But what did the Arabs of the seventh century eat, in the early days of Islam? There were many tribes of Arabs, nomads and city dwellers alike, Arabs of the north and of the south, Arabs of the Gulf and of the Red Sea, dispersed across the vast spaces of the Arabian peninsula. Their alimentary habits are known to us through accounts of the life of the prophet Muhammad, born at Mecca in Hijaz, a region that extends for hundreds of miles along the coast of the Red Sea, from the port of Aqaba in the north to the port of Al-Lith in the south. Hijaz consists of high desert plateaus where rainfall is rare and unpredictable, but it is not totally barren for all that; it is dotted with oases, as for example at Medina, where a settled population cultivates the date palm and, to a lesser extent, vineyards. Wheat was grown a bit farther south, in Asir, the best-irrigated region. Owing to the climate, caravan trade and stock breeding based on the dromedary and the goat were more important activities than agriculture. Relations among the nomadic masters of the desert trade routes and the settled peoples, who controlled the centers of commerce, were rarely peaceful, however, though some degree of harmony was necessary to assure mutual survival in a hostile environment. But even if their roles were complementary from the economic point of view, the Bedouin way of life, simple and plain, was predominant across the great expanses of the Arabian peninsula.

The Arabs remained faithful to this ancestral way of life from both principle and necessity, but perhaps out of a love of independence as well. Nonetheless, they were not indifferent to the influences of neighboring cultures; they knew the civilizations that had grown up around them: Iraq and Sasanid Iran, Byzantine Syria with its Greco-Roman heritage, Christian Abyssinia. The great poets of Arabia, who traveled the length and breadth of the peninsula, disseminated information in much the same way that the press does today; that is, they not only acted as spokesmen of their tribe,but served a function that was in some sense comparable to that of merchants.

A sixth-century poet, al-Nabigha al-Dhubyani, of the Murra tribe, for example, had contacts with the Ghassanid and Lakhmid monarchs, whose peoples had emigrated northward from Arabia a few centuries before the advent of Islam. He lived in Hira in Iraq, at the court of the king Nu'man III ibn Abi Qabus (581–602). Al-Nabigha al-Dhubyani’s poems recount tales of Bedouin life, but also of the cultural life he discovered in the Persian court of the Lakhmid kings. At Mecca, despite their xenophobia, the Arabs of the Quraysh tribe (the tribe of Muhammad) allowed themselves to be tempted by Sasanid pastries, above all by faludhaj, which was, in its simplest version, a cake prepared with starch and honey.We know that this cake was offered to guests by 'Abd Allah ibn Jad'an, who prepared it according to a recipe that he had acquired during his visit to the court of Khosrau II, and was served in ebony bowls.

Yemen, or Arabia Felix as the Romans called it, controlled the sea lanes to and from the Far East. Incense and fragrances came into ports in southern Arabia and Ethiopia. Mecca—which from time immemorial had been the spiritual center of the pre-Islamic Arabs, who made pilgrimages to worship at the temple of Ka'ba—was a center of the caravan trade for merchants coming from the coast of Yemen and bound for Syria and Egypt. Is it imaginable that their cargoes of incense and spices could have passed one another without the inhabitants of Mecca acquiring some of these things? Could Arab women have remained indifferent to such exotic merchandise? Surely not! While the pre-Islamic period is called jahiliyya, the “age of ignorance,” this term refers to the Arabs’ ignorance of true religion, Islam,not to ignorance in general, and still less to ignorance of the pleasures of life.

With Islam the idea of tradition as a fixed standard of behavior became radicalized, in accordance with the norms derived from Qur'anic prescriptions and sunna. The term sunna designates the tradition of Muhammad and his way of life, which were adopted by his companions and the first caliphs as the ideal model to be followed and universally accepted by the Muslim community.To eat as the Prophet ate—in the Arab style, seated on the ground, with the right hand—and to eat what the Prophet ate became an act of faith. The tradition of the Prophet, so far from being the invention of Islam, was a product of the Arab practices of his time and place, practices inherited from the age of jahiliyya, to which some modifications suggested by the Revelation were made.Following the example of the Prophet meant, apart from a few exceptions (pork, blood, and wine), having to reproduce the ancient manners and customs of the Arabs.

Muhammad took it upon himself to respond to questions asked by new converts to the faith when the answer was not found in the Qur'an. The early Muslim community joined together at Medina was made up of individuals from every part of the Arabian peninsula. The Prophet established alliances, ratified by marriage, with distant Islamized tribes. In his role as unifier of the Arabs, and despite efforts to adapt to foreign habits, he did not always succeed in concealing his distaste for a particular dish. One that the Prophet found unappetizing, locusts, was unknown to his tribe, but the religion did not forbid it. He therefore declared it lawful.

All the Prophet’s arguments concerning dietary matters were gathered by al-Bukhari (d. 870) in the chapter “al-Ghida” of his collection of the hadith (the sayings of the Prophet). There exist six official collections of the hadith, compiled by different authors during the ninth century after long and meticulous labors of authentication. Nonetheless, it is by no means impossible that practices from neighboring Islamized provinces may have found their way into this corpus of Arab-Muslim traditions, which was constituted well after the death of the Prophet on the basis of
oral transmission.

However this may be, respect for culinary traditions associated with the Arab tradition of Medina contributed to the diffusion in the Muslim world of certain Arab dishes, in particular tharid, the Prophet’s favorite meal. A few dishes from this period are known: masliyya, mutton and kid cooked in whey (masl) and sometimes sprinkled with dry cheese; madira, in which meat was cooked in curdled milk; and tharid itself, meat cooked in a broth with crumbled flat bread added to it just before serving. The Arabs cooked with both fat from the tail of the sheep and clarified butter (samn), whereas in other Islamic regions of the Mediterranean these two types of fat were supplemented by vegetable oils, especially olive and sesame oils. Bread was cooked either beneath coals or on red-hot stones, ideally ones that had first been used to roast meat or to melt a piece of sheep tail fat, so that the bread became saturated with the fat that remained stuck to the stone. A dish called hays, made with dates and milk, was an Arab specialty that Abu Hind, the Prophet’s barber, had made for him and his companions to celebrate victory after a battle.

Muslim  Cuisine - The Qur'anic Proscriptions

All foods are permitted, except for the blood and flesh of the pig. Each year Muslims must fast from sunrise to sunset for the entire duration of the lunar month of Ramadan. Ramadan is not a penance but a purification. During the rest of the year Muslims are free to eat as they please, to consume anything they desire, within the limits of the law, at any time of day. There are no meatless Fridays, nor any Sabbath meal, nor any other special regime. Compared to the dietary rules obeyed by Christians and Jews during the time of the Prophet, the Muslim prescriptions must have seemed a gift from heaven.To be sure, pork was strictly prohibited; but is it likely that pigs were ever raised by the Hijaz Arabs? In the sweltering climate of the Arabian peninsula swine have a hard time surviving, for the lack of water causes their skin to dehydrate rapidly, all the more since they are rather sedentary animals. In this part of the world, animals can be raised at all only by transhumance (the seasonal migration of animals and their herders between lowlands and adjacent mountains).

The few Islamic proscriptions there are regarding food were revealed to the Prophet at Medina, after his departure from Mecca, in 622. They are summarized in the following verse from the Qur\an: “[Prophet], say, ‘In all that has been revealed to me, I find nothing forbidden for people to eat, except for carrion, flowing blood, pig’s meat—it is loathsome—or a sinful offering over which any name other than God’s has been invoked.’”

As in the Hebrew religion, swine was considered impure; nor was it lawful to consume the blood shed in killing animals, which in any case had to be ritually slaughtered. Accordingly, an animal was prohibited that had been “strangled, victim of a violent blow or a fall, gored or savaged by a beast of prey, unless you still slaughter it [in the correct manner].” An exception was made in the case of quarry: “They ask you, Prophet, what is lawful for them.Say, ‘All good things are lawful for you.’ [This includes] what you have taught your birds and beasts of prey to catch, teaching them as God has taught you, so eat what they catch for you, but first pronounce God’s name over it.”

The new alimentary norms laid down by Islam appeared to the Jews and Christians of the seventh century to liberate its adherents by relaxing and simplifying traditional obligations. The number of dietary restrictions was reduced to two, as against the dozens insisted on by Jewish law, and the period of fasting was set at thirty days rather than the forty days of Lent, in addition to the elimination of meatless Fridays and the changing of the day of worship from the Jewish Saturday to the Muslim Friday. The Qur'an explains why God imposed so many prohibitions on the Jews:“We forbade for the Jews every animal with claws, and the fat of cattle and sheep, except what is on their backs and in their intestines, or that which sticks to their bones. This is how We penalized them for their disobedience:We are true to Our word.”

In a certain sense, the Muslim stands nearer to the Jew in rejecting pork and spilled blood, and further from the Christian, who, in addition to consuming the meat of impure animals and enjoying blood sausage, kills oxen by clubbing them on the head and wrings the necks of chickens. On the other hand, both Christians and Muslims indiscriminately consume horse meat, snails, locusts, rabbits, and every type of fish (exception being made for the Iranians, who, having their own opinion on this subject, had to devise a fatwa making it lawful to eat sturgeon, which caused offense for its lack of scales). So adamant is the insistence on the obligation to eat everything that God has made lawful—that is, all animals except the pig—that one may wonder whether a vegetarian could be admitted to the community of believers. The problem had already been posed in the eleventh century in connection with the poet and philosopher Abu al-Ala' al-Ma'arri, whose avoidance of meat caused him to be accused of heresy. His behavior contradicted the Qur'anic injunction “You who believe, do not forbid the good things God has made lawful to you—do not exceed the limits:God does not love those who exceed the limits—but eat the lawful and good things that God provides for you. Be mindful of God, in whom you believe.” By luck, reason prevailed over fanaticism and Abu al-Ala' al-Ma'arri was permitted to continue to observe an ascetic regime and to devote himself to the composition of his philosophical works.

On earth, food is a gift from God to human beings; in the hereafter it is the occasion of divine reward.Heavenly foods are sweet, refreshing, and intoxicating. Fruits in paradise are “plucked directly from the tree,” as the Qur'an says, and the “trees” are palms, pomegranates, and grapevines, always laden with marvelous fruits having no need for human attention: “Here is a picture of the Garden promised to the pious: rivers of water forever pure, rivers of milk forever fresh, rivers of wine, a delight for those who drink, rivers of honey clarified and pure, [all] flow in it; there they will find fruit of every kind; and they will find forgiveness from their Lord.”

In saying little about food, and nothing at all about cooking, the Qur'an leaves us free to indulge our appetite, or rather to exercise unlimited creativity in this domain—so long as no lard is used!

They Ask You About Intoxicants...” 

With regard to intoxicating beverages, the Qur'an lays down a few proscriptions associated with the revelations of the Medina period, but they do not seem to constitute a prohibition as categorical as the ones that apply to pork and spilled blood: “They ask you[, Prophet,] about intoxicants and gambling: say, ‘There is great sin in both, and some benefit for people: the sin is greater than the
benefit.’”

Wine is more or less forbidden depending on one’s denominational allegiance within Sunni Islam, which counts four rites (or juridical schools) recognized by the highest religious authorities. For instance, the Hanafi rite, followed by the majority of Turks, does not prohibit it altogether. Interpretations vary, but a lay reading seems to suggest that it is above all the abuse of alcoholic beverages that the Qur'an condemns and not moderate consumption. Moreover, wine is not considered “impure” in the way that pork is—otherwise why should it be included among the pleasures that are promised to pious Muslims on entering Paradise? “The truly good will live in bliss, seated on couches, gazing around.You will recognize on their faces the radiance of bliss. They will be served a sealed nectar, its seal [perfumed with] a fragrant herb—let those who strive, strive for this—mixed with the water of Tasnim, a spring from which those brought near will drink.”

Muslim laws restricted the consumption of alcohol but rarely its production, which was supervised for the most part by Christians and Jews.The municipal inspector of customs (muhtasib) was charged with intervening in the event of public displays of drunkenness, and particularly against persons who came inebriated to the mosque.In practice,for the whole of the medieval period, from Iraq to Andalusia, the consumption of alcohol of any kind— whether wine from the grape,palm wine,date wine,honey wine,or any other kind—though it was never officially authorized, was more or less tolerated depending on the attitude of the government at any particular time.

There were always those in favor and those against,as numerous medieval writings on the subject attest;nevertheless,support for the anti-alcohol position grew in the aftermath of the Crusades in the Middle East and the Almohad conquest in the Maghreb and Andalusia. A pair of Andalusian authors, writing two centuries apart, expressed passionate views about wine: Abu Maslama, in the eleventh century, exalted it in his Garden of Joys in the Description of the Reality of Wine, and Ibn Zarqun, in the thirteenth, condemned it in his Burning of the Embers for Prohibiting Wine.

Ibn Sayyar, the author of our earliest culinary record, dedicated the final pages of his book to the art of munadama, a term that indicates conviviality or the tasting of wine by a group of educated men capable of holding interesting conversations, especially in the presence of the king. This is evidence that a tradition of sociable behavior was openly perpetuated in the tenth and eleventh centuries. It is clear that the state of drunkenness was considered shameful.For this reason Ibn Sayyar insisted on respect for certain rules of decency, in order to avoid objectionable conduct:

"The nadim[boon companion] who drinks with the king must occupy the place that has been assigned to him, without seeking to put himself in  higher or lower position; he must not lie down, but rather hold himself in an upright position... He must not yawn,... nor persist in argument under the effect of drink, because whoever behaves in this way is boorish... He must drink by taking small sips, inhaling the fragrance [of the wine]. He is not to drink more than he is capable of supporting, [stopping] before he loses his judgment and encounters difficulties in controlling his actions. He is not to hoist his glass before the king, nor to fill it before that of the king, [taking care to] drink only after the king or at the same time. May he not begin to speak, nor to sing or to play a musical instrument, nor jest while the servant hands him his drink: he is to take it without asking for it to be filled more or less, without discussion or argument. Should he feel himself overcome by inebriation, let him get up and leave while he is still in control of himself. Let him not touch the hand of the wine server when he offers the glass, nor look at him excessively while [the server] is occupied with the wine, nor gesture to him, neither winking at him nor speaking in his ear."

A century earlier, learned men had been divided over the effects of wine. Al-Razi, a Muslim physician of Persian birth and director of the great hospital at Baghdad, took issue with Arab physicians of the period who condemned not only its consumption but also its medicinal use: “The usefulness of wine,for the protection of health and the improvement of digestion, is assured if one grants it its due place, and if its quantity and its quality, as well as the moment when it is consumed, are in keeping with the rules of art. It renders the body fertile, expels all excesses, causing them to leave the body, and increases the innate heat [of the body].”

It seems plain that the taboo against wine fell less heavily upon non-Arab than Arab Muslims.For the Turks of the Seljuk tribe, assembled in Iraq after their migration from central Asia toward the middle of the eleventh century, the consumption of wine was permitted, as it had been under the reign of the Buyids. Of this there can be no doubt, for it is the Seljuk sultan’s own vizier who furnishes us with proof. Nizam al-Mulk, born into a Persian family and murdered by a member of the sect of the Hashishiyyin (the Assassins), protector of al-Ghazali (one of the most celebrated theologians of Islam), and founder of the institution of the madrasa (school of higher education in the religious and secular sciences), was the author of The Book of Government, addressed to the Sunni Turkish sovereigns who reigned over all the Islamic East, Arabia included. He dedicated one chapter to the “Organization of Gatherings Devoted to the Pleasures of Wine: Rules to Be Obeyed”:

"It is customary for each person to attend the gathering dedicated to the pleasures of wine, accompanied by a single slave. He is forbidden to bring with him a cupbearer and cruets of wine ... since, [the sultan] being the supreme father of the universal family and [the guests] being the human members of his family and his servants, whoever receives sustenance from [the sultan] must not bring from his own house either his food or his wine. If [nonetheless] he brings some, because the cellarmaster of the palace does not provide any [of good quality], then one must harshly reprimand him."

Ramadan: A Spiritual and Gastronomic Event With the appearance of the new moon marking the start of the month of Ramadan, Muslims enter into a holy period of obligatory fasting (sawm) that constitutes one of the five pillars of Islam. It involves total abstinence from all food and drink, from sunrise to sunset, for the entire month. It also excludes the taking of medicines, as well as the use of tobacco and all sexual relations.

Ramadan is the ninth month of the Muslim lunar calendar, one of three holy months of the year—the holiest of the three, in fact, since it is to the night between the twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh days of this month that tradition assigns the first revelation of the Qur'an to Muhammad. The Qur'an calls it the Night of Glory:“The Night of Glory is better than a thousand months; on that night the angels and the Spirit descend again with their Lord’s permission on every task.” This month, whose name means “incandescent” or “reduced to ashes” because it coincided with the hottest month of the year before the modification of the lunar-solar calendar (converted to a lunar calendar by the command of the Prophet shortly before his death), had been sacred for the ancient Arabs from the earliest times, no doubt because it represented the hardest and most dangerous period of the year for survival in the desert regions, where thirst is apt to be fatal. With the new system of computation inaugurated by the Prophet, the month dedicated to fasting began to fall ever earlier, by eleven days per year (the lunar year being shorter than the solar year). Hence the chance that the month would coincide with August—that is to say, with the hottest month and the longest days—was reduced to three times every thirty-three years.

The wisdom and humanity of this decision were worthy of a prophet who cared for the health and safety of his people. Before the institution of the month of Ramadan, Muhammad had obliged Muslims to fast on the day of the Hebrew festival of Kippur (“atonement”), but this tradition was abandoned after the break with the Jews of Medina.

The rhythm of Ramadan alternates between abstinence and unrestrained consumption; between hunger and satiety, retreat and sociability, prayers and festivities. Anyone in a Muslim city during this time, Muslim or not, observant or not, is unavoidably aware of the exceptional contrasts of its days and nights, and invited to share the lavish evening meal that marks the breaking of the fast, the desserts and refreshing beverages that are served throughout the evening, and, last but not least, the final meal, sahur, which must be eaten just before the rising of the sun. This meal is very important, for it provides an ample supply of energy for the day of fasting ahead:“Eat and drink until the white thread of dawn becomes distinct from the black. Then fast until nightfall.”

The evening meal of Ramadan is prepared in silence in the last minutes before the firing of the cannon that immediately follows the muezzin’s cry announcing the end of the fast. The table is decorated with the most refined and varied dishes, beginning with specialties that Muslim women learn to prepare with passion and care, and serve on the most beautiful china plates. The fast itself must be seen not as a penance but as evidence of obedience to God and of gratitude to Him. Nor must it be supposed that the spiritual observance of Ramadan is somehow incompatible with good cheer and the pleasures of the table. It is, of course, a month of piety and of solidarity; but it is also a gastronomic event unique in the world, lasting twenty-nine or thirty days in a row.Food markets are abundantly stocked with the best local and exotic products during this period, spice merchants and nut vendors exhaust their supplies before the end of the month, and pastry shops make a fortune. In the evenings the mosques and mausoleums are never empty of the faithful, who come to hear Qur'anic chants and Sufi songs, and to participate in group prayers. The cafés and nightclubs are filled as well, with men who smoke the hookah while listening to the music of Umm Kulthum, the legendary Egyptian singer who passed away in 1975.

What still remains today of the ancient culinary tradition? At least a number of simple gestures that recall those of the Prophet: breaking the fast with water and dates and drinking curdled milk with the meal. The dishes typical of Ramadan differ from country to country, apart from zulabiyya, a honey fritter that has been found on tables every year in almost all the Muslim countries of the Mediterranean since medieval times.

The month concludes with the festival of 'id al-fitr (called Seker Bayram by the Turks), an occasion for offerings and the exchange of cakes that little by little gives way to the resumption of the normal rhythms of daily life.

By Lilia Zaouali (translated by M.B.DeBevoice -Originally published in Italian as "L’Islam a tavola. Dal Medioevo a Oggi". ) in "Medieval Cuisine of the Islamic World", University of California Press, 2007, excerpts pp. 25-36. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.

Before I visited Kyoto in 2000 to begin this study by interviewing chefs on the history of Japanese cuisine, my previous research on the masked Noh drama had attuned me to the value of speaking with a traditional art’s modern interpreters, namely, its performers.4 Noh actors and musicians have deeply ingrained knowledge of the traditions of their art, gained from years of training that begins in childhood. And they are responsible for enacting and preserving these traditions today, which provides them with a firsthand perspective different from that of modern Noh scholars—several of whom have admitted to me in private that they do not even regularly watch Noh plays. I surmised that, just as I gained an insider’s viewpoint from speaking to Noh actors and musicians, I could learn an inside perspective on culinary history by speaking to chefs, whose ideas are usually (and surprisingly) ignored in academic discussions of Japanese cuisine. I chose Kyoto as the site for this study because of its concentration of old restaurants, its long history as Japan’s capital—from 794 to 1868—and its renown today for its cuisine. Several restaurants I visited in Kyoto date from before the origins of the restaurant trade in Japan, in the late seventeenth century, when shops in major cities started selling prepared dishes. Establishments did not offer full-course meals until the mid-eighteenth century.5

Speaking to chefs in Kyoto, I gained insights into how establishments that once offered only snacks and prepared meals became full-service restaurants, but I had to rely on their testimonies without the benefit of confirming the particulars in written sources, as materials like old menus have either not survived or are not available for scholars to scrutinize.6 Despite the limitations of oral history, no one can fault the authority of my informants, who are fifth- to twentieth-generation descendants of the founders of their establishments, allowing them an intimate knowledge of the history of their restaurants, the restaurant trade, and cuisine in Japan. This intimacy with their profession and family history led the chefs I interviewed to intertwine the history of cuisine with the stories of their own restaurants. Consequently, it is important to first introduce these establishments before examining what their chefs report about the origin of Japanese cuisine.

The oldest restaurant I visited was Yamabana Heihachijaya, which traces its history to 1575, seven years after the warlord Oda Nobunaga (1534–82) marched his army into Kyoto ostensibly to restore the last head of the Ashikaga family, Yoshiaki (1537–97), to power as shogun, but actually to stake his own claim to the capital and thereby strengthen his efforts to unify a country disrupted by more than a century of warfare in the aptly named Warring States period. According to Heihachijaya’s current family head, Sonobe Heihachi, named after his ancestor nineteen generations removed, the first Heihachi began a teahouse in the village of Yamabana, northeast of the capital, not far from the Shugakuin Detached Palace. The establishment served travelers on the road to Wakasa (Wakasa kaid), which meandered into Kyoto at that point. Wakasa (in modern Fukui prefecture) was an important port town and an entry point for supplies destined for the capital. Heihachijaya thrived on this trade route into Kyoto. It sold goods to travelers, such as umbrellas, sandals, and raincoats, and it offered them refreshments for sale. The teahouse appears in an illustrated guidebook authored by Akisato Rit (fl. 1780–1814), Selection of Illustrated Sites in Kyoto (Shi miyako meisho zue), published in 1787.7 An illustration of Yamabana reveals several small grass huts resting between the road and nearby Takano River, which flows south into the Kamo River and passes along the eastern part of Kyoto. A notation reads, “Barley and rice teahouse” (mugimeshi chaya), indicating what visitors could expect to eat with their tea. Another caption notes that this barley and rice dish is a famous dish of the area.

Other roads into Kyoto had similar teahouses. The present-day Hy-tei restaurant began as a teahouse on the eastern edge of Kyoto where two major roads, the Tkaid and the Nakasend, merged at the village of Awataguchi. Many teahouses lined the road to the capital at this point, but Hytei was located off the main thoroughfare on a side street. According to its present-generation owner-chef, Takahashi Eiichi, Hytei catered to travelers who wanted to begin seeing the sights of the capital by first visiting the famous Zen temple Nanzenji nearby. Giant straw sandals (waraji) still hang outside of Hytei as an invitation to the weary traveler to sit, and large containers of water for tea stand ready to quench the traveler’s thirst.

At the same time that teahouses began to offer snacks to travelers, other entrepreneurs realized the potential profits to be made in the home delivery of prepared foods. The founder of Uosabur came from Sanuki province (modern Kagawa prefecture) to the Kyoto area in 1764, and he opened a catering business (shidashiya). Uosabur began its business by catering banquets for samurai officials and wealthy merchants who hired the establishment to cook for parties and other occasions that necessitated the preparation of complex dishes in greater amounts than usual. When called, Uosabur’s employees prepared and served meals within their customers’ homes, explained the current owner, Araki Shigeo, who is the ninth generation of his family to run Uosabur, which now operates as a restaurant in Fushimi.

The restaurant Harisei, located near the eastern part of Kyoto just south of Fifth Avenue (Goj), began as a teahouse, but its operator also became a caterer. Morimoto Ryz, current owner of Harisei, explained that his family’s restaurant opened as a teahouse in 1659 and started serving meals in 1764. Its original clientele came from the ranks of city craftspeople who lived nearby, according to Chef Morimoto, including master carpenters, fan makers, and potters, who are famous in that area. When requested, Harisei either sent members of the cooking staff to private homes to cook or the staff prepared the meals in Harisei’s kitchen for delivery. By the late nineteenth century, Harisei served full-course meals to diners, and the restaurant is mentioned several times in the well-known diary of the merchant-class homemaker Nakano Makiko (1890–1970), Makiko’s Diary: A Merchant Wife in 1910 Kyoto. Nakano records that Harisei catered a New Year’s party on January 3, 1910, and sent along a professional server. Four days later, Makiko’s husband ate at Harisei for a meeting with the neighborhood association. She writes, “He said that they served lots of good food and sake.”8

The early founders of Nakamura, like the founders of Harisei, began their careers as providers of delivered meals before opening a restaurant for diners. The current owner, Nakamura Fumiharu, explained that his family started their business as fishmongers catering to Kyoto nobility in the Edo period. These nobles enjoyed highly refined tastes beyond what their incomes afforded and, consequently, proved more generous with their advice about food preparation than with their money, according to Nakamura. Using the information derived from his family’s noble clientele, Nakamura Fumiharu’s grandfather transformed the family business, switching from provisioning to catering, making and delivering meals to nearby inns and homes. The business became a restaurant after the Second World War under the family name Nakamura.

In the Edo period, Nakamurar (no relation to the restaurant Nakamura) was described as one of the “two teahouses” (nikenjaya) located near Yasaka shrine, then called Gionsha since the shrine compound also housed a Buddhist temple.9 The two teahouses outside the main gates of this religious institution specialized in sweetened tofu on a stick (tfu dengaku), an early carryout food named after the medieval performing art that featured performers on wooden stilts. What can be called an expanded bible of tofu dishes, A Hundred More Tricks with Tofu (Tfu hyakuchin zokuhen), published in 1783, describes this “specialty of the two Gion teahouses” as grilled, miso-glazed tofu sandwiched between two rice cakes: “Spear a round rice cake, approximately nine centimeters, with a bamboo stick and roast it. Place two of these together with grilled tofu covered in miso in the middle.” Later recipes apparently omitted the rice cakes to serve the grilled tofu glazed with miso on a stick by itself, calling that dish dengaku.10 The popularity of this recipe for sweetened tofu on a stick, also called Gion tofu, grew to such an extent that it became a subject of popular songs in the Edo period.11 A reason for its popularity was its focal role in a performing art intended to draw customers. According to Tsuji Masamitsu, the current owner of Nakamurar, “Young girls sat in front of the teahouse, where they cut the tofu, making the noise ton, ton, ton to attract customers. Then they grilled the tofu in front of the customers and coated it with sweet, white miso.” This performance continued until the early 1920s, Tsuji said, when Nakamurar first experimented briefly with serving Western food before becoming a restaurant featuring kaiseki, the multicourse selection of delicately prepared dishes . The four-century-old Nakamurar still takes pride in its recipe for tfu dengaku, to the point that its preparation is a family secret.

A Hundred Tricks with Tofu (Tofu hyakuchin) published in 1782, the predecessor to A Hundred More Tricks with Tofu, mentions, besides the tofu of Gion, Kyoto’s famous Nanzenji tofu, the boiled tofu (yudfu) served in restaurants near Nanzenji, one of Kyoto’s most famous Zen temples, located in the eastern edge of the city.12 One of the oldest of these tofu establishments is Okutan, said to have been founded in 1635. According to Ishii Yasuie, who is the fifteenth-generation owner of Okutan, there were once three tofu shops in a row all with the same name, Tangoya. One of these three establishments appears alongside the restaurant Hytei in the guidebook Illustrated Sites around the Flowery Capital (Karaku meisho zue), published in 1864.

Since all three shops shared the same name and specialty, boiled tofu, the only way to distinguish them was by location: they were designated as “the closer,”“the middle,” and “the farther” Tangoya. The travel guide Illustrated Guide to Environs in Kyoto (Miyako rinsen meisho zue), authored by Akisato Rit and others and published in 1799, includes a large woodblock print of one of the three Tangoya establishments, revealing a restaurant with an expansive garden. In one corner, waitresses cajole customers to enter, and in another three diners sit eating. The caption reads, “Famous boiled-tofu establishment near Nanzenji.”13 The closer and middle Tangoya restaurants went out of business in the late nineteenth century, leaving only the “farther Tango shop” (Okutan), which still serves its signature boiled tofu. In 1894 Okutan was forced to move to a new location closer to Nanzenji temple when Yamagata Aritomo (1838–1922), the founder of Japan’s modern army, desired to build a residence in the restaurant’s location.

The restaurant Dai’ichi became famous for a specialty much rarer than tofu: terrapin (suppon) soup, which it still serves in its late-seventeenth-century building. Founders of Dai’ichi, located to the west of Senbondri avenue in the western part of the city, began their family business as caterers in 1688, carrying pots of hot terrapin soup to customers’ homes. Horii Masayumi, the seventeenth-generation owner, reported to me that, a century later, the family opened a restaurant where customers could enjoy this specialty. Daiichi’s signature soup consists of terrapin cooked at high temperature in a stock of soy sauce and sake. After cooking, the soup is brought to the table in a ceramic pot for customers to serve themselves. “We serve only terrapin soup here,” stated Horii. This has proven a successful recipe for Dai’ichi, which draws customers from all over Japan and markets a canned version of its soup bearing its brand name.

Although their histories go back centuries, most of these eating establishments did not become restaurants until the nineteenth century, well after most of the culinary developments described in this book occurred. While more research is needed to understand the historical transformation of teahouses offering only light snacks into restaurants that served full-course meals, Hytei provides an anecdotal example of this development. When it opened, Hytei served light snacks, probably sweets and its trademark “half-boiled eggs” (han’yude tamago), to accompany its tea. Later in the Edo period, Hytei became a destination for wealthy merchants (odannash), who called on the restaurant early in the morning after a summer night spent in the pleasure quarter of Gion. “They would knock on the door,” reported Chef Takahashi, “and ask for something simple to eat.” So the chefs would add leftovers to rice porridge, flavor this with sweet kudzu starch (kuzu), and serve this dish to customers. “This was a filling meal, so not much else was needed.” In 1837, Hytei began to offer light meals, and these developed into more elaborate ones over time. It still offers a rice porridge breakfast in July and August.

The Kyoto restaurant with the most distinct historical heritage is Mankamer, located in the central part of the city. Chef Konishi Shigeyoshi, owner of Mankamer, holds the title of “family head” (iemoto), meaning chief instructor, of the Ikama school of cuisine. Though the Ikama school has a long heritage of food preparation for the imperial and military elite in premodern Japan, today it is also known for preserving the art of the knife ceremony (shikibch), the ritual dismemberment of a fish or fowl for artistic display, an art I describe in further detail in the next chapter. According to Chef Konishi, this art dates to the Heian period (794–1185), while the Ikama school can be traced to the Kamakura period (1185–1333). He explained that the Ikama served the Ashikaga shoguns until Oda Nobunaga forced the last Ashikaga shogun, Yoshiaki, out of Kyoto in 1573. Thereafter, the Ikama served Nobunaga and his successor, Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537–98). In the Edo period, the leaders of the Ikama gained employment with aristocratic families in Kyoto, and the family name appears under the heading of cuisine (ryri) in the massive list of places and people in Kyoto, Ky habutae, published in 1685.14 After the death of his last patron, Princess Katsura no Miya Sumiko Naishin’n in 1881, the leader of the Ikama school, Ikama Masahaya, started teaching restaurateurs the art of the knife ceremony. One of his top disciples was the owner of Mankamer, a restaurant that opened at the end of the Edo period, but which had a longer history as a sake purveyor. The restaurateur inherited the Ikama school’s traditions and was allowed to take the Ikama family name—along with the family’s collection of knives, specialized writings, and other ephemera for the cutting ceremony.15 The current owner of Mankamer, Konishi Shigeyoshi, also known as Ikama Masayasu, is the twenty-ninth head of the Ikama school.

KYOTO CHEFS AND CUISINE

Though I was unable, on my modest research budget, to enter these restaurants as a diner, the owner-chefs generously made time to meet with me to answer my questions. But when I brought up the topic of the origin and meaning of Japanese cuisine, they deflected my questions to discourse on the qualities of Kyoto cuisine. Study the history of Kyoto cuisine, they told me, explaining that Kyoto cuisine (Ky ryri) was not only the prototype for all of Japanese cuisine but also the most refined cuisine in Japan today—an assertion I wish I could verify by taking an eating tour of all the country’s top restaurants.16

So I took the hint and asked about the origins of Kyoto cuisine, and the chefs’ responses were surprisingly uniform. They noted three main historical sources for Kyoto cuisine:

1. Buddhist vegetarian cooking (shojin ryori)17
2. Kaiseki ryri (which, they indicated, referred both to the multicourse meals served at restaurants today and the simpler fare of the tea ceremony)
3. Kyoto specialties that included dishes (osozai) prepared by commoners and the cuisine of the imperial court (yusoku ryori)

When I started to read the scholarly literature on the history of Kyoto cuisine, I discovered that these same three styles of food preparation were similar to the ones that historian Murai Yasuhiko identifies in his 1979 book on Kyoto cuisine. Either Murai had it right or my informants had all read the same book!

NOTES

4. Rath, The Ethos of Noh.
5. In Edo, for instance, shops selling a rice dish called “Nara rice” (Nara chameshi), consisting of cooked rice with soybeans, salt, and tea poured on top, opened in Asakusa in 1657. By the 1770s, Edo was home to numerous shops selling prepared foods such as soba, sushi, and grilled eel, and the number of these establishments grew to 6,165 by 1804—one for every 170 people living in the city. Ishige, The History and Culture of Japanese Food, pp. 120, 122–23; Harada, Edo no ryrishi, pp. 51–55, 132.
6. So discovered culinary scholar Okumura Ayao, who reported that he could not find any old menus in the historic restaurants he visited in Kyoto or Osaka. “Ryriya no ryri,” p. 58.
7. Akisato Rit, Shi miyako meisho zue, pp. 310–11.
8. Nakano, Makiko’s Diary, pp. 59–60, 63.
9. The other teahouse was the Fujiya (Kumakura, “Nihon ryriyashi josetsu,” p. 24). It no longer exists.
10. Tfu hyakuchin zokuhen indicates that the recipe for tofu with rice cakes was popular up to fifty years ago at the nikenjaya teahouses, but that recently—not long before the publication of this text in 1783—the recipe was prepared as a seasonal dish only on the first day of the sixth month (pp. 90–91). Since grilled tofu remained a specialty of these teahouses until the twentieth century, we can infer that the rice cakes were simply omitted from the recipe.
11. Murai Yasuhiko, Ky ryri no rekishi, p. 130.
12. Tfu hyakuchin, p. 18.
13. Miyako rinsen meisho zue, pp. 214–15.
14. Ky habutae, p. 205.
15. Koma, Miyako no aji, pp. 269–70.
16. The assertion that Kyoto cuisine is both the origin of Japanese cuisine and a distinct style can also be found in the scholarly literature; see Murai Yasuhiko, Buke bunka to dbsh, p. 290.
17. Shojin mono were meals that supported spiritual practice, for example, by excluding certain foods like meat in respect for the Buddhist precept against killing. By the turn of the eighteenth century, the term shjin ryri was coined, and it referred to a style of cooking that did not use any meat. Kumakura, “Shjin ryri,” pp. 34–35; Harada, “Shjin no keifu to kaiseki,” p. 69.

The terms “Assyrian” and “Babylonian” refer to inhabitants of Mesopotamia, most of which is modern Iraq, from the second millennium through the middle of the first millennium bce . The Babylonians occupied the southern part of the flood plain and the Assyrians the north, although these geographical designations do not reveal the complex diff erences between the two concerning language, historical connection to the Sumerians, political configurations, and religion.

The Babylonians occupied the region extending approximately from modern-day Baghdad to the shore of the Persian Gulf. 6 The name is derived from the city named “Babili” in cuneiform, which becomes Babylon in the Greek. 7 h is area coincides mostly with the area occupied by the Sumerians in the third millennium. 8 The last Sumerian political establishment, the h ird Dynasty of Ur, fell because of economic and political instability. 9 Part of this demise is attributed to a new group of people in the area: the Amorites.

The first two centuries of the second millennium, the Isin/Larsa period, saw numerous transitional groups try to gain control of Mesopotamia, with limited success. 10 The cultural and religious traditions of the previous millennium were preserved and modified 11 despite the entrance of people grouped under the title “Amorites.” 12 Only under Hammurabi did Babylon gain control of all Mesopotamia. 13 Hammurabi’s successes were military and political, but they forever changed the role and status of Babylon and its god, Marduk, to some extent identifying and creating the group labeled Babylonians. Hammurabi’s heirs did not rule with the authority of Hammurabi, and in 1595 bce Babylon was sacked in a raid by the Hittites. The Hittites did not stay to control Babylon, but they took with them the statue of Marduk, the city god. 14

Even before the Hittites arrived, in the reign of Hammurabi’s son and successor, Samsu-ilum, two new groups entered the area of Babylonia. In the south a new dynasty ruled by Iluma-ilum started the Sealand Dynasty, and in his ninth year he referenced another new group: the Kassites. 15 The origin of the Kassites is unclear, as is the reason for their appearance in Babylonia, but they controlled the area for the next four hundred years. 16 Little is known about the Kassite language, and the rulers soon adopted the Babylonian language and customs. Although they are always treated somehow as non-Babylonian, and most scholars argue there is little influence of their national characteristics reflected in the material remains, 17 “the Kassites reigned some four centuries, far longer than any native or for that matter any other dynasty.” 18 Babylonian literature flourished during this period. 19 Some argue the return of Marduk under the Kassites is the event that precipitated writing the enuma elish , the epic of creation that plays an important role in understanding the Mesopotamian concept of the world. 20

There is a dramatic westward shift of the Euphrates toward the end of the Kassite period. 21 h is led to a population decline in Babylonian cities. In addition, the Assyrians began to threaten Babylonia. Significant in this regard is the conquest of Babylonia by the Assyrian king Tukulti-Ninurta I in 1235 bce. 22 The conquest of Babylon was not prolonged, but its effects were. It marks the beginning of both the Assyro-Babylonian conflict and the significant Babylonian cultural influence on Assyria. The Kassites were destroyed shortly thereafter in an Elamite raid. Babylon was again sacked, and many of its artifacts taken to Susa. 23 In the three hundred years following the fall of the Kassites, Babylonia was controlled by a series of local dynasties.

