The Sword of Roland in La Serenissima: Materiality and the Occult in Late Medieval Venice

Introduction

Among the many thousands of manuscripts and incunabula safeguarded behind Venice’s Biblioteca Marciana’s thick and imposing walls, there is a particularly intriguing fifteenth-century source attributed to the mythic and magisterial sage from antiquity, Hermes Trismegistus, also known as ‘Thrice-Great Hermes’. ¹ This codex collates between its covers 171-folia pages that record hundreds of alchemical practices, magical wonders and medical recipes, in addition to a wide variety of useful and/or entertaining secreta (secret things). As these entries were believed to proceed from Hermes Trismegistus himself, and passed down over the centuries through a coterie of worthy adepts sworn to secrecy, there is an allure to the contents within this compendium. ² Although scholars do not yet know who wrote all of the many and varied entries that exhibit handwriting spanning from the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries, among the most fascinating and unique secreta is a brief yet compelling recipe that proposes to create a mixture that would invest a blade with specific occult qualities. Per the anonymous recipe’s author, it would result in the creation of the ‘Sword of Roland the Paladin’. ³ This process depends on a variety of natural substances such as herbs, minerals and alchemical mixtures that could be readily found or produced in a bustling late medieval city. Venice, one of the premier Christian mercantile entrepots in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, would have teemed with the ingredients that appear in the recipe and, thus, served as the perfect location both to house this manuscript and to reenact its processes.

This intriguing recipe that promises to create the ‘Sword of Roland’ sheds valuable light on the circulation of materials—as well as ideas about them—in the greater medieval Mediterranean Basin and is suggestive of the ways that scholars can write histories of materiality. An interest in magic and the occult had been part of the intellectual milieu of Europeans since antiquity and was kept alive throughout the Middle Ages. The blending of both elite and learned philosophical traditions regarding magic and the supernatural with folk and empirical practices learned and transmitted through informal channels, and practised by those outside of traditional authoritative circles, constructed a rich and complicated magical landscape that was part of a larger intellectual system in premodern Europe and the Mediterranean. By the fifteenth century, books of secrets and alchemical miscellanies began to increase in popularity dramatically, recording the technical practices of these various arts, and further attesting to the widespread fascination with the subjects they contained. ⁴

The physical copy of this brief recipe, embedded within a much larger compendium of Hermetic secreta, allows for an initial foray into a study of magic and material culture as four specific objects intersect within it. First, as mentioned above, the physical space of the Biblioteca Marciana housed and protected the donated historical document. The physical archive matters as it is tied to the civic identity of Venice. Second, the recipe itself is a material object, a physical document contained within another tangible source, namely, the larger codex concerning alchemical and magical sources. Third, the materials required to make the recipe are of most vital importance for the finished product, as without them, there is no process to make the Sword of Roland. The final material aspect that intersects with this recipe evokes the first and is that of the urban space of Venice itself. The codex, kept in the powerful mercantile city of Venice which teemed with mundane and exotic wares for sale, many of which were crucial for the recipe of the Sword of Roland, ultimately allows for the creation of a tantalising object made real in the mind of the recipe’s reader and/or practitioner.

Library and Codex: Material Spaces of Reading

The codex has another level of illustriousness in its own provenance, as it had been once owned by Cardinal John Bessarion (1403–1472 ad). It comprised part of his donation of his extensive personal library to Venice, a deed that, along with the donation of codices and incunabula by the famous Italian humanist, Petrarch, served to create the august public library, known as the Biblioteca Marciana. Bessarion gave his collection to Venice in the face of the growing political and military dominance of the Ottoman power in the Eastern Mediterranean. ⁵ For Bessarion, Venice was the perfect site to safeguard his library. In addition to the historic and established ties between Constantinople and Venice, the city and its government represented stability, peace and security. ⁶ Bessarion himself was a crucial conduit for the transmission of Hermetic philosophy and magic, subjects he considered of great significance. He had studied Neoplatonic philosophy under the renowned scholar, Gemistus Pletho (d. ca. 1452/1454 ad), who was also a devotee of magic, focusing on talismans and magical stones. The presence of the Corpus Hermeticum and Asclepius in Bessarion’s donation indicates the cardinal’s own interest in Neoplatonic and occult subjects. ⁷ Much of the extant scholarship regarding Hermetic magic and philosophy focuses on Florence, and with good reason, as many of the scholars and patrons affiliated with late medieval and early modern Hermetic philosophy resided there. Venice, however, was the other major northern Italian conduit for the transmission and reception of Hermetic philosophy to the Italian peninsula and Bessarion’s donation represents a hallmark moment that positions Venice as such.

