September 7, 2021 • 35 mins
The Protestant Reformation remains one of the most significant cultural events in the Western world. Martin Luther's 95 Theses addressed numerous concerns with the Catholic church, including corruption and the practice of granting dispensations -- allowing people to, essentially, pay their way out of sin. So what was it about butter that spurred Martin Luther into action? The story might surprise you.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to the show, Ridiculous Historians. This is a
classic episode because we took some time off for Labor Day.
We did do that thing. Uh, that time off has passed.
But it was awesome for me. I hope it was
awesome for YouTube Ben who boys, awesome for everybody listening
along at home. Today's episode is it's an oldie, it's
(00:25):
a goodie, it's a weird one. It's about butter. Yeah,
and a lot of you likely have not heard it
because I believe the old Apple podcast platform cuts off
older episodes. I think older than like three hundred of
the most recent, so we have surpassed that sometime ago.
So yeah, we're having our own indulgence today by taking
(00:46):
a little holiday and giving you this classic episode. Ridiculous
History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome to
(01:18):
the show, Ladies and gentlemen. They call me Ben. I
can't believe it's not Bowland, and my name is Noel
the butter lover Brown. Now that's good. I don't don't
ever call me that. I will not call you that.
If we're outside of the balance of this episode. Is
that fair? I guess so. Also, as it turns out,
our wonderful producer Alex pointed out right before we started rolling,
(01:41):
the butter lover was considered an insult in medieval Roman Catholicism. Yeah,
Roman times to call someone butter lover? Was it was
fighting words, wasn't it. Because we got the nod from Alex. There,
this is ridiculous history, and today we are looking at
(02:04):
a very ridiculous but I would argue, very important part
of butter history. Yeah, and also part of the history
of religion as we know it. And it's ridiculous, I
guess because a big part of the Protestant Reformation, as
uh it turns out, was hinged on the prohibition of
(02:29):
that delicious, creamy substance we know and love, many of
us I do. How do you feel about butter? Butter? Yes,
I love it. I've had um. I've had many loves,
hard one and often lost in my life. Noel, and
butter is Butter is the one that's going to stick around.
I think you're messing with me. I am not messive
(02:50):
with you. I am not messing with you. The It's true.
Everything that the illustrious Mr Brown said is true. And
this is somewhat timely for us because this year, the
year in which we're recording this ten marks the five
anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. And I mean, that's such
(03:11):
a staple of of high school history classes. But just
in case, well, what was the Protestant Reformation? Ben, I'm so,
I'm so glad you asked. So. It was a schism
from the Roman Catholic Church, and it was originally instituted
by a fellow named Martin Luther. To the guy that
(03:32):
nailed the thing to the door. Yep, he's the guy
who famously nailed feces onto the door in fifteen seventeen.
So what you're saying is he had theses and Butter
was one, yes, Yes, we are Uh. And I believe
I believe that jay Z just I'm just gonna guess
(03:55):
that jay Z probably based his song off theces. I
was thinking that might be the case. It has a feel,
has that feel to it. Uh. The problem that Martin
Luther had to keep it in a in a short format, right.
The problem that Martin Luther had was that the way
(04:15):
that Catholic Church was functioning seen in his opinion in
many ways as corrupt and as oppressive, and he had
his own theology that conflicted with this right, I mean
corrupt in the most like Mafioss sense of the word corrupt. Essentially,
(04:37):
the Church charged people um what they called indulgences in
order to go against Catholic doctrine or things that were
prohibited food items for example, or activities that were prohibited.
You could essentially pay for absolution. And this was clearly
(05:00):
a huge beef with Martin Luther. Because I have these
is pulled up in Internet form and I typed in
a search for the word indulge. I didn't even make
it all the way to indulgence, and it appears forty
five times um in the document. And there were there
were serious, fundamentally contradictory theological opinions that Martin Luther had
(05:24):
or maybe beliefs is a better word here. Uh, the
indulgence is yes, clearly a corrupt practice. Right. He also
challenged the authority of the pope, and he believed that
the Bible didn't have to stay in the Latin language.
(05:45):
He when he translated the Bible to German, he honestly
set that culture on a path toward a standard written
version of the German language. Well, totally mean like a
big part of it too. Beyond this weird practice of
selling an algiences was making it more accessible to people
and not having to have everything go through some sort
(06:07):
of high church official or you know, like the idea
that you could speak directly to God rather than have
to have a go between some kind of like medium
almost in a way, in the form of a priest.
You know. And and Butter is not just a tiny huh,
(06:28):
well look at that kind of detail in this story.
In fact, if not for this band on Butter, there
might have been a much slower growth rate of the
Protestant movement. So if we look at this first, I
guess the best way for us to start is to
consider fast days. Should we travel back in time to
(06:49):
medieval Europe? I think that's a wonderful idea. So here
we are medieval Europe. Dude, it's kind of here. It's
really dark and gloomy, and everyone looks really bummed out. Yes, yes, yes,
you'll you'll also notice that there are a lot of
(07:11):
people who look hungry. Watch out for that poop. Oh
you slipped, That's fine, it's my poop. I was here earlier, gross,
I know, I know, I was just really feeling the
moment that skinny guy in the stocks over there, he
looks pretty malnourished. That's also plague, So I don't touch him.
I think I've driven this bit into the ground. Well,
(07:31):
luckily we're riding it out still, because now that we're
in this environment, we can note that there are some
obvious traditions that are different from our own in the
modern day. Right, Let's see look at that. See that
monk man sure does have a shiny head. Yes, yes,
he has a ton shore. Ah my eyes, So what
(07:55):
a ton shore? That's a tantra is the word for
that type of haircut where they shave the top of
their head. I thought it was it called a bowl cut.
