Why did the table fork take centuries to catch on in Europe?

The fork was slow to win acceptance because it carried a moral stigma, filled no obvious gap, and arrived as a foreign fashion. Churchmen called it an affront to God, who had given people fingers. Spoons and knives already did most of the work. Travellers and reformers mocked the fork as affected or effeminate. It became general in much of Europe only around the 18th century, when it turned into a symbol of refinement. [1] [2]

Table forks appeared in Byzantine elite circles by the 10th century and shocked western European guests. In the best-known episode, a Byzantine princess married into the Venetian ruling family in the early 11th century and used a golden fork. The Swiss National Museum blog says the church protested that God had given people fingers to touch his gifts. The Conversation dates the marriage to 1004 and names her Maria Argyropoulina. It adds that the theologian Peter Damian blamed her early death on her vanity in using artificial metal forks. [3] [4]

The German Historical Museum notes a claim that Hildegard of Bingen called the fork godless, though it presents this only as something that is said. It also says the fork was seen as the devil's tool until the Reformation ended that superstition. Braudel likewise mentions a German preacher who condemned it as a diabolical luxury. [1] [2]

Earlier forks, from Bronze Age China, Egypt and Rome, were mostly for cooking and serving, and eating with a small personal fork was rare. In northern Europe the spoon already carried food to the mouth, so a second utensil had little appeal. Even in Italy, forks were at first used only to take food from the common dish. Pasta may have helped them spread there, since strands are hard to eat with a spoon or knife, and forks were common in Italy by the 14th century. [3] [1] [4]

The fork then travelled north with Italian brides and travellers. The Conversation credits Bona Sforza in Poland after 1518 and Catherine de' Medici in France after 1533. Resistance was strong. Martin Luther is reported to have said 'God save me from these little forks', and he and Erasmus are said to have mocked the fork as women's fashion. In England in the early 1600s, Thomas Coryat praised Italian fork use, but at home it was seen as affected, and eating with knife and fingers was long considered more honest and masculine. [3] [1] [4] [5]

Braudel says forks became general only around 1750, and notes that Montaigne rarely used one and Anne of Austria ate meat with her fingers all her life. In the 18th century the fork became a symbol of luxury among the aristocracy. In France it came to reflect courtly civility, and in Germany specialised forks multiplied. In England the right way to hold one became a class marker. Steel and mass production made cutlery affordable in the 19th century, and etiquette manuals then focused on how to use the fork rather than whether to. [2] [1] [3]

The Swiss National Museum blog, citing Norbert Elias, argues that disgust at eating with bare hands is not an instinct. It developed with changing ideas of decorum, as a cultural product like the fork itself. [4]