Fish in the Middle Ages

Today people are encouraged to eat a lot of fish because it is supposed to be healthy, full of omega this and that, even sometimes called "brain food."  Medieval people ate a lot of fish because cold-blooded creatures (like fish) were considered to produce a lower quality meat than mammals.  Many wanted to eat something not as good as red-blooded meat.

This of course was not everybody.  Peasants mostly ate bread with maybe some nice onions and lentils if they were lucky.  Fish was embraced by monks and nuns, and by aristocrats on Fridays, in all these cases because they wanted to be simple and ascetic.  These days even Catholics are only expected to abstain from red meat on Fridays during Lent, but in the Middle Ages, and until quite recently, every Friday was meatless Friday.  (In the modern US, of course, this has given rise to things like grocery stores promoting king crab legs for Lent.  I can hear the medieval monks rolling in their graves.)

(This is a picture of a carp, not a king crab.)

Aside from religious issues, fish could make a good supplement to the diet.  Those who lived along the coast or along a lake or river would routinely fish.  Many communities and monasteries had fish weirs, that is a barricade in a river or stream made of sticks or brush, something that would allow the water to continue flowing downstream, but would trap the fish.  These fish were not, strictly speaking, farmed the way that a lot of salmon and tilapia is farmed today, because people were not trying to grow up fish from tiny hatchlings and feeding them.  But fish caught in the weir might be transferred to an enclosed pond (and given a little food) so as to be ready whenever fish was wanted.

Fish were also an important trade item.  Especially in the North Sea, people caught a lot of fish (mostly cod), salted it heavily, and sold it to areas further from a source of fish.  Fortunately for the fishermen, oceans were both a source of fish and a source of salt.  This fish would have to be soaked for a day or so to get out the extra salt before you would actually want to try to eat it.

Fish also make a good symbol.  You've probably see the spare sketch of a fish that is supposed to identify someone as a Christian.

This is the ichthus, a word meaning "fish."  Although (supposedly) early Christians fearing persecution used this symbol to identify themselves to other Christians, it is not really found during the Middle Ages.  How can a fish be Christian, you understandably ask?  It's because the first three letters, ICH, were considered an abbreviation for Iesus Christus (remember, the distinction between I and J is a recent one).

© C. Dale Brittain 2018

For more on medieval food and religion, see my new ebook, Positively Medieval:  Life and Society in the Middle Ages.