Why Italians Love to Talk About Food (39 page)

Rome was already overpopulated in ancient times. The number of foreigners was equal to, if not greater than, that of the residents. After the fall of the Empire and the triumph of Christianity, Rome became the destination for all the pilgrims of the Christian world, as well as for ordinary travelers. As the headquarters of the Church, it was also the residence of clergymen and papal officials.

With this new physiognomy, the city, both sanctuary and teeming hostel, adapted almost naturally to the rhythms and requirements of the religious calendar (see “Calendar”) imposed by the sacredness of the location. As Massimo Petrocchi tells us in his collection of historical testimony about life in seventeenth-century Rome, the observance of fasting imposed strict discipline on the inhabitants, which also seeped into their dietary habits. To avoid committing the sin of gluttony, Romans, with a charming sense of humor, managed to find loopholes to satisfy their appetite on both feast days and days of abstinence. The high-ranking clergy, lacking “supervisors” (at least in this world), seemed to be free of such concerns.

Indeed, despite all the talk about fasting, Roman pontiffs were certainly not distinguished for their asceticism. The Boniface VIII timbale, still known today, takes its name from the pope who held office from 1294 to 1303: it was he who proclaimed the first jubilee (see “Pilgrims”). This succulent dish includes macaroni, meatballs, chicken gizzards, and whole slices of truffles, all contained in a pastry crust. The next Boniface, Boniface IX (1389–1404), adored liver meatballs, the so-called
tomaselli
, derived from his secular name, Tomacelli.

 

Beginning in the sixteenth century, papal passion for elaborate dishes grew. In his biography of pontiffs as viewed by their chefs, the illustrious humanist and papal gastronome Platina
¹
writes of Paul II, who demanded a wide variety of dishes at his table and always praised the worst ones. He occasionally shouted when he did not find his favorite foods at dinner. He drank a lot, though only the most ordinary wines, and on top of that he watered them. He loved shrimp, timbales, fish, salt pork, and melons, so much so that he was killed by a stroke: the night before he died, he ate two huge melons without leaving a morsel on his plate.
²

Leo X (pope between 1513 and 1521), a member of the Medici family, brought from Florence the lavish culinary customs of his city even before Catherine de' Medici conveyed them to the court of France. As understood by the lords of the Medici dynasty in the sixteenth century, “Florentine customs” signified a return to the traditions of crass imperial Rome, made up of endless, extravagant banquets, with long disquisitions about food. The Roman who wanted to be seen in a good light and admitted to the Curia shook the dust of the Lazio countryside off his shoes, and, renouncing the simple food of his ancestors, agreed to sit amid luxurious marbles and furnishings at Lucullan feasts in the Florentine style. He even agreed to laugh at the pope's jokes: Leo X, for example, who liked to amuse himself at the expense of his guests, had hemp ropes served instead of eels, so that the unfortunate dinner guest had to chew and choke on them for the entire evening.

Giuseppe Prezzolini was able to sketch a lapidary but incisive portrait of Rome and the customs of that time in his vivid, scathing style:

 

Rome was
caput mundi
, the world's latrine, headquarters of the universal leprosy. It was a country of gang wars, imposing ruins, puddles, chronic malaria, general filth, luxury and beggary hugger-mugger neighbors. Witches were burned there and in the Vatican there were courtesans and astrologers. There Luther was excommunicated and Christ sold by the hour. A continual congress was held there of pimps, gluttons and rascals, innocents and saints. To the better contemporaries Rome was Sodom, Gomorrah and Babylon rolled into one . . . The Pope had his minions, his sons, his concubines. He would fatten his cardinals to slaughter them, when they were prime with coin: jingle-bell, jingle-bell, report in hell. The cardinals had sons and nephews . . . Certain Popes loved the table better than war.
³

 

Toward the middle of the sixteenth century Julius III (pontiff between 1550 and 1555) ascended the papal throne. As we know from biographies of the time, this pope spent the final years of his pontificate in a sumptuous villa on the outskirts of Rome, giving himself over to worldly pleasures. It appears from the daily logs of the papal cooks that stuffed peacocks (a food of wealthy aristocrats, certainly not of penitents) and onions from Gaeta (their aphrodisiac virtues are legendary) were brought to the pope's private rooms daily. Paul IV, who became pope shortly thereafter (he was pontiff between 1555 and 1559), could remain seated at the table for as long as five hours, sampling twenty courses in a row.

