Paul Warde, The Invention of Sustainability: Nature and Destiny c. 1500–1870

Abstract

1 Living from the Land, c. 1500-1620 Bread 'Man doth not live by bread only.' 1 It is true, and repeated twice more in the Bible to underline the point. 2But when it came to that uttermost necessity of sustaining life, the people of early modern Europe did indeed largely live on bread. 3 This had been true of much of Europe and the Middle East for many, many centuries.Bread might fall in line behind the Word, and arrived on the scene after the expulsion from Eden, but when prophets and scribes sought some metaphor that could convey a notion as being indisputably essential, it was to bread they reached.In the Catholic tradition, God embodied himself in the transformation of bread: the 'bread of life'.The fact that the King James Bible contains 330 uses of the word 'bread' and only 280 of the word 1 Deuteronomy 8:3, King James version. 2 'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.' Matthew 4:3; also Luke 4:4. 3 The literature on bread consumption is enormous and cannot be glossed here.Indeed, as bread or grains (which might also be consumed as beer) constituted the largest share in the diet of the great majority of Europeans, nearly all histories of agriculture and material life must deal with it.There is no doubt too that access to grain and bread was the overwhelming preoccupation of authorities concerned with dearth, even if in some parts of the continent 'its predominance was not nearly so great as many modern assumptions suggest'.Craig Muldrew, Food, energy and the creation of industriousness.

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