Hans Pauli

Who is Hans Pauli?

Hans Pauli was a Swedish Bridgettine monk and an alleged sorcerer, active as a professional exorcist and counter-magician.

Pauli had originally been a monk of the Bridgettine order in the convent of Vadstena Abbey. When the Swedish convents were closed in 1527, the nuns and monks, though formally allowed to stay as long as they did not admit any new members into the order, often left their old convents, especially the male members of the orders. The male section in the convent of Vadstena was dissolved in 1555. These monks were given a bad reputation because they traveled around people who still believed in old Catholic habits, teaching old Catholic prayers out among the people as spells. King Gustav Vasa complained about these traveling monks.

Hans Pauli had left his convent and spent five years in his old home country in Bergslagen, where he made himself a name by healing peoples' sicknesses by spells. He was also hired for exorcism and as a counter-magician of curses and black magic.

On one famous occasion he was actually hired to lift the curse believed to have been put upon the silver mine in Sala in Berglagen.