A legendary treasure apparently belonging to a notorious 18th-century fraudster has been discovered in Poland

A hoard of gold and silver coins, which experts believe were siphoned from sick residents by an 18th-century fraudster, has been discovered in central Poland, officials said. Volunteer metal detectors found the treasure hidden underground in multiple locations while exploring the Zelniowski Mountain Range with permission from the local government, and the fact of its existence seems to confirm the validity of a centuries-old legend.

The Regional Office for the Protection of Antiquities in the city of Kielce, near the mountain range, said that the collection includes coins dating back to the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. advertisement Uncover discoveries. The coins will be analyzed more thoroughly this year, but as heritage officials and explorers themselves have suggested, the hoard appears to prove that tales of notorious Polish conman Anthony Jaczewicz can be rooted in real history after all.

“The coins we recovered may be part of this legendary treasure collected by Jaczewicz,” said Sebastian Graboeck, who heads the excavation group that found the coins. In the comments For the government-supported Polish science organization PAP.

Jackiewicz is said to have arrived in the Świętokrzyskie Mountains, which include the Jelniewski Mountain Range, around 1708. He established a type of settlement in the area when Poland entered a massive war involving most of the major powers of the region, which coincided with a deadly and large-scale war. Plague outbreak. As civilians feared for their lives as the disease spread, many turned to Jaczevich, a preacher who falsely claimed to have divine healing powers at a time when such powers were in particularly high demand.

He was not the only fraudster trying to exploit desperate civilians and their fears of contracting the plague. But officials say that, at least as legend suggests, people flocked to Jaczevich’s complex in the mountains in hopes of receiving his healing gifts. They also paid for his services.

Jaksiewicz’s scheme was apparently so successful that donations poured into his settlement, eventually allowing him to garrison it with hired guards who would then steal from other people around them, sometimes seizing entire properties in the vicinity. They are also said to have robbed the aristocrats around them.

Because of his alleged financial crimes, Jaxević was arrested by aristocrats and imprisoned. He escaped the first arrest and may have returned to the practice of so-called healing, claiming that he had the Pope’s blessing to do so. But Jaczewicz was eventually arrested again and convicted in 1712 by the Supreme Court in Kraków. He faced life imprisonment as punishment.

After metal detectors discovered the coins, officials said they were delivered to an archaeological museum in the southwestern city of Ostrowiec Świetokrzeski. The collection will be preserved and studied with the aim of learning more about how it was buried in the mountains and who it may have belonged to.

This discovery comes just weeks after officials announced a metal detector in eastern Poland A 17th century cross icon was uncovered Which experts say was banned by the emperor.