The Jesuit monk Henricus Schachtius went on an undercover mission in protestant Sweden, in the guise of a mousetrap maker and peddler. The image below shows him with some classical mousetraps. There's a dome-shaped cage trap at the near edge of the table, an unfinished double box-trap at its left edge, and a planchette or "dragin trappe with a great wyar" behind the dome cage (see here for dragin traps). There are also some tools, pieces of wood and wire on the table. A double box-trap with unset trap doors is standing in the niche behind Schacht.
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| From Mathias Tanner (1694, Societas Jesu Apostolorum Imitatrix... pp. 794-796) |
Giovanni Battista Veraldi, a protestant Italian musician serving at the Royal Court in Stockholm betrayed Heinrich Schacht together with Swedish catholics, Zacharias Anthelius and Georg Bähr. Veraldi had jealously reported them to the authorities in 1624, because Bähr had had a love affair with Veraldi's wife. In his defense, Bähr claimed at trial that the musician had been impotent for eight years. The trial involved further Swedes. Zacharias Anthelius, Georg Bähr Ursinus, Nicolaus Campanius, Henricus Schachtius and Arnold Johan Messenius were sentenced to death. As a foreigner, however, Schacht was pardoned and he returned to Hamburg. The juvenile Messenius was exiled to a fortress in Finland, where he died in 1636.
References
Sture Lagercrantz, 1987. The Jesuit priest Heinrich Schacht and his mousetraps.
Förutvarande Institutionen för Allmän och Jämförande Etnografi vid Uppsala Universitet. Occasional Papers XII, Varia III: pp. 20–29.
A blog entry by Tommy Hansson with information on the trial in Sweden.
German edition of the Sociatas Jesu Apostolorum Imitatrix (entry on Schachtius: pp. 895-6).