Nebuchadnezzar I (1125–1104 bce ) began a new phase of Babylonian history when he attacked the Elamites, recovered the statue of Marduk taken earlier in the sack of Babylon, and referred to Marduk as “king of the gods.” 24 The Arameans entered the area around this time and disrupted internal stability, reflected in the paucity of excavated documents. The rise of the Assyrians toward the end of the tenth century, accompanied by the appearance of the Chaldeans 25 in the south, led a Babylonian chronicle to claim “there was no king in the land.” 26 Despite non-native Babylonians dominating the area and political instability around 1200 bce , much Babylonian literature, including texts that are treated as “religious,” was standardized. 27

Conflict between Assyria and Babylonia continued throughout the period of Assyrian hegemony of the ancient Near East from the end of the tenth century until the fall of Assyria in the late seventh century. In this period, depending on the strength or weakness of the Assyrians, other groups, such as the Chaldeans, rose to fill the political vacuum. When Assyria was weaker, such as the period following the reign of Adad-nirari III, the Chaldeans filled the political vacuum. When Assyria was stronger, its kings tried various tactics to gain dominance, ranging from the destruction of Babylon (Sennacherib destroyed Babylon, taking Marduk with him to Assyria) 28 to appeasement (Esarhaddon), 29 with little success, although local Babylonian rulers maintained limited control, often with the help of Assyria. The accession of the Babylonian king Nabonassar in 746 bce is of key importance for modern scholars because, beginning with his reign, ancient scholars began to keep precise records of historical events, as exemplified in the new-Babylonian chronicle series. 30 Following the destruction of the Assyrian Empire at the end of the seventh century, Nabopolassar (625–605) took the throne of Babylon and established a new dynasty. His son, Nebuchadnezzar, took on the Assyrian goal of controlling Egypt, and it is under his rule that the kingdom of Judah revolted, leading to the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile of its people (2 Kings 24–25). Nebuchadnezzar was also responsible for major building projects in Babylon, making it a major economic and administrative center once more. 31

Nebuchadnezzar’s reign was followed by three kings with no major military or building successes. Nabonidus, who had no hereditary claim to the throne, came to power already aged. He is known for his devotion to Sin, the moon god of Haran, likely through the influence of his mother, Adad-guppi, whose tomb inscription has been preserved. 32 What impact this had on his decision to depart Babylon for ten years while he stayed in the Arabian oasis town of Teima and left Babylon unable to carry out the New Year’s festival is debated. 33 Shortly after his return, the city of Babylon fell to Cyrus of Persia, marking the end of Babylonian rule and of Babylonian religion in this essay. 34

Assyrian history follows a different trajectory although it intersects with Babylonian history and culture at various points. The early history of the city of Assur is unknown because of a lack of inscriptional evidence, although all texts indicate the area of Assyria was controlled by the Sumerian and Akkadian south. 35 According to the Assyrian king list, the earliest extant exemplar of which dates to the first millennium bce , 36 there were seventeen kings who lived in tents, ten ancestor kings, six early kings, and six early Old Assyrian kings with genealogies. 37 Research on this list reveals that, like the Sumerian king list, 38 it serves propagandistic purposes, probably to legitimate the reign of Shamshi-Adad, and shares Amorite attributes with ancestors of the Hammurabi dynasty. As a result, the data provide more information about how the Assyrians later situated themselves than about actual historical leaders. 39 Despite its problems, numerous rulers from this list appear on inscriptions from Assur and are referred to in the texts from the Assyrian trading colony at Karum Kanesh or Kultepe. 40 The documents from Kultepe provide more information about this period in Assyria than any remains from Assur itself. 41 Both sets of documents reveal a city ruled by a person identified as the issiak assur or ENSI Assur , not the Akkadian term for “king,” in concert with city elders. 42

During the second millennium, Assyria competed with and was influenced by the Hurrians. 43 Assyria’s leaders did not claim the title of “king” until Assur-uballit (1365–1330). 44 His change in title places Assyria on the same international level as the rulers of the major powers of his day: the Egyptians, the Babylonians, and the Hittites. He began ousting the Hurrians, 45 was the first to claim the title of “king,” and placed Assyria on the international stage during a period dominated by the Hittites, Egyptians, and Babylonians. He was followed by a series of strong kings under whose leadership Assyria maintained its role as an important power in the ancient Near East.

Many of the ancient Near Eastern powers of the mid-second millennium fell apart toward the end of the century, and new peoples, such as the Arameans, entered the area, modifying what and who constituted Assyria and its religion. 46 Only with the reign of Adad-nirari II (921–891) do we see Assyria recovering as the major political power in the region. His eff orts enabled his grandson, Ashurnasirpal II, to turn Assyria into a world power. He expanded the borders of Assyria and began to change the concept of what Assyria was. 47 He moved the capital of Assyria from the traditional home of the national deity Assur in the city of Assur to Calah (modern Nimrud). Shalmaneser III (858–824 bce ) extended the boundaries of Assyria, but his reign ended in turmoil with some of the major cities of Assyria, including Assur, revolting. 48 One of his sons, Shamshi-Adad V, managed to maintain control of Assyria, but the extent and power of the state diminished until the reign of Tiglath-pileser III (745–727 bce ). One of Tiglath-pileser III’s many internal changes was to shift the army from an Assyrian-only army to a standing army that incorporated peoples conquered by Assyria and thereby modified the definition of what and who an Assyrian was.

At its height in the eighth–seventh centuries bce , Assyria controlled most of the ancient Near East. One of the challenges to Assyria’s kings was how to control Babylonia. Diff erent methods were tried, alternating brute force 49 with imperial benefactions that included rebuilding the city of Babylon using traditional Babylonian rather than Assyrian iconography. 50 Assyria’s last major ruler, Assurbanipal, built a significant library and museum in which he gathered all the literature he could find. 51 Modern archaeologists uncovered this library in the mid-nineteenth century, and it is the basis for much of the extant Mesopotamian literature that we have today. 52 Assur-uballit II is Assyria’s last ruler (614–609 bce ), and with him the Assyrians disappear as a group from the political stage.

Notes

6 Klengel-Brandt, “Babylonians,” 256.
7 Ibid., 256.
8 See Chapter 1 .
9 Many histories of the ancient Near East will provide discussions of this topic, but the Lamentation over the Destruction of Sumer and Ur is the Mesopotamian literary and/or “religious” view of their disaster; see Michalowski, The Lamentation over the Destruction of Sumer and Ur.
10 Van Koppen, “Old Babylonian Period Inscriptions, 88–95.
11 Sjoberg, “h e Old Babylonian Eduba,” 159–80; Buccellati, “h rough a Tablet Darkly,” 58–71.
12 Heimpel, Letters to the King of Mari, 13–25; Schwartz, “Pastoral Nomadism,” 249–58.
13 Horsnell, The Year-Name System and the Date-Lists and the Year-Names Reconstructed.
14 “Agum-kakrime and the Return of Marduk,” in Foster, Before the Muses, 1:273–7.
15 Horsnell, The Year-Names Reconstructed, 192.
16 Brinkman, A Catalogue of Cuneiform Sources .
17 Lloyd, The Archaeology of Mesopotamia, 172.
18 Oates, Babylon, 86.
19 Foster, “h e Mature Period,” 203–9.
20 See the discussion of that text below.
21 Brinkman , Prelude to Empire, 3–10; Adams, The Heartland of Cities, 18, 152, 155–8.
22 Grayson, Assyrian Rulers, 231–79. For the Tukulti-Ninurta Epic, see Foster, Muses , 1:209–29.
23 Dieulafoy, “A History of Excavation at Susa, 20–4. See also Arevalier, “The French Scientific Delegation in Persia,” 16–19.
24 “The Seed of Kingship,” line 25, in Foster, Muses, 1:292.
25 Delineating the differences between the Chaldeans and the Aramaeans is not easy to do, although the ancient sources do so. See Arnold, “Nebuchadnezzar,” 330–55.
26 Grayson, Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles and Mesopotamian Chronicles, 286–7.
27 Foster, Muses , 1:207.
28 Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib , 78.
29 For an analysis of the different means of his policy see Porter, Images, Power, Politics.
30 Grayson, Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles , 10–24 and 69–111.
31 Herodotus, History 1.186; Berossus 27 in Josephus, Ant. 10.11.1.226; Koldewey, Excavations at Babylon, 734–9.
32 Longman, “h e Adad-guppi Autobiography,” 477–8.
33 Beaulieu, The Reign of Nabonidus, 178–85.
34 Herodotus, 1.178, 190–291; Xenophon, Cyropaedia 7.5.26–30; Daniel 5:30; Glassner, Mesopotamian Chronicles , 237; Cogan, “Cyrus Cylinder,” 314–16.
35 For an example, see Steinkeller, “Administrative and Economic Organization of the Ur III State,” 19–42.
36 Poebel, “The Assyrian King List,” 263–7.
37 Larsen,the Old Assyrian City-State,” 36.
38 Jacobsen, The Sumerian King List .
39 Larsen, Old Assyrian, 36.
40 Ibid., 37–43. For inscriptions of the pre–Shamshi-Adad kings, see Grayson, Assyrian Rulers , 7–46.
41 Despite difficulties in the publication of these materials a new series, Old Assyrian Archives, is making more of these data available. See, for example, Larsen, The Assur-nada Archive .
42 Ibid., 109–59.
43 Wilhelm, The Hurrians .
44 Grayson, Old Assyrian Rulers , inscription A.0.73.6, 115. Note reference to him as king of Assyria in letters to the Amarna king of Egypt, Akhenaten. Moran, The Amarna Letters.
45 Harrak, Assyria and Hanigalbat.
46 The Crisis Years: The 12th Century, ed. Ward and Joukowsky. For the Aramaeans, see Sader, “The 12th Century B.C. in Syria,” 157–63, and the response by McClellan, “12th Century B.C. Syria,” 164–73, and Lipinski, The Aramaeans.
47 Grayson, Assyrian Rulers.
48 Grayson, Assyrian Rulers II, 180–8.
49 Luckenbill, Annals, 78.
50 For an analysis of the different means of his policy, see Porter, Images, Power, Politics.
51 Oppenheim, Ancient Mesopotamia , 15–18.
52 Ibid.

By Tammi J. Schneider in "The Cambridge History of Religions in the Ancient World", vol.1, edited by Michele Renee Salzman & Marvin A. Sweeney, Cambridge University Press, USA,2013, excerpts pp. 56-61. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.

After prohibition was repealed in the 1930%, taverns started popping up and became the places where the locals stopped after work for conversation and beer. They were not places for fancy cocktails or the subtleties of single malt scotch. They were the places where people found solace and formed friendships and the walls absorbed the stories of the people who drank there. On the streets outside the taverns could be found a smattering of street vendors, hawking their homemade delicacies, many of whom were immigrants that brought their culture in the form of food to the United States. Combine this tavern setting and the Americanized homemade street food and welcome to Street Meet, where you can find Hilton Head's own Taste of Americana.

Walking into Street Meet is like walking into a post-prohibition tavern. Take stock of your surroundings as the cash registers and bar stools are old-timers and the distressed pine flooring gives the aura of age while manhole covers add authenticity. Under the auspices of antique lighting, the walls are decorated with old Ohio Steel Mill photos and antique memorabilia. And by the way, Pretty Boy Floyd, who met his demise in Ohio, is watching your every move. Look through the window into the newly added, family-friendly addition, and you will time warp from a1930's tavern to a 1970's alleyway surrounded by walls of graffiti and starlit skies.

Carey Basciano opened Street Meet in 2005 with his wife Shelby and his sister Nicole. He grew up in Youngstown, OH and attended Kent University as a Journalism major. He always knew he wanted to get into the restaurant business and that his degree could help him with his marketing. After a few valuable learning stints with restaurant chains up north, Carey moved to Hilton Head. He surveyed the Island restaurant market and observed that there was a catering component missing that would serve the more casual diner. "There was plenty of high-end out there, but not a lot that would do church hall type catering like up north," said Carey. "Caterers typically have a deli and the deli varies on volume, so I thought we could open up a bar and do a street vendor menu," he added.

Perhaps it was his creativity as a writer that pulled together the story behind his restaurant because it is quite a story to be told. "I wanted to create a homemade, healthy version of Americanized food/' said Carey. "What we've done with bar food is turn it into how it was cooked 80 years ago by the immigrant street vendors. So much American food has now become fast food - we wanted to bring back the good old street food." To that end, the Basciano's have traveled to the likes of Syracuse, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and Cleveland to bring authentic vendor tastes to their patrons right down to the Hofmann's hotdogs.

Their menu is multi-layered and vast and it is all homemade and from scratch. You can choose from their award winning German hotdogs. Fresh Market meat burgers, or Tavern Plates, or go with a lighter salad, sandwich, or wrap. They recently introduced a new "Healthy Menu" where you lose the bun, cheese, and chips and can build your own bowl - be it protein, low carb, low fat, low calorie, paleo, gluten- free, or vegan; you name it. An example of a power bowl might be a base of quinoa, grilled veggies, and black beans with your choice of protein - varieties of fish, chicken, or beef. You can build your own salad with the same choices or convert any wrap, burger, or sandwich on the menu into a bun-less bowl.

Carey is not someone who just recently jumped on the healthy eating bandwagon and decided to incorporate it into his menu. He is someone who for years has modified his own meals at the restaurant to be as healthy as possible and realized that maybe some people could use a little help in that direction. "We have such a large menu that I would just make my own healthy alternatives. Sometimes I would crave a fat or a carb and l would just put it on a salad. I took it for granted that other people did the same. The new Healthy Menu has turned into a beautiful alternative. You would be hard pressed to find anybody else on the Island that does healthy like we do it," said Carey. "Most of the health problems that society faces today are with the food processing. At Street Meet, we use whole ingredients and skip the sugar and chemicals." Street Meet roasts its own turkey and roast beef, smokes its own pork, and all of the soups are homemade. The Kid's menu is a big hit and on Saturday's they "pay what they weigh" at a penny per pound. The dessert menu, including the local favorite Fried Twinkie, will blow your socks off but might be something from which you want to avert your eyes if you are going healthy.

Street Meet has many 'Signatures' when it comes to the bar - namely PBR (Pabst Blue Ribbon) is their beer of note while they have a Peach Tea (of the Long Island genre) as their Signature drink. They have a full line of craft beers on tap and the wine menu is quite replete for a post prohibition tavern.

The awards that this restaurant has won are an example of its vast appeal, diversity, and excellence across the board. They are truly a local's favorite and have garnered "Best of" accolades for bartender, hotdog, chicken wings, fish 'n chips, and homemade sauce. "This is just another thing that makes us unique," commented Carey. A new expanded dining area has helped accomodate the evergrowing amount of customers.

In keeping with his Ohio roots and passion for the home team, Carey has turned Street Meet into Hilton Head's own Ohio bar. Every Sunday during football season, Street Meet is transformed into the home of the Cleveland Browns. Immediately after opening their doors 11 years ago, the Basciano's applied for a charter with the Browns and are now the team's official Hilton Head home base. Game day celebrations start early and go late. The entire exterior of the bar is set up like a giant tailgate replete with hot dog carts and merchandise stands. The party extends from porch to parking lot and while it is standing room only, there are plenty of screens to take in the action.

Other things that set Street Meet apart from the crowd is that a sizeable portion of their business is through catering to everybody from offices to the larger resorts on the Island. They also offer delivery from 6 to 9 p.m. with minimum $20 orders providing a great service and value, especially to the tourists who want an easy and delicious fix.

Centrally located in Port Royal Plaza, Street Meet is open for lunch and dinner 7 days a week and serves food until midnight. "After 10 p.m., we are the only game in town for food," noted Carey. They are a local favorite for food, drink, and fun. Find them on Facebook and for a full menu or visit their website.

Note

Hilton Head Island, sometimes referred to as simply Hilton Head, is a lowcountry resort town located on an island of the same name in Beaufort County, South Carolina, United States. It is 20 miles (32 km) northeast of Savannah, Georgia, and 95 miles (153 km) southwest of Charleston. 

By Risa Williams McMillan in "Taste of Hilton Head",USA, vol. XI, issue 3, Fall 2016, excerpts pp. 12-13. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.

Lo stato di salute delle catene del food service nel vecchio continente in una recente indagine realizzata da Food Service Europe.

L'arte del mangiare fuoricasa è, da che mondo è mondo, il modo piu tradizionale e piacevole di passare il tempo. Fin dalle origini è stata un'attività per così dire artigianale e a misura d'uomo in cui materie prime, sapienza culinaria e tradizioni enogastronomiche si mescoloavano per togliere la fame, siddisfare il palto e appagare lo spirito. Ma, come abbiamo potuto costatare negli studi di mercato dell'ultimo secolo, questa attività artigianale e sostitutiva di pranzi e cene amorevolmente preparati in casa, è progressivamente diventata, nell'Europa che mangia, una vera e propria attività industriale la cui importanza nell'economia dei paesi è oramai determinante.

Tuttavia, tenuto conto della diversificazione galoppante del modo di produrre e servire i pasti, della moltiplicazione estrema dei punti di ristoro della necessità di mantenere un contatto personale in ogni locale fra operatore e consumatore, è quasi impossible indivuare uno strumento di relevazione dei consumi in grado di misurare giro d'affari del fuoricasa di un dato paese. Certo, ci si può avvicinare alla realtà, atraverso lo studio dei diversi segmenti di mercato tenendo conto che il pasto non conosce piu front iera, i piatti escono sempre più da cucine industriali piutosto che dai fornelli del cuoco, e il modo di consumarli va via via modellandosi sul comportamento ed al bisogno immediato di ogni cliente. In questo contesto assai complesso e in continuo mutamento, l'indagine realizzata da Food Service Europe sui gruppi e le grandi societa che operano nei principali paesi euopei, risulta molto interessante per riflettere sul destino del mercato e del mestiere di ristoratore.


Un mercato da 100 miliardi di euro

Il primo dato che emerge dall'indagine condotta su un cent inaio di "top players" in 17 paesi europei, è decisamente posit ivo. Malgrado la crisi econemica, dalla quale nessun paese ha potuto scappare in un contesto di rialzo della desoccupazione e di calo del potere d'acquisto, in Europa, hanno resistito i grandi operatori mentre è crollata l'atividà degli operatori indipendenti. Solo i big del mercato hanno potuto mettere in campo nuove strategie commerciali e far leva su risorse financiarie, techniche e umane che hanno permesso innovazione e sviluppo. Infatti, il volume d'affari dei leader ha prosguito la sua progressione con um tasso di crescita annuale nel l'ordine del 5%, avvicinandosi dall'objettivo  dei 100 miliardi di euro di giro d'affari che dovrebbe essere raggiunto entro pocchi anni. Un bel risultato che tiene conto dei successo del franchising (in crescita) e dell'entrata sui mercatidi nuove multinazionali.


Grazie Signore

Ne 2014, la metà delle vendite è stata realizzata da 10 gruppi. Fra gli altri per lo meno due, erano vicini al club dei giganti europei ovvero gli americani Domino's Pizza, Starbucks e Aramrk ed il frances Groupe Bertrand che, nel mese di gennaio 2016 ha acquisito la catena degli hamburger restaurant a insegna Quick.

Questa evoluzione, frutto della tendenza verso la globalizzazione sociale ed ecomica in corso, ha permesso di compensare il forte declino della ristorazione indipendente sostituita dalla ristorazione al banco arrivata da tutte le parti del mondo.

Un fenomeno la cui giustificazione si trova anche nella desertificazione delle cucine casalinghe, abandonate da mamme e mogli per una più "nobile" attività lavorativa. Comportamento che riduce l'arte dell tavola, all'acquisti di prodotti industriali pronti da scaldare.

USA, Francia e UK sul podio delle insegne europee

Per quanto riguarda la visione del mercato europeo globale, l'indagine non sta contraddicendo i diversi studi relativi ad ogni singolo segmento di mercato fatti di recente, paese per paese. Ciò che si evince dai dati, è che i format che funzionano meglio sono originari degli USA (33% dei casi), del Regni Unito (25% dei casi) e della Francia (20% dei casi). L'America primeggia nel fast food con il dominio assoluto di McDonald's; Lo UK primmeggia con un buon equilibrio fra insegne di ristorazione commerciale e operatori di catering la Francia se segnala per la forza e la capacità d'esportazione delle attività di ristorazione collettivadei suoi big player. In quarta posizione, si trova l'Italia con i concetti di Autogrill Group il cui sviluppo europeo si puo paragonare al terzetto dei leader in particolare per quanto riguarda il segmento del travel retail.

la ristorazione europea in cerca di identità

Concludiamo dicendo che gli operatori euopei del food service stanno ultimando i diversi studi di mercato nazionali che, per forza di cose non possono nel loro insieme restituire uno scenario europeo credibile. A questo si aggiunge un fenomeno molto diffuso che vede una nuova "razza" di piccoli operatori del fuoricasa che via via individuando un segmento complementare di ristorazione la cui dimensione è fuori controllo.

Di Georges Garcin, estratti "Ristorando", settembre 2016,anno 21, n.9, Milano, pp.38-39.  Adattato e illustrato per essere pubblicato da Leopoldo Costa

Peu ragoûtant, le mollusque bivalve constitue pourtant l’une des perles de la culture gastronomique française. À condition de bien le déguster!

En 1941, l’Américaine Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher écrit dans sa Biographie sentimentale de l’huître (en anglais, Consider the Oyster) : «Il n’y a qu’une façon, et une seulement, de déguster la portugaise et l’huître européenne plus rare ( Ostrea edulis ), pense un Français [...]. Il faut ouvrir le mollusque à la température du dehors, pendant la saison froide, mais sans jamais le réfrigérer outre mesure, et le sortir aussitôt de sa coquille rugueuse et irrégulière, pendant que ses franges noires vibrent encore et se recroquevillent sous le choc de l’air frais. Il faut l’avaler d’un coup, mais pas trop vite, puis il faut aspirer à même la coquille sa bonne eau salée.»

De nos jours, c’est la manière la plus courante de manger l’huître en France. Cela n’a toutefois pas toujours été le cas, car on s’est longtemps méfié de la consommation du coquillage cru et vivant. En 1555, le naturaliste et médecin Pierre Belon rappelle, dans La Nature & Diversité des Poissons, que les huîtres crues ont la chair glutineuse et molle et qu’elles engendrent des humeurs salées. Une cinquantaine d’années plus tard, l’auteur anonyme du Thresor de santé explique qu’elles sont difficiles à digérer «si on les avale crues avec leur eau» et conseille de les cuire dans leur écaille sur les charbons, «avec beurre & poivre pulvérisé». Mais c’est le suc salé de l’huître qui rend la digestion difficile, dit-il.

Neutraliser une excessive humidité

C’est pourquoi il avantage plutôt la cuisson bouillie «avec des correctifs» : le mollusque est décoquillé, lavé, puis bouilli avec du beurre, des épices et des raisins de Corinthe. À mi-cuisson sont ajoutés marjolaine, thym, persil, sarriette, oignons, safran et verjus. Toutefois, l’auteur considère que les huîtres les plus saines sont celles qui sont «rôties» à la poêle pour enlever leur «excessive humidité». Le fait de préparer l’huître est ici perçu comme un moyen de neutraliser ses désagréments supposés. Mais le coquillage est aussi cuisiné par goût.

Dans les recettes de la fin du Moyen Âge, l’huître est généralement proposée en civet, comme dans les ouvrages de la Renaissance, où on la présente aussi frite, à l’étuvée, ou en écaille (cuite dans sa coquille). Les recettes d’huîtres sont de plus en plus nombreuses et de plus en plus diversifiées dans les ouvrages culinaires des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles : tourte d’huîtres, beignet d’huîtres, omelette aux huîtres, ragoût d’huîtres, etc.

Le chef Pierre François de La Varenne ( Le Cuisinier François, 1651), confectionne ce dernier en les fricassant au beurre avec des oignons, du persil, des câpres et de la chapelure. Les recettes alliant les huîtres décoquillées et la viande sont la nouveauté des siècles modernes : «chapon aux huîtres», «canard aux huîtres», etc.

Cette importance des huîtres cuisinées n’empêche pas qu’elles soient consommées crues, comme en témoigne Le Déjeuner d’Huîtres (1735), du peintre Jean-François de Troy. Elles arrivaient à Paris en charrette ou par bateau, immergées dans de l’eau salée. Au Siècle des lumières, le discours médicinal sur les huîtres s’inverse par rapport à celui tenu à la Renaissance. Désormais, on considère les huîtres cuites comme plus difficiles à digérer que les huîtres crues.

Il devient l’objet de tous les soupçons...

Mais surtout, la suspicion s’installe progressivement à l’égard de l’huître cuisinée : un doute plane sur sa fraîcheur. Bientôt, la cuisine de l’huître devient une hérésie : «Anathème, cent fois anathème aux barbares qui les font cuire, fussent-ils d’ailleurs les plus renommés entre les gastronomes!» écrit en 1839 un membre de l’Académie royale de médecine. Pour Alexandre Dumas, «l’huître se mange habituellement de la façon la plus simple du monde, elle s’ouvre, on la détache, on exprime sur elle quelques gouttes de citron et on la gobe». Dans les livres de recettes, l’huître se fait dès lors plus rare. La question de la fraîcheur interpelle : «l’huître n’est fraîche que vivante», écrit Joseph Favre dans son Dictionnaire Universel de Cuisine Pratique (1905).

Cela devient une garantie sanitaire et une valeur gustative. Pour Escoffier, il est désormais d’usage de la servir sur de la glace pilée. On prend aussi l’habitude de la présenter sur un lit d’algues : elle retrouve ainsi son environnement marin – ce qui rassure aussi le mangeur sur la fraîcheur du coquillage qu’il consomme.


LA STAR DES REPAS DE FÊTE

Le triomphe de l’huître crue n’a pas fait disparaître l’huître cuisinée. Au moment des fêtes de fin d’année, revues culinaires et chefs présentent de nombreuses recettes. Michel Guérard propose des «huîtres chaudes en feuilles vertes», Georges Blanc de la «soupe d’huîtres aux cèpes et mousserons», Pierre Gagnaire, un «chaud-froid d’huîtres creuses, tartines de seigle au beaufort», où le mollusque est décoquillé, mélangé avec du foie gras, le jus du coquillage cuit avec du vin blanc et une échalote, puis de la crème Chantilly et du cresson.

Le Larousse Gastronomique de 1996 présente quelques autres recettes: «huîtres chaudes de l’île de Ré» de Jean et Paul Minchelli, «huîtres plates au champagne» de Gérard Boyer, avec une julienne de légumes et une sauce crémée montée au beurre, «huîtres en nage glacée» de Guy Savoy (cicontre). De nos jours, Olivier Roellinger (Les Maisons de Bricourt, à Cancale) présente dans son « menu au gré du vent et de la lune», une «huître grillée sur le feu de bois, noisettes fraîches et acidulée de pommes pas encore mûres»... Toutefois, la préparation peut être plus simple, comme lors des fêtes d’huîtres, notamment en Normandie, où le coquillage est apprêté à la manière des escargots, avec du beurre persillé, pour le plus grand bonheur des amateurs.



BULLES IODÉES

Le tableau de Jean-François de Troy Le Déjeuner d’Huîtres (ci-dessus, 1735), connu de tous les gourmets, l’est encore plus des amateurs de vin de Champagne. Cette peinture de genre, qui représente un repas d’«après-chasse» où les convives festoient joyeusement, fait la part belle à cette boisson nouvellement mise au point à la fin du XVIIe siècle par le moine cellérier de l’abbaye d’Hautvillers dom Pérignon. Au centre du tableau, un personnage empoigne un flacon de forme ronde dont il vient de faire sauter le bouchon à l’aide d’une lame.

Au XVIIIe, on sabrait déjà le champagne. Réservée à l’élite, la boisson effervescente aux vertus aphrodisiaques fait le bonheur des cours européennes, en France, en Angleterre et bientôt dans la Russie impériale. Dès la fin du XVIIIe, l’éclosion du champagne fait le succès de quelques familles de négociants-propriétaires: Heidsieck, Perrier-Jouët, Bollinger, Cliquot-Ponsardin, Ruinart, Pommery... L’association huître-champagne n’est pas une hérésie. Le goût iodé du mollusque s’accorde avec des vins tranchants et incisifs, comme le chablis, le pouilly-fumé et le muscadet.

C’est le cas aussi avec un jeune champagne tendu et minéral où le chardonnay domine. Mais un vieux champagne extra-brut à la vinosité plus affirmée et aux notes de pain grillé est aussi à la fête avec des spéciales de claire et des huîtres plates de Belon, au délicat goût de noisette.

Notre sélection : Agrapart & Fils terroirs extra-brut blanc de blancs; Pol Roger pure extra-brut ; A.R Lenoble brut nature.

Par Patrick Rambourg dans "Historia", Paris, decémbre 2016, n.804. pp- 94-95. Adapté et illustré pour être posté par Leopoldo Costa.

Dal cotone al pepe, dal tabacco alla coca: ecco le specie che hanno fatto le “rivoluzioni verdi” nella storia umana.


Il papiro, tesoro d’Egitto

L’uomo ha sempre trovato il modo di scrivere su qualsiasi superficie, dalla roccia alla pelle essiccata degli animali passando per le tavolette d’argilla. Ma se oggi usiamo quaderni e libri il merito è anche di una pianta, il papiro, usata in Egitto dal 3000 a.C , ha segnato l’evoluzione della civiltà benché non sia impiegata da un millennio.

Patrimonio perduto. Il papiro ha bisogno di molta acqua per sopravvivere: ecco perché prosperava nel Delta del Nilo, dove godeva delle inondazioni annuali del fiume. Gli Egizi utilizzavano la polpa della pianta, tagliata a strisce e pressata: il risultato era un materiale leggero e flessibile. Si smise di usarlo in seguito a una tremenda siccità che colpì il Nilo nell’XI secolo d.C., venne dimenticato e sostituito con fibre vegetali meno nobili. Intanto, prima i Cinesi, poi gli Arabi insegnarono agli europei come usare la corteccia degli alberi per produrre la carta.

Il silfio che fece grande Cirene

Il silfio cirenaico si è estinto da quasi duemila anni. Per un periodo altrettanto lungo è stata la pianta più importante della civiltà occidentale: legume pregiato, foraggio per animali, panacea contro ogni male e primo contraccettivo.

Mille usi. Utilizzata già dagli Egizi, rese ricchissima, nel 600 a.C., la città di Cirene (attuale Libia): era talmente centrale per il commercio che la sua immagine era stampata su tutte le monete locali (a destra). Il silfio era ricercato per la sua resina, il laserpitium, utilizzata per le proprietà antinfiammatorie, antidolorifiche e antispastiche. Sorano di Efeso (II secolo d.C.), padre della ginecologia, lo prescriveva come miscuglio di afrodisiaco e anticoncezionale: aveva infatti proprietà stimolanti, ma ostacolava la fecondazione o induceva aborti.


Super-patata

Ci sono almeno due continenti al mondo che non sarebbero quello che sono senza la patata. Il primo è l’America, dove questo tubero è conosciuto dal 3000 a.C.: era alla base della dieta degli Inca. E proprio in Perù i conquistadores spagnoli lo scoprirono, portandolo in Europa.

Mai più senza. Nel Vecchio Mondo all’inizio era una pianta ornamentale. Poi si diffuse in molti Paesi, tra cui la Germania, dove Federico il Grande nel Settecento ne incentivò la coltivazione, come principale fonte di sostentamento. Quando, nel 1840, un fungo devastò i campi di patate in Irlanda si ebbe una delle carestie più spaventose della Storia: un milione di morti e due milioni di profughi, quasi tutti emigrati in America, dove per questo ci sono così tanti irlandesi.

Quel toccasana del tabacco

Insieme al cotone, il tabacco è la coltura non alimentare più importante al mondo. Oggi il suo nome è associato alle sigarette, ma in origine il suo utilizzo non aveva solo a che fare con il fumo. Da quando Jean Nicot (1530-1600), ambasciatore francese in Portogallo, lo aveva spedito alla sua sovrana Caterina de’Medici per combattere l’emicrania, il tabacco diventò un toccasana: triturato e inalato, fu usato anche contro mal di denti e gotta.

Effetti collaterali. A diffondere in Europa l’abitudine di fumare sarebbe stato invece lo spagnolo Rodrigo de Jerez. Salpato con Cristoforo Colombo alla ricerca delle Indie nel 1492, aveva osservato gli indios che fumavano le foglie di tabacco avvolte in rotoli di palma o mais. Fu una rivoluzione: il tabacco entrò in pipe, sigari e sigarette. Queste ultime, durante la Grande guerra, si rivelarono irrinunciabili per i soldati al fronte che ne sfruttavano le proprietà antistress. Negli Anni ’50, però, si scoprirono i rischi per la salute.


Coca: la “bomba” delle Ande

Da duemila anni le popolazioni che vivono sulle Ande masticano le foglie dell’albero della coca, perché sanno che poco dopo saranno pieni di voglia di fare, privi di inibizioni e intossicati dal piacere. Non c’è mai stato dubbio sul fatto che la coca fosse una droga, ma fino all’arrivo dei primi colonizzatori europei nessuno aveva mai pensato che potesse diventare pericolosa. Deriva. Tra gli indigeni, l’uso delle foglie di coca era riservato alle cerimonie religiose e ai chasqui, i “postini” dell’epoca, che avevano bisogno di una spinta per percorrere decine di chilometri a piedi a migliaia di metri di altitudine, mentre gli spagnoli cominciarono a utilizzarla come merce di scambio per pagare il lavoro degli schiavi in miniera.


Ma la prima rivoluzione la fecero i cereali

Orzo, luppolo, riso, frumento, mais: se dovessimo indicare una sola categoria di piante senza le quali l’umanità non sarebbe dov’è oggi, non faremmo fatica a scegliere i cereali. Quando 10 mila anni fa “inventammo” l’agricoltura, orzo e grano furono le prime piante coltivate, perché erano facili da curare e molto nutrienti. L’ingresso dei cereali nella dieta umana allungò la speranza di vita dell’intera specie e portò persino cambiamenti nella forma del nostro viso, le cui mascelle si specializzarono per poter masticare meglio il nuovo cibo.

Per tutti i gusti. Orzo e frumento hanno cambiato i paesaggi europei, il mais l’ha fatto per quelli americani e il riso (che oggi rappresenta il 30% della produzione mondiale di cereali) per quelli cinesi, dove il cereale viene coltivato “bagnato”: le risaie sono uno dei paesaggi agricoli più diffusi nel mondo, dalla Cina agli Stati Uniti fino all’Europa. Ma non bisogna dimenticare gli utilizzi più“ricreativi”: i cereali sono alla base della lavorazione di molte bevande alcoliche, dalla birra (il luppolo) alla vodka (il grano) al whisky (l’orzo).


Canapa milleusi

Oggi è illegale in molti Paesi: associata al suo utilizzo come droga ricreativa, la canapa è invece una delle prime piante coltivate dall’uomo, e una delle più versatili. Le fibre che produce sono più resistenti di quelle del cotone, tanto che in molti sono convinti che si potrebbero utilizzare per sostituire la plastica (a sinistra, una fabbrica nel 1946).

Resistente. La canapa inoltre cresce rapidamente e senza bisogno di pesticidi, particolare che faciliterebbe la coltura intensiva. Contiene però THC, una sostanza psicotropa che ha proprietà mediche (come antidolorifico, antidepressivo o per rallentare gli effetti del Morbo di Alzheimer), ma è anche uno stupefacente: ecco perché, nell’America degli Anni ’30, la pianta fu messa fuorilegge.


Quando il caffè “invase” l’Europa

Le proprietà rinvigorenti del caffè (sotto, i frutti) furono scoperte in Etiopia verso l’800 d.C. Questo “oro nero” divenne una specialità del mondo arabo, dal quale non uscì fino a che la Compagnia olandese delle Indie importò le piante, invece dei chicchi che gli arabi spogliavano, pare, della polpa esterna per renderli sterili. La diffusione della bevanda in Occidente andò di pari passo con quella dei caffè, istituzioni culturali che si affermarono tra XVII e XVIII secolo.

Tè “caldo”. Un altro famoso “collega” del caffè, il tè (consumato in Cina fin dal III secolo), divenne invece pretesto di una rivoluzione, quella americana: il 16 dicembre 1773 i coloni travestiti da indiani gettarono in mare un carico di tè come protesta contro le tasse imposte dalla madrepatria inglese.


Il pepe? Ci portò in America

Cristoforo Colombo partì il 3 agosto 1492 proprio in cerca del pepe. Trovò l’America, ma non se ne rese conto: pensava di aver raggiunto le Indie, da cui veniva importato il re delle spezie, il pepe nero. Nativa dell’India, dove ancora oggi cresce allo stato selvatico, la pianta produce frutti che, se lasciati essiccare e poi macinati, si trasformano in una polvere dal sapore inconfondibile.

Per tutti. Fino al XVIII secolo veniva importato in Europa direttamente dall’India, a costi esorbitanti: i profitti del commercio di pepe consentirono per esempio alle banche veneziane di arricchirsi. Quando però l’ufficiale britannico Robert Clive sconfisse i Moghul del Bengala e stabilì il dominio inglese sull’area, il pepe smise di essere un bene prezioso, e oggi è una merce diffusa e poco costosa.


Caldo cotone

Prima che l’uomo inventasse i tessuti sintetici il cotone era il materiale tessile più usato. Lo è stato per migliaia di anni: le prime coltivazioni risalgono al 3000 a.C. (sono state scoperte sia in Pakistan sia in Messico). Quando portoghesi e spagnoli arrivarono nelle Americhe indossavano gli stessi indumenti di cotone degli indigeni.

Svolta nera. Dal ’700 la pianta fu coltivata su larga scala e il tessuto si diffuse sempre più. L’industrializzazione della produzione scatenò persino un movimento di ribellione contro “le oscure fabbriche sataniche” (parole del poeta William Blake). E quando il cotone sbarcò in America diede la spinta decisiva allo schiavismo: nel 1855 una persona su due negli Usa del Sud era uno schiavo nero nelle piantagioni.


Bambù: l’oro verde d’Oriente

“Il gentiluomo dovrebbe essere come il bambù: dritto e forte come una canna, ma anche vuoto dentro, come il suo fusto” (cioè privo di pregiudizi): così consigliava nell’VIII secolo il poeta cinese Bai Juyi. Il bambù è, insieme al riso, la pianta che più ha caratterizzato la storia della Cina e dell’Oriente in generale (a destra, una foresta di bambù nel Giappone di fine ’800).

Nel piatto. Sfruttato 2 mila anni fa dai primi abitanti delle foreste cinesi, diventò prima il materiale dei documenti ufficiali, poi pietanza principale per i monaci buddisti a cui era vietato il consumo di carne. Il fusto cavo si usava anche per gli strumenti musicali: le 12 note della musica cinese sarebbero state suonate per la prima volta su un flauto di bambù.

Di Gabriele Ferrari estratti "Focus Storia", dicembre 2016, n.122, Mondatori, Milano, pp.30-33.  Adattato e illustrato per essere pubblicato da Leopoldo Costa

A number of cultures occupied Spain in early times, and together they helped lay the foundations for many regionally unique food cultures.

Phoenicians crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and founded colonies in the southern Iberian cities Cadiz and Tartessus in the ninth century BC. Carthaginians took up residence in the Balearic Islands before setting out to conquer most of Iberia in the third century BC, with Carthago Nuevo (located in modern-day Murcia) serving as their base of power and capital.

Around the fifth century BC, northern Spain was occupied by the ancestors of today’s Basque people and tribes of early Celtic colonists. The latter is credited with establishing a strong pork-centric culture, and possibly the initial regular practices of the matanza, as they marched across the Pyrenees and eventually settled north of the Rio Duero and Rio Ebro. These early Celtic settlers viewed the pig as more than a simple food source, however; animals like pigs, bulls, and lambs were worthy of sacrificial rituals, verracos (statuettes) for worship, and representation on ancient coins from the era.

After the conquest of Spain by the Roman Empire in 19 BC, the country was renamed Hispania. The cosmopolitan Romans brought ideas, goods, and technology to the Iberian Peninsula via the Roman roads. Concepts became a shared commodity between lands through the spread of Christian teachings, architectural fundamentals for building marvels like aqueducts, new farming methods, and—most important to the culinary world—new charcuterie and meat-preserving techniques, many of which likely arose from Rome’s conquest of Gaul around 51 BC.

Those meat-curing secrets begat jamones and embutidos coveted throughout the Empire, as towns like Pompeiopolis (known today as Pamplona) structured whole economies around exportation of their jamones. These culinary specialties were solely the province of Rome’s social elite, since only the wealthy upper class had the financial means to procure such luxuries from faraway Hispania.

THE CHURCH TAKES CHARGE

As Roman rule declined in the third century AD, Visigoths from the north gradually extended their control over Hispania, while the porcine-centric culture of the peninsula’s emerging gastronomy continued to flourish. Specifically, acorn-fed pigs roamed even more freely in their native oak forests once they became protected by new Gothic laws codified in the Liber Iudiciorum. In this Visigothic book of laws, Iberian pigs received specified protections for their feeding habitat in oak-tree laden dehesas, and protections were also put into place for the gradual transformation of freshly harvested Iberian hams into succulent jamones.

At the same time, the Catholic Church took a leading role in maintaining formal education, preserving historical records, and managing government in the region. As a result, Hispania was one of the few centers of culinary development that survived both the Visigothic reign and the 800-year Moorish occupation in later years. For example, monasteries like the order of San Fructuoso maintained large herds of pigs for making embutidos. The cured meats kept the resident monks and traveling pilgrims fed, and the monks were also able to study the pigs and products made from them. In fact, the order maintained archives about medicinal uses for pork. Their work makes up a good portion of the archival information about charcutería that survives today.

800 YEARS OF MOORISH RULE

Beginning in AD 711 and continuing for the next eight centuries until the completion of the Reconquista in 1492, most of the Iberian Peninsula was ruled by Moorish and Berber invaders from Africa—all except the northern states, which defiantly resisted occupation and remained the last vestiges of Christian freedom in Spain. During these centuries of occupation, Spain was renamed yet again (Al-Andalus) and religious tolerance was granted, up to a certain point, by the conquering Moors. Specifically, the populace’s cultural and religious practices were allowed to continue under the conditions of stiff taxation, which eventually became a rallying point for revolution for many native Spaniards.

Fomenting anger over both the occupation and the new taxes shifted the pig from a symbol of wealth or family survival to one of Spanish pride and defiance. Since eating pork or even handling pigs by Muslims was forbidden by strict religious laws, the only people who could farm and eat pigs in Spain during this period were Christians opposed to the occupation.

The matanza became the ultimate act of defiance, as Spanish families moved their pig-slaughtering practices away from the hidden corrals or inner courtyards of their homes to front yards and village squares.

