Published: 2025-09-16

‘For supper, white bread rolls are served with dinner’. Evening meal in the Bernardine convent in Kraków — monastic customs and dietary practices in the second half of the eighteenth century

Olga M. Przybyłowicz
Kwartalnik Historii Kultury Materialnej
Section: Communiques
DOI https://doi.org/10.23858/KHKM73.2025.1.006

Abstract

Supper was one of the two daily meals consumed in monasteries. The aim of this article is to present the menu of evening meals of the Bernardine nuns in Kraków at the Church of St. Joseph. This has been made possible by a unique source: a meal register kept from November 9, 1765, to November 15, 1766, which has survived among the accounts of this convent from the second half of the 18th century. The data provide insight into what the nuns ate during monastic and ecclesiastical fasts, as well as outside of those periods. Suppers were more modest than dinners, yet the rule applied to the main meal of the day was maintained: a richer menu for festive suppers and a simpler one for ordinary days. During fasts, both the quantity and quality of the dishes were significantly reduced and less varied. This pioneering analysis of the menu, set against the backdrop of monastic customs and the culinary culture of the era, serves as a starting point for further research into the topic of consumption in the early modern period.

Keywords:

female monasteries, Bernardines, food consumption, supper, early modern period

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Przybyłowicz, O. (2025). ‘For supper, white bread rolls are served with dinner’. Evening meal in the Bernardine convent in Kraków — monastic customs and dietary practices in the second half of the eighteenth century. Kwartalnik Historii Kultury Materialnej, 73(1), 129–141. https://doi.org/10.23858/KHKM73.2025.1.006

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