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Multidisciplinary approaches to food and foodways in the medieval Eastern Mediterranean

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Sylvie Yona Waksman

Byzantium and beyond

Dogs, vultures, horses and black pudding

Unclean meats in the eyes of the Byzantines

Béatrice Caseau

Résumé

The Byzantines, influenced by the traditions of ethnographic literature, readily condemned their enemies’ real or imaginary food practices as signs of barbarism. The ethnographic literature rarely mentions the practices of foreigners without adding a negative value judgement. The differences in food habits between nomadic peoples and the Byzantines were described in almost exactly the same manner as in the sources, from Antiquity up to the Middle Ages, which renders these descriptions useless for reconstructing the diet of nomadic peoples. This article explores how the “taste for blood” of the Pechenegs, the Coumans and the Turks are described in Byzantine sources. Some neighbours of the Byzantines, such as the Bulgarians, eventually converted to the Christian faith, and when their land was incorporated into the Byzantine Empire, these converts were forced to abandon certain foods that were repellent to the Byzantine Greeks, such as horse meat and raw meat. Nomadic peoples were not alone in being denounced as bloodthirsty barbarians, so were the Latins, because they did not bleed animals before eating them. In the context of military attacks against the Byzantine Empire, the leap between consumed blood and the figure of a bloodthirsty and monstrous Latin was easily made. The food taboo on animal blood thus contributed to the creation of a specific Byzantine identity as opposed to the barbarians and the Latins, who were condemned for eating unbled animals.

Texte intégral

Introduction

1Food practices are one of the identity markers used to distinguish different human groups. There is a tendency in the sources to record different practices, especially when they were proscribed. Byzantine society established certain dietary rules that differed from those of their Roman predecessors: some foods were forbidden and there were rules about the kinds of food that could be consumed at different times of the year according to the religious calendar. But certain types of behaviour from Antiquity survived into the Middle Ages, for example the perception that one’s own manners were appropriate and those of others barbaric. The Byzantines were influenced by the traditions of ethnographic literature and readily condemned their enemies’ real or imagined food practices as signs of barbarism. Their ethnographic literature rarely mentions foreigners’ practices without adding a negative value judgement. What others ate would have been a distinguishing criterion between Byzantine society and its neighbours. Thus, what a civilised Roman ate would have distinguished that person (those whom we call Byzantines called themselves Romans, Byzantine being a modern historiographic term) from a barbarian who ate “revolting” food. This food criterion was applied to dangerous enemies of the empire such as the Pechenegs or the Turks, but also to minor and foreign religious groups such as the Latins. The sources that describe their relationship to food or their food practices do so to condemn or at least to establish a clear distinction between the Latins and the Byzantines, who considered themselves to be the true Romans. This hostility can be explained by the economic and political context, i.e. an increasingly antagonistic relationship between the Latin and Byzantine worlds. Criticisms of food practices reinforced the conviction that the Latin was a bad Christian, thus adding another damning argument to all the others against the Latins, who had been denounced since the time of Photius. Food and religion were intrinsically linked, as discrepancies in the preparation of food and what was unacceptable for consumption were stigmatised and became an additional element in theological controversies with the Latins, which primarily concerned religious practices. The Latins were a target mainly because their presence and their trade benefits irritated the Byzantines.

2The Byzantines needed “the other”, particularly the barbarian, to define themselves as the norm. Certainly not everyone internalised or applied the rules imposed by canon law and civil law regarding fasting periods and consumable foods, but by using the other as a foil, whether the Pecheneg or the Latin, it was possible to create within Byzantine society a perception of its own specificity and to make it more difficult to transgress these rules. The food norms, internalised by the people, served to create a specific religious and cultural identity. The ethnographic literature concerning food practices served therefore as an important regulatory function in Byzantine society as well as creating religious boundaries with foreigners or other groups residing in Byzantine territory.

3We will begin by studying the Pechenegs and the Cumans, the new barbarians in the eyes of the Byzantines.

The proto-Turks: Pechenegs, Cumans and Bulgarians

  • 1 Athenaeus, ll.499. I thank A. Mitchell for this reference.

