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SIDONIA THE SORCERESS
THE SUPPOSED DESTROYER OF THE WHOLE REIGNING DUCAL HOUSE OFPOMERANIA
TRANSLATED BY LADY WILDE
MARY SCHWEIDLER
THE AMBER WITCH
BY
WILLIAM MEINHOLD DOCTOR OF THEOLOGY
IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. I.
1894
DEDICATION OF THE GERMAN EDITION.
TO THE ILLUSTRIOUS
LADY LUCY DUFF GORDON,
THE
YOUNG AND GIFTED TRANSLATOR
OF
"THE AMBER WITCH,"
THIS WORK IS RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED.
PREFACE
Amongst all the trials for witchcraft with which we areacquainted, few have attained so great a celebrity as that of theLady Canoness of Pomerania, Sidonia von Bork. She was accused ofhaving by her sorceries caused sterility in many families,particularly in that of the ancient reigning house of Pomerania,and also of having destroyed the noblest scions of that house byan early and premature death. Notwithstanding the intercessionsand entreaties of the Prince of Brandenburg and Saxony, and of theresident Pomeranian nobility, she was publicly executed for thesecrimes on the 19th of August 1620, on the public scaffold, atStettin; the only favour granted being, that she was allowed to bebeheaded first and then burned.
This terrible example caused such a panic of horror, thatcontemporary authors scarcely dare to mention her name, and, eventhen, merely by giving the initials. This forbearance arose partlyfrom respect towards the ancient family of the Von Borks, whothen, as now, were amongst the most illustrious and wealthy in theland, and also from the fear of offending the reigning ducalfamily, as the Sorceress, in her youth, had stood in a very nearand tender relation to the young Duke Ernest Louis vonPommern-Wolgast.
These reasons will be sufficiently comprehensible to all who arefamiliar with the disgust and aversion in which the paramours ofthe evil one were held in that age, so that even upon the rackthese subjects were scarcely touched upon.
The first public, judicial, yet disconnected account of Sidonia'strial, we find in the Pomeranian Library of Dähnert, fourthvolume, article 7, July number of the year 1755.
Dähnert here acknowledges, page 241, that the numbers from 302 to1080, containing the depositions of the witnesses, were notforthcoming up to his time, but that a priest in Pansin, nearStargard, by name Justus Sagebaum, pretended to have them in hishands, and accordingly, in the fifth volume of the above-namedjournal (article 4, of April 1756), some very important extractsappear from them.
The records, however, again disappeared for nearly a century,until Barthold announced, some short time since, [Footnote:"History of Rugen and Pomerania," vol. iv. p. 486.] that he had atlength discovered them in the Berlin Library; but he does not saywhich, for, according to Schwalenberg, who quotes Dähnert, thereexisted two or three different copies, namely, the ProtocollumJodoci Neumarks, the so-called Acta Lothmanni, and thatof Adami Moesters, contradicting each other in the mostimp