“Let him bring huge lampreys or enormous salmons or pike, without letting it be known. A good eel is hardly bad, shad or tench or some good sturgeon, cakes or stuffed pastries or sweetbreads: these are things that will gain my love. Or let him send me large kids, or large, well-nourished capons…”
(The Flower, 1283-1287)

The Flower is a poem in the vernacular attributed to the young Dante Alighieri. It serves as a starting point for an excursus on food inside the Great Poet’s oeuvre.

However, the functions that food takes on differ according to the various works and, inside them, different themes. In the Convivio (The Banquet), for example, written between 1304 and 1307, he develops the meaning of banquet.

“…Oh beati quelli pochi che seggiono a quella mensa dove lo pane de li angeli si manuca! E miseri quelli che con le pecore hanno comIt is as a table of wisdom, a theme dear to the Platonic and biblical tradition. However, metaphors related to food are frequent. “Blessed are the few who sit at the table where the bread of the angels is eaten, and most unfortunate those who share the food of sheep! […] They who are fed at so lofty a table are not without compassion toward those whom they see grazing about on grass and acorns in animal pastures”.une cibo! […] Coloro che a così alta mensa sono cibati non sanza misericordia sono inver di quelli che in bestiale pastura veggiono erba e ghiande sen gire mangiando”.

At the end of the thirteenth century, Florence at the time of Dante Alighieri achieved an excellent standard of civil and cultural life. Economic well-being created the conditions for the development of the city in an artistic and cultural sense.

Medieval culture and the beginning of a new era converge in the works by Dante. Even the cuisine became savoury and more refined this time: almonds, candied fruit and cane sugar arrived from Sicily; the fragrant spices from the East. The Florentine markets, well organized and controlled by the authorities, were rich in products, which every day arrived fresh from the contado (countryside): in particular vegetables, eggs, poultry and cheese.

Dante Alighieri, therefore, wrote the Divine Comedy when the cuisine was taking a huge step forward with the publication of the very first recipe books known to us (such as the Liber de Coquina [1], thought to be written around 1304). Food and its preparation began to have a large presence in literature. Perhaps, it is such motive that Dante decided to include references to the gastronomy of his time in his work.

Therefore, food is present in different forms in the Divine Comedy.

In Inferno, food falls within the punishments, as also many features of the gastronomic world. In a certain sense, the very act of cooking becomes a vehicle for administering punishment to the damned. In the fifth bolgia, the barterers, fraudulent speculators of objects and public offices for personal profit, are kept under boiling pitch. [The demons] did the same as any cook who has his urchins force the meat with hooks deep down into the pot, that it not float… (XXI, 55-57). Here, hell is seen as a large kitchen where the devils, monstrous cooks, instruct their minions to immerse the flesh of the damned so well that it cannot emerge and hence cook perfectly.

Dante describes similar scenes in other moments: he defines the violent towards the neighbour’s person and possessions as “boiled“, since cooked in blood.

These and other scenes allow us to identify, through the punishments inflicted on the damned, not only means of cooking but also other techniques as slaughtering or the preparation of jellies. The acts and tools used refer to a typical kitchen environment, a great inspiration for Dante Alighieri.

The presence of the alimentary aspect is also present in Purgatorio.

Dante compared the explant distress of the soul, as they landed on the shore, to the tasting of a new dish: the crowd that he had left along the beach seemed not to know the place; they looked about like those whose eyes try out things new to them… (II, 59-54).

Gluttony (and the related pains) does not spare anyone, not even the Pope. From Tours was he, and purges by his fasting Bolsena’s eels and the Vernaccia wine. (XXIV, 23-24), indicating not only the gluttony of Martin IV but also the punishment for this grave sin: fasting and therefore the deprivation of all good things.

The cantos dedicated to the theme of gluttony are among the most realistic of the Comedy. They capture our attention, not by representing the pains of a category of sinners, but thanks to the accurate portrayal of the terrible hunger, which must have been the daily experience in medieval life.

In Paradiso, however, feasting is no longer a source of sin but a reward for a correct life. Here Dante returns to using food as a metaphor. Food, therefore, leaves its mere role of nourishment and takes on meanings, rites and symbols. The heavenly hosts live on the bread of angels (II, 11) angels of mystical contemplation, together with the blessed and the saints symbolically feed on the divine mysteries, enjoying them in celestial banquets and tables. In this case, gluttony is legitimate because it means gluttony of bliss. The act of feasting becomes a reward for a righteous and pure life. The act of eating is elevated to a meaningful spiritual gesture that diners perform in the presence of God.

As for drinking, Dante’s drink par excellence is water. The other is milk, which he quotes with symbolical meanings in canto XXIII of Paradiso. He compares the reaching out of the blessed towards Mary to a tender child outbursting towards the mother when it has taken its milk. On the other hand, wine is the drink that causes numbness of the senses and mental faculties. However, it is also the metaphor of the thirst for truth, because, since ancient times, people associated wine to sincerity. He proves this in canto X of Paradise. When to indicate those who refuse to satisfy the desire for the truth of other people, he affirms who should deny the wine out of his vial unto thy thirst.

The link between food and the Divine Comedy is therefore profound. Nonetheless, Dante rarely describes or names food and drinks, although he often used them as a metaphor, a typical practice in his time. Nevertheless, his examination of the food metaphor or its application can illuminate certain aspects of the history of culture, characteristics directly relevant, among other things, to the history of nutrition.

In canto XVII of Paradiso, Dante even manages to go beyond the metaphor of food. In his encounter with Cacciaguida, bread is so real that it becomes a universal emblem of exile or, better, loss of the dearest affections.

Thou shalt have proof how savoureth of salt
The bread of others, and how hard a road
The going down and up another’s stairs.

This triplet is perhaps one of the first written (and literary) testimonies of our Tuscan bread, obviously without salt. The bread that obtained the DOP recognition with the European directive 2016/58 / EU, published in the Official Journal of the European Union on March 4 same year … almost seven hundred years after Dante’s Paradiso.

ILARIA PERSELLO

[1] The book of cookery