Why Italians Love to Talk About Food (10 page)

The Council of Trent had been announced in 1545, five years before the start of the sessions. These five years were devoted to preparations for the event. Little by little lodging and accommodations in the city were found for hundreds of functionaries from the Holy See, the Jesuit Order, the congregations and monastic orders, and for the ambassadors of all the episcopates and the nuncios of all the dioceses and Christian churches on the planet, not to mention the numerous individuals employed in “security” at that time. Small wonder that the city experienced a tumultuous economic and gastronomic renaissance during these years.

Rich folklore and literature show us that prelates and monks appreciated a good table and were able to skillfully evade the precepts of fasting and abstinence (see “Calendar”). Parish priests as well as pontiffs were targets of irony. Memorable in this regard is the sonnet “La cucina der papa” (the Pope's kitchen) by Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli:

 

It so happened that the cook appeared
this morning and invited me to visit
the most Holy Kitchen. Kitchen?
Some kitchen! I'd call it a seaport.

 

Vats, basins, pots and pans,
Sides of veal and slabs of beef,
chickens, eggs, milk, fish, herbs, pork,
plump game and all kinds of special dishes.

 

Say I: Well, cheers, Holy Father!
Says he: And you haven't seen the pantry yet,
where there's just as much of God's grace.

 

Say I: Oh well, excuse me, poor man!
Does he have some Eminence dining with him?
No, no—says the cook—the Pope always dines alone.

 

Not just the intellectuals, but the ladies of fine society also made witty remarks about the subject, as we know from Goethe:

 

Throughout the meal, the mischievous lady on my left did not leave the clergy in peace for a moment. During Lent, the fish is served in forms which make it look like meat, and this gave her inexhaustible opportunities for making irreverent and unseemly comments. She made great play with the expressions “a liking for flesh” and “a fleshly liking,” saying that one ought at least to enjoy the form, even though the substance was forbidden.
³

 

What with an obsession for the rules of fasting and an obvious attraction to the sins of gluttony, an opulent and substantial meatless cuisine was developed in Trento that outshone the local game-based traditions.

On days when meat was permitted, prelates were also served capercaillies (large grouse), fallow deer, chamois (antelope), and roe deer. The papal cook Bartolomeo Scappi, the “secret” (personal) chef who served the high-ranking hierarchies of the Council for its entire period, wrote about it. But since days of abstinence, according
to the Catholic rules, make up nearly half the year, and since the clergy, willingly or not, was forced to respect the rules of the Church during the conference, dishes based on flour, milk, and vegetables still prevail today in the daily life of the Trentino. In these areas meat very rarely ends up in a casserole. Fish is hardly ever included in the meatless diet of the Trentino, or, if fish is used, it is freshwater fish (since the sea is far away). The cod purposely imported for Lent (stockfish and
baccalà
) is an exception.

Meat is therefore scarce in the typical dishes of the Trentino and South Tyrol, replaced by a variety of interesting flour-based specialties. The best oven-baked products were invented in the monasteries, where breads were made for daily distribution to the poor (a practice prescribed by the Church). The varieties and types of bread, a ritual element of domestic life, symbolically recounted the health, prosperity, and composition of the family. In the Trentino (more precisely in the Benedictine abbey of Monte Maria in Burgusio, in Val Venosta) a kind of family loaf was invented, baked as a “couple” in a single pan: the traditional Ur-Paarl rye bread, shaped as a figure eight. Each spouse had to eat half of it. For widows and widowers, a ring loaf was made instead. Similar double loaves are known in other national cuisines as well, for example, the Jewish challah. The best and most well-known types of South Tyrolean bread are called
Vorslag
and
Schüttelbrot
.

The grainy magnificence of the cuisine of the Trentino comes not only from oven-baked products, but also from pastas and, above all, from the renowned
canederli
(dumplings). Sometimes dishes are given names that involve some teasing of the clergy (e.g., the dumplings called
strangolapreti
, or priest-chokers). The dough of the
canederli
may also include potatoes, as in the case of sweet
canederli
. In preference to the five different varieties of potato that grow in Italy (the Avezzana of Abruzzi, the Agata of Emilia Romagna, the Tuscan and Ligurian Pastagialla, and the Viterbese of Lazio), the Trentinese clearly favor the Austrian variety that bears the name Sieglinde.

The main vegetables in this region, which is considered Nordic, are the same as those in Russia: potatoes and cabbage. Moreover, the Trentinese even prepare cabbage and cucumbers for the winter in
salamoia
(pickling brine), without vinegar! It is a practice that is quite widespread in Russia but absolutely inconceivable in other parts of Italy.

The Trentino is famous for its excellent red wines (Südtiroler Lagrein, Teroldego, Marzemino, Trentino Cabernet), and the most famous enological school in Italy, founded in 1874, is located in this region, in San Michele all'Adige. Besides wine, beer is also often present on tables in the Trentino, another indication of the Austrian influence on the local population's customs.

 

The concept of Italy as a locus of continual movement, a place of transit and at the same time a point of arrival, has a fifteen-hundred-year history.

The major communication routes of the Mediterranean passed through Italy. But the most important thing is that from the eighth to the twelfth century the road leading to the Holy Land ran through its territory. Then, starting in the thirteenth century, Italy became not simply a country for all the world's Christians to pass through on the way to Jerusalem, but a destination for religious pilgrimages in and of itself. In 1240 Pope Gregory IX proclaimed an indulgence for anyone who had prayed a determined number of times in the basilicas of St. Peter and St. Paul. And starting in the fourteenth century, after the fall of the last bastion of Christianity in the East, St. John of Acre, in May 1291, urgings to come to Rome completely replaced prior recommendations to visit the Holy Sepulchre. And though for Dante the theme of the pilgrim remains linked to Palestine, Rome nevertheless wasted no time in transforming itself into the “New Jerusalem” for the faithful. Sacred relics, both from the Holy Land and from Constantinople, were transferred to Rome. Every Christian was expected to go to Rome at least once, preferably on foot, along special pilgrimage routes, to visit the
mirabilia urbis
, the venerable relics housed in the seven famous churches: San Pietro in Vaticano (St. Peter's), San Giovanni in Laterano (St. John Lateran), Santa Maria Maggiore (St. Mary Major), San Paolo fuori le Mura (St. Paul Outside the Walls), Santa Croce in Gerusalemme (Holy Cross in
Jerusalem), San Lorenzo fuori le Mura (St. Lawrence Outside the Walls), and San Sebastiano (St. Sebastian).

By Alexey Pivovarov

The first Christian jubilee was proclaimed in 1300, at a time that was quite propitious for establishing a ritual that would unify all Christians. The end of the thirteenth century had generated widespread calamity in Europe, more or less like the turmoil that had occurred in the year 1000. Struck by famine and poverty, people were anticipating the apocalypse and an ascetic mood prevailed everywhere. Among the monastic congregations was the Franciscan Order, which assigned the most prestigious place in the social hierarchy to the poor and disenfranchised. These circumstances gave rise to a new concept of the absolution of sins. Those who could not pay the contribution for future beatitude while still alive could walk to Rome in the year 1300, to participate in the solemn processions and celebrations. A papal bull issued on February 22 promised the complete remission of sins to those who would pray each day, for four weeks that year, in the Roman basilicas of St. Peter and St. Paul.