Adamson - Food in Medieval Times

FOOD IN MEDIEVAL TIMES
late-medieval Europe in search of alms. But the towns were not always
able to help, since many of their own inhabitants were constantly tee-
tering on the brink of starvation. The working poor in medieval towns
included many artisans, servants, textile workers, tanners, dyers, and
craftsmen, but also intellectuals and civil servants, such as clerks,
teachers, lecturers, poets, and artists of any kind. As we can see, the
starving artist is by no means a modern concept.
In order to cope with the ever-increasing number of beggars in me-
dieval towns, town councils tried to regulate the distribution of alms.
Almoners and aldermen kept updated lists of paupers, who were given
tokens that entitled them to receive social assistance in the form of
money or supplies.50 A typical annual stipend for such a pauper would
include clothing, shoes, bread, meat, dried herring, peas, oil, wine or
beer, and firewood.51 Estimates of the number of poor and indigent in
late-medieval towns range from 20 to 30 percent. In times of crises,
often precipitated by wars or famines, the number could soar to 80
percent of a town’s population.52 In addition, studies of epidemics
such as the plague have shown that it was the malnourished bodies of
the poor that succumbed to diseases in much higher numbers than the
bodies of the rich.53
For humans as for any other living creatures, food is the most basic
need that must be met before any other needs can be addressed, and
economists have known for a long time that the poorer a family is, the
more of its overall income is spent on food.54 For most of the Middle
Ages a rise in wages went hand in hand with a rise in population. Only
in the period immediately following the Black Death (1350–1450)
was the opposite the case, with a third or more of the population
dying of the disease, and labor becoming a hot commodity. For the
working poor desperately trying to feed their families, or the town
councils looking after the ever increasing number of beggars, bread
was the most cost-effective foodstuff, rivaled only in modern times by
the potato. A medieval mason’s daily wage, for instance, would buy
him three to four times as many calories if he spent it on bread than if
he spent it on meat.55 Furthermore, the body of a manual laborer
burned far more calories than that of a member of the leisure class. It
thus becomes clear that good or bad grain harvests had a much more
dramatic effect on those at the bottom than those at the top of the so-
cial hierarchy. Grain prices in the Middle Ages fluctuated more widely
than those of other foodstuffs, and peasants were thus usually caught
between a rock and a hard place. In times of bad harvests when prices
were high, they had little or no grain to sell, and when they had a
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