With their strong wines;’
or the cellarer quietly chuckling to himself as he loosened the spiggot of the choicest casks—
‘Between this cask and the abbot’s lips
Many have been the sips and slips;
Many have been the draughts of wine,
On their way to his, that have stopped at mine.’
The monks were in the habit of throwing open their monasteries to all comers, under pretext of letting them taste the wine they had for sale, until, in 1233, an ecclesiastical council at Beziers prohibited this practice on account of the scandal it created. Petrarch has accused the popes of his day of persisting in staying at Avignon when they could have returned to Rome, simply on account of the goodness of the wines they found there. Some similar reasons may have led to the selection of Reims, during the twelfth century, as a place for holding great ecclesiastical councils presided over by the sovereign pontiff in person; and no doubt ‘Bibimus papaliter’ was the motto of Calixtus, Innocent, and Eugenius when the labours of the day were done, and they and their cardinals could chorus, apropos of those of the morrow,
‘Bonum vinum acuit ingenium
Venite potemus.’