Vegetarians or Carnivores Standards of L PDF

Tim Soens, Erik Thoen
Vegetarians or Carnivores ? Standards of Living and Diet in late medieval Flanders
Published as: SOENS (T.) en THOEN (E.), “Vegetarians or Carnivores? Standards of living
and diet in late Medieval Flanders”, in: Le interazioni fra economia e ambiente biologico
nell'Europa preindustriale. Secc. XIII-XVIII - Economic and Biological Interactions in the Pre-
industrial Europe from the 13th to the 18th Centuries, Prato, 2010, pp. 495-527 (Instituto
Internazionale di Storia Economica ‘F. Datini’ Prato, Serie II-Atti delle ‘Settimane di Studi’ e
altri Convegni, 41).
1The historical link between wealth, food and health is a highly complex one. In
this respect one of the most influential historical narratives has been developed for
the late medieval period. In the 14th century, demographic decline would have
resulted in “Das Goldene Zeitalter des Handwerks”: labour had become scarce, and
nominal wages rose while prices remained stable or decreased. As a consequence,
diet and nutrition intake would have improved for large parts of the population,
peasants as well as urban wage-earners. Instead of the monotonous grain-based diet
of the 12th and 13th centuries, food became more varied. Especially meat and fish,
sources of proteins and iron, became affordable for larger parts of the population -
Europe was more than ever turning into “l’Europe carnivore” eating up to 100
kilograms of meat per capita a year in the 15th century according to Wilhelm Abel 2.
In recent years both the regional variation of this diet improvement and its
presumed positive impact on health and mortality have been questioned in the
historiography. The link between diet improvement, disease and mortality in the
wake of the Black Death turns out to be an uncertain one, with important regional
variations, and biased by epidemiologic, environmental and social conditions3. As
to the supposed increase in meat consumption, Massimo Montanari advocated a
1 The authors would like to thank Peter Stabel and Reinoud Vermoesen (both University of
Antwerp, Belgium) and the participants in the Datini 2009 conference for their valuable comments
and suggestions.
2 W. ABEL, Wandlungen des Fleischverbrauchs und Fleischversorgung in Deutschland seit dem ausgehenden
Mittelalter, in “Berichte über Landwritschaft. Zeitschrift für Agrarpolitik und Landwirtschaft”, XII,
1937, 3, pp. 411-452. The idea of an ‘excessive’ meat consumption in late medieval Europe has since
been repeated in many overviews of European food history, for example: H.J. TEUTEBERG, Periods and
Turning-Points in the History of European Diet: a Preliminary Outline of Problems and Methods, pp. 17-18.
3 See different contributions in the proceedings of the 1996 Datini conference:, Alimentazione e
nutrizione, secc. XIII-XVIII: Atti della " Ventottesima Settimana di studi " , 22-27 aprile 1996, ed. S.
CAVACIOCCHI, Firenze 1997 (Serie II, Atti delle " settimane di studi " e altri convegni). For Flanders,
see: E. THOEN, T. SOENS, The Family or the Farm: a Sophie’s Choice? The Late Medieval Crisis in the Former
County of Flanders, in Postan-Duby. Le destin d’un paradigme historique. Peut-on comprendre les crises économiques
de la fin du moyen âge sans le modèle malthusien?, ed. J. DRENDEL, Leiden forthcoming.
6 TIM SOENS, ERIK THOEN
more nuanced approach, indicating important regional and chronological

divergences within late medieval Europe, as well as the lack of evidence for
increased overall meat consumption on the late medieval countryside: in many rural
regions beef-eating remained uncommon and both the extension of animal
husbandry and the booming international oxen trade were more than ever oriented
towards the urban markets4.
In this paper we will take up Montanari’s remarks for one of the core regions of
“L’Europe carnivore”: the county of Flanders. For the towns of the densely populated
and urbanized Southern Low Countries, a significant increase in meat consumption
from the late medieval period on has already been noticed by Herman Van Der Wee
in 19665. However the main problems remain unsolved: did late medieval diet
indeed improve for large numbers of the both the urban and rural populations? We
can further question whether such ‘improvement’ consisted solely of an increase in
the quantities of meat consumed or conversely, whether more qualitative changes
were also visible. Finally, it remains an open question whether the improved
nutrition intake was sufficient to change health conditions and mortality on a more
than individual base. In what follows we will concentrate on meat consumption,
although the presumed nutritional changes of the late medieval period also
concerned other foodstuffs like fish, cheese and butter. We will try to argue that an
‘overall’ increase in meat consumption in late medieval Flanders is highly
problematic. Regional and social variations in food consumption were often more
significant than ‘general’ chronological evolutions. As we will see, this wide variety
of diets can only be explained by linking food consumption to regional economic
and environmental conditions6. In our Flemish test-case this will be illustrated by
comparing the inland part of the region, where a more traditional small-size family
survival economy had developed and where animal husbandry was focused on
manure and dairy production, and not on private meat consumption, with the
coastal area, where extensive and commercial cattle-breeding developed from the
late medieval period on.
1. The historiographical fate of ‘Carnivorous Europe’ and the medieval ‘standard of liv-
ing’ debate
The idea of a ‘Carnivorous Europe’ distinguishing itself from other parts of the
world - and notably from Asian and Pre-Columbian American civilisations - by a
much larger and much more diversified meat consumption, is probably best known
through its description by Fernand Braudel, in his Civilisation and Capitalism. In the
first part of this work, Braudel compiles very divers evidence to prove that meat
was abundant in Europe from the fifteenth century on, and not limited to the
4 M. MONTANARI, La faim et l’abondance. Histoire de l’alimentation en Europe, Paris 1995, pp. 104-109.
5 H. VAN DER WEE, Voeding en dieet in het Ancien Régime, in “Spiegel Historiael”, I, 1966, pp. 94-101,
translated in English as: Nutrition and Diet in the Ancien Régime, in: H. VAN DER WEE, The Low Countries in
the Early Modern World, Cambridge and New York 1993, pp. 279-287.
6 See also R. HOFFMAN, Frontier Fisheries for Medieval Consumers. Culture, Economy, Ecology, in
“Environment and history”, 6, 2001, 2, pp. 131-166.
VEGETARIANS OR CARNIVORES? 7
upper classes. From c. 1350 to c. 1550 living standards were inevitably good for a
large part of the European working classes as manpower had become scarce in the
wake of the late medieval demographical crisis and real wages reached their highest
levels for centuries. The parallel increase in meat consumption in this period was
made possible by an expanding long-distance trade in cattle, bringing thousands of
oxen from Poland, Hungary and the Balkan to the West of Europe. The evidence
used by Braudel is mainly qualitative: stories of travellers; descriptions of meals and
complaints of landlords finding it increasingly difficult to hire workers. This
‘Golden Age of meat consumption’ would not last: from c. 1550 on there was an
overall decrease in meat consumption, and a renewed concentration on arable
farming with a parallel increase in cereal consumption - ‘an extra-ordinary step
backwards’ as Braudel labelled it. In the Early Modern Period, carnivorous Europe
- again - became the realm of the urban and aristocratic elites, so that European
voyagers still remained puzzled by the limited rates of meat consumed by Chinese,
Japanese or Indian upper classes7. Braudel was not the first to establish this broad
chronology of European meat consumption. Already in 1937 Wilhelm Abel pointed
the attention to the extra-ordinary levels of per capita meat-consumption
sometimes reached by pre-modern European populations in some periods of their
history.8 And at the end of the 19th century the well-known economist C. Juglar had
used meat consumption as a measure of well-being, especially with regard to urban
populations. 9 But probably the first modern scholar to deal with the problem in a
historical analysis, was the influential German economist Gustav Schmoller who in
1871 linked fluctuations in meat consumption to the evolution of wages and
purchasing power and more precisely concluded that the 16th century rise in meat
prices resulted in ‘einer weitgehenden Einschränkung des Fleischconsums’.10
Influenced and inspired by Braudel 1960’s and 1970’s historians were swept
with enthusiasm to reconstruct the average daily food intake in the past. The largest
collaborative effort in this respect took place in the context of the Annales enquiry
into the conditions of daily life. All over Europe the diets of late medieval and early
modern soldiers, sailors, monks and hospital’ patients were reconstructed, and
converted into caloric intake. 11 The consumption of meat always had a crucial role
in these enquiries: ‘régimes alimentaires’ were discerned according to the place they
devoted to meat. 12 The results of these enquiries were highly debated and both the
7 F. BRAUDEL , Civilisation matérielle et capitalisrne (XVe-XVIIIe siècle), 1967, pp. 192-198.

8 W. ABEL, Wandlungen des Fleischverbrauchs, cit..
9 C. JUGLAR, Des crises commerciales et de leur retour périodique en France, en Angleterre et aux Etats Unis,
Paris 1889, pp. 534-535: ‘la consommation de la viande qui indique le plus ou le moins de bien être de la population
des villes, permet de juger le degré des périodes heureuses ou malheureuses’ (cited by C. VANDENBROEKE,
Kwantitatieve en kwalitatieve aspecten van het vleesverbruik in Vlaanderen, in “Tijdschrift voor Sociale
Geschiedenis”, IX, 1983, 2, p. 223).
10 G. SCHMOLLER, Die historische Entwicklung des Fleischconsums sowie der Viehpreise in Deutschland, in
“Zeitschrift für die gesamte Staatswirtschaft”, 27, 1871, pp. 284-362, esp. 343-362.
11 F. SPOONER, Régimes alimentaires d’autrefois: proportions et calculs en calories (Bulletin nr. 1), “Annales
E.S.C.”, 16, 1961, pp. 568-574; J.J. HEMARDINQUER, Pour une histoire de l’alimentation, Paris 1970.
12 M. AYMARD, L’Europe des nourritures végétales. Une nouvelle visite aux prisons de longue
durée, in: Alimentazione e nutrizione, cit., p. 96.
methodology and relevance of reconstructing ‘average’ diets for different periods in

