FOr for nearly 500 years, the arch connecting the world’s largest Gothic cathedral with its Renaissance sacristy has provided visitors with a luxurious, even if rarely seen—or even less studied—religious blessing scene.
68 beautifully carved food plates decorating the arches Seville Cathedral It offers more than just bread and wine.
There are trotters and wild strawberries, eggplants, clams and oysters. There were peaches, radishes, a hare with skin, a knife beside it, a squirrel on a bed of hazelnuts, and a plate of lemons, on which a small snake slipped. There are also cakes and biscuits, and the more exotic one is a new pepper imported from Mexico. Fall into Hernan Cortes and his men It was more than ten years before the engraver started working.
These plates are often hidden when the huge wooden doors of the sacristy are opened. This is the subject of a new book by a Spanish art historian who has been trying to uncover the secrets and meaning of the cathedral stone for the past 11 years. .
“People didn’t really see the carvings because the door and they were too busy looking at the dome of the sacristy,” said Juan Clement Rodriguez Estevez“But these carvings have been around for 500 years and have never been properly studied. Besides being regarded as a bit novel, they haven’t attracted people’s attention.”
This arch was carved between 1533 and 1535 and provides what Rodriguez called a “snapshot of a seminal moment.” He believes that its still life sculptures are chapters of the social, religious, economic and cultural history of Seville and Seville. Spain as a whole.
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Rodriguez, who teaches at the University of Seville, said that contemporary theologians and mystics are concerned about the importance of the Eucharist and are trying to portray the sacrament as “a feast in which everyone is invited.”
His book “The Banquet of All Nations: Art and Gastronomy of the Renaissance in Seville” explores how food can be used to strengthen Catholic identity, as an image of rich joy in the afterlife, and even as a bridge between them. Europe And America.
Unsurprisingly, pork occupies three seats out of 68 plates, but strangely, olive oil-the staple food of Andalusia since Roman times-did not appear. Rodríguez’s theory is that it may have been excluded under the order of Baltasar del Río, a bishop who played an important role in the creation of the arch.Although he has earned a reputation in the churches of Rome and Seville, Del Rio comes from a Conversion – Jewish conversion Catholicism – His father was tried by the Inquisition at the end of the 15th century.
Given his roots, the bishop may choose to exclude oil because it is used by Jews, who, like Muslims-but unlike Catholics-do not fry their food with pigs.
“become a I convert, Del Río must treat the food in the arch very carefully. They all need to be true Catholics,” Rodriguez said.
“But some foods are influenced by Jews, such as eggplant. Eggplant was introduced to Europe through Islam and is favored by Muslims and Jews. I think the appearance of eggplant shows how normal they have become by then.”
The bread in the center of the arch may also be a reference to Del Rio’s decision to establish a fraternity to help raise the Pistons and the poor.
“There was a terrible famine in 1521, and he ordered the purchase of cheap wheat to provide bread to the poor when the price of wheat rose. If you look in the middle of the arch, you can see the bread.”
Until a botanist consulted by Rodríguez corrected him, Rodríguez had treated peppers as strawberries, which were the only crop from the Americas.
“There is no more food there because it was still early days,” he said. “At that time, corn was mainly used as animal feed, and potatoes had not yet reached Spain. Because the conquest of Peru occurred in the 1530s, Peruvian ships had only just begun to arrive.”
However, there is not only one way of transportation. As Rodriguez pointed out, the Augustinian friars who followed the Dominicans and Franciscans to the Americas built three churches in Mexico in the 1560s, with food plates adorned at the entrances of the churches. The purpose is to celebrate the Eucharist and help explain the importance of the sacrament to the conquered who are not familiar with bread and wine.
Rodriguez was pleased with the results of more than ten years of research and emphasized that he has huge debts to botanists, zoologists and other experts he consulted during his physical and intellectual travels.
“I would not have written this book if it hadn’t been for researchers for decades to help us understand food in a cultural context,” he said.
“All I saw was a pile of plates. When I started to look at the arch, I saw a window leading to the 16th century, but I’m not sure what was on the other side.”
