Dispelling Some Myths: Dirty water? Drink beer!

For some reason it is often stated on popular television programmes that Mediæval Europeans drank lots of wine, ale or beer all day, every day because the local water was dirty or somehow fouled. Unfortunately for those repeating this myth, there is plenty of evidence that people regularly drank water. After all, what was the town, village or castle well for?

Water is a basic need for human survival, together with food and shelter. What is true today has been so since antiquity. In truth, very few civilisations have not been established near a source of clean water. The ancient Egyptians had the river Nile. The Assyrian and Babylonian Empires flourished between the rivers Euphrates and Tigris in Mesopotamia [1].

The Spartans had the Eurotas, while for the Romans it was the Tiber. Nearly all European capitals are founded on or near rivers. To name but three: Parisiennes have the Seine, Londoners the Thames, and Buda and Pest sitting on either bank of the mighty Danube became the Hungarian capital of Budapest.

Medieval cities and water supply  There was a very good reason why the Mediæval forerunners of these modern capitals were sited near a water supply. As the 15th-century architect Leon Battista Alberti noted: “a city required a large amount of water not only for drinking, but also for washing, for gardens, tanners and fullers, and drains, and in case of sudden outbreak of fire, the best should be reserved for drinking, and the remainder distributed according to need” [2].

The importance of drinking water is evidenced by the recorded efforts of local leaders to give people access to it. Writing in the 7th-/8th-century AD, the Benedictine monk, Bede noted that King Edwin of Northumbria, “established a benefit for his people in that in many places where clear springs or streams ran by well-used roads, where they were most frequented he ordered posts with bronze cups hung on them to be set up for the refreshment of travellers.” Scroll forward in time and it becomes clear that cities in Mediæval Europe were spending large amounts of money on creating and maintaining water supplies. In 1237, for example, the City of London acquired the springs of the Tyburn and built a small reservoir, a head of water, to help serve the city with a steady, free, flowing supply. Eight years later work began on the Great Conduit, a man-made underground channel that brought drinking water from the Tyburn to Cheapside in the City. Londoners were at liberty to draw water but even so wardens were appointed to stop them taking too much, the unpermitted taking or diversion, and to repair pipes. There are also records for the City noting the expenses related to maintaining and cleaning the Great Conduit. Yet despite this example, the myth of constant beer drinking persists.

Absence of evidence  There may be a simple explanation. There are few references to people drinking water in the surviving Mediæval letters and chronicles. Instead, such sources speak of drinking ale or wine. Perhaps water drinking was so mundane it was just not worth mentioning. If truth be told few historians in the past rarely recorded the ordinary things that would be familiar to their readers. Rather, they focused on relating the novel, different or strange. That Mediæval authors seldom wrote about a love of water, does not mean people avoided drinking it.

The benefits of drinking water from a good source are often noted in Mediæval medical texts and health manuals. There are numerous references to when one should drink water or add it to another drink. The 7th-century Byzantine physician, Paul of Aegina, for example wrote: “of all things water is of most use in every mode of regimen. It is necessary to know that the best water is devoid of quality as regards taste and smell, is most pleasant to drink, and pure to the sight; and when it passes through the praecordia [stomach] quickly, one cannot find a better drink” [2]. In a similar vein, the Regimen sanitatis Salernitanum [3] advises drinking from a cool spring was good for thirst but adds that rainwater was even better. The treatise does caution against drinking water during a meal to avoid its chilling effect on the stomach. Wine, it notes, should be preferred.

Being on bread and water  As well as medical texts, Mediæval religious manuscripts also mention provide further evidence of drinking water. Many of the saints, for example, are chronicled abstaining from drinking alcohol preferring water instead. Some of the more austere monastic communities advocated relying solely on water. Moreover, it became a standard practice throughout the Mediæval period for people to atone for their sins on a diet of bread and water. If said water was polluted, then it would be rather sadistic of the church to compel the penitent to risk illness or death. Rather, the idea of “bread and water” was clearly intended to limit those seeking repentance to a bland diet, but one sufficient to sustain life while discouraging further minor transgressions [4].

Ale or Water?  Water has always been the stuff of life. Access to good sources of clean water was prized and throughout history great efforts were undertaken to supply people with water not only for drinking but for washing, sewerage, firefighting and so on. People in the Middle Ages clearly understood that not all water was safe to drink. It was common knowledge that obtaining water from marshy areas or places of standing water was to be avoided. They also knew that, when making ale or beer, the boiling of the mash during the brewing process usefully killed any harmful bacteria in the water. Moreover, the mash gains nutrients from the barley and other ingredients, and the microorganisms can also produce vitamins as they ferment. For many people, therefore, the drinking of ale or beer was an excellent nutritional supplement.

