It may be of interest to note that the importation of the turkey to Europe has been attributed by various scholiasts to the Jesuits, in proof of which they assert that in many French provinces it was formerly termed a jésuite, and that in some of the more remote departments it was the custom to refer to it in the following manner: "Come to dine with me; we will have a fat jésuite." "Monsieur, will you pass me some of the jésuite?" It is also said to have been referred to as a jésuite en capilotade and a jésuite au feu d'enfer. Savarin gives the period of its importation by the order in question as the latter part of the seventeenth century; while the Marquis de Cussy states it was imported a century earlier from Paraguay by the Jesuits, and was served for the first time in public at the marriage of Charles IX of France, when, according to Montluc, the young king disposed of the left wing.
The true date of the turkey's flight into history is the early part of the sixteenth century, when the learned confessor and historian to Cortez, Fra Agapida, returned to Spain from his first visit to Mexico, and wrote a brief narrative of the wonders of the New World. In this account he called attention to the abundance of fine fish-food, and the excellence of the venison and a variety of "wild cattle." "There is also a bird," adds the discerning presbyter, "much greater in bigness than a peacock, that is found within the forests and vegas (meadows) all over this country. It surpasses as food any wild bird we have found up to this time. The natives do shoot these birds with arrows and catch them in various kinds of springes and snares. They are sometimes very large, being as much as thirty pounds in weight. They can fly, but prefer to run, which they can do with exceeding swiftness."
No less is the introduction of the potato from South America due to the monks, who first brought it to Europe in the proud galleons of Spain.
In Canon Barham's "A Lay of St. Nicholas," where the temptations of the flesh proved stronger than the spiritual powers of the head of the abbey, turkey and chine figure as the pieces of "resistance," with old sherris sack, hippocras, and malmsey to flank them,—
"The Abbot hath donn'd his mitre and ring,
His rich dalmatic and maniple fine;
And the choristers sing as the lay-brothers bring
To the board a magnificent turkey and chine."
The capon, however, appears to have been the greatest favourite with the clergy; its frequent companion, the carp, doubtless owing its popularity to the fact that it is so easily raised, rather than that it is more esteemed than numerous other species of fish. Even more than the capon, the carp suggests the cenobites, bringing up a whole train of monastic orders—with the cloister and the abbey as its most congenial home. It is inalienably associated with the cassock and chasuble, the rosary and censer, the peal of the organ and the glory of old stained glass. It is essentially the sacred fish—the true "sole" of piety. It whispers of sanctity and breathes of Benedicites. In fancy one sees the abbot, rotund and rubicund, presiding at table, with one eye upon the fish and the other lifted aloft, uttering his Bonum est confiteri ere the loud "Amen" resounds through the vaulted chamber, and carp and capon are bathed in the red juices of the monastery vineyard. Or it may be a pike, a mullet, or a dish of eels that, cunningly prepared by the master-cook of the brotherhood, steeps the refectory with the perfume of shallots and fine herbs, and justly merits a Benedic, anima mea from the partakers of the repast.