CHAPTER VMONASTIC DIET
ONE of the commonest and cheapest ways of abusing the religious, and bringing monastic life into contempt, has always been to depict the monk, and sometimes the nun, as usually given up to extravagant living in the satisfying of the appetite for food and drink. The coarse ballad of older times flung such charges broadcast, and today the tenors and basses of high-class concerts continue to sustain popular delusions by songs of “Simon the Cellarer” stamp. Moreover, the modern poster and smaller advertisements appear to think that nothing tends so much to increase the sale of wines and spirits as the often cleverly rendered pictures of jovial monks tippling beer or sampling vintages amid impossible surroundings.
The Devil, naturally enough, was ever ready specially to tempt the monk, vowed to a limited dietary, to gluttony and drunkenness, and to do his work on insidious and gradual lines. Now and again, in some very rare cases, he succeeded; andoccasionally a corrupt superior infected for a time his flock until sharply pulled up by a visitation. Such cases, though severely punished, could seldom be kept secret, and the worldling, whose own conduct was rebuked by the generally high level of the religious life, took an evil pleasure in retailing and exaggerating the news. But on the whole, in days when there was much proneness to coarse sins even among those of high position, the vowed religious of England led exemplary lives, and occupied a decidedly higher plane than the secular clergy. We do not take the rest of our history from scurrilous writers of either prose or verse; the student who attempted to do this would be laughed out of court; it is merely the innate and perpetual hatred of the world for Christ that has made many an historian, or writer of historical sketches, so ready to turn aside from any patient study of the lives of those who tried specially to deny themselves for the Master’s sake, and to accept cynical sneers in the place of sober facts.
Perhaps a few plain statements with regard to the eating and drinking of England’s religious may tend to dispel views that are far too common even among those who have no desire unfairly to belittle the cloistered life. A diet roll for the year 1492 that has been printedin extenso, and was fully analysed by Dean Kitchin, yields interesting results as to the fare at a large Benedictine house in the days when they certainly fared better than in earlier periods. On Monday before Christmas Day therewere placed on the refectory tables of St. Swithun’s for general consumption at the two meals, dishes of moile made from marrow and grated bread, tripe, beef, mutton, calves-feet, and 170 eggs. The cost of this food was 8s.4d., or about £4 of our money. On Christmas Day the fare was only a very little better, and cost 9s.6d.; the dishes were seasoned vegetables, tripe, brose or bread soaked in dripping, beef, mutton, and stew or onion broth. On days of strict fast their fare that year was salt fish, relieved by dried figs or raisins as an extra, and mustard. “The charge for mustard, 1½d.,” says Dean Kitchin, “runs through all the fast days; it would appear that during the time of a meagre indigestible fish diet the brethren needed something to warm and stay their poor stomachs.”
One or two remarks are necessary for the due understanding of Benedictine diet-rolls, of which several are extant besides those of Winchester. Although there were a variety of dishes, it was usual, save on feast days, for the monk to partake of only one dish, though the old as well as those in the infirmary were often allowed a pittance, or something extra. The general method of serving was for two dishes to be handed to or placed in reach of each; “if anyone cannot eat of one dish let him eat of the other, if of neither they shall bring him something else so long as it is not a delicacy.” The great quantity of eggs used—eggs not being permitted as an addition to but instead of meat—seems to prove that even in the somewhateasy-going house of St. Swithun, towards the end of its days, the large majority of the professed monks did not follow a flesh dietary but only those who were dispensed. No. 39 of the old Benedictine rule strictly forbade flesh of quadrupeds or of birds except to those who were genuinely weak or ill (omnino debiles et egrotes); but this rule was afterwards relaxed by general councils of the order.
A homely touch occurs in the refectory custumal of the monks of St. Swithun’s, Winchester. The convent gardener had to find apples as a slight relief to the severe fare of Advent and Lent on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, save when some festival intervened. The apples were distributed in numerical accordance, with due gradation, to the monks in official position. It is to be hoped that they were permitted to distribute the fruit within or without the house! The prior, if present, had fifteen of the apples, the second prior ten, the third prior eight, and so on with the rest of the obedientiaries or officials. In recognition of his trouble in this respect the gardener was to receive a conventual loaf on the first and last days of each of these festivals.
