by Jack Turner
In the time of Dionysius the pseudo-Areopagite, a fifth-century Syrian writer, the anointing oil was prepared with whatever aromas were to hand. The early Greek Church used forty different spices and herbs. Rabanus Maurus (c.780–856), archbishop and abbot of the great Benedictine abbey of Fulda, apparently based his mix on the Exodus recipe but with the addition of balsam to the cinnamon, the two sharply contrasting aromas symbolising suffering and sweetness respectively.
In western Europe, however, there never emerged a definitive consensus on the acceptability of spices. To some a sense of their pagan odium never entirely vanished. Though figuratively sublime, in practical terms they were more problematic. Haymo, bishop of the Saxon city of Halberstadt in the middle of the ninth century, felt that spices were ‘common to idols’ and should not therefore be offered to God. Another and probably more serious problem for the early Church was that with the economic and political collapse of the Roman world the spices needed for chrism and incense were becoming harder to come by. Until its final conquest by the Turks in 1453, the surviving eastern half of the empire acted as intermediary to the Far East. Midway through the sixth century the Persian dynasty of the Sasanids closed the trade routes and entrepôts to Byzantine traders, forcing them to buy from the Persian state at exorbitant prices. In 575, the Persians shored up the last remaining gap in their monopoly with the conquest and annexation of the then Christian kingdom of the Yemen, where the Romans had acquired the spices and incense used across Christendom. The East was now closed to the West.
The upshot was that Christians now relied on Zoroastrians for the aromas they – or some of them – employed in their liturgy. Yet the Persians would not have it all their own way for long. In 628 the emperor Heraclius sacked the royal Persian residence of Dastagird, carrying off a huge haul of silk, aloes, ginger, pepper, sugar and ‘other spices without number’. A more lasting defeat came in 642, when the Sasanids were utterly vanquished by the unstoppable armies of Islam, and the spice routes passed under Islamic control. For the next thousand years, Christians relied on Jews and Muslims to supply aromas for their worship.
It was long thought that the division of the Roman world into two warring zones of Islam and Christendom brought trade and contacts to an all but complete halt, but the persistent presence of spices in the West puts a serious dent in the thesis. Since they remained an important component of religious practice they were clearly getting through somehow. In this sense religion, far from being a barrier to trade between faiths, is more likely to have encouraged it.
For it is clear that through the early and central Middle Ages, spices and incense alike were regular features of religious practice. They were, however, more a luxury for special occasions than an item of daily use. When St Ulrich returned triumphantly from a relic-gathering trip to the monastery of Reichenau in 952 (or possibly 953), bringing with him the remains of St Maurice, the residents of Augsburg honoured the two saints, dead and alive, with processions, holy water, music, songs and burnt spices. The Italian chronicler Falcone of Benevento describes the celebrations for the visit of Pope Calixtus II in August 1120, when the air was filled with the scent of incense and cinnamon wafting from gold and silver censers. The Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI was crowned in Rome in April 1191, his entry to the city perfumed with balsam, incense, aloes, nutmeg, cinnamon and nard. The religion was different, but spices served much the same purposes as they had in classical times – the scene is not far removed from Sappho’s description of Hector and Andromache’s wedding procession, accompanied by the sound of lyres and the smell of cassia.
Many of the references to spices from these centuries only begin to make sense in a sacramental context. There survive a number of letters from Roman Church functionaries addressed to Boniface, the apostle of Germany martyred by the pagan Frisians in 754, concluding with a gift of spices: in one case, four ounces of cinnamon, two pounds of pepper and one pound of storax. Another ends with an unspecified quantity of incense, costus, pepper and cinnamon. This holy ascetic would hardly show such attenriveness to his diet: food parcels from Rome do not fit the image of the apostle, contemptuous of his personal comforts and safety, roughing it out in the wilds of heathen Germany. In one case a deacon at the Vatican attaches to the spices the request that Boniface should pray for him – with the strong implication that the spices, like the incense with which they are paired, should serve to this end. A letter from the archdeacon Theophylacias, written in 752, describes the spices he is sending as ‘a little gift of blessing’. Language and context strongly suggest that Boniface’s cinnamon did not end up in his stomach but in the chrism dabbed on the brows of the Germans he converted, priests and bishops, or the altars, chalices and walls of the churches he built in the pagan wilderness.
Or, more tendentiously, on kings. Since it was Boniface who presided over the coronation of Pepin the Short, some of the apostle’s spices may conceivably have ended up in the chrism with which he anointed the first of the Carolingians at Soissons in 751. Beginning with Pepin’s coronation, the Carolingian ritual of royal anointing self-consciously followed Old Testament coronation accounts, in which the holiness of the oil was integral to the symbolism of the ritual, conferring on God’s anointed the stature of king and priest, his robes ‘fragrant with myrrh and aloes and cassia’. While the associations were sacred, the need was political. The problem was particularly pressing for the Carolingians, who despite holding effective power as mayors of the palace, were constrained to recognise the divine right of the last surviving member of the Merovingian dynasty, an imbecile driven around in an ox-cart. The solution was provided by the Church, by anointing with the chrism, thereby confirming Pepin’s legitimacy as both king and priest, more than a merely secular ruler. Given the conscious following of the Old Testament precedent, it is conceivable that the Carolingians used cinnamon for the chrism and subsequent rituals. Such at least is the implication of the account of the coronation of Berengar, king of Italy from 888 and Holy Roman Emperor from 915, anointed with an ‘unguent of nectar’, as the anonymous poet narrates the event, according to the recipe of the anointing oil given in Exodus; that is, with cinnamon.
