Food and Meaning: Christian Understandings of Muslim Food and Food Ways in Spain, 1250–1550

This article argues that the discussion of food and food ways in late medieval and early modern Spain could send powerful messages about perceptions of cultural, social, and religious identity. Foodstuffs and eating traditions have always been complex in the ways they have the ability to build, define, and separate communities, and this was certainly the case for Muslim and Christian populations in Spain. Taking as its starting point the critique of king Enrique IV of Castile for eating Muslim foods while seated on the ground in a Muslim manner, the article examines changing Christian attitudes in Iberia towards particular food stuffs (especially milk, butter, honey, raisins, figs, and couscous); views about of sharing food with Muslims; and the implications of sitting on the ground to eat. By the sixteenth century, influenced by emerging arguments of both humanism and the inquisition, Christian rhetoric in Spain came to see food as a powerful tool for defining difference.