WAYS OF APPROACHING food play a central role in medieval monastic thinking, endowing the daily problem of nutrition with important cultural values and conferring on it a heavily ritualized character. A remarkable variety, in time and space, distinguishes the ideological and existential choices of individual groups and orders. There are, however, important common traits, mental and cultural attitudes, immediately recognizable as typical of the monastic experience.1
One aspect that is totally uniform is alimentary deprivation, the renunciation of food as a means of mortifying the flesh. The practices of fasting (understood in a primarily quantitative sense: the elimination of the first of the two daily meals) and abstinence (understood in a qualitative sense: the elimination, temporary or permanent, of certain foods from the monastic diet) assume different characteristics according to the greater or lesser degree of ascetic rigor, the material conditions of life, the rituals, and the liturgical calendar. But these are details within a choice that is general and precedential.
It should immediately be made clear that deprivation does not mean absence. On the contrary, one can only deprive oneself of what one has, of what one is accustomed to having: “privatio praesupponit habitum,” Rabelais ironically remarks.2 On this, monastic culture is in agreement: there would be no value or merit in a renunciation that was obligatory in some way because of circumstances; it is necessary to renounce an available pleasure so that the choice acquires value and meaning. When Abbot Pacôme (one of the fathers of eastern monasticism) returns to his monastery after a prolonged period of solitude in the desert, he learns to his astonishment that for the previous two months his cook had ceased preparing the traditional dish of vegetables that was served to the brothers on Saturdays and Sundays. Asking the reason for this, he is told that it had become pointless because the monks had stopped eating it, preferring to mortify their bodies by refraining from cooked foods. Surprisingly, Pacôme acquiesces, although harshly disapproving a decision that he does not hesitate to call “satanic”—for “he who abstains only against his will and out of necessity, with no object of desire, abstains in vain and will have no recompense.” If food is absent from the table, “temperance has no value.” Instead, every day “many dishes should be cooked and placed before the brothers so that by depriving themselves of what has been given to them they can augment their perfection.”3
It is thus not a paradox to find in the monastic world an intense interest in food, in the search for alimentary resources, and in the careful organization and management of supply systems alongside forms of ideological repulsion. This is not only because the same principle of deprivation presupposes the availability of foods from which to abstain and their destination for other purposes (particularly charity), but also because the alimentary regime of the monks, being extremely selective with regard to the quality of foods consumed, implied a constant effort to rationalize and control resources.
What meanings does monastic culture attribute to the deprivation of food? And first of all, what meanings come out of the abstention from meat, which is the first and most important of those deprivations? The prime purpose of renouncing food, and the simplest and most immediate, is the mortification of the flesh, the rejection (ideological, of course) of that burden of matter that hinders the elevation of the soul toward God. In this sense—according to a play on terminologies that was common in medieval treatises—food for the body was contrasted with food for the soul, earthly bread with celestial bread. The “contempt for the body” is to be understood in a moral, not a theological sense (in the religious context of Christianity, founded on the idea of divine incarnation, this would be inconceivable); but it is not hard to recognize in certain attitudes of monastic culture an echo of dualistic ideologies, always denied and always recurring in the ascetic tension of Christian spirituality.
The rejection of food is therefore the negation of the priority of the body in human experience, and from this perspective, one understands why the very first choice of this “negative regimen” is the rejection (more or less radical, more or less rigorous) of meat. Meat was held, by definition, to be “the nutrition of meat.” That ambiguity of the term (caro nutrita carne) was part of the ideology that proposed it and found ample support in medieval scientific literature (treatises on medicine and diet) which saw meat as the prime alimentary value, the ideal food for “nutrition.”4 Whether from the vantage point of basic cultural choices or of individual psychological attitudes, the rejection of meat was an elitist choice to distance oneself from the “normal” food of humans. This was an important motive for self-identification on the part of a particular group of individuals, who, for this reason as well, felt themselves closer to God. And more generally, this accounted for an attitude of detachment and renunciation of food.
