Taste and see that the lord is sweet (Ps. 33:9) : The flavor of god in the monastic west

Journal of Religion

Volumn 86, Issue 2, 2006, Pages 169-204

  Fulton, Rachel ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 61949256308     PISSN: 00224189     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/499638     Document Type: Article

References (233)

1. On the importance of paving attention to such metaphorical entailments generally, see George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980)
2. and Philosophy in the Flesh: The Emhodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought (New York: Basic, 1999)
3. On this problem in medieval historiography in particular, see Gabrielle M. Spiegel, "In the Mirror's Eye: The Writing of Medieval History in North America," in her The Past as Text: The Theory and Practice of Medieval Historiography (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), 57-80 and 230-38
4. David Hume, "Of the Standard of Taste" (1757), in Critical Theory since Plato, ed. Hazard Adams, rev. ed. (Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992), 308-15, at 311
5. On these "taste primaries" and their chemical stimulants, see H. R. Schiffman, Sensation and Perception: An Integrated Approach, 3rd ed. (New York: Wiley, 1990), 156-63
6. Joseph G. Brand, "Biophysics of Taste," in Tasting and Smelling, ed. Gary K. Beauchamp and Linda Bartoshuk, Handbook of Perception and Cognition, 2nd ed. (San Diego: Academic Press, 1997), 1-24
7. Susan S. Schiffman and Charles Dackis, "Taste of Nutrients: Amino Acids. Vitamins and Fatty Acids," Perception and, Psychophysics 17, no. 2 (1975): 140-46
8. Howard R. Moskowitz, "The Psychology of Sweetness," in Sugars in Nutrition, ed. H. L. Sipple and K. W. McNutt (New York: Academic Press, 1974), 37-64
9. and Gordon G. Birch, "Chemical Aspects of Sweetness," in Sweetness, ed.John Dobbing (Berlin: Springer, 1987), 3-13
10. The now standard "taste tetrahedron" of sweet-sour-bitter-salty was first proposed by Hans Henning, Der Geruch (Leipzig: J. A. Barth, 1916)
11. The metaphor is intentional. Compare Oxford English Dictionary Online, 2nd ed. (1989), s.v. "mess, n.," 1.1a. "A serving of food; a course; a meal; a prepared dish of a specified kind of food."
12. Constance B. Hieatt, "The Roast, or Boiled, Beef of Old England," Book Forum 5 (1980): 294-99
13. On the dangers of roasting beef, see Terence Scully, "The Opusculum de saporibus of Magninus Mediolanensis," Medium Aevum 54, no. 2 (1985): 178-207, at 185-86
14. On the range and strength of our responses to food, see Paul Rozin, "Food Is Fundamental, Fun, Frightening, and Far-Reaching," Social Research 66 (1999): 9-30
15. Elizabeth Rozin and Paul Rozin, "Some Surprisingly Unique Characteristics of Human Food Preferences," Food in Perspective: Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Ethnological Food Research, Cardiff Wales, 1987, ed. Alexander Fenton and Trefor M. Owen (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1981), 243-52
16. and Richard I. Stein and Carol J. Nemeroff, "Moral Overtones of Food: Judgments of Others Based on What They Eat," Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 21, no. 5 (May 1995): 480-90
17. reproduced by Jeffrey Hamburger, Nuns as Artists: The Visual Culture of a Medieval Convent (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), fig. 1 and pl. 1
18. As Hamburger comments: "This Crucifixion fascinates even as it repels us" (1). The scholar used to viewing such images, as Hamburger suggests we should - "through [the artist's] eyes and those of her contemporaries." i.e., sympathetically - might find it salutary to reflect upon his or her own reactions to the recent cinematic rendering of the Crucifixion directed by Mel Gibson (The Passion of the Christ, Icon Productions. 2004). by the end of which Christ on the cross appears much as in the fourteenth-century drawing (in Hamburger's words), "his body . . . one enormous wound," "almost entirely obscured by blood" (1)
19. The ingredients listed appear in a fifteenth-century recipe for vyaund ryall as prepared for Henry V at Windsor. For a modern adaptation of this dish, see Phyllis Pray Bober, Art, Culture, and Cuisine: Ancient and, Medieval Gastronomy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 312
20. For the medieval English recipe, see Constance B. Hieatt, ed., An Ordinance of Pottage: An Edition of the Fifteenth-Century Culinary Recipes in Yale University's MS Beinecke 163 (London: Prospect, 1988), 73
21. For a similar recipe from northern Italy, see Odile Redon, Françoise Sabban, and Silvano Serven ti, The Medieval Kitchen: Recipes from France and Italy, trans. Edward Schneider (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 89-90 ("Saracen" chicken)
22. On this vision (actually, the first of a series) in the context of Rupert's life at St. Lawrence in Liège, see John H. Van Engen, Rupert of Deutz (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 48-55
23. For its effects on his career as an exegete, see Van Engen, Rupert, 342-52
24. Rachel Fulton, From Judgment to Passion: Devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary, 800-1200 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 310-17
25. Christel Meier-Staubach, "Ruperts von Deutz literarische Sendung: Der Durchbruch eines neuen Autorbewußtseins im 12. Jahrhundert," Wolfram-Studien 16 (2000): 29-53
26. and Morgan Powell, "Vox ex negativa: Hildegard of Bingen, Rupert of Deutz and Authorial Identity in the Twelfth Century," in Unverwechselbarkeit: Persönliche Identität und Identifikation in der vormodernen Gesellschaft, ed. Peter von Moos (Cologne: Böhlau, 2004), 267-95, at 282-91
27. For the mystical and theological implications of this series of visions, see Bernard McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism: Gregory the Great through the 12th Century (New York: Crossroad, 1994), 328-33
28. and Rhabanus Haacke, "Die mystischen Visionen Ruperts von Deutz,"' in "Sapientia doctrina": Mélanges de théologie et de littératures médiévales offerts à Dom Hildebrand Bascour O.S.B., Recherches de Théologie Ancienne et Médiévale, numéro spécial 1 (Leuven: Abbaye du Mont César, 1980), 69-90
29. Compare Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos,"In psalmum CXXXII," par. 2 (ed. Clemens Weidmann, Hildegard Müller, and Franco Gori, Corpus Scripterum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 93, 94, 95.1-2 [Vienna: Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2001-4], 3: 319): "Ista enim verba psalterii, iste dulcis sonus, ista suavis melodia, tarn in cantico, quam in intellectu, etiam monasteria peperit."
