When I first started writing, I assumed that I would use Ramon Llull as a historical character in the novel, but I had a problem with doing this – I clashed against Llull’s religious persuasion, his stance on women and emphasis on conversion – and I also wanted to invent something new. I didn’t want to write purely historical fiction. So I decided to investigate the areas of Llull’s life which I found most opaque, most mysterious, and zeroed in on the circumstances of his death and what happened posthumously to his written work. Llull’s last work is written in Tunis, dated December 1315, after which point he vanishes from history. And here is where my eyes light up: two fascinating events occurred after Llull’s death, affecting his legacy dramatically. In the late 1300s his work ignited the ire of the Dominican Inquisitor General of Aragon – Nicholas Eymerich, who features in the novel as an ally of the Assassin of Words. At the same time, Llull posthumously becomes one of the most famous alchemists in the history of the European tradition.
The phenomena of Llullian Alchemy seems to have begun in 1332, only sixteen years after Llull’s death, with the appearance of a volume of chemical recipes called Testamentum, an alchemical tome written by an anonymous Catalan residing in London. I used this anonymous Catalan author as the direct inspiration for Rex Illuminatus. Following the publication of Testamentum, legends started circulating about the text, claiming that Ramon Llull learned the arts of transmutation from the Catalan alchemist Arnaldus of Villa Nova, and that Llull had faked his own death in order to begin secret work in London for the Abbot Cremer, who asked him to make gold for Edward III.
The success of Testamentum built into wave after wave of apocryphal ‘Llullian’ alchemical books – some of which you can call up today at the British Library. The pseudo-Llulls took on different variations of Llull’s name – Raymond Lully, Raymundus Lullius . . .
I felt that I had discovered an original conspiracy theory. I became fascinated with these pseudo-Llulls, and wondered if some could have been women.
The alchemical mutation of Llull’s legacy proved to be a gold mine. I wanted to invent a character who could be responsible for what the academics called the pseudo-Llull, and I would call this character Rex Illuminatus.
Alchemy
Pseudo-Llullian texts (of which there are many) constitute one of the largest and most universally influential bodies of medieval alchemical manuscripts. Excitingly, pseudo-Llullian alchemy is beginning to be explored by contemporary scholars, and you can find an excellent history of the subject in Lawrence M. Principe’s The Secrets of Alchemy, should the material interest you.
The first (and longest) of the pseudo-Llullian works is the Testamentum – the very volume that had appeared in London in 1332 written by an anonymous Catalan, who was presumed to be an immortal version of Ramon Llull. Now – while the anonymous Catalan never mentions Llull by name, a generation later the writer of a subsequent alchemical tome, the Book of the Secrets of Nature, cited Ramon Llull as the true author of the Testamentum, igniting and perpetuating the legend of Llull’s life as an alchemist.
The Testamentum defines alchemy as a hidden field of natural philosophy that teaches three essential lessons:
• How to transmute base metals
• How to augment human health
• How to forge and perfect precious gems and stones
But the bulk of the book focuses on one specific goal: the creation of the Philosopher’s Stone.
The Testamentum describes the Philosopher’s Stone as the ultimate panacea – a universal medicine that simultaneously ‘cures’ corrupt base metals by transmuting them into gold, heals imperfections in precious gems, and provides an antidote for illness in humans and animals (the stone is even capable of encouraging the growth of plants). It is a life-giving, life-purifying elemental force.
The pseudo-Llullian manuscripts popularized this idea that the Philosopher’s Stone was a powerful medicine – a cure-all for both man and metals – and emphasized the role of medicinal waters in alchemy. In doing so, these writers effectively pioneered a conceit that has carried through the conception of alchemy to the present day. They did not – however – consider the stone as an elixir of immortality – which is where my character, Rex Illuminatus divorces himself from the pseudo-Llullian corpus and his work becomes fiction.
But what concrete information could I glean about the author behind the Testamentum? Only that he lived in London, and his colophon in the manuscript suggested that he wrote near the Tower, during the reign of Edward III (1327-1377). In terms of facts, King Edward did indeed issue a new gold coinage called ‘nobles’ in 1344 and invaded France almost immediately following. Rumours circulated that the king had minted these new nobles from Llull’s alchemical gold and betrayed the alchemist, using the sacred gold to wage war on France, leading the pseudo-Llull to abandon England in moral frustration and disappear into hiding.
