IMC 2011: Sessions
Session 722: The Rich Man's Feast and the Poor Man's Fare: Multidisciplinary Approaches to Food and Nutritional Health in the Middle Ages, III - Feasting and Fasting
Tuesday 12 July 2011, 14.15-15.45
| Sponsor: | Wellcome Trust / Medica: Society for the Study of Healing in the Middle Ages |
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| Organiser: | Iona McCleery, Institute for Medieval Studies / School of History, University of Leeds |
| Moderator/Chair: | Chris Woolgar, Department of History / Centre for Medieval & Renaissance Culture, University of Southampton |
| Paper 722-a | Eating Like a King, a Saint, or a Horse: Food and Status in Anglo-Saxon England (Language: English) Index terms: Daily Life, Language and Literature - Old English, Medicine, Social History |
| Paper 722-b | Food for the Body, Sustenance for the Soul: A Stable Isotope Investigation of Diet at the Early Medieval Monastery at Tarbat, Scotland (Language: English) Index terms: Archaeology - Sites, Daily Life, Medicine, Monasticism |
| Paper 722-c | From Simnel to Horsebread: The Regulation of Bread for the Rich and Poor in Late Medieval England (Language: English) Index terms: Daily Life, Economics - Urban, Law, Medicine |
| Abstract | Medieval food was intrinsically associated with social status but is it possible to demonstrate this in a more nuanced way by looking beyond the traditional method of analysing recipes, which are usually just for elite society. These three papers use human skeletons, assize hearings, literary works, and food rents to provide insight on eating behaviours in a variety of different time periods across the British Isles. Monastic communities and royal courts followed distinctive seasonal patterns in their diet, fasting, and feasting at particular times, but at all times both rich and poor relied on bread, the quality of which was strictly controlled by law in the late Middle Ages. |