‘A tool of the devil’: The dark history of the humble fork
The utensils moved west in 1004 c.e., when Maria Argyropoulina, niece of the Byzantine emperor, was married to the son of the Doge of Venice. Maria brought a little case of two-pronged golden forks to Italy, which she used at her wedding feast. The Venetians, used to eating with their hands, were shocked, and when Maria died two years later of the plague, Saint Peter Damian proclaimed it was God’s punishment:
Nor did she deign to touch her food with her fingers, but would command her eunuchs to cut it up into small pieces, which she would impale on a certain golden instrument with two prongs and thus carry to her mouth . . . this woman’s vanity was hateful to Almighty God; and so, unmistakably, did He take his revenge.
And with that, Saint Peter Damian closed the book on the fork in Europe for the next 400 years.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90481445/a-tool-of-the-devil-the-dark-history-of-the-humble-fork