When banquets were dangerous for the soul

In the Middle Ages, wedding banquets were extremely common and popular rituals. Eating and drinking together were the basic public expression of marriage: the most widely accepted, the most genuinely shared. There are many reasons that lie behind this success, but if we should summarise them in one word, we could pick “versatility”: people could celebrate, witness and legitimise a marriage comfortably seated at table, in a society where publicity played a fundamental role for the ratification of such agreements. In spite of this, we can find many testimonies that wedding banquets had something…wrong.