4The nomadic barbarian, the Scythian, has represented one of the archetypes of barbarism since the time of Herodotus (Hartog 1988). He was known for being bloodthirsty and having behaviour akin to that of wild beasts. In ancient greek, Skythizein means to drink immoderately, like a Scythian, probably because they drank undiluted wine, a practice thought barbaric by the Greeks.1 Since Antiquity, the barbarian has been considered to be the antithesis of the civilised Greek. Hellenic culture was therefore defined in relation to the barbarian, the two representing opposite poles. Like the concept of the heretic, the concept of the barbarian permitted the Byzantines to more clearly define themselves. Just as new heresies became assimilated with older ones, the new barbarians who had recently settled on the borders of the imperial lands or on these lands were conceptually identifiable with the barbarians of old. This is why Pechenegs, Coumans and Turks were named after people who had lived in proto-Byzantine times or even earlier times in Greek history. Thus, the name Scythian could be used as a derogatory term for several nomadic peoples.

5The Barbarian is a well-defined generic category but the ethnographic discourse provided parallels and distinctions among the barbarians with each new historical encounter (Hall 1989). Between the fifth-century Huns and the eleventh-century Turks, several populations that we call “proto-Turkish” came into violent contact with the Byzantine world: Avars, Bulgars, Khazars, Pechenegs and Cumans. The literary descriptions of their “barbarism” reiterate the same expressions, using the ancient ethnographic sources to characterize them, which implies that they are virtually useless in any attempt to discover the actual food practices of these populations. The assimilation of the various groups that attacked the empire at different points in its history makes it very difficult to study their characteristics. They are all based on the Huns, still known in French historiography of the 19th and 20th centuries as archetypal bloodthirsty barbarians.

  • 2 There is a profusion of literature on the Huns. Some recent works: Bozoky 2012; Tuffin & McEvoy 20 (...)

6Their bloodthirstiness was reflected in their diet. Ammianus describes the Huns as people who ate raw meat, which was warmed by placing it between the horseman’s thighs and the horse’s back (Ammanius Marcellinus, Res Gestae).2 They never dismounted to eat or drink. These crude beings did not cultivate the land but fed on wild plants, like the animals that accompanied them. At a time when the Byzantine world was particularly under threat from nomadic peoples coming from the steppes of Central Asia, Byzantine authors referred again to the stereotyped descriptions of nomads, who did not appreciate the sophistication of cooking and ate only raw meat and wild plants (Malamut 1995; Stephenson 2000).

7Some of these peoples, like the Pechenegs, attacked the Byzantine Empire in the 11th century and long wars were fought throughout that century. Michael Psellos refers to the barbarism of these Pechenegs, presenting them as a bloodthirsty people who ate horse meat and consumed the flesh and the blood of the animal together (Michael Psellus, Chronographia, 7, 68, p. 126):

Do they wish to drink? If they find water springs or rivers, they jump in them without a second thought and start to lap the water. If they do not find any, they all dismount and bleed their horses, open veins with iron, and quench their thirst; and then, having carved up the fattest horse and set fire to wood they found lying about, they heat slightly the skinned members of the horse and eat it all bloody.

  • 3 Transl. Rosenblum 1972, p. 20.
  • 4 Niketas Choniates, History, p. 94: “ὁ δέ αὐτος ἵππος καὶ τὸν Σκύθην ὀχεῖ, διὰ μαχησμοῦ φέρων τοῦ π (...)

8Joannes Kinnamos described them as ignorant of agriculture, and feeding only on milk and meat (Joannes Kinnamos, Epitome, I, 4, p. 9),3 while Gregory Antiochus emphasizes their taste for red meat, which they preferred to fish (Gregory Antiochus, Letters I, p. 279; Stephenson 2000; Messis 2018). The Pechenegs were finally defeated in 1091 at the Battle of Lebounion, with the help of the Coumans, another nomadic people also referred to as Scythians. Niketas Choniates described them with a comment similar to that of Michael Psellus on the Pechenegs: “The same horse serves the Scythian as a means of transport in violent battle, and a means of subsistence once he opens its veins.”4

9This similarity of the comments referring to these different peoples is hardly surprising since they all fell under the category of nomadic barbarians. Blood consumption, the abuse of the very animals with whom they lived in symbiosis, the lack of control in eating or sex were stereotypical characteristics of the barbaric nomad.

  • 5 Gregory III, Letter to Boniface, PL 89, col. 517.
  • 6 A. Dierkens considers that the refusal to eat horsemeat in the West is not due to a religious reas (...)

