The real Elizabeth Bathory?

1. Because other nobles usually managed to keep their affairs private, or were too powerful for anyone to do anything about it (google Gilles De Rais for an example of this.) Similarly, Bathory got called up on it because she ended up killing the daughters of noblemen, killing peasants = mad but fine. Killing nobles = out of order.

2. Yes in that time period testimonies were coerced now and again, but all 300 of them, along with all the fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters coming forward saying "Hey, we sent my daughter to Bathory, what happened to her?"? The simplest explanation is that she was a serial killer who had a lot of power. You are suggesting something MUCH grander as in "it was all a plot", so it's up to you to provide evidence.

3. Mental health problems =/= socially dis-functional. Psychopaths for example are renowned for their ability to blend into society. Often what makes them such great killers is their ability to charm their victims and lie.

That is not to say that a psychopath IS a killer. One in ten people have some form of psychopathic personality. But one in ten people are not running around the house brandishing an axe.

4. Was she a serial killer, probably. Their is quite a lot of evidence for her killing and torturing individuals. From victims who were found in captivity in her castle with injuries received from torture. To confessions from her servants that her house-hold had infact abducted, abused and killed young girls sent to the Bathory house.

5. Not really. The fact that her conviction was lucky for some doesn't influence the fact that there were mountains of testimonies saying "Elizabeth Bathory tortured and killed you women, I saw it/ I took part in it"

It's possible these testimonies were forced, but I doubt it.
 
Id say you are wrong. No doubt you gladly would have accepted DeSalvos false confession knowing he had a history of false confessions.
Answer the question, are you aware of the story of her throwing victims over the castle walls for the wolves to eat, relying on wolves to get the evidence, do you believe that? yeah like wolves eat bones to.
 
Zzzzzzzzzzzzz...change the channel Elvira - this stopped being relevant several pages back. I have shown evidence and conclusions.

You have shown diddly-squat other than the fact you cannot debate. You also have no conception of burden of proof, balance of probabilities and I suspect Occam's razor will not mean anything to you without being googled

Put up (some evidence) or shut up
 
You drew your own conclusions, big deal. I can do the same. Answer the question, do you believe all the stories your supposed evidence revolves around?
 
The "big deal" is that my conclusions are borne out by the salient facts

Yours aren't in any way shape or form - in fact some of your conclusions are just out and out garbage

The fact you cannot see this is telling. The fact you accuse me of believing the nonsense you are rallying against is further testament to you failure to grasp even the basic tenets of reasoned argument and discussion.

And what evidence do you think I am looking at or considering when formulating conclusions ? The myths and innuendo surrounding the horse crap you are spouting that was reviewed and rejected by scholars ages ago? You are doing nothing here that has not been reviewed, analyzed and considered by historians previously.

Yet against all this you think it is possible you can come up with another theory that is suddenly going to shock anyone with even a passing interest in these matters.

You remind me of Karl Pilkington
 
And a folk hero to his people in many respects - but you don't believe that for some reason......but Poor Wizzy Baff eh?
 
Typical of his age and maligned by his conquerors for doing what most others did at that time.

Richard III suffered similarly at the hands of the Tudors

"History is written by the victors"
 
David Ben Gurion was a great leader according to Jews and a tyrant and hateful racist according to Arabs. Sometimes it all depends on who you ask.
 
Not always. Much of what we know about the fall of the Roman Empire comes from writings of the defeated Romans after the German tribes defeated them. Much of what we know about Genghis Khan comes from ballads written by the Chinese whom he conquered.
 
Vlad was actually a sadist with a vicious streak a mile wide who was considered excessive even in his own period - his own letters confirm as much. But to the Romanians he was a hero. Genghis Khan was not exactly beatific, but his reputation is viewed in the context of the period he lived in.

Vlad killed his enemies in horrific ways - yet rarely his own. He was viewed as a patriot and it was the Germanic peoples who detested him so and started a lot of the accusations of depravity

But this is again a matter of study and history - you can look at the material and if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck then guess what? It's a duck

Bathory is the same. 600 was only ever brought up by one person and rejected outright by right minded people even at the time. But she was a killer and a sadist - end of discussion.
 
Hence it is a balance of probabilities and the actions an individual undertook tell more than the words written about them - this is why the Bathory conspiracy theory makes no sense and did not happen.

She was protected by the system more than she was persecuted by it
 
They're rare sociopaths, killers are. Most of them don't outright commit crimes. Most psycopaths/sociopaths live off hurting others but technically its not 'illegal'



Same with Louis Riel. The indians and french loved him, the english people called him a treasoner.
 
