Artificial Marvels

The obj ects in medieval collections testify to the close association between
the wonders of nature and the wonders of human art. Sometimes the line
between these was blurry - the thirteenth-century philosopher Albertus
Magnus was doubtless not the only person to question whether an ancient
cameo was a work of art, like a medal, or a work of nature , like a fossil.48

In general,
the marvels of art came from Africa and Asia, lands believed far to sur
pass Europe not only in natural variety and fertility, but also in fertility of
human invention

This was well established by the middle

of the twelfth century, as appears in two of the earliest great French
romances:
Eneas and the Roman de Troie.
As described in
Eneas, for
example, the walls of the citadel of Carthage were made of marble and adamant
painted a hundred colors and topped with three rows of magnets to inca
pacitate armed attackers; "the magnet is of such a nature," wrote the poet,
"that no armed man could approach without being drawn to the stones,
and as many halbardiers as came were always attracted to the wall:•

The
tomb of the Amazon Camilla incorporated "a hundred marvels
voilles] ,"
[cent mer
including not only spectacular carved ornaments, but also its1
own defensive magnets, a magic mirror that revealed the approach of
enemies, a sarcophagus hermetically sealed with cement made of ground
gems moistened with serpents' blood, a cushion for Camilla's head stuffed
with caladrius feathers, an ever -burning lamp made of asbesto s , and a
metal archer set to loose an arrow and extinguish the lamp should the
tomb be disturbed.

Benoit de Sainte -Maure 's

Roman de Troie

Nonetheless, Benoit went o n t o describe the four greatest "marvels

and tricks" in Hector's chamber: four life -sized gold and silver automata,
perched on top of columns made of precious materials. One held a mirror
that allowed people to adj ust their dress and behavior; one played every
sort of instrument and periodically strewed the room with flowers (later
swept up by a mechanical eagle); one had a censer made of topaz and
filled with salubrious and sweet-smelling gums; and a female acrobat
"performed and entertained and danced and capered and gambolled and
leapt all day long on top of the pillar, so high up that it is a wonder it did
not fall:'

What made a work of art marvelous, as characterized in these texts? In

the first place, many artificial wonders exploited and depended for their
operation on the magical properties of exotic substances that were already
part of the canon of natural wonders: magnetic lodestones or luminescent
carbuncles, the prophetic caladrius or the mysterious dindialos, precious
spices or medicinal gums.

To fabricate artificial wonders required access

to such products, as well as deep knowledge of their natural powers. Thus
the writers of romance invariably described their makers as scholars and
magicians rather than as artisans; Benoit called them "wise and learned
men, well versed in the magic arts." 5

Most wonders of art were what we

might call wonders of engineering. In addition to being decorative, they
harnessed powerful natural forces to produce astounding effects. Like
natural wonders, these heterogeneous creations were united by the psy
chology of wonder, drawing their emotional effect from their rarity and
the mysteriousness of the forces and mechanisms that made them work.

This wonderful technology had a particularly courtly character, ex

pressed in the aesthetic that governed its creations. These were beautiful,
intricate, precious, expensive -

Many served defensive or military purposes:

Eneas' magnetic fortifications,
burning mirrors (capable of setting fire to an entire army - a perennial
favorite) , and automata that warned of impending attack

provided personal protection, like the cloak lined with dindialos

skin or the marvels in Camilla's tomb.

dindialos
Aymeri de Narbonne,
which described a gilded copper tree covered with
pneumatically powered singing birds, 57 or the automata in Benoit's Cham
ber of Beauties.

the emir of Babylon 's "marvelous toys" in the early thirteenth -century
Aymeri de Narbonne,
which described a gilded copper tree covered with
pneumatically powered singing birds, 57 or the automata in Benoit's Cham
ber of Beauties.

These last show very clearly a central characteristic of many artificial

marvels: their explicitly civilizing intent. Romances served, among other
things, to foster and implant aristocratic and courtly ideals and behavior. 58

Marvels, the aristocracy of phenomena, played a fundamental part in this

proj ect by refining sensibilities, promising mastery (including self-mas
tery) , and providing a window onto a more opulent world

The wonders of art, then, like the wonders of nature, embodied a form
of symbolic power - over nature, over others, and over oneself. Men versed
in the knowledge of natural properties could use them to work marvels,
turning day into night, controlling the weather, eliminating disease and
decay. Artificial marvels also allowed lords to defeat their enemies and to
enforce stringent standards of conduct in their dependent

Automata functioned as ideal servants: beings useful for the discipline and surveil
lance of others, and over whom their owners could have in turn perfect
control. Finally, they helped their noble (and not-so-noble) readers and
hearers to internalize increasingly stringent standards of courtly conduct
intended to elevate them above the rest of society

The late twelfth-century encyclopedist Alexander Neckam also stressed

the vanity and transitory nature of even the greatest works of human art,
notably the marvelous inventions commonly ascribed to Vergil and also
described by Gervase of Tilbury (fig. 1 . 1 )

In the same vein, Neckam berated human builders who would

compete with nature and usurp the wonder due to God. " 0 curiosity ! o
vanity ! " he lamented, "o vain curiosity ! o curious vanity ! Man , suffering
from the illness of inconstancy, 'destroys, builds, and changes the square
to round."' 66

If early medieval writers tended to displace artificial marvels to the

ancient past, high medieval writers proj ected them outward, to the mar
gins of the world. This happened not only in romances, but also in the
literature of Eastern travel , which looked to romance for many of its
themes. The prominence of mechanical wonders in this literature also
reflected the fact that the construction of automata had flourished in the
Byzantine and Islamic world.

