THE PLACE OF SPAIN IN EUROPEAN NUTRITIONAL THEORY OF THE 16th CENTURY
Ken Albala
History Department
University of Pacific
Stockton, CA 95211
It is evident that people's attitudes toward food are to a great extent determined or conditioned by ideas imposed upon them by the medical profession. It is equally true that nutritional theory is itself informed by the fears and prejudices of the culture that supports and patronizes the medical authorities. For example, in modern American culture, a widespread recognition of the hazardous effects of a diet high in saturated fats both influences people's daily food choices and is itself bolstered, if not generated by, people's fear of actually growing fat. Theory is shaped by cultural attitudes.
Recognizing this symbiosis of culture and ideas about food, this paper will examine a brief episode in the history of nutrition in a country somewhat apart from the developments taking place elsewhere in Europe. The country is Spain in the period immediately preceding and following the infamous index of prohibited books promulgated and enforced definitively in 1559 by Philip II in a conscious effort to stave off the wave of Protestant and even merely humanistically-oriented texts from entering his staunchly orthodox kingdom. This had the effect, not only of keeping Protestantism at bay, but also a good number of new ideas entirely unconnected with religion.[1]
The questions I will attempt to answer include the following: Did this censorship effectively halt the development of nutritional theory in Spain by banning the importation of novel ideas and forbidding students from studying abroad? If so, how were Spanish attitudes toward food influenced by this increasing intellectual isolation? Secondly, in what ways did ideas and attitudes embedded in Spanish culture influence the formation of medical ideas concerning food and determine the nature of dietary literature in spite of the king's efforts to control the ideas of his subjects?
To answer these questions, I will discuss two texts, the only two major dietaries written by Spaniards and printed in Spain in the entire Renaissance. One was issued prior to the Index and the other after. By comparing their contents both to each other and to wider developments on the continent, the extent of Spanish isolation and the unique nature of their attitudes toward food will be explored.
The first text is El Vanquete de Nobles Cavalleros of 1530, here examined in its second edition of 1542 with the title Vergel de sanidad, composed by Luis Lobera de Avila.[2] The second text is the Regimento y Aviso de sanidad by Francisco Nuflez de Oria[3] which was first published in Madrid in 1569 also under the title Vergel de Sanidad, but here examined in the later edition of 1586.
Before proceeding with Lobera, it should be mentioned that in the Middle Ages, Spain had often been at the forefront of the effort to recover ancient Greek medical texts. These had usually come by way of Arabic translations and commentaries written in preceding centuries across the Islamic world and often within Moorish Spain before the conquest. In the 12th century Spain had been one of the crucial vectors for the transmission of Galenic humoral medicine. Such figures as Gerard of Cremona active in Toledo were busy translating from Arabic to Latin some of the key medical and dietary texts such as the Canon of Avicenna, the Liber as Almansorem of Rhazes and the dietary writings of the Jewish scholar Isaac Israeli. These would later become the cornerstones of the medical curriculum at universities. Thus nutritional theory in the late middle ages was essentially Greek with a heavy Arabic accent, and profoundly influenced by Islamic food preferences.
It is no coincidence that in this period, medieval cuisine favors many imported eastern products such as spices, sugar, dried fruit, citrus and pomegranates, almond milk and rosewater- all fundamentally Isalmic ingredients that become the favorites of medieval cooking and cuisine. They all play a significant role in the dietary literature as late as the end of the 15th century. They are featured prominently in Platina's well-known De honesta voluptate as well as most other dietary works of the period.[4]
However, by the time we reach the 1530s when Lobera's Spanish dietary was published, most of Europe had been swept up by an effort to recover Greek texts in their original language and issue them in new translations free from the intrusion of Arabic corruptions and purged of the barbarisms introduced by medieval Latin scholars. This essentially humanist movement, centered first in Italy and later in Paris and elsewhere-often called the Galenic revival, and its adherents "Hellenists" as opposed to "Arabists" - was primarily concerned with maintaining the stature of Galen and Hippocrates as the sole authorities in medicine. One noticeable effect this had on the dietary literature was the increasing excision of eastern flavorings from inclusion in the health-promoting diet.
