Eating Right in the Renaissance 9780520927285

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgments
Note on Spelling
Introduction
Chapter 1. Overview of the Genre
Chapter 2. The Human Body: Humors, Digestion, and the Physiology of Nutrition
Chapter 3. Food: Qualities, Substance, and Virtues
Chapter 4. External Factors
Chapter 5. Food and the Individual
Chapter 6. Food and Class
Chapter 7. Food and Nation
Chapter 8. Medicine and Cuisine
Postscript: The End of a Genre and Its Legacy
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Eating Right in the Renaissance

california studies in food and culture Darra Goldstein, Editor 1. Dangerous Tastes: The Story of Spices, by Andrew Dalby 2. Eating Right in the Renaissance, by Ken Albala

Eating Right in the Renaissance

Ken Albala

University of California Press Berkeley ·Los Angeles ·London

University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2002 by the Regents of the University of California

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Albala, Ken, 1964 –. Eating right in the Renaissance / Ken Albala. p. cm. — (California series in food and culture ; 2) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0-520-22947-9 (cloth: alk. paper) 1. Gastronomy. 2. Food habits—Europe— History. I. Title. II. Series. tx641.a36 2002 641⬘.01⬘3— dc21 00-067229

Manufactured in the United States of America 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

02

01

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ansi/loniso z39.48-1992 ⬁ (r 1997) (Permanence of Paper). 䊊

Contents

Acknowledgments

vii

Note on Spelling

ix

Introduction 1. Overview of the Genre 2. The Human Body: Humors, Digestion, and the Physiology of Nutrition 3. Food: Qualities, Substance, and Virtues 4. External Factors 5. Food and the Individual 6. Food and Class 7. Food and Nation 8. Medicine and Cuisine Postscript: The End of a Genre and Its Legacy

1 14 48 79 115 163 184 217 241 284

Bibliography

295

Index

309

Illustrations follow page 77

This page intentionally left blank

Acknowledgments

I owe a debt of gratitude to the many people who have helped me write this book, foremost to my family, both immediate and extended. Thanks to my parents Albert and Phyllis, my wife Joanna, my sons Ethan and Benjamin, my in-laws Mona and Ira, and Marcia and Hershey for foodie newsletters and old PPCs. You have all either put up with or inspired my passion for food, without which this book would have been unthinkable. I also thank the many people at Columbia who guided me on the first version of this work : Eugene Rice, Caroline Bynum, Wim Smit, and Kathy Eden, and particularly Nancy Siraisi, who has continued to be a professional inspiration. The curators and staff, both past and present— particularly Adrienne Fabio, Adrienne Levin, and Ann Pasquale—at the New York Academy of Medicine deserve special thanks for tolerating my presence for several years in the early 1990s. Above all thanks to Lois Black, who has remained a great friend and been an invaluable aid. Thanks to the staff at the Wellcome Institute in London and to Vivian Nutton whose comments and advice to “just do it” proved indispensable. Thanks also to those who have helped me at the Columbia Libraries, the Yale History of Medicine Library, and the Bodleian Library. Thanks to my chums from the Oxford Symposium, Andy Smith, David McDonald, and especially Rachel Laudan, who has probed me with questions and comments down to the very last minute. I would also like to thank the readers, Melitta Weiss Adamson and those anonymous others along the way. Your comments were extremely helpful, and I hope you will forvii

viii

Acknowledgments

give me for the occasions when I have not heeded your advice. To all my great friends and colleagues in the history department at the University of the Pacific, including those retired and new, you have made this an extremely pleasant place to work. I wish I had the space to name all of you individually. And thanks to my students who have kept me on my toes and indulged me in many digressions on food and medicine. Lastly, thanks to the editors at UC Press, Sheila Levine, Juliane Brand, Cindy Fulton, and series editor Darra Goldstein for helping make this book possible.

Note on Spelling

Throughout this book I have attempted to be consistent with proper names. I have usually chosen to use the most familiar form of authors’ names whether in the vernacular or Latin. Hence Ficino and Estienne rather than Ficinus and Stephanus, but Placotomus and Lessius rather than Brettschneider and Leys. In a few cases, I have chosen what appears to be American over British usage, as with Moffett rather than Mouffett or Muffet. I have also tried to translate all place names to accord with modern usage, as with Strasbourg rather than Strassburg or Argentina. Regarding quotes from primary texts, I have extended all abbreviations down to every last ampersand and tilde, changed all i/j and u/v permutations to current usage, but have otherwise left all spellings in the original, particularly in English where the flavor of the language seemed desirable. All translations from Latin, French, Italian, and Spanish, where unnoted, are my own; I strove for general sense rather than literal accuracy, and in most cases I have supplied the reader with the original in the notes.

ix

This page intentionally left blank

Introduction

It would be almost impossible for a person living today to escape the influence of nutritional science. A vast array of dietary guidelines is promulgated through every media and on every item of packaged food. Whether or not these rules are followed, the terms of the discussion are all too familiar: calories, saturated fat, vitamins and minerals, cholesterol. We all know that many of us are intensely diet and health conscious. It would probably come as a surprise, though, to learn that five hundred years ago literate Europeans were equally obsessed with eating right. Then, as now, a veritable industry of experts churned out diet books for an eager and concerned public. From the 1470s to 1650 there was an immense outpouring of dietary literature from printing presses in Italy, then issuing from France, England, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and as far afield as Transylvania. Nutrition guides were consistent best-sellers. About one hundred titles in dozens of editions, revisions, and translations plainly attest to the topic’s popularity. Some dietary works were tiny handbooks written in the vernacular for a lay audience, others were massive Latin tomes clearly intended for practicing physicians or scholarly dilettantes. The authors of these books may have been physicians, philosophers, poets, or even politicians. Anyone with an interest in food appears to have felt qualified to pen his own nutritional guide. This book examines these dietary works in detail and offers a view of what it meant to eat well and be healthy in the Renaissance. This book also focuses on the major differences among dietary au1

2

Introduction

thors, how the genre changed over time, and how authors of various nations disagreed. Just as today, the medical experts of the past were a contentious lot. Fads came and went, new discoveries shook the profession, academic vendettas were waged in print, and zealots proposed miracle diets. Controversy among the experts was fueled by several factors. Dependence on ancient authorities, who often disagreed, divided physicians into warring factions. Entrenched local custom or an effort to address a particular social group might outweigh loyalty to the reigning medical orthodoxy. How to assess new foods from America and Asia also sparked contention. This book also considers the impact of regimens upon the reader. With conflicting advice from every corner, the beleaguered public was probably left hopelessly confused, and many probably gave up. Montaigne, in his essay “On experience,” revealed his own failure to follow dietary rules, trusting his personal experience over the strictures of the medical profession. On the other hand, he also realized “that the art of medicine is not so rigid that we cannot find an authority for anything that we may do. . . . If your doctor does not think it good for you to sleep, to take wine or some particular meat, do not worry; I will find you another who will disagree with him.” 1 Other readers persevered, trying to maintain rigorous control over every morsel consumed. The artist Pontormo was clearly manic about diet and in his autobiography made a point of recording every crumb he ate. For those who took the advice seriously, dietary literature must have generated a considerable amount of anxiety and guilt. Even apart from the truly diet-conscious, the genre appears to have enjoyed a real vogue. At the tables of many Renaissance rulers and elites, the court physician was grilled daily regarding the virtues and perils of every tidbit.2 His advice was often promptly ignored, but nonetheless diet remained an entertaining topic of conversation. 1. Michel de Montaigne, Essais, trans. J. M. Cohen (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1958), 371. 2. Laurent Joubert, Erreurs populaires, book 2 (Rouen: George L’oyselet, 1587), 99 –100: . . . plusiers, qui ne cessent d’interroguer les medecins quand ils sont à table, ceci est-il bon, cela est-il mauvais ou mal sain? que fait ceci, que fait cela? . . . la plus part de ceux qui en demandent, ne se soucient pas d’observer ce que le Medecin en dira, mais ils prennet plaisir à ce devis, & d’estre ainsi entretenus . . . Many never cease interrogating physicians when at the table: is this good, is this bad or unhealthy? What does this do, what does that do? Most who ask have no desire to observe what the physician says, but they take pleasure in doing it, for entertainment. See also chap. 2, n. 42.

Introduction

3

Attesting to the popularity of the genre, a few exemplary parodies should suffice. The first is found in François Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel, in which the young giant, abandoning his regular bouts of unimaginable gluttony, is instructed by his teacher Ponocrates in the art of “proper regimen,” consisting of nothing more than a frugal dinner and a larger supper. This runs counter to the extensive rules of “a rabble of foolish physicians” who advise the contrary. Having studied medicine, Rabelais probably knew all too well the details of the current dietary debates and refers to them derisively throughout this work.3 The second example comes from Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote, in which Sancho Panza, now governor of his own island, is tormented by a court physician intent on keeping a variety of delightful foods away from his master. Bolstering his prohibitions with Hippocratic quotes, the doctor has the fruit taken away, then the meats, the partridge, the rabbit, the stew, and everything else, until he himself is finally removed.4 Lastly, in Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, the therapy imposed on Katherine to curb her violent temper is to deny her food and sleep. Specifically it is burned meat, “for it engenders choler, planteth anger,” as well as neat’s foot (ox), and tripe and beef with mustard—all “choleric.” Keeping her body cold, Petruchio thought, would correct her to a more feminine and demure complexion. These references all show that such dietary pronouncements would have been familiar to a popular audience and that many readers had probably already learned to ignore and ridicule dietary dogma.5 3. François Rabelais, La vie tres horrificque du grand gargantua (Paris: Flammarion, 1968), 120. Notez icy que son disner estoit sobre et frugal, car tant seulement mangeiot pour refrener les haboys de l’estomach; mais le soupper estoit copieux et large, car tant en prenoit que luy estoit de besiong à soy entretenir et nourrir, ce que est la vraye diete prescripte par l’art de bonne et seure medecine, quoy q’un tas de badaulx medecins, herselez en l’officine des sophistes, conseillent le contraire. Notice here that his dinner was sober and frugal, for he only ate to settle the rumblings of his stomach; but supper was copious and large, for he took enough to sustain and nourish, which is the true diet prescribed by the art of good and proper medicine, though a pile of gawking physicians, dragged through the sophists’ pharmacies, counsel the opposite. Other parodies are included in the list of imaginary books in the library of St. Victor’s, (see Rabelais, book 2, chapter 7): M. N. Rostocostojambedanesse, De moustarda post prandium servienda, lib. quatuordecim, apostiliati per M. Vaurillonis. This was a standard dietary question. Also Campi clysteriorum per S. C., an imaginary work by Symphorien Champier on suppositories. 4. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote, book 2, chap. 47. 5. William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew, 4.1.159 and 4.3.17–32.

4

Introduction

Apart from its familiarity to readers, the dietary literature of the Renaissance reveals much more than merely what physicians thought was good to eat. We are also given a glimpse of the most basic fears, prejudices, and preoccupations of that culture. Whereas modern nutritionists may promise a slimmer waistline, increased stamina, or freedom from disease, Renaissance physicians spoke of clear and rational thought, avoiding putrefaction and fevers, and maintaining a balance of humors. The scientific framework differs, as do the ultimate goals. In the Renaissance, a particular food may have been condemned because of association with the lower classes, because of a foreign or exotic origin, or merely because an ancient authority denounced it. These shifting dietary criteria reflect the social, national, intellectual, even aesthetic concerns of these authors as clearly as would any artwork or poem. Food preferences, being so central to identity, are perhaps even more revealing than taste in other media. If a picture speaks a thousand words, then what of the dish that savors of the homeland, or displays wealth and elegance, or smacks of simple frugality? Each of these tells a complete story about the person who eats it. Nutritional literature is, of course, purely prescriptive and it is difficult to tell how closely an author’s advice was followed. There were few references to dietary regimens put into practice consistently, but the evidence suggests that they were rarely followed with success. The nutritional guidelines of the Renaissance, as with any food system, must therefore be taken as an ideal aspiration rather than a depiction of actual foodways. But the ideal is in many ways more interesting than a simple record of what people ate because it encapsulates everything a culture values. Brillat-Savarin, writing in the nineteenth century, said “tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.” 6 A far more interesting challenge might be “tell me what a culture thinks it ought to eat, and I will tell you what it wants to be.” How does a group define its ideal morality, ideal sensibility, or ideal physique? All these will ultimately find expression in what the ideal person ought to eat, whether the guidelines are Hindu or Hebrew traditions or the latest dietary fad. In the Renaissance, the overarching theoretical framework of all dietary works was “Galenic,” deriving primarily from the Greek physician of the second century a.d., Galen of Pergamum, although his writings were often available only through later interpreters and translators. Af6. Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, The Philosopher in the Kitchen (La physiologie du gout), trans. Anne Drayton (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1988), Aphorism 4.

Introduction

5

ter many centuries, the Galenic system dominated all discussions of food and nutrition, but there was still wide scope for disagreement about specific details. By the time of the Renaissance, it was possible to create unique and original works despite dependence on ancient authorities. The dietary regimens also varied in the kinds of information they offered the reader. Many included smatterings of natural history about plant and animal foods, some basic human physiology, and often an extensive catalogue of every known food and its properties and uses. Depending on the interests of the author and his audience, there might also be discussion of the etymology of food terms, food practice in ancient times, and medical or culinary recipes. There was no standard format, and ideas of “diet” or “hygiene” in their original senses usually encompassed consideration of not only food and drink but also air quality, exercise, sexual activity, emotional state, and numerous other variables that were believed to affect nutrition. Diet books might also have included diets for the aged or diseased, or they might have promised longevity or ways to escape pestilence. None was designed to help the reader lose weight, and rarely was body size a major concern, except that the average or mean size was considered most healthy. Some of the dietaries had specific goals in mind as well: to disabuse the public of their errors; to promote a particular food like cheese, wine, or salads; or to recommend dietary rules for travelers. Regardless of author, audience, or intention, all dietary literature in this period depended on a common theoretical framework based on the work of Galen. This was the system of humoral physiology, which posits that health consists of a balance of four fundamental fluids or “humors” in the human body: blood, choler, phlegm, and bile. Each of these humors is described in terms of elemental qualities as well, being some combination of heat, moisture, coldness, or dryness. In other words, blood is a hot and moist humor, phlegm is cold and moist, choler is hot and dry, and melancholy is cold and dry. The imbalance or predominance of any one humor determines the individual’s “complexion,” which is continually altered by the intake of foods and condiments, each of which has its own complexion. A person can be described as choleric, and black pepper can also be described as choler-promoting. The interaction between the two was one of the central concerns of dietetics. Even authors who rejected humoral physiology in other branches of medicine remained faithful to this foundation when discussing diet. The other parallel and sometimes dominant concern of Renaissance authors was the texture of food, namely how easily it might offer nutri-

6

Introduction

tion by passing through the body and being converted into flesh. A food could be described as nutritious but hard to digest, or easy to digest but not very nutritious. The texture or “substance” of a food along with its humoral makeup formed the basis of every dietary opinion, but certain foods were also believed to have unique properties to stimulate the appetite, quench thirst, help pass kidney stones, induce sleep, or act as aphrodisiacs. The reasons for assigning these unique and sometimes “occult” properties are often the most fascinating discussions in the genre and reveal a wealth of information about the mental outlook of the authors. Another fundamental assumption of all Renaissance dietaries that stands in sharp contrast to modern nutritional science is that there was no uniformly prescribed diet for all people, no recommended daily allowances, no set quantity of nutrition that all individuals should receive to maintain health and vigor. Different people of different complexions required different foods to be well nourished. Hot and dry food would nourish the excessively phlegmatic but make the choleric sick. Individuals with strong or “hot” stomachs could digest tougher and heavier foods, whereas the weak and delicate needed to subsist on lighter fare. Beef would nourish the former but be impossible to digest for the latter, offering no nutritional value. “One man’s meat is another man’s poison” was perhaps taken literally. The subtlety of this nutritional system, and what accounts for many of the arguments as well, was the difficulty of deciding exactly what diet would be appropriate for which individual while taking into consideration a multitude of other factors: age, sex, climate, habits, and even occupation and social group. Cooking was also an important factor in all dietary recommendations. A food improperly cooked or poorly seasoned would be less nutritious than one judiciously “corrected,” because it would either putrefy in the stomach or never attain complete assimilation. One author, for example, explained that onions cooked twice were far more nutritious than those left raw precisely because the former could be digested whereas the latter could not.7 Modern nutritional science may take account of vitamins lost in cooking, but it never considers digestibility as a criterion for nutritional value. In this literature, however, cooking was 7. Elias Eobanus Hessus, De tuenda bona valetudine, commentary by Ioannes Placotomus (Frankfurt am Main: Heirs of Christian Egenolff, 1556), 59.

Introduction

7

a matter not only of rendering foods more palatable and digestible but of counteracting food’s adverse qualities by balancing them with corrective condiments. Cold and moist lettuce required hot and dry salt and pepper to be more humorally temperate and appropriate for the human body. Overly moist foods were to be roasted to rid them of superfluous humidity and crass foods were to be accompanied by lubricating and aperitive condiments. Cooking and dietetics were thus inseparable in the Renaissance. Apart from these basic features to which all authors subscribed, the dietary literature can be grouped into three distinct periods: period 1, from the first printed texts of the 1470s to about 1530; period 2, from 1530 to the 1570s; and period 3, from the 1570s to 1650. These periods will be used throughout this text. They are not meant to coincide with periods in art history or literature, but they do align with stages in the history of medicine. The early Renaissance dietaries, like other medical works, did not differ greatly from their medieval predecessors, except in being printed and circulated widely. The period 2 works coincided with the Galenic revival, and the period 3 dietaries witnessed the gradual breakdown of Galenic hegemony in this and other fields of medicine.8 Further features distinguish the authors of these three periods. Period 1 texts depended primarily on medieval Arab and Jewish authorities such as Avicenna, Rhazes, and Isaac Judaeus as well as available writings of Galen. Most authors wrote for princely patrons such as the Medici, Sforza, Este, or Papacy, and they tailored their advice to upperclass tastes. They also shared a similar attitude toward food—generally open, eclectic, and international. Within this group are some of the better known food writers: Platina, Savonarola, Ficino. The period 2 dietaries were deeply influenced by the Galenic revival of the 1520s and 1530s, which sought to restore the entire Greek medical corpus, including the Hippocratic writings, to their pristine state. Their intention was also to excise the Arab authors from the curriculum and replace them with Greeks such as Aëtius, Oribasius, and Paul of 8. For different views about the significance of the Galenic revival, see Walter Pagel, “Medical Humanism,” in Essays on the Life and Work of Thomas Linacre, ed. F. Maddison, Margaret Pelling, and Charles Webster (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 375 – 86; Vivian Nutton, “John Caius and the Eton Galen,” in From Democedes to Harvey (London: Variorum Reprints, 1988), 243. For a broader look at Galenism, see Oswei Tempkin, Galenism: Rise and Decline of a Medical Philosophy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1973).

8

Introduction

Aegina. Naturally, these mid-Renaissance authors are the most philologically oriented, and many are aptly considered “humanists” in their efforts to recover and edit lost classical texts. Their works were often printed in university towns or intellectual centers: Padua, Basel, Antwerp, Lyon, and London. But beyond this, the dominant tone of the nutritional literature changed dramatically as authors cut themselves off from courtly audiences, even criticizing their lavish excessive consumption. Extended tirades against gluttony became a major feature of the genre for the first time. This may reflect a more widespread intolerance toward indulgence in Reformation Europe, although explicitly religious aims are only evident in a few authors. The period 3 authors of the late Renaissance often retained this vitriolic tone, but they were also now willing to criticize the ancients and strike out with their own opinions. It is in this period that local custom began to outweigh nutritional dogma. Social prejudices also came to the fore. Personal experience became a valid criterion in making dietetic judgments, and although there was nothing like a revolution with the experimental method and quantification that characterized scientific investigation of later centuries, there were major departures from orthodoxy. The basic features of humoral physiology did survive well beyond 1650. In Europe the process of dismantling took a few centuries, and in places like India, Pakistan, and—as some have argued— even South America the system survives in folk practice today. But there was never again the intensity and sheer number of publications as before 1650. Because new models of human digestion and nutrition began to appear in the seventeenth century with Santorio and Van Helmont, 1650 is thus an appropriate place to end this study. METHODOLOGY The ideas in Renaissance dietaries will usually strike the modern reader as extremely peculiar. There is a fear of fruits bordering on the pathological and impassioned denunciation of mushrooms, hard cheese, onions, and beef. Wine is given fanatical attention and is often considered a necessary nutrient. In some writings a storm of spices accompanies every recommended dish. Needless to say, these preferences bear little resemblance to our own nutritional ideals. Nevertheless, a persistent logic pervades even the most apparently bizarre opinions. Cucumbers, in the perfectly rational Renaissance

Introduction

9

mind, do indeed appear threatening. Extreme objectivity has been essential in following the threads of logic, and I began with the assumption that these medical topics were of utmost seriousness to the authors and that their reasoning was anything but irrational and arbitrary. Another basic assumption that has been sustained throughout this book is that the biological effects dieticians described were to them quite real. Fear of fruit corrupting in the body must have lead to actual pathological symptoms in a way that we have never experienced. This is not only to say that foods may really have produced the effects described but that all nutrition and the physiological effects of food on the body are to a certain extent psychosomatic. A culture’s idea of “indigestion” or being “well nourished” is socially conditioned, and the idea of good nutrition reflects that particular society’s own self-image. A health-promoting meal to an American differs significantly from that of the French or Chinese or a person from the sixteenth century. By modern American standards, many foreign peoples seem poorly nourished; by foreign standards, modern Americans are miserably overnourished—inordinately large, requiring an excessive diversity and amount of food, living long beyond their ability to support themselves. Each society has its own criteria for deciding nutritional value that suits its own needs and self-image, and thus the healthy, happy, wellnourished individual will be quite different from place to place and from century to century. Consider the past few decades in the United States. There has been a dramatic transformation in what are considered the ideal foods, what form the ideal body should take, and what constitutes a happy, healthy human. This merely reflects a changing self-image, and contemporary nutritional theory has developed to reflect these cultural changes. No longer do the cultural ideals of size, strength, and virility recommend a diet of meat and potatoes. Agility, sensitivity, and the more office-bound virtues are now reflected in dietary ideals that promote chicken and fish, vegetables, and lighter foods. More and more Americans today believe they are unable to digest red meat and avoid it altogether. All cultures create a nutritional ideal that reflects their particular values and in turn conditions their expectations of how their bodies will behave. And bodies do behave differently in different times and places. The history of food should involve not only tracing culinary trends but uncovering the logic of how and why cucumbers and melons truly did affect Renaissance men and women differently than they do us. The difficulty is knowing exactly what people in the past felt and

10

Introduction

what nutritional precepts they may have had in mind. Sometimes this is easy because authors cite their own experience. It might be to confirm the opinion of an ancient authority that one would assert “yes, this lettuce did help me get to sleep,” or it might be to criticize that one would note “we eat this fish frequently with no adverse effects, so Galen must have been mistaken.” The actual physiological effect of each food, following nutritional theory, is either supported or denied. In other cases judgment must be made by inference. Falling sick and even dying after a surfeit of melons appears to have been a common occurrence. For many people such a clear causal connection between food and sickness must have had real biological meaning. Psychosomatically, the physician’s warnings made people sick. On the other hand, the persistent tirades against melons, decade after decade, can only suggest that many people ignored the warning with no ill effects. Either way, what people believed would happen in their bodies informed what actually did take place, just as our bodies react physically and emotionally when we eat foods that we think are good or bad for us. In this sense, the nutritional precepts of the past are “true” despite what we may think of them. It would also be fruitless to evaluate the Renaissance system according to modern scientific standards. Since all systems are largely socially constructed, what value is there in showing how one theory falls short of another? There is the added difficulty that various peoples have actually evolved different nutritional needs. The disastrous results of introducing “nutritious” foods to the Pima tribe of Native Americans is perhaps the clearest example of this. Their health has dramatically deteriorated, with the percentage of obesity and diabetes among the population reaching epidemic proportions. Due to changes in intestinal flora, it is also likely that people of the past were able to live on diets substantially different from those of modern people.9 Still, there are many consistent physiological effects that transcend time and culture. Hemlock will kill a woman regardless of what she thinks of it. Cut off all food, and the body will perish. Beans have and always will cause gas, despite our ideas about them. Individuals and cultures, however, have developed immunities to some poisons, fasted for long periods, or evolved the ability to process beans efficiently. Human 9. Andrew Appleby, “Diet in Sixteenth-Century England,” in Health, Medicine, and Mortality in the Sixteenth Century, ed. Charles Webster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 104.

Introduction

11

adaptability and evolution are the modern rationales for explaining how different societies can function on completely different diets. However, these cannot explain how nutritional ideas change from year to year, as do people’s physical reactions to food. In several generations we cannot have developed immunity to the cucumber that terrified our forebears, nor have we developed insensitivity to medicinal herbs that assuaged our ancestor’s pains, although many Renaissance pharmacists including Paracelsus believed this. More likely, the suggestion that an herb is ineffective shatters its psychosomatic efficacy. Were it suddenly announced today that “recent studies have shown” all cold medicines to be placebos, they would soon cease to work, disappear from the market, and be replaced by new drugs. The process of individual foods and drugs rising in and falling from favor is clearly discernable in the Renaissance, for many a life cycle can be charted showing the introduction, height of popularity, and eventual demise of a once treasured commodity or dish. Borage, an innocuous herb that to the modern palate can be described as nothing but insipid, inspired impassioned accolades from Greeks, Arabs, and Latins over many centuries as a powerful cordial to combat melancholy and strengthen the mind. People began to suspect the veracity of this claim early in the seventeenth century as theorists began to doubt the ancients and their immediate predecessors who trusted them.10 The efficacy of borage was soon lost. Both saffron and sugar as medicines suffered a similar fate. How the body reacts to food and medicine is to a large extent determined by what the mind anticipates, and this is informed by medical theory. Thus, this study relates another side of the history of food and suggests how ideas about food may have actually affected Europeans of the past. It is a description of what people thought about food and its preparation, what they felt guilty about eating, and what ultimately was going on in their minds and bodies as they consumed food. Many Renaissance writers merely followed public opinion on these matters, but often they did have their own personal lists of favored and forbidden culinary customs. Some medical campaigns took time to catch on in the public imagination; others failed completely. The decisive fac10. Salvatore Massonio, Archidipno, overo dell’insalata . . . (Venice: Marc’antonio Broglio, 1627), 279: “A me non pare, che sia nella boragine quella soavita di sapore, o anzi insipida, che saporosa . . .” The therapeutic effect of an herb was gauged by its flavor, thus a tasteless borage is useless. Massonio also states that he cannot support the opinion of Castor Durante and many others that borage is good for the memory.

12

Introduction

tor in the success of nutritional doctrine seems to be the public’s ability to envision the physiological effects of a food in their bodies. That is, preceding the psychosomatic efficacy of medical suggestion, the theoretical logic must be palatable. For example, in modern medicine cholesterol has had a long history, but only after being firmly associated with saturated fats was the public able to envision the clogging of arteries and development of heart disease. However, people remain ambivalent toward high-cholesterol foods that are low in fat, such as shrimp. The time it took for the American public to take serious notice of warnings against pesticide use on their food is another example. It was difficult to imagine that something that looked better might be worse for you. Similarly, Renaissance consumers were able to believe only some of the nutritional dicta aimed at them. Scare tactics fell on deaf ears when the public could not imagine the physiological processes being described. Eventually dietary writers were forced to abandon their tirades. In many cases the result was an interesting accommodation of local practice. For the English, thinking of beef as indigestible was nearly impossible, and they eventually lifted the classical ban on beef. The dangers of fish were too outlandish in the mind of a seventeenth-century writer in the Low Countries.11 A Roman of the same period was intent on defying physicians’ apprehension over salad vegetables.12 Dietary writers simply could not convince people in these regions that these foods were dangerous, and eventually they stopped trying. It is not merely that these foods were abundant and bound to be eaten by hungry people, other foods remained indexed, but that nutritional theory was able to submit to custom without abandoning its basic principles. Fear of melons, I will argue, was a successful campaign. People went on eating them, just as we go on eating everything we are told is bad for us, but the guilt experienced after indulgence was a sure sign that the physician’s message had been internalized. For many the result was indigestion and sickness. Henry IV of France admitted that he could not eat melon in his youth but grew accustomed to it as he grew older and his body became colder. The thrill of taboo-breaking attracted others to melons, and they became the object of derisive fascination precisely because of their being condemned. Nothing in the Renaissance mind could be considered more delicious and dangerous than a sweet, ripe, juicy 11. Ludovicus Nonnius, Diaeteticon, sive re cibaria, 2d ed. (Antwerp: Petri Belleri, 1645). 12. Massonio, Archidipno.

Introduction

13

melon. Stories circulated about people who died eating melons, with kings and emperors on the death list. Still, at court encomia were composed to the noble fruit, powerful prelates enticed their retainers with it, and a pope is said to have given us the name cantaloupe after his own garden. Cookbooks were adorned with courtiers offering melons for princely adulation,13 yet the warnings in dietaries continued as fiercely as ever. People were indeed both frightened by and attracted to melons. In either case they believed and understood the medical warning. Imagining the melon within the stomach, in contact with intense digestive heat, disintegrating, fuming, and putting out the digestive “fire” altogether, then picturing the onset of putrefaction and the corrupt juices being forced into the veins was enough to make anyone feel ill. The success of this nutritional doctrine is due precisely to the vivid description of decay: it was so easy to imagine becoming ill that readers readily obliged. As with all the medical opinions discussed in this book, the condemnation of melons typifies the vast differences between the nutritional logic of the past and our own. It also highlights the fact that the fears and preferences of the past, though strange, were no less real to those who experienced them. They also reveal the workings of the Renaissance mind on a level unattainable by any other means. That ultimately is the goal of this book: to understand the period through its ideas about food. 13. Christoforo di Messisbugo, Banchetti (Ferrara: Giovanni Buglhat and Antonio Hucher Compagni, 1549), frontispiece.

chapter 1

Overview of the Genre

FROM ANCIENT GREECE TO MEDIEVAL EUROPE The urge to categorize foods according to a rational system appears to be at least as old as civilization itself. Every major world culture has devised a method of appraising foods and many of these survive to this day in some form. The ancient Chinese system based on ideas of yin and yang, the Hindu Ayurvedic system, and the Levitical kosher laws still inform food choices around the world. While the system of humoral physiology no longer directly affects Western ideas about food, its history is long and influential. Its roots stretch from the ancient Greeks and through the early modern period to the eighteenth century: well over two thousand years. This study focuses on a prolific two hundred years of the genre’s history, but it will be crucial to briefly outline developments that predate the Renaissance, given that dietary writers depended almost entirely on ancient and medieval texts. Research, it must be remembered, was conducted in a library rather than a laboratory, and nutritional writers mined older authors for quotes, offering them as proof of their own opinions. Exactly which authorities were chosen for citation will be a central part of this story and accounts for many of the variations among Renaissance dietaries. The pages that follow should thus be considered a list of sources for Renaissance nutrition.

14

Overview of the Genre

15

The Greeks The ancient Greeks were the first in the Western medical tradition to write extensively on nutrition. The popularity of this genre and the dynamic nature of the medical profession in general were largely the product of a cosmopolitan, mercantile society with a wealthy elite large enough to patronize physicians. In this respect, the ancient Greeks were comparable to Renaissance Europeans. A literate audience with enough leisure and money to be choosy about diet appears to have been a prerequisite for the genre to flourish. Active competition for clients also created a contentious and argumentative medical atmosphere in which professionals were eager to advertise their skill and superior knowledge of the human body. This eventually led to rival schools and a fruitful, innovative interaction of ideas. Another feature of Greek medicine more or less inherited by the Renaissance physicians was the tendency to abandon any supernatural origin of disease, although in both societies divine and demonic disease etiologies and magical or religious cures certainly did flourish. The Asclepian healing temples remained as popular in the ancient world as healing shrines and miracle-working saints did in early modern Europe. But within learned medicine and particularly in writing about nutrition, divine or magical forces played a minimal role. Nor was astrology a major feature in nutritional theory in these periods, although astrological medicine did have its supporters throughout all periods in Western medicine, and some dietaries do make use of astrology. For the purposes of this study, the most important influence of Greek medicine was the tendency to look at health and disease in purely physical terms. The wellnourished body was believed to be a product of natural forces, internal and external, influencing the normal physiological functions, and thus it is explainable in entirely material terms. Both Greek medicine and its inheritors also looked at health in holistic terms. Mind and body formed a psychosomatic whole, and treatment of the individual was never geared toward a single organ or disease. Rather, the entire body was the subject of both diagnosis and treatment, and any successful physician would have been expected to take into account all the major factors influencing the physical constitution, especially diet. Food was considered among the crucial regulating factors in maintaining health, and diet or a change in regimen was among the most common therapies for illness.

16

Overview of the Genre

The first of the ancient Greeks to discuss diet was the philosopher Pythagoras, known today by every geometry student for his famous theorem. According to later admirers such as Porphyry and Plutarch, Pythagoras stressed the importance of a vegetarian diet for maintaining physical and mental health as early as the sixth century b.c. The community of Pythagoreans he founded in southern Italy was renowned for their refusal to eat meat or sacrifice animals for fear—according to explanations offered in later centuries— of consuming a reincarnated human. According to Iamblichus, they were also the first to practice dietetic medicine.1 Although Pythagorean ideas did influence later Greeks, his vegetarianism was never a regular feature of dietetics. By the time of the Renaissance, he was usually mentioned only in this context, and most physicians by that time considered abstention from meat positively unhealthy. Pythagoras apparently also abstained from beans, and the debate over his original intentions has been raging for centuries. He may have found intestinal gas distracting for philosophers or he may have been communicating a hidden message to avoid politics, beans having been used to count votes. The fear of eating a reincarnated relative in bean form may also have prompted this prohibition. The question has yet to be settled.2 The earliest Greek medical practitioner focusing on diet per se was the physician Herodicus of Selymbria in the fifth century b.c., who seems to have started a fad for diet, exercise, and regimen. Apart from being regarded as a teacher of Hippocrates, he gained the unfortunate distinction of being criticized by Plato in The Republic. In a discussion of the dangers of adhering too closely to a strict regimen, Herodicus was described as a man so bound by rules that he prolonged his existence unnaturally into a miserable old age.3 His writings did not survive, and he was not considered a significant authority in later centuries. The most important early author, the acknowledged founder of Western dietetics and the “father of medicine,” was Hippocrates of Cos, who lived from about 450 to 370 b.c. Although little is known about the details of his life, he is well known as the author of the Hippocratic Oath, which was revived in medical schools during the Renaissance. Today it 1. James Longrigg, Greek Medicine from the Heroic to the Hellenistic Age: A Source Book (New York: Routledge, 1998), 148. 2. Colin Spencer, The Heretic’s Feast: A History of Vegetarianism (Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 1995), 44. 3. Plato, Republic, book 3, 406a. See Ludwig Edelstein, Ancient Medicine (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967), 138.

Overview of the Genre

17

is generally agreed that the many writings traditionally ascribed to Hippocrates were written by several different authors, as contradictions among them plainly suggest. But in the Renaissance it was firmly believed that the historical Hippocrates had written them all. Renaissance nutritionists also hailed him as the founder of the humoral system and the first physician to stress diet or “hygiene” as the cornerstone of medicine. The principle sources for Hippocratic dietetics were the Regimen in Health and the book Regimen, often known in Latin under the title De diaeta. These writings were certainly the oldest extensive treatment available on the subject, lending them great weight and authority, and providing accurate editions and translations of them was a major preoccupation of Renaissance medicine.4 Unlike our progressive idea of the constant advancement of science and faith in everything new and improved, Renaissance physicians had greater trust in older pristine sources of knowledge, presumably closer to the original font of wisdom. This meant that Hippocrates had greater authority than later medical writers, even though few people could cite his works directly before the new translations and complete editions of the sixteenth century. Nonetheless, the idea of health as a balance of hot and dry or cold and moist elements in the body is Hippocratic in origin, as is the focus on what later came to be called the “non-naturals,” or external factors influencing health such as diet, exercise, environment, and emotions. The Hippocratic authors were also fond of speaking about physiological functions using metaphors from everyday life and particularly from the kitchen. The idea of digestion as a cooking or “concoction” by means of heat and subsequent refinement for use by the body dominated all nutritional thought up to the seventeenth century. In the generation following Hippocrates, several other figures composed dietary works. The ancients credited Polybus, Hippocrates’ sonin-law, with having written a work on humors offering a full explanation of their relation to diet, but his works were known only through citations by other authors. Praxagoras and Chrysippus were credited by Porphyry as having perfected dietetic medicine after Hippocrates, although none of their writings on the subject are extant.5 The eclectic Diocles of Carystus (c. 350 –300 b.c.) is another author known only through extended fragments. In classical times he was often

4. Hippocrates, vol. 4, trans. W. H. S. Jones (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967). 5. Longrigg, 146 – 47.

18

Overview of the Genre

placed next to Hippocrates in importance. His letter on hygiene addressed to King Antigonus of Macedonia was the first medical work devoted exclusively to diet. In this and other works, Diocles catalogued individual foodstuffs, describing their various properties and place in a balanced regimen. This format would later become a standard feature of the genre. He also distinguished between diets for different age-groups and took into consideration seasonal differences in diet. His works were not well-known directly until sixteenth-century humanist editions of later Greek writers Paul of Aegina and Oribasius in which Diocles’ fragments were preserved. His contemporary Diphilus of Siphnos (fl. c. 300 b.c.) was also recognized as an early authority. As the undisputed expert on natural history, Aristotle (384 –322 b.c.) also exerted considerable influence on the dietary genre, especially when authors discussed animals and plants beyond their use as food. Although Aristotle did not write specifically about diet, topics such as physiology, nutrition, and generation all entered into his philosophy, and thus Renaissance authors were often heavily dependent on him, even if indirectly. The topic of how nutrition takes place, interestingly, was more often discussed by philosophers in the early modern period and was rarely treated extensively in dietetic works. In the Hellenistic period, following the conquests of Alexander the Great and the spread of Greek civilization to several successor kingdoms, there emerged several rival schools of medicine. The Dogmatist followers of Hippocrates, who relied on his theoretical framework, vied with the Empiricists and eventually the Methodists, Pneumatists, and several eclectic blends of these schools. The lines between the schools were never rigidly defined. Their specific theories were not as important as the fact that a lively and innovative discourse in medicine directly preceded the emergence of the most important and towering figure in the field of medicine and dietetics: Galen of Pergamum. Before discussion of Galen, though, a few writers of importance in the Roman era should be mentioned. Because of the close relationship of dietary literature to herbals, many Renaissance authors were led to Pedianus Dioscorides of Anazarbus (fl. a.d. 60), the most important figure in ancient botany and materia medica (pharmaceutical plants and other substances). His stature among botanists remained undiminished well into the seventeenth century.6 For Renaissance nutritionists, Dio6. Agnes Arber, Herbals, 3d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 8 –12.

Overview of the Genre

19

scorides, especially through Mattioli’s critical edition of 1544, was most useful in identifying obscure species of plants and defining their properties, particularly those that had fallen out of use since antiquity. Another common source for writers on food was the Roman author Pliny the Elder (a.d. 23–79). His interesting and bizarre anecdotes on natural history and the use of plants and animals for food enlivened the pages of many early Renaissance dietaries, although he was increasingly found to be untrustworthy in the later Renaissance. Plutarch (d. after 119) was also commonly cited, particularly the passages from the Moralia that discussed diet, although these were more moralistic in nature than medical. In a sister genre, the history of food and dining, the dominant authority was Athenaeus, a native of Egypt writing in Rome around a.d. 200. His Deipnosophistae recorded practically every food-related passage in classical literature. It is solely through his compilation that some authors have survived at all—Archestratus, the first Greek cookbook author, is the prime example. Passages from Diocles and Diphilus, mentioned earlier, were also known through Athenaeus. From these pages Renaissance food writers culled some of their best remarks about the obscene gluttony and excesses of ancient Romans like Apicius, whose name was used as a synonym for a luxurious, sophisticated glutton. The cookbook attributed to Apicius, De re coquinaria, was of interest to Renaissance scholars, although it contained nothing specifically about diet and most often he was cited as an example of how not to eat.7 On the topic of diet in particular Rufus of Ephesus (fl. c. a.d. 50 in Alexandria) was sometimes cited by Renaissance authors. He was especially influential on Arabic authors but was not known directly in Europe until 1554. The Roman Aulus Cornelius Celsus of the first century a.d., the only important ancient medical author to write in Latin, was probably more of a learned compiler than a practicing physician. It is from his De medicina that many details about earlier Hellenistic writers were known, but his discussion of diet is relatively brief.8 Nonetheless, the discovery of this work in 1426 created quite a stir in medical circles, and it was also among the first books on medicine to be printed (1478). Of these ancient authorities, however, all are overshadowed by Galen 7. Platina worked with the ninth-century copy of Apicius that is now at the New York Academy of Medicine, but unlike later authors was not critical of it. 8. Celsus, De medicina, vol. 1, trans. W. G. Spencer (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1938), book 2, 18 –33.

20

Overview of the Genre

of Pergamum (a.d. 129 – c. 200 or 216) Galen’s output in all fields of medicine was massive and comprehensive and, most importantly, drew upon, summarized, and criticized all preceding schools. He claimed to have chosen what was good from all schools, it being the mark of a slave to call anyone master. His closest affinities, however, were with the Hippocratic authors, and his writings build chiefly on these, especially in their adherence to and elaboration of humoral theory. It was Galen who first defined the four temperaments and linked them to specific humors and elements in nature. The dominance of Galen in Western medicine for a good thirteen or fourteen centuries after his death can partly be attributed to the sheer volume of writings and their remarkable survival rate. Of the four hundred or so works attributed to Galen, the most important dealing with dietetics were De alimentorum facultatibus, De sanitae tuenda, and De probis pravisque alimentorum succis.9 These offered detailed, painstaking discussion of individual foods and how they should be used, as well as of “diet” in the broad sense of the term, including all factors that relate to the maintenance of health. His dominance is also due to his selfassured, boastful, and argumentative character. He was not above calling his contemporaries and predecessors frauds and idiots. In this sense, he was a remarkable self-promoter. His authoritative tone and incredible prolixity assured him status as the best informed of all medical writers of antiquity. His service as personal physician for the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius and his successors also gave weight to his claim to superiority. Physicians in later centuries believed that they had good reason to trust everything he said and that there was no reason to correct or amend his observations. In a certain sense, medicine for centuries after Galen is an extended footnote or commentary. The topic of nutrition in the West could easily be described as the gradual recovery of Galen’s works. Because medieval scholars possessed only parts of the corpus or knew him through later commentators and translators, much of the scholarly efforts of physicians involved recovering and editing Galen’s texts. In fact, works of Galen’s are still being found and translated from various Eastern languages.10 In the Renaissance, among the most important developments for dietetics was the 9. Claudius Galen, Opera Omnia, book 6, ed. C. G. Kühn (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1965). 10. Vivian Nutton in Lawrence Conrad, et al., The Western Medical Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 58 –70.

Overview of the Genre

21

publication of Latin translations of Galen’s writings directly from the Greek. Writers believed they finally had access to the “source” of dietetic wisdom, and it took several generations before Galen lost his complete domination. Nonetheless, all nutritional writings up through early modern times remained fundamentally Galenic. Following chronologically, the next efflorescence of the dietary genre after Galen occurred in Constantinople, the Byzantine Empire, and elsewhere in the Greek-speaking world. Oribasius (c. 325 – 400), physician to the emperor Julian, and to a lesser extent Theodorus Priscianus were the first authors following Galen to discuss diet extensively. Their writings are primarily compilations and encyclopedic reference works, and much the same is true of the work of Aëtius of Amida (fl. 530), Alexander of Tralles (c. 525 – 605), and later Paul of Aegina, who flourished in seventh-century Alexandria. The traditions of Greek medicine were maintained in the Byzantine Empire for many centuries, but these authors were almost entirely unknown in the Latin West until the sixteenth century, when they were recovered, translated, and published by humanists.11 The one direct contact western Europe did have with Greek dietetics in this period came in the form of a physician, Anthimus, who traveled to the court of the Frankish King Theuderic between 511 and 534. His De observatione ciborum was, however, totally unknown by Renaissance physicians and was not published until modern times.12 The last of the Byzantine authors were Simeon Sethi, who penned On food and drinks, one of the most important sources on diet for the Middle Ages; Michael Psellus (1018 –78); and Johannes Actuarius, writing as late as the fourteenth century. It was only really in Byzantium that a continual unbroken tradition of Galenic medicine was maintained, although few writers offered anything wholly original.

11. The following is a chronological list of Latin translations of recovered Greek authorities on diet: Paulus Aegineta, Salubria de sanitate tuenda praecepta (Strasbourg: 1511); Michael Psellus, De victus ratione, ed. Giorgio Valla (Basel: 1529); Oribasius, Commentary on Hippocrates (Paris: 1533); Aëtius, Tetrabiblos, ed. Johannis Baptista Montani (Basel: 1535); Simeon Sethi, Syntagmata (Basel: 1538); Diocles, De tuenda sanitate, ed. Albano Torino (Basel: 1541, bound with Alexander Trallianus); Polybus (Basel, 1544). Greek editions were also issued for many of these authors during these years. See F. E. Crantz and P. O. Kristeller, Catalogus translationum et commentariorum, vol. 4 (Washington: Catholic University of America, 1980). 12. Anthimus, De observatione ciborum, ed. and trans. Mark Grant (Totnes, Devon: Prospect Books, 1996). The introduction also makes interesting parallels between the careers of Anthimus and Oribasius.

22

Overview of the Genre

The Arabic-speaking World For the most part, the major contributors to dietetics and humoral medicine from the ninth through the twelfth century were Arabic-speaking inhabitants of the Islamic world, although many were often actually Jewish or Christian. Official toleration of these religions provided a fertile intellectual interchange of many different traditions. Although probably with little basis in fact, there was a tradition that a thriving medical school existed prior to the emergence of Islam within the Persian Empire in the city of Jundishapur, where fleeing Nestorian Christian exiles had brought Greek medicine. Tradition has it that Muhammad’s personal physician also studied there. Persia, and specifically Baghdad under the Abbasid Caliphate, became the next major center of medical learning in the ninth century. Among the earliest authorities was the Nestorian Christian Hunayn ibn Ishaq (d. 873), known in the West as Johannitius. With the aid of courtly patronage, he was responsible for rediscovering much of the Greek medical corpus, particularly Galen, and translating it into Arabic and Syriac. His own Isagoge contained within the larger Articella was designed as an introduction to Galen and was widely used as a textbook in medieval Europe. Mesue the elder and the herbalist Serapion were also influential authors of this century.13 By the next century the next great efflorescence of Greek medicine and diet was well underway. Like their Greek predecessors, the Islamic nations were cosmopolitan and wealthy enough to support many full-time physicians and medical authors. As in classical times, extensive trade brought spices and exotic medicines from far away, and a lively interchange of ideas fomented innovation and scientific speculation. In the tenth and eleventh centuries there was a major outpouring of dietary writings. Some of the most influential figures were Rhazi (or Rhazes as he was known in Europe, 860 –932), who practiced in Baghdad and whose Liber ad Almansorem (Al-kitab al-mansuri fi l-tibb) was translated into Latin and became a standard medical textbook in medieval Europe. Its first books provided an extensive theoretical discussion of diet, hygiene, and physiology, and even a section on travel regi13. Luciana Rita Angeletti, “Transmission of Classical Medical Texts through Languages of the Middle East,” Medicina nei Secoli 2, no.3 (1990). This article, however, contains numerous errors.

Overview of the Genre

23

men. The Jewish physician Isaac Judaeus (Ishaq al-Isra’ili, d. 955), writing in what is now Tunisia, also became a standard authority on diet in medieval Europe with his Book on Foodstuffs and Drugs. Haly Abbas (or Majusi, d. late tenth century) was another major Arabic authority on diet. His work was known in Europe as the Liber pantegni or Liber regius. The verse Tacuinum Sanitatis (Taqwim al-sihha) of Ibn Butlan (d. 1063 or 1066) also became popular in medieval Europe and was often richly illustrated for wealthy patrons.14 One author, however, Avicenna (Ibn Sinna, 980 –1037), gained an influence far beyond that of his contemporaries and was second only to Galen in importance. Avicenna’s ability to systematize and organize Galen’s ideas made his Canon (Qanun) and shorter poem on medicine (or Cantica) eminently useful for medical practice and one of the most important works in the medieval medical curriculum in Europe.15 Many of the arguments to be encountered in the Renaissance dietary writing originated in rivalry between “Hellenists” following Galen and “Arabists” following Avicenna as the primary authority. Arabic medicine also flourished in Moorish Spain where Avenzoar (c. 1091–1162); the Aristotelian philosopher Averroës (Ibn-Rushd, 1126 – 98), whose Colliget diverged in many ways from Galenic doctrine; and Averroës’s pupil, the Jewish philosopher Maimonides (Moses ben Maimon, 1135 –1204) all wrote about diet. Their works were later known in translation in Europe. At the other end of the Islamic world Greekbased medicine and dietetics were brought to India where they came to be known as Yunani or Unani (Ionian) medicine, which is still practiced to this day.

Latin-speaking Europe It was not until the eleventh century that major changes in European society made it ripe for the development of its own medical tradition. Political stability, the emergence of organized kingdoms, and most impor-

14. Ibn Butlan, The Medieval Health Handbook: Tacuinum Sanitatis, ed. Luisa Cogliati Arano, trans. Oscar Ratti and Adele Westbrook (London: Barrie and Jenkins, 1976). In Europe this was often attributed to Elluchasem de Baldath, Albukasem, or some version of that name. It was first printed as Tacuinum sanitatis (Strasbourg: Joannes Schottum, 1531). 15. Nancy G. Siraisi, Avicenna in Renaissance Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987); Conrad et al., Western Medical Tradition, 114.

24

Overview of the Genre

tantly, enough wealth to support leisured and professional classes were once again preconditions for the emergence of a genre devoted to food and health. Along with this, urban growth, trade contacts with the East, and direct interaction in southern Italy along the fronteira in Reconquista Spain and in the crusader kingdoms in the Holy Land all provided access to Greek medicine through the Arabs. The first dietary written in medieval Europe was the popular Regimen Sanitatis Salerni, written in catchy verse purportedly for the “King of the English,” identified as Robert of Normandy, who did have a claim to the throne (1101). It was actually composed by several anonymous figures associated with the school of Salerno in southern Italy mostly in the late thirteenth century. It became one of the most popular food and health guides up through the Renaissance, and new editions and translations continued to appear as late as the seventeenth century.16 By that time it tended to be regarded more as an interesting literary work than an authoritative medical source by dietary writers, but its influence on popular ideas about nutrition remained undiminished. The school of Salerno, although not a formal university until much later, was important for the history of nutrition as an early disseminator of translations. By tradition, the school was founded by representatives of the four great medical traditions: Greek, Jewish, Muslim, and Latin. Indeed, it did provide one of the crucial vectors for writings from all of these sources. The first major scholar associated with the school was the Tunisian Constantine the African working at the nearby monastery of Monte Cassino in the late eleventh century. It was through his translations from Arabic to Latin that Joannitius, Haly Abbas, Isaac, and some of Galen’s works were first known in the West. Thus, Europe first received a medical curriculum that was predominantly Arabic in origin. Medieval Spain was also a major conduit for translations, most notably by Gerard of Cremona (fl. 1150 – 87) in Toledo. It was through him that the dietary works of Avicenna and Rhazes were introduced to Europe and would dominate nutritional thought for several centuries. Not long after these translations, Europeans began composing their own regimens. Among the most prominent was Michael Scot (c. 1175 – 1234) whose Mensa philosophica was attributed to various authors in

16. Two seventeenth-century examples are The Schoole of Salerno, trans. Harrington (Washington: Catholic University of America) and L’Eschole de salerne en vers burlesques, trans. L. Martin (Paris: I. Henault, 1653).

Overview of the Genre

25

the next centuries.17 A regimen was also composed by Aldobrandino of Siena, written in French in 1256 for the countess of Provence. In the fourteenth and early fifteenth century there appeared several others. The renowned Catalan physician, Arnald of Villanova (d. 1311), working at the medical school of Montpellier, wrote a prose commentary on the Regimen of Salerno and composed a regimen for King James II of Aragon in 1308. There was also an important German dietary, the Sanitatis conservator of Konrad von Eichstätt, written about 1300. Bernard of Gordon also wrote a Regimen sanitatis in this period. Lastly there were the two most important works of the late Middle Ages. First was yet another Regimen sanitatis, different from the others, written by Mayno de Mayneri (Magninus Mediolanensis, d. 1368), and after it, the vernacular dietary guide of renowned Spanish-born physician Ugo Benzi (1376 –1439). The latter also enjoyed popularity after the being printed in 1481, and its seventeenth-century expanded version will be discussed further below. THE RENAISSANCE The first real outpouring of dietary writings in Europe occurred, naturally, only after the invention of the printing press. In terms of sheer output, if nothing else, the two centuries from 1450 to 1650 rival all others of the genre. Much of this was clearly the result of wider literacy and a public eager to buy up cheap self-help and how-to books. Etiquette guides, books on gardening and agriculture, cookbooks, and homeremedy books all proliferated alongside the regimens, and all seemed to appeal to a reader genuinely eager for self-improvement.18 This may have had something to do with “Renaissance self-fashioning” or may 17. Most notably it paraded as the work of Thomas Twyne, The Schoolemaster, or teacher of table philosophy (London: Richard Jones, 1576). There is also a Mensa Philosophica of Theobaldus Anguilbertus Hybernensis (Venice: Simon ex Luere, 1514 and Paris: Johanne Petit, 1517). An overview of several late medieval dietaries and their contents can be found in Pedro Gil Sotres, “Le regole della salute” in Storia del pensiero medical occidentale, vol. 1, ed. Mirko D. Grmeck (Rome and Bari: Laterza, 1993), 399 – 438. Also Melitta Weiss Adamson, Medieval Dietetics: Food and Drink in Regimen Sanitatis Literature from 800 to 1400 (Frankfurt-am-Main: Peter Lang, 1995), which discusses Arabic and medieval German sources. Also, Wolfram Schmitt, “Theorie der Gesundheit und ‘Regimen sanitatis’ im Mittelalter” Heidelberg Habilitationsschrift, 1973. 18. Paul Slack, “Mirrors of Health and Treasures of Poor Men: The Uses of the Vernacular Medical Literature of Tudor England,” in Health, Medicine, and Mortality in the Sixteenth Century, ed. Charles Webster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).

26

Overview of the Genre

have been one facet of the “civilizing process” of rationalizing morals, manners, and bodily functions that Norbert Elias sought to link with the formation of nation states.19 The popularity of the genre may also be linked to a wider humanist program to improve the minds as well as bodies of educated Europeans.20 Whatever the impetus, dozens of authors took up the pen in defense of rationally controlling diet along medical lines. As will be shown, the changes within the genre in this period also reflected broader cultural and social changes in Europe.

Period 1 (1470 –1530): Courtly Dietaries For the first generation of Renaissance dietary authors, it is clear from internal comments that their targeted audience was usually the courtier, and almost without exception these authors enjoyed princely patronage. Not only were dietaries dedicated to ruling figures, but the advice was tailored to meet the needs of those who were required to attend grand banquets with many courses and plenty of wine. The first, published posthumously, was the Libreto de tute le cose che se manzano by Giovanni Michele Savonarola (c. 1385 –1466). The grandfather of the infamous reformer who overturned Florentine society and was eventually burned, this Savonarola enjoyed a relatively more peaceful existence as physician to several generations of Ferrarese rulers.21 The Libreto was written specifically for Borso d’Este and is studded with remarks concerning which foods were appropriate for gentlemen and how a courtier ought to advise his lord on such matters. For example, discussing walnuts he remarks, “surely they will do your Lord much more good than harm.” 22 His book might equally have been used by a physician or even chef to a noble household. Apart from his noble connections, Savonarola was also respected as a professional physician in his day, and his Practica major, which also includes chapters on diet, was reprinted sev-

19. Norbert Elias, The History of Manners, trans. Edmund Jephcott (New York: Pantheon, 1982). Stephen Mennell draws an explicit connection between the refinement of manners and increasing repugnance toward certain foods, which he calls “the civilizing of taste.” Stephen Mennell, All Manners of Food (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985), 291. 20. Werner Freidrich Küemmel, “Der Homo litteratus und die Kunst, gesund zu leben. Zur enfaltung eines Zweiges der Diätetik im Humanismus,” in Humanismus und Medizin, ed. Rudolph Schmitz and Gundolph Keil. (Bonn: Acta Humaniora,1984), 67– 85. 21. Lynne Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, vol. 4 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1923–58), 183–214. 22. Giovanni Michele Savonarola, Libreto de tute le cose che se manzano comunamente e piu che comune. (Venice: Simone de Luere, 1508), 16.

Overview of the Genre

27

eral times in the next century. Like his contemporaries, Savonarola was dependent primarily on Arabic authorities—particularly Avicenna. This Arabist focus colored his opinions sharply in ways that clearly distinguish him from later Hellenists of the sixteenth century (period 2), who used Greek sources. Probably the most widely translated and published dietary work first appeared at Rome around 1470: De honesta volptate by Bartolomeo Sacchi, known as Platina. It is recognized today as the first printed cookbook, but the magnificent recipes that line its pages were actually “borrowed” from an acquaintance, one Maestro Martino of Como, professional chef to Cardinal Ludovico Trevisan.23 Platina can only be credited with the nutritional material, which is not technical and was clearly meant to appeal to a wealthy and leisured audience. Platina himself was not a physician but rather a humanist, and is best known as the first librarian of the Vatican Library. There is an extraordinary painting in the Vatican by Melozzo da Forli commemorating Platina’s appointment by Sixtus IV, which was roughly contemporaneous with the publication of De honesta voluptate. Considering its publishing record, it was a runaway success. Editions followed one after another in Latin, Italian, then in a significantly expanded French version, German, and Dutch. Only an English edition has waited for modern times. Although a popular success, the work was not highly regarded by later dietary writers, who seemed to have found all the rich sauces and elegant dishes more appropriate for gluttons than the health-conscious.24 This rejection of complex cuisine points to another vast difference between period 1 authors and those who follow. It was perfectly possible in the late fifteenth century to prescribe a diet for “honest pleasure.” Eating well was not incompatible with health. For later and stricter authors, however, lavish cooking was something to be derided and fled from whenever possible. Contemporaneous with De honesta voluptate was Girolamo Manfredi’s Libro de homine of 1474. It enjoyed much greater fame in translation as “Il perche,” designed to answer a variety of nutritional ques23. Platina. The first dated edition is Venice, 1474. James Dohmers Vehling, Platina and the Rebirth of Man (Chicago: Walter M. Hill, 1941); Platina, On Right Pleasure and Good Health, ed. and trans. Mary Ella Milham (Tempe, Arizona: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1998). 24. See chapter 9 for critiques of Platina. In a fascinating passage from Leonardo’s notebooks discussing cannibalism, the artist mentions that suitable food can indeed be prepared using only vegetables, and even “an infinite number of dishes as Platina and other authors for gourmets have written.” Charles D. O’Malley and J. B. de C. M. Saunders, Leonardo da Vinci on the Human Body (New York: H. Schuman, 1952), 238 – 89.

28

Overview of the Genre

tions for a nonprofessional audience. Judging from the dedication to the Bentivoglio rulers of Bologna, its author regarded a healthy and nutritionally alert populace as the best safeguard for a happy and prosperous state. He apparently had not foreseen the impending downfall of his patrons in the next century, when Bologna was brought firmly under papal control. Like other regimens of this period, it took account of pleasure and the positive role it plays in nutrition and health. The Opus ad sanitatis conservationem by Benedictus de Nursia [Benedetto de’Riguardati di Norcia] was published in 1475, and like the previous works, was written for a courtly audience. In this case, Benedict was a professor at Perugia, served the papal court, and after being banished, ended up in Milan as physician to the Sforzas. As a typical period 1 work, the advice proffered is not strict nor would it have been likely to upset anyone at court. Few items are forbidden outright, and the healthy reader is told to eat what he likes. There should be no reason to abstain from one’s favorite dishes when they are properly prepared and served in moderation. He even includes remedies for drunkenness.25 Although not a comprehensive dietary, the Summa lacticiniorum, all about cheese and dairy products, deserves to be included among the period 1 works. Its author, Pantaleone da Confienza, was physician to the duke of Savoy and taught medicine at Pavia and Turin. First published in 1477, the Summa is much like contemporaneous works. It depends on Arabic and medieval Latin authors, takes into consideration gastronomic pleasure, and reflects essentially broad catholic tastes. Pantaleone offers his preferences but rarely condemns any food outright. The first two books dealing with diet in De vita by the Neoplatonic philosopher Marsilio Ficino should also be considered alongside these dietaries. De vita was written in the 1480s and published in 1489. It was addressed to the Medici in Florence and aimed toward an audience accustomed to buying expensive spices, sugar, perfumes, and even gold, all of which are included in the recipes. There is also much advice for scholars and the elderly, which became typical in later dietaries. What makes De vita uncharacteristic is the heavy inclusion of magic and astrology. Ficino’s medical advice is subsumed by his Neoplatonic and esoteric 25. Benedictus de Nursia, Opus ad sanitatis conservationem, 2d ed. (Bologna: Domenico de Lapis, 1477) p. Q1r. Some of his solutions are still commonly used and reputed effective against hangovers, such as drinking citrus juice or a lot of water, although he recommends this after coriander comfits.

Overview of the Genre

29

concerns. Some of his opinions were also clearly out in left field, and later physicians who had read him found numerous causes for amazement and outrage. Drinking human blood was one of the more obvious oddities.26 The medical mainstream in Florence is much better represented by Ficino’s friend Antonio Benivieni, who had prepared a detailed regimen for Lorenzo de Medici. Although this was not printed for public consumption, the text confirms that practical dietary advice for the courtly household was in great demand.27 Outside Italy, the Rosa gallica of Symphorien Champier is also a typical period 1 work. It was published first in Nancy in 1512, Paris in 1514, and many more times. Its author was a poet, soldier, historian, dabbler in esoteric arts, and also physician to Charles VIII and Louis XII. It is interesting that as in the regimens discussed thus far, there were few social stigmas attached to particular foods. Nobility and royalty could presumably eat whatever they pleased without fear of degradation. This was not be the case in later dietaries in which many foods were explicitly banned as fit only for rustics and laborers. Although later in life Symphorien would become more of a Galenist, even writing his own commentaries, in this work the authorities were still predominantly Arabic.28 Several other minor works should be included in this period, like for example the anonymous Governayle of helthe that was published in England by Wynkyn de Worde in 1489. The last of the period 1 dietaries is typical in its using both Galen and several Arabic sources but in some respects marks a departure from the typical features mentioned. The Corona florida medicinae by Antonius Gazius (Antonio Gazzo) was first published in Venice in 1491 and subsequently in several editions in the sixteenth century. Gazius was a practicing physician in Padua, and his work is more narrowly academic in tone. It makes no concessions to courtiers but in fact consciously distances itself from the lavish banquets and exquisite rarities that grace the pages of other fifteenth-century regimens. There was no courtly patron 26. “Why shouldn’t our old people, namely those who have no [other] recourse, likewise suck the blood of a youth?” Marsilio Ficino, Three Books on Life, ed. and trans. Carol V. Kaske and John R. Clark (Binghamton N.Y.: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1989), 197. Also see further treatment of this topic below in the discussion of the physiology of nutrition. 27. Antonio Benivieni, De regimine sanitatis ad Laurentium Medicem, ed. Luigi Belloni (Turin: Società Italiana di Patologia, 1951). 28. Brian Copenhaver, Symphorien Champier and the Reception of the Occultist Tradition in Renaissance France (The Hague: Mouton, 1978).

30

Overview of the Genre

here and thus no one to risk offending by launching out against gluttony. This became a standard feature of later works. His audience was also not the common laboring masses but rather the delicate, sedentary, and weak of digestion—most likely the scholar. Although composed long after these earlier dietaries, the Spanish Vergel de Sanidad of Luis Lobera de Avila (Abulensis), first printed in 1530, should also be considered a period 1 work. It is addressed specifically to “cavalleros y señores” and like the earlier courtly nutrition guides depends primarily on Arabic authors. It is also cosmopolitan, reflecting few national prejudices or preferences, as would be appropriate considering that it was written for the court of the emperor Charles V while he was passing through Augsburg.

Period 2 (1530 –1570): The Galenic Revival The dietary genre underwent several important changes in the midsixteenth century. The most important of these was a deeper appreciation, respect, and in some cases, adulation of Galen. This was primarily the result of medical humanists’ efforts to recover and translate the entire corpus of Greek medicine in reliable editions. By the mid-1520s even Greek editions of both Galen and Hippocrates had been printed by the Aldine press in Venice. The Greek texts, considered the older and purer font of medical truth, quickly displaced the medieval Arabic and Latin authorities. The works of Paul of Aegina and Aëtius, as well as many other Greek dietary writers, were translated for the first time in these decades.29 The effect this new burst of Hellenism had on nutritional writing was not merely a switch of allegiance by most authors but also a heightened awareness of style and language. The philological concerns of the humanists had influenced the genre, and etymology, mythology, and the discussion of ancient dietary practice became a regular feature in this period. The black letter typeface of the preceding period was replaced by a Roman one, and the simple and practical medieval Latin was replaced with a strangely rhetorical Ciceronian style of Latin purged of “barbarisms” and studded with Greek quotes. Many food terms are also changed outright, just as anatomical terms were changed from colloquial medieval Latin to erudite terms from classical Latin and Greek. 29. See above, n. 11.

Overview of the Genre

31

For example, basilea [basil] became ocymum, and qualea [quail] became coturnix. In period 2, the scholarship took center stage over practical use, which is ironic considering how Galen stressed direct observation and actual medical practice. In these authors’ defense, there are several reasons why Galen and the Greek writers could not have offered practical dietary advice. First, they were describing a world over a thousand years in the past. The Arabic authorities may have been a few centuries old, but they were working with material resources and culinary customs not very different from those of medieval Italy. Kid and veal were still the ideal meats; sugar, cinnamon, saffron, and lemon were the ideal condiments. Although it was quite easy for early Renaissance authors to accept and use Avicenna, the Greek authors were another matter entirely. Garum, the ubiquitous fermented fish sauce of the ancients, baffled many writers. Silphium, another popular ancient condiment, seemed to have disappeared entirely. The Greek names for fish caused endless confusion because authors could not accurately identify which species they referred to. Most authors were also not sure what to make of the Greeks’ consumption of ass, fox, bear, camel, and—most upsetting to Europeans— puppies.30 The period 2 authors were also spread all over Europe, and northern climates and local customs made many of the details of the Greek authorities impractical and irrelevant. None of the foods introduced from the New World could be fit precisely into a strictly Galenic system. Tomatoes and potatoes in particular posed an enormous problem, as did many foods introduced in the Middle Ages, such as the eggplant. The Galenists nonetheless defended a rigid orthodoxy, and the dietary literature became increasingly cut off from everyday eating habits. A fundamental change in tone also pervaded period 2 dietaries. Loose guidelines were replaced by urgent warnings. Sound advice became chastisement and nagging. Whereas earlier writers assured their readers that the food that tastes best is the most nourishing—“quod sapit nutrit”—period 2 readers were warned to mistrust their bodies’ signals and eat only foods approved by the experts. Many more foods and culi-

30. Hugo Fridaevallis, De tuenda sanitate (Antwerp: Christopher Plantin, 1568), 146; Symphorien Champier, Rosa Gallica, 2d ed. (Paris: Iodoco Badio, 1518), p. 32v. Also in a later period Thomas Moffett, Healths Improvement: or Rules Comprizing and Discovering the Nature, and Manner of Preparing all sorts of Food (London: Thomas Newcomb, 1655), 78.

32

Overview of the Genre

nary practices were forbidden outright. For example, pastries and cakes were considered a legitimate part of a health-promoting diet in earlier works, but in period 2 all such confections were condemned. This subject will be explored more fully in a later chapter on food guilt, but for the moment it serves to illustrate a broader trend toward regulation and self-control that is characteristic of Europe as a whole in these decades. Period 2 dietaries were also fairly uniform and contained few surprises. In adhering to Greek sources, the same subjects tended to dominate, and authors often used the same organizational structure. This is in one respect surprising, because period 2 authors were found from one end of Europe to the other, but this, of course, attests to the wide distribution of standardized ideas made possible by printing. Also interesting is the fact that Italy, which dominated the genre in period 1, produced few new dietaries in period 2 and then not until the end. Perhaps printers were content to reissue already commercially successful works, or the genre awaited fresh new impetus there. Perhaps it was merely that other printing centers rose to prominence such as Paris, Lyon, Basel, and London, and they produced new works to meet the demand of their markets. The earliest of the period 2 dietaries appeared in the late 1530s and 1540s. Among these is Gulielmo Menapius’s De ratione victus salubris. It was written in Dusseldorf and first published in Cologne in 1540, its author a scholar rather than a practicing physician. It was also almost entirely drawn from Greek sources and broadly criticized the undignified style of medieval authors and the vulgarity of the Arabs. The text, apart from being wholly derivative, is also among the dullest and most pedantic. Its tone is also characteristic of this period in being stern, humorless, and guilt-ridden. One can only speculate whether the Reformation might have been responsible for this change in this tone. Another small dietary appearing at this time, the Regimen sanitatis of Robert Grospré (Geopretius), first published in Ghent in 1538 and afterwards in Paris, is similar in tone. Strangely, its widest circulation came after being affixed to a cookbook by Domenico Romoli (known as Lo scalco, 1560) that was still largely court-oriented and even Arabist in its theoretical underpinning, using Rhasis as its main source. That is, a period 2 book hitched a ride on what was still essentially a period 1 book. In England, the Renaissance dietary writers were also caught up in the new humanist craze for reviving Greek medicine in its original form. Thomas Elyot, best known for The Governor, also composed The

Overview of the Genre

33

Castle of Helthe around 1539. Although his work is a simple handbook intended for a popular audience, Elyot was apparently first introduced to the subject by Thomas Linacre himself, one of the greatest medical humanists. Elyot never became a dogmatic Galenist, though, and many of his quirky recommendations reflect his own personal taste and particularly English eating customs. This was typical of English dietaries, especially those written in the later sixteenth century. Like other period 2 works, he does criticize courtly extravagance and gluttony. The following quote is typical of the period in general: “What abuse is there in this realme in the continual gourmandise, and dayly fedinge on sundry meates, at one meale, the spirite of gluttony tryumphynge amonge us in his glorious chariotte, called welfare, dryving us afore hym, as prisoners, into his dungeon of surfet. . . .” 31 A compendyous regyment or a dyetary of helth, written by Andrew Boorde and published in 1542, is not very different in tone. Its prominent feature is its xenophobia, and his Introduction to knowledge contains a compendious catalogue of all the poor dietary customs of every nation. His own recommendations for frugality may have been colored not only by his medical education in Montpellier but his brief experience as a Carthusian monk and his attempt to follow their strict version of vegetarianism. It has been rumored that Boorde served as a secret agent for Thomas Cromwell and that he authored Tom Thumb.32 Contemporary to these are the nutritional dialogues of Georgius Pictorius, first published in Basel in 1549 and soon translated into Italian as Dialoghi. These too contain similar criticisms of court life and drunkenness as well as recommendations to avoid the eating habits of the lower classes. Clearly, Pictorius considered himself and his potential readers in neither category. In France, the first major writer to be considered within this period was Charles Estienne (Carolus Stephanus) whose De nutrimentis was printed in 1550 in Paris by his family’s press. He was the youngest son of the great printer-scholar Henri Estienne and after studying medicine composed a text on dissection and this dietary. He is equally known as the author of books on the theater and travel and of the popular Maison 31. Sir Thomas Elyot, The Castle of Helthe (New York: Scholars Facsimiles and Reprints, 1937), 43. 32. Richard Gordon, The Alarming History of Medicine (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993), 223; Andrew Boorde, The fyrst boke of the Introduction of Knowledge, in A compendyous Regyment or A Dyetary of Helth, ed. F. J. Furnivall (London: Early English Text Society, Trübner, 1870), 122 –240.

34

Overview of the Genre

rustique about agriculture. De nutrimentis, characteristic of period 2, makes no mention of Arabic authors. It also excised many foods completely in consideration of health: onions, leeks, and garlic because they were appropriate for barbers and journeymen; 33 foods such as cakes, truffles, and exotic new fruits because they were associated with gluttony. Estienne made clear that he was addressing neither the common rabble nor the effete courtier. It is particularly the learned, sedentary, or perhaps the public servant he intended to reach, as was true of most works in this period.34 The Galenist Prosper Calano (Calanius) composed a typical period 2 dietary handbook that was widely circulated in French translation as the Traicté pour l’entretenement de santé (translated from Latin by Jean Goeurot, 1550). Although he promises in the introduction that the work will not be entirely devoid of pleasure, the long descriptions of dangerous foods probably lead the reader to believe otherwise. As in England, in France there were also published several short popular health handbooks. The Thesaurus sanitatis paratu facilis by Jean Liebault, nephew of Estienne, appeared in 1557 and included the short dietary of Jacob Sylvius (Jacques Dubois) for poor scholars, the De victus ratione paratu facili ac salubri pauperum scholasticorum libellus egregius. Sylvius, best known as the quarrelsome teacher of Vesalius in his Paris years, also composed the only dietary essays for paupers: De parco ac duro victu libellus [On choosing thrifty and rough foods] and Consilium perutile adversus famem et victum penuriam [Useful advice against famine and penury]. How the poor were expected to read its Latin text was not explained. One gets the impression that it has little to do with actual practical hints for famine years and may have been more of an academic curiosity. At any rate, Sylvius remained a thorough Galenist in this and other works. Through the 1550s and 1560s many other nutritional guides appeared from one end of Europe to the other. These decades witnessed the greatest geographical dispersion of the genre. In England there was Christopher Langton’s An introduction into physicke with an universal dyet (1550?), Certeyne preceptes necessary to the preservation of healthe by Henry Wingfield (fl. 1551), and William Bulleyn’s A newe booke entitled the governement of healthe (1558). Each of these is 33. Charles Estienne, De nutrimentis, ad Baillyum, libri tres (Paris: Robert Stephanus, 1550), 37. 34. Estienne, 81.

Overview of the Genre

35

typical of the period in condemning gluttony and surfeit and blaming human disease on excess and drunkenness. Bulleyn’s comments about gout are typical: “how many noble men and worshipful personages hath it slayne in this realme: many one, which cometh of hote wynes, spices, long bancqettes, repletions, fulnes, costifnes, warme keping of the backe, salte meates, etc.” 35 Also typical is his warning that “as gods worde and storis, the treuth to tell / That unsatiat glottons shall faste in hell.” 36 Bulleyn’s work, in dialogue format, is liberally sprinkled with such catches and songs on topics ranging from the taste of food and digestive processes to uroscopy and bowel movements. Philip Moore’s The hope of health (1565) is yet another English work typical of this period. The mid-century fashion for versifying extended also to Germanspeaking lands. The elegant Latin De tuenda bona valetudine of Eobanus Hessus, a poetry professor in Marburg, is one example. The work was also published with extended commentary by Ioannes Placotomus (Brettschneider) in 1556 in Frankfurt. In the vernacular there also appeared Walter Ryff’s Spiegel unnd regiment der Gesundtheit of 1555. A typically Galenic dietary even appeared in Transylvania, published in 1551 in what is now Brasov, Romania: Paulus Kyr’s Sanitatis studium. Perhaps the most interesting author of these decades was Italian Calvinist exile Gulielmo Grataroli, who wrote two important dietary works, one for students and magistrates and the other for diet while traveling: De literatorum et eorum qui magistratibus fugentur (1555) and De regimine iter agentium (1561). The former gained wide circulation in English translation as well and no doubt found a certain appeal among the more puritanically minded. The Fleming Hugo Fridaevallis, a strict Galenist, wrote De tuenda sanitatis, which was published in 1568 by the famous humanist Plantin publishing house in Antwerp. It is the most representative of period 2 dietaries and contains all the familiar guilt-laden tirades against effete and luxurious dining as well as the mid-century preoccupation with etymology and quotes drawn exclusively from Greek authors. A similar work, Ioannes Bruyerin Campegius’s De re cibaria (1560) contains extensive discussion of eating habits around the known world and attempts to criticize the insane excesses of the present age with opinions drawn from the ancients. It is an excellent example of the short35. William Bulleyn, A newe booke entitled the Governement of healthe (London: John Day, 1558), p. 48r. 36. Bulleyn, epistle Biv.

36

Overview of the Genre

comings of depending heavily on Greek authors and particularly of difficulties of applying classical medical doctrine to current practices as well as to new foods recently arrived from the Americas. The mid-sixteenth century also produced what was the most longlived popular health manual, written by the most infamously long-lived of health gurus, the Venetian patrician and octogenarian Alvise (or often Luigi) Cornaro. His Della vita sobria promised health and longevity if readers would eat only carefully measured quantities of food and remain sober. His own conversion experience after a riotous youth was probably the best advertisement. First published in 1558 and expanded in subsequent editions, it was the only continuously published treatise in the genre. It remained popular through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and even into the twentieth. It stands outside the mainstream of nutritional literature and perhaps precisely because it has no theoretical underpinning could easily be adopted by any diet-conscious age. The experience of Spain in period 2 also lies outside of mainstream developments, and the last major dietary written there, Fransisco Nuñez de Oria’s Regimiento y aviso de sanidad (1569, first published as Vergel de sanidad) was still primarily Arabist in its sources. This may have been the result of the increasingly closed intellectual atmosphere in Spain following the promulgation of the first index of prohibited books by Philip II. At any rate, Spain was left out of the major developments that occur within the genre in the next decades.

Period 3 (1570s–1650): The Breakdown of Orthodoxy The last major period within the scope of this study is distinguished by a wider divergence of opinion among dietary authors. In many cases this was the result of a conscious appeal to experience and local custom over the authority of the ancients. The ambiguities within authoritative texts as well as disagreements between them meant that authors were freer to pick the ideas that best suited their own now that they had a variety to choose from. Thus, the recovery of the Greek medical corpus may have been a precondition to superceding it. In this respect, the humanistoriented texts of period 2 may be considered a stepping stone to the more skeptical and independently minded period 3 authors. No one entirely abandoned the basic tenets of humoral physiology, and even those who had jumped on the Paracelsian bandwagon in prescribing chemical drugs remained loyal humoralists in diet. But in specific details few dietaries still followed the orthodox Galenic line in this period.

Overview of the Genre

37

A shift in audience may also account for changes within the genre. Many period 3 works were written in the vernacular, and this seems to reflect a genuine attempt by these authors to present their readers with practical working guides to food and health rather than scholarly tomes. Extended discussion of etymology and Greek-studded commentaries gave way to popular manuals aimed at changing unhealthy habits. Even those works first written in Latin by medical professionals were translated for wider consumption. Not that there had been no such popular diet books in earlier periods: the English dietaries were almost always simple vernacular manuals. However, the specific concern to dispel people of their misconceptions and odd fallacies regarding diet suggests that the topic had become truly popular. Corruption and misapplication of theory is good proof that people had become increasingly dietconscious in these years. These Period 3 dietaries are not merely introductions to the subject but rather concerted efforts to reconcile basic physiologic principles with peoples’ actual eating experiences. Like period 2 works, the conscious anticourt dialogue was sustained, perhaps with even greater vehemence. But the subject of their derision was extended to popular habits as well. These authors were far more sensitive to the social meaning of food than their predecessors, attempting to distance themselves from both the luxurious tables of the courtier as well as those of the lower classes. This probably reflects a literate, professional, upper middle class audience with enough leisure to be concerned with a healthy diet and also competitive enough to be deeply conscious of other people’s perception of their eating habits. Dieting and physical improvement through rational self-control became a truly popular preoccupation, then just as today. The first of the period 3 authors was the eclectic astrologer, mathematician, and physician Girolamo Cardano, who composed three dietetic studies from the 1570s. De sanitate tuenda, De usu ciborum, and the philosophical dialogue Theonoston all deal extensively with diet.37 All mark the first significant departure from orthodox Galenism, ironically by returning to a purer Hippocratism and by appealing more directly to personal experience in offering dietary recommendations. For example, in his discussion of apples, he comments that whereas Galen did indeed write a great deal about the fruit, he taught us very little.38

37. Nancy Siraisi, The Clock and the Mirror: Girolamo Cardano and Renaissance Medicine (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), ch. 4. 38. Girolamo Cardano, De sanitate tuenda (Rome: F. Zanettus, 1580), 165.

38

Overview of the Genre

Cardano, following personal experience, believed that there was no place at all for apples in a healthy diet. In such departures from standard theory, Cardano represents one of the first major cracks in the edifice of Galenic orthodoxy that in subsequent decades would be slowly dismantled and replaced with a variety of regional and idiosyncratic preferences within dietary literature. Cardano is also particularly interesting for this genre because he recorded many of his own dieting experiences in his autobiography. The obsession with bodily functions and food was not uncommon; the autobiography of the artist Jacopo Pontormo, in which he meticulously measures his meals, is a case in point. Written about the same time as Cardano’s works was the dietary of Alessandro Petronio, first published in Latin in 1581 and later in Italian in 1592 as Del viver delli Romani et di conservar la sanità. Apart from tailoring his recommendations for the inhabitants of Rome, his text is lined with recommendations that proceed directly from personal experience over ancient authority. An excellent example is his discussion of wine, which in all earlier discussions was considered an aid to digestion when taken in moderation and usually even a necessary nutrient. Petronio insists that every kind of wine slows digestion because it dries out and toughens food in the stomach, just as it does to food cooked in wine, which is not the case with food cooked in water.39 His argument also rests on common experience of dehydration after consuming alcohol, which runs counter to the standard explanation of spiritous vapors ascending to the brain and disturbing mental processes. Another good example is his criticism of the Greeks for believing that asparagus is nutritious; his own reason and the experience of fetid urine suggests that it putrefies in the body.40 Petronio here and elsewhere typifies the period 3 willingness to offer practical advice rather than learned commentary and slavish adherence to authority. Castor Durante’s Il tesoro della sanita was also produced in Rome in 1586, translated from Latin to Italian and reprinted many times into the next century. It is a fairly typical dietary, almost wholly derivative and certainly not as innovative as Petronio’s. In fact, Durante never cited a single author. The book was meant to be more of a handy reference work, and in form is similar to the more successful Trattato della natura 39. “Ogni sorte di vino tarda la concottione, perche indura il cibo nel ventriculo rende il chilo più grosso, che non fa l’acqua.” Alessandro Petronio, Del viver delli Romani et di conservar la sanità (Rome: Domenico Basa, 1592), 58. 40. “Onde si può credere, ch’è falso quello, che dice un’auttor greco, che l’asparago nutrisse assai, & è in mezo tra le carni, & herbe.” Petronio, 106.

Overview of the Genre

39

de’ cibi et del bere, written in 1583 by Baldassare Pisanelli, a Bolognese physician. Oddly enough, Pisanelli’s work was later translated from Italian into Latin and published many times throughout Europe into the late seventeenth century. The most representative French work of this critical period is the second part of Laurent Joubert’s Erreurs Populaires (1587), in which the author, a learned physician serving the French court, took great pains to correct popular misconceptions regarding diet. The fact that such a work was perceived as needing to be written suggests the great popularity of the subject as well as the tendency for theory to become corrupted and misapplied when popularized. The best proof that regimen became one of the most fashionable conversation topics is imbedded in Joubert’s chapter on oysters and truffles, where he remarks that physicians are so hounded by fellow diners with questions such as “Is this bad or unhealthy? What does this do? What does that do?” that they never get to finish their meals.41 Although Joubert’s opinions rarely veer off the path of standard Galenism, he is nonetheless a typical period 3 author in his attempt to offer sound, practical dietary advice. In England the popularizing tendency continued in a handful of dietaries composed in the later sixteenth century. As in other countries, local custom increasingly prevailed over strict theory, resulting in a wide variety of opinions, lively debate, and for the unfortunate readers, probably a great deal of confusion as well. The Haven of Health, by Thomas Cogan, appeared in 1584 and then in a second edition in 1589 with many of its Latin passages translated. At first it was directed chiefly toward students and then to a more popular audience. Cogan was master of Manchester Grammar School, and we catch a glimpse of his pedagogic style in the following comments: “By the very order of nature, reason ought to rule / and al appetites are to be bridled and subdued,” and “if a man be naturally enclined (as the most part of men bee) to one thing or another contrary to reason, yet he should strive against that inclination, and doe as they doe which would make crooked things straight, that is, to bend them as may be to the contrary.” 42 Like other works of this period, he freely criticizes Galen but also depends heavily on the Regimen of Salerno. Most frequently, it is 41. Joubert, Erreurs populaires, book. 2, 99. Laurent Joubert, The Second Part of the Popular Errors, trans. Gregory David de Rocher (Tuscaloosa and London: The University of Alabama Press, 1995), 113. 42. Thomas Cogan, The Haven of Health, 2d ed. (London: Thomas Orwin, 1589), dedication.

40

Overview of the Genre

ordinary English custom and his own personal experience to which he defers, as for example when he approves of oats as food for humans.43 Even more audaciously, he approved of beef, contrary to the warnings in Galen, Isaac, and Salerno.44 The dietary of Thomas Moffett, Health’s Improvement, was probably written in the later sixteenth century, although it was not published until 1655 in a version extensively modified and enlarged by Christopher Bennet. Excellent clues that the original work had been altered are the numerous jibes against Paracelsus. Moffett was himself a Paracelsian and an accomplished entomologist. The poem “Little Miss Muffet” was reputedly written for his daughter Patience.45 His dietary, apart from being among the most lively and entertaining, also takes a critical stance against blindly following ancient authorities. He criticizes earlier dietaries for being overly rigid, precise, and unreceptive to the needs of specific individuals.46 Most importantly, the ultimate authority is firsthand experience. In direct contrast to the standard denunciation of cucumbers, he insists that pickles settle a cold and weak stomach “as by much practice and long experience I have proved in divers persons.” 47 Like other works of this period, Moffett also had a highly acute sense of the social meaning of food and made it clear that he was writing for neither gluttonous courtiers nor the common rabble. Although one wonders what his patrons, the earl of Essex and the earl of Pembroke, may have thought of his extensive criticisms of courtly life. As I show, Moffett was also an advocate of eating only native, familiar foods. Warnings to avoid foreign ingredients and eating habits grew more intense during this period. Another English dietary of the late sixteenth century is Henry Buttes’s Dyets Dry Dinner. Although ostensibly a work promoting the use of tobacco in place of wine, it is actually a concise and well-organized handbook. The fact that it was used as such is evidenced by the Bodleian 43. Cogan, 44. 44. Cogan, 113. 45. Charles Panati, Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things (New York: Perennial Library / Harper and Row, 1987), 196; A. Stewart Mason, “Little Miss Muffet’s Father,” Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of London 27 (1993). 46. Moffett, 51: “A very thin and precise diet is not to be prescribed to anyone of indifferent health and strength; no scarce to any . . .” Joubert also insists that there can never be one precise diet ideal for all people or any food universally condemned: “Ou il faudroit, que le fourmage fut du tout condamné, pource qu’il nuit aux graveleux.” Joubert, Erreurs populaires, book 2, 53. 47. Moffett, 218.