30. For the monastic practice of scriptural ruminatio as one of physical as well as spiritual chewing, see Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture, trans. Catharine Misrahi, 3rd ed. (New York: Fordham University Press, 1982), 73
31. See, esp., Jeffrey Hamburger, "The Visual and the Visionary: The Image in Late Medieval Monastic Devotions," in his The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in Late Medieval Germany (New York: Zone, 1998), 111-48, 502-10
32. and Mary Carruthers, The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400-1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)
33. Rosemary Drage Hale, "'Taste and see, for God is sweet': Sensory Perception and Memory in Medieval Christian Mystical Experience," in Vox Mystica: Essays on Medieval Mysticism in Honor of Professor Valerie M. Lagarto, ed. Anne Clark Barlett (Rochester, NY: D. S. Brewer, 1995), 3-14
34. Boyd Taylor Coolman, Knowing God by Experience: The Spiritual Senses in the Theology of William of Auxerre (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2004)
35. Gordon Rudy, Mystical Language of Sensation in the Later Middle Ages (New York: Routledge, 2002)
36. McGinn, Growth of Mysticism, 187-88. 328-33
37. Compare Rudy, Mistical Language of Sensation, 14, 54-55. 132, on the relative appropriateness of die term "synesthetic" in this context
38. On synesthesia as physiologically experienced, see Richard E. Cytowic, The Man Who Tasted Shapes, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003)
39. Ambrose. De Isaac vel anima, chap. 3, par. 8 (ed. J.-R Migne. Patrologia Latina 14 [Paris. 1845], col. 506; compare the version ed. Carolus Sehenkl, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 32.1 [Vienna: F. Tempsky, 1897], 648
40. trans. Nicolas James Perella, in The Kiss Sacred and Profane: An Interpretive History of Kiss Symbolism and Related Religio-Erotic Themes [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969], 44)
41. For the composition, transmission, and variants of this hymm, see André Wilmart, "Le Jubilus' sur le nom de Jésus dit de Saint Bernard," Ephemerides Liturgicae: Analecta historicoascetica, n.s. 27, 57 (1943): 3-285
42. On the importance of this hymn, see F.J. E. Raby, A History of Christian Latin Poetry from the Beginnings to the Close of the Middle Ages, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1953), 329-31
43. and Denis Renevey, "Anglo-Norman and Middle English Translations and Adaptations of the Hymn Dulcis Iesa Memoria," in The Medieval Translator, vol. 5, Traduire au Moyen Age, ed. Roger Ellis and René Tixier (Tumhout: Brepols, 1996), 264-83
44. For the hymn as it was sung at the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus prior to Vatican II, see The Liber Usualis with Introduction and Rubrics in English, ed. Benedictines of Solesmes (Tournai, Belgium: Desclée, 1953: repr.. Great Falls, MT: St. Bonaventure Publications, 1997), 452-53
45. On the "sweetness of God" more generally, see Jean Chatillon, "Dulcedo, Dulcedo Dei," Dictionnaire de spiritualité, ascétique et mystique, doctrine et histoire, ed. M. Viller et al., 17 vols. (Paris: Beauchesne, 1932-95). 3:1777-95
46. Joseph Ziegler, Dulcedo Dei: Ein Beitrag zur Theologie der griechischen und lateinischen Bibel, Alttestamentliche Abhandlungen 13.2 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1937)
47. and Friedrich Ohly, Süsse Nägel der Passion: Ein Beitrag zur theologischen Semantik, Saecula Spiritalia 21 (Baden-Baden: Valentin Koerner, 1989)
48. Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos, "In psalmum CXXXIV." par. 5 (in Gori, ed.. 4:29-30)
49. On the centrality of this metaphor for Augustine's understanding of God, see Franz Posset, "The Sweetness of God." American Benedictine Review 44, no. 2 (June 1993): 143-78, at 147-55
50. Franz Posset, "Christi Dulcedo: The 'Sweetness of Christ' in Western Christian Spirituality," Cistercian Studies Quarterly 30, no. 3 (1995): 245-65
51. Edith Scholl, "The Sweetness of the Lord: Dulcis and Suavis," Cistercian Studies Quarterly 27. no. 4 (1992): 359-66
52. Reindert L. Falkenburg, The Fruit of Devotion: Mysticism and the imagery of Love in Flemish Paintings of the Virgin and Child, 1450-1550, trans. Sammy Herman (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1994)
53. and Henri de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, vol. 2, The Four Senses of Scripture, trans. E. M. Macierowski (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), 162-77
54. On food imagery in scriptural exegesis more generally, see also Klaus Lange, "Geistliche Speise: Untersuchungen zur Metaphorik der Bibelhermeneutik," Zeitschrift für deutsches Alterthum und deutsche Litteratur 95, no. 2 (1966): 81-122
55. and Carmela Vircillo Franklin, "Words as Food: Signifying the Bible in the Early Middle Ages," Settimane di studio della Fondazione Centro italiano di studi sull'alto Medioevo 52 (Spoleto, 2005), pt. 2:733-62. I would like to thank Professor Franklin for sharing her paper with me in draft prior to publication
