The Raven's Head (55 page)

Alchemy has two sides, the physical and the mystical. The physical goal was the search for the
stone
,
elixir
or
tincture
, which could transmute base metals into precious metals, prolong life and restore health by changing the balance of the body. But this quest became symbolic of the mystical side of alchemy, which meant transforming the base soul of man, his nature and corrupt body into the pure, incorruptible spirit that could not die.

Alchemy was a dangerous practice. Many of the chemical experiments its proponents attempted could go horribly wrong, leading to explosions or fires, and neighbours, fearing their own properties would be set ablaze, especially when houses were made of wood or thatch, often attacked those they suspected of practising it. Another hazard was that thieves, and indeed kings and even bishops, believing the alchemists had succeeded in producing gold, would murder them in order to steal it or torture them into revealing their secrets.

The opportunities for fraud in alchemy were great. Many wealthy investors were duped into financing experiments in the hope of obtaining a limitless supply of gold or the elixir that would give them eternal life. So from time to time, the art was banned by kings or popes in order to stamp out fraud and often because alchemists were suspected of using the dark arts or were guilty of the capital crime of heresy.

For all these reasons, medieval alchemists were advised to carry out their experiments in secret in isolated locations and the methods and formulations were often couched in an elaborate symbolic code, while the pieces of apparatus, such as the glass flask known as the griffin’s egg, also acquired mystical symbolism of their own.

The various stages of the chemical processes of alchemy and the mystical quest were also depicted symbolically.
Nigredo
,the black death
,
in which alchemists reduced matter to its original earth-like state, was symbolised by the raven’s head.
Albedo
, the whitening, which involved cleansing, is depicted by a king drowning or sweating in a bath of blood or by a pelican tearing at its breast, or by a white rose.
Citrinitas
, yellow death, is symbolised by a sower casting golden grain into the earth. The climax,
rubedo
, which produces the philosopher’s stone through chemical union, is represented by the marriage of king and queen, often shown as the wedding of the sun and moon, or by the starry lion or by the ouroboros.

Langley and the White Canons –
The Order of Regular Canons, known as Premonstratensian or White Canons, was founded in 1120 by St Norbert at Prémontré, near Laon, France. White Canons, sometimes called Norbertines, are not monks but ordained priests who carry out priestly duties of celebrating Mass, administering the sacraments, preaching, teaching, hearing confessions and ministering to the laity, while living together in a religious community under the rule of an abbot. They follow the rule of St Augustine, but with more austere disciplines than many other Augustinian orders. Their habit – a long white robe and hood with a tall white cap – gave rise to the name White Canons.

The order came to England around 1143, establishing its first abbey at Newsham, near Brocklesby in Lincolnshire, and by the time of the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII, they had thirty-five abbeys in England.

The Premonstratensian abbey at Langley in Norfolk was founded in 1195 and was dedicated to the Honour of the Blessed Virgin. It flourished until its dissolution in 1536. The land for the abbey was given by Sir Robert FitzRoger Helke, who was lord of Langley through his marriage to Margaret, daughter of William de Cheyney. Sir Robert was sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk, in 1192–3. The abbey acquired a great many properties, including the manor of Langley and eighteen others. Its wealth continued to grow, and by 1291, it had property and lands in sixty-two Norfolk and thirteen Suffolk parishes, with an annual income of £178 5
s
. ¾
d
. But in 1334, the abbot complained to the pope that the income from the abbey’s market was being badly affected by river and sea floods. And though their fortunes rose and fell through the centuries, by the time they were dissolved in 1536, the house was reported by the commissioners to be in debt to the amount of £120 16
s
. 8
d
.

Langley Abbey was surrounded by a wet ditch, or moat, the remains of which are still clearly visible today. The moat was probably built less for defence and more to drain the water from the low-lying land, irrigate the gardens and protect against flooding from the nearby river and marshland. Excavations of the ruins have revealed a cruciform-aisled church, sacristy, chapter house, dorter, vault, warming house, frater and cellarium, with a vaulted undercroft, stables and gatehouse. The remains of a furnace were also found. The stable and cellarium are still in use today, though at the time of writing the site is in private ownership and not generally open to the public, except for functions.