It's it's like the opposite of a bowl cut. It's
like the fringe around a bowl cut, minus the part. Okay,
you learned something new every day. These monks that we're
hypothetically looking at are living in a system of fairly
(08:19):
rigid and exacting rules dictating both their um, their religious practices,
and their day to day behavior. And one of the
big things about this we're drawing a lot of this
from a book called Butter, A Rich History by Elaine
Coast Sulva uh one of the big things about this
was the the sort of food you could eat. And
(08:41):
if it were Wednesday, if it were a Friday or
a Saturday, then these monks the way this tradition started
could not eat any animal products. They were vegan three
days out of the week. They were really ahead of
the curve on that one, no kidding. And then in
lent the Ford day period leading up to Easter, they
also couldn't eat animal products, so they were vegan functionally
(09:05):
for like forty days or their version of that. Yeah,
and what's wild and didn't ocur to me until looking
into this stuff is it was accounted for something in
the neighborhood of like half of the calendar year when
you added it all up together. And that's if you
don't well we'll get to indulgences and how they play
in here. But yeah, you're absolutely right. That really adds
(09:26):
up and that makes me appreciate every fully. Cheese steak
I have ever eaten or will ever eat Do you
do that? The cheese whiz version? You know, you know,
I'm not loyal enough. That's the classic they say. Yeah,
but I like the provolone, you know, like a good provolonge.
You ever eating cheese whiz out of the can. Yeah. Man, Yeah,
we've all had dark times in our lives. I mean,
I'll do whip cream out of the can, but cheese whiz,
(09:48):
It's like, it's not it's not a food. It's not
a food. It's essentially like the powder that comes in
the Kraft Macaroni and cheese boxes, just like an aerosol form.
Don't they have to call the cheese food product? I
think so American cheese slices. But the thing that's cool
too about this is, um, a lot of this stuff
really hinged on region. We take for granted the idea
(10:10):
of importing and exporting and are the availability of like anything,
and like we don't really have to limit our food
intake based on where we live. If we want strawberries,
we can get strawberries. If we want some you know,
tropical fruit that's not grown anywhere near us, we can
get it because of like you know, refrigeration. But back
in these days that was not a thing, and your
(10:30):
diet was dictated pretty much exclusively on what was available
in your region unless you were super wealthy, and even
and even then it would be incredibly rare, you know,
or be incredibly expensive, for instance, to get certain spices
like peppercorns. So now we've got we've got our monks
(10:51):
who about half the year just can't eat meat or
dairy and is also coincidentally believed to you will lust
any animal product is thought as like essentially an afrodisiactive sorts.
This tradition became becomes intensely problematic when the Catholic Church
(11:13):
extends these Fast Day rules to all Christians. So for
not just monks, anybody who is a Christian has to
skip meat, milk, eggs, animal fats, or butter on Wednesday's, Friday's, Saturdays,
and all during Lent. And this is where we really
see the problem of geography that we mentioned coming into play,
(11:37):
because the Roman Catholic Church isn't is it in southern Europe? Right,
It's based in Rome. It's in charge ideologically of a
lot of Europe, but it's based in Rome, and they
had access to like fish, a lot more fish, you know,
fresh fish, and also things like olive oil that were
(11:57):
alternatives to butter, because butter, you know, as as we know,
is delicious to just spread directly on things, but it's
also a really great way to cook things, and it
infuses pretty excellent flavor into things that you cook with it.
Olive oil is also fantastic, I would argue, it doesn't
quite add the same you know, some kind of same
(12:18):
kind of mommy, same kind of kick as butter does.
So that played into this as well. Southern Europeans were
not only not only was olive oil sort of functioning
the way that butter functioned in different areas of Europe,
(12:42):
but olive oil was considered superior and Southern some Southern
Europeans actually a prejudices against butter, really really strange stuff.
There was this belief that, you know, butter was a
disease vector, that the reason people got leprosy was because
(13:02):
of their buttered consumption. And so when Southern Europeans were
traveling abroad, some would even bring their own supply of oil,
you know, like I don't want to come back to
Rome with leprosy, So pack of the pack of mule
full of olive oil, or put bags on the mule.
Don't put the oil in the mule, I mean unless
(13:25):
it's you know, starting to rust. Yes, sure, I mechanical mules.
I don't know what I'm talking about. All of this,
but don't leave it in. It's fine. We're just having
a conversation here. So Southern Europeans all about olive oil,
olive oil, maybe fish oil. These are the superior flavor ingredients, right,
(13:48):
These are the superior um products in comparison to butter.
But in parts of Europe where there were dairy farming
countries like France or where Martin Luther lived Germany, cutting
butter from the diet was a huge deal and it
was dangerous. That was tantamount to some form of forced
(14:11):
starvation essentially m because think about it, if they can't
consume any meat or then also cheese, right, cheese would
be out. Then they couldn't rely on butter. Things were
getting really really skimpy in the pantry and the larder.
And this rule was applied in a very corrupt way.
(14:36):
This is where indulgences come in. And did you ever
read about these when you were a kid in school? Man,
this sounds like the most crooked, disturbing practice. Well, it's
like the it's it's it's you know, a religious equivalent
of like Polly Walnuts from the Sopranos knocking on your
door and you know, expecting his collections for protection, you know,
(14:57):
but this is like spiritual protection space. PA. Say, you know,
you you grease my palm a little bit, and I'll
give you a pass. In other words, I won't break
your legs or you know, put you in the stocks
when we find out that you've broken fast by eating
you know, something that was prohibited like butter. Yeah, it's
it's crazy. So if you are well connected Catholic royalty,
(15:20):
or if you're a wealthy merchant, for instance, and you're
saying the common people maybe all well and good three
days out of the week without button, but I am
of different stock. Have they talked? Every single one? They
all sounded like Winston Churchill, including the children. That's terrifying.
(15:41):
I forgot. We're there actually right now. Still we we
haven't come back from our time traveling. Yeahs, figure out
what day of the week it is, so we don't
get in trouble. Because you know, this is a spiritual institution.
We are talking about a religious rule, and this means
that in addition to physical penalties that might exist, you know,
(16:07):
if their physical penalties for breaking a religious rule, the
ultimate threat is that you couldn't you are spiritually committing
a transgression against the will of God. And the thing
too is in these regions where they didn't have ready
access to the alternatives to butter, there were merchants that
would capitalize on that and would provide or import I guess,
(16:31):
really really really poor quality oils. And there's actually a
quote from a book by the name of Fast and
Feast from a um priest from fifteen twenty that goes
as as such, in Rome, they make a mockery of
fasting while forcing us to eat an oil they themselves
(16:52):
would not use to grease their shoes. Then they sell
us the right to eat the foods forbidden on fast days,
but they have stolen that same liberty from us with
their ecclesiastical laws. Eating butter, they say, is a greater
sin than to lie, blaspheme, or indulge in impurity, which
(17:13):
is just insane when you think about it, you know
that that list of priorities could be so messed up.
