Forrest Najjaj - Is Sipping Sin Breaking Fast. Chocolate Controversy

Food and Foodways
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Is Sipping Sin Breaking Fast? The Catholic

Chocolate Controversy and the Changing World of
Early Modern Spain
Beth Marie Forrest & April L. Najjaj
To cite this article: Beth Marie Forrest & April L. Najjaj (2007) Is Sipping Sin Breaking Fast?
The Catholic Chocolate Controversy and the Changing World of Early Modern Spain, Food and
Foodways, 15:1-2, 31-52, DOI: 10.1080/07409710701273282
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07409710701273282
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Download by: [Vienna University Library] Date: 11 November 2015, At: 03:01
Food & Foodways, 15:31–52, 2007
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ISSN: 0740-9710 print / 1542-3484 online

DOI: 10.1080/07409710701273282
IS SIPPING SIN BREAKING FAST? THE CATHOLIC

CHOCOLATE CONTROVERSY AND THE CHANGING
WORLD OF EARLY MODERN SPAIN
BETH MARIE FORREST

Department of History, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA
Downloaded by [Vienna University Library] at 03:01 11 November 2015
APRIL L. NAJJAJ
Department of History, Greensboro College, Greensboro, North Carolina, USA
Over the course of the 16th and 17th Centuries, a heated public debate arose
among Catholic theologians focusing on the question of whether consuming the
New World foodstuff of chocolate, “taking chocolate” as the Spanish referred to it,
constituted breaking the ecclesiastical fast. If classified as a drink, then chocolate
would be permissible for consumption during fast times; if classified as a food,
however, it would not have been permissible under church law.
Chocolate consumption and its controversy extended beyond a strictly
theological debate, however, and can be seen as a microcosm of the tensions
present between the Old World and the New, illustrating a process of negotiation
and assimilation in the evolution of the Medieval mentalité into the Early
Modern worldview. Analyzing the discourse that arose in this particular debate
can assist historians in better understanding the tensions underlying the
processes of transformation and cooptation in the Europe of the 16th Century,
including not only new geographic and scientific discoveries but also new
challenges to religious and cultural institutions.
Keywords: cacao, chocolate, Spain, Catholicism, New World, fasting,

assimilation, Early Modern
In the mid-17th century, Spanish Catholic women in Latin

America, called peninsulares, resident in the province of Chiapas,
Mexico, angered the local bishop by having their maids deliver
hot chocolate and conserves to them during the mass at the
cathedral. According to the English Dominican priest, Thomas
Gage, the women “pretend much weakness and squeamishness
of stomach, which they say is so great that they are not able
Address correspondence to Beth Marie Forrest, Department of History, Boston
University, Boston, MA 02215. E-mail: bforrest@bu.edu, or April L. Najjaj, Department
of History, Greensboro College, Greensboro, NC 27401. E-mail: anajjaj@gborocollege.edu
31
32 B. M. Forrest and A. L. Najjaj
to continue in the church while a Mass is briefly huddled over,

much less while a solemn high Mass . . . is sung and a sermon
preached, unless they drink a cup of hot chocolate, and eat a
bit of sweetmeats to strengthen their stomachs.”1 The episode
follows where the bishop, Don Bernardino de Salazar, took great
offense at this practice and even threatened excommunication to
anyone who crossed the threshold of the cathedral with a cup
of hot chocolate, regardless of the weakness of “the chocolate-
confectioning donnas,” as Gage referred to them.2
He continued by recording that the women, rather than

putting their immortal souls in danger or giving up “taking
chocolate” in church, instead chose to attend their neighborhood
chapels where the local nuns and friars appeared to be less
troubled by refreshments being served during mass times. A mere
week later, the aforementioned bishop, Don Bernardino, took ill,
commonly rumored to have done so after consuming a cup of
chocolate at his home. Gage reported, according to one woman’s
gossip, that,
“few grieved for his death [Bishop Bernardino], and that the women had
no reason to grieve for him, and that she judged, he being such an enemy
to chocolate in the church, that which he had drunk at home in his house
had not agreed with his body. And it became afterwards a proverb in that
country, Beware of the chocolate of Chiapa [sic].”3
Besides the possibility of chocolate being a vehicle for the re-

moval of a difficult bishop, the controversy over the consumption
of chocolate in early modern Spain and the New World permeated
the society beyond simply the proper social and religious etiquette
observed during Mass. Rather, the consumption of this New World
foodstuff became a highly polarized theological debate over
whether “taking chocolate,” as the Spanish referred to it, broke
the ecclesiastical fast in the Catholic Church. Should chocolate
be considered merely liquid refreshment and thus permissible
during fast times, or did it provide sustenance to the consumer,
rendering it a prohibited substance?4
Chocolate consumption and its controversy extends beyond
a strictly theological debate, however, and can be seen as a
microcosm of the tensions between the Old World and the New,
between the traditional culture of Europe and the foreign, un-
familiar, and exotic culture of the Indies. Columbus’ “discovery”
Sipping Sin 33
of a New World began a process of negotiation, co-optation,

and assimilation that resulted in a social context with new and
different societal relations, cultural norms, institutions, expres-
sions of material culture, and modes of verbal and non-verbal
communication that developed in the first century after 1492, and
the Catholic chocolate controversy can be seen in a number of
these new contexts.5 The practice of “taking chocolate” in early
modern Spain grew rapidly at a time of expanding commerce,
the increasing availability of new commodities, the need for state
revenue, and a growing bourgeois class who could afford to

