Date: this event never happened
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The Legend:
Sometimes between 1468-1503 -- during the reign of Queen Bona Sforza in Milan, Italy -- a knight by the name of Polonus Vorstius consumed "two ladles of strong wine," vomited fire and was then consumed by flames.
My Source's Sources
The above story is from Larry Arnold's book, Ablaze!; he in turn, says the story is described in a book printed in 1654, entitled the Historiarum Anatomicarum Rariorum by Thomas H. Bartholin (Arnold uses a variation of this name, Bartholini). His quoted case is this:
| "A knight, Polonus, during the time of good queen Bona Sforza, having consumed two ladles of strong wine, vomited a flame and was thereupon totally consumed, according to a report from his parents, Mrs. and Mrs. Eberhard Vorstius. The older son of the aged father, living in Leidon, narrated an account to me." |
Bartholin, however, has no refernce to Queen Sforza anywhere in said book. However, I do have a different version of this event, from a 1745 study of spontaneous human combustion; according to it:
| “John Henry Cohausen relates this fact in a book printed at Amsterdam 1717, intituled, Lumen novum Phosphoris accensum; and in the first part, p. 92. relates also, ‘That a Polish Gentleman, in the time of the Queen Bona Sforza, having drank 2 dishes of a liquor called Brandy-Wine, vomited flames, and was burnt by them.’ “ |
But here's the next problem; Cohausen's book also has no mention of Queen Sforza. While the page indicated above does in fact contain a story of a strange fire death, it is not the story that is related above!
In addition, while digging through a volume of correspondance on various subjects that Bartholin had produced in his life, I discovered that he had received a number of letters from a gentleman named Vorstius, some dealing with questions about spontaneous combustion. So in the end, the brief tale of Polonus Vorstius' fiery death appears to be a modern mix of a false old tale and a name from Bartholin's correspondance... and until more information can be found, I have to consider this tale to be false.
Sources:
- Now available on Request.
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