The connection between the right-of-the-first-night hoax and the true story of Countess Elizabeth
Bathory (1560 - August 1614)
At 04:03 2000 04 04 EDT, [Per ?] wrote:
>http://idt.net/~per2/
>
>
---snip---
>March 1997: Stupid Law Tricks (Topics: Did ancient lords really have the
>right to sleep with a bride on her wedding night?;....
Per explained that the right-of-the-first-night myth, "also known as
the jus primae noctis (law of the first night), the droit du seigneur
(the lord's right), etc.," is quite likely a hoax for the simple reason
that the commoners would have risen in a bloody revolt if they would have
been subjected to the alleged practice of the lord of the castle routinely
deflowering freshly married virgins.
Another, far more terrible fate would have been in store for the lord
if his wife would have caught on to what he was up to on the wedding
nights of the commoners. No, but there may be far more to the hoax than meets the eye.
If anyone looks into the darkest and innermost secrets of the
creation of the hoax, I bet that he'll find a surprising truth. The motivation for creating the hoax was
more than simple titillation by the idea of the two-backed beast of which one half was a virgin and the
other a lecher (however noble). No, the real motivation for launching the hoax was most likely the
originator's fascination with sexual perversions of a different kind.
Given the name of the mythical king, Evenus III (often falsely pronounced "Evenus the Third," but more
correctly "even us three") the interests of the creator of the hoax most likely were in a different sector
of sexual endeavours. One question that remains is: "Who was the third party?"
Considering that nobody ever throughout history held back in calling men beastly, it is safe to assume
that, in the mind of the creator of the hoax, the third party in the threesome in the legendary execution
of the right of the first night was the legendary king's wife who, so to speak, had the king do the
procuring for her in that fashion. It is most likely that the creator of the tale was moved by the
traditional respect for the falsely alleged moral superiority of women in making such an indirect
reference to the depravity of the queen of his imagination.
Update (2005 01
29):
Mel Gibson had it wrong
The tall story of the right of the first
night truly is a hoax.
Finally, after a full seven centuries of its existence, the
hoax of the right of the first night has been
officially debunked.
Boureau, Alain The Lord's First Night: The Myth
of the Droit de Cuissage. Translated by Lydia G. Cochrane.
310 p. 6 x 9 1998
Cloth $55.00sc 0-226-06742-4 Fall 1998
Paper $19.00sp 0-226-06743-2 Fall 1998
From the late Middle Ages to The Marriage of Figaro
to Mel Gibson's Braveheart, the ultimate symbol of
feudal barbarism has been the droit de cuissage, or
right of a feudal lord to sleep with the bride of a vassal
on her wedding night. The droit de cuissage even
resurfaced in the debate over the French Penal Code of 1992
as a synonym for sexual harassment.
But, as Alain Boureau elegantly demonstrates in this book,
the droit de cuissage is a myth. Under contextual
examination, nearly all the supposed evidence for this
custom melts away--yet belief in it has survived for seven
hundred years. Boureau shows how each era turned the
mythical custom to its own ends. For instance, in the late
Middle Ages, monarchists raised the specter of the droit
de cuissage to rally public opinion against local lords,
and partisans of the French Revolution pointed to it as
proof of the corruption of the Ancien Régime.
A fascinating case study of the folklore of sexuality,
The Lord's First Night also offers evocative insights
into popular (mis)conceptions of the Middle Ages.
On the French edition: "A richly informative study of
attitudes to the past and the manipulation of history down
the ages."--Peter Linehan, Times Literary Supplement
Quoted from the University of Chicago Press
Ordering information and publishing details
Nevertheless, the hoax of the right of the first
night has been around for so long and has been used in so many
stories, plays and movies, it is quite likely that it will prove
to be hard to dislodge. We can count on that the feminist
propaganda machine will keep on exploiting it for all it is
worth.
The hoax, however, may well have been an oblique reference to a real member of the nobility who
did have a perverse and even deadly interest in a large number of virgins. The facts of
that particular instance of perversion are well recorded and most definitely neither myth nor hoax.