purchase luxury goods that included chocolate. These tangible
changes occurred along with a developing consumer culture with
the concept of “Taste” and a growing demand for the exotic,
ultimately resulting in the potential conflict present in drinking
a cup of “sinful” chocolate, which provided visceral pleasure yet if
consumed on inappropriate days or at the wrong times, could also
end up being a mortal sin. The result of such contradictions can
be described as a struggle between fashion and faith. By viewing
chocolate from many different facets—through religious treatises
as well as economic statistics, material culture, and literature,
the scholar can examine the public discourse involved in the
process of adopting new and foreign foodstuffs into a society and
a rich glimpse into the mentalité of the rapidly changing social and
cultural world of 16th and 17th Century Spain.
From the time of the early-institutionalized Catholic Church
until Vatican II in the 1960s, the natural fast had been described
as abstaining from taking any nourishment between midnight and
the time of Holy Communion the following day. In addition, the
Church designated specific fast days during which only one meal
could be consumed, including the forty days of Lent, Pentecost,
Advent, and most Fridays. Although considered a mortal sin to
break such a fast, drinking to allay thirst during this period
could be permissible if the liquid did not provide any kind of
nourishment.6 While such a distinction may seem clear-cut in
today’s world, Europeans in the Medieval and Early Modern
periods often added bread, ground nuts, spices, and/or eggs to
a liquid, thus adding not only flavor but nutritional value, too.7
Before 1492, Europeans had never tasted, seen or even heard
of cacao. Hernán Cortés, in the second Carta de Relación, written
in the late 1520s, first mentions cacao as a “fruit like almonds.”8
When Spanish conquistadores first encountered cacao in the New

World, the substance could be found in both powdered and
liquid forms. José de Acosta explains in his 1590 Natural and
Moral History of the Indies, “They say that this chocolate is made
in different forms and temperatures: hot, and cold and lukewarm.
They often put spices in it and much chile; they also make it in the
form of a paste, and say that it is good for the chest and stomach
and against catarrh.”9 Even earlier, Francisco Hernández wrote
that the natives also “made from it a drink, since they had never
discovered a way of making wine . . . [and] which even today is a

substitute for wine as well as money.”10 He also explained that the
cacao seed could be made into many different drinks, both simple
and compound, and described one drink, atextli, as made of raw
or roasted cacáhoatl [cacao], finely ground and mixed with corn,
but then also could be made into a compound beverage by adding
the fruits of the mecaxóchitl [leafy plant added for anise or licorice
flavor], xochinacaztli [oreja flower], and/or tlilxóchitl [vanilla].
“Another drink called tzone is made from equal amounts of Indian
grain and cacáhoatl both roasted, then boiled with a small amount
of the same grain softened, to act as a thickener. This serves as [a]
refreshing food. . .”11 The choice of vocabulary Hernández used
in his writings demonstrates that he remained rather ambivalent
to the categorization of the bi-products of cacao, to the point of
even calling derivatives of the same substance both a food and a
drink.
Because of the many possibilities of preparing beverages
made with cacao and its ability to take either solid or liquid form,
Europeans found themselves faced with a categorical question of
whether chocolate, even when mixed only with water, should be
considered a food or a drink. If designated a food, then chocolate
could not be consumed while fasting without committing a mortal
sin. In Mexico in 1591, in a treatise entitled Problemas y secretos
maravillosos de las Indias (“Marvelous Problems and Secrets of the
Indies”), Juan de Cárdenas included three chapters on the subject
of cacao. He devoted chapter nine specifically to the issue of
consuming chocolate vis-à-vis fasting and argued that there could
be two ways of interpreting what constituted a bebida (a drink) and
whether such consumption should be permissible under Church
law. On the one hand, he considered anything drinkable as a
bebida and thus allowed; however, due to the common practice
Sipping Sin 35
of adding ground foodstuffs to a liquid, he refined his definition

to include only liquids intended to allay thirst. Cárdenas’ opinion
stated that water had always been the best and most pure liquid
during fast times since, after all, the purpose of fasting should
be to mortify the flesh by denial of food and drink; therefore,
within this narrow definition, even chocolate mixed only with
water should be prohibited during fast times.12 By restating these
strict traditional interpretations of categories of food versus drink,
Cárdenas further emphasized the existing boundaries between
what should be considered pure and good and acceptable to

consume during times of fasting as opposed to what could be seen
or perhaps even mistakenly condoned as a gradual descent into
moral laxity and, ultimately, mortal sin.
The Historical Context
By the time the Spanish conquistadores had been moving into

Central and South America in the first third of the 16th century,
the Spanish government had developed a strong position to
enforce doctrinaire Catholic beliefs and practices in both the
mother country and in the newly acquired territories. Under the
auspices of the papacy, beginning in 1501, Pope Alexander VI
(a Spaniard) had conferred a host of privileges on the Spanish
crown that would lay the groundwork for Spanish domination
of the Catholic Church in the New World. The Catholic rulers,
Ferdinand and Isabel, had the right to collect all tithes, nominate
all higher Church officials and dignitaries, grant permission to
any representative of the Church who wanted to travel to the New
World, and approve or reject petitions for the foundation of any
new churches, convents, or hospitals in the Spanish colonies.13
To encourage orthodox practice and custom, the Spanish
monarchy, in cooperation with the Catholic Church, sought to
control or curtail all religious festivals or rituals, either in the
New World or the Old, which might have been influenced or
contaminated by any pagan or heretical elements. As a result,
“celebrating holy feasts could no longer be the casual familiar
affair defined by generations of odd customs. It now had to be
a solemn, rigorously prescribed and sacrosanct rite.”14 A parallel
movement also developed with the requirements of solemnity and
respect within any church ritual. The Council of Trent, besides
insisting that the Mass should not be given in the vulgar tongue
(22nd Session, Chapter VIII), also set forth in Chapter IX of the
22nd Session:
[in order] that irreverence may be avoided, [no one should be permitted
to participate in the mass] . . . unless those present have first shown by their
outward disposition and appearance that they are there not in body only
but also in mind and devout affection of heart . . . all worldly conduct, vain
and profane conversations, wandering around, noise and clamor, [should
be avoided] so that the house of God may be seen to be and may be truly
called a house of prayer.15
Thus Bishop Don Bernardino de Salazar, mentioned in Thomas