Overview of the Genre

41

Library copy, which contains copious handwritten marginalia by its owner.48 Like his fellow countrymen, Buttes also had a great sense of humor. “All say a Limon in wine is good: some think a Leman and wine better.” (The joke only makes sense knowing that the word Leman means “lover.”) 49 William Vaughan’s Directions for Health both Naturall and Artificial was first published in 1600 and later went through seven editions. It claims to be designed specifically for colonists in Newfoundland, in which Vaughan was himself an investor, and attempts to deal with the difficulties of adapting to strange new foods and climates. But in fact, it does not discuss New World foods, about which Vaughan seems to know little. Perhaps not surprisingly, his colonial venture failed. Unlike Buttes, Vaughan also had a particular loathing for the custom of smoking: “Tobacco, that outlandish weede, He spends the Braine, and spoils the seede: It dulls the spirite, it dims the sight, it robs a woman of her right.” 50 Another curious feature of Vaughan’s life is his religious mania and mysticism, apparently prompted by the tragic death of his wife after lighting struck their house.51 Prompted by contrary religious motives, Edmund Hollings at about the same time renounced Protestantism and went to practice medicine at Ingolstadt in Bavaria. His De salubri studiosorum victu (1602), like so many other dietaries, caters specifically to students, administrators, and sedentary types. The key to health, he warns, is careful regulation of the types of food eaten; their preparation, quality, and quantity; and most importantly avoiding luxuries like pies, pastries, and fried foods. Condiments and sauces he considers improper for students and even suggests that the best drink is plain water.52 Hollings’s advice is a good example of simplification of theory to the point of distortion, so common in many of the period 3 dietaries.

48. Bartholomew Ketts was the owner of the Bodleian copy of Buttes. In some places his notes are more ample than the text itself. 49. Henry Buttes, Dyets Dry Dinner (London: Thomas Creede for William Wood, 1599), p. C6r. 50. William Vaughan, Directions for Health both Natural and artificial, 5th ed. (London: Printed by T. S. for Roger Jackson, 1617), 146. 51. W. J. Bishop, “Sir William Vaughan (1577–1641): LL.D. Vienna, Colonial Pioneer, and Amateur Physician,” in Festscrift zum 80.Geburtstag Max Neuburgers (Vienna: Verlag Wilhelm Mandrich, 1948). 52. Edmund Hollings, De salubri studiosorum victu (Ingolstadt: Typis Ederianis, per Andream Angermarium, 1602), 27 on pies and pastries, 37 on fried foods, 46 on condiments, 51 on water.

42

Overview of the Genre

Also appearing early in the seventeenth century was Joseph Duchesne’s massive Diaeteticon Polyhistoricon, issued also in French as Le pourtraict de la santé. Duchesne (Latinized as Quercetanus) was at the center of the debate between Galenists and Paracelsians in seventeenthcentury Paris.53 It is remarkable that although Duchesne rejected the idea of four humors and replaced them with Paracelsus’s three chemical elements (salt, sulfur, and mercury) and he relied at times on the doctrine of signatures to discover the hidden virtues of various products, his basic discussion of nutrition and foodstuffs is otherwise not very different from those of other dietaries. It appears that Duchesne was unwilling to toss out Galen and the Greeks, and his specific recommendations are nothing out of the ordinary. That is, while the facade of orthodox Galenism may have been crumbling, its internal structure remained unscathed. Take, for example, his comments regarding chicken, that it is “the most healthy for the human body, its flesh is the most tempered, and does not convert easily into either phlegm, bile or melancholy.” 54 Considering that Duchesne was the personal physician to Henry IV, there may have been something more to the King’s wish to have “a chicken in every pot.” A contemporary of the same social circles, Nicholas Abraham, sieur de La Framboisiere, composed his own dietary, Le gouvernement necessaire. It seems fitting that following the destruction of the French civil wars, attention should again have been directed toward “good government” of the realm and the body. This is the controlling metaphor of his work; otherwise it is a typical early seventeenth-century regimen. One of the most popular regimens of this century was Leonard Lessius’s Hygiasticon, first published in Latin at Antwerp in 1613 and later translated into English, French, Spanish, and German. Its author was a Jesuit in Louvain, and he addressed many of his comments to scholarly types and priests. For example, he warns against overeating at marriages, dedications of churches, and solemn feasts—something divines would be particularly prone to doing.55 Departing from standard theory, he even suggests that flesh is not necessary for the healthy diet and that 53. Allen Debus, The Chemical Philosophy: Paracelsian Science and Medicine in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (New York: Science History Publications / Neale Watson Academic Publications, 1977), 148 – 66. 54. Joseph Duchesne, Le pourtraict de la santé (Paris, Claude Morel, 1606), 425. 55. Leonard Lessius, Hygiasticon: Or, The right course of preserving Life and Health unto extream old Age, 2d ed. (Cambridge, 1634), 30.

Overview of the Genre

43

one can easily live on bread, milk, butter, cheese, and beer if accustomed to it.56 Following Cornaro, whose treatise he includes, he recommends twelve to fourteen ounces of food per day for the sedentary, and as with other dietaries of this period he outright condemns delicacies, “lickorish cooking,” and “curious dressing of meats,” preferring instead simple, plain fare and sobriety.57 As with several other dietaries of the seventeenth century, Lessius found a niche in the market by offering something new and in doing so moved even further away from the doctrines of Galen and Hippocrates. Great demand for health handbooks dealing with food also provided the opportunity to republish or add to older works. Even Salerno’s regimen was reissued, which must have confronted the public with an even wider variety of conflicting opinions. No doubt many readers were hopelessly confused. One such interesting mixture of older and new ideas was the 1618 edition of Ugo Benzi’s Regole della sanita, to which is appended the extensive commentary of Giovanni Lodovico Bertaudo (or Bertaldi). It is essentially a late medieval work crammed into a larger seventeenth-century work drawing heavily on Galen and Hippocrates, yet targeted to a Piedmontese audience. One the one hand, it is a good example of the basic continuity of nutritional theory and its adaptability to various audiences and regions. On the other, it is characteristic of the tail end of popularity for the genre, as the public is offered a bewildering array of ideas that eventually they despair of following. How, for example, was the public expected to evaluate two unorthodox dietaries that both appeared in 1627, one promoting salads as it major theme, the other promoting fish? Salvatore Massonio’s Archidipno, overo dell’insalata e dell’uso di essa defends common custom in southern Europe, finding an audience ready and eager to see their favorite foods finally vindicated by the medical profession. It is also interesting that Massonio frequently addresses his comments to male heads of households. For example, he suggests to his reader he tell his wife that turnips are best boiled with sugar and made into a conserve.58 The projected audience became the ordinary household, and dietary recommendations were forced to take into account ordinary eating habits, often entirely bypassing the ancient authorities. It also appears that the

56. Lessius, 39. 57. Lessius, 75 and 193. 58. Massonio, 184.

44

Overview of the Genre

wide variety of cultivated and wild vegetables Massonio discusses may reflect an actual deterioration of the European diet due to economic decline.59 Equally heterodox was the Diaeteticon (1627) of Spanish-born Ludovico Nonnius, which indulges the author’s preoccupation with fish. Following his earlier Ichthyophagia of 1616, Nonnius composed this larger work incorporating his stalwart defense of fish into one of the most comprehensive dietaries. Concerning fish in particular, he remarks that most people think of it as an unpleasant burden to eat, being forced to eat it during Lent. Physicians only reinforced this perception with numerous warnings against the dangers of eating fish, a watery phlegmatic food prone to corruption. But in fact, he argues, it is among the healthiest of foods, especially appropriate for lawyers, students, and others who get little exercise. This was a direct contradiction of Galen and other authors who with their blanket condemnations persuaded people to avoid fish.60 Interestingly, much of Nonnius’s argument rests on the fact that the ancients did eat fish often, and that it was only recently that their nutritional value had been overlooked. At any rate, it appears that Nonnius was also making a concession to the eating habits of his audience in the Spanish Netherlands and adapting theory to accommodate what was an unavoidable practice. Incidentally, Nonnius’s face may be familiar, being the subject of a celebrated painting by Rubens. In the 1620s several other major dietaries were published: in Italy the Trattato del custodire la sanita of the Venetian Viviano Viviani in 1626 and De alimentis of Paduan Giovanni Domenico Sala in 1628. The former, who identifies himself as a philosopher, offers to clear up the tedious and obscure literature on the topic by presenting something brief and to the point, but he confounds his own intentions with a good deal of Aristotelian garble. Sala’s work is more of a natural history of foodstuffs, which ventures few judgments regarding nutrition. He does, however, offer numerous interesting recipes and argues for the important role of cuisine in preserving health. Frequently, as is characteristic of pe59. Jean-Jacques Hemardinquer, “The Family Pig of the Ancien Regime,” in Food and Drink in History, ed. Robert Forster and Orest Ranum (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979). The author calls the gradual decrease in the percentage of meat in the European diet due to inflation a “depecoration.” 60. Nonnius, 304 –10. Also Verhandelingen-Konninklijke Academie voor Geneeskunde van Belgie, vol. 58, no. 3 (1996) is entirely devoted to Nonnius, although I have not consulted its Flemish text.

Overview of the Genre

45

riod 3 works, he cites the opinion of Galen only to contradict him, as for example with his approval of all fruits.61 It is also interesting that Sala has an extended discussion about the quantity of food appropriate to maintain health. He cites Santorio and his famous weighing machine, often hailed as the first scientific attempt to measure metabolic activity, so it appears that the effort to think about nutrition in quantitative terms rather than qualitative and humoral had also begun to affect the genre.62 The KREWFAGIA, sive de esu carnium of Petrus Castellanus (du Chatel) also appeared in 1626 in Antwerp. It explicitly argues that meat is necessary for optimal health and may have been intended to refute the popular claims of Lessius to the contrary. Castellanus was first a professor of Greek in Louvain, and it is interesting that although his work draws heavily from Greek authors, he also makes extensive use of the Arabs. Being published the year before Nonnius’s works promoting fish, it appears that the debate over fish versus flesh as the ideal aliment became a particularly sensitive issue in the Netherlands. In fact, the preface to the book written by an official censor assures the reader that it contains nothing contrary to Catholic dogma, which proscribed meat during Lent. Contemporaneous with all these is the Erreurs populaires (1626) of Gaspard Bachot, which is intended to fulfill Joubert’s promise to deal with the topic exhaustively. It is, in fact, an exhausting and massive study of regimen in health, quite different in form from Joubert’s work. Rather than small diverting discussions of various popular notions, it contains long detailed chapters on broad topics such as humors, maintaining or altering body size, the time and order of meals, and digestion. It also takes issue with astrology and in particular with the recent vogue for Paracelsus and the idea of a universal medicine for preserving life.63 Bachot also has a highly elaborated sense of which foods are appropriate for which class of people. So too does Tobias Venner’s Via recta ad vitam longam, published in 1620, in English despite the Latin title. In contrast to other authors but like Bachot, Venner also spends a disproportionate amount of time discussing body size, although it is not clear

61. Io. Domenico Sala, “De alimentis,” in Ars medica (Padua: Franciscum Bolzetta, 1641), 38 and 51. 62. Sala, pt. 2, 36. 63. Gaspard Bachot, Erreurs populaires touchant la medecine et la regime de santé. (Lyon: Barthelemy Vincent, 1626), 83.

46

Overview of the Genre

why this suddenly becomes a feature in dietary literature. For example, he recommends white wine over red because it is considered less nourishing for “those that would be leane and slender.” 64 The last two texts covered by this study are Humphrey Brooke’s UGIEINH, or A Conservatory of Health (1650) and the magisterial De alimentorum facultatibus of the Strasbourg physician Melchior Sebizius also of 1650. Both works were written by learned academic professionals. The former was intended to fill a perceived gap in the literature following the English civil wars and was composed in plain English, there already being “gardens enough to exspatiate in” for the learned in Latin.65 While not the last dietary to be composed in England, it does mark the end of the genre’s great popularity. Sebizius’s massive tome of over fifteen hundred pages is the last great Galenic diet work. It makes use of practically every available ancient and early modern source and is intended for practicing physicians, whom the author feels have been neglecting the topic. He suggests that important questions concerning diet are often addressed to physicians: What are the qualities of this food? What is its substance? Does it promote health? Is it easily digested? Does it generate good chyle, offer much nutrition, corrupt easily? Does it quickly dissipate? Is it astringent or laxative? These are exactly the questions to be discussed in the following chapters. Sebizius believed they were still a major concern for the general populace but nonetheless out of fashion among professionals.66 It is also true that the wave of publications on diet halted dramatically in the later seventeenth century. Only the most general speculation is possible concerning this. It seems too simple to assume that a new “scientific” mentality had suddenly overcome the medical profession that now preferred direct empirical observation and experimentation over 64. Tobias Venner, Via recta ad vitam longam (London: Edward Griffen for Richard Moore, 1620), 25. 65. Humphrey Brooke, UGIEINH, or a Conservatory of Health (London: R. W. for G. Whittington, 1650), p. A5r. 66. Melchiore Sebizius, De alimentorum facultatibus (Strasbourg: Joannis Philippi Mulbii et Josiae Stedelii, 1650), preface. Hac namque et similes aliae quaestiones potissimùm in Magnatum conviviis, imò et in quotidiana hominum conversatione vel discendi et cognoscendi, vel explorandi et tenandi causa proponi solent. . . . Medicorum tamen organa, inter quae sanè haud infirnum locum alimenta occupant, ignoret: hac in parte plebeiis et opificibus longè deterior, qui non solùm quomodo operandum, et quibus operandum sit instrumentis, norûnt: sed etiam conditiones eorum, sub quibus et magnitudinem, et figuram, et qualitates atque accidentia alia comprehendimus, cognitas perspectasque habent.

Overview of the Genre

47

learned commentary on the ancients. It may also be too rash to assume that the new mechanical models of digestion as had been first proposed by Santorio and that the new chemical models drawn ultimately from Paracelsus and van Helmont had by the later seventeenth century made humoralism obsolete. In fact, humoral theory had a remarkable resilience despite the new iatrophysical, iatrochemical, and corpuscular schools. Nonetheless, it appeared that enough had been written on diet. Popular handbooks were reprinted less and less, and professional physicians increasingly turned to other topics. For these reasons, the present study concludes in the mid-seventeenth century.

chapter 2

The Human Body Humors, Digestion, and the Physiology of Nutrition

This chapter is a guide to the basic theory that underlies all Renaissance discussions of food and nutrition. Human physiology, digestion, and especially the four humors are central to the entire topic and inform all specific food recommendations. These ideas are usually, but not always, set in the context of the broader topic of “hygiene” or rules for maintaining health by means of diet, exercise, and regulation of all external factors that affect the individual. The theories originate in the Hippocratic corpus and the writings of Galen and can be thought of as the substructure that links all dietaries in the Western tradition from ancient times to the early modern period. How Renaissance physicians evaluated food products is also firmly rooted in their understanding of humoral physiology. HUMORS The four humors are essential fluids manufactured in the body that regulate physiological functions. Although a complete theory of humors was not formulated at the time of the Hippocratic writers, they often referred to health as a balance of hot or cold and moist or dry properties, and some authors referred to specific humors. The systematic description of four distinct fluids was first proposed by Galen, who described the humors in terms of elemental properties. Blood was described as a

48

The Human Body

49

hot and moist humor, phlegm as cold and moist, choler (yellow bile) as hot and dry, and melancholy (black bile) as cold and dry. These four humors determined a person’s physical constitution or “complexion,” which was the tendency of each individual from birth to be inclined toward an excess of one particular humor. The complexion not only predisposed the individual toward certain physical and mental characteristics but explained an individual’s susceptibility to certain diseases or extreme humoral imbalances. Thus, humoral pathology and indeed the description of all physical states was ultimately explained in terms of balancing these four fluids. Although the idea of balancing the humors might suggest the view that they are found in equal proportion in the body, this was not in fact the case. Blood, quantitatively, is the most abundant humor. Only onefourth as much phlegm as blood is found in the healthy body, onesixteenth as much choler, and one sixty-fourth as much black bile. Perfect health, or “eukrasia,” which is extremely rare, consists in maintaining this delicate proportional balance. More commonly, most people were thought to be mildly distempered. Only in extreme pathological imbalances would therapeutic remedies be required, as in a “plethora” or excess of blood, requiring blood-letting. But more frequently an excess of any particular humor would be corrected by a change in diet or counteracting the imbalance by means of opposite forces. Hence, this was an allopathic system. For example, a cold and moist distemperature would be corrected with a hot and dry regimen that might include hot herbs. Added to this quantitative balance, humors must also be of good quality and magnitude.1 Both good and bad varieties of each can be produced from various foods and internal processes. For example, pork might be converted into good humors in a body strong enough to digest it but in a weaker system might generate only “raw” humors. Conversely, a delicate food like chicken might combust in a powerful system, leading to “burnt” or “adust” humors. Many descriptive adjectives could also be applied to the quality of a humor. Thomas Elyot recounts nine varieties of “unnatural” phlegm, including watery, slimy, raw, viscous, and salty. Bachot describes a natural (good) phlegm as “pituité

1. Cardano describes a symmetry of elements in “number, magnitude, and figure.” Girolamo Cardano, Opera Omnia, vol. 7, De usu ciborum (Lyon: Huguetan et Ravaud, 1663). The terms “quantity, concentration, and quality” are perhaps clearer.

50

The Human Body

douce” [sweet phlegm],whereas the unnatural are serous, putrefied, crass, vitreous, and gypseous.2 At any rate, the balance of humors required much more than quantitative regulation. The internal physiological systems also had to be in optimal working order. Following Galen, the four humors also came to be associated with the four Empedoclean elements (air, water, fire, and earth) and thus became the unifying explanatory model for all nature. All plants and animals could be described in terms of humors, as could eventually metals, planets, seasons, and, indeed, everything. Thus, knowing how the humors in the human body interact with the humoral forces of nature and carefully regulating these interactions became the central preoccupation of medicine and diet. For example, a hot and dry herb like mustard would increase the choleric humors in the body, as would a hot and dry wind, vigorous exercise, or even excessive anger. By controlling these external factors, or “non-naturals,” one could also influence the internal humoral balance. One of the major difficulties in dealing with this literature is that it is not always clear whether readers could readily identify their own humoral balance or complexion. Some authors, such as Manfredi, delved into the art of physiognomy, judging the complexion by external characteristics such as hair color and quantity, stature and physical build, movement of the eyes, and, of course, personality.3 Most other authors avoided such information as they did astrology and magic. There were, however, medically certifiable ways to discern complexion. The difficulty with doing this stemmed from the fact that the body’s “natural” inherent complexion could be drastically altered from day to day due to the influence of external factors. An “accidental” complexion could even be acquired. This was the diagnosis offered by a team of physicians to Giovanni de Medici in 1463. He had accidentally acquired a phlegmatic complexion by drinking cold water too often and not getting enough exercise. Giovanni was the younger son of Cosimo and had escaped the family gout but had suffered from “cattarh” or, as we would say, frequent colds and perhaps influenza. He died in the same year this diagnosis was offered,4 perpetuating the belief that “second nature” can 2. O’Hara-May, Elizabethan Dyetary of health (Lawrence, Kans.: Coronado Press, 1977), 55; Bachot, 116. 3. Girolamo Manfredi, Opera nova intitulata il perche (Venice, Zorgi di Rusconi, 1512), p. 47r. 4. Gertrude R. B. Richards, “A Renaissance Regimen,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 7 (1939): 1170 – 80.

The Human Body

51

thus entirely replace the original complexion. You become what you eat. Just as you can acquire a taste for something, an aliment can be so thoroughly absorbed into the system that it alters the human fabric. Nonetheless, the state of the body, its complexion, tempered or not, can be read by various manifest signs. The most obvious of these is the “complexion” itself, in the sense that we use the term, or facial color. Sanguine people, with an abundance of blood, will logically appear ruddy; phlegmatics will be pale with a waterish, washed-out color.5 Venner describes drinkers of cider in these terms. They are pale because the coolness of the drink chills the liver so that good rich blood is never made and thus never colors the face.6 Cholerics are reasonably described as yellowish, angry-looking, and prone to sudden outbursts. Melancholics are dark with sunken eyes and are usually thin. But for many people, without such obvious signs, other clues may be necessary. The physical heat of the body and consequently the propensity to sweat may offer some indication of complexion. The palm is the most reliable diagnostic point. The cold, clammy hand indicates phlegmatic humors; the warm reddish palm is an immediate sign of excess blood. The physician could also routinely take the pulse, which was at least an indication of how quickly blood was coursing through the veins. In hotter complexions there would naturally be a more rapid pulse than in colder and more sluggish bodies. Urine, at least to the Arabist physicians, could also offer clues about internal functions. The color, odor, and sometimes even taste would reveal the dominant humor, although often these “piss-prophets,” as Brooke calls them,7 were criticized for failing to realize that urine consists of expelled wastes rather than nutrients absorbed into the body. Taste preferences may also be an indication of temperament, and the body seems to have natural cravings following its own inherent capacity to correct itself humorally. That is, the unnaturally hot body will desire cold and moist foods to cool itself off. The most fascinating references are those that point to character as the key to complexion. The passage of spirits around the brain has a mechanical effect on the emotions. A hot, bilious humor can provoke wrath, just as the melancholic humors can cause sadness and fear. In 5. Guliermo Gratoroli, De regimine iter agentium, vel equitum, vel peditum, vel navi, vel curru seu rheda, etc. (Basel: Nicholas Brylinger, 1561). 6. Venner, 43. 7. Brooke, 196. Brooke credits one Mr. Brian for the delightful term “piss-prophets.” The OED cites Hart, Anat. Ur. 1.2.32 (1625) as the earliest use of this term.

52

The Human Body

fact, the modern usage of these terms still reflects their original medical meaning. Sanguine people were said to be cheerful, though simple, because most of their blood is directed toward muscular exertion, which ultimately detracts from mental activity. The phlegamtic or pituitious are generally lazy and apathetic. Melancholics are depressed, of course, but can also be endowed with extraordinary creative talents.8 Poets, painters, and prophets derive much of their ecstatic skill from their humoral makeup. These simple stereotypes probably reflected popular simplification and literary usage of basic theory. Rarely, however, did dieticians describe individuals in such concrete terms, knowing full well that few people behave so consistently. Nor do people regularly dream of such things as war, water, and death, also said to be manifestations of a dominant humor. But such signs can be of importance in diagnosing particular imbalances. Who has not had terrifying dreams after an indigestible dinner? It is still not entirely clear whether each reader was sure of his or her own natural complexion. The dietaries do assume that the reader could take note of imbalances and could self-diagnose before eating, studying, or having sex. And readers were certainly expected to notice how external factors affected their bodies and alter these factors when necessary. Heating or cooling and drying or moistening the body was the primary way to redress any imbalance. Readers were also expected to pay close attention to other physiologic processes, especially what was going on in their stomachs and other organs. PHYSIOLOGY It is easy to understand how ideas of qualitative changes in the human body could have developed empirically. Ambient heat does manifestly alter the body, as does a “hot” herb burning the tongue. But when dealing with the interaction of a vast array of factors, exactly how the body processes nutrients and generates the humors is also of great importance. A weak digestive system can accidentally produce melancholic humors, and any malfunction of the organism can throw the entire system off balance. Therefore, a discussion of physiology as a whole is necessary. 8. Raymond Klibansky, Erwin Panofsky, and Fritz Saxl, Saturn and Melancholy (New York: Basic Books, 1964).

The Human Body

53

To begin with, life itself, according to the natural philosophers, is the product of heat and moisture. It is these properties that distinguish organic from inorganic material. The ubiquitous metaphor, originating in the Hippocratic corpus and finding fullest expression in Avicenna, runs as follows.9 The human body is like an oil lamp. At birth we are supplied with a quantity of life oil (radical moisture), which is slowly burned throughout life or consumed by an internal flame (vital heat). As we grow older we naturally become colder and drier. To maintain the heat, often spoken of as a voracious flame or edax ignis, food must be supplied, which replenishes the substance of the body that has been consumed.10 This food directly becomes our flesh. For those individuals who exert a great deal of energy, the food supply must be greater, and these people tend to have shorter lives. In the sedentary body, the flame is less ardent but lasts longer. Equally, it is possible to oversupply the flame and extinguish it, as happens with gluttony. Were it possible to continually replenish the body, we would be able theoretically to prolong life indefinitely, but few authors saw this as a viable goal. As we grow older, the body’s capacity to digest diminishes, as does its internal heat, and so we are forced to consume less and less, thus replenishing the flesh less effectively.11 The body then inevitably both shrinks with age and becomes colder and drier. Death occurs either naturally when the radical moisture is entirely consumed or when the flame is accidentally extinguished, as in violent death.12 Having said this, it might seem that the classical model of nutrition involved an explicit idea of food as fuel, being burned in the body and providing energy. This is, of course, the modern concept of calories. It would be anachronistic, though, to confuse our ideas of metabolism with the notion of an internal flame being constantly stoked. In fact, nutrition is far more frequently thought of as a simple replacement of the body’s substance and the generation of humors and “spirits.” How this transformation from food to human flesh was thought to occur is of central importance to the history of nutritional theory and begins with digestion.

9. Thomas S. Hall, “Life, Death, and the Radical Moisture,” Clio Medica 6 (1971): 3–23. 10. Hessus, p. 39v. 11. Peter H. Niebyl, “Old Age, Fever, and the Lamp Metaphor,” Journal of the History of Medicine (1971): 51– 68. 12. Lessius, 82, as cited in Niebyl, 363.

54

The Human Body

DIGESTION According to the Greek and Arab authorities, proper digestion is fundamental for maintaining health. Avicenna called it the root of life, and Galen warned his readers to take care of digestion before all else.13 This obsession with converting food efficiently persisted through the Renaissance texts. An improperly digested meal not only causes mild discomfort but is the origin of many diseases. One upset stomach will have resounding effects through every physiological function of the body. One corrupted food product will foul not only the blood and the humors but ultimately the flesh, the spirits, and the mind that is nourished by them. This is not merely a matter of proper nutrition but the foundation of all health, and a smooth trip down the digestive tract is an absolute prerequisite for the system to function. Pictorius called the stomach the padre di famiglia, [the father of the family]—the supplier of the household, without whom the whole would perish.14 Today the term digestion refers only to the functions of the alimentary canal. To Renaissance theorists, it was a much broader term, implying etymologically to “carry away” or “direct” nutrients to the entire body. Often the term was used solely to describe this stage, the process of distributing nutrients. Usually the term concoction denoted the breaking down or more exactly the “cooking” of foods in the stomach. The misapplication of the term digestion to the entire process seems to have been the result of imprecise usage among Roman authors. Both Cicero and Celsus used the term in its broader sense. Here the more narrow definition will be used, making a distinction between concoction and digestion. The first stage of the entire process was thought to be the attainment of a sufficient appetite, which every dietician was careful to point out is crucial. Appetite was considered a sure signal that the previous meal had been completely processed. By eating out of habit, without hunger, one risks having unrefined food forced prematurely into the body along with the earlier meal. This “raw” food not only clogs veins but corrupts, causing swellings, ruptures, and innumerable illnesses. With this danger in mind, appetite stimulants, although useful in certain cases, could be 13. Ficino, Three Books on Life, 173. 14. “Lo stomaco, il qual costoro chiamano padre di famiglia di tutto il corpo.” Georgius Pictorius, Dialogi del eccellente medico M. Giorgio Pittore Villingano, del modo del conservar la sanita, trans. Pamphilius Fiorimbene (Venice: Vincenzo Valgrisi, 1550), 26.

The Human Body

55

easily abused. Complex sauces and elaborate presentations were also thought to overstimulate the appetite, provoking it beyond the stomach’s natural capacity. In fact, it was said that humans, being more brutal than beasts, are the only animals who eat beyond their natural appetite. Or, as Socrates would have said, some men “live to eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink in order to live.” 15 The mechanics of appetite stimulation were believed to be simple. The empty stomach, having consumed all its substantial humidity, begins to pucker or “corrugate and exasperate,” squeezing out any liquids at the mouth of the stomach, thus causing the sensation of hunger. An unnaturally cold and constricted stomach continually contracting would cause the appetito canino, or bulimia, constant ravenous hunger.16 Conversely, an excessively moist stomach, choked with phlegm, would not feel this sensation, and it was for such people that an appetite stimulant—something acidic, cutting, and biting—might be prescribed. Olives were the perfect choice for stimulating the feeble appetite, as were capers whose salt acts as a detergent.17 A hot, viscous humor at the mouth of the stomach was also described as the cause of cravings and the perverted appetite of pregnant women. Following this logic, excessive heat from within the stomach was thought to destroy the appetite, never allowing the stomach to pucker; whereas during winter and in the case of cold, dry stomachs, the appetite is thought to be greater: “The choleryche stomache dothe not desyre soo moche as he maye dygest: the melancholye stomache maye not dygeste soo moche as he desyreth.” 18 It is hard to assess the many extended discussions of lapsed appetite in Renaissance dietaries. It appears to have been a genuine concern, although this is perhaps merely a remnant of theories that originated in hot Mediterranean climates, where it may have been an actual problem. Lead pipes, as existed in Rome at the time of Galen, could indeed have led to poisoning and loss of appetite even if they did not cause the fall of the empire. But why this should have remained a major concern over the centuries is not entirely clear. It is possible that the theory itself psychosomatically alerted people to scrutinize the mouth of the stomach, in 15. As cited by Plutarch, Moralia, “How a Young Man Ought to Hear Poems,” 4. 16. Manfredi, p. 66r. 17. Nonnius, 134 and 136. Olives are not nourishing, but used “ad orexim excitandam.” Similarly capers “appitentiam excitet collapsam, pituitam ventriculo haerentem detergat.” 167. Ham can be used for the same purpose. 18. Elyot, 16.

56

The Human Body

much the way that today heartburn or “acid reflux” is a major preoccupation thanks to the efforts of large antacid manufacturers. Digestion is probably the most psychosomatically influenced system in our bodies. Can it be mere coincidence that the space below the lobes of the liver was called the hypochondrium and was considered the seat of delusional maladies? 19 At any rate, Renaissance nutritionists prescribed various measures to procure an appetite before a meal. A starter salad of lettuce in summer was said to cool and refresh a hot, exhausted stomach; salt and vinegar, with their abstersive qualities, also helped clean and “corrugate.” 20 The next stage of digestion was thought to be chewing. As a major concern to Renaissance theorists, unparalleled until the days of “Fletcherizing,” chewing was also viewed as crucial for the entire digestive process. Apart from physically breaking down the food, it was also said to lubricate the food for easy passage down the throat. According to the standard theory, this is the only part of digestion accomplished by mechanical grinding, although authors often mentioned that the ancient Alexandrian Erasistratus believed erroneously the entire process to be mechanical. Careful and complete chewing was the only rational way to approach a meal. Montaigne, interestingly, expressed guilt over eating too greedily, gulping his food down and sometimes biting his fingers.21 It is clear that Montaigne knew about and had internalized the dietetic warnings, even though he had failed to follow them. Throughout this genre the voracious helluones, or gluttons, who practically inhale their food are decried. Not only was all nutritional value thought to be lost because the majority of nutrients pass out of the system unprocessed, but serious illness could follow. Next, the food—well pulverized and sufficiently moistened, makes its way down the gullet, past the “mouth,” and enters the stomach proper. Dieticians identified this stage of “concoction” as the single most important bodily function. A bad concoction could never be corrected later; the food poorly broken down, burned, or putrefied in this stage ultimately spoils everything else in the body and is eventually converted into corrupted blood, flesh, humors, and spirits. Both doctors and lay19. According to Dr. A. T. W. Simeons, all digestive disorders, unless caused by chemically or bacterially contaminated food, are the result of the imagination, of the “hypochondriac.” A. T. W. Simeons, M.D., Food: Facts, Foibles, and Fables (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1968). 20. Massonio, 278. 21. Montaigne, 394.

The Human Body

57

men repeated the saying “an error in the first concoction, cannot be corrected in the second nor even in the third,” 22 meaning that in no stage of digestion could such a fault be remedied. The Renaissance image of what takes place in the stomach is entirely different from our own. Our modern idea of powerful acids and enzymes breaking down or dissolving food derives entirely from the late seventeenth century and after. Apart from Erasistratus’s idea of the crumbling of food and Empedocles’s idea of digestion as a kind of putrefaction,23 the single most frequent analogy came from the kitchen: the stomach cooks the food by means of heat, exactly like an enclosed kettle on a fire. This image informed nearly every single Renaissance idea about the digestibility of food, and the issue was thus whether a substance was easily broken down by heat. Concoction was precisely this process, and a substance unaffected by cooking, like unhulled grains, would pass directly out the human body without providing nutritional benefit. Giovanni Bertaldi recounted the story of his own father who after excruciating difficulty urinating finally passed a whole tiny mushroom that had traveled through his system unaltered.24 Logically, he concluded that the mushroom was indigestible. As in cooking, the order of ingredients added was also a major consideration.25 A solid food that easily burns must never enter a dry, hot stomach, nor should liquids be added at the end given that they tend to float on top. On a weak flame heavy foods will never cook and on high heat many substances will evaporate or combust. We must also remember that the culinary analogies were drawn from cooking methods quite unlike our own. For example, browning ingredients first and deglazing afterwards would never have occurred to a Renaissance cook or physician nor would this be possible in an unstirrable kettle like the stomach. Naturally, the kettle image would also dissuade one from reclining after a meal. Because the fire is at the bottom, food would easily flow back upward and digestion would be impeded. Benedict suggests that one remain perfectly upright after a meal.26 He likewise advised against any22. Hollings, 38. “Concoctionis primae errorem, non corrigi a secunda, neque huius a tertia.” 23. Nonnius, 319. 24. Ugo Benzi, Regole della sanita et natura de cibi, annotated by Giovanni Lodovico Bertaudo [Bertaldi] (Turin: Gio. Domenico Tarino, 1618), 339. 25. Gazius, Corona florida medicinae (Venice: Ioannes et Gregorius de Gregoriis, 1491), p. D4v. 26. “Bonum est igitur ilico post cibi assumptionem non capite aut dorso inclinato, sed fere rectus sedere aut stare.” Benedictus, p. B4v.

58

The Human Body

thing observed to burn easily in a pan as a meal opener. Sugar, for example, burns easily, or rather “converts to choler,” as does fat, which smokes, turns bitter, and blackens. Estienne reminds us that butter can flame up, both outside and inside the body.27 Unlike the hearth, though, the stomach heat can not be adjusted, nor can the kettle be removed from the flame, so ingredients must be carefully ordered. Liquids like soup are best consumed first; solids and foods more difficult to digest should follow. As I discuss later, this theory sparked a major debate within the dietary literature: if the heat radiates from the bottom and is strongest there, should not the crasser foods enter first? This issue divided the Arabists and Hellenists. Interestingly, none of these theorists discussed the anatomy of the stomach at length to prove their point. They assumed that the mouth of the stomach was above and the pylorus, or exit valve, was directly below it, so that food ends up layered in the stomach exactly in the order that it was eaten. In the mid-sixteenth century Vittore Bonagente pointed out in De concoctione that apart from the fact that foods are jumbled up together in the stomach, the stomach actually rests on its side. The pyloris is raised higher on the left side than the mouth of the stomach and esophagus on the right. Therefore, because foods eaten last remain for the most part on top and exit the stomach first it makes sense to eat lighter foods last.28 Very few dietaries made use of this anatomical observation, though. Nonetheless, Bonagente’s analogy remains a culinary one. It is also interesting that few theorists clearly delineated the separate types of concoction mentioned by Aristotle: maturation of aliment in the pericarp, elixation by means of heat and moisture, and assation in a hot and dry environment. All of these have their failed counterparts in crudity, corruption, and combustion. In any event, his more detailed descriptions do correspond to ripening, boiling, and roasting (or rawness, spoiling, and burning), the same cooking terms used by the dieticians. The entire cooking model is also considerably complicated by the recognition that the stomach is flexible and can contract or become distended. The latter is caused simply by overeating. Brooke’s graphic de27. Symphorien Champier, 11; Estienne, 41, “Butyrum . . . ventriculo biliosore promptissime flamam concipiat.” 28. “Propinquioraque demum pyloro esse postremo loco comesta, qui primo loco assumpta, et in fundo tanquam sacculo contenta.” Vittore Bonagente, De concoctione (Venice: Michele Tramezzino, 1549), pp. 101v–103v.

The Human Body

59

scription of excess reveals the mechanics: overload prevents the mouth of the stomach from closing, causing heat to escape upward, vapors to fill the brain, the pleats of the stomach to unfold, and the heat source to be extinguished. Left uncooked, food ingested rots, causing fevers and spontaneously generating into worms, which are eventually distributed into the body, choking its passages and suffocating the vital spirits.29 Distension can also be caused by the all too familiar flatus. Beans, cabbage, and root vegetables were the arch culprits, then as now.30 Because of their indigestibility, these foods were thought literally to send fumes throughout the body, swelling it, or worse rising into the brain and causing nightmares. This wind could also enter the bloodstream and “inflate” the extremities, the genitals included. This is one reason that these foods were often considered aphrodisiacs.31 More important than the expansion of the stomach, however, was thought its contraction. Foods we like, those similar to us (that is, more like human flesh) and apt for retention, are embraced or hugged by the stomach.32 This idea informed the Arabist position that what tastes good is necessarily more nourishing because it is better processed. The agglutinative property of some foods, like bread, was also thought to keep everything in place. In fact, Moffett believed bread to be absolutely indispensable to good concoction because without it our food would either corrupt or pass through too quickly.33 Drawing the stomach closed, at any rate, was thought to fortify it so that concoction could proceed more efficiently. Sealing the mouth of the stomach securely during concoction was also recommended and underlies numerous specific prescriptions to pre-

29. Brooke, 91–92. 30. Legumes and seeds contain storage sugars to feed the growing plant, called oligosaccharides, which are bound together in such a way that human enzymes are unable to break them down. It is the anaerobic bacterial population in the lower intestinal tract that metabolizes them, the by-products of which are carbon dioxide, methane, and hydrogen sulfide. McGee, On Food and Cooking (New York: Collier Books, 1984), 257–58; Interestingly, Petronio came close to this idea when he suggested that beans and seeds contain in them a generative heat which causes them to swell both in the ground and in us (136). Most authors were not so delicate; on the topic of beans Savonarola says “E certo manifesta la lor malitia la sua alexadura che gran puzza rende” [Surely their malice is manifest in the great stink that issues from the bung hole], p. 5v. 31. See the discussion below on aphrodisiacs. 32. “Quòd palato sint magis grata; Nam etsi cum voluptate avidiùs a ventriculo arripiantur, et arctius complexentur, faciliusque conficiantur in ventriculo, iecore, venis, ac toto corporis habitu.” Cardano, De usu ciborum, 47. 33. Moffett, 236 and 243.

60

The Human Body

vent fumes from rising to the head or to stave off nausea. Any styptic food, particularly tart fruit, would be a valuable close to a meal. Quince or quince preserves (such as cotiniate, codignac, membrillo, or marmalade) were all considered ideal. Rabelais has Panurge describe its benefits, only to realize that he is “speaking Latin before clerks.” 34 Cheese was most often preferred as the ideal “seal” for the seething stomach,35 this view being most likely the origin of the modern European custom of serving cheese at the close of a meal. Several authors, however, employed the same logic to condemn the styptic after-dinner course. It does indeed constrict the top of the stomach, they argued, but in addition to sealing the vessel forces the undigested food down, like sausage meat squeezed down a casing.36 In perfect concoction the food has been held in place without floating up as indicated by nausea or sliding down as results in fluxes caused by excessively moist and lubricating foods or too much liquid. Food has also been retained in the stomach the proper length of time: too little time, and it remains raw; too much time, and it putrefies. Rarely was the exact amount of time for concoction specified because this would depend entirely on the digestive heat of the individual. Only after the food is thoroughly concocted can the digestive process continue. The concocted, but unrefined, food passes into the intestines, the job of which it is to separate the usable nutrients from the waste products. The liquid wastes are passed through the kidneys, which literally strain them of impurities (another kitchen analogy), and then they are passed into the bladder. The solid wastes continue down and eventually out of the system. It is interesting that every physiological process has its own set of “excrements.” These are only the first type of excrement. The details of evacuation were not generally included in descriptions of the “natural” or intrinsic process of digestion, which refers exclusively to nourishment. Evacuation was categorized as a “non-natural,” a process believed to be controllable by external factors. 34. Although the phrase “speaking Latin before clerks” means “everybody knows,” this passage is satirical. The clerks do not know their Latin, nor does Doctor Rondibilis know about quinces. Rabelais, 379. Benedict offers the standard medical opinion: “citonio . . . post cibum bonum sigilum in stomacho facit,” p. F6v. 35. “Postrema mensa edi debet caseus ut stomachum sigillet, et pinguium edulorum fastidium tollat, coctionique profit.” Fridaevallis, 151. 36. Actually Grataroli uses the metaphor of a full bladder being squeezed. Since most of us are unfamiliar with bladders outside our own bodies, I have substituted the more graphic sausage analogy. Grataroli, p. P3r.

The Human Body

61

The important material at the stage prior to evacuation was considered the refined “juice,” or “chyle,” which was directed to the liver, where phase two of digestion takes place. It was seen as the liver’s job to convert the chyle into blood in a process called sanguification. The liver was even referred to as the officina sanguinis, or officer of the blood, and was described as an organ composed of congealed blood. It performed this act of conversion by means of the “natural spirit,” which was its own special energy force for refining the nutrients for use. The liver was also treated as a kind of pilot light for the digestive process, being the source of digestive heat.37 Foods that heated the liver were thought to speed up the digestive process, and a cold liver could bring the refinery to a halt. In discussing the heat of digestion, or “natural” heat, the theorists did mean literal, physical heat. In fact, heat outside the body could be particularly dangerous. Remembering that like attracts like, a hot day draws the heat of the liver out, as can sitting too close to a fire, or even washing the hands with hot water after a meal, which, according to Castor Durante, could lead to worms.38 By the same logic, exercise draws the internal heat out to the extremities, arresting digestion. The process of digestion takes place most efficiently at night when we are asleep and the body’s heat is drawn inward. Sanguification in the liver being completed, the blood is next distributed throughout the body in phase three, the true digestive stage. It is here that “digestives” such as alcohol truly take effect, lightening and warming the blood and facilitating quick and easy distribution. The belief that digestives aided concoction was a popular error, but even Shakespeare’s Falstaff seems to have at least have partly understood their true function: A good sherris-sack hath a two-fold operation in it. It ascends me into the brain; dries me there all the foolish and dull and cruddy vapours which environ it; makes it apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of nimble, fiery and delectable shapes; which, deliver’d o’er to the voice, the tongue, which is the birth, becomes excellent wit. The second property of your excellent sherris is,

37. Gazius, following Isaac, claims that wheat that is too old and dry overheats the liver and food is ejected from the stomach too quickly. Gazius, p. E1v. 38. “Ma dopó cibo non bisogna lavar le mani con acqua calda, perche genera vermi nel ventre & la ragione è perche con l’acqua calda si tira fuori il calor naturale, onde ne vien la digestione imperfetta, laquale è potissima cagion de’ vermi.” Castor Durante, Il tesoro della sanita, 3d ed. (Venice: Domenico Imberti, 1643), 16.

62

The Human Body the warming of the blood; which, before cold and settled, left the liver white and pale, which is the badge of pusillanimity and cowardice. But the sherris warms it and makes it course from the inwards to the parts extreme. (King Henry IV, Part Two 4.3.96 –108)

Hot spices were similarly believed to “extenuate” the blood and help it flow, which is one reason they were so often added to dense meats, not to aid concoction but distribution. They prevent the heaviness in the limbs that comes from sluggish blood. Garlic, then as now, was also used for good circulation of the blood. Crass or rough foods are likely, even at this stage of refinement, to clog the body’s passages or cause “oppilations,” sometimes with grave results such as stroke and death.39 Again, faults inherent in the food product are replicated in each stage of digestion. Note that the blood at this stage is not the pure humor blood but still contains the other unrefined humors in it. Further refinement of these humors takes place in secondary organs. The gallbladder makes, or draws to itself, choler; the brain makes phlegm; and the spleen makes melancholy. All this takes place after the blood leaves the liver through the venous system. Blood can then follow a number of different paths, either to the parts of the body where the nutrients are assimilated, to the organs for refinement into humors, or to the heart. The last of these paths, although not directly connected to nutrition, has a bearing on the production of spirits, which were said to nourish the brain. They are the crucial connection between food and mental processes. THE SPIRITS Few dieticians explained the production of spirits in great detail, but a brief discussion will be useful here for clarifying how food ultimately effects the entire body in this system. Once blood has traveled from the liver to the right ventricle of the heart, it can proceed in two directions. Some enters the interstices of the lungs where the sooty vapors, or byproducts, of the body’s various refinements are exhaled. This blood then sloshes back into the venous system to be used again throughout the body. Some of the blood, however, percolates through invisible pores in 39. Menapius on the topic of obstructions: “Ex quo est necesse sequi mortis accelerationem; sequitur item eiusmodi apostemata minari consueta.” Gulielmo Menapius, De ratione victus salubris (Basel: Bartholomew Westheimer, 1541), 472.

The Human Body

63

the septum to the left ventricle where it comes in contact with “vital” spirits that have entered with air from the outside. The air “refreshes” the blood or vitalizes it, charging it with life. The lamp analogy proves useful. Like a lamp, contact with the outside air is necessary to keep the flame going.40 This refreshed blood then enters an entirely different vascular system, the arteries, which distribute this spirit, or pneuma, and provide another essential component of the physiological system. Naturally the quality of air brought in ultimately determines the consistency of these spirits. Pollution, foul odors, and malignant gases that rise up from the earth during miasmas can all undermine the ability of the vital spirits to function properly. So too can seasonal fluctuations, the Renaissance version of what we call seasonal affective disorder. This is why air quality, alongside diet, was an equally important factor in regimen. The most important role of the arterial system is to carry this vitalized blood to the brain, where it comes in contact with a fine mesh-like lattice called the rete mirabile. In fact, although anatomically absent in humans, this structure and its function were not called into question until the time of Vesalius. Until the mid-sixteenth century, this mesh was believed to act as a kind of cooling system through which is distilled the last form of spirit, the “animal spirits,” corresponding to the rational soul, or animus. The animal spirits in turn travel through the nervous system and are the messengers of all voluntary acts prompted by the brain. Keeping in mind, again, that a fault in any stage of the digestive process will ultimately affect the quality of these spirits, it is easy to understand why Renaissance dieticians drew such a direct connection between diet and thoughts. The food apt to increase melancholic humors also leads directly to depression, malaise, and nightmares. This is probably also why the topic of diet was of such importance to scholars. Inappropriate foods or faulty digestion clouds the thoughts and obfuscates the intellect, drawing the unfortunate thinker into confusion and possibly sin. Body and mind are still inextricably linked. ASSIMILATION Returning to the topic of nourishment itself, we must revisit an earlier stage in the long process, the point when the blood leaves the liver and 40. Galen’s De usu respirationis is the classical source for this discussion.

64

The Human Body

enters the various parts of the body. The blood at this stage undergoes a process called assimilation wherein nutrients are converted into flesh. The analogy to cell metabolism is tempting, but without microscopes, “cells” obviously never entered the picture. However, the process was thought of as a kind of miniature digestion complete with its own particular excrement in the form of sweat. According to the natural philosophers following Aristotle, it was only through several distinct “faculties” or actions that the body was able to perform this act of transformation. The faculties involved in nutrition were identified as the attractive, retentive, concoctive (or alterative), and expulsive. Central to understanding these is the idea that similar substances adhere and dissimilar substances repel. It is with this rationale that certain foods were said to be nutritious in that they are similar to our bodies and are thus attracted. Our bodies have no power to attract and retain dissimilar substances, and these pass through the body unchanged. The faculties can also be fortified by the qualities of various foods. That is, hot and dry foods aid the attractive (appetitive) faculty, cold and dry the retentive, hot and moist the concoctive, and cold and moist the expulsive. Very few dietaries discussed these topics at length, though, and they really fall under the discipline of philosophy rather than medicine and regimen.41 For our purposes it is important to recognize that those substances most similar to the human body itself are considered potentially the most nutritious.42 These were not, interestingly, always the foods recommended by physicians. Some are too difficult to concoct. Others provide more nutrition than would be required for inactive bodies. Again, diet was required to be specifically geared toward the individual and his or her particular constitution. In other words, there was an important distinction to be made between potential and actual nutrition. Pork, considered especially similar to our own bodies, might be nutritious for the athlete but dangerous for the scholar. Nonetheless, there was a definite concept of “nutritious” food, or foods offering abundant nutrition quantitatively. Logically, meat, because similar to our substance, was considered more nutritious than vegetables. 41. Sebizius, however, does offer lengthy discussion of nutrition in Aristotelian terms, 1175 ff. 42. O’Hara-May posits that nutritive value is a concept missing from sixteenthcentury theory, 115 –16. It is not the most important criterion for choosing foods, but it is certainly an established concept.

The Human Body

65

It is also important to note that for most nutritionists the real danger was in overburdening the system. There was nothing corresponding to the modern idea of minimum daily requirements or even of energy supplied by nutrients. In fact, lassitude was more often associated with excess. For example, Humphrey Brooke counseled his readers not to eat breakfast in the morning. The previous night’s meal and the energy expended in processing, distributing, and assimilating it is what causes heaviness and weariness in the limbs. The remedy for a sluggish morning is abstinence, not food.43 On the same note, the key to Cornaro’s pro-longevity regime was merely eating less, thereby conserving the radical moisture. The lamp of life thus burns less brightly but lasts much longer.44 Rather than thinking of food as fuel, most theorists were inclined to describe it as a restorative, something that replaces the dissipated flesh, blood, and spirits. That is, our own body supplies the energy, and food merely restores the parts that are wasted during the day and must be replaced or remade. The Latin verb refacio, or refection, implies this idea. In his notebooks, Leonardo da Vinci described nutrition as a continual process of dying and being reborn: The body of animals continually dies and is born again . . . because nourishment can only enter into places where that past nourishment has expired, and if it has expired it has no more life; and if you do not supply nourishment equal to the nourishment departed, life will fail in vigor; and if you take away this nourishment life is utterly destroyed. But, if you restore as much as is consumed day by day, just so much of life is reborn as is consumed. . . .45

According to Sebizius, this process is a species of generation, enacted continuously within the human body.46 This is more than a simple analogy because excess nutrients were thought in the case of males to be directly converted into sperm, which potentially transfers the generative principle outside the body. Again, the key to regenerating our flesh was similarity. According to Avicenna, aliment by definition is any substance that can be totally converted into our own substance. Poison, its opposite, is a substance that

43. Brooke, 107. 44. Gerald J. Gruman, A History of Ideas about the Prolongation of Life, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 56, pt. 9, (Philadelphia: 1966), 68 –70. 45. This passage is quoted in Graham Lusk, Nutrition. Clio Medica 10 (New York: Paul B. Hoeber, 1933), 18. 46. Sebizius, 1182.

66

The Human Body

totally transforms our body. When we consume poison, we are converted into it and die. Between these two extremes are medicines, which both transmute and are transmuted into our body. We are altered, and so is the medicine. Further distinctions are made for foods that alter our bodies somewhat yet are eventually converted into our substance. These are the medicinal foods, or as dieticians call them condiments, such as pepper. Lastly are venomous foods, which alter our body, are slowly converted into us, and with accumulation come to destroy us.47 Renaissance theorists would probably have placed mushrooms in this last category. But if similarity was the key to ultimate conversion and nutrition, what, apart from meat, could be considered nourishing? And what were the ideal candidates for total conversion into human flesh? NUTRITIOUS FOODS In evaluating food products not apparently similar to human flesh, other criteria must be employed. Further elaboration of theory was required to justify the consumption of most aliments. Theorists reasoned that if life itself is the confluence of heat and moisture, then must not the restoration of life be as well? Thus, revitalization should logically be promoted with hot and moist foods. Since the taste of heat and moisture on the tongue is sweetness, it also follows that sweet things are the most nutritious. This was the conclusion that Aristotle came to: “nothing can nourish the human body unless it participates in some sweetness.” 48 And this is why the insipid cucumber was considered to offer so little nutrition. Thus, the “temperature” of a food and its qualities, as revealed in part by taste were believed an indication of nutritional value. Sugar, understandably, was a prime candidate for the miracle food category. Often a food was described as having or making “good juice.” This refers specifically to the consistency of chyle, or broken down food, in the stomach. Will a food ultimately be converted into thick, viscous, slow-moving blood or thin and watery blood? Will distribution of nutrients be impeded by a food’s “substance” or will it evaporate quickly? These concerns were directed toward the food itself: is it crass and dense or light and airy? The subject of consistency will be further discussed

47. Manfredi, p. 1r. 48. “Nihil potest humanum corpus nutrire nisi aliqua dulcedine participaverit ut sensit Ar[istoteles].” Gazius, p. C6r.

The Human Body

67

later, but for the moment it is worthwhile to see how this factor bears on the topic of nutrition per se. If, according to theory, it is sweet foods (hot and moist qualitatively) that most readily approximate our body’s qualities, what consistency of food is most readily assimilated? Again, following theory, though rarely applied directly to dietary recommendations, it would be glutinous foods, those that stick to the ribs, as we would say, that are most easily assimilated. Once a nutrient is attracted, if it is not “agglutinated,” it merely slides away and is never incorporated. Bread, by this logic, is deemed among the most nutritious foods; in fact, the protein chains that allow bread to rise are still called glutens. This is not to suggest that Renaissance theorists knew anything about proteins. More likely their view was a way to rationalize the nutritional value of what was already the major staple of their diet. Most societies find comparable ways to explain how grain staples nourish and usually invest them with sacred meaning as well. In Christianity, bread becomes the sacrament, in Asia rice is sacred, and among the Aztecs it was maize. The glutinous substance of bread is actually the only rationale given in Western theory for recommending bread because similarity of substance is clearly inapplicable. Following this logic of similarity further, the most nutritious foods are consistently described as not only the most glutinous but the most crass: grains, beans, red meat, and cheese. All are foods, oddly enough, we would now describe as protein rich. The theorists described these as gross and viscous but, importantly, did not always recommend them for their readers. These were bodybuilding foods, appropriate only for laborers, and in period 2 and 3 dietaries they were often decisively excised from the healthy diet of the educated and ruling classes and consigned to that of the lower classes. Readers were counseled to consume less nutritious foods that were more easily digested by their weaker systems and would not corrupt before being transformed. For example, Platina describes fresh unsalted cheese as more nutritious than salted. The salt desiccates the cheese, making it easier to digest and more penetrative but less viscous and moist and thus less nutritious.49 Readers were always counseled to opt for the safer, though less nutritious, option. Juan 49. Platina, Le grand cuisinier, trans. M. Desdier Christol, 2d ed. (Paris: Jean Ruelle, 1586), p. 40v; for exactly the same reason, Manfredi considers salted ham to be less nutritious than fresh pork, p. 6r; and Hessus contends that drier foods are less nutritious as a rule, p. 67v: “Cibi exiccati humidis tum sicciores, tum minus nutriunt.”

68

The Human Body

Valverda’s list of foods that increase the body includes brains, snails, squid, oysters, chestnuts, and dates. Clearly his criterion was viscosity. These are all, not surprisingly, terribly hard to digest and were not to be consumed by the average reader.50 So, although glutinous substance was indeed deemed to be the key to nutritional value, this did not influence the choice of ideal foods for the readers of dietaries, who were presumably not laborers. It may also be clearer now why vegetables and fruits were usually described as offering little nutrition. Although containing moisture, theirs is of a cold and watery consistency that has little sticking power, and they eventually generate a watery, thin blood.51 The same is true of most fish, even though by our standards they may seem to be the gummiest of all foods. In addition, an indication of a food’s nutritional value, although hardly discernable until after the fact, is the quantity or proportion of the food expelled as excrement. Whatever passes through has obviously not been assimilated. Foods that produce abundant excrement are therefore considered less nutritious. Special attention must also be paid to the speed of digestion and how long it takes for a food to be processed. Some substances, such as bran, because they have little agglutinative power, slide right through the system, offering little nutritive value. Others move slowly through the digestive tract and are likely to putrefy before being converted to “good juice.” Beef is one example of such a slow-moving and indigestible substance. It would be nutritious if it could be thoroughly processed, in which case it would leave behind only a small amount of waste product. These few examples prove to be the extreme cases, to which theory is easily applied. Not all foods yielded so readily to simple scrutiny, and a number of other factors came into play when considering a food’s nutritive value. As has been said, those substances most similar to the human body were believed to be the most easily assimilated and thus the most nutritious. The maxim “you should eat what you are” was considered true for animals as well. Gross pigs were appropriately fed with heavy acorns rather than herbs and light chickens were fed grains or mil50. Juan Valverda, De animi et corporis sanitate tuenda libellus (Paris: Carolus Stephanus, 1552), 25. 51. Cardano, 57: “olera omnia parùm nutriunt qui a sanguinem paucissimum generant, et pravi succi.” Interestingly, this is the typical Arabist position. Hellenists have numerous exceptions, such as asparagus.

The Human Body

69

let.52 In the most extreme extension of this theory, the substance most easily converted into human flesh, then, is nothing other than human flesh itself.53 The idea of eating human flesh was, in fact, a perennial obsession for dietary writers. Long before stories of cannibals reached Europe from the New World, the thought both titillated and revolted Western minds. Numerous classical sources mention anthropophagoi; St. Jerome as a boy is said to have witnessed the Scots enjoying a meal of swineherd buttock and maiden’s breast.54 There are various allusions to some pregnant women’s longing for human flesh. And naturally, “the whole nation of cannibals account it the sweetest meat of all others.” 55 Such notions could obviously not be entertained with any seriousness, but among pharmaceuticals there is frequent reference to the consumption of “mummy,” a powder made from human skulls, preferably from those who have suffered violent deaths. This, it was thought, still contained traces of vital spirit, which would have evaporated entirely in normal deaths.56 As the name suggests, prepared from actual Egyptian mummies, this drug would also have the power to preserve the body. At any rate, the suggestion of cannibalism may not have been quite so unthinkable as it is today. Gazius tells a story of a butcher passing off human flesh as pork until the discovery of a stray finger ruined his lucrative business. Symphorien Champier admitted regrettably that some had been forced to eat human flesh out of necessity and reported that it did indeed taste like pork.57 The only apparently reliable modern account of the taste of human flesh likens it to well-matured veal.58 52. Benedictus, p. G8v: “tanto meliores carnes animalis product quanto eorum nature proportionatiores cibos habent. Unde Porcos meliores carnes habere dicimus dum glandes comedunt quam herbas et capones et gallinas meliores esse ex frumento aut milio nutritos quam ex herbas aut furfure.” 53. Manfredi, p. 3v: “non e cosa ne cibo che piu conforme al nutrimento de lhomo quanto e la carna humana se non fusse la abhominatione che la natura ha a quella.” Camporesi characteristically takes these comments out of context. The English translation reads “there is neither thing nor food that is more agreeable to man’s nourishment than human flesh.” The abomination for human flesh is, however, left out. Piero Camporesi, Bread of Dreams, trans. David Gentilcore (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 23. 54. This is recounted by Cogan, 123. The original source of this appears to have been Ammianus Marcellinus. 55. Both references to pregnant women and cannibals are from Moffett, 35. 56. Camporesi, 45 – 46. 57. Gazius, p. F2r, “Feruntur nam quam quidam necessitate urgente quandoque humana carne pasti narasse porcine carni videri persimilem.” Symphorien Champier, p. 43v. 58. William Buehler Seabrook, Jungle Ways (London: George Harrap, 1931). See also Gary Allen, “What is the Flavor of Human Flesh?” in Cultural and Historical Aspects of

70

The Human Body

The next best thing to human flesh, by universal assent, was pork. According to Galen, pig’s flesh is the substance most similar to human. The similar internal anatomy probably prompted this idea, and Galen is known to have used pigs for illustration of human anatomy. But the recommendation of pork as the ideal aliment may also have been derived from the observation of similar habits, dietary and otherwise, that suggested pigs are closer to humans than ruminants. Following theory, it was logical for Galen to have given pride of place to pork. Later authors, however, almost always point to the difficulty of digesting pork. And Muslim and Jewish authors, perhaps following their own dietary strictures, struck pork from their lists of ideal foods. How these authors were able to objectively assess pork remains a mystery, and only Avicenna admits that he had to trust the Christians.59 What is stranger though, is that later Christian physicians also condemned it, noting its phlegmy, gross, and corruptible substance. Although most Renaissance authors mentioned that Galen praised pork, they refuted the idea that readers should eat it regularly. Nonetheless, meat does remain the food of choice throughout this genre, despite the universal admiration for the antediluvian forefathers, Pythagoreans and “Brachmans,” who lived solely on fruits and vegetables. Few theorists ever suggest that a vegetarian diet could be healthy, nor could religious austerities serve to justify such a diet. God had clearly ordained animal flesh as fit for human consumption after the flood. In fact, to suggest otherwise could implicate one in heresy. The Cathars had notoriously rejected meat as worldly and evil, and Pope Innocent III saw fit to call a crusade against them in the thirteenth century. Even the Carthusians were forced to defend their vegetarian diet from suspicions of heresy. Renaissance physicians explained their position in simple terms. Vegetables may have been nutritious before the flood, but the deluge altered their qualities permanently, leaving them cold, watery, and full of superfluities that scarcely meet the needs of the contemporary human frame.60 It was also believed that humans had physiologically deFoods, ed. Mary Wallace Kelsey and Zoe Ann Holmes (Corvallis: Oregon State University, 1999), 27–38. 59. Symphorien Champier, p. 44v. 60. Moffett continues, “God appointed men to eat flesh and fish: lest happily overflowing the earth by daily increase, there would scarce be any food left for man, and man should not be able to rule his subjects.” Similar justifications exist today, and it is clear that Moffett has some misgivings about animal slaughter. He repeats a moving passage from Plutarch concerning the horror of killing, flaying, and dismembering an animal amidst sighs and groans. Moffett, 31.

The Human Body

71

generated since biblical times living much shorter lives, with a significantly diminished ability to digest plants. Although theorists did agree that meat is the most nourishing food, exactly which species left great room for debate. Authors could cite the Arabs, who tended to favor kid and veal, or they could turn to Greek sources and recommend chicken. For some authors local custom outweighed all ancient authority on the topic. There were, however, some criteria for assessing meat that remained fairly stable. Again, the key factor was similitude. Proximity to humans along the “great chain of being” offered some clues. Clearly mammals are more like humans than birds, fish are further removed, and reptiles and insects are entirely out of the question. This logic cannot be applied with any consistency, though, because plants are considered suitable food, whereas some mammals, such as carnivores, often are not. There is a superficial resemblance here to the kosher laws of the Old Testament and to halal regulations of Islam. Both forbid the use of carnivores as food, not because of their dissimilarity but because of their failure to redeem their acts of murder with a sacrifice.61 Nonetheless, the cultural aversion to carnivorous flesh may have lingered in the West in spite of the abrogation of Old Testament dietary laws in Christianity. More important for physicians was the consistency of the flesh, its color and odor, and even the habits of the animal. All these may immediately suggest dissimilarity. Gazius easily condemns hedgehog, fox, and hare on these grounds,62 even though Greek authors discussed them as food. Plutarch, many authors noted, condemned all carnivores on the ground that their nature is so unlike our own.63 It is true that we too are carnivores and often equally rapacious, but they can digest raw meat and we were not believed to have this ability, which suggests that their body heat must be far more powerful than our own. Therefore, meat from these animals would be far too hot for our use, a fact evident in their rank, malodorous, and dark-colored flesh. Volatility of odors was an immediate sign of excessive heat. This logic seems to be, once again, a rationalization of regular practice. By this reasoning birds too should

61. The classic article about food prohibitions in the Old Testament is Jean Soler, “The Semiotics of Food in the Bible,” in Food and Culture, ed. Carole Counihan and Penny Van Esterick (New York and London: Routledge, 1997). 62. “Carnes vero eritii, vulpis, leporis et similium naturae humanae non sunt similes: imo earum nutrimenta sunt pessima quod testatur gravitas, odoris, et vicina fetoris.” Gazius, p. E3r. 63. Nonnius, 162.

72

The Human Body

be condemned because they are able to digest worms and insects, which are considered indigestible for humans. Their mild and light colored flesh, however, implies a moderate and temperate heat, rendering them appropriate as food. Equally, a herbivorous diet does not necessarily make an animal suitable for food. The horse and water buffalo are two good examples, although for the former an entirely different set of criteria seems to have informed this aversion, only one of which was Pope Gregory VII’s explicit prohibition in the early Middle Ages. None of these brings us any closer to understanding why Renaissance physicians thought some animals are more similar to humans than others. Upon closer scrutiny, it seems that the true test, although no author specifies this, is docility. Not merely should the animal be able to be domesticated, but it should have a pleasant demeanor. Sheep, goats, and young calves are acceptable but not bulls, rams, and billy goats, unless young and castrated. Rabbits, ducks, and geese are fine fare, as are deer, although most authors leave these to strong constitutions not prone to melancholy. The dark flesh and unsavory diet of waterfowl made many authors think twice about them, but they were nonetheless included among nourishing foods. Boar meat is a curious exception to the rule of docility. The interesting point is, the ancient authorities had many differing opinions about which foods to choose, the foundations of theory did not provide any rigorous guidelines that could be followed consistently. The result is that by period 3, each author was more or less free to follow his own criteria, and the results are far more varied than might be imagined. Some authors condemned beef, the English praised it; many condemned mutton, the French promoted it; the Italians adored kid, others could not imagine why. This is merely one facet of the many disagreements within the genre. For many authors the difficulty of digesting most meats disqualified them from status as ideal aliments. To counter this problem, many merely recommended broths made from meat, which were then in a sense pre-concocted. This was often seen as the best way to absorb the benefits of flesh without undergoing the rigors of processing it internally. Most regimens for sickness specify broths made from meat or fowl for precisely this reason. Chicken soup, it seems, has been a perennial curative. Far more suitable than broths, they thought, and perhaps even more easily converted into human flesh, were substances closer to blood itself. If the locus of human nutrition is in the members rather than the stom-

The Human Body

73

ach, why not bypass that troublesome stage of concoction altogether and consume blood itself? Marsilio Ficino suggested exactly this for his weak, aged, or infirm readers. Human blood, taken from a clean, happy, and temperate adolescent, with plenty of blood to spare, was suggested to provide an excellent and immediate restorative.64 It is unlikely that this became “universally adopted” as Piero Camporesi has suggested,65 but some physicians did give it serious consideration. More often, they were aghast at the suggestion. Menapius wonders how Ficino, who must have known his Galen, could possibly have commended blood. Moffett says, “be it far from any humane or Christian heart . . . to suck away one anothers life in the blood of young men.” 66 Animal blood, on the other hand, was regularly consumed in the form of black puddings or boudins. Several authors even point to the French custom of sending blood sausages to friends as a symbol of heartfelt affection, although Joubert imagines that practice to have originated in blood’s perishability. They are given away before they go bad.67 Regarding their nutritional value, though, no dieticians recommend their use. Blood may contain life essence while it is warm and flowing through the body, but once removed it grows cold, coagulates easily, and corrupts quickly. Just as blood scrambles in a pan and gets harder the longer it cooks, in the stomach it stiffens, passes slowly, and ultimately offers little nutritional value. Even more important than this, as a food product, it came to be associated with the “plebians” and this was every reason to justify its prohibition.68 Interestingly, although blood was forbidden in practice, all its theoretical virtues were transferred to its analog, wine. The association seems to be an ancient one. It was the substance chosen for easy conversion to the blood of Christ in the miracle of the Sacrament.69 Why then should it not readily convert into human blood in the body? The

64. Ficino, 197. 65. Camporesi, 44. 66. “Quo magis miror, quid in mentem venerit Marsilio Ficino viro alioquin doctissimo ostendi aliud iudicium fuisse Galeni, sic enim scribit: Medici tamen veteres maxime Galenus, suis carnes et sanguinem propter quandam cum corpore nostro similitudinem valde commendant . . . sanguinem nusquàm à Galeno video laudatum.” Menapius was, of course, an orthodox Galenist, but failed to note that Galen does mention pig’s blood in Alimentorum facultatibus 3.2. Menapius, 520; Moffett, 140. 67. Joubert, Erreurs populaires, book 2, 57; Nonnius, 204. 68. Petronio, 183. Petronio offers the description of blood getting harder as it cooks and also adds, “non è stimato se non dalla plebe.” 69. Tim Unwin, Wine and the Vine (London and New York: Routledge, 1991), chap. 5.

74

The Human Body

connection between blood and wine was not merely a coincidence of substance, color, or external “signatures,” which may have suggested similar virtues. Rather, it is a deeper recognition that wine and blood are both made the same way. Both involve a crushing, fermenting, separating from various by-products, and ultimately refining for use. Like blood, wine can also be further distilled into aqua vitae, or “spirits,” a term we still use. From this essential similarity, it was deduced that wine actually regenerates our own spirits and is thus useful for all complexions, regions, and ages, and especially for the aged and emaciated. Lac senum existit vinum [Wine is the milk of the aged].70 The older you become, in fact, the more wine you ought to drink. The virtues of wine (in moderation) could fill a book, and they often did. Think of Paul telling Timothy to “drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities.” 71 Wine is the substance most easily converted into human blood and assimilated into the body and thus is the quickest to nourish. For many theorists it is an indispensable nutrient. Quoting Plato, they recount that it heats both body and soul, and men by nature covet it, except for the odd person who is “abstemious, one among a thousand perchance degenerate, and is of a doggish nature, for dogges of nature doo abhore wine.” 72 A caninum prandium [dog dinner] is, in fact, a dinner without wine. Another point that may have supported the wine-blood analogy is the observation that wine is not only made from grapes the way blood is from food, but it undergoes a natural life cycle in which it ages and eventually loses its innate heat, becoming vinegar. For all practical purposes, it is alive and nourishes our living spirits with its own. Throughout these impassioned accolades, theorists rarely consider whether the grapes themselves bear any similarity to human flesh. Ostensibly they do not, and some authors suggest that they produce only flaccid and flabby flesh. The case of wine as an ideal aliment appears to be yet another example of a regular dietary custom that is accommodated by theoretical juggling. The fermentation and analogy to blood is cited as a justification for using wine, and because wine and alcohol resist corruption, should they not also protect our bodies? Just as with

70. This is repeated by nearly every author following Salerno. Its origin is likely earlier. Benedictus, p. P2v. 71. 1 Timothy 5:23 King James Version. 72. Cogan, 209.

The Human Body

75

bread, the most common foods, which empirically seem to nourish the body, must be explained by physiology only after the fact. The theories also provide another potentially ideal aliment. Just as blood was known to nourish the developing fetus in the mother’s womb, milk serves the same function postpartum. More than merely a similar substance, milk was believed to be “twice-concocted blood” manufactured from blood itself within the mammary glands. Easy to digest and containing all the nutrients that had been consumed originally by the mother, it is the ideal food for the aged and infirm. Platina specifies choosing a healthy, young, and beautiful woman of tempered complexion; naturally the milk was to be imbibed directly from the source. One can only imagine the scores of decrepit clerics in Rome clamoring for the treatment. The authority on dairy products, Pantaleone da Confienza, even went so far as to suggest that human milk should be used not merely for medicine but for regular food.73 The medical humanist John Caius (of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge) is said to have lived the last few years of his life on human milk. Interestingly, the character of the donor was also to be a prime consideration. As Thomas Moffett relates of his mentor: What made Dr. Cajus in his last sickness so peevish and so full of frets at Cambridge when he suckt one woman (whom I spare to name) froward of condition and of bad diet; and contrariwise so quiet and well, when he suckt another of contrary disposition? verily the diversity of their milks and conditions, which being contrary one to the other, wrought also in him that sucked them contrary effects.74

But like all pure substances, milk was also not without its dangers. For one, milk is cold and moist, having been deprived of its heat in nourishing the mother. Qualitatively, it is ideally suited for infants, who are also comparatively cold and moist, but not necessarily for adults. Milk is

73. Platina, p. 38v, “et sic lac mulieres vel via medicine ceteris omnibus preferet et merito”; Pantaleone da Confienza, Summa lacticiniorum, 2d ed. (Lyon: Antonium Blanchard, 1525). 74. This citation comes from Waverly Root, Food (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1980), 258. I have been unable to find this passage in Health’s Improvement and the author does not provide the source. Another anecdote about John Caius regards a debate before Queen Elizabeth on the topic of whether one should prefer simple foods to the more complex and whether one should eat more at lunch or at dinner. Both were standard dietary topics. See Nutton, “John Caius,” 304. On the topic of milk, Thomas Cogan also relates that the earl of Cumberland was cured of consumption with human milk and later fathered George Clifford, Queen Elizabeth’s favorite. Cogan, 154.

76

The Human Body

also prone to perish, as everyone is well aware. Corruption in the body sends up fumes to the brain and also damages the eyes, both of which are especially dangerous for students. With the idea of concoction as cooking in mind, it must also have been easy to imagine milk in a hot pan bubbling, curdling, casting chalky deposits, and burning. This very image prompted most writers to ban milk, unless taken on an empty stomach, preferably in the spring when it is not too hot outside, and with an unagitated mind. Milk never became an ideal food in practice, although it did remain a symbol of nutritional value.75 More amenable to theory were other forms of “potential being” such as sperm and eggs. The former were considered to be manufactured from a superfluity of nutrition, transformed from blood in the testes the same way milk is made in the mammary glands. As with all “seeds,” sperm contains all the ingredients for generation and growth if planted in a nourishing matrix. It contains the principle of radical moisture intended for the ultimate purpose of sustaining life. Theoretically it should also be an ideal aliment, although no theorist specifically makes this claim. Several do commend animal testes, though, particularly from capons. However, as with all organ meats, the difficulty of digesting them led to disapproval. Much was also said for the liver, an organ of congealed blood, potentially nourishing, but too dangerous for regular consumption. Of all the candidates for ideal aliment, the only food that passes all the rigorous tests is the egg. According to Estienne, like blood and milk, eggs are also animal in prior form, yet they have none of the drawbacks of blood or milk.76 They are qualitatively tempered, easy to digest if cooked properly, and easily agglutinated and assimilated into the human body “due to a certain analogie or likenes that they have with mans nature.” 77 According to Alexander of Aphrodisias, the egg is a symbol of the earth, a microcosm, round like a sphere and containing all four elements in proportion. The shell is like the earth, the albumen is like water, the yolk like fire, and the foamy nodule like air. A human being, after all, is also a microcosm of the world, and this clearly suggested that 75. Ken Albala, “Milk: Nutritious and Dangerous,” in Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery, 1999, ed. Harlan Walker (Totnes, Devon, U.K.: Prospect Books, 2000). 76. Estienne, 39: “Omnino igiter lac et ovum sanguis est animalis à priore forma, naturae labore atque artificio, post animalis, a quo productus est specimen, nobis etiam alendis idoneus.” 77. Venner, 86.

The Human Body

77

the two are similar. Eggs, therefore, provide perfect nourishment for people of all ages, complexions, and in all seasons. Being only potential animals, they are also suitable for Lent. Most other foods were subject to far more scrutiny. Careful examination of the qualities of food and their humoral makeup was required, as was investigation of the substance or texture and perhaps the unique virtues of a certain food. All these are the subject of the next chapter.

Figure 1. Melchior Sebizius, De alimentis, frontispiece. Courtesy of the New York Academy of Medicine.

Figure 2. Bruyerin Champier, De re cibaria, frontispiece. Courtesy of the New York Academy of Medicine.

Figure 3. The Lamp of Life. Piero Valeriano, Hieroglyphica et emblemata medica, p. 17. Courtesy of the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. Figure 4. Melancholic Man. Piero Valeriano, Hieroglyphica et emblemata medica, p. 40. Courtesy of the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

Figure 5. Perch with a Knife. Guillaume van den Bossche, Historia medica, p. 360. Courtesy of the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

Figure 6. The Butcher. Ortus sanitatis, p. K3v. Courtesy of the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. Figure 7. The Baker. Ortus sanitatis, p. Z4v. Courtesy of the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

Figure 8. Cucumbers. William Turner, Herbal, p. 175. Courtesy of the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

Figure 9. Artichokes. Matthias L’Obel, Nova stirpium adversaria, p. 478. Courtesy of the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

Figure 10. Wild Pigs. Conrad Gesner, Historia animalium, vol. 1, p. 872. Courtesy of the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. Figure 11. Turkey. Conrad Gesner, Historia animalium, vol. 2. p. 482. Courtesy of the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

Figure 12. The Cook. Bartolomeo Platina, Von allen speisen und gerichten, frontispiece. Courtesy of the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

chapter 3

Food Qualities, Substance, and Virtues

Like human beings, all other living creatures and plants, according to the system of humoral physiology, have their own inherent complexion. When these creatures are used as food, their elements, being transferred and assimilated into our bodies, naturally alter our own complexion. Thus, a food product described as hot and dry, or “choleric,” will ultimately increase the choleric humors in the individual who eats it. The difficulty in understanding this system fully stems from the fact that “hot and dry” and other qualitative terms used to describe food do not refer to actual tactile properties. A food need not be manifestly hot in temperature or dry to the touch to be classified among the foods that increase choler. Rather, it is the effect that these foods produce in us humorally that determines how they are categorized. For example, lemon juice, although obviously a liquid and usually at room temperature, is classified as cold and dry because it cools the body and dries or puckers the flesh, as is evidenced by its effect on the mouth. Sugar, although composed of dry granules, is categorized as hot and moist because it warms and moistens our bodies and increases blood. Therefore, it is important to distinguish between physical properties that are confusingly called hot, dry, cold, and moist in common parlance and qualitative properties that influence the humors. Sometimes the tactile properties are described as “primary” or “actual” to distinguish them from “secondary” or “potential” qualitative effects. As Viviano Viviani points

78

Food: Qualities, Substance, Virtue

79

out, pepper and wine, though cold when entering the stomach, nonetheless are vigorously heating foods.1 That said, it remains to be seen how foods were placed into these various categories. “Hot” foods that burn the tongue and foods that are physically refreshing on a hot day fit easily into the qualitative schema, but few foods affect our bodies so dramatically. To understand how foods were categorized, it is important to keep in mind that although some foods were probably first assigned qualities empirically, the majority were fit into the system deductively. That is, the theoretical framework of elements and humors was already in place when the foods were categorized according to the system. This method of reasoning is sharply distinguished from our own. Whereas we would examine any new food directly, perhaps run clinical trials to prove its nutritional or therapeutic value, and then present our evidence statistically, this system fits food into prefabricated categories by seeking evidence in the food itself. For example, a tomato’s superfluous moisture logically points to the fact that it is a phlegmatic food and will increase cold and moist humors in the human body. In this case the physical properties coincide with the potential humoral effect on the body. One can also reason the other way: in the case of red meat, one can deduce that because it is an extremely nourishing food, it must therefore be hot and moist. Wine’s apparent similarity to blood leads to the conclusion that it should also increase blood and so is also hot, moist, and nutritious. Because older varieties of lettuce (lactuca) secreted a milky substance when cut, they reasoned it should be good for milk production. Usually, however, categorization was not as simple as this, and it is quite likely that this type of analogical explanation predates the entire theoretical framework as constructed by the Greeks. The fact that similar food values are found among many descendants of Indo-European and even Chinese peoples suggests that such reasoning probably existed long before medical theories were written down.2 In Renaissance nutritional theory are traces of an earlier system probably rooted in folk beliefs, where the assignation of qualities to a given food may originate. The idea that any given animal organ will benefit the same organ in us—what might be called a doctrine of similarities—

1. Viviano Viviani, Trattato del custodire la sanità (Venice: Girolamo Piuti, 1626), 39. 2. E. N. Anderson, “Traditional Medical Values of Food,” in Food and Culture, ed. Carole Counihan and Penny van Esterik (New York and London, Routledge, 1997), 80 –91.

80

Food: Qualities, Substance, Virtue

led to the conclusion that eating brains is good for the intellect: the cold and moist elements of one directly transfer into the other. Similarly, testicles promote virility and liver stimulates courage. Also, the notion that the particular characteristics of any given animal will promote the same in us depends on the assumption that if these humors could produce such effects in one animal, then logically those same elements can stimulate psychological changes in the consumer. Thus, since eating rabbit causes fear, rabbit is considered a melancholic food; since eating goat incites lasciviousness, goat is characterized as excessively hot. Usually, however, this reasoning was ridiculed as vulgar superstition, especially in period 3 authors. Comments such as “the vulgar think that the flesh of turtledoves promotes wisdom” were common.3 Although Sala contended that young girls ate turtledoves to be prudent and chaste,4 Petronio criticized the notion that hare’s flesh causes melancholy and pointed directly to hare’s lack of courage as the motivation for this idea.5 The idea of color and visible form as an indication of nutritional value is also probably a remnant of earlier food systems, although quite often it persisted in humoral physiology. In the West this was called the doctrine of signatures. An object’s visible signs indicate the object’s affinity to other substances and offer clues to its ultimate meaning and value. Within the context of Christianity, these signs were left by God as hints to tell us how we should make use of his creation. By this logic, red foods are hot and thus good for the blood; yellow herbs might be good for jaundice; heart-shaped leaves are logically good for the heart. Similarly, walnuts, because shaped like a brain, are good for the mind. By the time of the Renaissance, this type of direct reasoning was rarely invoked, although color was often considered an indication of nutritional value. Symphorien Champier, for example, explained that red beans are always hotter than white ones.6 Gazius points out that sweet red grapes are good for coitus because they make a full, rich blood; white are less nutritious but diffuse through the body quickly; black are hardest to digest.7 Black foods will, according to this logic, increase

3. Petrus Castellanus, KREWFLGIA, sive de esu carnium (Antwerp, Hieronymus Verdussius, 1626), 231: “unde vulgatum apud nonullos dictum, Turturum carnes esse cibum sapientum.” 4. Sala, 97. 5. Petronio, 173. 6. Symphorien Champier, 75. 7. Gazius, p. O2v.

Food: Qualities, Substance, Virtue

81

melancholy.8 Most of these color valuations are found in period 1 authors and less frequently in periods 2 and 3 authors. This may be due in part to dependence on Greek authors over Arab ones. Nonetheless, almost all authors conceded that redder-fleshed meats are hotter, more nutritious, and more difficult to digest than lighter ones. This is a logic that, perversely enough, persists even in modern popular thought about the comparative value of “red” and “white” meats. In Renaissance theory, light meats—those from young quadrupeds and pork—were judged to be cold and moist. Dark red flesh—for example, that from oxen and goats—was associated with dryness and heat. Color associations concerning foul were somewhat more straightforward and thus more consistently applied: the lighter fleshed chicken is far more tempered than the dark-fleshed wild fowl, whose redness denotes choler. Blackness, as in swan’s flesh, denotes melancholy.9 The odor of a food also offers clues about its potential qualities, although this has little to do with the doctrine of signatures. The volatile character of an aromatic substance such as cloves is a sure indication of heat and dryness. A putrid smell signals the heat and moisture associated with putrefaction and spontaneous generation. The naturally rank odor of carnivorous animals points to their excessive heat. With far greater subtlety, Pantaleone insisted that the smell of an animal is an effective criterion for judging its milk. Goat’s milk is hotter and drier than cow’s because goats smell worse.10 Another essential consideration is the habitat of the animal or growing environment of the plant and ultimately the substances with which both are nourished. Marsh plants are logically more phlegmatic than mountain shrubs that are warmed by the sun. Even different parts of the plant can be distinguished by their location. Roots, which absorb the cold “undigested” elements directly from the soil, are much harder for us to concoct than hot leaves in which the nutrients have been further refined by the sun.11 Fish, naturally, because reared in the water, are cold and moist, like their element. Wild mountainous birds that feed on herbs are dry like their food, in contrast to waterfowl that feed on phlegmatic 8. Ficino, Three Books on Life, 133. Ficino has the most explicit color-associations of any dietary author. Not only does he condemn black foods, but praises yellow and golden foods and anything which has affinity with the sun. 9. Platina, Le grande cuisinier, p. 121r. 10. Pantaleone, p. 17v. 11. Symphorien Champier, p. L21r.

82

Food: Qualities, Substance, Virtue

muck. Cattle fed cold and dry oats become cold and dry; sheep fed grass become cold and moist. Simply, the organism becomes what it eats. The predominant humor is passed from fodder to feeder down the food chain until it ends up on our table. But this reasoning only leads one to the original source of the humor and leaves unanswered the question of how the first food was categorized. FLAVOR The key to understanding the qualities in the humoral system is flavor. Behind nearly every single qualitative evaluation is ultimately a taste test, and flavor is the most consistent criterion for categorizing foods. Following Avicenna, everything can be placed into one of seven basic flavor categories: sweet, bitter, acute, salty, acidic, styptic, and unctuous. Most would add an eighth as well: insipid.12 The Hellenists also added “acrid” as the hottest of flavors, associated with pepper and mustard. They sometimes further distinguished different intensities of sourness.13 Some authors specified as many as thirteen distinct flavor categories.14 Sweetness indicates heat and moisture, which is a sure sign that a food will be nourishing. It is apparently the only flavor that newborn infants instinctively enjoy. The pleasant flavor of sweet things denotes their similarity to our substance in the powerful attraction they have to our body and ultimately the ease of conversion into it. However, because sugar and honey, theoretically the most nourishing of foods, are prone to combustion and extremely sweet fruits are prone to corruption, many authors did not include sweet foods in specific dietary recommendations. Those who did were subject to criticism by later authors, especially when sweets became more widely available and were abused. Our natural aversion to bitter foods indicates, by the same logic, that they are not nutritious. They are the opposite of sweetness, which should mean schematically that they are cold and dry, but only Averroës came to this conclusion. All others classified bitterness as the most extreme of hot and dry flavors. In fact, choler (yellow bile) was reputed to 12. Gazius, pp. C5r–D2v. 13. Sebizius, 30 –36. 14. In contrast to the Arabists such as Gazius, the Hellenists specify many more flavor categories. Symphorien Champier, p. 24r; Menapius, 552; Jean Bruyerin Champier, De re cibaria (Lyon: Sebast. Honoratum, 1560), 34.

Food: Qualities, Substance, Virtue

83

be the most bitter tasting of substances.15 The other hot and dry flavors are “acute,” which includes the taste of garlic and onions, “salty,” and “acrid” to describe burning or “hot” flavors as we still think of them. The cold and dry flavors we today would lump together under a broad category of “sour” the Renaissance physicians frequently distinguished as acidic, styptic, and pontic, following the Arabs, or acerbic (mildly sour), acid, and austere (terribly tart), following the Greeks. These are the polar opposites of sweetness, and we still use the word dry in this older sense to describe a dry wine that has a tannic or styptic quality. Lastly, cold and moist humors are generated by insipid foods, which include watery vegetables, flavorless fruits, and anything directly associated with water. The unctuous or fatty flavor was thought to lie somewhere between cold and warm among moist aliments. Probably because fat was considered to contain an excess of nutrients, it was thought to contain some sweetness and was thus classified as moist and somewhat warm. Because fats are not refreshing, they could not be considered completely cold. The effect of a food on the tongue not only determines the qualities of the food that are transformed into their respective humors in the body but indicates the food’s effect on every other part of the body as it passes through the various digestive stages. Sour, puckering, and constricting foods that are cool and dry to the tongue will behave the same way after conversion into humors and spirits. Aperitive foods that dilate the mouth and nasal passages are hot and dry and will similarly widen all the body’s passages. Burning, spicy foods and bitter foods cut through clogged passages. Refreshing, thirst-quenching foods, conversely, cool and moisten the entire body. Flavors are thus associated with specific physiological effects on the body, and sometimes these are inferred from how a substance behaves outside the body. Salt, for example, because it inhibits putrefaction, accomplishes the same inside us. The physiological “faculties” were also said to be fortified by particular flavor-linked qualities. Cold and moist foods promote expulsion, whereas cold and dry foods aid retention. On the theory that taste reveals qualities, it might seem then that deciding how a food will affect the body would be a simple matter of tasting the food. In fact, the system is further complicated by the recogni15. Bachot, 115.

