Lesser Beasts: A Snout-to-Tail History of the Humble Pig Read online

  79Another group moved overland out of Turkey and Greece: Peter Rowley-Conwy, “Westward Ho! The Spread of Agriculture from Central Europe to the Atlantic,” Current Anthropology 52, suppl. 4 (2011): S431–S451.

  79Genetic studies tell us that the first wave: Greger Larson et al., “Phylogeny and Ancient DNA of Sus,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104 (2007): 4834–4839.

  80An Irish myth tells of pigs: Miranda Green, Dictionary of Celtic Myth and Legend (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1992), 44–45; Jeffrey Greene, The Golden-Bristled Boar (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011).

  80From these laws we can infer: Katherine Fischer Drew, The Laws of the Salian Franks (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991), 7, 3–5, 66–73, 88.

  80Anglo-Saxons valued a pig: Joyce Salisbury, The Beast Within (New York: Routledge, 1994), 34.

  81In a practice known as denbera: John Thrupp, “On the Domestication of Certain Animals in England Between the Seventh and Eleventh Centuries,” Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London 4 (1866): 164–172.

  81In England’s Domesday Book: Robert Trow-Smith, A History of British Livestock Husbandry to 1700 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957), 51.

  81In ninth-century Italy a monastery’s forest: Vito Fumagalli, Landscapes of Fear, trans. Shayne Mitchell (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1994), 146.

  81The tips of stone arrowheads have been found: U. Albarella and D. Serjeantson, “A Passion for Pork,” in Consuming Passions and Patterns of Consumption, ed. P. Miracle and N. Milner (Cambridge, UK: Monographs of the McDonald Institute), 44.

  81“It is dangerous for one unfamiliar with their ways to approach them”: Strabo, Geography, trans. Horace Leonard Jones (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1923), 2:243.

  81In the forests of Kent in the ninth century: Caroline Grigson, “Porridge and Pannage,” in Archaeological Aspects of Woodland Ecology, ed. Martin Bell and Susan Limbrey (Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 1982), 300–301.

  82Swineherds carried either a long, slender pole: Earl Shaw, “Geography of Mast Feeding,” Economic Geography 16 (1940): 233–249.

  82An English law of 1184 decreed: Robert Bartlett, England Under the Norman and Angevin Kings (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 239, 674.

  83Lions and leopards kill with claws and teeth: John Cummins, Hound and Hawk (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988), 96.

  83The boar slashes at an approaching hero: Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. Henry T. Riley (London: George Bell, 1893), 279, 281.

  84Arthur became known as the Boar of Cornwall: The Mabinogion (London: Quaritch, 1877), 239–257.

  84In present-day Belgium, bones dug up at castles: Anton Ervynck, “Orant, Pugnant, Laborant,” in Behaviour Behind Bones, ed. W. Van Neer and A. Ervynck (Oxford: Oxbow, 2004), 215–223.

  84The trash heaps of the elite: Annie Grant, “Food, Status and Social Hierarchy,” in Miracle and Milner, Consuming Passions, 18; R. M. Thomas, “Food and the Maintenance of Social Boundaries in Medieval England,” in Archaeology of Food and Identity, ed. K. C. Twiss (Carbondale, IL: Center for Archaeological Investigations, 2007), 138–144.

  84Medieval Europeans ate spices because they liked them: Paul Freedman, Out of the East (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 3–6, 19–25.

  84Medieval cooks also borrowed from Rome: Bridget Ann Henisch, Fast and Feast (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1976), 131.

  85A camphor-soaked wick was placed in the boar’s mouth: Freedman, Out of the East, 37.

  85One cookbook offered a recipe for a roasted rooster: Freedman, Out of the East, 38.

  85In noble houses, the pantry of preserved foods: Terence Scully, The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 1995), 244.

  85Sometimes the salt gets an assist: R. Lawrie, Lawrie’s Meat Science (Boca Raton, FL: Woodhead Publishing, 2006), 130–132.

  86Greeks used the same word to describe: Frank Frost, “Sausage and Meat Preservation in Antiquity,” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 40 (1999): 244.

  86According to Cato, “No moths nor worms will touch”: Marcus Cato, On Agriculture, trans. William Davis Hooper and Harrison Boyd Ash (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1935), 154–157.

