Bread trenchers was [Sca-cooks] Tableware

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Also sprach Terry Decker:
>Since the first reference is early 12th Century, the custom of trenchers
>probably became established in the 11th Century.  Germany and Poland use
>variations of the French, "tailloir."  (That may not be spelled correctly
>since I don't have my crib sheet handy.)  "Trencher" is derived from the
>Anglo-Norman, "trancheor," and probably would not have been used before
>1066.  So tentatively the origin is 11th Century France.

A point to be aware of, however, is that some verb form connected to
the word seems to have remained in French after 1066, so it may
simply have come to be applied primarily to bread in post-conquest
England. For example, the office of head carver in a large, noble
French household seems to have been the ecuyer tranchant, IIRC.

>Trenchers appear in countries where the manorial system (11th to 15th
>Centuries)was strong and the household would reside at each manor for
>various periods.

Yes, they these people travelled. Could the use of trenchers have
minimized the amount of tableware that had to be transported?

>   Of the countries where references to trenchers do not
>appear, Spain, Russia and much of Eastern Europe were continuously at war
>with invaders or were uninhabited lands.  Greece, Russia and much of Eastern
>Europe were also Orthodox rather than Roman Catholic tied more to the
>Byzantine Empire than Rome.  And the leadership of the Italian city states
>was mostly urban and cosmopolitan, being supplied by, but not living on
>their estates and practicing a different form of patronage from their
>northern counterparts.  Ireland and Scandinavia were culturally different
>from most of Northern Europe.
>
>Why the bread trencher came to be is an open question.  Tableware was
>readily available and using the quantities of bread required is a major
>expense.  My opinion is it represents conspicuous consumption.  That it is
>meant to demonstrate that the lord of the manor is so wealth he (or she) can
>give those in service to him bread to use as a plate and that those who
>serve him are so enriched by the service that trencher does not need to be
>eaten, but can be given to the poor to feed them as is the Christian duty of
>such a rich and powerful household.
>
>Because the rise and decline in the use of bread trenchers appears to rise
>and decline of the manorial system, there is the question of whether the
>relationship is casual or causal.
>
>I know of no household account information prior to the 13th Century.
>Information from the 13th Century is pretty skimpy, but the quantities of
>bread purchased suggest that trenchers were used daily.  Later household
>accounts show marked declines (up to 25%) in the purchase of bread and food
>stuffs without a similar decline in the numbers of the household.  The
>decline in expenses is attributed by a number of historians to a decline in
>the use of bread trenchers.

And in the fourteenth century we have fairly major weather changes
that are also clearly reflected in costume (in fact, it is believed
to have been the beginning of a series of "mini-Ice-Ages" from which
we are only now completely recovering), repeated bad harvests
followed by a sufficient general weakness of the population as to
allow the Plague to wipe out a third of Europe. That could be your
25% expenditure drop right there.

Adamantius