The Letter That Imprisoned a Duchess
A letter addressed to John Casimir of Saxe-Coburg by the courtier Ulrich von Lichtenstein recounted the diversions, clandestine meetings, and liaison he had maintained with Duchess Anna, the Duke’s consort. The scandal erupted in October 1593; it gave rise to two distinct proceedings, leading first to divorce and subsequently to a capital sentence commuted to perpetual confinement. Anna endured nearly twenty years of captivity, dying on 27 January 1613. The chronicle published in 1861 preserves admissions attributed to both paramours alongside excerpts from this missive; yet the motives it imputes to them must be distinguished from the procedural facts it records.
Anna was the daughter of Augustus, Elector of Saxony, and Anna of Denmark. Born in Dresden in 1567, she was betrothed in 1584 to John Casimir, Duke of Saxe-Coburg, whom she wedded in 1586. Her father died shortly after her departure from Dresden. The young duchess passed from a vibrant, bustling court to the smaller, far more austere residence at Cobourg. The chronicle depicts a strained and childless union; this circumstance was soon to furnish the first instigator of the affair with a pretext for approaching Anna.
In 1590, an Italian adventurer appeared at court under the name of Hieronymus Scotus. He amused the Duke with sleight of hand and professed knowledge of the occult arts, upon which John Casimir expended considerable sums. Scotus promised Anna, who longed for an heir, a secret remedy to ensure her fertility. According to the confessions attributed to her by the chronicler, he enticed her into his chamber under the pretence of teaching her a card trick, laid upon her hand a paper cross inscribed with arcane characters and an iron wire, and then uttered words she could not comprehend. He termed this wire a bond that would fasten her to him. This contrivance, reported as a magical rite by both the actors and the chronicler, served primarily as the artifice by which Scotus secured the Duchess’s confidence.
The source further attributes darker utterances to him: he allegedly prophesied that Anna would precede her husband in death, and claimed he could encompass the Duke’s demise should she so desire. Nothing in the narrative demonstrates that any plot against John Casimir was ever devised or pursued. Scotus ultimately departed from the court, but prior to his leave-taking, he drew Anna into familiarity with Lichtenstein, a gentleman in the Duke’s service.
Lichtenstein left behind a letter addressed to the aggrieved Duke, from which the chronicle quotes extensive passages. In it, he acknowledged that Scotus had brought him into Anna’s presence and joined their hands together; he claimed to have initially withdrawn from the room, only to yield later to the Duchess’s advances. He related that their games of cards soon lapsed into intimate gestures, and that Anna had summoned him to her chambers in the morning during her husband’s absence. During a journey to Eisfeld, he stated, she bid him come to her room while the Duke was engaged in the chase. He professed to have hesitated before complying. The letter was calculated to apportion culpability to its author’s advantage, yet it contained explicit admissions regarding his own determinations and their trysts. Lichtenstein claimed he had long feigned ignorance of Anna’s signals and had complained of these overtures to confidants; nevertheless, he acknowledged that he had ultimately entered into the intrigue. During a carriage journey in company with the ducal couple, he affirmed that the Duchess had made her inclinations unmistakably plain. At Eisfeld, his hesitation and subsequent resolve to visit her bedchamber whilst the Duke was hunting could no longer be imputed solely to the enchantments of Scotus.
According to the record, Anna acknowledged several subsequent assignations after that of Eisfeld: at Tenneberg, Bietorf, near an iron forge at Eisenach, and at Cobourg. Lichtenstein and the Duchess were thus bound together by the letter and by the depositions the chronicle attributes to them. The gentleman portrayed himself as circumspect; the chronicler depicts the Duchess as far less guarded, and relates that the secret was betrayed to the Duke. The name of the informant is not disclosed. A third party had thus bridged the perilous distance that separated the Duchess’s bedchamber from her husband’s tribunal.
On 19 October 1593, John Casimir ordered the arrest of his consort and the courtier. He instituted a commission of inquiry to interrogate them. The chronicle records that both swiftly confessed to their commerce and were subsequently committed to closer custody. From that juncture, the matter proceeded along two separate avenues. The Duke petitioned the consistory for a dissolution of the marriage; concurrently, a criminal inquest was directed toward securing a penal sentence against both accused.
On 28 November, John Casimir laid his petition before the consistory, releasing its members from their oaths of allegiance so that they might deliberate with untrammelled conscience. The tribunal was enlarged by the addition of noble and ecclesiastical councillors. On 12 December 1593, it pronounced the marital separation of the spouses. Meanwhile, the criminal proceedings were brought to a close and submitted to the faculty of jurists at Jena. That body condemned Anna and Lichtenstein to suffer death by the sword. John Casimir commuted the capital sentence to perpetual imprisonment. The chronicle does not reproduce the detailed legal reasoning of the Jena jurists; it merely records the verdict and the sovereign prerogative that altered its execution.
Lichtenstein was incarcerated in the fortress of Cobourg; the chronicler surmises that he perished there, though no date is assigned to his end. Anna was confined there until the close of 1593, whereupon she was removed to Eisenach. For three years she dwelt in strict isolation within the old customs house, furnished only with what was needful for her bare sustenance. She was subsequently conveyed to the castle of Callenberg, and thence, in 1596, to the convent of Sonnefeld. There she remained for seven years. In 1603, John Casimir caused her to be brought back to Cobourg and somewhat mitigated the rigour of her confinement: she was permitted occasional company and allowed to hear a weekly sermon preached within her chamber.
The chronicle proceeds to portray a woman devout and resigned to her lot; these traits belong to the pious interpretation of the narrator rather than to any journal kept by Anna herself. The reality remains that she never regained her freedom. On 27 January 1613, after nearly twenty years in captivity, she expired and was laid to rest at Sonnefeld. Lichtenstein and Anna had been spared the executioner’s blade by the Duke’s clemency, yet for the Duchess, this commutation transformed a swift capital sentence into confinement ended only by the grave.