Marco Bragadino

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Marco Bragadino
engraving by Dominicus Custos

Marco Bragadino , actually Marco Antonio Mamugnà , (* around 1545 in Cyprus ; † April 26, 1591 in Munich ) was an Italian gold maker and impostor .

Life

Almost nothing is known about Bragadino's childhood and youth. After the Turkish conquest of Cyprus , his family, like many other Christian residents of the island, fled to Venice . In Venice, Bragadino probably came into contact with Hieronymus Scottus and from him learned the secrets of alchemy - especially gold-making - or at least the tricks of faking them. He chose his name after the defender of Famagusta against the Turks Marco Antonio Bragadin .

Years of traveling in Italy

It is not known why Bragadino had to leave Venice. Between 1574 and 1579 he stayed in Florence, where he had contact with the Tuscan Grand Duchess Bianca Cappello , whom he promised to cure her sterility with the help of the Philosopher's Stone . The relatively large sum of money (Minucci mentions at least 40,000 Scudi ) that Bragadino was able to dispose of for some time is likely to come from this business relationship . Bragadino fled from believers to Rome and became a monk in a Capuchin monastery there in 1586 . He received the lower ordinations and the first of the higher, thus became a subdeacon . In 1588, however, he left his monastery without permission and resumed his unsteady life. Stays in Geneva, England and France are attested. When he returned to Italy, he found himself exposed to the grip of the Inquisition , which persecuted him as an escaped monk, and made influential friends with his gold-making as a protection against it. The most prominent of these was the Duke of Mantua , whom he relieved by 25,000 scudi.

Venice

The Republic of Venice invited its former fellow citizen as a state guest to benefit from his skills. On November 26, 1589, Bragadino entered the city as a celebrated alchemist. Since, as before, he could not produce any significant amounts of gold, but only played for time, the ground gradually became too hot for him. In April 1590, he fled Venice for Padua .

Bavaria

In Padua he received the call of Duke Wilhelm V of Bavaria . In August 1590 Bragadino arrived at the Duke's court at Trausnitz Castle in Landshut . He quickly won the duke's trust because he not only promised to pay off the duchy's immense debts by producing lavish amounts of gold, but also offered to heal the duke himself, who was suffering from severe headaches, through his art. He also tried to obtain a dispensation from his spiritual consecration through the Duke's agent from the Pope , but to no avail.

The end

Since Bragadino did not succeed in producing the promised gold at the Bavarian court either, his critics became louder and more numerous. On March 24, 1591, at the instigation of the estates , he and his entourage were arrested without the knowledge of the duke. After he had confessed to his frauds under threat of torture , and even Duke Wilhelm could no longer ignore the knowledge that he had been caught by a fraud, he was sentenced to death on the gallows for fraud. Through intervention by the Jesuit side, the dishonorable execution by hanging was converted into death by the sword. The beheading on April 26, 1591 in front of a large crowd on the Munich wine market turned into a disaster because the executioner only managed to separate his head from his torso on the third blow.

Trivia

  • His significance as the dazzling figure of an alchemist at the Bavarian ducal court is still remembered today in the annual carnival lectures given by the Chair of Inorganic Chemistry at the Technical University of Munich .
  • Bragadino's adventurous life provides material for various themed tours in Munich and Landshut ( Trausnitz Castle ).

literature

  • Ivo Striedinger : The gold maker Marco Bragadino. Archival study on the cultural history of the 16th century . In: Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv (Hrsg.): Archivalische Zeitschrift . II. Supplement. Theodor Ackermann, Munich 1928, DNB  365607584 .
  • Hatto Kallfelz: The Cypriot alchemist Marco Bragadin and a Florentine embassy in Bavaria in 1590 . In: Commission for Bavarian State History (Hrsg.): Journal for Bavarian State History . tape 31 . CH Beck, Munich 1968, p. 475-500 ( digitale-sammlungen.de [accessed on 21 February 2018]).
  • Hatto Kallfelz:  Bragadin, Marco. In: Alberto M. Ghisalberti (Ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 13:  Borremans – Brancazolo. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 1971.
  • Oswald Bauer: Pasquille in the Fugger newspapers: ridicule and abusive poems between polemics and criticism (1568–1605) . In: Source editions of the Institute for Austrian Historical Research . tape 1 . Böhlau / Oldenbourg, Vienna / Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-205-77937-7 , pp. 100-117 .
  • Grete de Francesco : The Power of the Charlatan . Basel: Benno Schwabe, 1937, pp. 45–61

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Striedinger: The gold maker Marco Bragadino . 1928, p. 18-24 .
  2. ^ Striedinger: The gold maker Marco Bragadino . 1928, p. 126 .
  3. ^ Gustav Radbruch : History of Criminal Law . edited by Ulfrid Neumann . In: Arthur Kaufmann (Ed.): Gustav Radbruch Complete Edition . tape  11 . Müller, Heidelberg 2001, ISBN 3-8114-2147-6 , pp. 166 ( digitized version [accessed October 25, 2012]).
personal data
SURNAME Bragadino, Marco
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mamugnà, Marco Antonio; Bragadin, Markus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Venetian alchemist and impostor
DATE OF BIRTH around 1545
PLACE OF BIRTH Cyprus
DATE OF DEATH April 26, 1591
Place of death Munich , Duchy of Bavaria , Holy Roman Empire