4-26-2011 Umbra Professor Publishes on Food History
Umbra Institute History professor reexamines Perugian bread and its invented history.
Umbra Institute history professor and coordinator of the new Food Studies Program Zachary Nowak has published an article in the latest issue ofDiomede: Journal of Political and Cultural Studiescalled “Il pane sciapo e la Guerra del sale di Perugia” (Unsalted Bread and the Salt War of Perugia), in which he provides an important contribution to the discovery of the roots of the gastro-cultural phenomenon of unsalted bread in the Tusco-Umbrian region.
Nowak in his article scrutinizes the common belief that bread in the region is unsalted because of a five-centuries old dispute with the pope and shows that bread was most likely unsalted many centuries before the “Salt War” of 1540. His findings are interesting on many levels, revealing on the one hand how food-cultures can become part of an historical “urban legend” used for political ends, and on the other hand shedding new light on a line in Dante’ Paradiso, that makes a precise reference to unsalted bread as early as 1315, which has traditionally been interpreted only symbolically rather than literally.