Other famous Catalan alchemists include John of Rupescissa and Arnaldus de Villa Nova – both of whom Rex Illuminatus references in the novel. All the recipes in the novel are inspired by real alchemical recipes I found during my research.
The Serpent Papers starts with a chapel hit by a bolt of lightning that reveals a book. Where did that idea come from? First – from walking the mountain trails between Valldemossa and Deia, where I discovered a 19th century Chapel of Ramon Llull , destroyed in the 1970s by a bolt of lightening. You can visit this chapel if you walk through the miradors of the Archduke Ludwig Salvator on Mallorca. I also drew inspiration from another alchemical folktale. In the 15th century, the alchemist and monk Basil Valentine was said to have hidden his legendary Last Will and Testament in the high altar of St. Peter’s Abbey in the German town of Erfurt. When a freak bolt of lightening destroyed a pillar in the church, Valentine’s secret manuscript was miraculously revealed inside.
Philomela
Women in alchemy are sometimes called Soror Mystica – mystical sister – and these women formed the original precedent for Philomela.
The Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist Carl Jung identified a young woman called Theosebia as an early Soror Mystica – a scholar who worked as the alchemical partner of Zosimos of Panopolis. (Other sources suggest that Theosobia may in fact have been Zosimos’s sister). Theosebia collaborated with Zosimos to write one of the world’s first alchemical encyclopedias, the Cheirokmeta (c.300 ce), consisting of twenty-eight books including the work of two more famous female alchemists – Mary Prophitissa (credited with the invention of the tribikos and bain-marie) and Cleopatra (not the queen, but another alchemical scientist).
A second source for representations of the Soror Mystica is the Mutus Liber (1677) – a manuscript containing fifteen exquisite engravings illustrating the numerous steps necessary to achieve alchemical success (beginning with prayer and the gathering of dew, and culminating in successful lunar and solar tinctures held aloft above a fire). The author – like so many creators of alchemical manuals – hides in anonymity, but the illustrator has done something interesting. The Mutus Liber depicts two alchemists – one male, one female, working alongside each other.
The Sibyl
While I was searching for the potential roots of my invented Philomela myth, I began digging into the history of the witch and pushed back and back until I found the Sibyl. I decided to connect Sibyls with the history of European witchcraft and the novel’s world exploded. It was like discovering a secret language. It was also an incredibly Gothic conceit. Who was this ancient, figure holding her scrolls and writing her books? I had heard of oracles. Why did I know nothing about Sibyls? Why had she disappeared from the lexicon?
Definition of ‘Sibyl’ from the Oxford English Dictionary:
‘1. A woman in ancient times who was thought to utter the prophecies of a god.
2. A woman able to foretell the future.’
The first record of the existence of the Sibyl comes from a fragment of Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher and historian, around 500 bce. This evocative
piece describes a woman with frenzied lips, speaking ancient prophetic words in the rough voice of a god. Heraclitus did not conjure the Sibyl out of nothing – but her true origins remain occluded in the murky prehistory of Greek religion – along with the meaning and source of her mysterious name.
In the ancient classical world, female ecstatic seers played a crucial role in the fabric of politics and faith. Some suggest that the Sibyl came into Greek religious culture via Ionia, where the Greeks had direct contact with the Near East. Contemporary scholarship links the emergence of Sibylline lore to a cave near Erythraea on the coast of Asia Minor. (The Sibyl likes caves. It is a theme that continues.) The Roman scholar Varro (116 BC – 27 BCE) records ten Sibyls: the Persian, the Libyan, the Delphic, the Cimmerian, the Erythraean, the Samian, the Cumaean, the Hellespontine, the Phrygian, and the Tiburtine.
