The Heretic's Feast: A History of Vegetarianism by Colin Spencer ...

Review Reviewed Work(s): The Heretic's Feast: A History of Vegetarianism by Colin Spencer Review by: Bruce Kraig Source: The American Historical Review, Vol. 102, No. 1 (Feb., 1997), pp. 85-86 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2171268 Accessed: 15-11-2016 17:52 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

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Reviews of Books

entitled. Children lost any productive role within the economy, becoming consumers instead. Parents re-

GENERAL HUGH CUNNINGHAM. Children and Childhood in Western

sponded by having fewer children but valuing them

Society since 1500. (Studies in Modern History.) New

more as individuals and for emotional reasons. The root of present-day angst about childhood, Cunning-

York: Longman. 1995. Pp. 213.

ham argues, can be found in the disjuncture between a

Hugh Cunningham's aim is to trace the development of the belief that children are "real" children only in so

public discourse that argues that children are people with rights to a degree of autonomy, implying a fusion

far as their experiences are compatible with a particular set of views about childhood. He begins with a

of the worlds of adult and child, and the lingering remnant of the romantic view that the right of a child is to be a child, implying a cleavage. This is a thoughtful, well-written survey, although it is heavily weighted to the period from 1800 onward. Despite the opening critique, the survey of early modern society is kept firmly within the terms of the original debate. The work is really an English-centered account of the rise and spread of the Romantic conception of childhood. This makes the text cohesive, but it leaves the impression of a sweeping tide of homogenous change slowly taking in all classes and both genders. Even though Cunningham is scrupulous enough to point out the limitations of the ideas of Rousseau and the Romantic movement, the middleclass ideal becomes the ideal of childhood, and thus the value and importance of contrary views are marginalized, the different importance placed on childhood in earlier periods or by different cultures (portrayed here as sub-cultures resistant to change) is given short weight, and the costs of the ideal, albeit touched on, are not fully explored.

careful critique of current scholarship, which has vir-

tually imprisoned the history of childhood within the history of sentiments, thus confining it to the domestic arena rather than locating it within wider political and social worlds. It has also been a largely parent-centered history. Cunningham intends to restore the balance. He distinguishes between children as human beings and childhood as a shifting set of ideas, pointing out that the challenge for scholars is to untangle the relationship between children and childhood and how this changed over time. The connection between public action and thought and private experience should set

the agenda for future research. Cunningham argues that continuity in ideas about and treatment of children is the key throughout the medieval and early modern periods, with Christianity supplying the crucial influence. The emergence of a secular view of children and childhood in the eigh-

teenth century, aided and abetted by John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and the Romantic poets, resulted in a significant change in conceptualization and treatment "from a prime focus on the spiritual health of the child to a concern for the development of the individual child" (p. 62). Child-rearing became a mat-

LINDA A. POLLOCK

Tulane University

ter of allowing natural growth rather than of bending twigs to the desired shape. The period of childhood was viewed as an important time, and, moreover, a

COLIN SPENCER. The Heretic's Feast: A History of Vegetarianism. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New

England. 1995. Pp. xiii, 402. $29.95.

time that should be happy. From 1750 onward, central governments increased their involvement in programs for poor children, designed initially to produce children who would be of service to the state. By the late nineteenth century, however, the concept of child saving became the new rallying cry, accompanied by a separation of the child and adult world. No longer were children to be inured to labor; they were to be saved for the enjoyment of a childhood, a period of life to which all children were

Colin Spencer's work joins a growing number of volumes dealing with topics in food history. Many

historians and philosophers have dealt with ideologies in which vegetarianism plays a role, but there have been few large-scale books written about the ideal

itself through time. Like Reay Tannahill's well-known Food in History (rev. ed. 1988), this one belongs to the popular history genre. Like its predecessor and despite

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its flaws and polemical tone, this is a brave attempt to

tion states the book's case: "If we had accepted other

tackle an important part of food and culinary history.

animals as our equals ... would the world's natural

Non-meat diets-a more apt description than "veg-

resources have been so depleted?" (p. 343). In its

etarianism," a term first coined in the 1840s-have

individual parts, this volume will interest students of

stemmed over time from one or more major causes.

food history and perhaps specialists in specific areas.

