Medieval Lives (2004) s01e06 Episode Script

Medieval Lives with Terry Jones once upon a time when all was shrouded in ignorance, there lived a philosopher.
He sought the philosopher's stone that would transmute base metal into gold.
And the elixir of life that would bring eternal youth.
(Bang) Hold this, would you, Ray? (Explosion ) Did it work? (Bubbling) ''philosopher'' was the closest term the Middle Ages had to scientist.
But of course we all know that they weren't real scientists, because they had no idea of scientific method.
The medieval world floundered in superstition and ignorance.
The church persecuted seekers after knowledge, medicine was more likely to kill than cure, and people didn't even know the shape of the world.
But are we sure they were so very ignorant, or could it be us who don't know as much as we think we do about them? over and over again, we're told that our scientific understanding of the world didn't begin until Isaac Newton in the 17th century.
For example, he's credited with showing that white light contains the colors of the rainbow.
And yet, 400 years before Newton, a 13th-century monk by the name of Roger Bacon performed this experiment, in which he passed light through water to create a spectrum, and concluded, like Newton, that light contains an unchanging geometry.
Newton was the man who made mathematics the basis for the study of the world.
But then, Roger Bacon said the same thing.
He wrote, ''Mathematics is the door ''and the key to the sciences.
'' At 400 years before Galileo, Bacon described how to use lenses to make a telescope.
Bacon was one of many experimental philosophers hunting for the philosopher's stone.
He was an alchemist.
But of course, we all know that alchemists were charlatans and magicians who were trying to turn base metal into gold.
Well, undoubtedly, alchemy had its fair share of fraudsters.
That doesn't mean they all were.
You see, gold is a very peculiar metal.
For a start, you cannot destroy it.
Heat it up, melt it down, beat it, whatever you do, gold will always return to the way it was.
The gold we have today could once have been a viking's collar or a 17th-century ewer.
At oxford university's chemistry labs, Dr.
Allan Chapman explained to me just why gold obsessed the medieval alchemists.
What the alchemists were fascinated with is what they called mutability, why certain things did change, and things like gold never changed.
Gold was the most perfect of all metals.
And as a result, therefore, what gold became was the study of perfection on earth.
And all of their manipulative procedures about gold were concerned with trying to actually obtain, not wealth, it wasn't wealth they were after, it was understanding the inner secrets by which God had made all the substances of nature.
The alchemists believed that all things in nature were striving towards perfection.
And since gold was perfect, one day all metals would transmute into gold.
The alchemists were just trying to give nature and God a hand.
- Teach me how to make gold.
- oh, yes, very easy.
Allan showed me one of the experiments that made the alchemists think they were very close indeed.
Well, here we have mercury in a jar, it was liquid, it was shiny and they believed that it was a sort of seed bed into which you could plant gold.
That's the gold there, some nice gold powder.
- put them together.
- A bit like cookery? - Bit like cookery.
- Yes.
What to do with your guests if you wanted to kill them in the 15th century.
And it's now getting a bit like breakfast cereal.
It's a sort of scrunchy, peanut buttery feel to it.
I don't know what you have for your breakfast, Allan.
This so-called butter of gold is spread on the item to be transmuted into the real thing and then heated.
There it is, we've got a gold-plated Tesco's can lid.
The only one in the world.
The process didn't actually multiply gold, but the alchemists had discovered the technique of gold-plating.
It was just one of their achievements.
They also discovered the first strong acids and developed techniques such as distillation that would form the basis of modern chemistry.
And in a way, the alchemists were right.
Transmutation not only is possible, it's one of the key processes in the modern world.
A nuclear power station like this runs on transmutation.
In the process, a metal like uranium is transmuted into other substances, including other metals.
The alchemists may have been right about something else.
In 1972, Russian scientists reported that at an experimental reactor in siberia, the lead shielding had been exposed to such constant nuclear bombardment that part of it had turned to gold.
In the Middle Ages, all science, what they called philosophy, had a different purpose from science today.
Any pursuit of knowledge was only useful if it brought you closer to understanding God.
Even medicine.
Today, there's only one thing we expect from medicine, to make us better.
But medieval doctors had their sights set on even more ambitious things.
Eternal life, for a start.
Meet Artephius, who wrote a treatise on the art of prolonging human life.
And as proof that his theories worked, he claimed he was no less than 1,025 years old.
What, you mean you were alive at the time of Christ? - Yes.
- Did you meet him? Yes.
Well, what was he like? just exactly as you'd imagine the son of God.
oh, right.
Wow.
phew.
