Why Italians Love to Talk About Food (27 page)

Giordano Bruno, burned at the stake by the Inquisition in February 1600 in Campo de' Fiori in Rome, is the author of a 1584 treatise,
La cena delle ceneri
(The Ash Wednesday supper), in which Copernican astronomy is extolled. To understand the meaning of the title, and the distinctiveness of the typically Italian way of conducting a philosophical dialogue, we must remember that Ash Wednesday—the first day of Lent for the Catholic Church—is so named because on that day the priest puts ashes (obtained from burning the palm fronds from the previous year's Palm Sunday) on the foreheads of the faithful, accompanying the gesture with the words: “Remember, man, that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return” (Genesis 3:19). The Catholic rite has distant biblical origins: covering the head with ashes as a sign of penitence, and practicing both fasting and abstinence on that day.

The opening of
La cena delle ceneri
recounts a supper held in an English home, during which Giordano Bruno and his hosts begin a philosophical discourse. Giordano Bruno was used to a certain tradition that in Italy, on Ash Wednesday, called for penitence at the table, true, but in serene conviviality, marked by gentle melancholy. The English custom, instead, contrasted greatly with all that. The essayist and poet Baron Dudley North (1581–1666) attests to the English rules of conduct on this first day of Lent in the book
Forest of Varieties
(1645), noting that in the English church the ancient ritual of hair shirt and ashes on Ash Wednesday was accompanied by the reading of public maledictions against unrepentant sinners, with the faithful repeating “Amen” after each malediction. Baron North adds that many on this day tried to stay away from church, so as not to hear the maledictions mouthed by their neighbors, and children who did not wear a somber, dispirited look at school were taunted and beaten by their companions.

 

One might suppose that, finding himself in England, Giordano Bruno was aware of the conflict that underlay the English concept of Ash Wednesday and for this reason chose that very day for a work whose principal theme was disputation. Nevertheless, because he brought a typically Italian approach to the religious calendar, he knew that in Italy, on the day following the end of Carnival, banquets were held in any case, while still observing the requirement of abstinence, since everyone intended the supper to be an agape (love feast) with strong religious significance, even in its renunciation.

The tradition of the Lenten banquet is still maintained today in certain localities, for example in Lazio, in the village of Gradoli. A confraternity works all year to organize a
sagra
banquet, collecting “offerings for Purgatory.” Part of the money collected is used to redeem the souls languishing in Purgatory (see “
Pilgrims
”), and part of it buys food for the “Purgatory Dinner.” Only men can be members of the confraternity, while women have been allowed to take part in the banquet just since the 1950s. Generally speaking, the troupe at the Lenten supper preserves features of the ancient monastic confraternities. Within the group squads are formed: the first sees to the fish dishes, the second prepares the legume dishes (in the village a local specialty, the Gradoli lentil, is grown just for this purpose), and the third team handles egg-based dishes. All the dishes are meatless, in accordance with the precepts of the Catholic Church, but the expressions of the participants at the feast are not at all penitential.

Keeping in mind this Italian tradition of soothing conviviality, intended to lead the faithful pleasurably into the mood of the upcoming weeks of penance, it certainly seems as though Bruno's lexicon and all the symbology in his treatise were dictated by the Italian gastronomic code. Bruno begins by drawing upon terms of comparison from mythology and from history. He wants not only to place his interlocutors and readers in a convivial situation, but also to describe the particularitity of the upcoming banquet against the background of other celebrated and memorable ones:

 

This book is not a banquet of nectar for Jove the Thunderer, signifying majesty; not a protoplastic one for man's desolation; it is not the banquet of Ahasuerus for a mystery; not that of Lucullus for fortune, nor that of Lycaon for sacrilege; not that of Thyestes for tragedy; not that of Tantalus for torment; not that of Plato for philosophy; not that of Diogenes for
poverty; not that of leeches for a trifle; not that of the archpriest of Pogliano for Berni's satire; not that of Bonifacio Candelaio for comedy. But this is a banquet so great and small, so professorial and studentlike, so sacrilegious and religious, so joyous and choleric, so cruel and pleasant.
¹

 

And so Giordano Bruno, right in the opening phrases of the dialogue, draws from universal myths and historical testimonies all the possible occasions on which the protagonists of those myths dine. After which, almost as if to confirm our thoughts on the “gastronomic emblems” of Italian cities, he writes:

 

. . . so Florentine for its leanness and Bolognese for its fatness, so cynical and Sardanapalian, so trifling and serious, so grave and waggish, so tragic and comic that I surely believe there will be no few occasions for you to become heroic and humble; master and disciple; believer and unbeliever; cheerful and sad; saturnine and jovial; light and ponderous; miserly and liberal; simian and consular; sophist with Aristotle, philosopher with Pythagoras; laughter with Democritus and weeper with Heraclitus.
²

 

And further on, the metaphor of the banquet extends to the teaching of philosophy:

 

I mean that after you have sniffed with the Peripatetics, supped with the Pythagorians, drunk with the Stoics, there will still be something left over for you to suck with him who, showing his teeth, smiled so pleasantly that his mouth touched both ears. Indeed, by breaking the bone and extracting the marrow, you will find something that would make a dissolute of St. Colombino, Patriarch of the
Gesuati
, would petrify any market-place, make monkeys split their sides with laughter, and break the silence of any graveyard.
³

 

Thus the typically Italian love for culinary metaphors leads the dissident and heretical Bruno to express himself in line with Catholic tradition, whose religious calendar prescribes not so much what you must
do
on a certain day as what you must
eat
on that day.