At the very least, the literature leaves no doubt as to cinnamon’s sacramental associations. Even pepper may have served as commonly as a sacrament as a seasoning.* Before the eleventh century, many of the references to the spice occur alongside incense, whether because the two were sold by the same person or because they were used for similar purposes. One of the miracles of the eleventh-century pontiff St Leo concerns a shyster who sold pepper and incense to be offered at the pope’s tomb. On account of its potent essential oil the spice is still used in perfumes, oils and unguents. Among the documents of the abbey of Mont-Saint-Michel is a record dating to 1061, outlining arrangements between abbot Ranulphus and John, bishop of Avranches, whereby the former undertakes to supply the monastery with the equipment necessary for the celebration of the feast of the Purification (2 February). This was an important event in the medieval year, celebrated since the time of Pope Sergius I late in the seventh century with processions of candles (hence ‘candlemas’). The bishop provides (in the order given) a vestment for the abbot, three pounds of incense, three pounds of pepper, six blocks of wax and three candles. The context only seems odd if we assume the pepper was there to be eaten; perhaps it was consumed at the feast afterward. It is equally likely that the pepper served some liturgical function, either mixed with the incense used in the censer or, alternatively, as an ingredient in the anointing oil.
There are many such cases where culinary assumptions rest uneasily with the context. As the Venerable Bede lay dying in 735 he told his disciple Cuthbert to run and collect ‘whatever things of value’ he had in his cell, which the hagiographer lists as pepper, linen and incense: ‘Run swiftly, and bring the monks of our monastery to me, so I may give them such little gifts as God has given me.’ The presence of the pepper is startling enough in eighth-century Northumbria; but it woul
d be more startling still if the hagiographer had sought to portray the holy man Bede gasping out his last words with the diet of his fellow monks foremost among his concerns. For this was an age when such attentiveness to diet was utterly incompatible with the spiritual life of which Bede was – and as the hagiographer intended – a shining exemplar. His parting gift only makes sense if the spice was valued as a sacrament or medicine, or quite possibly both. After bestowing the spices, according to his hagiographer, Bede’s final words were to contrast the pepper, linen and incense with the gorgeous but worldly gold and silver that the rich were accustomed to distribute from their deathbeds. The force of the comparison relied on pepper having, in some forgotten and unknowable sense, a deeper symbolic force that somehow suited it to a life of holy poverty. And herein, in this mingling of sacred and physical well-being, lay the spice’s inner value, whether for Bede or, more to the point, the edified reader.
That such incidents have lost their force is, of course, because spices’ air of sanctity has long since vanished. This seems to have been not so much a conscious, doctrinal departure as a consequence of the growth of the trade. In all likelihood the increasingly common use of spices at the table argued against their sacramental use, depriving them of their symbolic force. Spices simply disappear from view in the later Middle Ages, leaving balsam behind, more or less arbitrarily, as the sole surviving aromatic regularly used in the sacraments. In a twelfth-century sermon attributed to Werner of the Black Forest monastery of St Blaise, the use of cinnamon in the anointing oil is referred to in the past tense; evidently this was by now something that needed to be explained to the congregation. In the instruction of preparation of chrism given by the mid-fifteenth-century Pope Eugenius IV only balsam is mentioned.
Spices survived better in the Eastern Churches. In the thirteenth century, the Coptic Church was still using an anointing oil based on the Exodus recipe, with the addition of nutmeg, cloves and cardamom. According to a contemporary Coptic treatise on liturgy by Ibn Kabar, The Luminary of Church Services, the oil used by the apostles was based on the recipes given to Moses by God, with the addition of myrrh and aloes in memory of the spices brought to Christ’s tomb by Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea. Coptic tradition held that the apostles had mixed the oil in the ‘upper room’, and then taken it to the four corners of the earth as they dispersed on their evangelising mission. In Ibn Kabar’s day a new batch was made annually with the remnants of the old. It was believed, accordingly, that the oil used by the Coptic Church still contained some of the spices that had anointed Christ himself.
To this day the Russian Church uses spices in its chrism. Over the course of Holy Week, the Moscow patriarchate prepares a year’s supply, during which time a blend of oil, wine, flowers and spices is stirred, boiled and reduced, the last three days to the accompaniment of non-stop gospel readings. There is no strict definition of ingredients, but a typical mix is still built around the Exodus template of olive oil, cinnamon and cassia, with the addition of other spices such as cloves, ginger and cardamom. When the chrism is ready it is blessed by the patriarch, poured into consecrated vessels then distributed to dioceses around the country. Authority for the use of the spices stretches back to the time of Dionysius the pseudo-Areopagite, signifying ‘the grace-giving aroma of the variegated gifts of the Holy Spirit’.
