On nuns' diet in the Middle Ages and Early-modern period. Problems, sources and research opportunities

Abstract

The article aims to highlight the types of mediaeval and early-modern sources that contain information on diet in convents, to exemplify research opportunities with concrete documents, to compare two types of archive records, and finally to formulate some research postulates. The focus is on female orders but some findings are also applicable to male monasteries. Polish historians exploring the history of monasticism have rarely paid attention to the subject of eating and fasting in convents, usually mentioning it only in terms of marginal curi-osities. Differences and nuances in the eating and fasting customs in convents were noticed more than fifty years ago by Maria Dembińska. Methodological assumptions formulated by her and Andrzej Wyczański have not been applied in systematic research until today and the sphere of material culture and consumption remains almost unexplored by historians of monasticism.Mediaeval sources offer less information about consumption than modern ones. Normative documents such as rules, statutes and constitutions, which were to shape and stabilise nuns’ habits in all spheres of activity including food consumption, give a rather general picture of diet. Information on ingredients used in convent kitchens are supplemented with details from the Vitae of the saints.Much more data can be found in modern sources, such as accounts, chronicles, visitation reports and rare surviving samples of menus and descriptions of meals. Here, the main research postulate is to survey poorly explored convent archives. With regard to the Middle Ages it is necessary to conduct a contrastive analysis of order rules and other normative sources. This will reveal consumption norms and habits promoted in theory as well as similarities and differences between particular orders, which can later be confronted with practice reconstructed from the rich modern records.