The curse of the Middle Ages was very powerful. To protect oneself from him, great humiliations were accepted. Whether they were thrown by Christians, Muslims, or pagans, each was taken deadly seriously. Meet the six curses that shaped the fate of Europe!
Although they are several centuries old, the effects of some were noticed back in the 20th century! They explained the course of wars, the collapse of states, and the fate of individual people. You can shrug them off, but when certain sequences of facts are followed, even the greatest rationalists feel a certain unease ...
6. Hungarian doom
For many Hungarians, the fact that their once mighty country has succumbed to foreign powers, dwarfed and has become a secondary state in Central and Eastern Europe, is difficult to explain. The matter becomes clear, however, if one recognizes that it is all the fault of Turan's curse!
Its history dates back to the times of King Stephen I the Holy (969–1038). To live up to his nickname, the ruler ruthlessly fought the heathen cultivating the traditions brought by the Magyars from Asia. The Christian king had no mercy, he did not hesitate to use brute force and torture.
To deserve his nickname, Stephen I the Saint ruthlessly fought against pagans (source:public domain).
The followers of the ancient deities, out of vengeance, turned to the shaman Turan (name significant because it refers to the land in Asia). The latter cast a thousand-year curse on the state of Stefan. This is why Hungary has been haunted by internal struggles for centuries, it is affected by catastrophic invasions, and its inhabitants are eternal pessimists. This also explains the fact that in the 20th century Hungarians were known as "leaders" in the world ranking of suicides .
In fact, there is no historical evidence that in the Middle Ages a pagan shaman cursed the Hungarian kingdom . It can therefore be concluded that the history of the alleged curse is not so much the key to understanding the difficult history of the Magyar state, but it says a lot about the Hungarians themselves, who perceive their country through the prism of their fate ...
5. Tamerlane Threat
This ruler, otherwise known as Timur Chromy or Timur Lame, ruled in Central Asia between 1370 and 1405. In this short period of time, he created a powerful empire that stretched from northwest India to eastern Turkey, from the Aral Lake to the Indian Ocean. After his death, the body of the great commander was placed in a mausoleum in his beloved Samarkand.
The peace of the brave Tamerlane ended in June 1941, when Soviet scientists appeared at the place of his burial. With research fervor, they decided to open the sarcophagus. Local Muslim clerics wanted to stop them. They told about the curse:apparently the opening of the tomb was supposed to bring a catastrophe within a few days not only to those who did it, but even to the whole world.
Timur Kulawy created a great empire in Asia. In a painting by Stanisław Chlebowski, Sultan Bayazyt in captivity with Tamerlane (source:public domain).
Despising superstition and superstition, Soviet scholars did not heed the warnings. Timur's tomb was opened on June 20. Two days later Hitler attacked the USSR with crushing force . This may be considered a coincidence, but the fact is that the scales of the war did not tip over to the Soviet side until after the second funeral Tamerlana at the end of 1942!
4. Kara Husa
Jan Hus lived in times when the Church was shaken by successive splits, and the faithful were shocked and scandalized by the rule of popes and anti-popes. The contrast between the lavish life of the clergy and the misery of the common people, troubled by hunger, war and pestilence, was particularly shocking. Seeing all this, Hus demanded the reform of the Church .
He criticized the papacy for materialism and ambition to rule the world. He emphasized that the Bible should become the only source of Christian doctrine. He promoted the preaching of the faith in national languages. Of course, was quickly censored .
First, the Prague bishop condemned him and excommunicated him - that is, he excluded him from the community of the faithful (1410). Hus, however, continued to act and gained more sympathizers, so in 1413 Pope John XXIII himself put a curse on him and imposed an interdict (ban on administering the sacraments) on his whereabouts , that is Prague and other Czech cities.
Hus decided to defend his point of view at the Council of Constance - he was to be enabled by a letter from the emperor. It was for nothing, because the Czech was captured, tried and burned at the stake on July 6, 1415 . His followers soon reached for weapons.
The curse on Hus and his condemnation to death led to the Hussite Wars then to the development of Protestantism in the sixteenth century and in the longer term to today's reserved (to put it mildly) attitude of the Czechs towards the Church.
