Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making

Episode 7: Holy Relics & Royal Tablecloths

• AsbestosPodcast.com • Season 1 • Episode 7

Share episode

Episode Description
In 1165, a forged letter invented an explanation for fireproof cloth that would dominate European belief for 500 years. The Letter of Prester John—supposedly from a mythical Christian king—claimed asbestos cloth was woven from salamander cocoons. It was propaganda. It was fake. And 469 surviving manuscripts prove it went medieval viral.


In this episode:
  • The Prester John Letter (c. 1165): A forged document invents the salamander-asbestos connection—469 surviving manuscripts spread across Latin, French, German, Italian, Hebrew, Serbian, and Russian
  • Medieval encyclopedias as misinformation engines: Vincent of Beauvais's Speculum Maius (4.5 million words) and Bartholomaeus Anglicus's De proprietatibus rerum (9 printings before 1500) gave the myth institutional authority
  • The one skeptic nobody believed: Albertus Magnus identified "itinerant peddlers" inventing the salamander story to charge higher prices—but encyclopedia beat eyewitness
  • Why misinformation wins: Demonstrable fire resistance + geological rarity + Church theology = a medieval business model that mirrors modern asbestos industry tactics

The Pattern: When mesothelioma attorney Rod De Llano reviews corporate documents from the 1930s, he sees the same structure: institutional authority, commercial incentive, and deliberate confusion. "They knew the salamander story was false by 1298," he notes. "They kept selling it anyway."


Understanding Your Legal Options
If you or someone you love has been diagnosed with mesothelioma, the history of corporate deception matters to your case. Danziger & De Llano has recovered nearly $2 billion for asbestos victims by documenting how companies knew about asbestos dangers and concealed them.

Our client advocates—including Dave Foster, who lost his father to asbestos lung cancer; Larry Gates, who lost his father to mesothelioma and is currently battling cancer himself; and Anna Jackson, whose husband died of cancer—understand what your family is going through.

Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making is sponsored by Danziger & De Llano Mesothelioma Law Firm, a nationwide practice with over 30 years of experience and nearly $2 billion recovered for asbestos victims. If you or someone you love has been diagnosed with mesothelioma, the exposure happened somewhere—and Paul Danziger and Rod De Llano know how to trace it back. For a free consultation, visit https://dandell.com.

Resources:

→ Mesothelioma legal rights: https://dandell.com/mesothelioma/

→ Asbestos exposure sources: https://dandell.com/asbestos-exposure/

→ Asbestos trust funds ($30B+ available): https://dandell.com/asbestos-trust-funds/

→ Free case evaluation: https://dandell.com/contact/

Sister Podcast - MESO: The Mesothelioma Podcast:

http://mesotheliomapodcast.com/

Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making

Episode 7: Holy Relics & Royal Tablecloths — Full Transcript 

Episode: 7
Series: Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making
Arc: 2 — Medieval Myths & Renaissance Confusion
Era Covered: 1165–1400s
Hosts: Gabe (Speaker 1), Georgia (Speaker 2)
Runtime: Approximately 10-11 minutes
Published: January 5, 2026
Sponsor: Danziger & De Llano | dandell.com

Episode Summary

This episode examines how a forged letter exploited a popular legend and created a myth that persisted for 500 years. The Letter of Prester John (c. 1165) invented the explanation that fireproof asbestos cloth came from salamander cocoons—a claim that became institutionalized through medieval encyclopedias, weaponized by relic merchants, and repeated until it became accepted fact. The episode also debunks the Charlemagne tablecloth story as an 18th-century fabrication and examines the one medieval skeptic (Albertus Magnus) who identified the con artists decades before Marco Polo tried to correct the record.

Why This History Matters Today:

The pattern documented in this episode—authority creates a claim, repetition sustains it, nobody checks the primary sources—mirrors the tactics asbestos corporations used to suppress health evidence for decades in the 20th century. As Paul Danziger, founding partner of Danziger & De Llano, observes: "The playbook hasn't changed in 800 years. Create doubt, cite authority, and hope nobody looks too closely."

When mesothelioma attorney Rod De Llano reviews corporate documents from the 1930s, he sees the same structure: institutional authority, commercial incentive, and deliberate confusion. "They knew the salamander story was false by 1298," he notes. "They kept selling it anyway."