Bessarion’s compendium of magical and wondrous secreta is a fascinating and illuminating source of late medieval Hermetic magic, a subject upon which Carlos Gilly has shed enormous light with his two-volume edited collection and catalogue of occult manuscripts housed in the Biblioteca Marciana. ⁸ This specific collection of Hermetic secreta appears to have been quite popular and this particular recipe is especially so. When stood on its cracked spine, Bessarion’s codex immediately opens to the folia that contain it. It is impossible to determine the exact number of readers of this work, but the physical condition of the cracked spine may suggest that the recipe’s readership found it fascinating enough to consult repeatedly, so much so that the manuscript opens to this page without effort. Furthermore, there appear to be discolorations at the bottom of the verso and recto folia on which the recipe is found, suggesting repeated consultation. Analysis via a densitometer, which measures the darkness of reflecting surfaces and, thus, illuminates which texts readers concentrated on, might provide more specific and quantifiable information regarding the recipe’s number of readers. ⁹

Further complicating this recipe and its reception is that no physical ‘Sword of Roland’ has yet come to light, although a systematic study of objects bequeathed in wills and found in inventories proceeding from late medieval Venice might yield proof, at least in the documentary record, of their existence. Thus, at the centre of this recipe, there is a void. It promises to produce a marvellous object, yet no actual physical object exists. This Sword of Roland is, thus, not a tactile ‘thing’, but instead represents a potential object. The recipe elucidates the idea of an object, an absent object tied to an object once believed to have existed in the past and which held enormous meaning within medieval and early modern culture. And even though the sword itself does not exist, the promise of the sword has clear material qualities rooted in its dependence on assembling the materials that form the recipe list and that did exist and could be found within Venice.

Idea and Reality in a Recipe

The recipe of the Sword of Roland appears in the middle of a section of recipes all dealing with adapting iron in one way or another. ¹⁰ The recipe is brief; a mere 27 lines long, and straightforward in its content and procedures. A transcription and translation of the recipe can be found at the end of this article. ¹¹ This specific process described illustrates the need for a variety of materials proceeding from an interconnected world that linked South-east Asia, China, India, the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea, which was linked in the mercantile entrepot of fifteenth-century Venice.

The listing of the various materials crucial for conducting this recipe’s procedure, can also offers as a point of departure for investigating the intersection of late medieval magic and materiality. As Elizabeth Lambourn has demonstrated excellently, the baggage list of the twelfth-century Jewish merchant Abraham ben Yiju, more than a mere static catalogue of objects ranging from gunnysacks of rice to worked brass, opens a window to the ways identities—in Abraham’s case his simultaneously Jewish and Mediterranean identities—maintain and shape themselves in the religiously and culturally pluralist Indian Ocean Basin. Such a seemingly nondescript source, thus, demonstrates the profound depths of the interconnectedness of objects—and by extension people—in the Middle Ages. ¹² So, too, then does this recipe for the Sword of Roland open another window onto the culturally and religiously diverse late medieval Mediterranean Basin and how magic and wonder were integral parts of that cultural landscape.

