Medieval Clothing and Textiles. Volume 11 [11] 1783270020, 9781783270026

Table of contents :
Illustrations page vi
Tables ix
Contributors x
Preface xiii
1. Production, Quality, and Social Status in Viking Age Dress: Three Cases from Western Norway / Ingvild Øye 1
2. The Effect of Spindle Whorl Design on Wool Thread Production: A Practical Experiment Based on Examples from Eighth-Century Denmark / Karen Nicholson 29
3. The Shirt Attributed to St. Louis / Tina Anderlini 49
4. Angevin-Sicilian Sumptuary Statutes of the 1290s: Fashion in the Thirteenth-Century Mediterranean / Sarah-Grace Heller 79
5. The Devil on My Tail: Clothing and Visual Culture in the Camposanto 'Last Judgment' / Cordelia Warr 99
6. “Transposing þe shapus þat God first mad them of”: Manipulated Masculinity in the Galaunt Tradition / Emily J. Rozier 119
7. Textiles and Dress in the Household Papers of Lady Margaret Beaufort (1443–1509), Mother of King Henry VII / Susan Powell 139
8. “Like two artificial gods”: Needlework and Female Bonding in 'A Midsummer Night’s Dream' / Anna Riehl Bertolet 159
Recent Books of Interest 179
Contents of Previous Volumes 185

Citation preview

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Contents INGVILD ØYE Production, Quality, and Social Status in Viking Age Dress: Three Cases from Western Norway KAREN NICHOLSON The Effect of Spindle Whorl Design on Wool Thread Production: A Practical Experiment Based on Examples from Eighth-Century Denmark TINA ANDERLINI

The Shirt Attributed to St. Louis

SARAH-GRACE HELLER Angevin-Sicilian Sumptuary Statutes of the 1290s: Fashion in the Thirteenth-Century Mediterranean CORDELIA WARR The Devil on My Tail: Clothing and Visual Culture in the Camposanto Last Judgment EMILY J. ROZIER “Transposing þe shapus þat God first mad them of ”: Manipulated Masculinity in the Galaunt Tradition SUSAN POWELL Textiles and Dress in the Household Papers of Lady Margaret Beaufort (1443–1509), Mother of King Henry VII ANNA RIEHL BERTOLET “Like two artificial gods”: Needlework and Female Bonding in A Midsummer Night’s Dream

ROBIN NETHERTON is a professional editor and a researcher/lecturer on the interpretation of medieval European dress. GALE R. OWEN-CROCKER is Professor Emerita, The University of Manchester.

an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge IP12 3DF (GB) and 668 Mt Hope Ave, Rochester NY 14620-2731 (US) www.boydellandbrewer.com

Editors Netherton & Owen-Crocker

Cover image: Lady Margaret Beaufort, painted by Roland Lockey, ca. 1597 (detail). Photo: By permission of the Master and Fellows of St. John’s College, Cambridge.

MEDIEVAL CLOTHING AND TEXTILES

Medieval Clothing and Textiles 11

MEDIEVAL CLOTHING AND TEXTILES

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Edited by Robin Netherton and Gale R. Owen-Crocker



Medieval Clothing and Textiles Volume 11

Medieval Clothing and Textiles ISSN 1744-5787

General Editors Robin Netherton Gale R. Owen-Crocker

St. Louis, Missouri, USA University of Manchester, England

Editorial Board John Hines Christine Meek Lisa Monnas M. A. Nordtorp-Madson Frances Pritchard Lucia Sinisi Eva Andersson Strand Monica L. Wright

Cardiff University, Wales Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland London, England University of St. Thomas, Minnesota, USA The Whitworth, University of Manchester, England University of Bari, Italy Centre for Textile Research, Copenhagen, Denmark University of Louisiana at Lafayette, USA

Medieval Clothing and Textiles Volume 11

edited by

ROBIN NETHERTON GALE R. OWEN-CROCKER with the assistance of

MONICA L. WRIGHT

THE BOYDELL PRESS

© Contributors 2015 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. First published 2015 The Boydell Press, Woodbridge ISBN 978-1-78327-002-6

The Boydell Press is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620-2731, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. This publication is printed on acid-free paper.

Typeset by Frances Hackeson Freelance Publishing Services, Brinscall, Lancs

Contents page vi

Illustrations Tables

ix

Contributors

x

Preface 1

xiii

Production, Quality, and Social Status in Viking Age Dress: Three Cases from Western Norway Ingvild Øye

1

2 The Effect of Spindle Whorl Design on Wool Thread Production: A Practical Experiment Based on Examples from Eighth-Century Denmark Karen Nicholson

29

3

The Shirt Attributed to St. Louis Tina Anderlini

49

4

Angevin-Sicilian Sumptuary Statutes of the 1290s: Fashion in the Thirteenth-Century Mediterranean Sarah-Grace Heller

79

5 The Devil on My Tail: Clothing and Visual Culture in the Camposanto Last Judgment Cordelia Warr

99

6

“Transposing þe shapus þat God first mad them of ”: Manipulated      119 Masculinity in the Galaunt Tradition Emily J. Rozier

7

Textiles and Dress in the Household Papers of Lady Margaret Beaufort (1443–1509), Mother of King Henry VII Susan Powell

139

8

“Like two artificial gods”: Needlework and Female Bonding in A Midsummer Night’s Dream Anna Riehl Bertolet

159

Recent Books of Interest

179

Contents of Previous Volumes

185 v

Illustrations The editors, contributors and publishers are grateful to all the institutions and persons listed for permission to reproduce the materials in which they hold copyright. Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders; apologies are offered for any omission, and the publishers will be pleased to add any necessary acknowledgement in subsequent editions. Viking Age Dress Fig. 1.1 Graves with textile tools in Hordaland and Sogn og Fjordane, Norway Fig. 1.2 Brooches found at Hyrt Fig. 1.3 Status groups in female graves in different regions of Norway Fig. 1.4 Types of weaves found in Viking Age graves in Norway Fig. 1.5 Map of Hordaland showing the graves in Trå, Hyrt, and Veka Fig. 1.6 Smoother of glass and soapstone spindle-whorl from Trå Fig. 1.7 Textile fragment on the front of one of the brooches from Hyrt Fig. 1.8 Textile remains on the back of the brooch Fig. 1.9 Close-up of the textile fragment Fig. 1.10 Cross-section of the layers above and below the brooch Fig. 1.11 Wool combs from Hyrt Fig. 1.12 Loom weights per weight group in the graves from Trå, Hyrt, and Veka

3 8 8 10 12 14 16 17 18 20 22 25

Spindle Whorl Design Fig. 2.1 Drawing of spindle whorls from Ribe, Denmark Fig. 2.2 Ceramic reproductions of Ribe whorls Fig. 2.3 Ceramic reproductions of Ribe whorls Fig. 2.4 Range of thread production from Ribe-style reproduction whorls Fig. 2.5 Ceramic reproduction whorls in Neolithic and Bronze Age styles Fig. 2.6 Range of thread production for all ceramic reproduction whorls Fig. 2.7 Graph of the range of threads produced by the reproduction whorls vi

30 31 31 34 35 40 42

Illustrations Fig. 2.8 Fig. 2.9 Fig. 2.10 Fig. 2.11

Spindle shafts carved of maple wood Cloth fragments from Ribe Tabby-weave reproduction sample Twill-weave reproduction sample

44 45 46 47

The St. Louis Shirt Fig. 3.1 Fig. 3.2 Fig. 3.3 Fig. 3.4 Fig. 3.5 Fig. 3.6 Fig. 3.7 Fig. 3.8 Fig. 3.9 Fig. 3.10 Fig. 3.11 Fig. 3.12 Fig. 3.13 Fig. 3.14 Fig. 3.15 Fig. 3.16 Fig. 3.17

The St. Louis shirt, front The St. Louis shirt, back Measurements of the body of the shirt, from the front Additional measurements of the body of the shirt, from the back The narrow lower opening of the sleeve The sleeve, with measurements Seams and stitches The top of the remaining front gore piece The top of the back gore insert The neck opening, with measurements Inside of the front gore The right shoulder Proposed cutting diagram for the St. Louis shirt The auqueton of Isabelle of France Drawing of Rodrigo Ximenez de Rada’s short shirt Construction of a pleated gore with binding Detail of St. Francis’ shirt showing the top of the gore

54 55 56 57 59 60 63 64 65 66 68 68 70 71 73 75 76

Clothing in the Camposanto Last Judgment Fig. 5.1 Fig. 5.2 Fig. 5.3 Fig. 5.4

Last Judgment fresco, ca. 1330–40, Camposanto, Pisa Carlo Lasinio’s 1812 engraving of the Last Judgment fresco Detail of doomed woman from the Last Judgment fresco Detail of doomed woman from Lasinio’s engraving

100 101 102 103

Dress of Margaret Beaufort Fig. 7.1

Lady Margaret Beaufort, painted by Roland Lockey (ca.1597, St. John’s College, Cambridge)

156

Needlework in A Midsummer Night’s Dream Fig. 8.1 Calendar illustration by Marcus Ward (1923) Fig. 8.2 Detail from engraving by Elias Porzel in Curioser Spiegel (1689) Fig. 8.3 Cushion cover (1603–25, Victoria and Albert Museum, London) vii

165 166 169

Illustrations Fig. 8.4 Cushion cover (ca. 1600, Victoria and Albert Museum, London) Fig. 8.5 Detail of spot sampler (mid-1600s, Victoria and Albert Museum, London)

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172 174

Tables Viking Age Dress Table 1.1 Textile tools in three graves with remains of textile tools and textiles

12

Spindle Whorl Design Table 2.1 Spindle whorls and thread produced

36

Sumptuary Statutes of the 1290s Table 4.1 Status categories and fines in thirteenth-century French and Angevin-Sicilian sumptuary laws

ix

92

Contributors ROBIN NETHERTON (Editor) is a costume historian specializing in Western ­European clothing of the Middle Ages and its interpretation by artists and historians. Since 1982, she has given lectures and workshops on practical aspects of medieval dress and on costume as an approach to social history, art history, and literature. A journalist by training, she also works as a professional editor. GALE R. OWEN-CROCKER (Editor) is Professor Emerita of the University of ­Manchester. Her recent publications include articles for “Dress” and “Textiles” in Oxford Bibliographies Online: Medieval Studies, both with Elizabeth Coatsworth; The Lexis of Cloth and Clothing in Britain ca. 700–1450, a database available at http:// lexisproject.arts.manchester.ac.uk; Encyclopedia of Dress and Textiles in the British Isles c. 450–1450, with Elizabeth Coatsworth and Maria Hayward (2012); and Medieval Dress and Textiles in Britain: A Multilingual Sourcebook, with Louise Sylvester and Mark Chambers (2014). TINA ANDERLINI is a researcher, lecturer, costumer, and author in Russange (Lorraine), France, and author of Le Costume Médiéval au XIIIe Siècle (2014). She has been an editor since 2010 for the magazine Moyen-Âge in the subjects of costume, jewelry, and art and iconography, and has written on costume for the magazines Historia and Histoire et Images Médiévales. In addition to Pre-Raphaelite art (the subject of her Ph.D. dissertation) and medieval costume, art, and iconography, her interests include Quattrocento art, Egyptology, and re-enactment. ANNA RIEHL BERTOLET is Associate Professor of English at Auburn University. She is author of The Face of Queenship: Early Modern Representations of Elizabeth I (2010) and co-editor (with Thomas Betteridge) of Tudor Court Culture (2010). She is currently working on a monograph on gender and needlework in early modern England. SARAH-GRACE HELLER is Associate Professor in the Department of French and Italian at Ohio State University and the author of Fashion in Medieval France (2007). She is currently working on editing A Cultural History of Fashion, vol. 2: The Medieval Age (800–1450) for Berg Publishers and a long-term project on An Illustrated History of Fashion 500–1300.

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Contributors KAREN NICHOLSON is an independent researcher in Albany, New York, with a focus on medieval textile tools and hand spinning. She is currently working on reproducing a medieval nalbound mitten from Ribe, Denmark. She holds a degree in architecture. INGVILD ØYE is Professor of Medieval Archaeology at the University of Bergen, Norway. Her scholarly fields cover medieval urban and rural archaeology, including textile production. She is author of Textile Equipment and Its Working Environment, Bryggen in Bergen, c. 1150–1500 and also published findings on the textile tools from the Viking Age town Kaupang. Her current research project relates to textiles and textile production in West Norse societies from 800 to 1300. SUSAN POWELL is Emeritus Professor of Medieval Texts and Culture at the University of Salford. She is a Research Associate at the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York, and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of English Studies, University of London. Her most recent publication is A Companion to the Early Printed Book in Britain 1476–1558 (2014), co-edited with Vincent Gillespie. She is currently editing selected household papers of Lady Margaret Beaufort for the British Academy series Records of Social and Economic History. EMILY J. ROZIER is a doctoral researcher in English at the University of Birmingham, where she is working on a Ph.D. thesis titled “The Galaunt Tradition in England, c. 1380–c. 1550: The Form and Function of a Satirical Youth Figure.” Her current r­ esearch interests include late-medieval representations of youth and the use of sartorial symbolism in political satire and didactic art. CORDELIA WARR is Senior Lecturer in Art History and Visual Studies at the University of Manchester. She is author of Dressing for Heaven: Religious Clothing in Italy, 1215–1545 (2010) and co-editor (with Janis Elliot) of two books on art in Naples: The Church of Santa Maria Donna Regina (2004) and Art and Architecture in Naples 1266–1714 (2010). Her current project focuses on miraculous wounds between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries, and she recently co-edited (with Anne Kirkham) Wounds in the Middle Ages (2014).

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Preface Medieval Clothing and Textiles begins its second decade with a volume exhibiting its desired eclecticism, ranging from early medieval to early modern, from northern to southern Europe, though archaeology and artifact study, literary and documentary text, art and experimental reconstruction. Two papers focus on cloth manufacture in the early medieval period: Ingvild Øye examines the graves of prosperous Viking Age women from Western Norway that contained both textile-making tools and the remains of cloth, considering the relationship between tools and cloth. Karen Nicholson complements this with practical experiments in spinning, using tools of different weights and shapes. Tina Anderlini analyzes a surviving thirteenth-century shirt famously attributed to King Louis IX of France (St. Louis). Examination of the garment, out of its shrine for the first time since 1970, newly reveals details of cut and construction, contributing to the debate of whether it could indeed have belonged to the king. Three papers address fashionable clothing and morality: Sarah-Grace Heller discusses sumptuary legislation from Angevin Sicily in the 1290s, which sought to restrict men’s dress at a time when preparation for war was more important than showy clothes; Cordelia Warr presents the dire consequences of a woman dressing extravagantly as portrayed in a fourteenth-century Italian fresco; and Emily Rozier recounts the extremes of dress attributed by moral and satirical writers to the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century men known as “galaunts.” Two textual studies show the importance of textiles in daily life: Susan Powell describes the austere but magnificent purchases made on behalf of Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of King Henry VII, in the ten years before her death in 1509, from the evidence of her household papers. Anna Riehl Bertolet explores in detail the passage in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in which Helena passionately recalls sewing a sampler with Hermia when they were young and still bosom friends. We welcome Lisa Monnas to our editorial board, an international team of experts who have provided us with great wisdom since the inception of our journal. As always, we express gratitude to the scholars in related disciplines who have generously lent their knowledge and guidance as anonymous peer reviewers for article submissions to this series, often helping to improve contributions substantially. We continue to consider for publication in this journal both independent submissions and papers read at sessions sponsored by DISTAFF (Discussion, Interpretation, and Study of Textile Arts, Fabrics, and Fashion) at the international congresses held annually in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and Leeds, England. Proposals from potential conference speakers should be sent to [email protected] (for xiii

Preface Kalamazoo) or [email protected] (for Leeds). Potential authors for Medieval Clothing and Textiles should read our author guidelines at http://www. distaff.org/MCTguidelines.pdf, and send a 300-word synopsis to Professor Gale R. Owen-Crocker, 181 Chester Road, Hazel Grove, Stockport SK7 6EN, UK; or by email to [email protected]. (Professor Owen-Crocker retired from the University of Manchester in January 2015 with the title Professor Emerita; note that she is no longer using her university address.) We are delighted to announce the publication of the second title in our subsidia series Medieval and Renaissance Clothing and Textiles: Medieval Dress and Textiles in Britain: A Multilingual Sourcebook, edited by Louise M. Sylvester, Mark C. Chambers, and Gale R. Owen-Crocker (Boydell, 2014). Authors interested in contributing a volume to this series should apply using the publication proposal form on the website of our publisher, Boydell & Brewer, at http://www.boydellandbrewer.com/authors_ submit_proposal.asp.We encourage potential authors of monographs or collaborative books for this series to discuss their ideas with the General Editors, Robin Netherton and Gale Owen-Crocker, before making a formal proposal.

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Production, Quality, and Social Status in Viking Age Dress: Three Cases from Western Norway Ingvild Øye

Textiles have been, and continue to be, indispensable necessities, but they are also able to signify status. In Norway, traces of textiles and textile production become especially apparent in the Viking Age (ca. 800–1050) through the burial custom of inhumation graves, where the deceased were buried according to their rank, and in women’s graves, in their dress, with dress accessories and often with textile tools among the grave goods. In some cases there are still traces of clothes—representing one of the few find contexts with preserved textiles from this period in Norway. As concrete remains of products and means of production in different work processes, these finds throw light upon both clothing and textile production in the different physical and socioeconomic environments in which they were found. Differences among regions and districts can prove to be significant indicators of underlying social and economic trends. The evidence for special-quality textiles in relatively limited geographical zones and within a period of major transformations, politically, economically, and socially—such as Christianization, state formation, and early urbanization—makes this an interesting issue to investigate. This article discusses how and to what degree textile fragments and textile tools from female burials can illuminate quality, status, and level of textile production. The environments in which finds from Western Norway appear and the degree to which they reflect local textile

An earlier version of this paper was given in May 2013 at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, Michigan. I would like to thank the organizers, and especially Professor Gale Owen-­ Crocker, for this stimulating opportunity and also for her constructive and useful comments to the written version. Comments from an anonymous reviewer have also benefited the article. I also thank Hana Lukešová, ­textile conservator at the University Museum of Bergen, who has generously given me access to her a­ nalyses of the textiles referred to in the article. 

Ingvild Øye production will be assessed. The study relates to an ongoing research project on textile production in this region in the Viking Age and the Middle Ages.1 The primary research area is the central part of Western Norway, consisting of the three medieval fylki (counties) of Hordaland to the south, with the only town in the region, Bergen, from the late eleventh century; Sogn, further north along the 200-kilometer-long Sognefjord; and north of that, Fjordane (the fjords).2 The area stretches from the North Sea coast to the inner fjord districts and mountainous areas (see fig. 1.1). This was the core area of the Gulathing law province, dating back to at least the beginning of the tenth century.3 The region was rich in outlying resources for summer as well as winter grazing and consequently able to supply wool for textile production—an expanding industry in the Viking Age and the Middle Ages, not least because of the maritime technology based on sailing. Production was organized within rural economies and settings and a mainly hierarchical social and political structure. It was a society in which elements of material culture, including garments, played an important distinguishing role as markers of social status. About 130 of the Viking Age graves in the region have yielded textile tools—wool combs, spindle whorls, loom weights, weaving beaters, shears, and others, in some cases more or less complete tool kits. The finds bear witness to the important role and level of textile production in these rural contexts. Fragments of dress or garment textiles have also been identified in thirty-five of the Viking Age graves in this region, of which thirty are identified as female, two as male, and three as uncertain with respect to gender. Most of these graves are of fairly high status. Jewelry, dress accessories, and other typical items appear in the adult female burials and include a wide variety of artifacts, which occur in regionally distinct, gender-differentiated kits.4 Altogether, twenty-one of the female graves (70 percent) also contained textile tools, generally representing a wide range of different tools. This article focuses on three female graves from the inner part of Hordaland that   1 The working title of the project is “Tools and Textile Production in West Norse Societies, c. 800– 1300 AD.” It is supported by the Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion, University of Bergen, and runs from 2012 to 2015. The project concerns textile production in Western Norway (with a side glance to the North Atlantic region) in a long-term perspective, focusing on textile production equipment from different archaeological contexts (graves and deserted settlements, including seasonal occupations, such as shielings). As far as possible the tools are seen in connection with textiles when found in the same archaeological contexts. The project will, like the present article, draw upon textiles already analyzed. The project continues the author’s earlier work on textile tools and textile production in urban Viking Age and medieval contexts: Ingvild Øye, Textile Equipment and its Working Environment: Bryggen in Bergen c 1150–1500, Bryggen Papers 2 (Bergen: Norwegian University Press, 1988); Øye, “Textile-production Equipment,” in Things from the Town: Artefacts and Inhabitants in Viking-age Kaupang, ed. Dagfinn Skre, Kaupang Excavation Project Publication Series 3, Norske Oldfunn 24 (Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press, 2011), 339–72. The aim is to assess and explore the development from rural to urban textile production.   2 Today, the latter two areas are combined in the single modern county Sogn og Fjordane.   3 Knut Helle, Gulatinget og Gulatingslova (Leikanger, Norway: Skald, 2001), 25–27.   4 This kind of gender-based burial custom is also demonstrated in other parts of Northern Europe. Heinrich Härke, “Grave Goods in Early Medieval Burials: Messages and Meanings,” Mortality 19, no. 1 (2014): 41–60.

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Viking Age Dress

Figure 1.1: Graves with textile tools in the Norwegian counties Hordaland and Sogn og Fjordane (n=135). Drawing: Per Bækken, based on Anders Rabben, “Med vevsverd og stekepanne: Tekstilredskaper og kjøkkenredskaper i vestnorske mannsgraver fra yngre jernalder” (master’s thesis, University of Bergen, 2002).

contained textiles of different qualities, including special high-quality dress textiles, as well as differentiated textile tools. The finds in these closed contexts will be used to discuss and illuminate questions related to textile-production environments in the Viking Age, including quality of textiles and social status. 3

Ingvild Øye Although the equipment is rather simple, fine differences and the variety of textile-production implements found in graves can be significant and reflect production of different types of quality and fabric. Production of standard cloth requires not only a homogenous wool type but also standardized tools. A more varied tool kit is needed for producing different types and qualities of textiles. TEXTILE TOOLS FOUND IN GRAVES

Recent studies of textile tools have shown their potential to shed light on both the quality of fabric produced and the extent of textile production. Threads were spun for different purposes and for various types of fabric, requiring different qualities of yarn. Quality was dependent not only on the quality of the fiber and the skill of the worker, but also on the tools. The spinner or weaver selected the tools for the task at hand. Thus, specific features of the tools found in the graves are important for comparing and assessing the relation between the tools and textiles in order to substantiate whether the tools actually could have been used to produce the textiles found. Experimental research in spinning with a drop spindle and weaving on a warp-weighted loom has demonstrated that the size, the shape, and not least the weight of the spindle whorl, even differences as little as 5 to 10 grams, affect the thickness and quality of the thread, and subsequently also the fabric.5 To spin the finest threads, the lightest whorls were needed: Light, compact spindle whorls rotate markedly faster than heavy ones and give a tighter twist. Historically, whorls of about 25 to 35 grams were commonly used to spin the wool from the Norwegian short-tailed sheep, and whorls of 50 grams for plying the yarn.6 Whorls of 25 to 35 grams can be used to produce a variety of thread gauges, dependent on the dexterity of the spinner. Lightweight whorls of about 7 to 16 grams cannot, however, readily be used to produce thick threads.7 The size and shape of the spindle whorl also affects how tightly it can spin; a large whorl does not spin as tight a thread as a small and relatively heavy one, and a conical spindle whorl turns more quickly than a disc-shaped one,8 and so on. Different spindle whorls also govern the number of fibers the thread may contain. Compared with heavier whorls, the lightest whorls need wool that is softer and more   5 Eva Andersson, The Common Thread: Textile Production During the Late Iron Age–Viking Age, Report series 67 (Lund: University of Lund, Institute of Archaeology, 1999); Linda Mårtensson et al., Technical Report, Experimental Archaeology, Part 1, 2005–2006: Tools and Textiles—Texts and Contexts Research Program (Danish National Research Foundation’s Centre for Textile Research, University of Copenhagen [CTR], 2006); Linda Mårtensson et al., Technical Report, Experimental Archaeology, Part 2:2, Whorl or bead? Tools and Textiles—Texts and Contexts Research Program (CTR, 2006); Linda Mårtensson et al., Technical Report, Experimental Archaeology, Part 3, Loom weights: Tools and Textiles—Texts and Contexts Research Program (CTR, 2007). The observed results correspond with the results of the experiments described in the article by Karen Nicholson in this volume.   6 Sunniva Lønning, Spinne ull på rokk og håndtein (Oslo: Landbruksforlaget, 1976), 20.   7 Andersson, The Common Thread, 24, with references.   8 Lise Warburg, Spindebog (Valby, Denmark: Borgen, 1976), 89.

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Viking Age Dress homogenous.9 These differences would have had important consequences for the preparation of fibers and the spinning—how much of the wool had to be sorted out and discarded, and the time spent in the whole process. Experiments have shown that the greatest significance for the product lies in the whorl’s weight and its relation to the diameter. This defines whether the thread can be thick or thin, tightly or loosely spun. Clusters of certain weight groups in graves should thus give a good indication of the type of thread that was spun. Finds of loom weights, used for warp-weighted looms, in many of the female graves may also throw light on whether the tools present in a grave might have been used to create the associated textiles. In Western Norway, the warp-weighted loom was used for longer than in most parts of Northern Europe, and until the middle of the twentieth century in some rural areas, especially for weaving tapestries.10 The weights affected both the weaving and the product. On historically known looms, the number of loom weights varied considerably, from about thirteen to forty-eight, mostly between twenty and forty. They were attached to the warp by means of a cord looped through the hole in the weight and never tied directly in the hole.11 Pairs of stones of about the same weight were used to maintain the balance between the front threads and the back threads, and sometimes two stones were needed to balance one group of warp threads. To some extent it was also possible to regulate the tension on the warp threads by adjusting the number of ends to which one weight was attached. Experiments have shown that lighter loom weights are generally suitable for weaving fabrics with thin and tight warp threads, while heavier weights are more useful for fabrics with a thick warp, giving the needed weight tension on the threads.12 Thinner, softer threads would generally have functioned better as weft threads for an open tabby weave. The loom weights in the grave finds vary in number from two to three to more than forty, but only seldom represent the whole loom and mainly symbolize a work domain. Weaving beaters, most often of iron or bone, appear among the grave goods, though less frequently than loom weights. They were used between the two planes of warp threads for pushing on the weft, to compact the weave. Beaters of iron made it possible to weave fabrics of coarse threads tighter and faster than when using beaters of softer material, and were considerably more efficient than wooden beaters when weaving tight fabrics, such as sailcloth.13 Wool combs, shears, needles/needlecases, linen smoothers of glass, and other textile-related implements are all found in graves from the Viking Age.

  9 Mårtensson et al. Technical Report, Part 2.2, 7. 10 Marta Hoffmann, The Warp-Weighted Loom: Studies in the History and Technology of an Ancient Implement (Oslo: Norwegian University Press, 1964). 11 Ibid., 37. 12 Mårtensson et al., Technical Report, Part 2.2, 11. 13 Eva Andersson, Tools for Textile Production from Birka and Hedeby, Birka Studies 8 (Stockholm: Riksantikvarieämbetet, 2003), 28.

5

Ingvild Øye GENDER, STATUS, AND DRESS

As osteological material is seldom preserved in graves from Western Norway, sexual and cultural identification is based on dress accessories and other gender-specific equipment.14 Grave goods made of perishable materials, such as textiles or wooden objects, are preserved only in rare cases. Traces of burial dress in the graves are generally restricted to small fragments of cloth, normally found in direct contact with objects of copper alloy or iron, jewelry, belt buckles, or sometimes weaponry. It is the metal salts of such artifacts that preserve the remains of the finds. In Western Norway, most of the graves with textile remains are found in association with brooches worn as part of the typical Norse female dress. In some cases layers of different cloth have been preserved on the pins of brooches and reflect different garments and their parts, made of different fabric. Since it is female graves that contain the brooches, female burials are heavily overrepresented with regard to textiles. At the same time, female graves from the period constitute only about one-fifth of the total of the graves that can be identified with regard to gender. This gendered imbalance has been explained by the graves’ assumed symbolic, commemorative, and physical roles as markers of inheritance, reflecting property rights and control of land, and thus dominated by male landowners and also heirs, but not exclusively. Only a small segment of the population in the Viking Age was buried in monumental graves, such as burial mounds or cairns, and furnished with grave goods, and relatively few of these burials were female. Spatial analyses of the distribution of graves indicate a correlation between monumental and richly furnished graves and rights to landed property.15 According to the Gulathing law for Western Norway, women could inherit such property as single daughters without brothers, or as widows. Otherwise, only chattels, including textiles, constituted the female inheritance.16 Female graves, then, seem generally to reflect the upper strata of Viking Age society, and although clearly fewer, still fall within a hierarchical structure, judging by the graves and grave goods. The burials do, to a large extent, allude to the social identity of the deceased and seem to follow conventions and norms related to their status, roles, and responsibilities, as the living, and especially heirs, wanted to display them in the funerary rites. 14 Bergljot Solberg, “Social Status in the Merovingian and Viking Periods in Norway from Archaeological and Historical Sources,” Norwegian Archaeological Review 18, no. 1 (1985): 61–76. The study is based on the distribution of identified graves from the Late Iron Age with gendered artifacts, weaponry, and dress accessories. 15 Dagfinn Skre, Herredømmet: Bosetning og besittelse på Romerike 200–1350 e. Kr, Acta Humaniora 32 (Oslo: University of Oslo, 1998); Frode Iversen, Var middelalderens lendmannsgårder kjerner i eldre godssamlinger? En analyse av romlig organisering av graver og eiendomsstruktur i Hordaland og Sogn og Fjordane, Arkeologiske avhandlinger og rapporter fra Universitetet i Bergen 4 (Bergen: University of Bergen, 1999); Iversen, Eiendom, makt og statsdannelse: Kongsgårder og gods i Hordaland i yngre jernalder og middelalder, UBAS, Nordisk 6 (Bergen: University of Bergen, 2008). 16 Ingvild Øye, “Kvinner, kjønn og samfunn fra vikingtiden til reformasjonen,” in Med kjønnsperspektiv på norsk historie: Fra vikingtid til 2000-årsskiftet, ed. Ida Blom and Sølvi Sogner (Oslo: Cappelen Akademisk, 2005), 82, 84, 87.

6

Viking Age Dress It appears that textile production was perceived as the role of females, as producers, users, and administrators. Textiles were moreover transferred to women as bridal gifts and inheritance together with other movable goods, while men normally possessed and inherited land—as long as there were male heirs.17 Bridal clothes may perhaps also have been used as burial clothes. Textiles and grave goods are evidently not arranged at random but intentionally displayed by the descendants to signify the social identity of the deceased. When females appear in Viking Age monumental graves, they are generally understood as representing housekeepers with administrative roles over certain domains within rural households—food storage and production, maintenance of clothes and other textiles, and to a certain degree also harvesting, signified by the different tools within these domains. Although the tools appear as personal belongings, it does not necessarily mean that they were used by the person buried.18 Rather, they may indicate roles, responsibilities, and work domains within extended households.19 Rank is first and foremost reflected in dress and garments—in best cases preserved as fragments of textiles—and the generally better preserved jewelry, dress accessories, keys and locks of different metals, and in rare cases also artifacts of organic material, such as textiles or wooden objects. This is also the case for the textile tools, best represented as tools of stone and metals. The artifacts do not, then, give a full picture of the total that once was buried. But they reveal patterns that reflect both norms and praxis, and they are indicative of the technological level of production as well as its quality. To assess both functional and socioeconomic aspects, the textile tools should therefore be assessed contextually together with the other objects in the grave, and also in wider landscape contexts. Textile production to a large extent depended on widely available resources, especially pastures for sheep, including rights of use. For understanding the textiles and signs of status, a brief survey of female dress and jewelry is needed. From the scanty archaeological data, it is known that Viking Age women wore long garments. The basic outfit was a long tunic with long sleeves fastened at the neck with a brooch. A pair of oval brooches was worn at shoulder level, attached to the straps of a sleeveless apron or dress, which could be worn on top of the long tunic underneath. A third brooch, usually identified as a shawl-fastener, was often placed in the middle, and a string of beads or a pendant was usually strung between the pair of oval brooches. The wrap, shawl, or cloak is the garment sometimes fastened by the third brooch.20 Different layers of textiles that remain attached to their 17 Øye, “Kvinner, kjønn og samfunn,” 86–89. 18 Cf. Howard Williams, “The Emotive Force of Early Medieval Mortuary Practices,” Archaeological Review from Cambridge 22, no. 1 (2007): 107–23. 19 The household seems to have been the key unit for craft production, but some people and even households may have been subordinate to others. Households in the upper strata exceeded the nuclear family and comprised both male and female servants within different domains and social categories, from unfree to free. 20 Inga Hägg, Kvinnodräkten i Birka, Archaeological Studies, Uppsala University Institute of North European Archaeology 2 (Uppsala: University of Uppsala, 1974), 108; Hana Lukešová, “Fragmenter av kvinnedrakter fra vikingtiden: Metode for identifikasjon av gamle tekstilfunn,” Viking 74 (2011): 149–64.

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Figure 1.2: Brooches (type R652) found at Hyrt (after conservation). Photo: University Museum of Bergen, by permission.

Figure 1.3: Percentage distribution of status groups based on finds assemblages of dress accessories in 833 female graves in different regions of Norway. Group 1 represents the simplest assemblages, and Group 3 the richest. Chart: Ingvild Øye and Per Bækken, based on Bergljot Solberg, “Social Status in the Merovingian and Viking Periods in Norway from Archaeological and Historical Sources,” Norwegian Archaeological Review 18, no. 1 (1985): 61–76.

8

Viking Age Dress brooch pins can offer clues to the nature of these garments—their quality and weaving technique—although only partially. Oval brooches are among the most typical items of female dress found in Scandinavian Viking Age graves associated with women of a particular stratum of society (fig. 1.2). Although their designs are rather standardized, they also show differences, reflecting shifting styles and degree of elaboration. The dress accessories may then also symbolize status.21 A study by Bergljot Solberg of gender and status based on more than 800 Late Iron Age female graves from Norway (550–1050), mostly from the Viking Age, reveals patterns in the finds assemblages that seem to signify rank (fig. 1.3).22 Solberg’s division of status is three-part: Graves in Group 1 contain beads and/or textile tools. Graves in Group 2 hold a minimum of one oval brooch, beads, and textile and/or agricultural implements. Group 3 represents the richest graves, those containing a pair of conical or oval brooches (only oval in the Viking Age), as well as a third brooch, several beads, and also keys and agricultural and textile tools. This group represents 16 percent of all graves in the whole of Western Norway (the county of Sunnmøre included), and 13 percent in Eastern Norway. Group 2 represents the most common category, with 40 percent of the graves in Western Norway, 60 percent in central Norway, and 54 percent in Eastern Norway.23 It is therefore interesting to see how these social indicators concur with the assortment of textile tools and the qualities of the textiles found. WEAVING TECHNIQUES AND QUALITIES

The textile fragments that were formerly analyzed by Inger Marie Holm-Olsen and Lise Bender Jørgensen have been reexamined by Hana Lukešová of the University Museum of Bergen, but only some of her findings have been published.24 In her comprehensive study of North European textiles, Bender Jørgensen showed that the dominant weaves among the preserved Viking Age textiles from Norway are about 40 percent tabby, about 30 percent 2/2 twill, and about 25 percent broken diamond/lozenge twill. The rest is “other weaving” (fig. 1.4). There are, however, clear regional variations, most significantly between eastern Norway and what Bender Jørgensen denotes as “western Norway,” but she includes a wider area than in the present project—nearly the whole coastline of Norway, including larger parts of northern Norway. What is particularly interesting in this context is the higher representation of the finer and more advanced broken diamond/lozenge twill in her “western part” (28 percent) compared with the eastern part. There are variations on the regional level as well. Of the thirty female graves with preserved textiles within the present study area, fourteen contained textiles 21 Jan Petersen, Vikingetidens smykker (Stavanger: Dreyers Grafiske Anstalt, 1928), 48, 74. 22 Solberg, “Social Status.” 23 Ibid. 24 Inger Marie Holm-Olsen, “Tekstilfunn fra Vestlandet fra vikingtid: Bruksstoffene av ull—deres produksjonsmiljø og produksjonssted” (master’s thesis, University of Bergen, 1972); Lise Bender Jørgensen, Forhistoriske textiler i Skandinavien, Nordiske Fortidsminder, ser. B, 9 (Copenhagen: Det Kongelige Nordiske Oldskriftselskab, 1986); Lukešová, “Fragmenter av kvinnedrakter.”

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Figure 1.4: Percentage distribution of different types of weaves found in Viking Age graves in Norway as a whole, and in eastern and western parts of the country. Chart: Ingvild Øye and Per Bækken, based on Lise Bender Jørgensen, Forhistoriske textiler i Skandinavien, Nordiske Fortidsminder, ser. B, 9 (Copenhagen: Det Kongelige Nordiske Oldskriftselskab, 1986).

of the broken diamond/lozenge twill technique, meaning that 47 percent of these graves contained the finest qualities—a much higher percentage than in the wide “western” group of Bender Jørgensen. Whether the finer types were locally produced or imported has been a continuing theme of discussion. Here a more detailed study of the preserved textiles together with the textile-production equipment, as well as the environments for textile production, may shed further light. Holm-Olsen’s analysis of textiles, which also relates to the present study area, accentuated how the quality of weave varies, especially with regard to the density of threads in the warp and weft. Assessment of density may be divided into three elements: (1) density in the denser thread system (that is, either the warp or the weft), (2) density in the more open thread system, and (3) the relation between these two densities. The textiles in the more advanced weaving techniques have a higher density of threads in both directions than tabby weaves, and the weaving is regular and more homogenous, and generally of higher quality. The group of diamond/lozenge twill artifacts also shows differences in density and quality. Seven of these fourteen graves contained textiles with more than 37 threads per centimeter in the denser thread system. High density of threads demands even and good spinning and manual skill in weaving.25 Thread count is thus the best indicator of quality and cloth type. All the textiles here seem to belong to the dress fabric found close to jewelry.

25 Holm-Olsen, “Tekstilfunn,” 73.

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Viking Age Dress In her study, Holm-Olsen divided the textiles into two main categories with regard to quality, which are relevant when assessing them in wider contexts and related to tools. The first category comprises material where the average number of threads per centimeter is a maximum of 37 in the denser thread system and 15 in the more open system. The second category comprises material where the average number of threads is a minimum of 38 in the denser thread system and 16 in the more open system. The divide is, however, not always sharp.26 The quality of some of these fabrics—fine worsted cloth of high uniform standard—also implies a high level of organization, access to and supplies of high-quality wool, and not least, skilled labor for the sorting and combing of wool, and for spinning and weaving. It has therefore been debated whether some of these high-quality fabrics had been imported, or whether textile milieus at that level existed in Western Norway in the Viking Age. This issue will be pursued further by studying three cases closely. THREE CASES FROM THE COUNTY OF HORDALAND

In Hordaland, only three Viking Age graves contained both textile tools and textiles, partly of very high quality. The graves are more or less contemporaneous and were found within a rather limited zone in the inner part of the county (fig. 1.5). The graves were situated at Trå in the community of Granvin in the northeastern part of the Hardanger region, bordering the Voss region, where the other two graves were found; at Hyrt in the northeastern part of the Voss region, in a mountain valley bordering the county of Sogn; and at Veka in the southwestern part of the Voss region, in a traditionally better agricultural area. All three farms have rich outlying resource areas. Two of the graves, at Trå and Veka, were found and archaeologically investigated in the early years of the twentieth century, but are still professionally documented,27 while Hyrt was more randomly investigated after being discovered by local farmers somewhat earlier. All three graves are dated to the tenth century, based on the jewelry, and of a status that can be defined as belonging to Solberg’s Group 3. The textile tools also represent varied production stages, from preparation of fibers, through combing, spinning, weaving, and sewing, to maintenance (table 1.1). The graves also contained textiles with higher density than 37 threads per centimeter in the denser thread system. Trå The richly furnished burial found in a single grave cairn was situated fairly close to

26 Ibid., 74. 27 Trå: Haakon Shetelig, “Fortegnelse over de til Bergens Museum i 1912 indkomne saker ældre end reformationen,” Bergens Museum Aarbok 1913 (Bergen: A/S John Griegs Boktrykkeri, 1914), 1–53, at 44–47; Hyrt and Veka: Haakon Shetelig, Vestlandske graver fra jernalderen, Bergens Museums Skrifter, ny rekke 2, no. 1 (Bergen: A/S John Griegs Boktrykkeri, 1912), 206–11.

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Figure 1.5: Map of the county of Hordaland, showing the three graves, in Trå, Hyrt, and Veka. Drawing: Per Bækken.

Table 1.1: Textile tools in three graves with remains of textile tools and textiles Grave no. (farm)

Spindle whorls

Loom weights

Weaving beaters

Wool combs

Shears

Needlecase

Smoother

B6657 (Trå)

1

12

1

1 pair

1

—

1

B4864 (Hyrt)

1

20

—

1 pair

—

—

—

B6228 (Veka)

2

11

—

1 pair

—

1

—

Total

4

43

1

3 pairs

1

1

1

Note: All three graves are high-status female burials from the tenth century. The grave at Hyrt had a double burial, male and female.

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Viking Age Dress the present and historical farmyard of Trå,28 centrally located in the community of Granvin. A north-south oriented grave, about three meters long, with traces of a wooden coffin, was placed secondarily in the western side of the cairn, above a partly destroyed older grave. The original cairn was already damaged when the archaeologists were called upon and arrived at the site. There were no skeletal remains, and only the grave goods could define the gender. The dress had left traces under the two gilded oval brooches of copper alloy (R351, Petersen variant 51F).29 They represent a rare type in Norway although rather similar to the type R652 (fig. 1.2). The fixed bosses on the brooches are furnished with silver filigree around the rims and between the bosses; the loose hemispherical bosses also have silver filigree, with traces of gilding, and are filled with lead. The third brooch was a trefoil gilded copper-alloy brooch in Borre style (R671). Additionally, the deceased was furnished with a special necklace of silver rings connected by eleven beads, with a little snake of silver as one of the pendants, evidently some kind of amulet.30 Another fifteen beads, originally on a string, were also found, made of materials that included carnelian and rock crystal. Keys and locks were other status-indicating objects, as well as horse gear with parts of the harness, bridle ring-fittings, and strap mounts. The other preserved grave goods comprised a varied assemblage of textile tools, as well as utensils for food processing and storage—a vessel of soapstone, a frying pan, a spit or skewer, fragments of a kettle, and a ladle of bronze,31 the latter with three fragmentary runic inscriptions on the handle and the rim.32 Only small fragments of textiles were found at the pins of the brooches, at first instance only recognized as tabby weaves with a thread count per centimeter of 20/18 and 24/14 in the warp and weft respectively.33 A new analysis by Lukešová of all the textiles from the grave gives more detailed and new information about textiles also woven in 2/2 twill and diamond/lozenge twill. The biggest of the two 2/2 twill-woven fragments was dark blue-green in color, with a thread count of 26/16 threads per centimeter. It also had a selvage with a tiny remnant of a blue sewing thread, possibly of plant material. Holes indicate that it had been lying on one of the two oval brooches. She also recognized a remnant of a tabby loop on the third brooch, probably fastened to the cloak from the 2/2 twill—together indicating pieces of the woman’s cloak. Moreover, she identified three tiny fragments of very fine broken diamond/lozenge twill, with a repeat pattern unit of 20/10 (that is, 20 warp and 10 weft threads) and

28 University Museum of Bergen, Main Catalogue, no. B6657. 29 R numbers refer to classification by Oluf Rygh, Norske Oldsager (Christiania [Oslo]: Cammermeyer, 1885). See also Petersen, Vikingetidens smykker. 30 Sigrid Kaland, “Kvinnegraven fra Trå i Granvin—en gydjes grav?” in Samfunn, symboler og identitet: Festskrift til Gro Mandt på 70-årsdagen, ed. Randi Barndon et al., UBAS, Nordisk 3 (Bergen: University of Bergen, 2006), 352–53. 31 Haakon Shetelig, “Fortegnelse,” 44–47, note 27. 32 Magnus Olsen, Norges Innskrifter med de yngre runer (Oslo: Dybwad, 1957), 4:26–38. 33 Bender Jørgensen, Forhistoriske textiler, 263.

13

Figure 1.6: Smoother of glass and soapstone spindle-whorl from the Trå grave. Photo: University Museum of Bergen, by permission.

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Viking Age Dress with a density of 64 warp and 26 weft threads per centimeter in fine z/z spun threads, blue-black in color.34 The textile tools represent a whole tool kit for several stages of production: shears, remnants of wool combs, a spindle whorl suitable for spinning very fine threads, one weaving beater, and twelve loom weights of medium weight, as well as a linen smoother of black glass. The spindle whorl, with a hemispherical upper part and a flat base (Øye, type A),35 is small and light, measuring 2.6 centimeters in diameter and 1.2 centimeter in height, with a spindle hole of 7 millimeters. It is well made of finely elaborated greenish soapstone and well balanced, decorated with concentric circles at the upper end and the base (fig. 1.6). Weighing only 10 grams, it could be used for spinning threads of the finest quality, in wool or plant material, as represented in the preserved textiles. The twelve loom weights of soapstone are generally well made, mostly with gently sloping and nearly parallel sides (Øye, types B and C),36 and all but one fall within a weight frame from about 450 to 600 grams. Two of them had crosses incised, perhaps as markers of weight, both within the weight group of 450 to 500 grams. Altogether, the weights indicate somewhat coarser threads in the warp, which were also found in the accompanying textiles. The 76-centimeter-long weaving beater of iron (like R440), represents a common type in the Viking Age, normally 60 to 80 centimeters long, with a long narrow double-edged blade and with a handle set at an obtuse angle and originally furnished with wood.37 Here, it was broken into five pieces and nearly complete, but seems to have originally measured around 80 centimeters in length, indicating that the textiles woven must have been somewhat wide. A complete bun-shaped linen smoother of black glass (like R446), measuring 7.5 centimeters in diameter and 4.1 centimeters in height, and weighing 358 grams, was also among the textile tools (fig. 1.6). This was an object of foreign origin, probably from France, judging by analyses of similar objects of corresponding size and shape.38 It was used to smooth textiles and sharpen garment folds on flat boards of wood or whalebone. The wool combs were represented only by the iron teeth, but according to the catalog were of the same type as the well-preserved specimens from Hyrt (see below, fig. 1.11). They were no longer to be found in the museum, nor were the shears. The wool combs and the light, well-balanced spindle whorl would have permitted the production of the fine threads seen in some of the high-quality textiles. The loom weights indicate somewhat thicker and stronger warp threads, as in the 2/2 twills. 34 Pers. comm., Hana Lukešová, regarding information from forthcoming report of analysis of the Trå textiles, University Museum of Bergen, Sept. 30, 2013. 35 Øye, Textile Equipment, fig. II.7, 38. 36 Ibid., fig. III.3, 59. 37 Jan Petersen, Vikingetidens redskaper, Det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi 2, Historisk-Filosofisk Klasse 4 (Oslo: Dybwad, 1951), 86–88. 38 Bjarne Gaut, “Vessel Glass and Evidence of Glassworking,” in Skre, Things from the Town, 169–280, at 230–31.

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Figure 1.7: Textile fragment on the front of one of the oval brooches from Hyrt, before being removed for conservation. Photo: University Museum of Bergen, by permission.

16

Viking Age Dress

Figure 1.8: Textile remains on the back of the brooch shown in fig. 1.7, before being removed for conservation. Photo: University Museum of Bergen, by permission.

17

Figure 1.9: Close-up of the textile fragment shown in fig. 1.7. Photo: University Museum of Bergen, by permission.

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Viking Age Dress Theoretically, then, these tools could actually have been used in the processes of making the different fabrics found with them in this grave. Both the sewing thread from plant material and the linen smoother indicate that not only wool fabrics were used. Hyrt The grave from the Hyrt farm39 was found in 1892 in a low single mound close to the farmyard, and contained a double burial, a male and a female. Both were furnished with grave goods signifying high status by their jewelry, weapons, and other equipment. The female was buried with two oval brooches (R652; figs. 1.2, 1.7, 1.8, and 1.9), without a third brooch, but with a rich assortment of beads: twenty beads of blue, green, and yellow glass and amber, and additionally, seventy-five very small and fine beads of different colors. Besides textile-production equipment, the grave contained the remains of one or two iron keys, two small iron knives, and remains of a wooden casket.40 Although less richly equipped than the Trå burial, its status may be categorized in Solberg’s Group 3. Several types of textiles were found both over and underneath the brooches, representing both exclusive fabrics and more common and coarser ones, three of plant material, the others in wool, all z/z spun. It was possible to identify three types of weaving techniques: tabby, 2/2 twill, and broken diamond/lozenge twill.41 The textile fragments preserved on the two brooches formed different layers (see 1.7, 1.8, and 1.9). Lukešová’s analysis of the textiles and their placement has made it possible to connect them to different garments of various weaves and qualities (fig. 1.10).42 Six fragments of plant material, woven in tabby with a thread count of 18/10 and dyed in blue, constitute the first layer and seem to represent the tunic worn innermost. Two fragments of 2/2 twill with the same structure and thread count of 12/10 were lying under the brooch and represent the second layer, presumably the second tunic. The bigger one appeared as dark blue-green in color. A plaited string used as a strap was also found. The third layer, and also the finest, was woven in the more advanced technique: broken diamond/lozenge twill, black-blue in color, with a very high fabric quality, with a repeat pattern of 20/10 and a density of 50 warp threads and 20 weft threads per centimeter. This piece may represent a cloak. Some wool fragments woven in tabby techniques were also found, with a tighter weave than those of plant material, with a thread count of 32/20.43

39 Aarsberetning fra Foreningen til norske Fortidsminnesmerkers bevaring ([Oslo]: 1892), 113–115; University Museum of Bergen, Main Catalogue, no. B4864. 40 Ibid. 41 Holm-Olsen, “Tekstilfunn”; Bender Jørgensen, Forhistoriske textiler, 263. 42 Lukešová, “Fragmenter av kvinnedrakter.” 43 Pers. comm., Hana Lukešová, regarding information from forthcoming report of analysis of the Hyrt textiles, University Museum of Bergen, Sept. 30, 2013.

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Figure 1.10: Cross-section of the different layers above and below the brooch shown in figs. 1.7, 1.8, and 1.9. Drawing: Per Bækken; based on Hana Lukešová, “Fragmenter av kvinnedrakter fra vikingtiden: Metode for identifikasjon av gamle tekstilfunn,” Viking 74 (2011): 158.

The textile tools here also represent a whole textile-making kit, for preparation of fibers, spinning, and weaving: a pair of wool combs, a spindle whorl, and twenty loom weights. 20

Viking Age Dress The spindle whorl looks similar to the one from Trå as regards shape, material, and decoration, with five incised concentric circles on the upper surface, and made of finely elaborated greenish soapstone (Øye, type A). However, it is larger and heavier than the Trå example: It measures 3.1 centimeters in diameter and 1.4 centimeter in height, and weighs 22 grams. Although not representing the lightest weight group, it could be used to spin fairly fine threads, but not of the thinnest quality. Altogether twenty loom weights are referred to in the report, seemingly representing a whole loom. Fewer than half were still to be found in the museum collection, all of them made of soapstone and of type B, and weighing from 261 to 413 grams, with a mean just below 300 grams. This sampling seems to be fairly representative of the assemblage as a whole by the information given: According to the catalog, the items in the original group weighed from 250 to 450 grams, totaling 7,050 grams, which gives a mean of 352.5 grams, about 50 to 60 grams higher on average than the remaining specimens, but still significantly lighter than those from Trå. The pair of wool combs (fig. 1.11), now corroded together, are the best preserved of the few wool combs known from the study area. The two combs each consist of a single row of iron teeth that are fastened to a narrow wooden base, about 15 centimeters long, with an iron cover. The number of teeth was twenty per comb when found, but is now reduced to fifteen and eighteen respectively. The iron teeth were 11 centimeters long, now somewhat shorter, and slightly curved inwards. The handle is fixed at the center of the base and at right angles to the teeth, making the combs look like small rakes. The wool is placed on one of the pair and combed with the other. The presence of the combs implies that longer fibers were combed to lie even and parallel so that they could be spun into smooth yarn. The spindle whorl was best suited for making threads of medium-fine quality, probably for a thread count of 17 to 22 threads per centimeter, perhaps more, which is also represented in most of the preserved textiles, except the warp threads in the fragments of diamond/lozenge twill. The warp weights may indicate thin to medium-strong warp threads. Like the tools, the textiles also indicate varied qualities. The textile-production equipment from the Hyrt grave could have been used to spin and weave textiles of fairly fine qualities, although not the very finest of those found. Veka The burial at Veka farm44 was situated in a large mound. The mound, which is located on a steep hillside on the outskirts of the farm, is about 30 meters in diameter and 3.15 meters high at its upper side and 6 meters at the lower surface. Two other mounds without preserved finds, located closer to the old farmyard and infields, had been investigated earlier.45 The large mound contained a grave with the deceased in a wooden coffin with the head to the south, but the rest of the skeleton was decomposed. Like

44 University Museum of Bergen, Main Catalogue, no. B6228. 45 Shetelig, Vestlandske graver, 206.

21

Figure 1.11: The pair of wool combs from Hyrt after conservation. Photo: University Museum of Bergen, by permission.

