“Man does not live by bread alone” : Feeding Confraternity in Early Modern Nuremberg Leprosaria

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

Looking beyond the history of food, feeding and nutrition, this article aims to capture the cultural history of food and feeding in Renaissance leper hospitals in Nuremberg. When attempting to understand the early modern hospital community and determining how hospital patients actually spent their time, one rapidly recognizes that such groups of patients spent most of their time praying and eating collectively. The article, therefore, focuses on the function of meals inside late medieval and early modern hospitals in generating a sense of community. The example of the Nuremberg hospitals, especially the four leprosaria around the imperial city, clearly indicates the way in which daily routine was structured by meals and prayers. Furthermore, the function of feeding within almsgiving is discussed using the example of a Nuremberg charity specifically for foreign lepers, which in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, fed hundreds and thousands of non-native lepers in the very centre of the imperial city dur...