And it's it's not just a matter of controlling a population, right,
it's a matter of economic import for the for the
(17:34):
Catholic Church, because they're taking this money that people are
paying for dispensations, right. Uh. And they had different rates,
and they had sometimes they had groups paying like a
community paying for a dispensation. They're using the cash, these
folks are paying them too construct bigger buildings, you know, uh,
(17:56):
and to fund crusades. And there are even there, there
are even things that the local population still recognizes about
this practice. Right. There was a special collection box in
French parishes to collect what was called butter money. Right,
so these entire communities where it's told you can eat butter. Dude,
(18:19):
that sounds like a mafia term when you get that
butter money, a a little bit of butter money, you know,
forget about it. That's not my best It's okay. Now
everybody's looking around at that terrible accident, and we apologize
to any Italian Americans out there that Ben is deeply offended. No,
that was not Italian American. It was just it was
(18:41):
you know, yeah, like a like a you know, forget
about it, Brooklyn, Jersey. That's fair, that's fair. Oh boy, Well,
who knew that butter can be so controversial? Right? Who knew?
Who knew? We we knew, we we we read, we
read up on this, but we knew earlier Dad's tory
going so in this case, it's not somebody saying, Okay,
(19:06):
I know that butter is banned on Wednesdays, but we're
having a big wedding at my castle, and I'd like
to serve butter to you know, the people attending the wedding.
This case, there are these entire regions who just continue
to pay an extra tax for the right to conveniently
(19:27):
ignore a rule. Yeah, or even like like you said,
royalty or you know, very privileged members of society could
pay the tax for like their entire household. Yeah, yeah,
they could. They could do it as a you know,
like a group rate. I wonder if they got a
price break, you know, I wonder if if members of
(19:47):
the church would say, well, for you by yourself, it's
x amount of stuff, but you get a couple of
did a couple of units off for every family member
you add? They probably didn't do price breaks, sort of
like buying group passes to like Disneyland or something like
like a cell phone plan. This is almost like a
cell phone plan because you have to keep paying a
cable bundle or a cable bundle. Basically, the Roman Catholic
(20:10):
Church was like the comcast of the medieval Karen in this.
You know what, that is accurate to a frightening degree
in in this case, officially and locals even today would
call certain buildings like butter towers. You know that the
money was used to build these gigantic religious uh well,
(20:32):
to add expansions on or to build these gigantic religious structures.
This struck Martin Luther, along with all the other problems
you had. This struck him as tremendously insulting, because you know, Noel,
we're walking around in the past. Our clothes look probably
(20:52):
really cool, I would hope, although our hat game is
nowhere near as evolved as the Middle Ages hat game.
But we we don't have any money in this area
of time. So if we're in this community, if we
like sat down and lived here and we didn't have
(21:13):
money to pay for that dispensation, then we're getting swindled
by people selling garbage oil, right that might not even
be edible. There's no way around this butter band for us.
So what what do we what are we supposed to do?
You know? Yeah, and just just to backtrack just slightly,
(21:34):
I found an example of one of these kind of
blanket dispensations in and this is from the the butter
book of rich history. Queen Anne, who was the Duchess
of Brittany, um got Rome to give her a dispensation
for not only herself but the entire household, including all
her servants and family members. And Brittany did not produce
(22:00):
any cooking oil at all. It was a it was
a butter based economy, I guess for lack of a
better time. But um, it's interesting because the this dispensation
was ultimately extended to all of Brittany, and this kind
of started, um, the the undoing of some of this gradually. Um.
(22:25):
But it didn't come for free, because they had to
still give to the church, and there were even special
prayers that they had to do. Yes, I contrite confession.
It's not it's technically it's not enough to just give
them the money and say let me let me snarf
my butter in peace. Technically they have to make a
(22:49):
contrite confession where they are legitimately apologizing, confessing to receive
the absolution from sin. And that's where those butter boxes
came from. That we were talking about in churches where
you would pay this spiritual tax in some of these
French parishes, and they actually paid for the construction of
(23:11):
like these ornate cathedrals, and one of them, in um
Ruin and borges Um, was dubbed the Tower, the butter Tower,
or the tour Debuer. Yeah, so we can see, we
can see how this becomes a an active segment of
(23:34):
the regional economies. Right, and this whether or not, I mean,
obviously we see we look back and we see the
process of granting indulgences as corrupt. Right, But if it
is the practice of the Catholic Church, and the Catholic
(23:56):
Church is making the rules, then they're the ones who
decide if something is corrupt. It would logically follow. However, Luther,
in an open letter to the Christian nobility of the
German nation, said that this was an enormous problem, that
these clergymen should not be traveling around Germany telling people
(24:21):
two pay money and say they're sorry before they can
eat the butter that they already made. They already may
be paid for, right, they already churned themselves. The religious
institution was not involved in the creation of the butter.
You just had to pay them. And this practice, which
(24:44):
was seen as selling forgiveness, became very, very widespread, and
I loved this. I loved this phrase, and we talked
about a little bit off air. Professor of Lutheran History
and Theology at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary called it this
that's Dr Kurcy Sturna an economy of grace. Yeah, that's
(25:09):
pretty pretty great image. And there's a quote from Professor
Sturno says, today we buy life insurance and health insurance
to secure our possessions. In the Middle Ages, the only
security came through church. These indulgences were the people's insurance policies,
tangible pieces of paper that said, hey, I'm good, get
out of health free exactly. But as we've been saying,
(25:30):
for Luther, these clergies selling indulgences represented just kind of
totally exposed what he saw as kind of the rot
within the Roman Catholic Church that convinced poor peasants that
they could be forgiven for a price. And in Luther's
particular theology, um forgiveness was free and you could be
(25:55):
saved by faith alone and grace alone, and it did
not have to fall allow this you know, bizarre pyramids
scheme of like paying for forgiveness, which you know, I
mean it totally cheapens it if you're thinking about it
like objectively, right, especially when consider uh different parts uh
(26:15):
different passages of the Bible which talk about the dangers
of the dangers have counted on wealth. Right. This leads
us to an interesting parallel. Is it a coincidence that
most of the dairy rich countries that were producing and
(26:38):
using butter at the time were the same nations that
broke away from the Catholic Church in the sixte century? Man,
Butter's delicious, and you know where they clearly needed it. Yeah,
there's there's no old quotation that I remember reading that says,
every paraphrase something along the lines of like every nation
(27:00):
is uh seven days away from revolution if they're not eating.
