Pomegranate

4. Medieval Pomegranates

Go to, sir; you were beaten in Italy for picking a kernel out of a pomegranate: you are a vagabond and no true traveller Lafeu in William Shakespeare’s

All’s Well that Ends Well, Act II Scene 3

The spread of the pomegranate benefited greatly from the Crusades, as fruit was brought back to various European nations by many returning knights. New dishes had to be devised in order to include the fruit in their respective cuisines. The Modus viaticorum preparandorum et salsarum, an Occitan cookbook of the fourteenth century AD, includes among its recipes a dish known as raymonia. This recipe must have been considerably popular, as it even appears in the Middle English aristocratic cookbook The Forme of Cury. The instructions are as follows:

If you want to make a raymonia, take hens and cook them with salted meat. And take unblanched almonds, and wash them in lukewarm water, and grind them very strongly, and dilute with hen’s broth, and strain. Afterwards, take pomegranate verjuice or pomegranate wine and add it. Then boil it and add enough sugar.[1]

The central roundel from the Hinton St Mary mosaic showing Jesus Christ flanked by pomegranates, early 4th century AD.

This dish is a revision of the Arabic rummaniya, a chicken bruet with pomegranate juice, ground almonds and sugar. However, it was much more than recipes that were adopted and adapted in the medieval period, as ancient notions were used to create new and powerful symbols surrounding the pomegranate.

As the medieval Christian world drew on many pagan traits adopted from their classical predecessors, the pomegranate retained the same ideology, borrowed from the Persephone myth. The fruit became associated with the Resurrection of Christ and the eventual resurrection of his believers, instead of the annual resurrection of crops. The central bust of Jesus in the Hinton St Mary mosaic, discovered in the county of Dorset, England, uses two pomegranates in conjunction with the Chi-Rho symbol to form a somewhat unconventional halo. It is from a Roman villa of the fourth century AD and is the earliest-known image of Christ in Britain and the only known portrait of Christ used in a mosaic pavement. To an audience of recently converted Roman pagans, the image of pomegranates would immediately conjure images of rebirth. The many seeds of the pomegranate protected inside a single rind came to stand for the Church itself, which unified people in faith. The pomegranate and its symbolism would survive in later icons and religious paintings. In the common scene of Mary holding the infant Jesus, one of the pair is sometimes represented holding a split pomegranate, or both have pomegranate seeds fall upon them. The most famous example of this type is by the Italian Renaissance master Sandro Botticelli. The open pomegranate, with its seeds bursting forth, is likened to Christ bursting forth from the tomb. The same themes are evoked in a fourteenth-century ivory. Pomegranates sprout from the central panel of a triptych in which the Crucifixion is depicted, forecasting the Resurrection.

Sandro Botticelli, Madonna of the Pomegranate, 1487, tempera on wood.

Three pomegranates top this 14th-century ivory triptych of the Passion of Christ. From the central split pomegranate pour arils that form a decorative border of the entire ivory.

South Netherlandish Unicorn Tapestry, 15th century. The beast is chained to a pomegranate tree with wounds that drip pomegranate arils in place of blood. The meaning of the letters AE hanging from the tree branches are unknown, although it is speculated that these may be monogram initials of a pair of newlyweds.

The Geoponica is a tenth-century Byzantine encyclopaedia of land cultivation, which includes mention of a practice involving pomegranates during this period. The text states that ancient Africans believed that a pomegranate branch was so powerful that any wild beast would become terrified in its presence. The author of the Geoponica thus advises that a pomegranate branch should be laid at the entrance of the home for the protection of the household. This notion is based on an earlier Roman belief, for Pliny in his Natural History claims that a pomegranate branch will repel snakes.[2]

One mythical beast that the pomegranate had an effect on was the unicorn, popularized in medieval art as a mythical symbol of Christ. Known for its purity, the unicorn could only be captured by a virgin, after which it could be tamed by being tied to a pomegranate tree. A Netherlandish tapestry from the fifteenth century shows a wounded unicorn bleeding pomegranate seeds while chained to a pomegranate tree, further emphasizing the fertility potential already signified by the beast’s prominent horn. Being symbolic of marriage, the image of the unicorn tied to the pomegranate tree, with the red seeds of the fruit spilling on him, functions as an allegory for the bridal sheets.

