Speaker 1: Pushkin. This is the second of two episodes about Elizabethan's
Speaker 1: scholar John D. Last episode, D's predictions secured the favor
Speaker 1: of Queen Elizabeth, but a scheme he backed to find
Speaker 1: the Northwest Passage ended in humiliation. At the castle of
Speaker 1: Treybon in southern Bohemia, a plume of thick gray smoke
Speaker 1: rises from the roof of the gatehouse. The year is
Speaker 1: fifteen eighty six, and inside an experiment is underway. A
Speaker 1: glass vessel shaped like an egg sits atop a furnace.
Speaker 1: A young man wearing a cowl hunches over it, feeding
Speaker 1: charcoal into the stack. He's been doing this for weeks now,
Speaker 1: at regular and frequent intervals. In the time before thermometers,
Speaker 1: controlling temperature is a delicate art. This furnace and the
Speaker 1: glass egg on top must remain at a constant. At
Speaker 1: the other end of the room is an older man,
Speaker 1: John D, the famous mathematician. John D is focusing intently
Speaker 1: on the glass vessel, quill scratching into parchment as he
Speaker 1: takes notes. He's hoping to see a change in the
Speaker 1: mysterious white matter inside it. No, he's willing it to change,
Speaker 1: to turn deep red a sure sign that they're on
Speaker 1: the right path. Their backer, the nobleman who owns traybon cars,
Speaker 1: needs results. D himself has bet everything, his career, his standing,
Speaker 1: his home on this venture, and the cow clad man
Speaker 1: hunched over the furnace. They've been iterating with all sorts
Speaker 1: of ingredients, salts, earth, suspended in water, horse manure, menstrual blood.
Speaker 1: They're objective to bring forth a substance that has been
Speaker 1: sought for centuries, but seldom, if ever obtained, a substance
Speaker 1: so powerful that it can force base metal into gold
Speaker 1: and even keep a man from death. John D and
Speaker 1: his associate are searching for the fabled Philosopher's Stone. A
Speaker 1: chill autumn wind whips around the castle walls, whistling through
Speaker 1: cracks in the masonry. John D puts down his quill
Speaker 1: and waits, I'm Tim Harford, and you're listening to cautionary tales.
Speaker 1: John D believed that numbers held the key to the universe,
Speaker 1: and he'd bet on navigation and exploration as the tools
Speaker 1: to reveal its hidden architecture. Around his fiftieth birthday, he
Speaker 1: had championed a mission to find the Northwest Passage. When
Speaker 1: it failed, D was devastated. He lost his reputation, his money,
Speaker 1: and his self confidence. Seeking a second chance at unraveling
Speaker 1: nature's secrets, he turned to the world of spirits. Good
Speaker 1: Christians believed in angels and in their ability to see
Speaker 1: the future. It was more transgressive, though, to actively seek
Speaker 1: their advice. The people who did this were called scriers.
Speaker 1: They would speak to angels and spirits by looking into
Speaker 1: a shiny showstone, such as a mirror or a crystal ball.
Speaker 1: Since scrying meant bypassing the church, it wasn't uncommon to
Speaker 1: find that a scrier was on the run, and because
Speaker 1: of their sensitivity to the occult, they also tended to
Speaker 1: be rather eccentric. Dee's first scrying partner ended up in
Speaker 1: court facing criminal charges. But then a mysterious stranger appeared
Speaker 1: at D's door under portentous skies of deep arterial red.
Speaker 1: The stranger introduced himself as Edward Talbot, a distant kin
Speaker 1: to the Talbot Earls of Shrewsbury. He was young, walked
Speaker 1: with the aid of a staff, and kept his head
Speaker 1: covered by a hood. He also seemed to be intelligent
Speaker 1: and better educated than the average sqrire. There was something
Speaker 1: captivating about him. D decided to give him a chance.
Speaker 1: In March fifteen eighty two, Talbot knelt in D's study
Speaker 1: amid stacks of books and manuscripts and peered into a dark,
Speaker 1: gleaming mirror. Himself retreated to a nearby room to pray.
