Der Satansgedanke

In the shadow of early‑seventeenth‑century Innsbruck, a fledgling Jesuit mission stirs a restless spiritual climate. At the heart of the town’s convent lives a woman once hailed as the Helena of three kingdoms, famed for a beauty that rivals the ancient Greek heroine. She is the daughter of Manuel Chrysoloras, a cold‑hearted banker whose household includes a scarred mercenary hired for sheer profit, a figure as brutal as he is cunning.

Helena’s outward grace masks a deep, inherited melancholy that drives her to weep often and to cling to the village children, whom she comforts with strange lullabies about a hunch‑backed man who appears whenever a child is alone. Whispers link her to the enigmatic Faust, and the locals keep a wary distance, fearing the dark verses she sings. Yet the Jesuits see in her a fragile soul yearning for redemption, and her reluctant participation in their rites hints at a conflict between faith, family legacy, and the unsettling shadows of her past.