Customer Reviews

The Heretic's Feast: A History of Vegetarianism

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This excellent book presents a vast smorgasbord of history. From the Dawn of Man to the Ancient Greeks to the Early Christians and onwards, the book looks at the different practicalities and philosophies underlying vegetarianism and their impact on believers. The section on Pythagoras, more famous for his mathematics than his diet, is especially interesting in demonstrating how the Greek may fairly be considered "the first humanist."

The central part of the book deals with early Christian sects and is a genuine eye-opener, although it is not the lightest reading in the book. Quoting the Dead Sea Scrolls and other ancient sources, it is clear that the success of the Pauline concept of Christianity was not a foregone conclusion. It is fascinating to read about other opinions, some of which painted Jesus Christ as an enlightened teacher in the style of Buddha rather than as divine. Many of these sects were vegetarian but also shared many views that came to be considered as the foulest heresies, including the equality of women. The author shows the unfriendliness of Pauline Christianity towards animals and it is easy to see how a religion where humanity is promised the power to terrorize animals could result in centuries of abuse and horror. As well, the Established Church conducted hideous crusades against Christians who interpreted their religion in a different way. For many of these heretics, the refusal to eat meat was a sign of asceticism and sacrifice. The issues of animal rights and human health seem to be quite recent in terms of vegetarian philosophy.

The book is somewhat weaker as it moves into more modern times when it takes on a primarily English focus, although Asian vegetarianism does receive some attention in the appendices. It becomes a catalogue of movements and less of an overview. There are some striking errors in this well-researched book. For example, the author states the Canary Islands were named after the songbirds as support for his comment that new discoveries were named after birds. In fact, the Canaries were named after the dogs (from the Latin Canus) found there. There are also references that require more local knowledge. For example, "the snoek saga of 1948, which was a complete Government fiasco..." has no further details. My Oxford Concise defines "snoek" as the South African term for barracuda, so there is probably a fascinating story here too.

"The Heretic's Feast" suggests that throughout history, the desire to be vegetarian has required some courage. It runs counter to received wisdom although its logic is unassailable. Whether seeking to find a closer road to God, to exercise compassion in avoiding the killing of sentient fellow-creatures or just to protect one's own health and environment, the vegetarian in history has, with a few noteworthy exceptions, suffered a range of punishments from ridicule to murder.

With our knowledge of the environmental impact of intensive meat production, the effects of meat consumption on human health and the well-publicized horrors of factory-farming and slaughterhouses, coupled with the extraordinary array of fruits and vegetables now available in the industrialized world, there is simply no rational reason to consume dead animals. Mr. Spencer's thoughtful and entertaining book shows how far people have come towards this ideal as they have grappled with these troubling issues for millennia.

Many of the people quoted in the book demonstrate high intelligence and unquestionable compassion. I am particularly fond of the quotation from American naturalist Henry Beston, who wrote about animals in 1928: "They are not brethren; they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth."

I picked up this book out of idle curiosity and was immediately sucked in. It is a true history of vegetarianism. I knew that there had been a few prominent vegetarians in history, like maybe Benjamin Franklin. My knowledge turned out to be very superficial. Animal slaughter and the eating of animal flesh has been a subject of both horror and religious prohibition since mankind became a thinking being. In fact, in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve did not eat meat and the lamb was safe with the lion. It was distressing to learn of the Christian Church's prosecution of vegetarians! This book follows vegetarianism from early man, through Greek, Indian, and Christian times, onward into the Enlightenment and the present day. An absolute must-read for vegetarians wanting to learn about their illustrious philosophical ancestors!

Colin Spencer does an excellent job of covering the last couple million years of vegetarianism. This book is not an easy read, especially in the sections about the diet of early man, and the analysis of some of the early Christian sects. You'll learn why mainstream society traditionally looks at vegetarians as "cranks" Puritanical, or just plain heretical. This is slowly beginning to change, but I think that in some areas of the world, (esp. where I live) vegetarians are still those weird outsiders who are thumbing their nose at the hallowed institution of eating meat. You'll also learn that early vegetarians weren't vegetarians for animal welfare reasons. For the Greeks like Plutarch or Pythagoras it was all about reincarnation (metempsychosis or transmigration of souls) For the early Christian sects eating meat was a symbol of man's Fall from grace. Some early Christian hermits also abstained from meat & alcohol because they thought consuming these didn't jive with the ascetic lifestyle; you had to deprive yourself of luxuries to become spiritually closer with your God.

