[Sca-cooks] TMR 04.02.11, Effros, Creating Community (Van Dam) (fwd)

[jenne at fiedlerfamily.net]

I believe some people were interested in this book...

-- Pani Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, Knowledge Pika jenne at fiedlerfamily.net
She gave him a look that indicated that her capacity for Not Putting People
Through Walls No Matter How Much They Deserve It had been exhausted.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 05 Feb 2004 22:36:44 -0500 (EST)
From: tmr-l at wmich.edu
To: tmr-l at wmich.edu
Subject: TMR 04.02.11, Effros, Creating Community (Van Dam)

Effros, Bonnie. <i>Creating Community with Food and Drink in
Merovingian Gaul</i>. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.  Pp.
xviii + 174. $50.00 (hb). ISBN: 0-312-22736-1.

   Reviewed by Raymond Van Dam
        University of Michigan
        rvandam at umich.edu


Thanks for the gift of wine and fish, bishop Avitus of Vienne
wrote a benefactor in the early fifth century.  But, he then
sighed in frustration, despite his appetite he was constrained
from sampling these delicacies. This tension between feasting
and fasting is the basis of Bonnie Effros' very interesting
survey of the rituals associated with the provision and
consumption of food and drink in early medieval Gaul.  Her book
focuses on the social relationships nourished through the
sharing of meals, and on the use of food as a "symbolic
language" (4) for the maintenance of power and hierarchy.

In the first chapter Effros discusses the social significance
of feasting for the creation of Christian communities.  She
argues that bishops and monks wanted to demonstrate that their
churches and monasteries were lavish sources of food.
Sometimes clerics and ascetics directly supplied refreshments
or hosted meals; at other times they were assisted by saints,
whose miracles might create unlimited wine or beer.  Providing
food was a way of enhancing authority and prestige.  "Feasting
constituted a powerful form of gift exchange and patronage, and
played a highly symbolic role in the display of status and
identity in sixth- and seventh-century Gaul" (16).  Clerics
also used their feasts to encourage people to accept orthodox
Christian beliefs and behavior.  By defining and restricting
membership in the community of true believers, regulations
about food and sharing meals effectively isolated pagans,
heretics, and Jews.  As a result, clerics were always concerned
lest their liturgical vessels be contaminated through demonic
forces.

The second chapter discusses how clerics and monks used food
and drink in order to define their own identities, both more
widely in Gallic society and within monasteries.  In contrast
to local notables, bishops and other clerics did not form
alliances through marriages, and they could not participate in
warfare.  They created ties of loyalty instead through hosting
meals, which were "the best opportunities to interact with and
gain the support of well-armed lay contemporaries" (27).  They
also celebrated banquets on saints' festival days in order to
bolster the civic pride of their sees.  The organizers of
monasteries highlighted the role of communal meals in order to
promote fellowship and a sense of inclusion among all the
monks.  In contrast, extreme asceticism might limit the
formation of social networks among both clerics and monks.

Because cloistered nuns were likewise isolated from networks of
political patronage, they faced the same tension between
fasting and feasting.  In the third chapter Effros argues that
nuns nevertheless hosted meals to enhance their social
standing.  Some bishops might be alarmed at this prospect, and
Caesarius of Arles tried to impose restrictions on the
provision of banquets by the nuns in his sister's convent.
Even though Radegund adopted Caesarius' Rule for her convent at
Poitiers, she understood the need for influential supporters,
and she matched her personal austerity with meals of delicacies
offered to visitors like Fortunatus.  Radegund was hence both
more ascetic and more generous than Caesarius had recommended
for nuns: "early medieval noble women in monastic houses gained
access to greater authority both as a result of their patronage
of feasts and abstinence from food and drink" (54).

In the fourth chapter Effros wants to analyze the connections
between eating and healing.  Even though many people were
healed at saints' shrines after swallowing something sacred,
such as holy oil, medicinal herbs, or dust mixed with water,
this chapter in fact discusses not cures of illnesses, but the
maintenance of health through a dietary regimen. Anthimus, a
Greek doctor who served at the court of the Ostrogothic king
Theodoric in Italy, composed a treatise about the medicinal
value of various foods for the Frankish king Theuderic.
Perhaps his treatise was a diplomatic gift from one king to
another, "a more theoretical rendition of a well-prepared
banquet" (65).  Whatever the motives, his advice was probably
ineffective, since the recommendations in his treatise about
dietary discipline would have challenged the important role of
feasting in establishing social connections.

The last chapter discusses funerary rituals of feasting.  Early
medieval tombs and cemeteries have of course yielded much
tableware, including glass cups, ceramic plates and bowls,
bronze spoons, and sometimes vessels filled with food or drink.
Because the dead seem to have been expected to participate in
such graveside meals, their memories lingered in their families
and their communities.  Such celebrations then reassured family
members that they too would be remembered after death.  Some
bishops complained about excessive revelry, but others were
prepared to condone these private celebrations of remembrance.
Eventually they promoted the celebration of the Eucharist as a
substitute, "thereby allowing the faithful to commemorate their
ancestors under the watchful eye of the Catholic clergy" (91).

Future studies will need to refine Effros' suggestions, in
particular by acknowledging distinctions in various regions and
at various times.  Even though Effros suggests many important
themes for analysis, such as differences between Roman and
Frankish customs or between urban and rural practices, her
discussions tend to conflate the available texts and other
sources into a rather generic early medieval system.
Subsequent studies might also consider the significance of the
actual food being consumed, as well as the symbolic
implications of the methods of its preparation.  The raw and
the cooked provide ready metaphors for aspects of class and
gender in any society.  These culinary metaphors furthermore
affected ideas about Christianity.  As a process cooking in
particular neatly linked up with the mechanics of healing at
saints' shrines.  Saints were chefs, softening the stiff joints
of paralyzed suppliants, but allowing unrepentant sinners to
boil in their fevers.  Effros' fine survey now sets the table
for subsequent feasting on the subject of food in the early
medieval period.