**In the night of 24 June 1507, the statue of the Virgin Mary in the Dominican monastery in Bern cried bloody tears. It later emerged that the friars had painted them on.** Korporation Luzern, Diebold Schilling-Chronik, S 23 fol.

The Jetzer Affair

A story of deception, fraud and torture that ends at the stake. The Jetzer Affair in Bern was an out-and-out scandal worthy of a modern-day thriller. Its protagonist was a young tailor's assistant who experienced mysterious spiritual apparitions in 1507. As it turned out, they were much more earthly visions.

Kathrin Utz Tremp

Dr Dr h.c. Kathrin Utz Tremp is an expert on mediaeval history who lectured for many years at the University of Lausanne.

It became known as the Jetzer Affair, and in 1507 it shook the people of Bern to the core. Tailor's assistant Hans Jetzer of Zurzach, then just 23, had not long been admitted to the Dominican monastery in Bern when the Virgin Mary began to appear to him regularly, accompanied by various saints. Before they began, he had been visited by the ghost of the former prior, who had been dismissed 160 years earlier before dying in a brawl in Paris. He had been condemned to live in purgatory ever since. The ghost confided to Jetzer that he shared purgatory with a large number of Franciscans, punished for preaching that the Virgin Mary was born free of original sin. He was addressing one of the principal theological problems of the time. The ghost asserted that the Dominicans, who believed that Mary was indeed born into original sin, were on the ‘righteous’ path.

**The ghost in Jetzer’s cell. Its hand is at Jetzer's throat, while on the right a devil is up to no good. Jetzer is ringing for help with his right hand. Wood carving by Urs Graf, 1509.** Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin

This appeared to be borne out when, promptly on the Feast of the Annunciation, in the night of 24 March the Virgin Mary herself appeared to Jetzer, accompanied by Saint Barbara, to whom Jetzer was particularly devoted. Mary brought Jetzer a number of reliquaries and imprinted the first stigmata on his right hand, promising that the other four would follow in six weeks’ time. This was also very revealing, because unlike the Franciscans and their Saint Francis of Assisi, the Dominicans had not had a stigmatised saint until that point. Several attempts to produce one had failed.

**Saint Barbara in Jetzer’s cell. She is recognisable by her attribute, the tower. Wood carving by Urs Graf, 1509.** Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin

However, the Dominicans did not wait until six weeks had passed. Just a short time later, in mid-April, they had a white communion wafer in Mary’s hand turn red. Jetzer then realised that Mary and the two angels accompanying her were the monastery’s lector, Stephan Boltzhurst, and prior Johann Vatter and subprior Franz Ueltschi in disguise. The three stood on a moving beam operated from the neighbouring cell by steward Heinrich Steinegger. Jetzer broke down in disappointment and anger, while the lector attempted to placate him. They had simply wanted to see whether he could tell real apparitions from false ones, was the excuse. Boltzhurst insisted that the white wafer had indeed transformed itself into a bloody one, and it was subsequently displayed for veneration on several occasions. It was a wafer-thin fraud if ever there was one. The plot had basically already failed by mid-April, and if the monastery superiors had abandoned their plan there and then, the matter would not have come to a fatal end. Instead, they made several unsuccessful attempts to poison Jetzer, who had become a serious risk to them. In early May, the subprior gave Jetzer the other four stigmata. Around midday every day thereafter, under the influence of a draught administered by his superiors, Jetzer played out a bizarre Passion Play as the whole of Bern watched.

**Preparations for the Passion Play: a friar administers a draught while two others give Jetzer stigmata.** Korporation Luzern, Diebold Schilling-Chronik, S 23 fol.

Yet the superiors took things even further. In the night of 24 June 1507, they painted bloody tears on the face of a statue of the Virgin Mary in their church. Seated, Mary held her dead son in her lap. The story told by our master manipulators was that Jesus had asked his mother why she was crying. She replied that she was distressed that she was said to have been born without sin, when that honour belonged to her son, not her. There was uproar throughout the city, made even worse when, one or two nights later, Mary declared that a great plague would befall Bern because the city’s leaders, having foresworn the practice of supplying mercenaries to foreign rulers, were still taking bribes for it. The prophecy excited the people of Bern considerably more than the question of Mary’s conception. At the end of July, Jetzer’s stigmata disappeared overnight, probably because the Bishop of Lausanne had said he would have them examined by a doctor. Shortly afterwards the bloody wafer, which was still on display on 29 July 1507 when the Dominican church celebrated its saint’s day, became a problem. However, since it represented the body of Christ, it could not simply be thrown away. The monastery superiors tried to force Jetzer to swallow it. When he resisted and the wafer fell and broke onto a chair, leaving a red mark, they tried to burn the chair in a stove. It is said that the stove and the whole room exploded. Even the superiors interpreted this as a Eucharistic miracle.

**The rood screen at the Dominican church (now the French Church) in Bern, decorated by frescoes by the Bernese Carnation Masters.** Wikimedia / Mike Lehmann

The final apparition was of a crowned Virgin Mary in the night of 12 September 1507 in the Dominican church. The vision had been planned so that Jetzer could be set up, as he had overheard his superiors’ conversations. He met Mary with a staff and knife, but was prevented from grabbing and unmasking her. The governing Kleine Rat responded by having Jetzer arrested on 1 October 1507, and handed over to the Bishop of Lausanne for an inquisition.

**Two of the Kleine Rat’s henchmen take Hans Jetzer to prison.** Korporation Luzern, Diebold Schilling-Chronik, S 23 fol.

