A walking wonder

Jay Vickers delights in a 16th-century religious automaton

Miracles and Machines A Sixteenth-Century Automaton and its Legend Elizabeth King & H David Todd Getty Publications 2023 Hb, 246pp, £40, ISBN 9781606068397 This is a fascinating and beautifully illustrated book about an astounding little piece of machinery, just 16 inches (41cm) high, from the mid-16th century. It’s a wooden monk, which “walks and turns along a non-repeating path, striking his chest with one hand [in a mea culpa sign], raising and flourishing a small wooden cross with the other. As he walks, his head and his eyes pivot to gaze at the cross, then the onlookers, then the cross. His mouth opens and closes as in speech. From time to time he brings the cross to his lips and kisses it.” The monk, now housed at the Smithsonian, is…

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Fortean Times (Digital) - 1 Issue, 445

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