10In opposition to this literary tradition borrowed from Antiquity, which rejects the barbarian outside the Greek world, is the Christian tradition that sought to convert and bring the barbarian into the fold of the Byzantine oikoumene. This was the case for the Bulgarians, whom Theodore Daphnopates thought should no longer be called Scythians or barbarians, but Christians (Jenkins 1966). The Bulgarians, once converted to Christianity and incorporated into the empire, could be assimilated into Byzantine Greek culture without completely losing their origins. It was therefore possible to discard one’s “barbarism”, by renouncing any separation from the Orthodox Christian world. These converts could keep their particular food traditions, such as traditional cheeses, but they had to abandon certain practices that were repellent to the Byzantine Greeks, such as hippophagy or consumption of raw meat. Even though hippophagy was not an absolute taboo, it was frowned upon in both East and West (Safran 2014, p. 194). In 732, Pope Gregory III, a pope of Greek origin, told Boniface, the apostle of the Germans who were consumers of horsemeat, that it was appropriate to tell new converts that eating horses was a serious sin.5 Gregory III intended to ensure that the newly converted population would renounce this meat (and “pagan” sacrifices).6 Eating horsemeat was habitual in the Celtic, Germanic and Slavic worlds. When Håkon (ca 920-961), who was raised in England as a Christian, became king of Norway he was asked to perform a horse sacrifice and eat the flesh. As a Christian, he refused to do so, but for the sake of compromise he agreed to drink the cooking broth, which would probably have been repellent to a Byzantine (Simoons 1994, pp. 187‑188). Eating horses was not officially condemned by civil or canon law in the Byzantine world, but it was avoided and horse meat remained a food to be eaten only in case of famine.

11These differences in food habits between nomadic peoples and the Byzantines were commented upon in almost exactly the same manner in the written sources, from Antiquity up to the Middle Ages. The barbarians were feared, and Byzantine authors constantly referred to their taste for blood, revealed on the battlefield, and to their alleged drinking of horse blood. Bloodthirsty barbarians were condemned for their ferocity and their food habits. How could they hurt the horses that they rode? The Byzantine dislike for raw meat had a Biblical origin. The Byzantines bled animals before eating them, following the Jewish practice. Blood was seen as the life of the animal, which belonged to God and should not be consumed. Nomadic barbarians were not the only people to be denounced as blood-drinking barbarians, so were the Latins, because they did not bleed animals before eating them. They were considered to be bad Christians who had not renounced “barbarism”, because they did not respect biblical food prohibitions.

The Latins

  • 7 For example: Canons of Adomnan, 2‑8, p. 176; on the end of the taboo on eating blood in the West: (...)

12Was this accusation justified? On the consumption of animal blood, Byzantine and Latin canon law hardly diverged until the 12th century. In the Latin penitentials are penances that were imposed on those who ate carrion or drank blood.7 For example, the Penitential of Theodore of Tarsus, who became Archbishop of Canterbury in 668, mentions the prohibitions against drinking blood, eating strangled animals and making offerings to idols (Penitential of Theodorus, XI, 2, p. 207). Presumably Theodore of Tarsus was influenced by his Greek upbringing, but we find the same prohibitions in Carolingian penitentials. The Roman penitential of Halitgar bishop of Cambrai, in about 830, imposed a twelve-week fast on any person who ate blood or carrion, and on idolothytes (Roman penitential attributed to Halitgar, 44, p. 306). This penitential is thought to have come from Rome, where the Greek influence was very strong in the 7th and 8th centuries, and was incorporated into the Carolingian penitential tradition. The perception of impurity and barbarism in regard to Latin food practices may have been related to the Latins’ ignoring formerly common dietary requirements, but it was more likely to have been related to the anti-Latin polemic that developed at the time of the Crusades. While the issue of the consumption of animal blood does not seem to have worried the Romans, the Byzantines made it a factor of identity. The Latins although Christians were not devoid of barbarism in the eyes of the Byzantines; they ate meat which had not been bled and consumed coagulated blood in sausages called black pudding.

  • 8 Theodore Balsamon, Commentary on the council of Trullo, PG 137, col. 748.
  • 9 Theodore Balsamon, Commentary on the canons of the apostles, PG 137, col. 164.

13Balsamon († 1199) was particularly virulent in his criticism of Latin food practices, which included consumption of blood and of unclean animals. To justify this Byzantine rejection, he recalls that consuming unbled meat was already proscribed in the book of Genesis (Genesis 9: 4). In his commentary, he noted that the prohibition of consuming blood was incorporated into Byzantine civil law by Leo VI (Caseau 2013). Above all, he took advantage of this review to criticize the Latins.8 He stressed the differences in biblical culture and the respect for canon law that opposed Byzantines to Latins: the latter ate bloody meat (from τὰ πνικτά, “the strangled ones”).9 According to Balsamon, the Byzantines, with the exception of the inhabitants of Adrianopolis, respected prohibitions from the New Testament, whereas the Latins gorged on blood, a way of accusing them as token barbarians, a typical feature of the barbarian being his taste for blood and his lack of self-control.