Speaker 1: A few minutes later, he heard Talbot cry out, and
Speaker 1: he hurried back. The angel Uriel had made contact. D
Speaker 1: was hooked, and he wasted no time in asking Uriel
Speaker 1: via Talbot about the mysterious angelic language, a lost tongue
Speaker 1: encoded in a divine cipher that was believed to mirror
Speaker 1: the structure of creation. Talbot's next revelation was extraordinary. The
Speaker 1: archangel Michael would help D recover the angelic language. D
Speaker 1: was awestruck. If this was true, it would unlock the
Speaker 1: price that he had long sought the hidden workings of
Speaker 1: the universe, and he would be instrumental in restoring lost
Speaker 1: knowledge to humanity. What must I do to have the
Speaker 1: sight and presence of Michael, the blessed Angel?
Speaker 2: In voke our presence with sincerity. These things are revealed
Speaker 2: in virtue, not by force.
Speaker 1: D was grateful and relieved Talbot was reporting exactly what
Speaker 1: he'd hoped for. Talbot's sudden appearance in Mortlake raised a
Speaker 1: few eyebrows. His past was murky, and some of the
Speaker 1: villagers said that he was wanted for forging documents. Forgery
Speaker 1: carried a lasting punishment, the brutal clipping of the ears.
Speaker 1: Talbot always kept his ears carefully hidden beneath his cowl,
Speaker 1: and on the odd occasion anyone caught sight of them,
Speaker 1: one of them appeared curiously diminished. D had his doubts
Speaker 1: about the man, but he managed to suppress them. Scrias
Speaker 1: were itinerant by nature, so a nebulous past was normal,
Speaker 1: And besides, Talbot was prodigiously talented. His visions majestic and elaborate.
Speaker 1: D recorded them all in his diary, Convinced that he'd
Speaker 1: at last found the partner had been looking for. His
Speaker 1: entries were detailed and methodical. Within days, the scrier's visions escalated.
Speaker 1: The great Archangel Michael appeared in the mirror, sword in hand,
Speaker 1: and there was a man there too. He was kneeling
Speaker 1: with his back to Talbot, who couldn't see his face.
Speaker 1: The archangel tapped the man with his blade, as though
Speaker 1: dubbing a knight. Then the man rose and turned, and
Speaker 1: the scrire revealed his identity. He did resemble me. John
Speaker 1: d Encountenance, the d of Talbot's vision had been anointed,
Speaker 1: chosen for some higher task. It was a seductive story,
Speaker 1: one that the real flesh and blood d simply couldn't resist.
Speaker 1: Talbot and d continued scrying together. Each session D led
Speaker 1: them in the same preparatory ritual. They washed, shaved, dressed
Speaker 1: in fresh clothes, read from the scriptures, and prayed faced,
Speaker 1: seeing all four points of the compass. As the months passed,
Speaker 1: more angels identified themselves, explaining their places in the spiritual hierarchy.
Speaker 1: Talbot had exhausting apocalyptic visions of fire and brimstone that
Speaker 1: left his heart palpitating furiously, and archangel Michael began to
Speaker 1: dictate a holy table of numbers with a sacred sigel
Speaker 1: at its center. It was all going rather well until
Speaker 1: it wasn't. A few months later, De wrote a grim
Speaker 1: note in his diary. I have confirmed that Talbot was
Speaker 1: a cossoner. A cosoner was a fraud. Fast forward nearly
Speaker 1: four hundred and fifty years to the town of Agd
Speaker 1: in France. It's twenty twenty and Gield Detour is speaking
Speaker 1: with his father. That might seem unexceptional, but for one detail.
Speaker 1: Gild De'tur's father died over twenty years ago. A woman
Speaker 1: called Sophia Martinez has helped them reconnect. Martinez describes herself
Speaker 1: as a medium, hypnotherapist and healer, a specialist in the
Speaker 1: cleansing of energy for people and places. Her clients have
Speaker 1: included doctors, architects, and police officers, and she comes highly recommended.
Speaker 1: Detur himself used to be a Secret Service officer, but
Speaker 1: he's now the mayor of agd. His father ran for
Speaker 1: mayor too, but he passed away just before the votes
Speaker 1: were cast. Detur took up the torch and he's held
Speaker 1: since two thousand and one. He misses his father immensely.
