Abstract
In the historical sources related to the salt treasury (cassa salis) administration in Bohemia, there is one interesting criminal case. It concerns Vilem Zumacker, the doctor of canon law and theology, who served in the services of the Prague Archbishop Arnošt Harrach from 1631, and in the beginning of 1637, he was appointed as chancellor within the reform of the Archbishop's Curia.
In the time of Harrach's frequent absence, he administered his finances and cared also of the salt treasury. In the history of the early modern period, we cannot find many cases when, in spite of his faith, a church officer committed the crime of embezzlement and finished his life by a suicide.
Zumacker's plan for stealing money from the cassa salis started to be realized in the time when Prague was threatened by Saxon-Swedish troops in 1634. Because of security reasons, the treasury was emptied and the money hidden.
Zumacker made use of the situation and he created the duplicates of all treasury keys, which were in his temporal custody. After having stored the money in the treasury again, he stole more than 7 000 golden coins.
The theft was camouflaged so well that his embezzlement had not been discovered for a long time. It got disclosed after the Archbishop had ordered the revision of the treasury to make a report of its revenue and expenditure, which he had to send to Rome.
Zumacker did not wait for the result of this control and committed suicide by jumping off the window in the Archbishop's palace. The stolen money has never been found, and the reason for stealing it remains unknown.
Based on all available resources, we tried to reconstruct the interesting life of Zumacker as well as the events leading to the tragic ending of his life.