Axel E.W. Müller
Gunpowder Technology in the Fifteenth Century: A Study, Edition and Translation of the Firework Book
(The Boydell Press, 2024), 378 pp. $170.00
It would not be quite right to say that the Firework Books are a great mystery lurking in the study of early gunpowder, but they certainly are a troublesome topic. While they inevitably crop up in discussions of fifteenth century gunpowder weaponry, they haven’t received the depth of analysis that they rightly deserve, especially in English. The existence of a prolific book tradition of how-to manuals written in the vernacular raises all sorts of questions, many of which are not easily answered. In Gunpowder Technology in the Fifteenth Century, Axel Müller digs deep into the Firework Book tradition while also providing a critical edition and translation of one example of the form. The final product does much to complicate our understanding of these books and outlines as much about what we don’t know as it does what we do. It is also another excellent entry in Boydell and Brewer’s critical editions of medieval sources, it reminds me of Rémy Ambühl and Anne Curry’s excellent A Soldier’s Chronicle of the Hundred Years War.
The book’s core is a critical edition of Royal Armouries manuscript MS I.34, a copy of the Firework Book text with some unique features but which is also generally representative of the genre. It is presented as a facing translation, with the original Early New High German text on one page and the English translation on the other. Müller has gone to great lengths to convey the structure of the manuscript as well, including using different font sizes for enlarged capital letters, bold to represent different ink colours, and repeating the overall layout and structure of the manuscript in terms of line breaks and repetition within the text. The English translation makes some effort to clean up inconsistencies in the original for readability but is also filled with ample footnotes to draw attention to where this is being done. Müller states that his goal is to allow readers to understand the manuscript without necessarily having to visit it, and he is successful in doing so. While the Firework Book itself may not be the most engaging read for non-specialists, with its frequent repetitions and many recipes, this is a thoroughly successful presentation of its text and an invaluable resource for scholars looking to get a better understanding of the history of early gunpowder.
If that were all this book was it would be a useful addition to many libraries, but Müller is not content to simply translate the Firework Book. The translation is sandwiched between two sections. It is preceded by an in-depth discussion of the Firework Book tradition, both in general and in the specifics of I.34 itself. This includes a thorough historiographical study of what has been written about the Firework Books before with no hesitation shown for pointing out the shortcomings of many of those studies. As someone who tends towards scepticism, I found Müller’s willingness to point out what we don’t know and highlighting of the many mysteries behind the Firework Book to be refreshing. These books are something of an enigma – we can infer some aspects of their purpose from the text itself, but there are significant limitations, and few theories survive scrutiny when compared to all the available evidence. Müller certainly expands our understanding of the Firework Book and its purpose and shows off the results of having personally viewed nearly every extant example, but we are left with more questions than we started. It is not a hopeless book, though, and Müller highlights future avenues for research and analysis by specialists with expertise distinct from his own.
After the translation is a section analysing the text itself and digging into what it says. Here Müller highlights many of its idiosyncrasies and shortcomings, which give us insight into how this book was likely made and who it was for. I was fascinated by his highlighting of how much detail there is about the purification and use of saltpetre but how little useful information there was on its manufacture – showing that the authors and users of the text likely spent a lot of time handling saltpetre but did not necessarily know how to make it.
If I have one very small complaint, it is in the realm of asking for more rather than criticising what is in the book. The Firework Books were written in Bavaria, or at least linguistically originate there. I would have liked if Müller provided some more information on what was happening in Bavaria at the time these books were being written, especially what we may or may not know about the use of guns in this region. It is easy to ask for more, and the book is already impressive without this, but I believe this context would have helped someone like me, who does not specialise in late medieval Germany, to better understand the origin of these books.
Overall, this is an impressive study of the Firework Book tradition, something that was sorely needed and which provides an antidote to some of the more speculative arguments that originated in the nineteenth century and have not been thoroughly examined since. It is not so wide reaching in its scope that it will be useful to everyone, but for specialists in early gunpowder history or in the development of technical manuals in medieval Europe, this is a valuable addition to their shelves.
Stuart Ellis-Gorman