So, it is true that people in Mediæval Europe drank large quantities of ale or beer during the day [5], but not necessarily for inebriation or because the water was unfit to drink. Rather beer drinking provided daily sustenance. Of course, where a water source was polluted, then it made perfect sense to consume ale or beer. But if water could be drawn from a good source, then people would commonly drink it. The myth it seems reveals more about our misunderstanding of the past. With more contemporary references to wine, ale and beer drinking than to water it would be easy to see how the “dirty water” idea might take hold. But people in the Mediæval period did drink water and, because it was such a normal and mundane thing to do, they, like us, simply did not boast about it.

Notes:

1. Literally “[land] between rivers” from the ancient Greek Μεσοποταμία which is formed by the root words μέσος (mesos, “middle”) and ποταμός (potamos, “river”).
2. “Did people drink water in the Middle Ages?”, Medievalist.net, retrieved April 17th, 2021.
3. The Regimen sanitatis Salernitanum is a Mediæval didactic poem believed to have been written in the 12th- or 13th-century. Even though the book bears the name of the famous mediæval medical school, the Schola Medica Salernitana, it is not certain if it originated there.
4. Chevalier, J., (2013), “The great Mediæval water myth”, Les Leftovers, retrieved April 17th, 2021.
5. In the 12th-century, the strength of ales and beers varied and were identified by marking with single, double or triple X’s. Lighter ales might be drunk earlier in the day and the heavier, stronger one later.
6. Marks, T., (2018), “A sip of history: ancient Egyptian beer”, The British Museum Blog, retrieved April 18th, 2021.

Dispelling Some Myths: Mediæval Peasants ate Bland Food

The first thing to note is that what people ate was heavily dependent on where they lived and at what time. For example, Europe covers a large area with many different countries and peoples living within its boundaries, and the Mediæval period in Europe lasted a long time, roughly ten centuries. Much as today trends in food came and went, and access to particular foods may have been restricted by a multitude of factors such as the climate affecting harvests, war and pestilence, trade links, cost and a person’s disposable wealth, religious observance, personal preference and so on.

New research  Much is known of the medieval dietary practices of the nobility and ecclesiastical institutions, but less about what foods the medieval peasantry consumed. A 2019 study by a team from the University of Bristol examined a range of historical documents and found that medieval peasants ate meat, fish, dairy products, fruit and vegetables. Before this study, there had been little direct evidence that this was the case.

Yet, even though we now have a better understanding of what Mediæval peasants and the poorer social classes ate, the notion persists that food was bland or tasteless. This is a myth, so what is the truth?

What did Mediæval peasants eat?  In some respects, the Mediæval diet was much healthier than ours today. There was little or no processed food and far less sugar. Bread remained a staple food for all, but what did Mediæval peasants actually eat? The University of Bristol team analysed food residues from the remains of cooking pots found at the small medieval village of West Cotton in Northamptonshire [1]. By identifying the lipids, fats, oils and natural waxes still present on the porous ceramics, the team found that stews (or pottages) of mutton and beef with vegetables such as cabbage and leek were a mainstay of the medieval peasant diet. The research also showed that dairy products, likely the “green cheeses” [2] known to be eaten by the peasantry, also played an important role in their diet.

A rural diet  It should be borne in mind that, unlike today, for most of the Mediæval period people did not live in towns and cities. While reliant on good harvests, a predominantly rural existence meant people could forage for wild fruits, nuts, fungi, plants and herbs. For those with a little piece of land, then homegrown produce was available. Cottage gardens were common but unlike today’s obsession with cultivating flowers, people would focus on growing vegetables and plants with useful culinary or medicinal properties. Unsurprisingly, herbaceous borders were for herbs!

Fish could be dried or salted, but fresh fish, like herring or mackerel, was popularly eaten by people living near the sea. Those living near rivers could eat freshwater fish such as eels, pike, perch, trout, sturgeon, roach, and salmon. Indeed, in the Mediæval period, English rivers had a plentiful supply of salmon making it a cheap source of food. So cheap in fact that some towns passed laws to limit the feeding of apprentices (trainees) with salmon to no more than three times a week. Today, the introduction of fish farms has made salmon more affordable, but it is still considered a luxury by many.

Farming was one way of providing meat, but unlike today meat remained a luxury unaffordable to the majority. For those who could, the rich and privileged, hunting game (deer, pheasant, rabbit and so on) was a popular pastime that added to their diet. But for those poorer folk who could, they might keep animals all year round. Cows, for example, could provide milk for producing cheese, while chickens could be reared for their eggs or for their meat. When they had the money a Mediæval peasant might buy some meat from the local market, while game animals, like rabbits, they could catch for themselves - but beware of being caught poaching (see right).

Added flavours  Herbs and plants such as parsley, rosemary, thyme, basil, garlic, chives and many others were, just as now, added to recipes to develop and improve flavour. Spices, however, were expensive and beyond the means of the ordinary Mediæval peasant.