Psychopaths don't necessarily hurt or want to hurt. It is far more a personality type, than some weird deranged madness.

Someone with a psychopathic personality type may be prone to certain behaviours but the condition itself doesn't necessarily mean they will engage in them. Some psychopaths are prone to abusive or anti-social behaviour, but that is usually caused by external factors mixing with their personality type rather than such acts being committed purely because he/she is a psychopath.
 
Actually most psychopaths or sociopaths live off using others, as they lack the empathy to properly understand the suffering their actions may or may not cause. They are not deliberately setting out to hurt people in most cases, simply doing what anyone would do given that same lack of empathy.

People lie and manipulate one another constantly - it's what our entire society is build around. The difference is that in most people this is mitigated by some understanding of what those on the other end will feel, whereas with a sociopath only their own emotions are important and there is a lack of understanding of other's.



Exactly. It's hard to judge the number of true sociopaths, as only behavioural clues help. Unfortunately (or fortunately) the intelligent ones understand others well enough to fit perfectly into society and not show these behavioural clues. So, the question then becomes if a sociopath does not behave in a way damaging to others (in order to blend in), should we care in the least that they are a sociopath?
 
Oooh - browsing the forum this morning & stumbled across this... which is astounding, given that I have recently been researching Elizabeth Bathory!!!

My research has lead me to believe that she was a sadistic and cruel woman, which whilst not unusual for the time/society/class that she lived in, she was more so than most (hence the trouble she landed herself in).

The thing about the loans is that she brought attention to herself by actually asking her cousin (the King) to repay them... he couldn't afford to, but... it wasn't a conspiracy - the question raised was that she was left an incredibly rich widow when her husband died - what does she need money for...

Then the story starts to come out...

To be fair, what she was doing was the wrong side of normal even for the time. The biggest probably wasn't what she was doing, it was who she was doing it to. She'd used up the peasants (let's be honest here - the nobility didn't care about them) and she'd started taking in the daughters of the lesser nobility.

Lesser or not, nobility is nobility and that was the line she crossed.

Her husband (before he died) used to send her girls back while he was away campaigning so, she had a steady supply and apparently most of her sadistic ways she'd apparently learned from him anyway (nice, normal marriage they had going on there).

It might have been made worse by pyschological trauma from her past (she got frisky with a peasant in her younger teenage years (bear in mind she married Nadasdy when she was 14) and had a daughter (Anastasia) who was 'sent to be brought up by peasants' (isn't that a lovely euphemism!!!)

Being a mother, I can only imagine the psychological trauma that may cause on a woman - never mind a 12/13 year old kid!

However, she would most likley have turned out to be a cruel and sadistic woman even if that hadn't have happened to her due to the influences after she married.

I don't think she was villified to stop the King repaying the loan... I think that curiosity caught the sadist torturing the young girls sent to her almost like a finishing school!

As for her abilities as a healer - to be honest in that period, any woman whose husband was a warrior would have learned at least basic levels of healing in case of a siege - it was part of the standard learning for all well-born women at the time... she definately wasn't accused of witchcraft!


On slightly different notes - (having read through the entire 10 pages of thread)
Henry VIII was definately catholic until the day he died (he even had the last rites).
Anglicanism and Catholicism differs very slightly (seriously, I was brought up 1/2 and 1/2) - the words of the Nicene Creed [declaration of faith] are identical in both churches down to (and including) the line "I believe in one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church", still said aloud by 'protestant' Anglican's nationwide each and every Sunday!

& I know someone else has already caught it but Mary Queen of Scots didn't burn protestants - she was actually very, very tolerant of protestantism, especially in Scotland. Bloody Mary, was the English Queen Mary Tudor, who burned substantially more protestants than her Anglican younger half sister, Elizabeth burned Catholics! She was only villified towards the end of her reign & afterwards, early in her reign Mary was almost universally adored (well, in England at any rate).

Which makes you feel realy sorry for Lady Jane Grey, who has only received sympathy very much post-mortem!

The wererwolf angle is intersting in this thread & I remember an espisode of CSI (few series back - Gill Grissom was in it) with the brother & sister who had Hypertrichosis... often called Werewolf disease (but that's as far as my knowledge runs on that! Sorry)
 
Whomp! There it is!!

Nice to have a scholarly confirmation of what (most) of us have been saying all along
 
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