The Medieval Paleo* Diet

New York, Morgan Museum and Library, MS M. 638, fol. 20r, Paris, France, c. 1244-54.

It appears that each new day brings another study that tries to tell us how to eat, what foods are good, and which are bad.  Competing “diets”, the Mediterranean diet, low carb, no carb, keto, and Paleo diets all claim to hold the secret to a long healthy and today, svelte, life.  Medieval people were no less interested in a long and healthy life and they too had questions about which foods to eat and which to avoid.  However, they did not have to contend with the internet, trademarks, longitudinal scientific studies and p values.  Fortunately, medieval authorities were quick to jump in with answers about raw bacon, turtledoves, peacocks and milk.  My focus today will be on Anthimus who lived in the late fifth to early sixth century.  Anthimus wrote a letter to Theuderic, King of the Franks, called On the Observance of Foods.  This text was popular, appearing in nine manuscripts, the earliest being St. Gall’s Cod. Sang. 762 which was produced in the ninth century.  For more on Anthimus and the political shenanigans which resulted in his banishment and led to his writing the letter, please see the introduction in Mark Grant’s (1996) edition and translation of the work.
So, at this point you are wondering how medieval people viewed the diet of their paleolithic cave brethren.  *In the case of Anthimus, the paleo would refer to paleography, since of course in the ninth century all books were written by hand with a quill and ink on parchment.  A caveman to medieval people would have meant a hermit, a religious ascetic who eschewed the company of other people, and the comforts of hearth, and home to contemplate God in peace, and solitude.  Not exactly the club wielding fellow evoked by the term “Paleo” today.
For an extremely concise summary of Anthimus’ work I would direct you to St. Gall’s Cod. Sang. 751, also produced in the ninth century.  The text in the manuscript, appearing on page 395, displays a level of distillation that would make this the 190-proof version of the text if it had started as corn mash.  There is almost nothing of Anthimus’ text left.  Here is the Latin text and my translation.  Notes explaining my choices can be found at the bottom of the blog.  If you see another way to translate this text, please let me know in the comments.

De ciborum causis —

Quod teodoricus rex francorum utebatur et observabatur propter infirmitates multas in primis carnes aucina¹ non manducare nec pecorina nec pisces nec ceruisa nec metus nec agramen² non dulciamen. mela, mala, pira pessima prona prudit³ nucis nocet perseca⁴ bona radix usa et ova sorbilia quantum volueris accipere.⁵

About stipulations of foods.

This is what Theodoric, King of the Franks used and was heeded due to many infirmities, above all; to not eat goose flesh, neither beef, nor beer, nor mead, nor cabbage, nor sweet thing; honey, apples, and pears being the worst. Prunes bring forth (ie, move the bowels), nuts harm, and to have as much as you want of good dry⁴ radish, and eggs cooked but still runny.

This extreme summarization hardly touches on all the wisdom Anthimus had to share about foods.  One of Anthimus’ pet peeves was about the charring of meats.  Theuderic was in trouble if he was a fan of well seared rare steak.  Anthimus specifically says to avoid cooking the meat too close to the fire so that the outside is charred and the inside still raw.[1]  Boiling and steaming were his preferred methods of preparation, but if you had to roast meat it was to be done at a distance.  I have a hard time picturing how far away that would be, especially in the winter when close to the fire is hot and one inch farther away is cold.  Anthimus’ concern is also interesting in light of the recent studies examining the cancer-causing effects of charred meat or rather the chemicals produced by charring meats.[2]
The summary above is also wrong.  Contrary to the summary, Anthimus suggests that almost anyone can consume beer, and spiced mead.[3]  As far as beef goes, Anthimus provides a recipe that involves a little roasting, then boiling, followed by a simmer in vinegar to which honey and some seriously aromatic herbs, pepper, spikenard, and cloves, are then added.[4]  Sounds like a spicy, sweet and sour pot roast to me.  Granted pecorina could refer to sheep, but even in that case Anthimus says they are fine whether roasted, steamed or boiled.  The excerpt in Cod. Sang. 751 is beginning to look like a poor summary indeed.
Another element missing from the summary is two entries about eating wild fowl, especially turtledoves and starlings.  Anthimus suggests both these birds should be avoided when caught in the wild due to their predilection for eating poisonous plants, turtledoves being fans of hellebore and starlings choosing to chow down on hemlock.  Anthimus warns that one can become very ill from eating birds which have consumed such poisonous plants.[5]  I was intrigued by the possibility of this happening.  However, I was unable to find any sources describing such an instance.  What I was able to find, was information provided by the U. S. Department of Agriculture describing the hazards of livestock exposure to Veratrum californicum.  This plant is also known as false hellebore and is related to the white hellebore or Veratrum album found in Europe.  The brief says nothing about the consumption of livestock thus exposed.  I also find myself wondering if tiny little starlings could consume enough hemlock to cause harm to a person eating them later without killing themselves first and would that poison be in their flesh or be predominately still in their stomachs.  There is no pharmacokinetic data to answer this question and fortunately, there are no human/bird studies to flesh this out.  For now, I would say I am deeply skeptical that anything like this could happen. 
On the Observance of Foods is full of interesting details about life, at least life in a king’s court, in sixth-century Europe.  Some of the recipes, like the beef roast mentioned, seem like they could be fun to try.  While I am not so sure I want to try the raw bacon or the peacock, I already eat my asparagus Anthimus style, not cooked too long, served with salt and oil, yum.

