Medieval Table Manners: The Messiest Myth?

https://www.medievalists.net/2023/06/medieval-table-manners/

by BerislavLopac • 3 years ago

95 69 3 years ago

sethammons• 3 years ago

I had not heard of taking small enough bites that you can always respond to a conversation; that seems such a small amount that I must be the ape they abstain from being.

gostsamo5• 3 years ago

Well, if your liege ask you something, you should be able to reply immediately. It would be impolite to make them wait for you to end chewing. I remember in some of the musketeer books described how Portos had cut a big part of a boar while dining with the king and when the king asked him something, he had to swallow the entire piece.

eru4• 3 years ago

Did you mean to write 'liege'?

JoelMcCracken• 3 years ago

Huh, curious, I don't remember them ever dining with the king in the musketeer books.

wongarsu3• 3 years ago

I guess that depends on the standards. I can talk with about half my mouth full, but doing so would be considered impolite by today's standards. At about a quarter mouth full I can push it into my cheeks to talk mostly unimpeded.

bombcar• 3 years ago

Chipmonking is an important skill.

foobarian• 3 years ago

I was a bit surprised that a twelfth century source would refer to apes. Possibly the word meant something else first and was later used for big nonhuman primates?

UncleSlacky• 3 years ago

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ape#Name_and_terminology :

"Ape", from Old English apa, is a word of uncertain origin. The term has a history of rather imprecise usage—and of comedic or punning usage in the vernacular. Its earliest meaning was generally of any non-human anthropoid primate, as is still the case for its cognates in other Germanic languages.

KineticLensman• 3 years ago

I was a bit surprised that a twelfth century source would refer to apes.

The Roman empire extended into North Africa and they would absolutely have been aware of the wildlife. Hannibal actually launched an attack on the Romans that involved bringing war elephants across the Alps [0]. Subsequent readers of Roman authors would have known about the animals the Romans knew about, e.g. [1], which in turn made their way into medieval bestiaries (along with unicorns and a few others).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannibal%27s_crossing_of_the_A...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physiologus

libele• 3 years ago

https://bestiary.ca/beasts/beast148.htm

the gallery on this website has over 100 illustrations of apes... some from the 12th century.

r13a• 3 years ago

Medieval europeans were in direct contact with Barbary macaques. On top of African animals that were exchanged through Mediterranean sea since the Romans, Iberian populations, Christians, Muslim and Jewish had direct contact with macaques introduced by Maures.

The_Colonel2• 3 years ago

It says "A diner should not take so large a bite that he is completely unable to speak, if he were addressed." which seems very reasonable. I can speak while having a normal sized bite in mouth, although it's of course less than ideal and not polite these days. But sometimes useful for shorter utterances.

ricardobeat• 3 years ago

Isn’t it widely recorded that handwashing only came to be a norm mid-1800s? If doctors weren’t washing theirs at the time, I have a hard time believing peasants would be doing so in the 1200s.

sorokod• 3 years ago

They might be doing so as to not soil their clothes.

_ea1k• 3 years ago

Handwashing has a long history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handwashing_in_Judaism#:~:text...

wongarsu3• 3 years ago

It isn't unheard of. Jesus refused to wash his hands before eating in Mark 7:1-6, and some people were not happy about that:

The Pharisees and some of the scribes gathered to Him after they came from Jerusalem, and saw that some of His disciples were eating their bread with unholy hands, that is, unwashed. (For the Pharisees and all the other Jews do not eat unless they carefully wash their hands, thereby holding firmly to the tradition of the elders; and when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they completely cleanse themselves; and there are many other things which they have received as traditions to firmly hold, such as the washing of cups, pitchers, and copper pots.) And the Pharisees and the scribes asked Him, “Why do Your disciples not walk in accordance with the tradition of the elders, but eat their bread with unholy hands?” But He said to them, “Rightly did Isaiah prophesy about you hypocrites, as it is written:

caminante3• 3 years ago

In summary, Jesus got called out for not washing, and then switched to an ad hominem instead of acknowledging?

edit: See gjsman-1000's comment below for the missing context. It wasn't a shaming for lack of functional sanitation.

enkid2• 3 years ago

That's specifically about doctors washing their hands to prevent disease. Plenty of cultures had traditions of washing before that

oldgradstudent• 3 years ago

That's specifically about doctors washing their hands to prevent disease.

Not prevention of disease, but preventing its spread.

Doctors were a common transmission vector of infectious disease across history.

op00to2• 3 years ago

Jewish people have a long history of laws involving hand washing. I’d be surprised if most cultures at the time didn’t have rituals or laws around hand washing!