In this rejection of the world and of meat, there were also subtler concerns. If the consumption of meat was for most people the best kind of nutrition, for some social groups—those who held power, the military aristocracy—it represented something more: it was the symbol of strength and power, the manifestation of a violent mentality that was an integral part of the culture and customs of potentes. During the Carolingian period, among the punishments imposed by imperial law for political crimes of singular gravity was the deprivation of meat accompanied by the laying down of arms.5 For many who entered monastic orders—in large part offspring of aristocracy—the deprivation of meat took on the meaning not only of a generic renunciation of the “world” but also a rejection of that particular world from which so many monks had originally come.
Medieval monasticism—above all, that of Cluny, so closely tied to the nobility (although this applies more generally)—was not intolerant of alimentary habits that were too deeply rooted to be abandoned all at once, but the principle of renunciation was irreversible and perhaps all the more rigorous in that its daily practice was so difficult. The biographies of the great reformers (Odo of Cluny, Hugo, and so many others) show them tenaciously struggling with monks so attached to eating meat that they resist all attempts at “moralization.” In cases like these, the texts insist on the idea of combatting the sin of gluttony or the question of individual submission, but the heart of the problem seems less a moral one than a social one: the sharing, on the part of the monastic body, of habits and lifestyles common to the world of nobility.
Abstinence from food—and in particular, from meat—was also programmed for another reason, that of a technical nature. Deprivation of food was, in fact, considered one of the principal means of realizing an important objective of monastic status—virginity, seen as a privileged condition for approaching God more rapidly and more intensely. The dietary choices of the monks thus appear to be closely related to the repression of sexuality. Abstinence and chastity go together, be it in a metaphoric sense (gluttony and sexuality, the two primary physical pleasures, are images of one another and follow each other in turn) or in a functional sense (this type of diet is seen as a means of facilitating chastity, with implicit or explicit reference to the medical science of the time and the conviction that foods of a “hot” nature encourage sexuality and those of a “cold or dry” nature inhibit it).6
Perhaps yet another reason led monks (at least, some of them) to reject meat: the wish to align their own dietary style with the vegetarian model of Eden, as recounted in the book of Genesis and announced by the prophet Isaiah as returning at the end of time. This was a nonviolent alimentary model that avoided killing living creatures. Aspirations like these were never openly declared (although certain passages of monastic literature assure us that they were not lacking) because they were incompatible with Christian doctrine,7 which, at least in principle, made no distinction between foods (plant and animal), accepting all of them as a gift of divine Providence.
Violence was rejected by certain groups that were labeled “heretical.” One need only remember the vegetarian rigor of the Manichean sects, later revived by Cathar philosophy—radical examples whose presence one can readily trace in “orthodox” monasticism as well.
After the rigorous prohibitions of early monasticism, especially in the east, the consumption of meat became the object of discussions, proposals, and choices that changed from one time to another. If a few monastic rules maintained the original rigor (above all, in northern Europe, where the tradition of meat eating was more entrenched and its opposition all the more fierce, as shown, for example, by the Rules of Colombano, which totally excluded meat), others more easily legitimized the consumption of meat (especially in southern Europe, as in the Italian Regula Magistri). In the end, a line of compromise won out, which is how the regulations of the Benedictine Rule, for centuries the principal model of western monastic life, might be defined. The Benedictine text, in fact, making mention only of the meat of quadrupeds as being strictly prohibited, allows the consumption of poultry, though not explicitly encouraging it.8
This margin of tolerance, which allowed substantial freedom of choice and discretion (discretio) to the abbot, and also to individuals and to individual communities, seems to have been motivated either by cosmological considerations (based on differentiated scansions of the times of creation, high medieval culture made a clear distinction between terrestrial animals, on the one hand, and animals of the air and water, on the other) or by medical-dietetic convictions related to the image of greater lightness attributed to birds (the metaphoric notion of flight as lightness is translated into values more specifically nutritional). In turn, the physiological aspect took on ethical meanings (lightening the organism so as to rise closer to God): “The meat of winged creatures,” wrote an Italian physician of the sixteenth century, “is much more suited to those who expect more from exercising the spirit than the body.”9 In conclusion, it is possible that what might have influenced monastic regulations—insofar as the meat of winged creatures can generally be considered less rich in blood than the meat of quadrupeds—was the ancient Hebrew taboo against blood, which Christianity had formally rejected but which long persisted in the culture and mentality of the high Middle Ages, as confirmed by penitential books and hagiographic sources.10
In any case, it is clear that “sola quadrupedia, non volatilia [only quadrupeds, not winged creatures]” were prohibited to the monks—the quotation is from Rabano Mauro11—even if the model of total abstention remained the highest aspiration of many. In a famous letter written to Charlemagne by Teodemaro, abbot of Montecassino, the abbot describes the monks of that abbey—surely with some chauvinism—as the most faithful interpreters of the Benedictine Rule, who, only under special circumstances (one week at Christmas and one at Easter), convince themselves to eat the meat of winged creatures; moreover, he adds, many brothers abstain even at those times.12
The exclusion of meat from the diet resulted in its programmed substitution by other products that could take its place as “strong” food, as energy foods high in nutritional value. These replacement products—which therefore had great success in the monastic tradition from both an economic and a cultural point of view—were fish, cheese, eggs, and vegetables.
The acceptance of fish as an alternate to meat was not that simple. During the early centuries of the monastic experience, but not only then, more rigorous tendencies did not hesitate to exclude fish, like any other animal food, from the table of the brothers. Others condoned it but cautiously (for example, the Rules of Aurelian and Fruttuoso accepted it only on specific holidays or on other particular occasions, with the explicit authorization of the abbot) or, like Benedict, did not mention it. With time, however, it gained admission to the point that fish became—in contrast to meat—one of the primary alimentary symbols of monastic life. An edifying (and entertaining) tale by Pier Damiani concerns a monk who, invited to dinner by Count Farolfo, yielded to the temptation of a loin of pork. Then a huge pike was brought to the table, and the monk began looking at it avidly. Jokingly, the count said to him: “You who ate meat like a lay person, why do you now examine the fish like a monk?”
The relationship between monastic life and the consumption of fish soon became a commonplace. The presence of streams in which to fish and the construction of hatcheries are presented as indispensable for the founding of a monastery. “Rich in fish,” according to the Cronaca della Novalesa, was the site of the abbey of Bremen,13 and the Life of Saint Odo of Cluny relates that the marsh near the monastery of Fleury, “which earlier bubbled with frogs,” at some point began—miraculously, the author suggests—to abound in fish. And not only is this relationship found in literary texts: hatcheries and artificial fisheries stood beside monastic complexes, and archival sources confirm the keen concern of the monks that they be assured of their right to fish. To this end, the monastery of Bobbio, in the ninth century, exploited its property on the lake of Garda; the monastery of Nonantola had at its disposal a squadron of fishermen who fished in the nearby Po River.14
The need to substitute fish for meat is often the subject of miraculous episodes related by hagiographic sources. The Dialogues of Gregory the Great relate that Onorato, a monk at Fondi during the first half of the fifth century, having been invited to a dinner with relatives in the mountains of Sannio, refused to eat meat and was derided for it. “Eat!” they said. “How do you expect us to find you a fish in these mountains?” At that point, there was no more water, and a servant was sent to the spring: “while he was drawing water a fish jumped into the pail and when the servant poured water for the guests, out came a fish that satisfied Onorato for the whole day.”15 An almost identical episode appears in the biography of Count Gerald of Aurillac, who, in the company of the monk Ariberto, found himself in the embarrassing position of not having any fish to offer him. Suddenly, a servant who had gone to draw water “saw on the bank a little fish, still palpitating, that jumped out of the water before his eyes,” as though offering itself as a meal. Not only the monk but also Gerald tasted it and found it “most delicious.”16
Other miracles took place while eating fish. In the Life of Saint Simeon, a monk in the monastery of San Benedetto Po, it is written that brother Andrea was sitting at the dining table “when, accidentally, a fishbone got stuck in his throat in such a way that he could neither swallow it nor spit it out.” Everyone feared for his life, but Simeon, praying to God, miraculously managed to make him eject the bone.17
In truth, the monks were not always champions of abstinence. During the Carolingian era, between the eighth and ninth centuries, they closely followed the lifestyle of the gentry, from which most of them had originated, regularly introducing meat into their daily diet. This is also (and perhaps primarily) why the reformers—going back to the original rigor of the Rule—tried to convince them to give up meat in favor of fish. The Life of Saint Odo of Cluny is instructive in its mention of his many attempts (stubbornly thwarted) to reform monastic life: Giovanni, a disciple of Odo’s and his biographer, relates that in the Tuscan abbey of Saint Elia “we found monks whom we were unable to keep from eating meat.” The same thing occurred at Fleury, but in both cases, the diplomatic skill and patience of Odo succeeded in putting an end to it.18
The fish eaten by monks (and also lay people, both peasants and lords) were mostly freshwater fish, caught on the site according to a prevailing view of local production.19 A good inventory of the species best known and most often consumed (sturgeon, trout, among others) can be found in certain consuetudini drawn up at Cluny in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, which, as we shall soon see, codified the gestures used by the monks to indicate them (necessitated by their vow of silence).
Even cheese had a special place on the monastic table, and it has been observed that most of the cheeses eaten today have a link, direct or indirect, real or mythical (but no less meaningful), with some monastic establishment of the medieval period.20 Eggs seem to be a high-energy food: as a dish in itself or as an ingredient in a variety of dishes, they appeared regularly and abundantly in the daily diet of the monks. Saint Bernard of Chiaravalle accused the monks of Cluny of being too disposed to the pleasures of gastronomy and, furthermore, of knowing too many ways to prepare eggs and make them succulent: “who can determine how many ways eggs can be turned or beaten, how skillfully they are mixed, flipped over, liquified, hardboiled, thickened, served fried, boiled, stuffed, blended or separated?”21 Another fundamental ingredient in the monastic diet was legumes: beans, peas, chickpeas, lentils, and most of all broad beans were the basis of many dishes prepared in different ways. The broad bean, cooked according to a ritual codified in the minutest detail,22 which illustrates its prime alimentary importance, was also ground into flour and mixed with grains to make gruel, soup, and polenta.23
Legumes and vegetables (the Latin olera, produced in great quantity in the large kitchen gardens of monasteries) were the basic ingredients of the pulmentaria, another constant presence on monastic tables, as it constituted the main dish of the daily meal, according to Benedictine tradition.24 As to fats for seasoning and cooking, those preferred were vegetable oils (olive, walnut, seeds) but also lard, which it would seem was not included in the overall prohibition against meat; fats made up a separate alimentary group.25
Bread—which Benedict prescribed in the amount of one pound per person, independent of whether it was a fast day or not and whether it was eaten once or twice during the day26—was a constant presence in the diet of the monks, more fundamental than related to meanings that transcend the level of food to merge with liturgy and mysticism. Along with bread was wine, the two forming an indivisible pair of obvious symbolic meaning: wine was by far the drink most often consumed by the monks, in spite of the ambiguous halo of suspicion that hovered over it. Wine could certainly bring about sin and indulgence, but the habit of drinking it was so embedded in medieval society that Benedict could not bring himself to prohibit it: “in these times it is impossible to persuade the monks of the contrary,” the Rule says, limiting itself to recommending control and moderation, and establishing one emina as the daily measure.27 Important hygienic and medical benefits were moreover associated with wine—and not mistakenly, at a time when the antiseptic qualities of a moderately alcoholic drink doubtless protected the body, defending it against the threat of infection that could come from poorly kept foods and, most of all, from water, often turbid or contaminated.28 Pure water was therefore rarely drunk, just as pure wine was rarely drunk: the two liquids were normally mixed and flavored with herbs, aromas, and honey. Only in the most northern regions of Europe was the consumption of beer, or cider, widespread—but always subordinate to wine.
The monastic diet oscillated considerably during the course of the week and the year for liturgical reasons (the calendar of fasts and abstentions) or because of the activities of the monks. In the first instance, the direct determinant of food was the feast: major holidays (Christmas, Easter) and important occasions (the birthday of the abbot or of a benefactor) were celebrated symbolically through food, served with uncommon abundance and variety. This “joyful” aspect of food appears more or less clearly according to individual cases: particularly sensitive to this are certain rules, such as those of the so-called Maestro, whereas others show a preference for a link between work and food, as in the case of the Rule of Benedict, which prescribed quantitative and qualitative increases of rations for those monks who were engaged in activities or circumstances that were particularly laborious.29 The tie was not broken when monastic society, committed to manual labor as dictated by Benedict, progressively moved away from it, concentrating more exclusively on prayer. The monks in Cluny could justify the abundance and variety of their alimentation—seen with disapproval by the Cistercians—precisely because of the effort required by the daily liturgy.30
Another connection, essential for understanding the alimentary attitudes and choices of the monk, is the one between food and health: dietary science in its proper sense. On the one side, it teaches that food is the original medicine. On this axiom were founded medical notions and practices inherited from Greek and Latin antiquity and passed on to posterity through the decisive contribution of the monasteries. The use of foods is thus the fruit of this combined knowledge, this science of the “humors” utilized preventively and therapeutically, in addition to its function in such special choices as chastity. In monastic practice, the health of the individual was a fundamental variable for determining the type of diet assigned to him. Only healthy and robust brothers were held to the restrictive norms proposed by the legislator, whereas the sick and the “weak” (a term that at times assumes moral as well as physiological connotations) were allowed relatively broader transgressions: larger quantities, prohibited foods.31 This was particularly true for meat and broth made with meat, considered the best kind of “strong” foods and the most suited to restoring lost energy. Energy supplements (often based on eggs and possibly on meat) were also foreseen among those foods that were subjected to brining, a form of “purification” regularly practiced in the monasteries, in accordance with medical doctrines of the time.
To estimate with any precision the size of food rations in medieval monasteries is probably a fruitless undertaking for various reasons: the variety of situations in time and space, the imprecision and insufficiency of numerical data sporadically provided by the documents, and the difficulty of relating actual parameters to the units of measure used locally (which varied from one to another—often a lot). It is primarily because of these oscillations that the calculations proposed by scholars resulted in divergent conclusions, often diametrically opposed. Some, like Rouche, thought they could describe foods that were extremely rich and abundant:32 others, like Hocquet, drastically limited such values.33 In reality, as demonstrated by Devroey,34 the presumed theoretics about these calculations are all indemonstrable. Without taking into consideration that needs and consumption are historically variable data, whether from a biological or a cultural point of view, the legitimacy—above any other consideration—of measuring with the criteria of today the caloric needs of those men seems highly questionable, as it attributes to their foods the nutritional values of today’s foods.
To avoid any “false precision,” let us limit ourselves to pointing out that during the Middle Ages the members of monastic society appear to have been among the consumers best protected from the risk of hunger because they possessed ample resources and great managerial ability and because the tendency to eat and drink heavily, typical of the aristocratic society of the time for reasons of prestige, involved a good part of the monastic world—above all, in central and northern regions of Europe. Between the sixth and ninth centuries, daily rations in general were increased, and those determined in the 816 council of Aix (four pounds of bread and six pounds of wine per person) were judged “cyclopean” by the Lateran synod of 1059.35 As for the proverbial opulence of the Cluny table, it assuredly did not arise out of the pure imagination of the “inimical” Bernard. Moreover, the primary attribute of abstinence and the incessant urging to mortification of the stomach would be incomprehensible without a widespread condition of well-being.
In conclusion, food is a way of making a community cohesive. To eat together in the refectory was one of the most significant moments in monastic solidarity, symbolic of belonging to a group. Only exceptional circumstances involved isolation. A sick person ate alone, whether as a hygienic precaution or so that the occasional diversity of his diet did not trouble the harmony of the group or perhaps arouse envy or scandal. A monk found guilty of some grave misdemeanor would eat alone, this being the first tangible sign of his “excommunication.”36 A monk who retreats into a temporary hermitic experience also would eat alone. All of these examples are seen culturally as exceptional and outside the norm: the monastic choice is preeminently a convivial choice.
Conversation (preferably not noisy) would seem to be a “natural” attribute of a meal. Plutarch devoted one of his famous “convivial questions” precisely to the subject of what is or is not proper to discuss while eating, which subjects are suited to the table and which are not.37 Therefore, when medieval monastic rules imposed a strict observance of silence during meals, they came face to face with an anomaly, an unnatural norm that marked a difference between that table and “other” tables, between life in the monastery and life in the “world.”
This was hardly a novelty. Already in the pagan world, silence was imposed by certain philosophers, like Pythagoras, on their disciples. Even in the Old Testament, there are numerous exhortations to limit speech. But it is, above all, with Christian monasticism that silence became central to daily life, both as a form of personal mortification and as an external sign of detachment from the habits of the world. Silence, considered an essential condition for meditation and the contemplative life, was imposed for most of the daylight hours; speech and conversation were allowed only for a few moments and only in a few specific places expressly designated for that purpose. The Benedictine Rule prescribes constant silence and, above all, at night and in the refectory—the “natural” place for words; only in this way does renunciation becomes meritorious to the highest degree.
To be silent in the face of food might seem a way of focusing on this gift of God, of appreciating and tasting it to the fullest. Not so: appreciation and enjoyment of food are part of the experience of monks but not of the ideology expressed in the regulations, which, on the contrary, recommend the maximum inattention at the table. Not by chance is the consumption of food always accompanied by edifying texts read aloud in the refectory. The Holy Scriptures, the homilies of the Church fathers, and the edifying lives of the martyrs and saints are a constant and almost obsessive reminder that the material food being consumed is nothing compared with the spiritual food of the word of God. One must therefore listen and be distracted from food; the mind must be used to detach oneself as much as possible so as to avoid the temptation of experiencing it as a pleasure instead of a simple bodily necessity.
In any case, not all monks (and perhaps very few) were inclined to endure the burden of silence. They consequently evolved strategies and stratagems to get around the problem: to maintain the duty of silence but at the same time to communicate. Is it possible to speak without speaking? Clearly, yes: there is no need for speech to speak. They invented signs of every kind—hand gestures, facial expressions, body movements—to tell each other what they wanted to say without disobeying the Benedictine Rule. With time, a veritable “language of silence”—a communication code endowed with its own rudimentary but precise dictionary and an elementary but efficient grammar—evolved. Initially, it had to be practiced secretly and illicitly (somewhat like signals between partners in card games), but later it was accepted as legitimate and was even set down in writing.38
We know that already by the beginning of the tenth century, in a monastery in Baume, there was a fixed system of signals that its abbot transmitted to the more famous monastery in Cluny. During the next century, such lists of “signs” seem to have been definitively fixed, so much so that they were listed among the consuetudini, the regulations set down from time to time by the abbots to complement the Benedictine Rule, which remained the principal reference for monastic life. A list compiled by the monk Bernard contains some three hundred “signs”; they have been found at Eynsham in England, Saint Jacques in Liège, Saint Victor in Paris (a community not of monks but of canons), and many other places. Even Cistercian monasteries developed their own particular gestural language, different from the traditional one at Cluny.
