Story of the Mysterious Mummy

In June, four hundred years will elapse from the birth of Žofia Bosniaková, who was known by her good deeds and how she helped the poor. Her body was found in the late 17th century in the crypt of the castle of Strečno, in which preparations for great celebrations of the anniversary of her birth were already in progress in the castle's surrou­ndings. The Church allegedly planned to canonise her, but instead of the well-preserved body that was found, now the burnt bone splinters are all that is left.  

Her remains were stored in the chapel in the village of Teplička nad Váhom for centuries. Visitors were allowed to take a look at them when they borrowed the keys in the nearby cake shop. The 31-year old man, who suffers from schizophrenia, also took a look on the first day of April. As he claimed after the act, sitting under the nearby tree and laughing, he saw Žofia on the Internet video as a witch and could not sleep because of her. Therefore, he pulled her coffin from the chapel and set fire to it using an unknown flammable substance.

The body of Žofia Bosniaková (1609–1644) remained well-preserved in spite of the fact that it had not been mummified. Experts know of several cases when the conditions in which a body is stored can provide for natural mummification. However, the mystery about Žofia Bosniaková is that all the other bodies in her crypt were rotten.  

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Bosniaková was the oldest Slovak mummy; after this unfortunate incident, this attribute now belongs to Žofia Serédyova. She died in 1703 and her body lies buried in the Castle of Krásna Hôrka. Her remains were also mummified in a natural way. She was buried in the village under the church, where limestone water dripped on her body, which was subsequently dried by the air draught in the crypt. The body of the countess Serédyova was found in 1814. It was transferred to the castle chapel where wedding ceremonies are held today.

The mummy has a lifted right hand, in which she held a prayer book during the burial, but it pulverized with the long lapse of time. After the incident with Žofia Bosniaková, the mummy of Šerédyová is guarded not only by an alarm system, but also by a bodyguard. 

From her youth, Žofia Bosniaková distinguished herself not only by her nobility, but also by her beauty. She belonged to a small group of educated and economically active women of her period. Since her youth, people from far away talked about the renowned commander Tomáš Bosniak who was hiding his beautiful daughter in his native manor.

When she was seventeen, her father married her to 40-year old Michal Herein, whom she followed to Moravia. However, the marriage did not last long because her husband suddenly died only five months after the wedding and she returned to Slovakia. Šerédy's testament was very generous to debtors as well as to the poor, which many people attribute to Žofia’s influence on her husband. 

She married again three years later when the Turks “brought” her a new husband. They captured the Castle of Komjatice and their troops trundled to the city of Šurany. At the right moment, Fraňo Vešeléni, a graduate from the University of Trnava, with his army came to the city’s aid. In 1629, Žofia married again, at the archbishop’s in­tervention and insistence. Vešeléni later became a palatine of Hungry.

The spouses lived in Teplička nad Váhom, where her mummy was later laid to rest. Žofia gave birth to two sons and managed the estate during her husband’s frequent absence. She founded a hospital and a shelter for the poor and lived a religious life. Thanks to that, she was very popular among those subjects who called her the Female Saint of Strečno. 

When her intact body was found during the reconstruction of the Castle of Strečno, more than fifty years had elapsed from her death. It took another thirty years for the bishop to give his approval for the display of her remains in the newly built chapel. Her body was lying in a baroque coffin with a glass cover in Teplička nad Váhom from the year 1729 until April of this year, when the Internet and the mental disease of one of the many visitors sealed her fate.

Author: Ján Gregor
Photo: Jozef Feiler, TASR

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