I like to imagine the Pagan Sibyl working alone, crafting verses of original poetry as an autonomous author. She did not wait to answer questions, posed by the dignitaries of State or the High Priests of Apollo. She lived, virginal and wild, in the ancient forests, far removed from the walled cities and the pastoral meadows and she wrote prophecy. That is – she saw what was going to happen, and she bothered to write it down, despite the fact that nobody had asked for her opinion. In books, no less. There is a satisfying aura of mystery about her, a delicious and potent enigma.
Over a millennia later, the Sibyl would be etched into the façades of churches and enamelled onto boxes in Limoges. Her likeness would be painted by Raphael and Van Eyck, and Michelangelo immortalized her varied forms on the Sistine Chapel. She was heralded by Thomas of Celano as the equal of King David, while Augustine of Hippo cemented her role as pre-Christian figure of the City of God, giving voice to her terrifying and beautiful acrostic poetry. In her youth, the Sibyl rejected the love of Apollo and withered over the centuries into a voice trapped inside an ampulla or bell jar. She prophesied the conclusion of the Trojan War to Agamemnon and his army, and lead Aeneas by the hand through the underworld, showing him the future of Rome. The Sibyl always wrote in Greek hexameter verse, as the Sibyl of Cumae was said to have come from the Greek colony outside Naples. According to Early Christian lore, the Tiburtine Sibyl foretold the birth of Christ to the Roman Emperor Augustus.
In the Middle Ages the recognized number of Sibyls expanded to twelve to make room for a Hebrew and European Sibyl. In the novel, Anna Verco suggests that Philomela may have carried the writing of one of these ancient Sibyls on her person, and given this text to Rex Illuminatus.
Today the original pagan Sibylline verses of Rome (cited by Anna in the novel) are entirely disappeared. What we have instead are Christian and Jewish reinterpretations called the Oracula Sibyllina, assembled by a Byzantine scholar around the 6th century ce. This diverse opus consists of twelve books, numbered 1-8 and 11-14. Books 9 and 10 have been lost to history, and Book 7 has suffered the tribulations of time.
After surviving the decline of Paganism and the transition to Christianity, in the 17th century the Sibyl suddenly starts fading into oblivion. This fading interested me. I began to hunt for the Sibyl in English literature – and the results were breathtaking.
First I found the Sibyl inside the epigraph to T. S. Eliot’s The Wasteland, then I saw her lurking beside Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, and lingering in her poetry. The Sibyl appeared in Mary Shelley’s work, in Coleridge and Keats, then in Shakespeare . . . I chased her as she stretched back and back and back, morphing into her original form. I realized then that she had existed in Western literature through every century. A constant presence in the imagination of European popes, poets, philosophers, and theologians. And then I discovered that the Sibyl’s own written works had once constituted the most powerful texts in Roman Empire – the Libri Sibillini or Sibylline Books, which had, conveniently for my purposes, disappeared from history.
I thought – what if the original Sibylline Books were found by a modern scholar?
What if Sibyls were ‘palimpsested’ – like Archimedes or Cicero – but instead of a religious, Christian text above them, they were covered by the drawings of a medieval alchemist?
When I was in Mallorca I saw a poster for an event called The Song of the Sibyl – a tradition that began in the 10th century in southern France, and stretched into Catalonia, Castile and parts of Italy. The song was banned in the 16th century, but has since been reinstated in Catalonia, and has a special role on the island of Mallorca. In a matin before Christmas Eve, a woman robed in a white tunic trimmed in gold and silver holds an enormous sword in front of her nose and sings into the blade before a seated congregation. She sings a violent prophecy. An apocalyptic song based on the verses spoken by the Sibyl to Saint Augustine.
Why? I asked myself when I first saw her singing. Why is this clearly pagan woman singing about the Apocalypse on the eve of Christ’s birth? Why is she holding a sword? More importantly: what does it all mean? I’d like to think that the Sibyl exists at the frayed edges of Western, Christian history, at the uncomfortable overlap of conversion, of religion and faith.
The Mallorcan traditions of the Sibyl gave me the creative licence to invent Philomela and her Sibylline Books and then to bind her to Rex Illuminatus, himself the shadow of the Mallorcan mystic Ramon Llull. Both are, in that sense, distortions of a certain kind of historical truth.
And there you have it – the birth of the fictional, physical object – the mystical palimpsest: The Serpent Papers.
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