Chocolate almost immediately gained acceptance from the church, existing only around it a controversy of an academic appearance. Was it food – in which case it would have to have been forbidden during Lent – or was it a drink and therefore allowed? The Pope Pio V was given some to taste in 1569, but he found it to be so unpleasant tasting that he could hardly imagine anyone wanting to drink it, at any moment of the year.
The debate continued on during the next centuries, with uncountable writings about the theme done by studious theologians. The matter that was a concern was that if chocolate was allowed, surely people would find ways to dodge fasting with some other food, using a writer as comparison: “He who eats four ounces of exquisite roast sturgeon has broken his fast, but if he drinks it and prepares a thick broth extract of it, is not sinning”.
There was however a priest that came up with a violent objection against chocolate: the bishop of Chiapas. It was not exactly the drink in itself that he was against, but the fact that the ladies of Chiapas, in Mexico, during the long course of a Holy Mass insisted on asking their maids to bring them chocolate to be able to withstand until the end.
All the confusion and interruption that was caused by the maids who came in and out of the cathedral upset the bishop in such a way that he forthright prohibited this practice and threatened with excommunicating any person that did not obey his orders. The ladies however did not pay attention to these orders and when the priests tried to avoid the maids from doing what they were asked, they would make a racket and they would flash threatening swords at the priests. When the priest realized that his plan had been defeated, he resigned.
Not long after his resignation according to Thomas Gage in his book “Survey of the West Indies”, which was published in 1648, said that the Bishop had become gravely sick. They brought different doctors from all over the place to examine him, and they were all under the opinion that the Bishop had been poisoned. He also said that a lady he knew well had been accused of having prescribed a cup of chocolate so that it would be given to him by the page, which was the cup that poisoned the man who had so rigorously prohibited chocolate from being drunken in church. This deed later gave place to a proverb they have in that country: “Be careful with the chocolate of the Chiapas”.
Desserts Recipes Chocolate and the Church