Ingvild Øye

22

Viking Age Dress the burials at Trå and Hyrt, the grave was richly furnished with grave goods, including dress accessories: two oval brooches of gilded copper alloy (R651), rather similar to the ones at Trå, with bosses furnished with silver filigree as well as loose semicircular bosses covered with silver and filled with lead. The deceased also had a special third brooch of copper alloy with cast ornaments in relief. Remains of two bracelets, one of silver and the other of copper alloy, were also found. Altogether 118 beads—most of them glass, a few of amber, carnelian, or rock crystal—apparently belonged to a necklace or string. An old Anglo-Saxon coin with the inscription OFFA REX and on the reverse OSMOD, secondarily used as jewelry, was also found. Again, the deceased was equipped with utensils for food production and other tasks: a skewer, a small knife, a sickle, and two hoes, all of iron, together with some unidentifiable objects of iron, lead, and also organic material. All the textile tools were found in the remains of a wooden casket by the feet.46 The textile fragments include weaving of different techniques and qualities: tabby, 2/2 twill, and broken diamond/lozenge twill. The tabby was woven with a thread count of 30/16 threads per centimeter. The fragments of 2/2 twill vary in density in both the warp and the weft, with thread counts of 17/14, 16/20, and 23/17 per centimeter—the warp threads being generally tighter and finer than the weft threads.47 In many of the fragments of the broken diamond/lozenge twill, the spinning was z/z and of very fine threads, but in different qualities of fineness, both in the warp and the weft, with a repeat pattern of 28/10 and a warp/weft density of 42/20 and 50/22 threads per centimeter. The textile finds under the brooches indicate that the 2/2 twill belonged to a cloak or a caftan, fastened to the third brooch and worn over a strapped gown of diamond/ lozenge twill. Dyestuffs with traces of blue indigotin were found.48 A fragment of 2/2 twill with a long selvage was decorated by a narrow band made from a patterned weave, probably silk samitum, which must have been imported.49 The finest textiles at Veka, therefore, also belong to Holm-Olsen’s second category. The tools found in the remains of the casket represent a whole kit for textile production, for preparation of fibers, spinning, weaving, and sewing—a pair of wool combs, two spindle whorls, eleven loom weights, and a needlecase with thin needles. The pair of wool combs is of the same type as those found at Trå and Hyrt (fig. 1.11) but very corroded; the better preserved of the two has twenty-nine teeth, 13.5 centimeters long. The two spindle whorls are rather similar to the ones from Trå and Hyrt (Øye, type A), made of greenish soapstone and both ornamented with five concentric circles. They thus appear as a rather similar pair of whorls, but of different size and weight, the smaller measuring 2.5 centimeters in diameter and 1 centimeter tall, and the larger, 3.1 centimeters in diameter and 1.4 centimeters tall. Their weights of 9 and 17 grams signify that they were used to spin threads of different thickness—one 46 Ibid., 206–11. 47 Bender Jørgensen, Forhistoriske textiler, 264. 48 Penelope Walton, “Dyes and Wools in Iron Age Textiles from Norway and Denmark,” Journal of Danish Archaeology 7 (1988): 144–58, at 154–58. 49 Lukešová, “Fragmenter av kvinnedrakter,” 157.

23

Ingvild Øye very fine, and the other fine to medium-fine. Judging by the size of the spindle holes, 7 and 8 millimeters respectively, they were also used on different spindles. Shetelig also refers to a possible spindle whorl of lead, which has not been located.50 The loom weights also indicate weaving with rather fine warp threads. The eleven weights (Øye, types B and C), all in soapstone and finely worked, appear as a rather homogenous assemblage, from 227 to 398 grams with a mean of 297 grams—clearly lighter than at Trå but with a similar weight pattern as at Hyrt. The tools, then, could have been used to make textiles of the same qualities as represented in the grave. In addition, among the tools is a small cylindrical needlecase of copper alloy shaped like a tube, originally 7 centimeters long and 8 millimeters in diameter, and with a small ring of copper-alloy threads, with parts of the thin copper-alloy chain to which it had been fastened. When found, it was filled with felt with one or more iron needles embedded in it, but now lost. DISCUSSION

Of these three cases, the burial at Trå contains the most varied tool kit, representing five different tool categories for textile production—cutting/shearing, fiber preparation, spinning, weaving, and smoothing. Veka represents four of these categories, lacking cutting/shearing and smoothing but adding sewing, while the double grave at Hyrt represents three categories (table 1.1). All three graves contain wool combs of the same type. The spindle whorls are also rather similar in shape, material, and decoration. Trå and Veka contain whorls of the lightest weight group, 9 and 10 grams, while the one at Hyrt is somewhat heavier, 22 grams, and the second whorl at Veka in a midway position for making threads in different qualities. The graves at Veka and Hyrt both contain several loom weights, probably reflecting the whole loom, and of nearly the same weight range and mean weight, at Veka 297 grams, and at Hyrt 295 grams. By contrast, the weights from Trå are significantly heavier, with a mean of 537 grams and most within a range of about 450 to 600 grams (fig. 1.12). Trå contains both loom weights and weaving beaters used to achieve a tight weft. While the grave at Veka is the only one with a needlecase, the Trå grave is the only one that contains a linen smoother of glass, an imported and fairly rare tool in Viking Age graves, with only six found in the whole study area. A comparison of tools, textiles, and the different status objects related to the burial dress reveals interesting patterns. The textiles, preserved as fragments, provide evidence for the garments and such details as cords, loops, and pleating. High-quality cloth woven in z/z broken diamond/lozenge twill occurs at all three sites, but in different qualities. Veka provided fragments that are 28/10, 42/20, and 50/22 threads per centimeter and also edged with a silk band that must have been imported. At Hyrt, the fragments of broken diamond/lozenge twill were more homogenous in the weave, both

50 Shetelig, Vestlandske graver, 206, fig. 481.

24

Viking Age Dress

Figure 1.12: Number of loom weights per weight group of 50 grams in the graves from Trå, Hyrt, and Veka. Chart: Ingvild Øye and Per Bækken, based on Ingvild Øye’s analyses and documentation of all the preserved weights.

in the warp and weft, with 48/20 and 50/20 threads per centimeter. Here, traces of plant fibers were also found among the many fragments of wool. The few and small textile fragments of broken diamond/lozenge twill from Trå are the finest, with the highest thread count, and seem to represent the cloak, while the dress is of coarser fabric. The jewelry and the personal belongings in all three graves also indicate the high status of Solberg’s Group 3, but are more exquisite and varied at Trå and Veka than at Hyrt. The silk band from Veka, used as part of a garment, was obviously made from imported fabric. This raises the question of whether any of the other textiles, especially those of the finest quality in diamond/lozenge twill weaves, as from Trå, Hyrt, and Veka, originated outside Scandinavia, or whether they could have been made locally. Marta Hoffmann and Agnes Geijer have earlier characterized fabrics of this type of z/z fine worsted diamond/lozenge twill as imported materials.51 Geijer called this the “Birka type,” characterized as having a repeat pattern unit that is nearly always 20 warp and 10 weft threads. It occurs in very fine qualities, from 24 to 62 warp threads and 15 to 25 weft threads per centimeter.52

51 Hoffmann, The Warp-Weighted Loom, 247; Agnes Geijer, “Var järnålderns ‘frisska kläde’ tillverkat i Syrien?” Fornvännen 60 (1965): 112–32; Geijer, “The Textile Finds from Birka, Birka III, Die Textilfunde aus den Gräbern, revised by the author,” Acta Archaeologica 50 (1979). 52 Bender Jørgensen, Forhistoriske textiler, 357–60; Lise Bender Jørgensen, “The Textiles and Textile Implements,” in Ribe Excavations 1970–76, ed. Mogens Bencard et al. (Esbjerg, Denmark: Sydjysk Universitetsforlag, 1991), 3:59–78, at 61.

25

Ingvild Øye Holm-Olsen disputed Hoffmann’s and Geijer’s conclusion, as did Bender Jørgensen later. Both argued that the technique in itself is not as complicated as has been suggested and furthermore that it was well known in the area before the Viking Age.53 It is therefore not self-evident that these textiles were imported. Holm-Olsen argued that the fineness of the fibers indicates a highly developed sorting technique and cannot be used as an argument for import to Scandinavia.54 Bender Jørgensen also found it likely that such textiles were actually produced in Norway because of the high frequency of finds in western parts of the country. Except for a few finds, such materials have been found only in Scandinavia. They occur in major trading centers (such as Birka, Hedeby, and Kaupang), royal boat graves, and a restricted number of Danish, Swedish, and east Norwegian graves, but mostly they are found in graves along the Norwegian coast. Here, one out of three graves with textile finds contains such qualities. They appear for the first time in the seventh century.55 Bender Jørgensen has therefore chosen to denote this type of z/z fine worsted diamond/lozenge twill (called the “Birka type” by Geijer) as the “Norwegian type.” Since most of these textiles have been found in Western Norway, she later called it the “Veka type.”56 This type also largely corresponds to the characteristics of Holm-Olsen’s second category. If the finest textiles were produced in Scandinavia, two alternatives are relevant: They may have been produced in a few proto-urban settlements, such as Birka, or also in rural environments. Judging by quality, Holm-Olsen finds it likely that production in the few centers would be more homogenous than in decentralized rural environments, but not necessarily of lower quality. If produced in rural environments, an even spread of textile findings should be expected, whereas production in centralized places would give clusters. The find spots in Western Norway of textiles in 2/2 twill demonstrate an even distribution, indicating production in rural areas. This was a technique that most people, at least women, may have mastered to a larger or smaller degree, based on traditions and experience achieved through generations. Some milieus may, however, have been more advanced than others, and may have produced more complicated and finer textiles to meet demands related to social status. Fiber analyses of five of the textiles from Western Norway included one fragment from Hyrt and another from Veka. In the textiles with dense thread count, the wool was found to be very fine, but it was not possible to determine whether this reflected a special breed of sheep or a highly developed sorting of wool.57 In a later wool a­ nalysis by Penelope Walton, including similar textiles of diamond/lozenge high-quality weaves, the wool quality proved to be medium in the warp and hairy medium in the weft: a smooth and firm long-fibered warp was combined with the softer, crimpier

Holm-Olsen, “Tekstilfunn,” 88; Bender Jørgensen, Forhistoriske textiler, 309, 316. Holm-Olsen, “Tekstilfunn,” 98. Bender Jørgensen, “The Textiles and Textile Implements,” 61. Bender Jørgensen, Forhistoriske textiler, 173ff; Bender Jørgensen, North European Textiles until AD 1000 (Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press, 1992), 136. 57 Holm-Olsen, “Tekstilfunn,” 97, with reference to Anna M. Rosenqvist, “Rapport om arbeid med analyser av Osebergtekstiler,” Universitetets Oldsaksamling Årbok 1965–66 (1969): 291. 53 54 55 56

26

Viking Age Dress under-wool of the hairy medium type of fleece to give a strong, yet warm, material. Walton concluded that the choosing of the right wool for a specific function indicates an extraordinarily refined approach to textile production.58 The wool analyses then may also support Holm-Olsen’s view that the fineness of the fibers cannot be used as an argument for import to Scandinavia. Examination of tools and textiles in closed contexts, such as graves, has further strengthened the argument for local production. The grave finds from Trå, Hyrt, and Veka in the inner region of Hordaland seem to represent such advanced milieus, but probably in a social more than in an economic sense. It is also interesting to find these contemporaneous milieus in the inland areas of Western Norway, all with vast areas of grazing land for sheep in the hillsides and mountains close to the farms and thus able to provide large quantities of wool for textile production. These examples show that women of higher ranks in Western Norway were buried in their best clothes: in one or two dresses, sometimes with a cloak. The fabrics were made in different qualities, related to their function—but this could vary. In one case, the cloak seems to have been the most exclusive garment. Both textiles and tools indicate textile production on a high level. The tools and other grave goods were deliberately placed in the graves according to norms of the period for symbolizing social identity and status, as well as work domains, gender roles, and responsibilities. They were, in the context of the grave, symbols, but still practical tools that suggest the level of production. The three burials examined here contained tools representing three, four, and five categories of processes of textile production. This varied spectrum also seems to mark and reflect the importance of textile production, and it is interesting to observe that the degree of variation in tool kits corresponds with the presence of high-quality fabrics and other indicators of high status. In summary, the Viking Age graves represent an interesting find category that makes it possible to assess textiles, tools, and social categories in closed contexts. These contexts present both challenges and opportunities. The grave finds represent symbolic roles and rituals rather than daily praxis. But being intentionally placed in the graves, normally by the deceased’s heirs, the artifacts were hardly arbitrarily chosen, and should be seen as cautious selections and representations to commemorate and display the deceased’s role and social identity. The interconnected representation of tools, textiles, and other status-indicating artifacts should thus be seen as meaningful representations. Indirectly, these items give valuable information on both textiles and textile production. This may also have transferable value when assessing similar finds without preserved textiles and in other archaeological contexts.

58 Walton, “Dyes and Wools,” 153.

27

The Effect of Spindle Whorl Design on Wool Thread Production: A Practical Experiment Based on Examples from Eighth-Century Denmark Karen Nicholson The drop spindle is a tool that has been used to facilitate thread production for many thousands of years. It has two key components: a central shaft and a stabilizing weight called a whorl. Before spinning, prepared fibers are usually arranged on a stick called a distaff, which enables the person doing the spinning to carry a large amount of fiber and keep it from becoming tangled. To turn the fiber into thread, the spinner attaches a leading end of the fiber to the spindle shaft, and then, with a flick of the fingers, sets the spindle in motion. As the spindle rotates, twisting the attached fiber into thread, the spinner gently pulls additional fiber from the distaff and directs it toward the spindle at a regular pace, an action called drafting. The thread elongates as the twist travels up the incoming supply of fiber. Gravity keeps the thread taut. When the spindle reaches the ground, the spinner winds the finished thread around the shaft and begins the process again. While the basic principle of the drop spindle has remained the same, the design of the tool has changed over time and location. In particular, not only has the material and size of the whorl varied from one time and place to another, the whorl shape has shown dramatic changes as well. The series of experiments described in this article represent an effort to determine what impact, if any, changes in whorl design have on the qualities of the thread produced. The study was designed to shed light on why a spinner might prefer one kind of spindle over another; to consider whether changes in spindle design were the result of desired outcome or personal preferences; to identify the attributes of spindles that make them well suited to their task; and to establish whether a particular type of whorl can be identified with the manufacture of a particular cloth. It is not unusual for spindle whorls to be found among the artifacts at sites from the medieval age or earlier. However, catalogue descriptions of these whorls rarely go

An earlier version of this paper was presented in May 2013 at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, Michigan. My thanks to Robin Netherton, Gale Owen-Crocker, and Jacqueline Oppelt for their editing assistance.

Karen Nicholson

Figure 2.1: Drawing of spindle whorls from Ribe, as illustrated in Ribe Excavations 1970–76, ed. Mogens Bencard et al. (Esbjerg, Denmark: Sydjysk Universitetsforlag, 1991), vol. 3, p. 65, fig. 8. Illustration: Courtesy of the Sydvestjyske Museer, Ribe, Denmark.

30

Spindle Whorl Design

Figures 2.2 and 2.3: Ceramic reproduction whorls. Figure 2.2 (left), top to bottom: nos. 5, 27, 22, 8, 31, and 26. Figure 2.3, top to bottom: nos. 2, 3, 28, 7, 6, 29, 30, and 25. Photos: Frank Nicholson.

31

Karen Nicholson beyond documenting their shapes and sizes. Unless a tool is used, its performance cannot be measured. The practical study described here began by focusing on whorls excavated at Ribe, Denmark. Ribe is located in western Jutland. Written records from the ninth century indicated that the settlement had existed since the early eighth century; however, physical evidence of its location remained elusive over many decades of investigation.1 Then, during archaeological excavations in the 1970s, eighth-century artifacts were found on the northeast side of the river that cuts the modern city in half.2 Even though the dig sites were limited, archaeologists found indications of vibrant craft activities dating from the early 700s. Although only a small number of textile artifacts were recovered, among the significant finds were spindle whorls and loom weights, making it likely that textiles were produced there, at least for personal use, from an early date. The details of the textile-related finds were described by Lise Bender Jørgensen and published in 1991.3 The archaeology report notes that thirty-four clay spindle whorls were located in the eighth-century layers, twenty-five complete and nine fragmentary.4 These are different from the whorls found in western Norway,5 at York, and at other Iron Age sites. Their shapes are not unique in the archaeological record, but they form a cohesive group, which makes them an interesting case study. The Ribe report illustrates eleven of the whorls (fig. 2.1) and gives the range of the sizes and weights for the complete group of thirty-four. Two are bicones (a smooth diamond-like shape); one is lens-shaped (convex on both the top and bottom surfaces); thirty-one are cones or truncated bicones (cone-shaped with a short beveled foot). These last two whorl shapes are treated as a single group in the report. The whorls range in diameter from 2.2 to 4.3 centimeters (0.9 to 1.7 inch) and in height from 1.1 to 3 centimeters (0.4 to 1.2 inch). They range in weight from 14 to 38 grams (0.5 to 1.3 ounce).6 Based on measurements taken from the illustrations in the archaeology report, the center holes in the whorls range in diameter at least from 5 millimeters to 9 millimeters (0.2 to 0.4 inch). Four of the eleven whorls illustrated have tapered holes; six have straight holes. One whorl has a hole that is wider at each end and tapers toward the center. The larger whorls tend to have holes of larger diameter, but this is not always the case. In order to determine the attributes of the thread that could be produced using these whorls, a series of experiments was conducted using ceramic reproductions. Taking the illustrations as a guide, fifteen whorls were crafted to mimic the Ribe whorls (figs. 2.2 and 2.3). In addition, other shapes were reproduced based on Neolithic, Bronze  1 Inge Skovgaard-Pedersen, “The Written Sources,” in Ribe Excavations 1970–76, ed. Mogens Bencard et al., 6 vols. (Esbjerg, Denmark: Sydjysk Universitetsforlag, 1981–2010), 1:22–62, at 24.  2 Mogens Bencard, “Introduction,” in Bencard, Ribe Excavations 1970–76, 3:9–15, at 10.  3 Lise Bender Jørgensen, “The Textiles and Textile Implements,” in Bencard, Ribe Excavations 1970–76, 3:59–78.  4 Ibid., 59.  5 See the essay by Ingvild Øye, chapter 1 in this volume.  6 Bender Jørgensen, “Textiles and Textile Implements,” 64–65.

32

Spindle Whorl Design Age, and Iron Age finds. As the amount of shrinkage in the pottery kiln could not be anticipated, the new whorls do not match the artifacts exactly, but they all fall within the same range of size, weight, and general shape. The Ribe-style test whorls range in diameter from 2.6 to 4 centimeters (1 to 1.6 inch) and in height from 1.8 to 2.8 centimeters (0.7 to 1.1 inch). They range in weight from 15 to 38 grams (0.5 to 1.3 ounce). The whorls were then added to shafts in order to spin wool thread. For consistency, the initial tests were done using bamboo skewers, 30 centimeters long and 5 ­millimeters in diameter (approximately 12 inches by 0.2 inch), as the shafts of the spindles. The center holes in the new whorls have straight sides and average 5 millimeters (0.2 inch), in order to accommodate the bamboo shafts. Since wool characteristics vary by sheep breed, all of the tests were conducted using commercially prepared combed Shetland wool. The Shetland fleece has an even crimp (waviness) to the strands and a staple length of 8 to 12 centimeters (3 to 5 inches). These choices were made in order to isolate the whorl as the only variable in the experiment. All of the spinning was done by the author. Each whorl was tested by spinning multiple thread samples to determine the finest thread it could produce, the thickest thread it could produce, and its optimum thread range. The thickness (also called gauge or grist) of the thread was measured by how many strands could be packed side by side within a 1-centimeter space, a measurement commonly called wraps per centimeter (wpc) that reflects both the diameter and the density of the thread. The finest thread is here defined as the thinnest thread that can be spun without frequent thread break. If the spinner attempts to spin too finely, the weight of the spindle with thread will cause the thread to break before the spindle is full. The finest thread produced using the reproduction Ribe whorls was 34 wpc. The thickest thread is defined as the bulkiest thread that can be spun without constant back-spin, or untwisting. Producing the thickest possible thread is the most difficult spinning task; as the spindle fights against the twist in the fibers, it loses all efficiency and begins to spin backward. The limit for each whorl was set at that gauge where it was possible to draft the fibers from the distaff at least once before the spindle began to spin backward. Because a longer thread can hold more twist, as the thread grew, it was possible to draft two or three times before the thread would untwist and break apart. The thickest thread produced using the Ribe-style whorls was 5 wpc. The optimum thread range, which falls somewhere between the finest and thickest, reflects where the spindle works most efficiently and spinning can continue without frequent stops to fix a thread or twirl the spindle. When a spindle is producing thread in its optimum range, it is easier to maintain a consistent thread. A spinner working in this range can fill the spindle without constant attention to the tool and thus can maintain awareness of her surrounding environment without adversely affecting the quality of the thread.7

 7 While only one type of wool was used for this study, my subsequent work has verified that the optimum range can vary depending on the choice of breed and the quality of fiber preparation.

33

Whorl number

Karen Nicholson

Figure 2.4: Range of thread production from Ribe-style reproduction whorls, measured in wraps per centimeter, showing the average optimum thread gauge (designated by triangles) in relation to the total range of thread gauge for each whorl, from thickest to finest. The gray band represents the middle range of thread produced.

The finest and the thickest threads are the upper and lower limits of what a given spindle whorl can produce. Generally, it is not efficient to spin at these points. At both the upper and lower limits, it is difficult to maintain a consistent thread gauge, as one tends naturally to drift back to the optimum range. In these experiments, it took up to three times longer to spin at the limits as to spin an optimum thread. A spinner would not ordinarily use a spindle whorl at either limit to produce large quantities of thread; it would be easier to change the size of whorl being used.8 Thus, it is most likely that a whorl was used to produce thread within its optimum range. The closer the average optimum thread is to the center of the whorl’s range, the more efficient the spindle is at creating thread across the whole range of its production capacity. The triangles in fig. 2.4 show the average optimum thread gauge for each Ribestyle whorl. The point was determined by spinning several times with each whorl in a manner in which drafting and spinning required the least effort, and then averaging the results. The gray band indicates the middle 50% of the range of possible thread thickness for each whorl. If the triangle falls within the gray band, that shows that the whorl is particularly versatile. For example, looking at whorl no. 6, the thickest thread it makes is 5 wpc, and the finest thread is 21 wpc. Its average optimum thread is 12 wpc (almost exactly in the center of its range) making it suitable to use for a wide variety of   8 In her essay in this volume, Ingvild Øye notes graves in western Norway that include multiple whorls of differing weights.

34

Spindle Whorl Design

Figure 2.5: Ceramic reproduction whorls in Neolithic and Bronze Age styles. From top, row 1: nos. 20 and 33; row 2: nos. 21 and 23; row 3: nos. 17 and 32; row 4: no. 13. Photo: Frank Nicholson.

35

Karen Nicholson Table 2.1: Spindle whorls and thread produced

No.

Shape

Diameter/ height

Thread wraps/centimeter

Weight

Upper

Lower

Optimum

Style

Ceramic whorls 1

bicone

2.2 x 1.7 cm

6g

36

8

20

outside the range for Ribe bicones

2

cone

2.8 x 2.0 cm

15 g

31

5

14

Ribe style

3

cone

2.9 x 2.5 cm

19 g

24

7

13

Ribe style

4

cone

2.6 x 2.1 cm

15 g

32

7

22

Ribe style

5

bicone

2.9 x 1.8 cm

21 g

32

7

12

Ribe style

6

cone

3.6 x 2.5 cm

26 g

21

5

12

Ribe style

7

truncated bicone

3.7 x 2.2 cm

38 g

34

5

11

Ribe style

8

bicone

2.8 x 2.8 cm

22 g

31

5

10

Ribe style

9

disk

2.8 x 0.7 cm

8g

28

6

14

Greenlandic style, ca. 1000–1450

10

disk

4.8 x 0.3 cm

15 g

26

9

13

made for weight/ diameter comparisons

11

disk

4.8 x 0.8 cm

32 g

19

6

9

made for weight/ diameter comparisons

12

disk

4.5 x 0.8 cm

29 g

28

5

10

made for weight/ diameter comparisons

13

bullet

3.5 x 3.0 cm

26 g

25

5

13

Neolithic Turkistanish style, hollow

14

bullet

3.5 x 3.0 cm

33 g

21

4

8

Like no. 13 but solid

15

sphere

2.8 x 2.5 cm

23 g

21

7

12

Iron Age style

16

planoconvex

3.3 x 2.0 cm

24 g

29

8

10

Iron Age style

17

convex

4.8 x 1.1 cm

24 g

19

5

13

Bronze Age Swiss style

18

bullet

3.8 x 4.3 cm

35 g

16

6

12

Neolithic Turkistanish style

19

bicone

4.0 x 2.5 cm

36 g

20

5

13

outside the range for Ribe bicones

20

star

4.3 x 2.4 cm

26 g

16

6

12

Late Neolithic Swiss style

36

Spindle Whorl Design

No.

21

Shape

barrel

Diameter/ height 2.5 x 3.8 cm

Weight

31 g

Thread wraps/centimeter Upper

Lower

Optimum

23

6

12

Style

Late Neolithic Swiss style

22

bicone

2.7 x 3.1 cm

22 g

32

7

18

Ribe style

23

convex

4.0 x 2.0 cm

30 g

22

6

14

Bronze Age Swiss style

24

bicone

2.7 x 2.8 cm

16 g

26

7

16

Fired in fireplace instead of kiln

25

cone

2.3 x 2.0 cm

16 g

29

8

11

Ribe style

26

bicone

2.5 x 1.9 cm

15 g

27

6

18

Ribe style

27

bicone

2.7 x 2.6 cm

27 g

24

8

13

Ribe style

28

truncated bicone

3.0 x 2.0 cm

21 g

26

6

16

Ribe style

29

truncated bicone

3.5 x 2.1 cm

28 g

27

9

12

Ribe style

30

cone

3.9 x 2.1 cm

32 g

23

8

12

Ribe style

31

lens

3.8 x 2.0 cm

27 g

23

5

14

Ribe style

32

convex

5.1 x 3.3 cm

59 g

15

4

10

Late Neolithic Polish style

33

star

4.7 x 1.9 cm

26 g

18

9

12

Late Neolithic Swiss style

41

disk

4.8 x 1.9 cm

54 g

16

4

10

Late Bronze Age Danish style

Whorls of other materials (sampling of those tested) 34

barrel

3.0 x 3.6 cm

43 g

17

5

8

Reindeer antler, fourth-century style

35

disk

6.7 x 1.0 cm

43 g

24

6

8

Rim-weighted wood, modern

36

cross

12.0 x 1.2 cm

32 g

22

5

8

Turkish style with wood arms, modern

37

disk

4.5 x 0.4 cm

21 g

25

5

13

Stone, modern

Artifact whorls (sampling of those tested) 38

disk

2.5 x 0.7 cm

35 g

16

4

12

Lead whorl from York, ca. 1000

39

disk

2.0 x 0.6 cm

13 g

23

9

14

Lead whorl from York, ca. 1000

40

pear

1.8 x 1.8 cm

6g

29

9

28

Clay whorl from South America, preColumbian

37

Karen Nicholson Notes to Table 2.1: All the ceramic whorls were made by the author, mostly as reproductions of historic styles. Those in bold type are based on information in Lise Bender Jørgensen, “The Textiles and Textile Implements,” Ribe Excavations 1970–76, ed. Mogens Bencard et al. (Esbjerg, Denmark: Sydjysk Universitetsforlag, 1991), 3:59–78. No. 9 is based on Else Østergård, Woven into the Earth: Textiles from Norse Greenland, 2nd ed. (Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press, 2009), 48. Nos. 13, 17, 18, 20, 21, 23, 32, and 33 are based on various examples in E. J. W. Barber, Prehistoric Textiles: The Development of Cloth in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages with Special Reference to the Aegean (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991). Nos. 15 and 16 are based on Danish and Anglo-Saxon examples shown in Margrethe Hald, Ancient Danish Textiles from Bogs and Burials: A Comparative Study of Costume and Iron Age Textiles (Copenhagen: National Museum of Denmark, 1980) and in Penelope Walton Rogers, Cloth and Clothing in Early Anglo-Saxon England, AD 450–700 (York: Council for British Archaeology, 2007), 25. No. 41 is based on Hald, Ancient Danish Textiles, 134. Nos. 34, 35, 36, and 37 were purchased from various modern suppliers. Nos. 38, 39, and 40 are historic artifacts purchased from antique dealers.

thread sizes. Whorl no. 7, by contrast, has a broader overall range, from 5 to 34 wpc, but its optimum thread is a relatively heavy 11 wpc, just outside the gray band in the chart. Therefore, while it is possible to push that whorl to make a very fine thread, it is more efficient to use it at the thicker end of its range. The nine cone-shaped and truncated bicone test whorls range in diameter at their larger end from 2.3 to 3.9 centimeters and in height from 2.0 to 2.5 centimeters. They range in weight from 15 to 38 grams. These whorls produced optimum threads between 11 and 14 wpc and could be pushed to produce a thread as fine as 34 wpc or as thick as 5 wpc. The five bicone test whorls range in diameter from 2.6 to 3.8 centimeters and in height from 1.8 to 3.1 centimeters. They range in weight from 15 to 27 grams. These whorls produced optimum threads between 10 and 22 wpc, with limits at 32 and 5 wpc. While the cone shapes were slightly easier to spin with, the bicones could spin a finer optimum thread for a similar weight of whorl. For example, table 2.1 shows that whorl no. 25, a 16-gram cone, produced an optimum thread of 11 wpc. Whorl no. 26, a 15-gram bicone, produced an optimum thread of 18 wpc. Study of the Ribe whorls in isolation could not demonstrate if these shapes were more or less well-suited for producing a particular thread than another shape. Therefore, in order to make comparisons, the study was expanded to include both modern and more ancient shapes.9 Among the shapes tested were disk, convex, star, barrel, and bullet, shown in fig. 2.5. Fig. 2.6 shows the range of thread sizes produced by all of the reproduction whorls, with the data on the Ribe reproductions highlighted in bold type. The efficiency of the spindle itself is affected by balance, weight, and mass distribution. For a drop spindle to operate efficiently, it must be balanced. This does not  9 A total of 62 spindle whorls were tested over the course of this experiment. While this paper includes all of the data for the ceramic reproduction whorls, for clarity, only representative data is shown for the whorls from earlier and later periods.

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Spindle Whorl Design mean it needs to be circular, but that the mass needs to be evenly distributed around the center of gravity. If it is not balanced, it will tend to wobble and soon stop spinning. The Ribe reproduction whorls tested were all well balanced, as the originals appear to be. This is most important for being able to spin quickly. The suitability of a spindle to the task at hand is also affected by its weight, as the force required to start or stop the rotational motion of the spindle is equal to its weight. The momentum—the tendency to stay in motion—is affected by the force of the spin, the twist energy of the yarn, and gravity; a heavier spindle has greater momentum. Test results showed that the heavier the whorl, the thicker the optimum thread it produces. Two spindles with whorls of the same diameter will behave differently if the weight is different: the greater the difference in weight between whorls of the same diameter, the greater the difference in the thickness of the thread produced (see table 2.1). It is not particularly surprising that there is a direct relationship between the weight of the whorl and the thickness of the thread. However, it is surprising that the amount of twist remains the same for a given diameter of whorl, regardless of the weight of the whorl.10 (For these experiments, the twist was measured by folding the newly spun thread back on itself and then counting the number of turns per centimeter.) For example, ceramic whorls no. 10 and no. 11 both have a diameter of 4.8 centimeters, as does no. 41, a reproduction representing a Bronze Age whorl from Høje Taastrup, Denmark.11 The weights of these three whorls vary from 15 to 54 grams, yet each produces an optimum thread with 2.5 twists per centimeter. Conversely, two spindle whorls of the same weight will behave differently if they are different shapes. The shape of the spindle affects its use because it changes the distribution of the weight. It was found that the shape of the whorl itself is more critical in this regard than the overall spindle configuration—that is, where the whorl is positioned along the shaft.12 A spindle with a broader whorl will spin more slowly, imparting less twist to the fiber. One with a whorl of the same weight, but narrower, will naturally impart more twist. As an example, whorls no. 34 and no. 35 both weigh 43 grams. The barrel-shaped whorl (no. 34), a reproduction of a fourth-century artifact, and the modern disk (no. 35) both produce an optimum thread that is 8 wpc. The difference is in the amount of twist imparted to the thread. The barrel produces a higher amount of twist—three twists per centimeter, compared to two twists per centimeter produced by the modern disk. Due to its shape, the barrel must be spun more often than the disk. It spins faster than the disk but for a shorter amount of time when equal force is applied to the shaft.

10 All thread must have twist to hold the fibers together. The thicker the thread, the less twist it will hold. The finer the thread, the more twist it must have in order to maintain the thread. 11 Based on Margrethe Hald, Ancient Danish Textiles from Bogs and Burials: A Comparative Study of Costume and Iron Age Textiles (Copenhagen: National Museum of Denmark, 1980), 134. 12 Spindles can be configured with the whorls placed at the top, bottom, or middle of the shaft. Based on this experiment, this seems to be more a matter of personal preference than a way to influence the thread outcome.

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Whorl number

Karen Nicholson

forty-one Figure 2.6: Range of thread production for all ceramic reproduction whorls, measured in wraps per centimeter. Ribe-style whorl shapes are in bold type, with black triangles indicating the average optimum thread thickness. Gray triangles represent Neolithic and Bronze Age whorl shapes. The remaining triangles represent miscellaneous shapes that were tested. The gray band represents the middle range of thread produced.

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Spindle Whorl Design Over all, the barrel, bullet, cone, and bicone shapes produce thread with greater twist than disk, convex, or star-shaped whorls of similar weight. While a spinner can manipulate the procedure in order to change the amount of twist in a thread, the shape of the whorl affects the degree of twist produced naturally. To test for the natural amount of twist imparted by the whorl, the following criteria were followed:

· For each spindle whorl, drafting was carried out as quickly as possible while maintaining a consistent thread thickness within its optimum range. · Drafting was continued as long as the spindle was in motion. · The spindle was given no additional spin until it stopped its forward motion.

The amount of twist in a thread can be important for how the thread is used. For example, in weaving cloth, warp thread needs to be able to withstand high tension and the repeated abrasion that occurs as the weft is beaten into place. A thread with a tight twist is better able to withstand the weaving process. Since a compact whorl produces a tight twist, it is not surprising that the cone and bicone whorls yield thread well suited for weaving. The appropriateness of a spindle design for a particular task relates to the type of thread desired. A heavier spindle is needed to spin a thick thread easily. Thicker thread has less capacity than thin thread to hold twist. A heavier spindle is better able to resist the tendency to back-spin, but it is more difficult to start—more force is needed to begin its motion. Conversely, to spin a thin thread easily, a lightweight spindle is required. A lightweight spindle will spin very fast, allowing twist to build up quickly. This is important to build up the strength of the thread so that it is able to support the weight of the spindle. The effects of both weight and shape on spin force and speed were tested and compared. Of two spindles with the same weight but a different shape, the one with a larger-diameter whorl requires more force to set it spinning. If the same force is applied, the one with the more compact whorl will spin faster. By changing the force exerted on the spindle, it is possible to get the same thickness of thread from different whorls, even when the spindles spin at different speeds. What may be different among the resulting threads is the amount of twist. Tests for twist production found the greatest difference between the Ribe shapes, as a group, and the rim-weighted disks typically used in modern spinning. This may be because modern drop spinners often prefer a long rotational period and a loftier,13 lower-twist yarn, suitable for modern knitting, in contrast to medieval spinners, whose main objective was to create thread to weave into cloth. There is no single answer to what attributes make a spindle whorl well suited to its task. The variables of weight, shape, and size all affect performance. There is a great overlap in the production capacity of spindle whorls. Many spindle whorls can produce similar thread, particularly in the hands of a skilled spinner. As fig. 2.6 shows, while the overall range of threads produced is large, all of the test whorls can

13 That is, it has more air between the fibers.

41

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Whorl number

Figure 2.7: Graph of the range of threads produced by the reproduction whorls, measured in wraps per centimeter. Ribe-style whorls are in bold. The dotted line marks 28 wraps/centimeter (72 wraps/inch), an average thread size for sewing thread of the period.

Karen Nicholson

Spindle Whorl Design produce thread in the range of 10 to 20 wpc, which is similar to that found in many textile artifacts. The Ribe reproduction whorls easily produce thread in this range. In addition, as they approach their upper limit, the gauge of the resulting thread, when plied, is appropriate for sewing thread. Sewing thread can easily be spun with any of the whorls for which the line extends beyond the dotted line shown on fig. 2.7. After testing the whorls for the limits of thread size and amount of twist they were able to produce, it seemed desirable to test whether shaft design would also affect the qualities of the resulting thread. Three maple spindle shafts of equal length and weight—30 centimeters long and 3 grams—were carved using a pocketknife (fig. 2.8). One has a consistent diameter along the entire length. One is wider in the center, tapering to both ends; this shaft mimics the shaft found at the Ribe dig site.14 The third shaft has a pronounced bulge near the top, mimicking a shaft found in Greenland.15 The hole in Ribe reproduction whorl no. 6 was modified to fit the new shafts, making it possible to test all three shafts with the same whorl so that the shaft was the only variable. The changes did not have an appreciable impact on the size of the threads spun; in all cases, the optimum thread thickness remained the same. The change in shafts did, however, change the amount of twist in the thread. Both the Ribe-style shaft and the Greenland-style shaft produced thread with significantly greater twist than the straight shaft. This finding suggests that the shaped shafts were not arbitrary designs. The shape of the shaft can be as important as the shape and weight of the whorl for producing high-quality weaving thread. Spinning with the Ribe reproduction cone and bicone whorls, it was possible to spin much finer thread than anticipated, given the weight of the whorls. The heavier whorls could be made to spin both fast and long. Disk-shaped whorls of similar weight spin consistently “bulkier” fine threads. (Compare the results shown in Table 2.1 for nos. 5, 7, and 22 to nos. 11 and 12.) A fine, tight thread can easily be made with the cone and bicone shapes without approaching the spindles’ limits. These attributes of the Ribe whorls appear to reinforce the perfect suitability of these shapes to their intended product—fine woven cloth. By contrast, the Neolithic and Bronze Age shapes tested (shown in gray in fig. 2.6—nos. 13, 17, 18, 20, 21, 23, 32, 33, and 41) generally do not have production ranges as wide as the Ribe whorls (shown in black), nor do they produce such tightly twisted thread, but they are more efficient at producing thread across their entire range. For the most part, these whorls more easily produce thread near their upper and lower limits than the Ribe-style whorls. The cones and bicones have much wider ranges of production, but they are less efficient at the upper end of their range, meaning a shorter draft of the fibers and closer attention to the spindle is required to create thread at the upper limit. (The remaining triangles on the chart represent other miscellaneous shapes tested.)

14 Bender Jørgensen, “Textiles and Textile Implements,” 66. 15 Else Østergård, Woven into the Earth: Textiles from Norse Greenland, 2nd ed. (Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press, 2009), 48.

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Karen Nicholson

Figure 2.8: Spindle shafts carved of maple wood, each 30 centimeters long and 3 grams in weight. Left: uniform diameter; center: Greenland style, with a thicker area toward the top; right: Ribe style, with tapered ends. Photo: Frank Nicholson.

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Spindle Whorl Design

Figure 2.9: Left: cloth fragment (D3150); right: two cloth fragments (D6010), as illustrated in Ribe Excavations 1970–76, vol. 3, p. 61, fig. 3. Photo: Courtesy of the Sydvestjyske Museer, Ribe, Denmark.

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Karen Nicholson

Figure 2.10: Tabby-weave sample, woven from thread spun with whorl no. 2. Photo: Frank Nicholson.

46

Spindle Whorl Design

Figure 2.11: Twill-weave sample, woven from thread spun with whorl no. 6 on the Ribe-style shaft. Photo: Frank Nicholson.

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Karen Nicholson There were two textile remnants found at Ribe (fig. 2.9). In the excavation report, Lise Bender Jørgensen notes that the twill artifact resembles cloth from Frisia, and the tabby artifact resembles other Danish textile artifacts.16 This experiment has shown that any of the eighth-century whorls found at Ribe could have been used to spin thread efficiently at the gauge found in these textile artifacts. While it is not possible to know for certain, it is plausible that the cloth unearthed at Ribe was locally made, particularly the tabby cloth. To test this hypothesis, samples of woven cloth were created. The tabby artifact (D6010) is described as having “very fine and tightly spun” threads woven at 10 warp threads and 12 weft threads per centimeter.17 Based on the optimum production capacity of the whorls, a 15-gram cone (whorl no. 2) was chosen, and thread was spun at a gauge of 17 wpc. The resulting woven sample has 10 warp threads and 12 weft threads per centimeter, the same as in the artifact (fig. 2.10). In the sample tabby weave, there is space between the threads; they are not packed tightly together, just as in the artifact D6010. The 2/2 twill artifact (D3150) is described as being of “rather coarse yarn” woven at 10 warp threads and 9 weft threads per centimeter.18 This is more densely woven than the tabby artifact, and from the photograph, the threads appear slightly thicker than the threads in the tabby cloth. A woven sample was created by spinning at 14 wpc, using a 26-gram cone (whorl no. 6) on the Ribe-style shaft. The resulting sample is a close match (fig. 2.11). While it may never be known if a particular whorl produced the thread of a particular cloth, this experiment has shown that whorl design does affect the qualities of the thread produced. The eighth-century whorls found at Ribe could have produced a wide range of thread sizes suitable for a variety of cloth characteristics. They are particularly well suited to spin thread for the types of textiles found at the site. The threads they naturally produce tend to be more tightly twisted than that produced with modern spindles or many reproduction whorls from earlier periods, and they tend to produce that thread efficiently.

16 Bender Jørgensen, “Textiles and Textile Implements,” 61. 17 Ibid., 78. 18 Ibid.

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The Shirt Attributed to St. Louis

Tina Anderlini

The thirteenth-century shirt attributed to Saint Louis, King Louis IX of France,1 is one of the most interesting items of underwear to survive from the Middle Ages. In the treasury of the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, the garment was kept in a glass reliquary from 1970 to 2012, during which time its shape and characteristics were the subject of many questions and hypotheses, with greater and lesser degrees of accuracy.2 Since 2012, the shirt has been in a showcase, making access easier. The author had the opportunity to study the garment, out of its shrine for the first time since 1970, in

I wish to thank Elisabeth Ruchaud, Georges Bernage, Patricia Fogli-Iseppe, Marie De Rasse, Laurette Estève, Benoît Billion, Catherine Lagier, Jean and Claudine Maldonado, Caroline Piel (Conservateur général des Monuments Historiques), Patrick Raffin (Recteur-Archpriest of Notre-Dame de Paris), and, in particular, Laurent Prades (Régisseur of Notre-Dame de Paris) for making my examination of the relic possible, and Friar Luc Mathieu (Convent of St. François, Paris) for allowing the examination of Isabelle de France’s auqueton. I also thank Gaelle Bernard and Thomas Schmuziger for their precious help during the first examination of the shirt and the examination of Isabelle de France’s auqueton. Additional thanks to Marie Striebel (Office de Tourisme de Melun) for allowing me to approach the cilice; Friar Eduardo Zamaro Méndez (Monastery of La Huerta, Spain) and Chica Mantilla de los Rios for their help with Rodrigo Ximenez de Rada’s shirt; Suora Chiara Agnese and Suora Massimiliana (Convent of St. Clare in Assisi) and Maria Giorgi (restorer) for their help with the St. Clare and St. Francis relics; Arthur Scharag for his help with St. Elizabeth of Thuringia’s dress in Oberwalluf, Germany; and Marie Chantal Cadieux and Roy Worrall for assistance with English. And, of course, Robin Netherton, Gale Owen-Crocker, and Monica Wright for all their help and support and for putting this text into academic English.   1 The son of Louis VIII and Blanche of Castile, Louis lived from April 25, 1214, to August 25, 1270, and reigned as Louis IX, King of France, from 1226 to 1270.  2 The most accurate is Sophie Desrosiers, “Dessous Royaux du XIIIe Siècle,” Histoire et Images Médiévales 6 (Aug.–Oct. 2006): 72–78. For other interesting observations about the St. Louis shirt, see Dorothy Burnham, Cut My Cote (Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum, 1973), 12; Heather Rose Jones, “Another Look at St. Louis’s Shirt,”  originally published in  Tournaments Illuminated  137 (Winter 2001), 22–23, and updated in 2004 with additional comments at http://heatherrosejones. com/stlouisshirt (accessed Sept. 16, 2014); and Nadège Gauffre-Fayolle, “Une Définition du Sousvêtement Médiévale à Partir de la Comptabilité de la Cour de Savoie,” in Le Corps et Sa Parure (The Body and Its Adornment), Micrologus, Natura, Scienze e Societa Medievali 15 (Florence: Sismel, Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2007), 313.

Tina Anderlini March 2011, as part of the preparation of one of a series of articles that appeared in the French magazine Moyen-Âge.3 Gaelle Bernard, a professional historical costumer specializing in the medieval period, assisted with the analysis of the construction and the identification of stitches. The author returned in March 2013 to take additional pictures and measurements for the present article. HISTORY OF THE GARMENT

The first record of the relic dates to 1418, when it appeared in the inventory of Charles VI’s treasury.4 The shirt reappeared in 1422, in Regnault Doriac’s registers concerning items sold to pay for the king’s funeral. In 1480, it was listed in the treasury inventories of the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris. Subsequently, around 1575, it was deposited in a small, broken, ivory casket. During the seventeenth century, the shirt was moved to another reliquary, along with a relic that allegedly belonged to St. Simeon as well as the supposed shroud used to wrap the True Holy Cross. The shroud and the shirt were still together when, on March 12, 1791, King Louis XVI ordered them to be transferred to the abbey of Saint-Denis. In 1795, the shirt, along with other relics, was deposited in the Cabinet des Médailles of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. It was then described as “une chemise que portait Saint Louis dans sa captivité” [a shirt that St. Louis wore in his captivity].5 Finally, in 1804, the relic was entrusted to the Canon d’Astros6 and transferred to its current location at Notre Dame. Displayed with King Louis’s discipline,7 it is the property of the French Republic. The relic was examined and measured for the first time on January 11, 1958. It was then rolled, tied, and placed upon a piece of embroidered silk, which lay upon a red velvet cushion inside the neo-Gothic reliquary where the shirt had previously been contained. In 1970, this reliquary was replaced by a transparent box, where the

 3 Tina Anderlini, with Gaelle Bernard and Thomas Schmuziger, “La Chemise de Saint Louis, Nouveaux Regards,” Moyen-Age 84 (Sept.–Oct. 2011): 46–59. New observations and analyses as well as experiments are included in the present article.   4 The historical summary in this section is derived from Sophie Desrosiers and Danielle GaboritChopin, “Chemise de Saint Louis,” in Le Trésor de la Sainte-Chapelle, Jannic Durand and MariePierre Laffitte, exhibition catalog (Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 2001), entry no. 68, 231–32. Before its recording in 1418, the shirt and other relics of St. Louis may have been in the possession of the royal family. Gaborit-Chopin, curator of the Département des Objets d’Art in the Musée du Louvre, supposes that the relics could have been given to King Charles VI (1368–1422) in hope of bringing him some comfort for his disease. Charles VI suffered from mental illness from 1392. The items could also have reappeared in 1392, when St. Louis’s relics were transferred to Saint-Denis in the shrine ordered by Charles V (1338–80).   5 Inventory of the items given on the 18th Brumaire year IV (Nov. 9, 1795). Desrosiers and GaboritChopin, “Chemise de Saint Louis,” 231.   6 Paul Thérèse David d’Astros (1772–1881), abbot and canon of Paris at the beginning of the nineteenth century, later cardinal and archbishop of Toulouse.   7 A kind of scourge.

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The St. Louis Shirt shirt was displayed on a hanger attached to the lid. Thus hanging, the shirt remained sealed in that box until our visit in the evening of March 17, 2011.8 At its first recorded appearance, the shirt was already damaged: The 1418 inventory entry noted the absence of the left sleeve. Not only the sleeve but also a large part of the front (including half of the central gore) is now missing. Louis IX was canonized in August 1297. It is understandable that such a personal object as his shirt should become a holy relic. As an item of underwear, the shirt is the most intimate garment, one normally hidden from public view.9 Its proximity to the body and intimate nature support its transformation into relic. Indeed, a story about a shirt given to the king explains the particular force of this intimate garment. A Syrian chief, called the Old Man of the Mountain, sent the king his own shirt, according to Joinville’s Life of St. Louis: Within the fortnight the Old Man’s messengers returned to Acre and brought the Old Man’s shirt to the king. They told the king, on the Old Man’s behalf, to understand the meaning of the shirt in this way: Just as the shirt is closer to the body than any other piece of clothing, so the Old Man wished to hold the king closer in his love than any other king.10

It has even been suggested that the Notre-Dame shirt was indeed the Old Man’s,11 but this is unlikely.12 MATERIALS

The analyses of 1958 and 1970 established that the fabric, a basic tabby weave, is of lightweight bleached linen, z-spun, with 28 warp and weft threads per centimeter.13 What remains of the shirt shows some tiny holes, bloodstains, and a few rust stains. The 1970 report concluded that although the shirt had been washed at some point with   8 Close study of the shirt was impossible while it was hanging in this box. The shape of the shirt, and particularly the construction of the sleeve and armhole, remained mysterious, which is why different patterns have been proposed since 1970. Once the shirt came out of its shrine, previous descriptions were proved inaccurate.   9 Exceptions are for members of the low classes when engaged in work, or for any people when being humiliated or to show humility. 10 “Dedans la quinzeinne revindrent les messages le Vieil en Acre, et apporterent au roy la chemise de Vieil et distrent au roy de par le Vieil que c’estoit senefiance que aussi comme la chemise est plus pres du cors que nul autre vestement, aussi veult le Viex tenir le roy plus pres a amour que nul autre roy.” Jean de Joinville, Vie de Saint Louis, ed. and trans. to modern French by Jacques Monfrin (Paris: Garnier, 1995), 414, §456. 11 “Rapport d’Inventaire de Notre-Dame de Paris: Inv. NDP no. 296” (inventory record, Notre-Dame Cathedral, Paris, Sept. 2010; henceforth NDP), 3, citing Louis Le Rouzic, Le Trésor de Notre-Dame de Paris (Lyon: Lescuyer, 1951), 54, which in turn refers to Antoine-Pierre-Marie Gilbert, archaeologist and Grand Sonneur de Notre-Dame (1785–1858), writing in 1821 in his Description historique de la basilique métropolitaine de Paris (Paris: A. Le Clère, 1821), 358. 12 As will be shown below, the shirt has affinities with other garments from Western Europe. 13 “toile de lin blanchi, filé avec une torsion Z, 28 fils au centimètre dans chaque direction”; Desrosiers and Gaborit-Chopin, “Chemise de Saint Louis,” 231.

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Tina Anderlini ashes or soap, the bloodstains indicated that it had not been cleaned since it was worn.14 Tiny halos around the bloodstains suggest that attempts were made to reduce them. Two elements of the relic do not date from the thirteenth century: a few small threads of red velvet from the neo-Gothic reliquary cushion found randomly on the garment, and a parchment label sewn onto the left side identifying the owner of the shirt. The latter reads: “C’est la chemise de môns. Saint Loys jadis Roy de Fran[ce] et n’y a que une manche. N.” [This is the shirt of my lord St. Louis, formerly king of France, and there is only one sleeve. N.] At the official “recognition” of the relic in 1958, M. Mahieu, Curator of the Archives Nationales, suggested that the handwriting and stitching affixing the label dated from the fifteenth century.15 The label, as we discovered in 2011, was in fact sewn in a way that pierced both front and back of the garment, creating asymmetry when the shirt was hanging. For the new 2012 display, the label has been detached to free the back of the shirt and sewn again only to the front (fig. 3.1). We can now correct the asymmetry, but, unfortunately, it returns when the shirt is hanging, making the armhole seem longer in the back than in the front (fig. 3.2). CONSTRUCTION OF THE BODY

The shirt was originally composed of ten pieces, excluding trimmings. The shape of the shirt body appears to be trapezoidal from the shoulders.16 It is made of two main pieces of fabric, with a little more length given to the front piece so that the shoulder seam falls somewhat to the back. This observation supports Sophie Desrosiers’s hypothesis and disproves the assumption made by both Dorothy Burnham and Heather Rose Jones that the front and the back were made of a single piece of fabric.17 When the shirt is displayed resting on its back, the shoulder seam is not visible. Two central gore inserts, each made of two pieces (one of those halves missing in the front), give breadth to the garment (see fig. 3.1). The surviving sleeve consists of one main piece, which has a very individual shape that will be discussed later, and an underarm gusset longer than it is wide. Figs. 3.3 and 3.4 show the author’s measurements of the front and back body pieces. ­ easured the Different measurements have been recorded in the past.18 This author m garment’s length at 120 centimeters from the shoulder to the hem. The 2010 inventory 14 “L’examen réalisé en 1970 par le Laboratoire de recherche des musées de France a prouvé que la chemise, lavée avec des cendres ou de la saponaire, montre encore quelques infimes traces de sang et qu’elle n’a pas été nettoyée depuis qu’elle a été portée.” Ibid., 232. 15 NDP, 3, citing “Procès-verbal de la reconnaissance d’une relique conservée à Notre-Dame et désignée ‘Chemise de Saint Louis,’” Registres Capitulaire 15 (Jan. 11, 1958): 335–39. 16 Nadège Gauffre-Fayolle mistakenly described it as rectangular to the waist, where the adding of gores enlarged the garment. Gauffre-Fayolle, “Une Définition du Sous-vêtement,” 313. 17 Desrosiers, “Dessous Royaux,” 73; Burnham, Cut My Cote, 12; Jones, “Another Look at St. Louis’s Shirt.” 18 Unless otherwise detailed, the measurements given are the ones taken in March 2011 and March 2013. Most of the measurements (as well as equivalents in inches) will be indicated on the drawings and will not be discussed here.