Gage’s writings in 1648, had the backing of the Spanish govern-
ment as well as the Catholic Church in his efforts to prevent
the consumption of chocolate during the celebration of the
mass. Drinking chocolate during the church service not only
caused “great confusion and [interruption]” but also introduced a
profane substance into the church during a religious ceremony.16
Having chocolate in the vicinity of such pure substances as blessed
bread and wine could be seen as a mockery of the sacrament,
and chocolate’s consumption during the mass would signify that
those present had not been in the proper frame of mind for
worshipping God.
Constructed Categories and the Case of Chocolate
The issue of chocolate being a food or a drink fits into a larger

contextual question of classifying and categorizing foodstuffs. In
Europe, as so many other cultures, food could be fit or unfit
to consume during specific time periods or could fall into a
hierarchy of foods more desirable than others.17 Sometimes, the
practice could be cloaked in scientific reasoning for medical
purposes to assist in maintaining equilibrium for the body’s
humors (see Ken Albala, “The Use and Abuse of Chocolate in
17th Century Medical Theory” this issue), while at other times,
society structured food in strictly symbolic terms. During times
of change, such as early modern Europe, when new discoveries
and changing social structures seemed to break down traditional
institutions, not only an individual’s body, but by extension the
Sipping Sin 37
entire framework of society, could be disrupted by the choice of

one’s food.
Catholicism, too, as an institution with strictly ordered cate-
gories, used food as an important tool for creating boundaries.
The Catholic Church imposed a hierarchy of foods and dictated
when certain foods could be eaten by the faithful. It is no coin-
cidence that Christianity, having developed in a Mediterranean
climate, stressed that the holy triad of grapes, wheat, and olive
oil should be considered the most pure of foods; not coinciden-
tally, the three had ritual purposes as well.18 In addition, the

consumption or rejection of other foods could further identify
a person’s religious allegiance.19 Fasting days limited entire cat-
egories of food that could be eaten to remain pure, and the
Protestant rejection of fast days as being rooted in superstition
offered Catholics a polemical position for asserting the gluttony of
Protestantism—just one more example of their heresy and sin.20
The importance of traditional foods to the New World explor-
ers and early settlers, for both ritual purposes and daily consump-
tion, is evident by the expense they incurred in importing and
transplanting wheat, grapes, and olive oil to the colonies.21 Yet
when these had not been available in the early decades of Spanish
residence in the New World, the agricultural products of that New
World offered substitute crops, such as maize for the staple grain
used to make a bread-like product, fermented drinks to quench
thirst (and intoxicate), and another form of oil such as squash
seed oil, to add flavor and fat to foods.
Despite the newness of maize and the various fruits and
vegetables found in the New World, Europeans could incorporate
and classify these agricultural products into pre-existing cate-
gories of known or familiar foodstuffs and thus render these
foodstuffs not quite so foreign.22 An example can be seen in the
writings of Bartolomé de las Casas (1474–1566), a Dominican friar
whose father had sailed with Columbus. Las Casas himself had
been one of the first settlers in the New World and became one
of the earliest and best-known authors concerning the people and
plants of Central America. In his writings, he attempted to classify
multiple new foodstuffs by describing them within these already
existing categories. For example, in describing a New World fruit
that in the “Mexican language” had been called an aguacate,
he wrote that in color, shape, and perhaps even in taste and
sweetness, the fruit bore a resemblance to the pears of Castille.23

Although describing an avocado, the Castilian pear became the
closest he could get to elaborating on a foodstuff that his audience
had never seen or tasted.
In the case of chocolate, however, classification presented a
problem. Although Las Casas tried to describe chocolate, nothing
previously known to Europeans could be described as similar
enough that chocolate could simply be seen as a substitute
product. He wrote that the chocolate beans resembled almendras
(almonds) and that when toasted and ground produced a powder

that could be poured into water and stirred to create a fresquı́simo
(exceedingly fresh) drink that the Indians and the Spanish
consumed and then could go for great distances without eating
anything else.24 Las Casas wrote that chocolate could be a hard
solid, requiring classification as a food, or water could be added
to create a liquid for drinking. In addition, ground maize, ground
nuts, or bread could be added to the mixture, placing the food-
stuff in a dangerous position of marginality and thus a potential
social pollutant.25 For the Catholic Church, classification proved
to be especially vexing, as the growing popularity of chocolate
in either form potentially threatened the moral standing of its
parishioners.
From Dangerous Anomaly to Adopted Commodity
In her work Purity and Danger , Mary Douglas discusses the choices
that a culture must make when presented with an anomaly that
does not fit into pre-existing categories. The first reaction, she
suggests, is that the culture decides on one of the categories in
which to place the anomaly; in the case of chocolate, however,
theologians and authors remained divided on whether chocolate
should be considered a food or a drink. One option might
be to symbolically place chocolate in a special category—that
of a ritual substance. Alternatively, the culture could avoid the
anomaly and go so far to label it “dangerous.” Along these lines,
and to a greater extreme, the final option would have been to
get rid of the anomaly altogether.26 It is this dilemma of how
to classify the anomaly that the chocolate debate endeavored
to negotiate. Yet the controversy over taking chocolate did not
Sipping Sin 39
take place during a static period of history, nor did it take place
in a vacuum. Instead, a number of considerations—economic,
social, and cultural—played into the ultimate resolution of the
controversy.
The most radical solution to the debate can be seen in the
possible eradication of the cultivation of cacao. This drastic act,
however, would have been difficult for the Church to enact, as the
cultivation of cacao beans had been widespread for centuries in
Mesoamerica and continued to be important after the arrival of
the Spanish conquistadores. José de Acosta had noted that cacao
“is so much prized among the Indians, and even among the Spaniards, that
it is one of the richest and most frequent objects of trade in New Spain . . .
It is also used as money, for with five cocoa beans one thing can be bought,
and with thirty another, and with a hundred another, and without haggling
. . ... it [chocolate] is the most prized drink and is offered to noblemen as
they pass through their lands.”27
After the conquest, the Spanish government continued the

