The writings of the Medieval theologian Peter Damian (d. 1072) reinforce the idea that the Middle Ages were an era with such religious devotion that all other sensibilities were eclipsed. In learning about the disdain for which Peter seemed to hold nearly everything unconnected to Christian doctrine, we can imagine that even his contemporaries would have felt annoyed to no end by his self-righteousness. For example, we can just look at what he thought about forks – the now-common eating utensil. When Princess Theodora brought a fork to Italy where she was getting set to marry a Venetian leader, she pulled out her new-fangled eating device, horrifying Peter with its extravagance such that he spewed the following: “she did not touch the food with her hands but had each dish cut into tiny pieces by her eunuchs, which she then advanced to her mouth using a sort of miniature golden spear with two prongs, and barely tasted.” When the princess shortly thereafter died, Peter Damian was satisfied that God had taken revenge for her vanity. This image from an 11th century Italian Lombard law code, and is one of the earliest depictions of people eating with forks.
Source(s): From livingthehistoryelizabethchadwick.blogspot.com/2012/11/fork-off.html .
