The Body and Society by Turner Bryan S;

Author:Turner, Bryan S;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 448461
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Published: 2008-04-18T04:00:00+00:00

He fasted long and often, and prayed nine times a day. Fancying dry bread too great an indulgence for so great a sinner as himself, he began to feed on potatoes, acorns, crabs, and grass; and often wished that he could live on roots and herbs. (James, 1929: 301–2)

Protestantism took monastic renunciation into the world of the lay person; it did not dismantle these traditional religious practices. Ascetic disciplines in both Catholicism and Protestantism were a system of rules of conduct to control the flesh by starvation and renunciation. Asceticism as a term comes from ‘asketes’ (monk) and ‘askeo’ (exercise): it is a regulated practice or regimen of the body. Although the Reformation in general transferred asceticism from the monastery to the home, there was also an important continuity between Catholic and Protestant disciplinary methods. In order to understand the history of diet for the laity, it is important to state one obvious but important point. Given the uncertainty of food supplies, and given the absence of any great variety in the availability of food for the peasantry through the mediaeval period, early dietaries were primarily directed at the upper classes of landlords and merchants. Although in the twelfth century the reign of King Henry I was a period of expansion in medical knowledge and technique, the king himself died of dietary mismanagement. Ignoring his physician’s advice for weight control, Henry feasted on lampreys and died from the resulting ill humours in Normandy in 1135: ‘Despite the removal of his intestines, brains, and eyes for separate burial at Rouen and the salting of the rest of his body for transport to entombment at Reading Abbey, his corpse still fouled the air’ (Kealey, 1981: 117). The regulation of royal bodies was seen to be in the interests of the social body; peasants were expendable. More precisely, food supplies for the peasantry between 1350 and 1550 were adequate, but there was a long-term decline, especially in the production of meat, until the middle of the nineteenth century. Thus, after

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