This did not go without opposition. Certain monastic orders (like the Carthusians) refused to adopt sign language, considering it indecorous and disrespectful. There is no dearth of scandalized description, such as that of Gerard of Cambrai, who, in 1180, visited the Benedictines of Canterbury and noticed that at mealtimes the most absolute silence reigned over the refectory but the monks were “conversing” animatedly among themselves. Gerard relates that he had the impression of being in the midst of a theatrical performance and remarks that the use of the lips would certainly have been more dignified than those ridiculous gesticulations.
What did those signs indicate? Primarily objects (foods, plants, animals, clothing, domestic utensils), a few actions (kneeling, confessing), and a few abstract notions (good, evil, anger, wisdom). Foods constituted the major part of the “dictionary” because there was the need to indicate them in all their varieties and also because the refectory was the place of greatest silence and yet at the same time the place where the need (as well as the desire) to speak was greatest: to select a food, ask for more, pass it on to others, and so on—perhaps also to comment on its quality.39
The criteria by which these signs were devised corresponded to certain fundamental models, starting with the rule of imitation: to translate the object visually, describe it with a gesture. For example, a fish was represented by an undulating movement of the hand, held vertically, with the fingers joined, “simulating with the hand the action of the fish’s tail in water.” The species of a fish was specified with an additional sign: for lamprey, it was suggested to “simulate with a finger on the jaw the spots that this fish has under its eyes.” For cuttlefish, “separate the fingers and move them,” imitating the movement of the animal in water. For trout, the direction was “to trace a sign with one finger from one eyebrow to the other,” the sign for the female, it is specified, “because the female of this species has a band at that spot.”
Not all “dictionaries” are in agreement. The pike in the Cluny text by Udalrico is imitated by its exceptional speed in the water, whereas in the text by Hirsau it is described with its typical “spatula-like” face. In every case, the directions reveal an alimentary culture that is attentive and informed (in spite of the ascetic premises of the choice of monastic life) and that possesses a precise and detailed knowledge of the animal and vegetable world. Surprisingly exhaustive catalogs follow one after the other in these texts, meticulously subdividing fish from poultry, vegetables from grains, and beverages from foods, extending all the way to pots, bowls, and jars.
In other instances, it is the specific function of the object that is reproduced. To indicate salt, the movement of the hand salting a food was used: “Join the ends of the fingers to the thumb and holding them together, move them two or three times separating them from the thumb as though sprinkling something with salt.” To indicate walnuts, one made a gesture as though cracking them: “Sign of the walnut: stick a finger in your mouth and hold it between your teeth on the right side of the mouth as though you were cracking open a walnut with your teeth.” For a pig, one made the gesture of slaughtering: “Hit your forehead with your fist, since that is the way it is killed.”
From these few examples, the documentary interest of these “gestural dictionaries” is evident. In their evocation of the circumstances when foods were used or their external appearance, they apprise us of technical details we would otherwise not know. Gastronomic details are also revealed concerning the preparation of foods, such as the types of bread baking (in the oven, under embers, in water, in a frying pan), the various colors of wine, and the ways of cooking eggs. Complex dishes are indicated by their principal ingredients, as in the case of fladones, a savory pie with a filling of cheese and other things, typical of medieval gastronomy.40 “Using the usual signs for bread and for cheese, bend all the fingers of one hand so as to form a cavity and place them on top of the other hand.” This mimes the shape of a pie.
There are still other suggestions that allude to the social value of foods, to the symbolic function of their consumption more than to their material appearance. To indicate salmon or sturgeon (“noble” fish much prized in the Middle Ages), one must first make the “general” sign for fish and then add a second sign to indicate how exceptional it is: “Place your fist under your chin with the thumb raised.” Indeed, “in this way one indicates arrogance, for it is above all the arrogant and the rich who eat these fish.”
Dozens of signs like these offer us precious information about the alimentary and gastronomic culture of the Middle Ages, thanks, paradoxically, to the imposition of silence.
