Eating Right in the Renaissance California Studies in Food and Culture Darra Goldstein, Editor

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 641Ј.01Ј3—dc21 00-067229 Manufactured in the United States of America 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 10987654 321 The paper used in this publication meets the mini- mum requirements of ansi/loniso z39.48-1992 (r 1997) (Permanence of Paper). ᭺ϱ Contents Acknowledgments vii Note on Spelling ix Introduction 1 1. Overview of the Genre 14 2. The Human Body: Humors, Digestion, and the Physiology of Nutrition 48 3. Food: Qualities, Substance, and Virtues 79 4. External Factors 115 5. Food and the Individual 163 6. Food and Class 184 7. Food and Nation 217 8. Medicine and Cuisine 241 Postscript: The End of a Genre and Its Legacy 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 unthink- able. 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 indispens- able. 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 McDon- ald, 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 for- vii 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 permu- tations to current usage, but have otherwise left all spellings in the original, particularly in English where the flavor of the language seemed de- sirable. All translations from Latin, French, Italian, and Spanish, where unnoted, are my own; I strove for general sense rather than literal ac- curacy, 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 pro- mulgated 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, choles- terol. 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, revi- sions, 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 practic- ing 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 of- fers 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 au- 1 2 Introduction thors, how the genre changed over time, and how authors of various na- tions disagreed. Just as today, the medical experts of the past were a con- tentious 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. De- pendence on ancient authorities, who often disagreed, divided physicians into warring factions. Entrenched local custom or an effort to ad- dress 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 regi- mens upon the reader. With conflicting advice from every corner, the be- leaguered 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 re- alized “that the art of medicine is not so rigid that we cannot find an au- thority 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 en- tertaining 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.

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