Historical Background to Food and Christianity

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents v
3. Introduction 1
4. Historical Background to Food and Christianity 7
5. 1. The Urban Influence. Shopping and Consumption at the Florentine Monastery of Santa Trinità in the Mid-Fourteenth Century 21
6. 2. The Ideology of Fasting in the Reformation Era 41
7. 3. “The Food Police”: Sumptuary Prohibitions on Food in the Reformation 59
8. 4. Dirty Things: Bread, Maize, Women, and Christian Identity in Sixteenth-Century America 83
9. 5. Enlightened Fasting: Religious Conviction, Scientific Inquiry, and Medical Knowledge in Early Modern France 105
10. 6. The Sanctity of Bread: Missionaries and the Promotion of Wheat Growing Among the New Zealand Maori 125
11. 7. Commensality and Love Feast: The Agape Meal in the Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Brethren in Christ Church 147
12. 8. Metaphysics and Meatless Meals: Why Food Mattered When the Mind Was Everything 171
13. 9. Fasting and Food Habits in the Eastern Orthodox Church 189
14. 10. Divine Dieting: A Cultural Analysis of Christian Weight Loss Programs 205
15. 11. Eating in Silence in an English Benedictine Monastery 221
16. Bibliography 239
17. Index 253