Speaker 1: As time passes, he continues to consult Martinez. One day,
Speaker 1: when Detur is in his office at the town hall,
Speaker 1: his phone buzzes. It's dark, gleaming screen lighting up. The
Speaker 1: call is from a withheld number, Hello, Gesutor. The voice
Speaker 1: is guttural and rasping. Who is this?
Speaker 2: It is the archangel Michael, Prince of the heaven Leos.
Speaker 1: The Archangel Michael, leader of God's Army on the phone
Speaker 1: to him. If Detur is stunned, he's also credulous. As
Speaker 1: journalist Leo Chic reports in the podcast series The Mystic
Speaker 1: and the Mayor, he manages to answer the great Angel.
Speaker 1: He asks him about the afterlife, and Michael tells the
Speaker 1: tour that he has messages for him from his father.
Speaker 1: The calls keep coming. Before long, Michael asks the Mayor
Speaker 1: to call him Papa. In Mortlake fifteen eighty two, John
Speaker 1: D had made a discovery. His scrier's name wasn't Edward Talbot,
Speaker 1: but Edward Kelly, and he certainly wasn't related to the
Speaker 1: Talbot Earls of Shrewsbury. He'd given his master a fake identity. Talbot,
Speaker 1: or rather Kelly, defended himself. He got his hands on
Speaker 1: d diary, and beneath the charge of cousiner, he scrawled
Speaker 1: his own affronted entry.
Speaker 2: A horrible and slanderous lie.
Speaker 1: When D's wife Jane learned of the skrier's treachery, she
Speaker 1: flew into a marvelous rage. She'd never liked the man.
Speaker 1: He was mercurial and prone to wild, drunken outbursts. According
Speaker 1: to D, her fury lasted all evening and all night.
Speaker 1: D agreed that Kelly's deceit was abominable, but it was
Speaker 1: also true that a fake name didn't automatically make him
Speaker 1: less talented, quite the opposite. In fact, skill at scrying
Speaker 1: often went hand in hand with peculiarity. D now faced
Speaker 1: a dilemma. On the one hand, Ayane detested the man
Speaker 1: and wanted him gone from her house. On the other,
Speaker 1: they'd been making good progress in their work. The angelic
Speaker 1: language glittered just ahead or without Kelly, the signal from
Speaker 1: the heavens would go cold. Should he abandon the project,
Speaker 1: or choose to trust Kelly and plow on his wife,
Speaker 1: or his scrire cautionary tales will return. D managed to
Speaker 1: suppress his doubts. A few months later, he reunited with
Speaker 1: Kelly and offered him a place in his household. Jane
Speaker 1: Dee's loathing was but there was nothing she could do.
Speaker 1: Her husband was spellbound. De pledged Kelly a salary of
Speaker 1: fifty pounds per year. He was in debt and struggling
Speaker 1: for an income, but he was hardened by a reassuring
Speaker 1: forecast the Queen's glowing favor would soon return. The Queen's
Speaker 1: favor did not return, and other courtiers gave him the
Speaker 1: cold shoulder, but the angels had a ready explanation.
Speaker 2: Whom God commonly chooseth shall be whom the princes of
Speaker 2: the earth disdain.
Speaker 1: Dee's isolation was a badge of honor, proof of his
Speaker 1: cosmic significance. Trouble reared its head again. Kelly told Dee
Speaker 1: that a London surgeon was hounding him over for some
Speaker 1: fraudulent scheme. His wife Joanna had been forced into hiding.
Speaker 1: D wasn't too concerned. More pressing was that he couldn't
Speaker 1: obey the angel's latest command. They were to leave England
Speaker 1: because the apocalypse was coming, but they had no money
Speaker 1: for passage or lodgings. For now, they were stuck. In
Speaker 1: spring fifteen eighty three, as d and Kelly were busy
Speaker 1: transcribing the Angelic language, Prince Laski of Poland paid a
Speaker 1: visit to the English court. A distinctive figure, Laski wore
Speaker 1: his long white beard tucked into his belt, and gold
Speaker 1: and yellow shoes that curled the toes. He was charismatic,
Speaker 1: fabulously wealthy, and a favorite of his king. The Prince
Speaker 1: took an interest in d and Kelly's work and he
Speaker 1: visited them in Mortlake with a high stakes question for
Speaker 1: the angels. Would he Laski be the next king of Poland? Yes,
Speaker 1: said the angels, The crown would very soon be his.