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The St. Louis Shirt report, certainly based upon the 1970 observations, states it measured 122 centimeters. The 1958 record indicates a length of 98 centimeters at the front and 109.4 centimeters at the back.19 The length is not uniform. It is a long shirt, but the king himself was allegedly tall; Joinville wrote, “Never have I seen a more handsome armed man, for he seemed to tower head and shoulders above all his people.”20 Of course, Joinville’s statement may be symbolic, the height of the king being the reflection of his noble spirit, but people living in the thirteenth century are thought to have been about as tall as we are today.21 A man today might be considered tall at 1.85 meters (about six feet) or more. In addition to being tall, King Louis was also thin (this fact having been revealed by analysis of his jaw), though he was not undernourished.22 Perhaps his slenderness explains the shirt’s breadth of 47 centimeters across the shoulders, rather narrow for such a tall man. The shirt widens quickly, increasing from 74 centimeters at the waist to a little more than 130 centimeters at the hem. Our measurements at the hem were taken mostly from the back, since a part of the front is missing. The hem does not appear as a perfect, continuous line on the whole width of the garment because the edges lift a little at each attachment of two different parts. Each side of the main back piece is about 45 centimeters wide at the hem. The gore halves measure 20.5 and 21 centimeters, so the gore insertion is a little over 40 centimeters wide in total, with a height of 67 centimeters for the back gore and 69.8 for the front gore. Therefore, the circumference of the shirt at the hem must have been between 260 and 265 centimeters. It may seem voluminous, but one must remember that the wearer of this shirt would have had to ride a horse. Artworks such as the Bavarian sculpture known as the Bamberg Rider23 show us that a large amount of fabric was necessary for riding clothes because the thighs and most of the legs had to be covered. This explains the breadth of this unslit shirt. Desrosiers hypothesized that the underarm gusset was wider than its length, extending farther into the sleeve than into the body of the shirt.24 Once the sleeve 19 NDP, 3, citing “Reconnaissance d’une relique.” This source provides no information about the points at which the measurements were made, so it is possible that these significantly shorter length measurements reflect distances from the neckline to the hem, rather than from the shoulder to the hem. I extend thanks to Robin Netherton for calling attention to this possibility. 20 “Mes onques si bel armé ne vi, car il paroit de sur toute sa gent des les espaules en amon [.  .  .]” Joinville, Vie de Saint Louis, 282, §228. 21 Richard H. Steckel, “New Light on the ‘Dark Ages’: The Remarkably Tall Stature of Northern European Men During the Medieval Era,” Social Science History 28, no. 2 (Summer 2004): 211–28. Although mainly about Northern Europe, Steckell’s article shows the similarity between contemporary and medieval sizes. Tall men and women were not entirely rare during the Middle Ages in the south. The Count of Toulouse, who died at the end of the tenth century, has been estimated to have been about 1.85 meters (about six feet) tall, give or take 4 centimeters; Le Comte de l’An Mil, Eric Crubézy et al., Aquitania, supp. 8 (Talence, France: Fédération Aquitania, 1996), 104–6. It is likely that the situation was the same in thirteenth-century France. 22 Information given by Laurent Prades, régisseur of Notre-Dame, during our visit. 23 About 1230, Bamberg Cathedral, Germany. Available for view online at http://art-history-images. com/photo/4512 (accessed Sept. 16, 2014). 24 Desrosiers, “Dessous Royaux,” 73.

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Figure 3.1: The so-called Shirt of St. Louis, spread out to show the gores, in its new showcase in the Treasury of Notre-Dame, Paris. All photos and drawings accompanying this article are by Tina Anderlini, except as noted.

was unfolded, it became apparent that the opposite was the case: The gusset is 17 centimeters high and 12 centimeters wide. It attaches to the body from chest height to waist height, which can also be observed in several thirteenth-century artworks.25 25 For instance, see the statue of a bagpipe player from the Maison des Musiciens in Reims (midthirteenth century), now in the Musée Saint-Rémi, Reims, available for view online at http://www. kornbluthphoto.com/images/ReimsChevrette4.jpg (accessed Sept. 16, 2014). The shape of the sleeve indicates a large armhole, which, for economical reasons, could be constructed with gussets.

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Figure 3.2: The back of the shirt, hanging.

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Figure 3.3: Measurements of the front body of the shirt. Missing parts are shaded in gray. Length, shoulder to hem: 120 cm (47.2") Width at top: 47 cm (18.5") Width at level of C: 50 cm (19.7") Width at sleeve/gusset junction: 56 cm (22") Width at gusset end: 69 cm (27.2") Width at level of B: 74 cm (29.1") A to B: 69.8 cm (27.5") A to A1: ca. 21 cm (ca. 8.3") A1 to A2: 45 cm (17.7") B to C: 33 cm (13"); 31.5 cm (12.4") between the V and reversed-V ornaments D1 to D2: 13.8 cm (5.4") E1 to E2: 13.6 cm (5.4") D2 to E1, straight across: ca. 19.5 cm (ca. 7.7")

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Figure 3.4: Additional measurements of the body of the shirt, from the back. Missing parts are shaded in gray. Shoulders are seamed on the back. Hem width across back, between side seams: 131.5 cm (51.8") Estimated total circumference at hem: 260–265 cm (102.4–104.3") A to B: 66–67 cm (26–26.4"); difference reflects the curve at A. A1 to A: 20.5 cm (8.1") A to A2: 21 cm (8.3")

CONSTRUCTION OF THE SLEEVE

The sleeve is 46 centimeters long, which seems rather short in proportion to the shirt length. We finally came to the conclusion that the sleeve would not have been fulllength, as explained further below. The hem of the sleeve is simply rolled and sewn with an overstitch or a running stitch (both stitches were used on different parts of the hem, the overstitch used mainly at the junction). The wrist is narrow, at 18 centimeters around (fig. 3.5, top). It is difficult to imagine that a man of St. Louis’s size would have been able to get his hand through a sleeve as narrow as this, yet the garment has clearly been worn. One theory accounted for the 57

Tina Anderlini narrow wrist by suggesting that this was a woman’s shirt.26 However, a comparison with the auqueton27 of Louis’s sister, Isabelle of France, seems to rule out the theory that the Notre Dame garment was a woman’s: Although the shape of the neck openings of the two garments is identical, the cut of the body is different. Isabelle’s auqueton provides space for her breasts, whereas the shirt in Notre-Dame lies flat against the chest. One was made for a female, the other for a male. Another possible answer appeared as the sleeve was studied. Two different ways of joining the fabric had been used on the long seam that runs down the arm. A flat-felled seam with overstitch was used on most of this seam, but, in the last 16 centimeters along the lower arm, two narrow hemmed edges, forming lips, joined by an overstitch, replace the flat-felled seam (fig. 3.5, bottom). This part of the seam is fragile, and it is rather surprising to find a weaker seam here. The most logical explanation for both the difference in the stitching and the narrowness of the end of the sleeve was that this part of the seam may simply have been sewn up every time the king put on the shirt, and unstitched when he took it off, as was often the case with tunics at that time.28 If the sleeve of the shirt was shorter than that of the tunic worn over it, it would be advantageous to have it sewn as snugly as possible. It seems probable that the sleeve reached only to the forearm. A circumference of 18 centimeters at the middle of the forearm seems like a reasonable diameter for a slim adult. It is possible that the length of the sleeve was determined by the size of the original piece of fabric (see below, p. 67). However, a shorter sleeve on a hidden garment is not surprising and would have had advantages for both comfort and cut. Images of thirteenth-century tunics often show sleeves that are straight and tight along the forearms. Sewing closed not only the tunic sleeve but also the shirt sleeve would have created a more aesthetically pleasing look. The wearer could not have dressed himself easily alone but would have needed the help of a servant. Well-sewn sleeves were an indication of high social status and a sign of elegance. The shape of the sleeve (fig. 3.6, top) is also significant. It is wide at the armhole (78 centimeters around, including gusset) and gets narrower, coming in extremely close at the forearm below the elbow (32 centimeters at a point 16 centimeters from the sleeve hem; see fig. 3.6, bottom). That is comparable to the shapes of tunic sleeves in thirteenth-century artworks and is totally different from the sleeves of the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries. This valuable information supports the dating of the shirt to the thirteenth century. The armhole is of a slightly curved shape, identical to the armhole

26 “Elle ressemble à celle d’une femme, l’ouverture du poignet qui est fort étroite ne permet pas de croire qu’elle ait pu servir à tout autre usage” [It resembles that of a woman; the very narrow wrist opening would lead one to rule out other possibilities]; NDP, 3, citing Le Rouzic, Trésor de Notre-Dame, 54. 27 A padded undergarment; see discussion below, p. 67. This garment has been studied by Sophie Desrosiers in “Dessous Royaux,” 74–76, and by Gaelle Bernard and myself; Tina Anderlini, with Gaelle Bernard and Thomas Schmuziger, “La Bienheureuse Isabelle de France: Une Étude de sa ‘Chemise,’” Moyen-Age 83 (July–Aug. 2011): 53–57. 28 For instance, see Guillaume de Lorris, Le Roman de la Rose, trans. Armand Strubel (Paris: Librairie Générale Française, 1992), vv. 91–93, v. 2167.

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Figure 3.5: Top: The narrow lower opening of the sleeve. Bottom: Inside of the lower part of the sleeve, with the distinctive seams of this area. The seam at the center shows the overstitched portion that might have been resewn with each wearing. The cuff edge is visible at the bottom and at the right.

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The St. Louis Shirt Figure 3.6 (opposite): Top: The sleeve. Bottom: Measurements of the sleeve. Lower opening circumference: ca. 18 cm (ca. 7.1") A to E: 46 cm (18.1") A to B: 9 cm (3.5") B to C: 4 cm (1.6") B to D1: 16 cm (6.3") D to D1: 16 cm (6.3") E to E3: 39 cm (15.4") Note: On the left armhole, this measurement is 39 cm (15.4") in front and 42 cm (16.5") in back. E to E1: 22 cm (8.7") E1 to E3: 17 cm (6.7") E1 to E2: 12 cm (4.7")

of Isabelle’s sleeveless auqueton and, from even earlier, of the gown of Elizabeth of Thuringia (1207–31),29 and of St. Francis’s and St. Clare’s relics in Assisi, Italy.30 SEAMS AND CONSTRUCTION

Most of the seams are of a flat-felled type with the edges sewn down with an overstitch (fig. 3.7), but some are individual in that they are also covered with an applied binding. The stitches are very small (each one about three threads of the fabric) and, as may be seen from the reverse side, extremely consistent. The seams with additional applied binding are located at the tops of the gores (figs. 3.8 and 3.9). Based on recent experiments,31 it appears that this method was the means of securing this part of the cloth, which contains small folds. The gore pieces are not complete triangles, but rather have their top points cut off at an angle. The triangular shape of the gore inserts is created by these small folds drawing up the fabric at the tops of the gores. The two halves that constitute each gore are overstitched together along their selvages on the outside of the garment, in the simplest way. (Although one of the front gore halves is missing, the center seam remains.) Such a design for the gores appears to have some advantages for the general appearance of the shirt. While hanging (see fig. 3.2), the shirt looks rectangular when, in fact, it is trapezoidal. This illusion is created by the central seam and the tiny pleats at the tops of the gores. The result of this is that the gores lie hidden within the shirt, diminishing the trapezoidal appearance and enhancing the vertical one. Furthermore, recent experiments showed that the central seam in the gore was of primary importance for achieving this result, which could explain the false seams on gores made in one piece that have been observed on some

29 Reiner Haussherr, Die Zeit der Staufer (Stuttgart: Württembergisches Landesmuseum, 1977), vol. 1, Katalog, 615, 620–21. The gown is in St. Martin’s Church, in Oberwalluf, near Wiesbaden, Germany. 30 Observations made by the author of the original garments in the Convent of St. Clare, Assisi. 31 By the author and others, following the publication of Anderlini, “La Chemise de Saint Louis.”

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Tina Anderlini other archaeological garments.32 The main purpose of these false central seams may not have been aesthetic, but practical, as the garment falls differently with or without them. The neck opening is finished by a narrow facing on the right side, and the tip is embellished with a small reversed V, or, more precisely, a crow’s foot (fig. 3.10, top). A similar V-shape embellishment is visible on the tops of the gores as well. This small detail is significant because we also see it on Isabelle’s auqueton, the neck opening of which is finished with a kind of bias binding. The inside and the outside of that garment are similar except for one detail: a small reversed V-shape on the neck opening. This decoration appears to be the only way to discern the difference between the inside or outside of the auqueton. The seam allowances of Louis’s shirt appear on the displayed side of the shirt. Experts who saw the shirt hanging in its previous display case generally assumed it was displayed inside out,33 but it seems likely that the seam allowances were intentionally placed on the outside for the comfort of the wearer. A later source confirms the fact that comfort was very important: Les coutures à destre et à senestre Doivent estre de sy soubtil ouvraige Qu’elles ne blessent34 [The right and left seams must be of such a delicate work that they don’t hurt]

Although this is a 1488 text, the issue of comfort already existed in the thirteenth century, particularly if this shirt, against the skin, had to be worn by a man wearing military equipment, as would have been the case if this were Saint Louis’s shirt. Outside seam allowances would have been more comfortable.35 Similar decoration on the garments of Isabelle of France and Louis seems to indicate that Louis’s shirt was constructed with the seam allowances on the outside, suggesting that the way it is hanging does not constitute an accident. Moreover, a close examination of the seams at the top of the gores shows that the side that is on display is more neatly sewn than the side that is hidden (fig. 3.11), providing another clue.

32 For instance, Herjolfsnes no. D10584 (earlier designated no. 42), fourteenth century, National Museum of Copenhagen, Denmark, where a false seam can be found in the middle of a side gore. Else Østergård, Woven into the Earth, 2nd ed. (Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press, 2009), 171. 33 Robin Netherton (pers. comm.) has suggested that this was to show the label that was sewn to the inside, identifying the garment with St. Louis. However, the new evidence, as noted earlier in this article, shows that the stitching of the label pierced both the front and back of the shirt, meaning that the shirt was already oriented with the seams turned to the outside before the label was sewn, and the stitching of the label required it to remain in that orientation when on display. 34 Olivier De la Marche, Le Triomphe des Dames, ed. Julia Kalbfleisch, Rostock, Germany: Adler’s Erben, 1901), 13–14. This text is quoted in Marie De Rasse, “Le Vêtement Féminin à Paris chez les Non Nobles, XIVe–XVe siècles” (Ph.D. thesis, Université Paris-I Panthéon-Sorbonne, 2014), 108. 35 This hypothesis has already been tested and confirmed by a number of re-enactors.

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The St. Louis Shirt

Figure 3.7: Seams and stitches. The most common type of seam is flat-felled, started outsideon-inside (Fr., couture emboîtée). This can be found on the sides, on most parts of the sleeves, on most parts of the gores, and on the underarm gussets. The edges of the flat-felled seam are sewn with an overstitch (and possibly running stitch on the inside, which cannot be ascertained without unpicking the seam). The hems are folded toward the outside with an overstitch or a running stitch. The neck opening is finished with a narrow facing sewn with an overstitch on the outside. A tiny slit at the point has been sewn closed. This resewn slit and the endings of the facing form the three parts of the crow’s foot (see Fig. 3.10). A: The last 16 centimeters of the sleeve consist of two narrow hemmed edges, forming lips, joined by an overstitch. This is the part that is supposed to have been sewn and unsewn on the body. B: The tops of the gores consist of tiny folds (about fifteen on each gore). To protect this fragile part, the junction is covered by an applied binding (Fr., couture chinoise) on the outside. The ends of the binding form a V-shape. C: On the back of the shoulders, the front and back of the shirt are joined with another flat-felled seam, different from the main seams, as it is started inside-on-inside (Fr., couture rabattue). D: The back gores are sewn together with an overstitch, using the selvage edges of the fabric.

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Figure 3.8: The top of the remaining front gore piece, with its binding.

The same reversed-V decoration can be hypothesized on a third piece of underwear, upon which only the V-shaped seams, but not the binding, are visible: St. Louis’s cilice (penitence shirt), in Melun,36 which Sophie Desrosiers concluded is displayed inside out.37 Maybe the only way to know if Louis’s shirt is displayed (and has been, since the fifteenth century) inside out or was sewn to be worn this way could come from a study of the bloodstains. The flat-felled seams on the shoulders (fig. 3.12) differ from the other flat-felled seams on the shirt, in that they are larger and flatter than the rest. This design would minimize pressure on the wearer at the part of the garment where the seam was in closest contact with the skin. In contrast, the hems at the edges of the garment are either rolled (the sleeve) or double-folded (lower hem).

36 The cilice, which belongs to Église Saint-Aspais, is currently on deposit at Notre-Dame church, Melun, France. 37 Desrosiers, “Dessous Royaux,” 78.

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The St. Louis Shirt

Figure 3.9: The top of the back gore insert, with its fine pleats and binding. Some of the dark dots are remains from the velvet cushion upon which the shirt lay, rolled, in a former reliquary.

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Figure 3.10: Top: The neck opening, the facing, and its crow’s foot. Bottom: Measurements of the neck opening. (Y is a point halfway between A and B, used to figure the neck opening depths. All other measurements follow the curves.) Circumference: ca. 74 cm (ca. 29.1") Y to D: 8 cm (3.1") Y to C: 18 cm (7.1") A to B: 26.8 cm (10.6") A to C: 24 cm (9.5") B to C: 24 cm (9.5")

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The St. Louis Shirt THE LINEN BEFORE CUTTING

Fig. 3.13 shows a hypothetical cutting plan for the pieces of the shirt. As the main body piece is 90 centimeters (35.4 inches) wide at the base, the piece of linen, before the seams at the sides and the gores were sewn, must have measured about 95 centimeters (37.4 inches). The two 46-centimeter sleeves may have been cut from the same width, which may explain their length (although, as discussed above, there may have been practical reasons for that too). The gores could have easily been cut from the fabric scraps of the main pieces, a little more than 20 centimeters for each, which, added to the 47 centimeters of the shoulders, and adding seam allowances, fit neatly into our 95 centimeters. There are medieval equivalents of these measurements: Two cubits, three feet, or half a toise38 are all between 95 and 98 centimeters. The exact measurement changed from town to town and from period to period, but it is reasonable to think that the shirt was cut at a width of half a toise. For the length, 300 centimeters (about 3¼ yards) may have been enough.39 We can therefore estimate the piece of fabric as 95 by 300 centimeters, or half a toise wide by one toise and a half long. THE ALLEGED ASSOCIATION WITH ST. LOUIS

Essential issues relating to the authenticity of the shirt are its date and its quality. Pertinent to these questions are two other surviving thirteenth-century undergarments of high-ranking persons: Isabelle of France, the king’s sister, and Rodrigo Ximenez de Rada, the Spanish archbishop of Toledo. Saint Louis’s sister’s auqueton Louis’s beloved sister Isabelle is known through the biography written by her companion Agnès d’Harcourt, abbess of the order of Saint Clare in Longchamp,40 where Isabelle retired without taking the veil in 1255 and where she died on February 23, 1270, at the age of 45. As Louis’s only sister to live to an adult age and having never married, she was very close to him. She was beatified in 1521, having lived a life full of mysticism and devotion and enduring self-inflicted sufferings (possibly anorexia). The pain she made her body endure may have had consequences, as the study of the garment shows that her body was disproportioned. A 1325 inventory of Longchamp, mentioning two shirts and the auqueton, attests that it belonged to her.41 The garment remained in Longchamp until the French 38 A toise (fathom) is six feet. 39 The drawing in fig. 3.13 is for 310 centimeters (about 3⅜ yards), a bit more than necessary. 40 For further information about Isabelle’s life and about Agnès d’Harcourt, see Anne-Hélène Allirot, “Isabelle de France, Soeur de Saint Louis: La Vierge Savante: Une Étude de la Vie d’Isabelle de France Écrite par Agnès Harcourt,” Médiévales 48 (Spring 2005): 55–98; digitized edition at http:// medievales.revues.org/1050 (accessed Sept. 16, 2014). 41 Desrosiers, “Dessous Royaux,” 74.

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Figure 3.11: Inside of the front gore, showing the seams.

Figure 3.12: The right shoulder, with its wider flat-felled seam.

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The St. Louis Shirt ­ evolution, when it was taken to the convent of the Elizabethines of Paris around 1793. R Since 1904 it has remained in Paris in the convent of St. François.42 The identification of the St. François garment (fig. 3.14) as the auqueton, rather than one of the shirts, as previously believed, was made by Sophie Desrosiers.43 It is a quilted garment made of two layers of linen, padded with cotton. The origin of the term is the same as that of the military garment aketon,44 but Isabelle’s garment is a piece of civilian underwear, less documented than the military one.45 Made of fine, bleached linen of z-spun tabby weave, 25 to 27 threads per centimeter in the warp and 21 to 26 threads per centimeter in the weft,46 the sleeveless garment had certainly been worn. It is patched, and some seams are unstitched. As with Louis’s shirt, some parts are missing, but in smaller proportions: one strip of 4 to 5 centimeters (1.5 to 2 inches) at the back, and another of 2 to 3 centimeters (0.8 to 1.2 inches) from the front. The shape is trapezoidal. The proportions are close to Louis’s shirt, the tallest part measuring 106 centimeters (42 inches), and the circumference 226 centimeters (89 inches).47 Despite having the trapezoidal shape in common, the two garments differ in their main construction. The auqueton consists of a central, almost rectangular body, 47 centimeters (18.5 inches) wide at the hem, measured at the front, and 41 centimetres (16 inches) at the top, front and back; plus two lateral gores, each formed by two unpleated right-angle triangles, with the points cut off where they form the bottom of the armhole. The width of each half-gore is 4.6 centimeters (1.8 inches) at the armpit and 30 centimeters (11.8 inches) at the bottom edge. The garment as a whole is not symmetrical. The gores are sewn to the main body pieces with an overstitch. The front and back body pieces of the garment are fitted together on the shoulders, a little toward the back. The padding appears to have been prepared and sewn with a running stitch before the garment was cut.48 The lines of stitching that secure the quilted padding are irregular, with a space of 1 to 2 centimeters (0.4 to 0.8 inches) between them. The layer of padding is 2 millimeters (just over a sixteenth of an inch) thick. The neck opening is in a V-shape at the front and curved at the back. At its widest, the opening is 21 centimeters (8.2 inches) across. The depth at the front is 23 centimeters (9 inches), and 8 to 9 centimeters (3.1 to 3.5 inches) at the back. The neck opening is finished with a type of bias binding, which seems to come from the same piece of fabric. As stated

42 7, Rue Marie-Rose, 75014, Paris. 43 Desrosiers, “Dessous Royaux,” 74. 44 From the Arabic alkûtun, cotton. To avoid confusion with the military jacket, the French term auqueton has been kept for the civilian garment in this article. 45 A twelfth-century sleeve fragment of an auqueton can be seen at the church of Bussy-Saint-Martin, Seine-et-Marne, France. Considered a relic of St. Martin, it is made of silk and padded with cotton and layers of linen. Caroline Piel and Isabelle Bédat, “La Manche de Saint Martin à Bussy-SaintMartin (Seine-et-Marne),” Coré 2 (March 1997), 38–43. 46 Desrosiers, “Dessous Royaux,” 75. A complete fiber study can be found here. 47 The circumference measurement is from Desrosiers, “Dessous Royaux,” 76. Other measurements are the author’s, made on March 18, 2011. 48 Suggested by Gaelle Bernard.

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Figure 3.13: Proposed cutting diagram for the St. Louis shirt. Fabric width shown is 95 cm (37.4"), based on the actual width of the pieces plus estimated seam allowances. Total length of the fabric is 3.1 meters (3 yards, 14 inches).

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Figure 3.14: The auqueton (padded undergarment) of St. Louis’s sister, Isabelle of France (Couvent Saint-François, Paris).

above (p. 62), this binding forms a reversed V at the point, providing the only way to tell the difference between the outside and the inside. As has also been indicated, the auqueton was designed for a woman and, moreover, a disproportioned one. There is clearly a big discrepancy in the size of the breasts and the shoulders. The horizontal measurement of the left shoulder is 9 centimeters (3.5 inches) long, whereas the right one measures 11 centimeters (4.3 inches). The irregularity of the stitching on the padding is very surprising for clothing made for a princess. It may have been a saintly sign of poverty, contrasting with the quality of the fabric, or perhaps it was constructed by someone not accustomed to 71

Tina Anderlini making padded underwear. It might also have been a less important garment that did not need much attention because it was for an ascetic, or because it was underwear. The quality of Louis’s shirt makes this very last possibility doubtful. Underwear can be made with a lot of care. The archbishop’s short shirt The second archaeological piece to be compared to the alleged shirt of St. Louis belonged to Archbishop Rodrigo Ximenez de Rada, who died in Lyons on June 10, 1247, and was buried in the monastery of Santa Maria de Huerta, Spain. Rodrigo was shorter than St. Louis, probably measuring between 1.65 (5 feet, 5 inches) and 1.75 meters (5 feet, 9 inches) tall.49 The archbishop, in fact, wore two shirts: the camisa mediana [medium shirt] at 135 centimeters long, and the camisa corta [short shirt] (fig. 3.15). The latter, worn close to the body, is the more important for our study. Like the St. Louis and Isabelle garments, it was made of tabby weave of z-spun threads, in this case 27 warp threads and 21 weft threads per centimeter. The bottom of the shirt has suffered from the decomposition of the body. Its shape at first appears to be rectangular, but is in fact a trapezoid. No precise measurement of the length is known.50 Nadège Gauffre-Fayolle estimated that the shirt would fall just above the mid-thigh.51 The shirt is neither as long nor as wide as that of St. Louis. The ratio of length to shoulder width for the Rodrigo shirt is 1.66, and for the Louis shirt, 2.55. The ratio of hem width (without gores) to shoulder width for the Rodrigo shirt is 1.25, and for the Louis shirt, 1.91. Unlike the St. Louis shirt, Rodrigo’s shirt is slit: the gores are sewn together only at the top, and they remain open at their widest part. The smaller ratio explains the necessity of the slits. The gores are again pleated at the top, which seems to be extremely common on gores with a triangular shape.52 Pleated gores (fig. 3.16) can considerably increase the

49 Maria Socorro Mantilla de los Rios y Rojas et al., Vestiduras Pontificales del Arzobispo Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada. Siglo XIII: Su Estudio y Restauracion (Madrid: Instituto Conservación y Restauración de Bienes Culturales, 1995), 239. 50 Mantilla de los Rios y Rojas et al., Vestiduras, 173–79. The measurements are not included in the description of the garment. This author has contacted the restorer, Chica Mantilla de los Rios, and it seems the measurements were omitted from the book and may be lost. 51 Gauffre-Fayolle, “Une Définition du Sous-vêtement,” 313 n. 19. 52 Such pleats are found on the Kragelund gown, radiocarbon dated to 1045–1155 (National Museum of Copenhagen, no. D3956; Østergård, Woven into the Earth, 125–26); the Moselund tunic, radiocarbon dated to 1050–1155 (National Museum of Copenhagen no. C5239; Østergård, Woven into the Earth, 136–39); some Lebanese dresses from the ‘Asi el Hadath cave, dated to the second half of the thirteenth century (Directorate General of Antiquities, Beirut, Lebanon; Oussama el Kallab, “La Robe d’une Enfant du Mont-Liban au XIIIe Siècle,” in L’Orient des Femmes Vu par Christian Lacroix, exhibition catalog [Paris: Musée du Quai Branly, Arles: Actes Sud, 2011], 47–48); and some albs, such as those of Rodrigo and Thomas Becket (second half of the twelfth century, Sens Cathedral, France).

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The St. Louis Shirt

Figure 3.15: Drawing after Rodrigo Ximenez de Rada’s short shirt (monastery of Santa Maria de Huerta, Spain), another example of a thirteenth-century shirt. This one is pleated and slit.

size of a garment, as is the case for St. Francis’s shirt in Assisi.53 The gores are pleated at the top and covered with embroidery (fig. 3.17). With such a construction, the garment seems relatively narrow at the waist, yet the total hem circumference is 515 centimeters (about 203 inches). The camisa corta of Roderigo differs from Louis’s shirt in its proportions, as well as in its gores and several other elements, such as its heart-shaped neck opening, but the two share some similarities in the sleeves. The wide sleeves narrow at the wrists, and the gussets are longer than they are wide. The Roderigo armholes, however, are square at the top where the sleeve is inserted, and curved under the arm where the gusset is inserted. SHIRTS IN ART

Although archaeological finds are rare, artwork provides us with additional visual information regarding shirts. The evidence suggests that there was not a standard model of shirt in thirteenth-century Europe. Cantiga 148 of the Spanish Cantigas de

53 The “shirt” (alb) made by St. Clare (1194–1253) for St. Francis of Assisi (1181/2–1226) is constructed of two main pieces of 89 centimeters (35.4 inches) each; M. Bigaroni, H. R. Meyer, E. Lunghi, La Basilica di S. Chiara in Assisi (Perugia, Italy: Quattroemme, 1994), 290. See also Romana Mischi de Volpi, “Studio Tecnico sul Camice di Santa Chiara,” in Santa Chiara d’Assisi: Studi e Cronaca del VII Centenario, 1253–1953 (Perugia, Italy: Tipografia G. Donnini, 1954). This garment has been seen by the author at the Convent of St. Clare, Assisi.

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Tina Anderlini Santa Maria54 is about a shirt blessed at the shrine of the shirt of the Virgin at Chartres Cathedral.55 The illuminations of the Cantigas show a number of examples with great variation: differing lengths, wide or narrow at the wrists, different shapes in neck openings, and different styles and number of gores. Some designs are specific to Spain: close to the body and laced (camisa a cuerda) or embroidered (camisa margomada). In French art, the most notable examples from this period are in the Maciejowski Bible.56 Some shirts pictured in it are similar to that of St. Louis, particularly one with narrowing sleeves on the dead Saul.57 On the sculpted calendar on the west façade of Amiens Cathedral, a peasant (month of August) wears a shirt with very wide sleeves at the level of the armhole.58 A ROYAL GARMENT

None of these examples from the thirteenth century indicates that the relic in Notre Dame was not contemporary with St. Louis. The main evidence supporting a thirteenth-century date is the sleeve shape, which shares elements with Isabelle’s auqueton. The particular sleeve shape found on the shirts of both Louis and Rodrigo was not fashionable after the thirteenth century, even for more conventional clothes; it is difficult to imagine a fake relic imitating an old-fashioned type of shirt. The St. Louis shirt’s length and looseness of fit further support dating it to the thirteenth century, since in the fourteenth century shirts became shorter and tighter with changes in fashion. Françoise Piponnier supposed that the French royal family did not begin following the new fashion before king Charles VI,59 but Claude Gauvard indicates that Charles’s father, King Charles V,60 wore short clothes before he became king.61

54 Songs attributed to Alfonso X, King of Castile (1221–84). Four manuscripts from the end of the thirteenth century survive, known as To (Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional de España, MS 10069), F (Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale, MS b.r. 20), T (Madrid, Biblioteca de El Escorial, MS T.I.1), and E (Madrid, Biblioteca de El Escorial, MS B.I.2). 55 For the history of this relic (in fact, a veil), see Yves Delaporte, Le Voile de Notre Dame (Chartres, France: Maison des Clercs, 1927), and Tina Anderlini, “La Chemise au Moyen-Âge, Le XIIIème Siècle,” Moyen-Age 85 (Nov.–Dec. 2011): 52–59, at 59. 56 New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, MS 638. Sydney Cockerell and John Plummer, Old Testament Miniatures (New York: Braziller, 1975). 57 Ibid., 163, fol. 35r. 58 Anderlini, “La Chemise au Moyen-Âge,” 52. 59 Françoise Piponnier, “Une Révolution dans le Costume Masculin au XIVe Siècle,” in Le Vêtement: Histoire, archéologie et symbolique vestimentaires au Moyen-Age, ed. Michel Pastoureau, Cahiers du Léopard d’Or 1 (Paris: Le Léopard d’Or, 1989), 233. Charles VI, the “mad king,” reigned from 1380 to 1422. 60 Charles the Wise (1338–80), King of France 1364–80. 61 “Le nouveau roi délaisse l’habit court des chevaliers pour prendre la robe longue des clercs et des officiers en droit” [The new king gives up the knights’ short clothing in favor of the clerics’ and law officers’ long dress]; Claude Gauvard, La France au Moyen Âge du Ve au XVe Siècle (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1996), 403, deriving from Françoise Autrand, Charles V le Sage (Paris: Fayard, 1994). However, Gauvard provides no original source.

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The St. Louis Shirt

Figure 3.16: Construction of a pleated gore with binding. Work and photos: Laurette Estève, by permission.

The fabric itself may contribute to identifying the ownership of the shirt. As the fine thread count demonstrates, it is a very lightweight fabric, thinner than Isabelle’s auqueton or Rodrigo’s shirt. The archbishop’s clothes, apart from merino wool stockings, are all of very fine linen or silk. The shirt from Notre Dame appears to be of even finer fabric. It is clearly a luxury item, which could well have belonged to a king. If we compare these three garments, worn by three of the highest-status figures of the era, to other surviving linens, the contrast is obvious. Linen textiles from the London excavations (dating from the second half of the twelfth century to the first half of the

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Tina Anderlini

Figure 3.17: Detail of St. Francis’ shirt, in fact an alb (Protomonastero di Santa Chiara, Assisi), showing the top of the left gore. The top of the pleated area is covered by embroidery.

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The St. Louis Shirt fifteenth century) contain from 15/12 to 22/22 threads per centimeter.62 A carbonized piece from Niaquusat in Greenland is 20/18 threads per centimeter.63 The Llan-gors luxury linen fragments, which were discovered in 1990 near Brecon, Wales, and date from the late ninth to early tenth centuries, are as fine as 23 threads per centimeter.64 Few examples seem to match St. Louis’s 28 threads per centimeter, which places the shirt among the finest linen garments in medieval Europe. This could be the famous linen from Rheims that was so precious and praised among the European courts, but no fragment has yet been definitely identified as the legendary linen from Rheims. Finer examples than the St. Louis shirt do exist. The linen in Rodrigo Ximenez de Rada’s camisa mediana has 31 warp threads and 28.2 weft threads per centimeter.65 Gauffre-Fayolle, in her study of the accounts of the court of Savoy, states that the finest linens were used for liturgical garments or religious linens.66 But thinner linen existed in secular contexts, too. One of the garment fragments found in the “Comte de l’An Mil” tomb, in Toulouse, is z-spun tabby weave, 32 to 35 warp threads and 32 weft threads per centimeter.67 Another fragment, probably but not certainly linen, is z-spun tabby weave, 40 warp threads and 43 to 44 weft threads per centimeter. It dates from the thirteenth or fourteenth century and was found in Montpellier.68 Finally, the linen in which the heart of the English king Richard Lionheart (1157–99) was placed, in Rouen, is the densest on record, at 50 threads per centimeter.69 Sophie Desrosiers and Danielle Gaborit-Chopin do not doubt the authenticity of the Louis shirt.70 Desrosiers considers the shirt shows Mediterranean influence: … Spanish clothes of archaeological origin … show that the model of the shirt preserved in the Sainte-Chapelle, probably of common use during the thirteenth century at the Court of Castile, could also have been adopted at the Court of France, with which it had

62 Elisabeth Crowfoot, Frances Pritchard, and Kay Staniland, Textiles and Clothing c.1150–c.1450 (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2006), 80. 63 Østergård, Woven into the Earth, 77. 64 Hero Granger-Taylor and Frances Pritchard, “A Fine Quality Insular Embroidery from Llan-gors Crannóg, near Brecon,” in  Pattern and Purpose in Insular Art,  ed. Mark Redknap et al. (Oxford: Oxbow, 2001), 92, say “approximately 25 threads per cm in both warp and weft.” The information from the Web site of the Museum of Wales, Cardiff, from 2007, states “23 threads to the centimetre—a magnificent achievement given the equipment available in the ninth and tenth centuries A.D.”; http:// www.museumwales.ac.uk/en/rhagor/article/1936 (accessed Sept. 16, 2014). 65 Mantilla de los Rios y Rojas et al., Vestiduras Pontificales, 172. 66 Gauffre-Fayolle, “Une Définition du Sous-vêtement,” 325 and n. 60. 67 Dominique Cardon, “Des Vêtements pour un Comte,” in Crubézy et al., Le Comte de l’An Mil, 163. 68 Ibid., 164. 69 Philippe Charlier et al., “The Embalmed Heart of Richard the Lionheart (1199 A.D.): A Biological and Anthropological Analysis,” Scientific Reports (2013), published online at http://www.nature. com/srep/2013/130228/srep01296/full/srep01296.html (accessed Sept. 16, 2014) 70 Desrosiers and Gaborit-Chopin, “Chemise de Saint Louis,” 232.

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Tina Anderlini intimate ties. No aberration of chronological, geographical, or social order goes against the attribution to St. Louis of this item executed with obvious elegance.71

Spanish influence would not be surprising, since the mother of Louis and Isabelle was Blanche of Castile, but the main similarity between the Spanish and the French shirts is the sleeve shape; this shape seems to have been very common in thirteenth-century noble clothing and can be found in male tunics and women’s dress in German and English art, in St. Elizabeth of Thuringia’s gown,72 and in St. Clare’s dress in Assisi.73 It seems, therefore, to have been international. In style, then, the shirt seems to have been fashionable, but not ostentatious, which accords with the king’s deliberate practice, as described by Joinville: “He told me that one should dress and arm oneself in such a way that the wise men of this century would not say it was too much nor the young men that it was not enough.”74 Though there may be little reason to doubt a thirteenth-century date for the shirt and the royal identity of its owner, we still lack archaeological pieces from other parts of thirteenth-century Europe for comparison. Louis’s shirt looks like Rodrigo’s but is not totally identical. Apart from the different neck openings, which could be caused by different geographical or period fashions,75 the original fabric width seems to have played a huge part in the final shape and the design of the gores. Considering all these elements, it remains impossible to say definitively that the shirt belonged to St. Louis. Yet, no element disproves that it was his, either. Examinations of the garment and analysis of its features indicate that it most likely dates from the thirteenth century, that it belonged to somebody very important, that it would fit someone of the size we think Louis was, and that it has striking similarities with underwear that is known to have belonged to the French royal family. The shirt in Notre Dame could well have belonged to St. Louis.

71 “… les vêtements espagnols d’origine archéologique … montrent que le modèle de la chemise conservée à la Sainte-Chapelle, probablement d’usage courant au XIIIème siècle à la Cour de Castille, pouvait aussi avoir été adopté à la Cour de France qui lui était intimement liée. Aucune aberration d’ordre chronologique, géographique ou sociale ne va donc à l’encontre de l’attribution à saint Louis de cette pièce exécutée avec un raffinement certain.” Ibid. 72 Haussherr, Die Zeit der Staufer, vol. 2, Abbildungen, 570. The lower part of the sleeve is missing. 73 Both Elizabeth’s and Clare’s dresses have simple fabric, but their shape is similar to the tunics and overtunics worn by noble women. It is therefore possible to consider them representative. Both garments have been seen by the author, who expresses gratitude to Maria Giorgi, restorer of Clare’s dress in the Protomonastero di Santa Chiara, Assisi, Italy, for her enlightening insights. 74 “Il disoit que l’en devoit son cors vestir et armer en tele maniere que les preudeshomes de cest siecle ne se deisent que il en feist trop ne que les joenes homes ne deisent que il en feist pou.” Joinville, Vie de Saint Louis, 156, §25. 75 A similar shape to Rodrigo’s can be also be found in Spain in Doña Maria’s cotton shirt. This very young infanta died in 1235 and was buried in the Royal Pantheon of San Isidoro in León. The clothes are on loan in the Museo del Traje, Madrid. For the shirt, see Joaquin Yarza Luaces, Vestiduras Ricas: El Monasterio de Las Huelgas y su época, 1170–1340 (Madrid: Patrimonio Nacional, 2005), 115.

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Angevin-Sicilian Sumptuary Statutes of the 1290s: Fashion in the Thirteenth-Century Mediterranean Sarah-Grace Heller

On July 5, 1290, a sumptuary law aimed at regulating consumption during the miseries of the long Sicilian war was promulgated in Naples by the vice-regents of the reigning king of Sicily and Naples (together known as the Regno), Charles II, prince of Salerno.1 These two Angevin-French “justiciars” were Robert II, Count of Artois, and the king’s son and heir apparent Charles Martel (Carlo Martello). The statutes were promulgated at least two other times in Provence and the Regno: We know of instances in 1292 and 1293, and other documents may have been lost, as the Neapolitan archives have suffered extensive damage.2 The Latin of this document bears the imprint of the northern French language and style of Robert as well as the Neapolitan and Mediterranean milieu of Carlo Martello. Its prohibitions offer insight into practices of consumption in the international crossroads of the Mediterranean in the late thirteenth century, where the next generation of Charles d’Anjou’s French, Provençal, and Angevin courtiers mingled with local Neapolitans, Romans, and Sicilians while A version of this paper was presented at the International Medieval Congress at Kalamazoo on May 11, 2012. I am grateful to Robin Netherton and Gale Owen-Crocker for organizing the session, and to the session participants for their comments; also to Richard Firth Green and Drew Jones for looking at the Latin, and Jonathan Burgoyne and Elizabeth Davis for help with Spanish sources; and to the Ohio State University Arts & Sciences Associate Professor Mentoring Program.   1 I use the edition of Giuseppe Del Giudice, Una legge suntuaria inedita del 1290 (Naples: Accademia Pontaniana, 1886), 157–60. Page references to this source appear in parentheses after quotations in the text of this article. Translations throughout this essay are my own.   2 Del Giudice reported finding this document in the registers of the Cancelleria de’ Re Angioini in the Archivio di Stato di Napoli; in the same registers, another document of Carlo Martello, November 23, 1292, at Aix repeated the statutes nearly verbatim. There appears to have been another version of the statutes written by Charles II as King of Hungary, addressed to the justiciars of the Terra di Lavoro (Liburia), from Naples, January 14, 1293. This law’s preamble refers to legislation by “my father,” perhaps meaning a law of Charles I that has not come to light (Del Giudice, Una legge suntuaria, 66). Léon Cadier’s transcription (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS Fr. Nouv. Acq. 10832, fol. 291; copy of register LII, fol. 97), is the remaining witness, since the original document was destroyed with most of the archives in 1943. Serena Morelli, ed., Le carte di Léon Cadier alla Bibliothèque Nationale de France: Contributo alla ricostruzione della Cancelleria Angioina (Rome: École Française de Rome, 2005), 154–57.

Sarah-Grace Heller facing hostile takeover by the Catalans and Aragonese.3 The prohibitions have been mentioned by a few scholars,4 but they have not been scrutinized closely or translated into English. A close reading of the law’s clothing prohibitions can shed light on what the elite men of the 1290s sought to wear, what they might allow the women of their households, and what was targeted for cost-cutting during a military crisis. In the second section of this essay, I will consider how these regulations fit into the broader context of thirteenth-century sumptuary legislation, and whether French, Iberian, or Roman laws were more influential as models. My broader question is this: Do these statutes constitute evidence of a culture of fashionable consumption at this time? I will argue that they do. Sumptuary laws are worth studying in the light of fashion theory. For one, they are directly related to consumption patterns that were already occurring. Moreover, they are implicitly contradictory; as Michel de Montaigne observed, they represent a restrictive reaction to consumption and perceptions of excess, while often ultimately encouraging greater consumption by making the styles they prohibit covetable rather than abhorrent.5 Fashion theory offers a method for examining seemingly contradictory or paradoxical human behavior related to consumption. Fashion’s detractors frequently condemn new styles as “irrational.” As I have argued elsewhere, it stands to reason that since many of the mechanisms of fashion defy straightforward logic, it is necessary to examine them by a logic of their own as a complex nexus of behaviors influenced by and influencing many levels of life: individual psychology, the sociology of status and how it can be manipulated, and the economics of markets and production.6 Employing a term from Roland Barthes,7 I have characterized societies that become systematically organized around constant demand for production, consumption, and display of novelty as “fashion systems.” This thirteenth-century sumptuary proclamation was promulgated some decades before the point in the mid-fourteenth century that many have accepted as the “birth” of Western fashion,8 but as I have argued, many discourses from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries make it clear that fashion was   3 On the composition of the court, see Léon Cadier, Essai sur l’administration du royaume de Sicile sous Charles Ier et Charles II d’Anjou, Bibliothèque des Écoles Françaises d’Athènes et de Rome 59 (Paris: Thorin, 1891); Paul Durrieu, Les Archives Angevines de Naples: Étude sur les régistres du roi Charles Ier (1265–1285), vol. 2, Bibliothèque des Écoles Françaises d’Athènes et de Rome 51 (Paris: Thorin, 1887).   4 For instance, Catherine Kovesi Killerby noted the law was aimed at the male nobility; Kovesi Killerby, Sumptuary Law in Italy 1200–1500 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002), 86. See also Robert Delort, Le commerce des fourrures en Occident à la fin du Moyen Age (Rome: École Française de Rome, 1978), 1:543; Salvatore Salomone-Marino, Le pompe nuziali e il corredo delle donne siciliane ne’ secoli XIV, XV e XVI, Archivio storico siciliano, n.s. 1 (Palermo: Virzi, 1876), 209–40.   5 Michel de Montaigne, “Des lois somptuaires,” in Essais, ed. Maurice Rat (Paris: Garnier, 1948), chapter 43, 1:299–302.   6 Sarah-Grace Heller, Fashion in Medieval France (Cambridge, UK: D.S. Brewer, 2007).   7 Roland Barthes, Système de la Mode (Paris: Seuil, 1967).   8  Paul Post’s thesis has been influential, “Die französisch-niederländische Männertracht einschliesslich der Ritterrüstung im Zeitalter der Spätgotik, 1350–1475: Ein Rekonstruktionsversuch auf Gründ der zeitgenössichen Darstellungen” (Diss., Halle an der Saale, 1910); for a summary of proponents of this date, see Heller, Fashion in Medieval France, 48–54.

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Sumptuary Statutes of the 1290s already d ­ eveloping systematically in courts and urban areas of Europe. I will argue that this law, while conservative on many levels, also reveals some of the mechanisms of fashion in place in the Angevin court of Sicily. I do not mean to place the consumer habits and desires of the Regno in the 1290s on the same footing as those of today. They differ by several orders of magnitude. The roots of modern Western fashion are long in their development, however, and evaluating the degrees to which different stages in that development were systematic is worthwhile for better understanding the longer history of fashion, as well as this unique moment on its own terms. I propose to draw upon a set of interconnected criteria for evaluating the presence of a fashion system in a culture as a kind of interrogatory in reading this law.9 Briefly:

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A culture of fashion espouses a particular sense of time, privileging the new over the recent past as recent styles are discarded in favor of novelty, and as new arbiters are favored over established authorities. What does this law tell us about how often change in wardrobes occurred in the Regno in the 1290s? Fashionable cultures, when systematic, require constant rather than intermittent demand for change. Personal choices with regard to small details gradually have a cumulative trajectory toward excess and exaggeration of styles, yet those choices are restricted by the rule of imitation of a general silhouette.10 What types of gradual change and personal choices does this text suggest were present, and conversely, what role did conformity play? What evidence of variety can be discerned from its lexicon? Fashion entails an economy of words. Value is assigned through discourses of admiration and criticism, skewing more concrete measures such as production cost or weight.11 Sumptuary laws constitute important discourses of censure as well as permission. They give insights into the tensions and anxieties regarding spending and the meaning of appearance. Fashion is theatrical: In order for “conspicuous consumption” to be a tool of social advancement, it requires an audience.12 Who was the audience for this law? How could one impress? An established fashion system tends toward a generalization of appearances, extending the accessibility of consumption and imitation to an ever-broadening audience, which in turn finances greater quantities of unique goods. Gilles Lipovetsky called this the “democratization” of appearances,13 a term that medievalists may justifiably resist as anachronistic, but the principle of

 9  Heller, Fashion in Medieval France, 16–45. 10 Gilles Lipovetsky, L’Empire de l’éphémère (Paris: Gallimard, 1987), 35–44; Herbert Blumer, “Fashion: From Class Differentiation to Collective Selection,” Sociological Quarterly 10 (1969): 275–91, at 283; Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 249. 11 Barthes, Système de la Mode, 9–10, 14, 56–57, 62. 12 Thorstein Veblen’s famous term, from The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions (New York: MacMillan, 1899). 13 Lipovetsky, L’Empire de l’éphémère, 47, 72, 75.

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Sarah-Grace Heller expanding imitation at multiple levels of society is worth exploring. How many levels of society were restrained by this law, which is to say, how many groups were considered perilously active consumers? Sumptuary laws were promulgated by rulers, but fashion’s “rulers” often emerge from the margins of the elite. Because sumptuary laws express attempts to regulate a social hierarchy by designating strict visual codes of appearance for each level, they often suggest tensions between the official rulers (whose legitimacy often is expressed by traditional appearance rooted in the past) and would-be fashionable arbiters (who gain attention and admiration by displaying exciting new things). What hierarchical tensions does this law express?

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The law’s explicit audience was the Regno’s male nobles: every “count, banneret, baron, knight, or any other man holding land from the king or Court, or in the service of one of these or under feudal obligation to one,” carefully delineating a variety of titles and several grades of dependence.14 Some statutes grant exceptions to the male nobility (for instance, allowing them to wear furs prohibited to all others), so other ranks of society are addressed implicitly but without specific status gradations. Although women are mentioned later in the law, it is not as addressees but as the responsibility of the men in their lives, not surprising given that men generally handled fines and finances in this period, but in contrast with later laws.15 Following an unusually long preamble justifying the regulations due to the urgencies of the times (discussed further below), and then a section regulating the number of meat dishes at various meals,16 the justiciars take aim at expensive furs:

14 “Quod nullus comes, banderenus. Baro, miles, et quicunque alius terram tenens in Regno a Curia vel servicium aut auxilium ipsi [variant: ipsi curie] facere obligatus aut debens”; Del Giudice, Una legge suntuaria, 158. 15 Compare statutes in France that took aim specifically at bourgeoises or that attempted to distinguish prostitutes and honest women. Concerning bourgeoises, see items 1, 2, 12 and 13 of Philip IV’s law of 1294, in Recueil général des anciennes lois françaises, depuis l’an 420 jusqu’à la révolution de 1789, ed. Jourdan, Decrusy, and Isambert (Paris: Belin-le-Prieur, 1821–33), 2:697–700. Concerning prostitutes, see the statutes of Marseille in 1265 and Montauban in 1274 and 1291, in Camille Enlart, Manuel d’archéologie française depuis les temps mérovingiens jusqu’à la Renaissance, vol. 3: Le Costume (Paris: Picard, 1916), 445. 16 The food regulations are outside the scope of this study, but it is worth nothing that Del Giudice posited Jaume I of Aragon’s law as a predecessor of Charles II’s because the parallel food prohibitions caught his attention. Both laws limit the king and his men to two meat dishes per day, but allow certain “humbler” preparations (soup in the Sicilian case, dried meat in the Aragonese, roasting for both, with variations on less limited quantities of game). The food statutes also immediately precede the clothing restrictions in both texts, as they do in the 1279 ordinance of Philip the Bold of France. In 1294, Philip the Fair included a food statute (item 14), but clothing statutes had moved to the fore. Food regulations figure in Roman sumptuary laws; Vincent J. Rosivach, “The ‘Lex Fannia Sumptuaria’ of 161 BC,” The Classical Journal 102, no. 1 (Oct.–Nov. 2006), 1–15. On food regulation, see Marilyn Nicoud, Les régimes de santé au Moyen Âge: Naissance et diffusion d’une écriture médicale, XIIIe–XVe siècle (Rome: École Française de Rome, 2007), 2 vols.

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Sumptuary Statutes of the 1290s Item quod nullus ex predictis comite ac principe dumtaxat exceptis pellibus sua raritate percaris ut pote arminiis. grisis. variis vel vayroctis vestes infoderet nisi tantum si voluerit capucia. almucias vel ciffardas. (159) [Item, that no one, except those above-mentioned nobles surrounding the count and prince, may wear furs which are expensive because of their rarity, namely ermine, gris, vair, or miniver, except on hoods, aumusses, or berrettas.]