Aztec practice of paying wages with cacao beans. As a result, the
possibility of eradicating cacao soon became even more remote,
and the lower echelons of society within New Spain gradually
became able to afford chocolate.28 José de Acosta noted, “Both
Indians and Spaniards, and especially Spanish women who have
grown accustomed to the land, adore their black chocolate.”29
The growing demand of such a lucrative commodity allowed the
Spanish crown to ultimately co-opt its use as both a form of pay-
ment and as a valuable commodity for taxation, and the Catholic
Church likewise profited from the encomiendas that cultivated the
cacao beans.
Revenue from Latin America had become a financial neces-
sity. Late 16th century Spain had been involved in prolonged
religious and secular wars, experienced rapid inflation and a
population crisis, and continued to pay a high price for colonial
administration and defense. As a result, both church and state had
experienced an economic decline and desperately needed new
and original ways to fill their coffers. The cacao industry served as
one of these new sources of income in that both church and state
often owned the land and controlled the production of cacao in
the New World. The state secured additional revenues in various
forms of taxes, including the alcabala (a tax on internal sales in

the colonies) and the almojarifazgo (an import tax on maritime
trade), from the sale of cacao in both paste and powder form.30
According to López de Velasco, natives from the region of
Soconusco had been paying tribute in cacao to the King of Spain
for more than a decade—from 400–600 cargas in 1571 (1 carga =
approximately 24,000 beans); the amount of cargas only increased
as the years progressed—more than 650 cargas in 1576, and
1,133 cargas by 1613.31 Local officials, merchants and priests also
benefited from the industry by exploiting the cacao market, by

demanding excessive tribute, extorting payment, buying beans
with fraudulent money and goods, and exchanging wine and alco-
hol for cacao.32 The industry continued to expand despite these
problems, and by 1630, 500,000 cacao trees grew in the central
valley of Venezuela. Even before large quantities of cacao entered
Spain, the inter-colonial trade was staggering: from 1620–1650,
Mexico imported 35,512 fanegas of cacao from Venezuela while
Spain only brought in 289 fanegas, and the market exploded in
the second half of the century where Mexico imported 322,264
fanegas and Spain, by comparison, only imported 71,306, only
22% of the inter-colonial trade in the New World.33 To ban the
growth of cacao would be literally to stop growing money on trees.
Thus the church banning cacao outright would have been
difficult from both an economic and a logistical standpoint. To
constitute chocolate consumption as “dangerous” however, could
still have been possible. Indeed, church theologians as well as
lay scholars still attempted to marginalize the new foodstuff and
unequivocally end the chocolate controversy by repeatedly de-
scribing its consumption as a dangerous and potentially subversive
element in society—after all, the debate concerned a question of
mortal sin.
Juan de Solórzano Pereira (1575–1654), although rather
of a late-comer to the chocolate debate, knew from first-hand
experience the possible disruptive qualities caused by the over-
consumption of chocolate, and his writings are important for his
attempts to place the indigenous peoples and products of the New
World within the existing intellectual framework of the Europe
of his time.34 A prominent lawyer and Spanish oidor (judge) in
Peru in the mid-17th Century, his writings formed the basis of
Spanish law in the colonies for the next one hundred and fifty
Sipping Sin 41
years. He composed a legal treatise written in Latin, De Indiarum

Jure, in 1629, and translated into Spanish twenty years later as
the Polı́tica indiana, where he expressed his belief that the use of
chocolate prior to communion should be banned. In his opinion,
he saw the taking of chocolate during the ecclesiastical fast as
running “counter to the fast, which is undertaken principally to
lessen lascivious desires.”35 He had extrapolated these sentiments
from the descriptions of Bernal Dı́az in The True History of the
Conquest of New Spain, who had recorded in 1574 that Montezuma
drank a little chocolate “before visiting his wives,” thus alluding

to its alleged powers as an aphrodisiac.36 Therefore, the passions
potentially stirred up from drinking chocolate could be morally
dangerous and thus should be avoided during fast times.
In 1628, the Spanish poet Francisco de Quevedo also
couched the foodstuff in explicitly dangerous terms. Known for
his scathing and satirical commentaries on Spanish society that
got him into trouble with the Inquisition later in life, he wrote:
“There came the devil of tobacco and the devil of chocolate, who avenged
the Indies against Spain, for they have done more harm by introducing
among us those powders and smoke and chocolate cups and chocolate
beaters than the King had ever done through Columbus and Cortés
and Almagreo [sic] and Pizarro. For it was better and cleaner and more
honorable to be killed by a musket ball or a lance then by snuffing and
belching and dizziness and fever.”37
He continued by stating that these idolatrous chocaholics (choco-

lateros) had exalted and adored and become entranced by their
chocolate sipping while the tobacco lovers (tabacanos) had be-
come too much like the Lutherans with all their smoking and
snuffing and sneezing.38
Pereira’s and Quevedo’s opinions, however, would not ap-
pear to have been universal. Despite the potential moral dan-
gers in the consumption of chocolate, Bernal Dı́az wrote that
chocolate had been “the best of their [the Aztecs’] drinks.”39
Apparently, many agreed with Dı́az, and the popularity of taking
chocolate grew immensely among Spaniards on both sides of the
Atlantic Ocean. So much so, that by the end of the 16th century,
the taste and economic significance of chocolate had become
strong enough to ultimately influence a more favorable ruling
on the chocolate controversy. Government officials in Mexico ap-

