MECHANICAL FRIAR of JUANELO TURRIANO



Jessica Riskin:
A Franciscan monk of iron and linden-wood built around 1560 and attributed to a man named Juanelo Turriano offers a final example of the early modern mechanization of faith. Turriano’s life is a tale in itself. Clockmaker, architect, and engineer to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, and then to his son and heir, King Philip II of Spain, Turriano went into retreat with Charles, after his abdication in 1556, at the monastery of Yuste, near Plasencia. There, the imperial clockmaker built automata to comfort the gouty ex-emperor: an automaton lady who danced and played a tambourine, a flight of wooden sparrows that fluttered and flew about the room as if alive, a miniature army of prancing horses, and soldiers playing diminutive trumpets. According to legend, Philip II asked Turriano to build the automaton after Philip’s son, Don Carlos, made a miraculous recovery following a head injury. A fifteenth-century Franciscan monk, Diego de Alcalà, whose relics were brought to the prince’s bed at the moment of crisis, received credit for the cure, and the king, to express his eternal gratitude, asked Turriano to build the mechanical monk.

The monk, wearing a tunic, cowl, and sandals, and with its mechanism hidden beneath its habit, is a fully self-contained device, sixteen inches high. It clutches a crucifix and rosary in its left hand. Elizabeth King, the monk’s eloquent biographer, describes its performance thus:
Slowly the monk comes to life. He turns his head to single out one among the company. Left foot stepping forth from under the cassock hem, then right foot, the monk advances in the direction of his gaze, raising the crucifix and rosary before him as he walks. His eyes move: turning his head, he looks to the raised cross and back to his subject. His mouth opens, then closes, affording a glimpse of teeth and interior. He bends his right arm and with the gathered fingers of his hand he strikes his breast. The small blow is audible. And now he is lowering and turning his head as he walks: the elbow and shoulder in synchronized motion he brings the cross higher, up to his lips, and kisses it. Thirty seconds into the act, he’s taken eight steps, beat his chest three times, kissed the cross, and traveled a distance of twenty inches. At what seems like the last moment - for doubtless the subject of his attention has backed away from the table’s edge - he looks away, arms still aloft, executes a turn to his right, and makes a new appointment. He will make seven such turns and advances in his campaign if the mainspring has been fully wound. The uninterrupted repetition corresponds exactly to a trance-like performance of prayer, incantation.

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