Medieval Robots: Mechanism, Magic, Nature, and Art by E. R. Truitt (review)

We commonly assume that robots and similar mechanical gadgets are the products of the modern world and represent the latest technology. However, already in antiquity and throughout the Middle Ages, poets and writers report a variety of mechanical devices that appear to be very similar to modern robots, as E. R. Truitt discusses in her monograph, taking us on a tour de force of automata, either produced by particularly gifted craftsmen in Europe or imported from the Middle East as valuable gifts for high-ranking individuals. But we know of references to such automata already in Greek antiquity and have the famous Attikythera Mechanism (ca. 80 B.C.E.) discovered at the beginning of the twentieth century. In the early ninth century Harun al-Rashid, the caliph of Baghdad, sent an elaborate water clock to Charlemagne as a most precious gift, and later centuries witnessed similar gadgets, reported in a wide variety of texts. As much as those robots and instruments seem rather outlandish, we can agree with Truitt that they force us to abandon modern perceptions of the Middle Ages as a primitive world, especially since we are dealing here both with mechanical imaginations and concrete objects created to convey a sense of wonder. However, Truitt does not simply deal with imaginary objects, but with real-life robots as they were reported about particularly in late medieval accounts, such as in the Le Voyage de Charlemagne from the mid-twelfth century.

While automata were a relatively common product in the Islamic and the Byzantine world, medieval Europe was deeply awed by those objects, as Truitt emphasizes repeatedly. This might then explain, as she suggests, why poets and other writers filled their accounts with reports about miraculous mechanisms because Europe was simply intrigued by what they were exposed to in the East. Travelogue authors such as William of Rubruck, Marco Polo, and even the armchair writer John of Mandeville had much to say about mechanical marvels at the Mongol court and elsewhere.

Truitt examines twelfth- and thirteenth-century reports about automata, which gained in popularity among the intellectuals of that time (Natura artifex), such as Hugh of St. Victor. Vernacular poets like Benoit de Sainte-Maure (Roman de Troie, ca. 1165) also explored alleged wonders and projected rather fanciful images of the eastern world. Similarly, the thirteenth-century Lancelot do lac contains numerous references to wonders that support the protagonist or assume power by themselves.

Many poets began to associate Virgil with having invented miraculous gadgets, but in the thirteenth century such engineering and mechanical accomplishments were increasingly associated with members of the university, as Truitt emphasizes in the third chapter. Here she discusses the works by Gerbert of Aurillac, William of Malmesbury, Albertus Magnus, Robert Grosseteste, and by the virtually unknown Matteo Corsini. She also discusses many contemporary accounts, some of which originated from the Middle East, where the ninth-century robots had inspired engineers to develop the original designs further. By the same token various authors made references to automata at the Mongol court, a convenient strategy to locate mechanical marvels at the edge of human (western) civilization.

Many times automata were implemented at gravesites, mausoleums, and memorials, at least according to literary records, such as Floire et Blancheflor. Giant robots appear in the contemporary Daniel von dem Blühenden Tal by The Stricker, but Truitt does not cover Middle High German literature, not to mention other examples in Spanish or Italian. Surprisingly, she does not even allude to the mechanical devices in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival, or of the amazing water pumping system in Herzog Ernst. But the literary imaginations apparently soon found concrete parallels in objects created for the royal courts, such as in England, as Truitt claims, without, however, providing specific examples and documentary evidence in that chapter. Instead, in the following one, she refers to Villard de Honnecourt (fl. 1225–1250) and compares his designs with those drawn by Arabic contemporaries, who were obviously more sophisticated in their...