"...the mid-fifteenth-century Countess Elizabeth Bathory, of Hungary, who bled to death 610 peasant
girls, whom she abducted and kept in her castle dungeon so that she could fill rejuvenating beauty baths
with their youthful blood." (Patricia Pearson, "When She Was Bad: The Myth of Female Innocence," p. 156)
There are without any doubt good reasons why the redfems
don't promote the story of Countess Elizabeth Bathory and prefer to promote hoaxes instead. In the
case of the countess it is perhaps too hard for them to explain how she could possibly have exercised such
deadly powers in a society that "oppressed" women. But, given that women are the eternal victims,
was it her husband or the devil who made her do it?
Countess Bathory of Hungary tortured to death 610 to 650 girls
(depending on source), not just peasant girls, but also girls of the
lower nobility. However, contrary to many claims, there were no eye-witness accounts of her ever taking a
bath in her victims' blood, although she subjected them to bloody torture that often soaked her in her
victims' blood. She was tried and sentenced for her crimes to life-long imprisonment, with the pro-female
bias in jurisprudence being well established even then to favour women in power, as most women are up to
this day - only perhaps more all-pervasively, unless they are from the lower classes of society, such as
stay-at-home moms.
Some of her accomplices were sentenced to death and executed. Countess Bathory was bricked in, so that
she would never see the light of day again, and died a little while later.
For a full account of the life of the bloody and deadly Countess Elizabeth Bathory (1560 - August
1614), check
http://bathory.org/erzstale.html
You can find a good article with bibliographical references at
http://www.xs4all.nl/~monarchs/madmonarchs/erzsebet/erzsebet_bio.htm
For a more politically-correct embellished story about the 'poor countess', you may want to visit a
hotbed of radical feminism:
....How Could This Have Happened?
... Countess Elizabeth Bathory was a vain and mentally unstable woman whose circumstances allowed her
hideous inner demon to break free. If the laws of her day had held her accountable for her actions,
could the lives of 650 girls have been saved? We will never know.
Full story at
http://www.geocities.com/Wellesley/Veranda/7128/why.html
(Note: That link no longer functions, but the essay is still
accessible
here.)
(If the term "radical feminism" (a.k.a.
Marxist- or socialist-feminism) is somewhat new to you, you need to expand
your knowledge. After all, radical feminism, the currently controlling
faction of feminism, governs just about everything that is happening in your
life. See,
Carey Roberts column
Carey Roberts is an analyst and commentator on political correctness.
His best-known work was an exposé on Marxism and radical feminism.
Carey Roberts' best-known work, his exposé on Marxism and
radical feminism, is not necessarily easy to find, but
this link will help with that. (Some of the URLs for the article
series appear to keep changing. For that reason the identified link
leads to an Internet search for the series. The first or second link in
the return list will most likely lead you to the series.)
See? It was the devil that made her do it
(that must be true, for a feminist told it so); and who would want to believe that
Countess Elizabeth Bathory was not the only woman, ever, of all those
women for whom no-one — ever — drew the line whose inner demons broke free?
People like Jack the Ripper (he killed five prostitutes) are the
stuff of movie after movie, book
after book, headline-story after headline story in the papers. People like Jane Toppan (a
nurse and contemporary of Jack the Ripper who killed as many as or more than 90 patients for no other reason than that she wanted to set a
record) and like Countess Elizabeth Bathory are forgotten, as is the fact that the
vast majority of
serious or fatal family violence victims fell victim to women's
violence and also the fact that the vast majority of serial
killers is female.
Yes, that is right, because the
largest single group of victims of violence in
families, children, is not even counted in the tally of victims of women's violence. We just
don't want to know, because we, that is, the feminists,
want men to be seen as
being bad and want women to have victim
status. That works well. In propaganda, perception
is everything, and the truth is nothing.
________________
Further reading can be found in:
