Popes, Peasants, and Shepherds. Oretta Zanini De Vita
successive waves, the so-called barbarians canceled entire inhabited and cultivated regions from the map of Italy, erasing more than merely eating habits. Medieval man had to begin again from scratch, living in houses no longer worthy of the name, nourishing himself when he could with game, wild grains, and roots. The people forgot the great Roman cuisine almost entirely.
With the economic upturn of the year 1000, the waters of the Tiber once again became a major channel for the movement of people and goods, including foodstuffs. Business was conducted in the crowded ports of Ripetta and Ripa Grande,31 where the traffic of large and small craft grew steadily until boats and ships created frequent bottlenecks, comparable to those on today’s roads and streets.
While it was still active, the port of Ostia fed the major part of commercial traffic directed toward Rome, since the Tiber was navigable as far as its tributary the Nera, in Umbria. For centuries, small and large craft32 were pulled upriver by water buffalo treading a sheep track along the left bank. This service, called alaggio, or “haulage,” was in use as early as the Roman Empire. In the Middle Ages, the monopoly was given to the bishop of Ostia, who engaged a subcontractor to supply the animals for traction.
The flow of shipping in the ports and the activity of the boatmen and stevedores who loaded and unloaded all sorts of freight, including food, were regulated by papal proclamations and motu proprio, or decree.
The Tiber also participated in city life by making its rich, unpolluted waters available to fishermen. The humanist Paolo Giovio (1483–1552) maintained that ninety-six varieties33 of fish could be caught in the Tiber, and fishing on the river was always one of the marvels of travelers. There were trout, pike, barbel, carp, eel, salmon, and sturgeon. As late as the mid-nineteenth century, sturgeon, salmon, and their caviar were sold in shops in the city and in the outlying areas. Sturgeon had given rise to a curious and ancient tradition. In the Middle Ages, the heads of the largest specimens—those longer than 47 inches (1.2 meters)—were brought as gifts to the Conservatori del Campidoglio (the political hierarchy that governed the city), for whose tables they were transformed into delicious soups. Most of the brutes were caught in the short space between the Tiber Island and the Ponte Sublicio. A marble plaque spelling out the rules for sale was supposed to be displayed wherever fish were sold. An amusing example can still be seen on the Portico d’Ottavia, next to Via di Sant’Angelo in Pescheria.
Capita piscium
hoc marmoreo schemate longitudine
majorum usque ad primas pinnas
inclusive Conservatoribus
danto
The text says that the head, up to the first fins, of any fish longer than the diagram had to be given to the conservatori. The diagram in question is a picture of a sturgeon incised on another marble plaque, now in the Palazzo dei Conservatori, one of the buildings of the Capitoline Museums, on the Piazza del Campidoglio.
Of the many species that the then-clean waters of the Tiber used to offer, the most famous were perhaps ciriole, small, strong-tasting eels, different in both size and flavor from those fished (then and now) in the lakes of Lazio. They were cooked in guazzetto, or else fried, according to an ancient and unvarying recipe.
The University of the Fishermen, as the guild to which all those who worked with fish was called, was one of the oldest and most important in the city’s guild hierarchy. It included the fishermen of the upper Tiber, as well as those who fished the river’s middle course and mouth. The guild was regulated by a charter: one that has come down to us dates to 1665. It is more or less from this moment that fishing, formerly a laissez-faire activity, was regulated.
The fishmongers belonged to their own guild, whose charters are documented from 1536. The guild established rules and regulations for both hygiene and retail sale of fish. They could now only be sold in specific markets or in the city streets by special license from the consuls. Fishmongers also had to use a particular kind of basket, called a celigna, both to transport the fish and to measure it: according
Fish was sold in the Portico d’Ottavia, and nearby shops, such as the one shown here, sold cured meat, cheeses, and spices (Fondazione Primola, Rome)
to law, the tail had to remain outside the container and could not be considered in the price (which was based on length, not weight). For reasons of hygiene, the sale of fish, in the street or in the market, was prohibited during the hottest part of the year, from July 8 through September.
The main fish market, from antiquity down to the beginning of the twentieth century, was in the Portico d’Ottavia, in the Ghetto. There was a second market at the Pantheon, and another in the quarter, or rione, called Ponte. A large exhibition market of fish, the cottío, took place two days before Christmas, after midnight. The opening was marked with a solemn ceremony attended by city authorities, prelates, patricians, and members of the press, even at the beginning of the twentieth century. Three piazzas were rented by the University of Fishmongers and the proceeds were handed over to the Camera Apostolica (in other words, the Vatican), which also collected rent on the stone used as a sales counter. The fish market did not move until 1922, when it was transferred to the General Markets—the main wholesale food market—on Via Ostiense.34
The 1536 charter even dictated rules for correct behavior on the job: “It is prohibited to play with dice on the stones of the fish market. . . . It is prohibited to throw down money for the riffa [raffles] on top of the fish . . .” and so forth. Curiously, the charters authorized fishmongers to sell “wild animals,” defined as “pigs, stags, goats, hares, pheasants, partridges, pigeons, doves, thrushes, starlings, and other tiny birds.” The University of Fishmongers, like all the other guilds of the city, ran a home and a hospital that assisted its own members. Aid was extended not only to the sick and to pilgrims of the trade who were passing through Rome but also included dowries for poor or orphaned girls, support for spinsters, help with burial, and other forms of assistance. The home and hospital were located next to the church of Sant’Angelo in Pescheria, in the Ghetto, where the fishmongers had a chapel dedicated to their patron saint, Saint Andrew.35
Fish flowed to the markets in abundance and at a good price, even if the largest specimens invariably ended up on the tables of the rich clergy and the nobility. Freshwater fish were the most common and the most prized, both because they were less complicated to catch and because they traveled a much shorter distance to market. Marine fish were carried along the Tiber from Ostia to the ports of Ripetta and Ripa Grande and were distributed to the city’s markets from there.
Fish were never as important in the regional cuisine of Lazio, nor indeed of any Italian region, as other foods. This is quite odd when one considers that Italy is almost completely surrounded by a sea full of fish, and that for centuries the Lenten fast, by forbidding consumption of meat, in effect imposed a fish diet. The problem lay in the internal transportation, where roads were almost nonexistent and travel times made it impossible to deliver fresh fish to the towns of the interior.
Preserved fish had already appeared in popular cooking in antiquity. During the famous Roman Carnival, the people loved to stop at the wineshops (osterias) to eat tarantello—belly (ventresca) of tuna preserved in salt—and wash it down with a nice glass of wine. Alici, fat, tasty anchovies caught along the shore, were also preserved in salt, in large wooden barrels. Salted anchovies are used in many traditional Roman dishes.
Salt cod and stockfish are found in almost all the cuisines of the Mediterranean area. The very ancient practice36 of preserving cod by drying or salting occurs in Roman cooking in numerous specialties.
Many of the Roman meatless dishes are associated with Lent, Fridays, or any of the other 130 days of the year when, until recently, meat and its derivatives were prohibited for practicing Catholics. On Good Friday, a day of particularly strict fasting, it was usual to visit the thousand tombs of the beautiful Roman basilicas. At twilight, there wasn’t a housewife whose table did not have the famous Good