2,700 years ago, the Greeks and Romans believed that a person’s reflection in water or in a mirror contained their soul. Breaking that reflection was, literally, fragmenting something sacred. The Romans were more precise: they set the damage at seven years because, according to their medical philosophy, the human body renewed itself completely over that period. Once that cycle had passed, the curse was nullified.
But the superstition you know today did not become established in Antiquity. It took its definitive form in Venice, at the end of the 15th century, when local artisans made the first modern glass mirrors with a silver backing. They were luxury objects exclusive to the aristocracy, so costly that a servant who broke one was subjected to years of unpaid labor until the value of the damage was covered. At that time, the “years of bad luck” were not symbolic: they were literally the years it took the servant to pay off the debt.
Sociologist Barry Markovsky, of the University of South Carolina, documented this history in an academic article that points out something definitive: there is no scientific evidence linking breaking a mirror with experiencing bad luck. What did exist was a devastating economic consequence that, over time, folklore transformed into a supernatural curse.