Regarding the humanist texts, there were no specific restrictions on the entry of the new Hellenist medicine into Spain, and some Spaniards had even traveled to Italy to be at the center of the movement. The anatomist Juan Valverde, who studied with Reidus Columbus in Padua, is a prime example of a Spanish Hellenist, who revealingly when he came to write his own dietary had it published in Paris and Venice in 1552 and 1553.[5]
Returning to Lobera, there was significantly no reason why he should have been ignorant of the Galenic revival, either in 1530 or when his work was reissued in 1542 or down to his death in 1551 when a third incarnation of his dietary theories appeared as the Libro del Regimento.[6] Strangely enough, even a German edition appeared in 1556 as Banket der Hofe und Edelleut published in Frankfurt by the Christian Egenolffs firm which had also published in the same year one of the more popular Hellenist dietaries, the verse De tuenda bona valetudine of Elius Eobanus Hessus.
Yet Lobera's work remains thoroughly Arabist, and in its general tome, the type of recommendations it offers, and even in the specific details it reads not unlike a dietary of the late middle ages. Not that there weren't many Arabist apologists remaining throughout Europe. Even Cardano in many aspects retains ideas derived from Aviccenna and the Canon remained on the curriculum in many universities.[7] But in the dietary literature Lobera is the very last to cling to Arabist ideas, a full forty years after the last major Arab-influenced author has written. Lobera's contemporaries elsewhere in Europe had become without exception Hellenists[8] and even if they had not totally abandoned Arabic authorities, they certainly made use of the new revised and complete Galen.
Perhaps because of the relatively early composition of El Vanquete in 1530, and being written on the road in Augsburg while Lobera was court physican to Charles V, this meant that the author had no opportunity of seeing the new editions of Hippocrates coming from the Aldine Press in Venice after 1525. Nor might he have seen the work of English humanists like Thomas Linacre, though Lobera had apparently been in England too.[9] Whether Lobera had access to the new works or not, or whether he chose to ignore them in 1530 and in subsequent editions is not important.
More significant is the fact that a Spanish author, on his own volition and without any official coercion, remained traditional in his medical outlook, and it appears that this was a calculated decision to cater to a specific audience, in this case courtly. His dietary is explicitly written for "los cavalleros y senores assi de Espana y de Francia y de Allemana como de Italia, y otras partes usan agora y tienen mucho en costumbre de hazer se los unos a los otros banquetes y bever autun que agora..."[10]
Why would a courtly readership of the cosmopolitan kind following Charles V want an Arabist dietary? I would argue that it is because the Arabist and late medieval position is far less restrictive and guilt-laden than the Hellenist theories. Lobera does, in fact, warn against too great a diversity of foods, which courtiers are particularly prone to while sitting at the sumptuous tables of kings and emperors.[11]
But, in general, his dietary is relatively easy-going, giving simple guidelines concerning what order to eat foods, what time is best to eat and whether the afternoon or evening meal should be larger, which wines should accompany which foods. Incidentally, those foods harder to digest, like fish, require stronger wines in his opinion. These are all standard issues in the dietary literature; what is significant is that he is not dogmatic or strict, nor does he say anything likely to upset his courtly readers.
For example, he advises "persons with weighty business, nobles of great estate, should avoid frequent use of cow and oxen flesh, especially old, or if they do eat it, let it be in little pieces and in small quantity, or with some mustard sauce."[12]
Most importantly, the ultimate criterion in deciding which foods are best is the individual's own taste, an idea directly from Avicenna and usually quoted in Latin as "quod sapit nutrit" or what tastes good is nourishing. In Spanish, Lobera relates "y su abilidad de sabor: son convenientes a los cuerpos humanos. Todo manjar quanto es mas sabroso, tanto mas delectable y a los cuerpos humanos mas conveniente. Y quanto es apartado del sabor tanto menos delectable y menos conveniente a la natura humana."[13]
Again, for banquet-going courtiers this is exactly the sort of advice they want to hear, precisely the same that Platina gave the Roman court in the 1470s, that Manfredi gave the Este in Ferrara, that benedict of Nursia gave the Sforza. Revealingly, no one else in the early 16th century offers similar advice. The very last was Symporien Champier whose Rosa Gallica was written for the French court in 1514. But elsewhere in Europe, by the mid-16th century, the dietary writers were no longer employed at court. In this case it seems that the audience determined the nature of the advice.
