Book Review

Europe: Early Modern and Modern

A. Lynn Martin documents and interrelates the sexual double standard and the drinking double standard in England, France, and Italy from 1300 to 1700. Premodern Europeans expected women to preserve chastity and secondarily sobriety. His book provides abundant evidence that men were more in need of the prescription for sobriety. Martin judiciously examines studies of household accounts and statistical charts of drinking consumption, yet concludes that inebriation was a common popular condition in premodern Europe. While women brewed much of the ale, with the dominance of beer in the sixteenth century, male brewing became more dominant. The daily lives of women, as well as of men, included ale and beer drinking in the north and wine drinking in the south.

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Martin argues that premodern Europe was more heavily inebriated than modern Europe; and while anecdotes of disorderly behavior fill his book, his overall view is that male and female alcohol consumption led to "social integration and jollification" (p. 118). He portrays a world where alcohol marked lifecycle events and civic and religious ritual, served as a pharmacy and as source of nourishment, and contributed to the integration of social groups. He might have discussed the Catholic Church limiting the wine during the Eucharist to the priesthood, and the Hussite to Protestant sharing of the wine with the laity. He does discuss the Puritan disapproval of alehouses.

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