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A Barrel of Beer for the Benedictine Brothers

49 bytes added, 06:49, 10 June 2019
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So let's return to Father Bernard and how he supposedly saved Grodzisk from an epidemic that befell the town. This is how it happened according to his hagiographer, Father Marcin Chwaliszewski:
[[File:Grodziskie reklama.JPG|thumb|upright|"Only Grodziskie beer !" An advertisement from the 1930s.]]
{{ Cytat
| In the year 1620, remembered for the Polish defeat at Țuțora and other great calamities, including the pestilence which ravaged the entire nation, when this terrible disease betided the town of Grodzisk in the Diocese of Poznań and when its inhabitants {{...}} for 40 day joined in processions and public prayers, they saw a person surrounded by a bright light, rising above the town in heavenly clouds, holding a cross and clad in Benedictine garb. Enlightened by Divine instinct and by Father Andrzej Karsznicki, who had known Bernard well since their school years, they understood that it was a sign from God that the entire town should piously visit the tomb of this Venerable Servant of God in the Lubiń monastery. {{...}} Every year, the thankful town of Grodzisk made a voluntary offering of a keg of beer to the Lubiń monastery and a candle for Bernard's tomb. These offerings continued until the monastery's dissolution in 1835.
In any case, the legend thus pieced together served, on the one hand, to justify the very important (from the monks' point of view) custom of giving the monastery a keg of beer every year and, on the other hand, it reinforced Grodziskie's reputation as a beer to cure all ills. In the past, beer (in general) was indeed safer to drink than water – firstly, because the process of brewing required good-quality water that was boiled on top of that and, secondly, the alcohol and the hops had additional antiseptic properties. But even with all this in mind, Grodziskie beer stood out as a beer style that could be even used as medicine.
[[File:Grodziskie reklama 3.JPG|thumb|left|upright|"For over 400 years, healthful Grodziskie beer ." An advertisement from the 1930s.]]
{{ Cytat
| Grodziskie grew in fame throughout Greater Poland to the point that any nobleman who had no Grodziskie beer in store was considered either a pauper or a miser. It owed much of its esteem to doctors who valued it as highly as mineral waters. It is a light and tasty beer which doesn't spin your head around; doctors, who in all kinds of ailments forbid you to take any other liquors, allow you to drink Grodziskie and indeed prescribe it in some cases.