history were put into question.13 From the 1980’s on, other research questions
became predominant in food history, privileging the more social and cultural
aspects of medieval and early modern diets. As for the (r)evolutions of meat
consumption in the pre-modern period, Maurice Aymard concluded that fluctuations
had probably been exaggerated, and that only in the last decades of the 19th century
- with the globalisation of food trade - a structural and population-wide increase in
the share of proteins derived from animals could occur.14
However, the debate on fluctuating meat consumption in the pre-modern
period did not stop in the 1980’s and 1990’s. It was particularly revitalised in
discussions over the demographic and socio-economic impact of the Black Death
in Europe, focussing on two interconnected questions: firstly, did the 14th century
‘crisis’ induce a lasting period of improved living standards - including an improved
access to food - for broad groups in society? Secondly, was there a link between the
low nutritional status of the early fourteenth century and the demographic collapse
that followed? One of the most elaborate treatments of both subjects can be found
in the publications of Christopher Dyer. Dyer does notice a ‘real transformation’ in
peasant eating between the end of the 13th century and the late 14th century, with
the peak of dietary improvement reached in the 15th century. In the period 1280-
1325 the diet of large parts of the rural population was indeed particularly
unbalanced and monotonously grain oriented, with at least rural wage-earners and
peasants owning less than a halfyard (15 acres) vulnerable to cyclical starvation.
One century later both the quality and the quantity had improved significantly.
Wheat was used for bread instead of rye and barley, and larger quantities of fresh
meat had replaced the previous much smaller ratios of meat consisting mainly of
bacon. Dyer’s most convincing evidence is derived from the entrances of food and
drink allowances for harvest workers in manor accounts and from retirement
pensions accorded negotiated for the subsistence of the older members of peasant
society, both sources that are largely unavailable for most of continental Europe,
including Flanders. This source material clearly privileges some groups in society,
and Dyer stresses the difficulties of extrapolating food allowances or wages of
harvest workers to other periods of the year, to other regions, or to other social
groups in or outside rural society.15
13 E .BARLÖSIUS, The History of Diet as Part of the vie matérielle in France, in “European food
history”, pp. 91-108.
14 M. AYMARD, Pour l’histoire de l’alimentatin: quelques remarques de méthode, in”Annales. E.S.C.”, 30,
1979, p. 432: “encore l’ampleur des oscillations de la consommation carnée est-elle peut-être exagérée : d’après les calculs
de J.-C. Toutain, le pourcentage des protéines d’origines animale ne décolle en France de son niveau de 25% du total des
protéines, qu’après 1880-1890”. On this issue see also D.B. GRIGG, Population growth and agrarian change :
an historical perspective, Cambridge 1980.
15 These problems were first treated in: CH. DYER, Changes in Diet in the Late Middle Ages: the Case
of Harvest Workers, in “Agricultural History Review”, 36, 1988, pp. 21–37; and more recently: IDEM,
Did the Peasants really Starve in Medieval England?, in: M. CARLIN, J.T. ROSENTHAL, Food and Eating in
Medieval Europe, 1998, pp. 53-71; see also the general studies of the same author: IDEM, Standards of
Living in the Later Middle Ages. Social Change in England, c. 1200-1520, Cambridge 1989 and more
recently: IDEM, Making a Living in the Middle Ages. The People of Britain, 850-1520, London 2003.
The health consequences of this diet transformation are even more difficult to
grasp. Most authors nowadays seem to reject a direct link between nutrition status
and mortality. In his overview to the 1996 Datini conference, Richard Smith
summarizes the arguments against such a direct link: few people died directly from
starvation, pre-modern mortality peaks are mostly due to infectious diseases and
although some of diseases are fostered by under-nourishment, others like notably
the plague and smallpox are not. The validity of the correlation between grain price
fluctuations and population crises established by Goubert and others, is problematic
and in any subject to many regional divergences. Life expectancy worsens in some
periods - like most of the 17th century in England - when dietary conditions in
general improved.16 The same might have been true for the 15th century, where life
expectancy remained poor notwithstanding the general improvement of living and
dietary standards.17 In order to explain the non-linear relationships between
demography and nutrition, scholars increasingly pointed at the social mechanisms
and institutions involved in the access to food. Not just the general availability of
food and meat in a given period, but the regionally and socially divergent
production and consumption strategies are determinant in the dietary choices of
individuals. In order to explain the vulnerability for food shortage of late 13th
century rural smallholders, Dyer takes into account the diminishing access to land,
the increased market-dependency of the rural economy, the increased dependence
on wage labour, the diminishing availability of commons, the failure of familial and
communal networks; the limited extent of poverty relief… all resulting in an
unequal distribution of food, and a higher risk of food shortage.18 So, when
analyzing quantitative and qualitative changes in meat consumption over time, not
only demographic evolutions, but the whole picture of regional distribution of land
among different groups in society; changes in land-use and productivity; the
commercialisation of agriculture and the provisioning of urban populations;
changing labour relations in town and countryside; the role of familial, communal
and charitable institutions as means of food redistribution… must all be taken into
account.19
2. Late Medieval Flanders: population and crisis

Trying to measure qualitative and quantitative changes in meat consumption in
the late medieval period, the county of Flanders offers a very interesting but also
very specific test-case. First of all, the medieval county of Flanders belonged to the
most densely populated and urbanized regions of Western-Europe, and secondly,
the demographic impact of the late medieval crisis was long considered to have
been relatively low. With an estimated total population of about 660.000 inhabitants
16 R. SMITH, Periods of "Feast and Famine": Food Supply and Long Term Changes in European Mortality c.
1200-1800; in Alimentazione e nutrizione, cit., pp. 159-186.
17 PH. SCHOFIELD, Peasant and Community in Medieval England 1200-1500, Basingstoke 2003, pp. 92-93.
18 CH. DYER, Did the Peasants really Starve, cit.
19 For a recent treatment of diet from within the context of rural economy: see B.M.S.
CAMPBELL, English Seigniorial Agriculture 1250-1450, Cambridge 2000, passim.
(c. 730.000 when including Walloon-Flanders with the cities of Lille, Douai and
Orchies), and approximately 78 inhabitants per square kilometre the population
density in mid-15th century Flanders as a whole remained high.20 The region
suffered a lot of the Great Famine of 1315-17, when cereal prices at least tripled.
Neither did the region escape from the Black Death pandemic of 1348, although
the direct demographical impact was probably lower dan in most surrounding
regions. Furthermore, in the decades after 1348 repeated outbursts of epidemics,
either widespread (e.g. in 1360-61; 69-70; 1400-01) or on a more local scale, caused
a marked rise in mortality both in cities and on the countryside.21 Urban ratios
nevertheless remained spectacular high, with the largest Flemish cities of Ghent,
Bruges and Ypres counting respectively c. 65.000, c. 40.000 and c. 30.000
inhabitants in the first of half of the 14th century, and apart from Ypres, able to
retain most of their population in the subsequent centuries. Although the
traditional textile industries of the big Flemish cities suffered badly from
international and internal competition already in the 13th century, they successfully
made the switch towards luxury products, thus retaining most of their employment
for skilled labourers. Many secondary towns - especially in Inland Flanders -
specialized in textile products with a high added value and witnessed new economic
and demographic growth as well.22 Although interrupted in the late 15th century, by
two decades of internal warfare and severe economic decline, the 15th century
Golden Age of Burgundy is still thought to have caused a temporary improvement of
living conditions for most skilled and unskilled labourers in the Flemish towns,
including changes in daily food consumption.
For the countryside, new research has revealed that even within Flanders
generalization is difficult because of the profoundly divergent crisis impact in
different agricultural regions. In the sandy inland part of Flanders the demographic
peak was reached at the end of the 13th century, but most signs of demographic
decline can be situated between c. 1370 and 1410, due to high mortality rates. 23 The
influence of the mid-14th century waves of mortality (the Black Death) were
20 For a recent state of the art about late medieval demography in Flanders: E. THOEN, Historical
Demography in Medieval Rural Flanders. Recent Results and Possibilities, in Peasants and Townsmen in Medieval
Europe. Studia in honorem Adriaan Verhulst, J.-M. DUVOSQUEL, E. THOEN eds., Gent 1995, pp.573-58;
see also: W. PREVENIER, La démographie des villes du comté de Flandre aux XIVe et XVe siècles. Etat de la
question. Essai d’interprétation, in “Revue du Nord”, 65, 1983, pp. 255-275 ; W. BLOCKMANS et al., Tussen
crisis en welvaart. Sociale veranderingen 1300-1500, in Algemene Geschiedenis der Nederlanden, 4, Haarlem 1980;
B. VAN BAVEL, People and Land: Rural Population Developments and Property Structures in the Low Countries, c.
1300-c. 1600, in “Continuity and Change”, 17, 2002, pp. 9-37.
21 On the impact of the late medieval epidemics in Flandres: W. BLOCKMANS, The Social and
Economic Effects of Plague in the Low Countries: 1349-1500, in “Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire”,
58, 1980, 4, pp. 833-863; E. THOEN, I. DEVOS, Pest in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden tijdens de middeleeuwen en de
moderne tijden, in De pest in de Nederlanden, Brussel 1999, pp. 109-133 (Koninklijke Academie voor
Geneeskunde van België, Verhandelingen, 61).
22 See in particular P. STABEL, Dwarfs among Giants: the Flemish Urban Network in the Late Middle
Ages, Leuven-Apeldoorn 1997; IDEM, Urbanization and its Consequences: the Urban Region in Late Medieval
Flanders, in P. AINSWORTH, T. SCOTT, Regions and Landscapes. Reality and Imagination in Late Medieval and
Early Modern Europe, Oxford 2000, pp. 177-203.
23 E. THOEN, Historical Demography, cit., pp. 577-580.
relatively restrained but the real demographic (and economic) recovery happened
relatively late, after the end of the civil war against Maximilian of Austria (from
about 1492). 24 In the late 15th and early 16th century the region witnessed a marked
population growth. As peasant farmers retained most of their property rights on
land, and subdivision of holdings continued, an increasing part of the population
needed additional income, resulting in an further expansion of proto-industrial
activities, including rural textile industries, in the late medieval period.25 In contrast,
in the wetlands of coastal Flanders, social and economisch changes in the late
medieval period were much more pronounced and ‘crisis’ phenomena are more
numerous, including lost farms and villages, population decline, scarcity of labour,
engrossment of farm sizes and landownership, transition into less labour intensive
activities etc. (see below).
In general, the specific impact of the late medieval crisis on Flanders, might
have both fostered and hampered an improvement of diet for large parts of the
population. On the one hand, the limited demographic decline did not provoke the
same labour scarcity as for instance in England. As a consequence, spectacular
increases in spending power for the working classes during the 14th century are less
probable. On the other hand, the dense urbanisation, the Burgundian economic
recovery, and the growth of a wealthy middle-class in the 15th century cities, and in
some parts of the countryside, might indeed have caused an increased demand for
meat and a better diet for large parts of the population.
3. Evidence for increased meat-consumption in late medieval Flanders?

In this highly populated and densely urbanized region there are many
indications for high levels of meat consumption during the late medieval period, in
particular in urban contexts. According to Braudel, ‘meat was so commonly eaten [there]
that even in times of famine, demand scarcely fell’26. Direct evidence on daily diet however,
remains very scarce. Even for elite groups, the number of household accounts
giving reliable information on food consumption are relatively scarce before 1500 -
which might seem surprising given the generally good conservation of medieval
source material for this part of Europe. Even for the court of the Burgundian
dukes in the 15th century, we’re hardly informed on their food consumption27.
24 Due to this late recovery and the relative light effects, G. Sivery labeled the crisis in the
Southern Netherlands ‘the Bourgondian crisismodel’ (G. SIVÉRY, Structures agraires et vie rurale dans le
Hainaut à la fin du Moyen Age, I-II, Lille 1977-80)
25 The most elaborate synthesis of the agrarian history of this region remains E. THOEN,
Landbouwekonomie en bevolking in Vlaanderen gedurende de late Middeleeuwen en het begin van de Moderne Tijden.
Testregio: de kasselrijen van Oudenaarde en Aalst, Ghent, 1988, 2 vol.
26 F. BRAUDEL, Civilisation matérielle, cit.
27 M. SOMME, L’alimentation à la cour de Bourgogne au milieu du XVe siècle, in “Bulletin philologique et
historique (jusqu’à 1610) du comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques”, 1968 (Paris 1971), I, pp.
103-117 ; on the pre-Burgundian period see : M.G.A. VALE, Provisioning Princely Households in the Low
Countries during the Pre-Burgundian Period, c. 1280-1380, in Alltag bei Hofe: 3. Symposium der Residenzen-
Kommission der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen, Ansbach 28. Februar bis 1. März 1992, ed. W.
PARAVICINI, Sigmaringen 1995, pp. 33-40.
We’re much better informed on the food pattern of monastic communities,