Another curious feature of Lobera's work is that it is written in both Spanish and Latin. There were other works translated from vernacular into Latin, or visa versa, but none other in two languages. And Lobera's Latin text is not merely a translation of the Spanish. In fact, they are separate works on the exact same topic. The Spanish, in beautiful black-letter gothic, is simpler and clearly written for the noble not quite fluent in Latin. The Latin text, which surrounds the Spanish like a biblical commentary, is far more extensive and specialized. On some pages two or three Spanish words are engulfed by Latinity. And it is only in the Latin that we find some evidence of familarity with the Greek authors, though here he usually tries to reconcile Greek and Arabic sources, which would no doubt have only confused his vernacular readers.
Who exactly the intended Latin audience might have been is not entirely clear. Medical practioners seem good candidates, though at times the advice is geared explicitly toward priests. Take for example his discussion of anaphrodisiac technqiues like "submerging the member of generation into freezing cold water" or the use of a perforated lead sheath to the same effect.[15]
Another odd feature about Lobera's dietary is that it makes not one single reference to New World foods. Admittedly the works of Nicholas Monardes discussing foods and medicines from the Americas did not appear until 1536, and then the famous Dos Libros (Two Books about all things that are brought from the West Indies) not until 1565. but we might at least expect a word about products which learned people around Eurpoe had heard about. Most dietary authors an the continent, incidentally, condemn the new foods as utterly inappropriate to nourish Europeans.[16]
Ultimately why Lobera chose not to discuss these foods can not be determined, but certainly his adherence to Arabist authorities meant that no learned sources could be cited, and he would basically have been forced to go out on a limb and venture an independent, unsubstantiated opinion. The opinion, if following the basic guidelines of humoral physiology, would probably have been one likely to upset his noble readers as well. They might just have ended up in the Americas forced to eat these products. Perhaps this, too, was a safe omission.
Finally, was Lobera's conservatism part and parcel of Spanish backwardness, a reluctance to consider novelty? Was it perhaps the result of his traditional scholastic training at Salamanca? I would say neither. It was merely the concerns of an elite and luxurious court that made the Arabist line far more palatable. In this case theory was shaped by culture, and the widespread publication of this work in several editions meant that readers of Spanish were stuck with what is essentially still a late medieval work.
When we turn to the dietary of Francisco Nunez de Oria, we are in an entirely different cultural milieu. His work is definitely not directed toward a courtly audience. In fact, he has nothing but scathing remarks for his contemporaries who wallow in luxury and excess. Unlike Lobera, he is also very sensitive to the social meaning of foods-which are commonly eaten by nobles and which by the poor. His remarks suggest that he includes himself in neither category. For example, in discussing Langoustines he says "they are not disfavored, nor a bad aliment and are even placed on the tables of grandees" while merluz (cod) "arc not admitted on the tables of courtiers because they are a vulgar food."18 he also mentions that tuna "is used much among the senores and grandees, and is a dish worthy of the Emperor."[19]
Presumably to avoid making enemies in great places, Nunez rarely criticizes Spanish noblemen in particular, but he has no reservations concerning foreign nobles. In that respect the tenor of his work is quite different from that of the very cosmopolitan courtly Lobera. This work is purely Spanish, and borders on the xenophobic. For example, Nunez mentions that the French courtiers are so obscenely fashion-conscious that they imitate whatever the king does, even if he eats something vile and common.[20] Interestingly, although Nunez does have extensive comments about the eating habits of foreigners and ancient peoples, they seem mostly to be taken from a few recently published texts, most frequently Bruyerin-Champier (De re cilbaria-Lyons, 1560) which had clearly not been held back from the censors. The much earlier authors Platina and Gazius, whom he mentions several times[21] could easily have been imported in previous years. But apart from these few names, Nunez, too, seems for the most part oblivious to the developments on the contienent. His opinions are still overwhelmingly Arabist and he most frequently cites Avicenna, Haliabbas and Isaac. There are a few times when he mentions Paul of Aegina and Aetius of Amida, who were recently recovered Byzantine authors,[22] but his use of these authors is very superficial and seems to be used merely to impress. His real mentors are the Arabic authors, and the most decisive evidence of this is his preference for cabrito (kid) as the healthiest of meats following Avicenna, and Isaac evidence of this is his preference of cabrito (kid) as the healthiest of meats following Avicenna, and Isaac who claimed it was the best of quadruped.[23] Hellenists almost always opt for veal and chicken as the best meats, after remarking of course on the similarity of pork to human flesh, a citation taken directly from Galen.
