BOOKS: Vegetarianism: A History
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2004:
Vegetarianism: A History by Colin Spencer
Four Walls Eight Windows (39 W. 14th St,, New York, NY 10011),
2004. 384 pp., paperback. $16.00.
Until recent times, the history of vegetarianism was also
the history of religion and politics. The first two thirds of Colin
Spencer’s book describes the evolution of humanism and political and
religious influence on meat-eating.
Until the 18th century, vegetarianism in Europe was usually
equated with radicalism and heresy. During the Albigensian Crusade
against the vegetarian Cathari, who from about 1150 until circa 1250
challenged the primacy of Catholicism in southern France, alleged
heretics were required to prove their innocence by eating meat.
Spencer relates how “heretics” were brought before the
Emperor: “Among other wicked Manichean doctrines, they condemned
all eating of animals and with the agreement of everybody present,
he ordered them to be hanged.”
Circa 500 years B.C. the Greek philosopher and mathematician
Pythagoras was viewed with suspicion, though treated with greater
tolerance, when he openly abjured flesh. Pythagoras cited his belief
in the health benefits of vegetarianism, and his hope that
vegetarian societies would be less inclined to wage war. The basis
of his vegetarianism, however, appears to have been a belief in the
transmigration of souls (reincarnation).