Food and Religious Identities in Spain, 1400-1600

Jillian Williams

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351817042
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: History of Religion

In the late fourteenth century, the Iberian Peninsula was home to three major religions which coexisted in relative peace. Over the next two centuries, various political and social factors changed the face of Iberia dramatically. This book examines this period of dynamic change in Iberian history through the lens of food and its relationship to religious identity. It also provides a basis for further study of the connection between food and identities of all types.

This study explores the role of food as an expression of religious identity made evident in things like fasting, feasting, ingredient choices, preparation methods and commensal relations. It considers the role of food in the formation and redefinition of religious identities throughout this period and its significance in the maintenance of ideological and physical boundaries between faiths.

This is an insightful and unique look into inter-religious dynamics. It will therefore be of great interest to scholars of religious studies, early modern European history and food studies.

1 Boundaries of faith

In fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Spain, it was common to display a leg of ham or a rasher of bacon in morisco homes as a symbol of assimilation into the Christian religion. With such medallas, meaning medals or badges, moriscos could say to neighbours, friends and family: We eat pork; we are Christian.¹ After all, refusal to eat pork was one of the most notable elements of Jewish and Muslim religious identity. At once private and public, food was a visible marker of identity that individuals of any religion could look to for indications of a person’s true faith. It was one of the primary methods for self-identification as a member of a certain group. Yet this identification was only valid if there was another group by which to define oneself against. Indeed, without the visibility of food behaviours, much of their significance would be lost. It was not enough to have eaten a religiously appropriate meal. It was also necessary to have done so in view of others, to proclaim one’s own identity among others who shared that identity. Boundaries made such proclamations possible.

The separateness desired by Muslim, Jewish and Christian scholars and authorities is evident in the numerous ways in which each group sought to maintain their identity. While ideological boundaries provided the starting point at which one religious group could separate its identity from another, beliefs were only meaningful through action. The setting of boundaries between religious groups was accomplished on many fronts, some more successful than others. Separation rooted in ideologies and beliefs were represented in the real world through physical, spatial and temporal boundaries. Food boundaries, in particular, allowed members of each religious group to recognise insiders and outsiders through visible actions.

Concerns presented in legislation regarding the appropriate boundaries among groups and the visible behaviours of outsider groups filtered down into everyday life, making these associations recognisable to the laity. Even Torquemada’s inquisitors in the late fifteenth century focused on the outward signs of belief. The demandas, or lists of charges which were used by prosecutors, included ceremonies related to the Sabbath, festivals and dietary laws.² These outward behaviours were viewed as undisputed signs of adherence to Judaism. As we will see in Chapters Three and Five, Inquisition trials were full of confessions regarding observance of Muslim and Jewish fasts and holy days as well as adherence to dietary regulations. Regulating such behaviour was difficult since so many of the food behaviours which Christian officials sought to control were performed in private spaces.

Concerned primarily with separation of religious groups, authorities on all sides sought to create a world in which boundaries among Christians, Jews and Muslims were clear, distinct and immovable. Rather than developing these boundaries in isolation, authorities found that they were required to respond to other faith groups, constructing and moving the acceptable limits of their own identity to ensure that the distinction between Us and Them was maintained. The blurring of lines which occurred during the mass conversions around 1391 and 1500 further complicated matters.

According to one of the expulsion edicts, given in Granada in March of 1492, Jews and conversos were guilty of instructing baptised Christians:

in the ceremonies and observances of their [Jewish] law … declaring to them the fasts they must keep … carrying to them and giving to them from their houses unleavened bread and meats ritually slaughtered, instructing them about the things from which they must refrain, as much in eating as in other things in order to observe their law.³

At the most basic level, the Granadan edict was concerned with the co-mingling of Christians and converted judaisers or unconverted Jews. It was the shared physical space, the close proximity of Jew and Christian, which allowed for a Jewish influence to permeate the lives of New Christians. Despite government efforts in 1488 to minimise the Jewish influence through the use of separated spaces, juderías, the continued interaction between the groups seemed inevitable.⁴ By creating such spatial boundaries, authorities hoped to diminish the types of contact among religious groups which allowed judaisers to inform people of upcoming fasts and festivals, teach them about dietary laws and provide them with unleavened bread and ritually slaughtered meats.⁵ Spatial boundaries also contributed to the maintenance of physical boundaries, specifically those which prohibited physical contact with individuals of other faiths as well as their foods. After all, eating was a form of contact with a religiously significant substance. It was this commensal interaction that through legislation and eventual expulsion, the Christian authorities sought to terminate. In short, a lack of rigid boundaries created opportunities for conversion.

