MEDIEVAL FOOD, DRINK, COOKERY

Food and Drink - Great Place to Start
Ale and Brewing in the Medieval Times (Medieval/Renaissance Brewing Homepage)

If you're an Ale drinker or simply interested in its history, this site provides it all. Ale... the drink of choice in England throughout the medieval period. "Since ale was basic to the diet of ordinary people, each household required a large and steady supply; a household of five people might require about 1 1/4 gallons a day, or about 8 3/4 gallons a week." Virtually everyone drank ale for nutritional purposes. Mead was another alcoholic beverage made by the fermentation of honey and water. By varying the proportions of honey and water and the point at which fermentation is stopped, a wide variety of types can be produced ranging from a very dry and light, to sweet and heavy-bodied.Until the late middle ages meads were highly popular beverages. The guilds controlled all aspects of the trade and productionof ale, mead and only toward the end of the 16th-century wines. Recipes, articles, newsletters, biographies, and even a mailing list for Ale connoisseurs. "

A Boke of Gode Cookery

"Medieval cooking was not, as is so easily assumed today, a dubious practice that produced inedible dishes filled with strange spices and dangerous ingredients. Medieval cooks used many of the same type of foodstuffs that are in use today, in addition to forms of food preparation that would be familar to any of us. The dishes and recipes they prepared were neither inedible nor dangerous, but extremely delicious and tasty products that employed the finest meats, grains, fruits, and vegetables . . . Then as now, mankind knew what tasted good, and the sauces, stews, pies, roasts, and soups that satisfied the 14th c. family are just as wholesome and enjoyable today." Awesome, award-winning page with Medieval and other historical [unusual] recipes. Especially good because recipes have been adapted for modern times. Everything from beverages to desserts. Explains Four Humour food philosophy. Chaucerian relations to foods with a glossary of where foods are found in The Canterbury Tales."

Cooking Glossary

Savory selection of over 70 entries pertaining to Medieval cooking and food preparation. Provides insight into medieval food practices. Includes enticing descriptions of herbs, spices and other Medieval delicacies.

Dining in State: A High Cuisine Guide

Wonderful site. Information obtained from actual Middle Ages cook books! Interesting and thoughtful, contains insights as to how each class ate, how food was obtained, prepared, and served. Order of courses served in the king's presence. Medieval etiquette, with such taboos as scratching your head at the table!

Food in the Castle

"Eating was one of the castle dweller's most popular pastimes, for not only did food provide needed sustenance, it was a means of entertainment. In particular, the banquet was used to impress a lord's guests with his generosity and his wealth. Robert Dudley's 19-day festival of fun and feasting in honor of Queen Elizabeth is perhaps the most notorious of all, and the masses of food consumed are staggering by our modern, weight-conscious standard."  Read on.

Food, Drink and Cookery in Medieval Society

"The Food Heritage Press is your first stop on the internet for scholarly works on food and culinary topics during the Middle Ages." Online bookseller with links to pages on medieval cooking. Virtual handbook of food taken from Platina's original manuscript.

Medieval/Renaissance Food Homepage

"How to Pig Out With 130 of Your Closest Friends; Robbing Peter to Pay Paul: Halving Feast Costs; Camping Without a Cooler; and A Hitchhiker's Guide to Ancient Cookery" -- where else would you find information like this?? From the Renaissance Food Bibliography to a variety of articles and publications of this era. Also includes individual recipes.

WOMEN,  MEN, MARRIAGE, CHILDREN IN THE MIDDLE PERIOD

The Enduring Popularity of Courtly Love

"Lauded by nobility and idolized by troubadours, the ideal of "pure" love (which included strongly self-deprecating behavior and servitude by a man for a distant, unattainable woman) was a driving force throughout high period of medieval love literature. From 1100 to 1300, the language of lady love prevailed in the courts of England and Europe. " Read about this interesting "concept of romantic love rising to a higher plane and transforming the life of the giver for the sake of the receiver."