Speaker 1: Did d and Kelly believe this forecast? Or was it
Speaker 1: calculated flattery? D, after all, had once profited by predicting
Speaker 1: the rise to power of Queen Elizabeth herself. Lasky was thrilled,
Speaker 1: offered to fund a journey in Europe and pledge D
Speaker 1: a salary of fifty pounds per year to the angel
Speaker 1: whisperer Kelly. He offered twice as much, but D learned
Speaker 1: that the Queen's spies had made a shocking discovery. Laski
Speaker 1: was not beloved by the King of Poland. In fact,
Speaker 1: it had been exiled by him. He was also broke,
Speaker 1: having burnt through his fortune raising private armies in a
Speaker 1: bid for the throne, and he'd run up enormous bills
Speaker 1: all over England. Had D and Kelly fooled him or
Speaker 1: had he fooled them? It got worse. Lasky started claiming
Speaker 1: that he was related by blood to Queen Elizabeth and
Speaker 1: spreading pamphlets about his own popularity as suspicion of the
Speaker 1: Polish Prince grew d realized that he'd hitched his wagon
Speaker 1: to a falling star. He decided not to quit, but
Speaker 1: to flee. He scrambled to borrow four hundred pounds and
Speaker 1: packed several hundred books, the Showstone and his most prized possession,
Speaker 1: his perspective class the kind of forerunner of the telescope.
Speaker 1: And so the Lord Albert Laski, I, mister e Kelly,
Speaker 1: our wives, my children, we went toward our ships a
Speaker 1: low grazer. One dark night in September fifteen eighty three,
Speaker 1: they slipped past their creditors and sailed for Holland d
Speaker 1: Kelly and their families trudged through the Netherlands and across
Speaker 1: northern Germany, lodging at drafty inns. Lasky meanwhile glided between
Speaker 1: the great houses of Europe, enjoying all the privileges of
Speaker 1: his rank. It sooned and bitterly cold. Jane Dee, charged
Speaker 1: with managing a household and three small children on the move,
Speaker 1: must have been miserable. Dee himself agonized over his decision
Speaker 1: to leave. Had he made the right choice, The angels
Speaker 1: revealed that he had passed the point of no return.
Speaker 1: England now viewed him as a renegade. In February fifteen
Speaker 1: eighty four, the exhausted party reached the prince's ice bound
Speaker 1: home of Lascar. The welcome was even chillier than the climate.
Speaker 1: Lady Laski took an instant dislike to her husband's rag
Speaker 1: tag entourage, and it soon became clear that the Prince's
Speaker 1: dire finances couldn't support them for long. The Angels now
Speaker 1: appeared to have a change of heart, ordering that d
Speaker 1: and Kelly abandon their bankrupt patron and head to the
Speaker 1: golden city of Prague of a make or break mission
Speaker 1: awaited them. Prague was the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia,
Speaker 1: the heart of a sprawling empire that covered much of
Speaker 1: modern day Central Europe. From his soaring castle high above
Speaker 1: the city, Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph the Second ruled over
Speaker 1: a patchwork of lands that stretched from the Baltic to
Speaker 1: the Alps. Rudolph was obsessed with the occult, and his
Speaker 1: castle was crammed with eclectic objects. Have asked cabinets of
Speaker 1: curiosities that included clockwork, autometer, vials of virgin's blood, shriveled
Speaker 1: mandrake roots, an enormous narwhale tusk, and what he claimed
Speaker 1: were the leathery remains of a dragon. Below the Imperial
Speaker 1: Palace was a nest of winding streets, where astrologers and
Speaker 1: alchemists lived and worked. Rudolph was particularly interested in the
Speaker 1: Philosopher's Stone, a powerful substance that promised to transmute base
Speaker 1: metals into gold and supply an elixir of eternal youth.
