Hungary. There was

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Speaker 1: so much resentment and an anti Hapsburg independence movie in

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Speaker 1: Transylvania that eventually forced Rudolph to abdicate Hungarian throne and

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Speaker 1: give it to his brother Matthias. It was still in

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Speaker 1: the family, but hopefully people would get less mad if

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Speaker 1: it was more of a nominally separate kingdom. In sixteen

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Speaker 1: o four, after twenty nine years of marriage, Count Ference

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Speaker 1: died while off fighting the Ottoman invasion of Hungary, and

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Speaker 1: Elizabeth Bathory became one of the wealthiest and most powerful

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Speaker 1: women in the kingdom. She was sitting on incredibly important

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Speaker 1: land that she inherited from her husband's powerful Hungarian family.

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Speaker 1: States that she was already more than comfortable managing. She

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Speaker 1: had managed them for decades while her husband was off fighting.

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Speaker 1: The properties were vast, and she was so wealthy that

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Speaker 1: even King Matthias the Second was in debt to her. Meanwhile,

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Speaker 1: over in Transylvania, her nephew, Gabor Bathory was being crowned prince.

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Speaker 1: With Elizabeth's wealth and rank, Gabor seemed like an even

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Speaker 1: bigger threat to the Habsburgs of Hungary. Her estates were huge,

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Speaker 1: stretching from the west to the southeast of the Hungarian Kingdom.

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Speaker 1: If the Bathories wanted, Elizabeth could grant Gobor safe passage

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Speaker 1: across the entire kingdom, giving him access to possibly claiming

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Speaker 1: the Polish throne or even the Hungarian throne. The Bathories

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Speaker 1: were a threat. This is the larger context in which

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Speaker 1: Elizabeth Bathory was accused of terrible things. On December, the

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Speaker 1: Palatine of Hungary, Gregory Thorzo, stormed into Elizabeth Bathories castle

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Speaker 1: with a regiment of guards. The Palatine is the highest

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Speaker 1: ranking official of the country, think of him almost like

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Speaker 1: a prime minister, and had been ordered by King Matthias

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Speaker 1: to investigate the terrible rumors about the widow Elizabeth Bathory.

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Speaker 1: Thorso had succeeded in his task and then some, eventually

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Speaker 1: gathering hundreds of testimonies, all of which were in agreement

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Speaker 1: that Elizabeth Bathory was a murderer. Thorso would right that

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Speaker 1: he burst into the castle and found Elizabeth Bathory in

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Speaker 1: the act of torture, with one young girl already dead

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Speaker 1: at her feet and another strung up and being flayed.

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Speaker 1: But in truth, according to the documentation of the secretary

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Speaker 1: at the time, Bathory was actually just eating dinner. It's

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Speaker 1: hard to find where the stories of Elizabeth Bathory murderer began.

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Speaker 1: One visiting priest had written to the king back when

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Speaker 1: Elizabeth's husband was still alive, saying that he saw the

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Speaker 1: two of them being noticeably cruel to their servants. The

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Speaker 1: local Lutheran pastor, Janis Picenus seemed to delight in accusing

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Speaker 1: Elizabeth of witchcraft and cannibalism. He even wrote to Thurso

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Speaker 1: saying that Elizabeth would transform into a black ut and

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Speaker 1: that she would stalk him at night. His clearly exaggerated

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Speaker 1: outrage doesn't seem particularly easy to explain, at least from

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Speaker 1: a religious perspective. Though Elizabeth's husband was Lutheran, Elizabeth herself

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Speaker 1: remained a lifelong Calvinist, just like her mother had been.

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Speaker 1: But even still, she didn't renounce Lutheranism or hinder the

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Speaker 1: religious freedom of the Lutherans on her land. Her records

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Speaker 1: as a landowner indicate that she built schools and educated ministers,

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Speaker 1: and supported Lutheranism to the healthy extent that the local

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Speaker 1: pastor should have been content with. Still, it's worth noting

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Speaker 1: that before Thorso's investigation into Bathory, there were no formal

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Speaker 1: legal complaints made against her at any time from either

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Speaker 1: anyone on her estate or in her community, and this

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Speaker 1: was during a period when the Hungarian legal system kept

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Speaker 1: meticulous records of all grapes and grievances. It was just

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Speaker 1: rumors that swirled around her that motivated Thorso to move

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Speaker 1: on Bathory. King Matthias authorized Thorzo to investigate the rumors

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Speaker 1: around Bathory at the start of six and the Palatine

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Speaker 1: sent two notaries out into the Hungarian territories to gather

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Speaker 1: whatever evidence they could. By October there were fifty two witnesses. Later,

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Speaker 1: after Bathori's arrest, there would be over three hundred. The

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Speaker 1: stories were damning Elizabeth Bathory, they said, like to torture