84

Food: Qualities, Substance, Virtue

tion that an individual’s complexion and the interaction of a food with the individual’s humors alters perception of a food. Imbalances, in particular, cause cravings and perversions of the natural appetite. Some illnesses completely throw off perception of flavor. But before discussing how a food’s qualities interact with an individual’s complexion, a number of further refinements must be added to the concept of quality. DEGREES First, following Galen, a food’s quality is often said to lie within a certain “degree” of intensity. For example, parsley is hot in the third degree and dry in the third degree. Again, these intensities refer only to the effect on the person who eats the food and are not absolute or objective descriptors. Thus, first-degree foods are those that alter a tempered body only slightly, leaving no apparent evidence of the alteration. In fact, a physician must conjecture whether such foods have acted at all. Second-degree foods manifestly alter the body. The cooling effect of a cold and moist lettuce leaf having produced cold and moist humors in the body should be discernable. Those foods with qualities in the third degree strongly alter the body. Thus, cloves, hot and dry in the third degree, have an incisive faculty readily perceivable. Fourth-degree foods are the most powerful and vehemently alter the body, burning it with heat or stupefying it with cold.16 Garlic is one example of the former, cucumber of the latter. Few foods are perfectly “tempered,” having no dominant humor or qualitative effect on the body. Bread is one of the few tempered foods according to dietary authors. It is also possible for foods to be mixed in degrees of different qualities, for example, hot in the first degree and moist in the third, meaning a very moist food with little heat. Oil and unctuous foods usually fall within this range. For the sake of convenience, a shorthand notation will be employed throughout the rest of this section using the letters h, m, c, and d for the qualities hot, moist, cold, and dry, respectively, and a number referring to the degree. Thus, oil would be described as h 1, m 3 ; cloves as h 3, d 3. Pharmacists sometimes divided each degree into sixty “minutes” as well, as for example in describing a food as being “in the upper second degree” or “middle of the fourth degree.” Dieticians, however, generally avoided such pin16. Venner, 111–12.

Food: Qualities, Substance, Virtue

85

point accuracy, recognizing that the exact degree of a food depends entirely on subjective human perception, which in turn depends on the exact degree of humor in the body and thus differs from individual to individual. Many dietary authors refrained from using degrees altogether, and in some cases qualitative labels were entirely abandoned, especially in period 3.17 Renaissance dieticians’ ideas nonetheless required abstractions quite foreign to our way of thinking about food. It is clear that physicians envisioned the qualities graphically. Hot and cold are polar opposites, as are dry and moist. Moreover, the sanguine complexion is opposite to the phlegmatic; hot and moist oppose cold and dry; hot and dry oppose cold and moist. Since each of these is further divided into four degrees, it would follow that h 3, m 3 is equidistant from the temperate mean as c 3, d 3. In modern times, we would represent this interaction graphically on a Cartesian coordinate grid with four gradients, plotting precisely the interaction of any two items and describing it in a mathematical equation (e.g., person c 2, d 1 ⫹ food h 3, m 2 ⫽ h 1, m 1 ). For better or worse, however, this simple level of quantification was unavailable to Renaissance authors. Rather than plot points on a coordinate grid, they envisioned the humors on a circle, corresponding with the Earth and the cosmos. As a perfectly balanced system, with microcosm firmly linked to macrocosm, it made perfect sense to depict the humors in this way, and examination of this visualization system reveals their decisions and recommendations to be anything but arbitrary or esoteric.18 In this model, health consists of keeping the complex of humors as close to the center of the circle as possible. Because we are all usually slightly imbalanced, we must constantly correct our distemperature with opposite foods and, if necessary, medicines. Whereas a healthy complexion is nourished by similar foods, imbalances are corrected by their opposite. For example, consider how cloves (h 3, d 3 ) would bring into balance the excessively phlegmatic person by drawing the individual back to a more tempered constitution. Conversely, a sanguine youth should abstain from wine because it would only increase his natural imbalance toward heat and moisture rather than maintain his complexion. An excessively hot and moist food might even lead to fever, and any excessive imbalance would have pathological consequences. The effect of

17. Duchesne, as a Paracelsian, is an example of an author who abandons humoral qualities, though his dietary advice nonetheless remains fundamentally Galenic. 18. See the “tetrad” of Isidore of Seville reprinted in Brian P. Copenhaver, “Did Science Have a Renaissance?” Isis (September 1992): 386.

86

Food: Qualities, Substance, Virtue

lemonade on a hot day is another example of a correction induced by an opposite. Of course, it is an oversimplification to think of this as merely a mathematical equation: correct individual distempered at h 2, m 3 with food c 2, d 3. In practice, an individual’s complexion is never stated in degrees, and anything beyond the first degree would probably have been considered illness. Theoretically, however, the complexion in a healthy individual should be maintained. The rule is “similar foods nourish and opposites correct.” When an individual might be considered imbalanced is open to speculation, and in many dietaries it seems like the task of maintaining of a complexion is entirely neglected, but this basic rule remained intact. Hot and moist or “sanguine” people should be maintained by substances similar in quality to themselves, like red meat. This is, of course, the definition of nourishment. Similar substances are those most readily transformed and assimilated into the body. People in health are thus “conserved” by their food. But should this sanguine individual become excessively hot and moist (and this diagnosis is a difficult one, perhaps apparent in overheating, redness, and sweat) then a cold and dry “corrective” would be called for. This is by definition a “medicinal food” which both alters the body and is converted into it. This interaction is called “preservative” which gently corrects a mild distemperature. Should this same individual suffer a severe chill, an extreme distemper, then a hot and dry medicine would be required. Correct with opposites. This interaction is called “reductive” or “leading back” into a state of health. Graphically visualizing the interaction of food and individual shows that dietary recommendations depend entirely on one’s state of health and how one defines health and the role of each food changes dramatically depending on the constitution. Foods that are ordinarily only condiments or medicines serve as aliments during distemperature. As Nonnius remarks, hot and dry honey is nourishing for those with a “cold” distemperature.19 We still call a phlegm-associated sickness a “cold” and still treat it with honey. Furthermore, while one medicinal food may be perfectly appropriate for one individual, it might be poison for another. That choleric youth might be killed by a hot and moist glass of wine, whereas it would be nourishing for the melancholic. Thus, there

19. Nonnius, 148.

Food: Qualities, Substance, Virtue

87

can be no universally prescribed diet, no list of ideal foods without reference to the individual. The difference between individual complexions not only accounts for the variety of diets prescribed but also determines taste preferences: “chacun à son goût” [each to his taste] and every man in his humor. Whatever humor dominates in the body also dominates in the tongue, and so whatever is most “familiar” to us our taste buds embrace. Similar substances attract, and dissimilar ones repel.20 From bitter foods the healthy tongue and the entire face quite visibly recoil. Therefore, medicine, which must alter us, will not be effective unless it tastes bad. We may say this in jest today, but it is clear that in the humoral system a good-tasting substance could not alter the body; rather, it would confirm the sickness. Theoretically, we like those foods similar in complexion to us, in both health and sickness. When distempered, the taste buds are temporarily invaded by unnatural humors. Our usual favorites seem tasteless, and we suddenly crave odd foods. The specific items desired by victims of pica thus indicate the nature of the distemper, just as pregnant women’s craving for clay or dirt point to specific melancholic imbalances. Extreme distemperatures always lead to perverse desires. Camerarius relates a story to his friend Moffett “that a certain girl of Norimberg did eat up her own hair, and as much elsewhere as she could get; neither could she be persuaded by parents or friends, to think it an unpleasant or an unwholsom meat.” 21 For the majority of people, taste is altered in more subtle ways. For example, in the course of a meal the perception of one food will be altered by the previous food that has already affected the tongue. This is merely a physiological explanation of the obvious fact that after something spicy or salty, other foods taste bland because the complexion of the tongue has shifted to the hot and dry field; everything else tastes insipid, as if it were cold and moist. Manfredi explains that this is why drunk people enjoy salty or bitter things: the wine has alienated them from their true natures, and they have become closer in complexion to these extreme flavors.22 After a sour wine, even water tastes sweeter 23 because we have become colder and flavors seem warmer. With frequent

20. 21. 22. 23.

Cardano, De usu ciborum, 44. Moffett, 37. Manfredi, p. 13r. Symphorien Champier, p. 25r.

88

Food: Qualities, Substance, Virtue

use, we can even alter our body’s complexion entirely. “Acquiring a taste” for something means that we have used it so long that it has permanently changed our complexion, and being similar to it, we can now enjoy it. Custom becomes a second nature. COMBINING FOODS This process of interaction between the human complexion and the characteristics of foods follows a set of basic rules that was also applied to the combination of foods. Built into humoral physiology was a culinary science, a rational system that revealed not only which foods should be combined but how each should be properly prepared. Health was naturally the overriding concern, but in many works, especially those in period 1, aesthetics also played a part, since we are able to assimilate best those foods we enjoy. The only foods that require little or no correction are the staples: breads and some meats, including chicken. Although they do require proper cooking, they are humorally tempered and are by themselves appropriate for the human constitution. Conversely, many foods are imbalanced humorally when compared to humans and require “correction.” This correction is accomplished by carefully balancing these foods with their opposites, usually foods of extreme qualities or “condiments.” These items by themselves were not considered aliments but merely additions to other foods, designed to “season” them. This category included many foods we too would consider condiments or sauces, but in the Renaissance the list was broader and could even extend to fruits and vegetables. This is why so many dieticians openly claimed that fruits and vegetables are not aliments and should not be considered nourishing food.24 This should not be taken to imply that physicians told their patients not to eat these substances but rather that they considered them useful for altering rather than maintaining a complexion. Because of their extreme humoral makeup, often in the third or fourth degree of a given quality, fruits and vegetables and all condiments serve as correctives to either counteract a distemperature of the body or correct a fault inherent in another food. For example, hot and dry pepper can be used to treat the phlegmatic person and to render cold and moist

24. Symphorien Champier, p. 63v.

Food: Qualities, Substance, Virtue

89

fish more temperate. Lettuce and endive, equally, might be of value to correct a choleric complexion, although they offer little nourishment themselves because no human could possibly be so cold and moist or similar in complexion to lettuce. In fact, phlegmatics are warned to avoid lettuce because it would make them excessively cold and distempered. Similarly, when combining foods, hot pepper should not be combined with a hot and dry food, like pheasant, because the food’s inherent faults would only be emphasized. Dietary logic thus promotes dishes that balance opposite qualities: vinegar with sugar or salt, honey and spices in places that today seem totally incongruous. It might seem that combining foods is again a simple matter of mathematics. A food hot in the third degree combined with a food cold in the third degree would yield a tempered dish of zero degrees. One need only add up the qualities. For example, a tart apple (c 2, d 1 ) combined with sugar (h 1, m 2 ) as a corrective would yield a dish of c 1, m 1. This would give a phlegmatic product, so the addition of cinnamon (h 3, d 3 ) would balance out the equation, giving a somewhat hot and dry dish. Mathematically, an equation would look as follows: (⫺2, ⫺1) ⫹ (1, 2) ⫹ (3, ⫺3) ⫽ (2, ⫺2). Although no Renaissance dietician went to such lengths, this sort of logic does pervade their recommendations. The reason dieticians never attempted such simple equations is that these numbers refer to intensive rather than extensive qualities. That is, cinnamon may be hot and dry, but a pinch would not have the same effect as a pound. The above equation assumes all three ingredients in equal quantity. An accurate equation would have to account for quantitative and qualitative variables. The difficulty of measuring the effect of a teaspoon of sugar and a pinch of cinnamon on six ounces of apple becomes immediately apparent. It also seems that some other way of combining qualities informed their ideas beyond mere mathematics. For example, why are numerous different condiments added to one food? In this case, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and pepper are all used together to correct the cold and moist apple. Each of these is certainly not factored into an equation, nor does piling up of condiments increase their intensity mathematically. Just as two matches put together are not twice as hot as one, pepper and cinnamon together do not produce a doubly hot condiment. Although Renaissance dieticians did not discuss this question of intensity and extensity, it was a topic of concern to natural philosophers and scientists. Arnald of Villanova wrote about it, as did Thomas Brad-

90

Food: Qualities, Substance, Virtue

wardine and Walter of Odington at Merton College, Oxford in the fourteenth century.25 Pharmacists, who would appear to have needed such precision in measuring medical compounds, did not put Arnald’s theoretical system into practice, nor realistically could dieticians since the qualities of food vary widely according to age, season, environment, and other factors. But dieticians do seem to have comprehended the basic idea of varying amounts having varying effects and have applied it informally. While dieticians did not use mathematics to recommend combining foods of opposite qualities in the same quantity, say a teaspoon of pepper (h 4 ) and a teaspoon of cinnamon (h 1 ) to yield a compound hot to 31⁄ 4 degrees,26 they knew that pepper and cinnamon together form a condiment somewhat less intense than the same amount of pepper alone. That is, if a cold and moist dish, like pork, required hot and dry correction but not as much as a teaspoon of pepper would provide, then half that quantity of cinnamon would be a more gentle corrective. Eventually, of course, such combinations became habitual, and we arrive at the odd heaping of spices derided by modern gourmands. The original logic seems rather to have been of a more pharmaceutical nature and at least implies an understanding of how foods of similar qualities combine. Also, as would be clear to any cook, when combining opposite qualities, the food in greater quantity still dominates. Six ounces of cold and dry apple will only be somewhat tempered by one ounce of hot and moist sugar, and the apple will remain tart. Simple math such as the Averroists employed could not express this reaction, but Arnald’s system of measuring intensities of quality as a proportion of tension between a quality and its opposite could be used to arrive at a precise answer. For example, if a food is hot in the first degree, this is expressed as a ratio of 2:1, two parts hot to one part cold. The second degree would be 4:1, third 8:1, fourth 16:1. Using our apple example, c 2 would be expressed as 1 part hot to 4 parts cold, sugar as 2 parts hot to 1 part cold. The equation gives us 1:4 ⫹ 2:1 ⫽ 3:5 or cold to 2⁄ 3 of a degree 25. Michael McVaugh, “Arnald of Villanova and Bradwardine’s Law,” Isis 58 (1967): 56 – 64; McVaugh, “Quantified Medical Theory and Practice at Fourteenth-Century Montpellier,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 43 (1969): 397– 413; Donald Skabelund and Phillip Thomas, “Walter of Odington’s Mathematical Treatment of Primary Qualities,” Isis 60 (1969): 331– 49. 26. In Skabelund and Thomas, 337, Walter of Odington’s formula is Intensity ⫽ Greater Intensity ⫺ (Greater Intensity ⫺ Lesser Intensity) ⫼ 4 or I ⫽ (3 ⫻ Greater) ⫼ 4 ⫹ Lesser ⫼ 4. In this case, I ⫽ (3 ⫻ 4) ⫼ 4 ⫹ 1⁄ 4 [or 31⁄ 4].

Food: Qualities, Substance, Virtue

91

(3:6 would be c 1 ). In order to figure out what quantity of hot sugar will correct the apple in order to be perfectly tempered, we must know its “prime quantity,” the least amount that will have an observable effect. Let us say, hypothetically, that it is 6 ounces of apple and 1 ounce of sugar. The apple has 1⁄ 6 the strength of sugar, so a smaller proportion of the latter will have a greater corrective effect. Whereas our apple and an ounce of sugar before gave us a cold product to 2⁄ 3 of a degree, 2 ounces of sugar (1:4 ⫹ 2:1 ⫹ 2:1 ⫽ 5:6) gives us a nearly tempered food.27 Dieticians would never have dreamt of figuring this out algebraically, nor do they even specify quantities, but this type of logic does seem to enter their minds informally when mixing foods. Such an example may explain why a good deal of sugar was added to foods in quantities that we might find revolting. Although sugar and spices were expensive and so a profusion of them would have been desirable for symbolizing an abundance of wealth, there were also medicinal reasons for what we perceive to be odd combinations and quantities of foods. With a cold food, a great deal of spices was requisite for corrective purposes, and on closer examination, it is only with such foods needing extensive correction that a profusion of condiments was used. It would be a mistake to assume, as many culinary historians have been tempted to do, that spices and condiments were used sparingly in ways that would render dishes palatable, even to modern tastes. The medical literature suggests otherwise. For example, cold and moist milk can be corrected with hot and dry honey and with hot and dry salt.28 Hot and dry mint can also be added, serving further as an anticoagulant. Were the qualities and “prime quantities” figured into this compound, we might find ourselves prescribing half a teaspoon each of honey, salt, and mint per glass of milk. Clearly such mixtures must have been intended not to convey wealth but to confer health. SUBSTANCE Understanding of the entire humoral system is further complicated by the consideration of a food’s substance, or its texture and consistency. For most authors this was even a greater concern than balancing quali-

27. This follows McVaugh’s explanation of Arnald of Villanova’s system. “Arnald of Villanova,” 401. 28. Gazius, p. H6r.

92

Food: Qualities, Substance, Virtue

ties. However, it is not always easy to distinguish properties that depend on texture from those purely qualitative, and many dieticians failed to do this consistently. For example, is the tomato substantially and physically or qualitatively cold and moist? Or is it both? Do oysters promote the production of sperm because they are hot and moist and thus nourishing or because of some similarity in substance and ease of conversion? Many food properties that we would consider purely matters of physical texture Renaissance dieticians considered qualitative properties. For example, an aperitive acts because of its heat, a styptic because of its cold and dry qualities. On the other hand, a purgative may be considered a property of substance because it physically lets foods slide down but so may be an attenuating food because it physically lightens the body fluids. It is interesting that modern nutritional science does not account for the substance or consistency of food. Only infants and the infirm are given special attention in this regard. In the healthy body it is assumed that everything, regardless of texture, will be broken down into nutrients. This idea would have been inconceivable to Renaissance dieticians, and thorough processing both outside and within the body was considered indispensable to health and nutrition. Our own strange intuition that less processed foods are somehow more healthy seems to have originated in the Romantic era and can certainly be traced in the United States to figures like Sylvester Graham and John Harvey Kellogg, who promoted whole grains and “natural” foods. The macrobiotic diet is yet another manifestation of this tendency. In early modern Europe, there certainly were monks and ascetics who subsisted on whole and even wild foods, but this was seen as an act of penance and as anything but health-promoting.29 Today it would never cross our minds that a food difficult to digest might offer no nutrients or, even odder, that a food too easy to digest might evaporate away. But these considerations were central pillars of early modern nutritional theory. A whole grain might be suitable for an animal that can digest it, but for a civilized human being a more civilized fodder is required. The more refined we become, the more refined and “artificial” our food must be. The physical substance of any given food was classified according to its participation in one of the four principle elements. A substance could 29. Allen Grieco, “Les plantes, les régimes végéteriens, et la mélancholie,” in Le monde vegetal (XII e–XVII e siècles) (Saint Denis: Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, 1993), 12 –29.

Food: Qualities, Substance, Virtue

93

be predominantly terrestrial, aqueous, aerial, or igneous. Dense foods were described as earthy, moist foods participate most in the element of water, light foods are aerial, and so forth. Note that these descriptions are totally independent of the potential qualities hot, moist, cold, and dry, which refer to the effect on the body. Vinegar is cold and dry qualitatively because it cools us, but in substance it is a watery liquid. Although it is difficult to separate the two, and aerial and igneous descriptors were often employed haphazardly referring to both qualities and substance, it seems necessary to maintain the distinction in order to understand the physiological effects of the texture of food. The terminology most frequently used divides substances into “subtle” or light foods as opposed to “crass” or dense foods and watery foods as opposed to aromatic igneous foods, whose substance quickly dissipates. Although it seems that the latter denotes qualitative heat, it need not. Roses and camphor are cold qualitatively but igneous and aromatic in substance. The Arab author Rhazes also assigned foods degrees of subtlety (e.g., somewhat light to extremely light), but hardly any Renaissance author employed these gradations.30 One of the most common warnings in all dietary literature is concerned with the excessively crass or gross texture of food. Although not perhaps as colorful a pejorative as in current usage, these terms describe density, thickness, and indigestibility and refer to those foods that cause oppilations or clogs in the body’s passages. The most consistently derided of these substances is cheese: the older and harder, the worse. Some authors condemn all cheese.31 Others offer stringent guidelines: “neither white as snow, nor many-eyed like Argus, old as Methusaleh, weeping like Magdalen, rough like Esau, spotty like Lazarus.” 32 If posterity is any guide, we should trust on this matter “Dr. Muffet,” who allows only new and soft curds and whey. This is probably what he fed his daughter, the “Little Miss Muffet” of the rhyme. Next on the list of gross foods are beans, rice, and whole grains. All engender gross blood,

30. Gazius, p. G1r. The author remarks that in the Almansor of Rhazes pheasants are assigned the third degree of subtlety. 31. “Casei omnes sunt mali: nullum nanquam video probari. omnes difficulter concoquuntur: inflat ventrem implendo excremento improbo et pituitoso: et aluum exurunt.” Symphorien Champier, p 59v. “Le fourmage est de suc reprouvé. Car il engendre des grosses humeurs, et oppile les entrailles, et constipe le ventre, et si est difficile à digerer.” Nicholas Abraham, Le gouvernement necessaire a chacun pour vivre longuement en santé, 3d ed. (Paris: Marc Orry, 1608), 36. 32. The original source appears to be an addition to Salerno’s regimen: “Non nix, non Argos, Malthusalem, Magdalene, Esaus, non Lazarus, caseus ille bonus.” Cogan, 159.

94

Food: Qualities, Substance, Virtue

crass humors, and dull spirits. Few, apart from the well exercised, have enough heat to digest such foods. Rice constipates, unless carefully prepared and corrected, according to the French version of Platina,33 and fava beans can generate soft, spongy flesh like risen dough, contends Castor Durante.34 According to Benedict, chestnuts are like acorns and because of their density are more fit for pigs than humans.35 Products made from unrisen dough—such as unrefined porridges, lasagna, and spaghetti 36 —as well as pastries and fried doughs are all condemned as nearly indigestible. Root vegetables are also included among the gross foods, although some have hot aromatic qualities that make them useful as aperitives and diuretics. Horseradish is a good example of these: tough and stringy but qualitatively incisive. Similarly, many organ meats would be useful if they were lighter and more digestible; the same is true of goat, oxen, rooster, snails, and anything old and tough. All these demand long cooking and often straining into a broth if they are to be used at all. And logically anything that requires such long cooking will also be difficult for the stomach to break down. Other clues, apart from direct observation, may also indicate the substance of a food. Crass foods always contain a great deal of superfluity, referring to an excess of nutritional matter either unrefined, as in root vegetables, or stored up for later use, as in seeds or the fat deposited in the flesh of large animals. All superfluities are difficult to digest, hence, items such as turnips, oats, and pork are usually censured. Fat is also described as “excrementous,” which denotes a form of nutrition that has been unused and unrefined.37 Apart from fat content, the substance of a meat was often judged by external accretions of superfluity, such as hair, nails, horns, or the scales on fish. The more of these that appear exter-

33. “Toutes fois en user souvent nuyst à la partie posterieure et à ceux qui font durs et vont à grande peine à chambre.” Platina, Le grande cuisiner, p. 153r. 34. “Genera carne molle, e spognosa, facendo nella carne quello, che fa il formento nella pasta.” Durante, 72. 35. “Quidam ex auctoribus blassemant [sic] castaneam quod in nutrimento similis existit glandi. Unde dicunt quod castanee non sunt hominibus sed porcis nutrimento.” Benedictus, p. F7r. 36. Quite interesting, apart from the fact that spaghetti was considered difficult to digest and constricting, is that Benedict was not quite sure his audience knew what it was. “Trili sunt fila aut corrigie ex azima massa confecta” [Trills are threads or laces of unrisen dough, cooked]. Benedictus, p. O5r. 37. Prosper Calanius, Traicté par l’entretenement de santé, trans. Jean Goeurot (Lyon: Jean Temporal, 1553), 38.

Food: Qualities, Substance, Virtue

95

nally, the less internal excrements remain unprocessed, and hence the lighter and drier the flesh. This logic was used to explain why castrated animals become much fatter and moister and never grow horns.38 Because sperm is another way to rid the body of superfluous nutrients, in castrated animals these remain within the flesh. Lastly, a terrestrial substance might be something physically dry or crumbly: the crust on bread (frequently discarded by the upper crust), an overly salted meat like ham, or a smoked food. These foods dry the body out. Biscuits, wafers, and unrisen bread are always condemned, although they might be used in a slimming regimen.39 They are also appropriate, logically, for sailors and those with excessively moist bodies. Hugh Plat in his broadside regimen for sailors goes so far as to recommend macaroni and “cus-cus”—foods that would ordinarily be too dry for the landlocked.40 The second substance category of viscous, slimy, and lubricant foods was rarely formally recognized by dieticians, but was frequently mentioned. These foods were usually assumed to be within the gross category, but logically they should have formed a distinct classification of aqueous foods. Anything liquid, whether it be hot and moist wine, cold and dry vinegar, or hot and dry honey, should have been included as a lubricant, but it was usually foods with cold and moist qualities that were described as viscous and slimy in substance. Some were included among laxative foods, others were thought to cleave to the interior passages of the body and putrefy. Still others were said to rise up to the head in fumes only to be precipitated by the cold air entering the nasal passages, causing rheums or a runny nose. According to Venner this is precisely what happens with over-hopped beer because of its bitterness and inherent heat.41 Usually, however, the descriptions viscous, unctuous, and phlegmy were reserved for fish and fruits. The fact that fish cleaves to the fingers was taken as an indication that it would gum up the human interior. The Scot MacBeath makes it a general rule that “food which adheres to the 38. Moffett, 72 –73. 39. Vaughan, 33. “Bisket, simnels, cracknels, wafers, crust, toast” seem to be perennial slimming favorites. 40. Hugh Plat, Certaine Philosophical Preparations of Foode and Beverage for SeaMen (n.p.: 1607). The author’s prime consideration, it should be noted, is transportability rather than health. This very rare broadsheet can be found at the Wellcome Library in London. 41. Venner, 38.

96

Food: Qualities, Substance, Virtue

fingers when it is touched should be avoided, for it is tough.” 42 Presumably he meant tough to digest rather than tough to chew. Of course, without forks people would have been sensitive to the feeling of such foods as they brought them to their lips manually, and it was probably easy to imagine these substances clogging the body’s passages. Eels and “bloodless fish” like squid were the usual culprits. Lumpfish without their skin were described as a soft jellied substance. The Dutch called them “snot-fishes.” 43 All of these were believed to cause interior stoppages, much like phlegm itself, and in fact promote phlegm directly. A number of botanical fruits were also included in the watery viscous category. Squash and cucumbers were always vilified. In fact, physicians contended that they are nothing more than congealed water. Such foods get trapped in the membranes of the body, like oil in a woolen cloth.44 Distribution through the body is thus nearly impossible. Eggplant, in particular, according to Manfredi, gets caught in the spleen and liver and causes swellings.45 All the above, as well as peaches and melons, are also liable to putrefy before being thoroughly concocted, particularly if eaten as dessert. Imagine a moist puree of fruit floating atop a pot of simmering meat. No wonder readers became nauseous. They were warned that this would happen: as the mouth of the stomach is prevented from closing, it is swathed in putrescent ooze. Slimy meats such as brains, lungs, marrow, or suckling pig could have a similarly nauseating effect and often provoke a gag response. Petrus Castellanus similarly describes the effect of newly born veal and insists that it is mucus, not flesh.46 On the positive side of the substance spectrum, are light and subtle foods, evanescent like air or volatile like fire. Although descriptions of substances should refer only to physical consistency, in practice it becomes nearly impossible to distinguish substance from quality here. For one, few foods are physically hot like fire or light like air. When a food 42. John MacBeath, Regimen Sanitatis: The Rule of Health: A Gaelic Medical Manuscript, ed. and trans. H. Cameron Gillies (Glasgow: Robert Maclehose, University Press, 1911), 32. 43. Moffett, 157. Sebizius also refers to the “schnotfisch,” which is a kind of tench, 1009. 44. Calanius, 63. “Courge . . . n’est quasi qu’une eau congeleé;” Petronio describes the anguria, a type of cucumber: “si caccia tra le sue tuniche, si come fa l’oglio dentro in uno panno di lana,” 127. 45. Manfredi, p. 9v. 46. Castellanus, 115: “Nam quis stomacho tam firmo, ut vitulorum recèns editorum, et adhuc à matre madentium carnes sine fastidio comedat? Quisquis apponere volet, moneo simul pelvium afferat. Mucus est, non caro.”

Food: Qualities, Substance, Virtue

97

such as mustard is described as hot (spicy), this refers only to its quality as it feels on the tongue. Its substance would be the tendency to assail the nostrils and head. However, when any food is aromatic, like parsley or oregano, this does seem to mean that its physical substance participates in heat and is vaporizing, its internal heat becoming external.47 This is why aromatic cordials like tarragon and lemon balm are said to “lighten” the spirits physically; their vaporous substance thins out the turbid vital spirits flowing in the heart and cheers us.48 Aerial substances are difficult to pinpoint. Often a food will be described as subtle and aromatic, pointing to a firey substance mixed with an anelositas, or breathy airyness. This is how Gazius described the substance of cinnamon.49 What this actually means is difficult to discern because cinnamon is obviously solid. Wine, perhaps, is easier to imagine being subtle and ready to evaporate into the air. This is precisely why wine was watered, to prevent it from fuming and rising into the head, causing dizziness. Other subtle substances prove even more elusive, such as salt, vinegar, and citrus juice. This list comes close to meaning acidic and perhaps corrosive. What light and subtle seem to mean here is the speed with which these substances were thought to course through the body and their ability to lighten the bodily fluids. Regardless of their tactile form, these substances “attenuate” or cut through thick humors. They are not light in weight or density, but rather they “lighten” us. And anything opposite to the slow-moving and clogging is thus categorized as aperitive, abstersive, incisive, and resolutive. Anything not earthy or watery must then be igneous or aerial in substance. This is the simple way most theorists avoided dealing with the confusion of aligning substances with concrete physical matter and specific elements. The word subtle also came to be used as a kind of catch-all term to

47. Symphorien Champier uses this description for hot and “light” aromatic seeds. This does seem to involve substance as well as qualities, p. 74v; The same is true of Massonio’s definition of “vehemently attenuating” substances, in this case nasturtium, garlic, onions, etc. Here these are considered physically hotter, more active, volatile and cutting, 270. 48. Ideas such as “comforting the heart,” “strengthening principal parts,” or “making many excrements” according to O’Hara-May, are vague and have no precise meaning. Actually, these theoretical ideas are quite clear: lightening vital spirits to flow easily; being converted into clean spirits in the liver, heart, and brain, which strengthens them; and passing food out undigested. It may be that the English sources do not explain these terms, which supports the idea that these were readily understandable concepts to the reader. O’Hara-May, 114 –15. 49. Gazius, p. P1r.

98

Food: Qualities, Substance, Virtue

describe anything easy to digest or offering gentle nourishment. As Symphorien Champier put it, subtle foods are those which in great quantity still offer little nourishment, such as chicken, lettuce, and small fish.50 It could also mean delicate foods or those appropriate for lighter bodies. The word was used broadly, much like the modern usage of the word lite to denote low in calories, fat, or sodium. In both cases, these are foods that keep the body light, although in the Renaissance this had none of the associations we now have with weight loss. More specifically, Renaissance dieticians had in mind light humors and quick moving spirits that directly affect the ability to reason. It is no coincidence that subtlety was also considered a property of the intellect; it is mechanically linked to the texture and quality of the spirits wafting through the brain. Subtlety as a concept took on multivalent associations that also included sophistication, social class, and occupation. In fact, it could refer to any food appropriate for the serious dieter: herbs and spices, well-risen white bread, chicken and poached eggs, spinach and asparagus. Sebizius even includes beer in his list.51 It is perhaps the most malleable concept in all dietary literature. FOOD COMBINATIONS AND SUBSTANCE Just as with qualities, potentially harmful substances of various foods must also be balanced and corrected by proper cooking methods and by combining foods carefully to counteract their deficiencies. This adds yet another dimension to the logic of combining foods: a hot and moist food that is subtle will not enter into a dietary equation the same way a gross one would. Gross foods should be combined with hot and cutting ones and corruptible foods with the penetrating. Light foods should not, however, be combined with heavy ones since they break down at different rates. Often a corrective involves special preparation. Crass glutinous wheat, for example, is corrected by salt and leavening. Grape must is warmed and made more penetrating thorough fermentation. Watery foods are roasted and seasoned with subtle incisive spices. Taking all factors into account, cold and dry rice, which tends to clog, requires a subtle saffron and hot and moist sugar for correction. A hot and moist fowl that is tough benefits from a cutting and abstersive vinegar sauce 50. Symphorien Champier, 23. 51. Sebizius, 25.

Food: Qualities, Substance, Virtue

99

that is cold and dry. Crass melons can be corrected with subtle salt and penetrating wine. If we could imagine the combination of qualitative and substantial correction graphically, a spherical model would illustrate the interaction of both factors. Just as the most extreme qualities in the fourth degree lie on the periphery of a circular plane, the dangerously terrestrial, aqueous, igneous, and aerial substances can also be plotted on the edges of a third dimension. Very simply, the completely balanced dish, tempered in quality and substance, would lie at the precise center of the sphere. The idea of balance from all directions, absolutely tempered moderation, is indeed what dieticians aimed for. The spherical model, however, is not quite as fanciful as it sounds. As Moffett relates, even Hippocrates compared it to the ordinary potter’s wheel: Divine Hippocrate . . . compareth diet most fitly to a potters wheele, going neither forward nor backward, but (as the world itself moveth) equally round: moistning that which is too dry, drying up that which is too moist, restoring true flesh if it be decaid, abating proud flesh (by abstinence) if it be too much, neither drawing too much upward nor downward . . . but giving every part his allowance by geometrical proportion.52

VIRTUES The last criterion used in evaluating food concerns what were called virtues: the unique actions that particular foods have on the body as a result of either their qualities, substance, or “occult” properties. The last was a convenient term to cover all those properties unexplainable by the humoral system; it had none of the diabolical associations we may conjure up today, but in this context merely means “unseen” properties. Many of the virtues of food point to its therapeutic uses and thus shade into what would be considered pharmacy properly, but readers were nonetheless expected to use these readily available remedies after diagnosing themselves. These were mildly altering remedies rather than violent medicines and could easily be added to any meal when the individual felt some specific ailment. Some of the virtues are general in their operation. For example, the 52. Moffett, 6 –7. The author of this passage appears to have been intimately acquainted with the process of centering and “throwing” on a wheel. Equal pressure, continual addition of a little water and careful drawing upward are decent descriptions of the process.

100

Food: Qualities, Substance, Virtue

abstersive or “mundifying” effects of certain foods thought to scour and cleanse the body would suggest that they be used whenever lassitude and mild malaise set in, an indication of sluggish humors. Essentially, these foods are dissimilar to the body and thus can never be agglutinated and pass through the system, carrying away impurities. Most foods of this type are hot and dry as well, so they burn through viscosities. Bitter rue and hops are the most frequently cited herbs for cutting crass humors. Cardano mentions that rue also acts as a vermifuge and clears the eyesight of painters.53 It can also be used to induce abortion. For cleansing the chest, sweet foods were usually recommended, especially sugar. However, abstersive foods are not always hot. Whole grain barley, crass chickpeas, and even qualitatively cold melons can be included in this category because of their ability to clean the entire system as they pass through.54 These foods should be distinguished, however, from laxatives, which merely soften the belly or lubricate the digestive tract to help the contents slide through. Usually these are liquid foods, dried fruits, garden vegetables, and fats. The laxative effect of bran was also recognized. Essentially, it loosens the system by irritating the intestinal lining, a conclusion confirmed by both Hippocrates and recent research. The “incisive” and biting substances, although they do not necessarily clean, also cut through clogs in the system. They can be either subtle, like pepper and cinnamon, or gross, like garlic and leeks. In excess these can even be corrosive. Other related hot and dry virtues are the power to provoke urine or sweat by heating and forcing fluids out of the body, as in diuretics and sudorifics. Aromatics such as carrots, celery, and onions also provoke urine.55 The hot and dry spices, somewhat differently, thin the body’s fluids and help distribution and are thus called “digestives.” 56 Carminatives, or those that “discuss wind” and resolve flatulence, like coriander and fennel, operate by “digesting crudities.” 57 In another important category are foods considered antilithic, those that break up kidney stones and purge the gravel from the bladder. This problem seems to have been a painfully frequent occurrence in the Renaissance, and all dietaries are careful to specify which food cause 53. Cardano, De usu ciborum, 63. 54. Sebizius, 55. 55. Massonio points out the odd fact that carrots and parsnips are thick and difficult to concoct, yet provoke urine because they are aromatic, 152 –53. 56. Petronio, 194. The author explains that nutmeg extenuates the body because it has no attractive virtue and literally carries away the cold and heavy elements. 57. Fridaevallis, 79. This is within a description of anise.

Food: Qualities, Substance, Virtue

101

stones and which help to pass them. Cress was a common remedy, along with lemon juice and anything broadly diuretic such as asparagus and parsley. The “aperients” was another category of foods used to dilate all the body’s passages and was considered especially useful in cold distemperatures. These foods were usually hot and dry, either violently so, like mustard and horseradish, or mildly so, like mint, dill, licorice, and artichokes (the chemical derivatives of which—menthol, anethol, and cynarin—are still used in dilating medicines). Naturally, all these would be dangerous for choleric bodies, extenuating and distributing fluids too thoroughly. They would push sweat and humors to the surface prematurely and cause itchy scabs and “lowsie evill.” This is why it was often said that too much salt leads to head lice, which spontaneously generate in the semi-concocted effluvia. Cogan remarks that he was himself cured of an itch by abstaining from salt.58 These hot substances can also enflame the blood, which is why Pisanelli suggests that young girls never be given pistachios. They overheat the blood, cause vapors to rise to the head, and lead to vertigo.59 Hot wine would have a comparable effect, but no theorist dared suggest that it might be appropriate for excessively cold girls. Oddly, the hot purgatives are even recommended for cutting through choleric humors. The logic is to expel like with like, just as one poison was thought to drive another poison from the body. Presumably the cure would be preferable to the original poison. Following this logic, hops can expel choler by siege, as can wormwood,60 which has no doubt calmed many a raving lunatic into stupefied complacency. In large doses wormwood is highly toxic, and even the mildly narcotic absinthe distilled from the plant has been outlawed in the past century in most countries. Bitter almonds were also recommended for various purges. A similar logic is used when advising bundling up to cure a fever: the sweat is thought to purge the system and “break” the fever. Resisting poisons, malignant vapors, and venomous bites was another topic of concern to dieticians. Foods that stave off poison were usually thought to be cold and constricting. Because they narrow the

58. Venner, 121, discussing dried figs; Cogan, 163. 59. Pistachios should not be given to girls “perche gli assotigliano, e gli in fiammano il sangue, e lo fanno venire la vertigine.” Baldassare Pisanelli, Trattato della natura de’ cibi et del bere (Venice: Giorgio Alberti, 1586), 20 –21. 60. Venner, 166.

102

Food: Qualities, Substance, Virtue

body’s passages, these foods were thought to prevent the entrance and distribution of harmful substances. This is precisely the logic of drinking vinegar in times of plague. It was thought to keep miasmatic vapors from entering the pores and nostrils and rising to the brain. Cold and dry foods, because they are styptic, were also used to constrict the stomach and aid concoction or to stay unnatural fluxes. Excessively crass foods in this category, however, such as lentils, can cause grievous stoppages and melancholy and can even lead to elephantiasis, leprosy, and cancer.61 All of these diseases were believed to result from localized blocks in the system corrupting and breaking through the skin, rather than from contagious infection. Cold and dry foods also tend to slow the entire system, particularly the spirits in the brain, which accounts for the soporific effect of certain foods like chamomile and the narcotic effect of poppies and cannabis.62 In excess, the cold and dry foods can also damage the eyes and especially the nerves by slowing and constricting so violently that the individual shakes with chill, becomes paralyzed, or may suffer an apoplexy or “stroke,” which originally denoted a sensation like a blow from behind. Similarly, cold and moist foods, although having the power to quench thirst and refresh the vital organs, in extreme doses can induce catarrh, asthma, tremors and a variety of pathological states associated with cold. Most importantly, they are subject to putrefaction. Many fish and fruits were condemned for this reason. For example, Cogan gives this advice on the subject of pears: That peares may not hut thee, take out the coares Pare them, and salt them, & cast them out of doores 63

Regarding fish, few authors specify whether it is the cold and moist qualities or substance that makes them so dangerous. On the basis of taste, many are sweet, which should indicate heat and moisture. Pisanelli is among the few authors who categorize them this way. Mullet and lamprey he considers hot and moist; gilthead bream is hot and dry. Most authors, however, conflate the physical properties and quali61. Cardano, De usu ciborum, 56; Platina, Le grande cuisiner, p. 159r on lentils: “qui en use souvent faict tomber en leprosie.” 62. Sebizius, 241. Following Galen, he also says cannabis consumes genital sperm, which appears to be true. Interestingly, not all authors condemn its use: Platina offers many recipes. 63. The original in Cordus reads “ut pyra non noceant, extra mundentur et intra, mox immerge sali, proijce deinde foras.” Cogan, 90 –91.

Food: Qualities, Substance, Virtue

103

ties in this category. Fish, after all, must be cold and moist like their element 64 and are as subject to putrefication inside the body as they are outside of it. Conversely, many substances were credited with preservative powers precisely because they resist corruption outside of the body. Salt is the most notable item of this type, along with sugar and, following the same logic, gold. However, most authors were suspect of claims made on behalf of “aurum potabile,” or drinkable gold. Lastly, hot and moist foods, as we have seen, have the specific virtues of nourishing, generating flesh and milk, and also of serving as aphrodisiacs, since sperm, which triggers sexual desire, is an excess of nutrition. Some hot and moist substances were said to be “comforting” to the heart, implying that they warm and nourish the vital spirits. Borage and wine are good examples, and both logically promote cheerfulness and “good humor” as well. As a catchy way to remember all these various virtues, Bulleyn reminds us that taste is once again the sure way to decide how any food will behave in the body: Colde quencheth the collers pride / Moist humecteth, that which is dried The flowing moister, be proffe I trie / Is wasted of humors hot and drie The subtill fode, that is persing quicke / The clammy meates, maketh it thicke Bitter thinges, clense and wypith ofte / And expel flem and maketh softe Salt drieth and resolveth fleme tough / Fat nourisheth, and make subtil inough Stiptick or rough taste on the tongue / Bindeth and comforteth appetite long Swete things in clensing, is very good / It desolveth much, and nourisheth blod. . . .65

Dietary authors also referred to the “occult virtue” of certain foods. Foods with this virtue have discernable effects on the body that are unexplainable through reference to qualities or substance. The most familiar examples are the magnet, which attracts iron, and the small echeneis, or pilot fish, which can bring a huge ship to a halt.66 Foods containing occult virtues include purslane, which is good for the teeth 67 and cabbage, which—according to Sala—has the power to prevent drunkeness. Sala includes an extensive list of foods with occult properties, in64. Pisanelli, 96 –99; Platina, Le grande cuisiner, p. 207v. 65. Bulleyn, p. D5r. 66. Copenhaver, “Did Science Have a Renaissance?” 400. The reference is from Pomponazzi and ultimately, it seems, from Pliny. It is repeated frequently by dieticians. 67. Massonio, 326. This reference originates in Alexander of Aphrodisias.

104

Food: Qualities, Substance, Virtue

cluding rosemary and sage for the brain, fennel and doves for the eyes, and quince and basil for the heart.68 Reuchlin and Agrippa von Nettesheim also proposed that occult virtues play a role in digestion. This explains how ostriches can digest iron, a topic of perennial wonderment to dieticians. Without any other empirical explanation, they reasoned that ostriches’ stomachs must contain occult forces to accomplish this feat. (It had never occurred to them that any hard object will serve to provide friction in a bird’s crop.) THE MEAL How all these foods fit into a meal was yet another major concern to dietary authors. The quantity of food recommended, the time and duration of each meal, and also the order of specific foods were all discussed at length. Salerno’s regimen specified that we should note what amount to the five q’s: “Quale, quid et quando, quantum, quoties, ubi dando / in ista notare cibo debet medicus dictando” or less euphonically in my English translation: “Qualities, substance, time, quantity, frequency, and locations / These must be, the doctors say, dietary observations.” If one had to specify a common theme running throughout this entire genre, it would have to be the raging denunciations of gluttony. Authors delighted in recounting the perverse stories of ancient gluttons Lucullus and Heliogabalus and their modern counterparts, who meet their demise pandering to their insatiable appetites, squandering their fortunes, and subjecting their bodies to an infinity of tormenting diseases. Amid these fomentations we might expect some clear rules for food intake, some readily applicable principles, or something vaguely approaching the torrent of quantitative specifications that so dominate our own nutritional theory. There are none. Almost without exception, the theorists all point out that the quantity of food each body requires is so variable that only the most rudimentary of guidelines can be specified. The factors that must be taken into consideration are so complex that any set quantity of food approved within a meal would be a gross oversimplification. One must consider the complexion, body size, age, gender, season, region, exercise level, sexual activity, and emotion, as well 68. Sala, 93–101. See also Walter Pagel, Paracelsus: An Introduction to Philosophical Medicine in the Era of the Renaissance, 2d rev. ed. (Basel and New York: Karger, 1982), 158, which discusses the occult ability of ostriches to digest iron, and salamanders to withstand fire.

Food: Qualities, Substance, Virtue

105

as the numerous variables of the food itself. All these considerations threw the entire question into chaos. Not even our own nutritional science admits such variability. In fact, our current nutritional labeling requirements seem to suggest exactly the opposite: that there are two kinds of diet, the 2,000 calorie diet and the 2,500 calorie diet. Two sizes fit all. In the two hundred years studied here, only Cornaro and Lessius following him specified a twelve to fourteen ounce meal for delicate bodies.69 Every theorist thereafter criticized this sort of exact, mincing diaeta statica [measured diet]. Hippocrates himself said that it is useful to vary the quantity of each meal, so as not to fix permanently the size of the stomach and invite disaster if on occasion one happens to eat more or less. Although avoiding exactness, here as in every prescription, dieticians did indicate that the quantity of food should be proportionate, or analogous to the individual’s innate heat.70 Thus, the sanguinecomplexioned, young, robust, and well-exercised should eat more than the delicate, sedentary, or older person. The key is digestive power. The hotter the entire system, the greater the power to concoct and digest more food. When one exceeds the body’s digestive power, the process is spoiled. One actually receives less nutritional value by overeating because the excess suffocates the innate heat. Food that lies undigested or corrupts can never be put to good use by the body. Eating less food, a more manageable amount, actually supplies more nutrients. Hence, the curious saying in French “qui peu mange, prou mange,” or in Italian, “Manger . . . piu, chi manco mangia” [whoever eats less, eats more]. The opposite is also true.71 And because foods have different nutritional values and different substances require different digestive strengths, no single quantity of food can possibly be specified for a single meal. As Hollings points out, a small quantity of cheese constitutes a big meal because it is nutritious but difficult to digest. Because it is easier to digest, perhaps two, three, or four times the amount of veal can be eaten.72 For the individual who succumbs to surfeit and riotous excess, “worshipping the belly as a God,” disaster awaits. For one, the internal heat is suffocated and food begins to decay, accidentally generating its own 69. Lessius, 39. 70. “Debet enim alimentum semper anjavlogom esse innato calori.” Hessus, p. 23r. 71. Joubert, Erreurs populaires, book 2, vulgar saying no. 119, collected by M. Bart. Cabrol; the Italian is from Alvise Cornaro, A Treatise on Temperance and Sobrietie, trans. George Herbert, in Lessius, Hygiasticon, Cambridge, 1634. 72. Hollings, 40.

106

Food: Qualities, Substance, Virtue

putrescent heat. Sooty fumes build up, and the viscera swells. The fumes then fill the head, dulling our eyesight and thoughts. They then diffuse throughout the body causing intense weariness, and the flesh absorbs this corrupt matter. Paradoxically, the body then wastes away, having received no assimilatable nutrients. Durante points out that gluttons, strangely enough, do not increase in size because they never receive nutrients from what they eat. With time, the corrupt matter collects in the muscles and kidneys, causing the all too familiar gout and kidney stones. Cruelest of all, the sense of taste is eventually totally obscured, and gluttons search in vain for ever more delectable morsels, overstimulating their appetites, and finally eating themselves to death. Furious as these descriptions can get, practically no author endorses the opposite extreme. There is an almost universal aversion to monastic abstinence among Catholic as well as Protestant authors. That said, an occasional fast may be useful for health and piety. Some in England even supported the idea of a political Lent to promote frugality and to bring down the price of meat, which many believed was unnaturally high due to meat’s scarcity. But in the end, according to Elyot, “to a hole man, to precise a rule is not convenient in diete: and that diseases, which happen by to moche abstinence, are wars to be cured, than they which come by repletion.” 73 Moffett interjects that “maids and women are highly extolled for consumeing their bodies with excessive abstinence; which being a thing against nature and Godliness (which forbiddeth us to scourge or mark, and much more to consume our bodies) it shall need no confutation at all.” 74 The usual imagery is of self-devouring: the stomach demands and consumes the body for want of other nourishment until it is totally wasted, its radical moisture spent. Even minor fasts can fill the stomach with a sharp corrosive juice that saturates the body with foul humors, especially melancholy, which devours the spirits. The solution, as with all dietary questions, is moderation. Avoid all extremes, keep the quantity of food in continual balance to meet the body’s daily requirements—something only the individual can be sure of. Although the total quantity of food in a meal can never be specified, the proportion of each type of food to be included can be outlined. With this in mind, Renaissance theorists proposed a model not unlike the 73. Elyot, 45. 74. Moffett, 278

Food: Qualities, Substance, Virtue

107

FDA’s “food pyramid,” a simplified graphic representation of food categories and the proportion of each to be consumed daily. At the base of both models, forming the bulk of each meal, are the staple starches, most importantly bread. After that the similarities end. In our modern scheme fruits and vegetables form the second tier. In the Renaissance they are at the summit, meaning that one should consume less of these than any other food. One has to wonder if this may have inadvertently reinforced the desirability of fruit, just as in the modern food pyramid it may seem that the fats and sweets are at the top only because they are the most desirable. This is probably only a fault of the modern pyramid, because most often Renaissance nutritionists merely describe proportional ratios of particular foods. For example, Durante specifies that drink, in most cases wine, should be one half the total amount of solid foods. Bread should be two and a half times a serving of eggs, three times a serving of meat, and four times a serving of fish, vegetable, or fruit. Venner offers a simpler scheme, with bread in a two to one ratio with meat.75 These considerations clearly have more to do with the mechanics of digestion than with nutritional value. The greater proportion of bread is necessary for agglutination and to balance the substance of the meal. Both the modern and Renaissance schemes do, of course, reveal the ultimate goals and objectives of each system. In the modern system it is providing carbohydrates and vitamins, cutting back on meat, and drastically limiting fats, salt, and sugar. In the Renaissance, the focus is entirely on the digestive process: moistening and agglutinating food properly, while avoiding the dangers of watery and corruptible fish, fruits, and vegetables. For Durante a quantitatively balanced meal would include, for example, four ounces of chicken (one half breast) balanced by twelve ounces of bread (one small loaf) and nine ounces of wine (about a glass and a half). If vegetables were added, the proportion of meat would have to reduced and the proportion of bread increased. In a comparable meal of fish, a one-pound loaf of bread would need to be consumed. It seems unlikely that many people followed these guidelines exactly. The guidelines may have been merely wishful thinking, again much like our own food pyramid. Also, these rough guidelines become far too cumbersome in a meal of 75. “Che il cibo sia doppio al bere, il pane—sesquiduplo alla ova, triplo alla carne, e quadruplo ai pesci, all herbe, e ai frutti. . . .” Durante, 58; Venner, 184.

108

Food: Qualities, Substance, Virtue

several courses or several different kinds of food. That people did normally eat several courses is evident in the fact that dieticians spent a great deal of energy discussing the proper order of foods in a single meal. Although our own nutritional theory does not account for the order of foods, we do have relatively firm customs that dictate this. Soups and salads, at least in the United States, always precede a meal, and sweets always follow. We are also in the habit of constructing our meals in tripartite units. The main part of the meal is ideally a meat, a starch, and a vegetable. Two starches upsets our structural sensibilities, as does no meat (vegetarians excluded). Although this is slowly changing and is certainly not rigid among all ethnicities, it provides a good contrast to the typical Renaissance structure, which prescribes practically no structure at all. Starting with sweets, ending with salads, and mixing a variety of textures and flavors in each course seems to have bothered no one. Although nutritionists complained about this lack of structure all along, it was only in the seventeenth century that a more rigid order of courses became customary. During the Renaissance, in spite of dieticians’ continued discussion of the proper order of foods in a meal, it was typical, especially at banquets and formal gatherings, to place everything on the table at once. If there were many courses, every different type of food might appear in each course: flesh, fish, salads, sweets, and soups. The diner was expected to choose a bit of everything in the vicinity. In fact, passing the choicest morsels to a person indicated that person’s status. The opportunity at formal meals for mixing a multitude of foods at one sitting was probably what prompted dieticians’ focus on order at meals. It was not an easy task, however, to convince readers that there was anything wrong with this practice, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Nearly every theorist chastises the skeptic who sees many people follow no particular order yet appear to remain healthy. The standard response to this points out that while some people can manage to ignore dietary rules, this is rare and should certainly not be taken as an excuse to run riot.76 They insist that such loose living will eventually catch up with people of even the strongest constitutions. Perhaps dietary rules of order would have been easier to follow if the theorists themselves had agreed. As with all contentious medical advice, warring camps tended to blur the issue to such an extent that people stopped listening. In this case it was once again the Arabists versus the 76. Lessius, 29.

Food: Qualities, Substance, Virtue

109

Hellenists. Following Avicenna, most period 1 authors claimed that because the digestive heat is greater at the base of the stomach, logically those foods most difficult to digest should precede others.77 The Hellenists, ultimately following Galen, argued that lighter foods should be eaten first so as not to corrupt above the heavier foods, which take longer to concoct. Period 2 and 3 authors tended to support the latter position but not without criticism from anatomists, who insisted that all food is held together in the stomach until completely concocted. Accordingly, it does make sense to eat heavier foods first so they are closest to the heat source, unless perchance one eats a corruptible food, in which case it should precede all others.78 Common practice on the continent among all social classes appears to have followed the Galenic doctrine. Nonnius, for example, claimed that even vulgar people, as if by instinct, eat softer foods before more solid ones, which are tougher to concoct.79 English authors, on the other hand, consistently complained about the pernicious native custom of starting with gross meats.80 Others contended that this may be fine for the robust working man who has powerful digestive heat but never for the more delicate body. What physicians could agree on, though, was that corruptible foods should come first in a meal. This essentially means anything that readily spoils outside the body, such as milk and fresh cheese. Boorde, who was fond of criticizing Dutch customs, included butter in this category as well, insisting that it “doth swim above in the brinks of the stomach; as the fatness doth swim above in a boiling pot, the excess of such superfice will ascend to the orifice of the stomach, and doth make eructions.” 81 The usual target of these tirades, however, was fresh fruit. The sweeter varieties especially—peaches, sweet grapes, and melons—must never be eaten as dessert. Fridaevallis reminds us that peaches were considered poisonous even in their native homeland, Persia.82 If eaten at the end of a meal, sweet fruits float on top of the stomach and putrefy. Apples can go either way. If sweet, they must precede; if styptic, they must 77. Benedictus, p. C7v. 78. Valverda, 34; Bonagente, pp. C1v–C4r. Both anatomists accept this compromise. The original author of this idea seems to have been Pietro d’Abano. 79. “Vulgus etiam naturae quasi instinctu, iurulenta, olera et elixos cibos praemittit, mox solidiores, ut assos et durioris concoctionis subiungit. . . .” Nonnius, 9. 80. Boorde, 252. Boorde mentions this in the mid-sixteenth century and so does Brooke in the mid-seventeenth, Brooke, 140. 81. Boorde, 46. 82. Fridaevallis, 109. Peaches “non post alios cibos mandenda sunt, sed prima mensa exhiberi debent.”

110

Food: Qualities, Substance, Virtue

close a meal, acting as a sealant. This came to be a general rule for all fruit and interestingly runs exactly counter to current custom. Where to place a salad also commanded a great deal of attention. The authority, Massonio, tells us that when intended to provide nourishment salad must start a meal. Piquant ingredients like olives stimulate the appetite and thus must come first. Following the authority of Galen, salad at the end of a meal can act only as a medicine given that lettuce, being cold, acts as a soporific.83 Including hot herbs at this point only restimulates the appetite, leading to disaster. Fashion, however, seems to have imitated ancient Roman custom too enthusiastically in this matter, and Italians to this day often conclude a meal with a salad. Throwing the topic into further confusion, Cardano suggested that salads should come mid-meal.84 Apart from all this quibbling, there were certain features of a meal on which all authors could agree. For one, simplicity, without indulging in austerity, was always admired. Pythagoras and Socrates were objects of reverence for their frugal habits. So were Zoroaster and Epaminondas, not to mention all the biblical figures who subsisted on the simplest of foods. Interestingly, these are all semi-mythical figures.85 Though authors praised these people, few recommended imitating them. Herbs and wild fruits may have been fine for ancient ancestors, but in the Renaissance were seen to be “generally noyfull to man and doe engender ill humors, and oft times putrified fevers.” 86 They believed in the necessity of meats and civilized foods such as bread and wine. Still, simplicity was considered a positive goal. What exactly simplicity meant, however, was open to various interpretations. Theorists certainly did not intend to foster a mono-diet or food lacking corrective seasonings. The aim of most of these nostalgic ramblings was to provide a stark contrast to their gluttonous and sickly present. The ancients on their simple diet lived twice as long, and many paupers forced by necessity to live frugally reached ages much greater than their wealthy contemporaries, often in excess of one hundred years. Cardano, in a lapse of critical judgment, 83. “Là dove nell’ ultimo per solo medicare si appongono, gia che nel fine della cena, dopò la satietà, più non serve il nutrirsi, e l’irritar l’appetito.” Massonio, 14. 84. Massonio, 247 (mispaginated p. Kk1) quotes Girolamo Cardano’s Theonoston on prolonging life. “Ma alla lattuca cruda non ritrovo io il più opportuno luogo, che quasi nel mezzo della cena, e in verun modo nel pranso. . . .” This is opposed to the sentence of the most grave authors, Massonio reminds us. 85. Bruyerin Champier, 108 –10. 86. Cogan, 87.

Food: Qualities, Substance, Virtue

111

also believed that Indians, on account of their food prohibitions, could live three hundred years.87 People’s downfall, the Renaissance physicians exclaimed, was the habit of eating a variety of different substances in one meal. Given the theory of opposition of flavors underlying the corrective logic of combing foods, diverse flavors per se are no problem. Rather, it is incompatible substances eaten together that leads to ruin. Eating fish and flesh in one sitting, because each requires a different “cooking time” in the stomach, means that the former will corrupt before the latter is thoroughly concocted. Menapius offered the graphic example of combining milk and wine: one penetrates slowly, the other quickly. In a glass together, they curdle. Beer and wine together in one meal is also noxious. Even combining foods prepared by different methods, such as a fried food with a boiled one, can lead to ruin.88 One can only imagine what dieticians thought of the first appearance of food combinations that would later develop into classical haute cuisine. A meat combined with its own reduced sauce thickened with butter or cream must have been viewed with horror. A gross substance can be corrected with an incisive and penetrating condiment but never with a sauce that accentuates its faults. Particularly in period 2 and even more so in period 3 dietaries, these bizarre combinations of culinary fashion were ferociously denounced. It is clear from these tirades, as well as from records of formal meals, that variety was the norm. The way to impress one’s guests was not only with profusion but with changes, contrasts, and even shocking and bizarre juxtapositions of food. There was a sort of perverse delight in obscurity and erudition and perhaps an element of pleasure in breaking dietary rules as well. These constant titillations, dieticians pronounced, serve only to provoke the appetite unnaturally, goading the banquetgoer into gluttony. Both Hippocrates and Ecclesiasticus were cited in defense: “Do not be greedy for every delicacy or eat without restraint, For illness is a sure result of overeating. . . .” 89 The buffet table provided a perilous battlefield on which appetite easily overcame reason. Elyot de-

87. “Quin etiam multi pauperes nostra aetate, et virgines vestales reperiuntur quae centesimum excesserunt annum.” Cardano, De usu ciborum, 47. 88. Menapius, 565. 89. Ecclesiasticus 37:29 –30 New English Bible. The vulgate, the version usually cited, reads “Noli avidus esse in omni epulatione et non te effundas super omnem escam.” Gazius, p. D3v.

112

Food: Qualities, Substance, Virtue

nounces “the continual gourmandise, and dayly fedinge on sundry meates, at one meale, the spirit of gluttony tryumphynge amonge us in his gloroius chariotte, called welfare, dryvynge us afore hym, as his prisoners, into his dungeon of surfet.” 90 Many authors suggested avoiding banquets altogether and staying home to dine simply. This leads to yet another major question: what time to eat? Should the midday meal or evening meal be larger? Entire books were composed on this very topic. Medieval theorists, and common custom through the Renaissance, favored the “prandium,” or dinner, at ten or eleven in the morning, as the larger meal. Digestion, it was thought, is fortified by movement and the heat of the sun. Period 2 authors, armed with a purified Galen and other Greek authors, promoted the larger “coena,” or supper, at around six in the evening. They argued that distribution of humors and spirits, the third stage of digestion, is stronger during the day, but concoction is much stronger when the mind and body are at rest and the vital spirits governing this first stage can receive full attention. Furthermore, the body’s heat is drawn inward toward the stomach during sleep, when the air is cooler. During the day heat extends into the limbs and dissipates due to the attractive virtue of ambient heat. The interval of time between the evening meal and the next day is also longer, so a greater amount of food can be processed during this time. The basic theory is simple, but the rationale used to support both sides varied widely, and often local custom outweighed all these arguments. Most authors agreed that two meals are sufficient, although some Arabists favored three meals in two days or food every sixteen hours. The English vehemently defended their custom of taking breakfast. Most agreed in condemning between-meal and late-night snacks, or “merenda” and “collations.” The latter term originally referred to the light monastic meal at the end of the day, which derives its name from John Cassian’s “Collations,” which was read during the meal. It eventually came to mean all late-night nibbles or after-dinner dainties. This type of meal only adds raw food to a partially cooked former meal. Ultimately everything exits the stomach together, the concocted and the raw. Digestion, it must be remembered, was thought to proceed in dis90. Elyot, 43. In a similar vein, Cardano exclaims “et praesertim cum nulla alia in re magis, crebriusue peccatur. Saepe enim copis ac rerum varietate seducimur, atque adeo anxiè condimenta ac saporum coacervationes vehementer et plusquam requirimus pro palato, gulaque ad aviditatem irritanda . . . atque in barathrum gulae totum insumant patrimonium.” Cardano, De usu ciborum, 42.

Food: Qualities, Substance, Virtue

113

tinct separate stages rather than one long continual process along the digestive tract. Thus, knowing how long each stage requires also reveals the ideal time to eat. A meal must not commence until the former meal has been thoroughly processed. Bachot prescribed a regimen based on a four-hour concoction cycle and three-hour distribution. From rising to the first meal (dinner) one should wait four hours, then after seven hours of digestion a second meal (supper) can commence, followed by four hours before sleep, and seven hours of digestion during sleep. Such a schedule would mean rising at 6:00, dining from 10:00 to 11:00, supping from 6:00 to 7:00, and sleeping at 11:00. Of course, this would vary according to complexion, occupation, and season.91 These were all considered critical factors, as were personal custom and habit. Custom was considered the “Imitatrix of Nature,” a “usurper [that] hath exceedingly extended her Dominions.” 92 The foods we eat become our substance, and the habits we acquire become so ingrained as to overthrow our natural requirements. Thus, sudden changes, even from pernicious customs, can be disastrous. Alteration must be slow and gradual. Even the drunkard, who has become so much like alcohol that more and more is required to have an inebriating effect, must be only slowly weaned off drink. Such a body has become used to nourishment from the now similar substance and can only gradually become readjusted to regular food. Even travelers must beware and acclimate slowly to new foods and customs. Similarly, anything we are accustomed to from birth so thoroughly imbues our substance that we are nourished by it. It has exact affinity to us because we are now composed of the same elements. It is with this in mind that one should consider the parody of Giulio Cesare Croce about a peasant who goes to court and falls ill eating all the strange food. In the end “He died painfully because he was not given any turnips and fava beans / He who is used to turnips must not eat meat pies.” 93 The body can, of course, over a long time become used to new aliments. Dietary authors were particularly fond of stories like that of Mithridates, who managed to live on poison by building up from small doses to whole meals.94 We would say that he was building up an immunity; according to this system, he was acquiring a “second nature.” Ethiopians 91. Bachot, 430 –32. 92. Brooke, 35. 93. This story is cited by Allen Grieco, “The Social Politics of Pre-Linnean Botanical Classification,” I Tatti Studies 4 (1991): 133. 94. Hessus, p. 17v.

114

Food: Qualities, Substance, Virtue

were said even to live on scorpions, asps, and hellebore due to their acquired nature.95 Just as exotic peoples can survive on their bizarre diets, European peoples each have their own set of customs and native produce from which they should not deviate. With this concept in mind, nearly any odd custom or strange local foodway can be defended and any new or foreign food condemned. This becomes interesting when Europeans evaluate New World foods, a topic to be discussed later. 95. Bruyerin Champier, 58: “consuetudinem esse veluti quandam ascititiam naturam.” There is a splendid parody of this dietetic rule in Rabelais, Pantagruel, book 4. Slitnose, who has grown accustomed to a diet of windmills, gets indigestion one day after eating some pots and cauldrons. Upon the advice of physicians, he eats a lump of fresh butter at the mouth of a hot oven and promptly dies. The butter, presumably, was intended as a lubricant, but because so unfamiliar in his ordinary diet, it cured the disease, and killed the patient. Rabelais, 490.

chapter 4

External Factors

This chapter focuses on a broad range of factors that were thought to play a major role in the maintenance of health and on how these factors relate to food. They have a direct bearing on the administration of diet and “hygiene” in its original sense because they can be manipulated and altered to conform to the needs of the individual and his or her complexion. That is, one can seek out better air, get more or less exercise, or have more or less sex in order to alter the humoral balance of the body. In Renaissance terminology, these factors were called the six non-naturals and in their original form included (1) air, (2) food and drink, (3) sleep and watch, (4) motion and rest, (5) evacuation and repletion, and (6) passions of the soul. Since food and drink have been discussed in previous chapters, the original arrangement has been somewhat modified, particularly in the inclusion of what must be considered the purely “natural” factors of gender and age. I have also used more familiar modern terms, for example environment rather than simply air, because the original concept included considerations of pollution, seasonal variations, climate, and region. Sex, interestingly enough, was usually included in the category of evacuations but here receives separate treatment. The original list of six was also somewhat malleable and might have included a variety of other topics, including baths, vomits, clysters, and phlebotomy. These, however, are more strictly therapeutic procedures rather than regular components of the regimen in health. The origin of the term six non-naturals appears to be post-Galenic, 115

116

External Factors

although there are passages in Galen that specify these external factors.1 The topic itself certainly dates back to the Hippocratic Air, Waters, and Places, and consideration of most of these factors can be found throughout ancient medicine. Sometimes they were listed as five in number: labor, meat, drink, sleep, and “venus” (sex), and many Renaissance authors associated this short list with Hippocrates. As six specific non-naturals, they were attributed to Galen and were certainly discussed regularly from the time of the Arabic authors. They later came to form the cornerstone of medieval and Renaissance dietary theory. ENVIRONMENT It may seem surprising that so much attention was given to air quality in early modern medicine. As has been shown, air brought into the lungs was thought to cool and refresh the blood as well as to charge it with vital spirits. Just as corrupt foods can undermine the entire system, putrid odors, or more importantly miasmas or foul gases that rise up from the earth are responsible for many diseases, including plague. Thus, good air is as important in regimen as any other factor, and it was usually considered more important. All other external substances can be held back or denied for long periods of time, but without air we die.2 And without good quality air, we soon fall ill. This is why so much energy was spent in situating houses well and choosing the proper location to avoid malignant winds, swampy odors, or the stench of rotting garbage.3 All of these would directly and adversely affect the quality of humors coursing 1. There was a brief but intense flurry of interest in this topic, as can be seen in the following articles: Lelland J. Rather, “The ‘Six Things Non-Natural’: A Note on the Origins and Fate of a Doctrine and Phrase,” Clio Medica 3 (1968): 337– 47; Saul Jarcho, “Galen’s Six Non-Naturals: A Bibliographic Note and Translation,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 44 (1970): 372 –77; Jerome Bylebyl, “Galen on the Non-Natural Causes of Variation in the Pulse,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 45 (1971): 482 – 85; Peter H. Niebyl, “The Non-Naturals,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 45 (1971): 486 –92. And recently, Luis Garcia-Ballester, “On the Origin of the ‘Six Non-Natural Things’ in Galen,” in Galen und das Hellenistiche Erbe, ed. Jutta Kollesch and Diethard Nickel (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1993). 2. Fridaevallis, 22: “tantaque omnibus corporibus aeris est necessitas, ut siquidem omnibus aliis abstineat homo, neque cibum sumat neque potum; possit tamen ad aliquot dies superesse.” 3. The literature on choosing the best site for a house, often included in the “Rustic House” genre, is enormous in the Renaissance. Like the dietaries, it has a history stretching back to the ancients. Joachim Camerarius, De re rustica, opuscula nonulla, lectu cum jucunda (Nuremberg, 1577) offers an extensive bibliography on the topic. Estienne’s Praedium rusticum shows his interest in both topics. Interestingly, Paulus Kyr suggests that deficiencies in a region can be improved by proper plantings around a house. Cold flowers such as violets and roses or oranges improve a hot site, just as cold and moist spots can be

External Factors

117

through the body and ultimately our disposition and emotions. This was not merely a vague apprehension that in foul weather we become irritable or depressed, it was a prime concern in maintaining health. Air was also often spoken of as a “nourishment” for the spiritual parts, precisely as food is nourishment for the solid fleshy parts. Foul air thus directly and mechanically affects our emotions and thoughts much quicker than would a bad meal. With constant exposure to corrupt air, again exactly as with food, the complexion is altered permanently. This is why fishermen and farmers were often thought to be dull-witted. Their spirits are so thoroughly obfuscated by the smell of fish or animal dung that they are unable to move freely through the brain. Those who live in clean and open air always enjoy better health and longer lives.4 The perception that swamps and marshes are particularly unhealthy probably had much empirical evidence to support it as well, malaria being rife in these areas. In appraising air quality, the same criteria used for judging food were applied. Air must be moderate and tempered, neither too hot nor too cold, neither too wet nor too dry. Excess in any one of these would have an adverse affect on the constitution. While changes in weather are readily apparent to the senses, more subtle atmospheric variations are more difficult to detect. The thermometer and barometer had not yet been invented, so other ways to test the air were required. Castor Durante suggested to his readers that they leave a sponge or piece of fresh bread outside to test air quality. The bread will be dry, damp, or foul-smelling accordingly.5 A noxious air quality is also detectable in certain physiological effects. Because the spirits are poorly nourished by bad air, they become thick and viscous, which causes heaviness in the limbs, sluggish reactions, slow thoughts, and depression. Should the spirits become distempered in any direction, the contrary quality air acts as a corrective, precisely as with food. Brooke recommends that “crazy persons must (if they have the conveniency) make choice of such Aires as are opposite to their Distempers.” 6 For melancholy, one should seek warm moist air and cordial odors; for choler, a

corrected with pines and junipers. Paulus Kyr, Sanitatis studium (Brasov, Romania: Inclyta Transylvaniae Corona, 1551), p. A3v. 4. Venner, 6. This topic is treated at length using English sources by Andrew Wear, “Making Sense of Health and the Environment in Early Modern England,” in Medicine in Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 5. Durante, rule no. 6 under “air.” 6. Brooke, 57.

118

External Factors

cool moist sprinkling may refresh the spirits. Smoking tobacco was first prescribed medicinally to counter the affects of cold and phlegmatic imbalances. Some sickly bodies are even made healthy by visiting marshes. For consumption, Brooke suggests the steam of newly ploughed soil or inhaling near a fresh turf of earth in the morning doused with vinegar.7 All of this amounts to altering the spirits by introducing odors contrary to the imbalance, something akin to that which we now call aromatherapy. For example, Platina recommended marjoram tied to the head in a sachet to resolve the gluey humors and cure migraines.8 This very same logic informs the custom of walking about with a pomander to the nose so as to avoid the stench of unhealthy places. Marsilio Ficino’s books are redolent with health-promoting scents, and even Tomasso Campanella’s utopian City of the Sun is not without delightful therapeutic fragrances. Because air is assimilated into the body, becomes us, and can alter us, it falls under the rubric of nourishing substances, according to Galen.9 Interestingly, Avicenna and Averroës and their Arabist followers disagreed on this point. Pictorius, as a good Galenist, reminds us that after superfluities are exhaled through the breath, the remaining air is mixed with the blood and spirits and does become part of our bodies.10 Although few authors were willing to specify exactly what it is materially that is incorporated, whether the spirits are vapors or a kind of gas, they do insist that something becomes us and nourishes us. Hence, Hollings insists, “non loquimur hic de aere ut elemento, sed ut alimento” [I do not speak here of air as an element, but as an aliment].11 The theorists also extended this logic to its ultimate conclusion: humans can indeed live on air, without any food. How else can one explain the numerous examples of people fasting for days and even years? By replenishing the spirits directly and as long as rigorous exercise does not consume the substance of the flesh, in very rare cases, a person can be nourished by odors alone. Many animals survive long periods of hibernation this way.12 Dieticians could point to dozens of examples of hu7. Brooke, 65. 8. Platina, Le grande cuisiner, 82. 9. Hessus, p. 20v. Hessus, as a Galenist, stressed that air is a nourishment. “Alimenta dicuntur, quaecunque corpori assimilari, sive in corporis partes mutari possunt.” 10. Pictorius, 19. 11. Hollings, 3. Sebizius disagrees on this point, claiming that the nourishment is merely metaphorical or analogous to nourishment with food. Only composite bodies whose substance is similar to our own can be assimilated and nourish. Nor are the spiritual parts nourished by odors as Pietro d’Abano claimed. Sebizius, 1252 – 6. 12. Jacobus Sylvius, Consilium perutile adversus famem, bound with Jean Liebault, Thesaurus sanitatis paratu facilis (Paris, 1577): “Ut de primo primum dicam ursos, glires,

External Factors

119

man inedia, stories from Pliny about the “astomos” who live only on the scent of fruit trees, and tales of Indians who could subsist for years by smelling flowers. Democritus was said to have lived his last days on the odor of bread and honey alone. There were contemporary examples too. Pietro d’Abano wrote of a Norman who went without food for eighteen years; Boccaccio told of a German who lived for thirty. In Rome there was a priest, observed by Ermolao Barbaro and Pope Leo X himself, who had not eaten in forty years. These stories are all recounted by Laurent Joubert, who, although he concludes that these people must have lived on an excess of internal phlegm providing a crude form of nourishment, he does not call into question the veracity of the stories.13 The most celebrated case of inedia was a young woman, Katerin of Schmidweiler, who was carefully observed by physicians for a period of seven years. The official commission claimed that it was a miracle of God, but the physicians concluded that she was nourished by pure air.14 Only Moffett, in discussing this story, retorts that the air could not have been perfectly pure, for without the “invisible seeds, and those impalpable substances or resekens that are sometimes described by sun-beames, our spirits should find no more sustenance by it, then a dry man drink in an empty hogshead.” 15 In other words, he is saying that the spirits are nourished by dust in the wind. Most theorists, however, ascribed the nourishing virtues of air to actual odors. Odors are the physical particles of matter that have vaporized and enter the body through the nose or sometimes the skin. They physically alter and are incorporated into the body, so one can be nourished by just the odor of fresh bread. Sylvius even recommended this as a way to combat famine or penury. The odor of wine especially—but also citrus, cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon— because so aromatic and volatile, offers a quick, though evanescent, form of nutrition.16 Conversely, the entire body is malnourished by putrid odors. According to the dietary ascribed to the Byzantine Psellus, merely living near a testudines, angues, serpentes, viperae, et multa alia animantia in suis delitescentes speluncis vivunt absque potu et cibo, solo anhelitu. . . .” 13. Joubert, Erreurs populaires, book 2, 192 –202. 14. A notable and prodigious History of a Mayden (London, 1589) is the English translation of a report that first appeared in German. O’Hara-May mentions this text without referring to the physician’s explanation, 45. 15. Moffett, 10. Rabelais also satirizes this idea in the section on the Island of Ruach, whose inhabitants live on wind. 16. Jacobus Sylvius, Consilium, p. 34v: “sane si cogat necessitas, adsitque ciborum penuria, vapores odorati commodissimum alimentum suggere poterunt, qualis ex aceto, vel potius ex vino exhalat optimus.”

120

External Factors

field of fava beans weakens the brain, as does resting beneath a walnut tree.17 More perilous are swampy vapors, barnyard and stable smells, and worst of all, the stench of human filth and cadavers. Smelling these is only one step removed from eating them. It is no surprise that plague was thought to be transmitted by putrescent air. There was, of course, a very specific reason for Boccaccio’s characters to flee the city and take refuge in the mountains: they needed to breathe clean air. For those unfortunate enough to remain in the city, physicians recommended burning juniper, rosemary, and spices to purify the air.18 Vinegar could also be used to constrict the pores and prevent the fumes from penetrating the skin. Interestingly, some authors arrived at a more comprehensive theory of air pollution. Impure air not only poisons our bodies directly but contaminates our water supply and spoils the grass and grains that feed our cattle, all this eventually making its way into our systems.19 The problem of water pollution was more immediately apparent. Considering that water supplies and sewers were often one and the same, humans could easily be blamed. Moffett commented that there is so much privy pollution in London that the city “now smells all over of nothing else.” 20 Judging from dieticians’ comments about water, it seems safe to say that most drinking water was not safe. In fact, the danger of all cold and moist things, an obsession throughout the genre, may ultimately be connected to a fear of tainted water. Many physicians recommended abstaining from water altogether, especially from stagnant standing pools or underground wells. The best water is running, aerated, and heated by the sun. Manfredi further specifies that stream water flowing from the east is more thoroughly purged by the rising sun.21 In lieu of running water, fountains and fresh rainwater are best, otherwise water must be boiled to rid it of superfluities. As a test of water quality, Vaughan suggests placing a napkin in it and checking it for spots or impurities.22 Unclear water would also be an immediate clue to its contamination. Pep17. Cited by Calanius, 50; Fridaevallis, 117. Although attributed to Psellus by sixteenth-century authors, these dietary writings are actually by Theophanes Chrysobalantes. 18. Ioannes Guinterius Andernacus [Gunther von Andernach], De victus ratione cum alio, tum pestilentiae tempore observanda (Strasbourg: Wendelin Richel, 1542), p. B8r; See also A. Lynn Martin, Plague? Jesuit Accounts of Epidemic Disease in the Sixteenth Century (Kirksville, Mo.: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1996). 19. Moffett, 12 –13. 20. Moffett, 15. 21. Manfredi, 16. 22. Vaughan, 25 –26.

External Factors

121

per, or even garlic, because they are so hot, were also recommended as emergency correctives. But for those living in colder climates, particularly for the English, water is always unhealthy, according to Boorde.23 Cold water is especially harmful to the nerves and impedes digestion. It can also cause the humors to congeal in the body like a chilled aspic. Water by itself may be useful for moistening the body, but it does not nourish, despite the fact that people can survive for days on water alone.24 Nor is dew a nourishing substance, though insects were often thought to survive on it. Some authors believed that the manna that nourished the Hebrews in the desert was in fact dew, but were this the case, countered Sala, it must have been more than condensed water and probably included some kind of sweet secretion from the earth.25 Dew would then be classified along with other earthy excretions, such as mushrooms and truffles—hardly an appropriate food for humans. For almost all authors, although there were a few exceptions, wine is the preferred beverage. At the very least, water should be mixed with wine. A major question, however, often arises on this point. Does the wine correct the water, or does the water temper the wine? Water does cut the extremely subtle and vaporous parts of wine that tend to offend the head and cause inebriation. On the other hand, wine’s hot and preservative qualities correct the putrescent and cold qualities of water. There is little agreement over which of the two should predominate, but the usual recommendation is that unless one is accustomed to drinking water since birth, wine should have a little water added. As Fridaevallis suggests, “Water should be added to wine, not wine to water.” 26 Only the very poor or American savages can subsist on water alone as their major beverage.27 More civilized peoples must use the civilized, or fermented, fruits of the vine. Cogan suggests that water may be useful if one

23. Boorde, 252. 24. Sebizius, 1484: “Experientia testatum fecit, et nos ipsi hoc in non paucis aegrotantibus observavimus, quód solius aquae haustu aliquot non solúm diebus, sed hebdomadibus integris, homini vivere licuerit.” He concludes, however, that water alone is not nourishing for humans, nor even for plants, which need nutrients from the soil. 25. Sala, 4. 26. Fridaevallis, 223: “Noxas autem quas corpori inferre apta est aqua, vinum tollit admixtum,” but “Aqua autem vino infudenda, non aquae vinum.” 27. Duchesne, 244: “Voire on voit comme ceste necessité a contrainct les Americains, et autre pauvres sauvages et Barbares, qui n’ont eu l’industrie de planter la vigne, d’inventer et faire des boissons de sucs d’aucuns fruicts, et arbres afin de s’en servrir.” Nonetheless, he does consider water alone nourishing, because fish can survive only on water “Les poissons . . . vivre longuement en leurs reservoirs d’eau simple, sans prendre aucune autre pasture, ny nourriture.”

122

External Factors

has already had too much to drink to suppress the fumes from rising to the head. But ordinarily, even for quenching thirst after strenuous labor, wine or sack is preferable because it refreshes without violently altering the body. He even goes so far as to recommend a hot posset (a spiced concoction of milk and wine or ale), as was the custom in Lancashire.28 However, the issues concerning water were far more pervasive than whether it provides a reasonable choice of refreshment. Water quality was really an environmental question. The source and quality of water was thought to have a direct bearing on the fruits and vegetables that absorb it and an even greater impact on fish. In fact, the most important criterion for choosing fish was the water from which it is drawn. Clean, well-aerated, and gravel-bedded waters are the optimal source. Fish from muddy, stagnant, or polluted waters pass on these defects to whomever eats them and corrupt in our bodies much more easily than fish from clean waters. Fish found in the ground are worst of all. Nonnius contends that fossils prove the existence of such fish.29 Although there was disagreement on the topic, some authors believed that saltwater fish are preferable because the salt in their flesh makes them less prone to putrefaction, and being constantly tossed on the high seas makes them well exercised and well purged of superfluities. At any rate, all dieticians warn against fishing near cities with polluted water, although their advice seems not to have been heeded. The classic transgression cited was the renowned pike caught between two bridges on the Tiber in ancient times that had presumably fed on human sewage and garbage. But contemporary examples also abounded.30 Dieticians were also especially wary of fish held in stagnant ponds, whose bodies draw nourishment from rotting vegetation and muck. These same censures equally applied to waterfowl, not only cranes, herons, and plovers, but ducks and geese as well. Because all these “feed filthily, upon froggs, toades, mud, water spiders and all manner of venemous and foul things,” 31 they are bound to pass on the noxious quali28. Cogan, 205. 29. Nonnius, 315. Although fossils prove nothing of the sort, Nonnius may have had in mind certain species of fish that survive dry seasons embedded in the parched earth, reviving only with the coming of rain. 30. Gazius, p. I3v: “Caro illorum qui nutriuntur de sorditiae civitatum exinde erit mala et peior carne omnium piscium”; Fridaevallis, 179; Duchesne, 452. 31. Moffett, 88. Domesticated ducks and geese that fed on clean aliments would naturally be much better, but the practice of domesticating ducks seems not to have been widespread outside of England. Duchesne, for example mentions wild geese and ducks in one passage, but only domesticated geese in another. Duchesne, 430.

External Factors

123

ties of these creatures directly to us. But even apart from the revulsion toward consuming insects and frogs once removed, these authors had a very clear sense that water and air quality directly influence the fodder that animals ingest and ultimately pass to humans. Although the term food chain is of modern coinage, the idea that toxins may be passed from species to species was firmly grasped by these authors. Their sense of environmental purity even extends to soil quality. A heavy or “fat” soil nourishes wheat best. A thin, dry soil or muddy and shaded soil will foster plants that then pass these qualities to humans,32 yet colder and drier barley does do better in poorer soils. Just as with humans, similar substances nourish best. Whatever their inherent complexion, all plants are damaged by either too little sun or too much water. In fact, domestic plants were usually considered less potent than their wild counterparts due to excessive pampering and less exposure to the heat of the sun and purifying winds. Wild plants are thus hotter, more bitter, and serve as far more powerful correctives.33 Plants that thrive in moist soil, such as squash and cucumbers, obviously provide a watery nourishment, and those that thrive on excrement, such as mushrooms, are logically excrementous. Plants can even become poisonous by proximity to venomous serpents or worms.34 One has to wonder if such ideas may have dissuaded farmers from fertilizing their fields with manure, since the presumed harmful qualities of excrement would be drawn into the plants, eaten, and absorbed into the body. Ficino specifies that fields should contain no standing water, shady spots, or manure. Anything raised or grown in a manured field is subject to quick decay, outside the body and within.35 These same concerns would naturally extend to pastures for cattle. As a general rule, the quality of an animal’s flesh is directly influenced by its 32. Gazius, p. E1r. 33. For example, Savonarola, 9, discussing endive considers “ma la silvestra apresso nui [sic] dicta radighio e pur freda men assai de la hortulana.” 34. Benedictus, p. I5v. It is interesting that mushrooms were not divided by species into safe and dangerous categories. Rather, it was believed that any mushroom can become poisonous by drawing in toxins from other sources. This explains many accidental poisonings. “Multe familie ex comestione fungorum simul una nocte perìere. Ideo fugienda est eorum comestio.” What is less clear is why pears were considered the “theriac” or antidote to poison mushrooms. “Pira sunt tiriaca fungorum” is frequently repeated, though never explained. 35. Ficino, Three Books on Life, 185. “But it is very bad to manure fields or not to drain the stagnant water off them; for all things grown there are subject to quick corruption.” In this same passage, he praises Hesiod who cared more for health than fertility, and left out discussion of manure as fertilizer. Kaske and Clark, the translators of this edition, found this passage only in Varro.

124

External Factors

fodder. Sheep feeding on grass are a watery and phlegmatic food, cows fed barley and oats are cold and dry, and goats that eat leaves are hot and dry like the leaves that are warmed by the sun. Consequently, each of these animals will also be best to eat when its respective fodder is in season. Sheep are best in spring, beef in summer, game in the fall.36 According to Nuñez de Oria, domestic animals fed on dry mountain pasture have a flesh somewhere between the wild, which is too hot, and the domestic kept in pens, which is too moist. Mountainous animals are thus to be preferred above all others.37 Estienne, with greater subtlety, notes that mountain pasture can correct the harmful qualities of some animals but can damage others. Beef, for example, becomes too tough.38 The quality of milk is also best determined by examining the animal’s fodder. This is of great importance, since milk, being a converted form of blood, when fed to humans quickly converts back into blood. Thus, the soil and pasture of the animals has an almost immediate impact on human health. In effect, the soil is converted into us when we drink milk. Sheep’s milk, because the animal eats a watery food from moist soil, is the most moist and fatty. Goat’s milk, by the same logic, is the driest and most subtle because they eat dry herbs and leaves.39 But if either were fed foul or noxious plants, their milk would be extremely dangerous. The same considerations, of course, extend to choosing a wet nurse for one’s children. There are “many reasons why mothers should be afraid to commit their children to strange women. . . . children may draw ill qualities from their nurses both of body and mind.” In the country, children were often believed to get kidney stones because their nurses ate rye bread, hard cheese, and muddy ale.40 Once again, these authors were surprisingly circumspect about the origin of the food they recommend and the effect the environment ultimately has on it. In many respects, they paid closer attention to these factors than we do today. Birds too can be judged by their environment and the food they eat. 36. Platina, Le grande cuisiner, p. 101v. 37. Francisco Nuñez de Oria, Regimento y aviso de sanidad, que trata de todos alimentos y del regimiento della, 2d. ed. (Medina del Campo: Francisco del Canto, 1586), 80. Mountainous animals have a flesh “mas perfectas para la conservacion de la salud, y para la confortacion y para la union y assimilacion de los miembros.” Also see Menapius, 524. 38. Estienne, 28. Mountains breed “ovilla viscosior, bubula duroir, caprine delicatior, avium tenerior . . . quinetium ad caeli aspectum, pabulorumque bonitatem advertentum esse.” 39. Gazius, p. H4r. 40. Moffett, 120 –22.