Speaker 1: Monarchs everywhere craved the stone, and Rudolph kept a stable
Speaker 1: of alchemists on his pay roll. They labored in secret,
Speaker 1: subterranean labs, away from the disapproving eyes of the Catholic Church.
Speaker 1: As the summer unbeat down, De's loaded wagons rattled into Prague. Here,
Speaker 1: Kelly's focus shifted. Curious about the Philosopher's Stone and its
Speaker 1: lucrative potential, he began experimenting with a mysterious red powder
Speaker 1: that he said he had found back in England. The Angels, however,
Speaker 1: were restless. They announced that unless d delivered a shocking
Speaker 1: ultimatum to Emperor Rudolph, Satan would harm his beloved wife
Speaker 1: and children, a cunning fish of stratagem D was appalled,
Speaker 1: but what choice did he have? Declimbed to the Imperial castle,
Speaker 1: where he was ushered past displays of dissected frogs and
Speaker 1: magical amulets, and admitted to Rudolph's privy chamber. The Emperor
Speaker 1: had been told that the clever visitor from England had
Speaker 1: something useful to say to him. He waited expectantly, surrounded
Speaker 1: by his courtiers. De steeled himself, then began.
Speaker 3: The Angel of the Lord hath appeared to me and
Speaker 3: rebuketh you for your sins.
Speaker 1: The courtiers fell silent.
Speaker 3: Hear me, and you shall triumph. If you will not
Speaker 3: hear me, God will throw you headlong down from your seat.
Speaker 1: A chill fell over the chamber. The Emperor simply stared.
Speaker 1: Then he calmly rejected Dee's invitation to a scrying session
Speaker 1: and dismissed him. Shortly after this disastrous encounter, the papal
Speaker 1: nuncio in Prague accused d and Kelly of heresy, necromancy,
Speaker 1: and other prohibited arts. Rudolph had no interest in protecting them.
Speaker 1: They had just six days to find a new home.
Speaker 1: Isolated and penniless, d and Kelly had nowhere to go.
Speaker 1: They huddled in dirty crowded quarters and begged their old
Speaker 1: patron Laski for money. The messages from beyond again changed.
Speaker 1: It seemed that the angels wanted D and Kelly to
Speaker 1: focus on a new assignment, the Philosopher Stone. They ordered
Speaker 1: that d retire his showstone and burn his records. D
Speaker 1: was baffled as to how this fit their mission to
Speaker 1: decode the Angelic language, but exhausted, he went along with it.
Speaker 1: At the prompting of Kelly's Angels. D and his family
Speaker 1: had plodded from the court of Queen Elizabeth Tulaski, from
Speaker 1: Laski to Emperor Rudolph, and their journey still wasn't finished. Now,
Speaker 1: wealthy nobleman count villem Rosenberg took an interest in the pair.
Speaker 1: He invited them to his castle in Treybon, Southern Bohemia,
Speaker 1: where he gave them a laboratory and everything they needed
Speaker 1: to pursue the Philosopher's Stone. Kelly took the lead, wielding
Speaker 1: that strange red powder. D the Great Scholar, now acted
Speaker 1: as assistant. Word of their experiments spread. The Czar of
Speaker 1: Russia sent two merchants to Treybon with a lucrative offer
Speaker 1: of employment. Kelly declined, but before they left, he gave
Speaker 1: them a dazzling performance. Adding a tiny grain of his
Speaker 1: red powder to a crucible of mercury, he miraculously produced
Speaker 1: what he said was an ounce of the best gold.
Speaker 1: And as Kelly's reputation grew, so too did his wealth.
Speaker 1: In early fifteen eighty seven, he returned from a trip
Speaker 1: with an opulent gold necklace, valued at a staggering three
Speaker 1: hundred ducats. He didn't give it to his own wife.
Speaker 1: He gave it to Jane d Cautionary tales will return
Speaker 1: after the break. August twenty twenty three, at a lavish
Speaker 1: wedding in the south of France, one hundred white chairs
Speaker 1: line a path to an altar framed with angel wings.
Speaker 1: Local medium Sofia Martinez is getting married. Walking her down
Speaker 1: the aisle in the role of proud father figure is
Speaker 1: none other than long serving mayor of aged Yield at All.
