Criminalia

Welcome to first episode of a new season of Criminalia. This season we're talking about body snatchers, and the bodies they snatched. Ben Crouch was the son of a carpenter, and was a well-known prizefighter in his day. He’s described as a tall, flamboyantly-dressed man with a pox-marked face who loved to wear gold jewelry, especially gold rings. He could be violent and intimidating -- and he was the leader of London's most ...

In season 6 of Criminalia, you can expect to hear about those who dug up the dead for cash. Grave robbers dug up graves to steal valuable items that had been buried with the deceased. As did tomb raiders. They were known to take everything but the body. Body snatchers and resurrectionists, though, stole bodies from graves. The first recorded case of body snatching is attributed to four medical students in Bologna, Italy, in 1319 --...

Let’s talk about witch panic. If your crime is not of being a witch, but rather of falsely accusing and then punishing an alleged witch, what led up to that moment? Well, probably more than one thing. There’s a lot of talk about the religious factors that have long been part of purging witches, and while that’s often a fair explanation based on the time and place, it’s not the only explanation. Misogyny. Jealousy. Dreams. Lots of t...

There’s no mistaking that alchemy laid a foundation for the modern science of chemistry. And though the contributions of alchemists have been dismissed by scholars for years – centuries, to be more accurate -- some of the names we recognize as being influential in the early days of our modern sciences were also alchemists. Whether it was known they were practicing alchemists, that’s a different story.

See omnystudio.com/listener for...

Al-Fārābī learned from the Greeks, but he wrote for Muslims. This polymath translated Greek works on science and philosophy, offering important commentaries on both Aristotle and Plato -- in the Arabic language. You might be thinking, neither Plato nor Aristotle were nor are considered alchemists. Yes, but they formulated some ideas that went on to become part of the fabric of the traditions of alchemy, not only Arabic alchemy. And...

"One becomes two, two becomes three, and out of the third comes the One as the fourth.” That’s the most famous axiom attributed to Mary the Jewess, who, it’s said, is the first known alchemist of the Western world. She is known to have invented processes and apparatus that went on to be used for centuries, both in and out the scientific community – in fact one of them, you may have used in your home kitchen.

John Dee: scientist, or sorceror? Much evidence suggests he inspired Marlowe’s Faustus, Shakespeare’s Prospero, and Ben Johnson’s The Alchemist. He spent much of his life studying alchemy, divination, mathematics, and Hermetic philosophy -- and his library, it's said, housed an amazing 4,000 works. He was accused of using mathematics, of being a conjurer, and of spying for the English crown - which makes sense, because it's...

The idea of magic wasn’t strange in ancient Greece. But it has a noticeable overlap with what we’d consider science or religion today – with a dash of superstition thrown in for flavor. Magic, it was believed, could provide protection. It was a source of healing. It was a way to ensure you were successful in business, in love, and really in anything you wanted to be successful doing. It could also be used as a method for viewing an...

Her real name was Ursula Southeil, but she was known about town as Mother Shipton (and also “Hag Face”). She was believed to be the love child of a 15-year-old girl and the devil, himself. She was known as a powerful prophetess. While some scholars have argued that she a work of fiction, there are those, however, that argue she was an actual person, with her story embellished through local tradition into a folk legend.

The Pappenheimers were an itinerant family from Bavaria. Accused of murder and practicing black magic by just one person, a known thief, the family was tried and executed for having been instruments of the devil. Their trial was of one of the most well-publicized witch trials in German history, and it also exhibited sadistic accounts of torture.

See omnystudio...

Georg Honauer was maybe a scientist. He was maybe a goldsmith. He was definitely, a fraudulent alchemist in the service of Frederick I, Duke of Württemberg. And when he couldn't fulfill the sensational promises he made -- turning 2 tons of iron into 2 tons of gold, the duke ordered his execution. Welcome to Criminalia, where all that glitters is not gold.

...

Imagine one day your local pharmacist is arrested and accused of drinking the blood of infants and flying on the back of a goat to an orgy involving the devil. From the 14th through the 18th century, there were some wild superstitions about witches. The first witch to confess to riding a broom was a man: Guillaume Edelin. But it was Matteuccia di Francesco who was the first accused and tried for flying.

More than 500 years after his death, Heinrich Agrippa is considered one of the most influential occult philosophers of the early modern period. But not everyone in his lifetime was pleased with his theories and experimentation. While his work was denounced as heretical, it, and the work of fellow alchemists, laid the foundation for what we now call chemistry.

...