Forks are evil! Eat with your hands!

History of the fork: http://www.hotforwords.com/2008/07/07/fork-evil/

made its debut here in 1629, I believe. When I taught grade school, I loved to quash myths about the first Thanksgiving--no turkey, no forks, etc. Read somewhere that a high class person used fewer fingers to grab the food than a low class person did.

Henry had earlier split with Rome and appropriated Catholic properties: the political status of Catholics remained unsettled for some generations afterwards: Guy Fawkes' 1605 Gunpowder Plot, in 1605, shortly after James I assumed the throne, produced an anti-Catholic hysteria and a wave of anti-Catholic legislation, for example. The Catholic Church thus lacked the power to quash England's use of forks around 1611, even if the Church had desired to do so

Coryate did report that one of his close friends ridiculed him by calling him Furcifer
<pdf link:> http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9901E3DB1F39E433A25750C1A9609C94669ED7CF

The fork was actually known in England before Coryate



Of course, if the Catholic Church had really opposed utensils such as the fork, one should not expect to find the device in an altar painting such as this:

http://tarvos.imareal.oeaw.ac.at.nyud.net:8090/server/images/7000211.JPG
A sucket-fork rests on a table by a footed bowl in a detail from The Annunciation from a Viennese altarpiece, c. 1460-1470
Medieval & Renaissance Cutlery
http://larsdatter.com/cutlery.htm

:evilgrin:

:evilgrin:

I was hoping for an opportunity to use that cheap and obvious joke

:toast:

Wikipedia, for example, relates:



But:



Damian's death date seems clear enough:

...that there is no spoon.