External Factors

125

Birds of prey and waterfowl were condemned, while those that feed on grains and are well exercised in high, well-ventilated areas are lighter, hotter, and drier. One should judge a bird by its food, not its feather. Swans and peacocks are nearly indigestible, despite their beauty and the dramatic appearance they make on the table. Quails are often poisonous because of their diet of hellebore. Likewise, bees can produce poisonous honey if they have been collecting nectar from poisonous plants.41 The question of environment also pervades the dieticians’ opinions in more subtle ways. Fruits from the top of trees are best because the superfluities are more thoroughly cooked off by the heat of the sun.42 Cabbages with broad leaves contain fewer superfluities than varieties that have compact heads and are thus colder.43 Grapes from sunny slopes in dry gravelly soil are best, as any enologist to this day will admit. The logic of this recommendation was somewhat different than our own though. The natural humidity of grapes was thought to be corrected by a dry atmosphere. Dry plants, however, just like naturally dry animals, become drier and tougher. Although plants and animals often thrive best in atmospheres that are similar to their own complexion, as melons do in damp soil, they are often best for us if grown in a corrective environment. The effect of environmental conditions extends beyond the terrain of living plants and even affects how and where food products should be stored. Grain stored underground will only become more earthy and crass as it absorbs cold and dry exhalations from the earth.44 Wine, it was thought, would be similarly affected if kept in caves. It was often hung up on rafters along with the cheeses in Italian households in order to make it lighter, drier, and purged of superfluities. Pantaleone, in a fascinating passage, treats aging cheese as a living anthropomorphic entity. Like the human body, the cheese has a skin and pores that exhale superfluities and excrements while retaining valuable solids. Also like hu-

41. Platina, Le grande cuisiner, p. 36v. Although it would stand to reason that poisons would be transferred into bee’s honey, apparently poison ivy and other toxic plants do make excellent and safe honey. 42. Moffett, 197. Allen Grieco suggests that the higher up a plant is from the ground, the more suitable it would have been considered for the upper classes. By this logic root vegetables and beans are lowly food fit for peasants, and fruits are more noble. See chap. 7 below for further discussion of the social meaning of food, and Grieco, “Pre-Linnean Botanical Classification”; Grieco, “les régimes végétariens.” 43. Massonio, 348. 44. Benedictus, p. N5r.

126

External Factors

mans, the cheese dries with age. At any rate, cheeses are healthiest in well-ventilated areas that facilitate proper aging.45 The regional environment and climate were also major considerations in deciding which plants and animals are best suited to nourish humans. Mutton was considered healthy in France and Britain but not in Italy, where the air and pasture are more suited to veal. Rome’s humid climate was thought to have a negative effect on food as compared with drier places.46 The typical contrast focuses on beer and butter, which are considered suitable for northern Europeans, while wine and oil, being hotter, are more appropriate to nourish southerners. Providence would appear to have supplied each region with its proper aliments. It might seem in this case that food of opposite qualities would be preferable, but in fact cold air makes northerners more robust, and because their internal heat is drawn inward they are able to digest crasser foods like beer and dairy products. In the South, the sun’s heat draws the body’s own heat outward, weakening the digestive powers, and thus hotter and more subtle foods are best. Again providentially, in very hot regions where wine would only overheat the body, wine grapes will not grow.47 This is merely one example of a central tenet in this dietary theory: humans are best nourished by plants and animals that thrive in their particular region. Today, of course, we would say that humans had adapted biologically to be able to process their native produce efficiently. Lactose tolerance in northern Europe is a prime example of this. Most peoples around the globe, including many southern Europeans, remain lactose intolerant, mainly because historically they did not regularly consume milk in adulthood. The Renaissance dietician would have explained that over countless generations a population grows accustomed to using native produce that would be entirely unsuitable in other regions. By this logic, Welshmen thrive on leeks, although they harm most other people. Similarly, alpine peoples have grown accustomed to and can be nourished by chestnuts.48 This idea of native adaptation also suggests that strange and foreign foods should be highly suspect. Being unfamiliar physiologically, they can never be properly assimilated. These considerations all 45. Pantaleone, pp. 19v–20v. 46. Valverda, 22; Petronio, 57. 47. Platina, Le grande cuisiner, p. 237r. He is presumably referring to equatorial Africa. Grapes generally only grow in a band between 30⬚ and 50⬚ latitude in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres. This extends from the very tip of northern Africa to the Champagne region in France and nearly to southern England. Unwin, 34. 48. Moffett, 33; Nonnius, 146.

External Factors

127

imply that there can be no ideal dietary standard for all peoples, regardless of habitat, and thus no such thing as optimal nutrition for the human species as a whole. This is a concept that modern clinical nutritionists and food policymakers are only beginning to comprehend.49 Renaissance dieticians also recognized that regional environment determines the physical stature and character of its inhabitants. There is a long tradition of environmental determinism stretching back to antiquity. Typically, colder regions breed larger and more ferocious people, while southern Europe produces a more refined and intelligent variety. This follows logically from physiological principles. In the North, people eating cold and crass foods will be well nourished and thus robust and strong, but their spirits will be correspondingly thick and viscous. This explains their lack of intelligence. In hotter regions, people eat more subtle foods and receive less nourishment and are therefore smaller, but their rational faculties will be all the more light and nimble as spirits course easily through the brain.50 A drier brain also tends to retain information more efficiently. It may also be true that the type of economy and agriculture determines social habits. A rice-growing people must necessarily be patient and cooperative, bound to the land, and more family-oriented to succeed with such a labor-intensive crop. These people, logically, are more conservative and easier to rule than pastoral and nomadic peoples who have looser social ties and tend to be independent in thought. Whether either of these models can be applied generically to entire countries is doubtful, but certainly between geographic regions such comparisons were commonplace in early modern Europe. In England the “chalk” and the “cheese” regions are divided along these lines. The socially dependent fertile lowlands are inhabited by a very different people than the mountainous and independent dairy regions. As a Renaissance physician would put it, lowland wheat-eating peoples have more tempered 49. Paul Fieldhouse, Food and Nutrition (London: Croom Helm, 1986), 22; Peter Farb and George Armelagos, Consuming Passions: The Anthropology of Eating (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980), 32. The authors point out that by Western standards the diet of the average inhabitant of New Guinea is miserably deficient in calories and protein, and yet these people remain healthy. 50. Bruyerin Champier, 49 –50. “Quare et mens purior, et defaecatior, et prudentior evadit ratioque constantior et solidior efficitur.” This is especially the case in temperate climates. The Roman historians even attributed the Gaul’s fickle nature to the variable weather of the region. There is also a discussion of this topic in Sebizius, 1410 –13. “An victus ratio diversitatis ingeniorum et morum apud diversas gentes causa esse queat?” One example of how he answers in the affirmative concerns the Italians, who because of their diet, “Veneri hodie magus, quàm populi alii, dediti sunt Itali.”

128

External Factors

complexions and dispositions and live peacefully together. Mountainous peoples have humors dried by winds, and they become fierce, like their environment. This is only exacerbated by their diet of coarse grains and cheese. Comparable perceptions can be found throughout Europe. Seafaring peoples are more gregarious, outgoing, and open to new ideas. A region that produces an abundance of food with little effort naturally spawns a lazy populace. Only temperate regions produce a civil and industrious population, although what qualifies as temperate differs widely according to author. Whether an individual, or indeed a ruler, could consciously counteract the deleterious effects of the environment with diet was a matter of debate. Most physicians had no trouble recommending correctives. Among political theorists, only Jean Bodin seems to have considered the environmental factors as inevitable and invariable.51 In medical theory, how people interact with and shape the environment has a major effect on their complexion and character. It is not merely the terrain and climate but how individuals apply their talents to improve agriculture and diet that ultimately determines regional character. One might label this dietary determinism rather than environmental determinism. Human will, especially in the choice and preparation of food, plays a major role. Bruyerin Champier points out that there are lands in which people’s labor provides healthy foods that otherwise would not grow. The Normans are one of the examples he offers of a people who are able to counteract their environment with a good diet. Wetter regions should try to use drier foods such as roasts. Hotter regions should use subtle and cooling foods that match their natural digestive capacity yet counteract their climate. Vinegar is thus an ideal condiment for Italians. Using hot and dry spices is perfectly appropriate for the English and Dutch, but the Spanish and Portuguese only become more choleric and irascible by using them; Bruyerin Champier explains that this is why they are so vain and boastful.52 Of course, these recommendations are at perfect odds with the idea that people should stick to their native foods. Presumably, sometimes correction is better than succumbing to environmental hazards. Equally, there is no reason to persist in poor habits. Cogan laments that the English are prone to rheumatic fevers because of the cold and moist air, but this is only made worse by “the continuall gourmandise, 51. Terence Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967), 434 – 41. 52. Bruyerin Champier, 51: “Hispanos ac Lusitanos astutos, sactabundos, quae partium a solo, coeloque, partim a victu accidere non est dubium.”

External Factors

129

and feeding on sundrie meates at one meale.” 53 Bad dietary habits can exacerbate environmentally determined weaknesses. The environment was also thought to determine the digestive capacity of a people. Those in colder regions can eat much more food. The fierce Scot and Briton can consume vast quantities of semicrude flesh, while four Spaniards, according to their spokesman Valverda, would be stuffed with one Scot’s portion.54 Of course, all the exercise these semiwild people get only adds to the intense heat of their stomachs, but again, this is environmentally determined. Mountainous people have no choice but to trudge up and down hillsides all day. City-dwellers are necessarily more sedentary and have weaker systems. Parallel to all these environmental concerns are the recommendations for change in diet according to the season. Essentially, each season corresponds to a complexion. Spring is hot and moist and is the season of growth, when the blood dominates. Summer is hot and dry, and thus people are then prone to choler. Fall is the season of melancholy, and winter of cold and moist phlegm. Interestingly, seasons did not often begin as our do on the solstices and equinoxes. Platina lists spring as February 6 to May 8, summer as May 8 to August 6, autumn as August 6 to November 6, and winter as November 6 to February 6.55 Other authors begin on the eighth of each month. Obviously, the dominant qualities mentioned above work for these dates only in a Mediterranean climate, which may be why detailed dietary rules according to season failed to gain popularity in northern European regimens, where it rarely becomes spring-like until late March or April. At any rate, the basic outlines are the same regardless of geography. As with all external factors, the human diet must counteract the qualitative variables. In winter, hot and dry herbs are useful, as are sauces of mustard, ginger, pepper, cinnamon, and cloves. In summer, cold and moist foods are best: watery vegetables, verjuice, and lemon or rosewater condiments. Also of great importance is the variability of digestive strength in each season. In winter, the appetite is greater and we are able to digest a greater quantity of food and foods of a grosser substance. The internal heat is fortified by the external cold and draws inward, aiding concoction and digestion. This is the season for heartier foods like beans, 53. Cogan, 189. 54. Valverda, 41: “Alius nanque victus Scotorum et Brittanorum est, alius Hispanorum. Quippe vidi saepius illos, carnes semicrudas comedere, et ad tantam quantitatem, ut quod uni illorum non erat satis, quatuor ex Hispanis homines repleret.” 55. Platina, Le grande cuisiner, x–xi.

130

External Factors

cabbage, roasted meats, root vegetables, and even cheese.56 In summer, the digestive heat dissipates, attracted by the ambient heat. Thus, cooling condiments as well as salads, fruits, and lighter, preferably boiled meats are best. And of course, nothing very corruptible is suitable for summer. For the most part, the foods recommended just happen to be those available at the time, another act of providence. Verjuice from unripe grapes and salad vegetables are only available in the summer; root vegetables and preserved meats are logically held through winter. The quality of foods was also thought to vary by season in spite of mere availability. Animals are best in the season when their fodder flourishes, when the weather corrects their natural complexion, and when they are not mating. Oysters, for example, are best in months spelled with an r because their mating season occurs from May through August. Reproduction saps energy and nutrients from the blood and flesh. Plants also vary by season. Whatever part of the plant happens to be growing will offer the greatest nutritive value: shoots and buds in spring, leaves in summer, fruits in autumn, and roots in winter. This can also be explained by the position of the sun. Symphorien Champier explains that in summer it is high and warms the upper parts most; in winter the sun is below the horizon more, and the roots are thus warmer.57 The warmest part of the plant is also the sweetest and most nourishing in its season of growth. The effect of the environment on internal temperature and digestive capacity, and all the various factors involved in countering its effects, probably had its origin in easily perceived physiological changes. We do get cold in winter and hot in summer. Warm hearty meals do increase body temperature, and cold liquids do refresh. Similar empirical observations probably informed the discussion of the next non-naturals as well. “Sleep and watch” and “motion and rest” have been encompassed here by the comprehensive term exercise, and as is easily confirmed by the senses, these too have qualitative effects on the body. EXERCISE As a factor involved in determining diet and food choice, the level of energy a person exerts in performing daily tasks is of crucial importance. 56. Bruyerin Champier, 23. 57. Platina, Le grande cuisiner, 95; Symphorien Champier, 23.

External Factors

131

Because most discussions of exercise also encompassed the requisite periods of relaxation, the topic was somewhat broader than our modern concept of exercise as an activity chosen in moments of leisure, although this was not ruled out. Because this genre’s audience tended to be drawn from the leisured classes, authors did stress the salutary effects of a moderate amount of exercise in fortifying the system. They contrasted this, however, with the great amount of exercise performed by laborers. In both cases, activity level is the index for measuring digestive heat. The well-exercised body can always process a greater quantity of much crasser foods. For ploughmen and workers, a diet of bacon and beans is fine. Even for nobles who spend all day hunting, hawking, or brandishing a sword, huge roasts of game are perfectly suited. In classical theory athletes were always expected to consume enormous portions. Exercise essentially augments the internal heat, or as we might say, it boosts the metabolism. More food can be concocted in the stomach and efficiently distributed. The limbs are more thoroughly nourished, and superfluities are expelled through sweat and heavy breathing. Hot stomachs also have little trouble breaking down dense foods, as well as crude unrefined ones like turnips and onions. Lighter foods, on the other hand, tend to burn up in such a powerful stomach, and the laboring body would soon “resolve the juice engendered thereof.” 58 In other words, any nourishment received would quickly dissipate. It is this very logic that consigns gross foods to workers and light, subtle foods to the otiose. A light pheasant is as dangerous for the ploughman as a black pudding is for the scholar. Some exercise is, nonetheless, necessary for all people. The delicateframed and normally sedentary are usually told to try tennis, jumping, throwing a ball, or some kind of physical activity outdoors. Even the relatively passive exercise of riding on horseback was seen as beneficial. Platina suggests gardening, especially outside the city.59 The popularity of the villa suburbana, for those who could afford one, was strongly supported by medical authority. Cleaner air, sunlight, purer food, the opportunity to walk around the grounds were all firmly recommended

58. Cogan, 119. 59. Platina, On Right Pleasure, 107: “when we are at home, there is weeding, harrowing, grubbing, grafting, and pruning for pleasure while we cultivate our gardens and orchards.” Readers should note that in many cases I have cited the French version of Platina, translated and expanded by Christol, especially when it differs significantly from the original Latin.

132

External Factors

by physicians. Some authors viewed an active country life in general as healthier, but of course, they rarely meant the life of the rural poor. On the topic of exercise, as with food, mediocrity was the rule. Too much exercise resolves the spirits and vital heat, leaving us exhausted, colder, and unable to digest food. It thus hastens death. Exercise need not refer only to muscular activity. The same is true of excessive mental exercise or exercising the senses too rigorously. A moderate amount strengthens, but studying too long ultimately weakens the rational faculties, especially if time is not set aside to replenish the animal spirits in the brain. Looking at beautiful objects too long also dulls aesthetic appreciation, as anyone who tries to spend an entire day in an art museum can testify. Equally, overexerting the taste buds dulls them. All these species of exercise must be engaged in long enough to strengthen the body but not to excess and exhaustion. “Spiritual exercises” enable the moderately strengthened soul to grow and be nourished, but an excess of abstruse theology deadens the soul and makes it more susceptible to spiritual infirmities and heresy.60 Just as the system must be clean of superfluities and foul humors before exercise to prevent them from being distributed throughout the body, the soul too must be clean when approaching spiritual devotions. The metaphor of nourishment aided by moderate exercise could be applied to nearly any human endeavor and in the Renaissance was most often used to explain reading and learning, which nourish the intellect, as Michel Jeanneret’s A Feast of Words amply illustrates.61 There is also in the dietary literature a major concern that too much physical exercise may detract from the rational faculties. The body is only able to focus on one physiological function at a time, either digestion, exercise, or thinking. A great deal of exercise may promote a powerful body but leave a feeble intellect. As Brooke notes, “too constant use of Sports, corrupts the mind, and distracts it in the midst of all affairs and business, and begets a Dotage there upon.” 62 The stereotype of the “dumb jock” is hardly a modern phenomenon, nor is the common 60. Durante, 19. Exercising the soul: “queste cose dilettando all’animo, lo pascono in modo, che tutte le virtù diventino più forte a resistere all’infermità, e a superarle, e fatti questi esserciti; a debito tempo, cioè perfeta la concottione del cibo, e nutriscono, e corroborano l’anima, e fan perfetta memoria . . .” 61. Michel Jeanneret, A Feast of Words: Banquets and Table Talk in the Renaissance, tr. Jeremy Whiteley and Emma Hughes (Cambridge, Eng.: Polity Press, 1991). See especially chap. 5, “Eating the Text.” 62. Brooke, 160.

External Factors

133

perception of rustic simplicity, if not downright stupidity. Here it is bolstered by physiology. Students and readers of dietaries were consistently warned only to exercise until sweat begins to bead on the brow, ad sudorem, but no further. More than this only dissipates the spirits in the brain. The proper amount of exercise also serves to fortify concoction and distribute nutrients throughout the body. It stokes the flame of the vital heat and aids in the evacuation of excrements through the pores and breath. But because exercise heats the entire system, it is especially dangerous to exert oneself immediately after a meal. The unconcocted food would be prematurely and violently forced into the veins, causing cramps. Brooke recommends after exercise rest and then for refreshment something warm and analogous to our body, such as a “Cawdle, Mace Ale, Hot beer and sugar.” 63 This is much the same advice as offered by Cogan above. After exercise, many specific foods are also dangerous. A cold beer after exercise is equally dangerous. Because the humors become more fluid in the body with heat, as does fat, a sudden cold shock congeals the humors and extinguishes the heat. Light delicacies and fish are prone to combustion or corruption. One must be thoroughly cooled before touching these, according to Calanius.64 Apart from heating the body, the role of exercise and its relation to health in general is somewhat ambiguous. Today we have a clear idea, at least in the popular conception of exercise, that it keeps the body fit, the muscles toned; it aids circulation and boosts the metabolism. Most importantly for many, it helps us lose weight. While Renaissance nutritionists sometimes offered advice on how to make the body fatter or slimmer, they seem not to have connected either of these explicitly with exercise, or at least not in the same way we do. Strangely enough, some authors suggested that only those with hot complexions become thinner with exercise and fatter with a lot of rest. People with cold complexions, because they have such weak digestive powers, grow thinner with repose and fatter with exercise because their systems are warmed and they are more thoroughly nourished.65 Moreover, because a median body size was considered optimal both medically and culturally, dietetics did not

63. Brooke, 167. 64. Calanius, 8: “Apres qu’auras prins travail et grand exercise, laisse là telles friandises, et delles mesmement qu l’on fait de poisson, jusq’uà ce que seras revenu à toymesme, et ne te sentiras plus travaillé, ne fatigué.” 65. Manfredi, p. 20v.

134

External Factors

put great emphasis on keeping the body slim, and as we have seen, too much exercise was seen as positively harmful. What is also interesting and quite different from our own notions about the function of exercise is that comparable effects can also be gained by less strenuous means. Baths, for example, and “frications,” or rubbings, also heat the body and aid distribution of humors and spirits. They are thus akin to exercise and may even be preferable as a regular part of the daily routine. Most importantly, they too serve to expel excrements from the body. Recommendations for morning ablutions were designed not so much to disinfect the body from external pollutants but rather to aid the evacuation of internal superfluities from the bowels, bladder, pores, mouth, and nose. Even brushing or rubbing the teeth and combing the hair were less a matter of personal appearance than a way to purge the teeth and scalp of accumulated wastes. Rubbings in particular were thought to open and cleanse the pores in much the same way as exercise does. Baths, apart from the numerous mineral baths that were very popular and prescribed for a variety of ailments, were also useful in the daily maintenance of health. Simply put, when used in moderation they heat and moisten the distempered body. Cleanliness per se was not a major concern, and in fact frequent bathing was thought to be quite dangerous. In hot seasons, and for those with choleric or sanguine complexions, hot water can diffuse the body’s innate heat and moisture. This has the inadvertent effect of cooling and overresolving the humors, leaving us dehydrated and exhausted. Exactly as with exercise, baths are especially dangerous after eating. Even more dangerous is eating in a bath. Many people seem to have found this erotically stimulating, as a way perhaps of enticing all the senses at once, especially when accompanied by music and pleasant odors. It is mentioned in the French version of Platina, and there are extant illustrations of naked couples bathing and eating.66 But a bath, combined with sex, would be disastrous according to this system, thoroughly depleting the body of heat and moisture. It appears that frications went out of fashion by the seventeenth century, and although baths continued to be used when healthy, it was really not

66. Platina, Le grande cuisiner, p. 6v. This passage is conspicuously absent from Platina’s original work. See also Madeleine Pelner Cosman, Fabulous Feasts (New York: George Braziller, 1976), 102 and 106 for contemporary illustrations of people eating naked in a bath.

External Factors

135

until the nineteenth century that they were considered a necessary part of daily hygiene in the modern sense of cleanliness. The topic of exercise in its various forms extended well beyond human physiology and in the dietary literature also included consideration of its effect on animals consumed as food. An animal’s inherent complexion must be corrected by exercise. A well-exercised animal, cleansed of superfluities, is ultimately more easily digested and more nourishing. The fatty flesh of sedentary animals fosters fat human flesh. Some authors concluded that wild animals, although hotter and tougher, were generally more healthy than domestic ones because of the great amount of exercise they get. Their flesh is not only leaner but cleaner and thus is digested with less difficulty.67 But here as elsewhere, the choice of species is of central concern. Animals that are naturally cold and moist, like pigs, are corrected by exercise, and thus wild boars provide a more tempered meat than domesticated pigs. This is also true of pigeons. Cooped up, they are much less healthy than wild or free-ranging. Conversely, dry animals like goats are absolutely forbidden in their wild form. Even when domesticated they must be eaten young and castrated, both of which make them moister. This logic also extends to choosing cuts of meat. Those parts that move most are naturally the best to eat. Theoretically, the wings of birds were considered the lightest and easiest to digest, and this rule was rarely challenged even though it runs counter to our modern perception that unexercised white meat on a bird is the lightest. For the same reason, the tails of fish were deemed superior. MacBeath repeats a current saying “Pisces et mulieres sunt in Caudis meliores vel dulciores” [Fish and women are better and sweeter in the tail].68 Presumably, this was meant to be a ribald joke. Leg muscles and even the feet of quadrupeds, following this same reasoning, were also recommended by some authors. Nonnius commends pig’s and sheep’s trotters, and Pisanelli approves the feet of working animals as long as they are tempered by vinegar and saffron.69 The anterior parts of animals were also preferred to the posterior and the right parts favored over the left. This had more to

67. Fridaevallis, 140. For this reason, he praises well-exercised roebuck and doe. Many other dieticians consider them far too tough and melancholic. 68. MacBeath, 47. Exactly what this means eludes me. 69. Nonnius, 196; Pisanelli, 90 –91. Platina also approves of a Roman style meal of “calves’ feet, well washed, cooked in their own juice, and sprinkled with spice and, I would also think, something put in made from vinegar.” Platina, On Right Pleasure, 259.

136

External Factors

do with the positioning of the organs than with exercise. The front of the animal, because closer to the heart, receives freshly cleansed blood before it sloshes out to the extremities. The rear is also somewhat fouled by proximity to the bowels. The right flank of the animal is also closer to the source of heat in the liver and is thus better nourished and cleansed. The left side is worse by being nearer the spleen.70 These considerations originated in the Arabic authors and generally disappeared from period 2 onward as the Arabs lost authority to the Greeks. Paralleling the entire topic of exercise, dieticians also stressed the importance of rest and sleep. Like all other subjects in this genre, rest was examined in terms of its capacity to either heat or cool the body and dry or moisten it. Most importantly, however, rest is the time when the body is literally restored as the internal heat withdraws inward and nutrients are distributed, repairing the spirits and flesh. Without enough sleep, the body is not properly restored. With too much, the heat begins to burn the humors and dissolve the flesh and eventually consume the body’s radical moisture. Some concluded for this reason that in excess sleep emaciates the body.71 A long sleep can be particularly useful after a large meal to ensure that all food is properly processed, but sleeping late can be harmful if the heat has run out of food to process, at which point it begins consuming the body itself. Sleeping late is especially harmful for students, who should study during the day when the air is warmer and cleaner and the spirits flow easily through the brain but never at night when digestion should be taking place.72 Hence the saying in Lily’s Latin Grammar, and alluded to by Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night, “Deliculo surgere saluberrimum est” [To rise early is healthiest].73 The sleeping position also concerned dieticians. Due to the shape and location of the stomach, it is best to begin sleeping on the right side, move to the left, and then end on the right. Both the entrance and the exit to the stomach tilt to the right, which helps the food enter, remain, and exit efficiently. How a person was expected to perform this feat of nocturnal acrobatics remains a mystery.74 Others explained that switch70. Gazius, p. G2v; Symphorien Champier, p. L2v; Platina, Le grande cuisiner, p. 136r. Only the French version explains that forequarters are better than hind because they are “plus pres de la chaleur forte” [closer to the strong heat] and are thus less fatty. These ideas appear to originate in Isaac and Rhazes, as these are the most frequently cited authors on this topic. 71. Brooke, 179. 72. Ficino, Three Books on Life, 125 –29. 73. Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, 2.3.2. 74. Manfredi, p. 17r.

External Factors

137

ing sides bolsters the heat of the organs being used, although this would mean sleeping on the left first to aid the stomach underneath, then the right to aid the liver. But as Platina says, “No sane person should sleep on his back.” 75 He seems to have feared that the liquid humors would trickle into the brain and nerves in such a position. Lack of sleep was also thought to be dangerous. The body can never be properly nourished if one’s internal energy is spent thinking or praying all night, impeding digestion. It has much the same effect as too little exercise: the system slows and weakens and fills with impurities. Soporifics, most notably lettuce, were consistently recommended to combat sleeplessness, following Galen. The original recommendation may have referred to one species of lettuce, Lactuca virosa, which does yield a latex containing triterpenoid alcohols, which act as opiates.76 Over the centuries, however, the recommendation came to be applied to all species, and a humoral explanation was appended to explain it. Lettuce, being cold, chills the spirits flowing through the brain. Colder liquids and vapors move more slowly through the body and become more viscous. The logical comparison would be a thick, slow-moving syrup contrasted with hot, brisk steam. The heated spirits make the intellect quick and active, while cold ones make it sluggish and drowsy. Thus, cold lettuce aids sleep, and extremely cold poppies even more so. By this logic, hot and subtle foods like rosemary and sage are good for rousing a person out of sleep and even counteract slow-wittedness, also caused by sluggish spirits in the brain.77 Similarly, clouded spirits caused by foods difficult to digest, such as leeks, can disturb sleep. Lying unconcocted in the stomach, these generate fumes that ascend into the brain and obfuscate the spirits, causing bad dreams.78 Even the content of dreams can be affected by humors predominating in the body. Excess choler will stimulate dreams of fire and violence. An excess of phlegm will provoke dreams of water. Nightmares are the scourge of melancholics.79 Some foods automatically generate bad

75. Platina, On Right Pleasure, 111. 76. McGee, 196. 77. Petronio, 100; Massonio, 371. 78. Pisanelli, 46 – 47. 79. The most comprehensive account of melancholy, published in 1628, has the following: “against fearful and troublesome dreams, incubus [nightmare], and such inconveniences, wherewith melancholy men are molested, the best remedy is to eat a light supper, and of such meats as are of easy digestion, no hare, beef, etc., not to lie on his back, not to meditate or think in the day time of any terrible objects. . . .” Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, ed. Holbrook Jackson (New York: Vintage Books, 1977), pt. 2, 101.

138

External Factors

dreams. According to Sebizius, lentils are the most dangerous and should not be used as food or medicine.80 Images in the brain mechanically react to humoral imbalances. Dreams can therefore serve as a diagnostic tool for determining the state not only of the mind but of the body as well. Dream interpretation receives less emphasis in period 2 and 3 dietaries, but the central doctrine that the humors directly effect emotions remains. As Galen himself said, the soul’s habits follow the temper of the body. The humors and the factors that determine them (diet and the non-naturals) have an automatic effect on the emotions. An excess of a hot and dry food can provoke wrath as easily as lettuce or cucumbers can make us lazy. A cloudy day, lack of exercise, or a filet of beef can all sink us into depression. On the other hand, “accidents of the soul” can also aid or hinder digestion. The mind and body are one unified mechanism, or in modern terms they form a “psychosomatic whole.” EMOTIONS That the humors are directly connected to emotional states, character traits, and dispositions of the mind is evident in the original and modern usage of the terms describing complexion: sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic, and melancholic. But these natural inclinations can be counteracted to benefit the individual’s health through careful management of the non-natural factors. Not only the emotions but even ideas and the inclination to perform virtuous acts are ultimately influenced, if not determined by, dietary habits. Thus, disordered habits lead to a deranged mind and sin, while following an ordered regimen leads to happiness and virtue. The standard lament among dietary authors, however, was that in their gluttonous days both were lacking.81 There is a direct causal relation between diet and emotional well-being: a poor diet of badly digested foods leads to corrupt humors, which leads to foul spirits, which 80. Sebizius, 201. On lentils: “Nocturna etiam terriculamenta excitant: praesertim in pueris, qui naturâ sunt timidi, et nocturnis pavoribus exercentur.” Nor does he think they can be improved by cooking in vinegar: “Nec est, quòd quis dicat, meliores evadere conditura aceti. Nam licet acetum crassitiem lenticularum incidere atque attenuare valeat, succi tamen malitiam emendare nequit.” 81. Oddi, De coenae et prandii portione libri duo. In Opusculum recens natum de morbis puerorum. (Lyon: Jean Barbous for Germain Rose, 1538), 121. Ex recta videlicet cibi, potus’que ratione non bonam modò gigni corporis temperaturam, sed etiam animum reddi praestantiorem . . . At his temporibus, ut ab illa prisca victus ratione homines diverterunt, ita quantam ab ea discessere, tantum in animi moribus facta est commutatio.

External Factors

139

leads to disturbed and perverted thoughts. As Vaughan says, from tainted humors come “strange and wandering phantasies.” 82 Our reason may be able to overcome these destructive urges, but it is certainly safer to follow a sober diet. “Orderlie diet quickeneth the spirits and reviveth the minde, making it more active and coragious to know and practize vertuous operations,” according to Grataroli. Lessius also adds that sobriety makes us calm, affable, and cheerful as well.83 It is no surprise then that diet was taken so seriously by moralists and pedagogues during the Renaissance. An ordered diet might also be used as a means of social control. The well-fed populace is not only easier to govern but is naturally disposed to obedience. A gluttonous people fed on choleric meats is ready to take offense at the slightest cause; melancholics invent false dangers to fret over; the phlegmatic loses all vigor and motivation. And of course a pusillanimous population is a threat to national security. Although the various sumptuary laws enacted by Renaissance rulers have been examined in terms of clearly delineating social classes and checking upward mobility, there may be some dietary logic to them as well. For the individual, a careful diet can be used to correct imbalanced passions. Cholerics can be cooled off physically and emotionally by cold and moist foods; the melancholic’s mood is literally warmed by the herb borage. According to Durante, borage was commonly called “corago” [courage]. Wine is the most potent corrective for disordered passions of the soul. In moderation it reverses all malicious inclinations, making the impious pious, the avaricious liberal, the proud humble, the lazy prompt, the timid audacious, and the silent and dim-witted astute and loquacious.84 In a sense, it alienates us from our naturally malign complexions. In most cases, though, a sober, well-balanced diet was recommended for keeping the passions in check. Cornaro swore that his own dietary conversion had preserved him from the hatred, melancholy, and other perturbations of the mind that afflict so many.85 The healthy mind

82. Vaughan, 243. 83. Grataroli, p. F4v; Lessius, 160. 84. Pisanelli, 137. “Egli muta i vitii della natura in contrario, per coiche l’huomo empio lo fa pio, de Avaro lo fa liberale, di superbo humile, de pigro sollecito, di timido audace: la taciturnità, a la pigritia della mente muta in astutia, et in facondia.” Manfredi, p. 13v, also claims that wine makes melancholics audacious and cholerics fearful. 85. Cornaro, 11 and 14. “Neither melancholie, nor any other passion can hurt a temperate life.” His disciple Lessius in the dedicatory epistle to Hygiasticon continues, “Sobrietie, which is the procurer of so many singular benefits both to the mindes and bodies of men. For besides that it brings Health and long life, it doth wonderfully conduce to the

140

External Factors

in a healthy body is more than just a pleasant aphorism; it is a physiological rule. Equally important is the fact that changes in emotion alter the humors and digestion. There is a “mutual influence from the Body upon the Mind, and from the Mind upon the Body: not necessitating, but inclining . . . That therefore thou mayest be vertuous, keep thyself in good Health, keep thyself vertuous and Regulate thy Passions.” 86 Sudden passions are especially dangerous, and people in Renaissance Europe seem to have been especially prone to sudden mortal shocks of grief or even joy. At least theater-goers did not find the idea ridiculous, and physicians certainly believed it possible. Duchesne describes this fatal jolt as an immediate evaporation or exhalation of the spirit.87 Disturbed emotions could also have a variety of pathological consequences throughout the body, most commonly wasting away from excessive melancholy, which is, of course, still a common side effect of depression. More typical was the disturbance of digestive functions by distempered passions. A perturbed brain was thought to detract energy and heat away from the stomach, and so one should never come to the table upset.88 An immoderate level of anger can singe the food, and uncontrolled fear can bring the entire system to a chilling halt. We must be especially diligent, therefore, in controlling our emotions at the table. This was not merely in the interest of polite manners but health as well. Duchesne compares the whole process of managing the passions to good gardening. Harmful weeds must be removed to allow the beneficial ones to prosper and bear fruit. A pernicious weed in the emotional plot, such as voluptuous love, causes us to lose sleep and ruins our appetite. Malnourished, the body engenders crudities and illness ensues.89 Anger literally makes the blood boil, and horror sends cold shivers down the spine and makes the hair stand on end. Only the calm collected mind can support a healthy body. These considerations are naturally of utmost importance to the scholar, whose mental exertion poses a serious threat to health. Combined with a sedentary lifestyle and a predisposition to melancholy, the attainment of Wisdom, to the exercises of contemplation, Prayer, and Devotion, and to the preservation of chastitie, and other virtues. . . .” 86. Brooke, 224. 87. Duchesne, 351. 88. Venner, 180 – 81. 89. Duchesne, 20. “imiter le bon jardinier et laboureur: cestuy-là qui sarclera et arrachera d’un jardin toutes les mauvaises herbes, et cultivera et arrosera les bonnes pour leur faire produire quelque bon fruict.” The discussion of voluptuous love is on 41.

External Factors

141

student is a high-risk case. Thinking itself disturbs the digestive process, which is why studying after a meal is absolutely forbidden. Thinking and dining don’t mix. Even dinner conversation should be light and diverting, and in fact there was an entire genre of literature devoted to pleasant meal-time topics.90 After-meal games are also fine, as long as they are not competitive or vitriolic.91 Reading should only take place a good three or four hours after a meal to ensure concoction is complete. The best time to study, all agreed, is in the morning and afternoon, when the spirits are thoroughly restored after a good night’s sleep and digestion. Excessive study also exhausts the body, leaving no energy left for processing food. Obviously the student must also beware of foods harmful to the brain such as onions and garlic, whose fumes smother the intellect and understanding. Cold, viscous eggplant, or “meli-insani,” and mushrooms also suffocate the mind and breath.92 Badly prepared food can spoil the thoughts, and gluttony is obviously lethal to the intellect.93 As has been mentioned, proper nourishment of the mind and nourishment of the body go hand in hand, and one serves as a metaphor for the other. Reading and understanding a book is a matter of ingesting and incorporating knowledge, transforming it into our substance. Rabelais the physician certainly understood both processes. Montaigne also describes education and digestion as parallel functions.94 Renaissance pedagogues took careful consideration of the time, order, quality, and substance of the books offered to young students in exactly the same way as dietaries dealt with these issues regarding food. Erasmus also mentions that we must “digest” what we have consumed in reading rather than merely memorizing or ingesting the contents.95 For the student, nourishing the intellect was both a literal and figurative process. “Food for thought” can refer both to ideas and to actual aliments. The right diet and the proper curriculum are analogous endeavors; both must be tempered with reason. 90. Plato’s Symposium is the notable exception to the rule, because weighty topics are discussed after the meal. Dinner conversation books that proliferate in the Renaissance deal mostly with light and amusing stories. See for example Leon Battista Alberti’s Dinner Pieces, trans. David Marsh (Binghamton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1987), which is only one of dozens of similar works, but perhaps more serious than most. 91. Platina, Le grande cuisiner, p. 4r. 92. Petronio, 134 and 136. 93. Hessus, p. 28v. “Quare crapula bonam corporis valetudinem vehementer laedit, mentis actiones impedit.” Also Ficino, Three Books on Life, 125. 94. Jeanneret, 112 –35. 95. Jeanneret, 138. The comment is in the Dialogus Ciceronianus.

142

External Factors

Clearly, however, the connection between mind and body was seen as more than metaphorical. The two are inextricably interwoven: reason and emotion affect nutrition as much as nutrition affects them. This is the unique whole that comprises the human being. Physical health and mental health cannot be separated.96 This topic becomes a little more difficult when dealing with other species. If animals lack a rational soul, then perhaps they are unaffected by passions in the way humans are. If this were the case, then the character of an animal would not be a suitable criterion for judging the quality of its flesh as food. With plants, there is no question that they lack passions, but animals do experience fear, anger, and lust. These emotions must, therefore, alter their complexions in the same way that humans are affected. They must also, logically, pass on their dominant humors to the person who eats them. A timorous animal will cause us to fear, a carnivore will make us bloodthirsty. Only a few dieticians carried the logic this far because it would have meant excising many foods entirely from the roster. Some authors, mostly in period 1, did make explicit reference to the mood of an animal though.97 Rather than pointing to the stereotypical characteristics of the animal, they examined the way animals were reared in captivity and the effect this had on their emotions. A cooped-up chicken lacks not only clean air and exercise but also the good spirits (literally and figuratively) that would render its flesh useful to humans. Pantaleone describes how cows must be cheery if you want them to produce milk that will make your children cheery.98 Modern milk factories would hardly pass muster, not to mention industrially reared beef cattle. A flesh that promotes good humors can only originate in a well-treated animal. Can we infer from these ideas that early modern Europeans were beginning to express remorse for having treated animals poorly? Moffett’s comments are the most succinct on the topic: “So great is the diversity betwixt a cramm’d, I may say strangled, and captive Capon, and betwixt a gentleman Capon feeding himself fat 96. In modern Western culture, we are profoundly comforted by examples that show this not to be the case. Consider the popularity of Stephen Hawking, a man with a mind of genius entrapped in a seriously ill body. This seems to assure us that physical debility need not impair our mental functions. In early modern Europe, such a case would have been even more rare and extraordinary, perhaps even unthinkable. 97. Wear, “Health and the Environment,” 146. He adds that “there is a close connection between the qualities (psychological as well as physical) of the bodies that we eat and our own.” That is, a distressed animal will pass on this defect to the consumer. 98. Pantaleone, p. 16r: “Quis dubitat lac animalis iocundi laudabilius esse lacte animalis tristabilis? . . .”

External Factors

143

without art.” 99 Is this a consideration of the Capon’s feelings or the consumer’s health? He does mentions that “to deprive them of all light, is ill for them and us too.” To dispel any anachronistic reading that suggests the animal’s feelings were an end in and of themselves, one need only glance at the theory of how to treat hunted game. Platina mentions that boar becomes more tender, savory, and nutritious if it has struggled a great deal before death.100 Fear actually helps foul humors dissipate, makes the blood thinner and more subtle, and renders the flesh tender and easier to digest. Moffett himself, who praised Sir Free-range Capon, also recommended beating cocks with little wands. Bull-baiting is also rationalized on the grounds that it makes the flesh more subtle.101 The point here is not to prove that these people were cruel and vicious but that applying our own modern criteria to their opinions only leads us further from understanding them. In this case, a good-humored animal provides better nourishment, but should the animal be too tough for human consumption, we must tenderize it, dead or alive. Here it happens to be by torture, which heats and resolves the flesh.102 As with all nonnaturals, the issue ultimately comes down to a question of heat and moisture and the effect these have on digestibility and the balance of humors. SEX AND GENDER Sex is another factor that alters the body’s complexion and can be controlled rationally. Normally it was subsumed under the non-natural category of evacuation and repletion or management of those substances that collect in the body and must periodically find issue. But the relation of sex to food and nutrition was far more complicated than this and much more explicit than we might expect. The analogies between sexual and gastronomic gratification are abundant in Western civilization. 99. Moffett, 43. Keith Thomas was correct to note that it was entirely human self interest that motivated Moffett’s comments. Man and the Natural World (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 189. 100. Platina, Le grande cuisiner, p. 111r; Venner, 58 has similar comments about venison. 101. Moffett, 45. 102. Remarkably, this discussion continues to this day. Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat, History of Food, trans. Anthea Bell (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1992), 86, relates that a frightened animal secretes large quantities of lactic acid to nourish its muscles, which is then reconstituted as uric acid. Hanging venison allows these substances to evaporate, and is thus necessary. McGee, 96, counters that this acid environment in the muscle tissue fosters bacterial growth and mold, and thus a stressed animal always yields inferior meat. Slaughterhouses, as a matter of economics, have devised less traumatic ways to kill animals.

144

External Factors

Both are intimate acts of giving and sharing and are often connected literally as well as symbolically. And, of course, eating can be a psychological replacement for unfulfilled sexual desires, and abstinence from food and sex often go hand in hand. Prurient slang is always infused with the language of food. But the connection between the two is more than coincidental. In Renaissance physiology, sexual appetite is directly linked to nutrition. Production of sperm is merely the last step of the entire digestive process, and it is generated directly from an excess of nutritive material remaining after the body has been nourished. Whatever blood is left unused is directly converted into sperm. An abundance of sperm then signals the libido, and the well-nourished body is primed for reproduction. This is true of both males and females. Following Galen, both sexes have a form of sperm and are equal contributors to the characteristics of the offspring. It was only Aristotle who considered the womb an empty vessel in which the embryo grows and is nourished. More interestingly, according to many medical authorities, the female reproductive organs were considered to be an inverted and analogous form of the male anatomy. They merely remain internal in females because of deficient heat in the mother’s womb during development. Nonetheless, an abundance of nourishment is converted into sperm in the female body in the same way it is in the male, though if unused there is a natural monthly evacuation in the form of menses. During pregnancy this blood is used by the embryo, and postpartum it is transformed into milk. Sperm, blood, and milk are thus three forms of the same basic substance, and all are the direct product of the food first ingested. Thus, the diet of both sexes has a direct bearing on reproduction. Because well-fed bodies produce an abundance of sperm, any excess is likely to build up and, like any “plethora” of bodily fluids, will require exit. Under normal circumstances, sexual arousal signals the build-up of sperm, and coitus logically rids the body of these superfluities. But an excess of coitus, when not required, dries the body excessively, using up valuable heat and moisture. As with all non-natural factors, moderation is the key, and careful attention to the body’s temperature is essential for judging when to “use venus.” Some authors recommended it very infrequently. Grataroli admits that he does not like Solomon’s ordinance that a man should know his wife thrice in a month. For some even once a month is too much.103 As with all these factors, everything depends on 103. Grataroli, p. K4v.

External Factors

145

the constitution of the individual. For dry bodies, melancholics, and the aged, it can be dangerous, damaging the moist organs such as the brain and the eyes. Hippocrates even compares sex with epilepsy, both being a violent draining of the spirits, which is why it weakens the brain and stunts intelligence.104 Sex is especially dangerous for scholars because overdrying the brain dulls the memory and understanding and weakens the eyesight. Probably for this same reason, it was believed that masturbation would make you go blind—not merely an idle threat, according to physicians. Once the superfluous humidity is discharged, the body’s own nourishing humidity is spent, and in cold and dry scholars this can be disastrous. Excessive sex in any complexion ultimately cools and dries and ages the body prematurely because the aging process is also a matter of cooling and drying. As Manfredi says, “whoever uses much coitus lives little and quickly ages.” Or according to Nuñez de Oria, “Luxuria, or frequent coitus debilitates the body, diminishes and abbreviates life.” 105 The body’s heat is dissipated not only through exertion but because great amounts of heat and friction are required to liquefy the male sperm. Under normal circumstances, the sperm was thought to be solid, like wax, and cool, being stored outside the body. Manfredi contends that this is why humans cannot have sex in water, while elephants can, because their sperm is stored internally.106 The colder and drier body is also weaker and less fit for digestion and thus receives less nourishment from food, which further weakens and ages the body and makes it unfit for reproduction. Sex is safe only when there is an abundance of heat and moisture in the body and a plethora of blood and sperm. This also means that sex is best after digestion is complete and the body is filled with nourishment. Immediately after a meal it diverts heat from digestion, and any offspring of the union would also be deficient, since the sperm that contributed to generation was not thoroughly nourished. The only time to conceive is after digestion is complete, several hours after a meal.107 This is true of both males and females, and a cold distemperature in either can engender girls or pre104. Ficino, Three Books on Life, 123. 105. Manfredi, o. 22r: “Imperho dicono li philosophi che chi usa molto il cohito vive poco e tosto invechia.” Nuñez de Oria, p. 132v: “La luxuria, y coyto frequente debilita el cuerpo y desminuye y abrevia la vida.” 106. Manfredi, p. 28r. 107. Platina, Le grande cuisiner, p 8r: “Ceste heure n’est pas esgale à chacun, car la viande se cuist plus tost à un qu’a l’autre selon sa complexion, pource advise l’heure que tu sentiras ta viande estre cuite, car (pour lors) l’heure est bonne pour engendrer enfans.”

146

External Factors

vent conception altogether. This is why drunkards and gluttons are generally not fecund or produce only girls: they are poorly nourished and produce cold sperm.108 The most bizarre story of defective conception involves Countess Margaret of Holland, who in 1276 gave birth to 366 children at once, all no bigger than mice. Each was carefully baptized, but they all died shortly thereafter. Balinghem offers these remarks in the context of the effect of alcohol and gluttony on conception, so one can only assume that the countess or her husband were intemperate.109 Perhaps less distressing are the frequent warnings to be careful about what foods to eat before conception. Naturally crass foods will transfer their properties from the blood to the sperm and ultimately into the fetus, producing crass children. Subtle and nourishing foods, on the other hand, engender bright and healthy offspring. Most specific recommendations, when offered, appear to have folk origins, although sometimes a learned authority is cited. For example, Buttes comments that “Simeon Sethi counselleth women with child to eat many quinces if they desire to have wise children.” 110 With far greater frequency, the topic of sex and reproduction in the dietary literature focuses on aphrodisiacs. Under normal circumstances, sexual desire is triggered by an abundance of sperm. Thus logically, nourishing foods are ideal for stimulating both the appetite and ability. Chicken and veal, eggs, good bread, and wine are all easily digested, subtle, and nutritious and are at least theoretically the only foods suited to increasing virility.111 Conversely, the best aid to abstinence would be avoiding very nourishing foods, particularly meat.112 Hunger is the best remedy for lust. Joubert points out, though, that no topic is so clouded by popular error than the use of aphrodisiacs. Folk remedies abound, as do even medically sanctioned foods for stimulating sexual desire unnat108. Antoine Balinghem, Apresdinees et propos de la table contre l’excez au boire, et au manger, pour vivre longuement sainement, et sainctement, 2d ed. (Saint-Omer: Charles Boscart, 1624), 251: “les yvrognes et intemperants au boire et au manger, sont pour la plus part infeconds, et n’ont point d’enfans: secondement, s’il en ont, ce sont filles: par ainsi leur nom s’esteint et se perd.” The author is trying to argue from an economic basis that many family lines run out through gourmandise. 109. Balinghem, 258. 110. Buttes, p. C6r. 111. Joubert, Erreurs populaires, book 2, 96. 112. The link between meat-eating and testosterone levels has not been conclusively shown, but can be linked to levels of aggression. The amino acid tryptophan in animal flesh is used by the human body to manufacture serotonin, a neurotransmitter in the brain that affects aggression. Reay Tannahill, Food in History, rev. ed. (New York: Crown, 1988), 122, links this to the dynamism of nomadic peoples. Could it not also be a factor in the dominance of Western civilization, whose diet is comparatively high in animal proteins?

External Factors

147

urally, that is by means other than with sound nutritious food. Adding external heat to the body was one such remedy, thought to correct the “frigidity” of the reproductive organs. Platina suggests a sachet of hot herbs tied around the genitals.113 For the opposite effect, cooling the genitals works and can be useful for clerics. Lobera recommends “submerging the member of generation in very cold water” or for greater effect, wearing “a lead sheath with minute perforations.” 114 More typically, heating foods, which agitate and extenuate the penis mechanically, were recommended. Clearly, most of these remedies were to be taken by the male. Lack of sexual arousal or ability was rarely seen as a problem for women, in fact just the opposite. Therefore, most of these unnatural aphrodisiacs were designed to enhance performance of the male, rather than specifically to produce healthy offspring. The list is astounding, and interestingly, all period 1 authors offer a wide variety to choose from. Benedict proposes garlic, leeks, capers, chickpeas, quail, pine nuts, mint, nasturtium, eggs, parsnips, salt fish, oysters, turnips, asparagus, and truffles. Gazius adds celery, arugula, carrots, cloves, saffron, and galangal. Manfredi adds milk and sweet grapes. Platina has almonds, cloves, partridge, and spiced wine. It was only in periods 2 and 3 and especially among Catholic authors that this topic began to become taboo. The reason for this growing prudishness will be discussed below in the chapter on food guilt, but for the moment the logic of all these recommendations must be unraveled. The heating foods are easy enough to understand. Cloves “augment miraculously the force of venus” because they heat.115 For the poorer sort, garlic in moderation has the same effect: 116 it heats and helps the circulation of blood and eventually the production and delivery of sperm. Bitter hops, asparagus, artichokes, and cardoons are all heating and incisive foods and serve the same purpose. Fridaevallis recommends asparagus for timid newlyweds.117 Other hot herbs fortify sexual prowess:

113. Platina, Le grande cuisiner, p. 71v. 114. Luis Lobera de Avila, Vergel de sanidad, 2d ed. (Alcala de Henares: Joan de Brocar, 1542), p. 18r: “Amplius scias qui interdum submergere membra generationis in aqua frigidissima, est de hisque auferunt de sideriu coitus.” 115. Pisanelli, 118 –19: four drams of clove in milk “aumento mirabilmente le forze di venere.” Cogan, 109: “they comfort the debility of nature and stirre uppe venus.” 116. Benedictus, p. D8v, writes of garlic “coitum si in modica comedatur quantitate: excitat.” 117. Fridaevalls, 83, on asparagus: “sic non fugiendi, neque aversanti conjugi primas conjugii difficultates, et si quid minus in uxore tunc placet, dulce et amabile futurum tandem uxoris contubernium.”

148

External Factors

parsley, arugula, anise, and mint, which proverbially should not be sown in time of war lest the soldiers be distracted from battle. Anything salty also serves as an aphrodisiac, stimulating the appetite for food and sex. The very word salacious reveals this connection. Animals fed salt were thought to breed faster. Both Rabelais and Jonathan Swift adduce that the salty fish eaten during Lent accounts for the sudden population rise nine months later.118 Other authors contend that salt may immediately stimulate the genitals through irritation, a sort of itch, but ultimately will dry and consume the seed as it does all fluids in the body. The same is true of exceedingly hot and bitter foods like rue. They may immediately tingle but in the end destroy the appetite for coitus. Far safer are hot and dry birds, which both heat and nourish. Wild pigeon and sparrow are commonly cited aphrodisiacs. Catullus and Lesbia might have had some consolation in the death of the passer after all.119 Just as hot foods can provoke sexual appetite, cold foods can extinguish the flames of lust. For bachelors and priests, lettuce is the universal remedy. Calanius says this is why religious men and the unmarried should eat it often. In a similar vein, Moffett adds, “if any student list to live honestly unmarried, let him use often times this medicine.” 120 By moistening and cooling the brain, it also prevents lascivious dreams and nocturnal emissions.121 More drastically cold foods may also be suggested, such as cucumbers, lentils, poppy, and henbane, but these may cause more damage than good. They can chill the nerves to narcotic levels. Hot foods were not the only artificial stimulants. “Windy” foods that cause flatulence, oddly enough, are also useful for sex. The gases produced by foods difficult to digest, such as carrots and parsnips, diffuse throughout the body, inflating the blood vessels in the extremities. Arugula, appropriately also called rocket, is often recommended “tenere instrumentum virge erectum” [to keep the rod erect], according to Gazius

118. Robert Hendrickson, Lewd Food (Radnor, Pa.: Chilton Book Co., 1974), 18; Jonathan Swift, “A Modest Proposal,” cited in Deane W. Curtin and Lisa M. Heldke, Cooking, Eating, and Thinking (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1992), 335. 119. Two poems by the Roman poet Catullus refer to the death of his girlfriend’s sparrow (Latin passer), “Passer, deliciae meae puellae” and “Lugete, o Veneres Cupidinesque” in Catullus, ed. G. P. Goold (New York: Duckworth, 1983). 120. Calanius, 77: “Parquoy gens de religion et autres non mariez, en doivent souventefois user;” Moffett, 76. 121. Fridaevallis, 69: “Porrò lactucae semen epotum assiduas libidinum imaginationes in somno compescit et veneri refragatur, quin et geniturae profusionem cohibet.”

External Factors

149

and several other authors.122 This sort of stimulation can obviously not produce healthy offspring, though, and artificial aphrodisiacs were eventually condemned by the more moralistic authors. In the popular imagination, a far broader range of aphrodisiacs existed, and some dietary authors were seduced by common errors as well. The logic of these recommendations is not always immediately apparent, and sometimes modern authors explain them by pointing to the doctrine signatures. That is, a food’s alleged aphrodisiac qualities originate in its similarity to the genitalia. Hence, long root vegetables and moist shellfish are natural candidates. These foods bear the outward sign of their therapeutic value. In fact, this is a modern misconception, and no Renaissance dietician made any such claim or even mentioned a popular error of this kind.123 Nonetheless, the texture and color of a food could be an indication of how it would behave in the body. A thick, viscous food will produce thick, viscous blood, which may eventually promote sperm production. This idea seems to have informed the use of oysters as aphrodisiacs. Some dieticians correct this mistake, contending that if oysters are an aphrodisiac it must be because they are nourishing. Others claim that it is merely the salt content. No one suggests any similarity to female anatomy.124 Some sexual stimulants were thought to operate directly, their substance being easily converted into its analogue in the human body. Testicles are thus invigorating; sperm is logically converted quickly into sperm. With a less direct reasoning, lecherous animals can also incite lust in humans. Goats especially, but also “mullet [which] is so lascivious that a thousand females swim after one male as soon as they have 122. Gazius, p. K3r, also suggests that galangal root “quando tenetur ex ea in ore frustum, facit magnam virge erectionem,” p. P1v; Symphorien Champier, p. 68r. Benedictus, p. H8v, also mentions turnip greens (rape) in this same context. 123. See for example, Farb and Armelagos, 4, who suggest that the shape of a food was thought to be an indication of its virtues. Thus asparagus and carrots are aphrodisiacs. The logic actually used in the Renaissance was that asparagus is hot and incisive and the carrot causes flatulence. The idea that the doctrine of signatures was applied universally to all aphrodisiacs reaches its most extreme form in Leo Moulin, Les liturgies de la table: Une histoire culturelle du manger et du boire (Anvers: Fonds Mercator /Albin Michel, 1988), 122 –24. He suggests that carrots, asparagus, and leeks are phallic; truffles resemble testicles; parsley, cress, and tarragon look like pubic hair, and the fig is shaped like a womb. Such connections were not made in the Renaissance, and his entire list can be reduced to nourishing foods (figs), hot stimulating foods (herbs), and windy foods (leeks, carrots, and truffles). 124. Petronio, 166, calls the oyster into question; Sebizius, 1038, also explains that “ostrea . . . ad venereos amplexus homines stimulat praesertim si elixis addatur piper.” But he also concludes that they act as aphrodisiacs because they cause flatulence, are salty, and are hot when pepper and aromatics are added.

150

External Factors

spawned” are both considered aphrodisiacs. This at least was Paracelsus’s “cabalistic conclusion.” 125 In case of both goats and mullet, the humors that first prompted lust in the animal will do the same in the body of the consumer. Similarly, any especially fecund animal must also be well-nourished and should pass that nourishment and fecundity onto us, assuming that it has not been spent. Sparrows are sometimes defended as aphrodisiacs following this logic. At times the aphrodisiac merely turns out to be a rare and expensive item whose powers must be explained in some other way. Naturally, Renaissance physicians recognized the allure of exotic delicacies and often explicitly connected perverse tastes in food with sexual license. But they were often guilty themselves of including many foods on the list of aphrodisiacs merely because of their rarity. How else can sturgeon be explained as an object of seduction? Duchesne claims they “eschauffe le jeu d’amour,” and this must be because they are nourishing. Otherwise, he says, the less eaten the better.126 Lobsters too appear on the list, and Venner claims that they “maketh a great propensitie unto venereall embracements.” He is then forced to conclude that they are hot and nourishing.127 Truffles are also included among aphrodisiacs seemingly because of rarity. Durante ascribes their power to a flesh-like odor, which excites the appetite and increases sperm.128 Probably in the past, as today, a rare and expensive item impresses a potential lover, promotes confidence, and ultimately, even if only psychosomatically, serves to heighten sexual arousal and performance. It is interesting though, then as now, that a physiological explanation must be given to support any serious claim of efficacy. Throughout this genre no particular mention is made of female arousal. Perhaps it was considered less essential or something better off not stimulating. There were sometimes comments that a particular food is good for making a woman pregnant (Petronio recommends scampi),129 but it is not clear which partner this was meant to help. Usu125. Moffett, 157, rejects both the idea that mullet were sacred to Diana because good for chastity and Paracelsus’s conclusion that it causes lust. These comments, one suspects, were probably added by Moffett’s seventeenth-century editor, Christopher Bennett. Moffett himself was well known as supporter of Paracelsus. 126. Duchesne, 466. 127. Venner, 82. 128. Durante, 142. 129. Petronio, 165. By scampi, he means not the dish often made with shrimp but the squill or gambarelli marini that has no claws. They are “presi ne i cibi à far che le donne s’ingravadino.”

External Factors

151

ally comments regarding females focused on what foods to avoid, as was certainly the case with wet nurses. Hot aphrodisiacs, such as celery, not only provoke coitus, which diminishes the nutritive humidity in the female body and mars the value of the milk, but also diminish milk production directly by heating and drying.130 The larger topic of gender has received a great deal of attention in the last few decades, especially by historians of medicine.131 It is disappointing that the dietary literature is geared almost entirely for a male audience, and recommendations rarely specify women’s needs in particular, or if they do it is only by contrast to males. For example, the woman’s naturally colder and moister complexion renders her weaker, less active, and following Galen, an imperfect form of the complete male. With logical consistency, the diet of women in health should consist of colder and moister foods, and when distempered in this direction, hot and dry spices and wines would be appropriate. But the dieticians were reluctant to specify any broad differences in diet according to gender. Most references to the particular physiology of women deal with pregnancy. Cravings naturally interest food writers, especially the desire to eat charcoal, chalk, and clay (terraphagy). This seems to be the product of an extreme hot and moist distemperature, which makes perfect sense if generation is taking place in the body. Avicenna and his Arabist followers recommended the cold and dry sorrel to counteract dirt cravings.132 Cravings for sour foods like cold and dry pickles should be indulged, as they both correct excessive heat and fortify the retentive faculty, especially important for preventing miscarriage. Venner suggests gooseberries for pregnant women “because they helpe their picarie affections” and also prevent miscarriage.133 Hot foods, on the other hand,

130. Cardano, De usu ciborum, 18: “Apii . . . venerem excitat, lac imminuit, ideo nutricibus non convenit eius usus.” Platina, Le grande cuisiner, p. 70r, also speaks of wild celery (l’ache or smallage) in the same terms: it is “defendu aux nourices . . . pource que ladicte ache les incite à luxure et leur oste le laict.” 131. This is an enormous field, but very useful are Danielle Jacquart and Claude Thomasset, Sexuality and Medicine in the Middle Ages (Princeton: Prineton University Press, 1988); Ian Maclean, The Renaissance Notion of Woman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980); and a broader view in Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990). 132. Massonio, 280. Terraphagy is still practiced in West Africa and among some African-Americans in the rural South. Laundry starch apparently satisfies the urge when superior clays are unavailable and incidentally also causes stomach ulcers. Some anthropologists have explained these cravings as stemming from calcium deficiencies in the diet, which women eventually learned to supplement with chalky clay. 133. Venner, 128 and 147.

152

External Factors

and laxative foods can be very dangerous, particularly apricots. In Webster’s Duchess of Malfi, a craving for apricots is indulged, and the duchess immediately goes into premature labor.134 Under no circumstances should aquavitae or strong alcohol be given to pregnant women. “How many abortives, suffocations of the wombe, and franticke moodes have they caused? . . . Nay more, the use of these waters hath been so extreme in some, that they were delivered of flayed infants.” 135 The connection of alcohol with birth defects is certainly not a modern discovery. Apart from this sort of admonition, the human female is generally neglected, which certainly reflects the predominantly academic male audience of the genre. If anything, the poor habits of women are condemned from a distance. Both Bachot and Brooke in the seventeenth century launched somewhat more extended diatribes against lazy women, who “vivent à gogo” [live riotously] and grow fat, pale, and sickly. Eventually their minds become distracted and they fall prey to wanton and depraved thoughts.136 Brooke even believed that poverty can be a positive aid to women who are forced to work hard and are thus healthier and require less recourse to medicine. In one of the rarer passages dealing with actual dietary customs of women, Bulleyn mentions the strange habit of using a lot of pepper. “Although pepper be good to them that use it well, yet unto artificiall women that have more beastliness then beuty and cannot be content with their natural complexions, but would fayne be fayre: they eate peper, dried corne and drinke vinegar, with such like baggage, to dry up their bloude.” 137 The logic here seems to be that since hot and moist foods make a ruddy complexion and build muscles, some women took dry foods both to make themselves paler and thinner. This is clear evidence that the physiological theories had not only been internalized by the public but put to extraneous uses informed by fashion. Bulleyn notes that all this only causes weakness, “greensickness,” stinking breath, and sudden death. It is quite possible that he is referring to a form of anorexia in the modern sense of the term.138 Greensickness [chlorosis] 134. John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi, act 2, scene 1. The author could very easily have had a passage like Moffett’s in mind, where he says “let not women eat many of them.” Moffett, 195. 135. Vaughan, 275 –76. 136. Bachot, 394 –95; Brooke, 148 –54. 137. Bulleyn, p. C15r. 138. Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Fasting Girls (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988) and Rudolph Bell, Holy Anorexia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985).

External Factors

153

refers to the particular malady of young virgins who have not yet begun or have stopped menstruating and have a dangerous plethora of seed without an outlet. The seed eventually corrupts and becomes venomous.139 The usual cure, surprisingly enough, was marriage and sex. In this case medical theory was used as an instrument of male dominance. The topic of gender per se, not surprisingly in a genre devoted to food, can be more readily perceived by examining the dieticians’ opinions about animals. The first immediate feature that stands out is that in practice dieticians recognized four distinct genders: male, female, neuter, and immature. The physiology of each is slightly different, as are their complexions and effect of animals in each category on the human consumer. As a rule, females of all species are colder and moister than males. Their flesh is more tender, less muscular, and also less purged of superfluities. In naturally moist animals, such as sheep, the females are too phlegmatic for human consumption. In hot and dry animals, such as wild birds, the female is more tempered, or closer to the human complexion than the hotter males. These evaluations are essentially based on the proportion of fat in the flesh. Fatty animals are as unhealthy as tough and dry ones. The ideal for the human body is meat moderately balanced between fat and lean, and this can be either the male or the female. Most animals are also preferable before they have reproduced. Copulation detracts from the nutritive value of the flesh because it consumes heat and moisture. Immature animals are thus more nutritious and moist. Chickens are best before egg-laying and cows before they have calved.140 In many animals, however, the immature version is too moist and hot. Pigs are the perfect example, and some authors condemn lamb for the same reason. The naturally hot and dry goat is only acceptable as a kid, when tempered by youth. But in the adult goat the flesh, according to Sylvius, is mordicant, acrid, and fetid because of its voracious sexual habits.141 All authors agree that animals consumed too young are very unhealthy, and they consistently condemn the fashion for deer fe-

139. Irvine Loudon, “Disease Called Chlorosis,” Psychological Medicine 14 (1984): 27–36. See also the excellent discussion of this topic as it relates to England in Anthony Fletcher, Gender, Sex, and Subordination in England: 1500 –1800 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995), 44 –59. 140. Benedictus, p. G7r: “gallinas non ovisantes meliores esse.” 141. Jacobus Sylvius, De victus ratione paratu facili ac salubri pauperum scholasticorum, in Liebault, Thesaurus sanitatis paratu facilis, 43: “Hircus omnéque animal non castratum, et quod cum femellis suis frequentissimum habet commercium constat carne mordicante, acri, foetente ac proinde pessimi nutrimenti.”

154

External Factors

tus taken fresh from the womb as a dish invented for gluttony rather than health.142 A surprising detail of all these discussions of gender is that castrated animals are almost always to be preferred. They provide the most tempered flesh, not too hot like males nor too moist like females. All their nutritive value is retained and stored in fat since there is no outlet in the form of sperm, which is why they generally grow in size. Being closer to full age, they also contain less of the superfluities that abound in youth. They can even be well exercised. The “vervex” or “wether,” a one-yearold castrated goat, is best, as is the “capon,” and veal or young ox. Interestingly, all animals have different names in their gelded form, as they do in the neuter immature stage as well. AGE Although not traditionally included among the non-naturals, the passage of time and its effect on humans and the foods consumed by humans was a major concern to dietary authors. As an external factor altering the humoral composition of all living and once living creatures, time, ripening, decay, and putrefaction were all central to framing the ideal diet. And as an internal or “natural” variable, the aging process was thought to be one of the most important criteria in the nutritional scheme as well. Aging, following the Hippocratic metaphor of the lamp, was seen as a process of gradually becoming drier and colder as the vital heat slowly burns the radical moisture in the body. This moisture, sometimes described as a secondary humor (following Avicenna), is constantly replenished by food converted in the body. But as the body grows older, its ability to digest food weakens, and thus the radical moisture slowly diminishes. When this essential life oil is finally exhausted, death ensues. But by the time of the Renaissance the process of aging was viewed as somewhat more complicated than a passage from heat and moisture in youth to a cold and dry old age. In Galenic theory, following Aristotle, the body begins as cold and moist in infancy. During adolescence, it becomes hot and moist. In maturity, it is hot and dry, and in old age, cold and dry. Sometimes, accidentally through the accumula142. Sala, 58: “hinnulos ex viventis cervae utero detrahunt . . . sed haec plerumque sunt aut gulosorum hominum, aut divitum inventa, non quia aut magis iucunda sint aut magis salubria, sed quia vel insueta sint, vel cariori pretio comparetur.”

External Factors

155

tion of phlegm, the very old and decrepit body can become cold and moist again, initiating, as it were, a second infancy both mentally and physiologically.143 These five stages of life thus make a complete circuit of all four humors, finally returning to the beginning. What is perhaps confusing is that these inclinations according to age were seen as compounded with an individual’s own inherent complexion. So, for example, a phlegmatic person might become relatively hot and dry in maturity but would remain prone to his or her particular humoral imbalance. Some authors used the traditional “seven ages of man” to explain the aging process. In each, a different planet and humor dominates the body. By some accounts, the complexion changes every 7 years, but this would only leave 49 years of life, so most authors extended the years in some of the ages. For example, infancy is reigned by the moon and lasts from birth to age 7. Childhood, ruled by Mercury, extends from 7 to 14, but youth may range from 14 to 22 or 29. Young adulthood usually covers from 22 to 34 or 29 to 35 and is dominated by the sun. Mars controls adulthood, followed by Jupiter’s old age and Saturn’s decrepitude, which in some authors sets in after 63, in others after 74. Either schema should immediately dispel the popular misconception that people expected to die in their thirties. Average life expectancy took into account a very high infant mortality rate. If one were fortunate enough to survive adolescence, there was a reasonable possibility of living well into old age, and of course dieticians assured their readers that a careful regimen could prolong life. Interestingly, the astrological ages are usually found only in period 1 dietaries, and then for some reason again in the seventeenth century. Ficino used them in the fifteenth century, and they are mentioned by Vaughan and Bachot in the seventeenth century, although Bachot does ridicule Ficino.144 It may have been the strict adherence to Galen in period 2 that motivated most dietary authors to avoid astrology. Far more frequently, the dieticians employed the simple four-stage model of life, which closely matches the four humors, four seasons, four elements, and so forth. This means that the body is not altered completely but inclines toward the dominant humor in each age, while retain143. See Richard Palmer, “Health, Hygiene, and Longevity in Medieval and Renaissance Europe,” in History of Hygiene, ed. Yosio Kawakita, Shizu Sakai, and Yasuo Otsuka (Ishiyaku EuroAmerica: 1991); Niebyl, “Old Age,” 351– 68; Hall, 3–23. 144. Vaughan, 213; Bachot, 62. Neither actually accepts that the planets change the complexion every seven years.

156

External Factors

ing the natural complexion throughout. That is, the influence of age is comparable to all other non-naturals and can, like them, be consciously counteracted through regimen. Recommendations usually focus on the need to balance and cancel out any humoral excess and to avoid those foods that would push the individual to pathological extremes. For example, hot and moist wine would violently distemper children, making them sick. But for the cold and dry aged body, wine is nourishing. “Vinum lac senum” [wine is the milk of old men]. They can “use bacchus for their Physitian” because wine replenishes the nearly extinct lamp with vital spirits.145 Following the same logic, vinegar and sour fruits are fine to correct the heat of youth, but in old age they are very dangerous and only increase melancholy. One must also consider the body’s digestive power and the changes that take place with aging. In youth, the abundant heat of the stomach can break down gross foods and deal with greater quantities. As the vital heat dissipates, the digestive powers lose strength. In old age, only the subtlest food in small quantities can be managed. Eggs are the most typical recommendation, and Cardano suggests that a diet of eggs can extend life to 120 years.146 But because the quantity of food must constantly diminish with age, life cannot be prolonged indefinitely; each year less and less nutritive substance can be assimilated into the body. Although death is inevitable, and according to some authors its span is foreordained by God, most supported the idea that life could be extended by means of diet. Avoiding strenuous exercise both physical and mental, maintaining a balanced complexion, and replenishing the heat and moisture as safely as possible all prolong life. Longevity was always a selling point for Renaissance dietaries and was Cornaro’s main theme. Even feeble bodies “by thys providence and moderacion in livynge, lyve as longe as those which be valeaunt, lusty, and strong,” according to Wingfield.147 This was how the ancient ancestors lived so long: moderation in diet and diligence in managing the non-naturals. Nowadays, the authors complained, we are addicted to riot and excess, banquets, 145. Vaughan, 51: “A vecchio infunde lolio ne la lampada quasi estincta.” 146. Girolamo Cardano, De sanitate tuenda, 5: “Extent vero qui solis ovis victitant, ut colegiis phratrium, non solum nullus est inventus qui cxx annum excesserit, sed pauciores ad aetatem communem perveniunt, quàm ex his qui vulgari modo vivunt.” Of course today, the meaning of college fraternities is quite different, as is the typical diet. Petronio, 283, also supports eggs. 147. Henry Wingfield, A compendious or short treatise. . . . (London: Robert Stoughten, 1551), p. A4r.

External Factors

157

inordinate pleasures, all of which hasten old age.148 And as the saying goes, “there are more old drunks than old doctors,” which implies not that they live longer but they become old sooner. Perhaps missing the point, Sala says that one finds old drunks everywhere but very few old gluttons.149 As with all the non-natural variables affecting health, the age of plants and animals consumed as food is also a necessary consideration. A popular saw of the period recommended young flesh and old fish, presumably because youth corrects the dryness of quadrupeds and age tempers the moisture of fish. Many authors criticized this as a vulgar simplification because some mammals, like lamb, are better when older, and some dry and tough fish are edible only when young.150 In period 3, authors were more reluctant to make such sweeping generalizations and even began to question long-established practices. For example, in a revealing passage, Guillaume Bouchet discusses the use of old capons to feed the healthy and sick. He wonders whether physicians are following popular custom on this topic or the if the public is following medical advice. The use actually stretches back to the Hippocratic authors, but it still makes no sense to him how an old, tough, and dried out bird could be nourishing.151 At any rate, the comments regarding the age of meats follows the same corrective logic employed elsewhere. Lamb and pork, because 148. Bachot, 90, La plus part mesprisent leur propre santé, pour lascher la bride à leurs passions et plaisirs . . . ainsi les uns sont salariez des festins, banquets, jeux et veilles des nuicts passés entre les plaisirs, et voluptez, par le resentiment hasté d’un vieillesse decrepite avant l’aage. Bachot also mentions that the Paracelsians, especially Crollius [Kroll], believe in a universal medicine which prolongs life, right up to the age God has ordained, which presumably most people do not reach. 149. Sala, 42: “non paucos enim invenias, qui inter ipsos ad extremam senectutem pervenerint quotidie etiam ebrii, paucos tamen inter illos qui edaces sunt.” 150. Duchesne, 411, provides the criticism. Cogan, 119, and Abraham, 39, merely repeat the proverb. 151. Guillaume Bouchet, Les Serées, vol. 2 (Paris: Alphonse Lemerre, 1878), 3: Et m’esbahis des Medecins, que le peuple a suivy, ou ils ont suivy le peuple, qui font grand cas d’un chappon vieux, et pour les sain et pour les malades: combien qu’il soit dur sec, sans suc, et sans grande nourriture: n’ayans esgard à la commune voix, qui dit, jeune chair et vieux poisson. This book, first published in 1584, is really in the genre of “table talk” books, but the first book contains an excellent discussion of wine and the sixth on fish, both of which reveal a great deal about the popular conception and misconception of dietary medicine.

158

External Factors

moist, are best after one year, while hot goat and beef are best in the form of kid and veal. Birds and indeed all animals should not be eaten newly born. Like the deer fetus mentioned above, “rabbit suckers” and “chicken peepers” also became a delicacy. Unborn animals were not even properly considered meat because they are technically only a potential animal, like eggs.152 All these are too moist for consumption as a rule, just as old animals are too dry and tough. Vegetables and fruits also vary in quality according to age. Unlike animals, fruits begin cold and dry and grow warmer and moister with maturity. For example, an unripe apple is sour but not prone to corruption. A fully ripe apple is warmer and thus less resistant to the external heat of putrefaction. Depending on its use and placement within a meal, either form may be considered preferable. Apart from obvious examples such as this, all foods undergo alteration with the passage of time. Milk, for example, loses heat over time as it dissipates into the air. Consequently, milk grows sour and colder. The sweetness of new wine also diminishes with aging, leaving a colder and “drier” flavor because the internal heat has been exhaled.153 Eventually it turns to vinegar, a cold and dry food. Foods like honey and oil, on the other hand, grow hotter over time. Bread, if salted, according to Savonarola, grows lighter as it ages, but if unsalted gets heavier because its internal moisture never resolves.154 Many foods were thought to improve with age due to the evaporation of superfluities. Such foods become more subtle and easier to digest. Wheat always needs a drying and aging period, as do seeds and beans.155 Grapes are also improved if kept several days after picking. However apples kept through the winter lose their “ventosity.” This is also the logic of aging meat. Tough animals like venison need some time for the flesh to resolve. This slight decay acts as a kind of predigestion, breaking down the rigid fibers in the flesh. Game birds also improve with hanging. Opinions on this topic varied widely. Following some authorities, like Avenzoar, all flesh should be eaten as fresh as possible. Others recommend over a week of hanging for birds like ostrich, and according to legend peacocks can last a year without corruption. Castellanus, who accepts this 152. Platina, Le grande cuisiner, p. 129v, mentions the dangers of pigeon chicks, as does Fridaevallis, 160; Moffett, 31 discusses all premature animals. See also Tannahill, 100. 153. Cardano, De usu ciborum, 45. 154. Giovanni Michele Savonarola, Practica major (Venice: Vincentium Valgrisium, 1560), 27. 155. Gazius, p. L2r.

External Factors

159

idea, repeats a story told about the poet Antonio Gigante who ate a peacock in 1598 that had been cooked in 1592, six years earlier.156 The topic of corruptibility was also a perennial obsession for dietary authors and once again is a matter of heat. Putrefaction occurs when an external heat source overcomes a food’s natural heat. This can occur in the sun, in a cooking pot, or in the human stomach. Given enough time even atmospheric heat can spoil almost any food, especially in summer. But those foods which are qualitatively hot themselves are better at resisting corruption, especially subtle ones with few impurities.157 Wine, sugar, and salt are perfect examples of hot preservatives that prevent putrefaction. In modern parlance, they provide an environment inhospitable to the growth of bacteria. In Renaissance theory, with a comparable idea in mind despite ignorance of bacteria, they prevent unnatural heat and moisture from spontaneously spoiling and perhaps generating life as well. Some substances, such as salt, also desiccate the food, depriving it of moisture and thereby preventing putrefaction. Wine too, because it is subtle and hastens digestion but also due to its own inherent heat and moisture, preserves food outside and inside the body. This is why physicians often recommended drinking wine after corruptible fruits like melons and peaches. In fact any “spiritual” and incorruptible substance can act as a preservative. Gold and pearls were often used for this purpose, ground into foods or drunk in life-preserving fluids such as “aurum potabile,” [drinkable gold]. By periods 2 and 3, most authors had rejected these substances as utterly dissimilar to the human body and therefore indigestible, but they did appear in period 1 dietaries, such as Ficino’s. Most hot spices are also excellent against corruption outside and inside the body, while foods lacking heat are usually the most volatile. Cold fish goes bad easily outside the body and within, as does milk. Ripe cold and moist fruits are rotten within days, and logically the body’s heat applied to such foods can also generate corrupt humors if the fruit is not quickly digested and disposed of. The putrid humors may multiply, causing fevers, and can even spontaneously generate worms within 156. Castellanus, 239. He also mentions that Cardano denied that this was some inherent occult quality in the peacock that made it resist putrefaction, but rather the bird’s very cold and dry qualities. Neither author doubts the claim. 157. Giovanni-battista Cardano, “De non edendis cibis faetidis,” in De utilitate ex adversis capienda of Girolamo Cardano, (Basel: Per Henricum Petri, 1561), 1158: “At quae calorem proprium habent, aut magnum aut efficacem cum difficulter vincantur, ideo non putrescent.” This short work appears to be an early show of promise of a future medical career for Girolamo Cardano’s son, who was executed for murdering his wife.

160

External Factors

the body. Remarkably, both the worm inside the apple and the worm within the stomach were seen as by-products of putrefaction. Worms laying eggs in fruit is a purely modern idea. Rather, worms are generated by the rotting fruit, and this can take place inside the human body after the fruit has been partially broken down.158 Putrefaction, generation, and fermentation were all seen as comparable processes. Elixation, or cooking in a moist atmosphere, was also seen as similar. All involve transformation through heat and moisture. Birth and life are the natural forms of reproduction whose heat is internal, originating in the vital heat of the sperm. But putrefaction can also give rise to life through spontaneous generation, though in this case the heat is external. Lice and worms are born this way, as are maggots on meat. Lice can even be propagated within the body from burnt blood, which comes from eating too many radishes. Plato himself is said to have died from the lice bred by his too ardent passion for figs.159 Not only insects, but even eels were thought to reproduce without sex. Cogan claims “Yeeles [are] engendered of the verie Earth, Dirte or Myre, without generation, or spaune.” 160 Here is one typical scenario repeated by several authors: basil, although a hot herb, contains a superfluous excremental humidity, which is evidenced in its decay shortly after picking. This noxious juice is difficult to concoct and often putrefies before the body’s heat can break it down. The corrupted juice can then spontaneously generate, even within the body, into a scorpion. Cardano repeated a story told by Hollerius about an Italian man who had a scorpion bred in his brain from merely smelling basil too frequently. Cardano even offers a recipe for how to make basil-generated scorpions at home.161 As an analogous process, fermentation also takes place by means of a kind of “putrid heat,” but here it is carefully controlled so as to make foods lighter and more digestible by cooking off superfluities. In bread, only the smallest amount of yeast should be used or the bread will spoil and putrid humors will overtake the dough’s natural heat, making it accidentally sour. In beer, the barme, or “god’s good,” similarly lightens 158. Symphorien Champier, p. 78r. Following Rhazes, “Quando arbores maturantur, et venenantur: et vermes in eis nascuntur: non debent fructorum earum comedi.” 159. Moffett, 203. 160. Cogan, 144. 161. Benedictus, p. F3v; Cogan, 50, supplies the reference to Hollerius; Massonio, 338, repeats Cardano’s scorpion recipe: “se il basilico trito a prima luna si mette in una pignatta nuova, a prima luna manda dall’altro capo fuora i fiori, e se dopoi altrettanto di tempo si nasconderà sotto terra, generà gli scorpioni.”

External Factors

161

and makes subtle without corrupting the liquor. Much the same happens naturally with wine.162 So too in aging or preserving meats and cheeses, the drying process, combined with either salt or vinegar, makes these foods more subtle and allows the crasser corruptible elements to dissipate. Lastly, cooking is also a way to make subtle, or as we would say, tenderize meat and vegetables, which serves not only to make them more palatable but rids them of the superfluous humidity that causes corruption. Thus cooking, fermenting, and preserving are all analogous processes akin to digestion. And all apply heat to stave off the unnatural heat of putrefaction. No discussion of putrefaction would be complete without mentioning plague. Although Fracastoro was discussing his theory of contagion by the mid sixteenth century, most authors still considered the etiology of plague to be a species of putrefaction. There were numerous diet books specifically designed for times of pestilence. Although this fits more properly in a discussion of therapeutics rather than regimen in health, it is a fitting way to close this chapter, because like all other imbalances, pestilence was counteracted through management of diet and the non-naturals. Being an extremely hot form of putrefaction, the natural correctives would be cool and dry air and cold foods like vinegar, citrus, and sorrel. These also serve to constrict and close off the pores from external corrosive heat. And, of course, anything heating or aperitive must be strictly avoided: exercise, baths, sex, and especially corruptible foods. Even repletion, which might give rise to foul humors within the body, would increase susceptibility to plague.163 Of course, it never occurred to anyone to think of fleas and rats in connection to plague, since the former were themselves the product of putrefaction. In fact, contemporary accounts of plague symptoms have lead some modern historians to conclude that other diseases may also have been responsible for the devastating outbreaks that occurred throughout the period. Curiously, rats were never mentioned in contemporary accounts.164 The most interesting recommendations for plague concern not only the management of food and air but also emotion. Logically, depression itself was believed to trigger corrupt humors that would leave the body 162. Manfredi, 2; Symphorien Champier, p. 35v; Vaughan, 40. 163. Guinterius Andernacus, p. A8r. 164. See Martin, and the review essay by William Eamon, “Plague, Healers, and Patients in Early Modern Europe,” Renaissance Quarterly 52, no. 2 (summer 1999): 474 – 86.

