Menu: if you\u2019ve got it\u2026 flaunt it<\/h3>\n<\/div>
In 1491, Ercole I d\u2019Este, Duke of Ferrara in northern Italy, threw a feast for his son\u2019s wedding. Among the highlights of this culinary extravaganza was a series of elaborately designed sugar sculptures. Yet before the guests could tuck in to them, attendants picked up the sweet artworks and promptly threw them into the diners\u2019 laps. Not to worry: another round of similar treats was served immediately.<\/p>\n
To modern eyes, this may seem like a strange way to treat wedding guests. Yet the duke was making a statement: that he had the wealth to throw away eye-wateringly expensive delicacies and, in the blink of an eye, replace them with more of the same. The duke\u2019s prank may strike us as extravagance at its worst, yet it shines a light on to medieval attitudes to feasting.<\/p>\n
- Read more | How to throw a medieval feast<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>
For the elite, food was seen as a tool for flaunting wealth and power \u2013 and, as such, serving (or merely displaying) highly elaborate dishes was a feature of banquets in the Middle Ages. The 14th-century English cookbook The Forme of Cury<\/em> includes recipes for chickens dressed as knights and a cockatrice \u2013 a mythical dragon-like creature, in this case created by combining body parts from a pig and a cockerel. \u201cTake a whole roasted cockerel, pull his guts and skin him all in one piece, save for the legs,\u201d run the instructions. \u201cTake a piglet, cut him in half from the middle downwards. Sew them firmly together.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other dishes might demonstrate that the host was dialled in to new tastes and trends \u2013 for example, the growing influence of Arab or other cuisines seen in foods and ingredients such as pasta or aubergine.
2<\/span>Music: flutes, bells and trumpets<\/h3>\n<\/div>
In the comical Middle English romance Sir Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle<\/em>, the Carl (a giant) hosts a feast at which his beautiful daughter appears to perform music for the guests: \u201cFirst she played the harp, then sang songs of love and of Arthur\u2019s knights all the while, how they together met.\u201d Seated at the table are three knights of the Round Table<\/a>. Their presence at the banquet transforms the daughter\u2019s song from a piece of entertainment into a commentary on her father\u2019s guests.<\/p>\n
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<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>Musicians, shown in a 14th-century illumination, were a staple of courtly feasts (Photo by Art Media\/Print Collector\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n As that literary episode indicates, music and feasts went hand in hand. At the wedding feast thrown by Ercole I d\u2019Este for his son in 1491, for example, guests were serenaded by trumpets, carnival songs and dances. To add to the pageantry, the Greek god Apollo appeared with his lyre to sing to the newly-weds.<\/p>\n
In 1450, a banquet hosted by Francesco Sforza to celebrate his arrival as duke into Milan featured trumpets, flutes, bells and a choir dressed in white singing the host\u2019s name. Like the food, this music was intended to demonstrate \u2013 to all who would listen \u2013 the host\u2019s refined tastes.
3<\/span>Guest list: singing spies and unruly strangers<\/h3>\n<\/div>
In 1429, heralds and musicians attended a feast in the powerful Iberian kingdom of Castile. As with many of the jamborees put on in the Middle Ages, the banquet offered local elites the opportunity to shape power dynamics, as well as to engage in diplomacy with foreign nobles. But on this occasion, not all of those welcomed at the feast were entirely honest about their motives for attending. Among the musicians was a spy collecting information for the kingdom of Aragon, then ruled by Alphonse V.<\/p>\n
- Read more | What was the \u2018Ball of the Burning Men\u2019?<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>
As the interloper at the feast demonstrates, inviting strangers came with risks. A section in the 13th-century treatise On the Properties of Things<\/em>, by the Franciscan thinker Bartholomaeus Anglicus, includes a section on the importance of ensuring the safety of guests. Medieval guides to courtesy \u2013 etiquette for the upper classes \u2013 feature instructions for elaborate rituals designed to test guests to prove that they know how to conduct themselves at feasts, and won\u2019t ruin the entire thing by getting drunk and behaving badly.
4<\/span>Pageantry: diners with a stomach for the fight<\/h3>\n<\/div>
In 1454, Philip the Good, the formidable Duke of Burgundy, hosted a banquet. As Philip was a noted man of culture, and one of Europe\u2019s most powerful figures, his guests would, perhaps, have expected something spectacular from the gathering \u2013 and that is exactly what they got. The banquet \u2013 known as the Feast of the Pheasant \u2013 is famed for its elaborate pageantry.<\/p>\n
The duke himself, we\u2019re told, was served at his table by a two-headed horse ridden by two men sitting back to back, each holding a trumpet, and then by a monster, consisting of a man riding on an elephant. Next, so one of the duke\u2019s officials reported, \u201ccame a white stag ridden by a boy who sang marvellously, while the stag accompanied him with the tenor part\u201d.<\/p>\n
The duke himself, we\u2019re told, was served at his table by a two-headed horse ridden by two men sitting back to back, each holding a trumpet <\/blockquote> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n<\/div>
If these descriptions are anything to go by, no one who attended the Feast of the Pheasant would forget it in a hurry. Yet this event was far more than a mere assortment of fabulously rich aristocrats letting their hair down and their imaginations run wild. Drill down in to the detail of the feast and it soon becomes apparent that Philip had an agenda.<\/p>\n
He hosted the banquet with one specific aim in mind: to promote a crusade against the Turks<\/a>, who had taken Constantinople a year earlier. It\u2019s for this reason that, as well as the stag and two-headed horse, the guests were treated to the sight of an elephant \u201ccarrying a castle, in which sat Holy Church, who made piteous complaint on behalf of the Christians persecuted by the Turks, and begged for help\u201d.<\/p>\n
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<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>A painting of 1454\u2019s Feast of the Pheasant, a culinary extravaganza with strings attached (Photo by Fine Art Images\/Heritage Images\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n Meanwhile, knights of the Order of the Golden Fleece were accompanied into the feast by two damsels who asked the duke to make a crusading vow. Philip, naturally, obliged; crucially, so did his noble guests. Philip the Good wasn\u2019t the only medieval leader to host a feast in order to drum up support for a military venture.<\/p>\n
Edward I of England used his wedding banquet in 1254 to encourage his lords to invest in his conquest of the rest of Britain. The king\u2019s actors dressed as characters from popular literature (figures like the Loathly Lady, who appears in Geoffrey Chaucer\u2019s Wife of Bath\u2019s Tale<\/em><\/a>), asking for martial help in military flashpoints such as the Welsh Marches.
5<\/span>Art: feasts for the eyes<\/h3>\n<\/div>
By the mid-15th century, the finest feasting had evolved into something of an art form. And that art extended to the building in which the banquets were staged. When Tristan Sforza \u2013 son of Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan \u2013 got married in 1455, the wedding feast took place in a custom-built pavilion decorated in gold and silver. The Sforzas weren\u2019t the only clan to turn a feast into something resembling an art installation. During the banquet for the d\u2019Este wedding of 1491, the streets of Ferrara were decorated with images of gods and tapestries, and participants were dressed in costumes designed by Leonardo da Vinci<\/a>.<\/p>\n
In the medieval collections of London\u2019s V&A Museum are wonderful examples of tableware, including a dragon-shaped candlestick and a pitcher designed to look like a griffin. Artefacts like these reflect our ancestors\u2019 fascination with marvels: objects imbued with the strange or the mythological. This art was important for cultivating the noble image of the host \u2013 especially if the host wasn\u2019t actually noble.<\/p>\n
- Read more | What was the \u2018Ball of the Burning Men\u2019?<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>
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