FOOD IN MEDIEVAL TIMES
In addition to the Christian majority medieval Europe was also
home to a sizeable Jewish minority, whose food restrictions were gen-
erally more severe than those of the Christians. In the Old Testament,
specifically in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, a distinction is made be-
tween clean and unclean foods. To eat kosher or pure food extends
beyond the mere choice of a certain foodstuff to its production and
preparation. The correct handling of food is especially important in
the case of animals, since it was animals that were ritually sacrificed in
the temple of Jerusalem prior to its destruction in the first century
A.D., the event that led to the Diaspora of the Jewish people through-
out the Roman Empire. Animals considered clean according to the
Jews are those that chew the cud and have cloven hooves, in other
words, herbivores. This excludes the pig, the horse, the camel, and the
rabbit. Carnivorous animals are forbidden because the Garden of
Eden was a vegetarian one in which no killing was allowed. The list of
unclean foods also includes all birds of prey and other birds such as
owls and storks; it further excludes carrion and animals that have died
of natural causes or disease, or have been hunted and killed by gun-
shot.80 To be considered kosher, fish must have fins and scales, which
excludes sturgeon, swordfish, shark, eel, lamprey, all shellfish and crus-
taceans, sea urchins, octopus, and squid. Reptiles, snails, and frogs are
also forbidden.
Unlike Christians, Jews are strictly prohibited from consuming
blood, which is regarded as the signifier of life and seat of the soul.
This means that animals must be slaughtered in a ritual manner by
cutting their throats and allowing as much blood as possible to drain.
Large animals are killed by professional slaughterers who are not only
good butchers but also familiar with rabbinical law. The slaughter is
supposed to be painless, carried out in one slash that severs the trachea
and the jugular. An inspector then determines whether the meat is
kosher or whether the animal shows signs of disease. Fat from below
the abdomen of the animal is not to be eaten, as well as the sciatic
nerve or at times the entire hindquarter to which it is attached. To re-
move any remaining blood, the meat is soaked in water, then covered
in coarse salt and rinsed again in water. But not only animals have tra-
ditionally been subject to strict laws. Fruits, for instance, were sup-
posed to come from a tree that was more than three years old.81 With
regard to bread and wine, the restrictions for Jews were generally not
as strict as for meat in the Middle Ages, with the exception of the un-
leavened bread eaten at Passover, of course.
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