April 14, 2014 • 33 mins
Accounts of teleportation, alchemy and even immortality swirl around the legend of Count of Saint-Germain. Was he a spy? A concealed royal? A skilled con man? Or just a compulsive liar? Read the show notes here.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to you stuff you missed in history class from
how Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Polly Fry, I'm Tracy Wilson, and the subject of
today's episode is the center of so many myths and
stories and rumors that it's a little bit hard to
(00:23):
separate fact from fiction. That we will do our best
to make sure we hit the actually documented elements of
his story. Uh. There are accounts of teleportation, involved alchemy,
even immortality that swirl around this person, who is the
Count of Saint Gema. You'll also see him referenced in
uh the foreign version of Comte de Saint Gema. Uh.
(00:45):
And did an immortal actually walk among the aristocrats of
Europe in the eighteenth century courts. I'm gonna say odds
or no, but he has some interesting in compelling fastest
to his story, he does seem to have perhaps convinced
many people that he did. Yeah. And he, you know,
allegedly could make himself invisible. He according to some accounts
(01:07):
New Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Some accounts even
put him at the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Uh. However,
he could also turn let into gold apparently or something
close enough, according to one actual account that was written
in the letter, and we'll talk about that more specifically.
But what was the real deal with this guy? Was
(01:29):
he a charlatan? Was he an actual legit mystic, or
was he just sort of a madman caught up in
his own lies. I'm not sure that the truth has
to include or exclude any or all of those, because
it's really there's a lot of stuff involved and many
layers and weirdness made a weird noise. That's how. That's
(01:52):
how I am that one of the things possibilities is
not the right one. I am generally a very skeptical person,
so I, you know, suspect that not the real deal.
But that's you know, yeah, that is I'm kind of
an occam's razor kind of galt. Well, I am the
uh the extreme claims require extreme evidence, which you know,
(02:16):
some guy wrote us in a journal does not count, right. Uh. So,
normally we would do early history on people and well
kind of, but when we get to the like when
was he born? Well, m sure, it's really tricky in
this particular one because there are different stories and in
(02:38):
some cases no story. Most reputable sources that try to
put his birth somewhere on the timeline put it somewhere
between seventeen ten and seventeen twelve, and there were times
late in the count's life that he claimed that he
was the son of the Transylvanian Prince Farrank, the second Requezee,
who led a Hungarian uprising called the Curic Revolt against
(02:58):
the Habsburg Empire, and recas he had several sons, one
of whom died as a child, and those who believe
that Count Sangrement was the Transylvanian Prince's son claimed that
that death, the death of the child, had been fake
to protect the young boy in the midst of this
political tumult, and this version of the count's origins, if
(03:20):
you buy into that, actually puts his birth a little
bit earlier, around six. There's a lot bit earlier it does.
But you know, he was ageless, much like Dick Clark.
So I was gonna say Dorian Gray. I went with
a less impressive and more pop culturally reference. Yes. So
(03:41):
he first appeared in historical documentation much later. In seventeen
forty five, he was mentioned in a letter from Horace Walpole,
who was the fourth Earl of Orford and the author
of the horror fiction of the Castle of a Toronto,
which is like one of the first horror novels in English.
I read it before you. I'm sure you can find
(04:02):
it a fre on the internet. Um. So this letter
was from Horace Walpole to Horace Mann, who was a
London merchant and diplomat, not to be confused with the
American educator by the same name that he was around
about a hundred years later. So the two Horaces maintained
a friendship through correspondence for more than four decades, and
(04:23):
on December nine Walpole wrote the following We begin to
take up people, but it is with as much caution
and timidity as women of quality begins upon their jewels.
We have not ventured upon any great stone yet. The
Provost of Edinburgh is in custody of a messenger, and
the other day they seized an odd man who goes
(04:44):
by the name of Count Saint Germain. He has been
here these two years and will not tell who he
is or WinCE, but professes that he does not go
by his right name. He sings places on the violin
wonderfully composes is mad and not very sensible. He is
called in the Allian a spaniard, a pole, a somebody
that married a great fortune in Mexico and ran away
(05:05):
with her jewels to Constantinople, a priest, a fiddler, a
vast nobleman. The Prince of Wales has had unsatiated curiosity
about him, but in Vain, however, nothing has been made
out against him. He is released, and what convinces me
that he is not a gentleman stays here and talks
of his being taken up for a spy. So the
(05:26):
Count was arrested and released and then opted to hang
out and talk about his arrest and how he was
suspected of being a spy. He had been suspected of
being a Jacobite agent, but was released when nobody could
find any evidence of it. And in seventeen forty six,
roughly a year after this letter was written, so at
this point he's been in London for about three years.
(05:46):
A performance of musical compositions by the Count took place,
and those musical pieces were also published at the same time,
and the Count was apparently genuinely talented as a composer.
He wrote at least forty Italian arias, seven solos for
violin and six trio sonatas, as well as other things,
but those are kind of some of the high point
of his uh CV as a composer. However, after this
(06:11):
this musical um composition publication, he vanishes from the record,
either he left London or kind of faded into the
background for a while. And during his time on the
d L he said to have been in Vienna for
a while and then in India. And I should point out,
as we talked about kind of these kind of major
U turning points in his story of him being in
(06:34):
a location, he was allegedly kind of constantly traveling. So
even if he was kind of setting up regular um
house in some particular space, he was also probably going
out and visiting many other places at the same time. Allegedly.
Then he appeared in Versailles in seventy eight. Uh the
(06:57):
count next appeared in Versailles in seventeen forty eight, and
char Louis, a goose Que Duke de Bellisle, made Saint
Germain's introductions at court, presenting this mysterious count as an
expert in die and textiles, and this being the Court
of France in the eighteenth century. That was basically enough said, uh,
you know someone who can make beautiful things, You're in right.
(07:18):
And so for two years he made himself extremely comfortable
in French society. He went to parties and charmed everybody there.
He started dropping little hints about being a very extraordinary individual.
He would give away diamonds, saying that he could just
make them. He would play the harpsichord and the violin
with very great skill. He would give beauty advice to
(07:38):
the ladies of the court, and he eventually gained the
ear of King Louis the fifteenth himself. And one of
Saint Germain's habits was to set up a lab wherever
he went, which is where he would do things like
mixed beauty elixers for the ladies. He would die fabrics
and other media, and he would also work his alchemy. Uh.
And it's interesting because he was apparently quite a good chemist.
(08:00):
He really was good at like textile dying and coming
up with different paints. One story says that he made
a paint that was odor free, which at the time
was completely unusual. It's unusual now, um, but then there
was always also this alchemy element to it and he
said to have removed a flaw from deep within a
diamond for King Louis the fifteen without diminishing its size,
(08:22):
but he would never disclose how he achieved this feat.
