Still on matters medieval, my thoughts have turned in recent times to the subject of alchemy. To the majority, the word “alchemist” conjures up the image of a scholarly person in a cap and gown imprinted with cosmic symbols, waving a wand and mumbling jumbo over a variety of everyday substances, in the hope that one of them at least, would transform into shining, yellow gold – aaah, if only! To throw light on the subject, I enter into The Canterbury Tales, that epic work by Geoffrey Chaucer, structured about a group of travellers on a pilgrimage to Canterbury Cathedral. Every night as they sit about the fire of whatever inn they stay in, one of the group tells a tale to the others. The entire gamut of medieval professions is represented by the characters present; a Knight, Miller, Reeve, Shipman, Physician and so on,
In
one instance, Chaucer recounts the tale of the Canon and the Yeoman,
who enter into a dialogue about the secret craft that they practise.
The
Host asks the Yeoman why, if his master (the Canon) is
truly so sagacious,
then why is he, the Canon, dressed
in gaberdine that is hardly worth a mite, torn
to bits and isn't even clean. The Yeoman hints darkly that
what the Canon works at can
never be successful.
The Canon, he tells them, is clever enough to understand his
esoteric
craft,
but does
not
know
enough
to make it succeed. The Yeoman doesn't want to say any more, but the
Host slowly teases more details out of him.
Presently,
the
Yeoman warns the gathered company against the debt, despair and ruin
that practising the craft has brought them. He names the
substances we worked upon,
among them silver, orpiment, burnt bones and iron filings, ground
into finest powder and poured into an earthen pot, followed by salt
and pepper, and covered by a sheet of glass. At this point, I
wondered if Chaucer were not indulging in a medieval leg-pull, rather
than rendering an authentic account of the chemistry of the time.
Tradition has it that he himself
had
sometime practised the "esoteric craft", in addition to
being a poet, soldier, knight and Justice of the Peace.
The odder substances mentioned by the
Yeoman, the least of which are the salt and pepper, are likely thrown
in by Chaucer for comic effect - or just to trip up would-be practitioners with.
After all, if Chaucer really did know "the secret", he was
hardly going to give it away. No matter his agenda, there is
enough evidence to demonstrate that the fourteenth-century alchemist
was actually a proto chemist. For example, the Canon's Yeoman lists
orpiment
among
his roll-call of substances.
Orpiment,
or sulphide of arsenic, made a beautiful yellow paint in
illuminated manuscripts, but it
is
too poisonous for contemporary use. As
the Middle Ages ran into the Renaissance, trade rather than alchemy,
became the fount of wealth. Out
of the crucible of persecution and superstition, the modern chemist,
distinct from the miscreant and the mystic, was born. However, I
suspect that even the earnest, hard-working, proto chemist of
Chaucer’s imagination toiled
with gold pieces rather than the betterment of mankind, prominent in his
imagination? Whatever, I do urge you to read the wonderful snapshot
of medieval England that is The
Canterbury Tales.
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