In all premodern religions, food and abstention from it had important symbolic and identity-producing functions. On the normative level, restrictions and prescriptions concerning food were means of (self)regulation. They were tightly connected with the systems of social monitoring and control, of individual and group vigilance strategies, of defining oneself and the other. On the practical level, however, food often acted not as a marker of cultural or religious difference, but as a space of multiethnic and multireligious communication and entanglements. The dynamics of this communication, the practices of observation, vigilance, imitation, and exchange between groups and individuals were the focus of the workshop.

The conference enabled the exchange between the two organizing research groups, which was realized through the joint discussion of such questions as the plurality of faith practices, and food intake, fasting, and abstention as part and means of vigilance cultures. Another central question was what means and objectives were used to draw attention to food and food abstention, and what effects this had on the standardization, regulation, and practices of food consumption.

In her introduction, Julia Herzberg stressed that religions and denominations are to be understood as interaction communities that competed with, observed, and influenced each other. Their food traditions can therefore be studied not in terms of differences and similarities between unchangeable and isolated entities, but rather as fluid, interdependent practices that are entangled with one another. The study of practices promises to be a fruitful approach to demonstrate the interdependence and diversity of interreligious constellations in premodern times.

In the first panel, ANNA NOVOKHATKO (Thessaloniki) gave a presentation on the derision of abstention in the ancient comedy “Men of Tarentum”, ca. 345-320 BC by Alexis. The comedy criticized the hypocritical character of the Pythagoreans and their vegetarian diet. Novokhatko traced the genealogy of vegetarian practices in antiquity and underscored its connection to the ideas of metempsychosis and the kinship of men and animals. The argument about the soul that underlies the Pythagoreans’ dietary restrictions is at the center of the mockery. It is apparent that the theater audience possessed knowledge about Pythagoras’s teaching and the connection between the idea of metempsychosis and vegetarian diet. Thus, the comedy of Alexis helps define the place of dietary concerns in the public discourse in Athens around the 4th century BC and shows that diet could be instrumentalized to define and mock social groups.

The symbolic connection between the soul and food and the meaning of sacrifice were further thematized by FLORIAN HESSDÖRFER (Leipzig). He defined two motifs in the ancient myths that accompanied the topic of meat consumption: the mystical difference between animals and humans, and the difference between humans and gods. Both motifs illustrate the complicated and controversial status of meat in the ancient world, the abstention from, production and consumption of which was highly ritualized. These rituals not only regulated the relations of exchange and reproduction between nature and the divine, but also set the boundaries between nature, gods, and human communities.

In the second panel, MICHAELA BILL-MRZIGLOD (Koblenz-Landau) presented several examples of how fasting and ritual food ingestion were interpreted and criticized within the church in the Middle Ages. Food and fasting were not only able to create interreligious and interdenominational boundaries, but also to separate scientia (scholastic model of intellectual encounter with God) from sapientia (mystical model based on the sensual and emotional experience of God) within one religious space. For the mystics, the concept of sapientia connected the moment of “understanding” with “tasting” and was embodied in the Eucharist. This principle of “filling” one’s body with God without any priestly mediation could become a powerful tool of church critique, for example of the gluttony among priests or of the church’s hypocritical support of body mortification and abstention practices among the congregation.

The arguments surrounding religious food practices – in this case, the preparation and selling of meat – was also the focus of JÖRN R. CHRISTOPHERSEN (Frankfurt am Main) who talked about legal debates between Christians and Jews in several towns of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. The debates occurred between meat vendors and unfolded around religiously conditioned differences in slaughter and whether Jews could sell meat to Christians. These interreligious public debates show how theological ideas and economic rules were related to one another. Moreover, they demonstrate that the selling of meat could produce discourses about hierarchy (as seen from the arguments about Jews who sell leftovers to Christians), but also that economic interests could draw different religious groups together.