I have an idea, you do that he did not
do this for real. I'm extremely skeptical about his whole story,
like I have an idea, no so um. During this time,
(08:43):
he allegedly had an exchange with an elderly countess who
had accompanied her husband to Venice in the early seventeen hundreds.
A countess asked him whether his father had been in
Venice in seventeen ten, and he is said to have replied, no, madam,
it is very much longer since I lost my father.
But I myself was living in Venice at the end
(09:04):
of the last and the beginning of this century. I
had the honor to pay you court then, and you
were kind enough to admire a few barkar rolls of
my composing, which we used to sing together. And the
countess was rather befuddled at this, and she told the
count no, no, this could not be the case. The
man she was speaking of had been in his mid forties,
(09:24):
and that was the age that the count appeared before
her there in the Court of France, and again she's
referencing seventeen ten and this is, you know, in the
seventeen fifties, and U he replied to her, just simply, Madam,
I am very old. I totally saw this conversation and
one of the Lord of the Rings extended editions He's
(09:45):
wanted Dona Dines. So basically, any time the account was
questioned about his past, particularly his childhood, he would get
into these astounding tales or divert the conversation to another topic.
And this really got tongues wagging and created all the
speculative gossip around him. Yeah, which in the court of
France at this time, I mean publicity. Uh. And while
(10:06):
he was in France and rubbing shoulders with royalty, he
had this other weird cork which added to this sort
of cloud of speculation, which is that he allegedly never
ate in public. Uh. Though according to some accounts, he
would occasionally eat in front of people, but it was
only oatmeal or lean cuts of chicken. Uh. And in
some accounts he tells people that this is all he eats,
(10:29):
rather than them actually witnessing it. But this just added
to his sensational reputation, which just grew super rapidly. Also
growing very rapidly was his responsibility to the king. King
Louis the fifteenth started sending him on missions, sometimes of
a rather unclear nature, and this is what led to
rumors that he was the King's personal spy. It also
(10:52):
drew the scorn of lots of other people. Yeah, you
couldn't really be the King's favorite without making people angry, uh,
And the Duc de Chois was particularly suspicious of the
seemingly mystical Count. And there was also um a matter
of heightened tensions because this was all going on at
the height of the Seven Years War between England and France.
(11:12):
So for him to be a secret spy with the
ear of the king during this time just it was
a very tenth time and it made people that should
have been important in state affairs kind of left out
of the loop of these doings, and that was an irritant.
While Sant Germain was traveling to Amsterdam on business for
the King, Choazoe and the Count of Affrey were exchanging
(11:34):
letters about what he was doing. San Germain had told
the Count of Affrey that Amsterdam finances were in just
a terrible state, and that he alone could fix them.
He pitched this scheme to do so, which involved lots
and lots of moving parts and the establishment of a
fund for France to be bankrolled by the Dutch. He
also told Afrey that he had made all these plans
(11:57):
without the knowledge of the higher authorities. I mean that
he had been sent with this general sort of mission
to negotiate peace between the warring countries. Sounds pretty shady. Yeah,
Afrey was there in amsterda him and he was receiving
this man and talking to him and being like, wait,
you want to do what? Uh? And in the meantime, Uh.
(12:19):
Chwizoi had also intercepted this letter from Saint Germain to
the Marquise de Pompadour, who was King Louis the fifteenth
Chief Mistress. And in this letter, Saint Gerement deeply mischaracterized
his connections at the Hague. So while Schwizoi and Afrey
were comparing notes, they did not match up to what
Uh the Count was saying was going on when they
(12:40):
saw this letter that he had written the Marquise Uh.
And this letter, combined with the accounts from the Count
of Afrey, we're really quite damning for Saint Gerement and
a letter that went from Schwizoi to Affrey on March
nine sixty. This is this is what was written down. Sir,
(13:00):
I send you a letter from Monsieur de Saint Germain
to the Marquise de Pompadour, which in itself will suffice
to expose the absurdity of the personage. He is an
adventurer of the first order, who is, moreover, so far
as I have seen, exceedingly foolish. I beg you immediately,
on receiving my letter, to summon him to your house
and to tell him from me that I do not
(13:23):
know how the King's Minister in charge of the Finance
department will look on his conduct with regard to this object,
but that as to myself, you are ordered to warn
him that if I learn that far or near, and
much or little he chooses to meddle with politics, I
assure him that I shall obtain an order from the
King that on his return to France, he will be
(13:45):
placed for the rest of his days in an underground dungeon.
Exclamation point. It goes on. You will add that he
may be quite sure that these intentions of mine concerning
him are as since year as they will surely be executed.
If you give me the opportunity of keeping my word.
(14:05):
After this declaration, you will request him never again to
set foot in your house, and it will be well
for you to make public and known to all the
foreign ministers as well as the bankers of Amsterdam, the
compliment that you have been commanded to pay to this
insufferable adventurer. Yeah, Santa German did not returned to France.
(14:27):
No Uh. He fled to England after this all went down,
but he did not stay there for terribly long. And
before we go on to his next crazy adventure, do
you want to take a moment and here to work
from our sponsors. So now back to the illustrious count.
In seventeen sixty three, Saint German turned up in Belgium,
(14:47):
and this time he was going by the name of Surmont.
You may recall that I mentioned in the Rose Barton
episode people would change their names frequently at this time, uh,
and the Count was a pro at that he was
constantly going by different name Aimes uh. And he purchased
a parcel of land there in Belgium, and he set
up a lamb, and his intent was to enter into
(15:08):
a contract of the Belgian government to provide them certain
proprietary chemical processes that he had developed. So some of
these things, like you know, specific dies and paints that
he had been working on. One of the most important
aspects of this attempt at a business deal with Belgium
comes in the form of a letter sent by an
official who met with San German slash Sermont. This official,
(15:30):
Carl Cobenzel, sent the following in a note to Prince Count.