ANGLO-SAXON WOMEN: MORE THAN "FRITHUWEBBAS"

" As Christine Fell, author of Women in Anglo-Saxon England, astutely points out, we cannot assume that Anglo- Saxon England was a uniform, unchanging society from its inception in the fifth century to its demise in 1066. The laws of different time periods and areas varied greatly, and nowhere is this more true than in the case of laws pertaining to women. Yet laws concerning the rights of women were in existence from the beginning of the Anglo-Saxon period, and it is on the basis of these sometimes widely varying laws that we know something about the status of women in Anglo-Saxon England."  Excellent article.

Brothels, Baths and Babes - Prostitution in the Byzantine Holy Land

Free prostitution, institutionalized prostitution, brothels, regulation, actresses, the poor, recruiting, syphillis, sin, contraception.  " As a result of a chain of false logic, sexual repression dictated by the Church Fathers led to eroticism per se at the hands of prostitutes. Whilst controlled procreative sexuality was kept harnessed at home, pleasure blossomed amongst the harlots. The Midrash Genesis Rabbah (23.2) explained that at the time of the Great Flood, a man used to marry two women, one to bear him children, and another for sexual intercourse only. The latter took a 'cup of roots' to render herself sterile and was accustomed to keep company with him dressed like a mistress. Is this not reminiscent of Apollodoros' triad amputated of the pallake - the concubine? Had values therefore not changed despite the advent of Judaeo-Christian civilisation?

In fact, values had changed, but in this particular context for the worse. Frankness had given way to prudish dishonesty displayed both by Rabbinic Judaism and Patristic Christianity. Such puritanism is surely to blame for the proliferation of Byzantine prostitution and in its trail the increase in numbers of abandoned children. The bad faith shared by Augustine and Jerome on the matter of prostitution encouraged prostitution in exactly the same way that the Victorian brothel was, according to Michel Foucault, the offshoot of bourgeois puritanism."  Excellent article.

Dominion and Domination of the Gentle Sex: The Lives of Medieval Women - SPECIAL SITE

"They were wives and writers, lovers and soldiers, mothers and midwives, scientists and traders. The day-to-day lives of medieval women of all classes and callings are often glossed over in modern history courses in favor of sequences of events."

Hildegard von Bingen

At a time when few women wrote, Hildegard produced major works of theology and visionary writings. When few women were accorded respect, she was consulted by and advised bishops, popes, and kings. She used the curative powers of natural objects for healing, and wrote treatises about natural history and medicinal uses of plants, animals, trees and stones. She is the first composer whose biography is known. She founded a vibrant convent, where her musical plays were performed.

The Life and Works of Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179)

Rich and exuberant, the life of Hildegard von Bingen, the eminent 12th century scholar. The power of her presence permeates each web page. Visionary, mystic, poet, musician naturalist, healer, theologian - the Rhineland nun. Genuine renaissance woman long before there was a renaissance. Hildegard's immense contributions included books, herbal cures, poetry as well as innovative chants.

Convents in the Middle Ages

Brief article.

Homosexuality in the Viking Age

"The Viking Age shows clearly that the Vikings had words (and therefore mental constructs and concepts) of same-sex activity.  However since the needs of agricultural/pastoral living require reproduction not only to work the farm but also to provide support for the parent in old age, it was expected that no matter what one's affectional preferences were that each individual would marry and reproduce." How was homosexuality viewed in the Viking Age? Norse terminology, laws, cultural practices of homosexual acts, lesbianism, literature regarding Norse insults, pre- and post Christian attitudes, "manliness" hierarchies.

Isabella d' Este (1473-1539, Patroness)

True heroine of the Renaissance. Brief introduction to vibrant and alluring Isabella d' Este. Isabella's accomplishments as a musician expressed through her utilization of the writings of Plato and Aristotle to shape her musical knowledge and composition.  These preferences may have contributed to the creation of the viola Artist sketch of Isabella.

MANTOVA Isabella d' Este

Renaissance women were to marry properly, be a proper wife to their husbands and provide proper male heirs. Many of these renaissance women were not refined or cultured, but Isabella d'Este was not one of these women. Brief narrative regarding Isabella and her patronage of the arts, including her impact on poets, artists and musicians. Promotion of her many new ideas regarding the traditional role of women are among her significant accomplishments.

