"And let them be content with dinner and supper"

[Andruschak]

So what did Saint Francis have against breakfast? His rule for us Penitents came out in the yaer 1221. Was breakfast a part of the landscape then?

Off and on I have used GOOGLE, but terms like “breakfast history” or “history of breakfast” tend to bring up articles on the development of commercial cereals.

But today I GOOGLED with the term “middle ages breakfast” and obtained this page…

godecookery.com/how2cook/howto05.htm

Fascinating reading. It would seem as if breakfast was something of a new-fangled notion, and I can understand crusty old Francis not wanting HIS penitents to bypass hunger pangs and indulge themselves with food. Only eat on an empty stomach.

In my case, I have found it interesting to realize that, on the prescribed two meals a day, I am hungry some of the time, but by no means weakened or malnourished.

It could be argued that breakfast would lead to a softening of character. In the Worst Case Scenario, Protestantism.

If anybody else knows a good source of information on the prevelance of breakfast in the year 1221, I’d appreciate the link

 

[bpbasilphx]

The big American breakfast with eggs, meat of somekind, and potatoes was NOT customary.

Obviously, some monastic practices influenced St. Francis’s own. It is customay in monasteris to have no meal before the midday one, and then a light supper.

 

[Miserissima]

Breakfast wasn’t the big meal of the workday, the noontime meal was (I think I got that from wither Spielvogel.)

Far after St. Francis, I know that breakfast, when started as a fashion for the highborn, was eaten very late in the morning, as the Regency period kept different hours.

For the working class, it was the big meal of the day (as far as I know, for the New England and Virginia settlements brought this custom with them.

It was the hearty meal that supported the work that had to be done - worked off, too, better than a large meal at suppertime.

In the monastic times of St. Francis, wouldn’t there be a different time schedule based around the Liturgy if the Hours?

Breakfast, then, would have been…denying an act of penance as well as filling the stomachs of those who needed to work. After so little sleep, Ithink a full belly would tempt a nap.

No doubt it helped in saving resources in monasteries which were trying to be, as self-sufficient as possible.

Just a few ideas tossed out there, in no particular order.

 

[strngrnrth]

Breakfast is in the Bible, expected by the time of Moses. Two real sit-down meals a day and whatever little snacks come along the rest of the day seems to be normal from what I can glean form the Bible, which covers many periods and places in ANE life, which isn’t that far from Mediterranean European life by the early Middle Ages. But St. Francis lived in the Late Middle Ages, so who knows how the culture might have changed by then.
The 13th Century was when forks came about. Before that there were similar tools but not for eating. People picked up big pieces of meat with their daggers, little ones by hand, and licked their fingers. They blew their noses on their sleeves at the table. They threw bones to dogs. It was considered genteel in some parts of Europe to be sure to turn away from the table before hawking and spitting. But a French aristocrat,a lady, requested a smith make her a tiny instrument for lifting meat so her hands wouldn’t get greasy and so she wouldn’t have to eat off a sharp dagger. It caught on, but it took hundreds of years for regular folks to fel it was worth springing for forks. It was a ladylike conceit for a while, then rich men started using them too, then middle-class women and so on until everyone used them. Tablecloths (for blowing your nose and wiping your hands on, as opposed to your sleeves), and many other modern table customs trickled down in the same ways.
So, though breakfast, dinner and supper themselves may have a long history, they haven’t looked the way they do now very long.

 

[LilyM]

So what did Saint Francis have against breakfast? His rule for us Penitents came out in the yaer 1221. Was breakfast a part of the landscape then?

Off and on I have used GOOGLE, but terms like “breakfast history” or “history of breakfast” tend to bring up articles on the development of commercial cereals.

But today I GOOGLED with the term “middle ages breakfast” and obtained this page…

godecookery.com/how2cook/howto05.htm

Fascinating reading. It would seem as if breakfast was something of a new-fangled notion, and I can understand crusty old Francis not wanting HIS penitents to bypass hunger pangs and indulge themselves with food. Only eat on an empty stomach.

In my case, I have found it interesting to realize that, on the prescribed two meals a day, I am hungry some of the time, but by no means weakened or malnourished.

It could be argued that breakfast would lead to a softening of character. In the Worst Case Scenario, Protestantism.

If anybody else knows a good source of information on the prevelance of breakfast in the year 1221, I’d appreciate the link

If I remember rightly it wasn’t because people didn’t eat breakfast, rather because St Francis preferred his monks to look for honest work in the morning and then, only if they couldn’t find it, to beg their food. In either event they wouldn’t have time to be eating before the noonday meal.