162

External Factors

more exposed to putrefaction and plague. Manfredi warns his readers, in effect, that “the only thing to fear is fear itself.” 165 Hence, dancing, singing, and telling pleasant stories is less heartless or derisive than it may appear. They are in fact a medical corrective. This again explains much of what Boccaccio’s characters in the Decameron were doing in the hills outside Florence by telling dirty stories while their compatriots were dying. Perhaps a fitting way to end this chapter would be to sketch out one possible scenario taking into account all the possible variables to see if this entire system could actually be put into effect. These at least are all the things the dieticians advised should be considered. Imagine a melancholic man (cold and dry) of thirty-five years of age (tending to hot and dry) who gets little exercise (a cold and moist factor) and who studies a great deal (cold and dry) but who is accidentally distempered with phlegm (cold and moist) due to a winter storm. At 11:00 a.m. he notices that the previous day’s digestion is complete and a sharp feeling of hunger overcomes his stomach. He then takes a restorative broth (hot and moist) made from a healthy capon, corrected with cinnamon and pepper (hot and dry) to help his cold, with a glass of undiluted red wine (hot and moist), which is not too old and will make good blood. This meal being subtle, he adds well-risen bread (tempered) to aid agglutination. A friend joins him, providing pleasant conversation (hot and moist) and offers aniseed comfits (hot and dry), which aid digestion. By now it should be apparent that any attempt to figure out the overall effect of all these variables combined would be futile. The situation is only further complicated when rival dieticians make contrary claims following their own social, regional, and cultural prejudices. These will be the topic of the next chapters. 165. Manfredi, pp. 40v– 41r: “nel tempo de la pestilentia lhuomo non debbia pensare ad alchuno huomo amorbato ne havere paura de morbo e dicono questa essere la pegiore cosa possa havere lhuomo in quel tempo.”

chapter 5

Food and the Individual

At first glance, it may seem that taste preferences and food choices are informed by simple biological and economic factors. A person eats whatever tastes good and can be readily obtained. In fact, it is almost never so simple. As a species, we learn to eat foods that are not immediately pleasant and sometimes go to extraordinary lengths to find calorically inefficient foods. We also spurn perfectly nutritious foods that can be had for the taking. Obviously “taste” is something profoundly shaped by cultural, social, and psychological factors. A food sacred to one society may be taboo to another. What may be a rare delicacy to one social group may be repulsive even to think of for another. Individual food preferences are also shaped by past experiences, idiosyncratic associations, and the preferences of family and peers. Within one culture, or even to one individual, the meaning of any given food can change over time, in different contexts, and among different social groups. To one generation, expensive alcohol may be an extravagant luxury, to another a crippling vice. To one individual, strange and exotic food is an exciting adventure into the unknown, to another it is threatening and dangerous. A simple dish of beans may evoke nostalgic memories of the homeland for one person, while it is nothing but lowly peasant food to another. All these attitudes reveal much more than the mere effect of food on the taste buds. Taste preferences give us an indirect glimpse at the concerns, fears, and prejudices of the individual, the group, and the entire culture. 163

164

Food and the Individual

In examining food preferences found in a purely prescriptive literature, we are, of course, one step removed from actual consumption. There is really no way to be sure if anyone consistently followed the advice offered in dietary regimens. The fact that they often could not is itself revealing. In the past, just as today, the dietary ideal should not be taken as an indication of actual eating habits but rather as a mirror of cultural ideals. Take for example a slick new cookbook that explains how to throw elegant dinner parties. Whether readers actually throw these parties is perhaps less important and interesting than the cultural ideal embodied in sociability, savoir faire, and sophistication that is being bought by the readers of such literature. The cookbook is thus an idealization of values shared by a particular group and sought by the individual. In a society that constructs ideal beauty as a slim figure, logically diet books for weight-reduction will proliferate. Chances are that few people will ever attain the slim body promised, but the cultural ideal is still clearly spelled out in the literature and the success stories are touted publicly as an incentive to imitate. Any food literature, including nutritional science, can thus be read as an embodiment of cultural ideals and personal aspirations. Again, as discussed in the introduction, what people think they ought to eat is a reflection of what they want to be. The individual who seeks out rare and foreign ingredients hopes to become cosmopolitan and erudite and in consuming these foods directly incorporates these qualities. The devotee of organic produce does become literally and psychologically clean and natural through choosing pesticide-free foods. The daring chili enthusiast becomes intrepid through the act of eating dangerous food and gets a quick thrill from downing the fiery condiment. The narrowly ethnocentric person sticks to familiar, safe food to avoid being tainted by the other. That is, each individual consumes his or her own ideal self image, or at least uses this ideal to inform specific food choices whenever possible. And naturally, these ideals change over time and under the influence of fellow diners by whom one wishes to be accepted. Nonetheless, a person’s favorite foods and his or her overall attitude toward eating almost always reveal something basic and integral to that individual’s personality and conception of self. The sensualist, the control freak, the socially repressed—all are immediately exposed by their eating habits. Some of these ideal self-images are worked out into elaborate systems that may incorporate a philosophy, political agenda, or worldview. These

Food and the Individual

165

systems might even be thought of as food ideologies. Vegetarianism is as much a way of life as a dietary choice, as were the self-abnegating monastic regimens that flourished in medieval and early modern Europe. The diets proposed by Renaissance physicians and dilettantes are also, arguably, complex food systems offering the reader not just health but a cultural ideal distinct from the other competing systems, namely that of the poor, forged out of necessity, and that of the rich, formed by fashion. For readers of the dietary literature, this ready-made system could be used to direct specific food choices that approximate the personal selfimage. When an author recommends light and easily digested chicken for the studious reader, in that reader’s mind eating chicken is associated with or even promotes studiousness. The authors conveniently explained the meaning of each food and exactly what effect it would have on the body, so readers could adapt the more general guidelines to their own personal needs. But from author to author, and in different social contexts, the specific meaning of each food changed subtly, reflecting broader and deeper cultural concerns. For example, in authors whose ideal included conviviality, wine was considered a necessary part of the ideal diet. For those who promised piety, abstinence was preferred. When longevity was the primary concern, wine in careful moderation was recommended. The attitudes toward food found in dietary literature therefore give us an indirect idea of what was important to the readers and an idea of how they may have ideally envisioned themselves. By examining these specific meanings and how they changed over time, it is thus possible to chart larger cultural changes and shifting conceptions of personhood. If the ideal meal is intended to impress fellow diners with a dazzling display of wealth, then luxury is clearly a cultural ideal of the intended audience, and diners literally incorporate that wealth by eating rare and expensive foods. They become what they eat. Conversely, if the ideal meal is simple and frugal, thrift and resourcefulness may be the most important cultural values being promoted, and in such a work, rustic foods like turnips and onions take on a completely different meaning than they would in other contexts. To use a more familiar example, coarse brown bread in one cultural setting may remind people of their ethnic heritage, in another it may promote health through roughage, in yet another it is unrefined and uncouth. The meaning of any given food all depends on the social setting and the mindset of the consumer. Salad to a sixteenth-century author may have been a lowly and perhaps dangerous meal, but to the poet Ronsard it was a

166

Food and the Individual

symbol of elegiac simplicity, to be enjoyed with a close friend on a country picnic.1 Within Renaissance dietary literature, the shifting meaning of various foods can therefore be used as an indication of shifting values and, in a sense, a measure of the evolution of the ideal self-image. Take, for example, the fate of saffron. In the early Renaissance, or period 1, saffron was an ideal symbol of wealth, not only because it was difficult to harvest and expensive but because it lent a dazzling effect to foods. The way to impress a guest was to present saffron-daubed dishes sparkling like gold. Saffron became a symbol for gold, as visibly striking as the shimmering gold background of a religious painting.2 To the wealthy reader of culinary literature, eating saffron invests the body with wealth the same way a gold chain would, but here it is literally incorporated. The ideal self-image of wealth and power expressed in extravagance and conspicuous consumption, in lieu of eating actual gold, is fulfilled by consuming its analogue. The fact that period 1 dietaries consistently praised saffron reflects the fact that these authors worked primarily for courtly patrons, although the praise generally focused on saffron’s nutritional value rather than its indication of opulence. For Ficino saffron is a food with a magical affinity to the sun and gold itself, and therefore promotes wisdom. It also aids longevity because gold is an incorruptible substance, and so therefore is its analogue.3 Benedict claims that saffron has a great power to strengthen the heart, to illuminate the spirits, and to make the consumer joyful.4 This enthusiasm for saffron abates during the sixteenth century among period 2 and 3 authors, and some even claim that it is dangerous. This 1. Ronsard, “La salade,” in Poems of Pierre de Ronsard, trans. Nicholas Kilmer (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1979), 146 –54. Interestingly, the poem ends with Ronsard’s complaint about his quartan fever, which the salad would have helped to cure. 2. There are some striking parallels between art history and culinary history especially concerning the use of gold. It may be no coincidence that gold backgrounds and goldcolored foods both go out of fashion at roughly the same time, somewhere in the early sixteenth century. 3. Ficino, Three Books on Life, 113, 135, 139, and throughout the text. Ficino also offers a recipe for the heart, liver, stomach, testicles, and brain of hens and capons, ground with sugar, egg yolk, cinnamon, and saffron, and then coated with gold, 197. Recipes including saffron and gold are found everywhere in De vita. 4. Benedictus, pp. F1v–F2r: “in tantum quod aliquando multitudo sue commestionis cum letitia ad exterior spiritus dispergit fontem naturalis caloris dereliquendo, propter quod quidam dixerunt qui summere mediam unciam de croco mortem ridendo et letificando inducit.” The verb here is laetificio, to gladden, rather than a derivative of letifer, deadly.

Food and the Individual

167

is the effect, on the one hand, of increasing distance from wealthy patrons, but it can also be linked to simple economic factors. Saffron was first cultivated on a large scale in the sixteenth century.5 It thus became a more affordable luxury and consequently a less potent symbol of wealth, because more and more people could use it. Much the same happened to spices after the Portuguese opened up direct trading routes to the East. Among the rich, spices and saffron went out of fashion. In dietaries too, saffron was devalued, especially as authors became less concerned with the symbols of wealth. If anything, period 2 and 3 authors consciously avoided anything redolent of luxury, excess, and unnecessary expense. Saffron’s fate reflects these cultural changes as well as the changing ideal self-image of readers. Ironically, as saffron was more widely used and as lower social ranks were increasingly able to imitate their superiors, courtly cookbooks included saffron less. Dietaries followed suit, particularly as authors felt that it was being abused. This is merely one example of how dietary literature may be used as an index of historical changes in the ideal self-image of readers. The symbolism surrounding most foods changes far more subtly than saffron. Nonetheless, specific recommendations do reveal exactly what readers sought to avoid and what they sought to become. In Renaissance nutritional theory, the transfer of qualitative characteristics from food to consumer is, of course, much more direct that it is in our own system. Because being nourished involves literal assimilation of a food’s qualities into the flesh, humors, and spirits of the consumer, dietary guidelines offered a far more explicit image of self-construction. For example, avoiding melancholy was a major preoccupation throughout the genre, as was avoiding wrath, sloth, and any other extreme emotion caused by an imbalance of humors. Authors catered to and directly promoted this concern. For the reader who took this literature seriously, managing the emotions and exerting rigorous self-control was a positive goal. In other words, the self-image of those who bought dietary books included emotional reservation, not unlike the cool composure explicitly depicted in Castiglione’s The Courtier. So when a dietary authors suggests avoiding hare’s flesh because it promotes melancholy, he is really promising a means for the reader to achieve the personal goal of emotional selfcontrol. When another author suggests avoiding goat’s flesh because it 5. Toussaint-Samat, 522. See also in connection to spices in general and their changing status, Mennel, 53– 61, and throughout; also Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Tastes of Paradise, trans. David Jacobson (New York: Vintage, 1992), 3–14.

168

Food and the Individual

is a lascivious animal and will promote lust in the consumer, the selfimage being sold is sexual continence. But as we have seen, the dietary authors were by no means unified in this attitude, and other authors offered long lists of aphrodisiacs. Why and when these attitudes toward food change, and what they tell us about the readers themselves, will be the focus this chapter. Among the courtly period 1 authors, the direct transference of the qualities and characteristics of food was an integral part of the entire system. Assimilating the ideal self was a simple and direct process: the timid rabbit will make the consumer fearful, according to Savonarola.6 By the same logic, a meal of brains will promote intelligence because the substance of the meal is directly transformed into the substance of the brain. Although explained in humoral terms, this kind of direct assimilation appears to predate the humoral system or at least has affinities to folk medicine. When Platina condemns pork as a phlegmatic food whose excessive humidity in the form of fat promotes slovenly habits and gluttony, it is not humoral theory that provides the rationale but rather the concept of direct transference. Pigs are the most voracious and indiscriminate of animals, and therefore whoever would avoid gluttony should also avoid pork.7 Quite simply, we become like pigs when we eat pork. Dependence on Muslim and Jewish authorities among most period 1 authors probably only lent weight to this claim. Mohammed thought pigs were spawned from the elephant’s excrement that piled up on Noah’s ark.8 This accounts for their vile habits and unsuitability as human food. For Platina, his translators, and his readers, the ideal eater is more circumspect about the cleanliness and quality of food he consumes. The positive values promoted are selectivity and restraint.9 6. Savonarola, Libreto, p. 30r. 7. Platina, De honesta voluptate et valetudine vulgare, pp. 20v–21r: Succidia: Questo animale edacissimo cioe papatore. Per laqual cosa lo abunda di molto sangue e di calore . . . li spurchi e sordidi luochi voluntieri usa e habitare. . . . La carne porcina si fresca come salata, benche lasia giota al gusto: tamen le pentiosa al tutto: e di male nutrimento come dice Celso. And in Le grande cuisiner, p. 43v: “le dict porceau est une beste (surtoutes autres) gouleue.” 8. Fridaevallis, 140: “in arca Noe suem ortum ex elephanti stercore blaterat.” 9. As an example of how food symbolism has changed, our modern aversion to pork has very little to do with the animal’s habits, as few of us have direct contact with pigs. Our current concern is with fat content. We are afraid of becoming fat ourselves, and thus many people avoid pork. The industry has bred much leaner pigs in recent decades, though this does not seem to have broken the powerful symbolism of pork as a fattening food. The pork marketing agencies realized, ingeniously, that another potent symbol may obscure

Food and the Individual

169

Although period 1 authors continually referred to this kind of direct transference, they tried desperately to couch their comments in humoral terms. In Benedict, wolf’s liver is recommended for courage. He argues that because the liver manufactures blood, it therefore promotes robustness, strength, and courage in the consumer.10 But clearly, the characteristics of the audacious wolf are being assimilated into the human body. What this reveals is that Benedict expected that some of his readers, presumably elite warriors, wanted to become courageous. Even Cardano, in the mid-sixteenth century, comments that Corsicans and Maltese become cruel, stout, rash, bold, and nimble because they eat dogs.11 For the reader who hopes to avoid these characteristics, more docile animals are appropriate as food. Yet increasingly into period 2 and 3, direct transference theory disappears from dietaries. Plain empirical evidence simply was not seen to support such claims, nor were the classical Greek authorities, for the most part. Nonnius, for example, wonders how credulous people could possibly believe that deer, because they live so long, could confer longevity.12 Similarly, testicles for virility, brains for wit, and comparable recommendations disappear. Nevertheless, symbolic meanings of food survived in more subtle forms and continued to pervade the dietary literature throughout the Renaissance. One revealing illustration is the pigeon, always considered among the healthiest of foods. To these authors, the pigeon symbolized lightness and airiness. Its ceaseless activity and gentle demeanor rendered it the ideal food for those who imagined themselves to be delicate and fragile. Diets for students consistently commend pigeons, especially free-ranging, following the assumption that they will promote light and airy spirits and mental agility. Clearly this was the ideal image sought by potential readers. This example could not possibly pose a more stark contrast to the modern dietary symbolism. Today pigeons are practically considered vermin, feeding off human refuse and filth, and this image has been extended to all pigeons, even those outside cities— except that when they are called doves they become symbols of peace and purity. For the Renaissance physician, however, pigeons were classed within the the older one. We have yet to discover if pork will succeed as “the other white meat,” but evidence strongly suggests that it will. 10. Benedictus, p. I1r: “Epar lupi epati hominis multum confert. Prohibet metum et abhominationem aque.” 11. Cited by Moffett, 78. 12. Nonnius, 190: “Plurimi vanissima credulitate sibi persuadent, cervorum esu, vitae spatium in multos annos poste produci, quia animal illud long aevum, ab omnibus credatur. Quasi illius vivacitas in humaniam speciem transire posset?”

170

Food and the Individual

most important category of light, subtle, and refined foods. All these descriptions accurately reflect the author’s ideal self-image and probably appealed to an audience with similar values. Light was sometimes interpreted as whiteness, as in white wines and white-colored flesh. It might also apply to physically light substances or parts of animals that were considered well-exercised and purged of superfluities. Whiter, flakier, and smaller fish are preferred to dark and large ones. Interestingly, sole was the “sea capon” (the original “chicken of the sea”); tuna was more often compared to beef.13 Light also connoted foods that are easy to digest and thus make spirits subtle and humors flow easily. The meaning of the word light in this context bears little relation to our modern use of the term lite, meaning low in calories. Renaissance theorists had in mind light spirits, which would pass through the brain easily and instill subtlety, quickness of wit, and an incisive intellect. The mechanical passage of spirits was directly connected to mental agility. The ideal selfimage and the most important criterion for choosing foods turns out to be that which promote intelligence. This is hardly surprising, considering that the genre frequently aimed toward an academic or learned professional audience. Concern for the mind also explains the overriding preference for dry foods. An overly moist brain will not retain images efficiently, and the memory is dulled by thick and viscous foods.14 Sanguine and phlegmatic people are always described as slow-witted and forgetful. The symbolism here is simple: dryness equals intelligence. Joubert remarks that some incredulous people arrived at the absurd conclusion that all one need do to become smart is dry the body out.15 Coldness also harms the neural functions and can cause tremors or memory loss.16 Thus, the desire to avoid all cold and moist foods, such as fruits and vegetables, can also be linked to this concern for intelligence, as can recommendations that promote hot and dry spices and herbs that are sharp and “acute.” Humoral theory that ordinarily prescribes these only for certain complexions here bends to accommodate anyone who seeks to be wise. To achieve the self-image of subtlety

13. Venner, 74; Duchesne, 460. 14. Lessius, 160 –75, adds that what we learn is imprinted better in the memory when the brain is drier and the passages within the brain are free of clogging fluids. 15. Joubert, Erreurs populaires, book 2, p. A3r: “Car si on devenoit savant par la seule exiccacion du cors, il s’ansuivroit, qu’on n’auroit besoin de doctrine. . . .” 16. Menapius, p. 588: “tremorem ac stuporem membrorum et oblivionem memoriae tarditatem que mentis: quae et ipsa quoque sunt à frigore.”

Food and the Individual

171

and intelligence, readers were instructed exactly which foods to use regardless of their humoral temperament. Chicken and veal, poached eggs, white bread, white wine, and few fruits and vegetables apart from figs and raisins and perhaps asparagus becomes the stereotypical diet for intelligence. Of course, beyond this basic list the details varied widely from author to author, but these are the standbys and with the simplified theory were often presented to the reader as the only really safe foods to eat on a regular basis. Anything terrestrial or gross will weigh down the spirits. Fruits like peaches, melons, and cucumbers are also forbidden. Mushrooms are execrable. Apples are also sometimes forbidden outright; it is perhaps no coincidence that they were identified as the forbidden fruit. One major question remains unanswered. Were readers actually intimidated by these lists? Was the superego conditioned to feel guilt when these standards were not met? The failure to follow dietary guidelines may reflect indifference or a conscious rejection of the values embodied in the literature. If physicians condemned a particular food and people continued to eat it anyway, either they mistrusted the advice, were willing to accept the consequences, or had been barraged with so many conflicting opinions that they became skeptical of all such authoritative pronouncements. An individual’s personal experience may also prompt denial of expert advice. As was so frequently the case in the dietary literature itself, especially in the more skeptical period 3, authors continued to recommend familiar foods despite the warnings of the ancient authorities because people had eaten them without harm for so long. But the continued popularity of the genre and an eager book-buying audience suggests that the cultural ideals promised in dietaries were indeed embraced, even though the dietary rules were frequently transgressed in practice. The fact that dieticians’ tirades increased in intensity throughout the Renaissance is good evidence that many people did not heed their warnings. Their advice may have been internalized, but it was unsuccessfully followed. The result of trusting but not following dietary doctrine is secular food guilt and is related to the guilt experienced by the believer who breaks the basic tenets of religion. Either he or she is willing to accept the consequences—that is, damnation— or finds consolation in some eventual absolution. In modern dietary parlance one hears “I’ll start my diet tomorrow.” The transgression is redeemed by penitence down the road. In this scenario, the nutritional ideal approximates the superego, chastising the consumer every time an urge overwhelms the body. But the ideal remains in place, despite the temporary

172

Food and the Individual

lapse in judgment. The remarkable success of this genre, and the continual upbraiding of the audience for their failure to follow sound advice, is good evidence that dietary guidelines were both taken seriously and seldom carefully followed. The internal evidence provided by the dietaries themselves suggests that this secular food guilt was actually a gradual historical development. Period 1 authors seem to have been almost entirely free of the nagging sense of nutritional morality. By period 2 and 3, the authors, and perhaps their readers as well, were continually harassed by rules that they realized were difficult to follow in practice. Numerous clues reveal this change, the most significant of which is a shift of emphasis within theory itself. As has been mentioned, standard theory promoted the idea that when the body is in health, foods composed of humors similar to the individual are most nourishing because they are most easily assimilated and incorporated. Most importantly, these are the foods that taste good. The tongue naturally embraces foods composed of humors similar to its own. “Quod sapit nutrit,” as Avicenna said, “what tastes good is good for us.” 17 This idea is consistently followed throughout period 1. Foods whose qualities are opposite to our own are to be used only in sickness or distemperature as correctives or as condiments to correct foods with extreme qualities. In health, a hot and moist food is best for a sanguine body and tastes best; in a phlegmatic distemperature, hot and dry foods act as a corrective. This means that under normal circumstances we should eat foods that taste best. Even foods that might otherwise be harmful can be used by those who like them. Hippocrates, after all, said that in deciding between two foods, do choose the one that tastes better over the one that is better for you but disagreeable.18 Manfredi remarks that even harmful foods can be used by those who crave them. Because intense desire and enjoyment act as correctives, the stomach is able to embrace and digest such foods.19 Good taste is the ultimate criterion of good nourishment: our taste buds tell our minds what our bodies need. 17. Benedictus, p. C8v: “sano illud nutrimentum melius est quod melius sapit . . . melius amplectitur et digeritur.” 18. Gazius, pp. D3r–D5r, does remark, however, that of two foods equal in quality we should choose the one more convenient to our nature and lighter in digestion. But we should not use foods with opposite qualities when healthy. “Naturalia custodire et regere cum similibus debemus: sicut quae extra naturam cum contrariis expellere.” 19. Manfredi, 3: “per apetito e desiderio grande che ha il stomaco a quello unde sta per grande apetito che ha ad uno cibo cattivo si corregia la malitia de tal cibo . . . piu forte ha la sua operatione e fassi migliore digestione nel cibo dilectevole.” He also remarks that

Food and the Individual

173

One can easily imagine that with such a theory in hand readers would indulge, guilt-free, in all manner of sweets and confections. This could easily become a candy-eating culture. In fact, it was. Sugar was considered a universal condiment, suitable for flavoring all foods.20 Being similar to the human substance and good tasting to everyone, it must be nutritious. Sweetened pastries, tarts, pies, doughnuts, and wafers were all praised and even considered medicinal. Sweet wines were also considered ideal, for all complexions and all ages. Moderation was still the key, but these delectable foods were thought naturally beneficial if used wisely. Period 1 regimens did point out some absolutely harmful foods. The taste criterion never translates into dietary anarchy. That would make the dietaries themselves superfluous. Although readers were not advised to eat anything they like at any time and in any quantity, in general pleasure was a major consideration. Platina’s work is certainly among the least restrictive of this group, but his title may serve as a reasonably accurate description of these dieticians’ goals: Honest Pleasure. Health and pleasure are not mutually exclusive but rather reinforce each other. Food in moderation will confer greater enjoyment, and health will ensure continued pleasure. Temperance only maximizes delectation. Give to each person what is convenient, pleasant, appetizing, and nourishing, according to Platina.21 Savonarola also points out not only which foods are most useful but which are most delectable. In praising raisins he says “among foods used in meals for your Lord, it is certainly most convenient and delectable.” 22 Rarely are good-tasting foods condemned outright, and even these can be corrected with condiments. For the most part a skillful cook is an asset to health, and most foods when prepared correctly are perfectly fine. In the period 1 regimens, a wide variety of foods are also approved. Benedict allows, under the proper conditions, squash, cheese, fried foods, duck, hedgehog, frogs, stockfish, and even spleen.23 These are all vilified by later dieticians in periods 2 an occult virtue or conformity of elements may aid people in digesting harmful foods like onions. 20. Platina, Le grande cuisiner, p. 37v. Sugar is “necessaire aux cuysiniers pour attremper et donner bon goust à toutes viàndes.” 21. Platina, Le grande cuisiner, p. 10r: “a chacun ce qui luy convient, luy est plaisant, appetisant, et nourissant.” 22. Savonarola, Libreto, p. 11v: “E anco con i cibi usata e certo a tua signoria in sue viande convenientissima e delectevole.” He also notes that nuts and figs will offer much more pleasure than harm, p. 16r. 23. Benedictus, pp. F8r (squash), G5v (cheese): “nam sicut in regulis generalibus dictum est cibus consuetus et qui cum appetitu sumitur et si malis sit meliorem generat san-

174

Food and the Individual

and 3. Gazius remarks that dill is a fine flavoring because it is delectable, despite the authorities’ censure. We ought to eat “suave” foods to conserve health.24 Manfredi allows peacock and even recommends melons because they lift thirst and provoke urine and, most importantly, because they taste so good.25 Montagnana’s Consilia, a popular medical guide of the period, also allows fried foods, salted foods, and stuffed sausages.26 Platina endorses head cheese, tongue, andouilles, and sausages, and this is within his own dietary section, not from the recipes he borrowed from Martino.27 In fact, there is scarcely anything he condemns outright: snails, frogs, herring, game pies, and peacocks served in their feathers all make an appearance. Eel pie appears to be going a bit too far though. Avicenna may have thought chestnuts are only fit food for pigs, but Savonarola admits that he eats them at home boiled.28 How then did it come to pass that all these foods were condemned in the following periods? Why were so many foods forbidden despite their pleasant taste? A major shift in emphasis within nutritional theory itself accounts for this change. Whereas before the general rule that similar substances nourish and opposites correct was applied to specific recommendations, in period 2 and 3, all substances appear to be corrective. That is, similar substances no longer appear as nourishments; only opposites do. The assumption, on the part of dieticians, is that everyone needs correction. Jean-Louis Flandrin has argued that “by the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, the principles of a healthy diet had changed completely.” Before the mid-sixteenth century, in our period 1, the aim of guinem qua laudabilior cibus non cum tanto appetitu comestus,” H2r (fried foods), H5r (ducks), H7r (hedgehogs), M6v (frogs), N3r (stockfish), I1r (spleen). Pork spleen is best because its acidity helps digestion and provokes the appetite. 24. Gazius, p. O6r: “nos autem delectabilia et suavia debemus assumere si sanitatem volumus conservare.” 25. Manfredi, pp. 7v and 9v: “mellon rossi . . . si fan colera rossa tollen la sete e fanno molti humori molta urina fa e assai bon sapore.” This cannot be merely a regional preference, because later Italian authors advise their readers to avoid melons, even though they taste good. 26. Bartolomeo Montagnana, Consilia Montagnane (Lyons: Jacobi myt Calcographi, 1525), 2: “Frixa vero cum oleo more sarracenorum vel diligentium oleum melior et levior esse dicitur”; “Caro omnis conservata et salsa ut farciminum landutulorum et aliorum non valde pinguium est laudabilis.” The first edition of this work appeared in Padua in 1475, but the text itself was composed in 1436, according to Klebs, and should perhaps be considered a medieval rather than an early Renaissance work. 27. Platina, Le grande cuisiner, 101. 28. Savonarola, Libreto, 17. Despite the dangers of chestnuts, they are infinitely improved with roasting and boiling and “delectevole sono al gusto.”

Food and the Individual

175

diet was the maintenance of the individual’s complexion with similar substances: cold foods for cold people, hot foods for hot people. After 1550 diet sought to “counter rather than reinforce the peculiarities of the individual constitution.” 29 As an example, Flandrin offers a comparison between Bruyerin Champier and Joubert. The former condemns the drinking of very cold wine, which as an extreme opposite would damage the body. Wine is best at the body’s own temperature. In contrast, Joubert allows cold wine that corrects the influence of external heat. One exemplifies maintenance, the other correction.30 Yet it is not entirely clear whether this represents a “profound transformation” of theory. Certainly all authors in all periods continued to repeat the standard dictum: similar substances maintain and opposites correct. They must have been applying this rule in different ways, and perhaps a closer look at the precise intensity of qualities recommended will explain this apparent shift in theory. When we are tempered, qualitatively tempered foods like ourselves will not alter us. A healthy sanguine man should consume hot and moist staples. On the other hand, should he become excessively hot and moist, then cold and dry foods would be required to temper the complexion. No dietician would argue with this. Why then would hot and moist sugar be forbidden to this individual, even in health? It is because sugar is not a food but a condiment. Its extreme hot and moist qualities would only distemper our sanguine man. That is, the entire system had never been so simple as all similars nourish and all opposites correct. It is only relatively tempered foods, not condiments, that can maintain a complexion. Sugar would throw the sanguine complexion off balance. In other words, to maintain health, similar substances of a comparable or lesser degree of intensity are appropriate; to correct imbalance, an opposite in proportional intensity is effective. For example, a healthy choleric man (h 2, d 2 ) may eat pheasant (h 1, d 1 ). The equation would leave him somewhere around hot and dry in the upper first degree, to be precise, the first degree and forty-five minutes. However, garlic (h 4, d 4 ) would make him sick, dragging him beyond his natural choleric com29. Jean-Louis Flandrin, “Distinction through Taste,” in A History of Private Life, vol. 3, ed. Philippe Ariès and Georges Duby (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 1989), 295 –96. See also the more recent Jean-Louis Flandrin and Massimo Montanari, eds., Histoire de l’alimentation (Paris: Librarie Arthème Fayard, 1996), 491– 510 and 683–704. 30. Flandrin, “Medecine et habitudes alimentaires anciennes,” in Margolin and Sauzet, Pratiques et discours alimentaires, 86 – 87.

176

Food and the Individual

plexion. But were he distempered (h 3 , d 3 ), a cold salad (c 1, m 1 ) would be the perfect corrective.31 Thus, when sixteenth-century regimens commended lettuce only for cholerics and never for phlegmatics, their goal was to avoid excessive distemperature. In Flandrin’s example, Bruyerin Champier refers to a healthy person drinking cold wine. This would cause an imbalance, even sudden cold pains in the head, still a familiar phenomenon. Later authors say exactly the same thing.32 Joubert refers to distempered and hot people, who have no reason to avoid wine chilled in caves or even cold water. Revealingly, on the same page Joubert does condemn wine with ice or snow in it or chilled in saltpeter as far too cold.33 There is really no major theoretical distinction between the two authors on this point. One follows doctrine to the letter, the other defers to experience, but both employ the same basic theory: similar substances nourish, opposites correct. Nonetheless, it is true that a change of emphasis takes place in the regimens. It seems, as Flandrin points out, that correction entirely overshadows maintenance, as if all human beings were considered distempered. This shift is indeed apparent by mid-century, but the change is quite subtle. Grataroli comments, “they that have very melancholique bloud, muste use moyste and hoate meates, they that that be cholerique must use cold and moist. But phlegmatic persons must eate such meates as have vertue to drie and calefie.” 34 The first case does seem to be an example of distemperature, but is the latter as well? Perhaps this is a change of emphasis and a simplification rather than a change of theory to “opposites nourish.” The use of opposing “substances” was also always a part of theory, further complicating the question. For example, melancholics and phlegmatics were always advised to use light attenuating substances (usually hot), and sanguines and cholerics were told to eat crasser foods (usually cold) because of their different digestive strengths.35 This change is ultimately not the result of any alteration of theory, nor is it a result of abandoning the Arab authorities for the Greeks. It is really a change of attitude and mood. Period 1 authors were interested in health and pleasure; diet for them consisted in striking a

31. The use of these degrees to describe the human complexion is merely to prove a point, most physicians would agree that such a distemperature would kill the patient. 32. Hollings, 55, condemns chilled wine, as do most authors. 33. Joubert, Erreurs populaires, book 2, 52. 34. Grataroli, p. F2v. 35. Valverda, 55 –56.

Food and the Individual

177

balance between the body’s needs and the mind’s rational management. Thus, the individual was the final arbiter of diet. In the period 2 and 3 authors, this emphasis changes entirely. The body must be corrected, its natural instincts are base, and the mind must take complete control. The final arbiter becomes reason as guided by medical authority. The distinction between conservation and preservation is no longer made; it is assumed that every body is infirm and requires correction. As Brooke says, “A Healthful man is hardly to be found, everyone having his constitution more or less depraved,” and “the generality of people are infirm.” 36 This shift may partly be the result of misinterpreting Galen’s original comments that the perfectly tempered constitution is a rarity, and in period 2, a heavy dependence on Galen may have prompted overemphasis of this point. But it does not seem that this strict attitude has its origin in Galenism per se, especially since it grows in intensity in period 3 when authors grow less dependent on Galen. Period 3 authors also insist that the body size should be corrected. Fat people should eat thinning foods, thin people fattening foods. Bachot, for example, offers his readers slimming and fattening diets to render any body “en-bon-point,” which means not only healthy but regular sized.37 The ideal is regularity, conformity, standardization. The idea of sustaining your own individual complexion gives way to a continual balancing act striving for tempered mediocrity. This change of mood in periods 2 and 3 also ushers in the idea that taste should no longer be the basis for choosing food. Authority demands that you eat what is good for you, not what tastes good. The body’s urges and preferences are something to be ashamed of and destroyed. “By the very order of nature, reason ought to rule and all appetites are to be bridled and subdued,” says Cogan. We must “bend” our natural inclinations, and our appetites should be “well broken.” 38 Whereas in earlier dietaries hunger was a sure sign that the previous digestion was complete and another meal could commence, here it becomes something suspect and dangerous. Viviani claims that hunger is not a reliable sign that the stomach is empty, because it can be accidentally triggered by

36. Brooke, 18 and 123. 37. Bachot, 402 –5. Pictorius, 26, also suggests “Magri facilmente patiscono per la resolutione de gli spiriti onde hanno bisogno di molto cibo che gli nodrisca, è grassi che hanno l’abbondantia della flegma con poco caldo naturale, hanno bisogno di cibo che sia di poco nutrimento.” 38. Cogan, pp. 2v–3v.

178

Food and the Individual

an unnatural accumulation of acidic or acerbic humors.39 The message is to distrust the body and follow your physician’s advice. Nonnius goes so far to say that food should be eaten not for pleasure but as a form of medicine that may also perchance be satisfying. The dominant consideration must be health, and for health’s sake pleasure must often be forsaken.40 If invited to a banquet of “delicate cates,” Brooke advises that “tis best to decline the Field, not being able to endure the combate,” 41 such is human weakness that we would most likely succumb to this formidable foe. The metaphor of eating as a dangerous battle against the body’s urges illustrates succinctly the development of food guilt. How is it that food in the previous century was seen as something to be enjoyed honestly and here it has become an enemy to conquer? This change of mood and the apparition of guilt may have had some connection to the Reformations, both Protestant and Catholic, since it pervades all of Europe. Most theorists make few explicit references to religion, so any such influence must be purely conjectural. On the whole, this species of guilt appears to be secular, even though it appropriates the language of theology. Still, there is no eternal punishment for gluttony mentioned, only earthly suffering and illness. In fact, sickness is specifically the result of human error in this system. Health is something we can control, and the body’s ailments are a direct physical punishment for our dietary sins. Should you be struck with gout, Durante reminds us, “Culpa misella tua est” [it’s your own fault].42 “Neither did the Almighty create our Diseases with us, they are like Insects, the offspring of Corruption, of our Disorder and Luxury.” 43 Many diseases are the direct result of our immoderate use of harmful foods.44 Even epidemics and pestilence spread more easily and are more difficult to cure when the body is weakened by intemperance. “For our 39. Viviani, 91–93: “Donde avviene, che non distinguendo gli huomini frà queste due spezie di fame, incorrono spesso in gravissimi errori.” He means natural as opposed to unnatural hunger. Robertus Geopretius, Regimen sanitatis, (Ghent: Jodocus Lambertus, 1538), 361, also comments that if distempered, “non è da obedire allo appetito, perche la naturale disposition appetisce quel che gli è simile, e quella che è fuor di natura quel che gli è contrario.” Even the quantity of food “deve essere tanta che sodisfaccia alla natura e non allo appetito.” 40. Nonnius, introduction, p. I4v, Menapius, 525, suggests that milk should be corrected with salt. He admits that it is disgusting, but much better for you. 41. Brooke, 112. 42. Durante, 33; Menapius, 473, also says, “nostris verò temporibus, inquit, usque, adeò auctis edulis, ut nihil eis addi posse videatur, infinita est podagricorum multitudo.” 43. Brooke, 20. 44. Bruyerin Champier, 54 –55.

Food and the Individual

179

sinnes and offenses adversitie and sickness is layde upon us,” interjects Grataroli.45 The sins he refers to are gastronomic indulgence. To succumb to the pleasures of food is to invite physical suffering. This undertone of repression and guilt suffuses the same theoretical doctrine that informed earlier treatises yet arrives at quite different results. Tastes and personal preferences are no longer guides to the body’s needs but are sinful urges to be stifled. What tastes good is no longer what nourishes best. Only theory itself can instruct us in diet. The key to health is an exterior voice, generated on the pages of dietary regimens and imposed upon the individual as the superego. When a delicious food is approached, the period 1 dietician counseled moderation, circumspection, and corrective measures. Period 2 and 3 authors growled a resounding no, the price of disobedience being immediate and long-term suffering, both physical and mental. The number of foods newly labeled delicious but dangerous is astounding. In fact, an oversolicitous reader might come to suspect all foods that taste good. To be corrective, theoretically, a food would have to be slightly unpleasant and dissimilar to our distempered flesh. The reader who came to believe that the body is in constant need of correction might well feel best eating distasteful foods. Anything too exciting smacks of sinful indulgence. The most salient change in the details of dietary recommendations is the excision of sweets. There seems to be several possible reasons for this, but one is certainly guilt. Sweets are no longer subtle, hot, and moist foods that are easily assimilated into the body. They are now difficult to digest, gross, and oppilative, and therefore contraband.46 In authors’ minds comfits, marzipan, and other purely medicinal sweets were being used solely for pleasure and in frightening excess. Menapius counsels avoiding sweets altogether, because if one happens to overdo it, the sweets easily corrupt and convert into bile.47 The image of incorruptible, preservative sugar gives way to sugar as a delicious but dangerous temptation. Of course, labeling such foods in this way may have only increased their ultimate appeal. Sugar may suddenly have become an object of de45. Grataroli, p. X4r. 46. Conrad Gesner, Sanitatis tuendae praecepta cum aliis, tum literarum studiosis hominibus, et iis qui minus exercentur, cognitu necessaria. (Zurich: Andrea and Jacob Gesner, 1556), 15 –16: “Condita omnia duabus de causis inutilia sunt: quoniam et plus propter dulcedinem assumitur: et quod modo par est, tamen aegrius concoquitur.” 47. Menapius, 560 – 61: “Dulcia . . . sed advertere tu debes . . . nam si nimis copiose iisdem vescamure [sic], facile corrumpentur, et in bilem convertentur.”

180

Food and the Individual

licious disobedience. Perhaps the same “wet paint” attraction that lures young Americans to smoking also charged sugar with the same appeal of rebellion in the sixteenth century. Dieticians may have done their best to frighten people away from candy and accidentally given it the “naughty but nice” reputation it has to this day. Some people, of course, indulge freely without guilt, others abstain without difficulty, but a third group wages a constant internal battle against their own urges. The latter would not have been possible without official condemnation. That is, the dietaries promote guilt, because without knowledge of sin, there can be no sin. The irony of this situation is that at precisely the moment these authors condemned sugar, it became all the more available and affordable. By the mid-sixteenth century an unprecedented volume of sugar was first imported from the New World. The price immediately came down and, no longer an extravagant luxury or a medicinal remedy, sugar was increasingly used by the general populace in greater quantities well into modern times.48 Sweet pastries, once medicinal favorites, also receive the stamp of disapproval in periods 2 and 3 regimens. In England, “Bunns with eggs and spices, sugar-cakes, wafers, simnels and cracknels, and all other kind of delicious stuff” are condemned. In the Spanish Netherlands it is “Bellaria, Placenta, Crustula, Torta, Obelias Panis.” The latter, Nonnius explains are now called Oublies or Gaufres, that is, a kind of waffle, often dunked in wine. In Germany, honey cakes or Itrion and in France “Bignetz, petit choux, . . . gasteaux et terteaux” are all labeled delicious and dangerous.49 All generate crass humors and clog the veins and arteries; they best avoided entirely. This stigma was extended to many other types of food as well. Duchesne reminds us that the most tasty meats are often not the most healthy. Being a Gascon, he admits his fondness for roast suckling pig but warns that it should not be eaten often. Tripe with mustard, boudins and sausages “sont plus tost friandes” [are rather tasty] but are still very harmful. The less used the better.50 Note that these are all precisely the foods eaten with reckless abandon by the giants in the satirical opening scenes of Rabelais’s Gargantua. They were perfect symbols not only of

48. The classic work on sugar is Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (Harmondsworth: Penguin; New York: Viking Penguin, 1985). 49. Moffett, 242; Nonnius, 28; Menapius, 539; Calanius, 54. 50. Duchesne, 411, 418, and 434.

Food and the Individual

181

coarseness but of indulgence. Not surprisingly, similar foods scramble about Pieter Brueghel’s Land of Cockaigne (or Schlaraffenland, painted in 1567) in animated form, waiting to be gobbled up by the engorged gluttons. Sausages usually take center stage in carnivalesque celebrations, being the symbol of not only gustatory but sexual license. In these works a veiled moral message was being offered the sober reader: these are foods for people out of control. They are only for the immature, irresponsible, and less than fully human. On the same topic, Moffett confesses that pork is “sweet, luscious, and pleasant to wantons, and earnestly desired of distempered stomachs: but it is the mother of many mischiefs, and was the bane of mine own Mother.” 51 This is guilt indeed. Perhaps the popularity of pork was only heightened by its scarcity and the image of sinful indulgence. This may account for the odd mania over Bartholomew-Pig, the roast pork served at fairs, in England.52 Martilmas-beefe (heavily salted or “corned”) gains a similar rebellious appeal. It is no wonder these foods, condemned by medical authorities, are served specifically at festivals, the time for indulgent abandon and ritual taboo-breaking. Peaches, dates, and melons especially become the focus of frantic attention as well. The satirical encomia of Berni (“In lode delle pesche” [In praise of peaches]) and Firenzuola (“In lode della salsiccia” [In praise of sausages]) are all addressed to the delicious and dangerous foods.53 It were 51. Moffett, 65. Sebizius, an Alsatian, has much the same to say about pork cracklings, 598: “Pellis igne retorrida gratissimum quidem est gulosorum palato ferculorum, verùm neque succi bonitatem habet, neque facile digeritur, et choleram parit. . . .” 52. In Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair (1614) women get uncontrollable cravings to eat roast pork served at the fair. Shakespeare’s irresponsible Falstaff is also described as “thou whorson little tydie bartholomew bore-pigge” Henry IV, part 2, 2.4.250. In both the image of pig as an indulgent and infantile transgression is explicit. Responsible and guilt-ridden males know better. As a somewhat far-fetched analogy, the appeal of Food TV’s Emeril Lagasse and his raucous chant “pork fat rules!” lies precisely in the fact that modern nutritionists have condemned pork fat, and his audience is finally fed up. This is again a delicious transgression. 53. Francesco Berni, in Massimo Montanari, Nuovo convivio (Rome and Bari: Editori Laterza, 1991), 34 –36: Tutte le frutte, in tutte le stagioni, come dir mele rose, appie e francesche, pere, susine, ciregie e poponi, son bone, a chi le piacen, secche e fresche; ma, s’i avessi ad esser guidice io, le non hanno a far nulla colle pèsche . . . He also comments in direct contradiction of medical authorities that peaches are healthy, even aperitive, cordial, flavorful, gentle, and restorative.

182

Food and the Individual

as if the more foods were proscribed by dieticians, the more popular they became and the more honest and moral readers were nagged to avoid them. The list of forbidden pleasures only increases: fattened chickens, mustard and heavy sauces, pickled and smoked foods, fish (eels in particular), aged cheese. Even the multitude of aphrodisiacs once offered in good conscience are now to be shunned. A sense of sexual guilt goes hand in hand with food guilt. The “civilizing” of both appetites proceeds in tandem. As a brief comparison, Platina, in period 1, has no qualms about discussing the benefits of sex, even in the midst of the papal curia. It makes the body lighter, stokes the appetite, helps sleep, and is pleasurable. And most importantly, if not expelled, an excess of sperm can turn venomous, something particularly dangerous for celibate men and women, including virgins, as we have seen. In stark contrast, Grataroli, admittedly influenced by Protestant ethics, suggests that sex weakens the heart, debilitates the brain, and wastes the body’s substance. Sex is not necessary for personal maintenance and should only be used to propagate the species.54 With precisely the same theory, an entirely different emphasis can emerge depending on the attitude of the author and presumably his readers as well. In a word, period 2 and 3 authors were remarkably prude compared to their counterparts in the previous century. Authors like Bruyerin and Hessus in period 2 and Bachot and Hollings in period 3 never even bring the subject up. Moffett too admits that “nothing is more availeable to engender lust, then the eating of certain sea fishes and sea-plants, which I had rather in this lascivious age to conceal from posterity, then to specifie them unto my countrymen.” 55 The development of food guilt cannot entirely account for the transformation of this genre. Food symbolism is far more complex than a simple polarity between delicious /dangerous and bland / healthy. Many foods and styles of preparation were proscribed merely because of their social connotations. By examining the associations of food and class we can arrive at a more concise image of how dieticians and their followers envisioned themselves and where they situated themselves in the social hierarchy. For example, why are an increasing number of foods condemned as “fit only for peasants” or “best left to gluttonous courtiers”? These prejudices reveal not only the evolving ideal self-image of the 54. Platina, Le grande cuisiner, p. 8r; Grataroli, p. N4v. 55. Moffett, 54.

Food and the Individual

183

dieticians as distinct from other groups but also mirror the changing shape of European society itself. In delineating the rational diet as a distinct way of life appropriate for a certain type of person, the regimens carve out a social niche, superior not by virtue of its wealth or austerity but through self-control and conscious application of rational dietary principles.

chapter 6

Food and Class

The social connotations of food are perhaps the most powerful determinant of dietary preferences. This is especially the case in a nutritional theory whose basis entails the literal incorporation of a food’s substance and qualities into the consumer. An item considered gross and crude and associated with the peasantry will render the consumer peasant-like because those same elements that make up the peasant will be absorbed by the consumer. To a courtier, magnificent banquet dishes not only signify wealth, power, and sophistication but transfer those properties directly into the individual diner. An exquisite dish makes the eater exquisite. Thus, the ideal self-image as socially constructed is directly reflected in food prejudices that involve class. To be a true courtier, one must eat as courtiers do. And distance from the courtier’s lifestyle is best achieved by choosing a different diet. In societies that are not rigidly hierarchical, such food prejudices are usually not highly defined. A distinction between eating habits or food styles will only develop in those societies in which individuals or groups feel the need to be delineated or have distinctions imposed upon them. For example, in the Hindu caste system not only separate diets but even whom one may eat with and have one’s food prepared by are codified by religious law. In the most extremely stratified societies, foods have powerful social connotations, and crossing the social boundaries in any way threatens the natural order and violates the defining principles of personhood. Individuals can be unnaturally ennobled or debased by eating 184

Food and Class

185

outside the borders of class. Working in tandem with these food associations may also be distinctions in dress, speech patterns or language, modes of behavior, entertainment, and so forth. All serve to rigorously demarcate boundaries between social classes, but none is more central to self-definition than the food that becomes one’s flesh.1 As a rule, the more stratified a society becomes, the more complex and rigid are the alimentary symbols of class. Illustrating this point, Jack Goody has compared African to European and Asian cultures. Little division of labor, little specialization, and few social distinctions characterize the former. African economies of the past were able to support few separate classes apart from food producers and rulers. Consequently, their food habits and ideas about food had practically no social meanings. Most people ate the same foods. There were no classes or castes to be distinguished on the basis of diet. European and Asian societies, on the other hand, became stratified at an early date. Production, distribution, and consumption were divided, and a greater number of distinct classes could be supported in the economy.2 Holy men, merchants, professionals, all sought to be differentiated from each other, and diet became one of the most powerful delineators of class. For example, scholars would have been able to earn money and buy food rather than grow it themselves. This would have only been possible if other members of society had disposable income to support such activities, either directly, purchased as a commodity, or indirectly, supported by taxes. With their literacy, this group may have developed, with sufficient numbers, a group consciousness that was expressed in distinct clothes, speech, behavior, and importantly, diet. In India, China, and Europe this was the case. Not only did courtly cuisines develop, but scholarly diets evolved distinct from those of both the ruling class and the multitudes. The more complex the economy, therefore, the further stratified the society and the more distinct the eating styles or philosophies. Food prejudices are thus a barometer of social differentiation, and the proliferation of distinct food styles is a sign of growing complexity and also of anxiety over the shifting shape of the social structure. That is, the social meaning of food grows in intensity when the class structure is in danger of disruption by social mobility. It is no coincidence that dietary regimens gain popularity in those complex, changing, and dynamic 1. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984; Flandrin, “Distinction through Taste.” 2. Jack Goody, Cooking, Cuisine, and Class: A Study in Comparative Sociology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), chap. 4.

186

Food and Class

societies that have many classes. Ancient Greece, Rome, and Baghdad, and, of course, Europe in the High Middle Ages and Renaissance all fit this model. These societies have merchant classes, learned or holy classes, agricultural and urban classes, as well as a ruling elite with its own professional functionaries. These social gradations are directly reflected in separate cuisines and philosophies, one of which is the nutritional theory discussed here. These distinctions are, of course, only heightened by the availability of luxury goods, a wide variety of foodstuffs from which to choose, and thus the ability to be choosy about diet. We might also add that with our own global economy, we are better equipped than any other past society on earth for the development of distinct food philosophies or ideologies. Each of the societies mentioned above also experienced significant demographic pressure on its resources, which in turn stimulated agricultural innovation and diversification, not to mention external trade. All these factors appear to be indirectly associated with the efflorescence of the dietary genre. It may also be that a simple rise in population itself triggers the need for identification by social group. The more people numerically, the more difficult it is to feel distinct, the more rulers must treat their subjects impersonally, and the more groups coalesce to protect their identity and individuality. This scenario aptly describes Europe in the High Middle Ages before the devastations of the plague in the fourteenth century 3 and also in the sixteenth century, both of which witness the appearance of many new dietaries. However, any strict correlation between population pressure and a proliferation of food styles would be a mistake. And, of course, dietaries continue to be written in the fifteenth century. One could even plausibly argue that lower population density in the fifteenth century spread the wealth around more equally and gave a greater number of people more disposable income to spend on both food and books. But then, the critical strata in question here are the “middling sorts” able to emulate or reject the dietary customs of their superiors and indeed to formulate their own distinct eating styles. In the sixteenth century, although perhaps citing a “rise of the middle class” would be going to far, it is precisely the middle class person who the dietary literature targets as its audience. Despite these caveats, there does 3. Pertinent for the High Middle Ages is Bruno Laurioux, “Table et hiérarchie sociale à la fin du moyen âge,” in Du Manuscrit à Table, ed. Carole Lambert (Montreal: Les Presses de l’Université, 1992), 87–108. A preference for roasts, fowl, and particularly entremets or between-course dainties serves to distinguish the most noble diners in his example, but so does the sheer quantity of food offered.

Food and Class

187

seem to be a discernable shift of emphasis in the dietary literature that reflects actual social change in the sixteenth century. That is, as demographic pressure, economic specialization, and social stratification advanced, dietary prejudices based on class intensified. On the whole, dietary authors of period 1 were far less concerned with class than their sixteenth- and seventeenth-century counterparts in periods 2 and 3. The fifteenth-century regimens did express a number of welldeveloped food prejudices based on class. This kind of food discriminations is, of course, built right into the physiological theory. Labor increases the body’s vital heat, and vital heat directly controls digestive capacity. Active people can digest more quantitatively, qualitatively, and substantially. That is, they can eat more, digest colder and moister foods that would ordinarily harm a more delicate-complexioned person, and can physically overcome (concoct, digest, and incorporate) crass substances that in a cooler body would remain undigested and eventually putrefy. The laborer, through sweat and heavy breathing, also has the ability to pass superfluous wastes from the system that would collect in the body of the sedentary person. This immediately separates all individuals, regardless of complexion, into two main categories: workers and the leisured. This means that ploughmen are able to digest heavy and tough foods and that these are especially suited for them. Because these foods descend slowly through the digestive tract and offer copious nourishment, the intense heat of the laboring stomach can break them down entirely before corruption sets in; thus, they are the ideal aliment. Lighter foods, conversely, burn up in such an atmosphere, offering no nourishment. In theory, crass foods are best for laborers, light foods for the leisured. This is basically the extent of period 1 food prejudices. They are two tiered, laborer and leisured, reflecting the particular sociocultural setting of most fifteenth-century authors as well. Most worked for courtly patrons. There certainly were intermediate groups in this society, but they were not yet highly self-consciousness nor did they feel a need to stand out on the basis of food. If anything, courtiers sought to imitate the courtly style of eating, and where distinctions were present, they were usually imposed from above. At noble banquets, for example, courtiers would be served lesser cuts of meat or less prestigious dishes to signify their inferiority. This, naturally, only heightened the desirability of being closer to the head of the table, both physically and in terms of diet. The intellectuals who composed period 1 regimes sought to be part of the leisured culture; the food they recommended was that of the patricians,

188

Food and Class

even though they explained it in different terms and sometimes criticized its most extravagant excesses. The elite diet itself was distinguished by the use of spices and sugar; complex preparations involving pounding, straining, and coloring foods; and of course by the sheer quantity of food served. Otherwise it was not essentially different from the diet of the people. The staples were much the same. Meat was generally available to all levels of society.4 Fernand Braudel even describes this period as “carnivorous Europe.” 5 The distinct high and low cultures were really separated only by luxury items, the complexity of preparation, and abundance. Within the period 1 regimens relatively few staple items were invested with social symbolism. Peacocks, swans, sturgeon, and porpoise are among the few foods deemed fit only for the wealthy, and this was a matter of expense rather than physiology. The ordinary staples—veal, kid, pork, and chicken—were considered suitable for all people, as were beans, cabbage, and sometimes even onions and garlic.6 Wild fowl, game, organ meats, and salted meats had no particular social stigma attached. In general, theorists were not concerned with labeling basic ingredients by class and even when they did, it was on the basis of the two tiers. Some foods were for laborers, others for nobles and the delicate. Even the most socially conscious writer of this period, Savonarola, always expresses his prejudices in terms of courtly and uncourtly. “Hare is not a meat for Lords.” “Fava beans are a food for peasants.” Once he mentions that beef is a food for artisans with robust stomachs, but still allows it for “your Lord” if corrected with delicate condiments.7 Correction, usually by means of expensive spices, can always improve even 4. In the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the cost of meat was relatively low because a lower population density following the Black Plague put less pressure on the land. More people could afford to use land for animal fodder, more animals were raised, the price was low, and more people could afford to eat meat. This situation changed in the sixteenth century following a population boom, a period which Jean-Jacques Hemardinquer described as experiencing a “depecoration,” or gradual decrease in the percentage of household income spent on meat. While this is only a general broad trend, and perhaps not common in all regions to the same extent, it is reflected in the increasing distinction of lordly and lowly meats. For the peasants, organ meats, sausages, and tough old beef were reserved. The elites appear to have been the only ones able to afford fresh meat on a regular basis during and after the sixteenth century and for some time to come. Hemardinquer, “The Family Pig of the Ancien Regime,” in Food and Drink in History, ed. Robert Forster and Orest Ranum (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1979). 5. Cited by Massimo Montanari, The Culture of Food, trans. Carl Ipsen (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), 73. See chap. 3 for a circumspect discussion of this entire question. 6. Platina, Le grande cuisiner, pp. 155v–156r; Savonarola, Libreto, p. 10r. 7. Savonarola, Libreto, pp. 31r, 5r, 29v.

Food and Class

189

the most dangerous of foods. Savonarola’s heightened attention to this topic may reflect the social climate of his city of Ferrara, dominated by a courtly culture from an early date.8 Like all period 1 authors, though, his prejudices are two-tiered and clearly he considered himself and his readers in the upper class. At least Savonarola aspired to be in noble company. Some of his comments suggest that his readers were still on the way up, as when he mentions that “citrons, though they may not be in use among all people, nonetheless are eaten today among nobles with their repasts and roasts.” 9 This would have provided just the right information for anyone wealthy enough to imitate courtly eating habits. Most importantly, there is rarely criticism of courtly food, which as we shall see pervades later dietaries.10 The society reflected in period 1 regimens embraced only two major distinct aesthetics of food, and even these were mostly differentiated on the basis of expensive luxury items. The society reflected essentially has two levels. The middle only wants access to the noble culture; they have no well-developed ethic in contrast to both high and low culture, or at least they have not formed a self-consciousness that expresses itself in distinct foodways. Perhaps only monastic diets could be distinguished in this way in this period. And counter to what we might expect, even these were often considered closer to the courtly diet than their original austere intentions would dictate. Savonarola, for example, associates the eel with gluttonous abbots and repeats what was apparently a common saying, “the eels rejoiced when their abbot died.” 11 For the most part, though, in fifteenth-century regimens the majority of foods are described in physiological terms only. In sixteenth-century works, the social connotations of food become far more important and

8. Werner Gundersheimer, The Style of a Renaissance Despotism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973). 9. Savonarola, Practica, p. 21v, “Citrum et si non sit apud omnes in usu, tamen apud nobiles hodierno tempore cum cibariis, et assatis comeditur.” 10. On occasion, Savonarola does criticize nobles’ choice of certain foods, as with truffles, Practica Major, p. 31r: tutuberibus, sive tartufulis . . . ideò nobiles, qui in eis delectantur; quia sunt res rara; ideò cara; deberent non uti; sed eis abuti; cum in eis nullum reperiatur iuvamentum, et propter ipsos me in eis tantum extendi, nam ad malum finem utuntur. Significantly, this appears in a work designed for medical professionals, rather than his Libreto, which was written for a popular audience. 11. Savonarola, Practica, p. 31v: “de anguillis verò specialiter dicam; quoniam est cibus gulosorum, gustui amenus, et suavis. Unde de abbate guloso dicitur versus. Gaudeant anguillae; quia mortuus est abbas ille.”

190

Food and Class

in the seventeenth century constitute an obsession. Let us begin with the idea of “peasant food” and examine specific recommendations. In period 1 Benedict almost never uses this description, mentioning once that mulberries are best for farmers and rustics.12 Gazius does mention “laborers” and foods only they should eat, such as beans or gross items, but even laborers correct their foods, as when purslane is mixed with onions.13 In general, though, there is no great fear of debasement by eating “peasant food.” Class associations are never mentioned by Manfredi. Although he admits garlic and onions are hot, he never describes them as vile peasant food. And while he claims that light and delicate foods harm choleric and sanguine bodies because they burn up, he does not claim as later authors do that “rustics should never eat such foods.” The focus is on individual complexion rather than social class.14 Symphorien Champier, also in period 1, is relatively class blind. Even though he himself composed books about chivalry and nobility, he does not seem to have been worried about being tainted by vulgar foods. Perhaps “socially secure” would be a more accurate description than “class blind.” It is only those on the borders of social strata who worry about rising or falling. For his readers, there appears to have been no concern about being tainted by lower-class food. Lobera de Avila, writing expressly for the court of Charles V in the early sixteenth century, is also comparatively free from social prejudices. On one occasion he does mention that people occupied by weighty business and nobles of the highest estate should avoid eating much old beef, or at least should correct it with mustard. But otherwise the only food he specifically associates with rustics is garlic, and even this is not so damnable if twice roasted.15 The anonymous English Governayle of Helthe of 1489, similarly notes, “And wyte thou well that to a coleryk mannes stomak when the vertue is stronge / and gret hete grete metes ben good / as beoff porke gret venyson and grete bestly fyshes roughe and grete bred salte mete 12. Benedictus, p. K7r: “Morum arboris: . . . eorum usus potius as agrestes et rusticos est quam delicata vita viventes.” 13. Gazius, pp. L4r, D5v, K4v: “portulaca . . . laborantes etiam non nisi cum cepis ipsam assumant.” 14. Manfredi, pp. 9v, 10v. 15. Lobera de Avila: “las personas de negocios grandes / senores o de muy alto estado deven se evitar de mucho uso de comer vaca o buey maxime viejo: o si lo comieren sea pocas vezes: y poco en quantitdad / o con alguna salsa de mostaza.,” p. 40r; “los ajos poco mantienen . . . y para que non sean dannosos han se de assar dos vezes,” p. 78r.

Food and Class

191

fleshe half sodyn and grete myghty coloured wyne. . . .” 16 None of these have any social stigma attached here, only a humoral association. In period 2 and 3 dietaries these are all excised from the ideal diet as too plebian, with the exception of venison, which retains its noble associations. Platina too shows little class bias in his recommendations; even the exotic foods are identified as merely cost-prohibitive, not expressly forbidden, to the lower orders. It would not have upset him to see a laborer eat peacock, swan, and pheasant, and indeed he finds it a shame that these good birds are destined only for the tables of the wealthy, who may have gained their status through deception and flattery rather than virtue and industry.17 No doubt, Platina thought he had pulled himself up from humble origins on the basis of talent and therefore deserved such exquisite foods. Savonarola, unique in this group, does stamp several foods as “plebian,” but compared to later authors, even he emerges as a model of tact. By period 2, after the 1530s and 1540s, a whole string of foods was banned from the ideal diet on the basis of association with peasants and laborers. The best examples are sausages and salted and preserved meats and fish. It appears that peasants in this period were constrained to eat these foods more often. As the price of fresh meat rose considerably faster than the price of grains in the sixteenth century, a greater proportion of income would have had to be spent on the latter. The lower orders were forced to consume more grains and less meat proportionally. If any meat could have been bought, it would most likely would have been something preserved and long lasting. Fresh meat became more of a luxury item, and revealingly, sixteenth-century regimens allowed no other form. As the lower classes became more impoverished, their diet became more distinctive; the foods they ate became more obvious symbols of poverty. To eat these became a clearer act of debasement, especially for those who should have been able to afford better. Anyone hoping to avoid becoming peasantlike must be especially careful to steer clear of such foods, and it is this audience, not quite noble but certainly not plebian, that these regimes addressed. Perhaps a modern example will clarify this process. Spam, years ago, 16. [Gouvernal] In this tretyse that is cleped governayle of helthe. The English Experience 192 (Amsterdam and New York, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum and Da Capo Press, 1969), p. Cr. 17. Platina, Le grande cuisiner, pp. 115v–116r, and in De honesta voluptate (1498) p. K1r.

192

Food and Class

was considered an economical, nutritious, easily transported, and convenient food, especially suitable for soldiers overseas. Only after World War II, in years of relative prosperity and a more consistent supply of fresh meat, was Spam invested with the stigma of poverty. An individual who eats Spam is either poor or deranged. In fact, as an item of retro curiosity, Spam retains a certain perverse allure, which only reinforces the idea that it should not be thought of as ordinary food. As the society and economy changed, the symbol changed with it. Few nutritionists today, interestingly, would recommend a regular diet of Spam, despite the advent of Spam Lite. In the sixteenth century it was the widening gulf between rich and poor rather than social equality that prompted the evolution of food symbolism. A number of foods, previously eaten by all, were now consistently stigmatized: porridges of barley, gruel, beans, and even pasta. All of these became more obvious symbols of poverty, not only because they were less expensive but because they also cut out the costs of middlemen such as millers and bakers. Those with enough wealth had their food “corrected” for them. Period 2 authors were consistent in their comments. Guinterius Andernacus (Gunther von Andernach) remarks that barley gruel or ptisan is a common food for paupers and should only be used as a medicine in times of plague.18 Cardano mentions a kind of pizza made from mashed fava beans eaten by plebians in Lent. Estienne, having traveled in Italy, knew that vermicelli, lasagnetae, and macarones are only fit for artisans, workers, and rustics.19 The polentas made of millet and panic, today more familiar to most as bird seed, were universally proclaimed by period 1 authors but condemned by period 2 authors. Transylvanian Paulus Kyr says that rustics cook them with milk, though these would eventually be replaced by maize in this same role, both in Romania and northern Italy.20 Perhaps the most fascinating work of this period denoting food for paupers is Sylvius’s De parco ac duro victu libellus. Written ostensibly to stave off famine, despite the fact that it was written in Latin, it suggests all sorts of substitute foods appropriate for the lower classes. There is fried blood of sheep or pork and offal such as livers, kidneys, lungs, 18. Guinterius Andernachus, p. C8r. 19. Cardano, De usu ciborum, 55; Estienne, 15: “Haec difficilimae coctionis cibaria, quaeque artificibus, opipariis ac rusticis magis accomodari debent.” 20. Kyr, p. G4v: “Rustici lacte incoctum mandunt, et bonum succum procreat.” Kyr also mentions nux aquatica or tribulus aquaticus a kind of water chestnut or caltrop eaten in famine years, p. I3r, “ex hoc etiam in farina molito per inopiam annone panes fiunt.”

Food and Class

193

spleen, heart, and intestines. Ox and ram testicles can be made into a nutritious broth. In extreme penury, cherry pits, vetches, and even earthworms can be put to good use.21 In the author’s mind these are all only food for the poor or desperate. The specific repugnance toward organ meats—and especially those that are visible reminders of the living animal, like eyes and brains—appears to have been a gradual historical development. Stephen Mennel, charting culinary trends, places this aversion well after the Renaissance.22 It may be that culinary tastes lagged behind nutritional ideals with regard to offal. It is clear that by period 3 in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the repugnance toward organ meats is well developed in nutritional literature. Pisanelli claims that tripe is truly a food for workers because it is the toughest part of the animal. Intestines, according to Nonnius, are not for more prudent people even though plebians consider them a delicacy. Pictorius recommends that among several harmful organ meats “the stomach, interior, feet and ears must be left to country folk, and to men who work hard enough to digest stones.” 23 Note that the criticism is no longer that these foods are gross and difficult to digest but that they are considered edible only to a certain class. Presumably it took a long time for prejudice against these foods to make its way down the social 21. Jacobus Sylvius, De parco ac duro victu libellus, In Liebault, Thesaurus sanitatis paratu facilis, p. 20v: Sanguis vervecis, ut et porci inspissatus ac concretus, tandémque coctus et si velis in sartagine frixus cum caepis et aliquo sevo pingui aut butyro non omnino contemnendus cibus est. . . . Priapi boum, vitulorum, boum humilium, vervecum tempestivè castratorum, minutissime incisi, pistillo contriti, deinde tam diu cocti ut iusculum spissum ac viscosum reddant plurimum nutriunt . . . istud edulii genus utile ac commodum est potissimum rusticis hominibus et qui in opere negotio laborioso vitam ducunt. And of earthworms he mentions, p. 23r, “lumbrici . . . non edendi nisi extrema pene urgeat necessitas, etsi non omnino pravi sint nutrimenti.” Apple, pear, plum, and cherry pits are mentioned in Consilium, p. 40v. 22. Mennell, 314 –16. Total repugnance toward most viscera is a recent phenomenon, and it appears that historically the first to be avoided were in fact whole animal’s heads, eyes, and other recognizable body parts. It seems that the further a people gets from actual rearing and slaughtering of animals, the less they like to be reminded of the origins of their food. Today, most meats appear disguised in neat little plastic-wrapped packages. As Mennell notes, though, that culinary fashions are cyclical and many “variety meats” are revived in trendy restaurants. It might be added that in nutritional theory organs meats too go in and out of fashion. Liver and kidneys may someday be resurrected, once the fear of cholesterol dies down. 23. Pisanelli, 88 – 89. Animal heads are still fine if eaten with mustard; Nonnius, 201, Intestines: “quare etiam rarò à prudentioribus ad mensas advocantur, sed plebeculae tantùm in deliciis sunt”; Pictorius, 33: “lo stomaco, gli interiori, i piedi, et orechie bisogna che si lascino à contadini, et à gli huomini che durano fatica sufficiente à smaltire le pietre.”

194

Food and Class

ranks. And ironically the upper crust may have had no such associations. Sebizius in the mid-seventeenth century remarks that veal’s head is a food for princes.24 What is developing in these dietaries is a food ethic distinct from both lower and upper class eating habits. As mentioned before, preserved meats were increasingly prescribed for the lower classes in the dietary literature. Salted beef, ham, and “resty bacon” are best left to “rustical stomachs.” 25 Herrings and sardines, relatively cheap and durable, are also tainted by popularity among the common rabble, as is stockfish.26 Hard cheese is also excised from diet. By many accounts bread and cheese were all that many people lived on. Again, ironically, the wealthiest eaters appear to have had little aversion to many of these foods, perhaps because there was no possibility of being debased by being accidentally identified as a peasant. That would only be possible for the middle ranks of society. Comparable distinctions can be made for vegetable foods as well. Period 1 authors always pointed out that vegetables are not very nutritious and generate harmful humors. But by period 2 and 3, particular vegetables were singled out as appropriate only for rustics and laborers. Beans and lentils are the most obvious, as are squash, turnips, onions, and leeks. Allen J. Grieco has shown that plants were often assigned social meaning according to their morphology and proximity to the earth. Root vegetables and legumes, being lowest on the Great Chain of Being and also the least “refined” by the heat of the sun, are best for peasants. Fruits, grains, and “higher” forms of plant life, far from the soil, are fit for the upper classes. By this logic, anomalous fruits like melons, strawberries, and cucumbers are afforded lowly status, because they grow close to the ground.27 This classification system, however, was not followed consistently by Renaissance physicians. Peaches were condemned along with melons 24. Sebizius, 586: “Saepè etiam prandiorum principiis capita vitulina apponuntur elixa, platato quàm gratissima, praestertim illae eorum partes, quae auribus sunt proximae, pinguedine et teneritudine laudabiles.” Some even serve mesentary and boiled feet with the head, so clearly the repugnance toward being reminded of killing has not affected princes. 25. Moffett, 226 and 32; Venner, 51, also leaves Martilmass (salted) beef to laboring men. 26. Vaughan, 258: “take heede of salt Herrings and slimy fish, as a meate fitter for laborers, then for tender natures.” 27. Grieco, “Pre-Linnean Botanical Classification,” 131– 49; “Les régimes végétariens,” 11–29; “Food and Social Classes in Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy,” in Food: A Culinary History, ed. Jean-Louis Flandrin and Massimo Montanari (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 302 –12.

Food and Class

195

despite their elevated position, and many lowly herbs, such as oregano and thyme, were classed among the most noble herbs even though they grow along the ground. What dietary authors more frequently had in mind was the humoral makeup of the plant, based on its flavor, and then increasingly the plant’s social meaning, which often had little to do with botanical classification. For example, lentils were stigmatized as peasant food, but chickpeas and green peas usually were not. Some fruits such as cornel cherries and sorb apples were considered peasant food despite their position on trees.28 The important distinction here is the texture or substance of the plant. As Cogan said of leeks, “What rustickes doe or may doe without hinderance of their health it is nothing to students: For grosses meate is meete for grosse men.” 29 Digestibility was the most important criterion, and it turns out that the “grossest” vegetables happen to be not only roots, bulbs, and legumes but also gross grains like oats, rye, and millet, which are botanically comparable to wheat. The social stigma for the latter is based on digestibility. On the same topic of leeks, Pisanelli remarks that they “are bad at all times, for all ages and complexions, so you ought to give them to peasants.” As this example shows, the social connotations of food increasingly overshadowed basic humoral physiology. The social classification of food on the basis of substance extended beyond condemning the grossest foods. The lightest foods were also expressly forbidden for the lower orders by period 3 authors. Game birds are the perfect example. Bachot insists that if you nourish a robust and strong peasant on fowl and delicate meats, these foods will corrupt before being digested. On the topic of chickens, Moffett remarks that “no man I think is so foolish as to commend them to ploughmen and Besomers [sweepers].” Pisanelli believed that pheasants could cause asthma in rustics, and figpeckers could cause consumption. Country men, according to Venner, “when they shall chance to meet with a covie of young Partridges, they were much better to bestow them upon such, for whom they are convenient.” Castellanus also includes figpeckers among foods best left for more noble tables.30 With perhaps more enthusiasm than

28. Sebizius, 267: “Cornua . . . Plebeii et rustici illorum esu delectantur: in ditiorum mensis gratiam habent exiguam.” 29. Cogan, 58. 30. Bachot, 440: “car si vous nourissés un paisant robust et valide, de volaille et chair delicate, il l’a pourrira plustost qu’il ne la cuira”; Moffett, 80; Pisanelli, 80 – 81: “beccafichi . . . fanno venire tisichi i vilanni,” 86 and 83 (paginated correctly but entries are out of order); Venner, 64; Castellanus, 261: “ficedula . . . ut neque rusticis, quibus tabem con-

196

Food and Class

poetic talent, Buttes offers the following advice about pheasants in verse: “It only makes the Swaine short winded . . . Therefore good peasant, Touch not the Pheasant, But save thy weasant [throat or gullet]: Y’ar somewhat pleasant.” 31 All these opinions are firmly supported by theory, but the social connotations obscure the original logic, which was merely meant to distinguish hot constitutions from weak and cold ones. It has now become a simple matter of social prejudice. The most interesting and subtly malleable food prejudices always have and still do center around bread. As the staple, bread preferences are almost always an encapsulation of more complex food prejudices. Sometimes bread is arranged hierarchically by color and texture, the whitest and finest bread being reserved for the highest social classes and the roughest and darkest for the poor. But in other periods, such as our own, brown bread may be valued as more earthy in a positive sense and closer to nature. In both cases, social values are clearly reflected in attitudes toward bread. Whereas once efficiency and mass-produced, even democratic, regularity were promoted in Wonder Bread, now individuality and ethnic identity are valued. Hence the popularity of rustic and ironically expensive “boutique” loaves. Not surprisingly, nutritional theory, at least in its popular form, has followed suit in emphasizing whole grains and fiber.32 The social significance of bread in the Renaissance is no less complicated than our own. According to standard theory, the best bread is made of hard wheat, well milled and bolted, made into a dough properly salted, kneaded, well risen, well baked in an oven, and thoroughly cooled. Thus, anything of mixed flour, containing too much bran, unsalted, flat, burnt, or hot is inferior. Period 1 authors also noted that a flour of “pollen,” “farina,” or the “finest sifting” can also be too glutinous and adhesive, just as pure bran is too loosening. As in all foods, a mean is best.33 Some period 1 authors praised barley bread as well.34 ciliat, ut Itali praedicant, qui illa nobiliorum dumtaxat mensarum fercula oportere esse contendunt.” 31. Buttes, p. L1v. 32. Actually, scientists are still roughly divided on the relative merits of white and whole wheat bread. Fiber may speed food through the digestive tract, but it also makes nutrients more difficult to absorb. McGee, 283– 84, summarizes recent discussions and concludes with “Hippocrates’ 2,500-year-old observation: brown bread is more laxative, white bread more digestible.” 33. Manfredi, p. 2r, on farina and furfura or fine wheat vs. bran: “uno acquista beneficio da laltro.” So they are best mixed, or as nature intended them, whole. 34. Gazius, p. L5v.

Food and Class

197

There was also a general preference for whiter bread with little bran. Being more expensive, it was naturally a sign of status. Savonarola, as we might expect, assigns bread made of the fiore di formento [flower of wheat or pollen], made without any bran, to princes and great masters. Its opposite, made with a great deal of bran, is “bread for dogs.” 35 Piero Camporesi calls this “a dietary metaphor of the two different cultural systems that find their focal point in bread.” 36 Unwittingly, he points to a more significant phenomenon. Savonarola’s estimation of bread is indeed polar. White bread versus bran bread reflects an essentially two-tiered system. Such is the extent of bread symbolism in period 1 dietaries, and Savonarola is its most outspoken advocate. Compare his opinions to Venner’s: pollen is the finest flower of the wheat, and “if any such use it, they are more curious than judicious;” simila makes the best bread and “is in greatest use among the better sort of people”; secundarium “is that part of the meale, where of yeomenbread is made”; the “brannie part . . . the poorest sort of people use” is called “panis canicarius” more fit for dogs.37 Venner dissociates himself and his readers not only from the poor and the yeomen but also from the extravagant. This last category is vital. Distance from the courtly aesthetic is what truly separates this period 3 work from earlier ones. Venner and his fellow authors consider themselves members of a distinct group: better than most but still judicious in their choice of foods. His compatriot, Bulleyn, even complains that in great men’s houses the bread is chipped and pared, and the “upper crust” that is fed to the dogs might have been used to feed a great number of poor people, “but that manye be more affectionat to dogges than men.” 38 Even in this period 2 work, the distance from the nobility and their eating habits is apparent. Further gradations of bread quality appear in period 3 dietaries. Not only are hard winter wheat and soft spring wheat differentiated, but the inferior wheats like spelt and einkorn are also socially inferior. Rye also remains in an intermediate gradation and is usually consigned to “laborers, servants and workmen.” 39 Strangely, it seems to have gained vogue at court in the seventeenth century as a laxative eaten at the beginning of meals, but again these people were in no danger of being debased by

35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

Savonarola, Libreto, pp. 4r–v. Camporesi, 17. Venner, 18. Bulleyn, p. 113r. Moffett, 231.

198

Food and Class

using it.40 Beneath barley and rye are oats, which most authors leave for horses and Scots. On a low rung with this are the debased millet and panic, and even lower is bread made from chestnuts or beans. There is an even more lowly bread made during famine from grasses and weeds. Many of these are quite edible, though Piero Camporesi suggests that these famine breads were anything but healthy. In Bread of Dreams he contends that these are actually hallucinogenic and are promoted intentionally to keep the lower orders pacified with a “collective vertigo”: “We must not forget that both in theory and in practice the ‘treatment of the poor man,’ cared for with sedatives and hallucinogenic drugs, corresponded to a thought-out medico-political design.” 41 Stupefying bread forms the basis of his argument. What he has in mind are the family of plants known as darnel, lolium, or sometimes “tares” in English, a grass weed that grows among wheat. It was usually used profitably as animal fodder but when eaten by humans was purported to cause dizziness and sleep. The French called it ivraie, suggesting drunkenness: the Sanskrit root of the word lolati also means giddiness. Vetches were also frequently mentioned as a bread extender in times of famine. They are small lentil-like, or sometimes pea-like, bitter legumes described as crass and melancholy inducing, not unlike lentils themselves. There is never, however, any indication in the dietary literature that these are narcotic. Moreover, dieticians often included oats in their company as well.42 These were all certainly considered food for the poor, but were they stupefying, as Camporesi suggests, and intentionally recommended as a means of social control? Wormwood could certainly have a narcotic effect, as could cannabis, but these were reserved for the wealthy. Camporesi also mentions ergotism, a disease caused by the ergot fungus, which attacks rye, appears dark and kernel-like, and so is difficult to detect. It is also a source of LSD. Commonly known as St. Anthony’s fire, it causes intense hallucinations, burning sensations, gangrene, and death. It is not the convulsive St. Vitus’s dance [chorea], as Camporesi suggests.43 At any rate, this epidemic could clearly not have been controlled or the substance purposefully administered to the poor. Poppy seeds were also recognized as bread extenders for the poor. 40. Venner, 25; Abraham, 20. He also believes that the women of Reims who eat rye bread “sont reduës belles, et ont beau teint, et le corps robuste et succulent.” 41. Camporesi, 137. 42. Fridaevallis, 66. 43. Camporesi, 127. A minor epidemic of ergotism occurred as late as 1951 in France. McGee, 233.

Food and Class

199

Opium is indeed a derivative of one species, but the suggestion that poppy seed bread is narcotic is obviously absurd. Moreover, sesame is also suggested, as well as linseed, which should not be confused with harmless hemp seed or cannabis from which THC is derived.44 With these, Cardano includes fenugreek, a curious but hardly hallucinogenic flavoring.45 The most common bread extenders are lupins, which are still sometimes eaten as a snack in Italy, though Bertaldi suggests that only the poor and young boys would eat them.46 Lastly, fava beans can be worked into bread,47 although favism, an anemic condition resulting from eating raw fava beans, can cause headache and blurred vision, fava bread is clearly cooked. As for the “plants for the most part rich in stupefying and hypnotic qualities” that Camporesi mentions throughout his text, a brief list will serve: lotus (water lily, not the jujube-like fruit of the lotophagoi), marjoram, mugwort, roses, violets, borage, rosemary flowers, and saffron.48 Even if these were hallucinogenic, which they are not, they were certainly never prescribed for the poor. Even henbane and nightshade, recognized poisons, though they find their way into pharmaceutical use, were not proposed as famine foods. Bruyerin Champier, for example, mentions that fierce hunger may drive men to eat not only cabbage, radishes, and onions but wild vegetables, even hemlock and henbane, but these are clearly poisonous and should only be used as medicine.49 Other wild foods made into flour such as acorns, water lilies, cattails, clover, and sowthistle are not only harmless but quite tasty and are even promoted by modern wild food enthusiasts. In final consideration, did dieticians really care about famine and poverty? Malnourishment was rarely a major concern, certainly nothing

44. Sebizius, 238 – 42, discusses several famine foods and disapproves of all of them. About linseed or flax he writes, “Middleburgensium in Zelandiis exemplo ostendit. Nam cùm propter frugum inopiam plerique ex civibus pane et libis ex semine lini coctis vescerentur, distenda iis fuerunt hypochondria, et facies aliaeque partes tumefactae. . . .” Regarding lupines he says, “Dubium tamen non est, quin annonae caritatem famem pellere queat: cùm multa quoque alia, longé et amariora, et deteriora, et insalubriora vis fama devorare cogat.” Of all these, he only recognizes cannabis as causing delirium if eaten in great quantity, and suggests, with Fuchs, that it is a great error to give sick people hempseed broth. 45. Cardano, De usu ciborum, 57. 46. Ugo Benzi, Regole dalla sanita, annotated by Giovanni Lodovico Bertaudo [Bertaldi] (Turin: Heirs of Gio. Domenico Tarino, 1618), 355: “Il Lupino non è usato da noi, se non da poverelli, e figlioli, è di poco nutrimento.” 47. Durante, 77. 48. Camporesi, 140 – 41. 49. Bruyerin Champier, 32.

200

Food and Class

like the problem of gluttony. Sylvius’s diet for poor scholars and his brief famine diet discussed above seem more like academic exercises than actual working manuals, and apart from a brief and rare famine diet by Hugh Plat, they are unique. Many of these authors did have firsthand knowledge of famine, especially as a consequence of war, and several describe the disruption in moving terms. Bachot knew about the civil wars in France and repeats du Bartas’s vivid description of starvation as a kind of self-digestion. “Oh strange gluttony, which fills the belly by consuming the belly, diminishes the body to make it increase.” 50 Sebizius also comments on the deserted fields left in the wake of the Thirty Years War.51 Such comments are not untypical, as is not surprising for such a turbulent era. But apart from these violent and obvious disasters, the regular intermittent subsistence crises that ordinarily occurred every decade or two appear not to have been worthy of comment by the dietary authors. Perhaps they never considered that these would pose any problem for their relatively well-off readers. Or perhaps as part of the regular order of nature, they assumed that those people affected had long ago learned how to cope, as is evident from the use of the many wild foods mentioned above. In some cases, it is clear that the dietary authors chose to willfully distort the problem of poverty or at least assuaged their own guilt by evoking the image of happy rustic country folk, living in health on a simple diet of brown bread and cheese or even just bread and water. Petronio insists that that the lower classes are agile, robust, and healthy because they eat nothing else.52 This idea of rustic simplicity and health appears to be akin to the pastoral genre that idealizes country life as a way of ignoring or rationalizing harsh reality. Simple folk were also thought to be free from the weighty cares that burden greater people and cause anxiety and sickness. Bulleyn’s comments are revealing: “Ye poore sylly shephard, doth pleasantly pipe with his shepe, whan mighty princes do fight amonge their subjectes, and breake manye slepes in golden beds, whan bakers in bags, and brewers in bottels, do snorte upon hard strawe,

50. Bachot, 319: “O gloutonnie estrange pour remplir ses boyaux, elle mange elle amoindroit son corps pour le faire plus grand.” 51. Sebizius, 212: “An non per annonae caritatem eadem ab egenis et ruricolis in eosdem aptatur? Factum sanè hoc pluries vidimus in Alsatia nostra, hisce praesertim turbis bellicis, quibus agri infiniti fuerunt deserti.” 52. Petronio, 146: “contadini, il quali con il mangiare solamente pane, et bevere acqua, sempre sono agili, robusti, et sani.” See also Lessius, 75; Hessus, p. 36v.

Food and Class

201

fearing no sodaine mishappe.” 53 Of course, bakers and brewers had troubles of their own, but the assumption that simple people are naturally happy is a convenient way of avoiding any real confrontation with their suffering. The idea that a simple monotonous diet confers health, and therefore such people are in no real danger, also seems to be an intentional disregard. Most authors mention famine foods only so that their readers can be sure to avoid them. And it is clear that most authors did not think the problems of poverty were their problems. To return to the main thesis of this chapter, just as period 2 and 3 authors sought to instruct their readers how to avoid debasing foods, they also increasingly delineated the food habits of other social groups, which reflects the growing stratification of this society. The dietaries were becoming intensely self-conscious about being unique, distinct from those of both the poor and the rich as well as other groups such as priests and Jews. The distinctive diets of these various groups in turn reflect a more intense cultural division in Europe and a growing anxiety over the shifting boundaries of class. This is more than a bifurcation of high and low culture but a proliferation of many separate cultures, each striving for a unique identity. This is not to suggest that Medieval and early Renaissance culture was homogenous but merely that sixteenth- and seventeenth-century culture became more divided and more aware of social differences as expressed through clothes, speech, manners, and especially food. For example, priests and monks were consistently defined by their eating habits, and in period 2 and 3 works they are excluded from consideration in the dietary literature. Period 1 theorists did mention that abstinence can be more dangerous than repletion, but none was willing to openly criticize rigorous fasting. Perhaps their image of monastic foodways was anything but austere. By the time of the Reformation, as is hardly surprising, Protestant authors have no qualms about condemning the practice of extensive fasting. There is a big difference between temperance or moderate abstinence and outright self-mortification. As Pictorius points out, fasting through avarice or “vain religion” only wastes the radical humor and hastens sickness and death.54 Monasteries were also often criticized for their excessively precise rules and meal times, which were seen as ultimately harmful to the body if the regimen 53. Bulleyn, p. L2r. 54. Pictorius, 17.

202

Food and Class

was suddenly changed in any way. All strict regimens, like the diaeta statica promoted by Lessius, were also rejected as too precise and contrary to the basic tenets of good diet.55 As Hippocrates himself counseled, overly strict rules can be more dangerous than none at all. And seen as worst of all were the vegetarian orders such as the Adamites, who were considered “religious without knowledge, and timorous without occasion.” 56 Such people shorten their lives and do violence to nature, ignoring the laws of God, which after the flood allowed human beings to eat flesh. Both medical doctrine and religion, according to these authors, demand eating meat. Sebizius explains that Carthusians because of their fish diet become phlegmatic, somnolent, fat— even obese—and oblivious and suffer from numerous diseases such as apoplexy, paralysis, spasms, catarrh, and arthritis, which is only exacerbated by the fact that they get little exercise and drink diluted wine.57 Another problem arises on the question of Lent. Apart from repugnance toward the idea of successive periods of austerity and indulgence, the medical rules concerning diet according to season were somewhat different from those demanded by the holy calendar of fasts and feasts. Logically, in the cold and moist season of late winter and early spring, one should eat hot and drying foods in larger quantities, meat in particular. However, although nothing could be more harmful than a diet of cold fish and indigestible legumes in this season, few authors openly contradicted the Lenten restrictions, and they remained in force even in many Protestant countries. But an antagonism nonetheless existed between these two systems from the start. For most authors, though, the real problem with religious men and women was not asceticism but gluttony. Even Lessius himself, a Jesuit priest, warns his devout readers not to glut themselves at church functions, weddings, and solemn feasts.58 Excess seems to have been the real temptation for priests. Moffett compares “our old abby lubbers” with the grotesque Emperor Maximinus, who “did eat till he sweat.” 59 Even most Catholic authors in period 3 maintained a distance from priestly habits, considering priests peculiar people for whom dietary rules were irrele55. Bachot, 423; Brooke, 100. 56. Moffett, 31. 57. Sebizius, 1431: “Quia jugis et assidua piscium esitatio, qualis consueta est Carthusianis, reddit homines phlegmaticos, somnolentos, pingues atque obesos, obliviosos, corpore animoque tardos, colore albidos. . . .” 58. Lessius, 30. 59. Moffett, 273.

Food and Class

203

vant. The habits of the elite clergy, however, were probably scarcely distinguishable from those of the court. Take, for example, Nuñez de Oria’s comments about the cardinals and grandees in Rome who take great pains to raise delicate milk-fed veal.60 The point is that these authors excluded priests from their distinct audience. Priests and scholars were no longer kindred souls and certainly not ones on which to base a diet. Many works went further in singling out foods appropriate only for particular professions. Sailors were believed able to digest “calaminarie” in lieu of better meat; elsewhere they were entitled to garlic to purify their water and tobacco to prevent scurvy and hunger, although it is forbidden to tossepots [drunks].61 Buttes recognizes that “Garlicke is of most speciall use for Sea-faring men: a most excellent preservative against all infection proceeding from the nasty savor of the pump or sincke, and of tainted meates which Mariners are faine to eate for fault of better.” Although otherwise a problematic food, it is also good against seasickness: Garlick, onion, and Leekes, are very holesome, but their savor is passing loathsome and offensive. Wherefore some have thought of a medicament to take away the sent of them. But none like Syr Thomas Mores. To take away the smell of Onions, eate Leekes: and to convince your Leekes, eate a clowe or two of Garlicke: and if then Garlicke breath be strong, choke him with a piece of a T. with a u. with an r. and a d.62

Salted herring and dried beef are fine, and in fact render sailors’ bodies firmer, as is ship biscuit, which dries sailors’ unnaturally moist humors. Obviously these foods were also among the only imperishable items of the day, and sailors existed on them out of necessity. Whether seamen appreciated this diet, one can only guess, but a popular ditty suggests otherwise. “A pane biscocto, à medico indocto / à fulgere, tempestate, defende nos Domine” [From biscuit bread, from unlearned physicians / from lightening and tempests, defend us Lord.] 63 But some sailors, no doubt the wealthiest, were also provisioned with essences of spices and flowers to be used in syrups and conserves while out at sea, and even lemons. Hugh Plat’s broadside advertisement says “Here I may not omit the preparation of the juice of Limons . . . because it hath of late been found by that worthy knight Sir James Lancaster to be an assured rem60. 61. 62. 63.

