A Brief Introduction to Poisoning a Nobleman

The Alchymist. Joseph Wright (1771).

In this series:

• A Brief Introduction to Poisoning a Nobleman
• Richard Roose: Talk About the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time.

The poisoning of noblemen is an endless subject.  It will only be possible to give a brief introduction here and to return to the subject now and again when a proper leisure will allow.

Poisoning one’s enemies began, in earnest, in the West, during the long decay of the Roman Empire.  An understanding of certain poisons, goes back much further still, as evidenced by the Egyptians having left records on the concoction of prussic acid and other toxic substances.  The Greeks and Romans, curious as they were, wrote a good deal on the nature and production of poisons.  A good many Medieval scholars wrote on the subject as well and some few even knew what they were about.  The nobleman of the Middle and Early Modern Ages might well be nervous knowing as much.

The poison that underwrote the Roman terror was said to be the work of the mysterious Persian Magi.  They were already long reputed to have been centuries directing those events which went under the moniker of “fate”.  Some claimed they could read the stars and follow them to the humble birthplaces of those who would become greatest among them. They enchanted the rulers of the Persian Empire with ancient spells, it was  said, for which reason they were seen constantly at the rulers’ right hands.  Eventually they were driven out to live as wanderers, lurking in the shadows, offering their services.  Those who could withstand the power of their incantations, it was said, suffered mysterious deaths — from their evil potions.[1]

The first symptom of outbreaks of the practice, at various times, in the Medieval West, was generally a deep paranoia in the face of a weapon against which the tyrant and the warrior could not draw their sword in defense.  The next most prominent symptom was the prevalence, even in the most protected circles, of sudden, inexplicable deaths.  The third symptom, rarely absent in confirmed cases of poisoning, was the poisoner’s confession and confirmation of the identities of his suspected confederates under extreme torture.

To such symptoms is added the vagaries of eye witnesses and the distance of centuries.  As those who read the primary accounts whenever possible know, never were vagaries so vague as in the Middle Ages.  They were little better in the centuries that followed.

In the West it was the purported secret Italian assassin societies rather than the Magi who were the insidious purveyors of poison.  And the Jews.  A mysterious death in their vicinity could be doubly deadly.

Matters did slowly get better.  Thus we learn from Shakespeare, in his Romeo and Juliet, that poisons were taken quite seriously, along more rational lines in his time.  On Romeo’s way back to die next to the the body of Juliet, he stops at an apothecary’s to buy a poison giving instant death:

Ap. Such mortal drugs I have; but Mantua's law

Is death to any he that utters them.[2]

Such things are no longer to be had by the general public.[3]  Not unless one is a young nobleman with a silver tongue and purse filled with gold, that is:

Rom. There is thy gold, worse poison to men's souls,

Doing more murders in this loathsome world,

Than these poor compounds that thou mayst not sell :

I sell thee poison, thou hast sold me none.[4]

The promise of immediate death is acquitted.  As the insightful essay “Shakespeare as a Medical Observer”[5] avers, the quickness with which Romeo dies  pretty much guarantees that the poison was potassium cyanide.

The list of poisons available in Shakespeare’s time (and before), to the best of our knowledge, was arsenic, aconite, belladonna, nightshade, mercuric chloride and potassium cyanide.   Poison leaves and berries included alkaloids, atropine, scopolamine and hyoscyamine. To these add poison mushrooms.  Also add articles having been in contact with persons having highly contagious deadly diseases.  The most insidious poisoners were said to have had formulas enormously more potent and so secret that only they ever knew them.

It seems generally accepted that hydrogen cyanide (prussic acid) had not yet arrived in the West but it is difficult to understand how it didn’t.  Still, potassium cyanide had been available from time immemorial as a chemical commonly used in the purification of gold.  It was far more readily available to young noblemen.

Other than the cyanides (and, purportedly, the secret formulas), none of these poisons was immediate.  In fact, repeated doses were necessary.  Death was a lingering process.  A poisoner had to take grave risks.

The popular mythology of poisoning in Shakespeare’s day is all throughout his plays and those of his fellow playwrights.  The subject gripped theater-goers like few others.  It gripped the nobility of England and Europe every bit as much.  Rumors followed the deaths of Dukes and Kings, Cardinals and Earls, and their most powerful administrators.  Vast numbers had surely been poisoned.  Eye-witness reports of generally nameless onlookers circulated as to the violence of victims' final convulsions, the unnatural states of their corpses, the looks of horror frozen on their lifeless faces.

Be all of this as it may, poison does seem to have been adapted as a political strategy by more than one member of the nobility toward  others with whom they were in competition.  Across the distance of time and  through the fog of popular myth, it is possible to see how the practice of poisoning really did work in specific instances.  Even, perhaps, to draw a few generalities relating to the topic. 

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[1] See the works of Franz Cumont.  They are classics about all aspects of the mystery religions of the Middle and Near East.  Most have been translated into English.  For a specific accusation against the poisons and otherwise evils of the Magi, see the 5th century Armenian account in Réfutation Des Différentes Sectes Des Paienn, De La Religion Des Perses, De La Religion Des Sages De La Grèce De La Secte De Marcion, Par Le Docteur Eznig (1853).   42 ff.  “De même aussi dans les plantes, il en est qui, prises isolément, sont mortifères, et (qui), mêlées avec d'autres plantes, deviennent un remède pour différentes douleurs. La mandragore, si quelqu'un en mange seulement quelque peu, est meurtrière, et, mêlée avec d'autres racines, elle est somnifère pour les personnes privées de sommeil….” ff.

[2] The Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet (1599).  V.i.66-7.

[3] Shakespeare is not an historian.  His details come from his own times.  Be it Matua’s law or London’s, or both, it is a late 16^th century development.

[4] Ibid. V.i.80-3.

[5] Anonymous. “Shakespeare as a Medical Observer.” Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 164 (April 18, 1912), 603-5.

Also at Virtual Grub Street:

• What Color Were Shakespeare’s Potatoes? July 27, 2019. “By the year 1599-1600, when Shakespeare’s play would seem to have been written, the potato was available in London.  It was considered a delectable treat and an aphrodisiac.”
• A Thousand Years of English Terms.  June 2, 2019.  ‘One person did not say to another, “Meet you at three o’clock”.    There was no clock to be o’.  But the church bell rang the hour of Nones and you arranged to meet “upon the Nones bell”.’
• A Medieval Hodge-Podge. March 17, 2019. “The hogge pot had already existed for centuries, however. Many who fail to realize this have given spurious derivations to the name.”
• Did Shake-speare Die of a Stroke?  August 03, 2014. "In October of 1601 De Vere begins to complain of his health again in letters to his brother-in-law, Robert Cecil, who was representing him in certain legal matters at Court."
• Check out the Medieval Topics Article Index for many more articles about this fascinating time.
• Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time.