Hands
have always been used to eat with. As food became hotter and sloppier,
knives were developed from larger cutting blades, and spoons are simple
scoops. But forks weren’t used in ancient eating. And when some started
using them, they were considered somewhat pretentious.
In the 11th century, forks were in use in the Byzantine
Empire. An illustrated manuscript from that period shows two men using
two-pronged forklike instruments at a table, and St. Peter Damian, a
hermit and ascetic, criticized a Byzantine-born Venetian princess for
her excessive delicacy: “[S]uch was the luxury of her habits … [that]
she deigned not to touch her food with her fingers, but would command
her eunuchs to cut it up into small pieces, which she would impale on a
certain golden instrument with two prongs and thus carry to her mouth.”
Damian was sufficiently offended by the woman’s table manners that when
she died of the plague, he regarded it as a just punishment from God for
her vanity.
A detailed history of the fork can be found
here.
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