But even this is a far cry from the heaven-ascending spices of antiquity. In practical terms, with minor exceptions, Christianity has put its spicy past behind it. Religion is deodorised. Now arcane in the extreme, the very notion of aromas is known to present-day Christians largely as a matter of style; bells and smells versus the whitewashed minimalism of the Low Church. Some priests still use spices alongside balsam in preparing the chrism, but apparently on an ad hoc basis, the mix being up to the priest in question. The wife of the Revd Richard Fairchild of Golden, British Columbia, uses allspice, cloves and cinnamon to prepare chrism for her husband, but hers is apparently a rare instance. Even here the spices’ role is reduced to the purely symbolic; no longer are they allegorised lovingly.
They linger, today, only on the new-age margins. A random trawl through the wilder fringes of the internet suggests that the belief in spiced incenses and aromas is in ruddy health. Claims can vary widely. Some say that spices create a mood for spiritual communication, aiding a state of calm, reflection or concentration. To one authority pepper brings ‘the startling awakening of super-consciousness’; others recommend spices to cover the tell-tale smell of marijuana. (Even this is perhaps not so far removed from ancient use. Spices and incenses used in the temple probably had the added advantage of covering the smells left over by animal sacrifice. In the heat of the Near Eastern summer the altars must have smelled like an abattoir from the ‘foul remains of months-old sacrifices’, as Apuleius put it.) The website of the Theosophical Society of America advocates the use of cinnamon in incense ‘to create a spiritual atmosphere’.
Others make more grandiose claims. The TechnoDruid suggests ginger in a ‘money fast oil’, clove and pepper in a ‘courage oil’, pepper ‘for protection against all kind of attacks’ and cinnamon in an ‘astral travel oil’: ‘Anoint the stomach, wrists, back of the neck and forehead. Lie down and visualise yourself astrally projecting.’ So potent are these ingredients that they should be used with due caution. Lisa of the Sibylline Order and Ancient Ways writes that during a Goddess Ritual she inadvertently stained her forehead with cinnamon oil, which made her look foolish. Spices require careful handling: ‘For magical purposes it’s best not to blend oils while you’re watching TV or having a tense conversation with your mother on the phone; your attention will be diverted, and unwanted negative crap may get into the oil.’
Planta de la Canela.
The cinnamon plant.
Cristobal Acosta, Tractado de las drogas y medicinas
de las Indias orientales (Burgos, 1578).
* Terebinth is obtained from Pistacia terebinthus, a tree widespread in the Near East, the source of Chian turpentine.
* Scientists have looked for the physiological underpinnings of this custom, thus far with modest but suggestive results. It is believed that the part of the brain that processes smells, the limbic system, also plays a role in regulating reproductive behaviour, emotional and motivational states. Some smell-induced recollection can even take the form of a mild ‘trip’. Lyall Watson, author of Jacobson’s Organ, has gone so far as to suggest that the burning of incense produces a ‘basic biological euphoria’ akin to sexual excitement. Burning incense releases chemicals similar to human steroids that are thought to play a role in human sexual behaviour. If so, something along these lines might contribute to a sense of emotional uplift, a feeling of exhilaration amenable to mild religious transport. Less contentiously, perhaps, there is a consensus that smell disrupts and stimulates the conventional workings of the mind: certain aromas have powers of association that can bend perceptions of time and place. As Rousseau observed, smell is the sense of memory and desire, and such evocative powers are arguably not entirely removed from the experience of religious transport. Smell is as ineffable and elusive as the gods themselves, wafting beyond the reach of the rational intellect.
* Indeed some scholars have long argued that not only this trade but all trade first existed in order to serve sacred purposes. When the word for merchant first appears in Mesopotamian texts of the second millennium BC it carries sacred associations, designating ‘the official of a temple privileged to trade abroad’.
* Two hundred and fifty shekels is approximately three kilograms.
† About four litres.
* Which aromatics he obtained from Sheba and Ophir remains a mystery. One of the more intriguing spices mentioned in the Hebrew Bible is the sbelet, which Greek translators rendered as onyx, meaning claw or nail – was this the clove?
* Although spices played no direct role in Muslim worship, medieval Islamic scholars produced perhaps the most poetic vision of their origins. According to t
he great Islamic scholar at-Tabarî (c.839–923) and the Arab geographers who followed him, on Adam’s expulsion from paradise he was overcome by remorse, and wept with grief. From his bitter tears sprang gems and spices, the medicines and consolation for mankind after the fall.
* The word derives from the Persian, via Greek, meaning ‘enclosure’.
* In the temple of Kali in Cranganore in southern India, black pepper is offered to the goddess ‘so that spice vessels sailing abroad have a safe voyage’.
7
Some Like it Bland
Unnecessary and contaminating seasonings must be avoided.
Guigo de Castro, fifth prior of the Grande Chartreuse,
c.1083–c.1137
The Spartans flavoured their dishes with hunger and toil.
These are the seasonings of our order.
Hélinand of Froidment, Cistercian monk, c.1150–c.1230