-
The Old Monk's Prayer
Wine
was a universal medicinal drink in the Middle Ages and at the
time the world's only known antiseptic.
It
was used to disinfect cuts. It was a favorite cure for sore
throats, and where hygiene was poor, preferred over water.
In
early monasteries, wine was a crude concoction, but an evil
necessity for celebrating the mass, and often evil-tasting.
The St.
Wandrille Abbey variety, for example, was a medieval synonym
for foul.
But as winemaking improved - in the able hands of the Benedictines
- a suspicion slowly fermented that monks perhaps were more
interested in celebration than in the mass. It
was a hot topic of discussion in village squares all over Europe,
and worldy friars as boozy, slovenly and gluttonous later became
a common theme in literature and tavern sing-alongs.
The friar
who "knew the tavernes wel in every town" was among those characters
Chaucer skewered in Canterbury Tales.
Friar
Tuck, another irrascible Franciscan and fictional companion
of Robin Hood, strayed far from the ways of St. Francis of Assisi.
And,
it took little imagination to see the origins from whence came
the legend of The Purple Abbot who loved wine
- not wisely, but all too well. As the story goes, his skin
would eventually turn the color of the grape...
To
drink like a Capuchin is to drink poorly,
To drink like a Benedictine is to drink deeply,
To drink like a Dominican is pot after pot,
But to drink like a Franciscan
Is to drink the cellar dry!
-
Old French Drinking Song