Automata are machines that operate on their own, and have been around since Ancient Egyptian times. Often they are automated animals or people designed to impress an audience. This one might give you nightmares.
Tragically, the “Automaton of a Friar” that you see here is currently not on display at the National Museum of American History in Washington DC. Made in the 16th century mostly out of wood and iron, the Friar’s bald fleshy head, lips and eyes still cover parts of the mechanism. When a key is inserted, the Friar moves its arms — one beats its chest in a “mea culpa” gesture to claim awareness of sin, while the other brings a rosary to its lips. It also turns its head, and the museum descriptor says it walks “in a trapezoidal pattern” which I am interpreting as a sort of lurch.
The Friar’s origins are uncertain but possibly it was made by a craftsman called Juanelo Turriano in the court of Charles V, perhaps as a sort of mannequin resembling St. Diego/Didacus de Alcalá (d. 1463). That man, it turns out, worked to convert Indigenous peoples in the Canary Islands and died of an abscess — miraculously, instead of smelling fetid the wound gave off a delightful fragrance — sort of like magic incense. Furthermore, his body was said to have remained incorrupt and immune to decay.
Thus it would make sense that a sort of immortality would be embodied by a creepy doll that could move around all by itself. The place of European kingship, the history of machines, and the legacy of the Catholic conversion movement of the Counter-Reformation are all trends this automaton represents.
Catalogue number 336451, Accession number 1977.1191, National Museum of American History (source: NMAH)