56. trans. Benedicta Ward, in The Prayers and Meditations of Saint Anselm, with the Proslogion [Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973], 230)
57. Gertrude, Exercitia spintualia, bk. 5, lines 481-86 (ed. Jacques Hourlier and Albert Schmitt, Gertrude d'Helfta, oeuvres spirituelles, vol. 1, Les exercises, Sources chrétiennes 127 [Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 1967], 194
58. trans. Gertrud Jaron Lewis and Jack Lewis, as Spiritual Exercises, Cistercian Fathers Series 49 [Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1989], 90, with changes)
59. Liber specialis gratiae, pt. 2, chap. 16 (ed. Louis Paquelin, Revelationes Gertrudianne et Mechtildianae 2: Sanctae Mechtildis virginis ordinis sancti Benedicti Liber specialis gratiae [Poitiers: Oudin, 1877], 150
60. trans. Bernard McGinn, in The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and, Women in the New Mysticism, 1200-1350 [New York: Crossroad, 1998], 279, with changes)
61. Mechthild, Das fließende Licht der Gottheit, bk. 2, chap. 25 (ed. Hans Neumann with Gisela Vollmann-Profe, Münchener Texte und Untersuchungen zur deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters 100-101 [Munich: Artemis, 1990], 1:67-68, lines 131-39
62. trans. Frank Tobin, as The Flowing Light of the Godhead [New York: Paulist Press. 1998]. 96. with changes from Hale, "Taste and see," 12)
63. William, Meditado VI: Anima gaudium beatorum, ac coelum, id. est Deum, et arcam testamenti, id est humanitate Christi, contemplatur (ed. J.-P Migne, Patrologia Latina 180 [Paris, 1855], col. 226
64. trans. Sister Penelope, in The Works of William of St. Thierry, vol. 1, On Contemplating God; Prayer; Meditations, Cistercian Fathers Series 3 [Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1977], 132, with changes)
65. Pe Wohunge of ure Lauerd, ed. W. Meredith Thompson, Early English Texts Society, o,s., 241 (London: Oxford University Press. 1958), 20
66. Carl Horstman, Yorkshire Writers: Richard Rolle of Hampole, an English Father of the Church, and his followers, 2 vols. (NewYork: Macmillan, 1895-96), 2:9-24
67. On this Uric, see also Rosemary Woolf, The English Religious Lyric in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon, 1968), 176
68. Douglas Gray, English Medieval Religious Lyrics, rev. ed. (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1992), 48-49 nn. 47 and 48
69. See also Woolf, English Religious Lyric, 174
70. "The Fifteen Oes," ed. Rebecca Krug, in Cultures of Piety: Medieval English Devotional Literature in Translation, ed. Anne Clark Barlett and Thomas H. Bestul (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), 212
71. Gertrude, Spiritual Exercises, 32 n. 63, commenting on the phrase "suaviter gustare amen dulce, quo ipse reficit" (Hourlier and Schmitt, Gertrude d'Helfta, ouevres spirituelles, 76), which Lewis and Lewis translate as "taste with pleasure the dulcet Amen with which he himself refreshes [the soul]."
72. Posset, "Christi Dulcedo," 254 n. 47
73. citing Johannes Tauler, Sermons, trans. Maria Shrady (New York: Paulist Press, 1985)
74. see Le Psautier Romain et les autres anciens psautiers latins, ed. Robert Weber, Collectanea Biblica Latina 10 (Rome: Abbaye Saint-Jérôme, 1953)
75. For history, relationship, and liturgical use of the psalter versions, see Mechthild Gretsch, The intellectual Foundations of English Benedictine Reform (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 22-25
76. Andrew Hughes, Medieval Manuscripts for Mass and Office: A Guide to Their Organization and, Terminology (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982), 225-31
77. and George H. Brown, "The Psalms as the Foundation of Anglo-Saxon Learning," in The Place of the Psalms in the Intellectual Culture of the Middle Ages, ed. Nancy Van Deusen (Albany: State University of New York, 1999), 1-24
78. Posset, "The Sweetness of God," 149
79. Chatillon, "Dulcedo, Duceldo Dei," cols. 1781-83
80. Augustine, Sermones de Scripturis, sermon 145. par. 5 (ed. J.-P. Migne, Patrologia Latina 38 [Paris, 1841], col. 794
81. trans. Posset, in "The Sweetness of God." 149-50, with changes)
82. Charles Burnett, "Sapores sunt octo: The Medieval Latin Terminology for the Eight Flavours," Micrologies: Natura, scienze e società medievali/Nature, Sciences and Medieval Societies: I cinque sensif The Five Senses 10 (2002): 99-112
83. These flavor categories remained current in European dietetics well into the sixteenth century. See Ken Albala, Eating Right in the Renaissance (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 82-84
84. Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 39-42
85. Dulcis Iesu memoria, stanza 1 (ed. Wilmart, "Le 'Jubilus,'" 146): "Dulcis Iesu memoria, / Dans uera cordi gaudia, / Sed super mel et omnia. / Eius dulcis presentia."