Because food is one of these fundamental motivators. And we're
talking about people who live in a staple food economy.
These are not people who had, as we mentioned earlier,
this vast variety of food they could eat for fun,
(27:22):
you know, well, and and I know I keep joking
about the deliciousness that is butter, and that's you know,
surely some part of it. But this was something that
they needed to properly cook their food and you know,
make it easier to digest and to be nourished by.
You know, I mean, if they were cooking vegetables. It's
not a whole lot of fun eating raw vegetables, you know.
(27:46):
I mean, you want to do a nice little stir
fry or something, and butter gives you what you need
to do that if you don't have access to cooking oils.
This leads to what professors Stirner calls one of Luther's
biggest eatings. Nothing about eating, drinking, sleeping, marrying, or sex
is sin. Not believing in God is sin. That's a
(28:06):
quote from That's a quote from the professor and then
sums it up this way. And I love how approachable
this professor's language is. And she's the one who says, like,
we're good. Yeah, same professor, she says. In other words,
everything is cool. Eating butter is cool. One of the
reasons why the Reformation was so successful it was that
Luther radically changed how people thought about what's wrong and
(28:29):
what's permissible, and so in a very real way, something
that seems simple to us today, something simple as when
you are allowed to eat butter. In part Lad Martin
Luther to march up on October thirty one and fifteen
seventeen and publish his nine Theses. Uh. And the door
(28:53):
that we were referring to the way, the way the
story slash legend goes is that he nailed it to
a church door in his hometown of Wittenberg. And these,
you know, the the whole crux of Theses was to
call into question fundamentally, you know, the idea of the
(29:16):
pope being essentially godlike, and you know, specifically this idea
of God being completely removed from the average man and
woman and their ability to communicate directly with God through prayer. Yes, absolutely,
And the printing press also emerges on the scene, which
(29:40):
means these teachings spread rapidly. In today, as we record this,
there are more than forty thousand Protestant denominations across the globe.
Theses was like, you know, the first meme that's not bad,
it's pretty bad. A lot memes though, I think everything
I your memetic exactly meme classifications aside. This is pretty
(30:05):
profound to think that butter of all things and change
that could change the world. And I wonder if people ever,
if people ever think about that when they're the next time,
you know, they're in church, or they go to a
youth group where they Oh, and I do have to
point out Martin Luther was not by any measure a
(30:25):
a perfect man, but in this case he did something amazing.
And it's fascinating. You know, if you if you were
listening to this and you identify as Protestant, uh, give it,
give it a think and check out butter rich history
to learn more about this strange, fascinating, oftentimes invisible and
(30:50):
profound ways in which this food stuff affects you. What'st
thou like the taste of butter? Man, I'm so glad
we saved that reference for in anybody, anybody, which everybody
but I was looking into it as well, and I
didn't think about this until we were researching this. But
the family that's portrayed in that film are Protestant, but
(31:13):
they're like even more extreme versions of Protestant that they
want to just completely extricate everything associated with the Catholic Church.
And uh, there's a fantastic moment where butter comes up
as being almost like the most sinful indulgence. So that's
still stuck around even through Protestantism, although it certainly wasn't
(31:35):
like being taxed or in that way. Oh, that's a
brilliant connection. Well done. I didn't think about that. But
what do you think about that? Is that is that accurate?
I don't know. I think I I think it's intentional.
I will go on the record saying I think it's
intentional because I was always these were Puritans in the film.
I was always wrapped up in the concept of the
(31:56):
clever word play of You know, we have talked about
this when we're hanging out earlier, not just the because folks,
we fan boyd over this film so hard. Uh, it
was all we talked about for several weeks. And I
am so surprised that I missed that. And thank you
for telling me, because I dwelt on the concept of
(32:17):
not butter, the taste of butter. It's like the pursuit
of happiness, right. Um. But now I'm I'm going to
go back and watch The Witch and I might just
do it eating a stick of butter. There's such a
thing as too much of a good thing. Well, we're
gonna find out firsthead. I'm I'm mostly kidding. I have
(32:39):
I have never to my acknowledge eating an entire stick
of butter. You give her a deep fried butter at carnivals.
That's a thing I have, but I haven't tried it.
Did you ever given a show? Dude? No, too much
of a good thing. It just seems really weird. I
feel like butter is an ingredient and not its own snack. It. Well, mean,
it's like it's good on a piece of toast, for sure,
which essentially is me. Come on, let's be real eating
(32:59):
a piece of toast with butter on it. It's a
vehicle for butter. It's true. There's a there's a lot
of stuff. Like some people drink popcorn is a vehicle
for butter. Well, you guys out there, tell us how
you like to eat butter. Do you like to deep
fry it? Do you like to just eat it with
a spoon? You know, what's your favorite? What about clarified butter?
We didn't do so many things. But what am I doing?
(33:21):
What am I doing? We need to We need to
plug our friend Lauren and Annie's podcast, food Stuff. They
have a series of episodes on the history of butter
um and they also have a video that's pretty cool
called get Some Culture. Butter t is in parentheses, So
check out food Stuff. It's another house Stuff Works podcast
(33:43):
and they're they're friends of ours, so they're cool and
you should listen to them. And there was what uh
what a time capsule, a glimpse back not just into
the history of butter and religion, but into our own show.
We're gonna be back in just a few days with
(34:06):
a brand new episode, but we hope you enjoyed this one.
As as we said at the top, this is not
something you can find on Apple podcasts, but every so
often we're gonna share some classics like this with you
in the meantime. Huge thanks to you, Ben Bolan for
for taking us on this journey into butter and Religion,
(34:29):
Max Williams, Producer extraordinaire Christopher haciotas here in Spirit, Alex Williams,
who composed our theme. Big big thanks to our research associate,
the one and only gay Bluesier, And big thanks to
our own what would you call him? The main Protestant
of this reformed episode, Jonathan Strickland. He does protest a lot. Yeah,
(34:54):
I was going for the protest thing. We'll see you
next time Flix. Yeah. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio,
visit the I Heart Radio app Apple podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome back to the show, Ridiculous Historians. This is a
classic episode because we took some time off for Labor Day.
