Copper in the Middle Ages and Renaissance
Copper in the Middle Ages and Renaissance
A good picture of copper mining, metallugy, and use in the
Middle Ages and Renaissance can be obtained from De Re
Metallica, by Georgius Argicola, published in 1556. An
excellent translation was prepared by Herbert Hoover (a mining
engineer and later Pre sident of the United States) and his wife,
Lou Henry Hoover (the first woman geologist to graduate from
Stanford University). 
De Re
Metallica is illustrated with woodcuts that are widely
reproduced in modern books. Since metal work and mining had been
performed by people with guild secrets to keep, and little
interest in writing books, Agricola was one of the first people
in history to record mining and metallurgical practices. He lived
in the silver mining region around Freiburg, Germany. His
observations were achieved through personal observation.
Agricola gave detailed descriptions of mining techniques and equipment, mine surveying, mining law, mining industrial organization, copper minerals, vein deposits and ways to recognize them, assay techniques to determine the amount of copper contained in an ore rock, ways to smelt copper into cakes, and to purify it.
It is apparent reading his work that mining had progressed only slightly from the days of the Romans. Without explosives, rocks were still plucked from shafts and tunnels with picks and shovels. Tunnels were supported with timber (they are still), an d miners and ore were raised and lowered using winches. Techniques existed to drain water away from deep shafts, and to blow fresh air into them.
Another pioneering author of a book on metals and metallurgy
lived about the same time as Agricola. Vanoccio Biringuccio, of
Sienna in Italy, published the Pirotechnica in 1540. 
Agricola mentions Biringuccio in De
Re Metallica. Pirotechnia was published in the
Italian language, unlike Agricola's Latin text. Like Agricola,
Biringuccio illustrated his book with woodcut drawings.
After Rome fell to Barbarian invasions in 410 A.D. and again in 455 A.D., Europe was plunged into a time of war and uncertainty. Skills were forgotten. Trade stopped. Mining, except for iron for weapons and tools, was nearly abandoned. This period is called the Dark Ages.
Clovis, the chief of a tribe of Franks, created a state near Paris extending to the Rhine near Strasbourg in 486. His descendant, Charlemagne, was crowned Emperor of the Romans in the year 800. He expanded his kingdom into the old metal district in t he Erzgebirge Mountains of central Europe. Silver was mined by captive Saxons to become the new coins of his empire. Mining was beginning to revive in Europe.
In Germany, in the Kingdom of Otto, in 938, a German nobleman
was riding his horse, Ramelus.
The
nobleman was hunting near the town of Goslar in the Harz
Mountains. He tied the reins to a tree when he dismounted to
hunt. Ramelus was impatient and pawed the earth. When the
nobleman returned, he saw metals gleaming in the horse's little
excavation. Miners realized that the horse had uncovered a vein
of silver, lead, and copper. This mine was named Rammelsberg,
after the horse Ramelus.
Rammelsberg became the most important source of silver, lead and copper in central Europe. Over a thousand years later, it still produces wealth. Like the gold rush in the United States, it inspired German expansion to the east, to search for more mi neral deposits. It also trained miners in the skills lost to the Dark Ages, in mining and prospecting.
During the Middle Ages, many common people belonged to the land and to the lord of the land. They were not free to leave. However, the lords began to need money to buy luxuries from the Near East and China such as silk. These new ideas and luxuries c ame from European contact with Moslems during the Crusades. From the First Crusade in 1096, kings and princes needed money for luxuries and to pay for more armies to wage more Crusades. They allowed adventurous serfs their freedom to look for ore deposi ts. A freed serf who found a deposit could mark the boundaries of the deposit with piles of stone. Then he could apply to the lord who owned the land for permission to mine the deposit. The lord, in return, was granted tribute or a royalty. This pract ice is very similar to modern claim staking on public land. Medieval miners became respected craftsmen, not serfs.
Two hundred miles southeast of Rammelsberg, in the foothills of the Erzgebirge or "Ore Mountains" of Bohemia, another great deposit was found in 1170. Silver thalers or coins were minted in Joachimsthal, now known as Jachymov in the Czech Republic. The word "dollar", first applied by the United States to silver coins, comes from thaler. In the same area, copper and tin deposits provided the metals for the bronze bells, statues and doors of the great gothic cathedrals of Europe.
The same craftsmen that cast the
cathedral bells cast the first bronze cannons. Using cannons in
the Hundred Years War, the British won their first victory over
the French in 1346 at Crecy.
The demands of these new industries drove miners to follow their deposits deeper into the Earth. Old mining methods were no longer sufficient. European miners borrowed the idea of using water wheels from the Moors and Chinese. Formerly, water wheels were used to grind corn. Now, the late Medieval miners used them to pump water from the mines, grind ore, run bellows at the blast furnace, and operate hammers at the metalsmith's forge. The idea of using machinery was applied quickly to other industries such as cloth making and lumber.
Mining had become a very expensive industry to operate. Capital, that is, money, was needed to find, develop, and run a mine. Miners often were employees. The Fugger family financed copper smelters. They used the resulting fortune to finance and su pport the Austrian Hapsburg dynasty of emperors. Great banks and banking families arose in Europe.
The result of mining in central Europe was to bring wealth and power to the German and Austrian princes and emperors of the region. German technical know-how became important in the subsequent history of Europe.
The first explosives to crack rocks in a mine probably were used in the Hungarian Erzgebirge in 1627. There, the holes that had been drilled in the rock were packed with black powder.
Steam engines first pumped water out of mines in England, in Cornwall in 1711. Thomas Newcomen invented the steam-powered pump. James Watt improved it. While tin was the most valuable metal mined in Cornwall, copper also was found in the mines. Two mines alone produced twenty million dollars worth of tin and copper. Mining continues in Cornwall today, although far less than during the Nineteenth Century. But the invention of a steam-powered machine to assist in mining brought about the Industrial Revolution, and the modern world as we know it.
The miners of Cornwall took their knowledge of deep, hard rock mines with them to the New World. They helped to develop the great mining districts of the Western United States.
Geology
Project Homepage
Back