  • 10 Attribution confirmed by A. Michel, editor of the Panoplia (see next footnote), and more recently (...)
  • 11 Πανοπλία κατὰ τῶν Λατίνων: Panoplia against the Latins, pp. 236‑238.
  • 12 Πανοπλία κατὰ τῶν Λατίνων, Panoplia against the Latins: “ὁ σωτὴρ ἐν τῷ ἐυαγγελίῳ φησὶν οὕτως. ἀπέχ (...)

14Byzantine authors based their condemnation of the Latins’ food habits on biblical, patristic or canonical writings. In the Panoplia against the Latins, wrongly attributed to Michael Cerularius, dating rather to the period that followed the union with Rome in 1274,10 is a chapter devoted to strangled animals, and thus unbled meat: Περὶ πνικτοῦ.11 The author attributes the prohibition against consumption of blood, idolothytes and bloody meat to the “Saviour from the Gospel”.12 The Gospel being understood to mean the New Testament, the mention of the Saviour immediately eliminates any discussion about the prohibition. John Chrysostom’s testimony supports the arguments of the author, who also quotes canon 63 of the Apostles, which required the removal of clerics who had eaten carrion or meat in its blood (κρέας ἐν αἵματι) and excommunication of members of the laity for the same sins.

15In the 12th and 13th centuries, the Latins were frequently blamed for violating food taboos concerning blood and some meats. The Byzantines saw an increasing presence of Latins on their territory and became aware of the differences in food culture; they showed their rejection of these intruders by an increasingly fierce critique of these differences. This Byzantine mistrust emerged during the First Crusade, when Alexis Komnenos recognised among the Crusaders Normans from southern Italy against whom he had been compelled to fight to counter their ambition of conquering the Byzantine Empire. Food references should be read in the context of tense relations between Byzantines and Norman Crusaders. Anna Komnene describes how her father greeted Bohemond of Taranto, who feared being poisoned and would not touch food prepared for him by the emperor. Alexis I had raw meat sent to him so that he could prepare it as he pleased. This gift was also an insult, an allusion to the barbarism of the Normans, who ate unbled meat. Anna Komnene was probably aware of the controversy surrounding the differences between the Byzantines and the Latins in the preparation of meat.

  • 13 Eustathios of Thessaloniki, Account on the last – may God grant it – capture of Thessaloniki, p. 2 (...)
  • 14 Niketas Choniates, History, book 9, 594, transl. Magoulias 1984, pp. 326‑327: “their native food: (...)

16The image of the boorish Norman hungry for raw meat worsened after the capture of Thessaloniki by the Normans in 1185. Eustathios of Thessaloniki complained about the gluttonous Normans who devoured pigs and oxen, and although a bishop he was glad to hear that they died from food excesses:13 “Death, also caused by the pork meat, with which they filled their bellies without measure; and they did the same with beef and good garlic.” In the tragic context of the fall of Constantinople in 1204, Niketas Choniates referred in anger to the Latin beef eaters.14 The Byzantines ate mutton, goat and pork but rarely beef, a significant difference between them and the Latins, who came from western and northern Europe.

  • 15 Michael Cerularius, Letter to Peter of Antioch, PG 120, col. 781‑796; commentary on the influence (...)

17Although disputes between Greeks and Latins and a debated list of Latin errors date back to the time of Photius, catalogues of Latin errors that mention unclean meats or blood began to appear in the Byzantine world in the 11th century, at first in the wake of the schism of 1054, and then during the Crusades (Kolbaba 2000). This literary genre gained momentum starting in the late 11th century. Strangled (unbled) animals consumed by the Latins were mentioned in a letter from Michael Cerularius to Peter, Patriarch of Antioch, an encyclical which later served as a model for the writing of catalogues listing the errors of the Latins.15 1204 marked a turning point in the relations between Greeks and Latins and writings on the errors of the Latins began to proliferate.

18In these writings, Latins are denounced as consumers of unclean foods. Disgust toward those Christians who committed sacrilegious acts came to be expressed through the rejection of their impurity, the result of eating unclean foods. The leap from the consumption of blood to the figure of a bloodthirsty and monstrous Latin was easily made. It was indeed in contrast to the Latins that a Greek purity was defined after 1204. From then onward, this characterization of the Latin became a constant. The last great Byzantine commentator of the canonical tradition, Matthew Blastares, whose alphabetical Syntagma appeared in 1335, reiterated this criticism of the Latins, eaters of bloody meat who completely disrespected the canons (Mathew Blastares, ΣΥΝΤΑΓΜΑ ΚΑΤΑ ΣΤΟΟΙΧΕΙΟΝ, p. 431).

