How to Slay a Dragon Page 14

  Spirits and demons, insisted the wisest medieval scholars, could never be bound by mere human words. Demons permitted spells to give people the temporary illusion of power. The true result was to bind would-be witches to their will. Just ask the tall woman from Nuremberg who stepped into the circle in Regina Koch’s yard. Almost two hundred years earlier, a Spanish priest offered his own ritual that made no effort to disguise who was truly in control: “Let them show honor or veneration or worship of the invoked demons by drawing a circle in the earth; placing a boy in the circle; with a mirror, sword, vessel, or other small body set up near the boy, with the necromancer holding the book, and reading, and calling upon the demon.”11

  The German sorcerers who drew the magic circle and read aloud the necromantic words thought they were gaining the supernatural power to find treasure. The Spanish priest admits outright that the spellcaster is worshipping demons.

  So after—I mean before you start digging for treasure, ask yourself: What did happen that day in Regina Koch’s backyard? And are you really ready to find out?

  9. Q67:30, trans. M.A.S. Abdel Haleem’s translation from the Oxford World’s Classics edition.

  10. Okasha El Daly, Egyptology: The Missing Millennium: Ancient Egypt in Medieval Arabic Writings (UCL Press, 2005), 36–37.

  11. Michael Bailey, “From Sorcery to Witchcraft: Clerical Conceptions of Magic in the Later Middle Ages,” Speculum 76, no. 4 (2001): 972. I discuss the parallel in Cait Stevenson, “The Necromancer, the Inquisitor, and the Hunt for Buried Treasure in the Late Middle Ages,” Medieval Studies Research Blog, University of Notre Dame, October 16, 2020, https://sites.nd.edu/manuscript-studies/2020/10/16/the-necromancer-the-inquisitor-and-the-hunt-for-buried-treasure-in-the-late-middle-ages/.

  HOW to FIGHT the FIRE

  464 CE: An old woman supposedly dropped a candle… and definitely burned down giant swathes of Constantinople. 532: A chariot race set off riots… that burned down large swathes of Constantinople. Again. 1203 and 1204: A series of fires burned down less than one-third of Constantinople, but essentially allowed the Latin invaders to conquer the whole city.

  Fire itself was beyond necessary, of course. In the Middle Ages, using open flame was not optional. But if just one English chicken kicked over a candle onto a perfectly average straw floor, it was going to be a hot time in the very old town that night.

  Unless medieval people got in the way.

  Which they did. And which you will, too.

  Fortunately, the firefighting instructions they left behind might seem rather familiar.

  1. CURFEW

  Forget the cold. Ever get annoyed at night when you have to turn out the light and go to bed? Holy woman Agnes Blannbekin (d. 1316) sure did. But she dutifully obeyed Vienna’s literal curfew—medieval French and English cuevre-feu, the hour you had to “cover fire” at night. Can’t leave open flame unattended.

  2. ZONING LAWS

  A blacksmith’s workshop next to where a carpenter sells wooden furniture: not so good. City street names tell how once upon a time, artisans grouped near other people in their craft. Islamic theologians very much wanted these districts to be the law, but theologians weren’t running cities. Some crafts were better than others at sticking together, but most people ended up rezoning themselves into rich and poor neighborhoods. Thus, by 1500 you had streets like Augsburg’s Baker Lane, where one in three buildings either made or sold beer instead.

  3. BUILDING CODES

  “The whole street is on fire!” you hear, and probably picture a row of burning buildings. Nope. In medieval Europe, it could mean the very literal street was on fire, especially if the town had used wooden slats to pave its roads. One Norwegian city learned this lesson the hard way in 1476 and started paving its wooden streets with gravel. To deal with interior threats, Damascus wanted buildings to have stone chimneys. The city was even willing to pay to enclose and cover its main market with stone.

  Meanwhile, many Europeans made their roofs out of thatch, which is famous for never catching fire.

  4. FIRE EXTINGUISHERS

  Basically, everywhere in the Middle Ages demanded that people keep a bucket of water by the door at all times. Blacksmiths’ shops were more likely to start fires and carpenters’ shops were more likely to catch fire, so Cairo mandated in 1321 that those shopkeepers keep two buckets.

