Mata Bruja Crossbow: "Where I am, there are no monsters"

The Mata Bruja "Witch Hunter's Crossbow"

Buy it at Geek House Creations at Etsy

History of the Mata Bruja:

Letter of Provenance
Acquisition #021398-f
Occult Division, Trinity College, London
“Mata Bruja” crossbow, gold & silver
June 26, 1893

This crossbow was commissioned by Father Juan Battista De Torre in Spain 1845. According to records, Father Battista was a founding member of the Pope’s Order of Albion, an order dedicated to the eradication of “Witches, warlocks, and other consorters’ of devils likewise”. Father Battista ordered this special weapon to be built around a crossbow bar originally used in the Siege of Granada. The cross bar is engraved with sigils from the Mallus Maleficarum, the official witch-hunting guide of the Catholic church and the Keys of Solomon, a Renaissance grimoire. Several reliquaries have been attached to the crossbow. Notably it bears a telling inscription in Latin: “Ubi sum, ubi non sum monstra” or “Where I am, there are no monsters”.

Father Battista and the Order of Albion were active in parts of southern Spain and Italy between 1844 and 1858. Recent documents released by Vatican City show him to have been wounded in an “incident during religious duties” in 1852 in Malaga Spain. He seems to disappear from all public records until 1865 when he gave a lecture at the University of Wittenberg on “Sigils & Signs and Their Counters”. It is here that Father Battista met a young scholar of theology and the occult by the name of Abraham van Helsing. The two travel together to Bologna, Italy and spend several months there but the exact nature of their visit remains unknown. Father Battista returned to Spain in 1868 and remained there until his death in 1887. When the priest’s items were cataloged and returned to the church, the “Mata Bruja” as the crossbow has come to be known was not amongst his possessions.

The crossbow reappears in the public record in a customs declaration as Dr. Van Helsing enters England in 1889. Around the same time, several grisly murders in the northern counties are attributed to “witches and unnatural beasts” by the local populace. The unsolved murders cease the following year and witnesses claim to have seen a group of men lead by a scholar with a “menacing silver crossbow of old” asking questions in the area. One cannot be certain that the man described is Dr. Van Helsing or that the crossbow is Father Battista’s “Mata Bruha” but the connection can be reasonably made. In any case, the crossbow mysteriously appears at auction in London during the summer of 1891 being bought by a young woman who placed the winning bid and donated the item anonymously.