IL CIBO DEGLI ALTRI. VIAGGIATORI MEDIEVALI ALLA TAVOLA DEGLI STRANIERI

Food can be a means of comparison between peoples and cultures. Everyone needs to eat, but every people has its own foods and alimentary customs, different from others; realizing these differences is a way for recognizing or highlighting affinities or distances. This paper exemplifies the assumption, reporting some experiences of medieval travellers, who came into contact with exotic food habits, very far from European customs. William of Rubruk, traveller in Mongolia in the thirteenth century, describes the food of the peoples he meets without disdaining its quality; on the contrary, for Liutprand of Cremona, ambassador to Constantinople in the tenth century, Byzantine food customs are evidence of the cultural and moral degradation of that society; Marco Polo and John of Marignolli, travellers to China in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, evaluated exotic food which merchant’s eyes, but also with the aim to impress the reader on their extraordinary journeys.