JAD ABUMRAD: Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT KRULWICH: I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: Today on Radiolab.

ROBERT: It's ghost stories.

JAD: Yeah.

ROBERT: And this one, well, this one is going to take us into a machine.

LATIF NASSER: All right, my name is Latif Nasser.

JAD: He's not a machine. He's a grad student.

LATIF: In the history of science department at Harvard.

JAD: But he did get us thinking about really old robots. One in particular that was ...

ROBERT: Actually was kind of haunting.

LATIF: So the year is 1562. This is 450 years ago.

JAD: Not so long after Columbus.

ROBERT: Yeah. Ferdinand and Isabella are dead, and there's a new king of Spain.

JAD: Phillip.

ROBERT: Phillip, yeah. And he has a son.

LATIF: the 17-year-old crown prince, his name's Don Carlos.

JAD: And one day ...

LATIF: He's in the royal lodgings, he's walking down a flight of stairs, he trips, he falls, he bashes his head against a door near the bottom of the stairs.

ROBERT: Mmm.

JAD: This is the crown prince, you say?

LATIF: The crown prince of Spain.

JAD: So this is a national calamity.

LATIF: It is a national calamity because he's the heir apparent, right?

JAD: Hmm.

LATIF: So—so, well, at first it doesn't look like it's such a bad injury. He's still conscious, but then his head starts to swell to this kind of crazy size. He becomes delirious and feverish. He's struck blind.

JAD: Ooh!

LATIF: And so at this point, the king comes, right? This is King Phillip II. So he is—at this time, he is the most powerful man in the world, right? So he basically controls the—all of the Americas, he controls much of Europe, the Philippines is named after him.

JAD: He was tight with the Pope.

LATIF: At this time, the Pope and the king were like, you know, BFFs.

JAD: Yeah.

LATIF: So the whole Spanish court is going nuts. Across the country, people are seeing this, reading this, as a kind of sign that God's very angry, right?

JAD: Yeah.

LATIF: And so they're fasting, they're doing these kinds of prayer processions, things like this.

JAD: And according to Latif, the king calls all the best doctors in Europe to come to Spain to help his son. And these doctors are trying everything.

LATIF: They are drilling a hole in his skull.

JAD: To relieve the pressure?

LATIF: To relieve the pressure. They are bleeding him, and blistering him, and they are purging him to the extent that he has, like, 20 bowel movements within just, like, a certain few hours.

JAD: [laughs]

LATIF: They're, like, smearing all over the wound, they're smearing like turpentine and honey.

JAD: Wow. Poor Don Carlos!

LATIF: Even after all of this, they sort of look at each other, they look at him, and it's kind of like, this is—he's gonna die. It's ...

JAD: So he's dying.

LATIF: Yeah. He's basically on his deathbed.

JAD: So at this point, according to Latif, the king goes to his son.

LATIF: Legend goes that he kneels beside his son at his son's deathbed, and he makes a pact with God. The pact is, "If you help me, if you heal me son, if you do this miracle for me, I'll do a miracle for you."

JAD: Wow, that's quite hubristic of a human being to say to God.

LATIF: Well, let's also remember that's he's—he's the most powerful man in the world at this point.

JAD: He's a god among men, really.

LATIF: Hubristic or not, this is—this is what he says.

JAD: Yeah, okay.

LATIF: All of a sudden, his son just gets better.

JAD: Really?

LATIF: Within a week he can see again. Within a month he—it's as if he didn't fall at all.

JAD: He just pops right back up.

LATIF: Yeah.

ROBERT: And King Phillip must have thought, "Oh my god. This is amazing"

JAD: Exactly! My God! That's probably exactly what he thought!

ROBERT: [laughs]

JAD: And when his son can finally speak he says to him, "Dad, you know, the weirdest thing happened when I was out. I had this dream."

ELIZABETH KING: Oh, that's a great story.

JAD: This is Elizabeth King.

ELIZABETH KING: I'm an artist and a professor in the sculpture department at Virginia Commonwealth University.

JAD: And she's actually the one that hooked Latif on the story.

LATIF: Yep.

JAD: In any case, the dream.

ELIZABETH KING: There are documents of Don Carlo next morning, saying that he had had a dream.

LATIF: This vision.

ELIZABETH KING: That a figure ...

LATIF: In a Franciscan habit.

ELIZABETH KING: Shaved head.

ROBERT: Sharp nose.

ELIZABETH KING: This marvelous monk.

JAD: Entered his room.

LATIF: And approached his deathbed, holding a cross, and basically told him, "You're gonna be fine."

ELIZABETH KING: And that's quite well-documented.

ROBERT: Apparently, there was a witness in the room.

ELIZABETH KING: In the sick room with him that night.

ROBERT: Who overheard the prince talking to a ghost, sort of mumbling things in his delirium.