These are the familiar prestige furs of the medieval period, imported from the Baltic: white ermine, and the coveted squirrel sciurus varius, known in French as vair when it alternated grey backs and white bellies, menu vair (miniver) when it was only the choice white bellies, and gris when it was only the backs. The French vernacular terms gris and vair penetrate the Latin here, rather than the more common Latin forms such as griseum opus or pelles griseae. The peculiar spelling of “vayroctis,” however, comes closer to the term varota used in Venice and the Papal States than any more standard Latin word.17 Similarly, the terms for the headwear items, for which such furs would be permitted as linings, suggest a polyglot audience familiar with Italian and French styles. All three terms signify types of fur-lined hoods or soft hats, styles which required fewer pelts than mantles or robe linings, making them a more frugal version of this form of ostentation.18 This statute was originally promulgated in July: Furs would hardly have been a practical necessity in the Mediterranean climate in summer, but rather the contrary. The justiciars may have been seeking to limit garments which inhibited a knight’s practical fighting abilities as much as expenditures. On another level, the preamble reviles “softness,” juxtaposing the serious situation of soldiers gathering for “rough martial exercises” with apparently antithetical displays of careful grooming and safe, soft, delicate domestic clothing.19 Fur may have been prohibited in part by analogy. Military success is represented as requiring the opposite of fashion: Funds were in short supply, but apparently so were energies for war, which the writers saw as dangerously channeled into excessive grooming and consumption of “frivolous” clothing. This is an implicit critique of clothing styles as “irrational”: The consumption these authorities witness cannot be justified by practical logic. Their anxiety exposes fashion as an established presence, laws being born old, as the adage goes. Close examination of the headwear vocabulary in that passage also reveals international currents. While doubling of synonyms is common practice in medieval texts, lexical scrutiny suggests the need for a broader vocabulary than Latin afforded. This 17 Delort, Le commerce des fourrures, 1:543; Pietro Sella, Glossario Latino Italiano: Stato della Chiesa— Veneto—Abruzzi (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostoloica Vaticana, 1944), s.v. “varota.” 18 Royal accounts and merchant records from the early fourteenth century for nobles in Artois, Paris, and Avignon call for 18 to 24 bellies for a hood, depending on whether there were three or four rows of pelts, whereas a mantle required 90 to 366 pelts. Delort, Le Commerce des fourrures, 1:304–5. 19 “Nec id putamus cedere dubium quod ubi sudores bellici armorum exercitia et incompta ut expedit species bellatorum coauluissent quieti domestice mollium vestium deliciis inhesissent et compta coma processissent in prelium extrema quod absit Regno iam supererint quod de reliquo contigisset” (158). Note that the text in this section of Del Giudice’s edition has some corruptions.

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Sarah-Grace Heller lexicon suggests variety and the availability of choices to consumers. Many of these terms continued to be in use, appearing in later laws over the centuries. It is frustratingly difficult to link medieval terms to actual styles with accuracy, or to determine how and when varying styles denoted by a single term evolved. What can be said is that this law reveals multiple styles from several different lands and languages and that retaining the style precision of the vernacular was important to the justiciars. The spelling “capucia” suggests Italian or Aragonese20 influence, an alternative spelling to the more standard Latin caputia,21 but not approaching the French capuchon or chape, Provençal capa, or Spanish capota. The term “almucia” translates the Old French aumuce, Occitan almuça, or Catalan almussa, a hood worn by secular persons of both sexes that came into fashion around the 1250s, often with a fur lining, rather than the earlier form almutia, a Latin term that entered usage as an ecclesiastical garment around 1158–60.22 The rather puzzling non-Latin form “ciffardas” proves to be a term used in the Benevento, in the hills northeast of Naples. Several fourteenth-century documents gloss this term as a synonym for berretta, a soft, fur-lined hat worn by knights as well as some clerics at this time (rather than the four-pointed stiffened cap it became later).23 In short, these are not mere synonyms, but rather styles that might be adopted by the different constituents of the Regno’s court, with nods to the northern French of Robert d’Artois, and those more assimilated to the Neapolitan language and styles of Carlo Martello. The range of vocabulary also suggests the kind of minor variations of a fashion system: men could customize their look by selecting slightly different styles to adorn the head, a prominent and visible place on the body for personal display of taste. In the next item, cloth restrictions demonstrate price consciousness. The law prohibits a number of types of exceedingly expensive cloth: Pannos quoque purpureos, aureos, sericos. vel alios etiam laneos pretii ultra tarenos auri quindecim. per cannam se non presumant induere bis tamen et non plus in anno induendi huiusmodi vicissitudine limitata. Semel videlicet in yeme et semel in estate. (159)

20 The law of Jaume I of Aragon used the term “capuciam capae”; Pierre de Marca, Etienne Baluze, and Nicolaus Specialis, eds., Marca hispanica; sive, Limes hispanicvs, hoc est, geographica & historica descriptio Cataloniae, Ruscinonis, & circumjacentium populorum (Paris: Franciscum Muguet, 1688), 1430, item VII. 21 Charles Du Fresne Du Cange, Glossarium ad scriptores mediae et infimae latinitatis (Paris: Osmont, 1733), s.v. “caputium.” 22 Trésor de la langue française informatisé (TLFi), online ed. (Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1994), http://www.cnrtl.fr, s.v. “aumusse.” Du Cange does gloss “almucium” as a hood for winter; Glossarium, s.v. “almucium.” Sella glosses it as a sacerdotal garment; Glossario, s.v. “almucia.” 23 Sella, Glossario, s.v. “ciffarda” (Benevento, 1364), and “cilfarda” (Benevento, 1327); cf. “ziffarda” (Curia Romana, 1345). Charles Du Fresne Du Cange et al., Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis (Niort, France: L. Favre, 1883–87), available online at http://ducange.enc.sorbonne.fr, s.v. “birretum.”

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Sumptuary Statutes of the 1290s [In a year it is forbidden to get new garments made of purple, gold, or silk cloth, or wool costing more than fifteen gold tarì24 a cane, more than twice. One set of such garments per change of season is permissible, once in winter and once in summer.]

“Purple” in this period was generally no longer the true Tyrian purple prized in antiquity, but the notion of “purple” still carried considerable prestige, achieved in the best recipes by overdying a woad blue dye base with a red bath.25 Gold cloth was valuable for its bullion, as well as its luminescent qualities.26 Silk, similarly, when its weave had a sheen, could confer a radiance upon its wearer; as Jane Burns has noted, the distances it traveled were part of its costly allure.27 The prohibition includes wool as well, suggesting the fine broadcloths that would have been imported from northern France. (For more on comparisons with other laws targeting specific fabrics, see below, p. 93.) This item reveals the rhythm of fashionable renewal of wardrobes in the kingdom. By limiting new garment purchases to the change of the seasons, these passages show resistance to a more accelerated rate of fashionable renewal: The Angevin-Sicilian nobles wanted new clothes more often than twice per year. To put those fabric prices in perspective, knights at Charles I’s court a few years earlier were paid wages on the days when they were actively providing service at court. Knights who had been granted a provision of land received two tarìs a day, and knights without such provisions received four. In addition, they would receive new robes at Pentecost and All Saints.28 A refinement to that statute provides an interesting lexicon of chivalric surcoats, suggesting significant minor variations in this type of outer garment: Ita quod quod in utraque vice vestitionis eiusdem liceat induentibus ipsis sibi ultra robas ipsas facere semel Guarnachiam unam simplicem. huciam et etiam coctam Arditam.29 (159) [In addition to those new clothes, it is permissible to have one “simple” garnache, houce, or cote hardie.]

In the case of these additional permitted garments, simplex or “simple” may be understood as “one-layered” or “unlined,” as linings of fur or silk greatly increased the value of a garment, in terms of not only cost and comfort, but also the visual appeal 24 The tarì or tarenus was a gold coin struck first by the Arabs of Sicily, and later the Norman, Hohenstaufen, and Angevin rulers of the Regno. Peter Spufford, Money and Its Use in Medieval Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 146, 167–68. 25 Dominique Cardon, “Violets des pourpres, bleus de pastel ou d’indigo: Le monde des indigoïdes,” in Cardon, Teintures précieuses de la Méditerranée: Pourpre, kermès, pastel (Carcassonne: Musée des Beaux-arts, 1999), 22–29. 26 Susan Mosher Stuard discusses the fashion for “gilded bodies” in fourteenth-century Italy as beginning to extend beyond courts to a broader range of consumers; Gilding the Market: Luxury and Fashion in Fourteenth-Century Italy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006). This law suggests such consumption was occurring already in the thirteenth century. 27 E. Jane Burns, Sea of Silk: A Textile Geography of Women’s Work in Medieval French Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009). 28 Durrieu, Archives Angevines, 1:122–23. 29 Var. “coctarditam.”

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Sarah-Grace Heller of the contrasting lining (not to mention improved drape). The justiciars granted this concession to fashion: Noblemen might have distinctly cut garments to wear over their armor, but they should forgo the insulating properties of a lining, as well as the exuberance of personal choice expressed by contrasting silk linings or the status-symbol value of fur. Looking closely at these styles, the garnache was a new international style of the thirteenth century. Carmen Bernis Madrazo characterizes the garment, seen frequently in the kingdoms of Iberia, as “suelto, amplio”—loose, unattached, ample—with peculiar short sleeves as its distinguishing feature.30 Enlart says the garnache (Provençal guanag) was more of a mantle with side slits, with or without sleeves, akin to a chasuble.31 To illustrate this garment’s use in a military wardrobe, the Old French statutes of the Hospitalers, headquartered on the nearby Mediterranean island of Malta, declared that the knight-brothers might have one garnache in their wardrobe (along with three shirts, three braies, a cote, a jupel, one hood, and two mantles) and that they should not remove the fur lining from the garnache in summer. This was later amended, and they were allowed two garnaches, one fur-lined and one not.32 The huciam, in French houce or houche, was wider than a surcoat, according to Rutebeuf, and layered over that garment as well as the cote.33 At times it had a kind of wing at the shoulder and open, dangling sleeves. Enlart compares it to a dalmatic.34 Adam de la Halle, an Artesian poet who traveled the Mediterranean with the Charles d’Anjou retinue, suggests in the comic “Jeu de Robin et Marion” that an affluent farmer might pair it with a surcoat, both cut from the same cloth. The rustic Gautier boasts that he is worthier than his fellow peasants of the shepherdess Marion’s love, because he is better equipped both in clothing and farming implements: J’ai au mains ronchi traiant, Bon harnas et herche et carue, Et si sui sires de no rue;

30 Carmen Bernis Madrazo, Indumentaria Medieval Española (Madrid: Instituto Diego Velasquez, 1956), 23. Cf. John Esten Keller and Annette Grant Cash, Daily Life Depicted in the Cantigas de Santa Maria (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1998), 17, where the authors describe it as “a heavier and warmer outer garment,” a cloak with “full three-quarter bell sleeves, hood, and slits at the sides,” shown in Cantiga 41. 31 Enlart, Manuel d’archéologie, 48. Cf. Sella, Glossario, s.v. “garnaca, guarnacca,” which offers the later date of 1390 for the appearance of the word at the Roman curia. 32 Godefroy, Dictionnaire de l’ancienne langue française (Paris: F. Vieweg, 1880–95), s.v. “garnache.” 33 In his poem “Leçon sur Hypocrisie et Humilité,” composed on the election of Pope Urban IV in 1261, the allegorical narrator Courtois wants to spy on the conclave electing the new pope, and to go undercover he realizes he cannot wear courtly clothing and so buys eight aunes of cheap camelin, “S’en fis faire cote et sorcot / Et une houce grant et large” [and so I had a cote and surcoat made, and a broad, loose houce]; Rutebeuf, Œuvres complètes, ed. Michel Zink (Paris: Librairie Générale Française, 2001), lines 230–31. 34 Enlart, Manuel d’archéologie, 50.

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Sumptuary Statutes of the 1290s S’ai houche and sercot tout d’un drap.35 [I’ve had many a work horse, good harness and wagons and carts, Thus I am lord of our street; I have a houce and a surcoat all of the same cloth.]

Moreover, he will inherit his mother’s hanap (goblet), grain mill, and cow (enabling milk and cheese production) one day (lines 639–44). It is easily imagined that aristocrats would laugh at his modest presumption.36 In this passage, a houce is represented as a respectable garment, if not a prestigious or splendid one. It is also a term for a horse blanket, among other things. It seems to have been a northern style, with multiple attestations in that region. The evidence suggests it could be fine or modest; an unlined houce could be imagined as sufficiently rough and manly for suitability in war. The “coctam Arditam” is a rather curious term. “Ardita” means “bold,” so literally it is a “bold cote.” Perhaps “boldness” signified suitability for military wear? That would put this garment in line with the other two surcoats featured. By morphology it could be cote hardie in French, but the Latin for it is elsewhere attested as tunica audax.37 The cote hardie has been construed as a mid-fourteenth-century garment, a tight-fitting cote with an ample skirt worn at different lengths by both sexes.38 This instance would be an early attestation of the term.39 Its cut at this time is not particularly clear from any of the contexts. The earliest noted appearance of the term is ca. 1240–80 in “Li Contes des Hiraus” [The Tale of the Herald] by Baudouin de Condé, a trouvère who was at one point in the service of Marguerite II, Countess of Flanders (noteworthy here as a court neighboring that of justiciar Robert d’Artois). The narrator mocks the pretentiously fine dress of contemporary heralds, contrasting them with the ragged figures of the old days of his memory. In former times, he said, heralds put on knights’

35 Adam de la Halle, Œuvres completes, ed. Pierre-Yves Badel (Paris: Librairie Générale Française, 1995), lines 635–38; Godefroy, s.v. “houce.” Cf. François Boucher, 20,000 Years of Fashion (New York: Abrams, 1987), 449, s.v. “huque.” 36 Other moments of vestimentary comedy in the text include Marion’s opening song hoping Robin will buy her a scarlet “cotele” with a “souskanie” and a little belt (“chainturele”) as a sign of his love (lines 1–7); Robin’s rough appearance in a “jupel” (lines 115–17) and distress that his hose are torn (line 223) is juxtaposed with the presumably well-dressed knight just arriving from a tournament who has become his rival. 37 Enlart, Manuel d’archéologie, 48. 38 Mary Houston, Medieval Costume in England and France (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1939), 222. Boucher notes it appears in the late thirteenth century but that few details are known of it then: “for men it appears to have been a surcoat open in front, split and buttoned at the sides. The sleeves were wide at first, then false,” s.v. “cotehardie,” 446. Godefroy, s.v. “cote hardie,” lists the first instances as appearing in Froissart’s poems, ca. 1360s. 39 Ruth Turner Wilcox, without substantiation, labels it an Italian fashion with long sleeves and a closefitting body; Wilcox, The Dictionary of Costume (New York: Scribner, 1969), 88. The Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini says that cottardita appeared in the last quarter of the thirteenth century and attributes it to French origins; Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini, online ed. (Rome: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, 1997–), http://tlio.ovi.cnr.it/TLIO, s.v. “cottardita.”

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Sarah-Grace Heller cast-off garments, but (constrained by their base nature) soiled the furs, chain mail, and fine fabrics in the mud, weather, and soot:40 Il ont mis jus les hiraudies Et viestent les cotes hardies Et les robes as chevaliers.41 [They have laid aside the tabards And put on the cotes hardies And the robes of knights.]

By the second half of the thirteenth century in Flanders, it was clearly a garment recognizably reserved for the chivalric class, associated with other military accessories such as cotes figured with coats of arms (“cote armoire,” line 460), armored hose (“sollers feretés,” line 463), and tight coats of arms in linen and sendal (“En ces cotes d’armes estroites, / De toile ou de cendal, frotées,” lines 484–85). In sum, this varied lexicon of surcoats suggests that many decades prior to the fourteenth-century “birth of fashion,” thirteenth-century knights expected and were permitted individual choice in their appearance, that there was a significant degree of fashionable variety, and that styles traveled. This law offers considerably more explanation of its motivations than most, which is useful in considering why it would permit these outer garments while prohibiting comfortable or sumptuous linings. The law’s preamble emphasizes that noble men must make war preparations their priority. The justiciars’ wording refutes the commonplace notion that looking impressive equated to military might: Et si toto vite hujus decursu perutilis isto tamen molesto Guerrarum et discriminum tempore dignoscitur perutiliter admodum opportuna ut per modestie limites expensarum inutilium superfluitatibus confrenatis que inanis exhibent glori e titulos virtus strenuitatis que in viro requiritur unita convaleat et hostiles protervias ac conatus qui obstinanter insultant. Non in commensationibus aut pompa ornatus set necessario qui exigitur armorum et falere potentatu repellat. (157–58) [And thus during the course of these troubled times of war and hardship it is understood to be good and exceedingly beneficial to restrain superfluous and unnecessary expenses through modest limitations because some with noble titles exhibit foolish splendor in seeking to show their might against the hostile impudence that obstinately insults the success of our undertaking. Enemy powers are not repelled by pompous ornament, but rather through the necessary use of arms.]

40 This is also one of the earliest passages mentioning heralds. See Laurent Hablot, “Revêtir le prince. Le héraut en tabard, une image idéale du prince: Pour une tentative d’interprétation du partage emblématique entre prince et héraut à la fin du Moyen Age à travers le cas bourguignon,” Revue du Nord, 88:366–67 (2006): 755–804, at 758. 41 Auguste Scheler, ed., Dits et contes de Baudouin de Condé et de son fils Jean de Condé (Brussels: Devaux, 1866), 1:169, line 516. The TLFi notes this attestation, s.v. “cotte-hardie.”

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Sumptuary Statutes of the 1290s Given the emphasis on persuading nobles to rethink their notions of necessity in times of war, the surcoats permitted in this law must have been practical military garments. This logic suggests that their appearance must have signified might and readiness more than indolence or pleasure. Saddles were another site of fashionable expenditure. The statutes prohibit new saddles for palfreys more than once per year, for most status groups: Item ne appetitus noxius per huiusmodi refrenatus ad alia forte lasciviat inhibemus expresse omnibus et cuilibet predictorum quod sellam ad palafredum non innovet nisi tantum modo semel in anno. (159) [Item, we prohibit all the above-mentioned parties from getting new saddles for their palfreys more than once per year, so that unbridled, injurious appetites for wanton consumption may be kept in check.]

However, bannerets (bandereriis) were allowed two saddles because they were deemed a professional necessity.42 Worth noting here is the focus on the palfrey, a horse favored by nobles for riding, hunting, and ceremony, often associated with women, and certainly more with display than battle.43 There is no mention of gear for the destrier (war horse), which was apparently unlimited. Turning to women, the statutes urge that purchases for them be neglected under the circumstances, particularly forbidding styles that wasted fabric: Per uxores aut alias feminei sexus eis proximate coniuntas inducti ad expensas exuberes non procedant. Interdicimus inhibendo quod nulla domina. Domicella. Vel mulier alia cuiuscumque conditionis existat in vestibus suis ystitam44 seu fimbriam longiorem palmis quatuor supra terram portare quoquo modo presumant. (159) [For their wives and others of the female sex in their company, they should not engage in abundant expenditure. We forbid that any lady, damsel, or woman of any condition wear hem decoration or a train dragging longer than four palms in length on the ground.]

Trains had raised the ire of preachers, such as Maurice de Sully in Paris, who preached against their wastefulness on the Feast of John the Baptist (wearer of shaggy camelskin

42 “Bandereriis tamen quos hiis conspicimus necessario. Indigere duarum sellarum huiusmodi sub eiusdem anni curiculo innovacione concessa.” [We observe that for bannerets saddles are a necessity, so it is conceded that they may have two new saddles for their horses per year.] Note that bannerets were nobles who led a group of knights under their own banner, a Capetian title that appeared in France under Philip II at the turn of the thirteenth century. D’A. Jonathan D. Boulton, “Banneret,” in Medieval France: An Encyclopedia, ed. William W. Kibler and Grover A. Zinn (New York: Garland, 1995), 95. 43 Godefroy, s.v. “palefroi”; TLFi, s.v. “palefroi.” 44 Var. “institam.” Cf. Sienese statutes 1277–82, which refer to trains as “pannos trainantes”; SarahGrace Heller, “Limiting Yardage and Changes of Clothes: Sumptuary Legislation in ThirteenthCentury France, Languedoc and Italy,” in Medieval Fabrications: Dress, Textiles, Clothwork, and Other Cultural Imaginings, ed. E. Jane Burns (New York: Palgrave, 2004), 121–36, at 127–28.

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Sarah-Grace Heller loincloths): The extra fabric could clothe the poor.45 A “palm” was a measurement often used by Mediterranean cloth merchants, derived from the Roman palmus major, the length of the hand. Standard values for the palm varied between cities and over time, but early modern records indicate it was about 9.5 inches in Palermo and between 8 and 10 inches in Naples.46 A train four palms long would have extended a gown by around a yard of fabric, so a forbidden train would have been even longer. That extra length might have meant another fifteen tarì or more for military spending. Regarding penalties, there was a graded scale for men of different ranks (no mention of specific fines in cases of women’s infractions, as in many of the French and Italian laws): Quo pene ampliori transgressores indicimus subiacere. Quemlibet contemptorem ipsius si quidem comes fuerit quinquaginta. Banderius non comes triginta. Baro aut simplex miles quindecim. Vallictus aut armiger vel quilibet alius octo libras Turonensium decrevimus esse multandum. Fisci commodis irrevocabiliter applicandis. (160) [We order that transgressors submit to these penalties. Counts shall pay a fine of fifty pounds Tournois, bannerets who are not counts thirty, barons or simple knights fifteen, valets and squires or any other eight. (These funds shall be) irrevocably applied, as appropriate, to the treasury.]

Enforcement was entrusted to the barons and prelates in their various districts, with help from anyone willing to sell out a neighbor in the name of modesty, virtue, and a quarter of the fine: Sicque ordinationem ipsam quam statuimus prorsus esse servabilem infringi non cupimus quod quicumque ipsius probabiliter accusaverit trasgressorem quartam partem pene predicte quam curia exiget a cadente in premium eum assequi pollicemur. (160) [To ensure obedience to these statutes, anyone who accuses someone of transgressing them shall receive a quarter of the fine paid to the court.]

In the French royal law of Philip III in 1279, accusers were only offered a sixth of the fine, so Charles and Robert were increasing the incentive here.47 There are several possible models for this law. One is the law passed by Charles II’s cousin Philip III of France, mentioned above. Charles II may have viewed issuing sumptuary statutes as following a Capetian model of kingly comportment. Del G ­ iudice 45 Matthew 3:4; Mark 1:6. C. A. Robson, Maurice of Sully and the Medieval Vernacular Homily, with the Text of Maurice’s French Homilies, from a Sens Cathedral Chapter Ms. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1952), 173; Tina Anderlini, Le Costume medieval au XIIIe siècle (1180–1320) (Bayeux: Heimdal, 2014), 23. 46 Jean-François-Gaspard Palaiseau, Métrologie universelle, ancienne et moderne, ou, Rapport des poids et mesures des empires, royaumes, duchés et principautés des quatre parties du monde présenté en tableaux par ordre alphabétique de pays ou ville (Bordeaux: Chez Lavigne Jeune, 1816), 168, cf. 146, 148, 157, 160, 173; Vincenzo De Rosa, Tavole di ragguaglio delle misure napoletane comuni e delle consuetudinarie capuane con il sistema metrico decimale (Cassino, Italy: Di Bernardo, 1977). 47 H. Duplès-Augier, “Ordonnance somptuaire inédite de Philippe le Hardi,” Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes 15 (1854): 176–81, at 179.

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Sumptuary Statutes of the 1290s suggested the Sicilian law bore more resemblance to that of Jaume I of Aragon passed in 1234.48 Other possible models include the 1258 law of Alfonso X of Leon and Castile, or municipal laws of the thirteenth century. The political ties to France and Aragon were closer. King Jaume was the father of Peter III of Aragon, whose marriage to Constance, the daughter of Manfred (King of Sicily, 1258–66), constituted the Aragonese claim to the Sicilian throne, prompting the war described in this law. Charles was held prisoner at Peter’s court in Aragon from 1284 to 1288, and there is some likelihood that he was exposed to Aragonese legal proceedings or discussions. The question of influence has bearing on the history of sumptuary laws, which reappear in the thirteenth century following a hiatus dating to Carolingian times. While the French laws are quite well known, studies on the Iberian laws remain scarce, as Mercè Aventin has noted, and the same is true for many other Mediterranean statutes.49 But considering influence is also important for the problem of whether these laws may be used as evidence of the presence of fashion. If they were simply passed pro forma, one ruler imitating another, they would have little significance as indicators of change and novelty. In the discussion that follows, I propose some comparisons of the wording and structures of several different laws. The fine hierarchies of the French royal laws are those most comparable to the Sicilian statutes. While the Sicilian fabric prices were calculated in tarenos or tarì, coins struck by Arab merchants in Sicily, fines were assessed in a French accounting currency, the livre tournois (not an actual coin, but equivalent to twenty sous or gros tournois), as were the French laws. In contrast, the Aragonese and Castilian laws provide no fine provisions for excess clothing consumption by nobles.50 As may be observed in table 4.1, both French and Angevin-Sicilian laws demonstrate concerns

48 Del Giudice, Una legge suntuaria, 85–87; see above, note 14. The Aragonese law was published in Marca, Baluze, and Specialis, Marca hispanica, 1430, item VII. 49 Mercè Aventin, “Le Leggi suntuarie in Spagna: Stato della questione,” in Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli and Antonella Campanini, Disciplinare il lusso: La legislazione suntuaria in Italia e in Europa tra Medioevo ed età moderna (Roma: Carocci, 2003), 109–20. Surveys on sumptuary laws include that collection edited by Muzzarelli and Campanini, with contributions regarding many Italian states and European countries; also Alan Hunt, Governance of the Consuming Passions: A History of Sumptuary Law (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996); Kovesi Killerby, Sumptuary Law in Italy; and Frances Elizabeth Baldwin, Sumptuary Legislation and Personal Regulation in England, Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science 44 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1926). There are copious (if often repetitive) studies concentrating on the French tradition: Henri Baudrillart, Histoire du luxe privé et public depuis l’antiquité jusqu’à nos jours, 2nd ed. (Paris: Hachette, 1881); L’abbé de Vertot, Mémoire sur l’établissement des lois somptuaires (Paris: Académie des Inscriptions, 1766); Marcel Gatineau, “Le luxe et les lois somptuaires” (thesis, University of Caen, 1900); Etienne Giraudias, “Étude historique sur les lois somptuaires” (thesis, University of Poitiers, 1910); Marthe Lériget, “Des lois et impôts somptuaires” (thesis, University of Montpellier, 1919); Pierre Kraemer-Raine, “Le luxe et les lois somptuaires au moyen âge” (thesis, University of Paris, 1920). 50 Alfonso X’s law of 1258 does include fines for hunting infractions (item 35) and for wedding celebrations over two days long and lengthy guest lists (item 45). Real Academia de la Historia, Córtes de los Antiguos Reinos de León y de Castilla, ed. Manuel Danvila y Collado (Madrid: Rivadeneyra, 1861), 1:61 and 1:63.

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Sarah-Grace Heller Table 4.1: Status categories and fines in thirteenth-century French and Angevin-Sicilian sumptuary laws Philip III of France, 1279

Charles II of Sicily, 1290

Philip IV of France, 1294

dukes, counts, prelates: 100 LT counts: 50 LT

dukes, counts, prelates: 100 LT

bannerets: 5 LT

bannerets: 30 LT

bannerets: 50 LT

knights, vavasors: 25 LT

barons or simple knights: 15 LT

knights, vavasors: 25 LT

archdeacons, priors, other clergy with dignities: 25 LT

  —

archdeacons, priors, other clergy with dignities: 25 LT

laypersons worth 1,000 LT: 25 LT

valets, squires, or any other: 8 LT

laypersons worth 1,000 LT: 25 LT

laypersons and clercs worth less: 100 sous (= 5 LT)

  —

laypersons and clercs worth less: 100 sous (= 5 LT)

ladies: husbands must pay 40 LT

  —

  —

bourgeois or his wife: 20 LT

  —

  —

LT = livres tournois Sources: Duplès-Augier, “Ordonnance somptuaire inédite de Philippe le Hardi,” 179; Del Giudice, Una legge suntuaria inedita del 1290, 160; Jourdan, Decrusy, and Isambert, Recueil général des anciennes lois françaises, 2:700.

with class distinction, delineating different categories of fines for counts and other high nobles, bannerets, simple knights, and vavasors. The Sicilian law has a fine category for valets and squires, while the French laws do not.51 However, the French laws do set consumption restrictions on those groups, and their fines may have fallen into the broad “laypersons” categories. This careful stratification contrasts with typical Italian municipal laws.52 In general, the Sicilian fines were more modest than the French, perhaps indicating more limited incomes or a reluctance to confiscate funds that knights were expected to devote to war spending. While the Sicilian statute does make the general statement that “transgressors [shall] submit to these penalties,” the lack of differentiated fines for women and non-noble men reflects this law’s focus as a wartime measure. It seems

51 While Alfonso X did not set fines for squires, his 1258 law has a number of elaborate provisions on their dress, forbidding white furs; scarlet hose; clothing dyed any bright color, including scarlet, green, brunet, “morete” (probably a dark color with a violet tinge), “narange” (orange), rose, or sanguine; and saddles, bridles, spurs, boots, or hats decorated with gold, silver, or silk (item 22). Ibid., 1:59. 52 Kovesi Killerby, Sumptuary Law in Italy, 137–38; Sarah-Grace Heller, “Anxiety, Hierarchy, and Appearance in Thirteenth-Century Sumptuary Laws and the Romance of the Rose,” French Historical Studies 27, no. 2 (Spring 2004): 311–48; Heller, “Limiting Yardage,” 130.

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Sumptuary Statutes of the 1290s less concerned with elaborating the differences in a complex social hierarchy than do the French royal laws, particularly Philip the Fair’s. The most noteworthy shift across these statutes lies with the category of banneret. Bannerets were commanders of units of men and had the distinction of carrying their coat of arms on a rectangular banner rather than on a triangular pennon (often carried on a lance).53 There is a notable increase in attention to bannerets in the laws over the last quarter of the thirteenth century. In 1279, Philip the Bold fined them only five pounds for infractions, 5 percent of what barons were assessed; Charles II fined them thirty pounds in the 1290s, 60 percent of the baron’s fine; and by 1294, Philip the Fair fined them fifty pounds, 50 percent of the baron’s fine. The law of Charles II appears in this comparison as a midpoint between the modest fines of five livres tournois for infractions in 1279 and the tenfold increase in 1294. This may relate to the changing role of the banneret in military organization at this time.54 The above-mentioned Sicilian provision allowing bannerets two saddles per year would suggest that the Angevin-Sicilian court considered them essential and worth appeasing. The increases in fines, in contrast, suggest that their display was targeted as crucial for morale and motivating the men serving under them to comply. The Sicilian laws limited new expenditures on clothing to two sets per year for men. French laws were much less frugal, allowing four to five sets for wealthy nobles and two for merchants of means. Similarly, Alfonso the Wise of Castile decreed that “rric omme” (nobles of royal blood), knights, or “any other man” might have only four sets of robes made per year. This is a very brief provision relative to the French laws, which elaborate at length on such limits according to rank.55 Limits on furs and expensive cloth as well as meals are typical of this period, seen in laws of Philip II of France in 1190, Jaume of Aragon in 1234, Alfonso X of Castile in 1258, and Philip the Bold of France in 1279.56 This law also contrasts with most Italian and Occitan muncipal laws, which focus more on women.57 Turning to Del Giudice’s suggestion that Charles II’s law might have been inspired by that of Jaume I in 1234, his seventh item (of twenty-two provisions) does deal with clothing, to wit: VII. Item statuimus quod nos nec aliquis subditus nobis non portet vestes incises, listatas, vel trepatas, nec portent in vestibus aurum vel argentum nec aurifrigium nec auripellum nec sedam sudam nec sembellinum nec erminium nec lutriam nec aliam pellem fractam vel recoctam nec affiblays cum auro vel argento, sed erminium vel lutriam integram 53 Boulton, “Banneret,” 95. 54 Ferdinand Lot lists the numbers of knights and bannerets from various counties and duchies for Philip III’s expedition against the Count of Foix in 1272. In general, about a quarter of the knights were bannerets, and he remarks on how few knights would have been under their command relative to the units of ten, twenty, and fifty knights and squires they would command in the Hundred Years War. Lot, L’Art militaire et les armées au Moyen Age en Europe et dans le proche orient (Paris: Payot, 1946), 1:237. 55 Item 22, Córtes de los Antiguos Reinos, 59. 56 Del Giudice, Una legge suntuaria, 81–91; Heller, “Limiting Yardage,” 123–24. 57 Heller, “Limiting Yardage,” 127.

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Sarah-Grace Heller simplicem solummodo in longitudine incisam circa capuciam capae & operaturas manicarum quae dicuntur brassaleres & in capitibus manicarum & in mantellis similiter & cotis sive garvariis.58 [We declare that we and everyone above mentioned should not wear incised, stenciled, or stamped fabrics. They should not wear on their clothing: gold or silver, gold fringe, gilt leather, bright silk, sable, ermine, otter, nor other furs, and neither particolored or redyed furs; nor closures with gold and silver on them, but only simple, whole ermine or otter furs cut the long way as trim around the hood of their capes and the sleeve openings which are called brasseleres, and at the tops of their sleeves, and likewise for mantles, cotes, and garnaches.]

Similarities to Charles II’s law include the attention to furs. Both specify ermine. But whereas the Angevin law expanded the squirrel fur vocabulary, vair is absent in the Aragonese texts, with otter prominent instead. Whereas in Sicily the imperative toward modesty in furs limited their use to headwear, in Iberia Jaume’s prescription for modesty specified cutting methods, confining furs to the narrow edges of garments, a style visible in the illustrations of the Cantigas de Santa Maria.59 The difference in color palettes as well should be noted: Brown otter was still luxurious in Aragon, whereas most brown furs were held in low esteem in the vair-loving Francophone lands. Prohibitions of expensive silk and gold embellishment are also similar in the Sicilian and Aragonese proclamations, whereas they are absent from the French laws. Jaume’s prohibition of “vestes incises, listatas, vel trepatas” does not correspond to anything in the Sicilian or French laws. Leonard Williams believed these terms represented stamped fabrics manufactured in Barcelona.60 If that is true, Jaume would have been discouraging an industry in his recently conquered territory of Catalonia, perhaps one associated with the Moors. The term “incises” was one of several used to denote particolored clothing (also “recoctam” with regard to furs here). Mi-parti garments were prohibited in Danish legislation of 1283.61 The far briefer Aragonese statute lists a significant number of places on an individual as well as his horse where gold and silver might be displayed prominently, with both the wealth housed in these metals and a sophisticated culture of metallurgy targeted for restraint. This is supported by similar provisions in Alfonso X’s Castilian law of 1258, which sought to keep white fur, sendal, gilt saddles and bridles, scarlet hose, and a rainbow of bright dyes from scribes, archers, falconers, guards, clerks, and squires (items 4, 5, 22, 25) and to limit furs, scarlet, sendal, and gold orphrey trim for

58 Marca Hispanica, 1430, item VII. 59 See the brown fur edging on the woman’s robes and mantle, and the ermine on the husband’s, in Keller and Cash, Daily Life, plate 1, Cantiga 64; cf. plate 36, Cantiga 135B, lower left, brown fur; plate 44, Cantiga 44, ermine on multiple noblemen. 60 Leonard Williams, The Arts and Crafts of Older Spain: Textile Fabrics (London: T. N. Foulis, 1907), 47. 61 Camilla Luise Dahl, “Mengiað klæthe and tweskifte klæder: Marbled, Patterned, and Parti-coloured Clothing in Medieval Scandinavia,” in The Medieval Broadcloth: Changing Trends in Fashions, Manufacturing and Consumption, ed. Kathrine Vestergård-Pederson and Marie-Louis B. Nosch (Oxford: Oxbow, 2009), 122–38, at 124.

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Sumptuary Statutes of the 1290s knights, reserving them for royals (item 14). In short, this comparison suggests that (1) a shared logic of modesty and restraint guides all these laws, (2) certain luxury products were ubiquitously desired throughout Europe, and (3) consumption of flashy trimmings extended to mid-level social groups, beyond the highest elites. Each king applied this logic uniquely to the tastes of his moment, and also used these laws to attempt to shape the hierarchies of his kingdom in his own manner. To put Jaume I’s law into context, it appeared in a “peace and truce” declaration, forbidding all men in the realm to make war, pillage, or murder for a certain period. In this it contrasts with ordinances exclusively devoted to sumptuary measures, as the French and Sicilian royal laws were. Marta VanLandingham argues that there was a clear and conscious attempt on the part of the monarchy of Aragon in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries to impose a structure on the court and household in order to maximize resources at its disposal and to elaborate the court into a system of administration that would allow the ruler to consolidate and disseminate authority more effectively within his territory.62 This statute is one of many diverse ordinances included in this particular “peace and truce” declaration. Each ordinance of the law sets standards and regulations regarding a different aspect of court life and legal boundaries for the state, responding to vigorous resistance from newly conquered territories, groups such as Muslims and Jews, as well as nobles who saw their influence circumscribed by the new regime’s policies. One element of a fashion system is the production of frequent, minor variants on familiar, less-changing templates.63 It becomes clear from the comparison of these laws that the rulers of Sicily, Naples, and Provence, like those of Aragon and Catalonia, Castile and Leon, and France, were legislating within a familiar framework, but adapting their statutes to their own courtiers, languages, economies, and anxieties. Clothing had a significant role to play in the shaping of thirteenth-century states and the movement toward more centralized and bureaucratic court cultures. Another key element of fashion systems is resistance to change, which paradoxically reveals the strength of the desire for constant change; fashion exists in tension between the pressure to consume novelty and the pressure to conform.64 These sumptuary laws show rulers who sought to set limits on those whose consumption would otherwise have continued increasing. Considering these laws together, I think it is clear that they constitute evidence of fashion systems, and indeed interlinked but unique markets that were consciously distinct from one another. Sicily changed hands regularly and so in many ways defies neat national classification. As for this “Sicilian” law, its Latin strains at the pressure of expressing terms coming from several languages and cultures, and it demonstrates the complex international tensions that inspired it. Colonized by Greeks in antiquity, becoming an imperial breadbasket in Roman times, reemerging as a location of maritime trade 62 Marta VanLandingham, Transforming the State: King, Court, and Political Culture in the Realms of Aragon (1213–1387) (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 2–3, 96–98. 63 Heller, Fashion in Medieval France, 30–32. 64 Ibid., 37–38.

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Sarah-Grace Heller and religious cohabitation under Muslim dominance, Sicily came into a golden age in the twelfth century under Norman rule, and then endured troubled years, beginning when it passed to the Hohenstaufens of the Holy Roman Empire in 1186. In 1261 the French pope Urban IV went to Louis IX’s court, attractive for its piety, “dangling the Sicilian Crown” to expel the Holy Roman Empire.65 Louis’ brother Charles d’Anjou got papal support to battle the Hohenstaufens and defeated them at Avezzano, and in 1268 Charles beheaded the teenage king, Conradin, in the piazza of the Naples market. Charles had Sicily, but between the ferocity of this act, his heavy taxes, and his choice of the peninsula as home base, he was not popular. During the Easter Vespers uprising in 1282, the Sicilians killed hundreds of Frenchmen. Five months later, Peter of Aragon captured Charles’ son, Charles of Salerno, the promulgator of the law that is the subject of this essay, and held him for five years. He was released when he renounced his rights to Sicily and Malta, but Pope Honorius rescinded the renunciation and funded this war, wanting Charles II to fight for the kingdom. James II of Aragon ruled insular Sicily, and Charles II ruled peninsular Sicily. In a treaty arranged in 1302, the term Sicily was retained for the kingdom in southern Italy, while the island kingdom was given its old Greek name, Trinacria.66 This sumptuary law emerges from these troubles. The insistence on modesty reveals the anxieties of Charles II, his son Charles Martel, and his right-hand man, Robert II d’Artois; the Angevins were not universally popular. There was need not only to assert their power, but also to do so with an appearance of humility, gaining the trust of the beleaguered population. The law has usually been mentioned in the context of the multiplicity of Italian laws, which just began to appear in the thirteenth century but proliferated in the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries. Indeed, much study of sumptuary laws has been confined to national lines, which does not capture the complex cultural realities of this period: The Angevin-French rulers of southern Italy and Provence were not Italians in the modern sense, nor strictly speaking French heads of state. They ruled over a multilingual, multiethnic people. But as is clear from close study of this law, there was a strong French influence at the court as well. The King of Sicily kept a palace in Paris, located near houses for beguines and poor students founded by St. Louis. Robert d’Artois had crusaded with Louis IX as a young man. To illustrate the ethos of the French court, Joinville recalls St. Louis taking Robert de Sorbon’s side after Robert accused Joinville of being more richly dressed than the king. Louis sat Joinville down with the future Philip III and advised, saying, “…you should dress well and distinctively, so that your wives may love you more and your men value you more. For the sage tells us that our dress and our arms should be such that the serious men of the world cannot say they go too far, nor the young people

65 Sandra Benjamin, Sicily: Three Thousand Years of Human History (Hanover, NH: Steerforth, 2006), 208. 66 Benjamin, Sicily, 222.

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Sumptuary Statutes of the 1290s that they are inadequate.”67 This law reflects that impulse to modulate the tensions between pressures toward fashionable dress and political display of Christian sobriety. In conclusion, this law should be treated as a prescription unique to the peoples of diverse vernaculars who came together to form the court of Sicily in the 1290s, yet one also inscribed within a scribal culture that was increasingly regulating consumption. The template of restrictions aimed at noble men with an eye to military preparedness is allied more with the royal laws of France and Iberia than the Italian municipal statutes, which tended to restrain weddings, funerals, and women’s expenditures. It is much influenced by the French court atmosphere of the mid- to late thirteenth century but, reflecting exigent circumstances, is significantly more concerned with moderation than the laws of Philip III or his son. Sicily had access to rich Mediterranean textiles, but less to furs; fashion was present for nobles as well as other, less-specified social levels, despite challenging economic and political troubles. Sicilian men tended to express their personal taste in their choices of hat and surcoat styles. In the 1290s they appear to have been less wealthy than the French and in difficult circumstances. The profligacy of their wives and women was not their chief concern. In keeping with the views dating back to Roman sumptuary laws that delicate or sumptuous clothing undermined military values, they were urged to give up comfortable, attractive, and expensive fabrics and linings in the service of higher political goals.

67 Jean de Joinville, Histoire de Saint Louis, in Historiens et chroniqueurs du Moyen Age, ed. Albert Pauphilet and Edmond Pognon, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade 48 (Paris: Gallimard, 1952), 205, 208.

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The Devil on My Tail: Clothing and Visual Culture in the Camposanto Last Judgment Cordelia Warr

At the bottom right of the Last Judgment in the Camposanto in Pisa (figs. 5.1 and 5.2), probably painted in the 1330s,1 a richly dressed woman clings desperately to another woman standing next to her (figs. 5.3 and 5.4). She is being dragged inexorably towards hell by the blackened and disembodied hands of a devil who grabs at the clothing of his victim. The frescoes were badly damaged when the Camposanto was bombed in 1944.2 However, it is possible to study the depiction of the doomed woman thanks to painstaking restoration work on the frescoes, the sinopie (underpaintings) separated from the top layer of the frescoes as part of the postwar restoration, and Carlo Lasinio’s early-nineteeth-century engravings.3 The woman wears an overdress which splits below the bust to reveal the matching stripes of her gonnella. One of the devils reaches out from the adjacent fresco of the Inferno to take a firm hold of the upper part of the train of the woman’s split overdress, the bottom of which clearly lies on the ground disappearing behind the rocky outcrop of hell. It is unclear whether the woman’s companion, to whom she clings so tightly, is trying to help or to rid herself of someone whose fate she does not wish to share. The I would like to thank Professor Gale Owen-Crocker and the anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments and suggestions. Versions of this paper were presented at the University College London Interdisciplinary Medieval and Renaissance Seminar, the University of Leeds Institute of Medieval Studies “Medieval Group” Seminar, the Tulane University Faculty Networking Seminar, and the University of Manchester John Rylands Medieval Research Seminar. My thanks go to all those who offered helpful and thought-provoking comments.   1  On the dating of the Camposanto frescoes, see the discussion in Janis Elliott, “The Last Judgement Scene in Central Italian Painting, c. 1266–1343: The Impact of Guelf Politics, Papal Power and Angevin Iconography” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Warwick, 2000), 231–35.  2 On the history of the state of preservation of the frescoes, see Diane Cole Ahl, “Camposanto, Terra Santa: Picturing the Holy Land in Pisa,” Artibus et Historiae 24 (2003): 95–122, particularly 97, and with further bibliography, 119–20 n. 6. See also Umberto Baldini, “Una storia complicata: Gli affreschi del Camposanto Monumentale di Pisa,” in Sulle pitture murali: Riflessioni, conoscenze, interventi: Atti del convegno di studi, Bressanone 12–15 luglio 2005, ed. Guido Biscontin and Guido Driussi (Venice: Arcadia Ricerche, 2005), 17–27.   3 Carlo Lasinio, Pitture a fresco del Campo Santo di Pisa (Florence: Molini, Landi e Compagno, 1812).

Cordelia Warr

Figure 5.1: Last Judgment fresco, ca. 1330–40, as currently displayed in the Camposanto, Pisa. The edge of the Hell fresco is visible at an angle on the wall to the right. Photo: Opera della Primaziale Pisana, by permission.

woman physically pulled into hell must have spoken eloquently to a contemporary audience. Placed near the bottom of the fresco, she is clearly visible, her distress easily discernible through her gesture and facial expression. This article will focus on the doomed woman, trapped and consigned to perpetual suffering by the train of her dress, as the starting point for an exploration of the potential impact of this visual motif. It is challenging for a modern viewer to approach the Camposanto frescoes with a “period eye,”4 taking into account the contextual information that could have been brought to them by a contemporary. Some references are clear. As pointed out by Samuel Edgerton, any Renaissance Florentine, if asked what he or she would see on the day of judgment, would have given more or less the same answer, and that answer

 4 On the “period eye,” see Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 29–108. Baxandall’s focus was on style in relation to social history. My use of the term encompasses cultural and social associations in relation to visual images. For some of the ways in which Baxandall’s ideas were taken up and adapted, see Allan Langdale, “Aspects of the Critical Reception and Intellectual History of Baxandall’s Concept of the Period Eye,” Art History 21, no. 4 (1998): 479–97.

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Clothing in the Camposanto Last Judgment

Figure 5.2: Engraving based on the Last Judgment fresco, from Carlo Lasinio, Pitture a fresco del Campo Santo di Pisa (Florence: Molini, Landi e compagno, 1812). Photo: Copyright of the University of Manchester, by permission.

would have conformed closely to pictorial images of the Last Judgment.5 Monumental frescoes of the subject from the fourteenth century, such as those in the Arena Chapel, Padua, by Giotto (ca. 1305);6 in the church of Santa Maria Donna Regina, Naples (ca. 1317–23);7 in the Camposanto in Pisa; and in the Strozzi Chapel in Santa Maria Novella,8 all have the same basic structure described by Edgerton’s putative Florentine: Christ as Judge, with the Virgin Mary, at the centre of the apostles with, to Christ’s   5 Samuel Y. Edgerton, Jr., “Icons of Justice,” Past and Present 89 (1980): 23–38, at 23.   6 Elliott, “The Last Judgement Scene,” 148–55.   7 Janis Elliott, “The ‘Last Judgement’: The Cult of Sacral Kingship and Dynastic Hopes for the Afterlife,” in The Church of Santa Maria Donna Regina: Art, Iconography, and Patronage in Fourteenth-Century Naples, ed. Cordelia Warr and Janis Elliott (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2004), 175–94.  8 Kathleen Alden Giles, “The Strozzi Chapel in Santa Maria Novella: Florentine Painting and Patronage, 1340–1355” (Ph.D. thesis, New York University, 1977), 86–101.

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Cordelia Warr

Figure 5.3: Detail of woman about to be dragged down to hell, from the Last Judgment fresco. Photo: Opera della Primaziale Pisana, by permission.

right, the elect, and to his left, those from all strata of society destined for eternal damnation.9 Most monumental Last Judgment scenes typically contained far more information than the preceding description. The level of detail in the Camposanto Last Judgment and Inferno implies that it was possible for a fourteenth-century viewer to make something of very specific parts of the fresco. Within a broad understanding of the Last Judgment particular dramas were played out. Some aspects of the scene could be made to refer to contemporary or near-contemporary figures. For example, in the Santa Maria Donna Regina Last Judgment, the figures of St. Louis of Toulouse

  9 Edgerton, “Icons of Justice,” 23.

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Clothing in the Camposanto Last Judgment

Figure 5.4: Detail of woman about to be dragged down to hell, from Lasinio’s engraving of Last Judgment and Hell. Photo: Copyright of the University of Manchester, by permission.

(d. 1297) and St. Louis IX of France (d. 1270) have been identified amongst the elect.10 They may have served to remind the nuns in the choir of the patronage of the church by Louis of Toulouse’s mother, Maria of Hungary (d. 1323), and of the sanctity associated

10 Elliott, “The ‘Last Judgement’: The Cult of Sacral Kingship,” 183–84.

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Cordelia Warr with the ruling Angevin dynasty.11 The labels identifying the heretics at the top right of the representation of hell in the Camposanto responded to contemporary political concerns, and it is not unreasonable to expect that these could have been identified by some viewers.12 As Brendan Cassidy has pointed out, placing political opponents in hell, visual or literary, was not uncommon from the time of the Carolingians to the Reformation.13 With this in mind, the terrified woman at the bottom right of the Pisan Last Judgment can be viewed not just as an example of a sinner (or any sinner) being dragged to eternal damnation but as someone whose predicament might have engendered specific concerns in certain viewers. In a number of Italian Last Judgment scenes of the fourteenth century, such as the Camposanto and Strozzi Chapel versions, it is possible to distinguish quite detailed “clerical and social hierarchies.”14 Iris Grötecke has suggested that this mirrors the “growing complexity of urban society,”15 something also reflected in contemporary vernacular preaching, some of which specifically targeted women of the urban merchant classes.16 During the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries Pisa underwent a period of economic expansion and urbanisation, a period during which a new “middle class” gained increasing power.17 It is possible to assign some of the women in the Camposanto Last Judgment a particular function within society. In the bottom tier of the group of the saved, a queen, identified by her crown, leans down to help a young woman out of the ground; at the far left a nun looks upwards towards her saviour; on the side of the damned are also a crowned female and a nun, as well as a number of richly dressed women and two who appear to be more plainly dressed with white wimples, perhaps distinguishing them as widows. There is no single meaning that can be ascribed to these women. Nuns and queens are saved and damned equally. Indeed, it is possible to view the figures as generic without any specific references to contemporary Pisan society. Yet this does not mean that their appearance is without significance. The woman at the bottom right of the fresco appears relatively youthful, with long braided hair arranged so that it covers her head and ears,18 and

11 On dynastic sanctity, see André Vauchez, “‘Beata stirps’: Sainteté et lignage en Occident au XIIIe et XIVe siècles,” in Famille et parenté dans l’Occident médiéval: Actes du colloque de Paris (6–8 juin 1974), ed. Georges Duby and Jacques Le Goff (Rome: École Française de Rome, 1977), 397–406. For the shirt relic associated with Louis IX, see Tina Anderlini, “The Shirt Attributed to St. Louis,” chapter 3 in this volume. 12 Joseph Polzer, “Aristotle, Mohammed, and Nicholas V in Hell,” Art Bulletin 46, no. 4 (1964): 457–69. 13 Brendan Cassidy, “Laughing with Giotto at Sinners in Hell,” Viator 35 (2004): 355–86, at 356. 14 Iris Grötecke, “Representing the Last Judgement: Social Hierarchy, Gender, and Sin,” Medieval History Journal 1 (1998): 233–60, at 235–41. 15 Ibid., 248. 16 See, with further bibliography, Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby, “The Preacher as Women’s Mentor,” in Preacher, Sermon and Audience in the Middle Ages, ed. Carolyn Muessig (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 229–54. 17 David Herlihy, Pisa in the Early Renaissance: A Study of Urban Growth (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1958), ix–xii. 18 On expectations regarding social status and hair during this period, see Gabriela Signori, “Veil, Hat or Hair? Reflections on an Asymmetrical Relationship,” Medieval History Journal 8, no. 1 (2005): 25­–47, esp. 31–32.