The spice trade has a long and lucrative ancestry. Although there was an overland trade route across Asia, it was mainly by sea that the trade grew. Voyages from Roman Egypt to India, for example, soon brought vast quantities of aromatic spices to the markets of Greece and the Roman Empire. Roman trade with India continued for more than three hundred years and allowed exotic spices, such as black pepper, to be far more commonplace than in later centuries. As Roman influence waned, however, the trade in spices followed suit. A short-lived resurgence in the 5th-century AD did not prevent trade declining once more in the 6th-century.

The Arab traders, who had always been sailing directly to spice-producing lands, kept their albeit weakened hold on the spice trade in the post-Roman period and through the Middle Ages. But by the tenth century both Venice and Genoa had begun to prosper through their trade with the Levant. The bitter rivalry that developed between the two cities ended with Genoa's defeat and Venice securing a monopoly of trade in the Middle east for the next century. In so doing, the Venetians made vast sums of money by trading spices with buyer-distributors from northern and western Europe. Nonetheless, this trade did little to reduce the price and few ordinary folk could afford spices.

Bland and tasteless food  Today many of us have to hand a wide variety of spices from across the globe and we use them almost daily to flavour our meals. From that familiarity it is easy to see why, if Mediæval peasants lacked access to such spices, many might assume their food was bland and tasteless. But, as we have seen, this was far from the case. The Mediæval peasant had a well-rounded, healthy diet which, while dependent on good harvests, kept them properly nourished. Apart from bread, they ate stews (adding meat when it could be afforded), fish, a wide variety of fruit and vegetables, eggs, and dairy products. By adding herbs from their garden plots, their meals could be as flavoursome as ours.

Notes:

1. The pottery analysed covered a period of around 500 years during the Middle Ages.
2. In this instance the cheeses are not “green” by reason of colour but for its newness or under-ripened state. The whey has not fully pressed out of it and the cheese has not been thoroughly dried nor aged. “Green cheese”, therefore, is typically white in colour and usually round in shape.

A Brief History of Foods: Roman Wines

It may be reassuring to know that the wine gods continue to flourish.  While many narcotics are now illegal, the Roman god of wine Bacchus [1] must be revelling in our continued love of alcohol.  Of course, depending on which piece of research you read, the medical world has categorized wine as either a dangerous substance or, in small amounts, as beneficial to your health.  Such contradictions intrigued Pliny (the younger) who was amazed by the efforts that went into wine production when its effects were so questionable:

"If we consider the matter carefully, no area of human life is so laborious [as wine production], as though nature had not given us the healthiest of drinks, water, which all animals drink, apart from the fact that we even make our beasts of burden drink wine.  So much work, so much toil, so much money is put into wine, and this despite that it prevents the mind and leads to madness.  It is the cause of many crimes, and yet it is considered so attractive that much of mankind can see no other reason for living..” (Pliny, Natural History, XIC-137).

Pliny’s disapproval of wine consumption did not prevent him writing many books about its production, which had become essential to Roman agriculture.  In climates where the vine would not grow, the land was deemed habitable only for barbarians.  The borders of the Empire, to the north and south, mirror the limits of vine growing in the Roman period.

As is the method today, Romans harvested and crushed the grapes before beginning the first fermentation in a large open vat, where the grapes (referred to as "must') remained anywhere from a few days to a few weeks.  Then additives might be combined in the must. 

The Romans stored the mix in wide clay vessels and buried them in the ground to maintain a constant temperature.  The process of maturing wine in wooden barrels was a Celtic practice rather than Roman.  Sweeter than wine, some of the must was boiled down to produce a syrup, the basis of many sauces which could be used to sweeten wine.  In the cooking process, Roman chefs, unlike their modern counterparts, used wine already reduced.

While the wine was maturing, it was regularly checked to gauge its progress and to remove detrimental fungi.  The wine would be ready to drink after a year or more of such preparation, but before transferring it to amphorae, it was sometimes filtered.  As with modern methods, the wine would continue maturing in the amphorae; the longer the better.  It seems the Romans enjoyed aged wines considering them more delicious than young ones.  Moreover maturity was thought to be positively healthy with such wines supposedly strengthening the individual, improving the circulation of their blood while giving it a deep red colour, aiding their digestion and ensuring a good night's sleep.

Nowadays few wines are drinkable beyond twenty years old; and their last years are not exactly their finest.  Aware of this, the price of Roman wine rose significantly until the twentieth year after which it began to decline.  There are, however, frequent accounts of thirty year and even older wines.  Did the Romans therefore make longer lasting wines than we do?  Perhaps so, especially given that short term profit may have been less of an issue for Romans than now.  It is equally possible the Romans enjoyed mature flavours that today we would find overpowering.  If so, it might explain Pliny’s description of a famous vintage from classical antiquity of 121 BC, named for that year’s Consul, Opimius, which was still available to drink in Pliny’s time (AD 61 - AD 113).

