[Sca-cooks] 12th-century bread (was Re: Favorite Frugal Pennsic Meals)

[Laura C. Minnick]

At 04:05 AM 6/6/2006, you wrote:
>Am Dienstag, 6. Juni 2006 10:28 schrieb Sydney Walker Freedman:
> > What is this 12th-century "bread cooked in water," and from what source is
> > this reference taken?
><snip>
>It's from a 'signa' list. In Cistercian and Cluniac monasteries, different
>degrees of 'silence' were observed, the dining hall invariably being subject
>to this stricture. The monks developed a sign language to meet the need to
>ask for various foods or food items without actually talking, and lists of
>these signs survive. They are not recipes, just collections of food items,
>but they are still very interesting and if I ever find the time, I'll write a
>research article on it Meanwhile, I offer to send my first (and very bad)
>draft including a list of the terms from several such lists in Latin and
>English to anyone who asks, clearly stating that it's NOT for sharing (I'd be
>eternally embarrassed)
>
>Giano

Wow. I haven't thought about those in years; we covered them in my 
Anglo-Saxon classes- I can remember the prof and which classroom we were in 
that term, but nothing more about the handsigns than the fun the guys in 
the back row were having with them. I can't find anything in the Mitchell 
and Robinson about them, but I suspect it to be somewhere in Bede's works.

And Giano, I'd bet a country ham that your Latin is better than mine!

'Lainie
Ot-nay o-say ood-gay at-tay onstruing-cay
___________________________________________________________________________
Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something 
else is more important than fear.   --Ambrose Redmoon