Early Metal Working

The blacksmith or metalworker in the Middle Ages was a highly respected craftsman. The results of the blacksmith's skill were so important to society that many pantheons had a god of blacksmithing, or at least a legendary figure, such as Hephaestus among the Greeks, Goibhniu in the Tuatha Dé Danaan cycle, or Govannon in the Welsh Mabinogion. The Anglo-Saxons had the legendary Wayland Smith. Even the Bible mentions Tubal-Cain in the book of Genesis as the first blacksmith.

Metalworkers originally worked with gold, silver, and copper, which are all found in their native states as pure metals. They are also fairly malleable, and so could be shipped and hammered relatively easily into whatever was wanted—mostly small decorative objects like jewelry. Phoenician trade brought together tin from Cornwall and copper from Cyprus and the discovery that a mixture produced a stronger metal with a lower melting point we call bronze, making it easier to shape into larger objects that would be stronger, such as a weapon.

The so-called Iron Age came about around 1500BCE, when the Hittites in the Middle East began working with iron, much of which was embedded in other ores. (Many early peoples first used iron found in meteor deposits, where the iron was mixed with up to 40% nickel.) The armor and weapons of The Iliad are bronze, but Homer refers to arrowheads as iron. At the time of its composition (or its later revision), iron was known, but was not being easily worked into larger items.

One difficulty with iron compared to previous metals is that its melting point is very high (2800°F), and so the heat produced by the blacksmith could soften it so that it could be hammered and shaped, turning it into a liquid to pour into a mold was not within the power of most forges. If a village had a blacksmith, it likely only had one. On the other hand, a village without a blacksmith was in a sad state. Smithing was a necessary craft for the functioning of the Middle Ages. It was one of the seven essential Artes mechanicae (to parallel the seven Liberal Arts).

Tomorrow we'll look at the medieval blacksmith in more detail, and the men and women who were employed in this important trade.

Debasing Coinage

Let me explain how you can turn a finite number of metal coins into more coins.

You may have seen medieval coins that weren't entirely round; they were lop-sided somehow or had a flat edge to them. That was not necessarily the action of years or wear and tear through handling. That was more likely because of coin-clipping.

Coin-clipping was a popular way to make more money for personal use. Medieval coins were solid metal all the way through, not cheaper metal covered with another layer to make them shiny, as much modern coinage is in the promissory system. The Medieval English penny was solid silver. A known practice was to "clip" the edges of the coin, reducing its size, and using the clipping from several coins to make an additional coin (or a silver lump that had value).

This, of course, debased the value of the original coin(s) because they were expected to have a specific weight of silver (or gold, in some cases). The illustration above is not medieval, but from a hoard of clippings from 16th century coins found in 2015.

One of the ways to guard against coin clipping was to put a design or milled edge on the coin to make it clear of the edge has been altered; United States quarters and dimes show this, nickels and pennies are made of such cheap metal that a milled edge isn't considered worthwhile.

Other methods of debasing coinage were "sweating" and "plugging." In sweating, coins were placed in a bag and shaken vigorously so that bits of metal might flake off and could be collected at the bottom of the bag to be re-used. Plugging was the act of punching a hole in the middle of the coin, knocking out a bit of metal, then hammering the coin to fill in the hole. With the edge of the coin intact, the flattened image in the center could be explained as normal wear and tear.

These practices were bad for the economy, devaluing the actual coin (which was based on weight of silver), and promoting inflation. They were considered extremely serious offenses. Suspicion of coin-clipping in the time of King Edward I (1272-1307) lead to hundreds of deaths in a single outrageous over-reaction.

But that's a story for tomorrow.

Magical Metal

Yesterday mentioned the gold and silver cramp rings used in the Middle Ages in England to avoid cramps and epilepsy. (The sample here—alas!—is a later iron version.) Gold and silver were precious not only for their rarity and beauty; it was the reason for their beauty that made them magical.

Gold and silver do not oxidize like iron and copper. This "metallic immortality" surely helped to enhance the idea that they were special in a magical way. In fact, gold was considered medicine by many early authorities.

An 11th century lecturer at Salerno, Constantinus Africanus, claimed:

Gold is more temperate than the other metals. It has the property of relieving a defective stomach and comforts the fearful and those who suffer from a heart complaint. Galen confirms that it is effective against melancholy and baldness.

 Obviously gold needed to be ingested for it to work. To do so required very small pieces, and the Arab physician Abulcasis explained the method for preparing gold for consumption:

Take a piece of good and pure gold; and have a plate with pure sweet water in front of you; and have a rough clean cloth of flax, one end of which you keep in your hand. The other end should stay soaking in water on the bottom of the plate. Then rub gold with the cloth, always moistening the cloth with water, and fine filings descend to the bottom of the container. Do so as long as much of that gold as you want to have been shaved. Then leave for an hour; and mix water speedily and wash three times and dry up and preserve it.

Gold-based preparations were called aurum potabile ("drinkable gold"), written about by Michael Scot, Roger Bacon and others. Making it drinkable was no small trick, but it could be made into a liquid by combining hydrochloric acid and nitric acid. This mixture was one of the only ways to dissolve gold, and inspired alchemists to believe that an actual, pure aurum potabile was possible. Paracelsus (1493 - 1541), who was adamant that one could improve upon Nature, and his contemporary Johan Isaäc Hollandus were certain that pure liquid gold could be achieved and would have unbelievable curative properties.

The consumption of gold over time, however, far from enhancing health produced "auric fever": fever, profuse sweating, excess urination, gastrointestinal problems, and kidney damage. Evidence of death by gold has been found.

In 2013, The Geological Society published a collection of essays called A History of Geology and Medicine. One article, "Pharmaceutical use of gold from antiquity to the seventeenth century," points out that there is at least one modern medicine that includes gold: Myocrisin, an injectable used for rheumatoid arthritis.

Back to the subject of liquid gold: who figured out that hydrochloric and nitric could dissolve gold? That was a 9th century writer who produced the oldest known classification system of chemical substances. His name was Jabir ibn Hayyan, and you'll learn more about him next time.