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Speaker 1: young girls, that she mutilated even bit them, that she

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Speaker 1: beat and stabbed and starved them. Almost all of the testimony,

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Speaker 1: it's worth pointing out, was word of mouth hearsay from

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Speaker 1: people who had heard of Bathoris abuse, or from people

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Speaker 1: who had had relatives who had entered service at the

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Speaker 1: castle but who had never emerged. Elizabeth was arrested that

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Speaker 1: night December in her castle, along with four of her servants,

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Speaker 1: her so called accomplices. Thorso tortured all of the servants

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Speaker 1: into confessing to assisting the countess with various murders, although

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Speaker 1: all four gave differing numbers of victims, ranging from twenty

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Speaker 1: to sixty. One of the later witnesses would allege that

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Speaker 1: an officer had told him that he had seen a ledger,

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Speaker 1: the Countess's own ledger of her murders, and that they

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Speaker 1: numbered in these six hundreds. Under torture, one of the

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Speaker 1: countess's servants gave Thorso the location of a young girl's

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Speaker 1: body buried on the estate. Before the torture, the servant

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Speaker 1: had maintained that the young girl was one of eight

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Speaker 1: who had died of the plague earlier that fall. Bristling

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Speaker 1: with excitement, Thurso and his men dug up the body,

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Speaker 1: still fairly well preserved, having been buried in the cold

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Speaker 1: dirt of autumn. There's a hoisted the decomposing, play gritten

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Speaker 1: corpse onto a wooden platform in front of the castle,

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Speaker 1: and he invited all the servants and noblemen of neighboring

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Speaker 1: estates to come and see, Come, be witness see the

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Speaker 1: naked tortured body of one of the Countess's victims. Elizabeth

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Speaker 1: herself was forced to stand there in full view a

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Speaker 1: punishment of public humiliation. Thorso shouted at her to look

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Speaker 1: at her poor victim. Though the body was more than

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Speaker 1: two months old, Thorso claimed that it was fresh, which

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Speaker 1: no doubt colored the opinions of onlookers when it came

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Speaker 1: to make their statements about Elizabeth's brutal torture. After all,

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Speaker 1: they had seen the Countess standing next to a clearly

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Speaker 1: mutilated body. Though King Matthias urged Thurzo to follow the

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Speaker 1: strictest legal procedures, Thurso ignored the wreck. He claimed to

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Speaker 1: spare the Bathory family the shame of a public trial

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Speaker 1: and to preempt the order of execution. The servants that

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Speaker 1: had been arrested, were tried and quickly put to death.

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Speaker 1: But though Elizabeth had private hearings, she never had the

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Speaker 1: large public trial that would have been standard at the time.

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Speaker 1: She wasn't permitted to make a defense or speak on

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Speaker 1: her own behalf. There was never a sentencing. Thurzo continued

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Speaker 1: to claim that it was a mercy that if she

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Speaker 1: went to trial she would be put to death instead.

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Speaker 1: Without a verdict, she was merely detained under house arrest

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Speaker 1: at the castle for the rest of her life. The

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Speaker 1: rumors would only continue and grow. The thorso wrote to

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Speaker 1: the king and said that she was bricked into a

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Speaker 1: locked room. Visiting priests at the castle would write and

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Speaker 1: remark that she actually moved freely about the castle, at

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Speaker 1: least until she died three years later at age fifty four.

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Speaker 1: The story could be complete there. Elizabeth Bathori as a murderess,

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Speaker 1: for whom the extent of her crimes will never be

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Speaker 1: fully known. A woman who was cruel and sadistic, who

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Speaker 1: killed as many servants as she could because she could

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Speaker 1: protected by her wealthy and powerful family. Only in the end,

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Speaker 1: when she was no longer fully protected, her wealth and

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Speaker 1: privilege at least allowed her to remain comfortable under house arrest,

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Speaker 1: guilty and disgraced, but not hanged by the neck. But

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Speaker 1: in recent years, Hungarian scholars in particular, have found that

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Speaker 1: Bathori's case is less cut and dry than some people

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Speaker 1: might believe. I don't know if there's a smoking gun

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Speaker 1: one way or the other, but I think it's interesting

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Speaker 1: and important enough to examine that there might be more

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Speaker 1: gray area than originally meets the eye. Doctor Irma Shadeki

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Speaker 1: Kardo's posits that the quote I witness testimony of the

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Speaker 1: hundreds of witnesses against Elizabeth Bathory are less compelling than

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Speaker 1: they might originally seem. For one thorso had restricted his

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Speaker 1: investigation only to the parts of the Hungarian Kingdom where

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Speaker 1: he had full power and where many of the tenants

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Speaker 1: were beholden to him. He obtained confessions under torture. The

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Speaker 1: vast vast majority of the testimony gathered is hearsay. There

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Speaker 1: are no firsthand accounts of anyone who was actually abused

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Speaker 1: by the Countess. Much of the later testimony came after

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Speaker 1: the witnesses would have seen a decomposing corpse on a

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Speaker 1: platform with Elizabeth standing beside it, while Thorzo was shouting

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Speaker 1: that this was one of her victims. I think that

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Speaker 1: would buy us anyone a little, at least subconsciously. But again,

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Speaker 1: though Thorso claimed that his lack of public trial was

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Speaker 1: to protect Elizabeth, it also conveniently prevented any recorded defense.

