The Lentil of Popes
They call it so because it seems that Pope Pius IX, after the loss of temporal power, consoled himself with a plate of Onanese lentils that Cardinal Prospero Caterini da Onano, in the province of Viterbo, brought him. This lentil, among the traditional Italian food products, is among the oldest, with a glorious and documented past: in fact, a statute of 1561 already provided for penalties for those caught damaging or stealing legumes. At the beginning of the twentieth century, however, we find it the protagonist of major exhibitions, from Rome, Paris and London to Buenos Aires; is it because it has always grown in the soils that are most congenial to it, namely volcanic, sandy and light?
