The Fork

17th century knife and fork

There is a point in the movie Becket (taken from the play of the same name by Jean Anouilh) that introduces the fork. King Henry II has never heard of it before, and doesn't see the point.* Forks did come to England rather late, but they were around much earlier elsewhere.

Ancient Greeks used two-tined forks as serving utensils, though not for transporting food directly to the mouth. Forks show up in the Middle East by the 7th century CE, used by aristocracy. In the 11th century, the Doge of Venice, Domenico Selvio, married a Byzantine princess, Theodora, who brought to Venice a case of forks, surprising the locals with her refusal to eat with her hands. Bishop Peter Damian of Ostia attributed her death to her "excessive delicacy."

"An Englishman named Thomas Coryate brought the first forks to England after seeing them in Italy during his travels in 1608." [link] This is not true of the "first forks," since documentary evidence of forks exists in England prior to that. This site shows examples of forks in wills and household accounts:

• The Will of John Baret of Bury St. Edmunds, 1463: "Itm J. yeve and beqwethe to Davn John Kertelynge my silvir forke for grene gyngor" [my translation: "Item: I give and bequeath to Davin John Kerteling my silver fork for green ginger."
• The Jewelhouse inventory of Henry VIII: "Item one spone wt suckett fork at the end of silver and gilt" [Note: a "suckett" fork was used to get preserves like ginger out of jars; John Baret's was probably also a suckett fork.]
• Inventory of property left by Henry VII: "Item, one Case wherein are xxi knives and a fork, the hafts being crystal and chalcedony, the ends garnished with gold"
• "Item, one Case of knives furnished with divers knives and one fork, whereof two be great hafts of silver parcel-gilt, the case covered with crimson velvet"

This is not to say that everyone in England had seen forks; only that forks were known at least to the upper classes. No doubt they were often made with expensive materials, and not accessible to everyone.

They started with two tines to prevent whatever was speared from twisting. The tines were straight, however, and some foods tended to slip off. More tines were eventually added for stability, and in the late 17th century in France we start to find curved tines meant for scooping and holding food more reliably.

Our word "fork" comes from Old English forca, meaning a pitchfork, from the Latin furca for pitchfork. The French called them forchette for "little pitchfork."

*You can see a clip here.

Peter Damian & Omnipotence

St. Peter Damian, letter writer

Peter Damian (c.1007 - 21 February 1072/3), the author of the Liber Gomorrhianus, was more than just a critic of priests' vices. He was a reformer whose piety caused him to be named a Doctor of the Church and to be placed in one of the highest levels of Heaven by Dante.*

He has a place in philosophy, however, due to one of the 180 letters he wrote. This particular one is called De divina omnipotentia ["Concerning divine omnipotence"]. In it, he discusses two questions that came up in a mealtime conversation during a visit to the Abbey of Monte Cassino.

Before we jump into his answers to the two questions in his letter, we must first bring up the Law on Non-contradiction, which states that a thing cannot be at once true and untrue. Sounds sensible. Aristotle in his Metaphysics states definitively that "contradictory propositions are not true simultaneously." He was building on Plato and Socrates and others.

The two questions that Damian tackles are these:

1. Can God restore a woman's virginity?
2. Can God undo history?

Damian maintains the view of God's omnipotence that says he can restore virginity. Virginity is a good thing, and so regaining it is a good thing; God will do something if it is a good thing. Therefore, God can and would do it, if He felt the situation warranted it. Restoring virginity would require two things: restoring the merit of virginity and restoring the physical change that loss of virginity causes (restoring the "integrity of the flesh"). The first is accomplished by returning to God's Grace, the second a simple matter of God restoring a person's flesh to an earlier condition.

Does this, then, imply that Damian believes that God can undo history? Not quite. In the case of restoring virginity, Damian states that God can do so as a miracle in the present time. He is not undoing an event that took place; He is changing a person's current state back to an original state.

Then what about history?

Damian, after a long and complicated discussion of the law of non-contradiction (and criticism of his peers for not understanding the subtleties of the question), explains that God cannot turn what has been done into something that has not been done. He denies, however, that this is an instance of a lack of omnipotence. Damian argues that God's omnipotence is His ability to bring about what is good. Creating a contradiction by changing what has been done to something that has not been done would be creating a contradiction, and therefore would be a bad thing. It would be turning something into nothing, and God creates things out of nothing, He will not create nothing out of something.

Okay, fine, but what about evil things? Wouldn't it be good for God to undo evil actions? Damian gets a little vague about this, and tells his audience not to worry about evil things. Evil things don't have the same kind of existence/value as good things, and so to erase them does not create a contradiction in the same way as erasing from the historical record a good thing.

Well, who am I to argue?

*In Canto XXI of the Paradiso, in the Seventh Heaven, a bright soul comes to speak to Dante and identifies himself as Peter Damian. The subject of corrupt popes comes up (surprise!).

The Book of Gomorrah

PLEASE NOTE: This post should have a NSFW [Not Safe For Work] label. My apologies if this is not to your liking.

Illumination from Liber Gomorrhianus

Peter Damian (c.1007 - 21 February 1072/3), who later became a saint, wrote a book called Liber Gomorrhianus ["The Book of Gomorroah"]. Addressed to Pope Leo IX about 1050, it blasted the clergy for their many sexual vices. There are many works that condemn sexual practices that were considered deviant—such as handbooks designed to describe (and help one avoid) vice—but the Liber Gomorrhianus goes into much greater detail than others.

There are four particular vices he rails against:

Four types of this form of criminal wickedness can be distinguished in an effort to show you the totality of the whole matter in an orderly way: some sin with themselves alone [masturbation]; some by the hands of others [mutual masturbation]; others between the thighs [interfemoral intercourse]; and finally, others commit the complete act against nature [anal intercourse]. The ascending gradation among these is such that the last mentioned are judged to be more serious that the preceding. Indeed a greater penance is imposed on those who fall with others than those who defile only themselves; and those who complete the act are to be judged more severely than those who are defiled through femoral fornication. The devil's artful fraud devises these degrees of failing into ruin such that the higher the level the unfortunate soul reaches in them, the deeper it sinks in the depths of hell's pit.*

He finds particularly damning those priests who have relations with young boys, and those superiors who do not enforce proper discipline and punch these actions.

Damian made no friends with this exposé of clerical sins. Pope Leo IX came to dislike the book, feeling that the situation was not as widespread in the Church for which he had responsibility and authority as the Liber painted it. The pope did not mete out punishments as harsh as the Liber suggested, choosing to dismiss only those priests who were long-time repeat offenders.

*from Pierre J. Payer (ed.): Book of Gomorrah: An eleventh century treatise against clerical homosexual practise, Waterloo, Ont., 1982.