 It isn't the smartest thing to marry a prince that is nicknamed "the Fair" when you have a tendency to jealousy, one would say. But princesses in the 15th century couldn't choose their husbands; their marriages were arranged for political reasons. Joan was one of the luckier girls, since she was betrothed to a man she absolutely adored: Philip of Austria. He lived up to his nickname, and on the night the two first met, it was love - or lust - at first sight. Philip insisted they would marry immediately so the young couple could love each other passionately.
Unfortunately, their attraction would turn out to be fairly unequal: Philip's feelings for Joan were mere desire, whereas Joan loved her husband obsessively. But he was young, handsome and on top of that he was a monarch (he ruled the Low Countries from the age of 18), so women lay to his feet and he loved it. He acted as if he was a young bachelor, drinking, feasting and having sex excessively. Joan was extremely jealous; she wanted her husband for her and herself only. She often was moody and depressed, or could also break out in jealous rages. Philip couldn't care much, he would rather make things worse by avoiding her bedroom after they had been fighting over one of his excesses. She would cry of anger and despair and bump to the wall ceaselessly. Instead of starting to hate him, however, her mad love for him remained. He was all that she cared for: she lost all interest in politics and became isolated at court.  The brothers Jacob (1785–1863) and Wilhelm Grimm (1786–1859) were German cultural researchers and authors who collected and published German folklore during the 19th century.
Other than sometimes falsely assumed, the brothers didn't make up the fairy tales themselves, but penned down popular German folk tales. With the movement of Romanticism that started in the late 18th century, the interest in fairy tales revived. While Germany was still an assembly of kingdoms and (grand) duchies, the brothers strongly believed that national unity relied on the knowledge of the common cultural past that was reflected in folklore. In the introduction to their first book of collected fairy tales, the Grimms explain that they had travelled through Germany to talk with storytellers who supplied them with tales. Since the stories had been handed oraly from generation to generation, they often heard various versions of tales that were in fact the same stories. In these cases, the Grimms picked out the common content and molded it into a single tale. The first edition of Children's and Household Tales ("Kinder- und Hausmärchen") was published in 1812, but was in a constant state of alteration. During their lifetime, the work was published 17 times. Wilhelm was the main editor of the two, making the tales stilistically similar, adding psychological and sometimes religious plots and dialogue.  This may just seem to be an ordinary 15th century Dutch house. It is - except for the fact that it were witches that were weighed here.
Established in 1482, this weigh house in Oudewater (near Utrecht) was originally meant for weighing (trading) goods. As witch trials became common in the 16th century, weigh house scales were also used for witch processes. Witches were believed to be light enough to float on water, so if a person was a witch or not could be easily proven by putting them on the scale. Unfortunately, most weigh house scales were manipulated, and many a person was condemned based on a rigged test. In 1545, Emperor Charles V proclaimed Oudewater’s weigh house as the only fair weighing site in Europe – consequently, not a single witch was ever convicted here. |
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Photo used under Creative Commons from fusion-of-horizons
