When, in the final season of Succession, Kendall Roy floated the idea of a lifestyle programme that would extend the lifespan of its participants, he was roundly mocked for promising ‘eternal life’ – the prize dangled by every snake oil salesman since biblical times. But perhaps it’s not as laughable as Kendall made it seem; these days, the quest for immortality is science-based and largely funded by Silicon Valley moguls. After all, if you have every material comfort you could possibly desire, what’s left to want, except the ability to enjoy it indefinitely? (Apart from love and self-worth, to judge by the Roy siblings, but that’s for another day.)
The idea of outsmarting death or rendering the body immune to decay certainly didn’t seem outlandish to me after the research I’d done for my seventh S.J.Parris novel, ‘Alchemy’. At the end of the sixteenth century, wealthy nobles and rulers were throwing money at the same goals. Where today’s tech billionnaires invest in cryogenics and gene manipulation, the Renaissance elite looked to alchemy to beat death, and the greatest patron of the alchemical arts was the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II.
Alchemy sat at the intersection between magic and science. At his court in Prague castle, Rudolf supported scientific pioneers such as Johannes Kepler and Tycho Brahe, but he also welcomed a whole host of charlatans, conmen, self-styled magicians and outright lunatics, all competing for his patronage with grandiose promises of wealth and immortality. Though Rudolf, as Holy Roman Emperor, was supposed to rule over the eastern territories of Europe as a Catholic sovereign, his curiosity and love of novelty meant that in practice he was open to all manner of beliefs, turning Prague into an unusually (for the time) tolerant melting-pot that brought together people of all ideas, faiths and backgrounds. Just the sort of place that would appeal to a heretic ex-friar like Giordano Bruno, the hero of my historical crime series.
I visited Prague for the first time before lockdown, to research its historic beer and wander its cobbled alleys and winding stairs, where if you squint hard enough as dusk falls, you can almost see the alchemists emerging from the castle’s Powder Tower and heading into the shadows of Golden Lane, reeking of sulphur and smoke and clutching a flask of their latest attempt at the elixir of life. It’s a city steeped in folklore and legend that – for all the layers of bloody history that have accrued since – still bears traces of that magic-obsessed age, and lends itself perfectly to a murder mystery where Bruno discovers that the city’s fabled tolerance is only skin-deep, and the pursuit of immortality – then as now – is really about power.
I hope I’ve managed to convey something of Prague’s eerie magic and the hold it has had over the imaginations of so many writers and artists. If you’re planning a visit, don’t miss the Jewish cemetery, the castle, the Stone Bridge (now the Charles Bridge) and the Devil’s Channel, all of which feature in ‘Alchemy’. Brace yourselves for one disappointment, though. Rudolf, who was a great art collector, commissioned a novelty door-knocker for his palace in the shape of a fornicating couple (also described in the novel). Sadly, this no longer exists. I guess some things don’t last for ever.
Alchemy by S. J. Parris is published by HarperCollins