We did do that thing. Uh, that time off has passed.
But it was awesome for me. I hope it was
awesome for YouTube Ben who boys, awesome for everybody listening
along at home. Today's episode is it's an oldie, it's
(00:25):
a goodie, it's a weird one. It's about butter. Yeah,
and a lot of you likely have not heard it
because I believe the old Apple podcast platform cuts off
older episodes. I think older than like three hundred of
the most recent, so we have surpassed that sometime ago.
So yeah, we're having our own indulgence today by taking
(00:46):
a little holiday and giving you this classic episode. Ridiculous
History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome to
(01:18):
the show, Ladies and gentlemen. They call me Ben. I
can't believe it's not Bowland, and my name is Noel
the butter lover Brown. Now that's good. I don't don't
ever call me that. I will not call you that.
If we're outside of the balance of this episode. Is
that fair? I guess so. Also, as it turns out,
our wonderful producer Alex pointed out right before we started rolling,
(01:41):
the butter lover was considered an insult in medieval Roman Catholicism. Yeah,
Roman times to call someone butter lover? Was it was
fighting words, wasn't it. Because we got the nod from Alex. There,
this is ridiculous history, and today we are looking at
(02:04):
a very ridiculous but I would argue, very important part
of butter history. Yeah, and also part of the history
of religion as we know it. And it's ridiculous, I
guess because a big part of the Protestant Reformation, as
uh it turns out, was hinged on the prohibition of
(02:29):
that delicious, creamy substance we know and love, many of
us I do. How do you feel about butter? Butter? Yes,
I love it. I've had um. I've had many loves,
hard one and often lost in my life. Noel, and
butter is Butter is the one that's going to stick around.
I think you're messing with me. I am not messive
(02:50):
with you. I am not messing with you. The It's true.
Everything that the illustrious Mr Brown said is true. And
this is somewhat timely for us because this year, the
year in which we're recording this ten marks the five
anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. And I mean, that's such
(03:11):
a staple of of high school history classes. But just
in case, well, what was the Protestant Reformation? Ben, I'm so,
I'm so glad you asked. So. It was a schism
from the Roman Catholic Church, and it was originally instituted
by a fellow named Martin Luther. To the guy that
(03:32):
nailed the thing to the door. Yep, he's the guy
who famously nailed feces onto the door in fifteen seventeen.
So what you're saying is he had theses and Butter
was one, yes, Yes, we are Uh. And I believe
I believe that jay Z just I'm just gonna guess
(03:55):
that jay Z probably based his song off theces. I
was thinking that might be the case. It has a feel,
has that feel to it. Uh. The problem that Martin
Luther had to keep it in a in a short format, right.
The problem that Martin Luther had was that the way
(04:15):
that Catholic Church was functioning seen in his opinion in
many ways as corrupt and as oppressive, and he had
his own theology that conflicted with this right, I mean
corrupt in the most like Mafioss sense of the word corrupt. Essentially,
(04:37):
the Church charged people um what they called indulgences in
order to go against Catholic doctrine or things that were
prohibited food items for example, or activities that were prohibited.
You could essentially pay for absolution. And this was clearly
(05:00):
a huge beef with Martin Luther. Because I have these
is pulled up in Internet form and I typed in
a search for the word indulge. I didn't even make
it all the way to indulgence, and it appears forty
five times um in the document. And there were there
were serious, fundamentally contradictory theological opinions that Martin Luther had
(05:24):
or maybe beliefs is a better word here. Uh, the
indulgence is yes, clearly a corrupt practice. Right. He also
challenged the authority of the pope, and he believed that
the Bible didn't have to stay in the Latin language.
(05:45):
He when he translated the Bible to German, he honestly
set that culture on a path toward a standard written
version of the German language. Well, totally mean like a
big part of it too. Beyond this weird practice of
selling an algiences was making it more accessible to people
and not having to have everything go through some sort
(06:07):
of high church official or you know, like the idea
that you could speak directly to God rather than have
to have a go between some kind of like medium
almost in a way, in the form of a priest.
You know. And and Butter is not just a tiny huh,
(06:28):
well look at that kind of detail in this story.
In fact, if not for this band on Butter, there
might have been a much slower growth rate of the
Protestant movement. So if we look at this first, I
guess the best way for us to start is to
consider fast days. Should we travel back in time to
(06:49):
medieval Europe? I think that's a wonderful idea. So here
we are medieval Europe. Dude, it's kind of here. It's
really dark and gloomy, and everyone looks really bummed out. Yes, yes, yes,
you'll you'll also notice that there are a lot of
(07:11):
people who look hungry. Watch out for that poop. Oh
you slipped, That's fine, it's my poop. I was here earlier, gross,
I know, I know, I was just really feeling the
moment that skinny guy in the stocks over there, he
looks pretty malnourished. That's also plague, So I don't touch him.
I think I've driven this bit into the ground. Well,
(07:31):
luckily we're riding it out still, because now that we're
in this environment, we can note that there are some
obvious traditions that are different from our own in the
modern day. Right, Let's see look at that. See that
monk man sure does have a shiny head. Yes, yes,
he has a ton shore. Ah my eyes, So what
(07:55):
a ton shore? That's a tantra is the word for
that type of haircut where they shave the top of
their head. I thought it was it called a bowl cut.
It's it's like the opposite of a bowl cut. It's
like the fringe around a bowl cut, minus the part. Okay,
you learned something new every day. These monks that we're
hypothetically looking at are living in a system of fairly
(08:19):
rigid and exacting rules dictating both their um, their religious practices,
and their day to day behavior. And one of the
big things about this we're drawing a lot of this
from a book called Butter, A Rich History by Elaine
Coast Sulva uh one of the big things about this
was the the sort of food you could eat. And
(08:41):
if it were Wednesday, if it were a Friday or
a Saturday, then these monks the way this tradition started
could not eat any animal products. They were vegan three
days out of the week. They were really ahead of
the curve on that one, no kidding. And then in
lent the Ford day period leading up to Easter, they
also couldn't eat animal products, so they were vegan functionally
(09:05):
for like forty days or their version of that. Yeah,
and what's wild and didn't ocur to me until looking
into this stuff is it was accounted for something in
the neighborhood of like half of the calendar year when
you added it all up together. And that's if you
don't well we'll get to indulgences and how they play
in here. But yeah, you're absolutely right. That really adds
(09:26):
up and that makes me appreciate every fully. Cheese steak
I have ever eaten or will ever eat Do you
do that? The cheese whiz version? You know, you know,
I'm not loyal enough. That's the classic they say. Yeah,
but I like the provolone, you know, like a good provolonge.
