English Franciscan, Bartholomew Anglicus, lived and wrote in the middle of the thirteenth century, probably before1260. His writings speedily traveled over Europe. It was translated into French by order of Charles V. (1364-81) in 1372, into Spanish, into Dutch, and into English in 1397.
Medieval Lore for the Cosmopolitan Interest
“The worthiness and praising of wine might not Bacchus himself describe at the full, though he were alive. For among all liquors and juice of trees, wine beareth the prize, for passing all liquors, wine moderately drunk most comforteth the body, and gladdeth the heart, and saveth wounds and evils. Wine strengtheneth all the members of the body, and giveth to each might and strength, and deed and working of the soul showeth and declareth the goodness of wine. And wine breedeth in the soul forgetting of anguish, of sorrow, and of woe, and suffereth not the soul to feel anguish and woe. Wine sharpeth the wit and maketh it cunning to enquire things that are hard and subtle, and maketh the soul bold and hardy, and so the passing nobility of wine is known. And use of wine accordeth to all men’s ages and times and countries, if it be taken in due manner, and as his disposition asketh that drinketh it.”
“Red wine that is temperate in its qualities, and is drunk temperately and in due manner, helpeth kind and gendreth good blood, and maketh savour in meat and in drink, and exciteth desire and appetite, and comforteth the virtue of life and of kind, and helpeth the stomach to have appetite, and to have and to make good digestion. And quencheth thirst, and changeth the passions of the soul and thoughts out of evil into good. For it turneth the soul out of cruelness into mildness, out of covetousness into largeness, out of pride into meekness, and out of dread into boldness. And shortly to speak, wine drunk measurably is health of body and of soul.”
– Bartholomew Anglicus