Thus, the matanza became the ultimate act of defiance, as Spanish families moved their pig-slaughtering practices away from the hidden corrals or inner courtyards of their homes to front yards and village squares. These actions loudly proclaimed their political and culinary leanings, while also delivering a great big, passive-aggressive, porky middle finger to the ruling Moors.

NEW WORLD, NEW INGREDIENTS, NEW CHARCUTERÍA

In 1492, Christopher Columbus “sailed the ocean blue” to the New World with the blessing and sponsorship of Spain’s King Fernando and Queen Isabel. It may be debatable whether Columbus was in fact the first European to discover these shores, but we can thank him for bringing eight special passengers along for the ride on his second voyage. Part of his precious cargo included eight Ibérico pigs, the forerunners of our swine population, which were released to multiply and proliferate on the island of Hispaniola, where the nations of Haiti and the Dominican Republic exist today (Hernando de Soto later brought more pigs to continental North America in 1539).

Columbus’s voyages, and those of subsequent explorers, not only planted some very important culinary seeds here in the Americas; they also forever changed European gastronomy. Specifically, the culinary heritage of the Old World became enriched with new ingredients like corn, peppers, potatoes, chocolate, and other discoveries; notably, some very important red-pepper-tinged changes occurred in the charcutería of the period.

Peppers from the Americas eventually made their way into recipes for chorizos, lomos, morcillas, and other forms of Spanish charcuterie—sometimes in a smoked, dried, and powdered form (pimentón) and other times as a mashed paste (from ñora and choricero peppers). As a result, all manner of sausages became tinted a vibrant red, and Spanish embutidos were imbued with a heretofore unknown smoky, spicy quality. Quite simply, it was one of the greatest developments in Spanish culinary history. As described by noted author and Spanish culinary expert Teresa Barrenechea, this truly was a golden age for Spain, from both a culinary and cultural perspective:

"Spain served as a center for Europe and the gateway to the newly conquered lands of the Americas. The grandson of the Catholic Kings, Carlos I, ruled the sprawling Hapsburg Empire and became Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. With the seat of the Hapsburgs now in Spain, food traditions traveled back and forth all over Europe, affecting the eating habits of the entire continent. Then, in the mid-eighteenth century, the Hapsburgs gave way to the Bourbons, who introduced French styles to the Spanish court and upper classes."

COMFORT IN DARK TIMES

The rich, multicultural gastronomic landscape of Spain—a collective harmony of so many countries and cultures dating back over a thousand years—came into serious jeopardy in modern times. During the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) and dictator Francisco Franco’s reign (1939–1975) thereafter, the autonomy of Spain’s provinces faced oppression and near annihilation. Everything from local linguistic dialects to bullfights to flamenco came under scrutiny by a regime hell-bent on uniting the proudly regionalist Spanish people under a single banner: one language and one rule.

And the dark times continued thereafter. An economic depression ensued until the 1950s, leading to a strong black market for everyday luxuries like coffee, sugar, and tobacco. The cuisine of the era, which of course was focused on wasting absolutely nothing, showcased necessary innovations Spanish households had to employ to make the most of what they had. Stale bread provided a means for thickening soups. Families found ways to use every odd and end from slaughtered animals, and many people turned to preserved foods like charcutería to get the protein and fat they needed, since fresh meat was far too expensive.

Coincidentally, as suppression and economic woes swept across Spain during and after the Franco era, charcutería production soared. In fact, its popularity reached its highest levels to date at this point in time, as businesses with fiercely guarded family recipes for curing meat expanded. Franco’s suppressive regime opposed overt regionalist displays of language, culture, and the arts, so the people of Catalonia, País Vasco, Galicia, and other regions turned to their native charcutería recipes and traditions—a source of comfort to their souls—as a means of expression, freedom, and economic sanctuary from oppression.

MODERN SPAIN ON THE WORLD STAGE

These day, Catalonia—just one of seventeen distinct comunidades autónomas (autonomous communities) in Spain—alone recognizes seventeen different versions of chorizo. And while the Catalan viewpoint on cuisine is certainly valid (they gave the world Ferran Adrià, after all), add to this number the various local, regional, and national charcutería specialties of the rest of the country, and you’ll begin to understand the dizzying scope and depth of Spain’s cured meat lineage.

Generally considered the national sausage of Spain, more than 65,000 tons of chorizo are made by Spanish producers every year, which amounts to about 40 percent of Spain’s entire sausage production. In fact, chorizo is such an innate part of the Spanish soul that every February, a festival is held in its honor in the small town of Vila de Cruces in Galicia. Charcutiers from all over Spain bring their products, and festival goers devour and debate over whose is the best in the land.

But for all of the hype about chorizo within Spain’s borders, very little information about this delicacy has still yet to make it out of the country. Sure, you might see chorizo at your local Whole Foods or spot José Andrés, one of the most vocal proponents of all things Spanish, waxing poetic about it on TV. But only in the last few years have Spanish producers gained access to the American market, and even then only a small fraction of pork-laden goodies have trickled through.

In October 2002, for example, Palacios, a producer of chorizo based in La Rioja, became the first to be allowed by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to import chorizo into the United States. And while the Palacios product is certainly a decent chorizo, it is hardly representative of the multitude of other charcutería products enjoyed every day by the average Spaniard. Fortunately, in recent years, companies like La Tienda, Fermín, 5J, Wagshal’s, and a few others have been allowed to either import some Spanish charcutería products or put their traditional recipes to work here in the United States, creating authentic reproductions.

Likewise, jamón Ibérico is only a recent revelation here in the United States. For years, Embutidos Fermín fought to educate the USDA about its products and the process involved—but it wasn’t until 2007 that the first legal jamones were ceremonially sliced at José Andrés’s Washington, DC, restaurant, Jaleo. In a New York Times article by Amanda Hesser, exporter Jesús García commented on the issue, “The problem is that American authorities do not recognize the European Union’s standards for production. They want companies to follow their own standards. And some companies do not want to change.”

By Jeffrey Weiss in "Charcuteria-The Soul of Spain",Surrey Books (an imprint of Agate Publishing), Chicago, USA, 2014, excerpts pp. 45-51. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), there are about 800,000 beef producers in this country, located in all 50 states. The common goal is to supply high-quality, safe, nutritious, and flavorful meat products for meals served around the world.

Although beef is the most popular protein among American consumers, the industry is always researching and testing new ways to meet the growing needs of today’s consumers and foodservice operators. Just by reading this book, you are a part of this effort and have the opportunity to make a difference. Whether you are a trained butcher or meat professional, a chef, or an interested foodie, I think you will find this information to be a great review and maybe even enlightening. In any case, let’s begin.

THE SOURCE OF BEEF

Beef is one of the principal meats used in U.S. cuisine and is also a staple meat in Australia, Europe, South and North America, Africa, and Asia. The word “beef” is the culinary term for meat derived from full-grown bovines, mainly cattle. Cattle are a group of bovines regardless of sex and age. Typically, there are two categories of cattle: beef cattle and dairy cattle. Cattle raised for human consumption are called beef cattle, while dairy cattle are raised for milk and dairy. Only females are kept in production and used as dairy cows. Males cannot produce milk and are sold as calves for veal or beef.

A COW IS A COW. OR IS IT?

Terms such as “cow” and “bull” or other words are often used interchangeably, but the differences are significant. When a cattle herd produces offspring or calves, they are either female or male.

The male calves fall into two categories: bulls and steers. Calves with superior genetics are selected for breed stock, are not castrated, and are classified as bulls. Usually, there is only one bull per herd so selecting the right genetics is extremely important in beef and dairy production.

A steer is a male calf that was not selected for genetics. This steer will be castrated at birth and enter the beef production cycle.

A heifer is a female calf that is typically 2 1⁄2 years old and has not been bred. Heifers, like bulls, are selected for their genetics and breeding stock. Once a heifer becomes a new mom, she is referred to as a “cow,” and can then be selected to enter the beef production cycle.

CARING FOR CATTLE

Most cattle are raised on family farms, grazing on pastures, range acreage, or in fields after crop harvest. These farms or ranches are referred to as either “cow-calf” producers or “seed-stock” producers. They both raise cows and calves for breeding stock or to sell to other cattle producers who need younger cows or calves to send to pasture. Cow-calf producers may have crossbreeds in the herd based on the ease of calving or tradition. Seed-stock producers raise purebred or registered cattle for branded or specialized beef programs.

In general, cow-calf producers sell cattle to stockers, producers looking to place light, weaned yearling calves on pasture. The cattle will remain on pasture, often moving to new pastures to sustain the proper nutritional value of the forage and refresh the fields. The herd grazes until each cow weighs approximately 750 to 900 pounds. They are then either sold to enter the food chain or sold to “feeders” where cattle are moved into custom feedlots or finishing yards.

FINISHING OPTIONS

Most cattle are finished on grains, mainly corn. This high-carbohydrate diet increases marbling and palatability. Beef from the United States is preferred around the world because of this marbling and the resulting great taste. We set the standard in high-quality beef.

Cattle feed is specially designed to meet the nutritional needs of cattle. There are at least 17 minerals that beef cattle need in their diet, most of which can be found in forage. Vitamin and mineral supplements are used for grain-finished cattle, as well as grass-finished cattle to ensure that nutritional needs are met. This process usually takes place in a feedlot and is referred to as grain-fed or grain-finished.

Some cattle remain grass-fed on pastures until harvest and are not grain-finished. This is considered “grass-fed” beef. In the United States, it is extremely expensive to hold the cow on open pastures for a long period of time. Land is expensive, and large areas of open pasture are hard to support. Therefore, a majority of the grass-fed beef in the United States is imported from Uruguay, Brazil, New Zealand, or Australia.

When the cattle reach the desired weight or age (30 months of age or less), they go to a packing house or meat packer for harvesting. A live bovine weighs about 1,000 pounds and yields approximately 450 pounds of edible meat. In this stage, cattle are processed into smaller manageable sections such as primals and subprimals for further processing.

CHARACTERIZING BEEF CATTLE BREEDS

There are at least 50 breeds of beef cattle, but fewer than 10 make up most cattle produced. The most popular breeds of beef cattle in the United States and Canada originated in Europe.

British breeds

Angus (Black and Red), Hereford (Horned and Polled), and Shorthorn are the primary British breeds. They were brought to the United States in the late 1700s through the late 1800s. British breeds are generally smaller than Continental European breeds in mature size, reach mature size at an earlier age, have less growth potential, excel in fertility and calving ease, and attain higher-quality grades.

Continental European breeds

Considered “exotic” breeds, the Continental European cattle include Charolais, Chianina, Gelbvieh, Limousin, Maine Anjou, Salers, and Simmental. These are relatively new breeds to the United States, arriving in the late 1960s and early 1970s primarily to improve the growth rate and leanness of existing breeds. Continental European breeds are generally larger than British breeds in mature size, reach mature size at a later age, produce carcasses with less fat, have lower-quality grades, and have more calving difficulty when mated to the British breeds.

TYPES OF BEEF

Beef is marketed in several different categories ranging from conventional to kosher. According to Cattle-FAX, a cattle marketing information service, about 85 percent of all U.S. beef is grain-finished.

Conventional beef

The majority of beef sold in the United States is conventional beef. In this program, the cattle are grass-fed on pastures and finished on a corn-and-grain diet. The cattle are given the required vaccinations, as well as antibiotics when sick, and may have been given growth hormones. Although cattle producers are raising fewer cattle, beef production has increased. Due to modern management practices and advancements in technology, the beef production system in the United States is highly efficient.

Branded or breed-specific

Branded beef is generated from cattle that have been raised with clear specifications from the the brand company and carries a specific brand name on the label. Size and age are just two criteria.

Breed-specific beef is generated from specific breeds. Breed-specific cattle may also have brand specifications to differentiate themselves from the same breed competitors. Examples of breed cattle are Angus, Hereford, and Wagyu, to name a few. Check with your suppliers on the details of the brand specifications or breed you are purchasing.

Natural beef

All fresh meat qualifies as natural. The USDA defines “natural beef” as a product that contains no artificial ingredients or added colors and is only minimally processed, a process that does not fundamentally alter the raw product. The label must explain the use of the term “natural” (such as “no added colorings or artificial ingredients”; “minimally processed”).

Natural beef comes from cattle that have been raised on conventional pastures and are given vaccinations at birth (similar to the vaccines we give our own children). Feeding cattle organic corn or grains is not required. Antibiotics and hormones usage varies and is categorized as:

Never received: The animal was given the required vaccinations but never received antibiotics or growth promotants. When purchasing, look for a never-ever statement on the label or a “certified no antibiotics, no added hormones” statement.

Withdrawal program: Some beef programs advertise that their cattle do not receive antibiotics or growth hormones/implants within 100 days of harvest. This is considered a withdrawal program. Consumers can look for label statements such “Cattle do not receive antibiotics or growth hormones within 100 days of harvest.”

Grass-fed beef or pasture-raised

Grass-fed beef is beef harvested from grass-fed cattle that have only been allowed to nourish on their mothers’ milk or forage on fresh grass or grass-style hay. Pasture-raised cattle are raised in a more traditional method and are allowed to roam on high-quality grass and forage.

Organic beef

The Organic Foods Production Act (OFPA) and the National Organic Program (NOP) assure consumers that the organic agricultural products they purchase are produced, processed, and certified to consistent national organic standards. The labeling requirements of the NOP apply to raw, fresh products and processed products that contain organic agricultural ingredients. Agricultural products that are sold, labeled, or represented as organic must be produced and processed in accordance with NOP standards. Except for operations whose gross income from organic sales totals $5,000 or less, farm and processing operations that grow and process organic agricultural products must be certified by USDA-accredited certifying agents.

Certified organic beef is generated from cattle that have been raised on pastures without pesticides. The cows must be fed grain from crops that have been properly rotated, have not used pesticides, and are considered 100% organic. Since there are a limited number of pastures that meet these criteria, organic beef is more expensive. These particular cows are not allowed to receive an injection of any kind, antibiotics, or hormones to promote growth. If the animal becomes sick, it is given antibiotics (just like you when you become sick) but is removed from the herd and placed into the conventional beef program.

Kosher beef

Kosher is a Hebrew word meaning “fit and proper” or “properly prepared.” With regard to beef, kosher means that the beef is processed under the supervision of a rabbi but still must meet the requirements for federal and state meat inspection. According to kosher standards, only cuts from the forequarter can be eaten. When all criteria are met, the Kosher Triangle can be affixed to the product.

Halal beef

Halal is an Arabic word meaning “lawful” or “allowed” in accordance with Islamic law. This beef must be processed by butchers who follow strict Islamic guidelines in a ritual called “Zabiha” where animals are blessed with the name of Allah. Only a respected Muslim can perform this ritual. To meet Islamic guidelines, animals must be healthy at time of harvest. All requirements for federal and state meat inspection must still be met. “Halal” or “Zabiha Halal” labels must be handled according to Islamic law under Islamic authority.

BEEF INSPECTION PROCESS

To ensure quality, the Food Safety and Inspection Service, or FSIS, part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), requires meat inspection for all beef sold at foodservice and retail levels. These programs are funded by U.S. taxpayers; therefore, the cost of inspection is not included in the cost of meat purchased. Since the USDA is responsible for regulating the safety and development of food and agriculture, cattle and their carcasses are examined for wholesomeness before, during, and after the harvesting process by an in-plant USDA inspector.

USDA-inspected beef is stamped with an inspection symbol along with an establishment number that tells the purchaser what plant or facility processed or produced the beef.

THE GRADING SYSTEM

Many of your customers have probably asked, “Does the grade of meat affect the taste? What’s a select cut?” This information will arm you with clear, concise answers. The grading system comes from the standards set by the USDA. It is a voluntary system paid for by the beef industry or packers.

During processing, USDA inspectors analyze the carcass between the 12th and 13th ribs, where the ribeye has been exposed. The ribeye is then evaluated for its kernel fat, intramuscular fat, and the age or maturity of the animal. Marbling is white flecks and strips of fat within the meat. The greater the amount of marbling in beef, the higher the grade because marbling makes beef more tender, flavorful, and juicy.

Because the chronological age is virtually never known, physiological maturity is used. Indicators of “age” are bone characteristics, ossification of cartilage, color, and texture of ribeye muscle. Desirable ribeyes will display an adequate amount of marbling. The ribeye will be firm with fine muscle texture, and the lean, a bright-cherry red.

Grades are used by marketers to predict palatability. It isn’t easy to anticipate Mother Nature, but this system is as close as we can get. There are eight distinct grades of beef recognized by the USDA. Studies show that only the top three grades are preferred by consumers. Most beef offered for sale in grocery stores and markets is graded choice or select. Prime beef is sold to upscale restaurants and high-end butcher shops.

U.S. Quality Grades Ranked from highest to lowest :
1. Prime,
2. Choice,
3. Select,
4. Standard,
5. Commercial,
6. Utility,
7. Cutter,
8. Canner.

BEEF YIELD GRADE

Yield grades estimate the amount of boneless, closely trimmed cuts that can be generated from the high-value parts of the carcass—the round, loin, rib, and chuck. Meat graders assign a yield grade to a carcass by evaluating:
 1. the amount of external fat
 2. the hot carcass weight
 3. the amount of kidney, pelvic, and heart fat
 4. the area of the ribeye muscle
There are five yield grades: 1 is the leanest and 5 represents higher fat coverage or a lower cut yield factor. Typically primals and subprimals are stamped with the yield grade.

TYPES OF AGING

Beef is aged to develop additional tenderness and flavor. It is done commercially under controlled temperatures and humidity. Since aging can take from 10 days to four weeks, the USDA does not recommend aging beef in a home refrigerator. There are two types of aging:

Dry aging

This refers to the longer storage of carcasses or beef wholesale primal and subprimal cuts at refrigerated temperatures with no protective packaging. It is critical with dry aging to carefully control refrigeration conditions to minimize microbial growth and dehydration losses. Aging in a refrigerated room at 32°F to 34°F (0° to 1°C) and 80% relative humidity, with air velocity/air movement of 0.5 to 2.5 m/sec, is typical. Dry aging under these conditions is sometimes continued for 21 to 28 days and may impart a distinct aged flavor considered desirable by some consumers.

Dry-aged beef is more expensive because the primals or subprimals have been exposed to air in a humidity-controlled environment. Since beef is 72% water, the meat basically evaporates. This loss of water in the composition of the muscle increases the flavor of beef and makes it more intense. Some refer to the taste of aged beef as being “nutty.” The meat cutter will have to remove the dark and possibly moldy portions to generate visually appealing cuts. This trim loss also increases the cost of the steak or cut. But the distinctive taste does deserve a higher price and has a high perceived value by consumers.

Wet aging

This refers to storage at refrigerated temperatures in a sealed vacuum package—“in the bag.” While relative humidity and air movement are not factors with wet aging, strict temperature control is important and should be maintained at 32°F to 34°F.

All beef benefits from wet aging, especially lower grades such as select, which do not have as much intramuscular fat or marbling. I recommend aging all beef a minimum of 14 days and a maximum of 28 days.

Wet aging is cheaper because you do not have to control or maintain humidity levels, which often requires a special aging cooler. In wet aging, the primals or subprimals lose water while resting in the bag. After the product has been aged, you will experience moisture loss referred to as “purge.” Expect an “off” or gassy smell when opening the bag (it should not smell rancid or sour). This is perfectly normal from the natural decaying process.

Wet and dry aging methods have the same effect on tenderness. Wet aging is the typical method of aging beef today. Aging beyond 28 days has little benefit in enhancing beef palatability, and in dry-aged products, it may be detrimental because microbial growth and dehydration losses increase. Aging can be affected by individual muscle and by USDA-quality grade.

By Kari Underly in "The Art of Beef Cutting", John Wiley & Sons,USA, 2011, excerpts pp. 12-24. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.

LA TOMA DE LA BASTILLA EL 14 DE JULIO DE 1789 MARCÓ UN ANTES Y UN DESPUÉS EN LA HISTORIA DE EUROPA. CON LA CAÍDA DE LA MONARQUÍA EN FRANCIA, TERMINABA UN LARGO PERIODO DE DOMINACIÓN ARISTOCRÁTICA EN EL VIEJO CONTINENTE CONOCIDO COMO ANTIGUO RÉGIMEN. LA LLEGADA DE LA REVOLUCIÓN SUPUSO LA INTRODUCCIÓN DE DERECHOS CIVILES Y MEJORAS EN LAS CODICIONES DE VIDA DE LOS CIUDADANOS FRANCESES. PERO ESTAS MEJORAS SE REFERÍAN SOLAMENTE A LOS HOMBRES. LAS MUJERES CONTINUABAN SIENDO CIUDADANAS DE SEGUNDA, MENORES DE EDAD ANTE LA LEY. AUN QUEDABA UN LARGO CAMINO POR RECORRER PARA CONSEGUIR LA IGUALDAD DE GÉNERO. PERO YA EN AQUELLOS AÑOS TURBULENTOS ALGUNAS VOCES FEMENINAS SE ALZARON EN FAVOR DE SUS DERECHOS SENTANDO LAS BASES DE LO QUE SE CONVERTIRÍA EN EL FEMINISMO MODERNO UN SIGLO DESPUÉS. LAS MUJERES FUERON, TAMBIÉN, PROTAGONISTAS INTELECTUALES, LUCHADORAS EN LAS CALLES, VÍCTIMAS Y VERDUGOS, DE UNA REVOLUCIÓN QUE CAMBIÓ POR COMPLETO EL CURSO DE
LA HISTORIA.

Quando el pueblo de París, desesperado por una larga época de crisis economica, carestía de todo y tensión política y social, se alzó en armas contra el poder establecido, las mujeres también lucharon junto a ellos.En algunos de los hechos más determinantes de la revolución, tanto en la capital. Quando como en el resto del territorio francés, está documentada la presencia de féminas dispuestas igual que los hombres a luchar por una sociedad más igualitaria.

Ya en la toma de la Bastilla, un grupo de mujeres anónimas junto a otras que se harían famosas por sus actos revolucionarios como Théroigne de Méricourt, se presentaron ante los muros de la prisión parisina armadas con espadas, palos e incluso armas de fuego.

Pero el acto popular más conocido protagonizado por mujeres fue, sin duda, el que se recordaría como la marcha a Versalles y que tuvo lugar los días 5 y 6 de octubre de 1789. Aquellos días de otoño, en los primeros meses de la revolución, las mujeres despertaron de nuevo con la difícil tarea de llenar las bocas de sus familias. En los mercados el precio del pan era cada vez más exorbitante mientras seguía resonando en sus mentes una desafortunada frase atribuida a la reina María Antonieta: “Si no tienen pan, que coman pasteles”.

Aquella mañana la desesperación pudo con un grupo de ciudadanas que decidieron marchar hacia Versalles después de intentar asaltar el Ayuntamiento de París. En el palacio de las afueras de la ciudad, donde se escondía el rey y se reunía la Asamblea Nacional, las mujeres consiguieron traspasar las rejas y entrar en el recinto donde pudieron hablar con Luis XVI y arrancarle la promesa de liberar las reservas de grano.

Los acontecimientos se precipitaron ante la consecución de nuevas promesas orales pero pocos hechos constatados. Al día siguiente el rey y la reina se vieron obligados por la turba de mujeres, acompañadas por hombres y soldados, a volver a París mientras oían las voces de las revolucionarias coreando cantos como este: "Hasta Versalles llevamos con orgullo nuestros cañones. Deberías habernos visto, unas simples mujeres con un valor que no se nos puede reprochar". Las conocidas desde entonces como “mujeres de octubre” se convirtieron en el símbolo de los primeros tiempos de la revolución.

LAS MADRES DE LA REVOLUCIÓN

Sin ninguna intención violenta, aquellas madres, esposas, trabajadoras, consiguieron forzar la vuelta del rey a la capital y que Luis XVI aceptara la Declaración de los Derechos del Hombre y del Ciudadano aprobada por la Asamblea Nacional Constituyente francesa el 26 de agosto de 1789 entre otros decretos promulgados tras la Toma de la Bastilla. Las “heroínas de la Revolución” y su marcha a Versalles simbolizaron el fin de la autoridad real y del antiguo régimen de privilegios demostrando que ellas también podían formar parte de la revolución, ya fuera desde el anonimato y a través de los levantamientos populares con intenciones reivindicativas y no violentas.

A pesar de que en esa ocasión las reivindicaciones de las mujeres no fueron explícitamente “feministas”, ya mostraron su coraje y su intención de no quedarse tras los muros de sus  empobrecidos hogares esperando un milagro. Fue poco después cuando la participación activa en los ejércitos revolucionarios se utilizó como elemento reivindicativo de los derechos de las mujeres. En este sentido, de nuevo Théroigne de Méricourt, reclamó que las mujeres pudieran portar espadas o pistolas y participar en los enfrentamientos armados, lo que ella llamó como las “legiones de amazonas”.

LA DECLARACIÓN DE DERECHOS...¿DE QUIÉN?

Pero las ideas de mujeres como Théroigne estaban lejos de hacerse realidad. La Declaración de Derechos del Hombre y el Ciudadano enarbolaba la bandera de la libertad de todos los que  pertenecían al sexo masculino, dejando de lado sin ningún miramiento a la mitad de la población. Para los firmantes de tan histórica declaración, pensadores, filósofos, políticos, eruditos, las mujeres votaban indirectamente con el voto del hombre que la protegía legalmente, ya fuera un padre, un hermano, un esposo. Las mujeres tenían la obligación civil de dar hijos a la República a los que tenían que educar en los valores revolucionarios. Esta era su misión dentro del engranaje del nuevo orden.

Pero mientras algunas mujeres salían a las calles de manera espontánea, sin más motivación, que no era poca, que reclamar comida con la que alimentar a aquellos hijos de la revolución, otras fueron un poco más allá y se enfrentaron con la palabra escrita a una libertad ciudadana bastante incompleta.

Considerada como una de las primeras feministas de la Historia, Olympe de Gouges escribió la Declaración de Derechos de las Mujeres y Ciudadanas, una obra que intentaba reproducir los mismos derechos que los hombres habían conseguido en su declaración de aquel primer año de la Revolución Francesa. La obra, que empezaba con la elocuente expresión “¡Despierta, mujer!”, seguía la misma estructura que la Declaración de Derechos del Hombre, con sus 17 artículos y los convirtió en reclamaciones análogas para las mujeres.

Obligada a casarse con un hombre al que no quería cuando tenía solamente 17 años, decidió no unirse nunca más en matrimonio cuando quedó viuda de un marido mucho mayor que ella. Para Olympe, el matrimonio era un “sepulcro de la confianza y del amor”.

En París, Olympe de Gouges dedicó su vida a defender los derechos de los esclavos negros y de las mujeres. Su acercamiento a las posturas girondinas durante la época del Terror la colocaron directamente en el punto de mira de Robespierre quien consiguió que fuera detenida y condenada a muerte.

El 3 de noviembre de 1793 subía al cadalso para ser decapitada, convirtiéndose en la segunda mujer, después de la reina María Antonieta en ser ejecutada en la guillotina. Paradójicamente Olympe de Gouges había escrito en su Declaración de Derechos de las mujeres: “La mujer tiene derecho a subir al cadalso; y análogamente debe tener derecho a subir a la tribuna de oradores”.

VINDICACIÓN DE LOS DERECHOS DE LA MUJER

Un año después de que Olympe de Gouges escribiera su osada Declaración de Derechos de las Mujeres, otra mujer escribió el que se consideraría uno de los libros fundamentales para el feminismo moderno. Mary Wollstonecraft fue una escritora inglesa que tuvo una infancia difícil marcada por la pobreza provocada por un padre que llevó a la ruina su propio negocio mientras maltrataba físicamente a su esposa.

Mary empezó a trabajar siendo muy pequeña para ayudar a su madre. Pero harta de las pocas posibilidades laborales que se le ofrecía a una mujer, decidió dedicarse a la escritura e intentar conseguir dinero por sus palabras. Era una opción arriesgada y así se lo hizo saber a su hermana Everina: “Voy a ser la primera de una nueva especie. Tiemblo de pensar en el intento”.

Pero, a pesar de sus miedos, alcanzó su sueño. No solo fue aceptada en el círculo literario de Londres, sino que consiguió que su editor le pagara por sus escritos. Convertida en escritora, Mary Wollstonecraft dio un pasó más y se atrevió a defender la igualdad entre hombres y mujeres. No solo rechazaba el supuesto tradicional que definía de manera distinta las naturalezas femenina y masculina, sino que afirmaba con gran convencimiento que las mujeres no se desarrollaban más intelectualmente porque se les vetaba el acceso al conocimiento.

Entusiasmada por las ideas revolucionarias que habían levantado al pueblo francés, Mary marchó a París en 1792 dispuesta a poner en práctica sus ideas. Después de escuchar a los miembros de la Asamblea Nacional francesa afirmando que la única educación que las mujeres debían recibir era la relacionada con el hogar, decidió escribir todo un alegato en favor de las mujeres como seres igualmente capaces intelectualmente que los hombres. Su reivindicación de los derechos de las mujeres afirmaba que si las mujeres tuvieran acceso a la misma educación que los hombres,
podrían alcanzar iguales cotas de erudición. Es más, “si no se la prepara con la educación para que se convierta en la compañera del hombre, detendrá el progreso del conocimiento y la virtud”.

Cuando Mary Wollstonecraft falleció en septiembre de 1797 al dar a luz a su hija, quien por cierto, sería Mary Shelley, la famosa autora de Frankenstein, las memorias publicadas sobre su vida marcada por una serie de relaciones escandalosas para la época y un embarazo fuera del matrimonio, oscurecieron su verdadera importancia en la historia del feminismo. Sería gracias a mujeres como Virginia Woolf que un siglo después, encontraría el lugar merecido en la Historia.

LAS SOCIEDADES FEMENINAS

Los clubes políticos eran espacios muy comunes en la Francia ilustrada y pre-revolucionaria, donde hombres de leyes, filósofos, economistas, escritores, debatían sobre distintos temas relacionados con la política del país. En estos clubes rara vez participaba una mujer. Pero tras el estallido de la revolución, además de demandar su participación activa en las calles, vieron también la necesidad de encontrar espacios comunes de reflexión.

El primer club exclusivamente femenino lo fundó Etta Palm d'Aelders bajo el nombre de Sociedad Patriótica y de Beneficencia de las Amigas de la Verdad. Nacida en la ciudad holandesa de  Groningen, Etta Palm había llegado a París en 1773 donde creó un salón en el que se reunían hombres que tendrían un destacado papel político durante la revolución como Jean-Paul Marat o François Chabot. Etta se implicó desde el primer momento en las reivindicaciones feministas que defendió en sociedades mixtas como la Sociedad Fraternal de Patriotas de Ambos Sexos, pero pronto vio la necesidad de crear un espacio propio para las mujeres.

Sus reivindicaciones se verbalizaron en su famoso discurso ante la Asamblea Nacional. Bajo el nombre de Discurso sobre la injusticia de las leyes en favor de los hombres a expensas de las mujeres, el cual fue pronunciado el 30 de diciembre de 1790. En él, Etta Palm pidió con gran entusiasmo que las mujeres no habían venido a este mundo a ser esclavas de los hombres, sino sus compañeras voluntarias en el camino hacia la libertad de derechos. Para ellas reclamaba la misma educación y los mismos derechos sociales, así como una ley del divorcio igualitaria para hombres y mujeres.

LA REPÚBLICA Y LAS MUJERES

Con similares intenciones que Etta Palm, en 1793, un grupo de mujeres pidieron a los jacobinos usar uno de sus lugares de reunión sin éxito. Estas mujeres, que se hacían llamar Asamblea de Mujeres Republicanas, consiguieron al fin poderse encontrar en los locales de la Sociedad Fraternal de Patriotas de Ambos Sexos.

De aquellas primeras reuniones nacería, el 10 de mayo, la Sociedad Revolucionaria de Mujeres Republicanas. Registrada en la Comuna de París, sus fundadoras fueron Claire Lacombe y Pauline Léon.

Claire Lacombe era una actriz nacida en Pamiers que viajaba por toda Francia con una compañía teatral que participó activamente en los hechos revolucionarios de París. Claire, que frecuentaba algunos clubes masculinos defensores de las ideas jacobinas, decidió formar en febrero de 1793 su propio club femenino junto a Pauline Léon.

Esta última había nacido en la capital francesa en el seno de una familia de artesanos chocolateros. Cuando su padre murió, Pauline tuvo que trabajar duro junto a su madre para alimentar a sus otros cinco hermanos. Su difícil existencia marcaría sus posturas políticas radicales durante la revolución.

El 6 de marzo de 1791 Pauline Léon dirigió a la Asamblea Legislativa un discurso en favor del derecho de las mujeres a participar en las milicias ciudadanas para poder defender sus propios hogares.

El club de Claire Lacombe y Pauline Léon fue el más famoso y activo de los que se crearon en favor de los derechos de las mujeres. Su vida fue, sin embargo, efímera.

A finales de 1793, el Comité de Seguridad Nacional y la Convención Nacional decidieron clausurar la Sociedad Revolucionaria de Mujeres Republicanas. Tras ella, el resto de sociedades y clubes femeninos fueron prohibidos y disueltos.

REVOLUCIONARIA ENTRE LOS GIRONDINOS

El grupo de los girondinos, quienes tomaron su nombre de la región de la Gironda, era el sector más moderado de la Asamblea Nacional y la Convención Nacional. Entre sus filas destacó Madame Roland quien, junto a su esposo Jean-Marie Roland de la Platière, tuvo un importante papel escribiendo artículos sobre los cambios revolucionarios. Su salón ubicado en la Rue Guénegaud, fue uno de los principales lugares de encuentro de personalidades políticas de la talla de Brissot y Robespierre.

La popularidad de Madame Roland terminó cuando empezó el gobierno del Terror. Su marido huyó a Ruan, pero ella fue arrestada el 1 de junio de 1793. Rete- nida en la prisión de l'Abbaye, fue liberada pero, finalment,e recluida en la prisión parisina de La Conciergerie. Allí escribió su obra Memorias y llamada a la posteridad imparcial, un texto en el que defendía su inocencia, la injusticia de su condena y plasmaba sus principios ideales de una revolución que la condenó a morir en la guillotina. Madame Roland subió al ca- dalso el 8 de noviembre de 1793. Antes de ser guillotinada gritó al pueblo de París que se había congregado para verlar morir: “¡Oh, Libertad!, ¡cuántos crímenes se cometen en tu nombre!”. Al conocer el dramático final de su esposa, Jean-Marie Roland se suicidó.

REVOLUCIONARIA ENTRE LOS JACOBINOS

Conocida con el sobrenombre de Lam- bertine, Théroigne de Méricourt fue una de las mujeres que participó en la revolución desde el primer momento. Tras una infancia difícil en su Lieja natal, Théroigne consiguió llegar a París y hacerse un nombre entre el mundo ilustrado de la época previa a la toma de la Bastilla. Su salón de la Rue Boulay fue uno de los centros de reunión más importantes de la revolución. Además de su salón, Thé- roigne fundó el Club de los Amigos de la Ley que se uniría al club de los Cordeliers.

Théroigne de Méricourt defendió los derechos de las mujeres y su participación activa en las calles. No en vano era cono- cida como “La primera amazona de la Li- bertad". Su fama fue decayendo cuando empezó a criticar las posturas cada más más violentas y radicales de los jacobinos y que desembocarían en el gobierno del Terror. Fueron otras mujeres del sector más extremista de los jacobinos las que quisieron acabar con ella en plena calle.

Fue en el jardín de las Tullerías, en la primavera de 1793, donde Théroigne de Méricourt, acusada de defender a los girondinos, fue despojada de su ropa y apaleada. El líder jacobino Jean Paul Marat evitó su asesinato. Pero la que fuera una de las principales mujeres del partido, alabada por hombres como Robespierre, terminó falleciendo en la hospital mental de la Salpétriére, después de vivir una larga agonía de depresión y demencia.

CONDORCET Y SU DEFENSA DEL FEMINISMO

Es cierto que muchos hombres que participaron en la revolución vieron con desconfianza e incluso rechazo que las mujeres quisieran seguir la estela revolucionaria y conseguir sus mismos derechos civiles. Fueron pocas las voces masculinas que hablaron públicamente en defensa de las mujeres. La más conocida fue sin duda la del filósofo y político Marie Jean Antoine Nicolás de Caritat, conocido como Marqués de Condorcet.

Condorcet escribió en 1790 Sobre la admisión de las mujeres al derecho de ciudadanía, todo un alegato en favor de los derechos femeninos. En su texto,Condorcet venía a decir que la inferioridad social y política de las mujeres se había asumido como algo natural por su reiteración a lo largo de los siglos por lo que no existía una conciencia femenina lo suficientemente sólida para cambiar las cosas. Para Condorcet, la declaración de derechos no tenía sentido si privaba a la mitad del género humano a tales derechos.

Las mujeres que participaron en la Revolución Francesa no salieron muy bien paradas. Mientras algunas consiguieron por un breve periodo de tiempo hacer oír sus voces y otras consiguieron empuñar las armas, otras fueron víctimas del odio machista. Unas perdieron la cabeza en la guillotina, otras terminaron dementes en sanatorios. Su memoria fue silenciada y vilipendiada durante años hasta que los movimientos feministas de finales del siglo XIX y principios del XX rescataron del olvido sus voces silenciadas e hicieron de sus palabras los cimientos de su lucha en defensa de los derechos de las mujeres.


EL ÁNGEL ASESINO QUE TERMINÓ CON MARAT

EN EL VERANO DE 1793, LA REVOLUCIÓN FRANCESA HABÍA TOMADO UN CAMINO VIOLENTO Y RADICAL QUE PASÓ A LLAMARSE PERÍODO DEL TERROR.

Extremistas jacobinos consiguieron hacerse con la Guardia Nacional y eliminar de la escena política a los girondinos, representantes de las posturas más moderadas. El 13 de julio de aquel año terrible, una joven de orígenes aristocráticos asesinaba a uno de los líderes más carismáticos de los denominados jacobinos, Jean-Paul Marat. Charlotte Corday quiso así terminar con el Terror en Francia, pero conseguiría todo lo contrario.

Charlotte Corday empezó a simpatizar con las ideas moderadas de los girondinos cuando tenía alrededor de 23 años. Sus ideas se afianzaron cuando, tras la ejecución de Luis XVI en enero de 1793, los sucesos se precipitaron y la revolución se radicalizó. Los jacobinos y sans-culottes, defensores a ultranza de la república y la democracia, hicieron todo lo posible por desbancar a los girondinos de la escena política. Charlotte Corday, defensora de sus propios ideales, no dudó en terminar con aquella situación de Terror iniciada el 2 de junio de aquel mismo año por Robespierre. Se decidió así a marchar a París y terminar con uno de los radicales más influyentes.

Jean-Paul Marat, médico, periodista y político, formaba parte del grupo de los Jacobinos junto con otros políticos, como Danton o Robespierre. Marat era el editor de la famosa publicación L’ami du peuple, en la que escribía sobre la revolución en sus aspectos más radicales.

El 9 de julio de 1793, dispuesta a llevar a cabo su cometido, Charlotte Corday marchó hacia París. Tras alquilar una habitación en el Hôtel de Providence se dirigió a la Asamblea Nacional para encontrarse con Marat. Como allí no estaba el jacobino, Charlotte se presentó en su casa. Tras varios intentos por conseguir una entrevista con el periodista con el pretexto de que iba a facilitarle los nombres de los principales miembros de La Gironda dispuestos a organizar un levantamiento, consiguió acercarse a él.

El retrato de Jacques-Louis David, La muerte de Marat, nos da una visión muy real de la escena que terminó Charlotte. El líder jacobino trabajaba sumergido en una bañera debido a una enfermedad que sufría en la piel. Con una tabla de madera, se ayudaba para escribir sus textos revolucionarios.

Charlotte Corday no dudó y clavó un cuchillo en el cuerpo enfermizo de Marat. Murió en el acto. La joven girondina fue detenida e interrogada. Cuatro días después, el 17 de julio de 1793, fue ejecutada en la guillotina. Mientras Charlotte era enterrada en el cementerio de la Madeleine, Marat recibía un funeral con todos los honores. Mujeres pertenecientes a la Sociedad de Mujeres Revolucionarias Republicanas, portaron junto al cuerpo sin vida de Marat la bañera en la que el héroe jacobino había sido asesinado mientras le lanzaban flores en señal de respeto.

En sus últimos momentos de vida, Charlotte Corday defendió su acto asegurando que mataba a un hombre para salvar a cientos. Pero el asesinato de Marat no resolvió los problemas, más aún, los agravó. Los jacobinos iniciaron un periodo de “Gran Terror”, se suspendieron las garantías  constitucionales y aumentaron las persecuciones contra aquellos que no defendían sus ideas republicanas y democráticas. El asesinato de Marat lo convirtió en un mártir de la revolución y provocó un endurecimiento de la política jacobina.