You ever eating cheese whiz out of the can. Yeah. Man, Yeah,
we've all had dark times in our lives. I mean,
I'll do whip cream out of the can, but cheese whiz,
(09:48):
It's like, it's not it's not a food. It's not
a food. It's essentially like the powder that comes in
the Kraft Macaroni and cheese boxes, just like an aerosol form.
Don't they have to call the cheese food product? I
think so American cheese slices. But the thing that's cool
too about this is, um, a lot of this stuff
really hinged on region. We take for granted the idea
(10:10):
of importing and exporting and are the availability of like anything,
and like we don't really have to limit our food
intake based on where we live. If we want strawberries,
we can get strawberries. If we want some you know,
tropical fruit that's not grown anywhere near us, we can
get it because of like you know, refrigeration. But back
in these days that was not a thing, and your
(10:30):
diet was dictated pretty much exclusively on what was available
in your region unless you were super wealthy, and even
and even then it would be incredibly rare, you know,
or be incredibly expensive, for instance, to get certain spices
like peppercorns. So now we've got we've got our monks
(10:51):
who about half the year just can't eat meat or
dairy and is also coincidentally believed to you will lust
any animal product is thought as like essentially an afrodisiactive sorts.
This tradition became becomes intensely problematic when the Catholic Church
(11:13):
extends these Fast Day rules to all Christians. So for
not just monks, anybody who is a Christian has to
skip meat, milk, eggs, animal fats, or butter on Wednesday's, Friday's, Saturdays,
and all during Lent. And this is where we really
see the problem of geography that we mentioned coming into play,
(11:37):
because the Roman Catholic Church isn't is it in southern Europe? Right,
It's based in Rome. It's in charge ideologically of a
lot of Europe, but it's based in Rome, and they
had access to like fish, a lot more fish, you know,
fresh fish, and also things like olive oil that were
(11:57):
alternatives to butter, because butter, you know, as as we know,
is delicious to just spread directly on things, but it's
also a really great way to cook things, and it
infuses pretty excellent flavor into things that you cook with it.
Olive oil is also fantastic, I would argue, it doesn't
quite add the same you know, some kind of same
(12:18):
kind of mommy, same kind of kick as butter does.
So that played into this as well. Southern Europeans were
not only not only was olive oil sort of functioning
the way that butter functioned in different areas of Europe,
(12:42):
but olive oil was considered superior and Southern some Southern
Europeans actually a prejudices against butter, really really strange stuff.
There was this belief that, you know, butter was a
disease vector, that the reason people got leprosy was because
(13:02):
of their buttered consumption. And so when Southern Europeans were
traveling abroad, some would even bring their own supply of oil,
you know, like I don't want to come back to
Rome with leprosy, So pack of the pack of mule
full of olive oil, or put bags on the mule.
Don't put the oil in the mule, I mean unless
(13:25):
it's you know, starting to rust. Yes, sure, I mechanical mules.
I don't know what I'm talking about. All of this,
but don't leave it in. It's fine. We're just having
a conversation here. So Southern Europeans all about olive oil,
olive oil, maybe fish oil. These are the superior flavor ingredients, right,
(13:48):
These are the superior um products in comparison to butter.
But in parts of Europe where there were dairy farming
countries like France or where Martin Luther lived Germany, cutting
butter from the diet was a huge deal and it
was dangerous. That was tantamount to some form of forced
(14:11):
starvation essentially m because think about it, if they can't
consume any meat or then also cheese, right, cheese would
be out. Then they couldn't rely on butter. Things were
getting really really skimpy in the pantry and the larder.
And this rule was applied in a very corrupt way.
(14:36):
This is where indulgences come in. And did you ever
read about these when you were a kid in school? Man,
this sounds like the most crooked, disturbing practice. Well, it's
like the it's it's it's you know, a religious equivalent
of like Polly Walnuts from the Sopranos knocking on your
door and you know, expecting his collections for protection, you know,
(14:57):
but this is like spiritual protection space. PA. Say, you know,
you you grease my palm a little bit, and I'll
give you a pass. In other words, I won't break
your legs or you know, put you in the stocks
when we find out that you've broken fast by eating
you know, something that was prohibited like butter. Yeah, it's
it's crazy. So if you are well connected Catholic royalty,
(15:20):
or if you're a wealthy merchant, for instance, and you're
saying the common people maybe all well and good three
days out of the week without button, but I am
of different stock. Have they talked? Every single one? They
all sounded like Winston Churchill, including the children. That's terrifying.
(15:41):
I forgot. We're there actually right now. Still we we
haven't come back from our time traveling. Yeahs, figure out
what day of the week it is, so we don't
get in trouble. Because you know, this is a spiritual institution.
We are talking about a religious rule, and this means
that in addition to physical penalties that might exist, you know,
(16:07):
if their physical penalties for breaking a religious rule, the
ultimate threat is that you couldn't you are spiritually committing
a transgression against the will of God. And the thing
too is in these regions where they didn't have ready
access to the alternatives to butter, there were merchants that
would capitalize on that and would provide or import I guess,
(16:31):
really really really poor quality oils. And there's actually a
quote from a book by the name of Fast and
Feast from a um priest from fifteen twenty that goes
as as such, in Rome, they make a mockery of
fasting while forcing us to eat an oil they themselves
(16:52):
would not use to grease their shoes. Then they sell
us the right to eat the foods forbidden on fast days,
but they have stolen that same liberty from us with
their ecclesiastical laws. Eating butter, they say, is a greater
sin than to lie, blaspheme, or indulge in impurity, which
(17:13):
is just insane when you think about it, you know
that that list of priorities could be so messed up.
