John Damian de Falcuis (Italian: Giovanni Damiano de Falcucci) was an Italian at the court of
James IV of Scotland
James IV (17 March 1473 – 9 September 1513) was King of Scotland from 11 June 1488 until his death at the Battle of Flodden in 1513. He inherited the throne at the age of fifteen on the death of his father, James III, at the Battle of Sauchi ...
. His attempts at medicine, alchemy, flying, and his advancement by the king encouraged a satirical attack by the poet
William Dunbar
William Dunbar (born 1459 or 1460 – died by 1530) was a Scottish makar, or court poet, active in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. He was closely associated with the court of King James IV and produced a large body of work in ...
.
Exchequer records
In the records of the
Scottish exchequer John Damian is called the "French Leech" or "Master John the French Leech". "Leech" being an old word for a physician. He first appears in the records in January 1501. He directed the building of alchemical furnaces at
Stirling Castle
Stirling Castle, located in Stirling, is one of the largest and most important castles in Scotland, both historically and architecturally. The castle sits atop Castle Hill, an intrusive crag, which forms part of the Stirling Sill geological ...
and
Holyroodhouse
The Palace of Holyroodhouse ( or ), commonly referred to as Holyrood Palace or Holyroodhouse, is the official residence of the British monarch in Scotland. Located at the bottom of the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, at the opposite end to Edinburgh ...
to produce the
"quinta essentia", the fifth element. The furnace at Stirling was tended by Caldwell and Alexander Ogilvy, and managed by
Andrew Aytoun Andrew Aytoun (died 1547), was a Scottish soldier and engineer, and captain of Stirling Castle.
Aytoun worked for James IV of Scotland, whose reign lasted from 1488 until his death at the battle of Flodden in 1513. He was regarded as a member of t ...
, Captain of the castle.
John Damian was appointed
Abbot of Tongland
Abbot is an ecclesiastical title given to the male head of a monastery in various Western religious traditions, including Christianity. The office may also be given as an honorary title to a clergyman who is not the head of a monastery. The fem ...
. Between 1501 and 1508 he received a great deal of money from the king and bought many ingredients to make the quintessence, which included
aqua vitae
''Aqua vitae'' (Latin for "water of life") or aqua vita is an archaic name for a concentrated aqueous solution of ethanol. These terms could also be applied to weak ethanol without rectification. Usage was widespread during the Middle Ages a ...
,
quicksilver,
sal ammoniac
Salammoniac, also sal ammoniac or salmiac, is a rare naturally occurring mineral composed of ammonium chloride, NH4Cl. It forms colorless, white, or yellow-brown crystals in the isometric-hexoctahedral class. It has very poor cleavage and is ...
,
alum
An alum () is a type of chemical compound, usually a hydrated double salt, double sulfate salt (chemistry), salt of aluminium with the general chemical formula, formula , where is a valence (chemistry), monovalent cation such as potassium or a ...
,
litharge
Litharge (from Greek lithargyros, lithos (stone) + argyros (silver) ''λιθάργυρος'') is one of the natural mineral forms of lead(II) oxide, PbO. Litharge is a secondary mineral which forms from the oxidation of galena ores. It forms as coa ...
,
orpiment
Orpiment is a deep-colored, orange-yellow arsenic sulfide mineral with formula . It is found in volcanic fumaroles, low-temperature hydrothermal veins, and hot springs and is formed both by sublimation and as a byproduct of the decay of another a ...
,
saltpetre
Potassium nitrate is a chemical compound with the chemical formula . This alkali metal nitrate salt is also known as Indian saltpetre (large deposits of which were historically mined in India). It is an ionic salt of potassium ions K+ and nitra ...
,
silver
Silver is a chemical element with the Symbol (chemistry), symbol Ag (from the Latin ', derived from the Proto-Indo-European wikt:Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/h₂erǵ-, ''h₂erǵ'': "shiny" or "white") and atomic number 47. A soft, whi ...
,
sugar
Sugar is the generic name for sweet-tasting, soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food. Simple sugars, also called monosaccharides, include glucose, fructose, and galactose. Compound sugars, also called disaccharides or double ...
,
sulphur
Sulfur (or sulphur in British English) is a chemical element with the symbol S and atomic number 16. It is abundant, multivalent and nonmetallic. Under normal conditions, sulfur atoms form cyclic octatomic molecules with a chemical formula ...
,
tin
Tin is a chemical element with the symbol Sn (from la, stannum) and atomic number 50. Tin is a silvery-coloured metal.
Tin is soft enough to be cut with little force and a bar of tin can be bent by hand with little effort. When bent, t ...
,
verdigris
Verdigris is the common name for blue-green, copper-based pigments that form a patina on copper, bronze, and brass. The technical literature is ambiguous as to its chemical composition. Some sources refer to "neutral verdigris" as copper(II) ac ...
,
vinegar
Vinegar is an aqueous solution of acetic acid and trace compounds that may include flavorings. Vinegar typically contains 5–8% acetic acid by volume. Usually, the acetic acid is produced by a double fermentation, converting simple sugars to et ...
and
white lead
White lead is the basic lead carbonate 2PbCO3·Pb(OH)2. It is a complex salt, containing both carbonate and hydroxide ions. White lead occurs naturally as a mineral, in which context it is known as hydrocerussite, a hydrate of cerussite. It was ...
