Pane et sicera as identity elements of differentiation in Asturian medieval documentation (9th-13th centuries)

Abstract

Drawing from the abundant, though short, Asturian documents (9th-13th centuries) in which the traces of bread and cider appear in diverse documented legal acts, this paper attempts to show a cultural, as well as socioeconomic, reality. The texts reveal the productive cycle of the grain from which bread is made. This bread will be eaten by people from different classes, in line with the quality of the flour used. Those texts tell us about mountain crops or lands near the coast with spelt or millet, mills reflecting prosperity since the 12th century, marketplaces with bregadores who knead and panaderes who make and sell bread. We are also told about cider, which involves good business for those who produce it, normally the monastery with its plantations of apple trees, as well as for merchants and innkeepers. Farmers, who could not afford wine, will not be the only ones who drink ciderafter crushing the apples, but also the rich, the poor, pilgrims and maybe some clergymen. Thus, bread and cider are two distinctive identity elements in relation to the rest of peninsular areas, even those where the cultivation of apple trees was common.