SC - list newbie/Seasonal food.

[Christina Nevin]

	K. wrote:
	I might be going off on a weird tangent here, but I'd like to know
	whether they held "feasts" (or, more to the point, whether there
were
	any festival days or big events which would occasion a
bigger-and-more-
	impressive-than-usual meal) during Lent? It seems to me as if the
phrase "Lenten feast" is a bit of an oxymoron.
	Sure, people would still eat communally, and large households (and
	especially the huge households attached to a royal court) would eat
in a
	Great Hall with the a high table and numerous dishes and all that...
but 
	would they put on a big show of it, or would it be relatively
austere?

No, not a weird tangent. Yes, they did hold 'feasts' during the fast of
Lent. The Sunday in the middle of Lent, or Mid-Lent Sunday, was treated as a
feast, as was Palm Sunday (see also Elizabeth Cook's comments before re
Sundays in Lent). And although a 'fast' held the purpose of forcing people
to reflect on their sins, whereas in contradiction a 'feast' denoted a
celebration of some event or occasion, by the middle and near the end of
Lent people seriously needed something to cheer themselves up, which the
Church did realise and allow for with these feasts, the religious
justifications for which were the miracle of the fishes and loaves (Mid-Lent
Sunday) and the triumphal entry into Jerusalem of Jesus (Palm Sunday). And
the actual culinary restrictions by no means precluded a good cook creating
a feast from what was permissible under Lenten law.

Ciao
Lucrezia


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