My only quibble is that Spencer could've covered the last 100 years in more depth. The last 50 pages is surprisingly lacking in the same kind of detail that Spencer devoted to, (for instance) the Early Christian era. Maybe the last 100 years has been covered better in other books? I don't know, since this is the first book of its type that I've read.

OK, actually I have one other quibble.....In the last 20 pages, Spencer goes off on a rant about corporate farming, the effects of livestock farming on the environment, the dangers of eating meat (salmonella, heart disease, cancer). I thought this was a "history" of vegetarianism??? I mean, I agree with all the things he says about the above topics. I'm an ardent vegetarian myself, but I wish he had devoted more space to the last 100 years of vegetarianism, instead of the polemic.

Another thing to consider is tha Spencer goes go more in detail about vegetarianism in Europe and the UK. If you want a lengthier discussion on vegetarianism in the U.S try somewhere else. This is still an excellent book for a history of vegetarianism. I hope that other authors will take up this topic.

Well written and comprehensive book on the origins of vegetarian and non-vegetarian dietary habits. It is perfect for those vegetarians who want to understand the historical roots of the movement. Also recommended for anyone 'on the fence' about becoming a vegetarian or consuming less animal products. Here you will find concrete facts on the history, health benefits, and compassionate considerations of vegetarianism. You will be inspired by the stories of history's greatest minds choosing to abstain from meat for either health or humane reasons. Vegetarians can count Pythagoras, Leonardo da Vinci, Ben Franklin, Shelley, and Gandhi among their historical supporters. This book will motivate readers to consume more healthy non-animal foods and recognize the compassion behind vegetarian choices.
But, you don't have to be a vegetarian to enjoy this book. There is a wealth of information on how history, religion, and social development are related to food.

My son asked if one could survive only on meat. Contrarily, I looked this book up to find out. Orthodoxy and conformity long allied with the herding & consumption of animals. To those in control, those refusing to eat flesh posed a social and moral threat. Not eating meat equalled rebellion against the state, the faith, and the norm.

Spencer starts with early hominids and ends with fast food. He roams necessarily widely, if focusing most modern attention to the British take on vegetarianism. Egypt, Greece, Rome, China, and India all earn ancient testimony for a long-lived counter-cultural tradition. While Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cultures appear to have come down harder on what become known as "Pythagorean" practices, the Hindus seem to have had a more balanced approach. A "dharma-sutra" ca. 600 BCE counselled: "In eating flesh, in drinking intoxicating liquors and in carnal intercourse there is no sin, for such enjoyments are natural, but absention from them produces great reward." ((qtd. 76)

For the West, however, resistance to meat-eating smacked more of deprivation than moderation. Spencer defends deftly the reputation of Epicurus as more principled than "epicurean" today connotes. Gluttony came from satiation which left one more deprived than before, Epicurus reasoned. So, as with any addiction or longing, the cure stemmed from avoiding anger, irritation, and lust. Pleasure, thus controlled, did not lead to overindulgence but to self-restraint as "the absence of pain."

But such subtleties were lost on many pagan and Christian critics. Sacrifice harbored in its action food plus energy to equal meanings charged with much more than merely roasting a beast. As with Jews, Muslims, or Hindus in their dietary choices, it was impossible to keep secret one's preferences: "the lifestyle is an unspoken criticism." (97) For a radical, it became a mark of humanity and higher standards that often "makes meat-eaters uneasy and they often react aggressively."

The heretical associations of vegetarianism in the Bogomil, Gnostic, and Cathar movements outraged the Church. The renunciation of meat did come out of a more negative refusal by the dissenters to separate themselves from the profane, rather than a celebration of the natural realm as deserving of its own rights. "It is a doctrine that expresses fear of humanity more than a love of God. With such ideas, animals became too easily associated with the devil and his evil minions, hence the domestic cat came to be seen as the witch's familiar."(161)

For most people now as then, vegetarianism may have been involuntary, furthermore. Not out of religious objection or ethical solidarity, but because of poverty. Only when surpluses exist can a community afford a minority to find alternative foods. For a few faithful Christians, monks and saints, renunciation of meat was not identical with vegetarianism, perhaps oddly to us. Heretics were linked to vegetarianism, but clerics were not. "For a vegetarian philosophy to exist, it needs an ethical system of greater power and significance than the prevailing code in society." (181)

The glimmers of this began for the West with those who chose, for ideological reasons, to eschew meat. The Renaissance alerted Leonardo da Vinci and Giordano Bruno to the options argued by classical predecessors. Here, as in Bruno's proto-holistic system, or Leonardo's rarely cited vegetarianism, a sympathy for animals within the cosmos begins to emerge. Suffering elicits sympathy, and rather than a Christian solution, humanists begin to compete with the Church for an earth-based understanding of harmony and kinship.