The alchemists believed that if they could turn base metal into perfect, immortal gold, using the philosophers' stone, they might also be able to use it as an elixir of life that would make mankind immortal.
The purpose wasn't simply to make people live forever, but to restore mankind to its condition of perfection before the Fall.
The eternal life was almost incidental.
of course, no philosopher actually found the elixir of life.
I mean, otherwise I'd be interviewing him now.
But that doesn't mean we should write off medieval doctors.
I'm about to have a consultation with an expert in medieval medicine.
Ah, Faye.
I feel a bit of a fraud coming here to see you as my medieval consultant cos there's nothing wrong with me, really.
Well, that's ideal because my job is not to cure disease, but to prevent it.
A medieval physician believed that disease wasn't something that attacked you, a disease was something that you suffered from because you didn't have enough health.
so a physician would try, mainly by food and by herbs to promote your health and restore your health.
so if I was your patient, how would you distinguish me from other people? I would try to classify you for instance, according to the doctrine of the humors.
The ancient Greek physician Galen taught that the health of the body depended on the delicate balance of four vital fluids.
A person in whom blood predominated was sanguine.
phlegm predominated, you were phlegmatic.
(Coughs ) Black bile made you the melancholic type.
And yellow bile made you the colonic type.
Doctors first diagnosed the patients' type or humor and then adjusted the treatment accordingly.
What do you think about me then? What humor would I be? I thinkthere's definitely a sanguine streak to you.
(Whistles ) sanguine means that you're dominated by the humor blood, which is the humor of youth.
I would also say because you're an intellectual, that like most intellectuals, your predominate humor - is melancholic.
- (sighs ) The cold and dry humor of old age.
If you were my medieval doctor and I was your patient, how would you start to examine me? Well, the first thing I would do is take your pulse, and I would try to understand how your body's innate heat was cooking through your body.
And the pulse would tell me whether in fact you had a fever, and if you did have a fever I would probably let blood, because letting blood would lower the fever.
(Trickling) After I take the pulse, I would want to do a uroscopy.
You want me to pee in the bottle? oK.
I'll go and do that right away.
I feel a bit embarrassed about giving you this, Faye, but What you look at first is the color, do you? Yes, what I would be doing is looking at the color, the texture, whether anything's floating in it.
I would want to touch it and also I'd want to taste it.
What? - You were having me on! - What do you mean? This isn't urine at all.
You taste it.
oh, no, it's apple juice.
Yes, I'm sorry.
Yes, it is.
sorry about that.
In fact, medieval medical treatises warned doctors that some patients might try to fool them by offering wine or water instead of urine.
The striking thing about medieval physicians was that they cared for the person as a whole.
It's an attitude that's only recently started to creep back into mainstream medicine.
Now, I'm not saying medieval medicine had all the answers, I mean, if I'd lived then I'd have died aged 27 of a burst appendix.
But that doesn't mean medieval doctors were just quacks.
Maybe they even had something they could teach us.
Here at soutra Isle in scotland, Brian Moffat has been carrying out some remarkable detective work.
over 8OO years ago, a massive monastic complex stood here.
It included a hospital in which medical research was at the cutting edge.
Throughout the Middle Ages, this was the hospital's natural pharmacy, an outdoor pharmacy, as you can see.
You mean this is their chemist shop, is it? Well, in a real sense, yes, this was the source of their drugs.
In this gorge, there were some 4OO species of plant, many with medicinal properties.
And the monks used these for treating their patients.
so what sort of herbs are we looking for? Well, here are two.
Number one is yarrow.
It's a wound treatment, usually in the form of poultices.
It has behind it perhaps two millennia of clinical trials.
Really.
Really.
Down below, the tiny yellow flower is tormentil.
It has a tuberous root which has a long history as a worm treatment, to get rid of parasitic intestinal worms in humans and livestock, again, for a good millennium.
Is it possible these early physicians had knowledge that we've now lost? Take this plant, for example, the heath pea.
The monks claimed that a couple of its tiny tubers could put off feelings of hunger and thirst for weeks.
so, say, in scotland the crops failed in october, they would be no other food available until the following May.
Entire communities lived on this alone.
so the reports tell us.
Have you ever used it yourself? Yes, I was able without any trouble, and without any discomfort to have no further food or drink for five days.
No drink for five days? That's right.
Written evidence shows that monastic physicians weren't just relying on ancient knowledge, they were actually experimenting with new cures.
In fact, the deal for poor patients was that they would receive treatment if they allowed themselves to be experimented on.
one intriguing object discovered at soutra, 15 feet down in the hospital drains was this fragment of heel bone.
There are grooves which are running in a very regular almost parallel fashion - along the edges of the bone.