19The food taboo on animal blood thus contributed to the creation of a specific Byzantine identity as opposed to the barbarians and the Latins, condemned for eating unbled meat. Blood and raw meat were not the only food rejected by the Byzantines. Latins were accused of eating all sorts of animals deemed disgusting by the Byzantines. What should we conclude about food prohibitions in the Byzantine world?

Food taboos in Byzantium

20The Byzantines rejected most of the Jewish dietary restrictions and decided that it was permissible to eat pork and shellfish, among other animals declared unclean by Mosaic law. However, they did introduce dietary laws that focused on meat, since plants were irrelevant unless they had been offered to idols. The oldest prohibitions, dating back to the New Testament, concerned idolothytes and animal blood, upon which Greeks and Latins agreed at first, then diverged. Both Latin and Greek Christian communities allowed the consumption of pork, contrary to Jewish law. Jesus’ words (Mc. 7: 14‑23; Booth 1987) on the purity of food were regularly cited to justify this rejection of Jewish food taboos, but the Byzantines did not consider all animals to be edible. Some animals were considered unclean. We find references to those animals whose consumption was forbidden, first in canon law, then in anti-Latin treatises that outline what the Byzantines could not imagine eating.

  • 16 Opusculum contra Francos, pp. 65‑66: “τὰ πνικτὰ ἐσθίουσι καὶ τὰ θηριάλωτα καὶ θνησιμαῖα καὶ τὸ αἷμ (...)

21Among these catalogues of dietary errors, some went much further in detailing their accusations by establishing a list of unclean animals that the Greeks did not eat but which they accused the Latins of eating. John Claudiopolis, probably in the late 11th century, mentions beavers, jackals and bears. The Opusculum contra Francos, perhaps from the same period, mentions the same animals, and “others even more disgusting”.16 The list is even longer in the Memoires of Constantine Stilbes against the Latins, written after the fall of Constantinople in 1204 (Constantine Stilbes, Memoire against the Latins, p. 79):

They eat the meat of smothered animals, dead (accidentally from a disease) or killed by beasts, as well as blood and unclean animals: bears, jackals, turtles, porcupines, beavers, crows, ravens, seagulls, dolphins, rats and fouler and more disgusting animals.

  • 17 P. Bonnassie (1989, p. 1052, no. 11) quotes Latin sources that recommend eating hare against diarr (...)
  • 18 On the bad reputation of the hares’ mores, Laurioux 1988.

22This list could be enlarged, if one believes the testimony of Peter, Patriarch of Antioch, a contemporary of Michael Cerularius to whom he wrote explaining that his reproach to the Latins about eating unclean food must be toned down since some Byzantines do so themselves. He mentions in particular the Bithynians, the Thracians and the Lydians, who ate magpies, crows, doves and hedgehogs, animals that were not on the list of permitted meats (Peter of Antioch, Letter to Michael Cerularius, p. 194). A confirmation of this testimony can be surmised from a letter of the Greek Pope Zacharias to Boniface, the Apostle of the Germans (Zachary, Letter to Boniface, MGH Ep. III, p. 370, no. 87). This letter, which dates to 751, has intrigued many scholars because it contains a list of animals not to be eaten that includes mostly animals commonly eaten in the West, such as the hare.17 In this letter the Pope asked Boniface to ban the consumption of beavers, hares and wild horses, as well as some birds, such as jays, crows and storks. The alleged sexual behaviour of some of these animals and their indiscriminate consumption of other animals explain their rejection as food (Physiologos).18 The Byzantines feared that by eating them they would become like them (Physiologos, Introduction).

23There were two other banned meats in Byzantine canon law: dog and vulture. Constantine Harmenopoulos quotes or rather summarizes Basil of Caesarea’s 86th canon concerning these two banned meats (Constantine Harmenopoulos, Epitome of the Holy Canons, p. 127):

Just like we do with vegetables, we should do similarly with meats, distinguishing the harmful from the useful. And just like a reasonable man does not eat hemlock or henbane, he will neither touch vulture meat nor that of a dog, except if absolutely necessary.