although regretably not before the middle of the 14th century, making it difficult to
appreciate any qualitative changes as compared to the period before the Black
Death. In many 15th century monasteries diet was typically rich, with ample
quantities of meat (often with a preference for mutton and poultry), fish and diary
products, thus confirming the opinion of Barbara Harvey that late medieval
monastic diet actually was ‘a special version of aristocratic diet’.28
For the urban and rural lower and middle classes, the evidence is even more
problematic. As Johanna Maria Van Winter - the most distinguished food historian of
the medieval Low Countries - puts it: ‘One can speculate about peasant nutrition but
contemporary sources provide no hard evidence’.29 Private household accounts are very rare
in this part of Europe30. In exceptional cases, indirect taxation provides an
indication of total meat consumption. For the Brabantine city of Louvain for
instance, Raymond Van Uytven could calculate the total number of animals
slaughtered during one year. From January 1st untill April 30th, butchers and private
households reported the slaughtering of 1452 oxen, 967 cows, 4029 pigs, 11084
sheep and calfs, 4682 lambs and 1494 goats. At that period the population of
Louvain hardly exceeded 17000 people, which according to Van Uytven
corresponded to a fairly high annual meat consumption of about 60 kilogram per
capita31. Lacking comparable data for other years and cities, the probability of these
numbers is hard to check. For Flanders and Brabant however, we dispose of one
unique source that is both serial and to a certain extent representative for the food
consumption of larger strata of the urban population: accounts of food provisions
in urban hospitals. In what follows we will discuss the food distributed in the main
hospitals of Bruges (Saint John’s hospital and the Potterie-hospital) and Antwerp
(Saint Elizabeth’s hospital)32, supplemented with information on food consumption
in some smaller charitable institutions.33
28 B. HARVEY, Monastic Diet, XIIIth-XVIth Centuries: Problems and Perspectives, in Alimentazione e
nutrizione, cit., pp. 611-641, esp. 638. Studies on monastic diet in the Low Countries include J.
HEUCLIN, La table des chanoinesses de Maubeuge à la fin du XIVe siècle, in Boire et manger en pays bourguignons
(XIVe-XVIe siècles), Actes du colloque de Boulogne-sur-Mer du 21 au 24 septembre 2006, Neuchâtel 2007
(Centre européen d'études bourguignonnes (XIVe – XVIe siècles)), pp. 219-230 ; D. ROELANDT,
Voedingsgewoonten in de Gentse Sint-Pieters- en Sint-Baafsabdij tijdens de Late Middeleeuwen, in “Handelingen
van de maatschappij voor de geschiedenis en oudheid te Gent, Nieuwe reeks”, 1972, pp. 41-68;
29 J.M. VAN WINTER, The Low Countries in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, in M. WEISS
ADAMSON, Regional Cuisines of Medieval Europe. A book of essays, New-York-London 2002, p. 197.
30 One of the few examples from an urban context (although without much reference to food
consumption) is M. BOONE, De discrete charmes van het burgerbestaan in Gent rond het midden van de vijftiende
eeuw. Het financieel handboek van Simon Borluut (1450-1463), in: ‘Proeve ’t al, ’t is prysselyck”. Consumption in
European towns (13th-18th century). Liber Amicorum Raymond van Uytven, Antwerpen 1998. See also: J. M.
VAN WINTER, Nahrung auf dem Lobither Zollhaus auf Grund der Zollrechnungen aus den Jahren 1426-27, 1427-
28 und 1428-29, in Liber Castellorum. 40 variaties op het thema kasteel, T.J. HOEKSTRA, H.L. JANSSEN,
I.W.L. MOERMAN eds., Zutphen 1981 (Walburg Press), pp. 338-348.
31 R. VAN UYTVEN, Stadsfinanciën en stadsekomonomie te Leuven van de XIIe tot het einde der XVIe eeuw,
Brussel, 1961, annexe, table XXI. Similar data for Lier in 1474 however indicate a significantly lower
meat consumption: H. VAN DER WEE, Voeding en dieet, cit., p. 100.
32 Most of these data on food consumption in late medieval hospitals have recently been made
available for research thanks to a series of Master Theses in Medieval History, supervised by Erik
The oldest evidence on food consumption in an urban hospital concerns Saint

John’s hospital in Bruges. This hospital, founded in the course of the 12th century
and situated in the immediate vicinity of the Church of Our Lady, remained the
only hospital of the thriving commercial metropolis of Bruges until the last quarter
of the 13th century. Originally it provided lodging and food to all kinds of people in
need of assistance: the poor, the sick, the elder and the pilgrims. With more and
more specialised institutions founded in the late 13th and the 14th century, Saint-
John’s would more and more concentrate on the sick. The hospital was
administered by a mixed community of friars and sisters, following the rule of Saint
Augustine. In the first half of the fifteenth century their number varied between 15
and 19, assisted by six female or male servants. Furthermore between 10 to 13
‘proveniers’ (pensioners) also lived permanently in the hospital. Closely watched
over by the aldermen of the city, the accounts of the hospital, containing a lot of
information on food distributions, have been almost uninterruptedly preserved
parallel with the city accounts, the oldest one dating back to c. 1275. As often we
ignore the exact number of patients in the hospital, which poses huge problems for
the reconstruction of their daily meals. For the year 1547 we know of 74 sick and
30 temporary visitors or travellers and in the middle of the 15th century there were
83 beds, each usually lodging more than one person. Probably the capacity of the
hospital did not much change since the beginning of the fourteenth century, as the
last major building programme dated back from 1310.34
The late 13th and 14th century accounts contain many details on food
deliverances and purchases, but unfortunately they do not systematically register the
quantities concerned. The analysis of the relative cost of different types of food
already reveals some important changes in the course of the 14th and early 15th
century:
Thoen at Ghent University: S. DEHAECK, Voedselconsumptie te Brugge in de Middeleeuwen. Casestudy: het Sint-
Janshopitaal en het hospitaal van de Potterie, Ghent, Unpublished Master Thesis, 2000. See also IDEM,
Voedselconsumptie in het Brugse Sint-Janshospitaal tijdens de Middeleeuwen (1280-1440), in “Handelingen van
het Genootschap voor Geschiedenis, “Société d’Emulation” te Brugge”, 141,2004, 3-4, pp. 332-364;
C. VANDENBORRE, Prijzen, lonen en levensstandaard in Brugge en omgeving tijdens de 14de en het begin van de 15e
eeuw, Ghent, Unpublished Master Thesis, 1999; L. EYSKENS, De voeding in het Sint-Elisabethsgasthuis te
Antwerpen in de vijftiende en zestiende eeuw (1426 tot 1569), Ghent, Unpublished Master Thesis, 2000; N.
NYFFELS, Tussen ascese en exuberantie: een studie naar de voedselconsumptie van personeel en passanten in het
passantenhuis Sint-Juliaan te Brugge 1400-1550, Ghent, Unpublished Master Thesis, 2005.
33 In particular for the hospitals of Rijsel: A. DERVILLE, Vivre à l'hôpital Saint-Sauveur de Lille
(1285-1471), in “Bijdragen tot de Geschiedenis”, LXXI, 1-3, pp. 161-169; Douai: M. MESTAYER,
L’alimentation des bonnes maisons douaisiennes entre 1309 et 1365, in: Boire et manger aux pays bourguignons, pp.
231-240; Oudenaarde: D. DEMUYTERE, Poging tot het samenstellen van het menu van de hospitaalzusters in de
eerste helft van de 15de eeuw, in “Handelingen van de Geschied- en Oudheidkundige Kring van
Oudenaarde”, XXX, 1993, pp. 131-134.
34 On the early history of the Saint John’s hospital, see G. MARÉCHAL, De sociale en politieke
gebondenheid van het Brugse hospitaalwezen in de Middeleeuwen, Kortrijk 1978 (Standen en Landen, 73) and
IDEM, Het Sint-Janshospitaal in de eerste eeuwen van zijn bestaan, in:Sint-Janshospitaal Brugge 1188-1979.
Tentoonstellingscatalogus, Brugge 1976, pp. 41-75.
Fig. 1. Relative expenditure on food in Saint-John’s hospital in Bruges

(1280-1441, sample years).
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
1280
1290
1300
1307
1310
1316
1317
1320
1325
1332
1340
1341
1342
1343
1345
1350
1355
1359
1360
1361
1362
1365
1370
1375
1385
1391
1395
1400
1402
1406
1411
1416
1421
1426
1431
1436
1441
cereals meat fish dairy peas+fruit+vegetable beverages eggs salt+spices
Based on S. DEHAECK, Voedselconsumptie, cit., Annexe I.
Until the first quarter of the 14th century, cereals made up more than half of the
hospital’s food expenditure. In fact, the total share of cereal-based products in the
food budget was even higher as beer accounted between 53 and 86% of the
expenditure on beverages before 1325. From the second quarter of the fourteenth
century on, the relative weight of cereals in the budget was clearly diminishing, first
to c. 40% until 1350, than to c. 30% in the second half of the century, increasing
again in the beginning of the 15th century, and falling down to no more than 20% in
the second quarter of that century. By contrast, meat and to a lesser extent fish, are
clearly gaining importance. Their respective share in the food expenditure increased
from c. 9 to c. 40% for meat and from c. 4 to c. 10% for fish. The money value of
cereals and meat was completely reversed:
Tab. 1. Relative expenditure on meat and grain in Saint John’s hospital in

Bruges
expenditure meat/grain (%)
1275-99 19
1300-24 25
1325-49 34
1350-74 51
1375-99 83
1400-24 77
1425-49 144
Based on Ibidem.
The evolution described is not just a consequence of changing relative prices

(see below), the cereal consumption in the hospital was effectively decimated: from
2235 hectoliter in 1290 to 230 hectoliter in 1441. As bread ratios in hospitals were
often fixed, it’s possible that the evolution of cereal consumption is most of all
related to the number of patients in the hospital, which would imply that the
decline in the number of patients already began in the late 13th century, and
continued all the way through the early 15th century. Assuming a constant
consumption of 1 liter of cereals a day per capita (the ratio often used in the late
medieval period), 35 this would mean a reduction in the number of consumers from
c. 600 in 1290 to c. 60 in 1441. It’s possible although a bit unlikely that the 13th
century hospital was able to provide lodging for so many people on a year-round
base. It’s equally unlikely that the 15th century hospital only fed 64 people (including
a permanent staff of 20 and about 10 pensioners). So probably the daily ratio of
cereals had changed in the meanwhile from more than one liter in the late 13th
century, to less than one liter in the early fifteenth. Though it was c. 20% more
expensive than rye, the main cereal consumed by the hospital was always wheat.
Until the 1360’s, rye made up 10-25% of the hospital’s cereal consumption, but
afterwards rye was completely replaced by wheat. Most of the wheat was directly
delivered by the hospital’s farms in the polder area, where wheat was the main bread
cereal cultivated. For the surplus of wheat that had to be purchased, the hospital
also invariably chose wheat, even in 1316-17 during the Great Famine.
Fig. 2. Cereal consumption (in hectoliter) in Saint John’s hospital in Bruges
2500
2000
1500
1000
500
0
1290
1300
1307
1310
1316
1317
1320
1325
1332
1340
1341
1342
1343
1345
1350
1355
1359
1360
1361
1362
1365
1370
1375
1385
1391
1395
1400
1402
1406
1411
1416
1421
1426
1431
1436
1441
Based on Ibidem, Annexe II.
Unfortunately, the amount of meat consumed cannot be estimated with the

same degree of accuracy. In the first half of the 15th century the hospital
slaughtered each year between 35 and 90 cows; 126 to 263 sheep; 13 to 62 lambs
and 0 to 71 pigs. Using a rather modest estimation of 150 kilogram of useful meat
35 CH. DYER, Standardes of Living, cit., p. 153; A. DERVILLE, Vivre à l’hôpital, cit., p. 126.
per cow; 12 kilogram per sheep and 6 kilogram per lamb36, this would imply a total
annual meat consumption of 7900 kilogram beef; 2281 kilogram mutton and 1167
kilogram pork. In the years 1400-41, the correlation between the evolution of cereal
and meat consumption is clearly negative37: less cereals, more meat:
Fig. 3. Meat and cereal consumption in Saint-John’s hospital in Bruges

(1402-1441)
18000
16000
14000
12000
10000
8000
6000
4000
2000
0
1402
1406
1411
1416
1421
1426
1431
1436
1441
cereal consumption (x10 liter) meat consumption (kilogram)
Based on Ibidem, Annexe II.
The data on meat consumption before 1400 are much poorer, with most of the
entrances simply labeled ‘meat’. We can presume that at least part of this undefined
‘meat’ is pork, which is not mentioned elsewhere. However, we can see that until
1340 the expenditure on mutton always exceeded the expenditure on beef. From
the 1340’s onwards this was reversed. Using the price evaluations of cattle, pigs and
sheep entered by Simon de Rikelike in his unique accountbook (see below), we can
make reasonable guesses about the meat consumption in Saint John’s hospital in
the 1320’s and 1330’s. Taking as a hypothesis that the undefined ‘meat’ expenses
consist of 40% mutton, 30% beef and 30% pork, the total meat consumption in
this period oscillated between c. 5500 kilogram in 1325 (a troubled year when the
Peasant War was ravaging the coastal area) and c. 18500 kilogram in 1340, with an
average of about 10000 kilogram. If this is right, the total amount of meat
consumed in the 1320’s and 1330’s did not much diverge from the 15th century’
totals. Only the number of consumers had decreased. This hypothesis is confirmed
36 Mainly based on data for Antwerp c. 1600: H. VAN DER WEE, Voeding en dieet, p. 96; E.
SCHOLLIERS, Loonarbeid en honger, p. 37.
37 Pearson correlation coefficient equals -0,40.
by the comparison of the total expenditure on meat and cereals, converted into
silver to avoid the problem of mint depreciation in the 14th century:
Fig. 4. Expenditure on cereals and meat in Saint-John’s hospital in Bruges (total