Nuñez de Oria, p. 94v. Venner, 79; Vaughan, 139. Buttes, pp. H5r–H7r. I have not been able to find this turd joke in More’s writings. Joubert, Erreurs populaires, book 2, 148.

204

Food and Class

edy in the scurby.” 64 This is a 150 years before James Lind advocated lemons as a way of preventing scurvy. The point is that sailors were understood to need a unique diet of food, expressly forbidden ordinary dieters. This was as much a matter of social prejudice as it was physiology. To eat like a sailor would make one dry, rough, and salty like sailors themselves. As another unique group with its own dietary habits, the Jews were often singled out by dietary writers. Few authors discussed kosher laws at length, but they did mention specific foods associated with the Jews. The most common of these were salted duck and goose. Pisanelli believes that these account for the Jew’s melancholy character, pale complexion, and bad customs.65 Salted buffalo (the European water buffalo, not the American bison) is also associated with the Jews by Petronio, although he admits that some nobles eat it also.66 Moffett mentions that the Jews appreciate carp roe because they are forbidden to eat the unscaled sturgeon.67 Aversion to pork is also frequently noted, as might be expected. Savonarola recounts a story of a Jew recently converted to Christianity who tastes prosciutto for the first time and finds it good.68 As a rule, though, the Jews had always maintained themselves as a separate community, so these associations reveal little about the progressive stratification of society. The fact that it was usually the later authors who noted these differences does, however, seem to reflect a growing awareness of distinct foodways. Many other specific associations point to the fact that food was increasingly invested with social meaning in the late sixteenth century, and by the seventeenth century noting these differences became an obsession. Bachot, for example, describes nobles, financiers, and ecclesiastics 64. Plat, Certaine Philosophical Preparations of Foode and Beverage for Sea-men (1607) Only two copies of this rare broadside are known to exist, one at the Wellcome Institute in London, the other at UCLA. James Lind’s famous Treatise on Scurvy appeared in 1753, and citrus was not a standard issue for the British Navy until the end of the century. 65. Pisanelli, 78 –79, on salted goose writes “Gli Hebrei, perche spesso mangiano, sono sempre melanconici, di tristo colore, e di pessimi costumi.” Moffett, 86, also repeats the opinion of Jason Pratensis that Jews have so hard a flesh, foul skin, loathsome savor, and crooked conditions because they eat so much goose. He agrees that their exceeding watchfulness, moody disposition, and blackness of flesh denotes melancholy. 66. Petronio, 170 –71: “bufalo . . . è cibo da Giudei . . . pare che siano in qual che conto non solo apresso gli Hebrei ma anco apresso molti nobili Romani.” 67. Moffett, 32. 68. Savonarola, Libreto, p. 29v: “E qui non voglio passare la riposta del judeo facto Christiano in candia che cossi gustando de quelli persuti ne le sue prime nozze disse. Se ha vesse creduto la carne del porco esser cossi bona.”

Food and Class

205

as gluttons. He even describes specific meals as linked to certain professions: the soldier’s breakfast, the lawyer’s dinner, the merchant’s supper, the gossip’s nibble, and the nurse’s collation.69 Cogan also mentions the custom of epicurean “merchants to make great suppers, and to sit eating and talking, for the space of three or four houres . . . carousing and quaffing until midnight.” 70 In the same vein, Sebizius notes that while veal is good for the delicate, beef is appropriate for porters, rustics, sailors, and diggers. Elsewhere he identifies the unique dietary habits of judges, public servants, and even tailors.71 This tendency to identify eating habits by profession is indicative of growing social awareness and the separation of distinct eating styles. The most persistent dietary associations in periods 2 and 3, and the most significant for this discussion, revolve around court. The writers and readers of this genre no longer considered themselves aspirants to the upper culture, and they consciously dissociated themselves from the eating style and symbols of courtly refinement. In fact, these authors were usually not connected to courtly patrons, and this is reflected in their rejection of most extravagant foods. This group’s self-consciousness is not merely directed against the peasant, laborer, merchant, and Jew but against the courtier as well. The most obvious and ancient symbols of nobility were large game animals. The usual image involves a roast boar or venison presented in a hall to a large group of retainers, the meat carved and apportioned according to rank. Naturally those seated closest to His Lordship at the high table were the most honored guests. This stereotypical meal was no longer the fashion by the sixteenth century, although game was still most often associated with the nobility. Few others, naturally, would have been able to afford a whole animal, and often they were actively forbidden such foods by law. Among the rural nobility, hunting certainly remained a major pastime, but game was no longer the most pervasive symbol of wealth. Nonetheless, it is usually forbidden to the reader of regimens by periods 2 and 3. Magnificent fowl such as peacocks, swans, and pheasants were also 69. Bachot, 384: “desjuner de gensdarmes de chasseurs et d’escholiers,” “disner d’Avocat,” “souper de marchant,” “gouster de commere,” “colation de nourrice.” 70. Cogan, 189 –90. 71. Sebizius, 586, on veal: “magis tamen competit hominibus, qui in otio et deliciis vivunt, quique per se tenerioris delicatiorisque sunt constitutionis, quàm bajulis, rusticis, nautis, fossoribus et aliis, qui duros subeunt labores, quibus bubula caro est convenientior.” On public servants, 1393; tailors on 1370.

206

Food and Class

stereotypical foods served at court, but these larger fowl were increasingly condemned by dieticians as tough and difficult to digest, much as venison is rejected. Large fish and seafood such as sturgeon, baked porpoise, and whale were also singled out as courtly foods, along with lamprey eels and oysters. Nearly all the aphrodisiac foods were also associated with the court by period 2 and 3 authors. Not only expensive foods but also exquisite types of food were identified as well: asparagus, artichokes, and most frequently melons and peaches. The record of kings and nobles who killed themselves eating fruit often reads like a genealogical chart. Moffett warns us about strawberries: “Let every man take heed by Melchior Duke of Brunswick how he eateth too much of them, who is reported to have burst asunder at Rostock with his surfeiting upon them.” 72 Albert II of Bohemia died after eating too many melons, and according to Platina, Pope Paul II was struck by a fatal apoplexy after a supper of melons.73 Several English kings were purported to have died after eating eels. The consistent image is that of a voluptuous, slothful court, content “to wallow in their disordered and lascivious appetites, tendryng and cockeryng their wanton carkases” as do “a great many Princes and Potentates who live without checke at their pleasure and ease.” 74 Gluttony, sloth, and perverse tastes become the focus of overwhelming criticism of court life. “Pearl-dissolving courtiers” 75 with their curious sauces, dragées, musk and amber garnishes, wine with snow, and hartshorn and cockscomb dainties 76 are consistently condemned as gluttonous. For the first time the banquet itself receives the full impact of the dietary tirades. Surfeit, inebriation, a harmful variety of foods, and expensive and unhealthy dishes eaten without order late into the night are all condemned. Although these criticisms are based on sound principles, but they are only in this period directed specifically toward courtly banquets. Clearly the authors of dietaries no longer travel in such circles and

72. Moffett, 229. 73. Duchesne, 393. 74. Grataroli, p. B4v. 75. Lessius, J. Jackson’s letter to the translator. 76. Nonnius, 190, mentions that the king enjoys hartshorn boiled, cut up, breaded, and fried: “Quis hoc primum excogitavit? cuius hoc portentosae gulae inventum.” Regarding cockscomb, 273: “hodierno etiam die, luxus cristas variè condire invenit.” But the author concludes that it has no flavor, and is crass and pituitious. Castellanus, 217, also mentions that Heliogabalus loved them and “in his etiam hodie multi delicias faciunt,” but they are difficult to digest and not nourishing.

Food and Class

207

feel free to offer criticism. Perhaps a sense of exclusion only heightened some of these authors’ feelings of spite. It is rather like the priestly denunciation of sex, made all the more vitriolic through abstinence and secret envy. When punishment ensues, either in the form of damnation for those who fail to heed the priest, or bodily illness for courtiers who are reckless at the table, it is easy to imagine that both priest and physician enjoyed what Nietzsche called schadenfreude, or spiteful joy, when misfortune strikes the sinner.77 How else can one account for the rabid accusations and resonant cries of “I told you so?” They serve to comfort these authors and their readers, assuring them that any deprivation they may suffer will be compensated for in the end: with health, longevity, and clear rational thoughts they can feel superior and distinct from the extravagant courtier who suffers torments and illness despite all his wealth. Gazius is the first author in the Renaissance to explicitly criticize the rich. As an academic at Padua, without courtly connections and thus quite unlike other period 1 authors, it is not surprising that he was willing to take this position. Specifically, he denounces competitive entertaining among nobles, overextending hospitality, and their persistence in ignoring all the rules against eating diverse foods at one sitting.78 Through the sixteenth century such criticisms intensified, and by period 3 they are dietary stock-in-trade and scarcely any author neglects to censure the court and its gluttonous habits. The reader of regimens was expected to identify with these tirades as a matter of course. This reflects a selfconscious appreciation of distinction as a group. A few examples should suffice. Menapius mentions that banquets are thrown without regard to expense. They not only impoverish the hosts but break both body and spirit. Nothing can satisfy the banquet-goer’s ravenous appetite, notes Fridaevallis, not even hedgehogs and dormice.79 This was not meant to be merely a reference to Apicius and the perverse habits of the ancient Romans. Savonarola mentions in the fifteenth century that these animals are neither good nor harmful but are 77. See Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, part 2, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale. (New York: Random House, 1967.) It should be noted that modern fitness fanatics are not immune to comparable feelings of self-righteousness. 78. Gazius, p. D4r: “cum nollint potentes quod diximus de omissione diversitatis ciborum ullis persuasionibus vel rationibus observare. Cum eis videretur qui non solum nobilitatem sed divitias ipsas amisissent et eo magis propter hospitantes quam ad eorum domos non raro solent pervenire. . . .” 79. Menapius, 475: “caruerant enim solicitudine dispensandae domus, et epularum largitate, quae et corpus frangunt et animum”; Fridaevallis, 145 – 46.

208

Food and Class

nonetheless eaten by gluttons. According to Petronio, they were still being eaten in the 1590s and were “greatly desired by gluttons.” 80 Cogan complains about the length of great feasts: “At this day, such as be of great estate, Ecclesiasticall or Temporall, they may by authoritie sitte so long in the glorious chariot of intemperance until they be carried as prisoners into the Dungeon of Surfet. . . .” Insatiable luxury and gourmandise grows continually more perverse and intense until all life seems but one endless meal, and finally the belly comes to be worshipped as a god.81 Rabelais calls its devotees “gastrolaters.” Although sumptuary laws were probably never rigorously enforced, Cogan does seem to imply that, beyond all reason, great men are the only ones legally allowed to indulge in such excess. It was also the strangeness of the foods eaten at court that piqued the dieticians’ ire. Though benign nature has supplied humanity with such useful and nutritious foods, insane gluttons seek out frogs, snails, fungi, oysters, and other abominable products of corruption. They even dare to eat such manifestly harmful foods like eggplant, which even animals will not touch.82 Apart from these condemnations of gluttony, there were also subtle shifts in the specific outlines of what were considered courtly foods. As fashions changed, and particularly as elite foods became the object of emulation among the middle ranks of society, the court was constantly prompted to reinvent its own symbols of grandeur. All this was reflected in the dietary regimens as the details of their criticism changed. The social meaning of food thus constantly evolved as status symbols were sought out by the wealthy and socially mobile and then consequently devalued at court. This serves to have only heightened the significance 80. Savonarola, Libreto, 31. Petronio, 174: “Al tempo de’Romani non era licito mangiar questo animale, ma hora è molto desiderato da i leccardi.” Why he thinks they were forbidden in ancient times is not entirely clear. The Romans even raised them on a large scale. 81. Cogan, 186; Bachot, 381: “Car toute leur vie ne semble qu’un repas.” Duchesne, 345 – 49, “qu’on employe pour la gueule, comme chose dommageable, et à la santé du corps, et mesme au salut des ames . . . aujourd’huy . . . on fait un Dieu de la Pance.” He also offers many examples of those who ate themselves to death, among them kings. 82. Sebizius, 1055: “Ranis, terrae sordibus, cochleis, sylvarum ulceribus et scabie, fungis, maris muco, ostreis, avium quarundam stercoribus, aliisque monstrosis et abominabilibus dapibus in gratiam insaientis gulae vesci.” And referring to eggplants, melanzana or malum insanum [insane apple], 348: “Debere enim illos vel nomen statim absterrere. Sed hoc, qui cupediis, scitamentis, ganeatisque ciborum deliciis, quibus appetitus irritatur, non curant. Imò ne stercora quidem brutorum devorare verentur, dummodò ita sunt parata, ut palato sapiant.”

Food and Class

209

of distinct food styles, which proliferated, accentuating class divisions. And among these various food aesthetics, the healthy way of eating as proposed by nutritionists became increasingly circumscribed, narrow, and unique. It became, to borrow a term used by Paul Fieldhouse, a highly defined “food ideology” consciously opposed to all others and reflective of a distinct world outlook.83 However, despite antagonisms, food ideologies do interact and borrow from each other, much as political ideologies do. This means that foods or recipes are often successively adopted by different groups, thus hastening the evolution of the social meaning of food. For example, in more modern times a tortilla may have begun as a specifically ethnic food among Latinos, reminding them of their heritage and delineating them as a unique group. But later it was adopted by adventurous AngloAmericans, subsequently popularized as cheap fast food, then revived in a new “authentic” form among aficionados, and even raised in status to a “gourmet” item. What is essentially the exact same food can mean different things to different people, and its meaning changes over time. It is even evaluated differently by nutritional scientists in successive periods. Once considered marginally nourishing and only a food for the poor, today the traditional preparation of corn dough, masa, particularly in combination with beans, is recognized as offering a complete nutritional package. Just as manners, clothing styles, and fashions in art and music experience an organic evolution as they are adopted by various strata in the social hierarchy, so the meaning of food also experiences a gradual development. By tracing these changes in a food’s popularity among various social groups, the distribution of power within that society and who craves access to or rejects the symbols of power can be discerned. This is precisely what Norbert Elias sought to discover by examining the development of manners, why certain groups emulated them, and how the “threshold of repugnance” was continually extended among more and more people.84 In other words, why did the courtly and effete fashion of eating with a fork make its way down the social strata until even83. Paul Fieldhouse, Food and Nutrition: Customs and Culture (London: Croom Helm, 1986), 43: “Food ideology is the sum of the attitudes, beliefs and customs and taboos affecting the diet of a given group. It is what people think of as food; what effect they think food will have on their health and what they think is suitable for different ages and groups.” This passage cites E. F. Eckstein, Food, People, and Nutrition (Westport: AVI, 1980). 84. Margaret Visser, The Rituals of Dinner (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991) expands upon this idea by focusing on the social mechanisms which enforce table manners.

210

Food and Class

tually everyone considered it indispensable? These shifts, of course, do not always proceed down the social hierarchy. Sometimes a popular or rustic item can come into vogue or be heralded by physicians as the latest wonder food, only to be later forgotten. We have yet see in our own day what will become of oats as the major weapon in our battle against cholesterol. In the Renaissance, the clearest example of the evolution of food symbolism is the role of spices in cuisine and medicine. In medieval society they were the distinguishing mark of wealth and status. Pepper, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg, along with ginger and saffron, were considered universal condiments and were used liberally on all types of food. Spices were also obscenely expensive, and only the wealthiest people could afford to use them either as flavoring or as medicinal correctives. In period 1 dietaries, the symbolic association of spices with wealth remained undiminished. They were still considered ideal and whenever possible were preferred over lowly native condiments, such as herbs. Yet in period 2 and especially in period 3, by the later sixteenth century, dieticians began to warn their readers to use spices sparingly. Estienne, for example, says cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and mace “ought to be used very little.” 85 Hot and acute spices like pepper, ginger, and cardamom are also dangerous in excess. More revealingly, though, he mentions that even rustics have access to these now. Were spices devalued among elites and physicians because they became cheaper and more accessible? Food historians offer conflicting evidence on this point. The volume of spices entering Europe after the Portuguese made direct contact with the East did increase, but it does not appear that their cost necessarily went down as a result. The fall of Egypt to the Turks in 1518, and restricted access to European merchants, may have served to keep prices high due to lack of competition among suppliers. Strict monopolies of the cinnamon market by the Portuguese and later of cloves by the Dutch may have had a similar effect of keeping prices artificially high.86 Perhaps this is why spices remained popular among a broad clientele. They were still expensive but far more accessible. At any rate, spices did go out of fashion among the very wealthy, and their former status as medicinal wonder foods was also 85. Estienne, 77: “parcissimus usus esse debet” and “etiam rusticis in consuetidinem pertracta sint.” These comments are embedded in a criticism of rare and exotic aromatics, a topic which will be discussed at greater length in the next chapter. 86. Mintz; O’Hara-May, 23–24.

Food and Class

211

increasingly ignored by dietary authors. Although devalued by these groups, popularity of spices among the middling ranks of society only increased, in turn bolstering physicians’ impression that these products were being abused. The fate of “grains of paradise,” or malaguetta pepper, from the west coast of Africa, illustrates this process. In the Middle Ages it was among the most prized of spices by cooks and physicians. After an increase in supply, it went out of fashion. By the sixteenth century, Cogan considered it cheap, though still “good for old folks.” 87 In the seventeenth century it disappeared altogether and dietaries make no mention of it. In fact, its importation was eventually banned by the Portuguese, who feared that it would be used as a cheap substitute for real pepper and cut into their sales. In modern times it is almost completely unknown.88 Canella suffers the same fate, devalued as a cheap substitute for real cinnamon, according to Pisanelli.89 In fact, few Americans realize that what they buy ground is actually canella rather than true cinnamon. The point is that both these products dropped in status in the Renaissance as their price decreased and more people were able to afford them. Saffron was similarly devalued socially. In the fifteenth century it was touted as the ideal flavoring for scholars. By the seventeenth century we are told that it even harms the intellect. “His narcotic smell doth offend the braine in such wise, that it maketh dull and stupid,” says Vaughan. Pisanelli concurs.90 In all these examples, nutritional theory as one food ideology among many, responded to the changing social meaning of food and adjusted accordingly. Sugar provides another example of a food whose social meaning shifts as it becomes more available and is used more extensively by lower social groups. Sidney W. Mintz’s classic study, Sweetness and Power, traces this process to modern times. For our purposes, the decisive turning point occurred in the sixteenth century, as sugar plantations began to proliferate in the New World: shipments from Brazil to Lisbon assured a steady and affordable supply.91 This is exactly the turning point of medicinal estimations of sugar. In the fifteenth century sugar was considered tempered, nutritious, easily assimilated and it even fortifies the in87. Cogan, 111. 88. Some food historians even make the mistake of identifying “grains” as cardamom, among them O’Hara-May, 24. 89. Pisanelli, 117. 90. Vaughan, 79; Pisanelli, 120 –21. 91. Mintz, 33.

212

Food and Class

nate heat.92 In the 1560s, Fridaevallis mentions that sugar is being used on every food, not just in the context of banquets, but for everyday use. Living close to Antwerp, then in its heyday as the center of the refining industry, his opinion is not surprising. After the sack of Antwerp by Spanish troops in 1576, the industry shifted to London, where it was apparently still in vogue at court, as is evident from Queen Elizabeth’s teeth, which were reported to be black from eating too much sugar.93 Medical opinion, in this wave of intensified use and extensive popularity, changed its mind about sugar. It was subsequently considered to burn the blood and corrupts the teeth and was recommended not be used “in ordinary meats.” Sauces with sugar were only used “to oblectate the palate” by “ingurgitating belly-gods.” By 1699, we are informed by John Evelyn that “now sugar is almost wholly banish’d from all, except the more effeminate Palates.” 94 The popularity of sugar proved to be its downfall as a medicinal and an elite food. It could no longer symbolize either wealth or health. The fortune of several other foods proves to be equally as interesting. The fashion for eating flowers in fifteenth-century Italy appears to have had little or no impact in the sixteenth century. Yet in the seventeenth century there abound references to salads of rosemary and borage flowers, rose and violet confections, and stews made with marigolds.95 Perhaps medical authors merely followed culinary fashion on this topic. As in our own day, the culinary use of flowers seems to coincide with their use in alternative medicine. The medicinal use of oranges also seems to have followed the courtly fashion for orangeries, especially in France after Amboise and Blois set the trend. Regimes also increasingly promoted oranges in this period. Duchesne mentions that they are grown indoors 92. Gazius, p. C5v. He also mentions how many people are deceived when they travel all the way to Venice to buy confections for weddings, only to discover back in Padua that they are hollow, without a soft sugary center, p. O5v. This must have been a considerable expense for his to have mentioned it here. 93. Fridaevallis, 52 –53; Mintz, 45 and 134; McGee, 424; Nonnius in Louvain, 152, remarks, “Patrum memoria detectis primum Fortunatis insulis, mox et America, ingens eius proventus cepit esse, adeo ut non solum nitidoris vitae instrumentum sit, sed paene in quotidianum victum venerit.” England may have lagged behind the continent in the use of sugar, which appears to have still been considered a universal condiment, even by some medical authors. Buttes claims, p. O5v that “no kind of meat refuseth Sugar for his condiment, but only the inwards of beasts.” Tripe apparently takes on an odor of fresh ox dung when cooked with sugar. 94. Duchesne, 484; Vaughan, 77; Venner, 106; John Evelyn, Acetaria (London: B. Tooke, 1699). 95. Massonio, 367–70; Venner, 152 –55.

Food and Class

213

in the Tuilleries and that citrus “being the most beautiful of fruits, most useful, whose juice is commonly used on all good tables” are also excellent in the morning to dissolve gums, gravel, and stones in the body.96 Not all courtly fashions were automatically denounced. In northern Europe and elsewhere, citrus fruits retain their popularity and nutritional role to this day. For the most part, however, courtly cuisine developed an aesthetic entirely opposed to nutritional theory. Whereas in the fifteenth century, medicine and cuisine went hand in hand at court, in the sixteenth century these two styles and the social groups that adhered to them became polar opposites. Jean-Louis Flandrin calls this process “the liberation of gourmandise” from dietary medicine and correctly situates the long process in the sixteenth century with the decisive break in the seventeenth.97 That the two styles began to drift by period 2 is evident by comparing dietary and culinary texts. In period 1, for example, Savonarola’s dietary produced for the Este court in Ferrara still combines medical and culinary concerns. Yet, when compared with Messisbugo’s Banchetti, produced for the same court one hundred years later, the growing distance of medical and culinary literature is clear. Banchetti, a description of actual meals served at court, reveals a total disregard for dietary rules. First, there is no logical order to the foods served in each course. Foods of varying qualities and textures are served together, and many unhealthy foods such as mushrooms, aged cheese, squash, and melons make an appearance. Beyond this, the sheer variety and quantity of food served is staggering. One banquet laid out for fifty-four people, during Lent so there was no meat, consisted of over a dozen courses including anywhere from 15 to 54 individual servings of 140 separate foods. This comes to over 2,500 plates.98 Even more curious is the fact that all types of food appear in every course: fish, eggs, vegetables, fruits, sweets, and pastries. Nearly every dietary rule outlined by Savonarola a century earlier is flouted. The only apt description of this culinary style would have to be mannerist. There is an extraordinary profusion and diversity of strange mo-

96. Duchesne, 384 and 408. 97. Flandrin, “From Dietetics to Gastronomy: The Liberation of the Gourmet,” in Food: A Culinary History, ed. Jean-Louis Flandrin and Massimo Montanari (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 418 –32. 98. Christoforo di Messisbugo, Banchetti (Ferrara: Giovanni Buglhat e Antonio Hucher Compagni, 1549), Banquet for 20 May 1529.

214

Food and Class

tifs. The effect is not quite the same as the dazzling spectacles so beloved by the previous centuries, such as golden peacocks spewing flames, but rather there is a studied obscurity and an almost numbing repetition of decorative elements. The same dishes appear over and over in slightly altered form, displaying the chef’s expertise and ingenuity.99 One might even say a horror vacui inspires a bewildering profusion of culinary themes that are twisted into endless variations, crowding the aesthetic space. It is no coincidence that Ariosto, a quintessentially mannerist poet, wrote for this same court and that his play “La Cassaria” was performed at the banquet thrown on June 24, 1529. Present that day was the Marchesa of Mantua, whose own Palazzo del Tè, perhaps the most sublime expression of mannerist architecture and design, was still under construction by Giulio Romano. In all these media, the content is deliberately obscured with a sense of sophisticated panache that is more concerned to display elegant form. This style is also intentionally distancing, which not only alienates the uninitiated, but serves to distinguish and delineate the boundaries of the group and those who “get it.” Clearly the physician is no longer welcome in this charmed circle, and as outsiders, the dietary writers feel free to criticize such excess. This is merely one example of the cultural divergence of courtly and healthy eating styles. The standards of gastronomy and the dictates of medicine grew so far apart by the late sixteenth century that even Platina’s work on “honest pleasure” was retitled as Le grand cuisinier, implying that its contents would now mostly appeal to gourmands rather than the health-conscious. Honesty and pleasure no longer seemed compatible. A good chef was no longer an asset but a liability to health. This entire process of separation ended decisively with the advent of classical haute cuisine in the mid-seventeenth century. With the publication of La Varenne’s Cuisinier François in 1651—followed by the works of Bonnefons, de Lune, and Massialot— dietary considerations were completely excised from cookery. Healthy food was now part of an ideology entirely opposed to cuisine. Finally, there were many other distinctive eating styles that developed and in turn reflected a further splintering of European culture and society. Alluded to already, the rustic aesthetic or pastoral cuisine came into

99. John Shearman, Mannerism (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967). Shearman’s succinct definition of this style is also perfectly applicable to culinary fashions of the period. There are probably equally as interesting connections between other periods in art history and culinary history.

Food and Class

215

fashion perhaps as a conscious rejection of the overly refined ways of court or as a temporary respite from them. We find Aretino praising a simple radish and Ronsard musing upon salad.100 Massonio mentions the courtly fashion of eating “rustic salads” composed of spicy, wild, piquant, and bitter herbs.101 Perhaps this constitutes a safe thrill akin to “playing shepherd” on stage. That is, there is no real danger of social debasement because the pastoral setting is entirely fictional. Courtiers eat wild herbs because it is quaint, not because they have to. If anything, this is a hypersophistication, which may also explain why courtiers were reported in the seventeenth century to eat rye, oats, and vetches.102 It was probably the same sort who retired to their tumbledown cottages and donned country garb. This rustic aesthetic appears to have been a perennial phenomenon. Savonarola mentions that the readers of bucolic verse rush out to eat jujubes.103 These rustic excursions are, of course, meant to be anything but egalitarian. An equally interesting culinary phenomenon, again inspired by literature, was the revival of classical customs. Among humanists, and even with some dietary authors, the temptation to hold proper symposia, observe ancient meal times, or sit within triclinia on proper Roman dining couches sometimes inspired reenactments. The neoclassical convivia differed notably from ordinary banquets because they were consciously egalitarian. Attendees should be close friends, in number no fewer than the graces (three) and no more than the muses (twelve).104 In contrast to banquets, there was to be no hierarchy of seating, no drunken carousing or gluttonous excess, but rather simplicity, good conversation, and healthy food. The details of such gatherings are unfortunately neglected by dietary writers, but they do at any rate reveal a conscious ethic and aesthetic of revived ancient customs to contrast with the usual courtly banquet. Lastly, another distinct eating style also criticized by the dietary au100. Mennell, 71–74. The fact that “classical” order was introduced into cuisine as Mennell suggests should not be taken to imply that ancient order was revived. In fact, seventeenth-century order is in most ways opposed to both ancient practice and what physicians recommend. 101. Jean-François Revel, Culture and Cuisine, trans. Helen R. Lane (New York: Da Capo Press, 1982), 135; Jeanneret, 11, who cites Ronsard, Oeuvres completes, vol. 15, 78. 102. Duchesne, 204; Abraham, 21: “avoyne pilée, soit bien venu és tables des grands seigneurs.” Even cream-based desserts appear to have been first considered a rustic dish. Petronio, 144, on cicerchia: “passa per le tavole de’ poveri solamente, se bene qual che volta, s’usa anco da’ricchi, per qualche stravagante appetito.” 103. Savonarola, Libreto, p. 15v. 104. Moulin, 209.

216

Food and Class

thors approaches what we might call “fast food.” Usually it is associated with taverns (ganae) and cookshops (popinae), the foods most frequently associated with these establishments are meat pies, salted meats like ham, and other salted foods, which as barmen still know provoke thirst. Bruyerin Champier mentions quick dishes that include onions and garlic; Nonnius’s association is with pork dishes, oxshanks, turbot, and carp.105 Perhaps these eating houses more closely resembled bistros than taverns. The cookshops clearly catered to a “take away” crowd as well. Whatever they were in practice, dieticians wanted nothing to do with them. Cardano, for example, specifically condemns the gluttony of cookshops and even associates Platina’s work with this kind of cooking.106 In conclusion, the proliferation of eating styles, as well as the association of an increasing number of foods with specific social classes in period 2 and especially period 3 reflects a growing self-consciousness of social differences, a heightened concern over emulation and devaluation through food, and in sum, the social stratification of Europe itself. 105. Bruyerin Champier, 67: “Quin in cibis, alliis, caepisque delectatos tradidit: atque adeo culinarum ac ganae mire studiosos.” Nonnius, 167, on pork: “ex nullo autem animali, numeriosior est Ganae materia,” on oxshanks, 198, “crurum bubulum potissimum in pretis est, quam variis cibis permiscere, iam pridem ganea docuit.” The references to turbot and carp are on 349 and 377. 106. Cardano, De usu ciborum, 43, suggests that Platina’s book is more useful for cuisine than health: “et voluptatem heluonem qui popinis tantum indulgent, atque gulae. . . .” So he will not discuss these types of food.

chapter 7

Food and Nation

THE POLITIC BODY It has been suggested thus far that the major changes within Renaissance nutritional theory reflect larger transformations of European society, culture, and thought. The most conspicuous features of this new outlook have been described as reactions to various greater trends: a demographic surge, inflation, a greater disparity of wealth, the differentiation of social strata, and divergence of high and low cultures. One other significant development may be discerned in the recommendations of dietary regimens, and this is a growing consciousness of regulation, order, and rational government at a personal level in terms that parallel the rationalization of political states. In tandem with the use of political metaphors is a fear of physical insurrection brought on by disorderly diet as well as its opposite, fear of tyranny and excessive regulation. Both these may in turn reflect current political anxieties that sprang easily into the minds of physicians when describing the impolitic body. First, there is what many historians have described as “the rise of the modern nation-state.” Without entering into the argument of whether the centralization, rationalization, and bureaucratization of the state were truly something novel, at the very least the monopolization of violence by the state does bear a relationship to the growth of manners. As Norbert Elias would have put it, as governments claim exclusive right to organize and order human beings, arbitrate disagreements, and enforce 217

218

Food and Nation

settlements, the more unacceptable personal violence and emotional outbursts become. Behavior on the whole becomes more “civilized.” All apparent signs of violence or lack of self-control are banished from polite society or disguised from the gaze of others. Any behavior that might be construed as threatening or offensive, such as the use of a knife to bring food to the mouth or blowing one’s nose at the table, becomes barbaric. In fact, any physical act that is a reminder of our animal nature is relegated to privacy or is ritualized. Sex, defecation, and eating are all eventually given their own separate place and time and are all strictly regulated so as not to pose a threat to others. The threshold of embarrassment and shame is raised along with the growing power of the state. Thus, there is an explicit connection between the intensification of government at the political level and the growth of manners and self-government on the personal level.1 As one among many forms of self-government, the dietary regimens and their attempts to control and rationalize eating behavior also, logically, flourished in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, our periods 2 and 3. That the authors of these works considered the government of the body as analogous to that of states is quite clear. It is no coincidence that the words regime and regimen share a common root in the Latin regere, to rule, and are still sometimes used interchangeably for ruling both the body and the state. The “body politic” as a popular metaphor has a long history, but here it appears to revert back to its physiological sense. Governing the body is a matter of each organ fulfilling its specific role as subordinates of the brain. To eat without any regulation is, as Brooke puts it, to have “our Bellies sovereign to our Brains.” 2 Just as each part of the body has its own function, each humor, though essentially opposed to the others, must be distributed proportionally, balanced to achieve not equality but harmony.3 The elements of the universe, classes in society, and humors in the body all function precisely because of this inherent opposition, tension, and unequal distribution of power. This is a classic 1. Norbert Elias, The History of Manners, trans. Edmund Jephcott (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982). Elias places the transition from medieval “courtesy” to a more general “civility” precisely in 1530 with the publication of Erasmus’s book on manners (De civilitate morum puerilium). Whether or not this is coincidental, it matches nicely my division between periods 1 and 2 in the dietary literature. The most complete discussion of this topic as it relates to food and table manners can be found in Visser, The Rituals of Dinner. 2. Brooke, 112. 3. Hessus describes the temperate body in these terms: “est perfectissimum, ubi non aequalitas, sed harmonia qualitatem inter se spectatur,” 8.

Food and Nation

219

Aristotelian idea. Distemperature or political discord follow when one segment gains disproportionate power over the whole. In both political theory and physiology the word “constitution” is used to describe the basic makeup of the body and the tendency for one segment or humor to predominate, sometimes dangerously so. Regulation, laws, and good government can keep these tendencies in check, but each individual and each society requires its own specific type of rule. What is fitting for a monarchy would be unsuitable for democracies, just as the diet for the sanguine-complexioned differs from that of the phlegmatic. Equally, it is generally agreed that the stronger and more stable a body is, the fewer rules it requires. Only weak bodies tend to disruption and thus need extensive and careful regulation. Sudden changes are also extremely dangerous in both bodies, just as longevity is the reward of regular, undisturbed functioning and good habits. All this is not to suggest that physicians consciously had Aristotle in mind when framing their regimens but that the structure of both is so similar that it seems likely they informed each other at some level. The very fact that the language of government pervades the dietaries suggests this. For example, both Pictorius and Katzchius described management of the non-naturals as an artificial “administration”; the running title of the latter work is De gubernanda sanitate.4 There are also works with titles such as The governayle of helthe and Abraham’s Le gouvernement necessaire. Because the organization of political and physical systems appeared to be so similar, it would have been only natural to describe ruling them in similar terms. For proper control of the body in health, authors also frequently resorted to metaphors of physical “economy.” The older and broader sense of this term implied “management” or carefully bringing in and wisely spending and distributing wealth. It could refer to household management or management of the state’s fiscal affairs by setting prices and wages, by controlling the supply of labor, or by imposing tariffs on imports to create a favorable balance of trade, stimulating the flow of money into the country. Management of the body is an analogous process. Nutrients, like money, must be efficiently processed and distributed through the entire body. Each humor and organ must be supplied with

4. The non-naturals “con buono ordine amministrate, l’individuo conservano in buona dispositione, amministrate al contrari, lo rovinano,” Pictorius, 16; Katzchius, 431. The actual title, however, is Nonnulla de regimine sanitatis, in Medicina salernitana, ed. Ioannes Curionus (Geneva: 1594).

220

Food and Nation

the correct type and amount of nutrients, and expenditure of energy must be proportionate to the amount brought in. Moffett describes this as the “oeconomical distribution” of the body.5 Overconsumption can be as dangerous as abstinence, just as can excessive wealth or poverty in any segment of society. Rational management is required for both. For example, Venner claims that if a second meal is loaded into the stomach before the previous one is digested, the “oeconomie of the stomach is confounded.” 6 It were as if an excess of supply without the demand causes production (or concoction) to come to a halt. The goal of sound nutritional planning is also to keep as many nutrients within the body as possible. If digestion takes place too quickly or is overstimulated, nutrients pass through the system and are lost. Equally, in a sluggish body nutrients are spoiled before they are used. In the overexerted body nutrients are quickly burned up, much the same way that a population that consumes its own products in excess cannot accumulate wealth. No dietary author attempted to draw out this conceit in detail, but it does at least show that they considered economic management and physical management to be comparable processes. The more interesting political metaphors, however, deal with sedition and tumults of the lower orders, on the one hand, and tyranny of rule, on the other. Duchesne in describing the effects of eating a variety of different foods in one sitting says that they “create a pell-mell in our stomach, and this pell-mell and confusion leads in our body to a great sedition.” 7 That is, the normal smooth functioning of the body is overthrown by the rebellious mixture of foods with contrary qualities. In direct contrast, Moffett claims that “the sedition and tumults foolishly feared, and rashly presupposed to be in meats of divers kinds, afflicting the stomach either at the time of concoction or digestion, that reason of all other is most unreasonable. For who would or can imagine, that Man the Epitome of Abstract of the whole world, in whom something of everything . . . is placed and inserted, could live ever, or long in health without variety of meats.” He continues, “not variety but satiety, not quality but quantity, not simple taking, but unorderly taking of them . . . causeth that dissention and tumult in our bellies.” 8 Though authors dis5. Moffett, 266. 6. Venner, 171. 7. “Se fait un pesle mesle dans notre estomach . . . ce pesle mesle et confusion s’engendre en nos corps une grande sedition.” Duchesne, 246. 8. Moffett, 265 – 66.

Food and Nation

221

agreed about the process, the metaphor of political unrest served their purpose well. It is also revealing that in his essay “Seditions and Troubles,” Francis Bacon compares rebellion and enflamed discontent with an excess of choler in the body. Disorder and burning in the stomach causes vomiting, just as social disorder leads to “uprisings” of corrupted elements.9 Disorder can also originate at the top. Joubert contends that poor customs can completely subvert the natural and “legitimate government” of the body and come to exercise a kind of tyranny over the entire system.10 They gain power not naturally but through usurpation. In similar terms, some authors discussed the excessive rules self-imposed by overscrupulous dieters and the “static diet” of authors like Cornaro and Lessius. Because life itself is variable, our habits must be flexible and adaptable to unforeseen changes. To adhere too strictly to a precise diet is to be vulnerable to many external variables. One’s accustomed food may not be available, or one might be forced to eat at an irregular hour, which would subvert the system. Too many ingrained rules ultimately weaken the body.11 Rational control is one thing, but intense solicitude, like a tyrannical government, is bound to fail. Also doomed to failure is a single rule applied to people of differing complexions. Joubert wonders if there could be anything more unjust and tyrannical than expecting all people to abstain from wine merely because it is dangerous for those prone to gout.12 Liberty to drink, he believes, is quite healthy for most people. A few authors went so far as to repeat Celsus’s opinion that “He that is sound in good health, and at 9. Francis Bacon, Essays, no. 15 (New York: Macmillan, 1923), 48. 10. Joubert, Erreurs populaires, book 2, 47: “Il est vray que la coustume est un tyran qui a grande force, et bien souvent plus de pouvoir sur nous, que la Nature mesme. Combien que ceste-cy est legitime gouvernante, et l’autre par usurpation.” 11. Bachot, 206: “Mais qu’il ne s’y faut tellement assubjettir et l’allguer en toutes choses, la necessité pouvant arriver (comme la condition des hommes est muable, et subjette à la diversité des accidents) que necessairement il faudra changer. . . .” Brooke, 100 criticizes the dieta statica of Lessius, Cornaro, speculative and monastic men who are always weighing and measuring out their food. 12. Joubert, Erreurs populaires, book 2, p. 53: Ou il faudroit, que le fourmage fut condamné, pource qu’il nuit aux graveleux: et chacun abstint du vin, parce qu’il fait mal aux gouteux. Y a-il rien plus injuste et tyrannique, que de vouloir assujettir à ses appetites ou sentimens, les autres qui sont de different complexion? We might wonder under similar circumstances today why so many foods have come under general criticism because they are harmful to certain individuals. Salt and hypertension is only one example.

222

Food and Nation

libertie, should bind himself to no rules of dyet.” 13 For most, this suggestion was far too extreme; lack of all regulation is “brutish” and “uncivil.” 14 Being civilized means surrendering freedom to eat whatever one likes at any time in order to gain a greater freedom from illness. The language here is much the same as that used to describe political freedom. Descriptions of preventative medicine as defense tactics against a hostile enemy are also common. Elyot’s diet was entitled the “Castel of Helthe.” Neglecting the bulkwarks “addeth great increase to the disease and provoketh it to shew the uttermost effect of his tyrannicall force and quality uppon the bodie that is so willinge and readie even at the firste onsette and alarme to surrendre,” according to Grataroli.15 Abraham, a former soldier, remarks in his dedication that he now takes up the cause of defending the human body against the enemies of health.16 The idea of succumbing to gluttony as a form of submission to a foreign oppressor is also quite common. Although indulgence affords us a momentary pleasure, its long-term subjection is a kind of slavery, contends Lessius.17 Or as Brooke puts it, “All Disorder and Excess, especially in meat, drink, venery, makes us their slaves, and gives them heat, and spirit to Lord it over us, and renders us impotent to withstand their Temptations and assaults.” 18 All these metaphors show that to some extent thinking about government, economy, and defense of the state intensified current thought about personal government and diet. Their influence may even have been mutual. The appearance of such ideas cannot be pinpointed to a particular time and place, but the majority of these references are found in French and English authors of the latter sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, precisely at the time that other forms of personal regulation, manners, morality, and education are said to have intensified. In one respect diet and political stability are more than merely metaphorically connected. The health and strength of the commonwealth naturally depends on the health of its citizens. Dietary disorder and luxury, especially among the upper classes, who are meant to guide and de13. Cogan, 176. 14. Bachot, 424. He mentions, although not by name, a prince of Europe who eats only when nature invites him, at any hour. He calls this a “vie brutale, une grande incivilité.” 15. Grataroli, epistle, in A direction for the health of magistrates and students. 16. Abraham, p. A3r: “C’est porquoy je laisse les armes Martiales, pour prendre celles de Nature.” His dedication also refers to the recent bloody wars that had torn France apart, and that with peace it is time to take up a new kind of warfare. 17. Lessius, 206. 18. Brooke, 255.

Food and Nation

223

fend the realm, can lead to chaos and the ruin of empires. Luxury is never more dangerous than when it infects the crown itself. Nearly every dietary work at some point or another mentions the historical examples of great empires ruined by gluttony and perverse tastes. The Greeks went soft after conquering Persia, the Romans succumbed to exotic Eastern luxuries, the Parthians too were ruined, and now it is our turn.19 According to Duchesne in the Renaissance, demise was imminent.20 The sight of once strong, stern, and simple peoples falling prey to effeminate customs, grotesque excesses, and defeat was meant to be an object lesson for Europe, now headed down the same path. Luxury destroys not only the bodies of individuals but that of the state as well. The decay of order and regulation in one is directly reflected in the other. The dieticians were therefore fulfilling in their minds a very real political function. Improving diet benefits the state, not only creating a stronger populace ready and able to defend the realm but a sober people willing to invest their savings in profitable venues rather than squander them on superfluous enticements of the gullet. Many authors were explicit about their civic-mindedness. Bruyerin believes that all boys should be raised on simple and nutritious foods, like roasts, to make their bodies stronger and better able to serve the Republic. How can a people possibly be strong when fed on small fish rather than beef? Nothing should be offered for pleasure’s sake, only for public utility.21 Brooke also considers the bodies of women who will ultimately bear future generations. Women’s minds and bodies should be properly employed and luxuries strictly forbidden. Ironically, poor women and even the Irish produce healthier offspring because they are inured to labor and hardship. But delicately bred women who get no exercise have difficulty in childbirth, produce weak and sickly children, and ultimately injure the common-

19. Bruyerin Champier, 55: “nunc orbi nostro.” Willich draws a direct connection between imperialistic goals, crossing the seas and conquering strange peoples, the corruption of eating habits, and political decline. His list is typical, including Heliogabalus, Maximinus, and Milo of Croesus, among others. Iodoco Willich, Ars Magirica (Zurich: Iacob Gesner, 1563), 3. 20. Duchesne, 251: “Quelle stupidité et quelle faute d’entenement peut estre plus grande, que de voir notre perte et ruine proche et eminent, et ne la vouloir eviter. . . .” 21. Bruyerin Champier, 114: “Pulmentum autem ex macello assibus triginta compare solebat, nec id quod voluptatis sue gratis, sed utilitatis publicae, ut rei militari vigor corporis sufficeret. . . . aiebat vix posse rempub. servari, in qua pisciculus pluris quam bos vaeniret.” One cannot help but think of similar arguments made in Europe during both world wars. In England the Ministry of Food under Lord Woolton with Jack Drummond as his scientific advisor had precisely the same goals.

224

Food and Nation

wealth.22 Most authors were confident that an improvement in diet would foster a happier, more moral, and more secure state. Just as political metaphors and civic-mindedness appear to have become more pervasive in periods 2 and 3, so too did focus on national eating habits, including avoiding the strange customs of foreigners and eventually the strange new foods brought from Asia and the Americas. This too, the subject of the next two sections, supports the idea that a growing concern over political matters as well as a heightened national consciousness characterized this period and influenced the basic tenets of nutritional theory, steering it further away from classical tenets. XENOPHOBIA It is beyond the scope of this book to define nationhood precisely or come to some definite conclusion on whether a national consciousness emerged in the early modern period. Many historians point to the nineteenth or even the early twentieth century for a full-blown sense of nationality.23 It is likely that in the period covered here most people’s primary identification was still with their particular city or region rather than their nation. Nonetheless, dietary authors had a strong sense of nationally based stereotypical eating habits and increasingly they warned against strange tastes and customs of neighboring countries, even including peripheral bordering regions. A heightened awareness of cultural differences and food prejudices was especially pronounced in period 3 dietaries, which suggests a growing xenophobia. Chronologically, the focus on native food traditions coincides with the many wars stretching from the mid-sixteenth through mid-seventeenth century. It would only be natural, for example, to expect an English or Dutch author to criticize Spanish customs. War always brings out the worst national hatreds. But why this xenophobic attitude spread throughout Europe is a more difficult question, as is why it is conspicuously absent from period 1 works, when of course there were just as many national rivalries and wars as in the other periods. The fifteenth-century Italian regimens were almost totally free from criticism of foreign cultures. Such stereotypes certainly existed, but dieticians seem not to have feared foreign contamination. If anything, their 22. Brooke, 155. 23. Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1976).

Food and Nation

225

outlook was cosmopolitan and international, as in fact was late medieval cuisine. These authors embraced the exotic and novel. Most authors did point out regional variations in available food products. For example, the butter versus oil and beer versus wine distinctions between northerners and southerners was a standby dating back to antiquity. But there were almost never warnings to avoid foreign foods and stick to native produce. This is somewhat surprising considering that it was a basic tenet of classical theory that individuals are best nourished by foods to which they are most accustomed, those that grow in their region and have with long use become most assimilated into peoples bodies. This idea does not appear to have outweighed these authors’ fondness for foreign spices and strange recipes from throughout Europe. The very fact that Platina could combine his own nutritional text with a very internationally flavored cookbook by Martino is ample evidence that period 1 writers in Italy felt little threat from foreign influences. Of course, there was no reason to feel threatened when these works were composed. It is probably not coincidental that these dietaries (Savonarola, Platina, Manfredi, Benedict, Ficino, and Gazius) were written prior to the French and Spanish invasions that began in 1494 and extended into the middle of the sixteenth century. Revealingly, there were few dietaries composed in Italy during the Habsburg-Valois wars. Only in the second half of the sixteenth century and the seventeenth century did a new crop appear. Though some of these were narrowly focused on regional dietary customs (Petronio for the Romans, Bertaldi’s reworking of Benzi for the Savoyards), Italian authors were still comparatively free from xenophobia. It would be rash to conclude that being in a nationstate was itself a precondition for national rivalries and prejudices. But compared to the French and English, the Italians were remarkably open to foreign influences and even New World foods. Perhaps periodization rather than nation of origin was the crucial factor. We find the French and English not only fearful of strange foreign foods but they promoting native customs that were directly opposed to basic humoral theory. So too did German and Netherlandish authors, but they never lashed out against foreign customs per se. Hessus, Menapius, Fridaevallis, Lessius, and Sebizius were all free of xenophobia. Can there be some connection between writing in a state with a more pronounced sense of national identity and well-developed food prejudices that exclude the foreign? This may be mere coincidence, but the fact remains that the French and English consistently criticized their European neighbors as well as those in regions nominally subsumed within the na-

226

Food and Nation

tion-state but still considered foreign ethnically. For example, in the case of France, the idea of Frenchness often excluded the peripheral provinces. Symphorien was always quick to criticize German customs, such as the fact that they, like Asians, were known to eat dog. But when he mentions their depraved habit of drinking on an empty stomach, he includes the Normans, their Germanic cousins.24 Bruyerin Champier notes that the diet of fish, dairy, and fruit drinks among the Bretons, Normans, and Flemings gives them elephantiasis. He also considers the Gascons a ferocious nation unto themselves.25 Joubert recounts a few more national stereotypes when asks why it is said that the Spaniard eats, the German drinks, and the French do everything.26 In Bruyerin’s mind drinking wine is also a sign of refinement and civilization. In fact, the Germans who live closest to France tended to be more urbane and placid than the barbaric beer-drinking Germans in the north.27 Duchesne mentions that German nobles still hunt and consume deer, which he considered very harmful.28 The Spanish received comparable treatment and were considered by French authors to be voracious. Bachot mentions that “the Spanish stomach does not last very long eating in our fashion.” Apparently raised in such abject poverty, the minute they taste some decent food, they overindulge. According to Bruyerin, the Spaniards in France are always farting and belching and become grotesquely obese, even fatter than the Swiss.29 No doubt long-standing rivalry between these nations colored the physicians inherent animosity and willingness to criticize. But why should it be the French who have such a pronounced dislike of foreign 24. Symphorien Champier, pp. 46r and 95r: “Canum . . . carnem ego quidem nunquam gustavi: eoque nunquam indigui esu earum: neque in Asia: neque in Alemania: neque etiam secundum Italiam audio haec comedi.” 25. Bruyerin Champier, 55. 26. “Pourquoy dit-on, l’Espagnol mange, l’Allemant boit, et le François s’accomode à tout: et on le nomme le singe des autre nations?” Of course, Joubert is implicitly criticizing his own people, the French, here too. Other stereotypes he included are: “Pourquoy dit-on, aulx et oignons pour les Gascons, tripes et boudins pour les Limousins? et qu’un Limousin est grand mangeur de pain, un Bordelois de chair, l’Espagnol de salade, l’Italien de sausses, et un Sevenaut de chastagnes.” The last appears to be an inhabitant of the Cévennes mountains. Joubert, Erreurs populaires, book 2, 125, 128. 27. Bruyerin Champier, 71: “Hodie, quanquam longe mitiori et urbaniori placidorique victu degant Germaniae populi . . . nihilominus ferinae cuiusdam et priscae vitae vestigia quedam retinet, maxime quanto magis ad septentriones vergunt.” 28. Duchesne, 419. 29. Bruyerin Champier, 75: “L’estomach Espagnol ne dure à notre façon de manger,” Bachot, 195; “inde apud nos ventres Hispanorum vulgus iactat, quasi flaccidos Helvetiorum vero, ut amplos obesosque.”

Food and Nation

227

food habits? Bruyerin roves farthest afield in trying to describe customs around the world, among which are those of the Chinese, who consume raw meat, snakes, and a beverage made from rice. The Senegalese are even worse in eating foul, sordid, and nauseating foods with an insatiable appetite, though he neglects to mention what these foods might be.30 Only the English paraded their national prejudices as openly. Cogan recoils at the idea of eating frogs: “I have heard tell of a Bishoppe of this land, that would have eaten fryed frogs.” Boorde specifically associates this with the Lombards, who eat them “guttes and all.” 31 Frogs seem not yet to have been associated exclusively with the French. More typically the English censured French desserts, dainties, and complex kickshaws. What “the French call desert, is unnaturall, being contrary to Physicke or Dyet.” Vaughan refers specifically to the habit of closing a meal with fruit.32 Boorde has something awful to say about nearly every foreign nation. There are the barbaric Irish who boil meat in skins, rude and unmannered Scots, the Norse who eat raw fish and other “fylthy thinges,” along with Icelanders who are honored with the following verse: “whan I ete candels ends, I am at a feest / talow and raw stockfysh, I do love to ete.” The “buttermouth Flemyng” is nearly as bad, though in Amsterdam they get drunk and piss under the table where they sit. In Germany “they do fede grosly, and they wyll eate magots as fast as we wyll eate comfets. They have a way to brede them in chese.” 33 Only the southern French really escape his criticism; the fact that he studied in Montpellier probably has something to do with that. For most English authors the Spanish were usually thought of as hot-tempered, boastful garlic-eaters.

30. Bruyerin Champier, 77: Qui regnum Senegae colunt: Ferunt hanc gentem in parandis suis epulis adeo obscoenam ac sordidam, ut spectantibus nauseam et fastidium pariant . . . vivunt que insatiabili esurendi semper aviditate, longe ab iis diversi, quos tam modico vivere cibo nuper scripsimus. He had just been speaking about Europeans, in contrast with whom, these Africans are utterly barbaric. 31. Cogan, 123; Boorde, 187. Venner, 60, also marvels that some people eat frogs and snails and judge them a wholesome food. Attesting to the custom of eating whole crunchy frogs, Petronio writes, “Quelle che hanno gli ossi tanto teneri, che si possono rompere con li denti sono migliori. . . .” (164). Fridaevallis, 203, also approves, but he recommends that only the legs be eaten, and that they be corrected by skinning, soaking, coating with flour, then they should be fried and served with celery, fennel flowers, or a green sauce. 32. Vaughan, 95. 33. Boorde, 131– 60.

228

Food and Nation

Moffett mentions that tuna, if it is good at all, is only fit for Spanish and Italian mariners.34 These are only a few obvious examples of national food stereotypes that ran throughout the French and English dietaries. They reveal a heightened consciousness of foreign customs and a fear of changing habits. Consistently, these authors advised clinging to native customs and avoiding all foreign foodways. This must have been a real danger in the minds of physicians, especially considering the number of their readers educated abroad or traveling for some reason. Cogan heard of a gentleman who after traveling returned home “as it were despising the olde order of England, would not begin his meale with potage, but instead of cheese would eat potage last. But wise Englishmen I trust will use the old English fashion still.” 35 English literature of the period abounds in examples of Italianate fops who affect strange fashions, and there seems to have been a real concern that good English customs and diet would be debased.36 This kind of dietary conservatism is not in itself so remarkable. It is not surprising that in periods of stress, change, and anxiety, people were bound to cling to old, comfortable, and familiar native habits. Dietary writers would be no different. Whether indeed these years can be described as stressful on the whole is another matter, but there does seem to be a connection between dietary conservatism and fear of change in general, whether real or perceived. The preference for native food habits would only be of minor significance if it consisted merely in criticizing the strange and other. But actually it is among the most important catalysts of change within dietary theory. Specific details, particularly in period 3 dietaries, differ widely from region to region, all on the basis of defending native food customs. Increasingly the ancient authorities were abandoned and local custom began to carry more weight than Galen and Hippocrates, who clearly could not have understood the contemporary situation. These departures from orthodoxy were justified on the grounds that frequent use and custom create a “second nature,” enabling certain peoples to eat foods that 34. Moffett, 173. 35. Cogan, “To the gentle Reader,” 4. 36. For example, Robert Greene has his well-heeled narrator in A Notable Discovery of Coosenage protest that “I am English born, and I have English thoughts; not a devil incarnate because I am Italianate, but hating the pride of Italy, because I know their peevishness.” Greene, of course, describes how the English are just as treacherous in their swindling. In Prose of the English Renaissance, ed. J. William Hebel, Hoyt H. Hudson, Francis R. Johnson, and A. Wigfall Green (New York, Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1952), 405.

Food and Nation

229

would ordinarily harm others. Moreover, the products of various regions are environmentally adapted to meet the needs of the inhabitants. Ironically, this is itself an idea directly out of classical theory, which in a sense bore the kernel of its own demise. For example, fierce Scotsmen in their harsh climate get a great deal of exercise; their diet of oat cakes and gross meats is ideally suited for them. The delicate Italian soil and mild climate yields foods suited to that people’s constitution. Generally, there was little cause for disagreement among Italians, or for that matter Arabic authors before them, when they confronted classical authorities. All dealt with a similar Mediterranean climate and roughly the same foods. But classical theory in England, the Swiss Alps, or the Netherlands was bound to cause conflict. Why the details of theory had not broken down earlier, in the Middle Ages, when these regions first came in contact with the ancient authorities, is difficult to say. Perhaps they were more concerned at first with merely absorbing the new theories and trying to reconcile diverging opinions among the Greeks and Arab authors. Just how far the medieval European authors were willing to diverge from classical authorities and strike out on their own is beyond the scope of this study.37 But it is clear that by the latter sixteenth century dietary authors had no qualms about pulling down the ancient edifice brick by brick. It is only in period 3 that we find direct critiques of Galen and a willingness to openly assert idiosyncratic ideas, if not outright heresies in nutritional terms. Not that classical theory was ever so monolithic or dogmatic, but a tendency to depend on experience and local custom over received doctrine was something new. As stated earlier, perhaps having a relatively complete corpus of Galenic texts was a precondition to their being superceded. Whatever the cause, native food traditions did increasingly carry more weight than classical authorities. As early as the 1560s we find Grataroli, an Italian Calvinist living in Basel, loosening classical strictures against duck, sea-going fish swimming upstream, and cheese. All of these would have been common foods in Basel. Nature and custom were now powerful forces to be considered in diet.38 Hessus, in Mar-

37. This and many other questions should be answered by the forthcoming monograph by Marilyn Nicoud, which first appeared as “Aux origines d’une médecine préventative: les traités de diététique en Italie et en France (XIIIe–XVe siècles),” (Ph.D. diss., 1998). I have not seen this work, but it apparently focuses on the manuscript dietaries immediately preceding those covered here. 38. Grataroli, pp. I4r, L1r, K3r.

230

Food and Nation

burg, also defended native foodways. Pork and rabbit were favored, as were pickles, gherkins with roasts, and cheese with seeds like caraway. Placotomus, who wrote a commentary on Hessus’s work, includes an entire treatise extolling the virtues of beer.39 In Dusseldorf, Menapius also commends bread and cheese, pickled eels, and stockfish. If the ancients had only known how to make beer as we do, he notes, they would have taken greater notice of its utility.40 These are only the faintest hints of diverging opinion. The French authors also frequently praised mutton and native produce. Duchesne, a Gascon, even admits his weakness for onions, garlic, and leeks.41 Among the English authors, counter to all medical authorities, beef was praised: “All those aucthors (in mine opinion) have erred, in that they make the Biefe of all countries alike.” Moffett even goes so far as to condemn veal for the English: if too young “their flesh is but a gelly hardened.” 42 Mutton, pork, and rabbit are also suitable meats for the English constitution. Native foods like apples and oats are promoted, despite nutritional doctrine, by the Welshman Vaughan.43 Revealingly, English authors also praised ale (which was made without hops) over beer in the 1540s. A common saying ran “Hops, Reformation, Bays and Beer / came into England in one bad year.” 44 Buttes’s version is slightly different: “heresie & beere came hopping into England both in a yeere.” 45 Flemish exiles were said to have imported both of these. By period 3, the details of dietary regimens varied widely from region to region based on these appeals to native custom. I will address this topic again in the next chapter when considering how theory and actual eating habits may have influenced each other. For the moment, it is clear that Mediterranean preferences—such as the penchant for veal and kid, olive oil and wine, and figs and raisins—lost validity in northern Europe. It is perhaps this fact above all others that accounts for the gradual abandonment of classical authorities on the whole. Once the specific applications of classical theory lost significance, the foundation was 39. Hessus, pp. 41r, 42v, 60v, 65v. 40. Menapius, 534, 556. 41. “Caro omnium animalium ambulantium non est in nutrimento et digestione melior carne agni annotici.” Symphorien Champier, p. 42v; Duchesne, 380. 42. Cogan, 114; Moffett, 57. 43. Vaughan, 99; 32. The Welsh are usually singled out as lovers of toasted cheese as well. 44. McGee, 467. “Bays” (baize) is a coarse woolen cloth napped to imitate felt. 45. Buttes, p. G3r.

Food and Nation

231

bound to collapse. Eventually custom became more important than physiological doctrine. Diet based on complexion gave way almost entirely to diet based on class, occupation, and nationality, especially as the idea that each region should only be nourished by its own produce gained sway. A period 1 author would have found this idea perplexing, especially since the most valuable foods and condiments came from the East. By period 3, the preference for native foods became the rule. Consuming certain dishes even became a matter of national solidarity. For the English, roast beef was one of these self-imposed stereotypes. One of the more interesting questions raised by this notion of sticking to native produce is how exactly did Europeans assess the increasing number of new foods arriving from the Americas? How did they appraise these foods according to the humoral system, and why were some foods enthusiastically adopted in some places but not in others? NEW FOODS The earliest European descriptions of New World foods are found in the published accounts of discoveries such as those of Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci, and in Peter Martyr’s De orbe novo.46 It is clear that valuable spices and dyes as well as foods were among the many things the early explorers hoped to bring back, and Columbus appears to have been almost desperate to find anything of value. On several occasions he misidentified plants as cinnamon and nutmeg, which is what he expected to find in the Indies. From these works Europeans learned about maize, chili peppers, sweet potatoes, cacao, tobacco, and a variety of other new products. Among the first popular accounts describing the new plants in detail was Nicolas Monardes’s Dos Libros of 1569, which appeared in expanded versions thereafter.47 Botanists and natural historians were, of course, fascinated by the panoply of exotic new fruits, vegetables, and animals, and many American plants were soon found growing in European botanical gardens, to the delight of the curious. Certain New World drugs—such as guiac bark, sassafras, and sarsparilla—also met with en46. Christopher Columbus, Journal, trans. Clements R. Markham (Reprint, New York: Burt Franklin, 1971); Peter Martyr, Opera (Graz: Akademische Druk-u. Verlagsanstalt, 1966). 47. Nicolas Monardes, Dos libros, el uno que trata de todos las cosas que traen de nuestras Indias Occidentales. . . . (Seville: Hernando Diaz, 1569). This was translated into English by John Frampton as Joyfull newes out of the newe founde world in 1577.

232

Food and Nation

thusiasm, even if their popularity was sometimes brief.48 By the middle of the sixteenth century, New World foods were at least familiar to many learned authors throughout Europe. It took much longer, though, for these to become regularly used as food, and some were not adopted for several centuries. For regular use as food, the pattern of adoption for New World crops and animals seems perplexing. Some were immediately welcome while others languished as exotic curiosities. Some were adopted only in the North, others only in the South, and this does not appear to be directly related to where these crops would flourish. Moreover, we find almost immediate antipathy toward these imports among dieticians. It should be borne in mind that just as these products were reaching learned medical communities, dieticians were also stridently defending their native food habits from foreign corruption. Traveling the globe for ever more exotic foods was the first sign of cultural decay and weakness, and as everyone knew, luxury ushered in the fall of great empires.49 Bruyerin was amazed how Europeans could seek out exotic new foods knowing well that new diseases came with them. He probably had syphilis in mind, which was said to have arrived from the Americas with Columbus. Elsewhere, Bruyerin is specifically critical of the Spanish and Portuguese, who were moved merely by avarice and luxury to go on long voyages culminating in the subjugation and misery of the native populations.50 He might also have added the unintentional extermination of New World populations through disease. Estienne makes similar comments when wondering why people cannot be content with native condiments but must always go in search of rare and exotic aromatics.51 Perhaps it is not surprising to find the French critical of Spanish and Por-

48. J. Worth Estes, “The European Reception of the First Drugs from the New World,” Pharmacy in History 37, no 1 (1995): 3–23. 49. Duchesne provides the usual classical examples, Archestratus who traversed the length of the seas in search of new delicacies; Apicius, who went all the way to Alexandria to find the largest shrimp; the emperors Vitellius and Heliogabalus, who outdid them both with their monstrous appetites and hastened the decline of Rome. The implication, of course, is that the Spanish and Portuguese are next. Duchesne, 256. 50. Bruyerin Champier, 54, 97: Praeterea, mirum videri minime debet, novos quotidie et priori aevo incognitos accidere morbos, et ex terris in alias transferri terras: cum etiam ratio vivendi nova usurpetur, et ex alieno orbe in nostrum invehatur. Quid enim ab Indis petimus cibos, nisi contagionem ab iis speramus? 51. Estienne, 75: Noluit aetas nostra sibi propriis, suaeque regioni peculiaribus, ac communioribus condimentis esse contenta: nisi etiam exoticis, et aliunde magnis sumptibus, atque itineribus allatis aromatis, gulae illecebras exatiaret. Adeo nihil est hominum appetentia iniustius atque iniquius.

Food and Nation

233

tuguese achievements. But it is astonishing that the Spanish Lobera neglects to mention a single New World product, and his countryman Nuñez de Oria, although he discusses them, also criticizes far-flung voyages sent out despite all dangers merely to sate the appetite for strange new foods.52 The authors we might expect to know the most about new foods, and perhaps approve of them, are equally critical of introducing them to Europe. In contrast, earlier centuries had welcomed foreign foods and medicines and had worked them into their nutritional theories. Sugar and spices were the ideal condiments to period 1 dietaries. Spinach, celery, rhubarb, and cauliflower were all gladly added to lists of approved foods despite their absence from the ancient authorities. Lemons, cloves, and nutmeg all became ideal condiments when introduced in the Middle Ages. Why then were new foods accepted and even glorified in these earlier works, yet rejected in the latter Renaissance dietaries? Why, for example, was rice accepted by period 1 dietaries but potatoes were rejected by period 3 authors? In part xenophobia was responsible for the conservatism of later dietaries, but this is not the entire picture. Several new foods were accepted almost immediately. The key appears to be whether the new food was considered analogous to something already standard in the diet or could be substituted in a recipe with comparable results. This explains why both guinea fowl and turkeys, introduced in the 1530s from West Africa and the New World respectively, were enthusiastically praised.53 Many authors also hopelessly confused the two, and the real origin of the latter remained obscure, as the words turkey and coq d’Inde reveal. Nonetheless, these were not considered strange or foreign in any way, in fact quite the opposite. By the time they became well known, which was remarkably quickly, theorists claimed that they were among the best of meats, one of the healthiest to be found because they were light and easy to digest. Venner calls them temperate and agreeable to every age and constitu-

52. Nuñez de Oria, p. 7v: porque es cosa estrana de la naturaleza humana passar a las Indias, navegar al estrecho que dizen Magallanes, para aplacar la ravia del appetito y gula . . . porque para que se pone la vida de un hombre a tantos peligrosos? para buscar alimentos muy preciandos. 53. Tannahill, 210 –11. Actually, the meleagris species was well known to classical authors, but in the Renaissance there was much disagreement if it was precisely the same species essentially now reintroduced. Regarding the history of the turkey, see A. W. Schorger, The Wild Turkey (Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1966).

234

Food and Nation

tion. Moffett, although he believes they came from Africa through Turkey, says they are worthy of a prince’s table.54 Turkeys, because similar to pheasants and other approved wild fowl, adopted their status and were easily assimilated into the ideal diet. Duchesne exclaims, “in brief, it is one of the best, most healthy and delicious meats that can be found.” 55 The reception of maize (corn) was rather more mixed. Like the turkey, it was often presumed to have come from the Middle East, hence the name granoturco and “turkey corn.” With remarkable speed it traveled from the New World through Spain and Portugal to India and as far as China. Some have even suggested an earlier pre-Columbian mode of transmission. However it arrived, it was new to Europeans in the sixteenth century and was readily accepted in southern Europe. The Spanish Nuñez de Oria claims that bread made from maize is even more suave than wheat, although he admits that colonists do not always find it as tasty as their own bread.56 In Europe, maize seems to have caught on primarily in those places already accustomed to eating pulmentum, or polenta, made from millet or barley. Maize was readily substituted in northern Italy, Spain, and later in other places, such as Romania in their mamaliga. Interestingly, all were former Roman provinces. The fact that in many southern European dialects the name for the new grain was a variation of millet supports this idea of substitution.57 Not all dieticians approved of it, however. Bruyerin specifically claims that the natives of Hispaniola are well nourished by a diet based on maize, but in Europe it is of little use and can even be dangerous.58 54. Venner, 60; Moffett, 84. Only Buttes among the English claimed that “it maketh store of seede, enflameth Venus,” and is thus harmful for those who live at ease and are subject to gout. Buttes, p. K4v. 55. Duchesne, 423: “bref c’est une viande des meillure, plus saines et delicieuses qui se trouvent.” It is not entirely clear here whether coq d’Inde here refers to turkey or guinea fowl. The same can be said of Pisanelli’s comments, “e sono stati gli ultimi ad esser posti nell’uso delle mense per i cibi di esquisito, e delicato gusto dai golosi.” Pisanell, 74 –75. Bruyerin Champier also mentions with approval a bird known among the Muscovites, which he claims is a turkey and is called tetrao. This is probably the тетереф in modern Russian, which is in fact a variety of woodcock. Bruyerin Champier, 87. 56. Nuñez de Oria, 41: “En unas islas españolas que dizen la nueva España ay una semilla que llaman Mayz, de la qual se haze pan mas suave que lo trigo.” His compatriot Lobera de Avila writing in 1530 neglected to mention a single New World product, which may have been out of ignorance or his close dependence on Arabist sources. 57. Maize in the southern French Occitan language was called millette, and in Portuguese milho. Toussaint-Samat, 173. 58. Bruyerin Champier, 103: “qui tamen nostrarum terrarum homines in eam penetrarunt, id semen parvae utilitatis leviorisque alimenti esse confirmant: cuius rei in seipsis periculum fecerunt.” On has to wonder if the author had pellagra in mind, as a niacin and protein deficiency is a pronounced effect of a maize-based diet when the grains are not

Food and Nation

235

This is evidence that it was not only being used by the mid-sixteenth century but warranted a physician’s disapproval based on the idea that people should stick to native and familiar foods. A century later and farther North, Sebizius insists that bread made from maize is very dry, difficult to digest, causes flatulence and constipation, and hence should be left for rustics.59 In northern European regimens maize is practically never mentioned. It appears that without an immediately apparent role for the new food, it was rejected. Presumably no one had yet figured out how to make proper corn bread. Although it was mentioned by some of the leading herbalists of the day, such as Jean Ruel (1536) and Leonhart Fuchs (1542), it remained primarily an ornamental plant in northern Europe. The herbalist Gerard, for example, although he could grow it in England, relates that corn “yeeldeth to the body little or no nourishment . . . is of hard and evill digestion, a more convenient food for swine than for man.” 60 Again, most northern European dietary writers did not even discuss it. Not surprisingly, New World beans were among the few foods accepted almost everywhere. Few authors even recognized them as a new and separate species. They were called faseolus and fagioli, using the name of a bean previously familiar throughout Europe, the black-eyed pea or cowpea.61 Before contact with the New World all period 1 authors, for example, recognized both a fava bean and a faseolus. The first dietician to mention that some fagioli come from the Indies was Durante in the late sixteenth century. Being the author of an herbal as well, he was most likely more attuned to the different varieties and their origin.62 treated with lime or combined with other protein-rich foods such as beans, as they were in the New World. 59. Sebizius, 148. 60. John Gerard, Gerard’s Herbal, ed. Marcus Woodward (London: Studio Editions, 1994), 26. 61. This has led some food historians to mistakenly assume that any reference to the fagioli bean means the New World variety. This is only in modern nomenclature. ToussaintSamat, 45 – 46, for example informs us that the haricot (faseolus) was first introduced to Western tables in 1528, and that merely six years later Rabelais maligns them (fazéolz) as recognizable Lenten fare. Clearly there was already a fagioli in Europe when American beans arrived, which was most likely the cow pea or black-eyed pea from Africa (Vigna unguiculata). To offer merely one example, Benedict of Nursia, whose work on how to conserve health was first published posthumously in 1475, gave an entry for faba, which he described as cold and dry, hard to digest because of its superfluous humidity, causes flatulence, bad dreams, etc. It is followed by an entry for faseoli, equally gross and inflating, which should be corrected with mustard, oregano, and wine. But he treats them as two separate species two decades before the Columbian exchange. Benedictus, p. I7r. 62. Durante, 73. His herbal was the Herbario nuovo of 1585, discussed by Arber, 102. This provides one piece of evidence that some herbalists did recognize new American

236

Food and Nation

At any rate, dieticians classified New World beans exactly as they did the familiar species, and New World beans almost never received separate coverage. Much the same is true of capsicum peppers, which received the qualitative classification of black pepper as hot and dry. Like many other New World products, these too remained botanical curiosities rather than food. The English expert on pepper, Walter Bailey, mentions that “codded peppers” are sold in apothecary shops, although he had never seen the plant. Again, it seems odd that this plant could have been so rapidly diffused to the East but remained an oddity in Europe. Fuchs even believes that it had originated in Calcutta.63 In general, though, neither dieticians nor cookbooks mention chili peppers, and although they were eventually grown and eaten in southern Europe, literary authorities on food were silent about it. A few other new curiosities were mentioned here and there. Cassava or yucca are discussed by Nuñez de Oria, as well as New World citrus varieties, most likely limes and grapefruit. Clearly he was relating this information second hand and does not appear to have seen any of these.64 Bruyerin also mentions the cassava (Iucca radix) as an example of a poisonous plant miraculously transformed into something edible.65 And Bertaldi mentions the pineapple, whose nature, he claims, is similar to the artichoke thistle, a good indication that he had probably only seen a picture of the fruit.66 Again, it seems remarkable that authors intensely interested in food said so little about New World products. Another item conspicuous by its absence is cacao. All this is ample evidence that most new products took a great deal of time to diffuse, and even when recognized, they were usually rejected by dieticians. The two products they did sometimes take notice of are the tomato and potato. Dieticians’ initial reluctance to recommend these probably stems from the immediate association with their Old World cousins in the Solanaceae or nightshade family, which are highly poisonous. Belbean species, contrary to the claim made by Lawrence Kaplan and Lucille N. Kaplan in Chilies to Chocolate, Foods the Americas Gave the World, ed. Nelson Foster and Linda S. Cordell (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1992), 62. 63. Toussaint-Samat, 516. 64. Nuñez de Oria, p. 40v. 65. Bruyerin Champier, 104: “Quippe venter, ingenii largitor, docuit atque invenit cibos, quos primum exitiales experti sunt, innoxios reddere.” 66. Benzi, 177. Bertaldi, as mentioned elsewhere, essentially grafted his own dietary work onto the medieval text of Ugo Benzi. The entry for pineapple is entirely his.

Food and Nation

237

ladona, for example, was a poison of choice, and looks roughly similar to a small, purplish tomato. Anyone who had ventured to taste tomato leaves would also have been immediately repulsed, and they are apparently mildly toxic. It also appears that dieticians associated the tomato with its other Old World cousin, the eggplant. Estienne, for example, in 1550 refers to “love apples” and “insane apples” as unhealthy fruits.67 Because eggplants were considered cold and moist and especially dangerous, it was only natural to place tomatoes in the same category. It seems unlikely that this alone accounts for the long-standing aversion with which tomatoes would be held for many years, but it may be part of the reason. Even well into the seventeenth century, Sala includes tomatoes among the strange and horrible things some unwise people are willing to eat.68 Sebizius instructs his readers that tomatoes are cold and moist, which is why they are prepared with pepper, salt, and oil. This is at least evidence that some people were eating them, but he also adds with approval that “our cooks absolutely reject them, even though they grow easily and abundantly in gardens.” 69 This suggests that while elite chefs and dietary writers remained hostile, clearly other people grew and consumed tomatoes. Not until the eighteenth century did cookbooks offer tomato recipes, although the majority of dietary writers in the period covered by this study simply ignored them, especially in northern Europe. Exactly the opposite is the case of potatoes, which were enthusiastically praised by the English but scarcely any other nation. Potatoes were first encountered by the Spanish in the 1530s, and the first dietary writers to mention them appear to have used the Spanish accounts as sources. However, they were confused, as were most writers, between potatoes (Solanum tuberosum) and sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas), which were first encountered by Columbus in 1492. The distinction here is less important than the comparison of both with Old World root vegetables. Nuñez de Oria, for example describes the potato as similar to turnips, 67. Estienne, 64. The first botanical references to the tomato appeared in Europe in Mattioli (1544) and later in Dodoens (1554). The name love apple, or poma amoris, originates in Gesner, which is presumably where Estienne learned about them. 68. Sala, 10: “Tandem et mala illa dicta insana, et poma quem hic vulgariter aurea appellant, quem fructus sunt cuiusdam solani species. . . .” This shows that eggplants and tomatoes were still regularly associated. The context of these comments is actually equally revealing about current attitudes. Sala had just been discussing locusts eaten in Ethiopia, young boys in Padua who eat spiders and crickets, Indians who eat ants and worms, and then he turned to eggplants and tomatoes. 69. Sebizius, 349: “Nostris verò culinis prorsùs abdicantur, tametsi facilè et copiosè in hortis proveniant.”

238

Food and Nation

having a flavor like chestnuts and equally unpleasant if eaten raw.70 Although he does not venture to classify the tuber precisely, the association with turnips and chestnuts would have immediately placed this among those gross foods that are difficult to digest and best left for peasants. Bruyerin also makes an explicit comparison of battatas with turnips.71 Similarly, Cardano considers potatoes especially good for constricting and cooling the digestive system, and hence a medicine but hardly a food.72 It is only in the seventeenth century, late into our period 3, that an Italian writer discusses the culinary uses of the potato. Sala suggests that they be either roasted in cinders and eaten with pepper or, as the Spanish do, peeled, cut in pieces, skewered, and roasted and seasoned with wine, rosewater, and sugar.73 In any case, the potato took a long time to become established in southern Europe and also most of northern Europe. Sebizius, after some interesting speculation whether Theophrastus and Dioscorides knew about potatoes, declares that “they are a cold and humid food, and cause flatulence . . . unless corrected with aromatics, as is often done.” 74 Only in 1650 did a northern continental author concede the fact that potatoes may actually eaten. It may be relevant here that most authors, if they discussed potatoes, usually did so in the proximity of the other infamous tuber, that earthy excrescence, the truffle. The association of the two would automatically have condemned potatoes for dieticians, just as they may have given them a reputation as an aphrodisiac for those so inclined. In England, however, the potato appears to have caught on more quickly, and dieticians approved of them and acknowledged them as a common food from a relatively early date . Moffett notes that they are “now so common and known amongst us, that even the husbandman buyes them to please his wife.” Venner finds potatoes “surpassing the nourishment of all other roots or fruits.” 75 Why is it then that the rest 70. Nuñez de Oria, 40: “Esta isla cria unas rayzes a manera de nabos, tienen sabor de castañas, aunque en gusto desgraciadas quando estan recientes dizense en aquella isla Ages, y en otras partes batatas.” 71. Bruyerin Champier, 103: “Battatas nuncupant radices quasdam, tuberibus aut napis grandioribus magnitudine pares. . . .” 72. Girolamo Cardano, De sanitate tuenda, 138: “Solanum esculentum . . . cum maximam astrictionem habeat; ideo raro, ut alimento, ut medicamento autem assidue utimur, in quibus adstrictionis ac refrigerantis usus indicit, minimi autem est alimenti.” 73. Sala, 12: “in Hyspania in cineribus coquunt exteriore pelle repurant, et in taleolas sectas ex pauxillo vino, aqua rosarum, et saccaro comedunt.” 74. Sebizius, 410: “Edulium videtur frigum, humidum, flatulentum et pravi succi: nisi, ut fieri solet, aromatibus corrigatur.” 75. Moffett, 73; Venner, 141.

Food and Nation

239

of Europe avoided potatoes when xenophobic England seized upon them enthusiastically? It may be that the English firmly associated potatoes with Virginia, rather than with “foreign” colonies, and so could consider them their own. They also agreed that English constitutions were well suited to digesting rough and heavy foods, and thus there was no real reason to refuse them. The other New World product that deserves at least brief mention is tobacco. Also a member of the Solanaceae family, it was first acclaimed as a hot and dry medicinal, useful for drying superfluous humors and phlegm. Needless to say, the fashion for smoking and later its economic viability as a colonial cash crop assured it a permanent place among European vices. Apart from King James I’s well-known aversion to the custom,76 many physicians praised the weed, even though they acknowledged its frequent abuse. Perhaps the strangest encomium to tobacco was Henry Buttes’s Dyets Dry Dinner, in which the author presents the argument that a dinner without any liquid refreshment but ending in the “Dry Drinke” of tobacco is best to preserve health, for “we perfume and aire our bodies with tobacco smoake (by drying) preserving them from putrefaction.” 77 Even authors who condemned the general fashion for smoking, like Vaughan, nonetheless conceded to its general therapeutic use. He believed if taken in excess by gallants, tobacco dries the brain, but it can be used as a physic on rainy mornings in months without an r and is especially good for mariners against scurvy, hunger, and thirst. But, of course, as with all useful things, it came to be abused by tossepots. The following verse sums up his final appraisal: “Tobacco, that outlandish weede, It spends the braine, and spoils the seede, It dulls the sprite, it dims the sight, It robs a woman of her right.” 78 Modern antismoking campaigns might learn something from such catchy invective. The only other new product that makes its first appearance in the dietary literature before 1650 is tea. As early as 1624, the French Jesuit Antoine Balinghem was making a decidedly tee-totaling argument for replacing wine as the universal beverage with tea. He seems to have received his information from his Jesuit comrades in Japan and even describes the solicitous care and numerous utensils used to brew the bever76. James I, A Counter-Blaste to Tobacco (London: Rodale Press, 1954). 77. Buttes, dedication. In fact, Buttes said practically nothing more on the topic, and even a final closing epistle by someone else wondered why he gave the work this odd title. 78. Vaughan, 139 – 46 and in The Golden Fleece (1626) cited in W. J. Bishop, “Sir William Vaughan,” in Festschrift zum 80. Geburtstag Max Neuburgers (Vienna: Verlag Wilhelm Maudrich, 1948), 56.

240

Food and Nation

age. In the end, he decides that tea is not only more heating, nourishing, and refreshing but a much healthier drink as is evidenced by the robust and courageous, yet civil and polite Japanese themselves.79 His work is perhaps the only one to suggest consciously adopting foreign products and is thus quite different from the other works covered here. Balinghem would probably have fit in quite well among modern health gurus, whose latest obsession is also, coincidentally, green tea. In sum, New World products and new foods from Asia do not appear to have had a major impact on European diet before 1650, with the few exceptions such as maize in northern Italy and potatoes in England. The fact that dietary authors largely ignored them is good evidence that they were still relatively unknown among learned elites in Europe. These new foods were also for the most part missing from contemporary Renaissance cookbooks. When authors did discuss these foods, their dietary conservatism almost always led to suspicion and rejection, especially when these foods could be readily compared to a familiar food already disparaged by theorists. Whether these learned opinions can be held partly responsible for the long lag before new foods were adopted is impossible to say. It may be equally likely that while tomatoes, maize, and chili peppers were admired as ornamentals in European botanical gardens, people down the social scale began to eat them anyway, despite all the warnings. Whatever the case, it was not until after the midseventeenth century, and in many cases much later, that new foods began to be grown and eaten on a large scale. And it is not until then that humoral theory began to lose authority among food writers. This may not be mere coincidence, and the fact that a slew of other new products became instant successes seems to suggest that the xenophobia of period 2 and 3 authors gave way to a far more mercantile and cosmopolitan attitude among the drinkers of chocolate, tea, and coffee in the succeeding era. It was also the era when whole new culinary and scientific models doomed the Renaissance dietary to obsolescence. 79. Balinghem, 279 – 87.

chapter 8

Medicine and Cuisine

There can be no doubt at this point that the Renaissance genre of dietary regimens reflects both medical and culinary concerns about food. But the question remains whether the principles of humoral physiology actually informed eating habits, or whether dietary authors merely accommodated current culinary practices into their medical theories. Ultimately, this is a chicken or egg dilemma. This chapter does not make a systematic attempt to claim priority for one or the other but rather explains the relationship between the two, which was sometimes coincidentally similar and sometimes plainly antagonistic. The points of intersection and the major differences between medicine and cuisine will be made clearer by looking closely at how dieticians suggested food should be prepared. Examining whether preparation techniques match what they perceived to be standard usage and the ways they approved or disapproved of contemporary customs should make the relationship between theory and practice more vivid. Although it might seem reasonable merely to describe recipes found in cookbooks or dishes described by contemporary accounts of banquets in terms of the basic principles of nutrition, this would be a mistake. As we have seen, especially in periods 2 and 3 (latter sixteenth and seventeenth centuries), dietary authors were usually hostile to what they considered the grossly extravagant and unruly habits of courtiers. We should not expect, therefore, any real agreement about cooking among dietary regimens and cookbooks. For period 1 authors, who lacked this 241

242

Medicine and Cuisine

anticourt aesthetic, the relationship between elite cuisine and dietary concerns was probably much closer, but here too it would be a mistake to assume that “physicke teacheth the cooke,” as Cogan would have us believe.1 An equally plausible argument could be made that basic established cooking procedures and flavor combinations provided ready examples for physicians trying to apply their theoretical principles to concrete culinary examples. For example, if we are told that a dish of cold and moist pork should be corrected by hot and dry mustard and that the mustard’s cutting and abstersive qualities will help us digest the gross and heavy pork, does this mean that the idea originated among physicians? Or did they merely use this as a familiar example of a nutritionally sound combination? Or were these basic nutritional ideas so imbedded in the European mental framework that anyone when thinking about food would necessarily have had these principles in mind to some extent? There is no reason to believe that this was necessarily so. Before trying to untangle this knotty question, it would first be useful to describe in detail exactly what the dieticians meant by “correcting” a potentially harmful food. Typically, this would involve adding condiments or sauces to balance or counteract the humoral qualities of the main dish. Hot condiments correct cold foods, dry ones correct moist foods, and so forth. Correction could also include the addition of ingredients that were thought to improve the texture and digestibility of a food considered excessively crass, gross, or glutinous. Vinegar or lemon juice on fish follows this logic. The acidic juice “cuts” through the gluey humors of the fish. “Preservative” ingredients such as salt or sugar could also be used to prevent the corruption of certain foods, such as peaches and melons, which are prone to putrefaction in the stomach. Considerable seasonal variation would also have influenced physicians’ recommendations, cooler condiments being used in summer and hotter ones in winter. Lastly, certain cooking techniques were intended to mitigate the drawbacks of most foods in their raw state. Cooking makes foods more digestible and more easily assimilated into the body. It can even counteract the inherent qualities of an ingredient, making dry foods moist or vice versa. Thus, the dieticians were forced to make explicitly

1. Cogan, 118. Cogan is paraphrasing Boorde here: “A good cook is half a physician. For the chief physic (the counsel of a physician excepted) doth come from the kitchen. . . .” Boorde, 49. All he is saying here, though, is that diet is an essential part of health, not that physicians necessarily inform chefs. See also Cogan, 125, where Boorde is directly cited.