The inhabitants of Latin Christendom knew

of such wonders primarily through the reports of pilgrims and other trav
elers, although such items were occasionally sent home by merchants or
received by European rulers as diplomatic gifts. 67

The imperial automata

of Byzantium had long since corroded into immobility, as described in
Robert of Clari's account of the Fourth Crusade,68 but William of Rubruck
found a bonafide functioning automaton shortly after 1 2 5 0 at the court of
the Great Khan. This silver tree was ornamented by silver lions and gilded
serpents, which belched mare's milk and other beverages, together with
an angel with a moveable trumpet connected by a pneumatic tube to a
man hidden in a vault below:

William described this contraption in purely mechanical terms, but

subsequent visitors to the Khan's court embellished their descriptions of
other imperial automata with magical language recalling Benoit de Sainte
Maure's
Roman de Troie.
According to Marco Polo, Kublai Khan's famous
levitating cups were made by Bakshi or enchanters - "those who are skilled
in necromancy will confirm that it is perfectly feasible ," he assured his
readers - while Odoric of Pordenone described the dancing golden pea
cocks of the imperial palace in Peking as products of "the diabolical art or
. . . a device under the ground:

As the references to malice and farcasting suggest, suspicions persisted

concerning the marvels of Eastern art. (Farcasting allowed magicians to
obtain knowledge of distant events and places through intermediary
demons.) The necromancers of twelfth- and thirteenth-century romance

derived their powers in part from knowing the wonderful properties of

lodestones or carbuncle s , but also, at least implicitly, from commerce
with demons, which they used to animate their statues and to accomplish
their feats of force.72

While many Latin Christians lost themselves in wonder before the

artificial marvels of the East and of antiquity, others, beginning in the thir
teenth century, took them as a model and built around them fantasies of
their own mastery. The English Franciscan Roger Bacon (d. 1 2 9 2 ) incor
porated this material into his systematic program for the advancement of
learning. Inspired by his study of the
Secretum secretorum,
an Arabic com
pendium of political, medical, and magical arts purportedly composed by
Aristotle to help Alexander the Great conquer the world, Bacon devel
oped the notion of what he called experimental (or experiential) science
(scientia experimentalis) .

This aimed to harness the hidden powers of

nature in order to produce startling and useful effects. He sketched his
vision in the
Epistola de secretis operibus artis et naturae (c.
1 2 60), where he
painted a vivid picture of the wonders such a study could produce. These
included, among "infinite other marvels," many staples of romance: per
petual lamps ("for we know many things that are not consumed in flame,
such as salamander skin, talc, and things of this sort"); 74 distorting mirrors
to confuse a hostile army ("for so Aristotle is said to have taught Alexan
der"); 75 and innumerable mechanical devices.
Bacon's list of artificial marvels was clearly inspired by the marvels of
romance, conceived as instruments of princely power; he later tried to
realize this program, proposing to play Aristotle to Pope Clement IV's
Alexander.77 In the
Epistola he legitimized Western
aspiration to the won
ders of Eastern art in two distinct ways. Not only did he set the wonders
of art at the center of a program of religious and intellectual reform with
impeccable Christian credentials , but he also attempted to dispel the
demonic haze that surrounded them.
In other words, for Bacon art could perform its
wonders using only natural forces, without invoking demons - a practice
he considered both impious and ineffective. 7
Thus it formed part of the Western technological revival that began
to gather momentum at least as early as the eleventh century, inspired in
many cases by the technical achievements of the Islamic world. 80 Bacon
was an armchair inventor - the Mandeville of technology - and there is no
indication that he produced any of the marvelous works he described

The hydraulic clocks and cups of thirteenth-century Europe were pale

reflections of their splendid Muslim counterparts, but they impressed and
inspired contemporaries, as is clear from the notebook compiled by the
French Cistercian Villard of Honnecourt during the second quarter of the
thirteenth century. Villard included among the devices he had seen, heard
of, or imagined on his extensive travels: a Tantalus cup in the tradition of
Hero of Alexandria; a mechanical lectern in the shape of an eagle, which
turned to face the reader of the gospel; and a primitive mechanical sun
dial in the form of an angel that rotated to follow the sun

Nonetheless, they mark the early stages of a process of rapid devel

opment that was to produce in little over a century marvels such as the
late fourteenth-century silver gilt and enamel table fountain given to Abu
al-Hamid II by the Duke of Burgundy (fig. 2 . 1 0) ,82 as well as the elaborate
automata and marionettes in Robert of Artois's park of Hesdin.

Robert had commissioned these " engiens d'esbattement" (machines

for fun) in the late thirteenth century, and they appeared repeatedly in
the account books of his daughter Mahaut, Countess of Artois, to whom
he had bequeathed these fragile creations. From this source we know
that they included a group of mechanical monkeys (horns were attached
in 1 3 1 2 ) ; an elephant, a goat, and a hydraulic stag; and - from 1 344 - a
carved tree covered with birds spouting water. 8

Robert had commissioned these " engiens d'esbattement" (machines

for fun) in the late thirteenth century, and they appeared repeatedly in
the account books of his daughter Mahaut, Countess of Artois, to whom
he had bequeathed these fragile creations. From this source we know
that they included a group of mechanical monkeys (horns were attached
in 1 3 1 2 ) ; an elephant, a goat, and a hydraulic stag; and - from 1 344 - a
carved tree covered with birds spouting water. 8

The splendor of the fifteenth-century courts of Savoy, Anj ou, and Bur
gundy stemmed from their wealth and from their political and cultural
rivalry with the court of France.8 6