The twelfth-century historian William of Malmesbury took great interest in recording the ways in which people of the Middle Ages died. No anecdote he tells is stranger than one which includes a delightful image of a pomegranate. William relates that it is ‘well known’ that if any man were bitten by a leopard in Asia, a group of mice would subsequently plan an attack on his boat, with the objective of urinating on his wounds. This, according to William, would cause the man to die. The thousands of mice would row to meet their victim ‘in the rinds of pomegranates, the insides of which they had eaten’.[3] This is not the only instance of the pomegranate rind being associated with seafaring. Much more recently, in the nineteenth century, the archaeologist Sir Austen Henry Layard, while exploring ancient sites in Western Asia, observed that raft men on the Tigris preserved the suppleness of the skins used to build their boats by rubbing them with pomegranate rinds.[4] William’s tale probably refers to this technique of using the rind for buoyancy, a practice which most likely had much older origins.

Pomegranates featured in medieval architecture, the fruitfulness of the seeds making it a fitting symbol for evoking the Virgin Mary in church designs. The architectural example of the Pilastri Acritani demonstrates this. Its two pillars are carved with symmetrical and stylized pomegranate plants, each topped with a single fruit growing from vases. Now standing in Venice, they were traditionally regarded as trophies of the Venetian victory over the Genoese at Acre, Israel, in the thirteenth century. This however was proved false in 1960, with the discovery of the sixth-century church of St Polyeuctus in Istanbul, which bore identical stylistic traits. So how did they get to Venice? The pillars were probably part of the booty taken back after the sack of Constantinople by the Venetian-led Fourth Crusade in 1204. The church of St Polyeuctus, from which the pillars originate, dates from the reign of Justin I and was commissioned by the noblewoman Anicia Juliana. The choice of using pomegranates heavily in its architectural design is probably in tribute to her femininity. The imagery on the Pilastri Acritani is probably also an evocation of the Solomonic Temple, which, as discussed in Chapter Three, featured pomegranates prominently in its design.

The Pilastri Acritani in front of the Basilica di San Marco, originally part of the Church of St Polyeuctus in Constantinople.

The pomegranate was used to convey a message by many well-known figures of the Middle Ages. After conquering Granada in 1492 (and subsequently adding a pomegranate to her coat of arms), Isabella I is reported to have stood with a pomegranate in her hand and declared, ‘Just like the pomegranate, I will take over Andalusia seed by seed.’[5] Granada is of course the Moorish city in Spain, named after the Spanish word for our favourite fruit. From medieval times until today the pomegranate has featured prominently in the architecture of the city. Tourists exploring the city today will soon become aware of modern representations of the pomegranate on street signs, drains, church pews, fountains, bollards and fence spikes and as a logo of many shops. One of the gateways to the city’s famed Alhambra is topped with the allegorical figures of Peace and Abundance alongside three split pomegranates. The coat of arms of the city likewise features the fruit.

Imperial crest giving the pomegranate a prominent position in the centre of the Cross of Burgundy and the Hapsburg firesteels, on the 16th-century Palace of Charles V at the Alhambra of Granada, Spain.

The pomegranate became an emblem on the coat of arms of Isabella’s daughter Catherine of Aragon (1485–1536), the first wife of Henry VIII. Through the queen, the fruit was introduced into England at this time, and is often conjoined with the Tudor rose in iconography.[6] The pomegranate featured prominently during the festivities held in honour of Catherine and Henry’s marriage, such as in displays of gilded fruits. A field was planted with roses and pomegranates next to one another to denote the union of England and Spain.[7] However, the pomegranate proved to be of no assistance to her fertility, and when Henry and Catherine were unable to produce a surviving male heir, the king eventually divorced her in favour of a new marriage to Anne Boleyn. Still today people honour Catherine, placing flowers and pomegranates on her grave in Peterborough Cathedral.