What accounts for this continued dependence on the Arabic authorities long after all other European dietary writers had abandoned them, and had even begun to move beyond the orthodox Galenic line? What accounts for Spain being so seriously left behind? In this case a particular audience and its own tastes can not be held accountable, but more the conscious closing of the Spanish mind to outside influences by Philip II by means of increasing stringent indexes.
It may seem odd that the attempt to preserve Catholic orthodoxy should even touch upon medical texts, but the association according to the inquisitors was clear. If Erasmian and Humanist ideas could hatch the Lutheran Reformation which rent northern Europe from the bosom of the mother church and ultimately from salvation, then all humanist thought was suspect, as were the works of heretical authors whatever field they happened to be writing in. Not that medical texts were specifically put on the index. Some, like the works of Paracelsus were, but they were also explicitly heterodox. I would say it was more an atmosphere of suspicion and mistrust of outside ideas, that was peculiar to Spain in the second half of the 16th century, that forced authors to take a conservative, reactionary attitude toward new ideas.
I say peculiar to Spain because Nunez's exact contemporary Hugo Fridacvallis in The Lowlands and sharing the same king as Nunez, is nonetheless worlds away intellectually. Fridaevallis had completely absorbed Galen and Greek medicine direct from its source, as is evident in his De tuenda sanitate of 1568 published by the humanist printer Plantin. He claims that Galen is the Homer of medicine, the source of all following writers.[24] Nunez, on the other hand, follows much the same authorities as Lobera, and mostly cites the Galenic works which were already known in the middle ages. In this case, once again, it is culture which influences the development or stagnation of ideas, and the state of medical theory which eventually can influence people's actual food choices.
A comparable situation would be if a state in the 19th century broke away from the Union, and somehow closed its doors to outside ideas and never found out about vitamins in the early 20th century.
The situation in Spain is similar, for while Italy, France, England and the Germanic countries continue to produce dietaries well into the 17th century: texts which increasingly overcome strict Galenic orthodoxy and begin to think about nutrition in new ways. These texts are ultimately a prelude to the entirely innovative ideas of the scientific revolution, but Spain does not experience it, at least not yet. Nunez's is the last dietary work written in Spain in this entire era. It was reissued, but no new dietaries appeared in the next century, which means that without the stepping stone of recovering then overcoming Galen, Spain is for the time being left out of the scientific revolution.
This is not to say that Nunez's work is entirely unoriginal and devoid of interest. His discussion of New World foods is particularly extensive, and unlike his contemporaries elsewhere who usually after trying to make sense of new foods using the humoral system eventually end up condemning them outright, Nunez is merely content to describe. He discusses potatoes found by Columbus on Hispaniola, and bread made from cassava or yucca.[25] He also remarks "in those Spanish islands called New Spain, they have a seed that's called Maize, of which they have bread more suave than of wheat."[26] The Spaniards there were apparently of the opinion that it was not as nourishing as wheat bread, but without an authoritative physician to fall back on, he gives no definitive opinion.
Thus, ironically enough, while hampering the development of new ideas in general, Nunez's still basically medieval theoretical stance makes him more open to new foods than his contemporaries elsewhere. If what tastes good is nourishing, as Avicenna said, then why not eagerly embrace the panophy of new products arriving from the Americas? He suggests that colonists living on native produce eventually have no trouble accustoming themselves gradually to the new foods. In the rest of Europe it would take some time for the new products to be accepted, and this may have been, in part, because of theoretical considerations. Certainly the dietaries are unequivocal in their condemnation.
Another interesting consequence of this intellectual lag is that nutritional theory was exported from Spain to the New World and subsequently melded with Aztec ideas which were vaguely assimilatable to the humoral system. It was, however, still Arabist ideas that were brought by the colonists, and which apprently still exist throughout South America as part of folk medicine and popular ideas about nutrition.
In conclusion, these two examples of how nutritional ideas can be effected by cultural attitudes, sometimes in obvious ways and sometimes in less obvious, provides a caveat. We should be equally alert to the ways that our own cultural attitudes, political and social forces, and strange prejudices shape our own nutrition theories.
