I dedicate this article to Amadeu Ros, who this week has captured a xata (a shark known as a bootie –Hexanchus griseus- that has six gill openings) of more than four meters and has returned it to the sea, which is its habitat. Friend Amadeu, with the hope that someday you can find the gray amber of a sperm whale how you found this xata.
The javiense Fray Cristóbal Bas (? - +1691) was about to receive gray amber-scented gloves as a prize for participating in a poetic joust in 1665. The poetic jousts of the 1665th century were contests where poets were asked to write some composition in honor, in this case of XNUMX, of the Immaculate Conception, and so that the poets had a subject on which to versify, some subjects related to religious devotion were proposed to them. In this case, Fray Cristóbal Bas participated in the third matter in which María resembled a sundial that had no shadow at one o'clock.
For the poets who intervened on this subject, three prizes were announced: a silver watch for the first prize, a ring for the index finger destined for the second prize and amber gloves for the third prize.
When I read the three prizes that were awarded there were two prizes that shocked me and caused surprise. The watch and the amber gloves. Was the gift of a watch possible? So I was able to find out that the watch was a valuable object for a gift. The watch that was a pocket watch at that time was given as a gift on three occasions held in Valencia in the XNUMXth century: on one occasion a watch, on another a silver watch and a third watch with a bell made in Brussels . Well, pocket watches to keep in the bag or pocket have their beginning in the early sixteenth century in Nuremberg, which leads us to understand that it was a desired object in those years of the mid-seventeenth.
But what about the amber gloves? As I turned the idea over, I did not imagine amber gloves since I considered that amber, being a product that identified as mineral, specifically a resin, could not make gloves, until after several consultations I understood that amber You could get some substance that could shape gloves until looking for more data I learned that it was referring to gray amber scented gloves.
This led me to look for more data on gray amber and after a path in which I am surprised at every discovery I make, and since gray amber is able to obtain the compound to perfume the gloves, I come to understand the value of the prize.
In poetic jousting, amber is constituent of gifts on four occasions: an amber pocket, a cut of amber coleto, amber pills and the amber gloves for this occasion of 1665.
What I discovered is that the amber used to perfume was gray and had the property of masking the smelly scent of nature: people smelled bad, the world stunk and only the penetrating perfume of those gloves was able to offer from time to time a truce on the wounded sense of smell. Objects scented with amber acquired extraordinary value, as gray amber is capable of fixing the aroma of any perfume apart from enhancing it ...
A text from 1733, precisely during the reign of Felipe V, describes the way to perfume gloves: the glove must remain submerged in pink water, to later add musk dissolved in orange blossom water and a drop of vinegar, this is intended to imbibe odor skin. Subsequently, they must remain hung for a whole day in order to dry them and then a measure of gray amber will be mixed with an ounce of almond oil, printing the gloves with this solution.
I was progressing to discover things about this product and in this way I found the accounts of the Great Captain, Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, who when presenting the accounts to the Catholic Monarchs for their expenses in the exercise of their military office, these were very high since among them was offering each of his men a pair of perfumed gloves with which to relieve them of the stinking battlefields of Italy, covered with decomposing corpses ...
But where does gray amber come from or what is gray amber? Here is the surprise that I am going to reveal before describing the process of its achievement. It is produced by sperm whale diarrhea.
The sperm whale is a cetacean, it can also be defined as a toothy whale, although only in the lower jaw. This is not the time to describe the sperm whale but I will say that it can have a total length of up to 20 meters and its weight can exceed 50 tons and that it has a tail fin up to 4,5 meters wide. Well, your intestine can reach 160 meters in length, and sometimes there is a gray or blackish substance inside, with an unpleasant odor, when it is fresh. It is what will be called ambergris that in some places aphrodisiac properties are attributed to it.
The interesting thing is that they can get rid of this substance and pieces can appear floating on the high seas or stranded on the beaches. It seems that they are concretions of the digestive system determined by the horny and indigestible beaks of the squid. Well, these pieces that float in the sea, in contact with air, water, sun and wind over time, end up giving off a scent of formidable intensity and solidified take on a white color,
being able to weigh up to five hundred kilos.
Gray amber is cited for example in The Thousand and One Nights in the stories of Sinbad the Sailor in the episode of 'Mandadero and the three maidens' along with male incense kernels, aloe stick, and musk. This product caused the sperm whale to be persecuted because of the search for fresh ambergris in the early XNUMXth century.
But also at that time the seafaring stories begin with respect to the resistance of these animals to being captured, as opposed to the whales, which in this sense seem to offer little opposition. One of these is the one that inspired Herman Melville's novel, Moby Dick.
Mocha Dick was a notable male sperm whale that lived in the Pacific Ocean in the early 100th century, usually found in the waters near Mocha Island, in southeastern Chile, hence its name. Mocha Dick unlike other sperm whales was an albino and survived many skirmishes, according to some references at least 1820 before being killed. It was very large, strong, and capable of wrecking small boats with its tail fin. It is believed to have been responsible for the sinking of the Essex Whaler in XNUMX whose sailors roamed the Pacific Ocean to Henderson Island.
Another day I will talk about the prize that Fray Cristóbal Bas received in that poetic joust of 1665.
John the Baptist Codina Bas
Just as a reminder, the street that is currently called carrer en Forn was called Calle Fray Cristóbal Bas. The street of my childhood.