Resumen de The Rhetoric of Impurity in Medieval Iberia

Martha Mary Daas

• Aside from certain food taboos, most people in the Middle Ages, whether Christian, Muslim, or Jewish, ate a similar diet, based on their economic status. Yet, as early as the thirteenth century in Spain, rules were being established to prohibit commensality. Medieval Iberian legal codes and religious ordinances against commensality use a rhetoric of impurity and vice that have its roots in classical and ancient traditions. In this article, I will examine the history of the rhetoric of impurity as it relates to food and its impact on the diets of Christians, Muslims, and Jews in the Iberian Middle Ages. I explain how religious authorities used food restrictions to advance their vision of the proper social order. I will also show how the conflation of racial prejudice and food practices created nationalistic discourses that continue to this day.