How cod became a typical Good Friday dish – 04/07/2023 – Food

In his almost 37 years of priesthood, there were many times that Father Eugênio Ferreira de Lima questioned the custom, traditional in many Brazilian Catholic families, of not eating red meat in Lent – some, only in Holy Week; others, exclusively on Good Friday, the day when the protagonist at the table is usually cod.

“Especially because cod is more expensive than certain types of meat,” said Lima, in an exchange of messages with the BBC News Brasil reporter a few days ago. “I also don’t see the sense in fasting or not eating meat and not giving what you skipped to eat to the poorest. Sometimes I feel like an isolated voice in that sense.”

The question raised by the religious makes a lot of sense, especially in times of inflation, socioeconomic crisis and Brazil’s return to the hunger map. But, at the same time, it is a criticism that instigates: where did the custom of cod on the Friday before Easter come from?

For experts, it’s a long story in which there is no single explanation. And, of course, it has its roots in Portugal’s influence as a colonizing country in what would later become Brazil. Another part of the explanation lies in the fact that it is a product that can be preserved for a longer time without refrigeration.

“When the subject is ‘you cannot eat such a thing’ and ‘it is permissible to consume such products’, the rule is not so much based on the economic issue”, explains historian André Leonardo Chevitarese, professor at the Institute of History of Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and author of the book ‘Jesus of Nazareth: What History Has to Say About Him’, among others. “And the case of cod has to do with Portuguese colonization.”

“The key to thinking about this issue, if it is not economic, has to do with the religious issue. That is why this issue is so tense. Not every Christian fasts or gives up eating red meat during Holy Week. whether or not to consume red meat concerns looks, ways of reading theologically what Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross is about”, he adds.

That is why abstinence from meat raises comments ranging from “the Catholic Church prohibited it without biblical basis” to those who defend that regulations arising from documents or from Catholic tradition would indeed be anchored by the teachings of the sacred books, as contextualized by Chevitarese, in “theological symbologies of the act of Jesus’ sacrifice”.

“That is: I would not discuss economic issues, but I would think about symbologies”, he concludes.

And then there are some issues that need to be taken into account: the practice of fasting, the symbolism of fish, the pleasure of eating red meat and, finally, the dissemination of cod in the Portuguese world.

Fast

“It all starts, in fact, with fasting,” says Vaticanist Mirticeli Medeiros, a researcher in the history of Catholicism at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, to BBC News Brasil. “Since the first centuries of Christianity, this practice has been observed, but without focusing on a specific food. Also because, in the primitive era of Christianity, there was this concern to break with Jewish practices in some aspects, although the influence, from the point of view cultural, was more than evident. It is in the Middle Ages that such a precept begins to be drawn.”

Chevitarese points out that since the first Christians there was already a reflection on “thinking about the sacrifice of Jesus” experiencing some form of abstinence.

“The idea of ​​fasting, of having an ascesis, would represent, in many ways, an austerity, a self-control in the face of human pleasures, always in dimension to the sacrifice made by Jesus on the cross”, he points out.

Historian, theologian and philosopher Gerson Leite de Moraes, professor at Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie, points out that this idea of ​​fasting, in Catholicism, is linked to the sacrament of penance, that is, a sacrifice made for the remission of sins. “In Catholicism, it’s a concept that works very strongly with the idea of ​​reconciliation.”

Now, Lent is, so to speak, the perfect time for this religious experience to occur. “Because it is a period of forgiveness, of reconstruction. And it is within this whole logic that abstinence from the flesh appears, as a symbol of this life that asks to be reconciled”, adds Moraes.

After all, the symbology is in the narrative: Lent is the journey that results in Easter. And Easter, the feast of the Resurrection, would be the culmination of this history of renewal, this possibility of each one becoming a new human being.

Moraes points out that this practice of abstinence is not usually followed by Protestant Christians, evangelicals or other denominations. According to him, the root of this difference lies precisely in the question of the sacraments – if for Catholics there are seven, including penance or repentance of sins, Protestants have only two: baptism and the Eucharist.

Fish

But if the idea is to fast, why would fish be allowed?

There are many explanations that, added up, result in unanimous permission. In the first place, it is necessary to remember how important fish were in the context of the historical Jesus, that is, in the daily life of those communities in the Middle East around 2 thousand years ago.

No wonder, the first followers of Jesus are presented, in the gospels, as fishermen. “He had fishermen among his disciples. It is logical that fish is an important food in Jewish culture. But there is no explicit, direct relationship, [disso com a ideia da troca da carne pelo peixe]”, says Moraes.

What there is, recalls Chevitarese, is a spelling issue. Fish, in ancient Greek, was ichthys. Primitive Christians, in those times when they were persecuted for their faith, decided to use the fish as a symbol, giving the word an acronym: Iesous Christos Theou Yios Soter, which means Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.

“Thus, the consumption of fish also goes through a set of symbolisms, in the experience, in the daily practice of many Christians”, argues the historian. “The letters that make up the word ichthys form a meaning that is closely related to Christianity,” he says. “This fish is itself symbolically something that points to Jesus as savior.”