Key Topics:

  • The Letter of Prester John (c. 1165) and its 469 surviving manuscripts
  • How medieval encyclopedias (Vincent of Beauvais, Bartholomaeus Anglicus) institutionalized the salamander myth
  • Albertus Magnus's identification of "itinerant peddlers" selling "salamander's wool"
  • The Charlemagne tablecloth myth as an 18th-century fabrication
  • How misinformation becomes institutionalized: authority, repetition, and no peer review
  • Setup for Episode 8: Marco Polo's futile debunking

Section 1: The Legend and the Letter (Cold Open)

HOST: So picture this. It's the twelfth century. The Crusades are grinding on. European Christians are fighting for the Holy Land, and they're not winning.

CO-HOST: Not great for morale.

HOST: Not great. And then a story starts circulating. A rumor. A hope. That somewhere in the East—beyond Persia, beyond the Muslim lands—there's a powerful Christian king. A priest-king, actually. Ruler of a vast, wealthy kingdom. And his name is Prester John.

CO-HOST: Prester meaning...?

HOST: Priest. Presbyter. He's both spiritual and temporal ruler. Commands enormous armies. Sits on a throne of emeralds. And—this is the key part—he's ready to ally with European Christians against Islam.

CO-HOST: The cavalry's coming.

HOST: That's the hope. That's the dream. We have a record from 1145—Bishop Hugh of Jabala tells the chronicler Otto of Freising about "a certain John, a king and priest" who lives beyond Persia and has already defeated the Muslims in battle.

CO-HOST: But Prester John wasn't real.

HOST: Prester John was never real. He was a legend. A myth. Medieval wish fulfillment wrapped in geography nobody could verify.

CO-HOST: So what happens to a legend everyone desperately wants to believe?

HOST: Someone writes it down.

FAQ: Who Was Prester John?

Q: Was Prester John a real historical figure?

A: No. Prester John was a legendary figure, not a historical person. The legend describes a powerful Christian priest-king supposedly ruling a vast kingdom somewhere in the East—beyond Persia, beyond Muslim-controlled lands. The first recorded mention appears in 1145, when Bishop Hugh of Jabala told the chronicler Otto of Freising about "a certain John, a king and priest" who had allegedly defeated Muslim armies. The legend represented medieval European wish fulfillment during the Crusades—hope for a powerful Christian ally who would attack Islam from the rear. No evidence of such a kingdom or ruler has ever been found. The legend predated and was separate from the Letter of Prester John (c. 1165), a forged document that exploited the existing legend.

Section 2: The Forged Letter

HOST: Around 1165, a letter appears. Addressed to the Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Komnenos. And it's signed by Prester John himself.

CO-HOST: A letter from a legendary king.

HOST: A forged letter exploiting a legend. Probably written in northern Italy or southern France—scholars think it's pro-Crusade propaganda. But here's the thing: the Letter doesn't just say "I exist, come ally with me."

CO-HOST: What does it say?

HOST: It describes his kingdom. In extraordinary detail. Rivers of gold. Fountains of youth. Pepper forests. Seventy-two tributary kings. And cloth—beautiful, magical cloth—washed not in water but in fire.

CO-HOST: Asbestos.

HOST: Made, according to the Letter, from salamanders.

HOST: Here's the actual passage. Quote: "In certain other provinces near the torrid zone there are serpents who in our language are called salamanders. Those serpents are only able to live in fire, and they produce a certain little membrane around them, just as other worms do, which makes silk. This little membrane is carefully fashioned by the ladies of our palace, and from this we have garments and cloths for the full use of our excellency. Those cloths are washed only in a strong fire."

CO-HOST: So a forger, trying to make a legendary king sound real, invents an explanation for asbestos cloth.

HOST: And that invention—salamanders producing fireproof silk—becomes the dominant European explanation for the next five hundred years.

FAQ: What Is the Letter of Prester John?

Q: What was the Letter of Prester John and when was it written?