24The dog and the vulture are both scavengers, which probably explains the disgust that eating their flesh might have inspired (Simoons 1994, p. 233). They were thus considered to be harmful to human health and excluded from the list of consumable foods, but it also seems clear that Basil made an exception in the case of famine and did not consider penance to be necessary if prohibited foods were eaten by the starving, which may be regarded as a kind of doublespeak. Some foods are unclean and to be avoided, but if this is impossible, eating them has no spiritual consequence.

Conclusion

25We see through these examples that the Byzantine sources borrowed from an ethnographic literary tradition when it came to describing barbarians, as may be seen in the similar descriptions of different groups. There also existed a more innovative literary genre, which while using food as a means to belittle the other, invented long lists of foods that the Byzantines did not eat. These texts reflect indirectly Byzantine food culture by revealing what seems to have been repulsive and inedible to the Byzantines. Although they do not tell us what Pechenegs or Latins really ate, they do provide us with a better understanding of the food culture of the Byzantines in the Middle Ages (Caseau 2015).

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Notes

1 Athenaeus, ll.499. I thank A. Mitchell for this reference.

2 There is a profusion of literature on the Huns. Some recent works: Bozoky 2012; Tuffin & McEvoy 2005; Levi-Strauss 1964.

3 Transl. Rosenblum 1972, p. 20.

4 Niketas Choniates, History, p. 94: “ὁ δέ αὐτος ἵππος καὶ τὸν Σκύθην ὀχεῖ, διὰ μαχησμοῦ φέρων τοῦ πολυάικος, καὶ τροφὴν χορηγγεῖ σχαζομένης φλεβός”; transl. Kaldellis 2013, p. 116.

5 Gregory III, Letter to Boniface, PL 89, col. 517.

6 A. Dierkens considers that the refusal to eat horsemeat in the West is not due to a religious reason but rather to the respect of a military society that valued the cavalry (A. Dierkens, “Réflexions sur l’hippophagie au haut Moyen Âge”, Presentation at the HASRI Conference Viandes et sociétés. Les consommations ordinaires et extraordinaires, Paris, Natural History Museum, 27‑28 November 2008, quoted in Leteux 2012, p. 50).

7 For example: Canons of Adomnan, 2‑8, p. 176; on the end of the taboo on eating blood in the West: Rousseau 2005.

8 Theodore Balsamon, Commentary on the council of Trullo, PG 137, col. 748.

9 Theodore Balsamon, Commentary on the canons of the apostles, PG 137, col. 164.

10 Attribution confirmed by A. Michel, editor of the Panoplia (see next footnote), and more recently by Smith (1978, p. 104); but contested by Jugie (1933), Laurent (1932, pp. 97‑110) and Grumel (1960, p. 286), as well as by Laurent & Darrouzès (1976, pp. 116‑121), but endorsed by Dagron (1993, p. 344, no. 238) and Tinnefeld (1989).

11 Πανοπλία κατὰ τῶν Λατίνων: Panoplia against the Latins, pp. 236‑238.

12 Πανοπλία κατὰ τῶν Λατίνων, Panoplia against the Latins: “ὁ σωτὴρ ἐν τῷ ἐυαγγελίῳ φησὶν οὕτως. ἀπέχετε ἀπὸ τοῦ αἵματος, εἰδωλοθύτου ἤγουν πνικτοῦ.”

13 Eustathios of Thessaloniki, Account on the last – may God grant it – capture of Thessaloniki, p. 248.

14 Niketas Choniates, History, book 9, 594, transl. Magoulias 1984, pp. 326‑327: “their native food: chine of oxen cooked in cauldrons, chunks of pickled hog boiled with ground beans, and a pungent garlic sauce mixed with other seasonings.”

15 Michael Cerularius, Letter to Peter of Antioch, PG 120, col. 781‑796; commentary on the influence of this letter on the catalogues of errors of the Latins in Constantine Stilbes, Memoire against the Latins, p. 51.

16 Opusculum contra Francos, pp. 65‑66: “τὰ πνικτὰ ἐσθίουσι καὶ τὰ θηριάλωτα καὶ θνησιμαῖα καὶ τὸ αἷμα καὶ τὰς ἄρκτους καὶ τοὺς κυνοπόταμους καὶ τζακάλεις καὶ τὰ ἔτι τούτων μυσαρώτερα καὶ μιαιρώτερα.”

17 P. Bonnassie (1989, p. 1052, no. 11) quotes Latin sources that recommend eating hare against diarrhoea; on hare recipes, Laurioux 1997, pp. 378‑379.

18 On the bad reputation of the hares’ mores, Laurioux 1988.

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