END NOTES
| 1. | Paracelsus in the field of chemistry and medicine is a good example of this. See Allen G. Debus, "Paracelsus and the Delayed Scientific Revolution in Spain" in Reading the Book of Nature, ed. Allen G. Debus and Michael T. Walton (Kirksville Missouri, Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1998) Also Josň Maria LÖpez Pišero, Ciencia y Tňcnica en la Sociedad Espašola des los silglos XVI y XVII (Barcelona: Editorial Labor, 1979. |
| 2. | Luis Lobera de Avila, Vergel de sanidad (Alcala de Henares: Joan de Brocar, 1542) |
| 3. | Francisco Nušez de Oria, Regimiento y aviso de sanidad, que trato de todos alimantos y del regimiento della. (Medina del Campo: Francisco del Canto, 1586). |
| 4. | See for example, Antonius Grazius, Corona florida medicinae (Venice: Gregorius de Gregoriis, 1491); Girolamo Manfredi. Libro de homine, 1474, 1st ed. or Opera Nuova intitulata il perche (Venetia: Zorgi di Rusconi, 1512; Benedictus de Nursia, Opus ad sanitatis conservationem (Rome: Lignamine, 1475). |
| 5. | Juan Valverde, De animi et corporis sanitate tuenda libellus (Lutetiae: Apud Carolum Stephanum, 1552). Valverde most frequently cites Hippocrates, Galen and Celsus and practically no one else. He should thus be considered a Hellenist, despite his avowed aim to correct Vesalius' anatomical errors. |
| 6. | Josň Maria LÖpez Pišero, Introduction to facsimile edition of El Vaquete of Lobera (Madrid, Ministerio de Sanidad y Consumo, 1991). |
| 7. | Nancy Siraisi, The Clock and the Mirror (Princeton University Press, 1997). |
| 8. | Just to mention a few of the names of Hellenist nutrition writers across Europe: Elyot (1541) and Boorde (1542) in England; Menapius (1540) and Pictorius (1544) in Basle; Etienne (1550) and Calanius (1550) in France. Even Paulus Kyr (1551) in Transylvania. |
| 9. | LÖpez Pišero, Introduction. |
| 10. | Lobera, fol.1. |
| 11. | Lobera, fol. 1. "En un buen b„queteha de aver muchas frutas de pricipio y cosas de leche ye queso y mucha diversidad de carnes. . . y todo de diversas maneras guisado cÖ m„teca y vino y vinagre y todo genero de salsas y pasteles." |
| 12. | Lobera, fol. xi. |
| 13. | Lobera, fol. livo. The author says much the same in the following passage about fish: "Et etiam oportet multurn considerare amicabilitatem gustus, nam quoniam cibus est multul delectabilis, lesio superveniens non est multum manifesta, nam qd melius sapit, melius nutrit, datur enim gustus proter alimentum." fol. lxxvii. |
| 14. | Svmphorien-Chamoier. Rosa Gallica. 1514. 2nd ed. (Paris: Iodoco Badio. 1518). |
| 15. | Lobera, fol. xviii. |
| 16. | See for example, Jean Bruyerin-Champier, De re cibaria (Lyons: Sebast. Honoratum, 1560), p. 54 and Charles Etienne, De nutrimentis (Paris: Robert Stephanus, 1550), p. 75. |
| 17. | This author should not be confused with Ludovico Nušos or Nonnius, also a Spaniard writing in Antwerp and immortalized on canvas by Rubens. This author was at the forefront of nutritional research in his Diaelecticon of 1627. |
| 18. | Nušez, p. 181 and 183vo. |
| 19. | Nušez, 184vo. |
| 20. | "En Francia el mantenimiento de los cortesanos y de los gr(des se regula por el exemplo del rey, por que se vee que si al Rey dan gusto mentenimientos viles y communes, luego todos los principes usan dellos, aunque los muy pobres no los quiran gustar." Nušez, p.12vo. |
| 21. | Nušez, pp. 106, 114vo. |
| 22. | These would have been the Aldine editions of Paul of Aegina in 1528 and Conarius' translation of Aëtius in 1542. These could have circulated in Spain before the Index. |
| 23. | Nunez, p. 91vo. |
| 24. | Hugo Fridaevallis, De tuenda sanitate (Antwerp: Christopher Plantin, 1568), p. 15. |
| 25. | Nunez, p. 40 and 40vo. |
| 26. | Nunez, p. 41. |
| 27. | Bernard R. Ortiz de Montellano, Aztec Medicine, Health and Nutrition. (Rutgers: University Press, 1990). |