In the 1920s, Norwich Museum housed two medieval lead jars with lids, which were discovered in the ruins of Langley Abbey in 1816. They were believed to have contained human viscera.

Throughout its history, the abbey was beset by scandal, and abbots were repeatedly replaced only for their successors to find themselves accused of serious offences. We shall never know if the abbey itself exercised some kind of malevolent and corrupting influence on those who became abbots there or if the canons invented tales of their superiors’ misconduct out of revenge against abbots who tried to discipline them.

On several occasions a group of canons and lay brothers had to be removed from the abbey for ‘evil living’ and ‘incontinence’. In 1306, the abbot and one canon were charged with falsely claiming that some men owed money to the abbey when in fact they knew it had already been paid. In 1478, discipline had become so bad that the canons were punished with bread and water for forty days, forbidden to lock their cell doors or take recreation outside the grounds. In 1482, the abbot had to be removed for undisclosed grave offences and the canons were forbidden to frequent the town taverns. While their behaviour improved slightly under the new abbot, there were still complaints that the canons were out all night hunting and fishing, and ignored the periods of silence. Even the abbot himself had to be sternly warned not to associate with women.

One of the most bizarre incidents took place in 1491, when one of the White Canons, Thomas Ludham, whose behaviour was described as
instigante diabolo
, ‘instigated by the devil’, got into an argument with a Carmelite friar and hacked off the friar’s hand, for which Ludham was sentenced to life imprisonment in a carcer in Sudbury.

Aqua regia
– King’s water or nitro-hydrochloric acid is a highly corrosive red or yellow acid solution. It was given the name
aqua regia
because it can dissolve the ‘royal’ metals, gold and platinum. The mixture is formed by freshly mixing concentrated nitric acid and hydrochloric acid. It was used to etch gold.

It was once believed that
aqua regia
was invented by the alchemist Maria Prophetissa or Maria the Jewess who lived around the first century BCE, and whose name lives on in the
bain marie
, which we now use for cooking, but which she invented for chemical experiments in her laboratory. Most people now believe
aqua regia
was in use earlier.

In the Middle Ages, gold was often contaminated with copper, and this would have turned the acid green; in alchemy the process was symbolised by the image of the sun being devoured by the green dragon.

Averer
– a beggar who was fit and healthy, but pretended to be sick or maimed to gain sympathy from passers-by or to obtain alms from the Church. Common tricks included sticking on fake boils made from wax or foul tumours fashioned from animal offal, or pretending to be blind or lame.

Cletch –
a dialect word that comes from old Norse, meaning a family of young children or chickens, from which the word
clutch
is derived.

Coffin of lampreys
– a
coffin
was a popular baking method in which the meat was cooked inside a round pastry case, which was designed to set hard as a container in which food was served, but the pastry itself was not eaten. The method was to cut living lampreys and let them bleed, then die in their own blood. The blood was added to cinnamon, pepper, salt, wine and bread soaked in vinegar and cooked until it was a thick gravy. The cleaned lampreys were laid in the coffin in the gravy and covered with pastry. A hole was made in the top, down which the cook blew to raise the lid to a dome. The lampreys were baked in the coffin. The gravy was then removed and recooked with ginger and more wine and the whole thing returned to the coffin to be served hot as ‘meat for a lord’.

Comfrey cast
– broken limbs were set with casts in Europe from at least the time of the ancient Greeks onwards. To make a cast, a linen or woollen cloth was wrapped round the limb, then soaked in one of several different pastes so that it would set hard. These pastes often included grated comfrey root, which was known to aid healing, but would also include egg white, flour and fat or clay. Since the casts could not bear weight and broke easily, patients were usually confined to bed for many weeks until the bone had healed.