Red meat

OK, there was the widespread practice of fasting. And there was the habit of the fish, plus the whole symbology. But what’s the problem with red meat anyway?

The theory itself came only in the 13th century, thanks to the Italian philosopher, theologian and friar Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), one of the great thinkers of the medieval world.

“When he prescribed guidance to the faithful regarding fasting, he pointed to meat as one of the most pleasurable foods, along with dairy products”, says Medeiros. “He did this because fasting was conceived as the act of abstaining from something one liked the most, not necessarily depriving oneself of meat. sexual sins, commonly called ‘sins of the flesh’.”

“The theology [da abstinência de carne vermelha] was brought by Tomás de Aquino”, agrees Chevitarese.

Medeiros draws attention to the recurrence of examples that confirm this idea. For example, the rule of Saint Benedict, a document attributed to the monk Saint Benedict of Nursia (480-547) and which governs the Benedictine order. “It demanded that the monks only eat meat in case of extreme need or for health reasons”, says the scholar of Catholicism.

She says that the topic has been hotly debated in church synods over the centuries. “It was even questioned whether ground beef and ham could be consumed in place of meat [em si] because, once crushed, they would have lost their ‘fleshy’ properties”, exemplifies Medeiros.

“Finally, in the Middle Ages, the faithful observed the so-called ‘skinny fast’, which required abstinence from meat at various times of the year, including on Friday”, says the researcher. The current rule is contained in two Vatican documents: the 1917 Code of Canon Law and the 1966 Constitution of Pope Paul VI (1897-1978).

There are many rhetorical devices that seek to explain the difference between the meat of different animals, in order to authorize the consumption of fish and prohibit that of other animals, for example. “There is the element of fish as meat whose blood is cold, to the detriment of the hot blood of red meat from cattle and chicken”, comments Chevitarese.

The nuances are not very clear either when it comes to defining what is a fish or not. In this sense, religion does not necessarily drink from the sources of science. “In Jewish tradition, fish would be the animal that has scales and fins. Although we consider many other marine animals to be fish that do not necessarily have scales and fins”, explains the historian.

He reports that he has already come across understandings that are quite offensive to taxonomic knowledge. “For example, in New Orleans [nos Estados Unidos] there was a bishop who said that alligator should be considered a fish. So Catholics there can eat alligator meat on Good Friday”, he says. “There are cultures that see capybaras as fish, so Catholics can eat capybaras in Lent. And in Quebec [no Canadá]a bishop said that beavers are also fish…”

“So, the rule varies a lot about what a fish is (in the religious context), how to define what a fish is…”, he adds. “There are many loopholes.”

Cod

“There is no prescription from the Church on the use of cod”, stresses Medeiros. She gets straight to the point: the tradition caught on in Brazil “simply because we were influenced by Portuguese customs”. Well of course…

“They brought the delicacy here in the 19th century. As it is considered a long-life fish, many faithful consumed it throughout Lent,” she adds.

There seems to be the leap of the cat – or the leap of the fish. In times before the invention of the refrigerator, especially when Lent occurs in the summer, like Brazil, it was necessary to facilitate this idea of ​​​​eating fish.

As cod is usually cured, in a process with the addition of salt and dehydration, it is a product that can be preserved for a longer time without refrigeration. In short: it wasn’t because of faith in codfish, it was because of pure pragmatism.

Historian Chevitarese explains that consumption of cod was brought to Brazil with the arrival of the Portuguese court in Rio de Janeiro in 1808. Gradually, the delicacy began to be available in the famous emporiums of dry and wet products.

“The logic of penance imposes on the believer that he obey, of his own free will, an important penitential moment”, emphasizes Moraes. “Easter is an excellent opportunity for this. On Good Friday, then, the subject makes this substitution [da carne pelo bacalhau]which is a historical, traditional thing.”

“We are a country created under the influence of Catholicism, so this observance of the Catholic faithful dates back to the colonization period and is something very evident, anchored by the guidance of the priests here. And the fish [o bacalhau] appeared as a tradition of the Portuguese court itself”, he says.

The theologian summarizes: if the ritual of abstinence came with colonization, the practice was accentuated with the arrival of the Portuguese court in Rio.

“So cod, with the practicality of something that was part of Portuguese cuisine and did not spoil easily, was inserted. And that was being re-signified over time”, he comments.

Yes, because with all the ingredients, it’s time to remember the biblical phrase that proclaims that the things of God must be left to God and the things of Caesar, to Caesar. Because the market god is able to perpetuate the most diverse invented traditions…

“The consumption of cod, brought by the court, fell in love with Brazilians. We live in a capitalist mode of production and when something falls in the taste of commercial mercantile practice, everything becomes a commodity: there are people who sell and people who consume”, reflects Moraes. “So there it is: it has become a very exploited practice until today. And the fish sellers thank you.”

This text was originally published here