Etiquette from the 14th Century

Only squirrels hoard nuts… diners should not take more than a few when they are served at a dinner – “only… take two or three nuts when nuts are on the table.”

Ancient Table Etiquette

Some of the ancient table directions are very quaint. You are told, for instance, not to eat much cheese, not to leave your spoon on your platter, not to play with your knife or roll your napkin into a cord or tie it into knots, only to take two or three nuts when nuts are on the table, and not to get intoxicated during dinner time. The “Boke of Curtasye” also warns people not to play with the cats and dogs while at table.—Correspondent for Chicago Herald, 1892

🍽Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Medieval Seating and Dining

 The origins of modern day seating arrangements for dining. — “As a rule, one knife had to serve for two people, and often a bowl of soup was used by two persons. For this reason the party giving the dinner arranged his guests in couples, trying to place people together who would be congenial and not adverse to this common use of table appointments.”— Image source, Pinterest

A description of a dinner given in 1350 shows that there has been a vast improvement in table manners since then:

As a rule, one knife had to serve for two people, and often a bowl of soup was used by two persons. For this reason the party giving the dinner arranged his guests in couples, trying to place people together who would be congenial and not adverse to this common use of table appointments. Spoons were seldom supplied to the guests, and the soup was drunk directly from the bowl, the latter usually having side handles by which it was held. 

In less refined company, there were no separate soup bowls, only one large porringer, which was passed around to the guests in turn. The diners helped themselves to the pieces of meat they desired from the common dish with their fingers. Napkins were considered a luxury, and were only provided in very aristocratic and wealthy families.—Philadelphia Inquirer, 1903

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Chaucer and “Fingers of Courtesy”

From Chaucer’s “Parliament of Fowls,” circa 1381-1382 –In the 14th century, forks were not in use . At the time, those who exhibited good manners at the table, ate with the thumb and first two fingers. These were called, “the fingers of courtesy.”

Table Manners at the Time of Chaucer 

were of a Decidedly Primitive Character

Table manners at the time of Chaucer were described in a lecture by Kenneth Base, author and poet, in “A Holiday in London in the Days of Chaucer.” Etiquette in those days (the latter half of the fourteenth century) demanded that meat should be held between two fingers and a thumb of the left hand, and no more, if one was to be received in polite society. After soup, pike roasted in claret and favored with strange and varied spices was eaten. Then followed partridge, roasted with saffron, cloves and ginger, and jam tarts and jelly. It was the custom to change the cloth with the courses, and one read of one feast in which each new cloth was scented with a perfume appropriate to the dish. In Chaucer's day, the bath in construction was not unlike a miniature pulpit, and a bouquet of sweet scented herbs was hung over it for the stream to draw out their refreshing qualities. -Healdsburg Enterprise, 1922

🍽Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia