This is one of several
posts exploring a dietetic written in the fourteenth century by a
certain “Brother Leonard” at the monastery of St. Jacques in
Liège (today in Belgium).
In 2007, Geneviève Xhayet published a transcription, with notes and
commentary, of this Latin work and these posts reference that
transcription.
The other posts are:
1. What is a dietetic?
3 Belgian (Walloon/Liègois) food in the fourteenth century
4. Brother Leonard on behavior and attitude
This post explores the work's approach to diet and
health.
Brother Leonard does not
limit his advice on health to diet; he touches on everything from
mental attitude to exercise, sleep and keeping warm. But certainly
the bulk of the document addresses specific foods and their effects
on health. This is perfectly standard for a medieval dietetic. What
is most striking in this one however is what, with a few exceptions,
is not present: humoral theory.
Consider
these previously quoted statements from earlier dietetics: “As
for lentils... they produce bad and melancholy juices” (Galen); “if
the food has been well prepared, it... nourishes good humors,”
“they
have black meat and engender melancholic humors” (Anthimus);
"Chervil is warm and dry at the second degree"
(Aldobrandino).
Terms
like “melancholy”, “humors”, “warm”, “dry” are all
taken straight from humoral theory, the idea that
health results
from a balance between bodily humors (bile, blood, and phlegm) and
their warm or cold, moist or dry qualities. (Melancholy - (Gk. melan
chole)
– literally corresponded to black bile.) This
was the dominant medical theory long before Leonard's time and would
remain so for centuries after. Typically, it is fundamental to early
dietetics.
Leonard
only rarely uses such language, as here: “For
your supper, fish or fruit or similar moistening things, but do not
take anything drying.” or
here:
“The
broth of goose giblets... is very hot and dry because of spices.”
When
he writes that broth is “dry” he
is referring to
the liquid's humoral character (or more specifically here that of the
spices added to it). But such
references are exceptional in his text.
Possible
sources
The
absence of humoral language is all the more striking given his
probable models. Xhayet provides an overview of these, first of all
in general, for the type of dietetic she describes as being based on
"non-natural things": Galen's De
sanitate tuenda and De alimentorum facultatibus and
Johannitus (Hunain-Ibn-Ishaq)'s
Eisagoge.
with strong contributions from Arab dietetics, notably Isaac's Liber
dietarum universalium and Liber dietarum particularium,
the first book of Avicenna's Canon (fen 2, on
non-naturals and fen 3 on types of regimen), Ibn Butlan's
Tacuinum sanitatis and the Secret of Secrets (Secretum
secretorum).
Leonard does not name his
own sources – writers of dietetics often do not – but Xhayet
refers to (and in 2007 had intended to publish) another of his works,
the Medecina, which references several works, include Isaac's
Diets, Constantine's Pantegni and Avicenna's Canon.
"These works," she writes, "make up a possible
substratum" of Leonard's work. Except for Arnaud de Villeneuve's
regimen, however, he does not mention any other regimena
santitatis. His own work then may reflect other sources.
Could not one see... in it also a reminiscence of the old dietetic calendars established by month, which had appeared since the early Middle Ages and were related to the old monastic medicine? Under the form of short notices, these calendars lay out, month by month, a series of recommendations sometimes on bleedings and baths, sometimes on the consumption of foods and specific drinks, appropriate to the moment.
Certainly
there are signs that he
is writing more in a monastic than a medical tradition. This
might explain his lack of emphasis on humoral theory; writers of dietetic calendars only make passing mention of humors. But
nor do they outline the
effects of eating the wrong foods. Leonard does so regularly, moving
his text closer to a standard medical text.
One
indication of how deeply humoral theory permeated medical thought at
the time is reflected in the monks' own practice of being bled at
regular intervals. “Physicians
became blinded by the philosophical dogma of the Hippocratic School,
which advocated bleeding as a method of restoring harmony of the
humours and hence health.” (Hart)
As
previously mentioned, Bede's calendar already mentioned bleeding and
it remained a standard part of monastic life in the fourteenth
century. Regular
bleedings and the days right after them form an integral part of
Leonard's calendar.
The only bodily fluid
Leonard discusses with any frequency is urine. Relative to blood and
bile, for instance, urine has one particularity: it leaves the body
naturally. This may be one reason it was the subject of a number of
medieval treatises. Leonard can be very specific about it: "If
you drink beer.., it will constrict your urine and you will urinate
little and your urine will be thick and your voice will not be clear,
but thick, and the urine's sediment will be globular;" “Your
urine from beer after sleep will be red and thick;” “If you do
otherwise, you will stay as if strangled, and your urine will be left
dark;” “This will appear overnight in the urine which will be
thick and appear fatty on its surface and in its depths will be a lot
of sediment.”
Attitudes towards foods
Many of Leonard's
statements on diet are surprisingly in keeping with modern attitudes,
starting with the most general one: “Be measured in dining and
drinking.” He objects to salted foods: “If it is fresh, not
salted, then you can safely eat it;” “Beware very salty mutton;”
“Flee rancid crouzos and salted meat;” “Do not eat
garlic or hard or salted cod;” “Abstain from soup which is
prepared with salted meat or with the broth of salted meat;” “Do
not take salted meat of cattle, pigs and their broth except mutton.”
This was not a minor point in a time when salting was one of the main
means of preserving foods, especially given that he also has
reservations about smoking, the other major method: “Continually
abstain from what tastes of salt and is dry and smoky.”
He warns against foods
prepared with fat (again not a minor issue when lard was one of the
most common flavorings): “Do not eat fatty vegetables [or vegetable
stew];” “Never eat long vegetables in winter with frozen
stems and prepared with fat. which are the worst for you. Rarely use
others prepared with fat or lard, above all in the summer when it is
very hot;” “Carefully avoid greens and omelets soaked in a great
deal of fat;” “Avoid the broth of fatty meat.”
He offers a related
warning against foods cooked in oil: “Nor even take fish fried in
oil, because these are the most cloying [“thick”] to you and
soaked in much oil, abominable and sticky;” “You will also avoid
fish fried in oil because of its viscosity, above all its skin
especially if it is drenched in oil.” Some will still find the
image of the greasy skin of a fried fish off-putting today.
He warns too against
rancid foods, notably butter and eggs. “Rancid butter, and
perchance age in selected eggs is easily detected by the odor;” “If
however it has a strong smell, eat nothing of it, but at once move it
away from you;” “Better to take something fresh than rancid
omelets.”
Though many eat meat rare
today, it is not unusual still to warn, as does Leonard, against under-cooked meat:
"Beware salted meat or red and badly cooked beef or pork with a
horrible flavor;" "Also beware of hard or badly cooked or
salty mutton," "Never eat half-cooked and red beef or
mutton, which cannot be peacefully distributed by your stomach to
other members;" “Beware of... above all half-cooked beef and
mutton, because the taste is horrible and also your mouth will be dry
and arid in the morning;” Not that he approves of over-cooking
either: “Do not take refreshment from dry and hard, and badly
cooked or burnt, oxen or cow intestines, because they are too tough
and indigestible.”
Would a “dry” chicken
be more dangerous because older, or just unappetizing? At any rate,
this advice too could as well be given today: “Beware also
chickens, if they are dry and arid”. (Note that here he uses “dry”
in its common, not humoral, sense.)
His various reservations
about fish that is not absolutely fresh also still make sense today:
“Hard and salt fish such as herring, cod, hard, and salted gem of
the sea and smoked haddock as well as old haddock with a black mouth
and scallops in the same state, the old also avoid, do not eat them,
particularly those that are rancid and yellow nor eat fish fried in
oil, nor carp prepared with clear onions, nor loach.”
He also warns several
times against drinking a variety of wines or other drinks: “Avoid
a plurality of wines,”, “If you are offered wines of various
colors and substances beware of this;” “Flee a variety of drinks,
both in color and substance." “good wine of one sort, and not
of different colors and seasons.” Anyone who has woken with a
hangover from mixing white, red and rosé
(never mind bourbon and vodka) would probably still consider this
good advice.
It is more surprising,
however, to see him warn against ale and beer (that is, in this
period, cervoise and, in his rare term, “hoppa”, a
fermented grain drink with hops added), two very northern drinks:
“Avoid small and strong ale and beer, unless very old or sour. But
wine or water and the like, however, take as drink.” Otherwise,
note that this fourteenth century reference is yet another
confirmation that water was a perfectly standard drink in the Middle Ages and in fact in this case is preferred to beer and its close
ancestor.
His suspicion of hard –
and so older – cheese and fruit, if more surprising today, was
probably not so unique in the time: "Refrain from hard cheese
and many fruits;” “Nor take a great deal of cheese or fruit when
supping;” “Avoid pears also raw or cooked;” “Never eat any
fruit whatsoever, because you [will] feel a bitter taste in the mouth
and in the throat and easily have hoarseness in the throat and
constriction in the nose, you will have winds and roaring in the
belly.”
It is striking that the
one cheese he singles out was from a neighboring region (and one
known for its dairy products): “Always avoid cheese of Flanders,
dry, hard and highly salted, and similar types of cheeses at hand”
(Note that in this time it was still fairly rare to identify cheeses
by region, even in France, where Brie was one of the few to be so
singled out.) Is the curious “at hand” (ad manum) a
warning against these precisely because they are so easy to obtain?
It is more striking still
that he says to “beware butter and black bread”, a pairing that
seems perfectly natural today and was probably not exceptional in the
time.
His warning on eating
peas with their pods reflects a common-sense concern: “Nor take
peas cooked with their pods,
because they are not cooked.”
(This would have been all the more true of peas in this era, which
were white, mature field peas, not the more tender green peas, with
more tender pods, most
common today.) His warning
to “not eat crushed
broad beans unless there is vinegar” has
at least one antecedent – Anthimus' sixth century warning: “Whole
broad beans, well cooked, either in gravy or in oil, with seasoning
or salt, are more fit than these beans crushed because they weigh on
the stomach.”
Strangely though Leonard
specifically says to eat them broken up under certain circumstances:
“Do not eat beans, peas
with bacon, above all very salted or often rancid, rather use them
broken up in broth and this will be with non rancid butter.”
Neither Galen nor Isaac,
for instance, make any such distinction.
Compare
too his advice on hard-boiled eggs – “Do not eat .. hard boiled
or poached eggs or cooked with shells when they are hard, especially
the white, that is hard to digest” – to
Anthimus: “For the hard-boiled white is completely indigestible; it
causes corruption in the belly, and does not help but rather causes
harm. Beware then of all egg whites made hard.”
Some of his concerns are
less clear-cut. “Do not eat carp in onions or other fish prepared
with onion, because they are
often old or the remains of Sunday Supper.“ The problem here seems
to be, not mixing fish with onions, but rather
the risk of unhealthy food
being disguised (a rare
period echo of the modern canard that spices were used to hide the
smell of rotting food).
Some
are more curious. In a time when a hard shell of pastry –
the pasty – was standard fare, he is not a fan of hardened baked
goods: 'Leave aside crusts of tartlets and waffles;” “It is also
good to avoid crusts and dry bread.” Cumin had a long and mainly
favorable history in this region since the Gauls, yet Leonard writes
“cumin ... is very much the contrary for you. for its taste often
comes back as a belch in your mouth.” He uniformly rejects herring – by then one of the most important fast-day foods – in all its various forms: smoked, salted, broiled, even fresh.
Soups and broths are
often considered healthy and in fact had gained, at the least, more
visibility in the European diet at this point. But Leonard does not
approve of most broth (though Xhayet translates brodium
as brouet; it might
also be translated as “soup”).
He repeatedly warns against the broth of eels, and otherwise of that
of goose giblets,.of wild boar, and of game in general. Several times
he warns against “black broth”, a phrase whose meaning is
obscure, though in one passage he specifically warns against the
“black broth of boars”. Whatever virtues chicken soup may be
thought to have today, the closest mention Leonard makes to it, of
capon broth, is at best neutral: “Be careful not to eat parsley
roots cooked incompletely in capon broth.” In fact the only broth
he positively approves of is that of... haddock: “Boldly take
however broth of haddock”. In one of his rare forays into classic
humoral jargon, he even says that the broth of game will make one
thirsty: “Do not drink the broth of game, because you will be
thirsty for more, for it is very hot and dry.”
His most curious
interdiction is of leeks. “Never eat tarts made with leeks cut up
small;” “Also beware tarts, if cut leeks are in them;” “Do
not eat a vegetable dish of leeks, because they come up in your
mouth, the flavor like the broth, and balls of boiled leeks as well.”
This is, at the least, an extreme take on classic humoral views of
this food. Galen finds leeks, along with garlic and onions, bitter,
but is not opposed to eating them, especially after boiling them;
Anthimus actually recommends adding them to soup; In one passage,
Isaac also describes them as bitter and dry, but does not condemn
them; in another however he does say that they do things like cause
nose bleeds and darkening of the vision and are “useless in food”;
even then he recommends ways to compensate for their qualities and to
use them for such things as snake bites or inciting desire. As late
as the seventeenth century (when vegetables overall were still looked
at with suspicion), Gontier wrote that they were “hot in the third
degree, dry in the second” and had a bitter taste, but also
credited them with various curative properties (curing coughs among
them). Overall they were a common food, even if writers had
reservations about them, and a curious one to condemn.
Effects
When it comes to the
effects of different foods, Leonardo's concerns
are also idiosyncratic. Anthimus, for instance, is largely concerned
with digestive ailments. Chick peas, he
writes, “can
cause serious flatulence and bad indigestion and corruption of the
stomach;” “Do
not take [certain
birds']
hindquarters because these weigh on the stomach;” “[Hard
sausage] will not be digested, but will cause corruption of the
belly.” Anthimus
cites several foods as being useful
for dysentery.
He shows
particularly concern about the kidneys: “It
thickens in the kidneys and from that stones are produced;” “Raw
vinegar is rather harmful to the kidneys and bladder and it is not
appropriate for the liver.“
Turning to Leonard's
work, one finds almost none of these. Maladies, or merely
discomforts, of the mouth and throat are prominent. “Your mouth
will remain dry and parched, as if you had eaten dust or ashes;”
“You will undoubtedly incur hoarseness, as you have experienced
many times, and the loss of your voice;” “The fat of herbs mutes
your voice;” “Your lips will swell up and your saliva will be
like a white foam, and your throat dry, and you will not have a clear
voice, but it will become thick and troubled;” “Hawking phlegm
will be most aggravated in your chest and your throat.”