In the same house cheese was provided daily in the refectory both at dinner and supper, from Easter until Lent began. Butter was supplied after a very limited fashion, namely on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and that only from May 1st to September 14th.
The three reformed congregations of Benedictines,Carthusians, Cluniacs, and Cistercians, all made a point of more rigid observance of the dietary rule. The Carthusians adhered to the absolute and perpetual refusal of every kind of flesh-meat right up to the dissolution; for them it was never lawful even in times of the gravest illness. The Cistercians, whose abbeys were so frequent throughout England, were in the first instance rigid in prohibiting flesh save in the infirmary. Their strictness in this respect in England for some time after their establishment is well illustrated by the following fact. In June 1246, the new conventual buildings of the great Hampshire monastery of Beaulieu were dedicated by the Bishop of Winchester at a function which was attended by the King and Queen and by a large assembly of the magnates of the realm. At the next visitation both prior and cellarer were deposed from their offices because, even on a supreme occasion of this kind, they had broken the rule by serving secular visitors with flesh in the refectory. Early in the fifteenth century power to dispense from this rule was granted for a time to Cistercian superiors; but this worked badly, and in 1485 those who desired it (even if well in health) might have meat three days in the week—namely, Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, provided they took it in a separate chamber built for the purpose, usually termed themisericorde, and not in the refectory or fratry.
By some it was pleaded that the greater coldness of England, as compared with the rest ofChristendom, demanded a better diet; but this notion did not commend itself to Gilbert of Sempringham, the devout and yet very practical English founder of the essentially English order that bore his name. In the guest-houses of the Gilbertine foundations the canons were prohibited from ever eating or drinking with their guests, unless it was an Archbishop or Bishop; and as it was lawful to give obedience to a Bishop, if such a guest invited a canon to eat or drink, he might do so once or twice to avoid discourtesy. But even in the guest-houses no flesh was on any account to be served save for an Archbishop, Bishop, or Papal Legate, or in the case of real sickness. Supposing a Bishop required it, Gilbert laid down that none of his canons or lay-brothers were to prepare the meat, but the prelate’s own attendants, “for,” he adds, “in our houses nothing of the nature of flesh or blood ought ever to be eaten save by the sick, nor within the walls of the granges save by the sick and hired labourers.”
The remarkable series of obedientiary rolls of every kind pertaining to the great Benedictine priory of Durham, which have recently been printed for the Surtees’ Society in three volumes by Canon Fowler (1898-1901), throw remarkably full light on the dieting of monks in a great house whose funds were never lacking. The accounts are exceptionally complete for the year 1333-4. The cellarer’s roll contains each week’s expenditure for food. The roll begins with the week afterMartinmas, when the following were the cellarer’s purchases:—1000 herrings, 6s.9d.; a horse-load of whiting, 4s.; 7 salmon, plaice, and smelts, 4s.2d.; pork and veal, 9s.0½d.; 7 sucking pigs, 14 geese and 17 fowls, 7s.4½d.; wildfowl, 3s.; butter and honey, 10d.; 48 fowls, 8s.; and 700 eggs, 42s.6d.The following are the entries for the week that included Christmas Day:—8 horse-loads of whiting, 26s.9d.; 2 horse-loads of plaice, smelts, and lobsters, 17s.1d.; 2 turbots and 1 salmon, bought in the town, 6s.9d.; veal, 3s.2d.; 68 fowls for gifts, 5s.4d.; 10 ducks and wildfowl, 9s.9d.; 4 stone of cheese and 4 stone of butter, 7s.6d.; and 12 fowls, 2s.2d.There were no eggs bought in Christmas week, but in the following week 900 were purchased. Throughout the whole of Lent the weekly purchases were strictly confined to fish, not even eggs being allowed; the week before Lent 900 eggs were bought, and in Easter week 300. It may here be mentioned that the eggs purchased by the cellarer in the whole year amounted to 44,140. The purchases made in the second week in Lent were:—9 horse-loads of whiting, bought at the seaside and elsewhere, 43s.6½d.; 9 fresh salmon and 3 turbot, 26s.10d.; and 27 crabs, plaice, smelts, and mussels, 6s.7d.The third week’s purchases were:—1000 red herrings, bought at Newcastle, 9s.; 9 horse-loads of whiting, bought at the seaside and in the town, 55s.9d.; 2 salmon, 5s.2d.; 80 salt fish bought at Newcastle, 16s.6d.; and 140 salt mackerel and mussels, for the servants, 6s.7d.Lent was evidentlyrigorously kept, for twice during the great fast the prior entertained an earl and his household without any change in the fish diet. This monastery was certainly fortunate in being within easy distance of the best part of England’s fishing coast. The Durham monks and their retainers and guests could always procure a considerable variety of fish diet. During this particular year, in addition to the varieties already named, the cellarer was able to supply for the tables, whelks, kippers, cod, codling, trout, skate, sturgeon, eels, lamprey, fresh herrings, and porpoise.