  When the buckets ran out, desperate residents turned to prayer. Greek Christians in Constantinople’s massive 464 fire begged divine forgiveness for neglecting their patron saint. Cairo’s citizens fled to mosques, climbed minarets, and cried out for divine aid.

  5. CONTAINMENT

  One house on fire was probably a goner, but you might have time to protect the ones next door. People in late medieval Nuremberg climbed ladders to throw buckets of water onto those buildings’ upper stories as well as the ground level. But that was a best-case scenario. More often, people in places like Damascus tried to dismantle reed roofs, and everyone from England to Ethiopia sometimes just tore down entire houses—no matter that many houses were built to be strong enough to stand for hundreds of years.

  6. FIREFIGHTERS

  A fire in a medieval city all too quickly became an entire medieval city on fire. Throughout most of the Middle Ages and most of the medieval world, firefighter recruitment meant an on-the-spot decision between “I don’t want my house to burn down today” and “Maybe I should just grab my stuff and run today.” (Baghdadi scholars saved their library in 1117: the real heroes.)

  Cities in Syria and Italy had self-organized groups (gangs?) of younger men who might mobilize to fight a fire in any part of their city. Or they might get blamed for starting it. Were they teenage rebels, or militias with hard-core political beliefs? Later writers sure had opinions.

  By the 1400s, German cities had made major improvements. Nuremberg subdivided its eight quarters (… the city had grown) into units for firefighting and defense, and local captains assigned every able-bodied man a particular role in confronting fire. The city offered rewards to the people and units who showed up first, which is probably why the system worked.

  7. WATER

  Medieval hydraulics were… actually pretty great. Germany’s mountaintop castles with no access to flowing water dug impossibly deep wells and developed rudimentary filtration for their underground reservoirs. The cities of hilly Italy learned to dig horizontally into the surrounding hillsides, in order to access underground aquifers without needing to pump anything uphill.

  Expanding cities meant the water had to reach a bigger area, and tax-funded pipeworks were a great way to do it. The oldest cities in Europe may even have inherited functional pipe systems from Roman days. Meanwhile, Muslim engineers in Yemen, Syria, and Spain were busy inventing new irrigation systems that cities used for their water supply, too. People still liked their private wells, but by the 1200s, no modern town wanted to be without its own lead, clay, or wooden pipes.

  8. FIRE HYDRANTS

  The saying “beggars can’t be choosers” was all too literal for the lower-class workers paid to take rich men’s spots in the fire brigades of Nuremberg. This phrase also applied to their water sources. Public bathhouses were required to supply water (how’s that for spa service?); wells were useful but slow. The cities of Freiburg im Breisgau and Zurich especially encouraged the reuse of dirty water for firefighting.

  But best of all were the fountains.

  True, “fountain” in medieval sources might just mean a pipe that emptied into some kind of channel. And those fountains were just as useful—and used—as bigger ones when it came to firefighting. But the city of Siena would not have thrown a massive festival in 1343 for a pipe with a new tank. No, its residents were celebrating the final completion of the city piazza’s large, lavish fountain, which for a time was even adorned with an antique statue of Venus. Goslar, in Germany, topped its twelfth-century fountain with a bronze eagle—a Roman and medieval symbol of strength, empire, and renewal. The palace at Aachen had its
own gorgeous fountain in the shape of a bronze pine cone. The pine cone was in fact a second Roman and medieval symbol of renewal… but you’ll notice that emperors always chose a symbolic eagle instead.

  9. FIRE HOSES AND FIRE ENGINES

  Whatever your source, there were essentially two ways to get enough water from it to the fire. You could put buckets on a cart, or you could carry the buckets yourself. (Remember the part about rich Nurembergers paying poor ones to take their places? Right.)

  10. WATER BALLOONS

  Yes, ladders have their place when fighting a fire; yes, buckets are nice and refillable. But wouldn’t you rather fill a clay pot with water, hurl it at a burning house, and watch the pot smash to pieces? Yes, yes you would.

