Alchemy and the Canterbury Tales

 

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.