¡Páguenme, asquerosos campesinos!

mediumaevum:

What People drank in The Middle Ages and Renaissance

Water
Water was rarely drunk due to the difficulties in obtaining clean drinking water (typhoid and other water-borne diseases were highly prevalent). If water had to be drunk, spring water was preferred, as it was less likely to cause disease than river water or still water (pond water). Water was also believed to be bad for the digestion, as they believed that it would chill the stomach and hinder digestion of food.

Wine
Wine was believed to be very good for the health, and was commonly drunk with meals as it was also readily produced in many areas in Europe, and easily transported and stored. Good quality wines were the most popular mealtime drink of nobility, although poorer people could sometimes afford low quality wines.

Spiced Wines
Spiced or mulled wines were also enjoyed. These were used as an aperitif, or to clear the palate after a meal. Spiced wines were also believed to have medicinal qualities.

Hippocras was a red wine which was flavoured with spices such as ginger, cinnamon, sugar, cloves, galingale or nutmeg. Claret was a spiced wine which was often made from a white wine, and was flavoured with cloves, nutmeg, mace, caraway, ginger, pepper and other spices.

Beers and Ales
Beer and ales were very popular drinks, although they were generally consumed by lower class people rather than the nobility (who generally preferred drinking wine).

Beer was made from grains such as oats, wheat, barley or rye, while hops were not added to beer in England until after their introduction to England in 1525 (although they had previously been used in beer production in Flanders for several hundred years). Hops add a bitter taste to beer, so most medieval beers would have lacked the bitter taste of modern beers.

Ales could also be flavoured with spices, similar to spiced wines. These spiced ales were called �braggots�.

Mead
Mead is produced by fermenting a honey and water mixture. Mead could also be flavoured with various spices, either during production or immediately before drinking. Mead was considered to be an ideal drink for invalids by the physicians of the time.

Cider and other fruit juices
Fruit juices were drunk as either fresh fruit juice, or were fermented to produce alcoholic drinks like cider or perry.

Cider is produced from whole apples, while perry is produced from pears. Murrey comes from blackberries or black mulberries, while prunelle is made from plums. A more unusual fruit juice is made from ground and strained pomegranate seeds.

Milk
Milk was not popular as a drink for adults- its use was generally confined to young children. Kumiss, which is an alcoholic drink made from fermented mare�s milk, was popular in the Middle East, but was only drunk in European countries when recommended by a physician.

Tea & Coffee
Tea & coffee were not commonly drunk in Europe during our time period. Herbal infusions were sometimes drunk for their medicinal qualities, but tea was not commonly drunk until after our time period. Coffee was extremely popular in the Middle-East, and was introduced to Constantinople in 1554, but did not become popular throughout Europe for another 100 years.

shoomlah:

No really, the film looks beautiful, but come on now, Pixar!  That dead horse was good and beaten by the time Titanic came out, no need to dredge up anachronistic narrative tropes.

fyeaheasterneurope:

supernova-inthesky:

Baltijos kelias(Baltic Way). 650km human chain across Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia in 1989 produced to seek independence from Soviet Union.

The Baltic Way protest took place on August 23, 1989. Approximately two million people participated, joining hands across three nations. 

Lithuania became the first of the Baltic republics to declare independence, in March of 1990. Latvia followed suit later that year. Estonia declared independence a year later, in 1991.

elgin-marbles:

Portrait of Juana Inés de la Cruz at age 15

Juana Inés de la Cruz de Asuaje y Ramirez was born in San Miguel Nepantla, near Mexico City. She was the illegitimate child of a Spanish Captain, Pedro Manuel de Asuaje, and a Criollo woman, Isabel Ramirez. Her illegitimacy was due to her mother’s refusal to marry.

She learned how to read and write at the age of three. By age five, she could do accounts, and at age eight she composed a poem on the Eucharist. By adolescence, she had mastered Greek logic, and at age thirteen she was teaching Latin to young children. She also learned the Aztec language of Nahuatl, and wrote some short poems in that language.

In 1664, at age sixteen, Juana was sent to live in Mexico City. She asked her mother’s permission to disguise herself as a male student so that she could enter the university. Not being allowed to do this, she continued her studies privately. She came under the tutelage of the Vicereine Leonor Carreto, wife of Viceroy Antonio Sebastián de Toledo. The viceroy, wishing to test her learning and intelligence (she being then seventeen years old), invited several theologians, jurists, philosophers, and poets to a meeting, during which she had to answer, unprepared, many questions, and explain several difficult points on various scientific and literary subjects. The manner in which she acquitted herself astonished all present, and greatly increased her reputation. Her literary accomplishments soon made her famous throughout New Spain.

She was much admired in the vice-royal court, and declined several proposals of marriage, for in the spirit of her mother, she refused to marry. In 1667, she entered the Convent of the Discalced Carmelites of St. Joseph as a postulant. In 1669, she entered the Convent of the Order of St. Jérôme.

In Juana’s time, the convent was often seen as the only refuge in which a female could properly attend to the education of her mind, spirit, body and soul. It was Juana’s only refuge from marriage. Nonetheless, she wrote literature centered on freedom. In her poem Redondillas, she defends a woman’s right to be respected as a human being. Therein, she also criticizes the sexism of the society of her time, poking fun at and revealing the hypocrisy of men who publicly condemn prostitutes, yet privately pay women to perform on them what they have just said is an abomination to God. Sor Juana asks the sharp question in this age-old matter of the purity/whoredom split found in base male mentality: “Who sins more, she who sins for pay? Or he who pays for sin?” For these works, she is regarded as one of the first feminists.

Foolish men who wrongly accuse women, Without seeing that you are the cause of what you fault them for; You want with unthinking presumption to find in the woman you seek… Either love women for what you force them to be, or fashion them according to what you want them to be.