The Romans distinguished between sweet and dry wines, with Pliny identifying four distinct colours:

Albus: a light white wine similar to a Moselle.

Fulvius: a golden yellow wine like a heavy Sauterne or a dessert wine.

Sanguineus: a blood red wine comparable with most young red wines of today.

Niger: a very dark red aged wine, almost black in colour hence its name.

Typing wines by their colour is difficult because colours are mentioned intermittently in the literary sources.  When wines are named, the sole reference is usually to the place of origin. 

For example, when Apicius mentions wine, he makes no comment as to type, frequently writing simply “wine” or, on one occasion, “old wine”.  We tend to think of red and white wine as two different forms of drink with quite different culinary properties.  In contrast, Apicius makes no obvious distinction and we are left guessing as to his intention.  One Apician recipe, for example, notes wine added to a “white sauce” from which one might infer a white wine is needed.  On another occasion, Apicius writes: “add wine to colour”, which one might reasonably assume to mean use a red wine, but we cannot be certain without experimentation.

The number of vine varieties was innumerable and, consequently, the same was true of the resulting wines produced.  From surviving sources, a few notable wines include:

Albanum, of which there were two kinds, sweet and dry.  This wine, from the Alban hills, was matured for fifteen years, and the Roman authors Athenaeus, Horace, Pliny, Martial and Columella all praise its excellent quality.

Calenum which, according to the poet Ovid (IV-xii-14), was a favourite wine of the patrician class, lighter than Falernum.

Falernum [2] itself was one of the most famous wines of antiquity being frequently mentioned in contemporary literature.  It was drunk after ageing for ten to twenty years; any older and it reportedly gave the drinker a headache.  Falernum could be either white or rosé.

Fundanum was a strong white wine that could intoxicate quickly.  According to the poet Martial, this wine existed in the time of Consul Opimius (Martial, XIII-113).

Massilitanum was a cheap but heavy smoked wine that, according to the physician Galen was healthy and delicious.  Martial, however, thought it disgusting and recommended giving it to beggars to poison them (Martial, XIII-123).

Nomentanum was a mediocre wine that, again according to Martial, one should give to friends and was only drinkable at five years old (Martial, XIII-19).

Opimanum was not a wine per se but rather a famous vintage named after the Consul of 121 BC, Opimius.

Sorrentinum was a light, immature wine which, because it was drunk so young, tasted sour and earthy.  It owed its fame principally to the elegant clay drinking bowls that came from the same region where the wine was traditionally drunk (Martial, XIII-110; Pliny, Natural History, XXXV-46).

Spolentinum was a sweet golden-coloured wine that Martial considered better than a young Falernum (Martial, XIII-120).  It was served mixed with water that had been boiled then cooled in snow (Pliny, Natural History, XXXI-40).

Tarentinum was, according to Galen, a wine with a light taste and low alcohol content. This is surprising as the wines that come from Puglia where Tarentinum was produced are, today, among some of the world’s heaviest.  Martial, of course, thought they were terrific (Martial, XIII-125).

Trifolinum was a wine comparable to Sorrentinum because of its earthy taste. Martial placed Trifolinum seventh on his list of good wines (Martial, XIII-114), while Pliny thought it only good enough for plebeians.

Despite popularising wine drinking across their empire, Roman viticulture was still a relatively new science. Wine spoiled quickly and crude measures were often taken to correct this problem. Cloudy wine, for example, might be cleared by the addition of albumen or chalk. Taste might be improved by smoking, but smoked wines are often bitter, and their colour suffers as a result. Interestingly, to correct the latter the Romans dyed the wine with such as additives as aloe, saffron or elderberry. Wines could also be sweetened with the addition of must, and many flavourings were added from plants and flowers such as myrtle, rose, violet, lilac, coriander, anis, almonds, pepper, cinnamon and so on. Apicius, for example, provides two recipes for heavily flavoured wine [3] where the principal ingredients were pepper and honey. From the ancient Greeks, the Roman winemakers adopted the custom of adding seawater and, similarly, some wines were flavoured with resin much as Greek Retsina is today.

Notes:

1. To the ancient Greeks he was Dionysus. Either way Bacchus/Dionysus was the god of the grape-harvest, winemaking and wine, of fertility, orchards and fruit, vegetation, insanity, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, festivity and theatre.
2. Popularly known as "Falernian" after the district of Italy from where it originated.  Latin Falernum should not be confused with a syrup liqueur or a non-alcoholic syrup of the same name from the Caribbean that first appeared in the 18th-century.
3. A heavily flavoured wine was known as consitum.