The southern mentality, more closely bound to religious tradition, involves a rapport with food as an ever-conscious element, at all times meaningful in everyday ritual. The heroes of history and mythology are remembered as one along with objects or situations in some way intrinsic to food:

 

Why do you think that old Homer
has been read and reread for so long?
Maybe
so that by casting our thoughts
in the footsteps of that noble intellect,
they'll travel a thousand miles away,
from one marvel to another?

 

What an idea! not in the least!
You know why we like the bitter battle
of Troy, and why we like the
Odyssey
?
Because every so often the table is set;
because Ulysses and the others, at the proper
time and place, can be both heroes and cooks.

 

Socrates, who was so revered
and who so honors human reason,
if you were to read the Banquet
of Xenophon and that of Plato,
you would see that he taught his philosophy
among platters and feasting.

 

The Bible is full of tasty delights:
our father Adam for an apple
committed the first folly,
and infused a rose between man's teeth.
If he gambled the garden for an apple
what won't we do for a turkey?

 

The poem, entitled “Brindisi” (Toast), was written by Giuseppe Giusti in 1843. With his liberal revolutionary thinking mixing the sacred and the profane, Giusti went so far as to compose variations that were decidedly blasphemous:

 

Moving on then from the Old Testament
to review the stories of the New,
charges, offices, more than one sacrament,
parables, precepts, examples, I find
(if you ignore a miracle here and there)
that Christ performed them all at suppers.

 

It seems that that superhuman mind
preferred taste and appetite;
as was seen at the wedding of Cana:
when at the height the wine ran out,
he with his noble, divine power
changed water to wine on the spot.

 

And as a final proof, the place chosen
to serve God as a receptacle,
which by the Jews was called ark,
Holy of Holies and Tabernacle,
is called ciborium by the Christians,
a word taken from the refectory.

 

. . . Therefore it seems that we believers
in the Father, the one in the middle, and the Son
are destined to drink and eat heartily,
and keep a napkin on our knees;
and if this seems like heresy to you,
allow me to say it: So be it.

 

Extremes have much in common. The most impudent blasphemy here probably reveals a surprising steadfastness of principles affirmed by religion. What's more, seeing food everywhere, paying attention to every detail of the gastronomic code, means being a true Italian, an exemplary product of Catholic upbringing.

Italy is characterized by a rather suspicious attitude toward the jovial, full-blooded way of life of northern Europe, that Bruegelian lavishness which knows nothing of fasting. Not dogged about fasting, but moderate about eating (see “The Mediterranean Diet”), refined and exacting, Italy mistrusts abundance, seeing it as an imprecise approach whose intent is to compensate with quantity for a lack of quality. It is no accident that Mussolini's propaganda in the years of the Fascist Ventennio created an image of the enemy (the British) with the slogan “The people who eat five meals.” The giant who sits at the table five times a day (breakfast, lunch, five o'clock tea, dinner, and supper) made the “sober” Italians shudder. People from the north, who ingest meat, milk, butter, beer,
⁴
and vodka, are still today perceived as different from the those of the south, brought up on wine and olive oil, nourished with wheat, vegetables, and fruits.

It bears repeating that the chief feature of the Italians' attitude toward food is an ongoing quest. What to eat (see “
Ingredients
”)? Where to eat (see “
Restaurants
”)? How to combine different foods (see “
Pasta
”)? How to prepare them (see “
Preparation Methods
”)?

And, finally, at what moment of life should a certain dish be eaten?

The answer to this last question has always come from the religious calendar, which formalizes and ritualizes the lives of Italians by dividing the days of the year into two categories: those on which certain foods are prohibited, and those on which other foods are prescribed.

Let's begin with the prohibitions, the requirements for abstinence and fasting. Undoubtedly a demographic policy was at the heart of all the fasts that excluded wine and meat from the population's daily life, in accordance with the teaching of Saint Paul:
Si vis perfectus esse, bonum est vinum non bibere et carnem non manducare
(If thou wilt be perfect, it is well not to drink wine or eat flesh)—namely, a desire, on the part of the Church, to limit liberal sexual behavior as much as possible.

In the chapter “
Lazio and the City of Rome
,” we tell how in Italy laymen as well as members of the clergy contrived to get around such prohibitions, or more accurately, to observe them shrewdly, without depriving themselves of the joys of the table and other kinds of pleasures. There have never been extremely rigid fasts anywhere in Italy, or so it seems, except at times among the monks. Two orders distinguished themselves for their austerity among the other monastic communities: the Franciscans, whose order was formed at the beginning of the thirteenth century, and two centuries later, the followers of Francesco di Paola (1416–1507), a reclusive anchorite and ascetic, and spiritual guide to Louis XI, king of France. In truth, it should be observed that with respect to the total number of monks living and operating in Italy, those who practiced such fasting were few. Fasting was observed much more strictly in other European countries. The historian Fernand Braudel reports that in France, at the time of Louis XIV (seventeenth century), it was forbidden to sell meat, eggs, and poultry during Lent (except to the sick, upon presentation of two certificates: one from the priest and one from the doctor). In Italy, on the other hand, it was not state officials who safeguarded the order, but specially designated representatives of the guilds and municipal administrations (this aspect is analyzed in the chapter on food in Iris Origo's splendid study of medieval daily life,
The Merchant of Prato: Francesco di Marco Datini
). According to several communal statutes, the citizens could not eat meat on Friday and Saturday.