Báthory Erzsébet (1560-1614)
From The NY Times A new book by Shelley Puhak dismantles the legend of Hungary’s infamous “blood countess,” separating fact from myth. There once was an aging Hungarian noblewoman so desperate to cling to her beauty that she had young maidens tortured and murdered in order to bathe in their virgin blood. After her servant-executioners testified against her, she was walled up in the tower of her castle, visible only as a spectral figure in the barred window. So unforgettably lurid are the details of this story that its subject, Countess Elizabeth Bathory (1560-1614), became an enduring object of fascination. In the 1960s, the Guinness Book of World Records named her the “most prolific murderer,” responsible for 610 deaths. But as Shelley Puhak argues in “The Blood Countess,” her new account of Bathory’s life and times, there’s ample reason to believe that the legend of her depravity was concocted by her enemies in order to shred her reputation and remove her from publ...
