The capon, however, appears to have been the greatest favourite with the clergy; its frequent companion, the carp, doubtless owing its popularity to the fact that it is so easily raised, rather than that it is more esteemed than numerous other species of fish. Even more than the capon, the carp suggests the cenobites, bringing up a whole train of monastic orders—with the cloister and the abbey as its most congenial home. It is inalienably associated with the cassock and chasuble, the rosary and censer, the peal of the organ and the glory of old stained glass. It is essentially the sacred fish—the true "sole" of piety. It whispers of sanctity and breathes of Benedicites. In fancy one sees the abbot, rotund and rubicund, presiding at table, with one eye upon the fish and the other lifted aloft, uttering his Bonum est confiteri ere the loud "Amen" resounds through the vaulted chamber, and carp and capon are bathed in the red juices of the monastery vineyard. Or it may be a pike, a mullet, or a dish of eels that, cunningly prepared by the master-cook of the brotherhood, steeps the refectory with the perfume of shallots and fine herbs, and justly merits a Benedic, anima mea from the partakers of the repast.

From an anecdote related by the Franciscan Jean Paulli de Thann, it would appear that the olden monks had learned from the Scriptures a particular method of carving fowls when they partook of them in secular company. A gentleman had invited his confessor, who was a monk, to dine in company with his wife, his two sons, and two daughters. There was a fine capon for the roast, which the host requested the guest to carve. The latter excused himself, but the host insisted.

"Inasmuch as you demand it," replied the monk, "I will carve the fowl according to biblical principles."

"Yes," exclaimed the hostess, "act according to the Scriptures."

The theologian therefore began the carving. The baron was tendered the head of the fowl, the baroness the neck, the two daughters a wing apiece, and the two sons a first joint, the monk retaining the remainder.

"According to what interpretation do you make such a division?" inquired the host of his confessor, as he regarded the monk's heaping plate and the scant portions doled out to the family.

"From an interpretation of my own," replied the monk. "As the master of your house, the head belongs to you by right; the baroness, being most near to you, should receive the neck, which is nearest the head; in the wings the young girls will recognize a symbol of their mobile thoughts, that fly from one desire to another; as to the young barons, the drumsticks they have received will remind them that they are responsible for supporting your house, as the legs of the capon support the bird itself."

In England, during Elizabeth's reign, fish was largely consumed on the festival of St. Ulric, a pious custom referred to by Barnaby Googe:

With fish much is possible in the way of a generous dietary during the Lenten penance and on meagre days. To the devout Thomas à Kempis nothing was more delicious to the taste than a salmon, always excepting the Psalms of David. The possibilities of a fish diet, however, have nowhere been more appreciably set forth than by Father Prout on the occasion of the classic "Watergrasshill Carousal," when Sir Walter Scott was among the guests. And though the turkey which was in readiness was forgone on account of the day being Friday and therefore a fast-day, the repast, nevertheless, did not languish. The trout, it will be remembered, the witty priest had caught himself from the neighbouring stream, as well as a large eel from the lake at Blarney. To these were added from the excellent market at Cork a turbot, two lobsters, a salmon, and a hake, with a hundred of Cork-harbour oysters. Besides these figured also a keg of cod-sounds, a great favourite of the bishop of the diocese, which invariably appeared at the table of Father Prout when his lordship was expected. With eggs, potatoes, sauce piquante, lobster-sauce, whiskey and claret in addition, the sacerdotal banquet proved a signal success, fully bearing out the sentiment expressed by the shepherd in the "Noctes" at the end of a Scottish repast,—"We 've just had a perfec' dinner, Mr. Tickler—neither ae dish ower mony, nor ae dish ower few."

Fish naturally demands a white wine; but a carp may be prepared—and doubtless is prepared—so sauced and spiced and aromatised by practised cloistral hands that a red wine, the favoured colour of the cowl, may accord with it perfectly. This is not saying that an abbot who may be as renowned for his gastronomic abilities as for his oratory necessarily confines himself or his followers to red wine with fish. Much will depend, of course, upon the mode of preparation,—it is to be supposed that the cellarer has both red and white wine at command to draw from as occasion demands; to be confined to a single variety must be as onerous to the cloth as to the layman. When the celebrated vineyard of Clos-Vougeot was the property of the Bernardin monks, before it was confiscated and declared national property, Dom Gobelot was the father-cellarer. It was he who, after being forced to retire to private life at Dijon, with a hundred dozen bottles of a famous year of his vineyard as a souvenir, proudly replied to the young Bonaparte, conqueror in Italy and returning from Marengo, when he requested some old Vougeot for his table: "If he wishes some forty-year-old Vougeot, let him come and drink it here; it is not for sale." And does not history record that Pope Gregory XVI, in the year 1371, made the Abbot of Clos-Vougeot a cardinal to express his gratitude for a present of a basket of his best old wine which the abbot had sent him?

The famous wine of "Est, Est, Est" owes its celebrity to a German bishop named Fuger, who, while on a journey to Italy, sent his secretary in advance in order to provide the best accommodations. He was especially charged to test the wine in all the inns en route, and wherever he found it best to write the word "Est" on the wall of the albergo. Arriving at Montefiascone, a small town on the highroad from Florence to Rome, the secretary found the wine so superior that he was at a loss to describe it until he bethought him of the inscription that a sultan of Lahore had engraved on the door of his seraglio,—"If there is a paradise on earth, it is here, it is here, it is here!" Accordingly, he wrote the word "Est" thrice in large characters on the wall of the principal inn—a fatal word for the bishop, who tarried so long and drank so freely that he died ere reaching his destination—Rome. His tomb exists at Montefiascone. On either side of his mitre and his arms his secretary had carved a reversed glass, with this epitaph on the stone: Est, Est, Est, et propter nimium est Johannes de Fuger dominus meus mortuus est. The explanation of the epitaph and emblems is given by the Roman prelate, Valery. It is still further averred that the death of Cardinal Mauri, a distinguished Italian prelate, whose remains were interred near those of the German bishop in the Church of St. Flavien, was also hastened by his fondness for the Montefiascone wine. The story of the bibulous bishop was told in 1825 in German, in a poem of fourteen stanzas, by Wilhelm Müller, father of Professor Max Müller.[39] It has also been excellently rendered in English verse by an American poetess whose name the efforts of the writer have been unable to trace:

To judge of the quality of Montefiascone, one must drink it at its home; like other white wines of the former Papal States, it will not bear the shock of distant carriage. As for the German ecclesiast, one should not take him too seriously, but consider him rather from the picturesque point of view, as Rowlandson and Combe have done with the reverend Syntax. "Other times, other manners,"—to-day his reverence would have made the journey by rail and not by post, and thus, doubtless, would have missed the fiasci of Montefiascone. One must also bear in mind that the wine in question, being of the muscat type, is extremely heady and exciting to the nerves, its deleterious effects being masked by its unctuousness and engaging aroma; so that an unsuspecting beer-drinking bishop, accustomed to copious libations of a milder fluid, might readily and unwittingly find himself under the table, and, even though a hierarch, prove an easy subject for a De Profundis. Many years have elapsed since the prelate's demise; and it is to be supposed that, meanwhile, the nectar of Est has been rendered less potent and even more delectable in heavenly vineyards.