CHRISTINE OTT (Frankfurt am Main) returned to the depiction of food in literature, namely Luigi Pulci’s epic “Morgante” from 1481/82. She suggested that the abundant drinking and eating of the knights in the epic can be understood not only in terms of a “democratic culture of laughter” and religious skepticism, but as social critique. Eating scenes, including gestures of hospitality, are depicted in a negative light and are meant to demonstrate the power of the strong.
DOROTHEA WELTEKE (Frankfurt am Main) wrapped up the first part of the workshop. She stressed the importance of studying eating and fasting as entangled histories and of rooting research in concrete practices and cases. This attention to historical everyday practices can balance and supplement theological studies of food that are primarily focused on canons. In the first part of the workshop the main functions of food and abstinence were identified as competition, division, and imitation. Food practices are also used to mark one’s spiritual autonomy and identity and can be studied as a reflection of power dynamics between different actors.

The second part was opened by JULIA HERZBERG (Munich/Regensburg). In her study of fasting in early modern Russia, she focused on the political regulation of fasting under Alexis Mikhailovich (r. 1645-1676) as a reaction to the growing plurality in matters of faith within the country and religious competition from Europe. The legal regulation of fasting therefore served as a tool of distinguishing Russia from the rest of the world (getting rid of foreign influences) and binding it from within through unified dietary norms. However, the new rules did not achieve their goal, and Russian society became even more divided, as can be seen in the schism in the Russian Orthodox Church and the appearance of old believers for whom asceticism, fasting, and abstention became arguments to defend their position as real believers.

The theme of collective bodily practices and their regulation was further developed by IRYNA KLYMENKO (Munich) in her talk about the regulation of Jewish clothes in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Both clothes and nourishment can be regarded as collective bodily practices and sign systems or socially constructed systems. The functions that clothes markings possessed had parallels with the functions of dietary regulations. Much like fasting rules in 17th century Russia, symbols such as yellow hats or red marks used in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth performed such functions as group distinction, outward marking, and inward regulation, as well as stabilization of identity borders. Managing clothes thus meant managing identities.

Common bodily practices therefore not only marked or distinguished groups but also created them. This alternative perspective of viewing groups as fluid systems of belonging and focusing on group formation processes rather than groups as containers was suggested by LENNART GARD (Berlin). In his presentation on spiritualism within Protestantism around 1700, he showed that spiritualist communities did not arise intentionally, but rather indirectly through mechanisms of collective religious introspection. Dietetics played a key role in these group formation processes, since food was perceived as a regulator that had a direct effect on the bodily ability to obtain religious knowledge.

In the last panel, STEFANO SARACINO (Jena) focused on the dietary habits of Greek Orthodox migrants from the Ottoman Empire in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. He showed that, on the one hand, the spatial distance of migrant students, merchants, and clerics from their original territory meant that they were outside the vigilance of their confessional authority; on the other hand, strict fasting and frugality habits sometimes became a distinguishing characteristic of the migration society and were contrasted with Catholic practices. These foreign fasting regimes drew the attention of local secular and spiritual authorities and shaped an interconfessional competitive environment where food practices acted as “confessional markers” and proof of religious authenticity.

The interconfessional and cross-cultural aspect of food practices, this time for the colonial context, was also a focus in OLGA TRUFANOVA’s (Beijing/Regensburg) talk on Christianization and colonization of Siberia. The conceptualization of food practices as the main feature distinguishing Christians and pagans from each other is inaccurate if one looks at colonial practices as opposed to colonial discourses. The Russian “civilizing” and Christianizing mission in Siberia, which above all else was meant to demonstrate Russian imperial prestige internationally, was endangered by the colonizers’ inability to maintain cultural and physical distance between themselves and the indigenous, predominately pagan population. The task of making Siberia Christian was therefore complicated by the failures of the colonizers to remain Christian.

JESSICA CRONSHAGEN (Oldenburg) developed the topic of colonial food practices in Surinam and their thematization in the chronicles of the Dutch missionary Christlieb Quandt (1740-1824), who discussed the dietary regimes of colonizers and indigenous peoples. Cronshagen identified six contexts and functions in which food was problematized and used by the colonizers: religion and cultural taboos; body observation and health; colonial accumulation of knowledge; ethnic connotation of food; colonial narratives of civilization; and justification for the use of enslaved people. This case illustrated how Christian practices of vigilance were based on the colonial division of the world, but also how the increasing number of Christians worldwide generated new forms of religious practices and perceptions thereof.