As modernity dawns, Spencer concentrates on Britain. The Victorian denial of flesh and its promotion of unadulterated, but often unsalted or unspiced foods, formed the common English stereotype of sandals and nutloaf, bland pablum as fare for pale aesthetes and bearded cranks. This was a wise reaction to the horrors of slaughterhouses, true, but one that went so far in its po-faced rejection that its grim, ascetic influence lingers nearly two centuries later. Dogmatic puritans, the 19c and early 20c proponents of vegetarianism often carried with them a severe air.

George Bernard Shaw, Edward Carpenter, and Leo Tolstoy, famously, symbolized the intellectual contingent. George Orwell fulminated in 1930: "One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words 'Socialism' and 'Communism' draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, 'Nature Cure' quack, pacifist, and feminist in England." (qtd. 299)

Orwell objected to a vegetarian, for not being able "to relate to the working classes," in Spencer's interpretation-- as "a person out of touch with common humanity." Faced by such prejudice, our author wonders if Orwell's disgust is with the bourgeoisie associations; "If Orwell could have found a vegetarian coal miner he might well have written differently." (300) Orwell continues his own holy war against what Spencer labels a "secular heresy" for the Victorians. Immorality, sexual license, and fervent egalitarianism allied with it in popular opinion.

The book moves predictably if appropriately into an outcry against factory farming and ecological degradation. The examples are well-chosen, if again largely British. This is one shortcoming, perhaps, for readers expecting a global treatment; the book narrows as it nears the present into a study of British reactions to the vegetarian refusal. Spencer writes with verve and compassion, and has read widely. The book can be a bit repetitious, but he makes his claims and supports them well.

We face, he concludes, a dual challenge. Consumption of meat psychically for most of us still marks a celebration, an entry into affluence, a fine night out to cash in a bonus or impress a date. Yet, he reminds us that, despite the persistence of the off-beat vegetarian caricature, abstention from meat also runs through our history back to ancient times as a reminder of our higher nature, in league with Nature.

Today, the notions may persist of woolly-headed middle-class do-gooders, but Spencer, writing this in 1995 (reprinted 2002 as "Vegetarianism: A History"), also notes a sea-change in attitudes among those who came of age in the hippie era. Urbanization perhaps ironically or appropriately drove together the scattered rural-based resisters to the meat-eating rule, and the media and markets allowed people in cities to rally, shop together, and raise their own crops in gardens. The seeds of today's farmer's markets, locavores, and green cuisine might be planted a century ago in such alliances.

1. Nearly ever major religion has had some sects that practiced vegetarianism in some form. If you want a lot of details about that, this book has them. Some of the coverage of early vegetarianism, particularly ancient Egyptian vegetarianism, seems excessively speculative.

2. The vegetarian food of 1700-1800s Britain sounds awfully bad and seems to consist almost solely of starches and sugary dishes.

3. The world, or at least the US and Britain, appears to have been having the same arguments about vegetarianism for about 250 years.

4. Post 1700, the book centers on Britain.

I would have preferred more culinary history (for example on the origins of seitan and tofu) and fewer statements of the author's opinions (such as that, for example, a certain writer argues well), but the book is a useful reference of famous vegetarians and vegetarian sympathizers over the last 2500 years. Also, the sections that briefly discuss animal trials and pre-industrial slaughter methods are fascinating.

"A reader" says that humans should have priority. I agree with that. That is why I'm vegetarian. By doing so, I make more food available to others, and decrease my chances of degenerate disease in the process.

I thought the book sometime spent too much time on some subjects, and too little on others. But still, overall, a good book.

Lots of people have tried to make an issue about Hitler's claimed vegetarianism. Of course whether he was or wasn't has no bearing on his actions. But since so many people make an issue of it, Spencer had to cover Hitler. What Spencer says about Hitler isn't the same as what I had heard from other sources. Most other sources I thought said Hitler enjoyed meat, but gave up most meat due to digestion problems. Spencer says that Hitler was vegetarian just to be different then everybody else. Which is true, I don't know, but I would assume that Spencer knows what he is talking about.

Som people want to excuse their meat eating on the base of Bible, but theirs attempts are futile,just because quoted often Letters of Paul are simply false ones,introduced to the Bible by clergymen who had been in opposition to true teaching of Jesus. Specially letters to Timothy I,and Timothy II are recognized by modern biblists as forgeries. I didn't know that not harm any creature is...."demonic teaching" It is rather false teaching of the "false apostles" -can be clled

DEMONIC TEACHING.