When Anne Boleyn became queen, she adopted a new coat of arms showing a white falcon surrounded by Tudor roses. Anne’s falcon is sometimes depicted hacking up Catherine’s pomegranate (as in an illumination from page four of Motets et Chansons, a music book owned by Anne). This image inspired the creation of a piece of silk embroidery by the artist Suky Best that she attributes to Anne Boleyn’s mother, Elizabeth, which depicts Anne’s falcon pecking at the pomegranate. Capturing the spirit of her sentiment towards Catherine, the French text around it contains Anne’s personal motto: Ainsi sera, groinge qui groinge (‘That’s the way it’s going to be, however much people grumble’).

Manhole cover of a sewer in Granada, Spain.

Street sign in Granada, Spain.

Pomegranate bollard in Granada, Spain.

Pomegranate fountain in Granada, Spain.

Woodcut depicting a celebration of the joint coronation of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, from a 16th-century manuscript. Henry sits beneath the Tudor Rose of England, while Catherine is under the pomegranate.

In terms of textiles of the period, the pomegranate was a favoured motif embroidered on clothes during the medieval era and until the seventeenth century. It was adapted from the Islamic East, elaborate pomegranate patterns now status symbols adorning garments worn by elites of European society. Paintings show the fruit worn by both women (as in portraits of Mary Clopton and Eleonora di Toledo) and men (as worn by one of the Eastern kings in Gentile da Fabriano’s Adoration of the Magi). The sixteenth-century Henry IV of France (who was known for passing the Edict of Nantes, which allowed for religious freedom, thus ending civil war between Catholics and Protestants) wore the pomegranate as a heraldic badge. He chose as his motto ‘Sour, yet sweet,’ comparing the nature of the pomegranate with his belief that a king should be firm but fair with his subjects. The Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I of Austria likewise used the pomegranate as his emblem, and it is held by the monarch in a notable portrait of 1519 by Albrecht Dürer. In Maximilian’s portrait, the pomegranate arils symbolize the ruler’s subjects: diverse but held together under the rule of his empire.

Elizabeth Boleyns Embroidery, c. 1530 (A Fictional Embroidery That May or May Not Have Existed). Sewn, damaged and restored by the artist Suky Best in 2003, and presented as though it were a real artefact.

Robert Peake the Elder, portrait of a woman traditionally identified as Mary Clopton wearing a pomegranate-textile dress, 16th century.

Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I holds a pomegranate as his globus cruciger in this portrait by Albrecht Dürer, 1519.

Medieval medical thought held the pomegranate in high esteem. The fruit is the attribute of the fifteenth-century saint and medical doctor San Juan de Dios (St John of God), who devoted his life to the service of the poor and sick from his hospital in Granada. Statues of the saint depict him holding a pomegranate with a cross coming out of its calyx. The sixteenth century saw the Royal College of Physicians of London adopt the pomegranate into their coat of arms. The restorative fruit rests beneath an outstretched arm, gripped by a hand descending from the heavens. It is still their logo today. In medieval humour theory, the pomegranate was considered warm and moist in nature, the same traits attributed to the human male. Pomegranates were thus prescribed by medieval physicians to counterbalance phlegm and coughs, which were cold and dry in nature. When eaten before a meal, pomegranates supposedly stimulated the appetite, and were considered to have aphrodisiac properties. In medieval thought, the womb of a woman was a beast with a mind of its own, with the ability to wander around a woman’s body causing ailments; for example, when it moved up into the head, it would cause headaches. The Trotula, a medieval medical text, specifies that a wandering womb that had descended from the body could be restored by bathing in water that had been blended with various berries, nuts and seeds, including pomegranate arils and rinds.[8] Throughout the Trotula, the pomegranate is linked with conditions unique to the female experience, another passage recommending rubbing pomegranate on the feet to reduce the foot swelling that occurs during pregnancy. The text even notes the fruit’s use in cosmetic treatments, claiming that a mixture of ground pomegranate, water, vinegar, oak apple and alum could be used to dye one’s hair black.

The symbol of San Juan de Dios held by a statue in Granada, Spain.