Quotation from: Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period

Written by: Paul Lacroix


To the many regulations affecting the interests of the public must be
added that forbidding butchers to sell meat on days when abstinence from
animal food was ordered by the Church. These regulations applied less to
the vendors than to the consumers, who, by disobeying them, were liable to
fine or imprisonment, or to severe corporal punishment by the whip or in
the pillory. We find that Clement Marot was imprisoned and nearly burned
alive for having eaten pork in Lent. In 1534, Guillaume des Moulins, Count
of Brie, asked permission for his mother, who was then eighty years of
age, to cease fasting; the Bishop of Paris only granted dispensation on
condition that the old lady should take her meals in secret and out of
sight of every one, and should still fast on Fridays. "In a certain town,"
says Brantome, "there had been a procession in Lent. A woman, who had
assisted at it barefooted, went home to dine off a quarter of lamb and a
ham. The smell got into the street; the house was entered. The fact being
established, the woman was taken, and condemned to walk through the town
with her quarter of lamb on the spit over her shoulder, and the ham hung
round her neck." This species of severity increased during the times of
religious dissensions. Erasmus says, "He who has eaten pork instead of
fish is taken to the torture like a parricide." An edict of Henry II,
1549, forbade the sale of meat in Lent to persons who should not be
furnished with a doctor's certificate. Charles IX forbade the sale of meat
to the Huguenots; and it was ordered that the privilege of selling meat
during the time of abstinence should belong exclusively to the hospitals.
Orders were given to those who retailed meat to take the address of every
purchaser, although he had presented a medical certificate, so that the
necessity for his eating meat might be verified. Subsequently, the medical
certificate required to be endorsed by the priest, specifying what
quantity of meat was required. Even in these cases the use of butchers'
meat alone was granted, pork, poultry, and game being strictly forbidden.

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