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Clothing in the Camposanto Last Judgment clothing which points to a family of considerable means. Despite the damage suffered by the fresco over the centuries, it is still possible to make out the vertical stripes of her green and rose dress. Perhaps she reflects well-off young married Pisan women, or perhaps those of marriageable age. In the remainder of this article, I will explore what such women might have seen in their two-dimensional counterpart on the wall of the Camposanto and how their experiences—of sermons and of sumptuary legislation, for example—may have affected their reactions. In her discussion of the inscriptions in the Triumph of Death cycle at Pisa, Lina Bolzoni has drawn attention to the process of “looking fixedly,” which she defines as “fixing one’s eyes and attention on a detail as a necessary condition for the metamorphosis of the image, for sparking the play between seeing with the physical eye and seeing with the mind’s eye.”19 She has persuasively argued that there is a “web that each image constructs within and around itself, a web of memories and creative associations.”20 Looking fixedly was advocated in the inscriptions which originally accompanied the Last Judgment fresco.21 The inscription next to the separation of the saved from the damned read: Wise soul, if you look fixedly Into the future of divine judgment And the Good received into Paradise And the Bad condemned to eternal lament, Your life on earth will be perfect, Following virtue, leaving vice.22

In this context, the woman dragged down to hell by the train of her fashionable clothing acts as a visual warning to the viewer. A number of Italian Last Judgment scenes demonstrate, through visual clues, the reason for which the unfortunate sinner is condemned to eternal damnation. In Giotto’s Last Judgment in Padua, usurers are pulled downwards by money bags tied around their necks.23 For the woman at the bottom right of the Camposanto Last Judgment it is her love of finery, her vanity, which effectively consigns her to hell. Other women in the fresco wear fine clothing, but this woman, like two more above her, is distinguished in that the immediate instrument of her doom is her dress. Almost within sight of salvation she looks up, perhaps towards the face of the woman to whom she clings so desperately, perhaps towards the judging Christ and his mother, hoping for mercy, yet her clothes drag her down.

19 Lina Bolzoni, The Web of Images: Vernacular Preaching from Its Origins to St. Bernardino da Siena (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2004), 31. 20 Ibid., 9. 21 The inscriptions originally accompanying the frescoes have long been partially destroyed. However, a fifteenth-century manuscript (Florence, Biblioteca Marciana, MS Italiano IX 204) contains verses which have been identified as versions of the inscriptions. See Salamone Morpurgo, “Le epigrafi volgari in rima del ‘Trionfo della morte,’ del ‘Giudizio universale e inferno,’ e degli ‘Anacoreti’ nel Camposanto di Pisa,” L’Arte 2 (1899): 53–87. 22 I have used the translation in Bolzoni, Web of Images, 31. 23 Cassidy, “Laughing with Giotto,” 358.

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Cordelia Warr PREACHING

Some of the creative associations which viewers brought to the depiction of this woman would have come through sermons. Scholars have long acknowledged the importance of preaching in relation to the Camposanto frescoes.24 Mendicant preachers could attract enormous crowds during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. St. Peter Martyr’s anti-heretical preaching in Florence in 1244 was so successful that there was a request to enlarge the square outside the Dominican church of Santa Maria Novella where his sermons were held.25 In Pisa, the Dominican convent of Santa Caterina provided preaching for the city and, through the city’s bishops, who were Dominican from 1299 to 1342, was closely linked to the cathedral complex.26 The two best known preachers to have resided at the Santa Caterina in the early fourteenth century were Domenico Cavalca (d. 1342)27 and Giordano da Pisa (d. 1311).28 Unfortunately there are no extant records of Cavalca’s preaching activity,29 but that of Giordano da Pisa is well documented. Giordano has been described by Carlo Delcorno as one of the first major proponents of vernacular preaching in Italy.30 He preached in Florence regularly between 1303 and 1307 and also in Pisa in 1309.31 In his sermons Giordano followed a model of femininity in which women were particularly vulnerable to the sin of vanity (vainglory).32 Vanity was also a sin relevant to those in the new urban mercantile-capitalist class, who sought to rise above their peers through their commercial enterprises.33 Their profits enabled women in their families to indulge in expensive clothes and the use of cosmetics, examples of which can be seen on the walls of the Camposanto. Conversely, those whose families did not have sufficient wealth for such indulgences were often unable to marry.34 Vanity was a popular subject for medieval

24 Chiara Frugoni, “Altri luoghi, cercando il Paradiso (Il ciclo di Buffalmacco nel Camposanto di Pisa a la committenza Domenicana),” Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa 18, no. 4 (1988): 1557–1643; Lina Bolzoni, “La predica dipinta: Gli affreschi del ‘Trionfo della morte’ e la predicazione domenicana,” in Il Camposanto di Pisa, ed. Clara Baracchini and Enrico Castelnuovo (Turin: Einaudi, 1996), 97–114; Jérôme Baschet, Les Justices de l’au-delà: Les representations de l’enfer en France et en Italie, XIIe–XVe siècles (Rome: École Française de Rome, 1993), 327–49. 25 N. J. Housley, “Politics and Heresy in Italy: Anti-heretical Crusades, Orders, and Confraternities, 1200–1500,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 33, no. 2 (1982): 193–208, at 198. 26 Bolzoni, Web of Images, 15. 27 For brief details of Cavalca, see William A. Hinnebusch, The History of the Dominican Order: Intellectual and Cultural Life to 1500 (New York: Alba House, 1965), 2:344–45. 28 For brief details of Giordano da Pisa, see Daniel R. Lesnick, Preaching in Medieval Florence: The Social World of Franciscan and Dominican Spirituality (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1989), 257–58 n. 70. For further biographical details, see Eliana Corbari, Vernacular Theology: Dominican Sermons and Audience in Late Medieval Italy (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2013), 40–49. 29 Lesnick, Preaching, 101. 30 Carlo Delcorno, L’exemplum nella predicazione volgare di Giordano da Pisa, Memorie Classe de Scienze Morali, Lettere ed Arti 36, fasc. 1 (Venice: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 1972), 9. 31 For a discussion of Giordano da Pisa’s preaching in Florence, see Lesnick, Preaching, 103–8, 111–33. 32 Cecilia Iannella, Giordano da Pisa: Etica urbana e forme della società (Pisa: ETS, 1999), 181–91. 33 Lesnick, Preaching, 116–17. 34 Richard Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence (New York: Academic Press, 1980), 380–81.

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Clothing in the Camposanto Last Judgment mendicant preachers,35 one which Giordano addressed in some of his sermons. With regard to dress, Giordano made specific mention of trains in his preaching in Pisa in 1309.36 In a sermon which took as its theme the temptation of Jesus from the gospel of Matthew: “Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world, and their splendour” (Matthew 4:8),37 Giordano expounded on the ways in which the devil tempts people.38 He stated that one of these ways is through vanity, that the sin of vanity is one mostly committed by women, and that women are persuaded by the devil to lose their chance of salvation (“abbandonano lo bene di vita eterna”) in return for ornaments and a train, which he compared to a tiny piece of grain (“per ornamenti e per uno traino, che è una spassula”), something so small and insignificant as not to be worth the risk of one’s eternal soul.39 Trains are also mentioned in an earlier sermon given by Giordano in Florence in 1306 in the piazza outside Santa Maria Novella. In this sermon he asserted that women who wore long trains committed a mortal sin.40 Given the ubiquity of mendicant preaching on vanity,41 one of the creative associations that could have been triggered by viewing the woman at the bottom right of the Camposanto Last Judgment may have been just such a sermon in which the devil is directly associated with a particular aspect of clothing. EXEMPLA

It is probable that Giordano’s preaching did not make extensive use of exempla.42 However, his references to the devil’s temptations to the sin of vanity in the shape of female dress and ornament and, in particular, trains may have led to another association in the minds of the viewers of the Last Judgment, for fine clothing as one of the external signs of vanity is found in numerous medieval exempla. One which is particularly apposite in the context of this discussion is that of the devils riding on a lady’s train. 35 See Katherine Ludwig Jansen, The Making of the Magdalen: Preaching and Popular Devotion in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 155–67, esp. 156 n. 39 with further bibliography. 36 Giordano da Pisa, Prediche inedite (dal ms. Laurenziano, Acquisti e Doni 290), ed. Cecilia Iannella (Pisa: ETS, 1997), vii. 37 For a clear explanation of the structure of the sermo modernus form used by Giordano, see Lesnick, Preaching, 99–100. 38 For the complete text of the sermon, see Giordano da Pisa, Prediche inedite, 32–38. 39 Ibid., 38, line 8. All translations in this article are mine unless noted otherwise. 40 The sermon is published in Giordano da Pisa, Quaresimale fiorentino, 1305–1306, Carlo Delcorno, ed. (Florence: Sansoni, 1974), 368–73, at 371, line 14: “Or facciano le donne i grandi traini, e mettansi le grande corone! Tutto è furto, tutto è de l’altrui, e pecca mortalmente sempre che ll’usa.” 41 Thomas M. Izbicki, “Pyres of Vanities: Mendicant Preaching on the Vanity of Women and its Lay Audience,” in De Ore Domini: Preacher and Word in the Middle Ages, ed. Thomas L. Amos, Eugene A. Green, and Beverly Mayne Kienzle, Studies in Medieval Culture 27 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute, 1989), 211–34, at 217. 42 Lesnick, Preaching, 97. Exempla are moral anecdotes; in the Middle Ages, they were gathered into collections that could be used by preachers.

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Cordelia Warr In the early-thirteenth-century Dialogus Miraculorum (ca. 1223–24), the Cistercian Caesarius of Heisterbach (d. ca. 1240) tells the tale of a woman who had such a long train for her dress that devils took free rides as she walked around: A priest was going round his church and sprinkling the people with holy water, and when he came to the door of the church, he met there, striding haughtily in, a matron dressed out with all kinds of adornments, as gay as a peacock; and on her skirts, which she was dragging far behind her, he saw a number of demons sitting. They were as small as dormice, and as black as Ethiopians, grinning and clapping their hands and leaping hither and thither like fish enclosed in a net; for in truth feminine extravagance is a net of the devil. Now when he saw this chariot of demons he bade the woman wait outside, and called the congregation to come to the door and adjured the devils not to move. She stood there in terror, while he prayed that the people might have grace to see the vision, and because he was a good and upright man his prayer was granted. When the woman realised that the extravagance of her dress had thus made her an object of mockery to demons, she went home and changed her dress; and thus that vision became an occasion of humility both to her and all the other women.43

Caesarius’ is one version of a tale which was disseminated throughout Europe over the course of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, a period during which exempla collections flourished.44 An idea of its popularity can be gauged from the listings in Frederic Tubach’s Index Exemplorum.45 Versions of the story are found in various thirteenth-century compilations: for example, the earliest part of the Vie des Pères (1230–41)46 (not to be confused with the Vitae Patrum so often connected with the frescoes in the Camposanto),47 the Sermones Vulgares of Jacques de Vitry (d. 1240),48 the Tractatus de Diversis Materiis Predicabilibus (1250–60) of Etienne de

43 Caesarius of Heisterbach, The Dialogue on Miracles, trans. Henry von Essen Scott and Charles Cooke Swinton Bland (London: Routledge, 1929), 1:327 (book 5, chapter 7). 44 Phyllis B. Roberts, “The ‘ars praedicandi’ and the Medieval Sermon,” in Muessig, Preacher, Sermon and Audience, 41–62, at 54. 45 Frederic C. Tubach, Index Exemplorum: A Handbook of Medieval Religious Tales (Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1969), 136, no. 1660. 46 On the dating and the tale, called Queue, see Élisabeth Pinto-Mathieu, La ‘Vie des Pères’: Genèse de contes religieux di XIIIe siècle (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2009), 13, 416–31. The text has been published in Félix Lecoy, ed., La Vie des Pères (Paris: Société des Anciens Textes Français, 1987), 1:247–56. For a list of the extant manuscripts, see 1:xv–xix. The tale has been examined by Adrian P. Tudor, “Blingy Women, Saint Jerome’s Mirth, and Grubby Devils: Play and the Old French Vie des Peres,” in The Playful Middle Ages: Meanings of Play and Plays of Meaning, ed. Paul Hardwick (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2010), 161–74. 47 The tale of the devils riding on a lady’s train is not found in Latin text of the Vitae Patrum published in the Patrologia Latina 73, nor is it in the Dominican Domenico Cavalca’s vernacular version. Domenico Cavalca, Volgarizzamento delle Vite de’ Santi Padri, ed. Domenico Maria Manni, enlarged by Antonio Cesari, 4 vols. (Verona: Dionigi Ramanzini, 1799). 48 Thomas Frederick Crane, ed., The Exempla or Illustrative Stories from the ‘Sermones Vulgares’ of Jacques de Vitry (London: Folklore Society, 1890), 101, 235. For a brief overview of the life and career of Jacques de Vitry, see Carolyn Muessig, The Faces of Women in the Sermons of Jacques de Vitry (Toronto: Peregrina, 1999), 8–14, with further bibliography.

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Clothing in the Camposanto Last Judgment Bourbon (d. ca. 1261),49 and Arnold of Liège’s early-fourteenth-century Alphabetum Narrationem,50 amongst others.51 The story, acknowledged as that told by Caesarius, was known in Spain and is contained in a manuscript in the vernacular from the beginning of the fifteenth century with exempla arranged alphabetically by topic.52 The basic components of the tale remain the same in most versions. Compilers appear to have followed either Caesarius’s version (given above), that of Jacques de Vitry, or the version from the Vie des Pères and associated with the life of St. Jerome. Jacques de Vitry’s version is short and to the point: A woman wore so long a train to her dress that it raised the dust to the altar, and even to the crucifix. As she was leaving the church, and holding up the train on account of the mud, a holy man saw a devil laughing, and conjured him to tell the reason. The devil replied: “A companion of mine was sitting just now upon that woman’s train, and using it as his carriage. When the woman raised her train my companion fell off in the mud, and that was the cause of my laughter.”53

Carlo Delcorno has characterised the efficacy of this type of exemplum as being due to “the clash between the everyday and the unreal” (“il scontro tra il quotidiano e l’irreale”).54 In many collections, the story is not told in any great length. This may indicate just how well known it was and that a brief note was enough to remind the preacher in need of an apposite exemplum of the entire story. The Scala Coeli of the Dominican Jean Gobi (d. ca. 1350)55 composed in Provence at Saint-Maximin b ­ etween 1323 and 1330,56 which contained over 900 exempla, was widely disseminated. According to Marie-Anne Polo de Beaulieu, around forty manuscripts, most of them dated to the fifteenth century, have been found, distributed throughout most of Europe as far afield as Seville and Naples to the south and Dublin and Gdansk to the north, with the majority in northern France and Germany.57 Of twenty-three manuscripts consulted

49 Some material from the Tractatus was published by A. Lecoy de la Marche, Anecdotes historiques, légendes et apologues, tirés du recueil inédit d’Etienne de Bourbon dominicain du XIIIe siecle (Paris: Librairie Renouard, 1877). For the tale of the devils on the woman’s train, see 233–34 (no. 282). 50 Larry Scanlon, Narrative, Authority, and Power: The Medieval Exemplum and the Chaucerian Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 31; Claude Bremond, Jacques Le Goff, and Jean-Claude Schmitt, L’Exemplum (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 1982), 77. 51 Gérard Blangez, ed., Ci nous dit: Recueil d’exemples moraux (Paris: Société des Anciens Textes Français, 1979–86), 2:316, gives a list of versions of this exemplum dating from after the Vie des Pères. 52 Mariano Aguiló y Fúster, ed., Recull de eximplis e miracles, gestes et faules e alters ligendes ordenades per A.B.C. tretes de un manuscript en pergami del començament del segle XV (Barcelona: Alvar Verdaguer, 1881), 2:136. 53 Crane, Exempla, 101, 235. The translation is that given by Crane. 54 Carlo Delcorno, Exemplum e letteratura: Tra medioevo e rinascimento (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1989), 115. 55 For a brief resumé of the little that is known about Jean Gobi’s life, see Jean Gobi, La Scala Coeli, ed. Marie-Anne Polo de Beaulieu (Paris: Edition du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1991), 25–26. 56 Ibid., 54. 57 Ibid., 75, 77–95.

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Cordelia Warr by Polo de Beaulieu for her edition of the Scala Coeli, the story of the devils on the lady’s train is present in eighteen. SERMONS AND EXEMPLA

The exemplum is also present in sermon collections, for example in the Latin text of the sermon “Against making oneself up and using wigs and against women wearing trains” (“Contra se fardantes et capillos adulterinos portantes atque contra feminas caudatas”) of the Observant Franciscan Bernardino of Siena (d. 1444).58 Having asked “For what is a woman’s train?” (“Quid enim est cauda mulieris?”), Bernardino answers with a list of abuses, stating that it is “nothing other than the increase of bad expenditure, the appearance of a beast, in winter defiled with mud, in summer covered with dust, the broom of the slow-witted, a infernal censer, a peacock in mud, the home of blasphemy, haughty greed, an infernal serpent, the chariot of devils, and the bloodstained sword of the devil.”59 Part of Bernardino’s answer (“the appearance of a beast,” “an infernal serpent”) plays on the Latin “cauda” (or “coda”) which can mean both “tail” and “train.” He goes on to elaborate on the abuses, the penultimate of which is the use of the train as a devils’ chariot. The story as narrated by Bernardino is set in the fourth century and tells of St. Ambrose, bishop of Milan, and St. Zeno, later to be bishop of Verona. Zeno sees two demons riding on a lady’s train; one falls into the mud, making first the other and then Zeno laugh. St. Ambrose cannot see the devils, and so Zeno has to explain his laughter to the older man.60 Bernardino was not the only preacher to have included a version of this exemplum in his sermon collections. Johannes Herolt (ca. 1386–1468), a Dominican friar at Nürnberg,61 included it in his sermon “De superbia vestium,” adding that the longer a person’s train, the more fleas were collected.62 The Franciscan Giacomo della Marca (1393–1496) also used the trains of women’s clothing in his sermons.63 It is clear from the discussion above that the story of the devils riding the lady’s train was well known, certainly to the compilers of exempla collections and probably to those who attended sermons. Might this exemplum have been called to mind by 58 Bernardino da Siena, Opera Omnia, vols. 1 and 2, Quadragesimale de Christiana Religione (Florence: Ad Claras Aquas, 1950), 2:86–99 (sermon 47). For a good introduction on the sources for Bernardino’s sermons, see Franco Mormando, The Preacher’s Demons: Bernardino of Siena and the Social Underworld of Early Renaissance Italy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 40–45. 59 Bernardino da Siena, Opera Omnia, 2:89: “. . . nihil aliud est nisi multiplicatio expensarum malarum, similitude bestiae, in hieme lutosa, in aestate pulverata, scopa stultarum, thuribulum infernale, pavo in luto, domus blasphemiae, superba rapacitas, serpens inferni, quadriga daemonum, et diaboli gladius cruentatus.” 60 Ibid., 92–93. 61 On Herolt, see Ian D. Siggins, A Harvest of Medieval Preaching: The Sermon Books of Johann Herolt, OP (Discipulus) (Bloomington, IN: Xlibris, 2009), 1–13. 62 Johann Herolt, Sermones discipuli (Reutlingen: Johann Otmar, ca. 1479–82), sermon no. 83. 63 See Diane Owen Hughes, “Distinguishing Signs: Ear-rings, Jews and Franciscan Rhetoric in the Italian Renaissance City,” Past and Present 112 (1986): 3–59, at 25.

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Clothing in the Camposanto Last Judgment “looking fixedly” at the woman at the bottom right of the Last Judgment? While her dress appears to have a train, there are no devils riding on it. Instead, a devil catches hold of the dress just below the waist. The representation in the fresco can in no way be classified as an illustration of the exemplum, yet it embodies a similar idea. IMAGE AND EXEMPLUM/SERMON

A connection between image and exemplum did not have to be exact and precise in order to enhance the efficacy of both. The preacher’s listeners did more than hear. They visualised and were expected so to do. They made connections and were expected so to do. Preachers regularly referred to images which the crowd could have been expected to call to mind in order to make specific points.64 They also used actual images.65 Scholars such as Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure had argued that many people found visual imagery easier to assimilate than verbal imagery.66 With narratives that could be mentally pictured, some exempla formed part of the visual arsenal of the preacher. In some instances there may have been an expectation that the sermon would be enhanced through knowledge of, or access to, relevant nearby images. Sermons which dealt with themes of judgment and punishment may have called related images to mind. Those listening to a sermon preached from, for example, Nicola Pisano’s Baptistery pulpit in Pisa (1260) may have been familiar with the relief of the Last Judgment depicted on it.67 Indeed, despite the fact that the congregation may not always have been able to see it, Nicola Pisano’s pulpit has been characterised as having “a didactic target—to instruct the congregation.”68 The reliefs on the pulpit formed part of a complex and indirect interaction capable of linking visual images and sermon. Just as Nicola Pisano’s Last Judgment on the Baptistery pulpit may have encouraged contemplation of the hope of salvation, the inscriptions which accompanied the frescoes in the Camposanto consistently encouraged the viewer to contemplate and turn away from the sin of vanity. The scroll carried by the angel to the left below the group of finely dressed young people at the right of the Triumph of Death scene was addressed to a woman, advising her:

64 Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby, “War and Peace: The Description of Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s Frescoes in Saint Bernardino’s 1425 Siena Sermons,” Renaissance Studies 15, no. 3 (2001): 272–86. 65 Roberto Cobianchi, “Fashioning the Imagery of a Franciscan Observant Preacher: Early Renaissance Portraiture of Bernardino da Siena in Northern Italy,” I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance 12 (2009): 55–83, at 61–62. 66 Cordelia Warr, “Re-reading the Relationship between Devotional Images, Visions, and the Body: Clare of Montefalco and Margaret of Città di Castello,” Viator 38, no. 1 (2007): 217–49, at 218–19. 67 Anita Fiderer Moskowitz, Italian Gothic Sculpture c. 1250–c. 1400 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 23–31, 83–90. 68 Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby, The Renaissance Pulpit: Art and Preaching in Tuscany, 1400–1550 (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2007), 35.

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Cordelia Warr Vain lady, why does it please you to go around painted and adorned so that you want to please the world more than God? Leave this!69

The scroll to the far right used the language of clothing to refer to the relationship between the soul and the body: O soul, why, why do you not think that Death will take away that dress in which you feel bodily pleasure?70

St. Macarius, standing above the three dead, reinforces the message instructing the group of fashionable riders to vanquish vanity,71 whilst an inscription which was probably placed in a now lost scroll below the fresco gives the words of one of the dead in their tombs: “In the world I had many vain desires.”72 These messages were reinforced in the inscriptions originally accompanying the Last Judgment and Hell scenes, two of which reminded viewers of the seven deadly sins.73 Stated in the inscriptions and visually demonstrated in the frescoes, the intended conclusion for the viewer/reader was that vanity, in some cases specifically in the shape of expensive clothing and cosmetics, led directly to eternal damnation. The female viewer was given instructions on how to avoid such a fate: penitence and confession. The penultimate scroll at the right of the Triumph of Death concluded with an exhortation to confess,74 a theme of the frescoes emphasised by Jérôme Baschet.75 SUMPTUARY LEGISLATION

The need to control expense in women’s clothing reflected in exempla and voiced by preachers is also apparent in Italian sumptuary legislation. It cannot be coincidental that the first Italian sumptuary laws were promulgated in the thirteenth century.76 This is a period during which secular as well as religious legislators grappled with the link between outward appearance and social or religious status. All members of society, religious or secular, wore clothing that defined them. Misuse of clothing 69 Morpurgo, “Le epigrafi volgari,” 56: “Femina vana, perché ti delecti / D’andar cosí dipinta et adorna / Che vòi piacer al mondo più che a dio? / Ai lasscia!” 70 Ibid., 56: “O anima, perché perché non pensi / Che Morte ti torrà quell vestimento / In che tu senti corporal dilecto?” 71 Ibid., 57: “Se vostra mente serrà bene accorta / Tenendo qui la vostra vista fitta, / La vanagloria ci sarà sconficta / Et la superbia vederete morta. / Et voi serrete ancor di questa sorta! / Or observate la lege che v’è scripta.” Bolzoni (Web of Images, 33) translates as follows: “If your mind has become aware / By keeping your sight on what is here, / Vainglory will be defeated / And you will see the death of Pride. / You too will come to this, it is clear! / Now observe the law that is written here.” 72 Ibid., 60: “Nel mondo io hebi molti vani desiri.” 73 Ibid., 64–71. 74 Ibid., 56: “Che sententia tu ne aspecti, / Se incontenente il tuo cor non torna / Ad confessarsi spesso d’ogni rio!” 75 Baschet, Les Justices, 329–30. 76 Catherine Kovesi Killerby, Sumptuary Law in Italy 1200–1500 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002), 24–40.

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Clothing in the Camposanto Last Judgment could allow misidentification, be a sign of deliberate intent to deceive, or give cause for or signify a variety of sins. Sumptuary laws could, and did, deal with weddings, funerals, and feasts, but the majority of sumptuary legislation enacted in the Italian peninsula between 1200 and 1500 focused on clothing, with female clothing by far the largest category.77 The preambles of Italian sumptuary laws did not uniformly point out vanity as a rationale and, as a reflection of social, economic, and political tensions as well as religious issues, the rationales behind sumptuary legislation were complex. They included considerations about the local economy, excessive expenditure and consumption, and social hierarchy. However, the concept of “honesty” in female dress was “a constant theme,”78 and Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli has argued that the connection between sumptuary legislation and preaching “was neither casual nor isolated.”79 Women’s clothes were linked to the weakness of female nature: Luxurious clothing implied, indeed encouraged, immoral behaviour.80 Some early laws relating to dress were promulgated by individual churchmen or through church councils, thus emphasising the link between dress and morality. Cardinal Federico Visconti of Pisa passed sumptuary legislation during the third quarter of the thirteenth century which included regulations regarding female dress.81 Trains were specifically targeted: Cardinal Latino, in 1279, restricted the length of women’s trains in the papal territories of Lombardy, Romagna, and Tuscany to one hand’s breadth.82 This requirement formed part of a number aimed at ensuring women’s clothing visibly demonstrated their modesty and chastity. As the preamble stated, the aim of the legislation was that women should, “with modest shame and bashful modesty, which especially ornament faithful wives . . . show forth externally the chastity that they should have internally.”83 The length of the train was also a concern in secular legislation throughout Italy: in Siena in 1249, San Gimignano in 1251, Parma between 1258 and 1266, and Sicily in 1290.84 In Venice, the discussions on sumptuary legislation in 1334 included a proposal to limit women’s trains to one braccio (about 68 centimetres).85 Florentine legislation

77 Ibid., 38 (fig. 2.1). 78 Ibid., 118. 79 Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli, “Reconciling the Privilege of a Few with the Common Good: Sumptuary Laws in Medieval and Early Modern Europe,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 39, no. 3 (2009): 597–617, at 598. 80 Kovesi Killerby, Sumptuary Law in Italy, 118. 81 Ibid., 99–100. 82 Ibid., 98. A translation of the text of Cardinal Latino’s legislation is provided by Thomas M. Izbicki, “Failed Censures: Ecclesiastical Regulation of Women’s Clothing in Late Medieval Italy,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 5 (2009): 37–53, at 46–47. 83 Izbicki, “Failed Censures,” 40, 46. See also Ronald E. Rainey, “Sumptuary Legislation in Renaissance Florence” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1985), 42–44, 89–90. 84 Kovesi Killerby, Sumptuary Law in Italy, 26, 86. 85 Discussed in Susan Mosher Stuard, Gilding the Market: Luxury and Fashion in Fourteenth-Century Italy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 44–45. A braccio (pl. braccia) was a unit of measurement related to the length of the arm used in many Italian cities. The measurement was not uniform in each city and could vary between approximately 58 and 68 centimetres.

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Cordelia Warr of 1463 censured women in mourning whose cloaks had inordinately long trains.86 A survey of the sumptuary legislation of Emilia-Romagna between the thirteenth and the sixteenth centuries edited by Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli demonstrates concern with the length of trains throughout the period.87 In Bologna in 1286, Domina Francesca, the wife of Feudus, was accused of having a gown with a train longer than that allowed under the Bolognese statutes.88 The Bolognese statutes of 1288 contained a section listing the fines for wearing a variety of forbidden items of clothing, including dress trains. The statutes specified that no woman was allowed to wear furs or any other item of clothing that had a train which dragged or could be dragged along the ground and was longer than three-quarters of a braccio.89 The Provvisioni of April 26, 1508, also referred to dress trains, limiting their length.90 Similar regulations were made on April 6, 1514, stating that the more noble and well-off women were, the more important it was to dress “honestly.”91 In Ferrara, the deliberations of January 14, 1434, on women’s clothing specifically stated that no clothes should have trains longer than one-quarter of a braccio.92 A week later on January 21, more detailed information on dress trains was provided.93 In Forlì, the statutes of 1359–73 stated that no woman could wear an item of clothing that dragged or could be dragged along the ground. The wording is very explicit, going on to say that clothing should be short and proportioned so that no part reached to the ground or could be dragged along it, neither should it rise two fingers above the ground either at the front or the back of the garment.94 The statutes of Cesena of 1467–72 specified that women could not wear clothes with a train which dragged on the ground but only clothes which reached to the ground.95 The Riformanze of 1575 stated that trains no longer than a third of a braccio were to be tolerated.96 The same length of train was stipulated in the Bandi of 1584.97 In Modena, the statutes of 1327 allowed trains on women’s clothes of no longer than one braccio.98 This brief overview of some aspects of Italian sumptuary legislation shows that trains were an object of regulatory interest to a number of Italian towns from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries. The amount of regulation suggests that women who could have afforded dresses with trains which dragged along the ground could not have failed to be aware that such attire was not considered to be appropriate. Carole

86 Kovesi Killerby, Sumptuary Law in Italy, 62–63. 87 Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli, ed., La legislazione suntuaria: Secoli XIII–XVI: Emilia-Romagna (Rome: Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, 2002). 88 Ibid., 49. 89 Ibid., 54. 90 Ibid., 163. 91 Ibid., 169. 92 Ibid., 301. 93 Ibid., 302. 94 Ibid., 323. 95 Ibid., 352. 96 Ibid., 360. 97 Ibid., 366. 98 Ibid., 391.

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Clothing in the Camposanto Last Judgment Collier-Frick has characterised trains as “flashpoints,”99 features of clothing which engendered passionate discussion from both moral and practical standpoints. The woman at the bottom right of the Camposanto Last Judgment, the bottom of her dress lying on the ground for more than the hand’s breadth stipulated by Cardinal Latino’s regulations, may have prompted the female viewer to reflect on her own clothing and its potential effect on her eternal salvation. DEVILS, MONSTERS, THE OTHER

It is clear that the trains of women’s clothing engendered “creative associations” with sumptuary legislation, sermons, and exempla. The sermons and exempla discussed above link devils to women’s trains. The blackened, claw-like, disembodied hands of the devil pulling the woman in the Camposanto fresco down to hell give form to a presence that may have been felt almost physically by contemporaries. Giordano da Pisa’s 1309 sermon, discussed above, stated that the devil tempts women to sin through vanity.100 This is more than a figure of speech. It should be considered in the context of the third temptation of Christ, the theme of the sermon, when Christ is taken up to the top of the mountain by the devil in person.101 In the pre-modern world, “the devil and his demons are real, they are present.”102 To be dragged down to hell by a devil was to be dragged down not just to punishment but to a dreadful and terrifying foreign world.103 Devils were foreign “others” and frequently described as black-skinned.104 In the Camposanto, as in medieval life, such “others” did not always stay within their own borders, and this was one of the things which made devils so funny, discomforting, and terrifying: Their incongruity on the train of a dress made them funny, their otherness made them discomforting, and their ability to cross boundaries and drag victims down to hell made them terrifying. The early-fourteenth-century Apocalypse of Isabella of France (Paris, Bibl. Nat., MS Fr. 13096) shows a vain woman in hell. Devils crawl over her, arranging her hair and the train of her gown and sitting inside her voluminous sleeves, a depiction which Suzanne Lewis has associated convincingly with the tale of the devils riding on a woman’s train.105 The devils can be characterised as playful: The sleeves of the gown form a type of swing, and the rearrangment of the woman’s 99 Carole Collier Frick, Dressing Renaissance Florence: Families, Fortunes, and Fine Clothing (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 190. 100 Giordano da Pisa, Prediche inedite, vii. 101 Ibid., 32–38. 102 Richard Raiswell, “Introduction,” in The Devil in Society in Premodern Europe, ed. Richard Raiswell with Peter Dendle (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2012), 23–65, at 29. See also Joan Young Gregg, Devils, Women, and Jews: Reflections of the Other in Medieval Sermon Stories (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1997), 25. 103 Debra Higgs Strickland, Saracens, Demons, and Jews: Making Monsters in Medieval Art (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), 61–94. 104 Gregg, Devils, 32–33. 105 Suzanne Lewis, “The Apocalypse of Isabella of France: Paris, Bibl. Nat. MS Fr. 13096,” Art Bulletin 72, no. 2 (1990): 224–60, at 230–31.

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Cordelia Warr hair recalls children who play with the long tresses of their mother. As devils, they are also terrifying: We as viewers know that their ostensible playfulness is a preamble to eternal damnation. The devils who ride on the lady’s train do more than demonstrate the vanity of women who wear long trains, their sinfulness, and their ridiculousness. There is a sense in which the woman carrying the devils on her train is in the process of becoming just such a monstrous being. Bernardino da Siena stated that wearing trains made these women similar to beasts (“similitudo bestiae”). Playing on the words for train and tail, he noted that “man and woman were created by God without a tail . . . but that the devil, because he had made man into a beast of burden through disobedience” ensured that it was clear that both man and woman had lost their likeness to God: men through wearing a tail in the shape of a sword, and women through having trains on their clothing. “But,” Bernardino goes on to say, “it is amazing that man and woman surpass even the animals in their tails; since they (animals) have only one tail, yet the woman has more, she has four or seven or sometimes even more than twice seven. On that account, such people can be included amongst the monsters.”106 Bernardino’s sarcastic comment on women’s multiple tails may have referred to their perceived love of luxury and extravagant clothing habits: A woman who owned more than one gown or cloak with a train could be categorized as having more than one tail. Alternatively, Bernardino’s comments on multiple tails could refer to the fashionable dagged clothing of the time represented, for example, by the Sienese painter Giovanni di Paolo (d. 1482) in his Paradise (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Robert Lehman Collection, 1975.1.31).107 But even one train/tail, dragging along the ground and sliding from side to side as the woman wearing it walked through the city, was enough to suggest a link with the devil in the shape of the serpent from the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3). In one of his sermons in Siena in 1427, Bernardino specified, “There are times in which women appear to be serpents . . . the woman with her tail, now here and now there, now here and now there, as the serpent does with its tail, dragging it around on the ground.”108 As a serpent, the woman is clearly identified with the devil, and many of the devils in the Camposanto Inferno clearly have tails, a common attribute 106 Bernardino of Siena, Opera Omnia, 2:89–90: “Secunda abusio: similitude bestiae. Homo enim atque mulier sine cauda a Domino create sunt . . . Sed diabolus, quia hominem fecerat per inobedientiam ut iumentum, . . . caudam[que] posuit homini, scilicet spatam, in vesteque caudam posuit mulieri . . . Sed mirabile est quod vir et mulier etiam animalia in cauda praecellunt; cum illa non habeant nisi unam, hi vero, maxime mulier, habeant quatuor vel septem vel quandoque etiam ultra bis septem. Propterea inter monstra tales possunt annumerari.” 107 For a reconstruction of the altarpiece of which the Paradise probably formed part of the predella, see Ingeborg Bähr, “Zum ursprünglichen Standort und zur Ikonographie des Dominikaner-Retabels von Giovanni di Paolo in den Uffizien,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 46, no. 1 (2002): 74–120. On dagged clothing, see John Block Friedman, “The Iconography of Dagged Clothing and Its Reception by Moralist Writers,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 9 (2013): 121–38. 108 Bernardino da Siena, Le prediche volgari, ed. Piero Bargellini (Milan: Rizzoli, 1936), 858–59: “Saranno tempi che le donne parranno serpenti. (E cosí fa la donna co la sua coda, qua oral à, qua oral à, come fa il serpent della sua, trascinandola per terra),” sermon 37, “Come ogni cosa di questo mondo è vanità.”

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Clothing in the Camposanto Last Judgment of such creatures. It is therefore fitting that the woman at the bottom right of the Last Judgment should be dragged down to hell by one whom she already, through her own choice of attire, resembles. CONCLUSION

The Camposanto Last Judgment is a monumental fresco, yet in this article I have “looked fixedly,” to return to Lina Bolzoni’s term, at the representation of one aspect of the clothing of one of the over one hundred figures depicted. In doing so, it has been possible to explore some of the complex references which a fourteenth-century viewer may have brought to the representation of clothing within the fresco, demonstrating not only the rich visual culture of the period—those things requiring visualisation, such as the imagery of sermons and exempla, as well as those already visualised, such as frescoes and relief sculpture—but also the significance of an important cultural referent.

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“Transposing þe shapus þat God first mad them of ”: Manipulated Masculinity in the Galaunt Tradition Emily J. Rozier

Whilst in modern parlance the term “gallant” has come to be associated with chivalric virtues and courteous behaviour, it was first used, in Middle English, to describe a stereotype of fashionably dressed young men synonymous with licentiousness and delinquency. The galaunt figure is extremely prevalent in the literature of late medieval England. It is referred to in a variety of literary sources, from verse satire to drama, and is even mentioned in material as disparate as personal letters, legal cases, and guild accounts. The earliest extant description of the galaunt that refers to the figure by name can be found in the late-fourteenth-century satirical lyric catalogued in the Digital Index of Middle English Verse (DIMEV) as no. 4853, a macaronic complaint that bemoans the lasciviousness of contemporary society.1 Between the composition An earlier version of this article was given in a DISTAFF session at the 2012 International Medieval ­Congress at Leeds, England. I am grateful to Professor Gale R. Owen-Crocker for arranging the session and for inviting me to submit the paper for publication. Her patience and assistance are greatly appreciated. I would also like to thank the editorial team of Medieval Clothing and Textiles, particularly Robin Netherton, together with the anonymous peer reviewers for their comments, which helped to shape the final article. Particular thanks also go to Professor Wendy Scase for her feedback on the chapter of my doctoral thesis that forms the foundation of the research presented here, and to Dr. Michael Rush for his advice and support.  1 This anonymous poem survives whole in three manuscripts, all of which are fifteenth-century miscellanies: London, British Library, MS Harley 536, fol. 34 (A-Text); London, British Library, MS Harley 941, 21v (B-Text); and Dublin, Trinity College, MS 516, fols. 108–10 (C-Text); see Linne Ruth Mooney et al., Digital Index of Middle English Verse, http://www.dimev.net, entry no. 4853. (Poetry discussed in this article will be cited to this database, abbreviated DIMEV, with the poem’s entry number.) It is commonly referred to as “On the Times” thanks to Wright’s 1857 edition, which uses the C-Text; Thomas Wright, ed., Political Poems and Songs Relating to English History, 2 vols. (London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1859–61), 1:270–78. The A-Text is printed in Jeanne Krochalis and Edward Peters, eds., The World of Piers Plowman (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1975), 87–95. A more recent edition, which was published in 1996 and is referenced in this article, uses the C-Text: James M. Dean, ed., Medieval English Political Writings (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1996), 140–46. An extract focusing on dress appears in Louise M. Sylvester, Mark C. Chambers, and Gale R. Owen-Crocker, eds., Dress and Textiles in Medieval Britain: A Multilingual Sourcebook (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2014), 166–67.

Emily J. Rozier of this text and the end of the fifteenth century, the figure features in at least thirty-six additional examples and becomes, in the words of Fiona Dunlop, “the most frequently mentioned inappropriate identity” of this period.2 This article will explore the concerns expressed in this large body of literature about the transformative effects of the galaunt’s fashions, which will be shown to have been consistently viewed as being both physically and spiritually distortive. Through its investigation of these criticisms about the manipulative effects of the figure’s clothing, the article will bring to light the anxieties about forged masculine authority and effeminacy that inform the sartorial discourses exercised in the tradition. LITERARY ANALYSIS OF THE GALAUNT FIGURE

Despite the cultural significance of the late medieval galaunt tradition, it has received little, though some excellent, scholarly attention. John Scattergood wrote about the figure in 1971, including a brief discussion of some of the galaunt texts and their interaction with contemporary sociopolitical factors, in his monograph Politics and Poetry in the Fifteenth Century.3 Scattergood’s interest in the figure also resulted in the publication of a note in 1974 on the dress of the character Ryotte (that is, “riot”) in John Skelton’s poem The Bowge of Courte and how those costume features related to the wider galaunt tradition.4 This was followed in 1987 by further appraisal of some of the socioeconomic concerns that Scattergood identified as being linked to the figure’s sartorial choices.5 For the most part, Scattergood’s work concentrated on the satiric galaunt tradition and discussed the texts in relation to what he argued were the contextual factors that influenced and shaped them. Scattergood posited that the criticisms expressed about the figure’s clothing were symptomatic of broader anxieties about social change, citing the agricultural, commercial, and social developments of the fourteenth century that led to a rise in social mobility in the late medieval period.6 Much of the existing scholarship on the galaunt canon has focused on specific aspects of the tradition, such as the use of the figure in morality plays or the makeup of a single text. Two of the galaunt texts that have enjoyed particular attention from scholars are DIMEV 3084 and DIMEV 6831—the first of which is the subject of a

  2 Fiona S. Dunlop, The Late Medieval Interlude: The Drama of Youth and Aristocratic Masculinity (York: York Medieval Press, 2007), 40.   3 John Scattergood, Politics and Poetry in the Fifteenth Century (London: Blandford Press, 1971), 342–45.   4 John Scattergood, “Skelton’s ‘Ryotte’: ‘A Rusty Gallande,’” Notes and Queries 21, no. 3 (March 1974): 83–85.  5 John Scattergood, “Fashion and Morality in the Late Middle Ages,” in England in the Fifteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1986 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Daniel Williams (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 1987), 255–72.   6 Scattergood, Politics and Poetry, 347.

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The Galaunt Tradition 1993 article by Julia Boffey, and the latter discussed in a 1994 article by Wendy Scase.7 Whilst both scholars described the fashions associated with the figure in the course of their arguments, the sartorial discourses at play in the canon were not the primary concern of either article, each of which instead concentrated on the form and function of the text itself. In regard to the dramatic galaunt tradition, Tony Davenport offered a detailed introduction to the subject in 1983, tracing the figure’s inclusion in late medieval morality plays and Tudor interludes.8 Davenport perspicaciously interpreted the figure as a youthful “composite of vanity and impiety,” one that was used to express alarm at “the social and moral failings of the contemporary world in the suspicious eyes of the moralist looking for the traditional English virtues, for sober modesty, plain simplicity, truth without cleverness, honest permanence.”9 For Davenport, costume was crucial to successful articulation of this criticism, as it allowed the galaunt to act as “a tableau-figure, conveying moral meaning simply by costume and gesture.”10 The galaunt’s role as a stock personification of sinfulness was also commented upon by John Cox, who mentioned the figure in the course of his analysis of late medieval and early modern dramatic representations of Lucifer.11 Theresa Coletti further engaged with the figure’s role as a visual representation of transgressive appetites, though her study of the Digby play of Mary Magdalen concluded that the galaunt was included to raise “questions of social identity rather than sexual sin.”12 Her article thus shares Scattergood’s placing of the figure as one that was primarily used to criticise those who indulged in high fashion despite lacking the financial means to do so, rather than Davenport’s and Cox’s interpretations of the figure as a personification of cardinal sin. In 2007, Fiona Dunlop examined the galaunt figure in relation to its inclusion in instruction manuals—an area previously neglected. She argued that in these manuals, the “young man is encouraged actively to construct a masculinity for himself through the management of his gestures.”13 Whilst Dunlop’s conclusions about the galaunt, like those of many of the previous studies, read the figure as “one deliberately making a false claim to a noble identity,” her analysis also presents the galaunt tradition as one that was primarily concerned with the instruction of youth. The present article seeks to build upon Dunlop’s adroit engagement with this aspect of masculinity studies. The didactic material in which the galaunt features has also been considered by Matthew Giancarlo, who investigated Peter Idley’s appropriation and adaptation of source

  7 Julia Boffey, “The Treatise of a Galaunt in Manuscript and Print,” The Library 15, no. 3 (1993): 175– 86; Wendy Scase, “Proud Gallants and Popeholy Priests: The Context and Function of a FifteenthCentury Satirical Poem,” Medium Aevum 63, no. 2 (1994): 275–86, at 284.  8 Tony Davenport, “Lusty Fresche Galaunts,” in Aspects of Early English Drama, ed. Paula Neuss (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1983), 111–28.   9 Ibid., 111, 116. 10 Ibid., 121. 11 John D. Cox, The Devil and the Sacred in English Drama, 1350–1642 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 12 Theresa Coletti, “‘Curtesy Doth It Yow Lere’: The Sociology of Transgression in the Digby Mary Magdalene,” English Literary History 71, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 1–28, at 2. 13 Dunlop, Late Medieval Interlude, 40.

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Emily J. Rozier ­ aterial in crafting his fifteenth-century Instructions to His Son. Giancarlo’s article, m which argues that Idley “dresses” his text for a lay, aristocratic audience, again presents the galaunt as a marker of social change.14 The most recent study of the galaunt is that in Andrea Denny-Brown’s 2012 book Fashioning Change: The Trope of Clothing in High- and Late-Medieval England.15 The galaunt tradition is discussed in the final chapter, in which the figure is presented as “a parody of English mutability in dress.”16 Denny-Brown states at the outset of the chapter that she is “most interested in examining the literary galaunt’s potential as a fulcrum for late medieval English responses to aesthetic changes in their culture and to the related notion of worldly transience more broadly.”17 Denny-Brown thus shares, and indeed greatly extends, Scattergood’s reading of galaunt literature as belonging to the “wicked age” topos, concentrating on the various prophecies cast against the figure in the satiric verses. Her investigation of the galaunt’s clothing therefore centres on the figure’s role as varietas vestium incarnate, representative of concurrent sociopolitical upheavals and concern for the future of English society. The previous scholarship undertaken on the figure has thus tended to interpret the galaunt as an expression of concern at political fragmentation and changes to the social order. Scattergood has already observed that the galaunt was used to criticise late medieval knights for having “the appearance of nobility without the necessary substance to go with it,” but the “substance” to which he referred was financial.18 This article seeks to develop our understanding of the galaunt tradition by instead examining how the figure, as depicted in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, was used to malign those who lacked physical substance and so sought to fake knightly prowess by altering the male form through their clothing. It will be shown that through their wearing of garments that appeared to change the very structure of the body, the galaunts altered not only their physical appearance but also their physiognomies, and came to be identified as “non-male” as a result. The article therefore also introduces some of the broader questions of masculinity and status for which the writers of satiric and didactic literature in the late medieval period used the galaunt’s dress as a vehicle. In so doing, the article engages not with the traditional interpretation of the figure as a symbol of social turmoil but rather with its role in youth discourse.

14 Matthew Giancarlo, “Dressing Up a ‘Galaunt’: Traditional Piety and Fashionable Politics in Peter Idley’s ‘Translacions’ of Mannyng and Lydgate,” in After Arundel: Religious Writing in FifteenthCentury England, ed. Vincent Gillespie and Kantik Ghosh (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2011), 429–47. 15 Andrea Denny-Brown, Fashioning Change: The Trope of Clothing in High- and Late-Medieval England (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2012). 16 Ibid., 15, 148–78. 17 Ibid., 149. 18 Scattergood, Politics and Poetry, 309.

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The Galaunt Tradition MASCULINITY STUDIES

The field of masculinity studies has grown in significance amongst medievalists in recent years with a number of monographs published on the subject. Ruth Karras’s From Boys to Men: Formation of Masculinity in Late Medieval Europe, for example, examines how young men were inducted into adulthood through a process of institutionalised socialisation carried out in the professional setting most appropriate to their class.19 In the course of the study, Karras explores how this process of education and affiliation helped to forge masculine identity in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Similarly, Isabel Davis’s Writing Masculinity in the Later Middle Ages looks at the key role of proper employment in the formation of male identity.20 Davis’s work investigates the relationship between medieval attitudes to masculinity and the responsibility placed upon men to make a positive contribution to society through fruitful occupation. This article addresses these themes as well, presenting the galaunt as representative of those who sought to subvert the role of productivity in the formation of masculine identity and as such failed to meet the social expectations placed upon them. Derek Neal’s The Masculine Self in Late Medieval England, the third chapter of which focuses on late medieval attitudes to the male body, also investigates questions similar to those to be explored here.21 Neal makes the point that in the medieval period “physical manhood involved for the individual not only social selfhood, but a sense of the body’s evolving capacities, especially strength and sexuality.”22 The importance placed upon physical maturity in the formation of masculine identity and the attainment of adult authority is another ideal that the galaunt will be shown in this article to undermine. Neal’s analysis of male fashions asks why extravagant styles of male dress were so popular in the late medieval period and how these sartorial choices were perceived to affect the desirability of the wearer—in terms of both sexual attractiveness and homosocial appeal. Indeed, Neal concludes that the virile nature of late medieval fashionable display was intended to impress other men by “appearing masculine” as much as to attract women.23 Whilst Neal does discuss some aspects of DIMEV 4853, he does not refer to the galaunt’s role therein. Including the galaunt tradition in such

19 Ruth Mazo Karras, From Boys to Men: Formation of Masculinity in Late Medieval Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002). 20 Isabel Davis, Writing Masculinity in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 21 Derek G. Neal, The Masculine Self in Late Medieval England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008). 22 Ibid., 141. 23 Ibid., 187.

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Emily J. Rozier examinations of male physical identity is of immense value, as much of the discourse surrounding the figure hinges on these issues.24 MANIPULATION OF THE MALE FORM

The noun galaunt is defined by the Middle English Dictionary as pertaining to “a man of fashion; especially one who dresses showily or extravagantly.”25 This definition is certainly in keeping with the galaunt of verse satire, whose sartorial exploits are exclusively presented as an indulgence in the most extreme and expensive of current fashions. Whilst the galaunt tradition can offer a fascinating window into late medieval couture, there is more to the descriptions of the figure’s fashions than a mere documentation of contemporary sartorial tastes. Nor do the accounts simply criticise the garments on the basis of the extreme and impractical nature of their design. Instead, the figure’s clothing is used as a medium through which to examine and describe his moral failings. To return to the first galaunt text, DIMEV 4853, as an example, here the author links the figure’s tight hose to the tendency of these men to stand nonchalantly during times of prayer, an act that the author accuses of disrupting the service: They may nott, I suppose, curvare genu sine cura: When other men kneles pia Christo vota ferentes, Thay stondyn at here helys, se non curvare valentes; For hurtyng of herre hose non inclinare laborant.

[to bend the knee without care] [saying pious vows to Christ] [unable themselves to bend their {knees}] [they take pains not to bend]26

The galaunt’s garments do not merely reflect the sartorial inclinations of the wearer; they are also used to represent the moral laxity of those who sport them—offering a vehicle through which to malign the figure as one who places the concerns of fashion above the observation of his spiritual duties. 24 Other monographs on related fields of study include (in chronological order) Christina Marie Fitzgerald, The Drama of Masculinity in Medieval English Guild Culture (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); Ian McAdam, Magic and Masculinity in Early Modern English Drama (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2009); Rachel E. Moss, Fatherhood and its Representation in Middle English Texts (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2013). A number of essay collections were published on the formation and representation of masculinity prior to the spate of monographs discussed here. These include Clare A. Lees, ed., Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994); D. M. Hadley, ed., Masculinity in Medieval Europe (London: Longman, 1999); Jacqueline Murray, ed., Conflicted Identities and Multiple Masculinities: Men in the Medieval West (New York: Garland, 1999). See also Christopher Fletcher, “Manhood, Kingship and the Public in Late Medieval England,” Edad Media: Revista de Historia 13 (2012): 123–42. 25 Middle English Dictionary, online ed. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001; henceforth MED), s.v. “galaunt, n.,” (a). 26 Dean, Medieval English Political Writings, 140–46, lines 147–54. All translations of the Latin in this article are from Dean’s edition.

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The Galaunt Tradition This dual aspect of meaning imbues every facet of the galaunt’s clothing. To stay with DIMEV 4853, the galaunts are here also accused of making themselves Brodder then ever God made humeris sunt arte tumentes; Narow they bene, thay seme brod, nova sunt haec respice gentes They bere a newe facoun, humeris in pectore tergo; Goddes plasmacoun non illis complacet ergo.

[they puff out {their} shoulders artificially] [they are a “new fashion” of gents] [with shoulders in the back of the chest] [therefore is not pleasing to them]27

The galaunts are portrayed as being so presumptuous that they would seek to improve upon God’s design of the male form, changing its composition by wearing clothing that remodels the very structure of the body. Those who indulge in fashionable attire are thus depicted, through the galaunt, as sartorially blasphemous. Further than this, by changing their appearance, the galaunts also change their very nature, becoming, as the line “nova sunt haec respice gentes” denotes, a new race of people as a result.28 The consequence of indulging in fashionable attire is to be made “other” by one’s clothing and subsequently to be excluded from the Christian community. Adulteration of the human form continues to be an issue in the mid-­fifteenthcentury lyric DIMEV 3084, in which the author complains that the galaunts are “­dysfygurynge nature / by this newe araye”—phrasing that once again emphasises the removal from the natural state that is produced by such attire.29 In this instance the remodelling of the body is detailed as being accomplished through a combination of binding, which allows for “small gyrdynge in the waste” (line 143) and padding in the form of “cloutes / at theyr brest lyke a pye” (line 149). The manipulation and 27 Ibid., lines 129–36. “Plasmacoun” (line 135) here means “a forming or fashioning, creation”; MED, s.v. “plasmāciǒun, n.,” (a). 28 Dean translates gentes as “gents” (ibid., line 132), but the Latin gentes means races, peoples, or nations. This article takes a similar approach in interpreting the line as a reference to a new group of people or separate nation. 29 W. Carew Hazlitt, ed., Remains of the Early Popular Poetry of England (London: John Russell Smith, 1866), 147–60, line 23. DIMEV 3084 survives in three late-fifteenth-century manuscripts: Cambridge, Trinity College Library, MS R.3.21 (601), 247–248v; Rome, English College, MS A.347, fol. 78; Tokyo, Takamiya s.n. (olim Astor A. 2), fols. 210–13. For a discussion of the manuscript variants and of the early print editions, see Boffey, “The Treatise of a Galaunt.” Boffey (176) titles the poem “The Treatise of a Galaunt” on account of the fact that it is referred to as such in some of the early editions. DIMEV names the poem “Song of Galaunt.” Other editions of the poem include F. J. Furnivall, ed., Ballads from Manuscripts (1863; repr., New York: AMS, 1968), 1:445; and James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps, ed., A Treatyse of a Galaunt, with The Marriage of the Fayre Pusell the Bosse of Byllyngsgate unto London Stone, from the unique edition printed by Wynkyn de Worde (London: n.p., 1860). Whilst John Scattergood dates the text to 1510, the dates of the manuscripts in which it survives make this improbable. Further than this, the mention of the poem in a sermon given by John Alcock in the 1490s (see Boffey, “The Treatise of a Galaunt,” 175) makes Scattergood’s date for the poem impossible. On the basis of the costume features described therein, the poem is most likely to date to the mid-fifteenth century. The author is unknown. Alcock ascribes the text to John Lydgate, but there is no further evidence to support this attribution.

