[Sca-cooks] Horseflesh in Early Period NW Europe?

Terry Decker t.d.decker at att.net
Mon Mar 15 16:53:24 PDT 2010


Horse sacrifice and the ritual consumption of the horse appear to be part of 
an Indo-European fertility rite which apparently carries down into the pagan 
rituals of the various horse migration peoples.  One finds related rituals 
among the Irish, the Norse (Hervarar saga) and in the Vedic ashvamedha. 
Apparently the pagan German tribes of the 8th and 9th Centuries were still 
practicing their form of the ritual and the papal edict against hippophagy 
appears to have been meant to create a sharp divide and definition between 
the Christians and the pagans among the Germans.

The dispensation for Iceland likely has to do with fact that survival there 
was marginal for centuries and that horsemeat was necessary to the survival 
of the Icelanders.  As to the rest, God's in his heaven and the Pope far 
away.  Eat what you must to insure survival.

Bear

> Hippophagy - I never knew there was a specific term for it.
> Is there one for eating dog? Canophagy? (no Latin here).
> Both are pretty emotionally charged topics.
> Other animals were used/eaten sacrificially, I wonder what caused the 
> church
> to ban horse specifically? Logistically it is probably more cost effective
> to raise other animals to eat so maybe it was a "safe" thing to ban? Was
> there dispensation to eat them if you were starving, or in a siege or
> something?
>
>
> That said, I would have to be reaaaaallly hungry to eat cat.
> Randell Raye.




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