Character Preludes: Johann

"The Penitent Witch Hunter"

“Johann Ratzinger, you merciless claw of the Roman Church that has torn the flesh from innocent men and women, the frail and the babe.

"We Mothers of Shadow, we Spectators of Animosity have been beholden to your crimes against the forsaken few; we know all of your past misdeeds whispered on the tongues of rats, sung from the sparrows under the eaves, and hidden under the earth were the worm reigns . You, whom were abandoned into the cold cradle of orphanhood to be raised by the black frocked Order of Dominicans, to harm the common people from whom you were truly sired.

"Johann Ratzinger, We were there when you first learnt the executioner’s art from Friar Hartung, a faithful apprentice during the spring of 1709 as you both traversed the frosted lanes of winter’s residual blight into the wilds of the Swiss Alps, the smoking stakes of your forced trials smouldering in your wake.

"Craven vermin you became, seeking out the lame and malformed from village to village in the name of God. With one hand you pointed at white haired widows, whilst the other clutched at golden bribes from their wealthy neighbours. Your heart became as cold as the coin you counted, stirred only when you ran like a dog through the streets of Hungary to bite at the heels of any peasant associated with witchcraft, herding them as sheep toward the flames to prove your devotion to the Roman church.

"For a time the fires ceased, as you worked against the Church of fallen Constantinople in the lands of Transylvania, sharpening your liturgical rhetoric against the elder vipers of other faiths. Here on the borders of the Ottoman Empire you could do little harm; the customs of the Huns were already able to test the faith of the living as well as the recent dead should they become restless in the grave. You took no heed of their rites in keeping a corpse under its headstone, ignorant to the ways of the vrykolakas, the Nosferatu, because you are as maleficent a beast in your rotting organs as we are by visage. Look upon me and know that your heart is as ugly and foul.

"If you had listened to the legends of the vrykolakas as you dined in those Saxon houses, you would have known that we demons are vengeful, with long memories of your misdeeds, haunting the sinner until he is half mad with guilt and fear to churn his innards, praying for redemption from phantoms and an early death.

"Having hauled your corpulent and zealous tongue in the chapels and courts of the Carpathian mountains, you grew bored with the debates and took your leave back into the Kingdom of Hungary, lured by the rumours of an army of witches stealing babes’ souls with their winter’s breath, or withering the wheat on the stem as they flew above in their mad parades to the devil’s den.

"It was a bad winter for the residents of Szeged in 1728, when the city’s magistrates invited you and your ilk into the courthouse to sniff out the cause of the famines in the countryside thereabouts. Seeking to outdo your protestant rivals in leading guiltless beggars to the confession rooms under the courthouse, you broke their souls with your iron tongs and incessant questions until another dry summer came, leading them from the underworld of justice toward the river Tisza, on the peninsula of land called Boszorkany-sziget (Island of the Witches).

"Your axemen beheaded my chosen one, my little crippled daughter whom I would have let blossom into womanhood if only for a few more years before gifting her with eternal life to accompany me in the nights thereafter. You watched her body burn to bones and ashes beside the other victims of your witch hunt, as did all the able citizens of Szeged. My innocent child’s ashes shovelled into the river Tisza to wash away no other sin but the false crimes you laid on her guiltless head.

"We followed your footprints from the horrors of Hungary north into Germania, loosening your entourage of villains away by alluring words or a knife’s tip along the Bavarian roads until you reached the mountains of the Black Forest alone. Snuffing out the candle by your bedside, we came not long after, surrounding the four posts like fetid angels, a fitting wake for your vile life.

"And now, bound up in those same bed sheets we found you sleeping in we have prepared a midnight court here in the forest, to call aloud the roll of names you have extinguished in your holy vocation before we condemn you to suffer in their stead forevermore. For taking my dear child away from me for being no more than misshapen at birth, I can think of no greater justice than to carve your body into a monstrous cadaver to remind you of the dead waiting for you in hell. You will take her place as my child, to accompany me for eternity so I can be certain you will never forget your crimes against the peasants of the Hapsburg’s realms..."

- Speech by Our Lady of Sorrows in the Black Forest Trial, 1729.