Ekaros• 3 years ago

I would guess there is varying levels of dirtiness. I think it is reasonable to expect people to clean their hands if they have things like soil or sooth on them. As those are slightly annoying to eat.

On other hand if your hands are relatively clean, I would not expect particular attention put in on cleaning them again.

balderdash• 3 years ago

I suspect one interpretation of washing your hands is simply with water to get the visible dirt of your hands - hardly anti-microbial

brokenkebaby• 3 years ago

Isn’t it widely recorded that handwashing only came to be a norm mid-1800s?

You're mixing up two completely different modes of washing. The one related to medicine in XIX is about washing hands in lime solution. Pop science magazines always miss this part to make it feel more sensational I guess.

Washing visibly dirty hands (e.g. with soil, grease, or blood), often using sand as an abrasive cleaner, and ashes to dissolve fat, or (depending on one's wealth) a real soap was a norm for a very long time before. [Edit: added the last para]

adrian_b4• 3 years ago

Actually exactly what was used for washing the hands and the body in the Ancient World is a bit of a mystery, I have never seen an adequate discussion of this.

In the Ancient World, at least from almost 4000 years ago, i.e. when the Epic of Gilgamesh was written, until less than 2000 years ago, by the time of Pliny the Elder, the main use of the vegetable oils, including of oils like sesame oil or olive oil, was not as food, but for body massage, preferably mixed with perfumes.

Starting with the Epic of Gilgamesh, but also in many later literary works, until in the early Roman Empire, the greatest pleasures for civilized people were described as eating bread, drinking beer or wine and being anointed with vegetable oil.

While it must have been pleasant to be smeared with oil, all good things come to an end. Greasy hands or greasy clothes are undesirable, so they must have had some means to wash the abundant oil from their bodies, at a time when they did not have soap.

The most likely method for removing the oil from the skin is that they have used lye made from plant ashes (i.e. potassium carbonate) or from mineral natron (sodium carbonate).

However, at least for a modern sensitive skin such harsh washing methods seem rather unpleasant, which seems inconsistent with the pleasure associated by the ancients with anointing.

adrian_b4• 3 years ago

Cato the Elder, writing about 2200 years ago, begins his recipe for making bread like this:

"Manus mortariumque bene lavato"

which means

"Wash well your hands and the bowl in which you will knead the dough!"

so the ancient Romans were well aware about the benefits of washing the hands, at least when preparing food.

retrac• 3 years ago

This is a common confusion with the ancients' lack of germ theory. It doesn't mean they weren't aware of the association between filth, excrement, and the concept of contamination or unhealthy influence. Miasma theory goes back to at least Hippocrates, and it was thought that bad smells could cause illness. That decay begets decay is obvious. They were just very fuzzy on the mechanism.

beebeepka• 3 years ago

Does medieval refer to one or two countries?

iamthemonster• 3 years ago

In the English-speaking world, "mediaeval" often ends up being a shorthand for "mediaeval English" in practice. The books references in this article are English.

The vast majority of the world's population was not in Western Europe in mediaeval times but Indian and Chinese history of this period for example is rarely taught or discussed in such a mainstream way.

spapas822• 3 years ago

An old greek proverb says "chicken and woman need a hand" (to eat the chicken and to pleasure the woman)

geewee2• 3 years ago

Can you cite a source for that? Googling it only comes up with this particular comment.

SapporoChris• 3 years ago

I translated it to Greek and then searched. Not a great source, but a source. https://www.lexilogia.gr/threads/t%CE%BF-%CF%88%CE%AC%CF%81%... "The saying goes «το ψάρι, το κοτόπουλο και η γυναίκα θέλουν χέρι», i.e. "you should use your hand for fish, chicken and women". It is usually used as a joke, in a familiar environment, in order to urge someone, usually a man, who is reluctant to use their hands to eat fish or chicken, and stick to using their knife and fork, because they are embarrassed to eat with their hands.

An attempt at a definition: "you can't eat fish and chicken unless you grab them with your hand, and you should also use your hands on (your) woman". It is a play with the phrase "βάζω χέρι", which means to grope, to feel up. Not very politically correct, I know :)"

goda90• 3 years ago

I think this is more of a joke that has moved through a bunch of cultures. In Chile, when I started to use silverware on chicken, I was told(with a laugh) the only things they eat with their hands there is chicken and women.

Of course that excludes all the things they eat on bread.

pbjtime• 3 years ago

The author implies that because there are presently certain social customs that it is logical to presume that these customs are inherent to the human condition.

It is not logical to presume so.

ycombinete• 3 years ago

This article felt like a strange place to see the idiom “on the regular”.

Medieval Table Manners: The Messiest Myth?

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