Margery Kempe (ca.1373-1438)

One of the earliest autobiographies in English literature was that of Margery Kempe, religious mystic. Daughter of a mayor of Lynn, she married John Kempe in 1393 and bore 14 children before beginning a series of pilgrimages to Jerusalem, Rome, Germany, and Spain in 1414. Illiterate, she dictated her autobiography to scribes. "Famous" for her hysterical crying during church services and her contemporary use of language to describe her ecstatic and intimate visions. Quite a character! Life, book exerpts, articles, resources. Good music!

Medieval Domestic Life

Wonderful essays on: Life in a Medieval Castle, Christmas, Eleanor and the Arabs, The ABCs of Aristotle, Medieval Humanism, Marriage, Courtly Love, Family, Clothing, Brewing History and Recipes, May Day, Domestic Violence, Medieval Management, Rape in the Middle Ages, Women's Contact With the Outside World, Illicite Trade, Medieval Thoughts on Sleeping, Advice on Preserving Health, Feasts, Courtly Love and Prostitutes, Clothing, Games Played in Medieval London, Sexual Initiation, Maids, Education of Women, Dowry of the 12th Century, Marriage Ceremony, Personal Autonomy, Contraceptive Methods, Wet Nurses, Heresy, Prostitutes in the Middle Ages, Whores II, Vows, Manners, Vassals.

Medieval and Renaissance Weddings - Extensive, Fascinating, Tour-de-Force````````````````

Medieval Women

Range of links to medieval women. Individual lives, women rulers, general resources.

Notions of Gender in the Middle Ages: Myth vs. Reality

"What was the predominant image of women and women's place in medieval society? A rather sexist or misogynistic view--by twentieth century standards of course--was prevalent among learned clerics. The writings of the theologian Thomas Aquinas typify this view. But although the religious of Europe's abbeys and universities dominate the written record of the period, Thomistic sexism was not the only view of women's proper role."  Fascinating research study:  " Any 20th century ideas of wholesale female oppression in the middle ages are relativist "myths" which serve to glamorize the modern period rather than describe historical reality."

The Use of Power and Influence - by a Medieval Woman

"Discovering the life of a medieval woman can be a lot tougher than tracing that of a man. There are fewer resources available for us to trace a medieval woman's way of life as opposed to that of a man with equal station at the time. Manorial Court Rolls do not show, as example, a woman's private influence over her husband, only the legal matters involved in the case. This leaves little room for individuality. It is however, a view focused on essential activities. In addition, illiteracy was common among the peasants so there aren't many diaries or memoirs to use as a resource for the daily life of the peasant woman. . . . We may not necessarily like some of her avenues but they were very necessary at the time in order for a woman to at least have her own personal opinions and designs come into reality. She was restricted but not as oppressed as movies and many romantic fiction novels would have us believe. Medieval women were very similar to the women of today, looking out for the interests of her family and working to have a voice in her society."  Splendid research.

Women of Note in Medieval History

A small but growing collection of individuals from the Middle Ages and Renaissance .  Offers a brief description of who each historic woman was and what she accomplished as well as useful websites, books, related online resources, and more.

Women of the Middle Ages who changed history - 901-1000

The Song of Roland - Full Site

Women Artists in the Middle Ages

Good list. Although there were many significant women artists in the MA,  "Much of the works completed by Medieval women have not even been descovered yet. Because of their name changes due to marriage and the delilberate disappearance of their signatures on works by pompous men, much of their recognition goes unclaimed. This is such a shame. Because of such barriers, finding information on women artists in the Middle Ages can be quite a task. They did not even achieve major international reputations until the mid-sixteenth century."  Here are Slides. And here is another good summary.

Women Knights in the Middle Ages

"Were there women knights in the Middle Ages? Initially I thought not, but further research yielded surprising answers. There were two ways anyone could be a knight: by holding land under a knight's fee, or by being made a knight or inducted into an order of knighthood. There are examples of both cases for women."

Women Writers of the Middle Ages

"I do not permit a women to teach, for four reasons. The first is her  lack of intelligence which women have in smaller quantity than men; the second is the subjection imposed upon her; the third the fact that, if she does preach, her appearance will provoke lust...; and the fourth because of the memory of the first women who...taught but once and turned the whole world upside down." For a look at what would be covered in a course of this nature, look here.