. Some of the materials for the quintessence were supplied by the court
apothecary
''Apothecary'' () is a mostly archaic term for a medical professional who formulates and dispenses '' materia medica'' (medicine) to physicians, surgeons, and patients. The modern chemist (British English) or pharmacist (British and North Ameri ...
John Mosman, who was involved in building the furnaces. A goldsmith,
Matthew Auchinleck, made silver fittings for the distillation equipment.
John took a hand in court entertainments, organizing the dances in Edinburgh at New Year 1504. In 1507, John tried to fly from the battlements of Stirling Castle, but broke his thigh in the process. The records of royal treasurer list sums of money lost by the King playing cards with John and betting at shooting matches with his hand
culverin
A culverin was initially an ancestor of the hand-held arquebus, but later was used to describe a type of medieval and Renaissance cannon. The term is derived from the French "''couleuvrine''" (from ''couleuvre'' "grass snake", following the La ...
.
John resigned as Abbot of Tongland in 1509, and James IV wrote to
Pope Julius II
Pope Julius II ( la, Iulius II; it, Giulio II; born Giuliano della Rovere; 5 December 144321 February 1513) was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 1503 to his death in February 1513. Nicknamed the Warrior Pope or th ...
asking that John's pension of 200 gold ducats should be paid. John Damian is still recorded at court a few months before the
battle of Flodden
The Battle of Flodden, Flodden Field, or occasionally Branxton, (Brainston Moor) was a battle fought on 9 September 1513 during the War of the League of Cambrai between the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland, resulting in an English ...
in 1513.
William Dunbar and John Lesley
The contemporary poet William Dunbar described Damian's career in comic terms in the poem, "
A Ballad of the False Friar of Tongland, How He Fell in the Mire Flying to Turkey". According to Dunbar, Damian came from the east and stole a priest's robes in Lombardy. In France he pretended to be a doctor to the detriment of his patients then came to Scotland where in "leichecraft he was homecyd" (a killer in surgery). When he failed to make the quintessence by alchemy, he decided to fly to Turkey. But he was attacked by birds who plucked his wings and landed up to his eyes in a mire.
Another poem by Dunbar, the ''Antichrist'', first line "
Lucina shynning in silence of the nicht", recalls a dream.
Dame Fortune came to the poet and described
her wheel and the genesis of the flying Abbot. She said Dunbar would not get clerical advancement until he saw a flying Abbot. Dunbar kept this dream to himself. But soon, turning the genre of the ballad of impossibilities on its head, Dunbar did see a flying Abbot.
A later writer,
John Lesley, provided a complimentary account. Lesley mentioned the alchemy, and describes how the failure of the enterprise began to make Damian unpopular. To counter this he announced that he would fly from Stirling Castle, reaching France before the Scottish ambassadors. On the appointed day he put on a pair of wings made from feathers and leapt from the highest point of the castle. Lesley says his journey ended as soon as it began, with the bystanders uncertain whether to mourn his demise or marvel at his daftness. Damian had broken his thigh bone and alleged that he had hoped to use only eagle feathers, but some poultry feathers supplied had sabotaged his wings. In Lesley's text the event is placed immediately prior to his account death of
Prince James in February 1508. There was a Scottish embassy to France in September 1507, so in the absence of other evidence, the attempt at flying is usually assigned to that date.
The critic Priscilla Bawcutt sees the ''Ballad'' and the ''Antichrist'' characterising Damian as a
shape-shifter
In mythology, folklore and speculative fiction, shape-shifting is the ability to physically transform oneself through an inherently superhuman ability, divine intervention, demonic manipulation, sorcery, spells or having inherited ...
without fixed identity. There is no other evidence for the flying attempt apart from Dunbar's poems and Lesley's later account, and the episode of the failed flight has a number of traditional literary parallels as an example of foolish striving for superhuman attainment. The birds who attack the flier in the poem draw attention to his lack of identity; "all fowill ferleit (wondered) quhat he sowld be" as an imposter.
A late 17th century carpenter's bill for work at Stirling Castle refers to a now unknown location, presumably at the King's Old Building built by James IV, where 'the Devil flew out'.
[''Inventory of Ancient Monuments: Stirlingshire'', vol. 1 (RCAHMS, 1963), p. 188.]
See also
*
Franz Reichelt
Franz Reichelt (16 October 1878 – 4 February 1912), also known as Frantz Reichelt or François Reichelt, was an Austrian-born French tailor, inventor and parachuting pioneer, now sometimes referred to as the Flying Tailor, who is remembered fo ...
, later parachute pioneer
External links
Small, John, ed., ''Poems of William Dunbar; The Poems'', vol. 2 (Scottish Text Society: Edinburgh, 1893).Sweeney, Charlene, 'Was 16th-century Scots alchemist the first man to fly?', ''The Times'', 7 September 2008.Mario M Rossi, 'L'abate aviatore', pp. 43-80, in ''Friendship's Garland, Essays presented to Mario Praz'', vol. 1 (Rome,1966).
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Damian, John
Court of James IV of Scotland
Scottish alchemists
Italian alchemists
Aviation pioneers
Scottish royal favourites
Year of birth missing
Year of death missing
16th-century alchemists
People of Stirling Castle