It's the Prime minister, and he says it was about
three months ago that the person known by the name
of Compte de Saint Germain passed this way and came
to see me. I found him the most singular man
that I ever saw in my life. I do not
yet precisely know his birth. I believe, however, that he
(15:52):
is the son of a clandestine union in a powerful
and illustrious family, possessing great wealth. He lives in the
greatest of simplicity. He knows everything and shows an uprightness,
a goodness of soul worthy of admiration. Among a number
of his accomplishments he made under my own eyes, some experiments,
of which the most important were the transmutation of iron
(16:12):
into a metal as beautiful as gold and at least
as good for all goldsmith's work. The dying and preparation
of skins carried to a perfection which surpassed all the
moroccos in the world, and the most perfect tanning. The
dying of silks carried to a perfection hitherto unknown, the
like dying of woolens, the dying of wood in the
most brilliant colors, penetrating through and through, and the whole
(16:35):
without either indigo or cocael, with the commonest ingredients, and
consequently at a very moderate price, the composition of colors
for painting ultramarine is as perfect as is made from
lapis leslie. And finally, removing the smell from painting oils,
and making the best oil of Provence from the oils
of Novette, of cost and from others even the worst
(16:58):
I have in my hands. All these productions made under
my own eyes. I have had them undergo the most
strict examinations, and seeing in these articles a profit which
might mount up to millions, I have endeavored to take
advantage of the friendship that this man has felt for
me and to learn from him. All these secrets. He
has given them to me, and he asks nothing for
himself beyond a payment proportionate to the profits that might
(17:20):
may accrue from them, it being understood that this shall
be only when the profit has been made. So this
letter creates a public record of San German's alchemical skills,
and whether Cobenzel was duped or was some sort of
co conspirator is not really known. Yeah, we don't have
those actual samples he claimed to have to back any
(17:41):
of it up. Well, and if if anybody had really
ever figured out how to turn lead into gold, surely
that would have spread like wildfire. Yeah, or someone would
still be plying that trade. Yeah. Well, you know that
was like the big alchemical quest for a really long time,
Like let's figure out how to turn base metals into gold. Yeah,
we know that does not really work. That's Antoine Lavoisier
(18:03):
would have some things to say. This letter, as you said,
creates this public record. Uh. But the deal fell through
just the same, and Saint Germain moved on, and the
years after things went south in Belgium, he basically went
all over the globe, maybe not all over the globe.
He went a lot of places. Uh. In seventeen sixty two,
(18:25):
Saint Germain was in St. Petersburg just in time for
Catherine the Great to seize the throne in a coup.
And whether or not Saint Germain was involved in that
coup is actually a matter of some debate. There are
people that will directly trace it to him and say
that he, you know, as part of his greater mystical being,
has catalyzed many important world events, this being one of them,
and others are like, no, he just happened to be there.
(18:47):
After leaving Russia, he stayed out of high profile circles.
There were fightings of him in various places, but the
official accounts of where he was or somewhere between between
sparse and non existent. And then almost a decade later,
Uh he turned up in Bavaria in seventeen seventy four,
and he was at this point traveling under the name
(19:08):
of Zarogi and feigning to be older than he had
previously said he was, although he eventually claimed to be
the son of Prince Roquizie. When he was caught in
this deception, it seemed like he had maybe stolen someone's identity. Uh.
And then someone figured out that that could not be
the case, and he said, no, no, no, I'm an
(19:29):
exiled I'm a prince on the run. In seventeen seventy six,
he was peddling his chemistry wears in Germany, trying once
again to get a government contract, and in spite of
getting some positive interest for his non mystical wears, he
blew the deal once again. He started talking about all
of his alchemy skills and how amazing he was, and
that soured the negotiations. Another reason that sandra Man lost
(19:52):
the deal was contextual suspicion. He was not the only
person in Europe claiming to be an alchemist and in
nobles had been duped and in Germany only shortly before
he came on the scene, that there was just a
general reluctance to get involved in this kind of business. Yeah,
there there had been other mystical people trapsing around getting
(20:14):
money out of people, so naturally, you know, it was
kind of a we just got burned by this. You
might you might be real. I don't know. But while
he was in Germany, the Count of Sangrement made a
really important friend, and that was Prince Karl of hes Kassel,
Governor of Schleiswig Holstein, and Prince Carl took in this
(20:34):
wandering mystic, and he set him up with a lab
for performing his chemistry and al chemical experiments, and you know,
lodging set him up with the little House. He has
been associated with the Rosicrucians, the Society of Asiatic Brothers,
the Knights of Light, the Illuminati, the Order of the Templars,
and has even been named as a co founder of
the Freemasons. But being secret societies, we naturally don't know
(20:57):
a lot about what level of involvement he may have had,
if any. Yeah, and some uh, you know, some texts saying,
you know, we want to disassociate from him. We just
don't know. But what we do know is that he
spent several years in Schleswig at this point with Prince Karl,
and it's here that he's reported to have met his end.
He died on February eighty four after catching pneumonia. The
(21:22):
Count is said to have told Prince Carl that he
left a note for him and his personal effects to
be opened in the event of his death, but no
such note was ever actually found. Yeah, and Carl wasn't
there when he died. He was away in his personal
physician uh witnessed the death, but some when Carl came back,
he was expecting a note and got none. Well, before
(21:42):
we go on to kind of the postmortem legend, do
you want to take another moment for an ad break,
and let's get back to our story. So, at this
point in time in our story, the Count Sangerement is deceased.
H And as we said at the top of the podcast,
sussing out how much his story and his legend regarding
(22:02):
his metaphysical life is based in any sort of reality
is difficult. At the very best, he may have been
nothing more than a compulsive liar, spinning up tale after
tale to cover his humble or shameful past or to
work his way into high society. He was definitely well educated,
able to speak many languages, able to hold his own
(22:24):
in conversation with the highest rungs of society. He was
definitely skilled as a musician and a composer, and a
successful chemist. And adding to the mythos surrounding the Count
is also a little problem of names and conflation. First,
the Count of Sangrement as we said meant by went
by many aliases during his lifetime. And second, there were
(22:46):
Salon comedians in France doing sagrement parodies. Uh, and it's
entirely likely that some of the boasts that they made
in jest eventually kind of made their way into the
legend and kind of got confused over what was reality
and it was comedy, uh, because he was I mean,
as much as many people were really blown away by
(23:07):
him and thought he was amazing, there were also people
that were like, you, guys, he's a charlatan. Yeah, and
he became a joke to many people. Yeah. Well, when
when you gave me this this outline and I was
reading through it for the first time, I was thinking,
this sounds a whole lot like Casanova without the sex part,
which I know, which makes it really funny, because Casanova
(23:30):
just added to the confusion. Not only would he sometimes
impersonate the Count as a joke, his autobiography includes this
description of the man that's completely counter to every other
description of him by anyone else. Yeah, and it's believed
that that description it like talks about him wearing these long,
(23:51):
plain robes and stuff, just things that had nothing to
do with him. Uh. And it's believed that that was
added by an editor, or that there was somewhere some
sort of translation or trans But this is believed to
have been added by an editor or somehow like lost
a little bit in translation on the text, or maybe
Casanova did it on purpose. Isn't also possible? Uh. The
(24:13):
sort of ironic comparison there is that, unlike Cassanova, the
Count of Sentiment was not associated with sex at all.
Really he had He's often described as living a chaste life,
so but interesting counterpoints to one another. He had this
weird con artist globe trotter Casva. All we can get
(24:34):
the two of them and the Baron of Arizona together,
I think we would have a really spectacular historical meet
and greet. Uh. And there have also been other people
with the same title in history uh and sometimes their
stories have been accidentally mingled with this Count of Sagerement.