Pius V (pope between 1566 and 1572), who was later canonized, led the Church back to austere simplicity. A Dominican and a fanatical persecutor of heretics, he had been an inquisitor before becoming pope. Once he donned the papal tiara, he banned secular feasts in Rome. Nobles who violated this injunction had to pay a fine. For all others, a first violation required a religious penance, the second a public thrashing, and the third a jail sentence. Disciplines and regulations introduced in the monasteries were so strict that not everyone was able to endure them. The Inquisition punished crimes committed twenty years earlier, and the pope never mitigated the sentences. On the contrary, if there were too few executions, he rebuked the judges for not showing enough zeal. Pius V was free of vices, nepotism, and spinelessness (he excommunicated Elizabeth I of England) and ate without witnesses. Nevertheless, his private chef—who as luck would have it was not only a gastronomic expert but also a literary talent—left us direct testimony of his appetite. This chef was none other than Bartolomeo Scappi, mentioned several times in this book, author of the first major Italian recipe book and reformer of Western European cuisine. In his volume of 1570,
Opera dell'arte del cucinare
(On the art of cookery), Scappi described several of the pope's favorite dishes, such as freshwater fish from Lake Garda, saltwater fish from the Ligurian Sea, and black caviar from Alexandria, Egypt. From the book, and from what we know in general about Chef Scappi's creative ways, it is clear that Pius V did not indulge in elaborate, dramatic foods. As a refined gourmet, he preferred sobriety. The pope insisted on absolute formal observance of religious laws concerning fasting, and the cook, on his part, could only rejoice at this, since he could not stand the extravagance of the Florentine popes and wanted to follow the principles of an authentically Renaissance cuisine, which involved harmony and equilibrium.

In 1549, Scappi was so good in the kitchen that he had to provide meals for the cardinals assembled in conclave to elect the man who the following year would be
proclaimed Pope Julius III. It was thanks to his services that the excellently fed prelates managed to pleasantly get through their confinement of more than two months. This decreed his success: once elected, Julius took him on as his “secret,” or personal, chef. Scappi remained in service throughout Julius's pontificate, and went on to serve another six popes.

 

The ecclesiastical calendar prescribed the observance of days of abstinence (160–200 days per year), and the Romans conformed, some out of devotion, others simply out of decorum. For this reason pasta seasoned with olive oil and all kinds of vegetarian dishes are found in the Roman diet. There is also a specific gastronomy for Lent: boiled pike or soup of pasta and broccoli in skate broth.

Aristocratic and wealthy bourgeois, meanwhile, complied with the usages and customs imposed by the clergy. Stendhal, an acute observer of Roman life at the end of the eighteenth century, wrote:

 

Almost all the middle class of Rome was wearing the ecclesiastical habit.

An apothecary with wife and children, who did not wear an abbot's dress, exposed himself to losing the practice of his neighbor the cardinal. This dress cost little and was highly respected, for it could cover an all-powerful man; that is the advantage of the absence of decorations. Only black habits were therefore to be seen.
⁴

 

To survive and prosper, the high-ranking inhabitants of Rome had to be good at diplomacy. If they wanted to maintain good relations with influential prelates, they knew they must not violate the moral code. Specifically, they must strictly observe, at least in public, the rules for abstaining from meat (see “
Calendar
”).

 

Everyone who flocked to Rome during the course of the last millennium, whether as a pilgrim or a worker, had to be lodged somewhere. Pilgrims, merchants, wholesalers, suppliers of the papal court, contractors, architects, artists and their students, adventurers of various kinds, workers from other towns, monks, lovers of the beauties of antiquity, and bored idlers: all had to find a place to stay and a place to eat. Hotels and inns were required. Stations to change horses, farriers to care for them, and forges where they could be shoed. Hospitals to treat the consequences of the pilgrimages
and prevent epidemics. Tiberina Island in the middle of the Tiber, in the city center, became the area of quarantine. The part of Rome that today is the Vatican state also had clinics and hospitals.

Two hundred inns and two hundred hostels were recorded in eighteenth-century Rome, along with more than a hundred places where you could drink a bracing coffee; then, as now, these places were called
caffè
(cafés). Bars (with espressos, cappuccinos, brioches, sandwiches, and aperitifs) appeared only in the twentieth century. Since many people who came to the city did not know how to read or write, Roman signs (Hotel! Trattoria! Inn! Café! Tavern!) were eloquent and colorful, and the walls of the establishments were painted with images so clear that even simpletons could understand: here they let you sleep, here they give you a drink, and here you can eat as well. For the same reason, barrels were displayed on the doors of taverns to advertise their offerings, and vine shoots (
frasche
, boughs) were planted around the entrances. Wine bars or taverns in Rome are still called
frasche
or
fraschetterie
.