Speaker 1: The All isn't the only client here. A number of
Speaker 1: the wedding guests have also engaged Martinez's services. Today they
Speaker 1: enjoy live music and two buffets. It's a beautiful wedding
Speaker 1: and it looks expensive. A couple of months later, the
Speaker 1: Mayor's ex wife Geraldine Sanchez de Toor walks into the
Speaker 1: aged police station with a strange story. She too, has
Speaker 1: been consulting Sophia Martinez. Recently, she started receiving phone calls
Speaker 1: from a rasping, guttural voice that purports to be the
Speaker 1: archangel Michael. The voice, which asks to be called Papa,
Speaker 1: knows all sorts of details about her private life, and
Speaker 1: it's begun requesting favors for Martinez. Sanchez de Tour later
Speaker 1: withdraws her complaints, but by then the police have heard
Speaker 1: from others they've been contacted by the rasping voice two
Speaker 1: and at least one worried about its influence on the mayor.
Speaker 1: An official investigation is opened. The police can't bring the
Speaker 1: archangel Michael in for questioning, so instead they followed the money.
Speaker 1: Spring fifteen eighty seven, Treybon By now D has been
Speaker 1: tethered to Kelly for more than three grueling years. The
Speaker 1: angel's requests had dwindled. Then in April, her spirit appeared
Speaker 1: to Kelly in the form of a young girl. She
Speaker 1: tantalizingly offered to reveal God's secrets, but there was a
Speaker 1: requirement that D and Kelly had to fulfill. First, it
Speaker 1: wasn't prayer or alchemy, but unity. They were to sh
Speaker 1: everything in common, including their wives. D was horrified. Nothing
Speaker 1: is unlawful, which is lawful? Until God came the convenient
Speaker 1: spiritual loophole. D and Kelly were warned that if they
Speaker 1: refused to obey the command, the consequences would be disastrous.
Speaker 1: The mysterious red powder their meal ticket would turn to dust,
Speaker 1: the angels would vanish, and the secrets of the universe
Speaker 1: would be locked away forever. D adored his wife, yet
Speaker 1: what choice did he have. H'd state everything on the angels.
Speaker 1: When grief stricken, he finally told Jane about their latest order.
Speaker 1: Her reaction shattered him. She fell a weeping and a
Speaker 1: trembling for a quarter of an hour, and I pacified
Speaker 1: her as well I could. D tried to persuade Jane
Speaker 1: that they must follow God's will. Eventually she agreed, I.
Speaker 4: Trust, though I give myself thus to be used, that
Speaker 4: God will turn me into a stone before he would
Speaker 4: suffer me in my obedience to receive any shame or inconvenience.
Speaker 1: D and Kelly drew up a contract, a cold legalistic
Speaker 1: document that formalized the common use of their wives. John
Speaker 1: Dee was a want in a generation polymath. He was
Speaker 1: phenomenally intelligent, yet he made choices that were dis de
Speaker 1: sidedly foolish. He fretted about Kelly's checkered past, and he
Speaker 1: knew that he was a liar, but he still chose
Speaker 1: to trust him. He followed Kelly into isolation and squalor,
Speaker 1: and he offended an emperor on his say so why,
Speaker 1: One answer lies in the spirit of the age. D
Speaker 1: truly believed that God was beneficent and wanted good things
Speaker 1: for him. The existence of angels was a fact. Difficulties
Speaker 1: were simply divine trials and far from being a red flag.
Speaker 1: Kelly's volatility and strangeness proved that his soul was sensitive
Speaker 1: to the supernatural. D also had a very real need
Speaker 1: for patronage. One way or another, he had to produce results.
Speaker 1: But there's another explanation at play here too. Psychologist Dan
Speaker 1: Kahan has argued we don't always use our intellect to
Speaker 1: seek the truth, but to preserve our sense of who
Speaker 1: we think we are. He calls this process identity protective cognition.
Speaker 1: What we believe isn't just a reflection of what we know.
Speaker 1: It's a badge of membership to our tribe. Our beliefs
Speaker 1: allow us to belong. John Dee's tribe was the intellectual
Speaker 1: elite of Europe. He saw himself as the man who
Speaker 1: would decode the hidden architecture of the universe, even as
Speaker 1: he became less and less relevant to the people in power.