expenditure converted into silver grams)
600
500
400
silver grams
300
200
100
0
1280
1290
1300
1307
1310
1316
1317
1320
1325
1332
1340
1341
1342
1343
1345
1350
1355
1359
1360
1361
1362
1365
1370
1375
1385
1391
1395
1400
1402
1406
1411
1416
1421
1426
1431
1436
1441
cereals meat
Based on S. DEHAECK, Voedselconsumptie, cit.; monetary conversions by the authors).
Around 1400 expenditure on both meat and cereals in Saint John’s hospital was
historically low. In the previous century, expenditure on cereals had been twice as
high. Expenditure on meat was also higher in the second half of the 14th century,
but significantly lower in the beginning of that century. The significant increase in
meat expenditure from c. 1300 to c. 1320/40 is intriguing. In the same period cereal
consumption dropped significantly (see above), and, apart from the Great Famine
period when cereal prices boomed, total cereal expenditure remained rather stable.
It’s difficult to determine whether the increase in meat expenditure in the first of
half of the 14th century should be explained by a rise in meat consumption per
capita or by a rise in meat prices. We lack any reliable evidence on meat prices
before the 1360’s, but wheat prices in Bruges in these decades were in fact no
longer rising, so a considerable increase in meat prices seems a bit unlikely.38 On
the other hand, the hypothesis of an early rise of meat consumption by hospital
dwellers is confirmed by similar data for yet another Flemish hospital: the hospital
Saint-Sauveur in Lille, studied by Alain Derville. Saint-Sauveur was smaller than Saint-
John’s in Bruges, with an estimated population decreasing from c. 100 in 1280 to c.
38 C. VANDENBORRE, Prijzen, lonen en levensstandaard, cit.; E. THOEN, T. SOENS, The Family or the
Farm, cit.
50 in the middle of the 50th century (staff included). The evolution of meat and
cereal consumption however, is not unlike the Bruges’ case:
Fig. 5. Meat and cereal consumption in the hospital Saint-Sauveur in Lille (F.)
(1285-1467)
50
45
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
1285
1295
1324
1325
1328
1331
1334
1337
1339
1341
1345
1349
1350
1351
1352
1353
1355
1356
1357
1358
1359
1361
1363
1364
1365
1366
1367
1368
1369
1371
1375
1376
1381
1400
1410
1429
1430
1431
1432
1433
1441
1442
1443
1446
1450
1451
1452
1454
1455
1456
1457
1458
1463
1464
1466
1467
cereal consumption (x10 hectoliter) meat consumption (converted into N porks)
Based on A. DERVILLE, Vivre à l’hôpital, cit., tab. 1 and 2.39
Remarkably, the increase of meat consumption in the first half of the 14th
century, suggested for Bruges, is confirmed by the Lille data: between 1295 and
1351 the number of animals slaughtered at the hospital more than doubled,
whereas the grain consumption decreased (although with a revival around 1350,
just like in Bruges). In the second half of the 14th century meat and cereal
consumption evolved in a parallel way, which suggests no further change in the
meat ratio. The early 15th century increase in meat consumption we’ve noticed for
Bruges also occurred in Lille, although the difference with cereal consumption is
less pronounced. When taking for granted that the cereal consumption reflected the
population, per capita meat consumption in the late 1450’s was twice as high as it
had been around 1300, mainly thanks to the early 14th century increase. Derville
tried to calculate per capita meat consumption, and saw an increase of annual ratios
from c. 32 kilogram in 1285 to c. 64 kilogram in the 1450’s, or from c. 120 to c. 266
gram per day on meat-days.40 Actual consumption was probably lower, as Derville
used gross weights of 381 kilogram per cow, 128 kilogram per swine and 64
39 Derville uses ‘pork equivalents’ to express the number of animals slaughtered each year, using the
same 1:3 ratio to compare the useful weight of a pork to the useful weight of the average cow. Only
for muttons Derville uses a 1:6 ratio compared to cows, which means that he valuates the useful
weight of sheep more than twice as high as we have for Bruges (1:12,5). The meat consumption only
concerns the sick, not the staff.
40 A. DERVILLE, Vivre à l’hôpital, cit., p. 164.
kilogram per sheep, which seems much overrated for the late medieval period. But
even accepting the high estimates of Derville, the 15th century meat consumption in
the hospital of Lille still remains lower than in Saint John’s hospital Bruges.
Although the data are far from perfect, there’s no doubt that patients in Saint-
John’s - and to a lesser extent Saint-Sauveur - consumed significantly more meat in
the 1440’s than their predecessor around 1300. Part of this increase took place in
the first half of the 15th century, an earlier increase already in the course of the 14th
century. At the same time however, a drop in the number of patients had occurred
both in Bruges and in Lille. As we have already mentioned above, urban population
did not decrease dramatically in late medieval Flanders, so this decline was not just
reflecting a general demographic evolution, but rather indicates a more restrictive
admittance to urban hospitals in this period. As a consequence, a richer diet was
enjoyed by a more selective group of consumers.
Unfortunately, detailed data on food consumption in the hospital of Saint-John
in Bruges or Saint-Sauveur in Lille are no longer available from the second half of
the 15th century on. In order to check whether the increased importance of meat in
the daily diet continued in the last decades of the Middle Ages, we have to leave
Bruges and take a look at another quickly expanding centre of international trade in
the Low Countries: Antwerp. The main Antwerp Hospital was probably founded in
the course of the 12th century in the vicinity of the Church of Our Lady. It moved
outside the city-walls in 1238 and was dedicated to Saint-Elisabeth in the late 13th
or early 14th century. In the late medieval period, a community of c. seven ‘sisters’
headed by a prioress, and assisted by 10-15 servants looked after the ‘sick and poor’
inhabitants of the city. As Antwerp’s main hospital, there was an increasing
involvement of the urban administration in the finances and the policy of the
hospital. Accounts have been preserved more or less continuously from 1426 on,
with a notable gap from 1460 to 1484.41 The evolution of food expenditure in the
Antwerp hospital is most interesting for the sixteenth century, Antwerp’s Golden
Age, which according to Hugo Soly and Paul De Commer turned out to be an Iron
Age for the hospital of Saint-Elizabeth.42 The city’s population grew spectacularly
from c. 40.000 inhabitants in 1496 to c.90.000 in 1568 (c.114.000 when including
foreigners, soldiers and citizens in the suburbs). Although the booming city
attracted a lot of wealthy foreign merchants and skilled labourers, they were by and
large outnumbered by the mass of poor immigrants from the countryside, hoping
to find work and money in the thriving urban economy. The demands for
assistance increased, but the hospital’s resources were limited. As usual we ignore
the actual number of patients in the hospital: the only accurate description dates
from 1582, when the medicin William Petri issued recipes for patients in the 39
beds of the men’s quarter. Supposing that the women’s quarter equally disposed of
39 beds and taken into account the beds in smaller buildings and the Plague House
of the hospital, the 16th hospital must have counted about 100-115 beds, each
41 E. CUYPERS, Financiën en ziekenverzorging, in Het Sint-Elizabethziekenhuis te Antwerpen. 750 jaar

Gasthuis op ’t Elzenveld 1238-1988, Antwerpen 1988, pp. 43-64.
42 P. DE COMMER, H. SOLY, De Zestiende eeuw. Harde tijden voor zusters en zieken (1490-1585), in: Ibid.,
pp. 66-98.
occupied by more than one patient. As the last great building campaign dated back
from the first decades of the sixteenth century, there was constantly overcrowded:
based on the quantities of bread baked and the often cited prescription of one
pound of bread a day, Soly and De Commer estimated that the number of patients
increased from c. 133 in the early 16th century to c. 223 in the 1560’s. In 1583,
during the Spanish Reconquista of the Southern Low Countries the 100 beds were
shared by not less than 600 patients! 43
Important data on the food consumption of the Elizabeth-hospital were
already published by E. Scholliers44 and the mentioned publications of Decuyper,
Commers and Soly. Recently they have been adjusted by L. Eyskens with the
additional daily purchases in the Antwerp Meat Hall - entered separately from the
gross purchases and deliverancies in the accounts. There is a clear evolution in both
cereal and meat consumption in the hospital:
Tab. 2. Cereal and meat consumption in Saint Elizabeth’s hospital in Antwerp

(sample years)
average cereal consumption (hectoliter) average meat consumption (kilogram)
1430-33 212 4424
1484-87 254 5242
1530-33 (448) 6433
1559-62 (498) 5206
Based on L. EYSKENS, De voeding, cit.; E. CUYPERS, Financiën en ziekenverzorging, cit.; P. DE COMMER, H.
SOLY, De Zestiende, cit.45.
In the 16th century important dietary changes occurred in the Antwerp hospital.
The total quantity of cereals used more than doubled from the 1430’s to the 1530’s,
but the meat consumption clearly did not. In the 1550’s the hospital consumed less
meat than in the 1480’s, whereas its population undboubtedly had risen. The type
of cereals consumed also had changed. Each year the hospital was provided with
cereals, mainly rye, by its farmers. During the 15th century, the hospital typically had
a surplus of rye, so that important quantities were sold (rye sales accounted for
31,3% of the total revenue of the hospital in this period). Notwithstanding the
ample rye supplies, the 15th century hospital used slightly more wheat than rye for
its own consumption: in the 1430’s wheat made up 52% of the cereals used for
baking bread. From the late 15th century on, however, this share diminished to 42%
in 1484-87; 30% in 1530-33 and only 20% in 1559-62. Clearly, the more expensive
cereal - rye - gradually became predominant as the booming populations of both
the hospital and the city of Antwerp as a whole needed more and more cereals.
43 Ibid., pp. 88-89.

44 E. SCHOLLIERS, Prijzen en lonen te Antwerpen (15de en 16de eeuw), in CH. VERLINDEN, E.
SCHOLLIERS eds., Dokumenten voor de Geschiedenis van Prijzen en Lonen in Vlaanderen en Brabant (Xvde-
XVIde eeuw), Brugge, 1959, 241-480.
45 The cereal consumption for 1530-33 and 1559-62 is based on the 10-year average for the
period 1530-39 and 1560-69: P. DE COMMER and H. SOLY, cit.
Compared to Bruges, the 15th century Antwerp diets contained less meat: for the
sample years 1431 and 1436 the annual meat consumption in Saint-John’s hospital
in Bruges was estimated at more than 11000 kilogram (against only about 4500 in
Antwerp), whereas the cereal consumption was more or less equal (compare Figure
3 for Bruges and Table 2 for Antwerp). Perhaps even more important, the Antwerp
data indicate that the improved access to meat for hospital populations did not
survive the end of the Middle Ages: with an average meat consumption of 5000 à
6000 kilogram and a population well above 200, per capita consumption probably
had dropped to about 30 kilogram a year by the middle of the 16th century.
The study of the hospital accounts not only reveals important quantitative
changes in meat consumption, but also quantitative shifts between the three main
meat-providers: cattle, pig and sheep. The first, 14th century increase in meat
consumption is mainly the result of an increased consumption of pork and/or
mutton. For instance, In the Douai hospital des Chartriers, in 1346 a community of
70-75 people consumed 36 swines, 60 sheep, 3 fat cows and 1 heifer46. We already
showed that mutton was probably the most important meat provider in Saint-
John’s in Bruges in the early 14th century, and pork in Lille. The preference for
either pork or mutton was probably dictated by the environmental setting of the
city. Here our findings are underpinned by new zooarchaeological studies on meat
consumption in late medieval cities: studies for Alost, Renaix (Ronse) and
Oudenaarde, all of them situated in Inland Flanders, confirmed the relative high
importance of pork in the late medieval food refusal, other studies for towns like
Diksmuide, Ypres, Bruges and Antwerp did not, and in contrast indicated much
higher shares of sheep. The latter towns are all situated close to the coastal wetlands
with their traditional emphasis on sheep-farming, or, for Antwerp, to the less
populated Campine area, where large flocks of sheep equally grazed the
heathlands.47 The consumption of high quantities of pork in 14th century hospitals
is less obvious as it might seem: in the European medieval period pork
consumption had long times been associated with elite status, as pigs were herded
in the woods, and access to pork does became reserved for those who disposed of
extensive grazing rights in the woods. As a consequence, archaeological findings in
castles and to a lesser degrees in monastic settlements usually contain much higher
shares of pig remains compared to urban or village contexts. In densely populated
regions like Flanders however, forests and woodlands had become rare by the 13th
46 M. MESTAYER, L’alimentation, cit., p. 234.

