The usages even of a great dinner depend largely on the customs of everyday life. One cannot understand the splendors of the marriage feast of Sire Olivier and Alienor without knowing what goes on regularly in the hall of St. Aliquis.
When the day is started we have seen how everybody arises to a very light breakfast of bread and wine, although sometimes, as in the epic of Doon of Mayence, when the work promises to be arduous, the baron's squire may bring him a favorite pasty because "eating early in the morning brings health and gives one greater courage and spirit." Dinner also, we have discovered, can begin as early as nine in the morning, and a good part of the day's business comes after this heavy meal. Sometimes when dinner is late you do not serve your guests any regular supper, but when they go to bed have the attendants bring cakes and fruits and wine. If you entertain guests, however, always it is proper to try to make them eat and drink as much as possible. There is a story of an overhospitable Count of Guines who not merely constrained any knight passing through his dominions to a feast, but kept quantities of white wine always on hand, so that if his visitors asked to have their red wine diluted with water, they might be hoodwinked by seeing a white liquid mixed in their goblets. In this way he once rendered the whole suite of a bishop gloriously intoxicated!
The ingenious Bartolomes of Granvilla has laid down the following requisites for an ideal banquet: (1) a suitable hour, not too early nor too late; (2) a pleasant place; (3) a gracious and liberal host; (4) plenty to eat, so one may choose one's dishes; (5) the same as to things to drink; (6) willing servants; (7) agreeable company; (8) pleasant music; (9) plenty of light; (10) good cooking; (11) a seasonable conclusion; (12) quiet and repose afterward. A marriage feast and a tourney can hardly provide this twelfth desideratum, but they ought, with proper management, to supply everything else.
Service at Table
SERVANTS BRINGING THE FOOD TO THE TABLE
From a manuscript of the thirteenth century in the library of Munich (Schultz).
The tables for the notables are laid and served by two classes of attendants; first by Conon's three squires, aided on this grand occasion by several young nobles who have actually received knighthood; second, by the older professional servitors of villein stock. The first class of attendants are resplendent in bliauts of colored silk with fur trimmings. Most of the dishes will be passed to them by the soberly clad villeins, then to be presented on bended knee by noble hands to noble guests. The whole process is under Sire Eustace, the old seneschal, who orders about his platoons of attendants with as much precision as he might command the men at arms for defense of the castle.
It is part of a squire's education to learn to wait on table. One may have to do this for some superior all one's life, unless one be king or emperor! Conon's squires have been taught to stand at perfect ease; not to roll their eyes or stare blankly; not to laugh save when guests are laughing; to keep their finger nails clean and hands well washed. If they sit at table themselves they are models of propriety. They do not gobble down their food, but put a little from every plate into the basket of collected leavings for the poor; they do not chatter, nor fill their mouths too full, nor chew on both sides of the mouth at once, nor laugh or talk with a mouthful, nor make a noise by overeating, nor handle cats or dogs during mealtime, nor wipe their knives on the tablecloth, nor pick their teeth publicly, nor wipe their noses with their fingers, nor (last but not least) spit across the table or beyond it.[30]