Speaker 1: Edward Kelly, of course, never turned mercury into gold. Charlatan's
Speaker 1: had all sorts of tricks. Preloaded crucibles, hidden pellets, sleight
Speaker 1: of hand. This was stage magic, and the showmanship that
Speaker 1: made Kelly a compelling scrier probably also made him a
Speaker 1: convincing alchemist. D understood stagecraft decades earlier. He had shocked
Speaker 1: an audience at Cambridge University with a mechanical beetle that
Speaker 1: was so lifelike they thought he'd bewitched it, But by
Speaker 1: the time he reached Bohemia, d was too bought in
Speaker 1: to see the hoax in front of him, because the
Speaker 1: more you give up for a vision, the more you
Speaker 1: have to believe it. To admit that Edward Kelly was
Speaker 1: a fraud would mean admitting that John d was no
Speaker 1: longer a brilliant scholar, but an impoverished old man who'd
Speaker 1: been deceived by a common trickster. The truth was far
Speaker 1: too painful for John D to face, and so in
Speaker 1: a long, slow process of self preservation, he chose to
Speaker 1: believe the lie. In May fifteen eighty seven, D made
Speaker 1: a terse entry in his diary pactum factum. The agreement
Speaker 1: had been executed. He had sacrificed his wife to Kelly's angels.
Speaker 1: That summer, Queen Elizabeth sent envoys to Trebon. They wanted Kelly,
Speaker 1: and they ignored thee entirely. At the castle, tensions boiled over.
Speaker 1: Jane D was pregnant, and John D was ever more
Speaker 1: dependent on Kelly, who frequently erupted into violent outbursts. Irritated
Speaker 1: that D was hanging on. In an effort to make peace,
Speaker 1: D wrote Kelly and his wife charitable letters, but to
Speaker 1: no avail. Privately, he was afraid encrypting his diary in
Speaker 1: an increasingly complicated code. In October, Kelly and his wife
Speaker 1: Joanna told the household servants that D was in league
Speaker 1: with the devil. Haniced, D tried again to turn the tide.
Speaker 1: He gave Kelly his most prized possession, his perspective glass,
Speaker 1: that telescope like device that tricked the eye and made
Speaker 1: small objects seem large. Kelly took it, but he had
Speaker 1: no use for a scholar's instrument. He passed it to
Speaker 1: Rosenberg who passed it to the Emperor. D's perspective glass,
Speaker 1: his treasured window into the laws of nature, was tucked
Speaker 1: away to gather dust in Rudolph's cabinets of curiosities. Rosenberg
Speaker 1: Io was irked by D's presence. As far as he
Speaker 1: was concerned, the man was a dead weight. He ordered
Speaker 1: d to leave Trebon and arranged for Kelly to be
Speaker 1: moved to another laboratory. In February fifteen eighty eight, D
Speaker 1: gave up. He handed Kelly his books on alchemy and
Speaker 1: watched him ride away. In modern day act investigators made
Speaker 1: a startling discovery. Between twenty twenty and twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: there were over three thousand phone calls between Gield Dettor
Speaker 1: and Sophia Martinez. Martinez has since admitted to playing the
Speaker 1: archangel Michael. She reportedly revealed to police that she's an
Speaker 1: accomplished ventriloquist and gave them a demonstration of Michael's rasping voice.
Speaker 2: Protect Sophia, Protect Sophia.
Speaker 1: The voice is said to have implored.
Speaker 2: Take care of her and her people.
Speaker 1: The case against Detur is that he allegedly obeyed the voice,
Speaker 1: using public funds to pay for Martinez's birthday party and
Speaker 1: contribute to her wedding, arranging four municipal contractors to renovate
Speaker 1: her home, funding holidays to Thailand, and securing jobs for
Speaker 1: her family at the town hall. Detor no longer holds
Speaker 1: the keys to AGD. In twenty twenty four, he resigned.
Speaker 1: He was also charged with corruption and misappropriation of public funds.
