Cross-cultural marriages face many tests, especially in the realm of food. Whether it’s cooking the pasta too long, watering down a spicy dish, or substituting lamb for goat, there are all sorts of controversial compromises to be made in the kitchen. Sometimes, however, no compromise can be found. Take Maroilles, a distinctively square and creamy cheese with a brine-washed rind. To some, its incredibly pungent aroma is heavenly, especially when it is slathered on bread and dipped in coffee. To others, it smells like something from the depths of hell. I’ll leave it to you to guess which of these people are likely to be French and which American.
The creators of Maroilles did not have to face this conundrum, as they were monks living at the abbey of Maroilles, in the north of France, more than a thousand years ago. Medieval monks were forbidden many things, but they were allowed milk, and from this they could make a huge variety of cheeses. As cheese can have various taste notes, from floral and fruity to pungent and meaty, it seems monks could not get enough of it, and some of them became expert cheesemakers. A number of classic cheeses were created by monks, such as Munster, which originated in an Alsatian monastery, and Abondance, a fruity hard cheese made in the Alps since the twelfth century. Époisses, made in Burgundy and washed with the strong local brandy, Marc de Bourgogne, is another cheese whose pungency may strain the limits of marital harmony (claims that it has been banned on public transport in France are an urban myth, yet highly believable). All these cheeses are still made today in the same areas where monks originally invented them. They serve as edible historical footprints, leading modern cheese aficionados to ancient monasteries, lost in the French countryside.
Cheese, however, is not the only reason why monasteries were important in the Middle Ages. It can be difficult for us to understand today how powerful and influential Christianity was in medieval European societies. After the collapse of the Roman Empire, the Church was one of the few institutions that could provide a sense of common social identity and a semblance of order in what was a very violent and unpredictable world. The tenets of Christianity shaped the most fundamental aspects of people’s daily lives. At a time when eternal damnation was not an abstract concept but seemed a very real possibility, people strove to avoid sinful behavior, and did penance when they could not. The Church’s omnipotence meant that monasteries were bound to become significant social actors.
The idea of monasticism first appeared in the third century in Egypt, when Saint Anthony decided to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ by living a life of poverty devoted to God. The first monks were hermits, but they increasingly began to live in communities as well. In France, these early monasteries mostly followed the Rule of Saint Benedict, who, at the time he wrote his monastic rules around 534, had no idea that a Norman businessman would someday name a liquor after him and his monks. By the ninth century, the Benedictine order had spread throughout the Carolingian realm.
The Rule of Saint Benedict was actually more permissive than the practices commonly followed by monks in the Holy Land, but it was still austere. Much of a typical day in a monastery was devoted to prayer, with seven sessions during the day and another in the middle of the night. Apart from praying, the monks were also supposed to work—often manual labor, but also intellectual work such as the copying of manuscripts. They were allowed to eat, but there was no breakfast, only one meal at midday; during the Easter season, a second celebratory meal might be allowed in the evening. Meat from “four-footed animals” was generally forbidden, except for the ill or very weak, and there were many days of fasting. At that time, people believed that physical health and spiritual health were inextricably linked, and these various restrictions on eating were seen as beneficial to the soul.
In practice, life in some monasteries really was not all that bleak for the monks. As shown by the saint of gastronomes, Fortunat, one could dine well in a monastery or convent. The exclusion of meat only made the monks more creative, as in their cheesemaking. And while Saint Benedict encouraged abstinence from wine, his Rule stated that “since the monastics of our day cannot be persuaded of this let us at least agree to drink sparingly and not to satiety, because ‘wine makes even the wise fall away’ (Ecclesiastes 19:2).”1 He judged one hemina of wine per day (about half a pint) to be acceptable, although undoubtedly some monks indulged quite a bit more.
In some areas, monks also became expert in the cooking and farming of fish. The Dombes plateau, not far from Lyon, is dotted with a number of monk-made lakes that to this day produce nearly a fifth of all farmed fish in France.2 In Lyon, quenelle de brochet, a type of fish dumpling made with pike from the Dombes plateau, is a local specialty not to be missed.
So while monks may have respected the strict rules regarding food, it is clear that they still believed in the importance of eating well. One indication of this is the sign language that they used to communicate when they were not allowed to speak: of several hundred signs, a large proportion referred to foods and wines. Some monasteries had up to twenty signs just for various kinds of fish.3
Overall, the Benedictine monks played a major role in medieval food production: they preserved traditional techniques while also inventing more productive methods of farming and new types of food, all of which they shared with the wider population. But by the twelfth century, some felt the great order had become a bit too comfortable, drifting away from the austere and devout lives envisioned by its founder. Early in that century, a group of zealous monks formed a new, more ascetic order. Originally based at a small monastery in Cîteaux, the new order came to be known as Cistercian. Within a few decades it had become one of the most prominent in Europe, thanks in large part to (Saint) Bernard of Clairvaux, one of the most renowned medieval theologians. His intercessions in both religious and temporal politics (for example, in preaching the Second Crusade) elevated the Cistercians above other reform-minded efforts.