Most of the herbs in the recipe for the Sword of Roland listed are readily identifiable, evidencing local orthography and pronunciation, and include among others radish roots, dragon arum, portulacie salvatice, spurge and vitriolum, some of which make a return appearance later in the recipe. ¹³ Material components for the process include a variety of herbs and minerals that appear to name compounds and mélanges of other items, as in lactaiolle or pantarie. The 1488 Hebarium Apulei and the 1522 Herbolario Volgare two-volume sources edited by Erminio Caprotti have been invaluable for ascertaining specifically the meaning of some of the substances that appear in the recipe, although there are also local terms that are not found in comparable sources.

Alchemical products necessary to produce the salve that would invest a blade with the power of the Sword of Roland also appear, including sal communis (ordinary table salt, NaCl, reduced to a fine powder for alchemical processes), sal nitri (potassium nitrate, KNO₃, also known as saltpetre), sal alkali (Na₂CO₃ or sodium carbonate), sal ge[m]me (NaCl as rock salt), and sal armoniaci (NH₄Cl, ammonium chlorate). Moreover, the recipe indicates that the ‘blood of a ruddy man’ and the ‘urine of a ruddy infant’ were required materials. In alchemical discourse, these Decknamen could perhaps stand in for the rubedo and distillation processes, crucial moments for many alchemical experiments. ¹⁴ After being mixed, the solution was to be hermetically sealed, buried and left to rest for 22 days for the requisite chemical processes to take place. ¹⁵ These actions would have been readily familiar to the alchemist with even a modicum of training in the discipline and the recipe suggests that the practitioner was to follow procedures that they ideally would have already been familiar with, as in the creation of rose water. ¹⁶ Finally, the anonymous author of the recipe appears to have made emendations to the process wherein they took it upon themselves to clarify measurements, suggesting ‘another ounce’ of the combined alchemical salts needed to be added before undergoing the hermetic sealing. ¹⁷

The extensive role of alchemy—that is, the transformation of matter—in this recipe, as well as throughout this codex of Hermetic and alchemical secrets, indicates Venice’s position as a major centre for alchemical thought and its receptivity in late medieval Italy in general. Giovanni Carbonelli noted that fifteenth-century Italy was an area known for the production and reception of alchemical thought. The northern Italian regions, particularly the Veneto, Lombardy and the Piedmont, moreover, produced the greatest amount of alchemical writings and related works. ¹⁸ The Venetian lagoon perched on the northern edge of the Adriatic Sea, of course, localised Venice within a much larger and interconnected pan-Mediterranean society. It was one that saw the exchange of economic and philosophical ideas—including magical, occult and alchemical ones—among the Latin Christian, Byzantine and Muslim worlds, and studies of occult and alchemical sources proceeding from archives and libraries housing these sources will yield further insight regarding the role of magic and the occult in forging the deeply interconnected nature of these societies. ¹⁹

Like the other Arabic-influence occult science of astrology, alchemy occupied a liminal and nebulous space in medieval culture writ large, and tensions surrounding its practice, which could often be an arena for charlatanry and fraud, flared in the medieval Veneto. Such activities could not help but capture the attention of resident authorities. It is not surprising that it was in Padua, part of the network of cutting-edge legal and medical knowledge for late medieval Venice and its environs, where the jurist Oldrado da Ponte (1270–1335 ad), who taught at the university there between 1307 and 1310, developed his legal positions critiquing the occult discipline. ²⁰ Despite theological condemnations surrounding alchemy’s acceptability within medieval culture writ large, Venice and its leaders took a different approach to the discipline. Venetian leaders sought to foster a mercantile republic with little clerical oversight. Their concerns regarding alchemy were, therefore, economic and political, not theological. They saw the discipline as economically fraudulent and in the fifteenth century linked it deliberately with counterfeiting precious metals, a practice that could threaten the entire economic stability that was the very foundation of the Republic. ²¹

