Abstract

The study examines Nicolas de La Chesnaye’s play ‘La Condamnation de Banquet’, a text written shortly after the year 1500 and criticizing heavily the conduct of nightly banquets in the French upper classes of its time. It was also transformed into tapestries, still extant, shortly after its first publication. Bodily conditions (e.g. sobriety), illnesses (e.g. stroke) and institutions (e.g. a tribunal) serve as personifications of such topics as excessive sumptuousness, and the moral depravation and aberration associated with it. The play’s perspective is to highlight social responsibility and to provide its audience with recommendations for a healthy way of living. Asceticism is declared to be a bonum commune and a way of optimizing oneself.