Eat Medieval: Food in Religious Houses
British Library, Harley 5451, f.6v
All photos courtesy of the British Library. London, British Library, Royal MS 10 E IV, ff.108r, 163v, 145v, 162v.
During the medieval period – however which way you slice the dates – religion was a large part of daily life. For some, such as monks, nuns, canons, and canonesses, religion WAS their life, as they lived, worked and prayed within the walls of a religious house. Their lives were dictated by various sets of rules based on religious books and the teachings of monastic leaders. Those under monasticism were told when to pray, how to pray, what to read, and even what to eat. These rules were not to be taken lightly, for if you broke one, you were not only letting down St Benedict, you were also potentially letting down God.
According to Gerald of Wales visiting Christ Church, Canterbury in c. 1179, the beer in Kent was quite good, yet no one was drinking it due to the copious amounts of wine, cider, claret, must, mead, pyment, and mulberry wine already available on that Trinity Sunday. As an important guest of the Benedictine monastery, Gerald was seated at the high table in the refectory with the prior and senior monks and received the most sumptuous of the meal offerings; indeed, he lost count of the number of dishes served after plate sixteen.
British Library, Harley MS 1585, f.57r
Gerald’s experience at Canterbury is not exactly what was envisioned by Saint Benedict when he wrote down his monastic rule in c. 530. Saint Benedict was a proponent of monastic asceticism and wrote his Rule to express how he believed a monastery under an abbot (or abbess) should function. He states that monks should receive two cooked dishes per day, with an optional fruit or vegetable dish if seasonable, with a pound of bread and approximately half pint of wine per person. Meat from a quadruped was fully disallowed.