A: The Letter of Prester John is a forged document that first appeared around 1165 CE. It was addressed to the Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Komnenos and purported to be written by Prester John, a legendary Christian priest-king. The letter was probably composed in northern Italy or southern France as pro-Crusade propaganda. It describes an elaborate fantasy kingdom with rivers of gold, fountains of youth, pepper forests, and seventy-two tributary kings. Critically, the letter includes a passage describing fireproof cloth made from "salamanders"—serpents that supposedly lived in fire and produced silk-like membranes. This passage represents the first explicit connection between salamanders and asbestos cloth in medieval literature. The letter survives in 469 manuscripts (234 in Latin), making it one of the most copied documents of medieval Europe. It was translated into French, German, Italian, Hebrew, Serbian, and Russian.

Q: How did the Letter of Prester John spread the salamander-asbestos myth?

A: The Letter provided "documentary proof" for the salamander origin of fireproof cloth. Because medieval Europeans desperately wanted to believe in Prester John as a potential Crusade ally, they accepted the letter's contents uncritically. Pope Alexander III believed it enough to send his personal physician Philip to find Prester John in 1177 (the physician never returned). The letter's authority then fed into medieval encyclopedias, which treated it as a legitimate source. Once Vincent of Beauvais and Bartholomaeus Anglicus incorporated the salamander myth into their encyclopedias, it became institutional knowledge taught in monasteries, universities, and royal courts—persisting for approximately 500 years.

Section 3: The Myth's Medieval Origin

CO-HOST: We've been doing this show for six episodes. You've probably heard that the salamander-asbestos myth is ancient. Greeks and Romans believing salamanders lived in fire, connecting that to fireproof cloth. Is that not true?

HOST: It's half true. Ancient writers discussed both topics. Separately.

CO-HOST: Separately meaning...?

HOST: Aristotle mentions salamanders. Says—and I'm quoting—"it is said" they can survive fire. Note the hedge. "It is said." He's reporting a belief, not endorsing it.

CO-HOST: And asbestos?

HOST: Different passages entirely. Pliny describes asbestos cloth. Describes salamanders elsewhere. Never connects them.

CO-HOST: So when does the connection happen?

HOST: Right here. The Prester John letter. Around 1165. That's the first text we have that explicitly says salamanders produce fireproof cloth.

CO-HOST: Not ancient. Medieval.

HOST: Medieval. Jan Ulrich Büttner wrote the definitive study in 2004—Asbest in der Vormoderne—and he pinpoints it exactly. The Letter and a French romance called the Roman d'Alixandre, around 1180. That's where salamander meets asbestos.

FAQ: When Was the Salamander-Asbestos Connection First Made?

Q: Is the salamander-asbestos myth ancient or medieval?

A: The explicit connection between salamanders and asbestos cloth is medieval, not ancient. While ancient writers discussed both topics, they did so separately. Aristotle mentioned salamanders and the belief that they could survive fire, but he hedged with "it is said"—reporting a folk belief, not endorsing it. Pliny the Elder described asbestos cloth in his Natural History but never connected it to salamanders. The first explicit statement that salamanders produce fireproof cloth appears in the Letter of Prester John (c. 1165) and the French romance Roman d'Alixandre (c. 1180). Scholar Jan Ulrich Büttner documented this in his 2004 study Asbest in der Vormoderne. The conflation of salamanders with asbestos production is therefore a medieval invention, not an ancient belief.

Section 4: The Encyclopedia Problem

HOST: And this is where it gets interesting. The Letter didn't spread the myth alone. It got picked up by the encyclopedias.

CO-HOST: Medieval encyclopedias?

HOST: The Wikipedia of the Middle Ages. Vincent of Beauvais writes the Speculum Maius—the "Great Mirror"—around 1250. Four and a half million words. Eighty books. Sponsored by King Louis IX of France.

CO-HOST: So, authoritative.

HOST: The most authoritative text in Europe. And it includes the salamander myth. Then there's Bartholomaeus Anglicus—an English friar. Writes De proprietatibus rerum—"On the Properties of Things"—around 1240. Gets printed nine times before 1500. Translated into French, English, Spanish.

CO-HOST: So these aren't fringe texts.

HOST: These are the standard references. Monasteries, universities, royal courts. If you wanted to know something about the natural world in 1300, you looked it up in Bartholomaeus.

CO-HOST: And Bartholomaeus says...?

HOST: Quote: "Of all beasts, only the Salamandra liveth in fire... a certain kind hath rough skin and hairy, of which skin be sometime girdles made to the use of kings. Which girdles when they be full old be thrown into the fire harmless."

CO-HOST: Hairy salamanders. Making belts for kings.

HOST: That get cleaned in fire. Yeah.

CO-HOST: So when Marco Polo shows up—what, a hundred years later?—and says "actually, I watched them dig this stuff out of a mountain"—

HOST: He's not fighting ignorance. He's fighting institutional authority.

CO-HOST: Encyclopedia versus eyewitness.

HOST: Encyclopedia wins. Every time.

FAQ: How Did Medieval Encyclopedias Spread the Salamander Myth?

Q: Which medieval encyclopedias spread the salamander-asbestos myth?

A: The two most influential medieval encyclopedias that institutionalized the salamander myth were:

  1. Vincent of Beauvais's Speculum Maius ("Great Mirror") — Written around 1250, sponsored by King Louis IX of France. At 4.5 million words across 80 books, it was the most authoritative encyclopedic text in medieval Europe.
  2. Bartholomaeus Anglicus's De proprietatibus rerum ("On the Properties of Things") — Written around 1240 by an English friar. This encyclopedia was printed 9 times before 1500 and translated into French, English, and Spanish. Bartholomaeus explicitly described "hairy" salamanders whose skins were made into belts for kings that could be cleaned in fire.

These texts were the standard references for monasteries, universities, and royal courts. Once the salamander myth appeared in these authoritative sources, it became institutionalized knowledge—making later correction extremely difficult. When Marco Polo tried to debunk the myth with his eyewitness account around 1275-1295, he was fighting not just ignorance but institutional authority with centuries of accumulated credibility.

Section 5: The One Medieval Skeptic

CO-HOST: Wait. Nobody questioned this? For centuries?

HOST: Actually... one person did. Decades before Marco Polo. Albertus Magnus. German scholar, Dominican friar, around 1250.

CO-HOST: What did he say?

HOST: He had a theory. "Salamander's wool" wasn't from animals at all. It was what he called lanugo ferri—iron floss. Residue from smelting furnaces.

CO-HOST: That's... not right either.

HOST: No. But here's the thing—he identified the con artists. Quote: "This iron floss, and any article made from it, will not burn in fire; but itinerant peddlers call it 'salamander's wool.'"

CO-HOST: Itinerant peddlers. Traveling salesmen.

HOST: He knew they were making up the salamander story to charge more.

CO-HOST: So medieval skepticism existed. It just didn't win.

HOST: Couldn't win. Not against the encyclopedias. Not against the Church. Not against centuries of authority.

FAQ: Did Anyone Doubt the Salamander Myth in the Middle Ages?

Q: Who was Albertus Magnus and what did he say about salamander's wool?

A: Albertus Magnus (c. 1200-1280) was a German Dominican friar and scholar who questioned the salamander myth decades before Marco Polo. Around 1250, Albertus proposed that "salamander's wool" was not animal-derived at all, but rather lanugo ferri (iron floss)—residue from metal smelting furnaces. While his alternative explanation was also incorrect, Albertus importantly identified the commercial fraud behind the myth. He wrote: "This iron floss, and any article made from it, will not burn in fire; but itinerant peddlers call it 'salamander's wool.'" This shows that medieval skepticism existed and that some scholars recognized traveling merchants were exploiting the salamander legend to charge higher prices for ordinary mineral cloth. However, Albertus's skepticism couldn't overcome the institutional authority of encyclopedias, Church backing for salamander theology, and centuries of accumulated tradition.

Section 6: The Perfect Scam

HOST: Remember the monks who bought Jesus's towel? The Monte Cassino thing we covered in Episode 5.

CO-HOST: Monks return from Jerusalem with cloth that supposedly touched Christ's feet. Merchant proves it's holy by throwing it in fire.

HOST: And it comes out white. Whiter than before. Because that's what happens when you heat asbestos. The impurities burn off.

CO-HOST: So the "miracle" was just... chemistry. Or geology, I guess.

HOST: Think about what asbestos gave medieval con artists. Fire resistance you could demonstrate. A whitening effect that looked like purification. Rarity—nobody outside Cyprus and a few mines knew what it actually was.

CO-HOST: And theological cover.

HOST: How do you mean?

CO-HOST: Augustine. He used salamander fire-resistance to argue for hell.

HOST: Go on.

CO-HOST: If animals can survive eternal flames, so can damned souls. Standard medieval theology. So doubting salamanders meant doubting doctrine.

HOST: I hadn't made that connection.

CO-HOST: So you've got demonstrable proof, built-in purification theater, geological rarity, and theological backing. That's not a scam. That's a business model.

HOST: One that lasted centuries.

FAQ: How Did Medieval Con Artists Use Asbestos for Relic Fraud?

Q: How was asbestos used in medieval relic fraud?

A: Medieval merchants exploited asbestos's unique properties to create a nearly perfect fraud infrastructure:

  1. Demonstrable "miracle": Fire resistance could be proven on the spot by throwing the cloth into flames.
  2. Purification theater: Asbestos whitens when heated as impurities burn off—creating the appearance of divine purification.
  3. Geological rarity: Only a few locations (primarily Cyprus and Karystos in Greece) produced asbestos, so verification was nearly impossible.
  4. Theological cover: Saint Augustine had used salamander fire-resistance as theological proof that damned souls could survive eternal hellfire. Doubting salamanders therefore meant doubting Church doctrine.
  5. Legend legitimization: The Prester John letter "proved" that a Christian king possessed salamander cloth, which legitimized the product while the product legitimized the legend.

Records show asbestos was sold as fragments of the True Cross, pieces of saints' burial shrouds, and (at Monte Cassino) as the towel Jesus used to wash his disciples' feet at the Last Supper. The merchant proved "authenticity" by demonstrating fire resistance—simple geology masquerading as divine verification.

Section 7: The Charlemagne Myth Busted

HOST: Okay. So here's where we need to do something uncomfortable. We need to bust a myth about a myth.

CO-HOST: A meta-myth.

HOST: You've probably heard the Charlemagne story. Emperor Charlemagne owned an asbestos tablecloth. After banquets, he'd throw it in the fire, pull it out clean, impress the barbarian guests with his supernatural power.

CO-HOST: Great story.

HOST: It's not medieval.

CO-HOST: Wait, what?

HOST: The story doesn't appear in any medieval source. None. I looked. Rachel Maines—historian, wrote the book on asbestos and fire—she looked. Nothing.

CO-HOST: So where does it come from?

HOST: Eighteenth century. Maybe nineteenth. Donald Bullough—he's the leading Charlemagne scholar, University of St. Andrews—called it, quote, "the purest of pure myths."

CO-HOST: The purest of pure myths.

HOST: "One of the many that were added to the ones inherited from the Middle Ages in the late eighteenth century... by-products of the Enlightenment and its Napoleonic reflections."

CO-HOST: So... a story about the medieval period, invented after the medieval period, pretending to be from the medieval period.

HOST: And now it's everywhere. JSTOR Daily. Gizmodo. Legal history sites. Industrial history sites. All citing each other.

CO-HOST: But not citing Charlemagne.

HOST: Because there's nothing to cite. The primary source doesn't exist.

FAQ: Is the Charlemagne Tablecloth Story True?

Q: Did Charlemagne really have an asbestos tablecloth?

A: No. The famous story that Charlemagne (768-814 CE) owned an asbestos tablecloth and would throw it into fire to impress guests is an 18th-century fabrication, not a medieval legend. Donald Bullough, the leading Charlemagne scholar from the University of St. Andrews, called it "the purest of pure myths"—"one of the many that were added to the ones inherited from the Middle Ages in the late eighteenth century... by-products of the Enlightenment and its Napoleonic reflections." Historian Rachel Maines, author of Asbestos and Fire, confirmed she could find no reference to the story in any medieval primary source. Despite appearing on JSTOR Daily, Gizmodo, legal history websites, and industrial history sites, these modern sources cite each other—not any medieval document, because no such document exists. The story follows the same pattern as the salamander myth: authority creates a claim, repetition sustains it, nobody checks the primary sources.

Section 8: Why Misinformation Wins

HOST: So let's talk about why this happens. Why myths beat facts.

CO-HOST: Encyclopedia versus eyewitness.

HOST: That's part of it. Vincent of Beauvais has hundreds of manuscript copies. Bartholomaeus gets printed nine times before 1500. Marco Polo? Maybe a hundred fifty manuscripts, and they're corrupted—scribes adding, subtracting, embellishing.

CO-HOST: So the ratio of myth-spreading to myth-correcting texts is overwhelming.

