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Chocolate, Medicine, and Theology: Knowledge-making in the Journal des Sçavans (1666)

The Journal des Sçavans of Monday 18 January 1666 (p. 29–32) opened with a review of a small Roman treatise with an intriguing title: De chocolatis potu diatribe (Rome 1664) by Cardinal Francesco Maria Brancaccio. The topic? The legitimacy of consuming an exotic product during days of fasting, namely a substance that already seemed to be taking Europe by storm in the seventeenth century: chocolate.  This text, unusually long for a review on such a subject in the Journal, provides a revealing perspective on the mechanisms through which natural knowledge was constructed among early modern scholars, across the disciplines.

The starting point is simple. Chocolate, recently imported from America, had become common in Europe, especially in Spain and Italy. Its enthusiasts claimed, the Journal explains, “that it aids digestion, that it fattens, that it warms stomachs that are too cold, that it cools those that are too hot, and finally that it possesses many other admirable virtues, which Spanish physicians praise extraordinarily” (p. 30). For instance, in Spain, chocolate had become so indispensable that one even estimated “that the greatest misery to which a man can be reduced is to lack chocolate” (ibid.). However, a theological–medical question had arisen from this: Is chocolate a beverage or is it solid food? For, as the reviewer recalls, according to the dominant doctrine inherited from Thomas Aquinas, “it is only solid food that breaks the fast, not beverages” (ibid.).

The reviewer then summarises the controversy. Some argue that chocolate counts as solid food. He cites the English royal physician Henry Stubbe, author of a treatise on chocolate, who concluded from an experiment “that an ounce of cacao yields more unctuous and nourishing humours than a pound of beef or mutton” (p. 31). Cardinal Brancaccio disagrees, maintaining that, like wine or beer, chocolate is essentially a beverage and that ingesting it does not involve breaking the fast. The Journal presents his reasoning as follows:

His principal argument is that chocolate is by nature a beverage and is regarded as such in America just as wine and beer are in Europe; from this he concludes that if one may drink wine and beer without breaking a fast, it is likewise permissible to drink chocolate. He adds that the quantity of paste used in chocolate, being only an ounce, is not sufficient to break a fast; especially since not even half of that ounce consists of cocoa. And to the objection that cocoa is highly nourishing, he replies that this argument applies just as much against wine and beer as against chocolate: for according to Galen there is wine that nourishes as much as pork, which is nevertheless considered the most solid of foods and, for this reason, was the ordinary sustenance of athletes; and since beer is made, as it is, from wheat or barley, it cannot fail to nourish, yet neither wine nor beer are regarded as solid foods but only as beverages, and according to the common opinion of theologians they do not occasion a breaking of fast (p. 31).

What is striking about this passage is how the review organises authority. Galen is invoked, Spanish physicians are cited, scholastic theologians appear in the background. The argument proceeds by analogy: if wine nourishes yet does not break a fast, why should chocolate be treated differently? Later in the text, the reviewer cites a Spanish physician named Caldera, most likely Gaspar Caldera de Heredia, who initially opposed Brancaccio but ultimately conceded, testifying to this in a letter printed at the end of the book (p. 32). The public communication of this “conversion story” functions as a mechanism of epistemic stabilisation: the opposing voice, here Caldera, concedes and this change of mind is made public. The disagreement dissolves.

Throughout this review, the Journal does not merely report an opinion but stages an argument. We are reading Brancaccio through the filter of the Journal. A learned mediator is already at work: the reviewer selects arguments, reformulates them, orders them, and inserts them into a periodical format aimed at a scholarly audience.

 

***

 

The story, however, did not end there. One week later, on Monday 25 January 1666, the Journal felt compelled to clarify what may have been overly enthusiastic claims in the initial review. Readers had objected to one statement in particular: How could chocolate both warm cold stomachs and cool hot ones? (p. 54).

The Journal’s reply was pedagogical. Drawing on post-Galenic teaching, the reviewer invokes a general principle: the same cause can produce opposite effects depending on the subject. A concrete example follows:

[A] hand that has only moderate warmth appears warm to someone who is excessively cold, and cold to someone who is excessively hot; and just as it cools the one, it warms the other. The reason is that tempered things equally partake of contrary qualities; thus what is only moderately warm, having four degrees of cold matched by as many degrees of heat, acts upon what is hot through its degrees of cold, and upon what is cold through its degrees of heat (p. 54).

The reviewer then offers a moral analogy: a virtue lies between two extremes and affects people differently. Thus, the same courage that encourages the coward also holds back the reckless. In the same way, a “tempered” substance like chocolate can either warm or cool, depending on the person (ibid.). The theological discussion of chocolate thus ultimately becomes a pretext for recalling a more general principle of nature, i.e. that “tempered” things affect other things according to the disposition of the latter. In this way, the originally theological debate is reframed in a more general natural philosophical framework, Aristotelian in the event. The Journal uses an esoteric theological objection to offer a broader “scientific” lesson about nature. In the end, despite his pro-chocolate stance, the Italian cardinal nonetheless puts both a moral and a medical brake on consumption. According to the Journal, even if consuming chocolate does not as such involve breaking the fast, drinking too much of it or drinking it with the intention of circumventing Church commandments remains blameable (p. 32). Beware of excess. Physiology moves seamlessly into morality, and vice versa.

This chocolate dossier reveals, on a small scale, an entire process: the arrival of a new object (chocolate) in Europe, conceptual hesitation, mobilisation of authorities (Thomas Aquinas, Galen), public objection, doctrinal clarification, the communication of an opponent (Caldera’s) change of position, and moral regulation; all orchestrated by a journal dedicated to “scholars” (“sçavans”). Today, such disputes over chocolate may appear minor. Yet in 1666, they formed part of the collective construction of natural knowledge, across the disciplines. And the Journal des Sçavans was not merely a messenger: it was a central actor in negotiating and shaping that knowledge.

 

                                  MOUHAMADOUL KHALY WÉLÉ

 

References:

Le Journal des Sçavans, Paris, Jean Cusson, 1666 — pp. 29–32 and 54 (the page numbers refer to this source)

— Francesco Maria Brancaccio, De chocolatis potu diatribe, Rome, Zachariam Dominicum Acsamitek a Kronenfeld, Vetero-Pragensem, 1664.

Amelie Berger-Soraruff
Amelie Berger-Soraruff

OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
adminnotcom (February 17, 2026). Chocolate, Medicine, and Theology: Knowledge-making in the Journal des Sçavans (1666). NOTCOM. Retrieved June 18, 2026 from https://doi.org/10.58079/15pr7


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