So his legend has gotten really nebulous and there aren't
any hard edges to it. It just kind of grows
(24:55):
and ebbs and flows. And there are historians who believe
that he really was a missing son of a of
Transylvanian royalty and that there was some kind of secret
arrangement or signal that validated this with other royals, which
explained his ability to just mix so easily with all
the courts of Europe. Yeah. Most uh, non noble born
(25:16):
people couldn't just stroll into like the court of France
and end up being BFFs with the king. But he
managed it no problem. And he you know, had contacts
all over the place. But uh, to make the historical
record and the story of counts sentiment even trickier, there
have also been plenty of people willing to assert that
he lives on and they kind of want to believe
(25:37):
and that kind of you know, get fished into building
a mythos. He's not a time lord. No, although there
are people that have suspected that he was a time traveler.
I mean there are people that believe. I'm just gonna
go on the record and saying that that I do not.
And he was also allegedly sided at a Masonic meeting
(25:59):
the year after his death, and that was just the
beginning of all these post mortem appearances. Yeah. Some will
even claim that he was actually once Sir Francis Bacon
and that he was either rejuvenated in some way, or
he was reincarnated as the Count. Plenty of people throughout
the years have been really happy to use the nebulous
details of his life to kind of fill in missing
(26:23):
pieces of the puzzle for their own gain. So he's
he's wound up in all kinds of occult books and
and crackpot theories. Yeah, and sometimes you know, he's cited
as having said things that he never said, but because
there's such a weird series of gaps in his record,
will be like, oh no, this wasn't that time when
(26:44):
there isn't a lot, but I know I have the texts. Uh.
And there have even been people who have become convinced
that they actually are the Count reincarnated, or that they're
channeling the deceased mystic. One of the quotes that usually
comes up in relation to his great standing is Voltaire's
line and a letter to Frederick the Great, in which
he calls the Count quote a man who knows everything
(27:06):
and who never died. Yeah, this gets brought up all
the time. People are like, no, this is the man
that Voltaire said this about. Okay, that sounds really good,
but it ignores the source. Because Voltaire was known for
his sarcasm, and it ignores the context because in this
same series of correspondence between uh Voltaire and Frederick the Great,
Frederick refers to the count as on conte Perrier, which
(27:29):
translates literally to a story for laughing. He's calling him
a joke, Like these two are basically kind of having
a gossipy, what a train wreck discussion about this guy.
And so it's kind of quoted in a way that
I'm confident Voltaire never intended. And of course there are
people who think that he himself was just deluded and
believed all of these legends about himself that had been
(27:50):
circulating while he was alive. Yeah, I mean we in
the first thing that we read about him, uh, in
the Horses letters, they say that he's mad. I mean,
lots of will describe him as a madman. So I
think there's you know, some credence to that. Uh. One
interesting note that will kind of conclude with is that
while sagrem uh was, you know, he's described sometimes as boastful,
(28:15):
but it seems like he was really pretty careful in
his conversations with people to never state outright any of
these extraordinary claims that are often attributed to him. He
would drop hints. He was like a pro at conversation manipulation,
and he would never say he had an elixir of youth,
but he would just tell people he was very old,
and then mentioned that he had this lab and that
(28:37):
he worked on things, and then he would direct the
conversation elsewhere, and people be like, oh, what is he hiding?
He he does have the elixir of life. He kind
of was really good at seating his own reputation, it seems,
which to me suggests the level of savvy that is
beyond what a deluded madman would be able to come
up with. But we'll never know for sure, and that's
(28:57):
just my conjecture on it. So that is the Count
of Sagrement. And there are so many stories of him
in addition to those that we've relayed. Uh, you could
really lose many many days combing the internet for various
If you do a search on him, you'll get a
nice combo of historical reference and also believers, people that
(29:20):
really want to believe that he's out there somewhere. Yeah. Uh,
but that story of the Count. Do you have a
story of some listener mail? I do? Uh? And this
particular piece of mail comes from our listener U Lara
and it is in reference to footbinding, and she talks
(29:40):
about it uh in relation to an event in her
own grandmother's life. She says, I wanted to write in
response to the recent show about footbinding. I was struck
by similarities between the experiences of the older Chinese women
and my German men Andite grandmother. I've attached a photo
of my grandmother and grandfather on their wedding day, which
is lovely. UH. For the nineteen sixty Mennonites wore quote
(30:01):
Plaine dress cape dresses for women, and she explains that
a cape dress was a special dress with an extra
piece of cloth in the front to cover up the
breasts and a covering which was a lace head covering
with bonnet strings. And men wore plain coats, usually a
dark colored coat with a high neck. Dress was very
much part of church membership, and the bishops spent a
(30:21):
lot of time regulating dress, and women like my grandmother
spent a lot of time figuring out subversive ways to
wear their coverings, like letting the strings hang down their
back rather than putting them in the front, which was
considered especially daring for some reason. Lara does not know
why uh, and she says, I'm not really trying to
draw a comparison between the permanently damaging tradition of footbinding
(30:42):
and Mennonite Plaine dress. But I think that the older
Chinese women's ambiguous feeling about the changing traditions was very
similar to my grandmother's mixed feelings about choosing to stop
wearing plain clothes in the nineteen sixties, when other women
burn their bras. Side note from Tracy and I there's
some debate about whether or not that actually happened. Most
people say it did not. There was more of a
freedom trash can where bras went, but just the same
(31:05):
we wanted to acknowledge that as not always being an
accurate depiction of what was going on. Some men and
nite women, according to this letter of Lara's, Uh, burned
their coverings. My grandmother didn't burn her covering, but she
did stop wearing it. She once returned to her home church,
which was very conservative, and on Sunday morning, the preacher
preached a sermon especially about her and her lack of
(31:26):
traditional dress. Uh. That's a really, you know, fascinating insight.
I mean, it's it's easy, I think when you're kind
of reading through it to go of course, they were
this was their standard, and then they were told it
wasn't the standard, and that's a difficult mental break. But
it's kind of a nice comparison to explain, like this
is another person who went through sort of a similar thing.
As she says, it's not the same as a disfiguring,
(31:49):
you know, permanent thing, but it's like it gets you
question her grandmother questioned this her whole life, but whether
that was the right thing, and whether dropping that tradition,
you know, was in some way a bad choice. So
it's just an interesting cultural insight. If you would like
to write to us and share any interesting cultural insights
or parallels to things we've talked about, or anything else
(32:11):
you would like to chat about, you can write us
at History Podcast at Discovery dot com. We're also on
Facebook dot com slash missed in History, on Twitter at
misst in history, at misst in history dot tumbler dot com,
and at pinterest dot com slash missed in History. You
can also visit us on our website, which I know
this address is going to be a shocker, but it's
missed in History dot com. Uh. If you would like
(32:33):
to learn a little bit more about what we talked
about today, you can go to how stuff Works and
do a search for alchemy, and what you'll actually get
is how Isaac Newton work because there's a little alchemical
dabbling there as well. And if you like to learn
about almost anything else your brain can country, you can
do that at how stuff works dot com for more
(32:57):
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Welcome to you stuff you missed in history class from
how Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Polly Fry, I'm Tracy Wilson, and the subject of
today's episode is the center of so many myths and
stories and rumors that it's a little bit hard to
(00:23):
separate fact from fiction. That we will do our best
to make sure we hit the actually documented elements of
his story. Uh. There are accounts of teleportation, involved alchemy,
even immortality that swirl around this person, who is the
Count of Saint Gema. You'll also see him referenced in
uh the foreign version of Comte de Saint Gema. Uh.