Medicine and Cuisine

243

culinary decisions about how their readers should prepare food. Whether readers heeded the dieticians’ advice or whether they were already practicing food preparation techniques subsequently used by dieticians to illustrate their points is a more difficult question. The idea that medical rules actually informed European culinary traditions has been a commonplace among food historians for some time. An invitation to draw explicit connections between medicine and cuisine was made by Jean-Louis Flandrin at the Colloque de Tours in 1979 in his article “Médecine et habitudes alimentaires anciennes.” 2 Here, among other examples, he noted that the combination of melon at the start of a meal with salt or prosciutto was originally considered to be a medicinal corrective. The salt was intended as a preservative to prevent the putrefaction of the melon in the stomach, and its “heat” would counteract the “coldness” of the fruit. This was offered as a remnant of a medically based culinary system that has accidentally persisted into modern times. Flandrin has sustained this basic thesis to the present and most recently has argued that heavily spiced, seasoned, and sauced late medieval cuisine is essentially medical in logic. Hot spices not only correct qualitatively cold foods but aid digestion, act as aperitives and stimulate the appetite. Practically all spices were introduced as medicines in the first place, and they merely made their way into the kitchen later as medicinal correctives for food. Cooking procedures too, he argues, were intended to abate the potentially harmful effects of foods with pronounced qualities, fatty meats being roasted to dry them and dry meats being boiled. In sum, “medieval tastes were largely shaped by dietetic beliefs.” 3 The most persuasive argument for the idea that dietary principles informed culinary practices has been made by Terence Scully. Although his focus is on the late Middle Ages, he describes not only food combinations based on humoral principles but even the grinding, chopping,

2. Flandrin, “Médecine,” 87 and 93: “Je ne doubte pas qu’en cherchant d’avantage on trouve d’autres coutumes explicable seulement par d’anciennes prescriptions dietetiques.” 3. Flandrin, “Seasoning, Cooking, and Dietetics in the Late Middle Ages,” in Food: A Culinary History, ed. Jean-Louis Flandrin and Massimo Montanari (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 313–27. This work has been cited previously in its original French edition as Histoire de l’alimentation. Also pertinent here is Bruno Laurioux, “Spices in the Medieval Diet: A New Approach,” in Food and Foodways 1 (1985): 43– 76; Melitta Weiss Adamson, “The Role of Medieval Physicians in the Diffusion of Culinary Recipes and Cooking Practices,” in Du manuscrit à la table, ed. Carole Lambert (Montréal: Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 1992), 69 – 80.

244

Medicine and Cuisine

and straining so typical of medieval cooking as ultimately medical in origin.4 That is, potentially dangerous foods with extreme qualities must be counterbalanced by condiments of the opposite quality to make them more suitable for the human constitution, and thorough mechanical combination of flavors aids the tempering process. Elsewhere he has also argued that the “function of the mortar in the mediaeval kitchen was largely to produce powders and mushes whose humours could mix thoroughly and intimately into any preparation.” Scully has also shown how in the mind of at least one late medieval medical authority, Magninus Mediolanensis, typical medieval sauces were specifically used to correct potentially harmful foods following this same corrective logic.5 Thus, among many food historians of the late Middle Ages there is a general consensus that medical principles are not only related but essentially tantamount to culinary procedures. Using many of the same texts from the late Middle Ages, Bruno Laurioux has also examined the similarities between medical and culinary sources but points out the authors’ ambivalence toward sauces in general, perhaps owing to their fear that they might be applied indiscriminately to any kind of food. Magninus himself complains that sauces were invented for gluttons to please the senses rather than health. His recipes are then a kind of concession to cuisine. It appears to be a realization, on the part of Laurioux, that the sauces were invented first and later accommodated into medicine. He also questions whether the purely medicinal recipes offered by physicians could actually have influenced culinary practice, and if there is more than a vague parallel between them. Like Flandrin, he concludes that it is a general mental schema shared by all medieval people that led to major points of intersection rather that active intervention on the part of physicians.6 Nonetheless, both medicine and cuisine adhered to the same basic principles in food preparation. As we move into the early modern period, and particularly in the die4. Terence Scully, The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1995), 99 –100; “Mixing It up in the Medieval Kitchen,” in Medieval Food and Drink, ACTA 21, ed. Mary-Jo Arn (Binghamton, N.Y.: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1995), 21. This rationale for grinding and straining is found nowhere in the dietary literature of the Renaissance, though the culinary fashion had died out, one might expect physicians to still be making the same recommendation. 5. Scully, “Deffaire and Destremper in Early French Cuisine,” in Petits Propos Culinaires 38 (1991): 14 –19; “The Opusculum de Saporibus of Magninus Mediolanensis,” Medium Aevum 54 (1985): 178 –207. 6. Bruno Laurioux, “La cuisine des médecines à la fin du Moyen Age,” in Maladies, médecines et sociétés, vol. 2 (Paris: L’Harmattan et Histoire au Présent, 1993), 136 – 47.

Medicine and Cuisine

245

tary literature itself, this relationship becomes much less clear. Even in the late fifteenth century, our period 1, which is arguably still within the late Middle Ages in terms of medicine and cuisine, there are fundamental differences, even antagonisms, between dietary recommendations and culinary practice. These suggest that either the two systems had begun to drift and that by periods 2 and 3 they became decidedly opposed or that European culinary traditions never had been wholly medical in the first place. Either way, a detailed look at what dietary authors said about cooking will be necessary before investigating the possible impact on cuisine.

PERIOD 1: COURTLY REGIMENS The most typical way Renaissance dieticians advised their readers to correct foods was through the use of condiments. Although the word condiment etymologically implies foods that have been preserved or pickled, it may ultimately be related to the Latin verb condere, to put things together. Dieticians usually defined it as something added in small quantity to a primary ingredient to season or improve it nutritionally. They also made a sharp distinction between “foods” meant to provide nourishment and “condiments” used only to provide correction. The use of condiments was not intended primarily to improve the flavor or palatability of the main dish, though that might be part of it, but rather to balance its humors or texture by the addition of herbs, spices, or sauces categorized as opposite. This means that most typical condiments should sharply contrast with main dish both in terms of flavor, which is an indication of dominant quality, and in terms of substance or digestibility. Thus, again, we find “hot” herbs and spices added to “cold” dishes and acidic or “cutting” sauces added to tough or viscous foods. By its very logic, this would lead to a cuisine with boldly pronounced, vibrantly contrasting flavors. The idea of subtly accenting flavors, or emphasizing the main ingredient with reduced essences is absent. So too is our modern notion of “balancing” the main ingredient, usually some form of flesh, with garnishes of vegetable and starchy foods. A “balanced” meal meant something very different to the Renaissance theorist. Among period 1 authors, it is evident that the late medieval penchant for heavily spiced, sugared, and even colored foods still held sway. This was a cosmopolitan and international style of cooking, heavily influenced by Arabic and Persian cuisine, and dietary writers had vast array

246

Medicine and Cuisine

of options when advising readers exactly how they should correct their foods. Although all New World products were missing from fifteenthcentury larders, there were a number of other exotic ingredients that have since passed into obscurity. Among these were verjuice, the juice of unripe grapes or sometimes other fruits such as crab apples or gooseberries; sapa and defrutum, concentrated grape-based syrups; almond milk, prepared by grinding, soaking, and straining almonds; and a number of spices like “grains of paradise” (melegueta pepper), cubebs, long pepper, and galingale, the latter becoming familiar today through Southeast Asian cuisines. One also finds musk, mastic, and sandalwood among the flavorings used by medieval chefs and other spices such as pepper, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, mace, ginger, cardamom, and cumin, not to mention dozens of herbs still relatively familiar and a few less so, such as tansy, rue, hyssop, and southernwood. Although it has become fashionable recently among food historians to stress the similarities between medieval and modern cooking, rather than the former’s eccentricities and perversities, this brief list alone should illustrate the vast differences between the two.7 It should also be stressed that the reason for using these condiments and particularly the context is completely different. Many spices we would consider appropriate primarily for desserts, cinnamon and sugar for example, can be found added to such unlikely foods as fish. We should not assume, however, that the use of such condiments in cooking necessarily proceeded from some medical logic, even though authors praised their medicinal virtues. That is, saffron may have been used to combat melancholy, but in cuisine chefs used it primarily as a colorant rather than corrective. The source from which we should expect the most explicit explanations of seasoning foods according to medical principles is Platina’s De honesta voluptate, first published about 1470. This is because the work 7. Scully, Art of Cookery, 31. Although perhaps the finest overview of medieval cuisine, the examples provided by the author to illustrate basic similarities to modern cooking seem to do exactly the opposite. Grains of paradise, galingale, spikenard, mastic, and cubebs are of course not “the spices at hand in the modern kitchen.” See 30 –31 and 85. There is also a minor flourishing industry of medieval cookbooks, such as Constance B. Hieatt, Brenda Hosington, and Sharon Butler, Pleyn Delit, Medieval Cookery for Modern Cooks, 2d ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996); Maggie Black, The Medieval Cookbook (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1992); Madeleine Pelner Cosman, Fabulous Feasts (New York: George Brazillier, 1976); Odile Redon, Françoise Sabban, and Silviano Seventi, The Medieval Kitchen, trans. Edward Schneider (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1998). Also Jean-Louis Flandrin and Carole Lambert, Fêtes gourmandes au moyen âge (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale Éditions, 1998), which is perhaps the most beautiful book on food produced in any language for any period.

Medicine and Cuisine

247

is both about the medical virtues of individual food items and includes recipes taken from an extremely sophisticated earlier cookbook by Martino of Como.8 If the two works held similar advice that would be proof that nutritional and culinary combinations were one and the same, but despite Platina’s best efforts, the two remain noticeably different works. Moreover, Platina makes virtually no attempt to explain the food combinations of the recipes in medical terms. All we are given are brief offhand comments such as “this is a healthy dish, good for this or that ailment” or, even more surprisingly, “this is a very dangerous dish and should be avoided at all costs.” For example, after a recipe for a fish rolled in pastry, Platina adds, “This is so dangerous I would serve it to my enemies.” 9 There can be no doubt that these recipes lie solely within the domain of cuisine, and Platina’s sometimes pathetic effort to explain them is good evidence that a physician did not inform the chef here. Actually, the opposite is the case. Despite the fact that Platina’s description of the ideal chef states resolutely that he should know the nature and virtues of all foods so as to prepare them the best way, just like his friend Martino, he later goes on to describe how dangerous many of Martino’s recipes actually are.10 Even in the sections that Platina himself authored, there are few explicit directions about how seasoning might correct individual items. It is revealing that the sixteenth-century French translator, Desdier Christol, saw fit to insert precisely this information in his version of the work. For example, in the entry on pork, Platina explains how salting preserves the flesh, but it is only Christol who explains that the salt “tempers” the pork’s dangerous viscosity. The medical logic was thus added after the fact. Similarly in the entry for leeks (hot and dry in the third degree) it is only the French version that suggests boiling twice to avoid flatulence and eating them with cold herbs to counteract their heat.11 With regard to cooking procedures as a corrective, Platina appears to have gone even farther off the mark. Introducing the sixth book, in which the recipes begin, he suggests that beef ought to be boiled, which makes sense because it is a cold and dry meat, but also suggests boiling veal, which is tempered, and mutton, which is moist. Either Platina was being careless and inconsistent here, or he had trouble reconciling the 8. Mary Ella Milham’s critical edition, On Right Pleasure, and translation explains the relationship between the two authors in great detail. 9. Platina, On Right Pleasure, 381. 10. Platina, On Right Pleasure, 119. 11. Platina, Le grande cuisiner, 45 and 63.

248

Medicine and Cuisine

standard cooking procedures in the recipes with the humoral principles he had just described. What is even stranger is that he also recommends boiling waterfowl, which is directly opposed to all medical theory.12 All this suggests, rather than the close affinity between medicine and cuisine, the great difficulty of writing a book that is both medically sound and fashionable in terms of cuisine. Other period 1 authors were more consistent in explaining the corrective logic of their recommendations, but they too had trouble reconciling the advice they offered with what they clearly knew their courtly patrons would be eating. Manfredi felt obligated to explain why even some harmful foods can be eaten by some people: great desire and appetite for a particular item “corrects” its bad qualities, or by some “occult virtue” it may become suitable for a particular individual. Thus, he explains, for some people even onions are perfectly nourishing.13 Presumably, so too are some of the dishes of which physicians disapproved. These ideas have been discussed previously in the context of food guilt or the apparent lack of it among period 1 authors, but it may be that be that bending the strict dietary rules was the only way these authors could write for an audience primarily concerned with cuisine. At any rate, this again highlights the differences between the two. That a food could be “bad” but still nourishing shows that these authors had some serious reservations. Manfredi also further refines the logic of why some meats are boiled and some roasted but adds that it is not so simple a matter as drying or moistening. Boiled meats do become moister on the outside, but they tend to be drier inside. Conversely, roasted food is drier outside but moister inside. Undercooked meat is more nourishing but difficult to digest, while well-done meat that has lost its “substantial humidity” is easily digested but less nourishing.14 We at least get the impression here that the author is well acquainted with what actually goes on in the kitchen. He also offers an opinion on foods cooked over coals, fried, cut into pieces, or baked into pies. For each of these he explains how nourishing

12. Platina, On Right Pleasure, 265. Here Magninus’s advice makes much more sense. He suggested roasting waterfowl, which would counteract their dangerous coldness and moistness. The odd pepper sauce, including toast, liver, and verjuice, discussed by Scully in this context appears to work as a corrective, though certainly nothing like it appears in the Renaissance medical literature. Scully, “Opusculum,” 193. 13. Manfredi, 3– 4. 14. Manfredi, pp. 5v and 7r.

Medicine and Cuisine

249

it is, how easily it is passed, and whether it dries or heats the body. But none does he condemn outright, something period 2 and 3 authors had no qualms about doing. Fried foods and pastries were always condemned in these later works. Here, however, there appears to be a concession to cuisine, a loose interpretation of dietary strictures to accommodate courtly habits, which suggests that there were significant differences between what cooks prepared and what physicians believed should be done. Benedict also enters into the debate over cooking methods and insists that roasted food, because cooked in its own humidity, is moister and more nourishing, although difficult to digest. Boiled food may appear on the plate moist, but it has been suffused with a foreign humidity, usually water. Thus, in terms of nourishing humidity, it is actually drier. More revealingly, he explains that he omits specification of exactly what condiments should be added to each type of meat because “experience shows what they are.” 15 This means that either basic nutritional seasoning principles were so well known that he felt it unnecessary to elaborate or that he knew he would be forced to defend some rather unsound practices. In fact, he gives us scarcely a glimpse of rich dazzling late medieval cuisine. The correctives Benedict does offer deal with quite simple fare: correcting hot and moist pigeons with some cold verjuice, beans cooked with mustard, oregano and wine added to prevent flatulence, or hot herbs like arugula or nasturtium combined with cold ones in a salad.16 But if all the complex combinations of pounded spices and elaborate sauces were also medicinal in nature, why not explain them too? What tantalizing hints about cooking procedures Benedict does reveal deal with cooking everyday foods such as eggs, best poached rather than hard-boiled or fried, and bread, which must be properly risen, cooked through, and not burned. This is all standard advice. Elsewhere he gives advice about pasta, which, because difficult to digest and constricting, should be cooked in a rich meat broth or served with almond oil, pepper, and mint or oregano.17 But for the most part, Benedict, like other period 1 authors, is content to describe the properties of individual food items, not how they should be combined. The bizarre combinations found in Ficino’s Three Books on Life seem to approximate late medieval cooking more closely, especially his con-

15. Benedictus, p. H2r. 16. Benedictus, pp. H4r, I7r, I3r, L3v. 17. Benedictus, p. O5r.

250

Medicine and Cuisine

fections of coral, sugar, rosewater, musk, and amber, often gilded and intended to combat melancholy and fortify the mental powers.18 These are, strictly speaking, medicines and not culinary recipes. They are meant to be “confections” as the word was used in its original sense, and as it still is in Italian, confetti to mean pills. Ficino’s “recipes” are anything but culinary, and we are led astray by looking for medicinally corrective cooking here. His contemporary Gazius is a much better source for explaining culinary methods. Like other period 1 authors, he still claims that what tastes good is most nourishing; nonetheless, we ought to “temper and correct foods with contraries.” Cold cucumbers are thus combined with onions or leeks, foods that tend to clog are combined with aperitives, lubricant foods combined with styptic ones. If sweet foods harm, then they should be combined with acidic ones.19 The late medieval preference for sweet and sour sauces appears then to be medically informed. Nonetheless, Gazius does lash out against “the meat of animals diversely prepared” followed by fish, milk products, fruits, and confections.20 All these mixed together in the body cause total confusion. In other words, he was the first author to explicitly criticize culinary fashions, especially the courtly custom of eating several different courses together. The cooking methods he commends are standard: fatty meats should be roasted or grilled over coals, and lean meats should be boiled. Thus, roast beef and boiled pork are both nutritionally unsound. Going one step further, though, he continues: foods baked in a pan are harmful and not nourishing; fried foods cause nausea and descend slowly from the stomach. A good proportion of all standard cooking procedures are thus condemned.21 Even the logic of salting meats, intended to correct the humidity, would be best for suckling pig and lamb, but certainly not tough old pork or beef, 18. Ficino, Three Books on Life, 141 and 149, 155. The last includes a recipe for a “candy” of almonds, pine nuts, cucumber seeds, as well as spices, pearls, coral, saffron, silk, gold and silver, emerald, sapphire, etc. These things may have found their way into cooking of the day, but their inclusion is hardly supported by humoral theory or nutrition as any other author understood it. 19. Gazius, p. D2v: “Debemus ea corrigere et temperare cum sibi contrariis.” 20. Gazius, p. D4r. 21. Gazius, p. E4r: Flesh “in patellis posita infurno coquatur mala et parum enim nutrit . . . nulla autem frixari debet quoniam caro cum pinguedine frixa fastidium facit.” He also suggested that fish is much healthier grilled rather than fried, p. J5r. Especially awful is the practice of putting cooked fish between two plates because it prevents the superfluous vapors from escaping. Worst of all is eating fish followed by dairy products “as many are used to doing,” p. J6r. “Errant igitur valde qui eadem mensa post piscium comestionem lac coagulatum accipiunt ut plerique facere consueverunt.”

Medicine and Cuisine

251

which should never be used as food.22 In this case we find nutritional logic directly opposed to what was obviously common custom rather than being somehow connected to it. Another good example of this is found in his description of milk, itself particularly dangerous and best combined with honey and salt but especially dangerous when mixed with gross foods such as rice or millet. Yet another favorite of late medieval cuisine, the rice pudding, is also condemned, along with all creamy desserts.23 This basic antagonism between culinary fashion and sound nutrition continues into periods 2 and 3 and suggests again that either the two were always quite different or that they gradually drifted apart. This is not to say, of course, that there were no major points of intersection. Gazius also offers recipes for dishes like quinces baked with honey, which he explains as a medicinal corrective. He claims that the logic of combining foods is something even people of little knowledge understand. They use it every day in composing salads, creating dishes with mixed flavors, and adding condiments.24 This suggests that he believed the basic flavor combinations to be common, understood at all levels of society, and in fact rooted in humoral medicine. But culinary fashion had obviously strayed from these simple corrections, especially at court. If his intuition was correct, then we should expect the most nutritionally sound combinations to be those eaten by ordinary people, rather than those found in elite cookbooks. But here too we find dietary authors constantly criticizing common customs. Even if the basic principles can be found among various levels of society and in many different types of recipes, it remains the case that dietary authors still narrowly circumscribed what they considered to be healthy cooking. In the end they found few people who followed the rules with any consistency. In periods 2 and 3 the tendency to more narrowly define these rules only increases. PERIOD 2: THE GALENIC REVIVAL As explained earlier in this book, period 2 authors depended more closely on Galenic texts and tended to excise the Arabist influence in 22. Gazius, pp. E6r–v: “Clarissime apparet error salientium carnes bovinas antiquas et similes.” 23. Gazius, p. H6v: “Multoque magis predicta faciet nocumenta sicut grossis cibariis permixtum fuerit.” Rice puddings are tough to digest and cause oppilations and kidney stones. 24. Gazius, p. O3r; Scully, Art of Cooking, 40 – 65; “Opusculum,” 178 –207.

252

Medicine and Cuisine

medicine and cuisine. In many cases this stricter dependence on Greek sources forced the dietary authors to reassess familiar cooking procedures. One surprising consequence was a new appreciation for pork and less emphasis on kid, which had been the optimal meat according to the Arabist authors. Menapius, for example, following Galen, pronounces pork the most nourishing meat. Because of its moist, pituitous nature, it should be roasted, but can also be served boiled if corrected with pepper, onions, sage, and raisins.25 Apart from suggesting what appears to be a very German dish, not surprising for an author in Düsseldorf, it is remarkable that it was Galen’s authority that supported it. In this case, it is also fairly clear that the author used a familiar recipe as an illustration of his main point that these hot condiments correct the moist flesh. But it seems unlikely that Menapius actually devised this particular combination. In fact, when Menapius is clear about the specifically medical origin of a dish he recommends, he also adds that many people would be unlikely to eat it. Milk, for example, is much healthier when mixed with salt, but he admits that it makes a much less pleasant food.26 In his discussion of fish, Menapius offers correctives such as wine or vinegar with aromatics such as ginger, cloves, cinnamon, saffron, and pepper, or in place of these onions, leek, and parsley. These latter were clearly the customary condiments for the less than well-off. What is more interesting, though, is that he claims the best corrective was provided by Galen and involves poaching the fish in a bronze vessel with salt, oil, dill, and chopped leeks. But, he adds, “certainly this way of preparing fish today appears to gratify the craving of delicate palates too little.” 27 In other words, the ideal medicinal corrective is quite different from the current culinary fashion. This was also the case with matching food and wine. Menapius, contrary to custom as he perceived it, suggests that tough foods and those qualitatively cold, like fish, should be accompanied by subtle and strong wines. Hotter foods, such as meat, should be matched with weaker wines. This certainly runs counter to any gastronomic principle, then or today.28

25. Menapius, 512. 26. Menapius, 525. 27. Menapius, 538: “Certe si quis ad hunc modo pisces hodie apparet, parum gratificetur palatis delicatorium ac fortassis avertat appetentiam.” 28. Menapius, 569: “Ut vinum subtile valensque sumamus iuxta cibum crassum, durum, ac frigidum natura, et rursus cibis calidioribus digestionique magis paretibus vinum adiungamus debilis.” Much the same advice is offered even earlier by the Spanish Lobera

Medicine and Cuisine

253

The relationship of dietary principles to culinary practice in Germany is also evident in the discussion of Hessus and Placotomus on how to prepare brains. As a very pituitous food, brains must be carefully cooked to avoid nausea. The authors approve of the “vulgar” custom of adding ginger to correct both the frigidity and humidity.29 This is another case of a common custom later explained by medicinal logic. Another point of divergence between theory and practice occurs in their discussion of onions. These, they say, are eaten more commonly for pleasure than for nourishment, and then only with boiling twice could they be considered somewhat nourishing and less noxious.30 They would have preferred their readers to abstain altogether, but bowing to custom, they offer a solution that was probably seen as devoid of gastronomic interest. Considering their comments that most ate onions for pleasure, we must assume that few people took their corrective advice. Also in this period, the French dietician Estienne offers some detailed critical comments about popular tidbits that we would now call appetizers. A number of these “eaten to irritate the appetite and gullet,” such as cured ham, smoked tongue, pig’s feet, patés—particularly those with eggs and onions and especially blood sausages—are condemned outright. Even the few he admitted were less noxious—Venetian lucanica (luganega or linguiça), Milanese cervelat, and some French sausages— should be eaten only sparingly. That is, a major subsection of European culinary traditions lies almost entirely outside of what physicians considered the optimal diet.31 Estienne also makes a distinction between the simple and vulgar condiments like salt, verjuice, sapa, vinegar, herbs, and the more exquisite imported aromatics such as lemon and citron, cinnamon, cloves, and pepper. But he also contends that many sauces, although considered delicate, are quite harmful to the stomach, especially mustard, alliata or garlic sauce, sauces made with pickles and vinegar, and especially anything with onions, leeks, garlic, or dill. Many of the most familiar sauces, presumed by culinary historians to be medicinal in de Avila, 22: “Unde fortius vinum bibendum est cum carnibus bovinis, quam pullinis: et fortius bibendum est cum piscibus quam carnibus regulariter.” 29. Hessus, 45: “Ideo rectè vulgo pulvere zingiberis . . . ad corrigendam frigiditatem, et humiditatem, conditur.” 30. Hessus, 59. 31. Estienne, 31–35: “Quae vero gulae atque appetentiae irritandae causa assumitur, veluti sunt perniones moguntini, lumbi ac linguae bubulae infumatae, item pedes, aures rostra porcorum. . . . mali sunt intestina sanguine suillo aromatis ac caepis condito infarcta (sanguiculus aut buldones vocant) crudos succos generat, difficile coquitur, venasque plurimum inflat.” Less noxious are “lucanicae Venetae, cervellatorum Mediolanensibus, Godivellorum Lugdunensibus, caeteris Gallis salsidiarum nomen retinentes. . . .”

254

Medicine and Cuisine

logic, are here condemned by a learned medical writer.32 Even composite salads, claimed by many dietary writers themselves to be based on a corrective logic, Estienne considers harmful and says should not be used as a daily food.33 Of course, the prejudice against raw vegetables stretches back for centuries through the dietary literature, but here it is even after standard correction that they are denounced. Whether this is merely symptomatic of an increasing rigidity that comes with orthodox Galenism or perhaps just with the Reformation, many familiar culinary practices can no longer be fit into dietary theory. This may suggest that many of them were inspired solely by the dictates of taste and fashion in the first place. The physician’s recommendation for dealing with the most dangerous of foods, mushrooms and truffles, also appears to be quite different from culinary practice. Calanius, after frightening audiences with stories of “whole families destroyed and lost,” tells us that there are some correctives. Pears, for some elusive reason, had always been a typical remedy, and the phrase “Pyra sunt theriaca fungorum” [pears are the antidote for mushrooms] was commonly repeated although rarely explained. Calanius, however, believed oil to be the true antidote for mushrooms. For truffles a more thorough procedure would be required: careful washing, cooking in wine with oregano and rue, then included in a salad with oil, vinegar, and pepper. What this might have tasted like one can only imagine, but it has little to do with what he acknowledges was common, namely roasting in the cinders.34 Again, the nutritionally sound correctives, apparently dreamed up by these dietary authors, seem to have little to do with customary treatments. For another equally dangerous food, melons, Calanius offers several remedies to prevent putrefaction. “After melons, use plaisantin cheese, or some salted meat, or equally salt or even sugar.” 35 The plaisantin from 32. Estienne, 35 –37: “Et si delicatius, tamen ventriculo noxium . . . quae sinapis atque herbae triticeae succum recipiunt.” He appears here to be referring to sauces made from green wheat grass, interestingly enough something today found among the new wonder foods sold in health food stores. In his description of spices he also said that pepper, ginger, and cardamom are so acute and hot that “they ought to be used very sparingly.” Presumably many people were using them liberally. He added, even saffron can be harmful in excess. This is an interesting diversion from opinions found in period 1. 33. Estienne, 59: “Omnino quicquid crudarum herbarum in acetaris assumitur, id corpori plurimum nocet, neque vero quotidiano nutrimento sanguinem probum generant.” 34. Calanius, 46 – 48. 35. Calanius, 60: “Apres les pepons user de fourmage plaisintin, ou de quelque viande salée, ou sel de mesme, ou bien de sucre.”

Medicine and Cuisine

255

Placentia or Piacenza was the forerunner to parmigiano. At any rate, here finally is a custom, still common in the combination of melons and prosciutto, that appears to originate within dietary medicine. However, this advice runs counter to the almost universal rule that melons should be eaten with no other foods so as to prevent corruption given that anything heavy and difficult to digest would keep the melon in the stomach too long. Some physicians recommend wine as a corrective, which was the current fashion, although by period 2 most authors suggested that the wine would force the melon prematurely into the veins before being concocted.36 The point is that Calanius probably took what was already a familiar custom that could be fit into nutritional theory and then approved it. The fact that this advice was so rare among Renaissance physicians but is still a common practice suggests that its origin was probably not in dietetics.37 In an interesting digression on the changes in flavor that occur during cooking, Bruyerin notes not only that the application of heat corrects food, making it sweeter, but that the choice of heating method is also crucial. Hot and dry foods like onions require a liquid medium to render them hot and moist, and hence sweeter and more nourishing. Cold and moist apples, on the other hand, become sweeter only with dry heat. Thus, roasting an onion would make it drier and bitter. Boiling an apple would leave it insipid.38 This reflects basic theory of how flavors change along with qualitative changes, but does it reflect actual culinary practice? A deft cook can roast onions and poach apples successfully. At any rate, Bruyerin finds this sort of simple correction legitimate. Other corrections, like the “heaping together” of flavors and bizarre culinary combinations, he considers not only poisonous but a species of “adultery.” That is, it involves putting together improper elements and mixing what ought not to be mixed, for the sake of pleasure and the gullet 36. Fridaevallis, 68. He offered wine as an antidote to the melon’s frigidity, rather than a preventative measure against putrefaction. 37. The source cited by Flandrin in “Médecine et habitudes alimentaires anciennes” regarding the melon and salt or prosciutto combination is Thrésor de santé, 436 –39 (Lyon: 1607), the French translation of Liebault’s Thesaurus sanitatis. Both appeared after Calanius (or in Italian, Calano), who was writing in the 1520s and 1530s, and it is possible that Liebault’s information was taken from there. Significantly, this advice does not appear in other dietary works, with the exception of Pisanelli writing in 1583. The remedy for melon here is “mangiando secco il cascio vecchio, e cose salate, e bevendoci appresto ottimo vino.” Petronio, 4. 38. Bruyerin Champier, 36 –39. Comparable processes occur as fruits ripen; heated by the sun they become sweeter. Regarding the changes in flavor through cooking procedures, see Flandrin in Food: A Culinary History, 320 –21.

256

Medicine and Cuisine

rather than health.39 This is a wholesale attack on cuisine, an explicit denial that culinary combinations have anything to do with health. Such denunciations only become more typical in the sixteenth century and reflect either a growing rift between these two ways of thinking about food or the fact that the two may never have been so similar. The kinds of corrections Bruyerin believed appropriate were much more simple, like macerating cabbage in salt to remove its bitterness and make it softer or combining cold lettuce with hotter herbs like arugula.40 With these examples, it would be impossible to tell whether the idea of correction informed the practice, but it does seem unlikely. In Spain the distinction between theory and practice is also evident in Nuñez de Oria’s discussion of cooking methods. Apart from typical advice about roasting fatty meats and boiling drier ones and the ban on all fried foods, he adds that most families pay no attention to these rules. There is more circumspection among Turks and Moors, which is why Christians suffer many more fevers and other diseases.41 Most people have no idea which meats are best to cure with salt, and “the greater part of men eat beef in these lands, ignoring their great malice.” 42 These comments suggest that in the author’s mind Arab-influenced cuisine or at least custom among Muslims is much more sober and informed, but Spaniards have strayed from dietary principles. Another example is found in his discussion of rules about how and when to eat cheese. The first rule is never to eat it with diuretic and aperitive herbs like parsley, celery, fennel, or pepper, as is done in quesadillas and other dishes.43 These herbs force the cheese undigested into the kidneys, causing obstructions and stones. Cheese must only be eaten after meals, as a seal to the seething stomach. Obviously, this was also a rule most Spaniards 39. Bruyerin Champier, 40. On the topic of condiments: “Verum ipsorum omnino nullo pro alimento utimur ob virium vehementiam, gula ingeniosa, ducem sequuta naturam, misturam omnimodam invenit, ne nonnihil hominum cibis nasceretur. Unde tot culinarum, saporum coacervationes, tot veneficia, tot adulteria.” 40. Bruyerin Champier, 41and 59: “Brassica, tum tenerior tum minus acris amaraque est salsilagine imbuta et macerata.” 41. Nuñez de Oria, 87–90: “Usan se entre Christianos muchas mas guisados que entre Turcos y Moros y por ende los Christianos son tentados de muchos mas fiebres.” Roasting pigeons and “piernas de carnero” leg of lamb, is one example of how Spaniards have gone wrong. 42. Nuñez de Oria, 103: “La mayor parte de los hombres comen sus carnes en estas tierras, por ignorar su gran malicia.” 43. Nuñez de Oria, 167: “La primera regla, que no coma con cosas diureticas abridoras con perexil, apio, hinojo, pimienta, o con otras especias, con las quales y queso, suelen hazer quesadillas, o otras manjares.”

Medicine and Cuisine

257

ignored. Thus, the cuisine in which we might expect some of the closest affinities between cooking and medicine, at least according to one physician, was quite negligent in this regard. On the other hand, when Nuñez de Oria does approve of a particular dish, and he even offers recipes, the medicinal logic is difficult to discern. For example, he admits that he is fond of the cuclillo, or cuckoo. Being hot and dry, it would naturally be best boiled according to the logic he spoke of previously, but the recipe suggests it be roasted, well larded or basted with fat, cooked with pepper and cloves, and finally served with a cinnamon sauce, which he claims makes it easy to digest. Adding hot and dry spices to an already hot and dry food defies all medical logic, and the idea that this makes it easily digested seems tacked on to justify a dish whose origin is plainly culinary rather than medicinal.44 On several occasions he is forced to admit the recipe he offers could not be healthy, as he does with a dish of conger eels, salted and dried and then cooked with garbanzo beans, leeks, and dried chestnuts, which he considers a typical dish.45 Among the English period 2 authors there is also a distinction between healthy cooking and common fashion. William Bulleyn, typical of this period, rants against the obscene gluttony he associates with courtly banquets. Especially noxious is mixing of various courses of roasted, fried, and baked foods and mixing of fish, meat, fruit, and salads. There is a pronounced anticourt aesthetic here but not necessarily an animosity toward cooking per se. In a few revealing passages he denotes what he thinks is medically sound cooking, which usually involves simple herbally based condiments. About sorrel he observes that “thy Coke dothe righte well knowe it, and all they that make grene sauce.” As a sour, cold, and dry corrective this would have been the perfect sauce for hot foods. Similarly, in discussing sage, he notes “If it be put in a pigge, it drieth the humours, that would engender fleume” and of purslane, which can be preserved in salt, “then it is very good with rosted meates.” 46 In another fascinating passage, Bulleyn suggests that because most herbs and roots are “wyndye” and engender melancholy and gross blood, it is best not to add them indiscriminately to other foods; rather, “the grose 44. Nuñez de Oria, 134: “assanse bien lavando las con manteca, o tozino, cuezense con pimienta, clavos, y comense con cierta salsa de canela, que llaman hipocras, es carne de facil digestion, y grata al estomago.” 45. Nuñez de Oria, 184. 46. Bulleyn, pp. 56r–58v.

258

Medicine and Cuisine

binding togither and seething of herbes in brothes and pottage, be more holsomer then the fyne choppynge of them.” 47 That is, a bouquet garni, in his mind, is a healthier preparation than the finely incorporated, typically medieval sauces. Whether this reflects a shift of culinary techniques or merely this author’s unique opinion is difficult to say. But this could be one example of a health recommendation adopted in the kitchen. On the other hand, Bulleyn was far more savvy about cooking than most of his fellow dietary authors. He may have merely known about this practice and commended it, as he did on numerous occasions. There are several recipes for complicated broths, intended to be corrective or medicinal. He also mentions swans in “galantines,” which if well made help to digest their flesh; even eels, tench, and lampreys are acceptable well-baked or roasted and eaten with pepper, ginger, and vinegar. It is clear here that the author repeats the standard dietary line and then procedes to describe and approve of his favorite recipes.48 The confusion over whether standard dishes originated in medicine or cuisine was clearly understood by Fridaevallis, writing near Antwerp a decade later. He wonders whether cooking beans with pepper and honey wine is done for the sake of health, as cooks claim, or for gluttony. Perhaps he was suggesting that any strange combination can be somehow defended using dietary principles, but this one is obviously questionable, as is the combination of peas and almond milk, about which he exclaims “behold how the art of gluttony rejoices.” 49 Fridaevallis is finally calling to judgment the many dishes that parade under the banner of health. He does, however, approve of some combinations: wine to correct melons, oregano and acidic flavors to correct squash, and spinach cooked quickly to release its humors, then mixed with butter and verjuice.50 47. Bulleyn, p. 77r. 48. Bulleyn, pp. 75v–76r. After warning against the dangers of beef he describes a broth, “If the said broth be tempered with salte: Mustard, vinegar or garlicke, etc. Be commonlye used for the sawces to digest biefe withall, for the said sauces do not onlye help digestion, but also defendeth the body from sundry inconveniences and divers sicknesses, as dropsies, quartens, leproses, and suchelike.” There is also a delightful recipe for a morning drink that bears mentioning here, p. C7r. “If mynts, burrage leaves, rosmarye flowers, honyesuckles, and a little suger bee layed in a Basone, and covered wyth a fayre cloth, and mylke the sayed Bason full through the cloth, and let it stande all nyghte— Thys is pleasant to drynke in the mornynge uppon an empty stomacke. . . .” This sort of tisane may have made the acceptance of tea in the next century much smoother. 49. Fridaevallis, 61. On Phaselis [sic]: “Si pipere et mulso faciat coquus arte salubrem, Dic mihi, naturae servit, an iste gulae?” On peas: “Sed melius sapient, si dulcis amygdala succum Praestiterit, mira sic iubet arte gula.” 50. Fridaevallis, 66 –72. He also commended peaches cut in cubes and immersed in wine, though it is impossible to tell whether or not the custom precedes the medical advice, 109.

Medicine and Cuisine

259

These are simple and legitimate corrections and are also tasty, as is mustard, hot and dry, when used to correct mushrooms, cold and moist. Later, however, he does say that all mushrooms are harmful however cooked, retracting his former approval.51 Nonetheless, he does not criticize all cuisine but only that whose primary objective is taste. It is still not entirely clear, though, what kind of medicinal logic might have led Fridaevallis to approve some of the recipes he offers. He may be just as guilty as others of appropriating dietary rules to defend favorite foods. For example, there are detailed instructions on how to prepare turtles: parboiled, cleaned, and returned to the pot with pepper, saffron, and egg yolks. Also surprising is a recipe for frog’s legs: soaked, floured, fried, and served with celery, fennel flowers, or green sauce. This, he claims, is a way to correct its humidity. Since most dietary authors condemned both of these foods, these recipes appear to be good examples of common customs later rationalized with medicine, as is a recipe for sea urchins prepared in a plate with eggs, pepper, and honey.52 Less strange is an explanation of why olive oil, which is temperately hot and moist, is used on raw herbs to temper their frigidity.53 With cold and dry vinegar and hot and dry salt, this would yield a perfectly balanced dish. But was it medicine that first inspired this combination of flavors? Italian authors in period 2 also reveal the ambiguous relationship between medicine and cuisine, none more so than the heroic attempt of Domenico Romoli (called Panunto) to describe all the duties of the scalco —a banquet manager, butler, maître d’, and health advisor to a noble household all rolled into one. This work, not unlike Platina’s in its scope, contains an ample collection of recipes, catering and serving information, details regarding what foods are best in which season, and a section on the medical virtues of all known foods. Although Romoli tries to explain that this latter section is really included for the scalco who has to deal with a master in less than optimal health,54 the advice 51. Fridaevallis, 76: “Fungorum comestorum malignitatem emendant: cùm enim fungi tantae sint et frigitatis et humiditatis participes;” 104, “fungi omnes pessimi sunt, quovis modo coquantur et parentur. Et si gulae satisfaciant, stomacho enim facessunt negotium, siquidem difficulter, ut modò diximus, concoquuntur.” 52. Fridaevallis, 193, 203, 191. 53. Fridaevallis, 212. 54. Domenico Romoli, La singolare dottrina . . . dell’ufficio dello scalco (Venice: Michele Tramezzino, 1560), p. 198r (misprinted as 298r): “Ne giudicate che questa sia materia inconveniente al vostro officio, percioche il vero scalco, oltre che dever saper render ragione di quel che fa, è tenuto anco intender qualque cosa del regimento della sanità, perche trovandosi il suo signore tal hora mal disposto, ò fastidito, sappia giudicare qual pasto gli potrebbe piu convenire per non incorrere in amalatia. . . .”

260

Medicine and Cuisine

there completely contradicts what was said earlier. Apart from seeming completely schizophrenic, his advice highlights the many discrepancies between what was actually eaten and what physicians thought should be eaten. For example, the first section contains some delightful recipes for pasticci di bue alla francese, which is parboiled beef baked in a pie with spices, and a soffrito di carne di bue trinciata, chopped beef that is fried and then moistened with broth. But later in the book beef is described as cold and dry; it generates gross, turbid blood and melancholy, and is especially harmful for the otiose. Similarly, recipes for lepri con pappardelle and roast hare cannot be made to concur with his later condemnation of hare’s flesh as excessively hot and dry. Why then would the recipes include hot condiments like sage and rosemary? 55 One can only assume that Romoli himself felt safe serving anything that tasted good when his master was in health but followed the physician’s advice when necessary. At any rate, the differences between the two are quite pronounced. Romoli was even forced on occasion to directly criticize his own recipes. Cheese should never be mixed with herbs that penetrate the body because this leads to clogs and kidney stones, and “they greatly err who mix cheese in ravioli with parsley roots, spices and raisins. . . .” 56 And after the panoply of dazzling banquet menus and complex recipes, he actually claims that “things composed of various ingredients are closer to corruption that those made with few things. Nothing is more pernicious than mixing many things together in the stomach, and remaining at the table a long time eating.” 57 This futile attempt to mix culinary and dietetic advice would not be repeated in the next period. PERIOD 3: THE BREAKDOWN OF ORTHODOXY In period 3, as has been explained, the divergence of opinion among dietary authors became wider, national prejudices more pronounced, 55. Romoli, pp. 142r and 209r; 151r and 210r. Interestingly, Romoli also claims that hare’s flesh is not really good for hunters who become unnaturally hot in the chase, and hot and dry hare would be dangerous for them. Most authors claimed that only the wellexercised can digest such gross meat. Another example would be a recipe for roasted peacock, p. 146r contrasted with the pronouncement that it “fa cattivo nutrimento, perche è questa carne di cattiva complessione,” p. 219r. 56. Romoli, p. 239r: “Però molto errano quei che fanno col Cascio: ravioli con radici di petrosemolo, e con specie, e uva passa, che son tutte cose che fan penetrare.” 57. Romoli, p. 258v: “Le cose composte di varie cose son di piu presta corrutione che le cose composte di poche. Niuna cosa è piu perniciosa, che mescolar nello stomaco molti cibi insieme, dopo lo star lungo tempo à tavola mangiando.”

Medicine and Cuisine

261

and the tendency to rely on experience over the authoritative sources greater. In some cases this prompted authors to approve of dishes formerly banned by dietary theory; in others it led to rethinking of the principles of corrective cooking altogether. It is clear that on the whole the two domains of cooking and medicine drifted further apart. No one better exemplifies this shift than Girolamo Cardano. Discussing condiments, he makes it clear that they make foods more useful for humans but can easily be abused. In De usu ciborum he assures readers that he is not about to give them a book like Platina’s, which is more for culinary pleasure and gluttony than good health.58 He also condemns all study of how to prepare delicacies and complex mixed dishes because these are all harmful to health. Condiments should only be used as correctives, acidic foods should be sweetened, tough foods softened, and so forth. Combining flavors should only be used to temper the main ingredient, to render it closer to our bodies qualitatively.59 But the finished dish should still be as simple as possible; as everyone knows, the simpler the food, the easier it is to digest and the longer one remains in health. Despite all this, Cardano does offer several relatively involved recipes, one that ironically could have come directly from Platina—the cibarium album or blancmange, made with rice starch, capon, almond milk, sugar, and citrus juice. He does at least admit that it is really only safe for the sick to eat now and then.60 But there are also recipes for a polenta made of millet, a sort of fava bean pizza made with onions or leeks and eaten in Lent, and baby artichokes eaten raw if tender or cooked in a broth with butter. All these are plainly examples of common Italian dishes that have made their way into a dietary despite the opinion of ancient authorities.61 In De sanitate tuenda Cardano moves even further from standard opinion. Among cooking methods, he describes the different species of roasting: on a grill, above the coals, baked in an oven either alone or in a pie. Surprisingly, he claims that boiling is the worst cooking method;

58. Cardano, De usu ciborum, 43: “Non quemadmodum fecit Platini, qui libellum de honesta voluptate inscripsit, potiùs ad usum culinarum et voluptatem heluonem qui popinis tantum indulgent, atque gulae. . . .” 59. Cardano, De usu ciborum, 47: “Quae si talia suapte natura non fuerint, ex contrariorum inter se admistione temperamentum quaerere debet, ut calida frigidis contemperentur, non secus ac calidia frigidis, et siccis humida: et in his condimentorum ratio maximè valebit, dummodo non ultra sanitatis limites tendant.” 60. Cardano, De usu ciborum, 55. 61. Cardano, De usu ciborum, 55, 61. As he admitted, Galen claimed that these carecossi or baby artichokes cause melancholy, but Cardano did not seem to care.

262

Medicine and Cuisine

it nourishes the least and makes food the most difficult to digest. He then goes on to approve of frying and especially stewing because these methods best retain the substantial humidity of the ingredients. A recipe for veal pie shows not only how far he was willing to stray from standard advice but his considerably extensive understanding of cooking procedures. The pie includes chopped veal, raisins, parsley, saffron, salt, cinnamon, fennel, egg yolks, and broth baked in a crust, perhaps laden with rosemary. Some people also add sugar and unripe grapes.62 It is not entirely clear why he thought this a particularly nourishing and easily digested dish, and he certainly does not explain any underlying corrective logic, if there is one. Cardano appears here to be yielding to purely gastronomic interests. The same can be said of his discussion of flavors and how best to mix them. Sweetness, for example, does not go well with bitter or salty foods but does go with acid. Salt goes well with bitter and astringent foods but not with acidic or acrid flavors.63 In practical terms then, sugar goes nicely with oranges but not a salad of herbs. Salt goes with the salad but not oranges. This certainly makes sense gastronomically but seems to depart from strict corrective logic. Combining hot and moist sweetness with cold and dry sourness makes sense, but hot and dry salt with hot and dry bitterness? And why not sweetness with bitter and salty foods, as used in many corrective combinations, the moisture of one offsetting the dryness of the other? All these examples show that nutritional dogma had begun to erode, and authors were increasingly willing to describe recipes that would not clearly fit within the standard rules. This again reveals some of the differences between cuisine and medicine. Another Italian author of period 3, Alessandro Petronio, directly contradicts standard medical advice on wine. Usually it was described as an aid to digestion, but clearly getting his clues from the kitchen, Petronio observes that in cooking it toughens and firms up food.64 Fish and pork become more tender only if cooked in water. Reasonably then, the same should happen in our stomachs, and water, despite the fact that it is cold and moist, does go with these foods. This advice opposes both culinary 62. Cardano, De sanitate tuenda, 91. Some of the information in this work, published after Cardano’s death, overlaps the former title, and I have been unable to tell exactly what this work might correspond to in the Opera Omnia. It may have been pieced together from other works. 63. Cardano, De sanitate tuenda, 101. 64. Petronio, 58: “ogni sorte di vino tarda la concottione, perche indura il cibo nel ventricolo, et rende il chilo più grosso, che non fa l’acqua.”

Medicine and Cuisine

263

and medical dogma and shows that humors, ironically enough, played less a role in the dietary literature than they may have in the dining room. His ideas also relied more heavily on experience outside the kitchen as well. He seems to have appreciated the fact that alcohol dehydrates that body and the fact that this, rather than fumes rising to the head, is what causes headaches, thirst, and bleary eyes. Beyond his willingness to abandon standard theory, Petronio also offers several recipes but is not entirely clear whether these follow a corrective logic. For example, after discussing his preference for seething or poaching fish over roasting (frying was considered the worst method), he explains how to cook tuna on a spit. It should be cut into pieces, salted, skewered, and seasoned with powdered coriander, oil and vinegar, and fennel or rosemary. He also advises to “sbruffa continuamente” [keep it turning].65 After this he describes the best way to eat the fravolino fish (rubellio in Latin), which should be “fresh, fried and cold.” This contradicts his earlier pronouncement against fried fish and ignores the ubiquitous rule that fish should never be eaten after it has cooled. Both these are good examples of customs taking precedence over nutritional theory. Petronio did not yield to all common customs. One example of his reluctance is a critique of the practice of eating tiny birds bones and all. The bones will not mix with other foods, resist being broken down, can remain in the stomach three or four days, and sometimes can even puncture the stomach lining.66 Like most authors of this period, Petronio strikes out on his own, following neither the classical authorities nor current practice but his own experience. This meant that nutritional theory could coincide with culinary customs but not necessarily because they shared some common humoral logic. Another example of a food commonly claimed to be both medicinal and culinary is marzipan. It was used as a kind of restorative, and a few decades earlier Grataroli claimed that it was an ideal food for travelers because it offered a highly concentrated and easily assimilated form of nourishment.67 Petronio, however, believes that it was just as likely to have the opposite effect; it is actually hard to concoct and distribute, can cause obstructions, and may ultimately weaken us.68 This is just one more example of how

65. Petronio, 150 –53. From the name, it is safe to assume that this was a red fish, but I have not been able to identify the species precisely. 66. Petronio, 178. 67. Grataroli, De regimine iter agentium, 19. 68. Petronio, 189.

264

Medicine and Cuisine

dietary theory could depart from both custom and the standard medical authorities. The dieticians, then as now, tried to promote their own new fads as well. Pisanelli raves about hop sprouts, how they generate clear and pure blood and help to clean out the whole system. He is actually amazed how little they are used outside of Germany, where they were used to make beer.69 His recommendation is to take tender young sprouts and season them with oil and vinegar, yielding a perfectly tempered dish. The significance of this is that neither the classical authorities nor common custom recognized the virtues of hops. Pisanelli is equally enthusiastic about lemons, not because they are nutritious but because they make the best sauce, especially as the Genovese prepare them: cut thin, seasoned with salt and rosewater, and used as an accompaniment to meat.70 Here is one custom, at least, that fulfills all the requirements of a medicinal corrective. But in many other cases Pisanelli approves of a dish despite the warnings of his fellow dietary writers. One example is venison, usually condemned as difficult to digest, generating melancholy and quartan fevers. Pisanelli believes it fine as long as cooked with fatty meats, perhaps like prosciutto, or well larded in a pie.71 It is a corrective logic that the author appeals to, adding moisture to a dry meat, but a common custom has again been rationalized with medical principles. Another example worth mentioning, if only for its sophisticated cooking technique, is eels. They are usually condemned but here cooked over a grill in a leaf of paper with oil, parsley, and coriander. There is a similar recipe for grilled mullet bathed with oil and orange juice.72 Whether these combinations might be explicitly medicinal is perhaps less important than the fact that a dietary writer was quite savvy about culinary matters and was willing to bend the rules a bit to offer some appealing recipes. Moving into the seventeenth century, the revised version of the medieval work by Ugo Benzi, extensively doctored up by Savoyard Giovanni Lodovico Bertaldi, is also a treasure trove of contemporary cooking methods and how these relate to dietary principles. Bertaldi is clear 69. Pisanelli, 36 –37: “è maraviglia, che essendo di tanta virtù, siano cosi poco usati.” 70. Pisanelli, 52 –53: “E certo non si trova salsa miglior di questa.” 71. Pisanelli, 68 – 69: “Cuocendosi in compagnia d’altre carni d’animali grassi, overo in pasticci molto bene inlardato.” It seems he had prosciutto in mind here as a corrective because on the previous page he suggested “persciuti . . . sono ottimi per cuocer con l’altre carni.” 72. Pisanelli, 106 –7; 96 –97.

Medicine and Cuisine

265

about what information he adds to the original text, so it would be reasonable to treat his comments as another period 3 work. For example, in the entry for garlic he says “today they are eaten with salads to correct the humidity and frigidity of the herbs, or placed with vinegar, parsley and bread soaked in vinegar to make sauce to eat with meat, which excites the appetite.” And regarding leeks: “In Piedmont they praise leeks cooked with rich goose broth, and women use them with sugar to temper their humidity.” In other words, Bertaldi is among the few to explain customs in explicitly medical terms. Mace, he explains, is used by women in patés of pork to correct the bad quality of this meat and “to give it better taste and better odor.” 73 If we trust the author’s comments, he implies that women regularly use corrective principles in common food preparations. In other cases he may have just been using familiar examples to illustrate his points. A good example of the latter, or at least his willingness to ignore received dietary wisdom, appears in his discussion of chestnuts. Galen condemned them, but they can be good and even nobles eat them cooked over the coals in a perforated pan and served with butter, salt, and pepper. This way they taste better, are more nourishing, and have no bad qualities.74 There can be no doubt that common custom outweighs medicine here, because food cooked over smoking coals was always forbidden. Bertaldi does not, however, bow to all culinary trends. He describes ice cream as cold and “windy,” that is, it causes gas.75 The ambiguous relationship between medicine and cuisine can also be seen in the recognized master of salads in this period, Massonio. His favorite combinations of salad ingredients, although ostensibly medicinal, also appear to flaunt corrective rules. Bitter herbs like chicory and endive must be countered by sweet condiments, he explains. Savory ingredients should be intensified with arugula, chervil, or valerian. Insipid lettuce and borage need other herbs and oil, salt, and pepper to make 73. Benzi, 130 –31, garlic: “all’hora si mangia con l’insalate, per correger l’humidità, e frigidità à della herbe: si mette ancora con l’acetosa, petrosilo, pan infuso nell’aceto per farne salsa, per mangiar con le carni, la quale escita l’appetito”; leeks, 133; nutmeg, 160, “usano le Donne la noce moscata, e macis nelle paste, che si fanno delle carne del porco, per correger la mala qualità d’esse carni, e per dargli miglior gusto, e miglior odore.” 74. Benzi, 185. 75. Benzi, 220: “Ventosa poi è la neve fatta di capo di latte, e bianchi d’ovi, e zuccaro sbattuti insieme, e refrigera molto.” Bertaldi was also willing to criticize what he considered outlandish or ill-advised customs. Worth mentioning is admission that some people eat cats in winter, roasted with aromatic herbs, 298. Even odder is his story of some English and Dutch sailors stranded on Novaya Zemlya in 1617 who were forced to eat polar bear meat, after which some died, 299 –300.

266

Medicine and Cuisine

them tasty. He also suggests orange or lemon juice, cooked must, garum, raisins, onions, garlic, and basil as flavorings. What is missing, however, is any acknowledgment that these would be corrective combinations.76 The objective here appears to be flavor. Even the most typical combination of salt, oil, and vinegar in salad dressings comes into question. Massonio admits that oil enters in not as a necessity but through continuous use. It begins as a custom and only fortuitously does it serve to temper the coldness of the vinegar and herbs and add a bit of nutritional value to the whole.77 Massonio also muses that while the ancients called salads acetaria, recognizing the vinegar, and moderns call them insalata, recognizing only the salt, some people think they should be called herba salolacetaria to acknowledge all the ingredients. In any case, here one author admits that custom precedes the corrective logic. But not all customs are equally adopted. One surprising comment, which follows corrective logic faithfully, insists that garlic is not a healthy condiment for Romans. It is not bad for those in colder climates, but its heat clearly exacerbates the harmful effects of ambient heat in the South. Here cuisine and medicine part ways completely.78 On the other hand, after lengthy discourses on the various ancient opinions on certain ingredients, Massonio often threw in his favorite recipes as well. For example, he explains that he prefers asparagus either chopped with eggs, fried in oil, in a broth, seasoned with cheese and eggs, or boiled with orange or lemon juice.79 None of these appears to have any corrective rationale at all. 76. Massonio, 20 –21. Why garo is mentioned in the seventeenth century is uncertain. It may refer to the ubiquitous ancient condiment based on decayed fish. Later in the book he denied that it was caviar, as some authors, such as Petronio, thought. This suggests that people were not familiar with it in the seventeenth century. But why then he would mention it as a condiment is puzzling. Massonio, 99, and 362 where he suggested it to season fagioli beans: “lessi in acqua, e condisconi con olio, sale acete, e peppe; o con olio garo, e peppe; o con succo di narancio, olio e peppe.” It may have been merely for historical interest, as must be his entry for Rhu or sumach, which he acknowledged was used by the Arabs and Spanish, but seems to have disappeared among Italians, because he had to explain what it is. Massonio, 83. 77. Massonio, 88 – 89. 78. Massonio, 139: “In Roma per esser città calda, è nocevole il mangiarlo spesso: ma ne’ luoghi più freddi, non è insalubre.” Interestingly, Cogan would have agreed with this basic principle. He explained that the French eat garlic to counter the cold of their country, and by this logic the English should eat it even more, Cogan, 61. Despite this critique, Massonio did approve of most common salads. A rare example of one combination he condemned is a mixture of shredded lettuce, olives, lemon, sardines, jujubes, tarantello (pickled belly of tuna) and parsley. This contains too many diverse ingredients, he believed. Massonio, 393. 79. Massonio, 236.

Medicine and Cuisine

267

Composed in the same year as Massonio’s, Sala’s book on aliments pays the usual lip service to the idea that the culinary art is indispensable to medicine. On their own and uncorrected, many foods would harm us unless properly mixed.80 He will not indulge us, he adds, in a tract on pots and pans or recipes as are found in cookbooks, only what is necessary for health. Nonetheless, almost immediately we find sesame biscotti being dipped in wine or some liquor, perhaps vin santo, as well as precise recipes for reginae (a biscuit with anise and coriander) and marzipan. These were, of course, touted as medicinal confections. There are also exquisite recipes for morselli (pounded meat morsels with nuts and sugar), gelatines, placentiae (tarts of fruits, herbs, fish, and the like), which are also considered somehow medicinal, as are sauces such as diasynapis (an Italian mostarda), alliatum, and piperatum.81 What makes the appearance of these so strange here is that they are essentially heavily spiced late-medieval concoctions. Perhaps Padua, where Sala was writing, still fell under the sway of the Venetian spice trade. Or perhaps Sala was just unique among dietary authors for retaining these long after others had abandoned them as illicit. Presumably all of these foods were still relatively familiar and had made the transition from medicine to cuisine; why else would other authors have felt the need to condemn people who use them merely for pleasure? 82 Sala does not, in the end, try to explain the medicinal logic of these recipes or how they should be used. And when he does offer specific correctives for individual items, they often defy all logic. For example, with melons, rather than old salted cheese as they serve it in taverns and as even physicians advise, he

80. Sala, 38: “omnino est ita aliquando esse necessariam in alimentis compositionem ut in medicamentis, potest enim simplex alimentum aut non iuvare ut deberet, aut etiam nocere nisi misceatur, ut non immeritò medicinae ars culinaria inservire perinde dicatur ac pharmacopea.” 81. Sala, 39 – 45. Reginae, the recipe coming from France, “dissolve on the tongue and descend into the stomach without any labor.” They are made with 12 ounces of flour, 16 ounces of sugar, 12 eggs, a little yeast, anise, and coriander. The diasynapis is made of grape must (hence the name mostarda), mustard seed, mace, pepper, cloves, cinnamon, sometimes musk and amber, either quince, pear, or apple, orange or lemon peel, sugar or honey, all cooked together. Sala’s culinary knowledge is also evident in his account of a particular preparation that involves stuffing various animals into others: eggs into chickens, birds into geese, capons into sheep, sheep into oxen, part 2, 17. He also describes birds wrapped in leaves and placed under hot coals to cook, as well as foods boiled in a cloth, bladder, or “double vase” to help retain their moisture, part 2, 21. 82. As merely one example among dozens, just the year before in Antwerp, Nonnius exclaimed that bellaria, placenta, crustula, torta: “ut gulae haec irritamenta passim mensas occupent . . . nulla sanitatis habita ratione, magna ex pane insalubres sunt.” Nonnius, 28.

268

Medicine and Cuisine

recommended pickled herring, caviar, or pickles.83 Maybe he was thinking that anything preserved would prevent corruption of the melons. Whatever the case, Sala was typical of period 3 authors in his willingness to trust experience and his own odd preferences over received wisdom. One example that relates to cooking is the common warning not to cover food after it has been roasted. Presumably the noxious vapors would fall and congeal on the surface of the meat or fish. Sala, however, says that you see everyone do this daily— cooks, tavern-keepers, and families—and no one is harmed.84 In this case, as throughout this work, dietary theory bent to accommodate common practice. The French authors of period 3 also reveal a great deal about the differences between common custom and dietary theory, particularly because of their aim to correct “popular errors.” Joubert can be credited with starting this trend, and in many cases, against all current practice, he followed corrective logic to its ultimate extreme. For example, wine was commonly denied to boys under eighteen because of their excessive heat. But logically, because they are colder, girls should be allowed wine earlier, contrary to vulgar opinion.85 This idea was also contrary to professional medical opinion, and Joubert was the first to point out this inconsistency in applying humoral principles. Of course, it also reveals a major gulf between theory and practice, both culinary and medical. Joubert also recognized that the so-called drugs sold by apothecaries were actually dainties eaten for pleasure, which led him to denounce all varieties of sugared “biscuteaux, pignolat, tartes de Massepan, confitures et autres friandises” [biscuits, pine nut cookies, marzipan tarts, confections, and other dainties].86 These are precisely the “medicines” that Sala gave recipes for above. Unfortunately, the majority of Joubert’s work deals with medical errors rather than culinary ones, and his Matinees de l’il’Adam, which he claims deals with food, has been lost. But the list of questions he offers in the second part of Erreurs populaires at least suggests the many ways that common customs may diverge from sound theory, even though he provides no answers. For example, he asks whether “la poire avec fromage, est mariage” [pear with cheese is marriage], whether there is no

83. Sala, 47. 84. Sala, 102: “Video tamen quotidie sine ullo periculo sine ulla cautione a coquis praesertim et hospiciis et numerosis familiis calentes carnes suffocari.” 85. Joubert, Erreurs populaires, book 2, 2. 86. Joubert, Erreurs populaires, book 2, 42.

Medicine and Cuisine

269

better sauce than appetite or whether it is alright to use sauces sometimes. He wonders if milk and fish are poisonous together and if nuts after fish serve as an antidote. He also asks why people say not to drink wine after eating salad.87 These maxims reveal that many people thought they understood sound medical principles, but the fact that Joubert called them into question implies that dietary theory informed neither people’s culinary practices nor even their basic understanding of nutrition. In several cases their ideas may stem from folk practices or older, superceded dietary works. This is certainly the case with “Jamais succre ne gasta sauce” (sugar never spoils a sauce), which can be found in Platina. Presumably Joubert was still under the sway of a more orthodox Galenism that could not explain such sayings as “mutton makes us age above all meats, but cheese guards us from it.” 88 It is clear from these that custom and theory were not one and the same. Along similar lines, Duchesne also takes the opportunity to correct some common mistakes, as in his condemnation of “young flesh and old fish” as “repugnant to all reason.” All animals are best at a median age, even if they are not at their best in terms of taste. Duchesne’s priority here is medical rather than gastronomic. He even recognizes that fat animals are always the tastiest and tenderest even though fat itself is dangerous and should be eaten as little as possible.89 In general, Duchesne’s attitude toward cooking is that excessive artifice—mixing of contrary types of food in one meal, and especially all the delicacies and drinks associated with banqueting—are just as dangerous as total lack of correction, as seen among the destitute.90 This attitude is typical of period 3 and again shows that in the authors’ minds few people, especially those at both ends of the social spectrum, followed dietary rules or corrected their food properly. Refuting yet another popular error Duchesne wonders where people got the idea that salt is more harmful than 87. Joubert, Erreurs populaires, book 2, 113. All these jingles really only work in French: “vin ne boit apres salade, est en danger d’estre malade.” 88. Joubert, Erreurs populaires, book 2, question 84, presented to Joubert by Bart. Cabrol, “Pourquoy dit-on, que le mouton nous fait envieillir sur toutes viandes: et que le fromage nous en garde?” 89. Duchesne, 411: “jeune chair et vieux poisson, se trouve repugner à la raison.” 90. Duchesne, 211–12. He repeated a story from Galen about seeing some peasants eating a bowl of boiled wheat and concluded that this lack of artifice would be just as dangerous as all the cakes, pastries, and tarts eaten by gluttons. The ideal diet lies between the two, and employs a moderate amount of reason and art, such as results when making bread properly. Strangely enough, though, in the section on medicinal foods Duchesne does offer recipes for cakes, tarts, custards, macaroons, and even a nice apple pie, 503. But these were not intended for healthy people.

270

Medicine and Cuisine

healthy. Of course it can be used to excess, but it is also useful for correcting moist and “excrementous” foods.91 Again, even when people thought they were doing the right thing, dieticians were quick to point out their mistakes. Bachot was the prime authority of the seventeenth century to pick up this theme of popular errors. On the topic of cuisine, he finds cooks to be the prime culprits in leading people astray. They overentice people with irritating flavors and a wide variety of sauces. And poor diners wonder why they have lost their appetite to such an extent that delicate pheasant and even the most exquisite venison bore them. Their palates have been jaded, their stomachs overburdened: “Chefs lack no artifice to revive lost appetite with an infinity of sauces, saupiquets, and diversely disguised foods. . . .” 92 All this serves only to keep people at the table, eating far more than is necessary or healthy. Again, the art of cooking flouts dietary rules. Regarding the customary order of meals, Bachot’s comments are difficult to make sense of. On the one hand they reveal that a familiar procession of courses has become customary among “les grands” in France. Soups, soft foods, fricassees, and salads start a meal, followed by boiled foods or roasts, and lastly cold foods such as fruits, sweets, and milkbased products. What is perplexing is that Bachot claims this order to be prescribed by medical precepts.93 Nothing could be further from the truth. Although the question of whether soft foods should precede more solid ones was never settled in the dietary literature, no author claimed that all fruits were best at the end of a meal, especially not corruptible ones like melons and peaches. And while milk products at the close of a meal may make sense gastronomically, it contradicts humoral theory because these foods must always be taken alone or at the start of a meal to prevent them from floating to the top of the stomach and putrefying. What appears to have happened here is that common custom worked its way into medical theory, which became simplified and adapted to gas91. Duchesne, 481. 92. Bachot, 336 – 40: “les cuisiniers ne manquant d’artifice à resuellir cest appetit perdu par une infinité de sauces; saupiquets, et diverse desguisements de viandes. . . .” A saupiquet is a kind of spicy stew or ragoût. 93. Bachot, 457: “et mesmes au joud’huy entre les grandes, de servir à table quantité de potage et couvrât de cinq ou six plats à grands bords une assez grande table, et ce tant au disner qu’au soupper; remplir de viandes molles et liquides pour le premier service, comme potages fricaseés, haschez et salades, comme le second est bouilly et rosty meslé, ou tout rosty, comme l’issue de toutes choses froides et de fruicts, laictages et douceurs, estant l’ordre qu’on doit tenir par le precept de medicine.”

Medicine and Cuisine

271

tronomic fashion. Another debatable point is whether salads should begin a meal; many authors claimed that they should come last. Perhaps the diversity of opinion among dietary authors themselves on all these points meant that practically anything could be defended using medical theory. It is certain, though, that no physician prescribed the order mentioned above. The English authors of period 3 showed a similar tendency to accommodate customs in their medical theories. For example, contrary to Galen, who believed that all bread must be well leavened, Cogan writes “Howbeit in England our finest manchet is made without leaven . . . now adayes common experience proveth in mens stomackes, that bread much leavened is heavie of digestion, and no bread is lighter than manchet.” Cogan even approves of oats, whereas Galen thought they were only good for animals, but “if hee had lived in Englande especially in Lancashire, Cheshire, Cumberlande, Westmoreland or Cornewale, hee would have saide that Oates had been meate for men.” 94 This reflects not only a willingness to depart from standard theory but a move toward fitting common practice into approved diet. In fact Cogan himself acknowledges that pigeons stuffed with grapes, which appears to be medicinal in origin, is merely as “cunning cookes have devised.” 95 This at least shows that the author believed that cuisine informed medicine in this case. But Cogan did not simply yield to all customs. Contrary to the manner in England, he claims that peaches should not be eaten as dessert because they swim above other foods and corrupt. He even goes so far as to assert “for such as can rule themselves, and refraine their appetite according to reason, it is best to forgoe both apples, peares and peaches.” 96 We can only assume that there is little consistency here, and Cogan is merely recommending whatever happened to suit his fancy. He 94. Cogan, 24 and 28. Moffett agreed, 233. Another departure from the authorities is Cogan’s approval of beef: “all these aucthors (in mine opinion) have erred, in that they make the Biefe of all countries alike,” 114. 95. Cogan, 134. The hot and moist pigeon is corrected with cold and dry, presumably sour, grapes. Cogan’s attitude toward cooks in general is not as negative as many of his contemporaries. For example, in his discussion of stockfish, he went further than Erasmus, who claimed that it nourishes no more than a stock (of wood). Cogan admitted that he once had a good piece, and “a good Cooke can make you good meat of a whetstone. . . . a good cook is a good jewel,” 150. Just as revealing is his claim that students do often need sauces because of their weak stomachs, but this matter belongs to the cook, not a physician, a clear admission that cooking per se is not within the purview of medicine. Cogan, 161. 96. Cogan, 91. What is strange here is that he is taking his cue from Salerno. Practically no other author still regarded this as a reliable authority.

272

Medicine and Cuisine

is completely out in left field when he warns his readers against oranges: “Ladie Gula hath not onely commended them to bee eaten with meates, but also devised a banquetting dishe to be made with sliced Orenges and Sugar cast uppon them.” 97 Both these, of course, make perfect medicinal sense. Also disregarding all theoretical principles, he makes the following singularly bizarre comment about mutton: “For it is seldom seene that any man hath taken harme by eating raw mutton, so light and wholesome it is in digestion.” 98 Faced with such blatantly outlandish comments, it is not surprising that the pronouncements of dieticians eventually lost credibility and people ate whatever they pleased. Moffett assumes that the basic corrective principles were well understood, but he also admits that there were many who ignore them: “Who seeth not a great difference between meats kill’d in season, and out of season, betwixt raw meat and parboild, betwixt fri’d meats and bak’d meats, spiced and unspiced, salt and fresh; between asparagus once washed and twice washt, betwixt cabbages once and twice sod, etc. is in my judgement deprived of his wits, or else over-wedded to his will.” 99 Such invective would, of course, have been unnecessary if the rules were followed. This is not to say that Moffett himself stuck to the rules often. Like Cogan, he was willing to depart from orthodox theory when native custom suited his fancy. For example, he claims that veal is much too moist for the English constitution but is more appropriate for Italians. He also insists that lamb is not as dangerously phlegmatic as Galen and the other authorities contend but is rather “of all other our best nourishment,” which he then proceeds to prove by divine and human reason.100 That is, it would hardly have been the Old Testament sacrifice or the analogue of Christ’s sacrifice if it were such an unwholesome food. Moffett also, surprisingly, approves of hedgehog, saying it need not be avoided as some fanatics say.101 Even deer’s flesh in season is commended unless ruined by cooks or overeaten by “greedy Gourmands, that cannot moderately use the good creatures of God.” 102 Once again, the enticements of cooking are to blame if people abuse good food. On the topic of cooking, he resolutely refuses to describe sauces: “All the which I write, not to tickle the Epicures of our age, who to the further cram97. Cogan, 104. 98. Cogan, 115. 99. Moffett, 48. 100. Moffett, 57 and 61. 101. Moffett, 77. The hind parts of squirrels are also fine fried with parsley and butter. 102. Moffett, 73.

Medicine and Cuisine

273

ming of their filthy corps, make curious sawces for every meat.” And quoting Socrates: “these new found sawces, what are they but whores to edge our appetite, making us feast when we should fast, or at least to feed more than nature willeth.” 103 The only proper sauces are exercise and hunger and for those who can get no exercise, only simple herbal correctives, spices, and flavorings like vinegar or lemon. Some of the examples Moffett provides of what he considers legitimate cooking procedures are nothing out of the ordinary: apples cooked with butter and cinnamon, ginger, or other spices and spinach boiled and served with butter, currants, and sugar. But others are difficult to make sense of humorally, especially this German dish: wild boar parboiled in Rhine wine and juniper berries, sliced and seasoned, then eaten cold with butter. The wine and spices would correct the meat and hasten concoction, but otherwise this just appears to be something Moffett had tasted and liked.104 The same can be said about his advice on olives, usually recommended at the start of a meal as an appetite stimulant. Moffett claims that they are “best in the midst of meat with a French salad; for eaten first they lie heavy in the stomach,” and after a meal their brackish salty vapors hinder sleep and provoke thirst.105 Here custom, even a foreign one, intrudes upon theory. These are rare exceptions to Moffett’s general rule that only the simplest of corrections promote health, while “over-curious cookery, making fine meat of a whetstone, and quelque-choses of unsavory, nay of bad and unwholesome meat” is to be utterly avoided.106 A contemporary of Moffett, Buttes, wrote somewhat more explicitly about how individual foods should be corrected. He counsels the reader to use salty meats and sharp things such as pomegranates or foods preserved in vinegar following grapes to counteract their sweetness. With strawberries, themselves tart, sugar is the best corrective. Apricots are best followed by anise seeds, salty or spiced meats, aged cheese, and wine.107 It is not clear if these were typical combinations, but they do ad103. Moffett, 255. 104. Moffett, 197, 227, and 72. The combination of spinach with currants and sugar, although strange to modern tastes, was a familiar combination in Elizabethan England. Thomas Dawson has a recipe for fritters with these and other spices, The Good Housewife’s Jewel, ed. Maggie Black (Lewes, East Sussex: Southover Press, 1996), 42. Regarding Moffett’s approval of this combination, it may be another example of a common custom subsequently used in a medical work. 105. Moffett, 209. 106. Moffett, 273. His reference to cooking a whetstone is directly critical of Cogan. See above, n. 95. 107. Buttes, pp. B2v; B4r; C1v.

274

Medicine and Cuisine

here to corrective logic consistently. Gourds should be eaten with pepper, mustard, and vinegar or with hot herbs like onions and parsley.108 In this case the cutting flavors help to digest the gourd, and the hot flavors balance it humorally. Similarly, the correctives suggested for fish are usually sour and spiced: carp is salted for six hours, fried, and sprinkled with vinegar flavored with spices and saffron; trout is poached in vinegar and water and eaten with a sour sauce; tench is baked with garlic and sweet spices or boiled with onions and raisins; oysters are roasted over embers and dressed with pepper, oil, and sour orange juice.109 These are among the clearest examples in the dietary literature of what were considered proper and simple cooking methods. It is not possible to tell with any certainty if these dishes were invented by Buttes. They appear not to be, if only because the medical opinions in the text are mostly derivative. And as he himself reveals in a description of a relatively complex “green sauce” made of sweet herbs like betony, mint, basil, rose vinegar, a clove or two, and a little garlic, “This kinde of sauce, I never tasted my selfe: yet am bold to communicate and commend it to my friends, as I find it described by the Italian Freitago.” 110 Buttes may have taken all the correctives from other medical texts, or they may be familiar examples taken from his own experience. In either case, they do show that one author could still describe a humorally sound form of cuisine. The puritanically minded Vaughan, writing at the start of the seventeenth century, was less generous toward the riotous habits of his countrymen. His advice is to leave for the New World, to “forsake our homebred idleness” and “leave off our loose and lavish living.” Among the abuses he enumerates are smoking and the use of “burning liquors, which are brewed by our vilipendious vulcans, not for any lasting use, but to beguile the lustfull world with desperate receipts, and momentary cures.” 111 In other words, his general apprehension is that certain items introduced as medicinal are now being abused for pleasure. Given this attitude, it is not surprising that he has few positive things to say about refined cuisine. He does, however, offer a few interesting recipes for foods he finds honest and wholesome. Among these are explicit directions on how to make mead, about which he remarks that there is “no drinke in 108. 109. 110. 111.

Buttes, p. E6r. Buttes, pp. L7v; M4v; N1r. Buttes, p. P3r. Vaughan, 7 and 29.

Medicine and Cuisine

275

the world more wholesome then Meath, if it be well brewed.” 112 Although his recipe sounds somewhat medicinal, he does claim that it is a “drink,” presumably for regular use, not one of his “diet drinks” for the sick. The few other culinary preparations he discusses, like how to serve fish, appear to be taken from Buttes. The same recipes for carp and trout are given, as well as a recipe for eels that is almost certainly from Pisanelli.113 Where all these recipes may ultimately originate is another question, but Vaughan does not offer much that is new regarding cooking, with the exception of an intriguing green sauce made of sorrel, strawberry juice, and violet leaves, to be eaten with pork or young goose.114 On the whole, however, his attitude toward cooking was overwhelmingly negative. In praise of our frugal antediluvian ancestors, Vaughan insists that they were “ignorant of our delicate inventions and multiplied compounds. . . . they knew not our dainty cates, our marchpanes, nor our superfluous slibber sauces.” They had no truck with “swinish epicures, whose thoughts intend on their present provender.” 115 This is, as mentioned previously, a decidedly anticourt aesthetic. Its net effect may have been not only to more narrowly define healthy eating but to excise what formerly were perfectly legitimate dishes according to medicine. These authors believed that the abuse of medicines and correctives for the purpose of pleasure is more harmful than the benefit they might have afforded. Thus, complex, spiced recipes, along with tobacco, alcohol, and sugar were increasingly banned, especially by puritanical authors like Vaughan. Ironically this could also be the case with recusant authors like Hollings, an Englishman who fled to Bavaria to practice his faith. In the introduction of his health manual for students, he complains that dietary rules were indeed followed carefully by the ancients, but today they are practically unknown. Doctors are also to blame for being exclusively concerned with curing patients rather than preserving health.116 This is a common gripe in the dietary literature and reveals that these authors did not recognize among the general populace any clear understanding 112. Vaughan, 40. Mead is made with one part honey and six parts water, boiled, skimmed, reduced by half, and cooled. To this is added barme or “Gods-good” (yeast) and cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and rhubarb tied in a cloth and then allowed to settle for two weeks. It is especially good to use against putrefaction. 113. Vaughan, 67– 69, see n. 72 above. Vaughan was well read; he also offered a great deal of agronomic advice taken mostly from Estienne and Liebault’s Maison Rustique. 114. Vaughan, 94. 115. Vaughan, 216 and 271. 116. Hollings, p. A5r.

276

Medicine and Cuisine

of proper corrective seasoning. Hollings’s students were also apparently ignorant. Much like today, he complains that they prefer quick snacks to balanced meals, in this case, turnover pies.117 Corrective seasoning for Hollings is a simple matter of counteracting cold with heat and vice versa, but “truly whatever is either fried in a pan, or encased in pastry by bakers and cooked in an oven, or grilled over coals, all of these are rendered unhealthy.” Like many other authors, there is an inherent antipathy toward culinary art here, and in fact he admits that he would say nothing about condiments, sauces, and other gluttonous enticements because they are totally improper for students.118 The attitude toward cooking per se is less stringent in Venner, but there are few explicit directions about how foods should be corrected. In many cases Venner mentions common customs and the popularity of certain preparations but reserves his own judgment. For example, the “feete of a Bullocke or Heifer, which we commonly call Neats feete, tenderly sodden, and layed in sauce, and afterwards eaten cold, are accounted very good meat.” The implication is that people believe this is a healthy dish. Venner does not seem sure. In other cases Venner clearly ignores prevailing medical attitudes, as when he commends cream “no lesse convenient than delightsome: and verily with strawberries and sugar.” 119 As a “correctorie” for the cream, the sugar should be used with a heavy hand, presumably to prevent corruption rather than balance the humors of hot and moist cream. This and other “whitemeats” [dairy products] such as frumentie, rice pottage, and junkets should not be eaten at the end of meals but always on an empty stomach at the start of a meal; at a between-meal “banquet” is even better: “How great therefore is the error of eating custards in the middle, or at the end of meales.” 120 It is interesting that Venner could approve of these in principle but not in the typical context as dessert. His advice is really a compromise between theory and practice. There are other examples of Venner’s willingness to approve or dis117. Hollings, 27: “in crustas ac diploides intorquentur, quaeque à pasta nomen et originem ducunt, damnatur omnia.” These “turnovers” are especially bad for students, who have difficulty digesting the dough. 118. Hollings, 37 and 46: “quae verò vel in sartagine friguntur, vel à pistoribus incrustatae furnis coquuntur, vel super carbones torrentur, insalubres reddantur omnes.” It is strangely ironic that these methods are also condemned by modern dieticians, most recently grilling. Charred meats and even toast are apparently carcinogenic. 119. Venner, 73 and 89. 120. Venner, 95.

Medicine and Cuisine

277

approve of common customs but little apparent logic to his decisions. For some reason he finds olives more dangerous than useful: “They are neither good for sauce, nor for meate” and black ones should be rejected as “abhominable.” On the other hand, sampier or samphire, a kind of pickled sea holly, he pronounces a “pleasant and familiar sauce, well agreeing with mans bodie” and convenient for all ages.121 Perhaps olives were somehow seen as foreign and dangerous while samphire is native. All of these approved condiments are nonetheless simple correctives. Like other authors, Venner counsels his readers “to refraine the use of all confused sauces” for “when hunger in gluttonous persons excite not the appetite, then the cooke is put to his shifts by strange mixtures of things to confect a sauce.” These are the product not of a “phylosophicall diet” but of luxurious excess.122 Cuisine again has overstepped the bounds of medical reason. The last of the English authors in period 3, Brooke, had the same vitriolic attitude toward gluttony and illogical combinations. He too gives no “farrago of recipes,” only simple rules as nature directs rather than art, rules of necessity rather than niceness.123 For Brooke, as for the others, the key is simplicity of diet, something he saw as practiced by few: “In this our English Feastings are exceedingly blamable, in which no Art or Charge is wanting, to furnish us with diseases; There are all the curiosities that can be invented to provoke us to Intemperance, Diversities of Courses and Services.” Brooke is also among the few authors who completely omits discussing condiments. He instructs his readers to see Venner.124 Discussion of a few authors from the Netherlands and of Sebizius in Strasbourg rounds out this discussion of period 3. The Dutch author Lessius’s Hygiasticon was not only among the most popular dietaries translated into a handful of other languages, but he was also frequently mentioned by other authors as prescribing a particularly strict and measured diet.125 Consequently, he also suggests what are probably the most 121. Venner, 100 –2. 122. Venner, 106. This comment is in the context of a discussion on sugared sauces “which of ingurgitating bell-gods are greatly esteemed.” Also 172, where the author asks whether it is good to provoke the appetite with sauces. 123. Brooke, 10. 124. Brooke, 110 and 83. 125. Brooke, for example, claimed that Lessius and Cornaro, bound together, can be found at almost every bookseller translated into English, 12. There was also a French translation in 1646, Spanish in 1782, and a German one as well.

278

Medicine and Cuisine

unimaginative descriptions of food in the entire genre. The simplest fare, such as gruel, an egg or two, and cheese and bread will suffice. Costly meat and fish serve only to entice gluttony, and we can live perfectly well without meat altogether and certainly without “lickorish cooking” and “curious dressing of meats.” 126 Savory foods are best not even thought about, because our imagination dwelling upon feasts and dainties will entice us to surfeit. We should pretend that these are all filthy, sordid, evil-flavored, and detestable, which indeed with habitual use they prove to be. “We should learn thereby, so much the more to contemne delicacies, and to content ourselves with simple and plain fare.” 127 This was a strange psychological tactic and one obviously antithetical to cuisine. One might expect a book seemingly written to refute the vegetarian stance of Lessius to be more generous with culinary details. Castellanus’s KREWFAGIA, “On Meat-eating,” does mention with approval such refined preparations as foie gras, procedures like aging meat properly, and enters the whole argument over roasting versus boiling meats.128 There is even a discussion of whether the custom of serving meats piping hot from a brazier or chafing dish can be healthy, particularly when food is eaten at such extreme temperatures.129 On the whole, however, Castellanus does not dwell at length on or give specific details about corrective procedures. In fact, his assumption is that it is only comparatively foul meats that require extensive treatment at the hands of chefs. Wild stag, for example, has a gamy or woodsy odor that can be nauseating unless disguised by artifice and condiments.130 This particular correction is entirely gastronomic rather than humoral, and it is revealing that Castellanus does not even suggest what these condiments might be, nor does he explain any inherent medical logic in the few recipes he offers. We are told how twelve larks can skewered, flavored with 126. Lessius, 62 – 64; 193. 127. Lessius, 75. 128. Castellanus, 37, 43, 53–57. His comments on aging meats are interesting, noting that some people prefer rare meat, but the process of aging helps to resolve and exhale superfluities, making the flesh drier, softer and lighter, and hence easier to digest. Somewhere between fresh and putrid is optimal. “In carnibus etiam recens ille vigor, tantoperè quibusdam placuit, ut crudas et adhuc palpitantes, atque à vitâ calentes edi voluerint.” “Ergo servanda mediocritas inter recentes nimium et vetustas, ut et putor absit, nec durities adsit.” 129. Castellanus, 46 – 49: “In hunc finem gulae artifices excogitarunt foculos, quibus in mensam pruna deferretur.” He concluded that such delicacies cannot even be tasted so hot, and tend to overcome our native heat, and dry up our insides. 130. Castellanus, 152 –53: “Odor praetereà et sapor quoddam sylvestris virulentiae fastidium afferunt, adeò ut vix placere possit, nisi coquorum artificio et condimentis illa feritatis contumacia frangatur.”

Medicine and Cuisine

279

sage and bacon, and roasted. Although this is a delicacy some physicians condemn altogether while others praise as easy to digest,131 Castellanus makes no attempt to resolve the issue, which is decent evidence that this recipe is culinary rather than medicinal, or at least that physicians themselves are unclear about how this might be a corrective procedure. Also writing in the Netherlands, though born in Spain, Nonnius provides readers with yet another twist on the question of optimal nutrition by emphasizing the virtues of fish. He also offers many insights into common usage of other foods, only some of which he approves. For example, he mentions that chickpeas are frequently eaten fried, which makes them less prone to cause flatulence but more difficult to digest. Similarly, squash are fried in pan and seasoned with oregano and pepper, or boiled in a broth.132 Nonnius is clear that neither of these preparations were invented by physicians, but he approves of them despite the censure of many ancient authorities. That is, the basic corrective logic can be applied post facto to a wide variety of practices that just happen to make medicinal sense. However, there are other practices of which he cannot approve, such as putting cherries in pastries, “as our depraved age persists in using.” 133 Some comments made by Nonnius call into question the entire problem of custom being absorbed into theory or theory informing custom. He notes that everyone uses lemon juice on meats and fish because it has the power to cut and attenuate. But the fact that lemon’s medicinal role is almost tacked on as an afterthought suggests that its use may have been a rationalization of a typical culinary practice. The same is the case when he notes that “many in our age eat figs with salt or pepper.” There is no suggestion that physicians told them to do this, but Nonnius explains that this prevents obstructions of the liver, which can come from eating sweet things.134 We should not rule out the possibility that these were originally dietary practices that had by the seventeenth century become so ingrained as regular habits that the physicians themselves could not be sure of their origin. But the fact that Nonnius claims these are customs rather than recommending them directly as medicinal correctives

131. Castellanus, 262: “Alaudis . . . duodenas ligneo trans fixas veruculo culine destinat, et cum salviâ laridoque assatas apponunt et in deliciis habent.” 132. Nonnius, 34: “Plures frictum cicer edebant, quod ita paratum flatus deponeret, sed concoctu difficilius redditur,” also 66. 133. Nonnius, 91: Cherries “inter Bellaria, ut pravus nostri saeculi usus obtinuit.” 134. Nonnius, 120 and 127: “plurimi nostra aetate, ideo ficibus cùm sale aut pipere vescuntur.”

