Гамбринус: Легендарный герой пива и пивоварения.

Culture hero of European legend, celebrated as an icon of beer

Gambrinus (/ɡ//æ//m/'/b//r//aɪ//n//ə//s/ gamBREEnəs) is a legendary European culture hero celebrated as an icon of beer, brewing, joviality, and joie de vivre. 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. Though sometimes erroneously called a patron saint, Gambrinus is neither a saint nor a tutelary deity. It is possible his persona was conflated with traditional medieval saints associated with beermaking, like Saint 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. (Marsus), John the Fearless of Burgundy (1371–1419) and John I, Duke of Brabant ( 1252–1294).

The source of the legend of Gambrinus is uncertain. An early written account, by German historian Johannes Aventinus (1477–1534), identifies Gambrinus with Gambrivius, a mythical Germanic king about whom little is known. Two other men purported to have inspired the creation of Gambrinus are John I, Duke of Brabant, and John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy.

In his magnum opus Annals of Bavaria, German historian Johannes Aventinus wrote that Gambrinus is based on a mythical Germanic king called Gambrivius, or Gampar, who, Aventinus says, learned brewing from Osiris and Isis. In 1517, William IV, Duke of Bavaria had made Aventinus the official historiographer of his dukedom. Aventinus finished composing the history in 1523; the work that he compiled, Annals of Bavaria, extends beyond Bavaria, drawing on numerous ancient and medieval sources. However, it is also a work that blends history with myth and legend. European anecdote credits Gambrinus with the invention of beer. Aventinus attempted to reconcile this account with much older stories attributing its origin to Osiris' agricultural teachings. In Aventinus' chronicle, Gambrivius was the paramour of Osiris' wife and sister, Isis. It was by this association, he says, that Gambrivius learned the science of brewing (cf. myths of the theft of fire). Aventinus' account of Gambrivius contributed to the reverence for Osiris and Isis held by 17th century European scholars. Perceiving Osiris and Isis as "culture bearers" enabled a willingness to see historical connections where there were none. According to Aventinus, Gambrivius is a seventh generation descendant of the Biblical patriarch Noah. By incorporating earlier myths recorded by Tacitus, Aventinus reckoned that Gambrivius was the fifth son of Marso (Latin: Marsus), who was the great grandson of Tuisto, the giant or godly ancestor of the Germanic peoples whom Tacitus mentions in Germania. Tacitus alludes to an earlier source (Strabo) who lists tribes called the Gambrivii and the Marsi among the peoples descended from Tuisto: the offspring or subjects of Gambrivius and Marsus, respectively. Gampar claims new lands east of the Rhine, including Flanders and Brabant, and founds the towns of Cambrai and Hamburg. The names of both these towns were theorized to be cognates of Gambrivius, as one of Hamburg's ancient Latin names was alleged to be Gambrivium. One of Aventinus' sources was Officina (1503), an encyclopedia compiled by French scholar Jean Tixier de Ravisi. This work purported that Tuisto and Gambrivius were giants descended from Noah. But Jean Tixier had only catalogued and reported a conjecture made in the name of the Hellenistic era historian Berossus, by the fraudster Annio da Viterbo (1498), who had previously used the same hypothesis to postulate an ancestry for the Gauls. Some Francophone and Germanophone scholars reject the others' claim to Gambrinus as an appropriation of one of their own cultural heroes. Aventinus' account did not just establish a claim to Gambrivius, but to a glorious ancestry and heritage. John's name, too, has a hypothetical connection to Gambrinus: In Dutch he was sometimes known as Jan Primus, and in French as Jean Primus. Jan and Jean are renderings of John in Dutch and French, respectively, and Primus is Latin for "the first". The name Gambrinus might be a corruption of one of these names. Dutch and French were principal languages in the County of Flanders and the Duchy of Brabant, and Latin was a language used by scholars and learned people.

