One such monastery existed for many centuries on the cliffs of the Isle of St. Brendan—also known as the Isle of the Blessed—a lush, verdant island once inhabited by a strange pre-Coptic civilization that had since vanished, leaving only a series of man-made saltwater lakes that appeared to have some religious significance. The monks soon added to the many strange tales surrounding the place, for it was said that the monks themselves would never die unless they left the island.
St. Brendan’s Shank, made of interlocking copper pieces, with over thirty springs to keep the pieces in tension with one another.
It was here that the idea for the Shank appears to have originated, although the sophistication of the device has led to theories of outside collusion. Some, for example, believe that the device shows evidence of workmanship common to the Early Middle Period of Muslim scientific flowering in the 1200s, specifically the influence of the (nonmonastic) brothers known as Banu Musa, and their Book of Ingenius Devices. Given the amount of traveling the monks did over the centuries, it is not impossible that they came into contact with either the Banu Musa or equivalent.
Whether or not this legend is true, it seems incontestable that the development of the Shank followed eventually from an event in 1078, when the lonely order on the island found itself an unwilling host to the unstable and murderous son of Viking despot Olaf the Bloodless, King of Jutland. The arrival of the young Viking on the isle was recorded in the sagas of a bard known only as Sigi, who was present with the Viking entourage accompanying the prince.
“The son of Olaf, upon hearing tell of an Isle populated by the Monks-Who-Cheated-Death, became inflamed by desire to find the place and conquer its secrets. The Isle, like a coward, made itself difficult to find, but the Prince did give chase through storm, through mist, and through ice until at last, the Isle was in our sights. We arrived with swords in hand, slicing open the first two monks who greeted us, as a demonstration of force and might. It was in this way that we learned that the Monks-Who-Cheated-Death had only cheated the death of cowards and slaves—a death in a bed, a death of age, a death of sickness. The death of Men cannot be cheated, nor can their Magics wish it away. And nothing, not even their craven God, is mightier than a Jutland sword. The monks knelt and trembled and wailed before us.”
This account is contradicted in part by the journal of Brother Eidan, abbott of the order since the departure of their founder-saint: “The children of the children of the men who once laid waste to our homeland arrived upon our shores unexpectedly. They were tired and hungry and sick at heart. Our souls were moved to pity and we welcomed them with open arms. Their demands seemed beyond our abilities or strength to fulfill, but we had no choice but to try, as otherwise they would have put us all to the sword.”
The prince suffered from a wasting disease that Sigi and other chroniclers had either covered up or had judiciously neglected to mention—this was the real reason the prince had come to the monks’ island. What followed appeared to consist of a series of ablutions in the icy waters of the island’s western bay. The monks told the prince they staved off death by stripping naked, bearing their skin to the morning light, and plunging into the water. Of course, if their other accounts are to be believed, any longevity, possible or impossible, came simply from prayer and from other essential properties of the island.
Nevertheless, after the young man stripped, winced, and shivered, submerging his body every morning for a full week, a miracle occurred. The son of King Olaf emerged from the water a new man, naked and shining, blessed with strength and health. “My disease is devoured and vanquished,” he cried, and the Viking horde gave a halfhearted cheer. They left the island in a relatively unpillaged condition. No account tells of exactly how the prince was cured, however, despite the first reference in the literature to a “creature of healing.” Nor is there any explanation for the prince’s eventual death two years later, except for an obscure fragment from Sigi referring to “bleeding.” Perhaps coincidentally or perhaps not, Brother Eidan died prior to the prince’s recovery, and his successor, Brother Jonathan, notes only that “he made his sacrifice for our sake, and would that such a sacrifice not need be made again.”1
A medieval representation of St. Brendan and his followers worshipping atop a floating sea monster.
The subsequent bleeding caught no one’s attention, but news of the incredible healing spread slowly throughout Europe, with the result that many an expedition put forth into the northern seas. However, the island proved ridiculously difficult to find again. Many tried and failed, some sailing to their deaths. From these attempts grew the legend that the isle moved across the seas, from charted waters to the uncharted danger of “Here be dragons.” Over the centuries, it would reportedly be sighted in view of the Canaries, in the midst of the Hebrides, off the coast of Newfoundland, and once apparently passed so close to Iceland that the bards sang of “waving at the holy men,” interpreted by some scholars as a reference to extreme drunkenness instead.
If the monks’ own records can be believed—and these accounts are vague on many points—by the late 1200s, the monks had succeeded, perhaps in partnership with Arab scientists traveling to Africa, in fashioning a mechanical equivalent to what presumably must have been a kind of symbiotic relationship with a form of Turrilepus Gigantis.
Over time—due in part to the creation of copies and the reduction in the number of monks from fatalities from drowning, slipping on wet stone floors, and the like—each monk came to be in possession of a replica of his own, although from the few descriptions, most of these may have been crude, nonfunctional copies.
The Shank—our Shank, the monks said fondly—soon became sanctified as a holy object. It became friend, confidant, and spiritual guide to every monk on the island, from the lowliest of the novitiate to the interim abbott. The monks carried the replicas around in their pockets, held them delicately (desperately) to their mouths, whispering secrets in the dark. Given the extraordinarily long lives of the monks, they had more secrets than most to confess to their small, metal friends.
After the silence of the Dark Ages, the Shank came once again to the notice of the burgeoning medical community in the West in the form of a smattering of accounts that hailed it as a kind of miraculous relic, but noting that even though healed, the recipients of the Shank suffered from a strange melancholy bordering on mania, following their treatment. Such patients drew pictures of the Shank—both the clockwork Turrilepad and the Turrilepad in the flesh. They painted portraits and composed sonnets and sang odes. They whispered the name of the lost saint in their dreams, and, as though suddenly losing sight of their senses, they would call out to him during the day, responding to the ensuing silence with fits of weeping. They left their families, left their businesses and affairs, and took to the sea, their eyes scanning the horizon for . . . well, they would not say. It was generally believed that they could not say.
Indeed, by the year 1522, Pope Adrian VI—having had enough of talk of floating islands, healing that resulted in death by melancholia, bleeding, or worse, and other rumors that, in his opinion, were, at best, due to the infernal influence of the followers of that fallen priest, Martin Luther, or, at worst (and Heaven forbid!), an insidious Ottoman plot—banned the use of the Shank, banned mention of the Shank, and excommunicated the entire Order of St. Brendan. “Since the presence or absence of suffering is due wholly to the whims of God, it is a blasphemy and an insult to thwart the divine Plan,” he wrote in October of that year, though, in his writings, he demonstrates an acute ignorance of how the Shank worked. He died a year later. It is doubtful that the monks on the wandering isle ever knew of their excommunication, or, indeed, that they would have cared.