As anthropologist Fiona Bowie cautions, ‘Too often what are taken as authentic or correct forms of religion are the representations of priestly elites, interested in what their religion ought to be, rather than how it is actually lived by the majority of adherents.’⁶ Indeed, legislation does not always describe actual behaviour. However, without an initial understanding of the idealised expectations presented in regulations, the meaning of actual behaviour cannot be appreciated. In medieval Spain, the authorities were keen to maintain ideological, spatial, physical and temporal boundaries between religious groups. Religious and secular legislation from the time supports this, as do the numerous dietary restrictions of each religious tradition which represented idealised food behaviours. The boundaries among groups were visible in the geography of cities and towns, the layout of marketplaces and the spaces inhabited by multifaith populations. It was also obvious in the numerous regulations against spatial proximity: Jews, Christians and Muslims were to maintain their separateness in physical space, paying particular attention to situations in which boundaries were normally relaxed, such as sharing a sexual encounter or even a meal.

Ingredients like meat, bread and wine were major elements in maintaining the religious identities of people in medieval Spain by defining ideological boundaries. This can be seen by examining the rules that each religion and secular government placed on the types of food which could be consumed as well as the acceptable times of consumption. This chapter will examine central religious texts and their ideological foundations in Islam, Judaism and Christianity. These will include the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, the writings of the Church Fathers, the Quran, the Midrash and medieval Jewish and Muslim responsa. In addition, the writings of late medieval scholars and religious authorities will be examined to understand the role of food in religious identity. Legislation and expectations provide useful starting points for subsequent chapters on the interpretation and practice of these expectations in daily life.

However, in this first chapter, the weight of the argument will fall on attempts to build and maintain boundaries between religious groups. Collectively, this chapter highlights two important elements of interfaith food relations. First, it demonstrates the idealised separateness of Christians, Muslims and Jews through legislation. Second, it will show that the various dietary prohibitions were practised by members of each religious group, were known by the other religious groups and were believed to be vital to religious identity. Finally, this chapter will argue that maintaining boundaries was of utmost importance to authorities from all three religious traditions. The setting of physical, spatial and temporal boundaries through legislation was based on ideological boundaries which emphasised religious intention, the appearance of superiority over other religious groups and the strictest possible separation among groups.

Early religious boundaries

The Bible and the Quran provide useful overviews of religious expectations. The secular and religious laws put forth throughout the medieval period were largely related to scriptural sources and spoke to the same issues regarding food behaviours. Religious identities in each of the faiths under discussion were based on their holy texts and the obligations and constraints presented within them. These identities, however, were also products of centuries of religious interaction among Christians, Muslims and Jews. Such relations were especially prominent during the tumultuous history of the Iberian Peninsula beginning as early as the Visigothic period. The necessary interaction and frequent conflict strained relations among faith groups. Throughout the medieval period, religious minorities were subject to a variety of treatments, ranging from toleration to forced conversions.

Almost as soon as Christianity recognised itself as a religion distinct from Judaism, efforts were made by its adherents to draw the borders around it. St John Chrysostom, writing in the fourth century, was fiercely opposed to self-identified Christians taking part in Jewish festivals and fasts. Indeed, Chrysostom placed Christianity and Judaism in direct opposition, arguing, ‚If the Jewish ceremonies are venerable and great, ours are lies. But if ours are true, as they are true, theirs are filled with deceit.’⁷

Undoubtedly, legislation showed a mutual understanding of religion in its most visible practices and rituals. Christian attempts to differentiate themselves from Jews, both in beliefs and in practices, were not uncommon. Food behaviours were a universal feature of this type of legislation, and these laws and regulations came to reflect the diversity of religious and social experience in a multifaith world. Around AD 300 the bishops at Elvira forbade eating with Jews, particularly at Passover (canons 1 and 50). At Laodicea (around AD 360), celebrating Jewish festivals was forbidden (canon 37) as well as eating unleavened bread at Passover (canon 38).⁸ The Council of Nicaea, in 325, aspired to maintain a uniform date for the observance of Easter among all Christians, an achievement which would also help to solidify their collective religious identity. However, it was not just this desire which led them to change the date of Easter. They also sought to distance the Christian observation of Easter from that observed by Jews. Constantine declared, ‘It appeared an unworthy thing that in the celebration of this most holy feast we should follow the practice of the Jews… . Let us then have nothing in common with the detestable Jewish crowd; for we have received from our Savior a different way.’⁹ Christians were forbidden from judaising by keeping the Sabbath at the fourth-century Council of Laodicea.¹⁰ More simply, the Sabbath observance was a Jewish practice, and it was un-Christian to observe it.

Several centuries later, more specific expectations were pla...