And the fork was adopted only after a long struggle with the same idiocy displayed by the young woman in her video.
Q to Grok: Weren’t forks once considered evil in Europe?
A: Yes, in the 11th century, forks were indeed considered sinful, luxurious, and even demonic by much of European (especially Byzantine and Catholic) clergy and nobility.
When the fork was reintroduced to Europe from the Byzantine Empire (where it had been in use for centuries), it caused genuine outrage. The most famous case is from 1004–1005, when Maria Argyropoulina, a Byzantine princess, married the Doge of Venice’s son and brought gold forks with her. She used them at banquets instead of eating with her hands like everyone else.
The Venetian clergy were horrified. The local chroniclers and church figures condemned forks as an unnatural, prideful rejection of God’s design—after all, God gave us perfectly good fingers to eat with. One prominent cleric, Saint Peter Damian, explicitly called the fork an instrument of the Devil and a sign of excessive luxury and vanity. When Maria died young (of plague) shortly after, many saw it as divine punishment for her “effeminate” and “sinful” use of the fork.
For centuries afterward, forks were associated with effeminacy, foreign decadence (especially Byzantine or later, Arab influence), and moral corruption. The Catholic Church in the West largely discouraged them, and most Europeans kept eating with knives, spoons, and hands until the 16th–18th centuries, when forks finally became normalized (first among the Italian upper class, then spreading north).So yes — for hundreds of years, the humble fork was literally seen as a tool of Satan by conservative Europeans. Cutlery has a wild history.
Hmmm. “Arab influence”? Curious.
Here’s another fun note about another invention that Miss Piggy might want to eschew: the anesthetics ether and chloroform; neither of which would be useful to a wokette who’s sworn off childbirth, but she might regret her decision to eschew all things western if she had to have a leg amputated, or undergo a brain transplant.
Somewhat related, but off-topic, the history of administrating anesthesia to women during childbirth also has an interesting history:
Yes, anesthesia during childbirth was indeed considered sinful by significant portions of Christian clergy and theologians in the mid-19th century, particularly when it was first introduced in the 1840s and 1850s.Key Historical Context
Biblical Argument from Genesis 3:16: The primary objection came from the curse pronounced on Eve after the Fall: “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children” (King James Version). Many Protestant and Catholic clergy interpreted this literally to mean that pain in childbirth was God’s divinely ordained punishment for original sin, and that relieving it through anesthesia (initially ether, later chloroform) was an impious attempt to thwart God’s will.
Notable Examples
1847–1850s in Britain and America: When James Young Simpson, a Scottish obstetrician, began using chloroform for labor pain in 1847 (famously using it on Queen Victoria in 1853 for the birth of Prince Leopold), he faced fierce opposition from conservative clergy. Sermons and pamphlets denounced “chloroform à la reine” as blasphemous.
American clergy (especially Calvinist and evangelical ministers) preached that pain-free childbirth violated scripture. Some went so far as to say women who used anesthesia were evading the very means God provided for their moral improvement through suffering.
Catholic opposition was initially strong as well; some theologians argued it was contrary to natural law and divine decree.
Turning Point: Queen Victoria (1853)The widespread acceptance of obstetric anesthesia is often dated to April 1853, when Queen Victoria accepted chloroform from Dr. John Snow for the birth of her eighth child. Because she was the head of the Church of England, her endorsement effectively silenced most religious objections in Britain. Clergy who had previously condemned the practice suddenly found ways to reinterpret Genesis 3:16 (e.g., “sorrow” meant emotional grief, not physical pain, or that God also gave humans medical knowledge).Lingering OppositionEven after the 1850s, pockets of resistance remained:
Some American fundamentalist and conservative Protestant groups continued to oppose it into the early 20th century.
The Catholic Church never issued a formal condemnation, but individual priests sometimes discouraged it on moral grounds until the 20th century. Pope Pius XII explicitly approved pain relief in childbirth in 1956, stating it did not contradict Genesis.
Summary
Yes, for roughly the first decade after its introduction (1847–1857/60), the use of anesthesia in childbirth was widely condemned as sinful or immoral by many Christian authorities, primarily on the grounds that it defied God’s punishment in Genesis 3:16. Royal endorsement and changing theological interpretation eventually overturned this view in most of the Western world.
Bonus material for non-readers here: a video!