Speaker 1: Martinez was charged with fraud and concealment. As of recording,
Speaker 1: they're both awaiting trial. Both Detor and Martinez deny the
Speaker 1: criminal charges, and they are presumed innocent until judgment, but
Speaker 1: neither of them seems to deny the spiritual influence. Detoru's
Speaker 1: lawyer has claimed that he was exploited, vulnerable in his
Speaker 1: grief for his late father, and according to the prosecutor,
Speaker 1: Martinez has regretted her behavior, attributing her claims about Detau's
Speaker 1: father to a downward spiral from which she couldn't escape.
Speaker 1: It's tempting to file John Dee Away as a relic
Speaker 1: from a distant time, but The story nagged nearly four
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty years later, would suggest that channels of special,
Speaker 1: unimpeachable knowledge have an enduring appeal. Shortly after John d
Speaker 1: and Edward Kelly parted ways, and nine months after the
Speaker 1: wife swapping agreement, Jane de gave birth to a baby boy.
Speaker 1: She and her husband named him Theodorus Trebonianus, Gift of God.
Speaker 1: At Trebon, the D's were out of options, and they
Speaker 1: began the arduous journey back to England. John D held
Speaker 1: on to hope that Kelly would have a change of
Speaker 1: heart and follow them. Instead, painful news arrived from Rudolph's court.
Speaker 1: The Emperor had given Kelly a castle and lands and
Speaker 1: made him a baron of Bohemia. D was crushed. A
Speaker 1: further blow awaited him in England. When he reached Mortlake,
Speaker 1: he discovered that his cottage had been ransacked by his creditors.
Speaker 1: Many of his most precious tomes on geography, horology, Arabic
Speaker 1: and Hebrew had been taken, and his magnificent library lay
Speaker 1: in ruins. Dee found himself totally irrelevant at court. He
Speaker 1: eventually accepted a job in the North as warden of
Speaker 1: Christ's College, Manchester. It was a respectable enough role, but
Speaker 1: hundreds of miles from the corridors of power. Jane Deeye
Speaker 1: had followed her husband across Europe, raising their children on
Speaker 1: the road, and submitting to Kelly's dark wife swapping command
Speaker 1: in Manchester, her journey came to an end. She succumbed
Speaker 1: to the deadly plague that was ravaging the city and
Speaker 1: passed away in sixteen oh five, aged fifty. As for
Speaker 1: John d he returned to London and lived into his eighties,
Speaker 1: Buried by manuscripts. White haired, penniless, he worked with scriers
Speaker 1: until his very last days, ever convinced that the universe
Speaker 1: would give up its deepest secrets if he only knew
Speaker 1: how to ask. There are various accounts of what became
Speaker 1: of Edward Kelly. Some say that he had a fight
Speaker 1: with an influential alchemist at Rudolph's Court and ended up
Speaker 1: in prison. Others that he faked his own death. Others
Speaker 1: still that he fled to Russia. You can believe what
Speaker 1: you like, after all John de did. For a full
Speaker 1: list of our sources, see the show notes at Timharford
Speaker 1: dot com. Cautionary Tales is written by me Tim Harford
Speaker 1: with Andrew Wright, Alice Fines and Ryan Dilley. It's produced
Speaker 1: by Georgia Mills and Marilyn Rust. The sound design and
Speaker 1: original music are the work of Pascal Wise. Additional sound
Speaker 1: design by Carlos San Juan at Grain Audio and Dan Jackson.
Speaker 1: Bend A. Dafhaffrey edited the scripts. It features the voice
Speaker 1: talents of Melanie Guttridge, Genevieve Gaunt, ed gohen Stella, Harford,
Speaker 1: Bassa Munroe, Jamal Westman, and Rufus Wright. The show also
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg,
Speaker 1: Greta Cohne, Eric Sandler, Carrie Brody, Christina Sullivan, Kira Posey,
Speaker 1: and Owen Miller. Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries.
Speaker 1: If you like the show, please remember to share, rate,
Speaker 1: and review. It really does make a difference to us
Speaker 1: and if you want to hear it, add free and
Speaker 1: receive a bonus audio episode, video episode, and members only
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Speaker 1: sign up, head to patreon dot com slash Cautionary Club.
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