“One drop to heal, three drops to kill”: Women and early modern poison

On July 5, 1659, five women were publicly hanged in the crowded Campo di Fiori in Rome. The story of malicious women adeptly poisoning unwanted husbands across the city with a mysterious clear liquid was printed and reprinted in avvisi (early modern tabloids) and told and retold by male chroniclers for centuries. Often embellished and conflated with other early modern poisoning stories, the myth of Aqua Tofana became a cautionary tale. But what, if anything, do we know about the historical reality of Aqua Tofana and other salacious stories of women wielding poisons? The truth is very little. But like most historical parables, the myths are just as telling as the reality… and in this case, maybe even more.

The Folger has a copy of one of the earliest accounts of Aqua Tofana, which comes from Pope Alexander VII’s biographer, Cardinal Francesco Sforza Pallavicino (1607–1667). While at the Pope’s court in Rome, Pallavicino complied the life and times of Alexander VII (Vita di Alessandro VII), a contemporary account of Alexander’s papacy. In book five, Pallavicino wrote of a malicious group of Sicilian women creating and distributing a poison in Rome that was “easy to make and impossible to detect, since it is tasteless and the color of water.” The Papal council became aware of this poisoning ring after a woman confessed to purchasing the clear liquid to her priest. More concerning to the council was that this poison was being used by women specifically to “poison their husbands.” According to Pallavicino, the council’s informant named the ringleader, a “Girolama Siciliana.” Pallavicino provided very little information on Girolama but went on to tell an elaborate story of a sting operation devised to identify and root out the poisoners. In the end five were discovered working in Rome. With some effective torture, all the women confessed, save Girolama. These were the five women convicted and hanged in the Campo di Fiori in 1659. Pallavicino ended his tale praising the Pope’s decisive action and swift justice and notes that under Alexander strict legislation against poisons was then enacted in Rome.

More than a century later, the myth of an odorless, tasteless poison wielded by disgruntled wives still circulated. Interestingly, Pallavicino never named the mysterious poison at the center of his tale. That detail would be provided by later chroniclers like Johann Wilhelm Archenholz who recounted the story of “Aqua Tofana” in his published travel narrative, England und Italien (1785). Archenholz’s account, like many of the chronicles in the centuries following Pallavicino’s, mentioned “a famous poison called Aqua Tofana” employed by an illustrious Roman lady to “get rid of an old husband.” According to Archenholz, there was no poison more dangerous than Aqua Tofana, which was odorless, tasteless, and thus impossible for men to guard against. Separated by more than a century, it is impossible to know if Pallavicino’s and Archenholz’s clear, orderless poisons were one in the same. 18th and 19th century chroniclers, however, continued to assert that across the centuries Aqua Tofana was the undetectable weapon of choice for wives looking to rid themselves of a husband.

Despite the well-entrenched myth of Aqua Tofana that continues to circulate and trend on social media even today, transcripts and court records from the 1659 investigation and trial reveal a different tale. As Dr. Craig A. Monson details, centuries of storytelling and mythologizing essentially rewrote the story Aqua Tofana. The five women who became infamous for killing their husbands and running a poisoning ring never called it Aqua Tofana, nor did they kill their husbands. In fact, according to Monson, two of the women were happily married. Although dozens of women were implicated and investigated, many of which were noblewomen, the authorities focused their attentions on the women who created and sold the poison, viewing them as more culpable than the women who purchased and used it. We know very little of the real lives of the women convicted of making and distributing Aqua Tofana. Unlike the noblewomen who were implicated but pardoned by the Pope, Gironima Spana, Giovanna De Grandis, Maria Spinola, Graziosa Farina, and Laura Crispoldi did not have enough social capitol to escape prosecution and punishment. They were poor, working-class women.