47 A. ERVYNCK, Orant, Pugnant, Laborant. The Diet of the Three Orders in the Feudal Society of Medieval
North-Western Europe, in Behaviour behind Bones. The Zooarchaeology of Ritual, Religion, Status and Identity,
SH.J. O’DAY, W. VAN NEER, A. ERVYNCK eds., Oxford 2004, pp. 215-223; A. ERVYNCK, W. VAN
NEER, Het archeologisch onderzoek van de voedseleconomie van laatmiddeleeuwse steden. Mogelijkheden en eerste
resultaten voor Leuven, in BESSEMANS et al., Leven te Leuven in de late Middeleeuwen. Tentoonstellingscatalogus; A.
ERVYNCK, The Economy of Food in Medieval Towns: Getting Rid of the Simple Explanations, in Medieval Europe
1992. Pre-printed papers, York 1992, 1, pp. 133-138.
century, and the pig changed from a forest dwelling animal to an animal elevated in
confinement, which gradually lost its former status as an elite food product.48
In the 14th century meat consumption in the Flemish cities was not yet
synonomous with beef consumption, but this would change in the following
century. In the course of the 15th century a significant shift from mutton and pork
to beef is likely to have occurred. In the 1430’s, pork and especially mutton still
made up half of the meat consumption in Saint Elizabeth’s hospital in Antwerp. By
the 1550’s, mutton had almost completely disappeared. Instead, the hospital
increasingly bought oxen and cows in de sandy Campine area, to the north-east of
Antwerp. These were fattened during one summer and slaughtered in autumn. At
the end of the 15th century about 12 oxen and 10 cows were bought each year. By
the 1550’s the number of oxen had risen to 15-16, but after 1550 it fell down to 9
or less, with equally diminishing numbers of cows. At the same time, the
importance of mutton decreased: at the end of the 15th century still 60-70 wethers
were bought each year. In the 1530’s perhaps half that number, and after 1550
almost none. Meat consumption in Saint Elizabeth’s hospital thus became
completely beef oriented49. The same evolution can be noticed elsewhere. In the
smal Saint Julian’s hospital in Bruges, for instance the staff and the patients still
consumed important quantities of pork, and to a lesser extent mutton around 1400.
Half a century later however, beef had reached a quasi-monopoly:
Fig. 6. Relative share of mutton, pork and beef (converted into useful weight)
in the meat consumption of Saint-Julian’s hospital in Bruges
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
1400-24 1425-49 1450-74 1475-99 1500-24 1525-49
BEEF PORK MUTTON
Based on N. NYFFELS, Tussen ascese en exuberantie, cit.
It’s important to notice that apart from the shift in meat consumption, the diet
in late medieval urban hospitals did not change a lot. Fruit and vegetables remained
scarce, although most of them did not appear in the accounts because the hospital
48 A. ERVYNCK et al., An Investigation into the Transition from Forest Dwelling Pigs to Farm Animals in
Medieval Flanders, Belgium, in Pigs and Humans. 10.000 Years of Interaction, U. ALBARELLA et al. eds.,
Oxford 2008, pp. 171-196.
49 L. EYSKENS, De voeding, cit.
owned its own gardens (called the ‘coolhof’ in Bruges). As for diary products -
another major component of food consumption in the hospital – we are informed
on quantities and prices consumed in Saint-John’s hospice in Bruges from the
1360’s onwards. Converted into metrical units, the total quantity of butter and
cheese consumed in the hospital dropped from 6000-9000 kilogram in the 1360’s to
4000-5000 in the 1430’s, a decrease more or less parallel with the decrease in cereal
consumption, so probably largely reflecting a diminishing number of patients.50
When accepting an average daily cereal consumption of one liter per capita, average
butter and cheese consumption in most years oscillated between 20 and 35
kilogram per capita. Remarkably, in the 14th century significantly more cheese than
butter was consumed whereas in the 15th century butter prevailed. Butter was
relatively more expensive than cheese per unit of weight, and this remained so,
although the price-difference in the 15th century was less pronounced than in the
1360’s (from c. 1:3 to c. 1:2). Compared to the Bruges data, diary consumption in
Saint Elizabeth’s hospital in Antwerp was considerably lower, increasing from c.
600-650 kilogram of – mainly Flemish – butter at the beginning of the 16th century
to about c. 1000 kilogram after 1550, with a parallel increase from c. 400 to c. 1000
kilogram for cheese.51 Like in Bruges, diary consumption thus more or less
followed the pattern of cereal consumption rather than the evolution of meat
consumption.
Data on fish – yet another source of proteins – are less abundant. The
consumption of fish was of course very much related to Church prescriptions on
meat-abstinence during Lent and other fasting periods, although fish and especially
herring had become a major staple food in many late medieval cities outside fasting
periods as well52. The analysis of fish consumption in the urban hospitals of Bruges
and Antwerp largely confirms our data on meat consumption. In Saint John’s
hospital in Bruges average annual purchases of 14.000 to 25.000 herrings in the first
half of the 15th century suggest that fish consumption per capita was high, just like
meat consumption53. In the same period, the staff of Saint Elizabeth hospital in
Antwerp bought undefined quantities of fresh fish at the fish-market almost every
day, also on meat-days. However, only the herring consumption can be followed in
detail: annual purchases of herring fell back from c. 6000 pieces around 1430 to no
more than 2000 around 156054. Unless the diminished consumption of herring was
compensated by increasing purchases of fresh fish (which is rather unlikely as fresh
fish usually was more expensive), the 16th century hospital population of Antwerp
not only ate less meat, but also less fish than their 15th century predecessors.
This survey of diet in late medieval Flemish and Brabantine hospitals remains
fairly hypothetical. Nevertheless it seems to suggest that diet underwent important
50 S. DEHAECK, Voedselconsumptie, cit., Bijlage 7.

51 P. DE COMMER, H. SOLY, De Zestiende eeuw, cit, p. 90.
52 P. VAN DAM, Fish for feast and fast. Fish consumption in the Netherlands in the Late Middle Ages in: L.
SICKING and D. ABREU-FERREIRA eds., Beyond the Catch. Fisheries of the North Atlantic, the North Sea and
the Baltic, 900-1850, Leiden 2008.
53 S. DEHAECK, Voedselconsumptie, cit., p. 86.
54 L. EYSKENS, De voeding, cit., p. 116; P. DE COMMER, H. SOLY, De Zestiende eeuw, cit, p. 82.
changes during the late medieval period. First of all: an increase in per capita meat
consumption in the first half of the 14th century, and again in the 1st half of the 15th
century seems probable. Whereas pork and mutton had been the drivers of the 14th
century urban meat provision, beef became predominant from the next century on
and would remain so in the early modern period. In the 16th century, the tendency
was reversed, as a significant drop in per capita meat consumption occurred. Apart
from regional variations, we have to be aware of the social bias in these data: in the
14th and 15th centuries, hospital admittance seemed more restrictive, so it can be
questioned whether the improved access to meat revealed by the hospital accounts,
did indeed indicate a better access to meat for large parts of the urban population,
or conversely, whether meat remained limited to the middle and higher strata of
urban population. During the Annales-enquiries of the 1970’s, Bennassar and Goy
concluded that until the 19th century both the quantities and the variety of food
distributed in hospitals generally exceeded ‘ordinary’ diets, thus warning us for
generalizations based on hospital accounts55. For many parts of pre-modern
Europe they nevertheless remain the most reliable proxy for everyday diet. In the
next paragraphs we will briefly discuss two other elements that will further improve
our appreciation of meat consumption in the late medieval period: firstly, the
evolution of real wages, as a (partial) indicator of purchasing power and secondly,
the evolution of animal husbandry and (international) cattle trade.
4. An improved access to meat? The affordability of meat.

For the non-food producing part of the population the access to meat directly
depended on the evolution of the household budget, and thus on the balance
between income and expenditure. For important groups in late medieval society –
like the petty commodity producers in town or the proto-industrial linen weavers
on the countryside - we completely lack any serial information on the evolution of
their income. As a consequence reconstructions of household budgets usually
concentrate on skilled or unskilled wage-earners in town or independent farmers on
the countryside, confronting either nominal wages or nominal farm produce with
price indexes based on baskets of consumables. For Flanders and Brabant we
dispose of extensive data on prices and wages since the second half of the 14th
century. Much of it has been published by Charles Verlinden, Etienne Scholliers et alii56.
Furthermore, indexes of consumer prices and wages have been developed by
Herman Van der Wee for the region of Antwerp between 1400-1700 and by John
Munro for Flanders (mainly Ghent and Bruges) between 1350 and 1500, each of
them based on the wages of building craftsmen57. Both series were designed to
55 B. BENNASSAR, J. GOY, Consommation alimentaire (XIVe-XIXe siècle), in “Annales. E.S.C.”, 30,

1975, 2-3, p. 410. See also the article of M. SLON in this volume.
56 C. VERLINDEN, E. SCHOLLIERS ET ALII (eds.), Dokumenten voor de geschiedenis van prijzen en lonen,
Brugge, 1959-73, 4 vol.
57 Both series were several times remodelled and republished: H. VAN DER WEE, Prices and Wages
as Development Variables: A Comparison Between England and the Southern Netherlands, 1400-1700, in “Acta
Historiae Neerlandicae”, 10, 1978, 58-78; J.MUNRO, Wage Stickiness, Monetary Changes, and Real Incomes in
enable comparisons with the famous Phelps Brown and Hopkins index for
England, but in contrast to the latter neither started before the Black Death, due to
the lack of serial data for the late 13th and early 14th century Low Countries. This
lack of data on prices and wages seriously hampered our appreciation of the impact
of the late medieval crisis on this part of Europe. However, new research by Erik
Thoen for Inland Flanders, and by Tim Soens and Chris VandenBorre for Bruges and
the coastal area of Flanders since revealed important new data on the evolution of
wages and cereal prices before 135058. Unfortunately, price information is restricted
to cereal prices, making a comparison with the above-mentioned indexes of
consumer prices very difficult. For meat for instance reliable price information is
lacking before the 1390’s. In order to reconstruct the affordability of meat the
combination of nominal wages and cereal prices is still relevant, as the evolution of
cereal prices remained a predominant factor in the household budget of any non-
elite family throughout the pre-industrial period.
Tab 3. Nominal wages of unskilled labourers and wheat prices in

Flanders 1275-1575 (25-year averages; index 1450-74=100)59
Unskilled labourer Unskilled labourer
(ground work) (helper-thatcher) In- Unskilled labourer
Coastal plain near land Flanders near (ground work) Bruges wheat Bruges (per hoet of
Year Bruges (per day) Ghent (per day) (per day) 172 liters)
Average Index Average Index Average Index Average Index
1275-00 0,7 12,0 16,5 32,8

1301-25 0,6 9,8 (1,3) (33,3) 22,8 45,2
1326-50 1,0 16,3 24,1 47,8
1351-75 3,1 52,0 4,1 103,1 3,7 66,7 53,6 106,3
1376-00 4,0 66,0 3,5 87,5 4,0 72,7 49,8 98,8
1401-25 5,0 82,5 3,6 89,6 4,0 72,7 53,1 105,4
1426-50 5,4 90,0 4,0 100,0 5,1 91,8 62,2 123,4
1451-75 6,0 100,0 4,0 100,0 5,5 100,0 50,4 100,0
1476-00 6,0 99,5 4,6 113,8 5,2 94,8 72,6 144,0
Late-Medieval England and the Low Countries, 1300 - 1500: Did Money Matter?, “Research in Economic
History”, 21, 2003, pp. 185 – 297; J. MUNRO, Builders’ Wages in Southern England and the Southern Low
Countries, 1346 -1500: A Comparative Study of Trends in and Levels of Real Incomes’ in L’Edilizia prima della
rivoluzione industriale, secc. XIII-XVIII, Atti delle “Settimana di Studi” e altri convegni, S. CAVIOCOCCHI ed.,
Florence, 2005, pp. 1013-76.
58 E. THOEN, Landbouwekonomie, cit., I, pp. 239-291 and annexes; T. SOENS, De spade in de dijk?
Waterbeheer en rurale samenleving in de Vlaamse kustvlakte (1280-1580), Ghent, 2009, pp. 113-154; C.
VANDENBORRE, Prijzen, lonen, cit. An elaborate publication on the 13th and 14th century prices and
wages in Flanders is being prepared by E. THOEN and T. SOENS.
59 Per year the mode – most frequent wage – is taken. In case of a difference between summer
and winter wages, the arithmetic mean of the two wages has been chosen. For Inland Flanders, we do
not dispose of wages for helper-thatchers before the middle of the 14th century. We only have some
data on helper-carpenters and helper-mason’s in the 1320’s. The estimated wage of 1,3 groten in Tab.
3 is based on these data.
1501-25 6,0 100,8 3,8 94,3 66,1 131,1

