Other References

Other References

  • In the late 9th century, a bishop in northern Italy was unable to respond to the invitation of a local lord. To mitigate his absence, he sent a gift basket of mastiha, cinnamon, cloves, pepper, a length of dark green cloth, dried dates and figs, pomegranates, an ivory comb, red dye, and a swordfish bill.
  • Grace of God. Medieval nobility gave the name “cordial” to drinks with a wine base flavored with various spices. They drank cordials after meals, for invigoration and pleasure. The Sloane manuscript (England, late 14th century) contains a recipe for a cordial called “Grace of God” for which twenty-five ingredients, including mastiha, are boiled in white wine.
  • Segreti per colori(Secrets for colors) is a 15th century Italian manuscript kept in the Monastery of San Salvatore in Bologna. It contains a glue formula for mounting precious gems: two parts powdered vitriol, one part mastiha, and four parts tar.
  • In the 18th century, Guillaume Antoine Olivier noted that a Turk had grafted a terebinth       to a mastiha tree. A few years later he incised the trunk and found a resin that smelled like mastiha but with the liquidity of terebinth resin.
  • In Der Schuster (“Regarding Shoes,” Leipzig 1769), D.G. Schreiber gives a formula for boot polish that contains mastiha, white poppy oil, white beeswax, asphalt and ebony sawdust.
  • In the vegetation on Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island, amid the dragonroot and ficus were also mastiha trees.
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