The following injunctions occur in Elfric’s canons:—
(29) ‘Let no Priest sottishly drink to Intemperance, nor force others so to do, for he should be always in readiness if a child is to be baptized, or a man to be houseled. And if nothing of this should happen, yet he ought not to be drunk, for our Lord hath forbidden drunkenness to His ministers.’
(30) ‘Let no Priest drink at taverns as secular men do.’
(35) ‘Nor ought men to drink or eat intemperately in God’s house, which is hallowed to this purpose, that the Body of God may be there eaten with faith. Yet men often act so absurdly as to sit up by night, and drink to madness within God’s house.’
But for them ‘twere better that they
In their beds lay,
Than that they God angered,
In that ghostly house.
Let him who will watch,
And honour God’s saints,
With stillness watch,
And make no noise,
But sing his prayers,
As he best can;
And let him who will drink,
And idly make noise,
Drink at his home,
Not in the Lord’s house,
That he God dishonour not,
To his own punishment.[28]
Other enactments may be discovered by the curious, scattered about the pages of early synods, e.g. nunneries were not to be houses of gossiping and drunkenness, and beds of luxury, but of sober and pious livers. An injunction this, evidently necessary, for Fosbroke (British Monachism, p. 22) speaks of the nuns of Coldingham as using oratories for feasting, drinking, and gossiping. The same author introduces us to the austere rule, as followed by the Britons, of Pachomius, that singular institutor of the cenobitic life in Upper Egypt in the fourth century. Abstinence seems to have been in force; at any rate there was a clause forbidding wine and liquamen (probably cider or perry) out of the infirmary. The inmates were also prohibited taverns[29] when necessity called them abroad. On such occasions they were restricted to ‘consecrated’ places. We have already seen that taverns at this time were anything but respectable, so ordinary travellers rarely used them; hence the propriety of this inhibition.
The requirements of Fulgentius, the African anchorite and bishop, were less severe. Among regulations of diet we find: ‘To have no more meat, drink, or clothes, than the rule allowed.’ ‘Not to eat or drink but at stated times.’ ‘No one to take any meat or drink before the abbot.’ The monastic rules of Dunstan were certainly laxer. The ordinary times for drinking were not too few, whilst special solemnities called for special refreshment. In the latter category we become acquainted with their caritates or charities—that is, cups of wine, to drink which the monks were summoned by sound of bell into the refectory, and which must have been rendered peculiarly palatable by their listening to the collation, which signified a reading of the lives of the fathers or devout books; from which edification late suppers have derived their name. These charities varied in their composition: sometimes they consisted of beer, sometimes a kind of honey compôte. Such indulgences or allowances of drink were also called misericord.
In the great monasteries the Poculum Caritatis was placed at the upper end of the refectory, on the abbot’s table. It was nothing more nor less than the old wassail-bowl, the latter word obtaining its name from the verbal formality adopted in health-drinking.’[30]
Enough has been said to correct the very common impression that the Benedictine orders were self-mortifying ascetics. Wealthy and learned, at times useful to souls as well as bodies, their virtues have often been overstated, whilst their vices no less frequently have been palliated or denied.
The canons of King Edgar’s reign furnish an almost complete epitome of the manners of the time. His twenty-eighth canon enjoined strict temperance at