- I see.
With quite a bit of thickening of the bone around them, suggesting that there was something which has made this bone grow irregularly.
And the likeliest thing would be something like a club foot, what we call talipes.
But whether this was a selective surgery of the foot - It could have been amputated? - It could have been amputated as part of an abnormal foot.
And what Brian found in the hospital waste, lying next to the bone was another revelation.
Roughly three inches away from the heel bone, is a clump of seeds.
A combination of three toxic species of plants.
Black henbane, hemlock and opium poppy, they are brought together for only one purpose.
This is a specialized anesthetic, rendering someone free of pain throughout surgery while amputation went on.
When we accuse medieval medicine of being dangerous, it's worth bearing in mind that today in the united states more people die of medical mistakes each year than from road accidents, breast cancer and AIDs combined.
We like to believe the Middle Ages was an age of superstition and ignorance.
We even cling to total falsehoods to support that belief.
Take geography.
In the Middle Ages they thought the earth was flat.
It's a well known fact, except that it's a fact that was made up in the 19th century.
Medieval sailors knew the world was round.
I mean, how else did things disappear beyond the horizon? In fact, people in the Middle Ages wrote about the world being round.
Here's Roger Bacon.
''The curvature of the earth explains why we can see further ''from higher elevations.
'' so, why is it we're so convinced that medieval people thought the world was flat? Well, one of the chief culprits was a 19th-century American novelist by the name of Washington Irving.
He wrote fantasies, like The Legend of sleepy Hollow and Rip van Winkle.
In 1828, Irving also wrote a biography of Christopher Columbus, which included a jolly exciting scene in which Thank you.
.
.
just before his great voyage of discovery, Columbus was confronted by the ignorance and bigotry of the church authorities at salamanca.
They accused him of heresy, for saying the world was round, when the church taught that it was flat.
Except the church had never taught that the world was flat.
The scene was entirely fictitious.
But if they didn't believe the world was flat, why were their maps so terrible? I mean, they hadn't a clue, had they? Look at this, they've got jerusalem here in the middle like a bull's-eye.
They've got Rome down there.
up there they've got Noah's Ark.
And over there a whole lot of monsters.
I mean, come on.
I asked peter Barber from the British Library to tell me what on earth was going on.
The point is, it isn't a map, because in the Middle Ages this would have been regarded as a visual encyclopedia.
In a way, it's geographical, but the purpose of the geography is to provide a framework for knowledge and for philosophy.
And also a history, which begins with Adam and Eve, - goes on to the Tower of Babel.
- Yes.
There's jerusalem.
- And down there is Rome.
- Yeah.
on another level, it's also the history of the past, including the history of Alexander the Great, who accounts for these weird creatures here.
These are the people whom Alexander the Great in legend is supposed to have encountered.
I've just noticed that God has got a cricket ball in his left hand.
Well, it may look like a cricket ball, and it's certainly a ball, but it is actually the world.
Ah, so this is visual proof that they see the world as a globe.
Mappa didn't mean map, it simply meant a cloth.
The purpose of these mappae was not to show you the shape of the world, it was to help you understand God.
The people who needed geographically accurate maps were mariners, and they had them.
This chart dates from the 13th century, although we have no idea who drew charts like this or even how they were made.
They're a bit of a mystery.
Washington Irving's fantasy of Columbus and the bigoted churchmen also panders to another major misconception.
And that is the idea that it was the medieval Church that suppressed knowledge and that persecuted those who sought to extend the boundaries of science.
In fact, throughout the Middle Ages, scientific experimentation was carried out by churchmen and with the blessing of the church.
Roger Bacon was a friar, often writing for the pope.
He wrote, ''Experiment is the only safe guide in such investigations.
'' Mind you, ''safe'' is a relative word.
In the 11th century, a monk at Malmesbury Abbey, by the name of Elmer, one day fitted himself out with a pair of wings and jumped from the high tower.
His flying machine carried him a full 2OO yards Wheee! .
.
before he crash-landed, breaking both legs.
When Elmer lay in bed recovering, he told the Abbot he knew what had gone wrong.
His flying machine needed a tail.
The Abbot forbade him to take the experiment any further and manned flight was put on hold for 9oo years.
(Birds twittering) Men of the church were forever exploring new boundaries of knowledge in every conceivable sphere of human activity.
Even these fabulous buildings are the result of experimentation.
Experimentation on a monumental scale.
When Canterbury Cathedral burnt down in 117 4, the monks decided to build something altogether more ambitious.
They allowed a French architect by the name of William of sens to talk them into an entirely new kind of architecture.