EL PRIMER PERIÓDICO FEMINISTA


En noviembre de 1789 salía a las calles parisinas el primer número del Étrennes nationales des dames, un periódico considerado como el primer rotativo con contenido feminista de la historia. Firmado por una misteriosa M. de Pussy y “una sociedad de gentes de letras”, el texto, que recordaba los hechos de octubre alabando el papel de las mujeres en su marcha hacia Versalles, es todo un alegato en defensa de los derechos de las mujeres. Escrito por un autor aparentemente femenino, el texto se dirige tanto a hombres como a mujeres y reclama el fin de una sociedad injusta para las mujeres en un momento trascendental de cambio social. A pesar de que el Étrennes nationales des dames salía a la calle el 30 de noviembre del año de la revolución con un número 1 delante del título, en la actualidad solamente se conserva el primer ejemplar.

Texto de Sandra Ferrer en "Clio Historia", Madrid, año 15, n.180, octubre 2016. pp. 30-39. Adaptación y ilustración para publicación en ese sitio por Leopoldo Costa.

La storia degli ebrei d’Europa tra l’XI e il XV secolo è quella della lenta asfissia di diverse comunità che furono odiate, attaccate ed espulse dai concittadini cristiani, sia per motivi religiosi sia per l’astio che suscitava la loro attività economica.

Quando papa Urbano II chiamò alla prima crociata contro gli infedeli in Terra Santa, la vita relativamente tranquilla e prospera fino ad allora condotta dagli ebrei europei ebbe fine. I crociati, spinti dallo spirito combattivo e dai desideri di vendetta, iniziarono a diffondere l’idea secondo cui prima di imbarcarsi verso l’Oriente fosse necessario sterminare gli infedeli più vicini: gli ebrei.

A quanto si sosteneva, erano loro i responsabili della morte di Cristo. Questa terribile e ingiusta accusa, che mise radici già all’inizio dell’era cristiana, venne utilizzata come detonatore della violenza contro gli ebrei in molti momenti della storia.

Era l’anno 1095. I primi attacchi furono scatenati a Rouen, poi si estesero rapidamente in Germania, nella valle del Reno, dove migliaia di ebrei andarono incontro a una morte brutale per mano dei guerrieri cristiani. I capi delle comunità ebraiche si appellarono all’imperatore Enrico IV e chiesero la sua protezione, così come quella di vescovi e altri signori importanti, in cambio di ingenti somme di denaro. I vescovi riuscirono a difendere gli ebrei in alcune città, come Spira o Colonia, ma non in tutte: l’arcivescovo di Magonza, per esempio, che aveva cercato di dare loro protezione, si vide costretto a fuggire dai crociati per mettere in salvo la sua stessa vita.

Vi furono anche ebrei che, come accadde a Magonza o a Worms, si suicidarono per evitare che venissero obbligati a convertirsi al cristianesimo. Altri, invece, preferirono salvarsi la vita e farsi bagnare dall’acqua battesimale. Ben presto, però, divenne evidente che le conversioni ottenute con tali pressioni erano poco reali, e fu lo stesso Enrico IV a consentire agli ebrei di tornare alla loro religione, suscitando le proteste del papa. L’atteggiamento dell’imperatore favorì il recupero e la rinascita delle comunità ebraiche, che a poco a poco ripresero le loro occupazioni abituali, delle quali il commercio era la più importante.

Le denunce della Chiesa

A partire dal XII secolo ebbe luogo un cambiamento importante nella vita degli ebrei dell’Europa centrale. I cristiani acquisirono un ruolo sempre più rilevante nel commercio, e gli ebrei si trovarono praticamente relegati all’esercizio di una sola occupazione: il prestito di denaro. Le circostanze erano loro favorevoli, giacché la Chiesa proibiva ai cristiani di prestare denaro su interesse, pratica considerata usura, un peccato molto grave. Inoltre, i tragici eventi che accompagnarono la prima crociata offrirono un insegnamento agli ebrei: all’avvicinarsi di un pericolo era meglio disporre di beni che si potessero trasportare facilmente in caso di fuga, come oro e argento.

Gli ebrei che si dedicarono al prestito di denaro procurarono enormi benefici economici ai governanti cristiani, che imponevano loro pesanti tasse e che, quando ritenevano che non stessero adempiendo ai propri doveri, confiscavano loro i beni. Dall’altra parte, questa attività attirò verso gli ebrei l’odio delle masse popolari. La Chiesa approfittò della situazione per condannare gli abusi degli ebrei nei suoi sermoni, e monaci e predicatori andavano di villaggio in villaggio screditandoli e accusandoli di estorsione ai danni dei poveri.

Davanti alle denunce degli eccessi degli usurai, re e governanti locali cominciarono a controllare e regolamentare le attività finanziarie degli ebrei, minacciando chi commetteva abusi e fissando dei limiti al tasso di interesse che potevano richiedere, che piuttosto di frequente arrivava al 33 per cento.

Verso il 1230 nei circoli ecclesiastici della Francia ebbe inizio una campagna per porre fine all’attività economica degli ebrei. Il domenicano Raimondo di Peñafort dichiarò che bisognava impedire loro di guadagnare interessi sui prestiti e che dovevano addirittura restituire quanto guadagnato sino ad allora. Dal canto suo, nel 1275, re Edoardo I d’Inghilterra pubblicò una «legge sui giudei» nella quale proibiva categoricamente la pratica dell’usura. Ben presto, però, i monarchi europei si resero conto che le misure adottate contro il prestito di denaro da parte degli ebrei diminuivano le entrate nelle casse reali, sicché tali misure finirono per decadere in breve tempo.

La pressione della Chiesa sugli ebrei aumentò a partire dal XIII secolo. Francescani e domenicani, che avevano dato avvio alla loro lotta contro le eresie cristiane, rivolsero ben presto lo sguardo verso gli ebrei e li accusarono di travisare il vero significato dell’Antico Testamento. Insistevano anche sulla loro “perfida ostinazione” nel non voler vedere una dottrina che essi stessi custodivano: la venuta di un Messia salvatore.

Papa Innocenzo III arrivò ad affermare che gli ebrei dovevano essere sottomessi ai cristiani in servitù eterna poiché colpevoli della morte di Cristo, e ordinò che portassero segni distintivi sugli indumenti per distinguerli dai cristiani e impedire i matrimoni misti (pratica che tutte le religioni, e non soltanto il cristianesimo, cercavano di evitare). Inoltre, la Chiesa cominciò ad approvare una serie di misure tese a limitare le attività degli ebrei, per esempio proibire loro di esercitare professioni che implicassero un qualche tipo di superiorità sui cristiani o chiedere a questi ultimi di non assumere balie o serve ebree, e di non rivolgersi a medici ebrei.

Crimini rituali

Anche i predicatori cristiani contribuirono a incitare le folle contro gli ebrei e ben presto si iniziò a divulgare false idee che concorsero a creare di loro un’immagine nefasta: per esempio, li si accusava di commettere crimini rituali e di profanare l’ostia consacrata. Le accuse di crimini rituali, dette “accuse del sangue”, erano cominciate nel 1144, quando nella città inglese di Norwich venne rinvenuto il cadavere di un bambino cristiano che era stato prima torturato e poi crocifisso. Gli ebrei vennero accusati di aver commesso tale atrocità durante la Pasqua, per imitare la passione di Gesù e usare a scopi rituali il sangue del piccolo, che fu venerato come un santo. Da allora casi simili si ripeterono in varie parti d’Europa.

L’imperatore Federico II, allarmato, affidò a una commissione di esperti il compito di stabilire se vi fosse nell’ebraismo una qualche base che desse credibilità a tali accuse. Gli ebrei convertitisi al cristianesimo lo convinsero del fatto che né nelle Sacre Scritture né in qualsiasi scritto ebraico si trovasse fondamento per pratiche tanto orrende; al contrario, le leggi ebraiche proibivano espressamente lo spargimento di sangue. L’imperatore pubblicò una dichiarazione speciale annunciando i risultati dell’indagine e persino papa Innocenzo IV dichiarò che i presunti crimini rituali degli ebrei non avevano alcuna credibilità. Il popolo, tuttavia, diede credito alle calunnie antisemite, e questo provocò nuovi eccidi.

L’accusa di profanare le ostie consacrate iniziò a propagarsi dal 1215, quando il IV Concilio lateranense decise di stabilire il dogma della transustanziazione, secondo il quale il pane e il vino dell’eucaristia diventano il corpo e il sangue di Cristo. I cristiani cominciarono a diffondere l’idea secondo la quale gli ebrei, così come avevano ucciso Gesù Cristo in passato, si proponevano di fare lo stesso nel presente profanando l’ostia consacrata. Con questa accusa, molti di loro finirono per essere condannati al rogo.

Diffusori della Peste Nera

L’odio verso le comunità ebraiche andò aumentando finché non esplose sotto forma di aggressioni ed eccidi negli anni 1348 e 1349, come conseguenza del diffondersi della Peste Nera. La popolazione era atterrita e stupefatta dinanzi a questa terribile epidemia, che in alcuni centri abitati uccise metà degli abitanti. Poiché le cause della malattia erano sconosciute, la gente trovò negli ebrei un capro espiatorio da incolpare del disastro. Ovunque venivano accusati di essere alleati del diavolo e di avvelenare i pozzi per sterminare i cristiani. Poco importava che anche loro morissero per la peste esattamente come i vicini cristiani, perché le menti erano accecate dal rancore e la fobia omicida per gli ebrei era ormai parte di una psicosi generalizzata. I massacri, dunque, si diffusero in tutta Europa, anche se si manifestarono con particolare accanimento in Germania.

A partire dal 1349 la situazione si calmò e le comunità ebraiche poterono rimettersi in piedi a poco a poco. Non sarebbe passato molto, però, prima che il fanatismo tornasse a diffondersi. La ribellione religiosa degli hussiti, i seguaci di Jan Hus, esplosa in Boemia e Moravia all’inizio del 1420, si ripercosse in maniera negativa sugli ebrei, che furono accusati di favorire questi eretici. Il monaco italiano Giovanni da Capestrano, che predicò contro gli hussiti, incitava i cristiani contro gli ebrei, portando come argomentazione, tra le altre cose, che questi ultimi sostenevano l’idea secondo la quale «ciascuno può essere salvato dalla propria fede», cosa che per il frate era del tutto inaccettabile.

Le espulsioni

Le violente agitazioni e i conflitti nati con gli ebrei portarono vari governanti europei a decidere la loro espulsione. In Inghilterra essi andarono perdendo sempre più potere economico e sociale, fino a quando smisero di essere indispensabili per i cristiani. Nel 1290 vennero espulsi dalle Isole britanniche da Edoardo II, e fu permesso loro di tornare soltanto alla fine del XVII secolo, anche se unicamente a titolo

Poco dopo, nel 1306, furono espulsi anche dalla Francia per ragioni religiose. In seguito furono autorizzati e rientrare sotto condizioni molto restrittive, fino a quando, nel 1394, non vennero espulsi in via definitiva.

In Germania, a partire dalla seconda metà del XIV secolo, gli imperatori cominciarono a delegare il dominio sulle comunità ebraiche ai governanti locali o alle città. A Norimberga, i maggiorenti della città iniziarono a mettere in discussione il diritto degli ebrei a riscuotere interessi per il prestito di denaro, e dal 1473 vennero prese le prime iniziative tese a metterli al bando, finché nel 1498 l’imperatore Massimiliano I approvò la loro espulsione da Norimberga, una decisione che sarebbe servita da esempio per altre città tedesche.

Il caso dei regni cristiani della Penisola iberica fu diverso rispetto agli altri territori europei. Lì le comunità ebraiche ebbero sempre la protezione dei monarchi cristiani, godettero di importanti privilegi e il rispetto per la loro religione fu maggiore. Ciononostante non poterono evitare violenti attacchi, come avvenne nel 1391, quando in varie città molti ebrei furono assassinati o si videro costretti a convertirsi al cristianesimo, il che fece sorgere un nuovo problema: quello dei conversi, della cui vera fede molti dubitavano. I Re Cattolici, impegnati nel processo di unione dei loro regni, decisero l’espulsione degli ebrei nel 1492, sostenendo che esercitavano una cattiva influenza sui conversi. Furono messi davanti a una scelta: convertirsi al cristianesimo e rimanere, oppure mantenere la loro fede ma scegliere la via dell’esilio. Quelli che optarono per il battesimo e rimasero in Spagna come cristiani, tuttavia, ancora per molte generazioni furono vittime di discriminazione, emarginazione e antisemitismo.


Quindici secoli di persecuzioni

Nel 70 d.C., dopo una ribellione giudaica, le truppe romane assaltarono e distrussero il Tempio di Gerusalemme. Molti sopravvissuti furono giustiziati, altri fatti schiavi e deportati. Iniziava così la diaspora o esilio degli ebrei.

132-135 - Roma soffoca la ribellione giudaica di Simon Bar Kokhba. Gerusalemme è rasa al suolo e migliaia di ebrei sono venduti come schiavi; la città sarà ricostruita come colonia romana, Elia Capitolina. Diaspora degli ebrei verso Europa e Mediterraneo.

321 - L’imperatoreCostantino promulga un editto che limita i diritti degli ebrei, aprendo la via alla loro sottomissione.

V-VI SECOLO - La relativa libertà degli ebrei nei regni barbari ariani si trova limitata dopo la conversione di questi al cristianesimo.

VIII-IX SECOLO - Nell’Europa carolingia, gli ebrei vivono un periodo di relativa prosperità e tranquillità; lo stesso avviene nel califfato andaluso.

1095 - La convocazione della prima crociata scatena gli attacchi contro gli ebrei; lo stesso accade per la seconda e la terza crociata. Si gettano le basi dell’odio irrazionale contro i giudei, che nella Spagna musulmana sono soggiogati dagli integralisti almohadi.

1215 - Il IV Concilio lateranense decreta l’obbligo per gli ebrei di portare segni distintivi sugli indumenti.

1247 - Prima accusa di profanazione di ostie consacrate. Nel 1321 sono accusati di avvelenare pozzi e fiumi, e nel 1348 di provocare la Peste Nera.

1290 - Espulsione dall’Inghilterra, a cui segue nel 1306 la prima espulsione dalla Francia, nazione dalla quale sono cacciati definitivamente nel 1394.

XV SECOLO - Nel 1492, i Re Cattolici espellono gli ebrei dalla Spagna; sono i sefarditi, che si stabiliscono nel Nord Africa, in Italia e nell’Impero ottomano. Nei territori del Sacro Romano Impero l’espulsione accelera dopo la Peste Nera, e gli ebrei ashkenaziti si stabiliscono in Polonia e Ungheria.


Persecuzioni e diaspora degli ebrei europei

Durante il Medioevo, gli ebrei furono esposti a leggi arbitrarie di ogni tipo, allo sfruttamento economico, al fanatismo religioso e alla violenza delle folle. Gli attacchi più gravi ebbero inizio ai tempi della prima crociata, nel 1096, e la violenza aumentò nel corso del XII secolo, talvolta accompagnata da accuse atroci, come quella di commettere crimini rituali. La prima espulsione effettiva ebbe luogo in Inghilterra nel 1290, e verso il 1500 gli ebrei erano oramai banditi dalla maggioranza degli Stati cattolici, quindi era vietato loro risiedere in gran parte d’Europa. Tra i Paesi cristiani, i soli ad accettarli furono l’Italia e la Polonia. Al di là dei confini della Cristianità, gli ebrei trovarono accoglienza nei domini dei sultani ottomani.


IL CASO DI SIMONINO DI TRENTO

Durante la Pasqua del 1475, un bimbo di due anni, Simone, che viveva a Trento, fu trovato morto, con segni di tortura. Gli ebrei furono accusati di averlo ucciso e di aver usato il suo sangue per preparare il pane azzimo della Pasqua ebraica. A indagare sul caso, Sisto IV inviò un legato, che però esitava ad accettare la colpevolezza degli ebrei e fu costretto a fuggire dall’ira del popolo, aizzato dal vescovo Juan Hinderbach, che promosse il culto del presunto martire.


L’ebreo strozzino e la cristiana traditrice

Di questa storia furono raccolte varianti. Si dice che, nel 1290, a Parigi, una donna cristiana che aveva chiesto un prestito a un ebreo lasciò come garanzia il proprio abito migliore. Quando chiese di recuperarlo per indossarlo durante la Pasqua, l’ebreo le chiese di portargli un’ostia consacrata. La donna lo assecondò, e l’ebreo cercò di distruggere l’ostia, senza riuscirci. Alla fine la gettò in una pentola d’acqua che bolliva sul fuoco, ma dall’ostia consacrata (che, secondo il dogma della transustanziazione, è il corpo di Cristo) iniziò a uscire sangue che tinse di rosso l’acqua, rivelando il crimine.

L’episodio di Parigi secondo Paolo Uccello

Paolo Uccello raffigurò in questa tavola, conservata nel Palazzo Ducale di Urbino, il miracolo di Billetes, così chiamato dal nome della via in cui viveva lo strozzino ebreo. Sulla sinistra, la donna gli consegna l’ostia; sulla destra, la moglie e i figli dell’ebreo, atterriti, contemplano il sangue che esce dalla pentola e rivela il crimine. Secondo alcune versioni, uno dei figli raccontò ciò che aveva visto; una donna cristiana lo udì, entrò nella casa, estrasse l’ostia dalla pentola e avvertì il vescovo dell’accaduto. Quest’ultimo rinchiuse in carcere l’ebreo ed espose l’ostia nella vicina chiesa di Saint-Jeanen-Grève, dove si conservò incorrotta per quattro secoli.

Di Mariano Gómez Aranda, estratto "Storica National Geographic Italia", dicembre 2016, anno VII n.94, pp.64-77.  Adattato e illustrato per essere pubblicato da Leopoldo Costa

"Sacrifice of Noah - Michelangelo

In modern Western societies, animal sacrifice is typically regarded as primitive, superstitious and barbaric, an uncivilized and unenlightened practice from which we have, thankfully, long since progressed. Sacrifice and associated religious slaughter methods have been attacked by many animal rights advocates, who regard them as inferior to modern slaughter practices. Christian attitudes to pre-Christian sacrificial practices have contributed to this negative assessment of animal sacrifice. Just as Christians have often defined themselves as people who do not follow food rules, so they have frequently categorized themselves as people who do not perform animal sacrifice. The outcome of these self-definitions has been a situation in which animals are eaten and their slaughter is a matter of religious indifference. Meat, when classified as one food among many, can be thought of without reference to the animals which become meat. Despite a long Christian history of meat abstention, it is striking how infrequently concern about the lives of animals has been invoked as the primary factor motivating such abstention.

In this chapter, we shall take a closer look at sacrifice and Christian practice, and especially at Christian practices of sacrifice. In some Christian contexts, animal sacrifice has been treated as a form of worship which can be directed towards either false gods or the Christian God. In any case, one important aim of this chapter is simply to present evidence of a Christian tradition of animal sacrifice, thereby disproving the widespread assumption that no such tradition exists. Jean-Louis Durand, for instance, accuses Christianity of ‘theological arrogance’ because it ‘excludes from the domain of the sacred’ the ‘death of animals, which in other religious cultures has religious significance’.1 In fact, Christians have sacrificed animals in order to express respect for life, praise God as giver of life, and highlight humans’ ambiguous kinship with animals. We shall examine this little-known tradition, and consider the significance of the history of sacrifice for a modern society in which sacrifice is rejected and mass animal slaughter accepted as normal.

Early Christianity: beyond sacrifice?

The development of the early Christian churches in the later first century coincided with the fall of Jerusalem and the ending of the sacrificial system of the Jerusalem Temple. In Christian accounts, the idea that Christ came to abolish sacrifices could then conveniently be added to the various other supersessionist interpretations of the relation between Judaism and nascent Christianity. 2 Early Christians also distinguished their practices from those of sacrificial cults, which for the next three centuries formed part of the religious landscape in which Christian communities were situated. Once Christianity became the official imperial religion sacrifices were outlawed, because of their close association with paganism. In 341, Emperor Constantius ordered that the ‘madness of sacrifices shall be abolished’, and five years later stipulated that anyone caught sacrificing would be put to death.3 In 391, Emperor Theodosios moved decisively to ban animal sacrifice throughout the Roman Empire as part of his efforts to establish Christianity as the privileged religion and abolish the pagan cults competing with it.4 Animal sacrifice thus became synonymous, in the minds of both pagans and Christians, with pagan religion. As the Roman Christian poet Prudentius urged the pagan senator Symmachus:

"Leave these heathen divinities to pagan barbarians; with them everything that fear has taught them to dread is held sacred; signs and marvels compel them to believe in frightful gods, and they find satisfaction in the bloody eating that is their custom, which makes them slaughter a fattened victim in a lofty grove to devour its flesh with floods of wine.5"

Images of bloodshed, fear and gluttony here coalesce around the practice of sacrifice. The ‘bloody eating’ of the sacrificial victim is troubling both because of its association with violent death and because of the immoderate consumption of food and wine which follows. Sacrificers are presented as acting under the compulsion of ‘signs and marvels’ and ‘custom’. Living under the sway of ‘frightful gods’, they are victims of the ‘madness of sacrifices’ along with the animals they slaughter.

The prohibition of animal sacrifice was reinforced by at least six emperors in the period 341 to 435: Constantius, Gratian, Valentinian, Theodosius, Arcadius and Honorius.6 Animal sacrifice was by then seen increasingly as inimical to urban civilized religion.7 Nevertheless, these successive bans suggest that animal sacrifice was, in practice, difficult to extirpate from all parts of the Empire, especially from its more remote and rural areas. This could have been due solely to the ongoing attraction of paganism. Yet such a simple explanation fails to take account of the specific features of animal sacrifice, including its cross-cultural character. It is possible that the attraction of sacrifice lay not in pagan religion as such, but in an impulse to offer thanks for meat and perhaps to deflect the guilt experienced for killing by situating the act cosmologically. Prudentius’ comments to Symmachus hint at what is for him the strange and persistent attraction of sacrificial ritual. He lingers with fascination over its nonrational excesses, and in so doing suggests indirectly why it might persist. His objections to its ‘bloody’ and ‘fearful’ character and associations with excessive consumption refer to more than just the explicit association of sacrifice with pagan religion. For Prudentius, the ‘madness’ of sacrifice was synonymous with the ‘madness’ of pagan worship, and abolition of the latter would necessarily lead to the elimination of the former.

Christian rituals of animal sacrifice

In fact, sacrifice became assimilated into Christian practice in many regions. We shall now survey various places where it has flourished. Our first example is the oldest Christian nation on earth, Armenia, whose ruler King Tiridates was healed and baptized a Christian in 301 by St Gregory the Illuminator. In the Armenian Church, an ancient sacrificial liturgy known as the matal (or madagh), meaning ‘something tender’, has persisted to the present day. This was a continuation of pagan practice promoted by Gregory and later church leaders following the country’s conversion to Christianity, but in revised Christian form. The sacrifice has typically been offered on several occasions through the year: Easter, all other dominical feasts, the feasts of famous saints, and to commemorate the faithful departed. At Easter a lamb has traditionally been offered, while at other times cows, bulls, goats or sheep have also been used, and even doves or pigeons in cases of scarcity or poverty.8

Nerses Shnorhali, an Armenian bishop and future catholicos, despatched an intriguing epistle in the mid twelfth century to his priests in the Hamayk province of Syrian Mesopotamia defending the matal against its detractors. It appears that Syriac Christian critics in the area had accused the Armenians of following Jewish practice, especially in the case of the Easter sacrifice of the lamb. Nerses’ apologia therefore proceeds by distinguishing various ritual points of the Easter matal from those of the Passover sacrifice of the Jews. He writes:

"They selected a lamb a year old, and a male: our lamb is one month old, or, as a rule, more or less; and we never consider whether it is male or female. They carried it five days beforehand to their houses: we take ours on the same day or whenever occasion suits. They sacrifice at eventide on the old Pascha: we at dawn of the new Pascha. They ate it standing up, and by night: but we sitting down, and by day. They ate it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs: we with leavened bread and without herbs. Likewise the rest of their victims were offered for the living: but those which we offer are in memory of the deceased, in order that by feeding the poor, we
may find the mercy of God.9"

Later in his epistle, Nerses warns his priests: ‘Let no one venture to smear the upper lintels of his door with the blood of the lamb ...for that is a Jewish custom, and the person who does it renders himself liable to an anathema.’10 Although the rebuttal of accusations of Judaizing occupies most of Nerses’ text, he also is at pains to distinguish the matal from the old pagan sacrificial rites. In a passage inveighing against both Jewish and pagan traditions, he states that the matal was

"not indeed according to Jewish tradition, God forbid! For he who shares their practices shall be accursed. But instead of the vain ingratitude of offering sacrifices of the creatures made by God to the demons, as the heathen were used to do, it was made lawful to transfer the sacrifices into the name of the true God, and to devote to him as the creator his own creatures, in the same way as the first fathers had also done prior to the law, I mean, Abel, Noah and Abraham.11"

Nerses here locates sacrifice ‘prior to the law’ as a universal human activity continuous with worship. It is not therefore to be rejected but rather offered to ‘the true God’. The three Old Testament readings appointed for the matal are instructive in this regard: although the first two, Leviticus 1.1–13 and 2 Samuel 6.17–19, situate sacrifice in Israelite context, the third passage, Isaiah 56.6–7, proclaims that the sacrifices of ‘foreigners who bind themselves to the Lord’ will also be pleasing to God: ‘Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.’

Nerses’ appropriation of pre-Christian sacrifices was motivated partly by economic and political considerations. If animal sacrifice had been banned in the new Christian state, the clergy would have been deprived of their livelihood through being deprived of their portion of the sacrificial meat. The nascent Christian church had a clear interest in retaining these reformed priests, who provided it with native and comparatively well-educated leaders, and therefore enlisted the support of future generations of the historic priestly families.12 Pagan priests were deemed eligible for Christian baptism, and once baptized were permitted to continue to officiate at sacrifices and receive their historic portion. Indeed, under the new dispensation this portion increased to include various limbs and organs. All that many pagan congregations had apparently left their clergy was skin and backbone.13

In his defence of the matal, Nerses also appeals to similar practices elsewhere in Christendom, referring to a lamb sacrifice made in the Roman Church as well as ‘all over the Church of the Franks, with greater care and diligence than we exercise’. In Gaul, Nerses claims, the reservation and consumption of the lamb sacrifice happened as part of the Eucharistic celebration itself. He describes the proceedings as follows:

"After they have roasted the lamb, they lay it in the tabernacle under the sacrifice on the day of the Pascha; and after they have communicated in the Mystery, the priest divides, and gives a portion to each; and they eat it up in the church itself before they partake of any ordinary food.14"

Other accounts confirm that a ceremonial meal of lamb was taken at the papal court during the twelfth century.15 The Frankish practices enthusiastically described seem unlikely to have been widespread, however, although at least two ninth-century writers refer to them.16 Yet it is clear that similar transformations of pagan sacrificial practices had been a feature of other earlier medieval Western Christian regions, including Britain. In 601, Pope Gregory the Great wrote to Mellitus, the missionary French abbot to Britain and future Archbishop of Canterbury, to advise him how best to deal with animal sacrifices. Gregory reasoned:

"I have long been considering with myself about the case of the Angli...Since they are wont to kill many oxen in sacrifice to demons, they should have also some solemnity of this kind in a changed form … Let them no longer sacrifice animals to the devil, but slay animals to the praise of God for their own eating, and return thanks to the Giver of all for their fullness, so that, while some joys are reserved to them outwardly, they may be able the more easily to incline their minds to inward joys. For it is undoubtedly impossible to cut away everything at once from hard hearts, since one who strives to ascend to the highest place must needs rise by steps or paces, and not by leaps. Thus to the people of Israel in Egypt the Lord did indeed make Himself known; but still He reserved to them in His own worship the use of the sacrifices which they were accustomed to offer to the devil, enjoining them to immolate animals in sacrifice to Himself; to the end that, their hearts being changed, they should omit some things in the sacrifice and retain others, so that, though the animals were the same as what they had been accustomed to offer, nevertheless, as they immolated them to God and not to idols, they should be no longer the same sacrifices.17"

Once again is evident the comparison of the continuation of contemporary pagan sacrifice, in a new form, with divine approbation of the sacrifices of the people of Israel. Yet despite this comparison, Gregory demands surprisingly few changes to the practices themselves, with his principal requirement being simply that the animals be offered to the one true God rather than to other deities.18 Moreover, even though the sacrifices of the Angles are certainly identified as provisional, the explicit comparison with Israelite sacrifices suggests that their imminent eradication was neither expected nor required.

Gregory’s policy of permitting the traditional British sacrifices to continue, provided they were situated within the new Christian context, contrasted sharply with the approach adopted in the following century by the first German national synod, presided over jointly by Karlmann, Prince of the Franks, and Archbishop Boniface in 742. Germany, unlike Britain, had not formed part of the Roman Empire and so had not by then fallen under Christian influence. Paganism remained a powerful religious force there, presenting an increasingly serious obstacle to Christian mission in Saxon territory during the eighth century once this area was threatened with invasion by the Christian Franks.19 At the synod, every bishop was enjoined, with the support of the Frankish court, to

"see to it that the people of God perform not pagan rites but reject and cast out all the foulness of the heathen, such as … offerings of animals, which foolish folk perform in the churches, according to pagan custom, in the name of holy martyrs or confessors, thereby calling down the wrath of God and his saints.20"

It is notable that the decree condemns sacrifices despite reporting the invocation of Christian saints during the ceremonies. Animal sacrifice is regarded not as a form of worship which can be directed either towards the true God or towards other gods, but as inherently problematic for Christians and irredeemably pagan. The synod’s robust approach elicited strong approval from Pope Zacharius, who in a letter to Boniface six years later condemned

"sacrilegious priests who, you say, sacrificed bulls and cows and goats to heathen gods, eating the offerings of the dead, defiling their own ministry, and who are now dead, so that it cannot be known whether they invoked the Trinity in their baptisms or not.21"

His baptismal reference highlights the problems which sacrificing caused for full inclusion in the church. In a culture of competing and overlapping religious commitments, sacrificial practices did not simply mark out some Christians from other Christians, but contributed to identifying who was a Christian and who was not, and thus to establishing the boundaries of the Christian community. In the Germanic context of combating paganism, Christian boundaries were drawn particularly tightly.

The continuation of animal sacrifice by Orthodox Christians in several other countries has been noted sporadically. These include Georgia, Bulgaria, Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Egypt and Ethiopia.22 Of special interest, however, is the more recent work of Stella Georgoudi examining the persistence of sacrificial rituals in twentieth-century Greece.23 The sacrifices are offered on particular Christian festivals, notably those of Saints Athanasius (18 January), George (23 April), Elias (20 July) and Paraskevi (26 July). The sacrificial animal might be presented before an icon of the saint for whom it is to be offered, or even left inside the church to sleep the night before its sacrifice, and blessed by the priest before its departure. The sacrifices are made outside the church building, often during mass or immediately afterwards, or during the vespers marking the beginning of a festival. The animal’s head is turned towards the east, just as churches are oriented by their altars. Following the slaughter, participants dip a finger in the blood and trace the sign of the cross on their forehead. All inedible body parts are buried to prevent scavenging by animals, especially dogs, who according to Matthew’s gospel must not be given what is sacred.24 Before the meal begins, the priest or sometimes the bishop stands over the boiling cauldrons to bless the meat.25 Then the climax of the proceedings is reached: a lavish feast served from the cauldrons ‘bubbling with meat, spices, grains and vegetables, including rice, wheat or gruel, garbanzo beans, onions, garlic, and tomatoes’, supervised by the churchwardens and heralded by the tolling of the church bells.26 Although these multiple ritual elements are not all formally codified, they point in combination to a ritual patterning of the slaughter and an understanding of the slaughtered animal as an offering to God. The slaughter can therefore reasonably be described as a sacrifice, even though no part of the animal is burnt as a direct offering to God.27

This Christian animal sacrifice diverges from the kourbánia of classical paganism on several points. The fire is used purely for cooking purposes and has no spiritual significance. No portion of the cooked meat is set aside to be offered to the saint. Priestly mediation occurs primarily through words rather than ritual action.28 The cooking of the meat is a shared task, and the common practice of stewing ensures that everybody receives a helping of similar quality.29

The social dimension of this ‘sanctified slaughter’ is particularly noteworthy. Preparing and serving the meat is a communal task. Georgoudi highlights the pre-eminent importance of the shared meal that follows the distribution of the sacrificial meat, which forms the ‘heart and essence of the festival’.30 An interesting comparison may here be drawn with the matal. Michael Findikyan has complained that, among the modern Armenian diaspora in the West, the matal ceremony has become ‘abbreviated and ritualized to the point of meaninglessness’. 31 Some of the sacrifice might be offered to neighbours, but he complains that the bulk of the meat is frequently consumed behind closed doors as the centrepiece of a large private party. Yet quoting the ceremony’s epistle and gospel readings, Findikyan shows that the ceremony’s essentials are praise and hospitality. In Hebrews, the matal is likened to a ‘sacrifice of praise to God – the fruit of lips that confess his name’.32 The final text from Luke’s gospel makesclear that it must be shared with the ‘poor, the lame, the maimed and the blind’, because these people cannot repay the giver.33 Indeed, there is a tradition that no part of the matal may be consumed by the person who has offered it.

In both Armenia and Greece, sacrifices are located at the boundary between church and society. In Armenia, sacrifice was traditionally offered on the church steps or in the courtyard. In Greece, the sacrifice typically happens in the square outside the church, with the priest perhaps blessing the animal about to be sacrificed in the narthex.34 This boundary location of the sacrifices points to their liminal position between Christian and non-Christian ritual, and between the Eucharist and everyday practices of slaughter and eating. The theological ambiguity of sacrifices points, of course, to the intrinsic liminality of meat itself, which is in Bryan Turner’s words ‘located mid-way between nature and society, between nature and culture, between the living and the dead’.35 It also, however, emphasizes their social character. The distribution of food that follows the ‘sanctified slaughter’ can be seen, in these contexts, as a means by which God’s peace and generosity proclaimed in the church’s liturgy is made real in society.

Despite Georgoudi’s well-founded aversion to classical ‘survivalist’ accounts of modern Greek animal sacrifice which neglect its obvious Christian context, she rightly argues, as do scholars of classical Greece, that animal sacrifice displays the deep connections between everyday food practices and understandings of the sacred.36 It is a fundamental part of human culture, cosmology and religion, and performs vital functions in these fields of human experience.37 This suggests that Christians who have insisted on the elimination of animal sacrifice, especially in the Roman Empire, risk disengaging Christian belief from a fundamental part of human culture. A positive Christian reappraisal of animal sacrifice is also possible by, for instance, requiring that the poor enjoy a privileged share in the meal which follows, as in the case of the Armenian matal. This instruction places fellowship at the heart of the sacrifice, and has been restated at different times in several pronouncements directed against clergy or households who have reserved sacrificial meat for themselves.38

There are other examples of Christian practices of animal sacrifice in which fellowship is central. Sacrifice has been used in South Africa to promote reconciliation across hostile community boundaries. In the township of Mpophomeni, it played a key part in resolving a long-running war between different tribal groups allied with the Inkhata Freedom Party and the African National Congress. In 1996, the people of the township celebrated a rite of reconciliation which included the slaughter of cows by the chiefs of the seven main tribes, Christian worship, and a large public feast open to all. The rite drew on elements of Zulu religion by including an offering of meat to the participants’ ancestors (ukutelelana). Nonetheless, Jone Salomonsen insists that the rite was not simply a mix of Christian and Zulu practices but given meaning by the sacrificial death of Jesus on the cross, bringing reconciliation, forgiveness and new community, and also reinterpreted in light of Hebrew scripture.39 In this example, animal sacrifice should not therefore be viewed as a simple continuation of ancient Christian practice, but as an appropriation by Christians of an existing cultural practice.40

A similar doctrinal context is suggested by Samuel Britt in his discussion of animal sacrifice in the United Church of Salvation in Liberia. Britt adopts the motif of ‘ritual struggle’ in the context of an agonistic universe within which sacrifice serves to resolve personal and social tensions. As in Armenian tradition, the person offering the sacrifice is not allowed to consume any portion of the meat, which either goes to the priest or is cooked in a hot, peppery stew and eaten by other church members before midnight, depending on the category of sacrifice.41 In this Liberian Christian context, strong emphasis is placed on the role of sin as the cause of the breakdown of fellowship, and so the collective context of fellowship is accompanied by a narrative emphasizing substitutionary atonement in which the animal is exchanged for the sin of the sacrificer, or even for his life in cases where this was seen as threatened by accidents, plots or bewitchment.

In some ancient accounts, animals are even presented as sacrificing themselves voluntarily. Porphyry reports a shortage of sacrificial victims during the siege of the sanctuary of Herakleion of the Gadeiroi by Bogos, king of the Maurousioi. This was alleviated by a bird flying down to the altar to present itself to the high priest for sacrifice. Similarly, during the siege of Cyzicus by Mithridates, the time for the festival of Persephone drew near, at which a cow had to be sacrificed. The cow, marked for sacrifice before the siege had begun, lowed and swam across the river, ran through the city gates opened by the guards, and thus to the altar ready for sacrifice.42 Plutarch rightly questions the somewhat contrived nature of these ‘voluntary’ sacrifices, discussing the practice of pouring a drink offering over an animal selected for sacrifice to make it shake its head as if to communicate assent.43 Such narratives persisted in some Christian accounts. For example, the Christian priest Paulinus describes such an instance at the shrine of Felix of Nola in southern Italy, in which a heifer vowed for sacrifice guided her owners to the shrine to present herself with them.44

By recovering some key elements of historic sacrificial practice, such as confining meat eating to particular days, making slaughter visible to the community, and having greater regard for animal welfare, Christians would bear witness to a redeemed and realistic fellowship between humans, but also between humans and animals, and humans and God. Sacrifice provides a context for slaughter in which thanks is given for the life of the animal as a gift from God. It enables rites of passage or other special events in human lives to be celebrated: anything from the birth of a child to safe return from the Mir space station.45 Above all, the meal is shared, especially with the poor and needy.

Bloody eating

Yet is it not a conceit to endorse and thereby perpetuate the cycle of ritualized bloodshed which is the reality of animal sacrifice, even to the extent of suggesting that animals volunteer themselves for sacrifice? Why should peace and fellowship among all members of society, and the offering of praise to God for the gift of life, require repeated bloodshed? Furthermore, can the killing of animals really be regarded as the right worship of the God of Jesus Christ? One twentieth-century writer saw very clearly the continuities between Christianity and sacrifice. Her response was to reject both. Rebecca West, in her evocative account of her 1937 journey through Yugoslavia, describes attending a dawn sacrifice of lambs in Macedonia. In the area she visits there was a folk tradition that sacrifice on a particular rock, known as the Cowherd’s Rock, will bring good fortune and fertility. West describes approaching this large rock, gleaming red-brown with the blood of animals offered during the night, smeared with wool and wax from the candles burned there, and with cocks’ heads strewn around.46 The two sacrifices she witnesses are both thanksgiving offerings for newborn children. These require the infant to be placed on the filthy, stinking rock alongside the lamb, as its throat is slit, and then to be marked on the forehead with some of the lamb’s warm blood. West reflects:

"On the Sheep’s Field I had seen sacrifice in its filth and falsehood, and in its astonishing power over the imagination. There I had learned how infinitely disgusting in its practice was the belief that by shedding the blood of an animal one will be granted increase; that by making a gift to death one will receive a gift of life. … Now that I saw the lamb thrusting out the forceless little black hammer of its muzzle from the flimsy haven of the old man’s wasted arms, I could not push the realisation away from me very much longer. None of us, my kind as little as any others, could resist the temptation of accepting this sacrifice as a valid symbol.47"

West is appalled by the ontology which the sacrifices represent. The whole of Western Christian thought, she protests, has developed in the shadow of the Cowherd’s Rock, born from the atonement theology of Paul through Augustine’s granting to the devil of rights over humanity, Luther’s hatred of reason and Shakespeare’s sickly longing for the disgusting and destructive. Western civilization has been founded on a scheme in which, through sacrifice, death may be exchanged for some share in life. For West, the Christian God is now the ‘frightful’ God enforcing the custom of ‘bloody eating’. Also motivating her abhorrence of the sacrifices seems to be their whimsical character, and lack of order and dignity. The squalor of the rock thus becomes, for West, a metaphor of human life and the chaos into which the Balkans would imminently be plunged.

