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In reply to the discussion: Religious opposition to the table fork [View all]struggle4progress
(118,379 posts)11. An earlier version of this BS was debunked four years ago back on DU2
struggle4progress
Sun Jul-13-08 07:42 PM
3. The story of the Venetian Doge's wife is ... suspect:
Wikipedia, for example, relates:
Teodora Anna Dukaina Selvo .... was married to Domenico Selvo in Constantinople (1075) .... Her Byzantine extravagance included the use of a fork ... There is an account of her lavish manners written by Peter Damian, the Cardinal Bishop of Ostia, entitled "Of the Venetian Doge's wife, whose body, after her excessive delicacy, entirely rotted away"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teodora_Anna_Dukaina_Selvo
But:
... The problems with all this are (1) Domenico Selvo, then Doge of Florence, married Teodora Doukaina (AKA Ducas) in 1075, (2) Saint Peter Damian, Cardinal Bishop of Ostia, died in 1072, and (3) the quotes do not appear to be attributable to any 11th Century source. I have also been unable to locate any Biblical prohibition against forks or locate any Medieval reference to a prohibition against forks ...
http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:fK2xVGnmjwEJ:www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD-UTENSILS/forks-msg.rtf+%22Peter+Damian%22+Teodora&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=14&gl=us
Damian's death date seems clear enough:
Peter Damian, Saint
Doctor of the Church, Cardinal-Bishop of Ostia, b. at Ravenna 'five years after the death of the Emperor Otto III,' 1007; d. at Faenza, Feb. 21, 1072 ...
http://oce.catholic.com/index.php?title=Peter_Damian%2C_Saint
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=214&topic_id=178610&mesg_id=178678
See the effin problem with the earlier version? Peter Damian is somewhat oddly claimed to be condemning something three years after his death. There's a symmetric problem with your new version:
... in 1004 Maria Argyropoulina ... showed up in Venice for her marriage to Giovanni ... When Argyropoulina died of the plague two years later, Saint Peter Damian ... suggested that it was Gods punishment for her lavish ways ...
One suspects Peter Damian (d. 1072) must have been rather young in 1006, but how young? Well, young enough not to have yet emerged emerged from his mother's womb, and possibly even young enough to have been a mere twinkle in his daddy's eyes, considering that Peter was not actually born until 1007:
St. Peter Damian
Doctor of the Church, Cardinal-Bishop of Ostia, b. at Ravenna "five years after the death of the Emperor Otto III," 1007; d. at Faenza, 21 Feb., 1072 ... http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11764a.htm
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Saint Peter Damian sounds like a nasty little prig, doesn't he? On the bright side, he died of a
Squinch
Dec 2012
#2
An earlier version of this BS was debunked four years ago back on DU2
struggle4progress
Dec 2012
#11
Let us follow the first Wikipedia citation (currently footnote 14) back to its source-link:
struggle4progress
Dec 2012
#17
Or, y'know, you yourself might try, through internet sleuthing, to provide a more credible version
struggle4progress
Dec 2012
#25
Peter Damian (b. 1007) could not have been sufficiently shocked, by woman's wedding in 1004, to have
struggle4progress
Dec 2012
#21
OK. What I mean is that when this story first appeared on DU2 four years ago,
struggle4progress
Dec 2012
#31
Lot number: 1487. A collection English medieval knives and English medieval forks, with horn, metal
struggle4progress
Dec 2012
#12
Of course what Coryat noted was not that the fork was unknown to the English...
trotsky
Dec 2012
#27