  86Varro insisted that the Gauls: Marcus Terentius Varro, On Agriculture, trans. William Davis Hooper and Harrison Boyd Ash (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), 357.

  86These Gauls lived around Parma: David Thurmond, Handbook of Food Processing in Classical Rome (Boston: Brill, 2006), 217.

  86Varro recommended pork from what is now Portugal: Strabo, Geography, 101.

  86Martial gave a nod to hams: Martial, Epigrams (London: Bell & Daldy, 1865), 595.

  86Living things need to eat fats: Harold McGee, On Food and Cooking, rev. ed. (New York: Scribner, 2004), 797; Adam Drewnowski, “Why Do We Like Fat?,” Journal of the American Dietetic Association 97, suppl. (1997): S58–S62.

  87Ancient cooks often boiled their meat: Mireille Corbier, “The Ambiguous Status of Meat in Ancient Rome,” Food and Foodways 3 (1989): 233.

  87Fat was so rare and precious: Harry Hoffner, “Oil in Hittite Texts,” The Biblical Archaeologist 58 (2012): 109.

  87a sort of olive tree on the hoof: Ari Weinzweig, Zingerman’s Guide to Better Bacon (Ann Arbor, MI: Zingerman’s Press, 2009), 30–38.

  87For medieval Europeans, the seasons were a bumpy cycle: Bartlett, England Under, 643; Dolly Jørgensen, “Pigs and Pollards,” Sustainability 5 (2013): 387–399.

  87Many proverbs indicated that a supply: Jean-Jacques Hémardinquer, “The Family Pig of the Ancien Régime,” in Food and Drink in History, ed. Robert Forster and Orest Ranum (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979), 58.

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  90The patron saint of animals expressed no sympathy: Thomas Okey Francis and Robert Steele, The Little Flowers of St. Francis (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1910), 134–137.

  90“Cursed be that evil beast”: Saint Bonaventure, Life of Saint Francis (London: J. M. Dent, 1904), 85–86.

  91According to the New Testament, Christ was: John 1:29, RSV.

  91The Christian Bible picked up this theme: Psalms 23:1 KJV.

  91According to the Second Epistle of Peter: 2 Peter 2:22, RSV.

  91The prodigal son, after squandering his inheritance: Luke 15:16, KJV.

  91Those husks, incidentally, were likely pods: John Russell Smith, Tree Crops (New York: Harcourt, 1929), 33–34.

  92He said to the demons, “Go”: Matthew 8:32, KJV.

  92In the words of one bestiary: Richard Barber, Bestiary (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 1993), 81.

  92“The pig is a filthy beast”: Barber, Bestiary, 84–86.

  92In addition to filth, the pig stood: Albertus Magnus, Questions Concerning Aristotle’s “On Animals,” ed. Irven Resnick (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2008), 239.

  93During sex the boar’s penis: Wilson G. Pond and Harry J. Mersmann, Biology of the Domestic Pig (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001).

  93An early agricultural writer described pigs: Gervase Markham, Cheape and Good Husbandry (London: Thomas Snodham, 1614), 100.

  93Peter protests that he has “never eaten”: Acts 10:10–15, KJV.

  93At one of the councils of Antioch: Claudine Fabre-Vassas, The Singular Beast (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 6, 325–326.

  94Even the Acts of the Apostles hedged its bets: Acts 15:29, KJV; David Freidenreich, Foreigners and Their Food (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 94–95, 102, 133.

  94An Irish text warned people not to eat: David Grumett, “Mosaic Food Rules in Celtic Spirituality in Ireland,” in Eating and Believing, ed. D. Grumett and R. Muers
(New York: T & T Clark, 2008), 35.

  94“Swine that taste the flesh or blood of men”: John McNeill, Medieval Handbooks of Penance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 130–135; R. Meens, “Eating Animals in the Early Middle Ages,” in The Animal/Human Boundary, ed. Angela Creager et al. (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2002), 15.

  94If swine merely tasted human blood: Grumett, “Mosaic,” 34.

  95Medieval armies could be slow to collect their dead: Philippe Ariès, The Hour of Our Death (New York: Knopf, 1981), 43–44; C. Smith, “A Grumphie in the Sty: An Archaeological View of Pigs in Scotland,” Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 130 (2000): 715.

