Baptism with flaming spirit?
Alex Kraaijeveld
You will all have seen many whisky books claim that Irish monks, after traveling the European continent from the 5th century onwards, brought the knowledge of alcohol distillation back to Ireland. Nice story, but it has two problems. First of all, not the slightest scrap of evidence has ever been produced to show that alcohol distillation happened on Irish soil that early. No contemporary literary sources, no archaeological finds, nothing. And second, there is no hard evidence that distilled alcohol was known on mainland Europe in that period. The earliest solid European record of distilled alcohol is found in the “Mappae clavicula”, which dates from the first half of the 12th century: On mixing a pure and very strong wine with three parts of salt and heating it in the vessels destined for that purpose there is obtained an inflammable water which burns without consuming the material which it is placed upon. This ‘aqua ardens’ was extraordinary in two ways: it looked like water, but it burned (hence the name it was given; ‘aqua ardens’ means ‘burning water’). And while burning it didn’t seem to cause any damage to the material it was poured on.
Although this entry in the “Mappae clavicula” appears to be the oldest solid reference to distilled alcohol in Europe, there is a theory stating that distilled alcohol actually existed in Europe at a much earlier date. This theory, mostly based on circumstantial evidence, was first proposed by H. Diels early in the 20th century, but then dismissed and largely forgotten. Recently, it was revived again by C. Anne Wilson of the University of Leeds. What I want to do in the remainder of this article is present a brief summary of this theory; I will give references to several of Wilson’s publications on this subject at the end of the article, in case people want to follow this up in detail. Before I go on, let me stress that this is not more than a theory, but an intriguing one and one which would potentially remove one of the two problems with the ‘Irish monks brought back the knowledge of distilled alcohol after traveling through mainland Europe’ story.
A Greek text from the 2nd or 3rd century, and supposedly written by Hippolytus, talks about gnostic Christians heating wine in an earthenware vessel, about adding salt and sulphur, and notes that after the wine has been brought to the boil, it can be set alight and poured on the head it does not burn at all. Earlier texts, traced back to Anaxilaos, who lived in the 1st century BC, mention baptism ceremonies, with bright fire appearing on the water used. Other texts talk about ‘raising the water’ in connection to boiling wine. And going back even further, a play written by Euripides around 408 BC has a scene where fire burns harmlessly on the hair of the maenads, signaling the presence of the wine god Dionysus.
All this does of course not add up to convincing evidence that wine was distilled in Greece 2,500 years ago and that this distilled wine was used in gnostic baptismal rituals to create a nimbus of flames on the heads of the baptised. But you have to admit it is an intriguing theory ….. It has been argued that the stills of those days were not suitable for distilling alcohol because of their poor cooling (don’t forget, distillation as a technique is certainly much older than the use of that technique to produce distilled alcohol!). However, experiments performed by Needham have shown that ancient Hellenistic stills can be used to distill alcoholic spirit. So, assuming these gnostic baptism rituals actually took place as described and people had flames dancing on their heads without getting burned, the big question is whether it was distilled alcohol that was used or simply warm wine? Experiments have shown that a distilled spirit of about 35% will indeed burn without damaging a piece of cloth soaked in it. But can you do the same with warmed-up wine? Wine certainly does give off alcohol vapours when heated, which could be set alight, but in order to pour this burning wine on someone’s head without scalding him or her, it can’t be warmed up too much obviously.
So, where does all this leave us and 6th/7th century Irish monks? And do we need to re-write the history of whisky distilling in the British Isles? I think C. Anne Wilson’s research opens the possibility that distilled alcohol was known in Europe long before its generally-accepted first record in the 12th century “Mappae clavicula”. And when I say ‘possibility’ I really mean possibility in the sense that it can’t be ruled out. If (and that’s a really big ‘if’) she is right and alcohol was already distilled in Europe more than 2,000 years ago, it is not impossible that traveling Irish monks brought that knowledge back to Ireland during the second half of the first millennium. And if (yet again, big ‘if’) that is what really happened, whisky distilling in the British Isles was originally done with an Irish, rather than Scottish accent.
© 2005 Alex Kraaijeveld
Wilson CA, 1984. Philosophers, Iōsis and Water of Life. Proceedings of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society; Literary and Historical section. Vol XIX, part V, pp 101-219.
Wilson CA, 1993. Water of Life: its Beginnings and Early History. In: Wilson CA (ed). Liquid Nourishment. Chap 9, pp 142-164. Edinburgh University Press.
Wilson CA, 1998. Wine rituals, maenads and Dionysian fire. Papers of the Leeds International Latin Seminar. Vol 10: 157-168.
Wilson CA, 1998. Pythagorean theory and Dionysian practice: the cultic and practical background to chemical experimentation in Hellenistic Egypt. Ambix 45: 14- 33.