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Translation notes:

1.      Varcl, Ladislav, and Karl Ernst Georges. 1977. Latinitatis Medii Aevi lexicon Bohemorum = Slovník středověké latiny v českých zemích. Pragae: Academia. Accessed via: Brepols online Database of Latin Dictionaries.

2.      Du Cange et al., Glossarium mediæ et infimæ latinitatis. Niort : L. Favre, 1883-1887: Agrumen, olerum genus, acrimoniam aliquam habens, ut porri, allia, etc. Found in the life of Columba. (Italian, agrume: citrus).  I think cabbage is much more likely than citrus, although, Blaise Medieval Dictionary defines agrumen as vegetables in general which would leave poor old Theuderic with a need for many prunes.

3.      prodit, prodo, prodere.

4.      Database of Latin Dictionaries, Latinitas Italica: Persicus (Persecus) – gen. fem. Prosiccas ORIB. 489, 5v. l.4. – m, subst. helenium; DOISC. 1, 68, 24 elenium multi sinfitum vocant, aliqui -m; sinapi -m; or persiccus, a, um – very dry, I think the very dry reading works better as neither helenium nor sinapi are mentioned anywhere in Anthimus.

5.      Anthimus says that radishes should be eaten only after allowing them to ripen for at least 5 days after picking (Grant, 1996: 71).  Also see Rose, V. (1964: 395) who published this extract in 1864.

Also a big Thank You! to Graham Johnson for looking over the translation.

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[1] Anthimus and Grant, Anthimus De Observatione Ciborum =, 51–53.

[2] Rengarajan et al., “Exposure to Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons with Special Focus on Cancer.”

[3] Anthimus and Grant, Anthimus De Observatione Ciborum =, 57.

[4] Anthimus and Grant, 51–53.

[5] Anthimus and Grant, 61.

Bibliography

Deroux, Carl. “Anthime, un médecin gourmet du début des temps mérovingiens.” Revue belge de Philologie et d’Histoire 80, no. 4 (2002): 1107–24. https://doi.org/10.3406/rbph.2002.4663.

“False Hellebore (Veratrum Californicum): USDA ARS.” Accessed June 25, 2019. https://www.ars.usda.gov/pacific-west-area/logan-ut/poisonous-plant-research/docs/false-hellebore-veratrum-californicum/.

Grant, Mark. “A Note on Anthimus’ ‘De Obseruatione Ciborum Epistula.’” Hermes 114, no. 3 (1986): 383–84.

———. “A Problematical Word in Anthimus’ de Observatione Ciborum Epistula 43.” Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 136, no. 3/4 (1993): 377–79.

Rengarajan, Thamaraiselvan, Peramaiyan Rajendran, Natarajan Nandakumar, Boopathy Lokeshkumar, Palaniswami Rajendran, and Ikuo Nishigaki. “Exposure to Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons with Special Focus on Cancer.” Asian Pacific Journal of Tropical Biomedicine 5, no. 3 (March 1, 2015): 182–89. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2221-1691(15)30003-4.

Rose, Valentin. Anecdota Graeca et Graecolatina Mittheilungen aus Handschriften zur Geschichte der griechischen Wissenschaft. Berlin: Duemmler, 1864. http://archive.org/details/bub_gb_QnE-AAAAcAAJ.