  95In Shakespeare’s Richard III: William Shakespeare, Richard III, ed. Anthony Hammond (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2006), 306 (V.iii.7–10).

  95“Cows feed only on grass and the leaves of trees”: McNeill, Medieval Handbooks, 130–135.

  95The process was nudged along: Thomas Benjamin, The Atlantic World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 38–39; Edward Barbier, Scarcity and Frontiers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 197.

  95In response, Parisian authorities banned pigs: E. P. Evans, The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals (London: Faber, 1987), 158.

  95Similarly, in 1301 the English city of York passed: P. J. P. Goldberg, “Pigs and Prostitutes,” in Young Medieval Women, ed. Katherine Lewis et al. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), 172.

  96The wealthier might have pit latrines: Alain Corbin, The Foul and the Fragrant (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), 27.

  96A set of German playing cards from 1535: Peter Stallybrass, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986), 57.

  96The theologian Honorius of Autun: Caroline Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 148.

  96In an English text, a woman explains: Irven Resnick, Marks of Distinction (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2012), 14.

  96In France in 1494, for example: Evans, Criminal Prosecution, 155–156.

  96The earliest medieval animal trials date: J. Enders, “Homicidal Pigs and the Antisemitic Imagination,” Exemplaria 14 (2002): 206.

  96“When an ox gores a man or a woman to death”: Exodus 21:28, RSV.

  97Pigs accounted for well over half: E. Cohen, “Animals in Medieval Perceptions,” in Animals and Human Society (New York: Routledge, 1994), 74.

  97In modern-day Papua New Guinea: Robert L. Miller, “Hogs and Hygiene,” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 76 (1990): 125.

  97One European court explained that a pig: Evans, Criminal Prosecution, 155.

  97In another case the court noted: Evans, Criminal Prosecution, 156.

  97“But if another animal or a Jew do it”: Enders, “Homicidal Pigs,” 230.

  98English illustrations of the crucifixion: Wendelien Van Welie-Vink, “Pig Snouts as Sign of Evil in Manuscripts from the Low Countries,” Quaerendo 26 (1996): 213–228.

  98Martin Luther, in a religious tract, addressed Jews directly: Martin Luther, Works (St. Louis, MO: Concordia, 1955), 47:212; Stephen Greenblatt, “Filthy Rites,” Daedalus 111 (1982): 11–12.

  98“If swine were used for food”: Resnick, Marks of Distinction, 169.

  100According to one authority, no other food: Ken Albala, Eating Right in the Renaissance (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 69.

  100The twelfth-century text Anatomia porci: P. Beullens, “Like a Book Written by God’s Finger,” in A Cultural History of Animals in the Medieval Age, ed. Brigitte Resl (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2009), 146.

  100One medical book reported: William Mead, The English Medieval Feast (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1967), 79.

  100A butcher reportedly passed off human flesh: Albala, Eating Right, 69.

  100Christians, one authority explained, can transform: Irven Resnick, “Dietary Laws in Medieval Christian-Jewish Polemics,” Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations 6 (2011): 11, 15.

  101An English rhyme told the tale of Hugh of Lincoln: Fabre-Vassas, Singular Beast, 134.

  101These invented tales had brutally real effects: R. Hsia, The Myth of Ritual Murder (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988), 1–4.

  101A London town ordinance of 1419: Resnick, Marks of Distinction, 153.

  102According to the Quran, the word of God: Quran 5:3.

  102Environmental and political reasons—the unsuitability of swine: P. Diener et al., “Ecology, Evolution, and the Search for Cultural Origins,” Current 19 (1978): 493–540.

  102One Christian text depicts Jews lamenting: Resnick, Marks of Distinction, 157.

  103Many converts tried to combat such suspicions: B. J. Zadik, “The Iberian Pig in Spain and the Americas at the Time of Columbus” (master’s thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 2005), 11–14.

  103In a work by the great playwright Lope de Vega: Rebecca Earle, The Body of the Conquistador (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 61.

  103A convert named Gonzolo Perez Jarada: Resnick, Marks of Distinction, 165–166.

  103Then, after cords were twisted tightly around her wrists: Cecil Roth, History of the Marranos (New York: Schocken Books, 1974), 110–116.