1526-50 6,3 104,9 101,0 200,3
1551-75 9,1 152,1 187,6 372,3
Based on T. SOENS, De spade in de dijk, cit, p. 122; E. THOEN, Landbouwekonomie, cit, II, pp. 1321-
1326; J.P. SOSSON, Les travaux publics, 304 ; A. VERHULST, Prijzen van granen, boter en kaas te Brugge volgens
de ‘slag’ van het Sint-Donatiaanskapittel (1348-1801) in Dokumenten voor de geschiedenis van prijzen en lonen in
Vlaanderen en Brabant. Deel II, C. VERLINDEN, E. SCHOLLIERS eds, Brugge, 1965; C. VANDENBORRE,
Prijzen en lonen, cit., annexes.
We already mentioned the important regional divergences in the impact of the

late medieval crisis on the county of Flanders. This becomes strikingly clear when
analysing the evolution of nominal and real wages in different regions of the
county. Most evidence of real wages in Flanders and Brabant, mainly based on
urban builders’ wages, points at a general trend not unlike what happened
elsewhere in Europe. In the decades after 1337 real wages plunged, as prices
witnessed a strong inflatory movement not matched by a parallel increase in wages.
From the 1370’s to the first decade of the 15th century, there was a quick recovery,
mainly due to the deflatory price movement. After a temporary setback in the
1410’s and 1420’s (with price inflation and nominal wages that remained
unchanged), real wages reached a period of ‘Burgundian’ prosperity from the 1430’s
to the 1460’s, again mainly due to the price evolution, as nominal wages remained
largely unchanged in most cities60. For most wage labourers engaged in the building
industries for Bruges, extensively studied by Jean-Pierre Sosson, real wages were most
favourable from c. 1390 to c. 1410/20 and again from 1439 to 1465. Lowly skilled
labourers like the ground workers mentioned in table 3, only got one rise in
nominal wages, namely with 33% between 1362 and 1371. Furthermore, around the
middle of the 15th century a difference between winter and summer wages was
installed, which in practice meant a – modest – rise in average nominal wages. Not
nominal wages but the relatively low cereal prices thus were the main causes of the
rise in purchasing power around 1400 and again half a century later61.
As mentioned new data assembled by the authors for Flanders correct this
general picture by putting the emphasis on the strong regional variation in nominal
– and hence real – wages within the county of Flanders. Labourers in the coastal
plain seemed to have enjoyed a considerable gain in purchasing power in the course
of the 14th century. Water boards – local authorities responsible for the mainteance
of the water control system – paid unskilled labourers an average wage of 0,7
Flemish groten a day in the last quarter of the 13th century. One century later, this
nominal wage had risen to 4 groten (x6). In the meanwhile average nominal wheat
prices in Bruges – where wheat and not rye was the staple grain - increased from
16,5 groten per hoet (172 liter) to 49,8 (x3)62. When assuming a constant labour
volume, this implies that the relative importance of cereals in the household budget
60
See the brief overview in J. MUNRO, Builder’s wages, cit., pp. 1038-1041.
61
J.P. SOSSON, Les travaux publics de la ville de Bruges XIVe-XVe siècles. Les matériaux. Les hommes,
Bruxelles, 1977, pp. 225-231.
62 T. SOENS, De spade in de dijk?, cit., pp. 150-151.
of a labourer in the coastal plain could significantly decrease over the course of the
14th century. In this region nominal wages started to rise already in the second
quarter of the 14th century. In the second half of that century nominal wheat prices
also increased, but the rise of nominal wages accelerated, thus realising a net gain
for wage-labourers. By contrast, nothing of that in inland Flanders. For the latter
region the few data on wages for unskilled labourers before 1350 suggest a
somewhat higher wage-level than in coastal Flanders. In the second half of the 14th
century however, the average wage for an unskilled helper-thatcher in the rural
surroundings of Alost witnessed a downward rather than an upward evolution. In
the 15th and early 16th centuries as well, no significant increase in nominal wages
occurred. By then, unskilled labour was paid significantly better in the coastal plain
than in inland Flanders63. As already mentioned above, these marked differences in
wage evolution can be explained by the changing labour relations in both regions
due to the different impact of the late medieval crisis: whereas in coastal Flanders
the late medieval period resulted in an important decline of both population and
above all peasant smallholders eager to engage in part-time unskilled wage-labour,
this was much less the case in Inland Flanders, where the peasant economy and
thus the labour supply and demand remained largely intact64. With the decline of
the peasant economy in the coastal plain and the engrossment of holdings cheap
labour became scarce and employers had to turn to full-time wage-labourers instead
of peasants seeking additional employment. As a result wages in the coastal plain
could rise, and the purchasing power of wage-earners in terms of wheat-purchases
did increase. By contrast, in Inland Flanders cheap labour remained abundant and
no sign of any ‘Golden Age of Labour’ could be found.
From the late 14th century on meat prices as well can be included in our
analysis. They often remain highly tentative as the quality and thus the price of meat
were extremely variable.
Tab 4. Average prices of beef and wheat in Flanders 1375-1575 (Index

1450-74=100)
wheat Bruges (per Salted beef Malines (per Slaughter cattle Fat cow Bruges
year hoet of 172 liters) 100 pounds) Ghent (per unit) (per unit)
Average Index Average Index Average Index Average Index
1376-00 49,8 98,8 210,6 62,4
1401-25 53,1 105,4 266,6 79,0 299,6 95,9
1426-50 62,2 123,4 317,9 94,2 374,1 119,7
1451-75 50,4 100,0 72,9 100,0 337,4 100,0 312,5 100,0
1476-00 72,6 144,0 89,5 122,8 433,2 128,4 527,7 168,8
1501-25 66,1 131,1 91,1 101,8 546,7 162,0 421,9 135,0
63
E. THOEN, Landbouwekonomie, cit., II, pp. 1321-1326.
64For the economic differences between both regions, see E. THOEN, ‘Social agrosystems’ as an
economic concept to explain regional differences. An essay taking the former county of Flanders as an example (Middle
Ages-19th century), in Landholding and land transfer in the North Sea Area (late Middle Ages-19th Century), B.J.P.
VAN BAVEL, P. HOPPENBROUWERS, eds, Turnhout, pp. 47-66 (CORN Publication Series 5).
1526-50 101,0 200,3 148,1 162,6 684,0 218,9

1551-75 187,6 372,3 224,6 151,6
Based on Table 3; and C. VANDENBORRE, Prijzen en lonen, cit., annexes; N. NYFFELS, Tussen ascese
en exuberantie, cit., annexes
From the late 14th century on the evidence from Ghent seems to suggest that
beef prices were increasing more rapidly than cereal prices in periods of price
inflation, but in contrast with the latter they were less affected by deflation, for
instance in the third quarter of the century. Beef prices also showed considerable
rises in periodes of dearth, like the period of civil war in the 1480’s, when urban
supplies stopped. The higher prices of meat might be a result of a higher demand,
especially in periods like the early 15th century or the 1460’s when the favourable
ratio between cereal prices and nominal wages fostered the purchasing power of
urban wage earners. In the first half of the 16th century both series evolved more or
less parallel, but in the wake of the 16th century ‘price revolution’, cereal prices
would eventually inflate more than meat prices: between 1525/50 and 1625/50
nominal cereal prices in Ghent and Antwerp would multiply by five, whereas meat
prices ‘only’ tripled.65 How can we link the evolution of meat prices to actual
consumption practices? The parallelism between meat and cereal prices in the early
16th century, would corroborate the conclusion of Schokkaert and Van Der Wee,
that meat consumption in mid-16th century Brabantine cities had become as
common as cereal consumption and that both can be considered ‘pure necessities’
for the urban middle classes. Schokkaert and Van der Wee based this conclusion on
an analysis of price and income elasticity of meat and other foodstuffs in the
budget of a hospital in the smaller Brabantine town of Lier. For meat this elasticity
was remarkably low, although not so low as for rye. This elasticity was low,
meaning that the hospital did not cut its expenses on meat in times of high meat
prices (compared to other products) or budget cuts.66 But even in the model of
Schokkaert and Van Der Wee, the quantities of meat consumed where reduced in
case of price increases: even if the share of meat in the budget remained the same,
actual meat consumption in fact decreased, just as we noticed for our case-studies
of Antwerp and Lille.
To a certain extent the evolution of real wages coincides with the evolution of
meat consumption in urban hospitals, but the match is only partial. The main
increase in meat consumption in the hospitals of Bruges and Lille took place before
1350 and between 1410-1440, whereas the second half of the 14th century in the
coastal plain and the decades 1390-1420 and 1440-60 in Bruges were the most
favourable for wage-earners, keeping in mind that rural wage-earners in Inland
Flanders enjoyed almost no increase in real wages whatsoever. That a hospital like
Saint John’s in Bruges could afford higher shares of meat in periods of higher food
65 C. VANDENBROEKE, Kwantitatieve en kwalitatieve aspekten, cit., pp. 224-225. VandenBroeke

ignored the striking difference with the 15th and the first half of the 16th century, when meat prices
increased more rapidly than cereal prices.
66 E. SCHOKKAERT, H. VAN DER WEE, A Quantitative Study of food consumption in the Low Countries
during the Sixteenth Century, in “The Journal of European Economic History”, 17, 1988, 1, pp. 131-158.
prices – like the 1410’s and 1420’s – should not amaze us, as this hospital was not
only a major food consumer but also a major food producer on its own estates, at
least until the middle of the 15th century (see below). As a consequence the hospital
was not negatively affected by rising food prices. In the 16th century wages of
unskilled labourers both in and outside the city were not adapted to the increase of
either cereal nor meat prices: in the early 16th century average beef prices were
probably twice as high as one century before, against 30% for wheat prices and
15% for the wages of an unskilled labourer in the Flemish coastal plain. In Inland
Flanders, nominal wages for unskilled labourers were sometimes even lower than
they had been one century before. Based on the evidence of prices and wages, it
seems that the access to meat was worsening again from the second half of the 15th
century for wage earners both in the city and on the countryside. In the Flemish
and Brabantine towns meat undoubtedly remained a common foodstuff for many if
not most of the citizens, but nevertheless the increasing divergence of wages and
prices will undoubtedly have forced the wage-earning part of them to diminish their
per capita input of meat again. As a consequence, probably not wage earners, but
the urban and rural middle classes remained the driving force behind the further
expansion of meat markets throughout the 15th and 16th centuries.
5. An improved access to meat? The production and trade of meat.