3. Excommunication to the emperor…
Henry IV of Salicki is considered the most famous of the accursed emperors . He was excommunicated when he was still "only" king of Germany. The curse fell during the dispute with the papacy over investiture, i.e. the right to appoint bishops, and de facto who is more important.
In 1084, the emperor entered Rome and, without worrying about another curse, chased Pope Gregory VII away. The escape, expulsion and death of the Holy Father in the chronicle of Otto of Freising (source:public domain).
To undo the punishment, the emperor had to humble himself. In 1077 appeared barefoot and in a penitential bag at the papal castle in Canossa . That was the price of the photo of the excommunication. But the scene of humiliation turned out to be just a tactical move, because in 1084 he entered Rome and, without worrying about another curse, chased Pope Gregory VII away.
The compliant antipope Clement III crowned Henry as emperor. But whether as a result of a curse or otherwise, his reign was not happy . In 1105, his opponents forced him to abdicate, and the emperor died a year later.
2. Again!
However, not only Henry IV had such hard times with the papacy. Even worse was scored by Frederick II Hohenstauf. He was excommunicated three times! For the first time in 1227, because he preferred to negotiate with Muslims in the Middle East rather than fight them. The Pope lifted the curse in 1229, when it became known that the emperor had in fact regained Jerusalem without a fight.
So what, since ten years later he was again cursed - for fighting the papal state. The curse was lifted in 1244, but a year later Innocent IV placed another on Frederick, as part of the struggle of the papacy with the empire for leadership in the Christian world. On the occasion of the pope dethroned the emperor, and the propapal anti-king Henry Raspe appeared in Germany.
Hohenstauf managed to defeat him, but bad luck hung over the emperor's house, as if provoked by further curses. Frederick II dies in 1250, and his son and successor Conrad IV only four years later. At this point the Hohenstaufa rule over Germany ends.
Soon, the descendants of the emperor also lose power in the Kingdom of Sicily (Manfred, the illegitimate son of Frederick II, dies on the battlefield in 1266) and in the Duchy of Swabia (Conradin, grandson of Frederick II, is beheaded in 1268).
Frederick II regained Jerusalem by way of treaties, not by armed confrontation. Which is why he was excommunicated. And it's not the last time ... The Emperor during talks with Sultan al-Kamil (source:public domain).
Even less known emperor's bastards, such as Frederick of Antioch, die (in an epidemic during the battles with papal troops in Italy in 1256). The last of the great Hohenstaufen, Enzo of Sardinia, the illegitimate son of Frederick II, dies in a Bologna prison in 1272, after twenty-three years behind bars!
1. Curse of the Templars
The Knights Templar were rich and powerful, and the King of France, Philip the Beautiful, needed money. In the fall of 1307, he gave the order to detain them - on heavily inflated charges of heresy, sacrilege, and sodomy. The arrests took place on Friday, October 13. This contributed to the fear of this day, which is popular today (the so-called paraskevidekatriaphobia).
But the curse of the Templars is something else. Here, according to legend, when the Grand Master of the Order Jacob de Molay was led to the stake on March 18, 1314, he cursed on his persecutors: Pope Clement, Knight William, King Philip! Before the year has passed, I am calling you to God's judgment for just punishment . Cursed! Until the thirteenth generation of your family .
Indeed, Pope Clement V - who could not save the Templars because he was too dependent on Philip - died a month later, on April 20. The king of France - the main animator of the conspiracy against the Templars - left this world on November 29, 1314.
Due to premature deaths in the family, ineffective politics, and then the anger of the people (death on the scaffold of Louis XVI Bourbon) and pro-republican ideals of freemasonry (often referring to the Templars), the Capetian dynasty lost power in France . It sounds like the curse is working, doesn't it?
The curse allegedly cast by Jacob de Molay would haunt France for centuries to come. A miniature from the Chroniques de France showing the Grand Master of the Templars burning at the stake (source:public domain).
We are still left with the "knight William", that is, Wilhelm de Nogaret - Philip the Beautiful's man of black work. He also did not live to see a peaceful old age. The problem is that he already died in 1313, a year before de Molay! Either the great master was very uninformed, or the curse of the Templars is only a fiction of journalists and writers …
It is worth noting that this curse was mentioned for the first time not so long after de Molay's death, in 1330. But then the words attributed to the great master were spoken by another Templar! They didn't put them on de Molay's mouth until the mid-16th century.