From Claudia Roden’s “Coffee: A Connoisseur’s Companion” by way of John Baruch:
In Italy it was the priests who appealed to Pope Clement VIII to have the use of coffee forbidden among Christians. Satan, they said, had forbidden his followers, the infidel Moslems, the use of wine because it was used in the Holy Communion, and given them instead his “hellish black brew.” It seems the Pope liked the drink, for his reply was: “Why, this Satan’s drink is so delicious that it would be a pity to let the infidels have exclusive use of it. We shall cheat Satan by baptizing it.” Thus coffee was declared a truly Christian beverage by a farsighted Pope (p. 14).
You know…there are some good things that come from Christianizing the things of ‘infidels’.
Thanks for the nugget of info, Pope Clement VIII has now become a great figure in my eyes. Maybe I’ll find a painting of him and hang it above my sign that says: Coffee Break 9:00-5:00 Daily.
Why should the devil have all the good brew?
[...] Veith has posted a couple fun articles on coffee on his blog lately: Of Coffee and Christianity and The coffee maker and two doctrines of vocation. He ends the latter post by asking how two [...]
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Gene Edward Veith is the Provost and Professor of Literature at Patrick Henry College, the Director of the Cranach Institute at Concordia Theological Seminary, a columnist for World Magazine and TableTalk, and the author of 18 books on different facets of Christianity & Culture.
Lucas Cranach, self portrait c.1530.
About Lucas Cranach
Lucas Cranach was the great artist of the Reformation. He was a close friend of Martin Luther. He was a businessman, who first printed Luther's translation of the Bible; a politician, who served on the Wittenberg town council and served the city as its mayor; a chemist, who operated a pharmacy; a teacher, who trained a host of apprentice artists; a family-man, who helped arrange Luther's marriage with the two men serving as the godfathers of each other's children; and an active layman in his church, who gave his pastors important personal and material support. As a Christian who lived out his faith in his many different callings, Cranach thus embodies the Reformation doctrine of vocation, using the gifts God had given him in service to Christ and his neighbor in the church, the family, the workplace, and the culture. In the spirit of Lucas Cranach, this blog will discuss wide-ranging issues of Christianity and culture with a Lutheran twist.
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