SC - The Church, gruits and hops

[Nick Sasso]

I hate to ask...I just know this is going to make trouble, but I have to
go ahead and ask.

Fra Niccolo <grizly_nick at rocketmail.com> wrote:

> You have just sparked a new light for me with this hops thread of
> thought!  Hops were developed as a bittering alternative to gruits as
> the latter was controlled and mandated by the church.  Their decreased
> use was a political and economic statement by the common many.  They
> later found that it gave longer preservative effect and offered more
> stable bittering qualities.

Could you tell us a little more about this mandate from the Church?
Please understand I'm not disputing what you say, but I wonder if you
can tell us a bit more about the Church's role in the shift from mixed
gruits to hops. The explanation that naturally occurs to me is that a
high percentage of the trained "medical professionals" of the day were
clergymen and nuns, and a lot of brewing was done in  monasteries
(heavy-gravity beers being an excellent restorative while fasting!), so
I expect a lot of what was brewed in monasteries was made according to
what amounted to a medical prescription.

The SCA seems to have a lot of members who immediately conclude that
everything from the Black Plague to global warming and El Niño  are the
results of the conspiracies of the Evil Church, and while I'm not
assuming you are one such, I was just wondering why you make the above
claim. Any more info available? I hadn't run across anything like it in
my own reading on the subject, so I was curious. 

Adamantius 
______________________________________
Phil & Susan Troy
troy at asan.com
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