Manners, Customs, and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance - The Original Classic Edition. Lacroix Paul

up to the age of fifty kept the parish school; but changing his first trade he has become a wine-grower. However, he cannot resist the feast days, when he brings us his old books, and reads to us as long as we choose, such works as the 'Calondrier des Bergers,' 'Fables d'Esope,' 'Le Roman de la Rose,' 'Matheolus,' 'Alain Chartier,' 'Les Vigiles du feu Roy Charles,' 'Les deux Grebans,' and others. Neither, with his old habit of warbling, can he help singing on Sundays in the choir; and he is called Huguet. The other sitting near him, looking over his shoulder into his book, and wearing a sealskin belt with a yellow buckle, is another rich peasant of the village, not a bad villain, named Lubin, who also lives at home, and is called the little old man of the neighbourhood." After this artistic sketch, the author dilates on the goodman Anselme. He says: "This good man possessed a moderate amount of knowledge, was a goodish grammarian, a musician, somewhat of a sophist, and rather given to picking holes in others." Some of Anselme's conversation is also given, and after beginning by describing in glowing terms the bygone days which 126

       he and his contemporaries had seen, and which he stated to be very different to the present, he goes on to say, "I must own, my good old friends, that I look back with pleasure on our young days; at all events the mode of doing things in those days was very superior and better in

       every way to that of the present.... O happy days! O fortunate times when our fathers and grandfathers, whom may God absolve, were still among us!" As he said this, he would raise the rim of his hat. He contented himself

       as to dress with a good coat of thick wool, well lined according to the fashion; and for feast days and other important occasions, one of thick cloth, lined with some old gabardine.

       [Illustration: Fig. 70.--The Shepherds celebrating the Birth of the Messiah by Songs and Dances.--Fifteenth Century.--Fac-simile of an Engraving on Wood, from a Book of Hours, printed by Anthony Verard.]

       "So we see," says M. Le Roux de Lincy, "at the end of the fifteenth century that the old peasants complained of the changes in the village customs, and of the luxury which every one wished to display in his furniture or apparel. On this point it seems that there has been little

       or no change. We read that, from the time of Homer down to that of the excellent author of 'Rustic Discourses,' and even later, the old people found fault with the manners of the present generation and extolled those of their forefathers, which they themselves had criticized in their own youth."

       [Illustration: Fig. 71.--Purse or Leather Bag, with Knife or Dagger of the

       Fifteenth Century.]

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       Food and Cookery.

       History of Bread.--Vegetables and Plants used in

       Cooking.--Fruits.--Butchers' Meat.--Poultry, Game.--Milk, Butter, Cheese, and Eggs.--Fish and Shellfish.--Beverages, Beer, Cider, Wine, Sweet Wine, Refreshing Drinks, Brandy.--Cookery.--Soups, Boiled Food, Pies, Stews, Salads, Roasts, Grills.--Seasoning, Truffles, Sugar,

       Verjuice.--Sweets, Desserts, Pastry.--Meals and Feasts.--Rules of

       Serving at Table from the Fifteenth to the Sixteenth Centuries.

       "The private life of a people," says Legrand d'Aussy, who had studied that

       of the French from a gastronomic point of view only, "from the foundation of monarchy down to the eighteenth century, must, like that of mankind generally, commence with obtaining the first and most pressing of its requirements. Not satisfied with providing food for his support, man has endeavoured to add to his food something which pleased his taste. He does not wait to be hungry, but he anticipates that feeling, and aggravates it

       by condiments and seasonings. In a word his greediness has created on this score a very complicated and wide-spread science, which, amongst nations which are considered civilised, has become most important, and is designated the culinary art."

       At all times the people of every country have strained the nature of the soil on which they lived by forcing it to produce that which it seemed

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       destined ever to refuse them. Such food as human industry was unable to obtain from any particular soil or from any particular climate, commerce undertook to bring from the country which produced it. This caused Rabelais to say that the stomach was the father and master of industry.

       We will rapidly glance over the alimentary matters which our forefathers obtained from the animal and vegetable kingdom, and then trace the progress of culinary art, and examine the rules of feasts and such matters as belong to the epicurean customs of the Middle Ages.

       Aliments.

       Bread.--The Gauls, who principally inhabited deep and thick forests, fed on herbs and fruits, and particularly on acorns. It is even possible that the veneration in which they held the oak had no other origin. This primitive food continued in use, at least in times of famine, up to the eighth century, and we find in the regulations of St. Chrodegand that if,

       in consequence of a bad year, the acorn or beech-nut became scarce, it was the bishop's duty to provide something to make up for it. Eight centuries later, when RenA(c) du Bellay, Bishop of Mans, came to report to Francis I. the fearful poverty of his diocese, he informed the king that the

       inhabitants in many places were reduced to subsisting on acorn bread.

       [Illustration: Figs. 72 and 73.--Corn-threshing and

       Bread-making.--Miniatures from the Calendar of a Book of

       Hours.--Manuscript of the Sixteenth Century.]

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       In the earliest times bread was cooked under the embers. The use of ovens was introduced into Europe by the Romans, who had found them in Egypt. But, notwithstanding this importation, the old system of cooking was long after employed, for in the tenth century Raimbold, abbot of the monastery of St. Thierry, near Rheims, ordered in his will that on the day of his

       death bread cooked under the embers--_panes subcinericios_--should be given to his monks. By feudal law the lord was bound to bake the bread of his vassals, for which they were taxed, but the latter often preferred to

       cook their flour at home in the embers of their own hearths, rather than

       to carry it to the public oven.

       [Illustration: Fig. 74.--The Miller.--From an Engraving of the Sixteenth

       Century, by J. Amman.]

       It must be stated that the custom of leavening the dough by the addition of a ferment was not universally adopted amongst the ancients. For this reason, as the dough without leaven could only produce a heavy and indigestible bread, they were careful, in order to secure their loaves

       being thoroughly cooked, to make them very thin. These loaves served as plates for cutting up the other food upon, and when they thus became saturated with the sauce and gravy they were eaten as cakes. The use of