Bernard castigated the dissolute monks of Cluny, the most notable Benedictine abbey in France, in a lengthy rant known as the Apologia. Their clothing, art, and architecture incensed him, and he singled out for condemnation their excessive love of food. During meals, he huffed, “there is nothing about the Bible or the salvation of souls. Jokes and laughter and chatter are all we hear. At table, while the mouth is filled with food the ears are nourished with gossip so absorbing that all moderation in eating is forgotten.”4 He seemed offended that the cooks took such care to present an appealing variety of foods, spiced with foreign ingredients that sullied the natural foods provided by God, and drawing men into gluttony. The fact that so many different ways of cooking eggs had been devised left him particularly indignant:
Who could describe all the ways in which eggs are tampered with and tortured, or the care that goes into turning them one way and then turning them back? They might be cooked soft, hard or scrambled. They might be fried or roasted, and occasionally they are stuffed. Sometimes they are served with other foods, and sometimes on their own. What reason can there be for all this variation except the gratification of a jaded appetite?5
At Cistercian abbeys, eggs were forbidden, along with fish, cheese, and milk.
It might seem strange that such a stringent order should have made a lasting contribution to French gastronomy, but part of Cistercian asceticism included a devotion to manual labor in the agricultural lands they acquired—and notably, in the vineyards of their original homeland of Burgundy. Wine had been grown in Burgundy since Roman times, but the Cistercians transformed the local varieties into the world-renowned wines they are today. Not long after the Cistercians’ founding, they were given some land on the Côte d’Or and devoted themselves fully to viticulture, inventing and perfecting the techniques that would yield the best and most consistent wines. The famous Grand Cru vineyard Clos de Vougeot is one of the best examples of their handiwork, and they are also credited with developing the first Chablis. It is perhaps a bit ironic that such delicious, even decadent wines owe their existence to ascetic monks, but it is the kind of paradox that seems to crop up all the time in France.
In the north of France, where wine was not produced locally, the monks drank beer instead. It was less intoxicating than wine and often safer to drink than water, so beer rations were usually quite generous. It was here that the Trappist order of monks could be found, and the beers they produced have always enjoyed a very high reputation in France. Unfortunately, the French Revolution and World War I pretty much wiped out the Trappist order in the region, and today there are no Trappist monasteries in France producing beer. All the Trappist beers enjoyed in France today are imported from Belgium.
An obvious question arises: how did these monks get so much land to produce food and wine? Paradoxically, the more the monks tried to pray, work, and renounce the outside world, the more they became important to that outside world. In the eyes of the laypeople, especially the nobility, monks were close to God and could, as it were, put in a good word for them so that they would not be sent to hell in the afterlife. People began to donate to monasteries or help establish new monasteries. Sometimes a condition of the donation would be that a noble’s brother or nephew would become the new prior of the monastery. In this way, the nobility and the clergy began to increasingly overlap and share power and influence.
Donations could take various forms—animals, land or gold, or a relic from a saint—and some monasteries amassed huge wealth. The image of the rich and fat monk has a long tradition for a reason. Some objected to this state of affairs, even within the Church, eventually leading to the appearance of new monastic orders like the Dominicans and the Franciscans, who aimed to return to the original teachings of Christ and lived the lives of paupers.
But most monasteries continued accepting donations. When monasteries acquired land, they became the new lords of the peasants and people working on those lands. They therefore had certain rights over them and could impose taxes on them. In those days, taxes were not always paid in money. The monks of Maroilles, for example, asked their subjects to prepare some Maroilles cheeses, age them for a hundred days—the time needed for Maroilles to become really delicious—and then deliver them to the monastery. In Alsace, people could pay their taxes in Munster cheese. Obviously, this didn’t always go down well with the locals, and it should not come as a surprise that during the French Revolution, the abbey of Maroilles was attacked and torn down by nearby villagers.
But getting rich also meant that the monks could become major philanthropists. They provided food and shelter for paupers and pilgrims and in effect served as the main social safety net for the poor. Convents offered a safe haven for many women. The Church tried to curb the violent excesses of the Middle Ages, successfully establishing the idea of sanctuary in churches and other ecclesiastic grounds. The Peace of God movement, which was particularly strong in southern France, tried to discourage attacks against members of the clergy, the poor, widows, orphans, or the elderly—essentially, those people who had no protection. In the eleventh century, the Church tried to impose the Truce of God, forbidding warfare on certain days of the week and all feast days (perhaps unsurprisingly, it had only modest success). Monasteries also used their wealth to promote literacy and learning, a rare thing in the Middle Ages. Until the thirteenth century and the development of universities, knowledge and the teaching of sciences was very much a monastic monopoly. Their devotion to collecting and copying manuscripts helped preserve classical knowledge and texts throughout the medieval era.
In modern France, monasteries do still exist, but their social role has eroded since the fourteenth century. They suffered greatly during the French Revolution, when most of the great monasteries were destroyed or repurposed. But monasteries still perform what they see as their social duty to the poor and vulnerable, and some of them still produce various foods, especially liquors and cheeses. The quantities produced are usually small, and the products are therefore hard to get outside of France (or even outside of the monastery’s shop).
Today, the main contribution of monks to French food production seems to be of a more secular bent: images of monks are used without any scruples by the marketing departments of big food companies. Making your food product seem like it has some vague link to monks seems to be a good technique for improving sales. It is an association that may be puzzling if one thinks only of the asceticism of the medieval Church. But in the competition between the soul and the stomach, it is clear that the wondrous products of the French countryside often held the winning hand.