Abstract

The goal of the essay is to illustrate, without claiming to be exhaustive, how historiography treated some issues related to the interactions between food and religious culture, highlighting topics of special interest and trying to indicate some potential perspectives for future original research. We will return to what seems to be the most profi table approach in our research area: the collaboration between different disciplines. We divided the essay into fi ve paragraphs, in which we take account of different religious traditions: "Ricerche", where we propose a short review of the bibliography of the issue; "Testi," where we include some examples of regulation of food practices in different holy texts; "Alimenti", where we list some examples of consecrated food and present the opportunity to think on a chronology based on the food histories; "Pratiche", where we analyze ritual models of the sacred act of cooking; "Momenti", where we focus especially on the case of the study of fasting.