A sword from Frankenthal in the Palatinate, around 1600
Photo:
Peter Haag-Kirchner / Historical Museum of the Palatinate Speyer
In the end, Blasius Bien was left with only a bill from his wife for 91.50 guilders, for the imprisonment, torture and execution of Merga Bien.
To be paid to Balthasar Nuss, the witch judge, the maleficent master of Fulda.
In other words, to the man who had kept and tormented the woman in a small stable like an animal for weeks before having her burned as a witch sometime in the autumn of 1603.
According to everything that is known about her life today, Merga Bien was part of the Fulda middle class.
A woman who, because of her small fortune, was able to marry a middle-ranked civil servant even at an advanced age.
In the parish books she was listed as godmother.
An indication that she had money and a good reputation.
But that could not protect them from the witch craze that intensified in Fulda in 1603.
In the Hochstift Fulda, an ecclesiastical territory of the Holy Roman Empire ruled by a prince-abbot, the persecution of witches was short but particularly cruel.
Between 1603 and 1606, during the second term in office of Prince-Abbot Balthasar von Dernbach, an estimated 250 women fell victim to her.
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