Cellarer

The person responsible for laying in and keeping track of food and other provisions for a monastery. The person charged with providing a convent's supplies of liquors.

"Now he had a kinsman, Frederick by name, a canon of the same church, who held the office of cellarer; this man was wont oftimes to rebuke his uncle for his indiscreet liberality, and the uncle in turn blamed him for his too great niggardliness; for they kept house in common, and therefore Frederick was much grieved that the Dean was wont to give secretly to the poor whatsoever he could seize. It came to pass that this Frederick, having many and great swine in virtue of his office, slew them and made them into flitches which he hung in the kitchen to be kept until the time appointed; these the Dean would oftentimes consider, and, grudging sore that they should hang there, knowing at the same time that he could not or dared not beg any part thereof from his nephew, he contrived a holy fraud, a pious fraud, a fraud worthy of all memory! So often as he knew that no man was in the kitchen, he would steal secretly thither, and sometimes seize the occasion to send the servants forth. Then would he mount the ladder and cut from the flitches on the side next to the wall until all were wasted away almost to the midst; but the forepart he left untouched, that none might mark how the rest had been taken. This he did for many days, distributing the flesh thus cut away to widows, and poor folk, and orphans. In brief, the theft of this household property was at last discovered, the thief was sought and found without delay. The cellarer raged, the Dean held his peace; and when the other complained that he had lost the sustenance of the brethren and the stock of a whole year, the holy man sought to soothe him with such words as he could, saying: 'Good kinsman, it is better that thou shouldst suffer some little want than that the poor should die of hunger. The Lord will indeed reward thee.'"

Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dialogus Miraculorum (13th century).