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  105When cooked and served at a “feast among the nobles”: Walter Scott, Ivanhoe (Edinburgh: A. and C. Black, 1860), 46–47.

  106Thus “swineflesh” became pork: Ina Lipkowitz, Words to Eat By (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2011), 179–183.

  107This prompted farmers to clear forests: Thomas Benjamin, The Atlantic World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 38–39; Edward Barbier, Scarcity and Frontiers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 197.

  107the human population grew in tandem with the supply of grain: Fernand Braudel, The Structures of Everyday Life (New York: Harper and Row, 1981), 104.

  107Nobles continued to eat large amounts: Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 1:35–39.

  108In France and Germany the price of grain: P. Edwards, “Domesticated Animals in Renaissance Europe,” in A Cultural History of Animals in the Renaissance, ed. Bruce Boehrer (Oxford: Berg, 2009), 77.

  108In 1397 the average resident of Berlin: Wilhelm Abel, Agricultural Fluctuations in Europe (London: Methuen, 1980), 71.

  108On one manor in Norfolk, England: Christopher Dyer, “Change in Diet in the Late Middle Ages: The Case of Harvest Workers,” Agricultural History Review 36 (1988): 21–37.

  108In 1501 the Duke of Buckingham hosted a meal: R. M. Thomas, “Food and the Maintenance of Social Boundaries in Medieval England,” in Archaeology of Food and Identity, ed. K. C. Twiss (Carbondale, IL: Center for Archaeological Investigations, 2007), 144–146.

  109Woodcut illustrations of peasant weddings from this era: Paul Freedman, Out of the East (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 41.

  109One Renaissance doctor advised that the sedentary elite: Ken Albala, Eating Right in the Renaissance (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 69, 192.

  109For reasons of status, health, or both: Fernand Braudel, Capitalism and Material Life, 1400–1800 (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), 128–132.

  109A century later another Frenchman noted: Jean-Jacques Hémardinquer, “The Family Pig of the Ancien Régime,” in Food and Drink in History, ed. Robert Forster and Orest Ranum (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979), 60n11.

  109In Scotland, another writer reported: C. Smith, “A Grumphie in the Sty: An Archaeological View of Pigs in Scotland,” Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 130 (2000): 716.

  110The poor, among their many misfortunes: The same was true i
n ancient Rome. See J. Toner, Leisure and Ancient Rome (Cambridge, MA: Polity Press, 1995), 68.

  110The English sometimes referred to a brothel: P. J. P. Goldberg, “Pigs and Prostitutes,” in Young Medieval Women, ed. Katherine Lewis et al. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), 172–173, 186n3.

  110The most common Greek word for sausage: Frank Frost, “Sausage and Meat Preservation in Antiquity,” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 40 (1999): 246–247.

  110Shakespeare’s Falstaff, a man of large and indelicate appetites: William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2, in The Works of William Shakespeare (London: G. Routledge, 1869), 3:31 (II.iv.232–3).

  110Zeal-of-the-Land Busy, a Puritan intent: Peter Stallybrass, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986), 63.

  111By 1696, England had about 12 million: B. H. Slicher Van Bath, “Agriculture in the Vital Revolution,” Cambridge Economic History of Europe 5 (1977): 89.

  111Gervase Markham, in a 1614 book: Gervase Markham, Cheape and Good Husbandry (London: Thomas Snodham, 1614), 99–100.

  111In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith: Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson, 1843), 95.

  111One writer noted that pigs could be fed: Markham, Cheape and Good, 106.

  111In 1621 a London maker of starch: Joan Thirsk, Economic Policy and Projects (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 91.

  113Alcohol production provided an even larger source: Peter Mathias, The Brewing Industry in England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959), 42.

  113Daniel Defoe reported that Wiltshire and Gloucestershire produced: Daniel Defoe, A Tour thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain (London: Strahan, 1725), 48.

  113Dairymaids churned butter, and the whey flowed: Robert Malcolmson, The English Pig (London: Hambledon, 2001), 39.

  113The British navy required as many as 40,000 pigs: Daniel Baugh, British Naval Administration in the Age of Walpole (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965), 407–410.

  113Those legumes became hog feed: Adolphus Speed, The Husbandman, Farmer, and Grasier’s Compleat Instructor (London: Henry Nelme, 1697), 86.