86. Alberta Dieker, "Mechtild of Hackeborn: Song of Love," in Medieval Women Monastics: Wisdom's Wellsprings, ed. Miriam Schmitt and Linda Kulzer (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1996), 231-42. at 236-37
87. On Mechthild's use of this imagery of sweetness in the context of her visions more generally, see McGinn, Flowering of Mysticism, 278-82
88. Ann Marie Caron, "Taste and See the Goodness of the Lord: Mechthild of Hackeborn," in Hidden Springs: Cistercian Monastic Women, ed. John A. Nichols and Lillian Thomas Shank, 2 vols. (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1995), 2:509-24
89. and Caroline Walker Bynum, "Women Mystics in the Thirteenth Century: The Case of the Nuns of Helfta," in Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 170-262, at 210-17
90. Henry Suso, Büchlein der Ewigen Weisheit, chap. 23 (ed. Karl Bihlmeyer, Enrich Sense:Deutsche Schriften im Auftrag der Württembergischen Kommission für Landesgeschichte [Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1907], 303
91. trans. Frank Tobin, as The Exemplar, with Two German Sermons [New York: Paulist Press, 1989], 285, with changes)
92. On Suso's devotional attitude toward food more generally, see Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 102-5
93. Rudolf, De septem itineribus aeternitatis, bk. 6 (ed. A. C. Peltier, in Opera omnia Sancti Bonaventurae [Paris: Ludovicus Vives, 1864-71], 8:393-482, at 472
94. cited in Posset, "Christi Dulcedo" 254 n. 46)
95. On Rudolf's account of the spiritual senses, including taste, see Rudy, Mystical Language of Sensation, 109-12
96. Rudolf's treatise also circulated in a Middle High German translation, where Jesus is described as "die grossen fige einer vngeendeter sues-sikeit." See Margot Schmidt, ed., Die siben Strassen zu got: Die hochalemannische Übertragung nach der Handschrift Einsiedeln 278 (Quaracchi: Typographia Collegii S. Bonaventurae, 1969), 164
97. Gertrude, Exercitia spiritualia, bk. 5, line 483 (ed. Hourlier and Schmitt, Oeuvres spirituelles, 194)
98. Interestingly, Lewis and Lewis, Spiritual Exercises, 90, translate adipe as "cream." Compare Charlton T Lewis, A Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon, 1879), s.v. "adeps": "the soft fat or grease of animals, suet, lard."
99. For references, see J.-R Migne, Index Marianus, sec. 7. Patrologia Latina 219 (Paris. 1862). col. 521. s.v. "Virga Aaron."
100. Maria Meertens, De Godsvrucht in de Niederlanden naar handschriften van gehedenhoeken der XVe eeuw, 6 vols., Historische bibliotheek van Godsdienstvvetenschappen (Antwerp: Boekhan-del N.V. Standard, 1930-32), 2:29
101. trans. Falkenburg, in Fruit of Devotion, 68. It may not be coincidental that Christ's side wound is represented in many late medieval images as itself almond shaped, although many recent commentators have preferred to read the wound as a vaginal slit
102. For examples of such images, see Flora Lewis. "The Wound in Christ's Side and the Instruments of the Passion: Gendered Experience and Response," in Women and the Book: Assessing the Visual Evidence, ed. Jane H. M. Taylor and Lesley Smith (London: British Library and University of Toronto Press, 1996), 204-29
103. and David S. Areford. "The Passion Measured: A Late-Medieval Diagram of the Body of Christ," in The Broken Body: Passion Devotion in Late-Medieval Culture, ed. A. A. MacDonald, H. N. B. Ridderbos, and R. M. Schlusemann (Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1998), 211-38
104. accessed online through the Acta Sanctorum Full-Text Datahase [Cambridge: Chadwyck-Healey, 1999-2002], http://acta.chadwyck.com)
105. On the role of food more generally in descriptions of Lidwina's spirituality, see Bynum, Holy Feast, 124-29
106. Alan of Lille, Liber in distinctionibus dictionum theologicalium (ed. J.-P. Migne, Patrologia Latina 210 [Paris, 1855], col. 741). s.v. "cinnamomum."