The Jetzer Trials

The first trial was held in Lausanne and Bern in the winter of 1507/1508, with lay brother Hans Jetzer as its sole defendant. The Bishop of Lausanne proceeded with great care, trying to determine what heresy he had committed. He also remained firm in the face of calls from the City of Bern to have Jetzer tortured. In the end, the city leaders succeeded in bringing Jetzer back to Bern before the end of the year. He was tortured several times at the beginning of February, during which he made charges against his superiors at the monastery. Unlike lay brother Jetzer, the Dominicans were full members of an order exempt from the authority of the Bishop, so an extraordinary trial was needed that had to be approved by the Pope. This took place in Bern in the summer of 1508. The judges were the Bishops of Lausanne and Sion, Aymo von Montfalcon and Matthäus Schiner, as well as the Provincial of the Upper German Province of the Dominican Order, Peter Sieber. The latter tried for as long as possible to prevent his fellow friars being tortured. When this was decided nonetheless, he resigned from the court. The torture began with the weaker links in the chain, the steward and subprior, moving on following their confessions to the prior and the lector. Although confessions obtained under duress must be treated with suspicion, what emerged was a cohesive story, and one from a total of five accused (Jetzer included) who had been imprisoned separately since February 1508.

**The Bishops of Sion and Lausanne preside over the Dominican monks involved in the Jetzer Affair.** Korporation Luzern, Diebold Schilling-Chronik, S 23 fol.

The Provincial having removed himself from the court, the defendants were also questioned about any complicity on the part of the Upper German Province. It then emerged that the plan to engineer miracles to support the Virgin Mary's original sin had been hatched at a provincial chapter in Wimpfen, Germany, in early May 1506. The City of Bern had been chosen because the Dominicans believed it powerful, but its people also foolish. In Wimpfen, the Dominicans had been particularly incensed about a manuscript written in the 1490s by an Italian Franciscan, Bernardin de Bustis. He listed numerous miracles purporting to prove the Virgin Mary’s lack of original sin, pointing out triumphantly that there was not a single miracle to prove that she was not born of immaculate conception. This notwithstanding, the main trial did not reach a verdict because the Bishops of Lausanne and Sion could not agree. Montfalcon argued for life imprisonment for the Dominicans, Schiner for burning at the stake. His case was supported by Bern's city leaders, who had been chosen by the Dominicans because of their credulousness, and sharply criticised for their unreliability in matters mercenary. Here we sense an overhang of the hostility surrounding the Swabian War, because since the cities of the Confederation had formed alliances with rural areas, the Swabians had written them off wholesale as ‘(stupid) Swiss dairymen’. The uncertain end to the main trial meant that permission had to be obtained from the Pope for a retrial, which was held in Bern in 1509. An Italian bishop, Achilles de Grassis of Città di Castello, was brought in as presiding judge over the Bishops of Lausanne and Sion. He caused a sensation in Bern because he wore dentures of ivory. On 23 May, the Dominicans were taken from the ecclesiastical court to a scaffold on Kreuzgasse, stripped of their orders – defrocked – and handed over to the secular branch of the justice system. The charges were heresy, sacrilege, poisoning, idolatry (the wafer fraud) and exercise of the dark arts. Jetzer was unconnected with these crimes. Towards the end of May the secular court, likely the Kleine Rat, handed down the death penalty against the friars, and had it carried out on 31 May.

**The four Dominicans are defrocked and handed over to the secular branch of the justice system on 23 May 1509 on Kreuzgasse in Bern (the tower of the famous Zytglogge is seen in the background).** Korporation Luzern, Diebold Schilling-Chronik, S 23 fol.

The question of guilt

Up to the end of the 19th century nobody questioned that the four Dominicans were guilty as charged. Then, in 1897, German church historian Nikolaus Paulus revisited the records and published what he called a review of the case, alleging that the four Dominicans had been the victims of judicial murder. Paulus pointed the finger of blame at the City of Bern. At the time, however, only the records of Jetzer's trial in Lausanne and Bern in the winter of 1507/1508 were known, so Paulus's ‘judicial review’ could hardly be described as such. The records of the three Jetzer Trials were not published until 1904, by Rudolf Steck, Professor of the New Testament at the University of Bern. He also described the verdict as judicial murder, but laid it at the feet of the Pope. Subsequently, in treatments of Bern history throughout the 20th century Jetzer was presented as the sole guilty party. It could still not be explained how he staged all of the apparitions alone, however. The deeper one delves into the Jetzer Affair, the greater the doubt about guilt being ascribed to Jetzer in isolation. He is the only one in the entire story and historical record who had nobody on his side. Another factor undermining Jetzer's sole guilt is that the Jetzer Affair is relatively sophisticated, to a degree that could not have come from him. We have, however, discovered what inspired the machinations: the writings of Bernardin de Bustis, which the illiterate Jetzer certainly had not read.

**The condemned superiors are burned at the stake on 31 May 1509. Wood carving by Urs Graf, 1509.** Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin

Why the Virgin Mary cried bloody tears

In her book on the subject, Warum Maria blutige Tränen weinte. Der Jetzerhandel und die Jetzerprozesse in Bern (1507-1509), Kathrin Utz Tremp offers a detailed examination of the Jetzer Affair and the Jetzer Trials. It was published in 2022 as part of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica series from the Harrassowitz Verlag.

More of: Middle Ages Religion Crime Article