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Emily J. Rozier ­ ebasement of the male form caused by such padded garments, together with the d spiritual implications of this, is also a key concern in didactic material. In The Vision of Edmund Leversedge, from which the quotation in the title of this article was taken, the galaunts are directly accused of using their fashionable garb, including “stuffid dowblettes,” to interfere with God’s design of the male form: “þe aray þat þees galantes, þes proud peeple, nowondayes usune, transposing þe shapus þat God first mad them of.”30 This criticism is directly echoed in another mid- to late-fifteenth-century didactic text: DIMEV 6850, in which the galaunts are again described as trying to “hem dysguyse in ther array.”31 Such concerns about the tendency of fashionable garb and those who adopt it to adapt God’s design are thus common to a variety of different genres within the galaunt tradition. The embellishments and decorative motifs described within the canon are another aspect of fashionable garb that is framed so as to emphasise the galaunt’s removal from the natural state and from the God-fearing community. This symbolic link between ornamentation and sin is clearly drawn in Peter Idley’s tale about “a knyght that loued nyce array” that is used as the narracio for the sin of pride in the account de septem peccatis mortalibus [of the seven deadly sins] that forms part of Book 2 of his Instructions to His Son. The knight, who is later referred to as “this galaunt” (line 190), is described as wearing a cote “to-Iagged with poisies on every side, / And bottoned with siluere to the harde throte.”32 Throughout the period in question, buttons were indeed used as a platform for sartorial display and were often made of valuable

30 W. F. Nijenhuis, ed., The Vision of Edmund Leversedge: A 15th-Century Account of a Visit to the Otherworld Edited from BL MS Additional 34,193 with an Introduction, Commentary and Glossary (Nijmegen, Netherlands: Centrum voor Middeleeuwse Studies, Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen, 1991), lines 374, 141–43. The quotation in the title of this article is taken from line 143 of this poem. The Vision of Edmund Leversedge survives in a single manuscript: London, British Library, MS Additional 34193. There is only one other critical edition of the text: E. Margaret Thompson, ed., “The Vision of Edmund Leversedge,” Somerset and Dorset Notes and Queries 9 (1905): 19–35. The text dates to ca. 1470. 31 F. J. Furnivall, ed., The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man (1899; repr., Millwood, NY: Kraus, 1973), line 11670. DIMEV 6850 is John Lydgate’s translation of Deguileville’s Pélerinage de la vie humaine, commonly known as “The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man.” It survives in four manuscripts: London, British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius A.VII, 39–106v (fragment); London, British Library, MS Cotton Vitellius C.XIII, fols. 2–309; London, British Library, MS Stowe 952, fol. 1; and Worcester, Worcester Cathedral Library, MS C.i.8 (fragment). Furnivall produced two editions of the text; one was coedited by Katharine B. Locock and published for the Roxburghe Club in 1905, and the other was published for the Early English Text Society in three volumes over the period 1899 to 1904. The 1973 edition referenced here is a single-volume reprint of the three-volume edition. The text dates to ca. 1430. 32 Charlotte D’Evelyn, Peter Idley’s Instructions to His Son (Boston: Heath & Co., 1935), lines 184–85. The text survives, in varying degrees of completion, in eight manuscripts, described in its entry as DIMEV 2594. Additional extracts from Instructions to His Son are included in Sylvester, Chambers, and Owen-Crocker, Sourcebook, 182–93.

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The Galaunt Tradition metals, set with precious stones, or enamelled.33 They were so treasured, in fact, that they are even listed amongst the jewels in some royal inventories.34 Idley, however, chooses a specific metal for the buttons: silver. This is significant, as it draws a parallel between the galaunts and Judas Iscariot, who was paid for betraying Christ with thirty pieces of silver. Given the didactic nature of the text from which this excerpt is taken, together with the fact that Idley uses clerical texts as the exempla for his work, this is an association that was likely to have been made.35 Even something as seemingly innocuous as buttons can be read as a sign of the duplicitous and sinful nature of those who are portrayed as wearing them. The phrase “to-Iagged” in the above quotation is a reference to dagging, a tailoring practice that involved either cutting the edges of a garment into intricate patterns, or attaching decorative pieces of material to the hem.36 This labour-intensive technique had been used in court fashions since the mid-fourteenth century and was commonly criticised from the time of its introduction.37 Within the galaunt tradition it is first mentioned in the mid-fifteenth-century satiric verse DIMEV 3084, in which the galaunt’s cote is described as being “shredde all in lystes.”38 The practice, however, was already the subject of negative comment long before DIMEV 4853 was composed. The extended, English version of the Brut, for example, contains an account of the 1342 tournament at Dunstable in which the “ȝong bachelrye” there attendant are chastised for appearing “more liche to turmentours & deuels” than men on account of their “schorte cloþis […] dagged & ket.”39 The association of the well dressed with the demonic is capitalised on by the galaunt tradition, more than a century after the events described in the Brut, in The Vision of Edmund Leversedge. In this late-fifteenth-century example, the eponymous 33 Elisabeth Crowfoot, Frances Pritchard, and Kay Staniland, Textiles and Clothing c.1150–c.1450, Medieval Finds from Excavations in London 4 (London: HMSO, 1992), 168; Geoff Egan and Frances Pritchard, Dress Accessories 1150–1450, Medieval Finds from Excavations in London 3 (London: HMSO, 1991), 272–80; Stella Mary Newton, Fashion in the Age of The Black Prince: A Study of The Years 1340–1365 (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 1980), 4; Geoff Egan and Maria Hayward, “Button,” in Encyclopedia of Dress and Textiles in the British Isles c. 450–1450, ed. Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Elizabeth Coatsworth, and Maria Hayward (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 106–7; Brian Read, Metal Buttons c. 900 BC–c. AD 1700 (Langport, UK: Portcullis, 2010). 34 Ronald W. Lightbown, Medieval European Jewellery with a Catalogue of the Collection in the Victoria and Albert Museum (London: Victoria & Albert Museum, 1992); Tessa Murdoch, Treasures and Trinkets: Jewellery in London from Pre-Roman Times to the 1930s (London: Museum of London, 1991). 35 For a discussion of Idley’s source material, see Giancarlo, “Dressing up a ‘Galaunt.’” 36 F. W. Fairholt, Costume in England (London: Chapman and Hall, 1846), 490–91; Gale R. OwenCrocker, “Dagging,” in Owen-Crocker et al., Encyclopedia, 167. 37 John B. Friedman, “The Iconography of Dagged Clothing and Its Reception by Moralist Writers,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 9 (2013): 121–38; Laura F. Hodges, Chaucer and Costume: The Secular Pilgrims in the General Prologue (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000), 62; Ruth Mellinkoff, Outcasts: Signs of Otherness in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages, 2 vols. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). 38 Hazlitt, Remains, 147–60, line 186. 39 Friedrich W. D. Brie, ed., The Brut or the Chronicles of England, Early English Text Society, o.s., 136 (London: Oxford University Press, 1908), 2:297.

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Emily J. Rozier dreamer is tormented by a company of devils dressed as galaunts, whose fashions are described as emulating “þe shapus of þer maister, þe develle of helle.”40 The galaunt’s clothing is being presented through the lens of a wider iconographical tradition that associated dagging, amongst other fashionable styles of dress, with exile from the godly community and alignment with the non-human.41 This connection remained active in galaunt literature to the end of the fifteenth century, appearing again in the Boke of Kervyng and Nortur, in which the author bemoans the proliferation of “these Cuttid galauntes” and condemns their fashions as “an ungoodly gise.”42 Throughout the galaunt canon, fashionable styles of clothing are thus used as a physical manifestation of the sins of those who indulge in them, and emphasis is placed upon any sartorial feature that manipulates the human form. FORGED MASCULINITY

In addition to accusing the galaunts of corrupting the divine image, many of the complaints outlined above also intimate forged machismo on the part of the galaunt, as his clothing is used to hide his physical deficiencies. The artificial broadening of the shoulders described above in DIMEV 4853, for example, enables the wearer to emulate the ideal masculine physique promoted in chivalric literature without partaking of the pursuits necessary to develop such musculature naturally.43 In a period when physical presence was closely associated with masculine authority, this was a serious issue. The fact that men were given a superior physical form to women was often used to prove their ordination by God as the ruling sex.44 Bodily strength also played an important role in separating the man from the boy and therefore acted as a marker of personal autonomy.45 As such, the galaunt’s counterfeiting of a more virile physique can in many respects be equated to a woman’s cross-dressing; by emulating the visual

40 Nijenhuis, The Vision of Edmund Leversedge, lines 373–74. 41 For further examples, see Andrea Denny-Brown, “Rips and Slits: The Torn Garment and the Medieval Self,” in Clothing Culture, 1350–1650, ed. Catherine Richardson (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2004), 223–37. 42 Frederick James Furnivall, ed., Early English Meals and Manners: John Russell’s Boke of Nurture, Wynkyn de Worde’s Boke of Keruynge, The Boke of Curtasye, R. Weste’s Booke of Demeanor, Seager’s Schoole of Vertue, etc. (London: Trübner, 1868), 1–123, lines 305–6. John Russell’s Boke of Kervyng and Nortur, sometimes referred to as the “Book of Nurture,” is entered in DIMEV as no. 2556. It survives whole in three manuscripts: London, British Library, MS Harley 4011, fols. 171–89; London, British Library, MS Sloane 2027, fol. 37; and Manchester, Chetham’s Library, MS 8009 [Mun. A.6.31], 337–355v. 43 For a discussion of this ideal, see Clare R. Kinney, “The (Dis)Embodied Hero and the Signs of Manhood in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” in Lees, Medieval Masculinities, 47–60. 44 Vern L. Bullough, “On Being a Male in the Middle Ages,” in Lees, Medieval Masculinities, 31–46. 45 Deborah Youngs, The Life-Cycle in Western Europe, c.1300–c.1500 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), 126–62.

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The Galaunt Tradition markers of maturity, the youths represented by the figure fraudulently acquire adult male ascendancy.46 The concerns about counterfeited authority that are expressed in the galaunt tradition may have been exacerbated by the fact that the style of jacket described in DIMEV 4853 was originally designed to be worn under armour and was only adopted into civilian costume in the 1330s.47 The galaunts are therefore adapting a garment to a purpose for which it was not intended, much as they then use such articles of clothing to manipulate their physical form to match an ideal of male beauty to which they have no just claim.48 The special regard in which military apparel was held can be discerned from the fact that the Act of Apparel enacted by Edward IV’s government in 1463 explicitly states that the legislation can pass only “provided also that this ordinance be in no way extended to any manner of array properly and necessarily used in war or similar feats.”49 Those engaged in military activities were thus protected from the sumptuary legislation, an exemption that is likely to have been made on the grounds that some of the garments deemed inappropriate for everyday attire were in fact essential in serving the practical purposes for which they had been originally designed. Kim M. Phillips has already established that a desire to regulate masculinity can be discerned behind the late medieval clothing laws.50 The fact that military apparel was exempted from the legislation can be taken as further proof that the restrictions placed on dress were informed by a desire to protect, and indeed mould, the acceptable forms of masculine expression. The criticisms heaped upon the bulwark in the galaunt tradition are another anomaly that may be partially based on the fact that some fashionable articles of dress were adapted from military raiment. Whilst the term “bulwark” (Middle English bulwerk) is most commonly used to describe a fortification, in clothing it referred to a kneepad.51 Bulwarks were originally makeshift wads of material used by a knight “to put aboute his kneys for chawfynge of his lighernes.”52 They first appear in the galaunt tradition in 46 Female cross-dressing in the period has been discussed by Valerie R. Hotchkiss, Clothes Make the Man: Female Cross Dressing in Medieval Europe, The New Middle Ages 1 (New York: Garland, 1996). 47 Fairholt, Costume in England, 490–1, 550; Hodges, Chaucer and Costume, 231; Françoise Piponnier and Perrine Mane, Dress in the Middle Ages, trans. Caroline Beamish (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), 63–65. 48 For a discussion of how the representation of positive youth stereotypes differs from that of the negative in the literature and visual art of the late medieval period, see Philippa Tristram, Figures of Life and Death in Medieval English Literature (London: Elek, 1976), 20–61. 49 3 Edward 4 (1463), 505b–506a, in The Statutes of the Realm: Printed by Command of His Majesty King George the Third … from Original Records and Authentic Manuscripts (London: G. Eyre and A. Strahan, 1810), 2:402. The original reads “Purveu auxi q cest ordenance en null man extende au ascun mane darraie destre necessarement usez, en guerre ou en feetes del mesme.” Thanks to Monica Wright for her assistance with translation. 50 Kim M. Phillips, “Masculinities and the Medieval English Sumptuary Laws,” Gender & History 19 (2007): 22–42. 51 MED, s.v. “bulwerk, n.,” 1(a). 52 New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, MS 775, transcribed in Harold Arthur, “On a MS Collection of Ordinances of Chivalry of the Fifteenth Century, belonging to Lord Hastings,” Archaeologia 57 (Jan. 1900): 29–70, line 43.

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Emily J. Rozier DIMEV 3084, which describes them as “these newe bulwarkes / they [the galaunts] were at theyr knees.”53 This phrasing suggests that the item was novel in the mid-fifteenth century when DIMEV 3084 was composed. Indeed, outside of the galaunt tradition, only one written reference to bulwarks being used as a fashion accessory has been found—in a late-fifteenth-century sarcastic “love letter” to a female recipient in which the subject’s “bolwerkys, pectorellys, and al your nyce aray” are mocked.54 Much of our knowledge of the adoption of this item of military apparel into civilian costume in the mid- to late fifteenth century is therefore dependent on the four references to bulwarks found in the galaunt canon, especially as these constitute the earliest examples of the term being used to describe fashionable garb. The bulwark, like the galaunt’s other costume features, attracts scorn and is bemoaned by the writers of verse satires such as DIMEV 1488, in which the author describes the galaunt’s “whytte bulwerk abowtt þe kne” as “a schrewe syȝt ytt ys to se.”55 Between this example and the earlier one in DIMEV 3084, given above, comes what could be a third reference to bulwarks in The Vision of Edmund Leversedge, in which devils “schewid a similitude and shappis of þe facion of my pykis, bolstirs, stuffid dowblettes, schort gownes, hygh bonettes, long heere and al þe inordinat aray þat ever I usyd” to Edmund.56 Although the item is here referred to as a “bolstir” and not as a bulwark, its place in the catalogue of the offensive outfit—immediately after the shoes and before the doublet—makes it physiologically likely that a leg-covering is being described. Further than this, a “bolster” is a wad of padding, and as the doublet is itself described as “stuffid,” it is logical that the term is being used to describe a distinct article of padded clothing, rather than as a duplicate description of the stuffed doublet.57 Indeed, the fact that the term is plural makes its relationship to the bulwark even more likely, as one normally has two legs but only one torso. This reference can therefore be taken as further evidence of the popularity of bulwarks amongst the fashionably dressed in the mid- to late fifteenth century and as another example of such items receiving a negative reaction from the writers of galaunt literature. The final allusion to bulwarks occurs at the end of the fifteenth century in the play Nature. In this instance, the item is explicitly linked to armour, thereby referencing the original function of the garment, through this description: “corselettys of fyne velvet slyped / Down to the hard kne.”58 The galaunt is thus described as exploiting two military-style items of dress: the bulwark, here described as a “hard knee,” and a 53 Hazlitt, Remains, 147–60, line 197. 54 Rossell Hope Robbins, ed., Secular Lyrics of the XIVth and XVth Centuries (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952), 220–22, line 46. 55 Rossell Hope Robbins, ed., Historical Poems of the XIVth and XVth Centuries, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), 149–50, lines 30–31. DIMEV 1488 is unique to Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawl. poet. 34 (S. C. 14528), fol. 4. Robbins’s edition of the poem is the only one. He titled the text “Huff! A Galaunt,” on account of the poem’s refrain, and dated it to the end of the fifteenth century. The author is not known. 56 Nijenhuis, The Vision of Edmund Leversedge, lines 373–76. 57 MED, s.v. “bolster, n.,” 2(a). 58 Alan H. Nelson, ed., The Plays of Henry Medwall (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1980), lines 171–72.

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The Galaunt Tradition corselet, a term used in official documents, including the Rotuli Parliamentorum, to refer to a piece of armour.59 The context for the account of the fashions favoured by the galaunts that is given in Nature is, as always, one of criticism and consternation. It is the play’s personification of Pride who describes the fashions, which he intends to use as a sartorial trap through which to lure Man into sin. The fact that it is Pride who is extolling the virtues of such garments makes the moral censure attached thereto unmistakable. When one compares the treatment of the galaunt’s fashions to the first reference to a bulwark given above, in which a knight was described as using such an item to protect his knees, the difference in tone and attitude is clear. The knight suffers none of the opprobrium that is heaped upon the galaunt precisely because the item is not enjoyed as a faddish item of fashion, but rather made use of as a practical solution to the problem of being chafed when wearing leg armour. The galaunts, and by extension the fashionably dressed, use such paraphernalia for purely aesthetic purposes and as such become the target of conservative vitriol. Further than this, the adaptation of military raiment for frivolous purposes, for use by those who had no just claim to it, emphasises the galaunt’s affectation of a manliness that is not his to possess and the danger to society that was felt to be inherent therein. In case the reader were in any doubt of the galaunts’, and in a wider sense the foppish courtiers’, unworthiness of such apparel, the author of DIMEV 3084 witheringly observes that in a court in which there are many—one assumes highly wrought—stirrups, there are few able horsemen: “So many styroppes / and so few good chyvallers.”60 The author later goes on to pun that despite the high number of decorative points (that is, laces for tying clothing) on display, a good point amongst those who wear them is hard to find: “Howe many poyntes were they nowe a dayes / And yet a good poynte / amonge them were to fynde” (lines 134–35). The galaunt’s ornaments are juxtaposed with his ineptitude to derisive effect by the satirist. This practice is not limited to the one text, but recurs, in one incarnation or another, throughout the galaunt tradition. At the end of the period, for example, the author of the satiric verse DIMEV 3765 complains that whilst there are many self-styled knights at the court, they are “lytyl of myght.”61 The galaunt is thus associated with those who would seek to fake their prowess in order to claim greater social standing than warranted. These discourses 59 MED, s.v. “corset, n.,” 2; John Strachey, ed., Rotuli Parliamentorum; ut et petitiones, et placita in Parliamento tempore Edwardi R. I. [ad finem Henrici VII.] (London, 1777), 6:51. 60 Hazlitt, Remains, 147–60, line 122. 61 Wright, Political Poems and Songs, 2:252–53, line 3. Wright based his edition on the “a” version of DIMEV 3765: Oxford, Corpus Christi College Library, MS 237, 243v. The text is the final item in the manuscript and was added thereto by a late-fifteenth-century hand. The hand used in Cambridge, University Library, MS Hh.2.6, 58r, which contains the “b” version of the text, is from the sixteenth century. On the basis of the manuscript and internal evidence, this article dates the composition of the poem to the end of the fifteenth century. The “a” version was titled “On the Times” by Wright in his edition of the text. It has more recently appeared in Celia Sisam and Kenneth Sisam, eds., The Oxford Book of Medieval English Verse (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), 450. The “b” version has only been edited by Robbins, Historical Poems, 149–50, in which it is titled “Now Is England Perished.” The author is not known.

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Emily J. Rozier simultaneously provide a useful avenue through which to lambaste the knightly classes more generally. As Hoccleve warns in his Regiment of Princes, the “God of bataille; he loveth noon array / That hurtith manhode at preef or assay.”62 The galaunt’s fashions are consistently presented as belonging to this harmful and unsuitable category, particularly when worn by the segment of society that was supposed to provide the nation’s great warriors. The most obviously virility-enhancing item of late medieval clothing is, of course, the codpiece, which is described by Maria Hayward as follows: An integral part of men’s hose in the fifteenth to sixteenth centuries. In the fifteenth century the term codpiece referred to the front flap at the front of long, joined hose. The word cod means bag, and contemporary description referred to “a kodpese like a pokett”. The word cod also signifies the scrotum. The codpiece was usually secured to the waistband of the hose with points. It was often padded in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries so drawing attention to the wearer’s genitals.63

There are only two texts in the galaunt tradition that mention this article of clothing: the mid-fifteenth-century Instructions to His Son and the late-fifteenth-century Boke of Kervyng and Nortur. In the first of these two examples, the item is closely associated with the temptations of the flesh: Sum set þeir myndes galantes to asspye, Beholdyng þe schort garmentes round all abouȝt And how þe stuffyng off þe codpece berys ouȝt.64

This excerpt comes from the section of the Instructions to His Son that deals with the question of what constitutes sacrilege. Whilst the galaunt’s codpiece is a very obvious physical representation of lust and sexual temptation, in drawing attention to the genitals, for Idley the galaunt is guilty of more than mere seduction. Instead the figure is again, as was the case in DIMEV 4853, accused of disrupting church services through his outlandish and arresting apparel. Idley urges “þeis women” (line 414) who are tempted to look at the galaunts, when they “comyst to any holy place” (line 407) to concentrate instead on endeavouring to “lyve to hys [God’s] Intent” (line 413). The codpiece continues to be marked as a sacrilegious appendage in the Boke of Kervyng and Nortur, in which the author laments: “galauntes with theire codware; þat is an vngoodly gise.”65 The galaunts are thus accused of corrupting others through their sartorial display and of again indulging in clothing that is intrinsically sinful. It is not difficult to imagine why the codpiece was deemed profane, given its obvious links to the carnal sins of lechery and lust. Medical research has uncovered,

62 Charles R. Blyth, ed., Thomas Hoccleve: The Regiment of Princes (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1999), 477–90. Extracts from Hoccleve’s Regiment of Princes are included in Sylvester et al., A Multilingual Sourcebook, 168–77. 63 Maria Hayward, “Codpiece,” in Owen-Crocker et al., Encyclopedia, 135. 64 D’Evelyn, Instructions to His Son, 210, lines 418–20. 65 Furnivall, Early English Meals, 117–99, line 305.

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The Galaunt Tradition however, another possible reason for the mistrust that the article garnered. Writing in 1989, Grace Vicary made the case for the development ca. 1500 of the codpiece from a simple flap to a prominent, padded attachment as being spurred by the concurrent outbreak of syphilis that plagued Europe.66 This argument found support from C. S. Reed in a 2004 article in the Internal Medicine Journal.67 Syphilis causes “large volumes of mixed pus and blood to be discharged from the genital organs,” and the codpiece was therefore developed, according to the syphilitic theory, to allow for padding to be worn on the groin that would trap such fluids.68 If this were true, then the galaunt, through the codpiece, is being associated not only with lust and sexual activity but also with disease and infection. If the codpiece were directly related to the management of syphilis, then it would act as a physical sign of both sexual activity and of God’s punishment for indulging therein. EFFEMINACY

Sartorial extravagance and dependency on material refinements were often portrayed as a sign of growing feminisation amongst the elites during the period in question, as they had been for many centuries before the first extant galaunt text was composed. Writing in the twelfth century, for example, William of Malmesbury described the male courtiers attendant upon King William II of England as being corrupted by their indulgence in high fashion: Long flowing hair, luxurious garments, shoes with curved and pointed tips became the fashion. Softness of body rivalling the weaker sex, a mincing gait, effeminate gestures and a liberal display of the person as they went along, such was the ideal fashion for the younger men. Spineless, unmanned, they were reluctant to remain as nature had intended they should be; they were a menace to the virtue of others and promiscuous with their own.69

These concerns continue to be aired by social commentators more than four hundred years later, as the material examined above has shown. William’s link between a preoccupation with clothing and effeminacy also recurs in the galaunt tradition.70 The mid-fifteenth-century author of DIMEV 3084, for example, complains that amongst the galaunts, “the noble course of nature / nycete hath devoured.”71 If one interprets “­nycete” 66 Grace Q. Vicary, “Visual Art as Social Data: The Renaissance Codpiece,” Cultural Anthropology 4, no. 1 (Feb. 1989): 3–25. Vicary (10–11) traces the syphilis epidemic to infected sailors who returned with Columbus to Spain in 1493. 67 C. S. Reed, “The Codpiece: Social Fashion or Medical Need?” Internal Medicine Journal 34, no. 12 (Dec. 2004): 684–86. 68 Ibid., 684. 69 William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, ed. and trans. R. A. B. Mynors, Rodney M. Thomson, and Michael Winterbottom (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998), 1:559–61. 70 For a discussion of this issue and a range of examples, see Vern L. Bullough and Gwen Whitehead Brewer, “Medieval Masculinities and Modern Interpretations: The Problem of the Pardoner,” in Murray, Conflicted Identities, 93–110. 71 Hazlitt, Remains, 147–60, line 99.

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Emily J. Rozier as meaning “extravagance or excessive refinement in clothing, habits, or manner of living; also, a delicacy, a luxury,”72 then the implication is that the galaunt’s pursuit of sartorial pleasures interferes with the “natural” development of his masculinity.73 This is certainly the sense conveyed near the end of the fifteenth century in the Book of Curtesye, in which the reader is warned against repeating the sartorial excesses of “unthryft ruskyn galante” and instead advised to ensure That your araye be manerly resonable Not apysshe on to mocken ne to mowe To nyce araye that is not commendable Fetis newe founden by foolis vnprouffitable That make þe world so plainly transformate, That men semen almoste enfemynate.74

Proper, “manerly” array to which one ought to aspire is contrasted with the transformative “nyce araye” that causes the galaunts to “semen almoste enfemynate.” The galaunt is thus consistently portrayed as one who wears the most excessive of fashions, to the detraction of his social and spiritual duties, exhibiting a taste in dress that was presented as being inappropriate for a man. This concern about the feminising effect of taking an interest in material refinements is not limited to clothing, as the galaunt’s hairstyle is also used as a vehicle for the expression of such concerns. Three texts make mention of the figure’s coiffure—all of which date to the latter part of the fifteenth century, and all of which focus on the length of the galaunt’s hair. The earliest of these is The Vision of Edmund Leversedge, in which the galaunt is used to mock the dreamer’s own tendency to have “longe heere upon here browes.”75 In the second reference, the author of DIMEV 6831 satirises the

72 MED, s.v. “nicete,” 4(a). 73 For a discussion of the relationship between masculinity and the regulation of clothing, see Phillips, “Masculinities,” 22–42. 74 Frederick James Furnivall, ed., Caxton’s Book of Curtesye, Early English Text Society extra ser. 3 (1868; repr., Millwood, NY: Kraus, 1973), lines 451, 485–90. This text is entered in DIMEV as no. 3133. It survives in two manuscripts and two early prints. Furnivall formed his edition of the text based on the manuscripts—Oxford, Balliol College Library, MS 354, fols. 160–65, and Oxford, Oriel College Library, MS 79, fols. 88, 89, 78—together with the print designated no. 3304 in A. W. Pollard et al., eds., A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland and Ireland and of English Books Printed Abroad 1475–1640 (1926; repr., London: Bibliographical Society, 1976–91). The other early print, no. 3303 in the catalogue, is available as a facsimile: Francis Jenkinson, ed., Book of Curtesye (Cambridge: University Press, 1907). 75 Nijenhuis, The Vision of Edmund Leversedge, line 155.

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The Galaunt Tradition galaunt for having “long here into your eyen.”76 The third and final reference to the figure’s hairstyle can be found in DIMEV 1488: “All a-bak he castys hys here, / ffowre enchys by-neth hys ere.”77 Whilst being generally hairy was often associated with strength, for example in depictions of “wild men” such as the Giant Herdsman in Ywain and Gawain, this is not the same as having fashionably styled long hair.78 Indeed, in treatises on masculinity, it is body hair and more importantly facial hair that acts as a marker of virility, not the hair of the head. As Joan Cadden states in her study of sex difference in the Middle Ages: Many of the differences perceived between males and females […] had to do with hair, and these too had a place in the characterization of the feminine and the masculine. Prominent body hair not only marked the male among humans but also signified masculinity. In remarks about beards and body hair, the contrast is not simply between males and females but rather between the masculine and the nonmasculine, including children of both sexes and castrati as well as women.79

The visual similarity between the sexes that resulted from men having long and wellgroomed hair was also considered to lead to spiritual and physiological similarities. The main concern was that as a result of this blurring of gender lines, men would be led not by the masculine qualities of rational thinking and temperance, but by the female traits of eroticism and carnal desires.80 The result of this association is that the galaunt’s long hair can be read as branding the figure as a non-masculine male, as to appear womanish was tantamount to being so.81 Perhaps the greatest slur on the figure’s manliness, however, occurs in The Bowge of Courte, in which the galaunt is described as wearing “An eestryche fedder of a capons

76 Wright, Political Poems and Songs, 2:251, line 7. Wright titled the lyric “On the Corruption of Public Manners” and used the version found in London, British Library, MS Harley 372, fol. 113. The poem also survives in Oxford, University College, MS 154, fol. ii; and Cambridge, Trinity College, MS O.2.53 (1157), fol. 27—though only the second of these includes material similar to that in the verses quoted above. For further details of the manuscript variants, see Scase, “Proud Gallants and Popeholy Priests.” Scase tentatively dates the poem to “the middle or third quarter of the fifteenth century” (ibid., 279), and the MED dates it to ca. 1475. On the basis of this previous research, particularly Scase’s account of the internal, palaeographic, and gloss evidence, this article dates the poem to the latter half of the fifteenth century. The author is unknown. 77 Robbins, Historical Poems, 138–39, lines 25–26. 78 Albert B. Friedman and Norman T. Harrington, eds., Ywain and Gawain, Early English Text Society, o.s., 254 (London: Oxford University Press, 1964), lines 251–54. 79 Joan Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 181. 80 For a discussion of medieval theory concerning gender traits and sexual appetite, see Joyce E. Salisbury, “Gendered Sexuality,” in Handbook of Medieval Sexuality, ed. Vern L. Bullough and James A. Brundage (New York: Garland, 1996), 81–102. 81 For further discussion of the role of hair in the formation of masculine identity, see Neal, The Masculine Self, 140–45.

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Emily J. Rozier tayle / set up fresshely upon his hat alofte.”82 Exotic feathers were used to adorn hats in the late fifteenth century and acted as a mark of social standing, as they were available only to the more affluent members of society.83 Ostrich feathers were particularly prized due to their association with royalty since Edward III’s inclusion of one in his seal.84 Again, however, there is more to this sartorial detail than a mere account of courtly costume. The feather is not a pure ostrich feather, but rather it is taken from a capon’s tail. One could infer from this rather contradictory description that the galaunt sporting this particular feather was duped into believing it to be a high-quality ostrich feather, when in fact it is merely that of a cockerel. This hypothesis is certainly in keeping with the portrayal of a foolish fashionista uncovered in the descriptions of the galaunt examined above. Further than this, a capon is not merely a cockerel, but a castrated cockerel, and as such the description ties in with the slurs on the galaunt’s masculinity unearthed above as key to the fashion discourse surrounding the figure. Indeed, the term “capon” was actually used in some instances to directly refer to a eunuch, a nuance that makes the defamation of the galaunt’s masculinity inherent in this sartorial feature all the more clear.85 CONCLUSIONS

The galaunt was consistently portrayed, throughout the late medieval period, as one who indulged in the most excessive of fashions, to the detraction of his social and spiritual duties. Whilst a genuine interest in the specifics of contemporary designs can be unearthed in the galaunt canon, it is the distaste for fashion itself, as a cultural phenomenon, which offers the clearest overarching theme. As the cut, fit, style, and taste for embellishment changed over the period in question, each innovation offered the writers of galaunt literature fresh opportunities to criticise those who indulged in fashionable clothing, and any interest in matters of dress was always presented as intrinsically sinful and fundamentally inappropriate. In addition to being presented as vapid slaves to fashion, the galaunts were also frequently associated with the sartorially profane and the spiritually dangerous. They were accused of disfiguring their God-given appearance by wearing padded and tightened clothing that enhanced and manipulated the male form, and they came to be iconographically coupled with the demonic as a result. This charge of bastardising 82 Julia Boffey, ed., Fifteenth-Century English Dream Visions: An Anthology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 232–65, lines 366–67. John Skelton’s The Bowge of Courte was printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1499. Editions of the text also include Alexander Dyce, ed., The Poetical Works of John Skelton, 2 vols. (1843; repr., New York: AMS Press, 1965), 1:30–50; and John Scattergood, ed., John Skelton: The Complete English Poems (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983), 46–60. 83 Steven A. Epstein, Wage Labor and Guilds in Medieval Europe (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), 145. 84 Charles Boutell, The Handbook to English Heraldry, 11th ed., rev. A. C. Fox-Davies (London: Reeves & Turner, 1914), 262. 85 MED, s.v. “cāpŏun, n.,” 2(a).

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The Galaunt Tradition God’s creation relates to the broader question of what constitutes “proper” masculinity that informs the figure in the tradition as a whole. The galaunt was accused of using his clothing to hide his physical deficiencies and, in so doing, of presuming to display a level of masculine authority that was beyond his years and abilities. The military origins of many of the galaunt’s fashions enhance the concern that his outer appearance was not a just representation of his true nature. One of the primary concerns for which the figure’s fashions act as vehicle is thus the fear of external appearances that do not offer a reliable indicator of inner nature. The galaunt is presented as “a lyer in goodnes / in thyne araye”—accused of using his opulent and beautiful costume to mask his deficiencies, both physical and spiritual.86 When it comes to deciphering the messages conveyed by the galaunt figure, it is his clothing that forms a readable and transferable vocabulary that allows for even the smallest of details to carry a host of connotations and associations. Galaunt literature forms an interdependent canon of satirical comment that can be used to decode and better understand the didactic import of visual treatments of the same, and similar, subjects. Within the confines of the tradition, the galaunts are depicted as using clothing to mould their outward appearance, in the hope that this will in turn have a positive impact on how others gauge their virility and social position. They, and to an extent even their fashions, are, however, literary creations—constructed by the writers of galaunt literature, who are actually using the figure’s sartorial choices as a vehicle for social discourse. The galaunt is thus a creature of multiple constructions from which we can learn a great deal about late medieval attitudes to a broad spectrum of social issues, significant amongst which is the role of sartorial display in the formation of masculine identity.

86 Hazlitt, Remains, 147–60, line 76.

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Textiles and Dress in the Household Papers of Lady Margaret Beaufort (1443–1509), Mother of King Henry VII Susan Powell After the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, when Henry Tudor took the crown from Richard III, his mother Lady Margaret Beaufort became the most powerful woman in England.1 Her son, from whom she had been separated for most of his life but whose right to the throne she had fiercely fought for and eventually achieved (in preference to a claim for herself), rewarded her with land, property, status, and responsibility. From Collyweston in Northamptonshire, which Lady Margaret developed as her home after 1498, she ruled as quasi-regent of the East Midlands with the aid of her council at Stamford, four miles east of Collyweston.2 Collyweston was just one of numerous estates in her ownership, some inherited early from her father John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, and her grandmother Margaret Holland, many the result of her son’s 1487 “great grant” of lands derived from the Duke of Exeter (such as her London home of Coldharbour) and the honour of Richmond estates.3 In the last ten years of

This essay is a development of a paper read in July 2012 at the International Medieval Congress at Leeds, England. The author extends her thanks to the editors of this volume, Gale Owen-Crocker and Robin Netherton, as well as to the anonymous reviewer of the article.   1 She had been a valuable asset from birth (May 31, 1443), the daughter of John Beaufort, duke of Somerset, grandson of John of Gaunt by Katherine Swynford (an originally adulterous union, later legitimised but never entirely free of taint). Her father’s death (May 27, 1444) led to her wardship being granted first to the Earl of Suffolk (who intended her for his son, John de la Pole), and then to Henry VI’s half-brothers, Jasper and Edmund Tudor. She married Edmund in 1453 and gave birth to the future Henry VII on January 28, 1457, at the age of thirteen; Edmund had already died of plague on November 1 the previous year. Within a year (January 3, 1458) she had married the duke of Buckingham’s second son, Henry Stafford; at his death (October 4, 1471), again within a year (June 1472), she had married Thomas Stanley (d. 1504), then second Baron Derby but in 1485 created Earl of Derby.   2 The most reliable and recent biography is that of Michael K. Jones and Malcolm G. Underwood, The King’s Mother: Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). There is much useful information, including transcripts of some inventories and other documents, in Charles Henry Cooper, Memoir of Margaret, Countess of Richmond and Derby (Cambridge: University Press, 1874).   3 See Jones and Underwood, The King’s Mother, Appendix 2: “Lady Margaret’s Estates,” 262–67.

Susan Powell her life she also spent considerable time at the manors of Croydon (a residence of the archbishop of Canterbury) and Hatfield (a residence of the bishop of Ely, her stepson James Stanley). These last ten years are of great importance because they were the years of her separation from her last husband, Thomas Stanley, Earl of Derby, and her life as femme sole, in sole charge of her own estates and property and living under a vow of chastity. Stanley remained at his northwestern estates and his wife in the south and east; there is no evidence that she visited Lancashire after their separation, although he stayed with her on several occasions. The papers relating to these last ten years (1498–1509) are archived at the second of the two Cambridge colleges she founded (Christ’s and St. John’s) and are currently being edited by the author of this article.4 The accounts to be edited consist of a book of receipts and payments for the whole period, accounts of the treasurer of the chamber for 1498–99 and 1502–9, accounts of her chamberlain for the period spent at Coldharbour May 1501 to February 1502, and a Latin computus provisionis [account of provisions for the household] in the form of a roll. Also to be edited are some of the extant inventories and executors’ accounts.5 Although these had been partly edited by Charles Henry Cooper, and the College archives had been well used in publications by and for Johnians,6 it was not until the 1992 publication of the definitive biography of Lady Margaret Beaufort by Michael K. Jones and Malcolm G. Underwood that the context of interest in the St. John’s material ranged beyond the College itself.7 Since that date I have used the accounts in publications in my own research areas of devotional texts, the Birgittine religious order, and the history of the book.8 My editing of the St. John’s accounts had, however, made me aware of the mass of material on textile and dress, an area otherwise outside my research expertise. In 2007 Maria Hayward had used the documents held at St. John’s in her comprehensive edition of the wardrobe

  4 I wish to express my gratitude to the Master and Fellows of St. John’s College, Cambridge, for their hospitality and generosity during the period I have been working on this project, and for permission to publish details of the accounts and the accompanying image.   5 For details of the material to be edited, see Susan Powell, “Lady Margaret Beaufort and Her Books,” The Library, 6th ser., 20 (1998): 197–240, at Appendix, 239–40, i and ii.   6 See Cooper, Memoir, Appendix 2, 178–214, and, for example, R. F. Scott, “On a List (preserved in the Treasury of St. John’s College) of the Plate, Books and Vestments Bequeathed by the Lady Margaret to Christ’s College,” Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society 9 (1896): 349–67. Scott was Master of St. John’s College, 1908–33.  7 I wish to express my gratitude to Malcolm Underwood, former archivist of St. John’s College, Cambridge, for his generous extension to me of his considerable knowledge of the St John’s archives.   8 For example, Susan Powell, “Syon Abbey and the Mother of King Henry VII: The Relationship of Lady Margaret Beaufort with the English Birgittines,” Birgittiana 19 (2005): 211–24; Powell, “Lady Margaret Beaufort as Patron of Scholars and Scholarship,” in Patrons and Professionals in the Middle Ages, ed. Paul Binski and Elizabeth A. New, Harlaxton Medieval Studies 22 (Donington, UK: Shaun Tyas, 2012), 100–21. See too note 5 above.

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Dress of Margaret Beaufort book and inventory of James Worsley, yeoman of the robes to Henry VIII.9 Of necessity in a book focused on Henry VIII, Hayward’s discussion was brief (although by no means cursory), and so an overview of the nature of the evidence to be found in Lady Margaret Beaufort’s household papers may be useful here. EVERYDAY PURCHASES AND LOCAL SUPPLIERS OF CLOTH AND CLOTHES

Lady Margaret Beaufort’s household papers supply the following types of information: regular purchases of textiles and ready-made small items (caps, gloves, hose, etc.) for her household;10 occasional purchases of fabrics and ready-made items for herself; special purchases of textiles and dress for specific occasions; special purchases of textiles for furnishings; and, amongst her inventoried goods, dress and furnishings. Examples of the entries which relate to regular purchases of textiles and readymade small items for her household may be given from the accounts for 1505–7 (D91.21).11 As a case study we will consider Lady Margaret’s provision for her almsfolk. She maintained twelve almsfolk in a house in the kitchen yard at Collyweston, and they moved with her as the household moved to different abodes. The accounts for January 1505–6 were written when she was in residence at Croydon and 1506–7 at Hatfield. They record the purchase of hose and shoes, and the repair of shoes, for her almsmen and women: “Item paid for a dossen of hose for my ladys almesse women … iii s.” (17), “Item for sawlyng of iiii payre of shoez for iiii of the almes wemen at ii d. the payre … viii d.” (14), “Item paid to the same [Jackson of Stamford] for vi payre of shone for my ladys almes men. Price the payre vi d. … iii s.” (15), “Item paid for a payre of shoez for Moder Maryon and for a payre of shoez for Moder Dawson and for the mendyng of ther old shoez … xvi d.” (51), “Item paid for a payre of shoez and a payre of hose for Margaret oon of the almeswomen bought by the same Thomas Symson … x d.” (55), “Item paid unto John Fodyll of Croydon shomakere for iii payre of shoez for iii of my ladys almes folkes … xiiii d.” (118).12 Children were also maintained: “Item paid for iii   9 Maria Hayward, Dress at the Court of King Henry VIII: The Wardrobe Book of the Wardrobe of the Robes prepared by James Worsley in December 1516, edited from Harley MS 2284, and his Inventory prepared on 17 January 1521, edited from Harley MS 4217, both in the British Library (Leeds: Maney, 2007). See the index for references to Lady Margaret Beaufort; useful information is also available in material indexed under Henry VII, Elizabeth of York, and their offspring Arthur, Henry, Margaret, Mary, Edmund, and Elizabeth. 10 Clothing was invariably purchased as cloth and sewn up in-house; smaller items were purchased ready-made. 11 All the documents used here begin with the designation SJCC D (St. John’s College, Cambridge, Drawer, although the material is no longer kept in drawers). Most SJCC D documents are paginated, as are all those used here. Further references will omit “SJCC” but include D and the document number, as well as the page number, in brackets. The occasional isolated page number, in brackets, refers to the most recently named document in the text. 12 Underlines on figures appear in the original documents; the practice was to underline internal references to money so they are included in the final calculation at the end of a line. The space between the text and the final calculation is indicated here by three dots. Three dots within square brackets indicates an ellipsis.

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Susan Powell payre of shoes for my lady almes chyldern at ii d. ob. the payre … vii d.” (54). Robert Hilton, her yeoman of the wardrobe, supplied, amongst numerous items throughout all the accounts, doublets, hose, and caps for the almsmen: “Item paid for a pece of northren kersey for doblettes and hose for the almesmen conteynyng xviii yerdes … xiii s.,” “Item paid for a dossen of russett bonettes for the almesmen. Price … iiii s.” (136). The Maundy ceremonies the day before Good Friday 1505 entailed the distribution of stockings, bonnets, and shoes, not just to her own almsfolk but to the poor of the neighbourhood: seven dozen women’s stockings (4s. 8d. per dozen), seventy-three caps (5s. 10d. per dozen), and sixty-three pairs of shoes (3s. 4d. per dozen) (109). The items noted above are not exhaustive in terms of that one account, which is in any case only for a two-year period, but they serve to illustrate the nature of the material. Other small items for her household may be covered more briefly, with just one or two entries here as an example of each: purchases for the children who sang in her chapel (“Item for a dossen of blak cappes for chylder of chappell … xii s.,” 137); for her gentlewomen (“Item paid unto my lady Reverse for a bonet bought for maistres Parker […] … xxiii s. iiii d.,” 53; “Item paid unto maistres Foller for a bonett bought for Ursula my lady Polis doughter … iiii s.,” 107); for her servants (“Item for i payr of hose to Henry footeman—clothe, makyng and lynyng … iii s. v d.,” 31); for Skyppe, her jester (“Item payd for a payre of startuppes [short boots, OED “startup” n.1] to Skyppe … xii d.,” 42); for her own and her son’s godchildren (“Item for a cote-cloth for Henry my ladys godson […] … v s.,” 32; “Item for makyng and lynyng of a payre of hose for Henry the kynges godson … viii d.,” 14); for enclosed women, whom she visited frequently (“Item paid unto Mr Morgan for money by hym paid for the dying of viii yerdes of lynyn clothe at viiid. a yerd for a nonne at Sempryngham … v s. iiii d.,” 17); and for gifts of textiles outside the household (“Item payd unto Robert Hilton […] for vii yerdes of russet satten which was yeven to my lord chamberlayn son […] … xlii s.,” 50).13 As well as fabric, threads of various types are recorded, and it is clear that much sewing of garments and furnishings was accomplished in-house. For example, the entry for April 17, 1502 (D91.20, p. 21), records the payment of 2s. 8d. for 1 pound of “threden reban” [edging made of thread, cf. OED “threaden” adj., LCCP “ribbon”] for vestments for her chapel priests, 14d. for 1 pound of “cukkyn gyrdell” [?scarlet thread for belts or girdles, cf. LCCP “coccin”], 10d. for 1 pound of “cotnall threde” [definition untraced], and 2s. 3d. for 1 pound 2 ounces of “crulys” [?skeins of yarn, cf. LCCP “crewel”]. The names of Jackson (also “Jacson” or “Jakson”) of Stamford, John Fodyll of Croydon, and Thomas Symson occur above as suppliers of footwear and cloth. Jackson

13 Where definitions are given in square brackets, the source is cited by headword to the University of Manchester Lexis of Cloth and Clothing Project (LCCP) database at http://lexissearch.arts. manchester.ac.uk/, unless otherwise indicated. When a word is not recorded in LCCP, the alternatives are the Oxford English Dictionary, online ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000–; henceforth OED); the Middle English Dictionary, online ed. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001; henceforth MED); or the Dictionary of the Scots Language (DSL) database at http://www.dsl.ac.uk. See too the glossary in Hayward, Dress at the Court, 433–35.

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Dress of Margaret Beaufort was a supplier of shoes in nearby Stamford, and bulk orders are recorded in March 1502 and April 1504: four dozen pairs of shoes at 3s. 4d. per dozen and eleven pairs at 4d. a pair, and sixty-one pairs of shoes given away at the Maundy and costing 20s.14 “Ma(y)dwell” of Stamford is also recorded as “Thomas Maydwell” of Croydon, perhaps indicating his peripatetic status in relation to the household. “Maydwell shomaker in Stampforth” supplied a pair of shoes and a pair of slippers and re-soled a pair of buskins [high boots, OED “buskin” n.] for Lady Margaret (18d.) in May 1502 (D91.20, p. 24), and he provided seven pairs of shoes “for the yonge gentylwomen” (2s.) in May 1503 (94), and a pair of slippers and a pair of high “pynsons” [slippers, pumps, OED “pinson” n.] for the anchoress at the convent in Stamford (10d.) in March 1505 (D91.21, p. 12). As “Thomas Maydwell of Croydon” he made a pair of slippers and a pair of shoes for Lady Margaret (12d.) in February and again in May 1506 (D91.21, pp. 96, 110); by May 1507 he is simply “Thomas Maydwell” and supplies Lady Margaret with three pairs of shoes for 18d., one pair of buskins for 6d., one pair of double-soled shoes for 8d., one pair of slippers for 6d., and one pair of shoes for 4d. (D91.19, p. 20). Thomas Symson (above) is recorded several times in the 1505 account, perhaps also at Croydon, mostly in individual entries (such as supplying cloth for hose and making and lining a pair of hose, D91.21, pp. 54–55), but at one point as a supplier of six and a quarter yards of “blak” [black cloth, LCCP “black” 2], three yards of “stamyn” [wool-cloth, LCCP “stamin”], a yard and a quarter of black kersey [coarse cloth, LCCP “kersey”], eight “tavelyns” [measurement or bundle of furs, LCCP “tavelin”] of black shanks [fur from the shank of an animal, LCCP “shank”], twenty-four and a half yards of black cotton, and two yards of white cotton (D91.21, p. 45).15 The bulk supplier of cloth and clothes for Lady Margaret’s household was her yeoman of the wardrobe, Robert Hilton, whose purchases often extend at some length, bracketed with his name in the margin. For example, over a two-day period in midMarch 1505 he bought in Stamford twenty-five yards of medley [mixed-coloured cloth, LCCP “medley”], six pieces of black cotton, four pieces of white cotton, nineteen yards of medley for kirtles for poor women, four and three-quarter ells of black worsted, two pieces of buckram, six dozen hose, six pairs of fine hose, eighteen yards of white kersey, two pairs of shoes for almschildren, and a pair of shoes and hose for Skyppe, Lady Margaret’s jester. He also took shoes for soling and had hose made and lined (for Henry, the king’s godson, as above). His charges to the coffer included the carriage of the goods from Stamford to Collyweston (4d.) and his expenses over the two days (8d.) (D91.21, pp. 13–14). Hilton bought cloth for Lady Margaret in London and at fairs in Stamford, Coventry, Stourbridge, and Leicester. He was responsible for moving the wardrobe from domicile to domicile, such as to Croydon in 1505: “his costes by oon day at Colyweston in fochyng of the stuff of the wardrop,” “for a cart to carye the 14 D91.20, pp. 15 and 152, recorded in the margin respectively as “Shoez bought for poure folkes” and “almes shoez.” 15 Although the term “cotton” could be used to mean either cloth or padding material, of either wool or cotton fibre (see LCCP, s.v. “cotton”), the yardage measurements here suggest these entries refer to some sort of cloth rather than unspun and woven fibre to be used for padding.

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Susan Powell same,” “for his costes for waytyng upon the stuff to Huntyngton by iii daiez” (D91.21, p. 42). He was expected to help out when necessary, e.g., “for helpyng to sowe xi gownes and xi payre of hoose for the chyldren of the chapell,” “for dressyng and dying of two gownes of maister Pottes” (D91.21, p. 42). Goods were delivered to him as yeoman of wardrobe August 21, 1500 (D91.6, p. 2), and, as will be seen below, he was responsible for the regular inventories of Lady Margaret’s wardrobe. ELITE PURCHASES AND SPECIALIST CRAFTSMEN: THE FURNISHINGS OF COLDHARBOUR

By no means were all Lady Margaret’s purchases so everyday, and specialist craftsmen and suppliers of cloth were also employed. Certain events required a particularly lavish display of magnificence: the reception of Katherine of Aragon at Lady Margaret’s London home of Coldharbour on the occasion of her marriage to Margaret’s eldest grandson Arthur in 1501, the farewell reception at her Northamptonshire home of Collyweston for her granddaughter Margaret leaving for Scotland to marry James IV in 1503,16 and the reception at her borrowed home of Croydon of Philip of Habsburg, king of Castile, unexpectedly blown to shore at England in 1506. The first of these will be considered in some detail. Katherine arrived in England October 2, 1501, and was married at St. Paul’s on November 14 (Lady Margaret was present).17 The accounts of Lady Margaret’s chamberlain Roger Ormeston survive from May 20, 1501, until February 6, 1502 (D102.2, D102.6), and provide some indication of the lavish preparations made at Coldharbour.18 They include the following names and purchases: “Benedyk Spynyall” for 28 yards of purple velvet at 14s. a yard (D102.2, p. 9),19 “Mane Florentyne” for 29 yards of black sarcenet [a fine silk, LCCP “sarsenet”] at 3s. 4d. a yard (10), “Antone Savage” for 27 yards of black cloth of gold at 26s. 8d. a yard, “Bartyllmew the Jewse” for 47 yards of blue sarcenet at 3s. 4d. a yard (11), “Nycolas Curtesse” for 46 yards of white sarcenet at 3s. 4d. a yard, “William Bradschaa” for 25 yards of crimson satin at 6s. 8d. a yard, “mastres Buck” for four lots of 23 yards and one of 25 yards of tawny medley at 3s. 3d. a yard (12), “Thomas Spyght” for 30 yards of tawny medley at 4s. 6d. a yard, “Richard Bowden” for 23 yards of the same at 3s. 6d. a yard, “William Baly” for 21 yards of the same at 4s. 4d. a yard (13), “Bartylmew Felbywilliam” for 27 yards of tawny medley at 16 For example, in April 1503 the merchant Thomas Robertson of Boston was paid for Flemish tapestry work and crimson Bruges satin and their transport from London to Boston and from Boston to Collyweston (D91.20, p. 91). See further Michelle L. Beer, “Translating a Queen: Material Culture and the Creation of Margaret Tudor as Queen of Scots,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 10 (2014): 151–64. 17 Arthur was to die in April of the following year, after which Katherine remained in an invidious (and financially embarrassing) position in England until Arthur’s younger brother Henry married her in June 1509, only days before his grandmother’s death. 18 Jones and Underwood, The King’s Mother, 77, 166, 172. 19 In May 1502 an “Augustyne Spynell” was paid £8 16s. 5d. for imitation arras (D91.20, p. 25).

