FOOD & FAITH

Salvatore D. S. Musumeci

The monks of Santa Trinità, in their monastery on the banks of the Arno River in Florence, Italy, participated fully in the universal religious lifestyle of late fourteenth-century monasticism, as dictated by the Rule of Saint Benedict.¹ Santa Trinità, however, had all the benefits of an urban economy and marketplace availability, and its inhabitants took full advantage of this. In theory Santa Trinità’s diet was suited to a life of prayer, penitence, and preparation for the afterlife.² The Vallombrosans, one of Italy’s many traditional religious orders, were dedicated to the Rule and a strict spiritual lifestyle that renounced bodily pleasures, observed perpetual silence, and embraced physical enclosure. Yet their provisioning practices, and the foods eaten by the monks, were similar to those of their secular Florentine neighbors.

Through the use of intermediaries like lay brothers and hired servants, the monks were able to keep to their strict enclosure but also easily and affordably provision their monastery to support the full-time congregation as well as visiting guests and friends. That their diet resembled what the secular Florentines ate is not to say that the monks were decadent or cavalier about the necessity of following Saint Benedict’s Rule. Instead, it shows an ability to fit, with resourcefulness and care, what they grew as well as purchased within the strictures and guidelines of their liturgical life.

Santa Trinità’s surviving account books, with their highly detailed records of daily expenditure, reveal the tensions between the popular image of monastic life in the middle decades of the Trecento and that life’s realities and actual practices, highlighting the fact of just how dependent the monks actually were on the markets and shops of Florence. Since the neighboring families shopped at the same markets and vendors that the monks frequented, it seems clear that the monks ate the same foods as their secular Florentine counterparts. However, they honored the Rule of Saint Benedict that regulated life at Santa Trinità by eating these same foodstuffs in a different manner from their neighbors and by using appropriate foods at the correct times of the year according to the liturgical calendar.

The information in this chapter comes from a libro di spese, or book of purchases, kept by Santa Trinità’s camerlengo, or fiscal administrator, Dom Lorenzo di Guidotto Martini.³ His purpose was to ensure a careful daily record of what was purchased on behalf of the monastery, its dependents, and guests. Dom Lorenzo’s account book runs from January 1360 (1359 in the Florentine calendar) through July 1363.⁴ The accounts were not designed to record dinner menus, architectural developments, or musical performances at the monastery. Dom Lorenzo had the inclination, time, and ability to carefully track and annotate institutional expenditures in a manner that was familiar to the many Florentine merchants who kept extensive business records, personal accounts, and zibaldone (a mixture of both familial and financial memoranda).⁵ Dom Lorenzo, like his secular counterparts, also used these fiscal records to note events that were important in the monastery’s history. This was, in part, to justify the expenditure incurred, providing a record that would not be easy to dispute if questions were raised over the accountant’s or monastery’s probity. Because monasteries were not exempt from secular taxation, Dom Lorenzo carefully recorded the gabelle, or taxes, paid for food imported into the city from the monastery’s estates outside the city walls. These records permit the analysis of the monastery’s self-sufficiency with regard to certain products, as well as justify the need for the monks to engage the markets, shops, and vendors of Florence for the products that were not produced in quantity enough on their lands to allow self-sufficiency. Where items were given as gifts or were exempt (for whatever reason) from taxation, they were not recorded.⁶ Dom Lorenzo’s text also provides more detail for marketplace purchases, particularly their quantities and prices.

For many scholars the monastic diet was a relatively bland affair and has primarily been viewed against the backdrop of the liturgical year, at times focusing exclusively on the cycle of fasting periods and feast days present in the calendar.⁷ Fluctuations in the purchase and consumption of meat, fish, and vegetables are normally understood as signposts for both reverent and irreverent behavior as well as a gauge of the congregation’s moral and spiritual health and practices. However, recent studies have established the strong relationship between the diet of the aristocrat and the diet of the religious house, challenging assumptions about an order’s relationship to its governing rule.⁸ This is not to argue that the liturgical year was not important, only that the argument needs to be made that fasting was only one part of the religious diet in the fourteenth century. Seasonal availability, the skills of the cook, the appearance and frequency of guests, and the obligation to entertain them were also important monastic considerations. Therefore Dom Lorenzo’s text can be used to better understand the alimentary habits and consumption patterns of the monastery of Santa Trinità. We would expect, for example, to see fasting clearly delineated in the daily purchases and mealtime preparations rather than through the long-term stores kept at the monastery.⁹ Likewise, feast days might be differentiated by the special nature of goods bought for specific occasions or celebrations, such as costly wines, roasted meats, and musical entertainments.¹⁰

The short period of time covered in Dom Lorenzo’s accounts was a relatively peaceful one in Florentine history; the economic and political landscape was mostly stable, providing us a look at what might be considered normative for both secular and ecclesiastic citizens.¹¹ However, these three and a half years occurred during a longer period of transition between the devastating effects of the Black Death of 1348 (Florence’s population dropped from ninety thousand to about fifty-five thousand people) and a great political upheaval in the form of the Ciompi Revolt in 1378.¹² During this time the monastery was embedded within its own long-established religious traditions and key local neighborhood connections.¹³ Unlike other monastic orders that were international in scope and ambition, the Vallombrosans were closely connected to the Arno city and its surrounding countryside.¹⁴ The order’s founder was a Florentine named Giovanni Visdomini, later known as Giovanni Gualberto, who joined the Benedictine monastery of San Miniato in the early eleventh century.¹⁵ In 1036 he formed a new order just outside Florence in the wooded hills of Vallombrosa, an order that sought to combine the contemplative elements of the Benedictine Rule with a stronger denunciation of material wealth and worldly possessions through the Rule’s literal interpretation and application.¹⁶ Gualberto wanted his ideal monastic communities to be self-sufficient.¹⁷ But the need to engage in daily devotions, meditation, and a regular cycle of prayer and praise made the investment of time required for self-sufficiency difficult. Conscious of these contradictions, Gualberto permitted the employment of conversi, or lay brothers, and famiglia, or hired servants.¹⁸ The lay brothers, along with the hired servants, were meant to serve as a buffer between the outside world, with its secular ideologies, and the secluded sacred world of the fully professed monks.¹⁹

Using Dom Lorenzo’s accounts to identify the actual individuals at Santa Trinità responsible for provisioning the monastery is a complex task, especially in light of the strict observance of Saint Benedict’s Rule expected of members of the Vallombrosan order. Three groups at Santa Trinità had interactions with the markets of Florence: the monks themselves, the lay brothers, and the hired servants (employed on a salaried basis by the monastery).²⁰ Importantly, it becomes clear from the accounts that purchases and orders did not always involve or require actually leaving the monastery.²¹ The use of intermediaries, often the merchants themselves, allowed those in charge of a daily shop to bargain effectively without having to compromise their ascetic retreat behind the monastery’s walls. The use of intermediaries means that it can be difficult to untangle the distinctions between those leaving the monastery to go out into the markets and shops of Florence and those who simply paid for the requisite items from within the sacred space of Santa Trinità.²² Entries that record the servicing, purchasing, picking up, or dropping off of items are much more detailed than entries noting transactions taking place within the monastery, and the entries in Dom Lorenzo’s text that represent a monk-purchaser lack the detail that physically places the person outside the monastery’s walls.²³ Where no one is credited with the purchase, it suggests someone within the monastery simply paid for an item rather than leaving the monastery to purchase it in the marketplace.²⁴ Indeed, it is plausible that the majority of purchased items noted within Dom Lorenzo’s text could have been bought from itinerant sellers or by regular suppliers who brought goods to the monastery door and received their payment via a hired servant or lay brother; thus the fully professed monks of Santa Trinità kept to their enclosure, avoiding contact with the outside world.²⁵

The lay brothers played key roles in managing the daily needs and activities at the monastery. Unlike the professed monks of Santa Trinità whose lives were devoted to study, meditation, contemplation, and prayer, the lay brothers (not bound by the rules of enclosure) occupied themselves with a portion of the everyday tasks that were necessary to the smooth and efficient running of the monastery. In addition, and to a lesser extent, they participated in the religious devotions that occurred daily at the monastery.²⁶ These individuals acted as an important safeguard between the sacred space of the monastery and the secular world of late medieval Florence, a view suggested by the historians Peter King and Clifford Lawrence.²⁷ Their jobs involved running errands, shopping, picking up, or dropping off items required by the monks. These recorded daily outings into the city center, which in part led the historian Gene Brucker to suspect that the monks had compromised their rule and withdrawal for all the secular attractions that the Arno city had to offer, were in reality simply tasks undertaken mostly by lay brothers to fulfill a specific need which was required by the cook, abbot, or stable boy to benefit visitors to the monastery.²⁸

Alongside the monks and lay brothers of Santa Trinità, the hired servants of the monastery assisted with daily routines, undertaking the majority of the work to provision the kitchen and stable. Although both King and Lawrence emphasized the role played by the lay brothers, they largely ignored these secular servants who were the key liaisons between the monastery and the urban community in which it was located.²⁹ From Dom Lorenzo’s entries, we can see that that this group undertook the bulk of the everyday excursions.³⁰ There were only three servants who were paid on a salaried basis: the cook, the stable boy, and the grammarian—this last individual had little to do with the kitchen. The cook shopped directly for food and occasionally helped the stable boys by purchasing fodder during his daily excursions.³¹ In return, the stable boy looked after the animals and their needs but also helped with the purchasing of food-stuffs for the cook and his kitchen.³²

The Vallombrosans took possession of Santa Trinità in 1092.³³ As a monastery, it was probably one of the wealthiest, largely due to its urban location. While it had been founded outside the original walls of Florence, the construction of new city walls meant that Florence absorbed it into an expanding neighborhood.³⁴ The piazza that developed outside of Santa Trinità was commonly associated with the church attached to the monastery, and most early fifteenth-century documents refer to piazza Santa Trinità or via di Santa Trinità.³⁵ However, there were also important secular buildings in this area, and the art historian Kevin Murphy notes references in several 1427 catasto declarations to piazza degli Spini rather than piazza Santa Trinità.³⁶ Indeed, while the chronicler Benedetto Dei names the space as piazza Santa Trinità in 1472, he is also conscious of important local lineages and is careful to list patrician residents of the piazza such as the Gianfigliazzi, Scali, Bombeni, Minerbetti, Soldanieri, Strozzi, Sassetti, and Spini.³⁷

Although the cloistered community of Santa Trinità should have stood apart from these wealthy residents, it was, in fact, closely integrated with and increasingly dependent on their support. As with most ecclesiastic buildings, the church’s construction was financed by donations and the sale of private chapels.³⁸ By the fifteenth century the Gianfigliazzi had two chapels and three burial sites for different branches of the family in the church of Santa Trinità.³⁹ The family held both collective and individual loyalty to the Vallombrosan order during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In part, this could be because two of the Gianfigliazzi became Vallombrosan monks: the brothers Simone di Bertoldo de’ Gianfigliazzi and Bernardo de’ Gianfigliazzi.⁴⁰ According to Murphy, the family provided this level of extensive patronage only to Santa Trinità.⁴¹ This was a gesture that would both justify the Gianfigliazzi’s loyalty to the Vallombrosans as well as strengthen the link between the family and the neighborhood within which Santa Trinità was located. The close relationship between the monastic community and its neighborhood is illustrated by the fact that at least two identifiable members of the monastic congregation during Dom Lorenzo’s tenure (Dom Jacopo di Bernardo Ardinghelli and Dom Simone di Bertoldo de’ Gianfigliazzi) came from local piazza families who contributed to the building and patronage program of the church of Santa Trinità.⁴² In fact, Dom Simone and his mother continued to have a close relationship even after he entered the monastery.⁴³

Because the monastery was dependent on the city of Florence for so many of its daily needs, as we shall see, we need to briefly consider where sales and purchases of goods took place. Dei described the piazza outside the monastery and church of Santa Trinità as being “full of all the merchants and shops one could want.”⁴⁴ The accounts do allude to a local open-air market, noting on June 18, 1360, that Dom Lorenzo paid a required tax for a merchato qui or “a market here.”⁴⁵ A later libro di spese from Santa Trinità covering the years 1416–1423 mentions the purchase of flour in the piazza itself on a number of occasions.⁴⁶ But Murphy’s study of the development of the piazza complicates the issue of what the monastery would have been able to purchase in its immediate vicinity. His in-depth study of the piazza’s history suggests that it, and the surrounding area, included a high concentration of individuals practicing manual trades such as carpentry or paving as well other nonfood related trades such as moneylending and painting.⁴⁷ Murphy concludes that in order for the piazza’s residents to secure foodstuffs they would have needed to visit via Porta Rossa or the Mercato Vecchio, literally “the old market.”⁴⁸

Historians Maria Bianchi and Maria Grossi, using the catasti declarations from 1427 and 1480, concur with Murphy’s analysis of the areas surrounding Santa Trinità.⁴⁹ Grossi’s study deals specifically with the catasti declarations of 1427, which Murphy also utilized in his study, and shows that there were a range of places to buy food a short distance from the monastery.⁵⁰ For example, within the quarter of Santa Maria Novella the monastery would have found butchers, greengrocers, and bakers.⁵¹ The other quarters bordering Santa Trinità were also well stocked with individuals selling food and wine.⁵² Furthermore, itinerant vendors and traveling markets often passed through the area, giving the monks access to the food items they needed, even if the piazza’s more established shops did not.⁵³

Before we turn to market purchases, let us look briefly at the items Santa Trinità’s own farms supplied. Like most traditional monastic institutions, Santa Trinità relied on land holdings that were donated by grateful parishioners, using these lands to garner rental income or provide sustenance in the form of produce or animals.⁵⁴ In this way, Santa Trinità would have been closely connected with the surrounding rural economy, husbanding, and overseeing their properties just as other land-owning Florentines would have.⁵⁵ During the period in question, the monastery of Santa Trinità owned and farmed a range of properties; indeed, the holdings may have been more extensive than Dom Lorenzo’s text indicates.⁵⁶ Dom Lorenzo identifies seven farms as distinctive entities in his text: Arcetri, Campora, Ema, Legnaia, Monte, Mugnone, and San Donnino. Paid laborers and farmhands tended each farm (or sometimes two farms), the buildings, and the crops on behalf of the monastery.⁵⁷

The investment in multiple plots of land meant that the monks never had to rely on a single source for their basic provisions. They could ensure themselves against crop failure on one farm by spreading the risks across numerous sites. Looking more closely at what was cultivated and then how the goods were treated and transported gives a sense of the monastery’s attitude to the need for self-sufficiency.⁵⁸ Imports from the monastery’s farms to the monastery’s kitchen, pantry, or cellar needed to be well planned and well orchestrated. Fresh foodstuffs would have deteriorated, unless they were used immediately or stored properly, and the monastery no doubt found it difficult to cope with a glut of seasonal produce. Though it is clear that the monastery’s farms produced a variety of items they used on a daily basis, and that a variety of products arrived reliably from the monastery’s lands, the sheer amounts of some goods produced were not enough to fulfill the monastery’s needs.⁵⁹ This is in part why the monastery relied so heavily on the markets, shops, and vendors of the Arno city.

The farm at Ema produced beans, chickpeas, and garlic—all items that could be dried and stored.⁶⁰ Ema also had an orchard, which provided pears, a variety of apples, figs, walnuts, cherries, plums, grapes, and medlars.⁶¹ All these items were either shipped to the monastery fresh or dried.⁶² The farm at Monte also supplied figs, walnuts, and apples.⁶³ Both Monte and Ema had the ability to dry fruits, especially figs, in their fornace or oven.⁶⁴ In addition, the farms supplied amounts of pork, poultry, and eggs.⁶⁵ However, only three items were supplied from the farms in such quantities that Santa Trinità could be self-sufficient in them: olive oil, grain, and wine.⁶⁶ In these items alone the monastery did not rely on the markets to supply their needs. The monks rarely ever purchased olive oil or grain, and though wine was purchased daily, it was in very small quantities and for a very specific purpose.⁶⁷

Olive trees were a long-term investment for the monastery. Of the seven farms recorded in Dom Lorenzo’s text, only one piece of land, the farm at Monte, produced olive oil, and in such quantities that allowed for self-sufficiency. Indeed, in 1360, Dom Lorenzo referred to the farm at Monte as a fattoio da olio or an oil-producing farm.⁶⁸ The same terminology was also used half a century earlier in 1307 when the Commune of Florence sold the property to the monastery.⁶⁹

Enormous quantities of grain were cultivated on five of the seven farms. Dom Lorenzo’s text makes it clear that Santa Trinità relied solely upon wheat production and deliveries from its own lands for this essential product. Ema, Monte, and Campora produced wheat, barley, and spelt; the farms at Arcetri and San Donnino only produced wheat.⁷⁰ It is likely that the majority of grain was used to make the monastery’s bread, since Dom Lorenzo notes the grain was picked up from the monastery, milled, baked, and then delivered back to Santa Trinità in its loaf form.⁷¹ Here the integration of countryside and urban community becomes clearer. For example, the wheat arrived from the farm in an unprocessed state. A miller then collected a small portion of the grain from Santa Trinità’s stores on a regular basis, processed it, and sent it on to the monastery’s baker. Such a procedure occurs on September 28, 1360, when Dom Lorenzo records two exchanges of wheat between the miller Vespino, who took the resulting flour to the baker Biliotto.⁷²

Like the olive groves, vineyards required capital investment and a high level of maintenance and personal attention by the farmhand.⁷³ But, unlike olive oil, which all came from a single farm, the taxes paid on wine for the monastery indicate a much wider range of grape production. Unfortunately, Dom Lorenzo’s text gives us only very basic data: the tax paid on an amount of wine from a certain farm and the date the wine was delivered to Santa Trinità.⁷⁴ His records indicate that white wine was delivered only during the month of September, while red wine was delivered primarily in October.⁷⁵

A little over one hundred and twenty-two some of red wine were delivered to the monastery of Santa Trinità from its properties, while the records indicate only thirty-nine and a half some of white wine were received.⁷⁶ The imbalance is unsurprising. White wine required more processing and did not last as long. Trebbiano was the white wine of choice in terms of cultivation and consumption.⁷⁷ Trebbiano was a particularly popular Tuscan wine during this period.⁷⁸ The popularity of this wine with the members of the congregation and their visitors is further emphasized by the fact that Dom Lorenzo noted several purchases of Trebbiano in addition to deliveries received.⁷⁹ When comparing the deliveries of wine recorded by Dom Lorenzo to the purchases of wine made in the city of Florence, we see that wine was bought almost daily, even when there was enough in the cellar to drink.⁸⁰ These purchases were usually in small amounts and were most often made when guests were visiting the monastery, suggesting that the wine purchased may have been a highquality product as opposed to what was served on a regular basis. Bulk purchases of wine, which were still nowhere near the amounts received from the farms, only occurred during the preparations for the annual festival celebrating the feast of the Holy Trinity.⁸¹ Comparison of the amounts delivered and the amounts purchased, therefore, clearly show that the monastery’s farms allowed Santa Trinità to be practically self-sufficient with regard to wine production and consumption; questions of quality, however, meant that the monks would turn to local shops when necessary.⁸²

The entries that describe wine purchases in Dom Lorenzo’s text are interesting in terms of market interaction. Recent research on the buchette del vino, or the little windows through which wine was sold in medieval and Renaissance Florence, has shown that Santa Trinità had easy and ready access to a major wholesale wine seller in its very neighborhood.⁸³ Just steps from the monastery, at palazzo Scali Buondelmonti on via delle Terme, those who shopped for Santa Trinità would have been able to secure a portion of wine for their meals as well as for use in topping up and maintaining the barrels in the cellar.⁸⁴ Purchases of wine per minuto, or literally “by the minute,” seem to have been made with daily consumption in mind, especially that of the monks and residents of Santa Trinità, while wine purchased from a shop and given a varietal name, e.g., Trebbiano or Vernaccia, was usually bought for a meal honoring guests.⁸⁵ The frequency with which wine was purchased by the monastery is rather deceptive, since the monks received enormous amounts from their farms and yet still saw fit to purchase wine every day or so from the shops in Florence. However, once we examine Dom Lorenzo’s actual entries, it is clear that the daily purchases were for very small amounts, perhaps for a special meal or to better honor a visiting abbot or friend. The vast majority of the wine consumed by the congregation was provided by the farms and not by the markets and shops of Florence.

In contrast to the monastery’s self-sufficiency in olive oil, grain, and wine, there were many items that the monks got from their lands only in small portions, meaning that they had to supplement these food supplies from the markets of Florence. Let us look now at some of the items the monks purchased. The most popular meat at Santa Trinità was castrone, the meat of a young castrated lamb.⁸⁶ Lamb seems to have been served regularly and was clearly a reliable market product, whereas veal appeared to be reserved for feast days, including the public celebration of the feast of Holy Trinity, which was held annually for neighbors and friends in the piazza of Santa Trinità. After lamb the next two most popular meats consumed at Santa Trinità were cavretto, or kid and pork.⁸⁷ The amount of pork purchased from local butchers was much lower, undoubtedly because pigs were being raised regularly on the monastic farms before being slaughtered, salted, and stored.⁸⁸

Purchases of veal averaged about seventy-four libbre a year.⁸⁹ As already suggested, the appearance of veal on the menu was clearly related to feast days and important meals with visitors; it was hardly ever consumed as part of a daily meal at the monastery. For example, on July 24, 1361, a purchase of veal was made for the feast of Saint Anthony that was celebrated the following day; the abbot of Monte Piano, the prior of San Fabiano, and Nuccio the organ player were to join the monastery for the feast.⁹⁰ Veal also figured prominently in the monastery’s public celebration of the feast of the Holy Trinity.⁹¹ In 1363, for instance, further purchases of veal meat were made in addition to the live calf that was specifically bought for the occasion.⁹² This not only ensured that there would be enough for those in attendance to eat but also indicates that the meat may have been prepared in different ways. This explains why the monastery apparently consumed more veal than pork—it was not that veal was more common, but that it was more appropriate for the extremely large gathering of the one major feast day the monastery subsidized and celebrated with its community.⁹³

Poultry was also a very popular item on the monastery’s table. The monks consumed several different species of bird and game. In addition to the thrush, hen, capons, and pigeons that the monastery received from its farms and raised on its own grounds, the monks purchased a variety of birds including cocks and goslings.⁹⁴ The large amounts and varieties involved may be due to the limited prohibition by Saint Benedict’s Rule on the consumption of poultry—though the Rule required abstinence from the meat of quadrupeds, it did not have strictures on the consumption of birds.⁹⁵ Along with poultry, eggs were a prominent market purchase. Purchases ranged from 9 eggs in October 1360 to a high of 358 in June 1360.⁹⁶

Cascio or cheese purchases can be found throughout Dom Lorenzo’s text.⁹⁷ In addition to buying general cascio, regional styles of cheese were consumed by the monastery’s congregation and guests. The most popular kind of cheese purchased, with an average yearly consumption of forty-four libbre, was cascio di forma.⁹⁸ Purchases of this cheese occur during both feast and fast periods. It appears to have been served at the table as well as incorporated into cooked foods.

Instead of raising it in special ponds, located either on their farms or the monastery grounds, the monks bought fish.⁹⁹ As would be expected, purchases spiked during lean months, when it served as the primary foodstuff (along with vegetables) for the morning or evening meal.¹⁰⁰ While tench and eel were the most popular fish, dried sturgeon, tonnina, or salami made with the tenderloin of tuna, sorra, or salami made from the belly of tuna, salted mullet, fish from the Arno, gilthead, and pike are also noted in Dom Lorenzo’s text.¹⁰¹ The peak months for consumption of fish were March, April, and December, periods of great importance in the liturgical calendar with the celebrations of Lent, Easter, Pentecost, and Christmas. Fresh fish is rarely referred to, which is surprising since the monastery is located only a few yards from the Arno River. Instead, the majority of fish purchased was salted.¹⁰² During the Advent season, tench and other fishes purchased by the monastery normally found themselves prepared in an aspic.¹⁰³ So much so that, on December 11, 1361, Dom Lorenzo tells us that Santa Trinità’s abbot implored the cook to fry the tench rather than make another aspic out of it.¹⁰⁴

Surprisingly, the monastery did not grow vegetables on its farms, though some beans, pulses, and legumes were cultivated.¹⁰⁵ Instead, fresh and varied vegetables were readily available in the market and purchased by the monastery on an almost daily basis. Cauliflower, leeks, and fennel, turnips, spinach, and squash frequently found themselves on the daily shopping lists.¹⁰⁶ The consumption patterns of vegetables followed the dietary requirements of the liturgical year, allowing for the incorporation of vegetables, beans, pulses, and legumes into the monastic diet as a way to provide variety during the leaner months.¹⁰⁷ These items not only figured in the menus devised for Advent and Lent but were also part of dishes that appeared throughout the entire year. Primarily serving in the role of side dishes, the vegetables, beans, pulses, and legumes provided a welcome addition to the cook’s broths and pottages that were constantly produced from the monastery’s kitchen. The monastery did receive shipments of apples, pears, and figs from its farms, but the monks also purchased these same items, and more fruits besides, from the markets and shops of Florence.¹⁰⁸ It was not unusual for complete meals, both lunch and supper, to be composed solely of vegetables and fruits.

Careful analysis of Dom Lorenzo’s records indicates that the monks of Santa Trinità were tactful about what they grew or reared themselves. Self-sufficiency was important in terms of essentials: items such as wine, olive oil, and grain. Commodities that could be salted, dried, and then stored for considerable periods, such as pork, beans, and fruits like figs or plums, were also welcome. The farms also provided eggs and poultry in reasonable amounts, and birds were raised within the monastery itself. But, to avoid the danger of perishable products like fruits and vegetables arriving from the farms in large, seasonal quantities, and the expense of the considerable care and pasture that animals such as sheep or cows required, the monks turned instead to the marketplace. There were also very positive impulses behind this choice—the market gave the monastery access to a wide range of imported and more-difficult-to-obtain products such as spices, sauces, and exotic fruits like oranges. The monastery could also save on time and skill by buying ready-cooked meals, roasts, and, above all, fish: these were available from market vendors, itinerant traders, shopkeepers, and innkeepers. Although these market purchases may have grown to resemble that of many of their secular neighbors, important piazza families who were making the same marketplace purchases, the rhythms of the items recorded by Dom Lorenzo fall in line with the liturgical calendar and do not deviate from Saint Benedict’s Rule. The studies by Giovanna Frosini and Curzio Mazzi highlight the purchases and meals of the Florentine priors, and, when compared to those recorded by Dom Lorenzo, Santa Trinità’s consumption patterns bear witness to the obvious tensions between remaining true to Saint Benedict’s Rule and entertaining those who visited the monastery or, more specifically, and ate with the monks.¹⁰⁹

The previous discussion indicates the enormous variety that was available to the monks in terms of foodstuffs and shows that they took full advantage of what the city of Florence had to offer. This variety was, of course, also enjoyed by the monastery’s secular neighbors and the important families in the piazza. However, though the monks enjoyed the same access to and variety of food that their neighbors did, the monastery used this bounty and provision in different ways. While the secular population gave, perhaps, no regard to what they ate and when, the monks were very careful to use their food in a manner appropriate to the Rule. They ate certain foods at certain times, and though there appears to be no difference in quantity, according to Dom Lorenzo’s text, there was certainly a difference in the kinds of food the monks ate during periods of religious fasting and feasting. What seems to be remarkable about the monastery of Santa Trinità is that a “fast” for them did not involve not eating—rather, they simply ate less of one kind of food (meat perhaps) and made up for that lack with other types of foods, such as pulses, beans, or fish. That is what Dom Lorenzo’s text shows us—the patterns of types of foods consumed, not the pattern of gluttony and feasting during festivals and starvation during periods of the fast. The monks of Santa Trinità appear to have eaten steady portions of food of all varieties, but they certainly followed the letter of Saint Benedict’s Rule as to what foods should be eaten when.

Notes

1. I would like to thank Robin Musumeci, Ken Albala, Trudy Eden, and the anonymous readers from Columbia University Press for graciously reading and commenting upon earlier versions of this essay. Translations, unless otherwise noted, are my own.

2. The research for this essay is taken from Salvatore Musumeci, “The Culinary Culture of the Monastery of Santa Trinità in Fourteenth-Century Florence,” Ph.D. dissertation, Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London, 2008.

3. Dom Lorenzo Martini’s Libro di spese is found in Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Con. Sopp. 89:45 (this essay utilizes this document). A full transcription of the Martini text can be found in Roberta Zazzeri, ed., Ci desinò l’ abate: Ospiti e cucina nel monastero di Santa Trinità, Firenze, 1360–1363 (Florence: Società Editrice Fiorentina, 2003); and Musumeci,“The Culinary Culture,” vol. 2, appendix 1.

4. Dom Lorenzo’s text covers the Florentine years 1359–1363. The Florentine New Year commenced on March 25, and so each recorded entry before that day counted toward the previous year.

5. On the use of the diary as memoir as well as accounting practices and traditions, see Duccio Balestracci, The Renaissance in the Fields: Family Memoirs of a Fifteenth-Century Peasant, trans. Paolo Squatriti and Betsy Merideth (University Park: Pennsylvannia State University Press, 1999); Richard Marshall, The Local Merchants of Prato: Small Entrepreneurs in the Late Medieval Economy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999); and Basil Yamey, Art and Accounting (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989).

6. Musumeci “The Culinary Culture,” 56–90, and vol. 2, appendix 2.

7. See especially Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast; Bell, Holy Anorexia; and Vandereycken and van Deth, From Fasting Saints to Anorexic Girls.

8. See, for example, Barbara Harvey, Living and Dying in England, 1100–1540: The Monastic Experience (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 30–71; Miranda Threlfall-Holmes, Monks and Markets: Durham Cathedral Priory, 1460–1520 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 34–74; and Mary Hollingsworth, The Cardinal’s Hat: Money, Ambition and Housekeeping in a Renaissance Court (London: Profile, 2004).

9. Musumeci, “The Culinary Culture,” 91–124.

10. Ibid., 177–209.

11. Gene Brucker, Florentine Politics and Society, 1348–1378 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962), 148–193. See also John Najemy, A History of Florence, 1200–1575 (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006), 124–155; and Christopher Duggan, A Concise History of Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 31–59.

12. Brucker, Florentine Politics and Society, 15–16, and Renaissance Florence (New York: Wiley, 1969), 55; Najemy, A History of Florence, 97; Gottfried, The Black Death, 45–47; and David Herlihy, The Black Death and the Transformation of the West (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), 39–58. For a list of years that either witnessed plague or famine, see especially David Herlihy, Medieval and Renaissance Pistoia: The Social History of an Italian Town, 1200–1430 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967), 105.

13. See especially Dale Kent and Francis Kent, Neighbours and Neighbourhood in Renaissance Florence: The District of the Red Lion in the Fifteenth Century (New York: Augustin, 1982), 48–74; Kevin Murphy, “Piazza Santa Trinità in Florence, 1427–1498,” Ph.D. dissertation, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 1997, 271–316; and Roger Crum and John Paoletti, “Florence: The Dynamics of Space in a Renaissance City,” in Roger Crum and John Paoletti, eds., Renaissance Florence: A Social History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 1–16. See also Ronald Weissman, Ritual Brotherhood in Renaissance Florence (New York: Academic, 1982), 29–30, and “The Importance of Being Ambiguous: Social Relations, Individualism, and Identity in Renaissance Florence,” in Susan Zimmerman and Ronald Weissman, eds., Urban Life in the Renaissance (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1989), 269–280, and “Reconstructing Renaissance Sociology: The ‘Chicago School’ and the Study of Renaissance Society,” in Richard Trexler, ed., Persons in Groups: Social Behavior as Identity Formation in Medieval and Renaissance Europe (New York: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1985), 39–46; and Public Life in Renaissance Florence.

14. George Dameron, Episcopal Power and Florentine Society and Florence and Its Church in the Age of Dante (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005). See also Francesco Salvestrini, Santa Maria di Vallombrosa: Patrimonio e vita economica di un grand monastero medievale (Florence: Olschki, 1998).

15. Giuseppe Marchini and Emma Micheletti, eds., La chiesa di Santa Trinità (Florence: Casa di Risparmino di Fireneze, 1987), x; see also Federigo Tarani, L’ Ordine vallombrosano: Note storico-cronologiche (Florence: Scuola Tipographica Calasanziana, 1921), 5–6.

16. See especially Nicola Vasaturo, “L’Espansione della congregazione vallombrosana fino all metà del secolo XII,” Rivista di storia della chiesa in Italia 16 (1962): 456–485; Ornella Tabani and Maria Vadalà, San Salvi e la storia del movimento Vallombrosano dall’ XI al XVI secolo (Florence: Consiglio di Quartiere, 1982); and King, Western Monasticism, 163.

17. Jean Leclercq, “Western Christianity,” in Bernard McGinn, John Meyendorff, and Jean Leclercq, eds., Christian Spirituality: Origins to the Twelfth Century (New York: Crossroad, 1989), 128; see also King, Western Monasticism, 161–166.

18. On the use of conversi in the West, especially in Italy, see Sara Beccaria, “I conversi nel medioevo: un problema storico e storiografico,” Quaderni medievali 46 (1998): 120–156; Francesco Salvestrini, “Conversi e conversioni nel monachesimo vallombrosano (Secoli XI–XV),” in Giordano Compagnoni, ed., “In vice Iohannis primi abbatis”: Saggi e contributi per il millenario gualbertiano in onore del Rev.mo Dom Lorenzo Russo in occasione del XXV anniversario di ministero abbaziale (Vallombrosa: Vallombrosa, 2002), 33–74; and Duane Osheim, “Conversion, Conversi, and the Christian Life in Late Medieval Tuscany,” Speculum 58 (1983): 368–390.

19. King, Western Monasticism, 163–164; and Clifford Lawrence, Medieval Monasticism: Forms of Religious Life in Western Europe in the Middle Ages (Harlow: Pearson Education, 2001), 150.

20. Musumeci, “The Culinary Culture,” 31–55.

21. Ibid., 125–148.

22. See especially the opening two parts (“Seeing Shopping” and “The Geography of Expenditure”) of Evelyn Welch’s book for a complete contrast to the scenarios represented in the Martini text. Welch, Shopping in the Renaissance, 17–163. James Shaw’s work on the fishmonger’s guild in Venice also provides a compelling variation from that present in the Martini text. See James Shaw, “Retail, Monopoly, and Privilege: The Dissolution of the Fishmonger’s Guild of Venice, 1599,” Journal of Early Modern History 6 (2002): 396–427, and also “Justice in the Marketplace: Corruption at the Giustizia Vecchia in Early Modern Venice,” in Anne Goldgar and Robert Frost, eds., Institutional Culture in Early Modern Society (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 281–316.

23. See, for example, how on April 20, 1361, one of Santa Trinità’s lay brothers, Francesco, is noted as taking a pair of the abbot’s hose that needed mending to the shop of Ghetto, while another of Dom Lorenzo’s entries, from April 12, 1363, records Dom Giovanni purchasing a glass flask, but lacks any detail or evidence that places the monk outside the monastery’s walls. For Francesco’s trip to Ghetto’s shop, see Archivo di Santo Firenze (ASF), “89:45,” 30r. Entries for Santa Trinità lack the detailed description and complexities that Welch utilizes to analyze and expound upon the shopping practices of Isabella d’Este and her court. See Welch, Shopping in the Renaissance, 245–273. In addition, Hollingsworth’s study of Ippolito d’Este’s quest for a cardinal’s hat also employs a set of rich documentation that details the complex process of provisioning, entertaining and up-keeping the archbishop’s family as they maneuvered and jockeyed for the ever coveted cardinal’s hat. See Hollingsworth, The Cardinal’s Hat, 25–198.

24. ASF, “89:45,” 2v, 3r, 4v, 6r, 12r, 16r, 21v, 23v, 30v, 34v, 39r, 49r, 49v, 50r, 57r, 60r, 69v, 70r, 82v, 83r, 87r. See also Walter Horn, “On the Origins of the Medieval Cloister,” Gesta 12 (1973): 13–52.

25. Musumeci, “The Culinary Culture”.

26. King, Western Monasticism, 161–166; Lawrence, “Medieval Monasticism,” 149–160; Osheim, “Conversion”; Beccaria, “I Conversi”; and Salvestrini, “Conversi e conversion.”

27. See King, Western Monasticism, 161–166; and Lawrence, “Medieval Monasticism,” 149–160.

28. Brucker, Renaissance Florence, 192.

29. King, Western Monasticism, 161–166; and Lawrence, “Medieval Monasticism,” 149–160.

30. Musumeci, “The Culinary Culture,” 130–147. See also Gigliola Fragnito, “Cardinals’ Courts in Sixteenth-Century Rome,” Journal of Modern History 65 (1993): 26–56. See also Hollingsworth, The Cardinal’s Hat; J. Ambrose Raftis, “Western Monasticism and Economic Organization,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 3 (1961): 452–469; and David Chambers, “The Housing Problems of Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 39 (1976): 21–58.

31. Musumeci, “The Culinary Culture,” 141–147.

32. Ibid.

33. Carlo Botto, “Note e documenti sulla chiesa di S. Trinità in Firenze,” Rivista d’ arte 20 (1939): 2; see also Howard Saalman, The Church of Santa Trinità in Florence (New York: College Art Association of America, 1966).

34. Murphy, “Piazza Santa Trinità in Florence,” 74–75.

35. Ibid., 89–97.

36. Ibid., 90–91.

37. Roberto Barducci, ed., Benedetto Dei: la cronica dall’ anno 1400 all’ anno 1500 (Florence: Papafava, 1984), 79; and Murphy, “Piazza Santa Trinità in Florence,” 87, 96.

38. Darrell Davisson, “The Iconology of the S. Trinità Sacristy, 1418–1435: A Study of the Private and Public Functions of Religious Art in the Early Quattrocento,” Art Bulletin 57 (1975): 315–334; and Murphy, “Piazza Santa Trinità in Florence,” 200–270.

39. Murphy, “Piazza Santa Trinità in Florence,” 225.

40. Ibid., 225–234. Simone di Bertoldo de’ Gianfigliazzi arrived at Santa Trinità in 1361 and died after an extended illness in 1363, while his brother Bernardo Gianfigliazzi served as abbot of the monastery at Passignano before becoming head of the order. For information on Simone Gianfigliazzi, see ASF, “89:45.” For information on Bernardo Gianfigliazzi, see ASF, Con. Sopp. 89:46. See also Torello Sala, Dizionario storico biografico di scrittori, letterati ed artisti dell’ ordine di Vallombrosa (Florence: Tipografica dell’Istituto Gualandi Sordomuti, 1929), 263–265; Tarani, L’ Ordine vallombrosano, 114; and Zazzeri, Ci desinò l’ abate, xxvi–xxvii.

41. Murphy, “Piazza Santa Trinità in Florence,” 226.

42. ASF, “89:45”; and Zazzeri, Ci desinò l’ abate, xxv–xxviii.

43. ASF, “89:45,” 4r, 25v, 27r–27v, 28v, 30r, 38v, 42r, 45v, 48v, 50r, 53r, 63v, 74v, 89v. See also Musumeci, “The Culinary Culture,” 48.

44. Barducci, “Benedetto Dei,” 79; see also Murphy, “Piazza Santa Trinità in Florence,” 272–316.

45. ASF, “89:45,” 11r.

46. See especially ASF, “89:46,” 2v, 14v, 20v, 25r.

47. Murphy, “Piazza Santa Trinità in Florence,” 294–295. Murphy’s investigation of piazza Santa Trinità in the period 1427–1498 utilized the declarations from the catasti of 1427 and 1480 to recreate what trades and services would have been available to the residents in and around the piazza. He argues that Santa Trinità would not have been a self-sufficient neighborhood. Murphy’s argument is in opposition to that of Weissman, who puts forth the idea that the city of Florence was populated by self-sufficient neighborhoods. See Weissman, “Riual Brotherhood,” 29.

48. Again, Murphy bases this statement on a series of entries from a later libro di spese that dates from 1416–1423. See Murphy, “Piazza Santa Trinità in Florence,” 297. See also ASF, “89:46,” 7v, 20v, 31r, 32r, 32v, 33r, 36v.

49. Maria Bianchi and Maria Grossi, “Botteghe, economia e spazio urbano,” in Gloria Fossi and Franco Franceschi, eds., La grande storia dell’ artigianato: Il quattrocento, vol. 2 (Florence: Giunti, 1999), 27–63.

50. Maria Grossi, “Le botteghe fiorentine nel catasto del 1427,” Ricerche Storiche 30 (2000): 3–55. See also Maria Bianchi, “Le botteghe fiorentine nel catasto del 1480,” Ricerche Storiche 30 (2000): 119–170.

51. Grossi, “Le botteghe fiorentine nel catasto del 1427,” 50–51; see also Bianchi, “Le botteghe fiorentine nel catasto del 1480,” 162–167.

52. Grossi, “Le botteghe fiorentine nel catasto del 1427,” 41–55; see also Bianchi, ““Le botteghe fiorentine nel catasto del 1480,” 152–169.

53. Welch, Shopping in the Renaissance, 32–55.

54. See Mavis Mate, “Agrarian Economy After the Black Death: The Manors of Canterbury Cathedral Priory, 1348–91,” Economic History Review 37 (1984): 341–354. See also Samuel Cohn, The Cult of Remembrance: Six Renaissance Cities in Central Italy (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1992), 42, and “Piety and Religious Practice in the Rural Dependencies of Renaissance Florence.” English Historical Review 114 (1999): 1121–1142; Brucker, Florentine Politics and Society, 18–19, and Renaissance Florence, 190–191.

55. This relationship between city and countryside has its roots in ancient urban and rural history and was an important part of daily life and provisioning strategies throughout the Middle Ages and early modern periods. See especially Emilio Sereni, Storia del paesaggio agrario italiano (Rome: Laterza, 1961); William Caferro, “City and Countryside in Siena in the Second Half of the Fourteenth Century.” Journal of Economic History 54 (1994): 85–103; Charles de la Roncière, Firenze e le sue compagne nel trecento: Mercanti, produzione, traffici (Florence: Olschki, 2005); and Giuliano Pinto, Città e spazi economici nell’ Italia communale (Bologna: CLUEB, 1996).

56. Zazzeri, Ci desinò l’ abate, xxxii–xxxiv.

57. Musumeci, “The Culinary Culture,” 56–90.

58. Ibid.

59. Ibid.

60. Salvatore Musumeci, “Per rape et porri et per spinachi: Examining the Realities of Vegetable Consumption at the Monastery of Santa Trinità in Post-Plague Florence,” in Susan Friedland, ed., Vegetables: Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery, 2008 (Devon: Prospect, 2009), 146–155. See also Musumeci, “The Culinary Culture,” 56–90.

61. Musumeci, “The Culinary Culture,” 56–90.

62. The ability to dry fruits and pulses for storage and preservation purposes is mentioned on September 3, 1362. ASF, “89:45,” 68v. The same kind of drying apparatus is listed as existing and providing the same service at the farm at Monte. ASF, “89:45,” 39v. For deliveries of fruits from the farm at Ema, see ASF, “89:45,” 20v–21r, 44v–45r, 46v, 58r, 73r–74v.

63. For deliveries of fruits and nuts from the farm at Monte, see ASF, “89:45,” 19v, 47r, 48r, 74r, 79r.

64. See note 62.

65. Musumeci, “The Culinary Culture,” 56–124.

66. Ibid.

67. Ibid.

68. ASF, “89:45,” 3r.

69. Ibid., 9v.

70. Musumeci, “The Culinary Culture,” 86–90.

71. Ibid., 88–89.

72. ASF, “89:45,” 18r.

73. See especially Jean-Louis Gaulin and Allen Grieco, eds., Dalla vite al vino: Fonti e problemi della vitivinicoltura italiana medievale (Bologna: CLUEB, 1994); and Antonio Pini, Vite e vino nel medioevo (Bologna: CLUEB, 1989). See also Zeffiro Ciuffoletti, ed., Storia del vino in toscana: Dagli etruschi ai nostri giorni (Florence: Polistampa, 2000).

74. Musumeci, “The Culinary Culture,” 82–86.

75. Ibid.

76. Ibid. One libbra of weight was equal to twelve oncie (once) and was equal to 339.5 grams (about 7/10 of a pound). A soma was equal to 91.16 liters (about 20 gallons, or 160.42 pints). The basic unit of measurement for olive oil was the orcio. Each orcio was equal to 28.86 kilograms (about 63 pounds). Peter Spufford, A Handbook of Medieval Exchange (London: Boydell and Brewer, 1986); Iris Origo, The Merchant of Prato: Daily Life in a Medieval Italian City (New York: Penguin, 1963); and Angelo Martini, Manuale di metrologia ossia misure, pesi e monete in uso attualmente e anticamente presso tutti i populi (Rome: E. R. A, 1976).

77. Red wine is usually referred to as vino vermiglio and should not be confused with a type of wine but read as a classification of color. See especially Hanneke Wilson, “Tuscany: Ancient and Medieval,” in Jancis Robinson, ed., The Oxford Companion to Wine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 721; and Gaulin and Grieco, Dalla vite al vino, 59–83.

78. Wilson “Tuscany.” See also Redon, Sabban, and Serventi, The Medieval Kitchen, 14–16; and Salvatore Musumeci, “‘How does it taste Cisti? Is it good?’: Authentic Representations of Italian Renaissance Society and the Culture of Wine Consumption in Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron,” in Richard Hosking, ed., Authenticity in the Kitchen: Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery, 2005 (Devon: Prospect, 2006), 331–344. For the popularity of Trebbiano outside of Tuscany, see Pini, Vite e vino nel medioevo; and Federigo Melis, “Produzione e commercio dei vini italiani nei secoli XIII–XVIII,” Annales disalpines d’ histoire sociale, 1/3 (1972): 107–133.

79. See ASF, “89:45,” 32v, 91r.

80. Musumeci, “The Culinary Culture,” 96–101.

81. Ibid.

82. Ibid.

83. Lidia C. Brogelli, Le buchette del vino a Firenze nel centro storico ed in Oltrarno (Florence: Semper, 2004).

84. Ibid., 55–58. For a discussion of how buying per minuto fit into the larger story of buying and selling wine in medieval and Renaissance Florence, see Paolo Nanni, Vinattieri fiorentini: Dalle taverne medievali alle moderne enoteche (Florence: Polistampa, 2003), 41–70.

85. Musumeci, “The Culinary Culture,” 96–101.

86. Giovanna Frosini, Il cibo e i signori: la mensa dei priori di Firenze nel quinto decennio del sec. xiv (Florence: Presso L’Accademia della Crusca, 1993), 71–72.

87. Ibid., 73–77.

88. Musumeci, “The Culinary Culture,” 71–76.

89. Ibid., 105–106.

90. ASF, “89:45,” 38r. For other similar purchases see ASF, “89:45,” 2r, 3r, 21r, 26v, 45r, 65v, 71v, 74v, 78r, 79r–79v.

91. Musumeci, “The Culinary Culture,” 200–208.

92. ASF, “89:45,” 90v. For other feast purchases where a live calf and an additional portion of veal is bought, see ASF, “89:45,” 10v–11r, 35v–36r, 63v–64v.

93. Musumeci, “The Culinary Culture,” 200–208.

94. Ibid.

95. Francis Gasquet, ed., The Rule of St. Benedict (Mineola: Dover, 2007), 34. However, in 1336 Pope Benedict XII relaxed the regulations concerning the consumption of meat with regard to Benedictine monks. Though the rules were relaxed, the consumption of meat was still regulated under the pope’s proviso. See especially Barbara Harvey, “Monastic Pittances in the Middle Ages,” in Woolgar, Serjeantson, and Waldron, Food in Medieval England, 220.

96. Musumeci, “The Culinary Culture,” 108–109.

97. Frosini, “Il cibo,” 136–141.

98. Musumeci, “The Culinary Culture,” 109–110.

99. Ibid., 110–113.

100. Capatti and Montanari, Italian Cuisine, 69–74.

101. For tonnina, see Frosini, “Il cibo,” 100–101, for sorra, see Frosini, “Il cibo,” 99. For a complete listing see Musumeci, “The Culinary Culture,” 111.

102. Musumeci, “The Culinary Culture,” 109–110.

103. On Advent and Lenten menus at Santa Trinità, see ibid., 180–183, 185–186.

104. ASF, “89:45,” 49v.

105. Musumeci, “Per rape et porri et per spinachi.”

106. Ibid.

107. Ibid.

108. Ibid.

109. Frosini, “Il cibo”; and Curzio Mazzi, “La mensa dei priori di Firenze nel secolo XIV,” Archivi Storico Italiano 20 (1897): 336–368.