(00:45):
And did an immortal actually walk among the aristocrats of
Europe in the eighteenth century courts. I'm gonna say odds
or no, but he has some interesting in compelling fastest
to his story, he does seem to have perhaps convinced
many people that he did. Yeah. And he, you know,
allegedly could make himself invisible. He according to some accounts
(01:07):
New Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Some accounts even
put him at the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Uh. However,
he could also turn let into gold apparently or something
close enough, according to one actual account that was written
in the letter, and we'll talk about that more specifically.
But what was the real deal with this guy? Was
(01:29):
he a charlatan? Was he an actual legit mystic, or
was he just sort of a madman caught up in
his own lies. I'm not sure that the truth has
to include or exclude any or all of those, because
it's really there's a lot of stuff involved and many
layers and weirdness made a weird noise. That's how. That's
(01:52):
how I am that one of the things possibilities is
not the right one. I am generally a very skeptical person,
so I, you know, suspect that not the real deal.
But that's you know, yeah, that is I'm kind of
an occam's razor kind of galt. Well, I am the
uh the extreme claims require extreme evidence, which you know,
(02:16):
some guy wrote us in a journal does not count, right. Uh. So,
normally we would do early history on people and well
kind of, but when we get to the like when
was he born? Well, m sure, it's really tricky in
this particular one because there are different stories and in
(02:38):
some cases no story. Most reputable sources that try to
put his birth somewhere on the timeline put it somewhere
between seventeen ten and seventeen twelve, and there were times
late in the count's life that he claimed that he
was the son of the Transylvanian Prince Farrank, the second Requezee,
who led a Hungarian uprising called the Curic Revolt against
(02:58):
the Habsburg Empire, and recas he had several sons, one
of whom died as a child, and those who believe
that Count Sangrement was the Transylvanian Prince's son claimed that
that death, the death of the child, had been fake
to protect the young boy in the midst of this
political tumult, and this version of the count's origins, if
(03:20):
you buy into that, actually puts his birth a little
bit earlier, around six. There's a lot bit earlier it does.
But you know, he was ageless, much like Dick Clark.
So I was gonna say Dorian Gray. I went with
a less impressive and more pop culturally reference. Yes. So
(03:41):
he first appeared in historical documentation much later. In seventeen
forty five, he was mentioned in a letter from Horace Walpole,
who was the fourth Earl of Orford and the author
of the horror fiction of the Castle of a Toronto,
which is like one of the first horror novels in English.
I read it before you. I'm sure you can find
(04:02):
it a fre on the internet. Um. So this letter
was from Horace Walpole to Horace Mann, who was a
London merchant and diplomat, not to be confused with the
American educator by the same name that he was around
about a hundred years later. So the two Horaces maintained
a friendship through correspondence for more than four decades, and
(04:23):
on December nine Walpole wrote the following We begin to
take up people, but it is with as much caution
and timidity as women of quality begins upon their jewels.
We have not ventured upon any great stone yet. The
Provost of Edinburgh is in custody of a messenger, and
the other day they seized an odd man who goes
(04:44):
by the name of Count Saint Germain. He has been
here these two years and will not tell who he
is or WinCE, but professes that he does not go
by his right name. He sings places on the violin
wonderfully composes is mad and not very sensible. He is
called in the Allian a spaniard, a pole, a somebody
that married a great fortune in Mexico and ran away
(05:05):
with her jewels to Constantinople, a priest, a fiddler, a
vast nobleman. The Prince of Wales has had unsatiated curiosity
about him, but in Vain, however, nothing has been made
out against him. He is released, and what convinces me
that he is not a gentleman stays here and talks
of his being taken up for a spy. So the
(05:26):
Count was arrested and released and then opted to hang
out and talk about his arrest and how he was
suspected of being a spy. He had been suspected of
being a Jacobite agent, but was released when nobody could
find any evidence of it. And in seventeen forty six,
roughly a year after this letter was written, so at
this point he's been in London for about three years.
(05:46):
A performance of musical compositions by the Count took place,
and those musical pieces were also published at the same time,
and the Count was apparently genuinely talented as a composer.
He wrote at least forty Italian arias, seven solos for
violin and six trio sonatas, as well as other things,
but those are kind of some of the high point
of his uh CV as a composer. However, after this
(06:11):
this musical um composition publication, he vanishes from the record,
either he left London or kind of faded into the
background for a while. And during his time on the
d L he said to have been in Vienna for
a while and then in India. And I should point out,
as we talked about kind of these kind of major
U turning points in his story of him being in
(06:34):
a location, he was allegedly kind of constantly traveling. So
even if he was kind of setting up regular um
house in some particular space, he was also probably going
out and visiting many other places at the same time. Allegedly.
Then he appeared in Versailles in seventy eight. Uh the
(06:57):
count next appeared in Versailles in seventeen forty eight, and
char Louis, a goose Que Duke de Bellisle, made Saint
Germain's introductions at court, presenting this mysterious count as an
expert in die and textiles, and this being the Court
of France in the eighteenth century. That was basically enough said, uh,
you know someone who can make beautiful things, You're in right.
(07:18):
And so for two years he made himself extremely comfortable
in French society. He went to parties and charmed everybody there.
He started dropping little hints about being a very extraordinary individual.
He would give away diamonds, saying that he could just
make them. He would play the harpsichord and the violin
with very great skill. He would give beauty advice to
(07:38):
the ladies of the court, and he eventually gained the
ear of King Louis the fifteenth himself. And one of
Saint Germain's habits was to set up a lab wherever
he went, which is where he would do things like
mixed beauty elixers for the ladies. He would die fabrics
and other media, and he would also work his alchemy. Uh.
And it's interesting because he was apparently quite a good chemist.
(08:00):
He really was good at like textile dying and coming
up with different paints. One story says that he made
a paint that was odor free, which at the time
was completely unusual. It's unusual now, um, but then there
was always also this alchemy element to it and he
said to have removed a flaw from deep within a
diamond for King Louis the fifteen without diminishing its size,
(08:22):
but he would never disclose how he achieved this feat.
I have an idea, you do that he did not
do this for real. I'm extremely skeptical about his whole story,
like I have an idea, no so um. During this time,
(08:43):
he allegedly had an exchange with an elderly countess who
had accompanied her husband to Venice in the early seventeen hundreds.