pealed to the Dominican friar Agustı́n Dávila Padilla (1562–1604),
who wrote an opinion in favor of consuming chocolate during
the ecclesiastical fast.40 Much to the delight of some members
of the Church and of the nobility, this ruling lessened the moral
dilemma of taking chocolate at any time or any given day.
The sixty nuns of Santa Isabel in Mexico City certainly took
Fray Agustı́n’s opinion to heart, for by the early 1700s, convent
records show that the nuns had spent 2,916 pesos on chocolate
for themselves, the sacristans, and the priests, while only spending
390 pesos on poultry, eggs, and wine. In 1710, at a similar convent
of moderate means, Santa Clara de Puebla, the abbess and the
sister accountants alone spent 290 pesos on chocolate. Rather
than being anomalies, these examples illustrate the vast quantities
of chocolate consumed on a regular basis within religious houses
and thus provide clear evidence that at least to the lower ranks
of the Catholic Church, “taking chocolate” could be enjoyed and
not seen as endangering immortal souls.41
Although historians dispute when chocolate first arrived in
Spain, the first documented evidence appears in 1544 when
Dominican friars presented Maya Indians and their indigenous
products, including chocolate, to the court of Prince Philip (later
King Philip II). The first official shipment of chocolate arrived
in Seville from Vera Cruz, Mexico, in 1585, with the implication
that at least some demand for chocolate had been established
in Spain by this time. At first, the high price of the commodity
served to limit its consumption largely to an indulgence of the
nobility, just as it had been for the Mayas and later the Aztecs. Yet
it quickly became popular enough that in 1628, when the Duke
of Olivares attempted to turn the business of chocolate into a
state monopoly, such a public outcry occurred that the idea could
not have been pursued any further. Antonio Colmenero wrote in
his 1631 A Curious Treatise of the Nature and Quality of Chocolate,
that “The number is so great of those, who, in these times drink
chocolate, that not only in the Indies, where this kind of drink
hath its original, but it is also much used in Spain, Italy, and
Flanders and particularly at the court.”42
Taking chocolate came to be more than just a luxury product;
it became a ritual around which an entire consumer culture
developed. Over time, chocolate culture incorporated an entire
Sipping Sin 43
array of material objects to display wealth as well as an exotic

symbol that reinforced Spanish superiority. Special cacao pots,
molinillos (instruments for frothing the cacao), and mancerina
(saucer and cup) lent a certain protocol to the act of taking
chocolate and heightened the status for those who could afford
the product and all of its accoutrements.43 Moreover, the lure
of the exotic, together with the symbolism of conquest, came to
reflect the superiority of Europe over the “savage” Indians of the
New World. Spaniards had co-opted the royal beverage of the
Mayas and the Aztecs and replaced indigenous ingredients, such

as chili peppers and ground maize, with other additions, most
commonly sugar or crumbled bread.44 Chocolate, while slowly
being integrated into Spanish society, remained for centuries an
example of the exotic and luxurious, making it a powerful symbol
for those who consumed it both as an indication of national and
cultural superiority, but also as a source of fantasy and exoticism.45
Certainly, part of the attraction of taking chocolate came
from both its taste and stimulating properties.46 Jose Vicente del
Olmo, writing of an Inquisitorial tribunal in Madrid in 1680,
stated that, “in order to attend to the sleeplessness and anguish
of the condemned, and due to the fatigue and long work of the
officials and ministers, it was the obligation of the Inquisitional
court to provide biscuits and chocolate, sweets and drinks, in
order to provide relief and assistance to whoever needed it.”47
Marie de Villars, a French traveler also in Spain in 1680, wrote
of chocolate, “Remember that I am in Spain, and taking it
[chocolate] is almost my only pleasure.”48
Chocolate came to be conspicuously consumed at public
events as early as 1538 in the Great Plaza of Mexico City at a
banquet, where Spanish ladies enjoyed wine and cacao.49 Later
in the 16th century, Cosimo III, Duke of Tuscany, and the Spanish
king enjoyed cups of chocolate while watching a bullfight.50 The
context of these overt displays of consumption occurred during a
period of transition, whereby not only did a nascent bourgeoisie
challenge the uniqueness and privilege of the aristocracy but
also challenged the idea that “taste” should be something to
cultivate and excess something to avoid. In order to do so,
however, over time, the concept of “taste” became limited in its
execution; excess would no longer be a mark of sophistication
but instead moderation became the rule of the sophisticated. An
evolving standard of taste and culture “helped construct a new

moral discourse and a pattern of legitimate consumer behavior
that could accommodate luxury to broader changes in Western
culture, social organization, and economic life.”51
In the end, the theologians took a moderate approach to
chocolate consumption, thereby solving the chocolate contro-
versy. Antonio de León Pinelo in his treatise dated 1634 entitled,
Question moral, si el chocolate quebranta el ayuno eclesiástico (“A Moral
Question, Whether Chocolate Breaks the Ecclesiastical Fast”)
documented the historical debate over the taking of chocolate

during times of fasting; he considered other beverages debated in
the past, including wine, beer, chicha, hidromiel (water mixed with
honey), and pulque; and lastly he discussed the medicinal qualities
and potential benefits or detriments to a person’s health.52
In Don Antonio’s contribution to the chocolate controversy,
he concluded that taking chocolate during the ecclesiastical fast
should not be a mortal sin as long as it is taken only once and
no other ingredients are added to the mixture.53 His emphasis on
moderation is clear, for he criticizes the practice of extremes in
Mexico where some people had been known to take chocolate as
many as six times per day, and yet worse in Spain where others
drank the beverage four to six times in one afternoon which, he
cautions, could be dangerous to a person’s health.54
Slightly later, in 1644, Francis Marı́a Brancatius argued that
taking chocolate with water should be permissible but not with
breadcrumbs.55 According to Sophie and Michael Coe, Brancatius
further justified his opinion by writing that fasting is not divine law
but ecclesiastical law and therefore could be changed and should
be changed, reflecting a movement away from the previously strict
interpretations of the Catholic Church.56 For moderates like Don
Antonio and Brancatius, chocolate would no longer be seen as
a foreign substance with dangerous overtones—it had become a
permissible food and/or drink.
By the early 1700s, Giovanni Francesco Gemelli Careri had
written that chocolate “is very ancient and had been used by the
Indians before the Spaniards conquered their country, but the
efforts of the Spanish have raised it [chocolate] to perfection.
Today it is taken so much in the Indies that there is neither Negro
nor peon who does not drink it every day, and the wealthier four
Sipping Sin 45
times per day.”57 Chocolate had now found a permanent place in

