Poisonings in the Middle Ages.
The belief in the skill of the compounders of philtres and mysterious charms grew rather than diminished in the Middle Ages and as alchemy developed. In Sir Walter Scott’s “Talisman,” the tale of the Crusades, the western physician says, “The oily Saracens are curious in the art of poisons, and can so temper them that they shall be weeks in acting upon the party, during which time the perpetrator has leisure to escape. They can impregnate cloth and leather, nay, even paper and parchment, with the most vile and subtle venoms.”
Official records of the trial of a minstrel named Wondreton in Paris, in 1384, give a copy of instructions alleged to have been given to the accused by Charles the Bad, King of Navarre, who had employed this Wondreton to poison the then King of France, Charles VI, his brother, two uncles, and several dukes. The scheme was extraordinarily crude, although Charles the Bad was reputed to be an adept in alchemy. The minstrel was to buy “arsenic sublimat” from the hotels of the apothecaries in Pampeluna, Bordeaux, Bayonne, and other towns through which he would pass. He was to powder this, and get into the kitchens of the eminent persons who were to be his victims, and then, when he could do it with safety, he was to sprinkle some of the powder in the soups and meats served to the masters. Wondreton was arrested before he had done any mischief, and was executed.
King John of England is alleged to have caused Maud Fitzwalter to be killed in the Tower by a poisoned egg because she would not yield to his illicit passion.
The sorcery practised so largely in the Middle Ages must have frequently developed into poisoning. The philtres were to a large extent the same as those which the Romans had used. Opium, belladonna, datura, Cannabis Indica, and arsenic were capable of producing astonishing effects, and there was but little chance of detection except the chance which was just as likely to result in the conviction of an innocent as a guilty person. Poisons, or at least the terror of them, played a considerable part in the history of Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and the country acquired the nickname of Venenosa Italia. Even earlier the famous Venetian “Council of Ten” was believed to have made a systematic business of assassination by poison. It employed experts and had a regular tariff—so much for a king, so much for a duke and downwards, which was allowed, plus expenses. The crime having been accomplished, the books of the Council recorded the fee, and the single word “factum” was added. The Medicis and the Borgias, and other of the great aristocrats of the nation are supposed to have kept skilled poisoners in their pay. Giambaptista Porta, Mercurialis, and other scientific men wrote treatises on toxicology as it was understood at the period, coloured with exaggerated fancies such as would impress the common public, and tempt the criminally inclined. Porta, for example, describes the “magic unction” which witches were believed to employ. It was this which gave them power to fly through the air. He attributes this virtue to belladonna. With dulcamara they made a drugged cheese which they gave to travellers, and which had the effect of inducing the victims to fancy themselves beasts of burden. In this condition the adepts could set them to any work they wanted done, and, this performed, they gave them an antidote which restored them to their proper senses.