  AFTERMATH

  This pagan symbolism of pine cones was probably not on people’s minds while they watched an entire city block burn to the ground or tried desperately to keep it from happening. It probably wasn’t on their minds the next day, either, as they cried over what they’d lost (everything), gossiped over who had started it (it had to be old women or Jewish people, of course), and grumbled about looting (kids these days).

  But then in the 1350s, Nuremberg shoved its Jewish population into a burned-out quarter of the city that no one had dared touch since a 1340 fire. The ultimate result? A thriving neighborhood complete with kosher butchers.

  And consider that apple you’re holding. There is the small problem about “Eve and Adam eating the apple and unleashing evil into the world,” yes. But apples are small and durable, good for travel and better for pies. And if you plucked it from a city orchard, that tree probably grew from the ashes of the house that had once stood in its place. Fires destroyed, but they couldn’t defeat.

  HOW to BRING the OLD GODS BACK

  The legendary grave robber Ridwan al-Farras knew it as well as you do: the deader the god, the better the god.

  The actual existence of any deity, or the correctness of a given religion, is irrelevant here. Contemporary religions are things the people in your village believe. Worse, they are the things your parents believe. But heroes fight the mainstream. Heroes are in touch with the secrets of the past. In touch with the outcast gods destroyed by religion and abandoned by their people. In touch with the deepest truths that hold so much more power than (or really, are just plain old cooler than) anything believed in your time. A proper heroic quest awakens the arcane gods and unleashes their power into heroic hands.

  That’s how the story goes, right?

  When al-Farras and his friends passed over the threshold into the cool darkness of the Great Pyramid at Giza, they sure knew it. At least, al-Farras did. As the pyramid stubbornly refused to reveal any gold, his friends gave up and turned back to the mundane world. But not al-Farras. He pressed on alone, his torch flickering against the narrow passageway inside the Great Pyramid. The last his friends heard from him was a terrified scream.

  Until he materialized out of the wall, bathed in red.

  Crying out at them in a language he did not speak, the language of the pyramid builders, al-Farras warned them to go no farther. All who disturbed the peace of the pyramids would share in his eternal punishment. And he sank slowly into the ground, never to be seen again.

  Still sure you want to bring the Old Gods back? Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

  STRATEGY #1: USE THE PYRAMIDS

  Had ancient human or supernatural forces built the pyramids? Either way, the Fatimid dynasty was quite eager to take advantage. These powerful Muslim rulers (909–1171) founded their new capital at Cairo, right across the river from Giza and its monuments. They chose to rule from the shadow of the greatest pyramids, with all the magic, treasures, and hidden wisdom from the past. Fatimid caliphs and their heirs brought the Old Gods back to life, but only to embellish their own majesty.

  A few individual rulers had more creative definitions of “embellishing the majesty.” Abu’l Hasan Mu’nis (d. 933) offered a bounty to the first person who could climb to the top of the Great Pyramid. Two hundred years later, the Fatimid government staged massive nighttime parties around the Giza pyramids. One century after that, al-Malik al-Kamil upstaged them both, as he held climbing contests and threw giant parties. Obviously, these rulers understood that poor Ridwan’s tale was just part of the never-ending superstition about cursed Egyptian mummies and tombs.

  On the other hand, all these caliphs made sure the Nile would always safely separate their palaces from Giza. Throwing parties and hiding behind a river are two good ways to keep the Old Gods very much present but very much sleeping.

  Rulers from later dynasties would snort at the Fatimid caliphs. You can’t bring the Old Gods back, they would say, so stop trying. These leaders thought they could outdo the pyramids in majesty and plundered the pyramids’ stones for building projects. The great sultan and general Saladin (1138–1193), who was beloved for his chivalry and charity—even by the Christian crusaders he defeated—ordered the destruction of Giza’s smaller pyramids. It was easier and cheaper to use their stones than to carve out his own. And subsequent leaders followed his example. The magnificent stone casings that once dazzled Giza’s visitors were dismantled piece by piece, ruler by greedy ruler.

  On the other hand, the pyramids held their own against the exterior vandals. Saladin’s own son reportedly spent eight months and 12,000 dinars trying to repeat his father’s deed with one of Giza’s smaller surviving pyramids. And completely, utterly failed.