Social status, however, did not save every woman accused of poisoning. Within the Folger Collections is another tale of a woman prosecuted for poisoning. According to the published account, Madam Brinvilliers was a woman “of quality.” She was blessed with “wit and estate, more than was necessary to make her happy.” But Madam Brinvilliers was not happy. In 1676 she was charged with and convicted of poisoning her father and brothers.

According to the story, Madam Brinvilliers was seduced by a credulous man identified as St. Croix. To save his daughter from the shame of betraying her husband, Madam Brinvilliers’s father had St. Croix imprisoned in the bastille. While there, however, St. Croix met a fellow prisoner who “was a great artist in making of Poisons” and who taught him the “very strange lessons of an Italian.” This connection to Italy was no coincidence. Whether real or imagined the stories of Aqua Tofana had clearly traveled outside Italy. Like the accounts of Aqua Tofana, Madam Brinvilliers wielded an odorless, tasteless poison that she slipped into the drinks and meals of her male family members. Soon after the death of her father and brothers, St. Croix also died. The number of deaths caused suspicion, and a search of St. Croix’s home revealed a “closet” of poisons, which included a mysterious white powder. Facing torture and death, Madam Brinvilliers eventually confessed. In July of 1676 she was beheaded, her body burned, and her ashes spread to the wind.

What was the deadly poison wielded by disgruntled wives? Most chroniclers and historians agree that arsenic was the likely substance. Arsenic, however, was not exactly an early modern secret. Arsenic was a common poison in the Elizabethan era and Shakespeare’s audiences would have been familiar with both its properties and effects. That is because arsenic had been used as a poison for centuries. The Roman physician Dioscorides identified arsenic as an effective poison in the first century CE. Arsenic trioxide, called white arsenic in the early modern period, was easily produced through the smelting of arsenic containing ores, like cobalt. The resulting white powder dissolved in water producing an odorless and tasteless clear poison. As an easy to access and abundant natural resource known for centuries, arsenic was the poison of choice when it came to expending an early modern political enemy. Already recognized as a powerful poison, what made arsenic more dangerous in the hands of women?

Poisoning was already of great concern in the early modern era. It was a deceptive, bloodless, and an effective means to rid oneself of an enemy. It required relatively little skill and could be easily slipped into a beverage or meal. It was this delivery method, slipped into a drink or dish, that made the knowledge and know-how of poisoning in the hands of a women particularly dangerous. As keepers of the home, women of all statuses had access to the preparation and serving of meals. Women were also charged with the general health and caregiving of the home, dispensing simple remedies and medical care long before the intervention of a professional physician. A quick glance through the recipe literature collected, exchanged, and read by early modern women reveals that they not only had the opportunity to poison men, but they also had the alchemical know-how to create and dose effective poisons.

The fear associated with women’s knowledge of and ability to poison produced numerous tales that circulated in early modern literature. Known as “justice literature,” and recounted by men, the stories of Aqua Tofana and Madam Brinvilliers emphasized the danger of malicious women and focused on “justice” for men in power. Poisoned men were portrayed as blameless, hagridden victims whose misdeeds never contributed to their demise. These stories served as a warning to husbands as well as unhappy wives who wondered if they might get away with it.

When recounted by women today, however, these stories take on a more sympathetic narrative. Unable to enter into contracts, purchase property, or in many cases even testify in court without a male representative, early modern women, especially poorer women, had little opportunity to escape unhappy or dangerous marriages. Today we recognize that with little say in the choice of a spouse and little opportunity to divorce, mariticide was a survival strategy for some early modern women.

According to legend, more than 600 men, from commoners to noblemen were killed by Aqua Tofana. The reality is we have little historical evidence to support such a claim. We can, however, learn just as much about early modern gender dynamics from the sensationalized story of Aqua Tofana as we can from the real women who met the hangman’s noose in July of 1659. The subsequent cautionary tales spun around malicious wives poisoning their husbands reveals deep societal concerns about the power dynamics between men and women. The reality is that unhappy and thus nonconforming women are dangerous threats to the patriarchal order, both in the early modern period and today.