In contrast with the sense that humans sacrifice animals through compulsion, as a particular pattern of thought gains power over their imagination, West insists that sacrifice is unnecessary. She states that goodness ‘must be stable, since it is a response to the fundamental needs of mankind, which themselves are stable’.48

West’s poetic and polemical attack draws attention back with a jolt to the Plutarchian challenge to meat eaters: that their eating habits are cruel and inhumane, and that a corollary of the human violence to animals on which they are predicated is human violence to other humans.49 Plutarch suggests that, far from promoting fellowship among humans as previously suggested, animal sacrifice is emblematic of practices which breed violence and conflict. Reflecting on the historical development of meat eating, he writes:

"When our murderous instincts had tasted blood and grew practised on wild animals, they advanced to the labouring ox and the well-behaved sheep and the house-warding cock; thus, little by little giving a hard edge to our insatiable appetite, we have advanced to wars and the slaughter and murder of human beings.50"

Plutarch links this degeneration with the atrophying of the virtue of sensitivity caused by meat eating, through which the ‘brute and the natural lust to kill in man were fortified and rendered inflexible to pity, while gentleness was, for the most part, deadened’.51

In modern Britain, the idea that meat eating sets humanity on a path to violent confrontation was developed by opponents of the First World War. The impulse to war has been pictured, especially by feminists, as issuing from accumulated oppression, subjection and violence both latent and explicit in apparently civilized Western culture.52 The renewed interest in vegetarianism around this period mirrors that in the later seventeenth century, when its adoption often formed part of a general pacifist commitment engendered by revulsion at the bloodshed of the Civil War.53 Yet over previous centuries, foodstuffs other than meat have also been seen as provoking wars: for example, Clement of Alexandria attributed the Persians’ invasion of Egypt in 525 BC to their desire for the splendid figs that grew there.54 Nevertheless, in the case of meat eating a twostage dynamic is identifiable in which an impulse is generated to acquire more land on which to grow the crops needed to feed the cattle which will eventually be killed for meat. An increased desire to eat meat therefore results in a disproportionately large increase in the need for arable land.55

This reasoning can be traced back at least to Plato’s Republic, in which Socrates explains in his dialogue with Glaucon that, in a luxurious state, pigs and cattle would be required in great numbers, with the result that a territory of previously sufficient size will become too small and need to be enlarged by military seizure of a neighbour’s land.56 This theme was developed by the American post-war social critic Henry Stevens, who argued that meat eating was founded on food scarcity and originated during the last Ice Age among northern European tribes, for whom plant cultivation was impossible due to adverse climate.57 Once the ice receded, the northern hunters migrated southwards and subjected the land to intensive animal cultivation with lasting negative effects on its crops and inhabitants. In these terms, the story of the killing of Abel, the keeper of flocks, by his jealous brother Cain, tiller of the soil, can be seen as representing the final, failed act of resistance by agrarian peoples against encroaching pastoral domination.58 Abel is literally banished from the land, not simply by an arbitrary divine decree but by an encroaching meat-based polity whose products God accepts.

This association of meat eating with the control of land and the exclusion of existing inhabitants from their land is highly pertinent in the British context, when the enclosure of open common land into small individually owned plots impeded the grazing of animals by peasants. Beef, which remains the most costly meat to produce in terms of the quantity of vegetable protein required per unit of meat, thus became the defining feature of the table of the landed yeomanry.59 ‘British beef’ came to represent a comfortable, domesticated, maledominated social superiority to which, in time, many would aspire, retaining these class associations until the late nineteenth century.60 This nexus of control over animals, land and other people was perfectly expressed in the ritual of the male head of the household carving the hunk of flesh in the centre of the table surrounded by his wife and family, a scene that Mrs Beeton revealingly expected to provoke ‘envy’ in others.61 In the twentieth century a similar development can be traced in the United States, with meat eating becoming a sign of success among wealthier working men: three times a day, including steak for breakfast.

Rebecca West’s account of the sacrificed lamb, like more recent feminist critiques of meat eating, identifies Christianity with the meat-centred system of domination and violence. For West, Christianity perpetuates the myth that life or goodness come about only through untimely death and violent killing. She sees in the practice of animal sacrifice a replication of the logic of the crucifixion. Her work here intersects with a perennial area of controversy and reflection within Christian theology, showing its relevance to everyday decisions about eating.

Sacrifice and the cross

Where is the cross in animal sacrifice? In Greece, the tree – suggestive of the cross – has often assumed several important roles: the victim can be tied to the trunk, the roots receive the animal’s blood, the carcass is hung from a branch while being skinned, and the boughs provide shade and shelter during the meal which follows.62 These multiple functions echo descriptions of the cross of Christ as both the place and means of his death, but also as the tree of life – evoking the wood of that tree in the Garden of Eden – from which Christ reigns triumphant. Developing these associations in one of his Homilies on the Resurrection, Gregory of Nyssa describes the ram caught in the thicket that takes the place of Isaac in Abraham’s sacrifice in strikingly literal terms as ‘hung from wood, caught by the horns’.63

The Epistle to the Hebrews develops the implications for sacrificial practice of the sacrifice wrought by Christ on the cross, proclaiming this to be the one perfect and sufficient sacrifice for sin which establishes a new covenant between the Lord and his people.64 Yet René Girard’s highly influential account of the meaning of the crucifixion sees in Hebrews the roots of a fateful misinterpretation. 65 For Girard, the crucifixion ‘abolishes’ sacrifice not by being the perfect sacrifice, but by exposing the error of the sacrificial system, especially of the system of sin-offerings. If the cross has been used to support a system of violent sacrifices, this is due to a basic  misunderstanding of Jesus’ mission.

Girard’s argument, like the Hebrews text he finds problematic, focuses on sacrifice as a sin-offering. This point is important, despite a blurring of the historic distinctions between the different types of sacrifice in both first century Jewish theology and early Christian discourse.66 Hebrews presents Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice as being primarily for sins, and secondarily for the removal of guilt. Yet in the Old Testament there are other types of sacrifice and several purposes for which sacrifice may be offered.67 Notable among these is fellowship, which is, as has been seen, an important dimension of the matal sacrifice and of Christian sacrificial rituals in Greece. It could be argued that the Christian ‘abolition’ of sacrifice – whether through a Girardian unmasking of falsehood or through the final perfect sacrifice of Christ – relates only to sinofferings, and leaves open the possibility of other functions of animal sacrifice. In the Liberian context, for instance, there is a rich interweaving of the themes of atonement and communal solidarity. The animal sacrifice makes effective the fellowship between people which is made possible by the forgiveness of sin.

This does not, however, fully answer West’s critique. Nor does it satisfy at least one contemporary Christian theologian, who develops a cross-centred advocacy of Christian vegetarianism. Stephen Webb argues that, to the extent that the sacrifice of Christ abolishes animal sacrifice, it calls Christians to abstain from eating meat. For Christians to act otherwise would be nothing less than to continue the crucifixion of Christ. Webb avers:

"When Christians partake of the body of God in the eucharist, it surely is not a commemoration of animal slaughter but as an admission to our own guilt in slaughtering and destroying others, our own identification with Jesus in all of his animal cries and pain, and our own affirmation of the struggle to work to overcome such pain. Literal meat-eating, then, is a parody of the vegetarian supper of the eucharist, and giving thanks to God for servings of dead flesh is an affront to the suffering of God in Jesus Christ.68"

Webb’s powerful critique exposes the contradiction underlying standard interpretations of the Eucharist – it abolishes animal sacrifice, but is regarded as having no theological implications for animal slaughter or human consumption of animal carcasses as meat.

Israelite animal sacrifice served as the legitimating exemplar of all animal slaughter and meat eating. Through sacrifice, the people of Israel acknowledged the gifted character of animal life, originating from God and being offered, in part, back to God. The importance of this awareness is shown by the requirement that any animal to be sacrificed on festivals be one year old.69 Moreover, all animals sacrificed had to be unblemished.70 Such an animal was a significant offering. It would have attained optimal weight for the level of investment required, whereas the slaughter of a newly born animal would leave more milk from the mother available for human use. Alternatively, killing a much older animal would have amounted to convenient disposal of an increasingly unproductive beast.71

The gifting was represented above all by the blood, identified with the life of the animal, which consequently needed to be shed in all acts of slaughter rather than consumed by humans. The implication of the gifted character of all animal life is that, if Christ came to abolish sacrifice, then he came to abolish slaughter and meat eating too. As Issa Khalil puts it, Christ ‘died in place of animals, thereby liberating and reconciling them to himself and to human beings’.72 This notion is lent support by evidence from bread stamps that some early Eucharistic loaves were imprinted with images of animals.73 The bread, representing the body of Christ, was thus seen as replacing the former animal sacrifices.

If, alternatively, animal sacrifice continues to be theologically justifiable within a Christian context, then meat eating might also be justifiable in this context. In this case, the supposition that Christ’s sacrifice necessarily abolished animal sacrifice needs fundamentally rethinking. Such an understanding of animal slaughter as sacrifice is developed by Karl Barth, who goes so far as to argue that Christians can understand slaughter only as sacrifice, i.e., as a ‘substitutionary sign for the forfeited life of man’. He states: ‘The slaying of animals is really possible only as an appeal to God’s reconciling grace, as its representation and proclamation.’74 For a human being to presume to kill an animal on his or her own authority would, Barth contends, be murder. The only authority on which animals may be killed legitimately is God’s, which means that moral and spiritual submission to God are required of humans engaged in slaughter. Barth asserts:

"The killing of animals in obedience is possible only as a deeply reverential act of repentance, gratitude and praise on the part of the forgiven sinner in face of the One who is the Creator and Lord of man and beast. The killing of animals, when performed with the permission of God and by His command, is a priestly act of eschatological character.75"

The theological implications of this understanding of slaughter as sacrifice extend to the eating of the meat which follows. Barth affirms: ‘A meal which includes meat is a sacrificial meal. It signifies a participation in the reconciling effect of the animal sacrifice commanded and accepted by God as a sign.’76 In such a meal, the animal’s life becomes a substitutionary sign by which human participation in the reconciliation is signified.

Support for this association of Christian reconciliation with animal sacrifice can be found in a long tradition of reflection on how, on the cross, the body of Christ becomes meat. In early Latin Easter hymns, Christ is described as the ‘innocent lamb which is killed and roasted on the altar of the cross’, and as ‘hung on the spit of the cross and roasted by the fire of love and sorrow’.77 This imagery, initially disturbing to the contemporary reader, recalls the various ways in John’s Gospel in which the rules for the Passover sacrifice are observed in the sacrifice of Christ, the lamb of God. In fulfilment of the requirements of sacrificial ritual, no bone of Christ’s body is broken, his blood is shed and scattered, and his body is removed before morning.78 The sponge soaked in wine vinegar, which Christ is offered to drink, is raised on a stem of hyssop, the plant also used to spread the blood of the Passover lamb on the door frames and lintel of Israelite houses.79 The paschal lamb was, like Christ, also pierced with a shaft of pomegranate wood, which served as a spit for roasting.80 We noted  the links identifiable in some medieval Christian folk devotion between the killing of pigs and the death of Christ. This association might now be seen as susceptible to interpretation against itself, with the injustice and cruelty which Christ suffers in order, in Stephen Webb’s terms, to become meat giving an insight into the injustice and cruelty of animal suffering.

Whatever one concludes about the justifiability of Christian practices of animal sacrifice, it is clear that they are very far removed from contemporary practices of animal slaughter. The theological association of meat eating with the crucifixion and the Eucharist might make the suffering and death of animals visible in a context where meat eating is connected with sacrifice. Such linkages are impossible, however, in the present-day context of mass slaughter.

Sacrifice and the slaughterhouse

In Eastern Orthodox churches, sacrificial ritual has maintained far greater continuity with Israelite practice than in Western churches. This analysis is supported by the understanding of Orthodox liturgy developed by Margaret Barker, who sees it as fundamentally continuous with Jewish Temple worship. 81 Barker does not, however, give any attention to liturgies of animal sacrifice. This is understandable, because her interest is to read modern mainstream Western liturgy through the lens of Temple worship. Yet their relation can also be viewed in reverse perspective, with the Temple tradition calling Christian theologians and liturgists to reappraise which practices count, or could count, as liturgical. In the case of the slaughter of animals by Christians, conceiving this as a potentially ritual act in continuity with Israelite sacrificial practices illumines what should be some of its underlying motivations and restraining factors, especially the limitation of the pain experienced by the animal. In the case of the Armenian matal, several marks are identifiable which have the combined effect of minimizing the suffering caused to the animal, including rule observance, attentiveness and reverence.

The Armenian and other Orthodox rituals of slaughter display obvious links with shechitah, Jewish kosher slaughter. Various Jewish scholars have argued that animal welfare is of key importance in the theory of kosher slaughter, and that minimizing the animal’s suffering is a theme in rabbinic discourse.82 Dan Cohn-Sherbok points out, for example, that the shochet who performs the killing must be pious and sensitive, and well instructed in the Law, animals and the method of slaughter. He must not be mentally or physically impaired, nor a drunkard, and must have steady hands. His knife must be sharp, clean, and at least twice as long as the diameter of the animal’s neck. The act of slaughter itself should take no more than a second, and render the animal immediately senseless. Five prohibitions are formulated to ensure that the slaughter is as swift and painless as possible, and infringement of any of these renders the animal non-kosher. Comparable requirements are found in Islamic halal slaughter, with the difference that the cut must sever the trachea and oesophagus as well as the jugular veins. Furthermore, there is a Muslim tradition that nothing be done to the slaughtered animal until the body is completely cold, in order to avoid any possibility of mutilation while it is still living.83 In a general assessment, Stephen Clark has even argued that a sacrifice in which the animal has been treated unjustly counts as unclean and is therefore invalid as a sacrifice.84 The claim that kosher slaughter practices are rooted in respect for the life of animals and the desire to minimize their suffering has been used by contemporary Jewish scholars to hold slaughter plants to account and to interrupt the logic of commercial meat production.85 Opposing arguments have, of course, been presented, and will be considered shortly.

An underlying continuity exists between specific ritual requirements such as shechitah and full sacrificial rituals like matal. Shechitah was fundamentally connected with the Temple sacrifice, as evidenced by requirements such as the draining of the blood and checking for any disease or deformity which would constitute a blemish.86 Two key aspects of continuity show that the rules of ritual and sacrifice have more in common with each other than with modern mass animal slaughter methods. These are the visibility of the slaughter of the animal to its consumers, and the assigning of clear responsibility for the act of killing to an individual person.

The visibility of animal slaughter to eaters of meat is deeply countercultural. Even in Armenia, attempts were made by the patriarchate during the nineteenth century to end the practice following complaints by visitors from the Christian West.87 In medieval cities in Western Europe, animals were killed for meat in the central areas where their meat was sold – still named ‘the Shambles’ in some British towns – being led down filthy streets through puddles of congealed blood beneath suspended carcasses ready for sale. Yet in countries like France and Britain, nineteenth-century hygiene legislation forced slaughter off the streets and into abattoirs located far away in the suburbs.88 Unconsciously echoing Cecil Frances Alexander’s description of the location of Christ’s crucifixion in her hymn There is a green hill far away, Noélie Vialles discusses this new requirement that slaughterhouses, like cemeteries, had to be ‘outside the city walls’.89 The result is that, in the present day, animal slaughter has become an anonymous, invisible and even clandestine activity removed from the general populace. This shielding from view of the killing of animals for meat is mirrored in the domestic sphere of food preparation by a gradual tendency which, in Britain, occurred during the nineteenth century to relocate the carving of whole animals and large joints away from the meal table into another room removed from the gaze of diners.90 The common attitude that the slaughter and cutting up of animals for meat is acceptable providing that the enclosure, exile and secrecy of these activities are preserved has been confirmed recently in Britain by the widespread outrage expressed after several television food programmes broadcast the killing of animals as the first stage in their preparation, cooking and consumption as meat.

The dehumanization and dismemberment which define the modern slaughterhouse have thus, in the late modern period, been hidden from public view, and with good reason. Yet they point to the second key countercultural principle of sacrificial ritual, following its visibility: the assignment of responsibility for slaughter to a specific person. Inside the slaughterhouse, by contrast, the basic organizational principle is the splitting up of the act of killing into a ‘process’ for which no-one assumes direct responsibility.91 This methodology employed in a large modern American slaughterhouse is described as follows:

"At Branding Iron, death is represented in technical terms. The steps are marked out on job descriptions and on factory blueprints, distancing the moment of death from easy capture so that the fatal event is not a moment but a set of stages. This is a calculated death. The transition from live cattle to meat is never marked by a single blow, or even by a single industrial tool in a packing plant. Determining exactly when the killing happens, and identifying which job actually does the deed, is frustrated by the minute divisions of tasks along the way from animal to meat.92"

In the context of mechanized mass slaughter, the alienation of workers from the product of their activity and the annihilation of their compassion, sensitivity and imagination are essential means of conditioning them to perpetuate slaughter willingly. The compartmentalization of tasks is the principal method of achieving this crucial practical and ethical disengagement of workers from their actions and the consequences of those actions. As Carol Adams puts it, ‘they must view the living animal as the meat that everyone outside the slaughterhouse accepts it as, while the animal is still alive’.93

It would be worrying enough if the working practices just described were confined to slaughterhouses as a means of arming their battalions of staff to prosecute humankind’s war on other animals. In fact, the organizational principles which made the practices possible became, through the twentieth century, an international norm in manufacturing industry. Henry Ford describes forming his concept of the car assembly line from observing the overhead trolley utilized by the Chicago stockyards in the process of making beef carcasses presentable for sale.94 Perhaps Ford had gained knowledge of the yards from Upton Sinclair’s bestselling exposé The Jungle. Around the time that Ford was creating his production line, Sinclair had revealed the apocalyptic horror of these establishments to a stunned nation, describing the grim efficiency of the process for dressing beef carcasses in comparatively unemotive terms:

"The beef proceeded on its journey. There were men to cut it, and men to split it; and men to gut it and scrape it clean inside. There were some with hoses which threw jets of boiling water upon it, and others who removed the feet and added the final touches.95"

The twentieth-century mass-production line which Ford pioneered did not, however, need to maintain this alienation and annihilation for the same reasons as the slaughterhouses on which it was modelled. Many assembly line outputs do not depend directly on the killing and dismemberment of living beings, and the workers staffing them do not, therefore, need to be desensitized to the same degree in order to perform their role in the process. Even so, similar methods of worker organization were preserved in the Fordist production line in order to standardize products, maximize profits through the division of labour, and crucially to establish detailed control over workers’ roles. In Sinclair’s novel the central character, who is a young Lithuanian immigrant named Jurgis Rudkus, eventually embraces socialism in response to the degradation of humans he has witnessed in the stockyard.96

In a provocative assessment, Charles Patterson traces this trajectory further forward through the twentieth century to the methods of mass slaughter deployed in the Holocaust. Patterson compares the systems and principles used to compel animals and humans towards their deaths and the language employed to describe them. Channelling emerges as a common theme, communicated by imagery of the chute, the funnel or the tube and set against a backdrop of extremely efficient mechanistic processing of huge numbers of humans and animals.97 Indeed, many victims of the Nazi genocide were transported to the death camps in hot, airless cattle trains, just as railroads were essential to the centralization of slaughter in Chicago, the animal killing centre of the United States. Some of the carriages used could be viewed in Paris in an outdoor exhibition in the Jardins des Champs-Elysées during the summer of 2003. Written on the side of each carriage was the number of cattle it was permitted to carry, and a much larger maximum number of human beings. This was in conformity with the elaborate Nazi law concerning the protection of animals during train journeys passed on 8 September 1938, which specified the amount of space to which a range of animals on their way to slaughter were entitled.98

Following the national furore sparked by Upton Sinclair’s exposé, notable efforts were made in the United States to rehumanize the commercial mass killing of animals. These continue today, inspired in part by new public revelations of abuses of animals perpetrated out of public view.99 In many American states, they are abetted by legal provisions exempting ‘food animals’ from the anti-cruelty laws applicable to other animals.100 Animals in slaughterhouses are thereby placed ‘beyond the law’ and become bare life. This degradation occurs by a process similar to that by which Christ is dehumanized, passed between different legal authorities and then cast out of the world onto the cross.101 This provides a Christological perspective on modern animal slaughter which complements the comparison developed in our earlier discussion of the small-scale sacrifice of individual animals.

In light of the shocking violence sometimes perpetrated in slaughterhouses, one might well wonder about the quality of their ‘outputs’. An especially notorious description in The Jungle concerned the production of sausages, and deserves to be quoted in full:

"There was never the least attention paid to what was cut up for sausage; there would come all the way back from Europe old sausage that had been rejected, and that was moldy and white – it would be dosed with borax and glycerine, and dumped into the hoppers, and made over again for home consumption. There would be meat that had tumbled out on the floor, in the dirt and sawdust, where the workers had tramped and spit uncounted billions of consumption germs. There would be meat stored in great piles in rooms; and the water from leaky roofs would drip over it, and thousands of rats would race about on it. It was too dark in these storage places to see well, but a man could run his hand over these piles of meat and sweep off handfuls of the dried dung of rats. These rats were nuisances, and the packers would put poisoned bread out for them; they would die, and then rats, bread, and meat would go into the hoppers together. This is no fairy story and no joke; the meat would be shoveled into carts, and the man who did the shoveling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one – there were things that went into the sausage in comparison with which a poisoned rat was a tidbit. There was no place for the men to wash their hands before they ate their dinner, and so they made a practice of washing them in the water that was to be ladled into the sausage. There were the butt-ends of smoked meat, and the scraps of corned beef, and all the odds and ends of the waste of the plants, that would be dumped into old barrels in the cellar and left there. Under the system of rigid economy which the packers enforced, there were some jobs that it only paid to do once in a long time, and among these was the cleaning out of the waste barrels. Every spring they did it; and in the barrels would be dirt and rust and old nails and stale water – and cartload after cartload of it would be taken up and dumped into the hoppers with fresh meat, and sent out to the public’s breakfast. Some of it they would make into ‘smoked’ sausage – but as the smoking took time, and was therefore expensive, they would call upon their chemistry department, and preserve it with borax and color it with gelatine to make it brown. All of their sausage came out of the same bowl, but when they came to wrap it they would stamp some of it ‘special’, and for this they would charge two cents more a pound.102"

Do such practices continue today? Consumers of sausages will undoubtedly hope not, but can do little to verify actual conditions. Slaughterhouses are out of bounds to most people for a host of regulatory and public-relations reasons. In such places, the safeguards of animal welfare and meat quality associated with Christian rituals of animal sacrifice are absent. On a fast-moving conveyor belt, close attention cannot be given to every animal killed, and spiritual discipline is deemed irrelevant to the task of slaughter. Consumers of this meat are not involved in its slaughter and have little idea of what has happened to the meat before it reaches them. Conversely, the slaughterers of the meat are unlikely ever to consume it.

Temple Grandin, a designer and operator of equipment used to kill animals in slaughter plants, has sought to reorganize some of their processes according to ritual concepts. As many as one third of all cattle slaughtered in the United States have been moved through handling facilities which she has designed.103 Grandin has described how ritual ideas can promote among workers an understanding of slaughter as part of a process which places controls on killing, resensitizing workers and increasing their awareness of death as a sacred moment.104 She has introduced measures including the configuration and adornment of factory space, the naming of pieces of machinery (such as a new cattle ramp and conveyor restrainer system known as the ‘Stairway to Heaven’), rotating workers around tasks to discourage routinization, and reducing line speed.

But as Grandin herself states: ‘The paradox is that it is difficult to care about animals but be involved in killing them.’105 The statement is particularly poignant because underlying her approach is deep personal identification with the animals to be slaughtered. In her autobiography she describes how, as a person with autism, she recognizes and understands many of the stimuli to which cattle are sensitive far more acutely than do most other humans. These include a sense of living in a world filled with predators, worrying about a change in routine, and becoming unsettled if objects are moved from their normal position.106 Despite this deep empathy, she nevertheless sees animals as unproblematically available to be killed and consumed by humans as meat.

The question of whether classic religious forms of animal slaughter remain less cruel than modern factory methods of killing, which employ the latest technology, is hotly contested. Grandin, for example, argues that the main problem with kosher slaughter is the restraint system – which often involves suspending animals by one leg from a chain – rather than the cut itself, and discusses how this shackling and hoisting system can easily be eliminated.107 Abuses have been reported in some industrialized kosher slaughter plants, and these plants’ originating ritual principles have clearly needed to be re-established through regulation and training.108 Moreover, it has been argued that comparatively recent new technologies such as electrical stunning provide less painful possibilities. Yet ritual slaughter methods at their best offer principles capable of ameliorating conditions in secular abattoirs, as shown by Grandin’s work, and also constitute an important dimension of religious identity.109

A complicating factor in legal arguments about religious slaughter practices is that such practices have been seen as more intrinsic to some religions than to others. In Germany in 1995, the Federal Administrative Court ruled Islamic ritual slaughter (dabh) illegal on the grounds that it failed to comply with existing animal protection laws and was not a requirement of Islamic law. The ban on dabh was overturned by the country’s constitutional court in 2002, following a case brought by a Turkish butcher. Jewish religious slaughter (shechitah) had, in contrast, been judged part of Jewish law and had therefore been permitted since the 1986 first amendment to the Animal Protection Law.110 In Britain, recent legislation has sought to balance the possibility that religious slaughter methods cause more animal suffering with the maintenance of religious liberty. Religious slaughter is certainly permitted, but must be carried out in a slaughterhouse with a veterinary surgeon and stunning equipment available if required.111 In modern multi-faith Western countries, religious slaughter methods raise issues affecting everyone, if only because most meat eaters have probably consumed halal meat. Because far more is produced than required by Muslims, it is frequently served in restaurants run by Muslims and sold in food stores in areas where Muslims live.112

What might Christians contribute to debates about methods of animal slaughter? Our discussion suggests that Christians in the modern West have much to learn from Christian traditions of animal sacrifice. The concealment and deliberate forgetting of slaughter, and the lack of respect for nonhuman animal life which this indicates, should be subjected to Christian critique. Attention to rituals of animal slaughter can jolt Christians out of complacent indifference about how they obtain their meat. So, as Stephen Webb reminds us, can the image of the slaughtered carcass on the cross.

For Christians who are meat eaters, sacrifice provides a means of acknowledging the giftedness of all animal life, and that this life is not ultimately human property. Sacrifice also brings meat eaters to face with honesty the reality of animal slaughter, which in the modern world is almost always hidden from view. Some of the principles which sacrifice has promoted, including fellowship between humans and the welfare of animals killed for meat, need to be preserved by modern meat eaters. More radically, Christians who are vegetarians might wish to argue that actual sacrifice and public slaughter should be reinstated, in the hope that large numbers of meat eaters would be repelled by such spectacles and thus motivated to abstain from meat too. The animals killed for meat in the factory-like abattoirs are sacrificed to the idols of profit, instant gratification, and the technological mastery over nature. Christians should consider whether, following Augustine in this if in no other dietary prescription, they should decline this meat as part of their refusal of idolatry.

Notes

1 Jean-Louis Durand, ‘Greek animals: towards a topology of edible bodies’, in The Cuisine of Sacrifice among the Greeks, eds Marcel Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1989), pp. 87–118 (87).
2 Frances M. Young, Sacrifice and the Death of Christ (London: SPCK, 1975), pp. 50–51. For examples, see R.P.C. Hanson, ‘The Christian Attitude to Pagan Religions’, Aufsteig und Neidergang der römischen Welt 23, 2 (1980), pp. 910–73
(915–17); Maria-Zoe Petropoulou, Animal Sacrifice in Ancient Greek Religion, 100BC–AD200 (Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 246–51.
3 The Theodosian Code 16.9.2 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1952), p. 472. 4 Ingvild Sælid Gilhus, Animals, Gods and Humans: Changing Attitudes to Animals in Greek, Roman and Early Christian Ideas (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 154–57.
5 Prudentius, ‘A Reply to the Address of Symmachus’, I.449–54, in Works (2 vols; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1949), vol. 1, pp. 384–85.
6 Theodosian Code 16.9, pp. 472–76.
7 Susan Power Bratton, ‘Urbanization and the end of animal sacrifice’, in Environmental Values in Christian Art (State University of New York Press, 2009), pp. 87–106.
8 A. Sharf, ‘Animal Sacrifice in the Armenian Church’, Revue des études arméniennes 16 (1982), pp. 417–49 (418–21).
9 ‘Epistle of Nerses Shnorhali’, in Rituale Armenorum: Being the Administration of the Sacraments and the Breviary Rites of the Armenian Church together with the Greek Rites of Baptism and Epiphany, eds F.C. Conybeare and A.J. Maclean (Oxford: Clarendon, 1905), pp. 77–85 (78–79). 
10 ‘Epistle of Nerses Shnorhali’, p. 83.
11 ‘Epistle of Nerses Shnorhali’, p. 79.
12 Sharf, ‘Animal Sacrifice’, pp. 418–21.
13 Canons of St Sahak, in Rituale Armenorum, pp. 67–71.
14 ‘Epistle of Nerses Shnorhali’, p. 82.
15 Joseph Tixeront, « Le rite du matal », in Mélanges de patrologie et d’histoire des dogmes (Paris: Gabalda, 1921), pp. 261–78 (277–78).
16 Tixeront, « Le rite du matal », pp. 276–77.
17 Gregory the Great, Epistle XI.76, in NPNF II.13, p. 85.
18 Tixeront, « Le rite du matal », pp. 272, 274.
19 For contemporary German religion, see Ian N. Wood, ‘Pagan religions and superstitions east of the Rhine from the fifth to the ninth century’, in After Empire: Towards an Ethnology of Europe’s Barbarians, ed. G. Ausenda (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1995), pp. 253–68 (262–63).
20 Decrees of the Synod of 742, in The Letters of Saint Boniface, trans. Ephraim Emerton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1940), p. 92.
21 Letter of Pope Zacharius, 1 May 748, in Letters of Saint Boniface, p. 144.
22 William Dalrymple, From the Holy Mountain: A Journey in the Shadow of Byzantium (London: Harper, 2005), pp. 169, 340–41; Cérès Wissa-Wassef, Pratiques rituelles et alimentaires des coptes (Cairo: Institut français d archéologie orientale du Caire, 1971), p. 332; F.C. Conybeare, ‘The Survival of Animal Sacrifice Inside the Christian Church’, American Journal of Theology 7 (1903), pp. 62–90 (89).
23 Stella Georgoudi, ‘Sanctified slaughter in modern Greece: the “kourbánia” of the saints’, in Cuisine of Sacrifice, pp. 183–203.
24 Mt. 7.6.
25 The presence and key role of clergy is attested in M.D. Girard, « Les ‘madag’ ou sacrifices arméniens », Revue de l’orient chrétien 7 (1902), pp. 410–22.
26 Georgoudi, ‘Sanctified slaughter’, p. 190.
27 Georgoudi, ‘Sanctified slaughter’, pp. 195–96.
28 Some Greek prayers are translated in F.C. Conybeare, « Les sacrifices d’animaux dans les anciennes églises chrétiennes », Revue de l’historie des religions 44 (1901 ), p. 108–14.
29 Georgoudi, ‘Sanctified slaughter’, p. 199.
30 Georgoudi, ‘Sanctified slaughter’, p. 190.
31 Michael Findikyan, ‘A Sacrifice of Praise: Blessing of the Madagh’, Window Quarterly 2, 4 (1992), at  www.geocities.com/derghazar/MADAGH.DOC [acessed 15 June 2009].
32 Heb. 13.15.
33 Lk. 14.12–14; Heb. 13.16.
34 Georgoudi, ‘Sanctified slaughter’, p. 185.
35 Bryan S. Turner, The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory (London: Sage, 2nd edn, 1996), p. xiii, reflecting on the use of Francisco Goya’s still life of the head and ribs of a sheep for the cover illustration of the second edition.
36 In classical Greece, most if not all meat was the product of sacrificial ritual, either directly or indirectly, such as from butchers who purchased sacrificial meat. The situation was different in Rome, where a secular meat market also thrived. John Wilkins and Shaun Hill, Food in the Ancient World (London: Blackwell, 2006), pp. 143–44; Michael Jameson, ‘Sacrifice and animal husbandry in Classical Greece’, in Pastoral Economies in Classical Antiquity, ed. C.R. Whittaker (Cambridge Philological Society, 1988), pp. 87–119. 
37 Walter Burkert, Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), pp. 8–9.
38 Sharf, ‘Animal Sacrifice’, pp. 427–28.
39 Jone Salomonsen, ‘Shielding girls at risk of AIDS by weaving Zulu and Christian ritual heritage’, in Broken Bodies and Healing Communities: Reflections on Church-based Responses to HIV/AIDS in a South African Township, ed. Neville Richardson (Pietermaritzburg: Cluster, 2009).
40 Harold Walter Turner, History of an African Independent Church (2 vols; Oxford: Clarendon, 1967), vol. 2, pp. 349–50, suggests that sacrifice might be an inevitably prominent feature of African Christianity, even when not involving actual sacrifices of animals.
41 Samuel I. Britt, ‘“Sacrifice Honors God”: Ritual Struggle in a Liberian Church’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 76 (2008), pp. 1–26 (16).
42 Porphyry, On Abstinence from Killing Animals, I.25 (4–9), trans. Gillian Clark (London: Duckworth, 1999), pp. 39–40. 
43 Plutarch, Table-talk 8, 729F, in Moralia, vol. 9 (14 vols; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961), pp. 180–81.
44 Dennis Trout, ‘Christianizing the Nolan Countryside: Animal Sacrifice at the Tomb of St. Felix’, Journal of Early Christian Studies 3 (1995), pp. 281–98 (287, also 291–92).
45 Dalrymple, From the Holy Mountain, p. 191.
46 Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: The Record of a Journey through Yugoslavia in 1937 (2 vols; London: Macmillan, 1942), vol. 2, pp. 200–10.
47 West, Black Lamb, vol. 2, p. 298.
48 West, Black Lamb, vol. 2, p. 205.
49 See Michael Beer, ‘“The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?”: the ethics of vegetarianism in the writings of Plutarch’, in Eating and Believing: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Vegetarianism and Theology, eds Rachel Muers and David Grumett (London: T&T Clark, 2008), pp. 96–109 (100, 103, 105).
50 Plutarch, ‘On the Eating of Flesh’ II, 998B, in Moralia, vol. 12 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957), pp. 572–73.
51 Plutarch, ‘Whether Land or Sea Animals are Cleverer’, 959E, in Moralia, vol. 12, pp. 322–23.
52 Carol J. Adams, The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory (New York: Continuum, 1995), pp. 120–41. For a similar current argument, see David Nibert, Animal Rights/Human Rights: Entanglements of Oppression and Liberation (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002).
53 Tristram Stuart, The Bloodless Revolution: Radical Vegetarians and the Discovery of India (London: HarperPress, 2006), p. 38.
54 Clement of Alexandria, Instructor 2.1, in ANF 2, p. 238.
55 The classic modern statement of this thesis is Frances Moore Lappé, Diet for a Small Planet (New York: Ballantine, 1991), pp. 158–82; for its history, see Warren Belasco, Meals to Come: A History of the Future of Food (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), pp. 4–9; for a recent assessment highlighting the huge stake of arable agribusiness in pastoral farming, Colin Tudge, So Shall We Reap (London: Allen Lane, 2003).
56 Plato, Republic 373c-e (2 vols; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1930–35), vol. 1, pp. 160–65; Daniel Dombrowski, ‘Two Vegetarian Puns at Republic 372’, Ancient Philosophy 9 (1990), pp. 167–71.
57 Karen and Michael Iacobbo, Vegetarian America: A History (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004), p. 162.
58 Gen. 4.
59 Ben Rogers, Beef and Liberty: Roast Beef, John Bull and the English Nation (London: Chatto & Windus, 2003), pp. 10–18.
60 Jeremy Rifkin, Beyond Beef: The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture (New York: Dutton, 1993), pp. 52–55.
61 John R. Gillis, A World of their Own Making: Myth, Ritual and the Quest for Family Values (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 92.
62 Georgoudi, ‘Sanctified slaughter’, p. 185.
63 Gregory of Nyssa, ‘On the three-day period of the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ’, in The Easter Sermons of Gregory of Nyssa (Cambridge, MA: Philadelphia Patristic Foundation, 1981), p. 32; see Ex. 22.13.
64 Heb. 10.1–14.
65 René Girard, Violence and the Sacred (London: Athlone, 1995).
66 Robert J. Daly, Christian Sacrifice: The Judaeo-Christian Background before Origen (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1978), p. 493.
67 Lev. 6–7.
68 Stephen H. Webb, On God and Dogs: A Christian Theology of Compassion for Animals (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 166.
69 Num. 28–29.
70 Mal. 1.6–14.
71 Oded Borowski, Every Living Thing: Daily Use of Animals in Ancient Israel (London: AltaMira, 1998), pp. 57, 215.
72 Issa J. Khalil, ‘The Orthodox Fast and the Philosophy of Vegetarianism’, Greek Orthodox Theological Review 35 (1990), pp. 237–59 (246).
73 George Galavaris, Bread and the Liturgy (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1970), p. 32. Galavaris suggests, less plausibly, that the images point to the influence of pagan sacred animal cults.
74 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics (14 vols; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1936–77), III.4, p. 354.
75 Barth, Church Dogmatics, III.4, p. 355.
76 Barth, Church Dogmatics, III.1, p. 210.
77 James H. Marrow, Passion Iconography in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages and Early Renaissance: A Study of the Transformation of Sacred Metaphor into Descriptive Narrative (Kortrijk: Van Ghemmert, 1979), pp. 300, n.
480; 301, n. 483.
78 Jn 19.31–34; cf. Ex. 12.7,10,46.
79 Ex. 12.22.
80 Craig S. Keener, The Gospel of John: A Commentary (2 vols; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2003), vol. 2, p. 1153.
81 Margaret Barker, Temple Themes in Christian Worship (London: T&T Clark, 2008); idem, The Great High Priest: The Temple Roots of Christian Liturgy (London: T&T Clark, 2003).
82 Dan Cohn-Sherbok, ‘Hope for the animal kingdom: a Jewish vision’, in A Communion of Subjects: Animals in Religion, Science, and Ethics, eds Paul Waldau and Kimberley Patton (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), pp. 81–90 (85–86); Ramban (Nachmanides), Commentary on the Torah (5 vols; New York: Shilo, 1971–76), vol. 1, p. 58. The claim has a long history in Western thought: Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton and Alexander Pope, among others, argued that the Mosaic sacrificial practices were less cruel than alternatives, especially those more common in the Western Europe of their day such as strangulation or hammer blows to the head. Stuart, Bloodless Revolution, pp. 103, 106.
83 Al-Hafiz Basheer Ahmad Masri, Animal Welfare in Islam (Markfield: The Islamic Foundation, 2007), pp. 34–35.
84 Stephen R.L. Clark, Biology and Christian Ethics (Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 289.
85 Aaron Gross, ‘When Kosher Isn’t Kosher’, Tikkun Magazine 20, 2 (2005).
86 Cohn-Sherbok, ‘Hope’, p. 86.
87 Girard, « Les ‘madag’ », p. 417.
88 Meat, Modernity, and the Rise of the Slaughterhouse, ed. Paula Young Lee (Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England, 2008).
89 Noélie Vialles, ‘A place that is no-place’, in Animal to Edible (Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 15–32 (19).
90 Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, rev. edn, 2000), pp. 102–103.
91 Vialles, Animal to Edible, pp. 49–52.
92 Ken C. Erickson, ‘Beef in a box: killing cattle on the high plains’, in Animals in Human Histories: The Mirror of Nature and Culture, ed. Mary J. Henninger-Voss (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2002), pp. 83–111 (85).
93 Adams, Sexual Politics, p. 53.
94 Henry Ford, My Life and Work (London: Heinemann, new edn, 1924), p. 81.
95 Upton Sinclair, The Jungle (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974 [1906]), p. 49.
96 Carol J. Adams and Marjorie Procter-Smith, ‘Taking life or “taking on life”? table talk and animals’, in Ecofeminism and the Sacred, ed. Carol J. Adams (New York: Continuum, 1993), pp. 295–310 (300–301), discusses the continuing interlocking oppressions of workers, who are mostly Hispanic women, and chickens in a North Carolina poultry plant. For a striking painted record of a tour of slaughterhouses, see Sue Coe, Dead Meat (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1996).
97 Charles Patterson, Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust (New York: Lantern Books, 2002), pp. 109–13; also Mark H. Bernstein, ‘The holocaust of factory farming’, in Without a Tear: Our Tragic Relationship with
Animals (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2004), pp. 92–115.
98 The 1933 Animal Protection Law of the German Third Reich was probably the strictest in the world, and had been closely preceded by a law that effectively banned kosher slaughter by requiring anaesthetizing or stunning prior to killing. Boria Sax, Animals in the Third Reich: Pets, Scapegoats, and the Holocaust (London: Continuum, 2000), pp. 110–15, 144–48.
99 E.g., Gail A. Eisnitz, Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect, and Inhumane Treatment inside the U.S. Meat Industry (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 1997).
100 Eisnitz, Slaughterhouse, p. 71.
101 For which, see John Milbank, ‘Christ the Exception’, New Blackfriars 82 (2007), pp. 541–56; drawing on Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998).
102 Sinclair, The Jungle, pp. 163–64. For similar quality-control problems in medieval pie shops, see Martha Carlin, ‘Fast food and urban living standards in medieval England’, in Food and Eating in Medieval Europe, eds Martha Carlin and Joel T. Rosenthal (London: Hambledon, 1998), pp. 27–51 (39–41).
103 Temple Grandin, Thinking in Pictures, and Other Reports from my Life with Autism (London: Bloomsbury, 2006), p. 167.
104 Temple Grandin, ‘Behavior of slaughter plant and auction employees toward the animals’, in Cruelty to Animals and Interpersonal Violence: Readings in Research and Application, eds Randall Lockwood and Frank R. Ascione (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1998), pp. 434–42; idem, Thinking in Pictures, pp. 238–39.
105 Grandin, ‘Behavior’, p. 441.
106 Grandin, ‘A cow’s eye view: connecting with animals’, in Thinking in Pictures, pp. 167–83.
107 Grandin, Thinking in Pictures, pp. 178–79.
108 Gross, ‘When Kosher Isn’t Kosher’.
109 ‘German court ends Muslim slaughter ban’, BBC News Online, 15 January 2002.
110 R. Jentzsch and J. Schäffer, „Die rechtliche Regelung des rituellen Schlachtens in Deutschland ab 1933 ”, Deutsche Tierarztliche Wochenschrift 107, 12 (2000), pp. 516–23.
111 Mike Radford, Animal Welfare Law in Britain: Regulation and Responsibility (Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 117, citing the Welfare of Animals (Slaughter or Killing) (Amendment) Regulations 1999, 51 1999/400. 
112 Martin Hickman, ‘Halal and kosher meat should not be slipped in to food chain, says minister’, The Independent, 7 April 2008.