Spanish society, and the people of Europe had made it their own.
The adoption of a new food into a culture is a complex
and multi-layered process. It often incorporates categories of
culture, religion, philosophy, and economics, on both a personal
and a larger societal level. The Catholic chocolate controversy
illustrates the public debate involved in the process of adopting
a new food product, as well as illustrating the broader context
of a cultural transition and new mentalité after the “discovery”
of the New World in the 16th century. The New World and all
of its foodstuffs, in addition to the challenges to the superiority
of the Catholic Church and the beginnings of development of a
consumer culture, forced Spaniards to redefine the sacred and
the profane, the pure and the dangerous, the banal and the
exotic. This acculturation would ultimately allow Catholics all over
the world, in essence, to take their chocolate and drink it, too.
Notes
1. Thomas Gage, A New Survey of the West Indies, 1648, ed. A.P. Newton. (New
York: Robert M. McBride & Co., 1929), 161.
2. Ibid., 164. Gage’s observations on the West Indies had been written in 1648,
only sixty years after the Spanish Armada’s attempt to invade England,
and relations between the two countries had been difficult at best. The
British founded colonies in Barbados and the Lesser Antilles by the mid-
17th century, and the increasing competition of empire, together with
the growing divisions between Catholics and Protestants, had brought on
strained relations between England and Spain that could have contributed
to Gage’s rather critical assessment of the behavior of the peninsular women
in the New World. As a Dominican priest, though, Gage could have simply
been concerned with the irreverent conduct of the “donnas.”
3. Ibid., 163.
4. Certainly, the question of what constituted fasting—the period between
midnight and the taking of communion the next day—did not begin
with Europeans’ introduction to chocolate or its diffusion throughout
Christendom; wine had likewise been questioned centuries before.
5. For consideration of consumption within a specific cultural context, see
Woodruff Smith, Consumption and the Making of Respectability 1600–1800 (New
York: Routledge, 2002), pp. 13–21.
6. A mortal sin is considered to be a serious transgression believed to be
committed in full knowledge and with the consent of the transgressor.
Until repented, the sinner would be considered severed from the grace of
God. See Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Question 147, Article 3. Not
everyone was required to fast, those exempted included the young and old,
with exceptions made for some pilgrims and manual workers.
7. For example, see Robert May, The Accomplisht Cook, or the Art and Mystery of
Cookery, 1685 (Devon, England: Prospect Books, 1994), p. 423, that gives a
recipe for Alebury: “Boil beer or ale, scum it, and put in some mace, and a
bottom of a manchet [bread made of finely milled, white flour], boil it well,
then put in some sugar” and his recipe for Buttered Beer consists of beer or
ale, boiled with licorice, aniseed, and beaten with egg yolks and butter.
8. José Pardo Tomás and Marı́a Luz López Terrada, Las Primeras Noticias Sobre
Plantas Americanas en las Relaciones de Viajes y Crónicas de Indias (1493–1553)

(Valencia, Spain: Instituto de Estudios Documentales e Históricos sobre la
Ciencia, 1993), p. 163.
9. José de Acosta, Natural and Moral History of the Indies, ed. Jane Mangan
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), p. 210.
10. Francisco Hernández spent 7 years in New Spain from 1570–1577. While
there, he wrote a description of more than 3,000 plants (16 folio volumes,
never published in its entirety). In 1577, when he returned to Spain, he
made a second copy of his manuscript and gave it to King Philip II (where
it later burned in a fire in El Escorial). See Simon Varey, ed., The Mexican
Treasury: The Writings of Dr. Francisco Hernández (Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 2000), p. 108.
11. Ibid.
12. Juan de Cárdenas, Problemas y secretos maravillosos de las Indias (Madrid, Spain:
Alianza Editorial, 1988), pp. 189–194.
13. John A. Crow, The Epic of Latin America, 4th ed. (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1992), pp. 64–70.
14. Ken Albala, Food in Early Modern Europe (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press,
2003), p. 205.
15. H.J. Schroeder, Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, 1545–1563 (St.
Louis, MO: Herder Book Co., 1941), p. 151.
16. Thomas Gage, A New Survey of the West Indies, p. 161.
17. See Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Raw and the Cooked, Introduction to a Science of
Mythology, Vol. I (London: Jonathan Cape, 1970); Mary Douglas, Purity and
Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul, 1979); and Mary Douglas, Implicit Meanings, Essays in
Anthropology (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, Ltd., 1979).
18. Wheat, grapes and olives remained important from the Greco-Roman
period. Certainly, the clash between Greco-Roman and Germanic culture
increased the consumption of meat, but bread and wine became a sacred
element of transubstantiation and oil transformed into a sacramental tool.
(See Massimo Montanari, “Introduction: Food Systems and Models of
Civilization” in Food: A Culinary History (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1996) pp. 69–78.
19. The consumption of pork in Spain had long been seen as a demarcation of
religion and culture; according to Catholics of the 16th Century, eating pork
became a tell-tale sign of a pure Catholic because those who eschewed this
Sipping Sin 47
“good” food could be adherents of a “bad” religion, namely Islam, Judaism,