Recipes found in books of secrets and alchemical miscellanies could be—and were—used to produce mirabilia and entertainments of all stripes. They collect precise, measured quantities of material components, meant to harness the occult powers contained within natural substances, spices, roots, plants, flowers, animals and minerals. Rhetorically, the sources have stock phrases (‘you will see wonders’; ‘I saw this with my own eyes’, etc.) that attest to their veracity and were meant to assure the reader that the suggested processes would come to pass. Often their authors are anonymous. As such these recipes also function as written conduits of knowledge that had been transmitted orally, like the metallurgical knowledge to forge a sword, which moved across generations. Some compilers of recipes might be identified, as in the case, on the other side of the Mediterranean Basin, of the fourteenth-century Catalan priest, astrologer and collator of alchemical recipes, Guillem Sedacer, protected and sponsored by the count-king of the Crown of Aragon, Joan I, who shared his occult and magical interests. But far more recipe compilers and scribes remain unknown. ²²

Alchemy and the Materials of Magical Knowledge

There is another, singularly unique aspect to the attributed origins of the Sword of Roland recipe that complicates the role of alchemy within the larger framework of the occult and that speaks to the tension between elite and popular culture. Directly addressing the reader, the anonymous author attributed the recipe’s origin to a necromancer residing in Bologna: ‘And know that this mixture was discovered through diabolical spirits by a great master of nigromancy in the city of Bologna’. ²³ The university’s eleventh-century origins marked Bologna as one of—if not the—oldest university in Europe. It was certainly the most prestigious school for the study of canon and civil law and medieval Bologna teemed with students. ²⁴ As Richard Kieckhefer has shown, the receptivity and practice of magic was particularly pronounced among members of ‘the clerical underworld’, a group that included university students. ²⁵ This clerical underworld was primarily comprised of those clerics from lower status who held aspirations for more power and wealth within the institutional Church, but who would be denied those opportunities on account of a glut of talent and comparably few available positions. Despite Bologna’s lofty reputation, students who had the desire for lucrative careers as lawyers working in the service of the Church or in the households of noble or urban oligarchs might find themselves with little to no opportunities for initial employment, let alone career advancement. As such, these members of the clerical underworld would engage in the practice of outright diabolic magic to harness the power behind demonic entities.

The use of the term nigromancie in this specific recipe further evidences the general medieval—as well as the modern—confusion regarding the word’s translation and reception. It is a contested term, a corruption of ‘necromancy’, in Greek, νεκρός and μαντεία, which in antiquity meant divination of the future via the dead. By the thirteenth century, its meaning was more akin, at least in formal treatises of astral magic, to ‘natural magic’, the occult power in stones, plants and stars. As shown by Dan Attrell and David Porreca, recent translators and editors of the thirteenth-century anonymous Iberian treatise of astral magic, Picatrix, natural magic decidedly was not diabolic magic. Translated from the original Arabic into Castilian and then into Latin in the court of the Castilian King Alfonso X ‘el Sabio’ (1221–1284 ad), the principal concern of Picatrix was with harnessing the powers of specific spirits residing in specific planets and stars. ²⁶ This ‘nigromancie’ was, therefore, far from the type of black magic that invoked demons, although Attrell and Porreca note that physical components including animal sacrifices and dismembered human body parts—material objects linked outright with necromancy—appear in some of the rituals found in Picatrix. The genealogy of the late medieval recipe creating the Sword of Roland found in a book of Hermetic magic once in the possession of a renowned theologian and intellectual and attributed to be discovered by a master of nigromancie in Bologna, thus, has a very different valence than that of Picatrix. In this specific case, it mirrors a late medieval perception, at least in the case of the recipe’s anonymous scribe and/or anonymous compiler(s) of this codex, of nigromancie as an outright diabolical practice, a fascinating development in the history of magic and alchemy.

