Women in God's Kitchen: Cooking, Eating, and Spiritual Writing. Este artículo no está disponible.Women in God's Kitchen: Cooking, Eating, and Spiritual Writing

Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin once noted that 'nunneries in the old days were veritable storehouses of the most delectable tidbits.' Perhaps that is why the much-maligned Lucrezia Borgia is said to have truly felt at home only in the company of pious cloistered nuns. Cristina Mazzoni savours the food writings and images of a broad spectrum of Catholic saints and holy women. A native of Italy and a splendid cook herself, Mazzoni accords due attention to her fellow countrywomen, as well she should given the importance of Italian cookery (Catherine of Genoa, Angela of Foligno, Gemma Galgani), but includes numerous other holy women and their cuisines as well: Germany and the Low Countries (Hildegard and Hadewijch, Elisabeth of Schonau), France (Margaret Mary Alacoque, Therese of Lisieux), Spain (Teresa of Avila), colonial South America (Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz), England (Margery Kemp), and the first person in the United States to be canonized by the Roman Catholic Church, Elisabeth Ann Seton. One of the most touching scenes in the book has Mrs. Seton feeding her dying husband in a lazaretto near Livorno. Because of his deteriorating health, she had taken him and their oldest child to Italy for its sunny, salubrious climate. But a yellow fever epidemic in New York caused them to be quarantined in a cold, damp, smoky building. He died a few days after their month-long quarantine. Included in the book (for how could it not be?) is a wonderful meditation on that sweet and sour Scandinavian Lutheran movie celebrating the joys of French Catholic cuisine: Babette's Feast.

Cristina Mazzoni is associate professor in the Dept. of Romance Languages at the University of Vermont. She is the author of Saint Hysteria: Neurosis, Mysticism, and Gender in European Culture, Angela of Foligno's Memorial, Maternal Impressions: Pregnancy and Childbirth in Literature, and Theory, and, with Rudolph Bell, The Voices of Gemma Galgani: The Life and Afterlife of a Modern Saint.