People in medieval times had no knives or forks and
consequently ate with their fingers. Daggers also were employed to convey food
to the mouth. Forks date from the end of the thirteenth century, but were
adopted only slowly. As late as the sixteenth century German preachers
condemned their use, for, said they, the Lord would not have given us fingers
if he had wanted us to rely on forks. Napkins were another table convenience
unknown in the Middle Ages.
DRINKING
In the absence of tea and coffee, ale and beer formed the
drink of the common people. The upper classes regaled themselves on costly
wines. Drunkenness was as common and as little reprobated as gluttony. The
monotony of life in medieval Europe, when the nobles had little to do but hunt
and fight, may partly account for the prevailing inebriety. But doubtless in large
measure it was a Teutonic characteristic. The Northmen were hard drinkers, and
of the ancient Germans a Roman writer states that "to pass an entire day
and night in drinking disgraces no one." [38] This habit of intoxication
survived in medieval Germany, and the Anglo-Saxons and Danes introduced it into
England.
[38] Tacitus, Germania, 22.
CENTRAL PERIOD OF THE MIDDLE AGES
Our survey of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries has now
shown us that these two hundred years deserve to be called the central period
of the Middle Ages. When the Arabs had brought the culture of the Orient to
Spain and Sicily, when the Northmen after their wonderful expansion had settled
down in Normandy, England, and other countries, and when the peoples of western
Europe, whether as peaceful pilgrims or as warlike crusaders, had visited
Constantinople and the Holy Land, men's minds received a wonderful stimulus.
The intellectual life of Europe was "speeded up," and the way was
prepared for the even more rapid advance of knowledge in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries, as the Middle Ages passed into modern times.
