"Brazen Head" redirects here. For the pub reputed to be one of the oldest in Ireland, see The Brazen Head.
Roger Bacon's assistant Miles is confronted by the Brazen Head in a 1905 retelling of the story.
Abrazen head, brass, or bronze head was a legendary automaton in the early modern period whose ownership was ascribed to late medieval scholars, such as Roger Bacon, who had developed a reputation as wizards. Made of brassorbronze, the male head was variously mechanicalormagical. Like Odin's head of MimirinNorse paganism,[n 1] it was reputed to be able to correctly answer any question put to it, although it was sometimes restricted to "yes" or "no" answers. In the seventeenth century, Thomas Browne considered them to be misunderstanding of the scholars' alchemical work,[1] while in modern times, Borlik argues that they came to serve as "a metonymy for the hubrisofRenaissance intellectuals and artists".[2]Idries Shah devotes a chapter of his book The Sufis to providing an interpretation of this "head of wisdom" as well as the phrase making a head, stating that at its source the head "is none other than the symbol of the [Sufic] completed man."[3]
Chaucer's "The Squire's Tale" depicts a moving brazen horse among the gifts from an Arab and an Indian king to Cambuscan, and compares it to the Trojan horse.[4] It is likely that these accounts had their origin in allegorical treatments of alchemy[1] and in early machines whose owners pretended to have given them life or speech.[4] They may also have found inspiration in the Greek legends concerning Talos, the brass guardian of Minoan Crete.[5]
The first account of a talking head used to give its owner answers to his questions appears in William of Malmesbury's c. 1125History of the English Kings, in a passage where he collects various rumors surrounding the polymath Pope Sylvester II, who was said to have traveled to al-Andalus and stolen a tome of secret knowledge, whose owner he was only able to escape through demonic assistance.[6][7][n 2] He was said to have cast the head of a statue using his knowledge of astrology. It would not speak until spoken to, but then answered any yes/no question put to it.[6]
The heads were then ascribed to several of the major figures of the 12th- and 13th-century Renaissance, who introduced Europe to Arabian editions of Aristotelian logic and science, as well as the Muslims' own work on mathematics, optics, and astronomy. These included Robert Grosseteste,[11]Albertus Magnus, and—most famously[12]—Roger Bacon.[13] Grosseteste was said to have constructed "an hed of bras to... make it for to telle of suche thinges as befelle" over the course of seven years but then lost it through 30 seconds' neglect.[11] Its relics were supposedly held in a vault under Lincoln College.[14] Reports that Albertus Magnus had a head with a human voice and breath and "a certain reasoning process" bestowed by a cacodemon[15] eventually gave way to stories that he had built an entire automaton who was so overly talkative that his student Thomas Aquinas destroyed it for continually interrupting his train of thought.[4][14] Bacon, with the help of a Friar Bungy[14] or Bungay,[16] was said to have spent seven years building one of the devices in order to discover whether it would be possible to render Britain impregnable by ringing it with a wall of brass.[14][n 3] They only succeeded in their work once they compelled the assistance of a demon.[16] Like Grosseteste before them, however, they were said to have missed the decisive moment, either from forgetfulness[14] or exhaustion.[16] Having missed it, the head either collapsed or exploded[16] or was scrapped as useless.[14]
The talking "Skull of Balsamo" was a mechanical illusion of the ViennesemagicianJoseffy. The skull was made of painted copper inset with real human teeth, answering questions by turning or clicking its lower jaw.[23]
An Elizabethan woodcut of Miles playing his tambour while Friars Bacon and Bungay sleep and their Brazen Head speaks: "Time is. Time was. Time is past."
Miguel de Cervantes's 1605 Don Quixote lampoons the idea with Don Antonio Moreno's brazen head, created for him by a Polish pupil of "Escotillo"[24][25] but which is later revealed to be fake.
William Douglas O'Connor's 1891 "The Brazen Android" features Bacon attempting to use a steam-powered brazen head to terrify King Henry into meeting Simon de Montfort's demands for greater democracy, although he repents after his prototype explodes.[26][27]
James Baldwin's 1905 Thirty More Famous Stories Retold reset the story of "Friar Bacon and the Brazen Head" as a children's story.[28]
John Cowper Powys's 1956 The Brazen Head centres around Bacon and his eponymous head.
Philip K. Dick's 1967 The Zap Gun has a guidance system which is plowshared into "Ol' Orville", a featureless telepathic head sold as a novelty to the people of West-Bloc but which the protagonist consults for serious ontological and practical questions.
Avram Davidson's 1969 The Phoenix and the Mirror, set in a fantasy version of the Roman Empire, includes a talking head which gives its name to Vergil Magus's home, the House of the Brazen Head. It guards the house, welcomes visitors, and announces them to Vergil.
William Gibson's 1984 Neuromancer, set in the near-future "Sprawl", depicts a computer terminal, which is used to permit two artificial intelligences to merge into a superconciousness, as a gem-encrusted platinum head voiced by "a beautiful arrangement of gears and miniature organ pipes... a perverse thing, because synth-voice chips cost next to nothing..."[29]
Norman Rush's 1991 Mating, set in Botswana in 1980, features a character who nicknames US presidentRonald Reagan "The Brazen Head" through a garbled comparison with "Babylonian" idols supposedly "equipped with speaking tubes leading down into the bowels of the temple whence the priests would make the idol speak".
Tom Deitz's Soulsmith trilogy (1991–1993) features a protagonist who constructs a brazen head as his masterwork.
Gregory Frost's Shadowbridge novels (2008 and seq.) includes a lion-faced brass pendant which advises the protagonist.
Matthew J. Kirby's 2010 The Clockwork Three, set in the 19th century, includes a clockwork head, attributed to Albertus Magnus, that constantly repeats "Cur?" (Latin for 'Why?') until it is activated; afterwards, it speaks normally, but fails to understand any statement with the word why in it.
InThe Savage Empire, the first Worlds of Ultima game, a brass head can be found and eventually reunited with its bejeweled body, creating a golem-like automaton that joins the player's party.
A metal head, referred to as "the Hidden Knowledge", appears in Atlantis: The Lost Tales, described as being able to answer all questions. This head, however, appears to be made of steel or silver, rather than brass.
The Sample Dungeon written by J. Eric Holmes for the 1977 Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set rulebook contains a room in which "set into the stone of the west wall is a bronze mask, about the size of a manhole cover. The eyes and mouth are shut". A riddle is inscribed, which if solved will cause the mask to open its eyes and speak, answering one question per day.[30]
The scenario The Auction for the Call of Cthulhu role playing game centers around the theft and recovery of a brazen head that is reputed to give answers to any question related to the Mythos.[31]
The Brazen Head pub in Dublin, established in 1198 and over 800 years old, is the second oldest pub in Ireland. There is also a Brazen Head pub in Limerick.
^Malmesbury even notes that "probably some may regard all this as a fiction, because the vulgar are used to undermine the fame of scholars, saying that the man who excels in any admirable science, holds converse with the devil"[8] but professes himself willing to believe the stories about Sylvester because of the (spurious) accounts he had of the pope's "shameful end".[9] In fact, Sylvester's reputation as a sorcerer arose from the slanderous "Against Gregory VII and Urban II" (Latin: Contra Gregorium VII et Urbanum II), written c. 1085 by an imperial partisan—either St Benno of OsnabrückorCardinal Benno of San Martino—anxious to discredit the independent papacy amid the Investiture Controversy.[10]
^A project to construct a brass wall around Carmarthen had earlier been attributed to Merlin by the Welsh bards,[17] a story which reappeared in Spenser.[18]