As an experiment, this recipe to create the Sword of Roland also requires many material components. Magical and/or occult materials were part and parcel of the premodern magician’s possessions, crucial for the success of the procedure as well as for creating an air of professional expertise and learning. As the Picatrix made clear:

The magician tirelessly gathers materials (whether through trade or foraging); crafts elaborate images or talismans; spends countless nights staring up into the night sky; pores over astrological charts, tables, and star maps; pays close attention to the slightest details of astronomical position (down to the seconds of arc); and then, by the grace of God, can move nature to act. ²⁷

The variety of objects used to create a mixture for the iron was crucial for investing the sword with the power (most likely by changing the metal’s appearance). Furthermore, the mixture could be used for more than just a sword: ‘And when you wish to make the sword—or other weapons—you yourself make it to be tempered with the said water.’ ²⁸ This is yet another intriguing twist in the recipe, for ostensibly it could be used to invest a knife, an axe, any other blade with this illustrious honour. This raises an important observation: Here we see that the history of magic overlaps not just with refined philosophies and state economies but also with the raucous history of popular culture and entertainment. ²⁹ Just like today, magic could be—and was—used in the service of entertainment, and the ‘Sword of Roland’ might very well serve to be created within that context.

The sword is perhaps the best-known of premodern weapons. Anecdotally, colleagues and friends have remarked to me how wonderful it would be to complete a course of study for the doctorate in Finland for there the newly minted doctor of philosophy receives a sword in addition to their degree as part of doctorate-granting ceremonies. Although anecdote is not evidence, it stands as a testament to the enduring and appealing power of the sword as both a reality and an idea. ³⁰ The sword is also, the most fetishised of premodern weapons, then and now. A weighty iron phallus forged in flame, when resting in its scabbard it dangles heavily from the belt; when drawn and used against another, it penetrates the wound it simultaneously generates. Unsurprisingly swords were read as both markers of status and masculinity in medieval society. ³¹ Swords were used across all levels of society over the course of the medieval millennium and the higher the status of its bearer, the more ornate the weapon became, especially over the course of the later Middle Ages. Further, the more luxurious the object, the more it was meant to catch the eye. And swords could be some of the most lavish objects available. Wrapped in gold and encrusted with precious stones, the object known as ‘Charlemagne’s sword’ graces the covers of two recent monographs devoted to the sword and its place within medieval culture. ³² Both Kristen Neuschel and Martin Aurell position the sword as a material object crucial for the construction of high medieval English and French seigneurial authority, a physical marker of one’s status in a society whose landed elite gravitated towards and prized the violence woven throughout chivalric texts and martial epics, of which the character of Roland was no small player.

Indeed, beyond the structure and ingredients of the recipe, Roland himself is of crucial importance in ascertaining the intersection of magic and materiality within larger patterns of culture in late medieval and early modern Venice. Roland is perhaps one the most famous historical figures who, like the eleventh-century Castilian mercenary, Rodrigo Díaz de Bivar, known as ‘El Cid’, metamorphised to become one of the most important characters for medieval and early modern culture. The Carolingian lord of the Breton March, Roland’s death occurred on 15 August 778 in Roncesvalles, when Christian Basques, in retaliation for the Franks’ invasion of their territory and siege of their city of Pamplona, attacked the rearguard of Charlemagne’s retreating forces. By the twelfth century, the height of crusading fervour in Europe, in the Chanson de Roland, the Basques became Muslims and Roland’s death was, for Christian audiences, both tragic and triumphant and nigh superhuman in its representation. Haughty, proud and foolhardy, Roland was akin to, and aspirational for, members of the seigneurial class for whom physical swords were so important. The desired product of this recipe could potentially appeal to those who valued Roland, or Orlando, as he had been known in fifteenth-century Italy, for his martial qualities.

The Sword of Roland, like the paladin himself, is polyvalent. It can be—and was—read in multiple contexts. In Le Chanson de Roland, the eponymous character is a deadly serious, stubborn and proud figure; and he also functions in early modern Italian literature as a comic figure in his own right, as evidenced in Ludovico’s Ariosto’s massive Orlando Furioso. ³³ In Ariosto’s work, Durendal became Durindana, and Roland emerged as a comic figure who was wildly popular in early modern Italian cultural circles. Indeed, Orlando is a very different, often uproariously funny, figure. Fifteenth-century Venetian audiences might have been set hysterically laughing with the adventures of Durindana.

