✣ Highlights from the week online
How medieval chefs made fast days easier Natasha Frost at Atlas Obscura described how medieval chefs handled meat-free days. It wasn’t just Fridays, she noted, but Wednesdays, to observe when Judas betrayed Christ, and Saturdays, to commemorate the Virgin Mary – not to mention the whole of Lent. Those living inland, she said, were forced to endure “weeks upon weeks of muddy-tasting freshwater fish or salted herring and cod”. One 15th-century schoolboy wrote: “Thou will not believe how weary I am of fish ... I have eat none other than salt fish this Lent, and it has engendered so much phlegm within me that it stops my pipes that I can scarcely speak nor breathe. “Robbed of their eggs and dairy,” Frost wrote, “medieval chefs were forced to get creative, often plumping for the same substitutes many 21st-century vegans choose.” Almonds were a “crucial tool”, used to make cheeses and turned into foods that masqueraded as eggs and bacon. There were also “flagrant misinterpretations” of what was or was not a fish. Sea mammals such as dolphins and porpoises were allowed, as were beavers’ tails, “which were scaly and apparently tasted enough like fish to qualify”. Displaced Christians deserve their own film The effort to look after displaced Christians in Iraq and Syria is like “Dunkirk in reverse – the idea isn’t to get people out, but to help them stay,” wrote John L Allen at Crux upon the release of the blockbuster film Dunkirk. Mainstream aid focuses on refugee camps, where Christians are reluctant to go for fear of further persecution, instead taking refuge in “churches, schools, clinics, hospitals, social service centres, even the homes and properties of other Christians”. And they’re supported by Catholic groups like Aid to the Church in Need and the Knights of Columbus. Hundreds of thousands of Christians “have been kept alive, were able to remain with their families, and given some hope of better things to come,” he wrote. How an entire town was excommunicated An entire town in Spain was excommunicated in the 13th century “when the castle of Trasmoz was accused of being a safe haven for witches and wizards,” wrote Daniel Esparza at Aleteia. Tramoza, in the province of Zaragoza, had a reputation for witchcraft – a cover-up, it seems, for the noise of the castle’s residents forging coins. Over the years relations between Church and town got worse. As secular land, it didn’t pay any taxes to the monastery. Then the monastery diverted water from the village. Events escalated, and in 1511 Tramoza was “officially cursed” by the archbishop, with the support of Julius II. “Since the curse had papal approval, only the pope can lift it. So far, no pope has.”
