Miracles and Machines
A Sixteenth-Century Automaton and its Legend
Elizabeth King & H David Todd
Getty Publications 2023
Hb, 246pp, £40, ISBN 9781606068397
This is a fascinating and beautifully illustrated book about an astounding little piece of machinery, just 16 inches (41cm) high, from the mid-16th century. It’s a wooden monk, which “walks and turns along a non-repeating path, striking his chest with one hand [in a mea culpa sign], raising and flourishing a small wooden cross with the other. As he walks, his head and his eyes pivot to gaze at the cross, then the onlookers, then the cross. His mouth opens and closes as in speech. From time to time he brings the cross to his lips and kisses it.”
The monk, now housed at the Smithsonian, is still in good working order. Fully wound, his performance lasts for over three minutes; he walks 19 inches (48cm), turns to the right, walks again, seven times over an astonishing total of 14 feet (4m), performing his various motions. He actually runs on wheels, hidden under his robe, but his moving feet give the illusion of him walking.
The book encompasses “art, religion, natural science, medicine, folklore and popular culture” in its examination of the monk. Sculptor Prof Elizabeth King does the historical detective work, while clockmaker and conservator W David Todd takes the monk apart, cleaning and photographing every one of the 133 pieces of iron and wood weighing in
