page_title: Gambrinus
hierarchical_section_title: Gambrinus
context_page_description: Gambrinus is a legendary European culture hero celebrated as an icon of beer, brewing, joviality, and joie de vivre. Traditional songs, poems, and stories describe him as a king, duke, or count of Flanders and Brabant. Typical representations in the visual arts depict him as a rotund, bearded duke or king, holding a tankard or mug, and sometimes with a keg nearby.
  Gambrinus is sometimes erroneously called a patron saint, but he is neither a saint nor a tutelary deity. It is possible his persona was conflated with traditional medieval saints associated with beermaking, like Arnold of Soissons. In one legendary tradition, he is beer's inventor or envoy. Although legend attributes to him no special powers to bless brews or to make crops grow, tellers of old tall tales are happy to adapt them to fit Gambrinus. Gambrinus stories use folklore motifs common to European folktales, such as the trial by ordeal. Some imagine Gambrinus as a man who has an enormous capacity for drinking beer.
  Among the personages theorised to be the basis for the Gambrinus character are the ancient king Gampar, John the Fearless and John I, Duke of Brabant.
context_section_description: Gambrinus (/ɡæmˈbraɪnəs/ gam-BRY-nəs) is a legendary European culture hero celebrated as an icon of beer, brewing, joviality, and joie de vivre. Traditional songs, poems, and stories describe him as a king, duke, or count of Flanders and Brabant. Typical representations in the visual arts depict him as a rotund, bearded duke or king, holding a tankard or mug, and sometimes with a keg nearby.
  Gambrinus is sometimes erroneously called a patron saint, but he is neither a saint nor a tutelary deity. It is possible his persona was conflated with traditional medieval saints associated with beermaking, like Arnold of Soissons. In one legendary tradition, he is beer's inventor or envoy. Although legend attributes to him no special powers to bless brews or to make crops grow, tellers of old tall tales are happy to adapt them to fit Gambrinus. Gambrinus stories use folklore motifs common to European folktales, such as the trial by ordeal. Some imagine Gambrinus as a man who has an enormous capacity for drinking beer.
  Among the personages theorised to be the basis for the Gambrinus character are the ancient king Gampar (aka Gambrivius), John the Fearless (1371–1419) and John I, Duke of Brabant (c. 1252–1294).
caption: Gambrinus in kingly garb sits casually on a beer keg as he regards a foaming chalice and balances a large pitcher on his thigh. An illustration from the catalogue of Ernst Holzweißig Nachf. (1898)
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