Vegetarian or Franciscan? Flexible Dietary Choices Past and Present
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v1i4.450Keywords:
Francis of Assisi, vegetarianismAbstract
Francis of Assisi is often understood, both by modern commentators and his contemporaries, to have been vegetarian. Textual evidence contradicts this supposition and shows that he sometimes ate meat. As a guest, Francis would not refuse meat if offered it, and when he himself received guests, normal dietary practices were sometimes disrupted. Sickness was a second reason for exemptions from normal dining practices. Moreover, as the Franciscan Rule developed, Francis opposed agitation for more rigorist discipline. This was because rigid abstention might have created boundaries that hindered the spread of the Gospel, and would have identified the nascent Franciscan order with heretical sects. Francis’s dietary practices should be seen in light of his hierarchical view of creation, according to which every living being praises God but is also available for human use and consumption as food, at least in the present age. This retrieval of a more accurate picture of Francis than the one dominant in modern popular imagination aids understanding of modern vegetarianisms by both scholars and the wider public.
References
Adam, David 2006 ‘Earthshakers: The Top 100 Green Campaigners of All Time’, The Guardian, 28 November.
Adams, Carol 2000 The Inner Art of Vegetarianism: Spiritual Practices for Body and Soul (New York: Lantern).
Amato, Paul, and Sonia Partridge 1989 The New Vegetarians (New York: Plenum).
Athanasius 1961 ‘Life of Anthony’, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church (28 vols.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans): II.4, 188-221.
The Babylonian Talmud: Seder Nezikin: Baba Bathra, I 1961 (London: Soncino).
Bazell, Dianne M. 1997 ‘Strife among the Table-Fellows: Conflicting Attitudes of Early and Medieval Christians toward the Eating of Meat’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 65: 73-99.
Berry, Ryan 1998 Food for the Gods: Vegetarianism and the World’s Religions (New York: Pythagorean).
Brooke, Rosalind 1959 Early Franciscan Government: Elias to Bonaventure (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Brown, Callum 2001 The Death of Christian Britain (London: Routledge).
Bruce, F.F. 1988 The Book of the Acts (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, rev. edn).
Chesterton, G.K. 1923 St. Francis of Assisi (London: Hodder & Stoughton).
De Vogüé, Adalbert (ed.) 1964–65 La Règle du Maître (3 vols.; Paris: Cerf).
Diamond, Eliezer 2004 Holy Men and Hunger Artists: Fasting and Asceticism in Rabbinic Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Douglas, Mary 1999 Leviticus as Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
[1966] Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge, rev. edn).
Elliott, Alison 1987 Roads to Paradise: Reading the Lives of the Early Saints (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England).
Esser, Cajetan 1958 ‘Franziskus von Assisi und die Katharer seiner Zeit’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 51: 223-55.
Fiddes, Nick 1993 Meat: A Natural Symbol (London: Routledge).
Fox, Michael Allen 1999 Deep Vegetarianism (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press).
Francis of Assisi: Early Documents 1999–2002 (ed. Regis J. Armstrong, J.A. Wayne Hellmann, and William J. Short; 4 vols.; New York: New City Press).
Gregory IX, Pope 1228 Mira circa nos. Online: http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Greg09/g9mira.htm.
Hamilton, Malcolm 2000 ‘Eating Ethically: “Spiritual” and “Quasi-religious” Aspects of Vegetarianism’, Journal of Contemporary Religion 15: 65-83. doi:10.1080/135379000112143.
Harnack, Adolf von 1909 The Acts of the Apostles (London: Williams & Norgate).
Horrell, David 2002 ‘Solidarity and Difference: Pauline Morality in Romans 14.1–15.13’, Studies in Christian Ethics 15: 60-78. doi:10.1177/095394680201500206.
‘Solidarity, Difference and Other-regard: The Strong and the Weak (1 Corinthians 8–10; Romans 14–15)’, in Solidarity and Difference: A Contemporary Reading of Paul’s Ethics (London: T&T Clark International): 166-203.
Houston, Walter 1993 Purity and Monotheism: Clean and Unclean Animals in Biblical Law (Sheffield: JSOT Press).
Jacobus de Voragine 1993 The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints (2 vols.; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
Lambert, Malcolm 2002 Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation (Oxford: Blackwell, 3rd edn).
Leyerle, Blake 2005 ‘Monks and Other Animals’, in Dale B. Martin and Patricia Cox Miller (eds.), The Cultural Turn in Late Ancient Studies: Gender, Asceticism, and Historiography (Durham, NC: Duke University Press): 150-71.
The Lives of the Desert Fathers 1981 (trans. Norman Russell; London: Mowbray).
Long, R. James 2005 ‘Aquinas and Franciscan Nature Mysticism’, Logos 8.2: 52-60. doi:10.1353/log.2005.0020.
McGuckin, J.A. 1985 ‘Christian Aceticism and the Early School of Alexandria’, in W.J. Sheils (ed.), Monks, Hermits and the Ascetic Tradition (Oxford: Blackwell): 25-39.
Moschos, John 1992 The Spiritual Meadow (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian).
Northcott, Michael 1995 The Environment and Christian Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Rogers, Ben 2003 Beef and Liberty: Roast Beef, John Bull and the English Nation (London: Chatto & Windus).
The Rule of the Master 1977 (trans. Luke Eberle; Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian).
The Rule of St. Benedict 1981 (trans. Timothy Fry; Collegeville, MN: Liturgical).
Shaw, Teresa M. 1998 The Burden of the Flesh: Fasting and Sexuality in Early Christianity (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress).
The Sibylline Oracles: Books III–V 1937 (trans. H.N. Bate; London: SPCK).
Singer, Peter 1990 Animal Liberation (London: Cape, 2nd edn).
‘A Vegetarian Philosophy’, in Sian Griffiths and Jennifer Wallace (eds.), Consuming Passion: Food in the Age of Anxiety (Manchester: Manchester University Press): 71-80.
Sorrell, Roger 1988 St. Francis of Assisi and Nature: Tradition and Innovation in Western Christian Attitudes toward the Environment (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Stuart, Tristram 2006 The Bloodless Revolution: Radical Vegetarians and the Discovery of India (London: Harper).
The Tosefta: Third Division: Nashim 1979 (New York: Ktav).
Twigg, Julia 1979 ‘Food for Thought: Purity and Vegetarianism’, Religion 9: 13-35. doi:10.1016/0048-721X(79)90051-4.
‘Vegetarianism and the Meanings of Meat’, in Anne Murcott (ed.), The Sociology of Food and Eating: Essays on the Sociological Significance of Food (Aldershot: Gower): 18-30.
Vialles, Noélie 1994 Animal to Edible (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Vööbus, Arthur 1958–88 History of Asceticism in the Syrian Orient: A Contribution to the History of Culture in the Near East (3 vols.; Louvain: Corpus scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium).
Waddell, Helen (ed.) 1934 Beasts and Saints (London: Constable).
Webb, Stephen H. 2001 Good Eating (Grand Rapids: Brazos).
Wolf, Kenneth Baxter 2003 The Poverty of Riches: St. Francis of Assisi Reconsidered (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