By David Grumett and Rachel Muers in "Theology on the Menu - Asceticism, Meat and Christian Diet", Routledge (an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group), New York, 2010, excerpts pp.107-127. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.

Carlos III de España en banquete (cuadro de Luis Paret y Alcázar)

Nuestro destino estaba en sus manos. Como Hércules, cargaban con el peso del mundo sobre sus hombros y, en su mayoría, se sentían responsables ante el juicio de la Historia. Pero los reyes también tenían momentos de calma chicha, ¡no todo iba a ser declarar guerras y firmar decretos! La vida de los reyes era intensa y a menudo solitaria. Siempre fascinante. A su alrededor los filósofos discutían sobre el derecho divino que los asistía, y así es normal que no andaran con los pies muy en la tierra. Pero, en el fondo, a los reyes les gustaba lo mismo que a los demás mortales: comer bien, jugar y hacerse selfies o retratos. Bienvenidos a palacio...

¡Ha del castillo!

Entre palacios y castillos transcurría la vida privada de los monarcas.

¿Quién, recreándose en las imágenes de estos colosos, no se ha sentido alguna vez como un caballero o una dama? ¿Quién no ha soñado con descubrir una cámara secreta o con liberar a un reo del frío de su cárcel? ¿Quién, siendo chico, no lamentaba, llegada la lección del feudalismo en clase de Historia, haber nacido en un tiempo tan profiláctico y poco bravo?

Hoy nos es dado saltar a estas postales y pasear por sus fosos ya secos, correr por sus adarves, asomar la cabeza por sus vanos, rezar en sus capillas, hacer equilibrios en sus empalizadas y olisquear, en sus cocinas, el rastro del vino y las compotas.

Hay más de diez mil castillos en España, aunque en buen estado menos de mil; y, desde luego, no tenemos que desplazarnos mucho para verlos. ¿Cómo iba a ser así en la tierra de Castilla?

Banquetes para no pasar hambre

¡A comer! Esto de los banquetes regios quizá sea lo más lacerante a nuestros ojos del siglo XXI: aunque la crisis o el eco de las bancarrotas mortificaran a las clases más desfavorecidas, en la mesa de los reyes nunca faltaba un pan que llevarse a la boca. Los Reyes Católicos recibieron a su yerno Felipe el Hermoso en Toledo con una cena con cinco bufés, “cada uno con 600 a 900 platos dorados o de plata”. Tan pantagruélicos eran aquellos ágapes, que en el pecado llevaban la penitencia y los problemas de salud acechaban tarde o temprano a la mayoría de los monarcas.

La palma se la llevaba Carlos I, quien ni siquiera en su retiro final de Yuste fue capaz de privarse de la tentación de las cervezas alemanas y flamencas o las ostras de Ostende. No le iba a la zaga su hijo Felipe, que gustaba de picotear veinte platos en cada almuerzo. En una ocasión, viajando por tierras de España, un arquero que lo acompañaba señaló que, mientras aquel comía, “para nosotros y otros criados había tanta falta de todas las cosas, que agua para beber no hallábamos por dinero que fuese bueno”. Gracias a esa pasión culinaria, al menos la gastronomía española se hizo un hueco en el paladar del mundo...

Las armas de la fe

En el año 587 Recaredo se convirtió al catolicismo. Tras ocho siglos de ocupación musulmana, España renació como una Monarquía Católica, cuajada desde el reinado conjunto de Isabel y Fernando. La bula de Alejandro VI Si convenit (1496) reconoció a la pareja con el título de Reyes Católicos, que Inocencio VIII había ya anticipado. Desde entonces se puede decir que Monarquía e Iglesia fueron siempre de la mano.

Blindada contra la Reforma protestante y el judaísmo mediante el Tribunal de la Inquisición, las “herejías” fueron acalladas y los reyes empeñaron su honor y caudales, que eran los de todos, en su derrota definitiva. El Santo Oficio hizo de las suyas hasta el siglo XIX, y no era en absoluto extraño que los reyes presenciaran los autos de fe, prendados de su pompa ceremonial y su misa. Felipe II asistió a varios.

Juego en el trono

Luego estaban los pasatiempos más ligeros y pacíficos, sustanciados en los juegos de mesa. En el siglo XIII Alfonso X el Sabio encargó El Libro de los juegos, o Libro del ajedrez, dados y tablas, facilitando sin querer, o queriendo, a los historiadores del futuro la ímproba tarea de examinar el ocio a la luz de ese regocijo intelectual.

Traído a la Península por los árabes, que habían conquistado el Imperio sasánida allá por el siglo VII, el ajedrez hizo las delicias de la corte de Felipe II, quien llegó a convocar el primer torneo de maestros en El Escorial en 1575. Nuestro compatriota Ruy López de Segura, vigente “campeón” y creador de la apertura española que lleva su nombre, se enfrentó al temible Leonardo da Cutri. Al duelo se sumaron el granadino Alfonso Cerón y el siracusano Paolo Boi. Al final ganó Da Cutri, quien heredó así la prez del español, percibiendo de paso multitud de honores por su hazaña.

Mecenas de las artes

Todos los reyes, unos con más afán y otros con menos, han ejercido el mecenazgo, y tal vez ese apego a las artes sea el legado más irreprochable y valioso que nos han dejado. Sin ellos, los museos serían hangares vacíos y la cultura una laguna perpleja, o, por decirlo de otro modo, una paella sin cosas. Tiziano, Antonio Moro, Alonso Sánchez Coello, Juan Pantoja de la Cruz, Velázquez, Claudio Coello o Goya son lo que son por la desenvoltura de su genio, pero también porque vieron francas las puertas de los palacios y encontraron un hogar donde hospedar el fruto de sus manos. Gracias a las colecciones reales, nuestra mirada es más limpia y sabemos la hora, ¿verdad, Carlos IV?

La familia es lo primero

De una reunión familiar estándar suelen salir cotilleos y algunas risas. Cuando la realeza quedaba para comer, lo más probable es que se cerrara una boda entre primos no tan lejanos o se fijara la fecha para invadir un territorio. En el árbol geneálogico de la monarquía europea se cruzan las raíces, las ramas se entrelazan.

Texto de Alberto de Frutos en "Historia de Iberia Vieja", España, n.138, diciembre 2016. pp. 32-41. Adaptación y ilustración para publicación en ese sitio por Leopoldo Costa.

Más allá de su valor estético, el vestido a lo largo de la historia se convierte en un indicador económico debido a su vinculación con el desarrollo económico, industrial y comercial de una sociedad. Su análisis nos ayuda a conocer la función de los individuos cercanos al proceso de elaboración y comercialización de las prendas. El primer elemento clave para analizar el valor económico del vestido es el tejido. Mediante el mismo se determina de donde procede cada prenda, cómo se ha producido y si se ha creado en función de alguna necesidad.

En el caso del siglo XVI los principales tejidos serán la seda, el terciopelo, el lino y el algodón. Sin embargo es la seda la que tiene mayor relevancia porque incluye hilos de plata y oro. La mayoría de la seda procede de Sevilla Granada, Toledo, Valencia, Flandes o Florencia, sin embargo hay otros centros de producción sedera como Egipto, Persia e lrak. Todos estos tejidos son traídos por los alemanes e italianos a España a través de las rutas comerciales. Pero además la monarquía hispánica tendrá una clara tradición sedera por la herencia musulmana, encontrándose diversos tipos de tejidos de seda con nombre árabe como por ejemplo el acetuní o el zarzahán. En cuanto a los demás tejidos destacan el lino y el algodón, la mayoría de ellos proceden de los puertos del norte y el principal foco de producción de este tejido será Flandes.

La ornamentación de los tejidos también se convierte en una cuestión económica debido a la gran cantidad de brocados que se comercializan en el mundo en el siglo XVI. Algunos de los brocados utilizados para la elaboración de diferentes tejidos o prendas proceden de la misma península sin embargo las guarniciones realizadas en oro y plata se elaboran gracias a la recepción de materias primas procedentes de América y de los países árabes. Por tanto, el uso de ciertas guarniciones en los trajes está claramente vinculado al desarrollo económico del 1m perio en el siglo XVI y se debe a las nuevas industrias que vienen de América. Entre ellas hay que destacar la llegada de metales, sobre la que en numerosas ocasiones se cuestiona si fue positiva para la sociedad. Si bien es cierto que, contribuyó al desarrollo del lujo, provocó también el aumento de los gastos ya que muchos tuvieron que vender sus bienes para comprar brocados de oro y otra ornamentación. Asimismo, los beneficios que se dan por el comercio con América favorecen la creación de fábricas de paños.

Sin embargo, la llegada de metales procedentes de América también tuvo consecuencias negativas, ya que la extracción de oro y plata genera problemas porque los metales pasan por manos extranjeras y se hacen dueños de los consumos hispanos. Muchas veces se impide que los extranjeros comerciantes se relacionen directamente con las Indias, sin embargo, esto no implica que mejore el comercio español ya que el lujo estará controlado por los extranjeros tanto en la industria como en la riqueza nacional.

El descubrimiento de América afecta a la distribución de las materias primas europeas y muchas de estas materias destinadas a la indumentaria sufren una redistribución comercial que ni los portugueses, ni los españoles son capaces de asegurar por sus propios medios. En realidad el lujo no se contuvo pero las manufacturas pasaron a manos extranjeras por todas las trabas y prohibiciones que imponían los gobernantes a los artesanos españoles. Los impedimentos que se ponían a la industria textil se acrecentaron en tiempos de Felipe II, al añadirse nuevas trabas que perjudicaban tanto a la industria como al comercio. Algunos testimonios como el Diego de Clemencín señalan la situación de la industria textil española: "Año ominoso, año verdaderamente funeral y mortuorio de la industria, de los oficios y del comercio castellano"

A parte de los brocados, encontramos otras guarniciones como los encajes o los tintes. En cuanto a los primeros se denominaban randas o puntas y aunque su origen sea previo al siglo XVI su auge se produce en ese momento sobre todo en territorios como Holanda e Italia. Los tintes se elaboraban mediante diferentes materias primas procedentes de América, es el caso del flavonoides denominado por los hispanos palo de tinte. La introducción en Europa de los palos de tinte americano se produjo de una forma masiva pero sirvió para dar mayor belleza estética y versatilidad a las prendas.

El desarrollo económico y comercial de los tejidos, ornamentaciones y tintes que participan en el proceso de elaboración de las prendas de la sociedad del siglo XVI no puede entenderse sin tener en cuenta los avances y nuevas técnicas industriales y textiles. Los primeros avances aparecen en Francia, Gran Bretaña y Cataluña. Uno de los principales será la creación del telar de género de punto de William Lee, destinado a la elaboración de medias. Tampoco podemos comprender el proceso de elaboración de una prenda sin sus principales protagonistas, los sastres. Desde la edad media la industria textil se organiza en gremios pero a partir del siglo XVI están sujetos a fuertes ordenanzas que sobre todo imponen nuevas contribuciones a los extranjeros.

Están controlaban todo el sistema productivo a través de la formación de la mano de obra. Los gremios de sastres del siglo XVI están marcados por ciertas rivalidades y competencias a nivel tanto peninsular como europeo. En el caso hispano uno de los gremios con mayores conflictos a partir del siglo XVI será el gremio de Valencia. A través de las diferentes ordenanzas reflejadas en El Libro de repartiement real entre els veins de la ciutat de Valencia podemos cómo se estructuraba el gremio y qué tipo de conflictos se producían. Éstos estaban vinculados en su gran mayoría a la llegada de extranjeros que quieren acceder al gremio y algunas de las limitaciones se indicaban en los diferentes pleitos como el de roperos de corrillo de julio de 1515.

A pesar de los conflictos y competencias entre los sastres lo que más nos interesa en relación a esta estructura económica que regulaba la industria textil en el siglo XVI son las nuevas formas de producción y el enriquecimiento económico que estas suponían. A partir del siglo XVI surge un nuevo orden industrial y económico denominado domestyc-system, mediante el mismo las unidades domesticas rurales enviaban su producción a un pañeo central mediante los canales de distribución habituales. Este nuevo sistema favorece el desarrollo de la industria de lujo y por ello las producciones comienzan a centrarse en la seda, terciopelo, damascos y brocados. El interés por estos tejidos queda reflejado en las diferentes ordenanzas que se suceden en el siglo XVI: Ordenanzas de paños, lanas, bonetes y sombreros de Sevilla en 1511 y Ordenanzas de paños y lanas en 1528.

Éstas estarán destinadas a que los sastres se encarguen de la elaboración de la prenda. Es a partir de este momento cuando la función del sastre adquiere una nueva perspectiva porque ellos mismos empiezan a ser conscientes de que los hombres quieren recurrir a su arte. Por ello su nivel de exigencia aumenta y entre sus objetivos se encuentra la idea de resaltar la gracia y la belleza. Los mismos sastres buscan estrategias para introducir algunos adornos que no están presentes en las normativas.

Estas decisiones dan lugar a que se generen modos de vestir diferentes a los establecidos desde el poder monárquico. Será Felipe 11 quién limite estas nuevas modas imponiendo multas a aquellos sastres, calceteros y jubeteros que elaboren prendas en contra de las normativas. La fuente principal para analizar cómo los sastres introducen nuevas ornamentaciones y modas en el siglo XVI son los tratados de sastrería. Contienen una gran variedad de datos económicos porque en ellos se incluyen los procesos de elaboración del traje, sus cortes y la organización de la producción.

Los nuevos tratados de sastrería hacen que esta adquiera una dimensión intelectual. De hecho, según Juan Luis Vives, la sastrería se convierte en uno de los principales saberes que ha de difundirse entre la sociedad y se asemeja a otras artes como la cocina, la construcción, la agricultura o la navegación. Procedente de la sastrería española encontramos al sastre milanés, usa un álbum como book de trabajo y al mismo adjunta los modelos de trajes de todos los tipos.

Ya en 1571 Prospero Visconti hablo de la correspondencia de un libro de modelos que facilitaba la elección del atuendo, "Il Lubro del Sarta". El primero de los tratados de sastrería es Libro de Geometría y Traça realizado por Juan de Alcega en 1580. Su objetivo principal es que se estandarice un determinado modelo de vestido pero además intenta que los sastres economicen a la hora de elaborar las prendas. En sus páginas aparecen nuevos métodos de medición que superan las técnicas rudimentarias habituales. Está principalmente destinado a los aprendices para que sean más precisos a la hora de elaborar las prendas.

También se explica cómo se han de hacer las trazas y patrones para hacer el vestido basándose en la aritmética. Por otro lado, se les avisa de las dificultades que pueden presentárseles a la hora de elaborar las prendas puesto que a veces no saben cuántos paños necesitan para elaborar un traje. Por ejemplo, se les aconseja que algunos tejidos como los damascos requieren de mayor cantidad porque cuentan con decoraciones especiales.

El segundo de los tratados del siglo XVI es el de Diego de Frayle de 1583, que está más elaborado. Se convierte en un maestro de la sastrería en Sevilla. Para dibujar los patrones toma como modelo la obra de Pérez de Moya, un tratado de geometría especulativa en el que el autor se preocupa de explicar cómo ese deben dibujar las figuras. Este tratado está formado por sonetos, cartas y un prólogo final. Los sonetos fueron compuestos por Miguel Díaz de Alarcón, se le considera un verdadero artista, un maestro en mayúsculas por su ocupación laboral. Entre ellos podemos destacar:

"A los que officio y arte an inventado
Es justo que a su industria agradezcamos
Las cosas milagrosas que gozamos
Que con divino ingenio han procurado
Y aunque es verdad que haverlos comenzado
Su origen y principio les debemos
A los que hallan como sepamos"

Devemos más pues lo han facilitado.

Las cartas que aparecen muestran la importancia de los tratados, que no están destinados únicamente a los propios sastres o aprendices sino también a todos aquellos que compran tejidos. Se les intenta transmitir lecciones para que no sean engañados a la hora de comprar tejidos, el objetivo es que sepan diferenciar si los tejidos son de buena o mala calidad. En la parte final, el prólogo se habla de la necesidad que hay de que se elaboren más tratados que favorezcan la difusión de la sastrería. Además se establecen cuáles son las posturas y actitudes que deben adoptar los sastres para poder elaborar una prenda de forma correcta así como cuáles son los problemas técnicos a los que se van a enfrentar a la hora de elaborar una prenda.

En ambos tratados hay varias formas de dibujar las piezas de las prendas, por un lado destacan aquellos patrones que presentan a las piezas de forma separada, dispuestas sobre el tejido separadamente y desprovistas de toda decoración. Mientras que la segunda modalidad presenta a las piezas unidas como en el libro del sastre. Los cambios de mentalidad se expresan incluso en los títulos de los tratados ya que todos ellos cuentan con las palabras geometría y traça.

Según Ruth de la Puerta Escribano esto se debe a que ya no se tiene como objetivo principal guardar los secretos técnicos tan celosamente como en la edad media sino que se pretendía incorporar lo experimental al mundo científico y artístico. Los tratados de sastrería incorporan lo experimental a la ciencia y el arte. Los sastres del siglo XVI no necesitan conocimientos matemáticos para elaborar sus patrones, sin embargo desde este momento se pone de manifiesto el estudio de la geometría.

Texto de Laura Pérez Hernández en "Revista de Historia", España,  n.1, diciembre 2016. pp. 56-63. Adaptación y ilustración para publicación en ese sitio por Leopoldo Costa.

Thoth, el dios atlánte en Egipto

LA MÍTICA «TIERRA DE LOS PRIMITIVOS» EGIPCIA DESIGNARÍA UN ANTIGUO CONTINENTE DESTRUIDO POR UN CATACLISMO LA GRAN PIRÁMIDE: CLAVE SECRETA DE LA ATLÁNTIDA ES UNA OBRA AMBICIOSA, PUES SU PROPUESTA ES RESOLVER ALGUNAS INCÓGNITAS QUE SIGUEN INTRIGANDO A LA HUMANIDAD. A PARTIR DE LA RECONSTRUCCIÓN INFORMÁTICA DEL MODELO ORIGINAL DE LA GRAN PIRÁMIDE, SU AUTOR, EL ARQUITECTO MIQUEL PÉREZ-SÁNCHEZ PLA, HA DESCUBIERTO UN CÓDIGO OCULTO Y, AL DESVELAR SUS CLAVES, LA RESOLUCIÓN DE UNO DE LOS MAYORES Y MÁS FASCINANTES MISTERIOS DE LA HISTORIA PARECE ESTAR MÁS CERCA QUE NUNCA: LA REALIDAD DE LA CIUDAD PERDIDA DE LA ATLÁNTIDA. A CONTINUACIÓN, LES OFRECEMOS UN BREVE EXTRACTO DE ESTE FASCINANTE LIBRO.

La civilización madre del Antiguo Egipto sería la enigmática e ignota «Tierra de los Primitivos», cuya existencia está recogida en los textos jeroglíficos que cubren las paredes del Templo de Horus, en Edfú, al sur de Egipto. La existencia de esta tierra originaria fue revelada por la profesora Eve A. E. Reymond, de la Universidad de Manchester. A ella se refieren Robert Bauval y Graham Hancock, que exponen la idea de que ya en los orígenes del Antiguo Egipto había un grupo de sabios depositarios de conocimientos que se remontaban a épocas remotas: «Entre otros pueblos, como los romanos y los griegos, mucho más próximos al Antiguo Egipto que nosotros, se consideraba axiomático que los faraones y sus sacerdotes eran guardianes de detallados relatos de ciertos acontecimientos importantes que habían tenido lugar hacía mucho, mucho tiempo».

Pero, según Bauval y Hancock, éstos no eran los únicos conservadores del saber: «[...] nuestro objetivo aquí será contemplar los ‘muros de los templos’, como sugiere Platón, prestando especial atención a los llamados Textos de la Construcción (hacia 200 a. C.), grabados en las paredes del templo de Edfú que se levanta en el Alto Egipto, a medio camino entre Luxor y Asuán. Estos textos, que contienen una serie de extraordinarias referencias al Tiempo Primero, son aceptados por los especialistas como los únicos fragmentos que se conservan de un ‘corpus’ de literatura cosmogónica –ya perdido– mucho más antiguo, vasto y coherente, que constituía una completa ‘historia mítica’ de Egipto, de sus dioses y de los templos construidos en su honor. En los textos, los ‘seguidores de Horus’ son equiparados y asimilados a otros seres ‘míticos’, aparentemente divinos unas veces y humanos otras, que siempre son retratados como dispensadores y conservadores del conocimiento a través de los tiempos, una hermandad selecta consagrada a la transmisión de la sabiduría y a la búsqueda de la resurrección y el nacimiento a una vida nueva».

GRAN MONTÍCULO PRIMITIVO

El nexo entre la mitología del génesis egipcio y el Diluvio también es señalado por estos autores que, a partir de la lectura de la obra de Reymond, consideran que «[...] hay algo destacable en el contexto en el que los Textos describen a los Sabios. Este contexto está marcado por el predominio de las imágenes de ‘inundación’ con las que se describen las ‘aguas primitivas’ (de las que surgió el Gran Montículo Primitivo) en recesión gradual.

Ello nos recuerda la cima del monte en el que se posó el Arca de Noé después del Diluvio Universal, y los ‘Siete Sabios’ (Apkallu) que, según la antigua tradición babilonia, habían vivido ‘antes del Diluvio’ y construido las murallas de la sagrada ciudad de Uruk. ¿Es también coincidencia que en la tradición india se recuerde que ‘Siete Sabios’ (Rishis) sobrevivieron a la Inundación, y que su función era la de preservar y transmitir a futuras generaciones la sabiduría del mundo antediluviano? En todos los casos, los Sabios son presentados como supervivientes ilustrados de un cataclismo que asoló la Tierra, y que se dispusieron a volver a empezar, en los albores de una nueva era, a la cual se llamó en el Antiguo Egipto el ‘Tiempo Primero’».

Pero, más importante aún sería la reflexión respecto al origen de estos sabios: «Según los Textos de Edfú, los Siete Sabios y otros dioses procedían de una isla, la ‘Tierra de los Primitivos’. Como queda dicho, los textos son categóricos en que el agente que destruyó la isla fue una inundación. También nos dicen que el fin fue súbito y que la mayoría de sus ‘divinos habitantes’ se ahogaron. Los escasos supervivientes, al llegar a Egipto, se convirtieron en Dioses Constructores, que obraban en el tiempo primitivo, los Señores de la Luz... los Espíritus, los Antepasados... que cultivaron la simiente para dioses y hombres... los Ancianos que fueron en un principio, que iluminaron esta tierra cuando aparecieron unidos...».

LA PATRIA DE LA OSCURIDAD

El libro de Reymond sobre los Textos de la Construcción del Templo de Edfú y su descripción del mito del Génesis son tan sugestivos como complejos. Veamos un fragmento de las conclusiones del capítulo 8, llamado The Decay and Resurrection of the Primaeval Island: «Nuestras principales fuentes de Edfú indudablemente expresan visiones de importancia y de aplicación general. La afirmación de que un mundo primero, creado al principio, cuando la luz fue conformada, fue destruido, concuerda con una de las más grandes ideas de la cosmogonía egipcia. En este punto vemos un vínculo entre el destino de la isla como es conocido desde las fuentes de Edfú y el concepto expresado en el Libro de los Muertos [...]; según este último, la Tierra, tras ser creada, desapareció bajo las aguas primitivas. La versión de Edfú [...] añade muchos detalles a esta visión y, además, le da un contexto dramático. La primera creación puede ser recordada, desde el punto de vista de la tradición, implícito en nuestros documentos, como la historia de la Tierra de los Primitivos. En la historia de este dominio, las alusiones a la caída del Ojo Sano [...], el Inframundo del Alma, y la revelación de los Dioses Ancestrales, son todas valiosas piezas de la evidencia de que esta Patria acabó en la oscuridad y bajo las aguas primitivas».

La lectura de los Textos de Edfú que hace la propia Reymond ya es suficientemente reveladora: la Tierra de los Primitivos desapareció bajo las aguas. Del libro de Reymond y de la interpretación complementaria que hacen Bauval y Hancock de los Textos se podrían derivar los datos de una secuencia histórica referida al fin de la Tierra de los Primitivos:
1) Inundación;
2) Fin súbito de sus habitantes tras una muerte colectiva por ahogamiento.
3) Supervivientes que se instalan en Egipto y devienen los Dioses Constructores.

Unos Dioses Constructores o maestros que especialmente lo fueron en arquitectura, ya que según Bauval y Hancock: «También es de destacar que se decía de los sabios que especificaban los planes y esquemas que debían ser utilizados para todos los templos del futuro, papel atribuido frecuentemente [...] a los ‘seguidores de Horus’. Por ejemplo, el templo de Dendera (un poco al norte de Edfú) tiene inscritos Textos de Construcción propios que dicen que el ‘gran plan’ seguido por sus arquitectos estaba ‘marcado en antiguos escritos heredados de los seguidores de Horus’».

Entonces..., ¿la Gran Pirámide de Keops y el conjunto monumental de Giza pueden haber sido el proyecto de toda una civilización, pueden haber sido un proyecto realizado por los «seguidores de Horus»? Pero... ¿Quiénes eran y de dónde procedían los «seguidores de Horus»?

UNA APROXIMACIÓN AL MITO DE OSIRIS

La interpretación de los mitos desde la visión de la ciencia, a la manera de Plutarco o de Robert Graves (Londres, 1895 – Deiá, Mallorca, 1985) –el poeta y mitólogo inglés especialista en Grecia–, se convierte en esencial para avanzar en cualquier proceso de investigación sobre el pasado. Porque en ocasiones la mitología fue una forma sutil de poner la historia al alcance del pueblo llano, al transformarla en religión.

En este contexto, el conocimiento y la interpretación del mito de Osiris será una importante herramienta a considerar, porque encaja perfectamente con todo lo explicado. Intentemos una aproximación al mismo: Osiris era un daimon extranjero, un semidiós que llegó al país del Nilo, unificó el Alto y el Bajo Egipto bajo una sola corona, enseñó la agricultura a los pastores nómadas autóctonos, y reinó sobre su pueblo durante 28 años. Osiris fue asesinado por su hermano Seth, que con un ardid lo encerró en un cofre de oro y pedrerías hecho a su medida y lo lanzó al Nilo, donde se ahogó. Su esposa Isis fue a buscar el cadáver a Fenicia, hasta donde lo habían arrastrado las aguas, y lo devolvió a Egipto.

Seth robó el cadáver de Osiris, lo descuartizó en 14 partes y las diseminó. Isis las halló todas excepto el falo, recompuso el cadáver y le insufló la vida. A continuación, sustituyó la verga de su esposo por una caña, y de la desgarradora e imposible cópula, nació sietemesino, en el siguiente solsticio de invierno, Horus –el halcón–. De Horus deriva toda la saga de los faraones egipcios, que se reclamarían descendientes directos del dios durante tres milenios. Horus ocupaba el cuerpo del faraón al producirse la concepción del sucesor al trono –fenómeno conocido como teogamia–, por lo que se convirtió en el «padre» de todos los faraones de Egipto.

Es evidente que el mito del semidiós ahogado, descuartizado y diseminado es fácilmente asociable con la historia que se recoge en los muros del Templo de Horus en Edfú: un pueblo que murió ahogado por una inundación repentina y cuyos restos –los supervivientes– se diseminaron entre los territorios vecinos, antes de concentrarse en Egipto, creando la clase dirigente del único reino que duró tres milenios.

Al respecto, Reymond nos habla de las paylands, las tierras de pago, las tierras compradas, que reflejarían un proceso de colonización similar al llevado a cabo por el pueblo judío en Palestina durante el siglo XX para crear el Estado de Israel. El falo es un símbolo del padre y del linaje y, por extensión, de la patria. Por tanto, la pérdida del pene parece representar la pérdida del padre (pater), del linaje y de la patria (patris) –palabra que deriva de pater–. Pero, en arquitectura... ¿qué elemento clásico tiene forma fálica? Evidentemente, una torre cilíndrica.

Por tanto, la pérdida del falo de Osiris podría simbolizar, incluso, la pérdida de una torre representativa de su país de origen.

La presencia de una torre es un hecho lógico en un país marino que desease dominar visualmente las orillas lejanas. Y recordemos que la Biblia recoge el mito de la Torre de Babel, que los hombres quisieron levantar hasta el cielo. Debido a su estructura vertical, las torres soportan mal los empujes laterales, sea de un terremoto, sea de un tsunami, o sea de ambas fuerzas combinadas.

En cambio, las pirámides, por su estructura de montaña, soportan mucho mejor los esfuerzos horizontales –y también contribuye a estabilizarlas que una colina rocosa quede clavada dentro de ellas a la manera de una de una cuña, que es lo que ocurre en la Gran Pirámide–. ¿La Tierra de los Primitivos tuvo como símbolo una torre? ¿Esta torre fue el origen del mito de la pérdida del falo de Osiris y de la historia de la Torre de Babel? ¿La destrucción de esta torre a causa de un tsunami y de un terremoto fue el motivo por el que los antiguos egipcios construyeron pirámides? Probablemente, la respuesta a las tres preguntas sea afirmativa. Y la gematría nos ayuda a confirmarlo.

Veamos el valor nominal de la frase «Torre de Babel»: Torre de Babel = Πuργος Βαβeλ = 80 + 400 + 100 + 3 + 70 + 200 + 2 + 1 + 2 + 5 + 30 = 893

Es 893, sólo la unidad por encima del valor ordinal del nombre de la civilización madre del Antiguo Egipto, del nombre de la Tierra de los Primitivos. Y recordemos la regla del colel, a través de la cual la gematría hebrea permite asociar palabras que contienen números con una sola unidad de diferencia. Por tanto, la gematría relacionaría la Torre de Babel con el número 892, que esconde y guarda el nombre de la Tierra de los Primitivos.

Además, también vemos que el número 891 se obtenía de la frase «Pueblo del Sol». De todo ello se puede deducir una doble identificación de la civilización madre del Antiguo Egipto con la Tierra de los Primitivos y con el Pueblo del Sol, que serían dos denominaciones de la civilización que se oculta tras el número 892.

En este contexto, el mito babélico de la lengua unificada que se convirtió en múltiples lenguas, se explica fácilmente a partir de la diáspora que debería de suceder a la destrucción. Los supervivientes transmitirían parte de su sabiduría, pero al ser minoría en las nuevas tierras, difícilmente podrían imponer su lengua a las poblaciones autóctonas.

CALENDARIO DE LAS ESTACIONES

Observemos de nuevo las estrellas, tal como hacían los antiguos, ya que nos ayudarán a confirmar los datos temporales establecidos. Y auxiliémonos nuevamente de la astronomía, de los calendarios y de la mitología. Fijémonos en la relación entre la altura del monumento y la distancia al Sol. La altura total de la Gran Pirámide sobre la tierra de Egipto era de 281 cr, que es igual a 147,133510 m. Y desde antiguo se había establecido que la altura del monumento estaba relacionada con la distancia al Sol en el perihelio, que era 1.000 millones de veces superior.

Sin embargo, el estudio de la distancia al Sol nos llevará mucho más lejos: dos días antes del Diluvio, el 1 de octubre de –3530 (DJ 431.999) a las 4:48:17 h, el Sol –aún bajo el horizonte– se situó a 147.133.510 km de la Tierra, una distancia que es exactamente 1.000 millones de veces la altura de la Gran Pirámide. Si no fuera una coincidencia casual, esta medida confirmaría la fecha del Gran Cataclismo con una diferencia de 2 días.

Según Plutarco, la Osa Mayor era la constelación de Seth, lo que refuerza la teoría expuesta. La principal estrella que estaba más cerca del norte en el año de la gran destrucción fue Mizar, la estrella zeta de la constelación de la Osa Mayor, de magnitud 2,22. Por tanto, la Osa Mayor era un referente del norte al producirse la muerte de Osiris. Y el periodo de máxima proximidad de Mizar al norte coincide con el Gran Cataclismo. Por eso sería considerada la constelación de Seth. Sin embargo, Thuban, la estrella α de la constelación del Dragón, fue la estrella más cercana al norte, tanto en tiempos de los antiguos egipcios como el día de la muerte de Osiris. Pero Thuban es una estrella menos visible, de magnitud 3,63.

Recordemos que el calendario oficial del Antiguo Egipto se dividía en 12 meses de 30 días, de donde resultan 360 días, a los que se sumaban 5 días epagómenos o «añadidos». Estos 5 días los dedicaron al nacimiento de los dioses para completar los 365 días del año. Sewell nos proporciona una información coherente con los hechos descritos. Nos habla de un antiguo calendario egipcio –el calendario de las estaciones– que situaba el equinoccio de otoño en el 3.er día epagómeno –el día 363 del año–, por lo que se correspondía con el Festival de Seth, de tal manera que el año nuevo comenzaba tres días después del equinoccio otoñal. Por tanto, la asociación del dios egipcio de la destrucción con el fin del verano está documentada.

El Gran Cataclismo conocido como el Diluvio se produjo hacia el final de aquel verano trágico para la humanidad. El siguiente equinoccio de otoño llegaría el 19 de octubre de –3530, justamente el día 17 contado desde el 3 de octubre, si éste se considera el 1.er día. Por tanto, el día de la muerte de Osiris fue el 17 de athyr de –3530, y coincidió con el primero de los 17 días que faltaban hasta el equinoccio de otoño, la estación de Seth, en que la naturaleza va muriendo y la luz va declinando hasta el solsticio de invierno.

El número 17 fue llamado «interposición » por Plutarco, ya que se hallaba entre el 16 –el «número cuadrado»– y el 18 –el «número rectángulo»–, porque en un cuadrado de 4 × 4 el perímetro y el área coinciden ya que ambos son igual a 16, y en un rectángulo de 6 × 3 el perímetro y el área vuelven a coincidir ya que ambos son igual a 18. Plutarco añade que el número 17 fue considerado por los egipcios como nefasto al coincidir con el día de la muerte de Osiris.

Así, el dios de la destrucción se daría un festín a costa del pueblo y de la Tierra de los Primitivos un día 17 a 17 días del otoño.


UN OCÉANO EN LOS ORÍGENES

Según el mito egipcio de la Creación, primero fueron las aguas del Nun, el Océano Primordial, que lo ocupaban todo, de tal manera que el mundo era sólo agua. Después las aguas bajaron lentamente hasta que surgió la primera tierra, la Colina Primigenia. Nos encontramos, pues, ante un mundo dominado por el agua, por lo que este mito parece un testimonio más del Diluvio –aunque el mito del Nun se ha asociado a las crecidas periódicas del Nilo, el río sólo inundaba su estrecho valle y su delta, pero no la totalidad del mundo egipcio, porque no afectaba al desierto–. Por otra parte, los pitagóricos llamaban Okeanós al 9, al que consideraban el número del cielo porque creían que la bóveda celeste estaba compuesta por un infinito de agua. Y esta creencia parece ser otro testimonio del Diluvio. El mito del Nun y el concepto de océano celeste son dos pistas de un fin acuoso o diluvial de la civilización, son dos referentes del Gran Cataclismo que la Biblia describe como el Diluvio, y que el mito de Gilgamesh denomina el Diluvio Universal.


SECRETOS DE LA METARQUITECTURA

La Gran Pirámide constituye un permanente foco de atracción para visitantes e investigadores, y es fuente de inagotables interrogantes acerca de una civilización capaz de construir, hace miles de años, un monumento que todavía hoy no ha sido superado en muchos aspectos. La Gran Pirámide, clave secreta de la Atlántida (Larousse, 2016), obra del arquitecto Miquel Pérez-Sánchez Pla, presenta el fruto de un pormenorizado y pluridisciplinar estudio de la Gran Pirámide partiendo de los recursos que ofrece la arquitectura, y desvela, uno tras otro, los principales misterios que envuelven a esta «enciclopedia de piedra»: Cómo era la forma original del monumento; cuándo empezó y acabó su construcción; cuál fue la causa última de erigirla; qué motivó su nombre oficial (el «Horizonte de Keops»); y dónde podría encontrarse la Cámara Sepulcral del faraón. El descubrimiento de un Código Secreto, que hace «hablar» a los números y que estaría encriptado en las medidas y magnitudes de la Gran Pirámide, podría revelar uno de los mayores enigmas de la antigüedad: el nombre de la civilización madre de la que descenderían los antiguos egipcios, una cultura ignota que llegó al País del Nilo procedente de una misteriosa «Tierra de los Primitivos», denominación tras la cual se hallaría la isla-continente de la Atlántida.

Texto de Miguel Perez-Sanchez Pla en "Ano/Cero", Barcelona, n.12-317, diciembre 2016. pp. 37-43. Adaptación y ilustración para publicación en ese sitio por Leopoldo Costa.

On a chilly morning in March 1522, in the city of Zurich, the printer Christoph Froschauer sat down with his workers and shared a plate of sausages, in open defiance of the Roman Catholic Church, which forbade the consumption of meat during Lent. Froschauer and his men were dragged before the civil magistrates, where he entered his official plea of not guilty on the grounds that he had a heavy load of printing jobs waiting and his men needed the extra sustenance. Such meals were not unheard of during Lent, and normally for a small fee one could purchase a “dispensation” on the grounds of infirmity, age, or even unusually difficult work. But the printer had never obtained his dispensation and was duly charged. The city rose in protest, street fighting broke out, and, on April 16, the local prelate Ulrich Zwingli preached a sermon defending the printer’s actions not on the grounds of necessity but on the basis of scriptural authority. The New Testament, Zwingli pointed out, nowhere mentions food prohibitions of any kind, all of which were merely invented haphazardly by the Church and could in no way constrain the conscience of men. 1 Neither should there be specific times set aside for fasting: “as far as time is concerned, the need and use of all food are free, so that whatever food our daily necessity requires, we may use at all times and on all days...” 2 Thus began the Swiss Reformation over a plate of sausages.

The centrality of food to questions of Reform has largely been overlooked by modern scholars who have rightfully seen theological debates as the causative agent in protest, though, at the grass-roots level, fasting and feasting issues played just as great a role in fomenting anticlerical sentiment. 3 Like Luther’s outcry against indulgences and other clerical abuses a few years earlier, the arguments over food practices helped create a breach that rent the universal church permanently, and food fights embroiled reformers on all sides for the next few centuries. Food was also involved in most theological debates of the era, primarily because of reformers’ attempts to reassess the original intentions of Jesus and his followers and restructure Church practice accordingly.

Despite the conscious eff orts of the early Christians to distance themselves from the legalism of Levitical food prohibitions, the complex kosher laws, in the course of a millennium and a half the Church had managed to invent its own intricate food rules—the most important of which was the compulsory fast during Lent. There were also fasts on Saturdays and often Wednesdays, the so-called Quatuor Anni Tempori, equinoxes, as well as on the vigils of saints’ days. These might account for up to a quarter of the calendar year, or by some estimates even as many as 150 days. The fast, in this case, stipulated that healthy adults must abstain from the flesh of all animals as well as products derived from them, such as butter, eggs, and cheese. For a six-week period (forty days not counting Sundays) people subsisted entirely on fruits and vegetables, grains, beans, and fish. Furthermore, they were expected to abstain entirely from solid food during the day, breaking the fast with a single meal either at sundown or, in more general practice at Nones, the ninth hour, or 3:00 p.m . There was considerable variation in local observance though, Milan, for example, foregoing the Saturday fast. 4

For the average parishioner, whose prime understanding of religiosity was in the form of ritual observances or “works,” the decision whether to fast was of crucial concern. Morality was not construed as a form of practical ethics in action but rather fulfilling the ritual acts commanded by the Church—participating in the mass, performing works of charity, and abstaining from meat. Yet the reformers raised some serious questions: were the traditional accretions of practice, such as the Lenten fast, necessary for salvation, or was the Bible (and its rejection of dietary legalism) the sole authority dictating worship? Could a person indeed be defiled by “what goes in the mouth” despite Christ’s dictum? Even if an individual chose to fast in imitation of Christ, should that not be in the form of complete abstinence from all food, rather than merely animal flesh and derived products? Jesus and the apostles did make lengthy voluntary fasts acts of penitence and purification, but nowhere in the New Testament was any particular time set aside for a fast, nor were any particular foods specified as interdict during these periods. Moreover, if the fast is necessary for salvation, how could there be such a free trade in dispensations, readily available to anyone with money and sometimes sold to entire cities in what was generally construed as a fund-raising effort to finance the new St. Peter’s in Rome? Finally, with the new theological emphasis on the exclusive power of faith in gaining salvation, how could such quotidian practices as abstaining from sausages possibly be of interest to the Almighty—and did the Church have the authority to claim it was important in the first place on the basis of tradition alone?

