The poets of the thirteenth century speak of this decoction with transport. They regarded it in the light of an exquisite delicacy. As no gentleman’s library is complete without the presence of some particular work of which a bookseller is anxious to dispose, so no feast at which pigment was not present was held to be complete by the medieval _gourmet_. Indeed this drink seems to have been all too sweet, and was, in consequence of its inebriating property, like the honied Falernian, partially prohibited. The Council of Aix-la-Chapelle in 817 decreed that on festival days only might this voluptuous cup be introduced into conventual repasts. Hydromel and hippocras were allied to this category of fermented and almost alcoholic drinks, but they were not liqueurs. Finally certain liqueurs were composed entirely of juices of fruits and held the rank and title of wines. Such were cherry, gooseberry, strawberry wine, and others. Another liqueur wine often cited by the thirteenth-century poets is _Murrey_, a thin drink coloured or otherwise affected by mulberries. The word liqueur appears to have had a considerable latitude of signification. We talk now of coffee and liqueur, but according to the French poet Delille, who lived at a time very near our own, coffee itself was included under the latter category— “Cest toi, divin café, dont l’aimable liqueur Sans altérer la tête épanouit le cœur”: which presents us with a view of coffee akin to that held by Cowper of tea, when he talks in his _Task_ (Book IV.) of “the cups That cheer but not inebriate.” Liqueurs, indeed, properly so called were not known till long after the distillation of wine had been recognised, probably about the fourteenth century. Many years elapsed before these preparations escaped from the domination of the alchemists. Those religious who employed distillation for the confection of balsams and panaceas seem to have been the first to discover them to the world. Montaigne, in the strange account he has written of his travel in Italy, speaks of the Jesuits of Vicenza—the _Jesuates_ as he calls them—who had a liquor shop in their fair monastery, in which were sold phials of scent for a crown. The good fathers appear to have busied themselves in the intervals of their religious exercises with distilling waters of different herbs and flowers for the public use, as well for medicine as for sensual delight. Speaking of Verona, Montaigne says he saw also a religious of monks who call themselves _Jesuates_ of St. Jérosme. They are dressed in white under a smoked robe with little white caps. They are not priests, neither do they say mass, nor preach,[71] and they are for the most part ignorant. But they make a boast to be excellent distillers of _eau de naffé_[72] and other waters, both in Verona and elsewhere.