  Vandalism: not a good way to bring the Old Gods back.

  STRATEGY #2: STAY FAR, FAR AWAY FROM THEM

  Parties, plunder, treasure hunters looting the insides, and graffiti artists carving on the outside. What more could there possibly be?

  Ghost stories. There could be ghost stories. Everyday Cairenes spooked each other with tales of locked chambers guarded by golden idols, of a tomb sealed behind seven gem-encrusted doors, of walls engraved with unreadable words that betrayed all the secrets of the world.

  Visiting Jews and Christians borrowed the locals’ tradition and added their own legends. The Travels of John Mandeville was the best-selling travel guide of medieval Europe, reminding its readers the pyramids were the silos built by biblical hero Joseph. (There is a slight wrinkle in that John Mandeville was probably not a real person and thus he probably never went to Egypt.)

  Yet “some men say,” whispered the real author, with all the credibility of the supposed knightly narrator, “that [the pyramids] are sepulchres of great lords, who lived sometime.” Those tombs, he added, were filled with snakes. And yes, it had to be snakes—how better to enthrall his readers than with tombs of the ancients guarded by the slithering creatures of the devil?

  Fan fiction: either a good way to bring the Old Gods back and control them, or a better reason to not even try.

  STRATEGY #3: EXPLAIN THE PYRAMIDS

  Adventure stories are great, sure. There were also plenty of nonfictional travelers from around the medieval world who made it to Egypt and saw the pyramids for real, and they had just as much to say.

  Their writing should have been a good introduction to the twilight world beyond the edges of Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, and indigenous Berber beliefs: the realm of inexplicable supernatural powers. Visitors described the pyramids at Giza and Saqqara as unfathomably large, as the greatest marvels in the world. It was obvious that the pyramid builders also made the Sphinx at Giza. Surely it was some kind of idol to hold back the ever-encroaching, ever-consuming desert.

  But travel writers inevitably stripped away the mysticism. Most repeated the party line that the pyramids were in fact silos to store grain for famines—silos that were mentioned in the Tanakh, the Bible, and the Qur’an. Muslim travelers insisted that those creepy, unreadable inscriptions on the pyramid exteriors were just using a different alphabet to explain Islam.

  Some visitors with a little more education promoted the idea that the pyramids were tombs built for (really) Aristotle and Alexander the Great. Fiftee
nth-century Italian rabbi Meshullam ben Menahem had the audacity to claim that the pyramids were treasure chambers. He explained this by stating that he could go into Cairo and buy pyramid souvenirs (or counterfeit souvenirs) on the street.

  One way or another, visitor after visitor explained away the pyramids. Somehow or other, the mysterious monuments were just regular parts of their historical, religious, comfortable world. Old Gods need not apply.

  The book called (really) Lights Lofty of Form in Revealing the Secrets of the Pyramids should have lived up to its name.12 Its author, Abu Ja’far al-Idrisi (d. 1251), was unimpressed by the Joseph-grain-famine story. He was also skeptical of the theory that Aristotle ordered the pyramids’ construction for Alexander and himself.

  Al-Idrisi much preferred a different theory: the pyramids preserved ancient wisdom to survive catastrophe. Arcane wisdom plus apocalypse already sounds like an idea worthy of “lights lofty of form in revealing secrets.” It gets better. The pyramids were built at the command of the ancient Babylonian wise man Hermes Trismegistus, master of all knowledge. What secrets could hieroglyphs hold, besides the wisdom so long lost to the world? And why choose pyramids of stone, unless the builders wanted them to survive even bigger disasters than the Flood that couldn’t sink Noah’s wooden ark?

  Except even Lights Lofty of Form in Revealing the Secrets turned out to be less of a crystals-and-cultural-appropriation read, and more theological treatise. Long before al-Idrisi, Muslim theologians had turned the mythical Hermes Trismegistus into an ancestor of Muhammad (under a different name, though) in the Qur’an. He was special, but also just another religious figure. Trismegistus’s occult knowledge was astrology and alchemy, which seem plenty mysterious and arcane but were really just two regular medieval sciences. Lights Lofty was an impressive and original book, but also just mundane teachings.