Roland’s sword was one of the most well-known objects of the premodern era. Famous swords appearing in medieval legend and literature—King Arthur’s Excalibur or El Cid’s Tizon and Colada—often were themselves characters with their own personalities that contributed to their own adventures. Roland’s sword Durendal was no exception. Furthermore, as Orlando, the character of Roland was one of the most popular literary figures received in late medieval and early modern Venice and a recipe purporting to create his sword would have resonated profoundly within Venetian society and could potentially have had a ready audience of interested clients. Thus, the promise of creating even a representation of it would hold considerable cultural and artistic value.

The ability to forge a sword, not unlike other claims to technical alchemical work and obscure occult principles, required access to a body of privileged, specialised, technical knowledge passed from master to apprentice and across the generations. In this case, the process to make this specific recipe was to make a solution that would invest an existing blade with this power, rather than making the blade itself, and the cost of the materials involved to make this salve could be quite high. Economic historians such as Chris Wickham have suggested scholars’ focus on the trade of luxury goods in the medieval Mediterranean has been misguided and that, instead, bulk goods such as iron, wheat and wine, should rather be the subjects of their attention, as illustrative of broader consumption patterns. ³⁴ It is a sensible position, but I would not be too quick to discount the importance of the luxury good trade in the Mediterranean, as it overlapped considerably with the history of the occult sciences, particularly alchemy, subjects of intense interest across all levels of medieval society. Although Wickham is correct in stating that luxury products, by their very nature, are meant for consumers who could afford such luxury, direct ownership of luxury products does not preclude these products’ larger receptivity within society. The various materials used to create this magical sword would have been readily found and displayed in an entrepot like Venice teeming with pharmacopeia and materia medica for sale. The necessity of bulk products such as iron and wine that would be directly used in the service of alchemical and occult procedures further suggests the necessity of studying their trade in conjunction with that of luxury goods. ³⁵

Why does the occult, of which alchemy represents a significant part, flourish in the later Middle Ages? It is a complicated question, and further problematising the occult’s messy role in medieval society is the trauma of the Apocalypse, felt keenly, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Alchemy and other occult disciplines were popular within late medieval society partly due to the larger trauma of fears and hopes about the Apocalypse unfolding in the background. As Leah DeVun has shown, the fourteenth-century alchemist and Spiritual Franciscan, John of Rupescissa, used his knowledge of alchemy to better ascertain and directly engage with the contours of apocalyptic crisis to create a healing salve that would allow preachers to heal themselves from the physical trauma they would receive while bearing witness to the drama of the End of Days. ³⁶ In Rupescissa’s case, he faced the trauma of the Great Western Schism and shaped his alchemical discourse and philosophy in direct response to it. So, too did other individuals who claimed specialised magical and/or medical knowledge. These specialists would have been—and were—considered invaluable during days of plague and they were relatively ubiquitous in late medieval and early modern Italy. ³⁷ Other individuals who claimed privileged magical or medical knowledge could—and did—use their claims to engage with clients facing their own individual or collective apocalyptic crises. Magic, indeed, was part of a larger intellectual system used to understand—and cope with—the various traumas of the later Middle Ages.

Venice as a Material Entrepot

The recipe for the Sword of Roland in the Corpus Hermeticum undoubtedly contributed to the codex’s perception as something wondrous. It was an object with clear material qualities dependent on assembling all the listed materials, which includes a range of herbs and special alchemical salts, precious objects that were also included in the lucrative and interconnected spice trade. As Paul Freedman has observed, the rarity of spices, tangible commodities hailing from South Asia, South-east Asia and the Indian Ocean Basin imparted upon them a nigh-magical lustre in medieval Europe. A sense of wonder and mystery was applied to the occult sciences in general in medieval Europe. The images and symbols used by specialists in the occult, as well as medical practitioners could, and did, serve to entice and enchant. The Venetians had a reputation for being singularly business-minded, which is not quite accurate. But the lucrative spice trade that provided the foundation for the wealth of many Venetian patrician families and the exquisitely detailed mappamundi drawn up by the Venetian cartographer Fra Mauro in 1459 focused on specific information, particularly the location of spices, that would be most relevant to the economic interests of the city’s elites. ³⁸

