Evil Strangers. the Authorities, Common People and Their Fear Of
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Artikel/Article: Evil strangers. The authorities, common people and their fear of strangers Auteur/Author: Johannes Dillinger Verschenen in/Appeared in: Leidschrift, 28.1 (Leiden 2013) 71-84 Titel uitgave: Onbekend maakt onbemind. Negatieve karakterschetsen in de vroegmoderne tijd © 2013 Stichting Leidschrift, Leiden, The Netherlands ISSN 0923-9146 E-ISSN 2210-5298 Niets uit deze uitgave mag worden No part of this publication may be gereproduceerd en/of vermenigvuldigd reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or zonder schriftelijke toestemming van de transmitted, in any form or by any means, uitgever. electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publisher. 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Articles appearing in this journal are abstracted and indexed in Historical Abstracts. Secretariaat/ Secretariat: Comité van aanbeveling/ Board of Doelensteeg 16 recommendation: 2311 VL Leiden Dr. J. Augusteijn The Netherlands Prof. dr. W.P. Blockmans 071-5277205 Prof. dr. H.W. van den Doel [email protected] Prof. dr. L. de Ligt www.leidschrift.nl Prof. dr. L.A.C.J. Lucassen Prof. dr. H. te Velde Evil strangers. The authorities, common people and their fear of strangers Johannes Dillinger This text is about some of the darkest elements of the multi-faceted image of strangers in the early modern period. Not only the authorities but also the so-called common people, i.e. peasants and townspeople were obsessed with delusions about the evil machinations of itinerant strangers. We will explore two major complexes: vagrant strangers as experts for treasure and as mercenaries employed in covert warfare. Among the most curious legendary figures of the popular treasure lore of early modern Europe were the so-called Venetians. In many parts of Central Europe, the common people talked about foreigners speaking a Romance language who had come to search for hidden treasures or gold and silver mines. These people were sometimes known as the Walen (also spelled Wahlen or Walhen, i.e. the French-speakers) or more often as the Venetians. In contrast to most other characters of popular narratives about treasure, the Venetians were spectacularly successful. They could find gold and treasures where the locals could not. The Venetians owed their unbelievable success as prospectors to their magical skills. A most material kind of clairvoyants, they saw caves full of gold in the mountains that were invisible to anyone else. After the Venetians had filled their bags with riches they disappeared as quickly and as clandestinely as they had come. It was said they could make themselves invisible and even magically fly back to their home country. The Venetians rewarded their local helpers and guides very handsomely. However, they were very secretive about their business. The folk tales presented the Venetians as nondescript, small and darkish. Nevertheless, when any of their hosts or relations met the Venetians by some chance in their home town, they lived in palaces and wore the most expensive attire. The treasures they had taken out of other people’s countries had made them rich.1 The Venetians embodied a specific concept of foreignness in popular culture: Their foreignness spelled superiority and exclusiveness, not poverty and exclusion. 1 J. Dillinger, Magical Treasure Hunting in Europe and North America. A History (Basingstoke 2012) 79-84; W.-E. Peuckert, ‘Walen und Venediger’, Mitteilungen der schlesischen Gesellschaft für Volkskunde 30 (1929) 205-247; R. Schramm ed., Venetianersagen von geheimnisvollen Schatzsuchern (Leipzig 1985). Leidschrift, jaargang 28, nummer 1, april 2013 Johannes Dillinger The Venetian magicians were more than just characters from folk tales. At least until the eighteenth century, many people regarded the Venetian wizards as real. Polemics against them were published. These texts changed little between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. The authors stated bitterly that their respective home countries were robbed of their gold by foreigners who – in the words of the eighteenth century scientist – ‘know our country and the treasures therein better than we do ourselves.’2 The stories about the Venetian magicians had a basis in the economic realities of the early modern period. Some groups of traders from Italy or France did come to the eastern parts of Germany and the western Slavonic regions. Some of them might have been looking for gold or for the precious stones which could be found in the region. However, in all likelihood their real business was glass