Alcohol: A History

5. EARLY MODERN EUROPE, 1500–1700: Alcohol, Religion, and Culture

87 5 EarlyModernEurope 1500–1700 alcohol, religion, and culture The early modern period, from about 1500 to the eighteenth century, saw alcohol firmly entrenched in the daily diets of European populations but also witnessed immense changes in the types of alcohol available. Distilled spirits, with their much higher alcohol levels, had been made in Europe for medicinal purposes in very small volumes for a century or more, but they became much more widely available and consumed during the 1500s. (This is the subject of Chapter 6.) Brewing, as we have seen, had already undergone major organizational and technological changes: from small to large in scale, and hops were used to make beer that lasted longer and could be shipped to more distant markets. During the 1500s, the issues of conservation also began to bear on wine, which was notoriously unstable. Producers in some regions began to take advantage of the distilled spirits being made in commercial volumes to add brandy as a conservation agent. These “fortified wines,” notably sherry and port, had higher alcohol levels and more lasting power than regular wine, and they quickly found eager consumers in England and other parts of Europe. But before spirits and fortified wines began to make an impact on European drinking patterns, a religious shift, the Protestant Reformation, had important consequences for the history of alcohol in Europe. Protestantism was a cool-climate religion, more successful in northern Europe than in the south. Generally aligned with the geography of alcohol, it had more traction in beer-drinking (and, later, spirits-consuming) societies than in southern and Mediterranean regions where wine was easily produced and 88 early modern europe, 1500–1700 more commonly consumed. This correlation is intriguing, and it has been suggested that in Catholic cultures, wine was heavily symbolic of social unity, so that any threat to wine was seen and was resisted as a danger to the community.1 Protestants might have been viewed as latter-day barbarians , sweeping into Catholic Europe with a message of moderation in alcohol consumption and critical of contemporary drinking practices. But it seems to be nothing more than coincidental that Protestantism was largely unsuccessful in the wine-producing regions of Europe. For one thing, some of the wine-producing areas of southern France, northern Germany, and Switzerland rallied to the Protestant cause. For another, the decisions as to which faith to follow were far more often made by political leaders (kings, dukes, and others) than by the mass of the population.2 Did the Protestants really pose a threat to wine and other alcoholic beverages ? Reformers like Martin Luther and John Calvin had myriad objections to the doctrines and practices of the Church of Rome (the Catholic Church), and they accused it of having a lax attitude toward all kinds of immorality. Yet Protestant and Catholic positions on alcohol were essentially the same: everyday consumption was desirable for dietary and health purposes, but drinking beyond those needs—and, of course, drunkenness—was sinful and socially dangerous and should be punished. But if they agreed with Catholics on the basic message, Protestants argued that the Church of Rome had failed to enforce these rules and had turned a blind eye to the heavy drinking that they believed was widespread and the prime cause of the blasphemy and sinful behavior that afflicted the Christian world. They often portrayed Catholic priests and monks as lazy, alcohol-sodden fornicators who were as guilty as the sinful hordes that they were supposed to be models for. In doctrinal terms, then, Protestants were more rigorous toward alcohol consumption, and it is noteworthy that Protestants were far more active than Catholics in the temperance and prohibition movements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the 1500s, only a few radical Protestants called for complete abstinence from alcohol—an extraordinary policy to advocate at a time when beer and wine were intrinsic parts of the daily diet for most adults and were considered far healthier alternatives to water. One would-be prohibitionist was the German reformer Sebastian Franck, who condemned alcohol for its contribution to all manner of vice and, believing that humans were too weak to resist it, called for it to be banned altogether. Anyone who drank alcohol, he wrote, should be expelled from the community of believers: “Oh misery! We are not alone drunk from wine, but drunk, drunk with the lying spirit, error early...