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Dress of Margaret Beaufort 3s. 8d. a yard, “Picketon” for diaper [patterned cloth, LCCP “diaper” 1] (13), “Nycolas Curtes,” again, for another 45 yards of white sarcenet at 3s. 4d. a yard and 45 yards of black damask (no price) (12, 14), “Herre Dakers” for 30 yards of tawny medley at 4s. 10d. a yard, “mastres Fynch” for 2½ pounds of gold of Venice at 48s. per pound and 2 pounds of silk at 10d. per ounce (15).20 One of these names can be clearly identified. Benedetto Spinola (“Benedyk Spynyall”) belonged to an important Genoese family whose galleys had traded in England from the reign of Edward II. He was a naturalised burgess by 1485, and, although the Genoese trade dwindled in Henry VII’s reign, the Spinola family remained. Their Southampton base was severely affected by anti-Italian actions throughout the second half of the fifteenth century (Benedetto had been thrown into prison in Southampton in the late 1450s), and by 1495 he was the accredited London agent of the duke of Milan.21 One may identify less securely “William Baly” as a London alderman and draper and “Picketon” as John Pikton, who was a warden of the Mercers’ Company in 1488.22 “Mane Florentyne” must have been another Italian, a Florentine, about whom nothing is known.23 Bartholomew the Jew may be the same as Bartholomew Felbywilliam. The other names would appear to be of English merchants, clothmakers, and agents. Two are women, who were prominent in the cloth trade in London; mistress Finch may be the wife of James Finch who became a freeman of London in January 1485.24 The decoration of the textiles purchased for display at Coldharbour is indicated by references to craftsmen such as “Wodward,” whose trade was to draw gold into gold wire, and who is recorded in relation to 1 pound of gold “of Damask” [gold thread from Damascus, cf. LCCP “gold of Genoa/Venice”] costing £3 (D102.2, p. 17),25 and Richard “browderer,” who was paid 10s. for his board-wages in 1502 (D102.6, p. 6). Others mentioned in the accounts include John Forster “brotherer” who received 12d. for riding to London for two days in 1506 (D91.21, p. 96) and Petur Oldam “broderer” who was employed in 1507 (D91.19, p. 35). The foreigner Sebastian (“Bestyan”) Mussheka or Musteka was clearly an elite embroiderer, since he was paid £7 and £10 5s. respectively for embroidering Lady Margaret’s emblems on her new furnishings 20 Tawny appears to have been favoured for unobtrusive garments, such as Lady Margaret’s maundy gown and her servants’ livery; see further below and see Hayward, Dress at the Court, 157. 21 On the Spinola family, see Alwyn A. Ruddock, Italian Merchants and Shipping in Southampton, 1270–1600 (Southampton: Southampton University College, 1951), esp. 20, 109, 125, 175, 183, 216– 17. I am grateful to Dr. Anne Sutton for this reference. 22 Anne F. Sutton, The Mercery of London: Trade, Goods and People, 1130–1578 (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005), 346, 558 (and see index). 23 At the end of the fourteenth century a “John Florentyne” lived in English Street in Southampton, part of a small but prominent Italian community of Florentine or Lucchese agents and representatives of Genoese firms; Ruddock, Italian Merchants, 121. 24 A. A. Ruddock, “London Capitalists and the Decline of Southampton in the Early Tudor Period,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 2 (1949–50): 137–51, at 141. I am grateful to Dr. Anne Sutton for this reference. 25 Lady Margaret’s dealings with the merchant Sir John Schaa/Shawe and his servant John Mundye involve gold exchange and rewards for services rendered rather than craftsmanship (e.g., D91.17, pp. 19, 20, 27, 67).

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Susan Powell at Collyweston in the summer of 1498: “for makynge of flourys & other thyngez” and “for broderynge of portkullys & branchez of rosez” (D91.17, pp. 20, 38). For her arrases [figured tapestries, LCCP “arras”], “my ladys arrow maker/mender” (also “arresmaker”) was John Collop, who was paid “to by ȝerne [i.e., yarn] at Stamforthe of dyverse colores” (D91.20, pp. 169, 171), “for threde to amende carpettes,” and “for thred … to mende arres clothes” (D91.21, pp. 16, 53). A summary of Lady Margaret’s textile expenditure during the period of the chamberlain’s accounts for May 20 to December 18, 1501, when Katherine of Aragon was to be received at Coldharbour, amounts to over £400: velvet £141 7s. 6d., damask £69 17s. 5d., satin £13 17s. 4d., chamlet [a costly Eastern fabric, LCCP “camlet”] £22 19s. 4d., sarcenet £30 12s., gold wire and gold of Venice and Damascus £29 13s. 10d., diaper £36 (bought from Pikton), working silks £4 9s. 4d. (bought from Mistress Langton), cloth of gold in various colours £41 13s. 4d., furs bought for Lady Margaret and others £23 3s. (D102.6, p. 3). Her litter was entirely refurbished and her riding retinue re-clothed. Palmer the saddler was paid £88 3s. 4d.; a coppersmith who made livery badges for saddles received 107s. 5d.; a joiner put in a chit for 33s. 4d.; painting Lady Margaret’s chair of cloth of gold cost 53s. 4d., and Mistress Langton was paid £8 13s. 4d. for making buttons and fringes for it (D102.6, pp. 3–4). Wall-coverings with figural images (“tapettes of ymagery warke”) for Lady Margaret’s little parlour at Coldharbour cost 35s. 4d., and lining verdures [hangings embroidered with depictions of vegetation, LCCP “verdure” 2] cost 42s. 7d. in all; thread and other such stuff cost 50s. 9d.; tawny medley was bought “for my ladyes lyvery” (767¼ yards for £160 5s. 7d.); red cloth clothed the chariot men (47s. 6d.) (D102.6, pp. 4–6). In the inventory taken at Hatfield four years later, further details of the appearance of the chair and litter are given under a heading of “Coverynges for the chare and lytter”: “Item a coveryng for the chare of crymsyn velvet lyned with scarlett in length ij yerdes di. and in bredeth ij yerdes 1 quarter. Price … iij li.,” “Item ij frountes for the same, every of theym in length 1 yerde and in bredeth on yerde. Price … x s.,” “Item another coveryng for the chare of blewe velvut lyned with purple chaungeable [changing colour, OED “changeable” adj. 3a] sarsenet in length ij yerdes dimidium, in bredeth ij ye[r]des dimidium … iij li. xiij s. iiij d.,” “Item ij frountes to the same, every of them in length 1 yerd and in bredeth 1 yerd 1 quarter. Price … xx s.” (D91.24.1, p. 31). The same inventory gives details of her household furnishings, with entries for verdures, beds of different textiles, sparvers [bed canopies, LCCP “sparver”], counterpoints [bedcovers, LCCP “counterpoint”], pillows, fustians [blankets, LCCP “fustian” 1b], traverses [curtains or screens, OED “travers” n.], cloths of estate [throne canopies, OED “cloth” n. I 4], cushions, carpets, Irish mantles [lined with fur],26 canvases, happings [coverings, OED “happing” n.], chairs, cloth sacks, and white frieze. Verdures are 26 Cf. LCCP, s.v. “Irish,” where the quotation indicates a fur lining. See Janet Arnold, “Jane Lambarde’s Mantle,” Costume 14 (1980): 56–72; Mairead Dunlevy, Dress in Ireland (London: Batsford, 1989), passim; Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass, “‘Rugges of London and the Diuell’s Band’: Irish Mantles and Yellow Starch as Hybrid London Fashion,” in Material London, ca. 1600, ed. Lena Cowen Orlin (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), 128–49.

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Dress of Margaret Beaufort numerous, many decorated with red roses and portcullises amongst other devices,27 and there are in all twenty-four pieces of counterfeit arras, that is, imitation tapestry, painted rather than embroidered.28 Five pieces depicted the seven sages, five the story of Samson, five Hannibal, four Matthew Gough (a commander in the Hundred Years War with France), four “Macabrune,”29 and the final piece recorded is simply “with men and beestes and a castell” (D91.24.1, p. 2).30 An indication of the size may be given by the description of the seven sages hangings: “Item v peces of counterfett arras with vij sagis, on of them in length vij yerdes 1 quarter, in depth iiij yerdes, the ijde in length vij yerdes 1 quarter and in depth iiij yerdes, the iijde in length vij yerdes 1 quarter and in depth iiij yerdes, the iiijth in length vij yerdes 1 quarter, in depth iiij yerdes, the vth in length vij yerdes 1 quarter and in depth iiij yerdes. Summa … xxix li.” (2).31 THE FURNISHINGS OF LADY MARGARET’S CHAPEL

In considering furnishings, one needs to look at the decorative aspects of Lady Margaret’s chapel, said to be “egall with the kynge her sonne.”32 Among the inventories to be edited are two, D102.13 and D91.15 (known as “the Book of the Revestrie”), which replicate material on her chapel: copes, vestments, altar cloths, palls and canopies, altar curtains, veils and banners, corporals, cushions, cruets, paxbreddes [handled tablets used in the kiss of peace, OED “paxbred” n.], and chapel books. D102.13 may have been prepared at Hatfield, where she had lived since 1506, and is marked with cancellations and annotations, whereas D91.15 is the fair copy and final version. The marginal notes (and presumably the cancellations) are in the hand of John Fisher, bishop of Rochester and Lady Margaret’s most trusted adviser. For example, the entry “Item a cope rede blew & whyght of sarsynet enbrowdyrd with lyons of golde bendyd, the orfreys off grene clothe bawdkyn, the mose [morse, fastening of a cope, LCCP “morse”] off blewe satteyne … Price viii li.” is cancelled with the interlinear note “Geven unto Christes College by my ladys grace” (1). Most of the cancelled items have been given to Christ’s, Lady Margaret’s first Cambridge foundation, although other recipients include the parish church at Collyweston (a green damask cope “off the 27 The portcullis was the Beaufort badge and featured prominently in all Lady Margaret’s decorations (see fig. 7.1); her son used it too, often with the addition of “altera securitas” (the other security), i.e. that his crown, won in battle, was reinforced by the additional security of his Beaufort title. The saddle badges noted above were in the form of portcullises. 28 Susan E. James, “Domestic Painted Cloths in Sixteenth-Century England: Imagery, Placement, and Ownership,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 9 (2013): 139–60, at 159. 29 According to the life in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS 12473, Marcabrun was an early-twelfthcentury troubadour, notable for his criticism of women and courtly love. I am grateful to the anonymous reader of this article for this suggestion, as for other valuable comments. 30 For other tapestries sold at her death, see Jones and Underwood, The King’s Mother, 239 (no source is given). 31 Cf. the depiction of the nine worthies on a “painted cloth” which appears to be the backcloth to the play staged at the end of Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost, 5:2. 32 Henry Parker, her sewer, in his memoir (London, British Library, MS Add. 12060, fol. 22r).

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Susan Powell olde fassyon,” 6) and Westminster Abbey (a new vellum Mass-book, 42). It seems very likely that Lady Margaret and Fisher worked together on these donations (perhaps in her last year when she was very unwell), since the Collyweston gift is said to have been “gevyn by ladys grace [sic] to the parish chyrche off Collysdon” and another entry clearly indicates Lady Margaret’s active involvement, to the extent of keeping the valuable part of an old Mass-book and letting a needy church have the book itself. The entry (42) is cancelled: “Item a lyttyll olde mes boke off parchment sum tyme kyvered with clothe off golde & clasped with ii claspstaff sylver & gylted cuius 2m folium supplices,”33 and below is written in Fisher’s hand the telling note: “My ladys grace hath the kyveryng & the claspes & bade the dean to gyff the boke to sum poor churche & [so above line] the sayde dean gaff the sayde boke unto the parishe church off Badhampton at the desyre off Sir Robert Whitlege.” The word “old” is used twelve times of chapel stuff (four times of Mass-books but otherwise of vestments and altar cloths), but in general the furnishings appear to have been lavish, often personalised with Lady Margaret’s emblems, as in “iii copes off crymsyn velvet enbrowdyrd with margarettes” (D102.13, p. 3), or, of another cope, “the mose with a porcules havyng a coronall” (4).34 Non-heraldic imagery included water-flowers, siphanies and posies,35 animals and birds, and, with regard to saints, the cross of St. George and the saint himself (1, 4, 5) and St. Katherine and Mary Magdalene on the morses of copes (4), and St. Margaret, Mary Magdalene, and St. Leonard on altar cloths (22). LADY MARGARET’S PERSONAL DRESS

The splendour of Lady Margaret’s surroundings, appropriate to the mother of the King, will have contrasted with the subdued simplicity of her personal dress. Although evidence is sparse in her household accounts, the wardrobe inventories and extant visual representations of her appearance provide greater detail. In the accounts themselves, the occasional references to clothing “for my lady[’s grace]” invariably refer to black for reasons that are discussed below.36 Black was an expensive colour both 33 The final phrase of the entry, in Latin, indicates that the second folio of the book begins with the word “supplices.” It was usual to identify books in this manner because the first page of the book would be more vulnerable to loss. 34 The marguerite, or daisy, puns on the name Margaret; the portcullis was her badge (see note 27 above), and the coronet surmounting it imitates her crest, with a coronet (atop the shield of France and England quartered) and an eagle issuing from it, as in the oriel and great gate of Christ’s College; Jones and Underwood, The King’s Mother, plates 15 and 16; for her arms and seal, see Appendix 5, 291–92. Cf. “a payer off aulter clothes off red tyssew clothe a golde, palyd with blew velvet enbrowdyrd with Ihesus & portcules & my lady armys, havyng a coronall with a crucifix in the myddes” (D102.13, p. 21). See also fig. 7.1 accompanying this article. 35 Posies may indicate bunches of daisies, but siphanies are mysterious and water-flowers not much more obvious; cf. OED, s.v. “siphany” n.: “The name of some flower”; s.v. “water-flower” n.: “A flower growing in water; the representation of such a flower in metal, in embroidery, etc.” 36 Skyppe the jester must have made a vivid contrast to his mistress: “Item paid for viii yerdes of popyngay colour kersay for a cote for the same Skyp. Price the yerd xiii d. … viii s.” (D91.20, p. 112).

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Dress of Margaret Beaufort to dye and to maintain, and perhaps for that reason her Maundy gown, which was deliberately unostentatious and simple, was not black: “Item for iii yerdes of derke tawny for my ladys maundy gowne. Pris the yerd iiii s. … [summa] xii s.” (D91.20, p. 16), “Item paid for iii yerdes of diett tawny [?everyday tawny cloth, cf. med. L. dieta, LCCP “tawny”] for my ladys mawndy gowne … xiiii s.” (D91.21, p. 101). Three yards is very little more than the length of cloth used in making her nightgown, although the nightgown cloth was cheaper: “Furst paid unto Robert Hylton by his byll assigned for ii yerdes and iii quarter of derk tawny for a nyghtgowne for my ladies grace. Price the yerd ii s. … v s. vi d.” (7). From the same accounts (D91.21) the following entries on page 32 appear all to relate to articles of clothing for Lady Margaret: “Item paid for [blak above line] cotton whiche lyned my ladys playth [length of plaid cloth in a single or double width, or the garment itself, DSL “plaid”] of hir mantelet … ii d.,”37 “Item paid for cotton for lynyng of a stomacher to my ladies grace … iii d.,” “Item paid for furryng of a kyrtill of blak velwet with grey pootes [fur of squirrel paws]38 … viii d.,” “Item paid to iiii skynners by the space of iiii days … viii s.,” “Item paid to a taylour to help to sowe my ladies gere by the space of iiii days … xx d.,” “Item paid for the boordyng of the same skynners by iiii days … ii s. viii d.” The list continues to the end of the page with other payments incurred during those days on behalf of other members of the household: to a tailor for helping to stitch the gown and kirtle of Mistress Perrot, her French gentlewoman, and for a pair of hose for her, for hose and shoes for Skyppe, and for various items for Lady Margaret’s godson Henry: cloth for a coat and the making of it, cloth for hose and the making and lining of them, a pair of shoes, a shirt, and a dozen points [tagged ribbons used as fasteners, LCCP “point” 1]. At around the same time (late June 1505) Robert Merbury, usher to the chamber, bought several items of footwear, most likely all for Lady Margaret’s own use: “Item paid unto Robert Merbury the same day for money paid for the furryng of a payre of buskynce for my ladys grace … ii s. iiii d.,” “Item for money payd for the same buskynce … xvi d.,” “Item for makyng of a payre of buskynce of Spaynessh lether … viii d.,” “Item for a payre of pynsons of the same lether … ii d.,” “Item for iii payre of slyppers at viii d. a payre … ii s.,” “Item for a payre of shoez … vi d.” (34). These were bundled up and brought to her in canvas: “Item for a nell of canvas to trusse hit in … iiii d.” The shoes seem to have been bought for a journey to Richmond, or perhaps on arrival, since the previous entry to these refers to “my ladys goyng from Colyweston to the kyng” June 25, 1505, and a later one records 14d. paid “for a payre of shoez and slyppers for my ladys grace bought in London” (34). Although plain, Lady Margaret’s outfits were rich and of excellent quality, as the inventories demonstrate. Robert Hilton, yeoman of the wardrobe, made regular inventories of the wardrobe (both garments and materials to be made up into garments), 37 Given that Lady Margaret’s granddaughter, Margaret Tudor, had married James IV of Scotland on August 8, 1503 (the “playth” is mentioned in the accounts for June 20, 1505), the entry may here refer to an actual Scottish plaid presented to Lady Margaret. 38 Maria Hayward, “Poots,” in Encyclopedia of Dress and Textiles in the British Isles c. 450–1450, ed. Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Elizabeth Coatsworth, and Maria Hayward (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 426.

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Susan Powell such as the one already considered above, D91.24.1 (dated October 28, 1505). Not all survive, but his final inventory does survive (D91.4). It was prepared at Hatfield, where the wardrobe of robes must have been at Lady Margaret’s death, and styles itself a “view” of the wardrobe made between January 14, 1509 (the usual date for the financial year to start in Lady Margaret’s household), and August 16, two months after her death.39 Under subheadings of the material, it itemises the previous inventory and details the distribution of items in the intervening period, some on Lady Margaret’s orders and others after her death, before summarising what remains. It begins with “Blak veluet,” for which the previous inventory had recorded eleven gowns (most lavishly furred), one kirtle, two mantles, one hood, one tippet, seventy and three-quarter yards of black velvet, and one edging for gowns. In the intervening period one black velvet gown lined with black damask had been given to mistress Mabel Clifford; another, lined with black cotton and edged with shanks, had been utilised for other garments; and all but eleven yards of the black velvet had served to make clothing for members of the household or for Lady Margaret herself (3–4). The kirtle, mantles, hood, tippet, and edging remained, but only ten gowns were left (one newly made) and eleven yards of black velvet (3–4). Under “Blak Satens” were listed from the previous inventory three gowns, a kirtle, sixty-six yards of black satin, and one and a half edgings for gowns, out of which various lengths of the black satin had been given to Master Treasurer (Robert Fremingham, as his New Year’s gift), Master Parker (her sewer), and Master Zouche, or used by Lady Margaret herself: for stomachers; the edge, collar, and ruff of a gown; kirtle sleeves; the overbodice and sleeves of a gown; two gowns of twenty-two yards in all; and, finally, “the coveryng of my ladys cophin v yerdes iii quarter” (5). This left five gowns, the kirtles, the edgings, and sixteen and a quarter yards of black satin. And so the document continues: tawny satin, black damask, tinselled [interwoven with gold or silver thread, cf. LCCP “tinsel” n.]40 satin, black sarcenet, tawny velvet, tawny damask, russet damask, russet satin, yellow satin, white damask, tawny chamlet, black chamlet, buckram, blue cloth of gold, purple velvet, crane-coloured [ashy-grey, OED “crane” n.1 6a] satin, and “Satin or Sypres” [fine fabric, by this date used of satin, LCCP “cypress”]. It ends with a summary of random items left in the wardrobe:41 four gowns, of which one was “of scarlet [rich woollen cloth, LCCP “scarlet”] full of garters to be worne vpon Seynt Georges day,”42 three petticoats of scarlet, three mantles of

39 “A viewe taken of Robert Hylton yoman of my ladies wardrobe of hir robes … ” (D91.4, p. 3). 40 The adjective is not recorded in LCCP, but see OED, s.v. “tinselled” adj. and, for a fuller definition of the noun, Lisa Monnas, Merchants, Princes, and Painters: Silk Fabrics in Italian and Northern Paintings 1300–1550 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 303. 41 “Certayn apparaill of clothe remaignyng” (D91.4, p. 17). 42 Lady Margaret belonged to the Order of the Garter. For an image of a garter knight of the 1360s wearing a robe decorated all over with surprisingly large representations of garters, see Stella Mary Newton, Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince: A Study of the Years 1340–1365 (1980; repr. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 1999), 45, fig. 13. Although “scarlet” was not necessarily red at this time (see LCCP, s.v. “scarlet” 1 and 2), the colour may indeed have been red. For an image of Henry VIII and the Garter knights in red robes, see the Black Book of Garter (ca. 1534) in Hayward, Dress at the Court, plate IVc.

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Dress of Margaret Beaufort black and tawny cloth, and a black cloak. Apart from cloth and small items, eighteen other gowns remained in the wardrobe: ten black velvet, five black satin, two tawny satin, and one black damask (17). After Hilton had completed the inventory on August 16, a valuation was undertaken for Lady Margaret’s executors on September 5 by the notary Oliver Scales (D91.2).43 The most expensive gown (£11 1s. 4d.) was one of the black velvet ones, “a gowne of blake velwett with a dimidium [i.e., half] trayn edged with sables and furred with marterons [OED “marten” n.] conteynyng xi yerdys at viii s. the yerde iiii li. viii s. and the furre at vi li. xiiis. iiii d.” (1), while the scarlet gown with garters was valued only at 16s. (3). The sum of all the wardrobe of robes came to £126 19s. 7¼d. Thereafter is recorded the “stuf remanynyng in a grete standard in the Galery vnder the custodi of Mastres Fowler of silkes and napery” (7), “In another Coffer” (9), and “A remembraunce of diaper napery lat apertaynyng unto my ladis grace” (13).44 LADY MARGARET’S PERSONAL APPEARANCE

The preponderance of black is noticeable. For five years before her death Lady Margaret was a widow. Thomas Stanley drew up his will on July 28, 1504, and news of his death reached Collyweston on August 3. Although he was buried in Burscough priory in Lancashire, his ancestral burial place, his grandson and heir, Thomas, arrived at Collyweston with a large retinue on August 23 to attend a requiem Mass at Stamford.45 Mourning was observed for the household by the dyeing black of 700 yards of say [a fine serge, or perhaps silk, LCCP “say” 1b, “say” 2]. The etiquette of mourning dress was drawn up by Lady Margaret herself in an “ordinance and reformacion of apparell for princessis and great astatis with other ladies and gentilwomen for the tyme of mornynge made by the right hie myghty and excellent princesse Margaret countesse of Richemond doughter and soule heir of that noble prince John duc of Somersett and moder to oure most drad souuerain lord king Henry the viith the xviii yere of his

43 “Certayn appareille, clothe of golde, silkes and furres with other stuff remaynyng in the said wardrobe prised by Olyver Scales … .” Scales’ services to the executors led to his appointment as clerk of works for St. John’s College 1512–16; Jones and Underwood, The King’s Mother, 239, 283. 44 There are several other inventories: D91.1 (plate), D91.3 (bequests of plate), D91.5 (the wardrobe of robes but including items in closets and coffers, including plate and spices), D91.6 (wardrobe, 1500), D91.7, 8, 9 (payments), D91.10 (jewellery in Mistress Fowler’s keeping), and D91.11 (“Small Trasshe. A Rememb[ra]unce of certain coffers and stuffes [remembr canc.] remaynyng in the chaunters place at Paules in London the last day of September anno regis Henrici viij, some in a nold litill coffer covered with blak lether, having brode bandes of iern,” p. 1). 45 “Item paid … for horse meyte [i.e. fodder] of xlvii horsis of my lord of Derbyes at Colyweston by a day and ii nyghtes” (D91.20, p. 168).

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Susan Powell most noble rayne.”46 The heir to the throne, Arthur, had died on April 2, 1502, and the ordinance may well have been written thereafter to clarify court procedure in time of mourning. Since it is dated to the eighteenth year of the king’s reign (August 25, 1502, to August 24, 1503) and refers to the queen (albeit generally), it may be assumed to have been written in the last quarter of 1502 or early in 1503 (Elizabeth of York died February 11, 1503).47 It begins with the general advice that the greatest estates should wear surcoats with trains before and behind, mantles with trains, and the longest trains in the court, with hoods and tippets. “Bekys” [?peaks, cf. OED “beak” n.1 II 6] are not to be used “for the deformyte of the same.”48 The queen’s mourning dress is described first and will be quoted at length, since it is followed by the note: “Item that my ladie the kinges modir in dewlle [i.e., in mourning, OED “dole/dool/dule” n.2 2b] to were

46 London, British Library, MS Add. 45133, 141v, in a contemporary hand, and transcripts in several heraldic manuscripts at the British Library, namely Harley 1107 (81v–83r), 1354 (10v–13r), 1776 (7v–9v), 2129 (27r–28v), 4628 (269r–v), and 6072 (180r–181v), and Lansdowne 860 (249v–250r). The sixteenth-century single leaf of the ordinance in MS Add. MS 45133 is the earliest hand of all the transcripts and is found (but perhaps added later) in the earliest of the manuscripts, which contains material collected by Sir Thomas Wriothesley, Garter King of Arms 1505–34. The ordinance is discussed by Frederick Hepburn, “The Portraiture of Lady Margaret Beaufort,” The Antiquaries Journal 72 (1992): 118–40, using the details given by Joseph Strutt, A Complete View of the Dress and Habits of the People of England, ed. James R. Planché (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1842), 2:212–14. It is unclear which manuscript or manuscripts Strutt used in his essentially discursive account (he refers only to an “edict”). Hayward quotes the ordinance in full (Dress at the Court, 170); she reiterates doubts about Lady Margaret’s authorship, but the title clearly refers to Lady Margaret, and her accounts include a payment to Wriothesley in 1507 for making a book of such ordinances (D91.19, p. 8). For the doubts about the authorship, see Kay Staniland, “Royal Entry into the World,” in England in the Fifteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1986 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Daniel Williams (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 1987), 297–313, at 299. Lady Margaret’s interest in protocol is, however, well attested; see Jones and Underwood, The King’s Mother, 187. Not only mourning but also childbirth ordinances are attributed to her; Staniland, “Royal Entry,” 299. For her involvement in the allocation of livery for Henry VIII’s coronation, see Hayward, Dress at the Court, 246, and for dress and protocol at various ceremonies (including funerals) of Henry VII and his family, see Hayward, Dress at the Court, 41–72. 47 However, it is the only manuscript to cite the eighteenth year of Henry VII’s reign; those others which have the full title as quoted above give the eighth year (1492–93), which is followed by Strutt and Hepburn and is less likely; it might then have been prepared at the death of Elizabeth of York’s mother, the former Queen, Elizabeth Woodville. 48 “Item the qwenes my ladys the kinges modir the kinges doughters duchesses and countesses apparell to bee of the fascion and largenesse and they were vsed when they ware bekys except now the typettes to bee in the stede of bekys”; 141v. This is where the single page of the ordinance in MS Add. 45133 ends (the equivalent of the end in Strutt, Dress and Habits, 2:213); “Explicit” appears to make clear that the document is at an end.

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Dress of Margaret Beaufort in euery thinge lyke to the qwene.”49 The queen is to wear a surcoat with trains before and behind, a mantle with a train, and the longest train “because she ys the grettist estat.” Her hood is to be plain, “withowt clockys” [?cloaks, i.e., shoulder mantles, cf. LCCP “cloak”],50 but with a tippet [a flat tube of cloth attached to the crown of a hood, cf. LCCP “tippet”] a “nayle” [two and a quarter inches, cf. OED “nail” n. III 8] and an inch wide reaching a good length down the mantle. After the first three months of mourning, she may, if she wish, have her mantle lined with black satin or fine double sarcenet and furred with ermine “powdred at her plesir.”51 There is no mention here of the most obvious sign of mourning, the wearing of the barbe [a modesty covering for the upper chest and neck, cf. OED “barb” n.1]. However, a fuller version of the mourning ordinances includes the statement: “everie one not being vnder the Degree of a Baronesse to weare a Barbe above the Chinne And all other as Knights wives, to weare it vnder their throats, and othere gentlewomen beneath the throate goyle [Adam’s apple, MED “throte-gole” n.].”52 However, Lady Margaret dressed not only for mourning, but also as a woman who had taken a vow of chastity both before and after her husband’s death.53 In the extant portraits (see, for example, fig. 7.1) she is shown wearing not just a barbe, but a wimple [a wrapping headdress covering the sides of the face and the neck, as worn by

49 Only MSS Add. 45133, Harley 1776, Harley 4628, and Lansdowne 860 have “my ladie the kinges modir,” the usual appellation of Lady Margaret; Strutt and the other manuscripts have “the queen’s Mother.” It is entirely like Lady Margaret that she would write her ordinances so as to dress herself “in euery thinge lyke to the qwene,” and it is highly unlikely that she would find any reason for the queen’s mother to dress like the queen (Elizabeth Woodville had anyway died June 8, 1492). Moreover, the reference lower down the page to “the kinges modir” (see note 48 above) suggests that “the queen’s Mother” is either an error or an alteration by a later herald to suit the circumstances of the time. Since Hepburn followed Strutt, he discusses Lady Margaret in terms of the description of a countess’s mourning apparel; “Portraiture,” 123, 126. Although a countess, as the king’s mother she was dressed like the queen, and a countess’s mourning apparel is irrelevant. 50 Strutt would equate these with “clocks,” i.e. ornamental patterns, as in OED, s.v. “clock” n.2 1; Strutt, Dress and Habits, 2:212 n. 3. 51 When used of ermine, “powdered” (not so recorded in LCCP) denotes the distribution of the animals’ tails with their black tips (or black fur to represent the tails). 52 MS Harley 1107, 82v. Only this manuscript and MS Harley 6072, 181r, include material on barbes, which may not therefore be original to Lady Margaret’s ordinance. See Strutt, Dress and Habits, 2:214 and plate CXXXV (from London, British Library, MS Harley 6064, fol. 91), which shows “a Countess of the 16th Century in her Mourning Habit,” with the barbe looking exactly like the beard from which its name derives. 53 As attested by John Fisher in his month’s mind sermon (that is, the sermon delivered a month after death) for Lady Margaret: “As for chastyte … yet in her husbandes dayes longe tyme before that he deyed she opteyned of hym lycence & promysed to lyue chast, in the handes of the reuerende fader my lorde of London, whiche promyse she renewed after her husbandes dethe in to my handes agayne”; The English Works of John Fisher, ed. J. E. B. Mayor, Early English Text Society, extra ser., 27 (London: N. Trübner, 1876), 294, lines 15–21. For the text of the 1504 vow, see Cooper, Memoir, 97, from Cambridge, St. John’s College, C7.11, 47r, a copy of which is in London, British Library, MS Add. 5825, 224v.

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Susan Powell nuns and widows, LCCP “wimple” 1].54 Over the wimple she wears a transitional style of gabled hood, with the tippet hanging behind. The gabled hood is white, a colour more common for headcoverings in the Low Countries than in England, and perhaps a sign of widowhood there and in France, where it was usually indicative of “white,” or secondary, mourning.55 However, a white gable hood appears to have been unique.56 Lady Margaret Beaufort died on June 29, 1509, and was buried in the Benedictine abbey of Westminster. The tomb contract between her executors and Pietro Torrigiano is dated November 23, 1511.57 Amongst the craftsmen, supervised by the prior of St. Bartholomew’s, William Bolton, was the painter Meynnart Wewyck (as he signed himself),58 who drew the face of the effigy and seemingly also various designs for the tomb.59 In the executors’ accounts he is paid for painting a portrait of Lady Margaret for her foundation of Christ’s College as well as preparing her image for the tomb.60 It

54 For the fullest description of the portraits, including her tomb sculpture, see Hepburn (“Portraiture,” 123–26), who compares the portraits with the ordinance as transcribed by Strutt but refers to a “frontlet” (123), a term not used in Strutt, as a covering for the forehead. However, a reference to black velvet being used “for a tippett and a frontlet for my ladyes grace” (D91.4, p. 4) may suggest otherwise. See too Jones and Underwood, The King’s Mother, 188, Appendix 6, 293–95, and plates 2–4, and Mary Haynes, “The Likenesses of Lady Margaret Beaufort,” in The Brown Book: Lady Margaret Hall: A Commemorative Edition for the 500th Anniversary of the Death of Lady Margaret Beaufort (Oxford: Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford, 2009), 19–28, available online at http:// www.lmh.ox.ac.uk/Documents/General-documents/LMH-Brown-Book-(Commemorative-Issue). aspx. More recent discoveries of portraits are the one at Hever Castle, Kent, and that recently given to Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, reproduced as nos. 6 and 4 online at http://www.margaretbeaufort.com/ LMB/Portraits.html. This website shows only ten portraits of those extant; it also illustrates sculpture (principally her tomb effigy) and stained glass (all modern, apart from no. 1, which is unlikely to be Lady Margaret Beaufort). 55 I am grateful to Professor Melanie Schuessler, Associate Professor of Costume Design, Eastern Michigan University, for much information on gabled hoods and Lady Margaret’s dress. For the later gabled hood, see Hans Holbein the Younger’s portrait of Mary Wotton, Lady Guildenford, 1527, in the Kunstmuseum, Basel, Switzerland, viewable at http://www.wikiart.org/en/hans-holbein-theyounger/portrait-of-mary-wotton-lady-guildenford-1527. 56 Indeed, Lady Margaret’s whole appearance may have been unique at the time: Melanie Schuessler (e-mail, Aug. 14, 2012) suggests, “Perhaps Margaret wanted to cover all bases and wore the peaked hood for fashion, the barbe for mourning, and the wimple for religious reasons!” 57 For the contract and discussion of the relevant St. John’s accounts, see R. F. Scott, “On the Contracts for the Tomb of the Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby, Mother of King Henry VII, and Foundress of the Colleges of Christ and St. John in Cambridge,” Archaeologia 66 (1915): 365–76. On the tomb, see Hepburn, “Portraiture,” 118–22, and Phillip Lindley, Gothic to Renaissance: Essays on Sculpture in England (Stamford, UK: Paul Watkins, 1995), 47–72 and plates 19 and 22. See further in Lindley for other commissions of Torrigiano, including the tomb of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York (64–71). 58 Lady Margaret’s accounts use the Christian name “Maynard/Maynerd(e),” either alone or with the surname “Waywyke/Weywyk” or the occupational title “paynto(u)r/paynter(e).” 59 As discussed by Lindley, Gothic to Renaissance, 50–51. Payments to Bolton and to Maynard (“for makynge of diverse [reparacion canc.] patrons [patterns] for my ladies tombe”) are recorded in the executors’ accounts of March 16, 1514 (D91.24.2, p. 91). 60 D91.7, p. 9; D24.2, pp. 55, 76. In the same accounts, he is paid on June 22, 1513, for “makynge the picture and image of the seide ladye” (D91.24.2, p. 90, cf. the Latin entry in D91.7, p. 18).

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Dress of Margaret Beaufort may be that the likeness was from a death-mask, as suggested tentatively by Hepburn,61 and indeed the photograph of the effigy in Hepburn (plate 1) is so distinctive as to suggest such a thing.62 Lady Margaret wears the transitional gable hood, the barbe and the wimple, as in the portraits, and an interesting comparison may be made with the effigy of her daughter-in-law, Elizabeth of York, who predeceased both her husband and Lady Margaret, and, as neither widow nor vowess at the time of her death, is depicted by Torrigiano with bare upper chest, uncovered by the widow’s barbe and without the vowess’s wimple.63 CONCLUSION

This essay is by no means comprehensive, nor is its author a textile or dress historian herself. Much therefore remains to be exploited once the edition of Lady Margaret’s household papers is published within the next three to four years. However, a study of her dress and furnishings helps to confirm what is known of her from elsewhere during these last ten years of her life. What is already known is her religious conviction, her political acumen, and her personal and political loyalty to her son, her extended family and household, and the tenants of her many estates. She was acutely aware of her station as mother of the King and the importance of “magnificence” in the display of rank and power. Much of this is demonstrated in the facts marshalled in this essay. Austere but rich in her personal dress, she displayed in her appearance a unique balance between her dissonant roles, on the one hand mother of the king, countess of Richmond, and countess of Derby, and, on the other hand (from 1504), widow and vowess. She must have presented, as she still does in her likenesses today, an impressive sight, even to those familiar with her distinctive but sombre appearance. Outside, as she travelled 61 Hepburn, “Portraiture,” 120, 122. There is no clear evidence that Maynard painted Lady Margaret alive; the earliest references to him are in the executors’ accounts of 1513–14. 62 Most photographs, taken from a different angle from that in Hepburn, do not show the distinctiveness of facial features, e.g. Jones and Underwood, The King’s Mother, frontispiece. It may be that Hepburn’s plate 1 dates from 1871–72, when the effigy was freed from its context (it seems to be upright). Already in January 1854, G. G. Scott had recommended cleaning with acid “or other means” to remove oxidisation, but nothing was done. In January 1870, Scott’s stonemason, Henry Poole, was criticised for cleaning, without authorisation, the marble and metalwork of Lady Margaret’s tomb and commissioning photographs to send to interested parties. In December of that year he tendered for hoisting the effigies to the triforium so as not to damage the marble while the metalwork was cleaned, and to avoid the annoyance of the stench of ammonia. The work was completed in March 1872. See John Physick, “Royal Monuments in the Nineteenth Century,” Church Monuments 2 (1987): 44–56, at 47–53, and, for Scott’s conservation programme at the Abbey, William J. Jordan, “Sir George Gilbert Scott R. A., Surveyor to Westminster Abbey 1849–1878,” Architectural History 23 (1980): 60–85, 188–90 (for the effigies, 66). 63 Compare the Westminster Abbey tomb effigies of Lady Margaret Beaufort at http://www. davidmadden.org/art/pages/effigy.htm and of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York at http:// tudorhistory.org/groups/effigies.jpg, and (for a decorated transitional hood) see the anonymous portrait of Elizabeth of York, ca.1500, in the National Portrait Gallery, London, viewable at http:// www.luminarium.org/encyclopedia/elizayork2.jpg.

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Figure 7.1: Lady Margaret Beaufort, painted by Roland Lockey, ca.1597, displayed in the hall of her second Cambridge foundation, St. John’s College. Lady Margaret’s headdress includes a wimple and barbe, which cover the neck, shoulders, and parts of the face in a manner associated with both widows and nuns. Behind her the hangings display her coroneted coat of arms with the yale and swan as supporters, as well as the Beaufort portcullis (which is also in the window glazing). Photo: By permission of the Master and Fellows of St. John’s College, Cambridge.

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Dress of Margaret Beaufort through the villages and towns in a litter covered with red velvet lined with scarlet, or blue velvet lined with purple shot silk, the sight must have been even more powerful. At the great events of her life and in her visits to the court, she would have secured admiration through the quality of the materials used in her dress. And yet at the Maundy ceremonies in nearby Stamford she knew to eschew both show and richness and to dress almost as a nun. Her household must have dressed sombrely, as she did, at least her household servants and certainly her almsfolk, if not the dependents who often lived in the household, and in fact she dressed many of them herself, presumably as she wished to see them and with some frugality in the reuse of garments for them and for herself. However, the houses she lived in displayed neither sombreness nor frugality but were rich in the extreme. If her dress did not declare her status, her furnishings did so, hangings emblazoned with the emblems she shared with the king, thrones of estate with rich canopies, and figural and scenic tapestries lining the walls. She was an extraordinary woman and must have appeared so to all who knew her.

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“Like two artificial gods”: Needlework and Female Bonding in A Midsummer Night’s Dream Anna Riehl Bertolet Lo, she is one of this confederacy. Now I perceive they have conjoined all three To fashion this false sport, in spite of me.— Injurious Hermia, most ungrateful maid, Have you conspired, have you with these contrived To bait me with this foul derision? Is all the counsel that we two have shared— The sisters’ vows, the hours that we have spent, When we have chid the hasty-footed time For parting us.—O, is it all forgot? All schooldays’ friendship, childhood innocence? We, Hermia, like two artificial gods, Have with our needles created both one flower, Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion, Both warbling of one song, both in one key, As if our hands, our sides, voices and minds, Had been incorporate. So we grew together, Like to a double cherry: seeming parted, But yet an union in partition, Two lovely berries moulded on one stem. So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart, Two of the first—like coats in heraldry, Due but to one and crowned with one crest. And will you rend our ancient love asunder, To join with men in scorning your poor friend?

This article is a version of a paper presented in May 2013 at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, Michigan. I would like to express my gratitude for the expertise in the history of needlework generously offered by Clare Browne, Curator of Textiles at the Victoria and Albert Museum; Carol ­Humphrey, Honorary Keeper of Textiles at the Fitzwilliam Museum; and Jacqueline Holdsworth of ­Needleprint blog and publisher. My thanks also go out to the readers of Needleprint blog who ­enthusiastically participated in helping me identify two depictions of women embroidering together. I am also grateful to Gale Owen-Crocker and Robin Netherton, the wonderful co-editors of Medieval Clothing and Textiles, for their guidance of and enthusiasm for my project.

Anna Riehl Bertolet It is not friendly, ’tis not maidenly. Our sex, as well as I, may chide you for it, Though I alone do feel the injury. A Midsummer Night’s Dream (3.2.193–220)1

In her speech to Hermia in act 3, scene 2 of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Helena seeks to reclaim Hermia’s friendship by recreating a scene of their childhood bonding and by evoking needlework objects associated with intimacy and femininity. An inquiry into Helena’s rhetorical strategies in this speech is incomplete without recognition of its investment in material culture that, as Karen Harvey defines it, “encapsulates not just the physical attributes of an object, but the myriad and shifting contexts through which it acquires meaning.”2 The object, in turn, becomes a meaning-making conduit through which characters are able to process and express their thoughts and emotions.3 The identification and interrogation of the “shifting contexts” that inform and ground the objects evoked in Helena’s speech, therefore, open up a field of meanings that would be available to Shakespeare’s audience, whose material culture literacy differed from our own. Helena’s poignant recollection of a shared childhood is anchored by an evocation of the needlework and its material and symbolic significance in creating intimacy between the two girls. This affective reconstruction of a safe space of an exclusively female world is framed by references to the masculine intrusion that seeks and fails to mirror the bonds forged within that feminine space, a place defined first and foremost through the shared act of creation by means of needle and thread. The activity of working with a needle was ubiquitous in early modern England, and, while most professional embroiderers were male, domestic needlework came to be seen as an increasingly feminine pursuit.4 Shakespeare follows this cultural perception as he selects the central symbol of the childhood bond between Hermia and Helena—in its domestic origin and function as well as in its emerging educational uses, a sampler was a type of needlework closely associated with women. Helena evokes the memory of communal creation of a sampler in a desperate attempt to return Hermia to the roots of their childhood devotion, to the definitive moment when their friendship was at its strongest. Some of the most prominent imagery in Helena’s impassioned speech therefore refers to entwining and incorporation, thus repeatedly materializing the emotional bond between Helena and Hermia. Shakespeare additionally laces this passage with less obvious references to bonding: those tied with the shared pursuit of embroidering,   1 William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in The Norton Shakespeare, ed. Stephen Greenblatt, Walter Cohen, Jean E. Howard, and Katharine Eisman Maus, 1st ed. (New York: Norton, 1997). All quotations from Shakespeare are from this edition and cited to act, scene, and line numbers in parentheses following the quotation.   2 Karen Harvey, History and Material Culture (London: Routledge, 2009), 3.   3 My methodology follows, in part, Catherine Richardson’s technique of literary analysis from the objects, exemplified in her book Shakespeare and Material Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).   4 On professional male embroiderers, see Kathleen Epstein, British Embroidery: Curious Works from the Seventeenth Century (Williamsburg, VA: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1998), 49–57.

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Needlework in A Midsummer Night’s Dream an activity that makes very specific demands on the bodies and minds of the stitchers. While Helena’s speech creates a contrast between the closeness of the girls’ remembered bodies and their current oppositional stance, the sampler and needles function as props evoked in memory, absent from the stage. Yet, just like the girls’ bodies, left behind in their childhood, the needlework tools and materials become emotionally charged objects, whose manipulation, physical in the past and verbal in the present, is also highly emotional. Shakespeare thus creates a vignette of the two embroidering girls that appears to be as charming as it is idealized. However, the idealization throws in relief the historical and emotional authenticity of the bond that stands in fragile opposition to the play’s dominant narrative of reconfiguration and erasure. FEMALE SCHOOLING AND TWO-PERSON EMBROIDERY

Helena’s reference to “schooldays’ friendship” and a later assertion that Hermia “was a vixen when she went to school” (3.2.325–26) may point to participation in tutoring conducted within a household or at a school outside the family home.5 As members of the upper class or gentry, either Helena or Hermia could have been “placed out” into the other girl’s household; this educational practice arose in the 1400s and was still popular in England throughout the seventeenth century.6 Such domestic arrangements were certainly conducive to intimacy, since the girls would have spent most of their time together during the day and likely shared a bed at night.7 Another possibility is that Helena and Hermia were involved in a more formal arrangement for tutoring, perhaps attending a boarder school or an establishment for young gentlewomen such as the Ladies Hall in Deptford.8 Needlework was a prominent part of the education of girls in the period. It is frequently mentioned as a desirable skill in a woman; instruction in stitching was traditionally incorporated in a girl’s upbringing, and she was expected to demonstrate her competence with a needle as a result of her training. For instance, Cupid’s   5 For information on the early modern models of female education, especially in relation to needlework, see Rebecca Scott, Samplers (Oxford: Shire Publications, 2009), 16; Epstein, British Embroidery, 5–30; Averil Colby, Samplers Yesterday and Today (London: B. T. Batsford, 1964), 110–42; Betty Ring, “Needlework in Women’s Education: Its Rise and Fall,” in Girlhood Embroidery: American Samplers and Pictorial Needlework, 1650–1850 (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1993), 1:2–25; Mary M. Brooks, “Learning the Skills,” in Mary M. Brooks, Elizabeth Feller, and Jacqueline Holdsworth, Micheál & Elizabeth Feller: The Needlework Collection ([Hascombe, England]: Needleprint, 2011), 1:14–17.   6 Ring, Girlhood Embroidery, 1:5; Dorothy Gardiner, English Girlhood at School: A Study of Women’s Education Through Twelve Centuries (London: Oxford University Press, 1929), 114–29; Charlotte Merton, “Women, Friendship, and Memory,” in Tudor Queenship: The Reigns of Mary and Elizabeth, ed. Alice Hunt and Anna Whitelock (New York: Palgrave, 2010), 239–50, at 244.   7 Bed sharing was typical at the time. See, for example, the diary of Anne Clifford, who records her emotional dependence on sharing the bed with her cousin Frances Bourchier. Anne Clifford Herbert, The Diaries of Lady Anne Clifford, ed. D. J. H. Clifford (1990; repr., Stroud, UK: History Press, 2011), 26.   8 The only surviving record of this school is found in the manuscript of Cupid’s Banishment, a masque performed by its students in 1617.

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Anna Riehl Bertolet Banishment (1617), a masque showcasing the accomplishments of students attending Ladies Hall, features a formal presentation of “needlework gifts” to Queen Anne.9 This example attests to the importance of needlework lessons in the curriculum for girls in the social class approximating that of Helena and Hermia. However, the point of learning needlework was to put this skill to domestic use as well as promote an industrious use of time, so many girls and women wrought with their needles outside of school. Therefore, Helena’s recollected scene of collaborative embroidering may be set outside of formal schoolroom instruction. The girls’ closeness and implied synchronicity of sound and movement suggest an atmosphere of enjoyment, isolation, and leisure not readily associated with performing tasks under the supervision of a schoolmistress. Hermia and Helena may have been working on their homework or stitching purely for pleasure. This possibility is confirmed by some early modern images of girls and women doing needlework: Although some of the group arrangements show the work being done in a schoolroom, others do not specify the setting and thus imply that one or more people may have practiced with the needle without a teacher’s supervision.10 Although these images often feature communal embroidering, they typically show each girl working on her own piece. However, one of the most striking concepts in Helena’s speech is the synchronicity of the girls’ actions and, by implication, their thoughts and feelings. The activities recalled by Helena are embroidering and singing, and she suggests that the girls’ actions are perfectly harmonized. In the song, the friends’ voices mingle in unison or easy harmony, both “in one key,” and the rhythm of Helena’s speech implies that the entwining through stitching is equally effortless. But if we consider the mechanics of such activity, we may find that Shakespeare is glossing over some technical complications. In Helena’s story, the girls are embroidering not only one sampler, but also one flower, an almost impossible task unless the stitchers sit very closely or pass the fabric to take turns. To embroider one flower, two people must become as nearly to being one body as possible, perhaps each using

  9 Cupid’s Banishment: A Maske Presented to Her Majesty By young Gentelwomen of the Ladies Hall In Deptford at Greenwich the 4th of May 1617, in Renaissance Drama by Women: Texts and Documents, ed. S. P. Cerasano and Marion Wynne-Davies (London: Routledge, 1996), 83–89, at 88. 10 In addition to some of the images discussed later in the essay, see, for example, the following illustrations of communal stitching in the early modern period: Johannes von Schwarzenberger, Ain new Formbüchlein (Augsburg, 1534), title page, reproduced in Arthur Lotz, Bibliographie der modelbücher (Leipzig: Verlag Karl W. Hiersemann, 1933), no. 23; Bernhard Jobin, New künstlichs Modelbuch: Von allerhand artlichen und gerechten Mödeln, auff der laden zuwircken (Germany, 1589), title page, reproduced at https://archive.org/details/MAB.31962000791859Images; Johann Sibmacher, Schön neues Modelbuch (Nuremberg: Balthaser Caimox, 1597), title page, reproduced in Lotz, Bibliographie, no. 53; Giovanni Andrea Vavassore, Esemplario di lavori (Venice, c. 1530), title page, reproduced in Lotz, Bibliographie, no. 93; Nicolo Zoppino, Convivio delle belle donne (Venice, 1531), title page, reproduced in Lotz, Bibliographie, no. 97; Zoppino, Gli universali di tutti e bei dissegni, raccami, e moderni lavori (Venice, 1532), title page, reproduced in Lotz, Bibliographie, no. 108; Matio Pagano, Ornamento delle belle et virtuose Donne (Venice, 1554), title page, reproduced in Lotz, Bibliographie, no. 116; Pagano, La gloria et l’honore de ponti tagliati e ponti in aere (Venice, 1558), title page, reproduced in Lotz, Bibliographie, no. 120.

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Needlework in A Midsummer Night’s Dream only one hand, one bringing the needle up through the fabric and pushing it down, the other pulling it through from the underside and finding the proper place to come up again. Alternatively, one girl might control the needle while the other helps to pull the thread. But Helena refers to the “needles” in plural, so the activity must be even more complicated: The girls must take turns, in a rhythm possibly following their song, perhaps each holding a needle threaded with a different color, shading the flower as they alternate their stitches. Moreover, though possible with the techniques of silk shading or double running stitch by taking turns with each pass, such embroidery with two needles cannot be done with other typical sampler stitches, such as the buttonhole, queen, or rococo stitches frequently used for embroidering flowers on samplers in the period.11 Even the plain and ubiquitous tent stitch would present difficulties, since the length of the tent stitches is minuscule on a high-count fabric used for samplers. And even with silk shading, the girls would have to hunch down to their work to achieve any accuracy, making it difficult to sing as they worked. Simultaneous working on the same sampler was not a typical method, but it was sometimes used on large pieces, and there is visual evidence examined below that helps to explain how such two-person embroidery worked. As mentioned above, samplers were often created in a social context, such as a schoolroom, where each girl worked on her own piece. Some extant pieces suggest, however, that every so often two people could have worked a sampler from the opposite ends. It is not always possible to discern the process of creation from examining a sampler. The most intriguing evidence of more than one pair of hands possibly contributing to the finished product is the existence of double-ended pieces (sometimes called upside-down samplers). A handful of such pieces are known, but only one of them from this period features two signatures and has thus been definitely worked by two people.12 This sampler is signed with the name Elizabeth Priest on the top and, upside down, with a CP on the bottom.13 However, the two signatures are accompanied by different dates (respectively, 1676 and 1674), so this sampler does not prove that the stitchers worked on it together. Scholars such as Rebecca Scott and Rebecca Quinton have suggested that various upside-down samplers could have been worked either by two girls or by the same one, “in an attempt to prevent soiling”14 or “perhaps for reasons of economy, or ease of stitching.”15 Jacqueline Holdsworth additionally 11 Queen, tent, and buttonhole stitches were the most popular choices for creating flowers on samplers and personal items. Roses and pansies were the flowers most readily associated with Queen Elizabeth I. At the entertainment at Bisham in 1592, for example, Anne and Elizabeth Russell found an optimal way to please their queen when they chose to decorate their sampler by working “roses, egletine, harts-ease” in “Queenes stitch.” John Nichols, The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth (1823; repr., New York: Burt Franklin, 1996), 3:134. 12 There are a number of eighteenth-century samplers that carry two or more names believed by scholars to record the contributors to the creation of these pieces. Colby, Samplers Yesterday and Today, 98, 107. 13 Reproduced in Rebecca Quinton, Patterns of Childhood: Samplers from Glasgow Museums (London: Herbert Press, 2005), cat. no. 15. 14 Scott, Samplers, 30. 15 Quinton, Patterns of Childhood, cat. no. 13.

