Sicera humolone quantum necessitas exposcit. Beer in the early Middle Ages: between food necessity and social practices (6th-11th centuries)

The representation of beer by sources from the first half of the Middle Ages is ambivalent. On the one hand, some texts give a negative connotation by explicitly associating it with pagan rites or linking it with prohibited behaviour. On the other hand, the documents of the great Carolingian monasteries show the care with which the communities sought to have a brewery, to benefit from the services of experts or, more generally, to obtain supplies in order to have << as much hop beer as necessary >>, as the abbot Ansegise of Fontenelle, near Rouen, stated in 829. All things considered, while beer was not viewed very favourably by some clerics, it was not denounced for its own sake, but as a symptom of the excesses of table sociability. Added to this are other prejudices, such as those that have had a lasting effect on the eating habits of northern populations within a Christian culture that has remained strongly influenced by the Mediterranean imagination of wine.