Teresa Prieto, often called the Witch of Jove, has captivated the imaginations of many by the centuries as the primary recorded case of a vampire in Spain that reached the court docket. What was she? A witch? A vampire? Or was she certainly one of many harmless girls accused of one thing supernatural.
Lengthy earlier than the vampire turned a determine of Gothic fiction, the concern of blood consuming witches already haunted the villages of medieval Spain. One of many earliest recorded circumstances emerged within the late fifteenth century within the coastal settlements round Gijón in Asturias. There, a girl named Teresa Prieto turned the middle of one of many strangest accusations in Spanish historical past. To her neighbors she was not merely a witch. She was believed to be a creature that slipped into houses at evening and drank the blood of youngsters.
Learn Extra: Take a look at all ghostly tales and legends from Spain
The case of Teresa Prieto, later often called “the Witch of Jove” or “the Vampire of Xove,” sits on the crossroads between folklore and historic actuality. It reveals how medieval fears of evening demons, witchcraft, and vampirism may merge right into a single terrifying accusation.
Night time Customer of the Village
Within the late 1400s the realm of Jove, immediately referred to as Xove, was not the fashionable district of Gijón identified immediately. It consisted of small scattered villages related by slim paths and surrounded by forests and fields. Oral traditions and superstition formed every day life. Native healers lived on the margins of society, gathering herbs from the woods to make cures and potions.
Inside this surroundings unusual rumors started to flow into.
Mother and father claimed that one thing entered their houses throughout the evening. The intruder moved silently whereas households slept and approached the beds of youngsters. When morning got here, some youngsters had been discovered useless. In response to the tales instructed by villagers, the our bodies bore two small marks on the neck, indicators that their blood had been sucked throughout the evening.
Concern rapidly turned towards a human suspect. The villagers accused Teresa Prieto.
The Shadow of the Strix
The accusations in opposition to Prieto didn’t come up in isolation. On the finish of the fifteenth century European folklore nonetheless carried sturdy beliefs in striges or strigias, monstrous feminine beings mentioned to prey on infants. These creatures had been described as winged girls with the claws and beaks of birds of prey who drank the blood of youngsters to make use of in magical brews.
Such beliefs had deep roots in classical mythology and medieval superstition. The Roman strix and the Greek lamia had been each imagined as feminine evening predators who attacked infants. In medieval Europe these creatures slowly merged with the thought of witches. A lady accused of sorcery may simply be accused of vampiric acts as nicely.
Within the remoted communities of Asturias, the previous legends had been nonetheless alive. When youngsters died unexpectedly, the traditional clarification returned. A blood consuming witch have to be accountable.
Accusation and Trial
Round 1480, Teresa Prieto was formally denounced by her neighbors. She was accused of being a striga, an evening witch who entered houses and drained the blood of youngsters. The case reached the eye of the Spanish Inquisition, which opened proceedings in opposition to her.
The accusations described her as a girl who wandered by villages at evening and entered homes secretly, harming Christians and sucking blood from youngsters. In essence, the primary documented case of vampirism in Spain, though the lore behind the blood sucking entity seemed a bit of bit totally different than the fashionable model.
She was turned in to Juan de Acebal, on the time a prosecutor and litigant who would lead the primary Asturian case within the renewed Tribunal of the Inquisition, which had simply been re-established within the kingdom of Castile, exactly on All Souls’ Day in 1478.
Prieto was arrested and subjected to interrogation and torture. She was sure hand and foot, twisting and turning on her again, and he or she was compelled to drink liters of water repeatedly for no less than an hour. Regardless of the ordeal she maintained her innocence and by no means confessed to the crimes attributed to her.
The tribunal or the Bachelor Brecianos, ultimately condemned her to demise by hanging. There, it was ordered that she be taken “on horseback, using a donkey, her arms and toes sure with an esparto rope round her neck,” publicly and shamefully earlier than the townspeople, to the stone gallows the place the witch or sorceress of Gijón can be hanged and her flesh burned to ashes.
But the case didn’t finish in the way in which many witch trials did.
Escape From the Gallows
Earlier than the sentence was carried out, Teresa Prieto appealed the decision. As she acknowledged in her protest, when she was arrested she was not knowledgeable of the fees or anything; she had not been instructed who had denounced her; the accuser turned out to be the one witness and, apart from contradicting himself, was a private enemy of hers, which ought to legally disqualify his testimony; moreover, she had not been supplied with the required authorized illustration, and the lieutenant corregidor had acted in opposition to her unjustly and opposite to the legal guidelines of the dominion. She additionally emphasised that she had been subjected to torture with out trigger or cause and was summoned repeatedly with none new proof or proof showing. To conclude her plea, she careworn that by showing earlier than the court docket she demonstrated her good religion and will be capable of atone for any potential crime.
The attraction succeeded. As a substitute of execution she was imprisoned whereas the case continued. Her conduct throughout the proceedings seems to have influenced the authorities, and ultimately the sentence was overturned.
In November of 1500 she was launched from jail and allowed to return to Asturias as a free lady. Neither social gathering was ordered to pay prices, however Teresa requested a written copy of the sentence and the return of the property and belongings that had been confiscated from her.
Ultimately the supposed vampire of Jove was by no means confirmed to be something greater than a sufferer of concern and rumor.
The Beginning of a Spanish Vampire Legend
Although Teresa Prieto survived the trial, her popularity by no means disappeared. Folklore continued to explain her as a vampire witch who crept into homes at evening to feed on youngsters. Later historians and folklorists comparable to Julio Caro Baroja and Juan Uría Ríu recorded the story as one of many earliest examples of vampiric perception in Spain.
The witch of Jove belongs to a darker chapter of European folklore. She stands on the boundary between legend and historic file. A lady as soon as accused of slipping by the evening to drink the blood of youngsters. A case the place historical fears of witches, demons, and vampires converged within the lifetime of a single unlucky particular person.
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References:
Mito y realidad de Teresa Prieto, la bruja de Jove
Un zumbido mortal. Theresa Prieto, la vampira de Jove | El Comercio: Diario de Asturias
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