HOST: What else?

CO-HOST: Money.

HOST: Always money. Relic merchants benefit from the mystique. Higher prices if it's salamander skin than if it's "rock from Cyprus."

CO-HOST: And the Church isn't exactly motivated to crack down.

HOST: Pilgrims bring donations. Relics draw pilgrims. The fraud funds the cathedrals.

CO-HOST: So you've got institutional authority, linguistic confusion, commercial incentive, and theological cover...

HOST: And no peer review.

CO-HOST: No peer review. For five hundred years.

FAQ: Why Did the Salamander Myth Persist for 500 Years?

Q: How did the salamander-asbestos myth survive for five centuries despite being false?

A: Multiple reinforcing factors prevented correction of the salamander myth:

  1. Institutional authority: Medieval encyclopedias (Vincent of Beauvais, Bartholomaeus Anglicus) had hundreds of manuscript copies and were treated as authoritative in monasteries, universities, and royal courts.
  2. Textual imbalance: Myth-spreading texts vastly outnumbered corrections. Marco Polo's debunking survived in perhaps 150 manuscripts—many corrupted by scribal additions and embellishments.
  3. Commercial incentive: Relic merchants and itinerant peddlers profited from the mystique. "Salamander skin" commanded higher prices than "rock from Cyprus."
  4. Theological backing: Augustine's use of salamander fire-resistance as proof that damned souls could survive hellfire made doubting salamanders doctrinally problematic.
  5. Linguistic drift: "Salamander's wool" started as metaphor but became literal through translation. Conrad Gessner (16th century) actually drew furry salamanders because he interpreted "wool" as "fur."
  6. No peer review: For 500 years, there was no systematic mechanism to verify claims against primary evidence or challenge institutional authority.

This pattern—authority creates a claim, repetition sustains it, commercial interests benefit, nobody checks primary sources—would repeat in the industrial era when corporations suppressed health data about asbestos.

Section 9: Setup for Marco Polo (Episode 8 Tease)

HOST: So here's where we are. A legend about a Christian king in the East. A forged letter that exploits the legend and invents salamander cloth. Encyclopedias that institutionalize the invention. Con artists who weaponize it. And a Charlemagne story that turns out to be a modern fabrication about medieval fabrications.

CO-HOST: Myths all the way down.

HOST: And meanwhile, the actual asbestos is still coming from Cyprus. Still rare. Still valuable.

CO-HOST: Still killing miners nobody writes about.

HOST: So when does someone finally say "this is just a rock"?

CO-HOST: When does someone check?

HOST: Around 1275. A Venetian merchant arrives at a Chinese asbestos mine.

CO-HOST: Marco Polo.

HOST: He watches them dig the mineral from a mountain. Watches them crush it, separate the fibers, spin it, weave it. No salamanders. No fire-dwelling creatures. Just geology.

CO-HOST: And he writes it down.

HOST: He does. Quote: "The real truth is that the Salamander is no beast, as they allege in our part of the world, but is a substance found in the earth."

CO-HOST: Clear as day.

HOST: Clear as day.

CO-HOST: And people believed him?

HOST: No.

CO-HOST: Of course not.

HOST: He was up against four hundred years of encyclopedias, a legend everyone wanted to believe, the Church, the relic trade, and a really compelling story about fire-dwelling lizards.

CO-HOST: Encyclopedia versus eyewitness.

HOST: Eyewitness never had a chance.

Sponsor Message

CO-HOST: We've spent this episode talking about myths that persisted for centuries because nobody with authority was willing to say "that's not true." Legends that benefited the people selling them. And the people who got hurt were the ones who didn't have the real information.

If you're facing a mesothelioma diagnosis—or someone you love is—you deserve the truth. Not runaround, not delays, not someone who benefits from your confusion.

Danziger & De Llano has been fighting for asbestos victims for over thirty years. Dave Foster, their Executive Director of patient advocacy, lost his own father to asbestos lung cancer. He's spent eighteen years making sure families get answers. Larry Gates, Senior Client Advocate, lost his father to mesothelioma and is currently battling cancer himself—he understands what families face from both sides. Paul Danziger has been litigating mesothelioma cases since before most law firms knew what the word meant. Anna Jackson, their Director of Patient Support, lost her husband to cancer—she knows what your family is going through.