107. Rupert, Commentaria in Canticum canticorum de Incarnation Domini, bk, 4 (Song of Songs 5:1; ed. Rhabanus Haacke, Corpus Christianorum Continuado Mediaeualis 26 [Turnhout: Brepols, 1974], 95, 98-99, 102)
108. R. W. Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 1953), 42
109. On the question of spices and "rotting meat," see Jack Turner, Spice: The History of a Temptation (New York: Knopf, 2004), 106-9
110. On the legal restrictions in the sale of food, particularly meat, see Madeleine Peiner Cosman, Fabulous Feasts: Medieval Cookery and Ceremony (New York: George Braziller, 1976), 67-91
111. Terence Scully. The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1995), 53-54
112. and Jean-Louis Flandrin, "Seasoning, Cooking, and Dietetics in the Late Middle Ages," in Food: A Culinary History from Antiquity to the Present ed. Jean-Louis Flandrin and Massimo Montanari, with Albert Sonnenfeld, trans. Clarissa Botsford et al. (New York: Penguin, 2000), 313-27, at 314
113. citing Louis Stouff, Ravitaillement et alimentation en Provence aux XIVe et XVe siècles (Paris: Mouton, 1970), on the butchery regulations in Carpentras against the sale of even day-old meat
114. Against the insistence that spices were favored in medieval cooking primarily as preservatives and/or against the flavor of rot, see also Scully, Art of Cookery, 83-86
115. Bruno Laurioux, "Spices in the Medieval Diet: A New Approach," Food and Foodways 1 (1985): 43-76
116. Bridget Ann Henisch, Fast and Feast: Food in Medieval Society (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1976), 104-8
117. and Lorna J. Sass, "The Preference for Sweets, Spices, and Almond Milk in Late Medieval English Cuisine, " in Food in Perspective: Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Ethnological Food, Research, Cardiff Wales, 1987, ed. Alexander Fenton and Trefor M. Owen (Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers, 1981), 253-60
118. On the relative spiciness (or lack thereof) of medieval cooking, see also Constance B. Hieatt, Brenda Hosington, and Sharon Butler, Pleyn Delit: Medieval Coofiery for Modern Cooks, 2nd ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), xiii-xiv
119. and Redon, Sabban, and Serventi, The Medieval Kitchen, 29-31
120. Sidney W. Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York: Penguin, 1985), 84-85
121. quotes William Hazlitt on "the unnatural union of flesh with sweets" that Hazlitt observed in medieval cookery. See W. C. Hazlitt, Old English Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine (London: E. Stock, 1886), 183
122. On the change in attitudes toward the mixture of sugar, spices, and meat in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to which Hazlitt was heir, see Jean-Louis Flandrin, "From Dietetics to Gastronomy: The Liberation of the Gourmet," in Flandrin and Montanari, Food: A Culinary History, 418-32
123. Andrew Dalby, Dangerous Tastes: The Story of Spices (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), charts the actual and imagined origins of some of the most popular ancient and medieval spices
124. On the appeal of spices' scarcity, see Paul Freedman, "Spices and Late-Medieval European Ideas of Scarcity and Value," Speculum 80, no. 4 (2005): 1209-27
125. For Rupert's tendency to Epicureanism, see his self-description in Super quaedam capitula regulae Benedicti, or Liber de apologeticis suis, bk. 1 (ed. J.-P. Migue, Patrologia Latina 170 [Paris, 1854], col. 479): "Nam quia sum homuncio ventris pigri, et cuilibet Epicuro pene consimilis, dicere soles."
126. For Bernard's condemnation of Cluniac table customs, see Epistola 1.11 (ed. J.-P. Migne, Patrologia Latina 182 [Paris, 1854], col. 77
127. see also Jean Leclercq, C. H. Talbot, and H. M. Rochais, eds., Sancti Bernardi opera, 8 vols. [Rome: Editiones cistercienses, 1957-77], 7:9)
128. On the presence of spices in the monastic diet generally, see Barbara Harvey, "Monastic Diet, XIIIth-XVIth Centuries: Problems and Perspectives," in Alimentazione e nutrizione secc. XIII-XVIII: Atti della ventottesima Settimana di Studi, 22-27 aprile 1996, ed. Simonetta Cavaciocchi (Florence: Le Monnier, 1997), 611-41, at 613, 627, 631-32
129. and Turner, Spice, 265-81
130. Bober, Art, Culture, and Cuisine, 259-62
131. and Henisch, Fast and Feast, 206-36
132. For recipes, see Hieatt, Hosington, and Butler, Pleyn Delit, nos. 137-42 (including a "fars" boar's head and a pastry castle)
133. Cosman, Fabulous Feasts, 198-204 (including a four-part heraldic design made of fish suspended in gelatin, as well as a "live frog and turtle pie," singing blackbirds optional)
134. and Joop Witteveen. "The Great Birds. Part 5: Preparation of the Peacock for the Table," Petits propos culinaires 36 (1990): 10-20
135. Constance B. Hieatt and Robin F. Jones. "Two Anglo-Norman Culinary Collections Edited from British Library Manuscripts Additional 32085 and Royal 12.C.xii," Speculum 61. no. 4 (1986): 859-82. at 866-67 and 877
136. Hieatt and Jones, "Two Anglo-Norman Culinary Collections," 866-68 and 877-79
137. Compare Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, 60-61: "Medieval cookbooks make it clear that visual effects were more important to a medieval diner than taste and that vivid colors . . . were often applied at the expense of flavor. . . . Given such assumptions about and expectations of food, it is small wonder that medieval mystics considered sounds and sights as crucial to the Eucharistic banquet as eating, or that they sometimes felt they 'ate' or 'received' with their eyes or in their minds and hearts."
