United States or Cambodia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The story is told in Gaze's "New Survey of the West Indies," published in 1648, and is worth repetition. It is well to bear in mind his information that "two or three hours after a good meal of three or four dishes of mutton, veal or beef, kid, turkeys or other fowles, our stomackes would bee ready to faint, and so wee were fain to support them with a cup of chocolatte."
And it became afterwards a Proverbe in that country: 'Beware of the chocolatte of Chiapa! ... that poisoning and wicked city, which truly deserves no better relation than what I have given of the simple Dons and the chocolatte-confectioning Doñas."
For this purpose it was much used by them to make their maids bring them to church, in the middle of mass or sermon, a cup of chocolatte, which could not be done to all without a great confusion and interrupting both mass and sermon.
"The women of that city, it seems, pretend much weakness and squeamishness of stomacke, which they say is so great that they are not able to continue in church while the mass is briefly hurried over, much lesse while a solemn high mass is sung and a sermon preached, unles they drinke a cup of hot chocolatte and eat a bit of sweetmeats to strengthen their stomackes.
The women, seeing him so hard to be entreated, began to slight him with scornefull and reproachfull words: others slighted his excommunication, drinking in iniquity in the church, as the fish doth water, which caused one day such an uproar in the Cathedrall that many swordes were drawn against the Priests, who attempted to take away from the maids the cups of chocolatte which they brought unto their mistresses, who at last, seeing that neither faire nor foule means would prevail with the Bishop, resolved to forsake the Cathedrall: and so from that time most of the city betooke themselves to the Cloister Churches, where by the Nuns and Fryers they were not troubled....
"The Bishop fell dangerously sick. Physicians were sent for far and neere, who all with a joynt opinion agreed that the Bishop was poisoned. Myself heard this gentlewoman say that the women had no reason to grieve for him, and that she judged, he being such an enemy to chocolatte in the Church, that which he had drunk in his house had not agreed with his body.
It was only natural that the nuns and friars of the cloister churches should raise no objection to this practice of chocolate drinking, for we read further that two of these cloisters were "talked off far and near, not for their religious practices, but for their skill in making drinkes which are used in those parts, the one called chocolatte, another atolle.
Word Of The Day