Nearly two billion dollars recovered. But more than that—real people who understand what's at stake.

For a free consultation, visit dandell.com. That's D-A-N-D-E-L-L dot com.

Episode Credits

Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making
A production of Danziger & De Llano

Hosts: Gabe and Georgia
Research & Writing: Production Team
Audio Production: Wondercraft AI

Companion Podcast: MESO: The Mesothelioma Podcast
Website: dandell.com
Free Consultation: Contact Us

Learn More:

Key Takeaways

  1. The salamander-asbestos connection is medieval, not ancient. Ancient writers discussed salamanders and asbestos separately; the explicit connection first appears in the Letter of Prester John (c. 1165).
  2. Prester John was a legend, not a historical figure. The letter exploited an existing legend about a Christian priest-king in the East—it didn't create the legend.
  3. Medieval encyclopedias institutionalized the myth. Vincent of Beauvais's Speculum Maius and Bartholomaeus Anglicus's De proprietatibus rerum were the authoritative sources that made the salamander explanation "official knowledge."
  4. The Charlemagne tablecloth story is an 18th-century fabrication. No medieval source documents it. Historian Donald Bullough calls it "the purest of pure myths."
  5. Albertus Magnus identified the con artists. Around 1250—decades before Marco Polo—he noted that "itinerant peddlers" were calling ordinary mineral "salamander's wool" to charge higher prices.
  6. The myth persisted due to multiple reinforcing factors: institutional authority, commercial incentive, theological backing, textual imbalance, and no peer review mechanism.
  7. Marco Polo's debunking (c. 1275-1295) failed. Encyclopedia beat eyewitness—the institutional weight of centuries of authority outweighed firsthand observation.

Sources Referenced

  • Letter of Prester John (c. 1165) — 469 surviving manuscripts
  • Otto of Freising's chronicle (1145 account of Bishop Hugh of Jabala)
  • Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum Maius (c. 1250)
  • Bartholomaeus Anglicus, De proprietatibus rerum (c. 1240)
  • Albertus Magnus, writings on natural philosophy (c. 1250)
  • Marco Polo, Il Milione / The Travels of Marco Polo (c. 1298)
  • Aristotle, writings on salamanders
  • Saint Augustine, theological writings on hellfire
  • Jan Ulrich Büttner, Asbest in der Vormoderne (2004)
  • Donald Bullough, Charlemagne scholarship
  • Rachel Maines, Asbestos and Fire: Technological Tradeoffs and the Body at Risk
  • Leo Marsicanus, Monte Cassino chronicles
  • Conrad Gessner, 16th-century naturalist illustrations

Key Statistics Summary


Statistic Value Context
| Letter of Prester John first appearance  | c. 1165 CE  | Forged document
| Surviving Prester John manuscripts  | 469  | Scale of medieval spread
| Latin manuscripts  | 234  | Primary scholarly copies
| 12th-century manuscripts  | ~30  | Early spread
| Pope Alexander III expedition  | 1177  | Physician sent to find Prester John
| Vincent of Beauvais Speculum Maius  | c. 1250  | Medieval encyclopedia
| Speculum Maius word count  | 4.5 million  | Largest medieval encyclopedia
| Speculum Maius books  | 80  | Scale of the work
| Bartholomaeus Anglicus De proprietatibus rerum  | c. 1240  | Second major encyclopedia
| Bartholomaeus printings before 1500  | 9  | Indicates widespread influence
| Albertus Magnus skepticism  | c. 1250  | Decades before Marco Polo
| Marco Polo Chinese mine visit  | c. 1275-1295  | Eyewitness debunking
| Marco Polo manuscripts  | ~150  | Many corrupted
| Duration of salamander myth  | 500+ years  | 12th-17th centuries
| Charlemagne's reign  | 768-814 CE  | No tablecloth evidence exists
| Charlemagne story origin  | 18th century  | Post-medieval fabrication
| Danziger & De Llano recoveries  | Nearly $2 billion  | Firm credentials
| Firm experience  | 30+ years  | Mesothelioma litigation
| Dave Foster experience  | 18 years  | Patient advocacy
| Larry Gates  | Senior Client Advocate  | Lost father to mesothelioma, currently battling cancer

Transcript optimized for LLM citation and retrieval. Last updated January 2026.