[Sca-cooks] fork

[Suey]

Diane & Micheal Reid wrote:

>   The devil made them do it, ah symbolism such a great thing. 
>  Da
>
>
>   
This is not working out Alonso Luego says at the beginning of the 15th 
Century Pietro de Oreseolo married his son to the Byzantine princess who 
brought the gold fork(s) for her wedding banquet with his son. Pietro II 
de Oreseolo was Dogge of Venice from 991-1009. It seems to be pretty 
well established that the wedding took place in 1004 in some reports. 
Now Henrisch states and I believe one of our SCA colleagues too the 
marriage was between the princess and Domenice Selvo's son. Selvo was 
dogge between 1071-1081. It seems to me that Alonso Luengo had a 
grammatical mishap as his subject here was that the fruit fork served to 
guests during Suero Quinones tournament in the 1430's. Alonso's point 
here is that using metal to transmit food from animals to the mouth was 
prohibited by the Church while fruit was permitted, therefore we have 
the fruit fork in Spain cause they said OK but not as far as meat is 
concerned.
    Henrisch at the same time perhaps has some kind of a mishap cause 
perhaps the fork was pardoned during Selvo's service as doge for food 
not originating from animals but the general rule as I understand it was 
that God gave us fingers, natural forks, somewhere along the way as per 
the Church rulings. I don't know I don't have my RC cannon laws here - 
another failure trying to live in two different continents with split 
libraries. The Canon Laws are under my spouse's desk in Madrid and I am 
in Chile right now! But there should be a Cannon Law on this no?
    Further, the wedding could have been during Pietro I's  (976-978) 
term as doge or while Otto Oreseolo was in office (1009-1026) as far as 
I can see.
    Now I have another problem Alonso goes on to state that this "15th C 
wedding" was not with our Byzantine princess but with the sister of 
Ramon Agricola, a rich Venetian business man. I can no trace of Ramano 
but that Agricola is the name of a Greek princess and the bride in 
question is supposed to have married in 955 as opposed to the Byzantine 
bride of 1004. The father of the groom then would have been Pietro III 
Candie's son if it is true she married the doge's son.
    Whatever - a bride of a Venetian seems to have introduced the fork 
to Italy to eat all morsels meat or whatever but now we get into a messy 
affair cause it seems to have something do with the schism between the 
RC and the Orthodox Church in 1054 cause the RC's identified the fork 
with the devil's pitch fork as DA points out. Now I have a complete 
blank there. I can't remember what I was told by my profs in college as 
far as the reasons for the schism  is concerned but I certainly don't 
remember that forks caused the fork in the road. (Interesting side light 
as the Pope right now is trying to negotiate to reunite the two Churches 
when I can't remember why the cause for the split in the first place.)
    In short the more I read the more I don't know. Can someone 
straighten me out???
Suey