by Christopher Nicholson
Few ingredients are as significant to the Czechs as carp. This
fresh-water fish is so important that it has become the key ingredient
in the now traditional Czech Christmas meal.
The centrality of carp to Czech cooking and culture has been
understood for centuries. Janus Dubravius (or Jan Skála z Doubravsky,
1486 – 1553), a Czech humanist and the sometime bishop of Olomouc (1541
-1553), wrote a little book so that one could breed the best possible
carp. Janus Dubravius Wikipedia
Dubravius’s book, De piscinis et piscium, qui in eis aluntur natura,
was published in Wrocław in 1547 and dedicated to members of the German
Fugger and Hungarian Thurzó families. The text gained popularity and
was reprinted in 1596 (Nuremberg) and 1671 (Helmstadt). An English
translation was published in 1599 as A New Booke of good Husbandry,
very pleasant, and of great profite both for Gentlemen and Yeomen:
Conteining, The Order and maner of making Fish-pondes, with the
breeding, preserving, and multiplying of the Carpe, Tench, Pike, and
Troute and diverse kindes of other Fresh-fish. De piscinis offers readers more or less everything one might
want or need to know to establish ponds and breed fish. Dubravius
explains in great detail how to locate, construct and fill a pond. He
also makes recommendations about the hiring of labour for the project.
If a noble has to leave his estate during the building work then he
should employ ‘a cunning, expert, and skilfull man to overlooke their
work.’ Elsewhere Dubravius covers the breeding and harvesting of fish,
while he also considers the crucial subject of what it is exactly that
different fish eat. He even suggests that being a good builder of ponds
might make a man more attractive to the opposite sex, but seems not to make any fantastic or medicinal claims about the fish. Jan Dubravius’ Latin Text From Open Library
This manly display will lead to the best-fed carp with which to woo
the ladies, but first one must begin by finding the right location for
your pond. The first thing to think about when considering a fishpond is
where one should put it. Dubravius thinks this is critical for the
nourishment of the pond’s potential occupants. The quality of the land
is particularly important because carp require no supplementary feeding.
The fish would be expected to find their food in their surroundings.[1]
Dubravius warns against building ponds in rocky areas or in places
where nothing will grow because these areas will not provide carp with
the nutrients they need. As he explains: ‘barren and miserable ground’
is ‘most unfortunate for Carpe, because it wanteth the iuce and meysture
of the earth, wherewith the Carpe is nourished and made fatte.’
Later, and referring to Aristotle, Dubravius describes the diets of a
range of fish. He notes that conger, lamprey and wolf eels are
carnivores that eat exclusively other fish, while ‘Mullets feedes on
Fish and Sea weedes, Goldins feedes only of Sea weedes, Stockfish on Sea
weedes and doung, Codfishes on slyme’.
In its desire for ‘slyme’, the cod shares something with the carp.
The conditions that Dubravius says allow the carp to be ‘made fatte’ let
it indulge in its preferred diet of ‘slyme and sande’. However, the
carp is not a fussy fish. The carp will not eat other fish but it will
take worms that live in the banks of the pond. It might also make
attempts to catch gnats and flies that amble close to the surface of the
water. Those who disbelieve Dubravius are invited to see for
themselves: ‘if you walke quietly by the bankes and harken attentively,
you shall heere him snatch after them.’ Jan Dubravius’ English Text From EEBO
Dubravius, like many other contemporary authors,
thinks not all foods are equal. The The carp eats ‘slyme and sande’
because it lies at the bottom of the pond, but it is more quickly
fattened up if it consumes the worms, gnats and flies. Carp on noble
estates might be left to fend for themselves, but Dubravius explains
that common folk do things differently. They enclose the fish in weirs
and feed to them grain. Another, slightly bizarre, option is thus:
‘Potters clay also dryed a little by the fyer, and annoynted over with
the lees of oyle, maketh fatte Carpes, and is much better than corne.’
The point here, then, is not so much about what one should feed the
carp. Rather it is where one should put them. In the right environment
the carp will look after themselves. If the food is there they will find
it. Nevertheless, if one does, through incompetence or bad luck, end up
with a pond devoid of ‘slyme and sande’ for the carp to feast upon then
one should not panic. Simply find some potters clay, oil and a fire. Christopher Nicholson completed a PhD in History at UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies. He is co-editor of Perpetual Motion? Transformation and Transition in Central and Eastern Europe & Russia (2011) and Between Worlds: The Age of the Jagiellonians (2013).
He is currently involved with a project on the medieval laws of Croatia
based at the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts and is co-editing a
volume of essays on Emperor Sigismund. [1]
Richard C. Hoffmann and Verena Winiwarter, ‘Making Land and Water Meet:
The Cycling of Nutrients between Fields and Ponds in Pre-Modern
Europe’, Agricultural History, 84, 3 (2010), pp. 352-80 (p.368).