There must have been a very moderate and occasional use of both cheese and butter; the year’s purchase of the former only amounted to 32 stone 2 lbs., and of the latter to 25 stone. Rice, which was imported in large quantities from the East, has been mentioned as a pittance at Winchester; on two occasions in the whole year it seems to have served as a delicacy for a few at Durham, for there are two entries of the purchase of 12 lbs. of rice.
When the number of mouths to be filled at this great monastery are considered, it is obvious that the weekly purchases of the cellarer, which averaged about £5 a week, must have been wholly inadequate for the bare support of life. It is therefore a relief to find that he had a well-stocked larder of salt flesh and fish to fall back upon. In this year William Hexham, the cellarer, had in the larder 202 “Marts” or Martinmas cattle, killed and salted for winter and subsequent consumption, some fromtheir own manors, and others bought at Darlington and elsewhere. A large stock of mutton, and occasionally lamb, beef, and pork, was also received at intervals from the manors, and now and again purchased, which was also salted down for larder purposes. Moreover, upwards of sixty barrels of herrings, and 1000 cod fish were bought to be salted as larder storage, as well as 205 dried fish (probably large cod) for the servants.
This seems a mighty store; but how many were there to support? The ideal number of monks for a large Benedictine establishment was seventy, but it was seldom realised. We know the exact numbers at Durham on various occasions; probably at this date it was sixty. Then there were the chaplains, the lay-brothers, the singing boys, the almonry boys, and a considerable number of paid servants of the house, as well as those of the priors’ lodgings, and of the great and roomy guest-house, and the monks’ infirmary. The cellarer had to provide food for all these, as well as for the large infirmary outside the gates, and to a considerable extent for a hospital in the town. Altogether, the mouths that had to be provided for (inclusive of guests of all ranks) may be safely estimated as averaging at least 250 a day. The great guest-house, with its courtly sets of apartments (the principal of which were termed the King’s chambers, the knights’ chambers, and the clerks’ chambers) were frequently filled, and this irrespective of humbler lodgings for middle-class folk and the poorer wayfarers.Moreover, “the releefe and almesse of the hole Convent was alwaies open and free, not onely to the poore of the citie of Durham, but to all the poore people of the countrie besides.”—(Rites of Durham.) During 1333-4, the King paid three visits to the priory, once accompanied by the Queen. The King’s justices tarried with the prior when visiting Durham; on one of these three occasions during this year they stayed at the monastery for four days, and on another for a whole week. During another whole week the prior entertained the members of his council; visits were also paid by bishops and earls, on one occasion by two bishops at the same time. The retinue of these distinguished visitors was always considerable. It may also be remembered, when thinking of the two hundred salted “marts” that found their way into the larder during the year, and the carcases of sheep bought for salting or occasionally for fresh use, that the cattle of those days were decidedly smaller than what are now seen in butchers’ shops, whilst the sheep resembled the small Welsh mutton.