Certainly, there was an economic component that was crucial—if not central—to the worldview of members of the Venetian ruling elite. But the supernatural component must not be overlooked. In addition to the aggrandisement of their houses’ names and reputations, Venetian patricians’ many substantial donations to the churches and religious orders spread throughout the city represented their adherence (to varying degrees) to Christianity. The relics contained in Christians’ altars and held in their treasuries, part of the plunder gained by Venice in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade, reflect tangible expressions of Christian religiosity and reflect the larger worldview. ³⁹ But the world of magic and the occult, of which alchemy was no small part, also influenced these Venetians’ lives and cultural orientations at all levels of society. The recipe for the Sword of Roland, although certainly not a lofty treatise on principles of natural magic, nevertheless tantalises its reader and/or client with the opportunity to harness nature itself by accessing the occult, hidden virtues found within plants and minerals, to effect change on earth, to create the Sword of Roland.

To what degree did the material outcome promised by this recipe come to pass? How many enchanted swords of Roland did the recipe yield since its first appearance in this codex and since the codex’s first arrival in Venice? Although unknown for now, a thorough study of fifteenth-century Venetian inventories and wills might very well evidence the presence of ‘Roland swords’ among Venetians’ household possessions. ⁴⁰ In his study on Italian testamentary practices, Samuel Cohn Jr. notes that by the end of the thirteenth century, between 84% and 92% of wills bequeathed money, but by 1400, what he calls ‘the early Renaissance’, bequests of material objects, including ‘cloth, capes, dresses, farm implements, pieces of armour, houses, and palaces’ rose and demonstrate an increased attachment to possessions on testators’ part. ⁴¹ The potential discovery of ‘Roland swords’ in the wills and possessions, especially among members of the Venetian patrician class, would therefore be exciting, one that would raise additional questions: who commissioned the creation of these swords and why? Did they view them as bona fide magical objects infused with arcane power? Or did they prize them as objects that instead represented Durendal/Durindana, knowing full well there was no occult power woven throughout the blade? That approach is beyond the scope of this present investigation and there is no way to know without textual affirmation of such claims. Nevertheless, it is my hope that this current project will inspire other scholars to pursue that—or a similar—approach. ⁴²

The recipe for ‘The Sword of Roland the Paladin’ does not draw a magic sword from a stone, but rather from the folia of a codex full of magical, medical and alchemical secreta. Books of secrets simultaneously reveal and obfuscate, bridging the magical and technical traditions of the later Middle Ages. Like the waters of the Venetian lagoon themselves, the sources’ themes and objects embedded in recipes flowed between the mercantile elite who ruled Venice and the general populace who made the urban space what it was, all positioned within a larger and much more interconnected world of ideas and products. The alchemists who plied their trade in and around the city overlapped with the domains of the alchemical philosopher, the technical practitioner and the fraudulent charlatan. ⁴³ The recipe is, thus, much more than a recorded technical alchemical process within part of a larger compendium. It elides the fuzzy borders between magic and alchemy. By offering access to secret knowledge, it tantalises its readers and promises the potential of a most marvellous possession, of magic made real.