JAD: So Don Carlos has this dream. Suddenly he's fine. And the natural question that people are asking is, "Who is this monk?"

LATIF: Yeah.

ELIZABETH KING: Yeah.

ROBERT: I mean, is it just a generic monk, or is it somebody specific? Some messenger from God?

JAD: And from his description ...

LATIF: Physical description and ...

JAD: The shaved head, the ...

ROBERT: The pointy nose, monk's habit.

JAD: Piercing eyes. Even the kind of cross he was using, everybody in town, the king, everyone was like, "Oh yeah."

LATIF: Like, "We know exactly who this guy is."

JAD: "Can only really be one guy."

LATIF: A kind of local friar, who died a hundred years before, named Diego de Alcala.

JAD: Diego de Alcala.

JAD: Who is he?

ELIZABETH KING: He is a local holy figure whose corpse was associated with a number of documented miracles.

JAD: In fact, this guy was so holy in this town ...

ROBERT: Mm-hmm.

JAD: Actually not just in the town, you wanna know something?

ROBERT: What?

JAD: Here's a bit of trivia. Ever heard of San Diego?

ROBERT: California, you mean?

JAD: Yeah, as in the Padres?

ROBERT: What does have to—is this the same guy?

JAD: Same guy!

ROBERT: The same guy? This Saint Diego?

JAD: This is the patron saint of the people who founded San Diego!

ROBERT: Oh my! He is holy! All right. So there you go.

JAD: There you go. So he was so holy in this town that people believed his corpse, his 100-year dead corpse, had healing powers.

LATIF: And some people—there are different stories, but some people say that even—they—these ...

JAD: That unbeknownst, Don Carlos, that night that he had the dream ...

ELIZABETH KING: The priesthood and the king himself, according to some stories, went and they got this corpse out of the church, out of the crypt, they carried it through the streets, they brought it to the bedroom, they ...

LATIF: Literally put it—they sort of snuck it in bed with Don Carlos, and that's how he healed.

JAD: Eww!

ROBERT: They didn't stick him in bed with his bones, right?

JAD: Did they? Did they?

ROBERT: They just—they kind of brought him into the room.

ELIZABETH KING: There's different reports.

JAD: [laughs]

ROBERT: Oh!

ELIZABETH KING: There's a picture of it in this engraving.

JAD: Oh!

ELIZABETH KING: And if you can—you probably can't see it ...

JAD: Wait.

ELIZABETH KING: ... but look at this picture right here.

ROBERT: She had a copy of a 16th—roughly a 16th-century woodcut showing you this scene.

JAD: Where you could kind of see.

JAD: Oh wait! So there!

ROBERT: There he is! They're taking him over the bed!

JAD: He's in bed!

JAD: The two men in bed together—or about to be.

ELIZABETH KING: Well they could be—you know, they could be just laying him down.

ROBERT: Okay.

JAD: [laughs]

ROBERT: Caught in the middle.

ELIZABETH KING: We're seeing it ...

JAD: Meanwhile, back to our story. You've got Phillip II who has asked God for a miracle, God came through, through this monk, and now Phillip II is like, "Uh oh."

LATIF: "I gotta deliver." King Phillip II owes God a miracle.

JAD: Yes, he does.

LATIF: And he is acutely aware of this. So basically what he does is he enlists this really renowned clockmaker.

JAD: A clockmaker?

LATIF: Yeah, named Juanelo Turriano

JAD: Juanelo Turriano.

LATIF: Yeah.

ELIZABETH KING: A huge man, a big ox of a man. Described as always being filthy and blustery, and not a lot of fun to be around. But a great, great clockmaker.

JAD: Certainly among the best.

ELIZABETH KING: In Spain.

ROBERT: Maybe the entire Holy Roman Empire.

LATIF: So the king goes to this guy, and he says, "Look, I want you to make a mechanical version of Diego de Alcala."

ROBERT: What?

JAD: A mechanical version of this 100-year dead holy priest?

LATIF: Yes. Like a mechanical monk.

ROBERT: A robotic padre.

LATIF: Yeah.

JAD: Which—and this I did not expect—still exists!

LATIF: Now the monk-bot is in the Smithsonian. Perfect working order.

JAD: No way!

LATIF: I swear! I swear that it's since 1977.

JAD: No!

LATIF: Yeah!

CARLENE STEPHENS: The first time I saw this figure, I was drawn to it and then repelled.

JAD: That's Carlene Stephens, she is a curator at the Smithsonian in DC. About a week after Latif and I spoke, we ended up in DC meeting with her and she showed us ...

LATIF: Oh wow!

JAD: ... the monk! Who lives in a little glass case.

CARLENE STEPHENS: What we have here is an automaton, over 400 years old.

JAD: Is this the first robot that we know of?

CARLENE STEPHENS: No.

JAD: Wow.

