Bona Sforza: The Accidental Foodie Influencer from Renaissance Italy

4_bona_mburdzynska.jpg, default, Bona Sforza's crown, illustration by Magdalena Burdzyńska, photo: Magdalena Burdzyńska

This early 16th-century Polish queen is said to have brought włoszczyzna to Poland – a term used for a bundle of vegetables used to make soup, including carrots, celery, cabbage and parsley. Could Bona Sforza really have introduced them to Poles? Linguistics fans like to think so.

But history fans say it was impossible. Polish people were familiar with these vegetables and already eating them during the reign of Władysław Jagiello a century earlier. Derived from the Polish name for Italy, namely Włochy, włoszczyzna was the term for immigrant novelties such as artichokes and asparagus, which had gained popularity in the Renaissance. Surely one person, even the richest and most influential, and no matter how Italian, wouldn’t have been capable of making people do something on such a massive scale?

A carrot in a suitcase

Bona Sforza, the second wife of King Sigismund I the Old, was intelligent (perhaps even cunning), beautiful and cosmopolitan, but she did not, after all, have an Instagram account, millions of followers or a selfie in front of Wawel Castle. She moved to Kraków from Italy at a time when there were already many Italians living there. Bona was undoubtedly well-educated, having learned Latin, history, theology, law, geography, philosophy and mathematics. She read classical authors and could recite Latin orations with ease. She took dance and music lessons. She had contact with great artists and knew about works of art. She ate sumptuous meals, but wine or leeks can’t become famous merely through the whims of a single royal.

The popularisation of certain products and ways of cooking or combining ingredients takes many years. No cauliflower landed on Polish soil like a sputnik, bringing a message: take me and eat me. Even less likely is it that this lively Italian woman brought carrots and celery to Kraków in her suitcase. Although when she left Warsaw in 1556, where she had lived after the death of her husband, on bitter terms with her son and forgotten by the populace, and headed to the Duchy of Bari, she took twenty-four wagons filled with silver, gold and jewels with her. She took a great deal from Poland.

Professor Jarosław Dumanowski, a historian and researcher on the history of food, has stated:

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There are a lot of commonly held beliefs with completely unknown origins. The connection between Bona and vegetables is a classic culinary myth. We have a simple story: someone introduced something or invented something. It isn’t clear where this came from in Bona’s biography. She brought pearls, of course, as well as clothes and paper, but Jadwiga and Jagiełło’s menus already included lettuce, cauliflower, cabbage, and exotic products from Italy. Why should Bona have brought anything? She is credited with importing products that had already been in Poland for a long time, or those that certainly didn’t exist in her time, such as tomatoes, which only became popular in the 19th century.

In his book Kapłony i Szczeżuje: Opowieść o Zapomnianej Kuchni Polskiej (Capons and Mussels: A Tale of Forgotten Polish Cuisine), in which Dumanowski answers questions posed by Magdalena Kasprzyk-Chevriaux, he states: ‘In the era in which Bona lived, cauliflower, broccoli, asparagus, artichokes, cardoons and capers, which were fashionable in Italy at the time, became widespread in Northern Europe. Authors of Polish herbaria from the 16th and early 17th centuries describe these products as novelties and unusual delicacies.’

Not everyone had access to artichokes. Nowadays, food has become more democratic, although the category of luxury food products still exists and is thriving. In the 16th century, different social classes ate very differently, with more or less variety, and wealth was a key factor when it came to diet. The culinary horizon goes only as far as one’s experience, capabilities and wallet. In the poorest stratum of society, people simply ate what was grown nearby; nobody ordered groceries from Tesco. Elsewhere in the interview, Dumanowski explains:

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In Central Europe there was game, freshwater fish, intense spices and a little sugar, and groats became popular between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, but not groats as we know them nowadays. They were ‘quasi-groats’ – food prepared in the consistency of groats but in which the appearance and flavour of the ingredients were altered. This was to impress guests and also to ‘balance the humours’ through the right combination of ingredients.

Verdure, pleasure & delight

We are, of course, referring to the rich cuisine of the royal court. In the 15th century, this cuisine in Poland was influenced by Filip Kallimach, an Italian humanist who was accused of participating in a plot to assassinate Pope Paul II. Kallimach found shelter at the royal court – he became secretary to Casimir IV Jagiellon, and then advisor to John I Albert. He was also friends with the Copernicus family. Kallimach was clearly a supporter of Poland’s independence from the papacy. He was also a protégé of Bartolomeo Platina, a librarian of the Vatican Library and author of a treatise titled De Honesta Voluptate et Valetudine, which was the first printed cookbook. This work was published in Rome around 1470 and then in Venice in 1475. Platina included recipes by Martin da Como, the cook at the court of the Venetian Cardinal Ludovico Trevisan. Thanks to Kallimach, this book on exclusively Mediterranean cuisine was known in Poland within academic communities. And this was before Bona was even born.

Italian and Mediterranean food products slowly but surely made their way onto Polish tables. From the 16th to 18th century, vegetable gardens were planted by the nobility on their estates. Most of them grew black and white cabbage (which covered over 34% of the land) and carrots (about 14%), and also onions, hemp, turnips, kale, parsnips and aniseed. The least commonly grown plant was poppy (0.5%). Other vegetables such as cucumbers, parsley and dill were also grown, as well as herbs, various grains, peas and buckwheat. In the Middle Ages and early Renaissance, according to Piotr Krescentyn’s definition in Księgi o Gospodarstwie i o Opatrzeniu Rozmnożenia Rozlicznych Pożytków Każdemu Stanowi Potrzebnych (Books on Husbandry and the Securing of Growth of the Multitudinous Benefits Required by Every Estate), published in Polish in 1549 by Helena Florianowa’s printing house in Kraków, ‘Mirroring Latin usage, a name related to verdure is used for small gardens in which herbs or trees or even both herbs and trees are planted, so that through their verdure they bring people pleasure and delight.’

Above all, however, people ate what grew well and what was familiar to them. In Renaissance Poland, fish was lower-class food because fish were easy to catch, even large pike and sturgeon. Biologically and environmentally, the territory of Poland at that time was a completely different world than it is today. Before people started trying out novelties for the sake of fashion, flavour or whimsy, they made use of the abundance of local produce. And what about Bona? She is said to have popularised the fashion for décolletage. But this is just another myth, this time from the fashion world.

Originally written in Polish, Apr 2021, translated by Scotia Gilroy, Oct 2021

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