Lots of fancy outfits featured here in this Late Medieval illumination of a feast — but take a look at the dudes, especially. Being an aristocratic male meant that you had to juggle the attributes of a military knight skilled in the art of appropriate murderous violence with the finesse of a metosexual able to charm the ladies with wit and fine manners. Both of these skill sets required boucoups training and financial investment, and really showed off the power that accompanied the masculinity of the knightly class.
A guide book to good manners by William Caxton called _The Book of Curtesye_ was developed for the instruction of young squires and demonstrates the sorts of behaviors that needed coaching: “Blow not in your drink, nor in your soup,/ Nor stuff your dish too full of bread,/ Bear not your knife toward your face/ For therein is peril and great dread . . . . Take care also that no breath resound from you, whether up or down . . .”
Source(s): Cited in _From Boys to Men: Formations of Masculenity in Late Medieval Europe_ by Ruth Mazo Karras (univ of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), p. 44. Image cited in _The Iris: Behind the Scenes at the Getty_, “Why aren’t people eating in Medieval depictions of feasts?” By Christine Siacca, Nov 24, 2015.
