The Byzantine princess was not popular in Venice, if we may assume that some stories told of her by Peter Damian are derived from Venetian rumour. He quotes her as an example of shameful Oriental luxury: "She scorned to wash with common water, so that her servants had to gather the dew of heaven for her bath. Nor would she take her food with her hand like other mortals, but her eunuchs cut it into small pieces which she then carried to her mouth with a golden instrument that had two prongs:[3] her rooms, too, were always scented with the costliest perfumes."[4]
We are led to believe that the way the princess used her golden forks had outraged the populace and the clergy, who called her forks "luxurious beyond belief."[5] "Instead of eating with her fingers like other people, the princess cuts up her food into small pieces and eats them by means of little golden forks with two prongs.... God in his wisdom has provided man with natural forks - his fingers. Therefore it is an insult to Him to substitute artificial metallic forks for them when eating."[6] "Whether through disease, climate or nefarious means, the princess died within the year. The Bishop of Ostia, Peter Damian, wrote, ‘Of the Venetian Doge’s wife, whose body, after her excessive delicacy, entirely rotted away.’" [7]
Was this fact? Or slander and mis-information repeated so often that it has become "truth." There was some grumbling by the populace towards Giovanni and Maria, but it was not her habits of cleanliness or eating utensils that were the cause. The populace of Venice were afraid of the ambitions of Doge Pietro. "The association of his son with himself as Doge was an act by no means without precedent, as we have seen, but it had never been regarded with approval at Venice, and combined with the Byzantine marriage, would naturally lead to the suspicion that the Doge wished to make his power hereditary and to develop into, a king."[8] It may, also, have been backlash due to the schism between the Roman Catholic and the Greek Orthodox churches: the Princess becoming a physical symbol of the more complicated divide between the two churchs. In any case, Giovanni and Maria died in a plague[9] that hit Venice in 1007. They died within sixteen days of each other, and were buried in a single "mausoleum" in San Zaccaria. [10]
Long after Maria’s death a cautionary tale was told about the Greek wife of a Venetian Doge which seems to refer to her. It was related by St. Peter Damian, a fervent reformer of the evils of his time, who died in 1072. The moral of it was that the good Christians of the west should beware of the decadent and sybaritic ways of the east, lest the Oronates flow into the Tiber. Peter records with vindictive satisfaction how the Greek princess who came to Venice died a hideous death as a result of her self-indulgence. Distrusting the water supply of Venice, she had her servants collect rain water for her ablutions. Too fastidious to eat with her fingers, she carries her food to her mouth with a two-pronged golden fork. Disliking the stink of the lagoons, she filled her rooms with incense and perfumes. For such depravity and vanity she was a victim of the wrath of God, who smote her with a vile disease. Her body putrefied, her limbs withered, her bedchamber was permeated by such a stench that only one of her maids could bear it; and after a lingering illness of excruciating agony she passed away to the great relief of her friends. It is a nasty tale, but it is eloquent of the difference in living standards between Byzantium and the west in the eleventh century. .. The princess Theophano who had married Otto II was believed to be burning in Hell because of all of the baths she had taken during her lifetime. If eating a fork or taking baths were though enough to being down the wrath of God, western society had still some way to go to match the cultured habits of Byzantium. [11]
Add to this, all of the documentation attributing the introduction of the fork to Venice to Theodora, wife of the Doge Domenico Selvo (reigned from 1070 - 1084)[12] , also a Byzantine princess.[13] I was confused why sources were confused as to the name of the princess; some using Theodora and some using Maria. Some did not list any names at all, instead introducing her as the "wife of the Doge", "married to the Doge’s son" or simply as "a Byzantine Princess". Upon more detailed investigation, it would appear that Domenico Selvo married Teodora in 1075. Peter Damian was born sometime between 995 and 1007[14] and died in 1072:[15] Peter could not have had known of the wedding of Domenico and Theodora, let alone of her death. And it is unlikely that he would have had first hand knowledge of Giovanni and Maria, as he would have been, at most, ten or eleven when they returned to Venice [16], baptized their only child and then died along with so many others when the plague, that killed them, arrived in 1007. I do not know why his slander is so oft quoted as being a eye-witness account when other, more trustworthy, accounts are available:
A traveler, Jacques Lesaige, speaks thus of it, not without astonishment, in describing a feast given by the Doge [Pietro]: ‘These lords, when they desire to eat, take the food with a silver fork.’ A little later Sabba da Castiglione mentions the use of forks a la Vénitienne to avoid seizing the food with the fingers.[17]
1 Cedrenus, Hist. Comp., ii. p452 (ed. Bonn) ...
2 Herrin, p.203-5
3 "Quibusdam furcinulis aureis atque bidentibus."
4 Hodgson, p192, similar translation from Bober, p251: "Her eunuch had to gather dew for her to wash in, because water was too harsh; he cut her food into tiny pieces for her to eat with a little gold, two tined fork"
5 Wollfman and Gold p22
6 Ibid
7 Henisch, p145
8 Hodgson, p192
9 Pertz SS., vii. p.36; i.p.170, ed. Monticolo: as refernced by Hodgson, p193.
10 Perhaps influenza or tuberculosis: I was unable to find any credible sources that described the symptoms of the plague.
11 Nicol, p46-7
12 http://www.friesian.com/romania.htm
13 As told by many sources.
14 Depending on the source.
15 Hodgson, p192
16 They were wedded in the "imperial chapel" in Constantinople. Nicol, p46
17 Buck, p85
Sources:
Buck, John Henry. Old Plate, Its Makers & Marks: Its Makers and Marks. Gorham Manufacturing Company, 1903.Google Books: Original from Harvard University. Digitized Jun , 007.
Cedrenus, Hist. Comp., ii. p.452 (ed. Bonn)
Henisch, Bridget Ann. Fast and Feast: Food In Medieval Society. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1976.
Herrin, Judith. "Venice and the Fork," Byzantium, The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire. Princeton & Oxford, 2007.
Hodgson, Francis Cotterell. The Early History of Venice: From the Foundation to the Conquest of Constantinople, A.D. 1204. G. Allen, 1901. Google Books: Original from the New York Public Library. Digitized Sep 11, 2007
Nicol, Donald MacGillivray. Byzantium and Venice: A Study in Diplomatic and Cultural Relations. Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Wollfman, P. and C, Gold. Forks Knives and Spoons. London, Thames and Hudson Limited 1994.
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