History of the Fork
The fork actually has a very long history, even being mentioned in the Old Testament: “And the priests’ custom with the people was, that when any man offered sacrifice, the priests’ servant came, while the flesh was in seething, with a fleshhook of three teeth in his hand, And he struck it into the pot … all that the fleshhook brought up the priest took for himself” (1 Sam. 2:13-14) So while this claw-like fork was a fairly common cooking and fire keeping utensil and even popped up now and then on the table through the Middle Ages and beyond, the fork as an eating utensil was far from being a common item.
Forks did appear as a way to eat your meal at the table as early as the fourth century, having been introduced there from the East. But even then, it was only occasionally and at elegant dinner parties. To the west the fork remained an oddity, or worse. In the eleventh century, a Byzantine princess created a stir in Venice. The princess came to marry the future Doge, Domenico Selvo, and at one of the celebrations in her honor she dared to refuse to eat with her hands. Instead, she had one of her eunuchs cut her food into little pieces she was able to eat with a golden fork. The socialites of the era proclaimed it to be total decadence and when the princess died shortly after of some wasting disease, the Cardinal Bishop of Ostia denounced her with the passage: “Of the Venetian Doge’s wife, whose body, after her excessive delicacy, entirely rotted away.”