It is no guess-work that the Durham cellarer provided all the necessary food for the hostelries and for the prior’s table, or even an assertion based upon the usual custom of Benedictine houses. It is testified to in extant rolls. For this year, 1333-4, Brother Robert de Middleham was hosteler, and his expenses show that he found—in addition to wine, of which more anon—nothing save diversespecial pittances for guests and for prior, sub-prior and their companions, at diverse special occasions, at the small cost of 21s.3d.; a pittance made to the convent in the refectory on the first Rogation Day at the price of 26s.; and a pittance of 11s.6d.provided for the chaplain who heard the confessions in Lent of the parishioners of St. Oswald’s. Everything else, even for kings, bishops, or earls, was provided by the cellarer; and we find at the end of his roll, under the headingEmpcio specierum, various small purchases of almonds, pepper, saffron, mace, cinnamon, sugar, rice, honey, figs, and raisins, of much of which it is expressly stated that it was for the prior’s table. In later days delicacies of confectionery were occasionally provided by the priory cooks or purchased, such as anise comfit, madryan, gobett reall, pinyonade, sugar-in-plate, chardecoyne, or geloffors, but always for the guests.
So far as the Durham rolls are concerned, a close study of them proves beyond doubt that the fare of these monks was (for the times in which they lived, when meat was plentifully enjoyed by the poorest) simple in quality, and moderate in quantity, and further, that the fasts were most carefully observed. Neither in amount nor in variety of food did the monks of Durham fare so well as the inmates of an average English work-house of the present day.
A recent most capable historical writer (Miss Bateson) has said: “At St. Albans the diet seems to have been very severe; it was an innovationthere in the thirteenth century to allow the sick in the infirmary to have meat. It is clear from the detailed custumals of Abingdon and Evesham that mutton and beef were not eaten in their refectories, but bacon was generally consumed, and all kinds of fat.”
The pittance was an occasional relief to the usual strict dietary in the way of some exceptional or extra food or delicacy. In some monasteries, as at Durham, it was customary for the chief officials or obedientiaries to give a pittance to the whole convent on some special festival. In not a few monasteries there were special endowments for certain pittances, usually of early origin. This is a matter of decided interest in connexion with monastic fare; for it shows that early benefactors were so impressed with the usual ascetic fare of the religious that they desired to secure for them an occasional alleviation. The word “pittance” has been by some, rather absurdly, derived frompicta, a small coin of Poitiers, imagining that it was originally a dole of that value; but almost every monastic roll with which we are acquainted spells itpietancia, and the true derivation comes frompietasand implies pity or commiseration. There are lists of provisions made for pittances both on flesh days and fish days at St. Albans in the second volume of the annals of that house in the Rolls Series. In some houses it happened that a fashion set in of giving lands or rents for pittances, and their very frequency, as lands increased in value,and the sternness of rules of dietary relaxed, became an embarrassment. In these circumstances the whole question of the pittances required rearrangement, for it would have been extravagant and luxurious to continue to use such funds according to the primary intention of the pious founders. In such cases the whole funds of this kind were sometimes put in the custody of a particular obedientiary who expended them in accordance with the decision of the chapter and visitor, and was himself termed the pittancer.
A good instance of this occurs in the later rolls of the abbey of St. Benet’s, Holme, many of which are at the Bodleian, and have never been published or printed. John Takylston was both prior and pittancer of this abbey at the beginning of Henry VIII.’s reign. His accounts for 1511-12 show that his total receipts as pittancer for that year were £9 17s.1½d., which would have been a monstrous sum to spend on extra fare. In genuine food-pittance the only expenditure was in providing figs and other fruit for the convent at a cost of 3s.4d., and in a sum of 12d.spent on peas and beans and butter, probably for some tasty dish of vegetables specially cooked, for peas and beans had for some time been considered only fit for cattle. The seven principal feasts of the year were brightened by a very moderate expenditure on wine; the total cost for the whole seven occasions was but 16s., and as the monks of St. Benet’s then numbered twenty-three, the individual consumption on each occasion,even if the wine was strictly confined to the professed monks, must have been diminutive. Three definite pittances, of early bequest, intended to provide an extra dish for each inmate, were at this time commuted for money payments, each monk receiving at different periods of the year the respective sums of 6d., 10d., and 12d., the abbot and prior both receiving double the amount. Small sums of money for each religious to provide personal necessaries, or to serve as pocket-money when on exterior service, were not unusually allowed in the later days of English monasticism. The considerable balance still left in the hands of this pittancer was used in a variety of ways towards the relief of the needs of the house. Thus the pittancer that year found his own clothes and the wages and clothes of his servant; made payments for collection of rents, for felling trees and making faggots for fuel, for mowing the grass of the cloister-garth; discharged the abbey’s share of 33s.due to the King as voted by Convocation, and the sum of 4s.as the abbey’s subsidy to the general chapter of the Benedictines; paid for the repairing of the glass windows of his own apartments, and the re-thatching it with reed; and had withal 3s.left to distribute in alms during Lent. Those who know the dreary swamps and general surroundings of St. Benet’s will not be surprised that early benefactors desired to fortify the inmates against damp and chills by the relief of a more generous diet; and we cannot but admire the self-restraint and wise economy thatdirected the superfluity of these pittances into other channels. The Benedictines, in their practical dealings with the benefactions of the piety or pity of former centuries, set an example which might with profit be followed by modern Charity Commissioners.