Although the evidence of real wages refutes too much optimism about the
affordability of large quantities of meat for each and everyone in late medieval
society, an increased meat consumption in the cities and some rural regions in the
14th and 15th century still remains plausible. Hence it’s an important question to
know where this meat – increasingly beef – came from. For the early modern
period we are quite well informed on the long-distance cattle trades in North-
Western Europe, bringing oxen from Denmark and eastern Europe to Holland,
Germany or Northern-Italy. As Ian Blanchard has made clear, this long-distance
trade in oxen only gained importance after 1470, thus largely too late to sustain the
14th and early 15th century increases in meat consumption we’ve noticed in Bruges
and Lille. All over Europe, the rising urban demand for meat in the late medieval
period was to be met by local and regional supplies.67 In their analysis of the Lier
livestock market, Aerts and Van Der Wee traced a well-integrated local and regional
market system, that supplied the towns of Brabant with meat (and hides), mainly
drawing animals from the eastern and northern provinces of the Low Countries.
Fifteenth century Antwerp was mainly provisioned with animals from Zeeland and
Holland, but there was also an active trade with more distant provinces like
Friesland, Groningen and Overijssel, ‘s Hertogenbosch as intermediary market.68
67 I. BLANCHARD, The Continental European Cattle Trades, 1400-1600, in “Economic History

Review”, 39, 1986, 3, pp. 427-460.
68 H. VAN DER WEE, E. AERTS, The Lier livestock market and the Livestock trade in the Low Countries
from the Fourteenth to the Eighteenth centuries, in Internationaler Ochsenhandel, 1350-1750: Akten des 7th
International Economic History Congress, Edinburgh 1978, ed. E. WESTERMANN, Stuttgard 1979, pp. 244-
245.
By contrast to the Brabantine towns, the meat provisioning of the major

Flemish towns like Ghent and Bruges - in the 15th century still considerably larger
than any Brabantine town - remains largely unknown. Even in the early modern
period, their surprisingly few indications of international oxen transports to
Flanders.69 Gérard Sivery revealed incidental evidence of 15th century Flemish
merchants buying cattle in Hainault,70 but the macro-economic impact of these
transports was probably rather limited. Even with respect to grain supplies, with a
long established tradition of international supplies from England and France, and
later on from the Baltic to the major Flemish urban centres, the overall share of
import in the total cereal consumption remained limited untill the end of the 15th
century (although they did have an impact impact on grain price settings already
well before that time).71 Taken into account the limited demographic decline of the
Flemish population in the 14th century, any structural increase in meat consumption
must have been rooted in changes in the rural production systems of Flanders
itself: only an increase of commercialized meat production in Flanders, could have
sustained increased meat consumption in the late medieval period.
As the agrarian hinterland remained of primordial importance for the urban
supply of basic foodstuffs,72 we absolutely need to understand the evolution of
animal husbandry, in order to explain changes in meat consumption. In a recent
contribution to the Flaran conferences,73 the authors of this paper established a
chronology of animal farming in Flanders in the medieval and early modern period.
Until the 11th century the importance of animal husbandry was great mainly thanks
to the plentiful availability of pasture ground: marshlands in the coastal area, and
woodlands in Inland Flanders. In the 10th and 11th century, a highly commercial
form of extensive animal husbandry originated in the area, mainly concentrated on
sheep-farming in the coastal plain and pigs in Inland Flanders. Abbeys and local
elite groups took a particular interest in these practices whereas the developing
towns thrived on the wool production and probably also where major consumers
of pork. The “marisci” - sheep farms of 80-130 sheep- in the coastal plain74 and the
69 W.M. GIJSBERS, Kapitale ossen : de internationale handel in slachtvee in Noordwest-Europa (1300-1750),

Hilversum 1999.
70 G. SIVERY, Structures agraires et vie rurale dans le Hainaut à la fin du Moyen Age, Lille 1977-80.
71 R.W. UNGER, Feeding Low Countries Towns: the Grain Trade in the Fifteenth Century, in “Belgisch
Tijdschrift voor Filologie en Geschiedenis”, 77, 1999, 2, pp. 329-358.
72 We can refer to the important project on the food provisioning of London: B.M.S. CAMPBELL,
J.A. GALLOWAY, D. KEENE, M. MURPHY, A Medieval Capital and its Grain Supply: Agrarian Production and
Distribution in the London Region, c. 1300, London 1993.
73 E. THOEN, T. SOENS, Elevage, prés et pâturage dans le comté de Flandre au Moyen Âge et au début des
temps modernes. Les liens avec l’économie rurale régionale, in Prés, prairies et pâturages dans l’Europe médiévale et
moderne. Actes des Vingt huitièmes Journées Internationale d’Histoire de Flaran, 15 et 16 septembre 2006, ed. F.
BRUMONT, Toulouse; for the divergent evolution of both ‘social agro-systems’ in Flanders, see also: E.
THOEN, Social Agrosystems’ as an Economic Concept to Explain Regional Differences. An Essay Taking the
Former County of Flanders as an Example (Middle Ages-19th Century), in Landholding and Land transfer in the
North Sea Area (Late Middle Ages-19th Century), B.J.P. VAN BAVEL, P. HOPPENBROUWERS eds., Turnhout
2004, pp. 47-66.
74 We refer to A. VERHULST, Sheep-breeding and Wool Production in Pre-Thirteenth Century Flanders and
their Contribution to the Rise of Ypres, Ghent and Bruges as Centers of the Textile Industry, in Ypres and the
herds of pigs owned by the Ghent Abbey of Saint-Peter, grazing and progressively
degrading the former woodlands to the south of Ghent are well known for this
period. During the 12th and 13th centuries, population densities increased and more
and more pasture land was converted into arable. Elite groups largely retreated
from commercial animal farming. In the coastal plain wool production was no
longer competitive with English wool, and part of the pasture lands were converted
into arable. The counts of Flanders even levied a specific tax called ‘superaratum’
(literally: ‘ploughing over’) on this kind of land use changes. Close to the tidal
estuaries of the Scheldt, the Zwin and the Yser, embankment progressed rapidly in
this period and the new ‘polders’ were also largely intended for arable farming. In
Inland Flanders too an important extension of arable farming occurred, although
peasants in many cases retained some use rights in what remained of woodlands.
The existing infield-outfield system in the latter region was gradually abandoned.
Holdings split up very quickly in both regions during this period, and peasant
smallholding became predominant, with a limited number of larger farms -
increasingly held in short-term lease - still persisting and offering additional
employment to the peasant smallholders in their surroundings. Only in a certain
number of sub-regions with specific environmental conditions and an intense
urban demand, commercial animal husbandry persisted: this was the case for
instance in the region of Tournai, were institutional innovations such as the bail à
cheptel (contracts for the short term leasing of cattle) were introduced in the course
of the 13th century.75 As a consequence the predominance of cereal-based diets in
this period fits perfectly within the prevailing logic of the rural economy at the
time.
As we’ve already noticed coastal Flanders and Inland Flanders evolved in a
different way from the 14th century onwards. In Inland Flanders, peasants enjoyed
secure property rights on their holdings and smallholding persisted throughout the
late medieval ‘crisis’-period. Until the middle of the 19th century, the region would
be characterised by on-going subdivision of holdings and a constant labour surplus.
Cereal cultivation was primordial. Livestock nevertheless was important too, both
for diary products (milk, butter…), but perhaps most of all for the production of
manure. In the 16th century region of Oudenaarde, even the smallest holdings
(smaller than 0,5 hectare) owned at least one or two cows. Thanks to this manuring
and most of all, to the huge labour input of all household members, cereal
cultivation in Inland Flanders would realize a high physical productivity: the famous
Flemish Husbandry was born.76 Did the peasants of inland Flanders enjoy a better
access to beef consumption and meat in general during the 14th and 15th centuries?
We’re inclined to doubt it: meat production was simply not the primary function of
the lifestock held on the small peasant holdings. Furthermore, as the pressure on
medieval Cloth Industry in Flanders. Archaeological and historical contributions. Papers of the international symposium
"A Good Yarn! Archaeological and Historical Research into the Medieval Cloth Industry of Flanders - Ypres 29-
30.11.1996, M. DEWILDE, A. ERVYNCK, A. WIELEMANS eds., Zellik 1998, p. 33.
75 A. VERHULST, La laine indigene dans les ancients Pays-Bas entre le XIIe et le XVIIe siècle. Mis en œuvre
industrielle, production et commerce, in “Revue Historique”, 504, 1972, pp. 289-290.
76 E. THOEN, The Birth of Flemish Husbandry, in Medieval Farming and Technology, G. ASTILL, J.
LANGDON eds., 1997.
land was high, the remaining common lands gradually disappeared, which must
have seriously hampered the holding of livestock by the peasants. Direct evidence
on peasant diet is lacking for late medieval Flanders. For the early modern period
peasant probate inventories offer descriptions of the food supplies in stock. In the
17th and 18th century region of Alost recently studied by Reinoud Vermoesen,77
peasant meat supplies were strictly limited to pork: either lump quantities of brined
pork, or one or more hams. Furthermore there was a clear social bias on the access
to meat:
Tab. 4. Meat supplies described in probate inventories of the villages of Er-

embodegem, Gijzegem, Herdersem and Hofstade (castellany of Alost) (1650-
1794)
wealth category (quartiles) 1 2 3 4 Total
Number of inventories 69 74 73 77 293
Meat supplies 4 16 29 44 93
Based on R. VERMOESEN, Markttoegang, unpublished database.
The poorest half of the rural population (category 1) only seldom possessed
meat supplies. In the four households that did own some meat in stock, the
maximum weight was 45 pound (19 kilogram). Higher in the social scale, the
maximum quantities of pork increased to 30 kilogram for category 2; 87 kilogram
for category 3 and 130 kilogram for category 4. Carnivorous or beef-eating Europe
clearly not included the early modern countryside of Inland Flanders. In the 15th
century the per capita availability of pork was probably even lower, as pig-breeding
by peasant smallholders only really gained importance in the 17th and 18th centuries.
In the meanwhile agriculture in the Flemish coastal area had evolved in a
completely opposite direction. Changing environmental conditions, an increase of
inundations and drainage problems, weaker property rights on land, and the
competition of large leasehold farmers, more and more endangered the survival of
peasant smallholding in this area. From the 14th century on, a secular concentration
of property, followed by a remarkable engrossment of farm sizes started, that
would continue well into the Early Modern Period.78 The coastal area was rapidly
transforming into a highly commercial farming economy, charecterized by low
population density, middle-sized and large holdings, short-term leasehold and a
radically reorientation towards (urban) markets. Commercial animal-husbandry with
an emphasis on cattle, would become one of the main features of this commercial
agriculture. In the first decades of the 14th century this was not yet the case: in his
77 R. VERMOESEN, Markttoegang en ‘commerciële netwerken’ van rurale huishoudens. De regio Aalst 1650–
1800, Antwerp 2008.
78 See also T. SOENS, E. THOEN, The Origins of Leasehold in the Former County of Flanders, in The
Development of Leasehold in Northwestern Europe, c. 1200-1600, B. VAN BAVEL, PH. SCHOFIELD eds.,
Turnhout 2008 (Brepols - CORN Publication Series 10), pp. 31-56; and T. SOENS, Explaining
Deficiencies of Water Management in the Late Medieval Flemish Coastal Plain (13th-16th centuries), in “Jaarboek
voor Ecologische Geschiedenis”, 2005-2006, pp. 35-62.
accountbook, the rich farmer Simon de Rikelike living in Sint-Pieters-op-de-Dijk near