Cooper
– a person who makes round casks and barrels of various sizes, shaped with a
bouge
,
bilge
, or
bulge
in the middle. The casks are made from wooden staves bound with hoops or bands.
Barrel
refers to a particular size of cask. The term ‘cooper’ may come from the Dutch
k
ū
pa
, meaning a basket, wood or tub, or from the Latin
cupa
meaning a vat.

Corrodies –
the pension scheme of the Middle Ages. A lay-person would pay a lump sum of money or sign over a parcel of land to a religious house. In return, the monks or nuns would undertake to care for that person when they became aged or infirm, either by housing them in special lodgings within the monastery, or by delivering meals, fuel, clothing and medical treatment to them in their own homes.

Employers would often reward a faithful servant by buying a corrody for them or even promising a corrody in lieu of proper wages. Better-off individuals, such as merchants, would buy one for themselves and their spouses when they were in their prime, as an insurance against their old age. Of course, the corrodian would gamble on living long enough to get back far more than the sum they had originally paid, while the religious houses prayed the corrodians would die quickly, so they could make a profit. Religious houses often used corrodies to raise easy money, only to find themselves crippled by the cost of providing for dozens of elderly people some years later.

Councy –
birds such as chickens, partridge and duck were often served
in councy,
which was a spicy egg sauce. It was an easier dish to prepare than stuffing, tinting and dressing the bird in its feathers, therefore recommended for the less artistic cooks. The bird was roasted, then cut into pieces and put into stock, which had been thickened with egg yolks and breadcrumbs and flavoured with cloves, saffron, pepper, cinnamon and ginger. The dish was edged with the chopped whites of hardboiled eggs and crowned with the whole egg yolks.

Dorter
– otherwise known as a dormitorium. It was the communal sleeping place of the monks in an abbey or monastery or of the boys being taught in the religious house. In the early Middle Ages, the dorter was a long room in which the monks slept in individual beds, with candles burning constantly through the night to prevent any impropriety and to help them to rise quickly for the midnight offices. Later, the monks’ dorter became separated into open cubicles with a walkway down the middle.

Dragon’s blood –
the name was given to various substances, including gold chloride, but in the Middle Ages it most commonly referred to the
red resin that can be obtained from one of several different trees –
Dracaena cinnabari
found in Socotra,
Dracaena draco
from the Canary Islands and the palm
Daemonorops
from Malaysia.

The name
Dracaena
comes from the Greek
drakainia
meaning female dragon
.
In the first century AD, a Greek sailor records an island called Dioscorida, probably the island of Socotra in Yemen, where dragons lived and trees shed drops of cinnabar. Pliny recounts a legend from India about Brahma and Shiva, in which a dragon bites an elephant and drinks its blood. As the elephant dies, it falls on the dragon, crushing it, and from the intermingling blood springs the dragon’s blood tree.

In the Middle Ages, this very costly resin was brought by merchants to the Mediterranean and sold right across Europe. It was believed to have all kinds of healing properties and was considered to have particular potency in alchemy. In later centuries, it was used most commonly as a dye, particularly to stain the wood used to make violins.

There are three grades of dragon’s blood resin. The best and most expensive is
Edah amsellah
– meaning tears. The medium grade is
Edah dukkah
– fragments of tears.
Edah mukdehah
– resin-dust and bark melted together into blocks – is the most inferior grade.

Firkin –
a wooden barrel or a measure of liquid such as ale. A firkin was nine gallons.

Galbanum
– is an aromatic gum resin collected mainly from a Persian plant species,
Ferula gummosa
,
which grows in the mountain ranges of northern Iran. The resin is translucent and brown, yellow or greenish-yellow. It has a bitter taste and an intense musky scent. It is mentioned in the Book of Exodus as an ingredient in
Ketoret
, the consecrated incense used in the Temple. Both Hippocrates and Pliny used it medicinally, claiming that a single touch from it could kill a serpent.