138. For similar emphases, see Suzannah Biernoff, Sight and Embodiment in the Middle Ages (New York: Pal grave, 2002). 140-43 (on "ocular communion")
139. and Rubin, Corpus Christi, 63 (on the elevation as "a sort of substitute 'sacramental viewing'")
140. On the importance of sight in medieval discussions of sensory perception, see Biernoff, Sight and Embodiment, 63-84
141. Elizabeth Sears, "Sensory Perception and Its Metaphors in the Time of Richard of Fournival," in Medicine and the Five Senses, ed. W. F. Bynum and Roy Porter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 17-39, 276-83
142. and Michael Camille, Gothic Art: Glorious Visions (New York: Harry Abrams, 1996), 21-25
143. For its importance in Galenic physiology, see Rudolph E. Siegel, Galen on Sense Perception: His Doctrines, Observations and Experiments on Vision, Hearing, Smell, Taste, Touch and Pain, and Their Historical Sources (Basel: S. Karger, 1970), 10-216 (NB: this is by far the longest chapter in the book; by comparison, taste gets only some fifteen pages, 158-73)
144. Aristotle, De sensu, 437a (trans. W. S. Hett, as "On Sense and Sensible Objects," in Aristotle, Vol, VIII: On the Soul, Parva Naturalia, On Breath, Loeb Classical Library 288, rev. ed. [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957], 219)
145. Aristotle, De anima, 434a-435b
146. (trans. W. S. Hett, as "On the Soul," in Aristotle, Vol. VIII: On the Soul, 197-203)
147. Sears, "Sensory Perception," 28-33
148. For an intriguing early thirteenth-century counterargument in favor of taste, see Charles Burnett. "The Superiority of Taste," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 54 (1991): 230-38
149. Rudy, Mystical Language of Sensation, 4, 19-20. and 127 n. 4
150. On the importance of vision for spiritual perception, see, among many studies. Jeffrey F. Hamburger, St. John the Divine: The Deified Evangelist in Medieval Art and Theology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 185-201
151. David F. Appleby. "The Priority of Sight according to Peter the Venerable," Mediaeval Studies 60 (1998): 123-57
152. Carruthers, Craft of Thought, 1 71-220
153. and Denise Depres, Ghostly Sights: Visual Meditation in Late-Medieval Literature (Norman, OK: Pilgrim, 1989)
154. Bernard, De diversis 10: Discretio vitae a quinque sensibus animae (ed. J.-P. Migne, Patrologia Latina 183 [Paris, 1854], cols. 567-69
155. Compare Rudy, Mystical Language of Sensation, 51-52
156. Bernard, Ad clencos de conversione, sermon 13, par. 25 (Leclercq, Talbot, and Rochais, Sancti Bernardi opera, 4:99-100
157. trans. Rudy, in Mystical Language of Sensation, 63, with slight changes
158. cf. trans. Marie-Bernard Saïd, as Sermons on Conversion: On Conversion, a Sermon to Clerics, and Lenten Sermons on the Psalm "He Who Dwells," Cistercian Fathers Series 25 [Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1981], 61)
159. Bernard, Sermones super Cantica canticorum, sermon 85, par. 8 (ed
160. ed. Leclercq, Talbot, and Rochais, Sancti Bernardi opera, 2:312
161. trans. Irene Edmonds, as On the Song of Songs IV, Cistercian Fathers Series 40 [Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1980], 204-5, with slight changes)
162. (trans. Hett, "On the Soul,"' 197): "This is why taste is a kind of touch; for it relates to food, and food is a tangible body. Sound, colour and smell supply no food, nor do they produce growth and decay
163. Hence taste must be some kind of touch, because it is the perception of what is tangible and nutritive." Compare Aristotle, De sensu 436b (trans. Hett, "On Sense and Sensible Objects," 217): "For it is taste which discriminates between pleasant and unpleasant in food, so that the one is avoided and the other pursued."
164. Bernard, Sermones de cantica canticorum, sermon 85. par. 8
165. Laurioux, "Spices in the Medieval Diet" 69 n. 24
166. and Maxime Rodinson, "Ma'muniyya East and West." trans. Barbara Inslip, and "Venice, the Spice Trade and Eastern Influence on European Cooking," trans. Paul James, both in Medieval Arab Cookery, ed. Maxime Rodinson. A. J. Arberry, and Charles Perry (Devon: Prospect Books. 2001), 185-97 and 201-15. respectively
167. See also Bernard Rosenberger, "Arab Cuisine and Its Contribution to European Culture," in Flandrin and Montanari, Food: A Culinary History, 207-23
168. Toby Peterson, "The Arab Influence on Western European Cooking." Journal of Medieval History 6 (1980): 317-40
169. Although Larioux would insist that Peterson goes too far in attributing the taste for spices to more recent contacts with the flavors of the East, most scholars accept that some late medieval recipes are recognizably adaptations of Arabic cuisine. Sugar, classed as a spice, was one of the most important new imports in this period. See Mintz, Sweetness and Power, 23-32
170. and Jean-Louis Flandrin, "El azúcar en los libros de cocina franceses del siglo XIV al siglo XVIII." in 1492: Lo dulce a la conquista de Europa; Actas del cuarto seminario internacional sobra la caña de azúcar, Motril, 21-25 de septiembre de 1992, ed. Antonio Malpica (Granada: Diputación Provincial de Granada, 1994), 195-217
171. For sugar in Arab cookery, see "Kitäb Waşf al-Az'ima al-Mu'tāda" [Description of familiar foods], chap. 10, trans. with intro. by Charles Perry, in Rodinson, Arberry, and Perry, Medieval Arab Cookery. 275-465, at 415-23
172. Compare Rozin, "Food Is Fundamental"'