or Catharism. During the Spanish inquisition, Moriscos and Conversos had
often been forced to eat pork to prove the legitimacy of their conversion to
Christianity. Inquisitors often mentioned that Cathars abstained from eating
any meat. At the other extreme, Jews, Muslims, and heretical sects had been
commonly accused of cannibalism—a cultural anomaly seen as polluting the
body and soul.
20. G. Wylie Sypher, “Faisant ce qu’il leur vient a plaisir”: The Image of
Protestantism in French Catholic Polemic on the Eve of the Religious
Wars,” Sixteenth Century Journal 11:2 (Summer 1980), p. 69. In actuality,
Martin Luther did not prohibit fasting but stressed that the voluntary
practice should be only for personal spirituality, not a means to salvation
or damnation.
21. As early as his second voyage, Columbus had brought seeds and cuttings for
wheat and grape vines.
22. For a good description of the adoption of New World ingredients into
Creole cuisine, see Jeffrey Pilcher’s Que Vivan los Tamales: Food and the Making
of Mexican Identity (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998),
pp. 30–43. While he mentions the adoption of chocolate into the diet
of the Creoles, and even mentions the women of Chiapas, Pilcher does
not mention the religious and social conflicts that often surrounded the
consumption of chocolate.
23. Bartolomé de las Casas, Obras escogidas de Fray Bartolomé de las Casas,
Apologética historia, Vol. 105 (Madrid, Spain: Biblioteca de Autores Españoles,
1958), p. 197.
24. Ibid. Las Casas uses the verb comer , to eat, so at least at this early stage, he
considered chocolate to be a food.
25. Europeans had previously been at least subconsciously concerned with issues
of marginality and deviance, as the 16th and 17th Centuries experienced the
height of the witch-hunts in Europe. See Nachman Ben-Yehuda, Deviance
and Moral Boundaries, Witchcraft, the Occult, Science Fiction, Deviant Sciences
and Scientists (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), pp. 1–73; and
Robin Briggs, Witches & Neighbors, The Social and Cultural Context of European
Witchcraft (New York: Penguin Books, 1996), pp. 162–169.
26. Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger , pp. 39–40.
27. José de Acosta, Natural and Moral History of the Indies, ed. Jane Mangan
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), pp. 209–210.
28. Mark Burkholder & Lyman Johnson, Colonial Latin America (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 166.
29. José de Acosta, Natural and Moral History of the Indies, p. 210.
30. J.I. Israel, “Mexico and the ‘General Crisis’ of the Seventeenth Century,” Past
and Present 63 (May 1974), p. 37.
31. Murdo J. MacLeod, Spanish Central America: A Socioeconomic History,
1520–1720 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), pp. 70–71.
32. Ibid., pp. 73–74.
33. John Lynch, The Hispanic World in Crisis and Change: 1598–1700 (Cambridge,
MA: Blackwell, 1992), pp. 342–3.
34. James Muldoon, The Americas in the Spanish World Order, The Justification for
Conquest in the Seventeenth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 1994), p. 12.
35. Sophie D. Coe and Michael D. Coe, The True Story of Chocolate (New York:
Thames & Hudson, 1996), p. 152. See also James Muldoon, The Americas in
the Spanish World Order .
36. Bernal Dı́az, Conquest of New Spain, trans. J.M. Cohen (New York: Penguin
Books, 1963), p. 226. Hernández also commented that a compound of atextli
“excites the sexual appetite” in Varey, The Mexican Treasury, p. 109.

37. Mark Kurlansky, ed., Choice Cuts, A Savory Selection of Food Writing from Around
the World and Throughout History (New York: Ballantine Books, 2002), p. 332.
38. Francisco de Quevedo, ‘El Entremetido y la dueña y el soplón,’ Obras satı́ricas
y festivas (Madrid: Ediciones de ‘La Lectura,’ 1924), p. 250.
39. Bernal Dı́az, The Conquest of New Spain, p. 91.
40. Sophie Coe, The True Story of Chocolate, p. 151.
41. Asunción Lavrin, “The Role of Nunneries in the Economy of New Spain
in the Eighteenth Century,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 46:4
(November 1996), pp. 382–383.
42. Antonio Colmenero, A Curious Treatise of the Nature and Quality of Chocolate
(trans. Don Diego de Vades-Forte, London: J. Okes, 1640), p. 1.
43. See the 1652 painting, Still Life with an Ebony Chest, by Antonio de Pereda y
Salgado that beautifully illustrates the chocolate service.
44. Anthropologists have suggested many reasons why people eat foods from the
“other,” such as appropriation of another culture to display colonial power,
social power through leisure and pleasure, or curiosity of other people
and their cultural world. See L. Long “Culinary Tourism: A Folkloristic
Perspective on Eating and Otherness” in Culinary Tourism (University Press
of Kentucky: 2004) p. 45. However, we would suggest that motivations are
multi-faceted, and Spaniards taking chocolate could incorporate any or all
of these reasons.
Marcy Norton makes a convincing argument that rather than using the
spices called for in indigenous recipes, Europeans attempted to use familiar
spices to simulate native flavors. She explains, “That chocolate had con-
formed to European taste was a myth that supported the Spanish ideology
of conquest: it presupposed that the colonists brought their civilization
to barbarians rather than the opposite. In fact, Europeans inadvertently
internalized Mesoamerican aesthetics and did not modify chocolate to meet
their existing tastes. Rather, they acquired new ones, a reality at odds with
colonial ideology.” M. Norton “Tasting Empire: Chocolate and the European
Internalization of Mesoamerican Aesthetics” The American Historical Review
(Vol 111, No. 3, June 2006) <http://www.historycooperative.org /jour-
nals/ahr/111.3/norton.html. She adds that part of the issue of chocolate
can be seen in its ambiguous status and “potential as a medium for cultural
contagion” and how medical discourses attempted to lessen the tension
between a medical framework and the fear of spreading Indian culture.
Sipping Sin 49
Surprisingly, Norton does not discuss the theological debate, neglecting an