This brings us to the consideration of what the religious drank. It is scarcely necessary to say that the solace of tea, coffee, or cocoa was utterly unknown to the monks and nuns of Old England. Water as a regular beverage was almost equally unknown; home-brewed beer was the usual drink that accompanied every meal. Most of the religious formed no exception in this respect to the general rule. Beer-drinking was accepted in England as a matter of course, and when we learn occasionally of the limit allowed, it does not seem to err on the side of niggardliness. Number 40 of the old Benedictine rule laid down that aneminaof wine was to suffice for the day, save when extra labour or the heat of summer made more desirable, in which case it was left to the judgment of the Superior. Much discussion used to arise on the continent as to the true interpretation of anemina, and it was generally agreed that it meant about two-thirds of a pint of our liquid measure. But so rarely was wine used in England that this rule was but seldom required. Among the mitigations of the rule sanctioned by the Pope for the English province, as cited in the customary of St. Augustine’s, Canterbury, was the permission to drink“beer, which, as the rule mentions no particular measure, may be had daily as commons without any precise limit (in communi sine taxacione aliqua).” This does not, of course, mean unlimited beer, but that it was left to each house to regulate the quantity. The brewhouse was a general adjunct of the outer conventual buildings; in the larger houses beer was brewed in two qualities. The ordinary beer was very light. Pious Gilbert of Sempringham, in his minute regulations, could scarcely imagine a grosser or more awkward piece of carelessness on the part of the canons who supplied the temporal needs of the nuns than a failure in beer. In that portion of the Gilbertine rule that concerns itself with the provision of beer it is laid down that: “For the avoiding of scandal, if the nuns, having no beer, are obliged to drink water, it is only just that the masters of the house who provide the supplies shall share in their deprivation. Whenever the nuns, through the negligence or carelessness of the proctors, have to drink water, the four proctors are to associate themselves with them in their water-drinking, even if on a journey or absent from the house, unless across the seas.”
BUILDWAS ABBEYBUILDWAS ABBEY (Cistercian)
BUILDWAS ABBEY (Cistercian)
BUILDWAS ABBEY (Cistercian)
With regard to wine, irrespective of the much stricter dieted reformed congregations, the ordinary Benedictine monk or the regular canon but rarely tasted it, and only on special festivals or at times of illness. Gilbert of Sempringham enjoined on his canons never to take wine unless it was well watered. The higher class guests were responsible for the lion’s share in the consumption of wine at the larger monasteries. These houses served,inter alia, as inns,minusthe bills, for the magnates of the land, including royalty, when on their travels. For such visits they were usually well prepared. Those who study the itineraries of our kings as gained from the date places of public documents know how frequent was the entertainment of royalty within monastic precincts. Even in Northamptonshire, where there were several royal residences, kings sojourned with the Cistercians of Pipewell and the White Canons of Sulby, as well as with the lordly Benedictines of Peterborough.