Taller, lighter, finely chiseled and with graceful pointed arches, nothing like it had been seen in England before.
It soared to the glory of God, the church, the archbishop and the architect.
And not necessarily in that order.
John Burton, the surveyor of the fabric at canterbury, showed me just how William of sens improved on the ancient Roman designs that still exist in the old part of the cathedral.
see, what we're in at the moment, this rather dark and dank sort of area really, and that was caused by the fact that this is Romanesque architecture.
It's very simple, very basic architecture based on the semicircular arch.
It's very shallow and it's pushing a lot of weight down.
And so the walls have to be extremely thick to counteract that.
And these thick walls, of course, do not allow large window openings.
And what William of sens was coming up with was a way of overcoming that problem.
He's being pushed by the theologians as well, they were saying, ''God is light, ''let's see what we can do, how we can bring light in, ''and actually worship in a very light, bright space.
'' And so what they did, they tried to experiment with this and see how they could make the structure thinner and strong.
And to do that, they actually put curtain walling up really.
It's the early curtain walling and brought the light in.
- This is what we call the Gothic? - The Gothic, yes.
Here, we're looking across at the Romanesque part of Canterbury.
It's just a very heavy mass.
If you look at the tower you'll see that's just a heavy mass of masonry coming straight down to the ground.
And the openings are relatively small to the space.
And if we look across here, we can see the solution to the problem.
The flying buttress.
In that roof, above, are the vaults which have loads forcing outwards, just pushing, pushing out.
And the flying buttress at right angles to the main wall is pushing back, not letting it collapse.
so the structural development here is opening up the wall and giving some beautiful, beautiful shapes inside and a massive amount of light.
(Terry ) And this at the time was just revolutionary? oh, totally revolutionary.
It was theit was the great new architecture.
The cathedral builders were experimenting at the limits of their technology.
And they learnt what those limits were the hard way.
The fact is, our great cathedrals were always falling down.
Winchester cathedral's tower collapsed in 11O7.
Gloucester Abbey, 117O.
Lincoln cathedral, 1237.
st.
David's, 122O.
Ely, 1322.
st.
Albans, 1323.
y ork, 14O7.
And Ripon, 145O.
of course, the Church's motive wasn't pure blue skies research.
Like a lot of modern science, there were often economic or political imperatives behind the pursuit of knowledge.
Take the Abbot of st.
Albans here, in 1323.
He undertook one of the most ambitious engineering projects of his day.
Abbot Richard of Wallingford was an enthusiastic astronomer and mathematician, and a leper.
Although I don't suppose he was that enthusiastic about the leprosy.
But why did he make this and what is it? Well, it's a clock.
Actually, this is a reproduction based on the designs and descriptions he left behind.
That part of the mechanism strikes a bell on the hour.
But this is the most intriguing part of the clock.
This is an astronomical clock.
It shows the position of the sun here.
And the moon.
It even shows the phases of the moon.
It can even predict a lunar eclipse.
That's when the dragon swallows the moon.
The whole clock takes 18 and a third years to complete one cycle of the heavens.
It's a formidable feat of engineering.
But, why did he make it? Well, the Abbot's reasons were economic and political.
y ou see, the church had been locked in a power struggle with the townspeople of st.
Albans over who controlled the town's commercial enterprises.
By building such a revolutionary clock, Richard was demonstrating that the church was technologically superior to the townsmen.
What's more, by chiming every hour, instead of just the time for prayers, Richards's clock would take control over the working day of the town.
From now on, it was the Church who would issue the time for town council meetings, for the opening and closing of markets, and for the beginning and end of each and every day's work.
This was God's universe made visible.
Nowadays we assume that science and religion are poles apart.
But the medieval church was not opposed to science.
It wanted to use it.
After all, since the Bible contained the truth, how could the church be threatened by understanding the truth better? It was only later, in the time of Galileo, that the vatican became frightened of science.
Newton, who was obsessed with alchemy and interpreting the prophecies of the Book of Revelation, was no more rational than the alchemists, who with their experiments, sought to uncover the truth hidden in nature.
It was their understanding and their explorations which became the very foundation of modern science.
Back in the 13th century, Roger Bacon recorded the things he foresaw in the future.
''Great ships guided by one man, that will move with greater swiftness ''than if they were full of oarsmen.
''A carriage which will move with inestimable speed ''and without the help of any living creature.
''It is possible that a device for flying shall be made.
'' That was 75o years ago.
so what took us so long? partly our ignorance of our own past, perhaps? Next time on Terry Jones' Medieval Lives, the outlaw.
Did Robin Hood really exist? Did outlaws never wear trousers? And how many cows enjoyed a career as executioner?