A countess asked him whether his father had been in
Venice in seventeen ten, and he is said to have replied, no, madam,
it is very much longer since I lost my father.
But I myself was living in Venice at the end
(09:04):
of the last and the beginning of this century. I
had the honor to pay you court then, and you
were kind enough to admire a few barkar rolls of
my composing, which we used to sing together. And the
countess was rather befuddled at this, and she told the
count no, no, this could not be the case. The
man she was speaking of had been in his mid forties,
(09:24):
and that was the age that the count appeared before
her there in the Court of France, and again she's
referencing seventeen ten and this is, you know, in the
seventeen fifties, and U he replied to her, just simply, Madam,
I am very old. I totally saw this conversation and
one of the Lord of the Rings extended editions He's
(09:45):
wanted Dona Dines. So basically, any time the account was
questioned about his past, particularly his childhood, he would get
into these astounding tales or divert the conversation to another topic.
And this really got tongues wagging and created all the
speculative gossip around him. Yeah, which in the court of
France at this time, I mean publicity. Uh. And while
(10:06):
he was in France and rubbing shoulders with royalty, he
had this other weird cork which added to this sort
of cloud of speculation, which is that he allegedly never
ate in public. Uh. Though according to some accounts, he
would occasionally eat in front of people, but it was
only oatmeal or lean cuts of chicken. Uh. And in
some accounts he tells people that this is all he eats,
(10:29):
rather than them actually witnessing it. But this just added
to his sensational reputation, which just grew super rapidly. Also
growing very rapidly was his responsibility to the king. King
Louis the fifteenth started sending him on missions, sometimes of
a rather unclear nature, and this is what led to
rumors that he was the King's personal spy. It also
(10:52):
drew the scorn of lots of other people. Yeah, you
couldn't really be the King's favorite without making people angry, uh,
And the Duc de Chois was particularly suspicious of the
seemingly mystical Count. And there was also um a matter
of heightened tensions because this was all going on at
the height of the Seven Years War between England and France.
(11:12):
So for him to be a secret spy with the
ear of the king during this time just it was
a very tenth time and it made people that should
have been important in state affairs kind of left out
of the loop of these doings, and that was an irritant.
While Sant Germain was traveling to Amsterdam on business for
the King, Choazoe and the Count of Affrey were exchanging
(11:34):
letters about what he was doing. San Germain had told
the Count of Affrey that Amsterdam finances were in just
a terrible state, and that he alone could fix them.
He pitched this scheme to do so, which involved lots
and lots of moving parts and the establishment of a
fund for France to be bankrolled by the Dutch. He
also told Afrey that he had made all these plans
(11:57):
without the knowledge of the higher authorities. I mean that
he had been sent with this general sort of mission
to negotiate peace between the warring countries. Sounds pretty shady. Yeah,
Afrey was there in amsterda him and he was receiving
this man and talking to him and being like, wait,
you want to do what? Uh? And in the meantime, Uh.
(12:19):
Chwizoi had also intercepted this letter from Saint Germain to
the Marquise de Pompadour, who was King Louis the fifteenth
Chief Mistress. And in this letter, Saint Gerement deeply mischaracterized
his connections at the Hague. So while Schwizoi and Afrey
were comparing notes, they did not match up to what
Uh the Count was saying was going on when they
(12:40):
saw this letter that he had written the Marquise Uh.
And this letter, combined with the accounts from the Count
of Afrey, we're really quite damning for Saint Gerement and
a letter that went from Schwizoi to Affrey on March
nine sixty. This is this is what was written down. Sir,
(13:00):
I send you a letter from Monsieur de Saint Germain
to the Marquise de Pompadour, which in itself will suffice
to expose the absurdity of the personage. He is an
adventurer of the first order, who is, moreover, so far
as I have seen, exceedingly foolish. I beg you immediately,
on receiving my letter, to summon him to your house
and to tell him from me that I do not
(13:23):
know how the King's Minister in charge of the Finance
department will look on his conduct with regard to this object,
but that as to myself, you are ordered to warn
him that if I learn that far or near, and
much or little he chooses to meddle with politics, I
assure him that I shall obtain an order from the
King that on his return to France, he will be
(13:45):
placed for the rest of his days in an underground dungeon.
Exclamation point. It goes on. You will add that he
may be quite sure that these intentions of mine concerning
him are as since year as they will surely be executed.
If you give me the opportunity of keeping my word.
(14:05):
After this declaration, you will request him never again to
set foot in your house, and it will be well
for you to make public and known to all the
foreign ministers as well as the bankers of Amsterdam, the
compliment that you have been commanded to pay to this
insufferable adventurer. Yeah, Santa German did not returned to France.
(14:27):
No Uh. He fled to England after this all went down,
but he did not stay there for terribly long. And
before we go on to his next crazy adventure, do
you want to take a moment and here to work
from our sponsors. So now back to the illustrious count.
In seventeen sixty three, Saint German turned up in Belgium,
(14:47):
and this time he was going by the name of Surmont.
You may recall that I mentioned in the Rose Barton
episode people would change their names frequently at this time, uh,
and the Count was a pro at that he was
constantly going by different name Aimes uh. And he purchased
a parcel of land there in Belgium, and he set
up a lamb, and his intent was to enter into
(15:08):
a contract of the Belgian government to provide them certain
proprietary chemical processes that he had developed. So some of
these things, like you know, specific dies and paints that
he had been working on. One of the most important
aspects of this attempt at a business deal with Belgium
comes in the form of a letter sent by an
official who met with San German slash Sermont. This official,
(15:30):
Carl Cobenzel, sent the following in a note to Prince Count.