making. The Italian traders worked for the glass and mirror industry. They were looking for manganese, maybe also for cobalt and alum. Small quantities of these minerals were needed to produce totally clear glass – the basis of the world-famous Venetian mirrors – or blue stained glass. These traders had two good reasons to keep silent about their business: first, they did not want to draw any attention to the secrets of Italian glass manufacturers. Second, they did not want to have to deal with authorities who might have claimed that the foreigners violated princely mining privileges.3 In 1574, a high ranking mining official of the kingdom of Bohemia was very clear about this: Many people say here in the German lands that various bits of earth are found in a number of territories (…) and strangers and vagabonds take them away (…) and can turn them into gold. I personally do not believe this (…) The bits of earth those vagabonds take with them do not contain any gold and they cannot be turned into gold. Rather, the vagabonds take them to Italy and other places for money as these bits of earth are used as components in glass making and in the colouring of glass.4 2 F.G. Leonhardi, Erdbeschreibung der kurfürstlichen und herzoglichen sächsischen Lande (Leipzig 1788), quote translated in Dillinger, Magical Treasure Hunting, 80. 3 H. Wilsdorf, ‘Einführung in die Bergbausagen “Von den Venedigern”’ in: R. Schramm ed., Venetianersagen, 217-241. 4 L. Ercker von Schreckenfels, Beschreibung aller fürnehmisten Ertzt- und Bergwerckarten (Prague 1574), quote translated in Dillinger, Magical Treasure Hunting, 80-81. 72 Evil strangers Even when the traders’ business declined at the end of the sixteenth century, the people in the regions they had visited remembered them and turned the secretive foreigners into the stuff of legends.5 The rumours about foreigners searching for treasure or precious minerals had a way of focussing on real people. In seventeenth and eighteenth century Slovakia, foreign peddlers from the neighbouring regions – Silesians, Poles, Bohemians – as well as Italians and Swiss, who came to sell innocent household items like mousetraps, were collectively under suspicion of being magicians wanting to rob the Slovak Tatra mountains of their treasures. Until the early twentieth century strange signs scratched into some stones in the Tatra mountains, which might have been of natural origin or be mere childish doodles were regarded as Venetians’ symbols indicating – if one only knew how to read them – the way to some mineral vein. Similar signs were also found in Saxony.6 Among the reasons why the Venetians kept their hold on the people’s imagination were the books supposedly written by them. These so- called Walenbücher (Walloon books, i.e. books of the Italian- or French- speakers) contained instructions where to find mineral veins, as a rule: gold veins. They combined mining knowledge with magical elements such as advice about the best times to go searching for gold. Mostly, these books described the way to mineral veins and spots where mining would be profitable. The earliest examples of these books dated back to the fifteenth century. They were readily bought and sold at least in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Some were written as if they were aide-memoirs of Venetians which had been lost by them or taken from them. The people who were interested in these books apparently did not care why the Italian- speakers did not write their booklets in Italian and why anybody would sell a book that showed the way to a secret gold mine. One of the reasons why the Tatra seems to have attracted a number of treasure hunters was certainly that it was mentioned in a number of such treasure hunters’ manuals between the late seventeenth and early twentieth centuries. 7 A Walenbüchlein from 1803 dealt with treasure in Saxony: 5 Wilsdorf, ‘Einführung’, 226-227. 6 Dillinger, Magical Treasure Hunting, 81-82. 7 E. Boehlich, Das älteste schlesische Walenbuch (Breslau 1938); R. Altmüller ed., Ein steirisches Walenbüchlein (Vienna 1971); G. Eis, Kleine Schriften zur altdeutschen weltlichen Dichtung (Amsterdam 1979) 438; Dillinger, Magical Treasure Hunting, 82-84. 73 Johannes Dillinger If you go from the village of Stolpen to Tholenstein castle (…) go up the hill where the castle stands, go to the right on the way that leads to Rückersdorf village (…) You will go through a pine wood and through a deadfall where you can see right through the wood. And before long you will come to a stone with a Venetian sign on it, it is the sign of a bishop, and if you are there, then go further to the right, to the South for the length of four fields.