important component in the multi-layered sphere of consumerism.
45. Woodruff Smith, Consumption and the Making of Respectability 1600–1800, pp.
74–81. Also see Piero Camposresi, “Indian Broth” in Exotic Brew: The Art
of Living in the Age of Enlightenment (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 1998) pp.
108–121 and Susan Terrio, “Crafting Grand Cru Chocolates in Contemporary
France,” American Anthropologist 98:1, pp. 67–79 argues that the legacy of
chocolate as an exotic and dangerous substance remains in France even
today.
46. Ross W. Jamieson, “The Essence of Commodification: Caffeine Dependen-
cies in the Early Modern World” Journal of Social History 35.2 (2001), pp.
269–294.
47. José Vicente del Olmo, Relación histórica del auto general de fe, que se celebró en
Madrid en el año de 1680 con asistencia del Rey don Carlos II (trans. by April
Najjaj; Madrid: Javier Rodriguez de San Miguel, 1820), p. 54.
48. Marie de Villars, Lettres de Madame de Villars a Madame de Coulanges (Paris:
Henri Plon, 1868), p. 132.
49. Jamieson, “The Essence of Commodification: Caffeine Dependencies in the
Early Modern World”, p. 171.
50. This account was chronicled by Lorenzo Magalotti, in Viaje de Cosme de Medici
por España y Portugal, 1668–1669. Sophie Coe, The True Story of Chocolate, p.
138.
51. Woodruff Smith, Consumption and the Making of Respectability, p. 77.
52. Chicha is a fermented drink derived from fruits and grains popular in
the Andes region of South America; pulque is also an alcoholic beverage
derived from the agave cactus and similar to tequila. Before the Spanish
conquest, consumption of these drinks among the Indian populations had
been limited, as drunkenness had been discouraged in pre-conquest society
and priority for the use of the available arable land had been reserved
for staple food crops, such as maize and potatoes. Later, though, after the
conquest, the availability and consumption of such drinks increased among
both the Indians and the Spanish, and by the mid-16th century, pulquerı́as
and chicherı́as, the stores that sold these drinks, could be found in most
towns of Spanish America. Even in modern-day Peru, chicha is considered
as both a food and a drink and still has religious and social significance, just
as had been the case with chocolate. See John C. Super, Food, Conquest and
Colonization in Sixteenth-Century Spanish America (Albuquerque: University of
New Mexico Press, 1988), p. 75.
53. Don Antonio de León Pinelo, Question moral, si el chocolate quebranta el ayuno
eclesiástico (Mexico City: Centro de Estudios de Historia de México, 1994),
p. 95.
54. Ibid, p. 101.
55. Brancatius, Francis Marı́a, De chocolates potu diatribe (Rome: Zachariam
Dominicum Acsamitek à Kronenfeld, Vetero Pragensem, 1664), pp. 19–31.
Brancatius is also referred to as Francisco Marı́a Brancaccio.
56. Sophie D. Coe and Michael D. Coe, The True Story of Chocolate, p. 154.
57. Giovanni Francesco Gemelli Careri, Viaje a la Nueva Espana (Mexico City:
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico, 1976), p. 140.
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Food and Foodways

Explorations in the History and Culture of Human Nourishment

ISSN: 0740-9710 (Print) 1542-3484 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gfof20

Is Sipping Sin Breaking Fast? The Catholic

Beth Marie Forrest & April L. Najjaj

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ISSN: 0740-9710 print / 1542-3484 online

IS SIPPING SIN BREAKING FAST? THE CATHOLIC

BETH MARIE FORREST

Keywords: cacao, chocolate, Spain, Catholicism, New World, fasting,

In the mid-17th century, Spanish Catholic women in Latin

to continue in the church while a Mass is briefly huddled over,

He continued by recording that the women, rather than

Besides the possibility of chocolate being a vehicle for the re-

of a New World began a process of negotiation, co-optation,

revenue, and a growing bourgeois class who could afford to

When Spanish conquistadores first encountered cacao in the New

discovered a way of making wine . . . [and] which even today is a

of adding ground foodstuffs to a liquid, he refined his definition

what should be considered pure and good and acceptable to

The Historical Context

By the time the Spanish conquistadores had been moving into

Thus Bishop Don Bernardino de Salazar, mentioned in Thomas

Constructed Categories and the Case of Chocolate

The issue of chocolate being a food or a drink fits into a larger

entire framework of society, could be disrupted by the choice of

tally, the three had ritual purposes as well.18 In addition, the

sweetness, the fruit bore a resemblance to the pears of Castille.23

(almonds) and that when toasted and ground produced a powder

From Dangerous Anomaly to Adopted Commodity

the Spanish conquistadores. José de Acosta had noted that cacao

After the conquest, the Spanish government continued the

forms of taxes, including the alcabala (a tax on internal sales in

benefited from the industry by exploiting the cacao market, by

years. He composed a legal treatise written in Latin, De Indiarum

drank a little chocolate “before visiting his wives,” thus alluding

He continued by stating that these idolatrous chocaholics (choco-

on the chocolate controversy. Government officials in Mexico ap-

array of material objects to display wealth as well as an exotic

Mayas and the Aztecs and replaced indigenous ingredients, such

evolving standard of taste and culture “helped construct a new

documented the historical debate over the taking of chocolate

times per day.”57 Chocolate had now found a permanent place in

Plantas Americanas en las Relaciones de Viajes y Crónicas de Indias (1493–1553)

“good” food could be adherents of a “bad” religion, namely Islam, Judaism,

“excites the sexual appetite” in Varey, The Mexican Treasury, p. 109.

Surprisingly, Norton does not discuss the theological debate, neglecting an

Translated by writing under the name of Don Diego de Vades-forte London:

Montanari, Massimo. 1996. “Introduction: Food Systems and Models of Civiliza-

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