It's the Prime minister, and he says it was about
three months ago that the person known by the name
of Compte de Saint Germain passed this way and came
to see me. I found him the most singular man
that I ever saw in my life. I do not
yet precisely know his birth. I believe, however, that he
(15:52):
is the son of a clandestine union in a powerful
and illustrious family, possessing great wealth. He lives in the
greatest of simplicity. He knows everything and shows an uprightness,
a goodness of soul worthy of admiration. Among a number
of his accomplishments he made under my own eyes, some experiments,
of which the most important were the transmutation of iron
(16:12):
into a metal as beautiful as gold and at least
as good for all goldsmith's work. The dying and preparation
of skins carried to a perfection which surpassed all the
moroccos in the world, and the most perfect tanning. The
dying of silks carried to a perfection hitherto unknown, the
like dying of woolens, the dying of wood in the
most brilliant colors, penetrating through and through, and the whole
(16:35):
without either indigo or cocael, with the commonest ingredients, and
consequently at a very moderate price, the composition of colors
for painting ultramarine is as perfect as is made from
lapis leslie. And finally, removing the smell from painting oils,
and making the best oil of Provence from the oils
of Novette, of cost and from others even the worst
(16:58):
I have in my hands. All these productions made under
my own eyes. I have had them undergo the most
strict examinations, and seeing in these articles a profit which
might mount up to millions, I have endeavored to take
advantage of the friendship that this man has felt for
me and to learn from him. All these secrets. He
has given them to me, and he asks nothing for
himself beyond a payment proportionate to the profits that might
(17:20):
may accrue from them, it being understood that this shall
be only when the profit has been made. So this
letter creates a public record of San German's alchemical skills,
and whether Cobenzel was duped or was some sort of
co conspirator is not really known. Yeah, we don't have
those actual samples he claimed to have to back any
(17:41):
of it up. Well, and if if anybody had really
ever figured out how to turn lead into gold, surely
that would have spread like wildfire. Yeah, or someone would
still be plying that trade. Yeah. Well, you know that
was like the big alchemical quest for a really long time,
Like let's figure out how to turn base metals into gold. Yeah,
we know that does not really work. That's Antoine Lavoisier
(18:03):
would have some things to say. This letter, as you said,
creates this public record. Uh. But the deal fell through
just the same, and Saint Germain moved on, and the
years after things went south in Belgium, he basically went
all over the globe, maybe not all over the globe.
He went a lot of places. Uh. In seventeen sixty two,
(18:25):
Saint Germain was in St. Petersburg just in time for
Catherine the Great to seize the throne in a coup.
And whether or not Saint Germain was involved in that
coup is actually a matter of some debate. There are
people that will directly trace it to him and say
that he, you know, as part of his greater mystical being,
has catalyzed many important world events, this being one of them,
and others are like, no, he just happened to be there.
(18:47):
After leaving Russia, he stayed out of high profile circles.
There were fightings of him in various places, but the
official accounts of where he was or somewhere between between
sparse and non existent. And then almost a decade later,
Uh he turned up in Bavaria in seventeen seventy four,
and he was at this point traveling under the name
(19:08):
of Zarogi and feigning to be older than he had
previously said he was, although he eventually claimed to be
the son of Prince Roquizie. When he was caught in
this deception, it seemed like he had maybe stolen someone's identity. Uh.
And then someone figured out that that could not be
the case, and he said, no, no, no, I'm an
(19:29):
exiled I'm a prince on the run. In seventeen seventy six,
he was peddling his chemistry wears in Germany, trying once
again to get a government contract, and in spite of
getting some positive interest for his non mystical wears, he
blew the deal once again. He started talking about all
of his alchemy skills and how amazing he was, and
that soured the negotiations. Another reason that sandra Man lost
(19:52):
the deal was contextual suspicion. He was not the only
person in Europe claiming to be an alchemist and in
nobles had been duped and in Germany only shortly before
he came on the scene, that there was just a
general reluctance to get involved in this kind of business. Yeah,
there there had been other mystical people trapsing around getting
(20:14):
money out of people, so naturally, you know, it was
kind of a we just got burned by this. You
might you might be real. I don't know. But while
he was in Germany, the Count of Sangrement made a
really important friend, and that was Prince Karl of hes Kassel,
Governor of Schleiswig Holstein, and Prince Carl took in this
(20:34):
wandering mystic, and he set him up with a lab
for performing his chemistry and al chemical experiments, and you know,
lodging set him up with the little House. He has
been associated with the Rosicrucians, the Society of Asiatic Brothers,
the Knights of Light, the Illuminati, the Order of the Templars,
and has even been named as a co founder of
the Freemasons. But being secret societies, we naturally don't know
(20:57):
a lot about what level of involvement he may have had,
if any. Yeah, and some uh, you know, some texts saying,
you know, we want to disassociate from him. We just
don't know. But what we do know is that he
spent several years in Schleswig at this point with Prince Karl,
and it's here that he's reported to have met his end.
He died on February eighty four after catching pneumonia. The
(21:22):
Count is said to have told Prince Carl that he
left a note for him and his personal effects to
be opened in the event of his death, but no
such note was ever actually found. Yeah, and Carl wasn't
there when he died. He was away in his personal
physician uh witnessed the death, but some when Carl came back,
he was expecting a note and got none. Well, before
(21:42):
we go on to kind of the postmortem legend, do
you want to take another moment for an ad break,
and let's get back to our story. So, at this
point in time in our story, the Count Sangerement is deceased.
H And as we said at the top of the podcast,
sussing out how much his story and his legend regarding
(22:02):
his metaphysical life is based in any sort of reality
is difficult. At the very best, he may have been
nothing more than a compulsive liar, spinning up tale after
tale to cover his humble or shameful past or to
work his way into high society. He was definitely well educated,
able to speak many languages, able to hold his own
(22:24):
in conversation with the highest rungs of society. He was
definitely skilled as a musician and a composer, and a
successful chemist. And adding to the mythos surrounding the Count
is also a little problem of names and conflation. First,
the Count of Sangrement as we said meant by went
by many aliases during his lifetime. And second, there were
(22:46):
Salon comedians in France doing sagrement parodies. Uh, and it's
entirely likely that some of the boasts that they made
in jest eventually kind of made their way into the
legend and kind of got confused over what was reality
and it was comedy, uh, because he was I mean,
as much as many people were really blown away by
(23:07):
him and thought he was amazing, there were also people
that were like, you, guys, he's a charlatan. Yeah, and
he became a joke to many people. Yeah. Well, when
when you gave me this this outline and I was
reading through it for the first time, I was thinking,
this sounds a whole lot like Casanova without the sex part,
which I know, which makes it really funny, because Casanova
(23:30):
just added to the confusion. Not only would he sometimes
impersonate the Count as a joke, his autobiography includes this
description of the man that's completely counter to every other
description of him by anyone else. Yeah, and it's believed
that that description it like talks about him wearing these long,
(23:51):
plain robes and stuff, just things that had nothing to
do with him. Uh. And it's believed that that was
added by an editor, or that there was somewhere some
sort of translation or trans But this is believed to
have been added by an editor or somehow like lost
a little bit in translation on the text, or maybe
Casanova did it on purpose. Isn't also possible? Uh. The
(24:13):
sort of ironic comparison there is that, unlike Cassanova, the
Count of Sentiment was not associated with sex at all.
Really he had He's often described as living a chaste life,
so but interesting counterpoints to one another. He had this
weird con artist globe trotter Casva. All we can get
(24:34):
the two of them and the Baron of Arizona together,
I think we would have a really spectacular historical meet
and greet. Uh. And there have also been other people
with the same title in history uh and sometimes their
stories have been accidentally mingled with this Count of Sagerement.