Bruges, noted data on the size and value of his livestock between 1325 and 1334. It
was a mixed farm with 29 to 56 hectares of arable - ploughed by 6 to 7 horses -
some 15 swines and between 16 to 38 cows. The cattle was most of all intended for
dairy production. Simon also held some oxen (7 in 1334 versus 30 cows), but he
systematically appraised them at only half the value of a milkcow (24 groten each in
1334 versus 48 for a milkcow). Young animals - presumably much appreciated for
their meat - were also valued much less than older cows: in 1325 a full-grown
milkcow was estimated 60 groten, a heifer of two years 30 groten and a heifer of one
year only 15.79 During the next centuries however, livestock would expand in the
coastal plain, and meat production would become a prime objective. We can partly
illustrate this evolution for the main farm of the Saint-John’s hospital in Bruges: the
very large farm Scueringhe in Zuienkerke, directly exploited by the hospital until the
middle of the 15th century.80 The farm is a-typical, because of its huge size (200-240
hectares), its direct exploitation and the fact that it continued to supply the hospital
directly with important quantities of wheat, which might have hampered rapid
adaptations to market conditions. Nevertheless, it’s clear that animal husbandry was
expanding, especially in the first half of the 15th century:
79Het memoriaal van Simon De Rikelike, vrijlaat te Sint-Pieters-op-den-dijk 1323-1336, ed. J. DE SMET,
Brussels 1993.
80 Studied by J. MERTENS, De laatmiddeleeuwse landbouweconomie in enkele gemeenten van het Brugse Vrije,
Gent-Leuven 1970.
Fig. 8. Livestock and arable on the large Scueringhe farm of Saint-John’s hospi-
tal (Zuienkerke near Bruges 1300-1454). Livestock units81 per 100 hectares
of arable land and per 100 hectares of land
200,0
180,0
160,0
140,0
120,0
100,0
80,0
60,0
40,0
20,0
0,0
1300 1333 1358 1365 1375 1385 1395 1405 1415 1425 1435 1445 1454
UGB/terre arable (x100 hectare) UGB/superficie totale (x100 hectare)
E. THOEN, T. SOENS, Elevage, prés et pâturage, cit., fig. 9.
There was already a slight increase in the number of livestock units per hectare
of arable from the middle of the 14th century, but only after The Ghent War of
1379-1385, the increase became considerable. The size of the arable remained more
or less constant until the middle of the fifteenth century, but than it started to
decrease. Whereas in the 14th century on average 66% of the farmlands were
ploughed, this share diminished to about 58% in 1454 and only 30-40% in the
1540’s.82 But perhaps even more important: the composition of the livestock also
changed: the number of horses (especially needed for arable farming) diminished
from 30-50 in the 14th century to 20-30 in the 15th century. The number of
milkcows remained more or less the same (about 60), but the stock of oxen, heifers
and calfs more than doubled from about 40 to 90 all included, although the major
increase was realised only in the 1420’s. However, the farm did not concentrate
solely on beef production: in fact already in the 1360’s a rise in the average of
number of sheep occurred (from c .120 in the early 14th century to c. 180/190 in
the 1360’s and 70’ and further climbing - after an interruption during the Ghent
War - to more than 300 in the 1420’s and ’30s. Interestingly the number of lamb
diminished: in the early 14th century, lambs often outnumbered the number of
81 Livestock units: each full-grown horse or cattle unit equals 1, each young animal, sheep or pig
equals 0,25.
82 E. THOEN, T. SOENS, Elevage, prés et pâturage, cit., fig. 10.
sheep, but later on their numbers plunged. Was the date of the annual stock taking
moved or were more lambs slaughtered shortly after their birth? The number of
swines also gradually increased during the 14th century, from c. 30-40 about 1300 to
c. 50-70 hundred years later. A major increase in the number of pigs took place
during the 1420’s, when more than hundred pigs were held on the farm. The rise in
lifestock is clear, but interestingly the first increases were focused on sheep and
pork, not yet on cattle.
Before the 16th century the practice of fattening oxes on rich permanent
grasslands is poorly documented for both Inland and Coastal Flanders. In the 16th
century coastal plain, it clearly gained importance83. When the friars of Saint-Johns
hospital returned to direct exploitation of their Scueringhe farm for some years in
the 1530’s and 1540’s, they were very active in buying meager oxen (‘magher hossen’)
and grazing them for three or four years either on the farm’s grasslands or on the
hospitals marshlands in the surroundings of Furnes.84 In 1542 no less than 44 oxen
were bought, 22 oxen were sold and 12 were consumed at the hospital. Two of the
oxen sold were fattened at the stable instead of on the grassland, and significantly
higher valued than the other.85 By this time oxen meat must have been
predominant in the hospital, although the Scueringhe farm also deliverd pork and
mutton to the hospital (in 1534 40 sheep, 8 fat lambs, 8 fat swines and 3 fresh
hams, and 1 fat calf). 86 We also could study the whereabouts of a monastic farm of
about 90 hectares in Moerkerke, east of Bruges from c. 1528 to 1578. The nuns
normally held some 40 oxen. After fattening them on the farm’s grasslands, half of
the oxen were sold (as where some sheep and pigs), the other half was consumed
by the nuns, which undoubtedly provided them with a rich beef-oriented diet.87 In
Inland Flanders, fattening oxen also became common in the grasslands along the
rivers Scheldt and Lys, although the economic significance of these activities is not
yet very well known.88
6. Some preliminary conclusions

The reconstruction of the diet of medieval and early modern populations is a
highly complex matter. Uniform serial data on food consumption in the premodern
past are very scarce, have an enormous social bias and often seem to contradict
each other. Zoo-archaeological sources do provide important additional
information, but mostly for situations and households that are not documented by
historical sources, making the interpretation of the archaeological findings very
difficult. As a result our enquiry into food consumption in late medieval Flanders,
the main research problem of a overall diet improvement in the wake of the late
83 XXX HMGOG.
84 “Somme XXXIII beesten hier binnen ghesleghen daerof de XIIII ossen ende XX coyen die al ghegarst up ons
landt in dat wij belegghen in Vuerenambocht ende up ons gars tZuenkercke over dyck”.
85 BRUGES, OCMW-ARCHIVES, Saint-John’s hospital, LA C 7: account of Scueringhe, 1543-44.
86 Ibid., LA C4: account of Scueringhe 1532.
87 E. THOEN, T. SOENS, Elevage, prés et pâturage, cit.
88 P. LINDEMANS, Geschiedenis van de landbouw, Antwerpen 1952, II, pp. 432-433.
medieval crisis will remain largely open. Nevertheless we think that some
preliminary conclusions can be drawn. Based on the only available serial source that
might provide us with a glimpse of diet evolution for non-priviliged groups -
accounts of urban hospitals - an increased meat consumption for larger parts of the
urban population in the later middle ages remains plausible. However, both the
chronology of these diet improvements, their origins and features do not fit usual
interpretations. First of all, the rise in meat consumption in the hospitals was
parallelled by a more selective admittance, making it probable that the hospitals
were providing food to a higher-status public. A higher input of meat thus becomes
logic. Secondly, both in Bruges and Lille, a first and perhaps most important
increase in meat ratios took place very early, in the first half of the 14th century.
This early increase in meat consumption was probably based on pork and mutton,
not on beef. Regional (and institutional) variations were very high, both in the
quantity and the quality of meat consumed. Even at its 15th century maximum, meat
consumption in the main Antwerp hospital remained far below the quantities of
meat consumed in the early 15th century Bruges hospital of Saint-John. With regard
to choises between meat providers, differences between Inland Flanders (longtimes
preferring pork) and Coastal Flanders (preferring mutton) were high, also indicating
the importance of regional environmental conditions and agricultural production.
In the course of the 15th and 16th centuries, the (urban) meat markets in Flanders
and Brabant probably became more uniform and beef oriented. Whereas in
Brabant long-distance cattle trade gained importance, this seems less the case in
Flanders. In the latter county, the reorientation towards beef on the urban markets
was made possible thanks to the specialisation of some agricultural regions in cattle,
with the fattening of oxen becoming standard practice in the early 16th century
coastal plain and on the river marshes in Inland Flanders.
During the 14th and 15th centuries wage-earners in some regions of Flanders
and Brabant probably enjoyed periods of increasing purchasing power like the
second half of the 15th century or the decades 1440-60. These periods coincided
very roughly with increases in meat consumption in urban hospitals, although the
match was not perfect: for Bruges for instance, rises in the consumption of meat in
Saint John’s (second quarter of the 14th century, period 1410-30) preceded rather
then followed increases in real wages for wage-earners. In other regions like Inland
Flanders no increase in real wages whatsoever did occur. Meat and in particular
beef did not become cheaper in the course of the 15th century. On the contrary, the
Ghent beef prices seem to suggest that meat prices started a secular rise already
early in the 15th century, long before the 16th century rise in grain prices, perhaps
reflecting an increased demand for meat. For wage earners, both in the city and on
the countryside, a high daily consumption of meat seems more and more unlikely
from the second half of the 15th century on. Even if the price evolution of meat in
the first half of the 16th century indicates that it had become a basic foodstuff for
the Flemish and Brabantine urban populations - as Schokkaert and Van Der Wee
demonstrated for Lier - the average quantities of meat consumed undoubtedly
decreased. As for the late medieval increase in real wages, this increase was much
more pronounced in regions where the volume of wage labour decreased. In other
words: where people enjoyed a higher wage during less days of the year, as was the
case in coastal Flanders. We doubt it that a year-long increase in spending power

resulted from it.
In rural Flanders, the divergent evolution of the two main Flemish agro-systems
from this period onwards, resulted in significant differences in both the production
and the consumption of meat. In Inland Flanders, the limited population decline
before the late 14th century, the on-going subdivision of holdings, the disappearing
of common-land and common use rights, the necessity for additional wage-labour
to buy basic quantities of cereals all seem to contradict the possibility of an
increased meat consumption in the late medieval period. In coastal Flanders, animal
husbandry became more important as the farming system was intensively
commercialized and the increase of labour productivity became primordial. It
remains an open question whether this meat producing region also became an
important meat-consuming region: the relative high wages in the 15th century
coastal plain were only enjoyed during part of the year and possibly could not make
up for the loss of income due to the dissappearance of proto-industrial activities in
this region. In general the quantity of meat eaten remained an important social
marker on the countryside, as we have seen for the early Modern Region of Alost,
where the weight of pork in a household was directly related to its wealth. In the
city probably not meat-eating itself, but the way it was eaten, remained a social
marker. In this respect we can refer to the work of Martha Carlin for late medieval
London, who revealed that lower class people did eat meat, though it was often a
ready-made fast food version of it, bought at cheap rates in specialized shops.89
Last but not least, although it’s difficult to quantify, we’re convinced that the
per capita consumption of meat before the 12th century was probably higher than in
the 15th century: before 1100 the large availability of common lands probably
provided considerable amounts of meat to the peasant population, whereas the
early commercialisation of sheep and pig herding, provided meat for the early
urban settlements and the non-rural populations…. Only in the 12th and 13th
century, diet had become unbalanced towards cereal consumption, and for a large
part of the population would remain so until the 19th century. It’s doubtful that the
late medieval increase in meat consumption structurally reversed this tendency. Real
carnivores remained an endangered species in late medieval society.
89 M. CARLIN, Fast Food and Urban Living Standards in Medieval England, in Food and Eating in
Medieval Europe, M. CARLIN, J. ROSENTHAL eds., London en Rio Grande-Hambledon 1998, pp. 27-52.

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Tim Soens, Erik Thoen

Vegetarians or Carnivores ? Standards of Living and Diet in late medieval Flanders

more nuanced approach, indicating important regional and chronological

7 F. BRAUDEL , Civilisation matérielle et capitalisrne (XVe-XVIIIe siècle), 1967, pp. 192-198.

methodology and relevance of reconstructing ‘average’ diets for different periods in

2. Late Medieval Flanders: population and crisis

3. Evidence for increased meat-consumption in late medieval Flanders?

We’re much better informed on the food pattern of monastic communities,

The oldest evidence on food consumption in an urban hospital concerns Saint

Fig. 1. Relative expenditure on food in Saint-John’s hospital in Bruges

Based on S. DEHAECK, Voedselconsumptie, cit., Annexe I.

Tab. 1. Relative expenditure on meat and grain in Saint John’s hospital in

The evolution described is not just a consequence of changing relative prices

Fig. 2. Cereal consumption (in hectoliter) in Saint John’s hospital in Bruges

Based on Ibidem, Annexe II.

Unfortunately, the amount of meat consumed cannot be estimated with the

Fig. 3. Meat and cereal consumption in Saint-John’s hospital in Bruges

Based on Ibidem, Annexe II.

Fig. 4. Expenditure on cereals and meat in Saint-John’s hospital in Bruges (total

Based on S. DEHAECK, Voedselconsumptie, cit.; monetary conversions by the authors).

Based on A. DERVILLE, Vivre à l’hôpital, cit., tab. 1 and 2.39

41 E. CUYPERS, Financiën en ziekenverzorging, in Het Sint-Elizabethziekenhuis te Antwerpen. 750 jaar

Tab. 2. Cereal and meat consumption in Saint Elizabeth’s hospital in Antwerp

43 Ibid., pp. 88-89.

46 M. MESTAYER, L’alimentation, cit., p. 234.

Based on N. NYFFELS, Tussen ascese en exuberantie, cit.

50 S. DEHAECK, Voedselconsumptie, cit., Bijlage 7.

4. An improved access to meat? The affordability of meat.

55 B. BENNASSAR, J. GOY, Consommation alimentaire (XIVe-XIXe siècle), in “Annales. E.S.C.”, 30,

Tab 3. Nominal wages of unskilled labourers and wheat prices in

1275-00 0,7 12,0 16,5 32,8

1501-25 6,0 100,8 3,8 94,3 66,1 131,1

We already mentioned the important regional divergences in the impact of the

Tab 4. Average prices of beef and wheat in Flanders 1375-1575 (Index

1526-50 101,0 200,3 148,1 162,6 684,0 218,9

65 C. VANDENBROEKE, Kwantitatieve en kwalitatieve aspekten, cit., pp. 224-225. VandenBroeke

5. An improved access to meat? The production and trade of meat.

67 I. BLANCHARD, The Continental European Cattle Trades, 1400-1600, in “Economic History

By contrast to the Brabantine towns, the meat provisioning of the major

69 W.M. GIJSBERS, Kapitale ossen : de internationale handel in slachtvee in Noordwest-Europa (1300-1750),

Tab. 4. Meat supplies described in probate inventories of the villages of Er-

accountbook, the rich farmer Simon de Rikelike living in Sint-Pieters-op-de-Dijk near

UGB/terre arable (x100 hectare) UGB/superficie totale (x100 hectare)

E. THOEN, T. SOENS, Elevage, prés et pâturage, cit., fig. 9.

6. Some preliminary conclusions

case in coastal Flanders. We doubt it that a year-long increase in spending power

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