Even where digestion
comes into play, the focus is on the mouth: “If you do otherwise,
you will be heavy and your mouth will be foul and dry in the throat
and it will be undigested;” “A fetid odor will be in your mouth,
because it will not be digested;” “The stomach does not digest
such broth well, but rather it rises up to the mouth, causing
belching.”
Otherwise, simply waking
up is a concern: “You may feel too heavy in the morning on getting
up;” “Your mouth and throat will be dry and parched with thirst
in the morning, when you get up;” “Because in the morning you
will be spitting too much phlegm following the night;” “If you do
this, the lighter and the more promptly you will rise in the
morning;” “If you do anything else, [you will be] heavy and
drowsy.”
Xhayet offers a perfectly
credible reason for some of Leonard's more idiosyncratic
recommendations. Might he not be addressing a specific monk, she
asks. "Several details of the 'dietetic calendar' allow us to
think so at any rate.” In discussing bleeding for instance he
writes, "If you were one of those suffering".
The evocation of digestive troubles, of a repulsion for certain dishes... or condiments.. equally allows one to guess a clearly defined addressee....
Multiple allusions to the quality of the voice and to factors that might alter it... would lead one to identify this person as the chanter...
At the least, it is clear
that Leonard's advice did not guide the monastery's kitchens; several
times he makes it clear that the person he is addressing will have no
control over what is served: “If dinner is in the hall, first be
careful to ask what common meat must be eaten;” “If peas are set
in front of you, take off any bacon floating on them;” “When you
are eating in the morning in the refectory from Easter to the
Exaltation of the Cross, carefully avoid greens and omelets [or,
per Xhayet, crepes] soaked in a great deal of fat.”
Still, writes Xhayet, “whatever the
case, most of the recommendations have a broad enough impact to have
been able to benefit the whole monastic community." Whether in
fact they did is a separate question.
Three facets of the calendar
It would be surprising if
Leonard did not take key religious days into account, but it is
difficult sometimes to work out the relationship between his health and
religious concerns: “If it is very hot, abstain from hot greens and
fats, above all outside the Sabbath.” Because better foods were to
be reserved (as was sometimes the case) for the Sabbath? It is
particularly strange to read: “Eat eggs and fish, except if it
falls on a Saturday or Friday;” both were (technically) fast days
and the fish at least would seem to have been appropriate to them.
Other advice is closely linked to certain feast days, but couched in
what appear to be concerns for health: “Sunday of the Nativity:
avoid greens, flee omelets, leave eel broth, eat sops in honey, drink
wine three times;” “On Rogation, the second and the third day of
the week, do as for Mark the Evangelist except if you have greens,
because then you can safely eat of them.”
Xhayet only touches in
part on the relation between certain foods and certain holidays:
Eel brouet [or broth] (brodium) is served for the vigils of certain feasts (Assumption and All Saints), Holy Thursday, Christmas Day and during Advent. On the Sexigesima, during the second Sunday of Lent, Holy Thursday and Saturday, the menu offers carp in civet [that is, with onions] ...Herring are associated with the Quinquagesima, Ash Wednesday and for the vigils of various feasts....
A gruel (grumellum) of unspecified cereals [was] served at the dinner of Ash Wednesday and the Sundays of Advent, or oat gruel, on Good Friday... Apple beignets [were] offered on the second Sunday of Lent.
While some aspects of
diet were clearly regulated by fast days, etc. it is less obvious why
Leonard would advise or discourage specific foods on specific
holidays. One might at least consider that specific feast days also
corresponded to specific moments in the seasons and so his counsel
might bear more relationship to the natural calendar than is obvious
by his reference to specific saints. There is also the question of
humoral theory's view of each season. Overall, the relationship here between the religious calendar and the natural seasons, as well as
humoral theory, would be one worth exploring in depth, ideally by a scholar
well-versed in both the Catholic calendar and medieval medical
theory.
FOR FURTHER READING
Xhayet, Geneviève, "Where does monastic medicine spring from?", Reflexions, University of Liège 2010
Der karolingische Reichskalender und seine Überlieferung bis ins 12.Jahrhundert ed Arno Borst V1 2001
Butlân, Ibn, Tacuinum sanitatis 1250-1300
Constantine the African, Liber Pantegni (manuscript) 11th century
FROM CHEZ JIM - TRANSLATIONS OF EARLY WORKS IN FOOD HISTORY:
Taillevent, How To Cook a Peacock - A translation of the fifteenth century edition of Taillevent's Le Viandier
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