280

Medicine and Cuisine

does cast doubt upon this. At the least, we should not automatically assume that these are medicinal combinations. In certain instances Nonnius is explicit about favoring a common custom over the pronouncement of the authorities. A case in point is his approval of quail, which he knows the Belgians use frequently without any harm.135 The same is true of fish, which he felt received such terrible press among physicians that many people believed them unwholesome. And, although the Lenten proscription of meat makes it seem a punishment to subsist on fish, Nonnius nonetheless insists that fish are the best food for this season.136 Nonnius would not go into detail about regional preparations or recipes for fish as Apicius and Platina did.137 Strangely, he preferred to expound at length about ancient customs and their praise of fish, which perhaps he felt would polish up the tarnished reputation of this once esteemed food. He does on occasion mention current usage, for example that many European peoples eat turbot or that today everyone concedes that mullet is the best fish.138 What is fascinating about these comments is that he does not suggest that correctives are necessary. The physician himself seems to abandon basic humoral theory. He also describes without censure numerous familiar uses for trout, smoked salmon, sturgeon, herring, and stockfish, many of which were valuable export items for the Belgians.139 Custom had begun to outweigh theory and corrective logic. Sebizius also openly claimed that condiments are used solely for pleasure and taste. They can make food more suave and hence more easily converted in the body, but there is no suggestion that they are necessary for healthy people.140 There are medicinal foods intended for the sick, 135. Nonnius, 254. 136. Nonnius, 283–310. Ultimately, on the question of Lent, Nonnius took great pains to explain why fish are healthy during spring, but he was forced to bend theoretical principles considerably. Logically cold and moist fish would be much better in summer. He had to insist that fish is really tempered, and so vegetables are appropriate for the summer, meats for the winter. Nonnius, 311. 137. Nonnius, 322. He also said “nor do I seek the laurel from this must cake.” [nec ego laureolam ex hoc mustaceo quaero.] Presumably whoever found the laurel got to be leader for the day, an honor Nonnius did not seek in culinary matters. 138. Nonnius, 349 and 352. 139. Nonnius, 362; 366; 372; 412. Smoked salmon “quotidianis ex Belgio in caeteras Europae regiones avehitur.” “Halecum . . . atque ex Belgia in universam Europam transmittuntur.” 140. Sebizius, 11: “alimentum utile est planéque necessarium, quoniam corpus nutrit. Condimentum voluptatis solùm et suavitatis gratiâ illi additur. Cibis enim potiùs suavitatem conciliat, quàm in alimentur vertatur.” He also mentioned later that with culinary art some people mix contrary flavors. Significantly, he considered such combinations to be culinary rather than medicinal. Sebizius, 96. “Nam quemadmodum ars culinaria interdum

Medicine and Cuisine

281

but otherwise corrective logic appears to have become superfluous. It may be no coincidence that by the mid-seventeenth century typically medieval flavor combinations have also begun to disappear from cookbooks. It is important to note, though, that Sebizius does not abandon humoralism at all. In fact, he is in some ways an orthodox Galenist. Every food is still classified qualitatively; it is just that the balancing act for condiments seems to have disappeared. This suggests that the food combinations may have been mostly culinary in the first place and that when fashions in cooking began to change, so did nutritional theory. It is also revealing that when Sebizius does discuss cooking, it is often to some local Alsatian custom that he defers. Among the appetite stimulants we find sauerkraut; among common drinks are both wine, beer, and lora, which appears to be made from a second fermentation of water and grape husks. He also admits that a local “polenta” made from oatmeal is quite pleasant, as are various breads made from millet and even buckwheat.141 Grated horseradish is also a common condiment among Germans, he notes, as is mustard.142 But he does not claim that these serve some corrective function. Sebizius is also willing to approve many typical pork preparations, insisting that they are all healthier if the animal itself is kept clean. No corrective measures are suggested.143 When he describes more complex dishes, he is also quite clear that they have been devised by “our cooks” rather than following some corrective logic. String beans, for example, should have the string removed and then be chopped, boiled, strained, and seasoned with butter, vinegar, broth, salt, savory, and leek. This apparently had become a favorite banquet dish.144 Chestnuts are roasted and soaked in citrus juice, or stuffed into geese, pork, or other animals.145

alimenta quedam viribus contraria componit: sic etiam Natura permulta, quae sensui quidem simplicia apparent, commiscere solet, facultatibus inter se pugnantia.” 141. Sebizius, 70. His insertion of German terms into the Latin, apart from the comic results, shows that customs are intruding upon theory: “brassica nostra condita, quam Sawrkraut vocamus. . . .” He did later admit that it can cause gas. Reference to local drinks, 81, includes this lora: “Nostri homines loras parant ex aqua vinaceis affusa.” Reference to oats and millet: 144. Buckwheat or “fegopyrum”: 150. Also, like other Germanic authors, Placotomus most notably, he thoroughly approved of beer, 1148. 142. Sebizius, 401 and 465. A simple mustard: “vulgaris illa composito, quae condimenti loco nobis ferè quotidiè offertur, fit ex farina sem. sinapi, vino et aceto.” 143. Sebizius, 589 –97. He also noted that there is hardly any part of this animal which is not eaten. Unlike other animals, “pork is like a miser, since it is of no use to anyone until it’s dead” [Avari suibus similes dicuntur: quoniam nemini utiles sunt ante obitum], 598. 144. Sebizius, 228 –29. 145. Sebizius, 291–92.

282

Medicine and Cuisine

There are also many occasions, however, when Sebizius criticizes local custom, as when strawberries are eaten with cream, “dispensing with health.” They would be better eaten with wine and spices. This is one of the few instances in which he offers a corrective, although he appears to suggest it only as an alternative to the harmful practice.146 He also rejects the custom of eating buttered bread at the end of a meal. This prevents the mouth of the stomach from closing and hinders concoction.147 Characteristic of period 3 authors, Sebizius is willing to attack not only popular errors but received medical wisdom as well. For example, he wonders how Galen could possibly have recommended snails. Just because they are slimy does not mean that they somehow adhere better and are restorative. By this logic cheese, brains, and old beef would be equally nutritious. Ultimately snails are considered much like those other sordid and monstrous things eaten for the sake of insane gluttony, like frogs, cockles, fungus, oysters, and bird offal.148 Here health concerns take precedence over gastronomic ones. Although Sebizius does not indulge his readers with details about how to cook such culinary perversions, there is some indication that he himself was not totally lacking in taste. Directing his readers how to best judge wine, he offers the acronym “COS.” That is, take note of color, odor, and sapor [taste]. Some would go further with “COSTA,” adding tactu [touch] and auditu [hearing]. Rubbing the wine between the fingers and listening to the sound it makes when poured tells you something about its density and viscosity.149 Modern enologists might learn something from this. Sebizius also on rare occasions admits that cooking is a useful and necessary art. Specifically, he is concerned to contradict an odd claim made by Cardano that raw foods prolong life, not only those sometimes eaten raw, like oysters or eggs, but even meat. Sebizius, interestingly, identifies this as a “macrobiotic” diet. At any rate, he insists that it is not 146. Sebizius, 338: “Fraga . . . comeduntur cum sanitatis dispendio ex cremore lactis. Salubriùs assumuntur cum vino, asperso saccaro, et pulvere cinnamomi, aut zinziberis. Sic enim minùs ventriculo nocent.” 147. Sebizius, 767: “Malè faciunt nostrates, quòd butyrum post alios sumant cibos.” 148. Sebizius, 785: “Cochleae . . . respondetur, pravam consuetudinem non parere errori patrocinium,” and 1055: “Ranis, terrae sordibus, cochleis, sylvarum ulceribus et scabie, fungis, maris muco, ostreis, avium quarundam stercoribus, aliis monstrosis et abhominabilibus dapibus in gratiam insanientis gulae vesci.” The bird’s guts, or perhaps less delicately translated as “bird shit,” probably refers to the custom of eating the offal of roasted snipe or small ducks on toast, referred to on 833 and 933. What “sea mucus” might be is uncertain. 149. Sebizius, 1137: “Ad auditum sonora, sive strepentia, cùm promuntur. Nam quae sine sonitu funduntur, lenta sunt, ac pendula.”

Medicine and Cuisine

283

merely a custom but a necessity to cook food.150 Like most period 3 authors, he believes that cuisine has run amuck in certain respects, but he would certainly not recommend living without all art. He even devotes his energies to such seemingly gastronomic questions as “should meat be pounded?” He thought that pounding would make the flesh lighter and that heat could penetrate the interior more fully, riding it of superfluous humidity.151 This is clearly a culinary procedure that he explains theoretically. The point is that although dieticians were hostile to the most extreme excesses of culinary art, they recognized an inherent kinship between the two fields. And because food must be properly cooked to be nutritious, dieticians were forced to assess common cooking procedures, only some of which they could approve. Thus, medicine and cuisine were still related in the Renaissance in a way they certainly are not today. Humoral theory may have informed culinary practices of the past, but just as often physicians accommodated familiar customs into their theories. And frequently they were openly hostile toward purely gastronomic interests. The relationship between the two fields remains somewhat ambiguous. What can be asserted confidently is that despite the apparent similarity of medical precepts and recipes in the late Middle Ages, the two gradually drifted apart, especially in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. It was at that point, of course, that classical cuisine began to abandon humorally based considerations of health,152 as did scientists themselves. This was merely the beginning of the rift between the two fields, which continues to this day. 150. Sebizius, 1345 – 47. 151. Sebizius, 1429: “Recténe faciant coqui et ancillae nostrae, quòd carnes assandas priùs malleis ligneis percutiant?” 152. Flandrin calls this process “The Liberation of the Gourmet.” While I would agree that dietetics was increasingly separated from gastronomy, I am not as confident that the consequences were all so positive. I am not suggesting that humoralism should have survived, only that considerations of health should not have become so overwhelmingly antithetical toward gastronomic interests. See Food: A Culinary History, ed. Flandrin and Montanari, chap. 32.

postscript

The End of a Genre and Its Legacy

Why did the genre of dietary regimes come to an end in the midseventeenth century? The theories themselves certainly did not disappear overnight, and there were physicians still defending humoral pathology well into the nineteenth century. But the application of humoral medicine to the study of food and the popularity of this particular genre did indeed trail off. It would be too simple to claim that new iatrochemical and iatrophysical theories suddenly replaced the older Galenism. New theories were just as often blended with older ones, particularly because they themselves offered no comprehensive new way to think about food. Ideas may have been shifting, however. Certainly Santorio’s efforts to quantify the process of nutrition and later van Helmont’s discussion of digestion in purely chemical terms made many of the physiological theories inherited from antiquity obsolete. It is only with hindsight, though, that we can see these ideas as progressive and as part of something we sometimes call the “scientific revolution.” In the seventeenth century these ideas were but a few of the myriad theories leading in every possible direction. Whatever one might say about this revolution, it is true that research became increasingly empirically based. That is, a shift in epistemology persuaded scientists that their own senses, often aided with instruments, yielded something far closer to the truth, especially when accompanied by rigorous methodology. The appeal of experience over received wisdom was evident even after the mid-sixteenth century, or our period 3. 284

Postscript

285

Coupled with this new purely empirical focus, what kind of scientist would be content to hash over theories inherited from antiquity? No doubt a few did, and there were some traditional dietaries written in the latter seventeenth century. And, of course, the dietary writers covered in this book were still happily repeating and criticizing Galen, Hippocrates, and the whole lot. But the scientific method demanded starting afresh, reasoning inductively from small certain facts to larger theories. Beginning with the grand schema and deducing the meaning of individual phenomena, as did every author we have encountered, no longer held appeal for the new scientist. The fact that science could not yet produce its own new physiological theories probably accounts for the slow and lingering demise of humoral theory and eventually all research that pays deference to the ancient and revered authorities. Put another way, the audience for dietary regimes did not disappear, the authors did. It may be purely coincidental that the emergence of classical haute cuisine occurred at about the same time. That is, a way of thinking about food in purely gastronomic terms, which increasingly ignored the strictures of dietary medicine, flourished especially in France after the midseventeenth century. One can easily trace in La Varenne, Massialot, and on into the eighteenth century the willingness of cookbook authors to abandon all reference to medicine and cater solely to the demands of taste. The warnings of physicians disappear. Spices and condiments as correctives, medically approved cooking methods, and qualitative properties nearly all give way to new culinary fashions. In fact it would have been practically impossible for a physician to assess this new cooking in anything but negative terms: cream sauces on fish, reduced essences used to accentuate flavors often rounded out with butter, fruits and vegetables used in contexts totally foreign to humoral principles. It may be that even the unscientific dilettante dietary author gave up and joined the new trend toward refinement and elegance in classical cuisine. Whatever the case, the strained relationship between medicine and cuisine was decisively severed. These factors, as well as the general confusion and disagreement within the genre itself, discredited traditional humoral ideas about food, and the entire dietary business gradually became defunct. This is not to say that humoral ideas disappeared from the minds of European peoples. Exactly the opposite seems to be the case. The very fact that traces of humoral logic still lingered in the popular consciousness on both sides of the Atlantic, if not around the world, suggests that old ideas die hard. A few examples should suffice. We still say one should feed a cold and

286

Postscript

starve a fever, and we still use humoral terminology to describe flavors being hot like pepper or dry like a martini. The very word “cold” as a pathological state is a leftover from this system. And who knows how many of our familiar culinary combinations have humoral origins? Many of the customs described in this book still sound familiar and suggest that our daily experiences are still shaped by certain ingrained humoral prejudices. A question that is more intriguing, though, is how and why this system is still practiced in such places as India and South America after disappearing so long ago from Europe. In India and Pakistan a variant of basic humoral physiology is still taught in accredited institutions. This study of medicine called Unani, a word stemming from “Ionian,” referring to the Greek settlements in the eastern Aegean where Hippocrates and other scientists flourished, was imported to this region with Islam. Here the “Canon” of Avicenna still forms the backbone of the curriculum. In this respect, the history of Unani medicine runs parallel to European Galenism up until the Renaissance. Unlike in Europe, there was a conscious revival of Unani medicine, along with traditional Ayurvedic medicine, at the time of national independence in the twentieth century. In this one area, then, we can state confidently that a cousin to European humoralism still survives relatively intact, although influenced to some degree by Western medicine. But what of Central and South America, and even the Philippines, where a descendant of humoral medicine brought by the Spanish is said to linger among popular remedies and the basic understanding of food properties? There certainly appears to be general recognition among anthropologists that foods in the New World were often categorized as hot or cold and that a whole series of rules that appears to be humorally based still governs popular attitudes there. For example, the tomato was generally recognized as a cold food. It was thus considered dangerous for an individual who had been outside in the cold night air or someone who had recently bathed. Warm foods, like chocolate or tequila, would be more appropriate to counteract the body’s inherent coldness. This appears to be a remnant of European humoral medicine applied to New World foods. On one side of a major debate on this topic are those who insist on a European origin for New World ideas about food, most prominently George Foster, on the other those who claim that a Native American cosmology that assigns hot and cold values to everything in nature underlies the system as it is now practiced. Bernard Ortiz de Montellano is the major defender of the Aztec origin of current folk beliefs.

Postscript

287

Theoretically, this should be a relatively easy problem to solve. By comparing the long categorical lists of foods classified according to predominant humoral qualities circulating through Europe and in Spain at the point of contact in the sixteenth century with the long lists compiled by anthropologists in the twentieth century delineating how various Latin American communities also classified food according to humoral properties, one could show conclusively and in detail exactly how the European system was planted and flourished in New World soil and survived there long after it had died out in the Old World. For example, if sixteenth-century Spaniards had classified cucumbers as cold and moist and so did many twentieth-century Latin Americans, at least at the folk level, then it would be reasonable to assume that this idea (like the vegetable itself) is a transplant. Description of the cucumber’s properties and its uses would not have to coincide exactly, because native ideas could certainly have been added in the past centuries. And it should be mentioned from the outset that all combatants in this argument over origin acknowledge a degree of syncretic mixture of native and imported ideas. But which is the predominant influence remains a major question. As one goes deeper into the details of Latin American folk practice, several unique and unexpected features emerge. First and most importantly, the American system is exclusively bipolar. That is, foods are classified along a spectrum from hot to cold. Foods like chili peppers, garlic, onions, and cinnamon are almost always considered hot, while fish, fruits, tomatoes, and vinegar are almost always cold. Other foods range somewhere in between and are described as temperate. That is exactly as in the European system, which often delineates specific degrees of intensity. In the New World, however, these become more casual categories of very hot, hot, cold, and very cold. But, unlike humoral categories in Europe, the New World categories lack the dry and moist axis. Fully half the entire humoral system is therefore missing. In Europe garlic was described as hot and dry, fish as cold and moist, vinegar as cold and dry. In America these foods are only hot or cold. Furthermore, in Europe and in their authoritative sources stretching back through classical Arab and Greek writers, the classifications of food were somewhat stable. Authors certainly disagreed over points of interpretation and quibbled over individual foods and their usage, but the categories remained for the most part intact right up to the midsixteenth century and long thereafter in some regions, especially Spain. Because this was fundamentally a learned text-based system, the ideas of Galen were transmitted over fifteen-hundred years as orthodoxy. In the

288

Postscript

New World system, however, there was wide divergence of opinion on how foods should be classified, not only from community to community but sometimes even one individual will classify a food as hot, but in another context will classify it as cold.1 In other words, this is an entirely subjective system, based on the individual’s perception of how a food will affect his or her body, which may be influenced by classification generally agreed upon by the community, learned through parents and kin, but without reference to textual authority at all. More importantly, foods themselves in the New World system are described as having intrinsic qualitative properties. That is, they have hot and cold qualities distinct from actual physical temperature, so that pepper is “hot” even at room temperature. Anthropologists sometimes describe this as “metaphorical” hot and cold properties, a term that seems very misleading. Nonetheless, these qualities inherent in foods alter the human body when eaten in terms of actual thermal and perceivable heat and coldness. Eating hot peppers will physically warm the body, just as taking a cool bath or walking on wet pavement will chill the body. This stands in dramatic contrast to European humoral physiology in which the qualities of foods primarily alter the humoral balance of the body—that is, the quantity and quality of blood, phlegm, choler and melancholy—but not necessarily body temperature. Body temperature is determined by nutrition, exercise, age, and sexual activity but not necessarily by the predominant humor of foods eaten in a given meal. What this means is that the New World system is fundamentally not humoral, since foods change only body temperature, not body fluids. It would be a mistake then to describe the New World system as humoral, since consideration of the humors themselves is missing.2 Furthermore, in the New World the “key principle routinely applied to classify foods as ‘hot’ or ‘cold’ concerns the physiological effects which certain foods produce when ingested.” 3 Foods that cause bloating or constipation or that slow down the digestive system are considered cold. Those that cause digestive disorders such as gas, diarrhea, heartburn, or that speed up digestion are considered hot. And these effects are as perceived by each individual, rather than universally valid categories. 1. Holly Matthews, “Context Specific Variation in Humoral Classification” American Anthropologist 85, no. 4 (1983): 826 – 47. 2. George M. Foster, Hippocrates’ Latin American Legacy (Langhorne, Pa.: Gordon and Breach, 1994), 51. Even he acknowledges that humors in the American system are only a vestigial linguistic survival. 3. Matthews, 829.

Postscript

289

While the European system would generally concur that coldness slows down digestion and heat speeds it up, this has nothing to do with the original criteria for assigning foods qualitative properties. In Europe, it was primarily taste that determined classification. Spicy hot and salty foods were always hot and dry; sour, styptic foods always cold and dry; watery, insipid foods always cold and moist; and so forth. These criteria are objective and universally valid and not subject to individual perception. Aberrant taste perception implies that the individual’s body is humorally imbalanced. Food categories themselves remain constant. Another important difference between European and American systems is the overwhelming emphasis in the latter on the dangerous effects of sudden and extreme temperature changes in the body. For example, it was believed that a person overheated by exercise under the sun should not drink cold water until the body has naturally and slowly returned to normal temperature. Similarly, when a person has been heated by a nearby oven or pottery kiln, all cold foods are dangerous.4 Conversely, when a person is excessively chilled, anything hot taken immediately is potentially dangerous. What Foster calls the “avoidance of opposites” principle is the central guiding concept in the New World used to determine the foods, medicines, and activities that were potentially dangerous when the body was already in a state of risk. Strangely, this principle was absent from European humoral theory at the time of contact with the New World in the sixteenth century. In fact, physicians generally prescribed foods and medicines that were opposite when the body was in a state of imbalance. The rule was nourish with foods that are similar in quality but cure with those that are opposite. This is standard Arabist theory directly out of Avicenna and endorsed by sixteenth-century Spanish physicians. For example, Luis Lobera de Avila, in discussing cold and moist herbs like lettuce and purslane, suggests to his readers that they should never be eaten raw unless to restrain or counteract excessive heat of the blood.5 This is clearly a case of curing with opposites. The two systems do concur that in an excessively hot pathological state, hot foods would harm, and in cold states, cold foods would lead to illness. Thus, while suffering a cold, qualitatively cold citrus fruits

4. Foster, 36 and 68. 5. Luis Lobera de Avila, Vergel de Sanidad (Alcala de Henares, Spain: Joan de Brocar, 1542), p. 76r: “Herbae non debent comedi crudae, nisi interdum lactucae et portulaca cum aceto, ad compescendum sanguinis caliditatem.”

290

Postscript

would be dangerous. During a fever, spicy foods would only aggravate the situation. Strangely, in the New World spicy foods were used to “drive out” moderate internal heat and cool the body through perspiration, and although humoral medicine did sometimes make use of hot purgatives to expel heat, it was absent from culinary practice. Also, it is revealing that when colonial botanists such as Hernández (sent from Spain by Philip II) described the native system, they were perplexed that natives would prescribe hot herbs for hot illnesses, as this contradicts standard principles of balancing humors.6 This again suggests a native origin for these ideas. The basic principle nonetheless remains in both systems that a hot or cold person should avoid foods of the same quality as the distemperature, but the New World emphasis on avoiding opposites when in an imbalanced state is essentially non-European. In fact, medicines were effective precisely because they counteracted the body’s humoral balance violently. The other major difference between these two systems is that, as Foster himself admits, humoral theory itself does not inform therapeutic measures but is only applied post facto “to validate traditional remedies rather than to serve as a guide to treatment.” 7 That is, an empirically discovered traditional remedy or even a medicine derived from the modern pharmacopoeia is used because it is known to be effective, and only after the fact is it described as hot or cold and good to counteract an imbalance. The categorization itself is dependent on the subjective diagnosis and assumed etiology of the illness. This further supports the lingering apprehension that humoral theory is only a superficial veneer tacked onto a local empirically based traditional system. What is also quite surprising is the complete absence from the New World system of the Spanish obsession with texture and consistency of foods. For example, Francisco Nuñez de Oria, in discussing breads and pastries, specifically condemns those made with eggs, butter, milk, and sometimes nuts— even more dangerous when unleavened—because they generate “gross” humors.8 That is, the consistency of humors produced from these foods is more important than any humoral quality

6. Bernard R. Ortiz de Montellano, Aztec Medicine, Health, and Nutrition (New Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press, 1990), 220. 7. Foster, 75. 8. Nuñez de Oria, p. 71v: “En fin todas aquellas composturas que se hazen de huevos, manteca, leche, harina, que en Latin se dizen, placentae, y tortadas de piñones, nuezes, avellanas, conficionados con azeyte, y otras muchas cosas hechas de massa sin levadura, de diversas figuras, todas engendran gruessos humores. . . .”

Postscript

291

of the food itself. This entire classification of foods as light and subtle or gross and difficult to digest, which is key to the European system, does not appear to have influenced the American system at all. This again seems to suggest that these are two very distinct systems. The fact that Latin Americans use a terminology from fundamentally Galenic texts shows how completely the Spanish language replaced native terms, but it says very little about the origin of the therapeutic techniques and drugs themselves. Again, there is no doubt that Spanish colonists brought with them humoral medicine and ideas about food, that they taught it in universities, and promulgated it in books and through missionaries. But whether the ideas were “translated” accurately to the general populace and continued to inform folk practices (at least among the older generations today) remains suspect. To give a concrete example of “mistranslation,” the way foods are combined to balance their qualitative properties is fundamentally different in these two systems. In European dietary literature, a careful cook is instructed to counteract potentially dangerous foods with pronounced qualities so as to temper them, making them more appropriate for and consistent with the body’s own humoral balance and hence more assimilable and nutritious. This is accomplished by adding condiments contrary to the qualities of the primary ingredient. The ideally temperate dish is balanced humorally precisely the same way as the healthy body. There are many examples of New World dishes tempered in much the same way, or at least the logic of humorally tempering foods is used to explain a recipe if even after the fact. Qualitatively cold turkey is therefore combined with a hot molé sauce. According to legend this dish was devised by a nun using a few dozen ingredients including nuts, raisins, cinnamon, chocolate, and chilies. At any rate, hot flavorings temper the cold turkey, which may have been the intention of a humorally conscious colonial nun. Alternatively, it may just be an older dish, minus a few ingredients, explained humorally. Either way the hot sauce balances the cold turkey. As Carol Molony has shown in Oaxaca, all foods routinely cooked with hot spices become hot and those cooked in water generally become cold, but it is not clear that these treatments are intented as “correctives” as they would have been in Europe.9 It also seems odd that Foster on page one of his Hippocrates’ Latin American Legacy cites a nineteenth-century source about Peru that 9. Carol H. Molony, “Systematic Valence Coding of Mexican ‘Hot’-‘Cold’ Food” Ecology of Food and Nutrition 4 (1975): 67–74.

292

Postscript

claims that foods of opposite quality should never be eaten together. Chocolate and rice, because they are opposites, would be deadly together and lead to empacho [blockage].10 At least in principle, this idea would have made no sense to Hippocrates or to his Spanish followers centuries later. Opposite foods are always combined, and foods are always balanced by condiments of a contrasting quality. It is only foods of greatly differing texture and digestibility that can cause trouble, particularly when one item is prone to corruption and is held in the stomach too long by rougher foods. That is, one should never eat a peach after a heavy meal of pork. But the pork is always combined with humorally opposite flavorings, such as hot and dry herbs or abstersive or cutting condiments that resolve the gluey humors. Combining opposite foods qualitatively and in terms of texture and digestibility is at the core of humorally based cuisine. There is evidence that Latin Americans also balance foods according to hot /cold categories, but rather than counteract each individual item, they balance foods course by course. Thus, a cold course would be followed by a hot course. As Matthews explains, “the decision-making sequence is based on the classification of main course dishes that, depending on their hot /cold values, are always served in combination with either first and/or last courses of an opposite balance.” 11 So, to use Matthews’s example from Oaxaca, a hot main course of barbacoa would be balanced with a first course of rice (which is cold) and a last course of black beans (also cold). These also become routine patterns in arranging meals, with the staples like tortillas usually classified as neutral, freeing the cook from having to decide where to place them. Another example of balancing courses given by Ingham from Tlayacapan includes a rice course, followed by a soup of hot and cold ingredients, and ending with dark beans, in this case hot.12 He also notes that main dishes are also often served in a medium of opposite quality, such as goat meat (cold) served in corn husks (hot). That at least is comparable to the European system, except that the husks are presumably not eaten and are not exactly a condiment. At any rate, the balancing by courses is completely foreign to humoral physiology as practiced in Europe. Courses were planned accord10. Foster, 1. 11. Matthews, 832. 12. John Ingham, “On Mexican Folk Medicine” American Anthropologist 72 (1970): 76 – 87.

Postscript

293

ing to difficulty of digestion. According to Juan Valverda, light, corruptible foods must precede heavy ones so as not to float at the top of the stomach for an extended period during which they go bad.13 But in all the dietary literature of the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, there are no examples of meal planning that alternate course by predominant humor. Again, this may be a native practice that humoral medicine was subsequently used to explain, a veneer of humoralism over a traditional custom. Thus, even if Hispanic ideas about food have been profoundly influenced by Hippocratic ideas exported from Spain, in practice they are so fundamentally different as to constitute an entirely separate system. Would it make sense then to conclude that the hot /cold system of the Americas is pre-Columbian? Certainly its wide distribution throughout Latin America and the Philippines would suggest that it could not be specifically Aztec but might nonetheless reflect general ideas current through many Native American cultures, which might have been exported to the Philippines in a postcolonial form. This broader, perhaps primordial origin among native peoples might be comparable to the ancient distribution of humoral ideas among what later became very different systems in the old world: the Ayurvedic, Chinese yin /yang, and Greek. All these share vaguely comparable theories about the qualities of food, and even though the details differ widely, they may have a common prehistoric origin or may have influenced each other later. Or the similarities may be coincidental. There is a possibility, though, that hot /cold classifications ran throughout New World civilizations before the time of contact, in which case we would expect to find similar ideas among North American natives, particularly the Shoshone and Comanche, who are related linguistically and ethnically to the Aztecs. This does not seem to be the case though. There are a number of scholars, nonetheless, who argue for a pre-Columbian origin of this system, most notably Alfredo López Austin and more recently Bernard Ortiz de Montellano. They argue that the American system reflects a fundamentally Aztec binary cosmology that places all of nature on a hot /cold spectrum, with weather, seasons, 13. Juan Valverda, De animi et corporis sanitate tuenda libellus (Paris: Apud Carolus Stephanus, 1552), 31–35. This is actually a complex argument raging especially among Italian anatomists in the mid-sixteenth century. Valverda claims that rougher foods should precede, except when the first course includes corruptible fruits like peaches, apricots, and melons which must come first. “Quaecunque paulò sunt duriora aliis ad coquendum, in prima mensa assumere convenit.”

294

Postscript

plants, animals and minerals, human physiology, different ages and genders, personality types, and the like classified as either hot, cold, or neutral. Thus, they argue, the New World system is much broader and allencompassing than the European one, which only deals with food and medicine. In fact, European humoralism is equally, if not more, cosmological in its scope and at various points could include astrology, alchemy, and hermetic magic. Marsilio Ficino’s Three Books on Life, written at almost exactly the time Columbus first set foot in the New World, is a very good example of how broad and cosmological humoral medicine could be.14 Even among less esoteric authors, elemental theory underpins everything in nature, not just food and medicine. Thus, arguing for native origin by reference to scope misses the point that both are indeed world systems. The other difficulty in proving a specifically native origin for the New World system is that there are no precontact sources. Even the earliest herbals translated from Nauhautl, the Badianus Codex, and Sahagún are clearly “contaminated” by European ideas and Spanish terminology. But this is used as evidence that indeed an earlier system was comparable to and easily assimilated into the more formal dominant European system. European medicine thus “accommodated” local ideas, much the same way Christianity accommodated local festivals and Aztec gods by adopting them and renaming them. The New World system is thus a syncretic mix of humoralism and native world view. Unlike Greek culture, which passed through dozens of distinct cultures over two millennia without drastic changes, the culture of the New World changed very suddenly. The fact that the New World system was a folk system of an preliterate populace, and thus necessarily subject to simplification, whereas the European system was a complex learned tradition, is not enough to account for the fundamental differences between the two. Although the New World hot /cold system was influenced by Hippocratic/Galenic ideas, the influence was mostly superficial, and the American system as practiced today bears little resemblance to the European medicine at the time of contact. 14. Ficino, Three Books on Life.

Bibliography

PRIMARY SOURCES Abraham, Nicholas, Sieur de la Framboisiere. Le gouvernement necessaire a chacun pour vivre longuement en santé. 3d ed. Paris: Marc Orry, 1608. Bachot, Gaspard. Erreurs populaires touchant la medecine et le regime de santé. Lyon: Barthelemy Vincent, 1626. Bailey, Walter. A short Discourse of the three kindes of Peppers in common use, and certaine special medicines made of the same, tending to the preservation of health. 1588; Reprint, facsimile ed., New York: Da Capo Press, 1972. Balinghem, Antoine. Apresdinees et propos de table contre l’excez au boire et au manger, pour vivre longuement sainement, et sainctement. 2d ed. SaintOmer, France: Charles Boscart, 1624. Benedictus de Nursia [Benedetto de’Riguardati di Norcia]. Opus ad sanitatis conservationem. Rome: Lignamine, 1475; 2d ed., Bologna: Domenico de Lapis, 1477. Benivieni, Antonio. De regimine santiatis ad Laurentium Medicem. Edited by Luigi Belloni. Turin: Società Italiana di Patologia, 1951. Benzi, Ugo. Regole della sanita et natura de cibi. Annotated by Giovanni Lodovico Bertaudo [Bertaldi]. Turin: Heirs of Gio. Domenico Tarino, 1618. Bonagente, Victor. De concoctione. Venice: Michele Tramezzino, 1549. Boorde, Andrew. A compendyous Regyment or A Dyetary of Helth. London: Robert Wyer, 1542; reprint; edited by F. J. Furnivall. London: Early English Text Society, Trübner, 1870. Bouchet, Guillaume. Les Serées. 1st ed., Poitiers, 1584; Paris: Alphonse Lemerre, 1878. Brooke, Humphrey. UGIEINH, or a Conservatory of Health. London: R. W. for G. Whittington, 1650.

295

296

Bibliography

Bruyerin Champier, Jean. De re cibaria. Lyon: Sebast. Honoratum, 1560; 2d ed., Frankfurt, 1600. Bulleyn, William. A newe booke entitled the governement of healthe. London: John Day, 1558. Buttes, Henry. Dyets Dry Dinner. London: Thomas Creede for William Wood, 1599. Cagnati, Marsilio. De sanitate tuenda. Padua: Franciscum Bolzettam, 1605. Calanius, Prosper. Traicté pour l’entretenement de santé. Translated by Jean Goeurot. Lyon: Jean Temporal, 1533. Cardano, Giovanni-battista. “De non edendis cibis faetidis.” In De utilitate ex adversis capienda, by Girolamo Cardano. Basel: Per Henricum Petri, 1561. Cardano, Girolamo. De sanitate tuenda. Rome: F. Zanettus, 1580. ———. Opera omnia, vol. 7. De usu ciborum. Lyon: Huguetan et Ravaud, 1663. Castellanus, Petrus [Pierre Du Chatel]. KREWFAGIA, sive esu carnium. Antwerp: Hieronymus Verdussius, 1626. Champier, Symphorien. Rosa gallica. 1514. 2d ed. Paris: Iodoco Badio, 1518. Cogan, Thomas. The Haven of Health. London, 1584; 2d ed. London: Thomas Orwin, 1589. Cornaro, Alvise. Scritti sulla vita sobria. Edited by Marisa Milani. Venice: Corbo e Fiore, 1983. ———. A Treatise on Temperance and Sobrietie. Translated by George Herbert. In Lessius, Hygiasticon. 2d ed. Cambridge, 1634. Corti, Matteo. De prandii ac caenae modo libellus. Rome: Paulus Manutius, 1562. Duchesne, Joseph [Quercetanus]. Le pourtraict de la santé [Diaeteticon Polyhistoricon]. Paris: Claude Morel, 1606. Durante, Castor. Il tesoro della sanita. Rome, 1586; 3d ed., Venice: Domenico Imberti, 1643. Elyot, Sir Thomas. The Castle of Helthe. 1541; Reprint, New York: Scholars Facsimiles and Reprints, 1937. Estienne, Charles [Carolus Stephanus]. De nutrimentis, ad Baillyum, libri tres. Paris: Robert Stephanus, 1550. Ficino, Marsilio. De vita libri tres. 1489; Critical edition edited by Felix KleinFranke, apparatus by Martin Plessner. Hildesheim and New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 1978. ———. Three Books on Life. Edited and translated by Carol V. Kaske and John R. Clark. Binghamton, N.Y.: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1989. Fridaevallis, Hugo. De tuenda sanitate. Antwerp: Christopher Plantin, 1568. Gazius, Antonius [Antonio di Gazzo]. Corona florida medicinae. Venice: Ioannes and Gregorius de Gregoriis, 1491. Geopretius, Robertus [Grospré]. Regimen sanitatis. Ghent: Jodocus Lambertus, 1538. Also translated in Romoli, La singolare dottrina, as Un breve et notabile trattato del regimento della sanità. Gesner, Conrad. Sanitatis tuenda praecepta cum aliis, tum literarum studiosis

Bibliography

297

hominibus, et iis qui minus exercentur, cognitu necessaria. Zurich: Andrea and Jacob Gesner, 1556. [Gouvernal]. Here begynneth a lytell treatyse called the gouvernall of helthe with ye medycyne of ye stomacke. Wynkyn de Worde. [c. 1487]; facsimile ed., In this tretyse that is cleped governayle of helthe. 1489. The English Experience 192. Amsterdam and New York: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum and Da Capo Press, 1969. Grataroli, Guliermo. De regimine iter agentium, vel equitum, vel peditum, vel navi, vel curru seu rheda, etc. Basel: Nicholas Brylinger, 1561. ———. A direction for the health of magistrates and students. Translated by Thomas Newton. London: William Howe for Abraham Veale, 1574; Originally published as De literatorum et eorum qui magistratibus fugentur, 1555. Guinterius Andernacus, Ioannes [Gunther von Andernach]. De victus ratione cum alio, tum pestilentiae tempore observanda. Strasbourg: Wendelin Richel, 1542. Hessus, Elius Eobanus. De tuenda bona valetudine. Commentary by Ioannes Placotomus [Brettschneider]. Frankfurt am Main: Heirs of Christian Egenollf, 1556. Hollings, Edmund. De salubri studiosorum victu. Ingolstadt: Typis Ederianis, per Andrea Angermarium, 1602. Joubert, Laurent. Erreurs populaires. Bordeaux: S. Millanges, 1587. ———. Erreurs populaires, book 2. Rouen: George L’oyselet, 1587. ———. The Second Part of the Popular Errors. Translated by Gregory David de Rocher. Tuscaloosa and London: The University of Alabama Press, 1995. Kyr, Paulus. Sanitatis studium ad imitationem aphorismorum compositum. Brasov, Romania [Inclyta Transylvaniae Corona], 1551. Lando, Hortensio. The Frugal Life. “That a Spare Diet is better than a splendid and sumptuous.” Introduction by E. A. Axon. Manchester, 1899. [From Paradossi. Lyon, 1543] Also in Lessius attributed to “T. S.” Langton, Christopher. An Introduction to Phisycke with an universal dyet. [1550?]; Reprint; facsimile ed., Amsterdam and New York: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum and Da Capo Press, 1970. Lessius, Leonard. Hygiasticon: Or, The right course of preserving Life and Health unto extream old Age. 2d ed. Cambridge, 1634. Liebault, Jean. Thesaurus sanitatis paratu facilis. Paris, 1577. Lobera de Avila, Luis. El Vanquete de nobles cavalleros. Edited by José M. López Piñero. Madrid: Ministerio de Sanidad y Consumo, 1991. ———. Vergel de sanidad. 1530. 2d ed., Alcala de Henares, Spain: Joan de Brocar, 1542. MacBeath, John. Regimen Sanitatis, The Rule of Health: A Gaelic Medical Manuscript of the Early Sixteenth Century or perhaps older. Edited and translated by H. Cameron Gillies. Glasgow: Robert Maclehose, University Press, 1911. Manfredi, Girolamo. Opera nova intitulata il perche. 1st ed., 1474 [as Libro de homine]; later ed. Venice: Zorgi di Rusconi, 1512.

298

Bibliography

Massonio, Salvatore. Archidipno overo dell’insalata e dell’uso di essa. Venice: Marc’antonio Brogiollo, 1627. Medicina salernitana. Edited by Ioannes Curionus. Geneva, 1591; 2d ed., 1594. Includes Janus Cornarius, De salubri diaeta; D. Ioannes Katzchius, Nonnulla de regimine sanitatis. Menapius, Gulielmo. De ratione victus salubris. Cologne, 1540; 2d ed., Basel: Bartholomew Westheimer, 1541. Moffett, Thomas. Healths Improvement: or Rules Comprizing and Discovering the Nature, and Manner of Preparing all sorts of Food. (Written c. 1595) Corrected and enlarged by Christopher Bennet. London: Thomas Newcomb, 1655. Montanus, Johannes Baptista. De victus ratione. In Methodus therapeutica, by Johannes Crato von Kraftheim. Basel: Johannes Oporinus, 1555. Moore, Philip. The hope of health. London: Jhon Kingston, 1565. Nonnius, Ludovicus [Alvarés Nuñez]. Diaeteticon, sive re cibaria. 1627; 2d ed., Antwerp: Petri Belleri, 1645. Nuñez de Oria, Francisco. Regimiento y aviso de sanidad, que trata de todos alimentos y del regimiento della. 1st ed., 1569 [as Vergel de sanidad]; 2d ed., Medina del Campo: Francisco del Canto, 1586. Oddo degli Oddi. De coenae et prandii portione libri duo. In Opusculum recens natum de morbis puerorum. Lyon: Jean Barbous for Germain Rose, 1538. Pantaleone da Confienza. Summa lacticiniorum. Turin, 1477; 2d ed. Lyon: Antonium Blanchard, 1525. Paterno, Bernardino. De coena et prandium. In De humorum purgatione in morborum. Rome: Valerio and Luigi Dorici, 1547. Petronio, Alessandro. Del viver delli Romani et di conservar la sanità. Translated by M. Basilio Paravicino. Rome: Domenico Basa, 1592. Originally published as Mensa Romana, 1581. Pictorius, Georgius. Dialogi del eccellente medico M. Giorgio Pittore Villingano, del modo del conservare la sanita. Translated by Pamphilius Fiorimbene. Venice: Vincenzo Valgrisi, 1550. Original in Latin, published Basel, 1549. Pisanelli, Baldassare. Trattato della natura de’cibi et del bere. Venice: Giorgio Alberti, 1586. Plat, Hugh. Certaine Philosophical Preparations of Foode and Beverage for SeaMen, 1607. Platina [Bartolomeo Sacchi]. De honesta voluptate, 1474. 2d ed., Venice: Bernardus Venetus, 1498; De honesta voluptate et valetudine vulgare. Venice, 1516. ———. Le grand cuisiner de B. Platine de Cremone. Translated by M. Desdier Christol, 1507; 2d ed., Paris: Jean Ruelle, 1586. ———. On Right Pleasure and Good Health. Translated and edited by Mary Ella Milham. Tempe, Ariz.: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1998. Rantzau, Heinrich von. De conservanda valetudine liber. 1573; 4th ed., Frankfurt am Main: Petrus Fischerus, 1596.

Bibliography

299

Romoli, Domenico. La singolare dottrina . . . dell’ufficio dello scalco. Venice: Michele Tramezzino, 1560. Sala, Giovanni Domenico. De alimentis. Padua: Io. Bapt. Martinum, 1628, in Ars Medica. Padua: Fransciscum Bolzetta, 1641. Savonarola, Giovanni Michele. Libreto de tute le cose che se manzano comunamente e piu che comune. Venice: Simone de Luere, 1508; Reprint; edited by Jane Nystedt. Stockholm, 1982. ———. Practica Major. Venice: Vincentium Valgrisium, 1560. Sebizius, Melchiore. De alimentorum facultatibus. Strasbourg: Joannis Philippi Mülbii et Josiae Stedelii, 1650. Sylvius, Jacobus. Consilium perutile adversus famem. In Liebault, Thesaurus sanitatis paratu facilis. ———. De parco ac duro victu libellus. In Liebault, Thesaurus sanitatis paratu facilis. ———. A regimen for poor scholars. Translated by C. D. O’Malley. Journal of the History of Medicine 17 (1962): 141–51; Originally published as Victus ratio scholasticus pauperibus, Paris, 1542. Sylvius, Joannes. De studiosorum et eorum, qui corporis exercitationibus addicti non sunt, tuenda valetudine. Duaci, 1574. Valverda, Juan. De animi et corporis sanitate tuenda libellus. Paris: Carolus Stephanus, 1552. Vaughan, William. Directions for Health both Natural and artificial. London, 1600; 5th ed., London: Printed by T. S. for Roger Jackson, 1617. Venner, Tobias. Via recta ad vitam longam. London: Edward Griffen for Richard Moore, 1620. Viviani, Viviano. Tratatto del custodire la sanità. Venice: Girolamo Piuti, 1626. Wingfield, Henry. A compendious or short treatise, gathered out of the chyefe and Principall Authors of Phisycke, conteynynge certeyne preceptes necessary to the preservation of healthe, and long continuance of the same. London: Robert Stoughten, 1551. Zantuliete Barbantini, Jo. de. De dietis totius anni. In Regimen Sanitatis, by Magninus Mediolanensis. [Lyon?: Fradin?, c. 1500?]. SECONDARY SOURCES Adamson, Melitta Weiss. Medieval Dietetics: Food and Drink in Regimen Sanitatis Literature from 800 to 1400. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1995. ——— [Melitta Weiss-Amer]. “The Role of Medieval Physicians in the Diffusion of Culinary Recipes and Cooking Practices.” In Du manuscrit à la table, edited by Carole Lambert, 69 – 80. Montréal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 1993. Ackerknecht, Erwin H. “The End of Greek Diet.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 45 (1971): 242 – 49. ———. A Short History of Medicine. Rev. ed. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982.

300

Bibliography

Agrimi, Jole. Review of Libreto de tute le cose che se manzano, by Savonarola, edited by J. Nystedt. Aevum 58 (1984): 358 – 65. Alberti, Leon Battista. Dinner Pieces; A Translation of the Intercenales by David Marsh. Binghamton, N.Y.: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1987. Angeletti, Luciana Rita. “Transmission of Classical Medical Texts through Languages of the Middle East.” Medicina nei Secoli 2, no. 3 (1990): 293–329. [Use with caution.] Anthimus. De observatione ciborum. Translated and edited by Mark Grant. Totnes, Devon: Prospect Books, 1996. Appleby, Andrew W. “Diet in Sixteenth-Century England: Sources, Problems, Possibilities.” In Webster, ed., Health, Medicine, and Mortality, 97–116. Arber, Agnes. Herbals. 3d ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Arn, Mary-Jo, ed. Medieval Food and Drink. ACTA vol. 21. Binghamton: The Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1995. Bacon, Sir Francis. The Essays. New York: Macmillan, 1923. Bell, Rudolph. Holy Anorexia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. Black, Maggie. The Medieval Cookbook. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1992. Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction. Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984. Braudel, Fernand. The Mediterranean. Translated by Siân Reynolds. New York: Harper and Row, 1976. Brumberg, Joan Jacobs. Fasting Girls. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988. Burke, Peter. Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe. New York: Harper, 1978. Burton, Robert. The Anatomy of Melancholy. Oxford, 1621; Reprint, edited by Holbrook Jackson, New York: Vintage Books, 1977. Butlan, Ibn. The Medieval Health Handbook: Tacuinum Sanitatis. Edited by Luisa Cogliati Arano, translated by Oscar Ratti and Adele Westbrook. London: Barrie and Jenkins, 1976. Camporesi, Piero. Bread of Dreams. Translated by David Gentilcore. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989. Catullus. Edited by G. P. Goold. New York: Duckworth, 1983. Cavaciocchi, Simonetta, ed. Alimentazione e nutrizione secc. xiii–xviii. Prato: Istituto Internazionale di Storia Economica “F. Datini,” 1997. Ceard, Jean. “La diététique dans la Médecine de la Renaissance.” In Margolin and Sauzet, eds., Practiques et discours alimentaires, 21–36. Celsus. De medicina. Vol. 1. Translated by W. G. Spencer. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1938. Coe, Sophie D. America’s First Cuisines. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994. Columbus, Christopher. Journal. Translated by Clements R. Markham. Reprint, New York: Burt Franklin, 1971. Conrad, Lawrence I., Michael Neve, Vivian Nutton, Roy Porter, and Andrew Wear. The Western Medical Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Bibliography

301

Copenhaver, Brian P. “Did Science Have a Renaissance?” Isis 83 (1992): 387– 407. ———. Symphorien Champier and the Reception of the Occultist Tradition in Renaissance France. The Hague: Mouton, 1978. Cosmacini, Giorgio. Storia della medicina e della sanità in Italia. Rome and Bari: Laterza, 1987. Cosman, Madelaine Pelner. Fabulous Feasts. New York: George Brazillier, 1976. Cosminsky, Sheila. “Changing Food and Medical Beliefs and Practices in a Guatemalan Community. Ecology of Food and Nutrition 4 (1975): 183–91. Counihan, Carole, and Penny Van Esterick, eds. Food and Culture: A Reader. New York and London: Routledge, 1997. Crantz, F. E., and P. O. Kristeller. Catalogus translationum et commentariorum. Washington: Catholic University of America, 1980. Crosby, Alfred W. Ecological Imperialism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Curtin, Deane W., and Lisa M. Heldke. Cooking, Eating, and Thinking. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1992. Davidson, Alan. The Oxford Companion to Food. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Debus, Allen G. The Chemical Philosophy: Paracelsian Science and Medicine in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. New York: Science History Publications / Neale Watson Academic Publications, 1977. Drummond, Jack, and Anne Wilbraham. The Englishman’s Food. 1939; Reprint, revised by Dorothy Hollingsworth. London: Jonathan Cape, 1957. Eamon, William. “Plague, Healers, and Patients in Early Modern Europe.” Renaissance Quarterly 52, no. 2 (summer 1999): 474 – 86. Edelstein, Ludwig. Ancient Medicine. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1967. Elias, Norbert. The History of Manners. Translated by Edmund Jephcott. New York: Pantheon Books, 1982. Elkort, Martin. The Secret Life of Food. Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher, 1991. Estes, J. Worth. “The European Reception of the First Drugs from the New World.” Pharmacy in History 37, no. 1 (1995): 3–23. Evelyn, John. Acetaria. London: B. Tooke, 1699. Farb, Peter, and George Armelagos. Consuming Passions: The Anthropology of Eating. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980. Fenton, Alexander, and Eszter Kisbàn. Eating Habits from the Middle Ages to the Present Day. (Fifth International Conference on Ethnological Food Research, Hungary, 1983.) Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers, 1986. Fiddes, Nick. Meat: A Natural Symbol. London and New York: Routledge, 1991. Fieldhouse, Paul. Food and Nutrition: Customs and Culture. London: Croom Helm, 1986. Flandrin, Jean-Louis. “Distinction through Taste.” In A History of Private Life, vol. 3, edited by Philippe Ariès and Georges Duby, 265 –307. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 1989.

302

Bibliography

———. “La Diversité des goûts et les practique alimentaire en Europe du XVI e– XVIII e s.” Rev. Hist. Mod. Contemp. 30 (1983): 66 – 83. ———. “From Dietetics to Gastronomy: The Liberation of the Gourmet.” In Flandrin and Montanari, eds., Food: A Culinary History, 418 –32. ———. “La Gola.” In Cucina, Cultura, Società. Edited by Luciano Bonanni and Giancarlo Ricci. Shakespeare & Co., 1982. ———. “Médecine et habitudes alimentaires anciennes.” In Margolin and Sauzet, eds., Practiques et discours alimentaires, 85 –95. Flandrin, Jean-Louis, and Carole Lambert. Fêtes gourmandes au moyen âge. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale Éditions, 1998. Flandrin, Jean-Louis, and Massimo Montanari, eds. Food: A Culinary History. Translated by Albert Sonnenfeld. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. ———. Histoire de l’alimentation. Paris: Libraire Arthème Fayard, 1996. Fletcher, Anthony. Gender, Sex, and Subordination in England, 1500 –1800. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995. Forster, Robert, and Orest Ranum, eds. Food and Drink in History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979. Foster, George M. Hippocrates’ Latin American Legacy: Humoral Medicine in the New World. Langhorne, PA: Gordon and Breach, 1994. ———. “Relationships between Spanish and Spanish-American Folk Medicine.” Journal of American Folklore 66 (1953): 201–17. Foster, Nelson, and Linda S. Cordell. Chilies to Chocolate: Foods the Americas Gave the World. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1996. Galdston, Iago, ed. Human Nutrition Historic and Scientific. (Conference on Nutrition, Arden House, Harriman, N.Y., 1958.) New York: International Universities Press, 1960. Galen, Claudius. Opera Omnia. Edited by C. G. Kühn. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1965. Garrison, Fielding H. An Introduction to the History of Medicine. Philadelphia and London: W. B. Sunders, 1913. Gerard, John. Gerard’s Herbal. Edited by Marcus Woodward. London: Studio Editions, 1994. Glacken, Clarence J. Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967. Gli Archivi Per La Storia Dell’Alimentazione. 3 vols. (Atti del Convengo PotenzaMatera, 1988.) Rome: Ministerio Per I Beni Culturali e Ambientali, 1995. Goody, Jack. Cooking, Cuisine, and Class: A Study in Comparative Sociology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Gordon, Richard. The Alarming History of Medicine. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993. Grieco, Allen J. “Food and Social Classes in Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy.” In Flandrin and Montanari, eds., Food: A Culinary History, 302 –12. ———. “Les plantes, les régimes végétariens, et la mélancholie à la fin du Moyen Age et au début de la Renaissance italienne.” In Le Monde végétal, edited by Allen J. Grieco, Odile Redon, and Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi. SaintDenis: Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, 1993.

Bibliography

303

———. “The Social Politics of Pre-Linnean Botanical Classification.” I Tatti Studies in The Renaissance 4 (1991): 131– 49. Gruman, Gerald J. A History of Ideas about the Prolongation of Life. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, n.s., vol. 56, pt. 9, 1966. ———. “The Rise and Fall of Prolongevity Hygiene, 1588 –1873.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 35 (1961): 221–29. Guggenheim, K. Y. Basic Issues of the History of Nutrition. Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, The Hebrew University, 1995. Gundersheimer, Werner. The Style of a Renaissance Despotism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973. Hall, Thomas S. “Life, Death, and the Radical Moisture.” Clio Medica 6 (1971): 3–23. Harris, Marvin. Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985. Hartley, Dorothy. Food in England. London: Macdonald, 1954. Heiatt, Constance B., Brenda Hosington, and Sharon Butler. Pleyn Delit, Medieval Cookery for Modern Cooks, 2d ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996. Heikki, Mikkeli. Hygiene in the Early Modern Medical Tradition. Helsinki: Academia Scientarum Fennica, 1999. Hemardinquer, Jean-Jacques. “The Family Pig of the Ancien Regime.” In Forster and Ranum, eds., Food and Drink in History. Hendrickson, Robert. Lewd Food. Radnor, Pa.: Chilton Book Co., 1974. Ingham, John M. “On Mexican Folk Medicine.” American Anthropologist 72 (1970): 76 – 87. Jacquart, Danielle, and Claude Thomasset. Sexuality and Medicine in the Middle Ages. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988. James I (King of England). A Counter-Blaste to Tobacco. London: Rodale Press, 1954. Jansen-Sieben, Ria, and Frank Daelemans. Voeding en geneeskunde/Alimentation et médecine. Brussels: Archief en Bibliotheekwezen in Belgie, 1993. Jarcho, Saul. “Galen’s Six Non-Naturals: A Bibliographic Note and Translation.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 44 (1970): 372 –77. Jeanneret, Michel. A Feast of Words: Banquets and Table Talk in the Renaissance. Translated by Jeremy Whiteley and Emma Hughes. Cambridge, Eng.: Polity Press, 1991. Julien, P. “La condonation de banquet” [Of Nicole de La Chesnaye, 1508] Revue d’histoire de la pharmacie 34 (1987). Kaplan, Lawrence, and Lucille N. Kaplan. “Beans of the Americas.” In Chilies to Chocolate, Foods the Americas Gave the World. Edited by Nelson Foster and Linda S. Cordell. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1992. Klibansky, Raymond, Erwin Panofsky, and Fritz Saxl. Saturn and Melancholy. New York: Basic Books, 1964. Küemmel, Werner Friedrich. “De Morbis Aulicis: On Diseases Found at Court.” In Medicine at the Courts of Europe, 1500 –1837, edited by Vivian Nutton. London and New York: Routledge, 1990.

304

Bibliography

———. “Der Homo litteratus und die Kunst, gesund zu leben. Zur enfaltung eines Zweiges der Diätetik im Humanismus.” In Humanismus und Medizin, edited by Rudolph Schmitz and Gundolf Keil, 67– 85. Bonn: Acta Humaniora, 1984. Laqueur, Thomas. Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990. Laurioux, Bruno. “La cuisine des médecins à la fin du Moyen Age.” In Maladies Médecines et Sociétés, vol. 2. (Actes du VI e Colloque D’Histoire au Présent.) Paris: L’Hartmann et Histoire au Présent, 1993. ———. “Spices in the Medieval Diet: A New Approach.” In Food and Foodways 1 (1985): 43–76. ———. “Table et hiérarchie sociale à la fin du moyen âge.” In Du Manuscrit à Table, ed. Carole Lambert, 87–108. Montréal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 1992. La Varenne. Le cuisinier françois. Paris: Pierre David, 1651. Logan, Michael H. “Humoral Medicine in Guatemala and Peasant Acceptance of Modern Medicine.” In Health and the Human Condition, edited by Michael H. Logan and Edward E. Hunt, Jr, 363–75. North Scituate, Mass.: Duxbury Press, 1978. Longrigg, James. Greek Medicine from the Heroic to the Hellenistic Age: A Source Book. New York: Routledge, 1998. Loudon, Irvine, ed. “Disease Called Chlorosis.” Psychological Medicine 14 (1984): 27–36. ———. Western Medicine: An Illustrated History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Maclean, Ian. The Renaissance Notion of Woman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980. Maddison, F., Margaret Pelling, and Charles Webster, eds. Essays on the Life and Work of Thomas Linacre. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977. Magner, Lois N. A History of Medicine. New York: Marcel Dekker, 1992. Margolin, Jean-Claude, and Robert Sauzet, eds. Practiques et discours alimentaires à la Renaissance. (Actes du colloque de Tours, 1979.) Paris: Maissonneuve et Larose, 1982. Martin, A. Lynn. Plague? Jesuit Accounts of Epidemic Disease in the Sixteenth Century. Kirksville, Mo.: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1996. Martyr, Peter. Opera. Facsimile edition. Graz: Akademische Druk-u. Verlaganstalt, 1966. Massialot. Le cuisinier roïal et bourgeois. Paris: Charles de Sercy, 1691. Matthews, Holly F. “Context-Specific Variation in Humoral Classification.” American Anthropologist 85, no. 4 (1983): 826 – 47. McCullough, John M. “Human Ecology, Heat Adaptation, and Belief Systems: The Hot-Cold Syndrome of Yucatan.” Journal of Anthropological Research 29 (1973): 32 –36. McGee, Harold. On Food and Cooking. New York: Collier Books, 1984. McVaugh, Michael. “Arnald of Villanova and Bradwardine’s Law.” Isis 58 (1967): 56 – 64.

Bibliography

305

———. “Quantified Medical Theory and Practice at Fourteenth-Century Montpellier.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 43 (1969): 397– 413. Mennell, Stephen. All Manners of Food: Eating and Taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to the Present. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985. Messisbugo, Christoforo di. Banchetti. Ferrara: Giovanni de Buglhat e Antonio Hucher Compagni, 1549. Mintz, Sidney W. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. Harmondsworth: Penguin; New York: Viking Penguin, 1985. Molony, Carol H. “Systematic Valence Coding of Mexican ‘Hot’-‘Cold’ Food.” Ecology of Food and Nutrition 4 (1975): 67–74. Monardes, Nicolas. Dos libros, el uno que trata de todos las cosas que traen de nuestras Indias Occidentales. . . . Seville: Hernando Diaz, 1569. Montagnana, Bartolomeo. Consilia Montagnane. 1474; Later edition, Lyon: Jacobi myt Calcographi, 1525. Montaigne, Michel de. Essays. Translated by J. M. Cohen. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1958. Montanari, Massimo. Alimentazione e cultura nel medioevo. Rome and Bari: Laterza, 1992. ———. The Culture of Food. Translated by Carl Ipsen. Oxford: Blackwell, 1994. ———. Nuovo Convivio. Rome and Bari: Editori Laterza, 1991. Moulin, Leo. Les liturgies de la table: Une histoire culturelle du manger et du boire. Anvers: Fonds Mercator /Albin Michel, 1988. Naso, Irma. La cultura del cibo. Alimentazione, dietetica, cucina nel basso medioevo. Turin: Paravia, 1999. Nicoud, Marilyn. “La dietetica nel medio evo.” In Et coquatur ponendo: cultura della cucina e della tavola in europa tra medioevo ed età moderna. Prato: Istituto Internazionale di Storia Economica “Francesco Datini,” 1996. Niebyl, Peter. “Old Age, Fever, and the Lamp Metaphor.” Journal of the History of Medicine (October 1971): 351– 68. Nuland, Sherwin B. Doctors: The Biography of Medicine. New York: Vintage Books, 1989. Nutton, Vivian. From Democedes to Harvey. London: Variorum Reprints, 1988. O’Hara-May, Jane. Elizabethan Dyetary of health. Lawrence, Kans.: Coronado Press, 1977. O’Malley, Charles D., and J. B. de C. M. Saunders. Leonardo da Vinci on the Human Body. New York: H. Schuman, 1952. Origo, Iris. The Merchant of Prato. London: Jonathan Cape, 1957. Ortiz de Montellano, Bernard R. Aztec Medicine, Health, and Nutrition. New Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press, 1990. Pagel, Walter. Paracelsus: An Introduction to Philosophical Medicine in the Era of the Renaissance. 2d rev. ed. Basel and New York: Karger, 1982. Palmer, Richard. “Health, Hygiene, and Longevity in Medieval and Renaissance Europe.” In History of Hygiene, edited by Yosio Kawakita, Shizu Sakai, and

306

Bibliography

Yasuo Otsuka. (Proceedings of the Twelfth International Symposium on the Comparative History of Medicine—East and West.) Ishiyaku EuroAmerica, Inc., 1991. Panati, Charles. Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things. New York: Harper and Row, Perennial Library, 1987. Paston-Williams, Sara. The Art of Dining: A History of Cooking and Eating. London: The National Trust, 1993. Pelling, Margaret. “Food Policy in the Early Modern Period: Medical Practitioners and Others.” In Nutrition in History, ed. Margaret Pelling, 11–15. (Annual Conference, Sheffield, 1986.) Society for the Social History of Medicine Bulletin 40, 1987. Peterson, T. Sarah. Acquired Taste: The French Origin of Modern Cooking. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994. Pyke, Magnus. Food and Society. London: John Murray, 1968. Rabelais, François. Gargantua and Pantagruel. Translated by J. M. Cohen. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1955. Rather, L. J. “The Six Things Non-Natural: Note on the Origins and Fate of a Doctrine and a Phrase.” Clio Medica 3 (1968): 337– 47. Redon, Odile, Françoise Sabban, and Silviano Serventi. The Medieval Kitchen. Translated by Edward Schneider. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Revel, Jean-François. Culture and Cuisine. Translated by Helen R. Lane. New York: Da Capo Press, 1982. Richards, Gertrude R. B. “A Renaissance Regimen.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 7 (1939): 1170 – 80. Robin, P. Ansell. The Old Physiology in English Literature. New York: F. P. Dutton, 1911. Root, Waverly. Food. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1980. Sarton, George. Appreciation of Ancient and Medieval Science during the Renaissance. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1955. Scappi, Bartolomeo. Opera. 1570; Later edition, Venice, 1596. Scarborough, John. “Botany, Pharmacy, and the Culinary Arts.” In The Rational Arts of Living, edited by A. C. Crombie and Nancy Siraisi, 161–201. Northampton, Mass.: Smith College Studies in History, 1987. Schivelbusch, Wolfgang. Tastes of Paradise. Translated by David Jacobson. New York: Vintage Books, 1992. Schorger, A. W. The Wild Turkey. Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1966. Scully, Terence. The Art of Cooking in the Middle Ages. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1995. ———. “Deffaire and Destremper in Early French Cuisine.” Petits Propos Culinaires 38 (1991): 14 –19. ———. “Mixing It up in the Medieval Kitchen.” In Arn, Medieval Food and Drink, 1–26. ———. “The Opusculum de Saporibus of Magninus Mediolanensis.” Medium Aevum 54 (1985): 178 –207.

Bibliography

307

Shearman, John. Mannerism. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967. Sigerist, Henry. Landmarks in the History of Hygiene. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956. Sim, Alison. Food and Feast in Tudor England. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997. Simeons, A. T. W. Food: Facts, Foibles, and Fables. New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1968. Siraisi, Nancy G. Avicenna in Renaissance Italy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982. ———. The Clock and the Mirror: Girolamo Cardano and Renaissance Medicine. Princeton: Princeton University Press 1997. ———. Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. Skabelund, Donald, and Phillip Thomas. “Walter of Odington’s Mathematical Treatment of the Primary Qualities.” Isis 60 (1969): 331– 49. Slack, Paul, “Mirrors of Health and Treasures of Poor Men: The Uses of the Vernacular Medical Literature of Tudor England.” In Webster, ed., Health, Medicine, and Mortality. Sotres, Pedro Gil. “La regole della salute.” In Storia del pensiero medico occidentale,vol. 1, edited by Mirko D. Grmeck, 399 – 438. Rome and Bari: Editori Laterza, 1993. Spencer, Colin. The Heretic’s Feast: A History of Vegetarianism. Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 1995. Tannahill, Reay. Food in History. Rev. ed. New York: Crown, 1988. Temkin, Oswei. Galenism: Rise and Decline of a Medical Philosophy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1973. Teuteberg, Hans, ed. European Food History: A Research Review. Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1992. Thomas, Keith. Man and the Natural World. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983. Thorndike, Lynn. A History of Magic and Experimental Science. New York: Columbia University Press, 1923–58. ———. “Three Tracts on Food in Basel Manuscripts.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine (1940): 355 – 69. Toussaint-Samat, Maguelonne. History of Food. Translated by Anthea Bell. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1992. Unwin, Tim. Wine and the Vine. London and New York: Routledge, 1991. Vehling, Joseph Dommers. Platina and the Rebirth of Man. Chicago: Walter M. Hill, 1941. Visser, Margaret. The Rituals of Dinner. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991. Wear, Andrew. “The History of Personal Hygiene.” In Companion Encyclopedia of the History of Medicine, vol. 2, edited by W. F. Bynum and Roy Porter, 1283–1308. London and New York: Routledge, 1993. ———. “Making Sense of Health and the Environment in Early Modern England.” In Medicine and Society, 119 – 47. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

308

Bibliography

Weber, Eugen. Peasants into Frenchmen. Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1976. Webster, Charles, ed. Health, Medicine, and Mortality in the Sixteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979. Wheaton, Barbara Ketcham. Savoring the Past. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983. Wilson, C. Anne. Banquetting Stuffe: The Fare and Social Background of the Tudor and Stuart Banquet. (Leeds Symposium on Food History and Traditions, 1986.) Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991.

Index

abortion, 100 Abraham, Nicholas, 42 abstersive and mundifying foods, 100 abstinence. See fasting Aëtius, 7, 21, 30 age, 154 – 62; and digestive capacity, 156; of plants and animals used as food, 157–59, 269 aging meat and fowl, 158 –59, 269, 278 aging process, 53, 154 –55 agglutination, 59, 67 air: as nourishment, 117–19; quality, 117 alcohol, 274. See also birth defects almonds, 101 America, humoral theory in, 8, 286 –94 American foods, 2, 231– 40 anatomy, 58 anger, 3 anorexia, aperitives, 92, 100 –1 aphrodisiacs, 59, 146 –51, 182 Apicius, 19, 207 apoplexy, 102 appetite, 54 –56 apples, 90 –91, 255, 273 apricots, 152 Arab and Jewish authorities, 7, 168; rejection of, 7 Aristotle, 18, 58, 64 Arnald of Villanova, 26, 89 –91 aromatherapy, 118 aromatic foods, 97 artichokes, 101, 206, 261

ascetics, 92 Asian foods, 2 asparagus, 98, 206, 266; causing fetid urine, 38 ass, as food, 31 assimilation, 6, 63– 66 astrology, 15, 45, 155 Athenaeus, 19 attenuation, of humors, 97 authorities, criticism of, 8, 10, 38, 229, 285 Averroës, 23 Avicenna, 7, 23; and order of foods in one meal, 109 Bachot, Gaspard, 45, 270 –71 banquets. See gluttony, at court barley, 100, 198 basil, 160 baths and rubbings, 134 –35 beans, 258, 261; as a crass food, 94; fit for peasants, 188; and gas, 10, 59; New World, 235 –36; and Pythagoras, 16; string bean recipe, 281 bear, as food, 31 beef, 8, 68, 188, 256, 276; digestibility of, 6; for English, 12, 40, 230; nutritional value, 6; promoting choler, 3; recipes, 260, 276 beer, 95, 98, 133, 230. See also Placotomus Benedict (Benedictus) of Nursia, 28, 190, 249 Benzi, Ugo, 26, 43

309

310 Bertaldi, Giovani Ludovico (or Bertaudo), 43, 264 – 65 birth defects and alcohol, 146, 152 bitterness, 82 – 83 blancmange, 261 blood: as food, 73, 192 ; as a humor, 49 bloodletting, 49 body size, 5. See also weight loss Boorde, Andrew, 33 borage, 103, 139; efficacy, 11 bouquet garni, 258 brain, as food, 96, 253 bran, 100, 197 Braudel, Fernand, 188 bread, 59, 67, 84, 165, 249; crust, 95, 197; and fermentation, 98, 271; as a social marker, 196 –97; white, 98 breakfast, 65, 112, 205 Brooke, Humphrey, 46, 277 broth, 72 Bruyerin Champier, Ioannes (Campegius), 35 –36, 255 –56 buffalo, 204 bulimia, 55 Bulleyn, William, 34 –35, 257–58 Buttes, Henry, 40 – 41, 273–74 Byzantines, 21 cacao, 231, 236 Calanius (Prosper Calano), 34, 254 –55 camel, 31 Camporesi, Piero, 198 –99 cancer, 102 cannabis, 102, 198 cannibalism, 69 Cardano, Girolamo, 37–38, 261– 62 carnivores, 71 Castellanus, Petrus (du Chatel), 45, 278 – 79 Celsus, 19 Cervantes, Miguel de, Don Quixote, 3 cheese, 67, 93, 105, 125, 229 –30, 256, 260; hard, 8, 194; with maggots, 227; as a seal for stomach, 60. See also Pantaleone da Confienza chestnuts, 265, 281 chewing, 56 chicken, 98, 165; free-range, 142 – 43; as most tempered of foods, 42 chickpeas, 100, 195, 279 choler, foods that promote, 3 chyle, 61, 66 citrus and citron, 97, 189, 213 class. See social prejudice cloves, 84 Cockaigne, 181 Cogan, Thomas, 39 – 40, 208, 271–72

Index cold, as a pathological state, 50, 86, 95, 102 coldness: atmospheric, 288; as an elemental quality, 5, 288 collations, 112, 205 color, of food, as criterion of nutritional value, 80 – 81 combining foods. See correction complexion: as color of face, 50 –51; as humoral makeup, 5, 49 –50 concoction: and cooking metaphors, 17, 57, 96 as one stage of digestion, 54, 56 condiments, 6, 66, 88 –91, 188, 242, 245, 252, 291–92; condemnation of, 41, 253, 255 –56, 261, 270, 273, 276, 280 cooking: as a corrective, 242 – 83, 255 – 56, 261– 62, 272, 276, 282 – 83; and effect on nutrition, 6 –7 cordials, 97 corn (maize), 231, 234 –35 Cornaro, Alvise (or Luigi), 36, 139, 156 correction, of food’s substance, 98 –99, 242. See also condiments; cooking corruption of food. See putrefaction courtly dining, 12, 184, 187– 88, 205 –15, 213, 250, 257 crass foods, 93–94 cravings, 51; in pregnancy, 55, 87, 151 cucumbers, 8 –9, 66, 84, 194, 250 cuisine, late medieval, 246 custom: criticism of local, 251; outweighing theory, 12, 44, 114, 251– 83 ; as a second nature, 50 –51, 113–14 deduction, to assign food qualities, 79 defense: and diet, 223–24; military metaphors, 222 degrees of intensity, 84 – 88 diet. See hygiene, old broader meaning of diet, universally prescribed rules of, 6, 87, 127 dietaries, audience for, 8, 37, 43, 131; irrational logic in, 9; periodization, 7; popularity of, 1, 37, 39, 171, 269; printing of, 8. See also medical advice digestibility, as a criterion for nutritional value, 6 digestion: faulty, as etiology of disease, 54, 56 –57; in older broader sense, 54 – 62 digestives, 61, 100 digestive capacity: determined by environment, 129; determined by exercise, 129, 131–32 disagreement: among ancient and medieval authorities, 2; among Renaissance authors, 6, 72, 109

Index Diocles, 17–18 disease, as punishment for intemperance, 178 –79 docility, as criterion for meat selection, 72 doctrine of signatures, 80 doctrine of similarities (or direct transference), 79 – 80, 168 – 69 dog, 31, 169, 226 dormice, 207– 8 dreams, 52, 63, 137–38 Duchesne, Joseph (Quercetanus), 42, 269 –70 Durante, Castor, 38 –39 dryness: as an elemental quality, 5; and intelligence, 170 economic metaphors, 219 –20 eels, 96, 160, 189, 206, 230; recipes for, 257, 258, 264 eggplant, 31, 96, 141, 208, 237 eggs, 76 –77, 98, 156, 249 elements, 48 –50 elephantiasis, 102, 226 Elias, Norbert, and “civilizing process,” 26, 209, 217–18 Elyot, Thomas, 32 –33 emotions, 51–52, 63, 138 – 43; of animals used as food, 142 environmental effects: on food, 81– 82; on health, 116 –30; on stature and character, 127–29. See also air Erasmus, Desiderius, 141 ergotism, 198 Estienne, Charles (Carolus Stephanus), 33–34, 253 excrements, 60, 68 exercise, 130 –36; and digestion, 133; effect on animals used as food, 135 –36; harming the rational faculties, 132 –33; mental and spiritual, 132 experience, personal, as a valid guide, 8, 38, 261, 263, 284 – 85 faculties, of Aristotle (attractive, retentive, concoctive, expulsive), 64, 83 fast food, 215 –16, 267– 68, 276 fasting, 106, 201 fat, in food, 83, 94 fetus, as food, 153–54, 158 fevers, avoiding, 4 Ficino, Marsilio, 7, 28 –29, 249 –50 figs, 279 Fieldhouse, Paul, 209 fish, 12, 44, 68, 95 –96, 102 –3, 133, 242, 246, 280; identifying ancient names for, 31; origin of, 122; recipes, 252,

311 263, 274; tails, 135. See also Nonnius, Ludovico Flandrin, Jean-Louis, 213, 243; and shift in theory, 174 –76 flatulence, 100; as aphrodisiac, 148 – 49 flavor: combining, 262; as key to qualities, 82 – 84, 289 flowers, as food, 199, 212 food: deprivation, 3; pyramid, 107 Foster, George, 286, 289 –92 fowl, 71–72, 98, 188, 278 –79; bones, eating, 263; effect of environment and diet on, 125; waterfowl, 122 –23, 248 fox, 31, 71 Fridaevallis, Hugo, 35, 258 –59 frogs, 208, 227, 259 fruit, 96, 227; corruption of, 9, 109 –10; effect of environment on, 125; as offering little nutritional value, 68, 88 Galen, 4 –5; dependence on, 177, 281; and humors, 48; life of, 19 –21; and order of foods in one meal, 109; rejection of, 229, 271; writings by, 7, 20 Galenic revival, 7, 30 –36 garlic, 62, 84, 190, 203, 230, 265, 266 garum, 31 Gazius, (Antonio Gazzo), 29, 190, 207, 250 –51 gender, 151–54, of animals, 153–54 gluttony, 3, 53, 56, 104 – 6; at court, 8, 33, 112, 206 – 8, 241 goat and kid, 80, 149, 153, 252 gold, 103, 159, 166 Goody, Jack, 185 gout, 106 grains of paradise, 211, 246 Grataroli, Gulielmo, 35 Greeks. See medical authors, Greek and Roman greensickness, 152 –53 Grieco, Allen J., 194 Grospré, Robert (Geopretius), 32 guilt, 2, 31–32, 171– 83 hare, 71, 80, 260 haute cuisine, 111, 285 heat, as an elemental quality, 5, 79, 288 heating foods as aphrodisiacs, 147 hedgehog, 71, 207, 272 herbals, and Dioscorides, 18 –19 herbs, 257; medicinal, efficacy, 11 Hessus, Eobanus, 35, 253 Hippocrates: life of, 16 –17; quoting, 3; works by, 7 holistic: conception of mind and body, 15; therapeutics, 15

312 honey, 86, 95; mead, 274 –75 Hollings, Edmund, 41, 275 –76 hops, 100 –1; hop sprouts, 264 horse, 72 horseradish, 94, 101, 281 hygiene, 5 humoral pathology, 49 humoral physiology, 5; rejection of, 5 humors, four: balancing, 4, 85; correction of, 174; production of, 62; raw and burnt, 49; theory of , 5, 48 –52; visualization on a graph, 85 – 86, 99 Ibn-Rushd. See Averroës Ibn Sinna. See Avicenna ice cream, 265 incisive foods, 100 India and Pakistan, 8, 286 inedia, 119. See also air insipid foods, 83 Isaac Judaeus, 7, 23 Jews, 204 Johannitius, 22 Joubert, Laurent, 39, 268 – 69 kidneys, 60 kidney stones, 100 –101, 106 Kyr, Paulus, 35 laborers, and differing dietary needs, 67, 131, 187 lamb, 272 Langton, Christopher, 34 lassitude, 65, 100 Latin, language, 30 –31. See also philology Laurioux, Bruno, 244 laxatives, 95, 100 leeks, 195, 247, 265 lemon, 41, 203– 4, 242, 264, 279. See also citrus Lent, 44, 106, 202 leprosy, 102 Lessius, Leonard, 42 – 43, 277–78 lettuce, 79, 84, 89; as an anaphrodisiac, 148; as promoting sleep, 137 lice, 101, 160 Liebault, Jean, 34 life, prolongation of, 45 liver, 61, 76; wolf’s, 169 Lobera de Avila, Luis, 30, 190 lobster, 150 longevity, 65, 111, 156, and deer, 169 lungs, and breathing, 63 Magninus Mediolanensis, 25 Manfredi, 27–28, 190, 248 – 49

Index manna, 121 mannerism, to describe courtly dining, 213–14 manners, 218 marzipan, 263, 275 Massonio, Salvatore, 43, 265 – 66 meals, dinner/supper debate (prandium /coenam), 3, 112 mealtimes, 112 –13, 205 meat, 3, 9, 79, 191; effect of environment on, 126; in the late Middle Ages, 188; as necessary, 45, 64; as unnecessary, 42 – 43, burned, 3. See also salt, foods preserved with medical advice: following, 4, 164; ignoring, 2, 3, 10, 108, 171, 251, 253, 256 medical authors: Arabic-speaking, 22 –23 Greek and Roman, 2, 15 –21, 251–52; medieval Latin, 23–25 medical research, in libraries, 14. See also authorities, criticism of medical texts: editing of and translations, 20 –21; recovery of, 7, 20; recovery as stepping stone to abandoning, 36 melons, 194, 206, 242 – 43; as an abstersive, 100; correction of, 254 –55, 267– 68; and corruption, 96; as delicious and dangerous, 12, 181; fear of, 10; with wine, 99 memory, 170 Menapius, Gulielmo, 32, 252 Mennell, Stephen, 193 Messisbugo, Christoforo di, 213 miasma, 102, 116. See also plague middle class, and emulation, 186 – 87 milk and milk products, 75 –76, 81, 91, 251, 270, 276; and emotion of cattle, 142; and fodder of cattle, 124; human, 75, 151; lactose intolerance, 126 millet, 195, 198, 261 Mintz, Sidney W., 211–12 Moffett, Thomas, 40, 272 –73 monks, 92, 106, 189, 201–3. See also ascetics; priests moisture, as an elemental quality, 5 Moore, Philip, 35 Montaigne, Michel de, 2, 56, 141 mullet, 149 –50 mummy, 69 mushrooms, 8, 66, 141, 208, 254, 259; as indigestible, 57 mustard, 97, 101; promoting choler, 3 mutton, raw, 272 narcotics, 102, 148, 198 native food, preference for, 40, 228 –31 natural history, 5

Index nausea, 96 new foods, accepted in Middle Ages, 233 Nietzsche, Frederick, 207 non-naturals, 115 – 46; and Hippocrates, 17, 116 Nonnius, Ludovico, 44, 279 – 80 Nuñez de Oria, Fransisco, 36, 256 –57 nutrition: as regeneration of flesh, 65; quantity of, 6 nutritional guidelines, and ideal selfimage, 4, 9, 164 – 68. See also diet; medical advice nutritional requirements, differing in time and place, 10 –11 oats, 40, 195, 198, 229, 271, 281 occult properties, 6, 99, 103– 4 odor, 81, 119 oil lamp metaphor, 55, 63, 154. See also radical moisture; vital heat olives, 55, 273, 277 onions, 8, 253, 255; cooking and digestibility, 6 oppliations (clogs) in body, 102 oranges, 212 –13, 272 order, of foods in one meal, 57–58, 108 – 9, 270 organ meats, 188, 192 –93 Oribasius, 7, 21 orthodoxy. See authorities, criticism of Ortiz de Montellano, Bernard, 286, 293– 94 oysters, 92, 130, 206, 208, 274 Pantaleone da Confienza, 28. See also cheese Paracelsus, 42, 45, 47, 150 passions of the soul. See emotions pasta, 94 –95, 192, 249 pastries, biscuits and pies, 41, 94, 180, 267– 68, 279 Paul of Aegina, 7– 8, 21, 30 peaches, 96, 181, 194 –95, 206, 242, 271 peacocks, 188, 191, 205 pears, 102, 254 peas, 195; with almond milk, 258 peasants, 113, 184, 191–101; and simple happy life, 200 –201. See also laborers; social prejudice pepper: black, 88; choler-promoting, 5; use by women, 152 peppers, capsicum, 231, 236 perspiration, 51, 101 Petronio, Alessandro, 38, 262 – 63 pharmacy, 90 pheasant, 89, 191, 195 –96, 205 philology, 7, 30

313 phlebotomy. See bloodletting phlegm, 49 –50 physiognomy, 50 physiology, 5, 52 –54 pica, 87 pickles, 40, 151 Pictorius, Georgius, 33 pigeon and doves, 80, 135, 169 –70, 249, 271 pigs. See pork Pisanelli, Baldassare, 38 –39, 264 pistachioes, 101 Placotomus, Ioannes, 35, 253 plague, 102, 120, 161– 62 Platina, (Bartolomeo Sacchi ), 7, 173, 191, 246 – 48; life of, 27 Plato, and Herodicus, 16 plethora, 49, 144 Pliny, 19 poison, 65 – 66, 101, 113, 199 political metaphors, 218 –19 pollution, 63, 120 Pontormo, Jacopo, 2, 38 poppies, 102, 137, 198 –99 popular errors, 37. See also Bachot; Joubert population density, and effect on genre, 186 pork, 49, 70, 135, 168, 181, 242, 247, 252, 257, 281; Bartholomew Pig, 181; boar, 273; paté, 265; sausages, 253; suckling pig, 96, 153, 180 porpoise and whale, 188, 206 porridge and polenta, 192, 234, 281 potatoes, 31, 237–39; and English, 238 –39 pregnancy. See cravings preservative foods, 103, 159 priests, 42, 201–3 printing, 32 prisca scientia (ancient wisdom), 17. See also authorities, criticism of psychosomatic, effects of ideas on body, 9 –11 pulse, 51 purgatives, 92, 101 putrefaction, 159 – 61; avoiding, 4; as a result of improper concoction, 6 Pythagoras, 16 quantification, 45 quantity, of food per meal, 43, 104 –5, 107 qualities, of food as humoral makeup, 78 – 82 Rabelais, François, Gargantua and Pantagruel, 3, 60, 141, 180, 208 rabbit, 3; causing fear, 80, 168 radical moisture, 53 rare foods as aphrodisiacs, 150

314 Reformations, 8, 178, 201, 254 Regimen Sanitatis Salerni (or Salernitanum), 24 rete mirabile, 63 Rhazes, 7, 22 rice, 94, 98 Romoli, Domenico, 32, 259 –10 rue, 100 rules. See medical advice sailors, 95, 203– 4 saffron, 98, 166 – 67, 211, 246 Sala, Giovanni Domenico, 44 – 45, 267– 68 salad, 12, 110, 165 – 66, 215, 249, 265, 270 –71; corrective logic of, 251, 254, 265 – 66. See also Massonio, Salvatore salt, 97, 101, 269 –70; as aphrodisiac, 148; foods preserved with, 95, 188, 191, 194, 203– 4, 216, 256 samphire, 277 Santorio, Santorio, 8, 45, 47, 284. See also quantification sauces. See condiments Savonarola, 7, 26, 188 – 89 scientific revolution, 285 Scully, Terence, 243– 44 seal, for stomach, 59 – 60 seasons, 63, 129 –30 sea urchins, 259 Sebizius, Melchior, 46, 280 – 81 sedition metaphors, 220 –21 sex, 143–51; and aging, 145; and prudery, 182, 218 Shakespeare, 3, 61, 136 similarity, as criterion for nutrition, 59, 64, 68 simplicity of meals, 110 sleep, 136; deprivation, 3, 137; and digestion, 112, 136 –37 slimming regimens, 5, 95, 133–34, 177 smoked foods, 95 snails, 208, 282 social prejudice, 8, 37, 73, 184 –216 social stratification, 184 – 86 soil quality, 123–24 sorrel, 257, 275 sourness, 83 Spain, 36, 256 –57, 287 sperm, 92, 95, 144 – 46 spices: to drive out heat, 290; evolution of meaning, 210 –11, 267; excessive use of, 8, 91; to extenuate blood, 62; in medieval cuisine, 243 spinach, 98, 258, 273 spirits, 62 – 63, 98

Index spontaneous generation, 159 – 60. See also lice; worms squash, 279 starvation, and war, 200 stockfish, 194, 227, 230 strawberries, 194, 206, 276, 282 students, diets for, 41, 140 – 41 sturgeon, 150, 188, 206 substance, as the texture and digestibility of food, 5 – 6, 91–99, 290 –91 subtle foods, 93, 96 –98, and light foods, 170 sugar, 66, 78, 100, 173, 175, 179 – 80, 211–12, 246 superfluities, 94 –95 supernatural etiology of disease, abandoning, 15 swans, 188, 191, 205 sweetness, 66, 82, 179 Sylvius, Jacob, 34, 192 –93 Symphorien Champier, 29, 190 taboo-breaking, 12 taste: as criterion for nutritional value, 171–74; influenced by outside factors, 163; preferences and perception, 51, 84, 87– 88 taverns. See fast food tea, 239 – 40 temperature, physical, as distinct from qualities, 78 theory: corruption of, 37; understanding of, 12. See also custom thoughts, clear and rational, 4. See also spirits tobacco, 40 – 41, 118, 203, 231, 239 tomatoes, 31, 79, 92, 236 –37 tripe, promoting choler, 3 truffles, 150, 254 tuna, 228, 263 turkey, 233–34 turnips, into conserves, 43 turtles, 259 tyranny metaphors, 221–22 urine, 100 uroscopy, 51 van Helmont, Jan Baptiste, 8, 47, 284 variety, of foods in one meal, denunciation of, 111, 250 Vaughan, William, 41, 274 –75 veal, 96, 105, 203, 272; head of, 194; recipes, 262 vegetables, as offering little nutritional value, 68, 88, 194

Index vegetarianism, 16, 70, 202 venison, 191, 264, 272, 278 Venner, Tobias, 45, 276 –77 vinegar, 97–98, 156, 242; for plague, 102 virtues, of food, 99 –104 viscosity, as criterion for nutritional value, 68 viscous foods, 95 vital heat, 53 Viviani, Viviano, 44 water, 120 –22 water buffalo, 72 weight loss. See slimming regimens whole foods, 92; and macrobiotics, 282

315 wine, 79, 86, 97–98, 101, 139, 262 – 63; as an analogue of blood, 73–74; criticism of, 38; for the elderly, 156; for girls, 268; as an ideal aliment, 8; judging, 282; matched with food, 252; mixed with water, 121 Wingfield, Henry, 34 worms, 61, 100, 160; as food, 193. See also putrefaction; spontaneous generation wormwood, 101, 198 xenophobia, 224 – 40, and English, 227– 29; and French, 225 –27; and Italians, 224 –25