L'uso ideologico del tabù del cibo: gli eretici di Walter Map e la contraffazione culinaria (De nugis curialium, I, 30)

The taboo of food shows in every culture the incompatibility of universes and their substantial irreducibility, referring to the sacredness of the separation of ontologically distinct worlds (heaven and earth: the world of the dead and the world of the living). In its various forms the taboo of food indicates the distrust and suspicion against strange creatures and therefore dangerous. Walter Map reuses a long-term taboo to strengthen the total strangeness and danger of heretics that make attempt on the societas christiana: one of the tactics adopted by the heretics to lure and deceive good Christians is the culinary counterfeiting. We will investigate the ideological use of a cultural widespread pattern.