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Speaker 1: Her disgrace, and the rippling disgrace of the entire Bathory

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Speaker 1: family was irreconcilable. It was also fairly convenient for Thorso

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Speaker 1: that his own son, Imre, happened to be the same

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Speaker 1: age as Elizabeth's son, Paul. Paul, being the scion of

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Speaker 1: two powerful families, would easily eclipse Thorso's son when it

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Speaker 1: came to Hungarian politics, unless, of course, the Bathories family

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Speaker 1: fortunes changed. Dr shadeky Cardo's also raises a fascinating point

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Speaker 1: that many of the so called tortures that Bathory was

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Speaker 1: reported to have engaged in were actually well recorded medical

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Speaker 1: procedures for the sixteen hundreds. In Transylvania, where Bathory had

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Speaker 1: grown up, in the seventeenth century, it was considered the

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Speaker 1: duty of landowners and nobles to provide for the welfare

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Speaker 1: of their tenants and servants. The lady of the house

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Speaker 1: was responsible for the women and children. According to Schadecki Cardo's,

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Speaker 1: Elizabeth's letters aren't blood chilling manifestoes of a sadistic murderer,

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Speaker 1: their normal, reasonable business management. Elizabeth writes, petitioning the King

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Speaker 1: for her tenants, she installed in each of her estates

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Speaker 1: herbalists and healers, and appointed the same personal healer that

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Speaker 1: she used for her own children for her underlings. Coming

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Speaker 1: from Transylvania, Elizabeth was familiar with a more hands on

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Speaker 1: approach to herbal medicine and healing methods that would have

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Speaker 1: been unfamiliar to the local people when she moved with

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Speaker 1: her husband to western Hungary. One of Elizabeth's most famous,

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Speaker 1: quote unquote accomplices was a woman named Anna Darbuglia, a

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Speaker 1: Croatian midwife and healer and one of the few women

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Speaker 1: who performed rudimentary surgeons on her patients so that the

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Speaker 1: female patients wouldn't have to be treated by men. It

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Speaker 1: would have been a rare and strange sight, maybe for

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Speaker 1: some to see a woman doing something like blood letting,

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Speaker 1: even though blood letting at the time was a conventionally

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Speaker 1: accepted medical procedure. The medical texts of a contemporary Transylvanian

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Speaker 1: doctor Fence Papa peris contain a number of procedures that,

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Speaker 1: to the untrained eye, or to an eye mistrustful of

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Speaker 1: a woman holding a knife, might look suspiciously like torture.

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Speaker 1: Necrotic tissue needed to be cut from healthy flesh to

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Speaker 1: prevent infection from spreading. Maggots were frequent. Blight boils and

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Speaker 1: abscesses had to be lanced. Wounds needed to be cauterized

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Speaker 1: with red hot irons. For some ailments, hot cupping was recommended,

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Speaker 1: and for those with fever or rubonic plague, a weak,

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Speaker 1: sweating body would be shocked with an ice cold bath.

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Speaker 1: Singing nettles were an old wives cure for rheumatism and arthritis.

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Speaker 1: Some seamstresses suffered from boils under their nail beds, a

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Speaker 1: condition known as finger nail poison. The treatment was lancing

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Speaker 1: finger tips under the nails with needles. Hearing those treatments

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Speaker 1: out of context, and particularly if they were unfamiliar or

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Speaker 1: gasped done by a woman, you can almost see where

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Speaker 1: the stories of torture might have begun. Shadeki Cardos also

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Speaker 1: points out that the deaths that Dorzo ascribes to Elizabeth

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Speaker 1: happened to coincide with outbreaks of disease. The eight girls

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Speaker 1: whom Thurzo built his case around had possibly actually died

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Speaker 1: of the plague. They had been quarantined together and treated

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Speaker 1: by two of Elizabeth's servants, and they had died when

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Speaker 1: Elizabeth wasn't even at the castle. Elizabeth was frequently touring

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Speaker 1: between her estates. The pace and pre neticism with which

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Speaker 1: the rumors of Elizabeth Bathery's guilt took hold of the

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Speaker 1: Countryside could also possibly point to Thurso's haste to make

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Speaker 1: her guilt quote common knowledge. Common knowledge was accepted evidence

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Speaker 1: in court at the time. Elizabeth's confinement meant that her