It may seem surprising that through the Middle Ages contestation of the practice of fasting was a rarity. It was taken for granted that physical self-abnegation, mortifying the flesh to bolster the spirit, was among the most praiseworthy acts of devotion possible. Fasting was always to be accompanied by prayer and was construed essentially as an act of contrition, to facilitate forgiveness of sins. There were numerous examples among the early Christian fathers of heroic acts of self-denial. While these were considered beyond the capabilities or obligations of most mortals, a comparable fast, lesser in degree, was thought to purify the body as an act of penance. Meat, conceptually corrupting because inherently pleasurable, nutritious, and invigorating, and linked directly to the libido, was thus excised from the diet as a form of self-punishment. It was not, as we might imagine it, a medically motivated kind of purging of the system, but rather a conscious ritual of intentional undernourishment.5

As a form of penance (and a sacrament), it washed away sins through suffering. As further justification, the fast was a proactive curb to the cardinal sin of gluttony, which was actually the first of the seven deadly sins, thanks to Eve’s apple. Fasting was also, in popular parlance, a good “work” which in a sense earned one salvation. On the grand ledger of good works (the book of life), every act of fasting was logged in as a kind of brownie point—the more collected in the course of one’s life, the greater the chances of gaining access to heaven. That is, fasting was considered tantamount to other ritual practices such as communion, pilgrimages, venerating relics, and making pious benefactions to the Church. These all earn salvation in the popular consciousness, without which it is unachievable, unless one’s surviving progeny sponsor masses, which truncate one’s stay in purgatory.

In sum, eating in a particular way and avoiding certain foods during specific times of the year was considered a devout act of piety. The specific scriptural warrant normally cited was Matthew 9:15: “but the days will come when the Bridegroom shall be taken from them, and then shall they fast.” 6 The specific times for fasting and foods to be avoided were solely a matter of tradition and varied widely from place to place and across the centuries. But, as such, it was also a ritual practice that bound the community in common forms of observance, year after year, in a regular and predictable pattern. Food, in this respect, was at the core of the average person’s conception of religiosity, and devotion was defined in terms of the things one does, not necessarily the things one believes, as in a creed.

Thus, for many people—not only those defending Catholic orthodoxy— the threat to these seemingly timeless rituals was also a threat to community and social bonds. Many reformers, solely on this basis, defended the practical benefits of fasting as useful for inculcating and bolstering faith, which alone gains salvation. This was Luther’s position on adiaphora, practices that were not esential to salvation, which, while not harmful in themselves, might help common parishioners strengthen their faith, as long as they understood that they could in no way earn or merit the gift of grace. It was precisely this question which vexed those in the Reformed tradition and in the English Church: what did ordinary people really understand? The danger of continuing a food practice which people might construe as a necessary “work” might outweigh the practical benefits of communal solidarity.

It should not be surprising that when ritual practice was questioned by theologians on the basis of scriptural authority, and when the mechanism of salvation was scrutinized, so too were these quotidian forms of observance. Fasting and feasting, asceticism, the mass itself—are these necessary for salvation? Is this what God demands of us? Are these the things that will get us into heaven? The answer for Protestants was, of course, unequivocally no. But should this then lead necessarily to a ban on fasting, which admittedly might be a useful spiritual exercise? Should it be a private matter, or could there still be public fasts, if not at specific times as prescribed arbitrarily by the “popish” Church, then perhaps as in the Old Testament during times of distress, to avert plague, to repent for sins, and in days of public mourning. This would be the pattern adopted generally by the Reformed tradition, taking their cue from Calvin’s Institutes , in which the public communal fast became the norm, in imitation of Old Testament fasts.

The interaction between the clearly defined theological issues and the daily practice of common people provided the ultimate criteria for enacting policy in all denominations. In other words, since reformers, Protestant and Catholic, were concerned with doctrinal and ecclesiastical uniformity—and they were convinced that most people never fully grasped the deeper theological issues at stake—they were especially anxious about carefully defining the nature and meaning of the fast. And since confrontations erupted primarily over daily practices: tithes, church courts, and especially food regulations, this was one of the most pressing issues, and one that few could adequately address, which probably accounts for the arguments dragging on well into the seventeenth century. Intellectuals and reformers on all sides were forced to define their position on food restrictions, much as had the early Christians in defining their distinction from Judaism and its food regulations, and, as before, this proved no simple task.

The origins of the debates over fasting and Lent in the early modern era are found in the fifteenth century, primarily among Renaissance humanists whose ideas about food were imbued with classically derived concepts of moderation and balance, which was generally antithetical to the fast-and-feast mentality of the Middle Ages. 7 Of course the return to scriptural primacy among reformers was also founded on the humanists’ hermeneutics and insistence on interpreting classical texts in historical perspective. That is, they understood precisely why the early Christians rejected official food prohibitions and generally ate a simple, frugal, but regular diet. The humanists also bolstered their defense of a regular diet with ancient medical precepts that, while stressing seasonality, could not defend either abstinence or excess. Even more powerful in their criticism of medieval foodways was the haphazard and hypocritical ways in which these restrictions were applied. Dispensations were easy to obtain for a price and under practically any pretext, practices diff ered widely from place to place, and regulations were rarely enforced.

These concerns were brought to a head in 1491 when Pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia) began to both loosen the restrictions on butter and grant extensive dispensations from Lent. This itself was nothing new, but it occurred now on an unprecended scale to raise money for the Church. Such dispensations were even peddled, much like indulgences, by itinerant papal agents. Beyond these personal exemptions, there were also more lucrative corporate dispensations, especially in northern Europe with butter, witness the impressive Butter Tower on the Cathedral in Rouen, paid for with money collected from dispensations. Some cities or entire regions were exempted from regulation. In the humanists’ minds, these were merely part and parcel of the range of clerical abuses (concubinage, simony, absenteeism, clerical ignorance). The ultimate absurdity of declaring such foods as beaver tail or puffin legitimate for Lent, merely because they live in water and are therefore technically fish, gave the humanists further ammunition for ridicule.

While this loosening of restrictions may have contributed to the evolution of culinary arts through the greater incorporation of butter, eggs, and dairy products into cuisine, especially with fish dishes and in sauces, it also directed public attention to the arbitrary way the Church enacted and enforced legislation. Anyone with enough money could basically buy the right to ignore what were ostensibly devout acts necessary for salvation, and if butter could so easily be taken off the list of prohibited foods, why was it there in the first place? Perhaps all restrictions were equally unnecessary.

This climate of opinon is best exemplified by the colloquy of Erasmus published in 1526, even though it postdates the earliest years of the Reformation. 8 In it a butcher and fishmonger argue over the possible consequences should Lent be abolished. The fishmonger contends that meat would not be so highly valued if it were no longer a forbidden food. The butcher thinks it would be healthier for people to eat meat in cold months (which, at least according to contemporary humoral physiology, was absolutely true). The two continue to accuse each other, one that fish stink, the other that butchers sell cat meat. Eventually, however, the argument blossoms into a full-scale debate over food laws instituted by humans versus the essential laws as laid down by biblical authority. In the New Testament, fasts were only voluntary, they could take place any time of year, and they did not exclude specific foods. Erasmus ultimately presents a theological discussion over how the rigorous laws of the Old Testament were abrogated with the new dispensation. Mandatory food regulations are therefore inherently unchristian, and the Church had no right to institute them in the first place. Interestingly though, Erasmus went no further than chiding the Church into a policy change, he was not interested in schism.

Elsewhere in the writings of Erasmus, and among other humanists, were other related concerns bearing on the topic of fasting. 9 Those in the community who should have been most inclined to the rigors of abstinence, monastics, were often themselves gourmands, living richly despite their vows of personal poverty. Likewise any wealthy family could adhere to the letter of the law by eating only fish during Lent, though the most rare and exotic species and garnished so lavishly and presented at such astronomical expense that the entire spirit and purpose of fasting was ignored.

A fast should logically involve self-denial, but what kind of suffering was involved in such elaborate fish-based meals? The humanists were also concerned, as would be later reformers, with curbing what they saw as disorderly riot and mayhem in the days preceding Lent, the Carnival or Mardi Gras celebrations. While modern critics have pointed out the valuable function of such celebrations as a social “safety valve”—an opportunity to blow off steam in an otherwise rigidly controlled and hierarchical culture, the threat of real violence, especially in the early sixteenth century, led many elites to ban Carnival celebrations, which in turned open the whole question of whether Lent was also strictly necessary.10

These were, of course, political expedients to keep a growing population orderly in a period of inflation and rural displacement. But it had the effect of making the fast and feast cycles obsolete. It also did not help that many of these celebrations had their roots in pagan practices, or were so perceived, making them a prime target for those interested in restoring Christianity to its pristine origins.

Among the first Protestant reformers, it is interesting that ritual and food practices do not gain great attention. Luther, like Erasmus, mentioned the absurdity of restrictions. For example, Germans were forced to buy oil rather than use local and plentiful butter. This was oil that the people in Rome “would not use to grease their shoes. But they sell us permission to eat butter and other things in spite of the holy apostle who says that the gospel gives us complete freedom to do everything.” “They think that eating butter is a greater sin than lying, swearing or committing fornication.” 11 Yet in the end Luther had little deep abiding interest in much beyond the theological doctrine of sola fidei , salvation by faith alone. How one worships, what form of church government is put in place, and indeed whether one fasts or not was of no great importance as long as one understands that these are not the means whereby we attain       grace. A fast can be useful, but we can not gain merit thereby. Such trivial concerns should be left to magistrates to decide. And, in fact, after the Peasant Wars, magistrates were more interested in not upsetting the fabric of society, so they left Lent in place along with most of the trappings of the Church hierarchy, including bishops. But equally as interesting is the focus on family, marriage, and procreation, which put an end to the ascetic/celibate and monastic traditions in Lutheran regions. There was thus no longer a pious and abstinent ideal outside the family context, and fasting became a private matter, often observe  d in practice, but not enforced. Gradually, but over centuries, it disappeared.

Ulrich Zwingli, in Zurich, mentioned earlier, was truly the first to make a decisive break from Lenten restrictions as something positively harmful for Christian worship. This was not only fundamentally different from Luther’s lax attitude but would set the tone for later Swiss and other Reformed traditions. Here not only was the Bible to be the standard for all practices, but anything not found in the Bible should be decisively abolished, that is, all the traditions of the Church without biblical warrant, including Lent, and of much greater theological import, the very meaning of the central food ritual of Christinity—the literal consumption of the flesh and blood of Christ in the Eucharist by means of transubstantiation.

For Zwingli, the entire ritual was nothing more than a memorial. Hoc est corpus meum was meant to be figurative, as so much else that Jesus said. Any other interpretation, any kind of real presence, could only be a form of cannibalism. Regarding Lent, in the Reformed tradition (including the Swiss, Dutch, Scots, Huguenots, and Puritans on both sides of the Atlantic) seasonal fasts and fasts on Saturday were abolished solely because they are nowhere mentioned in Scripture.

However, penance remained a sacrament, and fasts could still be undertaken for the purpose of spiritual cleansing, to seek absolution from sins, especially in public form, just as the ancient Israelites had done to avert God’s wrath—particularly for Calvinists, who saw God in an active role sending portents and off ering rewards and punishments here on earth. What this meant is that, despite the abolition of Lent per se, public fasting and atonement, in this case often complete abstinence from food for an entire day, was declared by political authorities. In England it was Parliament, elsewhere city councils. They saw this as a means of directly communicating with God to gain favor and possibly seek absolution. Moreover, the Calvinists were more strictly concerned with public order and propriety and theologians praised frugality on a year-round basis. How extensively this new attitude was adopted by ordinary people is a matter for debate, and it is too easy to caricature Puritans as dour disciplinarians. But it is true that a regular and frugal diet around the calendar became the cultural ideal, completely replacing the seasonal cycles of medieval Christianity.

The English Church, at least theologically fell in this camp as well, though perhaps stemming from Elizabeth’s infamous via media , and desire to please a wide array of worshipers, a so-called political Lent remained on the books until the end of the seventeenth century. Ostensibly, this was defended as a means of supporting the fishing industry and maintaining a strong fleet in the event of war. That, at least, was the official explanation lest the retention of Lent upset the more ardent reformers. Among Anglicans of the seventeenth century, however, many were fully committed to the ancient apostolic and legitimately instituted forms of fasting which they believed ought to be retained. Every monarch to follow renewed the statute on fasting upon inheriting the crown, but few people seem to have obeyed it. As in Lutheran lands, fasting gradually became obsolete.

The Radical Reformation took an entirely diff erent tack in regard to fasting. Returning to the “roots” of Christianity along with its pacifism, adult baptism (hence the name anabaptist ), they also “democratized grace,” to borrow a phrase of Sir Christopher Hill. That is, they believed salvation was attainable not only to a select predestined few “saints,” as the Calvinists contended, but to everyone and anyone who could attain faith. Thus one could fast as a means of attaining grace; as their detractors so called them, radical reformers became “work saints.” And because they were unaligned with any political establishment—in fact consciously apart from them—there was no way they could declare official fasts. They became a matter of individual conscience and an important form of personal penance. Even more important, many of the radical sects were strict millenarians, fully expecting an imminent second coming.

Fasting thus became a means of spiritual cleansing in preparation for the return to Edenic purity after the apocalypse. Hence many became not only pacifists, but vegetarians, anticipating the moment when the lion will lay down with lamb. In an entirely unexpected way, the asceticism of the early Church was reintroduced to communities whose descendants would be the Mennonites and Amish, 12 indirectly laying the foundation for many other sects that would adopt vegetarianism as a new form of perpetual fast, most notably the Seventh Day Adventists.

Lastly, the Catholic Church responded to these assaults. Rather than adopt reforms from within, the Council of Trent decided to reemphasize works as a means of attaining grace. Lenten rules stayed in place and observation was enforced. But they also imbued the religion with a new kind of energy and dynamism, using the arts to win adherents back into the fold. New saints appeared, heroic ascetics, and a form of self- starvation that Rudolph Bell has called holy anorexia. The exact parameters of Lent were also debated, most notoriously in Spain where chocolate was taken in the morning during church services at a time when people were not supposed to take any “food” whatsoever. The debate over chocolate hinged on its nutritional classification; if a beverage then permitted, if a nutritious liquid food then highly suspect. There also appeared a whole new literature defending Lent, such as Theodor Peltanus, De jejunio et ciborum delectu (1572), Johannis Viringi, Tractatus de jejunio et abstinentia (1597), and Paulo Zacchia, Il vitto quaresimale (1637). There were also detractors in the Protestant camps—like French Protestant Joannis Dallaeus’s De jejuniis, et quadragesima liber 1654. The topic remained vibrant and hotly debated long after the initial years of the Reformation.

Why fasting should still have been an ongoing issue a hundred years later is the most interesting question. The polemic, largely between Lutherans, Calvinists, and Jesuits in the seventeeth century, was motivated partly by political threats, as the Counter-Reformation was in full swing and as military violence loomed over Germany and of course erupted in the Thirty Years War. Protestants felt motivated to defend their position on fasting, and Catholics sought to enforce theirs, both with arms and newly invigorated theology, particularly in the writings of Cardinal Bellarmine.

In a nutshell, the Protestants cited biblical passages regarding the original intention of fasting as a voluntary act of penance, and the Catholics and Jesuits defended their form of fasting as a rite that did indeed develop over time as a tradition of the Church, was based on apostolic forms, but is not something people may decide to ignore without good cause, and some claimed that it is required for salvation. Nonetheless, there were dispensations available for a fee under various pretexts: infirmity, age, pregnancy, and nursing.

Rather than recount in detail the several dozen texts written in this era, I will focus on just two very important sources from the mid seventeenth century, one Jesuit, the other Calvinist, to off er a specific example of how the aforementioned issues were debated. The first is entitled Aloe Amari, sed salubris succi Ieiunium (Bitter aloes, or healthy essences for fasting), written by Jeremias Drexel, who was a convert to Catholicism who went to study at Ingolstadt, joined the Jesuits in 1598, and became preacher at the court of Maximilian I, elector of Bavaria. The book was published in 1637, shortly before his death, and went through many editions: 1638 in Antwerp, 1642, 1650, etc. 13 It is a massive book of about five hundred pages and represents what is truly in the spirit of the Catholic Reformation attempt to gain back converts to Catholicism, not through threats of eternal damnation or physical punishment but by promoting fasts as good and moral in and of themselves. The tactic was diff erent from earlier polemics, which basically made obedience to the Church’s commandments a requirement for salvation. This makes a very rational argument—even a gastronomic one—about why fasting is useful.

The other text is by French Protestant theologian Johannes Dallaeus (Jean Daillé), De jejuniis et Quadragesima liber , printed in Deventer in 1654, 14 which nicely captures the types of arguments made by the Reformed side in this era, arguing not that fasting should be completely abolished but that they should be undertaken in the spirit in which they were originally intended, as they were in the Bible, particularly in the Old Testament. These are two completely opposed ideological texts, and yet, fascinatingly, they argue in the end the same essential point, that fasts are very beneficial for the body and soul and valuable for maintaining moral integrity.

Beginning with Drexel, the book is a remarkably well-crafted sales pitch promoting fasting. Not only is the author a great storyteller, but he argues convincingly that fasting is a moral virtue, that it is beneficial for health and mental well-being and happiness. The basic idea is that when one feeds the body excessively it makes the spirit weaker and one more easily succumbs to temptation. But by castigating the flesh one makes the soul stronger and better able to fend off sin. “Abstinence and fasting ennervates this enemy, thus however much the flesh is supressed, so greater the spirit is lifted up.” 15 People shouldn’t fear fasting: exactly the opposite. It is a kind of exercise that makes you stronger, physically and morally. And, although this basic line of reasoning was nothing new, the way he illustrates his argument with poignant vignettes is truly novel and persuasive. For example, he tells about one Macarius Alexandrinus who made a habit of walking around holding bags full of sand to make his arms stronger. Eventually he hardly even noticed them, but then it never bothered him to lift anything thereafter. Fasting is precisely the same, a small hardship at first, but in the end dealing with hunger becomes no burden at all.

Drexel also has a very personable style and addresses his readers directly. He adds anecdotes in ways that connect with the reader. For example, he knows very well the running criticism of Jesuits that they live very lavishly, and, while most people are eating frugally during Lent, the general impression is that Jesuits have rare and delicate fish, fruits, perfumed biscuits, and sweet wines—anything but hardship. Drexel retorts: fine, I’ll tell you exactly what we eat—very plain and frugal food. Even on feast days, were you to walk into the refectory, you might find a piece of beef, some cabbage or vegetables, perhaps a minutal (a kind of minced stew with tripe, lung, or liver), or fried eggs and broth. To close the meal, there might be some cheese or fruits such as cherries or apples. But normally there is no meat, but rather fish, such as sole or stockfish, or whole chickpeas. Everything is served in small amounts, and no one would call these meals sumptuous. 16

The popular impression that Jesuits live lavishly stems largely from the fact that they are an active order, and brothers often serve in princely households. They fi nd themselves at meals where delicacies and fine wines are served. But they do not partake of these, in fact, despite what you read, there are many ascetics among Jesuits who perform proper fasts, flagellate themselves, keep long vigils, and wear a hair shirt.

Drexel also makes an impassioned defense of abstinence as a longevity regimen. One need only look at the thousands of impoverished people who live on so little yet labor long hours and often live to eighty or ninety—even sometimes one hundred years. His words sound startlingly familiar to us: most people overeat and eat too quickly, both of which tax the system. If you want to eat like a dog, expect to suff er many diseases. “There is no doubt that daily many thousands are killed, who if they had eaten less, and moderately, and more frequently sustained hunger, would have lived many more years.” 17 As a rule, one should also leave the table before hunger is sated, or, as the saying goes in German, “Stehe vom Tisch mit lust auff .” Likewise one should not eat foods of extreme qualities “such as melons, mushrooms and cucumbers, which are most cold, yet taken as irritants of gluttony.” 18

Apart from all these medical rationales for fasting, Drexel also makes what is a most convincing gastronomic defense as well. He claims that hunger is the best condiment and suggests a little experiment: try going a few days eating a small amount of the lowliest foods, as paupers do. Or try skipping supper on Saturday night and then Sunday food will taste much better to you. In fact, the pleasure we receive from food has more to do with the disposition of the mouth as an organ of taste than with the food itself or as it is transformed by hands of the cook. Everyone knows a constant diet of delicacies soon makes the palate jaded. But, with abstinence, the powers of gustatory sensation are stronger, and thus even simpler foods taste better. Fasting is actually a gastronomic exercise. The vegetables and bread of the laborer taste better than the “stuff ed chicken or creamy dessert” to the leisured diner. Only this type of person needs the numerous stimulants to gluttony like olives, capers, mustard, pickles, and sour condiments, which are all irritants for a deranged palate which no longer senses hunger and needs to be artificially deceived. The same goes for pepper, cloves, ginger, nutmeg, and similar aromatics—they ultimately dull the senses. 19

The timing of these comments in the mid seventeenth century is, incidentally, just at the point that dominance of spices was giving way to purer flavors unsullied by juxtapositions of condiments. It is quite surprising to find it in a theological tract on fasting though. In any case, Drexel off ers what appears to be the quintessential Catholic Reformation appeal, not merely commanding obedience to the Church but rather making a logical and impassioned argument favoring the benefits of following the Lenten fast as prescribed as well as fasting in general and living a basically abstemious life. Most important, Drexel stresses fasting for the right reasons: as a form of penance and as a way to help moderate the passions and prevent us from sinning. Here too he is very clear about the ultimate payoff : eternal life.

The book on fasting by Dallaeus comes from a totally diff erent ideological and theological standpoint, though makes much the same arguments. Even though the prescribed Lenten fast is criticized as popish superstition, he still favors a general kind of frugality and simplicity (which of course is typical among Calvinists and Puritans) as well as a proper Old Testament fast, the serious chest-pounding lamentation with dirt in your hair and rent clothes. Dallaeus argues that the primary reason to fast is to punish your body so as to avert God’s wrath. It is much better to punish yourself than to let Him do it. Not that this gains merit or contributes to salvation in any way (for all Protestants that is faith alone). Nonetheless, there is a conception of God very actively intervening in human aff airs, and witnessing the faithful in active contrition, confessing their sins, and punishing themselves as a way to show their sincere interest in reforming truly pleases God.

It’s also interesting that while the fish days, saints’ days, and Lenten fasts were all abolished among Calvinists, they did conduct public fasts, again exactly the kind that were in the Old Testament, either to gain favor in battle, avert some impending disaster or epidemic, or even just to begin some great project auspiciously. The English Parliament, for example, regularly held an official fast before the opening of each session in the seventeenth century.

In any case, Dallaeus, writing in the 1650s, just before the revocation of the Edict of Nantes when Huguenots were expelled from France, is primarily concerned with countering the standard Catholic conception of a fast as abstinence from meat in specifically prescribed days: Saturdays, for various saint’s days, and of course through Lent. He approaches the topic as a historian, on the one hand distancing himself from any idea of food somehow being unclean (a Levitical notion), yet promoting the kind of voluntary fasts one finds in the Old Testament, like Moses on Mount Sinai or Joel on Mount Horeb, that were replicated in Jesus’s forty-day fast and the fasting among the apostles.

What is particularly striking is that, like Drexel, Dallaeus intimately understood the details of Baroque cookery and the whole battery of roasts, jumbled-up stews, condiments, and delicate wines that are eaten during fast days but simply do not include meat. To him, these defeat the whole purpose of fasting. Can it be called a fast when “we do not taste meat, but every variety of fish, condiments and vegetables are laid out, and the stomach is inundated with wine most generously, which is belched forth in drunkenness.” 20 Again this is a matter of following the letter of the law rather than its intended spirit. In place of this, he suggests that year-round frugality is far more virtuous and more appropriately fits the kind of sober lifestyle promoted by Calvinists—because intemperance in food is directly connected to intemperance in other vices.

Dallaeus is extremely insightful on this point: Serving lavish meals leads to the sin of pride—because you’re flaunting your wealth. This in turn causes envy among others. Gluttony itself is a sin, because you’re eating food that could otherwise feed hungry people—so it leads to the sin of avarice and neglect of charity. Drunkeness obviously leads to loss of control, libidinousness, and a variety of other sins. Who is more holy, the poor peasant or the Apician priest who imagines it’s a hardship to linger for “no more than two hours” at his meal of exquisitely prepared fishes? 21 This is not considered a sin, yet to even taste a tiny lump of dry bacon is considered a mortal sin during Lent. Even worse in his mind are the throngs of obedient Catholics who believe that following these arbitrary and capricious rules will somehow count as a good work, as Cardinal Bellarmine claimed, and that his will contribute to their salvation.

The real strength of Dallaeus’s argument are the many passages in the New Testament that show no food bad in itself, an idea which even the early Church Fathers condemned as a form of heresy among the Manichaeans and various other vegetarian groups. He shows, rightfully, that the idea that meat corrupts the spirit and increases the libido has no Christian foundation, but is rather medical. It can be traced back to Greek medicine, which posits that meat is the most nutritious substance, best suited to increase our own blood and flesh, and directly converted into sperm, which in turn activates the libido. Dallaeus may have been aware of the shift in medical theory away from orthodox Galenism, but, even if he did not, he claims definitively that one would have to be pretty stupid (“stultus es, si hoc putas”) to think that “meat is the seed of the libido, and thus promotes it, and to believe that anyone who tastes a crumb of meat is thus contaminated.” 22 It is gluttony and drunkenness, an excess of food elaborately prepared, that corrupts us, not meat itself eaten in moderation.

Strikingly, Dallaeus is not arguing to abolish fasting per se. He merely wants it to be a voluntary act, a kind of exercise, which is useful when accompanied by prayer and undertaken with the right goals in mind. In no way can it be considered a necessary rite, something conducted out of mere obedience to the Church and of course not in the form of elegant fish meals. In the end both Dallaeus and Drexel are arguing many of the same points—decidedly moving away from the whole fast-and-feast mentality of the Middle Ages and arguing for fasting as a means of strengthening body and soul and keeping us morally vigilant. In that respect both are remarkably modern. We can never be sure whether people actually followed their recommendations, but readers, or the congregations to which clerical readers preached, would probably have been made to feel guilty for their eating habits, and the whole idea of year-round frugality and abstemiousness as a moral ideal is certainly something new on the cultural landscape.

In the end, it appears that fasting was considered such an integral part of Christianity, an indispensible component of penance, that theologians, regardless of denomination, were loath to abolish it altogether. In the process of debating the importance of fasting, they changed its nature or at least attempted to make it a conscious and deliberate act of piety rather than a rote habitual practice.

Notes

1 . Ulrich Zwingli, “Concerning Choice and Liberty Respecting Food,” in Early Writings , ed. Samuel Macauley Jackson (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 1999), 70–112.
2 . Ibid., 83.
3 . A recent exception is Mentzer, “Fasting, Piety, and Political Anxiety.”
4 . Anonymous, The Wonderful Eff ects of a True and Religious Fast (London: John Thomas, 1642), 180, n. g, which cites Augustine, epistle 86, among other sources.
5 . The primary sources for these ideas are recounted in detail in Grimm, F rom Feasting to Fasting .
6 . Take, for example, George Buddle, A Short and Plaine Discourse Fully Containing the Whole Doctrine of Evangelicall Fastes (London: Mathew Law, 1609), which focuses on the meaning of this passage.
7 . Montanari, The Culture of Food ; Henisch, Fast and Feast .
8 . Erasmus, “Ichthyophagia.”
9 . See especially Erasmus, Duae Homiliae Civi Basilii de laudibus iejunij (Friburgum Brisgoae: Ioannes Emmeus, 1532). 
10 . Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World , trans. Helene Iswolsky (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984); Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (New York:Harper, 1978).
11 . Martin Luther, “An Appeal to the Ruling Class of German Nationality as to the Amelioration of the State of Christendom,” in Selections from His Writings , ed. John Dillenberger (Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1961), 456.
12 . Kenneth Ronald Davis, Anabaptism and Asceticism (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 1998).
13 . Drexel, Aloe Amari sed salubris succi Ieiunium .
14 . Dallaeus, De Jejuniis et Quadragemisa Liber.
15 . Drexel, Aloe Amari sed salubris succi Ieiunium , 27.
16 . Ibid., 49–50.
17 . Ibid., 69–70.
18 . Ibid., 74.
19 . Ibid., 135–144.
20 . Dallaeus, De Jejuniis et Quadragemisa Liber , 22. “vi in singulorum culinas, ac coenacula irrumpunt, & quid quisque coenet non curiose modo, sed etiam impudenter scrutantur. Homines coeli disciplinam professi Theologiam suam ad lances, & cacabos, & ollas, & patinas demittunt; magnaque & supercilios gravitate de ossis, & condimentis, & esculentorum invenio, atque paratura jus dicunt.” It should be noted that the author shows an intimate familiarity with baroque cookery.
21 . Ibid., 52–53.
22 . Ibid., 108.

By Ken Albalain "Food and Faith in Christian Culture", editrd by Ken Albala & Trudy Eden, Columbia University Press, New York, 2011, excerpts pp.41-57. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.

Union Stockyards, Chicago, 1947

In 1910 a bulletin from the federal Census Bureau called New York the “greatest manufacturing centre on earth.” Five of its twenty-one largest industries, employing 65,000 people, were food-related: sugar refining, slaughtering and meatpacking, baking bread and other products, malt liquor manufacturing, and candy-making. All except butchering held “first place” in their respective fields.

While Chicago, “Hog Butcher to the World,” boasted a bigger meat industry than New York, thousands of cattle were still slaughtered daily in the city. Trains transported them from the western United States to New Jersey, where they rested for a day before crossing the Hudson River by boat to Manhattan or Brooklyn. The city’s “chief abattoirs” were United Dressed Beef Company, which prepared 80 percent of its meat for the kosher market, and Schwarzschild & Sulzberger.

In 1895, Chicago’s Big Four meatpackers—Swift, Armour, Wilson, and Cudahy—formed the Beef Trust, and New York’s Schwarzschild & Sulzberger “joined hands” with these “Westerners.” The packers banded up to stiff ranchers and gouge consumers.

Though meat prices climbed to their highest level since the start of the Civil War, the companies denied collusion. Ferdinand Sulzberger “declared that prices were high because farmers of the West were not able to supply the packers.”

When the Beef Trust hiked prices by 50 percent in 1902, the city’s retail kosher butchers, selling an average of 600,000 pounds of meat weekly, closed their shops to force the wholesalers to cut prices. But talks went nowhere. “It makes no difference to us whatsoever,” Ferdinand Sulzberger told the Times. “If the butchers do not require the meat, then we will not be obliged to ship so many cattle. If they want to reduce the price they will have to go out West and try to do it. We cannot help them in any way.” That cavalier attitude came easily to him because there was “scarcely a town that is not reached by [our] branch houses, distributing points and sales agencies . . . throughout the United States and at many European points.”

The wholesalers wouldn’t budge, and at the end of a week the butchers reopened their shops, saying that their customers had been “besieging” them and it was “useless” to stay closed. But they badly misread public opinion. Rather than rushing into the shops to buy meat that had just risen six cents a pound, neighborhood women engaged in a spontaneous riot that spread beyond the Lower East Side to Jewish neighborhoods in upper Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. During the three-week boycott, women doused meat in the shops with carbolic acid and dragged carcasses into the street. To cross boycott lines was to take your life in your hands, and neighbors who continued to buy meat were shunned.Some extremists even entered people’s kitchens, “picking up whatever meat they could find to throw on the street, where it was caught and pitched about and
trampled upon.”

Rioting women were injured in scuffles with police, and hundreds were arrested in the “great struggle for cheap meat.” The police and the Times both deplored this “dangerous class” of protesters, who “mostly speak a foreign tongue.” “Let the blows fall instantly and effectively,” an editorial demanded. During one of the many meetings held by the boycotters, a flier was distributed that said, “The people feel very justly that they are being ground down, not only by the Beef Trust of the country, but also by the Jewish Beef Trust of the City.” Boycotting proved futile in the face of such power; when the boycott ended on June 5, meat cost two cents more a pound.

Later that year, the government investigated the Beef Trust, particularly the practices of United Dressed Beef and Schwarzschild & Sulzberger, whose vice president, Samuel Weil, told the Tribune in 1903 that the company had “no connection with the meat merger [of the Big Four]” and was “perfectly independent.” Four executives from Schwarzschild & Sulzberger eventually pled guilty to charges of accepting kickbacks from the railroad companies but settled just as they were about to go to trial, paying a hefty fine. The firm then severed the connections with the “combination” that it denied it had made.


S & S IN DISTRESS

The Germanic name Sulzberger became a liability during the early years of World War I. Although Sulzberger and Sons (previously named Schwarzschild & Sulzberger) had been doing business in England and France for decades, both governments confiscated meat shipments exported by it, questioning the origin of its meat. Sweden, once a huge market for the company, was cut off, and the firm’s foreign market evaporated.

Loss of its European business substantially weakened the company. In both 1913 and 1914 there were negotiations with the Chicago meatpackers Swift (which owned a large chunk of stock) and Armour over carving up the company between them. By 1915 the company, the family’s fortune, and the livelihood of its 750 workers were in jeopardy. At the last minute a group of New York bankers stepped in to save it. The Sulzberger family still owned a large block of stock but had lost control of the company.

By John Santlofer in " Food City- Four Centuries of Food-Making in New York", W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 2016, chapter 41. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.

Five hundred sausage companies of all sizes graced New York in 1926. One of the largest, Hygrade Products, had been opened by Samuel Slotkin on South Street in Brooklyn in 1914, with $15,000 and twelve employees. When the fifteen-year-old Slotkin left Russia, he couldn’t decide whether to study art in Paris or go to America, where two of his six brothers were living. He chose New York but traveled on to Buffalo, where one brother had settled, and worked as a photographer and painter. After a few years he returned to New York and took a job curing meats in the cellar of the Zimmerman Provision Company on Houston Street, where, working from five in the morning until eight at night, he eventually rose to clerk. Slotkin moved on to a salesman position for the Gomprecht Sausage Company on Columbus Avenue because the owners, he claimed, were “a nice bunch” making “a high-class sausage,” and he built up a huge clientele, including Gimbel’s and Bloomingdale’s.

The 1906 publication of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle hit the sausage business hard; the book’s graphic descriptions of Chicago’s meatpacking plants shocked everyone. Slotkin carefully studied Gomprecht’s sausages, deemed them sanitary, and set about rebuilding sales, but a power struggle within the Gomprecht family prompted him to return to Zimmerman’s. Over the next four years he stayed at home, fielding telephone orders from clients up and down the eastern seaboard. In his silk top hat and cape, he and his dolled-up wife were a familiar sight at the opera, museums, and tony cafés. Zimmerman’s didn’t care for his flashy lifestyle, however, and the dapper dresser left to start his own meat-processing business, Hygrade.

Slotkin’s clients all followed him to his new enterprise, which made a variety of meats, though his “first loyalty” was to his first product, the frankfurter. His were always all beef and came with a skin, because otherwise “all the juice leaks out.”

In 1927 Hygrade merged with eight other companies to form Hygrade Food Products Company. According to the Washington Post, it was “the first consolidation of delicatessen food properties ever effected” and included some of the biggest sausage-makers in New York and Philadelphia. The combined company manufactured frankfurters, bologna, salami, smoked and cured tongue, spiced, pickled, and corned beef, and other ready-to-serve meat products and sold them to over five thousand delicatessens, chain stores, meat markets, clubs, grocers, hotels, restaurants, and steamship and railroad companies throughout the United States and around the world. It had plants in Europe, South America, Ireland, French Morocco, Australia, and New Zealand. Slotkin was the firm’s president, and within two years the company recorded sales of $9 million. But the restless Slotkin was ready to expand further. His first purchase was Chicago’s Allied Packers, which had sales six times greater than Hygrade’s but was in bankruptcy. The vertically integrated Hygrade could now “transfer meat from the prairie to the retail butcher.” Hygrade Foods cleverly weathered the Depression by making cheap food—packaged beef and pork products, especially frankfurters—at its offshore plants.

Another New York sausage millionaire, with factories throughout America, was Adolf Göbel (also spelled Adolph Goebel), maker of sausages, fresh and smoked meats, ham, bologna, corned beef, bacon, and lard. The German immigrant, who began in New York as a peddler with a straw basket, opened a factory on Morgan Avenue in Brooklyn and by 1921 employed 220 men and ran 75 delivery trucks.

After Adolf Göbel died, in 1924, his wife, Ottilie, was named the sole executor of his $3 million estate, including his company. His will stipulated that his son, Adolf Jr., should become the firm’s president. The younger Göbel opened a second packing plant next door to the New York Butchers Dressed Meat Company on 39th Street, doubled the number of employees, and expanded his fleet to ninety-six trucks. All went smoothly for about a year, until Ottilie married Dr. Sigwart J. Reed, a sculptor hired to design a mausoleum for her husband. Ottilie and her new husband fired Adolf Jr., but he and his older sister did not take the firing, or the marriage, lying down. Together they hired a private investigator, who discovered that Reed, whose real name was Josef Rittmier, was a serial bigamist, with one wife in Philadelphia and another in Germany. The mortified Mrs. Göbel filed for an annulment but was ousted as executor of the estate by her children, and the duplicitous Dr. Reed vanished. The company was then sold to a group of bankers.

In 1927, the new firm, called Adolf Göbel, Inc., went on a buying spree, acquiring four local companies. It added another local company in 1928, plus four large firms in different parts of the country. In 1930, “Göbel’s—Quality First—Pure Meat Products” sold a record 243,715,995 pounds of meat. By the 1940s the company had moved to North Bergen, New Jersey, and been bought by a notorious swindler, Tino De Angelis, who, among other criminal exploits, sold over 2 million pounds of uninspected meat to the New York school lunch program.

One of Göbel’s competitors, Stahl-Meyer, was formed when three sausage companies, each with its own specialties, merged in 1928. Otto Stahl, opened in 1895, was famous for its bologna. Louis Meyer, Inc., which was also formed in 1895 in Brooklyn, made bacon, ham, and European-style canned frankfurters. The third company, F. A. Ferris, founded in 1836, had an international market for hams. Together they produced a full line of prepared meat products. The merged Stahl-Meyer claimed to have over 9,800 delicatessens and butchers as their customers and over $9 million in annual sales.

In 1928, Isadore Pinckowitz, a Romanian immigrant who worked for a butcher on the Lower East Side, bought the Hebrew National Kosher Sausage Factory at 155 East Broadway from the bankrupt previous owners. Pinckowitz sold the firm’s kosher sausages and hot dogs to delicatessens, restaurants, and grocery stores. After the 1929 crash, many sausage companies struggled, but Hebrew National flourished. The products made by the Hebrew National Kosher Sausage Factory were filling and cheaper than steak, which was just what people wanted in the Depression.


HOT DOGS CAN’T STRIKE

By 1900 sausages were so popular that a city district was known as the “great sausage belt.” The area, east of the Bowery between Canal and Houston Streets, was home to several dozen small manufacturers, including Hebrew National Kosher Sausage. The city’s two hundred sausage-makers prepared kosher and nonkosher versions in long, short, fat, and thin links. Ingredients included smoked liver, beef, lamb, pork, and ham. Products included blood pudding, head cheese, garlic sausages, salamis, cervelat, Hungarian sausages, Polish kielbasa, bratwurst, knockwurst, and weisswurst.

Over six thousand sausage-makers worked in these factories, and when they went on strike for higher wages and better working conditions in 1901, Coney Island feared a hot dog famine. Charles Feltman, impresario of the island’s German Gardens restaurant, must have been close to panic. His 1,200 waiters served 8,000 meals a day, including millions of hot dogs—so many that seven grills were needed to cook them all.

By John Santlofer in " Food City- Four Centuries of Food-Making in New York", W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 2016, chapter 42. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.

Joseph accompagné de ses fils (Musée de Chora - Istanbul)

Jacques, Joseph, Jude et Simon, évoqués par les textes sacrés, posent quatre problèmes de taille pour les tenants de la virginité de Marie...