173. Walter Ong, "The Shifting Sensorium," in The Varieties of Sensory Experience: A Sourcebook in the Anthropology of the Senses, ed. David Howes (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), 25-30
174. Seminal here: Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966). 41-57
175. Georges Duby, Rural Economy and Country Life in the Medieval West, trans. Cynthia Postan (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. 1968)
176. Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Raw and the Cooked, trans. John Weightman and Doreen Weightman (New York: Harper & Row. 1969)
177. Fernand Braudel, The Structures of Everyday Life: The Limits of the Possible, trans. Siân Reynolds (New York: Harper & Row, 1981), 104-265
178. and Mintz, Sweetness and Power. Significantly, Caroline Bynum's observation made in 1987 (Holy Feast and Holy Fast, 1) that issues of money and sex tend to hold the attention of most modern scholars over those of food still holds true even today
179. Carol Nemeroff and Paul Rozin, "'You are what you eat': Applying the Demand-Free 'Impressions' Technique to an Unacknowledged Belief," Ethos: The Journal of Psychological Anthropology 17, no. 1 (1989): 50-69
180. Recent psychological studies have shown Americans to be particularly prone to considering sugars like sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup as toxins, even in trace amounts. See Paul Rozin, Michele Ashmore, and Maureen Markwith, "Lay American Conceptions of Nutrition: Dose Insensitivity, Categorical Thinking, Contagion, and the Monotonic Mind." Health Psychology 15, no. 6 (1996): 438-47
181. and Eric Oliver, Fat Politics: The Real Story behind America's Obesity Epidemic (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), chap. 5. I would like to thank Professor Oliver for making available several chapters of his book prior to publication
182. On humors, flavors, spices, and tastes and their importance in medieval culinary theory and practice, see Terence Scully, "Mixing It Up in the Medieval Kitchen," in Medieval Food and Drink, ed. Mary-Jo Arn, Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies Acta 21 (1995 for 1994): 1-26
183. and Art of Cookery, 40-51
184. Flandrin, "Seasoning, Cooking, and Dietetics," 313-26
185. Ria Jansen-Sieben, "From Food Therapy to Cookery-Book," in Medieval Dutch Literature in Its European Context, ed. Erik Kooper (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 261-79
186. Melitta Weiss Adamson, Medieval Dietetics: Food and, Drink in the Regimen Sanitatis Literature from 800 to 1400, German Studies in Canada 5 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1995), 10-18
187. Nancy G. Siraisi, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 101-6
188. and Albala, Eating Right, 78-84
189. Burnett, "Sapores sunt octo" 112
190. See also Lynn Thorndike, "A Mediaeval Sauce-Book," Speculum 9, no. 2 (April 1934): 183-90, for the text of the recipes from Magninus's Opusculum de saporibus
191. Luisa Cogliati Arano, The Medieval Health Handbook: Tacuinam Sanitatis (New York: George Braziller, 1976), color pl. 48
192. See Adamson, Medieval Dietetics, 83-91, on the transmission from the Arabic, translation, and manuscript transmission of the Tacuinam. The Arabic original was written by the physician Abu 1-Hasan al-Muhtar ibn 'Abdun ibn Butlan (Ibn Butlan; d. 1066). The Latin translation was made in Palermo in the second half of the thirteenth century
193. Arano, Medieval Health Handbook, color pl. 16
194. Scully, "Opusculum de saporibus" 185
195. C. Anne Wilson, "Ritual, Form and Colour in the Medieval Food Tradition," in her "The Appetite and the Eye": Visual Aspects of Food and Its Presentation within Their Historic Context (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991), 5-27, at 16-26
196. and Mireille Vincent-Cassy, "La vue et les mangeurs: Couleurs et simulacres dans la cuisine médiévale," in Banquets et manières de table au moyen age, Centre Universitaire d'Etudes et de Recherches Médiévales d'Aix (CUER MA), Sénéfiance 38 (Aixen-Provence: CUER MA, Université de Provence, 1996), 161-75
197. Wilson, "Ritual, Form and Colour," 18
198. Peterson, "Arab Influence," 328
199. Jansen-Sieben, "From Food Therapy to Cookery-Book," 264
200. citing W. F. Daems, ed., Boec van medicinen in dietsche: Een middelnederlandse compilatie van medisch-farmaceutische literatuur (Leiden: Brill 1967), 214
201. Magninus, Regimen sanitatis Magnini mediolanensis medici famosissimi (London. 1517)
202. and David Waines. "Sugar in Andalusi 'Home Remedies,'" in Malpica, 1492: Lo dulce a la conquista de Ewropa, 77-86
203. and Thomas, Summa Theologia, pt. 2.2, q. 147, art. 6 (ed. OP, Opera omnia iussu impensaque Leonis XIII P.M. edita [Rome: Ex Typographia Polyglotta S.C. de Propaganda Fide, 1882 - ], 10:163)
204. Compare Dorothy Savers, The Mind of the Maker (New York: HarperCollins, 1987), 22-24, on the problem of metaphor and thinking about God: "All language about God must, as St. Thomas Aquinas pointed out be necessarily analogical. We need not be surprised at this, still less suppose that because it is analogical it is therefore valueless or without any relevance to the truth. The fact is, that all language about everything is analogical; we think in a series of metaphors. . . . To complain that man measures God by his own experience is a waste of time; man measures every tiling by his own experience; he has no other yardstick."
