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By Root 2952 0

where Italian merchants came into contact with the increasingly powerful Hanseatic League of merchants. Hard hit by the plague, the Italians lost their commercial preeminence while the Hanseatic League continued to prosper.

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A Renaissance Banquet

As in Greek and Roman society, a banquet during the Renaissance was an occasion for good food, interesting conversation, music, and dancing. In Renaissance society, it was also a symbol of status and an opportunity to impress people with the power and wealth of one’s family. Banquets were held to celebrate public and religious festivals, official visits, anniversaries, and weddings. The following menu lists the foods served at a grand banquet given by Pope Pius V in the sixteenth century.

A Sixteenth-Century Banquet

First Course

Cold Delicacies from the Sideboard

Pieces of marzipan and marzipan balls

Neapolitan spice cakes

Malaga wine and Pisan biscuits

Fresh grapes

Prosciutto cooked in wine, served with capers

and grape pulp

Salted pork tongues cooked in wine, sliced

Spit-roasted songbirds, cold, with

their tongues sliced over them

Sweet mustard

Second Course

Cold Hot Foods from the Kitchen, Roasts

Fried veal sweetbreads and liver

Spit-roasted skylarks with lemon sauce

Spit-roasted quails with sliced eggplants

Stuffed spit-roasted pigeons with capers

sprinkled over them

Spit-roasted rabbits, with sauce and crushed pine nuts

Partridges larded and spit-roasted, served with lemon

Heavily seasoned poultry with lemon slices

Slices of veal, spit-roasted, with a sauce made

from the juices

Leg of goat, spit-roasted, with a sauce made

from the juices

Soup of almond paste, with the flesh of three

pigeons to each serving

Third Course

Hot Foods from the Kitchen, Boiled Meats and Stews

Stuffed fat geese, boiled Lombard style and covered

with sliced almonds

Stuffed breast of veal, boiled, garnished with flowers

Very young calf, boiled, garnished with parsley

Almonds in garlic sauce

Turkish-style rice with milk, sprinkled with cinnamon

Stewed pigeons with mortadella sausage and

whole onions

Cabbage soup with sausages

Poultry pie, two chickens to each pie

Fricasseed breast of goat dressed with fried onions

Pies filled with custard cream

Boiled calves’ feet with cheese and egg

Fourth Course

Delicacies from the Sideboard

Bean tarts

Quince pastries

Pear tarts, the pears wrapped in marzipan

Parmesan cheese and Riviera cheese

Fresh almonds on vine leaves

Chestnuts roasted over the coals and served with

salt and pepper

Milk curds

Ring-shaped cakes

Wafers made from ground grain

What kinds of people would be present at a banquet where these foods would be served? What does this menu tell you about the material culture of the Renaissance and the association of food with social status?

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EXPANSION OF TRADE As early as the thirteenth century, a number of North German coastal towns had formed a commercial and military association known as the Hansa, or Hanseatic League. By 1500, more than eighty cities belonged to the League, which had established settlements and commercial bases in many cities in England and northern Europe, including the chief towns of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. For almost two hundred years, the Hansa had a monopoly on northern European trade in timber, fish, grain, metals, honey, and wines. Its southern outlet in Flanders, the port city of Bruges, became the economic crossroads of Europe in the fourteenth century, serving as the meeting place between Hanseatic merchants and the Flanders Fleet of Venice. In the fifteenth century, however, silting of the port caused Bruges to enter a slow decline. So did the Hanseatic League, which was increasingly unable to compete with the developing larger territorial states.

Lübeck and the Hanseatic League. The Hanseatic League or Hansa was an economic and military alliance of northern European trading cities that established a monopoly on trade from the Baltic to the North Sea. The city of Lübeck in northern Germany played a major role in the founding