At the First Table by Jodi Campbell

Author:Jodi Campbell [Campbell, Jodi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: CKB041000 Cooking / History, HIS045000 History / Europe / Spain & Portugal, SOC026000 Social Science / Sociology / General
ISBN: 9780803296596
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Published: 2016-11-10T00:00:00+00:00

Resistance to Social Change

While a degree of social fluidity was advantageous to those who could work the system by acquiring valuable spices, setting an elegant table, and learning the finest points of etiquette, such changes were of course threatening to those who had always benefited from unquestioned hereditary privilege. Urban elites might successfully copy the appearance of nobility, but many found this artifice troubling; how was one to know who was truly noble? It was one thing for well-established men like Juan de Cuéllar or Diego Velázquez to penetrate the ranks of nobility but quite another for anyone to be able to perform the part. Writers began to complain in the 1530s that it was no longer possible to distinguish rank by appearance; similar protests appeared in the Cortes of Valladolid in 1537 and the Cortes of Madrid in 1551. The philosopher fray Alonso de la Cruz warned that “the merchant should be humble, not desiring to be the equal of the gentleman who has dukes for ancestors while he himself has only ducats,” while the doctor and philosopher Pedro de Mercado complained that “there is no one left who knows and moderates himself, in accordance with his potential and quality of person, but all men attempt to present themselves as if they were lords.”88 Mercado went on to narrate an example in which a finely dressed young student passed through the territories of the Count of Ureña and encountered the count himself three or four times but did not directly address him (as one of lower status was expected to do when meeting his superiors). The count finally stopped him to ask who he was and why he had not presented himself. The young man, embarrassed, begged the count’s forgiveness. The count replied that the young man was not at fault for his poor upbringing; rather, his camel-hair jacket was to blame for making him feel so superior. He demanded that the young man surrender his fine jacket, threw it on the ground, and trampled it under his horse’s hooves. The commentary in Mercado’s treatise following this example expressed great satisfaction at this outcome and agreed that justice like that of the count’s should be applied to everyone who tried to adopt an appearance that did not match his origins.89

Many early modern scholars (as well as traditional nobles) shared this view that status, as well as the dining habits that corresponded to it, should remain fixed. Not only should the socially ambitious be prevented from obtaining noble titles, but their behavior and appearance needed to be contained as well. The fourteenth-century Franciscan writer Eiximenis maintained the traditional Christian position that those with means were obliged to provide charity to the poor, especially in the form of food. Yet at the same time he warned that one should not reward one’s servants with food of high quality, lest they be tempted with the desire to rise above their station and become rebellious.90 And just as we have seen food work

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