In her concluding remarks, BIRGIT EMICH (Frankfurt am Main) summarized the main findings and points of the workshop, beginning with an evaluation of the approaches to understanding food. Thus, fasting often raises discussions of the ability of abstention to enlighten and of ingestion to nourish. The juxtaposition of body and soul plays an important role in these discussions. On the one hand, by not needing to eat, one makes oneself godlike. On the other hand, certain practices of food ingestion have a symbolic meaning of god internalization. Although sometimes at the core of the opposition between the body and the soul, food can also act as a bridge between both, as well as between individuals and groups. At the same time, food can produce new individual and group identities and help to form new (interaction) communities. This (trans)formative function of food is particularly visible in studies of everyday practices in general, and everyday practices in multiethnic and multireligious regions in particular. For this reason, considering the “whole package” of food practices and their entanglements with each other has great scholarly potential.

The workshop enabled interdisciplinary discussion on the meaning of food, abstention, dietary restrictions, and food taboos beyond the limits of a single religion, church, or denomination. In addition, it promoted a more nuanced view of connections between religion, nutrition and abstention, enabling a trans-epochal dialogue between various disciplines.

Conference overview:

Julia Herzberg (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München / Universität Regensburg): Begrüßung und Einführung

I: Verzicht und Gemeinschaft in der Antike

Anna A. Novokhatko (Aristoteles-Universität Thessaloniki): Zur Verspottung des Nahrungsverzichts in der altgriechischen Komödie

Florian Heßdörfer (Universität Leipzig): Das komplizierte Fleisch. Zu Opfer- und Speisegemeinschaften in der Antike

II: Askese vs. Genuss: religiös und literarisch

Michaela Bill-Mrziglod (Universität Koblenz-Landau): „…wie kann man hungern und dürsten nach Christus, wenn man täglich von den Futterschoten der Schweine voll ist?“ – Fastenaskese und mystischer Genuss im Mittelalter

Jörn R. Christophersen (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main): Identitäten im Norden des Alten Reichs aushandeln: Juden und Christen vor dem Rat und im Schlachthaus während des späteren Mittelalters

Christine Ott (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main): Fressen statt Beten? Nahrungsmotivik und Nahrungsmetaphorik in Luigi Pulcis komischem Ritterepos „Il Morgante“ (1481/82)

Dorothea Weltecke (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main): Zwischenbilanz

III: Regulierung und Formierung religiöser Zugehörigkeit

Julia Herzberg (Ludwig-Maximilian-Universität München / Universität Regensburg): Verzicht als Pflicht. Die Normierung des Fastens an Russlands Schwelle zur Neuzeit

Iryna Klymenko (Ludwig-Maximilian-Universität München): Identitäten verwalten? Jüdische Regulierung kollektiver Körperpraktiken in Polen-Litauen

Lennart Gard (Freie Universität Berlin): „Wir genießen Christi Leib unter aller Speise“. Zum Zusammenhang zwischen diätetischer Vigilanz und religiöser Vergemeinschaftung im spiritualistischen Protestantismus um 1700

IV: Ess- und Enthaltsamkeitsgewohnheiten verflechtungshistorisch

Stefano Saracino (Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena): Konfessionalisierung, die durch den Magen geht: Die Beobachtung der Ernährungsgewohnheiten griechisch-orthodoxer Migranten im Alten Reich

Olga Trufanova (Peking / Universität Regensburg), Remaining Christian – becoming Christian. Food practices and religious identity of Siberian colonizers and the colonized

Jessica Cronshagen (Universität Oldenburg): Die Thematisierung von Nahrung in der Missionschronik und den Briefen Christlieb Quandts (1740-1824) im kolonialen Suriname

Birgit Emich (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main): Abschlusskommentar und Abschlussdiskussion