LATIF: No.

JAD: No, idiot.

CARLENE STEPHENS: No. The ancient Greeks had things that could be considered robots.

JAD: Okay, back to our story. 450-some odd years ago, our clockmaker, what's his name?

ROBERT: Turriano.

JAD: Turriano.

ROBERT: He goes into his shop and he does whatever he does.

JAD: Connects one gear to another, to another.

ROBERT: For hours.

JAD: Weeks, months.

LATIF: No idea how long it takes, and I don't think anybody does.

JAD: But he emerges one day into the bright sunshine with, what did you call it?

ROBERT: A robotic padre.

JAD: Yeah.

LATIF: It's a 15-inch high ...

CARLENE STEPHENS: Figure.

LATIF: Made of wood and iron, has the sort of habit, has the sandals, has the rosary, has the cross.

JAD: And poking out of the top of the habit, is a little ...

CARLENE STEPHENS: Bald, hairless head.

JAD: With that sharp nose, like a—like a razor.

CARLENE STEPHENS: And the rather ferocious eyes.

ROBERT: Like intense? Or like doing business ferocious?

JAD: More like, "I'm focused."

ROBERT: I'm focused.

JAD: Like, "Maybe I'm only 15 inches tall, but I am focused on something much bigger than you, you human!"

ROBERT: So did you, like, turn it on, or push something?

JAD: Yeah! Well why would I go on a train and go for three hours just to look at it?

ROBERT: [laughs] All right, obvious question.

CARLENE STEPHENS: Okay, do you wanna wind it?

LATIF: Sure!

JAD: Yeah.

CARLENE STEPHENS: Okay.

LATIF: Okay.

JAD: Do it.

JAD: So Carlene takes us out into the hall, and we sit down on the floor. She gives Latif a little brass key, he sticks it into the secret slot in the monk's side.

CARLENE STEPHENS: And I think it goes counter clockwise.

LATIF: Okay.

CARLENE STEPHENS: You would tend to want to do it this way.

JAD: And Latif winds up the monk.

LATIF: And I'm turning it counter clockwise, and it's surprisingly sort of taut. How much should I turn it?

LATIF: And so if you sort of wind up this sort of secret spring ...

CARLENE STEPHENS: I think there's a stop and then it'll ...

LATIF: Okay. All right, I'm going. I'm going.

LATIF: Put it on the ground.

CARLENE STEPHENS: Well just ...

LATIF: All right.

CARLENE STEPHENS: Let him go.

LATIF: Yeah.

CARLENE STEPHENS: Give him a push.

LATIF: Okay.

LATIF: It'll walk very slowly.

CARLENE STEPHENS: One foot after the other coming out from under the cassock. In fact, there's actually little wheels under there. And yet you see the feet coming out. The head is turning from right to left. The eyes are rolling in the head, the mouth is opening, closing.

LATIF: As if it's sort of muttering like a prayer.

CARLENE STEPHENS: The arms are in motion. One arm is raising and lowering a cross. The other arm is beating the chest.

JAD: Wow!

CARLENE STEPHENS: A symbolic gesture to a Catholic that is called the mea culpa. After three or four steps, the arm holding the cross does something new. It moves two different, new directions to bring the cross to the mouth. And the figure kisses the cross.

LATIF: Whoa.

JAD: It's oddly, like, mesmerizing

CARLENE STEPHENS: Yes.

LATIF: Yeah.

CARLENE STEPHENS: The next thing it's doing is that it's turning and moving in a different direction, and then walking its paces and kissing the cross.

JAD: As we watched it, it turned once, then twice, then three times, four times, then it got back to where it started.

CARLENE STEPHENS: So if you imagine a table with a number of people sitting around it, probably it's gonna sort of, at one point or another, head for you, and then turn away and head for someone else, and then turn away.

JAD: Wow.

ROBERT: Why would the king of Spain, who could have, you know, I don't know, built a church, or taken a crusade to Jerusalem, or done something, you know, he could have done anything. Why did he decide to commemorate his son's revival by making a little automatic doll? Like, what was that for?

JAD: Yeah, Latif, what was he thinking?

LATIF: Yeah, it's a good ...

ELIZABETH KING: That's the $64,000 question

LATIF: It's a great question.

CARLENE STEPHENS: It's a really good question.

JAD: The truth is, there's really no way to know for sure.

CARLENE STEPHENS: As a historian, I gotta—I gotta rely on the documentation.

JAD: And there's not a whole lot of that in this case. But one interpretation certainly could be that, you know, the king had this amazing, miraculous thing happen to his son. And now he had a way of sharing that with his subjects. Because he's got this device, it's an illusion, the machinery of it is completely hidden.

LATIF: There's no visible—yeah, that's one of the craziest parts, that it's all sort of hidden underneath the robe.