And it's it's not just a matter of controlling a population, right,
it's a matter of economic import for the for the
(17:34):
Catholic Church, because they're taking this money that people are
paying for dispensations, right. Uh. And they had different rates,
and they had sometimes they had groups paying like a
community paying for a dispensation. They're using the cash, these
folks are paying them too construct bigger buildings, you know, uh,
(17:56):
and to fund crusades. And there are even there, there
are even things that the local population still recognizes about
this practice. Right. There was a special collection box in
French parishes to collect what was called butter money. Right,
so these entire communities where it's told you can eat butter. Dude,
(18:19):
that sounds like a mafia term when you get that
butter money, a a little bit of butter money, you know,
forget about it. That's not my best It's okay. Now
everybody's looking around at that terrible accident, and we apologize
to any Italian Americans out there that Ben is deeply offended. No,
that was not Italian American. It was just it was
(18:41):
you know, yeah, like a like a you know, forget
about it, Brooklyn, Jersey. That's fair, that's fair. Oh boy, Well,
who knew that butter can be so controversial? Right? Who knew?
Who knew? We we knew, we we we read, we
read up on this, but we knew earlier Dad's tory
going so in this case, it's not somebody saying, Okay,
(19:06):
I know that butter is banned on Wednesdays, but we're
having a big wedding at my castle, and I'd like
to serve butter to you know, the people attending the wedding.
This case, there are these entire regions who just continue
to pay an extra tax for the right to conveniently
(19:27):
ignore a rule. Yeah, or even like like you said,
royalty or you know, very privileged members of society could
pay the tax for like their entire household. Yeah, yeah,
they could. They could do it as a you know,
like a group rate. I wonder if they got a
price break, you know, I wonder if if members of
(19:47):
the church would say, well, for you by yourself, it's
x amount of stuff, but you get a couple of
did a couple of units off for every family member
you add? They probably didn't do price breaks, sort of
like buying group passes to like Disneyland or something like
like a cell phone plan. This is almost like a
cell phone plan because you have to keep paying a
cable bundle or a cable bundle. Basically, the Roman Catholic
(20:10):
Church was like the comcast of the medieval Karen in this.
You know what, that is accurate to a frightening degree
in in this case, officially and locals even today would
call certain buildings like butter towers. You know that the
money was used to build these gigantic religious uh well,
(20:32):
to add expansions on or to build these gigantic religious structures.
This struck Martin Luther, along with all the other problems
you had. This struck him as tremendously insulting, because you know, Noel,
we're walking around in the past. Our clothes look probably
(20:52):
really cool, I would hope, although our hat game is
nowhere near as evolved as the Middle Ages hat game.
But we we don't have any money in this area
of time. So if we're in this community, if we
like sat down and lived here and we didn't have
(21:13):
money to pay for that dispensation, then we're getting swindled
by people selling garbage oil, right that might not even
be edible. There's no way around this butter band for us.
So what what do we what are we supposed to do?
You know? Yeah, and just just to backtrack just slightly,
(21:34):
I found an example of one of these kind of
blanket dispensations in and this is from the the butter
book of rich history. Queen Anne, who was the Duchess
of Brittany, um got Rome to give her a dispensation
for not only herself but the entire household, including all
her servants and family members. And Brittany did not produce
(22:00):
any cooking oil at all. It was a it was
a butter based economy, I guess for lack of a
better time. But um, it's interesting because the this dispensation
was ultimately extended to all of Brittany, and this kind
of started, um, the the undoing of some of this gradually. Um.
(22:25):
But it didn't come for free, because they had to
still give to the church, and there were even special
prayers that they had to do. Yes, I contrite confession.
It's not it's technically it's not enough to just give
them the money and say let me let me snarf
my butter in peace. Technically they have to make a
(22:49):
contrite confession where they are legitimately apologizing, confessing to receive
the absolution from sin. And that's where those butter boxes
came from. That we were talking about in churches where
you would pay this spiritual tax in some of these
French parishes, and they actually paid for the construction of
(23:11):
like these ornate cathedrals, and one of them, in um
Ruin and borges Um, was dubbed the Tower, the butter Tower,
or the tour Debuer. Yeah, so we can see, we
can see how this becomes a an active segment of
(23:34):
the regional economies. Right, and this whether or not, I mean,
obviously we see we look back and we see the
process of granting indulgences as corrupt. Right, But if it
is the practice of the Catholic Church, and the Catholic
(23:56):
Church is making the rules, then they're the ones who
decide if something is corrupt. It would logically follow. However, Luther,
in an open letter to the Christian nobility of the
German nation, said that this was an enormous problem, that
these clergymen should not be traveling around Germany telling people
(24:21):
two pay money and say they're sorry before they can
eat the butter that they already made. They already may
be paid for, right, they already churned themselves. The religious
institution was not involved in the creation of the butter.
You just had to pay them. And this practice, which
(24:44):
was seen as selling forgiveness, became very, very widespread, and
I loved this. I loved this phrase, and we talked
about a little bit off air. Professor of Lutheran History
and Theology at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary called it this
that's Dr Kurcy Sturna an economy of grace. Yeah, that's
(25:09):
pretty pretty great image. And there's a quote from Professor
Sturno says, today we buy life insurance and health insurance
to secure our possessions. In the Middle Ages, the only
security came through church. These indulgences were the people's insurance policies,
tangible pieces of paper that said, hey, I'm good, get
out of health free exactly. But as we've been saying,
(25:30):
for Luther, these clergies selling indulgences represented just kind of
totally exposed what he saw as kind of the rot
within the Roman Catholic Church that convinced poor peasants that
they could be forgiven for a price. And in Luther's
particular theology, um forgiveness was free and you could be
(25:55):
saved by faith alone and grace alone, and it did
not have to fall allow this you know, bizarre pyramids
scheme of like paying for forgiveness, which you know, I
mean it totally cheapens it if you're thinking about it
like objectively, right, especially when consider uh different parts uh
(26:15):
different passages of the Bible which talk about the dangers
of the dangers have counted on wealth. Right. This leads
us to an interesting parallel. Is it a coincidence that
most of the dairy rich countries that were producing and
(26:38):
using butter at the time were the same nations that
broke away from the Catholic Church in the sixte century? Man,
Butter's delicious, and you know where they clearly needed it. Yeah,
there's there's no old quotation that I remember reading that says,
every paraphrase something along the lines of like every nation
(27:00):
is uh seven days away from revolution if they're not eating.