So his legend has gotten really nebulous and there aren't
any hard edges to it. It just kind of grows
(24:55):
and ebbs and flows. And there are historians who believe
that he really was a missing son of a of
Transylvanian royalty and that there was some kind of secret
arrangement or signal that validated this with other royals, which
explained his ability to just mix so easily with all
the courts of Europe. Yeah. Most uh, non noble born
(25:16):
people couldn't just stroll into like the court of France
and end up being BFFs with the king. But he
managed it no problem. And he you know, had contacts
all over the place. But uh, to make the historical
record and the story of counts sentiment even trickier, there
have also been plenty of people willing to assert that
he lives on and they kind of want to believe
(25:37):
and that kind of you know, get fished into building
a mythos. He's not a time lord. No, although there
are people that have suspected that he was a time traveler.
I mean there are people that believe. I'm just gonna
go on the record and saying that that I do not.
And he was also allegedly sided at a Masonic meeting
(25:59):
the year after his death, and that was just the
beginning of all these post mortem appearances. Yeah. Some will
even claim that he was actually once Sir Francis Bacon
and that he was either rejuvenated in some way, or
he was reincarnated as the Count. Plenty of people throughout
the years have been really happy to use the nebulous
details of his life to kind of fill in missing
(26:23):
pieces of the puzzle for their own gain. So he's
he's wound up in all kinds of occult books and
and crackpot theories. Yeah, and sometimes you know, he's cited
as having said things that he never said, but because
there's such a weird series of gaps in his record,
will be like, oh no, this wasn't that time when
(26:44):
there isn't a lot, but I know I have the texts. Uh.
And there have even been people who have become convinced
that they actually are the Count reincarnated, or that they're
channeling the deceased mystic. One of the quotes that usually
comes up in relation to his great standing is Voltaire's
line and a letter to Frederick the Great, in which
he calls the Count quote a man who knows everything
(27:06):
and who never died. Yeah, this gets brought up all
the time. People are like, no, this is the man
that Voltaire said this about. Okay, that sounds really good,
but it ignores the source. Because Voltaire was known for
his sarcasm, and it ignores the context because in this
same series of correspondence between uh Voltaire and Frederick the Great,
Frederick refers to the count as on conte Perrier, which
(27:29):
translates literally to a story for laughing. He's calling him
a joke, Like these two are basically kind of having
a gossipy, what a train wreck discussion about this guy.
And so it's kind of quoted in a way that
I'm confident Voltaire never intended. And of course there are
people who think that he himself was just deluded and
believed all of these legends about himself that had been
(27:50):
circulating while he was alive. Yeah, I mean we in
the first thing that we read about him, uh, in
the Horses letters, they say that he's mad. I mean,
lots of will describe him as a madman. So I
think there's you know, some credence to that. Uh. One
interesting note that will kind of conclude with is that
while sagrem uh was, you know, he's described sometimes as boastful,
(28:15):
but it seems like he was really pretty careful in
his conversations with people to never state outright any of
these extraordinary claims that are often attributed to him. He
would drop hints. He was like a pro at conversation manipulation,
and he would never say he had an elixir of youth,
but he would just tell people he was very old,
and then mentioned that he had this lab and that
(28:37):
he worked on things, and then he would direct the
conversation elsewhere, and people be like, oh, what is he hiding?
He he does have the elixir of life. He kind
of was really good at seating his own reputation, it seems,
which to me suggests the level of savvy that is
beyond what a deluded madman would be able to come
up with. But we'll never know for sure, and that's
(28:57):
just my conjecture on it. So that is the Count
of Sagrement. And there are so many stories of him
in addition to those that we've relayed. Uh, you could
really lose many many days combing the internet for various
If you do a search on him, you'll get a
nice combo of historical reference and also believers, people that
(29:20):
really want to believe that he's out there somewhere. Yeah. Uh,
but that story of the Count. Do you have a
story of some listener mail? I do? Uh? And this
particular piece of mail comes from our listener U Lara
and it is in reference to footbinding, and she talks
(29:40):
about it uh in relation to an event in her
own grandmother's life. She says, I wanted to write in
response to the recent show about footbinding. I was struck
by similarities between the experiences of the older Chinese women
and my German men Andite grandmother. I've attached a photo
of my grandmother and grandfather on their wedding day, which
is lovely. UH. For the nineteen sixty Mennonites wore quote
(30:01):
Plaine dress cape dresses for women, and she explains that
a cape dress was a special dress with an extra
piece of cloth in the front to cover up the
breasts and a covering which was a lace head covering
with bonnet strings. And men wore plain coats, usually a
dark colored coat with a high neck. Dress was very
much part of church membership, and the bishops spent a
(30:21):
lot of time regulating dress, and women like my grandmother
spent a lot of time figuring out subversive ways to
wear their coverings, like letting the strings hang down their
back rather than putting them in the front, which was
considered especially daring for some reason. Lara does not know
why uh, and she says, I'm not really trying to
draw a comparison between the permanently damaging tradition of footbinding
(30:42):
and Mennonite Plaine dress. But I think that the older
Chinese women's ambiguous feeling about the changing traditions was very
similar to my grandmother's mixed feelings about choosing to stop
wearing plain clothes in the nineteen sixties, when other women
burn their bras. Side note from Tracy and I there's
some debate about whether or not that actually happened. Most
people say it did not. There was more of a
freedom trash can where bras went, but just the same
(31:05):
we wanted to acknowledge that as not always being an
accurate depiction of what was going on. Some men and
nite women, according to this letter of Lara's, Uh, burned
their coverings. My grandmother didn't burn her covering, but she
did stop wearing it. She once returned to her home church,
which was very conservative, and on Sunday morning, the preacher
preached a sermon especially about her and her lack of
(31:26):
traditional dress. Uh. That's a really, you know, fascinating insight.
I mean, it's it's easy, I think when you're kind
of reading through it to go of course, they were
this was their standard, and then they were told it
wasn't the standard, and that's a difficult mental break. But
it's kind of a nice comparison to explain, like this
is another person who went through sort of a similar thing.
As she says, it's not the same as a disfiguring,
(31:49):
you know, permanent thing, but it's like it gets you
question her grandmother questioned this her whole life, but whether
that was the right thing, and whether dropping that tradition,
you know, was in some way a bad choice. So
it's just an interesting cultural insight. If you would like
to write to us and share any interesting cultural insights
or parallels to things we've talked about, or anything else
(32:11):
you would like to chat about, you can write us
at History Podcast at Discovery dot com. We're also on
Facebook dot com slash missed in History, on Twitter at
misst in history, at misst in history dot tumbler dot com,
and at pinterest dot com slash missed in History. You
can also visit us on our website, which I know
this address is going to be a shocker, but it's
missed in History dot com. Uh. If you would like
(32:33):
to learn a little bit more about what we talked
about today, you can go to how stuff Works and
do a search for alchemy, and what you'll actually get
is how Isaac Newton work because there's a little alchemical
dabbling there as well. And if you like to learn
about almost anything else your brain can country, you can
do that at how stuff works dot com for more
(32:57):
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Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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