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Anna Riehl Bertolet presents convincing evidence that the same stitcher often worked her sampler with one of the long edges facing her, and thus the directions that we perceive as “up” and “down” functioned to her as “left” and “right.” The occasional flipping of words and images could thus be a result of building the sampler in directions other than those we use to read the finished bands.16 Therefore, traces of multidirectional stitching do not definitively point to a simultaneous two-person production. Nevertheless, Shakespeare’s somewhat idealized description is treated as a compelling testimony by some scholars. As a result, the passage from A Midsummer Night’s Dream is sometimes cited in discussions of double-ended (or upside-down) samplers, and Helena’s recollection is offered as an illustration of the process of sampler making by two people from the opposite ends of the fabric.17 With the exception of Jacqueline Holdsworth,18 scholars have disregarded the fact that Helena and Hermia are sitting “on one cushion,” and therefore are positioned side by side rather than face to face, so they cannot be working both ends of an upside-down sampler. Artists, in contrast, seem to be more attentive to Shakespeare’s description and more sensitive to its poetic potency. But is this simply a lyrical image or an actual way two girls might have acted? Certainly, Shakespeare’s readers have been fascinated by this depiction of female togetherness, and later images by Joseph Severn and Marcus Ward endeavor to visualize Hermia and Helena plying a shared piece of fabric with their needles. While it is not entirely clear how the division of stitching works in Joseph Severn’s painting Hermia and Helena (1834), or how the fabric is supported in mid-air, each young woman is holding a threaded needle.19 In Marcus Ward’s depiction, only one of the girls is embroidering, while her friend is admiring the work, her hands busy holding up the frame and drawing her companion close in a tender embrace (fig. 8.1).20 Whatever the vision of the technical elements of the two-person stitching, these depictions are faithful to the seating arrangement described by Helena. While these paintings follow some poetic liberties that originate in the text itself, a further look at the early modern images corroborates Shakespeare’s placement of Helena and Hermia side by side. In other words, while there are no known specific references to two stitchers working the same sampler from either end at the same time, visual evidence gleaned from frontispieces and title pages of contemporary pattern books confirms the side-by-side positioning while working on the same piece. The images in pattern books depict females stitching both in solitude and in groups. Two examples, one Italian and one German (fig. 8.2), feature two stitchers

Brooks, Feller, and Holdsworth, Micheál & Elizabeth Feller, 1:151. See, for example, Colby, Samplers Yesterday and Today, 148. Brooks, Feller, and Holdsworth, Micheál & Elizabeth Feller, 1:151. Joseph Severn, Hermia and Helena, oil on canvas, 1834. Current location unknown. Reproduced in Sotheby’s London, Nineteenth Century European Paintings, Drawings and Watercolours, Nov. 26, 1985 [auction catalog], cat. no. 1. 20 Marcus Ward, “Shakspere Calendar Design” (Belfast: M’Caw, Stevenson & Orr, Ltd., 1923), print included in William Gamble, ed., Penrose’s Annual: The Process Year Book & Review of the Graphic Arts, vol. 25 (London: Percy Lund, Humphries & Co., 1923). 16 17 18 19

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Figure 8.1: Calendar illustration by Marcus Ward, 1923. Photo: Anna Riehl Bertolet.

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Figure 8.2: Detail from hand-colored engraving by Elias Porzel in Curioser Spiegel (Nuremberg: Johann Andreas Endter, 1689), 4. Photo: Courtesy of the Watkinson Library, Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut.

sitting together and working on the same piece.21 The fabric is stretched on a frame and rested either on trestles or a table. Most importantly, each stitcher is focusing 21 Woodcut from Tagliente, Essempio di recammi (Venice: Giovan Antonio et fratelli da Sabbio, 1527), title page, reproduced in Lotz, Bibliographie, 85; engraving by Elias Porzel in Curioser Spiegel: In welchem der allgemeine Lauff des gantzen menschlichen Lebens von der zartesten Kindheit an bis in das gestandene Alter in allerhand schönen Figuren mit beygefugten artigen Reimen zur Belustigung vorgestellet wird (Nuremberg: Johann Andreas Endter, 1689), 4.

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Needlework in A Midsummer Night’s Dream on her own section of the fabric and occupying her own working space rather than leaning in to embroider a shared shape. Such visual examples of two persons working the same piece are extremely rare; typical group pictures show girls and women either working individually in different parts of a room or sitting together, each attending to her own design, as in the illustration from an Italian pattern book by Matio Pagano, Trionfo di Virtv (1559).22 Here, each student is holding her embroidery on a pillow, listening to the teacher’s comments or instructions. Shakespeare, therefore, depicts a recollection that may or may not have been entirely accurate—and isn’t this a quality of human memory? While Helena and Hermia could have worked on the same sampler, it is less likely that they would have been stitching the same flower together (or it may be that the girls are following the same pattern while stitching identical flowers, as shown in the images above). Yet it is this additional detail that completes the absoluteness of the girls’ connection. Indeed, by placing the two friends side by side and directing their gaze at the stitching of “one flower,” Shakespeare pushes them into an extreme proximity, in a vignette that reads as an image of ultimate intimacy, a union of the minds as well as bodies. Helena and Hermia are nearly fused in a process that requires coordination of their movements and contact, almost conjoining, of their bodies. Indeed, to work a flower with two needles and allow room for moving the hands that guide the sharp steel, they must become almost like Siamese twins, one right-handed and the other, its perfect left-handed counterpart. HELENA’S EMBROIDERING OF FEMALE FRIENDSHIP: MEMORY AND ­DESTRUCTION

With relentless insistence, Helena saturates this passage with the imagery of twining (two gods, two girls, two berries) and merging (a double cherry, a two-part family shield), where separate entities, though still discernable, are always pulled together through some conjoining force. This unity is signified by a singular number echoing throughout the passage, insisting on the essential oneness in opposition to all seeming doublings: one stem anchoring the double cherry, one crest crowning the doubled shield, one activity that binds two women together, one sampler held between them, and an “incorporation” of their parts—bodily (hands and sides) and immaterial (voices and minds). Such twining and incorporation through an act of collaborative creation, for ­Helena, is the memory that encapsulates the essence of friendship and maidenhood, the “ancient love” that binds her to Hermia. When Hermia forsakes this bond, she betrays

22 Matio Pagano, Trionso di Virtu (Venice, 1568), title page, reproduced in Charlotte Paludan and Lone de Hemmer Egeberg, 98 Mønsterbøger til Broderi, Knipling og Strikning [98 Pattern Books for Embroidery, Lace, and Knitting] (Copenhagen: Danske Kunstindustrimuseum, 1991), 52, fig. 32.

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Anna Riehl Bertolet both their love, forged while they mingled their voices with their stitching, and her own femininity, established and validated during such employment: And will you rend our ancient love asunder, To join with men in scorning your poor friend? It is not friendly, ’tis not maidenly. (3.2.216–18)

According to Helena, Hermia literally separates herself from Helena, with whom she used to sing and stitch, and joins herself to men in an ignoble effort to scorn her female friend. In exchange for the beautiful task of communal creation offered to Hermia by the world of femininity, the society of men, having pulled her into their midst, can offer no better shared activity than to engage in a practical joke at the expense of her abandoned friend. This cruel betrayal, Helena implies, will not furnish Hermia with the sort of true, “incorporate” bond she has so carelessly discarded. Hermia is once again “conjoined” with other bodies, this time not in the spirit of intimacy and industry, as previously while stitching with Helena, but for the reprehensible purposes of falsehood and idle entertainment: “they have conjoined all three / To fashion this false sport.” (This “three,” of course, is inherently problematic in a passage so invested in the merging of two into one.) Scorning other women is but a superficial pastime that will not buy Hermia a long-lasting standing in the world of men. In contrast, the dominant discourse of A Midsummer Night’s Dream suggests that such standing may be achieved only through a bond of love between one man and one woman. That discourse is, of course, perpetually undermined by the bizarre temporary couplings of the wrong woman and the right man, the right woman and the wrong man, the right woman and—as it happens—the decidedly wrong ass. Helena’s references to the disruptive consequences of the imagined female-male alliance bracket her lyrical recollection of the girlhood friendship formed during their school days. This detailed memory of harmony and synchronicity sends emotionally charged waves throughout Helena’s speech, reaching such a high intensity that Hermia responds not with a logical refutation, but with amazement at her friend’s “passionate words” and confusion about who is scorning whom: “I scorn you not. It seems that you scorn me” (3.2.221–22). Hermia reacts to Helena’s speech, in other words, in an emotional rather than rational way. The passion builds and circulates throughout Helena’s juxtaposition of “now” and “then,” firmly anchored in the central image of the embroidered cloth that was held between the two friends in the remote hour of their childhood. Even as Helena’s description moves away from the sampler, the imagery continues to evoke embroidery: the cushion upon which the girls are sitting would likely

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Figure 8.3: Cushion cover (1603–25). London, Victoria and Albert Museum, no. 816-1893. Photo: Copyright © Victoria and Albert Museum, London, by permission.

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Anna Riehl Bertolet have been embroidered,23 a “double cherry” and “two lovely berries” evoke frequently embroidered motifs, and Helena’s heraldic simile would remind her audience of the badges and coats of arms that were frequently embroidered on the bearers’ possessions (fig. 8.3). Thus, not only the binding activity of embroidering, but the figurative language reiterating the closeness of that bond itself draws on and suggests needlework. Shakespeare makes Helena and Hermia’s distant memory almost tangible, evoking and reinforcing the girlhood friendship in the vocabulary of the very activity that has forged it. Perhaps Helena’s most striking simile that exemplifies a “union in partition” is the “double cherry.” Cherries were embroidered in bunches with the stems of two or three berries joined at the top, the way they usually grow on a tree (fig. 8.4). In nature, a double cherry is less typical, and it is truly a double berry, with one stem attached to the top. Each part of the berry contains a pit, and the outlines of two ingrown berries indicate a faint but perceptible separateness while they interpenetrate each other at the center where the flesh is shared, fusing them into one double berry. Cherries were commonly thought of as the fruit of paradise. Their symbolism is quite rich, starting with their emblematic connections, in the Middle Ages, to Christ and the Virgin (especially the Nativity), incarnation, and the joys of heaven.24 In one of her portraits,25 Elizabeth I wears cherries in her hair—possibly as a reference to her virginity or divine reward for her virtue—and in early modern family portraits, cherries are often placed in the laps of or in proximity to the male heirs.26 By using the image of a double cherry, then, Helena with one stroke captures the intensity of the lost friendship, the purity of Hermia’s and Helena’s younger selves, and the promise of heavenly rewards—a promise that was once within their reach.27 23 Long cushions were used to cover wooden chairs and benches as well as window seats and remained in fashion until the 1630s. In addition to the considerations of comfort, cushions were often used to emphasize the family’s wealth and social standing. Lavish embroidery and frequent depiction of the family’s coat of arms at the center of the cushions served these purposes. See Liz Arthur, Embroidery 1600–1700: At the Burrell Collection (London: John Murray, 1995), 32; George Wingfield Digby, Elizabethan Embroidery (London: Faber and Faber, 1963), 109; Therle Hughes, English Domestic Needlework 1660–1860 (New York: Macmillan, 1961), 130–35; Preston Remington, English Domestic Needlework of the XVI, XVII, and XVIII Centuries (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1945), 5–6. 24 Lawrence Ross, “Symbol and Structure in the Secunda Pastorum,” Comparative Drama 1, no. 2 (Summer 1967): 122–49, at 130–32. 25 Portrait of Elizabeth I with a Pelican Emblem, attributed to Nicholas Hilliard (ca. 1574, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, England). 26 For instance, Portrait of Lady Sidney and Six of Her Children, by Marcus Gheeraerts (collection of Viscount de L’Isle, Penshurst), features some cherries in the lap of the younger boy, Robert. 27 Helena’s speech and the image of the double cherry in particular have also been read by some scholars in sexualized terms. For instance, Valerie Traub considers this passage as evidence of Helena and Hermia’s former homoerotic desire, and Christy Desmet dubs the double cherry a “virgin hermaphrodite.” Traub, “The (In)Significance of ‘Lesbian’ Desire in Early Modern England,” in Queering the Renaissance, ed. Jonathan Goldberg (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994), 62–83, at 72; Desmet, “Disfiguring Women with Masculine Tropes: A Rhetorical Reading of A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” in A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Critical Essays, ed. Dorothea Kehler (New York: Garland, 1998), 299–329, at 316.

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Needlework in A Midsummer Night’s Dream As Susan Frye shows in the examples of Queen Elizabeth, Mary Queen of Scots, and Bess of Hardwick, aristocratic women in early modern England “used needlework to create and disrupt alliances with other women.”28 Whether given as gifts from one woman to another or created jointly by two or more stitchers, embroidered objects bound women to each other. Yet, as Frye points out, needlework could also factor in the disruption of alliances, whether due to its subversive content, as in the case of Mary Queen of Scots’ choices of imagery and mottos, or even due to a woman’s refusal to continue engaging with the needle and thread, as in the case of Elizabeth after she became queen. The very rhetoric of Helena’s vignette, styled as a nostalgic recollection of a pastime left behind in their childhood, suggests that the endeavors and processes responsible for forging that bond have long been discontinued. Moreover, the intimacy itself has already began to dissolve. But a few hours earlier, Helena disclosed her friend’s secret plans, deciding to compromise Hermia’s happiness for a chance to earn Demetrius’ approval. Evidence that this dissolution did not happen overnight is found early in the play, in the description of Hermia and Lysander’s meeting place as they resolve to leave Athens. Hermia reminds Helena of a location … in the wood, where often you and I Upon faint primrose beds were wont to lie, Emptying our bosoms of their counsel sweet. (1.1.214–16)

The past tense of this reference to Hermia’s intimacy with Helena is countered by the future that is bound to follow: “There my Lysander and myself shall meet” (1.1.217). Earlier in this scene, Lysander suggests their meeting “Where I did meet thee once with Helena, / To do observance to a morn of May” (1.1.166–67), thereby indicating his prior intrusion on the two women’s private time together. The trajectory is clear: Where there used to be two women spending time together, a man has first joined them and eventually displaced one of the women, thus completing the substitution of the female homosocial bond with a heterosexual union. In a sense, then, Helena’s speech suggests that it is the disruption of the habit of embroidering together that brings about the dissolution of their “union in partition.” The metaphors fall apart; the metaphysical links no longer hold together the apparently separate entities; what used to “seem” to be, now simply is. Instead of “seeming parted,” they are parted in earnest. Instead of “two seeming bodies,” Hermia and Helena are now indeed twain, independent, and no longer connected to each other. But while Helena is isolated, Hermia is not: She has entered a new union, this time with men. Needlework is left behind, but it continues looming in Helena’s passionate accusations as she constructs the opposition between Hermia’s former and

28 Susan Frye, “Sewing Connections: Elizabeth Tudor, Mary Stuart, Elizabeth Talbot, and SeventeenthCentury Anonymous Needleworkers,” in Maids and Mistresses, Cousins and Queens: Women’s Alliances in Early Modern England, ed. Susan Frye, Karen Robertson, and Jean E. Howard (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 165–82, at 180. See also Susan Frye, Pens and Needles: Women’s Textualities in Early Modern England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010).

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Figure 8.4: Cushion cover (ca. 1600). London, Victoria and Albert Museum, no. T.79-1946. Photo: Copyright © Victoria and Albert Museum, London, by permission.

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Needlework in A Midsummer Night’s Dream current alliances. The value of her bond with Helena is conveyed by the time invested in creating their friendship, … the hours that [they] have spent, When [they] have chid the hasty-footed time For parting [them] … (3.2.200–2)

The slow forging and strengthening of this bond is in direct contrast to the sudden and flippant “conjoining” of Hermia to the two men. Time, indeed, is writ large in the play. In one sense, the action stretches through one seemingly endless night full of rapid twists and turns of passion. But the discourse of A Midsummer Night’s Dream embraces the vastness of time through Titania’s pondering of seasonal disturbances, the playwright’s references to (pseudo)historical/mythological time, and the extension of time through dreams and recollections (such as Bottom’s experience with the fairies, but even more so memories of the past evoked in Titania’s and Oberon’s speeches in act 2).29 Helena’s speech certainly belongs to the same category of “speaking pictures” that register the significance of unrepeatable moments in the past. The evocative time of childhood friendship recollected by Helena is also a prominent factor in production of needlework: both as virtue (an industrious way to spend the hours) and necessity (by its nature, needlework is a time-consuming process).30 THE TWO FLOWERS

Helena’s story about two girls’ joint singing and embroidering gives us a pattern for placing value on the other bonds in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Indeed, the worth of a relationship is defined by the time taken to produce it, and there is a gender-­ specific distinction that seems to suggest that female bonds are created more slowly and meticulously while the female-male alliances are rushed and often volatile.31 While Titania’s devotion to her votaress is prolonged both in the queen’s memory and in her continued care for the votaress’ child, Titania’s sudden union with the ass-headed Bottom is as fleeting as it is preposterous.32 Hyppolita, too, is rent out of her prolonged incorporation in the Amazonian society and forced into a union with 29 For a perceptive analysis of the ways these “highly visualized speeches” function as “linguistic bubbles which contain something desired and yet complex,” see Richardson, Shakespeare and Material Culture, 166–73. 30 Exaltation of needlework as an antidote for idleness (and thus a virtuous time filler) is one of the main postulates in treatises addressing proper female behavior in the period. 31 The contrast between professional performers acting A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the amateur theatrical efforts of Peter Quince and his company follows the same pattern: One group has undergone an extended period of training, while the others “never labored in their minds till now” (5.1.73). 32 Titania’s bond with her votaress is formed alongside and eventually in opposition to the two women’s heterosexual marital obligations. The boy is “stol’n from an Indian king” (2.1.22), so that Titania can honor her bond with the boy’s dead mother. Titania’s own marriage to Oberon is punctuated by repeated infidelities.

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Figure 8.5: Detail of spot sampler (mid-1600s). London, Victoria and Albert Museum, no. T.234-1928. Photo: Copyright © Victoria and Albert Museum, London, by permission.

Theseus, with the wedding approaching faster than her own apparent desire to join him in the marital bed. This sustained contrast between female homosocial and heterosexual bonds is encapsulated in the correspondence between the embroidered flower mentioned by Helena and Cupid’s flower used by the fairies to wreak havoc on some characters’ sexual desires. If the scene of two embroidering girls forms the heart of Helena’s speech, the sampler sits at the center of this scene, and the focal point of that sampler is the flower 174

Needlework in A Midsummer Night’s Dream being worked by the girls. This flower speaks subtly to the most prominent floral prop of the play: the magic pansy.33 Shakespeare undoubtedly chooses a flower (and not a deer, a bird, a bug, or a geometric shape, also common in the spot samplers of the period) for its longstanding associations with youth and femininity (fig. 8.5). Flowers, of course, are among the most frequently occurring motifs on samplers of the period.34 Rebecca Scott provides an ample list of the most popular flowers and their meanings on early modern samplers, noting that roses stood for “earthly love, pride, victory and passion”; cornflowers were used for healing and, along with other blue flowers, “signified faithfulness, fidelity, and peace”; lilies and irises were associated with chastity and virtue; pinks and carnations symbolized a “mother’s undying love for her child, and the union of the divine and human in the body of Christ”; columbines stood for the Holy Spirit; and honeysuckles represented enduring faith.35 In addition, flowers carried prominent heraldic connotations; the most popular associations linked roses to England and thistles to Scotland. Helena and Hermia thus had an array of delectable flowers from which to choose the motifs for their sampler. Shakespeare does not specify what flower they are crafting with their needles, but it is likely to be a rose (the most popular flower, and the one readily associated with love) or, if one accepts the analogy between Cupid’s flower and the blossom worked by the girls, one may well imagine a pansy on their sampler. Pansies, too, were among the popular flowers in the period, and they appear on samplers as well as personal items such as nightcaps.36 This popularity extended to (or perhaps from) the queen’s personal taste—pansy was supposed to be Elizabeth’s favorite flower, especially when embroidered. In early modern England, pansies were also associated with love and thus called “Cupid’s flower,” and they had many other suggestive names, such as “call me to you,” “three faces in a hood,” “kiss me at the garden gate,” “tickle my fancy,” “pink of my John,” and most commonly, “heartsease.” The name “pansy” comes

33 The identification of Oberon’s magic flower as a pansy has been commonly accepted. George Wingfield Digby (Elizabethan Embroidery, 42) summarizes: “The pansy is called by Lemoine ‘pawnsie’ and he gives the French as ‘pensée.’ The old country name, known to Chaucer and Tyndale, was ‘love-inidleness’ (idleness=vain) and Shakespeare uses this name. It was ‘cupid’s flower’ associated with love, and it can be found referred to as ‘call me to you,’ ‘three faces in a hood,’ and ‘kiss me at the garden gate.’” Thomas P. Harrison, Jr., explains that “love-in-idleness” is the “vulgar epithet for a pansy,” albeit he points out that “Cupid’s flower” may also be a reference to a rose; Harrison, “Flower Lore in Spenser and Shakespeare: Two Notes,” Modern Language Quarterly 7 (1946): 175–78, at 177–78. Maurice Hunt likewise refers to the “transformation … of a ‘western flower’ into a magical pansy”; Hunt, “Individuation in A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” South Central Review 3, no. 2 (Summer 1986): 1–13, at 1. 34 Arthur, Embroidery 1600–1700, 46. 35 Scott, Samplers, 20–21. 36 “Viola Gaza / Heartsease” is featured on one of the pages in a book used as a source for embroidery patterns, Animalium quadrupedum, Auium, florum, fructuum, Muscarum et Vermium Omnis generis Veræ delineationes in æes incisæ: A Booke of Beast, Birds, Flowers, Fruits, Flies, and Wormes, exactly drawne with their Liuely Colours truly Described, ill. (attr.) Simon van de Pass ([London]: Thomas Johnson, 1630).

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Anna Riehl Bertolet from the French pensée, and this flower is associated with thoughts for this reason.37 In the colors and patterns of pansy petals, Shakespeare’s contemporaries discerned three tiny faces that seemed to stare back, and so this flower represented the Trinity as well as chastity.38 Whether the petals on Helena and Hermia’s sampler form a heartsease, a rose, or some other floral shape, the flower created by their needles is placed, alongside Oberon’s magic love-in-idleness, at the center of the emotional landscape of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Even the stories of their creation are implicitly parallel. Love-in-idleness starts out as a “milk-white” “little western flower” (2.1.167–66). Once pierced by Cupid’s deflected arrow, the flower becomes “purple with love’s wound” (2.1.167). Embroidered flowers are likewise created by pricking the fabric, and different shades and colors of floss were frequently used to suggest dimension and render the flowers more realistically. Pansies, in particular, would require some color variation rather than monochrome shading of an embroidered rose, and if Helena and Hermia were shading their flower in silk, they would alternate from one color to another, as if reenacting the metamorphosis of the “little western flower.” Significantly, Oberon does not use the common name for pansy, heartsease, but instead opts for an Ovidiesque designation, love-in-idleness—an odd name that means “love in vain.” This name, too, harks back to Hermia and Helena embroidering a flower; their schoolgirl love also seems to have gone amiss. Moreover, their love, like that imparted by Cupid’s arrow, was created in the process of piercing. The parallel between the violation of the flower and needlework, in Shakespeare, extends even further. The magical properties of the flower used by Oberon and Puck result from the laceration by Cupid’s arrow, and this injury is manifested by a color change analogous to bleeding. As the magic flower has to be crushed to extract its magic juice, so Helena and Hermia’s childhood love is “rent asunder,” and the embroidered flower they created together is figuratively ripped apart. Magical, material, and even metaphoric flowers, therefore, function as recipients of symbolic violence in the play, and by means of this violence, love bonds are formed and sundered. Because the two flowers are in so many ways analogous to each other, they also demarcate a fundamentally gender-specific difference. While the flower made with the schoolgirls’ needles and thread is an intentionally created artifact, love-in-idleness is a magical byproduct of a misguided attempt at lighting a fire in the heart of a virginal “fair vestal” (2.1.158). If the evocation of Hermia’s and Helena’s flower radiates emotion that draws its energy from their girlhood bond, the Cupid’s flower begins its magical existence in a non-relational void. Its accidental properties come from a deflected emotion and are thoroughly disassociated from the “imperial vot’ress” who remains “fancy-free” (2.1.164); yet the flower is also obliquely empowered by her coldness and

37 Digby, Elizabethan Embroidery, 42; Jessica Kerr, Shakespeare’s Flowers (London: Longman, 1969), 23–26. 38 Scott, Samplers, 20.

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Needlework in A Midsummer Night’s Dream virginity.39 While resembling nature, neither one of these flowers is properly natural, and it is love-in-idleness, the product of an accidental creation by a male god, that holds most noticeable sway in the events of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Its feminine counterpart, created by girls resembling “two artificial gods,” is an embroidered equivalent to magic. Although it may not speak as loudly in the world of the play, the bond forged in the process of its creation is precious in its profound innocence and devotion. The fleeting or enforced female-male relationships, on the other hand, are unanchored by any tangible objects or purposeful design. This volatility is additionally manifested in the pattern of a delayed heterosexual merging: from Theseus’ enforced deferral of consummation till the wedding, to Lysander’s reluctant sleeping apart from Hermia, and throughout the confusion of the night when the frustrated lovers repeatedly find themselves surfing the asynchronous waves of desire. The two flowers stand in stark contrast in their tangibility as well as in their meaning. As it appears in Helena’s memory, the girls’ flower is a material, visible, palpable item made of thread, an object of their intense concentration. Cupid’s flower, on the other hand, is unknown and invisible to the mortal male lovers who are unwittingly and passively put under its influence. Indeed, the materiality and intentionality of the needlework serves both as a foundation and manifestation of the female bonding, and it is the absence of this materiality and creative purpose in the female-male alliance imagined by Helena that, in her speech, empties this new heterosocial bond of meaning and value. “One flower” and “one sampler” become the emblems of “one heart” as the material object both fastens and evokes the emotional intimacy whose nature is distinctly feminine and whose purity and worth are silenced and yet ultimately unmatched by the end of the play.

39 Interestingly, Catherine Richardson (Shakespeare and Material Culture, 171–72) uses this passage to explore how this memory shows a “time-depth” for the relationship between Oberon and Puck. While Richardson does not discuss love-in-idleness, one may extend her interpretation to suggest that this flower may resemble Helena and Hermia’s flower in its presence during the creation of homosocial bonds.

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Recent Books of Interest

The Bayeux Tapestry: Bayeux, Médiathèque Municipale: MS. 1: A Sourcebook, Publications of the Journal of Medieval Latin 9, by Shirley Ann Brown (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2013). ISBN 978–2503549170. 317 pages. Shirley Ann Brown has been the prime Bayeux Tapestry bibliographer since her 1988 publication,1 updated in 2004.2 Her invaluable new book presents an annotated bibliography to 2013 and contextualises the Tapestry. It begins with a physical description, from the embroidered face to the less famous numbered strip, lining, edging braid, and 1983 backing sheet. It continues with a history of the embroidery, including what are cautiously described as “a few tantalizing references to what has been taken by some to be the Tapestry” (p. xxi), its rediscovery by antiquaries in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and its progress to international icon. Its World War II adventures are detailed.3 The ownership and care of the Bayeux Tapestry can be puzzling (and frustrating) to outsiders: Brown explains its ownership by the French State, guardianship by the mayor of Bayeux, and daily care by a curator. Biographies of the curators since 1842, written in collaboration with the present curator, add to Tapestry historiography. An essay analysing Bayeux Tapestry studies from 1720 to 2013 distils and cross-references the information from the bibliography. A list of primary sources will be particularly welcome to new Tapestry scholars. The chronological bibliography—266 pages of books, articles, and reviews—is followed by archival resources, reproductions/facsimiles, and a selection of spin-offs. The eagerly anticipated photographs of the reverse of the embroidery are mentioned at page 271, but Brown’s book was published before they became available on the Internet. I therefore give the URL here: http://www.photo.rmn.fr (type in “verso Tapisserie de Bayeux”). — Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Editor

 1 Shirley Ann Brown, The Bayeux Tapestry: History and Bibliography (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 1988).   2 Shirley Ann Brown, “Bibliography of Bayeux Tapestry Studies: 1985–1989,” in The Bayeux Tapestry: Embroidering the Facts of History, ed. Pierre Bouet, Brian Levy, and François Neveux (Caen: Presses universitaires de Caen, 2004), 411–18.   3 See further Shirley Ann Brown, “Decoding Operation Matilda: The Bayeux Tapestry, the Nazis and German Pan-nationalism,” in The Bayeux Tapestry: New Approaches: Proceedings of a Conference at the British Museum, ed. Michael J. Lewis, Gale R. Owen-Crocker, and Dan Terkla (Oxford: Oxbow, 2011), 17–26.

Recent Books Chaucer and Array: Patterns of Costume and Fabric Rhetoric in The Canterbury Tales, Troilus and Criseyde and Other Works, by Laura F. Hodges (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2014). ISBN 978–1843843689. 232 pages, 19 illustrations (8 in color). Laura Hodges dedicates her third book to answering the question of whether or not there is a characteristic pattern to Chaucer’s costume rhetoric outside the General Prologue. Hodges brings together decades of research, some updated and expanded from earlier publications and presentations, to analyze the patterns of costume rhetoric in Chaucer’s works as a whole. Chapter 1 examines Chaucer’s manipulation of late medieval literary conventions for the dressing of knights, ladies, and procession routes in The Knight’s Tale. Part I provides extensive references to establish literary conventions for describing central characters in the romance genre. Hodges then discusses how Chaucer diverges from convention and his sources to thwart readers’ expectations of a head-to-toe descriptio of the beloved maiden, or formal arming sequences for the central knights. Part II details both historical and literary evidence for street drapery to establish how Chaucer’s readers would have interpreted the draping of Athens in cloth of gold for the tournament procession and black for the funeral procession. Chapter 2 continues with Chaucer’s treatment of romance convention by examining the signature garments of characters in Troilus and Criseyde, such as Criseyde’s widow’s weeds, Pandarus’ hood, and Troilus’ “shirte.” Hodges discusses these costume signs in great detail, addressing both fabrics and garment construction, as well as their metaphorical function throughout the text in comparison with genre convention. Chapters 3 and 4 focus on a single garment, the smock, and its rhetorical use in both the Clerk’s Tale and the Miller’s Tale. Although there is some repetition between the chapters, Hodges carefully examines the history of construction, materials, decoration, and wearing of this undergarment by women of various socioeconomic strata in late-fourteenth-century England. Within this context, she addresses Chaucer’s “inventive twists” on literary convention in the Clerk’s Tale, as well as the sartorial satire of awarding a detailed romance descriptio to a fabliau protagonist in the Miller’s Tale. Chapter 5 likewise examines a satirical descriptio of a less-than-noble character in the Tale of Sir Thopas. With expected thoroughness, Hodges works readers through each element of Thopas’ excessive and inappropriate costumes for court and combat. The conclusion brings together the earlier chapters’ arguments, applying them to a variety of Chaucer’s other works. While this study will be of primary interest to scholars of medieval literature, the extensive notes are a valuable resource for costume historians as well. — Kimberly Jack, Athens State University Clothing the Clergy: Virtue and Power in Medieval Europe, c. 800–1200, by Maureen C. Miller (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014). ISBN 978–0801449826 (cloth); 978–0801479434 (paperback). 286 pages, 79 illustrations (many in color). This clearly written and beautifully illustrated book considers the “ornate style” of ecclesiastical vestments from their first attested appearance in the late eighth to ninth centuries to the point where they became ubiquitous in the thirteenth; the 180

Recent Books g­ eographical range of the book is Italy, France, Germany, and England. The author argues that depiction in art of the more elaborate fashions lagged behind actuality. She links the popularity of silk and gold vestments to the increased power of bishops and popes, when royal patronage lessened and ecclesiastical rulership became the norm. She associates ornate liturgical dress with reform (especially celibacy for higher clerical orders), the superior status and “corporate identity” of ecclesiastics, and the use of dress to distinguish them from laity. Noting that Charlemagne and his son, Louis the Pious, advocated plain attire for clerics at a time when Anglo-Saxons were already accustomed to gold and silk, Maureen Miller interestingly suggests that the impetus for the ornate style came from Anglo-Saxon England, which had a long tradition of appreciation for precious metalwork. The author discusses with detailed examples how, as liturgical dress became more elaborate, new garments were added to the episcopal costume and each of the liturgical vestments proper for each of the higher offices—pope, bishop, priest, and deacon—came to be assigned symbolic, spiritual qualities. These were invoked at the ordination of the cleric when he was invested with the garment, and in vesting prayers when the cleric dressed, preparatory to Mass. In the early medieval Church, pronouncements of councils on dress had been largely concerned with the cleanliness of vestments. Later attention turned to the correctness of clerical clothing outside church, which the author pursues in the concluding chapter, tracing the sober costume of scholars and the responsible-looking dress cultivated by merchants to clerical streetwear. Miller assembles some interesting information on aristocratic female patronage and women workers, but her statement “Women made all of this” (p. 206) is surely contentious, emphasising the personal and female while minimalising the commercial and male contribution to ornate garments; after all, Theodred, Bishop of London, tells us he purchased (Old English bouhte) vestments in Pavia which he bequeathed in his will. Splendid fabrics and lavish decoration came to be used for secular aristocratic dress as well as the thousands of ecclesiastical vestments in circulation, and though they were handmade, they were professionally produced. Weaving had become a masculine occupation. Men organized trade (and all silk was imported at this stage) and were in charge of embroidery production, employing male as well as female embroiderers. Women certainly spun, sewed, and embroidered, but the argument that they were solely responsible for vestment production is unconvincing. — Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Editor The Four Seasons Tapestries at Hatfield House, by Michael Bath (London: A ­ rchetype, 2013). ISBN 978–1909492035. 162 pages, 155 illustrations (many in color), plus ­numerous thumbnail illustrations (many in color). The motto Credis expertus (You believe what you know), along with a scene depicting a well-dressed man looking at his own reflection in a mirror, can be found in the border of a sixteenth-century Brussels tapestry depicting Winter. This was one of a set of four tapestries depicting The Four Seasons that were made for Sir John Tracy of Toddington, Gloucestershire, but are now on display at Hatfield House, 181

Recent Books ­ ertfordshire, and which form the focal point of this scholarly volume. Michael H Bath presents his analysis of these tapestries in four chapters, titled “The Tapestries,” “Changing Seasons,” “Emblematica,” and “Religious Emblems,” which are supported by several appendices explaining all of ca. 170 emblems and mottoes depicted in the borders. Bath’s expertise lies with the emblems and mottoes, and this is where his careful and thorough research shines through. As such, for those exploring emblems and the print sources that t­ apestry weavers, amongst others, used for inspiration, this book is a highly useful source. The book has a wider appeal for those interested in early modern textiles and dress. First, it is rare to be presented with such a detailed and well-illustrated study of a single set of tapestries. The discussion of where they were woven, which rejects the traditional view that they were produced at the Sheldon workshop, is significant. Equally, the insights Bath provides into how individuals thought about their interiors and whether they bought items off the peg or carefully selected objects that reflected their political, religious, and intellectual interests is thought-provoking. Second, the tapestries and the prints that inspired much of their imagery provide us with many depictions of clothing and accessories and even activities linked to textile production. For instance, the scene accompanying the motto Honos alit artes (Honors nurture the arts) depicts a dyer stirring the dye bath and lifting the fabric out in order to check that the colour is even. As such this is a very well-produced and well-researched specialist text which offers the reader an interesting insight into one facet of the early modern home. — Maria Hayward, University of Southampton The North European Symposium for Archaeological Textiles [NESAT] XI, edited by Johanna Banck-Burgess and Carla Nübold (Rahden, Germany: Verlag Marie Leidorf, 2013). ISBN 978–3867570022. 264 pages, 243 illustrations (most in color). Includes CD-ROM. Of the thirty-five papers in this proceedings volume from the May 10–13, 2011, NESAT conference at Esslingen am Neckar, Germany, eight are in German and twenty-seven in English. On the included CD-ROM are 24 posters (two of introduction and 22 of content). All of these are in both German and English. It has become increasingly difficult to summarize the NESAT volumes because of the wide diversity in papers presented. Those focusing on analytical techniques or methodology are essential reading even when they use case studies outside the geographic or temporal interests of the reader. Fifteen papers and three posters feature textiles and garments of the medieval to early modern periods of Europe. At time of presentation, Beatrix Nutz’s initial report of underwear finds from fifteenth-century Austria was rather startling, but the finds have subsequently been discussed in more detail elsewhere. Elizabeth Wincott Heckett’s paper on seventh-century Irish textile fragments helps fill a void, and Marianne Vedeler’s essay on the samite textiles from Oseberg is also welcome. There are two papers and a poster on the clothing of the Gunnister Man (late-seventeenth-century North Shetland, Scotland) and the technical challenges of recreating a close facsimile. Eastern Europe is well represent182

Recent Books ed, with significant textile and clothing papers from Latvia (ninth century), Estonia, Poland, and the Czech Republic (including a thirteenth-century infant’s clothing imported from Spain). Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland also continue to be mainstays of the conference. Do not neglect the CD-ROM. While the posters are necessarily brief, they are well illustrated and interesting. — Beth Matney, Little Rock, Arkansas Silk For the Vikings, by Marianne Vedeler, Ancient Textiles Series 15 (Oxford: Oxbow, 2014). ISBN 978–1782972150. 125 pages, 43 illustrations (34 in color). This short book, by an associate professor of archaeology at the University of Oslo’s Museum of Cultural History, tries to cover aspects of the topic ranging from details about fragments measuring in millimeters to silk’s symbolic meaning. In between are sections about silk finds in Scandinavia, silk production, and the manufacture and distribution of silk. The first two chapters describe the grave finds in Scandinavia, primarily from the ninth and tenth centuries. The northernmost example comes from northern ­Norway, with the bulk of the finds in southern Scandinavia, concentrated in graves and trading centers. The first chapter deals solely with the Oseberg ship burial, in which were found 110 fragments of woven silk and twelve silk embroideries. Most of the weavings were weft-faced compound twills. As with the majority of the textiles found in approximately 100 other graves (addressed in Chapter 2), the Oseberg textiles are fragmentary, with significant color loss. Subsequent chapters take up the technical aspects of silk production, the trade and exchange of silk products, and the silk trade routes along the Russian River systems and overland through Europe. To better understand the specific types of silk that might have made their way to Scandinavia, the author also tackles the proscriptions regarding silk exchange in the Islamic area of influence as well as in Byzantium. The last chapter goes into the symbolic significance of silk, both in the lands where it was produced (as expressed in law and court documents) and in Scandinavia (based on more speculative interpretations). For such a brief study, the author covers a great deal of territory and provides useful information for an array of disciplines, from textile history to archaeology to the economics of the Vikings and their trading partners. Even specialists in one area will find it helpful in providing a deeper context over all. Thorough copy editing would have enhanced the book, ridding it not only of typos but also phrases that may be correct in Norwegian but are less idiomatic in English. Silk for the Vikings, with its wide-ranging scope and large bibliography, will be a useful tool to researchers in multiple disciplines. — M. A. Nordtorp-Madson, University of St. Thomas Trinkets and Charms: The Use, Meaning and Significance of Dress Accessories, AD 1300–1700, by Eleanor R. Standley, Oxford University School of Archaeology Monograph 78 (Oxford: Institute of Archaeology, University of Oxford, 2013). ISBN 978–1905905300. 136 pages, 72 illustrations (most in color). 183

Recent Books This is an object lesson in how to turn doctoral research into an attractive book. The research had deliberately focused on a period of transition between the later medieval and early post-medieval period and on two geographically opposite regions of Britain which have received relatively little archaeological attention, both of them border areas: southeast Scotland/northeast England; and southeast Wales/southwest England. The artefacts studied were taken from religious, rural, and urban excavation sites and from stray finds recorded by PAS (the Portable Antiquities Scheme). Deliberately eschewing a cataloguing approach (though a detailed dataset is available as an appendix to the associated Ph.D. thesis), the author imaginatively groups the dress accessories in themed chapters broadly related to the chronology of human life: “Relationships and Romance”; “Sexuality”; “Devotion and Pilgrimage”; “Illness, Healing and Protection”; “Objets Trouvés and Heirlooms”; and “Death and Burial.” Archaeological finds are attractively photographed, and their interpretation assisted by information from paintings, manuscripts, effigies, and a memorial brass, and well explained with the aid of maps, tables, and charts. The focus is on both the significance of the objects to the lives of the people and the biographies of the artefacts themselves, currently a popular approach in archaeological studies. Thus, a jet chess piece, carrying with it the chivalric, intellectual, and allegorical associations of the game of chess, has been recycled as a pendant, found in an amuletic capacity along with two folded silver coins accompanying a skeleton from St. James’s Priory, Bristol. The coins were associated with the Crusades and may have represented crusade vows while also acting as Mass pennies. Objects carried on the person for practical or decorative purposes could also be aids to prayer. Metal purse frames inscribed with prayers, a jet bead carved into the shape of three scallop shells—the emblem of St. James of Compostela—and several finger rings with religious images, inscriptions, a compartment for a holy relic, or simply projecting knobs which acted like prayer beads all testify to the piety of everyday life. The re-enactor will find plenty in this book. The multifunctional dress accessories might be reproduced for an authentic appearance, while dress hooks and twisted wire items believed to have come from headdresses may exercise the ingenuity of the reconstructor. With the small quibble that a bit of additional proofreading could have been supplied, I can recommend Standley’s book as both scholarly and original. — Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Editor

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Contents of Previous Volumes

Vol. 1 (2005)

Elizabeth Coatsworth Stitches in Time: Establishing a History of Anglo-­Saxon  Embroidery Maren Clegg Hyer Textiles and Textile Imagery in the Exeter Book Gale R. Owen-Crocker Pomp, Piety, and Keeping the Woman in Her Place: The   Dress of Cnut and Ælfgifu-Emma Sandra Ballif Straubhaar Wrapped in a Blue Mantle: Fashions for Icelandic  Slayers? John Muendel The Orientation of Strikers in Medieval Fulling Mills:   The Role of the “French” Gualchiera Susan M. Carroll-Clark Bad Habits: Clothing and Textile References in the   Register of Eudes Rigaud, Archbishop of Rouen Thomas M. Izbicki Forbidden Colors in the Regulation of Clerical Dress   from the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) to the Time   of Nicholas of Cusa (d. 1464) Robin Netherton The Tippet: Accessory after the Fact? Kristen M. Burkholder Threads Bared: Dress and Textiles in Late Medieval   English Wills Carla Tilghman Giovanna Cenami’s Veil: A Neglected Detail Vol. 2 (2006)

Niamh Whitfield Dress and Accessories in the Early Irish Tale “The   Wooing Of Becfhola” Gale R. Owen-Crocker The Embroidered Word: Text in the Bayeux Tapestry Monica L. Wright “De Fil d’Or et de Soie”: Making Textiles in Twelfth   Century French Romance Sharon Farmer Biffes, Tiretaines, and Aumonières: The Role of Paris in   the International Textile Markets of the Thirteenth   and Fourteenth Centuries Margaret Rose Jaster “Clothing Themselves in Acres”: Apparel and ­   Impoverishment in Medieval and Early Modern ­  England

Contents of Previous Volumes Drea Leed “Ye Shall Have It Cleane”: Textile Cleaning Techniques   in Renaissance Europe Tawny Sherrill Fleas, Fur, and Fashion: Zibellini as Luxury Accessories   of the Renaissance Danielle Nunn-Weinberg The Matron Goes to the Masque: The Dual Identity of   the English Embroidered Jacket Vol. 3 (2007)

Elizabeth Coatsworth Cushioning Medieval Life: Domestic Textiles in Anglo   Saxon England Sarah Larratt Keefer A Matter of Style: Clerical Vestments in the Anglo   Saxon Church Susan Leibacher Ward Saints in Split Stitch: Representations of Saints in Opus  Anglicanum Vestments John H. Munro The Anti-Red Shift—To the Dark Side: Colour Changes   in Flemish Luxury Woollens, 1300–1550 John Oldland The Finishing of English Woollens, 1300–1550 Lesley K. Twomey Poverty and Richly Decorated Garments: A   Re-Evaluation of Their Significance in the Vita Christi   of Isabel de Villena Elizabeth Benns “Set on Yowre Hondys”: Fifteenth-Century Instructions   for Fingerloop Braiding Lois Swales and Tiny Textiles Hidden In Books: Toward a Categorization Heather Blatt   of Multiple-Strand Bookmarkers Melanie Schuessler “She Hath Over Grown All that Ever She Hath”:   Children’s Clothing in the Lisle Letters, 1533–40 Vol. 4 (2008)

Heidi M. Sherman From Flax to Linen in the Medieval Rus Lands Anna Zanchi “Melius Abundare Quam Deficere”: Scarlet Clothing in   Laxdæla Saga and Njáls Saga Lucia Sinisi The Wandering Wimple Mark Chambers and From Head to Hand to Arm: The Lexicological History Gale R. Owen-Crocker   of “Cuff ” Lena Hammarlund, Visual Textiles: A Study of Appearance and Visual Heini Kirjavainen,   Impression in Archaeological Textiles Kathrine Vestergård Pedersen, and Marianne Vedeler 186

Contents of Previous Volumes Camilla Luise Dahl and The Cap of St. Birgitta Isis Sturtewagen Robin Netherton The View from Herjolfsnes: Greenland’s Translation of   the European Fitted Fashion John Block Friedman The Art of the Exotic: Robinet Testard’s Turbans and   Turban-like Coiffure Lisa Evans “The Same Counterpoincte Beinge Olde and Worene”:   The Mystery of Henry VIII’s Green Quilt Vol. 5 (2009)

Kate D’Ettore Clothing and Conflict in the Icelandic Family Sagas:   Literary Convention and the Discourse of Power Sarah-Grace Heller Obscure Lands and Obscured Hands: Fairy Embroidery   and the Ambiguous Vocabulary of Medieval Textile  Decoration Thomas M. Izbicki Failed Censures: Ecclesiastical Regulation of Women’s   Clothing in Late Medieval Italy Paula Mae Carns Cutting a Fine Figure: Costume on French Gothic  Ivories Sarah Randles One Quilt or Two? A Reassessment of the Guicciardini  Quilts Melanie Schuessler French Hoods: Development of a Sixteenth-Century   Court Fashion Tawny Sherrill Who Was Cesare Vecellio? Placing Habiti Antichi in  Context Vol. 6 (2010)

Hilary Davidson and Archaeological Dress and Textiles in Latvia from the Ieva Pīgozne   Seventh to Thirteenth Centuries: Research, Results,   and Reconstructions Valerie L. Garver Weaving Words in Silk: Women and Inscribed Bands in   the Carolingian World Christine Sciacca Stitches, Sutures, and Seams: “Embroidered” Parchment   Repairs in Medieval Manuscripts Sarah L. Higley Dressing Up the Nuns: The Lingua Ignota and Hildegard   of Bingen’s Clothing William Sayers Flax and Linen in Walter of Bibbesworth’s Thirteenth   Century French Treatise for English Housewives Roger A. Ladd The London Mercers’ Company, London Textual   Culture, and John Gower’s Mirour de l’Omme 187

Contents of Previous Volumes Kate Kelsey Staples Fripperers and the Used Clothing Trade in Late   Medieval London Charlotte A. Stanford Donations from the Body for the Soul: Apparel,   Devotion, and Status in Late Medieval Strasbourg Vol. 7 (2011)

Benjamin L. Wild The Empress’s New Clothes: A Rotulus Pannorum of   Isabella, Sister of King Henry III, Bride of Emperor   Frederick II Isis Sturtewagen Unveiling Social Fashion Patterns: A Case Study of   Frilled Veils in the Low Countries (1200–1500) Kimberly Jack What Is the Pearl-Maiden Wearing, and Why? Mark Chambers “Hys surcote was ouert”: The “Open Surcoat” in Late   Medieval British Texts Eleanor Quinton London Merchants’ Cloth Exports, 1350–1500 and John Oldland Christine Meek Laboreria Sete: Design and Production of Lucchese Silks   in the Late Fourteenth and Early Fifteenth Centuries Vol. 8 (2012)

Brigitte Haas-Gebhard The Unterhaching Grave Finds: Richly Dressed Burials and Britt Nowak-Böck from Sixth-Century Bavaria Chrystel Brandenburgh Old Finds Rediscovered: Two Early Medieval ­   Headdresses from the National Museum of   Antiquities, Leiden, the Netherlands Maren Clegg Hyer Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: Imagined and Reimagined   Textiles in Anglo-Saxon England Louise Sylvester Mining for Gold: Investigating a Semantic Classification   in the Lexis of Cloth and Clothing Project Patricia Williams Dress and Dignity in the Mabinogion Kathryn Marie Talarico Dressing for Success: How the Heroine’s Clothing   (Un)Makes the Man in Jean Renart’s Roman de la Rose Lisa Evans Anomaly or Sole Survivor? The Impruneta Cushion and   Early Italian “Patchwork” Vol. 9 (2013)

Antonietta Amati Canta Bridal Gifts in Medieval Bari Lucia Sinisi The Marriage of the Year (1028) 188

Contents of Previous Volumes Mark Zumbuhl Clothing as Currency in Pre-Norman Ireland? John Oldland Cistercian Clothing and Its Production at Beaulieu ­   Abbey, 1269–70 Eva I. Andersson Clothing and Textile Materials in Medieval Sweden and   Norway John Block Friedman The Iconography of Dagged Clothing and Its Reception   by Moralist Writers Susan E. James Domestic Painted Cloths in Sixteenth-Century England:   Imagery, Placement, and Ownership Vol. 10 (2014)

Christopher J. Monk Behind the Curtains, Under the Covers, Inside the Tent:   Textile Items and Narrative Strategies in Anglo-Saxon   Old Testament Art Lisa Monnas Some Medieval Colour Terms for Textiles Rebecca Woodward Wefts and Worms: The Spread of Sericulture Wendelken   and Silk Weaving in the West before 1300 Maureen C. Miller The Liturgical Vestments of Castel Sant’Elia: Their   Historical Significance and Current Condition Christine Meek Clothing Distrained for Debt in the Court of Merchants   of Lucca in the Late Fourteenth Century Valija Evalds Sacred or Profane? The Horned Headdresses of St.   Frideswide’s Priory Michelle L. Beer “Translating” a Queen: Material Culture and the   Creation of Margaret Tudor as Queen of Scots Elizabeth Coatsworth “A formidable undertaking”: Mrs. A. G. I. Christie and   English Medieval Embroidery

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Contents INGVILD ØYE Production, Quality, and Social Status in Viking Age Dress: Three Cases from Western Norway KAREN NICHOLSON The Effect of Spindle Whorl Design on Wool Thread Production: A Practical Experiment Based on Examples from Eighth-Century Denmark TINA ANDERLINI

The Shirt Attributed to St. Louis

SARAH-GRACE HELLER Angevin-Sicilian Sumptuary Statutes of the 1290s: Fashion in the Thirteenth-Century Mediterranean CORDELIA WARR The Devil on My Tail: Clothing and Visual Culture in the Camposanto Last Judgment EMILY J. ROZIER “Transposing þe shapus þat God first mad them of ”: Manipulated Masculinity in the Galaunt Tradition SUSAN POWELL Textiles and Dress in the Household Papers of Lady Margaret Beaufort (1443–1509), Mother of King Henry VII ANNA RIEHL BERTOLET “Like two artificial gods”: Needlework and Female Bonding in A Midsummer Night’s Dream

ROBIN NETHERTON is a professional editor and a researcher/lecturer on the interpretation of medieval European dress. GALE R. OWEN-CROCKER is Professor Emerita, The University of Manchester.

an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge IP12 3DF (GB) and 668 Mt Hope Ave, Rochester NY 14620-2731 (US) www.boydellandbrewer.com

Editors Netherton & Owen-Crocker

Cover image: Lady Margaret Beaufort, painted by Roland Lockey, ca. 1597 (detail). Photo: By permission of the Master and Fellows of St. John’s College, Cambridge.

MEDIEVAL CLOTHING AND TEXTILES

Medieval Clothing and Textiles 11

MEDIEVAL CLOTHING AND TEXTILES

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Edited by Robin Netherton and Gale R. Owen-Crocker