The wine for entertaining guests was in the joint charge of the abbot or prior and the hosteler. In the already cited Durham hosteler’s account for 1333-4 there occurs an expenditure of 35s.10d.for sixty-five gallons of wine, bought for the prior’s lodgings, for the solar, and for the guests who attended at the time of audit. The practice of giving wine at the time of drawing up the accounts, when the bailiffs of different manors and other external officials attended, was usual. Even the pittancer of St. Benet’s expended 8d.in wine when his accounts were made. At Durham there were occasional large purchases of wine, intended to last for some considerable time, and there always appears to have been a good store. In 1299 nine casks of wine were bought at Hull and seven at Hartlepool and Newcastle at a cost, includingcarriage, of £36 7s.Just a century later the bursar bought fifty-two gallons of red wine for the prior for filling up a cask. When the Justices were entertained by the prior, certain special and more costly wines were generally set upon the guest table; thus in 1528-9, although £9 had been spent that year on ordinary red wine, the bursar bought malmsey and claret in the town, at a cost of 20s., on an occasion when the Justices and the Bishop happened to be among the prior’s guests. Wine was also offered to the confraters, or well-to-do lay associates of the house, when they were admitted to the confraternity, or when they visited the house. TheRites of Durhamexpressly says of the prior that “for ther better intertaynement he had evermore a hogsheade or two of wynes lying in a seller appertayninge to the halle to serve his geists withall.”
Wine was probably always on the prior’s board, and would be set before him when he dined in the refectory. Its use by the Durham monks at large was rare in occurrence, and then in most moderate quantities. A curious custom prevailed on St. Aidan’s Day (August 31st), when wine and pears were provided for the whole establishment; the usual amount was 900 pears and nine gallons of wine. The wine was of a cheap light character, for on one occasion, when the separate price of this pittance is given, the pears cost 2s.9d.and the nine gallons of wine only 6s.6d.In 1413 four gallons and a pint of wine were given to theconvent on the feast of the Purification, at a charge of 4s.1½d., entered in the almoner’s accounts. A small quantity of wine was usually given to the novices in the common room on the day of their profession.
The master of the conventual infirmary gave a pittance of spices and wine to those in his department of the monastery on St. Andrew’s Day; but he also regularly provided it for the sick and weakly in special cases. The quantity used for this purpose was but small; for several years in succession in the fifteenth century the infirmarian’s charge for wine only amounted to 5s.or 6s.; but perhaps this was the wine for the altar of the infirmary chapel, that for the sick coming from the cellarer’s stores.
The constant round of Masses in a religious house required a considerable supply of wine. Though sometimes a succession of sacrist rolls are found wherein there is no wine entry—in which cases the church wine would come from the common store—it is usual to find that the sacrist purchased specially for this purpose. At Durham, in the fifteenth century, this officer’s roll for many years contains the annual entry of a pipe of red wine for altar use. A pipe was 126 gallons, so that this works out at about three pints a day; from such a quantity as this, when the great number of altars and Celebrations are remembered, there could have been but little, if any, surplus. Henry III. granted charters to the great CistercianAbbey of Beaulieu, and four of the other large monasteries of the south of England, bestowing on each of them a yearly tun of wine, out of the prisage wine of Southampton, for sacramental purposes. The sacristan of St. Benet’s spent 26s.8d.on wine for the church in the very year that preceded the Dissolution.
About the most interesting wine entry in the whole of the voluminous accounts of Durham priory is one on the roll of Adam of Darlington, bursar, for the years 1355-6. Edward III. returned hastily from the north of France in November, 1355; for whilst he was invading France, the Scots invaded English territory and surprised Berwick. In January Edward, in his turn, invaded and ravaged Scotland and recovered Berwick. On his march to the north the priory sent forth one of their monks, William de Masham, to join the King, in charge of the sacred banner of St. Cuthbert, and with him he also took a pipe of wine. May we not conclude that this was intended for the relief of the wounded on the expected battle-fields?
The last monastic record relative to wine that shall be here named tells of the self-denial of the monks of St. Albans. At a time when funds were sorely needed for the rebuilding of the refectory and dormitory, the monks agreed to forego their allowance of wine on festivals altogether for fifteen years, the value to be added to the building fund.