Almost all have to do with religious or secular ideol-

BRUCE KRAIG

ogies. Among them are notions of purity of body,

Roosevelt University

purity of spirit, separation of an individual or group from others, and aversions to killing living beings for SIMON COLEMAN and JOHN ELSNER. Pilgrimage: Past and

food. Notions of purity historically arose from ascetic

impulses exemplified by the Buddha, Christians such

Present in the World Religions. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1995. Pp. 240; 81 plates. $29.95.

as Tertullian, and the Cathars. Food preferences/ taboos have always been means of social and personal

Pilgrimage entails acts of imagination as well as spa-

segregation from societies at large; many professing

tial, temporal, and spiritual displacements. ln tracing

vegetarians have been accused of thinking themselves

sacred travels from fifth-century B.C.E. Greece to the

morally superior to others. Repugnance for shedding

Holy Land in the late twentieth century and from

blood might derive from theories of metempsychosis

monotheistic traditions to those of Indian religions

(held by Pythagoras among others) or more secular

and the Buddhist world, Simon Coleman and John

ethical considerations for the suffering of nonhuman

Elsner propose a novel journey of the mind. Their aim

life.

is to reconceptualize pilgrimage in terms of cultures of sacred movement rather than merely to think about

Other reasons for eating wholly or mainly vegetable diets are poverty or scarcity. While claiming to exclude involuntary vegetarianism from his survey, Spencer cannot keep the subject from emerging, especially when discussing impoverished farmers and industrial workers of the last century. These groups illustrate a

profane) geographies demands multiple lenses and voices. Thus, numerous disciplinary approaches are

main theme of the book: vegetarians have been viewed

brought to bear on the topic: anthropology, history and

as outside the boundaries of normal or respectable society, that is, heretics.

short introduction devoted to "Landscapes Surveyed,"

religions with scripturalist/theological imperatives for

performing ritual voyages. A study of pilgrimage across the ages and through so many sacred (and

art, religious studies, and sociology. Prefaced by a

Using mainly secondary and some original sources,

seven chapters deal with the classical world and Jew-

the discussion begins in prehistory and ends in modern

ish, Christian, Muslim, Indian, and Buddhist pilgrim-

times. It is composed largely of summaries of major

ages. Each of these core chapters grapples with a

figures or movements that have featured or provided

central problem in the literature on pilgrimage: for

background ideologies for vegetarianism. Spencer roots the long line of vegetarian thought in Pythagoras,

example, the relationship between piety and identity in the- Greco-Roman world or sainthood in Christianity.

whose doctrines are claimed to have had great influ-

Folded within the textual treatment are photographs

ence not only on classical thought but also that of medieval and modern Europe, ancient Persia, and

and illustrations of the monumental structures that have, over the centuries, beckoned pilgrims to their sides, icons, ritual souvenirs embodying the sacred visit and visitor, popular shrines, and processions. These are grouped together under rubrics such as "living saints," "mapping the sacred," or "the sacred site." In an innovative approach, the authors have juxtaposed a photograph of Padre Pio, a Capuchin monk venerated by thousands of Catholic pilgrims as a holy man, with an image of the Dalai Lama receiving homage as a charismatic leader. The reader is invited by both the visual juxtapositions and the accompanying text to consider or re-imagine living saints from dissimilar cultural-religious traditions in disparate settings. But what of the pilgrim, either a solitary seeker of spiritual perfection or the participant in a collective human venture (and adventure) involving masses of the faithful assembled in a highly ritualized performance? Much to their credit, Coleman and Elsner have woven personal narratives and accounts of the pilgrim's progress from the mighty and humble alike. We hear of the travels of Paula of fourth-century Palestine, refracted of course through the prism of St. Jerome's

perhaps India. This assertion reveals a familiar form of popular historical thinking. Intellectual enlightenment that began in ancient Greece was mostly, but not entirely, subsumed by Christianity. St. Paul is given special blame/credit for establishing an exploitative, Judeo-Christian concept of human supremacy over the natural world. Except for several heretical sects (Cathars in particular) and a few ascetics (St. Francis), the world of medieval Europe was darkened by ignorance

of humanity's true relationship to nonhuman animals: medievals tortured and ate them wherever and when-

ever they could. Light dawned again with the Renaissance rediscovery of classical thought, including Pythagorean theories, and after that the Enlightenment (save for Descartes, whose "clockwork" vision of

the universe made animals into unthinking machines for human use). From this seedbed rose "humanism" (meaning humanitarianism toward other animals) in

the eighteenth century, followed by the modern era in which many ideologies compete with one another for

human minds, souls, and even existence. A final ques-

AMERICAN

HISTORICAL

REVIEW

FEBRUARY


1997