À chaque fois que l’on évoque la famille de Jésus, les amateurs de théories du complot dressent l’oreille. Selon eux, Marie aurait eu de nombreux enfants, mais l’Église se serait empressée d’éradiquer jusqu’à leur souvenir, car leur présence gênait sa fameuse théorie de la virginité. Heureusement, quelques privilégiés bien informés réussiraient à « rétablir la vérité » grâce à des documents tenus secrets.

En réalité, rien n’est plus faux. Comme l’écrit Simon Claude Mimouni dans son excellente enquête sur Jacques ( Jacques le Juste, frère de Jésus de Nazareth , Bayard, 2015) : « L’existence des frères et des soeurs de Jésus est explicitement afirmée dans la documentation canonique, dans la documentation apocryphe et dans la documentation patristique. » Autrement dit, elle se trouve devant les yeux de tous.

En effet, non seulement le texte sacré parle de la famille de Jésus, mais il donne de surcroît les noms de la fratrie (Marc, 6, 1-6 et Matthieu, 13, 53-58) : Jacques, Joseph/José, Simon, Jude/Judas. On parle aussi des soeurs de Jésus, mais sans les nommer : Matthieu 13, 53-58 ; Marc, 3, 20-35 et 6, 1-6 (« N’est-ce pas le ls de Marie et le frère de Jacques, de Josès, de Jude et de Simon ? et ses soeurs, ne sont-elles pas ici ? »).

Ces mentions sont d’autant plus fiables qu’elles témoignent d’un certain malaise : il semble que, dans un premier temps, les proches de Jésus se soient montrés hostiles à son message, et cette opposition aurait été bien facile à supprimer si l’on avait eu le moindre doute sur l’existence de cette encombrante famille.

L’évangéliste Marc n’y va en effet pas de main morte : il raconte comment, outrés des déclarations de Jésus, ses proches « se mirent en route pour venir le prendre, car ils disaient : Il a perdu la raison ! » (Marc, 3, 21). Paul de Tarse appelle quant à lui Jacques « le frère du Seigneur » (1 Corinthiens, 9, 4-5) et y fait plusieurs fois référence dans les deux premiers chapitres de l’épître aux Galates, ce qui prouve l’importance du personnage.

Un grand rôle qui est confirmée par les Actes des Apôtres, où l’on voit Jacques diriger la communauté de Jérusalem et présider la « réunion de crise » de 49, qui rassemble toutes les tendances du christianisme naissant : christianisme issu du judaïsme de Judée de Jacques, christianisme à coloration plus galiléenne de Pierre, christianisme issu du judaïsme de diaspora de Paul.

Ces différentes tendances s’opposent sur les questions de commensalité : faut-il admettre des païens à la table commune ? Oui, répond saint Paul, sans doute habitué à un tel usage dans des contrées où le judaïsme n’est pas majoritaire. Non, rétorque Jacques, qui vit à Jérusalem.

Les deux versions connues de la réunion – celle de Paul dans les Galates, et celles des Actes des Apôtres – sont un peu divergentes et ne permettent pas de savoir si l’on est parvenu à un véritable accord ou si les parties se sont quittées sur un malentendu en croyant chacune (ou en faisant mine de le croire) avoir fait triompher son point de vue. Mais toutes deux s’accordent en revanche pour reconnaître un grand poids à la gure de Jacques.

Cette autorité ne provient certainement pas de l’importance numérique ou de la richesse de la communauté de Jérusalem qu’il dirige : Paul ne cesse de dire dans ses lettres qu’elle est pauvre, et d’organiser des collectes pour lui venir en aide. Elle est plutôt une autorité morale, qui repose sur deux éléments.

Une Église moins « juive »

Le premier est la profonde piété dont Jacques fait montre, et dont Flavius Josèphe, pourtant non chrétien, se fait encore l’écho plus de quarante ans après sa mort. Dans un passage perdu, conservé par Origène et confirmé par d’autres auteurs, il semble avoir imputé la chute de Jérusalem en 70 à la mort de Jacques : « Et [Flavius], bien que ne considérant pas que Jésus fût le Christ, cherche la cause de la chute de Jérusalem et de la ruine du Temple [...] Il n’est pas loin de la vérité quand il afirme que ces catastrophes arrivèrent aux Juifs pour venger Jacques le Juste, le frère de Jésus appelé le Christ, parce qu’ils l’avaient tué en dépit de son éclatante justice » ( Contre Celse , I, 47).

Vers la même époque, au IIe siècle, un chrétien converti, Hégésippe de Jérusalem – cité deux siècles plus tard par Eusèbe de Césarée –, écrit : « Jacques, le frère du Seigneur, reçut l’administration de l’Église avec les apôtres [...]. Il fut sancti é dès le sein de sa mère : il ne buvait ni vin ni boisson enivrante, ne mangeait rien qui ait eu vie ; le rasoir n’avait jamais passé sur sa tête ; il ne se faisait jamais oindre et s’abstenait des bains. À lui seul il était permis d’entrer dans le sanctuaire ; car ses habits n’étaient pas de laine, mais de lin. Il entrait seul dans le Temple et on l’y trouvait à genoux demandant pardon pour le peuple. La peau de ses genoux était devenue dure comme celle des chameaux, parce qu’il était constamment prosterné adorant Dieu et demandant pardon pour le peuple. Son éminente justice du reste le faisait appeler le Juste » ( Histoire ecclésiastique, II, 23).

Le second élément qui vient valider la position de Jacques est précisément son appartenance à la famille de Jésus, que conforme la liste des chefs de la communauté de Jérusalem (que l’on peut reconstruire à partir des témoignages anciens et, en particulier, d’Eusèbe de Césarée) : à sa mort, en 62, c’est son frère Simon qui lui succède, puis son autre frère Jude. Tout semble indiquer qu’une sorte de « succession dynastique » (selon l’expression de Simon Mimouni) – ou de « califat », selon celle de Richard Baukham – a été mise en place en choisissant les chefs de la communauté dans la fratrie de Jésus.

Pourquoi ce prestige s’effaça-t-il et pourquoi la papauté se fonde-t-elle sur la succession de Pierre et non sur celle de Jacques ? La citation d’Hégésippe nous livre la solution : Jacques, proche du Temple, représentait un christianisme très ancré dans le judaïsme de Judée, dans lequel les chrétiens des générations suivantes ne se reconnurent plus.

La manipulation des sources

Les communautés d’origine juive disparurent ou furent marginalisées, et leurs écrits – qui se réclament souvent de Jacques, preuve supplémentaire du lien qu’il entretenait avec ces tendances – ne nous sont parvenus que par quelques allusions ou quelques fragments. Aussi est-ce déjà un personnage un peu oublié que Jérôme de Stridon ravala au rang de simple cousin du Christ en 382 dans son traité contre Helvidius (un hérétique romain). En effet, jusqu’à saint Jérôme, on considérait que la fratrie était née après la naissance de Jésus, qui était l’aîné (ce qui correspond aux textes évangéliques, af irme Helvidius, qui s’élève contre la « virginité perpétuelle » de Marie, que défendra saint Jérôme), ou bien que cette fratrie était le fruit d’un premier mariage de Joseph (ce qui permet de sauvegarder cette virginité de Marie, ce qui était l’opinion de Clément d’Alexandrie, d’Origène, d’Hilaire de Poitiers ou d’Épiphane de Salamine, et qui est encore celle de l’Église orthodoxe). Jérôme en fait un cousin et le confond avec l’un des douze apôtres – un quasi-inconnu, Jacques, fils d’Alphée –, au prix de complexes considérations généalogiques.

Les frères et les soeurs devenus des cousins et des cousines achèvent de faire disparaître Jacques du devant de la scène, mais cette disparition était depuis longtemps en cours. S’il paraît avoir été dans l’ombre de son frère Jacques, Jude – il s’appelait en réalité Judas, mais l’usage français permet d’éviter la confusion avec l’Iscariote – n’en fut pas moins un personnage très important de la communauté de Jérusalem, qu’il dirigea après ses deux frères.

En effet, un écrit du Nouveau Testament lui est attribué, l’épître de Jude. Ce texte très bref conforme l’ancrage judéen de la communauté de Jérusalem. Pour conforter les membres de sa communauté soumis à l’épreuve, celui qui se nomme « Jude, frère de Jacques » fait référence à un texte apocalyptique juif, le livre d’Hénoch, et adopte une technique littéraire en vogue : traiter un texte ancien comme s’il se rapportait à l’époque actuelle.

Une lignée paysanne

On ne sait rien de plus de la vie de ce Jude, ce qui autorisa plusieurs Églises à en faire leur saint patron (Syrie, Mésopotamie, Édesse, et même Arménie). L’historien Eusèbe de Césarée rapporte que des descendants de ce Jude vivaient encore à l’époque de l’empereur Domitien (84-96) et que celuici les convoqua. Il les relâcha promptement en constatant que c’étaient des paysans aux mains calleuses qui prêchaient un message sans aucun danger politique. Eusèbe ajoute : « Une fois délivrés, ils dirigèrent les Églises, à la fois comme martyrs et parents du Seigneur » (Histoire ecclésiastique, III, 20), preuve que les chefs des communautés de Judée étaient encore choisis dans la famille de Jésus.

ENTRETIEN: AVEC FRANÇOISE CHANDERNAGOR

« Jude, un témoin ordinaire »

HISTORIA Votre livre relate la vie de Jude, le frère cadet de Jésus. Qu’est-ce qui vous a donné envie de retracer cette histoire comme s’il s’agissait d’un manuscrit écrit par Jude lui-même ?

F. C. J’ai voulu faire un travail d’historienne pour restituer, à travers la famille de Jésus, tant avant sa mort qu’après, quelques aspects de la Palestine de l’époque : par exemple quand Pierre, Paul et Jacques doivent arbitrer entre chrétiens d’origine juive et ceux d’origine païenne ; quand les premières communautés se structurent dans un pays opprimé par l’armée romaine...J’ai voulu l’écrire à la première personne dans le style biblique du Ier  siècle pour immerger mes lecteurs dans la Judée de cette époque. Un exercice de style exigeant, complexe à mettre en oeuvre.

Sur quels textes vous êtes-vous appuyée ?

Sur les quatre Évangiles, bien sûr, les épîtres de Paul et les textes des Pères de l’Église. Sans oublier les évangiles apocryphes, dont celle de Thomas, vraisemblablement rédigé vers 150 et découvert en Égypte en 1945, qui recueille des paroles du Christ.

Pourquoi vous êtes-vous intéressée à Jude plutôt qu’à Jacques, l’autre célèbre frère de Jésus ?

C’est sur Jacques effectivement que nous possédons le plus d’éléments biographiques. Contrairement à Simon et José, les deux autres frères, pour lesquels on n’en a aucun. Jacques est quelqu’un de remarquable qui a dirigé l’église de Jérusalem, c’est aussi le premier évêque de la première communauté. Nous savons par un historien antique non chrétien qu’il est mort lapidé en 62, parce qu’il dérangeait les grands prêtres du Temple. Mais je lui ai préféré un témoin ordinaire, le benjamin de la fratrie, Jude, qui regarde son frère aîné avec admiration et traverse des aventures extraordinaires. Nous savons par un Père de l’Église que Jude eut des petits-enfants, Jacob et Zocker ; je lui ai donc imaginé toute une existence.

Quelles ont été les étapes de la reconstruction de cette fratrie ?

C’est à partir du XVIIIe siècle que des exégètes protestants commencent à élaborer une critique des textes pour retrouver le « Jésus historique ». Le théologien Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) a poursuivi ce travail, et, plus récemment, un prêtre catholique américain, professeur d’université, John Paul Meier, dans un ouvrage de quatre mille pages, Un certain juif, Jésus. Meier, comme avant lui Pierre-Antoine Bernheim ou l’historien Simon - Claude Mimouni, conclut à l’existence de frères biologiques.

Y a-t-il eu une volonté d’occulter cette famille ?

De la part des Pères de l’Église, sûrement pas. J’ai été frappée par le fait qu’ils n’avaient pas voulu réaliser une synthèse de la vie de Jésus exempte de contradictions. Ils attachaient beaucoup d’importance à l’existence historique de Jésus et ont fait l’effort d’en restituer toutes les traces – ce qui nous permet aujourd’hui de faire une critique historique qu’on n’aurait pu réaliser s’ils ne nous avaient transmis qu’un texte « harmonieux », arrangé par leurs soins.

Y a-t-il eu ensuite des controverses virulentes ?

Oui, bien sûr : lors du concile d’Éphèse en 431, qui a opposé Nestorius (patriarche de Constantinople) à Cyrille (évêque d’Alexandrie), tristement célèbre pour avoir fait lapider la philosophe grecque Hypathie. Le concile devait trancher pour savoir quel titre donner à Marie : Christotokos, « mère du Christ », comme le souhaitait Nestorius pour rester dèle à la double nature, divine et humaine, de Jésus, ou Theotokos, « mère de Dieu », comme l’af rmait Cyrille. C’est lui qui l’emporta, amorçant ainsi un processus de divinisation progressif de Marie. Deux cents ans plus tard (près de sept siècles après la naissance du Christ) fut établi le dogme de la virginité perpétuelle de sa mère... Autant dire qu’il n’était plus question d’évoquer l’idée même d’une fratrie.

Paradoxe, car le christianisme est bien une religion qui prétend avoir un dieu entré dans l’histoire des hommes ?

Exactement. Ces manoeuvres théologiques ont à nouveau éloigné Dieu des hommes, comme quand Zeus passait son temps à faire des enfants à des vierges en se transformant en pluie d’or ou en brouillard... Je trouve dommage qu’une religion qui a voulu donner à son dieu un destin humain pour mieux en faire un dieu d’amour refuse la réalité de la fratrie de Jésus. Elle refuse une lecture historique qui peut d’ailleurs s’accommoder de la notion de conception virginale, comme c’est le cas dans mon roman. Je montre que Jésus est le ls préféré de Marie, qu’il est pour elle « unique ». Des lecteurs peuvent voir là une préférence psychologique. Les croyants, eux, peuvent penser que c’est parce que Marie sait que cet enfant n’était pas comme les autres. Jude, dans mon roman, ne lève pas ce mystère...

(PROPOS RECUEILLIS PAR HUGUES DEMEUDE)

Par Regis Burnet dans "L'Énigme des Frères de Jésus",n.829, janvrier 2016, France, pp. 42-46. Adapté et illustré pour être posté par Leopoldo Costa

Food porn: origine ed evoluzione di un concetto

Food porn è l’espressione ormai comunemente utilizzata per indicare la pratica di chi fotografa il cibo – che sta per mangiare o che ha cucinato – e condivide poi l’immagine sui social network. Si tratta di un fenomeno che negli ultimi anni si è diffuso in modo così rilevante, che – per descriverne in parte la dimensione – nel momento in cui si sta scrivendo l’espressione “food porn” conta 67.895.040 post su Instagram (#food porn), 67.400.000 risultati su Google, una voce wikipedia e una pagina su facebook con 1.964.773 “like”.

L’origine del concetto di food porn è attribuita da alcuni a Roland Barthes, che lo definì «ciò che offre fantasie a coloro che non possono permettersi di cucinare certi pasti»1, mentre l’uso recente del termine pare ricondursi a Michael Jacobson, che lo ha utilizzato in contrapposizione al concetto di sana alimentazione – “Food Porn vs Right Stuff” – argomentando la necessità di pensare a un termine «per connotare un cibo così clamorosamente fuori dai limiti di ciò che un alimento dovrebbe essere, da meritare di essere considerato pornografico». Food porn, infatti, evoca quell’idea di irraggiungibile che, come nella pornografia, stimola fantasie e immaginari2.

Secondo altri3 il termine food porn si è invece diffuso a partire dal 1984, dopo che la scrittrice femminista Rosalind Coward lo ha utilizzato nel libro Female Desire. Women’s Sexuality Today per parlare dello spostamento dal concetto di cibo come dono al cibo come piacere estetico. Secondo la scrittrice, l’immagine del cibo – la presentazione, l’estetica del piatto – verrebbe progressivamente ad assumere maggiore importanza di chi (e come) l’ha cucinato. Invece il dono, che consiste nel preparare una pietanza con affetto e condividerla con amore, non viene contemplato nella pornografia del cibo; è semmai la scenografia del cibo ad assumere importanza, e con essa il desiderio che stimola, paragonabile a quello sessuale.

Il fenomeno food porn ha anche prodotto una serie di derive critiche: dai blog che raccolgono fotografie di persone che fotografano il cibo – per esempio Pictures of Hipsters taking Pictures of Food – ad artisti come il designer David Schwen, che nel progetto Pantone Pairings trasforma gli alimenti solitamente accostati nei piatti – prosciutto e formaggio, carote e piselli, latte e biscotti – nei quadratini colorati dei cataloghi di classificazione cromatica Pantone.

Di recente, anche la comicità ha preso di mira la pratica di fotografare il cibo: nella parodia Lo chiamavano Chef Rubio4, il duo Actual ricostruisce la storia del recente film di successo Lo chiamavano Jeeg Robot (G. Mainetti, 2015) partendo dalla mania di fotografare il cibo e condividere l’immagine su Instagram, dalla quale il supereroe deve salvare le persone perché, come dice la protagonista femminile, “qua se se mettono tutti a fotografà i piatti, succede un macello, non magna più nessuno… salvali tutti, tu che puoi”.

In generale, nella società dei consumi, la moderna soggettività non si esprime nell’atto materiale di acquisto o di consumo, ma nella ricerca e nell’attesa del piacere: un “edonismo mentale” derivante dallo iato tra desiderio e compimento5. Anche nel passaggio al food porn è proprio l’anticipazione, piuttosto che l’esperienza, a divenire la questione centrale: il food design, l’accostamento cromatico degli alimenti e “l’impiattamento” – termine entrato ormai nell’uso comune proprio grazie alle gare culinarie televisive – non hanno a che fare con il godimento ma con la mera dimensione estetica di esso.

Dal momento in cui l’attenzione per l’estetica ha reso le persone consapevoli di sé e del mondo fisico a loro circostante come potenziali esperienze e oggetti di bellezza sensuale, il cibo, considerato oramai simbolo della capacità di saper vivere bene, ha cominciato a configurarsi come territorio privilegiato per costruire il desiderio dell’anticipazione di esperienze sensuali.

Il food porn ha soprattutto a che fare con la diffusione di discorsi intorno al cibo, in particolare per quel che riguarda la messa in mostra del piacere, ciò che il semiologo Gianfranco Marrone ha definito “gastromania”6. Guardare altri che cucinano o gustano piatti che non si mangeranno mai, come avviene seguendo i cooking show, mettere in mostra una pietanza che si sta per gustare, come anche la mania per il food design, non sarebbero altro che alcune delle possibili derivazioni di questa voyerizzazione del piacere, ovvero pratiche di food porn.

Nel panorama televisivo, il proliferare di trasmissioni di pasticceria è senza dubbio legato a diversi aspetti del food porn: chef che maneggiano ingredienti proibiti come cioccolato, burro e panna, torte che sono assunte a forma di arte, spazi dove il cibo diventa esercizio estetico.

Sono molte le trasmissioni straniere di questo tipo che trovano spazio sui canali del digitale terrestre italiano, e la più nota è senza dubbio Il boss delle torte (Real Time), ma piuttosto conosciute sono anche La fabbrica del cioccolato o La Guerra delle torte (Real Time); sulla scia di questi successi si sono diffuse molte versioni italiane degli stessi (Torte in corso con Renato, Il re del cioccolato, sempre Real Time). La struttura dei format prevede la preparazione di un particolare dolce commissionato per un’occasione speciale: possono essere gli avvenimenti più disparati a fornire la scusa per costruire una scenografia degna di un museo, dove gli ingredienti, che in ogni caso risultano in secondo piano rispetto all’estetica, contengono quantità di grassi e zuccheri inconcepibili in situazioni di quotidianità. È proprio tale eccesso estetico e calorico ad alimentare il “mentalistic hedonism” di cui si parlava sopra, un piacere voyeuristico di un food porn sdoganato dall’idea che ci sono situazioni in cui le abituali condotte di controllo e di moderazione possono essere messe da parte.

La grande abbuffata: gastroanomia e modernità alimentare

I format televisivi di pasticceria non sono certo un fenomeno isolato: in questo periodo come mai è accaduto prima, la televisione presenta da un lato una ridondanza di trasmissioni di cucina, di ricette, di gare culinarie, dall’altro un moltiplicarsi di format sulla dieta e il dimagrimento.

Già alla fine degli anni novanta Zygmunt Bauman aveva rilevato come in testa alle liste dei libri più venduti ci fossero sempre i manuali di cucina e i libri delle diete7. Secondo la sua prospettiva, ciò era l’evidente dimostrazione di quello che stava iniziando a delineare e che avrebbe rappresentato uno dei cardini del suo pensiero: la ricerca di conciliazione tra spinte contraddittorie provenienti dal livello macro e culturale e la loro ricaduta sul soggetto.

In una società in cui è coltivata una “passione consumistica” da cui è stata esclusa ogni propensione all’equilibrio, alla moderazione e alla razionalità, il corpo snello assume infatti un valore simbolico assai potente poiché codifica l’ideale di un sé perfettamente gestito, in cui tutto viene mantenuto in ordine nonostante gli imperativi culturali siano contraddittori8. La contraddizione fondamentale del sistema – ideale della magrezza da un lato e pulsione al consumo dall’altro – deve essere dunque gestita e risolta a livello individuale; anche per questo i disturbi del comportamento alimentare, e in particolare la bulimia, sono stati letti come un modo per scaricare sul corpo (individuale) quei contrasti che non trovano più soluzione in referenti sociali capaci di rappresentarne i termini ed esprimerne i conflitti9.

Anthony Giddens si occupa di questi temi in Oltre la destra e la sinistra10, un importante testo in cui si trovano delineate alcune delle principali questioni alla base delle svolte politiche degli anni Novanta. Secondo il sociologo britannico, è stato l’ampliarsi della scelta alimentare ad aver reso necessaria la dieta: il mercato globale di prodotti alimentari, ampliando la disponibilità di offerta diversificata di prodotti alimentari, rende ciò che una persona mangia parte del suo stile di vita, poiché è il frutto di una più o meno attenta costruzione. Per tutto ciò, nei paesi occidentali, la maggior parte della popolazione (tranne cioè i più indigenti) è a dieta, mentre i gusti e le preferenze alimentari divengono strumenti indispensabili per il progetto di costruzione e di presentazione del sé.

Dal momento in cui le persone hanno cominciato ad avere a disposizione un’ampia gamma di alimenti, i gusti, le preferenze e le scelte personali diventano dimostrazione, per se stessi e per gli altri, di aspetti della soggettività come il capitale culturale ed economico, il genere, ma anche l’etnia o la posizione nel ciclo di vita, in sostanza il posto all’interno della cultura11. La questione però non è affatto semplice, perché si tratta di scegliere in un contesto in cui non esistono più regole certe; in pratica, come ha spiegato ampiamente Bauman, da un lato aumenta la possibilità di scegliere, dall’altro si hanno sempre meno strumenti per saper scegliere: è per questo che la libertà diventa così onerosa sulla responsabilità individuale.

Il corpo magro parla infatti di un sé perfettamente gestito, derivante da un’incorporazione di pratiche alimentari corrette, di un soggetto che, nonostante le spinte opposte di edonismo e autocontrollo, riesce a negoziare adeguati compromessi12.

Si tratta di una evidente incoerenza resa ancor più complessa dal fatto che tutto ciò avviene in circostanze in cui, all’aumentata possibilità di scelta, corrisponde un’amplificazione della percezione dei rischi alimentari, cioè i più indigenti) è a dieta, mentre i gusti e le preferenze alimentari divengono strumenti indispensabili per il progetto di costruzione e di presentazione del sé.

Dal momento in cui le persone hanno cominciato ad avere a disposizione un’ampia gamma di alimenti, i gusti, le preferenze e le scelte personali diventano dimostrazione, per se stessi e per gli altri, di aspetti della soggettività come il capitale culturale ed economico, il genere, ma anche l’etnia o la posizione nel ciclo di vita, in sostanza il posto all’interno della cultura11. La questione però non è affatto semplice, perché si tratta di scegliere in un contesto in cui non esistono più regole certe; in pratica, come ha spiegato ampiamente Bauman, da un lato aumenta la possibilità di scegliere, dall’altro si hanno sempre meno strumenti per saper scegliere: è per questo che la libertà diventa così onerosa sulla responsabilità individuale.

Il corpo magro parla infatti di un sé perfettamente gestito, derivante da un’incorporazione di pratiche alimentari corrette, di un soggetto che, nonostante le spinte opposte di edonismo e autocontrollo, riesce a negoziare adeguati compromessi12.

Si tratta di una evidente incoerenza resa ancor più complessa dal fatto che tutto ciò avviene in circostanze in cui, all’aumentata possibilità di scelta, corrisponde un’amplificazione della percezione dei rischi alimentari, producendo quello che il giornalista Michael Pollan13 ha definito “il dilemma dell’onnivoro”: da un lato il bisogno di variare, diversificare e innovare la dieta, dall’altro l’imperativo di essere cauti perché ogni cibo sconosciuto è un potenziale pericolo. Incorporare gli alimenti significa farli diventare parte della nostra sostanza intima; perciò l’alimentazione è il campo del desiderio, dell’appetito, del piacere, ma anche della diffidenza, dell’incertezza e dell’ansia14.

In sostanza, ci si deve mostrare competenti consumatori in un contesto dove da un lato si è spinti a consumare e contemporaneamente a essere magri, dall’altro all’aumentata possibilità di scelta è corrisposta un’amplificazione della percezione dei rischi legati all’alimentazione.

Interessante a tale riguardo il concetto di gastroanomia (mancanza di norme alimentari) dell’antropologo francese Claude Fischler15: un efficace gioco di parole che vuole evidenziare come il consumatore moderno non solo non possieda più un preciso apparato normativo riguardo i costumi alimentari, ma allo stesso tempo sia soggetto a una serie di indicazioni igieniche, identitarie, edonistiche, estetiche tra di loro spesso contrastanti.

La modernità alimentare sembra infatti potersi costruire nell’interconnessione di tre fenomeni: la sovrabbondanza di cibo, la riduzione dei controlli sociali del gruppo e del mangiare insieme – che ha lasciato al consumatore il peso di una scelta sempre più individualizzata – e il moltiplicarsi dei discorsi sul cibo – che produce “una costellazione o un mosaico cacofonico e contraddittorio di criteri di scelta alimentare”16. L’esistenza nella modernità di una gastronomia priva di regole e allo stesso tempo soggetta a enormi ingiunzioni contraddittorie produce, quindi, come prima conseguenza, uno stato di confusione e di ansia per il consumatore alimentare17.

Non stupisce in questo senso che abbondino i discorsi sul cibo, su come cucinarlo, servirlo, mangiarlo o non mangiarlo. Occorrono infatti guide, suggerimenti, consigli per orientarsi nella complessità e nella contraddittorietà dello scenario alimentare. Il proliferare di format televisivi sul cibo risponde perciò a questa esigenza; tuttavia, come si vedrà, i repertori messi in circolazione dai media risultano anche funzionali a riprodurre, rafforzare oppure occultare diversi ordini discorsivi che ruotano intorno alle questioni alimentari.

La foodie culture

Nell’episodio The Food Wife, il n. 491 della serie i Simspon, Marge e i due figli Burt e Lisa aprono un food blog che chiamano The Three Mouthketeers. In breve tempo i tre blogger divengono così popolari da essere invitati a partecipare a una serata presso un ristorante di gastronomia molecolare dove incontrano altri “foodies”, ovvero raffinati gourmet contemporanei. Nella puntata appaiono inoltre alcuni chef divenuti celebrità televisive – come per esempio Gordon Ramsey e Mario Batali – e altri noti personaggi legati al mondo gastronomico; lo stesso proprietario del ristorante è una parodia dello chef José Andrés, noto per la gastronomia molecolare. Diversi sono gli ammiccamenti più o meno espliciti ai foodies, come le citazioni culinarie sulla “salsa Sriracha”, sulla “cucina sottovuoto” o sulla corretta pronuncia delle zuppe vietnamite.

Come spesso accade in questa serie televisiva, gli autori si dimostrano capaci di costruire un’efficace parodia di una sottocultura, di un fenomeno o di un movimento sociale; in questo episodio, dunque, il bersaglio della loro satira è la “foodie culture”.

La foodie culture è definibile come una sottocultura di persone che hanno grande attenzione per la qualità del cibo, che considerano lo stile alimentare come parte della costruzione e della rappresentazione del sé, che seguono i movimenti culinari (il consumo etico, lo Slow Food), le trasmissioni di grandi chef e i blog sul cibo18.

La foodie culture ha un serie di icone di riferimento come gli chef stellati, i leader dei movimenti alimentari e culinari e i più celebri food blogger, ma soprattutto è prodotta dalla (e riflessivamente contribuisce a produrre la) costruzione mediatica di discorsi intorno al cibo: la pratica di fotografare il cibo per poi diffondere le foto nei social network è considerata parte della cosiddetta foodie culture.

I foodies – considerati l’evoluzione democratizzata della categoria, più snob e ormai anacronistica, dei gourmet – sono persone che dimostrano e mettono in scena un serio interesse per il cibo, pur non essendo professionisti agro-alimentari. Essi seguono la passione per il cibo nelle loro cucine ma anche fuori casa: nei ristoranti, nei mercatini contadini, nelle fiere del gusto come pure nei molti programmi televisivi. Questi moderni buongustai condividono con quelli tradizionali la considerazione del cibo come preoccupazione sensuale, ma, a differenza dei classici gourmet, per molti di loro il cibo per essere “buono” deve soddisfare criteri sia estetici che etici, coniugando per esempio gusto e genuinità19. Anche se non per tutti i foodies sono fondamentali le politiche sul cibo, questa cultura è in generale caratterizzata da un certo interesse per alcuni aspetti ecologici delle questioni alimentari, anche se, come hanno mostrato alcune ricerche20, le dimensioni etico-politiche risultano, in ordine di importanza, subordinate a quelle estetiche; è semmai il “Km 0”, nelle declinazioni di locale, stagionale e biologico, uno degli aspetti che risulta essere maggiormente ricorrente nei discorsi foodies21.

Del resto, anche il discorso portato avanti dal movimento Slow Food si incentra su una visione che tiene insieme la dimensione etica con quella estetica: il seguace della cultura Slow Food è un “eco-gastronomo”, qualcuno che aggiunge preoccupazioni ecologiche al piacere e all’apprezzamento estetico per il cibo. I temi ecologici – e in particolare il riferimento alle specificità locali, che appaiono direttamente connesse alla valorizzazione del gusto – appaiono trasversali nei discorsi Slow Food. In generale sono incoraggiati i comportamenti eco-sostenibili principalmente per la loro relazione con la convivialità rilassata e il gusto e, in secondo luogo, per le loro qualità etiche. Anche lo slogan del “diritto al piacere” è attraversato da quella tensione tra inclusione ed esclusione, che caratterizza la cultura contemporanea del consumo alimentare e che ha a che fare con la ricerca di conciliazione tra crescita economica, accesso alle risorse e tutela dell’ambiente22. Secondo Wolf Bukowski, autore estremamente critico su questi temi, si tratta di una grande narrazione che usa le retoriche del “buono pulito e giusto” e concetti come “rivoluzione” e “resistenza” per far convergere sul cibo una dimensione politica che non trova più altri referenti significativi23.

Nella foodie culture ha molta importanza coltivare e promuovere la cultura culinaria attraverso la salvaguardia della memoria e delle tradizioni sul cibo. La condivisione delle conoscenze sul cibo è una pratica che è sempre esistita: nelle diverse epoche storiche le ricette sono state diffuse attraverso molti tipi di media; questo bisogno di divulgare le tradizioni culinarie è testimoniato anche dal fatto che tra i primi libri a essere stampati ci siano stati proprio i libri di cucina24. Il fenomeno dei food blog ha a che fare con tutto ciò: è il media contemporaneo per la circolazione di consigli e di indicazioni alimentari.

I food blog

Per food blog si intendono i blog che si occupano di ricette, di recensioni di ristoranti, di stili alimentari o di questioni etiche riguardo al consumo del cibo. I primi food blog appaiono intorno agli anni Duemila, e da allora la loro crescita sul web è stata esponenziale25. Nei food blog chiunque può scrivere di cucina o interagire con chi scrive, proponendo suggerimenti o alternative; lo scambio e l’interattività sono alcune delle caratteristiche che contribuiscono a costruire comunità intorno alle pratiche alimentari. Il fatto poi che siano animati da persone comuni contribuisce alla messa in circolazione di una cultura alimentare popolare che si contrappone al dominio del sapere culinario degli chef famosi26.

Tuttavia, come spesso accade nella cultura contemporanea, la divisione tra cultura alta e cultura bassa non è mai netta e anzi forse non è neppure sensato considerarne i confini. Nel caso specifico dei food blogger capita che alcuni di loro diventino così famosi da scrivere libri o da essere chiamati dal mondo dell’intrattenimento televisivo o commerciale. Molti food blogger, intervistati in una recente ricerca27, hanno dichiarato che pur essendo dilettanti coltivano la speranza di trasformare il loro hobby in professione28. Uno degli aspetti più interessanti – presi in considerazione nello stesso lavoro – è senza dubbio l’analisi del meccanismo “reputazionale”, ovvero del processo attraverso il quale si diventa famosi food blogger: in estrema sintesi, è la quantità ma anche la qualità dei commenti a costruire la “reputazione” e ad attestare quindi il successo di un blogger nella comunità foodie. I più noti ottengono poi una qualche forma di sponsorizzazione oppure l’accesso al mondo televisivo.

La porosità dei confini tra web e altri media produce, inoltre, un flusso caratterizzato da un’elevata riflessività. Non solo infatti i food blogger possono passare al media televisivo come ospiti o addirittura conduttori, ma anche gli stessi format televisivi spesso si adattano agli stili e alle caratteristiche dei blog. La lifestyle television, per esempio, in parte si ispira al formato blog, soprattutto rispetto ai video tutorial – una delle forme preferite nei food blog per spiegare le ricette – ma anche rispetto al coinvolgimento diretto del pubblico. I cooking show sono spesso supportati da riviste, da siti o da altri social media, per rispondere alla crescente aspettativa di partecipazione di un pubblico oramai abituato ad avere “voce” e riconoscimento nei blog e più in generale nei social network29.

Se la pubblicità può avere un’incidenza non trascurabile nella costruzione dei palinsesti, considerando che la maggior parte delle sponsorizzazioni televisive appartiene al settore alimentare, tuttavia, ciò non è affatto semplice e scontato31. Parlare di cibo in televisione significa certo contribuire alla creazione di desiderio di consumo, senza tuttavia ricorrere quasi mai a un riferimento pubblicitario diretto, anzi durante le trasmissioni spesso i richiami non sono del tutto espliciti (semmai si fa riferimento a elementi di contesto come l’arredamento degli studi, gli strumenti utilizzati oppure gli ingredienti), mentre le pubblicità più dirette appaiono sui siti e i blog a cui sono rimandati i telespettatori per scaricare ricette e chattare con i conduttori.

Senza dubbio i food blog hanno avuto molta influenza nel mettere in circolazione un certo tipo di cultura alimentare e anche nel creare particolari tendenze o mode culinarie: si pensi a titolo esemplificativo alla recente diffusione dei “macarons” o dei “cupcake”. Essi, inoltre, hanno giocato un ruolo importante nel processo di estetizzazione del cibo: molti food blogger dichiarano di aver fatto corsi di fotografia per meglio rappresentare i loro piatti, poi hanno dato avvio alla condivisione su Instagram e Pinterest: è così che si è cominciato a diffondere il food porn.

Note

1 Barthes R. (1957) cit. in McBride A. (2010), Food Porn, «Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture», vol. 10, n. 1, pp.38-46.
2 McBride A. (2010), op. cit.
3 Marrone G. (2015), Food porn: l’esposizione del cibo, in Abruzzese A. (a cura di), EXPO 1851-2015. Storie e immagini delle Grandi Esposizioni, Utet, Torino, reperibile online: http://www.gianfrancomarrone.it/php/altri_testi.php.
4 https://www.facebook.com/actualproduction/videos/580075135495607/.
5 Ketchum C. (2005), The Essence of Cooking Shows: How the Food Network Constructs Consumer Fantasies, «Journal of Communication Inquiry», vol. 29, n. 3, pp. 217-234.
6 Marrone G. (2014), Gastromania, Bompiani, Milano.
7 Bauman Z. (1999), La società dell’incertezza, Il Mulino, Bologna.
8 Bordo S. (1997), Il peso del corpo, Feltrinelli, Milano (ed. originale 1993).
9 Stagi L. (2002), La società bulimica. Le trasformazioni simboliche del corpo tra edonismo e autocontrollo, Franco Angeli, Milano e (2008), Anticorpi. Dieta, fitness e altre prigioni, Franco Angeli, Milano.
10 Giddens A. (1997), Oltre la destra e la sinistra, Il Mulino, Bologna (ed. originale 1994).
11 Lupton D. (1999), L’anima nel piatto, Il Mulino, Bologna (ed. originale 1996), p. 212.
12 Lupton D. (1999), op. cit.
13 Pollan M. (2008), Il dilemma dell’onnivoro, Adelphi, Milano.
14 Lupton D. (1999), op. cit.
15 Fischler C. (1979), Gastro-nomie et gastro-anomie, «Communications», n. 31, pp. 189-210 e (1990), L’omnivore, Jacob, Paris.
16 Sassatelli R. (2004), L’alimentazione: gusti, pratiche e politiche, «Rassegna Italiana di Sociologia», n. 4, pp. 475-492.
17 Meglio L. (2012), Sociologia del cibo e dell’alimentazione. Un’introduzione, Franco Angeli, Milano.
18 Cairns K., Johnston J., Baumann S. (2010), Caring About Food: Doing Gender in the Foodie Kitchen, «Gender & Society», vol. 24, n. 5, pp. 591-615.
19 Johnston J., Baumann S. (2009), Tension in the Kitchen. Explicit and Implicit Politics in the Gourmet Foodscape, «Sociologica», n. 1, online http://www.sociologica.mulino.it/doi/10.2383/29565.
20 Johnston J., Baumann S., op. cit.
21 Nella ricerca di Johnston e Baumann l’interesse politico alle questioni alimentari è stato diviso in tre categorie: ambientale, comunitario e “benessere degli animali”. L’analisi mostra che la questione più sentita tra i foodies è quella ambientale, mentre meno rilevanti appaiono i temi riguardanti la giustizia sociale, i diritti dei lavoratori e la sicurezza alimentare, Johnston J., Baumann S., op. cit.
22 Sassatelli R., Davolio F. (2010), Consumption, Pleasure and Politics. Slow Food and the politico-aesthetic problematization of food, «Journal of Consumer Culture», vol. 10, n. 2, pp. 202-232.
23 Wolf Bukowski sostiene che lo scenario auspicato da Gambero Rosso (l’inserto del quotidiano il Manifesto a metà degli anni Ottanta) e Slow Food si sia trasformato in una grande organizzazione fatta di ipermercati, gestione privatistica dei centri cittadini, precarietà per i lavoratori e cibo sano per i ricchi, mentre i poveri, accusati di non saper scegliere i cibi giusti, continuano a essere costretti a nutrirsi di cibo spazzatura, Bukowski W. (2015), La danza delle mozzarelle. Slow Food, Eataly, Coop e la loro narrazione, Alegre, Roma.
24 Lofgren J. (2013), Food Blogging and Food-related Media Convergence, «M/C Journal», 16-3, online: http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/638.
25 Nel luglio 2012 la ricerca Technocrati ha classificato circa 16.000 blog alimentari, Manzo C., Pais I., De vita R. (2013), Reti personali e reputazione online ai tempi della crisi economica: il caso dei foodblogger, «Sociologia del lavoro», n. 131, pp. 120-136.
26 Lofgren J. (2013), op. cit.
27 Manzo C., Pais I., De vita R. (2013), op cit.
28 I dati analizzati mostrano che l’età media dei blogger è intorno ai trenta anni, con attività o professioni al di fuori dell’ambito alimentare già avviate; per la maggior parte si tratta di donne. Questa ultima caratteristica è interpretata dagli autori della ricerca come indicatore del fatto che il food blog è più utilizzato per la cucina domestica quotidiana, uno spazio considerato ancora tipicamente femminile, Manzo C., Pais I., De vita R. (2013), op. cit.
29 Freccero C. (2013), Televisione, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino.
30 http://www.gamberorosso.it/it/food/1023128-intervista-a-sonia-peronaci-ecco-perche-lascio-giallozafferano.
31 Ketchum C. (2005), op. cit.

Di Luisa Stagi, estratti "Food Porn - L'Ossesione per il Cibo in TV e nei Social Media", 2016, Egea, Milano, capitolo 1.  Adattato e illustrato per essere pubblicato da Leopoldo Costa.