Gifts of Wine in Late Medieval Knightly Culture as Depicted in Jean Cuvelier’s “Chanson de Bertrand du Guesclin” (ca 1385)

The article analyses the examples of stories in Chanson de Bertrand du Guesclin by Jean Cuvelier (ca 1385) in which the motive of gift of wine features. The author argues that the particularity of Cuvelier’s images of gifts of this liquor and its consumption as compared to other contemporaneous works, confirms the opinion of scholars, that the poem bears a significant relation to the social circles of the participants of the first phase of Hundred Years War. Offering gifts of wine is an important motif of enfances, the part of du Guesclin’s biography depicting his childhood and adolescence. This situation points out to high appraisal of ideas expressed via the aforesaid gift. This is by no means a coincidence as the structure of social bonds between the lord and his men as well as the means of forging it via gifts of luxurious alcohol is well recognised by the scholars in the early medieval sources picturing the so-called mead-hall communities. Thus, Jean Cuvelier’s poem exposes the longue durée of cultural substances. The similarities may be also discerned in the cases of descriptions of the ceremonial forms of drinking of wine and mead (as a gift passed among the feasters) by the means of which the status of given person in warrior community is expressed or subversed.