Another presumptive Gambrinus, John the Fearless (1371–1419), was the Duke of Burgundy born nearly 80 years after the death of John I of Brabant. The large and powerful Duchy of Burgundy also produced beer, and was found to the southwest of Brabant. John the Fearless held several titles of nobility, one of which was Count of Flanders—a title he inherited in 1405. He is credited with introducing, or legalising, hops within the County of Flanders. Sometime after John inherited rule of the County of Flanders in 1405, he is said to have instituted an order of merit called the Order of the Hop (Latin: Ōrdō lupuli). According to Jean Jacques Chifflet (1588–1660), John awarded the honour to curry the favour of his subjects in the County of Flanders. Recipients of the order drank beer in celebration. John of Burgundy has another connection to beer, and possibly to the etymology of Gambrinus: In 1385, he was married in Cambrai, a powerful city (in modern day north of France) whose beer was highly regarded. Allegedly, one of Cambrai's Latin names was Gambrivium—but then, the same is also said of the city of Hamburg. The Medieval Latin noun camba means "brewery"; this word was corrupted to cambe in Old French, and may have yielded the vernacular French noun cam, a word used by farmhouse brewers in Northern France and the Low Countries for the yoke that supports a brew kettle over a fire.

For his 1868 anthology Contes d'un buveur de bière (English: Tales of a Beer Drinker), French author Charles Deulin wrote a playful short story called "Cambrinus, Roi de la Bière" ("Cambrinus, King of Beer"), in which "Cambrinus" makes a deal with the Devil. Deulin was also a journalist, and drama critic who adapted elements of European folklore into his work. The success of "Cambrinus, Roi de la Bière" led to the 1874 publication of Contes du roi Cambrinus ("Tales of King Cambrinus"), a collection of short stories devoted to the character.

In this, the seminal Cambrinus short story, Cambrinus is an apprentice glassblower in the Flemish village of Fresnes sur Escaut, but he believes that he lacks the skill and upward mobility to succeed in glassblowing. He becomes smitten with the master glassblower's daughter, Flandrine. After she rebuffs him, he apprentices himself instead to a viol master, and learns the instrument. His first public performance goes excellently until he catches sight of Flandrine, and flubs his performance. The crowd turns on him violently, but when the case goes to trial the judge, Jocko, is against Cambrinus. When Cambrinus is released he considers suicide, but Beelzebub intervenes in exchange for the promise of his soul. Beelzebub announces, too, that he has killed the judge. With diabolical help, Cambrinus wins a fortune in games of skill and chance, becomes an irresistible player of the carillon, and becomes the first mortal to brew beer. Cambrinus' music and beer make him very famous, and eventually the king of the Netherlands heaps titles of nobility on him: Duke of Brabant, Count of Flanders, Lord of Fresnes. But even after founding the town of Cambrai, Cambrinus prefers the villagers' honorary title for him: King of Beer. When Flandrine finally approaches him, he rejects her. After 30 years, Beelzebub sends Jocko the judge for Cambrinus' soul, but Cambrinus thwarts Jocko by getting him drunk on beer, and thrives for nearly a hundred years more. When Cambrinus finally dies, Beelzebub himself comes for his soul, only to find that Cambrinus' body has become a beer barrel.

Some years after Deulin published Contes d’un buveur de bière, American playwright and blackface minstrel Frank Dumont wrote a loose variation on the story "Cambrinus, Roi de la Bière". In this musical burlesque, titled Gambrinus, King of Lager Beer, Gambrinus is a poor woodcutter to whom gives a recipe for an excellent lager beer. In Dumont's version, Gambrinus is joyfully reunited with his love, only to be taken from her by Belzebub. The play was first produced in the US town of Jackson, Michigan on 21 July 1875, by a blackface troupe called Duprez and Benedict's Minstrels.

In a very brief magazine piece, Deulin told a legend (possibly his own invention) in which Gambrinus and a host of ancient French (or, alternately, Franconian) kings gather each May Day for a midnight feast at a "Devil's table" (Teufelstisch) near Grafenberg, Germany.