Medieval Magic Tricks
Source: medievalists.net
Let us begin then with a positive view of of medieval people, imagining them not as trembling in the face of a universe filled with occult and dangerous forces, but rather as men and women of a lively and playful spirt, fascinated by the inexhaustible riches of nature, whether they be visible or invisible, favourable to mankind or the reverse, serious, or simply light and amusing.”~ Bruno Roy, in his article ’The Household Encyclopedia as Magic Kit: Medieval Popular Interest in Pranks and Illusions’
The Middle Ages are thought to be an age of wizards and magic. Medieval stories are filled with men like Merlin or saints who could perform incredible deeds. However, even medieval people liked the simpler magical tricks – how to make an apple roll around by itself; a dead fish to jump out of the frying pan; turn a white rose into a red one; or have a candle where the flame could not be blown out.
A few books from the Middle Ages can tell us more about these magic tricks, such as the Secretum philosophorum, which was written by anonymous author at the beginning of the fourteenth-century. At the beginning it explains “there are contained in it certain secrets which, by vulgar opinion, are impossible, but which philosophers consider to be necessary and secrets. Now, contained in this book are the secrets of all the arts.”
While the Secretum philosophorum might sound to be very mysterious, a modern reader might find it to be more a medieval version of The Dangerous Book for Boys – it contains all sorts of fun stuff, like how to make different colours of ink, riddles, and creating scientific experiments like how to make a soap bubble. The anonymous author even creates simple simple cyphers for to disguise a few words, so that his reader will have to figure it out.
The Secretum philosophorum even has a section where he talks about the senses can be deceived, and explains how to do a series of medieval magic tricks that the reader do for fun – a trick to show off for friends.
Here are a few of these medieval magic tricks:
To Give Water the Colour and Taste of Wine
The same cane be done in another way, so that the water appears to be turned into win, and this experiment is used by those conmen who wander about like pilgrims through the whole world; by this experiment many are convinced that God turns their water into wine. For, they take scraps of bread and put them in the wine which is called vin râpé, the wine which those sell wine use to colour the wines which have lost their colour. Now, when the scraps of bread have been well soaked in the said vin râpé, they dry them in the sun and carry them with them in their jewellery. And when they come to someone’s house, they say that they eat nothing but bread and water, and they ask for the bread and water, and they break the bread into pieces and put some of the said scraps into the water. And straight away the water takes on the colour and flavour of win, and so it is thought by many that this is a miracle.
To make a burning mirror
When you want to make a burning mirror, take an ordinary mirror and scrape off the lead from the concave side. Next, take some tin foil and fit it to the size of the mirror, and put it on the convex side of the mirror. But first rub the foil with quicksilver – very carefully, because if it is not carefully rubbed, when it is soaked with quicksilver it tends to tear easily. Having done this, fit it to the mirror. Then put this mirror into a box turning the concavity outwards. In it there will appear an image which is very ugly because of its very large size. Now, when you want to burn with it, hold the mirror against the rays of the sun and put something combustible between the mirror and the sun in the place where the first point appears from the reflection from the sun. And after a short time, you will see the combustible material catch on fire.
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