Suspenseful detective story from Redolphin Prague The Vampire Cemetery
The daughter of the alchemist Giovanni da Ponte Fiorello and her friends investigate two murders that took place outside the Old Town, in the Nusel cemetery. The victims have vampire teeth marks on their bodies and a vampire has also been spotted in the cemetery. The local parish priest is a learned man and does not believe in the powers of hell, but he is obliged to call the Inquisition...
The word inquisition sends shivers down the spine of many. They imagine the gloom of torture chambers, the horrific instruments of torture and the hideous practices of the inquisitors. Although there are many rumours associated with this religious institution, which has been active in Europe since the 12th century, it has undoubtedly been responsible for the lives of innocents who have died ignominious and painful deaths on burning pyres or in the dark dungeons of dungeons. The Inquisition had been active in the Czech lands since the time of Premysl Otakar II, when the heretical teachings of the Waldensians penetrated here as well.
For the judiciary of the Middle Ages and partly of the modern era, the heretic was placed on the level of the murderer. He may not have killed anyone, but he was guilty of an even worse crime, for his seductions were soul-killing.
Victims of the Inquisition often found themselves before its tribunals on denunciations which, though they may have been motivated only by malice, were no less often by superstition. The craft of alchemists was also linked to superstition, and they were often in the crosshairs of the Inquisition. However, at the court of the generous Rudolf II, who made Prague the centre of Europe, they enjoyed the respect and protection of the monarch himself. The alchemist Giovanni da Ponte, the father of the girl Fiorella, whom we have already met in the previous episodes of Vladimír Vondruška's historical detective series, moved to the imperial court: in The Brotherhood of the Crystal and The Mystery of the Dead Bat.
Fiorella and her two friends, Lukáš, a scholar of Valyrian studies, and Martin, a pupil of the Jesuit school, they'll have in solving the mysterious Nusle murders, then a village near Prague, as an adversary, not just a mysterious perpetrator, but also the Inquisition itself. Looks like the murdered were victims of a vampire. This is suggested not only by the teeth marks on their bodies, but also by the circumstances and locations of the murders. Three friends have to find out what the Old Town's town crier can't do. But they need help this time too. He therefore turns to Lucia, a voluptuous cellarer, of whom Fiorella is a little jealous because of her flirtations with Luke. However, during the search in the parish of Nussel, during which both girls find themselves in the torture chamber of the Inquisition, it turns out that Lucie is a girl with her heart in the right place and deserves to be admitted to the "Brotherhood of the Crystal". Hynek Pekárek (director)