JAD: So when he put it down on a table, or in a courtyard, people would have seen it move on its own, they would have been amazed—as we were—and he could have said, "Look! Here is the miracle! Look what God did for our country!"

ROBERT: God likes Spaniards!

JAD: Yeah, look at what God did for Spain!

ROBERT: Hmm.

JAD: Which would have been a useful thing for a king to be able to say, right?

ROBERT: Yep.

JAD: So that's one, that's one possibility. The other is just on a more utilitarian level, this was a machine that was built to pray.

ELIZABETH KING: And this was a period when you could buy prayer repetitions.

JAD: So if you had the money ...

ELIZABETH KING: You could get someone to pray for you while you do something else.

JAD: Oh, that's so cool!

ROBERT: So you're—so you're covered.

ELIZABETH KING: You're covered.

JAD: And if you think of it from Phillip's perspective, he needed to say thank you to God, and here he had this thing that if he wound up, was an automated thank you machine.

ROBERT: Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

JAD: Yeah, thank you, thank you, thank you.

ROBERT: Or could be ...

JAD: I love you, I love you, I love you.

LATIF: It could also be, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

JAD: [laughs]

ROBERT: [laughs]

ELIZABETH KING: Or it could also be, please, please, please, please, please.

JAD: Whatever you need. But if you think about it more expansively, says Latif, like what did it mean at that time to be a Catholic? Like, what did it really mean? Well then, this robot was maybe the best Catholic you could ever hope to be.

LATIF: What counted as prayer was quite specific in the sense that if you say the right things and do the right actions, in the right order, in the right time, and in the right place—sort of, that's prayer. That's when God notices.

JAD: So it's about method.

LATIF: It's about method, it's about ...

JAD: And maybe this monk, he says, was like method embodied.

CARLENE STEPHENS: That's a good one. I mean, why not? It is, in fact, perfect. It repeats itself over and over and over. And it replicates the ideal.

LATIF: So it's basically, what it is, is ...

ELIZABETH KING: A little teaching object.

LATIF: Like this is what you're aiming for.

ELIZABETH KING: Here's how you do it.

LATIF: This is it, this is the perfect prayer.

JAD: The perfect prayer.

LATIF: This is doing it the perfect way every time. And I—because I'm just this, you know, this lowly, imperfect human, I'm not. I can only aspire to this perfect piety.

JAD: Are you making this up, or do you think that this might—the monk might have actually been seen this way?

LATIF: It could be true! I don't think it's so crazy!

JAD: Especially if you think about what was happening at that moment. And this is counter-Reformation Spain, right?

LATIF: Not so long after Luther, you know, is nailing his theses on the wall ...

JAD: And there's this big debate raging about how actually do you get closer to God?

LATIF: You have the kind of protesters with Luther, who are saying, "It's not about, you know, works, it's not about saying something this many times, it's about whether you feel it." And then you have the kind of Catholic argument, which is to say, "You do these rituals, because these are the rituals and these are the way you get—this is the way you get close to God. This is the way you pray."

JAD: You pray like this thing.

ROBERT: Just like this thing. And if you're a Catholic king, and if God's a Catholic—and you better hope he is ...

JAD: And if you're Phillip II, you look at this guy, and you say, "God, you and me are square."

ROBERT: Special thanks to Latif Nasser and to Sarah Abdul Rahman ...

JAD: Sarah!

ROBERT: ... for production help on this story.

JAD: Thanks also to the amazing Elizabeth King, Carlene Stephens at the Smithsonian, and to David Todd. He constructed a replica of the monk which is actually what we heard moving around.

ROBERT: Oh.

JAD: Because the monk itself is very old and you don't want to be winding that thing.

ROBERT: Mm-hmm.

JAD: But big thanks to David Todd, we couldn't have done this piece without him. And actually, he and Elizabeth King will be publishing a book soon, which is called ...

ROBERT: A Machine, a Ghost, and a Prayer.

JAD: The story of a 16th-century mechanical monk. And thanks lastly to Steven Vitiello, who recorded clock sounds in David Todd's workshop, which we used in the piece. I'm exhausted from those thank yous. So much gratitude.

ROBERT: And of course, thank you for listening.

JAD: Yes. I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT: I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: Bye.

[LATIF: Hello, hello. Latif Nasser. Calling in for the credits. Radiolab is produced by Jad Abumrad. Our staff includes Ellen Horne, Soren Wheeler, Pat Walters, Tim Howard, Brenna Farrell, Melissa—Melissa—Melissa—Malissa O'Donnell, Dylan Keefe, Lynn Levy and Sean Cole. With help from Daisy Rosario and, is it Nas? Nasha? Nadia Wilson. Thanks guys. All right, thanks very, very much, you guys.]

[ANSWERING MACHINE: End of mailbox.]

 

-30-

Copyright © 2024 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of programming is the audio record.