Because food is one of these fundamental motivators. And we're
talking about people who live in a staple food economy.
These are not people who had, as we mentioned earlier,
this vast variety of food they could eat for fun,
(27:22):
you know, well, and and I know I keep joking
about the deliciousness that is butter, and that's you know,
surely some part of it. But this was something that
they needed to properly cook their food and you know,
make it easier to digest and to be nourished by.
You know, I mean, if they were cooking vegetables. It's
not a whole lot of fun eating raw vegetables, you know.
(27:46):
I mean, you want to do a nice little stir
fry or something, and butter gives you what you need
to do that if you don't have access to cooking oils.
This leads to what professors Stirner calls one of Luther's
biggest eatings. Nothing about eating, drinking, sleeping, marrying, or sex
is sin. Not believing in God is sin. That's a
(28:06):
quote from That's a quote from the professor and then
sums it up this way. And I love how approachable
this professor's language is. And she's the one who says, like,
we're good. Yeah, same professor, she says. In other words,
everything is cool. Eating butter is cool. One of the
reasons why the Reformation was so successful it was that
Luther radically changed how people thought about what's wrong and
(28:29):
what's permissible, and so in a very real way, something
that seems simple to us today, something simple as when
you are allowed to eat butter. In part Lad Martin
Luther to march up on October thirty one and fifteen
seventeen and publish his nine Theses. Uh. And the door
(28:53):
that we were referring to the way, the way the
story slash legend goes is that he nailed it to
a church door in his hometown of Wittenberg. And these,
you know, the the whole crux of Theses was to
call into question fundamentally, you know, the idea of the
(29:16):
pope being essentially godlike, and you know, specifically this idea
of God being completely removed from the average man and
woman and their ability to communicate directly with God through prayer. Yes, absolutely,
And the printing press also emerges on the scene, which
(29:40):
means these teachings spread rapidly. In today, as we record this,
there are more than forty thousand Protestant denominations across the globe.
Theses was like, you know, the first meme that's not bad,
it's pretty bad. A lot memes though, I think everything
I your memetic exactly meme classifications aside. This is pretty
(30:05):
profound to think that butter of all things and change
that could change the world. And I wonder if people ever,
if people ever think about that when they're the next time,
you know, they're in church, or they go to a
youth group where they Oh, and I do have to
point out Martin Luther was not by any measure a
(30:25):
a perfect man, but in this case he did something amazing.
And it's fascinating. You know, if you if you were
listening to this and you identify as Protestant, uh, give it,
give it a think and check out butter rich history
to learn more about this strange, fascinating, oftentimes invisible and
(30:50):
profound ways in which this food stuff affects you. What'st
thou like the taste of butter? Man, I'm so glad
we saved that reference for in anybody, anybody, which everybody
but I was looking into it as well, and I
didn't think about this until we were researching this. But
the family that's portrayed in that film are Protestant, but
(31:13):
they're like even more extreme versions of Protestant that they
want to just completely extricate everything associated with the Catholic Church.
And uh, there's a fantastic moment where butter comes up
as being almost like the most sinful indulgence. So that's
still stuck around even through Protestantism, although it certainly wasn't
(31:35):
like being taxed or in that way. Oh, that's a
brilliant connection. Well done. I didn't think about that. But
what do you think about that? Is that is that accurate?
I don't know. I think I I think it's intentional.
I will go on the record saying I think it's
intentional because I was always these were Puritans in the film.
I was always wrapped up in the concept of the
(31:56):
clever word play of You know, we have talked about
this when we're hanging out earlier, not just the because folks,
we fan boyd over this film so hard. Uh, it
was all we talked about for several weeks. And I
am so surprised that I missed that. And thank you
for telling me, because I dwelt on the concept of
(32:17):
not butter, the taste of butter. It's like the pursuit
of happiness, right. Um. But now I'm I'm going to
go back and watch The Witch and I might just
do it eating a stick of butter. There's such a
thing as too much of a good thing. Well, we're
gonna find out firsthead. I'm I'm mostly kidding. I have
(32:39):
I have never to my acknowledge eating an entire stick
of butter. You give her a deep fried butter at carnivals.
That's a thing I have, but I haven't tried it.
Did you ever given a show? Dude? No, too much
of a good thing. It just seems really weird. I
feel like butter is an ingredient and not its own snack. It. Well, mean,
it's like it's good on a piece of toast, for sure,
which essentially is me. Come on, let's be real eating
(32:59):
a piece of toast with butter on it. It's a
vehicle for butter. It's true. There's a there's a lot
of stuff. Like some people drink popcorn is a vehicle
for butter. Well, you guys out there, tell us how
you like to eat butter. Do you like to deep
fry it? Do you like to just eat it with
a spoon? You know, what's your favorite? What about clarified butter?
We didn't do so many things. But what am I doing?
(33:21):
What am I doing? We need to We need to
plug our friend Lauren and Annie's podcast, food Stuff. They
have a series of episodes on the history of butter
um and they also have a video that's pretty cool
called get Some Culture. Butter t is in parentheses, So
check out food Stuff. It's another house Stuff Works podcast
(33:43):
and they're they're friends of ours, so they're cool and
you should listen to them. And there was what uh
what a time capsule, a glimpse back not just into
the history of butter and religion, but into our own show.
We're gonna be back in just a few days with
(34:06):
a brand new episode, but we hope you enjoyed this one.
As as we said at the top, this is not
something you can find on Apple podcasts, but every so
often we're gonna share some classics like this with you
in the meantime. Huge thanks to you, Ben Bolan for
for taking us on this journey into butter and Religion,
(34:29):
Max Williams, Producer extraordinaire Christopher haciotas here in Spirit, Alex Williams,
who composed our theme. Big big thanks to our research associate,
the one and only gay Bluesier, And big thanks to
our own what would you call him? The main Protestant
of this reformed episode, Jonathan Strickland. He does protest a lot. Yeah,
(34:54):
I was going for the protest thing. We'll see you
next time Flix. Yeah. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio,
visit the I Heart Radio app Apple podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
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