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Speaker 1: relatives were able to take control of her valuable properties

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Speaker 1: a few of her son in law's new in advance

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Speaker 1: of impending quote surprise arrest. They even helped him to

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Speaker 1: arrange it. King Matthias's debts that he owed to Elizabeth

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Speaker 1: were conveniently dissolved. I don't know exactly where I stand

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Speaker 1: when it comes to a proclamation that Elizabeth Bathory was

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Speaker 1: either a sadistic monster or completely innocent a framed woman. Personally,

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Speaker 1: I tend to find it a little easier to believe

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Speaker 1: that a few hundred people living in close and unhygienic

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Speaker 1: quarters at the start of the sixteen hundreds were more

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Speaker 1: likely to have died from the plague than from a

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Speaker 1: cruel and unusual Lady Dracula. People were suspicious of powerful women,

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Speaker 1: and especially of powerful women with regional and religious differences.

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Speaker 1: Rumors were easy to spread, and Elizabeth Bathi's downfall financially

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Speaker 1: benefited many people in power. But on the other hand,

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Speaker 1: I also don't find it difficult to believe that a wealthy,

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Speaker 1: noble woman might have been exceedingly cruel, abusive, maybe even

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Speaker 1: deadly in her treatment of servants. You'll notice that throughout

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Speaker 1: this I didn't mention the whole bathing in blood thing. Well,

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Speaker 1: that's because that's objectively a complete fabrication. There were absolutely

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Speaker 1: no contemporary witnesses who alleged even rumors of Elizabeth bathing

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Speaker 1: in the blood of young women to preserve her own youth,

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Speaker 1: or doing anything with their blood. That rumor came over

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Speaker 1: a hundred years later during the Counter Reformation. In seventeen

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Speaker 1: twenty nine, the Hungarian Jesuit priests Laslow Taroshi used the

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Speaker 1: by then infamous saga of Elizabeth Bathory as a parable

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Speaker 1: to discuss the dangers of becoming Protestant. He wrote that

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Speaker 1: she was a Catholic who had broken bad and converted

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Speaker 1: to Lutheranism, and that unleashed in her a blood lust

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Speaker 1: that caused her, this demented Protestant to sadistically torture servants

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Speaker 1: and bathe in young blood in order to try to

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Speaker 1: stay young herself. It's a compelling detail, and kudos to

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Speaker 1: Taroshi for his imaginative creativity that still persists in the

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Speaker 1: popular culture today. But it's just not true. Elizabeth wasn't

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Speaker 1: even ever Lutheran. She was never elapsed Catholic. As I mentioned,

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Speaker 1: she was a lifelong Calvinist. So no blood lust. But

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Speaker 1: as for the murders, it's up to you to decide

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Speaker 1: what's to and what's merely rumor. That's the saga of

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Speaker 1: Elizabeth Bathory. But keep listening after a brief sponsor break

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Speaker 1: to hear a little bit more about her legacy. Lists

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Speaker 1: of pop history fun facts are littered with the type

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Speaker 1: of historical anecdote that seems like it should be true,

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Speaker 1: and so these anecdotes are just repeated often enough that

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Speaker 1: they become fact. One of those seems like it might

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Speaker 1: as well be true is the idea that, upon hearing

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Speaker 1: the rumors of this Eastern European countess from Transylvania, an

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Speaker 1: Irish author named Bram Stoker, while staying on the misty

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Speaker 1: northern coast of Scotland, was inspired to write Us to

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Speaker 1: worry about a man who sucked blood from others to survive.

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Speaker 1: His book, of course, became Dracula. Now there's no real

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Speaker 1: consensus on whether Bathory directly or even indirectly inspired Stoker,

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Speaker 1: but Bathory did inspire another recent character in pop culture.

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Speaker 1: In the video game Resident Evil Village, there's a glamorous

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Speaker 1: woman with a large black hat and sweeping white gown

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Speaker 1: who stands at over nine ft tall. The character is

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Speaker 1: named Countess Alcina or Lady Dimitrescu, and she became an

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Speaker 1: almost instant fan favorite. A villainist who rules over a

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Speaker 1: feudal peasantry with allegations of murder and cannibalism swirling around

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Speaker 1: her incredibly glamorous and incredibly tall person. Noble Blood is

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Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio and Grimm and Mild

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Speaker 1: from Aaron Mankey. The show is written and hosted by

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Speaker 1: Dana Schwartz. Executive producers include Aaron Mankey. Alex Williams and

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Speaker 1: Matt Frederick. The show is produced by rema il Keali

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Speaker 1: and Trevor Young. Noble Blood is on social media at

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Speaker 1: Noble Blood Tales, and you can learn more about the

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Speaker 1: show over at Noble Blood Tales dot com. For more

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Speaker 1: podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app,

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Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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Speaker 1: M