Bread and Ale for the Brethren

About the book

“By making empirical academic scholarship available at an accessible price, University of Hertfordshire Press provides an important service to local and landscape historians, many of whom do not enjoy easy access to university libraries. In the eleventh volume of their series 'Studies in Regional and Local History', Philip Slavin deploys an impressive number and range of documents to investigate how Norwich Cathedral Priory (which, in the early fourteenth century, housed approximately sixty monks and 240 lay brethren and staff) met its enormous requirement for bread and ale, the bedrocks of the medieval diet.” David Stone, Landscape History

“This highly detailed study will be of particular value to readers with interests in medieval economic history, Norwich cathedral and its estates, or simply wanting to know more about how medieval monks organised their supplies of bread, ale and other provisions.” John S Lee, The Local Historian

“This book is about the production and consumption of arable crops by a large monastic institution, Norwich Cathedral Priory, in the later middle ages. It demonstrates the exciting and satisfying results that can be achieved from a thorough and expert analysis of a relatively complete archive, especially when the author is testing various theoretical perspectives against the empirical evidence.” Christopher Dyer, Economic History Review

“An extraordinary piece of research. This is a strongly recommended resource because it has wider applications than its seeming central purpose. Clearly it says a great deal about medieval Norfolk but what it reveals should also provide a template for those who are interested in the way that large and small religious houses elsewhere also organized their supply chains.” Historical Association

By 1300, England and other West-European countries had undergone a significant degree of commercialisation. More and more communities, both urban and rural, depended on an efficient network of local markets to obtain the goods they needed, in particular for their food.

More about the book

Yet in spite of this, some landed lords and, most notably, monasteries and convents continued to rely on the produce of their own estates, even though there were significant costs and risks associated with the production, transportation and storage of their own food.
Philip Slavin sets out to account for this puzzling situation through an in-depth study of the changing patterns and fortunes of the provisioning of Norwich Cathedral Priory between c.1260 and 1536. Close analysis of contemporary archival sources reveals that the Priory made a deliberate choice, dictated by various economic, social and environmental factors and which, altogether, made isolation from the market a profitable, and very rational, option.
This is a new sort of estate study that considers questions of both production and consumption as well as health issues, including the problems of overeating and obesity occurring in late-medieval monastic populations.
Particular attention is given to the production, transportation, storage and consumption by the Priory household of grain-based products. In the late-medieval period, grains were the single most important component in the daily diet, for both commoners and the higher echelons, accounting for between 50 and 80 per cent of total calorific intake.
Although focusing on one specific region, this is more than just a regional study, analysing as it does a microcosm of the late-medieval English economy and society at a time of political, socio-economic and biological shocks and crises, including years of bad weather, famine, pestilence (both human and bovine), warfare and revolts.
The study of the food supply of late-medieval conventual households sheds much light on the wider process of decline and eventual collapse of direct demesne management in particular, and feudalism in general, in the post-Black Death era.

View the table of contents

	List of figures	ix
	List of tables	xi
	Acknowledgements	xiii
	General Editor's preface	xv
	Abbreviations	xvii
1	‘A puzzling economy’: demesne cultivation and seigniorial autarky in the age of commercialisation	1
	Commercialisation and marketisation of the late medieval economy	1
	Seigniorial autarky in the age of commercialisation	4
2	Norwich Cathedral Priory: population, food requirements and provisioning channels	8
	The priory population, 1096—1538	8
	The grain requirements of Norwich Cathedral Priory	15
	Getting grain: sources and resources	21
	The grain supply of Norwich Cathedral Priory in a wider context	23
	Why two channels? Economic instability	24
3	Norwich Cathedral Priory's grain market, 1260—1538	26
	Geographic extent of the priory grain market	26
	The grain trade: reputation and trust	29
	Quantities of purchased grain	33
	Frequency and seasonality of transactions	36
	Norwich grain prices, 1264—1536: between endogenous factors and exogenous shocks	39
	Market integration?	44
4	Grain production on Norwich Cathedral Priory demesnes	48
	The era of direct management	48
	Regional and chronological trends in crop geography	57
	Crop geography determinants: environment	63
	Annual crop disposal: chronological and regional patterns	69
	Crop disposal in a wider context	75
	Production costs	77
	Food farms	81
	Conclusions	83
5	Shipping the produce: transportation requirements, strategies and costs	84
	Grain transportation: sources and resources	84
	Demesne horses	85
	The ‘Great Boat’ (magna navis)	87
	Transporting services: customary dues	88
	Transporting services: harvest famuli	92
	Transporting services: stipendiary famuli	102
	Transporting services: priory carters and boatmen	103
	Carting requirements and logistics	105
	Transportation costs and savings	109
	Transportation logistics: the case of Eaton carters	113
	Road versus river transportation: advantages and drawbacks	115
	Conclusions	116
6	Space for grain: barns and granaries	119
	The medieval barn and modern scholarship	119
	Demesne barns: nature, layout and capacity	120
	Demesne barns: storage costs	122
	The Great Granary: layout and costs	126
	The almoner's granary	130
	Barns and granaries: a tool for insurance, speculation or practical storage?	130
	Grain storage mechanisms and depletion rates	136
7	Space for grain: barns and granaries	139
	Grain into bread and ale: processing and consumption	140
	Cathedral mills	140
	Cathedral bakery and brewery	142
	Annual baking patterns	145
	Panis monachorum	147
	Panis ponderis minoris	150
	Panis militum	153
	Bread consumption patterns	156
	Two kinds of ale	159
	Annual brewing patterns	163
	Turning malt into ale: gallons and calories	163
	Grain consumption in a comparative perspective	167
8	Bread and ale consumption in a wider perspective	169
	Economics of charity: grain alms as poor relief	173
	Hermits and anchorites	173
	Prisoners in the castle prison	175
	Almoner's soup kitchen for Norwich paupers	179
	Grain alms in a wider context	183
	Conclusions	186
	Conclusion: Seigniorial conservativism as an economic strategy	188
	Appendix: Transportation costs, requirements and speed estimates	193
	Bibliography	199
	Index	211

About the Author/s:

Philip Slavin

Philip Slavin is a lecturer in the School of History at the University of Kent, specialising in late-medieval economic, social and environmental history.

ISBN: 978-1-907396-63-2 Format: Paperback, 240pp Published: Sep 2012

Bread and Ale for the Brethren

The provisioning of Norwich Cathedral Priory, 1260-1536

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