Appendix A

Transcription of Biblioteca Marciana (Venezia) LAT VI 303 (=3413), ff.80r.-80v.

f.80r. [T]emp[er]ies p[er]fecta ferri de qua d[icitu]r spatam rolandi palatini esse temp[er]atam Rx lactaiolle.1. tortomaglio radicis raffani fortissimi esule maioris / famule que facit folia ad modum vit^isalbe. portu /ace saluatice [ana].1. half-dram. [et] pista res istas bene simul / [et] extrahe ex eis su^ccum / [et] uult esse tant[us] su[c]cus q[ue] ascendat usq[ue] ad libram.1. [et] sanguinem hominis rube 1 l[i]b[r]e.1. [et] vrinam i[n]fantis rubei l[i]b[e]r.1.: sal co[m]mu[n]is.sal nitri. sal alkali / sal ge[m]me /sal armoniaci [ana].1. dram. [et] istas^{* 44} res pone i[n] simul i[n] vno vase vetreato / [et] claude bene vas sic q[ue] non possit fieri repiratio ab aliqua parte / [et] postea ipsum vas pone subt[us] t[er]ram [et] <sic> ⁴⁵ p[er]mitte stare p[er] /xxii / dies /[et] quando sic feceris pone hanc [con]fectionem i[n] vno vase q[ue] vocatur lanbicum sub quo facito ignem de carbonib[us] / et distilla que[m] ad modum fit aqua rosata / [et] sic est [com]pleta tua [con]fectio. Et quando uis facere spatam u[e]l alia arma facias ipsam temp[er]ari cu[m] dicta aqua / [et] scias q[uod] ista temp[er]ies fuit rep[er]ta p[er] spirit[us] diabolicos ab vno magno magistro nigromancie i[n] ciuitat[e] bononie.

[T]emp[er]ies alia ferri reperta p[er] d[omi]n[u]m Neapoleonem cardinalem / que est de illa de qua fue[r]it te[m]p[er]ata

f. 80v. spata rolandi palatini / [et] i[n]uenta fuit i[n]marchia scripta sup[er] vna[m] tabula[m] metallina[m] / [et] p[er] ipsum dominum neapoleone[m] [et] magistru[m] lappum exposita fuit propt[er] v[er]ber[um] [con]fusione[m]. Rx. su^cci raphani / herbe que vocatur vitriolum^{.1. pantarie} /maraiole / s[er] pentarie galanga pulverizate / euforbii pulverizati de istis duab[us] puluerib[us] Rx. [ana] / [et] miscreant[ur] cum dictis su^ccis [et] temperetur ibi ferrum.

Appendix B

Translation of Biblioteca Marciana (Venezia) LAT VI 303 (=3413), ff.80r.-80v.

f. 80r. A perfect mixture of iron about which it is said to be the tempered sword of Roland the Paladin. Take lattaiòlo, that is, the twisted root of strongest radish, greater spurge, famule that makes leaves similar to traveller’s joy, wild portulace, one of each, that is, a half-dram. And grind these things together well. And take the juice from them. And you will want there to be so much juice that it comes to a pound. And one pound of the blood of a red man, ⁴⁶ and one pound of the urine of a red infant, that is, common salt, saltpetre, salt of alkali, rock salt, sal ammoniac, one of each, that is, a dram, and put these things together in a glass vase and seal the vase well so that no respiration is able to be done by any part, and after, put this very vase under the earth and thus ⁴⁷ <illegible> let it stand for 22 days and when you will do it thusly, put this confection in a vessel that is called an alembic under which a charcoal fire is made, and distil it in the manner of rose water and thus your confection is complete. And when you want to make a sword or any other weapons, you do the same to be tempered by the said liquid and know that this mixture was discovered through a diabolical spirit by a master of necromancy in the city of Bologna.

Another mixture of iron discovered by the lord Cardinal of Naples, which is that about which has been tempered

f. 80 v. The Sword of Roland the Paladin. And it was found written in the margin upon a metal tablet. And through this same Neapolitan lord and master of stones it was discovered on account of a confusion of words. Take the juice of radish, the herb that is called vitriol, that is, pantarie, marjoram, dragon arum, powdered galangal, and powdered spurge. Take one apiece from these two powders. And it is mixed with the said juice and there the sword will be tempered.