205. See table 1 in Schiffman and Dackis, "Taste of Nutrients," 142-43, for the correlation between tasting "sweet" and "food-like."
206. For contemporary discussion of sweetness as the preferred human flavor, see Moskowitz, "Psychology of Sweetness"
207. Elisabeth Rozin and Paul Rozin, "Some Surprisingly Unique Characteristics of Human Food Preferences"
208. Norge W. Jerome, ''Taste Experience and the Development of a Dietary Preference for Sweet in Humans: Ethnic and Cultural Variations in Early Taste Experience," in Taste and Development The Genesis of Sweet Preference, ed. J. M. Weiffenbach, Fogarty International Center Proceedings, no. 32 (Bethseda, MD: U.S. Dept. of Health, Education, and Welfare, 1977), 235-48
209. Claude Fischler, "Attitudes toward Sugar and Sweetness in Historical and Social Perspective"
210. and Paul Rozin, "Sweetness, Sensuality, Sin, Safety, and Socialization: Some Speculations," both in Dobbing, Sweetness, 83-98 and 99-111, respectively
211. For food as "medicine," particularly under stress, see Mary F. Dallmann et al., "Chronic Stress and Obesity: A New View of 'Comfort Food,'" PNAS 100, no. 20 (September 30, 2003): 11696-11701. I would like to thank Eric Oliver for pointing me to this last article
212. Paul Rozin, "The Selection of Food by Rats, Humans and Other Animals," in Advances in the Study of Behavior, ed. Jay Rosenblatt, Robert A. Hinde, Eveyln Shaw, and Colin Beer (New York: Academic Press, 1976), 6:21-76
213. Paul Rozin and Jay Schul kin, "Food Selection," in Handbook of Behavioral Neurobiology, vol. 10, Neurobiology of Food and Fluid Intake, ed. Edward M. Stricker (New York: Plenum, 1990), 297-328
214. Paul Rozin, "The Use of Characteristic Flavorings in Human Culinary Practice," in Flavor: Its Chemical, Behavioral, and Commercial Aspects: Proceedings of the Arthur D. Little Flavor Symposium, ed. C. M. Apt (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1978), 101-27
215. On chickens and cats: Yngve Zotterman, "Studies in the Neural Mechanism of Taste," in Sensory Communication, ed. Walter A. Rosenblith (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1961 ), 204-16
216. Morley R. Kare and M. S. Ficken, "Comparative Studies on the Sense of Taste." in Olfaction and Taste, ed. Yngve Zotterman (New York: Pergamon, 1963), 285-97
217. On koalas: Rozin, "Food Is Fundamental," 12
218. For example, the BBC broadcast, "Why Sugar Kills," Discovery,
219. or Nancy Appleton's "124 Ways Sugar Can Ruin Your Health," posted at http://www.nancyappleton.com/ (accessed December 2. 2004)
220. For example, the sculptures made for the weddings of Maria and Prince Cosimo de' Medici in the early seventeenth century. See Katharine J. Watson, "Sugar Sculpture for Grand Ducal Weddings from the Giambologna Workshop." Connoisseur 199. no. 799 (September 1978): 20-26
221. Mintz, Sweetness and Power, illustrations following 184, gives further examples. Medieval sugar shapes tended to be made out of marzipan
222. Hieatt. Hosington, and Butler, Pleyn Delit, no. 142 ("Ymages in suger")
223. Compare the corresponding Hindu practice of prasad (offering sweets to God) and the ayurvedic contention that the healthiest, most sattvic diet is sweet. See Sylvain Pinard. "A Taste of India: On the Role of Gustation in the Hindu Sensorium." in Howes, Varieties of Sensory Experience, 221-30
224. David Frawley, Yoga and Ayurveda: Self-Healing and Self-Realization (Twin Lakes, WI: Lotus, 1999). 179-82
225. and Bern Le Hunte, "Eating Wisely: Edible Blessings." Yoga Journal 185 (December 2004): 63-66
226. For current concerns with the debilitating effects of eating too many sweets, see Oliver, Fat Politics
227. Glenn A. Gaesser, Big Fat Lies: The Truth about Your Weight and, Your Health (Carlsbad, CA: Gürze, 2002)
228. Greg Critser, Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003). 132-41
229. Ali H. Mokdad, Barbara A. Bowman. Earl S. Ford, Frank Vinicor. James S. Marks, and Jeffrey P. Ko plan, "The Continuing Epidemics of Obesity and Diabetes in the United States," JAMA 286, no. 10 (September 12, 2001): 1195-1200
230. Rogan Kersh and James Morone. "How the Personal Becomes Political: Prohibitions. Public Health and Obesity," Studies in American Political Development 16 (Fall 2002): 162-75
231. and Simone A. French. Mary Story, and Robert W. Jeffrey, "Environmental Influences on Eating and Physical Activity," Annual Review of Public Health 22 (2001): 309-35
232. Compare Dulcis Iesa memoria, stanza 2 (Wilmart, "Le 'Jubilus," 146-47
233. trans. Fr. Edward Caswall [1814-78], as Jesu, The Very Thought of Thee): "Nil canitur suauius / Auditur nil iocundius, / Nil cogitatur dulcius / Quam Iesus Dei Filius."